The cybercafé's air congealed into swamp-thick sludge, pressing against Zhang Xiaonian's ribs like a burial shroud. Moonlight speared through barred windows, nailing the cadaver-glow monitors to shadow-swallowed walls.
He hunched in his corner booth—that crimson tumor between his shoulder blades pulsing in time with the flickering screen. Since childhood, the lump had been his cage; tonight, it would become his key.
A window bloomed in the screen's top corner like a tarry fungus:
[SYSTEM BREACH: DEEPCRAWL ENTITY DETECTED]
Before his fingers could move, a dozen clones sprouted—obsidian petals of a digital night-blooming cereus.
Then the voice came. Not through his headphones, but seeping from the foam ear-cushions themselves—wet and thick as grave-soil:
"Can you… taste my rope?"
Ice crystallized along his spine. He ripped off the headset. The plastic cracked like a snapped femur, revealing copper veins pulsing with mercury-blood.
The chairs behind him stood militant-straight, cushions bearing no indentations. But on the thirteenth monitor, static shivered into flesh: A woman's face coalesced from the noise, skin peeled back to reveal cinnabar-dusted cheekbones, eye sockets packed with damp yellow talismans.
Her lips—stitched with black silk threads—parted:
"You carry the tumor that ate my death."
Zhang Xiaonian's breath shattered in his lungs. The air reeked suddenly of spoiled milk and burnt mulberry paper.
The neon sign above sizzled out. In the darkness, his back tumor flared gold, etching the final warning onto every dead screen:
"吊魂秤兮轻重量,未满三钱莫过梁."
(Weigh your soul's weight—if less than three grams, flee my beam.)
This was no glitch.
Death had sent a collector's notice—with his tumor as collateral.