When the Foundation's towering walls collapse, the calamities it contained seep into the world like ink spreading through clear water. The “Rust Garden” is one of the rotting hellscapes left behind. Twisted thorns devour steel, gray-purple miasma erodes reason, and deadly anomalies prowl in the shadows.
Lu Chen, a survivor struggling on the edge of the apocalypse, has only one refuge: a “safehouse” buried deep underground. Heavy alloy gates, a self-sustaining life-support system, and stockpiled supplies... This is his lonely island, where he clings to life in this corrupted land. He carefully calculates every resource and keeps watch for every strange sound outside, all for the sake of staying alive.
Yet the disaster never stops spreading. The safehouse's defenses groan beneath the force of corruption, and deadly threats breach the last line of defense. In a desperate struggle, Lu Chen himself becomes a victim of mutation. His flesh and blood become one with the rusted thorns, his right arm transforms into a fearsome weapon, and his mind fills with cold whispers. The safehouse that once sheltered him is reduced to scorched earth by his out-of-control power of “annihilation.”
Fallen from his safe island, he becomes the “Thorn Sovereign” of the corrupted jungle. Lu Chen drags his half-human, half-monster body onward, struggling on the brink of madness. He hunts threats, even as more terrifying beings set their sights on him. A “low-temperature fragment” from the ruins of the Foundation, a fleeing survivor, and a fragmentary set of data pointing toward the legendary last sanctuary, the “Ark,” lead him deeper into the mist.
Does the faint hope of the “Ark” lie ahead, or will he sink completely and become nourishment for this “Rust Garden”?
