General, Your Wife Blew Something Up Again

She was the “Living Yama” of the defense industry. Then she opened her eyes and found herself a widowed, abandoned wife in a general's household. Forced to leave with nothing in court? Jiang Zhao flung five years of rotten accounts in their faces and sent the second branch, who had embezzled military pay, straight to prison. Her in-laws called her a curse on her husband and family. The court officials laughed at her lowly merchant origins. Jiang Zhao smiled faintly. “You have no idea what real power is.” Matches, soap, high-proof liquor: she dabbled in a few side businesses and made a fortune every day. Gunpowder, land mines, cannons: she got serious about military industry and changed the world. The Northern Di cavalry marches south? One cannon shot blows your royal court to bits. The powerful at court bully her? One mine blows your sweet dreams to pieces. Her general husband, who had faked his death, sneaks in late at night, his expression conflicted. “Who are you, really?” Jiang Zhao wipes down a cannon barrel without looking up. “Someone you can't afford to provoke. Sign the divorce papers and get out. Now.” Later The emperor begs her to become chief of military industry. The general begs her to take back the divorce papers. Neighboring countries beg her to stop doing research! Later still, the court historian writes through tears in The Annals of Zhaoyang: “By incomplete count, the emperor and empress blew up three palaces, twelve enemy camps, and... seventeen of His Majesty's imperial robes over the course of their lives.” When a technical woman's idea of romance is giving you an atomic bomb, this realm is one I'll conquer myself!