"No one gets to treat me like inventory."
"Not before negotiating a price."
The moment Lin Wu said it, the air in the store went so still that even breathing seemed to grow quieter.
On the isolation bench, the dark silver companion chamber continued giving off a faint ticking sound. Behind the observation window, the pale blue liquid shifted softly, and the silver-white key skeleton inside was no longer merely tilted a little.
Now, with each slow, almost tidal pulse, it was continuing to adjust itself toward the register.
Toward Lin Wu.
It was waiting.
Waiting for her to answer.
Qin Zheng stared at the chamber, his eyes cold enough to frost.
"You can't touch it."
"Why not?" Lin Wu didn't even look at him.
"Because it's already locked onto you." Qin Zheng's voice dropped lower. "If you go over there now, this is not testing. This is you stepping directly into the variable."
Lin Wu answered as flatly as if she were discussing shelf stock.
"You say that like I'm not already the variable."
That line dropped, and the second team outside went collectively silent.
Because it was true.
The moment the chamber identified her, she had stopped being a possible issue.
Now she was the clearest, most expensive, and most troublesome target in the room.
Pei Wan looked at her and finally asked:
"You're really going to try?"
Lin Wu didn't answer at once.
She lowered her eyes first and checked the monitoring terminal.
Xie Lin — yellow light, stable.
Pei Wan — green light, normal.
And her own line—
still a calm green.
Stable.
Abnormally stable.
Good.
The most valuable thing about her now was not that nothing was wrong.
It was that she had already been identified by both objects—
and was still standing here as if nothing at all had happened.
"Professor," Lin Wu said, looking at Zhou Qiming. "If I respond to it, what's the worst outcome?"
Professor Zhou's lips had gone white. His throat worked hard before he answered.
"The worst case… is that it treats you as a temporary anchor and forces the first round of calibration."
"Translate that," Lin Wu said.
Zhou closed his eyes briefly.
"Translated?"
He opened them again.
"You may see what's beyond the door."
He swallowed.
"And what's beyond the door… may see you."
At the shelves, Su Yu's face went pale at once.
Shen Xiaohe took a reflexive step forward.
"Professor, no! She doesn't have a single buffering rig on her!"
But Lin Wu had already isolated the most important part of the answer.
See what's beyond the door.
One brow lifted slightly.
"And the upside?"
That question bought her a short silence—not just from Zhou, but from Qin Zheng as well.
No one in the room had expected her first concern, in a moment like this, to still be profit.
Zhou looked at her as if he were finally beginning to understand why she had managed to keep everyone else under control all night.
Because she was not fearless.
She simply calculated value before fear.
"If you survive the first calibration…" Zhou's voice was rough. "You may gain the first true layer of door authority."
"For example?"
"For example…" He looked at her carefully. "You may be able to decide when it responds and when it stays quiet."
He drew a breath.
"And instead of passively being recognized by the samples…"
"…you may begin recognizing them back."
Silence again.
This time, even Qi Ye raised his eyes fully.
Door authority.
That phrase was no longer merely danger.
It was power.
The light in Lin Wu's eyes flared fully awake.
Good.
Now that was a price worth testing once for.
"Then I'll try," she said.
"Lin Wu." Qin Zheng's voice dropped hard. "I object."
"Objection denied." Lin Wu didn't turn around. "You're a customer right now, not my guardian."
"You—"
"You can pay to observe," Lin Wu cut in. "If not, stay quiet."
Qin Zheng: "…"
This time Pei Wan really did turn her head slightly, as if she was making sure she didn't actually laugh.
Lin Wu ignored all of them and walked straight to the isolation bench.
The chamber was less than one step away now.
As she approached, the pale blue liquid inside began to shift more visibly. Even the unstable cracks around the observation panel took on a faint silver sheen.
The system prompts flashed quickly in front of her.
[Store owner actively approaching Companion Chamber Two.][Enable: Low-Level Response Mode?]
There it was.
Lin Wu asked the system silently:
"What does Low-Level Response Mode do?"
For once, the answer came quickly.
[Store owner may, under rule-based protection, conduct one minimal resonance contact.][Recommended duration: no more than 3 seconds.][Notice: Initial contact may yield partial interface-gate feedback.]
Three seconds.
Enough.
Lin Wu didn't hesitate again.
[Enable.]
The next second, heat bloomed in her palm.
Not burning.
It felt more like the entire electrical pulse of the store had traveled lightly along her arm, from fingertips to chest, settling into her heart with perfect steadiness.
The nerves that had been taut from an entire night of continuous strain sharpened instead of fraying.
She looked down.
A faint web of golden lines had appeared along the fingers of her right hand.
As if the store itself had temporarily lent her a small fragment of its rules.
"Three seconds!" Zhou stared at her hand, voice tight. "No more than three seconds!"
Lin Wu didn't answer.
She simply raised her hand—
and pressed it against the outer shell of the companion chamber.
Cold.
The first sensation was a cold so deep it was almost violent.
Not the cold of metal.
The cold of something dragged up intact from the darkest floor of the sea.
It was so sharp it nearly numbed the bones in her hand.
But the instant her fingertips made contact, the silver-white key skeleton inside the chamber shuddered violently.
Then—
it didn't tilt a little further.
It bent.
The entire upper half of it bent gently toward Lin Wu—
like something that had finally received the correct answer after waiting far too long.
The store lights wavered.
Not a blackout.
They stayed on.
But everyone in the room felt, with sudden perfect certainty, that something much deeper had just connected.
Su Yu sucked in a breath.
Shen Xiaohe clapped a hand over her mouth.
Pei Wan stood fully upright.
And for the first time that night, the hard cold in Qin Zheng's face split all the way open.
Because all of them saw it—
where Lin Wu's hand rested against the chamber, fine silver-white lines were slowly surfacing across the shell.
Not cracks.
Not circuitry.
More like a lock rotating by impossible degrees, trying to align itself with the pattern of her palm.
At the same time, the gray mist behind the Special Goods Cabinet surged.
Not exploding outward—
but as if Sample One inside had suddenly, unmistakably, understood the reply from this side.
The system erupted with text.
[Initial response established.][Sample One has received calibration request from Companion Two.][Store anchor stability +1.][Warning: Interface-gate feedback generating.]
Interface-gate feedback.
Lin Wu's vision went white.
Not because of light.
Because an entire snowfield seemed to overturn behind her eyes without warning.
Snow.
Wind.
Black towers.
A broken elevated highway.
And very, very far away—
a single store lit up in the dark.
Not this store.
And yet somehow, it felt like this store's shadow.
The light was small.
But in that dead white wasteland, it burned with unreasonable defiance—like a nail hammered into the darkness.
And standing before that shadow store was a tall, thin boy.
Snow cut across half his face. His shoulders were narrow, and in one hand he carried a chipped long blade with a broken edge.
He was looking up.
Looking at her.
Across a door that did not physically exist.
It was Qi Ye.
No—
a Qi Ye from another time.
Lin Wu's heart kicked once, hard.
Then the vision shattered.
Reality slammed back.
Her palm was still against the chamber shell. Her breathing had quickened by only the slightest margin, but a thin layer of sweat had already surfaced along her back.
The system was still updating.
[Feedback complete.][Recommendation: Break contact immediately.]
Lin Wu withdrew her hand at once.
The movement wasn't messy.
It was controlled.
But only she knew that in that brief instant, she had truly stood at the crack of a door and taken the full force of snow-wind from the other side into her face.
"How long?" she asked, voice still even.
Zhou was staring at her hand.
"Two and a half seconds."
Good.
Within limit.
Lin Wu lifted her eyes and looked at the chamber.
The silver-white framework inside had already eased back. It was no longer leaning further toward her, and the glowing ring-joints along its surface had dimmed.
As if, having confirmed some part of its answer, it had quieted for now.
The blue lights around the isolation bench had also shifted from urgent flickering back to a stable, continuous glow.
It was under control.
Not solved.
But this waking cycle had, at least, stopped escalating.
"What did you see?" Qin Zheng asked almost immediately.
Lin Wu looked at him once.
And did not answer.
He pressed again.
"Was it the other side of the door?"
"Yes," Lin Wu said this time, without hesitation.
Qin Zheng's gaze darkened sharply.
"Details."
At last, Lin Wu smiled.
"Mr. Qin."
"That's a new transaction."
Qin Zheng: "…"
The second team outside had no temper left by this point.
Tonight, they had essentially been forced to learn one iron law:
Inside this store, the more important the thing—
the more it got sold one sentence at a time.
Pei Wan, however, didn't look at Qin Zheng first.
She looked at Lin Wu's face.
Carefully.
No bleeding.
No pupil distortion.
No obvious neural disruption.
Even her stance remained steady.
This was not nothing happened.
This was textbook abnormal stability.
Professor Zhou had finally caught his breath by now, and the shock in his eyes ran even deeper than before.
"You actually held it."
"Obviously." Lin Wu lowered her gaze to her own right hand. The gold tracing there had already faded, leaving behind only a faint residual warmth. "My store is still open. It would be awkward if the owner lost her mind first."
At that line, Shen Xiaohe was the first to fail to hold it in. One shoulder shook slightly.
The tension in her had been wound too tight for too long, and that absurdly unreasonable, absurdly logical line had put a crack straight through it.
Lin Wu ignored all of their reactions and checked the system first.
[Initial response complete.][Precondition fulfilled for new authority: Door Chime.]
Door Chime?
The phrase sharpened her gaze immediately.
She hadn't even had time to ask what it meant—
when the welcome bell inside the convenience store rang on its own.
Ding-dong—
Not from the glass entrance.
Not from the interworld door.
The sound came from the direction of the Special Goods Cabinet.
Every head turned.
The gray mist behind the black cabinet was slowly drawing apart, as if an unseen hand inside were pushing open a deeper, narrower, colder slit.
There was no merchandise beyond it.
Only wind.
Wind carrying the smell of snow.
And the instant that wind truly reached the store—
Qi Ye's face changed completely for the first time.
He stared at the opening, his voice coming out low, scraped raw from his throat.
"…Someone on the other side is knocking."