Three years after the nuclear war, the Heavenly Altar descended.
A colossal three-story white jade tower appeared out of nowhere at the heart of East Asia, glowing with a golden light that radiation could not penetrate. It divided the survivors into 108 quarantine zones and issued a mission every month: send people through a portal to bring back supplies from another world. Complete the mission, and your entire zone survives. Refuse to fight, and your rations are halved.
Li Yitian, 22, is a water purification technician in Zone 72. When the nuclear war broke out, he was in the laboratory, while his younger sister, Li Xiaohe, was at school. He searched for three years, finding neither her body nor any sign that she was alive.
Then, during a mission in the Withered Wood Forest, he found a school ID tucked in the arms of a rotting corpse. It read, "Li Xiaohe, Zone 108."
Xiaohe is still alive. But the people in Zone 108 told her that her brother was dead, then used her as bait to force Li Yitian to accept a high-mortality "Red Tag" mission.
What's on the bottom level of the Heavenly Altar? What is the true price of a Red Tag mission? And what are the things in the Withered Wood Forest that imitate the voices of the dead?
In this wasteland ruled by the Heavenly Altar, simply staying alive is a mission in itself. And Li Yitian discovers that the greatest danger isn't the monsters in the mission worlds. It's the Heavenly Altar itself.
