This Is Where the Game Begins

Li Wanqiu, a twenty-seven-year-old PhD in history specializing in political power struggles in the medieval court, stayed up late reading a cookie-cutter palace intrigue novel. The next day, she woke up as Li Wanqiu, a cannon-fodder character in the book whose name appeared only once: the daughter of a disgraced minister. She had been in the palace for twenty-seven days, and according to the story, she was supposed to "die of a chill" that night. Poison had been brought to her door, and figures in the corridor waited for her to take her last breath. She had no System, no pocket dimension, only the four words her father left behind in prison: "Read history."

By studying the rise and fall of dynasties, reading people's hearts, and spotting the details left incomplete on the page, she survived past her appointed death in the cold palace and secured her footing in the palace service quarters. She reopened her father's erased case, recognized the cracks in the conditioning of Su Jinshu, and rose step by step from a discarded pawn to someone who could stand shoulder to shoulder with the emperor. Then she pieced together The Great Yan Record of Heaven's Mandate: for thirty years, Lu Chengji, imperial tutor to three dynasties, had turned emperors, consorts, and famed generals into pieces on his chessboard.

Everyone told her to choose one of three paths: trade one person's life for the realm, one city for the greater plan, or the Mandate of Heaven for peace.

She said, "I won't choose a chessboard of your making. I'll flip it over."