"Zhang Yu!" "Zhang Yu!" "Zhang Yu!"
The chant of his name dragged Zhang Yu abruptly out of sleep. A ripple of snickers ran through the classroom. He looked up at the podium to find the teacher glaring coldly at him. "Get out and stand in the hall," the teacher snapped.
Zhang Yu rose with a shrug and shuffled out of the classroom.
Day after day, his high-school life felt hopeless. His grades kept sliding, his rank kept falling, dropping him from the model class all the way to the worst one. Classmates and teachers alike now looked at him the way one looks at a bag of garbage. Meanwhile, the loans he had piled up to cultivate the immortal path weighed on him, squeezing the breath out of his chest.
One day, he finally walked up onto the school rooftop.
As he was about to take that one step into the void, his phone rang. He picked it up. A voice on the other end said: "Hello? Is this Mr. Zhang? A fresh plot has just opened in the northern suburbs cemetery. For just two hundred thousand, you can enjoy post-mortem corpse-refinement service—a chance to live your life all over again..."
Zhang Yu couldn't help but laugh. "Your big data really is something. You even guessed I was about to jump off a building. Pity you didn't compute that I'm broke—can't afford your grave."
The caller pressed on: "If you're broke, then don't you want to turn things around? Our company has a Scheme to Mend the Heavens. If you're interested, I can send you the details..."
Zhang Yu hung up and stared down at the abyss of darkness at his feet.
"Turn things around..."
After a long pause, he opened his phone again and looked at the website the caller had sent. A toy bear appeared on the screen and spoke: "Make a wish to the deity."
"Set up the ritual for me, and in five minutes, all your wishes will be granted."
"Completely free. Zero barrier. No extra charges, ever."
"Click once, and let your life be reborn..."
Watching this, Zhang Yu felt something—a painful memory kept darting around in his head, yet he couldn't grasp it. It was the rage of being constantly pushed, constantly tormented, constantly having his head pressed down to eat bitterness.
Before those painful memories could break free of their cocoon, his emotions and instincts reacted first.
"Damn it!" Zhang Yu roared, hurling the phone away and raising his middle finger. "Ha ha, trying to fool me?"
"You'd better wait for your next life!"
Zhang Yu's awareness seized up, and the next moment he woke back up in the classroom. But the memories and emotions of the evil god grew more and more intense, and he gradually recalled something.
"I remember now. I'm taking the assessment to become a divine affairs contractor."
"And this assessment... it's connected to the evil god?"
Zhang Yu felt he now understood the key to this trial, and decided to give it his best performance.
...
Sun Jiayi's heart was full of pride.
Not because he was human—but because he was a god.
Though he was merely one of the four hundred and eighty million ledger-clerk divinities of the Patrol Department, he was still a god, holding the authority to review human beings.
True, what he reviewed were just outsourced job assessments that paid fourteen yuan an hour, yet he had always remained scrupulous and diligent. That was what it meant to be a god.
A humble god never forgot his duty toward Kunxu!
At this moment, screen after screen lit up before Sun Jiayi, playing one assessment after another. They were instinct-reaction tests held in dreamscapes within the Spirit Realm, pitting applicants against the temptations of the evil god. Whether an applicant could withstand that temptation inside the illusion... was the very key to passing.
"This candidate from Taishi City—what's he doing listing his family's assets and connections on his résumé?"
"So what if he's worth a hundred million? Fail is fail. Do they think I'd bend the rules for their family background?"
Sun Jiayi sneered, dismissing it with contempt. Watching the man hesitate in the illusion, he struck him from the list at once.
"Faint of will. Unqualified."
Sun Jiayi was a haughty god, and the more privileged the students he struck down, the more he savored his own divine pride, the deeper his satisfaction at having done his duty.
He turned his thoughts to the next candidate, from Hong'an City. The résumé was crowded with honors from freshman and sophomore years—the class's top scholar, a regular at competitions, dazzling talent, outstanding ability, boundless potential, likely to enter a top university or even take refuge in a great sect.
But watching the candidate struggle back and forth in the illusion, dragging on a full ten minutes before barely refusing the evil god's temptation, Sun Jiayi struck him down without mercy.
"Hmph, thinking a flashy résumé and a great future would make me go easy? I'm not some vulgar man who only cares about grades."
"Even if you were a genius from a real university, once you land in my hands, if I say you fail, you fail."
"Took so long to refuse—that alone proves your will is weak. Do you think I'd let you pass?"
He turned his thoughts again, and this time what appeared before him were Zhang Yu's file and assessment.
"Mmm, tossing the phone decisively on the rooftop. Not bad."
"The difficulty goes up from here. Let's see how he handles it."
The scenes on the screen shifted endlessly as the evil god's temptations took turn after turn before Zhang Yu. A beauty who adored him begged him to make a wish to the evil god together—Zhang Yu kicked her away and fled. Someone hunted and cornered, with the evil god offering to save him—Zhang Yu scoffed, turned, and hurled the evil-god doll straight at his foes, shouting: "This thing's a treasure! You can wish for anything from it!"
And when a colossal rag doll chased him, threatening him with terrifying strength to sign a pact—Zhang Yu ran while dialing the police, and when the constables arrived, he even tried to charge the evil god alongside them.
But... Sun Jiayi at the screen had already stopped watching his lively showing, because someone had contacted him.
Seeing Zhang Pianpian pop up in the contact window—along with her title as acting deputy captain of the Songyang Patrol Department patrol squad—he frowned. "What does my esteemed colleague want?"
Zhang Pianpian said: "There's a candidate named Zhang Yu, and I'd like to..."
Sun Jiayi raised a hand to refuse. Then he saw her activate her registry book and cast a talisman directly.
"You dare cross the Spirit Realm to cast a spell on me, a full ledger-clerk god?"
"You'd better have nerve!"
But seeing the specific talisman she cast, Sun Jiayi immediately relaxed. "A favor charm?!"
The favor charm—a talisman that quickly builds a god's good graces. Its principle required no god's name, no files, no knowledge of the account. Simply activated while contacting the target, it would directly transfer money into the account and automatically hide the transaction record.
Sensing the charm's effect, Sun Jiayi's stern expression eased. "Fancy that, a mere mortal from the lower world, and you understand talismans well enough to have learned the favor charm."
And when he sensed the number in his account shifting, a smile broke across his face. "For a high school student to honor the gods like this shows real, steadfast faith."
"What is it you need me to do?"
Zhang Pianpian was not surprised. From her two years of using a registry book and studying talismans, she knew: faith levels are topped up with money, spell-learning is topped up with money, hiring proper gods to tutor you is topped up with money... talismans simply were money!
But even filling a god's account required finesse. Between topping up the ledger book, private transfers, open transfers, favor charms... the channels differed enormously, and that was where a spellcaster's skill showed.
Zhang Pianpian said: "I'd like to trouble the great deity to lower Zhang Yu's assessment difficulty just a tiny bit..."
Sun Jiayi waved it off. "Pah, a job paying fourteen yuan an hour—what difficulty could the test possibly have?"
...
Inside the illusion.
Zhang Yu looked at the world before him, his eyes full of bewilderment. He now stood in a white room. Floating at the center of the room was a line of text: *Will you accept the evil god's temptation?*
Beneath it floated two choices: Yes, and No.
Wait... this was a trap question, wasn't it?
Because the question looked so simple, Zhang Yu couldn't bring himself to answer. After mulling it over for a full ten minutes, failing to find any hidden snare, he nervously chose: No.
The next moment, a notice of his passing appeared before him.
A thoroughly bewildered Zhang Yu withdrew from the Spirit Realm, still unsure what had happened.
Just then, his phone rang. He picked it up to hear Zhang Pianpian's voice: "You passed the exam, didn't you?"
Zhang Yu voiced the confusion in his heart at once.
Zhang Pianpian explained: "Oh, I transferred some money to the ledger-clerk god on duty and asked him to lower the difficulty a little?"
*A little?!*
So this was a god?
Zhang Yu was stunned. "You can buy gods off with money?!"
"How is that possible," Zhang Pianpian said. Zhang Yu was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when she continued, "Money can only *possibly* buy off a god. It depends on how much you spend and how you spend it. That's where a spellcaster's skill comes in."
Zhang Yu: "But... that's a god! In Kunxu, the gods work for money. That's how money moves the gods." Zhang Pianpian stated it as a matter of course: "Without money, how would the Eight Great Gods keep Kunxu running? How would they govern the world?"
Zhang Yu was speechless again. He could only say he now had a far deeper understanding of Kunxu.
Recalling what she had said earlier, he asked: "Didn't you say this test examines the Dao Heart and will?"
Zhang Pianpian said coolly: "Mm, yes. It requires you to have enough Dao Heart, enough will, to hold out long enough... for me to find the duty ledger-clerk handling this assessment of yours in the Spirit Realm and cast a talisman to put money into his account."
Then she added: "All right, I've brought your work permit and work registry book. Let's meet at the gate of your high school."
"Now... we can go talk with the Songyang High School student council."
So Zhang Yu dragged his exhausted body onto the bus, and after an hour and a half reached the school station. From a distance he saw Zhang Pianpian standing at the intersection.
She handed him a black-and-white object, like a small manual.
"This is your work registry book. It grants one free talisman use per day, and studying the Patrol Department's talismans through it comes at a discount..."
She pointed to a strange symbol on the book. "The marking on the registry book belongs to the Patrol Department. Flash it whenever you run into trouble."
Zhang Yu held it up with care, thinking: *So this is a registry book. The cheapest one runs nearly a hundred thousand, doesn't it?*
The registry book was a key to learning talismans—and talismans determined one's Dao-art grades in high school. Zhang Yu had once heard of a student who mortgaged his very organs just to buy one.
"And this thing just gets handed out as soon as you sign up? The Patrol Department sure is loaded."
"Just wait till A-Zhen sees this—she'll be on her knees calling me Daddy, begging to give it a try."