In the second year of Yuanfeng in the Northern Song Dynasty, a dying postman gave Cen Zhaoye, a poor book servant, half a page of an ancient map that had been "rerouted" in a book shop in Bianjing.
Cen Zhaoye, who has been able to see "secondary ink" among the remaining ink on old papers since he was a child, discovered that in the "Yuanfeng Nine Regions Chronicles" being compiled under the imperial edict, some ferries were erased, some ancient roads were changed out of thin air, and some entire villages disappeared from the world atlas. One less stroke on the map could mean that hundreds of people's names, land, and destinations are missing in reality.
In order to find his father who disappeared during the Caocun River Battle, he entered the Jiuyu Bookstore, and together with Su Heng, who was good at discerning paper and ink, and Yan Bugui, an old soldier who was familiar with river defense, conducted field surveys along the Bianshui River, the Yellow River, Qinguan, Shu Road and Jianghan. They used ancient books such as "Shui Jing Zhu", "Yuanhe Prefectures and County Maps", and "Taiping Huan Yu Ji" to prove each other's mountains and rivers, but gradually realized that not all the deleted places were eager to return to the map, and the compilers of the maps were not necessarily just for personal gain.
A map can determine taxes and levies, facilitate water transportation, and guard passes. It can also determine who is seen by the court and who is forgotten by history.
When the old mountains and rivers in ancient books reappeared under the lamp, Cen Zhaoye had to answer: Is the so-called reality a line of words on paper, or is it the human world that is still flowing under the feet of all people?
