The Soul of the Yongle Canon: Six Hundred Years Through Calamity

The Soul of the Yongle Encyclopedia: Six Centuries of Catastrophe

In the first year of Yongle, Emperor Chengzu of Ming, Zhu Di, ordered the compilation of an unprecedented encyclopedia, driven by the ambition to "gather all the world's books." Three thousand scholars labored over it, assembling a mountain of ten thousand volumes in Jinling, until they completed the Yongle Encyclopedia, hailed as "the world's largest encyclopedia." Yet the original was secretly buried with the late emperor and vanished without a trace. The copy endured the fires of war in the Ming and Qing dynasties and the looting of foreign powers, until only scattered volumes remained, adrift across the world...

Six centuries later, Qin Yue, a leading authority on ancient texts, led a team sworn to bring this national treasure back to life. AI prodigy Lu Ming used algorithms to restore fragile pages eaten by worms; international book hunter Zhao Ruowei tracked down lost secret volumes across the globe; and hacker boy Chen Nian battled formidable foes in the data darknet. Thus began a battle to save the books across time and space. The flames of the Imperial Archives, the shadows of theft in the Siku Library, and the blood and tears of the Gengzi Year: history's scars were laid bare in digital light, revealing the truth. Deeper mysteries emerged in their wake: the star-chart cipher of the Black-Robed Chancellor Yao Guangxiao, the book-guarding bloodline of embroiderer Sun Jing shu, the colossal glazed cabinet known as the "Dragon Vein's Eye" that housed the original... All pointed to an ultimate struggle spanning past and present.

When the hidden century-old organization "Gui" returned with cutting-edge technology, and a Yongle-era imperial edict appeared bearing the words "The soul of the books is not their form; their flame shall pass on forever," the restoration team was forced into a desperate battle in the virtual world. The aspirations of emperors, the blood of sages, and the wisdom of the people all converged at last in a "digital dome" illuminating human civilization. Yet when millions of users clicked open that vast book in the cloud, no one knew...

Had the bleeding heart that first guarded the spark of knowledge truly found peace?

Epic dual-timeline narrative × cutting-edge ancient-text technology × a millennia-spanning mystery

An epic saga that summons the soul of Chinese civilization's books