The Stone Drums Ask Heaven

Welcome to The Stone Drums Ask Heaven. According to historical records, Yu the Great cast the Nine Tripods to unite the realm. According to folk legend, the Qin dynasty carved the Ten Drums to pass on Heaven's Mandate. The stone drums were Qin treasures of succession. There were ten in all, corresponding to the ten Heavenly Stems. Daoist practitioners of esoteric arts say Laozi made the ten stone drums in accordance with Heaven's design. Five hundred years after the Qin dynasty, they would be used to lay out a formation and ask Heaven. The drums embody a divine formula of the Heavenly Dao and seal away wondrous power. Only the virtuous may possess them; otherwise, calamity will follow, shortening lives and bringing death. The ten drums together bring favorable weather and peace to the realm, but separated, they plunge the world into turmoil and leave the people destitute... The stone drums have had a strange and eventful fate. Since their appearance, they have endured upheavals, disasters, and wars, as well as the rise and fall of dynasties and the passing of generations. Countless stories have unfolded around them... A divine weapon in times of chaos, a cultural relic in times of peace. The stone drums were discovered in Fengxiang in 627, during the An Lushan Rebellion, when Li Heng fled north to Lingwu and proclaimed himself emperor... With war breaking out everywhere, the drums were buried again, and remained underground for nearly a century... They were unearthed in 814 and moved to the Fengxiang Imperial Temple, only to be caught up in war once more. The Zuo Yuan drum was lost. Then, in 1052, the fourth year of the Huangyou era of the Northern Song, a rubbing of the Zuo Yuan drum, one of the ten stone drums and missing for more than two hundred years, suddenly came to light... The story begins with a titanium-alloy lighter deal made by Lao Zhang, a craftsman from the local community. Hoping to make a success of his lighter business, Lao Zhang instead trades ten lighters for a set of Tang-dynasty stone-drum inscription rubbings. As he investigates and explores the stone drums, the twists and turns of his business dealings and the fascinating events surrounding them bring to life the astonishing and mysterious legend of the stone drums that asked Heaven.