The Iron Song Empire: A Library From the Start

1279 AD, Yashan.

One hundred thousand Southern Song soldiers and civilians are surrounded by the Mongol army. The death knell is about to toll for the Southern Song, as Lu Xiufu carries the young emperor into the sea.

Lin Jiu, chief engineer at a modern military-industry firm, transmigrates through time after an experimental accident and becomes an obscure junior officer under Wen Tianxiang.

He has no vast army or peerless martial arts. All he has is an accidentally activated “Otherworldly Library” System, stocked with every scientific and technical text published since the Industrial Revolution.

While everyone believes the Southern Song is doomed, Lin Jiu sees the one chance to turn the tide:

Use technology to crush the enemy with an overwhelming advantage.

He begins with the most basic improvements to metallurgy, then sells gunpowder recipes on the black market to earn his first fortune. He designs the first iron cannon that won’t explode, and builds a secret arsenal among Yashan’s reefs.

He trains the first musketeer battalion, using volley-fire tactics to tear apart Mongol cavalry charges.

But technology can’t change people’s hearts.

Wen Tianxiang sees him as a monster, Lu Xiufu condemns him as a heretic, and even the soldiers he personally trained wonder whether this “firearms fiend” will lead the Song into an even deeper abyss.

Worse still, the Mongols are no fools. Once they recognize the threat of firearms, every cavalryman on the grasslands will turn their spearheads toward this tiny arsenal.

Lin Jiu has only one choice:

Before the Mongol Great Khan can react, use steel and gunpowder to forge an entirely new Song Empire.

Either industrial revolution or national annihilation.