The Celestial One Crosses the Calamity

Ji Fusheng, a lowly worker at a scrapyard, has only one dream in life: collect enough scrap iron to trade for a decent meal.

Then one day, a rift in space opens before him.

A Voidbeast squeezes out of the blue light and swings its misshapen arm at him. Then something inside him snaps, like a sneeze he'd held in for twenty-two years finally breaking loose. The Voidbeast explodes, splattering him with gore.

Only later does he learn this is called an Awakening. His talent is Energy Resonance, making him the sixth person in all of humanity to be officially registered with it. Zhang Qingxu, an S-rank officer, hands him a business card, pure white with nothing but a string of numbers. The man wears a long robe and carries a teapot, strolling through rift contamination zones as casually as if he were visiting a teahouse.

“Report to the Tianshu District tomorrow. You're hired.”

Ji Fusheng goes. He signs a contract, gets an ID badge, and earns a monthly salary of eight thousand, more than he could make in three months in the Seventh District. He thinks he's finally made something of himself.

What he doesn't know is that the upper levels of the Dujue Bureau conceal secrets deeper than the rifts. And the reason he was chosen goes far beyond his talent being “rare.”

The rifts are expanding. The Voidbeasts are evolving. Every clue points to a truth buried for twelve years: the day humanity first encountered a higher-dimensional existence, the past Zhang Qingxu never mentions, and the parents of Ji Fusheng, who died when he was very young.