Building Bones in the Gray Zone

Fifty years after the nuclear war, on the wasteland, those who can fight and kill are hailed as heroes. Ji Xun, meanwhile, is just a “good-for-nothing” who knows how to read walls. At a glance, he can spot the load-bearing weaknesses in a ruin, and with three steel beams and an abandoned train car, he can build a maze that traps and kills mutant beasts. But no one thinks that counts as a supernatural ability. As the raiders’ iron cavalry bears down on the settlement and the survivors trust only bullets and gunpowder, Ji Xun opens a moldy copy of Structural Mechanics and draws one final escape route on the blueprint. He doesn’t build fortresses, only traps; he doesn’t raise high walls, only branching paths to certain death. This ruin will become his personal chessboard.