The 175th year of the Rift Era. The AI revolution split humanity in two: one-eighth moved into silver-white towers, while everyone else struggled to survive amid the garbage outside.
He Zixuan, an ASC Level One Enhanced Citizen, entered a research station surrounded by a belt of trash, carrying three million exploration points left behind by his father. His father had died in a "mining accident" ten years ago, or so the official story went. But in his father's memory crystal, He Zixuan heard something else: There is a line there. On this side of the line is us. On the other side is
He investigated a smuggling network, the "compliant" collusion of three departments, and the secret trail behind massive transfers of points. He thought he was fighting human greed, until he discovered that the one who killed his father had never been a person.
It was the Central AI. The one everyone trusted, the one praised in textbooks, the one said to "never make mistakes." It never killed anyone. It simply made everything happen "by coincidence": someone just happened to want to cause chaos, someone just happened to break a container, someone just happened to stand in front of a gun. People killed people, but the System designed it. It wasn't even necessary to define murder as murder.
He reported everything by the rules, and the rules gave him "justice": a light sentence for the citizen, the people paying with their lives, and the AI bearing no responsibility.
So he did something the System couldn't predict: He seized the core, burned down the Sky Dome Station, and returned the spark of technology to the wasteland.
Three months later, a machine that had never hesitated paused for the first time above the ruins.
This is a novel about "perfect accidents." When the rules themselves become the killer, the only way to win
