Introduction to the novel
The bloody broadcast at three o'clock in the morning is the prelude to the collapse of the world.
When the old radio spits out the cold rules of survival, when the faceless shadow lingers outside the cat's eye, when the red-eyed doll hunts for prey in the rainy night, when the counterclockwise clock strikes the countdown to death - the dawn of Ivy City never comes as expected.
Lin Mo clutched the coarse salt shaker and struggled to survive within the rules: don't look at the reflection in the mirror, don't open the shadowless door, don't pick up the red doll, don't swing the needle against the clock. But those rules written in blood were never life-saving charms, but strange cages tailor-made for human beings.
The smell of blood in the corridors is getting stronger and stronger, the disappeared neighbors have become the enforcers of the rules, the familiar city has turned into an island isolated from life and death, and even each other's shadows have begun to become unfamiliar.
When the rules are contradictory, when the cages are nested layer by layer, when the price of living is to become a part of the weirdness - Lin Mo understands that the so-called survival game always has only two choices:
Either abide by the rules and survive in a cage;
Or tear up the rules and break the situation in the dark.
The end of the rules is never a way out, but all the weird truths and an ultimate confrontation that risks human civilization.
The midnight announcement sounded again, and this time, it was humans' turn to make the rules.
