In the days after Plague Night, Rust Street was, for once, "quiet."
It wasn't that no one was coughing. It wasn't that no one died.
It was that the coughing and the dead had finally fallen back into a "bearable range"—
And for the lower city, "bearable" meant: it wasn't half the street gone all at once.
The city that had almost been burned out by a contingency felt like it had been dragged back from the cliff by brute force.
Its clothes were torn, face smeared with ash—barely, technically, alive.
As long as people were alive, they needed something to talk about.
"Did you hear? That night the temple was going to burn the city, and some kid from Rust Street ran up there with a stack of papers and forced a god to sign."
"Yeah, sure. Stuff like that only happens in storybooks."
"My cousin works by the square. He saw it himself! The pages that kid was holding lit up, and the god's hand pressed right on them."
"...What was that kid's name again?"
"Think it was… Qi Luo."
For the first time, that name spread in one piece around the tea stalls and under the booze awnings.
Rumors on Rust Street were never reliable—three parts truth, seven parts pure nonsense.
But "that night the city almost burned" and "a god signed in front of everyone" were too big to dismiss. Even the little chapel priests didn't dare just say, "Blasphemy, nonsense," and wave it off.
Because they'd been there too.
And the chapel's prayers quietly shifted, just a little.
The lower city's evening liturgy used to be simple—
First recite a few big names from the main pantheon, then casually tack on a handful of local spirits, road-guard gods, the Drip-God of the Pipes, and so on, asking:
"Please bless us with customers today."
"Please don't let the patrol Chains catch the illegal shack I threw up."
After the plague, people started sneaking an extra word or two into that chain of names.
"...Please let the illness withdraw, tell the little disease-reminder god Lihen to stop messing with us."
"Please, Healer-God, look in on us a little more, don't let the kid's fever burn too hard."
"And… also ask that contract-smith—that little Luo-kid from Rust Street—to help us look over our clauses."
The ones praying weren't even sure if those lines did anything. Sometimes they'd finish and laugh at themselves, like they were laughing at their own superstition.
But the prayer itself would be recorded by the Chains.
Every night, the tiny prayer Chains in the chapel ceiling would stretch themselves once, sorting that big heap of whispered "please, please, please":
All the money-asks went in one pile, all the health-asks in another, and the ones where people cursed the gods under their breath got tagged "resentment pool."
These days, a new tag appeared.
[Unknown object: Qi Luo · contract-smith?]
The prayer Chains didn't know where to file that name.
He wasn't any registered minor god, nor on any main pantheon list.
By rights, a mortal's name wasn't supposed to appear under "prayer targets" at all.
But the believers had spoken in the "pray-to-so-and-so" format, and the parsing system was too used to that pattern—so it reflexively nudged "Qi Luo" into the "invoked recipient" field.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
…
In a matter of days, chapels around Rust Street, black-market shrines, and even certain makeshift prayer corners someone had thrown up in secret all started echoing similar petitions.
"...If that contract-smith can hear this, please help lighten my wife's debt covenant."
"Qi Luo, you're the one who dares bargain with gods, right? Curse them out once on my behalf."
"So-and-so said you've already died once on the Chains and the gods can't grab you. If we say it to you, you can carry it upward for us, yeah?"
Qi Luo, obviously, had not opened any "prayer reception service."
The Chains didn't care.
All the prayer Chains knew was: mortals were murmuring a name with expectation, helplessness, and even a little… trust.
In the Chain-world, the node for "Qi Luo" was supposed to be dark—
Death on the mortal registry, Basic Covenant shrouded in black mist. Strictly speaking, even locating it should have been hard.
Now, next to the layer where the lower-city prayers were being logged, that node glimmered, just a touch.
Not bright.
Just a few match-flames pricking a sheet of black cloth.
But for certain beings in the upper tiers—those who'd never taken their eyes off the Base Chains—that was bright enough to sting.
——Covenant Council, high chamber.
The stone walls were carved with a simplified version of the World Base-Covenant. Those lines usually just sat there as decoration. Today they'd been truly invoked, every stroke glowing.
Several high-seated figures in gray robes stood around a floating Covenant page, all eyes locked on one unremarkable dot.
Beside that dot were two characters:
[Qi Luo]
Further along was a string of notes:
[Basic record: Rust Street resident · formerly registered apprentice of the Covenant Department.]
[Status: died in transit under escort (reported).]
[Aftermath: remains returned to Rust Street.]
They themselves had signed that accident report not long ago.
By all rights, the name should have completely dimmed afterward—maybe flicker once in a while in Rust Street mortality statistics, at most.
Now, in a sector that should have had nothing to do with him, a new line had appeared:
[Anomaly: prayer-chain parsing shows repeated mentions of "Qi Luo," "contract-smith," "that little Luo who fixes my covenants," etc.]
[Label: suspected symbolic sprout at the rule-layer.]
"What is this?" someone frowned. "Mortals spinning their own fairy tales?"
"The stories don't matter. The process does."
The eldest of the high seats tapped the "prayer-chain anomaly," tone calm. "Watch this parsing section."
His fingers brushed the suspended page.
The Chain-view magnified—
Hair-fine prayer Chains extended from Rust Street, the mid-levels, even a few tiny halls in the poorer corners of the upper city, each hung with various prayers at the tips.
[Please, god, bless…]
[Please, don't let so-and-so die…]
[Please, contract-smith, help me flip through that loan covenant…]
The parser lumped "contract-smith" and "Qi Luo" and the rest into one temporary node:
[In mortal perception: symbol of a 'watcher of clauses.']
"What's your point?" a younger high seat said impatiently. "Mortals flap their tongues. Today they praise this one, tomorrow they praise that one. We're supposed to care?"
"Normally, no." the elder said. "Because most of the time, the target they 'rename' already has a slot in the system. However they rebrand it, they're still praying to the same minor god or major god."
He paused, tapping lightly on the word [symbol].
"This time's different."
"'Qi Luo' is marked dead on the mortal registry," he went on slowly. "He has no seat on the god-level rolls. He doesn't exist in the minor-god registry."
"And yet, his name has started to show in the column for the 'Rules Layer.'"
"Rules Layer?" the younger one snorted. "You mean the mortal-contracts sector?"
"Half a step above mortal contracts," the elder corrected. "The 'concept-symbol' zone."
He called up another, older record.
An archive scroll appeared—rarely opened, brief, but dense:
[If a name repeatedly appears in prayer Chains, spontaneous narratives, and collective agreements, and mortals consciously or unconsciously regard it as the representative of some function, domain, or rule, that name has a chance to form a 'symbol-node' in the Rules Layer.]
[Ongoing accumulation at a symbol-node may lead to 'systemization'—i.e., the World Base-Covenant may connect it as vessel for new godhead, new office, or new authority.]
"In simple terms," the elder looked up, "a 'concept' that hasn't been officially consecrated yet."
"You're saying this 'Qi Luo' name is blurring toward 'god of clauses' or something?" another half-laughed. "You're giving him too much credit."
"Not yet," the elder admitted. "But the trend is there."
He pointed again at the string labeled "prayer-chain anomaly."
"Mortals have started using his name in prayers as a stand-in for 'contract-smith,' 'clause-watcher.'" he analyzed coolly. "Meaning—in their minds, the question 'who in the clauses stands on our side' now has a human answer."
"The prayer Chains are recording that recognition. The Rules Layer parser is trying to hook it somewhere and failing, so it set up a temporary node instead."
"In other words," he concluded, "the system acknowledges that such a 'concept' is being formed."
"Just a runt who got lucky on Plague Night," the young one sneered. "That's all."
"Lucky?" someone else gave a thin laugh. "Did you miss the post-analysis on the Catastrophe Contingency? The Base-Covenant's internal notes already say it—'mortal interference caused contingency cooldown.'"
He called up another block of text.
[Great Plague Contingency · Supplemental Execution Record: During one execution, detected clause interference from a mortal, resulting in contingency entering cooldown and revision state. Interference was not prevented and has been recorded as one instance of 'possible procedural self-correction.']
[Note: interferer bears a World Rollback Covenant key-mark.]
The chamber went quiet.
"Key-mark," someone murmured. "We used to treat that as a 'danger flag' someone forgot to clear. Now look—Rules Layer's started giving him flattering titles."
"'Contract-smith,'" the younger high seat spat the word like it tasted bad. "Talk about self-aggrandizing."
"The word isn't the issue," the elder said. "The issue is—once the Rules Layer accepts that 'mortals can be representatives of covenants,' the next time the Base-Covenant scans for 'delegation candidates,' this kind of symbol might get pulled in."
"Pulled in where?" someone asked.
"For example—have him stand in for some old god," the elder said slowly. "Or make him a 'human interface' for a segment of the clauses."
"That is… unacceptable for the structure of godhood."
"Put bluntly," another high seat said, "we can tolerate a mortal who's good at contracts. We cannot tolerate a 'mortal-grade god of contracts.'"
"Especially when that mortal's carrying the Rollback key-mark," someone added.
For once, the Council was perfectly aligned.
"So," the younger one tapped the table, "we have two options."
"One, we pull him into a position we can see, grant him some minor office under a main god, fold him into the system—make that 'symbol' work obediently for some higher seat."
"Two, we erase his name from the Rules Layer entirely."
Silence stretched.
On paper, the first sounded like the safest "co-opt and tame."
Anyone with a functioning brain knew it wasn't realistic.
Who would dare register someone with the Rollback Key as their subordinate god?
When the World Recovery Contingency actually fired one day, the god whose crest he bore might as well move a powder keg into their own doorway.
"We're neither qualified nor foolish enough to grant him formal godhood," the elder said frankly. "Doing that is admitting one thing—that mortals have the right to occupy a slot in the clause structure."
"Then the second it is," the young high seat spread his hands. "Tear that name off the Chains."
"Killing the man is easy," someone frowned. "Deleting the name… you know how old a forbidden art that is?"
"Exactly why it fits the current target." the elder replied.
He reached under the table and drew out a Covenant scroll sealed in black wax.
The seal bore the Council's private stamp—not a public document, but an internal secret clause.
[Internal directive: regarding mortal Qi Luo, bearer of the Key of the World Rollback Covenant, hereby authorizing the Hunter system, when necessary, to execute 'Name-Erasure.']
[Execution note: not mere physical elimination, but synchronized erasure of his name from Basic Covenant, mortal covenants, prayer Chains, and all levels of record, so that he no longer exists as a 'symbol-node.']
[Risk warning: this act will touch the edge of the Rollback key-mark and may cause localized Chain backlash; executor must possess sufficient resistance and exemption clauses.]
[Execution authority: Hunter Ruan Ji is designated sole candidate to carry out this directive.]
As that last line burned itself into the Covenant, several high seats looked up.
"Ruan Ji?" someone lifted a brow. "You're sure?"
"She has sufficient contact with the target, knows his habits and Chain structure," the elder said. "More importantly—her record in the Hunter system is relatively clean, not weighed down by too many dirty clauses. When the rollback key-mark bites back, her Base structure will be easier to preserve."
"Besides," another said mildly, "she already handles verification of the 'fake death case.' On paper this is easy to phrase—just an 'extended execution.'"
The younger one chuckled. "True enough. Having someone who's crossed swords with him a few times… delete his name personally—that has a nice, ironic edge."
No one echoed the joke.
The elder pressed the scroll flat and set his hand on the black seal.
The wax cracked. A hair-thin black Chain seeped out, slipped along the chamber's sigils, and arrowed toward the Hunters' outpost.
[Secret Execution Order · No. S-17]
[Directive: Name-Erasure.]
[Recipient: Ruan Ji.]
——Hunters' outpost, Chain room.
It was quiet enough that the only sound was the faint rasp of Chains against one another.
Ruan Ji stood before a floating Covenant pane, having just finished assigning follow-up plague-investigation tasks to several junior Hunters and kicked them all out.
Door shut.
Lamplight dimmed.
She raised a hand, unhooked the clasp at her cloak's hem, and let the restraints on her shoulders loosen a little—after that wind-tower stunt last night, her shoulder still tingled.
"...Another order," the intake stone outside the Chain room chimed.
A black, shining Chain slipped through the wall and looped quietly into the air.
Ruan Ji caught it.
The loop unfurled in her palm, showing its Covenant text.
No long preamble, no polite fluff—just a few clean lines:
[Internal directive · S-17]
[Target: Qi Luo.]
[Order: Council assessment shows his name is forming a 'contract-smith' symbol-node at the Rules Layer, and his person is bound to the World Rollback Covenant key-mark, posing uncontrollable risk.]
[Authorization: grant Hunter Ruan Ji authority to execute 'Name-Erasure'; when deemed necessary, in addition to eliminating his body, simultaneously sever all bindings between his name and Covenant Chains at all levels.]
[Note: this directive will not be publicly registered; execution result will be filed only with the internal review group.]
Not many words. Every one of them was heavy.
Ruan Ji finished reading and let her fingertip rest on the four characters for "Name-Erasure."
She wasn't naive. She'd heard the term before.
——The old method the War-God Council had used to handle things whose names "could not be allowed to remain."
You didn't just kill the person. You cut out his place in every Covenant.
"Name-Erasure—one stroke, and Qi Luo's not just dead," she translated silently. "He'll be as if he'd never been written into the clauses at all."
That little glow for "Qi Luo" in the symbol column would be smoothed flat.
"So that's it… you're afraid he'll become a god?" she sneered inwardly at the gray robes.
She wasn't a theologian, but she could read "symbol-node." She knew that once a mortal got hung in the same mental slot by enough prayers and stories, the system was forced to give that slot a name.
Lately, Qi Luo's name had been flickering there far too often.
"Qi Luo," she murmured.
The name turned once on her tongue and was pushed down.
She linked the black Chain to her own Hunter-system port.
[Accept secret directive S-17?]
The line popped up, cold.
After a silent moment, she wrote:
[Accept.]
The black Chain shivered and slipped into her sleeve like a snake, winding itself into her already-heavy permission Chains.
[Hunter Ruan Ji: new authority—localized Name-Erasure execution.]
[Limit: target restricted to Qi Luo alone; execution will trigger edge reaction from World Rollback key-mark, prepare shock-resistance clauses in advance.]
[If execution succeeds, executor will also bear part of the responsibility for 'mortal interference with Rollback,' to be recorded in file.]
Her fingers twitched at that last line.
The Council never handed anyone a sharper blade without carving "risk" along the edge.
You took the knife, you took the price written on it.
"...You picked your person well," she said softly.
She drew her hand back. In her Chain-sight, the black thread hung in one corner like an extra shadow.
She raised her head and looked at the overview pane.
A layer of the Base-Covenant had been enlarged—Rust Street.
The name "Qi Luo" still glimmered faintly beside the lower-city prayers.
Not divine light—just the shine that came from mortal mouths and hearts rubbing at it, over and over.
"Contract-smith… Qi Luo…"
"That kid from Rust Street…"
"Help me, please…"
Mortal voices, shattered and stacked together, braided into a thin line wrapped around that node.
From a Hunter's vantage, the line was laughably thin.
From the Rules' vantage, if it kept winding, sooner or later it would sprout something.
Ruan Ji shut her eyes briefly.
In the Hunter system she pulled up an old personal protocol and pinned it beside her own name—a simple self-defense clause: when carrying out missions with possible backlash, the World Base-Covenant must not casually wipe her out along with the target.
She rarely wrote herself such "coward's clauses." Today she made an exception.
Only after that did she leave the Chain room.
Outside, a second round of thin fog had already fallen.
Beyond the Hunters' outpost, from time to time she could still hear laughter and coughing from the lower city—after a plague, people who had work to do still had to work.
Ruan Ji stood on the steps, hands behind her back, looking toward Rust Street.
A small patch of black hung there, wedged between the city lights and the mist.
"What are you doing?" she asked the direction where Qi Luo was, silently. "Digging through old Covenants in that broken-down Firm of yours?"
"Do you have any idea," she whispered, "what your name has started to become to people?"
The Hunter-chains at her wrist warmed.
The new black thread lay among them, like a nail that hadn't yet been pulled.
[Name-Erasure authority: armed and ready.]
"Rules-layer symbols…" she pressed her lips together.
"Contract-smith."
She thought of his back on the Temple Square, holding those pages up. Of him, on Plague Night, sprinting under gray-green Chains. Of his eyes the first time he'd dug a pit in the clauses in class—too bright by half.
——She had received the order.
——She had the right, at some moment, to rip that name off the world's paper.
Maybe at the height of his pride. Maybe the day he thought he'd finally written "basic rights for mortals" into some grand Covenant.
"Qi Luo," Ruan Ji called very softly into the night wind.
The black mist parted in front of her, then closed again.
The Covenant Chain leading toward Rust Street stretched away into the distance, thin as a drawn wire.
She knew that sooner or later, she would have to walk down that wire.
Walk to the door of that underground Firm with no signboard. Lift her hand—not to knock, but to carve the name on the wall behind it off every clause in existence, in one clean stroke.
That day hadn't come yet.
But by the end of this chapter, the black Chain was already wrapped around her wrist.
The secret Name-Erasure order had been quietly hung in a corner of the world.