Modern office drone Meng Yumo opened his eyes and found himself in the body of Zhu Yunwen, the eldest grandson of the emperor, lying gravely ill in the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu. The recorded palace fire of the fourth year of Jianwen had yet to come, but the shadow of death had already fallen over him.
A bowl of calming tonic laced with cyanide revealed a shocking plot behind the crown prince's sudden death.
In the murky eyes of Zhu Yuanzhang, seated on the Nine-Dragon Throne, lay the secret edict to depose the heir, just delivered by the Embroidered Uniform Guard.
The smell of gunpowder drifting from the Prince of Yan's residence carried a formula that did not belong to this era.
Li Mo, bound to the Civilization Seed System, held plans for blast-furnace steelmaking in his left hand and the bloodstained power of the throne in his right:
- Use calculus in the Hall of Literary Glory to model the Yellow River floods, and make the roar of Yongle cannons echo across the northern frontier twenty years early.
- Set a biological warfare trap through the wool trade, and use economic pressure to break apart the grassland tribal alliance.
- Turn the imperial examination halls into arenas for technological competition, forcing the gentry of Jiangnan to trade centuries-old land deeds for shares in steam engines.
But when he discovers penicillin cultures in Consort Lu's secret chamber, when Zheng He's treasure ships dredge up bronze gears engraved with English words, and when the observatory on Purple Mountain locks onto a second satellite tracking a transmigrator, the Industrial Revolution that began in a side hall of the Eastern Palace abruptly collides with the Dark Forest law governing the entire plane.
At that moment, the System's light screen projects a blood-red warning across the ceiling of the Hall of Heavenly Favors:
[Zhu Yuanzhang's remaining lifespan: 372 days]
[Plane collapse threshold: 67% of the technology tree unlocked]
The world beneath the dragon throne is splitting apart. The frost on the glazed tiles of Yingtian Prefecture has already taken on the leaden gray of a nuclear winter.
