Reborn as a Palace Maid Entrusted with an Orphan, She Recruits Soldiers on the Road to Escape the Famine

[Transmigrate into a political intrigue setting + fleeing famine and farming + strong female lead + raising a child + raising a future emperor + picking up a rugged man]

After transmigrating into the palace as a low-ranking maid, Shen Ying spent five years climbing from cleaning chamber pots to becoming Noble Consort Wan's closest confidante.

Her twenty-fifth birthday was coming up. Soon she would be able to leave the palace, return to her hometown, and live a life of comfort.

But one night, the noble consort placed the bloodstained Second Prince in her arms.

“Shen Ying, take him away... Keep him alive!”

Looking at the baby in her arms, Shen Ying gritted her teeth and embarked on a path of no return.

One moment she was a songbird caged in the palace; the next, she was the empire's most wanted fugitive.

A greedy coachman? Kill him.

A maid who blabs? Kill her.

Refugees swarm to rob her? She turns around and recruits them as her first troops.

The thousand-mile escape becomes her recruiting ground.

In three years, she turns scattered troops into an iron army,

puts a down-on-his-luck scholar in charge of the money and provisions, and turns a martial-world assassin into a shadow operative.

From the capital to the South Sea, she keeps “picking people up” along the way.

The ailing doctor she rescues is a miracle healer; the defecting general she recruits becomes a commander.

Even an orphan starving by the roadside can be trained into the sharpest blade in her hands.

They say women are weak, but Shen Ying believes in one thing: you have to survive before you can change the rules.

They laugh at her for fleeing with a baby, unaware that the child in her arms will be the next emperor.

They accuse her of meddling in politics and harboring wild ambitions, unaware that this realm has long needed a different ruler.

At last, when iron cavalry storms the gates of the tyrant's capital, Shen Ying raises the young emperor to the throne and clears the noble consort's name.

Behind her stand a rugged prince who once became an outlaw but now bows to her, and the ironclad army she forged with her own hands from the depths of blood and slaughter.

If this chaotic age devours people, then she will be the one to reshape the realm.