Wu Yuan

Many years later, the Wuyuan Federal National Museum still preserves the remains of the first-generation steam pump. It is placed quietly in the most inconspicuous corner of the central exhibition hall. The huge cast iron boiler has long been rusted, with cracks all over the surface, and the connecting rods are slightly bent due to age. It looks clunky, backward, ugly, and even like a joke left over from the industrial age. It's hard for anyone to believe that it was such a machine that was inefficient, exploded frequently, and was ridiculed by countless people as an "iron monster" that ultimately changed the entire world. Historians of later generations always like to describe the Industrial Revolution as inevitable. It seems that given enough time, humans will eventually build factories, railways, banks, fleets and a global trading system. But that's not the case. At that time, no one knew where the future would lead. No one knows whether the system can maintain unity; no one knows whether the steam engine will become the heart of a new era or whether it will be an expensive and foolish experiment; no one knows that those "reserve bank alliances" hastily established to alleviate a financial crisis will eventually evolve into a financial system that dominates global trade and currency settlement. Many technologies are not born out of great ideas, but simply in response to immediate problems. However, it is precisely in these chaotic, short-sighted, decision-making full of interest exchanges and era limitations that an unprecedented civilization is slowly being shaped. Later generations will call that era - Wu Yuan era. And it all started when a young emperor from the distant future stepped into the crumbling ancient palace for the first time on a rainy night.