Wang Lin, eighteen years old.
At fifteen, he was recommended for admission to one of the country's top universities. He turned it down.
Instead, he threw himself into The Sixteen-Character Yin-Yang Feng Shui Secret Art, studying how to locate burial sites and search for dragon veins and ancient tombs.
His mother couldn't take it anymore. She filled out an application to have him admitted to a psychiatric hospital and sent him there.
Three months later, he discharged himself. Diagnosis: No obvious signs of mental abnormality.
The first thing he did after leaving was buy a plane ticket to Xi'an.
Destination: The Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang.
He had just landed and hadn't even had time to call a taxi when he was pinned to the ground.
The charge: Attempted grave robbery at the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang.
The evidence: A Luoyang shovel, two probes, three hand trowels, and a hand-drawn map of the underground palace at Mount Li, all found in his backpack.
In the interrogation room, a police officer asked, "Why did you draw this thing?"
Wang Lin answered with complete seriousness, "I think there's something alive in the underground palace. I want to take a look."
The court postponed its ruling and ordered him held for a psychiatric evaluation.
Before the evaluation could be completed, people from National Security arrived.
At the same time, thirty million students across the country had vanished without a trace and been pulled into a bizarre exam. Every question involved horror movies and disaster scenarios. Pass alive and you earned rewards. Fail and you died.
To get to the bottom of it, National Security searched through archives across the country. In the end, they found him: a lunatic who had been smart enough to get into a top university at fifteen, yet chose to study how to excavate the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang.
"Wang Lin, here's your chance. Get back with information alive, and you'll have done the country a great service. Besides, there's something even more interesting than the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang."
Wang Lin was silent for three seconds, then held out his handcuffed wrists to be released. "Then what are we waiting for? I want to leave right now."
"All right. You got it."
He willingly put on the hood.
