"The Ink Mark Code: The Grudges of Two Dynasties in Tang Steles" tells the story of the modern archaeologist Shen Yanzhi's journey of exploration. While excavating the tomb of Mrs. Jiang Guo in Yishan Township, Shaanxi, he discovered that the epitaph written by Ouyang Xun contained strange incisions. An abnormal stroke of the word "hidden" revealed the secret past spanning the Chen, Sui and Tang dynasties.
As the investigation deepened, Shen Yanzhi followed clues such as the cinnabar inscriptions in the Zhongnan Mountain mines, the mysterious symbols on the Luoyang stele, and the bronze code disks in Beimang Mountain, and gradually came across a piece of history that had been deliberately buried: Ouyang Xun, the son of a traitor, and Chen Shuda, a descendant of the Chen Dynasty royal family, were originally The world's enemies, who were blamed for killing their father, had a life-and-death relationship during the Xuanwu Gate Incident. They even used calligraphy as a medium to hide truths that could subvert historical records - from Chen Shuda's memorial that risked his own life to remonstrate, to the whereabouts of the authentic "Lanting Preface", to the ultimate answer to the transition from hatred to reconciliation between the two clans.
In the process, Shen Yanzhi not only had to deal with the remnants of the Northern Zhou Dynasty who coveted the national treasure, and cracked the layers of codes hidden in Ouyang Xun's pen, but he also had to face the complexity of history and the struggle of human nature. When the loyalty, courage, forbearance and tenderness hidden in the ink marks were revealed one by one, he finally understood: the real password is never a cold symbol, but persistence and reconciliation that spans thousands of years, and is the eternal light that illuminates human nature.
