Mark of Decay

Chen Qin opened his eyes to find himself lying in a rundown house filled with a foul stench. Outside the window, a dark red sky glowed with a light that never faded. This was not the world he knew. It was an apocalypse slowly and utterly rotting away, where the laws of physics and perception had warped, mutated creatures prowled the ruins, and the air reeked of sickly-sweet death.

He soon discovered his sole connection to this world: a dark red “blood mark” parasitically embedded beneath his collarbone. The mark was both a curse and his only means of survival. It could sense danger passively, and in life-or-death moments, actively “simulate” an enemy's weaknesses and reveal fragments of information. The price was intense mental emptiness, loss of vitality, and even cognitive contamination.

Under the control of a man called “Old Man,” Chen Qin became “Rock.” Alongside his numb companion “Wood,” he carried out perilous scavenging missions in contamination-ridden ruins: collecting “rotten eyes” that radiated mental contamination, scraping up poisonous “gray moss,” and evading swift, savage “carrion eaters”...

In this desperate cage, Chen Qin must learn to coexist and fight alongside the “parasite” inside him. He must use this dangerous power, which is steadily consuming him, to find a sliver of hope amid ruins riddled with deadly traps, find his bearings amid lies and betrayal, and uncover the origin of the blood mark and the truth behind the apocalypse in a world slowly falling apart.