In the Xiantong era at the end of the Tang dynasty, the empire is on the brink of collapse.
The dynasty’s courier station system has broken down. Zhao Sanhe, an old courier, loses the job that put food on his table and becomes a refugee. He only wants to take A Nu, an orphan he found, and find some humble way to survive in a world where people devour one another.
But he unwittingly gets caught up in a “decapitated dispatch” case involving the secret affairs of regional governors. From then on, he is forced to scrape by among Huang Chao’s rebel forces, the private armies of separatist governors, fallen aristocrats, and starving people stretching for a thousand miles.
From Chang’an’s ruined walls to Bianzhou’s rivers of blood, he works as a corpse carrier and serves as the bookkeeper for a hypocritical warlord. Even in a desperate world where people eat their own children, he clings to the last remnants of his humanity. Like a chess piece, he is moved across the board of his age by the giant hand of fate, every step taking him to the edge between life and death.
But he does not know that this chaotic age is a furnace that forges not only the ambitions of great heroes, but also the resilience of ordinary people. When the glimmer he has protected finally shines amid the ruins, he understands: in an era when lives are as worthless as grass, simply staying alive is itself a remarkable feat.
