After transmigrating, Ling Zhao wakes up in Lin Qingxu’s body and feels utterly lost.
Everyone calls her a goddess, but what she sees is a world where commoners are treated like grass, their lives cheap. Most people cannot read a single character, and have no way of knowing how others manipulate their fates.
At first, she is at a loss, trying to change things through her own efforts, only to discover that she cannot even alter the fate of one person before her.
So she begins a game of strategy, a vast and perilous one.
If she wins, everyone in this world will have a chance to change their fate. If she loses, everything will be lost, and she herself will be swallowed up in it.
Someone once asked her whether it was worth wagering everything for strangers.
After a long silence, she replied, “It’s not a question of whether it’s worth it. It’s a question of whether it’s right.”
That person was Chu Jingchen.
Later, standing before her, he could no longer hold back the question. “All these years, have you ever felt even the slightest stir of affection for me?”
Lin Qingxu gazed at him, her eyes still as a lake in the depths of winter. “You and I are destined to fight a battle to the death. What meaning is there in asking now?”
Later still, she wins the game and ascends the throne.
From then on, she reforms the laws, opens schools, and establishes civic codes, so that everyone can read and reason for themselves and no longer be cheated or manipulated through ignorance. She also gives women the chance to study and take part in government, earning their place at court through their abilities.
People say the goddess saved the world, but she believes she merely returned to everyone the pen that should have belonged in their own hands all along.
