In the 1990s, Lin Zhiyuan, a young technical specialist at Yuanhang Machinery Factory, settles in the impoverished and isolated Heiqing Ridge to teach the village children. Facing life-and-death hardships such as famine, bitter cold, and flash floods, he joins forces with draftsman Shen Qinghe to lead the villagers in building a handmade waterwheel generator, a linkage dry-field plow, and a cableway across the river using basic physics and mechanical engineering. Through his mission of "heavy-industry teaching," he breaks through the mountains' deep-rooted poverty. Twenty years later, the village children whose lives were transformed by education return as master craftsmen of the nation's industries. Together with their mentor, they build a massive high-speed railway bridge, completing a remarkable industrial rebirth as knowledge and skills are passed down from one generation to the next.