The Star-Iron Staff Manual

When a meteorite designated C/2022-Ω tears through the night sky and crashes into an uncharted valley in the northwest, it brings more than celestial fire. It brings a key capable of overturning the world's technological order: the Ω element. During an investigation, special projects engineer Lu Boshu discovers this “living” metal, but his discovery draws the attention of the transnational criminal organization RedAnt, which sets out to hunt him down. To protect a new alloy formula so advanced it makes rare earths seem insignificant, Lu Boshu smelts the alloy and devises a “staff-script” cipher, sealing the core fragments and activation key inside a pair of nunchucks. He then fakes his death and disappears, leaving his young son Lu Tao to grow up alone in bitterness and isolation. Ten years later, a long-delayed, iron-gray letter forces college junior Lu Tao to flee and search for his father. A derailed train in the wilderness, a mountain laboratory, a high-seas boxing ring, World War II ruins… Natural disasters and human schemes collide, and Lu Tao must decipher his father's legacy, the “staff-script,” while surviving repeated assassination attempts. Its sixteen coded forms use a staff as a pen and dance as a key. When the once-cold young man takes hold of the alloy nunchucks, passion and responsibility ignite the loneliness within him: save his father, expose the mole, destroy the giant cannon, and redeem the alloy, until at last the fallen meteorite is transformed into a monument to peace. The metallic roar of hardcore mecha, the searing tears of a father and son's redemption, the absurd humor of a road adventure, and the ultimate question of how technology can serve humanity all come together in this science-fiction novel spanning suspense, adventure, and coming of age.