In the first year of the Zhenguan era, Xu Zhao, a mechanical engineer, transmigrates into the body of a humiliated, impoverished son-in-law of the Xu family of Suzhou. On his wedding night, the main branch of the family forces him to sign a severance agreement. He counters by using The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art to shatter an abacus, then hoists a salt ship weighing ten thousand jin with a pulley system. Before everyone, he tears up the marriage contract. “I’m done serving as anyone’s son-in-law!”
Five years later, the “flying money” of Chang’an’s Western Market overturns the financial power of the Five Great Houses and Seven Great Clans, while the roaring ink-and-wash factory at Ba Bridge crushes the foundations of the aristocratic families.
Ten years later, gunpowder in the Talas Desert shatters the Persian elephant formation. The veteran general Li Jing rebukes him in a trembling voice: “Xu Mingyuan! You’re bringing down Heaven’s wrath!”
Twenty years later, the early model of a parliament in the Ryukyu Autonomous Territory sends shockwaves through the court. Wu Meiniang knocks on his door in the dead of night. “If Master Xu wants this empire…”
He helps a kneeling Japanese envoy to his feet and burns the Persian queen’s letter, which offers ten cities in exchange for a single meeting. Yet amid the misty rain of Jiangnan, he writes his final words:
“The Tang I want can welcome all nations to pay tribute and contain the ambition of the steam engine. The one thing it will never tolerate is blood spilled at Xuanwu Gate.”
