The Imperial Exams: Starting with Gunpowder

The smoke of war rises from the kitchen, and thunder crashes through the examination halls!

Lin Mo, an engineering PhD, awakens in the Great Zhou as the son of a poor family, facing a land where starving corpses litter the roads.

He extracts life-saving grain from saline soil and develops black powder in a ruined temple, using technology to tear open a corner of the darkness.

His examination essay stuns the world; in the Golden Throne Hall, he urges the emperor to adopt firearms. His distinction as a sixfold examination champion becomes a sharp blade aimed at a decaying regime.

From a frontier county magistrate to a master craftsman who safeguards the nation, he forges an iron-armored torrent to crush the northern invaders and reshapes the realm through the study of natural principles.

When steam engines thunder over imperial edicts, it is only right that the poor should rule this vast world!