When the reboot storm finally faded, the Bureau of Celestial Administration looked… wrong.
Not ruined — wrong.
The air no longer buzzed with divine mana but hummed softly, like a copy-paste of divine order freshly printed. Every corridor glowed too cleanly. Every desk looked recently polished, though none of the clerks remembered cleaning them. Even the portraits of the Heavenly Founders had new faces, as if someone had run an update patch on the pantheon while everyone slept.
Ne Job blinked as a glowing file floated toward him. "Uh, Yue? My inbox is glowing again."
Assistant Yue looked up from her own pile of reports, eyes weary but sharp. She'd been awake since the "System Overload" incident, trying to map which departments still existed. "Ignore it," she muttered, flipping another form. "The Bureau's still syncing."
The glowing file insisted, bumping Ne Job's forehead.
He caught it with a sigh. "Nope. It says Priority Reassignment Order."
That made Yue freeze. "From who?"
He turned it over. "Looks like Lord Xian's seal—oh wait, there's another one underneath…" He squinted. "Uh… red ink, shaped like a spiral. Kinda bleeds through the parchment."
Yue's pen slipped. A faint tremor crossed her hand.
"Red ink?" she asked softly.
"Yeah. Like someone used cursed calligraphy."
Yue stood abruptly, snatching the order. Her eyes darted over the dual seals, her expression tightening. "These stamps aren't supposed to coexist. You can't have Lord Xian's authority and the Forgotten God's mark on the same document."
"So, like… double authorization?"
She glared. "No, Ne Job. Like an existential contradiction."
Before he could reply, the parchment unfolded itself. Divine glyphs unfurled like luminous ribbons, reshaping mid-air into two conflicting instructions:
1. Report immediately to the Office of Heavenly Compliance — Supervisor: Lord Bureaucrat Xian.
2. Proceed to the Subterranean Records Vault for Reassignment under Division Ω (Obsolete Deities).
Yue's eyes widened. "Division Omega doesn't exist anymore. It was deleted centuries ago."
Ne Job tilted his head. "Then how did they send us mail?"
Her glare could have incinerated paperwork. "That's what terrifies me."
---
The Compliance Office
Minutes later, they stood before Lord Bureaucrat Xian — looking as immaculate and unreadable as ever, though even his divine robes seemed freshly recompiled.
"Assistant Yue. Intern Ne Job." His voice was steady, but his eyes flickered like static. "Your records were… complicated to recover. It seems you've been reassigned under my supervision once again."
"Once again?" Yue asked carefully.
He smiled. "Continuity must be maintained."
Yue nodded stiffly. Ne Job waved. "Hi again, Boss!"
Lord Xian's smile twitched. "Do not call me 'Boss.' You are to resume field audits immediately. The Bureau's mortal liaison offices have been… unstable."
Yue's brow furrowed. "Understood, my lord. But about the other order—"
"What other order?"
The room dimmed.
Yue froze. "The one sealed with—"
But the second parchment in her hands was gone. Only faint red dust lingered between her fingers.
Lord Xian's eyes glowed faintly golden. "Assistant Yue, I advise against tampering with unauthorized documents. The reboot has created illusions. Burn anything suspicious. For your safety."
He turned to Ne Job. "And you, intern—try not to 'fix' anything this time."
Ne Job gave a sheepish grin. "No promises."
---
The Vanishing Vault
Hours later, when the heavenly night cycle began, Yue dragged Ne Job into the Records Hall basement.
"Wait, why are we sneaking again?" he whispered.
"Because I don't trust 'burn it for your safety.'" She unrolled a replica she'd sketched from memory. "Division Omega was the archival branch for erased gods — forgotten, deprecated, or deleted during celestial reforms."
Ne Job blinked. "So like, the lost files of Heaven?"
"Exactly. And if the reboot restored their division… someone's rewriting the hierarchy."
They reached the last staircase — one that, according to current schematics, shouldn't exist.
Yue's lantern flickered. A faint red spiral glowed on the stone floor.
Ne Job frowned. "That's the same ink, right?"
Before she could stop him, he touched it.
The air folded.
Reality stuttered.
Suddenly they stood in a forgotten hall — dustless, silent, yet filled with floating scrolls inscribed in bleeding crimson. Rows of ghostly desks hovered midair, tended by translucent clerks who looked half-remembered — gods of wind, ink, and bureaucracy long struck from Heaven's ledger.
A voice whispered through the ceiling.
> "Protocol restored."
> "Division Ω operational."
Yue swallowed hard. "No… this place was erased."
Ne Job stepped closer to a floating file labeled 'System Backlog: Souls Unprocessed (Epoch 7)'. "Yue, this is like finding Heaven's Recycle Bin!"
She grabbed his wrist. "Don't touch—"
Too late. The file opened itself.
Thousands of faded names spilled into the air like ash. Among them, a single familiar glyph pulsed: Ne Zha (Intern Record Variant).
Yue froze. "Ne Job… that's you."
He blinked. "I mean, technically, I'm a version of—"
The whisper came again, louder now, overlapping like multiple divine voices reciting policy:
> "Unprocessed entities detected."
"Cross-reference: Ne Zha sub-instance."
"Correction: merge initiated."
Red threads lashed toward him.
Yue reacted instantly, slicing the air with a barrier charm. The threads hit the shield and recoiled, splashing ink across her face.
"Run!" she snapped.
They sprinted through the endless archive corridors as ghostly clerks turned to watch, their ink-stained eyes glowing faintly. Behind them, the whisper grew rhythmic — not words anymore, but stamp sounds.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Every stamp shook the floor. Each echo sealed another corridor shut.
Yue gritted her teeth, dragging Ne Job toward a faint golden door at the hall's end. "We have to get out before the Bureau finalizes the correction!"
"But what correction?!" he shouted over the noise.
She didn't answer. She couldn't — because she wasn't sure either.
They burst through the golden door just as the hall sealed behind them with one final deafening stamp.
---
They landed in a dark stairwell. The air smelled like burnt parchment and ozone.
Yue slumped against the wall, panting. "Okay. That wasn't a hallucination."
Ne Job coughed ink. "Good news — I think the file tried to eat me. Bad news — it kinda succeeded."
He turned his palm upward. A faint red mark shaped like a spiral now glowed beneath his skin.
Yue stared, silent. Then, quietly: "You've been tagged."
"Like… promoted?"
She exhaled slowly, pressing a trembling hand to her forehead. "No, Ne Job. You've just been classified by the system as both an intern and a legacy entity. You exist in two bureaucratic states at once."
He smiled weakly. "So… like overtime?"
She smacked his head. "Like extinction with paperwork!"
He grinned despite her fury. "Hey, at least I'm still employed."
Yue's voice dropped to a whisper. "For now."
She looked up the endless stairwell leading back to the Bureau proper, where faint red light was beginning to leak through the cracks in reality.
Somewhere far above, Lord Xian was stamping approvals. Somewhere far below, the Forgotten God was still whispering corrections.
And Yue realized the reboot hadn't just rewritten the Bureau.
It had merged its old and new versions — with Ne Job as the bridging error holding it all together.