When modern historian Li Cunxiao touched the space-time detector in the laboratory, what he fell into was not the late Ming Dynasty in the academic report, but the pot of gruel mixed with Guanyin soil in the Henan Earth Temple in the 13th year of Chongzhen.
There is still the smell of laboratory disinfectant between the fingernails, and half a piece of moldy cornstarch is already clenched in the palm of the hand - this is the trust that the old woman has earned with her life. The whimpers of the refugees chewing tree bark, the crisp sound of the whips of the officers and soldiers tearing the air, the confrontation between the smell of wine and meat in the wealthy family and the bones in the wilderness, crushed the book concepts of "democracy" and "science" into crumbs of survival.
He used botanical knowledge to cultivate sweet potato seedlings, but he had to crack the "private rights of wasteland" of landlords first; he designed "grain stamps" to replace silver, but then he had to deal with the poisonous arrows of counterfeiters; he taught defeated soldiers to use the "three-three system" to save their lives, but the veterans believed more in the half-bag of rice shared privately by the captain of ten. When Li Zicheng's cavalry crushed Luoyang, and when the Qing army's braids passed over the Great Wall, this refugee with a modern soul discovered that overthrowing a dynasty is easy and shaking the roots of the three-thousand-year-old principle of "the king is the minister" is as difficult as planting peach blossoms on frozen soil.
From the splashing of molten iron when making cannons made by local methods, to the bicameral parliament's bicameral parliament; from the arson of the Confucian Temple caused by Pinyin textbooks, to the open and secret struggles behind the customs barriers - the journey he led a group of hungry people through the sea of blood and corpses was never a smooth road. When the new flag was raised at the top of the city of Nanjing, Li Cunxiao looked at the crowd debating "whether the imperial examination should be retained" in the audience and suddenly understood: the so-called enlightenment is never the light lit by one person, but the cluster of flames that millions of people in the darkness finally dare to reach out to catch.
