He was supposed to be a systems engineering engineer of the 21st century, specializing in wartime logistics and equipment iteration. Now he stood in front of a granary that was about to be breached by the rebels. In his hand, he only had a rusty knife, half a bag of gunpowder, and a set of "war games" that no one could understand.
The rules in the late Tang Dynasty were simple: whoever had food and soldiers had the final say. Lu Chengzhao had no time to sigh. He spent three days transforming the granary into a simple bastion, built two trebuchets using the principle of leverage, and proportioned the gunpowder into black powder packets - which exploded the first batch of refugees who rushed in. Those who survived began to call him "General Lu".
But the real battlefield is not in the granary. The eunuchs in Chang'an City were still fighting for power. The governors of the vassal town watched with cold eyes as the court died. Huang Chao's 600,000-strong army was rolling over along the official road. Lu Chengzhao knew that Guanzhong could not be defended with one granary, and the rebel army could not be stopped with hundreds of hungry people. He needs iron-like discipline, streamlined logistics, and a battle map that can account for every move.
On the edge of the Wei River, he drew the first contour map; in front of the iron smelting furnace, he wrote the first standardized parts drawing; on the school field, he taught those country warriors who would only line up to die learn the three-by-three skirmisher line. Some people called him a witchcraft, and some people knelt down and called him a "god descended from heaven". Lu Chengzhao only stared at the wooden sign representing Chang'an on the sand table - he still had three months before the city was destroyed.
Three months, is it enough to turn a granary that is about to be crushed into a starting point for rewriting history?
