The wind in the alley cut out.
In its place, the phone speaker spat out a noise that went straight through Lu Jin's teeth—a high, scraping grind, like a swarm of glass knives tearing into sheet metal.
He leaned against the mold-spotted wall and stared at the screen.
On it, the camping pod he'd bought for 588 yuan a few hours ago looked like a soap bubble in a gun range.
The sky above A-11 had gone a dirty, heavy gray. Countless ice-blue crystals, each the size of a fingernail, ripped down with insane velocity, hammering the pod's thin energy shield in a ceaseless storm.
Crack.
A jagged line snapped into existence on the upper right of the shield.
Inside, Li Xing had wedged herself into a corner, arms over her head. Her body jolted with each impact. Razor-like shards punched through weak spots, skimmed past her face, scored her ragged lab coat, and sliced open her skin.
Blood welled up—and froze right away into tiny red beads on her cheek and arm.
[Warning! Shield integrity: 12%… 8%…]
[Estimated time to structural failure: 15 seconds.]
Lu Jin's thumb dragged across the screen, leaving a faint smear of sweat.
His jacket bulged with the cash he'd risked his life for not long ago—over thirty thousand in grubby bills. Earlier, just feeling that weight against his chest had calmed him down.
Now, every note felt red hot.
The system knew.
Of course it knew he'd just gotten paid.
As soon as the shield dropped below 5%, the familiar, festive pop-up slammed onto the center of the display like a death warrant.
[Your property has become unsafe! Immediate upgrade recommended!]
Dear Savior, still worried about your daughter's housing security?A single investment, a lifetime of protection!
[Blackstone-Class Personal Shelter (Permanent Deed)]
Specs: Explosion-proof alloy walls · Independent air cycle · All-weather radar suiteProperty right: Permanent (we swear on… someone else's life)Disaster Rescue Price: ¥29,998.00
[One-Tap Full Payment (Recommended!)]
Under the huge red PAY IN FULL button, in gray text so faint it nearly vanished into the background:
Short on cash? Tap here for "Divine Premium" flexible payment options.
Lu Jin stared at that 29,998 like it might physically crawl out of the phone and choke him.
He would've bet every day he had left that the system hadn't chosen that number randomly. It had eyeballed his wallet and drawn blood.
He tapped the gray text.
["Divine Premium" Installment Plan]
Down payment: ¥10,000.00Remaining balance: ¥19,998.00
Interest: 1% daily compound interest (watch your debt snowball in real time!)
Late consequences: Your daughter may lose property rights to the shelter~
"Cosmic loan shark…" A vein pulsed in his temple.
The system helpfully summoned two big buttons:
[Activate Now] / [Cruelly Refuse]
He stared at the line "1% daily compound interest," Adam's apple bobbing twice, thumb hovering. It lingered there for a few seconds.
Then he jabbed the second option hard.
[Cruelly Refuse]
The pop-up folded shut with fake politeness, leaving nothing but the raging storm on-screen.
[Your rational decision has been recorded.]
[The system wishes you and your cloud-adopted daughter the best of luck.]
Shield integrity plunged like a stone.
[Shield integrity: 4%… 3%…]
Another chunk of crystal punched through, grazing Li Xing's shoulder. The impact slammed her sideways. Her back hit the shell; what little color she had drained out of her face. Instinct shrank her down even smaller.
"...Fuck."
Lu Jin ground his teeth until his jaw hurt. The hand gripping the phone went bone white.
[Shield integrity: 2%]
The screen flashed again.
This time the pop-up was brighter, harsher, shoving everything else into the background.
[Host refusal detected under extreme risk conditions.]
[According to Clause 13 of the Cloud-Adopted Target Life Preservation Act, the system will now grant you one final chance to reconsider.]
["Divine Premium" Installment Plan (Final Confirmation)]
Down payment: ¥10,000.00Remaining balance: ¥19,998.00Interest: 1% daily compound interest (still more fun than the stock market!)
Special Clause:If you refuse again, it will be considered a voluntary forfeiture of all future rescue rights pertaining to this cloud-adopted target.In the event of death during this disaster, the system will provide no compensation or rollback.
A new timer blinked at the bottom.
[Final confirmation: 3… 2…]
"You threatening me now?" Lu Jin's laugh came out dry and raw. "Really?"
Storm howl, crystal impacts, the system's beeps—they mashed together into one suffocating pressure on his eardrums.
On the feed, Li Xing had folded herself against the wall, the camp pod around her collapsing into a glow of hairline fractures.
[1…]
"I'll pay!"
The words tore out of his throat like something ripped free. His thumb hammered down on the down payment option.
He couldn't dump all his money into this. On this side, he still had a failing body, a bank that wanted its credit card bill, and a city built to crush people like him. He needed a buffer. A fallback.
Even if that fallback came stapled to a growing mountain of debt.
A crisp chime cut through the chaos.
[Down payment received! ¥10,000.00 deducted. Balance: ¥21,247.00.]
[Congratulations, you are now officially underwater! Your first interest payment will be due in 23:59:59. Don't forget to repay on time!]
In the upper-left corner, a new icon lit up—bright red, stamped with a single character: 债 (DEBT). Next to it, a negative number began to blink:
[-¥19,998.00]
Lu Jin didn't even glance at it again.
His eyes were glued to the wasteland.
—
The crystal storm hit its peak.
The camping pod's shield, already a mess of lines, finally gave up. With a sound like thin glass under a hammer, it disintegrated.
All at once the sky poured knives.
Hundreds of ice-blue shards screamed toward the gap where the girl sat, unprotected.
Li Xing shut her eyes.
The world roared—
—and something enormous hit the ground.
The impact boomed louder than the storm. The earth bucked. Li Xing was jolted off the floor, her weight lifted for a heartbeat.
When she blinked her eyes open, everything over her had gone dark.
A massive black shape blocked out the sky.
A metal cube sat where the pod had been, its surface a dead, matte black that drank in the light. It stood like a tombstone dropped straight from some distant god's graveyard. Cracks spidered out in the frozen dirt where it had landed.
Hydraulics hissed.
Inside the cube, gears and pistons slammed into motion. The four walls split on unseen seams and slid outward. Layer upon layer of thick alloy armor unfolded, locking together in a seamless shell.
Crystals struck it in a relentless stream. Blue chips exploded, rebounding off at crazy angles. The sound didn't have the brittle panic of breaking glass anymore—it was the dull, contemptuous ring of heavy metal being pestered.
In three seconds flat, a forty-square-meter fortress squatted in the center of the storm—black, solid, immovable.
Li Xing sat in the middle of it.
Outside, the world tried to kill her.
Inside, she felt… nothing.
No wind. No sting of crystals. No icy rain.
She stretched out a hand, fingers cracked and filthy, and brushed the wall.
Cold. Thick.
Real.
—
Warm yellow lights clicked on overhead.
A bundled "Cozy Home Starter Pack" dropped out of nowhere and landed with a soft thump.
Li Xing jolted, instinct making her retreat two steps before curiosity dragged her forward again. She knelt, carefully tore the package open, and began to unpack the pieces: a small rolled carpet, a narrow bedframe, mattress, pillow, duvet.
Her movements were clumsy, cautious, almost ceremonial.
She spread the carpet. Set the slim bedframe against the wall. Smoothed the thin mattress out. Placed the pillow just right. Shook the blanket once and let it fall.
Then she hesitated.
Her gaze dropped to her boots, to the crusted mud and dried blood coating them.
She bit her lip, then slowly bent down and undid the laces. The boots came off with a sticky sound. She set them neatly by the wall.
Her bare feet touched the carpet.
Soft. So soft it made her toes curl.
She swallowed once and crawled into bed.
The mattress dipped under her weight, the pillow cradled the back of her head, the blanket settled around her like a quiet promise. Above, the ceiling panels glowed with gentle, steady light.
Li Xing lay there, arms clutched around the pillow, listening to the muffled storm hammer futilely against the walls.
The feeling rising in her chest was strange. Heavy and light at the same time, pushing against her ribs.
She turned her head to look at the upper corner of the room—where she knew, with the certainty of a believer, the listener's gaze would be.
Slowly, she slid down from the bed. Walked to the camera's blind corner. Stopped. Her lips moved for a long time before any actual sound came out.
"Thank you…" Her voice was hoarse, barely there. "For… my home."
As soon as the words left her, color crept across her cheeks. She lowered her head, shy and fierce at once, fingers twisting in the hem of her borrowed coat.
In the alley, Lu Jin felt something inside his chest twitch.
High-interest contracts, predatory UI tricks, compound interest—none of that had shifted his pulse.
But that one sentence from a starving girl in a metal box landed like a hot coal.
He looked from her face on the screen to the account info hovering in his periphery—the just-over twenty-one thousand in real-world balance, the blinking red debt mark.
For the first time since the pop-up appeared, the loan didn't feel like pure loss.
Maybe this deal wasn't completely stupid.
The system chimed again.
[Observation Target: Li Xing]
[Holy Song Realm: Mortal Echo · Faint Light tier]
[Level: LV1]
[Growth: 96 / 200 → 136 / 200]
[Emotional tags: Home / Belonging / Safety]
[New Holy Song form recorded: "Home Ballad" (continuous nourishment · ultra-slow decay)]
[Current singing efficiency: 1.2 → 1.25]
A low hum filled the air.
This time, the gold light didn't rush him like a flood. It seeped out of the screen like steam from hot water, countless particles drifting and settling over his skin.
It felt… deep. Not flashy. Like warm fingers working into old scar tissue.
Years of damage from his collapsing gene sequence, the constant microscopic tearing and misfire, met that glow and paused.
["Home"-grade Holy Song nourishment acquired.]
[Progression speed of Sequence Collapse Syndrome: temporarily locked.]
[Life countdown: halted.]
[Current physical state: D (stable).]
Lu Jin exhaled slowly. It left his lungs in one smooth stream instead of a ragged scrape.
This was the first time in months he could say, with any honesty, that he might still be alive tomorrow and not feel like he was lying.
He straightened off the alley wall, ready to drag himself back to the main street, hunt the next job, the next way to feed this bottomless duo of appetites—his disease and the app.
Before he could take three steps, another panel blinked on.
Not the usual interface. A new one: the Blackstone shelter's external radar.
Two markers pulsed on the map overlay. One green. One red. Both closing in.
[Shelter External Radar Online.]
Green tag (Friendly) distance: 1.2 km — Identity: Drifting engineer "Old Whistle."
Red tag (Unknown) distance: 800 m — Signal pattern: probable "Crystal Beast Pack."
The breath he'd just steadied snagged.
On the wasteland side, Li Xing had curled back onto the bed, arms wrapped around her pillow, talking softly to the air.
"I have a home now…" she whispered. "Will you come see it?"
She had no idea.
At her new doorstep, one path was walking toward her with tools and skills.
The other was already running on all fours.