Yang Yixiao time-travels to the turbulent Yunchao Dynasty, waking up to find himself bound by an arranged marriage. His fiancée, Gu Xiaomei, comes from a hunter family, and her six older brothers look more like bandits. On their wedding night, tax collectors bully their door; he and his wife take up swords for revenge. Starting from three thatched huts, they forge iron and make medicine, brew wine and gather wealth, take in refugees, and train an elite vanguard camp. Using knowledge and statecraft, he rises amidst the cracks between gentry, the imperial clan, and prairie iron cavalry. Yet the greater his fame, the deadlier the death traps become. Snow disasters, locust plagues, and national wars follow one after another, and he repeatedly struggles between benevolence and bloodshed. In the end, the former poor scholar teams up with the Gu family's six brothers to recover lost territory, sweep away powerful enemies, establish the Great Tang, and ascend the throne as Hongwu; Gu Xiaomei bathes in blood from the wild mountains to become the founding empress who guards the country side by side.