Chen Yan, a modern history professor, traveled through the Dayin Dynasty and was shocked to realize that the seemingly glorious imperial examination was actually a millennium scam of "human sacrifice to the tripod" - the top scorer in each subject would be implanted with fragments of the "Nine Tripods of Zhenguo" and turned into activation sacrifices for the alien spacecraft "Pioneer". The "spiritual vein tracing system" he carried revealed the truth: the tripod pattern was actually the coordinates of the spacecraft, and the "anti-bone pattern" on his back was the key to starting the engine.
In order to break the situation, Chen Yan used historical knowledge to forge the auspicious tripod pattern, and dealt with the eldest prince's "cadaver gang" and the mechanical prosthetic killers of the Cao Gang in the imperial examination room. He teamed up with the "Shadow Cabinet" who mastered steam engine technology, used the principles of thermodynamics to improve the Mohist ship, and set off a spy war intertwined with gears and phosphorus fire in the canal. He also cooperated with a female stargazer who appeared to be an iceberg but was actually an observer of the Galactic Federation, and gradually revealed the ultimate secret of Jiuding as the wreckage of an alien spacecraft.
When the nine tripods were lifted into the sky to form a star map at the palace examination site, and the core of the spacecraft was activated, causing the collapse of time and space, Chen Yan injected modern memories into the Dingling AI, causing it to awaken its self-awareness and fight back. In the end, he gave up and returned to modern times and established the "New Xia Federation" on the ruins of Jiuding, but in the end he ushered in the Xia Dynasty starship with the word "Yu" engraved on it - this imperial examination conspiracy that spanned a thousand years was just the beginning of the game of interstellar civilization.
