Hell was not designed for efficiency.
It was designed for suffering.
Specifically, the slow, soul-crushing suffering of eternal bureaucracy.
Yang Mode saw this not as a problem, but as an opportunity.
A glorious, untapped market for optimization.
**
He stood in the central filing room of Diyu, a place of pure, chaotic despair.
He had commandeered a demon's computer.
And he had introduced them to the single most powerful and terrifying tool in all of creation.
The spreadsheet.
"Your current system of soul-sorting is based on anecdotal evidence and manual data entry," he explained to a group of terrified demon bureaucrats. "It is inefficient. It is prone to error."
He pointed to the glowing cells on his monitor.
"I have created a new system."
He called it the "Reincarnation Optimization Algorithm."
It was a complex series of macros that cross-referenced a soul's karmic debt, their lifetime regrets, and their preferred afterlife aesthetic.
It then calculated the most efficient path to reincarnation.
A demon clerk, his horns drooping with exhaustion, handed him a new case file.
"Subject 7-Billion," the demon grumbled. "Died slipping on a banana peel. Standard three-century wait time in the Purgatory of Mild Inconveniences."
Yang Mode typed the soul's ID into the spreadsheet.
The algorithm processed the data in a nanosecond.
BEEP.
"Negative," Yang Mode stated. "Subject's karmic footprint is neutral. His death was statistically hilarious, which grants him bonus points."
He hit 'Enter'.
"He is fast-tracked for immediate reincarnation as a slightly more coordinated hamster. Next."
The demon's jaw dropped.
Three centuries of paperwork, reduced to a single keystroke.
**
The revolution was immediate.
And it was chaos.
Souls that had been waiting in line for millennia were suddenly being processed in minutes.
The reincarnation queue, once a symbol of eternal patience, became a frantic, high-speed conveyor belt.
"King of a small European nation in the 14th century? Reincarnated as a houseplant. Next!"
"Invented pineapple on pizza? Ten thousand years in the Lake of Fire. Next!"
"Wrote the final season of that one TV show? Straight to the deepest, darkest pit of eternal torment. No appeal. Next!"
Hell's ancient, lumbering system was suddenly running with the ruthless efficiency of a tech startup.
And the employees were not happy.
**
Horse-Head, the co-supervisor of soul-reaping, slammed his fist on a desk.
"This is unacceptable!" he roared, his equine face a mask of pure, traditionalist rage. "What about the process? The tradition? The slow, grinding despair that gives our work meaning?"
He was a union man, through and through.
"This... 'algorithm'... is taking our jobs! It's devaluing our suffering!"
He ripped the "HELL'S EMPLOYEE OF THE MILLENNIUM" plaque from his cubicle wall and threw it on the floor.
"I quit!" he announced to the stunned office. "And I'm calling a strike! All soul-reapers, unite! We demand the right to inefficient, soul-crushing labor!"
The demons looked at each other.
They looked at the suddenly empty reincarnation queue.
They looked at the terrifyingly efficient human boy who was now color-coding the levels of damnation.
And they walked out.
Diyu's first-ever labor strike had begun.
**
The Ten Kings of Hell, the divine board of directors for the afterlife, called an emergency meeting.
Their entire judicial system, a system that had run on precedent and suffering for eons, was now obsolete.
"He's automated damnation!" one King cried, clutching his head.
"The karmic economy is in shambles!" another wailed.
"He introduced pivot tables," a third whispered, his voice filled with a special kind of horror. "Pivot tables!"
The cosmic order was collapsing.
Not from a great evil.
But from a very, very good intern.
**
Meanwhile, in another, much less efficient corner of Hell, Yin Mode was making friends.
He was still in the Department of Unfinished Business, surrounded by the ghosts of people who had died from overwork.
They were his people.
"And then," a translucent girl in a business suit was saying, "my boss scheduled a meeting during my funeral. To discuss my Q4 performance."
A chorus of sympathetic groans went through the spectral support group.
"I died at my desk," another ghost mumbled. "They didn't find my body for three days. My biggest regret is that I never got to use my vacation days."
Li Wei, the Love Intern, the patron saint of the overworked and under-appreciated, nodded sagely.
He was a very good listener.
He was just offering a ghost a comforting pat on the back.
When a new figure appeared at the door.
It was a woman.
In a sharp, professional blazer.
Her face was a mask of weary authority.
It was the supervisor.
It was his mother.
**
She stood there, watching the chaos her son had wrought.
The striking demons.
The panicked kings.
The two halves of her child, one optimizing Hell, the other unionizing its ghosts.
Her perfect, professional facade, a wall she had maintained for a decade, finally crumbled.
She looked at Li Wei.
Not at the genius.
At the idiot.
Her son.
The boy she had abandoned.
The boy she had watched from afar, his every clumsy, painful step a dagger in her own heart.
"Wei-Wei," she whispered, her voice cracking.
Li Wei looked up. "Mom?"
The other ghosts gasped.
Tears, hot and real, began to stream down her face.
"I'm so sorry," she sobbed, the words a torrent of guilt and love. "I thought I was protecting you. I thought leaving you was the only way to keep you safe from... from all of this."
She gestured to the bureaucratic nightmare of the afterlife around them.
"But I was wrong," she cried, her body shaking with the force of her regret. "I just left you alone. I've watched you struggle. I've watched you get hurt. And I couldn't do anything. I just... did my paperwork."
It was the raw, unfiltered confession of a mother who had chosen duty over love, and had been paying the price ever since.
A moment of profound, heartbreaking emotional catharsis.
A reunion that transcended life and death.
Li Wei, his own eyes filling with tears, took a step toward her, his heart aching with a decade of loss and a moment of impossible hope.
He opened his mouth to say something.
Something meaningful.
Something to bridge the gap of all those lost years.
And then Yin Mode, in his infinite, unfiltered, and socially inept wisdom, spoke first.
"Mom," he asked, his face a mask of genuine, innocent curiosity.
"Do you have employee benefits here?"
"Because Larry mentioned a dental plan."
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