Su Yun, a modern doctoral scholar of classical literature, transmigrates to the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties, where she becomes an orphan from a poor family. In a rigid hierarchy where “the upper ranks have no poor families, and the lower ranks have no noble clans,” she draws on her deep grounding in the Confucian classics, her knowledge of agriculture, and her keen understanding of how institutions work to rise from a country girl to the pinnacle of power, ultimately becoming history's first female emperor of humble birth.
