The Inscription of Ashes on the Yinghuo Stele

Lin Zhao, a restorer of ancient inscriptions, takes on a batch of damaged Qin dynasty bamboo slips and discovers a charred slip embedded with a blue crystal. The moment she touches it, a static-like sting shoots from her fingertips through her entire body. Three faint red lines appear in the palm of her left hand.

She begins having the same dream: a stone chamber deep in Mount Li, an ancient figure holding a blue light, and a back turned toward her, waiting, its face impossible to make out.

Chen Du, a descendant of the tomb guardians, tells her that two thousand years ago, the true purpose of Qin Shi Huang's book burning and burying of scholars was to erase every trace of the extraterrestrial civilization Yinghuo's arrival from Earth's records. The three marks on Lin Zhao's palm are the last echoes in the human world of the "memory carbon crystals" that the Grand Astrologer branded with his own bones and blood.

The three in heaven have awakened, and the six on earth have emerged. Nine carbon crystals, six bone artifacts, and three celestial eye beads: before Yinghuo crosses the sun once more, Lin Zhao must travel a path that has remained untrodden for two thousand years. And the figure from her dreams is waiting for her at the end of that path.