Chapter 22: The Underlying Logic

“Your sister’s so alert?”

“No, I think anyone would be scared if they noticed a small van tailing them on a night like this,” Qi Ran said, looking out the car window. “And you say you’ve already got your driver’s license? I thought you were younger than me.”

“No, I am younger than you. I’m from ’01,” Jiang Zhique said softly, steering with one hand.

“You’re only sixteen? That means you don’t have a license,” Qi Ran stiffened. “Aren’t you afraid of getting pulled over by the traffic police?”

Jiang Zhique nodded. “Don’t worry, because this car doesn’t belong to the company.”

“What do you mean?” Qi Ran was slightly confused.

Jiang Zhique expertly pulled the car to the side of the road around a corner. She took a piece of candy from her pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. Opening a box beside the seat, she pulled out a stack of documents and tossed them to Qi Ran. “It wouldn’t matter even if we get pulled over. The license plate is fake, all the papers are fake. As for the legal owner of this vehicle, he’s been dead for five years. In a sense, this car should have been forcibly scrapped a long time ago.”

“Are you just stacking debuffs here? Wouldn’t this put you on a wanted list?” Qi Ran flipped through the convincingly real-looking documents in her hands, her voice dazed. This had gone beyond simply lawless.

“It would, but it’s not a problem. The records get wiped soon after,” Jiang Zhique tapped her fingers lightly on the steering wheel. “All of our personal information is on file. As long as we don’t cross the true bottom line, it’s fine. Like I said before—people like us don’t have the right to go to prison. The police will only come knocking for one reason: to verify the authenticity of our deaths.”

“You mean, confirm it with firearms?” Qi Ran’s voice was a little hoarse. The scene playing in her mind was a group of heavily armed police officers riddling her with bullets until she looked like a hornet’s nest. She wondered if Miss Ah Qiao could even stitch her back together after that.

Jiang Zhique shook her head. “You misunderstand. They wouldn’t need to go to that trouble. I told you, the Circle handles its own. If you truly commit a fundamental error, Executors—the Enforcers from within the Circle—will come for you. They’re professionals, whether the target is human or ghost.”

“Enforcers?” Qi Ran said. “Sounds like some kind of special police.”

Jiang Zhique said flatly, “You’d better hope you never meet them. For them, the job description isn’t so much ‘arrest’ as ‘hunt and kill’. They don’t carry things like handcuffs. They only bring body bags.”

“Isn’t there a principle called ‘innocent until proven guilty’?” Qi Ran asked. “Aren’t they afraid of making a mistake, of wrongful convictions?”

“‘Innocent until proven guilty’? That sort of thing doesn’t apply to people like us,” Jiang Zhique shook her head. “The law doesn’t protect people like us. The law protects ordinary people. As for wrongful convictions—don’t forget, the Executors are Insiders too.”

Qi Ran had a sudden, chilling realization. “Damn. So even if an Executor kills the wrong person, it’s still just considered in-fighting within the Circle, and doesn’t cross the bottom line?”

Jiang Zhique nodded.

“…That gives me goosebumps,” Qi Ran muttered. “Sounds like they’re exploiting a glitch.”

Jiang Zhique understood her complaint. Her tone turned somber. “Exploiting a glitch? It’s more like removing a bug, isn’t it? People like us shouldn’t exist in the first place.”

“What about those families you mentioned… like the Tang Family down in the Southwest? With their temperament, would they willingly accept this setup?” Qi Ran asked.

Jiang Zhique spread her hands. “Let me tell you a poorly-kept little secret. In the Southwest, all the Executors are named Tang.”

Qi Ran paused. The implication was not hard to grasp—the question of whether they were “willing to accept it” was a joke. This rule was an iron law, the most fundamental foundation. There was no room for doubt. You were either one hundred percent in support, or you were in opposition.

She glanced at the rearview mirror and suddenly noticed Miss Ah Qiao sitting in the back seat, listening intently to Jiang Zhique’s words. Silenced, she possessed a kind of intellectual beauty.

“Do you think the Tang Family owns the entire Southwest and finds it glorious? In truth, the Tao Family was far more glorious than they were back in the day. They only made one mistake: they opposed the Executor system,” Jiang Zhique said flatly. “The end result was obvious. Honestly, as the sacrificial chicken meant to warn the monkeys, the Tao Family was truly just unlucky.”

“Was it armed police who came knocking?” Qi Ran asked.

Jiang Zhique shook her head. “It was the military.”

Qi Ran stiffened. The image in her mind shifted again. This time it wasn’t bullets… it was an artillery shell. She was absolutely certain that Miss Ah Qiao wouldn’t be able to piece her back together from that.

“The Circle itself is just like that. Lenient and strict, like a prison of freedom. As long as you don’t cross that bottom line, everything is quite pleasant. At least, it looks pleasant on the surface…”

Her words suddenly stopped. She blinked hesitantly.

“Wait… where is that Shaxian Snacks place?”

Qi Ran felt her mind explode with a bang. She whipped her head up to look at where the shop had been. The round, green signboard was gone, replaced by a glass door sealed tightly shut. Dust covered it thickly; the shop looked abandoned for years. A white paper was posted on the door: FOR LEASE. She and Jiang Zhique got out of the van and approached the storefront. The date on that paper was 2004.

Qi Xin had just walked right into this shop that had been abandoned for thirteen years, right in front of their eyes? They had been tricked from the very beginning?

She instinctively glanced at Miss Ah Qiao beside her. Miss Ah Qiao only furrowed her brows, leaned in to sniff the lease notice, then said quietly, “No, that Shaxian Snacks was real… If I’m not mistaken, your sister, Qi Xin, is perfectly safe right now, probably still eating dinner. But you are not safe. This is not reality. In short, you and that girl Jiang Zhique are the ones who’ve fallen into a trap.”

“…I think the most urgent matter right now is no longer surveilling your sister,” Jiang Zhique, completely oblivious to Miss Ah Qiao’s presence, whispered to Qi Ran. “Look at the street behind you.”

Qi Ran turned back to look at the street where they had parked the van. At some point—she didn’t know when—a dense, blindingly thick pale-white fog had engulfed it, completely hiding the van’s shape. Even without knowing what it was, her instincts screamed danger.

“It’s Ghost Fog,” Jiang Zhique said quietly. “Keep your distance. This fog can swallow people alive.”

Qi Ran retracted her gaze and looked back at the old shop, worn down as if caught in a crevice of time. She suddenly noticed two small, wrinkled characters had appeared on the lease notice, shriveled and eerie.

Please Enter.

“…Any suggestions?” she whispered to Miss Ah Qiao, who stood behind her.

“Me? My suggestion is to accept the host’s invitation. After all—it’s rude to refuse such hospitality, isn’t it?” Jiang Zhique, mistakenly thinking Qi Ran was asking her, tore the lease notice from the door. She laboriously pushed open the dust-caked glass door. Inside, many large objects were neatly arranged, like refrigerators laid flat on the ground, all covered with thick, yellowed plastic sheets.

Miss Ah Qiao chuckled lightly. “If Miss Jiang says so, wouldn’t it be a loss of face for us not to enter?”

Qi Ran glanced at Jiang Zhique beside her and sighed inwardly. She couldn’t help but think Jiang Zhique right now looked exactly like the recklessly brave blonde cheerleader from American horror movies. And that type of girl usually survived longer, because the first to die was typically her football-player boyfriend who stubbornly refused to believe in ghosts. Maybe this was actually a survival strategy.

After opening the door, Jiang Zhique looked at the scene before her and murmured, “Good lord, is this six generations under one roof?”

Six generations under one roof?

Qi Ran didn’t catch on at first. When she finally understood, a cold sweat slowly seeped down her back. These objects weren’t refrigerators. They were coffins. From the two coffins at the very front, they expanded outward in neat, orderly rows, branching out like a family tree. Wasn’t this exactly a family genealogy?

Could it be that the owner of this shop was inside one of these coffins?