Chapter 3: The Karmic Audit of Office Supplies
~1.8k words · 2026-06-22
Zhang Wei had been dead for exactly seventy-two hours when he discovered that hell wasn't fire and brimstone. It was paperwork. Endless, soul-crushing, mind-numbing paperwork.
He sat at his desk—a floating slab of polished jade that hummed with ambient celestial energy—staring at a stack of destiny reports that reached his chin. The reports were written on parchment that occasionally burst into flames if you made a typo. Zhang had already lost three eyebrows.
"Junior Clerk Zhang!" a voice thundered from across the hall.
Zhang looked up to see Supervisor Hu marching toward him, his robes billowing despite the complete lack of wind. Hu was a mid-level celestial functionary with the face of a disappointed grandfather and the temperament of a cornered badger. His cultivation level was listed as [Nascent Soul Stage: Administrative Division], which apparently meant he could split mountains with his glare.
"Supervisor Hu," Zhang said, forcing a smile. "What can I do for you?"
Hu slammed a scroll onto Zhang's desk. The impact sent a stack of forms cascading to the floor, where they immediately began to sprout tiny legs and scuttle away. Zhang grabbed one before it escaped under the filing cabinet.
"This is the third time this week a mortal's destiny has been filed under the wrong dynasty," Hu said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Do you have any idea what happens when a farmer in the Tang Dynasty receives a destiny meant for a cyber-security analyst in 2024?"
Zhang blinked. "I'm guessing... bad things?"
"His crops grow firewalls instead of rice! His chickens start debugging code! We had to send a junior exorcist just to reboot his timeline!" Hu's face turned the color of a ripe tomato. "The Celestial Management System flagged it as a 'minor anomaly.' Do you know what happens when we accumulate too many minor anomalies?"
"I'm going to guess—"
"We get audited by the Department of Cosmic Compliance!" Hu threw his hands in the air. "And if they find even one discrepancy, they'll downgrade our entire division's cultivation bonuses for the next millennium!"
Zhang nodded sympathetically while mentally calculating how many office supplies he could steal before getting caught. The Divine Stapler on his desk was probably worth more than his entire mortal life savings.
"I'll be more careful, Supervisor," Zhang said. "I promise."
"You'd better be." Hu jabbed a finger at the scroll. "This is a priority filing. A soul destined for reincarnation into the Ming Dynasty—a scholar who will discover the cure for the plague that's ravaging the southern provinces. Get it right, or I'll reassign you to the Department of Unanswered Prayers. Those souls get... creative."
Zhang waited until Hu's footsteps faded before exhaling. The office around him hummed with activity. Other clerks—some human, some barely recognizable as former mortals—bustled between floating shelves, their fingers glowing as they processed destinies. The ceiling was a swirling vortex of clouds and lightning, occasionally cracking open to release a newly arrived soul for processing.
He looked at the scroll. It was sealed with golden wax, stamped with the Heavenly Seal of Approved Karma. Breaking the seal would officially register the destiny into the system, locking it into the fabric of reality. No pressure.
Zhang reached for his desk drawer, intending to grab his favorite calligraphy brush. But as he pulled the drawer open, something caught his eye. A faint blue glow pulsed from beneath a stack of blank parchment.
He pushed the papers aside. There, nestled in the corner of the drawer, was a small jade token. It was no bigger than his thumb, carved in the shape of a coiled dragon. And it was pulsing with light.
Zhang picked it up. The moment his fingers touched the token, a notification appeared in his vision:
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Unknown Artifact Detected]
[Classification: Administrative Privilege Token - Tier Unverified]
[Warning: This token is not registered in the Celestial Management System database.]
[Recommended Action: Report to Department of Protocol for investigation.]
Zhang's heart raced. An unregistered artifact. In heaven's bureaucracy, that was like finding a loaded weapon in a kindergarten. If he reported it, he'd get a commendation—maybe even a promotion to Senior Clerk. But something told him to wait.
He looked around. No one was watching. The other clerks were too busy arguing with a spirit who had filed a complaint about his arranged marriage destiny being "insufficiently dramatic."
Zhang turned the token over in his palm. On the back, barely visible, was a tiny inscription in ancient script: "For those who question the order of heaven."
He pocketed the token.
"Just a quick look," he whispered to himself. "What's the worst that could happen?"
He turned back to his desk and picked up the priority scroll. But instead of processing it normally, he held the jade token against the seal. The golden wax began to glow, and the scroll unrolled itself, revealing lines of text that shimmered and shifted like living things.
[SYSTEM PROMPT: Unauthorized Access Detected]
[User: Junior Clerk Zhang Wei - ID 7845-B]
[Action: Attempting to view restricted destiny metadata]
[Status: Pending...]
Zhang's breath caught. This wasn't supposed to be possible. The scrolls were locked by divine law. Only supervisors and above could view the metadata—the underlying code that determined how a destiny would interact with the mortal world.
But the token was working.
The text settled, and Zhang found himself staring at something he'd never seen before. The destiny for the Ming Dynasty scholar was written in the usual flowery language, but underneath it, in a separate layer, was a series of numbers and symbols. Variables. Functions. Conditional statements.
It was code.
The destiny wasn't a fixed story—it was a program. A piece of software that would run on the hardware of reality.
And at the bottom of the code, Zhang spotted something that made his blood run cold:
[ERROR: Inconsistent Karmic Load Detected]
[Source: Department of Mortal Affairs - Batch 374]
[Details: Soul ID 7845-B (Zhang Wei) was not scheduled for termination. Death was caused by administrative error - misrouted reincarnation queue.]
Zhang read the line three times. Then a fourth.
He wasn't supposed to be dead.
The bus that hit him wasn't destiny. It wasn't fate. It was a clerical error. Someone in the Department of Mortal Affairs had screwed up, and Zhang Wei had paid the price with his life.
And now he was stuck here, filing paperwork for the very system that killed him.
His hands trembled. Rage bubbled up from somewhere deep inside him—a hot, righteous fury that he hadn't felt since his last performance review.
"Error," he muttered. "They called my death an error."
He looked at the token in his palm. It was still pulsing, as if waiting for him to make a decision. A notification appeared:
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Do you wish to file a formal grievance?]
[Warning: Grievances filed against the Celestial Management System are subject to review by the Department of Cosmic Compliance. Processing time: 4,000-6,000 celestial years.]
[Recommended Action: Accept your fate and continue your assigned duties.]
Zhang almost laughed. Four thousand years. By the time they processed his complaint, the universe would have rebooted twice.
"No," he said, his voice firm. "I'm not filing a grievance."
He closed the scroll and leaned back in his chair. The office continued its chaotic dance around him—souls being processed, destinies being filed, the occasional burst of divine lightning as someone's karma got approved.
But Zhang was seeing everything differently now. The floating desks weren't just furniture—they were nodes in a network. The glowing parchment wasn't just paper—it was data. The entire Celestial Bureaucracy was a system. And every system had flaws.
Zhang pulled out the jade token again. A new notification flickered in his vision:
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Administrative Privilege Token Activated]
[User: Zhang Wei - ID 7845-B]
[Current Access Level: Tier 1 - Clerk]
[Upgrade Available: Tier 2 - Senior Clerk]
[Requirements: Pass Departmental Review (3,000 years processing time) OR bypass protocol using token]
[Bypass Protocol: Available]
[Warning: Bypassing protocol is a Class 3 Heavenly Offense. Penalty: Reassignment to Hell of Unending Data Entry.]
Zhang stared at the notification for a long moment. Hell of Unending Data Entry. That sounded worse than the actual hells. At least in those, you got fire and brimstone. Data entry was just... data entry.
But the token had already shown him the truth. He was dead because of someone's incompetence. And the system wanted him to just accept it.
"Not today," Zhang muttered.
He selected [Bypass Protocol].
The jade token flared to life, flooding his vision with light. For a moment, Zhang felt like he was falling through an infinite sea of numbers and equations. The code of reality streamed past him—births, deaths, marriages, wars, discoveries, failures. Every mortal life, every destined moment, all laid out in lines of celestial programming.
And then it stopped.
Zhang found himself standing in a white void. In front of him floated a single object: a massive, glowing sphere made of interlocking gears and runes. It pulsed with a rhythm that matched the beating of his heart.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Welcome to the Core Administrative Interface]
[User: Zhang Wei - ID 7845-B]
[Access Level: Tier 2 - Senior Clerk (Provisional)]
[New Functions Unlocked:]
- Destiny Modification (Limited)
- Karmic Ledger Viewing
- Timeline Adjustment (Single Thread Only)
- [REDACTED]
[Warning: Unauthorized use of administrative functions will result in immediate disciplinary action. Your soul has been flagged for monitoring.]
Zhang's lips curled into a grin. Flagged for monitoring. That was fine. He'd been monitored his entire mortal life—by bosses, by landlords, by that creepy guy who lived in his apartment complex's basement. He was used to it.
But now he had something he'd never had before: power.
He reached out and touched the sphere. Instantly, information flooded his mind—the current status of every destiny in his division, the pending karma balances, the upcoming celestial audits. It was overwhelming, but Zhang forced himself to focus.
There. Hidden in the depths of the system, buried under layers of bureaucratic obfuscation, was what he needed: the records of the administrative error that killed him.
He pulled up the file.
[LOG: Batch 374 - Reincarnation Queue]
[Error: Misrouting of Soul ID 7845-B]
[Responsible Party: Department of Mortal Affairs - Clerk ID 2319]
[Status: Correction Pending - Assigned to Supervisor Hu]
Supervisor Hu. The same man who had just yelled at him about filing errors. The same man who had been in charge of the department when Zhang's death was processed.
The same man who had conveniently "forgotten" to mention that Zhang's death was a mistake.
Zhang's hand tightened into a fist. He had two options: confront Hu and risk getting his soul deleted, or play along and slowly work his way up the system until he could expose the truth.
Option three: hack the system from the inside and become an immortal.
He liked option three.
A new notification appeared:
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Unknown Process Detected]
[Source: Internal]
[Action: Soul ID 7845-B has accessed restricted records]
[Alert Level: Medium]
[Recommended Action: Investigate and
He sat at his desk—a floating slab of polished jade that hummed with ambient celestial energy—staring at a stack of destiny reports that reached his chin. The reports were written on parchment that occasionally burst into flames if you made a typo. Zhang had already lost three eyebrows.
"Junior Clerk Zhang!" a voice thundered from across the hall.
Zhang looked up to see Supervisor Hu marching toward him, his robes billowing despite the complete lack of wind. Hu was a mid-level celestial functionary with the face of a disappointed grandfather and the temperament of a cornered badger. His cultivation level was listed as [Nascent Soul Stage: Administrative Division], which apparently meant he could split mountains with his glare.
"Supervisor Hu," Zhang said, forcing a smile. "What can I do for you?"
Hu slammed a scroll onto Zhang's desk. The impact sent a stack of forms cascading to the floor, where they immediately began to sprout tiny legs and scuttle away. Zhang grabbed one before it escaped under the filing cabinet.
"This is the third time this week a mortal's destiny has been filed under the wrong dynasty," Hu said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Do you have any idea what happens when a farmer in the Tang Dynasty receives a destiny meant for a cyber-security analyst in 2024?"
Zhang blinked. "I'm guessing... bad things?"
"His crops grow firewalls instead of rice! His chickens start debugging code! We had to send a junior exorcist just to reboot his timeline!" Hu's face turned the color of a ripe tomato. "The Celestial Management System flagged it as a 'minor anomaly.' Do you know what happens when we accumulate too many minor anomalies?"
"I'm going to guess—"
"We get audited by the Department of Cosmic Compliance!" Hu threw his hands in the air. "And if they find even one discrepancy, they'll downgrade our entire division's cultivation bonuses for the next millennium!"
Zhang nodded sympathetically while mentally calculating how many office supplies he could steal before getting caught. The Divine Stapler on his desk was probably worth more than his entire mortal life savings.
"I'll be more careful, Supervisor," Zhang said. "I promise."
"You'd better be." Hu jabbed a finger at the scroll. "This is a priority filing. A soul destined for reincarnation into the Ming Dynasty—a scholar who will discover the cure for the plague that's ravaging the southern provinces. Get it right, or I'll reassign you to the Department of Unanswered Prayers. Those souls get... creative."
Zhang waited until Hu's footsteps faded before exhaling. The office around him hummed with activity. Other clerks—some human, some barely recognizable as former mortals—bustled between floating shelves, their fingers glowing as they processed destinies. The ceiling was a swirling vortex of clouds and lightning, occasionally cracking open to release a newly arrived soul for processing.
He looked at the scroll. It was sealed with golden wax, stamped with the Heavenly Seal of Approved Karma. Breaking the seal would officially register the destiny into the system, locking it into the fabric of reality. No pressure.
Zhang reached for his desk drawer, intending to grab his favorite calligraphy brush. But as he pulled the drawer open, something caught his eye. A faint blue glow pulsed from beneath a stack of blank parchment.
He pushed the papers aside. There, nestled in the corner of the drawer, was a small jade token. It was no bigger than his thumb, carved in the shape of a coiled dragon. And it was pulsing with light.
Zhang picked it up. The moment his fingers touched the token, a notification appeared in his vision:
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Unknown Artifact Detected]
[Classification: Administrative Privilege Token - Tier Unverified]
[Warning: This token is not registered in the Celestial Management System database.]
[Recommended Action: Report to Department of Protocol for investigation.]
Zhang's heart raced. An unregistered artifact. In heaven's bureaucracy, that was like finding a loaded weapon in a kindergarten. If he reported it, he'd get a commendation—maybe even a promotion to Senior Clerk. But something told him to wait.
He looked around. No one was watching. The other clerks were too busy arguing with a spirit who had filed a complaint about his arranged marriage destiny being "insufficiently dramatic."
Zhang turned the token over in his palm. On the back, barely visible, was a tiny inscription in ancient script: "For those who question the order of heaven."
He pocketed the token.
"Just a quick look," he whispered to himself. "What's the worst that could happen?"
He turned back to his desk and picked up the priority scroll. But instead of processing it normally, he held the jade token against the seal. The golden wax began to glow, and the scroll unrolled itself, revealing lines of text that shimmered and shifted like living things.
[SYSTEM PROMPT: Unauthorized Access Detected]
[User: Junior Clerk Zhang Wei - ID 7845-B]
[Action: Attempting to view restricted destiny metadata]
[Status: Pending...]
Zhang's breath caught. This wasn't supposed to be possible. The scrolls were locked by divine law. Only supervisors and above could view the metadata—the underlying code that determined how a destiny would interact with the mortal world.
But the token was working.
The text settled, and Zhang found himself staring at something he'd never seen before. The destiny for the Ming Dynasty scholar was written in the usual flowery language, but underneath it, in a separate layer, was a series of numbers and symbols. Variables. Functions. Conditional statements.
It was code.
The destiny wasn't a fixed story—it was a program. A piece of software that would run on the hardware of reality.
And at the bottom of the code, Zhang spotted something that made his blood run cold:
[ERROR: Inconsistent Karmic Load Detected]
[Source: Department of Mortal Affairs - Batch 374]
[Details: Soul ID 7845-B (Zhang Wei) was not scheduled for termination. Death was caused by administrative error - misrouted reincarnation queue.]
Zhang read the line three times. Then a fourth.
He wasn't supposed to be dead.
The bus that hit him wasn't destiny. It wasn't fate. It was a clerical error. Someone in the Department of Mortal Affairs had screwed up, and Zhang Wei had paid the price with his life.
And now he was stuck here, filing paperwork for the very system that killed him.
His hands trembled. Rage bubbled up from somewhere deep inside him—a hot, righteous fury that he hadn't felt since his last performance review.
"Error," he muttered. "They called my death an error."
He looked at the token in his palm. It was still pulsing, as if waiting for him to make a decision. A notification appeared:
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Do you wish to file a formal grievance?]
[Warning: Grievances filed against the Celestial Management System are subject to review by the Department of Cosmic Compliance. Processing time: 4,000-6,000 celestial years.]
[Recommended Action: Accept your fate and continue your assigned duties.]
Zhang almost laughed. Four thousand years. By the time they processed his complaint, the universe would have rebooted twice.
"No," he said, his voice firm. "I'm not filing a grievance."
He closed the scroll and leaned back in his chair. The office continued its chaotic dance around him—souls being processed, destinies being filed, the occasional burst of divine lightning as someone's karma got approved.
But Zhang was seeing everything differently now. The floating desks weren't just furniture—they were nodes in a network. The glowing parchment wasn't just paper—it was data. The entire Celestial Bureaucracy was a system. And every system had flaws.
Zhang pulled out the jade token again. A new notification flickered in his vision:
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Administrative Privilege Token Activated]
[User: Zhang Wei - ID 7845-B]
[Current Access Level: Tier 1 - Clerk]
[Upgrade Available: Tier 2 - Senior Clerk]
[Requirements: Pass Departmental Review (3,000 years processing time) OR bypass protocol using token]
[Bypass Protocol: Available]
[Warning: Bypassing protocol is a Class 3 Heavenly Offense. Penalty: Reassignment to Hell of Unending Data Entry.]
Zhang stared at the notification for a long moment. Hell of Unending Data Entry. That sounded worse than the actual hells. At least in those, you got fire and brimstone. Data entry was just... data entry.
But the token had already shown him the truth. He was dead because of someone's incompetence. And the system wanted him to just accept it.
"Not today," Zhang muttered.
He selected [Bypass Protocol].
The jade token flared to life, flooding his vision with light. For a moment, Zhang felt like he was falling through an infinite sea of numbers and equations. The code of reality streamed past him—births, deaths, marriages, wars, discoveries, failures. Every mortal life, every destined moment, all laid out in lines of celestial programming.
And then it stopped.
Zhang found himself standing in a white void. In front of him floated a single object: a massive, glowing sphere made of interlocking gears and runes. It pulsed with a rhythm that matched the beating of his heart.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Welcome to the Core Administrative Interface]
[User: Zhang Wei - ID 7845-B]
[Access Level: Tier 2 - Senior Clerk (Provisional)]
[New Functions Unlocked:]
- Destiny Modification (Limited)
- Karmic Ledger Viewing
- Timeline Adjustment (Single Thread Only)
- [REDACTED]
[Warning: Unauthorized use of administrative functions will result in immediate disciplinary action. Your soul has been flagged for monitoring.]
Zhang's lips curled into a grin. Flagged for monitoring. That was fine. He'd been monitored his entire mortal life—by bosses, by landlords, by that creepy guy who lived in his apartment complex's basement. He was used to it.
But now he had something he'd never had before: power.
He reached out and touched the sphere. Instantly, information flooded his mind—the current status of every destiny in his division, the pending karma balances, the upcoming celestial audits. It was overwhelming, but Zhang forced himself to focus.
There. Hidden in the depths of the system, buried under layers of bureaucratic obfuscation, was what he needed: the records of the administrative error that killed him.
He pulled up the file.
[LOG: Batch 374 - Reincarnation Queue]
[Error: Misrouting of Soul ID 7845-B]
[Responsible Party: Department of Mortal Affairs - Clerk ID 2319]
[Status: Correction Pending - Assigned to Supervisor Hu]
Supervisor Hu. The same man who had just yelled at him about filing errors. The same man who had been in charge of the department when Zhang's death was processed.
The same man who had conveniently "forgotten" to mention that Zhang's death was a mistake.
Zhang's hand tightened into a fist. He had two options: confront Hu and risk getting his soul deleted, or play along and slowly work his way up the system until he could expose the truth.
Option three: hack the system from the inside and become an immortal.
He liked option three.
A new notification appeared:
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: Unknown Process Detected]
[Source: Internal]
[Action: Soul ID 7845-B has accessed restricted records]
[Alert Level: Medium]
[Recommended Action: Investigate and