The blood-red ink pulsed on Ruoxue’s palm, then receded as quickly as it had bloomed, leaving behind a faint, itching warmth. The brittle receipt crumpled into dust between her fingers. A small, sealed carton, slick and cool to the touch, materialized in its place. Instant noodles. Spicy Beef Flavor. The aroma, though contained behind foil, drifted rich and pungent, alien to the starving air of Mud-Brack Village. “Momo,” she whispered, her voice a thin thread against the distant din of shouting and splintering wood from her in-laws’ hovel. “What… what just happened?” Momo, perched on her shoulder, flicked his three tails, his obsidian eyes gleaming. “The house takes its toll, Ruoxue. A piece of you, for a piece of plenty. Your choices define the currency.” His tone was ancient, devoid of judgment. Ruoxue looked down at the sealed meal. Her stomach, empty since her transmigration, twisted with hunger and revulsion. This was food from *her* time, preserved without flaw. But the cost was a childhood scent of oven-baked bread. A small detail, perhaps, yet the loss left a barren pit where warmth belonged. “Lu Jianyu,” she murmured, the name a fragile prayer. He was her priority. The man who, despite his own disgrace and suffering, had buried her with his own hands, believing her dead. The knowledge that he was starving, perhaps injured, in their own freezing shack, spurred her. The single meal felt inadequate. She needed something more substantial. The militia’s shouts were fading, replaced by the wailing of her mother-in-law, Guan Xifeng, a sound like a banshee rending the night. Ruoxue ignored it, her focus entirely on her husband. She had placed the blueprints precisely for Guan Xifeng’s greed. Her empathy for their initial starvation was genuine, but her mercy had its limits. Guan Xifeng had orchestrated her burial. Some debts were not forgiven. “Momo, can I get something else? Something for him?” Her hand trembled, her kindness a vulnerability that the mystical space seemed to sense, to exploit. Momo tilted his head. “The counter opens by need. What do you possess, Ruoxue, that it might desire?” Her eyes swept the desolate landscape, settling on her own meager, dirt-stained clothes. Nothing. Then, a thought, cold and calculating, surfaced from the depths of her modern mind. This era, with its paranoia and political purges, also had its own strange treasures. Her past self, the museum curator, instinctively recognized value. Commended broadsheets, for example. Relics of a bygone ideology. She remembered a dusty corner of their shack, where a stack of outdated political posters, too tattered to be useful for communal display, had been shoved. Images of stern-faced laborers and blooming metal petals. Could the vault value cultural remnants from *this* era, even mundane ones, if they were antique to *her* original time? “Momo, wait here,” she commanded, clutching the packaged food. She slipped through the shadows, a wraith in the cold night, her destination the small, leaning shack she shared with Jianyu. The door creaked open, revealing a darkness thicker than the night outside, pierced only by the faint glow of dying embers in a brazier. The air was frigid, biting. “Jianyu?” she called softly, her voice catching in her throat. The shack was silent. A rustle from the straw mat in the corner. He was there. He always was. He emerged from the gloom, a gaunt shadow, his shoulders hunched, his usually sharp eyes dulled by hunger and exhaustion. A deep gash marred his left calf, swollen and weeping. “Ruoxue? You… you’re back.” His voice was raspy, laced with a relief that twisted her gut. He had thought her dead, buried. “I’m here,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt. “Are you hurt?” She moved towards him, seeing the dark, caked blood on his worn trousers. “Your leg…” He waved her off with a weary hand. “It’s nothing. Just a scrape from the fields.” But his grimace betrayed him. He noticed the carton in her hand, his brow lifting in bewildered hope. “What is that?” Ruoxue forced a smile. “I found it. A hidden cache, deep in the old forest path. No one else knows. Here, eat this.” She pressed the warm cup into his hand. “And I’ll go get something else. I saw… more.” It was a lie, but a necessary one. His suspicion was a barrier she couldn’t afford right now. Before he could question her, a harsh, guttural shriek tore through the night, closer now. “Lu Jianyu! You worthless piece of dung! Where is she?!” The door to their shack burst inward with a sickening crunch of splintering wood. Guan Xifeng stood framed against the freezing night, her face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. Her hair was disheveled, her clothes torn, but her eyes, usually narrowed with petty malice, now burned with a chilling, murderous rage. A glint of metal in her hand. A sickle, crudely sharpened, reflecting the faint moonlight. “Mother,” Jianyu began, stepping in front of Ruoxue, shielding her with his emaciated body. He was protecting her, even now, even from his own mother. The unconfessed love in his actions was a silent scream in the frigid air. Guan Xifeng ignored him, her gaze fixed on Ruoxue. “You demon! You brought the militia to our door! You stole our rations! You cursed hag!” Her voice was raw, laced with the stink of desperation and injustice. “I had to bribe Commander Bao with my father’s last silver coin to avoid the labor camps! For your treachery!” Ruoxue’s mind raced. Her empathy was warring with a cold calculation. Guan Xifeng was dangerous. Jianyu’s leg was infected. She needed help, and she needed it now. Without a word, she spun toward the stack of neglected campaign broadsheets in the corner. The vault was her only recourse. As her fingers brushed the brittle paper, the room dissolved into a swirling vortex of deep violet and starlight. The mud hut vanished, replaced by a cavernous antique storeroom. Ancient shelves towered in the gloom, laden with curiosities that glowed from within. Momo landed silently on her shoulder, his tails swishing. [Welcome, Soul-Bound Pawn. What do you offer?] The blood-red script materialized on a floating parchment before her. Ruoxue gripped the poster, a garish depiction of an Iron Blossom soldier crushing a serpent of ‘western decadence’. “Antibiotics,” she demanded, her voice echoing unnaturally in the vast space. “For an infected wound. Something strong.” [Appraising offering: One Iron Blossom Era Propaganda Poster (circa 18th year of the Iron Blossom Emperor). Aesthetic value: Low. Historical significance to future era: Moderate. Rarity: Common. Requested item: Pharmaceutical Grade Antibiotics (Oral, broad-spectrum). Transaction feasibility: High.] [Penalty: 2.0% Life Force & 0.5% Memory Fragment (Childhood memory of learning to ride a bicycle) Absorbed.] Ruoxue flinched. Learning to ride a bicycle—a small recollection, but fundamental, a piece of freedom. The ledger held no sympathy. An empty gray spot settled inside her mind where the scraped knees and sudden rush of wind had once been. “Accepted,” she bit out, her resolve hardening. Jianyu’s life was worth more than an afternoon on two wheels. A strip of white pills, sealed in modern foil, dropped into her hand. Before she could even test the foil's edge, the storeroom warped around her, the high shelves blurring and the violet hue receding. She reappeared in the freezing shack, the smell of dust and dying embers filling her nostrils. The room went dead silent save for ragged breath. Guan Xifeng, a banshee of rage, had raised the sickle high above her head. The crude blade glinted, aimed not at Ruoxue, but at Lu Jianyu’s vulnerable, unprotected head. He stood frozen, his face a mask of weary resignation, shielding Ruoxue to the last. Ruoxue moved. It wasn’t a conscious decision, more like a natural, unbidden flow of energy. She stepped forward, effortlessly, gracefully, placing herself directly in the path of the descending blade. For a split second, her eyes, usually a soft brown, turned obsidian, an oily gleam pooling along her skin as the dimensional vault's chilling authority bled into the starved reality of Mud-Brack Village.

The Bleeding Receipt