In the chaotic Republican era, warlords carve up the country while Japanese forces watch hungrily from the sidelines.
Jiang Zhiyu, eldest daughter of the reclusive Jiang family, comes to Jiangcheng to honor her childhood betrothal.
But Marshal Huo Linchuan throws a public tantrum and refuses to marry her. “I won’t marry her! What am I supposed to do, marry some old fuddy-duddy and keep her on display?”
Jiang Zhiyu calmly breaks off the engagement and turns to leave.
“The Jiang family’s fortune is mine to wield, and mine alone.”
Before the words have even faded, an army bears down on the city. To “borrow the Jiang family’s fortune to bring good luck and dispel evil,” the commander of the Zhenbei Army blasts open the Huo family’s gates with artillery and forces a marriage alliance. Jiang Zhiyu knocks an adjutant flying with one palm, tears the invitation to shreds with her bare hands, and smashes a teacup against a stone lion.
“If you want a fight, the Jiang family will give you one.”
Only then does Huo Linchuan realize that the “old fuddy-duddy” he had scorned is the Jiang family’s once-in-three-centuries heir.
She is a master of ancient martial arts, poisoncraft, and mechanisms. The golden mark on the back of her hand comes from a meteorite, a key to the gates of an ancient civilization.
The Japanese, warlords, Western tycoons, and mysterious organizations all mobilize to seize the secret she holds.
Huo Linchuan thinks that, as a mechanical genius returned from overseas, he can protect her. But she storms the Japanese Snake Island prison alone and rescues her father, who has been missing for three years.
He thinks he is her only ally, but at her side are a childhood friend who became a general, a poison king who is sometimes her enemy and sometimes her friend, and an arms dealer who won’t stop pursuing her.
From tearfully refusing the marriage to following quietly at her side, from Jiangcheng to Shanghai and from Shanghai to the Jiang family’s ancestral lands, Huo Linchuan is always just one step behind her.
She offers him a bowl of porridge, and he remembers it for the rest of his life.
