The Setting Sun Over Suiyang

An epic of a lonely city written in blood | A promise to protect, spanning a thousand years

“I’m no hero. I just refuse to retreat.”

A modern man lives through history amid the desperation of the An Lushan Rebellion.

In the second year of the Zhide era under Emperor Suzong of Tang (757), torrential rain pours outside Suiyang.

Lin Yan, a graduate student at Nanjing University, transmigrates after an accident in the lab. He opens his eyes in the mud of a battlefield strewn with corpses

with no money, no weapon, only a short blade engraved with the words “Break the Barriers,” and a piece of history about to be rewritten.

Three hundred days under siege. Famine so severe that people resort to eating human flesh. Zhang Xun holds the lonely city like iron. Nan Jiyun cuts off a finger to plead for reinforcements. Lei Wan Chun dies fighting at the north gate...

A few brief lines in the history books represent the lives of three thousand soldiers, traded for “three years of breathing room for the empire.”

Lin Yan knows how it ends

but he also understands that someone who knows the ending should not merely stand by and watch.

From borrowing arrows with straw dummies and blasting trenches with gunpowder, to attacking the city with poison smoke and breaking through under cover of a rainy night, he uses modern knowledge to intervene in a battlefield of cold steel.

From Nan Jiyun cutting off his finger to seal his vow, to Lei Ting killing with a pair of scissors, he bears witness to how the loyal and righteous prop up a dynasty with their flesh and blood.

But when he writes the words “Protect the Living” and hands the sword manual to a young woman,

when he stands alone atop the tower on the day the city falls and blows up the explosives, perishing with the enemy

he finally understands:

History cannot be changed, but its spirit can be passed on.

This is both the end and the beginning.

This is the setting sun over a city,

and also the never-extinguished spark of a civilization.