The rain in Neo-Tian never washed anything clean. It simply smeared the grime, carrying the scent of ozone, stale synth-noodles and a million overlapping, low-grade desperation wards down into the Lower Layers.
Li Fang hunched deeper into his threadbare enviro-cloak, the plasti-weave doing little against the chill that continued to seep into his bones. It's a chill that had little to do with the weather and everything to do with the crimson alert blinking insistently on the cracked lens of his optical implant.
[DIVINE FORECLOSURE NOTICE: ACCOUNT LXF-7748-G]
[KARMIC EQUITY: -912.38]
[OUTSTANDING BALANCE: 8,450 Qi-CREDITS]
[LIQUIDATION SCHEDULED IN 69 HOURS, 58 MINUTES]
[FAILURE TO RECTIFY BALANCE WILL RESULT IN ASSET SEIZURE (SOUL & MEMORY FRAGMENTS) AND SYSTEM MEMORY PURGE.]
Seventy-two hours. He'd started with seventy-two hours when the notice first flashed, right after he'd clawed his way out of the Data Tombs beneath Sector Gamma-9.
Now, two hours were gone. Time passed and vanished while he'd haggled over the pittance he'd earned from his latest soul-scavenging run.
He clutched the payment chit in his gloved hand and grimaced. A miserable 15 Qi-Credits.
Barely enough for a nutrient paste brick and maybe, maybe, a single, third-hand purification seal to try and mitigate the gnawing ache in his dantian.
Not that it would matter, however. His spiritual core wasn't just empty. It was legally sealed, shackled by a Qi-injunction seal filed by the Omni-Credit Sect Corporation five years ago when his inherited family debt had finally metastasized into terminal insolvency. The greedy corporation forced an orphan to shoulder it.
Cultivating was impossible. Earning Qi-Credits through conventional means like sect work, spiritual pest control or data-spirit channeling was therefore impossible. Leaving him with… this.
Sifting through the digital ghosts and Qi residue left behind in Neo-Tian's garbage heaps.
A flickering holographic koi fish, an advertisement for 'Golden Carp Loans - Swim Out of Debt!', swam lazily through his head, phasing through the foreclosure notice.
With a sigh, Li Fang swatted at it reflexively but the gesture was futile.
Everything in Neo-Tian was monetized, including the space inside your own skull if you couldn't afford the ad-blocker subscription!
Still, nothing could beat his negative karma hanging over his head.
The automated noodle vendor down the alley spat out a steaming bowl for the salaryman ahead of him, then promptly seized up, displaying a 'Qi Flow Error' message when Li Fang approached.
The mag-lift platform heading to the slightly less decrepit mid-levels sputtered oddly and died just as he stepped onto it, earning him glares from the other commuters.
Even the stray cyber-cats, usually bold enough to snatch scraps from someone's hand, seemed to give him a disdainful purr, their optical sensors perhaps picking up the faint miasma of misfortune clinging to him.
In Neo-Tian, negative karmic equity wasn't just a spiritual concept, it was a credit score enforced by the city itself. It affected loan rates, job prospects, social interactions, even the probability of random equipment failure in your vicinity.
Drop too low, like Li Fang had, and the Celestial Revenue Bureau, Neo-Tian's unholy fusion of tax agency and spiritual enforcers, put you on the clock.
After wasting another couple of minutes, he finally found a working, grime-coated lift and ascended three levels, the pressure change popping his ears.
He needed supplies. Not food. Hunger was a dull ache he could ignore for a while longer.
He needed tools.
His soul-extractor probe had fizzled out during his last run, likely another casualty of his karmic drag.
He ducked into a narrow side street overflowing with stalls selling everything from black market cybernetics to suspiciously glowing talismans.
Neon signs in stylized ancient calligraphy bled colours onto the wet pavement: "Immortal Components," "Xun's Expedient Scriptures," "Lucky Cloud Vape Juices (99 Flavors of Enlightenment!)."
Li Fang made his way to a cluttered stall overflowing with wires, circuit boards, and salvaged tech components presided over by a muscular old man whose cybernetic eye whirred audibly as it scanned potential customers.
Old Man Ji was a scavenger institution, hailed as fair by most of his customers despite having his own crooked ways.
"Old Man Ji," Li Fang greeted, the weariness in his voice couldn't be hidden. "I need a Class-3 resonance probe. Used is fine. Make it cheap."
Old Man Ji's good eye squinted. "Li Fang, huh? Did you have a rough run? You look like you wrestled a data-wraith and lost." He rummaged under a pile of sparking capacitors.
"Probes… their price went up. They say, cosmic interference messed with the supply lines." He pulled out a dented, greasy-looking device and presented it to him. "Got this one. Minor Qi-bleed, but functional. Thirty Credits."
"Thirty?" Li Fang scoffed. That's double of his current asset, "It looks like it was salvaged from a dumpster fire after being used as a chew toy by a gremlin."
"It was salvaged from a dumpster fire," Ji laughed merrily. "Premium dumpster fire, mind you. Sector Beta-4, near the Alche-Max Corp spill. It has enhanced residual energy. Twenty-eight, that's my final offer. Take it or leave it."
Li Fang's jaw tightened. Twenty-eight Credits were almost double what he had.
He'd have to sell… something. He glanced down at his belt. The small, worn pouch containing a few memory fragments he'd kept back from the main haul. They contained whispers of forgotten lives, faint echoes of skill sets. Worthless to most but sometimes bought by niche collectors or data-necromancers.
They were his emergency fund, his last resort before selling irreplaceable personal memories or, God forbid, a fraction of his own diluted soul signature that was being threatened to be repossessed.
He sighed heavily. "Fine. Twenty-eight." He started to reach for the pouch.
And then, it happened.
As his fingers brushed the salvaged data-slate he'd picked up in the Tombs, a worthless piece of corrupted junk he hadn't even bothered scanning properly, a jolt, not of electricity, but of something else, shot up his arm.
It wasn't painful, more like… a resonance. The cracked screen of the slate flickered erratically, displaying corrupted code that suddenly coalesced.
[Boot Sequence Initiated…]
[Compatibility Check…]
[Host Soul Signature Detected…]
[Negative Karmic Equity Threshold Met…]
[Desperation Index: 98.7%…]
Li Fang froze as his hand hovered over his pouch.
What the hell? Was the slate malfunctioning? Is it emitting some kind of hallucinatory Qi pulse?
[Environmental Scan Complete: Neo-Tian, Lower Layer, Sector Delta-7…]
[Spiritual Saturation: Moderate…]
[Capitalist Saturation: Extreme…]
Soon after that, a voice rang in his head. It didn't originate from the slate. It just echoed directly inside his head. It was cheerful, synthesized, and unnervingly upbeat, like a game show host welcoming a contestant.
[Quantum Fortune System Activated!]
[Congratulations, Host Designation: Li Fang!]
[You have successfully integrated with the premier wealth-building artifact in this quadrant! Prepare for unprecedented financial ascension!]
Li Fang blinked as he involuntarily swayed slightly.
He glanced around. Old Man Ji was haggling with another customer.
No one else seemed to have noticed anything. This was… new.
And deeply suspicious. Probably some new kind of virus or psychic malware scavengers occasionally picked up.
[System Task Assigned: Build an Interdimensional Spiritual Finance Empire!]
Right, Li Fang thought dryly. An empire. Starting from negative nine hundred karma and a sealed dantian. That makes perfect sense, doesn't it?