After ten years away, Guo Xu returns to his hometown and finds the village deserted.
The old computer in his family home switches on by itself. Blood-red words appear on the screen: **“Welcome home. The game begins.”**
A bronze cauldron beneath a dry well, a human sacrifice in the ancestral hall's underground chamber, strange black lines around the villagers' ankles...
Every clue points to a “genetic experiment” from twenty years ago, and Guo Xu's name is on the list of participants.
Searching for his missing parents, Guo Xu is drawn into a conspiracy spanning millennia:
Warring States bronze talismans replicate human genes, Mohist mechanisms blend with modern technology,
and files from National Security Bureau Nine reveal that the entire village is the central node of a “Soul-Devouring Formation.”
More terrifying still, his childhood sweetheart's “ghost” suddenly appears.
The crescent-shaped birthmark on her neck perfectly matches Guo Xu's mark,
and her “fall from the cliff” all those years ago turns out to have been a carefully planned fake death...
When the blood moon hangs overhead and bronze mother worms spread from the Yangtze River,
Guo Xu finally understands:
he is no accidental survivor,
but the most crucial “human key”
in a plan thousands of years in the making.
**, Technology and metaphysics collide, genes and bronze rot together
This time, the living have become the most fearsome “mechanisms” in an ancient tomb.**
