The apartment block loomed like a collapsed tombstone, stairwells echoing with the cries of strangled pigeons. Zhang Xiaonian slammed the door—boom—the sound swallowed by wallpaper peeling like scorched talisman paper.
He slid down against the woodgrain, ribs vibrating with every gasp. Dust motes swirled in the moonlight, coalescing into phantom abacus beads above his grandmother's desk.
There.
The rosewood box.
Its lid sealed with yellowed surgical tape—the kind used to stitch corpses' eyelids. Normally it radiated cemetery chill, but tonight... crimson veins throbbed beneath the lacquer.
Rip.
Tape tore like dried viscera.
Inside, a talisman lay curled like a mummified adder. Scarlet ink etched the words:
"封魂"
Spirit Seal.
The moment his fingertip brushed the charred edge—
*Hiss!*
The wrist mark erupted in icy fire, five bruise-fingers clamping like frozen forceps. The talisman's ink slithered off the paper, drilling into his palm as golden script blazed across his skin:
"债主三日,本息翻秤"
(Debt comes due in three dawns—principal and interest weigh double)
He screamed.
Above him, the lightbulb shattered into black lotus petals.
*Whoosh!*
Wind sliced through sealed windows. The wall calendar flayed itself alive, pages whipping to reveal a blood-smeared date:
1996.04.26
Darkness swallowed him whole.
Fog. Thick as congealed mercury.
A Taoist materialized, robes stitched from shroud fragments, face obscured by a revolving debt ledger. His voice scraped like a coffin dragged over gravel:
"The girl clings to her death-rope... because you borrowed her weight."
*SNAP!*
A noose of glowing sutures materialized around Zhang's neck. The girl's whisper seeped from the fibers:
"Did you see... how light I was on the scale?"
He awoke vomiting silver centipedes.
The talisman on the desk had charred to ash, forming a perfect yin-yang cinder.
His wrist shrieked.
The bruise had metastasized—now a rotating debt counter glowing cinnabar red:
002:23:17
The tumor between his shoulder blades thrummed in vicious triumph.
Death's loan shark had just cashed its first installment.