Seeking Tang

Seeking Tang is an alternate-history novel by the web author Gunner No. 1. It began serialization on Qidian in 2019 and concluded on January 10, 2021, totaling roughly 4.2368 million Chinese characters across 1,386 chapters, with the final chapter titled "Chinese Civilization Shines Forever on the World." The synopsis reads: Li Ze returns to the late Tang, an era full of violence, bloodshed, and upheaval—a time when order has collapsed above and below, the realm is splintered, chaos abounds, and whoever holds a spear can crown himself king. What he wants to do is restore the splendor of the High Tang and compose once more a song of the High Tang. The story begins with young Li Ze installed at a remote manor: he is the illegitimate son of the military governor Li Anguo, and his mother, Lady Wang, treats him coldly because of an old family grievance; neither his birth nor his circumstances allow him to live in peace. Li Ze bides his time, quietly gathering guards, putting the manor's affairs in order, stockpiling money and grain, and training a private force, while seeking opportunities to raise troops and establish himself amid the tangled factions, foreign threats, and ceaseless feuds among the military commands. Step by step he grows from an overlooked youth into a regional warlord, then contends for the Central Plains and sets out on the road to unification and the rebuilding of order. The book's main threads are power struggles in a chaotic age, the slaughter of war, and the rebuilding of civilization; it is grand in scope and, after The Pawn, another work by the author on late-Tang hegemony. Note: this is a web-serialized work with no official print single-volume edition; related information is based on the Qidian page.