Echoes Beneath the Neon Abyss

In a parallel 1987, Xinhai is a sprawling metropolis forever shrouded in cold rain and hazy neon. Its technological development has taken a strange turn: artificial intelligence is still in its infancy, but memory extraction and neural networking have quietly matured. Ling Xiao, a former Central Data Bureau agent whose promising career was ruined, now ekes out a living in the city's shadows as an “information detective,” taking on shady jobs involving data and memories. One night, a mysterious woman named Nightingale comes to him. She is a “memory artist” who can turn memories in other people's minds into visual images. Her mentor, the eminent neuroscientist Gu Yuanzhou, has vanished without a trace, leaving behind only a fragmented, chaotic digital echo. Ling Xiao takes what seems like an ordinary missing-person case, but step by step, he plunges into a vast web spun by the tech giant Immortality Technologies, rogue “digital ghosts,” and manipulated collective memories. In this abyss built from lies and neon, he is searching for more than just a missing person. He is also seeking the truth about humanity, eroded by technology, and a past that nearly swallowed him whole.