At the end of the Kaiyuan era of the Great Tang, the new dynasty united the realm, standardized the written language and the roads, and hung a volume of The Standard Characters in the halls of government. From then on, a single word could define a border, and one character could decide life or death.
The female historian Shen studied etymology from childhood, sitting alone with her brush in a cold study. She believed her only duty was to correct erroneous characters, not to meddle in the rise and fall of human affairs. The hostage prince of a fallen kingdom had lost the sounds of his homeland and kept his mouth shut as if made of stone, conveying his true feelings only through the surviving texts of his country.
One used the official language to buy back a person's freedom; the other recorded the dead in the language of a vanished kingdom. History unfolded between the characters, and blades clashed at the tip of the brush.
As for those characters, add a stroke, and a city might be massacred; remove one, and a name might be erased.
In such times, who would write the historian's record, and who would be imprisoned for their words?
Theme: Language is a tool of power; cultural erasure and the preservation of memory; how can "unity" and "diversity" coexist?
