Lin Fan is an avid angler.
But he doesn't fish for fish. He fishes for personalities.
Lin Fan is an ordinary office worker who often works overtime until the early hours. One day, he happens upon a golden fishhook. Known as the “Mind Needle,” this fishing rod lets him enter an endless sea of thought, where lie the fragments of personality people have abandoned, worn away, or deliberately cast off. Focus, guilt, fighting spirit, the flutter of love at first sight... Every wisp of colored smoke is once the most important part of a stranger's life.
He can keep these fragments, trade them, or exchange one for his mother's medical bills, a voice at work, or a chance to go from invisible nobody to player on the board.
But when he spots a deep red vertical line on the horizon, a fragment of obsession deliberately tempered rather than discarded, he realizes that this sea holds more than things people have thrown away. Some people are “storing” things here. Some are “building cities.” Some have broken apart their most essential personalities and put the fragments up for auction.
And a dark purple fragment of obsession, belonging to a mysterious twenty-four-year-old woman, is drawing Lin Fan into the deepest currents of the personality market.
The line is cast. Whether he reels in the truth or brings ruin upon himself depends on how much weight he can bear.
