In the fourteenth year of the Republic, at Liulichang in Beiping.
Lu Chen, an apprentice at Jubaozhai, delivered a shipment of goods at night for his master. When he returned, his master was dead behind the counter, an unidentified stone fragment stuffed in his mouth. The shop had been ransacked, yet nothing was missing.
There were only three items among his belongings: an incomplete handwritten manuscript, a brass key that fit no lock, and a bronze disc called the Nine Nether Disc.
On half a page burned by his master before he died, two legible characters remained: Xuanshu.
Lu Chen didn’t know that nine ancient mechanism cities lay buried underground, called the Nether Ruins. They weren’t treasure troves, but nine seals holding back a cataclysm that had once destroyed a nation.
He knew even less that a group of people invoking the slogan “Save the Nation Through Machinery” were dismantling them one by one.
Remove one pivot, and the neighboring veins overload. Remove three, and a chain collapse turns half the country into a wasteland.
The Nine Nether Disc is the only key to entering through the front gate. Take a side route, and survival is a long shot. Go through the front gate, and you can leave unharmed.
That was why they were all watching the disc, watching whoever carried it. And watching Lu Chen.
Things can speak. It just depends on whether you can read their script.
Lu Chen had learned only one craft: appraising artifacts, distinguishing genuine patterns from fakes. He had no special bloodline and no connections, just a pair of eyes and a stubborn streak.
But the seals were loosening one by one, and the countdown had already begun.
