The Sheng Dynasty is in chaos. Eunuchs command the imperial guards, regional warlords rule their territories with their own armies, and aristocratic clans monopolize cultivation techniques and the imperial examinations. Worse still, this world has inner power. Masters can live for more than a hundred years, and the most terrifying figures at court are never the young, but those "too old to die." The imperial authority has been worn down by these living fossils.
When Ninth Prince Xiao Jin wakes in the snow, the original owner of his body has just been humiliated in public by his older brother and frozen to death on a palace path. The newcomer is Chen Mo, a mechanical engineer and history buff who believes that "thinking only finds problems; doing is the answer." He has no System, only a head full of engineering knowledge: blister and crucible steel, water-powered bellows, improved gunpowder, upgraded crossbows, curved-plow improvements, a new army system, and a new tax system. He also brings a craft no one in this world has ever seen: inner-power quenching, which uses true qi to forge steel with properties approaching modern medium-carbon steel.
For the first time, technology and martial arts join forces in this land. He will bide his time, build up the land, train troops, reform the system, march north, and take to the sea. The man who crawled out of the snow will weld this shattered land back together, inch by inch.
