In Search of Tang

In Search of Tang is a long-form alternate-history novel by the web novelist Gunner No. 1. Serialized on Qidian starting in 2019 and completed in January 2021, it runs to roughly 4.23 million characters across 1,386 chapters. The story is set in a Tang dynasty that diverges from official history: after the Xuanwu Gate Incident the line of Li Jiancheng inherits the throne, Wu Zetian's Zhou never rises, and although the An Lushan Rebellion is put down, central authority keeps eroding. By the Kaiping era the military governors have carved out their own domains and edicts no longer leave Tong Pass, and the realm is sliding toward a Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms-style collapse. The protagonist, Li Ze, is the illegitimate son of the warlord Li Anguo. His mother is of low birth, he was raised under close guard on an estate, was once poisoned, and enjoys no protection from his parents—he is, in effect, a political castoff. At fourteen he seems willful and idle, but in secret he moves step by step: he quietly controls the estate's money, gathers trusted followers, drills a "secret camp" of orphans, and, when the court grants him a title, brings in the Qianniu Guard and turns this outside force into his own foundation. Later he builds a network of popular support through the "Yixing Society," promotes agricultural reform, waterworks, and the founding of banks in the Wuyi area, moving from self-preservation to breaking the deadlock to institution-building. The book's main thread is not conquest by arms but how to rebuild order on ruins: reforming the military system, spreading farming techniques, revising the law, founding schools, and finally replacing hereditary imperial power with an elected chief minister, in hopes that the Tang will not perish in civil war but be reborn through law and institutions. In the finale Li Ze steps back from power and oversees the simplification of Chinese characters and a pinyin scheme, placing his life's work in enlightening the people and spreading civilization. Written in a coldly realistic vein about a time of chaos, the work combines intrigue, battlefield slaughter, and institutional design, and is one of Gunner No. 1's representative works in the "historical power struggle" vein.