When a chemistry master’s graduate from a top 985 university transmigrates into the scapegoat of the first year of the Zhenguan era, Li Chang’an discovers that this parallel Tang Dynasty is downright wild: Turkic spies are parkour-running across rooftops, noblewomen wield account books as weapons, and even a frail princess can use an abacus to solve calculus problems! With his father wrongly imprisoned, the Turkic army at the gates, and the Five Surnames and Seven Houses monopolizing the economy, he faces a deadly situation from the start. So he brings out the ultimate romance of a science-and-engineering nerd: he makes soap from wood ash to win over the noblewomen, purifies gunpowder in a pickle crock to blast the Turkic cavalry to smithereens, and drifts through Vermilion Bird Street in a steam-powered sailboat.
