The Elixir Calamity: Heaven's Uprising Against the Nightmare Dynasty

The Qian Dynasty is beset by internal turmoil and foreign threats. The emperor uses industrial alchemy to make immortals and rule the country.

The aristocracy gains status through elixirs, while Westerners use guns and cannons to oppress the people. The protagonist and a group of fellow scholars blow up the provincial capital's alchemy factory, swallow its pills, and launch an uprising. They maneuver between the Westerners and the Qian Dynasty, until at last they abandon their illusions and take up the struggle, gradually rising into a powerful regime that controls half of China.

“When the monopoly on divine power is broken, what difference is there between noble and common blood?”

Worldbuilding references: The Elixir Calamity of 1912, Trench Crusade, Hearts of Iron: Pax Britannica

Setting:

[Becoming immortal through the power of faith VS becoming immortal through medicinal power]

[Steam Empire colonialism VS resistance by the Demon Dynasty]

[Physical universe VS supernatural world]

The Westerners think they've found easy pickings, only for the meat to leap up and fight back.

The officials think the elixir will keep them safe, only for the pills to prove powerless against the flames of war.

The evil spirits think the mortal world has no restraints, only for someone to scatter their ashes.

There is no path to heaven in this world, only one thing that can overcome another.