Han Feng moved fast, like a courier wind slicing through bamboo.

In less than a week, he had Nana Toki set up; a brand-new game pod rolled in like a gleaming shell washed ashore.

Nana was still on her hospital bed, surfing on a mystery laptop like a drifting leaf on a data stream, when Han Feng stormed in with his crew, a small tide lifting the pod into the room.

“So quick!”

She slid off the bed, awkward as a foal, stood by Han Feng, and eyed the pod like a moonlit relic. “High-tech world, huh. Logistics flies like arrows.”

“...”

“But this is a hospital. Can you use this thing in here? It feels like bringing a boat into a temple.”

“Why didn’t you think of that earlier?”

They set the pod in a corner like anchoring a dark ship. Han Feng, leading like a mast in the wind, glanced up at her. “Relax. It passed disinfection and security, clean as snowfall. You can use it. The hospital will charge an extra fee—just a few meals’ worth, a bridge toll across a small river. Don’t forget to pay.”

A few meals still cost coin; money falls like leaves and doesn’t grow back.

“This hospital is black as a crow.” Nana’s tone scraped like frost on glass.

“...”

“Right, did you find Nan Jin in the game like I asked?”

When Nan Jin sent her out, she’d slid a blade into Nana’s chest like winter lightning. If Nana hadn’t frozen, she might’ve stabbed back on reflex, a thorn answering a thorn.

Good grief, who uses that kind of haunted ferrying? Swap anyone else in and you’d scare a heart into stopping.

“Ah… that.” Han Feng leaned in, curious as a cat. “I went to the big-shot game company and asked. The whole game has no sign of Nan Jin, not even a code footprint in the snow. She’s like morning mist—gone. Think she’s one of those ‘game ghosts’ you see in novels?”

“If she’s a ghost, what am I? A ghost who hijacks bodies?” Nana squinted, a blade-thin look. “Are you brain-damaged?”

As if a game plane would sprout a haunted grove for real.

“...”

“Alright, alright. If you’ve got nothing else, go. Don’t stand in here and shed IQ like autumn leaves. I’ll play a bit.” Nana’s impatience rang like a snapped twig. “I sent the money for the pod. Check later. If I shorted you, message me, I’ll make up the difference.”

“No problem. Don’t push; I can walk.” Han Feng drifted to the door like a log in slow water.

“Wait.” He jolted like a sparrow at a shout. “You haven’t cashed out game coins. Where’d you get the money? That’s over a hundred thousand—like a stone pillar of bills.”

Not a small sum; it loomed like a mountain.

“Can’t it be money I earned?” Nana held the door like a shield and stared, cool as a lake at dusk. “You think I’m truly a patient? I’m just a bit weak. Once I mend, not only will I make money—I’ll treat you to neon nights, book a full venue, throw in a few fresh models for you to play. Easy as rain.”

Han Feng: “...”

Talk big, then talk bigger; words fluttered like paper kites.

If this weren’t the real world, he might’ve believed her mirage. Nightclubs and models? As a police squad captain, he’d cuff her first, like catching a fox by the tail.

“You still don’t believe me?”

“Mm.” He shook his head, solid as a stone.

If she said a few hundred, maybe he’d swallow it. A week’s hustling on phone or laptop could do that. But a hundred-plus grand in one week? What is this, a scratch-off miracle under streetlight?

Quit spinning tales; the moon doesn’t drop gold.

“Just wait.”

Her temper sparked like flint. Doubt her morals like that lousy System, fine; doubt her skill, and she’d draw steel.

She was strong. A peak under snow, not a sand dune.

In some corner, the trash System sighed, thin as a moth’s wing. “...”

“What are you doing?”

At the doorway, Han Feng saw her whirl toward the bed like a darting swallow and blinked.

“I’ll show you my passbook!” Nana’s voice thumped like a drumbeat.

“...”

With a sharp smack, a little red booklet flew from under the pillow like a finch, and Han Feng caught it like a net catching a fish. He opened it, and his hands almost slipped—the zeros rolled like a field of white pebbles.

He flipped it open and shut, open and shut, like a fan in summer; the numbers didn’t change. If anything, they grew clearer, bright as frost under morning sun.

“You… y-you robbed a bank!”

“No.” Nana gave him a look like an icicle. “Do I look fit enough to rob a vault?” She slid her laptop over, screen glowing like a lake at night. “Come. Watch how this genius makes money.”

Charts tangled like star maps and coastlines, strings of code pulsing like fireflies. Data rose and fell like tides.

Han Feng watched, eyes swimming, and saw no doorway to cash, only waves.

“What is this?”

“Stocks.” Nana’s tone was a blade sheathed in silk.

“You trade stocks?!”

“Yeah. You got a problem?”

“...” He stared, and the world tilted like a loose lantern. A girl just out of a game trading stocks—and not drowning, but sailing?

Isn’t this a field where ordinary folks bleed dry, a quarry that crushes bones? How did she pull up a net so heavy?

The woman felt uncanny, like fog with teeth. Not to mention what happened in the game—here in daylight she was more veteran than teenager, seasoned like old wood.

“Do I look normal?”

She asked from the soul, a pebble dropping in a well.

“...” Truth be told, she didn’t. Filed under ‘needs evaluation,’ he thought, like a blue tag on a cabinet.

“But you still need startup capital for this, right? Where’d that come from?”

“Loan sharks.” Nana set the laptop down and squinted, her gaze a thorn. “Are you truly not a fool? That question was limp as wet straw.”

“...” Loan sharks—who would’ve guessed? And she’d used her friend’s identity? Ethics slipped like mud underfoot.

“How much did you borrow?”

“Hundred thousand.”

“That much?! Can you even repay? The interest bites like wolves.”

“Paid it off minutes before you came. Stop fussing. Are you my mom?”

She tossed him one last look of disdain, cold as sleet, then shut the door, a slab of wood like a cliff face closing.

“...” Han Feng stood outside, rainless and stunned. He did the math, numbers marching like ants: the money she sent him, plus the hundred thousand principal and the ragged interest. In one week, that woman netted nearly three hundred grand?

Where’s the law in that? The sky stared back, pale as paper.

He felt like half his life was smoke. A non-smoker, he bought a pack under the hospital like picking up stones by a river and lit one.

On the roadside, he breathed out thick white fog like winter breath, looked up at the sky like a dry pond, and still didn’t grasp what kind of creature he’d dragged from the game’s underworld.

Elsewhere, after shooing Han Feng off, Nana returned to the game like a diver slipping into black water.

Because the Protagonist Lord had acquired Aoto Game Company, entering her old avatar took a while, like crossing a slow ferry at night.

After a week, back in her body, she felt a small wrongness, like a thread snagged on a thorn, but couldn’t place it.

Only when she checked her personal info did the shape emerge, like ink in clear water.

Name: ??? (to be entered)

Class: Shadow

Race: Human

Level: 85

HP: 26100/26100

MP: 6100/6100

Attack: 5210 (5210+0)

Defense: 3010 (3010+0)

Spirit: 2100 (2100+0)

Agility: 2220 (2220+0)

Everything about Treasure Imp, aside from raw stats, had been altered, like Nan Jin’s identity sliding over Nana Toki’s form, a moon crossing clouds and leaving its light on a second lake.

She stared at the blank name field, thought a moment with a winter hush, and left it empty, closing the window like shutting a paper screen.

She’d returned to find Nan Jin and talk about the truth of those human experiments three years ago, a buried bone under old snow. Instead, Nan Jin was gone, just as Moonlit West River had said—vanished like dew at sunrise.

A sigh rose like steam. Expected, and somehow still expected; fate folded like a fan, twice the same curve.

This world’s petty Heaven Dao, greedy to delay her main quest, had plot-killed Nan Jin, a knife from the script cutting a living thread. She hadn’t thought it’d stoop that low.

By the look of things, the Nan Jin who lived in the game had merged with Nana’s data, rivers joining under the city, making Nana’s avatar both original and Nan Jin’s shadow.

Either way, the path wound the same: to finish the main quest, she’d have to go to Nan Jin’s old haunts and dig up clues, turning stones in an abandoned garden.

Nana popped her backpack open, not to be outdone by fate, a hand upon a latch like a bird on a twig. Her old items were there, faithful as stars.

But something else lay inside, cool as iron in moonlight—a new weight.

A weapon.

The black-iron dagger Nan Jin had used—a blade named Thornspike.