The agonizing sting from that single slash hadn’t faded.

  I didn't even have time to check what part of me was missing before the massive kinetic force hurled me out of the shop. My spine slammed into the white gravel, the impact knocking the breath out of my lungs in a jagged, formless grunt.

  "GO! DON'T LOOK BACK!"

  JK’s voice exploded in my ear—not a shout, but a command. The kind that tolerated zero hesitation.

  I scrambled onto the scooter, my hands shaking so violently I could barely grip the handlebars. As the engine sputtered to life, I caught a glimpse of the fuel gauge. The tank, which had been bone-dry, had miraculously bounced back to Full the moment that "Three-and-Six-Li" was carved out of me by Old White. I didn't understand the logic. I didn't know what those 'Li' were. I only knew the engine was roaring, the tires were spinning, and I needed to be gone.

  I pinned the throttle.

  The scooter launched like a startled beast, spraying white gravel in its wake. The infinite uphill slope reappeared ahead. The wind cut across my face like a blade, tearing the mist on my visor into thin white streaks. I squinted, my eyes locked on the endless stretch of white road.

  Then, I made the mistake of glancing at the rearview mirror.

  Just once.

  That single glance made my heart stop in my chest.

  The neon-drenched, decaying Kowloon-style walled city of the "Underworld" was gone. In its place stood a towering, pitch-black structure—an ancient, bone-chilling high platform, silhouetted against the void. It was impossibly vast, a monolithic piece of architecture that shouldn't exist, looking down upon me with the weight of an era.

  Two plaques hung across the platform. The one on the right was tattered, flickering with faded Japanese Kanji:

  【 FOREIGN CURRENCY EXCHANGE 】

  But directly above it, three crimson characters bled out from the darkness, etched into my retinas with an unshakeable, ancient authority:

  【 WANG - XIANG - TAI 】 (The Platform of Longing for Home)

  My fingers spasmed on the throttle.

  Wangxiangtai.

  I twisted the grip to its limit.

  The back of the seat suddenly dipped.

  A familiar scent pressed against my back—cold, smelling of brine and rot, a temperature that didn't belong to the living. A pair of hands, etched with black patterns, clamped firmly around my waist. The chill from her fingertips bypassed my skin, piercing directly into my internal organs.

  "Look forward," her voice whispered in my ear, calm as a weather report. "If you don't want to die, shut up and ride."

  I didn't dare turn around.

  The white fog ahead began to dissolve. The half-finished concrete bridge pillars reassembled themselves with a mechanical snap. The gravel retreated as the engine vibrated, and the outline of the asphalt surfaced from beneath like a film developing in a darkroom. At the end of the slope, an orange glow pierced through the mist—

  A traffic light.

  The intersection of Minquan East Road and Fuxing North Road. Orange, warm, smelling of exhaust and urban noise. A mundane, precious color that belonged to the human world.

  A sharp, impatient horn blast detonated in my ear.

  I snapped back to reality.

  I was stopped at the red line on Fuxing North Road. Behind me, a taxi driver rolled down his window, barking a string of curses I didn't have the energy to process. The Dazhi Bridge was lit up ahead, traffic moving in a steady, peaceful flow. Pedestrians had faces. Streetlights were streetlights. Asphalt was asphalt.

  Everything looked so normal. So normal it made me want to cry.

  I stopped at the red light, and something in my brain began to click into place.

  Wangxiangtai. The legends say it’s the final stop for the deceased on the Yellow Springs Road—the high platform where the dead take one last look at the living world before being led away. And that gold shop with the "Pawn" sign, filled with the sound of muffled moans... that was for currency exchange. Not human money, but Merit. The final balance people accumulate in life, things they can't take with them but are forced to spend at the end.

  The "Three-and-Six-Li" I had just paid wasn't a toll or an entry fee.

  It was my "foreign currency" as a living being.

  The taxi behind me honked again. Green light.

  I don’t remember the ride home.

  I only remember the heavy thud of my iron door closing—a sound more somber than usual, like a final judgment. I hung my helmet on the wall, my hands still shaking. I didn't even take off my shoes; I just leaned against the door, letting the cold metal press against my spine, trying to force my breathing into a normal rhythm.

  Tonight was just a dream.

  It had to be.

  I’m just overworked. I must have nodded off on the bike and had a hyper-realistic nightmare—

  "You’re late."

  The voice was a thin needle, driving straight into my vertebrae from the direction of the living room.

  My breath hitched.

  The fluorescent light flickered, the glow in the room turning a sickly, pale white. Sitting on my sofa—which should have been empty—was the girl in the sailor uniform. She was lounging there, one leg crossed over the other, chin tilted up as she watched me with an "I’ve-been-waiting" stare.

  That notched, terrifying watermelon knife, still stained with a faint black mist, was resting casually on my coffee table. Right next to my TV remote.

  My brain tried to process two facts simultaneously: One, my living room had been occupied by an apex anomaly. Two, the visual was so absurd I didn't know how to react—a cursed blade and a remote, side-by-side on my IKEA table.

  "W-What... what is the meaning of this?" My voice shook with a pathetic tremor.

  "Don't be nervous," she gestured toward the floor with her chin. "Look."

  I looked down.

  Under the light, she had a shadow. Faint, but undeniably there, moving slightly with her breath. She noticed my gaze and let out a small, upward twitch of her lips. It wasn't quite a smile; it was the look of someone feeling a minor satisfaction at a predicted reaction.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  "I can temporarily 'Manifest' (凝態) in the living realm," she said. "How else do you think I survive here? Floating around like those 'Phone Zombies' and letting people walk through me?"

  She slowly lifted her head, and the eyes that had been hidden by her messy black hair were finally revealed. Deep grey. Devoid of warmth. They looked like two polished stones, but deep within the stone, something was rotating slowly.

  She took a deep breath.

  The action made me skin crawl because it looked too much like... enjoyment. Like someone savoring a glass of fine wine, letting the aroma linger in the nasal cavity before drowning in it. Her brow smoothed out, a look of near-decadent bliss spreading across her face.

  "Oh... you’re angry? The purity of your rage is so high... it’s top-tier even in the Underworld. Delicious."

  My anger turned into ice.

  This woman. She’s treating my emotions like a goddamn buffet.

  I took a breath, trying to make my voice steadier than my pulse. "What do you want?"

  "To do business," she said bluntly. "Do you want to get your Three-and-Six-Li back? Or maybe earn even more?"

  She tried to force a "cute" smile. On that wax-pale face, the expression looked like something that had never practiced smiling in its life—an entity mimicking a movement it had once seen. It only made me feel like something was fundamentally wrong beneath her skin.

  She began to count off on her fingers, one by one, like a judge reading a list of indictments.

  "Let me summarize your current situation. First, you accidentally trespassed into the Underworld. Second, you somehow ended up on Golden Rooster Mountain, which means there’s a breach in the local wards. You thought that tunnel you rode through was just a construction site? They say all roads lead to Rome, but you managed to pick the one path that leads straight to the Yellow Springs."

  She let out a distorted, glitchy cackle that sent ripples of unease through the silent apartment.

  "Third, and most importantly—your eyes have been 'Consecrated.' You can see them now. The non-human entities, the things that occupy your space but are usually filtered out by the human brain... you see it all. And there is no 'Undo' button for this."

  She paused, letting the phrase "no Undo button" sink in before continuing.

  "But your destiny-weight is clean—Eight Taels and Seven Mian. That’s not a lot for a living soul, but by Underworld standards, it’s enough capital to play with. What I mean is..." She crossed her fingers and leaned in. "You’re an obsolete smartphone, but you’ve still got a charge. Why not make it useful?"

  "Specifically," I looked at the watermelon knife on the table, cold sweat trickling down my temple. "What do I have to do?"

  "Under normal circumstances, I won't bother you," she said, adding a chillingly blunt truth. "But if I do come looking for you, it usually means the sky is falling."

  I was silent for a long moment.

  The fluorescent light hummed. Outside, the traffic on Minquan East Road filtered through the glass—so real, yet so distant. I looked at the knife, at the girl with a shadow who ate my emotions, and at those deep grey eyes devoid of human warmth.

  I slumped against the doorframe.

  "Fine," I said, sounding like a man who had just signed away his life. "I accept. But on one condition—no interfering with my normal life. I still have a day job. We talk business at night."

  Her eyes flickered. Not with emotion, but with the sharp clarity of an auditor confirming that the numbers finally matched.

  "Excellent," she said, her tone unexpectedly light. "I finally have an Agent. The last one I recruited was back in the Song Dynasty."

  I didn't want to ask what happened to that poor bastard from the 11th century. I just stood in the entryway, letting that detail sink deep into my mind until it was buried far enough that I didn't have to think about it.

  "Tomorrow night, I’ll take you to the Local Ministry of Households for certification," she said, standing up and folding the watermelon knife like she was closing an umbrella. "A pleasure doing business with you... Partner."

  She tossed a business card toward me. I caught it reflexively.

  Then her form began to flicker like a glitched TV screen, a signal dropping its final frames. She strobed twice in the air and vanished completely.

  The living room returned to its stagnant silence.

  I looked down at the card. It was gold-embossed, the design ancient and austere. The texture wasn't paper; it felt like some thin, resilient biological material. It read:

  【 APPRENTICE GRIM REAPER: MA-MIAN 】

  I stood in the hallway, shoes still on, lights still blazing. Outside, Taipei continued to churn as usual. The flow of cars on Minquan East Road, the sterile white glow of the 7-Elevens, the distant drone of a TV from another building—the city had no idea what had just happened, and it didn't care.

  I flipped the card over. The back was blank.

  I stared at it for three seconds.

  A thought flashed through my mind: Take a photo of it. But who would I show it to? There was no one in my contacts I could send this to and say, "This is a business card from Hell," without them worrying that I was finally cracking under the pressure of my sprint cycles.

  So I didn't take a photo.

  I slid the card into my wallet, tucking it right next to my expired EasyCard.

  I looked out the window. My scooter was still parked down there.

  I touched my wrist—nothing. No wound, no tattoo, nothing that could be used as evidence.

  Just something... missing.

  I stood there, trying to locate that "something." Like searching for a light switch in a pitch-black room—your hand brushes the wall, left, right, up, a bit higher... still nothing. The switch was gone. Not lost, but deleted.

  I couldn't quite put into words what it was that was gone.

  I suppose that’s because the first reaction of a thirty-something software engineer to having his "soul mortgaged" isn't to cry, but to think—

  "Fine. I guess I’ll just keep riding."