Note: Bai Mudan translates to White Peony

  Long ago, Bai Mudan was a goddess renowned throughout the heavens for her beauty, wisdom, and compassion. One day, a mortal Taoist monk embarked on a perilous quest, tasked by the Jade Emperor himself to retrieve a sacred pearl guarded by the powerful Queen Mother of the Gods to prove that humanity was worth protecting.

  Moved by the monk's courage and compassion for humanity, Bai Mudan, of the Queen's ladies in waiting, intervened, secretly helping him retrieve the pearl.

  The monk gratefully presented the sacred pearl to the Jade Emperor, thus securing the continued protection from the Gods.

  But for her part in all of this, all that awaited Bai Mudan was punishment.

  "If you love humanity so much that you would betray your Queen, your own kind, then become one of them," the Jade Emperor ruled, eyes ablaze in fury.

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  And he cast Bai Mudan down to the mortal realm so that she would suffer and die just like the humans she adored.

  Except...he didn't realise that was exactly what she wanted. For Bai Mudan had fallen in love with a mortal man long ago.

  All she ever wanted was to leave her immortal life behind, become mortal, and spend her life with the mortal man she had come to love.

  Her wish was granted. Bai Mudan descended from the heavens to live out a mortal life filled with love, loss, joy, and sorrow at her beloved's side.

  It is said that the powerful Zhang family in Rui State descended from Bai Mudan, each daughter inheriting her legendary beauty and charm. Yet perhaps this story is only a myth—a pretty lie spun by poets and courtiers, used to mask darker truths.

  But if it was true, among her supposed descendants was one young woman who seemed to inherit more than mere beauty: Jin Hengxin possessed Bai Mudan's cunning mind, her resilience, and an ability to endure whatever fate dealt her.

  And when betrayal came, as it always does, she unleashed a wrath so devastating that cities burned, kingdoms fell, and history itself was rewritten in her wake.

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  Author's note

  There are actually myths about Bai Mudan, but there are varying versions. In some, she is a courtesan, in others she is a seductive normal woman, and a rarer version closer to this one where she just played a small part in the quest of a Taoist Monk.

  I took the last one, and adapted it.