The Curtain-Raiser

Shen Qingci, a doctor of Song history, opens her eyes to find herself in the Northern Song dynasty, inhabiting the body of a fifteen-year-old legitimate daughter who shares her name.

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, her stepmother arranges for her to “accidentally” fall into the water. After waking, she uses her scholar’s mind to quickly see through the ruse: it was no accident, but murder. Starting with the moss beneath her fingernails, she secretly gathers evidence and joins forces with her grandmother, who has endured ten years of indignity in the ancestral hall. At her father’s birthday banquet, she delivers the decisive blow, bringing down her stepmother and the corrupt network behind her.

But this is only the beginning. She accompanies her father to the capital and uses her deep knowledge of Song history to establish herself in Bianjing. There, she meets Xiao Jue, the legitimate son of a military family. Motherless since childhood, he has been framed and suppressed by his own clan, struggling to survive in the dark for ten years.

One is an expert in institutions and strategy; the other excels in battlefield tactics. Two souls with similar pasts go from joining forces to investigate cases to fighting side by side, from the inner household to the imperial court, from the Qingli reforms to troubles on the northwestern frontier. She writes policy essays under the pen name “Curtain-Raiser”; he takes her strategies into battle and wins.

She clears his father’s name, and he keeps her safe. With knowledge, courage, and each other, they turn a hopeless game into the foundation of a golden age.