Wang Yun, a graduate student in history, opens his eyes to find himself a starving corpse in a refugee camp during the Western Jin dynasty.
To stay alive, he dares to impersonate a distant relative of the Langya Wang clan, the most powerful aristocratic family in the land.
A performance of “Guangling San” stuns the crowd; a copy of the “Lanting Xu” makes Wang Xizhi ask to become his student on the spot.
From the curved-beam plow to movable-type printing, he draws on a thousand years of knowledge and passes himself off as the sole inheritor of the Wang clan’s secret teachings in “investigating things.”
The clan elders treasure him, the emperor personally arranges a marriage for him, and every famous scholar in the land considers it an honor to engage him in conversation.
Power, beauty, and fame, he gets them all with nothing but a silver tongue.
Until Jiankang falls, and the flames of the Five Barbarians’ uprising reach the banks of the Yangtze.
Everyone kneels before him, begging him to take the throne and lead them to survival.
