In 2047, in an era when neural interfaces are popularized, "cognitive anomalies" are undercurrent around the world - some people hear the voices of the dead in the data, and some see non-existent cities in the mirror. Lin Ye, the former Stardust Group data restorer, had long been accustomed to this, until a damaged chip commissioned for a sky-high price came from the voice of his missing sister Lin Xi who suffered a "collapse of consciousness" three years ago.
In order to find the truth, he was chased by the "Scavengers" of the Stardust Group, and on the way he met Su Tang, a mysterious girl who could "see" data anomalies. The two sneaked into the abandoned mental hospital with half a chip containing a three-dimensional blueprint, only to discover that the so-called "abnormality" was not a neural interface failure at all - it was the penetration of the "virtual realm" from 2077.
The virtual world is an apocalyptic time and space where only consciousness data remains after the nuclear war. Stardust CEO Lu Mingyuan wants to use the "source core" of the virtual world to achieve immortality, and Lin Ye is the "key" to open the two time-space channels. On one side was the truth that his sister was locked in a crack in the virtual world, and on the other was the choice between two ways to survive in time and space. Holding the old mechanical watch given by his sister, he understood that the so-called key was never just a tool to open a passage, but also an obsession to retain the "now".
