After another all-nighter at work, modern office worker Chu Qingcheng opens her eyes to find herself lying on a gold-and-jade-inlaid dragon bed. Palace maids kneel in unison and greet her, “May Your Majesty enjoy good health!” She has transmigrated into the newly enthroned empress of the Great Qi dynasty!
The original owner was frail and sickly. Powerful ministers controlled the court, the imperial consorts each had their own schemes, and war on the border was about to erupt. Even the ancestral rules, which demanded that “the empress marry a powerful minister within a month” and “produce an heir within a year,” were enough to make anyone feel suffocated. With no experience in governing, Chu Qingcheng is pushed into the eye of the storm from the start: the Empress Dowager joins forces with her maternal relatives to poison her in secret, feudal princes watch hungrily from their fiefs, and even a ceremony to worship Heaven could expose her as an “impostor.”
But an office worker's resilience is no empty boast. She uses modern thinking to reform the finances and establish a rapid information network, draws on historical knowledge to refute princes who try to force her from the throne, uses medical knowledge to root out the poisoners around her, and even dares to break with tradition by replacing the imperial concubine selection with a talent search. From stumbling through the affairs of state to gradually consolidating power and winning the people's support, Chu Qingcheng must not only hide her transmigration secret in a palace full of dangers, but also carve out a path through the whirlpool of political intrigue and transform this beleaguered dynasty into a flourishing empire truly her own. And behind those seemingly dangerous enemies and ambiguous overtures, how many hidden schemes and genuine feelings are waiting to be uncovered?
