Archaeologist Shen Yan discovers a damaged epitaph in an unmarked tomb from the early Song dynasty and unexpectedly returns to the eve of the Tang dynasty’s fall. Familiar with the history of the following seventy-odd years, he once hopes to stop Zhu Wen from replacing the Tang, support a worthy ruler, and reclaim Yan and Yun. But he discovers that knowing how things end does not mean he can change the course of an era. Again and again, he foresees disaster, only to fail before the vast web woven from military governors, grain and military supplies, and the hearts of the people. Eventually, he stops hoping to save the realm and instead records, alongside the physician Ning Zhaoye, the lives of those left out of the history books. When Northern Han falls, the elderly Shen Yan hears someone in his tomb calling him by his modern name. When he wakes again, only seven minutes have passed in the present, and a list that should not exist has appeared in the tomb.
