When Lin Mo opened his eyes, he found himself lying on a hard wooden bed.
A dingy mosquito net hung above him. Through a gap in the tattered curtain, he could see mottled wooden rafters. The air was filled with the musty smell of mold mixed with medicinal herbs, and a faint trace of gunpowder lingered beneath it.
He sat bolt upright, and a dull pain throbbed in his head.
What was going on?
His last memory was of the top floor of the library, where a sudden major earthquake had sent the bookshelves crashing down and scattered the books. Lin Mo, a graduate student in history, had been researching changes to the foreign concessions in Republican-era Shanghai. Then everything went dark. When he opened his eyes again, he was here.
“You’re awake?” a slightly hoarse male voice said.
Lin Mo looked toward the sound. A middle-aged man in a gray long gown stood in the doorway. His face was thin, but his eyes were sharp. He held a bowl of dark medicine and carefully stepped over the threshold.
