Morning on Rust Street always smelled like cooking oil that had already been used twice.
When Qi Luo crawled out of the old pipe, only a few scattered lights were on in the street. The glow from the upper levels hadn't fully filtered down yet, so the lower level poked a few holes in the dark first with broken neon and oil lamps.
He stretched under the water tower's shadow.
He'd barely slept all night, curled up beside that abandoned circle underground, laying out every clause scrap he could read and piecing them together in his head along the structure of the Chains.
The result was that the World Rollback Covenant still looked like a story someone had deliberately ripped the middle chapters out of.
But there was one thing he was sure of now:
That old pipe under Rust Street, besides almost "writing him dead" back then, had a new use.
"Business," he murmured.
Wind whooshed out of the pipe behind him, somewhere between displeased and in agreement.
Qi Luo glanced at the stalls on Rust Street already starting their morning hustle, hitched his bag up, and headed toward Scrap & Salvage.
"You want to open a shop."
Garth said it like a statement, not a question.
He sat behind the counter at Scrap & Salvage, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, hands busy dismantling a scrapped runic board from the upper levels. He squeezed the pliers, glanced up, and watched Qi Luo.
"A firm," Qi Luo corrected. "The kind that writes clauses."
"Rust Street's crawling with black-market firms." Rosh lounged on a pile of scrap, casually sharpening his knife. "You think you can out-write those 'old craftsmen'? At least they've got official clause-worker badges."
"I'm not stealing their business," Qi Luo said. "They take mortals. I take gods."
The room went quiet for a beat.
The female knight—most people on Rust Street just called her "Sanya"—lifted her head from the corner, still holding a piece of armor charred almost black.
"Only gods, not mortals?" She raised a brow. "Trying to shorten your life?"
"Or your cash flow," Rosh snorted. "Gods don't like paying."
"They can pay in other things." Qi Luo smiled. "Like a little chain that stands behind a main god. Or a piece of internal liability clause from the Council. Or a side note on the World Recovery Contingency."
Garth's pliers clamped down on a screw with a crisp kacha, but he didn't twist, just stopped there.
"You want to use gods' clauses to pry at the world's side of things," he said slowly.
"I have to survive first." Qi Luo dropped his bag on the table and slapped it lightly. "Relying on human clients from Rust Street might cover lamp oil for a month at best. If I want to reach up there—"
He meant the World Base-Covenant, the Recovery Contingency, the key's remnant pages—all the things he was still fumbling toward in the dark underground.
"—I have to take gods."
"And," he added, tone turning serious, "only if I've helped enough minor gods and fallen gods will I have standing to talk 'basic mortal rights' in some future new covenant. Otherwise, if there really is a meeting someday, all the big ones will say is: 'Who are you to speak? You're just a rogue key.'"
"So you're going to be a 'god's lawyer.'" Sanya said.
"Something like that." Qi Luo shrugged. "A contract-smith who stands on a god's side."
"Then when some poor bastard on Rust Street, who's been tormented by a god till he can't sleep, comes asking for help, you just kick him out?" Rosh kept pushing.
"That's why it's called the 'Nameless Firm,'" Qi Luo said. "I won't be hanging a sign to welcome walk-ins."
"Then who do you take?" Rosh was genuinely curious. "You think gods are gonna crawl into pipes themselves?"
"They will." Qi Luo tapped his chest. "They have Chains too."
It wasn't a very clear explanation, but all three understood. Qi Luo didn't have to use doors. He could knock on certain names' doors directly along the Chains.
That was for later, though.
For now, he needed to hang a "signboard" for himself—if not out on the street, then on a chain only gods would see.
"Details?" Garth asked. "How are you actually opening this thing?"
"I've got the space," Qi Luo said. "Same pit I was born in."
Sanya whistled. "Very ceremonial."
"Staff?" Garth pressed.
Qi Luo looked around at the three of them.
"You," he said.
"Us?" Rosh laughed. "All right, count me in. I'll be the doorman—scare off debt collectors, gratis."
"I'll handle anyone who needs their face rearranged." Sanya slapped her burned arm. "If someone dares make trouble in our place, I'll show them how many tricks the old War-God clauses still remember."
"And me?" Garth asked.
"You're the most important," Qi Luo said. "That clause you three signed with the abyss that night is still hanging on you—that's the only successful 'pulled the key out' template this world's got. When I rewrite divine contracts, I need to study that structure."
Garth didn't answer right away.
His gaze settled on Qi Luo's face, slid past those too-calm-for-his-age eyes, then dropped to his chest—where nothing was visible, but something was clearly warming up.
"How're we splitting shares?" Rosh cut in suddenly.
"Rust Street business brain," Sanya snorted.
"What shares?" Garth said lazily. "We either all die together, or win together."
"Win what?" Qi Luo asked.
"Win a shot," Garth said. "One chance to flip the table with clauses before the world tosses us into the recovery furnace as offerings."
It didn't sound commercial at all.
Qi Luo still nodded.
"Done, then," he said. "Nameless Firm—gods-only, no mortals. Three Fallen Knight shareholders, one fake-dead key doing the writing."
"You really dare call yourself that." Sanya narrowed her eyes.
"Name doesn't matter," Qi Luo smiled. "It's not like anyone's going to put us on any official clause registry."
"Fine." Garth finally stood. "Let's go see that hole of yours, at least get you a proper table."
The old pipe saw its first "renovation."
Not by a World-Scale construction crew, not by the War-God's logistics—just three Fallen Knights and one supposedly dead student.
Rosh was in charge of hauling junk.
He dug up a reasonably sturdy metal table from Scrap & Salvage, four not-very-stable chairs, a working oil lamp, and a few old pieces of canvas with faint patterns still visible.
"We need to cover the walls." He hung canvas over the wall near the circle. "If we ever have a client, the last thing I need is some god getting scared off by what's carved on these."
"'Some god'?" Sanya kicked him. "When did you ascend?"
"Got carried away talking," Rosh laughed.
Sanya handled security.
She circled the ring once, fingers brushing over the old chains that still glowed, writing simple sealing notes onto each.
"These are all sublines of the rollback system," she told Qi Luo. "I'll slap a 'sealed' tag on them so they don't randomly wake up one day, trigger a test clause, and reset you and the table mid-contract."
"Thanks," Qi Luo said honestly.
He kept busy as well—sorting the covenant scraps by type, clipping them together and boxing them in wooden crates marked with symbols; picking out a clean patch of floor by the circle, spreading canvas, setting the metal table there, and placing an old pen stand and ink bottle at its side.
Opposite the desk was his seat.
On the wall behind it, he carefully scraped the stone smooth with a blade, then carved a few words:
[Nameless Firm]
Under it, a smaller line:
[We take gods, not mortals.]
"Not bad," Rosh remarked. "Top line looks like someone's tombstone."
"Bottom line sounds petty as hell," Sanya added.
"As long as you two like it," Qi Luo said, unbothered. "Most people coming here aren't here to read, anyway."
He put the scraper down and stepped back to study the words.
People on Rust Street didn't trust words on walls; they were always lies like "guaranteed," "promise," "never," "discount."
Words in the world of clauses were worse: once written, they had to be done.
Right now, "Nameless Firm" was just a scar on the wall.
Only when a god's name landed on a contract on this desk would those words take their place on the Chains.
"So how do clients show up?" Rosh asked.
"No signboard on the street, no queue," Sanya said. "Qi Luo will figure it out."
She looked at him. "Where are you starting? Drip-God of the Pipes?"
"Drip-God's practically family," Qi Luo said. "But it can't afford to show our connection too openly right now—it already shouldered part of the blame for me last time."
He lifted a hand and tapped the air.
A thin chain extended from his fingertip and probed upward, soon lost in the tangle of Rust Street's Chains.
That was a "border knock" he'd honed in years of black-market work—not brute-force editing clauses, but feeling along the existing structure to find the "note space" beside a particular name.
"Free ad for yourself?" Rosh asked.
"No," Qi Luo said. "I'm digging through old cases for potential clients."
He split the chain into several strands, sending them out in different directions—to the bottom-tier clauses of a few small shrines on Rust Street, the responsibility chain edge of Drip-God, a clause pool under some abandoned god's name on the War-God guilt chains…
"There are a few types of gods most likely to need help," Qi Luo said as he worked. "Minor gods used as scapegoats for higher gods. Old post gods the Council has tagged 'inefficient' and queued for cleanup. And ones like you—former contract-breakers, fallen gods."
"And what are you sending them?" Sanya asked. "A slogan?"
"Close enough." Qi Luo froze one strand at a node and wrote a short line in a margin:
[If you need a rewrite, an extension, or a liability shift—call the name 'Nameless' in your dreams.]
"…Seriously?" Rosh blinked. "That's—"
"Edgy?" Qi Luo finished for him. "For gods, it's normal. Mortals invoking divine names in dreams is standard clause procedure. I'm just writing us in as an observer."
He didn't write "address" or "rates" into any formal clauses.
All he did was slip tiny notes into a few "dream access" and "oracle delivery" footnotes—a nameless contract-smith may attend as silent counsel.
The system hesitated, then let it pass—this was just extending the ways word-of-mouth could travel; it didn't violate any "exclusive oracle rights."
The chains rolled back.
Qi Luo lowered his hand and rubbed his temple.
"Done," he said. "No one's going to show up that fast today."
"You're giving the market too much credit," Rosh yawned. "You think gods line up on day one?"
"I opened an underground firm with no sign," Qi Luo smiled. "Let's at least wipe the desk."
Turned out his estimate of "market speed" was off.
—Because not even two hours later, something came knocking.
"You hear that?" Rosh suddenly cocked his head.
They'd barely settled around the table. Qi Luo was sorting covenant scraps. Sanya was scrubbing down those rickety chairs. Garth was rigging a makeshift chain alarm in a corner—a few discarded monitoring stones wired to old Chains.
Qi Luo looked up and stilled.
"Water?" he asked.
"No." Sanya frowned. "It's… coughing."
The cough didn't travel through the pipe as sound. It was like a rough, sticky pulse in the clause layer, seeping through the stone—one dry cough after another.
Qi Luo got to his feet and traced a line in the air.
In his sight, the Chains shifted. The "human daily noise" layer dimmed; the "divine clause fluctuation" layer brightened.
Soon, he saw it—
A gray-green chain, pocked with tiny pits, dragging itself in from somewhere above Rust Street like a snake one breath away from dying.
The words carved on it were mottled and hard to read.
He had to lean in to make them out:
[Epidemic Spread Supervision · Lower City District Three]
[Outbreak Alert · Mild]
[Outbreak Alert · Moderate]
[Outbreak Alert · Severe]
[...]
Beside those duties that should have been neat and straightforward, a different hand had carved fresh words:
[Over-Spread Liability]
[Target for Clearance]
[Candidate Scapegoat Vessel]
That part clearly hadn't been in the original structure. It'd been bolted on later by some "clearance clauses."
At the chain's tail, a small bundle of light was curled tight.
As it drew near, the bundle grew limbs and outline—
A little god wrapped in strips cut from a hospital gown.
It was small, only half a head taller than Qi Luo. Thin. Sunken-eyed. Its skin was speckled with fine spots, like flaking paint from an old clinic wall. No luxurious divine robes—just a yellowed long shirt and uneven bandages binding it in place.
Every step it took, a ring of gray-green smoke puffed up under its feet, only to be stamped down again.
"...cough." It coughed lightly and pressed a blackened sigil on its chest. "Is this… the Nameless Firm?"
Its voice sat somewhere between a chain-smoker and dried grass.
Qi Luo glanced at Garth.
Garth gave the tiniest nod—not to the little god, but to Qi Luo.
—First client.
Qi Luo stepped forward to stand behind the table.
He didn't bother reciting the words carved on the wall. He just said, calmly:
"If you're a god, and you've got a covenant that needs changing, we probably qualify."
The little god looked him over once, too tired to even question whether some not-quite-adult mortal could touch its clauses.
"I'm called Lihen," it said. "Disease-Reminder god, Lower City District Three."
"Your duties?" Qi Luo asked.
"Before an outbreak blows up, I make mortals cough twice, get a little fever, break out in a few spots." Lihen's voice was dry. "So they'll know they're sick, go to a healer-god early, self-isolate early."
As it spoke, the duty codes along its chain lit up one by one:
[Minor Symptom Warnings]
[Contagion Risk Reminders]
[Nudge Toward Short-Term Immunity]
Basic, boring work.
Qi Luo had seen the effect around the streets: on some winter day a whole alley would suddenly cough in unison, and the next day a mobile healer-god's cart would roll in; or some kid would break out in a few red spots, and a grandma would panic, boil water, disinfect everything, and slam the windows shut.
"And now?" Qi Luo followed the gray-green chain upward.
A newer section near the top read:
[End-of-outbreak assessment: actual death count in Lower City District Three exceeds projected.]
[Assessment result: Disease-Reminder god failed in duties, did not effectively limit spread.]
[Clearance recommendation: reclaim its functions into the chief Plague-God's clause pool; dissolve its godhead to offset part of the excess deaths.]
At the bottom, in small script:
[Execution approved by: Chief Plague-God's clearing officer.]
"Short version," Lihen said flatly, "the main god wants to burn me as the scapegoat."
The bluntness made the chain itself shudder.
"Why come to me?" Qi Luo asked. "You could beg the chief Plague-God directly. Or find some other higher god. Isn't that more dignified than crawling into a pipe on Rust Street?"
"I begged." Lihen coughed, a hint of a laugh in it. "The chief Plague-God said: 'It's the clauses. Not my problem.'"
It lifted its thin wrist.
A cold metal ring chain dangled there.
That was the chief Plague-God's "liability allocation chain."
On it, Lihen's name appeared deep in a crowd of minor gods, with:
[Routine Epidemic Alerts · handled by subordinates]
Higher up was the chief Plague-God's own get-out clause:
[All spread primarily caused by environmental factors, population density, or mortal non-compliance with healing oracles shall not be counted under this god's responsibility.]
"See?" Lihen coughed. "They write well."
Qi Luo narrowed his eyes.
The chief Plague-God had preemptively blamed everything on "environment" and "mortal behavior," then sent a pack of minor reminder gods to do the dirty work—if something went wrong, they'd say "subordinates failed."
"What about the Council?" Qi Luo asked. "They signed off on the clearance note."
"The Council says, 'This is an internal redistribution of divine power, we won't interfere,'" Lihen said with a little smile. "Not that they signed for free. The clearance clause has an extra line at the bottom—"
It raised its eyes for Qi Luo to see.
The final line on the clearance document read:
[This adjustment to divine structure is expected to partially dissipate plague-related resentment in the lower city.]
"See it?" Lihen's sick-bed eyes fixed on him. "Burn me, and half the mortals' anger drops off the ledger. Looks great on their books."
Rosh clicked his tongue. "Real full-service operation."
"You came," Qi Luo said, "because you want me to…"
"Either rewrite the clearance so it doesn't burn my name off completely," Lihen said bluntly, "or help me jump off the Plague-God's chain entirely and get a new function."
"Got money?" Rosh cut in, shameless.
Lihen glanced at him and raised its other hand.
A few dim rune-coins hung there—not copper cash mortals used, but little plaques inscribed with abstract words like "merit," "resentment-clearing," "immunity."
"These," it asked, "can I pay you with these?"
Qi Luo didn't spare them more than a glance.
He looked instead at the small, almost invisible split chains trailing off Lihen—
One read:
[Post-epidemic immune memory maintenance · slight]
Thin, nearly crushed flat under the "clearance storm."
"You have that duty?" Qi Luo asked.
"On the side," Lihen said. "Every time a minor outbreak passes, I let the survivors keep a bit of 'memory,' so the next time it hits, they won't fall as hard."
Qi Luo nodded.
A new structure was forming in his head.
Right now, the chief Plague-God wanted to charge Lihen as "over-spread liability." But the clauses already said the main causes of spread were environment and mortal behavior:
[All spread primarily caused by environmental factors, population density, or mortal non-compliance with healing oracles shall not be counted under this god's responsibility.]
That line was meant to stop mortals from dumping all their fury on the chief Plague-God.
But if he flipped it—
"You're currently hanging under the chief Plague-God," Qi Luo said. "The clearing officer's structure is: classify the 'over-spread liability' under your name, then break your godhead apart to pay it back."
"Yeah," Lihen nodded.
"But the chief Plague-God has already written, in his own clauses, that the main reasons for severe spread are environment and mortal behavior," Qi Luo went on. "You're only tasked with 'reminding' and 'immune memory.' You don't control whether mortals listen."
He reached out and tapped the space on Lihen's chain right beside its reminder duties.
The chain jolted.
Qi Luo wrote a line there in tiny script:
[Reminder duties—do not include responsibility for controlling mortal compliance.]
The system paused, evaluated it—this explanation referenced the chief Plague-God's own logic, so it passed as a legitimate clarification.
The footnote slid quietly into Lihen's duty description.
"This is just step one," Qi Luo said. "I need to hang that clarification higher up, so the clearance clause has to see it."
"What are you trying to do?" Lihen asked.
"Give the clearing officer an extra condition," Qi Luo said.
He tracked Lihen's chain up to where it joined the main liability distribution chain.
There was a small blank space there—whoever drafted the clause hadn't cared enough to fill it.
Qi Luo wrote:
[Any clearance of a Disease-Reminder god must first rule out primary responsibility from environmental and mortal behavior clauses.]
That line was an "if" tacked in front of the knife.
The old logic had been:
[Deaths exceed quota] → [Minor god failed] → [Clearance]
Now it read:
[Deaths exceed quota] → [Check environment & mortal behavior first] → [If they bear primary responsibility, the reminder god only holds "insufficient warning" liability] → [Cannot be cleared under "over-spread" clause directly]
It didn't fix the whole problem. Mortals' behavior clauses could still be fudged.
But it blocked half the straight "burn the scapegoat" path.
"This part won't set off alarms," Qi Luo said. "You were never responsible for 'making mortals obedient' anyway."
Lihen watched the faint shift ripple through its Chains.
"And the other half?" it asked. "I'm still hanging under the chief Plague-God. Whenever they feel like it, they can still drag me out for 'structural adjustment.'"
Qi Luo smiled.
"Step two," he said. "We change your name."
"Change… my name?" Lihen flinched, hugging the tiny name-plate on its chest—its god-name and function engraved over its heart. "Isn't that… the same as changing gods?"
"Not changing you," Qi Luo shook his head. "Changing your function—and your patron."
He pointed to the nearly forgotten little chain:
[Post-epidemic immune memory maintenance · slight]
"This one matters," Qi Luo said. "The chief Plague-God treats you as part of the 'spread' side, but the clauses already admit you work on the 'memory' side too."
"If we pull this chain out and anchor it in a new function—make you an 'immune-memory minor god' instead of 'disease-reminder minor god'—"
"Then I'm no longer part of 'over-spread liability'?" Lihen followed.
"Right," Qi Luo nodded. "You'd become 'after-epidemic guardian,' not 'mid-epidemic accomplice.'"
"Where do we hang me?" Garth cut in. "Whose name covers an immune-memory minor god? The chief Plague-God's not taking you."
"The healer-god," Sanya said quietly.
Qi Luo glanced at her and smiled.
"Right," he said. "Under the healer-god."
He pulled a scrap from one of the boxes—a piece he'd sorted earlier—and spread it on the desk.
It contained an old clause about the healer-god:
[Healer-God's duties: cure, prevent, promote hygienic practices, maintain communal immunity barrier…]
At the bottom:
[(Reserved for future addition of subordinate god functions.)]
"The healer side also thought about setting up 'immune memory' sub-gods once," Qi Luo said. "They just never wrote it in."
"If we transfer your chain over now, we're helping them fill a blank."
"Will the healer-god agree?" Lihen looked doubtful. "They hate disease."
"They like prevention," Qi Luo said. "They like fewer relapses."
He held Lihen's gaze, voice steady:
"I can draft you a new covenant—cut you out of the chief Plague-God's liability chain and fasten you under the healer-god's 'immunity barrier.' The price is this: you never again accept any 'spread reminder' clauses. You only do 'immune memory.'"
"So I stop nudging people toward getting sick and only help them remember what happens after," Lihen repeated softly. "From the 'disease' side to the 'recovery' side."
"Is that a promotion or a demotion?" Rosh interjected. "Pay cut?"
Lihen was quiet for a while.
"I never wanted to watch them die," it said at last. "I was only ever supposed to make them cough twice and run."
It coughed, a wisp of gray smoke curling from its lips before it forced it back down.
"If I can live, doing only 'immune memory'…" It managed a thin smile. "That's good."
"Then there's just one problem." Garth said. "Will the healer-god accept the deal?"
"We can do all the structure work for them first," Qi Luo said. "So when they look over, what they see is: a ready-made immune-memory minor god, clean duties, clear liability borders, and some chains already running."
"If they're smart, they'll sign."
"And if they're not?" Sanya asked.
"Then they don't deserve it," Rosh said.
"Then this world's dumber than I hoped," Qi Luo chuckled. "But we'll start by assuming it's slightly smarter."
He lifted his hand and pulled a clean clause template from the air.
It was covenant paper he'd prepped specifically for the Nameless Firm—patched together from the blank backs of old covenant scraps, with nothing on the surface that hinted at the World Rollback.
He laid it flat on the desk and picked up his pen.
"Let's draft the 'Lihen Function Transfer and Immune Memory Agreement' first," Qi Luo said. "For now, it only binds you and us. When we're ready to deliver it to the healer-god's side, we'll hook it on."
Lihen watched, the gray-green in its eyes brightening a bit.
"And you?" it asked. "How do you write yourself into it?"
Qi Luo smiled, wrote across the top:
[Nameless Firm · temporary agent]
[Signatory: ——]
He stopped for a moment at the name line.
On the Chains, his name on the World Base-Covenant ledger was already marked "dead."
Writing it in meant certain systems would automatically ignore parts of him.
"Maybe that's good," he thought.
He set his pen down and wrote:
[Qi Luo (entry on the World Basic Covenant roster: cancelled).]
The page trembled as the words took.
The clause system registered it as a covenant signed by a "dead" mortal.
"A firm represented by a dead man," Lihen rasped, amused. "Fitting."
"Dead men are harder to write into someone else's contract," Qi Luo said.
He looked up at his first client.
"Then," he said quietly, "welcome to the Nameless Firm."
From today forward, he added silently, we take gods, not mortals.
The oil lamp on the desk flickered, shadows wavering.
In the hidden layer of clauses, a thin, brand-new chain sprouted from the edge of the circle, slowly stretching out to link the paper on the desk, Lihen's gray-green disease chain, and the hot Forbidden Sigil in Qi Luo's chest.
There were no words etched on it yet.
But it already had a name—
[Nameless Firm · Case One.]