C-rank integration level. Qi Rourou. Male. A five-year Eraser veteran.

He had apprenticed with an opera master at the age of three. The master, delighted by how naturally his looks and frame suited the huadan role, renamed him, changed his clothes, and trained him with great care. Fourteen years slipped past in this way.

Then, opera stopped putting food on tables. His master, a former comedic-relief-role performer, switched trades and took up shoe repair. Meanwhile, his senior brother, trained in the martial painted-face role, used those same skills to become the busiest pig butcher for miles around.

Most butchers needed men from their customers’ households to hold the pig and pin its legs, but his senior brother always handled it alone, with a large knife like a mythical warrior’s Green Dragon Crescent Blade.[1]

In short, if he had been born seventy or eighty years earlier, the name Qi Rourou could...