The moment the last line of system text appeared, Lin Wu felt something like a razor-thin beam of light cut across her vision—
starting beneath the counter, then sliding all the way toward the deepest part of the store.
It was faint.
But impossible to ignore.
The next second, the empty wall near the refrigerated section gave off a low hum.
Not a tremor.
More like some ancient mechanism, jammed for years, finally having its first lock turned from the inside.
Click.
Clack.
A ring of fine golden lines surfaced along the center seam of the wall. Then the wall slowly split apart, revealing a tall black cabinet hidden inside.
It wasn't oversized—about one and a half people tall—but every edge was polished too cleanly, too precisely. It looked like something that did not belong in a convenience store had been forcibly embedded into one.
There was no glass door.
Only a shallow layer of gray mist across the front.
It looked like water.
Or a mirror.
Occasionally, faint streams of light slipped beneath its surface.
At the top of the cabinet floated four dim words:
Special Goods Cabinet
Su Yu, still holding Sui Sui, stared blankly.
"…Another one just… grew out of the wall?"
At this point, she was genuinely starting to wonder whether the store itself was alive.
Qi Ye stood nearby, gaze fixed on the layer of gray mist, his expression darker than usual.
He could tell this new cabinet was different from the water purifier or the crafting station.
It wasn't a tool.
It felt more like an extension of the rules themselves.
And Pei Wan—
for the first time that night, the professional calm on her face truly cracked.
She looked at the newly appeared black cabinet, then slowly shifted her gaze back to Lin Wu.
As if she were being forced to reevaluate her.
Or rather—
to reevaluate the store itself.
"What exactly…" she paused, then finished the sentence, "…is this place?"
Lin Wu honestly wanted to know too.
But one of the most important job skills of a store owner, especially at a moment like this, was simple:
never look uncertain.
She lowered her eyes and checked the new system description.
[Special Goods Cabinet unlocked.][Function: Store, suppress, and display special items possessing rule resonance.][Currently recorded: Sealed Induced Sample ×1][Note: Items within the Special Goods Cabinet may, under the owner's permission, be shown in limited form and traded in limited form.]
Limited display.
Limited trade.
Lin Wu's eyes shifted slightly.
Those two terms carried weight.
A lot of it.
She looked up, voice as steady as ever.
"A place that does business."
Pei Wan looked at her, but said nothing.
The answer sounded evasive.
And yet somehow, right now, it felt almost absurdly reasonable.
Because from the moment they entered this zone until now, every single thing Lin Wu had done really had revolved around one thing—
doing business.
She just didn't sell only noodles and water.
She sold safety.
She sold rules.
She sold information.
She sold the chance to stay alive.
And now, apparently, she might soon be selling things far stranger than that.
Outside, the infected swarm had started to break apart.
Without the sealed case continuing to leak that "scent" into the world, the golden lines at the edge of the barrier finally calmed. Every now and then, one or two infected still stumbled into it and were instantly crushed into black ash.
But most of them had lost the trail.
Now they wandered the wet street in the distance, aimless and confused.
For the first time in a while, the whole street seemed to exhale.
It was as if the world had been seconds away from being crushed beneath a black tide—
and then barely stepped back from the edge.
Only then did Pei Wan slowly unclench her fingers.
She had been tense the entire time.
Only she knew how close they had come.
If Lin Wu's I have a way to suppress it had failed, everyone here might have died tonight.
But now the sealed case was gone.
The swarm was dispersing.
And the store had grown a new black cabinet because of it.
What that actually meant—
she wasn't sure she wanted to think about too hard.
"So," Lin Wu's voice pulled her back, "Captain Pei."
Pei Wan raised her eyes.
Lin Wu pointed toward the door.
"Your ten minutes of stay rights started counting down a while ago."
Pei Wan: "…"
She almost laughed.
At a time like this, this woman was still keeping time on paid shelter.
And yet somehow, that very habit—still keeping accounts at a time like this—made the place feel even more unnervingly ordered.
"Fine," Pei Wan said, her tone a little looser now. "Then I'll use the time and buy one more answer."
Lin Wu lifted a brow.
"Ask."
"Is Xie Lin still alive?"
This time, Pei Wan asked directly.
No detour. No official phrasing. No tactical fluff.
Lin Wu looked at her and tapped the edge of her ledger once.
"That question," she said calmly, "you already bought half of."
Pei Wan nodded.
"So I'm paying the second half."
Now that was a customer with sense.
Lin Wu's gaze swept over the counter and settled on the still-unopened broad-spectrum anti-infection injector.
"That injection."
"And a one-time temporary use authorization on your B-Level access card."
"I'll tell you."
Outside, the short-haired man frowned at once.
"Captain, the access card can't—"
"It can," Pei Wan cut in immediately.
She looked at Lin Wu without hesitation.
"But only once. And you tell me the location in advance."
Lin Wu nodded.
"Deal."
Then she gave the answer in two flat syllables.
"He is."
Inside the rest pod, Xie Lin closed his eyes.
For the first time that night, it felt like something inside him truly loosened.
Not because he'd been sold out.
Exactly the opposite.
Lin Wu had sold alive—
but not where.
That meant she hadn't broken the rules she'd just built.
And after getting her answer, Pei Wan didn't keep pressing.
She simply exhaled, the sharpness that had been coiled in her eyes finally easing by a fraction.
"That's enough," she said quietly.
Standing to the side, Qi Ye suddenly felt like he didn't understand these people from the real world at all.
One man had nearly died running with the box.
Another had led a team all the way here chasing it.
And now that they had finally confirmed he was still alive—
suddenly they weren't in a hurry to seize him?
But Lin Wu understood perfectly.
What Pei Wan needed was not immediate custody.
She needed confirmation that Xie Lin wasn't dead.
That the box wasn't out of control.
That the mission had not been completely destroyed.
As long as those two points held, she could go back and make a report.
That—
was the price of information asymmetry.
You weren't selling a sentence.
You were selling whether someone could sleep tonight.
"There's one more thing," Pei Wan said suddenly.
"You said earlier that after daybreak, any parsing information gets sold to you first."
"That stands."
She paused, then looked toward the Special Goods Cabinet. When she spoke again, her voice was lower.
"But if it changes further while it's here…"
"I want to be informed immediately."
Lin Wu smiled.
"Notification? Of course."
Then she added, pleasant as ever,
"But Captain Pei, just so we're clear—"
"That's after-sales service."
"Separate charge."
This time, Pei Wan really laughed.
Faint. Brief.
But different from the earlier smiles—those careful, professional, testing smiles.
This one was the first smile of the night that felt genuine.
As if she had finally started to see Lin Wu as something close to an equal.
"You run a ruthless business."
"Thank you," Lin Wu said without a trace of modesty. "I'll take that as a compliment to my professionalism."
The atmosphere around the counter finally eased.
Outside, the recovery team members visibly relaxed too. Some began quietly counting the supplies they had bought. Some crouched to inspect the equipment that wasn't fully dead yet. Others gathered up their guns, cases, and gear from the wet ground, getting ready to withdraw.
Sui Sui, who had woken up a little in Su Yu's arms, blinked her damp, fever-flushed eyes at the new black cabinet for a long while before asking in a tiny voice,
"Big sister… is there a monster in that cabinet?"
The question made the whole store go quiet for a second.
Lin Wu looked down at her.
The little girl's face was still flushed, and there were crumbs of biscuit stuck near the corner of her mouth. She looked soft and harmless enough to belong in a completely different world.
Lin Wu's tone softened without her meaning it to.
"No."
"There's only one very expensive item in there right now."
Sui Sui nodded as if she understood, then asked,
"Will there be more later?"
Lin Wu glanced instinctively toward the cabinet.
Nothing could really be seen behind the gray mist. Only the faintest silhouette floated near the lower shelf—the sealed case that had just been swallowed by the store core.
And suddenly she knew.
There would be more.
A lot more.
That cabinet had not appeared for a single item.
It was waiting for a second.
A third.
More and more things that would make this place less and less like a normal convenience store.
"Yes," Lin Wu said.
"But not everyone will be able to afford them."
Sui Sui didn't really understand. She just thought that sounded very powerful, so she nodded very seriously.
At that exact moment, the system refreshed again.
[The current Special Goods Cabinet may perform one basic display.][Display the outer-layer information of "Induced Sample"?][Note: After display, certain customers possessing related knowledge may trigger additional reactions.]
Lin Wu's eyes shifted.
Outer-layer information.
Now that was interesting.
But she didn't confirm it.
Not yet.
Pei Wan was still here.
Xie Lin was still hidden in the rest pod.
The situation in the store had stabilized, but it was nowhere near the point where she could start revealing new cards casually.
New features were like money.
The later you exposed them, the more they were worth.
Lin Wu had only just reached that conclusion when a short, sharp shout came from outside.
It was the man carrying the black case.
"Captain!"
Pei Wan turned at once.
"What happened?"
He stood beside the vehicle with a portable terminal in hand, and his face had clearly changed.
"We got a response from base."
"They're not ordering us to withdraw."
He swallowed.
"They're ordering us… to hold position."
Pei Wan frowned.
"And?"
The man glanced toward the store door, voice dropping even lower.
"They're sending a second team."
He paused for the briefest moment.
"And the note says… takeover."
The moment that word landed, the air inside the store changed again.
Qi Ye's eyes turned cold.
Su Yu's arms tightened around Sui Sui.
Even Wang Defa, outside near the shutter, instinctively edged closer to the store.
Lin Wu, however, caught only one keyword.
Takeover.
Take over what?
The box?
The store?
Or maybe even her—
the shop owner who was suddenly very good at business?
Her gaze slowly settled back on Pei Wan's face.
And Pei Wan's expression, in the span of a few seconds, had grown uglier than before.
Which made one thing obvious—
This second team was probably not going to be as easy to negotiate with.
The rain kept falling.
The headlights painted the wet ground outside in cold white. The street beyond, emptied by the retreating horde, looked strangely hollow.
So empty that it felt like something much bigger was still approaching through the night.
Lin Wu raised her hand and gently closed her ledger.
"It looks like," she said, smiling faintly at Pei Wan, "Captain Pei…"
"your ten minutes may not be enough."