Three Kingdoms: Heir to the Mohist School, Building Industry in the Han Empire

The fourth year of Guanghe in the Eastern Han dynasty.

That year, the Yellow Turbans had just risen up. Liu Bei was still weaving mats and selling shoes; Zhang Fei was still slaughtering pigs and selling wine; and Guan Yunchang, the Martial Sage who would one day shake all of China, was still a fugitive.

A young man from the 21st century, Zhai Ju, arrived in this era after an accident.

He is the 84th-generation heir to the Mohist school, and a distant descendant of Mozi himself.

What kind of achievements will such a person make in this age of strife?

Zhai Ju doesn't know.

But three years later, in the Peach Garden, just as Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei are about to swear an oath to Heaven, a shameless young man squeezes his way in:

Zhai Ju: "Elder brothers, mind if I join you in becoming sworn brothers?"

From then on, the Oath of the Peach Garden has four members.

With steel-clad quenching on his left and high-bridge stirrups on his right, Zhai Ju will forge the finest swords and blades in the world for Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, and craft a cavalry force that can sweep across the realm for the future Shu Han.

But this is only the beginning.

Since Emperor Wu rejected the Hundred Schools and exalted Confucianism alone, the Han dynasty has followed the Confucian path for three hundred years. Zhai Ju also knows that without outside intervention, our vast Huaxia will continue down that road for another two thousand years and more.

Two thousand years of moral codes and social norms, two thousand years of shackling the human spirit. From then on, the Hundred Schools withered, practical inquiry fell into disuse, and countless ingenious inventions and studies of statecraft were all buried beneath the label of "useless tricks and clever contrivances."

Everyone says the Mohist school is dead...

But with a vision and technology far beyond this age, Zhai Ju will reopen the doors to the Hundred Schools and kindle the fire called "industry" in Huaxia fifteen hundred years ahead of schedule.

Why can't the Industrial Revolution begin in Huaxia?