[A farming story with no romance + the rise of a female county magistrate. There is no romance plot, so if that's not your thing, please don't click in!]
[Farming + infrastructure development + no romance + building wealth + the rise of a female county magistrate]
Question: The first female jinshi of the Great Yong dynasty has been demoted to the poorest county in the land. Her only staff are an elderly gatekeeper and a lame clerk, and the treasury has just one tael and eight qian left. What should she do?
Xia Manyue's answer: First, tie up a bandit and raise some money for development. The rest... we'll take it one step at a time.
Three years later.
Roads have been built throughout Nanyun County, schools have opened, medical costs have gone down, and she's even turned a bandit den into a workshop.
At court, the old reactionaries who had kicked her out of the capital laughed themselves silly at first. “What kind of trouble can a woman possibly cause?”
Later, they weren't laughing anymore.
Digging ditches and building canals, improving rice varieties, introducing high-yield crops, and promoting modern farm tools... With each accomplishment, she won the hearts of the people across all thirteen counties of Liangzhou.
And all that was just an appetizer.
The fighting on the border is escalating, and the enemy forces are advancing like a knife through butter. She's not only a major supplier of provisions, she also holds a secret weapon capable of turning the tide of battle.
So they all fell to their knees. “Please, Lord Xia, come back to the capital!”
Xia Manyue cracked sunflower seeds. “Didn't you say women belong at home embroidering?”
When the news reached the emperor, an imperial decree followed her to Nanyun County: “My dear Xia, name your terms.”
Xia Manyue brushed the dust off her hands. “All right. Have everyone who insulted me back then line up and come see me one by one.”
I have read several movies with the same theme, and all of them have a young male subordinate who secretly likes the female protagonist, which is annoying, but this is not the case.