The Shen family suffers a wrongful framing, and Shen Qinghe transmigrates overnight, taking three emaciated young children into exile in the Northern Wasteland. On the day of exile, the guilty women must either choose a man to settle down with or enter the hard labor camp to await death. Everyone scrambles for strong, able-bodied laborers, but Shen Qinghe deliberately chooses Lu Yan, a heavily wounded and deposed military official whom no one else dares to take. The whole village laughs at her for seeking her own death, waiting to see her family freeze and starve to death. Yet nobody knows that she understands how to improve saline-alkali soil, make bricks and build houses, and divert water to reclaim fields. Using wood ash to amend the soil, trenches to channel water, and adobe fire kangs, she relies on her true skills to take root in the barren wasteland where nothing grows. When the wasteland sprouts green shoots and great success is within sight, an even greater conspiracy is already quietly striking.