A Virtual Embroidery of Mountains and Rivers: A Suzhou Embroidery Master in the Metaverse

One stitch embroidering the stars, one drop of blood sealing life and death! When her embroidery needle pierces the boundary between virtuality and reality, a massacre hidden for fifteen years, a bionic human substitute, and the shocking hoax surrounding her parents’ deaths explode amid the neon lights of the metaverse!

Jiang Zhiyun, a master of Suzhou embroidery, wields her needle to restore national treasures in the metaverse. During a session of holographic embroidery, a sudden pain shoots through her neural chip, and the needle’s projection twists into the flames of the explosion that consumed her parents fifteen years ago. The old scar on her wrist, left behind when someone saved her, becomes the key to uncovering the lies.

Chu He, CEO of Zhishang, offers her an exorbitantly priced contract. She pricks her bloodied needle into the data port. “The only contract I’ll sign is one that stakes life and death!” Ink leaking from the signing pen blots into the character for “sacrifice,” while the scar on Chu He’s wrist is identical to hers.

When her uncontrollable right hand embroiders the coordinates of her childhood cemetery in the dead of night, she digs through the damp earth and is horrified to discover her ten-year-old self curled up inside a children’s data pod. A cold electronic voice rings out: “DNA verification complete. Welcome back, Miss Jiang Xiuyun.”

Blue blood glows in her veins. The fingertips of a paralyzed embroiderer gleam with metallic chill. Satellite wreckage forms her father’s charred face in the night sky...

With her mother’s thimble in hand, Jiang Zhiyun turns embroidery into a blade and strikes at the corporate magnates who control billions of brain-computer interfaces.

In this game of strategy, she’ll make her moves with a bloodied needle and use the land itself as her embroidery frame. In this battleground where reality and illusion intertwine, she swears to stitch herself a way to survive!