Song Lingzhi, the late emperor’s legitimate daughter, was dumped in an abandoned city in Lingnan, and everyone was waiting for her to die.
From the start, the gate had collapsed, the roof leaked, the storeroom held only a few taels of silver, and her staff consisted entirely of elderly, weak, sick, and disabled people who hadn’t been paid in five months.
Song Lingzhi calmly took out a charcoal pencil and did the math:
The house collapsed? Perfect, she could chop it up for firewood.
No meat to eat? That plump, glossy rat in the corner could be diced and stir-fried for at least a taste of meat.
To stay alive, the pampered princess wore through her shoes as she led her people in search of a salt spring, set up huge pots, and refined fine salt. She carved out a path to riches in this desolate backwater, earning a fortune every day.
Shen Du, formerly an editor at the Hanlin Academy, was demoted to Lingnan. He had planned to pay a visit to the supposedly meek and easily bullied princess.
But the moment he knocked, the gates of the princess’s residence came crashing down.
In the moonlight, the princess who was supposed to be weeping among the ruins was crouched in front of three enormous iron pots, boiling salt.
She gave him a quick once-over, then casually tossed a book of indecipherable accounts into his arms. “Do you have nice handwriting? Can you do arithmetic? Wonderful, I happen to need a bookkeeper. Finish the accounts tonight, and hand everything over first thing tomorrow morning.”
Shen Du stared at the ledger in his hands. “?”
Later, everyone in the capital who had been waiting to laugh at Song Lingzhi was dumbfounded.
She had turned that leaky, dilapidated city into a sleepless metropolis, wealthier than anywhere else in the world!
And the once-promising, cool-headed minister was following close behind the princess, clicking his abacus as he murmured, “Your Highness, we made another hundred thousand taels today. Can I finally get the wages I’ve been owed for three years?”
