[Vol. 1, Fragment I: Directorate of Astronomy ? Registry of Officials (Hidden Archives)]

  "The Heavenly Dao is not whole; it is cracked porcelain. The Directorate of Astronomy established the position of 'Gleaner' not to counsel the Sovereign, but to sweep the Filth. All things unnamable, unlookable, and medicinal-incompatible shall be relegated to the Miscellaneous Division for disposal."

  — Official System of the Great Wei: Hidden Archives

  [Internal Note / Directorate of Astronomy] "Gleaner": Specialist. Handler of things that cannot be burned, cannot be exorcised, and—goddammit—are still moving.

  The air smelled of fermented rice cake left out too long—sweet, cloying, and sporting a fuzzy coat of green mold. Underneath that sugary rot lay the wet, inescapable stench of the Qinhuai River’s bottom, reminiscent of dead fish flipping their white bellies to the sun. Xie Bi’an felt less like a man and more like a salted fish, brined in his own juices and spread out to dry on the pleasure boat's most expensive rosewood couch.

  His temples throbbed with a rhythmic, drilling pain. Deep in his skull, a tinnitus hummed—a melody too precise and mechanical to belong to this era. It was Fur Elise, specifically the electronic chime of the yellow garbage truck from his old neighborhood, grinding back and forth over his cerebral cortex. Since the day he transmigrated to this godforsaken timeline, the auditory hallucination hadn’t stopped once.

  Dedication to the craft, Xie Bi’an thought, massaging the bridge of his nose. Even across time and space, the universe reminds me to take out the trash.

  In his previous life, waking up with a hangover meant groping for a smartphone to order steaming beef noodles, or shambling into the 7-Eleven downstairs to drop tea eggs into instant ramen while sitting in the sterile, chemical bliss of air-conditioning. But there was no AC here, only the damp, bone-chilling river fog. There were no tea eggs, only a plate of cold venison arranged like high art that tasted like chewing on a candle.

  "Master Xie... is the wine to your liking?"

  The oily voice slid into Xie Bi’an’s ear, violently severing his nostalgia. The speaker was the boat’s owner, Master Wang, a salt smuggler turned nouveau riche who had recently bludgeoned his way into a minor government sinecure. Wang rubbed his hands together—fingers sausage-thick and choking in ruby rings—and beamed at Xie Bi’an. His face was a disaster of heavy lead powder, plastered on to fill the craters of age and debauchery. When he smiled, the powder flaked off like dandruff, drifting down to "fertilize" the expensive Persian rug.

  His gaze was naked, holding three parts contempt for a destitute scholar and seven parts desperation to cling to the prestige of the "Xie Clan of Chenjun." In this world, the surname Xie was a passport. Even if Xie Bi’an was currently poor enough to pawn his undergarments, a tycoon like Wang still had to shrine him in the seat of honor, hoping some of that aristocratic "elegance" would rub off by osmosis.

  "It’s passable," Xie Bi’an answered lazily, not bothering to lift his eyelids.

  His long, pale fingers played with a gold cup he’d swiped from a neighboring table. A bright red lip print stained the rim—a souvenir from the previous owner that smelled of cheap rouge and the bitter metallic tang of lead poisoning. He didn't care. Free alcohol was free alcohol. Even if it was industrial-grade ethanol, he’d drink it. He tipped his head back and drained the cloudy liquid.

  It was Persian grape wine. The filtration was garbage—he could feel the grit of grape skins against his teeth—but it had a kick. The sour liquid slid down his throat, turning into a thin line of fire that burned its way to the stomach. For a moment, the electronic Fur Elise in his head turned down the volume, and the world stopped looking so psychedelic.

  In the folds of his robe, a ball of golden fat shifted.

  It was Xianchan. The golden chinchilla cat, fluffy enough to be mistaken for a sphere, had buried its face in Xie Bi’an’s wide lapels. Only its ear tufts were visible, twitching in time with the singing girl’s miserable lute performance.

  "Father," Xianchan’s voice resonated directly inside Xie Bi’an’s skull, sounding sticky with sleep and dripping with disdain. "This tub of lard named Wang smells like rendered corpse oil. You actually drank that? You really have no standards, do you?"

  Xie Bi’an’s expression didn't flicker. He scratched the cat behind the ear and projected a thought back. Shut up. Free booze is free booze. Corpse oil just adds texture. Besides, when you stole that roast goose earlier, I didn't hear you complaining that it was a dead bird.

  "That’s different!" Xianchan argued, his telepathic voice shrill as a eunuch’s. "The goose was an ingredient. This fat man is... kitchen waste. The whole boat smells wrong. It reeks of pickles that have been fermenting in a sewer for three years."

  Xie Bi’an ignored the chatty feline. Of course, he smelled it. Since taking over this body—and inheriting the unlucky official title of "Gleaner"—his nose had become sharper than a bloodhound’s. He could smell the rot beneath the prosperity, the white bone beneath the rouge.

  He reached out and grabbed a drumstick from a roast chicken, wiping his greasy fingertips on the silk tablecloth. The gesture was rude, bordering on barbaric. Master Wang’s eye twitched violently, his heart clearly breaking for the Suzhou cloud-brocade cloth—that single scrap of fabric cost more than three servant girls.

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  "Master Xie," Wang swallowed his heartache and leaned in closer, his heavy perfume nearly making Xie Bi’an sneeze. "I heard you found a... 'clean' and noble position in the Directorate of Astronomy? A 'Gleaner,' yes? An advisor to the Emperor! When you rise to the heavens, don't forget to pull your little brother up."

  Xie Bi’an paused, a half-chewed piece of undercooked chicken in his cheek. He almost laughed.

  Advisor to the Emperor? Right. In this crumbling world, where the Dao was rotting and the Buddhas were growing fur, the common folk didn't know what a "Gleaner" actually did. They thought it was a pristine job, writing essays to scold the Son of Heaven.

  Only Xie Bi’an knew the truth. To put it crudely, a Gleaner was a government-sanctioned garbage man.

  The Miscellaneous Division of the Directorate of Astronomy was responsible for sorting through the Filth that the Heavens threw down—the things that grew mold, the things that bit, the things that shouldn't exist. If it wasn't useful, they packaged it up and tossed it back into the Void. They were the janitors of the apocalypse, paid the lowest salary to do the deadliest work.

  "Yes. A Gleaner." Xie Bi’an swallowed the chicken. His gaze drifted past Wang’s meaty shoulders, fixing on the shadows in the corner of the cabin. He looked at it the way a man looks at a recyclable bottle worth five cents. "Speaking of which... business is calling."

  In the corner sat the singing girl playing the lute.

  She wore a jade-green dress, head bowed, long hair obscuring her face. Her hands, plucking the strings, were terrifyingly pale. Her fingernails were long, painted with crimson lacquer. Every time she plucked a string, the nail scraped against the wood with a wet, buzzing friction that sounded less like music and more like the dry rasp of bone grinding against bone.

  In Xie Bi’an’s vision—eyes marinated in alcohol to see the 'Real'—there was no singing girl. There was only a water-logged skin sack. Beneath that skin, there were no bones. Just countless black, eel-like things writhing, stretching the green dress until it bulged like a burlap sack full of worms.

  Shoddy craftsmanship, Xie Bi’an critiqued internally. Didn't even hide the resentment properly. This kind of trash would barely fetch a cabbage price at the Ghost Market.

  "Business?" Wang blinked, confused.

  The lute music stopped abruptly.

  A wet tearing sound ripped through the air as the singing girl’s neck split open like an over-inflated balloon. There was no blood. Instead, a torrent of black hair erupted like a dark tide, instantly weaving into a foul-smelling net that lunged toward the nearest living meat: Master Wang.

  "Ah—!! M-Monster!!"

  Wang squealed, a sound indistinguishable from a pig meeting the butcher. His reaction was surprisingly fast; he scrambled under the table, kicking over the pot of good wine in the process. Liquor splashed, filling the air with the incongruous aroma of fruit.

  "Tsk. My wine."

  Xie Bi’an sighed, his brow furrowing deeper than when he saw the monster.

  Water Ghost. Hair manifestation. High resentment. Hard to cut with steel, hard to burn with fire. But to a professional, this was just organic waste requiring "special processing." It didn't fear alcohol. It feared the time distilled within the vintage.

  Xie Bi’an didn't draw his blade—the ring-pommel saber at his waist had rusted into the scabbard long ago; it was purely decorative. Instead, he raised a hand still greasy with chicken fat and snapped his fingers.

  "Work time, fatty! That thing looks like kelp. Want a taste?"

  From his robes, Xianchan shot out, letting loose a roar that belonged to no feline species. "Pah! That’s hair! It gets stuck in my teeth!"

  Despite the complaint, the golden soundwave rattled the paper windows, freezing the mass of black hair in mid-air. In that frozen second, Xie Bi’an moved. He grabbed at the empty air, and the spilled wine on the floor defied gravity, rising to pool into a trembling sphere in his palm.

  "Go."

  He flicked his wrist, casual as swatting a fly. The wine-sphere became a bullet, tearing through the air and embedding itself precisely into the monster’s split neck.

  A clear, delicate chime rang out, like glass striking glass.

  From the point of impact, the monster’s frantically dancing black hair began to lose its color. It turned translucent. It turned golden. Golden cracks spread like ivy, racing across the monster’s body in the blink of an eye. It was still frozen in its pouncing stance, its hideous face still twisted with the hunger for flesh, but in an instant, it solidified into a massive, exquisite sculpture of Gold-Inlaid Liuli (Glazed Glass).

  At the same time, Xie Bi’an’s right hand, hidden inside his sleeve, trembled violently.

  He looked down to see his own fingertips turning transparent. Beneath the skin, it wasn't blood flowing, but molten gold dust. A piercing, drilling pain shot up his finger bones, as if his body wanted to "Liuli-fy" along with the monster. Expressionless, he grabbed the dregs of wine left on the table and downed them. As the alcohol hit his throat, the sensation of assimilation was forcibly suppressed, and his fingertips slowly returned to the color of flesh.

  This was the price of collecting trash. When you gaze into the Filth, the Filth assimilates you. This was why Gleaners didn't live long.

  Workplace injury, Xie Bi’an calculated. I’ll have to make this fat tub cover the medical bills.

  He walked over, swaying slightly, and flicked the forehead of the sculpture. With a sharp crash, the statue collapsed. Thousands of golden fragments rained down like hail, covering the floor of the boat and reflecting the shimmering waves of the Qinhuai River with a dazzling, hypnotic light.

  "If I took this craftsmanship to the Liuli factory, it’d trade for at least ten jars of Champion’s Red wine." Xie Bi’an shook his head in regret. He bent down, picked up a dark red bead the size of a fingernail, and handed it to the silver cat on his shoulder.

  The cat swallowed the bead with a visible struggle and a wet gulp, immediately turning its head to the window with a face of absolute disgust.

  Under the table, Master Wang poked his head out, trembling. The sweat had washed channels through his face powder, creating a landscape of white ravines. "Master... Master Gleaner... the monstrosity... is it gone?"

  Xie Bi’an didn't look at him. He spoke to the cat in his arms. "Fatty, put it on the tab."

  He turned, looking down at Wang with a standard "unscrupulous merchant" smile. "Master Wang, congratulations. You’ve just witnessed the consecration of a 'Gold-Inlaid Liuli' artifact. Your boat is now filled with auspicious energy."

  "Cleaning fee: one tael of silver." Xie Bi’an raised one finger, then added a second. "Plus compensation for mental trauma... two jars of thirty-year-old Daughter’s Red. After all, your scream just now gave my cat indigestion."

  Xianchan cooperated by dry-heaving theatrically.

  Wang didn't dare utter a syllable of protest. He nodded like a chicken pecking rice. "Yes! Yes! I’ll have them bring the wine immediately!"

  Xie Bi’an nodded and walked to the window, pushing it open. The river wind hit his face, carrying the unnatural, metallic scent of rust. He looked up at the waning moon, obscured by dark clouds. Around the moon hung a crimson halo, like an inflamed, bloodshot eye coldly looking down upon the city of Jiankang.

  "Two jars might not be enough."

  Xie Bi’an rubbed his fingertips, which still tingled from the near-transmutation. His eyes narrowed.

  "The wind tastes entirely of rust... Looks like the Heavens dumped more than one piece of trash tonight."

  If something feels off, that’s intentional.

  LSHI