Li Xiaoming, an ordinary screenwriter at a well-known animation film company, spends his days in front of a computer screen, racking his brains to write all sorts of bizarre plots. Originally, his dream was to become an animation master like Hayao Miyazaki, creating works that touched people's hearts. However, the reality is that he is busy every day with various projects like "IP adaptation" and "traffic first," and has long forgotten his original dream.

Until the movie called Ne Zha was released.

Li Ming felt like an ant trapped in a giant gear. Every morning at 7:30 am sharp, he would wake up, squeeze onto the crowded subway, and then begin his unchanging workday. His job was to review the answers of the artificial intelligence, DeepSeek, ensuring they aligned with the company's values. Li Ming always found this work a bit absurd—having a human review an AI’s answers was like having an elementary school student grade a university professor's thesis, but this was what he needed to do.

The "Spring-Dodging Agency" opened a storefront at the end of the old street, the entrance so narrow it looked like a crack squeezed between two buildings. The sign was handwritten, the characters crooked and twisted, like the "ancestral secret recipes" found in old, neglected neighborhoods.

As the Spring Festival approached, the sound of firecrackers grew louder, seemingly about to shake the city. But inside the agency, it was eerily quiet. Old Liu sat behind the counter, slowly sharpening his kitchen knife, which was rumored to "dodge all disasters." He wore a grease-stained apron, his face wrinkled like an old newspaper crumpled by time.

Old Li, a diligent programmer at his company, had recently felt like a wind-up toy, repeating the same code, the same routes, and even the same coffee-drinking posture every day. But this year's Start of Spring was a little different. The company issued a notice that, in response to the "dodge spring" initiative, all employees would have a day off.

Old Li didn't quite understand what "dodging spring" meant at first. Later, through various push articles and WeChat groups, he gradually realized that dodging spring was to avoid clashing with "spring" on the day of the Start of Spring, which was said to ward off evil and eliminate disasters. Although Old Li found it a bit superstitious, the company had requested it, and he couldn't do much about it.

Old Wang is a projectionist at Happiness Cinema. He loves his job. Although he repeats the same actions every day, he feels like he's guarding the entrances to stories. Recently, the cinema has been showing "Ne Zha 2," which has been incredibly popular, with screenings packed so tightly it's almost absurd—a show every ten minutes. This means he has to spin like a top, but Old Wang remains conscientious, like a precision instrument.

This day, Old Wang was repeating his work, pressing the play button, waiting for the movie to end, and then immediately cutting it off to prepare for the next showing. But just as he pressed the stop button, a strange image appeared on the screen: not the usual credits, but a black background with a line of text in white pixel font: "What you deleted is our memories."

Old Wang woke up to the piercing shriek of his alarm clock, or rather, he was startled awake. It was five in the morning, the world outside was still a blur, with the only indication that it was the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, the big day for welcoming the God of Wealth, coming from the intermittent sounds of firecrackers in the neighborhood. Old Wang turned over and pulled out the golden ingot he had prepared beforehand from the head of the bed—a plastic one, but shiny enough to be deceiving.

He lived in an old single apartment. It wasn't large, and the furnishings were simple, but a table in the center of the room stood out. It was a specially customized "God of Wealth Altar," made of mahogany and finely crafted, with images of five different Gods of Wealth on it. The incense burner was filled with incense sticks, and the smoke filled the room, making it somewhat choking.

The air in the cabin, as if the oxygen had been sucked out, became dull and oppressive. Li Ming sat by the window, trying to look like a calm traveler. The small, red, crumpled thing in his hand, like a hot potato, made him restless.

It was nothing else but a firecracker, a firecracker that had clearly been lit, with only some paper scraps and charred marks left. It lay quietly in Li Ming's palm, like a time bomb that would detonate fear.

Old Wang rubbed his hands together, bowing three times to the dark, hulking "Kitchen God" in the kitchen. It wasn't a wooden statue, nor a printed New Year picture, but a smart speaker with a screen.

Old Wang, the Stove God, has been very bothered lately. The Jade Emperor approved his descent to investigate public sentiment, euphemistically calling it "experiencing the human touch." He was overjoyed, thinking he'd see wisps of smoke rising from chimneys and hear cheerful laughter. But what did he find? On his first day, he was almost run over by a food delivery guy.

He transformed into a middle-aged programmer named Wang Ming, who was woken up by his alarm clock at 7:30 AM every morning. He'd hastily shove a few bites of bread into his mouth, then squeeze onto the subway to begin his daily "cultivation." Wang Ming’s "workstation" was in a transparent glass cubicle. He could see everyone in the cubicles across from him buried in their work, with only the clatter of keyboards rising and falling.

Old Wang shivered in the cold wind, carrying his ancestral small bench. Today was the first day of the Lunar New Year, and he had managed to get away from the mahjong table to watch a movie at the newly opened "Bench Cinema" in the county town. He had heard that this cinema was unique in that it did not have seats, and audiences had to bring their own benches. When the idea first came out, Old Wang had scoffed at it, thinking it was nonsense. However, he couldn't resist the cinema's "New Year Special Offers," the tickets were surprisingly cheap, and curiosity eventually overcame his principles.

When he arrived at the cinema entrance, Old Wang realized he was not an oddity. Men and women, old and young, each carried a bench, of different colors and materials, like a bench exposition. There were plastic ones, wooden ones, and elegant folding stools. Someone even carried a small grand master chair. People sized up each other's "vehicles," with a hint of novelty and a hint of helplessness on their faces.