The portal was a swirling vortex of bad decisions.
It smelled like ozone and old paperwork.
Li Wei didn't so much step through it as he was sucked into it.
The Ox-Head demon had offered him a clipboard to sign.
In his panic, he had tripped.
Over his own feet.
Naturally.
He fell forward, right through the shimmering tear in reality.
**
The world dissolved into a nauseating kaleidoscope of purple and black.
He felt like he was being squeezed through a straw.
A very long, very unpleasant straw.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, it ended.
He was spat out onto a floor.
A cold, hard, linoleum floor.
It was disappointingly clean.
**
Li Wei groaned and pushed himself up.
He wasn't in the lecture hall anymore.
He was in... an office?
A massive, soul-crushingly beige office.
Endless rows of cubicles stretched out in every direction under the sterile, fluorescent glow of drop-ceiling lights.
The air was filled with the gentle hum of computers, the rhythmic clicking of keyboards, and the faint, soulless melody of elevator music.
Demons in ill-fitting business suits sat in ergonomic chairs, staring blankly at their monitors.
One was on the phone, arguing about his infernal 401k plan.
Another was trying to un-jam a possessed photocopier.
This wasn't Hell.
This was worse.
This was a corporate nine-to-five.
**
Li Wei stood there, utterly bewildered.
A demon with small, polished horns and a name tag that read "Brenda" looked up from her reception desk.
She adjusted her glasses and gave him a tired, practiced smile.
"Welcome to Diyu, the Underworld," she said, her voice a monotone drone. "Do you have an appointment with Judge Yanluo?"
Li Wei's mouth opened and closed.
No sound came out.
"No appointment?" Brenda sighed, a wisp of brimstone escaping her lips. "Okay, I can try to squeeze you in. Last name?"
"Uh... Li?" he managed to squeak.
Brenda's claws clicked across her keyboard.
Click. Clack. Click.
She frowned.
"Li... Li... hmm. We have a lot of Lis."
She squinted at her screen.
"Okay, I have a file for you here, but it's... weird."
She turned the monitor toward him.
His face was on the screen.
It was his student ID photo. The one where he looked like he'd been electrocuted.
But the file was a mess of red flags and error messages.
[SUBJECT: Li Wei]
[STATUS: ALIVE (Error: Also Deceased)]
[CASE FILE: CONTRADICTION DETECTED]
[SOUL SIGNATURE: UNSTABLE. PLEASE REBOOT.]
"Your file is a paradox," Brenda explained with zero emotion. "The Department of Life says you're alive. The Department of Death has you scheduled for reaping last Tuesday. And the Department of Cosmic Anomalies just sent us a very angry memo about 'unauthorized reality-bending.'"
"Which department are you here to see?"
**
Before Li Wei could answer, three different demons appeared at the desk.
One, a lanky demon from the "Supernatural Violations" department, held up a thick stack of papers.
"Subject Li Wei? You're cited for seventeen counts of illegal qi manifestation in a mortal zone."
Another, a short, stout demon from "Reincarnation Processing," shook his head.
"No, no, he's with me. His soul is flagged for immediate recycling due to karmic debt."
A third demon, who looked suspiciously like a lawyer with wings, adjusted his tie.
"Actually," he said smugly, "my department, 'Existential Litigation,' is suing him for causing emotional distress to a registered zombie union."
They all started arguing.
"He's a supernatural violator!"
"He's a karmic debtor!"
"He's a defendant!"
Li Wei felt his vision start to tunnel.
The elevator music seemed to get louder.
The fluorescent lights hummed with a malevolent energy.
He was trapped.
Not in a realm of fire and brimstone.
But in a hell of paperwork.
Of bureaucracy.
Of endless, soul-crushing administrative procedure.
A panic attack, cold and sharp, began to crawl up his throat.
**
This is a nightmare, Yin Mode screamed in his head. I'm going to be stuck here forever, filling out forms in triplicate!
The panic was overwhelming.
It was a tidal wave of pure, unadulterated dread.
And then, the cold voice of reason cut through the noise.
Inefficient, Yang Mode observed. This entire system is inefficient. The inter-departmental communication is atrocious. Their filing system is archaic. I can fix this.
The golden light flickered in Li Wei's eyes.
He pushed past the arguing demons.
He strode up to Brenda's desk.
"Your workflow is suboptimal," he stated, his voice now cold and clear. "You're using a centralized database with single-point-of-failure architecture. You need to implement a distributed ledger system to streamline soul processing."
Brenda stared at him.
The demon lawyers stared at him.
Yang Mode ignored them. He was in the zone.
"Furthermore," he continued, pointing at the demon from Reincarnation Processing, "your intake process is redundant. You could increase efficiency by 34% by integrating pre-mortem karmic analysis via a predictive algorithm."
He turned to the demon lawyer.
"And your legal framework is based on outdated celestial precedents. I can draft a new, more equitable system based on game theory that would resolve 87% of all disputes before they even reach litigation."
He was on fire.
A beautiful, logical fire of pure, unadulterated competence.
He was going to optimize the afterlife.
**
But as Yang Mode worked his logical magic, Yin Mode was still panicking.
The sheer, overwhelming hopelessness of the situation was too much.
Being trapped.
Being processed.
Being reduced to a case file in a dusty cabinet for all eternity.
His terror, his very real, very human terror, didn't just stay in his head.
It radiated outwards.
A psychic shockwave of pure, unfiltered anxiety.
It washed over the entire office floor.
And the demons... felt it.
A demon in a cubicle, who had been stamping souls with "DAMNED" for three hundred years, suddenly paused.
He looked at his stamper.
He looked at the endless pile of paperwork on his desk.
He thought about his meaningless existence.
And he felt... sad.
Another demon, Brenda at the front desk, felt Li Wei's panic echo in her own heart.
She thought about her dreams of opening a small brimstone bakery.
Dreams that had died under the weight of endless phone calls and scheduling conflicts.
A single, fiery tear rolled down her cheek.
The feeling spread.
Across the entire floor.
Hundreds of office worker demons, cogs in the great, infernal machine, suddenly felt the crushing weight of their own bureaucratic damnation.
One by one, they stopped typing.
They put down their stampers.
They pushed back their ergonomic chairs.
And in a silent, unified wave of existential despair, they all stood up.
The demon from the photocopier room raised a fist in the air.
"Solidarity!" he roared. "With the sad, terrified human boy!"
"NO MORE PAPERWORK!" another demon shrieked.
"WE DEMAND MEANINGFUL EXISTENCE!"
The Underworld.
The entire administrative branch of Hell itself.
Had just gone on strike.
**
The chaos was immediate.
Souls were left unprocessed.
Reincarnation schedules were thrown into disarray.
The entire cosmic order began to grind to a halt.
A deep, furious rumbling echoed through the office.
The lights flickered and died, replaced by a terrifying, crimson glow.
The elevator music stopped.
A figure materialized behind the reception desk.
He was tall, dressed in an immaculate, tailored business suit, and wore the robes of an ancient judge over it.
His face was a mask of cold, regal fury.
It was Yanluo Wang.
The King of Hell.
The CEO of the Afterlife.
His burning eyes scanned the scene of chaos.
The striking demons.
The overflowing paperwork.
The flickering, logically-obsessed Li Wei, who was currently trying to explain the benefits of blockchain to a confused demon lawyer.
Yanluo Wang's gaze settled on Li Wei.
His voice boomed through the silence, dripping with the rage of a manager whose quarterly projections have just been ruined.
"Look what you've done!"
"Hell's productivity is at zero percent!"
📣 [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
Did this chapter bless your braincell or ruin your will to live (in a good way)?
Drop a comment or throw a power stone — it's like XP for my soul.