During the Baoyou period of the Southern Song Dynasty, Shen Yanzhi, a scholar in Lin'an City, was in decline. Due to his family's decline, he copied books in a bookstore to make a living. He faced oppression from the powerful, no chance to take the imperial examination, and his mother was seriously ill. Thousands of years later, Lin Zhiyao, a history student in the 21st century, lives in a modern society where efficiency is paramount, and is deeply trapped in value emptiness and existential anxiety. An unexpected meeting of dreams brings two lonely souls together across time and space.
At first, Lin Zhiyao used modern knowledge to help Shen Yanzhi resolve the crisis: he used "public opinion war" to outwit the powerful people who bought calligraphy and paintings, used "nursing" knowledge to delay his mother's illness, and used "managing the world to apply" to open up new career paths. However, when Lin Zhiyao herself fell into the dilemma of cyber violence, workplace alienation and modernity, Shen Yanzhi fed her back with the "slow wisdom" of the ancients - teaching her to "wait" instead of "chasing", teaching her to "be present" instead of "spectating", and teaching her to protect the "hope" of the soul in the tyranny of efficiency. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, war broke out suddenly. Shen Yanzhi chose to follow the government-in-exile and record the last dignity of the dynasty with his incomplete hands. In modern society, when the world was turbulent, Lin Zhiyao quit his stable job and wrote the voices of the forgotten with a lonely heart. They backed each other up in their respective "troubled times" and served as each other's afterlife. Using dreams as a boat and words as an anchor, they completed a two-way redemption that spanned a thousand years.
Purpose: When the watchman of Lin'an City and the alarm clock of Beijing meet in a dream, they teach each other: speed is ability, slowness is wisdom; survival is instinct, and life is the purpose.