As the blinding white light receded like a tide, Li Wen opened his eyes again to the smell of gunpowder mixed with rust and damp rot assaulting his nostrils.
He found himself kneeling on one knee on a small mound of rubble.
As far as the eye could see stretched the vast ruins of a city that had suffered a cataclysm: the Doomsday City District.
Broken overpasses, like dying steel serpents, were twisted and smashed into the cracked asphalt, their rust-covered rebar skeletons exposed to the air.
The remaining glass of a half-collapsed skyscraper's curtain wall refracted an eerie light in the dimness, illuminating the burning car wrecks and toppled billboards scattered across the street below.
A fine gray dust filled the air. A broken neon sign for the "Star Department Store" still flickered, its light wavering against a wall pockmarked with blackened craters, creating a particularly desolate scene.
