The Road to Survival at the End of the Han Dynasty

In the second year of Xingping, Chang’an falls and the Han dynasty teeters on the brink. Liu Xie wakes to find himself an emperor in name only, a puppet in the hands of Li Jue and Guo Si. Faced with Li Jue’s probing, he grovels; faced with Guo Si’s attempts to win him over, he plays dumb; faced with the ministers’ moral blackmail, he turns a deaf ear. Everyone thinks he is a useless emperor, and no one notices him setting up an iron pot in an abandoned stable and boiling coarse salt into his first handful of pure white fine salt. Starting with a single sack of salt, he quietly weaves a web of spies across Chang’an. As Li Jue plots to kill Fan Chou, Guo Si secretly contacts the Southern Xiongnu, and Ma Teng and Han Sui mass troops beyond the passes, everyone fights over the faded banner of the Han, unaware that the young emperor they trample underfoot is gathering the threads in his hands, one by one, from the darkness. When they finally look back, they will discover they have long been caught in his web. Starting with a battered pot amid the ruins of Chang’an, he will use salt, money, and the hearts of men to bring this chaotic age to a boil and reshape the Han realm.