Su Qingyuan, an elite instructor in the special forces, opens her eyes to find that her soul has transmigrated into the “useless, deposed empress” of the Dayao dynasty. She has just been accused of treason and murdering an heir, and is being taken to the execution ground to be beheaded.
The original owner was foolish enough to be used as a pawn by the favored consort, Liu Ruyan, and even her own father, the Duke Who Guards the Nation, is about to be implicated. But Su Qingyuan is a formidable woman who can disarm an opponent with her bare hands, identify poisons, and see through schemes. At the execution ground, she holds a silver hairpin to her throat and takes the execution site hostage. Then she feigns madness and drops a bombshell about the imperial heir's parentage, snatching her life back from the jaws of death. In the Cold Palace, she detects poison in the tea and turns the palace maid spying on her into a source of information, exposing Liu Ruyan's frame-up in full.
But she never expected the game to run so deep. The Northern Di wolf totem that suddenly appears on the Cold Palace wall, Emperor Xiao Jingyuan's seemingly cold and calculated tests, and the covert network of shadow guards her father has secretly put in place all revolve around the military power of the Duke Who Guards the Nation's residence and a Northern Di conspiracy.
To protect her family and uncover the truth, she hides her sharp edge and plays the fool, maneuvering between the inner palace and the court. She uses the poisoned tea to turn the tables on Liu Ruyan, draws on modern military tactics to help repel enemies at the border, and uses a Northern Di token to expose the lie about the imperial heir. Yet Emperor Xiao Jingyuan, who has watched from the sidelines with a cold gaze, goes from warily testing her to secretly protecting her as she repeatedly breaks through the traps.
As Northern Di's iron hooves approach the border and Liu Ruyan's final killing move targets the Duke Who Guards the Nation's residence, Su Qingyuan finally drops her disguise. She is no longer a deposed empress at the mercy of others, but a “War God” capable of leading troops and breaking enemy formations. Amid court power struggles, bloody battles at the border, and deadly schemes in the inner palace, she uses modern ingenuity to shake up Dayao, only to discover that she has long been caught up in an even deeper game of power
