[Alternate world + no romance + power fantasy + ensemble of women + transmigrated as the top-ranked candidate + System]
When Gu Peitang opened her eyes again, she had become the newly appointed third-place graduate of the imperial examination in Great Yong.
The good news: she placed third in the exams and had a bright future ahead.
The bad news: this “top-ranked scholar” was a woman.
Worse still, she had just transmigrated when she was banished to govern a dirt-poor county in the middle of nowhere. The county granary was empty, the river dikes had collapsed, and a crowd outside was waiting for her to die.
Just as Gu Peitang was preparing to flee under cover of night, something calling itself the Civilization Iteration System appeared. It told her that completing missions would earn her Tokens; once she had saved enough, she could upgrade the model and exchange them for knowledge and items. Complete the missions, and she could earn a grand prize of one hundred million and return to the modern world for a comfortable retirement.
Gu Peitang looked at her basic AI System, then at the county office so poor even the rats were moving out, and was left with one thought: Keep her head down, don’t let anyone discover who she is, upgrade the System, go home, and retire in comfort with the grand prize.
But then she saw torrential rain wash away a village, leaving people who had lost their land kneeling in the mud. She saw an old farmer toil for a year, only to be unable to afford even a bowl of thin gruel after paying his taxes. She saw baby girls abandoned by the riverbank and widows robbed of their land by their clans. She saw a twelve-year-old girl sold to a brothel by her own father in exchange for a mouthful of food for her younger brother...
When times prosper, the people suffer; when times collapse, the people suffer.
She decided to stay: inspect the granaries, repair the dikes, establish schools for girls, grant women household registration, and open a gynecology clinic...
When her identity as a woman was made public and the officials at court accused her of deceiving the emperor and usurping a man’s role, she turned around and realized that behind her already stood
