COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

Chapter 123 - 123 | Onwards

The fourth mark sat on the map in silence.

Eathan looked at it, then at Meng Po, then back at it again as if the little pulse of light might change its mind out of embarrassment.

"Commander Meng," he demanded. "What is the meaning of this?"

Chewie stood at his side, crimson eyes narrowed—a small presence that somehow magnified the intensity of the situation.

Meng Po folded her hands. "It is what you observe. One of Bai Hu's missing shards rests beneath the Obsidian Spires."

"You mean you've had shard right under our noses and you never told us?"

Meng's expression barely moved. "You never asked."

"…"

Chewie stared at the map. "So… we just go downstairs?"

"No."

The word landed sharply.

Bai Hu, who had been watching the floating marker with polite interest, shifted his gaze to Meng Po.

She rose, and the office feel arranged around her again.

The shard beneath us is not accessible by ordinary means," she said. "It rests in the Chamber of Echoing Regrets, sealed here long before I entered this position by Chang'e herself. With permission."

"The Moon Goddess?" Chewie raised an eyebrow.

"Whose permission?" Eathan asked, though some part of him already knew.

Meng looked at Bai Hu.

"His."

The room froze at her words. Chewie's face tightened first. Eathan felt it more like a small collapse somewhere in his chest. Bai Hu himself only blinked, as if the answer belonged to a stranger who happened to share his face.

Eathan pushed out of his chair. "Why would Mister White willingly leave a shard of his core here?"

"If he remembered, I imagine we would not be having this conversation," Meng replied.

There was no rebuke in it. Eathan looked at Bai Hu again, who then looked back with a tilt of his head.

"Long before your little disaster at the Games," she continued, "Bai Hu passed through this realm more than once. He was not fond of it. He was even less fond of what it tends to ask of its guests."

"That is not an answer," Chewie said.

"No," Meng agreed. "It is a door left slightly ajar. You may choose whether to look through it later."

Eathan rubbed a hand over his face. He could feel the question multiplying rather than shrinking.

If what Meng Po said was true, something must have happened that prompted the White Tiger to willingly discard this shard, one integral enough to conceal with the Lunar Goddess herself. And now none of that sat anywhere in his current memory.

Or maybe it did, Eathan thought, glancing at the motionless god near the shelves, and it was simply locked away with everything else sharp enough to draw blood.

He forced himself back to the practical problem.

"Fine. So it's here. Can we retrieve it?"

Again, Meng said, "No."

This time, she gave more.

"As guardian, my hands are tied by strict karmic protocol. The Chamber was also never meant to open for a partial core," she said. "It answers to identity, not intention. At present, Bai Hu does not match himself strongly enough."

Chewie's eyes narrowed. "That sounds deeply unhelpful."

"Bureaucracy, little warlord." Meng said. "Chang'e's safeguards usually are."

She crossed the room to one of her lower cabinets and drew out a flat lacquer box, opened it, and produced a tiny bronze seal in the shape of a rabbit pounding herbs.

Chewie stared at it. "You're kidding."

"I am not."

Meng set the seal on the desk between the tea cups. "The chamber requires proof of continuity. A command-level verification." She tapped the rabbit with one fingernail. "Yueto's stamp."

Eathan blinked. "The rabbit."

"Yes."

"Chang'e's rabbit."

"Yes."

"The same rabbit that, according to you, accidentally turned a comfort spirit into a river nightmare with nine heads."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Meng considered that. "Accidentally is an interpretive word."

Chewie didn't say anything. She merely dropped back into her chair and looked at the ceiling in doom.

"It is not just the stamp," Meng said. "The chamber would reject him in his current state even if I forced the door."

That got Eathan's attention back quickly.

"What do you mean reject?"

Meng's gaze shifted to Bai Hu once more. "The shard below is one of the heavier ones. The kind that does not slot neatly into an already unstable arrangement and demand strength derived from previously reclaimed truths. If you drag him into that chamber like this, you risk collapsing the three active shards you've already secured."

Well, that was enough to kill any impulse to improvise.

Eathan turned the map a little, studying the three other marks. The river. The labyrinth. The pillars. One of those had to come first. Not because he liked the idea of leaving a shard this close and untouched, but because he liked the idea of not exploding his boss more.

"So we need at least another one before we can get the one here," he said.

"Yes."

"Which one?"

Meng's fingers hovered over the map, then settled over the northward glow.

"Reverie Sanctum."

"The mirror maze," Chewie said. "You're really pushing the self-reflection theme tonight."

"It is the least geographically inconvenient and the most likely to restore structural coherence quickly," Meng said. "The River is unstable now that the Infant has stirred. The Pillars…" She paused. "The Pillars are better approached once one is more certain of one's motives."

Eathan did not miss the look she gave him on that sentence. He also chose, for once, not to take the bait.

Instead, he said, "The Sanctum it is."

Chewie leaned back, arms folded. "Assuming we can walk there without the entire realm recognising him."

At that, all three of them looked at Bai Hu.

He had, at some point in the conversation, migrated closer to Eathan again. Not enough to touch. Enough to register. His attention had moved from the map to one of the dangling bone ornaments in Meng's office, which he was studying with the intense seriousness of a man evaluating a battlefield trap.

Meng followed their gaze and, to Eathan's horror, let out a very small sigh that sounded suspiciously like suppressed amusement.

"He will need concealment," she agreed. "Or at least aesthetic confusion."

Chewie perked up immediately. "I know a ghost."

Eathan looked at her. "You know one ghost. The loud one."

"The loud one," Chewie said, "has a safehouse, a fan club, and the kind of face-altering glamour stockpile that screams bad choices and great results."

Meng tilted her head. "You've met Mingrui already."

And it was not in the tone of a question.

Eathan gave up on being surprised by what she knew. "She recognized us in the market. We were kind of hard to miss."

"Mm." Meng returned to her desk and slid open another drawer. "Then the path shortens."

She pulled out a lantern.

It was small enough to carry in one hand, woven from blackened silver and fitted with translucent panels that glowed faintly lavender from within. Tiny script crawled along the frame, blinking in and out in a pulse.

Eathan stared at it. "That looks expensive."

"It is mine," Meng said.

Chewie's brows went up, and Meng continued before she could ask something probably unhinged.

"Mingrui's Super-House moves frequently due to that same glyph-lagging talisman, making it challenging even for skilled trackers like the Elite Force to pinpoint."

She set the lantern on the desk. The light inside steadied.

"The Echoing Lantern is crafted from my own karmic energy," said, tapping one ring etched into the frame. "It will muffle your signatures and make direct tracking unpleasant. Not impossible, but unpleasant enough. And this—" her finger moved to a second, smaller sigil, "Memory Whisper. It will react to suppressed resonance near your targets. Consider it a lantern and, when necessary, a lie detector for old grief."

Eathan looked between the lantern and the map.

"You're helping us a lot for someone who isn't on our side," he said quietly.

Meng's eyes returned to his.

"I am on my realm's side," she said. "At the moment, your survival happens to align with that. If the Jade Deity's hounds corner a broken Guardian in the middle of my streets, the paperwork becomes intolerable."

That sounded more honest than comfort would have.

Bai Hu, who had thus far contributed only silence and suspiciously intense observation, spoke.

"Where?"

The single word cut across the office with startling clarity.

All three turned at once.

Ever since his reawakening, the man's verbal responses had been sparse. Now, Taeril stood very still, gaze on the lantern now, not on them. The question seemed half practical, half reflexive, as if some old habit of command had kicked loose and asked for coordinates before the rest of him caught up.

Eathan softened without himself noticing.

"To a friend first," he said. "For a disguise. Then to get back what you lost."

Bai Hu looked at him.

"Mine?" he asked.

Chewie made a face and scrubbed a hand over her mouth.

Eathan felt something sharp and helpless press under his ribs. "Yours," he said gently. "We're finding your pieces, Mister White. One by one."

The White Tiger absorbed that in silence. Then he nodded once, as if accepting a mission brief from an intern in a death office was entirely within expectations.

Meng reached for her tea again.

"Do not linger," she said. "The Platinum Paladins will not remain confused forever. And if Ji Renshu decides to formally contest my temporary custody of a destabilised divine hazard, she will eventually succeed."

Eathan exchanged a look with Chewie, then rose. The chair legs scraped softly over the floor. He picked up the lantern, surprised by how warm it already was. The lavender light shivered once, then steadied around his fingers.

"Thank you, Commander Meng."

"My assistance is bound." Meng Po's gaze softened. "I've offered what I can. From here, your path must be your own."

He glanced at the map again, memorising the path from the Spires back toward Midnight Avenue and then, from there, to Mingrui's ridiculous little kingdom.

"Super-House," he muttered.

Chewie grinned despite everything. "Never thought I'd be this happy to see an influencer."

Bai Hu's gaze shifted to them both, then to the lantern in Eathan's hand. "House," he repeated, as if trying the shape of the word.

Meng watched him for a heartbeat, unreadable.

When Eathan looked back at her, she had already resumed that impossible poise, hands folded, the office quietly orbiting around her again.

"Commander Meng," he said. "When we come back—"

"Bring tea," she said.

He blinked.

The faintest trace of humour touched her mouth. "And do try not to arrive with more pieces missing than you leave with."

That was, in context, as close to a blessing as he was getting.

They turned to go.

The office door opened at a touch. The corridor outside was still quiet, still old. Somewhere below, queue bells chimed and souls shuffled toward their next lives. Somewhere above, Heaven's best killers were probably untangling illusion fields and asking very pointed questions in very polished voices.

Eathan adjusted the lantern in his grip. Bai Hu fell into step at his side with eerie, obedient calm. Chewie took point, already muttering strategy under her breath.

They had a map. A borrowed warding lantern. A half-reassembled war god. An influencer safehouse. Three missing shards to chase before they could even try for the fourth.

Terrible odds.

Usual odds, then.

As they crossed the threshold, Eathan glanced back once.

Meng Po sat exactly where they had left her, already reaching for another file. The office had swallowed their crisis whole and was calmly moving on to the next item in the stack.

Only the map on the desk remained unrolled.

And on it, right at the center of the Spires, the fourth missing shard still pulsed like a patient secret.

Eathan looked away.

They would be back.