Embers of the Tang Dynasty: Chang'an Yi

After the Anshi Rebellion, the prosperous times have turned into embers. In the first year of the Dali calendar, Chang'an was "revived" on the surface, but in reality, eunuchs were in charge of the army, vassal towns were separatist, factions in the court were fighting, and people's livelihood was in decline. Shen Yan, an orphan from Luoyang, originally wanted to survive in troubled times, but was involved in a whirlpool due to a theft of palace treasures. In order to save his loved ones, he dealt with power, vassal towns, and aristocratic families, and used his photographic memory and knowledge of criminal names and laws to break through desperate situations. From a book scribe to a young prime minister, he founded the "Chang'an General Affairs Department" to stabilize grain prices, organized a "United Army" to defend Tongguan, and reformed the salt policy to fill the national treasury. He overthrew Chao En, the eunuch of power, but was jealous of the emperor; he suppressed the rebellion in the feudal town, but found that the system was deeply ill. This is not Shuangwen's counterattack, but the arduous trek of idealists on a thorny road. A close friend died in the battle at Tongguan, and the beauty was in the palace. Every time he broke the situation, he was sacrificed. When the reform touched upon the fundamentals, aristocratic families counterattacked, eunuchs reappeared, and even the united soldiers he devoted his efforts to became a sharp blade that the emperor was afraid of. Shen Yan finally retired at the peak of power and retired to Luoyang to write books and educate people. But his ideal of "keeping integrity" has not been extinguished - the General Affairs Department model has been inherited by later generations, reform ideas have been integrated into the system, and the fire of civilization has been quietly passed on deep in the ashes. The work is based on real history, recreating the era of mid-Tang Dynasty that was full of contradictions and hope. There are hard-core power intrigues, three-dimensional portraits of characters, details of people's livelihood construction, and profound questions about how individuals persist in "keeping integrity" in the historical wave. The chess game in Chang'an will eventually come to an end, and only the right path remains in the world.