Huang grows up in the little town of Yushi, where her father bosses everyone around largely by virtue of being the only wizard in the place apart from his children by a dozen women. It's not that bad a deal for the mundanes, he's a good generalist and can keep the crops behaving and the Party off everyone's backs, though some of the women do object to their children being eaten by monsters in the night. Huang has had fourteen older brothers and fifteen older sisters, many of whom she never got to meet before they died, and a fair number of younger siblings too; still alive are one who has made it to at least age twenty-one and will probably be fine, but left the village years ago, and one who is a year and a half older than Huang and is her main swordsmanship tutor, and several of the ones under ten.

Huang gets a chance to travel into the nearest city, hours away, figuring out how to drive her father's car on the way, when he gets into a fight with a neighboring wizard from over the mountain and winds up laid out with a curse. She goes to Tianjin looking for a cousin of his, who might be able to help. The address is occupied by someone else now but they have forwarding information; she goes there. She is stopped at the door by the guards and bows and explains her business and they let her in to speak to the cousin.

The cousin can't help with the curse. Her father passes. She has apparently impressed the cousin with her filial piety, or something, because he keeps talking about how good a daughter she's been when he really didn't deserve it, and he gets her in to the exams for the Scholomance.

She has not been educated the way everyone else has been and it's a near thing that she passes. She speaks only Mandarin and the local dialect in Yushi, she is used to working with such limited supplies and ingredients for artifice and potionmaking that it might as well be a different skill. But in the agility tests she is best in the cohort, and she strikes people as quick, and she comes at a time of some internal Tianjin drama which is ultimately resolved by giving her a slot as a compromise between several factions.

She bids goodbye to her sister, only one year too old to benefit from the opportunity instead, and packs with careful consideration for the advice of the other Tianjin wizards, and meets the others in her group, and goes to the Scholomance.