COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

The jet descended into Shanghai like a ghost skimming a sea of lights.

Through the small oval windows, Eathan could see the endless veins of neon and traffic threading across the dark ground, shimmering under the midnight haze. Beneath them was Shanghai—the ultra metropolitan city ever blooming in rivers of vibrancy and glass, sprawling far beyond the horizon.

Eathan leaned against the cabin window, blinking at the surreal sight.

Wow.

He decided at that exact moment that he would treat this as a field trip. After all, he was quite good at adapting to all sorts of situations, even when they might involve immortals and other un-humanly things.

They disembarked straight onto a private terminal—no customs, no announcements, no witnesses. Taeril led the way, moving with the casual momentum of someone who had bulldozed realms before breakfast. Chewie followed, hands stuffed into the pockets of her jacket, chewing gum with the look of a preteen about to commit casual murder if asked to fill one more form.

Eathan trailed behind them both, still wearing his COZMART jacket like a confused intern forced onto a life-threatening corporate field trip (he wasn't exactly off with that).

A matte-black electric SUV awaited them beyond the private terminal, its chassis etched with faint, shifting runes. The driver wore no mortal soul signature—a puppet contractor, Eathan guessed, tuned to ignore anything it wasn't paid to see. They slid into the vehicle without a word. Taeril leaned his head back against the seat, eyes closed. Chewie played some mindless mobile game.

Only Eathan, stuffed between them, was still trying to make sense of what was happening.

But the moment they arrived at their destination, his jaws practically hit the floor.

Area 001 HQ wasn't a government building, nor was it some mystical fortress buried underground. It was a skyscraper—glittering, glass-walled, twisting up into the clouds like a second spear aiming for the stars.

To mortal eyes, it would look like another cold corporate tower, but to Eathan's sight—still half-stimulated since activating [Ledger Tap]—the building pulsed like a heart. Barriers layered over barriers, spiritual arteries branching out across Shanghai like a vascular map. Above the entrance, a massive sigil hovered—half-tiger, half-wing, half-storm—the Boundary Seal that marked the White Tiger's domain.

"...This is a node headquarters?"

Eathan muttered under his breath, neck craning upward. Chewie gave a soft snort beside him.

"Mister White doesn't do 'small scale.' Even his ramen stands have three different pocket dimensions built into the kitchen."

Strolling in, however, Eathan found the lobby to be eerily silent.

Polished black marble floors, spiral staircases that seemed to float without visible support, and banks of elevators inlaid with quietly glowing talismans… The entire setup was screaming money, and not the mortal kind, either—the kind that moved silently behind the curtain of reality.

Waiting at the center of it all was a woman—or rather, something that looked like a woman.

She wore a sharply tailored black suit and white gloves, her long silver hair braided neatly down her back. When she lifted her head, Eathan caught a fleeting flicker of rabbit ears before they shimmered away under an active glamour spell.

The woman bowed crisply at the waist.

"Deputy Director Meng Yao. Area 001 Field Operations. Welcome back, Commander White."

Her voice was calm, steady—but there was a tautness to her posture, a tightly wound coil that didn't match the smoothness of her words.

Taeril nodded once, loose but steady. The next second, Meng Yao produced a slim cigarette from a silver case tucked at her side. She offered it to him in one fluid, practiced motion—like a ritual that had played out a thousand times before.

Taeril accepted without a word, slipping the cigarette between his lips. A rune-lighter sparked once, catching the cigarette's tip in a soft gold flare. The scent of burning tobacco—drier, sharper than the casual cigarettes the man usually chain-smoked—filled the air.

Eathan blinked, unsettled. He watched from the side as the white-haired man exhaled slowly, the ember flaring to a gold hue.

"Report," Taeril said.

Meng Yao straightened, producing a sleek holopad from thin air and tapping swiftly through a stream of projected screens.

"Thirty-three active rift breaches across Area 001's mortal sectors. Stabilization nodes at Sector 17B and 24F have collapsed. The Spirit Registry for the Yangpu district is at 48% function and falling."

Eathan tried to keep up, but the rapid technical jargon was making his head spin.

"Furthermore..." She hesitated—a flicker, almost invisible.

Taeril's eyes narrowed just slightly.

"Speak."

Meng Yao clicked to a new screen, expression unreadable.

"Furthermore, sir, emergency funding has been frozen."

A beat.

"By Council order."

Her head lowered along with her voice, and so did the temperature in the room.

"Without immediate intervention, Area 001 will drop below equilibrium compliance in six mortal days."

Chewie, chewing gum lazily, let out a soft "tsk" sound, while Eathan's brain was still scrambling to process the situation. He shifted uncomfortably, glancing between them.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Six days until... what? Global spiritual collapse? The skies fall? Emily and I marry in the streets?

He opened his mouth to ask, but Taeril spoke first. His voice was still calm, quiet even, but the air around him shifted—pressure sinking like the weight of an oncoming monsoon.

"Who authorized the freezes?"

Meng Yao flicked to a new screen, and two names glowed in sharp white text:

[Qiongqi | Seat 005 | Realm: Demon]

[Ao Bing | Seat 006 | Realm: Demon]

Eathan didn't know them personally, but he didn't need to. He could guess.

Taeril closed his eyes for a beat. When he opened them again, there was nothing lazy left in his face. "They want Area 001 to collapse before the hearing."

"Classic council politics," Chewie muttered under her breath. "Create a fire, then charge you for arson."

Enemies moved fastest when you were already bleeding.

"Of course they did." Taeril took a final, measured drag from the cigarette, the ember flaring again—then snuffed it out neatly against a talisman-sealed ashtray embedded in the nearby wall. When he straightened fully, even the marble underfoot seemed to brace itself.

He turned, catching Eathan full in the chest with a gaze that pinned him in place.

"Congratulations, Eathan," Taeril said smoothly. His mouth tilted into a smile—sharp-edged and utterly humourless. "You're getting a promotion."

Eathan blinked.

That did not sound like a good thing.

Before he could protest, a familiar chime echoed in his mind.

[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION

[Side Quest (new!)]

Emergency Rift Suppression Deployment!

▸ Assist in stabilizing critical nodes within Area 001.

▸ Complete rift suppression under live Ledger Tap monitoring.

Reward: Distributed upon completion of Side Quest

Eathan stared at the glowing prompt, then he stared at Taeril.

"...Boss, commander—sir." He sniffed. "I'm just a college sophomore with midterms coming up."

Taeril, not missing a beat, clapped a hand onto his shoulder with all the gentleness of a falling mountain. The force nearly buckled Eathan's knees.

"Not anymore."

"…"

He opened his mouth to protest—but the white-haired man had already turned away, loose sleeves whispering against the polished floor. Meng Yao, unfazed, flicked a wrist promptly after his departure. A new hologram unfurled into the air, displaying Area 001's current equilibrium dashboard.

Eathan gulped.

It was worse than he thought.

Dozens of rift flags blinked in angry red across the digital map. Three, five, eight—all clustered too close to densely populated districts. Meng Yao tapped a few zones, enlarging them. Statistical graphs curled into view: spiritual leakage rates, node destabilization charts, backflow incidents.

None of them looked promising.

"Here's the situation," she said crisply, voice cutting through the rising anxiety knotting in Eathan's chest. "Area 001 has thirty-three flagged rift anomalies."

She gestured to the display of district areas.

"Stabilization rates are dropping across all registered nodes, and if we don't suppress the ones near mortal sectors first, equilibrium will collapse by the next audit cycle."

She glanced sideways at him.

"No pressure."

Eathan's mouth opened, a dry wheeze escaping. Chewie, leaning lazily against the adjacent pillar, snickered. Meng Yao turned back to the hologram. Her gloved fingers slid across the screen, highlighting three rift points in glowing orange. She tapped a few rift markers, enlarging their tags:

Class D: Minor leak. Static anomaly.

Class C: Stable tear, active hostile spirit seepage.

Class B: Node anchor collapse in progress. Emergency response needed.

"First priority is to contain D-Class and C-Class rifts, which mostly occur near mortals. The focus is to prevent civilian injuries, spiritual poisoning, or panic. They're minor class leaks, but if left untreated, they can chain-react into a full collapse of the support nodes. Then, we go for the rarer B-Class sites that could escalate into A-Class disasters if left unchecked."

Eathan nodded along in an attempt to keep up—until her next words hit him squarely in the gut.

"You'll be leading information flow."

He choked.

"Me?"

He pointed at himself.

"Me?"

Meng Yao didn't even blink.

"You're carrying [Ledger Tap]. You're faster than mortal Regulators, so you can flag anomalies on the fly.

"If you don't call them out in time, we miss the breach windows and we lose the node.

"If we lose the node, we lose the district."

She said it as if she were reading out a grocery list. Eathan didn't even have time to ask her how she knew of the skill he'd only gained barely a day ago. Chewie, already twirling a printed "Clearance Receipt" Talisman between her fingers, added helpfully:

"No pressure."

Meng Yao ignored her, gesturing to the pulsing rings on the holo-map. "Activate [Ledger Tap] only when necessary," she said, glancing at Eathan pointedly. "I heard that each minute costs Qi Tokens, and that you also have a five-minute cooldown between activations."

She paused, and perhaps seeing Eathan's dumbfounded expression, her lips curled ever-so-slightly.

"Treat it like breathing through a straw underwater. Time your inhales. But don't miss your breath, or you'll drown."

Eathan swallowed hard, feeling the [SYSTEM] pulse faintly at the edge of his mind—an unreadable glint hovering there, almost amused.

As they moved toward the elevator, Meng Yao's voice grew a touch softer—almost too quiet to catch. "Equilibrium isn't just numbers," she said, adjusting her cufflinks. "Every rift tears at the thin fabric separating realms. If we let too many pile up... reality itself weakens. And then the Ledger flags the territory. Auditors come down. Investigations start. Sector autonomy is revoked."

She tapped her holopad once more. A brief flicker of red warning marks spattered across the top of the map.

[AREA 001 LIVE STATUS]:

▸ Equilibrium: 52%

▸ Cloud-Jade Audit Timer: Countdown Activated

▸ Rift Status: Red

▸ Overall Status: Extremely Unstable

If the equilibrium hits 50%...

Eathan gulped.

The Cloud-Jade Ledger would automatically issue an Audit Warrant. And an audit strike would be far, far worse than a few unstable subway nodes.

As Meng Yao spoke, a belated realization struck him:

He wasn't just tagging along.

If he didn't scout accurately, or if he missed fractures or unstable nodes, everyone else would be flying blind. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that their lives, the sector's stability, and the Mortal Realm's hidden balance depended on real-time surveillance.

Eathan gulped.

No pressure.

As they stepped into the elevator, the silver panels gleamed with their distorted reflections. Only then did Meng Yao glance sideways at Eathan, voice dropping even lower.

"Commander White..."

She hesitated—just for a fraction of a second—and in that hesitation, Eathan caught something he hadn't seen in her until now.

Something raw.

Something fiercely loyal.

"...is not a commander who coddles his people."

She smiled thinly, a curve of pale lips that held no warmth.

"But he's never let Area 001 fall, either."

The elevator doors slid shut behind them, severing the polished lobby from view. Eathan, heart hammering harder than he wanted to admit, realised something:

The Taeril White he knew—the coffee-addicted, corner shop slacker—

was only a fraction of the man the world called Bai Hu.

The elevator descended in a soundless rush, its walls pulsating with runes in time with the tower's heartbeat. Chewie cracked her knuckles in the corner, bouncing on her heels. Meng Yao calmly checked her Spirit Conduit seals. Eathan rechecked his [SYSTEM] panel, forcing his hands to stop shaking. Their destination loomed below—dark, frayed, unstable—was the cracked subway veins of the Pudong sector.

The doors opened, and cold, stale air rushed inwards instantly. Eathan tightened his grip on his [Receipt Printer] module, adrenaline flooding his system.

Ready or not, this was the field, he told himself.

And the Mortal Realm wasn't going to wait for him to catch his breath.