Is an epic about surviving, building and connecting. When seventeen-year-old Chen Ping'an woke up from the reef, two sets of heritage from a destroyed civilization - the fishing system and the synthesis system - were sleeping in his body. The former uses memory as bait to fish for hope from the deep sea; the latter uses rules as the basis to build entities from nothingness.
This is not one person's story.
Guidu Island takes root and grows on the sea. The port was built first, followed by farmland, workshops, medical stations, and schools. The survivors drifted from the ruins at the end of the void, carrying their own scars and obsessions. Some of them lost their voices and found a new language through touch; some countless others discovered the rhythm of the world in the fluctuations of leaf nets; some could not hear the wind, but learned to listen to the pulsation of roots.
Seven years. Nineteen stone tablets. One hundred and thirty-seven leaf sounds. A diary of more than six million words.
Chen Ping'an used his own causal threads to weave this web, and every thread in the web is a living person. When Guixin City awakens from the cold data in the center, when the colorless flag flutters without wind for the first time, when the replica created by the seventh-level civilization puts down its arms and learns to laugh - the Guiyu Network is no longer a concept, but a truly functioning civilization.
Deep within the Cocoon Zone, the Cleaners sleep. The silver light spot of the observer hangs over the continuing sea, like an indifferent eye. The rules of the game field are still cold, and the shadow of the seventh-level civilization has never been far away.
But Homeward Island is growing.
