Undercover: A Spark That Sets the Prairie Ablaze

Starlight in the Ashes

In late autumn 2023, Lin Wan, a national-level criminal investigation expert, is examining an explosion site when she discovers a pocket watch left behind by the suspect. The moment she opens it, the photograph inside the watch face, a sharp-eyed man in a Republican-era military uniform, gives her an inexplicable pang of unease. The next second, the shock wave from a second explosion sends her flying.

When she opens her eyes again, she has become Lin Wan, a newly arrived archivist at the Tianjin station of the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics in 1946.

And the man in the photograph is standing right in front of her, his voice cold as a blade: “I'm Li Ya, of the Intelligence Section.”