In the eighth year of Dahe in the late Tang Dynasty, Yangzhou was the capital of Jiangdu.
Modern criminal investigation policeman Wang Yan accidentally traveled through time and became a ninth-grade Jiangdu County Lieutenant.
When he woke up, he found himself in a dead situation: Cui Shanman, the prosecutor of the Yangtze Inspectorate, and seven members of his family were murdered. The government hastily closed the case as a "fire", and the original person was also assassinated for pursuing the case.
Cui Shan left a clue of "official salt vacancy" with his life, pointing directly to the Lai family, a giant salt merchant family that has occupied Jiangdu for three generations.
From the ashes of paper to the account books hidden under the tree, from the tampered testimony to the midnight assassination, Wang Yan relies on modern criminal investigation thinking to navigate step by step among the county officials who colluded with salt merchants and the intricate salt network.
With the state government suppressing the case, and killers around him, he used his lone courage to investigate the truth thoroughly, vowing to clear the wrongs and uncover the shady story of power and money behind Yanli in the late Tang Dynasty.
