In 2045, at Kaiyang No. 9 High School.
Zhou Chen is widely regarded as the school's biggest loser. His mental power test score was zero. The day he was kicked out of the honors class, the examiner wrote two words on his report: damaged.
No one knows that every night at two in the morning, he climbs over the wall around the Barrier Zone and enters the ruins of the Old World alone, pounding his fists against a load-bearing wall of reinforced concrete. After eight months, he broke through the first-floor wall. A year later, he snapped a pillar on the second floor. Now he's on the third floor. When his fist strikes the wall, he can see cracks invisible to the naked eye.
He calls this ability "the Dao."
The path of the wind, the direction steel will break, the rhythm of a human heartbeat: this world is a giant puzzle, and there are gaps between every piece. He can see every boundary. And he can break through them.
Thirty days until the college entrance exams. Deep in the Qin Chuan Wilderness Zone, a colossal beast never before recorded is stirring. Beyond the barrier, a dark red light flickers. The girl who brings him notes every week lives on the street closest to the barrier.
No System, no being reborn. Just a clueless kid who climbs over the wall every night to punch it, and a deskmate who thinks something is off about him.
The apocalypse has only one rule for survival: your fists have to be strong enough to protect the people you care about.
