Chapter Four: The Toad That Ate Money

The real creature lay inside Lu Chen's loose uniform, heavy enough to bend him at the waist. They hid it in the abandoned lounge beside the mist deer. Lu Chen refused to feed it stolen cash. Instead, he gave the drive to the police financial-crimes unit. Each time another account was frozen, dark rust fell from the toad's back. When the last illegal transfer was recovered that night, it coughed up seven grains of blue-silver sand. “Star sand,” Su said, sealing it in glass. “Sediment from a spatial fold. Licensed laboratories pay many times the price of gold.” Lu Chen offered the toad a pact: it would help expose unjust wealth, and half the lawful star-sand proceeds would fund an anomalous-animal shelter; the other half would become its food