Three years after Awakening Day, the whole world has accepted the fact that “China has no Awakened.” Lu Chen, director of the Nine Provinces Special Ability Administration, is an ordinary man publicly mocked as a “commander with no troops.” Every day, he has to calm the public, deal with pressure from foreign envoys, and pretend that China is conducting secret research.
One late night, Lu Chen was alone in his office, leafing through a fragmentary copy of The Complete Compendium of Ten Thousand Arts, which he had picked up at Panjiayuan. A yellowed slip of paper fell from between its pages. It bore just one line: “At the third quarter of the Zi hour, the North Sea viewing pillar.”
