There were only 300 yuan left in my account. I was half a month behind on rent, had just been laid off, and my mom was waiting for money for her medicine.
With nowhere else to turn, I signed up as a delivery rider. My very first order was downright eerie: pick up at 703, No. 148 Happiness Road, and deliver to 714. The payment jumped from five yuan to five hundred, then finally changed to “a life.”
There was a corpse in 703. Black water seeped out from under the door of 714, and an eye in the water was watching me.
A labor contract popped up on my phone. Employer: The Dao. Three orders during the probation period. Compensation: staying alive. Note: Contract signed automatically. The employee may terminate at any time, at their own risk.
I signed. Not because I was brave, but because I had no choice.
Then I discovered a hidden entry in the app.
By day, I delivered Shaxian snacks. By night, I sealed rifts. I delivered spirit meals in the cultivation world to earn spirit stones, and sealed rifts on the modern side to build my cultivation. Every delivery patched the boundary between two worlds: my footsteps became the new border. The more I ran, the more stable the two worlds became. The day I stopped would be the day they collided.
Things on the other side of the rifts were running this way, too. After I sealed ten, they could sense me. After fifty, they could track me. After a hundred... there was a letter among the previous repairer's belongings, but no one knew what it said.
The first six all died.
I don't know how long I can stay alive. I only know I have more deliveries to make tomorrow.
