Yongle Tiangong: the Ming Steam Dynasty

In the winter of the 18th year of Yongle, Zheng He's treasure ship brought back a fragment of Tiangong Kaiwu from the east coast of Africa - the pages were like gold foil, the writing was like lithography, and the true features were revealed using blood as a guide. Zhu Gaochi, the prince of the Eastern Palace, was fat and cowardly, and was ridiculed as a "nerd" by the whole court. However, in the fragment, he glimpsed the power that could overturn the world: steam drives steel, steel crushes blood, and efficiency replaces destiny. When Han King Zhu Gaoxu's 100,000 cavalry arrayed outside Beijing, when Jie Jin led six civil servants to kneel down and beg to "kill the demon", when Emperor Yongle on the sick bed asked "what do you want" - the fat prince lit the first furnace of steam. Cannons roared into the sky, and flesh and blood turned into mist. A dynasty of iron and fire descended upon the ruins of the old era. But what Zhu Gaochi has to do is more difficult than seizing the throne: he doesn't want the dragon throne, he wants to make the word emperor a history. He wants to engrave on the iron tablet: Rites and laws are born from the human heart, the human heart is born from food and clothing, and food and clothing are born from iron and fire. This is a huge gamble to use steam engines to leverage a thousand-year monarchy. The old aristocrats were sharpening their knives in the dark, the old Confucian scholars were writing books about demons during hunger strikes, and the Mongolian envoys were dumbfounded in front of the Iron City. This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.