The World of Incalculable Value

The World of Incalculable Value

According to the classification materials issued by the Time-Space Department, the first world Wei Keng traveled to fell somewhere between an Adjacent Plane and a Near Plane.

It had the same ancient history as the Main World, and most physical phenomena were currently similar to those of the Main World, so it had initially been classified as an Adjacent Plane. Only recently had they discovered that humans in this plane might possess supernatural powers, so they were now considering reclassifying it as a Near Plane.

The turning point caused by the spacetime ripple came on the day the Tartar Empire's army arrived beneath a fortified city in Hezhou, Tongchuan Prefecture Road, and Great Khan Möngke was about to be killed by a stone-throwing engine. After meeting an envoy of God, the Great Khan ordered his army to retreat and returned to the grasslands, evading the death that had awaited him in the original timeline.

These Divine Envoys bestowed Light Blades and Divine Bows upon the Mongol Army.

Then, under God's will, they headed north and swept across Europa. Yet this scourge of God, this invasion, had far-reaching consequences that surpassed even those in the Main Plane.

In the Main Plane, the sudden rise of horse-riding powers along the grassland frontier had already dealt the civilizations of the Danqing Dynasty a blow comparable to an attack from a higher dimension.

This was reflected in artifacts such as nautical charts. The routes before the fall of Yashan were all straight, but afterward they became curved. This showed that navigational technologies such as the Star-Gazing Board had been lost. Navigation was hardly the only thing lost during the classical era of Human Civilization. Books were fragile and scarce; it was entirely possible that a single siege in ancient times, followed by soldiers ransacking and burning a building, had severed the accumulation of classical technology. This time, however, the land of Jiuzhou had not suffered such a purge. A great deal of technology had survived among the people.

But Constantinople, the Papal States at the Vatican, and even the not-yet-completed Notre Dame Cathedral in Gaul were all completely burned down by the Tatars.

However, after the Tatars struck Europe,

this force that had scourged the world suddenly vanished. The entire Tatar leadership collapsed overnight, and not a single tomb could be found, leaving behind a host of mysteries.

Later, after a period of vassal warlordism across the land of Jiuzhou, a general used a Tengu Wood Carving to frighten the Tatar remnants away. He established his capital in Yanjian and founded the Great Yan Dynasty.

Three hundred years later, this dynasty was struck by an era of extreme cold and invaded by the Tatars once more. Prince Jin, the empire's direct heir, died in battle, after which warlords in the north, waving the banner of nationalism, supported the Queen's accession to the throne.

Nearly a hundred years later, frequent commercial exchanges and increasingly intense ideological conflicts across the Southern Seas led the eastern part of the world to experience the Industrial Revolution first. Once the sails of the Great Voyage had reached every ocean, the Heng Gewu Division of the Shenzhou emperor built the first steam engine. Five years later, the people of Europa built a similar machine.

At the end of the nineteenth century of the Western Era, global capitalism shifted from an early free-trade economy to a monopolistic one.

Tensions on the old continents grew ever greater, and the struggle for supremacy began in the wake of the Industrial Age. The major powers in every region of the world were drawn into this "meat grinder."

In the later stages of the war, the New Continent joined the Western Ocean alliance, while the former vassal states of Shenzhou took an ambiguous stance.

The East Asian Shenzhou alliance had no choice but to accept the armistice proposed by the equally battered Holy Alliance.

After the first contest for supremacy in the Industrial Age ended, Eastern Shenzhou's authority was severely weakened, and cracks appeared in its rule. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Rising Sun in Northeast Asia demanded an end to tributary relations and the status of a Brother Nation.

Under pressure, Shenzhou's rulers had no choice but to make further concessions at home to the powerful clans in various regions, increasing the proportion of successful candidates from the southeastern civil-service examination track who entered government. Abroad, they reconciled with the European Nations and abandoned their aggressive prewar strategy of "civilizing Africa." They also recognized the Rising Sun Kingdom's status and supported the development of its maritime power.

But things were no better in the West. A countercoup took place within Sarlos in Eastern Europe, overthrowing the rule of the Romanov Family and establishing Red Russia, which began exporting its ideology to Europa.

What followed was a world of minor wars that lasted for fifty years.

Shenzhou licked its wounds and reestablished order in the Southern Seas, Central Asia, and South Asia, while remaining wary of Soviet Red Russia's rise as a land power.

The Rising Sun, meanwhile, was given free rein. It developed its maritime forces on a massive scale, expanded its sphere of influence to the Australia Continent, and was now eyeing the resources of Latin America.

The European Community Alliance also suffered an internal split. The Western Ocean economic bloc, represented by the Anglo-Saxons and Gaul, and the Mediterranean economic bloc, centered on the Rhine River and the Italian Peninsula, pursued diametrically opposed strategies. The European Community Alliance became a hollow shell.

As for the United States of America on the New Continent, although it had successfully dismantled Shenzhou's unified influence in Asia and the West Pacific during the first global war for supremacy,

the Rising Sun's rise in the Pacific still left the Yankees with no foothold there.

Moreover, the colonial-access policy for Africa promised by the old European empires during the war was interpreted away through various treaties and came to nothing.

The United States' economic recovery came to an abrupt halt in the 1930s of that century.

A third war for supremacy never broke out, but the world's accumulated tinder continued to leave fresh scars over the following forty years.

The year was now 2186 of the Qin Tong Calendar.

The Time-Space Administration Bureau from the Main Plane had stationed itself in this timeline's plane. For instance, across the ocean, it had established the Future Company, which now spanned both the New and Old Continents.

In Shenzhou, the family businesses of several old financial dynasties in Shaanxi, Sichuan, Yili, and other regions were united in an alliance that had forces from the Main World behind it.

Wei Keng's father was one of the pioneers of this world's new technological conglomerate.

Wei Keng's father had devoted great effort to consolidating his power in this plane. When Wei Qiang was transferred away, the Main World immediately sent Wei Keng over to inherit it.

Why was that?

The development of this plane held important lessons for the Eastern Civilization of the Main World.

In the Main Plane, the Industrial Revolution had broken out in Britain, and its standards had spread throughout the world. The East had followed step by step, completing its industrialization in imitation of the West. As a result, even the historical fiction written in the twenty-first century about returning to the Ming Dynasty to bring about an Industrial Revolution carried more or less Western characteristics.

That was because the accumulated knowledge of classical Eastern Civilization had been cut off after the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.

In the Main World, only a trace of the Song Dynasty's rational thought had survived, yet even that had provided standards for certain modern industries. Take Records of the Washing Away of Wrongs, for example. When the Freemasons brought the book to Europa, they encountered the East's rational, logical thinking. It set out standards for identifying the scene of a death by examining where flies laid their eggs and distinguishing the types of flies found in different areas.

What would the world look like if the civilization of the Two Song Dynasties had been allowed to mature and been inherited intact by the dynasties that followed, eventually giving rise to an Eastern Industrial Revolution?

It would look like this world. The East had its own distinctive industrial system.

In the Main World, carpentry had already become an intangible cultural heritage, passed down by folk artisans.

During the Ming Dynasty, only Eastern carpenters could make furniture using mortise-and-tenon joints, while Europeans preferred iron nails.

Bear in mind that the construction and assembly of machinery was, at its heart, just a matter of fitting parts together.

Screws and rivets had become part of industry because manufacturing had developed a whole set of standard sizes for them.

But Eastern industry in this world had a system called Yin-Yang, with measurements for how much different materials expanded and contracted at different temperatures. Precisely fitting them together to hold them in place was also a matter of working with a series of data.

What's more, when Europe began using welding technology for industrial machinery, the East widely adopted a technique of placing a thin film of soft metals such as silver and lead between two steel plates in a riveted structure, essentially "gluing" them together to reinforce the bond.

Now, in Eastern Shenzhou's industry, from aircraft carriers to household appliances, screws were rarely used.

The gap between the two sides' industrial standards was enormous, effectively severing many exchanges of technology between East and West.

The Westerners couldn't learn Shenzhou's techniques, which were called "Yin Yang Harmony" but were actually a system of processes based on various thermal expansion coefficients.

And even if someone passed Level Four Chinese and could converse fluently in vernacular, when it came to the technical side, damn it, these Shenzhou scholars of natural philosophy annotated certain processing techniques with coded phrases like "the bright moon rises over the sea" and "the east wind returned to the small tower last night." Different interpretations of the imagery led to different results. A single poem could correspond to as many as four possible processing techniques.

So that was why, before Wei Keng traveled here, he had only been tested on basic knowledge and hadn't been grilled on professional knowledge: there was no point. Even if you had a doctorate in mechanical engineering in the Main Plane, your specialty might still be irrelevant here.

Facing a world like this, the Main World's Eastern Time-Space Department had given its transmigrators stationed here a simple instruction: "Copy it. Copy the entire set of technologies for me, and copy whatever new technologies the research institutes over there come up with, too."

Inside Qin Chuan Base stood the Life Research Center, secretly built by the Shenzhou Wei Family.

Every year, the family poured a great deal of money into the center to support its research into the Human Life Field.

The bodies of the previous Patriarchs were all preserved here, and the previous Patriarch had also been born here. The medical equipment ensured that every child born here was of the highest human quality.

Inside the facility, a sealed pod was lifted out of liquid helium. From a recessed compartment on the platform, a mechanical arm extended a needle-sized Electric Key and inserted it into the tiny holes of the Electric Heating Tubes on the pod. Once the heating was complete, thermal expansion made it easy to pull out the tenons and remove the steel plates.

According to the will Patriarch Wei Qiang had made several years earlier, most of the company's shares would go to his frozen twin brother.

The Veteran Administrators in the group thought the will ought to be assessed in light of the circumstances.

But three months earlier, when Wei Qiang was about to enter a Hibernation Treatment Pod, he had still insisted on his decision. He had also claimed that he had transferred his Experiential Thought to his brother, who would be thawed out. He trusted only his brother to run the businesses he had built.

In Xijing, inside a Steel-Reinforced Concrete Building in the style of an Oriental Pagoda, all the members of the Luoshui Group's board of directors had gathered. They sat around eight square tables as footage of the heir being thawed through Medical Thawing played on a screen resembling a folding screen on the stage.

Most of those present hoped a medical accident would occur.

But no one dared to make any direct or indirect contact with the doctors at the laboratory.

If a medical accident did happen, and their opponents on the board found even the slightest hint of impropriety involving someone under their command, then even without a shred of legal evidence, the resulting moral scandal would be enough to ruin them.

Although Shenzhou society had undergone many changes, the moral code of the clan had endured. If a person was suspected of being dishonest by other members of the family, they would remain under suspicion forever unless they found evidence sufficient to clear their name. Thus, this live broadcast served as a witness for all sides. Though everyone had their reservations, they could at least appear as upright gentlemen.

Under the shadowless lamps in the sterile medical chamber, the sealed pod slowly opened, and Wei Keng opened his eyes. The numb sensations in his body gradually returned.

Wei Keng—Old Wei, if you preferred—saw the shadows moving beyond the glass screen. He struggled to open his mouth and said, "I, I, I..." It sounded just like a dying man's last gasps.

A female doctor set down the Flat Electronic Recorder in her hand, opened the door to the sterile room, and leaned beside the thawing pod, bringing her ear close to Wei Keng's mouth.

Wei Keng tremulously reached up to touch the light overhead, as if he meant to swallow it, and took great gasping breaths. At last he gathered enough strength to sit up suddenly, grab her, and cling to her tightly. "So cold. Cold. Get me a blanket."

The doctor in charge looked flustered and had to reassure him at once. "Sir, we can't raise the temperature directly, or your body will be damaged. Please bear with it. We'll inject nutrient solution right away."

Wei Keng said, "Then hurry up. Also, tell those people to leave. I don't feel comfortable with them watching me."

Outside the sterile room, the relatives sent by the family factions stood separated from them by glass. They wore unnatural smiles and forced themselves to look respectful, but disappointment was hard to suppress in their eyes.

Because the person who had woken up wasn't an idiot.

Under Shenzhou's Civil Law, if the designated heir to someone's property could not understand the significance of his actions, he could not inherit control over commercial activities involving society. Under that law, the Western practice of leaving one's fame and fortune to a dog wouldn't work in Shenzhou.

Wei Keng's performance showed not only that he could express himself, but also that he understood shame. Clearly, he wasn't an Unconscious Puppet.

Forty minutes later,

Wei Keng was dressed in a standard blue hospital gown and propped up against the raised back of his bed. He switched on the electronic screen and began looking through the Luoshui Group's personnel records, its financial reports for the past twenty years, and its real estate holdings.

A young nurse placed some liquid food on the cabinet beside his bed. After taking a small sip, she asked, "Sir, would you like something to eat?" Wei Keng waved her away and put on a show of turning her down politely. If he didn't refuse, she'd probably feed him herself, and he absolutely wouldn't be able to control himself. He had just arrived; it was best not to do anything that would make people look down on him. He had to make the act convincing.

Wei Keng said, "By the way, postpone all the messages coming in from outside. Tell them I need time to get my bearings. I'll deal with everything in twenty hours."

He still didn't know how his younger brother's capable subordinates regarded him, their Weak Master, so it wouldn't hurt to take a small step back and keep them guessing.

The ploy worked immediately! Even a Weak Master could be "a rare commodity worth hoarding."

Over at the board of directors, those managers in splendid robes and tall hats had already begun placing their bets on the situation.

Wei Yue, Wei Qiang's former assistant secretary, picked up the Bell Hammer and struck the Golden Chime. "Everyone, we should now swear our allegiance to the New Patriarch."