Anxi's Last Stand: Forty-Two Years of Frontier Vigil

After the An Lushan Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty's elite troops were all recalled east to suppress the revolt, gradually cutting off the Hexi Corridor from the吐蕃 and turning the Four Garrisons of Anxi into a remote enclave. Lü Buzhi, a graduate student in archaeology, is transported back in time after a collapse at the Kuqa beacon tower ruins, becoming a soldier of the Anxi garrison just entering the Western Regions. Without any system or cheat, he only has the unearthed documents and historical records buried in his mind for a thousand years - he knows that what lies ahead is forty-two years of complete isolation, the eventual fall of Beiting, the successive loss of the Four Garrisons, and the martyrdom of the entire city of Kucha in the third year of Yuanhe. He refuses to sit idly by. He improves oasis farming, rebuilds beacon towers for early warning, mints coins with the Tang reign title, assists Guo Xin who is appointed in a time of crisis, negotiates with the Uyghurs, and pacifies the local Kucha and Sogdian people, sustaining the isolated city's livelihood in the desperate Gobi with no troops, no food, and no reinforcements. Forty years of Gobi wind and frost have whitened the hair of the young garrison soldiers. A title of commandery prince from Chang'an cannot withstand the annual fierce attacks of a hundred thousand吐蕃 troops. Yang Xigu dies in battle, three garrisons fall in succession, and Kucha becomes the last isolated city of the Tang Dynasty in the Western Regions. White-haired veterans and people of all ethnicities stand shoulder to shoulder on the city walls, knowing full well that the tide cannot be turned, yet they refuse to yield an inch. Lü Buzhi seals his half-century of blood and tears in a secret chamber beneath the beacon tower, and a thousand years later, the modern him personally excavates the Tang bamboo slips he wrote himself. — Description from novelcodex.org