[Not a cool article! Not a cool article! Not a cool article! Say important things three times] Zhou Ming, a 32-year-old Chinese detective, found a letter that should not exist in the locked office in Chinatown.
Cream parchment, dark red fire paint seal, half a torn rose pressed on the wax surface. The letter had no postmark and no sender, but it appeared exactly on his desk—next to the relics his partner had left two months ago. The partner died of natural causes and was stamped by the coroner. All that remained was a picture album of nineteenth-century London street scenes. There is half a rose painted on the title page of the album. There is also half a rose on the envelope.
He pressed the envelope onto the album. The coat of arms matches. Spire to spire, arch window to arch window, even the broken remaining column at the top of the bell tower is exactly the same.
Like someone knew which page he would turn.
Zhou Ming scratched the paint.
He was dragged into a place called the "Fog Hub" - eternal fog, Victorian gas lights, and a male voice with a London accent on the cobblestone streets told him: This is the reincarnation space, and you must enter the instance and come back alive.
The first copy is a Gothic castle. The human eyes in the oil painting will follow you. The sound of high heels at the end of the corridor was getting closer. There is a bloody contract hidden in the basement.
He made it out alive.
Then the second one. The third one. Each one was darker, deeper, more custom-made for him. He came to understand that these copies were not random - they were responding to him, observing him, learning his weaknesses.
