Lead-Washing Map: I Was a Doctor in the Tang Dynasty

In the spring of the fourth year of Zhenyuan, Wang Heng, a commoner from Suzhou, took his grandfather's letters and his father's incomplete pictures to Jingnan to join the Jiedu envoy Pei Zhou. The canal had been blocked for three years, and the local government and the Yantie yamen were trying to blame each other. He explored forty miles along the canal and used tea as a pledge to raise funds from merchants. It took a few months to complete the project. When sorting out his father's belongings, a broken map fell out from the interlayer of the rattan box - "The Essential Strategy of Mountains and Rivers" compiled by Fang Qing, King of Langya in the Empress Wu Dynasty. It was divided into various branches of the Wang family after the Anshi Rebellion. There is a hidden ancient road in the picture, pointing towards Huaixi. In the next eighteen years, he traveled from Jingnan to Chang'an, from the Hubu Branch Office to the Huaixi battlefield, from the storm of Yongzhen's revolution to the management of the Jianghuai transshipment. He used the residual pictures as a guide, and used water transportation, salt and iron, and cabinets as tools to find a way to serve the country through practical learning amid Dezong's suspicion, the power of the eunuchs, and the separatist rule of the feudal towns. When the fragmented map was finally assembled into a complete volume and handed over to Pei Du, the prelude to Xianzong's reduction of vassals had just begun. And that commoner who came out of Suzhou has spent eighteen years washing away all the fineness, leaving only the true flavor.