Slaughter Tang, Xingtian: The Chronicles of Huang Chao

Complete synopsis of The Tang-Slaying Xing Tian: A Chronicle of Huang Chao He once sold illicit salt and trudged through the lowest mud of human life. He once failed the imperial examinations and tasted the coldest blade of Heaven's law. The world curses him as a brutal rebel, and history brands him with an infamous name that will last a thousand generations. Yet no one knows that he is the reincarnation of an ancient remnant soul of Xing Tian, born solely to cleave open Heaven's unbreakable gate on behalf of countless poor families. In the Xiantong era of the Great Tang, beneath the grand facade of a golden age, the five great clans of the millennium, the Five Surnames and Seven Houses, monopolize the literary tradition and official careers. Secretly allied with Heaven's divine court, they lock away the fortunes of the poor. Huang Chao, the son of a salt worker from a lowly registered household, is haunted by nightmares from childhood, often seeing a headless giant god wield an axe against Heaven. He studies bitterly as an ordinary man and carries a sword along the salt roads. Three times he travels to Chang'an to sit the imperial examinations, and each time his essays surpass all others in the land, yet the aristocratic families strike his name from the records and Heaven itself bars his way. On a rainy night in Chang'an after failing the examinations, he writes, “A fragrance that charges the heavens fills Chang'an; the whole city is clad in golden armor.” The remnant soul of Xing Tian awakens completely. He did not come to win an official title. He came to settle accounts with this world that devours its people. From a member of an illicit salt gang to the leader of a million-strong rebel army, from Juye in Shandong to the imperial capital of Chang'an, Huang Chao fights across half the realm, slaughtering divine scions of the aristocratic clans, burning thousand-year-old genealogies, and severing Heaven's divine registers. Every battle is a bloody revenge by the poor against the great clans; every step is the ancient echo of Xing Tian's remnant soul challenging Heaven. The secondary protagonist, Zhu Wen, is also a shard of his wrath: a warlord of the chaotic age. One is loyal, the other treacherous; one righteous, the other baleful. They coexist and oppose each other, together unleashing a storm that will bring down the Great Tang. When Huang Chao enters Chang'an in golden armor, declares himself emperor, and founds the Qi dynasty, he must finally confront his ultimate destiny. How can a mortal body sever Heaven's chains? Can a thousand generations of infamy buy the poor a way forward for ten thousand years? This is Huang Chao's story, but it is also the story of China