A Frontier Poet of the Tang Dynasty, but in the Arctic

[An alternate-history, ever-sunny Great Tang | impostor noble | light transmigration-and-plagiarism tale] After transmigrating to the frontier of Great Tang, Lu Ci looked forward to passing off copied poems as his own, achieving immortality through fame, and rising to the top overnight. But when he stood at what was supposedly the frontier and saw an endless frozen ocean beneath the aurora that shone all night, he was utterly stunned. This was nothing like the Great Tang he knew! Steam factories dotted the Western Regions, and iron trains ran through the northern frontier. This was clearly an ever-sunny Great Tang, with its territory reaching north to the frozen ocean and west to Great Qin, while Empress Wu ruled as regent! Reciting, “In the desert, a solitary plume of smoke rises straight”? People would only mock him for his narrow horizons. Sighing, “The spring breeze never crosses Yumen Pass”? That would be a laughingstock too, entirely at odds with the world as it was. Fortunately, he had daily intelligence at his disposal. Disguising himself as a scion of a noble family, he shook the literary world and became the spiritual standard-bearer of a new school of writers, forging a path to power that would place the court under his sway!