One explosion sends modern engineer Chen Yan into the Northern Song as a condemned artisan registered in the lowliest caste. Trapped by the shackles of his status and the oppression of powerful families, his only way forward is to break through with the skills of “investigating the principles of things”: restoring the cementation steel method, inventing a water-powered spinning wheel, and submitting plans for the divine-arm crossbow... Yet he repeatedly finds himself in mortal danger. Framed in a military provisions case, accused of colluding with the Xia, and caught in the bloody battle for Bianjing, every step is fraught with peril. Fortunately, he has the help of Zhang Tao of the Directorate of Armaments and the famed general Di Qing. There is also Zhao Qingyue, a talented woman of the imperial clan who cuts off her hair to declare her resolve and stands by him through life and death.
He improves farming tools and unleashes waves of rice across the fields, forms iron cavalry to battle the flames of war in Western Xia, shocks the court with fire-arrows, and helps Bao Zheng execute treacherous ministers. He is granted a noble title as a founding baron, yet incurs the attacks of the scholarly elite. He establishes the Wanxiang Academy to spread the seeds of practical learning, and faces the ethical debate over “bloodthirstiness.” When rumors that “demonic arts will bring down the Song” unleash a storm on the eve of the Jingkang Incident, he burns Tiangong Kaiwu and sighs with a smile: “There should be someone in a later age to carry on this chronicle.” This is an epic about a craftsman who uses technology to move an era, fighting through fire and endless night to keep civilization alive.
