01 Chaotic Beginnings

In the scorched wastelands of 2082, the Enlightened World Empire hides a brutal secret behind its polished political façade. Though the Enhanced Duplicate Combat Personnel Program was officially shut down years earlier, its engineered soldiers—“duplicates”—are still being bred, bought, and pitted against one another in lethal trials known only to the elite.One of them is Triple 7, a raven‑haired duplicate who awakens in the middle of a nightmarish battlefield. Surrounded by explosions, burning grass, and the bodies of her own kind, she realizes something is wrong: every other fighter wears black, while she alone is dressed in white. “Why am I the only one?” she wonders as she dodges tracer fire and scavenges weapons from the fallen. Her instincts—and her training—take over. With a pistol in one hand and a katana in the other, she cuts through waves of attackers in a desperate bid to survive a culling she was never meant to outlive.Her victory is short‑lived. Triple 7 awakens again, this time immobilized inside a glowing capsule, unable to move or speak. Memories of the battle flicker through her mind as she tries to understand whether she won… or was simply captured for another purpose.Far away, in a blistering desert, wealthy buyer Chin‑Yau arrives at a hidden bunker to inspect the latest “merchandise.” Inside, rows of capsules line the walls, each containing a restrained duplicate—wounded, unconscious, and displayed like high‑priced weapons. The sales associate assures him, “The cream of the crop is right through this door,” as she activates screens showing each duplicate’s performance in the previous day’s deadly trials.Chin‑Yau is unimpressed by brute strength or flashy gunplay. He wants precision. Grace. A living scalpel.Then he sees her.Capsule 777 glows softly in the dim bunker. Triple 7 appears unscarred, almost serene, her dark hair framing a face too refined for the carnage she survived. The footage below her capsule shows her moving like “lightning,” weaving through enemies with effortless, lethal elegance. Chin‑Yau is captivated. She is exactly what he came for.He snaps his fingers. “I’d like to inspect this one more thoroughly.”The associate hesitates—Triple 7 was “an anomaly… wasn’t supposed to survive”—but Chin‑Yau has already made his choice.“If you meet my expectations,” he murmurs to the unconscious warrior, “I will call you Ying‑Tai.”A new identity. A new master. And a destiny Triple 7 never asked for.