[Please choose: Refuse / Hold / Open Ticket.]
The line of text hovered in front of Lin Wu, and the whole store went still.
The black sealed crate sat quietly on the bottom shelf of the Doorside Shelf, but the thin silver seam along one corner kept drawing tighter, as if whatever was inside had no intention of forcing its way out. It was simply waiting for her to decide.
Refuse.
Hold.
Open Ticket.
Three choices. Three roads.
Lin Wu stood behind the counter and tapped the edge of it once with her fingertip.
She did not choose immediately.
Because she understood one thing very clearly: Gray Tower was not Snow Market.
Snow Market sent couriers to do business. Goods came first, terms were clean, and everyone knew where the bargaining started.
This thing from Gray Tower felt different.
More like a finger already reaching through the doorframe.
If she accepted it, then something deeper behind that door would really start watching her.
If she refused it, then she would never know how Gray Tower intended to "collect" a door like hers.
And what she hated most was being watched through a door by someone whose opening price she couldn't even see.
"What are you choosing?" Pei Wan asked quietly.
Qin Zheng said nothing, but his eyes were fixed on the black crate too.
Qi Ye stood beside the Doorside Shelf, his expression cold.
"By wasteland rules, Gray Tickets are better left unopened."
Lin Wu looked at him. "Why?"
"Because for a lot of doors, the moment you open one, it counts as acknowledging it." His voice was low. "You read it, it marks you as having accepted contact."
Zhou Qiming's face was dark as well. "If this is some kind of two-way confirmation mechanism, opening it may be more dangerous than receiving the goods."
Cen Dong leaned against the edge of the rest pod, still pale despite the heat patch working under her coat. She looked at the crate and let out a quiet line:
"But if you never open it, you'll never know whether it sent an invitation or a death notice."
Good.
That matched exactly what Lin Wu had been thinking.
A small light moved in her eyes.
She did not fear danger. She feared not knowing what shape the danger took.
"So," she asked the system silently, "if I open the ticket, does that immediately count as letting something in?"
This time the system answered quickly.
[Open Ticket: reveals ticket contents only. Does not equal accepting further terms.][Store owner currently retains right to refuse signature.]
Good.
If she still had refusal rights, then this was not a one-sided trap.
That meant the order was worth taking.
Lin Wu made her choice.
[Open Ticket.]
The black sealed crate on the bottom shelf moved at once.
Not jumping.
Not exploding.
The matte black outer layer began peeling itself back in slow sheets, like ice dissolving under hot water, revealing a thinner, narrower inner case, almost like a black message box.
At the center of the box's lid, a pale gray vertical line slowly appeared.
Like a fingernail being drawn down a sheet of lacquer from top to bottom.
Click.
The lid opened by one finger's width.
No poison mist.
No blast.
No monster lunging out.
Only a single sheet of thin gray paper that slowly rose upright from inside.
It was small, almost fragile-looking, with edges that seemed soaked through by old snow. At first it was completely blank, except for a faint haze of frost-white vapor hanging over the top edge.
Then, less than two seconds later, the vapor began to gather.
As if words were seeping through from the reverse side of the paper.
Not ink.
Not print.
Stroke by stroke, white letters surfaced from deep within the gray paper itself.
At the shelves, Su Yu was staring so hard she had forgotten how to blink.
By now, she honestly couldn't tell anymore what counted as normal and what did not.
"Don't touch it," Lin Wu said first.
Because she had already noticed one of the Second Team members outside shifting forward on instinct.
If this ticket was truly addressed to a door, then the door itself should be the one to receive it.
The white letters kept bleeding outward.
The first line appeared slowly.
Gray Tower acknowledges the notice.
The second came faster.
The lit door stands steady; collection proceeds in order.
Zhou Qiming's face slowly turned white.
Qi Ye's expression hardened.
This was a notice, and not a subtle one.
No greetings. No testing. It went straight to recognizing the door and setting sequence.
When the third line fully appeared, the whole store seemed to hold still for a second.
Within seven days: declare the door's name, declare the asking price, declare whether you stay or go.
Below it, in smaller text, one final line emerged.
If no reply is made by deadline, the door will be deemed ownerless.
Ownerless.
Those three words pricked everyone in the room.
Lin Wu, however, did not think first about what might happen after seven days.
She caught the three lines before that.
Declare the door's name.
Declare the asking price.
Declare whether you stay or go.
This was not simply Gray Tower coming to seize a door.
It was closer to a formal procedure.
Meaning: your door is stable now, so report your name, set your price, and decide whether you enter Gray Tower's order.
In other words, Gray Tower was not trying to swallow it outright. Not yet.
It was offering her a chance to come to the table herself.
Very good.
That sounded an awful lot like an actual commercial invitation.
"What does 'door name' mean?" Pei Wan asked with a slight frown.
Zhou Qiming answered hoarsely, "Not the building's name. The name the door is known by on the other side."
Cen Dong looked up at Lin Wu. "Black Shop."
The store went quiet.
Of course.
The words on the White Tower wall had always been: when the Black Shop lights up, the door will open.
Clearly, the other side had already been calling this place the Black Shop long before anyone here used the term seriously.
But the line that truly lit up in Lin Wu's mind was the middle one.
Declare the asking price.
Excellent.
Everyone else heard danger.
She heard business.
Gray Tower was not lawless.
It simply obeyed a larger and harsher order.
And now that order had actually handed half the pricing power to her.
Lin Wu lowered her eyes to the Gray Ticket and slowly smiled.
"Interesting."
Qin Zheng looked at her immediately. "You're not actually thinking of accepting this, are you?"
"Who said I was accepting it?" Lin Wu did not look up. "I'm just noticing that for something so aggressive, Gray Tower's process is surprisingly professional."
Qin Zheng: "..."
The Second Team outside no longer knew what kind of expression they were supposed to have.
Most people, when handed a Gray Tower notice, would feel fear first.
Lin Wu, apparently, first complimented the workflow.
Qi Ye stared at the paper, voice low and cold.
"Don't treat that thing like an ordinary invitation."
"I know," Lin Wu said, finally lifting her head toward him. "That's exactly why it deserves a proper reply."
"Reply?" Qi Ye paused.
"Of course." She tapped the line that read declare the asking price. "If they're asking me to name my terms, why wouldn't I?"
"If Gray Tower wants to collect this door, then I'll tell it—"
A faint curve lifted at the corner of her mouth.
"this door is expensive."
The instant that line landed, the gray mist behind the Special Goods Cabinet shifted softly.
Not like a warning.
More like approval.
The system followed with another prompt.
[Detected: store owner displays bargaining intent toward Gray Ticket.][Temporary reply form available.]
There it was.
A spark flashed in Lin Wu's eyes. "How do I reply?"
The inner edge of the counter suddenly lit up, and a translucent gray panel formed in the air.
It looked like an unwritten receipt form.
There were only three blank lines.
Door Name:Asking Price:Stay or Go: _____
Everyone in the store saw it.
Even Qin Zheng could no longer force himself to treat what was happening as some sample-related anomaly.
This was no longer just people talking.
Rules were talking.
One side had sent a notice.
The other side was being offered the right to answer.
And the thing speaking was not a person.
It was the door.
Or rather, the store that had now been formally acknowledged by Gray Tower.
"You're really going to fill that out?" Pei Wan asked softly.
"Draft only," Lin Wu answered with perfect calm. "Writing it doesn't mean sending it."
That was exactly like her.
Goods could be displayed first. Prices could be set first. But until the final exchange was certain, no one would get her signature for free.
She looked down at the three blank lines and still didn't write.
Instead, she ran the accounting in her head.
The door name was easy enough now.
Black Shop.
But the asking price?
If she was really going to answer Gray Tower inside its own system, then the asking price could not be a few crates of goods or a handful of crystal cores.
What she wrote had to be something Gray Tower itself would have to weigh seriously.
Something that made it understand at a glance that this was not a door it could casually "collect."
The room was silent for several seconds.
Then Cen Dong spoke.
"If you're really going to reply."
Lin Wu turned to her.
Cen Dong still looked weak, but her voice had settled.
"Don't write goods."
"Write routes."
The moment those two words landed, Qi Ye's gaze changed immediately.
Even Zhou Qiming looked like he had understood something all at once.
Lin Wu didn't interrupt. She waited.
"Gray Tower doesn't lack ordinary goods. It lacks stable routes." Cen Dong looked at her, one word at a time. "A lit, steady door can grow into a route. A route that can actually be used is what determines whether a door is worth collecting."
"If you're giving them a price, don't write 'how much stuff I want.'"
She drew a breath.
"You should write this—"
"If they want to touch this door, then they pay with routes from their side."
Very good.
Exceptionally good.
That lifted the entire frame of the deal.
The light in Lin Wu's eyes finally sharpened all the way.
Exactly.
She was not selling a batch of goods.
She was selling access to the route itself.
Gray Tower wants to collect a door?
Fine.
Then first hand over the roads you control on the other side. The ones that are usable, passable, and can bypass the chaos around Snow Market and White Tower.
That was what equal terms looked like.
The system lit again.
[Notice: doorside customer "Cen Dong" has proposed a highly compatible bargaining strategy.][Recommendation: adopt.]
Excellent.
Even the system agreed.
Lin Wu raised her hand and wrote the first line:
Black Shop
The moment the words appeared, the edge of the gray panel lit softly.
Door name: accepted.
She did not immediately fill the second line.
The asking price remained blank, like a well not yet filled.
Outside, the rain kept falling.
Inside, the lights stayed bright.
And the Gray Ticket lay quietly on the Doorside Shelf, like the first hand extended from deeper behind the door.
Lin Wu stared at the empty second line, her expression slowly cooling into focus.
She knew exactly what this meant.
The moment she wrote there, this would stop being a casual reply.
It would become the first real quotation she had ever given to Gray Tower.
The first time she wrote down the value of this store to the other side.
She was just about to put pen to it—
when the system suddenly threw a new line of red text into view.
[Warning: abnormal communications activity detected on the real-world exterior side.][External high-authority Heng'an Biotech channel has forced entry.]
Qin Zheng's face changed immediately.
The next second, the emergency backup communicator at his waist—supposedly still half-dead under interference—flared to life on its own.
A burst of harsh static tore through the room.
Then a completely unfamiliar male voice came through, cold and flat:
"Second Team. Receive orders."
"All unauthorized free trade on-site is to stop immediately."
"Takeover protocol upgraded."
Every eye in the store swung toward Qin Zheng.
Lin Wu, however, still had the pen in hand, and the light in her eyes did not dim at all.
Very good.
The reply to Gray Tower was not even finished yet.
And already someone on this side wanted to seize the right to price her first.
She clicked the pen cap shut with a crisp sound.
"It seems," she said, voice even, "someone wants to set my value for me—"
"before I've finished naming my own price."