The siblings had been in Heaven for three weeks.
Their divine bodies and souls had merged firmly enough to leave the body.
It was all because they had kept using their divine bodies, going from unfamiliar at first to controlling them with ease.
That day, they decided to try.
They didn't want to keep dragging their divine bodies around, causing a commotion wherever they went.
Qianhui demonstrated first, and Shanjue followed. Before long, he could do it too.
——
For the next few days, their souls went everywhere.
They saw very blue seas, very deep forests, land waiting to be tilled.
They saw children absorbed in games, workers working hard.
They also saw houses about to collapse, and trash everywhere.
At a service counter, a man filled in the same box on a form wrong twice. He apologized to the people waiting behind him and bent his head to reread the instructions.
Qianhui stopped beside him for a while. She pulled up that district's supply records and noted the time and place.
One person filling in a form wrong didn't explain anything yet. What she wanted to see was where this kept happening.
The big roads in the Mortal Realm were still as empty as they remembered, with hardly any cars.
Hell always seemed about to break into a fight.
And there were places where they couldn't see anyone, yet could hear arguing clear as day.
——
They wanted to do something right away.
So for the next few days, they kept flying and watching, gathering similar problems from different places, then checking them against records of compute supply, medical care, and livelihoods.
Some places were still within standard range but had been running near the bottom of it for a long time. In worse areas, abnormal weather was increasing, and newborn survival rates were falling.
Some problems had nothing to do with compute. Officers understood perfectly well that people were crying innocence and still chose to close cases fast; allocation rules plainly cheated people and were still carried out as usual.
The two kinds of causes were tangled together. Fixing only one wouldn't work.
Every day brought new discoveries. They even started pushing each other to finish the report, wanting to give it to Pangu as soon as possible.
——
The night before the report was handed in, Wanquan went to see Pangu.
He knocked.
——
Pangu was reading reports from each district.
His tea had gone cold.
"Sit."
Wanquan didn't sit.
——
"Dad. Most of what you saw when you went down was arranged by me."
Pangu didn't look up.
"Which parts?"
"The places you went. The people you met."
"What about that chestnut stall?"
"I appointed him."
——
Pangu put down the report.
"And afterward?"
"After you came back, I lifted the appointment."
"The stall went under. The stock molded. Debt collectors smashed his window. His children cut him off."
"The woman at the corner who gave directions, her husband moved out. A doctor said she has delusions. She still goes and stands at that corner one afternoon every month."
Pangu thought for a moment.
"Which corner?"
Wanquan told him.
Pangu still couldn't remember it.
Wanquan went on: "The couple who held hands broke up."
——
Pangu said nothing.
Neither did Wanquan.
——
"Every time I came back," Pangu said, "I told Shunyi it was good down there."
"I said it for so many years."
"I used that to judge whether this world could hold up."
"I knew that after paying interest, compute had to be rationed. But the reports said we were within standard, and the streets I walked looked fine."
"So I thought, this way, we could still hold."
Pangu turned a report to the supply column.
"What the kids told me that day was how people live underneath this number. What you showed me was something else."
His voice didn't get any louder.
"It turns out I was watching a play you staged."
——
"Why?"
Wanquan didn't answer.
——
Pangu waited a while.
No answer came.
"All right," he said. "If you won't say, I won't ask."
"But from now on, report the bad news first."
"Not what I'll be happy to hear. What I need to know."
"Yes."
——
"That woman."
"Yes."
"Is she standing there right now?"
Wanquan thought for a moment.
"Not right now. Nine more days, Mortal Realm time."
Pangu nodded.
"You can go."
——
After Wanquan left, Pangu finished the cold tea.
The plate of chestnuts at the corner of the desk, he didn't peel a single one.