In the autumn of the seventeenth year of Yongchang, an edict summoned the legitimate daughters of officials above fifth rank to the Royal Zhaowen Hall.
Li Yunyan, the legitimate daughter of the Zhenbei Hou Mansion, was skilled in bowing and horseback, and could shoot half a stone bow before she was twelve years old. After a "serious illness" when she was twelve years old, she became a sick and reclusive person. Before his expedition to Mobei, her father left her a message: "Go and see clearly the capital, the court, and those people."
In the Zhaowen Hall, Xie Zhaozhao, the niece of the queen, watched with cold eyes, Liu Yanran, the daughter of the Minister of Household Affairs, pressed closer and closer, Su Miao, the only daughter of the richest man in the south of the Yangtze River, had gold hidden in her smile, and the imperial doctor Wen Renxue, an orphan, was silent - behind every classmate, there stood a family, a faction, a chess game.
An entrance exam caused cracks in Li Yunyan's plan to hide his stupidity. The assassination on the autumn hunting ground, the secret of the forbidden area of the library, the truth about the "serious illness" twelve years ago - when all the clues pointed in the same direction, she realized that she was not here to study.
She is here to settle accounts.
The idea: how a group of young women, trapped by family, imperial power, and the times, can find their own way in the established chess game - not waiting for rescue, but achieving mutual success.