Heavenly Creations: The Industrial Godfather

The Great Liang Dynasty has ruled for eight hundred years, rooted in 'spiritual energy'. The royal court claims that only those with spiritual roots are 'chosen people', able to cultivate magic and hold official positions; while ninety-nine percent of ordinary people, called 'mortal bones', are destined to farm, work, or serve as soldiers, with no hope of advancement. In this world, a mine's productivity depends on how many 'fire control' mages the owner can hire; an army's combat strength depends on how many grand mages capable of 'heavenly fire burning the city' it enshrines. The wisdom and sweat of mortals are treated as worthless. Cangwu County, the poorest iron mining area on the southwestern border of Great Liang. The iron ore here is of extremely low grade, and the cost of magical purification far exceeds output, so the court considers it a 'waste mine'. The county governor uses it as a place of exile, letting miners die from pneumoconiosis and cave-ins. Shen Mu, the adopted son of a blacksmith shop owner in Cangwu, an orphan abandoned in a slag heap. He has no spiritual roots and is considered no better than an ant by all mages. But in an abandoned mine, he finds a tattered 'Book of Hundred Crafts'—a notebook not from this era, filled with mechanics formulas, chemical equations, mechanical drawings, and a scrawled line: 'The wisdom of mortals can rival the might of heaven.'