Palace Intrigue: I Climbed to the Empress's Throne with Gears

In the Great Qian Dynasty, a unique era where the nation’s lifeblood is its “steam core,” and mechanical engineering is interwoven with the schemes of the imperial court, comes the tale of Mo Yuan, the daughter of a disgraced minister, and her rise to power. Bearing a blood feud, she is trapped in the inner palace as a low-ranking concubine. Within the palace walls, she relies not on conventional harem intrigue, but on the intricate mechanical engineering passed down through her family, dismissed by the world as “useless tricks,” to defuse crises and escape dead ends one step at a time. From crafting exquisitely precise clocks and lifelike mechanical birds, to secretly setting up a “web of listening spiders” to monitor the harem, and then designing “steam repeating crossbows” and “mechanical fortifications” capable of turning the tide of battle, she transforms cold gears, springs, and pistons into her sharpest weapons and most steadfast shields. As she and the young, suspicious, and scheming Emperor Xiao Heng test and exploit one another, entangling their fates in a complicated romance, Mo Yuan not only clears her family’s name, but also uses the power of ingenuity to propel this decaying dynasty into an unprecedented new age powered by steam and gears. In the end, she dons the phoenix crown and becomes the one-of-a-kind “Ingenious Empress” in the history of the Great Qian Dynasty.