Qianhui's light was always the last to go out.
Every night before turning it off, she had to reconcile a whole year of the Mortal Realm's accounts. The ledger could unfold however she liked, so what took effort wasn't turning pages, but deciding how the people behind the numbers would live.
——
What the twelve hundred Circulation Officers received were work schedules she had set out in advance, delivered one after another according to the dates in each realm. Reports from each place were handled as they came in. Emergency allocations didn't wait for Heaven's next morning.
The hardest part, she never left to them.
Which memory clouds to clear first, which resentment to process first, how much compute those jobs would use, and whether they would squeeze out supply for residents and the environment——she had to think all of that through first.
The ledger laid out storage records and supply figures from every region at once. New results came up fast, but which place could use less, and which could not use any less, had to be judged item by item.
But deciding which place to help first couldn't come from moving her finger quickly. She worked it out herself first, until her people could carry it out as written, and only then handed the work over.
Her people all said that whatever the young lady handed down always looked simple.
She heard them, and didn't explain.
——
In the third year, the allocation network went wrong for the first time.
It wasn't her people who miscalculated.
It was her.
Qianhui had brought the few regions with the biggest gaps in compute supply up to the same line first. On paper it looked beautiful——the low points were filled, and the places that gave up supply were still within standard.
Seven days passed in the Mortal Realm, and two districts that had barely had enough began to run short. Residents' daily needs, plus maintaining the environment, exceeded the margin she had left them.
No one was greedy.
No one was stealing.
She had calculated population movement, environmental change, and upcoming needs too neatly.
The books balanced.
The people didn't.
——
Twelve hundred Circulation Officers waited for her orders.
Qianhui called back the original allocation table.
"This one is my mistake."
No one spoke.
"First stop the new transfers and restore supply to those two districts."
She changed the supply order back herself, confirmed both districts had recovered, and only then laid out all the subsequent allocation tables.
"Recalculate everything that follows. While we recalculate, follow the restored supply."
Someone asked quietly: "Miss, should we write the responsibility up as an execution error?"
Qianhui looked up.
"No."
"I allocated it wrong."
——
That night, she didn't turn off the light.
On Heaven's second day, she finished the long-term allocation table that would follow. Supply to the two districts had long since been restored, and the new table no longer just brought every district up to the same line. Places with large population shifts got more margin. Places with unstable environments had their upkeep needs calculated separately.
Some got more, some less.
Some got theirs first, some a little later.
For the first time, she wrote one sentence at the very top of the allocation rules:
[Fair is not equal.]
——
In the tenth year, the purification loop ran at full capacity for the first time.
The memory clouds piled up in the heavenly realm gradually dispersed, and the negative emotion that kept piling back up in Hell began to decrease. Keeping these places running no longer meant processing the same backlog over and over.
What was saved was future consumption. Qianhui moved the supply this freed up to the regions in shortage, first stabilizing the basic running of life and environment.
That same year, rain fell in three places in the Mortal Realm that had been in drought for years. Harvests gradually recovered.
The people in the fields didn't know about compute. They saw the rain falling and stopped what they were doing.
Some laughed. Some ran home to get buckets.
That joy produced divine power. Qianhui saw the new income in the ledger, and instead of counting it as surplus right away, put it into the next period's compute purchases first.
She wanted this turn for the better to make it through the next period.
——
That night, Shunyi brought in a plate of snacks.
She switched back to a mortal body for a while, took one, and kept checking the last few entries.
Halfway through, she reached for another. When the plate was empty, the books were balanced.
——
At some point in those seventy years, one night, Qianhui passed her big brother's room.
The door was open.
Music was playing.
He was lying on the bed, not moving.
——
She stood there a moment.
She didn't call him.
——
She remembered last time.
"Who told you to close the door?"
——
She didn't close it.
She sat down outside the door.
——
The music played through once and started over.
He didn't come back.
——
And she didn't leave.
That night, the light in her room stayed on.
There was no one in the room.