Poetry and Swordplay in Our Youth, Growing Old Together

The day I became the owner of a bankrupt tavern in the Tang dynasty, the System asked whether I wanted a golden finger. I looked at the ledger marked “300 strings of debt.” “Can I turn it into cash?” The System fell silent. I said, “Then I don’t want it.” I decided to lie around until I starved to death. That is, until a snowy night, when a drunken young man in white knocked on my door and asked to write a poem in exchange for wine. He took up his brush and splashed ink across my weathered wall, writing “Bring in the Wine.” Signed: Li Bai. I made the call on the spot: he would provide the poems and the sword, and I would provide the wine and the tavern. So... I turned his poems into “limited-edition, numbered poem slips,” ten a day, and they became a craze in the West Market. I brewed his verses into “Immortal Exile's Tipsy Wine,” one string a cup, and made a name for it throughout Chang'an. Street thugs wrecking the place? He slashed once with his sword while drunk, splitting the bluestone ground three zhang deep. Powerful nobles scheming against us? I used modern business sense to teach them a lesson. From a broken-down West Market tavern to Chang'an's top-tier star, from banquets by Qujiang Pool to the turmoil of the An Lushan Rebellion. He was the dazzling Poet Immortal of the history books, but by my side he was a drunken cat who ran up tabs, got jealous, and always aimed the cup of wine meant to “drink away ten thousand ages of sorrow with you” at me. I was the only spark of life in his world of poetry, swords, and mountains, guarding the Immortal Exile's path back to the human world with ledgers, wine jars, and wisdom from a thousand years in the future. This is a grand collision of poetry and wine, swords and ledgers, legendary talent and modern thinking. See how we turn a bankrupt tavern into the most dazzling legend of the High Tang dynasty.