Beacon Fires Lighting the Heavens

In the second year of the Qianfu era, locusts and drought blot out the sun, and starving corpses litter the land. A soul from the twenty-first century falls into the family of a salt merchant in Yuanju, Caozhou. He becomes a fellow townsman of Huang Chao, and a helpless speck of dust amid this world-shaking chaos.

His name is Li Shu. In his previous life, he was a graduate student of history, well versed in the history of the late Tang and Five Dynasties. He knows better than anyone that Huang Chao will ultimately be defeated, Zhu Wen will usurp the Tang, and the rivalry between Li Keyong's Jin and Zhu Wen's Liang will drag on for decades, while the people of the realm suffer through half a century of warfare.

But what good is knowing how it ends? He cannot save the neighbors about to starve to death, stop the rebel armies sweeping across the realm, or change the course of history. All he can do is survive in this cruel world: from a salt merchant's son, to an adviser to the rebel army, and then to a regional military governor. In the cracks of history, he will fight for a way to live, for himself and for the countless refugees who follow him.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.