The Ledger of Good Deeds

The slums of Mud Alley, after the Black Mist Era. The air always reeks of rust, sour slop, and burnt grease, while daylight comes through like a gray-yellow glow filtered through oiled paper. Tainted energy is the only source of power and the only currency: three crystals will buy enough soup for three days. Tainted-energy lamps hang all along the street, and everything the black market burns, melts, or weighs depends on it. Those who cannot pay the tainted-energy tax begin to "crystallize": first their fingers turn gray, then their palms, then their arms, until their whole bodies become gray-white crystal statues. The corpse collectors smash them apart and sell the pieces as low-grade tainted-energy crystals. The recycling yard at the end of the alley has no door. A waist-high stone counter stretches across the street, with seven or eight iron hooks hanging from a beam behind it. Small wooden tags, their numbers written in charcoal, dangle from the hooks. A brick furnace sits at the very back of the courtyard. One entry in the ledger, one item on a hook; they only light the fire once they have a full batch. The real force ruling this street isn't the guard squad, but the "Law of Causality Reversal": do one good deed, and part of your body crystallizes while a piece of your memory is carved away; commit a little evil of your own accord, and your sentence is reduced instead. Every morning, the people in the alley first crush a bug underfoot and mutter, "Today, I struck first." No one ever asked why, until Lu Chen saw an empty hook hanging in front of a woman's chest, while the scale's beam sank under its weight.