I Forged a Divine Shield and Handed It to the Nation, Changing Our Fate and Protecting China

A hidden dragon stirs in the depths, using his wisdom to turn the tide. Born into poverty, a top imperial scholar secretly builds an organization to save the country amid the ruins of a dying dynasty. He reverses the nation's fate, reshapes the world's order, and ushers in a golden age for China.

In 1893, late in the Qing dynasty, the empire is beset by internal strife and foreign threats. Wu Chen, a poor exam candidate with the brief ability to glimpse the future, uses his “Heavenly Insight” to foresee and deftly avert a crisis when his exam paper is destroyed. Later, after a wealthy second-generation student from his hometown sabotages him and his excellent paper is tossed onto the pile of discarded scripts, Wu Chen draws the chief examiner's attention with a clue he planted during the exam. The chief examiner, Weng Tonghe, the emperor's tutor, is deeply shaken by the paper's precise prediction of Japan's ambitions and its astonishing naval defense strategy: “Take the offensive as a means of defense and strike directly at the enemy's homeland.” Against fierce opposition, Weng ranks him first in the provincial examination, making him the top candidate and an overnight sensation.

Wu Chen's growing fame soon draws him into deeper turmoil. In the capital, he foresees and prevents an assassination attempt against Zhang Yinhuan, a minister of the Zongli Yamen, and kills an assassin from Japan's Genyosha. He realizes that he must face not only the corruption of the imperial court but also the Japanese forces operating in secret. Determined to reverse the nation's fate and avert the disastrous defeat of the First Sino-Japanese War, he uses “Heavenly Insight” again during the palace examination. Foreseeing the annihilation of the Beiyang Fleet, he writes a startling strategy: “Feign weakness to the enemy and lure them deep into our territory,” backed by three secret plans. His proposal completely wins over the Guangxu Emperor. The two reach a secret agreement, ordering him to establish the Shield Bureau, a covert organization answerable directly to the emperor and exempt from the law. The protagonist turns his personal abilities into national strength, and with the Shield Bureau's intervention, world history takes a new course, toward a future led by China.