Seven years ago, 30,000 elite soldiers of the Great Sheng Black Armor Army perished on the snowy plains of Yin Mountain while protecting half of a secret military blueprint from the God of War's estate, a design for the world-destroying weapon known as the Fire Dragon Emerging from Water. Seven years later, Yun Zhao, a mechanical genius and colorblind orphan from the northern frontier, and Xie Lin, a mental arithmetic prodigy from a poor Jiangnan family who is plagued by a fear of heights, are swept into a storm when the Fire Dragon blueprint resurfaces.
She fights her way out of the mechanism-riddled cliffs of the frontier, builds "Fire Crows" from scrap wagon axles to burn the Di encampments, and takes charge of the Imperial Artificers' Institute as it forges an ironclad fleet.
He untangles the murky web of Jiangnan's grain transport, exposes a meteorite iron substitution scam with an abacus, and implements the performance assessment law to shake a thousand-year-old clan system.
As Di cavalry batter at the passes, the Wuming Sect manipulates grain prices and sparks famine, and the Xinggui Pavilion stirs up the court with astrological prophecies, the two stars are forced to stand side by side amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
Xie Lin: "The ironclad ships you build can cross the vast ocean, but they can't navigate the treachery of the human heart."
Yun Zhao: "Your accounting of the realm can expose every corrupt official, but it can't calculate the game being played behind the star charts."
