The Spirit of Jian’an

In the third year of Jian'an, Chen Jian was recruited to the Chancellor's Office in Xudu, where he became an ordinary clerk in the documents room.

His job was simple: copy his superior's spoken orders onto bamboo slips, stroke by careful stroke. His superior told him all he had to do was write neatly and never ask why.

But the secrets he saw kept piling up.

He copied Xun Yu's memorial urging Cao Cao to “serve the Son of Heaven and command those who refuse to submit”; Guo Jia's final stratagems, dictated before his death; Kong Rong's last letter to Cao Cao before his execution; Cui Yan's false confession before he was unjustly put to death; Xun Yu's words, “I have no face left,” written after receiving an empty food box; Cao Zhi's “We sprang from the same roots, so why torment each other so bitterly?”; and Cao Cao's final order that his wives and concubines learn to make shoes.

He watched Guo Jia die of illness, Xun Yu take his own life, Kong Rong be executed, and Cao Cao grow old. He watched the Han dynasty collapse and the Wei dynasty rise, bringing an era to an end. With a single brush, he recorded every secret from the more than twenty years of Jian'an that should never be forgotten.

He was the quietest witness of his age. He knew too many secrets, but he could not speak of them.

Only when he was old did he finally pick up his brush and write his own words:

“In the autumn of the twenty-fifth year of Jian'an, I returned to Kuaiji. The land was no longer Han, yet in my heart, Jian'an still lived.”

A brush can kill, and it can save. The lowliest copyist can choose silence, or choose to write down the truth.

This is the story of a small man who bore witness to the entire Jian'an era with a single brush. It is about heroes and ambitious tyrants, loyalty and betrayal, living and remembering.