Chapter 2: Paperwork Apocalypse
Ne Job woke up with soot in his hair and a half-burnt scroll stuck to his cheek. The celestial archive still smelled like roasted poultry and ash, though the flaming bureaucratic chicken itself had long since disintegrated into a pile of bureaucratically useless feathers.
"...Morning already?" Ne Job groaned, sitting up amid the wreckage of what used to be Filing Hall 7.
Assistant Yue, miraculously spotless despite having endured the same chaos, appeared at his side carrying a clipboard. Her quill scratched rapidly across the page. "You've been unconscious for precisely three hours, seventeen minutes, and forty-one seconds. That's already three late slips."
"Late? Yue, the room exploded!" Ne Job flailed, waving a charred scroll like a surrender flag. "Does punctuality really matter when I was nearly flambéed?"
"Yes," Yue replied without hesitation.
Before Ne Job could argue, a booming cough echoed down the ruined hall. Lord Bureaucrat Xian strode in, robes flowing, face red as though steam might whistle from his ears at any second. He surveyed the disaster with the weary eyes of someone who had seen far too many rookie interns and not enough pension plans.
"This—" Xian jabbed a finger at the smoldering ruins "—was the chicken storage room. You have destroyed three decades of carefully catalogued poultry permits!"
Ne Job blinked. "Why was there a chicken storage room in the first place?"
"To symbolize order!" Xian roared. "Every chicken was registered, stamped, and filed with heavenly precision! Now, thanks to you, the Bureau must explain to the Jade Emperor why the Celestial Poultry Census has a gap the size of a barnyard!"
Yue raised her clipboard. "Correction, sir: seventeen barns' worth. The collateral chicken paperwork affected at least five provinces."
"Five provinces?!" Ne Job yelped. "I just got here!"
Lord Xian pinched the bridge of his nose. His sigh could have flattened a mountain. "This is exactly why interns are a curse. Yue, draft a disciplinary memo. As for you, Ne Job…" He jabbed a finger. "You're on probation. Clean this mess. By hand. No divine fire, no shortcuts, and certainly no more poultry-based catastrophes!"
Ne Job slumped, dragging a broom across the ashes. "Great. First day and I'm already demoted to janitor."
But just as he swept aside a pile of charred parchment, something gleamed beneath. A sliver of blackened scroll, edges still glowing faintly red. The paper pulsed, almost alive. Words in ancient script curled and writhed across its surface.
"Uh, Yue?" Ne Job whispered. "Was this… supposed to be in the chicken room?"
Yue peered over his shoulder. For the first time, her expression faltered. The usually unshakable assistant actually stepped back.
"That… is not Bureau property." Her voice lowered. "It looks like a shard from the Forbidden Manual."
"The what-now?"
Before Yue could explain, the scrap of paper flared, searing Ne Job's palm. He yelped and dropped it, but the letters had already burned into his skin, glowing like molten ink.
Across the hall, Lord Xian froze mid-rant, his eyes narrowing.
"You," he growled, "didn't just touch it… did you?"
"...Define 'touch.'"
The ground trembled. Papers flew off shelves. Somewhere deep in the Bureau's labyrinthine corridors, a siren began wailing: "Unauthorized Manual Contamination Detected!"
And Ne Job realized, with sinking dread, that probation was the least of his problems.
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To Be Continued…