The Paper Maze: Chinese History Through the Pages of an Ancient Text

Shen Du has a secret: when he restores ancient books, he can hear the voices within the paper.

A drop of blood seeps into the Yongle Encyclopedia, and he becomes a bookbinder from five hundred years ago. He witnesses lightning and fire strike the Forbidden City and saves a register of craftsmen.

From then on, he transmigrates into ancient texts again and again: Han bamboo slips from Juyan, Dunhuang manuscripts, Southern Song medical books... He becomes garrison soldiers, woodblock carvers, and sutra copyists, all the little people forgotten by official history.

But every transmigration burns away his lifespan. Meanwhile, an organization called “Chiwen” is burning every ancient book in an attempt to reset history.

He must find the lost “Heaven, Earth, Black, and Yellow” before they do, because it records the “souls” of all ancient books and determines whether history lives or dies.

Paper may decay, but every breath written on it lasts longer than stone monuments.