I wake up to find myself a poor scholar in the tenth year of the Chongzhen reign.
Corpses litter the land, and the thundering hooves of the Tartars ring in my ears. The Ming dynasty has only seven years left before it falls.
In my despair, the [Civilization Library] in my mind activates.
It has everything: from steam engine blueprints and tank designs to chemical formulas and the principles of electromagnetism.
But there’s one catch: I can read all the knowledge I want, but I have to make the materials myself.
So I decide to give this dying age a taste of industrial shock.
When the civil and military officials mock my “iron-shelled crawler” as an absurd contraption,
I drive the “Chongzhen Type One” straight through the Later Jin’s Eight Banners cavalry.
When the Donglin faction accuses me of “competing with the people for profit,”
my factories are using steel and machinery to feed and clothe the displaced.
Political attacks at court? I persuade them with guns and cannons.
Western-style warships? My ironclads will teach them how to sail.
Li Zicheng’s million-strong army? Under the treads of my tank divisions, they’re nothing but dust.
I start with hand-operated lathes, then build blast furnaces, manufacture machine tools, lay railways, and smelt steel.
I help the Ming skip three hundred years of detours and step straight into an age of steel and fire.
When the first steam locomotive sounds its whistle as it crosses Lugou Bridge,
Chongzhen takes my hand and asks, “Teacher Lin, what’s next… should we build iron birds that can fly?”
I look at the ultimate seal that has just unlocked in my mind, named “Controlled Nuclear Fission.”
I smile.
“Your Majesty, first we’ll upgrade from machines that boil water to machines that burn uranium.”
This is the worst of times, and the best of times.
And I will personally kindle the spark that will advance civilization.
