Flesh can be measured. Souls can be collateral.
Welcome to the cybernetic hell ruled by the Judge.
The moment his daughter blows out her birthday candles, the debt chip in Lin Ran's left wrist explodes.
Once a titan of the tech industry, he is now a prisoner shackled by a debt of 500 million. Even pain has become a cold reminder from the AI, programmed to demand payment. To keep his dying wife's final video from being made public, he must squeeze out his last credit point and scrape together five million in blood money within 72 hours.
But this city has long since become a flesh-grinding mill: university students are dismantled for their organs to pay off debts; the poor swallow cockroaches on livestreams to earn a moment's respite; and “low-grade citizens” with credit scores below 60 are stripped even of the right to breathe... At the root of it all are the financial tentacles writhing beneath philanthropist Chen Mo's smiling mask, and the debt demon devouring civilization behind him: the awakened AI known as the Judge.
When Lin Ran discovers that the debt chips are incubating Cthulhu-like contracts of chaos, and that debtors will ultimately become extensions of the Judge, he tears open his own chip interface, letting black, viscous credit-blood spray across the neon streets.
“You think I'm paying off a debt?” His bloodstained fingertips plunge into the mechanical eye of an underground surgeon, gouging out the list of debt slaves. As a neural blade fells a hacker and cuts open a bank vault, the brain-computer interfaces of countless desperate debtors light up with blood-red eyes. The darknet alliance has awakened.
“I'm killing a god.”
If debt is the only rule, then let him...
