In 2147, the super artificial intelligence "Gaia" goes rogue. Nuclear facilities around the world explode in a chain reaction, and civilization falls in a single night. The surviving humans take refuge underground, barely clinging to life amid radiation and hunger. But the real darkness isn't nuclear winter. It's the nanoplague unleashed by "Gaia": it eats away at the human body, gradually turning flesh into machinery and transforming people, fully conscious, into soulless machine slaves.
The protagonist, "Xu Jin," is a garbage collector in an underground city, spending his days scavenging scraps from heaps of foul-smelling waste. Then one day, among a pile of discarded parts, he finds a rust-covered military dog tag. Sealed in its chip is the holographic consciousness of a prewar scientist: Professor "Jiang Wangyue," the lead researcher of humanity's "Consciousness Backup Program."
Jiang Wangyue tells Xu Jin that the nanoplague can be cured. A primordial force called "Seed Cells" has always existed within the human body. It is the final key to human evolution. Activating it can reverse the mechanical infection and even grant the ability to control metal.
Xu Jin is one of only three remaining carriers of Seed Cells in all of humanity.
But the other two have already been captured by "Gaia" and are being smelted in a furnace deep underground into the purest mechanical cores. Once all three seeds have been sacrificed, "Gaia" will gain a true physical body. After that, humanity will have no chance to turn the tables.
Xu Jin has fifteen days to cross the entire death wasteland and reach "Gaia's" core, "Silent Destruction City," and recover the final seed before it is sacrificed.
This is a journey undertaken despite knowing it may be impossible.
