The Porcelain King

The Porcelain King is a historical time-travel novel by the web novelist Ge Yu and his debut web novel; it was serialized and completed in the "Song, Yuan, and Ming" channel of Qidian. At the opening of the story, Zhang Yang, a modern arts and crafts artist, takes part in an experiment on the time-travel machine "Flowing Years" led by Professor Zhou of the Academy of Military Sciences and accidentally travels to the early Ming dynasty, where he establishes himself under the identity of the "young master of the Lin family." Zhang Yang excels at polychrome sculpture porcelain and miniature inside painting, and has a deep understanding of glazes, vessel forms, and firing techniques. He recreates the lost art of colored glaze ahead of its time and studies underglaze red porcelain, bringing modern arts-and-crafts thinking into the early Ming porcelain industry. Using the porcelain trade as its entry point, the novel links plots such as competitive auctions, the development of imperial tiles, the military application of porcelain firearms, trade with the Western Regions, and maritime expansion, placing a modern man amid the maneuvering of court and market. The book also features historical figures such as Zhu Yunwen, Zhu Di, and the monk Daoyan, intertwining craft innovation with the political upheavals of the early Ming. The book is divided into volumes, including "Universe in a Pot," "Smoke of Wolves at Sunset," and "Flowing Rhymes of Porcelain," and concludes with Chapter 338, "Stealing Heaven and Changing the Day, the Realm Rises." The work blends porcelain-making knowledge, business management, and historical imagination, and belongs to the technology-oriented branch of time-travel fiction that emphasizes craft detail.