The light in the underground pipe was a little unsteady.
An oil lamp hung on the canvas-covered wall, its wick jumping, making the words Nameless Firm flicker bright and dim by turns.
Qi Luo sat behind the metal desk, a half-written covenant agreement spread out in front of him. Lihen huddled in the chair opposite, a bundle of gray cloth creased by the wind.
That gray-green disease-chain trailed quietly behind it, the tail twitching now and then at the edge of the circle, like a sick snake that had just been jabbed with a needle.
"Let's pull up your old covenant first," Qi Luo said. "Easier to see the problem from the source."
Lihen raised a hand and flicked the metal rings at its chest.
With a soft ding, a ring of chain-light bloomed in the dimness under Rust Street—not a harsh glare, but a grayish mist. In the mist, lines of text floated up like old case files projected into the air.
Qi Luo stood and moved closer, lifting his hand to filter out the noise in his sight until only the clauses under Lihen's name remained.
The top line was written in an ancient script:
[Skycast City Epidemic Management · Branch Three]
Below that was Lihen's god-making clause.
[Bestowed Name: Lihen.]
[Duty: Among the weak groups of the lower city, perceive the emergence of disease, and by presenting mild symptoms remind them of their own frailty, prompting adjustment, isolation, or early death, so as to purify the vitality of the population.]
"That's the original text," Lihen murmured. "Back then, 'purifying the weak'… wasn't that bad, I guess. At least I just made them cough a bit more. Gave them a way out, sort of."
Qi Luo nodded.
He saw, under that original clause, an added section in a different hand:
[Revision One: Lower city population continues to grow, resources strained, burden of the weak increasing.]
[Added note: Targets of purification shall be prioritized among those without productive capacity, chronically ill, or disobedient to divine oracles.]
Further down, closer to the present day, was another rewrite in the modern covenant script he'd learned at the Academy:
[Revision Two: During catastrophes and epidemic periods, the Disease-Reminder god is permitted to moderately intensify disease progression among surplus population in the lower city, to accelerate resource redistribution.]
[Execution definition: "Surplus population" shall primarily refer to unregistered laborers and untaxed groups of the lower strata.]
"So that's what you meant," Qi Luo said quietly. " 'Purifying the weak' rewritten as 'harvesting surplus population.'"
Lihen didn't argue. It just let out a dry cough or two.
"Who was reading the words back then?" It gave a bitter little smile. "All they knew was that after a wave of sickness, a lot of people on the street were gone. The ones left alive were scared enough to pay taxes on time, line up at the little chapels for medicine, and the main god's ledger looked very pleased."
Garth leaned against the wall, half a stick of incense between his fingers, brows furrowed.
Rosh sat further back on a chunk of pipe stone, one leg swinging. When "Revision Two" appeared, he cursed under his breath and only stopped when Sanya shot him a look.
Qi Luo didn't answer. His gaze followed the clauses upward, rereading the entire responsibility structure under the chief Plague-God's name.
[Chief Plague-God · Duties Summary: Maintain overall epidemic order, keep population and resources in balance, and redirect excess resentment toward appropriate targets.]
[Exemption clause: All spread primarily resulting from environmental degradation, overcrowding in the lower city, mortal non-compliance with healing oracles and hygiene clauses, etc., shall not be counted under this god's responsibility.]
[Division of labor: Subordinate functions such as Disease-Reminder gods are responsible for specific execution and reminders; related liabilities shall be shared under their names.]
"See it?" Qi Luo lifted his eyes to Lihen. "They write beautifully."
"I'm hanging right under 'division of labor,'" Lihen said. "At first it was just 'reminders.' Later, they tacked on that one line—'moderately intensify disease progression.'"
It raised its thin, jointed fingers and pointed at the word "moderately."
Those two characters glowed perfectly in the chain, like a pair of neat little knives.
Qi Luo was silent for a moment, then suddenly smiled.
"The problem isn't you," he said. "The problem is those two words, 'purify the weak,' being written to only apply to one side."
Lihen narrowed its eyes. "What are you trying to do?"
"Literal wording is very handy," Qi Luo said. " 'Purify the weak'—who decided 'weak' meant 'poor'?"
Lihen blinked, not quite catching up.
"What are you most familiar with?" Qi Luo asked. "Disease, right?"
"Of course."
"In disease, there's this word—'host'," Qi Luo went on. "Pathogens don't have legs. They need a host to carry them around."
Lihen nodded. That was basic pathology.
"Right now, your clause defines 'the weak' as 'unproductive, untaxed, non-church-going lower city folk.'" Qi Luo tapped that section with his pen. "To the gods sitting upstairs, of course the bottom is 'weak'—kill a few tens of thousands and it's just an adjustment on the Chain."
He looked up, eyes calm.
"But from the disease's point of view, the hosts that weaken the whole system long-term aren't necessarily on Rust Street."
Something flickered in Lihen's gaze.
"You mean the nobles up there?" it whispered. "They've got healer-gods at their bedside, eat and drink only purified stuff, wrapped in layers of 'noble immunity clauses.' Disease can barely get its teeth into them."
"Which is why I'd call them 'systemic weaklings,'" Qi Luo said.
He reached out and, in the duty clause where it said "purify the vitality of the population," he slowly added:
[Supplementary definition: The weak refers to groups that have, through long-term dependence on unequal structures, lost the ability to adapt and repair themselves, whose existence obstructs healthy functioning of overall immunity and resource circulation.]
[Targets of purification shall be assessed based on group adaptability and systemic burden; poverty level or lower-city registration shall not be the sole criteria.]
As those lines sank into the Chain, the whole structure gave a small shiver.
All the vague definitions hanging off the word "weak" started tracing upward—shifting away from direct tags like "unproductive" and "untaxed" that pointed straight at the bottom, moving instead toward higher-level labels like "systemic burden" and "structural dependency."
The system took a moment to decide.
Qi Luo was citing notions of "justice" and "balance" that already existed in the world-level clause system—things like "birthplace shall not alone determine guilt" and "burden shall be measured by resource occupation, not mere status."
So the supplement wasn't judged as inventing a new term out of thin air, but as "applying high-level standards."
"This is just step one," Qi Luo said. "Pull 'weak' away from 'the poor' and hang it over the ones really dragging the system down."
Lihen stared at the lines, the gray-green in its eyes brightening.
"You're… changing my target," it rasped.
"Not changing," Qi Luo shook his head. "Correcting. It should never have been only the lower city."
He followed the text downward, patiently hunting until he found the offensive line:
[During catastrophes and epidemic periods, the Disease-Reminder god is permitted to moderately intensify disease progression among surplus population in the lower city, to accelerate resource redistribution.]
His pen hovered over the words "in the lower city."
He didn't cross them out—that would trigger high-level monitoring immediately. Instead, he wrote a tiny note beside them:
[(Note: When necessary, samples shall be taken proportionately from all strata of the city, to preserve the fairness of purification.)]
The clause system stalled again.
This time it hesitated longer, because that line clearly reached upward.
But Qi Luo tucked it into parentheses, under "moderately" and "fairness," and anchored it to a preexisting "just purification" rule from higher chains: any group treatment under the name of "purification" must "not target only one side."
That old rule had been written for battlefield "spot kills" and "cleansings." Now he was using it on plagues.
In the end, the system made a very reluctant sound and swallowed the note.
Somewhere in Lihen's wake, the invisible structure arched, like a tendon in the city flexing ever so slightly.
Qi Luo sat back down.
"From now on," he said, "if you have to carry out 'purification'—and I can't stop you cold yet—you at least have the right to not only throw it at the lower city."
"The right?" Lihen echoed.
"That's what the clause says." Qi Luo shrugged. "Whether you use it that way is up to you."
Lihen fell quiet.
It sat there, as if listening to a bell only it could hear.
It had always heard them—the faint illness-voices from inside the noble towers wrapped in "noble immunity clauses." They'd always been there, just blocked behind layer after layer of silken Chains.
Now, someone had scored a line through those layers.
"I always thought the only weak ones were the people coughing themselves flat at street corners," Lihen said hoarsely. "But those silhouettes behind the upper city windows… drinking, feasting, lying around, writing everything into servants' job clauses—"
It looked up, delayed anger in its eyes. "They're not weak?"
"Of course they are," Qi Luo said. "They've just gotten used to borrowing your knife to carve someone else."
"Then…" Lihen drew in a breath it didn't have, "let's swap it around."
It slowly rose, chains whispering softly at its back.
The gray-green disease-chain wound along the pipe's ceiling, slithering up out of Rust Street, past the middle-city workshops, up… and up.
Following it in his clause-sight, Qi Luo watched it hit the "epidemic barrier" outside the noble district—a glimmering web of golden Chains inscribed with "noble bloodline exemption" and "protection of important lineages."
Normally, the disease-chain hit that screen and bounced off.
This time, when it struck, the web hesitated.
The little note—"proportionate purification sampling"—lit softly at the edge, a needle pricking through gold leaf.
The barrier split along one filament, just enough for a thin thread of smoke to slip through.
Up in one of the noble towers, a banquet hall was in full swing.
Gold cups. Silver platters. Plates piled high with fish from distant seas, new mechanical toys from the middle workshops ticking away on the table. Under the lights, nobles raised glasses and talked about how "the lower-city epidemic is finally improving" and "the Council has at last cleaned up a batch of inefficient minor gods."
"I heard," a baron with a jeweled collar pin laughed, "some little disease god down there is up for clearance. They say you burn one and half the rabble goes with it."
He'd barely finished when an inexplicable itch rose in his throat.
He coughed once, reflexively.
No one paid attention. They thought he'd choked on his wine.
A few seconds later, he coughed again.
Sharper this time.
Within a few more seconds, two other nobles in the hall also coughed softly, frowning. The air was fresh, but their chests felt as if they'd walked through smoke.
Outside the windows, the tower's epidemic warding Chains shifted color for a heartbeat—gold to gray-green, then back so fast it could've been an illusion.
Only the monitoring stone mounted on the tower's peak flashed, then dimmed.
[Detected: Disease-reminder chain briefly passed through noble immunity net.]
[Ruling: Purification sampling sub-clause triggered.]
[Status: Immunity net has auto-adjusted threshold.]
The world of clauses was scrambling to prove its own "fairness."
"You just lobbed sickness at a tower," Rosh hissed after watching it play out. "Qi Luo, you planning on living?"
Qi Luo said nothing.
He hadn't added any extra "damage"—he'd only allowed the reminder function Lihen already had to slip past the gilded net, so that the people up top, who thought sickness belonged to the poor, would cough twice and realize the Chain didn't only fall downward.
"This is just the start," Sanya murmured. "Once they cough up there, the clauses coming down will twist fast."
"Let them twist," Garth drawled. "The world ought to remember it once wrote the words 'fair purification.'"
Qi Luo drew his gaze back to Lihen.
Lihen still looked like a gray, sickly thing standing by the table.
But inside that thin frame, something was slowly unfurling. It wasn't just a knife the chief Plague-God swung at the grass anymore—it had, for the first time, the right to lean the blade a little in another direction.
"Thank you," Lihen said.
It coughed after the words, adjusting the weight of its chain—just a little less downward, just a little more upward—so that the people who'd never truly felt illness would at least experience being "reminded."
"Don't thank me yet," Qi Luo said. "You've still got one foot on the chief Plague-God's liability chain. What we wrote just now only yanked you from 'scapegoat' to 'one of the implementers.' You're only really safe when we move you fully under the Healer-God."
Lihen nodded.
"I know," it rasped. "But at least… starting today, some lower-city folks who did nothing wrong except not being rich will cough a little less."
"And some people up top who should've coughed a long time ago—" it lifted its head, a cold light in its eyes, "will cough a little more."
Qi Luo smiled.
He picked up the agreement on the desk and, under Nameless Firm · Case One, added a few brief notes about the modifications they'd made today:
[Supplemented definition of "the weak" in Lihen's original duty clause, adding systemic dependency and resource occupation to the evaluation.]
[Supplemented epidemic-period purification execution clause with proportionate sampling notes, importing the "fair purification" rule into actual procedure.]
[Projected effect: pressure partially reduced along lower-city paths, opened partially along noble chains above.]
Those lines wouldn't attach directly to the world-level covenants, but they would stay in the underground firm's file box.
If, someday, he really was sitting at some high table, these files might become supporting evidence for his line: mortals must not be written dead.
"There's one more thing," Lihen said suddenly.
It looked at Qi Luo, expression tangled.
"While I was drafting the transfer covenant, I… took a look at your own Basic Covenant."
Qi Luo's fingers paused.
"How did you—" He almost said "there's black fog there," then swallowed it.
Lihen coughed hard, as if that single glance had scraped its throat.
"I didn't see it all," it said. "Most of it was eaten by that black fog."
"But something was sticking out through the gaps."
It lifted a hand and sketched in the air—a thin line, surface neither gold nor silver, but a strange dark patterning wrapped round and round.
"Like a stripe," it said. "A band of markings coiled around your name."
Qi Luo didn't answer.
He remembered the glimpse of the character "Key" when he'd looked up beneath the World Base-Covenant Node.
"I've seen that stripe somewhere else," Lihen went on, voice low. "In the High Gods' Council's restricted files."
Garth, Rosh, and Sanya all looked up at once.
"Back then the chief Plague-God had me sit in on a 'epidemic structure adjustment meeting' up top," Lihen said, eyes going distant. "On the back wall of the chamber there were several shadow-clauses—things they'd discussed and sealed away."
"One of them was about the Key of the World Rollback Covenant."
"I couldn't read the words, but that stripe—" It coughed again, as if the memory itself irritated its lungs. "Exactly the same. Wrapped around the name on that covenant."
"Later, the Council tried to touch it," Lihen said. "A high god reached out to inspect that clause's structure."
"What happened?" Rosh asked.
"An entire segment of the World Base-Covenant Chain went dark," Lihen said quietly. "Half the night-lamps in the hall went out."
"That god… never attended another meeting."
The underground firm fell silent enough that the sound of water dripping on stone seemed loud.
"After that, a new line of text appeared beside that stripe in the restricted files," Lihen whispered. " 'Without authorization from the World Base-Covenant, no chief god may directly touch this pattern.'"
"You," it looked at Qi Luo, "have the exact same thing on you."
Qi Luo's fingertips tapped the desk lightly.
The old metal gave a dull little ring.
"So," he said slowly, "even the High Gods' Council doesn't dare touch me?"
He said it lightly, as if he were just joking along the line of thought.
But the Forbidden Sigil at his chest burned hot, like a piece of iron fresh from the furnace, reminding him this wasn't a joke.
Lihen shook its head.
"They won't touch you casually," it corrected. "But they'll try to lock you in a box they can see—someplace they feel is safe."
"And inside a box," it said, "they can still push buttons."
Qi Luo laughed softly.
"Then we'll open the box down here under Rust Street first," he said. "When they finally reach down to feel around—"
"At least they'll hit our firm first."
He pulled the Lihen Function Transfer and Immune Memory Agreement back in front of him and, beside Firm Agent, added a tiny footnote:
[Note: Signatory's roster status—already deceased.]
[Without explicit consent from both parties, this covenant may not be used as a direct liability path in reports to the High Gods' Council.]
As his pen left the page, the circle carved into the floor glowed faintly.
The Nameless Firm's first case settled into place in the cracks of the clause world.
In the noble towers above, coughs rose and fell quietly through the night.
On Rust Street, children simply slept a little longer, not dragged away by sudden midnight fevers.
In some unseen corner of the world, the dark patterned stripe wrapped around Qi Luo's name seemed to draw a distant glance—then stayed where it was, unmoving.
—For now, no one dared lay a hand on it.