A twenty-four-year-old history major and top student wakes up in the body of Li Mingzhu, the twelve-year-old Seventh Princess, in the ninth year of Wude. The moment she opens her eyes, she faces a deadly plot: Consort Shu's nanny is holding rouge laced with aconite poison, ready to ruin her face. Memories of her previous life, trapped in the Cold Palace, come flooding back. Clutching the silver hairpin her mother has just given her, she vows that this time, armed with modern technology and the memories of two lifetimes, she will break through the palace walls that have confined women for a thousand years, using rouge and blood as her tools.
This is a tale of rising against the odds across a thousand years. Testing poison with a silver hairpin shows the rigor of a history student; carrying people in a hot-air balloon reveals the romance of an engineering student. And every night as she sneaks over palace walls, she carries not only System items, but also the determination to make the whole era hear women's voices. When the poison plot in a rouge box becomes fuel for a hot-air balloon, and the remaining snow of the Cold Palace melts into the spring waters of a law granting women household status, the legend of Princess Huiming is only just beginning. She will make the Great Tang the first era to recognize the sharp brilliance of women.
