[Two equally formidable leads + court intrigue + mystery investigations + angsty romance]
Modern office drone Lin Xiaoman is struck by lightning and transported to a matriarchal dynasty, where she becomes an attendant to a tyrant.
On her first day reporting for duty, she catches the empress's consort meeting in secret with a hostage prince from an enemy kingdom. A charred corpse turns up in the imperial garden, clutching her modern employee ID. Stranger still, the birthmark on the empress's wrist is identical to the burn scar beneath Lin Xiaoman's collarbone!
An investigation into the salt tax uncovers relief grain mixed with explosives, while repairing a river embankment leads to the discovery of a jade seal from the previous dynasty.
The empress's consort's jade pendant conceals a formula for cement, and the hostage prince from Mobei has a modern element on his person.
She flips through fake ledgers written in Arabic numerals with her left hand and clutches a flood-control map riddled with bullet holes in her right, treading carefully between the empress's burning gaze and the consort's suggestive intent to kill.
When Xie Mingshen tears open his robe to reveal a symbol she recognizes from the modern world,
when the empress crushes a jade pendant and says, “Little sister, it's time to come home”
this conspiracy spanning a thousand years
will finally end in the blood of sisters who turn against each other.
