Shen Yan, a young conservator at the National Library, receives an anonymous fragmentary map of Chang’an from the Tang dynasty. The Vermilion Bird Avenue is still marked on it, but Mingde Gate has been neatly cut away. His father, missing for ten years, has left a warning hidden in the map’s layers: Do not restore the city gate.
When Shen Yan makes his first stroke, he is swept into Chang’an on the night of the Shangyuan Festival. The city gate will disappear at midnight, and along with it, the twelve wards south of the city and the memories of a hundred thousand people will be erased.
He has no System and no martial arts skills. All he can rely on are his restoration techniques, records in ancient books, and his understanding of a city’s structure. He examines paper, identifies ink, investigates waterways, and reconstructs the wards. One stroke saves one street; one map protects one city.
From Chang’an to Bianjing, from Jiankang to Luoyang, as one ancient city after another reappears in the fragmentary maps, Shen Yan finally confronts a question that has spanned a thousand years: If forgetting can spare the living pain, is it still necessary to remember the truth?
