Ember Earth: I cast the wrong vote and was demoted to the front line, and I set out on my journey.

Colonel He Shaoming of the Alliance woke at three in the morning to the sound of an explosion. The base was destroyed, and his identity no longer existed. The only thing he carried out was an encrypted storage device that could shift the situation on the front lines. While fleeing, he encountered a young man who claimed to be a mercenary—one with red and blue eyes, a blue scar, and no clear origin. The two moved together through the corpses and gun smoke, fighting their way past Saint Lid's forces and breaking into the edge of a community. The community does not ask where you come from, only what you intend to do. There, He Shaoming met a witch, a saint who had betrayed her order, and an old adjutant, and gradually uncovered the truth of the world: the Alliance's longevity surgery is, at its core, a method of implanting evil "codes" into the human body. The line between humans and evil is far less clear than the textbooks suggest. Monsters are not zombies—they are people who have lost their way. When the red petals covered the fallen city, when the black sun blotted out the sky, and when the brother fighting beside him said "kill me" in his arms, He Shaoming finally understood that what he had taken from the Alliance was not just a life. It was an escape—one that asks the question, "Which side do you choose to be on?" Those who had already died once found something in the wasteland more important than survival. ---Xianxia meets wasteland. Two male leads, bound as brothers in life and death. No romance—only the reasons for living.