The black market's neon signs still flashed frantically, painting the street like an overturned palette bleeding electric dreams.
But in this corner space, light died a violent death.
Absolute silver-gray consumed the visual field—not reflecting light, only greedily devouring all surrounding colors like a cosmic vacuum cleaner.
The woman stood at the gray's center, a statue carved from liquid mercury and divine judgment.
Her terminal screen glowed coldly, illuminating a face perfect without any flaws—and without any trace of humanity.
The surrounding noisy crowd automatically diverted around her like water around a stone, no one realizing a deity capable of restarting civilization stood among them.
"Ethan Su." Her voice held no inflection, like reciting boring binary code to an empty universe.
"Logic error confirmed. Executing deletion."
Her slender finger hovered above the crimson [DELETE] key like a sword of Damocles made of bureaucracy. Before her fingertip even touched the screen, Ethan already felt his body light as paper—gravity abandoning him like a faithless lover.
The stellar seed in his pocket no longer burned. Even the concept of "heat" was being stripped away, reality editing itself in real-time.
This was more thorough than death—pure void, existence formatted like a corrupted hard drive.
Marcus wanted to scream, but his vocal cords only vibrated hoarse air that tasted of approaching nothingness.
Lyra's sword wailed—the sound of metal atoms decomposing in terror, steel crying for its mother.
Certain death approached with mathematical precision.
Ethan didn't move, didn't panic, didn't beg.
He simply raised his hand, methodically adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses with the care of a man preparing for his final performance.
Behind the lenses, his eyes held no fear—only calculation sharp enough to cut diamonds.
He was waiting for noise. Noise loud enough and stupid enough to save his life.
*BOOM—!!*
Sonic boom clouds exploded above the street like rock music for this silent funeral, salvation arriving in the form of stupidity.
Hundreds of hummingbird drones blotted out the sky, dense red laser dots bathing the alley entrance crimson—a constellation of death made manifest.
Treads crushed asphalt like bones under a giant's heel.
Twelve five-meter exoskeleton mechs smashed through flanking shops, twisted rolling doors shrieking in mechanical agony.
"Run? Let's see where you run, you financial terrorist!"
The hovering armored vehicle arrogantly dropped altitude, engine heat waves ruffling Ethan's hair like the breath of an angry dragon.
Jin Tai stood atop the vehicle, his vicious personal armor draped with ammunition belts that gleamed like deadly jewelry.
Rage twisted his face into something almost comically grotesque—wealth denied its due, privilege questioned by peasants.
"Dare scheme against me? Dare zero out my assets?!" His roar, amplified through speakers, made Ethan's eardrums ache with the sound of wounded pride.
"Hand over the fire seed! Chop up that glasses-wearing bastard and feed him to the void hounds!!"
That shout saved three lives.
The female auditor's descending finger stopped one micrometer from the screen—execution interrupted by cosmic comedy.
She tilted her head slightly, silver pupils focusing for the first time, looking at the spittle-spraying man with the interest of an entomologist discovering a new species of particularly loud insect.
Her brow furrowed minutely—like an observer enjoying the silent universe suddenly finding a fly on their telescope lens.
*Now!*
Ethan's lips instantly curved in an exaggerated arc—a gambler's fervor going all-in on the universe's biggest bluff.
He spun around, exposing his defenseless back to the female auditor, facing Jin Tai's black cannon muzzles head-on with suicidal confidence.
"Officer!" Ethan's speech was rapid-fire, carrying a victim's panic and righteous indignation that could win Academy Awards.
"You see! It's not that I won't cooperate with the investigation!"
He pointed at the sky-covering drones, at the imperious Jin Tai, at the mechanical army assembled for his destruction.
"Someone's trying to violently destroy important evidence belonging to the 'Entropy Council' right under your nose!"
Ethan pointed at his own nose, voice rising eight octaves in perfect victimhood:
"Namely me! Your taxpayer!"
Air froze for 0.1 seconds—reality holding its breath.
Jin Tai was stunned, watching this pretty boy still chattering with some random woman at death's door, his sanity completely burned away by rage that could melt steel.
"Where'd this wild woman come from? Blocking my righteous vengeance?"
Plasma heavy cannons directly locked onto that silver-gray figure with targeting systems that hummed like electronic wasps.
Jin Tai sneered, finger caressing the trigger with lover's tenderness. "Want to be lovebirds in death? I'll grant your romantic wish! Blast this interfering bitch to atoms!!"
"Full salvo!! Paint the walls with their molecules!!"
Marcus closed his eyes, desperately awaiting transformation into barbecued carbon.
*Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh—!*
Micro-missiles trailing shrill white smoke, high-energy laser beams warping the air into visible heat mirages, steel torrents crashing down like an avalanche of concentrated hatred.
This firepower density could erase entire city blocks from maps three times over—overkill made manifest in explosive poetry.
The female auditor didn't even lift an eyelid.
She simply looked down at the interrupted progress bar on her tablet, a flicker of disgust at being disturbed by lower lifeforms crossing her perfect features.
"Excessive noise." Red lips parted slightly, voice quiet yet exploding in everyone's minds like whispered thunder.
"Classification: Invalid data redundancy."
"Executing... full-spectrum mute."
She raised her left hand, previously hanging at her side with deceptive casualness.
Toward the screaming missile swarm, toward the roaring Jin Tai, toward those steel-forged killing machines that had never met their match.
Palm downward. Gently pressed.
Like turning off a cosmic radio.
*Poof.*
No explosion, no flames, no deafening roar of destruction meeting destruction.
The world lost a dimension in that instant—reality edited by divine authority.
Marcus swore this was the most absurd, most horrifying scene he'd ever witnessed, and he'd seen Ethan turn debt into real estate.
Those missiles suddenly stopped three meters from the woman, suspended like flies in amber.
Then, like hitting an invisible glass wall made of compressed physics, they instantly... went *flat*.
Missiles lost thickness, becoming geometric impossibilities.
Lasers lost heat, becoming colorful lines drawn on air.
The roaring Jin Tai, towering mechs, circling drones—in that second, all were flattened to the ground like insects pressed between book pages.
Colors remained blindingly vivid, details preserved with photographic precision.
Jin Tai's vicious expression was lifelike, mech exhaust flames still that scorching blue, missile explosion sparks still brilliant as dying stars.
But they'd all become a... painting on the ground.
A massive, colorful abstract graffiti printed on the asphalt—modern art created by casual omnipotence.
Wind blew across the scene.
"Painted" Jin Tai's mouth gaped wide, unable to produce even a whisper—two-dimensional vocal cords couldn't vibrate three-dimensional air.
This was physical law's crushing dominance, reality rewritten by someone who held the universe's source code.
Surrounding black market thugs who'd prepared to watch the show now resembled chickens with wrung necks, eyes bulging, throats making strange gurgling sounds of existential terror.
No one dared move. No one even dared breathe.
Forcibly reducing three-dimensional objects to two-dimensional images? This was mythology made manifest—divine punishment delivered with bureaucratic efficiency.
"Area cleared." The female auditor withdrew her hand, not even brushing away nonexistent dust from her fingertips.
She turned her head, silver eyes re-locking onto Ethan with laser precision, as if she'd merely crushed an ant nest that had gotten too noisy.
"Now, about that forged visa."
Her tone remained ice-cold, carrying unquestionable superiority that could freeze suns.
Ethan drew a deep breath, oxygen refilling his lungs confirming he was still gloriously three-dimensional.
He was walking a tightrope over the abyss of nonexistence.
One wrong step, and he'd become part of that street art.
But he'd won the gamble—stupidity had saved his life.
Ethan straightened his tie, lifted his polished dress shoes, and unhesitatingly stepped on "Jin Tai's" face with the confidence of someone who'd just witnessed miracles.
His sole ground against the oil painting, leaving a dirty footprint on that terrified two-dimensional visage—adding insult to dimensional injury.
Strange sensation. No soft flesh underfoot—just the rough texture of dried paint that had once been a human being.
"Thank you for your law enforcement assistance." Ethan turned, bowing slightly to the female auditor with ballroom elegance that belonged in palaces, not crime scenes.
Behind gold-rimmed glasses, his gaze penetrated the lenses, directly meeting those soul-freezing silver pupils with audacity that bordered on insanity.
No fear. Instead, a hint of... *aggression*.
"This fully demonstrates the Council's commitment to 'taxpayer' personal safety."
Ethan stepped aside, gesturing "please" toward the street's dark end with the courtesy of a maître d' seating royalty.
"Since you've helped me eliminate force majeure, as a law-abiding citizen, I naturally must take you to my 'First Tax Office.'"
He paused, his smile deepening into something that could cut glass.
"For comprehensive... thorough auditing."
The female auditor fell silent, studying this fragile carbon-based lifeform with the intensity of a scientist examining a particularly interesting virus.
Easily crushable, yet the greed and confidence in his eyes was like a black hole, causing her logic circuits to experience extremely rare stuttering.
Seconds later, she stepped forward, high heels clicking on two-dimensionalized mech debris with sounds like a countdown timer.
"Lead the way."
Ethan turned, victory tasting like copper pennies and stellar fire.
Marcus and Lyra moved like soulless puppets, mechanically shuffling their feet through a world that had just proven physics was more like guidelines than rules.
Surrounding survivors trembled, watching this impossible scene unfold.
That glasses-wearing man had not only casually destroyed the Golden Viper Consortium's financial empire.
Even more terrifying—that deity who turned people into paintings was actually *following* him like an obedient auditor.
---
The street stretched long and dark ahead, shadows reaching like grasping fingers.
Ethan walked unhurriedly, each step measured and deliberate.
The rhythmic high-heel clicks behind him felt like steps on his carotid artery—death keeping time.
"You used me." That cold voice suddenly whispered against Ethan's ear, breath like liquid nitrogen.
No footsteps had announced her approach—she'd somehow appeared beside him, close enough to smell her liquid-metal-like cold fragrance.
Ethan didn't stop, turning his head to meet her gaze.
Their eyes collided mid-air, sparks flying in dimensions beyond the visible spectrum.
"That was 'joint law enforcement,' Officer." His voice carried the smooth confidence of someone who'd just pulled off the impossible.
"Don't play word games with me." The female auditor's voice carried its first hint of actual "emotion"—displeasure at being toyed with by an ant, and a hunter's grudging appreciation for cunning prey.
"I've added this 'labor fee' to your bill."
She extended her finger, virtually pointing at Ethan's heart with surgical precision.
Fingertip coldness penetrated his suit, piercing straight to his heart like an icicle made of judgment.
"If you cannot prove that station's legitimacy, this fee will convert to your sentence in the Void Prison."
Her voice carried cruel pleasure that could make demons weep:
"One hundred million years."
Ethan's pocketed hand suddenly clenched around the stellar seed, fingertips gripping desperately as its burning temperature nearly seared his palm's lines.
Forty-eight hours remained. The final countdown to legitimacy or oblivion.
This woman was the Sword of Damocles hanging overhead, sharp enough to cut through dimensions. He had to "plant" this seed into that scrap station within forty-eight hours.
Not just plant it—do it before this higher-dimensional being while creating books so flawless even she couldn't find fault. The ultimate fake ledger that would fool God's own accountant.
Ethan stopped, turning back to face his beautiful executioner.
In this dark alley, facing that death-dealing auditor, he revealed an extremely dangerous smile—the grin of someone about to bet everything on a single hand.
"Don't worry, Officer." He leaned closer, nearly touching her cold nose tip with suicidal boldness.
"My books are always... *flawless*."