When salt is worth less than life and blood is colder than frost, a private salt dealer becomes the fulcrum to stir up troubled times.
At the end of the Later Tang Dynasty, the Khitan's iron hoof trampled the border of Hebei. In order to feed his sick mother and young sister, young Zhao Yansi got into a salt bag to survive, but he saw the salt gang boss chopped into pieces by a warlord. He fled south with three kilograms of coarse salt and staked his life in front of the military tent of Liu Zhiyuan, the hero of Hedong Province: "I can use the salt network to exchange for the general's ladder to heaven!"
From the bloody account books of the Bianliang salt tax case to the beacon fire letters of the Khitan invasion to the south; from raising the banner of the "Salt Owl Army" in the refugee pile, to wrapping the yellow robe in salt bags on the night of the Chanzhou mutiny - Zhao Yansi refined private salt into an intelligence line during the turbulent times of the four dynasties, and used a salt scale as a celestial ruler. He paved the way for Guo Wei and set up the fire of reform for Chai Rong. Finally, in the cold wind of Chenqiaoyi, he personally pushed open the Bianliang city gate and welcomed the dawn of the Song Dynasty into the blood-stained tower.
