In the afternoon when it was not raining, we first heard the sound of water in the archives room.
Chi Guanlan, an ancient book restorer, discovered seven blank pages in an unknown Song Dynasty fragment. The blank spaces are not moth-eaten or faded ink, but rather like someone neatly digging out a piece of Bianjing's fate from the paper. What's even more strange is that every time he uses professional methods to restore a fiber on the back of the paper, a comment written only to him will appear on the blank page:
"If water doesn't enter the city, words will enter it first."
Following the annotations, he walked into Bianjing in the eighth year of Yuanfeng and became a school scholar without any records. He met Ruan Qingwu who carved the map on the scrap wood, Qin Jiuyan, the boat owner who remembered every culvert, and the man who was ordered to erase a flood. The water level of the Bianhe River is rising, Shenzong has died, and the situation of the government is about to change. A river map without the north leads to a history that has lasted for twenty years.
Every time he fills in a page, he can save an erased name; but every time he fills in a page, there is one less page in the ancient book in reality, and even his own origin is gradually getting thinner.
When history asked him to remain silent, ancient books handed the pen into his hands. Chi Guanlan must make a choice between "restoring the original text" and "leaving a name for the unknown", and find the road that can truly turn Bianshui back.
