“If only geniuses are allowed to pilot mecha in this world, then I’ll use a pile of scrap metal to tear open the sky screen.”
East Cloud’s Ninth District never sees the sun. It is a graveyard for scrap metal and a prison for the poor.
Zhang Mo, an orphan who repairs vehicles, has only thirty-five coins to his name. He just wants to pass the entrance exam and land a steady job. Then he gives his only breakfast to a homeless girl and accidentally gets caught up in the “Tianshu Project,” a scheme capable of devouring the world.
The exoskeleton corps treat human lives like weeds, while noble mecha pilots sneer at the poor as if they were ants.
Everyone says, “Accept your lot. You’re just a mechanic.”
Zhang Mo says nothing. He wipes the grease from his hands and looks at the red lines in his vision, connecting the fates of all things. Picking up a rusty iron bar, he grins.
“You call this scrap metal? Then I’ll use this pile of junk to build a divine machine that can protect my family.”
This is no epic about saving the world. It is the story of people abandoned by the world, supporting one another through the mud as they try to kindle a single light.
An information broker who loves money but values loyalty, a timid tech geek who dares to hack the System, an amnesiac girl who wants to remember the taste of steamed buns...
When the shackles of the rules dig into your flesh, someone has to step forward.
Even if they’re held together by patches. Even if the whole world stands against them.
“My name is Zhang Mo. I’m from the Ninth District.”
“My mecha is beat-up, but it can win.”
“As long as I’m still standing, no one gets to cross this line and lay a hand on my people.”
Above the wasteland, the mecha spirit still burns. Watch as a wildfire spreads across the land.
