Zhong Anxue, a peasant girl from a desperately poor village, has nothing to her name. Her father is ill, and her younger sister is starving. At the end of her rope, she discovers a battered bronze basin. Give a poor person one bowl of porridge, and two bowls appear in the basin. Give away one tael of silver, and two taels grow inside. With this treasure basin in her possession, she launches an all-out poverty alleviation campaign. Soon, her granaries overflow with grain and her cellars are filled with silver. Overnight, she goes from penniless pauper to wealthy woman. When landlords try to seize her land and the county magistrate frames her, she strikes back by buying an entire street. The whole village is bribed to curse her, but she merely sneers. Three months later, the very people who cursed her most fiercely are kneeling at her doorstep, begging her to take them in. Zhou Yunsheng, a poor scholar, eats the meals she gives him and wears the clothes she sews for him, silently recording every kindness in a ledger. After placing first in the imperial examinations, he arrives with eight loads of betrothal gifts to ask for her hand in marriage.