An epic about survival, building, and connection. When seventeen-year-old Chen Ping'an wakes up on a reef, two legacies from fallen civilizations lie dormant within him: a fishing System and a synthesis System. The first uses memories as bait to fish hope from the depths of the sea; the second takes rules as its foundation and builds tangible things from nothing.
This is not one person's story.
Return Island keeps putting down roots and growing on the open sea. First came the harbor, then farmland, workshops, a medical station, and a school. Survivors drift in from the ruins at the edge of the void, each carrying their own scars and obsessions. Some have lost their voices, and find a new language through touch. Some cannot count, yet discover the world's rhythms in the ripples of the leaf network. Some cannot hear the wind, but learn to listen to the pulse of the roots.
Seven years. Nineteen stone tablets. One hundred and thirty-seven kinds of leaf song. More than six million characters of root diaries.
Chen Ping'an weaves this network with his own threads of karma, and every strand is a living person. When Guixin City awakens from the cold data at the network's core, when the Colorless Flag flutters for the first time without any wind, and when the replica created by a seventh-level civilization lays down its weapon and learns to smile, the Return Network is no longer an idea, but a civilization that truly functions.
The Cleaners lie dormant deep in the Cocoon Zone. The Observer's silver point of light hangs above the open sea, like a cold, indifferent eye. The rules of the game remain merciless, and the shadow of the seventh-level civilization has never gone away.
But Return Island is growing.
