Shen Zhao is a history graduate student who grew up in a military compound. His father, Shen Wangshan, is a senior military officer, while his mother, Su Wan, comes from the Su family of Jiangnan, a scholarly clan with a century of history. Growing up, he listened to his grandfather's war stories while his maternal grandfather made him memorize the Four Books and Five Classics. Red blood runs through his veins, along with a scholar's refined spirit.
He deeply loves modern history, and it fills him with bitter hatred. The unequal treaties, the lands ceded away, the civilians displaced by war... Every time he reads about them, he wishes he could go back and change things with his own hands.
One ordinary evening, a ginger-and-white cat leads him on his way home from school into an alley he'd never noticed before: No. 58 Beacon Lane. When he comes out the other end, rickshaws, long gowns, and newsboys' shouts fill the streets.
He has returned to 1930.
And he is the only one who can pass through the alley.
His family uses the connections of several powerful families to open a secret supply route for him. His childhood friends each put their skills to use: technology, intelligence, logistics. Several families from the military compound work together to send strategic supplies into the Republican era, one shipment at a time.
On the other side of the compound, he finds the most powerful warlord family in central China: the Lu family. Lu Xingzhou, the Lu family's third-generation young marshal, graduated from a military academy in Germany. Each of his three trusted subordinates has an extraordinary skill. He is cold-faced and cold-hearted, but carries an unquenchable passion for the country's future.
Armed with the knowledge of a century, Shen Zhao enters Lu Xingzhou's world. Harsh conditions, impossible supplies, and one life-or-death test after another: trust can't be won with a single promise.
And when he finally stands by that man's side, together they will face the most
