Shen Taotao, a civil engineer who died from overwork, opens her eyes to find she has become the daughter of a disgraced official, exiled to Ninguta! The story starts in a prison cart, battered by wind and snow, with her whole family starved into stick figures. Her mother shoves the last half of a bran pancake into her mouth, and her older brother shields her from the biting wind with his own back.
Facing this hellish start, she unleashes the fiery temper of a Northeastern native, teaching her family how to dig up squirrel caches and burrow windbreaks, saving all six of them in the -30°C weather. Upon arriving in Ninguta, she builds a hand-pump well, earning the title “Living Deity” from the kneeling crowd of exiles. She even single-handedly constructs a Northeast-style heated kang bed! The night the warm air first heated the stone slab, her entire family cried until they couldn’t breathe.
The icy prince, Xie Yunjing, deludes himself: “She touched my chest. She must have feelings for me!” Shen Taotao: “These muscles could definitely support a roof beam!” He grits his teeth and offers her a golden hairpin, hinting at a betrothal gift. Her eyes light up: “Can I melt this down to forge a pickaxe?”
She leads the people to build houses and excavate coal mines, transforming the barren outpost of Ninguta into a land of plenty. A desolate, frozen wasteland? No, it’s the new Great Northern Granary!
When the ailing old emperor finally makes his way there, he finds a land so abundant that you can club roe deer, scoop fish with ladles, and have wild pheasants fly right into your cooking pot
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