A Knowledge-Driven Great Tang, Rewriting a Thousand Years of Tragedy

Zhang Chu takes a tumble into the seventh year of the Zhenguan era. Drought ravages more than thirty prefectures of the Tang dynasty, and the dead lie scattered everywhere. The people point at Li Shimin and curse him for "killing his brother and imprisoning his father, bringing Heaven's punishment upon himself." Squatting beside a cracked riverbed, Zhang Chu uses modern chemistry to extract water from plant roots, somehow managing not to die of thirst.

He finds shelter in Wangjia Village, where starving villagers eye his backpack. A local thug kicks down the door to steal his food, and an old man collapses on the spot from sodium poisoning. Two children cry inconsolably. Zhang Chu shoves a handful of refined salt into the old man's mouth, and an incense stick later, the man is alive. The old man kneels and kowtows. "You are a living bodhisattva!" Zhang Chu helps him up, thinking only of refined salt and distillation: in his hands are miraculous tools that could save tens of millions of lives.

In Chang'an, Li Shimin scowls at the empty national treasury. Powerful clans have driven grain prices sky-high, and borrowing grain would be like handing them a knife. He is no longer the Qin Prince who had nothing to lose. Zhang Chu knows nothing of this. He only knows that beneath the prosperous Zhenguan era, ordinary people can't even get a mouthful of salt. Since he's here, he won't just be a tourist through time. Starting with surviving in the wilderness, he'll use modern technology to rewrite the tragic history of Zhenguan.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.