For one thousand and two consecutive nights, lawyer Li Ran has jolted awake at exactly 4:17 a.m. She thought the nightmares were the lingering effects of a wrongful conviction, but then she discovered her sleeping pills had been switched long ago, and that she had been living inside a secret human experiment for three years.
To uncover the truth, she ventured alone into Yunqi, a place disguised as a healing retreat. Underground cages, aerosolized sedatives, bone-conduction hypnosis, and brainwashed puppet patients: there was no healing here, only deadly sleep. Joining forces with survivors pushed to the brink, she gathered evidence and deciphered coded messages inside a prison blanketed with surveillance, all while battling the hypocritical doctor Zeng Yu.
But Yunqi was only the tip of the iceberg. The Qingwu Healing Base, an academic system controlled by capital, and bought-off appraisal agencies surfaced one after another, bringing a thirty-year-old case in Linjiang back to light. The villains were experts at exploiting the law and institutions to do evil, using legal procedures to carry out psychological plunder.
As the evidence gradually came together, Li Ran realized with a shock: ever since the lawsuit three years ago, she had been caught in the game of a mastermind at the very top. The so-called investigator was the perfect specimen her adversary had been waiting years for.
When sleep becomes a shackle, staying awake is a sin. In this desperate situation, a group of people who refuse to surrender take up reason as their blade and declare war on the entire system of darkness.
