Lu Jin burns ¥500 to appraise a mysterious Ark lockbox, earns a C-grade "dungeon"… and gets dragged back to reality by a landlord demanding rent.
The stairwell of the tenement was a concrete throat, swallowing all light.
The voice-activated bulbs had died months ago. Only the cold blue glow of Lu Jin's phone lit his face, carving his cheekbones into sharp, sickly angles.
He leaned against the damp wall, lungs wheezing like a broken bellows. The post-adrenaline crash clung to his spine, crawling vertebra by vertebra up into his skull. His fingers twitched, the fine tremors he couldn't quite suppress.
In the top right of his vision, numbers bled red across his retina.
[High-Interest Loan Interest Timer: 22:58:11][Current Debt: -¥19,998.00]
"Less than twenty-three hours…" He swallowed, tasting rust.
There was no time to complain about fate.
His gaze was a scalpel, pinned to one thing on the screen.
On the bunker's foyer feed, the old man Little Rock had dragged through the storm lay sprawled on the floor, unconscious. Even in that state, his arms were locked around a black metal box, hugging it as if it were his own heart.
The box was etched with intricate twin-helix patterns. Even through the camera, Lu Jin could feel the cold, severe beauty of war-era precision engineering.
Ark's symbol.
"Zoom in," he murmured.
The image enlarged—then smeared where it mattered most, as if someone had blurred it on purpose.
[System Notice: High-precision encrypted device detected.][Due to your insufficient authority (D-rank), direct analysis is unavailable.]
A split-second later, a colorful, browser-game-style pop-up slapped over his field of view, coins raining down with a cheesy shaa-la-la jingle.
[Trash or Treasure? Let the Expert Decide!]
Still mad about that "lucky pick-up" that turned out to be scrap metal?Still crying over the relic you sold for pennies that was actually a god-tier artifact?
Is it wasteland junk or civilization's lost inheritance?
Scan once, know forever!
Pay a small "technical service fee" to receive:
Detailed structural breakdown
Estimated market value
Bleeding-Heart Special: ¥500.00(Knowledge is money. Poor ghosts excluded!)
"Five hundred…" Lu Jin stared at his remaining ¥17,000+, the muscles at the corner of his eye twitching. "You want five hundred just to look at it?"
He knew exactly what this was.
Not a scam.
A very honest, very obvious mugging.
The system knew the box mattered. Knew he needed it. So it wrote the price right on his face, fair and square—highway robbery with a receipt.
He didn't hesitate long.
His right index finger was still shaking, but he still drove it into the [Pay] button like he meant to stab through the glass.
This wasn't an expense.
It was a bet.
A bet that whatever the old man was clutching could pay off the ¥20,000 hissing interest over his head.
[Payment Successful! Summoning the Appraisal Master…]
[Wasteland · A-11 Zone · Blackstone Bunker – Foyer]
The airtight door sealed out the crystal storm. Warm light pooled across the pristine synthetic floor.
Li Xing stood in the middle of the foyer, bare feet on the white panels, her torn lab coat hanging awkwardly around her. The room's clean lines made her look even more out of place.
Her expression, though, was deadly serious.
She tried to arrange her features into something cold and professional, copying the researchers she remembered. Her lashes trembled, betraying her nerves.
Golden text only she could see flickered across her vision.
[Command: Confiscate weapons. Search them. Question them.][Command: Keep your distance. Do not show weakness.]
Li Xing drew a breath, then another. The knife in her hand twitched. She forced it through a clumsy spin and leveled the blade at the boy kneeling before her.
"Hand… over the knife," she said. Her voice was tight, but clear.
Little Rock didn't even think about resisting.
He unhooked a jagged half-broken serrated blade from his belt, lifted it above his head with both hands, and set it carefully at her feet.
His gaze never rose from the floor.
Too clean.
Everything was too clean.
For a boy who'd grown up wallowing in mud and blood, this spotless white surface was more terrifying than any mutant beast. His knees, caked with frozen black slush and old blood, left ugly smears each time he shifted.
Every smear felt like blasphemy.
"Is this… heaven?" Little Rock rasped, voice raw and dazed.
A faint hum cut through the silence.
In the corner, a white disc-shaped unit lit up with a blue ring. It detected the new mess, puffed out a little jet of air, and glided toward the boy.
Whirrr—
The brushes under its belly spun up to full speed and slammed straight into Little Rock's filthy boots.
"Ah!" The boy yelped and flinched back, pressing himself into the wall, hands raised in panicked surrender.
"Spirit! Spirit of the Holy Place!" he babbled. "I didn't mean to dirty Your ground!"
Even the old man on the floor jerked awake at the commotion.
He blinked around blearily—and froze.
The white disc bumped doggedly against Little Rock's boots, brushes scrubbing at the dried mud like it was performing a sacred rite of purification.
The old man's pupils shrank.
In the wasteland, only the highest, most secure Ark cores boasted full automatic cleaning units like this. Those machines weren't convenience products.
They were symbols of obscene power and resource waste.
And here one was, roaming around like a cheap household tool.
Li Xing watched the scene unfold, the corners of her mouth fighting not to twitch.
She sneaked a glance at the invisible "eye" in the air. The Listener didn't seem angry, so she cleared her throat.
"This is… a holy cleaning spirit," she said solemnly, pointing at the hardworking vacuum robot. "It cannot tolerate filth. As long as you wash properly, it won't eat you."
Both the old scavenger and Little Rock immediately dropped back into a frenzy of bowing, knocking their heads against the floor toward the ¥99 robot like it was an angel.
[Reality · Tenement Stairwell]
Watching all this, Lu Jin felt the knot in his nerves loosen by a fraction.
[Appraisal Complete!]
A pale blue holographic report slid open over the video feed.
[Item Name]: Ark – Resource Point 7 Key (Inactive)Type: Encrypted Beacon
Description:Spare access key for Ark Resource Point #7 from before the war.Contains:· A full holo-map to Resource Point #7· Access codes for primary and secondary locks
Estimated Resource Grade: C(Potential contents: small energy core, medical consumables, standard weapon blueprints.)
Current State: Dormant (biometric activation required.)Distance from current subject location: 32.5 km
Internal Ark Codename: "Silent Containment Site 7."We wish you happy looting!
Lu Jin's eyes lit up.
"C-grade resource point," he breathed. "Right now, that's a gold mine."
His thoughts accelerated.
An energy core inside could power the bunker's defenses, saving him from buying overpriced "Emergency Power Packs." Weapon blueprints could arm Li Xing properly, cutting down how often he'd have to buy her high-markup "Savior Bundles" just to keep her alive.
Medical supplies?
Perfect for treating Li Xing and the new arrivals without the system handing him humanitarian bills with too many zeroes.
Spending less was the same as earning more.
If he could push the wasteland side toward basic self-sufficiency, then every bloody yuan he scraped together here could go toward his own absurdly-priced gene repair serum.
But the ¥500 he'd just burned hadn't bought him hope alone.
It came with a warning.
[Warning: Resource Point 7 is located in a "High-Risk" sector.][Recommendation: Do not enter without heavy firepower.]
Lu Jin glanced at the bright red line at the bottom, then started typing a new command.
[Blackstone Bunker · Foyer]
A new line of golden text unfolded in front of Li Xing's eyes.
She stood, knife still in hand, and moved to crouch in front of the old man.
He flinched, instinctively curling around his black box.
"Rent," she said, repeating Lu Jin's words in a calm, even tone. "That's the rent."
The old man's arms tightened.
The box was more important than his life. He'd guarded it like a rabid dog for five full years, outlasting radiation, raiders, and famine. How could he hand it over to a little girl?
But as Li Xing crouched, the collar of her lab coat tugged open.
Below the grime and scars at the base of her throat, a dark red mark showed—a barcode tattoo burned into the skin: Ω-07.
The old man stared.
His cloudy eyes contracted sharply. All the blood drained from his face.
"Ω sequence…" His voice shook violently now, no longer with fear, but with some toxic blend of despair and wild relief. "You're one of the samples that escaped from there?"
He wasn't really asking.
"Of course…" He laughed, harsh and hoarse. "Of course you'd have a shelter like this. Gods don't save beggars. They save their chosen."
He looked down at the box in his hands.
At the same double-helix pattern cut into its surface.
He chuckled again, the sound breaking apart.
"I crawled like a dog guarding this thing for five years," he muttered. "Dodged radiation. Dodged raiders. Snuck around like a rat…"
"In the end, I still have to hand it back to you Manufactured People."
"This isn't rent."
He shoved the box into her arms with sudden, brittle force. His eyes were strange—half looking at her, half through her, toward some distant monster in his memory.
"Take it," he said. "That madman you call 'Father' left this behind. It's yours."
"It's your life."
Li Xing didn't understand his muttering. She only understood weight.
The metal box felt heavier in her hands.
In a shelter that could shrug off crystal storms, with its own heating and cleaning machines, the priceless object in his arms really was only worth one thing.
The price of entry.
She lifted it.
She didn't hide it, didn't tuck it away.
Instead, she held the cold metal high above her head, offering it to the empty air like a sacred offering.
"Listener…" Her small act dropped in an instant, replaced by a little girl's barely-contained excitement. The corners of her lips tugged up, seeking praise. "Rent… collected."
At that moment—
On Lu Jin's screen, the black box flared.
A ring of golden ripples exploded outward from it like someone had dropped a pebble into liquid light.
Her effort to keep God's dignity in front of strangers.
Her guilty pride in finally being able to help.
They twined together into a clean, bright surge of emotion and slammed through the connection.
[Detected: Dual Resonance – Loyalty + Achievement!][Special Feedback Gained: Song of Stillness (Minor)]
The golden ripple stayed confined to the touchscreen, but a cool wave still rushed up through his fingers where they touched the phone.
The energy flowed along his arm, racing straight into the fried nerves behind his eyes.
"Haah…"
Lu Jin exhaled slowly.
The migraine that had been coiled around his skull like barbed wire dissolved. The snow of static and flicker at the edge of his vision—the noise that came from oxygen deprivation and constant pain—smoothed out and vanished.
He could hear the change in his blood flow, feel minuscule shifts in pressure. Dust motes drifting through the stairwell air became suddenly, absurdly distinct.
This wasn't healing.
It was like someone had taken an almost-broken instrument and recalibrated it back to factory default for a while.
[Feedback: Song of Stillness (Minor)][Effect: Neural stability greatly increased for 30 minutes.][Note: During this period, decision-making logic will forcibly strip out interference from "pain" and "fear." You will operate in a state of absolute rationality.]
He leaned his head back against the wall and savored thirty quiet seconds of that impossible calm.
Then—
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The door upstairs shuddered under heavy fists, the vibrations rattling down the stairwell and into his spine.
"Lu Jin! I know you're in there!"
A sharp middle-aged woman's voice knifed through the concrete and cheap wood, dripping with acid.
"Don't play dead! You're already three days late! If you don't pay the rent today, I'm throwing all your junk out into the hall!"
Lu Jin opened his eyes.
The warmth in them froze over in an instant.
On his UI, the high-interest countdown kept ticking down, silent and merciless.
Outside his door, his landlady hammered away, trying to shake money out of his ribs.
Across a ruined world, a high-risk resource point waited for him to crack it open.
"Twenty thousand in debt," he murmured. "Three thousand in rent. One lethal little dungeon…"
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
In the bunker feed, Li Xing was carefully wrapping a clean cloth around the metal key, treating it like a newborn. In the corner, the timer glowed quietly:
[Interest Timer: 22:47:33]
Finally, he looked down at his own hands—still pale, still thin.
Not trembling anymore.
"Mad?" he echoed the word the world liked to use on him.
He smiled.
In the thin, bluish light, the expression looked almost gentle—and deeply wrong.
He twisted the lock.
Outside was the landlady, and a city ready to squeeze him dry and dump his corpse in a recycling chute. Inside was ¥17,000, a girl in the wasteland burning her soul to worship him, and a key he'd just spent ¥500 on that led either to payday or to a grave.
"Coming," Lu Jin said.
He pulled the door open, voice calm as a surgeon's.