Age of Rusty Bones

Three thousand years after the collapse of Tiangong Civilization, the world was divided into three layers: the humans in the clean zone lived on lies, the gangs in the rust belt fought among the residue, and the rust people in the core were silent and lonely. Sixteen-year-old Lu Chen grew up in Gray Town and was born with mechanical lines on his left arm. He thought it was a birthmark, until at dawn after a certain bone rust storm, he "heard" the voice of the heart-shaped rust bone outside the town - not a language, but some older sadness. The moment he touched the rusty bones, he became a "reverberation body": a signal receiver left by Tiangong civilization. The Jingting calls him the polluter and wants to take him to "purify"; the Rust Gang sees him as a tool and wants to use him to enter the core; and the Rust people deep in the core have waited for three thousand years just to ask him a question. During his escape, Lu Chen met Su Tie, a rust gang thug whose right face was being mechanized. She needed him to enter the core to find her mother; he met Bai Jin, the inspector of Jingting. Thirty years ago, he let Lu Chen's adoptive father go. Now he lets Lu Chen go, just to ask the question that only Tiangong can answer. When Lu Chen finally stood in front of Tiangong's heart, he faced three choices: restart Tiangong to gain power but lose freedom, destroy Tiangong to protect mankind but sacrifice all the people, or - become a permanent translator connecting the scattered and the whole, so that loneliness is finally no longer lonely.