In 2047, Lin You, chief investigator at the Memory Inspection Bureau, discovers while investigating a plane crash that her own memories have been altered. A mysterious chip on the black market reveals a chilling truth: the CA-714 crash three years ago was a harvesting ritual conducted by an Observer civilization, and she is Clone Experiment Subject No. 39. She travels between neon-lit cities and quantumized underground palaces of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, where the roots of a bronze sacred tree coil around cyborg implants, and the pupils of mechanical nightingales replay the countdown to the extinction of human civilization. When memory chips resonate with oracle-bone script, a truth spanning three thousand years comes to light: the quantum firewall that Dr. Lin You built according to the rites of the Zhou dynasty is collapsing, and the Observer civilization’s “seedship” is already hovering in Earth’s orbit. Between cyberpunk rainstorms and bronze blood sacrifices, she must choose: become a puppet of the memory matrix, or ignite the embers that will burn away every timeline. This war over existence and lies will finally reveal, in the dying radiance of Betelgeuse, whether humanity is the heir to a civilization or a captive experimental subject.
