Chapter 39#

The World-Weary Heavenly Master of the Apocalypse#

On the desk of the Director of the Soul Purification Department lay two case closure reports. The executor number on both was the same: 666. The Director had a bit of a headache. The report that had just come in was virtually identical to the previous one—one hundred percent task completion rate, one hundred percent plane stability, and a one hundred percent deviation on the emotional connection line.

There couldn’t possibly be another “pending” stamp, could there? If this emotional line kept going wrong, the Bureau of Destiny would surely come knocking to make trouble. Should he have a talk with this 666? The Director was torn.

The arrival of a distinguished visitor rescued him from this dilemma.

Judge No. 1 of the Judge’s Bureau.

The man was dressed in a standard-issue uniform and spoke with crisp efficiency: “Orders from above—do not interfere with the task execution of Soul Purification Department’s 666. Try to assign him as many tasks as possible.”

Having delivered his message, Judge No. 1 turned to leave.

“Then how should I rate him? After all, according to regulations, disrupting the emotional line is grounds for a failing grade,” the Director quickly asked.

“There’s no need to consider the emotional line. Score based on completion rate.” This Judge No. 1 happened to have a personal rapport with the Director, so he added an afterthought: “This 666 is someone the higher-ups are watching very closely. Be mindful of that.”

After seeing Judge No. 1 off, the Director felt a chill run down his spine. The Judge’s Bureau was the personal assistant corps of the Director-General of the Underworld Bureau. The “higher-ups” referenced by Judge No. 1 were, at the very least, figures at the Director-General level.

Without hesitation, the Director stamped both case closure reports with an “S+” rating. Just as he was about to send them back, another message arrived from the system assistant belonging to 666. One glance and his face drained of color—what trouble had 666 gotten into this time?

The story had to go back to when Lu Heng returned to the Underworld Bureau.

After each task was completed, employees were granted a one-month recovery period. The last time, the “pending” stamp had riled Lu Heng so much that he’d gone back on the job after just three days of rest. But this time, Lu Heng’s door had stayed shut for the entire month, refusing even the little assistant entry.

Just as the little assistant was pacing anxiously outside the door, it swung open. Before the assistant could even express how much it had missed him, Lu Heng’s words nearly sent its database into meltdown.

“Little Assistant, I want to resign and re-enter the cycle of reincarnation.”

“Calm down!” the little assistant burst into a puff of fur in midair. “If you go through reincarnation again, according to the rules, there’s no guarantee you’ll be reborn as a human.”

“I don’t care. Even being a mindless tree sounds fine to me.” Lu Heng genuinely felt he couldn’t carry on with this job. Being forced to betray someone else’s sincere feelings was just too agonizing—especially when that someone was his own beloved.

After saying that, Lu Heng turned to go back to his room and write up a resignation report. In a panic, the little assistant reported the situation to the Director. After all, Lu Heng was by far the most promising new hire the Soul Purification Department had seen in tens of thousands of years—no employee had ever achieved a one hundred percent completion rate right from the start. The emotional line was indeed a major problem, but once he gained more experience, he shouldn’t be making such mistakes anymore.

The Director was, after all, the Director. Before long, he had sent the little assistant a solution.

The moment the little assistant saw the file the Director had sent, it lit up with joy and knocked on Lu Heng’s door: “Xiao Lu! Xiao Lu! I’ve got something good—guaranteed you won’t regret looking at it!”

What appeared before Lu Heng were two case closure reports and a piece of plane footage. The big red “S+” rating stamps on the two reports failed to pique Lu Heng’s interest in the slightest. What did catch his eye was the plane footage—labeled with serial number 58921. That was the plane where Shikong had been.

According to regulations, after an executor departed a plane, they were not permitted to secretly observe its affairs. This footage, without question, struck at the itchiest spot in Lu Heng’s heart.

The footage wasn’t long.

In the image, a single figure sat upright beneath the Source of the World. He had merely been sitting there like a statue when his expression subtly shifted. Through special processing, the dialogue taking place at the level of consciousness was made audible.

“Do you wish to see that person?”

“Who are you?”

“I am you. Do you wish to see that person?”

“That is the only thing on my mind.”

“Then abandon this body, and come with me.”

The footage ultimately froze on the image of Shikong, a smile on his face, as he passed away in meditation. What appeared next was a maintenance report from the Plane Maintenance Department: Investigation confirms this soul has departed this plane. Upon attempting to trace its whereabouts, a notification indicated involvement of a top-secret file. Insufficient clearance for tracking.

The footage the little assistant had brought gave Lu Heng a glimmer of hope. If he completed enough tasks, perhaps he could reunite with Shikong in some plane. Even if that didn’t happen—once he was promoted to a senior position, wouldn’t he have the clearance to trace Shikong’s whereabouts?

And so, Lu Heng reignited a boundless passion for his work and returned to his post with renewed ambition.

The third client looked rather peculiar. He wore a brocade cross-collar top embroidered with cloud patterns on his upper body, but a pair of denim jeans on his lower half, with a four-finger-wide wooden sword strapped to his back. The overall effect was strangely incongruous.

When the man noticed Lu Heng’s odd look, he smiled sheepishly: “A bit of a strange getup, isn’t it? No choice—jeans are more convenient for moving around.”

The client’s name was Yun Lan, and the plane he came from had deep ties to the Earth plane where Lu Heng had previously lived. This was a parallel plane to Earth’s. At a certain point in time, following a different major event, its trajectory diverged entirely from that of Earth.

This was an apocalypse plane. The appearance of zombies had thrown everything on this planet into chaos. However, in Yun Lan’s account, they were not called zombies—they were properly termed “Demon Men.” Yun Lan, hailing from a hidden sect, knew full well that the catastrophe sweeping across the entire planet was not, as the outside world claimed, caused by a virus, but rather by a leak of demon qi.

This was the greatest difference between this plane and Earth’s. This plane was connected to two other higher planes—one was a cultivation plane, and the other, a demon beast plane. Long ago, the spiritual qi of the cultivation plane had entered this plane through a passageway, awakening spiritual roots in some of its inhabitants. Some had even broken through and ascended to the cultivation plane through practice. Later, the passageway gradually collapsed, and this plane’s spiritual qi grew ever scarcer. The great powers departed one after another.

Before the last great power left, he sealed the passageway between this plane and the demon beast plane. Without the restraint of spiritual qi, the demon qi seeping from the demon beast plane would cause tremendous harm to the ordinary people of this plane.

And the hidden sect that Yun Lan belonged to was founded by the descendants of cultivators who had been unable to cultivate to the level required to leave this plane. They called themselves Heavenly Masters. Their ancestors had decreed: the duty of a Heavenly Master was to maintain the seal between this plane and the demon beast plane, to hunt down the occasional demon beast that broke through the seal, and to cultivate themselves in the process.

The hidden sect was protected by ancient formations left behind by great powers, and thus had never been discovered. Within the formation lay a fragment of spiritual source brought from the cultivation plane by a great power—needed to sustain the formation and to provide for the Heavenly Masters’ cultivation.

Then, one day, everything changed. A critical formation that maintained the seal was accidentally discovered by ore prospectors, followed by large-scale excavation and archaeology. Before the Heavenly Masters could repair this formation, yet another formation was unintentionally destroyed.

Amid this cascade of coincidences, the seal cracked, and demon qi leaked out. More than half the living creatures of the entire plane were infected by the demon qi, becoming the zombie-like beings seen in films. Among the remaining survivors, some had spiritual roots awakened within their bloodlines and became ability users.

The Heavenly Masters of the hidden sect rushed about, fighting the Demon Men and demon beasts on one hand while searching for a way to repair the seal on the other. But just as they were on the verge of succeeding, the effort collapsed at the final moment. The spiritual source was stolen, and the great formation protecting the sect vanished.

This land, cleansed for countless millennia by the ceaseless flow of spiritual qi, was exposed to the world. The Demon Men and demon beasts, who bore an innate hatred for spiritual qi—their natural nemesis—descended upon it. However powerful the Heavenly Masters were, they could not withstand the unending onslaught. In the end, the entire sect perished.

Yun Lan was the most gifted and most powerful disciple in the sect. His master and all his senior and junior brothers had spent their last ounce of strength to send him out of the encirclement. The single mission they entrusted him with: recover the spiritual source and mend the seal.

Yun Lan was the youngest disciple in the sect, yet possessed extraordinary talent and had never once left its grounds. Naive and unworldly, he was suddenly thrust alone into this chaotic apocalypse. After being deceived several times, he no longer trusted anyone. Like a lone wolf, he traversed this desolate world in solitude.

Eventually, Yun Lan discovered the whereabouts of the spiritual source—it was in the most powerful human safe base. He had intended to negotiate with the base’s leadership and reclaim the spiritual source that belonged to his sect, but could not find a way in.

With no other choice, he infiltrated the base to retrieve the spiritual source himself. But at the critical moment, he was discovered. Yun Lan refused to give up the spiritual source. No matter how strong he was, he could not overcome the base’s ability users’ sheer numbers. In the end, he was besieged and died of exhaustion.

“My obsession is to recover the spiritual source, repair the seal, and honor my sect’s trust,” Yun Lan said.

“I accept your commission. I am Executor No. 666 of the Soul Purification Department, Underworld Bureau. Lu Heng, at your service.”

Lu Heng’s employee rank had soared to Grade B after two S+ evaluations. As a result, he now had some permissions he hadn’t possessed before. After Yun Lan departed, Lu Heng had the little assistant compile a summary of key points regarding this plane from the Grade B database.

“Xiao Lu, big discovery—this plane is a derivative plane!” the little assistant suddenly exclaimed.

“A derivative plane?”

“During my cross-reference in the database just now, I found that this plane actually has a primary plane. In the primary plane, the final trajectory was that Yun Lan’s sect successfully repaired the seal and spread the cultivation method throughout the world, causing a shift in the laws of heaven and earth. The plane began generating spiritual qi on its own and eventually upgraded into a high-level cultivation plane. Yun Lan’s sect became the most exalted sect in that plane, and Yun Lan was its sect master. This Yun Lan was supposed to be this world’s Child of Destiny!” The more data the little assistant pulled up, the more alarmed it became.

“How could a derivative plane have veered so far off course? What was the point of divergence—a reborn person or a transmigrator?” When a plane showed a trajectory completely different from its origin, the most likely explanation was a reborn person or transmigrator who had altered some key events ahead of schedule. Lu Heng had studied all of this during new employee training. He hadn’t expected to encounter such a special commission so soon.

“It’s a reborn person,” the little assistant said, pulling up a file. “Jiang Sile—in the primary plane, he was murdered in collusion by his lover and his lover’s affair partner. Afterward, he was reborn. The derivative plane emerged after this point in time.”

It seemed the key to this task lay squarely with this individual.