Princes in Troubled Times: Women Can Also Become Emperors

When twelve-year-old Shen Qingwu woke up, the earthen bed was cold and his stomach was empty. The family had three acres of thin farmland, but nothing grew. My brother was drafted to build river embankments and there was no news. My mother coughed up blood, and my brother was so hungry that he bit his own hand. The villagers were waiting to see when the Shen family would sell their land. Li Zheng and the wealthy family had already included her family's sloping land in their own account books. No one knew that this skinny girl had a set of agricultural knowledge in her head that was a thousand years ahead of her time. No one knew that every night after she fell asleep, she would walk on a bluestone road, walk into a courtyard with blue tiles and white walls, and learn the lost skills in "Essential Art of Qi Min" from an old man who called himself "Chen Tingjing". During the day, she cut alfalfa for fertilization, dug canals to divert water, and planted beans using the field method; at night, she asked Chen Tingjing for advice on the carbon-nitrogen ratio of compost, the method of rhizobia seed dressing, and the formula of plant ash to prevent insects. Dreams and reality interpenetrate each other - Chen Tingjing knew what she did during the day, and she gradually discovered that Chen Tingjing was in the Hanlin Academy during the day, and was a bachelor at the Imperial Academy giving lectures to the emperor. A peasant girl struggling to survive in a remote mountain village, and an official compiling books and history in the capital court, meet each other in dreams every day, separated by unknown distances in time and space. She taught him the real hardships of people's livelihood, and he taught her the lost agricultural wisdom. And as the Holy Spirit patrols the south, more taxes are imposed, and refugees emerge everywhere, a huge network hidden under taxes and land gradually emerges - Shen Qingwu wants to protect not only three acres of sloping land, but also a way to survive. "If you have food in your hands, don't panic. As for other things, you will understand when the time comes."