The story of Sui and Tang Dynasties has been widely circulated among the people in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. But as a novel, it began in the Ming Dynasty. A large number of long historical romances appeared in the early Qing Dynasty, covering the ancient times to the Ming Dynasty, which almost constituted a complete and detailed historical series. The Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties is a link in this series. Before The Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties came out, Luo Guanzhong had compiled Biographies of Sui and Tang Dynasties. In the mid-Ming Dynasty, Han Lin revised it, which was called The Popular Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties. Chu Renhuo mainly relies on this book, and also refers to the Ming version of the thorn of Qin Wang in the Tang Dynasty, the anonymous history of Emperor Yang Di, and the legends, operas, folklore and other materials in the Tang and Song Dynasties, such as Hai Shan Ji, Mi Ji, He Kai Ji, Kaiyuan Tianbao Legacy and Taizhen Zhuan. The author collects extensively and compiles meticulously, melting many figures, complex events and long history into one furnace, forming an organic artistic whole.

This book mainly covers three aspects. The first is the court story at the end of Sui Dynasty, centering on the love affair between Yang Di and Zhu Guier, which describes the extravagance and waste of court life at the end of Sui Dynasty and the dissoluteness and cruelty of Yang Di. He won the throne, reigned for thirteen years, built Luogong, recruited embroidered mothers, dug canals, traveled to Jiangdu, built the Great Wall, and went on an expedition to North Korea. His national strength was exhausted and the people were in poverty. This part of the description is gorgeous and full of the flavor of the times, which objectively reflects the social background of the peasant war at the end of Sui Dynasty. The second is the story of the court in the Tang Dynasty, which takes the affair of Tang Gaozong Yang Guifei as a clue to show the arrogance and extravagance of the court life in the Tang Dynasty; At the same time, it also describes the murder of their husbands by Li Shimin's close brothers, Wuhou and Wei Hou, their struggle for power and favor, and their cruelty.

This part of the description is vague and emotional, not as good as the Sui Dynasty. Thirdly, the stories of rebellious heroes, such as Dan, Cheng, Wang Bodang and Mulan, are inserted in the first seventy chapters, describing their legendary experience of fighting against Sui and following the farmland, and praising their chivalry and courage. These stories are mostly connected in series between the Sui and Tang Dynasties, which are heroic and vivid, with many beauties. In the description, the sympathy for the wife of the Sixteenth Academy after the death of the Sui Dynasty and the sigh of the protagonist's frustration are all based on the old, but they are inextricably linked with the author's own feelings of "depravity" and "suffering".