Heirs of Sirius

After Zheng He's fleet passes through a rift gate, they crash-land on a terrestrial planet designated 'Sirius A'. The planet hosts a 'topological sensing array' left by the 'Yuanzhu' builders—a half-abandoned high-dimensional monitoring station. The fleet's astronomer (an accompanying imperial observatory official) discovers that the array's control logic has a striking topological isomorphism with the Ming Dynasty's 'feng shui compass'—ancient Chinese understanding of 'qi' flow, which unexpectedly aligns with topology at high-dimensional geometric levels. Through reverse engineering, the fleet masters basic gravitational manipulation and sub-light propulsion within 200 years. — Description from novelcodex.org