The Cranes Cry Across the City

[Ancient political intrigue + powerful heroine and hero + clever characters + rigorous science and engineering] Xie Wuyu, an illegitimate daughter of the Chen Commandery's Xie clan, has been regarded as a “jinxed harbinger of death” since childhood and kept confined in a secluded estate for more than a decade. What no one knows is that she holds the Frost Orchid Compendium of Science and Engineering, left behind by her birth mother. It teaches her to read the seasons, measure the earth's veins, understand people's hearts, and map the world. On the night she fakes her death and escapes, she takes an abacus as her weapon and lays a staggering scheme through the hidden channels of the city. She shorts the exchange houses and disrupts the grain transport routes, forcing the arrogant matriarch of a great clan to hand over the jade token granting control of the household! Aboard a lonely boat on a frigid night, she encounters Pei Yan, young commander of the Black Crane Guard, whose name terrifies the realm. He suffers from an old injury caused by the earth's veins and holds the power of life and death, yet in the long night he teeters on the brink of death. They entrust their lives to one another and strike a cold, ironclad pact: she will cure his poison and keep him alive; he will help her uncover the truth behind her family's massacre. Everyone says fate cannot be defied, but she will use her own flesh and blood to expose the monstrous lies woven by the powerful. From the muddy outer city to the imperial throne hall, two lonely souls stand side by side, carving a path to a bright new world from the depths of the empire!