Chapter 20: Chapter 20
~1.5k words · 2026-06-22
CHAPTER 20: The Immortal Janitor's Secret
Zhang pulled his hand back from the sphere as if burned. The notification blinked ominously in his vision.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Unknown Process Detected]
[Alert Level: Medium]
He had maybe thirty seconds before someone came to investigate. Maybe less.
"Think, Zhang. Think." He paced in the white void, his footsteps echoing strangely. The sphere pulsed behind him, a constant reminder of the power—and danger—now at his fingertips.
Option one: Run. Disconnect from the interface and pretend this never happened. But that would leave him exactly where he started, a dead man in a dead-end job, waiting for the ax to fall.
Option two: Stay and lie. Claim he accidentally stumbled into the interface. Blame it on system error. Hope Supervisor Hu was too lazy to investigate.
Option three: Do what he did best.
Zhang cracked his knuckles and dove back into the code.
The sphere's surface rippled as he touched it, and he felt the system's architecture spread out before him like a city seen from above. Traffic flows of destiny, buildings of karmic debt, highways of fate converging and diverging. And somewhere in the middle, a security protocol was waking up.
[ALERT: Unauthorized Access Detected in Sector 7-G]
[Countermeasures Initializing]
"Not today, firewall." Zhang found the security protocol's root and began rewriting its permissions. In his mortal life, he'd spent three years as an IT support specialist before getting fired for "excessive system modification." That job had taught him one thing: all systems had blind spots.
The celestial bureaucracy's blind spot was its own complexity.
He found what he was looking for in a subroutine labeled [ARCHIVE: CLEANUP ROUTINES 0.1]. It was buried so deep that even most immortals probably didn't know it existed—an old protocol from when the system was first built, designed to let maintenance personnel access restricted areas without triggering alarms.
Zhang copied the protocol's signature and wrapped himself in it.
[ALERT: Countermeasures Disengaged]
[Reason: Authorized Maintenance Access Detected]
[User: Janitorial Staff - ID 0000-GENERIC]
He let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "Janitorial staff. Perfect."
The white void dissolved, and Zhang found himself standing in a hallway. Not the gleaming marble corridors of the main bureaucracy, but something older. The walls were rough-hewn stone, covered in runes that glowed with a sickly green light. The air smelled of ozone and old paper.
A door to his left creaked open.
"Ah. I wondered when someone would find this place."
The voice was old, crackling like dry leaves. Zhang turned to see a figure emerging from the darkness. He was short, stooped, wearing the same white and gold robes as every other celestial official, but his were patched and frayed. In his hands, he carried a mop.
An actual mop.
"You're—" Zhang started.
"The janitor. Yes." The old man's eyes twinkled. "Also the founder of this mess you call a bureaucracy. But mostly the janitor now."
Zhang's mouth opened and closed. "The founder? But that was—the legends say the First Emperor of Heaven built this place."
"He did. I showed him where to put the filing cabinets." The janitor chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. "Name's Li. Just Li. I've been cleaning up after immortals for five thousand years. You'd think they'd learn not to make such a mess."
A suspicious silence fell between them. Zhang studied the old man's face—wrinkled, weathered, but with eyes that held the weight of millennia.
"You're not actually a janitor," Zhang said slowly.
"Neither are you, son." Li leaned on his mop. "You're a dead man who stumbled into the administrative core and somehow managed to bypass security protocols that have stumped gods and demons alike. That takes a special kind of stupid. Or a special kind of clever."
"I prefer clever."
"Most clever people do." Li shuffled closer, and Zhang noticed something odd about his feet. They didn't quite touch the ground. "I've been watching you, Zhang Wei. Ever since you bypassed the reincarnation queue. Ever since you found the bug."
"You knew about the bug?"
"Son, I wrote the bug." Li's grin revealed teeth that were too white, too perfect. "Every system needs a backdoor. Even heaven's. Especially heaven's."
Zhang's mind raced. "Why? Why would you sabotage your own creation?"
"Sabotage?" Li laughed. "Boy, I didn't sabotage anything. I left an exit. For people like you. People who don't fit the neat little boxes the immortals want to stuff everyone into." He gestured at the hallway. "This whole place—the bureaucracy, the departments, the endless paperwork—it's all a cage. A beautiful, elaborate cage designed to keep the universe running smoothly. But cages need keys."
"You're the key."
"I'm the master key." Li's eyes gleamed. "And you, Zhang Wei, are the lock I've been waiting five thousand years to open."
Before Zhang could respond, the hallway shook. Dust rained from the ceiling, and the green runes flickered.
[ALERT: Sector 7-G Emergency Lockdown]
[Source: Supervisor Hu]
[Reason: Security Breach - Priority: Maximum]
"Hu found us," Zhang said.
"Hu found you." Li corrected. "I'm technically not supposed to exist. But don't worry. I have a plan."
"Let me guess. Run?"
"Partially." Li reached into his robes and pulled out a key. It was made of pure light, shaped like a dragon coiled around a filing cabinet. "This key can open any door in the heavenly bureaucracy. Including the one to the original system logs. The ones that show exactly who killed you and why."
Zhang's hand twitched toward it. "And what do you want in return?"
"Nothing much." Li's smile was ancient and knowing. "Just help me burn the whole thing down."
The ground shook again, harder this time. Cracks spiderwebbed across the stone walls, and Zhang heard shouts in the distance. Immortal voices, filled with anger and panic.
[ALERT: Security Teams En Route]
[Estimated Arrival: 45 seconds]
"Decision time, son." Li held out the key. "Take it and become the biggest threat to the heavenly bureaucracy since the Monkey King rebelled. Or don't, and spend eternity filing reports about people who actually lived."
Zhang thought about Supervisor Hu's smug face. About the clerk who killed him through incompetence. About the system that treated human lives like data points to be processed and forgotten.
He took the key.
The moment his fingers touched it, knowledge flooded into him. Not just the system's secrets, but its weaknesses, its fractures, its hidden passages. He saw the bureaucracy for what it really was: a house of cards built on ancient lies and convenient omissions.
"The original logs," Zhang said, the words tasting strange on his tongue. "Where are they?"
"Department of Historical Records. Sub-basement seven. Behind the water cooler that nobody drinks from." Li's form was beginning to flicker. "I've kept them hidden for millennia. Too dangerous for anyone to find. But you—you're dangerous enough to use them."
The hallway's end exploded inward. Five immortals in golden armor stood in the breach, their weapons drawn and glowing with celestial fire.
[ALERT: Security Team Omega Arrived]
[Recommendation: Surrender Immediately]
"Zhang Wei!" One of the immortals stepped forward, and Zhang recognized the voice. Supervisor Hu. "By order of the Celestial Administration, you are charged with unauthorized system access, destiny manipulation, and—" Hu's eyes fell on Li, and his face went pale. "And consorting with a banned entity."
Li winked at Zhang. "Told you I didn't officially exist."
"Seize them!" Hu pointed, and the immortals lunged forward.
Zhang raised the key. It blazed with light, and the world twisted around him. He felt reality bend, space folding like paper, and then he was somewhere else.
A small office. Filing cabinets lining the walls. A water cooler in the corner.
Sub-basement seven.
He was alone.
Zhang let out a shaky breath and looked at the key in his hand. It pulsed gently, warm against his palm. Somewhere above, thousands of immortals were probably mobilizing to hunt him down.
But he had the key. He had the access. And soon, he would have the truth.
He walked to the water cooler and pushed it aside. Behind it, carved into the stone wall, was a door that shouldn't exist. A door that only opened with one key.
Zhang inserted the key. The door swung open, revealing a room filled with scrolls, each one glowing with the light of a thousand lives.
And at the center of the room, sitting in a chair made of pure jade, was a woman. She was beautiful in the way that mountains are beautiful—ancient, terrible, and completely indifferent.
"I was wondering when you'd get here," she said. "I'm the original Supervisor of Mortal Affairs. The one who built this department from nothing. And I need your help."
Behind her, the scrolls rustled, and Zhang saw names on them. Thousands of names. Millions.
All of them people who had died because of "administrative errors."
All of them people who should still be alive.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: New Quest Unlocked]
[Quest: The Truth of Department 7]
[Objective: Survive the Immortal Hunters]
[Secondary Objective: Learn the Original Supervisor's Secret]
[Warning: This quest cannot be abandoned]
The woman smiled, and it was not a kind smile.
"Welcome to the real bureaucracy, Zhang Wei. I hope you're ready for the paperwork."
Zhang pulled his hand back from the sphere as if burned. The notification blinked ominously in his vision.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Unknown Process Detected]
[Alert Level: Medium]
He had maybe thirty seconds before someone came to investigate. Maybe less.
"Think, Zhang. Think." He paced in the white void, his footsteps echoing strangely. The sphere pulsed behind him, a constant reminder of the power—and danger—now at his fingertips.
Option one: Run. Disconnect from the interface and pretend this never happened. But that would leave him exactly where he started, a dead man in a dead-end job, waiting for the ax to fall.
Option two: Stay and lie. Claim he accidentally stumbled into the interface. Blame it on system error. Hope Supervisor Hu was too lazy to investigate.
Option three: Do what he did best.
Zhang cracked his knuckles and dove back into the code.
The sphere's surface rippled as he touched it, and he felt the system's architecture spread out before him like a city seen from above. Traffic flows of destiny, buildings of karmic debt, highways of fate converging and diverging. And somewhere in the middle, a security protocol was waking up.
[ALERT: Unauthorized Access Detected in Sector 7-G]
[Countermeasures Initializing]
"Not today, firewall." Zhang found the security protocol's root and began rewriting its permissions. In his mortal life, he'd spent three years as an IT support specialist before getting fired for "excessive system modification." That job had taught him one thing: all systems had blind spots.
The celestial bureaucracy's blind spot was its own complexity.
He found what he was looking for in a subroutine labeled [ARCHIVE: CLEANUP ROUTINES 0.1]. It was buried so deep that even most immortals probably didn't know it existed—an old protocol from when the system was first built, designed to let maintenance personnel access restricted areas without triggering alarms.
Zhang copied the protocol's signature and wrapped himself in it.
[ALERT: Countermeasures Disengaged]
[Reason: Authorized Maintenance Access Detected]
[User: Janitorial Staff - ID 0000-GENERIC]
He let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "Janitorial staff. Perfect."
The white void dissolved, and Zhang found himself standing in a hallway. Not the gleaming marble corridors of the main bureaucracy, but something older. The walls were rough-hewn stone, covered in runes that glowed with a sickly green light. The air smelled of ozone and old paper.
A door to his left creaked open.
"Ah. I wondered when someone would find this place."
The voice was old, crackling like dry leaves. Zhang turned to see a figure emerging from the darkness. He was short, stooped, wearing the same white and gold robes as every other celestial official, but his were patched and frayed. In his hands, he carried a mop.
An actual mop.
"You're—" Zhang started.
"The janitor. Yes." The old man's eyes twinkled. "Also the founder of this mess you call a bureaucracy. But mostly the janitor now."
Zhang's mouth opened and closed. "The founder? But that was—the legends say the First Emperor of Heaven built this place."
"He did. I showed him where to put the filing cabinets." The janitor chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. "Name's Li. Just Li. I've been cleaning up after immortals for five thousand years. You'd think they'd learn not to make such a mess."
A suspicious silence fell between them. Zhang studied the old man's face—wrinkled, weathered, but with eyes that held the weight of millennia.
"You're not actually a janitor," Zhang said slowly.
"Neither are you, son." Li leaned on his mop. "You're a dead man who stumbled into the administrative core and somehow managed to bypass security protocols that have stumped gods and demons alike. That takes a special kind of stupid. Or a special kind of clever."
"I prefer clever."
"Most clever people do." Li shuffled closer, and Zhang noticed something odd about his feet. They didn't quite touch the ground. "I've been watching you, Zhang Wei. Ever since you bypassed the reincarnation queue. Ever since you found the bug."
"You knew about the bug?"
"Son, I wrote the bug." Li's grin revealed teeth that were too white, too perfect. "Every system needs a backdoor. Even heaven's. Especially heaven's."
Zhang's mind raced. "Why? Why would you sabotage your own creation?"
"Sabotage?" Li laughed. "Boy, I didn't sabotage anything. I left an exit. For people like you. People who don't fit the neat little boxes the immortals want to stuff everyone into." He gestured at the hallway. "This whole place—the bureaucracy, the departments, the endless paperwork—it's all a cage. A beautiful, elaborate cage designed to keep the universe running smoothly. But cages need keys."
"You're the key."
"I'm the master key." Li's eyes gleamed. "And you, Zhang Wei, are the lock I've been waiting five thousand years to open."
Before Zhang could respond, the hallway shook. Dust rained from the ceiling, and the green runes flickered.
[ALERT: Sector 7-G Emergency Lockdown]
[Source: Supervisor Hu]
[Reason: Security Breach - Priority: Maximum]
"Hu found us," Zhang said.
"Hu found you." Li corrected. "I'm technically not supposed to exist. But don't worry. I have a plan."
"Let me guess. Run?"
"Partially." Li reached into his robes and pulled out a key. It was made of pure light, shaped like a dragon coiled around a filing cabinet. "This key can open any door in the heavenly bureaucracy. Including the one to the original system logs. The ones that show exactly who killed you and why."
Zhang's hand twitched toward it. "And what do you want in return?"
"Nothing much." Li's smile was ancient and knowing. "Just help me burn the whole thing down."
The ground shook again, harder this time. Cracks spiderwebbed across the stone walls, and Zhang heard shouts in the distance. Immortal voices, filled with anger and panic.
[ALERT: Security Teams En Route]
[Estimated Arrival: 45 seconds]
"Decision time, son." Li held out the key. "Take it and become the biggest threat to the heavenly bureaucracy since the Monkey King rebelled. Or don't, and spend eternity filing reports about people who actually lived."
Zhang thought about Supervisor Hu's smug face. About the clerk who killed him through incompetence. About the system that treated human lives like data points to be processed and forgotten.
He took the key.
The moment his fingers touched it, knowledge flooded into him. Not just the system's secrets, but its weaknesses, its fractures, its hidden passages. He saw the bureaucracy for what it really was: a house of cards built on ancient lies and convenient omissions.
"The original logs," Zhang said, the words tasting strange on his tongue. "Where are they?"
"Department of Historical Records. Sub-basement seven. Behind the water cooler that nobody drinks from." Li's form was beginning to flicker. "I've kept them hidden for millennia. Too dangerous for anyone to find. But you—you're dangerous enough to use them."
The hallway's end exploded inward. Five immortals in golden armor stood in the breach, their weapons drawn and glowing with celestial fire.
[ALERT: Security Team Omega Arrived]
[Recommendation: Surrender Immediately]
"Zhang Wei!" One of the immortals stepped forward, and Zhang recognized the voice. Supervisor Hu. "By order of the Celestial Administration, you are charged with unauthorized system access, destiny manipulation, and—" Hu's eyes fell on Li, and his face went pale. "And consorting with a banned entity."
Li winked at Zhang. "Told you I didn't officially exist."
"Seize them!" Hu pointed, and the immortals lunged forward.
Zhang raised the key. It blazed with light, and the world twisted around him. He felt reality bend, space folding like paper, and then he was somewhere else.
A small office. Filing cabinets lining the walls. A water cooler in the corner.
Sub-basement seven.
He was alone.
Zhang let out a shaky breath and looked at the key in his hand. It pulsed gently, warm against his palm. Somewhere above, thousands of immortals were probably mobilizing to hunt him down.
But he had the key. He had the access. And soon, he would have the truth.
He walked to the water cooler and pushed it aside. Behind it, carved into the stone wall, was a door that shouldn't exist. A door that only opened with one key.
Zhang inserted the key. The door swung open, revealing a room filled with scrolls, each one glowing with the light of a thousand lives.
And at the center of the room, sitting in a chair made of pure jade, was a woman. She was beautiful in the way that mountains are beautiful—ancient, terrible, and completely indifferent.
"I was wondering when you'd get here," she said. "I'm the original Supervisor of Mortal Affairs. The one who built this department from nothing. And I need your help."
Behind her, the scrolls rustled, and Zhang saw names on them. Thousands of names. Millions.
All of them people who had died because of "administrative errors."
All of them people who should still be alive.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: New Quest Unlocked]
[Quest: The Truth of Department 7]
[Objective: Survive the Immortal Hunters]
[Secondary Objective: Learn the Original Supervisor's Secret]
[Warning: This quest cannot be abandoned]
The woman smiled, and it was not a kind smile.
"Welcome to the real bureaucracy, Zhang Wei. I hope you're ready for the paperwork."