Lin Wang woke up in a pitch-black, collapsed ancestral hall, surrounded by eerie paper figures, a paper bride, and a paper wedding procession playing a suona. The bride on the paper sedan chair smiled unnaturally. Lin Wang had no memory of how he got there. He was a psychological counselor from Earth, but suddenly he possessed the memories of another person, also named Lin Wang, from a different world, a people called the Northerners. Two sets of memories surged in his mind. Realizing the danger, he hid under the offering table as the paper figures entered, chanting about a wedding. He discovered he was wearing a bright red groom's robe, making him the intended groom. Determined to escape, he grabbed a dark gray wooden plaque from the ground and crept toward the exit, but the paper figures noticed him and advanced, chanting that the groom had arrived. He woke up in a daze.He was in an office at the Haoyue Daily newspaper agency, covered in cold sweat. He still held the wooden plaque from the dream. Before he could understand, a darkness began to devour the office, and a giant fleshy flower with teeth and vines attacked him. In a state of unnatural calm, he saw an energy node in the flower's head. Driven by a strange hunger, he reached into the flower and absorbed the energy, killing the monster. A group from the Public Security Bureau, led by a man named Xu Zhi and a carefree girl named Tian Taozi, arrived after a grenade explosion. Tian Taozi had thrown the grenade, almost hitting Lin Wang, but the flower's body protected him. Lin Wang pretended to be a victim rescued from the monster. Tian Taozi, feeling guilty, introduced herself and offered to treat him to a meal. Lin Wang agreed to go with them to the Public Security Bureau for questioning, as he had nowhere else to go and needed to understand this strange world. The wooden plaque from the dream was real, and he had brought it into reality. He was now in a world where anomalies and monsters existed, and he had just killed one with his bare hands. He began to suspect he was not an ordinary person, and that his identity as a Northerner was important. The Public Security Bureau would be his first step into this new, dangerous world.
