COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

The sky above Shanghai hung thick with silver-grey clouds, filtering the sunlight into diffuse halos that shimmered against the city.

Underneath those spiritual wards, Area 001 buzzed with quiet intensity. Markets hummed, nodes pulsed beneath the pavement, and somewhere above, Transfer Gates flickered into calibration for the upcoming Realm-Barrier Games.

Eathan, freshly not-prepared for divine madness, found himself standing outside a bubble-tea kiosk with his new teammates, trying not to look too much like a lost mortal.

"If we're going to die together," Chewie declared, biting into a skewered tanghulu with lethal precision, "we might as well know what snacks everyone likes."

"True. Can't stab beside someone if you don't know their trauma," Willow added matter-of-factly, stretching her arms behind her head.

Esther, already part of the group dynamic despite saying almost nothing since they met, coolly noted, "Or their worst angles. For blackmail purposes."

[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION

[Side Quest (new!)]

Team-Bonding Bootcamp!

▸ Engage with Team 001 members in meaningful mortal activities.

Rewards: +100 Karma, +10 Qi Tokens, 3% Humanity

Eathan stared at the glowing text hovering just above his left eye.

He was starting to think that one of the team selection criteria was psychological abnormality.

***

Their first stop was a hidden pop-up RealmNet Experience Boutique™—one of those aggressively branded glitter-hologram installations built by sinister marketing departments that had read too many "relatable mortal behaviour" datasets.

The storefront was plastered with floating QR sigils, celebrity cardboard cutouts, and rotating scent enchantments designed to trigger nostalgic emotion spikes. Half the display shelves flickered with augmented signage boasting, "Limited-time spirit-reactive items! Channel your inner influencer!"

Chewie refused to enter until someone bribed her with a new pen-sized tanghulu stamper.

They took selfies in front of a three-meter fox-plush suspiciously modelled after Lady Foxfire's emoji avatar. Finn wore reflective visor-glasses indoors and struck dramatic poses.

Eathan tried on a RealmNet-exclusive hoodie embroidered with AR-embedded sigils. He got stuck halfway pulling it over his head and flailed like a dumpling.

Chewie did not assist.

Chewie did take twenty photos.

Nearby, Finn tested a novelty hat labelled: "Translates Dog Barks (99% Accuracy)."

The hat promptly glitched and began shrieking aggressive threats in Old Canine—a lost dialect last used during the Karma Forge Rebellion in the Realm of the Passing. Customers fled. The hat was banned from three nearby districts before Finn could take a selfie.

Esther, across the store, examined a tiger-shaped keychain with enchantment slots and a legality disclaimer in three languages. She inspected the balance, flicked it once, then pocketed it.

"Cute."

After escaping with lighter wallets and significantly diminished dignity, they stumbled into their next mistake:

NeonFang Café—a sleek neon-lit gaming café with qi-stabilised headsets and anti-spirit wards to prevent "accidental possession during competitive matches."

They queued into an old-school five-player MOBA match.

Bad idea.

Finn picked the cosmic mage and blinded half the map with solar flares while monologuing in star poetry. Willow dual-wielded healer and tank classes with terrifying composure. Esther racked up kill streaks without saying a word, quietly top-fragging while sipping barley tea.

Chewie went full berserker. She charged into enemy lines like a divine tax audit, flattening players, objectives, and—somehow—the support server's sanity.

Meanwhile, Eathan pressed buttons like he was in a lottery draw, vaguely trying to remember how games worked back when Luke used to carry him through tutorial missions.

Then, someone camped Chewie's spawn point.

The eleven-year-old growled, muttered something in Ancient War Tongue, and slapped a talisman onto the monitor.

The screen sparked.

A second later, a small fire sprite erupted from the casing. One staff member screamed. A second deployed the emergency fire extinguisher. A mousepad caught on flames, which then spread quickly to the surrounding walls.

The group bailed, sprinting down the street.

"Their firewall," Chewie muttered, shaking ash off her sleeve, "was too literal."

Eathan wheezed behind her. "And this is who I'm relying on during divine combat..."

***

Dinner was significantly safer.

They ended up at a cozy Korean BBQ joint a few blocks from HQ—family-run, ambient spirit seals humming faintly along the walls. The owners were retired node-smiths who still wore spirit-dampening gloves to flip pork belly with tongs.

The grill hissed while fans spun lazily overhead. Five seats, one table, and a stack of side dishes as tall as Chewie.

"Did you all know?" Finn began, flipping a short rib with one hand while scrolling RealmNet with the other. "The Games were originally pitched as unity programs."

"Unity," Willow said, snorting. "As in, 'legalized chaos with divine commentary.'"

Eathan blinked. "Wait, I thought it was like... realm diplomacy?"

"Sure," Chewie replied. "In the same way a spiritual duel is a conversation."

Between grilled bulgogi and kimchi refills, the gossip started to flow.

Finn leaned in. "Past Games didn't just end badly. There was a duel that lasted five days, three marriage pacts, and a meme war that involved a platform-wide livestream and assassination attempts in emoticons."

Eathan gaped. "Marriage pacts?!"

Willow shrugged. "One of them still holds. The retired Cultivator Liu and Lady Vortex from Area 008. Their wedding cake caused a minor rift."

"Don't forget Lady Meng's crush on Li Wei," Finn added casually.

Eathan's chopsticks clattered. "Captain Li?" He said, choking on his rice. "He glares at paperwork like it owes him child support!"

Esther stirred her dipping sauce. "Apparently, she liked his aura."

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"Of bureaucracy?"

"Of mild decease."

With the gossip button flipped on, absurd tales came faster than side dishes:

Qiongqi had once tried to register an undead army for the Games. Denied on technicality.

Ao Bing once paid a mortal to seduce Wen. No one knew the reason, and Wen had never denied it.

Great Peng apparently live-tweeted his team's collapse in the last Game. The hashtag #DivineFail trended across the Six Realms for nine days and was later banned officially for causing morale degeneration.

When the table's chatter reached Commander White, the table fell silent.

Chewie stabbed a piece of kimchi. "He's... efficient."

Willow sipped her tea. "I like my job."

Esther, chewing calmly: "Pass the sauce."

Finn mumbled incoherent praise through a mouth full of lettuce.

Eathan stared at them. "You're all terrified, huh."

The grill snapped and hissed with every turn of the meat. With a satisfied sigh, Eathan leaned back in his seat, belly half-full and brain overheating.

"So," he asked, using his chopsticks to shield himself from potential hot oil splash, "what exactly do these Games entail? Please tell me it's not just divine dodgeball."

Willow, swirling her soup, gave a low chuckle. "Three rounds. Physical, mental, spiritual. It's always been that way. But the themes? That's where things go off the rails."

Finn grinned. "Ever since satellite got introduced into spiritual nodes and made half the cloud circuits misfire, the Heavenly Court started syncing their events with mortal culture trends—'"

"—to 'stay relatable,'" Chewie added stoically.

Willow nodded. "The Games happen erratically, but when they do, the Jade Deity picks themes based on what's 'popular in the Mortal Realm.' Except, they're always about twenty years late."

"Last cycle's 'Realm Crossing' game was... traumatic," said Finn, stabbing a radish.

"The cycle before that was Heaven's Kitchen." Chewie nodded along. "Dumpling cook-off. Lady Foxfire poisoned her entire team out of boredom and still got MVP."

Eathan lagged, visibly trying to comprehend that sentence.

"And apparently seven cycles ago..." Willow sighed. "Uno."

Esther, who had been mostly silent until now, stabbed a piece of pork belly and said mildly, "The reverse card incident."

Finn winced. "Qiongqi dropped a Draw 4 on Ao Bing. Ao Bing reversed it with a Council-sealed override card. RealmNet crashed."

"No one spoke to each other for half a decade," Willow confirmed, flipping a rib like she was reliving combat trauma.

Eathan stared down at his lettuce wrap like it had personally betrayed him. "Why is every divine event a social experiment with snacks and murder?"

Esther tilted her head. "Because that's the most efficient form of diplomacy."

The conversation drifted then, settling into a lull before looping back, as conversations often do, to themselves.

Willow flipped a short rib with surgical precision. "Alright, friends. You've heard immortal war stories. But you barely know who's going to be covering your flank when the Jade Deity decides it's time for mortal charades. Might as well start now."

She wasn't smiling. She didn't really smile. Not unless it involved stabbing something.

Esther was the first to speak. She finished her soup, wiped her fingers clean with a damp spirit-cloth, and set her cup down like she was preparing an interrogation.

"Esther," she said. "Silver Sand Sect. Assassin class. Been at HQ for six years."

Eathan glanced up from the grill, the word assassin catching in his throat like a fish bone.

"Specialties include infiltration, silent eliminations, and handling delicate betrayals," Esther said. She paused, gaze distant with unspoken stories. Others leaned forward, smelling lore.

"I had disagreements, you can say, with former colleagues who preferred stagnation over ambition. After a particularly dramatic mission failure involving ancient artifacts, celestial secrets, and—" for some reason, Eathan watched as she flicked a glance his way "—old grudges, I was left severely injured at a corrupted node site. Rather than leave me to a fate of boredom and regret, Commander White graciously offered me sanctuary at Area 001. Out of courtesy, I accepted."

A quiet, heavy silence followed. Finn blinked slowly. "...Sounds…intense."

"You said you've been at the HQ for six years?" Willow tilted her head slightly. "Which department? Don't think I've seen you around much."

Esther turned her head, grey eyes meeting Willow's gaze. The latter blinked back at her, and after a moment, her puzzlement soothed into something more mild.

"I hop around," Esther said.

Willow shrugged her shoulder. "Makes sense. Area 001's pretty big."

Finn eyed Willow oddly, then glanced at Esther. "So, uh… any hobbies?"

Esther considered the question in silence, as if deciding whether to share a deeply personal secret or simply kill Finn for asking. "Calligraphy. Archival research. Classical music. Occasionally manipulating political outcomes through strategic misinformation."

Finn stared at her in mild horror. "I—right. Fun."

"So basically," Chewie sighed, reaching for another short rib."Your hobby is being insufferably cryptic."

Esther glanced sideways at the eleven-year-old. "And yours appears to be chronic disrespect."

Chewie raised her chin, munching her food. "At least mine's productive."

Finn lifted his glass hastily, clearing his throat to dispel the tension. He leaned forward, accidentally knocking over a pair of tongs that righted themselves mid-fall thanks to a stabiliser rune.

"Finn Hawtorne. Internship Program," he said with a grin. "Celestial-Class intake. You know, back when the MSR still did company tours and lied to students about work-life balance."

Eathan blinked. "Wait, they did that?"

Finn shot him finger guns. "Don't worry. You were already doomed the moment you walked into HQ."

"…"

"I technically graduated top three in talisman deployment efficiency. Spiritually unlucky, though." He took a long sip of his soda. "Exploding talismans. Reversed a node collapse once while mid-hangover. Don't recommend."

"That was you?" Willow cut in, raising an eyebrow. "The CloudBo's witness reports said the sky turned inside out."

Finn shrugged. "Only for like ten seconds."

Eathan stared. The guy looked like a regular mortal most of the time—messy brown hair, too-bright grin—but every now and then, under strong spirit lights, his dichromatic right eye flickered with something unplaceable. Not demonic, not quite mortal either. Just other.

Probably a minor bloodline in his ancestry. Explains why node-control rooms politely glitched around him here and then.

"You're all just casually absurd, aren't you," he sighed, glancing around the table.

Esther regarded him with a mild look. She turned toward Willow, shifting the focus back smoothly. "What about you?"

Willow paused, considering her next words carefully—as if one of her teammates hadn't just casually revealed themselves as a potential walking national security threat.

"Border of realm's slums," she said eventually. "Spirit-Beast line. I was born with Heibao blood, on my mom's side. Where we lived, we didn't get node stabilization—too poor for those. But we did get storms that ate buildings, and 'family' that tried to sabotage each other to survive."

Chewie dropped her pork belly mid-bite. Even she looked briefly disturbed.

"But I've always been fast. Strong. And angry." Willow said it like she'd earned it. "Where I'm from, cooked food was a luxury, and survival was a feat in itself. MSR didn't patrol out there. Not unless a node blew high enough to make the map glitch. So instead, we learned to fight the weather and each other."

Eathan couldn't picture her as a kid. Willow had the posture of a wild but seasoned leader and the moral patience of a brick wall. But her voice, just then, carried a flicker of something old, nostalgic.

"One day," she continued, "the White Tiger came through. The real one. Not in fancy robes or loungewear—just him, shirt blood-soaked, dragging an unconscious rift beast by the tail. Saved our village. Didn't even wait around to take credit. Just left."

Willow leaned back, eyes distant for a breath. "I clawed my way to HQ a year later. Been here seventeen years now. Signed up the moment they let me."

Finn raised his glass toward her. "To Commander White. Chaotic good in human form."

Esther lifted hers with mild elegance. "To unexpected alliances."

Chewie, lips still stuffed with pork belly, stabbed her chopsticks skyward. "To meat. And murder."

Eathan looked around the table—at the ghost-quiet assassin, the hungover talisman slinger, the ex-streetfighter-turned-tank, and the eleven-year-old gremlin—and wondered what he brought to the group, exactly.

Eathan swallowed his tea. "...To not dying, I guess."

[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION

You have completed [Side Quest]:

Team-Bonding Bootcamp!

You Have Been Rewarded: +100 Karma, +10 Qi Tokens, 3% Humanity

[Humanity] has increased by 3%! (70% → 73%)

Their laughter, for once, wasn't sharpened by tension. For one brief evening, in a spirit-fanned K-BBQ under a flickering signboard, Area 001 felt like a team.

A strange one. A possibly cursed one. But a team nonetheless.

***

The next morning, Eathan found himself standing on the edge of the Area 001 staging platform, watching the Realm-Barrier Transfer Gates strobe like temperamental aurorae. A soft hum rolled beneath his feet—the kind of resonance that made his bones remember they were mortal.

Different from the ones they usually used for rift repair, the designated inter-realm gates were massive: three concentric rings carved from stabilized spiritual ore, rotating like some ancient clock winding down. Jade symbols traced the outermost rim, flaring brighter with every incoming pulse.

Area 001 HQ was alive with motion. Spirit-trackers zipped across holographic banners, and portal indicators blinked in sacred synchrony. On the staging platform, Team 001 stood in formation while staff bustled around them, waving talismans and testing last-minute stabilizers.

Finn stretched his arms. "Time to die."

Chewie nodded. "Time to slay."

"Same thing," Esther said, adjusting the strap of her curved blade.

From a distance, Meng Yao gave them a salute. She wouldn't be joining—someone had to run HQ while they were off reenacting spiritual survivor. A giant glowing sign waved overhead: "!! GO CHEWIE !!" Someone had added glitter runes.

Eathan stepped onto the platform, heart thudding in sync with the Gate's pulse. Just before the light engulfed him, his comm earpiece crackled.

It belonged to none other than Taeril White.

"Try not to embarrass yourselves," he said, voice mild. "And most definitely do not embarrass me."

Eathan groaned. "Comforting as ever."

And the instant he blinked—wind slapped him like a celestial bus. He stumbled forward, boots skidding on slick, sun-bleached stone.

The air around him was thin and frigid, as if someone had filtered it through an ice deity's lungs. His scarf whipped wildly behind him, and he had to crouch down to keep from doing a full somersault off the edge of what he now realised was, undeniably, a very large mountain.

No hoverpads.

No perimeter rails.

No breathable climate seal.

Just a mountain high in altitude, wind, and clouds—all below him, churning like celestial milk in slow motion.

Before Eathan's eyes could properly process the scene, his jaws had already dropped open.

"Where..."

Beside him, Willow stepped forward, clasping her hands behind her head. She turned to him with a smirk.

"Mount Kunlun," she said. "Embrace the sublime, intern."