A Flourishing Age of Shadow Puppetry

Modern girl Lin Wanshu unexpectedly transmigrates into the prosperous Kaiyuan era as the daughter of a minor official in Chang'an. Overjoyed, she sets out to experience the Tang dynasty's glamour, but gradually discovers that beneath this glittering age lurks a silent set of "rules."

She finds that at night, the sound of perfectly synchronized footsteps sometimes echoes through Chang'an, like an army on the march, though the streets are empty. She notices that the lifelike figures molded from dough at the market sometimes have syrup trickling from the corners of their eyes. And she discovers that the moon reflected in the ancient well used for prayers in her family estate is always blood-red.

This golden age is itself a vast, living shadow-play stage. Everyone who lives within it, from emperors and ministers to peddlers and laborers, is like a shadow puppet pulled along by invisible strings, acting out a predetermined "historical script" to preserve the perfect facade of prosperity. Any attempt to "change history" or "interfere too deeply" will disturb the rules that maintain the stage, causing the puppets to malfunction and display all kinds of eerie phenomena, like a program onstage trying to repair itself and reject intrusions.

As an outsider, Lin Wanshu is a living person who should not exist, with no strings to guide her. She can see these eerie phenomena, and the "malfunctioning puppets" notice her. Her very existence is constantly disturbing this carefully crafted stage. The more deeply she experiences the customs and the more of its splendor she encounters, the more frequent and targeted the strange incidents around her become. She is not battling demons and monsters, but playing a silent game of terror against the order and will of the entire "golden age" itself.