In the twelfth lunar month of the first year of Deyou, Lin'an.
The sixty-two-year-old watchman Chen Geng walked through Yujie, Ancestral Temple, Tianningfang and Houjing Alley every night. Knock the clapper and shout "Heaven is dry and things are dry", and write down in the diary "There is no danger in the road". It's been like this for twenty years.
He didn't know that the city was about to fall.
He just discovered that the gauze lanterns were extinguished one by one, the movers pushed the wheelbarrow away in the middle of the night, the hands of the eunuch who was refueling the eternal lamp in the Ancestral Temple became more and more shaky, and the imperial guard who patrolled the night did not show up again one day.
On the ninth day of the twelfth lunar month, someone rang the fifth watch clock for him. On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the Lantern Festival, Lin'an City was completely dark. On the eve of the eighteenth day of the first lunar month when the city was broken, he made the last watch alone.
The city is broken. The sound of trumpets replaced the sound of drums. He placed the clapper that had been used for twenty years on the steps of the Drum Tower. A young man passed by. He asked if there was still an update. Chen Geng said, listen. The young man listened for a while. No more drums.
"Then you fight."
