COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

Eathan woke to the hush of water and petals under his soles.

He stared downward. Lotuses—moon-pale, rimmed in faint gold—drifted past on a lake with no banks, no sky, only a quiet that sank through bone. The surface held him as if he weighed no more than air; each pulse sent concentric rings sliding into mist.

"Hello?" Eathan tried. The sound went nowhere, swallowed before it became an echo. Figures—no HUD, no pings, no comforting notifications. Just breath and a horizon that refused to exist.

The mist brightened ahead, not with light but with presence. Something large moved behind the veil—antlers like braided dawn, a mane the colour of rain seen through flowing silk.

Eathan's breath caught.

Qilin.

The real Qilin.

His chest clenched around a name he'd never said aloud. The creature stepped forward with a grace impossible for something so large, and, under Eathan's look of disbelief, it dipped its head.

"I'm sorry."

"You keep apologizing," Eathan whispered, not knowing why he knew this, only that he did. "What exactly are you sorry for?"

The Qilin's silence deepened. It did not speak—not in words. Instead, the mist around them shivered, thinning into scenes that slid through him like a second heartbeat.

He saw an ancient battlefield beneath skies shattered by rifts, pillars of energy uprooting the clouds. Five figures braced against a shadow that ate light from its edges. The Dragon, the Tiger, the Auspicious Beast, and three others he didn't recognize yet.

The fragments scattered rapidly: a flash of deception, a Guardian's anguished fury, bitter laughter mingled with the pain of betrayal. And above them all was Qilin; the creature stood like an ancient key; head bowed as it extracted something from its own chest as if unspooling the weft of a world.

Bai Hu's hands—steady as always, yet simultaneously trembling—received it. The glowing essence folded into a sigil. Theta. Then, it settled fully into the White Tiger's ownership.

Eathan's heart clenched, recognition settling into his chest.

The Mercy Protocol.

It was a final safeguard, a gesture of ultimate compassion, gifted moments before Qilin's own chosen annihilation.

The vision sheared, then settled into something quieter:

A veranda washed in moon-silver, two cups, no armour. Bai Hu sat with sleeves loose and hair unbound, that impossible face softened by ordinary night; Qilin curled beside the railing, antlers catching the constellations and cradling them for a breath. Below, the Southeastern Ridge was not yet a battlefield but a wide green held in the hush before the first village. They drank without ceremony. Companions did not require it.

A new realization crashed into Eathan, weighing down his entire being.

Southeastern Ridge wasn't just a random battlefield, nor was it nostalgia. Yes, nostalgia was smaller, survivable. But this—this was belonging dragged forward through centuries, the ache of a place and a person braided so closely that when one burned, the other could only become ash.

The lotus lake buckled with a wave of grief that wasn't his, a gravity like a falling moon. And beneath it, the other knowledge, the practical, merciless one—what grief does to judgment when the one holding the gavel has the power to alter geography.

And that's why he was going to erase it, Eathan realized.

For the first time, he understood why the line carved across history tablets read colder on stone than it had in Finn and Chewie's mouth. Not cruelty. An ending chosen because memory would not stop screaming.

For two thousand years, hidden beneath ironclad duty and indifference, the White Tiger had been silently, endlessly, mourning over the loss of a friend. And now, he would erase the island not from cruelty, but from overwhelming sorrow, silencing it all with finality.

Eathan gasped, overcome by another wave of sorrow. It crashed through his consciousness with an intensity far beyond any emotion he, a twenty-year-old mortal, should ever comprehend. For a breathless instant, he grasped the reality of immortal nightmares, understanding why these constructs were so lethal. Millennia of unresolved anguish compressed into a single moment were enough to erode even the strongest sanity.

Then, as that emotional storm ebbed, a fresh wave of urgency surged forth.

The water trembled again, and the scene lurched forward to now. Ridges splitting. Ley lines shrieking under their own weight, blue-white currents racing through channels warped by centuries of demon machinery.

Cang's engines, he now realized, had maintained a twisted stability across the Southeastern Ridge. For centuries, they had siphoned mortal life-force alongside the island's natural qi currents, systematically converting them into a tainted, yet predictable demonic leylines.

A monstrous harmony, perhaps, but harmony nonetheless.

Cang's engines had been a metronome; he had smashed them with [Auspice Ignition] and handed the island back its music all at once.

But when Eathan's [Auspice Ignition] smashed those engines—releasing all the purified qi at once—it had broken the metronome and handed the island back its music all at once. Centuries of demonic corruption twisted the island's spiritual channels into unrecognizable tangles.

Now, purity had nowhere to go. As natural qi flooded, slammed, and rebounded itself into the ridge altogether, the result was anywhere from fractures to earthquakes. The island itself, once balanced between conflicting energies, now teetered dangerously on the edge of complete spiritual collapse.

Eathan stood frozen. The earth beneath him sought equilibrium with the desperation of a drowning man.

"I did this, didn't I?"

Qilin raised its head slowly, silvery mane flowing past impossible eyes. No indictment lived there. Understanding, yes. But Eathan knew the truth instinctively: his act of purification had placed everyone—mortals, cultivators, demons—in catastrophic danger.

"Is there any, any way I can fix this?" he asked.

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Qilin regarded him, and the water around Eathan's ankles began to hum. Rings widened, then locked into a pattern—four beats, four directions. In the distance, lotus lanterns winked into the compass points; filaments strung themselves between them, luminous threads that sank through the lake and re-emerged on the far side without breaking.

Though no words passed between them, something in his chest clicked into recognition the way a key recognizes a lock it has not yet seen.

"Full Resonance."

An ancient understanding surfaced within him—an intuition, accompanied by details as innate and effortless as recalling his own name.

Align the pure flow to the damaged map without letting either lose itself. Anchor at the quarters. Retune the frequencies that demon engines had taught the earth to sing. Don't force; coax. It would take breath-counts, and focus, and the kind of steadiness he only managed when everything else was already on fire, but it was possible.

Eathan tried to speak and found, instead, that the moonlit veranda had returned. Lots of little things were different now that he knew what to watch for: Bai Hu's sleeve caught on a bamboo slat; Qilin's tail flicked once, a lazy punctuation mark.

Beyond the ridge, the sea murmured the same syllable over and over, practicing for a storm. He hovered over the two deities, not actually there and somehow entirely there.

At the same time, mist began to gather around Eathan, this time like a curtain called at the end of a scene. The lotuses rocked underfoot; the lake exhaled. His vision blurred at the edges as he sensed himself gradually surfacing from this dreamlike memory.

Qilin bowed its head slowly one final time, antlers scattering the constellations into brighter arrangements. Far away, a voice that was not a voice touched the inside of Eathan's skull with the care of a hand not wanting to wake a sleeping child.

"I'm sorry. Please think carefully."

***

Dust became breath, then weight, then pain. Eathan woke to a mouthful of dirt, hacking grit out of his lungs until sound returned as a ringing scrape.

When the world stopped tilting, he refocused his eyes to find himself lying on rough gravel surrounded by familiar faces cast in flickering lantern glow.

"Whoa, easy!" Finn hovered like a short-circuited air-con. His arms were extended halfway, uncertain whether to steady or simply wait for him to collapse again.

Willow kneeled beside him with gauntlets braced into shale. "You alright?"

Eathan blinked, regaining his bearings. A cave—makeshift lanterns illuminating rough stone walls, distant echoes of shifting earth and tremors.

"Alive. Mostly," he rasped, pushing himself upright. "What happened?"

"You blacked out when the tunnels collapsed," she said. "The dragon teleported us clear just before the entire ridge started coming down. Good thing, or you'd have woken up permanently underground."

Lounging a bit further off against the rock as though it were a chaise was Quine Long. The dragon didn't look over, but a single jade brow lifted as if to claim credit without the vulgarity of language.

"You've been out cold half a day," Finn explained. "I really thought we'd lost you to some eternal nap."

Eathan rubbed his temples, flashes of the dream still bright. Underneath his ribs, a new rhythm ticked—four beats, four directions—refusing to let him forget. Hanging above them all was the nightmare's red numerals, burned cold:

[TIME REMAINING]:

24:43:01

"Half a day?" he rasped. "Is everyone—?"

"Alive," Chewie cut him off. "Island—less so."

Finn gestured at the dark, then immediately flinched as a deeper tremor rolled underfoot. "Meridians thrashing, qi fissures acting up everywhere. Bai Hu might not even have to blow us up himself—the ridge is trying its best to save him the trouble."

"UMC scouts reported massive earthquakes. The Ascendant Alliance is chasing blockages like whack-a-wards, panicking about qi blockages causing explosions underground. Fei Qian's people look ready to meditate themselves into collective denial." Willow said. "We've been working with them for the last few hours, but it's like trying to stop a flood with paper fans."

"We have maybe twelve hours, twenty-four if it's merciful," Chewie interjected, "before this island implodes and drags all of us down with it."

Silence swelled. In it, the echo of lotus water and antlers and an apology finally anchored. Eathan swallowed. His friends—his teammates—had already spent hours coordinating with both mortals and cultivators, scrambling for any possible solution. And he'd been unconscious, swimming in ancient memories while the world around him fractured violently apart.

He inhaled, felt the four-beat rhythm ticking under his sternum, and said the thing that rearranged all their faces.

"I know how to stop it."

Finn blinked as if someone had swapped genres on him mid-page. "You… do?"

"I saw Qilin," Eathan said. He didn't bother with preface; there wasn't time and there was no language for lakes without sky. "I saw Qilin when I was out. And he showed me. If I merge clean with the fragment, I can stabilize the heart to stop the island from trying to murder itself."

"The Auspicious Beast told you." Willow's mouth thinned. "You mean like what you did back with Cang's engines? You barely walked away the last time."

"No, not [Auspice Ignition]. That was me hacking into the demonic engines," he said. "This is… listening. Full resonance—on purpose. I'll be letting him guide, not take."

Under the group's full attention, Eathan steadied his breath. "The island's qi flow is broken because of me. When I shattered those engines, I'd pushed purified qi into damaged, corrupted leylines. It's tearing the island apart. But Qilin—the creature inside me—can fix it. If I willingly resonate completely with him, we can rebalance the entire island."

Indeed, back in the dream, he'd seen it, felt it with his own soul.

The Auspicious Beast had once possessed an unparalleled gift: a natural ability to harmonize chaos. If Eathan willingly embraced full resonance—fully synchronizing with the Qilin fragment within—he could trace the corrupted lines, retune the flows, push the surge back into harmony.

However, true resonance could not be bought cheaply through [SYSTEM] shortcuts like [Auspice Ignition]. It required more than an expenditure of karma or Qi tokens; it demanded a sacrifice of self. A willingness to lower every physical and psychological barrier, to fully open his qi pathways and give Qilin's essence complete, if temporary, access for integration.

Silence stretched in the cave, thick with tension. Finn was the one who broke it first. "I dunno man," he said. "Sounds way too convenient."

Quine Long's smooth voice drifted from the wall. "Not convenient. Highly dangerous, actually."

"Full resonance with a dead deity can split you." Chewie's gaze sharpened. She eyed him like an old field surgeon gauging how much blood a body could afford. "You sure your head's not the first fault line?"

Eathan shivered involuntarily at the thought. The idea of surrendering himself—his very soul—to an ancient divine spirit was terrifying.

But then images of collapsing tunnels, trembling mountains, and island-wide devastation flashed painfully through his mind. If he did nothing, the entire island—mortals, cultivators, and demons alike—would face obliteration.

They would all die, including Mister White.

In the darkened cave, Eathan met her gaze steadily.

"If it stops this war, yes."

A silent beat passed. Chewie considered him carefully, then gave a small nod of unexpected approval.

Willow still looked unconvinced, but she sighed reluctantly. "How does it work?"

Quine Long finally pushed off the wall. "Resonance requires a locus," he said, as if continuing a lecture he'd begun two centuries ago. "Where?"

"The heart spring," Eathan answered. The memory rose with the taste of mineral cold: a basin where four currents knotted in a single pulse. "Qilin showed me the heart spring. That's where I need to initiate it—center of the island's natural qi. Once we get there, I just need to fully open myself, merge with the Qilin fragment, and let him guide the qi flow back into harmony."

Finn rubbed his face. "Every time we talk, our plans escalate from worrying to outright existential crisis."

"That sounds incredibly reckless." Willow frowned.

Eathan exhaled, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. "Incredibly reckless is my entire career."

"Great." Finn groaned, slumping back. "Now he's making jokes."

"Danger aside, it's plausible." Quine Long smiled. "Re-harmonizing qi flow is precisely within Qilin's legendary domain, after all."

"So it's settled, then. We get me to the heart spring. I trigger the resonance. And we save the island before it becomes history."

Chewie stepped in, palm brief against his shoulder. "You're the conduit. Be a pipe, not a sponge."

He huffed something like a laugh. "I'll tattoo that right on my brain."

The floor shivered again—long, low, a whale-song of stone. Eathan scanned the wary but resolute faces of his teammates, his own pulse pounding in his head. It felt like balancing at the edge of a precipice—but for once, he wasn't afraid.

"We have less than twenty-four hours." Eathan lifted his chin with renewed resolve. "Let's make them count."