In the first year of Tongzhi, outside Suzhou, Qinghe Grain Station.
Shen Wen'an, a writer at the bottom of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was in charge of food rolls, counting, and writing documents. When I woke up, my account balance was 420 shi, and only half of the pot was left: the camp was short of food, the officers wanted to force the village to requisition food, the soldiers were waiting for food, and the village was waiting to survive.
The old accountant advised him: Accounts are dead, people are alive, just fill them up.
He wanted to settle the accounts to the end. From the altered account pages, to the black ships at night, to the tangled moths on the grain roads - he couldn't save a kingdom of heaven, but he wanted to try to see if he could find another way to survive in this rotten world.
