Before the age of 16, she is the pearl in the palm of her rich and powerful father, the beloved daughter. After the age of 16, in a single night, her family is broken up and nearly all the members dead. Relying on the emperor’s last trace of love and affection, finally Mu Ru Shuang (如霜) is able to stand on top of the imperial harem. Conspiracy, suspicion, jealousy, people trying to create a wedge between her and the emperor, she is able to eliminate each and everyone of her enemies, the imperial concubines in the imperial court, one by one. She calculates and uses up all kind of schemes and strategies but ultimately there is no winner !!!
[Ebook][Eng Translation][Incomplete Radiodrama] [Trăng lạnh như sương]
[After a chance meeting, the handsome stranger asks for her name.
She waits in hopeless anticipation, but the marriage proposal never appeared.
What appeared is an edict from the Emperor killing 3 generations of her family.
She lives for revenge, only to realize when she sees her enemy, that it is the last person she would have expected meeting again.]
The story begins with an edict from the new Emperor destroying the Mu clan because the patriarch participated in a rebellion. Only the youngest daughter (Mu Ru Shuang) and youngest son are spared, but they are separated. Living with only revenge on her mind, Ru Shuang agrees to help 6th Prince overthrow 4th Prince (the Emperor). She relies on her looks to capture the Emperor’s heart because she looks very much like her elder sister, who had been his favorite concubine but died in childbirth upon learning of the edict against the Mu family. As Ru Shuang carries out her plan, twists and surprises slowly unravel to highlight the constant scheming between the Emperor’s women and the loyalty and rebellion between princes. In the end, the most heartbreaking secret is revealed – that two people meant to be together were separated by an innocent misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that sets in motion for the tragedy to come.
I was just complaining to peanuts about I’m in the mood for ancient stories but unable to find any good ones to read, then lo and behold! I stumbled on this little gem. I highly recommend this story, but the author is FWSC so you guys know what you are getting: angst, tears, heartbreak and then a sad ending. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a good story filled with unexpected twists and surprises, you’re not afraid of crying your eyes out and having your heart torn out of your chest because of the tragic ending, please give this a try!! It’s worth all the tears and pain, I promise hehe.
Given the intricacies of the plot, I’d love for this to be adapted into a drama (Yumama, can you read English? Can you hear lidge’s plea shouting out in the wilderness?) However, I’d change the ending so that Ru Shuang can let go of the past and she and 4th Prince can have a good ending. While the sad ending makes sense novel-wise, I don’t think viewing audience can stomach it, not if they invest hours upon hours following a drama. Come on, we watch dramas to be entertained, not have our hearts broken, lol.
Intro translation:
The Emperor’s edict cuts through the silence, not loudly, but the eunuch’s voice screeches, like a sharp knife slicing through everyone’s eardrums: “Males over 14 years of age will be executed, under 14 years of age will be exiled three thousand miles from the Capitol, females over 16 years of age will be given the white cloth to hang, under 16 years of age will be sold into slavery ……”
In the prison there is only dead silence, there are prisoners kneeling everywhere, the males are detained on the left side, the females on the right side, it is apparent that most will not survive. The hallway is dark and narrow, a cold breeze from somewhere wafts through, frigid to the bones. Among the females someone begins to sob, it is soft and desolate, like the melting of frost, bring a chill that permeates everyone’s hearts. High Official Mu glares with his red eyes, tightening his grips on the bars of his prison cell: “What’s with the crying? Are females of the Mu family afraid of death?”
Ru Shuang firmly grasps the bars of her prison cell, using all of her restraint to suppress her tears. Finally she cannot wait anymore, everything is coming to an end. Sixteen years of a sheltered life amidst wealth and privileges, sixteen years of being treated like a treasure, she had thought the next sixteen years would be the same, even better. But everything is gone now, everything is gone! Under the power of the new Emperor, everything of the Mu family has turned into ashes. She tightly bites her lower lip, so tight it begins to bleed. As blood oozes, she clenches her teeth: “Father, I’m not afraid to die!”
She does not fear death but fears being left alive, she is afraid of having to live by herself. She is her father’s youngest daughter, besides her, not many females will be spared. She is frightened of that possibility!
But she needs to live, to live so she can kill him, to live so she can have his blood in revenge for the blood of her family!
Even if he is the anointed Emperor, she will seek revenge for the Mu family, she will survive, she must!
I wrote the synopsis of the book but lidge did the hard work of translating so much details:P Another imperial harem story, yawn yawn. Sorry, this kind of story doesn’t sit well with my modern sensibilities. But if it is made into a pretty drama with a pair of handsome actor and cute actress like Legend of Lu Zhen, I’ll lap it up eagerly, lol. IF YMM is producing it then there will be no LSS & HG as they are from his arch enemy camp:(
The synopsis might sound like an imperial harem story, but the story is centered on the rebellion of 6th Prince against 4th Prince. It is from this rebellion that creates the intricacies in the plot: the elimination of the Mu clan, the reason why Ru Shuang’s elder sister agreed to marry 4th Prince, Ru Shuang using her looks to capture the Emperor’s heart and her wits to outsmart his other wives, 7th Prince’s loyalty to 4th Prince, 11th Prince’s betrayal against his own brother from the same mother, the question of who is the legitimate ruler.
The rebellion is the catalyst that causes a chain of events to happen which affects all the characters.
Lidge, please SPOIL me! 😀
MV (with Viet subs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haxiwGtXCkg
Liu Shi Shi – Mu Ru Shuang
Yuan Hong – 4th Prince/Emperor
Hu Ge – 7th Prince
Unknown guy at 6:36 – 6th Prince
The MV does a good job of telling the story so I decided to do a summary from it. I marked specific sections in the MV so it’s easier to understand. The summary is very detailed and covers the entire story. Please don’t read if you want to find out for yourself what happens.
Hi
Is the 4th prince in love with her distant relative? If not why would they have a child together when he is still tgt with RS.
RS killed 4th price bcause he nv came to propose to her or because he killed her clan?
Thanks. sounds interesting. but as usual, a sad ending. 🙁
and why wasn’t she killed after murdering 4th prince? is it because 4th price ordered not do before he died?
Thank you very much for such an indepth summary. Pls write one for every books in the bar, lol. Very good idea to base your summary on the fan-made MV. To prove that I did read your summary thoroughly, I’ll answer cloudy’s queries:P
4th prince loves the relative bcos she looks like RS. At that time RS was banished to the temple. Come on, he is the Emperor so can love as many as he can eat, lol. Hey lidge, how come the baby son becomes 7th Prince’s niece?
RS knows 4th prince did go but proposed to the wrong woman. She probably killed him to seek revenge for her family deaths.
She wasn’t killed after killing 4th prince bcos 7th Prince who is her lover took power & installed their son as the new Emperor.
This story sounds rather familiar. I think FWSC copied parts of the idea from the 2nd or 3rd Qing Emperor’s love story then mix & match with some other novel plots. Eeeeee, I don’t like RS, she is too vindictive & cold. The Emperor did what he has to do as her family are rebels. If one can’t forgive, just leave but killing him is so cruel. Moreover she also wanna kill his son. It is understandable why 7th Prince doesn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore.
Here is another MV on the story:
🙁 🙁 🙁
Thanks, Lidge!! You ROCK!!!!! 😀
I usually shy away from books with torturously sad endings, but I did like FWSC’s other ancient novel (Eastern Palace) a lot, which makes me much more partial to possibly picking up this story. Unlike Peanuts, I actually tend to prefer ancient stories, ha. 😛 I have EXTREMELY low tolerance for stupid females in modern stories, which is sadly an all too common phenomenon. Actually, that’s the sole reason I haven’t been following your and Peanuts’ translation of “Come Eat, Shan Shan”, sorry. 😛
I assume RS already knew, when she killed him, that 4th prince was “the one” from so long ago, but she still chose to kill him, despite (I presume) her love for him. It’s a little sad and extreme, but I can accept it in an ancient story, because back then, ideals like family honor were taken VERY seriously. In other words, I’m more willing to accept “excesses” in ancient stories since I can understand that their POVs and sensibilities were VERY different from modern ones.
Haha, to each its own. I know your fetish so I asked Lidge to post this to lure you out:P She even thought I used your name to ask for spoiler, such a suspicious girl, must have read too many scheming books, haha…I do like ancient book but not the palace kind unless have eye candy like Legend of Lu Zhen & BBJX:P I like Songs in the Cloud & Heavey Sweetness but if not translated into English I’ve difficulty understanding it:( Look out for my feature on my fav ancient book coming soon, hopefully, lol. We are sourcing material now:P
There are serious modern books with intelligent & normal female leads in SSB eg Xin Yi Wu’s books. Just that Lidge & I need to balance our book diet with some junk food. We can’t read ancient books & cry daily as most ancient books tend to have tragic ending. Real life is sad enough so we need to laugh our heart out, not break it:P I guess you can say, Lidge & I read everything except porno books, lol. Oh, maybe Lidge does read porno book if Ye Luo Wu Xin’s books are considered so:P
Haha, Peanuts, you are indeed a sneaky one, knowing how to lure me out even when I should be studying at the moment … I think you should write a palace intrigue novel of your own. 😛
Hey, I’m all for junk food, and most of the time, I actually prefer relatively light books, since as you said, RL can be frustrating enough at times, why pile on more (and “fake”) tears reading über-sad books at the end of the day.
My aversion to stupid female leads in romance novels probably stems from how little patience I have for them in real life. I HATE ragging on my own sex (girl power FTW!), but it constantly boggles my mind how little progress some “modern” women have made decades after we were finally granted the same rights as men, and which women in less developed countries still lack. I don’t expect all of us to be Hilary Clintons, but it makes me want to tear my hair out witnessing full grown women acting like little girls to “catch a man”. Okay, I’ll stop ranting. 🙂 It probably gets to me more because I work with disenfranchised women, and it rubs me the wrong way that too many women don’t seem to appreciate how lucky they’ve got it. Also, we women need to band together, not constantly be at each other’s throats and dragging us down. There are plenty of men to go around. Hehe, I said I would stop.
Anyway, I look forward to what you will recommend, Peanuts. 😀 Let’s see if you can lure me out again …
Isn’t the only book that can be considered “original” is the Bible? Every other books/dramas/movies/theatre plays all share some common plot elements.
4th Prince took preliminary measures against the Mu clan because the males were excellent warriors, which presented a huge threat to him should they have time to go ahead with the rebellion. I don’t fault 4th Prince for eliminating this threat to the throne, but I also can’t fault RS for seeking revenge. He killed her entire family, which was not just a few people. The edict encompassed 3 generations, including the servants so lots of blood were spilled.
RS can’t leave and start a new life somewhere, lol. She was demoted to slave status and bound to her master. The first chapter of the novel explains RS’s rough life as a slave. She worked under harsh conditions, was cold and didn’t have enough to eat. Her maid, the only other female left in the Mu clan left alive, was also a slave and killed before RS but she couldn’t do anything about it.
Wanting to kill 4th Prince’s son is a necessary move, just like 4th Prince eliminated the Mu clan. The worst thing for a country is a civil war and leaving a legitimate candidate for the throne will always carry that threat. Better to sacrifice the minority (in this case, one baby) to save the majority (the many people who will die or suffer should there be a civil war).
7th Prince is righteous and loyal whereas RS can compromise depending on the situation. His personality and RS’s personality are different so they wouldn’t suit each other. Besides, 7th Prince is very loyal to 4th Prince. Whatever romantic feelings 7th Prince might have had for RS, he would have kept them under wraps out of respect for 4th Prince.
When RS was rescued from drowning and brought before 4th Prince, that was her first time seeing him as the Emperor and she immediately recognized her enemy as “the one” she had fallen in love with 2 years ago and had been waiting for. Not soon after, RS found out how much 4th Prince had loved her elder sister so she realized he did propose marriage like he promised, just that he made a honest mistake and married the wrong person without realizing it. 4th Prince had to kneel before his father for half a day to get consent for the marriage. That was his first and only time begging his father for something. Despite knowing the full story, RS still went ahead with her revenge plan.
The question is whether RS continued loving him after knowing he’s the Emperor and her enemy? If she loved him, couldn’t she have forgiven him? The romantic part of me believes RS never stopped loving the handsome stranger she met at the festival, but the pain of losing her family outweighed that love. Love and hate for someone are not mutually exclusive and can exist at the same time inside one’s heart. The important thing is which is the more powerful force? Same dilemma confronted 4th Prince. He had to choose between his beloved wife or eliminating her family. He chose the latter option so she died in childbirth when she found out about it.
Hey peanuts, another member to add to our “Girl Power FTW!” club. It’s been lonely with just you and me ranting against men and how hard it is for us girls, lol.
Mei, if you like reading about intelligent female leads, you will like RS. She and 4th Prince are the most intelligent people in Cold Moon-Like Frost. FWSC doesn’t make the depth of 4th Prince’s intelligent obvious until the end when his strategy to trap and eliminate 6th Prince is explained, and the fact that RS was able to guess it shows she is as equally as smart as 4th Prince. In addition, 4th Prince and RS are both cold and calculating – 1) 4th Prince in how he figured out 6th Prince’s rebellion intention and took methodical steps to prevent it by first eliminating the Mu clan and forcing 6th Prince to rebel openly….2) RS in how she methodically eliminated 4th Prince’s other wives and then succeeding in killing him in the end. They are like the opposite gender of each other, and FWSC did a good job in pointing this out so that it makes sense why 4th Prince and RS fell in love and recognized each other as soul-mates just after meeting by chance and talking to each other. Sometimes in other novels, the reason why the main male and female lead love each other is not clear, which diminishes the quality of the plot.
When I finished this book, I was like why would FWSC do that? Why would the author only let 4th Prince (Emperor) realize his mistake at the last minute? And before he died, what was he trying to say to Ru Shuang? I was thinking what if on the Lantern Festival day of that year, he was patient enough to let Ru Shuang finish her word, then everything wouldn’t happen and it would not lead to tragedy. However, I know that there’s such thing called “what if”
Sorry, I was trying to say that there’s no such thing called “what if”
before I read, just wanted to know if there are any R-18 parts, and if so, is it a lot?