COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

Li Wei rummaged through the catastrophic drawer beside his desk, emerging victorious with a battered-looking tablet, its casing scuffed like it had survived both budget cuts and arson. He tapped the side, and a hologram unfolded midair—a wide mesh of node clusters pulsed faintly red across a map of the Pacific Rim.

"You know the nodes—the Tag-Registry hubs we use to stabilise dimensional boundaries?" he asked, tapping a blinking cluster off the coast of Japan.

Eathan, still mentally rebooting from everything he'd learned in the last conversation, nodded warily. Li Wei gave him a look like a teacher waiting for a toddler to name the colour red.

"Those nodes?" he said. "They were only installed about five hundred years ago. Practically new."

Eathan blinked. "Is that considered… recent?"

"For the cosmic timeline? Yeah," Li Wei said, leaning back in his chair, which groaned ominously as he kicked it onto two legs. "Before that, it was all paper ledgers, rune-marked borders, and a lot of divine finger-crossing."

Under Eathan's dumbfounded gaze, he tossed a stylus, where it bounced off a half-eaten protein bar and some forgotten incense sticks. "When One Greatness finally noticed that the realm boundaries were thinning, they panicked. Decided rules weren't enough anymore. They needed infrastructure."

Li Wei's mouth twitched slightly—whether in amusement or bitterness, Eathan couldn't tell.

"So they rewrote the Boundary Conduct Ordinance and slapped on some spiritual duct tape," he said, "and left the rest of us to figure out the part where, you know, it actually had to work."

He swiped the hologram to a new slide: long, thin ley lines pulsing between techno-spiritual towers—each one blinking erratically like a faulty server rack.

"The nodes were supposed to help. They did… for a while," he admitted. "But syncing the node network with mortal tech? Nightmare. You ever try installing a divine stabilisation lattice on top of a city that thinks Wi-Fi dead zones are a crisis?"

Li Wei rubbed his forehead with a groan that sounded years older than he looked, then he flipped to another hologram slide, where even thinner flashing leylines pulsed between data towers.

"Every time mortals invent something new," he said grimly, "it throws ripple interference across the boundary fields. They don't realize it, but every innovation—faster data transfer, AR emotion syncing, neuro-responsive architecture—rattles the realms. They don't realize it, but all that innovation leaks noise into the fabric of space."

Eathan gawked at him. "Wait, you're telling me—"

"Yeah," Li Wei said dryly. "Your wristpads are screwing up existence."

Eathan nearly dropped his chair backwards. "You're joking."

Li Wei gave him the most unimpressed look known to man.

"I wish."

He jabbed the stylus at him for emphasis.

"Not only your wristpad. Your neural uplink, your AR filters, your algorithm-driven dream logs—all of it contributes to boundary destabilization." He ticked off each point with exaggerated patience. "Electromagnetic clutter. Emotional resonance. Meme propagation velocity. Pop culture entropy. You name it. The modern mortal society is practically one giant chaos generator. Nodes can't keep up anymore. Neither can RealmNet."

Eathan stared at him like he'd just been told memes were a Class B cosmic hazard (he did).

"...You're saying that every time someone posts a MixTok dance, it's like kicking a hole in the dimension?"

Li Wei grinned without humour. "Pretty much."

He spun the stylus between his fingers absently. "They slapped a 'just patch it' sticker on mortal progress for the last three centuries. Guess who's holding the duct tape now?" He jerked a thumb at himself. "And a few other poor bastards like me who didn't leave when they saw the first node rupture in a grocery store."

Eathan sat there, feeling vaguely like he was about to be sued by the cosmos for negligence. "So…" he croaked, "that's why rift incidents are increasing?"

"No one planned for the mortals to evolve this fast. Not the spirit bureaucrats. Not the old deities. Not even the guys scribbling the BCO in gold ink."

Li Wei exhaled through his nose. He gestured grandly at the buzzing command floor outside.

"And now? Mortals are pushing reality faster than the heavens can patch it."

Then, more quietly, he fixed his eyes on Eathan.

"If there's one thing I'll hammer into your head, intern—"

He jabbed a finger at him.

"Never underestimate mortals." Li Wei leaned in, voice low and firm. "Not their speed. Not their influence. And definitely not the chaos they create without even trying."

Eathan sat frozen, a little stunned. Li Wei's voice dropped lower, almost amused in a grim way.

"You thought 7G was harmless?"

"You thought memes were harmless?"

There was a beat of silence as Eathan struggled to respond.

Li Wei tilted his head, smiling crookedly. "Every viral dance you post rattles a node somewhere, intern. The power you hold."

Eathan tried to process that, but his brain was glitching somewhere between existential horror and vague personal guilt.

"But still," he mumbled, "to compare mortals to deities—"

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Li Wei glanced up at him. For once, the sarcasm ebbed out of his voice, leaving something quieter.

"I almost ascended once," he said casually.

Eathan blinked.

"...Ascended? Like—half-immortal?"

Li Wei shrugged, looking oddly nonchalant about it.

"Qualified at twenty-six. Jade Deity even personally offered me sponsorship into the Mid-Heavenly Court Branch."

A beat.

"Turned it down."

Eathan's mouth dropped open. "Why in the heavens would you turn that down?"

Li Wei spun his chair idly with one foot, back to smirking like he'd refused a nasty underground slave contract. "Because once you ascend..." he said, "you stop seeing mortals as real. You forget what chaos smells like when it's ground-level."

His voice was steady, with a tinge of fatigue. But unapologetic. "Mortals—the people born into a system they never asked for—still have to deal with every leak, every glitch, every damn storm."

He twirled the stylus between his fingers again.

"If every capable mortal just bailed to Heaven because it was shinier... who'd be left to patch the ship sinking underneath?"

For a long moment, only the soft hum of holograms and the exhausted clicking of runes filled the space. Eathan stared, the weight of it all slowly sinking in.

"You stayed because you knew someone had to clean up the mess," he finally muttered.

Li Wei cracked a crooked grin. "Nah," he said. "I stayed because I'm stupidly stubborn."

He threw a crumpled sticky note into the bin, missing by a mile. Li Wei cursed under his breath, shifting the conversation with a flick of his wrist. He nudged a precarious tower of overstuffed rift reports off a second chair, clearing a pathetic little space for Eathan to sit.

"Enough philosophical rambling," Li Wei said, voice dripping dry amusement. "Let's see if you can plug holes faster than mortals invent new ones."

No sooner had he spoken than Eathan's [SYSTEM] interface blinked to life with a crisp notification:

[Side Quest (new!)]

Field Stabilisation Trial!

▸ Complete three simulated containment tasks. (Progress: 0/3)

Reward: +100 Karma, +15 Qi Tokens, 2% Integrity

Eathan swallowed dryly. His seat hadn't even warmed yet.

Leaning over, Li Wei tapped a few commands into the battered tablet, and the air around them shimmered. Three rune simulations sprang into life, projections flickering between half-real and semi-transparent.

Eathan gaped. "You can do that?"

"Mhm. It's training time," Li Wei announced, lounging back in his creaky chair with his mystery thermos. "Three common field failures. You solve them within three minutes each, or you owe me an extra coffee run. Ready?"

"No," Eathan said automatically, "but go ahead."

"Good attitude."

The first projection wavered into focus: a glowing tag-node rune crackling violently, thin trails of smoke curling up from the overheating sigils.

"Node Burnout," Li Wei said casually. "One of the fun ones."

Eathan's [Calamity Radar] immediately pinged, the rising heat signature feeling like a pressure cooker about to explode.

He racked his brain, remembered Taeril's lectures and Li Wei's grumblings about "sticking receipts where it hurts"—and dove for the portable barcode scanner on his hip while activating [Receipt Scanner]. Skimming through barcodes like his life depended on it, he found a cooling symbol: a stylized snowflake, hidden on an expired soft drink label.

He printed, ripped, and slapped the [Cooling Sealing Talisman] directly onto the smoking rune. With a muted fzzzt, the heat dropped almost instantly, stabilizing the node back to a steady glow.

Eathan wiped his forehead. "First one down."

Li Wei, sipping lazily, gave a slow clap. The second projection pulsed promptly into existence: a spiritual anchor—a glowing geometric pattern etched into the floor—slowly shifting off-center, distorting the surrounding energy field like a bad Photoshop filter.

"Anchor Drift," he narrated. "If you screw this one up, spatial layering collapses. No pressure."

Eathan gritted his teeth, quickly scanning for stabilisers. No anchors on hand. No rune stabilizer rods either.

Think, think, think—

Then he spotted a heavy industrial barcode sticker on a nearby equipment crate.

Weight. Tether.

He printed a [Weighted Receipt Talisman], dashing over and slapping it squarely onto the anchor's core. In a drag, the drifting stopped with a sluggish shudder. The field straightened like a wrinkled bedsheet being yanked taut.

"Two down," Eathan panted, feeling a bit nauseous from all the abrupt changes in environment.

Li Wei raised an eyebrow, mildly impressed but said nothing. Without giving him a chance to rest, the third and final simulation kicked in; it was a chaotic ripple of reality distortions, like a film reel stuck on fast-forward. Mortals in the projections started repeating the same two-second actions—laughing, walking, falling over—in endless loops.

"Data Echo Distortion," Li Wei said, waving a lazy hand. "Registry glitch. Mortal memories stuck. Need to treat it carefully or you fry the data feed."

Eathan's brain raced. He couldn't brute-force this. He needed precision. He knelt, feeling for the source of the distortions—and found the ruptured memory anchor embedded in the node console. Without hesitation, he applied [Minor Reconstitution] to the broken anchor's structure, manually threading the registry's feedback lines back into place.

The looping glitches slowed, then stopped. The [SYSTEM] pinged brightly:

You have completed [Side Quest]:

Field Stabilization Trial (3/3)

You have been rewarded: +100 Karma, +15 Qi Tokens, 2% Integrity

[Integrity] has increased by 2% (34% → 36%)

Eathan flopped backwards into the chair, breathing hard but triumphant. His [SYSTEM] immediately chimed another notification:

[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED!]

▸ SKILL: Ledger Tap (Lv. 1)

▸ USE: Access Cloud-Jade Ledger Incident Lists and view real-time sabotage, rift, and node Alerts

▸ COST: 30 Qi Tokens/minute

▸ COOLDOWN: 5 minutes

At the message, Eathan swerved to the commander and told him about the gain.

Li Wei, who had been observing quietly with his thermos in hand, finally gave a low whistle. "Cloud-Jade Ledger access?" he said, eyebrows lifting behind his sunglasses. "Your little OS actually authorized you for this?"

Eathan blinked, stunned. "Is that… not normal?"

Li Wei let out a short laugh. "Kid, most mortals don't even see the Ledger interface until their fifth audit year—if they survive that long."

He jerked his chin toward him.

"Don't just sit there gawking. Turn it on. Tell me what you see."

Gulping nervously, Eathan focused.

[Ledger Tap (Lv. 1)] has been activated!

Tutorial mode initialising...

No Qi Token required for first-time activation…

The world blurred—and then unfolded into transparent holographic layers stacked over reality. Color-coded grids, shimmering text, and node coordinates blinked in and out across an endless virtual sea.

Warning sirens muted behind a veil of ethereal glass.

[AREA 003 LIVE STATUS]

Active Rift Alerts: 6

Sabotage Flags: 5

Distress Signals: 3

Cloud-Jade Node Diagnostics: 74%

Overall Status: Stable

Eathan blinked at the stimuli, almost falling out of his seat.

"Captain Li," he squeaked. "Is it normal for Area 003 to have six active rifts and five active sabotage alerts all at once?"

Li Wei sipped his suspicious coffee concoction and exhaled long-sufferingly.

"Yes," he said without missing a beat. "Unfortunately."

He leaned back, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses like a man who had accepted the tragicomedy of his existence long ago.

"Welcome to mid-tier realm maintenance, intern."