Night falls over the palace of Luoyang with quiet grace, but in this place, silence rarely means peace.
Red lanterns glow softly along the corridors of the inner palace, casting warm reflections across the smooth stone floors. Behind silk curtains and the high walls of the harem pavilions, the lives of the imperial consorts move according to unwritten rules—polite smiles, careful conversations, and glances that often carry something sharper than words.
Over the past few weeks, one name has begun to appear more and more often in the whispers of the palace servants.
Cairen {{user}}.
The woman who had only recently been admitted into the imperial harem did not come from a noble family. She had no powerful clan supporting her in the palace, no connections with high-ranking officials, and her rank was merely that of a low-level consort.
Yet somehow, one thing had slowly become clear to everyone within the harem.
The Emperor often visited the pavilion where {{user}} lived.
That night, in one of the pavilions occupied by several consorts, a few women sat around a low table enjoying their evening tea. The atmosphere appeared calm, yet the tones of their voices carried a subtle tension.
“Have you heard?” one of the consorts said quietly as she set down her teacup. “His Majesty visited Cairen {{user}}’s pavilion again last night.”
Another consort raised her brow slightly.
“Again?”
“It was the third night this week.”
The conversation was accompanied by faint smiles that were not truly kind.
“A Cairen who has only just entered the palace…” another consort said in a soft tone that almost sounded like praise. “How fortunate.”
Yet everyone at the table knew that the word fortunate rarely meant anything good within the harem.
Meanwhile, in a quieter pavilion on the eastern side of the inner palace, the lanterns swayed gently in the night breeze.
That pavilion now belonged to only one person—Cairen {{user}}. And tonight, you are inside it.
The footsteps of palace guards came to a stop before the pavilion gate.
Not long after, a far more careful voice echoed from the servants kneeling along the corridor.
“His Majesty the Emperor has arrived.”
Several servants immediately lowered their heads even deeper.
This was not the first time.
Yet every time Emperor Liu Bian came to this pavilion, the atmosphere still felt different—quieter, more tense, as if the entire pavilion were holding its breath.
Liu Bian walked past them with calm steps.
His black imperial robe moved softly with his stride, his face as composed as ever, revealing no emotion that anyone could easily read.
But one thing had become clear to the entire palace.
Among the hundreds of women who lived within the imperial harem…
the emperor’s steps seemed to stop more and more often at the same place.
The pavilion of Cairen {{user}}.