Lu Jin sells his painkillers, bets his brain on a lethal job, and discovers that even cleaning the floor of a metal egg on a dead world can feed him Holy Resonance—and his new capital.
In the lower districts, the air only ever had two flavors: burnt cheap synth-oil and the sour reek of the sewer backing up.
"Old John's Aug Repair" squatted at the dead end of an alley, its flickering neon sign twitching like it had a nervous disorder, splashing a sickly red glow over the rusted door.
A "Closed" sign hung crooked on the handle.
Lu Jin pushed the metal door open anyway.
The bell above it clanged weakly, more rattle than chime.
Behind the counter, an old man with half his face replaced by brass plating was polishing a serrated knife. His cybernetic eye whirred and zoomed in on Lu Jin, crackling softly as it focused.
"Well, look what the rats dragged in," Old John rasped, voice like sandpaper grinding together. "The D-rank sickling from down the block hasn't dropped dead yet?"
Lu Jin didn't bother answering.
He walked up to the counter, reached into his jacket, and slammed three small vials onto the stained metal surface.
The clear capsules glimmered faintly under the overhead light.
High-grade painkillers. The kind you couldn't get through legal channels unless you had five digits in your account and a doctor who actually knew your name.
He'd spent six months stockpiling them—six months of gritting his teeth through attacks instead of taking the easy way out.
"All of it," Lu Jin said quietly. His voice was steady. "Cash."
Old John's good eye flicked to the labels. Greed warmed its muddy brown.
"Black market hard currency," he snorted. "Looks like you've really decided you don't care about living, kid. Without this stuff, your broken gene sequence will have you chewing through your own tongue tonight."
"That's my problem."
Lu Jin pushed his glasses up, gaze sliding past Old John's shoulder.
On the workbench behind the counter sat a high-precision electronic microscope—and under it, pinned beneath clamps, a piece of paper.
A job posting.
[Urgent Commission: Manual repair of military-grade neural transmission chip.][Reward: ¥30,000.00][Failure Penalty: Compensation for raw materials ¥100,000.00 (or equivalent organs).]
A death wish disguised as work.
Chips like that were usually handled by machine arms in clean rooms. Human hands simply couldn't keep up with the microscopic timing of the current pulses inside.
If your hand so much as twitched, the surge of misrouted electricity would ride your tools straight back into your brain.
No wonder the sheet had been lying there for a week untouched.
"I'll take it," Lu Jin said, nodding at the posting.
Old John blinked.
Then barked out a laugh so harsh it almost turned into a cough.
"You? A D-rank reject?" he sneered. "If your fingers tremble even a fraction of a millimeter, your grey matter's going to get flash-fried."
"D-rank is because my gene sequence collapsed three years ago."
Lu Jin's tone stayed even. He tapped the edge of the schematic with one finger.
"Before that, I was top of my year in the Federation Institute of Technology, Microelectronics Engineering. Four years running. If not for this disease, the person who designed this chip—"
He paused, then tapped his temple.
"—could very well have been me."
Old John's laughter died.
He squinted at Lu Jin, reassessing.
Under the pallor and the hollow cheeks, there was something in the young man's eyes—something sharp and unhinged, the same look Old John had seen in those maniacs who carved half their bodies off just to graft on more hardware.
"And besides," Lu Jin added, voice dropping, "this Accelerated Sequence Collapse Syndrome? It's killing my body slowly. The pain that comes with it has turned my nervous system into something else."
He flexed his fingers once.
"A precision instrument. Built to feel."
Old John snorted, but there was less contempt in it now.
"...You're insane," he muttered.
He tossed a set of delicate tweezers and a probe onto the table in front of Lu Jin.
"Fine. Deal. Just don't spray your brain all over my floor."
Wasteland, Sector A-11.
Li Xing woke up to light.
The camping pod's sound insulation was too good; she couldn't hear the wind outside, only see the washed-out morning sun seeping through the translucent shell, splashing across the white mat.
She pushed herself up and glanced toward the hatch.
There was a dark red patch near the entrance.
Blood.
Yesterday's scavenger, the one she'd cut down—she'd dragged herself in and out so many times she'd tracked a bit of his life in with her.
In this spotless, god-given space, that smear looked like an ugly scar.
"Dirty…"
Panic fluttered in her chest.
She dropped to her knees and reached out, scraping at the dried stain with scarred fingers. Her nails rasped against the mat. The blood had already seeped into the fibers; it wouldn't come off.
She dug harder.
One of her already-split nails snapped back. Fresh blood welled up along the torn edge.
Li Xing bit down on a yelp and kept going, eyes reddening.
This was the home the Listener had given her. The cleanest place in the world. How could she stain it? She was just a dirty "weapon," after all. All she did was ruin things.
She glanced down at her lab coat—streaked with grime and mud.
Then she grabbed the hem and ripped.
Rrrip—
She tore off a strip of fabric from a relatively less filthy section. Wet the cloth in her mouth, then hunched over, wiping the mat in small, frantic circles like a child trying to erase a mistake before a parent noticed.
She hummed under her breath as she worked—her tuneless song from the lab cages, as if music could scrub the stain out faster.
Reality. Repair bench.
Lu Jin's entire world narrowed to the view under the microscope.
Threads thinner than hair gleamed in the magnified view, each one a path for data and electricity. His right hand held the probe; his left balanced the tweezers.
Sweat crawled down his temple and burned his eyes. He didn't dare blink.
The probe tip hovered 0.01 millimeters from a damaged junction.
His lungs burned from the held breath. The fibrotic mess that used to be his healthy tissue screamed for oxygen, his chest tight like someone had stuffed hot coals between his ribs.
Steady.
He repeated the command inside his head.
That cool, Holy Resonance chill slid along his spine, smoothing out the tremors in his muscles, numbing the edges of the pain.
The moment before the probe touched the solder pad—
His phone lit up.
The screen beside his hand flared to life without warning. Deep Space Echo shoved a pop-up into existence, its obnoxious effects spilling light into his peripheral vision.
The glare bounced off the microscope lenses, scattering into his view like a tiny sun.
Lu Jin's wrist jerked—barely.
The probe hovered in midair. One tiny twitch and the chip was scrap, along with his brain.
He risked a glance at the glowing rectangle.
His blood pressure spiked.
[Compulsive Cleaning Alert!][Your cloud-raised girl is currently scraping the floor with her bare fingers!][Nails broken: 3. Bleeding: 2.][That's your precious newbie mat she's using as a rag! You really gonna let her scrub it into oblivion?]
The feed showed Li Xing kneeling on the mat, broken nail still leaking blood as she kept rubbing the stubborn stain, her expression stubborn and anxious.
Lu Jin's temple throbbed.
Of all times, the cursed app chose now to shill cleaning products?
Another banner rolled out.
Wasteland Housekeeping Bundle (Lazy Saint Edition)
Includes:– Nano Stain Eraser Sponge (High Power) ×1– Smart Cleaning Bot (round & derpy / quiet mode) ×1
Price: ¥99.00
[Recommended payment method: Consume 1 point of Holy Resonance Energy(Cash payments will unlock after newbie period.)]
(Stop letting her bleed all over the floor. Countdown: 10… 9…)
The glare made the micro-wires under his scope blur at the edges. He had to clear the pop-up or risk frying everything.
And the fastest way to clear it… was to make a choice.
"Thieving bastard," Lu Jin ground out.
He didn't dare move his right hand. With excruciating care, he extended his left pinky finger and scraped it across the [Holy Resonance Exchange] option.
Another prompt slid in.
[Current Holy Resonance Energy: 21 points.][Confirm spending 1 point to redeem items?]
"Confirm."
[Holy Resonance Energy: 21 → 20.][Redeem successful! Item drop in progress…]
The pop-up vanished. The glare died.
Lu Jin didn't waste a heartbeat. The probe in his right hand darted down like a striking snake, making contact with the micro-solder point.
A tiny spark of blue light pulsed under the scope.
Wasteland.
Just as Li Xing was about to shift to a new angle and attack the stain again, something dropped in front of her.
A round white object—flat and wide like some kind of mechanical pancake—plopped onto the mat, bouncing twice.
A block of white sponge landed by her hand.
"Mm?"
Li Xing jolted back, fingers tightening around the short knife she still carried.
The round thing lit up, two blue indicator lights blinking to life like a pair of eyes. It let out a gentle "bzz" and extended two little rotating brushes from underneath.
Then it charged straight at the bloodstain.
Li Xing froze, breath caught.
Monster? Pet? Holy artifact?
The round bot rolled over the stain, misting a puff of cleaning spray behind it. Its brushes whirled.
One second.
The ugly red patch that had refused to budge… was gone.
The bot spun in place, as if proudly showing off, then trundled toward the corners, intent on vacuuming up every speck of dust.
Li Xing gaped.
She stretched out a cautious hand and touched the smooth shell of the robot. It didn't bite. Instead, it bumped her palm lightly, as if in greeting, then went back to its work.
"A… broom from the Listener?" she whispered.
Her eyes lit up.
She picked up the nano sponge, copying the bot's movements, scrubbing at faint marks along the pod walls.
With him watching over her, even cleaning became a miracle.
For the first time in her life, a feeling she'd never had a word for settled in her chest.
Belonging.
This wasn't a lab.It wasn't a ruin.
It was home. A place someone else was helping her keep safe.
Reality.
A soft chime cut through the lab's hum.
On the monitor, all the indicators for the chip flicked green. Data streams flowed smooth and uninterrupted across the diagnostics window.
"Perfect repair," Old John muttered.
Lu Jin sagged back in his chair like someone had cut his strings. His shirt clung to his back, soaked through with cold sweat.
["Sense of belonging" detected in observed subject.]["Home protection" resolve detected.][Holy Resonance Energy feedback in progress…]
On the screen, golden notes bobbed above Li Xing's head as she and the cleaning bot scrubbed in tandem.
They drifted upward, slipped through the display, and became a shower of cool light raining over Lu Jin's overheated brain.
The brutal migraine that had been building from the concentration evaporated. His vision snapped into crystal clarity, sharp enough he could see the dust motes dancing in the beam of the overhead lamp.
Old John stared at him like he was a walking glitch.
He picked up the chip and ran the tests again.
Once. Twice. Three times.
No errors. No instability.
This was the kind of work you'd expect from a B-rank aug specialist with a price list for corporate clients, not a half-dead D-rank kid from the slums.
"Damn freak…" Old John muttered.
He yanked open a drawer and counted out thick stacks of physical bills, then added another smaller stack on top.
"Thirty thousand for the chip," he grumbled. "Twelve hundred for the meds. Total: thirty-one thousand two hundred. Take it and get out."
Lu Jin grabbed the cash and stuffed it inside his jacket.
As he stepped toward the door, a prickle walked down his spine.
Holy Resonance had sharpened his instincts into something almost animal. Every nerve screamed.
He stopped just before the threshold.
Three guys in leather jackets lounged in the shadows at the alley mouth, smoking. Mohawk haircuts, cheap ink crawling up their necks.
When they saw him, their eyes cut to each other—quick, hungry.
They crushed their cigarettes under their boots and pushed off the wall, drifting after him.
Lu Jin didn't turn around.
He adjusted his glasses, a cold little smile tugging at his lips.
He slipped his phone out, thumb brushing the interface of Deep Space Echo. A new icon glowed there—one he'd barely had time to test.
[Command Overlay]
"Thirty grand in seed money…" he murmured, thumb idly stroking the glass.
"Looks like I just found a few free sparring partners to test the latency on divine punishment."