After the An Shi Rebellion shatters the Tang Dynasty and the world’s order begins to tilt, a lone fortress city in the Western Regions is abandoned beyond the empire’s reach. For sixty years, no reinforcements arrive, no decrees come, and the Central Plains forgets the name of the place—yet the city still refuses to surrender, clinging to the belief that it remains Tang land.
Gu Chang An is born behind those walls and grows up in blood and sand. He kills young, fights older, and keeps fighting when everyone else is gone—until the defenders are reduced to a single man on the ramparts. With the last civilians at his back and the weight of countless fallen comrades on his shoulders, he holds the line through siege after siege, turning a hopeless defense into a legend. And then, after unimaginable years, a message finally reaches Chang An: a fragment of Tang territory still stands in the far west, and the last soldier of the An Xi Army is still guarding it. The news shakes the realm—because one man’s stubborn stand has kept an entire age from truly dying.