In the fifteenth year of the Jiajing era, Cui Li transmigrated.
When he woke, he was lying in a rented room in Sweetwater Well Alley in the capital. He had no silver in his pocket, no golden finger in his head, and only the survival tips he’d spent three months desperately memorizing: rice cost five qian per shi, the emperor lived in the Western Park refining pills, and the commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard was named Lu Bing.
He thought he could survive like that.
Until one night, a hand settled on his shoulder.
Pale as death, ice-cold, with fingers far too long. Fine cracks spread across its skin, gray smoke seeping through them. The twisted face pressed close to his ear and said, “You can see me.”
He could.
Then he was taken to a place called the Office for Investigating Anomalies, where he met Senior Xu, with his head and beard all white; a neighbor who could turn into a gray-blue monster; and a group of beings who called themselves “projections.” They came from a gray world and were slowly encroaching on this era.
Even stranger, every projection that saw him said the same thing:
“You have the scent of the other side.”
Cui Li began investigating his origins. He learned that in the fifteenth year of the Hongwu era, a hundred and fifty years earlier, a man with the same name had entered the gray world and never come back. He discovered that one of the seven administrators was a traitor, secretly hunting down everyone who knew the truth. And deep in the gray world, another “Cui Li” was waiting for him.
Only one of the two worlds can survive.
Is he a transmigrator, a projection, a key, or the man who has been waiting for a hundred and fifty years?
When an invasion from a higher dimension descended upon the Ming Empire, Cui Li stood atop the city wall, watching gray light flicker on the horizon.
The other side was calling him.
