Li Cheng, a physics teacher, transmigrates and finds himself hailed as a heaven-sent prodigy in the first year of the Zhenguan era. Faced with Cheng Yaojin’s great axe and Li Shimin’s scrutiny, he produces neither poetry nor political essays, but bag after bag of gray, dusty “cement.”
“This material can make the official roads as smooth as a whetstone and fortifications as solid as a fortress.”
With that promise, the Industrial Revolution of the Tang Dynasty begins.
Molten steel lights up the horizon, distilled liquor fills Chang’an with its fragrance, and thunderous black powder shakes the court. At the Academy of Science he establishes, Crown Prince Li Chengqian becomes engrossed in gears and levers, while Cheng Chumo and the other young nobles start counting out parabolas on their fingers. Using the laws of physics as his pen, Li Cheng redraws the blueprint of the Tang Dynasty.
The conservative aristocratic clans see him as a demon who will throw the established order into chaos, while neighboring states regard him as a grave threat. But behind him stand an emperor’s boundless trust, Zhangsun Wuji’s far-sighted investment, and an entirely new Tang Dynasty that he has personally ushered into the industrial age.
His goal has never been to become a noble or a high-ranking minister. For the era he loves, he will kindle a fire of technology that will never go out, making the Tang banner a symbol of civilization and progress.
This is an engineer’s grandest romantic dream: to protect Huaxia through the pursuit of knowledge and bring glory to the ages!
I think it looks pretty