While fighting floods and providing disaster relief, Zhao Nuan dies unexpectedly. When she opens her eyes again, her soul has transmigrated into the body of an ancient, fictional version of Zhao Nuan. Coincidentally, this ancient Zhao Nuan has also just encountered a flood, leaving her and her daughter as the sole survivors of their family.
Having escaped with her life, Zhao Nuan takes the original owner’s less-than-a-month-old daughter and follows a group of refugees to the capital. After witnessing fields littered with corpses and refugees vanishing without a trace along the way, she decides to sell herself into servitude as a wet nurse at the Marquis of Wu’an’s estate.
Just when she thinks she has found a peaceful life, the marquis’s household suffers a sudden, catastrophic downfall, and the entire family is sentenced to exile. The Marquis’s wife entrusts her youngest son to Zhao Nuan, asking her to raise him as her own.
To evade capture, Zhao Nuan relies on her cautious and resourceful nature, taking her daughter and the young master on a journey north. After enduring countless hardships, she arrives at the bitter, cold place of exile even before the rest of the marquis’s family. To repay the kindness of being taken in, Zhao Nuan reclaims wasteland, plants crops, raises chickens, and herds sheep before the family arrives.
What should have been a grueling life in exile is turned into a real-life sandbox farming game by Zhao Nuan, with the entire marquis household joining in. They sell mountain goods, open eateries, and build workshops, their days bustling with activity.
Talented individuals from all over come to join them, and strategists from every corner invite them to join grand schemes.
The marquis’s household’s response: A polite refusal.
Then one day, an urgent imperial edict arrives from the capital, summoning the wet nurse Zhao Nuan for an audience with the Emperor.
Zhao Nuan: …A polite refusal.
The marquis’s household: You can exile us, but you can’t take our wet nurse. Aren’t you all talented individuals? Aren’t you strategists? Come, come, let’s discuss how to stage a rebellion.
