The High Tang has yet to decline, and ancient mechanisms still turn.
Pei Chenbi, a scholar from a humble family, earns an exceptional place at the Imperial Academy of Mechanisms with his astonishing calculating device. But he soon uncovers the terrifying truth behind the empire’s splendor: Empress Wu Zetian’s brain, preserved in ice, is still functioning beneath the imperial mausoleum, controlling the entire empire through the System known as “One Lineage for Ten Thousand Generations.” Bronze grids in officials’ pupils, dreams bred by the steam of yellow millet, crystallized corpses in the mines of eternal night… Every gear turning in Chang’an echoes the System’s harvest of human nature.
To destroy this conspiracy that has endured for a thousand years, Pei Chenbi allies with Jin Lang, a fierce warrior from the western regions, and Yu Zhu, a cold-faced physician. Yet he gradually finds himself trapped in an even deeper dilemma: the System promises to save a world in chaos through “perfect order,” while resistance means burying the High Tang with his own hands. As the calculating device’s gears grow slick with blood and the line between loyalty and betrayal blurs in the steam, they must answer one question:
Would they rather live in an eternal lie, or ignite a fire that will consume civilization?
◆ Steampunk × Strange Tales of the High Tang ◆ The consciousness of an empress inside a frozen brain ◆ A deadly symphony of bronze mechs and Tang poetry
