The Bronze Memory Exchange

Hidden inside the elevator at 33, the Bund, Shanghai, is the world's most dangerous trading market. When the electronic clock strikes midnight, at 00:00, suited finance executives brush past Awakened Ones wreathed in starlight. They trade not in stocks and futures, but in memory bonds steeped in blood and tears: "The future memories advanced to you by the pawnbroker will be forcibly settled in 72 hours." Antique restorer Lu Zhaoming appears to restore bronze artifacts, but secretly commands a quantum Book-Burning Curse capable of rewriting reality. When he discovers that the memories of a murder frozen inside a Han Dynasty bronze mirror are connected to memory futures manipulated by the multinational conglomerate Time Cocoon, he uncovers something even more deadly: each time he uses his power, randomly lost fragments of memory are piecing together a terrifying truth... Deep beneath the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, a river of liquid mercury carries a data stream that has flowed undisturbed for two thousand years; The oracle-bone script reflected in the glass curtain walls of Lujiazui is actually a memory talisman controlling modern finance; And the star-vein markings burning along his spine are the ultimate key to rewriting the history of human civilization. "What we call time debt is nothing but the interest on civilization's cycle of rebirth." When the bronze mask with protruding eyes opens its third eye on the restoration table, Lu Zhaoming finally sees clearly: The memories he keeps losing are humanity's last safeguard against the annihilation of our collective memory. Want to redeem the truth you've pawned? Then pay twice the price in time and pain.