"Hey --" The fearsome indignity of having a knife to his throat overshadows the accusations the stranger is spitting, but then even that fades away as Shen Luguang remembers --

Walking through the market of a southern city, still four hours left until noon but the air already so hot it raises a few drops of sweat on the back of his neck, a laughing child runs through the crowd with a toy kite trailing behind them. They crash into his legs and fall back onto their rear, face screwed up as they start to cry. He coos sympathetically and picks them up, bouncing them a little to make them giggle before he asks them where their mother might be.

A shadow falls over the street, cast by a monster of a sea creature, floating in the middle of a cloud of qi that clouds the senses and claws at the mind. Its tentacles plunge towards the ground; he instinctively turns and tosses the child over the counter of the nearest shop, hoping they won't be harmed in their fall -- he feels himself struck in the back.

He wakes up in a cell.