The Shanghai station of the Military Statistics Bureau has a good-for-nothing named Lin Zhibai.
He wears round glasses and can barely hold a gun steady. When he starts coughing, he has to cover his mouth with a handkerchief for ages. Even the boiler operator at the station feels entitled to make him haul files around.
Nobody takes him seriously.
And nobody knows he comes from the future, has been a Party member for six years, and goes by the codename “Spark.”
That is, until the female chief code clerk from 76 was targeted by secret agents at a banquet. He set down his teacup and walked over, smiling like a bookish fool. “Madam, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”
From that day on, by day he was the most useless clerk in the archives. By night, he was the Japanese military’s number-one wanted target, codenamed “Spark.”
Shanghai was rife with undercurrents. From the confines of the archives, he pieced together enemy plans for the front lines and cleared deadly enemy sentry posts for his comrades. Along the way, he also became the female chief clerk’s “husband”: affectionate in public, but never speaking of love in private.
It took him ten whole years to rise from lieutenant in the archives to major general in the Security Bureau and make his way into the heart of the enemy.
He didn’t come to be a hero. He came from the future and knew that too many people were destined never to see daylight again.
And he would accept none of those endings.
The useless bookworm of the archives.
The mysterious “Spark” on the enemy’s wanted list.
Two identities, one man. Thirteen years of undercover work.
