"Welcome."
The instant those four words left Lin Wu's mouth, the entire convenience store seemed to brighten by a subtle layer.
Not that the lights themselves got stronger.
The air changed.
The gray mist behind the black Special Goods Cabinet had only been drifting slowly apart before. But the moment that greeting landed, the opening suddenly felt recognized by something deeper—accepted by rule, not chance.
The slit widened firmly to both sides, revealing a clearer, colder white corridor of snow.
Wind rushed in.
Snow grains.
Rust.
That hard, dead cold unique to things sealed in extreme winter for too long.
It swept along the edge of the shelves hard enough that even the outer row of potato chip bags trembled faintly.
The system prompt lit almost at once.
[New authority "Welcome Guest" activated.][Current rule: One guest only.][Current rule: Goods first, person second.][Current rule: Hostility from the other side will result in immediate refusal.]
Good.
Those rules sounded very much like her.
A faint light flashed in Lin Wu's eyes as she turned toward Qi Ye and Cen Dong.
"Stand behind me."
Qi Ye didn't waste a word. He stepped into position immediately, knife in hand, just behind her left shoulder.
Cen Dong was still injured, but forced herself upright all the same, one hand braced against the rest pod, her eyes fixed on the snow-white passage.
Outside, Qin Zheng and Pei Wan both looked over as well.
At this moment, even the Second Team was quiet.
Because everyone understood—
after a "welcome" like that, what came through next might not be an ordinary customer anymore.
At the far end of the passage, the snow churned.
A shape began to approach.
Not lunging.
Not running.
Pushing.
It looked like the figure was pushing an old iron flatbed cart. The wheels rolled over frozen snow with a soft, repetitive squeal—
creak… creak… creak…
Not loud.
But uncannily distinct.
As though the night on the other side of the door were being pushed forward inch by inch into this little lit store.
The first person to recognize what he was seeing was Qi Ye.
His eyes darkened.
"Not a drifter."
Lin Wu said nothing. She kept watching.
The figure finally emerged through the snow more clearly.
A man.
Not large. Almost thin.
He was wrapped in layers of gray-white cold-weather cloth, his head and face heavily covered with scarf and goggles, leaving only a strip of wind-burned nose bridge and a pair of very cold, very controlled eyes exposed.
His hands, buried in badly worn leather gloves, held the cart handles steadily.
And under the thick waterproof tarp spread across the flatbed—
there were shapes.
Goods.
Real goods.
Lin Wu's gaze landed on that cart almost instantly, and something in her eyes sharpened with satisfaction.
Good.
The first "welcome guest" had not come empty-handed.
The man stopped three steps from the opening and did not push farther inside.
First, he looked at Lin Wu.
Then at Qi Ye standing just behind her left side.
At that moment, his eyes paused very slightly, as though he recognized something—but chose not to say it aloud.
Instead, he lowered his head and drew out a black wooden tag from inside his robe, placing it at the front edge of the cart.
The tag was small, but carved with two lines of white text.
The first line used symbols Lin Wu had never seen before.
The second line, however, was clear Chinese:
Snow Market courier. Goods first. Words second.
The store went silent for a beat.
Cen Dong's expression changed immediately.
"Snow Market…" she said under her breath, as if some half-buried memory had just surfaced. "That name passed through the walls outside White Tower."
Zhou Qiming looked up sharply too.
"That's impossible. Snow Market is supposed to be only a rumor—the first gathering point on the other side of the door."
Lin Wu understood only part of that, but didn't ask.
Because the deal in front of her had already laid out its own rules neatly.
Goods first. Words second.
Very professional.
She approved.
"Uncover the cart," Lin Wu said.
The man beyond the door said nothing. He simply reached forward and pulled the tarp back.
The next second, several people in the store forgot to breathe for half a beat.
There was no gold.
No weapons.
What filled the cart instead were tightly sealed long iron cases, three black locked crates, and row after row of gray-white crystal bricks stacked with the precision of salt blocks. At the edge lay two military-spec energy tubes, more intact than even the ones Lu Chen had once brought in, their surfaces cold and dense with old light.
The system went wild.
[High-value cross-door goods detected.][Snow Salt Crystal Blocks ×24][Sealed Energy Tubes ×2][Low-Temperature Suppression Cases ×6][Unknown Sealed Crates ×3][Combined Value: Extremely High]
Excellent.
The first welcomed guest had brought a truly major order.
That familiar surge—this order is huge—rose instantly in Lin Wu's chest.
Only after the tarp was pulled aside did the man speak for the first time.
His voice was low, carrying the dry abrasion of a long snow-night.
"The goods stay at the threshold."
"I only want one confirmation."
Lin Wu looked at him.
"What confirmation?"
The man slowly lifted his gaze and looked past her—toward the Special Goods Cabinet inside the store.
"Has the Black Shop lit steady?"
The moment that question landed, the atmosphere in the store shifted again.
This was not a routine customer asking a price.
This sounded like many people on the other side had been waiting for this answer—
and the man in front of them was only the first courier sent to knock.
Lin Wu did not answer immediately.
She calculated first.
How much was that sentence worth?
More importantly—
how much traffic, how much future customer flow, how much risk was attached to it?
Before she could speak, Qi Ye said quietly:
"Don't answer directly."
Lin Wu glanced sideways at him.
Qi Ye was staring at the man beyond the doorway, his gaze cold as ice.
"Snow Market couriers aren't ordinary runners."
"There's someone behind them."
Good.
Exactly right.
The first one to knock really was just a probe.
Lin Wu had her measure of it instantly.
When she looked back at the courier, her voice was calm enough to freeze.
"Confirmation is for sale."
"But that cart only buys one answer from me—"
"the door has opened."
The man's gaze sharpened slightly.
Clearly, he had not expected a full cart of hard goods to buy so little.
"And what does the phrase 'lit steady' cost?" he asked.
Lin Wu smiled.
There it was.
He understood how to continue. How to push upward. How to add.
That was the kind of customer she could build a long trade line with.
She raised a hand and pointed to the three black sealed crates.
"One more crate."
The man was silent for two seconds.
Snow swirled behind him, laying a thin white film over the edges of the flatbed.
Then, after a moment, he actually reached out, pushed the leftmost black crate forward, and set it alone at the very front.
"Now?"
The system prompt jumped.
[Unknown Sealed Crate ×1][Value: High]
Good.
That made the phrase "lit steady" worth selling.
Lin Wu opened to a fresh page in the ledger and wrote four characters:
Snow Market Courier
Then, as always, she tapped the page three times.
Tok.Tok.Tok.
She looked up at the courier and gave the answer slowly.
"The door hasn't just opened."
"It has lit steady."
The moment those seven words left her mouth, even the wind and snow beyond the passage seemed to go still for a brief instant.
For the first time, the man's eyes showed something unmistakable.
Not surprise.
Something closer to the tremor of a person who had waited too long for an answer and finally heard it come back.
A cloud of white breath left him slowly.
"Good."
He lowered his voice.
"Then Snow Market can start queuing customers."
Queuing customers.
Several people in the store understood the weight of that phrase immediately.
This was not a single order.
It was a line.
A roster.
A traffic channel.
On the other side of the door, people were already being placed in sequence, preparing to come trade.
The light in Lin Wu's eyes had become nearly impossible to suppress.
This wasn't just there are customers.
This was the customers themselves beginning to line up.
The system erupted with updates.
[First successful "Welcome Guest" intelligence transaction completed.][Store Reputation +6][Notice: Doorside customer-flow channel preliminarily established.][New option unlocked: Queue Guests.]
Excellent.
Even the system knew how big this was.
And yet the courier did not leave immediately.
Instead, he lifted his gaze again and asked in a quieter voice:
"I can buy a second sentence."
"Go ahead," Lin Wu said, in a very good mood.
The man looked at her, and when he spoke this time, his voice was even lower.
"There are people behind Snow Market who want to know—"
"the one standing at the door…"
"is it the owner?"
"Or the key?"
The atmosphere in the store dropped instantly.
Qin Zheng's eyes went cold.
Pei Wan looked sharply at Lin Wu.
Zhou Qiming's breathing tightened.
Even Cen Dong instinctively straightened slightly.
Because this question was no longer about the door.
It was about Lin Wu herself.
The people on the other side clearly no longer cared only whether the shop had opened.
They had started watching the owner.
And under the lights, the glow in Lin Wu's eyes did not dim.
She simply looked at the courier—
and smiled, slowly.
Good.
Now this felt like a real interface-gate business.
Goods.
Information.
People.
Door.
At last, all of it was on the table together.
She set one hand lightly over the ledger and spoke in a calm, precise voice.
"The second sentence costs more."
"The person behind you—"
"needs to come ask in person."
The courier was silent for two full seconds.
Then, unexpectedly, he nodded.
"Understood."
"Then I'll put them first in line."
With that, he stepped back and took hold of the flatbed handles again.
But he did not take the goods with him.
Clearly—
the cartload left at the threshold had already become a deposit.
A calling card.
And just before he turned away, Qi Ye spoke.
Low.
Cold.
"You came from Snow Market."
"Then tell me—have you seen the Gray Tower?"
The man's movement paused.
He did not turn around immediately.
After several seconds, standing in the wind and snow, he answered.
"I have."
"And it has already started looking toward the light."
The color in Qi Ye's face dropped instantly.
The next second, the courier withdrew, pushing the flatbed—now half-empty—back into the snow-night. The gray mist slowly folded closed behind him, leaving only a rush of cold air and that heavy cartload of goods still waiting at the threshold.
The slit behind the Special Goods Cabinet narrowed again.
The welcoming was over.
But no one in the store felt relief.
Because everyone had heard the last line.
The Gray Tower had already begun looking toward the light.
That meant what was coming next would not just be customers.
Something larger, deeper, and much harder to price might already have noticed this place from the other side.
And yet Lin Wu, standing behind the counter, lowered her eyes to the line in the ledger that read Snow Market Courier—
and slowly curved her mouth into a smile.
The danger was real.
But so was the traffic.
She gently closed the ledger and looked at the entire cart of goods still pressed at the threshold.
"Excellent."
She lifted her eyes.
"At last…"
"…I can start stocking my shelves for the other side too."