Gu Zhao was twenty, on academic leave, and ran a shop in an urban village.
His shop didn't serve the living. Its door stood in a crack between yin and yang, and only those on the verge of death could see it and push it open.
When the first customer stepped inside, snow from Chang'an clung to his black armor.
"Shopkeeper, Huo Qubing," he said. "I want to see what the frontier looks like several centuries from now."
So Gu Zhao took the Champion Marquis from two thousand years ago to see the Tang dynasty's beacon towers, the Ming dynasty's Great Wall, and the morning light on the border stele. Standing before it, the general asked, "After this, will the Xiongnu ever dare to look south again?"
The second customer was Zhuge Liang, lighting a lamp in the autumn winds of Wuzhang Plains to prolong his life.
The third was Fusu, sentenced to death during the upheaval at Shaqiu.
The fourth was Zhu Yunwen, whose fate became a mystery after the palace went up in flames...
Each of them was trapped in their own parallel timeline, unable to change their fate by even the slightest degree.
But their final wishes could still be fulfilled.
For every wish fulfilled, a customer became a wish crystal and the shop gained a level. But taking them on a journey across such vast distances burned a wick from the Everlasting Lamp, and cost Gu Zhao one year of his own life.
The Everlasting Lamp scolded him: "How many years do you have to wager?!"
Gu Zhao smiled. "They wagered their entire lives on the realm. Betting one year is a bargain for me."
The history books are so thin. Turn one page, and a person's entire life is gone.
This shop gives them a chance to finish saying what they left unsaid.
