Twenty years after the Fog Tide arrived, black fog carrying fragments of rules swept across the globe.
Some people fused with fragments to control fire and water. Others fought strange beasts to the death to level up. But Lin Ye opened a shabby pawnshop on an old street in the old district, and its owner was a mute who couldn't speak. No one knew that he had pawned his ability to hear and speak himself.
No one knew that his shop accepted no gold or silver, only rules:
"Pawn half an hour of your hearing to gain the ability to see through the Shadow Domain. No credit."
"Pawn an old scar on your body to gain five minutes of invisibility from the rules. Fair to all, young and old." The Night Watchers called him a black-market rat and came to surround his shop day after day.
The Guixu Cult called him a heretic against the rules and put a bounty on his head.
Lin Ye leaned against the counter, fingers tapping on a storage box. A pale golden light flashed in his left eye.
Want to catch me? Ask the thousand rules in this shop if they'll let you.
Then a girl with scaled wings on her back kicked open the shop door and slapped half of a magnolia-engraved pendant onto the counter.
Lin Ye looked at the half-pendant, which fit perfectly with the one around his own neck, and finally understood what had been pawned on the day his parents disappeared ten years ago. The countdown to the second Fog Tide had already begun.
The Night Watchers' dark dealings, the Guixu Cult's madness, the wrongful case from back then,
He pushed open the pawnshop door, with a shop full of rules behind him.
It was time to collect the debt that had been owed for twenty years, with interest.
It's pretty. You have really good taste.
The new author writes really well, has been collected