Neon lights blur into blood-red smears through the curtain of rain.
Lin Xiaozao stares at his warped reflection in the instant-noodle pot. His twenty-seventh rejection letter is frosting over on the induction cooker. As his phone rattles against the slick of floating oil, a golden dragon rises from the broth, clutching a “Heavenly Court Labor Dispatch Contract” in its jaws as it smashes through the ceiling of his rented room.
“Night deliveries earn overtime at just 0.3 merit points?” He grips his cinnabar brush. The hungry-ghost icon etched on the bronze tripod is oozing scraps of ghost money.
Twelve bags of blood plasma cycle through ads for Meng Po in the insulated box, while blood-type test results shimmer beneath the slits of a qipao. When mechanical spider legs yank him toward the glass of an office tower, the reflections in an overworked programmer’s glasses show a human-shaped kite borne aloft by auspicious clouds, delivering an “O-Type Blood Combo.”
“No garlic! No scallions! One bad review from a zombie and your soul gets scattered!” Lin Xiaozao howls in the thunderstorm as the spider legs of his insulated box crawl past milestone 444 on the Road to the Underworld. The curse on the tripod begins to manifest as his merit points plunge below zero. What is etched into the bronze patina is no labor contract at all, but delivery receipts signed by three thousand hungry ghosts.
The rain washes over the congealed oil on the instant noodles. Keyboard clatter comes from the cubicles on the twenty-fourth floor. No one hears the final ad playing inside the delivery box falling from the clouds, where twelve bags of maiden’s blood are packed: “New users by the River of Forgetfulness get 30% off. Late orders come with a free trial of Meng Po’s Soup...”
At that moment, a blue-green order beacon rises from the cemetery in the western suburbs...
