The new rule spread like a fungal root.

No one saw it arrive. No scrolls declared it. No notifications pinged.

But everyone felt it.

[NEGATIVE ZERO: Intervention Condition Registered]

It didn’t come with documentation. Only a string of suppression alerts, fragmenting across high-tier auction protocols:

“This instance cannot be contained.”
“This instance cannot be bid upon.”
“If this instance enters an auction thread, the auction will become invalid.”

“DO NOT ALLOW ENTRY.”

But that only mattered in theory.

Because Jiyon didn’t request entry anymore.

He just walked in.

The first time he intervened, it was a minor relic trade in Seocho: two moderators and a divine-licensed soul vendor haggling over a Class V karma spike. Not explosive. Not strategic. Just a useful shard — enough to turn a third-tier bidder into something marginally dangerous.

Jiyon entered halfway through the negotiation.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t interrupt.

He just stood near the mirrored wall.

The bidding thread flickered.

The artefact hovered.

Then stopped.

The bidders looked confused.

Their gloves no longer responded. The relic stopped glowing.

One of them squinted.

“…Who’s that?”

The moderator reached for his comm.

Then stopped.

Because the scroll now read:

“You are attempting to bid in a contaminated thread.”

“Listing nullified by active Negative Zero presence.”

“Continue and risk recursive loop injection.”

The auction collapsed one second later.

The karma spike shattered mid-air.

And Jiyon walked out, hands in his pockets, as if he’d never been there.

That was just the start.

Within three days, rumours rippled:

• A divine blood-bond bid in Daejeon failed when the listing spontaneously turned to salt.

• A corruption cleanse in Busan devolved into a four-hour memory spiral after a dark-haired figure stepped through the glyph wall without breaking it.

• A Tier IV rebirth token in Ulsan combusted before the opening offer — and no one ever saw who walked past the terminal, only that he cast no reflection.

Each time:

No scroll opened.
No command given.
No force used.

Just presence.

And presence was enough.

The system couldn’t keep up.

It couldn’t stop him. Couldn’t track him. Couldn’t even tell which direction he’d come from. Because Jiyon didn’t enter through doors or scrolls. He entered from contradictions.

And contradictions were everywhere now.

In a sealed conference hall buried below the system’s oldest auction anchor, Kang-ho watched four moderators argue over how to quarantine an undefined presence.

“He’s not hostile,” one said. “There’s no aggression signature.”

“Because aggression would make him legible,” another snapped. “This isn’t resistance. It’s corruption.”

A third leaned forward.

“What if we… authorise him?”

The table went still.

“You mean… list him willingly?”

“No,” Kang-ho said softly. “You can't list him. You can only obey the rule.”

NEGATIVE ZERO: Not Biddable. Not Killable. Not Forgettable.

“So what do we do?” one asked.

Kang-ho didn’t answer.

Because at that moment, every screen in the room blinked — just once — as a single unauthorised ping echoed across their closed-system displays.

A phrase appeared.

Not spoken.
Not typed.

Injected.

“Don’t worry. I’m not crashing your system.”

“I’m just reminding it what it used to forget.”

And as the moderators reeled, one of them looked up at the mirrored observation pane and whispered:

“…He’s inside already.”

Across Seoul, in a quiet basement temple rigged with an illegal divine thread, Na Rina received a transmission too slow for system interception.

No image.

Just a voice.

Jiyon’s.

“They can’t list me anymore.”
“They can’t auction me. They can’t rewrite me. They can’t even agree on what I am.”
“So I’m going to walk into every auction they hold — and leave the door open behind me.”

“Let’s see what follows.”

And then silence.

Except for the mirror.

Which, for the first time in weeks, showed no reflection at all.