Modern engineer Shen Feng time-travels to become a native of the border town of Heishicheng, encountering government-enforced arranged marriages right at the start. While everyone else picks robust, capable women for work, he reverses course and deliberately picks the two most frail and burdensome women that nobody dares to take—one has needle calluses on her thumb, and the other hides a superb tailoring technique of three stitches in one within her sleeve. Everyone laughs at him for seeking his own death, but Shen Feng picks up limestone from the riverbank, burns cement, refines steel, and builds city walls. When others are still fighting desperately for a dou of rice, he has already used glass mirrors and infused steel blades to leverage the Western Regions trade route, building an industrial city in this barren land.