Late in the Tang dynasty, Tong Pass fell. Chen Wu, a low-ranking soldier of the Shence Army, awoke in a heap of corpses. He had forgotten everything but his name, and could remember only the sound of an iron staff striking the ground in a dream.
Over the next hundred-plus years, nine people who had already died came back to life, one after another. They were insignificant little people, like defeated soldiers and clerks, yet they witnessed Huang Chao's entry into the capital, Zhu Wen's usurpation of the Tang, the struggle for supremacy between Later Liang and Later Jin, the cession of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, the changing of the Five Dynasties, the Chenqiao Mutiny, and the Treaty of Chanyuan.
