Lin Jian had worked so much overtime that his soul was practically out of his body. He never imagined that picking up a blank package would get him forcibly hired by Anjia Convenience Store, a terrifying job where the shift starts at midnight, the customers aren’t human, and breaking the rules means death.
Smile and serve the slit-mouthed woman? Keep the shelves tidy, but watch out in case the merchandise bites back? Never count the severed hands in the freezer? At the midnight register, accept only human teeth and fingernails? Written on the “walls” in flowing, dark-red letters, the Employee Handbook is his ledger of life and death.
Congratulations on acquiring the talent [Rule Recognition]: You are unusually sensitive to textual traps and logical paradoxes! (System notification: Overuse will lead to [Mental Contamination]. Your fingers are beginning to turn transparent...)
Yet the greatest terror isn’t the monsters, but Threshold Corporation, the cold entity that issues missions and distributes rewards. As the team ventures into its core, a data-fortress-like stronghold, a horrifying truth comes to light…
Standing in the “Court of Thresholds,” formed from a flowing river of rules among the stars, Lin Jian faces the “Core of Rules,” an embodiment of his own mirrored self, with the power to rewrite reality in his hands. Should he destroy this prison of the mind once and for all, perishing alongside the countless lost souls?
Should he reshape the rules at a painful cost, making himself their permanent core in exchange for limited freedom?
Or should he exploit a loophole and lead his remaining companions back to a reality already being quietly eroded by the rules?
“Welcome aboard, Administrator Lin Jian. Now it’s up to you to decide: whom do the rules protect?”
