The Lost Kingdom of Loulan

During a strange thunderstorm, Xiao Yi, a young man from the modern era, transmigrates to the wilderness of Lop Nur in 176 BC and unexpectedly binds himself to a mysterious time-and-space System. At the time, the region is nothing but alkaline wasteland, and a group of Qiang people driven from their homes by war are struggling to find water.

Using the knowledge granted by the System and his modern way of thinking, Xiao Yi channels water from the Kongque River through karez wells and builds city walls from tamarisk branches and rammed earth. He helps Loulan, the Qiang leader, establish the first settlement here: the city later known in legend as Loulan. Along the way, he meets Aiyiruo, the tribal girl who knows the most about water. With reed flowers tucked in her hair and the light of the Kongque River in her eyes, she goes from shyly testing the waters to facing every storm at his side, becoming his strongest support in this unfamiliar land.

As the bells of Silk Road caravans ring out, Loulan becomes a hub of the Western Regions, where silk and jade converge and Han Chinese and Qiang people live side by side. But beneath the prosperity, danger is brewing: the Xiongnu cavalry repeatedly crosses the border, the Kingdom of Qiemo never stops eyeing Loulan, and even the distant Han Empire has turned its gaze toward this fertile land. With tactical manuals and metallurgical techniques rewarded by the System, Xiao Yi repeatedly averts disaster, turning Loulan from an isolated fortress in a sea of sand into a brilliant jewel of the Western Regions.

Aiyiruo is no longer the girl who could only weave tamarisk baskets. She learns to embroider the outline of the city with silk and offers sound plans for keeping the tribes at peace during council meetings, becoming an invaluable aide in Xiao Yi’s rule of Loulan. Their love grows amid the windblown sand and cooking smoke, but a shadow hangs over them all the same: Xiao Yi knows that historical Loulan is destined to vanish beneath the yellow sands