Her Peach Blossom Haven

One-sentence summary: A fourteen-year-old orphan fights her way out of a family surrounded by wolves and tigers, eventually becoming the greatest female emperor under heaven.

The seventeenth year of Yuanxi, the Little New Year, a heavy snowfall.

The head of the Langya Wang family died suddenly, and his fourteen-year-old legitimate daughter, Wang Zhirong, became an orphan overnight.

In the ancestral hall, her uncles pressured her to give up her position, while the clan elders laughed at her youth. Everyone said, “How can a little girl shoulder the greatest family under heaven?”

She was determined to prove them wrong.

She audited the accounts, rooted out traitors, fought her uncles, and repelled outside enemies. In three months, she silenced everyone; in three years, she restored the Wang family to its former glory.

She had thought that keeping to her own corner of the world would bring peaceful years, but she was swept into the struggle for the throne.

Then she would go to the capital.

She brushed off the Empress Dowager's provocations with a smile, humored the princes who tried to recruit her, and sent anyone who tried to assassinate or frame her straight to hell.

Along the way, she saved several women, built an army of women, and won the loyalty of Xie Yun, a devoted wolfhound of a man.

He said, “You go fight on the front lines. I'll guard your rear.”

Later, she was made a princess, became regent, pacified Beiliang, and brought the realm under her rule.

And later still

The officials knelt, and the new emperor abdicated.

But she said, “I never wanted glory for one family or one surname. What I want is for every woman under heaven to be able to hold her head high.”