1949: Starting from Northeast China

Jiang Fan, a devoted science blogger, comes into possession of a mysterious wristwatch—and is instantly pulled into a stark white space where a 72-hour countdown begins to tick. The moment his vision clears, he finds himself standing inside the Anshan Iron and Steel Company in the year 1949, an era when the war has ended and the painstaking work of industrial reconstruction is only just beginning. Hoping to simply pass three days in this unfamiliar time before returning home, Jiang Fan assumes he can keep a low profile. Instead, his Western-style clothing, his fluent English, and his uncanny ability to read engineering blueprints single him out almost immediately. He is ushered straight into a small white building, where the meeting room hangs thick with smoke and the eyes of more than a dozen senior leaders are fixed squarely on him. "Young man, you studied mechanical engineering, didn't you? Perfect—we've been stuck on a difficult problem for days." Just like that, Jiang Fan finds himself expected to solve a genuine technical challenge for the Anshan Iron and Steel Company—back in 1949.