Shaking Tang

Shaking Tang is a long historical alternate-history novel by the web novelist Yi Bao Huang Guo Shu, serialized on Qidian Chinese Network in the 2010s under the "History · Western and Eastern Jin, Sui and Tang" category. It is about 3.22 million Chinese characters long and is complete. The story opens at the end of the Daye era of the Sui Dynasty: uprisings were surging across the land, aristocratic clans were turning away one after another, and the once glorious Sui Dynasty was already gravely ill. The protagonist, Yang You, was originally a modern graduate student in archaeology and, after an illness, unexpectedly reincarnated as Yang You, Prince of Dai, grandson of Emperor Yang of Sui and left in charge of Daxing (Chang'an)—the future Emperor Gong of Sui. When he opens his eyes, Li Yuan has already raised troops in Taiyuan, Huoyi has fallen, and the army is pointing straight at the Guanzhong region, while old officials at court each have their own calculations, and Chang'an is empty of troops and restless in spirit. Facing the powerful rise of Xue Ju in Longxi and Li Yuan's imminent entry into the pass, Yang You hastily consolidates the last forces in the name of Sui legitimacy: he employs buried talents such as Li Jing, who had been wrongly imprisoned, reorganizes military affairs, pacifies the people, survives by a hair in successive great battles, and turns from defense to offense in battles such as Xiagui and Chengcheng, once suppressing the Tang army's edge. Yet the overall tide is hard to reverse, and he is forced to retreat south, forming a confrontation of "Southern Sui, Northern Tang," then uses the name of legitimacy to form alliances and maneuver, seizing resources from foreign peoples and constantly creating obstacles for Li Tang, step by step building his own realm in the cracks. The book is driven by war and power struggles, blending elements such as farming, management, and diplomacy, and is one of the more representative long works in time-travel fiction set in the late Sui.