Chapter 14: Chapter 14
~0.0k words · 2026-06-22
Wang Lei twisted the throttle, and the scooter launched forward, straight toward the edge of the chasm. The demon lunged—
And grabbed nothing but air.
Wang Lei had already tilted the handlebars back, pulling the front wheel up. The scooter cleared the demon's grasping claws by a hair's breadth, the wind from its swing rustling his jacket. He heard the creature roar behind him, felt the heat of its fury, but he didn't look back. He couldn't. Because the edge of the chasm was coming up fast, and he had exactly one chance to make this work.
He'd seen the videos. The insane ones on Douyin who did canyon jumps with dirt bikes. They always had a ramp, a running start, and a death wish. Wang Lei had none of those things. What he had was a scooter with 1% battery, a package weighed down by the soul of a dead emperor, and a stubborn refusal to die before completing his delivery.
The wheels left the stone.
For one glorious, terrifying second, Wang Lei was airborne. The scooter hung suspended over the chasm, the wind whipping past his face, the green light from below casting his shadow in twisted shapes against the canyon walls. He could see the bottom now—or rather, he could see the *suggestion* of a bottom. A pinpoint of sickly green light that pulsed like a heartbeat, impossibly far below.
Then gravity remembered him, and he began to fall.
"SHIT SHIT SHIT—"
The scooter plummeted, and Wang Lei felt his stomach try to escape through his throat. The wind screamed in his ears. The canyon walls blurred past him, streaked with veins of glowing crystal that pulsed in rhythm with the green light below. He gripped the handlebars so hard his knuckles went white, his mind racing through options that didn't exist.
He had no parachute. No glider. No magic. He was a delivery driver on an electric scooter, falling to what should have been his death in the heart of the Heavenly Court's most dangerous demon prison.
And then—of course—the scooter beeped.
BATTERY CRITICAL: 0%.
Wang Lei stared at the display. The battery had been at 1% for what felt like hours. He'd been running on fumes, on luck, on the sheer audacity of a man who'd survived Chengdu's rush hour for five years. And now, at the worst possible moment, the battery had finally given out.
The scooter's lights flickered. The motor whined, then died. And Wang Lei felt the machine beneath him become dead weight.
But then something strange happened.
The scooter didn't stop falling. It kept going, yes—but instead of tumbling end over end, it began to *glide*. The wheels, which had been spinning uselessly, now caught the air and started to rotate. The frame stabilized. The handlebars locked into position. And the scooter began to steer itself, angling toward the canyon wall, where veins of glowing crystal jutted out like ribs.
"What the—"
The scooter banked hard to the left, skimming past a crystal formation. Then it banked right, threading through a narrow gap between two stone pillars. Wang Lei held on for dear life, his legs clamped around the frame, his eyes wide with disbelief.
The scooter was flying.
No, not flying. *Gliding*. Like a paper airplane caught in a current. It danced through the canyon, weaving between obstacles that would have splattered him against the rock, riding currents of air that seemed to exist specifically for this purpose.
And Wang Lei suddenly understood.
The battery wasn't at 0%. It had been at 0% for the last three hours. The scooter had been running on something else entirely—something that had been with him since the moment he'd entered the Heavenly Court.
His *rating*.
He could feel it now, a strange warmth spreading through the handlebars, through the frame, through his own hands. It was the accumulated trust of five years of deliveries. The 99.7% on-time rating. The hundreds of grateful customers who'd given him five stars. The grandmothers who'd tipped him extra during Chinese New Year. The office workers who'd smiled when he handed them their bubble tea in the middle of a rainstorm.
All of that—every single interaction, every single package delivered, every single smile—had been building up something. A charge. A current. A power that had nothing to do with electricity.
The scooter was running on *karma*.
"Impossible," he breathed.
But the scooter hummed beneath him, and the hum was warm and alive, and Wang Lei realized that he was no longer falling.
He was *flying*.
The green light grew brighter as he descended, and he could see the bottom of the chasm now—a vast, circular chamber carved into the living rock. In its center stood a structure that made his heart skip a beat. It looked like a bank vault—an enormous, golden door set into a wall of black stone, covered in seals and sigils that glowed with a soft white light. The Vault of the First Emperor. The prison of Qin Shi Huang's soul.
And standing between him and that door was the demon.
It had landed at the bottom before him, its cracked stone skin scraping against the chamber floor as it rose to its full height. Ten feet of muscle and hate, its coal-burning eyes fixed on Wang Lei with murderous intensity. Black liquid dripped from its claws, hissing where it touched the stone.
"You jumped," the demon said, its voice like an earthquake. "You actually jumped."
Wang Lei brought the scooter down in a controlled landing, the wheels touching the stone with barely a sound. The karma-charge had carried him all the way down. He looked at the battery display.
Still 0%.
But the scooter felt *alive*. More alive than it had ever been.
"Delivery policy," Wang Lei said, swinging his leg off the scooter. "We don't let a little thing like gravity stop us."
The demon's eyes narrowed. "Little mortal, you don't understand what you've walked into. This place—" it gestured at the chamber around them, at the golden door behind it—"is not for you. The Emperor's soul is not a package. It's a *prisoner*."
Wang Lei pulled the package out of his bag. It was warm now, almost hot, and he could feel something moving inside it. A presence. A will. The soul of Qin Shi Huang, stirring in its confinement.
"Not my problem," he said. "I'm just here to deliver."
"Deliver it to whom?" The demon's lips curled back, revealing rows of jagged teeth. "There is no one here. No one but me and the Emperor. And I assure you, the Emperor is not accepting deliveries today."
Wang Lei hesitated. He hadn't thought that far ahead. The package was supposed to go to the bottom of the chasm. He'd assumed someone would be waiting for it. But the chamber was empty, save for the Vault's door and the demon barring the way.
"Then I'll leave it at the door," he said. "Signature not required."
"You'll do no such thing." The demon took a step forward, its claws scraping grooves into the stone floor. "Do you know what's in that package? Do you have any idea what you're carrying?"
"A soul," Wang Lei said.
"Yes. The soul of the First Emperor." The demon's voice dropped to something almost like a whisper. "The man who conquered the known world. Who unified China. Who built the Great Wall with the bones of a million laborers. And when he died, he didn't go to the afterlife. He was *trapped*. Sealed away by gods who feared what he might become."
Wang Lei looked at the package in his hands. It was heavier than it had been when he'd started. The weight of a tyrant's legacy, pressing down on his palms.
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.
"Because you need to understand what you're about to unleash." The demon pointed at the golden door with one massive claw. "Behind that door is the Vault. And at the bottom of the Vault is the Emperor's body—preserved by jade and mercury, waiting for his soul to return. If you open that door, if you deliver that package, you won't be making a delivery. You'll be starting a war."
Wang Lei's blood ran cold. He looked at the door, at the seals and sigils that covered it. They weren't just decoration. They were a prison. A cage designed to hold back something that the gods themselves feared.
But then he remembered his instructions. The words of the Jade Emperor, spoken with such casual authority. *Take this package to the bottom of the canyon where the Vault lies. The one waiting for it will know what to do.*
"The Jade Emperor sent me," Wang Lei said.
The demon's eyes widened. "What?"
"He said someone would be waiting for the package. Someone who'd know what to do with it."
For a long moment, the demon was silent. Then it began to laugh—a low, rumbling sound that grew into something like thunder. "Oh, he's clever. I'll give him that. The old bastard's clever."
"What are you talking about?"
The demon gestured at the chamber, at the Vault, at the package in Wang Lei's hands. "This is a test, little mortal. Can't you see it? The Jade Emperor didn't send you here to deliver a package. He sent you here to make a *choice*. And whatever choice you make, he wins."
Wang Lei frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."
"It makes perfect sense." The demon's coal-burning eyes fixed on him with unnerving intensity. "If you deliver the package, you release the Emperor—and the Emperor will be so grateful to the god who freed him that he'll pledge his allegiance to the Heavenly Court. If you don't deliver the package, you fail your mission—and the Emperor remains trapped, forever in the Jade Emperor's debt for trying to free him. Either way, the Jade Emperor gains power. Either way, he wins."
Wang Lei stared at the demon. Then he looked at the package. Then he looked at the Vault door, with its layers of seals and sigils.
"What if I just leave?" he asked.
"Then the Emperor remains trapped, and the Jade Emperor's plan fails. But you'll be a failed courier, marked as a disgrace in the Heavenly Court. Your rating will drop. Your scooter will lose its power." The demon's grin widened. "You'll be mortal again, in every sense of the word."
Wang Lei's hands tightened around the package. He could feel the soul inside it, pulsing like a heartbeat. Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor, waiting to be freed.
He thought about his 99.7% rating. He thought about the years of deliveries, the smiles, the tips, the gratitude. He thought about the karma that had powered his scooter through this canyon, carrying him safely to the bottom.
And then he thought about what the demon had said. *A test. A choice. Either way, he wins.*
"I don't like being played," Wang Lei said quietly.
The demon's eyes narrowed. "What?"
Wang Lei looked up at the creature, and for the first time since he'd entered the chasm, he smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"The Jade Emperor sent me to deliver this package. But he didn't say what would happen after I delivered it. He didn't say who would receive it. He just said someone would be waiting."
He took a step toward the Vault door. The demon tensed, its claws rising.
"Stop," it growled.
Wang Lei kept walking. "You're blocking the path. You want to stop me from delivering. But the Jade Emperor knew you'd be here. He knew you'd try to stop me." He stopped a few feet from the door, close enough to see the sigils pulsing with white light. "Which means you're part of the test too."
The demon's expression flickered. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Wang Lei
And grabbed nothing but air.
Wang Lei had already tilted the handlebars back, pulling the front wheel up. The scooter cleared the demon's grasping claws by a hair's breadth, the wind from its swing rustling his jacket. He heard the creature roar behind him, felt the heat of its fury, but he didn't look back. He couldn't. Because the edge of the chasm was coming up fast, and he had exactly one chance to make this work.
He'd seen the videos. The insane ones on Douyin who did canyon jumps with dirt bikes. They always had a ramp, a running start, and a death wish. Wang Lei had none of those things. What he had was a scooter with 1% battery, a package weighed down by the soul of a dead emperor, and a stubborn refusal to die before completing his delivery.
The wheels left the stone.
For one glorious, terrifying second, Wang Lei was airborne. The scooter hung suspended over the chasm, the wind whipping past his face, the green light from below casting his shadow in twisted shapes against the canyon walls. He could see the bottom now—or rather, he could see the *suggestion* of a bottom. A pinpoint of sickly green light that pulsed like a heartbeat, impossibly far below.
Then gravity remembered him, and he began to fall.
"SHIT SHIT SHIT—"
The scooter plummeted, and Wang Lei felt his stomach try to escape through his throat. The wind screamed in his ears. The canyon walls blurred past him, streaked with veins of glowing crystal that pulsed in rhythm with the green light below. He gripped the handlebars so hard his knuckles went white, his mind racing through options that didn't exist.
He had no parachute. No glider. No magic. He was a delivery driver on an electric scooter, falling to what should have been his death in the heart of the Heavenly Court's most dangerous demon prison.
And then—of course—the scooter beeped.
BATTERY CRITICAL: 0%.
Wang Lei stared at the display. The battery had been at 1% for what felt like hours. He'd been running on fumes, on luck, on the sheer audacity of a man who'd survived Chengdu's rush hour for five years. And now, at the worst possible moment, the battery had finally given out.
The scooter's lights flickered. The motor whined, then died. And Wang Lei felt the machine beneath him become dead weight.
But then something strange happened.
The scooter didn't stop falling. It kept going, yes—but instead of tumbling end over end, it began to *glide*. The wheels, which had been spinning uselessly, now caught the air and started to rotate. The frame stabilized. The handlebars locked into position. And the scooter began to steer itself, angling toward the canyon wall, where veins of glowing crystal jutted out like ribs.
"What the—"
The scooter banked hard to the left, skimming past a crystal formation. Then it banked right, threading through a narrow gap between two stone pillars. Wang Lei held on for dear life, his legs clamped around the frame, his eyes wide with disbelief.
The scooter was flying.
No, not flying. *Gliding*. Like a paper airplane caught in a current. It danced through the canyon, weaving between obstacles that would have splattered him against the rock, riding currents of air that seemed to exist specifically for this purpose.
And Wang Lei suddenly understood.
The battery wasn't at 0%. It had been at 0% for the last three hours. The scooter had been running on something else entirely—something that had been with him since the moment he'd entered the Heavenly Court.
His *rating*.
He could feel it now, a strange warmth spreading through the handlebars, through the frame, through his own hands. It was the accumulated trust of five years of deliveries. The 99.7% on-time rating. The hundreds of grateful customers who'd given him five stars. The grandmothers who'd tipped him extra during Chinese New Year. The office workers who'd smiled when he handed them their bubble tea in the middle of a rainstorm.
All of that—every single interaction, every single package delivered, every single smile—had been building up something. A charge. A current. A power that had nothing to do with electricity.
The scooter was running on *karma*.
"Impossible," he breathed.
But the scooter hummed beneath him, and the hum was warm and alive, and Wang Lei realized that he was no longer falling.
He was *flying*.
The green light grew brighter as he descended, and he could see the bottom of the chasm now—a vast, circular chamber carved into the living rock. In its center stood a structure that made his heart skip a beat. It looked like a bank vault—an enormous, golden door set into a wall of black stone, covered in seals and sigils that glowed with a soft white light. The Vault of the First Emperor. The prison of Qin Shi Huang's soul.
And standing between him and that door was the demon.
It had landed at the bottom before him, its cracked stone skin scraping against the chamber floor as it rose to its full height. Ten feet of muscle and hate, its coal-burning eyes fixed on Wang Lei with murderous intensity. Black liquid dripped from its claws, hissing where it touched the stone.
"You jumped," the demon said, its voice like an earthquake. "You actually jumped."
Wang Lei brought the scooter down in a controlled landing, the wheels touching the stone with barely a sound. The karma-charge had carried him all the way down. He looked at the battery display.
Still 0%.
But the scooter felt *alive*. More alive than it had ever been.
"Delivery policy," Wang Lei said, swinging his leg off the scooter. "We don't let a little thing like gravity stop us."
The demon's eyes narrowed. "Little mortal, you don't understand what you've walked into. This place—" it gestured at the chamber around them, at the golden door behind it—"is not for you. The Emperor's soul is not a package. It's a *prisoner*."
Wang Lei pulled the package out of his bag. It was warm now, almost hot, and he could feel something moving inside it. A presence. A will. The soul of Qin Shi Huang, stirring in its confinement.
"Not my problem," he said. "I'm just here to deliver."
"Deliver it to whom?" The demon's lips curled back, revealing rows of jagged teeth. "There is no one here. No one but me and the Emperor. And I assure you, the Emperor is not accepting deliveries today."
Wang Lei hesitated. He hadn't thought that far ahead. The package was supposed to go to the bottom of the chasm. He'd assumed someone would be waiting for it. But the chamber was empty, save for the Vault's door and the demon barring the way.
"Then I'll leave it at the door," he said. "Signature not required."
"You'll do no such thing." The demon took a step forward, its claws scraping grooves into the stone floor. "Do you know what's in that package? Do you have any idea what you're carrying?"
"A soul," Wang Lei said.
"Yes. The soul of the First Emperor." The demon's voice dropped to something almost like a whisper. "The man who conquered the known world. Who unified China. Who built the Great Wall with the bones of a million laborers. And when he died, he didn't go to the afterlife. He was *trapped*. Sealed away by gods who feared what he might become."
Wang Lei looked at the package in his hands. It was heavier than it had been when he'd started. The weight of a tyrant's legacy, pressing down on his palms.
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.
"Because you need to understand what you're about to unleash." The demon pointed at the golden door with one massive claw. "Behind that door is the Vault. And at the bottom of the Vault is the Emperor's body—preserved by jade and mercury, waiting for his soul to return. If you open that door, if you deliver that package, you won't be making a delivery. You'll be starting a war."
Wang Lei's blood ran cold. He looked at the door, at the seals and sigils that covered it. They weren't just decoration. They were a prison. A cage designed to hold back something that the gods themselves feared.
But then he remembered his instructions. The words of the Jade Emperor, spoken with such casual authority. *Take this package to the bottom of the canyon where the Vault lies. The one waiting for it will know what to do.*
"The Jade Emperor sent me," Wang Lei said.
The demon's eyes widened. "What?"
"He said someone would be waiting for the package. Someone who'd know what to do with it."
For a long moment, the demon was silent. Then it began to laugh—a low, rumbling sound that grew into something like thunder. "Oh, he's clever. I'll give him that. The old bastard's clever."
"What are you talking about?"
The demon gestured at the chamber, at the Vault, at the package in Wang Lei's hands. "This is a test, little mortal. Can't you see it? The Jade Emperor didn't send you here to deliver a package. He sent you here to make a *choice*. And whatever choice you make, he wins."
Wang Lei frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."
"It makes perfect sense." The demon's coal-burning eyes fixed on him with unnerving intensity. "If you deliver the package, you release the Emperor—and the Emperor will be so grateful to the god who freed him that he'll pledge his allegiance to the Heavenly Court. If you don't deliver the package, you fail your mission—and the Emperor remains trapped, forever in the Jade Emperor's debt for trying to free him. Either way, the Jade Emperor gains power. Either way, he wins."
Wang Lei stared at the demon. Then he looked at the package. Then he looked at the Vault door, with its layers of seals and sigils.
"What if I just leave?" he asked.
"Then the Emperor remains trapped, and the Jade Emperor's plan fails. But you'll be a failed courier, marked as a disgrace in the Heavenly Court. Your rating will drop. Your scooter will lose its power." The demon's grin widened. "You'll be mortal again, in every sense of the word."
Wang Lei's hands tightened around the package. He could feel the soul inside it, pulsing like a heartbeat. Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor, waiting to be freed.
He thought about his 99.7% rating. He thought about the years of deliveries, the smiles, the tips, the gratitude. He thought about the karma that had powered his scooter through this canyon, carrying him safely to the bottom.
And then he thought about what the demon had said. *A test. A choice. Either way, he wins.*
"I don't like being played," Wang Lei said quietly.
The demon's eyes narrowed. "What?"
Wang Lei looked up at the creature, and for the first time since he'd entered the chasm, he smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"The Jade Emperor sent me to deliver this package. But he didn't say what would happen after I delivered it. He didn't say who would receive it. He just said someone would be waiting."
He took a step toward the Vault door. The demon tensed, its claws rising.
"Stop," it growled.
Wang Lei kept walking. "You're blocking the path. You want to stop me from delivering. But the Jade Emperor knew you'd be here. He knew you'd try to stop me." He stopped a few feet from the door, close enough to see the sigils pulsing with white light. "Which means you're part of the test too."
The demon's expression flickered. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Wang Lei