The Jade Emperor was not having a good day.
His perfect, dramatic, soul-cleaving trial had devolved into a pathetic argument over dating rights.
He was the supreme ruler of the cosmos.
He did not have time for this nonsense.
"ENOUGH!" he boomed, his voice cracking the obsidian floor of the arena.
A wave of pure, absolute order washed over the four Li Weis, silencing their ridiculous debate.
"The trial is concluded," the Emperor declared, his face a mask of cold fury. "Your refusal to compete is, in itself, a result. A chaotic, unacceptable result."
He raised a hand, gathering the power to decommission the three redundant personalities.
But the combined chaos of four Li Weis standing in one place had already done its work.
Reality, already strained by their very existence, began to fray at the edges.
A small, shimmering tear appeared in the air next to Yin Mode.
It looked like a heat haze.
Then it solidified into a swirling vortex.
It smelled faintly of french fries and regret.
"What is that?" the Hero asked, his eyes wide.
"A spontaneous, localized dimensional rift," Yang Mode analyzed. "Probability of it leading somewhere pleasant: statistically insignificant."
Yin Mode, the Idiot, who was in the middle of backing away from the angry space-god, was not paying attention.
He took one step back.
And tripped.
Right into the portal.
He vanished with a sad little yelp.
**
The world was a nauseating swirl of greasy air and despair.
Then he was spat out onto a tiled floor.
It was sticky.
He pushed himself up, his head spinning.
He was in a bathroom.
A very small, very grimy, very familiar-looking bathroom.
It was a McDonald's.
He was in the McDonald's bathroom near campus.
Oh, thank god, he thought, a wave of relief washing over him. It was all a nightmare. A horrible, stressful, cosmic nightmare.
He stumbled out of the stall.
And came face-to-face with a seven-foot-tall demon with the head of an ox.
The demon was wearing a stained polo shirt with a name tag that read "LARRY" and holding a massive, blood-spattered chainsaw.
Nope.
Still in the nightmare.
**
"There you are!" the Ox-Head demon grumbled, his voice the sound of gravel in a cement mixer. "The new intern. You're late."
He shoved the chainsaw into Li Wei's limp hands. It was heavy.
"Welcome to the Department of Unfinished Business," Larry the Ox-Head said with zero enthusiasm. "I'm your shift supervisor."
He gestured to a long, endless line of shimmering, translucent figures that snaked out of the bathroom and into what appeared to be another soul-crushing celestial office.
"These are the vengeful spirits," Larry explained. "Souls with unresolved issues. Grudges. That kind of thing. Your job is to process them."
"Process them?" Li Wei squeaked, looking at the chainsaw.
"Yeah. You listen to their story, figure out what they want, and then... convince them to move on," Larry said, patting the chainsaw's engine. "This is a great motivational tool."
He pointed to a massive, ticking clock on the wall.
"You've got a quota," he said. "One thousand spirits by 5 PM. If you don't make it, you get eternal overtime. Any questions?"
Li Wei had several.
Starting with "What the hell?" and ending with "Can I go home now?"
But Larry had already disappeared, leaving him alone with a chainsaw and a thousand angry ghosts.
**
His first case was a woman who had been cheated on by her boyfriend.
She was now a screaming ball of pure, vengeful energy.
"I want him to suffer!" she shrieked. "I want to haunt his every waking moment! I want to make his life a living hell!"
Li Wei, who had zero experience with vengeful spirits but a lot of experience with awkward social situations, did his best.
"Okay, okay," he said, holding up his hands. "But, like, have you tried talking to him?"
The ghost stared at him.
"He says he's sorry," Li Wei continued, channeling every bad relationship advice column he'd ever read. "And maybe... maybe you just need to work on your communication? Like, haunting is such a negative way to express your feelings."
The ghost stopped screaming.
She seemed to consider this.
"So... you're saying I should try to be more... emotionally available?" she asked.
"Exactly!" Li Wei said, relieved. "Go get 'em, tiger!"
The ghost shimmered and vanished.
He had done it. He had processed a spirit.
Without even using the chainsaw.
An hour later, the ghost returned.
She was holding hands with another, very sheepish-looking ghost. Her ex.
"You were right!" she gushed. "We just needed to talk it out! We're back together! And being dead has really improved our relationship! Thank you, Love Intern!"
She and her ghost boyfriend floated away, leaving Li Wei in stunned silence.
Word spread.
The line of vengeful spirits dissolved into a chaotic mob.
"I want the Love Intern!" a ghost who'd been betrayed in a business deal yelled. "My partner and I need couples counseling!"
"He helped me find closure with my cat!" another spirit sobbed happily.
A full-blown rebellion was brewing in the Department of Unfinished Business.
A rebellion of romantic, emotionally fulfilled ghosts.
**
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Feng Yue was frantic.
The trial had ended abruptly when Li Wei had tripped out of existence.
The Jade Emperor, furious at the disruption, had simply vanished, leaving them all stranded in the ruins of Penglai.
She had searched everywhere.
Every corner of the dying immortal realm.
Every alley on campus.
He was gone.
The rain started to fall again, cold and miserable, soaking her to the bone.
She stood in the middle of the empty campus courtyard, the place where he had kissed her, the place where she had turned into a giant, confused bird.
The place where this whole, insane mess had really started.
And she finally admitted it to herself.
She wasn't searching for the Chaos Cultivator.
She wasn't trying to complete her mission.
She was looking for Li Wei.
The idiot. The fool. The boy who cried over spilled soup and defeated zombies with a children's game.
The boy who had looked at her, not as a princess or a goddess, but as a person.
The boy who had made her feel... something.
Something other than duty. Other than pride.
Something warm, and chaotic, and terrifying.
A single, desperate sob escaped her lips.
And for the first time in her thousand-year life, the phoenix flames that were her birthright, her power, her very soul...
Extinguished.
Leaving her cold, and powerless, and alone in the rain.
She loved him.
Oh, gods. She loved the magnificent idiot.
**
Back in Diyu, Yin Mode was causing a revolution of feelings.
But the portal he had fallen through had been unstable.
It had split him.
In a dark, forgotten filing room in the deepest, most bureaucratic corner of Hell, another version of him woke up.
He pushed himself up from a pile of dusty, unprocessed soul files.
He adjusted his glasses.
His golden eyes scanned the room.
He saw the towering shelves, sagging under the weight of fifty thousand unprocessed cases.
He saw the inefficient filing system, the redundant paperwork, the sheer, mind-boggling chaos of it all.
A flicker of something that was almost disgust crossed his perfect, logical face.
He stood up, brushing the dust from his clothes.
"I can optimize this entire afterlife," Yang Mode declared to the empty room.
"In 3.7 minutes."
Outside the door, a group of demon bureaucrats, who had come to investigate the commotion, froze in terror.
Hell had a new manager.
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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