Coming up from the underground lotus pool, the warehouse had been completely transformed.

  Ling looked at the neatly organized goods on the shelves with satisfaction. Worthy of a Hoardy Rat with maxed-out racial talents—under a compulsive episode, not only had all the loot been sorted by category, but even arranged by size and color in gradient patterns. The toilet paper rolls were stacked into pyramids.

  "Not bad. Professional."

  Ling generously picked out a gold bean and tossed it over.

  "A reward."

  Hoardy caught the gold bean, bit down to test its quality, then immediately beamed. His fuzzy face piled high with fawning:

  "Thanks, Boss! Boss is so generous! From now on, this Hoardy lives as Boss's rat, dies as Boss's dead rat! Whatever dirty work you need, just say the word!"

  Dax, who had just climbed up beside them, felt a pang of bitterness. He'd raised this packrat for decades—sure, he didn't pay much monthly, but at least it was steady income. And this guy turns around and defects for one gold bean.

  Hoardy stuffed the gold bean into his cheek pouch for safekeeping, then enthusiastically began pitching his services:

  "Boss, you might not know this, but our clan has been the Court's 'bonded servants' for generations. We handle all the tedious inventory those immortals can't be bothered with. Status isn't high, sure, but we've got lots of relatives and plenty of connections."

  He pointed downward, looking mysterious:

  "Loads of my aunties and great-aunts work in warehouses at various official agencies. Thunder Department, Fire Department, Wealth God Hall—we've got rat holes everywhere. Lots of quota-allocated equipment and supplies—the approval paperwork up top is a nightmare. If they can't use it all, it messes up next year's budget applications. So the surplus… naturally flows into our channels."

  "This is what you call—mutual benefit."

  Ling raised an eyebrow: "Oh? You're saying you've got an underground gray market going?"

  "Hehe, naturally." Hoardy puffed out his chest proudly, whiskers twitching. "Not just goods either—our business scope is huge. Mortal currency exchange, blockchain money laundering, Merit-to-spirit-stone conversion, artifact flipping, talisman swaps—you name it."

  "Boss, you lucked out. My turnover speed is the fastest around, but my fees are the lowest. This stuff can't see daylight, but run it through my rat network, and I guarantee even Erlang Shen's celestial eye couldn't trace the source."

  Ling nodded thoughtfully. Seemed this rat wasn't just good at warehousing—he was an excellent black market fence.

  Heaven's really helping me out here. This idiot Earth God sat on such a goldmine and only had him standing guard for a pittance.

  "Alright, I'll leave handling all this to you from now on. Manage it well, and there'll be plenty more where that came from."

  The sunlight in this border town was always fierce, shining on Ling's legs.

  Ling was currently sprawled on the slightly sagging old sofa at Moye's place with zero decorum, holding the latest "Celestial Court Link" work phone that Dax had finally been generous enough to issue her.

  Gann was in the back room, clanking away at the pile of artifact fragments confiscated from Secretary Wang's place, trying to smelt them into new equipment.

  Ling was scrolling through the hottest cultivator-sharing platform on the Spirit-Net—【Little Heaven's Book】.

  On screen, a female demon in a skimpy snakeskin dress was livestreaming "Spirit Snake Dance," the comments flooded with "Top donor begging for a carry!" Swipe past that, and there was Master Fahai doing a sales livestream for kasayas, spittle flying: "Family! This purple-gold kasaya originally ninety-nine thousand—today in the livestream only nine-nine-eight! Plus a free purple-gold alms bowl! We're all about ruthless family purging here, non-stop livestream deals!"

  Ling watched with relish, snickering.

  Just then, Moye's furious roar echoed from deep in her spiritual platform, rattling Ling's brain:

  "Can you close your eyes and rest for once?! So noisy! Can't you see I'm teaching this idiot to lay bricks?!"

  Inside the Spiritual Platform, in the communion space built by "Dream Chamber," Moye held a teaching rod capable of whipping souls directly. Trembling with rage, she pointed at Zhaos, who had been converted into a "runic code laborer":

  "Absolutely infuriating! Where'd you even find this bizarre moron! How many times have I explained this?!"

  CRACK!

  The rod came down hard on Zhaos's head.

  "The format goes like this! Variable names in caps! Loop structures must close! Why can't you get it?!"

  Zhaos clutched his head, on the verge of tears, utterly aggrieved:

  "M-Ms. Moye, I really am trying my best… These are sacred runes that immortal disciples need a hundred years of cultivation to comprehend! I'm just some wild ghost who joined halfway! I was a humanities major when I was alive! How am I supposed to learn this stuff…"

  "Shut it!" Moye snapped. "It's exactly because you're so useless and spineless that you ended up like this! Sacred runes? It's just a set of logical rules! I'm not asking you to create algorithms—just copy these modules according to the format! Just patch up this crack in the Infinity Shell Array! You can't calculate load-bearing, fine—but you can't even stack bricks layer by layer following a blueprint?!"

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "You slippery ghost—don't tell me you're still fantasizing someone will discover everything here and rescue you?"

  Zhaos curled into a ball: "I… I'm not, I really just can't remember…"

  Ling sighed, closed the snake Yao's gyrating livestream, and fully immersed her consciousness into the Platform.

  She watched Zhaos being driven by Moye, clumsily stacking glowing runic modules together like building blocks, trying to repair the Array's chaotic code.

  Moye rubbed her forehead in exasperation: "Look at this—half a day and he's only done one corner. If I did it myself, I'd be finished by now. You just had to make me and this dummy torture each other."

  Ling drifted over, laughing:

  "No wonder you two didn't have a single disciple worth talking about after things went south. Turns out you have no clue how to teach. Look at all those old engineers with way less skill than you—every one of them has students everywhere, sitting pretty as sect founders on their own mountain. But you two? They can mess you up however they want without weighing consequences. Pure tech-nerd thinking."

  Moye choked on that and fell silent.

  Ling shook her head: "If you're doing grunt work like this yourself, how long before you get around to tuning up my body? And even after that's done, how long before we save up enough capital to get back what belongs to you?"

  "Sharpening the axe won't delay the woodcutting. I'll be bringing in more runic laborers later. You'd better teach this one first—then let him be the foreman to train your future disciples. That way you can actually focus on architecture."

  With that, Ling turned to Zhaos cowering in the corner. Her tone suddenly softened, carrying a hint of temptation:

  "You. Pretty angry, aren't you? Pretty resentful?"

  Zhaos shuddered, shaking his head like a rattle drum: "Wouldn't dare, wouldn't dare…"

  Ling snorted coldly: "Doesn't matter if you won't admit it. We've got no real grudge between us—just the law of the jungle. You work hard, and whatever Fourth Master promised you, I can match."

  Zhaos muttered: "Back when I was working under Fourth Master, at least I could move around freely… Got thirty days of annual leave too, could possess some living person and stretch my limbs a bit. Good performers even got bumped up to VIP reincarnation lanes…"

  Ling nodded: "I see. Simple enough. Free movement I definitely can't give you right now, but I can give you some permissions. Once you help Ms. Moye unlock some of my core, I'll allocate you 1% of the space. Do whatever you want in your free time—scroll the Spirit-Net, play some games. Wouldn't that be nice?"

  Zhaos raised an eyebrow, still looking unenthused.

  This kind of "future pie" clearly wasn't tempting enough for an old hand like him.

  Ling cleared her throat, quickly recalling a "delicious boss" she'd once brewed who had screwed over countless employees. That boss's pie-in-the-sky rhetoric had been absolutely masterful—anyone who'd eaten his promises never made it out of the company with a labor arbitration win.

  "Zhaos." Ling began earnestly. "Being a ghost, you've gotta think long-term. Can't just focus on reincarnation all the time. That's how you narrow your path."

  Deep in his soul, Zhaos rolled his eyes. No shit—if ghosts aren't thinking about reincarnation, what else is there?

  "Looking at how your soul crystallized, you must've died pretty young, huh? Ever reflect on why? Maybe last life you rushed into reincarnation without saving up enough Merit, could only afford a bargain-bin fate chart, and ended up dying young?"

  Zhaos's eyes widened. Clearly she'd hit a nerve.

  "See? Young ghosts shouldn't be so impatient. Working under Fourth Master—did he ever let you in on core Merit investments? Give you original shares?"

  "You're pulling a dead salary, doing dirty errand work, and personally shouldering the karma for all his murders and robberies. Have you ever done the math: are those mosquito-leg benefits enough to offset the sins this job creates?"

  "The way I see it, even if you reincarnated right now, at best you'd scrape by for a few more years eating chaff. Once your past karma kicks in, you won't even have enough Merit reserves to pray for noble help. Just another violent death waiting to happen."

  Zhaos opened his mouth but couldn't find anything to argue back. This was exactly what he worried about most.

  Seeing the timing was right, Ling finally threw out her final offer:

  "Relax—stick with me and you won't work for nothing. You know I confiscated Secretary Wang's stuff."

  "He had a top-tier mortal proxy position there—excellent fate chart. Loving parents, power, status, wealth all top-notch. Took him twenty years to build up that high-weighted node."

  "Managed cleverly, the Merit generated from that identity would be enough for you to reincarnate continuously within that prestigious family network. True 'reincarnation freedom.'"

  Ling watched Zhaos's pupils dilate and continued her seduction:

  "It's just…"

  "Just what?!" Zhaos was frantic now. The temptation was too great.

  Ling sighed lightly, looking troubled:

  "It's just that, as you know, the final arrangements still need Fourth Master—the real boss behind the curtain—to approve. Right now I still haven't fully earned his trust."

  "If I had a helper who knew his organization, who could help solidify my cover, unlock the restrictions inside me, help me break into Fourth Master's inner circle… when that happens, arranging reincarnation for one measly vengeful ghost—wouldn't that be a piece of cake?"

  "I'm just worried…"

  Zhaos was being tortured by Ling's stop-and-start speech: "Worried about what?! Lady, just spit it out!"

  "I'm just worried that the work I'll be doing meanwhile is all high-return stuff. And the way I do things—always distributed according to contribution. If someone quits early, or slacks off… well, when dividend time comes, they won't have a share."

  With that, Ling turned to Moye beside her:

  "Oh right, the Ghost-Eye modifications you guys did were a huge help this time. That Hoardy fellow really is well-informed—he's already done a rough appraisal."

  "Our haul this time, if we flip it on the black market, is worth roughly a hundred-some thousand Merit Burns."

  "You and Gann, as original technical shareholders, get ten percent each as technical dividends. Go pick out whatever materials and spirit stones you like from the warehouse later."

  Hearing that figure, even the usually high-and-mighty Moye couldn't sit still.

  Holy shit! A minor secretary with no official rank, whose cultivation wasn't even as strong as some deeply resentful old ghost—his personal possessions reached this level?!

  Hard to imagine how much Merit he'd embedded in his life essence. Too bad now it was all dust to dust, earth to earth.

  After all, an ordinary mortal without any special fortune, even if they ate vegetarian and prayed daily, treated everyone kindly—the net Merit produced in an entire lifetime was barely a hundred Burns.

  Even if they handled everything themselves, never burning a single Merit for noble help or lucky breaks, it would take a thousand reincarnation cycles to accumulate this much.

  And 10%—over ten thousand Merit Burns—was already a hundred lifetimes' worth of achievements for an ordinary kind soul!

  Zhaos's eyes went red listening to this.

  That was over a hundred thousand! Even if he got just a fraction, it'd be enough to buy a riverside condo overlooking the Forgotten River in the Underworld! With so many souls unable to reincarnate these days, ghost-grave rents were sky-high. Even if he did nothing but collect rent comfortably, it'd be enough to live as a happy little dog in the mortal realm.

  Suddenly, his ears and eyes felt much sharper. Those obscure formulas and formats Moye had been explaining earlier didn't seem so hard to accept anymore.

  Those boring runes had transformed into gleaming gold ingots in his eyes.

  His whole body was filled with power.

  Without Ling saying another word, Zhaos silently picked up a "brick" and started hauling. His speed was at least three times faster than before.

  Ling watched this scene and exited the Platform with satisfaction.

  "That's more like it."

  She picked up her phone and continued watching the snake Yao dance.

  "There are no unteachable employees—only inadequate promises."