COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

The petals fell like verdicts.

One by one, the lotus fragments that had hung suspended midair—halted during the entirety of the Council Hearing—began to descend. Gravity reasserted itself as they landed sharp and clean, as if the very Chamber had exhaled.

The Cloud-Jade Ledger pulsed once in the center—its glow no longer contemplative but absolute. The spiritual script flared gold, threaded with streaks of jade. All present knew what was coming before the Avatar spoke.

And still, the sound made every ward in the Chamber hum in collective silence.

"Verdict rendered."

The voice of the Jade Deity Avatar seemed to echo across existence itself.

"Charges struck down. Audit cleared."

"Commander Bai Hu is reinstated to Area 001. Full operational privileges restored. Emergency Funds restored."

For a beat, no reaction followed the final verdict. Only the slow, collective re-entry of breath from those who had forgotten they were holding it.

Then the shifts began.

Lady Meng toggled her seal-scroll interface shut with a smooth flick of her fingers. "The evidence was thorough," she said, voice neither cold nor warm. She adjusted the ribbon beside her ear. "Good sitting."

Four seats down, Lady Foxfire, sprawled comfortably in her gourd-scented fog, raised her wine gourd in a lazy toasting motion. "Here's to the spectacle."

Wen gave a slow sigh, barely a whisper. Then, with no further comment, he flicked his stylus through his case files and quietly closed them.

Erlang Shen tugged his collar and muttered to no one in particular, "I suppose that concludes the theatrics," before making a deliberate note on the crystalline surface of his armrest.

Li Wei, impassive for most of the Hearing, allowed himself the smallest exhale—a silent, mortal gesture of relief.

Qiongqi remained kneeling. His lotus seat had turned gray the moment the Avatar invoked Protocol 2-X, and now he existed in mute stasis: not banished—just silenced, though it wasn't hard to notice that the demon was currently going through the second out of the Five Stages of Grief.

Ao Bing bowed slightly from his seat. It was not dramatic or grovelling. He would not raise his voice again until the Council's internal review passed. And he knew better than to throw sparks near dry tinder.

Standing in the heart of it all, Taeril White inclined his head, hair catching the final shimmer of petal-light. Then, with all the bored finality of someone who'd had to deal with a thousand minor hassles and had seen enough, he cleared his throat.

"Next time," he said, obsidian eyes sweeping across the Chamber, "try hiring better scriptwriters. Ones without laughable plot holes like this time."

Great Peng actually wheezed. Erlang Shen's eyebrow shot up. Someone on the SpiritTube livestream clipped the audio instantly.

The Jade Deity Avatar pulsed once, gold threading into white.

"Council Hearing concluded.

Post-proceeding documentation and RealmNet records are to be submitted within the next twenty-four hours."

"All attending members and spectators are dismissed."

The moment the Jade Deity Avatar rendered its verdict, silence followed like the final chord of a symphony. Taeril stood in the lotus-slick center of the Chamber, the very image of grace under divine bureaucracy.

Then, just behind him, a ripple passed through Li Wei's divine HUD. It was almost imperceptible—just a single blink of light, a silver fracture across the lower corner of his iridescent lens. But Taeril noticed. He always did.

Li Wei's face didn't change, but his fingers shifted under the table, swiping open a layer of his divine interface now accessible post-verdict. A pale screen unfolded, hovering above his seated position like a translucent lotus leaf.

At first, nothing.

Then, an alert box bloomed.

[PRIORITY-LOCKED NOTIFICATION]

Censored Activity Detected!

LOCATION: Beneath New York Basin — Sector A003-B (Lat: 40.7128° N / Long: 74.0060° W)

SIGNAL PATTERN: [Redacted]

SPIRITUAL QI SIGNATURE: Pending Confirmation

SEVERITY: Unknown. Monitoring Advised.

Li Wei didn't even blink. He tapped two fingers together and swiped before the headache could catch up to him.

Message: Forwarded.

Taeril's gaze didn't change, but his internal HUD updated almost simultaneously. For just a breath, his gaze narrowed, the faintest shimmer of digital light brushing against the corner of his obsidian eyes.

The entire report vanished a second later; the final thing to flicker was the watermark —a pulsing sigil.

A serpentine sigil in gold—one he hadn't seen in over four centuries—flickered across the back of his HUD. Then vanished.

The image vanished before it even fully resolved, but Taeril had seen it with utmost clarity.

So, that's what this was all about.

Behind the Council political games, beyond the sealed chamber drama and the memes and the diverted attention—something had shifted beneath the Mortal Realm.

He tilted his head slightly toward Li Wei, who met his glance with the barest flicker of confirmation.

The Council Hearing was not the war. It was the diversion.

Someone had just played them all.

***

The villa was steeped in sunlight and false tranquility.

Somewhere in the distance, wind chimes shaped like turtles hummed harmoniously. The koi pond had entered its afternoon loop—fortune scrolls surfacing once every three minutes like it was spiritually clocked.

By the veranda, Luke was crouched beside a plastic bucket in loose joggers and a suspiciously expensive shirt. The koi had migrated there temporarily because he'd wanted to feed them mulberries. Several were already nibbling from his fingers like scaled-down rabbits.

Chewie was cross-legged beside a tanghulu tray, stabbing each skewer with more aggression than culinary necessity. Behind her, Emily had an Algorithms problem set open on her tablet. Her eyes were narrowed in a way that mirrored a doctor's before they performed a surgical dissection—except the subject was binary trees and the victim was her sanity.

Sera was napping under a plum tree. One hand held her retro camera to her chest. Her other arm flopped loosely in the grass like she was sun-charging.

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Eathan, meanwhile, sat with his knees up on the steps, chin resting in the hollow between them, eyes flicking between RealmNet and the now-sentient chaos of SpiritTube.

The Council Hearing highlight reel had cleared eleven billion views.

There was a new remix every twenty minutes. A ten-minute compilation of Taeril sipping tea while Qiongqi got metaphysically muzzled had already spawned an entire fan-edit subculture. The most popular version featured AI-generated backing vocals and a flaming overlay of the White Tiger banner in seventy different fonts.

"You'd think they've never seen a White Tiger not get fired," said Chewie, now lounging upside down on the armrest like a monkey in mortal form.

Eathan's eyes flicked toward her, then back to the stream.

"You know they're making fan merch now, right?" the eleven-year-old added, tapping the screen to upvote a particularly sparkly edit of Taeril walking through rainbow lotus petals. "Saw a listing on CloudBo for 'Certified Tiger Tea Set: Comes with Judgment Energy.'"

"Why am I not surprised?" He groaned out loud this time. "Feels like I aged five years just watching that Hearing."

She peered at him. "Looks like it, too."

"…"

"Bro." Luke glanced over from his fish-handling operation. "What if we just... stayed another week?"

Emily didn't even look up. "We'd fail all our classes."

"Worth it," mumbled Sera from under the plum tree.

Luke turned his head. "Eathan? What about you? Want me to see if I can get you a ticket? Still got time before we check in tomorrow night."

Eathan didn't answer immediately. His gaze hovered over the top of his tablet screen, where a fresh school email glowed red:

[URGENT] Attendance Advisory — Westpoint University

Dear Student, Your Spring Semester absences have exceeded allowable thresholds. Contact academic advisor immediately.

He closed his eyes, dragged a hand down his face, and exhaled like a war survivor contemplating whether he wanted to return to base camp or enter into reclusion on a spiritual mountaintop.

Eathan weighed the facts.

Frankly, he missed being a regular sleep-deprived student. There was something nostalgic about forgetting deadlines, eating aggressively average campus stir-fry, and sprinting between buildings because the CS professors never believed in ending lectures on time. He missed that particular brand of chaos.

Academically speaking, he was also on the edge of three overdue assignments, at least one passive-aggressive TA email, and what he hoped was a C+ in Algorithms—if Professor Adoir had decided to be merciful.

He'd already missed the midterm. Algorithms was one spiritual battle he was absolutely unqualified for.

But on the other hand…

Eathan tapped open his [SYSTEM] dashboard. He'd survived Class-A rifts. Class-S, even. Semi-partook in the unmasking of inter-realm saboteurs. Witnessed the divine equivalent of a courtroom anime arc. His [Humanity] meter was stabilizing at around 70% (could have been higher), but his [Integrity] had already passed the halfway point.

Not to mention, his divine affinity had now been acknowledged by multiple immortal entities, a dubious snake, and an emotionally-charged sect recruiter who may or may not have implied an approaching inter-realm calamity.

His fingers hovered over the [Dear Professors] draft for the third time.

"Academic Leave Consideration: Extremely Niche Internship Opportunity…"

Eathan sighed again, fingers ruffling his hair, when—

Drrring!

A sudden chime broke the silence.

The villa wards groaned to life, gates unlocking one by one. The five-layer qi security flared in recognition of a familiar divine signature. The gates bowed—literally bowed—each ward line dipping in reverence before dissolving. A spiritual presence swept down the main path, and Eathan stood up before he even registered why.

Moments later, a familiar black car hummed up the curved road, tires whispering over the stone path. The doors unlocked with a high-pitched hiss.

Meng Yao stepped out first—still in field uniform, hair twisted in her signature lunar knot and emerging in full military grace.

Taeril followed.

Hair half-tied. Coat immaculate. Jade pin angled like a blade through silk. There was no more storm in his wake. But somehow, everything stilled anyway.

Eathan moved instinctively. Nearly tripped over the cleaning broom Chewie had left by the bench.

"You're back—!"

Taeril raised one hand. "Contain your mortal exuberance," he said. "There are koi watching."

But a faint tug of a smile ghosted across his mouth.

Eathan flushed, slowing down at last. "You could've at least warned me the hearing would be three days long. I had to refresh SpiritTube like I was tracking stock market shifts."

"I left a note. Spiritually," Taeril said.

"Excuse me?"

"But you were busy attending spiritual fairs and eating hotpot with snake spirits."

Eathan blinked. "...You knew?"

"Naturally." Taeril arched a brow. "You tagged the snake in your InterGram story."

Eathan cursed softly under his breath. Luke waved from the fish bucket. "Yo! Mister White! Good to see you in one piece! Eathan said something about you getting arrested?"

Eathan swerved to him in betrayal. "I did not!"

Taeril turned his head slightly. "Appreciated."

Chewie emerged from a bush, staring at him from behind a skewer. "Did you really pull out Protocol 2-X like a uno-reverse?"

"Officially? No," he said, glancing toward the koi in the bucket. "Uno doesn't have divine backing."

"So…" Emily stepped forward finally, holopad still in hand, eyes assessing. "You're really not running a pyramid scheme."

Taeril inclined his head. "Not unless one counts Heaven's hierarchy."

She blinked.

"That's not comforting," Eathan muttered.

With the White Tiger's return, the villa had descended into one of those perfect early evening lulls: golden lamplight, distant wind chimes, and the smell of warm ginger lingering in the air.

The mortal trio had commandeered the second-floor kitchen to bake desserts.

Emily and Chewie had found a recipe for taro sponge cake that the latter approved as "definitely wouldn't cause inter-realm allergic reactions"; Luke was taste-testing everything like it was a divine duty; and Sera was frosting cupcakes with a level of serenity that made Eathan think she'd done this in a past life.

Which meant, for once, it was just him and the White Tiger in the courtyard. Alone. Under starlight.

They sat in companionable silence, steam curling from their respective drinks—coffee for the tiger god, tea for the intern who still wanted to sleep through his mornings without astral projections.

Eathan sipped slowly, then glanced at the man across from him.

Taeril, as always, looked like he'd walked off a divine modelling agency's "Warlord Casual" collection—robe-sleeves pushed up to the forearms, smoke wafting from the cigarette between his fingers. He wasn't smiling, yet his resting face somehow suggested he might be one thought away from slicing a deity in half or telling a good joke. Sometimes both.

Eathan exhaled. Then blurted, "I'm contemplating going back."

Taeril glanced over, gaze deeply obsidian. "To your school?"

"Yeah. But I don't know for sure yet. I mean… school's important, but…"

"But you're now a part-time divine contractor with an RPG interface, spiritual resonance, and a tendency to attract plot-critical phenomena."

"…That," Eathan muttered into his tea.

There was a pause.

Then Taeril said, with a casual shrug of the shoulders, "Then make a decision."

Eathan blinked.

"To stay or to go. Here or there. But don't dither."

Eathan stared at him. "I thought you'd, I dunno… try to convince me to stay. Maybe bribe me with a villa. Or those immortality offers people usually throw in for the plot."

"This world doesn't need more passengers," Taeril said. "If you're going to be involved—be involved. Commit. Or don't. But either way…"

His gaze held steady.

"It should be you choosing."

And just like that, Eathan felt it click.

Because it was his choice. Always had been.

Just like that night in the convenience store. Just like when he first accepted that rift mission, or when he stayed behind with the [Node Imprint] and stabilized a fragment of reality with nothing but sheer willpower and tenacity that even he himself hadn't anticipated.

Just like fifteen years ago, when he reached for the outstretched hand.

He'd chosen this path, again and again. He just hadn't noticed.

Taeril rose, mug in hand, and headed back toward the villa entrance. Eathan stood there, fingers tightening around his teacup.

"But I really don't want to fail Algorithms," he called after him.

The white-haired man waved a lazy hand. "Have Meng Yao write you a reference. Just tell your professors you were caught in a time dilation field. Happens more often than you'd think."

"That's not going to work."

"Then tell them the truth. You're on semester leave to assist with celestial equilibrium restoration. Only slightly less absurd."

Eathan huffed—but he was smiling as he pulled up his student portal on the holopad.

Email Subject: Request for Academic Leave – One Semester

Reason: Rare Spiritual Co-op Opportunity

He stared at the screen for a moment. Then hit submit.

Done.

Taeril's voice echoed lazily from down the hall: "Don't forget to eat. Mortals still need protein."

Eathan chuckled under his breath.

Yeah. For this semester, at least, Algorithms could wait.

Celestial equilibrium certainly wasn't.

Just as he took a final sip of tea, footsteps returned to the courtyard. It was the White Tiger again, this time holding something delicate between two fingers—a golden paper crane.

Eathan froze.

"Why do you look like that?"

"I had forgotten to inform you." Taeril, all serene menace and HR energy, offered a pleasant smile. "The Jade Deity has issued a directive."

Eathan: "?"

"Realm-Barrier Games. Two weeks from now."

Eathan: "???"

"Mandatory participation," he continued, unfolding the crane like it was a flyer for some gardening club. "All Council-seated regions must send teams. Led by commanders themselves."

He looked at Eathan with a straight face.

"For inter-realm unity."

Eathan stared. "Games? Like… rec-center field day?"

"More like Realm-endurance trial meets diplomacy bloodsport."

There was a long, apprehensive silence.

"…I'm gonna die, aren't I?"

"Perhaps," said Chewie, materialising from the shadows with powdered sugar on her cheek. "But stylishly."

Eathan groaned into his tea. But then a thought flickered across his mind. Slowly, cautiously, he looked back up.

"Wait," he said. "You waited until I submitted the leave request."

Taeril tilted his head mildly. "Of course."

"You knew I was deciding, and you waited—"

"I said the choice was yours."

"You gaslit me!"

"I gave you space."

"You told me to be myself!"

"I never said when." Taeril patted down his sleeves. "You're already registered under 001."

"You what—"

But Eathan was too late. The crane had already unfolded itself midair, golden wings stretching, before flaring into brilliant light and vanishing—sealed and confirmed.

Somewhere deep beneath Manhattan, in a place no mortal subway could reach, a spiritual node let out a low, rumbling groan. A yellow sigil blinked to life in the darkness, then vanished again.

And above it all, under the flickering of courtyard lanterns, Taeril turned his gaze skyward, coat flaring in the wind. His voice, when it came, was soft yet terribly final.

"Soon, the time will come."

[END OF PART ONE]