Reborn in a single moment, medical doctorate Su Li opens her eyes to find herself a criminal wife being exiled to the borderlands. Her original self was set up by her stepmother and forced to marry Huo Zheng, a down-on-his-luck young nobleman convicted of colluding with the enemy. She also has a frail son who's always sick. Everyone in the capital is waiting for the family of three to die on the journey into exile.
But hidden in her sleeve is a world of her own, with a spirit spring that can heal wounds and cure illness. While others face exile and wait to die, she clears land and builds a life: refining salt, improving the soil, making soap, and taking over an apothecary. She turns barren wasteland into a treasure trove.
Her husband is no pushover, either: a battle-tested scion of a military family, framed and convicted, a blunt, fearless man who's lived by the blade. She says, "I'll protect you," and he says, "All right." She puts up the money; he risks his life. Together, the two of them are unstoppable, and they always say exactly what they mean. Anyone who so much as touches a hair on the Huo family's heads will get double the payback, with medicine and poison alike.
Meanwhile, her scheming cousin tries to steal her luck, her stepmother watches like a hawk, enemies in the Ministry of War close in at every turn, and a hundred thousand cavalry from foreign lands batter at the border as they invade south. She wants only a few simple things: to clear her family's name, amass a fortune, and live a warm, happy life with her husband and son.
But as her personal world grows ever larger, a secret seems to lie deep within the spirit spring, one that even the royal court of the foreign lands is fighting over in blood...
