Yu Zhen has been repairing old papers left by others all his life, and he understands that when a page of a book is destroyed, it is not just the loss of a few lines.
An unknown Song Dynasty manuscript was sent to the restoration room. On the paper were the streets and alleys of Bianjing that had been washed away by water, account books that had never been seen in historical records, and a sentence that changed every day: The school clerk Yu Zhen died in the winter of the third year of Qingli.
When he touched the broken page, he opened his eyes in the winter rain in Tokyo during the Song Dynasty and became an unqualified clerk in the Secretariat Department. Fan Zhongyan here has just written "Ten Things to Answer the Imperial Edict", Ouyang Xiu is still fighting about cliques, the canal boats on the Bian River have not yet frozen; and a tampering with the relief grain book is causing the names of countless ordinary people to disappear before the heavy snow.
Ancient books cannot be rewritten by others. Every time a stroke is added, the paper in reality becomes thinner; every time a name is saved, a new blank space is created in the book.
Yu Zhen didn't want to be the person who wrote the history books. He just wants to keep those people who are not remembered by the big shots, but who have lived equally seriously, until he can find the truly lost ending of an ancient book among the beating drums and flipping volumes all over the city.
