In the third year of Yuankang, Emperor Xuan of the Han Dynasty, five passers-by stayed at Xuanquanzhi. Early the next morning, the five people headed east as usual, but there was an extra body in the stable. The deceased was Cao Yan, an official from Jiuquan County who had left.
Zhi Shifuhong started to check the messengers, food books and horse records. With the help of the translator Ati, he found that someone was secretly changing his identity and collected information on the post road that had not been written in the official register: the number of the envoys, the change of messenger horses, the delay of documents, and some itineraries that could not be seen in the light.
For the next nineteen years, missing messengers, delayed edicts, and disputes among the countries in the Western Regions continued to pass through Xuanquan. Hong gradually discovered that the "night diary" he wrote to find out the truth might also become another pair of eyes to peer into the western frontier of the Han Dynasty.
Two thousand years later, the remaining bamboo slips were unearthed. The history books did not write a biography of Hongli, but left a record of the price he paid for guarding a path.
