My name is Li Minglei. I was once a scholar who lectured on the classics at Shu’s Imperial Academy. Now I am merely a lowly clerk at the Dujiangyan construction site. My job is to write the names of dozens of laborers on bamboo slips, then cross some of them out forever with cold ink. On this land soaked in blood and suffering, I have witnessed the Qin state’s grandest vision of engineering, and the cruelest price paid for it.
The commandery governor, Li Bing, and his stern son, Li Erlang, cherish the dream of “irrigating ten thousand fields and bringing blessings for generations to come.” To them, human lives are expendable, like fractures that can be calculated on a blueprint. The “Fish Mouth,” a symbol of their great achievement, looks to us common people like an altar built from countless bones. I navigate between Zhao Ji, a tyrannical and corrupt supervisor, and companions from all walks of life struggling to survive, trying to preserve a shred of a scholar’s conscience amid the humiliation of a conquered people and the struggle to stay alive.
Yet when a man named “Shi Tou” offers the first spark of resistance, when an innocent boy dies in my arms, and when bamboo slips stained with my countrymen’s blood leave their mark on my heart, I finally understand: to stand by and watch is itself a sin. I begin using lies and stratagems as weapons, igniting a silent war within this monstrous machine that devours people. From a chronicler barely clinging to life to an avenger who wields his brush like a blade, I record every sin and every truth in The Blood-and-Tears Chronicle, whose fate is yet unknown, hoping to console the countless wronged souls resting beneath the Fish Mouth and ask this age the most painful question of all.
