[Empress + literary and military brilliance + ruthless decisiveness + powerful female lead]
Ning Tingbai, courtesy name Fuguang, guarded her heart until dawn, and at last saw a world clear and bright.
The Ning family followed Emperor Chengzu and earned the merit of helping him claim the throne, becoming hereditary guardians of the nation.
After generations of emperors came and went, royal suspicion gave rise to a trend of favoring civil officials over military ones.
In the thirty-eighth year of the Wei dynasty, the legitimate daughter of the Ning family’s grandsons was born. Her father and older brothers were all stationed on the frontier, and her grandmother named her Ning Tingbai, with the courtesy name Fuguang.
Not long after Tingbai was born, her mother also left for the frontier, leaving Tingbai to be raised by her grandmother.
Her grandmother hired renowned tutors to teach her day and night. Tingbai lived up to everyone’s expectations, mastering both the literary and martial arts by the age of sixteen.
Rumors abounded in the capital. Officials criticized her in court for lacking the bearing of a proper young lady and spending all day practicing with weapons.
When the talk reached Ning Tingbai, she donned her armor and led the women’s army she had formed under the pretense of play, the Fuguang Army, to beat up the young men of the capital one by one. She declared, “You gentlemen are inferior to women, and all you know how to do is wag your tongues.”
She raised funds and resolved the drought in Suiyang using an ingenious system of water channels. She refused the title of princess and used her achievements to earn the chance to enter the court.
The fortunes of war shifted, the frontier was in crisis, and no one in the capital was fit for the task. Holding the imperial token bestowed by Emperor Chengzu, Ning Tingbai pledged to carry out her orders and volunteered for the frontier.
As she left the capital on horseback, she looked back at the prosperous city of Wangjing, deeply disappointed in its decaying court.
Ambition takes root in silence, but can bloom in an instant. From then on, she forged her path to the throne in blood.
[I am the Imperial Star, born under the Ziwei Star. If anyone dares defy me, let them answer to the sword in my hand and the head upon their shoulders.]
