Ancient book restorer Yu Guanlan is best at dealing with "missing characters". He believes that every blank space has its origin, and the break on the paper is not the end, but that someone has stopped writing here.
During a provincial library restoration mission, he received a fragmented volume with no title, no chapter, and no signature of the editor. The fragmentary page is from the Northern Song Dynasty, but it is mixed with paper, ink color and proofreading that should not belong to the same era. The strangest thing is that the word "" on the fragment changes its position every time it is unframed, like someone walking slowly on the back of the paper.
Yu Guanlan thought it was just an illusion caused by fiber shrinkage, until he corrected a blackened place name according to the ancient method, and suddenly Bianjing in the late Xining years appeared in front of him: the river was rising, the bookstore was inscribed overnight, and someone burned old documents outside the palace. A girl who calls herself the "scribe" tells him that the fragments are not books recording the past, but rather hiding things that have not happened yet in the past.
In order to return to reality, Yu Guanlan must trace the typos made eight hundred years ago to find out who was deleting "Shuiheng Miscellaneous Notes" and who was using a flood to cover up a larger conspiracy. He will form a fragile network with the school clerk, river workers, bookshop engravers, and descendants of missing historians to guard a river that is related to the livelihood of millions of people in a corner where the real history has not left its name.
History will not be rewritten just because one person walks into ancient books, but one person can make the erased evidence speak again.
