Chapter 1: Iron-Crimson
Northspire Haven had entered summer, yet it felt like the Plum Rain season—a relentless drizzle had poured for half a month. The sodden air hung heavy as the clinging rain welded clothes to skin, every thread a cold, sticky second layer. Or perhaps, the entire world had simply turned damp.

As the workday neared its end, the sky outside was a murky void. Even with windows open, the office’s stifling humidity refused to dissipate; instead, a few stray raindrops still managed to drift inside.

The air within the office weighed thicker than lead—partly from the weather, but mostly from the company itself.

The employees were hardly toiling for the boss’s profit. Instead, they clustered in twos and threes, chitchatting to kill time until clock-out.

“The boss hasn’t shown up today either. You think he’s bolted?” Linda, self-proclaimed senior white-collar, leaned against her cubicle with a coffee cup, her voice hushed yet sharp.

“No way! This office building’s under his name. He wouldn’t just abandon it!” Susan from the neighboring workstation huddled closer, skepticism dripping from her words.

Just then, the department manager strode in, head low, slamming a stack of documents onto the desk without looking up. “That old bastard sold off the building last month! Every penny on the company’s books is drained! This place is headed for collapse!”

“I knew it!” Linda’s voice turned shrill. “Something reeked of trouble! The boss ditched his pet project overnight—no way that was clean!”

Nearly half the floor had been drawn to the commotion. They began dissecting the conversation, unease rippling through the crowd like a toxin.

“The boss… actually ran?”
“Impossible! This is a publicly traded company!”
“Exactly! A listed firm can’t just crumble overnight! And there’s the board—he can’t bolt without consequences!”
“But have you seen any other execs lately? Or the directors—”
“…”
“…”

The questions hung midair, swallowed by the damp air and the hollow silence that followed， plunging the office into deathly silence.

But within moments, the stillness shattered into cacophony. People scrambled to pack their belongings—some even grabbed whatever company assets they could stuff into bags.

Soon, panic metastasized. The workspace devolved into the chaos of a flea market, clamorous and feverish.

Yet in jarring contrast, a lone intern sat by the window—Lin Feng, new and unnoticed. He leaned forward, cradling his head in his left hand, gazing serenely through the rain-streaked glass as if the world beyond still held peace.

Linda suddenly noticed the intern by the window. She set down her coffee and sighed, “Lin Feng, looks like You’ll be job-hunting again. But hey—good news! I’ve got industry contacts. We’ll land something together! Heh!”

Lin Feng turned to face her. His clean-cut, sunlit features seemed to glow against the gloom outside—a stark contrast to the leaden sky.

It was this face that had always made Linda soften, her self-important armor cracking just a little.

Yet beneath that sunlit, boyish charm, his expression remained detached—almost gloomy—as if numbly observing the chaos around him through a fog.

“So… will we get this month’s pay?”
“Uh…”
...

At clock-out, Lin Feng—unconcerned whether the company would exist tomorrow—simply shouldered his small bag and waded through the crowd scavenging like vultures. He slipped into the elevator lobby, descending straight to the first floor.

At the entrance, he retrieved his umbrella from the check-in counter, snapped it open, and stepped into the rain.

A dozen minutes later, the bus hissed to a halt at a stop wedged beside a narrow alley. Lin Feng didn’t bother with the umbrella. He simply darted into the passage.

This back alley served as the rear entrance to an aging residential complex. Squat, dilapidated buildings jammed shoulder-to-shoulder, squeezing the lane into a claustrophobically narrow slit. The pavement, pockmarked and uneven, had long been neglected by repairs.

Lin Feng stumbled into a puddle. The splash flung murky water upward, leaving twin splatters of mud streaking the walls like grotesque inkblots.

Wearing mesh sneakers on a rainy day was nothing short of a disaster. But to his misfortune, Lin Feng owned nothing else.

He squelched his way forward in the sodden shoes, sprinting toward a dry patch under the eaves. Behind him, a trail of waterlogged footprints seeped into the cracked concrete—fleeting markers of his passage through the decaying maze.

Even sheltered spots offered little reprieve from the damp. A clump of bluish-gray mold festered in one corner, its fuzzy tendrils creeping up the wall. Nearby, the trash bin stood crowned under a thick, mottled blanket of fungal growth—so dense it seemed almost alive.

Among the debris was a bag Lin Feng had tossed that morning, now buried under the seething mass. He wondered when the mold had crept in—perhaps the relentless rain had coaxed it from the shadows, turning neglect into a banquet.

The eaves offered only temporary shelter. Lin Feng gritted his teeth, picking his way through shallow puddles until he reached his apartment building—a crumbling relic in the old downtown complex.

As he tugged the rust-scabbed entry door, something caught his eye: mold festered around the hinges. Unlike the bluish-gray or sickly yellow-green patches elsewhere, this cluster pulsed with a crimson-tinged core, its hue straddling the line between oxidized iron and congealed blood.

Back in his apartment, he stripped off his soaked shoes and socks, showered briskly, then stretched out naked on the bed—rituals that did nothing to dispel his daily dose of numbness.

He hadn’t always been like this. The car crash that killed his parents had shattered more than bones—it bled him of emotions, of hope for any tomorrow. All that remained was this aging condo and a compensation payout just north of a million yuan, untouched in his bank account.

Justice, not compensation, was what he craved.

He got away with drunk driving and ultimately faced no punishment—just withdrew some spare change from his account to pay for two lives.
It wasn’t fair.
Lin Feng buried his head under a pillow, trying to escape into sleep.
But the blaring TV next door was broadcasting the weather forecast:
"Affected by the cold front from the north and the monsoon moisture from the southeastern sea, this widespread rainfall will persist nationwide. Northspire Haven will remain rainy for the next fifteen days."

Hearing this, Lin Feng instinctively sniffed the air—somehow, a strong musty odor had filled the room.
Just then, his phone suddenly rang. He picked it up and glanced at the screen, hesitating when he saw the caller’s name. He didn’t want to answer.

The caller was Maeve Chen, a high school classmate he’d barely kept in touch with after graduation. Yet after his parents died, she somehow got the news and started reaching out to him.
As it happened, they were both still in the same city.

Lin Feng's reluctance to answer the phone wasn't out of dislike - quite the opposite, he still treasured their shared high school memories.
He simply didn't know how to face Maeve Chen's well-meaning concern.
The phone kept buzzing insistently, and just as the call was about to end automatically, Lin Feng's finger finally hit the answer button.

"Hello~"
"Lin Feng! Huge discovery, HUGE discovery! Our lab just found something incredible—the so-called 'mold' spreading in Northspire Haven isn’t actually mold! It’s a mutated slime mold, it just looks like mold when it fruits!" Maeve Chen's lively, melodic voice burst through the receiver.

Only then did Lin Feng remember—Maeve had plunged into one of the "One of the ‘Four Academic Death Traps’ (biology)" of academia (biology) during college, even pursuing a master's in microbiology. Now, she was stuck in Northspire Haven University’s microbiology lab, sweating over her graduation thesis.

"Oh, is that so?" Lin Feng showed little interest in Maeve Chen's news.
"This means my thesis is saved! Haha!" Maeve's excitement practically bubbled through the phone. "To celebrate, I'm treating you to dinner and bubble tea!"
"Are you free this Saturday?"
Lin Feng considered it. He was supposed to work that Saturday, but it seemed he could skip it.
"Alright."

The next two days passed in a haze until their meeting day arrived.
Lin Feng made a half-hearted effort at dressing up, looking somewhat more presentable - though only superficially so.

As usual, he descended the stairs and pushed open the corroded unit door—only to have the pad of his right thumb sliced by a jagged rust edge, beads of blood welling up.
The cut was shallow, at least not deep enough to warrant a tetanus shot.
But that brief pause in the doorway drew Lin Feng's attention to something peculiar about the iron door.
The fungal growth that had colonized its surface now spread in dense, crimson tufts, its usual fuzzy appearance mutated into an unsettling blood-red hue.