COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

The milling rumours only got worse—or better, depending on one's taste for dread—during the mission-brief wing. Teams queued for assignments, but nobody could keep their heads out of the rumour stream.

"So the commander disappeared fifteen years ago, but apparently kept timestamped receipts on all of us?"

"Fifteen years? He probably started before we were born."

"He definitely never blinks."

"…"

Eathan ducked past two of the strike-techs, almost collided with Chewie, who appeared wordlessly at his elbow, skewered a tanghulu in hand.

She stared up at him, crystalline sugar glinting on her lips.

"You look constipated," Chewie observed.

"Everyone's staring at me like I'm carrying Mister White's secret eyeball," he hissed.

The eleven-year-old considered that, shrugged, and bit another crimson berry. "They'll get bored."

"Of me?"

"Of rumours." She checked the empty hallway to the lower lifts. "Come on."

Before he could protest, she scanned her badge. The steel doors slid open, revealing a lift lit the colour of cold water.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"To see why they'll get bored."

Eathan followed Chewie past the lower lofts and down a maintenance stair that looked like it had been forgotten since the Qing dynasty. With every level, the temperature dropped, trading cafeteria chatter for the hum of power-ward filaments thrumming behind the walls.

A sigil-lit arch announced their destination:

[The Vault of Foresworn Echoes]

—where sound went to die and secrets came to rot.

The corridor was coffin-narrow, concrete veined with pulsing talisman lines. Some glowed cyan, others ember-red— a colour-coded warning system that Eathan helpfully interpreted in his mind as "Don't Touch Any Unless You Enjoy Exploding."

Eathan stopped at the final door—quartz-steel plated, triple-locked, runes rippling across it like scales under moonlight.

Two silhouettes vaguely came into view from across the door. It was then that Eathan finally realized who they were.

He glanced sideways. "What do we even say to them?"

Chewie's expression didn't flicker.

"Nothing." She popped the last berry, tossed the skewer into a rune-waste slot where it disintegrated with a polite fzzztt. "Just watch."

The pupil dilated. Inside the vault, Zhao Feyan was a marionette with the strings cut—slumped at the table, eyes glassy, lips muttering half-erased apologies to a master no longer on the line. Xu Lindon sat opposite, hands folded, posture perfect. Too perfect. The fluorescent seals overhead painted his skin an anemic grey, but his gaze… still, clear, terribly calm—as if he'd rehearsed this scene a thousand times and resigned himself to the closing curtain.

They looked unharmed—no bruises, no restraints beyond the containment sigils humming across the floor. Yet they radiated a hollow, gnawing decay that prickled Eathan's eyes like static.

Eathan's first thought was: Taeril must've done something brutal.

But Chewie preempted him with a whisper. "Mister White doesn't do torture."

"…Huh?"

"He only divides people into two categories: dead or not dead." She licked sugar from her fingers. "And they're not dead."

"Then…"

"They signed off a contract prior to entering Area 001," she stated calmly. "A spiritual contract."

Eathan blinked.

"A spiritual bond signed long ago—whether forged in greed, desperation, or hope." She tilted her head, studying Xu Lindon as though cataloging symptoms. "Bonded puppets are what they are. Except that the contract's severing itself now that the mission failed."

Eathan's stomach lurched. A suicide clause—triggered not by shame, but by remote abandonment.

The door cycled open with a hiss. Eathan stepped in; Chewie lingered at the threshold, arms folded, silent guardian.

"Lindon."

No answer. Just that unnerving serenity.

Eathan pulled the lone chair around, planting himself directly in the medic's line of sight. "Why?"

A slow exhale fogged the air, and Lindon's eyes flicked up. His gaze was hollow, but his voice held a dry edge. "Someone like you wouldn't understand."

His voice was papery—still polite, still field-medic soft. "When the White Tiger notices you, the heavens kneel in your path. Lucky, isn't it?"

Eathan stiffened, then snorted. "Yeah, luck—like sprinting through artillery fire. You think I asked for front-row seats to extinction?"

A faint twitch at the corner of Lindon's mouth—maybe a ghost of amusement, maybe pain. After a pause, he spoke again, voice quietly trickling along the entire vault:

"Qiongqi promised me immortality."

Eathan's entire mental system blue-screened for a second. "Who?"

"Qiongqi, Commander of Area 005." His voice was barely above a whisper. "He promised true ascension. No audits. No fear of being …erased."

"…And you believed him?"

Lindon looked away, eyes shadowed.

He did.

Immortality. The word echoed, absurd and desperate.

Eathan didn't press. But inwardly, he thought about how Li Wei once told him—that even the Jade Deity's offers had to go through three layers of karmic verification before anything as absurd as ascension could be granted, and that was for half-immortality.

And even as the Jade Deity dangled half-divinity in front of him—an actual celestial bureaucrat—Li Wei had walked away.

"You really believed that demon commander could grant what the Jade Deity parcels out by committee?"

Lindon's focus drifted—past Eathan, past the concrete, somewhere only he could see. "Belief isn't the luxury of mortals. It's the currency."

His shoulders sagged; a shiver rippled down his spine as another invisible thread snapped inside him.

Eathan's protest died on his tongue. He suddenly felt enormous pity—and a flicker of anger on Lindon's behalf. Fans worship celebrities; mortals worship deities. Both forget that idols sell illusions first.

Footfalls echoed behind him, Chewie's signal. Time's up.

Eathan stood, throat tight. "We'll stabilize Area 001," he said, unsure if he meant it for Lindon, for himself, or for the listening walls. "You could've helped."

Lindon's eyes finally broke, tipping to the floor. Whatever held him together was draining fast—colour from a photograph left in rain.

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Back in the corridor, the door sealed, runic bolts sliding home like final verdicts.

"They're going to disappear, aren't they?" Eathan asked, voice small in the humming dark.

Chewie didn't answer.

But her eyes lifted toward the ceiling, where no light came from. Only the weight of something far above; the quiet, inevitable reach of a hidden hand, descending with patient cruelty. Her gaze was sharp enough to carve through realms—and for once, the eternal sugar-fiend looked almost pitying.

A comm-ping vibrated on Eathan's wrist—an alert from RealmNet.

[TRENDING]:

"Area 001 is still standing. Now… it might be fighting back."

On the overlay, a live rift-map shrank—two crimson points blinking out, replaced by the cool amber of sealed breaches. The caption below pulsed with fresh comments:

"White Tiger's claws unsheathed!"

Audit odds shifting 42% → 38%. Place your bets!

#CommanderNeverBlinks

Eathan exhaled, heartbeat syncing to the gentle fade of red lights on the map.

Area 001 was still bleeding—but the blood flowed slower, thickening into scab. And somewhere behind every rumour, every fearful whisper, a new sentiment was hardening like tempered steel:

The White Tiger had opened his eyes.

Who dared to blink first?

***

Coming out of the prison vault, Eathan still had over an hour to spare before the end of his 24-hour vacation.

The courtyard was perfect: koi-pond gurgling, late-summer cicadas droning, Eathan parked in a lounge chair with bubble tea two times the size of his self-esteem. He was exactly one video deep into a SpiritTube speed-run titled "Top 10 Node Failures That Became Memes" when—

At exactly 12:01 PM, a gong-chime vibrated from his wristpad, hitting him like a frying pan to the soul.

[12:01 PM] — DAY-OFF TERMINATED.

REPORT TO PIT.

"R-really?" he croaked, straw still in his mouth.

Eathan slurped the last of his brown-sugar bubble tea, wiped tapioca-syrup off his cheek, and jog-limped toward the operations pit with the exact energy of a raccoon caught after dumpster-raiding.

His wrist-HUD kept flashing [VACATION OVER] in seizure-purple. Cruel.

By the time he arrived at the pit, sub-level G had long been converted into Meng Yao's personal thunder-dome. Node-drones idled in rows, cores purring like tuned engines. Crates of blessed receipt paper were stacked like tire walls. Med-techs slapped talisman patches onto whoever slowed below "imminent heart attack."

Someone—probably Chewie—had spray-painted "EQUILIBRIUM 60% OR BUST" across a coolant barrel.

Eathan limped in, bubble tea clutched like a holy relic. Meng Yao didn't even glance at him; she was already carving commands through an aerial map. Eighteen angry red dots throbbed over Pan Asia.

"Current score: 53.2%," she announced. "Goal: sixty. Motto of the day—" she stabbed the air with a stylus "—No glitch left behind, no traitors left un-electrocuted."

A laugh rippled through the room, equal parts awe and terror.

Chewie twirled her sword-scanner, jacket flapping. "Dibs on the loud ones."

"Team A—Chewie and the Suppression Lancers—you're our blunt instrument. Anything snarling gets your boot to the face." Meng Yao snapped her stylus like a baton. "Team B—Willow, Xenis, Eathan, and the rest—surgical repairs only. You break it, you file the paperwork. The rest are floaters; offer reinforcement where necessary."

The moment she finished her sentence, a corresponding message popped up from the [SYSTEM]:

[Side Quest (new!)]:

Stabilize Three Minor Rifts in Six Hours! (0/3)

Reward: +300 Karma, +75 Qi Tokens, 3% Integrity

Willow clicked gum, cocky grin gleaming. "Copy, ma'am. Promise to swear quietly."

Xenis adjusted his spectacles, already live-coding stabilizer macros on a wrist pad. Eathan just saluted with his paper cup. As he pulled on his field jacket, someone shoved a fresh roll of thermal paper into his holster like a magazine clip.

Willow cracked her neck, a wicked grin. "Ready to spray-paint reality?"

Xenis lifted a stabilizer wand and a selfie stick. "And monetize the effect, thank you."

***

Five minutes later, they burst out of a Transfer Gate onto Line-9's southbound platform. Rush-hour commuters flowed around them, unaware that reality was peeling open between the rails. Static crackled in the fluorescent lights; a purple slit flickered beneath the train chassis like a hungry grin.

Chewie didn't hesitate. She vaulted over the yellow safety line, slid baseball-style under the belly of an approaching carriage, and slapped a bright-pink receipt onto the rift's "chin."

[CLOSED FOR LUNCH]—the seal declared in bubble letters.

The tear snapped shut with a disgruntled pop. Loose electricity skittered up the rails and fizzled out against the platform lights.

[EQUILIBRIUM] has increased by 0.3%! (53.2% → 53.5%)

Flicking close the holopad in one swift motion, Chewie dusted her knees, strolled back up the platform, and flashed the commuters a thumbs-up they'd never remember.

The instant Team A blinked away, a new gate had dumped Team B onto the top of the Yangpu radio tower.

Wind howled around the skeletal steel. Willow raced for the maintenance ladder, but a gust of tainted qi spiralled up the structure, distorting the air.

"Shortcut!" she yelled—and dove.

Eathan's stomach fell through his boots as she swan-dived past them, wind ripping her profanity into auto-censored bleeps. Halfway down, she triggered her spirit boots, flipped, and drove a spiral-seal stamp into the cyclone at the tower's throat. The winds imploded, dragging the rift with them like water down a drain. Willow landed on a satellite dish, a perfect gymnast dismount.

[EQUILIBRIUM] has increased by 0.3%! (53.5% → 53.8%)

"Clear!" she called, still chewing gum. The dish promptly detached and glided to safety on a cushion of stabilised air. Xenis clapped politely. Eathan unclenched.

Their next stop was a rattling stabilizer van barreling through back alleys near the Bund.

Xenis perched inside, soldering fuses while juggling a holo-projector.

"RealmNet, welcome to my one-minute calibration crash-course, live from none other than the famous Area 001!" he chirped quietly, camera hovering over his shoulder. View counts rocketed.

Somewhere behind him, Meng Yao's voice snarled from the comms: "Yan Xenis, fifty percent of those viewers are hostiles—shut it down."

"Educational outreach!" Xenis protested.

Meng Yao's face appeared on a side monitor—she pinched two fingers together. The feed died with a digital whimper.

[EQUILIBRIUM] has increased by 0.1%! (55.0 % → 55.1 %)

Xenis sighed, slid the camera into a rune-stasis box, and got back to rewiring the node coil whirring beneath their seats.

By late afternoon, they were in a narrow alley in Suzhou that smelled of rain and hot sesame buns. A lamppost anchor sputters sparks, rift lines cobwebbing the alley. Willow and Xenis keep civilian eyes averted while Eathan braces a trembling hand on the metal.

"Five-second window, rookie," Willow warns.

"Copy."

[Node Imprint] has been activated!

50 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE] (104 → 54)

[Humanity] has decreased by 1% (87% → 86%)

For the second time today, gold circuitry flooded his arm, lightning knitting the fractured node. Qi Tokens drained like a broken bank account; [Humanity] tick-dropped one percent. The lamppost glowed, fractures knitting tight.

[EQUILIBRIUM] has increased by 0.2 %! (56.7% → 56.9%)

Eathan's HUD exploded with new text:

[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION

You have completed [Side Quest]:

Stabilize Three Minor Rifts in Six Hours! (3/3)

You have been rewarded: +300 Karma, +75 Qi Tokens, 3% Integrity

[Integrity] has increased by 3% (42% → 45%)

Passive Skill [Auspicious Aura] has levelled up! (Lv. 1 → Lv. 2)

Adds passive +0.01 Equilibrium to the Area for every genuine good deed performed by host (capped 0.3/month). Stronger probability shifts (15%). Improved divine curse resistance. Moderate Karma pull.

[Humanity] has decreased by 1% (86% → 85%)

The painful aftermath from [Node Imprint] hit; so did Willow's high-five.

"Not dead. Good job."

Xenis swept in like a pit-boss tornado, wrapped his wrist in null-salve gauze, swapped his empty receipt roll for a fresh one, slammed two spirit rounds into Willow's bracer, and jammed a chilled vitamin-jelly pouch into Eathan's free hand—total contact time, maybe three seconds.

Eathan tried to bow, tripped over a rune-cable, and face-planted into her departing shadow.

Willow glanced down. "Pit-stop point-eight seconds. New record."

[Auspicious Aura] pulsed; the jelly packet somersaulted off the pavement and landed upright in her pocket. She blinked.

"Huh. Guess I could get used to your weird luck."

High above, on a mezzanine balcony, Taeril White watched the equilibrium graph rise. Taking an elegant sip out of his coffee, he spoke softly into the comms: "Last push tonight. Final two rifts will spike—save your big guns."

Then, calmer than a sleep-deprived barista, he addressed one member specifically: "Eathan, you've burned two percent of your [Humanity] today. Off-mission until twenty-hundred. Touch another node and I dock your ramen stipend."

Team B erupted.

"Unfair!" Xenis wailed.

"Trade wrists with me!" Willow demanded.

Eathan clutched the jelly pouch, wide-eyed. "Is… is that positive reinforcement or a threat?"

But Taeril had already ghosted away, coffee steam dissipating like a vanishing signature.

***

07:30 PM | HQ. AREA 001.

The ops mezzanine glowed a bronze hue with the sunset.

Benched, bandaged, and wired on electrolytes, Eathan watched drones paint the last nine rifts in pulsing crimson on the holo-map. Team A had completed four rift seals, while Team B finished up with three, and the floating operatives managed with one. That left them with almost more than half done in a day.

He feels useless for a heartbeat, sitting alone—then noticed technicians quietly rerouting to stand within ten meters of him. One found a lost wrench in a floor vent, and another solved a recursion bug by sneezing.

Auspicious aura field, he realized, taking an absentminded sip out of his grape-flavoured vitamin jelly drink.

Across the floor, Meng Yao climbed a staircase, voice carrying like a bell. "Shift Two launches at dusk. We finish what the moles started—"

She stabbed a command rune; the red dots pulsed brighter.

"—and we finish it loud."

Boots thundered. Engines howled. Receipts fluttered like battle standards.

Eathan smiled around his straw. The jelly tasted obnoxiously sweet.