[1][3] In the story, more than 500 people from early-21st-century China intentionally travel back in time via wormhole to the Chongzhen-era late Ming dynasty in 1628 AD.
Settling in Lingao County on the island of Hainan, the time travelers set out to establish an industrialized society and change the course of history.
[2] The novel originates from an online BBS discussion started in the year 2006, about how time travelers can survive and change the history by using modern technologies.
With permission, Xiao Feng, as one of the members of that BBS, collected the ideas by netizens of various educational backgrounds shawn in the discussion, and adapted them for a chuanyue novel.
[5] From the 2010s, Illumine Lingao became an increasingly concerned work in China's Internet literature studies for its collective and collaborative style of writing, and for its detailed descriptions of the proto-industrialized "new world" built by the time travelers.