COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

The arena shifted as if it were alive.

Dozens of floating islands, layered in concentric rings, hovered above a churning node rift that glowed with sullen stormlight. Gravity clung to the terrain only partially, loosening near the edges, where unanchored fools might tumble screaming into the spiritual abyss (respawn in thirty seconds, no big deal).

Five eggs shimmered midair—gold-veined orbs spinning like compass needles, their glows slightly out of sync.

"Terrain scan initiated," Brother Woo announced. "May your footing be steady and your falls cinematic."

"LET'S GO! First five minutes on the clock—Divine Egg Hunting has begun!" Yverie's voice rang out over the floating arena.

Teams were not told which egg was the real deal, but the first squad to intercept the Divine Egg and confirm its spiritual resonance would trigger the "active" status, making it the contested prize.

"Each egg glows slightly different," Brother Woo narrated. "But the real one pulses in-phase with the node rift below. Spectral sync. Only the most observant—or the most absurdly lucky—can tell."

"Looks like Team 003 found it first!" Yverie gasped. "Their ghost phaser just pinged it near Ring Two!"

One of the flying locust drones swept past, its lens panning to Li Wei's Ghost Envoy sweeping low and weaving through a platform's underbelly. He emerged a moment later, clutching one of the golden orbs. The moment he touched down, a faint flare pulsed from the egg—and all four decoys dimmed slightly.

[GAME UPDATE]

Divine Egg Discovered!

First contact: Team 003

"And that's how you call dibs in divine sports!" Yverie crowed. "Team 003 now holds the Divine Egg. Let's see how long they survive."

"Perhaps they won't," Brother Woo said. "But let's hope they will suffer with grace."

Team 003—Li Wei's lineup—moved with professional coordination.

From above, the Crane-spirit operative glided between rings, her wings sweeping through the air like pale brushstrokes. She wasn't just scouting; her long sleeves flicked out reflective threads that disrupted visual tracking spells, scattering false movement across the arena.

Below, the mortal tech-teenager crouched near their node-core. The Ghost Envoy had passed on the Divine Egg to him, and the Technie was now activating a pair of terrain stabilizers strapped like oversized watches to his wrists. One flicker of his bracelets, and a small cavern on a sub-island shimmered into view. The Divine Egg was gone—hidden deep inside an illusion-wrapped crevice that flickered every few seconds like a bad GPS signal.

"Solid," Willow muttered, arms folded. "Li Wei's going for delay-play. Classic turtle strategy."

"And misdirection," Esther added. "They're using the terrain like camouflage."

Their third member—an ethereal Ghost Envoy whose shape barely held in three dimensions—drifted through obstacles, throwing distortion veils across the dummy eggs. Even the broadcast screen wobbled as it tried to track him.

Team 004, on the other hand, did not bother with such formalities.

Lady Meng's two ghost warriors spread out like funeral smoke—no footfalls, no shadows. One glided along a suspended bridge of starlight without ever touching it, clutching a decoy egg like a lantern. Another oozed through cracks in the rock, trailing wards that dissolved terrain footholds just after they were passed.

And then there was the Tang Poet.

Sen Ren stood tall, robes flowing, his brush raised like a sword forged in calligraphy. He stepped forward with calm precision and spoke:

"Lo, the plum blossoms fall like blades upon the midnight field."

With an ice scythe in hand, he sliced a platform in half. The crane-spirit yelped, spiralled upward just in time.

The audience screamed. RealmNet emotes exploded like fireworks:

[@remindmetosleep]: AYYYYYYYYYYYYY

[@cheerforyverie]: Sen Ren bars harder than my final exams

[@slavingaway10]: plum.blossoms.exe has crashed your dignity

Eathan stared in horror. "This man just yeeted a haiku into artillery."

Yverie gushed from the screen. "And that's another poetic burst from Sen Ren—back again with the metaphor murder!"

Meanwhile, back on the map—

The Ghost General on Lady Meng's side phased left, then vanished. One moment, he was in a mid-guard stance; the next, he was simply gone.

No alert. No death trigger. Just… absence.

Thirty seconds later, the broadcast jolted to a new feed near Li Wei's core.

There he was. Reappeared from spectral mist, clutching the Divine Egg, a faint smirk on his amorphous face.

The crowd lost their collective divine minds.

Yverie nearly screamed into her mic, teal hair sparkling with shock. "Hold up—did he just recall phase to the core?! That's a Phantom Path Recall! I haven't seen one of those since the Twenty-Sixth Games! Thought they'd banned it for crashing the spectator HUD!"

Brother Woo, sipping a gourd of holy tea: "Ah. The old vanish-then-score tactic. Risky. Elegant. Questionably legal. Deeply fashionable."

Finn squawked. "He cheated death?!"

"No, it was clean," Willow said, narrowing her eyes. "Rigged it with a cloaked fail-safe, it's an old-school trick from the Realm of the Passing. The ghost disintegrated itself just outside the node rift's death barrier, triggering a death-phase manually. By the time the system flagged him, he'd already entered the respawn buffer inside Li Wei's territory. Everything was timed to the second."

Eathan made a noise halfway between awe and horror. "But how did he even know where the real egg was? I thought they hid it with an illusion cavern and, like, twenty layers of anti-stalker tech?"

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"He didn't track the egg," Esther was the one to answer. "He tracked the mortal techie."

Eathan blinked.

Willow nodded in approval.

"See those terrain-hacking bracelets?" She gestured toward the screen, where the Techie was frantically recalibrating his stabilizers. "They run on layered spirit-frequency pulses. Usually harmless. But ghosts from the Realm of the Passing can pick up on anchor emissions—especially phase-sensitive types like that general. He probably caught the stabilizer's resonance echo during the early scout phase. Backtraced it. Found the egg's anchor point from the bracelet's feedback trail."

"So…" Eathan said slowly, "he piggybacked on a maintenance signal to steal a divine artifact?"

"Yup," Finn muttered. "Dude reverse-engineered a hide-and-seek game using ghost WiFi. Legal, but barely."

"Meng's team plays dirty," Chewie said approvingly. "I respect it."

"Don't get ideas," Eathan muttered.

Just as the Ghost General prepared to plant the egg—

The terrain shifted.

A ripple surged through the realm as the game hit its 10-minute mark. The central cliff spun like a lazy roulette table. Bridges fractured and realigned midair, and the core node of Team 004 vanished, reappearing precariously at the opposite end. Amidst the chaos, one of Team 003's decoy eggs plunged downward, consumed by the node rift below and triggering a warning pulse.

[TEAM 003 PENALTY]

-30 seconds

Respawn initiating...

"Yikes," Finn winced, leaning forward in the stands. "Someone just lost their lunch—and their egg."

Still, Li Wei didn't move.

Standing by the viewing balcony, the man simply adjusted his stance with his hands clasped behind his back, observing the chaos on the battlefield like it owed him rent.

The Ghost General from Lady Meng's side advanced again—this time weaving through terrain mid-phase, trying to bypass defenses with the Ghost Scholar as support. Simultaneously, the Tang Poet whispered the stanzas as he swung his calligraphy brush, each poetic syllable reshaping the land to match the verse's meter.

But Li Wei had seen it coming.

Below, their Technie crouched hidden behind rubble. Earlier, he'd decoded Sen Ren's poetic meter—every syllable, stanza break, rhythmic breath logged and predicted. Now, timing was everything.

Now, he laid the trap.

Just as the Ghost General phased out of visibility, a signal flashed. The Technie activated a containment glyph—a calculated gamble—and mid-step, the Ghost General, mid-phase, was yanked into visibility prematurely, legs locked in spiritual stasis.

"Gotcha," the Technie muttered, adjusting his goggles.

But the Ghost Scholar surged forward seamlessly, ink dripping from ghostly fingertips, conjuring reinforcement talismans. Mid-air, a silver blur appeared—the Crane-spirit, wings unfurled, swooping to tug at the Scholar's ink-stained sleeve, disrupting the spirit just enough.

In the momentary confusion, Li Wei's own Ghost Envoy lunged from the shadows. He phased through residual barriers and, fingers tightening around its golden-veined shell, snatched the real Divine Egg.

"Counterstrike," Brother Woo murmured approvingly. "Executed with silence and grace."

Team 003 bolted toward their target.

[TIME REMAINING]:

10:00

Underfoot, the terrain had shifted again—ridges sliding, gravity flipping like a sulky cat. But their coordination held. But Team 003 adapted fluidly. The Technie adjusted for magnetic stabilizers onto their path, creating safe footholds. The Crane-spirit soared overhead, trailing azure illusions like banners and obscuring their route from sight.

The real egg—gold-veined, humming with unstable integrity—was tucked in the crook of the Ghost Envoy's phantasmal arm as he surged across the floating bridge. And then—

A voice rang out like a bell striking midnight:

"The road returns where stars align…"

A shiver ran through the terrain. Starlight unravelled like a loom unspooling a thousand threads at once. Starlight unfurled before them, forming a bridge of solid luminance straight across their path.

The egg carrier skidded to a stop.

The Tang Poet's voice, rich with desperate rhythm, had carved a final obstacle into existence.

The spectators stood gasping. RealmNet glitched from too many viewers trying to spam "NOOOO!!" in every known dialect.

"He versified a wall." Eathan clutched his hoodie strings.

Esther stood, eyes glinting subtly. "They're not letting him cross that easily."

"Dammit," Willow muttered. "Of course, the poet's a stage designer."

And up on the floating scoreboard, the clock ticked down.

TIME REMAINING:

02:30

Li Wei's team didn't hesitate.

The Ghost Envoy leapt towards the celestial obstruction—only to meet a crushing mid-air tackle from the Ghost General, who'd respawned just moments prior. They collided with a burst of phase-light, tumbling off the spine of stars. At the clash, Eathan inhaled and held his breath.

Yet as the Ghost Envoy fell, the Crane-spirit descended in a blur, silver sleeves trailing like comet tails. She twisted aerially, talons just barely brushing the edge of a cliff-ring before snagging the egg from the Ghost Envoy mid-fall.

Yverie screamed.

The mortal Techie howled something about copyright infringement.

But Team 003 was already sprinting. Crane-spirit, maneuvering mid-flight, flicked the egg downwards into the Technie's waiting hands. The latter activated a quick-seal glyph and slid it across the fragmented ground toward the exposed node-core of Team 004.

At the last moment, Ghost Scholar threw out a barrier, ink-glyphs stretching across their node-core, nearly stopping the egg in mid-motion—but it wasn't enough. Technie's modified talisman surged forward, slicing neatly through the barrier like paper.

The egg landed—glorious, glowing—in the node-core of Team 004.

A brilliant pulse of gold erupted skyward, shattering the remaining ink constructs.

And then—

[TIME REMAINING]:

00:00

Dead silence.

Yverie's hands shot up. "Was it fast enough?! Did they beat the clock?!"

The screen glitched. RealmNet comments exploded. Thousands of viewer emotes spammed the feed in synchronised panic—sparkle emojis, shattered egg stickers, one lone GIF of Qiongqi sobbing into a lotus seat.

Then, Brother Woo spoke, calm as ever: "Victory to Team 003—Li Wei. By zero-point-two seconds."

"…What the hell," Eathan whispered, eyeing the overworked commander across the arena. "That was terrifying."

He then looked up. The holographic comment section overhead scrolled like divine graffiti.

[@SwordDancer]: LI WEI PREDICTED A RHYME PATTERN. WHO DOES THAT???

[@wifiwarlock]: crane dive + techie sync + ghost phase bait = poetry is cancelled.

[@WTFanclubOfficial]: white tiger supremacy but ngl captain li's ghost can haunt my taxes anytime

Team 001 groaned in chorus.

Finn dropped his face into his hands. "Okay. Note to self. Never let Commander Li edit my slam poems."

"That egg route was risky." Esther tilted her head. "But he called the bluff and counted syllables. That's a little psychotic."

Willow just exhaled through her nose. "Guess it's our turn now."

Yverie's voice burst back onto the intercom, unnaturally chipper. "Aaaand now, stepping into the Divine Arena—Team 001 and Team 006! Let's give a cosmic roar for our White Tiger and Sea Dragon Prince!"

The battlefield rumbled.

The floating arena plates began shifting again, rotating in spirals as new terrain rose from the clouds. This time: jagged cliff ridges interspersed with unstable ice pillars. Slick bridges twisted into fractal spirals. Thin platforms shimmered faintly with frost.

A snow setting.

Above them, Taeril stood motionless on the commanders' platform, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

Eathan's wrist HUD lit up, followed by a soft ping:

[Divine Capture-the-Egg]

PARTICIPANT SELECTION CONFIRMED:

Eathan

Esther

Willow

His name appeared on the screen. His startled face followed—right alongside Esther's, whose expression looked like she wouldn't care even to enter the game blindfolded. Beside them appeared Willow, casually rolling her neck with the enthusiasm of someone about to commit war crimes.

Eathan read it.

Eathan reread it.

Eathan died inside.

"Cool cool cool," he muttered aloud, eyes vacant. "I'm going to die."

"Don't die," Esther said helpfully.

"Look alive." Finn grinned. "At least your opponent's not writing couplets with violence."

Willow cracked her knuckles. "Let's show Ao Bing how Area 001 handles snowflakes and smug blue hair."

The staging platform activated, and the three members of Team 001 strolled into the spotlight.

Above, Yverie blew a kiss toward the camera. Brother Woo gave a tranquil nod, as if he were already writing their obituaries.

"To those entering the arena: may your footing be firm, and your memes eternal."

A pulse of divine light swallowed the platform.

Eathan's last thought before vanishing into the arena:

Please don't let our egg be dramatic. Please don't let our egg be dramatic.