Mo Tang

Mo Tang is a historical web novel by Jiangchen Yinu, serialized on Qidian starting in August 2017. It runs about 3.56 million Chinese characters across 1,448 chapters and was completed in June 2024. The story is set in the early Tang, around the Zhenguan era: a contemporary homebody transmigrates into Mo Dun, a descendant of the Mohist school. Sharing the same name, Mo Dun receives a county marquis title and a fief for his father's achievements, but the fief is poverty-stricken after long suppression by Confucian forces. Mo Dun inherits Mohist Village, left by his father Mo Lie, and uses modern knowledge to improve daily life and production: a hand-built oxygen supply eases a village crisis, and inventions follow one after another—live fish transport, hot-air balloons, snow salt, horseshoes, new accounting methods—and Mohist Village gradually prospers. He later enters Chang'an by chance, is drawn into the circle of noble idlers and the succession struggle, and comes to Emperor Taizong's (Li Shimin's) attention through his inventions. He confronts the Confucians head-on and seeks out and connects with other schools of the Hundred Schools of Thought, hoping to use Mohist craft and a materialist, practical spirit to revive the Contention of a Hundred Schools. The book uses a light, humorous tone to weave together street life, court intrigue, and intellectual debate; it is a typical "historical farming" and "tech-tree climbing" work, featuring Mo Dun, Li Yi, Uncle Fu, Ziyi, and others, while historical figures such as Li Shimin, Li Chengqian, Zhangsun Wuji, and Sun Simiao also appear.