COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

The Taowu stilled.

All four pairs of its eyes rotated, locked, and narrowed in unison—each iris tightening like the aperture of a camera lens zeroing in. Their target: a single man at the edge of the Bund.

White-haired, coat rippling, and in his right hand, a paper cup of coffee—still steaming.

Taeril White.

He stood at the very edge of the cracked embankment, as if Shanghai's leyline network had personally split open to welcome him. The man looked not glorious, nor terrifying.

Just mild.

And somehow, that was worse.

Across the field, Tanke jolted from his trance. "Wait—" he said, squinting. "Is that a coffee in our commander's hand?"

Eathan, recovering slowly from whatever metaphysical slap Quine Long had delivered, blinked through watering eyes. "That's what you're focusing on?"

"He didn't even bring a weapon," said Tanke.

"Neither did the Taowu, technically."

Taeril took a sip from the cup. The motion quieted the very air.

Then, without urgency, he placed the empty cup on a bench cracked in half by rift tremors, positioning it precisely to face the Huangpu River. It sat there, quietly steaming, like an offering. Or a gravestone.

"No flowers this time," Eathan whispered, memory and reality colliding.

The rift screeched.

Lightning fractured the sky. Air pressure dropped. Mortals in nearby districts collapsed like flicked dominoes. The city grid trembled.

Meng Yao's revived voice cracked over the comms: "Area Equilibrium just dropped to 51.7%. Incoming spiritual collapse warning!"

"Wait—what?!" Xenis shouted. "We just got it back up to sixty!"

"Well, it's tanking. Fast."

Chewie looked around. "Where the hell are our node reinforcements?"

Then—ping.

A gold-framed notification trembled across Eathan's [SYSTEM] HUD:

[Node Imprint: Field Tether (new!)]

Limited Emergency Access Unlocked (180 seconds)

▸ COST: Remaining Qi Tokens, 1000 Karma, 4% [Humanity]

▸ STATUS: Critical Use Recommended

[CONFIRM?]

Eathan stared at it. He didn't have time to think. Not about how conveniently the option popped up right at their direst moment, nor about how this would mark his first time actually spending his Karma points.

"I'm sorry, Mister White," he muttered, thumbing [CONFIRM] before guilt could catch up. "This one's on me."

34 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (34 → 0)

1000 Karma have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (4510 → 3510)

[Humanity] has decreased by 4%! (76% → 72%)

The moment he accepted, his limbs locked.

Power surged down his veins like molten wire—half system energy, half divine resonance. Golden circuitry seared across his skin, outlining bone and nerve endings with painful clarity. Each heartbeat resonated like a gong strike.

[Node Imprint: Field Tether] has been activated!

The circuit extended from the heart to his fingertips, tether lines exploding from his hands as they hooked into the nearest fractured node points like anchors.

Eathan's knees buckled, and so did the reality around him.

Glowing threads materialized in the air, curving outward from beneath his feet. The threads seeped through cracks in the pavement, winding around each damaged anchor point. Different from the original [Node Imprint], the graphic effects were now visible for all to see.

Lady Foxfire's eyes glimmered, fan pausing mid-flutter. "Is that…?" she murmured, transfixed by the radiant web embedding itself into Shanghai's wounded streets.

"Sacred geometry?" Great Peng, nearby, yelped and hopped clear as gold veins shot across the ground beneath him. "My limited-edition shoes did not sign up for this."

Chewie stared at Eathan in silence, seemingly contemplative. He met her gaze briefly, then gritted his teeth. Each passing second was draining strength from his body like sand through fingertips.

"This—" he called out, voice strained, "this highlights the broken nodes. Use it! Expedite the repairs—now!"

The surrounding operatives hesitated only briefly, then nodded, breaking into frantic action. Finn clapped a hand on Eathan's back, a reckless grin breaking through his exhaustion.

"Leave it to us, intern!"

"You've done your part." Willow shot him a sharp glance, taking in his paling complexion. "Go take a nap or something."

Eathan forced a smile through sweat-soaked hair. Energy poured out, a torrent pulled directly from his core, yet he didn't dare stop.

[TIME REMAINING]: 170 seconds

And the countdown continued.

***

Unaware of the node dance happening behind him, Taeril dropped his trench coat onto the ground. Instead, what replaced it was a blooming war coat—ink-black and streaked with metallic white. His hair extended past his shoulders, astral strands rippling on invisible currents.

Then came the sigils.

Four constellation symbols—Tiger, Dragon, Bird, Tortoise—blazed awake, erupting across the Shanghai horizon in lines of divine script. The air quivered, reality bending as stars aligned like ancient gears locking into place.

The white-haired man pushed off the earth, ascending in a column of sheer force. Clouds curved away from him in splattering arcs, parting like curtains drawn open by an unseen hand. RealmNet short-circuited, visuals scattering into pixelated chaos.

Somewhere far-off, a RealmNet streamer screamed, "IS THAT THE WHITE TIGER IN 4K??"

Answer: No. Because the instant Taeril's divine form bloomed, all footage glitch-stuttered into pixels, firewalls triggering failsafes beyond recovery.

Except one.

High above, unseen and silent, Cipher Venerable hovered in the clouds, staring through fifteen layers of Jade Encryption. They didn't blink. They simply watched and waited. Quietly and reverently.

Taeril hovered high above, surveying the rift beast with narrowed eyes.

"A mere avatar."

The Taowu spat out flame, but the white-haired man didn't even react. Instead, he cast his eyes downwards.

Even here, at the edge of divine confrontation, he could feel it—an unmistakable, irritating gaze fixed squarely on his back from thousands of kilometers below. Without turning, he knew exactly who it belonged to.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The Azure Dragon's scrutiny was like an itch, deliberate and provocative, challenging him to do something worth watching.

Taeril responded by flicking an invisible speck from his sleeve—and the finger. Far below, he felt Quine Long's gaze sharpen in amusement.

A snarl took him back to the present. The Taowu bristled, obsidian spikes intensifying as its eight eyes constricted in response to being overlooked. The rift beast, now in full sentient form, blurred forward in a whirl of blood-smog and teeth.

Taeril stepped once—a ripple. The world curved.

The two forces collided mid-air. The clouds around them spiralled like a storm, evaporating from the sudden spike in temperature.

The Bund trembled under the weight of two gods in motion.

***

MEANWHILE – ATOP JING'AN PLAZA

Back at the upper temple plaza, Team Z had long since scattered after Eathan activated [Node Imprint: Field Tether]. With the upgraded skill, physical touch was no longer required of the host to stabilize nodes, allowing all members to hold off anchor lines, manage emergency seals, or throw up behind covers (Tanke).

Which left Eathan… forcibly stranded with three immortals.

Lady Foxfire leaned against a column, fanning herself with supreme disinterest. Her aura flickered pink with the light of collapsing anchors. "How unfortunate." She sighed. "I can't see his face on the screen."

Great Peng zoomed in on his SpiritTube stream. "White Tiger's exclusive blur mode. RealmNet censors his visuals automatically. Always has. It's tragic, really."

Eathan watched the battle unfold from the temple with all the helplessness of a gamer locked out of MP. He rubbed his eyes.

"Can I go help my team now?"

"With that filmsy body?" Quine Long said blandly, picking something from under his gradient-painted nails. "You'll just be baggage."

Eathan grumbled, eyeing his HUD that pulsed faintly gray, with zero Qi Tokens left on his [PROFILE].

He really wanted to help—throw a talisman, stabilize a node, anything—but his body was tapped dry. His [HP] teetered at a dangerous single digit. His [Receipt Printer], now just a regular-looking barcode scanner, coughed up dust. He didn't even have enough Qi Tokens or energy for a single use of [Minor Reconstitution] to patch up his crippled ankle.

Eathan slumped against the bannister and made a mental note to himself.

New Quest: learn basic token budgeting.

He glared at the raven-haired man anyway. "Then maybe you should go help!"

Quine Long sneered. "Who do you think I am?"

Lady Foxfire arched a brow. "Darling, don't be rude in front of your elders."

Far above them, the Bund skyline bloomed into divine chaos.

The sky split open by lightning and karmic backlash, and the Taowu raged with every ounce of its twisted lineage. Its monstrous body stretched like a shadow cast by collective despair—horns coiled in smoke, limbs unfurling in impossible directions, each movement collapsing clouds into typhoons.

And yet, even as it roared, there was one thing it could not shake:

The man standing opposite it.

Taeril hovered mid-air, weightless in the storm, as though gravity itself had politely clocked out for the day. His trench coat billowed in a wind that obeyed his presence, and around him, the very alignment lattice warped from deference.

There were no dramatic declarations. No golden auras shouting divine status.

Only a subtle sigh.

The White Tiger sighed.

Below, back at the temple, the immortal trio plus Eathan stood motionless, their gazes skyward.

Lady Foxfire lowered her fan an inch. "He's grown."

Great Peng blinked. "Yeah, wasn't his hair shorter a minute ago?"

Quine Long said nothing, arms crossed. His expression was unreadable.

Up there, in that battlefield stitched between wind and thunder, the Taowu bared its full chaotic soul. It snarled something in a tongue long forgotten—an invocation of hatred, a curse of madness—and lunged.

"Bai Hu—!"

The next second, Taeril moved.

It wasn't flashy. He didn't disappear and reappear with a bang. He simply… slipped forward in the air, like dusk flowing into night.

The moment his fingers closed into a single fist, starlight coalesced behind him. Wings of white fire bloomed wide, the four constellation seals flaring into perfect formation across the sky.

Claws met wrist; fangs met palm.

And the result? The sky cracked.

The impact sounded like a shattering gong. The Taowu was hurled backward, tumbling through the sky like a puppet with cut strings. An entire cloud bank disintegrated in its wake. And as the beast screeched in disbelief, limbs flailing to stabilize, Taeril moved his lips to form a single word:

"Fall."

No shout; no flourish. Just that one word.

The world obeyed.

A new light erupted from beneath his boots—a formation older than mortal memory. Glyphs flared to life, forming a ghost-script across the skyline that shimmered in every language of the Six Realms, a divine algorithm overwritten live onto reality. The ancient formation linked with the Guardian constellations from above, forming invisible threads of divine qi that caged the avatar in place.

The Taowu lurched, suddenly suspended in mid-air.

Then—

A single strike.

It wasn't clear what Taeril did. One second, he was still. The next, the rift beast was crashing through clouds like a meteor on fire.

From behind a Cloud-Jade satellite, Cipher Venerable smiled quietly.

In the temple plaza, a hundred kilometers away but mere inches through leyline resonance, Eathan's HUD lit up with a chime:

[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION

You have completed [Emergency Main Quest]:

Survive the Anomaly Surge!

You have been rewarded: +700 Karma, +100 Qi Tokens, 7% Integrity

[Integrity] has increased by 7%! (46% → 53%)

Another chime:

You have completed [Main Quest]:

Operation: Prevent Area 001 Audit!

You have been rewarded: +1500 Karma, +300 Qi Tokens, 5% Integrity

New Title Unlocked: Forty-Two-Point-Three Survivor

[Integrity] has increased by 5% (53% → 58%)

[Integrity] has reached the 50% milestone!

Host [Level]: Lv. 30 → Lv. 35

And that wasn't the end:

Skill [Receipt Printer] has levelled up! (Lv.2 → Lv.3)

▸ USE: Host may now "lend" the skill to someone other than the host themselves. The lending is effective for one talisman only, once a day.

▸ COST: 10 Qi Tokens per use

[Humanity] has dropped by 1% (72% → 71%)

And more...

[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED!]

▸ SKILL: Auspice Ignition (Lv. 1)

▸ EFFECTS: All base stats x5; 50% damage taken is redirected as negative karma debt to the attacker; 'Cleansing Pulse" every 3s: purges demon arrays, snaps bindings, nullifies low-grade curses.

▸ COST: 700 Karma, 70 Qi Tokens, 7% Humanity

▸ DURATION: 360 seconds

▸ COOLDOWN: 72 hours

▸ SIDE-FX: [Calamity Radar β] offline and [Auspicious Aura] inversion for 24 hours

[Humanity] has dropped by 1% (71% → 70%)

Eathan stared, slack-jawed, at the barrage of [SYSTEM] notifications that filled his entire field of view. He blinked. Then blinked again. Then—

"Oh!" Lady Firefox's excited voice rang out beside him. "The footage quality..!"

Upon hearing him, Eathan's eyes automatically shifted to Great Peng's streaming screen. They widened the next second.

The RealmNet firewalls had… disengaged.

Across every RealmNet feed, censors collapsed like falling dominoes. Thousands of viewer screens flickered from fuzzy static to high-definition clarity. And in the center of that storm—clearer than anything—stood Taeril White.

Unblurred.

RealmNet exploded.

[@sleepstreamer]: content no longer blocked??? 4K HDR somebody clip this!!!

[@audit_blocker44]: So Area 001's commander is not a myth?

[@aobingxqiongqi]: How did we go from ramen memes to divine beast kills???

[@truejadecoll3ctor]: So this is the White Tiger...

Great Peng spat out his drink mid-livestream, the rolling comment section reflecting off his bulging eyes. "The censorship's gone?"

Lady Foxfire fluttered her eyes. "How curious…"

Above in the sky, the Taowu screamed in raw rage. Its limbs jerked erratically. Its aura was beginning to tear apart.

Taeril didn't wait for the next move. He was already there.

A ripple of force, too fast to see, cracked through the rift's unstable heart. The Taowu tried to respond—but the White Tiger's presence now eclipsed the battlefield. His war aura had fully bloomed, flooding every spiritual channel, overwriting every divine thread.

The final blow landed like a verdict. At the same time, Chewie, from two districts away, raised a gleaming tanghulu skewer—because sometimes support came in the form of fructose—and hurled it through the heavens like a divine javelin.

It landed square in the Taowu's left horn.

A beat of stunned silence.

"Bonk," she said flatly. "Mutual aid delivery!"

For one impossible moment, even the heavens seemed to go still. Then, the rift imploded, and the sky tore open entirely.

The Taowu rocketed downwards, a jagged comet of despair, screeching all the way until it struck the heart of the Bund. An explosion followed immediately after him, carving concentric rings of light across the river. Light spiralled inward, folding the spatial wound into itself until only silence remained.

Then, like a firework, the rift burst.

Ribbons of celestial energy danced through the skyline—visible across the Mortal Realm, the Realm of Passing, and even the edges of the Bodhi Realm. The Bund was instantly painted in crimson-gold aftermath.

Team Z sprinted back into the temple plaza, their uniforms scuffed, eyes wide.

"We stabilized the minors ones!" Xenis yelled. "But—then the rifts just shut down. All of them!"

Finn, panting, nodded behind him. "I swear they closed themselves. So quickly, too. Like they wanted to do us a favour."

Meng Yao pulled out her holopad, eyes widening as the data refreshed:

AREA 001 LIVE STATUS:

▸ Equilibrium: 77.7%

▸ Cloud-Jade Audit Timer: Auto-Sleep

▸ Rift Status: Green

▸ Network Stability: Synchronized

"I…" She blinked at the number. "That's the highest it's been in fifteen years."

Xenis, wheezing with pride, nodded. "We're gonna have so much paperwork for this."

The winds settled and light returned to the skyline, washing clean across the city like a game reset.

Taeril drifted back to the ruined edge of the Bund. He touched down with the silence of snow, the last threads of astral fire dissolving off his coat like mist.

Eathan, still overwhelmed, still with Qi Tokens restored but soul entirely depleted, blinked at the sky.

And then, quietly, face-planted into the stone floor with a thunk.