Morning rush hour at Shibuya Crossing was a sprawling sea of black umbrellas and exhausted faces.
Hundreds of office workers, hospital nurses, and train conductors crossed the wide intersection with heavy, dragging footsteps. Under the giant electronic billboards, thousands of commuters moved in robotic silence, their shoulders hunched against the damp wind. The morning air smelled of wet asphalt, diesel exhaust, and cold concrete.
Along the subway exits, massive illuminated vending machines glowed with advertisements for the Kurokawa Zaibatsu’s flagship product: “Dark-Stamina Elixir.”
The small, black bottles cost fifty thousand yen each. The dark potion provided a sudden burst of synthetic adrenaline, but it secretly drained three days of mortal lifespan per dose. Millions of overworked citizens drank them daily just to survive sixteen-hour corporate shifts, trapped in an endless cycle of chemical addiction, organ failure, and physical decay.
Lin Mo stood on the open public plaza outside Shibuya Station, sipping warm tea from a paper cup.
Beside him, Master Lu Jian adjusted his yellow spirit-array hard-hat and tapped a massive bronze foundation stake into the pavement. Fifty Taichu array engineers worked with military precision, erecting an enormous, open-air dining pavilion in less than twenty minutes.
The structure was crafted from fragrant thousand-year cedar and topped with a glowing red-and-gold waterproof canopy. At the entrance stood a gleaming golden archway inscribed with ancient spirit-runes: The 80-Point Morality Doorway.
