COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

The storm outside came in quietly—at first.

A low grumble across the sky. The kind that rolled along its ribs, too deep to be thunder and too slow to be wind.

Inside the commander's office, the lights had been dimmed to dusk, casting long shadows between lacquered shelving and old-world scrolls. The only illumination came from Taeril's central holographic interface—an array of floating panels casting faint blue-white across the darkened glass. Most of the monitors had been set to sleep.

Except one.

A screen rippled.

No input. No command.

It simply pulsed.

Then, without preamble, a shadow dragged itself across the wall, flickering and tangled with glitched pixels. Not cast by light, but projected by something deeper, older. A faint crackle of data distortion brushed against the air like dry static.

From the far end of the room, Taeril—seated at his desk, calligraphy brush paused mid-character—didn't even look up.

"You're late," he said mildly, finishing up the final stroke with a satisfying whoosh. "I was beginning to think you got caught by a Heavenly Court spam filter."

The wall-pulse shimmered. Text scrolled across the top of his interface, accompanied by a flickering emoji:

:( no, i was scared

Taeril finally turned, fingers brushing the surface of his desk. His expression was faintly amused.

"You're a firewall ghost who once reverse-crawled the Lotus Archives," he said. "You wiped three war deities' IP history and rerouted a celestial subpoena into Lady Foxfire's spam folder. What, exactly, scares you?"

A beat.

ur office is intimidating

also... hi ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )

A subtle glitch in the light curved the shadow's shape—head dipped slightly, as though shy. The Cipher Venerable rarely appeared in person, and never in full form. Their presence existed as a digital suggestion, not solid geometry. An old myth, rewritten into protocol.

They were the whisper between loglines; silence between system pulses. And tonight, they'd come in person—if this counted as one.

Taeril leaned back in his chair.

"So," he said. "To what do I owe the honour, O Spectral Scourge of Packet-Level Surveillance?"

just checking in

#WhiteTigerOnline is trending again

Another panel blinked to life on Taeril's screen. RealmNet threads exploded in cascading scroll:

[TRENDING]:

#WhiteTigerOnline

#BaiHuBack

#Error404CommanderNotFound

and the top post:

"Is he even real or a very elaborate visual hallucination? Discuss."

There were memes. Dozens.

One was a blurry shot of Taeril's silhouette captured from some rooftop operation feed, captioned:

"When your manager finally logs into the server after fifteen years and deletes your existence."

#TheCommanderNeverBlinks

Taeril raised an eyebrow. "Charming."

they love u

terrified—but love u

He exhaled, long and amused, and reached over to swipe the feed away with a flick of his hand. "I'd offer to buy you dinner in thanks, but I'm not sure algorithmic restaurants exist."

0///////0

i dont need any payment

this is fine

"…Your punctuation usage suggests otherwise."

Cipher Venerable buzzed faintly, a spark of embarrassment literally encoded into the dim.

They fell quiet for a moment, letting the thunder murmur beyond the glass. Outside, the storm had crept closer—rain tapping in soft, experimental rhythms along the windows.

Taeril broke the silence with a sidelong glance. "The node trap you built with Li Wei," he said. "Clean work. Effective."

thx ₍^. .^₎⟆

He paused, then added dryly, "If I'd relied on Captain Li's tech skills alone, the system would be halfway to the Realm of the Passing by now."

:p

he tried really hard tho

"…Unfortunately."

The interface pulsed again, hesitantly this time.

...the vessel

The words hung in the air longer than usual.

Taeril didn't reply immediately. He turned back to his desk, gaze tilted toward the holographic map of Area 001 still lingering like ghost light across the table. His fingers tapped once, slowly.

Rain rattled louder against the windows.

"I have plans for him," he said finally, voice softer now. "There's no need for you to worry."

The firewall ghost didn't answer.

"You've done enough," Taeril added after a moment. "More than enough."

A low ripple moved through the shadows. If flusteredness could glitch, that's what it looked like.

Then, Taeril stood. He walked to the tall windows of his office, hands in his pockets, as a fresh wave of thunder curled in from the east. Rain smacked the glass now with hungry fingers.

"It's time," he murmured, half to himself. "Let's move on to the next part of the plan."

Behind him, the screen blinked again—RealmNet overlay swapped with a familiar feed.

COZMART. Aisle 3.

Quine Long, tall and serene, was captured on the store's security cam, crouching in front of the instant ramen shelf. Sorting noodle packs by colour. Again. Left to right. Chicken flavour at the top.

He'd been there for hours.

"You know what I mean, right?" Taeril murmured to the shadow on the wall.

...yes

please be careful

The text scrolled slowly, a final flicker. The Cipher Venerable seemed as though he wanted to say something more. Another line of code attempted to surface, then halted.

The screen went dark completely, and the shadow vanished.

A heartbeat later—

Crack.

A bolt of lightning split the skyline. Taeril didn't even blink as white light exploded against the glass. He saw the silhouette immediately.

Emerald eyes glinting against the storm.

A figure hovered just outside the window—a hundred-and-seventeen stories above the ground—untouched by rain, hair fanned like a dragon's banner in the wind.

Quine Long.

Still smiling.

Still very, very amused.

If Eathan saw him right now, he would've evacuated the entire floor through sheer spiritual recoil.

Taeril slowly turned, folding his arms behind his back, face cast in the silhouette of flickering neon storm light.

"I thought you'd be here soon."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Another fork of lightning tore the sky.

Quine Long tilted his head, that shark-like smile deepening. If Taeril glanced at the COZMART CCTV now, he would still see the same image playing on loop.

The Azure Dragon, sorting noodles.

It was no more than an illusion, a looped misdirect, because the real Quine Long was right here, outside the HQ windows.

And the barrier Taeril cast around the building still held, which meant the dragon couldn't get in.

"Oh," Taeril said lightly, tapping a finger against the glass. "Did I forget to deactivate the barrier?"

A pause. He smiled politely.

"My bad."

Outside, the dragon's smile didn't fade. But the air inside the room shivered like it had inhaled lightning.

Then—without a sound—he vanished.

And behind the clouds, the storm kept building.

***

The morning had started out with optimism.

With only seven rifts left to complete within a 72-hour deadline, the cafeteria was abuzz with the quiet electricity of people preparing to finally see the finish line.

Strike Teams A and B were sitting together at the long corner table. Even Meng Yao had been spotted sipping tea instead of issuing tactical threats as she strolled down to the operations pit.

Eathan slurped broth at the end of the table, letting out a small groan every time he swallowed. His entire digestive system felt like it had been reincarnated as a dumpster fire.

The marmot spirit from last night's rooftop dinner?

Yeah, it was fighting for its life inside him.

His skin glowed faintly under the sheets—healthy, radiant, like a spirit-beast influencer post-filter. But internally?

Death. Microwaved, then served with chilli oil.

"Morning," Chewie said mildly from five feet away, biting into a pear-shaped tanghulu as she slid into the seat beside his. "You look radiant. Like a dumpling with good karma."

Eathan bolted upright with a groan, skin shimmering faintly like he'd been dipped in glaze and honey.

"I think I feel my insides are exfoliating."

"Side effects include intestinal karmic realignment and spiritual clarity," she replied without blinking. "It's good for skin elasticity."

Eathan only grumbled, taking another small sip from his broth.

Fifty minutes later, he limped into the operations pit.

And walked into hell.

The energy in the room had gone from usual-mission-chaos to audit-level panic. Screens flickered at rapid intervals. Stabilizer maps scrolled like mad. And Meng Yao's voice—still cool and controlled from the morning—was now snapping across channels like a divine race car pit boss.

"Squad Three, why are you still recalibrating your sigils? They should've been pulsing five seconds ago. Do you wish to be vaporized by sentient fog?"

In the center of the Ops floor, Yan Xenis looked like someone had tried to convince him the world was flat—and maybe succeeded. His hands hovered over a shaking holopad, as if it were a cursed artifact about to explode.

Eathan blinked. "Uh. Did I miss a memo?"

Xenis snapped his head toward him, half-deranged. "We cleared it down to seven rifts last night, right? Right?!"

"...Yes?"

Xenis flipped the holopad. "Guess what."

"What—" Eathan started, just as the man turned from the central console, eyes wide behind his glasses.

"It's the same map," Xenis said. "Same nodes. But—watch."

Eathan stared as one by one, new red markers began pulsing into view on the projection—right over the previous cleared zones. Rift locations that had been green just hours ago were pulsing red again, and worse, some had doubled in size.

[New rift count: 15]

"Fifteen?!" Eathan squawked.

"Fifteen." Willow echoed. She was now leaning against the nearest console with her non-shaved side tied back in full tactical braids. "Which, in math terms, is—double what we expected."

Eathan looked around. "Wait, where's the rest of Team A and B?"

"We're all Team Z now," Tanke said, dragging a belt of talismans like a zombie across the floor. "Z for 'zero chance of nap time.'"

Eathan could only continue to stare at the flashing map as clusters of red pinpricks scattered across eastern China like spilled chilli oil.

"Are they… multiplying?" he breathed.

"They're hatching," Xenis said grimly. "Residual node turbulence."

It was then that Eathan realized that the red dots weren't exactly new rifts but stealth breaches. They were hidden; ghosted in the last report and triggered by residual interference.

Something had gone very wrong.

Eathan called up his [SYSTEM] menu.

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

▸ Accessing real-time Ledger data…

20 Qi Tokens has been subtracted from your [PROFILE] (35 → 15)

Semi-transparent screens exploded across his vision.

Screens expanded across his HUD, overlaying the wall projection. The same map bloomed across his field of vision—Bangkok, Tokyo, the rusted peaks of Mount Jiuhua, a derelict pagoda just outside Taipei. And then—

A bread café in Busan.

"Uh," he muttered, squinting. "This isn't exactly common territory anymore."

"Fitting," Xenis said blandly, peering over his shoulder. "Even carbs aren't safe now."

Node after node blinked into visibility. The leyline flow was compensating so hard it was overcorrecting.

Good news—they found the problem.

Bad news—it's literally everything.

"We've got maybe twenty minutes before some of those ghost rifts breach," Xenis said. "And if equilibrium dropped below 55% again, the Cloud-Jade Ledger's audit timer might most definitely reawaken."

A tremor rattled the Ops floor.

Node admin channels screamed. Minor rifts were also opening across Shanghai. Subway platforms blurred with phantasmal echoes. Someone reported a vending machine that was now trying to sell spirits (actual ones) instead of water.

Meng Yao roared orders over the comms, sharp as steel:

"All strike teams—move. We deploy now. No formation, no hierarchy—kill everything that's not mortal or we'll be explaining this to the Council in past tense!"

Team Z rushed into the deployment circle. Eathan barely managed to clip his printer to his belt before the floor rumbled beneath his boots.

Finn jogged past, grinning. "Easy job."

"Stop saying that," Runan muttered.

They stepped in.

And the gates glitched.

A flash of light—too fast, too unstable—and the floor jerked out beneath their feet. Eathan's scream was cut short as the world inverted.

And with that, the final rift rally resumed.

***

Eathan landed face-first in a gust of foreign air.

"Ow," he groaned, lifting his head to see bold hiragana characters imprinted on red-painted steel. "Why are the walls Japanese!?"

He scrambled up just in time to hear the rift snap open overhead.

Passive Skill [Auspicious Aura (Lv. 2)] has been triggered!

Lucky Teleport Glitch is in action! +PREEMPTIVE STRIKE!!

Finn dropped beside him, blinking hard. "…Are we on top of Tokyo Tower?"

"I think I saw this in an anime once," Eathan wheezed.

But there was no time to chit-chat. The rift above them howled, wind shredding through steel beams. Something massive loomed within the tear, twisted limbs flickering between dimensions like static-filled shadow puppets.

[Side Quest (new!)]

Seal Class-D Rift T-1886!

Reward: +100 Karma, +25 Qi Tokens

"Right on cue."

Eathan yanked his [Receipt Printer], hastily scanning a barcode he'd ripped from an emergency maintenance kit on the way out. The printer buzzed, spitting out a single blazing talisman marked [Quick-Bind Seal].

He launched it upward. The talisman streaked like a comet, fizzing at the rift's threshold—but barely scratched the edge, the creature within thrashing violently.

1 Qi Token has been subtracted from your [PROFILE] (15 → 14)

"Not working!" he shouted.

"Buy me thirty seconds!" Finn yelled back, wind billowing between his curls as he flipped three glowing talismans between his fingers. "I need to anchor the leyline point!"

Eathan turned. A gust of corrupt qi swept across the platform, shattering the glass behind them.

"Fine! But if I die here, tell my corpse I was right about the marmot meat!"

Charging forward, his mind flashed back to Taeril's office—only to recall that he had unlocked an elaborated version of [Receipt Scanner].

Burst mode.

He quickly adjusted the settings on his [Receipt Printer]. His thumb hit the trigger. The printer hummed like an overloaded engine, ejecting not one, but eight identical, gleaming seals in rapid-fire succession, spiraling gracefully around his hand.

[Receipt Printer (Lv. 2): Burst Mode] has been Activated!

8x Quick-Bind Seals deployed

1 Qi Token has been subtracted from your [PROFILE] (14 → 13)

Above him, the anomaly twisted—a dragon-fish hybrid half-materialized from steam and static.

Eathan whipped his palm forward. Golden talismans ignited simultaneously mid-air, forming a glowing lattice that snapped into place with a satisfying crackle, binding the rift's edges tight. The anomaly spasmed, trapped within shimmering rune-lines that glowed against the sky.

Finn darted forward. "Now!"

Seized the moment, he lunged, driving his talismans downwards, triangulating the rift's leyline anchor points. A blazing red array burst forth beneath the rift, threads of qi spiralling rapidly, sealing it tighter and tighter.

With a final shuddering cry, the rift collapsed inward, devoured by the bright rune matrix. It folded in on itself, compressing into a single point of blinding light—then vanished entirely, popping like a balloon made of pollen.

They crashed onto the steel platform, gasping, steam rising around them.

[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION

You have completed [Side Quest]:

Seal Class-D Rift T-1886

You have been rewarded: +100 Karma, +25 Qi Tokens

[EQUILIBRIUM] has increasesd by 0.1%! (58.9% → 59.0%)

Finn grinned, rolling onto his back. "Easy job."

"You are a jinx incarnate," Eathan said, half-laughing, half-dying.

Shooting him a toothy grin, Finn yanked out the comm from his back pockets and spoke into it, "Hey, Finn and Eathan from Team Z. Rift T-1886 closure in Tokyo a success. How's it going with everyone else?"

Some static noise came from the comm. Finn listened intently, with Eathan poking his head over in curiosity. After three seconds, the former flicked off the device with a nod.

"Nobody responded?" Eathan asked.

"Yeeko did," Finn said cheerfully. "Everything's fine on his end as well. Apparently got spawned right above a rift like us. Talk about luck."

Eathan stared at the man, blinking twice.

"You understood from the static?"

Finn merely gave him another grin.

On the other end of the line, Yeeko closed the communicator, neatly packing it in the left side pocket of his fanny pack. Beside him, Runan, silent as a ghost, leapt from a second-story window and somehow drop-kicked a rift echo into a recycling bin.

"Quiet breach neutralized."

[EQUILIBRIUM] has increasesd by 0.1%! (59.6% → 59.7%)

Wenrui stood nearby, glasses fogged, muttering at his wristpad. "Why does every spiritual anomaly show up during flu season—"

Ignoring him, Yeeko coughed lightly as he tossed a satchel into the rift's heart.

"Careful!" Tanke yelled. "That's the wrong angle—"

The satchel exploded. A gust of sulfurous smoke swept through the garage, leaving the trio doubled over, coughing as rift energies dissolved with a spluttering hiss.

Yeeko straightened, dusting off his sleeve. He cleared his raspy throat. "Acceptable loss."

"I got the whole thing on SpiritTube," Tanke wheezed.

***

AREA 001 LIVE STATUS:

▸ Equilibrium: 60.1%

▸ Cloud-Jade Audit Timer: Auto-Sleep (48 hours)

▸ Rift Status: Green

Back in Ops, Meng Yao finally exhaled into her headset.

"Next checkpoint secured. Rift count predicted to return to seven in the next two hours," she spoke into the communicator, voice delivering to every team spread across the map. "Report back to the HQ after you finish your designated rift. Less than three days to the Hearing. We do not have much time left."

Eathan, now curled up on a bench near Shibuya Station, sank into the seat like a deflated talisman as his brain slowly processed the comms message. Across the street, Finn was hovering by the windows of a convenience store, staring at the shelves of vividly-coloured Japanese magazines.

Then—another ping.

A holo-feed popped up on the corner of his HUD, pulled from none other than a trending post from FeatherScroll:

[BREAKING]:

The Azure Dragon spotted on the top of Shanghai's Pearl Tower.

Will new players be entering the fight?

Eathan stared at the photo.

A long-haired man in a silky blue suit, sipping milk tea five hundred meters above ground level, like he was waiting for his food delivery.

"…Oh no," he said.

CHN 104 was coming back to haunt him.