Devouring Symbiosis

After a zombie-virus catastrophe, civilization collapses. Lu Chen, a genetics PhD from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, uses CRISPR gene-editing technology to create “controllable devourers,” beings who retain human emotions but must regularly inject “memory stabilizers” to suppress their bestial nature. Though he holds the key to rebuilding civilization, he is caught in an even fiercer ethical storm: should the devourers be granted citizenship? In the wasteland, he must navigate between conservative survivors, wavering allies, and the devourer community, working to establish a fragile order founded on the Wasteland Bioethics Charter. When a comrade turns feral after running out of medication and trust teeters on the brink of collapse, Lu Chen stakes everything on founding the Human-Devourer Coexistence Research Institute, seeking an elusive future in which the two groups can live side by side. This is an ultimate struggle over the meaning of life, the value of emotion, and the limits of humanity.