The Hidden Chancellor

The Hidden Chancellor is a historical time-travel novel by the web writer Shui Yezi, first serialized on Qidian and complete at about 850,000 characters in 232 chapters (including two related-work chapters). The story begins in the first year of the Changshou era of Wu Zhou (692 AD). Tang Song, a young researcher at a modern institute of ancient texts, dies of overwork and wakes up in the body of Tang Song, a poor scholar from Xiangzhou—same sound, different character. After their memories merge, he lives again in this body as "Tang the Fool." Empress Wu Zetian had deposed Emperor Ruizong and changed the dynasty from Tang to Zhou only two years earlier, a transitional period of female rule, intellectual ferment, and aristocratic infighting. Tang Song builds a hut on Mount Lumen to study, and makes his name overnight with poetry, prose, and calligraphy unknown to this era—only to be denounced as "the shame of the literati." Using calligraphy, he uncovers a clan elder's secret hoard of Luo Binwang's letters against Wu, outmaneuvers the crisis to protect the family fortune, and maneuvers between local Xiangzhou and the capital Luoyang. Wu Zetian, Shangguan Wan'er, Princess Taiping, Empress Wei, and Princess Anle appear in the book as forceful or alluring figures, each deep in schemes and ambition. Against a backdrop of Tang-era civil examinations, law, and literati life, the author portrays a time traveler who holds no chancellor's title yet wields a chancellor's power—a "hidden chancellor"—and how he establishes himself and plots amid an age ruled by women.