The abolition of the imperial edict did not push her into the cold palace, but gave her the broadest battlefield.
Shen Yanqiu took off his phoenix crown and harem and picked up the surveying rope. Strife in the harem? Court intrigues? No, her battlefield is on the rivers and dams, on the wasteland thoroughfares, and among the thousands of people who are about to be swallowed up by the floods.
From burning the first kiln bricks in the ruins of the cold palace, to uncovering the blood debt of forty years ago at the bottom of the Jiangnan River; from building the first Anminfang in the hands of three thousand refugees, to overwhelming the imperial Neo-Confucianism with a project blueprint on the Golden Palace; from taming the mighty Yellow River, to laying rail tracks to the distant snowfields of northern Xinjiang...
She uses engineering as a blade to cut through the accumulated evils.
She uses data as her ruler to reshape the empire.
The emperor on the dragon throne once thought he had the chess in hand, but gradually discovered that the blueprint she drew was more magnificent than his.
"Your Majesty, you guard your nine-layered palace."
She stood on the top of the huge sluice she built across the natural chasm, her sleeves filled with river wind, and behind her was the brightly lit new city.
"And I, my Lord, will build my earthly world."
This is a story about a post-apocalypse who does not engage in palace fights, does not fall in love, and only wants to build infrastructure.
About how to use a carefully calculated line, an original intention to respect life, and a shovel to pound earth and stone to build a new and more dignified world on the land of the ancient empire.
