On a rainy night eighteen years ago, Lu Li’s mother died in childbirth, and a silver lock plate was implanted at the back of his neck.
Eighteen years later, the Bloodvine Gu runs wild during his coming-of-age ceremony, tearing open the swaddling woven from lies
A laboratory gene map is etched on the back of Miao embroidery. The corpse oil of the Five Poisons seeps from a sunken cargo container into the Yangtze River. Living corpses wearing bronze Nuo masks crawl out of the Ten Thousand Gu Cave toward the light-rail platform.
In search of his missing mother, a guardian of the mountains, young Xiangxi native Lu Li sets out on a perilous journey with Bai Li, a mysterious Nuo shaman:
In Chongqing’s air-raid shelters, clones submerged in liquid bronze are waking in batches;
Deep in the Wushan sinkhole, Chi You’s mech, covered in binary talismans, is about to restart;
When Jiefangbei is transformed into an altar and gene furnace, he discovers that he himself is the final living key to opening the Hall of Immortality.
Electronic tattoos versus thousand-year-old Nuo masks; gene sequencers decode the “Panhu Sacrificial Hymn”
A network of mycelium devours the city’s ley lines, while quantum Gu insects tear open parallel worlds
In this Nuo shaman revolution spanning five thousand years, is the chosen one a savior, or the perfect vessel for Gu?
