Zhuang Xu always felt that his name was like a curse.
It wasn't until the string of copper rings in the back alley of the convenience store burned through his palm that he knew the true meaning of the word "Xu" - not ruins, but a name eaten alive by the city, and a debt carved on the bones.
The rusty bones crawling out of the cracks in the wall gnaw on the old bricks, and the copper coins from the Guangxu Year are embedded in the carapace; the shadow beast in the subway tunnel drags the shadow of overtime workers, and the fire in the lantern can burn through the signal; the nine heads of Xiangliu at the bottom of the river chant different water-control spells, and the water weeds it spits out will entangle people with the same surname. These monsters, known as "Russian Names", are the result of ethnic resentment that has been erased by history, and the tile-shaped red mark on the back of his hand is their key.
Lan Ling, a girl in blue cloth, always appears when he encounters these things. The bronze dagger splits not only the monsters, but also his mediocrity for twenty-three years. The blue marks on her neck have the same source as his red marks, the bronze tiles in grandpa's suitcase, the strange symbols on the account books, and the broken compass in the old watchmaker's drawer all point to the same truth: the so-called "ruin keepers" and "name bearers" are just debtors tied together by fate.
When the glass curtain wall of the CBD reflected the huge shadow of candlelight, and when the old buildings in the entire city began to seep out black mud, Zhuangxu finally understood - those scales hidden in the demolition area, the whispers in the subway, and the skeletons at the bottom of the river were never legends. They are waiting for a person named Zhuang Xu to use flesh and blood as a pen to return the forgotten names one by one.
