Xu Sheng, a modern cross-border e-commerce professional, transmigrates unexpectedly and becomes a concubine-born daughter of the declining Xu family in Liangzhou, in the Western Regions of the Great Yong Dynasty. By then, the Xu family has already fallen into ruin, and the imperial court is about to reclaim their fief. The entire family can only rely on their clan to get by, enduring scorn at every turn. Even the matriarch is being pressured by the clan to send Xu Sheng to a powerful aristocrat as a concubine in exchange for money and grain. Xu Sheng unexpectedly inherits the original owner's memories and learns that if the Xu family cannot gather the fief's tribute within six months, the entire family will become refugees, and the ancestral lands they have guarded for generations will be divided among powerful officials at court.
Burdened with the task of restoring her family's fortunes, Xu Sheng has no choice but to disguise herself as a man, assume the identity of the Xu family's current head, and venture onto the Western Regions trade routes, which have been completely monopolized by Shen Huan, son of the Grand Commandant. Drawing on her modern business knowledge and understanding of the history of the Silk Road, Xu Sheng applies Legalist principles to streamline caravan management and uses modern surveying techniques to find alternative routes that bypass checkpoints. She transports tea and porcelain to the Western Regions at extremely low cost, gradually prying open the monopoly amid cutthroat commercial battles and carving out a path to survival from the bottom up.
As her caravan grows, Xu Sheng is drawn into a power struggle between the imperial court and the kings of the Western Regions. Grand Commandant Shen Yi allies with the Xiongnu in a bid to seize control of Liangzhou's military forces, going so far as to sabotage trade routes and incite border conflicts. The people of the entire Western Regions become pawns in the power struggle. On one side, she could rapidly rise to the top by absorbing her old rivals' businesses and achieve her goal of restoring the Xu family. On the other, opening the trade routes and sharing the profits with the people means risking her family being wiped out for standing against the powerful ministers of the court. Xu Sheng must choose between her family's glory and the people of the world, and, as a modern businesswoman, forge a different path to strength in the Western Regions of Great Yong.
