Rainwater cascaded down rusted drainage pipes, gathering into turbid streams that washed over the sludge beneath John. Lying next to a back-alley trash heap, he felt his body temperature draining away along with his hope.

  His consciousness began to blur. Hunger, cold, and a crushing sense of self-loathing weighed on him like three mountains, suffocating his will to breathe.

  "Is this how it ends?"

  He thought hazily. Maybe by tomorrow morning, a sanitation bot would sweep him up as bio-waste and toss him straight into the incinerator. At least then, he could contribute one last bit of thermal energy to this city.

  Just as his vision was about to plunge into total darkness.

  A strange sound drilled into his ears.

  It wasn’t the heavy metal electronic beats common in this cyberpunk city, nor was it a cold, synthetic broadcast.

  It was the sound of an ancient, almost anachronistic instrument—like the crisp strike of jade chimes—but mixed with the low-frequency hum of a current rushing through a motherboard.

  "System self-check... Yin-Yang data stream stable... Connecting to local LAN..."

  John struggled to pry his eyelids open a crack.

  He discovered he was no longer lying in that dead-end alley.

  At some point, the scenery around him had changed.

  The cold pipes, the rusted iron gates, and that black market clinic that sold people like pork—it all vanished.

  In its place was a narrow, deep, ancient alleyway that radiated a bizarre warmth.

  The walls on either side were no longer metal, but built from blue-grey bricks and stone. Rows of red lanterns hung under the eaves, swaying in the wind and rain, casting a dim, yellow halo of light.

  John struggled to crawl up from the ground. He rubbed his eyes, suspecting this was a pre-death hallucination.

  In a hyper-industrialized cyber-metropolis like New Babylon, how could such architecture—completely out of place in this era—even exist?

  But he was definitely standing here. The sensation under his feet wasn't slick grease, but dry flagstone. The air didn't smell of acrid disinfectant; instead, it carried a faint waft of... sandalwood?

  He stumbled forward.

  The alley was deep, seemingly endless. The shop doors on both sides were shut tight, with only wooden signs swinging in the wind.

  [Meng Po’s Soup - Exclusive Shop (New Flavors Available)]

  [Yellow Springs High-Speed Rail Station (Ticket Gate)]

  [Spirit-Paper Mecha Customization (With Fire Control Systems)]

  These characters... John had seen them in the Academy’s ancient literature classes. They were distant Oriental scripts, yet the content was absurdly modern.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  At the deepest end of the alley, one shop door was open.

  It was an unassuming, shabby little store. Two large red lanterns, brighter than the rest, hung at the entrance. Above the lintel hung a black plaque with gold lettering. Although much of the gold paint had peeled away, the four large characters still exuded an indescribable authority:

  And sitting on the steps of the shop entrance was a man.

  Or rather, an eccentric.

  He was a middle-aged man, looking about forty.

  He wore a deep crimson silk Tang suit, embroidered with dark gold floral patterns. The buttons were fastened all the way to his chin, looking both traditional and meticulous. On his feet were black cloth shoes with white socks that were spotless—completely at odds with the filthy environment.

  His hair was combed back without a single strand out of place, though instead of a traditional bun, he sported a sharp buzz cut.

  The most striking detail was that, in this dimly lit, rainy alley, he was wearing a pair of round, black sunglasses.

  At this moment, he was sitting on a folding camp stool with his legs crossed, holding a transparent tablet hovering above his palm—a genuine holographic "Heavenly Dao Tablet."

  His fingers tapped rapidly in the air, seemingly writing some complex code, while he muttered to himself:

  "This term's Underworld KPI is absolute trash to carry... Deficits again... Is the Life and Death Book's algorithm bugged? Why is the recent death rate tanking like a bear market?"

  John stood not far away, staring blankly at the scene.

  Tang suit? Sunglasses? Holographic tablet?

  Combined, these three things didn't feel contradictory; instead, they radiated an inexplicable aura of profound mystery.

  The middle-aged man seemed to sense something. He stopped his hand movements, and the hovering tablet instantly transformed into a stream of light, retracting into the sleeve of his Tang suit.

  He pushed up the sunglasses on the bridge of his nose. The eyes hidden behind the lenses seemed to pierce through the darkness, locking precisely onto John.

  The man's voice wasn't loud, but it carried a metallic magnetism, drilling clearly into John's ears.

  "Kid, looking at your dark forehead (bad luck), chaotic metadata, and soaked appearance... did you encounter a systemic crash?"

  John opened his mouth, but couldn't make a sound.

  The man chuckled, reached into the lapel of his Tang suit, and pulled out a crumpled poster written with a brush. Slap! He pasted it onto the doorframe next to him.

  "Take a look at this. New business vertical, currently recruiting beta testers."

  John subconsciously looked over.

  The calligraphy on the poster was wild, practically like ghost talismans, but miraculously, as John stared at it, the characters auto-translated into a language he could understand:

  [HIGH SALARY: UNDERWORLD HUMAN AGENT]

  Responsibilities: Handle lingering supernatural disputes in the mortal realm (Debug), exorcise stubborn nail-house ghosts (Format), collect scattered Merit Points (Crypto-mining).

  Requirements: Bold but detail-oriented, willing to run errands, high durability. No degree required.

  Compensation: Daily pay. Commission per order. Room and board included. Full access to Artifacts (Cheats/Hacks).

  Special Note: Hemophobics Preferred. (This line was bolded and circled).

  Hemophobics preferred?

  These two words struck John's chaotic brain like lightning.

  In a world where everyone despised his hemophobia, where everyone treated him as waste, there was someone... specifically hiring people who were afraid of blood?

  "What... what does this mean?"

  John finally found his voice, though it rasped like sandpaper.

  "It means," the man pointed at John, flashing a set of teeth that weren't perfectly straight but were very white, "I see your skeletal structure is unique. You're prime material for a 'Non-Violent Necromancer build.'"

  "Non-violent?" John let out a bitter laugh. "You mean the kind that sits in an office writing code?"

  "No, no, no." The man wagged his finger. "The kind that... doesn't need to use knives, doesn't need to see blood. You just need to use your mouth, or use your brain, to send the ghosts packing. We call this the 'Technical Stream.'"

  The man stood up, dusted off non-existent dust from his Tang suit, and beckoned to John.

  "The rain is heavy out there, and the signal is bad. Come inside and chat?"

  "I am the owner of this shop, and also the... uh... Technical Director of the Underworld's New Babylon Office."

  The man took off his sunglasses, revealing a pair of deep eyes that looked like they could debug the source code of reality itself.

  "You can call me... Daoist Singularity."

  "Here, as long as you can pay the price (even if it's your next life), everything... is Wishes Granted."

  [Message from Singularity]

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