At twenty-four, Supervising Censor Pei Zhao takes on an audit of military supplies in Fanyang. He turns one page of the ledger and finds that fifty thousand strings of military pay have vanished into thin air, the battle-loss figures don't add up, and every line of ink hides a living person's fate.
He thinks he's auditing the books.
Someone uses him to check a political rival, while someone else wants him silenced and thrown into the river. The secret reports he can't deliver, the evidence he can't destroy, the deadly trap he can't stop: all of it is pushing him into a game he can't understand.
His wife, Shen Nianzhen, has been five years wiser than him all along. She doesn't stop him from charging ahead. She simply lays escape routes behind him, inch by inch, blocks hidden arrows, and burns their bridges. The scar on her wrist is the price she paid to save his life. Their close friend Cui Huaijin, who has been with them since youth, defects to Yang Guozhong. On the surface, he grows distant from Pei Zhao, but in truth, every step he takes is trading a piece of his conscience for Pei Zhao's survival.
Three people of the same generation, three ways of living. One chooses what's "right," one chooses to "survive," and one thinks, "I'd be willing to die alongside him."
The An Lushan Rebellion begins, and Chang'an falls. They flee from the lantern-lit splendor of an age of prosperity to the misty rains of Jiangnan, surviving death after death and suffering countless wounds, but the light never goes out.
After hardship comes sweetness, and a life that remains beneath the lamp.
Premise: Someone knows the world is crooked, yet still wants to straighten it. In the end, he can't straighten the world, but someone stays by his side, and together they survive in its crookedness.
