A million-word epic blending cyberpunk with Taoist culture.
In New Bianjing in 2077, the megacorporation Jixia Academy controls everything through its neural-link system, the SkyNet. Society is ruled by data and reason. The protagonist, Mo Shiqi, is an amnesiac, unlicensed “Daoist doctor” who makes a living repairing cybernetic limbs in the undercity's ghost market. During a manhunt, the purple markings on his palm suddenly awaken, granting him the power to write “Ink Characters” out of thin air and change the rules of reality: a forbidden force the Academy has hunted for sixty years.
As the mystery of his origins gradually unfolds, Mo Shiqi discovers that he is not human, but a genetic clone of Mo Ling, the first person to awaken the power of the Ink Characters. Before him, sixteen others who awakened the Ink Characters had already died in the Academy's experiments and purges. To uncover the truth and rescue Bai Nianjun, his creator, who is imprisoned in the virtual paradise known as White Jade Capital, Mo Shiqi embarks on a path to awakening that spans both the real and virtual worlds.
The novel weaves the philosophical wisdom of the Dao De Jing into cyborg technology. Amid neon ruins and virtual data realms, it explores the timeless questions of human nature and the Dao, rules and freedom, inheritance and transcendence.
