Iron-Blooded China: 1884

In 1884, during the Sino-French War, the Fujian Fleet suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Fuzhou, and its ships were wiped out.

As the court wavered between war and peace, a soul from the twenty-first century, Lu Zixiao, chief engineer in the military industry, was unexpectedly reborn as a returned-student apprentice at the Fujian Shipbuilding Bureau.

Smokeless powder had only just been invented in France. The Maxim gun was still just a concept on paper, and the era of the dreadnought was still far away.

Facing a dire situation, Lu Zixiao began with the wreckage of a sunken French warship. He rebuilt the shipyard from the ruins, made smokeless powder by hand, improved breech-loading guns, and intercepted supplies bound for the French Far East Fleet, quietly planting the seeds of an industrial revolution in Fujian and Zhejiang.

From an apprentice lying low in Fuzhou to an industrial tycoon dominating the southeast; from a pillar of the nation during the First Sino-Japanese War to the leader of an Eastern dreadnought fleet that made the great powers tremble on the battlefields of World War I...

Lu Zixiao would not only save a collapsing empire, but also help this fallen ancient nation reclaim the name of Huaxia and make Asia the Asia of its people.