In late summer of 2026, heavy rains closed the road. Lin Shubai, Cheng Linxuan and "cousin" Ji Chengjie are trapped in their ancestral home in the countryside. Lin Shubai, who came from a family of historians, was told not to enter the attic since he was a child. This night, he went in. The window was banged, and someone spoke in his head: "You are still back, and this account should have an end." When he woke up again, it was already 1937.
In a war-torn county in northern Henan, three people settled in the tabloid "Xiao Bao" as refugee apprentices. Lin Shouzhuo, the great-grandfather of his family, was Lin Shubai's ancestor after eighty-nine years. Lao Zhao who typesets, Shuan Zi who delivers newspapers, Miss Meng who is good at calligraphy; the refugees coming from the north, the unjust case of the mute porter, the mother who has been searching for her son for thousands of miles, the four ferries frozen on the river, and the fifteen planes flying overhead on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Every wrinkle of the great era is seen by them.
That blue cloth book is the destiny of the historian's bloodline: every time the ancestors of the dynasty write a stroke, the book will grow by itself. The book has no name, but Lin Shubai named it "Bu Bai Shu" - Bu Bai Shu, what he wrote down cannot be written down in vain. The title page usually has four lines: one book for one day; record the unfinished accounts of that day; when the accounts are done, the book is full; when the book is full, the door is opened; when the nine books are full, it is home.
After each account, the door is opened once; they choose to go back or stay. They will always leave behind - the historian's pen, the strategist's ambition, the scholar's curiosity, each still has unsettled accounts. And the woman in front of the window on a rainy night didn't remember who she was, but she recognized each of them.
From the Republic of China to the Yin and Shang Dynasties, trace back the nine dynasties along the bloodline. They thought they were looking for a way home, but it took them a long time to realize that this book was never just about accounts.
For those who don't write official history, we should write it ourselves.
