Return from the Sand Sea: The Nine Gates Within the Game

Wu Xie, fresh from the hell of the Sea of Sand, was no longer the naive boy who needed someone to protect him. He had personally laid the breathtaking scheme that wiped out the Wang family, hardening himself into the calculating, powerful "Evil Emperor." But while pursuing the last traces of "It," he was caught in a temporal maelstrom after encountering a strange bronze fragment deep within Gutongjing. When he opened his eyes again, the sights and sounds of Republican-era Changsha rushed over him. The familiar name of the Old Nine Gates rang through the streets; the young Wu Laogou was still dogfighting in the street, and Er Yuehong's operatic singing echoed through the theater. And the figure who should have been sleeping behind the Bronze Gate was standing beside Zhang Qishan. His gaze was as cool as ever, yet carried a distance from the "past" that Wu Xie had never seen before.

This was an era when the Old Nine Gates were rising to prominence, but danger lurked everywhere. The mystery of the mines was only beginning to emerge, Japanese agents were reaching out from the shadows, the Wang family's ancestors were still weaving their web in secret, and suspicion and strife within the Nine Gates had never ceased. Carrying the ruthlessness forged in the Sea of Sand, his deep understanding of "It," and his attachment to Zhang Qiling that transcended time, Wu Xie concealed the hardships he had endured and entered this chess game from a century ago as an "outsider strategist."

He would use his foreknowledge to make up for the regrets of the Nine Gates' forebears: protect Yatou, keep Chen Pi from falling into evil, avert Hei Bei Liu's tragic fate...