When chemistry PhD Liu Chang opens his eyes, he has become Liu Chang, the newly enthroned ruler of Southern Han. Faced with a court full of absurd officials castrating themselves to curry favor, a weakened realm ripe for the taking, and the fate recorded in the history books that he will die in twenty years, he smashes the tribute “immortality pills.”
“Ignorance can’t save the nation,” he says, surveying the trembling eunuchs. “But science can.”
From then on, the imperial study becomes a laboratory, the alchemy furnace boils with the most potent gunpowder, and account books become calculations of economic formulas. When the Song army reaches the borders, they will face not jewels and beauties, but volley after volley of rifle fire, along with a periodic-table-inspired vision that overturns the age.
Before the poisoned wine is brought to him, he will rewrite the foundations of civilization for all of China.
