The Nonmetallic Era

Qi Ming has had a secret since he was five: he can see things other people can't.

Glowing particles drifting through the air, transparent people perched on telephone poles, unfamiliar figures holding umbrellas in the pouring rain. No one believes him. Doctors say he's ill. Six years of medication do nothing to make the visions go away.

Then he enrolls at Qingtong No. 3 High School, and those “visions” start talking to him.

The cool, aloof school beauty hands him a questionnaire. “There's a yellow-green glow coming from your pupils. What is it?” A neuroscience student grins at him around a lollipop. “See you tonight, little guy.” The chemistry teacher wipes a beaker without looking up. “Does the air smell sweet to you? That's oxygen.”

Gradually, Qi Ming realizes that the “visions” he sees are the twenty-two nonmetallic elements that make up the world. They have taken human form and gone undercover in human society, waiting for a war that has been raging for three hundred years.

And Qi Ming is Earth's final trump card.

The silver-haired emperor of the Sulfuric Acid Empire has been lying in wait underground for three hundred years, and his first claw is reaching toward the grounds of Qingtong No. 3 High School. How can one timid eighteen-year-old boy, twenty-two humanoid elements, and a group of bewildered classmates protect their city?

“Why are you staring blankly at the air?”

“Because... there's a person-shaped thing in it.”

Urban supernatural powers · Personified chemistry · Passionate coming-of-age · Ensemble cast defending their city

Watch a timid boy become the elements' one and only anchor.