The Eater of Worlds: A Reflection of a Thousand Years of Technological Delusion
During the Tianbao era of the Tang dynasty
A blacksmith in Shu forged a "Jade Pivot and Celestial Balance Mirror" from a meteorite. In the mirror, a colossal whale-shaped creature swam through a lunar sea. On his journey west, Xuanzang saw the "Dragon Host" of the kingdom of Uddiyana gnawing on the wreckage of a starship. A blood-written sutra warned: "When the Lord of the Deep awakens, the vast abyss will boil."
During the Wanli era of the Ming dynasty
Fishermen in Qingdao salvaged the wreck of the Yongle-era "Star-Surveying Vessel." A fragment of The Exploitation of the Works of Nature revealed a diagram of a quantum star raft. After Spanish black-sailed ships raided the vessel, a bronze armillary sphere engraved with Phoenician script rose from Jiaozhou Bay. A secret imperial decree surfaced in the waves: "On the day the star raft returns to the abyss, the vast deep will devour the nine provinces."
1900
Germany modified the Tang mirror with a steam engine, turning it into a radio telescope. It deciphered a coded message from Orion: "Earth's entropy exceeds the limit. Initiate reclamation." The Boxers slaughtered the artisans at the Bureau of Celestial Works. Shattered bronze gears activated a prophecy from the underwater Tui Bei Tu: "At the western edge of the black waters, a comet will sweep across Yingzhou."
1937
A professor at Jinling University pieced together fragments of the gears to build a gravitational-wave radio. He discovered that the Japanese invasion of China was in fact an "entropy-increasing sacrifice" orchestrated by the Eaters of Worlds. Before the Chongqing laboratory exploded, a phonograph shrieked out the coordinates of the seal: gather the Tianbao mirror, the Wanli star raft, the Gengzi gears, and the unexploded bomb from Jinling.
Present day, an offshore drilling platform in the South China Sea
An engineer discovers a strange piece of blue-and-white porcelain in the fuel chamber of a Ming dynasty star raft. Its glaze has rewritten the Qingdao sea eye as the rift valley of Mount Fuji. An image left behind by the Yongle Emperor reveals the truth: "The Lord of the Deep is actually a calamity star shot into deep space by King Wu of Zhou, using Japan as a vessel for its return to life." With 37 days left on the countdown, only the dud shell on Nanjing's city wall in 1937 can save the world. The pure gravitational waves sealed inside it are the Eaters of Worlds' fatal weakness.
Lord of the Deep: An extraterrestrial space fleet, named after the Tao Te Ching
