Entrepreneurship in the Late Tang

Two hundred and fifty-seven years after the Mandate of Heaven passed to the Li clan, the glorious Tang dynasty, once the court to whom all nations paid tribute, stumbled its way into the winter of the first year of Qiannfu.

That winter, only three months remained until Wang and Huang raised their banners, and only thirty-three years remained until the fall of the Tang.

That same winter, the princes and ministers in Chang'an were still immersed in the afterglow of prosperity, while in the empire's southwest, the tiny Nanzhao once again invaded Xichuan.

...

In the first battle, the Tang army was defeated at the Dadu River and fled to Qiongzhou; the Nanzhao spearhead pointed straight at Chengdu.

At the same time, outside the Dadu River, it was a Shura battlefield.

A young Tang army infantryman opened his eyes, pushed the corpses off himself, and saw only the setting sun of the end times.

This was the first year of Qiannfu: the Great Tang's sky had not yet collapsed, but the world was already a field of broken walls and ruins.

Our story begins that winter, with the Nanzhao War.