The Sword Guard, the Plow Keeper

Synopsis

It tells the legendary rise of ISOLA, a transmigrator from the apocalypse, in the northern lands of another world. At the start of the story, ISOLA wakes up amid an apocalyptic explosion and finds herself reborn as an exiled criminal woman on the Bone Wastes Border of the northern realm. Faced with the brutal reality of the king’s forced pairing law, she picks KAELEN, a centurion of the rangers, with sharp foresight. Breaking the ice with the words "I want to be with you", she enters into a contractual marriage where love comes after wedlock. When she first moves into KAELEN’s home, ISOLA is met with abject poverty: a low stone cottage, a dry well and crumbling sheds, plus the cold disdain of her mother-in-law MORGAN. Drawing on the survival instincts forged in the apocalypse, she quickly adapts to the bitter cold of the northern lands. She climbs mountains to gather wild vegetables, identify medicinal herbs and hunt hares on the wasteland. What’s more, she awakens an agrarian divine ability that lets her manipulate plant growth. She leads EIRA to find stone shepherd’s purse and frozen fern sprouts hidden in rock crevices, and senses frost-root medicinal plants deep within the frozen soil, bringing the family their first taste of a bountiful harvest. At the wedding feast, she rides through the village on a garlanded carriage dressed in a deep red wedding gown. The feast is laid out with stewed rabbit meat, mushroom soup and roasted frost roots, delighting all guests and overshadowing the family of SERENA and DEREK, who had tried to compete with her. After marriage, the affection between ISOLA and KAELEN gradually deepens as they strive side by side. She earns eighty silver denarii by selling medicinal herbs and buys new clothes for the whole family. Later, she discovers century-old snow spirit roots. Together with KAELEN, they slay a wild boar and sell it for an enormous sum. With this money, she purchases eighty mu of land, plow oxen and a carriage. She organises local women to make hair ornaments and handbags for market sales. She also buys foreign seeds such as millet and soybeans from travelling merchants, and uses her ability to grow potatoes and sweet potatoes. When summer drought strikes and barbarians launch night raids on the Great Wall, KAELEN dons armour to defend the border. Meanwhile, ISOLA holds the whole family together from the rear. She prepares chilled pea soup to beat the heat and sends dried meat and pickled rabbit to the border camp, becoming her husband’s most reliable support. The story unfolds along two parallel plotlines. One is ISOLA’s farm-building and business arc: identifying medicinal herbs, selling herbal medicine, holding a wedding, purchasing farmland and developing handicraft sidelines. Step by step, she lifts her destitute family to prosperity. The other covers romance and conflicts: her rivalry with SERENA, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship with MORGAN that shifts from resentment to trust, the