The Warrens settled into a tense, humming peace. The Scrubbers were gone, but the silent, shimmering barrier of the cordon remained—a permanent reminder of the leash. Inside, life went on. The garden of memory-fungi grew. The Forge repaired broken tools. The Archive chronicled their own small history. But the air of rebellion was gone, replaced by the quieter, more stubborn air of persistence.
Article Zero was a sword hanging over them all. One misstep, one provocation deemed "systemic," and Lin would be erased, the Warrens likely sterilized. They had to be perfect. They had to be boring. And they had to win.
Lin spent the first few cycles studying Article Zero like a sacred text, searching for its seams. "Foundational Processes." "Specific, individual client." The key was in the definition of "client." The system viewed a client as the soul on the docket. But what if the damage wasn't just to that soul? What if the injustice was a pattern that harmed many, but he only represented one?
It was a thin thread to hang on, but it was all he had.
The first case under the new regime arrived not through official channels, but through Mei's network. A whisper from the Department of Mortal Echoes, where the regrets of the living echoed as faint, tormented spirits. The client: a wisp named Echo-774, a collective resonance of "things left unsaid" from a single mortal family over three generations. Its charge: "Cluttering the Psychic Airways - Creating Undue Melancholic Static."
It was the kind of petty, soul-crushing charge the lower system thrived on. The punishment: attenuation—being slowly dissolved into background noise.
A perfect, insignificant case. On the surface.
Lin took it. He and Feng fed the details into the Paradox-Engine, now carefully camouflaged as a "case management tool." The Engine, constrained by Article Zero's protocols, couldn't map systemic corruption. But it could map procedural anomalies. It spat out a flag: the judge assigned, Arbiter Krix, had a 97% conviction rate in "clutter" cases. More interestingly, 89% of those convicted were subsequently processed by a Soul-Flux Redistribution Unit owned by a subsidiary of... the Department of Celestial Works—the same department humiliated in the Soul-Sieve case.
A coincidence? Possibly. A connection? Absolutely. But Article Zero forbade him from investigating the connection as an end in itself. He could only investigate it if it was relevant to defending Echo-774.
So, he made it relevant.
He filed a standard "Motion for Full Disclosure of Post-Conviction Processing," arguing that the potential commercial interest of a third party in the outcome of the case might constitute a conflict of interest for the judiciary, thereby prejudicing his client's right to a fair hearing. He wasn't accusing anyone. He was simply requesting information, as any diligent defender would.
The motion was, of course, denied. Arbiter Krix called it "frivolous and speculative."
Lin appealed the denial. The appeal went to a low-level review board, which upheld Krix.
Lin then filed a "Motion for Recusal Based on Appearance of Impropriety," citing the denied motion and appeal as evidence that the judge was unwilling to even consider a potential issue. It was legal judo—using the system's own "no" as a weapon.
The motion was, again, denied. But it created a paper trail. A tiny, almost invisible crack.
Meanwhile, he prepared Echo-774's actual defense. He didn't argue the charge. He redefined it. With Cui's help, he dug up ancient aesthetic regulations from the founding of the Department of Mortal Echoes. He argued that "melancholic static" was not clutter, but a protected form of "ambient historical sentiment," a vital part of the cosmic tapestry. He presented Echo-774 not as noise, but as a bittersweet symphony of familial love, regret, and continuity.
The hearing was a masterclass in tedious, precise, by-the-book defense. Lin was respectful, procedural, and relentless. He buried Arbiter Krix in obscure regulations, precedent citations, and philosophical tangents about the nature of echo. He never mentioned the Soul-Flux Redistribution Unit. He didn't have to. Krix, a petty bureaucrat used to quick, rubber-stamp convictions, grew visibly flustered, then angry, then careless.
In his frustration, Krix snapped: "This is absurd! Your client is designated for attenuation and redistribution, and no amount of sentimental drivel will change that!"
Lin paused. The courtroom, such as it was, fell silent.
"Your Honor," Lin said softly, innocently. "The court has not yet issued a verdict. Nor has there been any official determination of 'redistribution.' May I ask where the court obtained this information about my client's designated post-trial processing?"
Krix froze. He had revealed knowledge he shouldn't have had until after a guilty verdict. The connection—the assumption of guilt and the predetermined path to the Redistribution Unit—was now on the record.
It was a microscopic slip. But under the magnifying glass of Article Zero, where every procedure was sacred, it was a chasm.
Lin didn't press it. He simply noted the objection for the record and continued with his dry defense of ambient historical sentiment.
In the end, Krix, rattled and off-balance, dismissed the charge. He couldn't risk a verdict that would draw more attention to his slip. Echo-774 was set free, its melancholic song preserved.
13/1000.
A small, clean victory. And buried in the transcript, a single, damning line about "designated redistribution."
Lin had his first thread. He didn't pull it. Not yet. He documented it. He filed it away in the Warrens' Archive, in a section labeled "Judicial Anomalies - For Future Client Relevance."
He took another case. A dust-spirit accused of "unauthorized accumulation." He found a link between the enforcing bailiff and a quarry that sold purified spirit-dust as a building material. He didn't attack the quarry. He simply demanded the bailiff recuse himself due to a "potential perceived conflict." The bailiff refused. Lin lost the case (13.1/1000—a fractional gain for the effort), but the refusal was added to the archive.
Another case. A minor deity of lost keys charged with "inducing disorder." The prosecutor was the nephew of a senior official in the Bureau of Ontological Security. Lin filed a motion questioning the prosecutor's qualifications. It was denied. Added to the archive.
Case by case, point by point, he was not building a case against the system. He was building a database. A catalog of tiny, procedural corruptions, conflicts of interest, and predetermined outcomes. Each entry was justified by the needs of a specific client. Each was a legal, Article Zero-compliant action.
He was mapping the rot, one sanctioned brushstroke at a time.
The Warrens, in turn, became a different kind of refuge. Spirits who had been victims of these small, corrupt machines began to arrive, not for revolution, but for asylum. They didn't want to overthrow Diyu. They just wanted a place where the petty tyrannies couldn't reach them. The Warrens grew, not as an army, but as a sanctuary for the system's cast-offs. The Silence-Sphere kept the peace. The Paradox-Engine, hidden and muted, helped manage resources. The Echo-Scroll, confined to its display, was a cautionary tale.
Lin Wei became a quiet, persistent legend in the lower depths. Not the rebel who talked back to the Council, but the defender who could, sometimes, make the gears jam just long enough for a soul to slip through. He was a mechanic, not an engineer. And mechanics, when they are very good, know exactly which bolt to loosen to make the whole machine shake.
Yama Heng watched. He had to. The reports on Lin's activities were a study in frustrating legality. Every move was correct. Every case was defensible. Yet, the Archive grew. The network of grateful, whispered contacts grew.
The Judge could sense the trap closing, but he couldn't see its jaws. Lin was playing the long game now, a game measured not in battles, but in decades of Diyu time. A game of filing cabinets and footnotes.
One day, a new client arrived. Not a wisp or a spirit. A Keeper of Thresholds, a minor bureaucratic deity who guarded the doors between administrative sectors. He was charged with "Dereliction of Duty" for allowing an unauthorized data-transfer. A serious charge for his level.
The Keeper was terrified. But he brought something with him—not evidence, but a key. A master list of every unofficial data-routing override issued in the last cycle. A list that could, if traced, reveal a hidden network of information peddling among mid-level officials.
He didn't want to expose it. He just wanted the charges dropped.
Lin looked at the list, then at the Keeper, then at the glowing Article Zero script etched into the stone on his desk.
He had a specific, individual client. And to defend him, he would need to understand the context of these unauthorized transfers. To see if his client was a scapegoat.
It was the thinnest of pretexts. And the sharpest scalpel yet.
The next cut was about to be made. Not at the body of the beast, but at a single, infected cell. The kind of cut that, if made precisely enough, could make the whole organism sicken.