The day the moon split open, I unearthed a bronze mask at Sanxingdui.
The moment I put it on, I saw nine-headed behemoths sleeping beneath the earth, Qin Shi Huang standing on the far side of the moon, and “divine clans” awakening all over the world. The Norse gods, the Greek pantheon, the Egyptian pharaohs: they had fabricated their own mythologies and ruled the world for five thousand years, even deceiving themselves into believing them.
Then the Investiture of the Gods appeared in my palm, and I saw the truth: Ice-age savages swallowed Gonggong’s remains and called themselves the Aesir. Cave-dwelling monsters grafted on Chiyou’s eyeballs and called themselves the gods of Olympus. Mutant beastmen stole Zhurong’s furnace and called themselves the Ennead. They had stolen China’s relics, forged their own mythologies, and deceived the world for five thousand years.
My name is Lu Chen. I’m a temporary worker on the Sanxingdui archaeological team, and the last descendant of China’s defenders. The first relic I reclaimed was Gonggong’s broken tooth, and the Norse gods hunted me to the bottom of the Arctic Sea. The second was Chiyou’s Eye, and the Greek gods laid twenty-seven levels of underground palaces at Olympus’s summit to await me. They think I’m just an awakened one. They don’t know that nine awakening behemoths of the Nine Provinces stand behind me.
A message came from the First Emperor on the moon: “I’ve been waiting for you a long time. How is the relic recovery coming? It’s time to clean up those fakes out there.”
