I scored 702 on the national college entrance exam, ranking third in science across the province.
Tsinghua, Peking, Fudan, and Shanghai Jiao Tong fought tooth and nail over me, offering astronomical scholarships and showing up at my door.
Then I opened an anonymous admission letter.
I had just signed an enrollment agreement with Tsinghua when every top university vanished.
My name disappeared from the province’s admissions list entirely.
I gritted my teeth and went to register, only to be hauled deep into the Qinling Mountains.
No navigation system could find it, and no map showed it.
A dilapidated, abandoned Third Front military factory was my university?
One sentence from the principal shattered my twelve years of understanding about the world:
This year, the entire country had admitted only four students.
We didn’t study advanced math or English. We studied fortune-telling and feng shui, drawing talismans and exorcising evil, and handling supernatural incidents.
Other people fought tooth and nail for civil service and public-sector jobs after graduation.
We went straight into National Bureau 34, starting at division deputy level.
We got official government positions, and our whole families received protection on par with military dependents.
The cool-headed national exam champion could open her third eye and serve as a radar for investigations.
The chubby tomb raider from the Northeast had a sharp tongue and took the hits.
The Jiangnan humanities champion was taciturn and drew talismans powerful enough to seal anything.
And I, the provincial third-place finisher from a small town, became the core decision-maker of our four-person team.
Only after our first mission did I find out the truth.
Those sinister, deadly formations, disturbances in the dragon veins, and evil sorcery that never made the news...
We risked our lives to stop them all.
And my grandfather, who died many years ago, had once been the most reckless member of Bureau 34.
