"If every time you died, you returned to one hour before the coup began, what would you do?"
On the fourth day of the sixth month in the ninth year of the Wude era, Li Yan, an official of the Eastern Palace, dies for the ninth time before Xuanwu Gate. The agony of an arrow piercing his chest has barely faded when he opens his eyes again, back at that blood-red dawn, facing the standoff between Crown Prince Li Jiancheng and Prince of Qin Li Shimin. Everything starts over.
This is no nightmare. It's a cage.
After eight brutal deaths, Li Yan finally discovers that the coup deciding the fate of the Tang dynasty is an endless loop, set in motion by design. More terrifying still, the "NPCs" who should have been mere background characters seem to remember previous cycles: the meaning in Chancellor Xu Shen's eyes, the unspoken words of Wei Zheng, tutor to the Crown Prince, even the eerie smile on Prince Qi Li Yuanji's face as he died.
"Want to work together this time?" When the chancellor pushes the poisoned wine toward him for the ninth time and whispers those words, Li Yan understands: he is no longer the only one who has "awakened."
The truth gradually comes to light: this cycle stems from Emperor Li Yuan's obsession with an "eternal Tang dynasty." Anchored at Xuanwu Gate, it uses the Li clan's bloodshed as a sacrifice, locking time at the dynasty's peak. And Li Yan is the only "key" capable of breaking the cycle in the hundredth iteration.
