The hallway outside Lu Jin's rental was half-dead.
The voice-activated light had given up long ago. Only his phone glowed—a faint blue rectangle, enough to sketch his face in sickly white.
He rested his back against the concrete wall. The chill soaked straight through his shirt. His lungs rasped like a tired bellows on every breath. Now that the adrenaline was gone, the weakness crawled up his spine in slow, sticky inches. His fingertips wouldn't stay still; tiny spasms jumped along them like fleas.
In the top-right corner of the screen, a red countdown hung.
[High-Interest Loan Interest Timer: 22:58:11][Current Debt: –¥19,998.00]
"Less than twenty-three hours…" Lu Jin swallowed. The back of his throat tasted like old iron.
He didn't waste energy cursing fate.
His gaze cut past the numbers and locked onto the feed.
On that side, the old man Little Rock had dragged through hell lay unconscious, hands locked around a black metal cube. The box was etched all over with double-helix patterns so fine they looked grown there instead of carved. Even through a cheap terminal screen, the thing gave off the kind of cold beauty only old-world precision industry had time to produce.
Ark sigil.
"Zoom in," Lu Jin said toward the phone's mic.
The image punched closer.
The most important part stayed blurred, as if someone had smeared digital sludge over the center.
[System Notice: High-precision encrypted device detected.][Due to your insufficient permissions (D-Class), item attributes cannot be parsed.]
Color exploded across his vision.
A neon, browser-game-style window slapped itself over everything with a cascade of fake coins and that annoyingly cheerful chime every mall kiosk used.
[Dumpster-Dive Appraisal Master · Online]Still beating yourself up over selling a relic as scrap?Still crying over the artifact you let some other idiot pick up?
Wasteland trash, or lost legacy of civilization?One scan to find out!
For a small technical service fee, you'll receive:• Detailed structural diagram x1• Potential market value estimate x1
"Bleeding-out Bargain" Price: ¥500.00(Knowledge is money. Broke losers excluded!)
"Five hundred…" Lu Jin flicked a look at his balance—just over seventeen thousand. Something in his eyelid twitched. "You're charging me five hundred just to look at it?"
He knew exactly what this was.
The system had sniffed out how badly he needed whatever was inside that box. So it hung a tag on the information and waited. No haggling. No mercy.
Robbery, transparent and polite.
He didn't hesitate long.
The five hundred wasn't a purchase. It was a chip on the table. Either the old relic in that geezer's arms bailed him out of a twenty-thousand-yuan death trap, or he'd just paid extra to die curious.
His index finger was still trembling when he jammed it down on [Pay].
[Payment successful! Appraisal Master is now working…]
The window folded away into a rotating icon.
—
A-11 Wasteland Zone · Blackrock Shelter Entryway
Outside, crystal storms clawed at the world. Inside, the airtight door kept the worst of it out. Warm yellow light spilled over a spotless white composite floor.
Li Xing stood in the middle of the entryway.
The lab coat on her looked stolen from a trash incinerator—old, thin, stained at the hems. It didn't match the clean lines of the shelter at all. Her expression tried to.
She held her features in a strict mask, copying the cold researchers in her memory. Only her lashes betrayed her, quivering slightly.
Gold text only she could see flowed across her retina.
[Command: Confiscate weapons. Search. Question.][Command: Keep distance. Do not show weakness.]
Li Xing drew in a breath as if she could inhale courage with the filtered air. The combat knife in her hand did an awkward little flourish and came to rest pointing at the boy kneeling on the floor.
"Hand… over your knife," she said.
The first word caught. The rest landed clean.
Little Rock didn't even think about refusing.
His fingers shook as he unbuckled a half-worn serrated blade from his belt. He lifted it over his head with both hands and set it down carefully beside her feet, like an offering.
He didn't dare look up.
He stared at the floor.
Too clean.
The place was too clean.
For a kid who'd grown up rolling in wasteland mud, this kind of pure white was worse than a monster's teeth. His knees were caked in frozen black sludge and blood. Every time he shifted, he left a smear behind that screamed against the floor.
The sense of desecration crawled up his skin.
"Is this… heaven?" Little Rock's voice was hoarse. He sounded drunk on terror.
A faint hum cut through the air.
In the corner, a white disc lit up with a blue ring.
It had found dirt.
Air puffed from underneath as it glided across the floor.
"Bzzzz—"
Brushes spun up under the disc and slammed into Little Rock's ruined boots, scrubbing with rabid dedication.
"Ah!" He jerked back till he flattened against the wall, yelling, "Holy spirit! Holy spirit, forgive me! I didn't mean to stain the holy ground!"
The commotion pulled the old man out of his half-conscious state.
His murky eyes opened just in time to see a palm-sized white disc headbutting Little Rock's boots over and over, bristles tearing at the muck like it carried a disease.
He froze on the spot.
Out on the wasteland, only Ark's top core zones had fully automated cleaning machines. Those things weren't equipment. They were declarations: this place wastes electricity on floors.
And here, one was joyriding in a random shelter.
Li Xing watched the boy try to merge with the wall while the "holy spirit" chewed at his boots.
The stern look she'd been holding onto slipped for a second.
She flicked a glance toward the invisible "lens" where she imagined the listener watched from. No new warning text. No punishment. No cold, divine disapproval falling on her head.
She cleared her throat.
"This is… a holy spirit made by God," she said, face straight, pointing at the hard-working robot vacuum. "It can't stand filth. As long as you wash clean, it won't eat people."
Both the old man and Little Rock bought it instantly.
They dropped to the floor and started knocking their foreheads against it in a frantic rhythm, prostrating themselves to a ¥99 cleaning appliance.
On Lu Jin's side, the system chimed.
[Detected: Observed Target "Li Xing" maintaining "divine authority" and stabilizing protected targets' emotions.][Observed Target: Li Xing][Holy Song Realm: Mortal Echo · Faint Light Stage][Level: LV1][Growth: 168 / 200 → 184 / 200][Progress: Faint Light LV1 (184 / 200)]
—
Reality · Apartment Hallway
Lu Jin watched a frail old man and a wasteland kid bow to a consumer-grade robot and felt the knot in his nerves loosen a notch.
This world, both sides of it, had no sense of dignity.
The spinning icon in his HUD pinged.
[Appraisal complete!]
A pale blue holo-report slid open in front of him.
[Item Name: Ark · Resource Point No.7 Key (Unactivated)][Type: Encrypted Beacon][Description: Spare resource-point key left behind by old-era "Ark" organization. Contains a holo-map to Resource Point No.7 and its access code.][Estimated Resource Grade: C](Potential contents: small energy core, medical consumables, standard weapon blueprints.)
[Current Status: Dormant (biometric activation required).][Distance from current position: 32.5 km][Note: Ark internal codename for this point: "Silent Containment No.7." Have a pleasant opening experience.]
"Knew you were a fat sheep," Lu Jin said, eyes lighting up.
"A C-grade resource point. For me right now, that's a gold mine."
His brain spun up.
Energy core: plug it into Blackrock, keep the defenses on without buying those ridiculously priced "high-tier power packs."
Weapon blueprints: arm Li Xing so she wasn't relying on divine DLC every time; give the old man and Little Rock something better than scrap knives. The more they could handle alone, the fewer emergency "Savior Bundles" he'd have to slam the pay button on.
Medical supplies: patch them up before the system popped out some condescending "humanitarian rescue" package with a bill long enough to hang him with.
Saving money was profit.
If he could push Li Xing and her shelter to a point where they didn't need him to bail them out every five minutes, he could funnel every single bloodstained yuan from reality into one thing only: the gene repair fluid sitting behind that S-Class price tag.
The bottom of the report flashed red.
[Warning: Resource Point No.7 lies within a "High-Risk" zone. Heavy firepower recommended.]
Of course it did.
Lu Jin's fingers flicked over the screen, firing off new commands toward the wasteland.
—
Back in the entryway, Li Xing's gold text shifted.
A new "oracle."
She walked to the old man and lowered herself into a crouch. Instinct made him curl around the black box, arms tightening. He'd nearly died for that thing. It had been his secret, his load, his maybe-salvation.
"This is rent," Li Xing said.
Her tone went cool. She relayed Lu Jin's words exactly.
The old man's arms locked up.
Then she moved a little closer, and her collar shifted.
Under the grime along her collarbone, a strip of dark red showed—burned into her skin long ago. A barcode.
Ω-07.
The old man stared at it like it had punched him.
"Ω-series…" His voice shook in a different way now. Not pure fear—something half broken and half feverish. "You're one of the samples that escaped that place?"
He let out a breath that sounded like a laugh dragged over glass.
"No wonder… no wonder you have a shelter like this. God isn't saving beggars. He's saving his 'chosen stock.'"
He looked down at the box in his arms.
The double-helix patterns on it stared back.
He gave another cracked laugh.
"I guarded this thing like a dog for five years," he said. "Dodged radiation, raiders… all of it. And in the end, I still have to give it back to you lot."
"This isn't rent." He shoved the box into Li Xing's hands so suddenly she almost dropped it. His gaze turned strange, like he was looking at her and through her at something worse. "Take it. That mad 'father' of yours left this. It's your life."
Li Xing didn't understand his muttering about "samples" and "father."
She just knew the metal got heavier once it was in her hands.
In a place that held back crystal storms, that had stable temperature and machines running around just to clean up footprints, the thing he'd clung to for five years really did only qualify as an entry ticket.
She wrapped both hands around the cold box.
She didn't hide it. Didn't tuck it away like stolen loot.
She lifted it.
Arms straight, offering it up to the empty air where she felt the listener's gaze pressing from somewhere she couldn't see.
"Listener…" Her head tipped back. The severe mask she'd been wearing all this time cracked apart. Under it was just a girl angling for praise, the corner of her mouth sneaking up in a tiny, guilty arc. "I've collected… the rent."
On Lu Jin's side, the black metal cube on the feed flared.
A ring of gold shot out from it and rippled across the screen. Li Xing's feelings rode the wave straight into him—her stubborn need to protect his "god" image even in front of strangers, her bright little spike of pride at finally doing something big for him.
Clean. Simple. Strong.
[Detected dual-emotion resonance: "Loyalty" + "Achievement"!][Special Feedback: Tranquil Song (Trace)][Observed Target: Li Xing][Holy Resonance EXP: +15][Mortal Echo · Faint Light LV1 (184 / 200) → LV1 (199 / 200)]
Lu Jin stared at the 199 and felt his eye twitch again.
"One point short of leveling up?" he said through his teeth. "This damn system really knows how to torture people with OCD."
He didn't even have time to work up a proper complaint.
Energy slid up his arm.
It wasn't heat this time. It poured through his nerves like cold spring water, straight into the parts of his brain that had been pulled tight for too long.
He breathed out, a long, rough exhale.
[Feedback: Tranquil Song (Trace)][Effect: Neural stability greatly increased (Duration: 30 minutes).][Note: During this period, your decision-making logic will forcibly strip out interference from "Pain" and "Fear," entering absolute rational state.]
The migraine he'd gotten used to living under loosened its fingers. The grainy fizz at the edge of his vision smoothed out until the world came into focus in a way it hadn't in months.
For a moment he could feel tiny things he shouldn't have had the bandwidth to notice—blood changing speed in his veins, a small shift in heartbeat, dust motes drifting in the stale air of the hallway.
Not a cure.
Just a wrecked machine, forced back toward factory settings for a short window.
He let his head rest against the wall and closed his eyes, stealing a few seconds of quiet in a life that didn't offer many.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The door at the end of the hallway jumped in its frame. The concrete behind his back shivered.
"Lu Jin! I know you're in there!"
A middle-aged woman's voice knifed through the door, sharp and mean.
"Don't pretend you're dead! You're three days late already! If you don't pay today, I'm throwing all your junk out on the street!"
The faint softness in his gaze iced over.
On his screen, the loan countdown marched on.
[High-Interest Loan Interest Timer: 22:47:33]
Through the door, the landlord shrieked about three thousand yuan like it was a matter of national security.
Out in A-11, a C-grade resource point waited with "High-Risk" stamped all over it.
"Twenty thousand in debt, three thousand in rent, and one dungeon that wants to kill me…" Lu Jin murmured.
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
A slow smile pulled at his mouth. It didn't reach his eyes. In the dim blue of the phone light, the expression came out almost gentle, if you didn't look too hard at the edges.
"Lively," he said.
The pounding got worse. The hinges groaned in protest.
Lu Jin didn't rush.
He glanced at the feed once more—Li Xing carefully wiping the metal key with a clean cloth strip, handling it like something alive—then at the countdown, then at his own hands.
Still pale. Still thin.
No shaking.
"Crazy?" he repeated under his breath.
The word sat there between his teeth for a second, then he laughed. Quiet. Wrong.
He turned the lock.
On the other side: a landlord with spit ready to fly, and a city more than happy to squeeze him dry and dump the husk.
On this side: sixteen thousand yuan and change, a girl on a dead world building a faith around him, and a five-hundred-yuan report that might open a door to either profit or a body bag.
"Coming," Lu Jin said.
He pulled the door open, voice disturbingly calm.