In 2026, programmer Lu Ming, who was replaced by AI, accidentally traveled to Shanghai in 1865 when his unemployed identity collapsed. The Westernization Movement was beginning to emerge, the Jiangnan Machinery Manufacturing Administration was about to lay its foundation, and another storm of technological substitution was brewing. With no fame, no pigtails, and full of jargon that no one could understand, he was almost executed as a remnant of the party. Fortunately, he sneaked into the manufacturing bureau under the disguise of a "returnee from overseas" - only to find that he was standing in the center of the whirlpool of a desperate struggle between the Westernizationists and the conservatives. A steam hammer crushes a blacksmith's pride just as AI crushes his code. When the fire burned towards the manufacturing bureau, he had to answer a question that spanned 150 years: If I am no longer needed for what I do, then who am I?
