At thirty, Jiang Ning walked away from her marriage with nothing but a divorce certificate and returned to a dilapidated old house in the countryside with her three-year-old daughter.
From the start, she was fifty thousand yuan in debt, with only half a steamed bun left in the fridge.
Just as she was steeling herself to plan for the future, the ancient side-by-side freezer in her house suddenly began to shake violently.
When she opened it, there was no cold air. Instead, a bloodstained ingot of official silver rolled out, followed by a babyish cry:
“Fairy sister... please save Mother...”
On the other side of the freezer lay the frozen exile lands of the Great Chu Dynasty.
A three-year-old discarded crown prince, Xiao Jinse, was holding his dying mother in his arms, waiting to die in a blizzard at minus thirty degrees.
Jiang Ning sent over a box of self-heating rice. In return, she received a white jade seal made of mutton-fat jade.
The appraisal said it was worth eight hundred thousand!
Jiang Ning: ???
From then on, she spent her days planting crops and building an eco-farm in the hills, and her nights feeding a little one in another time and space through the freezer.
Instant noodles nearing their expiration date for rare Song Dynasty editions, unsold cabbages for imperial kiln blue-and-white porcelain, out-of-season down jackets for thousand-year-old agarwood.
In the modern world, barren hills became orchards and her farm became a conglomerate. Jiang Ning rose from debt-ridden farmer to the nation's queen of agriculture.
In the ancient world, little Jinse went from a discarded crown prince on the brink of death to gathering refugees, reclaiming farmland, training troops, and fighting his way back to the capital, becoming the youngest sage ruler since the founding of Great Chu.
One day, after growing up, Jinse erected a stele in the Imperial Ancestral Temple. It read:
“The revival of Great Chu was all thanks to the divine maiden of the Jiang family.”
Jiang Ning looked at the rubbing sent through the freezer, wiped away her tears, and stuffed another box of self-heating hot pot inside...
