The clay figures I make don’t do what I tell them.
After awakening a fragment of the power of creation on the brink of death, I can only bind a clay figure’s soul with a single sentence. Once I’ve said it, I can’t control what it does.
“Help me get my unpaid wages. Don’t cause trouble.” The clay figure breaks into a martial arts school at night, gets the wages back, turns down a bribe, goes viral, and lands on the Abyss Suppression Bureau’s C-rank wanted list.
Gu Zhou, an F-rank fall guy and wage slave, can only go work as a temporary records clerk at the Abyss Suppression Bureau, hiding in plain sight.
The second avatar is tasked with keeping the eldest brother in line. When making the third, he accidentally leaves out the word “don’t,” and the troublemaking third brother is born.
The clay figures patrol the city and slay evil spirits, flip police cars, and haul away manhole covers. But the ancient well underground keeps rumbling, and the Pathfinding Rite of the Returning Abyss Society has been sleeping beneath Jiangzhou for thirty years.
As Gu Zhou navigates official scrutiny and cleans up the messes his avatars leave behind, he’s only just opened the ledger.
