After three years of Tianbao, the lights in Chang'an City were still dim, but a lightning flash that spanned a thousand years quietly lit up the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
Grid engineer Chen Yan encountered ball lightning while repairing high-voltage lines. When he woke up, he was in Tangxi City, with only an old-fashioned multimeter and tool bag around him. With the keenness of an electrician, he soon discovered that this copper instrument could absorb the energy of the moonlight, and the mystery of time and space was hidden in the swing of the hands.
Starting from the improvement of oil lamps in the shops, Chen Yan's modern knowledge took on a new life in the hands of craftsmen in the Tang Dynasty: enameled wire wrapped in bamboo paper, a forged iron hammer driven by a water wheel, a primitive motor with a magnet as its core... Each invention needed to be reconstructed with materials already available in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. When he made the "Singing Changing Mirror" for Concubine Yang and designed the "Moonlight Array" for Zhuque Street, the technological craze gradually swept this city with a population of one million.
But the real challenge is not in technology - the conservatives' ridicule of "strange and obscene skills", Hu Shang's coveting of the glass formula, and the power game between the prince and the prime minister all made Chen Yan realize: It is easy to light up Chang'an, but it is difficult to light up the times. With the establishment of the Gewu Hall and the compilation of "Gewu Yaoshu", what he left behind was not only the rotating bronze bird and the copper wire that could transmit messages, but also the fire of "knowing things and putting them to use".
When the dark clouds of the Anshi Rebellion passed over the horizon, Chen Yan stood on the top of the bell tower, looking at the city that never sleeps that he helped shape. The multimeter in the tool bag has long been turned into a bronze monument, and the inscription glows faintly in the moonlight: "Technology will eventually get old, but human beings' pursuit of light will never stop."
