Dusk bled across the campus, stretching shadows into serpentine tendons that strangled the last warmth from the air.
Zhang Xiaonian walked alone toward the dormitory, the tumor between his shoulder blades thrumming with buried runes. A putrid gust lashed his face—rust and rotting lychees, sweet enough to blister the tongue.
Am I being followed?
He quickened his pace. At the corridor's bend, a figure coalesced: a woman in blood-crusted robes, skin like moldering rice paper. Her hollow eyes pinned him where he stood.
"Why struggle?" Her voice scraped like nails on a coffin lid, layered with whispers of drowned souls.
Zhang froze. The tumor ruptured against his spine, bone-spurs tearing through fabric. Dark symbols flared across its surface—swarming debt-sigils bleeding into the twilight.
"No escape." She advanced, each step cracking the tiles beneath her feet.
The air curdled with metallic rot. Zhang's lungs seized, ribs groaning under invisible ledgers.
He glanced down. The tumor's runes now pulsed in rhythmic verdicts:
債未償 • 子時刑
(Debt Unpaid • Midnight Punishment)
"Tongsheng's curse... or salvation?" he rasped, fists clenching as black veins crawled up his neck.
Their eyes locked—hers void-black pits, his blazing with stolen soul-light.
The corridor walls peeled like rotting skin, revealing flesh-pulp bricks beneath.
"Come," the woman hissed, robes billowing into blood-mist tendrils. "The ledger demands balancing."
Zhang Xiaonian bared his teeth. The tumor screamed through his bones, but he stood firm—a debtor ready to collect his due.