I Took My Brother's Place at Court as a Treacherous Minister, but Somehow Extended Our Dying Kingdom's Life?

[Woman Disguised as a Man] [Female-Oriented Political Intrigue] [Morally Dubious] [Dark Comedy] [Courtroom Ensemble] [Unhinged Treacherous Minister x Cool-Headed Minister]

The Great Liang is on the verge of collapse.

The treasury is so empty a mouse could run through it. Years of disasters during a mini ice age have struck, the Northern Di are at the borders, and refugees fill the land, yet the entire court is still waxing eloquent about benevolence and righteousness.

At the palace examination, Xie Zhao says, "Your Majesty, I suggest we sell all the refugees."

The whole court is thrown into an uproar!

The upright officials call her a treacherous demon. The great clans call her shameless and immoral. Censor Qi is so furious he threatens to remonstrate her to death on the spot.

But later, when the refugees riot, she stabilizes the situation with a work-points system. When grain merchants hoard food, she sets a trap and forces them to hand it over. When a plague besieges the city, she uses plague victims' corpses to form a battle array and frightens the enemy troops into retreat...

When the court runs out of money, she finds a way to make it!

When the great clans refuse to submit, she confiscates their estates.

Others save their country with loyalty and righteousness. Xie Zhao saves hers with poisonous schemes.

She only wanted to stay alive, make money, and get a little revenge along the way. Who knew she would become the most notorious treacherous minister in all of Great Liang?

And its last hope of survival.

When Pei Yan first meets Xie Zhao, he thinks she is a rebel who defies all convention and spouts nothing but twisted logic.

Then he discovers that, though not a single word out of her mouth sounds like a sage's teaching, everything she does saves lives.

On a snowy night, Pei Yan asks her, "Xie Zhao, what is it you really want?"

Wrapped in a shabby fox-fur cloak, she lowers her head to work the abacus and doesn't even look up. "To live, and, while I'm at it, to make the people who want me dead die first."

Later, snow sweeps across the entire city, and millions curse her as a treacherous minister.

Only Pei Yan stands behind her and quietly says, "Xie Zhao, if this world has no place for you, then I'll go mad right alongside you!"