Li Ming, a top student of Party history, transmigrates after a solar eclipse to the turbulent Great Yao Dynasty, inhabiting the frail body of an illegitimate son. A silent companion comes with him: a Civilization Legacy System.
Starting from a country estate outside the capital, Li Ming builds waterwheels to fight drought and locusts, uses the claim that he received knowledge in a dream as his shield, and wields practical learning as his spear, quietly sowing the seeds of scientific thought. He improves papermaking, revolutionizes movable type, recasts iron tools, establishes academies, promotes education for women, and compiles a new tax code. Every step strikes at the era's deepest wounds. The various schools of Confucianism, Legalism, Daoism, and Mohism take turns entering the stage. After ten days of fierce debate in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, he finally wins a place at court with his argument that “the people's wisdom is the nation's strength.”
The emperor's curiosity about him gradually gives way to wariness; the people move from watchful skepticism to building shrines in his honor. Li Ming, however, remains true to the words “facts alone.” He makes technology public, teaches knowledge according to ability, and creates room for trial and error in the system, carefully guiding a civilizational flame far beyond its time along a controllable path.
By the time the System's energy quietly runs dry, Li Ming has left behind the monumental work The Record of Renewal, which connects the various schools of thought, and a loose but resilient society devoted to practical learning. Practical learning ultimately becomes an official school of thought, while Li Ming himself passes away with a smile in the Hall of Inquiry.
Three hundred years later, airships skim over the eaves of modern schools. The flame of seeking truth that he lit still burns quietly in the depths of time.
This is a story without romance, devoted instead to the deep cultivation of technology, education, and ideas. It writes of “change,” not “conquest”: once the seeds of civilization are sown, history itself will offer a long-lasting echo.
