NOBEL SUITE | TRANQUILITY WING. REALM OF PASSING.

  Mei Yuling stared ahead with a throbbing headache and her soul slowly leaking out of her ears.

  The suite she was in glowed the way prestige brochures did. Silk curtains draped from the ceiling in overcomplicated folds; floor was some rare black stone that reflected everyone with uncomfortable clarity. Even the complimentary fruit platter probably had its own tier registration.

  In front of her, the Platinum Paladin Elite Force had taken over the sitting room. Holographic maps floated above the low table, layered with lines of data. Somewhere beneath the décor and background guzheng track, this was still an emergency deployment.

  Mei Yuling sat in an armchair by the wall like a decorative corpse and watched her team occupy the space like moths flocking to light.

  Captain Ji Renshu stood near the floor?to?ceiling window, hands clasped behind her back and looking like she’d stepped straight out of a recruitment poster. Across from her, vice-captain Yue Shiyao hovered over the holo?table, moving as if his body was just an extension of the data scrolling under his hands.

  “Surveillance grid stable. Perimeter sweep complete,” Shiyao said. “No anomaly resonance within our grid.”

  “Continue full sweep,” Renshu said. "The White Tiger’s resonance is simply hidden, not absent. We are not here to relax.”

  Across the room, Yang Mingze abandoned his attempt to nap on the couch and sat up with a grunt.

  “We’ve been ‘not relaxing’ for three days,” he said. “If we lie low any harder, I might as well just go and reincarnate as rock.”

  Despite having a karmic stream flowing like lava, the man remained politely seated, gloves folded in his lap because he’d already been told twice not to crack his knuckles on the table.

  Then there was the team’s youngest, Chen Mo, perched on the counter by the kitchen area. Boots on the marble. Knife in hand. The blade spun lazily between pale fingers, catching the suite’s ambient light.

  At Mingze’s words, he let out a soft laugh. “Couch reincarnation may be a little difficult,” he said. “Especially for hotheads.”

  Yuling watched as Mingze shot him a look, to which the latter offered a thin smile.

  “Captain,” Shiyao said, eyes on his holopad. “Perimeter scan still clear. No unauthorised fluctuations in Dwelling’s external field.”

  Renshu hummed acknowledgment without looking away from the window. “Internal?”

  “The hotel’s arrays register multiple high?tier presences,” he replied. “Expected, given Dwelling’s clientele.”

  Yuling let her gaze unfocus. Dwelling hissed with muted power, befitting a place that made its living pretending nothing interesting ever happened inside its walls.

  “Dwelling huh*,*” Mingze muttered. “Couldn’t they just write ‘Rich Dead People Tower’ on the door?”

  “That wouldn’t be on brand,” Yuling said. “You don’t pay ten thousand Karma a night and get referred to as dead. Etiquette is a guaranteed part of the package.”

  He snorted. “Spoken like a true nepo?baby.”

  Yuling flicked him a look.

  “Yes, yes. Born in a fortunate family.” She deliberately tucked hair behind her ears. “Tragic. I cry about it every night into my thousand?thread?count pillows.”

  Minister Mei—Karmic Minister of the Heavenly Realm, long?time confidant of the Jade Deity and Yuling’s overly involved father. Hobbies include drinking tea, curating karmic spreadsheets, and telling his daughter that “responsibility is the highest form of love.”

  Her father had stood before the Jade Throne one day and said, in that gentle way of his, My daughter will learn much under Captain Ji.

  Yuling had smiled dutifully and thought, I have done nothing worthy of this punishment.

  Which was how she’d ended up in this mess of a situation, with these unfortunately even messier coworkers.

  “So what if they’re dead?” Chen Mo said from the counter, upside?down now, spine arched as he leaned back to peer at them with jade-green eyes. “Just reincarnate.”

  Yuling flicked him a look. “Get off the counter.”

  “No,” he said pleasantly.

  Her temples throbbed. “We eat off that.”

  “We’re in the afterlife,” he pointed out. “We don’t eat.”

  Ji Renshu didn’t turn. “Chen Mo.”

  That was all she said. The next second, the boy slid off the counter in one smooth motion, landing lightly, knife vanishing into a sleeve as if it had never existed.

  “Yes, Captain.” Chen Mo smiled.

  Professional. Well?trained. Deeply unwell.

  A neat summary of everyone in the room, really.

  The chime at the door sounded.

  The air shifted; attention snapped toward the entry like a single, silent current. Ji Renshu pivoted, cloak whispering.

  “Enter,” she said.

  The door slid aside to reveal a man in Bureau blue.

  He stepped in with a mild smile that screamed administrator from half a corridor away. His hair was bound, his robes impeccably arranged. A silver badge in the shape of a stylised wave gleamed at his collar:

  [Hai Xianmo | Midnight Avenue Administration | Senior Tier].

  Hai Xianmo bowed with professional depth. “Dwelling is honoured to host Heaven’s best hands.”

  Yuling didn’t need to squint to see the threads of his karma. They were tidy. Not flawless—no one working this close to the River of Oblivion walked clean—but well-maintained. Responsible. Dangerous in a different register than her team.

  Oh good, she thought. One more in the room who isn’t normal.

  “Manager Hai,” Renshu said. “Thank you for coming.”

  Her tone carried the exact warmth one used for polite subpoenas.

  Hai Xianmo straightened, the door closing behind him. “Your note mentioned a matter regarding divine essence.”

  Ji Renshu gestured toward the holo?table. Hai Xianmo took in the spread: layered map of Midnight Avenue, data streams flickering at the edges, the faint outline of the Oblivion gliding beneath it all. His gaze lingered for a heartbeat on the Heavenly sigils rotating at the corners, then slid away.

  Shiyao stepped up beside the captain. “We’re tracking a divine core signature,” he said. “Bai Hu, Area 001.”

  “Ah.” Hai Xianmo’s smile didn’t shift, but something in his eyes cooled. “Commander Bai Hu.”

  Yuling watched his karma lines as he said it. No spike of malice; no guilty flinch. Just a clean acknowledgment, followed by detachment.

  “The Jade Deity has ordered retrieval and stabilisation,” Renshu said. “Given this realm falls under Commander Meng’s authority, we’re requesting local support—system access, recent anomaly logs, VIP registry anomalies in the past seventy?two hours.”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “In accordance with standing agreements between Heaven and the Passing,” Shiyao added, already pulling up a list of articles.

  Hai Xianmo inclined his head. “Of course. Cooperation with Heaven is a core clause in our charter.” He moved closer, politely outside arm’s reach of Renshu’s spear. “But I must also uphold Commander Meng’s privacy mandates. Individual client data, particularly for high?tier spirits, is sealed. Aggregate patterns, however, are… discussable.”

  Yuling automatically translated that in her head as I will show you just enough to not get smitted.

  Across the room, Chen Mo scoffed.

  The kid was perched on the kitchen counter again. His gaze hadn’t left Hai Xianmo since the man entered, but it wasn’t suspicion she saw there. It was… curiosity. The way one predator looked at another and thought, Ah, different prey.

  Ji Renshu ignored it the way one ignored background noise.

  “Start with anomalies,” she told Hai Xianmo. “We can request sealed files through formal channels later if necessary.”

  “Very well,” he said. “We’ve had three significant deviations in the last week: brief spikes of high?tier karmic consolidation, followed by aggressive dampening. The first two aligned with known council visitations. The third…”

  He hesitated the tiniest fraction of a breath.

  Yuling caught it. So did Shiyao; his eyes sharpened.

  “…the third occurred two hours ago,” Hai Xianmo continued. “In this district. Our internal systems classified it as a ‘anomaly disrupture’ and sent an alert to the Obsidian Spires”

  “Location?” Shiyao asked.

  “The alert came with a radius, not coordinates.” Hai spread his hands. “We suspect the Nine-Headed Infant in the Oblivion, though our arrays aren’t designed to triangulate people or things specifically.”

  “You’re saying,” Renshu said, “that something powerful, possibly our target, manifested under your roof. And you don’t know where.”

  Hai Xianmo’s smile did not grow more apologetic.

  “Under the twilight roof, yes. Within these physical walls, ambiguous.” He stared straight ahead. “Dwelling prides itself on hosting high?tier guests under the strictest confidentiality protocols. We neither confirm nor deny the presence of specific individuals unless they trigger security incidents.”

  Mingze shifted, rolling his shoulders. “So there could be a whole pantheon upstairs and you’d call that a privacy policy.”

  Hai Xianmo considered him. “If such hypothetical guests were properly registered and paid their karma, they would indeed fall under standard privacy clauses.”

  “And if they brought their enemies to your door?” Renshu asked.

  For a fraction of a second, something flickered in his gaze. It vanished the next second.

  “Then,” he said softly, “my priority would be preventing Midnight Avenue from becoming a battleground.”

  Yuling watched the exchange. On paper, Ji Renshu and Hai Xianmo stood on the same side—Heavenly Realm and the Realm of Passing, both ostensibly working for “balance.” In practice, their loyalties were braided to different pillars.

  Renshu’s threads ran straight up to the Jade Deity. She’d chosen that path and built her life around it; Yuling almost envied the clarity.

  Hai Xianmo’s threads curled sideways, anchoring into district charters, local staff, the quiet bustle of the riverfront. His duty was to a place, not a person.

  Both of them knew it.

  From the cabinet, Chen Mo snorted. “If he is here, we’ll flush him out.”

  He wasn’t exactly wrong. The Elite Force had a record: once they were sent, targets rarely slipped through their fingers.

  However…

  “He can’t hide,” Chen Mo said again, quieter this time. “Not from the Heavens. Not from me.”

  Yuling didn’t look directly at him.

  Everyone knew Chen Mo was fixated. Obsession had its uses; the Jade Deity had weaponised stranger traits before.

  Yuling just wished she hadn’t seen his room.

  The shrine behind the silk curtain had been the worst part. Not because of what was on it, but because of the care.

  She wondered, sometimes, what had actually happened between the White Tiger and this boy with the too?bright eyes. She usually decided she was too tired to care and moved on.

  Hai Xianmo shifted his weight slightly, bringing her attention back to the present. “If I may be frank,” he said, eyes on the captain, “direct intervention from Heaven draws attention. The more dramatic your approach, the more Commander Meng will insist on an audit.”

  “We will keep that in mind as we search for Bai Hu’s core,” Renshu said. “Your cooperation is appreciated.”

  The words were cordial; the underlying message was not a compliance.

  Bai Hu.

  Yuling felt the tiny prickle in her chest she carefully identified as curiosity instead of interest.

  Even considering Chen Mo’s wall shrine, it was hard not to be curious.

  Bai Hu—Commander of Area 001, one of the four Guardians, formerly War Council’s Supreme Judge-Executor and Heaven’s walking calamity report.

  He’d been a story in her house before he was a mission file. Minister Mei rarely brought work home, but some cases seeped through, especially the ones that forced him to rewrite parts of the Heaven’s code.

  Yuling had never spoken to him.

  She’d seen him once, though, from a distance. It was decades ago at Jade Court; she’d been standing at the back of Heavenly Court’s assembly hall, bored out of her mind when the air suddenly shifted.

  She’d looked up, past rows of officials, past the Lord of the Rivers and the Vermilion Chair, to a man in a white coat standing below the throne.

  Commander Bai Hu been arguing with the Jade Deity and had looked amused while doing so. Relaxed shoulders, tilted head and all. Not many gods walked away from that smiling.

  Aside from his demeanour, though, it was his karmic essence that really caught Yuling’s attention. Bai Hu’s qi was coiled tight against his skin, contained, but his karmic aura screamed. It was stained with war and bloodshed. Whole fibres wrapped around cities she’d never seen—ports, alleys, shrines tucked into corners of maps. Threads linked to mortals who would never know his name.

  It had hit Yuling then, the way his presence made her talent react, a prickle running down her spine.

  Ah, she’d thought. That’s the kind of god my employers would be afraid of.

  Now, they were here to bring back his scattered core like lost luggage.

  Heaven was nothing if not efficient.

  “…and your anomaly logs?” Shiyao was saying.

  Hai Xianmo adjusted his wristband; a translucent panel bloomed in the air. “Also aggregated. Pattern fingerprints only.”

  The waveforms scrolled past. To most eyes, they were noise. To Yuling’s, they were personalities. Calm pools of mid?tier tourists; spiky bursts from influencers rehearsing performative breakdowns; heavy slabs from ghosts clinging to grudges.

  Then one, in particular, came up.

  Sharp in places, hollow in others. It was a structure that had been cut apart and jammed back together, but still prominent even in its brokenness.

  She felt it like a static shock.

  “There,” Yuling said before she could stop herself.

  Shiyao froze the frame. He overlaid Heavenly archive data with a flick. The patterns weren’t identical, but they resonated, like two verses of the same song.

  “Sample B. Core resonance match above eighty percent,” he murmured. “This is ours.”

  Mingze whistled low. “So he really is here.”

  Across the room, Chen Mo had gone completely still.

  His knife hit the counter before he caught it, jade eyes contracting onto the waveform.

  Silence pooled for a moment.

  “Very well.” Renshu folded her hands behind her back.

  “Captain?” Shiyao asked.

  “We’ll cross?reference this pattern with our own sensors,” she said. “Once we localise the source, we move. Manager Hai, your cooperation has been… adequate.”

  “Honoured to be of help.”

  Hai Xianmo bowed again.

  Yuling watched his karma threads shift as he did. Not a single strand bent closer to the Heavenly side of the room. All his loyalty tethered here, to this Avenue and its crowded dead.

  She could respect that.

  Mingze leaned over to her, muttering, “You think he’s hiding something?”

  “Everyone’s hiding something,” Yuling said. “Some people just file better paperwork.”

  His brows knitted. “That’s not helpi—”

  A sharp tone cut through the suite, followed up a ripple of unmistakable divinity.

  Shiyao’s head snapped down. His holopad pulsed, projections rearranging themselves midair. His fingers snapped to the interface before the second beep completed.

  “Spontaneous spike,” he said. All the leeway left his voice, turning it crisp as steel. “Same pattern as Sample B. Intensity climbing fast. Doubling. Tripling. It’s—”

  Ji Renshu’s gaze never left the map. “Location.”

  Shiyao pinched the projection inward, isolating the highlighted band.

  The map over the table reconfigured, and the building flattened into floors. A ring appeared around one of them, then another. Thin beads of vertical band of light shot up through the building schematic like a spear, tracing the source of the surge.

  “Cross?matching with Heavenly archive.” Shiyao’s fingers flicked; most of the building dimmed, leaving a single bright shaft.

  The numbers stabilised. Eight seconds later, the bright shaft collapsed down into a tighter cylinder, highlighting a specific slice of the hotel.

  “Floor band 89 to 101,” Shiyao said. His brows lifted slightly. “Presidential tier.”

  Mingze blinked. “That’s…”

  Shiyao pinched the schematic, zooming in. A small icon marked their own suite. Another pulsed above it.

  “Ninety?eight,” he said. “We’re on ninety?five.”

  Yuling counted, slowly.

  Three floors.

  The room seemed to tilt for a heartbeat from the sheer absurdity.

  “…You’re kidding.” Mingze huffed a laugh. “The war kitty we’re hunting is upstairs.”

  Chen Mo slid off the counter again, this time without being told. His smile was sharper now, almost luminous.

  “He always did like being above everyone else.”

  “Double?checked,” Shiyao said. “Suite code matches top floor. Highest karmic shielding. Private access arrays. Someone’s already paid very well to keep that room quiet.”

  All eyes turned, as one, to Hai Xianmo.

  There was no guilt in his expression, no treacherous twist of anxiety. His smile didn’t even falter. If anything, it became even more polished.

  Ji Renshu held his gaze for three slow seconds, two leaders eyeing each other across jurisdictional lines.

  “Shiyao,” she said, already turning toward the door. “Full sensor lock on that suite. No external broadcasts, no corridor sightings. Mingze, extraction formation. Yuling, prep karmic barriers; we don’t know what state the core is in.”

  Then, to the fourth member of their chaos unit: “Chen Mo.”

  He looked almost eager. “Yes, captain?”

  “You will remain behind me at all times,” she said. “You will not engage the target without my explicit order. You will not initiate telepathic contact.”

  Chen Mo’s smile didn’t dim. “Of course, captain.”

  They moved.

  Hai Xianmo stepped politely out of their path, folding his hands.

  Yuling watched him as she passed. For a moment, their eyes met.

  In his, she thought she saw it—a quick flash of sympathy not for them, but for whoever stood upstairs. Then it smoothed away, leaving only the practiced mask of a man who had survived centuries by not siding with storms.

  Outside the suite, the corridor lights dimmed as Heaven’s lock engaged over Shiyao’s command. The elevator at the end of the hall chimed, doors gliding open without being called.

  “Let’s go.”

  Ji Renshu hit the control for the top floor.

  The lift doors closed on their reflections—Heaven’s sharpest knives in a box lined with mirrored glass—and began to rise.