Also known as 3:17 Eternal Night Loop
Chen Mo, a convenience store night-shift worker, receives a blood-red gift at 3:17 a.m.: a Taotie that feeds on human vitality. The first time a crystal spike pierces his temple, 9,999 gold coins spill from beneath his pillow, giving him a taste of sweetness unlike anything in his impoverished life.
Three months later, golden grains begin to crystallize in his pupils, and metallic powder oozing from his skin in the shower clogs the drain. More terrifying still, the whole city gradually reveals its horrifying truth to him: the steam rising from breakfast stalls is liquid gold, the glass walls of office towers run with mercury-silver blood, and a price tag hovers over every passerby's heart.
In this deadly bargain with beings from another world, Chen Mo discovers that gold is nothing but scrap from the universe's mint. As his liver crystallizes into an amber gemstone and the convenience store clock remains forever frozen at the moment of sacrifice, reflections of himself from twelve parallel timelines reveal the ultimate truth: humanity is merely living currency cultivated by an interstellar capitalist system. And what people call financial freedom is nothing more than the beautiful wail that sounds as life is forged into gold bars.
Now he grips his seventh rib as it begins to turn to metal, standing in a bathtub with a view of the Orion Nebula. Taotie Seven waits for him to exchange his heart for one last bag of golden sand, while a girl in a pearl dress smiles amid the rippling radiation waves of the microwave: Would you rather become an eternally glittering prisoner, or the first fugitive to pierce capitalism's endless night?
