Three Copper Coins Upend the World

Hu Hui was a top saleswoman who had made her way through modern society and mastered both human nature and the art of marketing. One day, she woke up reborn in the womb of a woman in ancient times, and was born as a baby girl. Worse still, because of an absurd family prophecy that she was a “solitary star of ill omen who would bring ruin to her relatives and clan,” her own mother had her abandoned in a desolate mountain wilderness just after birth. Fate had other plans: a wandering Daoist priest found her and named her Fu Duoduo. Thus began her rootless life as a streetwise swindler, scraping by with three copper coins and claims that she could “read the secrets of fate.” She repackaged modern psychology, probability, and persuasive sales techniques as mysticism, working the streets for a little pocket money and living quite carefree. But fate’s gears forcibly shifted when she was sixteen. In pursuit of a “big score,” she brazenly brought her con before Xiao Jue, the young regent who held power over the entire court. Thanks to her sharp eye for microexpressions, incisive analysis of politics and human nature, and seemingly supernatural trick of “determining the fate of the world with three copper coins,” she accidentally “divined” the court intrigue and borderland threats that had long troubled Xiao Jue. Astonished by her apparent genius, he kept her by his side, regarding her as an extraordinary talent worth putting to use. From then on, Hu Hui was drawn into the treacherous struggles of court politics and the harem. She used modern knowledge to avert crises and relied on her “tricks” to navigate the competing factions. Yet as she spent her days and nights with Xiao Jue, she gradually fell for this seemingly cold man, who bore the weight of the realm within him. Xiao Jue, too, went from making use of her “arts” to admiring and loving her for her intelligence, vitality, and resilience. With an imperial marriage decree, the swindler from the streets became the exalted Princess Consort of the Regent.