I inherited an inn, along with an ancient well filled with resentment and an old ledger filled with rules.
The account book records the "strange debts" of each room: embroidered shoes demand life, and owe a pair of feet; mirror immortals comb their hair, and owe a hundred years of life; hungry ghosts knock on the door, and owe a meal of flesh and blood.
My task is not to work hard, but to keep accounts.
Need feet for embroidered shoes? I turned to the terms and conditions: "The borrowed foot must fit the size." I noted in the account book: "The applicant's shoe size is 36. Our store only provides defective products in sizes 47 and refuses to return them."
Mirror Immortal is dying? I found a loophole in the rules: "The person combing her hair must be a living person." I made her a life-size silicone doll overnight, with a wig included.
From then on, I danced on the edge of strange stories, used logical loopholes to reorganize debts, and used causal loops to offset resentments.
Until that night, the biggest bad debt surfaced at the bottom of the well - the "death contract" mortgaged by the former boss with the lives of the whole town.
All creditors knocked on the door at the same time.
I opened the account book, licked the tip of the pen, and smiled at the monsters in the courtyard:
"Don't worry, come one by one."
"Tonight, we will conduct an audit."
