Heaven's Work

Twenty years ago, Tiangong Pavilion was destroyed overnight. Three hundred craftsmen were slaughtered, and the master of the pavilion, Lin Zhengxiu, died suddenly in exile on the charge of "liaison with foreign enemies." Twenty years later, his son, whom he had never met, squatted on the alkali soil of Baiyan City and boiled a handful of salt with a handful of soil. As white as snow. The cost is only one-tenth of that of Liujia Salt Shop. Lin Yan never thought about overturning the verdict. He just wants to live. But a handful of white salt shocked the whole city - the salt workers whose ribs were broken by the salt merchants, the widows who could not afford the salt tax and could only eat light meals, the coolies who had been carrying salt bags at the dock for a lifetime but could not afford to buy a grain of salt - these people looked over. The Liu family's eyes also looked over. From boiling salt in alkaline soil to homemade soap making, from crucible steelmaking to the new salt and iron policy, Lin Yan blazed a trail between the common people at the bottom and the aristocratic families: Technology can change the salt, but not the rules—you have to think in terms of the rules. And in the capital city that has never been set foot in, the truth behind the destruction of Tiangong Pavilion is being dug out layer by layer by a pair of eyes that have been blind for twenty years. An orphan of a guilty minister, a border town, and a handful of alkaline soil. What was overturned was the monopoly foundation of a dynasty.