The Micang Road: I Saved the Great Tang by Transporting Salt

Everyone in China knows the Lychee Road, thanks to Ma Boyong.

But the hardest, most perilous, most down-to-earth route through Shu is called the Micang Road. There are no lychees for a consort here, only two hundred jin of salt weighing down the backs of porters.

The Tang Dynasty is on the verge of collapse. The treasury is empty, the emperor has fled. The court sends a low-ranking official, just eighth rank, deep into the Bashan Mountains to transport salt. Everyone knows it’s a death sentence.

But when this man named Yan Chen reaches the salt well, dips a finger into the brine, flips through a set of false books, and says, “Do you still want to keep your head?”

Then he takes down corrupt officials with three numbers, ignites underground fire with a bamboo pipe, and uses an abacus to calculate the salt that will keep the Tang alive.

From abandoned wells to fire wells, from eighty jin to twenty thousand, from eighth rank to third.

No System, no transmigration radar. Just a man who can calculate better than anyone and is tougher than anyone, on a road that never ends.

The salt is underground, the people are above it. The wind still blows along the Micang Road.