Yanluo Wang, King of Hell and CEO of Afterlife Inc., pinched the bridge of his nose.
He looked less like a divine judge and more like a man whose company stock just plummeted.
"Do you have any idea," he began, his voice dangerously calm, "how much chaos you've caused?"
Li Wei, who was currently experiencing both Yin's terror and Yang's analytical curiosity, did not have an idea.
"You, son," Yanluo Wang said, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at him, "are a bug in the system."
"A walking, talking, reality-breaking glitch."
He gestured to a massive, celestial screen behind his desk.
It showed three overlapping spheres of influence, labeled HEAVEN, EARTH, and HELL.
All three were flashing with angry, red error messages that all traced back to a single point.
Li Wei.
"Heaven can't categorize you because you're not technically divine," the King of Hell explained, starting to pace. "Earth can't categorize you because you keep violating its physical laws. And my entire operation can't categorize you because your soul file keeps giving us a 404 error."
"You're not alive. You're not dead. You're a paradox with bad posture."
He stopped pacing and glared at Li Wei.
"We can't process you. We can't file you. We can't even properly bill you for the damages."
"You have broken the bureaucracy. And for that, there can be no forgiveness."
**
He snapped his fingers.
"Give him the tour."
The massive Ox-Head demon from the lecture hall appeared beside Li Wei.
He was still holding a clipboard, but now he also had a massive, rust-stained chainsaw slung over his shoulder.
He offered Li Wei a surprisingly friendly grin.
"Heya, kid. Name's Bob. I'll be your case worker."
Bob the Ox-Head led him out of the CEO's office and into the main processing facility.
It was even worse than the cubicle farm.
It was a DMV.
A literal, soul-crushing Department of Mortal Vestiges.
Endless lines of newly deceased souls snaked through velvet ropes, waiting to be assigned their eternal fate.
A bored-looking Horse-Face demon was taking spectral ID photos.
"This," Bob explained with a sweep of his chainsaw, "is where we sort the riff-raff. You get your karmic score calculated, your life regrets audited, and your soul assigned to the proper eternal holding pattern."
He pointed to a massive screen displaying wait times.
[CURRENT WAIT TIME FOR REINCARNATION: 347 YEARS]
"We're a little backed up," Bob admitted.
This is horrifying, Yin Mode whimpered in Li Wei's head. This is my worst nightmare. Endless lines and paperwork.
Their system is laughably inefficient, Yang Mode countered, his golden eyes already scanning for bottlenecks. Their soul-sorting algorithm is based on a binary moral system. It fails to account for nuance. I could fix this in an hour.
**
They walked past the Department of Unfortunate Accidents and the Office of Ironic Punishments.
Then Bob stopped in front of a door marked "Quality Control."
"This is your stop," he said. "Your case is so messed up, it got escalated straight to the top."
"You get to meet the supervisor."
The door slid open.
The office inside was neat, organized, and ruthlessly efficient.
A woman sat at a large desk, her back to them, reviewing a soul's file on a monitor.
She wore a sharp, professional blazer. Her hair was tied back in a severe bun.
"Supervisor Chen?" Bob said nervously. "The... the anomaly is here."
The woman sighed, a tired, put-upon sound.
"Send him in, Bob," she said without turning around. "Let's see what fresh hell has landed on my desk today."
Li Wei stepped into the office.
The woman swiveled in her chair to face him.
And Li Wei's world stopped.
He knew that face.
He had seen it in photo albums.
He had seen it in his dreams.
It was older, more tired, etched with a sadness he'd never seen before.
But it was her.
It was his mother.
The mother who had died in a car crash when he was ten.
**
The two halves of his soul, for once, were in perfect, screaming unison.
Grief.
Confusion.
Rage.
And a deep, aching sense of betrayal.
"Mom?" he whispered, the word a ghost on his lips.
Supervisor Chen's professional mask crumbled.
Her eyes, so cold and distant a moment ago, filled with a universe of pain and love.
"Wei-Wei," she breathed, her voice cracking.
She stood up, her hands trembling.
"You weren't supposed to end up here. You weren't supposed to find out."
"You... you died," he stammered, his brain refusing to process the reality in front of him. "The car crash..."
"There was no car crash," she said, tears streaming down her face. "I faked my death, Li Wei. To protect you."
Protect me? Yin Mode screamed. You left me! I grew up alone!
From what? Yang Mode demanded, his logic engine desperately trying to find a reason. What threat required such a suboptimal, emotionally devastating solution?
"Protect me from what?" he asked out loud, his voice shaking with the force of his warring emotions.
"From your power," she explained, her voice thick with unshed tears. "From him. From Zhurong."
"But most of all," she sobbed, "from your father."
**
Li Wei felt like he'd been punched in the soul.
His father.
The man who had disappeared before he was even born.
The man his mother had never, ever talked about.
"My father?"
His mother nodded, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her blazer.
"He wasn't just a man, Wei-Wei. He was... more. A legend. A mind so brilliant it could bend the heavens to his will."
She walked over to a locked, reinforced filing cabinet.
She pressed her thumb to a scanner. It beeped, and a drawer slid open.
She pulled out a single, ancient scroll.
It glowed with a faint, golden light, the same color as Yang Mode's eyes.
"Your father," she said, her voice filled with a strange mix of pride and terror, "was the reincarnation of Zhuge Liang. The greatest strategist in history."
She held the glowing scroll out to him.
Her hands were shaking.
"And you, my son... you have inherited all of it. Every memory. Every strategy. Every last piece of his impossible, terrifying genius."
"Your real training begins now."
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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