Where the Bridge Collapsed

In the near future, Genesis Corporation releases an implant chip that can "optimize" the brain. The genius Lin Bai dies when the first-generation chip overloads. His father, Lin Jingshan, falls out with his business partner, Pei Zhenyu, setting in motion a twenty-year obsession. Pei Zhenyu's daughter, Pei Zhiyu, undergoes an emotion-removal surgery and becomes a "mistake-proof" human machine. She takes charge of her father's business empire, but loses the ability to love, feel pain, or dream. As the chips spread among the global elite, a cognitive reconstruction quietly reshapes humanity in the name of "efficiency": writers can no longer figure out why they write, and mothers forget the warmth of their children's embraces. The last piece of data Lin Bai left behind is the only key to uncovering the truth. In the twenty-four hours before computing power collapses, fathers and daughters, former subordinates, and survivors are forced to choose: cling to lives ruled by calculations, or reclaim that "soil that has never been calculated." A bridge has fallen, but people still have to keep walking, one step at a time.