I Built Infrastructure in the Cold Palace, and Now the Emperor Begs Me to Stop

Lin Zhiyi, a PhD in civil engineering, wakes up to find herself a disgraced consort banished to the Cold Palace.

She is slapped twenty times and made to kneel for three days. The room where she lives leaks and lets in the wind, and one of its beams is tilted by three inches, ready to collapse at any moment.

The entire imperial harem is waiting to see her cry, to see her die.

She doesn't cry.

She crouches on the ground and uses chopsticks to draw a plan for improving the drainage.

After three days of torrential rain, the palace is flooded, and three feet of water fill the Imperial Study. The emperor stands barefoot on his imperial desk, reading memorials, while the entire court is at a loss. Only the Cold Palace stays dry. The channels, soakaway wells, and broken-tile paving are all her work.

Xiao Yan stands in the courtyard of the Cold Palace, watching the mud-covered woman look down at him from a ladder.

"Hand me that piece of lumber."

From drainage in the Cold Palace to a dangerous building in the Imperial Study, from dredging the lotus pond to the Qin'an Yellow River dike, from the hidden passage in the barbican to the beacon towers of the Great Wall, Lin Zhiyi repairs her way across the realm. She uncovers ironclad proof that the Ministry of Works embezzled 2,370,000 taels over six years, the remains of Shen Heting, who was buried in the dike with iron chains pierced through his body, and the late emperor's edict hidden in a secret chamber in the Cold Palace in the ninth year of Qingli.

She doesn't scheme in the harem, compete for favor, or sleep in the emperor's bed.

She repairs buildings, digs up evidence, trains apprentices, and feeds stray cats.

The Noble Consort is studying the Kao Gong Ji, the Empress is taking a number for repairs to the Peony Terrace, and the emperor is crouching beside a drainage ditch, eating roasted sweet potatoes.