Xie Yutang, the real daughter of the Prime Minister's household, spent fifteen years lost in the outside world. When she finally returned, she was met with a house full of hypocrisy: the distance of her birth parents, the hostility of Xie Ning, the fake heiress who had occupied her place for fifteen years, and a society that insisted women should be virtuous rather than educated. Hidden beneath Xie Yutang's coarse clothes was the knowledge she had secretly acquired over fifteen years, along with a heart unwilling to be shackled by fate.
When the opportunity to take the imperial examinations broke the silence, she faced the jeers of the entire household and the prejudices of society, wielding her brush as a blade and advancing with calculated steps. From the sensational shock of placing first in the highest imperial examination to her unyielding resilience amid the rises and falls of court politics, this woman, once abandoned in the countryside, ultimately tore through the shackles of her age by her own strength, ascended to the throne, and became the one and only empress in the history books.
