Gou Zai Punishment Division

It's still raining.

Outside the dome of the abandoned cold storage, cold wind blew in through the holes, and the blood on the ground mixed with the smell of burning.

Wen Liang was still kneeling.

Only when the sound of the chain completely stopped did He dare to move.

A piece of paper was floating in the puddle.

Amidst the blood, flesh, and mud, only this piece of paper remained eerily clean.

Wen Liang trembled as he picked up the corner of the paper.

He glanced at it and his breath stopped.

A "Temporary Worker Transfer Form".

The edges were also rough.

In the bottom right corner, the dark red seal of the "Punishment Division" is glaringly obvious.

Name field: Wen Liang. Handwriting: rusty fountain pen.

The remarks column is empty.

He simply drew a large question mark in blood, with two words beside it:

Seven days.

Wen Liang's face twitched.

A piece of waste paper bought his life.

Seven days.

If that question mark cannot be filled, then the fate of the Earthly Tai Sui will be His.

The deadly situation brought out the mad dog's ferocity.

He was breathing heavily, staring at the scorched pit.

He crawled into the ashes using both hands and feet, continuing even as his flesh was scalded and burned by the remaining lightning.

He dug a small string of charred and cracked Bodhi seeds out of the mud.

The piece of paper struck my heart, instantly melting into my dead skin.

Clutching the burnt beads, he scurried back into the ventilation duct like a stray dog.

Deep within the dark network of pipes, a tattered gray butterfly, stained with demonic blood from who-knows-where, weakly fluttered its wings in the cold wind.

Ripples of cause and effect spread along this tiny airflow.

Back alley in the north of the city.

The broken bicycle was pushed into the alley.

Rainwater mixed with mud clung to his chin.

He walked very slowly. His left eye was throbbing with pain.

Push the door open.

The smell was musty and burnt. He stopped outside the threshold.

There were no lights in the room.

The CRT screen, now powered off, is emitting a green glow.

The static electricity hissed.

Chen Mo walked over.

The garbled text scrolled by, then the image froze:

Warning: Widespread illegal causal manipulation detected.

'Target: Null value.'

Cleaning path locking accelerated... Progress jump: +10%.

Current cleaning progress: 16%.

The green light shone on his blank face.

16%. The city has its eye on him.

Zero climbed up the table leg, wanting to eat.

"Step back."

Chen Mo said in a low voice.

The shadow reluctantly faded away.

The anomaly of this machine is a fundamental rule of the system; swallowing it will only immediately expose its coordinates.

Chen Mo stared at the glaring "16%".

He turned around and pulled a piece of black cloth covered in mold from the pile of waste paper.

With a flick of the wrist.

A black cloth covered the screen. The eerie green warning light was muffled beneath the cloth, casting a faint shadow.

Chen Mo pulled out a chair and sat down.

He pulled a yellowed ledger and a red pen with ink leaking from the drawer.

"Uniform scrapped, forty yuan deducted. Expense report lost, fifty yuan loss. Next month's rent..."

He was calculating on paper, keeping everything out of this crude ledger.

The pen tip glided across the yellowed paper, and the leaked dark red ink spread out, its shape resembling a blood-red butterfly with outstretched wings.

This butterfly silently stirs up the storm.

The winter rains in Nanming City are long and persistent.

The scratching of pens calculating accounts in the North City Archives, along with the perpetually heavy sandalwood incense of the City God Temple, were all drowned out by the oppressive night.

The inner hall of the City God Temple.

Wen Liang knelt on the bluestone slab, his blood soaking the ground.

Holding the charred Bodhi seeds in his hands, his body trembling, he reported everything that had happened at the meat processing plant to the deity seated behind the curtain.

"The registrar was secretly raising a powerful demon... which was discovered by the Heavenly Dao, which sent down a lightning tribulation. Your subordinate risked your life to retrieve this relic."

The gentle voice was stern.

Behind the curtain, there was a long, deathly silence.

A moment later, a judge dressed in a scarlet official robe lifted the curtain and came out.

The judge's face was like a clay sculpture, his cold eyes looking down at Wen Liang.

"Heavenly Tribulation? A mere patrol clerk is not worthy of invoking the Heavenly Dao directly."

The judge's voice was like the scraping of metal, "Wenliang, you're nothing but a lowly stray dog. The registrar and the Grand Duke have both vanished into thin air, so how could you possibly have returned alive? You're lying."

Before he could finish speaking, the judge's withered fingers gripped Wen Liang's skull.

"I will come and see for myself."

Soul Search.

The judge's consciousness tore through the defenses and pierced the soul.

Meat processing plant, Tai Sui (a type of fungus), blood, fallen ledgers... everything is crystal clear.

Immediately afterwards, the judge "saw" the dark red lightning that tore through the sky. The oppressive force made the judge's consciousness tremble involuntarily.

The perspective of memory has shifted upwards.

The judge saw the rusty bicycle outside the hole in the dome, and the dusty silhouette straddling it.

The judge's consciousness locked onto the past, attempting to explore the causal threads within him.

The moment you touch the silhouette—

"boom--!!!"

The "empty value" attribute of the Eye of Cause and Effect is passively triggered under the Soul Search mechanism.

The judge's consciousness seemed to have struck a black hole of nothingness. There was no cause and effect, no past, no future. Only a jumble of logical nonsense.

"Ugh—!!"

Inside the main hall, the judge let out a scream.

He loosened his gentleness, staggered backward, and knocked over the incense burner behind him.

Two lines of viscous black blood spilled from the judge's eyes, which were like those of a clay sculpture.

He covered his eyes, his whole body convulsing, and light of spiritual disintegration spilled from between his fingers.

That one glance almost blinded His divine eye.

Just as the judge screamed in agony, the great temple, which had stood for hundreds of years, seemed to come "alive."

The sandalwood incense filling the hall seemed to swarm like snakes, all flowing backward along the bluestone slabs, desperately trying to avoid Wen Liang's breath. The shadows cast by the thick red pillars on both sides also tilted and contracted in the opposite direction.

The judge, blind, was panting heavily.

With his remaining consciousness, He "stared" at Wen Liang.

The gaze did not fall on Wenliang's face, but lingered on His heart. On that dead man's skin, covered in mud and blood, there was only a spotless blank space at the heart.

No such person was found there.

Kill Him?

The judge's withered fingers trembled slightly within his sleeves. Who dared to touch the container marked by that being?

Moreover, with such a huge hole struck by lightning in the meat processing plant, the enormous debt of unpaid incense offerings needed a scapegoat to cover it up. This terrified stray dog ​​in front of them was just the right thing to use to shut them up.

"You... are very good." The judge gritted his teeth, swallowing his fear and calculation, and his tone turned abruptly, "The registrar was corrupt and deserved to die. You risked your life to bring back the token, so you deserve a reward."

With a flick of his sleeve, the judge slammed a brand-new waist token in front of Wen Liang.

"From today onwards, you will take over the position of Registrar and be responsible for patrolling the western part of the city. Without my order, no one may interfere with your duties!"

"Creak—"

As soon as he finished speaking, the two heavy mahogany doors behind Wen Liang opened to their fullest extent automatically, emitting a harsh scraping sound.

This is not a welcome.

Rather, this temple was eager to spit out Wenliang, this ticking time bomb.

Wen Liang looked at the waist token on the ground, bent down, and pressed his forehead against the cold bluestone slab.

"Thank you for your kindness, sir."

In the shadows close to the ground, awe surged in Wenliang's deep green eyes.

The judge's severe injury, the temple's retreat, and even the clever tactic of shifting blame and promoting someone else... these are the methods of the "Punishment Division".

Even the judge of the City God Temple and this world are nothing more than puppets on strings, manipulated by that great man.

Seven days.

Wen Liang gripped the new waist tag tightly.

He has seven days to use this new position to uncover the intelligence network of the entire divine realm's upper echelons for that great one.