COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

FORWARD COMMAND POST. UNIFIED MORTAL COALITION.

General Shen Hai looked like he hadn't slept in a week, but the look on his face showed that he understood the stakes. He listened, didn't interrupt, then stared grimly for a good minute before finally sighing.

With a single gesture, a lieutenant staggered into the tent under a column of tubes and ancient vellum.

"These show the different tunnels under the ridge," Shen Hai said, unfurling a map stained with soot and oil. "Old village cisterns, smuggling runs, and siege cuts. Our people have mapped them over generations. They'll get you directly under their encampment without detection."

The scroll was a warren: snake-back lines under the ridge, cross-hatched choke points, sump vents into the Council territory, a sump drain labeled with a skull.

"Here," the general tapped—directly beneath the War Council ring. "You surface inside a maintenance well."

Willow traced three exits with a gloved finger. "And these are resurface paths?"

"Only two of them," Shen Hai said. "Both are ugly. If a net drops, retreat down-slope and collapse shaft seven. Price of the map is simple—bring back any mortals you find in there prison pens."

Chewie folded her arms. "The Council rarely keeps mortals alive—"

The petite warlord was cut off by Willow, who offered a rare respectful nod.

"Will do." She said, gaze sweeping over the scroll with uncommon gravity. "Thank you, general, you just cut our errors in half."

"We mortals protect our own." Shen Hai waved them off. "I wish you the best of luck."

Next was Ascendant Alliance's encampment, where Finn found Lady Fei Qian overseeing exhausted cultivators repairing damaged arrays. Her expression darkened upon hearing of Eathan's capture.

"Take these," Fei Qian said, pressing a silk pouch into his hands. Inside, several glassy beads shimmered in amber. "Disruptors. Throw them against suppression wards, and they'll temporarily short out any spiritual containment. But be careful, they overheat if you palm them too long."

Finn pocketed them carefully. Beside him, Quine Long eyed the pouch with a raised brow. "Generous."

Fei Qian's eyes flicked to the dragon, then inclined her head. "The auspicious aura your companion manifested earlier... we'd prefer staying in good graces with him—and Lord Qing Long."

Finn acknowledged her words with a slight nod. They left swiftly, knowing alliances here were built on practicality as much as principle.

Finally, the team reconvened at the edge of Cang's temporary command ring. The demon prince stood scowling, arms crossed, as he examined Team 001 one by one. The look he gave them said he'd already counted the minutes since their last request.

Without waiting, Chewie stepped up. "We need intel," she said. "Intel. Guard rotations, patrol routes—details to get our mortal out. I know you've been sniffing around the Pale Judgement ever since he arrived."

"So what if I do? You expect me to feed you the strength of my enemy while I hang a lantern over my own camps?" Cang's smile showed teeth—not humour, warning. "Chi You, I already pulled my engines when your mortal lit the sky. That was pragmatism, not generosity. It's not exactly my wish to throw the Legion into further fire with such eagerness."

"And we're offering you more pragmatism. Our mortal had just halted the White Tiger and dismantled your engines single-handedly," Willow said. "We don't know what he's going through down there, but it surely can't be all rainbows and sunshine. Imagine what happens next time, when compassion isn't holding him back."

Finn waggled the brass clicker. "Also, consider logistics. Fewer panicked demons clogging your field hospitals if the mortal anomaly isn't screaming judgment four tents over."

Cang flinched despite himself, eyeing them in silence.

"Would you risk facing that power again without us as mediators? Just think of it as helping logistics," Finn said. "One less problem on your plate."

Cang's scowl deepened. He studied each of them as if weighing currency, then the memory of Eathan's aura—a light that had forced him to withdraw—flickered behind his gaze. He exhaled, a thin thread of steam.

"Fine."

He snapped his fingers. A surly vanguard medic stepped forward, handing Willow a slate of scratch-etched charts.

"Rotations," Cang said. "The Pale Judgment doesn't ring bells; he rings silence. The changeover is the quietest minute of the hour. He trusts stillness to hide movement."

"Appreciated," Willow said.

Cang's gaze sharpened on the Azure Dragon. "In return, keep your dragon fingers off my supply caravans tonight. I will know if you take even a bolt of cloth."

Quine Long held up open hands. "I steal only attention."

"Steal theirs," Cang said. "Not mine."

A beat. Then, because he couldn't help it, Finn tried a smile. "So... a common enemy. Looks like we're all peas in one pod—at least for now?"

"We are not peas," Cang said flatly. "We are just fed up."

Chewie's mouth twitched. "Close enough."

***

Back near Quine Long's makeshift base, Team 001 gathered. Willow spread Shen Hai's tunnel maps across a crate, paper edges held down with Quine Long's tea cup and a bundle of Chewie's mini glaives. The lines were old but clean—arteries etched under the ridge, skirting cisterns, ash pits, and the stone ribbing below the War Council palisade.

"Entrance here," Willow tapped a thin hatch mark. "We move underground through the tunnels. We crawl for forty meters, then ladder up through a maintenance shaft that surfaces inside the supply ring. Chewie, you're on sigil control—any active rune arrays need immediate disabling."

Chewie nodded briskly, eyes glowing. "Consider it done."

"Finn, your job is noise discipline. There are four shats grates along the shaft, we need to keep them shut. Break even one, and it's over."

Finn held up both hands. "I can be quiet. Sometimes."

Chewie looked unconvinced. "I'm bringing extra tape."

On the table, Fei Qian's silk pouch sat like a coiled snake. Finn loosened the drawstring, and the disruptor beads glimmered faintly, each glassy sphere veined with silver script.

"They short suppression lattices on contact," Fei Qian had said, cool eyes measuring them one by one. "Three breaths of outage. Five, if you cluster them in cloth so the charge blooms."

Willow nodded at the pouch now. "Those go on the pit's binding rings. We'll need exactly one window—no more."

"And the return window," Finn added. "Hard to leave if the sky's falling on our heads."

Chewie slid Cang's rotation slate into place beside the maps, charcoal lines delineating arcs of patrol and call-and-response countersigns. Demon script crawled along the margins—shifts, gate codes, where the stew was good.

Finn leaned in, squinting harder. "Cang was quite generous, huh."

"Not generous," Chewie said. "Practical."

"Once we reach the prison pit, the countdown begins. If Eathan's chained, Chewie snaps the pins; if gagged, I'll cut it clean."

Quine Long brushed an imaginary speck from his sleeve. "And my role?"

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Teleportation once we're out of the restricted zone. And emergency distraction." Willow shot him a look. "And please, for once, don't enjoy it."

"Ah." He exhaled. "I shall suffer heroically."

Finn palmed the brass clicker. It ticked once against his skin, eager. "And if Bai Hu shows up in person?"

Willow's eyes didn't flicker. "He will. We don't fight him. We move faster than he can blink."

"But what if the Pale Judgment actually talks instead of strikes?" Finn ventured.

Willow rolled up the maps and slid them into her back case. "Then we talk while our feet move."

Outside the tent, the island's wind dragged old ash down the slope. Their three gifts—maps, beads, rotations—nested neatly in Willow's pack, the kind of luck that looked suspiciously like planning.

Quine Long lifted the maps with two fingers, gaze flicking to the far horizon where the War Council's banners cut the last light. "According to the rotation intel, the third bell in twenty-eight seconds," he said. "Shall we begin strolling?"

Finn slung the pouch, jaw set. "If I get eaten by a ward, I'm haunting you all."

"Haunt or be haunted, we'll see," Chewie said without missing a beat.

The petite warlord checked the tension on her blade-rod, shoulders loose, eyes not. She looked from Willow to Finn, then up the slope toward the ramparts that hid the pits and the mortal intern they weren't willing to leave behind.

"Let's go steal a mortal back from a god."

***

PRISONER PIT. WAR COUNCIL.

Eathan tested the cuffs once more, only to earn another irritating jolt as the iron bit his wrists. Static crawled up tendon and bone, leaving a fizzle behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw and swallowed the noise that wanted out.

Instinctively, he reached for [Minor Reconstruction], but the HUD blinked back the next second a flashing red:

[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION:

Access to Qi Tokens is restricted in this area!

"…Great."

He sighed—then froze, staring at the foggy breath. It was a thin plume of mist that was dissipating far too slowly.

Eathan blinked, watching the remaining vapour linger. First the glints in his vision, then the antler-phantoms at the edge of exhaustion, now frost-breath in a warm pit.

A creeping dread pooled low in his stomach. These changes were becoming disturbingly prominent. He didn't need a HUD to tell him the backlash from that Ignition still bit deep.

He checked his [SYSTEM] HUD. [Calamity Radar] was still offline, with a cooldown of twenty hours remaining. Above him, the Game's crimson digits ticked with bureaucratic cruelty.

[TIME REMAINING]:

42:31:45

"Just the right amount of urgency to add flavour," he grumbled.

"Urgency—that's one word for it."

A dry voice from the adjacent cell startled Eathan out of his sour mood. He swerved his head, noticing for the first time an elderly man sitting cross-legged against the bars, spine straight by force of habit more than strength. His robes, even though ragged and threadbare, marked him as a cultivator—or at least, formerly. The cultivator warmed his hands over a cup that held no tea—palms cupped to catch the damp that sweated from the stone.

"Uh," Eathan said awkwardly. "Didn't realise I had company."

"Company?" The man chuckled. Sounded like gravel grinding. "More like a fellow meal. The War Council drains the residual qi of every captive here to power their barrier net. Come midnight, they'll take their daily tithe."

"Batteries," Eathan said without thinking.

The man turned to Eathan with a face of patterned old scars. His gaze wasn't unkind. "New to the pits?"

"Does it show?" Eathan tried to smile; it came out crooked. "Is there an orientation pamphlet? 'Welcome to Being Soup'?"

"The orientation here is mostly screaming." The man rubbed his thumb along the rim of the empty cup as if to sand a burr away. "You haven't started yet—consider yourself lucky."

Eathan let his head rest back—carefully this time. A shard of set rune jutted from the wall like a misplaced tooth. The first time he'd met it, his HUD had cheerfully shaved off another three percent of his [HP] for having a skull. He eyed it now like a dog eyes an untrustworthy table leg.

"Why would they bother throwing a mortal here?" he asked. "Is there even anything to drain?"

"Everyone counts," the cultivator said. "Add a couple of dozen like you, and the net hums without a hiccup, at least. Those Council gods hate hiccups."

A chill ran down Eathan's spine. He glanced around, taking in the countless iron collars, rune-marked chains, and flickering array glyphs etched into the walls. "Seems like everyone's using mortals as fuel."

"Mortals carry enough to keep the numbers pretty," the cultivator said. "And so they're used until empty, then replaced. The Council—those gods' efficiency knows no bounds."

Eathan frowned at the word numbers. "You speak like you know the ledgers."

The man gave a small, wry bow from where he sat. "Scribe once in the Ascendant Alliance. We copy what the alliance commands, we climb when we're told the ladder's there. I found a small talent for wind-affinity talismans, so they told me I was fortunate. Fortunate to stand in the third line under Lady Fei Qian's banner, and very fortunate to donate my night-breath to a wall I'll never see."

His finger traced a faded callus on his knuckle—scribe's knot, not a swordsman's. "There are a thousand geniuses above me, child. A million below. Do you know how many 'talents' a war can eat and still ask for seconds?"

Eathan glanced at the lines stitched in the wall—array work done by an impatient hand. "I heard the Ascendant Alliance prides itself on… well, ascending."

"They do." He smiled without warmth. "You'll find the banners straight; you'll also find merit slips, elixir-grain rations, talisman allotments—all precisely distributed. It's only the work that smears. The leylines outside? Many cultivators assigned to it probably inspect them with eyes closed. But what can we do? Before we even fix one part, the war is already moving to a different table."

"Does Lady Fei Qian know about this?" Eathan asked.

"Naturally. Her banner stretches wide." The old man rolled the cup in his palms. "She keeps it as well as any high-ranked head cultivator can. But banners are not hands. Call it triage. Call it compromise. The words change. The gnawing stays."

Eathan listened. The pit smelled of copper and wet clay. Somewhere farther down, someone coughed, then counted their breaths aloud as if counting could anchor them.

"You sound angry," he said gently.

"I sound old." The man's smile eased. "I've been alive for quite long, you see, too long thanks to all this cultivating shit. Before all this, I was a village reed-cutter's son. A wandering priest saw me writing names in the dust and said my wrist flicked like a crane. I learned to breathe into bones, to coax wind through a brush."

He flexed his fingers. They trembled once, then stilled by sheer stubbornness. He pretended not to notice.

"I learned that almost everyone up here was born luckier than me. Luck can't be corrected by effort alone; it requires the kind of grace that doesn't answer to effort. That's true for mortals and immortals both."

"Immortals... have they always been like this?" Eathan asked, and surprised himself with the rawness in his voice. "This... arrogant and indifferent about the mortals that share the land?"

"It goes both ways, really. Mortals owe themselves the audacity to keep counting rice and faces instead of victories." The man's eyes drifted beyond the bars. "Immortals owe humility. Most can't afford it."

He looked sideways at Eathan. "And you? You carry a smell like rain against brass. Those War Council guards branded you as an 'anomaly'. Does their word make you a resource or a being?"

Eathan blinked. "You heard?"

"Never underestimate an old man's ears."

A familiar cold dread snaked through Eathan's spine. He leaned back, letting out another visible breath. He thought of the White Tiger's gaze pinning him like a butterfly. Of Quine Long's laugh slicing through falling stone. Of how it felt every time someone said Qilin before they said Eathan.

"Depends who's writing the requisition slip," he said, voice quiet.

"Good answer." The man's humour returned for a moment, small and real. "You'll live long enough to find out if you keep your voice soft and your feet quick."

Ethan huffed a breath that fogged again. "Soft voice, quick feet. I can do one of those."

"You'll need both."

A low hum rose through the rock. The elder's fingers paused on the cup. He set it down with deliberate care, as one sets aside a tool at dusk.

"Midnight," he said.

Eathan looked up. A delicate lattice of runes along the ceiling warmed by degrees until they glowed like banked coals. Threads too fine for mortal eyes laced the air, seeking anything with warmth and name. They found wrists, lungs, the hollow of the throat. They found the old cultivator and kissed his skin with a dim, continuous light.

Eathan surged instinctively against his chains. The cuffs sang their soft, hateful jolt; the [SYSTEM] stayed dark and useless.

"They fix the net with people," he said, feeling stupid as the words left him.

"They always have. Guess it's my turn tonight," the man replied. His voice had thinned, as if he stood one room farther away. "Don't look like that. I have given myself to less honest collectors. At least this wall does what it claims."

"Let me—" Eathan shifted again, searching for some angle, some hack, some mercy. "If I can get [Minor Reconstruction] for a second—if I can just—"

"You can't." The man closed his eyes as the draw pulled. The action was precisely measured, like a careful clerk subtracting the day's expenditures. "Save the indignation. Spend the minutes."

He breathed out; the sound shivered. "Tell me something, kid. What types of things did you see before this place?"

"...A sky that does not darken and bloodshed," Eathan said.

"And before that?"

"A really tall mountain. An old lecture hall. An even older corner shop. A lot of flying things that didn't function on qi. A bunch of mortals goofier than me. A gremlin who hates calculus," he paused. "A god who never says what he means."

"Mm," the man said, smile flickering. "Then it seems you have many things to walk back to."

The hum deepened. Fine steam rose from his sleeves. His hands, still callused at the knuckle from years of brushwork, relaxed on his knees.

"Hey." Eathan pressed his forehead to the bars, ignoring the bite of old iron. Something spiked into his hand, and his [HP] dropped by another two percent. "What's your name? I didn't ask—what's—"

The man turned his head slightly, as if to answer, and in the turning the thread pulled taut. His breath left him in a thin, neat line. The cup on the stone tipped and did not spill.

"Sir?" Eathan tried again, stupidly. "What should I call you?"

The lattice gave a satisfied sigh and dimmed by a shade. Somewhere down the corridor, another voice stopped counting.

Eathan stared at the still hands, the ink that had stained them long before this pit ever did, the straight spine that finally leaned. He swallowed a sound that tasted like rust.

Silence stretched, elastic and then thin, until it settled.

He leaned back, heart hammering uselessly against his chest. Above him, the crimson digits ticked on.

A man without a name, used exactly as the system intended.

Eathan closed his eyes. In the dark behind them, he could see Bai Hu's face the way it had looked when he set judgment on the island and its dwellers. He could see the different factions fighting relentlessly for their own interests. He could see blades and blood being spilled onto every inch of the land.

He opened his eyes again, because watching was the only ownership left, and whispered into the stale air, "I'm sorry."