This Official Wants No Romance, Only the Realm

Shen Jun, a modern history PhD, died suddenly after staying up all night studying obscure records from the Great Xia dynasty. When she opened her eyes, she had become a poor young woman from a border region, so impoverished she couldn't afford to eat. The good news: Gender doesn't matter when entering the civil service in this dynasty, and women can take the imperial exams too. The bad news: Aside from her widowed mother and little brother, all her family has is an earthen house with walls full of holes. No matter. She may be useless at everything else, but memorizing books is her specialty. She knows the Four Books and Five Classics by heart, takes first place in every exam from the county to the prefectural level, and is ultimately appointed third-place winner by the emperor himself. At court, while others jockey for position and scheme, she keeps her head down and works. While they fight over power, she goes to tame the Yellow River. For three years, she eats and sleeps at the construction site, and manages to hold back a century of flooding. The emperor visits the embankment in person and writes, "First in river management." From then on, there is no stopping her: she opens canals, cultivates wasteland, provides disaster relief, and puts down rebellions. Others get promoted by giving gifts; she gets promoted by saying, "Send me wherever things are worst." In the end, she works her way up to become chief minister of the Grand Secretariat, the first woman to hold the post in the Great Xia dynasty. Someone asks her, "You never married. Do you regret it?" She thinks for a moment. "Regret it? Every embankment I've built, every inch of land I've brought back to life, and every student I've taught has been more reliable than a man." This is the story of a woman who used her own hands and heart to repair an entire nation, piece by piece. She doesn't fall in love. She builds infrastructure.