In the nineteenth year of the Yongle reign, a soul from six hundred years in the future awakens on the imperial bed in the Qianqing Palace.
He is a Ming history PhD from Lanzhou University. Now, however, he has become the Ming emperor Zhu Di.
The Yongle Encyclopedia has just been completed: 11,095 volumes and 370 million characters, containing the essence of several thousand years of Chinese civilization. Envoys from the Western Seas are kneeling outside the palace gates, willing to pay a fortune in spices just to see a fragment.
No one knows that six hundred years later, it will be the westward spread of this vast work that provides the kindling for Western civilization. They will learn mathematics, astronomy, engineering, and shipbuilding from it, then build powerful ships and cannons to blast open China's gates.
There is still time to change everything.
He seals off the flow of knowledge abroad, while igniting another revolution within the Ming: fighting locusts, opening mines, casting cannons, and building ships. The seeds of industry quietly sprout in the ancient East.
He will make Chinese civilization grow into a towering tree in this age.
But will the wheels of history turn as he wishes?
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