Rust Patch

The world is not going bad. The world is dying slowly. Acid rain is the data condensed from the sky, rust spots are the scabs of broken rules, and lag is a respite when this dimension saves memory. Those who survived called all this erosion marks - only Lu Mian could hear its wail. The most inconspicuous private mechanic in the Erosion Zone, he makes a living by repairing other people's scrapped prosthetics. He can repair machines, but he can also see the cracks in people's hearts, the fractures in the skin of the world. The price is: every time he feels the same, his nerves are scorched an inch; every time he saves a person, he is one step closer to an invisible end point. Others would collapse after being hurt once, but he was still repairing after being hurt a thousand times - he never asked himself why he couldn't stop. Until he discovered that those who should arrest him would never kill him. They're not here to hunt him, they're here to protect him. The woman who always appears at critical moments never talks about her past, but always knows where the danger is before he does. And in the deepest night of the Erosion Zone, a mad mechanic whispered on the ruins: What the Ember Anchor Project created was never a warrior—it was just a patch. A person who patches everyone, finally discovers that he himself is the written patch.