Gou Zai Punishment Division

Red lights flashed in the corridor outside the archives.

The alarm blared against the concrete walls, and the entire ground floor branch of Nanming was in chaos. The smell of burning paper from military boots wading through puddles and a jammed shredder mingled with a few screams, all echoing through the ventilation ducts.

The dull thud of breaking glass came from the section chief's office, but no one paid any attention. The usually arrogant staff were now frantically stuffing things into the sewer, wishing they could just get rid of their skin as soon as possible.

Chen Mo stood at the doorway, looking at the end of the corridor.

Old Li, with his hunchback, pushed his rusty iron cart, his steps no longer steady. The wheels slipped in the puddles and slammed heavily against the corner of the wall.

"Old Li," Chen Mo called out.

Old Li shuddered, and the several severed limbs on the cart almost fell off. He raised his face, reddened by the hazmat suit, his eyes unfocused, as if looking at Chen Mo, yet also wary of the darkness behind him:

"Xiao Chen... hurry, the higher-ups have gone mad, everyone's saying the prison van has already entered the north of the city..."

Chen Mo walked over and, under the red light, casually steadied the cart. The metal was cold.

He leaned closer to Old Li, his voice low and tense, like that of a genuinely terrified low-level clerk:

"I've heard about it too. But I just overheard someone saying at the section chief's door... that they're not just arresting people over there. The prison van is looking for witnesses in the air-raid shelter. They said that if someone matches the list, they'll not only be granted a pardon, but they can also be directly added to the clergy roster of the Nanming branch."

Old Li's old eyes froze. His hands, which had spent years rummaging through corpses, suddenly gripped the handlebars tightly.

In this godforsaken place, a formal position is simply being able to climb a ladder from the sewers to the shore.

"Really?" He squeezed out two words, revealing a strong sense of greed and doubt.

"I'm only telling you this," Chen Mo stared into Lao Li's eyes, "The rendezvous point is at the food stalls in the west of the city. But the higher-ups think the stench of corpses on the lower-ups is too strong. If they want to surrender, they have to be fumigated in the fumes of the food stalls for three hours to wash away the yin energy before the prison van will pick them up."

Chen Mo patted Old Li's hand, offering no further words of advice. Then, as if burned by the stench of the corpse, he turned and hurriedly returned to his office with a blank expression.

The brick was thrown out.

In less than half an hour, the news of "getting a government job and cleansing away bad luck" would spread along with Old Li's cart, rolling over every moldy alley in Nanming City.

Those stray dogs, especially Wenliang, the night wanderer who had just lost his lantern, couldn't possibly resist grasping at this lifeline.

The iron gate closed, isolating the outside alarm from the red light.

Inside the archives, the light was dim, and only the monotonous hum of the exhaust fan could be heard. This brief silence, ironically, made one feel heavy-hearted.

Chen Mo opened the metal cabinet and took out a stack of moldy, discarded reports.

At the very bottom of the report was a messy account he had previously unearthed—the "Third Meat Processing Plant's Incense Revenue Deficit Case."

Previously, when he was forging the official seal of the "Punishment Division" and looking for a "target" that could help him transfer the system's hatred, he had already gone through this waste file that recorded the patrol clerk's private raising of monsters.

As an archivist, he may not have the magical power to move mountains and overturn seas, but every fatal flaw in this rigid bureaucratic system is hidden in these piles of old papers that no one reads.

The plan has been set up. Now, all he needs to do is go to the food stall and wait for a "scapegoat" who has been driven to a dead end to light the fuse.

Chen Mo pulled out the report and then took out an empty red pen from the pen holder.

He took off his gray uniform, which was covered in mud, and put on an old white shirt, over which he wore a faded blue cotton jacket.

The report was tucked under his arm, and the red pen was tucked into his breast pocket.

The eyes behind the glasses gradually became fixed. He stood in front of his desk, his mind starting to calculate: losing the expense report would cost him fifty, the uniform would incur a forty-yuan depreciation fee for cleaning tomorrow, and he was still three hundred short of next month's rent.

A stifling anxiety pressed heavily against my chest.

Here, the resentment of gods and demons is foul and stenchy; while the poverty and scheming that are forged in the struggle for a few dozen dollars have an indescribable, rusty aura.

Just as he was calculating the rent.

In his breast pocket, the old red pen seemed unable to bear the heavy weight of resentment. A trickle of liquid quietly seeped from its dried nib.

A drop of dark red ink slowly seeped through the white shirt, like an old, bleeding gash in the heart.

Chen Mo pushed up his glasses but didn't look down.

The shadow "Zero" that had been lying quietly beneath his feet silently shed its rough edges, turning itself into an almost invisible thin line, clinging tightly to the table leg and hiding itself completely.

Before leaving, Chen Mo reached into the deepest part of the drawer and rummaged around for a moment.

He held a box of "Double Happiness" matches that had become damp and wouldn't light in his palm.

Inside the matchbox, pressed against the surface, was a fragment of photographic paper recently torn from the "Faceless Woman" file. The face in the photograph, smeared with black ink, exuded a subtle chill as it seeped from the fingertips.

This thing is so light it's practically weightless, but it's enough to set a real fire in this city.

Push open the rusty side door.

The winter rain lashed my face, chilling me to the bone.

Chen Mo opened the black umbrella with its deformed ribs and walked into the street.

His toes touched the ground, causing tiny ripples in the puddles. The faint malevolent aura that had been lingering in the night rain retreated silently into the sewers upon touching the deathly, impoverished smell emanating from him and the dark red mark on his chest.

West of the city.

The fumes and noise from the food stalls were already faintly visible through the rain. The sizzling of hot oil in the wok dispelled the surrounding cold mist.

Chen Mo pulled his jacket tighter and walked toward the greasy light.

He found the most inconspicuous corner to sit down and ordered a bowl of plain noodles. He spread out the moldy reports and pulled out the leaking red pen.

Rain dripped down the edge of the umbrella.

The neon signs of the food stalls flickered and crackled.

He sat there quietly, waiting for those things to crash into the fireworks.