Chapter 17: Chapter 17
~1.8k words · 2026-06-22
The notification pulsed ominously in Zhang's vision, a glowing red warning that made his newly-acquired administrative interface feel less like a gift and more like a leash. But before he could curse his own recklessness, another message appeared—this one from an unexpected source.
[PRIVATE MESSAGE - SENDER: ACCOUNTING DIVISION - CLERK LI WEI]
[Subject: You're in danger]
[Message: Stop what you're doing. Meet me in Archive Sub-Level 7. Come alone. I know who killed you.]
Zhang stared at the message. Accounting Division. That was two floors below Mortal Affairs, in a section of the Celestial Bureaucracy so boring that even the immortals assigned there reportedly fell into comas from sheer tedium. Who the hell was Clerk Li Wei, and how did they know about his death?
He should ignore it. Clearly, this was a trap. Supervisor Hu had probably set it up, trying to lure him into a secluded archive where celestial security could "accidentally" delete his soul during a routine system purge. That was exactly the kind of bureaucratic murder that would never get investigated.
But the message had one detail that stopped him: "I know who killed you." Not "I know about your death." Not "I know your death was an error." Who killed you. As if his death was a murder, not a clerical mistake.
Zhang checked his internal clock. The next system purge of unauthorized messages would happen in twelve minutes. If he was going to respond, he needed to do it now.
He typed back: [Why should I trust you?]
The response came instantly: [Because Supervisor Hu isn't your enemy. He's a distraction. The real problem is in Accounting.]
That changed things. If this Li Wei person was trying to redirect blame from Hu onto someone else, they were either telling the truth or playing a very sophisticated game. Either way, Zhang needed more information.
[Fine. Archive Sub-Level 7. Ten minutes.]
He closed the interface and looked around the white void. The Core Administrative Interface still floated before him, its gears turning in their endless rhythm. He had so much more to explore here—the Destiny Modification functions, the Karmic Ledger, the tantalizing [REDACTED] option that probably let him do something incredibly illegal and awesome.
But first, he needed to survive the next hour.
Zhang pulled up his interface and located the navigation system. Archive Sub-Level 7 was technically part of the Records Department, which was technically part of the Celestial Library, which was technically in a completely different dimensional pocket than the main administrative building. Getting there would require using the transit system—a network of teleportation platforms that connected the various sections of the Heavenly Bureaucracy.
He materialized in the transit hub, a massive chamber filled with floating platforms that hummed with celestial energy. Immortals of various ranks moved between them, their robes swirling with authority and boredom. No one looked at him. That was the beauty of being a junior clerk—you were invisible until someone needed to blame you for something.
Platform 7-G. Archive Division. He stepped onto it and felt the familiar lurch of dimensional displacement.
The Archive was everything he expected and worse. Rows upon rows of shelves stretched into infinity, each one filled with scrolls, tablets, and crystalline data storage units that glowed with trapped knowledge. The air was cold and dry, carrying the faint scent of ancient paper and ozone. And it was quiet. Deathly quiet. The kind of quiet that made you paranoid about your own footsteps.
Zhang walked through the maze of shelves, following the directions Li Wei had sent. Sub-Level 7 was the lowest accessible floor, reserved for records so old that even the archivists had forgotten what they contained. The lighting grew dimmer as he descended, the celestial glow of the upper levels replaced by flickering runes that cast long, dancing shadows.
He found Clerk Li Wei at the designated meeting point: a small reading area surrounded by shelves of what appeared to be tax records from the Tang Dynasty. Li Wei was a middle-aged man with the tired eyes of someone who had spent centuries doing spreadsheets. He wore the plain grey robes of a junior accountant, and his fingers were stained with what looked suspiciously like ink that had dried before the invention of paper.
"You're Zhang Wei," Li Wei said. It wasn't a question.
"And you're the person who's about to explain why I shouldn't turn you in for unauthorized communication."
Li Wei smiled, and it was not a pleasant expression. "You won't turn me in because you know your death wasn't an accident. You accessed the records. You saw the error log. You know someone deliberately misrouted your soul."
"I know Supervisor Hu's ID was on the correction request."
"Hu's ID, yes. But do you know whose ID was on the original processing order?"
Zhang's blood ran cold. He hadn't thought to check that. He'd been so focused on the correction that he'd assumed the original processing was routine. But Li Wei was right—if someone had deliberately killed him, they would have been the one to process his death in the first place.
"Whose ID?"
Li Wei pulled out a jade tablet and held it up. The surface shimmered, displaying a name that made Zhang's stomach drop.
[Clerk ID: 0001-ADM]
[Name: Zhao Ming]
[Department: Accounting Division - Senior Auditor]
[Status: Active]
Zhao Ming. The name meant nothing to Zhang. But the ID prefix did. 0001-ADM. That was the prefix assigned to the most senior administrators in the Celestial Bureaucracy. The ones who had been around since the system was first created. The ones who could delete a soul with a single keystroke and never face consequences.
"Why would a senior auditor want me dead?" Zhang asked. "I was a nobody. I worked in tech support. I barely made enough money to afford rent."
Li Wei's smile vanished. "You weren't always a nobody, Zhang Wei. Or rather, you weren't supposed to be. Do you remember your past life?"
"My past... wait. You mean before this life?"
"I mean before you were reincarnated the first time. And the second time. And the third."
The world tilted. Zhang grabbed onto a nearby shelf to steady himself. Reincarnated multiple times? He only remembered one life—the miserable one where he died from a ceiling collapse. But Li Wei was talking about lives he didn't remember at all.
"I don't understand."
"Of course you don't. They wiped your memories every time. But the records don't lie." Li Wei tapped his tablet, and a stream of data flowed across its surface. "You've been reincarnated seven times, Zhang Wei. Each time, you died under suspicious circumstances. Each time, your soul was flagged for 'administrative review.' And each time, a clerk in Accounting Division processed your death personally."
"Zhao Ming."
"Zhao Ming. He's been following you through multiple lifetimes, killing you over and over, and the system has been covering it up."
Zhang's mind raced. Seven deaths. Seven lives he couldn't remember. A senior auditor who had been hunting him across centuries. And he had no idea why.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I'm next." Li Wei's voice cracked. "I found the pattern. I traced the records. I know what Zhao Ming is doing, and I know why. But I made the mistake of accessing the wrong file, and now he knows I know. I have maybe a day before my soul gets 'reassigned to a different department,' if you know what I mean."
"Then why are you here? Why not run?"
"Because I need you to finish what I started." Li Wei grabbed Zhang's arm with surprising strength. "I've been a clerk in Accounting for three hundred years. I've seen every trick, every loophole, every way the system can be used to hide things. But I've never seen anyone with your access level. You're a Tier 2 Senior Clerk, and you only died a week ago. Do you understand how impossible that is?"
Zhang thought about the Core Administrative Interface, the Destiny Modification functions, the [REDACTED] option. He hadn't questioned it at the time, but Li Wei was right. He'd jumped from Tier 1 to Tier 2 in a matter of days, bypassing years of bureaucratic advancement. That wasn't normal.
"Someone in the system is promoting you," Li Wei continued. "Someone with enough authority to override the standard progression protocols. And that someone is also the person who's been keeping you alive long enough to find the truth."
"Zhao Ming?"
"No. Zhao Ming wants you dead. There's someone else. Someone above even the senior auditors. I don't know who they are, but they've been watching you. Protecting you. And they've been feeding me information through back channels."
Li Wei reached into his robe and pulled out a small crystal, no bigger than a thumbnail. It glowed with a soft blue light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
"This contains everything I've found. Zhao Ming's records, the reincarnation logs, the names of everyone involved in your deaths. Take it. Use it. But don't trust anyone in Accounting Division. And whatever you do, don't access the file marked..."
Li Wei's eyes went wide. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Then his body began to dissolve, particles of light streaming away from him like sand in a wind.
"No!" Zhang lunged forward, trying to grab the falling crystal, but it passed through his fingers and embedded itself in his chest, merging with his soul interface.
[Soulbound Item Acquired: Li Wei's Research Crystal]
[Warning: Corrupted Data Detected]
[Origin: Unknown]
[Recommendation: Delete Immediately]
Above them, a voice echoed through the Archive—a voice that carried the weight of ancient authority and absolute power.
"Clerk Li Wei has been reassigned to the Department of Eternal Recollection. His records have been sealed. His existence has been noted for archival purposes."
Zhang looked up to see a figure descending from the ceiling, robes of pure white flowing around them like wings. The figure's face was smooth, featureless, a mask of celestial perfection. But the voice was unmistakable.
Zhao Ming.
"You're next, Zhang Wei," the figure said. "But first, I want to show you something. I want you to see what happens to people who try to expose the truth."
The figure raised a hand, and the Archive around them began to shift. The shelves rearranged themselves, the runes flickered, and Zhang found himself standing in a vast chamber filled with screens. Each screen showed a different scene—a different life, a different death, a different Zhang Wei.
"You've been wondering why I keep killing you," Zhao Ming said, stepping closer. "The answer is simple. You weren't supposed to exist. Your soul was a mistake—a glitch in the system that should have been deleted during the first purge. But somehow, you kept coming back. Kept remembering. Kept threatening the stability of the entire Celestial Bureaucracy."
"I don't remember anything."
"Not yet. But you will. And when you do, you'll understand why I can't let you live."
The screens flickered, and Zhang saw himself in a past life—a scholar in ancient China, arguing with a celestial official about the nature of fate. He saw himself in another life—a rebel leader, fighting against the heavens themselves. He saw himself in a life he couldn't comprehend—a being of pure energy, challenging the very structure of reality.
"You're not a mortal, Zhang Wei. You never were. You're a bug. A flaw in the code. And I'm the one who's been tasked with patching you out."
Z
[PRIVATE MESSAGE - SENDER: ACCOUNTING DIVISION - CLERK LI WEI]
[Subject: You're in danger]
[Message: Stop what you're doing. Meet me in Archive Sub-Level 7. Come alone. I know who killed you.]
Zhang stared at the message. Accounting Division. That was two floors below Mortal Affairs, in a section of the Celestial Bureaucracy so boring that even the immortals assigned there reportedly fell into comas from sheer tedium. Who the hell was Clerk Li Wei, and how did they know about his death?
He should ignore it. Clearly, this was a trap. Supervisor Hu had probably set it up, trying to lure him into a secluded archive where celestial security could "accidentally" delete his soul during a routine system purge. That was exactly the kind of bureaucratic murder that would never get investigated.
But the message had one detail that stopped him: "I know who killed you." Not "I know about your death." Not "I know your death was an error." Who killed you. As if his death was a murder, not a clerical mistake.
Zhang checked his internal clock. The next system purge of unauthorized messages would happen in twelve minutes. If he was going to respond, he needed to do it now.
He typed back: [Why should I trust you?]
The response came instantly: [Because Supervisor Hu isn't your enemy. He's a distraction. The real problem is in Accounting.]
That changed things. If this Li Wei person was trying to redirect blame from Hu onto someone else, they were either telling the truth or playing a very sophisticated game. Either way, Zhang needed more information.
[Fine. Archive Sub-Level 7. Ten minutes.]
He closed the interface and looked around the white void. The Core Administrative Interface still floated before him, its gears turning in their endless rhythm. He had so much more to explore here—the Destiny Modification functions, the Karmic Ledger, the tantalizing [REDACTED] option that probably let him do something incredibly illegal and awesome.
But first, he needed to survive the next hour.
Zhang pulled up his interface and located the navigation system. Archive Sub-Level 7 was technically part of the Records Department, which was technically part of the Celestial Library, which was technically in a completely different dimensional pocket than the main administrative building. Getting there would require using the transit system—a network of teleportation platforms that connected the various sections of the Heavenly Bureaucracy.
He materialized in the transit hub, a massive chamber filled with floating platforms that hummed with celestial energy. Immortals of various ranks moved between them, their robes swirling with authority and boredom. No one looked at him. That was the beauty of being a junior clerk—you were invisible until someone needed to blame you for something.
Platform 7-G. Archive Division. He stepped onto it and felt the familiar lurch of dimensional displacement.
The Archive was everything he expected and worse. Rows upon rows of shelves stretched into infinity, each one filled with scrolls, tablets, and crystalline data storage units that glowed with trapped knowledge. The air was cold and dry, carrying the faint scent of ancient paper and ozone. And it was quiet. Deathly quiet. The kind of quiet that made you paranoid about your own footsteps.
Zhang walked through the maze of shelves, following the directions Li Wei had sent. Sub-Level 7 was the lowest accessible floor, reserved for records so old that even the archivists had forgotten what they contained. The lighting grew dimmer as he descended, the celestial glow of the upper levels replaced by flickering runes that cast long, dancing shadows.
He found Clerk Li Wei at the designated meeting point: a small reading area surrounded by shelves of what appeared to be tax records from the Tang Dynasty. Li Wei was a middle-aged man with the tired eyes of someone who had spent centuries doing spreadsheets. He wore the plain grey robes of a junior accountant, and his fingers were stained with what looked suspiciously like ink that had dried before the invention of paper.
"You're Zhang Wei," Li Wei said. It wasn't a question.
"And you're the person who's about to explain why I shouldn't turn you in for unauthorized communication."
Li Wei smiled, and it was not a pleasant expression. "You won't turn me in because you know your death wasn't an accident. You accessed the records. You saw the error log. You know someone deliberately misrouted your soul."
"I know Supervisor Hu's ID was on the correction request."
"Hu's ID, yes. But do you know whose ID was on the original processing order?"
Zhang's blood ran cold. He hadn't thought to check that. He'd been so focused on the correction that he'd assumed the original processing was routine. But Li Wei was right—if someone had deliberately killed him, they would have been the one to process his death in the first place.
"Whose ID?"
Li Wei pulled out a jade tablet and held it up. The surface shimmered, displaying a name that made Zhang's stomach drop.
[Clerk ID: 0001-ADM]
[Name: Zhao Ming]
[Department: Accounting Division - Senior Auditor]
[Status: Active]
Zhao Ming. The name meant nothing to Zhang. But the ID prefix did. 0001-ADM. That was the prefix assigned to the most senior administrators in the Celestial Bureaucracy. The ones who had been around since the system was first created. The ones who could delete a soul with a single keystroke and never face consequences.
"Why would a senior auditor want me dead?" Zhang asked. "I was a nobody. I worked in tech support. I barely made enough money to afford rent."
Li Wei's smile vanished. "You weren't always a nobody, Zhang Wei. Or rather, you weren't supposed to be. Do you remember your past life?"
"My past... wait. You mean before this life?"
"I mean before you were reincarnated the first time. And the second time. And the third."
The world tilted. Zhang grabbed onto a nearby shelf to steady himself. Reincarnated multiple times? He only remembered one life—the miserable one where he died from a ceiling collapse. But Li Wei was talking about lives he didn't remember at all.
"I don't understand."
"Of course you don't. They wiped your memories every time. But the records don't lie." Li Wei tapped his tablet, and a stream of data flowed across its surface. "You've been reincarnated seven times, Zhang Wei. Each time, you died under suspicious circumstances. Each time, your soul was flagged for 'administrative review.' And each time, a clerk in Accounting Division processed your death personally."
"Zhao Ming."
"Zhao Ming. He's been following you through multiple lifetimes, killing you over and over, and the system has been covering it up."
Zhang's mind raced. Seven deaths. Seven lives he couldn't remember. A senior auditor who had been hunting him across centuries. And he had no idea why.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I'm next." Li Wei's voice cracked. "I found the pattern. I traced the records. I know what Zhao Ming is doing, and I know why. But I made the mistake of accessing the wrong file, and now he knows I know. I have maybe a day before my soul gets 'reassigned to a different department,' if you know what I mean."
"Then why are you here? Why not run?"
"Because I need you to finish what I started." Li Wei grabbed Zhang's arm with surprising strength. "I've been a clerk in Accounting for three hundred years. I've seen every trick, every loophole, every way the system can be used to hide things. But I've never seen anyone with your access level. You're a Tier 2 Senior Clerk, and you only died a week ago. Do you understand how impossible that is?"
Zhang thought about the Core Administrative Interface, the Destiny Modification functions, the [REDACTED] option. He hadn't questioned it at the time, but Li Wei was right. He'd jumped from Tier 1 to Tier 2 in a matter of days, bypassing years of bureaucratic advancement. That wasn't normal.
"Someone in the system is promoting you," Li Wei continued. "Someone with enough authority to override the standard progression protocols. And that someone is also the person who's been keeping you alive long enough to find the truth."
"Zhao Ming?"
"No. Zhao Ming wants you dead. There's someone else. Someone above even the senior auditors. I don't know who they are, but they've been watching you. Protecting you. And they've been feeding me information through back channels."
Li Wei reached into his robe and pulled out a small crystal, no bigger than a thumbnail. It glowed with a soft blue light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
"This contains everything I've found. Zhao Ming's records, the reincarnation logs, the names of everyone involved in your deaths. Take it. Use it. But don't trust anyone in Accounting Division. And whatever you do, don't access the file marked..."
Li Wei's eyes went wide. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Then his body began to dissolve, particles of light streaming away from him like sand in a wind.
"No!" Zhang lunged forward, trying to grab the falling crystal, but it passed through his fingers and embedded itself in his chest, merging with his soul interface.
[Soulbound Item Acquired: Li Wei's Research Crystal]
[Warning: Corrupted Data Detected]
[Origin: Unknown]
[Recommendation: Delete Immediately]
Above them, a voice echoed through the Archive—a voice that carried the weight of ancient authority and absolute power.
"Clerk Li Wei has been reassigned to the Department of Eternal Recollection. His records have been sealed. His existence has been noted for archival purposes."
Zhang looked up to see a figure descending from the ceiling, robes of pure white flowing around them like wings. The figure's face was smooth, featureless, a mask of celestial perfection. But the voice was unmistakable.
Zhao Ming.
"You're next, Zhang Wei," the figure said. "But first, I want to show you something. I want you to see what happens to people who try to expose the truth."
The figure raised a hand, and the Archive around them began to shift. The shelves rearranged themselves, the runes flickered, and Zhang found himself standing in a vast chamber filled with screens. Each screen showed a different scene—a different life, a different death, a different Zhang Wei.
"You've been wondering why I keep killing you," Zhao Ming said, stepping closer. "The answer is simple. You weren't supposed to exist. Your soul was a mistake—a glitch in the system that should have been deleted during the first purge. But somehow, you kept coming back. Kept remembering. Kept threatening the stability of the entire Celestial Bureaucracy."
"I don't remember anything."
"Not yet. But you will. And when you do, you'll understand why I can't let you live."
The screens flickered, and Zhang saw himself in a past life—a scholar in ancient China, arguing with a celestial official about the nature of fate. He saw himself in another life—a rebel leader, fighting against the heavens themselves. He saw himself in a life he couldn't comprehend—a being of pure energy, challenging the very structure of reality.
"You're not a mortal, Zhang Wei. You never were. You're a bug. A flaw in the code. And I'm the one who's been tasked with patching you out."
Z