On a summer night in Wugang City, the air was so damp you could wring water from it. The thick air, carrying the salty tang of the sea, the smell of cheap motor oil, and the greasy smoke from food stalls that never seemed to disperse, clung to Chen Mo’s face. The rain was light, the typical drizzle of Wugang, soaking silently into his faded gray T-shirt, its collar worn to a fray, and blurring the mottled graffiti on the peeling walls of the old Tangxili neighborhood.
