Lin Wanrong, a postdoctoral researcher in physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, transmigrates into the Tianqi era and becomes a condemned prisoner.
His crime? Offending Wei Zhongxian's nephew.
His execution is in three days.
Anyone else would lie flat and await death, but Lin Wanrong says: I won't die.
He makes poison gas from vinegar and saltpeter and escapes prison. He extracts penicillin from moldy oranges and saves his friend's younger sister. He uses statistics to expose the Donglin faction's fraudulent accounts and clear his name.
He thought this was just a “survival guide to transmigration.” He never imagined that, before he knew it, he would set the Ming dynasty's technology tree ablaze.
Crucible steel, water-powered forging hammers, flintlock guns, hot-air balloons: while everyone else is still playing power games, he's already launching an industrial revolution.
Wei Zhongxian tries to take him down? Lin Wanrong tosses out a flash bomb. “Eunuch, this is chemistry.”
Later Jin cavalry invades? New cannons line the walls of Ningyuan. “Nurhaci, have a taste of physics.”
Even the carpenter emperor Zhu Youxiao becomes a “science enthusiast,” pestering him every day: “Minister Lin, how do I install a differential on this wooden ox and gliding horse?”
But Lin Wanrong knows that an emperor's protection isn't enough. The eunuch faction is sharpening its knives behind his back, the Chongzhen Emperor is suspicious of him in secret, and Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong are undermining the Ming dynasty.
And the most powerful weapon in his hands isn't firearms or political cunning. It's knowledge.
“You play politics. I play productivity. Once my steam engine gets running, your era will be over.”
A physicist's struggle to survive in the late Ming.
Using science to crush the competition, and knowledge to rewrite history.
From condemned prisoner to imperial tutor, from the Institute of Investigative Learning to the Ming Academy of Sciences...
I'll recalculate this empire with equations.
