The Auditor's key burned in his hand, a cold spark of authority in this realm of oblivion. Lin Wei stood on an improvised dais made from the ruins of a server rack, looking out over a sea of flickering, fading souls. The temporary warden of the dump. It was either an opportunity or an elegant execution.
"Listen, everyone!" His voice, amplified by a simple device Feng had rigged, echoed through the Warrens' vaults. Phantoms, spirits, half-dissolved entities—thousands of eyes looked up at him. There was no hope in them. There was curiosity. And a deep, age-old weariness.
"The system has given me authority for one cycle. To bring order here. I will not bring the order they want. I will bring our own."
He raised the key. His defender's seal resonated with it, and a giant, crude hologram flashed in the air—a map of the Warrens, divided into sectors.
"Here is the plan. We will not wait for the arbiters' verdicts. We will overturn them. From today, every spirit, every being here undergoes re-classification. Not by accusations, but by potential. What CAN you do? What do you WANT to do?"
A whisper ran through the crowd. Such a thing had never been heard here.
"Xiao Bai, Lao Jin—you organize intake. Record everything. Name, former function, skills, desires. Feng—you create a database. Outside the system. On abandoned storage media Cui found. Mei—you need materials. Everything lying around: broken holographic projectors, dead data lines, spent energy. We will build."
He pointed to different parts of the map.
"Alabaster Sector—for souls with light, healing aspects. They will work in our 'infirmary'—cleaning each other's energy slag, stabilizing forms.
Viridian Sector—for nature spirits, even the weakest. They will cultivate fungi from pure memory and lichen from stable emotions. Food for the soul.
The Forge Sector—for those who could create, build. From junk, we will assemble primitive processors, amplifiers, filters. We will make this place STRONGER.
The Archive Sector—for scholars, keepers, gossips. Cui will be their head. They will analyze data streams from outside, find weak points, vulnerabilities, information."
It was an insane plan. To turn a camp of the doomed into a self-organizing, self-developing organism. Not to beg the system for mercy. To ignore it. To create their own, small one inside the big one.
The first days were chaos. Spirits, who had passively awaited dissolution for decades, had forgotten will. They were confused, afraid, sabotaged out of fear. But a few—a very few—grasped at this straw.
An old gardener spirit, accused of "excessive rose exuberance," with the help of two wandering electrician spirits, assembled the first "hydroponic module" for cultivating stable emotional patterns. The first harvest—a dim but real "joy without cause"—was distributed to the most depleted souls. The effect was microscopic, but it EXISTED.
Mei, risking everything, established a "quiet mail": an exchange of information with other marginalized beings in Diyu's abandoned sectors. Rumors, scraps of official correspondence, guard patrol schedules. The Warrens began to receive data from outside.
Feng, working day and night, created the "Shadow-Net"—a primitive, analog neural network on discarded chips that learned to predict the behavior of nearby automated arbiters. Soon they knew their patrol schedules down to the millisecond.
And Lin Wei handled "cases." Now he had the authority to overturn minor arbiter sentences. He didn't just overturn. He rewrote. "Spirit of a Broken Vase, accused of attracting misfortune" received a new classification: "Spirit-Restorer of Minor Material Artifacts with a focus on ceramics" and was sent to the Forge to learn to mend broken energy circuits.
Each such reclassification gave a tiny, fractional addition to his counter. 3.48... 3.49... 3.51... Progress was agonizingly slow but steady. And most importantly—it was UNNOTICEABLE to the upper levels. The Auditors saw only dry reports: "Arbitration efficiency in Sector Zeta-Grey improved by 14%. Number of unresolved cases reduced by 22%." They saw graphs, charts, reduced "energy noise." They saw order. They did not see the revolution growing beneath their feet.
But Yama Heng saw. Or at least sensed it.
Ten days later, it was not an Auditor who descended to the Warrens. It was a courier in the livery of the High Court. He handed Lin Wei a black silk envelope. Inside was an invitation. No, an order.
"To Defender Lin Wei. Your successes in optimizing peripheral zones have been noted. In recognition of your... diligence, you are assigned a case worthy of your enhanced skills. Case #00187. Hall of the First Court. Tomorrow. Preliminary hearing. Yama Heng will preside."
Xiao Bai, reading over his shoulder, gasped. "Case number 187? That's from the first epoch archive! Such cases haven't been opened for millennia! What is he planning?"
Cui, when told the number, paled so that his cracks looked like a spiderweb on snow.
"00187... 'The Case of the Silent Bell.' That is not a case. It's... a minefield. From the times when Diyu's laws were first being written. There are no clear rules. Only precedents written in blood and soul dissolution. No self-respecting defender would take it. It's a legal black hole."
"The perfect trap," Mei said grimly. "If you refuse—you'll be accused of neglecting your duties under your new status. If you take it—you'll drown in the intricacies of ancient law where you have no footing. And lose. Publicly. And he can terminate your contract for incompetence."
Lin Wei looked at the invitation. This was the end of his game in the Warrens. Yama Heng was luring him out of the sanctuary he had built himself, onto an open field where the judge held all the advantage.
He couldn't refuse. But he couldn't go there unprepared either.
"Cui," he said. "I need everything you have on case 00187. Every scroll, every reference, every legend."
"I have nothing! It's in the Sealed Protocol Vault! Access is for judges only!"
"Then we need to get it," Lin said. He turned to Feng. "Your Shadow-Net. Can it penetrate the peripheral logic of the Vault's servers?"
Feng squirmed. "Maybe... if there's a physical entry point. The Vault isn't data. It's a place. A separate dimension. There's only one portal leading there. In the Court Hall."
A dead end. Physically infiltrating the Court Hall under Yama Heng's nose was impossible.
Lin Wei pondered. His gaze fell on the map of the Warrens, on the bustling, newly alive activity. On the gardener spirit watering memory fungi. On the electrician spirits soldering a new circuit. On the weak but steady light in the Alabaster Sector.
And then it hit him. He couldn't steal the information. But he could... create a competing source.
"What if we don't steal the old data?" he said quietly. "What if we find someone who REMEMBERS? A case from the first epoch. That means witnesses, participants, maybe even judges... they might still exist. In some form. Possibly here. In the Warrens."
Cui froze. His blind eyes widened.
"First epoch souls... they either reincarnated long ago, or... were erased as obsolete. But... there is a legend. Of the 'Old Guard.' Spirits who refused rebirth to watch. Who saw the birth of the laws themselves. They must be insane. Or hidden so deep..."
"Deeper than the Warrens?" Lin asked.
"Lower. In the 'Slag.' In the waste from soul smelting. There's not even ghostly order there. Only chaos and residual memories."
This was even more insane than descending to the lower circles. The Slag wasn't a place for existence. It was a graveyard for reality fragments.
But there was no choice.
"Mei, do you know the way?"
The courier slowly nodded, her face turning to stone. "I do. But I don't guarantee we'll come back. Or that we'll remain ourselves. The Slag... it erases boundaries. Between past and present. Between you and not-you."
Lin Wei looked at his counter. 3.57/1000. He had won pennies. And now he had to win a fortune, risking everything in a game whose rules he didn't know.
"Prepare," he said. "We go to the Slag. We find the Old Guard. We have until..." he looked at the order, "...dawn tomorrow by Diyu time."
He left their headquarters and climbed back onto his improvised dais. Thousands of eyes stared at him again. Now there was something new in them. Not hope. But expectation. They had begun to believe that there could be something here other than the end.
"I need to leave!" he shouted to them. "For a while! The system is calling me to battle! While I'm gone—don't stop! Gardeners—plant! Archivists—search! Smiths—build! Remember: your value is not in what the system thinks of you. Your value is in what you can do for EACH OTHER!"
He didn't know if they understood. But as he descended and followed Mei into the deepest darkness of the Warrens, towards a hatch leading to the Slag, he turned back. And saw the gardener spirit explaining something to two phantom children, pointing at his fungi. Saw a new, weak spark ignite in the Forge.
He hadn't built a paradise. He had planted a seed. Now he had to survive to see it sprout. And for that, he needed to find a mad ancient witness in the universe's own trash heap.
Yama Heng's trap had sprung. But Lin Wei was already digging a tunnel.