Gou Zai Punishment Division

A drop of murky water falling from the ceiling interrupted Chen Mo's morning.

In the underground archives.

The air was filled with the sour smell of fermented old paper, mixed with a pungent, damp odor at the bottom.

Chen Mo sat at the peeling iron desk.

My gaze fell on the table, on the fifty-yuan reimbursement slip pressed under the glass mat, its edges already wrinkled.

The red official seal in the lower right corner was stained a blurry dark red by last night's leak.

It looked like a half-dried pool of dark blood.

He went to the finance department an hour ago.

The cashier behind the bulletproof glass kept her eyes glued to the ledger and simply threw the receipt out:

"The seal is unclear. Get your section chief to re-sign it. If it's not returned before the end of the day, this money will be treated as a 'bad debt'."

Article 3 of the yellowed "Nanming Branch Employee Code of Conduct" on the wall is written very clearly:

[Any employee with outstanding debts will have their employment status revoked and be transferred to the logistics department for disposal.]

Fifty dollars was his bargaining chip to maintain his human form.

The chill from the basement crept up my trouser leg.

Chen Mo uncorked the Double Happiness thermos and poured boiling water into the tin teacup.

He picked it up and took a sip.

The water was boiling, and the cup was so hot that my fingertips turned red.

Boiling water flowed down my esophagus, scalding a layer of skin off my oral mucosa, followed by a sharp, piercing pain.

However, his teeth trembled and he exhaled a breath of white frost.

The food was steaming hot, but my throat felt like it was frozen.

My mind went blank, and my senses were abruptly severed.

An absurd sense of disorientation nearly made him smash his teacup on the ground.

This is the price of "zero" swallowing up pollution.

He swallowed the "icy boiling water".

My gaze fell on the chipped rotary telephone on the corner of the table.

To re-sign, you have to knock on the door of your direct supervisor.

His mind was still racing, trying to figure out who to call for information.

But his hand rose first.

Fingers were precisely inserted into the cold, rotating hole.

The spring made a clicking sound as the dial slowly rotated.

3, 4, 7...

The brain has no idea where the number leads, but the muscle memory in the fingers never stops.

The call was connected.

An old man's heavy cough rang out: "Feed? Who is it?"

The brain was completely unfamiliar with this sound.

But his back arched instinctively the moment he heard the sound.

His throat tightened involuntarily, and he naturally lowered his head by half, forcing a smile:

"Uncle Li, it's me, Chen from the basement. I just checked the logistics roster, and your coal quota for the kiosk is almost gone. It's cold, so could I talk to logistics later and get you an extra half-basket of coal?"

Old Li paused for a moment on the other end, then his tone immediately became warmer:

"You're a thoughtful guy. By the way, that 'red sweater' you asked me to find last month, I had someone fish it out of the river. Should I bring it to you tomorrow? Didn't you say you were going to burn it for your sister?"

Chen Mo's breath hitched.

A red sweater? Burned for my sister?

He is clearly an only child.

But the moment the word "sister" entered my ears, my mind went blank.

A memory that didn't belong to him at all was forcibly driven into his mind:

Standing before the somber incinerator, clutching a red sweater dripping with river water, her heart clenched with suffocating grief, and tears streamed down her face uncontrollably.

The grief was so palpable that Chen Mo's eyes instantly welled up with tears.

Memories don't appear out of thin air; they are forcibly "replaced" in.

The remnants of his past in this body are assimilating him.

He bit his tongue hard, using the taste of blood to forcibly sever the sorrow that wasn't his own, his voice hoarse:

"...Okay, thank you, Uncle Li. By the way, I have a form here that's been blurred out. I'd like to get the section chief to sign it again. Where is he now?"

Old Li snorted coldly, his voice trembling slightly from the compression of the inferior electrical current:

"You're lucky you didn't run off. Something strange happened at the air-raid shelter last night! That 'Faceless Woman' who was driven to suicide by rumors a few years ago and cried in the tunnel in the middle of the night is causing trouble again last night."

"There's black blood everywhere outside the air-raid shelter. The section chief's scrambling to find someone to take the blame for this mess. Going there now is just asking for trouble, aren't you?!"

Click.

Put the receiver back into the phone.

Chen Mo sat quietly in the chair for a few seconds, his uniform already soaked with cold sweat.

He stood up and turned to the entire metal filing cabinet behind him.

He closed his eyes tightly.

Let your body's instincts take over your actions.

He raised his right hand and precisely reached for the second drawer from the left in the third row.

The moment the wrist moved, it naturally pressed down half an inch—perfectly avoiding the rusty, stuck slide rail.

The drawer slid open silently.

His fingers moved nimbly through rows of moldy brown paper bags, eventually pulling out the fourth-to-last file.

Open your eyes.

In the upper right corner of the file folder, there is a half-blurred black stamp that reads "Top Secret".

This file must have been reviewed countless times before these movements became an instinct of the body.

Open the file.

There is a black and white photograph inside.

The photo shows a female textile worker, but her face is covered with scribbled black lines.

The pen tip pierced through the paper, almost tearing it, leaving a patch of black ink.

Turn to the last page.

The case closure report had eight large characters printed on it: "No abnormalities found, no case to be filed."

Chen Mo's gaze suddenly stopped.

In the lower right corner of the case closure report, the signatory's name was crudely obscured by a blob of black ink.

He looked at the "Balance Sheet" on the table, where the old name that had been cancelled was also covered up with this same black ink.

The sharp tip of the pen peeking out from the edge of the report, and the rusty penmanship of the words "Chen Mo" written on the bill of accounts...

It's exactly the same.

Chen Mo's fingertip hovered over that stroke for a long time.

He is the section chief.

The deadly situation that this body is tainted with has an indelible karmic connection with this file and this section chief.

He closed the yellowed pages and picked up the fifty-yuan reimbursement slip that was soaked with water.

The Employee Handbook stipulates that bad debts will not be written off, and living employees will be deregistered.

However, the rules also stipulate that when the section chief's office door is closed and there are unusual noises inside, no one is allowed to knock on the door or disturb the office in any way; violators will be executed on the spot.

A spasmodic, colicky pain shot through the depths of my stomach.

Taking a piece of scrap paper to the section chief behind the door who could go crazy at any moment to sign it is no different from courting death.

But he gripped the edge of the paper tightly.

If he doesn't fight for those fifty dollars, he will lose the breath of life and his last hope.

Once he becomes numb to even the desire for money and survival, he will completely merge with those things.

Only by clinging to this meager sum of money can one barely maintain a semblance of human form.

Chen Mo carefully folded the crumpled expense report and stuffed it into his pocket.

He picked up the top-secret file on "Faceless Woman," turned around, and pushed open the cast iron door of the archives.

The moment the door was pushed open.

A chilly, musty draft blew in from the end of the corridor.

And at the source of the wind, in the direction of the section chief's office.

A sound of shattering glass came from behind the door, which was tightly shut.

Chen Mo calmly walked towards the tightly closed "death door".

Since the rules don't allow knocking.

He then slipped the "Faceless Woman" file under the door, letting the contents open the door by themselves.