The Age of Steam: Survivors of the Century-Long Plague

Xiao Mu was supposed to die in the collapse of an ancient tomb, but he opens his eyes to find himself lying in freezing seawater. He has awakened in a strange world of steam valves, gear-driven pipes, and mutated flora and fauna. History diverged after the Ming Dynasty, leaving a hundred-year gap, and humanity now ekes out a precarious existence across nineteen isolated zones. Life in the Ninth Zone is harsh and oppressive—ordinary people spend their entire lives without ever crossing the electrified fences that seal them in. Relying on the fragmented memories of the body he now inhabits, Xiao Mu struggles to survive in a soot-choked, salt-tinged district where residents burn mutated insect eggs for warmth and fight bitterly over meager rations of black oil. His only link to finding a way home lies in a cracked jade disk he carries—an artifact that seems to provoke unnatural mutations in the plants and animals around him. But his fragile routine shatters when signs of a catastrophe that devastated the neighboring First Zone half a year ago begin to surface in the Ninth Zone. Fever, decay, and crimson fungal threads creep through the dark alleyways. Branded a suspected carrier of the contagion, Xiao Mu must race against time—before the patrol breaks down his door—to unlock the secrets of the ancient tomb and the jade disk, and carve out his only path to survival.