Gou Zai Punishment Division

West of the city food stalls.

Rain pounded on the tarpaulin shed, trickling down the blackened edges. The white smoke from sizzling oil mixed with the cheap smell of cooking oil, making the tin shed pungent.

A few folding tables and chairs were squeezed under the awning, barely providing shelter from the rain.

In the corner, Chen Mo picked up a piece of plain noodles with his chopsticks and blew on it to cool it down.

An empty red pen lay beside a moldy report. His gaze passed over the rising steam from the noodle soup and landed on the table diagonally opposite.

There sat a man wearing blue overalls.

The clothes were the wrong size; the shoulder seams were taut, and one button was off. The most incongruous part was the exposed neck, the skin a pale, grayish-white, devoid of any color.

That was Wen Liang, the Night Wanderer.

In order to blend into the crowd of living people and wash away the yin energy, He peeled off a mortal skin and put it on himself.

Before him was a bowl of very spicy pig's blood soup.

The spoon stirred the food stiffly in the bowl. Blood clots and chili oil were stuffed into his mouth; he didn't chew, but swallowed them directly.

The coarse food scraped against the esophagus of a living person, and the corner of the dead skin's mouth twitched unnaturally. Deep in the throat, a muffled sound of air leaking out came from.

His eyes were bloodshot as he stared at the chipped porcelain bowl.

The water under the table was somewhat murky.

Black water stains were silently flowing down his trouser legs and the soles of his shoes into the cement drain of the food stall.

Chen Mo quietly chewed his noodles.

Just then, a burly man wearing a tattered vest walked by, carrying a half-empty bottle of beer.

Perhaps the oil stains on the ground were too slippery, the burly man stumbled and his massive body crashed into Wen Liang's back.

"Clang!"

Most of the bowl of pig's blood soup was spilled onto Wenliang's chest.

Scalding red oil dripped down the dead man's skin, instantly causing tiny blisters to rise at the collar. A faint, pungent stench of scalded flesh silently mingled with the surrounding barbecue smoke.

"Are you blind?! You're just taking up space without doing your business!" The burly man steadied himself, but instead of apologizing, he kicked Wen Liang's stool, fueled by alcohol.

Spittle flew onto his ashen face.

The guests at the surrounding tables stopped eating and turned their attention over.

Wen Liang slowly lowered his head.

A bluish vein bulged on his temple. His fingers, hidden in his sleeve, clenched tightly, the fingertips digging deep into the dead skin of his palms, making a faint ripping sound.

His knuckles were white, and his shoulders were slightly hunched.

But the next second, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the bubbling hot oil on the stove and heard the crackling sound of cooking.

The clenched fingers loosened one by one.

He grabbed a pair of chopsticks from the table haphazardly, seemingly trying to steady his trembling wrists. But his fingers slipped, and the chopsticks plunged straight into the center of the remaining bowl of pig's blood soup.

Two wooden sticks stood upright in the red soup.

Inside the food stall, the onlookers instantly turned away. No one looked at that table anymore; people continued drinking, and the fire in the stove remained burning brightly.

The burly man walked back to his seat, cursing and swearing.

He pulled out a chair and sat down, picking up a freshly poured cup of hot tea. He didn't drink it, but instead casually tilted his wrist, pouring the hot tea very naturally onto the empty chair opposite him.

Chen Mo pushed up his glasses.

The workers at the next table, who had just finished their night shift, casually peeled their first bite of grilled meat skewers into the deepest shadows under the table.

The woman in the corner, before eating, took her chopsticks and gently tapped the edge of her empty bowl three times.

Wenliang looked at the cup of tea spilled on the ground, and at the meat that had been fed to the shadows.

A chill never before felt seeped into the spirit through the dead man's skin. He suddenly realized that all the mortals in this shed were numbly abiding by some strange unspoken rule.

Only He, this high and mighty god, acted like an ignorant fool, sticking his chopsticks upright in his rice bowl, violating a taboo that even mortals know to avoid.

Chen Mo swallowed the last mouthful of noodle soup and picked up the red pen on the table.

The pen barrel was a bit slippery.

His palms were actually damp with cold sweat. This was a gamble where a mortal was trying to get something for nothing, and the slightest mistake could result in having his cervical spine crushed by a god.

But his back was ramrod straight, and his face showed no sign of it.

His original purpose was simply to find a suitable low-level underworld official at the food stall. Wen Liang being doused with soup by a living person and violating a death taboo was purely an unexpected event. It wasn't that Chen Mo could have predicted everything, but he astutely seized this opportunity.

Since the other party has already reached a dead end and has one foot in the abyss of the rules, he only needs to go with the flow and precisely hand over a knife.

He stood up, walked to the stall, and neatly placed a few coins on the greasy cutting board.

"Boss, the bill, please." He pointed to the corner, "and bring that guy over there who got splashed a new bowl. Even adding an egg isn't easy for him."

The shop owner, with a blackened towel draped around his neck, rummaged through the loose change in the drawer with his rough fingers: "Alright, add an egg."

He didn't even look up at Wen Liang.

Chen Mo tucked the reports under his arm and opened the tattered black umbrella.

As I passed Wenliang's table, the sound of my leather shoes stepping into puddles seemed somewhat muffled.

Wen Liang was wiping his clothes when a pair of shoes covered in mud came into view.

He instinctively glanced up along the tip of his shoe.

Just one glance.

Through the remnants of the dead man's skin, He saw the shadow behind Chen Mo.

The long, dark shadow cast by the streetlamp did not fall on the ground along with the light. It was a chaotic, constantly collapsing symbol made of jumbled lines and dead structures.

The moment their eyes met, Wenliang's eyes rolled upwards involuntarily. It was as if a string had snapped in his mind; he even forgot to breathe.

"belch."

A satisfying burp, tinged with the smell of plain noodles, rang out.

The symbol was gone. Chen Mo, wrapped in an old jacket, walked into the cold mist of the winter rain.

"Brother, your soup has an egg in it."

The boss placed the steaming hot pig's blood soup on the table and then turned to get back to work.

Wen Liang's teeth chattered, and cold sweat soaked the dead man's skin until it turned white.

He trembled as he slowly picked up the bowl of soup.

At the bottom of the bowl, there was a rough piece of paper underneath.

There was originally only a blurry dark red stain on the paper.

But as the scalding hot bowl pressed down, the heat mixed with the oil on the table, and the blot of red ink seemed to come alive, slowly seeping and spreading outwards on the paper.

A few seconds later, the outline of a broken seal appeared in the oil stains—"Punishment Division".

Beside them, several blood-red threads twisted into two lines of text:

"To surrender, you must provide proof of funds. Bring me the blood of the monster your superior is raising."

"The Third Meat Processing Plant in the west of the city."

Take the demon kept by your superior.

Wen Liang's pupils suddenly contracted. His superior was the patrol clerk of this jurisdiction. To touch the clerk's flesh, if he failed, would result in being skinned alive and having his soul torn out, never to be reincarnated.

The accumulated power of the Old Lord was like a mountain pressing down on His dead skin.

But the terrifying, undecipherable symbol flashed through his mind again.

Two fears were writhing wildly within His depleted chest.

Advancing is to the abyss, retreating is to the dead end.

He reached into his robe and pulled out an old waist tag that was neither gold nor wood.

That was the mark of the "Night Wanderer's" authority. Wenliang's rough thumb rubbed the lines on the edge twice.

Then, He abruptly closed His eyes and slammed the mark into the scalding hot swill bucket next to Him.

"Sizzle—"

A faint golden light flickered on the surface of the swill for half a second before being completely swallowed by the oil and turning into a cloud of black smoke.

Wen Liang clenched the paper in his palm, turned around and walked out of the tin shed.

The rain-soaked alley without streetlights resembles an open mouth.

The moment I stepped into the darkness, the temperature around me plummeted.

The noise and cooking sounds from the food stalls behind him were abruptly cut off by an invisible barrier.

Those chopsticks, stuck straight in the pig's blood soup, began to calculate the cost of the delay.

The puddles in the alley lost their reflective quality. The shadows on the ground became sticky, like wet cement, climbing up the soles of his shoes and grabbing his trouser legs.

The alleyway, which was originally just a few steps long, seemed to stretch endlessly in the field of vision, its end merging into absolute darkness.

Wen Liang did not turn around.

He took a deep breath of the cold rain, dragging himself through the heavy mud beneath his feet, step by step pulling himself deeper into the mire.