Shenghai

Biodata

Background and history

In the sixth year of the Great Yi Republic, Shenghai is an international metropolis in a nation weakened by foreign pressure, warlord division, and political instability. Foreigners, compradors, warlords, scholars, workers, martial artists, refugees, and underworld figures all compete within the city. The Moral Space mission assigned to Huang Tian’s group is to “change the world,” beginning by establishing themselves in Shenghai 349.

The city’s prosperity is uneven. The foreign concessions are wealthy and bustling, while Chinese districts such as Jiangyan and Wusong are comparatively rundown. Refugees continue to arrive from across the country, increasing pressure for urban expansion and development 350 352.

Huang Tian and his team establish themselves in Shenghai by renting a garden villa near Wangdan University. Through Antuo Tablets, factory construction, and Mystic Umbrella Technology, Huang rapidly becomes a major scientific, commercial, and political force in the city 350 351 353.

After Mystic Umbrella stops an Eastern Isles invasion and dismantles the city’s gangs, Shenghai undergoes rapid industrial and social change. Over more than three years, its streets, infrastructure, employment opportunities, and consumer goods change beyond recognition 360 363 368.

Geography and cityscape

• Jiangyan District — A comparatively undeveloped district with small buildings, shanties, woodland, and wasteland. Huang Tian purchases land here for laboratories, factories, and a large experimental zone; the district is also intended to become the center of the Greater Shenghai Plan 350 352 353 357.
• Wusong District — A relatively plain and rundown Chinese district that contains Shenghai Hospital 352.
• Foreign concessions — The city’s most prosperous area, controlled by foreign interests and marked by strong foreign-police influence. Mystic Umbrella later enters the concessions during its gang purge and warns the constables that concession rule will end 351 352 362.
• Hongkou District — Home to much of Shenghai’s Eastern Isles population. Its southern section belongs to the concession, while its northern section is nominally Chinese territory but patrolled by concession police 355.
• Huanggu River — Runs through Shenghai; merchant vessels moor along it, with concessions, old-city housing, and factory districts visible from above 360.
• Shenghai County — Listed alongside the concessions as one of Shenghai’s most flourishing areas 350.

Governance and power structure

Society and economy

Living conditions

• Chinese working-class districts contain overcrowded bamboo-and-thatch shanties without reliable water or electricity 350.
• Textile workers, particularly women, endure harsh hours, poor conditions, and inadequate food 351.
• Medical standards are severely underdeveloped; many common illnesses are otherwise untreatable in Shenghai 351.
• The city has more than two hundred newspapers when tabloids are included. Its three most influential papers are the Sheng Report, Public Words News, and Great Yi Times 353.
• Following the gang purge, residents find that roadside extortionists, pickpockets, and conspicuous gang members have disappeared. Mystic Umbrella’s proclamation promises safer travel and livelihoods, though the operation itself leaves citizens frightened by its arrests and killings 362 363.
• In the transformed city, rising wages and expanded employment accompany trams, automobiles, bicycles, department stores, color televisions, and other new goods 368.

Industry

• Shenghai possesses machinery works, steelworks, chemical plants, and power plants, though most are relatively small in scale 356.
• Yangshupu Power Plant, controlled by the Municipal Council, is described as the largest thermal power plant in the Far East 356.
• Huang Tian’s factories and experimental zone in Jiangyan create jobs while expanding Mystic Umbrella Technology’s industrial and political influence 353.
• Mystic Umbrella announces large-scale expansion in steelmaking, machinery, textiles, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and vehicle manufacturing. It recruits skilled workers and researchers from within Great Yi and abroad, offering wages and, for domestic recruits, housing and schooling for their children 363.
• Mystic Umbrella develops the domestically produced Dawnbringer automobile, initially for internal company use. Its factories later supply consumer products including bicycles, color televisions, watches, and canned foods 362 368.

Supernatural systems

Foreign martial artists call themselves knights and use a nine-rank system rather than the local martial-realm terminology 351.

Mystic Umbrella later trains hundreds of Inner Refining security personnel and true qi workers. By the time of the offshore strike, Huang Tian’s Moral Space companions have reached at least mid-Mystic Communion, with Liu Yuanying approaching the Third Stage 359 361.

Notable locations and institutions

• Wangdan University — A major Shenghai university where Huang Tian becomes a chemistry professor after completing its examination flawlessly. His lecture links chemistry to medicine, agriculture, industry, transportation, and national strength 350 351.
• National Shenghai Hospital — Led by Yan Qing, chairman of the Shenghai Medical Association. It conducts the successful clinical trials of Antuo Tablets 352 353.
• Mystic Umbrella Technology — Huang Tian’s company, established to operate across multiple industries and later responsible for Shenghai’s factories, experimental zone, security force, and the Terminator project 351 359. Its expansion drives the city’s subsequent industrial and technological transformation 363 368.
• Huamao Hotel — The concession’s most luxurious hotel and the venue of Fei Xinzhen’s elite reception introducing Huang Tian to Shenghai’s political, commercial, foreign, and underworld figures 353 354.
• Cathay Grand Theater — Hosts Mystic Umbrella Technology’s special film screening after the destruction of the Eastern Isles fleet; the event attracts prominent figures and foreign envoys from across the country 360. The film shows the wrecked fleet and the devastation left at sea 361.
• Skycloud Technology — A recently established Mystic Umbrella enterprise dedicated to space exploration and sought after by university students 368.

Major events

Antuo Tablets and the rise of Mystic Umbrella

Huang Tian develops Antuo Tablets at Wangdan University. National Shenghai Hospital’s trials show that the medicine treats bacterial illnesses including pneumonia, puerperal fever, meningitis, septicemia, and wound infections. Newspaper coverage and presidential endorsement make Huang a celebrated scientist and turn the medicine into the foundation of his wealth and influence 352 353.

Political competition and assassination attempt

Huang Tian’s rapid ascent places him in the contest for a vacant Municipal Council seat. Japanese textile executive Funatsu Kiji views Huang as a rival, plots to abduct him for the Antuo formula, and sends the sixth-rank samurai Takahashi Shizuo to assassinate him. Liu Yuanying and Ma Zhang ambush and kill Takahashi with automatic weapons at Huang’s villa 354. Funatsu is subsequently killed, alarming Shenghai’s authorities and further straining relations with the Eastern Isles representatives 355 356.

Eastern Isles crisis

Following the Eastern Isles invasion of the Four Eastern Provinces, Shenghai becomes the next target. Yata Rokutaro and Ai Yun engineer clashes between Eastern Isles expatriates and Chinese civilians to manufacture a pretext for intervention, while an Eastern Isles force of roughly forty thousand personnel, more than eighty warships, and around one hundred aircraft advances on the city 358.

Offshore nuclear strike

Mystic Umbrella Technology deploys a newly developed bomb against the Eastern Isles Third Fleet approximately thirteen nautical miles east of Shenghai. The resulting flash resembles a second sun over the sea and shocks the city, the nation, and foreign powers; the company publicly declares that it acted to stop the invasion and defend Shenghai 359 360. Footage shown at Cathay Grand Theater depicts shattered and sinking warships amid widespread destruction, making the strike’s effects visible to the assembled audience 361.

Gang purge and industrial expansion

After the strike, Mystic Umbrella mobilizes more than ten thousand security personnel and armed workers to dismantle Shenghai’s gangs. Mayor Ming Jue cooperates by sealing the city’s exits. Raids extend across the districts and into the foreign concession; gang members are detained, and those who resist are killed 362. A subsequent proclamation reports more than thirty thousand arrests by Mystic Umbrella and nearly fifty thousand when City Hall’s arrests are included. It announces a broad recruitment and factory-building program intended to replace the gangs’ economic foundations with industry 363.

Space-age transformation

Mystic Umbrella launches the world’s first artificial satellite, followed by four more within six weeks to establish global signal coverage. Huang Tian uses the network for humanity’s first global live broadcast, showing Earth from space and calling for exploration beyond it. Du Xiaomai later becomes the first person to walk on the moon, while computers, mobile phones, and robots begin to emerge 368.

Huang Tian eventually turns from ordinary company management to developing Dawnbringer, an artificial intelligence tasked with guiding humanity toward fairness, prosperity, and the stars. Looking out over the transformed Shenghai with his companions, he calls upon the Lord of Morality to settle their world-changing mission 368.

Trivia

• Shenghai is described as a city where legitimate authority and criminal power “govern together,” with gang leaders allowed into elite society while remaining socially marginalized 354.
• Huang Tian’s arrival transforms the city’s elite structure: within roughly ten days, he rises from obscurity to a figure known throughout the country and abroad through Antuo Tablets 354.
• The Terminator, unveiled by Huang Tian before the invasion crisis, is named at Du Xiaomai’s suggestion 358.
• Before the gang purge, residents are said to need three maps to navigate Shenghai: one for its districts, one for the concession powers, and one for gang territories 362.