Nanwan District, Zhucheng, the last Lingnan enclave embedded in the center of the city, is being encroached upon by a technological giant called "Yunshu New City". On the eve of the Qiqiao Festival, a series of bizarre crimes broke the calm: the victims were all women known as "skillful hands", and without exception, miniature handicrafts that were supposed to appear in the begging ceremony were left behind.
The newly transferred detective Chen Qi is recognized as a technical person in the bureau. However, his calm world suddenly cracked when a folk archive photo from more than thirty years ago emerged from the evidence - the archive notes belonged to his mother who had been missing for many years. What makes him even more suffocated is that his mother's research back then accurately predicted today's crime patterns.
During the investigation, Chen Qi was forced to cooperate with Lin Jing, a data security consultant at "Yunshu New City". This technological elite, who is so rational that he is almost indifferent, seems to know Zhucheng's past very well. One of them chased cold electronic traces, and the other dug into warm folk memories. Between the narrow alleys of the Handshake Building full of surveillance cameras and the ancient ancestral hall where the incense still lingered, they gradually approached a chilling truth: all the clues pointed to a huge conspiracy under the construction site that attempted to completely format and trade the city's collective memory.
What Chen Qi ultimately has to face is not just the most vicious criminals. He must penetrate the most deadly seventh layer of fog between data and blood, lies and truth, tampered history and shaky truth - where the future of everyone is related, and the answer to his mother's disappearance is also buried.
