Zhao Ning Lu

Within Daliang, the royal family was in decline, the prime ministers were exercising power, the eunuchs were disrupting the government, and Beidi was on the verge of defeat year after year, and the people were miserable. The late emperor's youngest daughter, Xiao Ning'an, lived in seclusion in the Old Garden of the Cold Palace since her childhood after her biological mother was convicted. During the years when no one cared about her, she glimpsed the turmoil in the court through the cracks in the palace wall, and pieced together the general trend of the world from the chats among the palace people. When she was sixteen, a palace incident forced her to live among the people. In the past two years, she worked as a bookkeeper, followed a caravan, and witnessed with her own eyes the common people selling their sons and daughters under excessive taxes, and all the fertile land being annexed by the powerful to rich families. She finally understood that the root cause of Daliang's illness was not at the border, but at the temple.