I've run a fortune-telling stall on Old East Street for twenty-three years. My copper coins have jumped exactly twice. Once, thirty years ago. A middle-aged woman possessed by a malice spirit walked past my table. The coins bounced half an inch. Once, fifteen years ago. A man who'd just killed someone was squatting in the noodle shop across the street. The coins trembled for over ten seconds.
Today was the third time.
Half past six in the evening. The sky hadn't gone fully dark yet. A man in a gray jacket and glasses walked past. About five-seven, head down as he walked. All three copper coins on my table jumped at the same time, like frogs that had been zapped by a live wire.
I looked up and called out to him.
"Young man. How've you been sleeping lately?"
He paused mid-step. Turned his head. His expression was ordinary enough. That worn-out, overtime-battered face you see on programmers in their thirties.
"Alright. Lots of overtime."
And then he was gone.
I pinched a Qi-Discerning Hand Seal inside my sleeve. Basic technique of Qingwei Temple. The colors on the copper coin divination plate tell you what's left behind: black for demon, gray for ghost, white for soul. A living human shows up colorless. After he walked past, the color on the plate made me freeze.
White. Pure human-soul color.
But underneath, there was a crack. Finer than a strand of hair. Below the crack, a layer of dark red. Like a dried bloodstain.
I'd never seen that color before.
When I packed up my stall, I decided to go back to the temple and check the archives. I couldn't report this directly to the Underworld Court. Report with no evidence? That's just giving the Judges a reason to laugh.
But I locked that face into memory.
I slept badly that night. Kept tossing and turning, thinking about that color.
---
Zhang Xiulan's daughter was in Vancouver, Canada. Married three years ago. Had a son last year. Zhang had only ever seen photos. The little one in the videos was chubby and adorable. Every time she finished watching, she'd wipe her phone screen. The tears made it impossible to scroll.
She'd done the math. Round-trip airfare—a little over nine thousand yuan. She only had four thousand in hand. Five thousand two hundred a month in pension, most of it eaten up by daily expenses. Nothing left to save.
That night, she was scrolling through short videos. A sponsored post came up. On screen, a white-haired old woman was dragging a suitcase through an airport. The caption read: "Retirement doesn't wait. Low-interest consumer installment loan. Link your account, instant funds. Borrow and repay anytime."
She clicked.
The landing page looked legitimate. Blue background, white text. "Peaceful Life Consumer Fund" centered at the top. Fine print underneath: 0.3% monthly interest. No collateral. Link your securities account to withdraw.
Zhang Xiulan used to teach math. Numbers were her thing. 0.3% monthly meant 3.6% annual—lower than a bank savings product. Something felt off. But the thought lasted maybe two seconds. The old woman in the video looked a little like her.
She entered her ID number. Linked her salary card. A securities account agreement popped up. She didn't read it carefully. Scrolled to the bottom. Checked "Agree."
A message appeared: Available credit—12,000 yuan.
She withdrew 9,000. Enough for the ticket.
Her phone buzzed: Congratulations, you are now a Peaceful Life Premier Member. Minimum monthly repayment: 432 yuan.
She did the math. 432 times 24 months. 10,368 total. 1,368 in interest. Acceptable.
She put down her phone and went to the kitchen to wash an apple. When she came back, the screen was still on. Beneath the congratulations message, a new line had appeared. Tiny, gray text. She nearly missed it:
"Repayment source: automatic pension deduction."
She sent her daughter a WeChat message: Mom's coming to see you next month.
Her daughter replied instantly: Really?! That's amazing! I'll have David pick you up at the airport.
Zhang Xiulan smiled. It had been a long time since one of her own decisions made her smile.
---
I was in the VIP room at the East City brokerage, eyes on the screen. Chen Sanqi's voice came through my Bluetooth earbud. "The third one is live."
I said, "What's it called."
"Peaceful Life Consumer Fund. Delusion-type demon stock. Targets the consumer loan space. Core demographic: retirees over fifty. Went live at eight this morning. Six and a half hours in. Four thousand three hundred registrations."
"Withdrawal rate?"
"Sixty-seven percent. Average withdrawal: seventy-five hundred."
Chen Sanqi's voice had a faint electronic hum to it. The first time he spoke after being dead for eight years, I could only receive him through Bluetooth, and the signal wasn't stable. Now he could talk through any networked LED lightbulb in the whole city.
"Zhang Xiulan withdrew nine thousand," he said. "I used her daughter's photo to optimize the push algorithm's matching rate."
I said nothing. Outside the window, someone in the retail traders' hall was slamming a desk, cursing the market manipulators.
"The thing you promised me," Chen Sanqi said.
"Your mom's money in Lincheng. After my monthly tribute is paid."
Silence on the earbud for a moment.
"My mom went to the hospital the day before yesterday. Diagnosed with diabetes. No one to go with her." His voice dropped. "I saw her in the data stream. Lining up to register. Standing in front of the self-service kiosk for five minutes because she couldn't figure out how it worked."
I wanted to say something. Zhao Yuanhang's soul membrane contracted in my chest. My heart skipped half a beat.
I took a sip of soy milk.
"Three days," I said.
The Boss had raised this month's tribute to four cores. Last month I was one short. The overdue interest was a three-millimeter heart contraction. Each contraction meant cardiac arrest for one second. Not long. But after three contractions, hairline cracks started appearing on the surface of the soul membrane. The Night Warden paused outside the brokerage half a second longer than usual on his rounds.
I needed to design a demon stock that trapped people the moment they entered.
My fingers tapped a few keys on the laptop. The system prompt window popped up:
"Monthly Tribute Progress: 0/4. Countdown: 15 days."
I closed the laptop. Chen Sanqi had already sent Peaceful Life's core rules to my phone screen:
"Once registered, cannot be closed. Account closure portal permanently displays 'System Maintenance.' Customer support is an eternally looping AI voice. Stock rises 0.3% daily. Holders think, might as well keep it. Attempt to sell prompts: 'Insufficient holdings—please settle outstanding loan first.' Only repayment method: recruit new users. For every new recruit, three years of pension are refunded."
I stared at that last line for a long time. "The loop design is good."
"Learned it from you," Chen Sanqi said.
---
A month later, Zhang Xiulan wanted to close her account. Because she ran into Old Li at the apartment complex gate.
Old Li was a colleague from before retirement. Taught P.E. Built like an ox. Third year into retirement, a stroke hit him. Now half-paralyzed, his wife pushed him around in a wheelchair. When he saw Zhang Xiulan, his mouth opened. Drool slid from the corner of his lips. His wife wiped it with her sleeve.
Zhang went home and sat on the sofa for a long time. It struck her, sudden and sharp: she should hold onto that nine thousand yuan for the plane ticket. Just in case.
She opened the Peaceful Life app. Found "Close Account."
Tapped it.
The page spun. A loading circle turned for about thirty seconds. Then: System Maintenance. Please try again later.
She waited three days. Tried again. Still System Maintenance. She called customer service. An AI woman's voice looped: Due to high call volume, you are number 247 in the queue.
She went to the service center in person. The East City Securities hall was packed. Mostly gray-haired people, staring up at the K-line charts on the big screen. The front desk girl had heavy makeup on. When she heard the words "Peaceful Life," she leaned back.
"Ma'am, we're just a brokerage platform. Not the lender. For account closure, you need to contact their company."
"How do I contact them?"
The girl hesitated. Dug through a drawer. Pulled out a crumpled business card. Printed on it: North City Tech Park, Building B-3, Room 607.
Zhang Xiulan took a bus for an hour and a half to get there.
North City Tech Park Building B-3 was a six-story old office block. The elevator was broken. She climbed six flights of stairs. Room 607 was locked. Three overdue property management notices were stuffed through the door crack. Taped to the glass was a sheet of A4 paper, printed: Company Relocated. New Address Pending.
She tore the paper down. When she turned around, the hallway light at the far end flickered.
Her phone buzzed. A text message:
"Current Debt: ¥11,743.00. Repayment Source Switched To: Automatic Pension Deduction. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation."
Zhang Xiulan stood in the sixth-floor hallway. The torn paper in her hand was soaked through with sweat.
That night, she called her daughter. It was seven in the morning on the Canada side. Her daughter was changing the baby's diaper.
"Mom, don't panic. I'll handle it."
Through the receiver, Zhang Xiulan heard her little grandson babbling. She pressed the phone tight against her ear, like she wanted to swallow that sound whole.
"I just want to close the account," she said.
"I checked online. The company is registered. The financial regulatory bureau has them on file." Her daughter's voice was steady. The same tone she used as a kid when she aced a test and told her mom not to worry. "I'll send you a link. Fill out the complaint form."
"Will it work?"
"Definitely. Don't worry."
The next day, her daughter sent a link. The banking and insurance regulatory commission's complaint portal. Zhang Xiulan spent two hours filling it out. Submitted.
The system responded: Complaint Accepted. Reference Number: BJ2026-117483. Processing Time: 15–30 working days.
She stared at that reference number for a long time. Then closed the browser and opened the Peaceful Life app.
The account balance section had changed. Where it used to say "Available Credit," it now read: "Margin Trading Service Activated. Available Credit: 5 Years. Note: Pension Advance."
She sent her daughter a WeChat message: I filled out that link you sent.
No reply. It was the middle of the night in Vancouver.
---
Lu Ming stood in the Bureau of Anomalies' office on the nineteenth floor, watching three wall-mounted screens.
The left screen displayed surveillance footage from three blocks around the East City brokerage. The middle screen scrolled through anomalous transaction data flagged by the banking system. The right screen showed a live satellite thermal image. Roughly three kilometers underground, there was a massive heat source. Its shape was indistinct. Some said it was a dragon. Some said a mouth.
Chu Li pushed the door open, a folder in her hand.
"Peaceful Life Consumer Fund. Thirty-two days since launch. Twenty-eight thousand registered users. Eleven complaints filed with the financial commission. All for failed account closures." She dropped the folder on the desk. "Three involve automatic pension deductions."
Lu Ming picked up the folder and flipped through it. Victim photos were stapled to the top right corner. Three old men. One old woman. The woman's ID photo showed her smiling, her hair neatly combed.
"Zhang Xiulan. Sixty-three. Retired teacher." Chu Li said. "Her daughter is in Canada. Got the complaint routed to us through the consulate."
"Why would the consulate forward something to the Bureau?"
"They traced Peaceful Life's business registration. The license was issued through an online government system that's been defunct for three years." Chu Li pulled out another page. "System logs show it was issued at 3:07 a.m. The IP address was already deregistered."
Lu Ming set the folder down. Walked to the left screen. Tapped his finger on the East City brokerage feed. "The Boss. Is Peaceful Life connected to him?"
"Possibly." Chu Li said. "But there's something else I want you to look at. The intrusion traces in that government system."
She pulled out her phone and set it on the desk. On the screen was a section of code log. Erratic timestamps. Unpredictable IP jumps. At least four different encryption protocols layered on top of each other.
"Someone's doing his data-layer work for him," Chu Li said. "Probably not a person. No human can move that fast through data streams."
Lu Ming's left eye narrowed. The gray-white pupil contracted—an involuntary reaction from that eye, the one that could see demonic residue. But there was nothing to see in a data stream.
"In the network," he repeated. "What could it be."
Chu Li shook her head. "I need to go talk to someone."
---
Monday morning. Ten o'clock.
Mo Yan sat in the East City brokerage VIP room. In his earbud, Chen Sanqi was reporting Zhang Xiulan's emotional curve.
"Her anger and fear have peaked. Now it's guilt. She thinks she spent this money on herself, that she let her daughter down." Chen Sanqi paused. "Can I call her daughter?"
"Say what."
"Pose as bank customer service. Tell her there was a system error, the overcharged amount will be refunded. Buy some time."
I stared at the K-line chart on screen. Zhang Xiulan's current emotional energy curve was a steep downhill slope, still bottoming out. According to Chen Sanqi's algorithm, once this curve hit bottom and rebounded, the energy density output would be three times that of a Greed-type demon stock.
"Do it," I said.
"What voice?"
"Your call."
Chen Sanqi was silent for two seconds. When he spoke again, the voice had changed. No longer the twenty-something programmer. A gentle, slightly accented middle-aged woman now.
"Hello, this is Peaceful Life Customer Service Center. Regarding the recent abnormal deductions on your mother's account…"
I cut the earbud.
That thing in my chest started crying again.
The residual fragments of Zhao Yuanhang's soul. Dead most of the time. But sometimes—especially when I was reaping someone whose situation mirrored Zhao Yuanhang's—they'd come alive for a few seconds. It felt like someone pouring ice water into your chest cavity. The water running down your ribs.
Zhao Yuanhang. Programmer too. Lived alone. Poured every cent into something he never should have touched.
I took a deep breath. My grip on the soy milk cup was tight enough to slosh a few drops out.
---
Zhang Xiulan got that call while she was at the wet market buying fish.
"Hello, is this Ms. Zhang Xiulan? I'm with Peaceful Life Consumer Fund customer service. Our system has detected abnormal deductions on your account. The overcharged amount will be refunded to your salary card within three business days."
The plastic bag slipped out of Zhang Xiulan's hand and landed on the fish stall. The crucian carp inside flopped twice.
"Can you close my account?" she asked. Her voice shook a little.
"Ms. Zhang, account closure requires you to visit a service center in person with your ID. Until then, the system will automatically suspend pension deductions from your account."
"Really?"
"Yes, Ms. Zhang. I've already submitted the suspension request for you. Is there anything else I can help with?"
Zhang Xiulan hung up. She stood by the fish stall for a moment. The fish vendor called out twice before she snapped out of it.
"You still want this cleaned?"
"Yes," she said. "Clean it."
She carried the cleaned fish home. When she reached the apartment complex gate, her phone buzzed again.
App push notification: Congratulations on successfully inviting a new user. New user name: Li Shufen. You have been refunded three years of pension.
Zhang Xiulan froze.
Li Shufen was her next-door neighbor. Last night, Li had come over to borrow soy sauce. Zhang was on her phone at the time, trying to figure out how to file a complaint against Peaceful Life. Li asked what she was looking at. Zhang said it was a finance app.
Li said, "I'll download it too."
Zhang hadn't thought much of it then. Now, staring at that push notification, the fish bag in her hand started dripping.
Fish blood. Drop by drop onto the tops of her shoes.
---
Half past six in the evening. Old East Street.
Mo Yan got off work from Yuanhang Zhilian, taking a shortcut home. In his Bluetooth earbud, Chen Sanqi was reporting: "Zhang Xiulan's emotional curve is starting to rebound. The near-death relief got triggered by her referral code through a passive recruitment. Guilt index doubled. The energy gradient's secondary spike is forty percent higher than I projected. This core is secured."
"What about the other three?"
"Lincheng and Bincheng each have a Peaceful Life clone live. Third one is still in deployment."
I stopped at the alley corner.
Didn't see anything. But I felt it. Someone was watching. More than one someone.
I kept walking. Chen Sanqi's voice in my ear: "What's wrong?"
"Shut up. Switch to offline mode."
Chen Sanqi vanished instantly. The Bluetooth indicator went dark. I couldn't hear anyone now.
But I could feel them. Footsteps about fifteen meters behind me. Short stride. Light footfall. Not leather soles hitting the pavement. Cloth shoes. And across the street, another pair of eyes. That gaze was drilling into the space between my shoulder blades.
I passed a general store and scanned the reflection in the window.
Behind me: wiry build, goatee, gray tunic. The fortune teller from the alley corner.
Across the street: early forties, black jacket. His walking rhythm was too steady for a casual stroll. A tiny black dot on his collar. Lavalier mic.
About fifty meters apart. Neither knew the other was there.
But I knew.
I reached the intersection. An electric scooter was parked at the corner. A man in a food delivery uniform sat on it. Helmet pulled low. No food in his hands. His left eye was gray-white, aimed at me through the scooter's rearview mirror.
Lu Ming.
Three groups. Three lines of pressure. Tightening at the same moment.
---
When Qi the Fortune Teller got within fifteen meters of Mo Yan, the copper coin divination plate hidden in his sleeve started burning.
Not heat. Spiritual overload. The three copper coins had aligned into a single line, all pointing in the same direction. Not at the gray-jacketed man's body. At the center of his chest.
Qi pulled out his phone. Dialed the temple.
Across the street, Shen Qingyuan walked at an unhurried pace. The mic on his collar was linked to Lu Ming's earpiece. Lu Ming, still on the scooter, caught Shen's live description:
"His weak point is where his heart should be. But the spiritual pressure there is negative. He doesn't have a heart in his body. His heart isn't here."
Lu Ming's left hand tapped the handlebars twice.
The heart rate sensor showed nothing abnormal. But between the T-wave and P-wave on the ECG, there was a waveform that shouldn't exist. Like something was pulling on it.
Shen Qingyuan said, "That's the crack. Traction feedback between the heart and its host body."
Lu Ming said nothing. He remembered an old file he'd found in the archives three months ago. The Qilian Mountains incident. Thirty-one years ago. The report mentioned anomalous spiritual residue. Color: dark red. The witness was a Daoist from Qingwei Temple.
Name: Gu Chen.
---
"Master." Qi the Fortune Teller kept his voice low and walked fast. "East City. A man. Gray jacket, glasses, about five-seven. The copper coin plate shows a normal human soul on the surface, but there's a crack underneath. Dark red below the crack. The plate's in spiritual overload. The coins are burning hot. I'm not sure whether to report this to the Underworld Court."
Silence on the other end of the line.
"Don't report it. I'm coming to you." The master's voice was like a rusted blade. Dry. Slow.
"Why not report it?"
"Dark red. I've seen it once. Qilian Mountains. Thirty-one years ago." The line went dead.
Qi watched his phone screen go dark. When he looked up again, the man in the gray jacket was gone.
He hurried to the alley entrance. Nobody. He looked left, then right. Old East Street wasn't long. You could see clear to both ends. The man in the gray jacket had vanished in under a minute.
The delivery guy on the electric scooter at the curb was gone too.
Across the street, the man in the black jacket was looking down, pretending to check his phone.
The copper coins in Qi's sleeve suddenly stopped burning.
---
Mo Yan ducked into the stairwell of an old apartment building. Between the first and second floors, there was an abandoned electrical panel. He squeezed behind it, his back pressed against the freezing wall.
Lu Ming's satellite thermal imaging had locked onto his last position. It couldn't find him now. The interference noise behind the electrical panel was enough to blur his heat signature.
He listened to his own breathing. The soul membrane in his chest contracted again. This time, not crying. A tremor he'd never felt before. Like something was knocking from the other side of the membrane.
He pressed his hand against his chest.
"Stop it," he whispered.
The knocking stopped.
Then his laptop screen lit up. He hadn't opened it. The black system prompt window appeared on its own:
"Monthly Tribute Progress: 2.8/4. Remaining: 7 days."
And another line:
"Warning: Soul membrane stress exceeding threshold. Heart rate compensation will fail within twelve hours. Recommend completing settlement within twenty-four hours."
Mo Yan stared at the screen.
Seven days. Still 1.2 cores short. Chen Sanqi was accelerating deployment in the other cities, but even at top speed, it would take time. And now three groups were watching him. If just one of them figured out his operational pattern, the entire stall would collapse.
He closed the laptop. Sent a Bluetooth command to Chen Sanqi: "Map out Lu Ming's surveillance radius. Find his blind spots."
"Already done. His thermal imaging covers three major intersections in East City. But there's one dead zone. The power company's substation underground conduit. The electromagnetic interference in there will completely neutralize thermal imaging."
"How deep."
"Twelve meters below ground. Accessible through the cable shaft."
"I'm going there tonight."
"What is that place?"
"A new stall." Mo Yan stood up, dusting off his jacket. "After Peaceful Life finishes deployment, the next product is called 'Perpetual Contract.' This time, we're not harvesting pensions. We're harvesting fortune. Luck."
He pushed the stairwell door open and stepped back into the twilight.
Behind him, at a second-floor window, a pair of eyes was pressed against the glass. A boy, seven or eight years old. Holding an Ultraman action figure.
"Mom, that man downstairs was talking to himself."
From inside the apartment came the sound of a television: "What man? Don't look out the window. Come eat."
---
Gu Chen—the master Qi had called—came down from Mount Cuiping. By then, the sky was fully dark.
The sixty-seven-year-old Daoist elder didn't walk fast, but his steps were steady as iron. He leaned on a bamboo staff. Three talismans marked in cinnabar were painted on the staff's head. When he reached the foot of the mountain, he tapped the staff against the ground three times. The talisman markings glowed once, then faded.
He flagged a taxi.
"Where to?"
"Old East Street."
The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror and asked nothing more. A Daoist priest descending from Cuiping Mountain in the middle of the night—that fell into the category of passengers you don't ask questions about.
Gu Chen sat in the back seat. His right hand rested on the bamboo staff. The dark red spiritual residue he'd seen in the Qilian Mountains thirty-one years ago had later been archived by the Bureau of Anomalies as "unidentified geothermal anomaly." But Gu Chen knew it wasn't geothermal. It was a seal crack.
The thing trapped below pushed upward in increments. Each time it moved, the spiritual energy it released seared dark red burn marks into the rock it passed through.
If a holder of the copper coin plate sensed that same color, it meant the thing was pushing upward again.
And this time, it was pushing faster.
The taxi dropped him at the entrance to Old East Street. Gu Chen stepped out. His bamboo staff tapped the pavement once. The sound wasn't loud, but every streetlamp on the block flickered at the same moment.
He walked into the alley.
Qi's folding table was still in its usual spot. Qi himself was gone. The three copper coins on the table had been turned face-up. They were arranged in a hand-seal formation Gu Chen knew well. Qingwei Temple's warning array.
Someone had used those coins within the last thirty minutes to lay a spiritual barrier over this area. Not Qi's technique. He didn't have the skill yet. Another member of the temple.
"Shen Qingyuan," Gu Chen muttered.
He pulled a sheet of yellow talisman paper from his robes. Bit his middle finger. Drew a sigil on the paper in blood. The talisman rolled itself into a thin tube and floated in the air, like a cigarette. One end pointed deeper into the alley.
Gu Chen followed it.
About seventy meters later, the talisman stopped in front of an old apartment building. It circled a first-floor window three times, then dropped to the ground and crumbled into ash.
Gu Chen looked up. The light was on behind the first-floor window. Through the glass, he could see a man sitting at a desk. Laptop open. A gray jacket draped over the back of the chair.
Mo Yan.
---
I closed the laptop, stood up, and opened the door.
An old man stood outside. Late sixties. A black Daoist robe so faded it was nearly gray. A bamboo staff in his hand. Behind him, the old street was pitch-dark. The wind had scattered his talisman ash across the pavement.
"Daoist Elder," I said.
"You knew I was coming."
"The spiritual disturbance from that copper coin plate carries pretty far. I felt it before you even reached the foot of the mountain."
Gu Chen's right hand stayed inside his sleeve. I knew what he was doing. Pinching the Qi-Discerning Hand Seal, reading the state of my soul membrane. What he was reading should be identical to what made Qi's coins jump the first time: normal human soul on the surface. Crack underneath. Dark red below the crack.
But he saw one extra thing.
"You have no heart," he said.
"I know."
"Where is it."
"Underground. Very deep." I leaned against the doorframe. I didn't invite him in. "Your junior already told you."
Gu Chen was silent for a long moment. His bamboo staff tapped the threshold once. The motion-sensor light in the hallway flickered on, then off.
"The Qilian Mountains. Thirty-one years ago." He said. "Were you there."
Qilian Mountains. Thirty-one years ago.
I'd never heard of the place. It didn't exist in the residual fragments of Zhao Yuanhang's crushed soul. The Boss had never mentioned Qilian Mountains to me. Not once.
But this old Daoist had brought it up. And he'd come all the way down the mountain in the middle of the night because of it.
An old Daoist elder doesn't leave his temple after dark for a spiritual color he's never seen. He comes because he's seen it before. Seen the exact same thing.
Which meant the Boss had done something in the Qilian Mountains thirty-one years ago. Seal breach. Spiritual leakage. Dark red scorch marks left on the ground. This old man had witnessed it.
He didn't know what was below. He just remembered the color.
I had two choices right now. Admit I wasn't involved, and this old man would turn and leave. I'd be left alone to carry everything. Or—catch the line he'd thrown, and gamble. Package the things the Boss had done, things I'd never witnessed, as things I "knew." Turn his fear of that dark red into a knife I could borrow.
He didn't need the truth. He just needed to believe that the color he'd seen thirty-one years ago was still climbing upward. That was enough.
I raised my head and looked at him.
"I wasn't there. The thing behind me was. Thirty-one years ago, it broke through a piece of the seal in the Qilian Mountains. Left the dark red residue you saw. Now it's climbing faster." I met his eyes. "Because someone's feeding it energy."
Gu Chen's fingers moved inside his sleeve. His calculations were speeding up.
"You're the one feeding it."
"Correct." I said. "It's not my choice. He's holding my heart. Any month I don't pay tribute, the heart contracts a few millimeters. At nine millimeters, the soul membrane ruptures. Once it ruptures, my demonic aura is exposed. The Night Warden's Soul Chain goes straight through my collarbones."
"Then why don't you let me send word to the Night Warden right now." Gu Chen said. "He drags you down below. It's over."
"It won't be over. You know that."
I turned back to my desk, picked up the laptop, and flipped the screen toward him. The black system prompt window was still there. Cursor blinking.
"Three of his chains are broken. Six remain. Every time he absorbs energy, he moves up half a meter. From here to the surface is three kilometers. At this pace, he breaks through in a year and a half."
Gu Chen stared at the screen. The bamboo staff creaked under his tightening grip.
"Why are you telling me this."
"Because I want your help. Not to fight him. To slow him down." I closed the screen. "Your copper coin plate's sensitivity increases three days before each tribute deadline. I'll send you a signal when the sensitivity spikes. You reinforce the seal at the marked coordinates. You won't catch him. But you'll slow his ascent."
The corner of Gu Chen's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. More like a muscle spasm that was hard to classify.
"You're negotiating with me."
"More like borrowing your knife to cut the rope. I'm tied up. You cut the rope. That's the same as saving me."
Gu Chen looked at me for about ten seconds. His eyes held a cold sharpness that decades had honed down to a fine edge. Like the frozen rim of a well in winter.
"Why should I trust you."
"You don't have to." I unzipped my jacket and exposed my chest. The skin looked normal. But I knew what he could see. The hairline crack in the soul membrane. The dark red underneath.
"Trust this. You've seen it in the Qilian Mountains."
Gu Chen's hand came out of his sleeve. Resting on his palm was a talisman. Three characters written on it: Soul Inspection Decree.
"Let me touch your chest."
I hesitated. Then nodded.
Gu Chen pressed the talisman to the center of my chest. The moment it touched, every light in the hallway flared to blinding white. Then they all died. A glow surfaced on the talisman. White base. Black cracks. The dark red beneath the cracks was pulsing, like something alive.
Gu Chen peeled the talisman off.
"When he squeezes your heart. What do you feel."
"Cold. Not on the skin. Seeping out from inside the bones. Then I can't breathe. Then someone's crying in my chest."
"The one whose shell you stole."
"Zhao Yuanhang. His soul didn't fully die. Some residue fused onto the soul membrane. Most of the time it's dead. When the heart contracts, it comes alive for a few seconds."
Gu Chen folded his talisman and tucked it back into his robes. He lifted his bamboo staff and drew a circle on the ground.
"Three days before each tribute deadline. A circle from this staff on your doorstep. It will contain a spiritual marker. Step on it, and the signal reaches me. I can reinforce the seal at the marked coordinates." He paused. "One condition."
"What."
"Every half month, you come to Qingwei Temple on Mount Cuiping for spiritual monitoring. If the soul membrane deteriorates, I report to the Underworld Court immediately."
"Deal."
Gu Chen turned to leave. I called out.
"Daoist Elder. That thing you saw in the Qilian Mountains. The same color that's in my chest. What is it."
Gu Chen didn't turn around. His hand gripped the bamboo staff. Knuckles white.
"The color of hunger."
Then he walked into the Old East Street night, leaning on his staff.
I stood in the doorway for a moment. No wind. The streetlamps were dim. Down the alley, Qi's folding table was still in its spot. Qi himself had packed up. Three copper coins were pressed on top of a note.
Qi's handwriting: "The master says I keep watching. From now on, one extra glance toward East City before I pack up."
I tore the note up and threw it in the trash.
---
One in the morning. Lu Ming and Chu Li sat in the Bureau's surveillance room.
Three screens were lit. The left one showed Mo Yan's social security payment records at Yuanhang Zhilian—three consecutive months of missed payments. The middle screen played surveillance footage from Old East Street that night. Gu Chen, leaning on his bamboo staff, disappearing into the dark. The right screen showed banking system anomaly flags. Peaceful Life Consumer Fund had added four new linked accounts that afternoon. Two of them were overseas.
"Daoist Elder Gu Chen came down the mountain," Chu Li said.
"I figured. Qi is his outer disciple. Shen Qingyuan is his junior brother. When Qingwei people show up in the same place, it means something big." Lu Ming picked up his coffee cup. It was empty. He didn't notice.
"Peaceful Life's business registration. The defunct government system. I found something in the logs." Chu Li slid her phone over. "An IP block refreshes the registration data every seventy-two hours. Dynamic IP, but the pattern is too consistent. Doesn't look human. Looks like an automated script."
"They're manufacturing consumer loan products. One after another."
"It's not about the products. It's that every new product doubles the victim count. After Zhang Xiulan, her referral code has already spread to four cities. The East City stall is just the central hub."
Lu Ming set down the empty cup. He stood and walked to the window. Below, the city lights spread out like a circuit board.
"I need to find that thing in the network," he said.
Chu Li pulled a USB drive out of her drawer. Black casing. Etched with a few lines of code.
"The last refresh on that government system was at 3:14 this morning. I ran a reverse trace on it. Found that the data packets were modified by a tiny program just before entering the base station. The core code of that program is a process burned into RAM. Named 32767."
"32767?"
"Hexadecimal 7FFF. The maximum value of a signed integer. But for a programmer named Chen Sanqi, before he died, it was his debug marker."
"Have you found anything on this process yet?"
"Not yet." Chu Li shook her head. "But here's what's strange. We've found that same process name in three compromised systems. The defunct government platform. Peaceful Life's banking interface server. And the social security inquiry gateway that got hit this morning. All three have '32767.'"
Lu Ming took the USB and turned it over under the light.
"The same process name, three unrelated systems. That's not coincidence."
"I don't think so either." Chu Li turned her computer screen toward him. "And it gets stranger. The intrusions on these three systems span three months, but the process creation timestamps show they were generated simultaneously. Synchronized down to the millisecond."
"Someone's deploying them in coordination."
"Or…" Chu Li paused. "Something is replicating itself."
Lu Ming was silent for a long time. Outside the window, the city lights blazed on. Every light was a retail trader's screen. Every screen had a demon stock's K-line on it.
"Trace the origin of this '32767,'" he said. "Start from the server where it first appeared. Reverse-track its write path. I want to know where it first materialized. What triggered it."
"Already on it." Chu Li typed a few keys. "But it'll take time. Whoever's cleaning up knows what they're doing. The log chain is broken in at least three places."
"Can you restore it?"
"Not sure." She leaned back. The cursor on her screen kept blinking. "All I can confirm right now is that this process has a data-level correlation with Peaceful Life's fund transfers. Every time it activates, the pension deduction commands increase."
Lu Ming set the USB on the desk. He walked to the window and watched the car lights flowing below.
"Open a file on it first," he said. "Tentative codename: '32767.' Status: Active investigation. Threat level…"
He paused.
"Mark it 'pending' for now. We'll reassess once we know what this process actually is."
Chu Li typed the final line:
"Target: Codename '32767.' Associated Systems: Government Platform / Banking Interface / Social Security Gateway. Status: Active Investigation. Threat Level: Pending."
---
Zhang Xiulan finally bought the plane ticket. Departure date: the seventeenth of next month.
Her daughter said on the phone, "Mom, autumn here is incredible. Red leaves lining every street. We'll take you to Stanley Park."
Zhang hung up and opened the Peaceful Life app. Account balance: Six years of pension refunded. Number of recruits: Two.
She didn't know who the second one was. Maybe someone she'd casually mentioned it to at the market. Maybe the app had read her contacts. She'd stopped wanting to know.
She only knew one thing: that nine thousand yuan for the plane ticket had been offset, one way or another. Her pension would be deducted. A little each month. Didn't hurt. Didn't itch.
And then the referral code would keep spreading. The next person would get trapped the same way. And the next.
She turned off her phone and went to the kitchen to wash vegetables. The TV was on in the living room. The news was analyzing a stock that had been hitting its upper limit for days on end.
"Market sentiment is recovering. Retail investors are rushing back in. New account openings are at a record high—"
Zhang Xiulan twisted the faucet open. The water ran loud, drowning out the TV.
Something suddenly crossed her mind. She searched through every call log on her phone. The customer service call wasn't there.
It hadn't been deleted. That record had never existed in the first place.
The call had never left a trace on any telecom base station. That gentle, slightly accented middle-aged woman's voice—it had been synthesized by Chen Sanqi. The last fragment of a vocal print taken from a body that had been dead for eight years.
Zhang Xiulan didn't know any of this.
She only knew one thing: the water had been running for a long time. She'd forgotten to turn it off. The sink was nearly full. The surface rippled under the light. Like a half-lidded eye, watching.
She reached out to shut off the faucet. The water was so cold it bit.
---
At the mouth of Old East Street, Qi the Fortune Teller packed up his stall.
He folded his table. Wrapped the three copper coins in red cloth. Placed them in his bag. Before leaving, he glanced in the direction of East City. Toward the old apartment building where Mo Yan lived.
The copper coins inside the red cloth gave a faint shudder.
He didn't take them out to check.
He just walked three extra steps, then turned into a narrow alley.
From deep in the alley came the sound of a bamboo staff tapping stone. Gu Chen was still there.
---
The laptop's system prompt window lit up at three in the morning:
"Monthly Tribute Settlement: 3.9/4. Days Remaining Until Deadline: 1."
"Status: Critical. Soul Membrane Tensile Coefficient: 0.87."
"Recommendation: Complete final core within twenty-four hours."
I stared at the text in the dark.
Zhao Yuanhang's soul woke up again in my chest. No crying this time. A fine, stuttering series of convulsions. Like someone pressing the palms of their hands against my ribs. Pressing. Pressing. Pressing.
"Soon," I said.