Imperial calendar year 2784, cyber interstellar era.
This is an era where spiritual power determines destiny - awakening at the age of fifteen, with levels ranging from F to S. Level D and above can be trained as warriors, and level B and above can drive mechas and stand on the pinnacle of glory. Those with lower levels can only survive at the bottom of the empire pyramid, crushed by the rules and forgotten.
Lu Yan, number G-157, is a scavenger boy on the garbage planet Gaia-7.
Fourteen years ago, the soul of an alchemist traveled to this baby, and was picked up and raised by the maintenance master Wei Ci who was exiled here. When he was nine years old, Wei Ci died of a poison gas leak. All that was left to him was a shabby house, a tool sign, and one last word: "Be a good person."
In this world where mechas are rampant and spiritual power is paramount, Lu Yan possesses another kind of power - alchemy. Understand, break down, reconstruct. This is the ancient secret of material transformation, the whisper of the planet's ley lines, the unexplainable heresy of Imperial technology.
He only has D-level mental power, which is just over the line and unremarkable.
His alchemy has just begun, and he can only purify a piece of rusty iron into fine steel the size of a fingernail every day.
But the seeds have been planted.
When the empire's detection ship arrives, when the reformist academicians cast their gaze, when the dark truth is peeled off layer by layer - this young man crawling out of the garbage dump will illuminate the entire sea of stars with the light of alchemy.
This is a story about equivalent exchange. Whatever you want, you have to pay the same price.
Lu Yan wants to change the world. And the price he paid was himself.
