[I have seen far too many things alongside my friends, comrades, and fellow travelers: mysterious, magnificent, and uncanny sights that the people of the old era never had the chance to see.]
[I have seen sharks in the desert hunt and fight giant flying “scorpions,” stirring up sandstorms that blot out the sky.]
[I have seen animal packs develop social languages, and plant communities gain consciousness, then join forces with the “new humans” to resist a colossal, moving “natural disaster.”]
[I have endured the “new humans” of this wasteland hunting me down. I have also witnessed the new tribes and city-states established here, as the “new humans” draw on the legacy of the old era to gradually lay the foundations of their civilization.]
[And now...]
[All I have is the head of an old-era AI that may be damaged, a body that has grown young again and rivals a bioweapon, and a strange ability to “revive and recover” whose principles and side effects remain unknown.]
[...Perhaps that really is a possibility, but I need proof.]
[Still... I may be destined to witness the land’s transition between the new and the old on my journey to uncover the hidden disasters of this world and seek out whatever remains of human civilization from the old era.]
[But...]
[At the end of this journey, will I rebuild the civilization of the old era, or become the caretaker of its magnificent ruins?]
[It is time to set out.]
[, Shi Wenyuan’s personal reflection, recorded on the evening of the twenty-third day of the seventh month in the sixth year of the Awakening Era, just before leaving the Zhatan Desert]
(Not a brainless power fantasy or a conventional post-apocalyptic wasteland story. The content is fairly hard-edged.)
