Ne Job: The Intern from Hell — Chapter 113: "System Reboot"
The Bureau of Heaven was collapsing.
Paper wards tore off the walls, glowing sigils flickered in midair, and every corridor twisted into new configurations like a maze reprogramming itself. The divine architecture — once serene, stable, perfect — had begun to rewrite its own code.
Yue clutched her tablet as the floor shuddered beneath them. "The entire Bureau's system is purging itself! It's rewriting the data architecture— Ne Job, your activation must've triggered a full reset!"
Ne Job braced himself against the trembling wall. "You're saying I did this?"
Bao stumbled out from a nearby elevator shaft, clutching a half-eaten donut. "You mean this whole divine building's having a nervous breakdown because the intern's logged in?"
"Not funny, Bao!" Yue snapped, typing furiously on her glowing scribe tablet. "The Bureau is restructuring around the Legacy Code. It's treating Ne Job as the root administrator. Every subsystem is rewriting hierarchy to match his old identity — Ne Zha."
The moment she said the name, every lantern in the hall flared white.
Glyphs etched themselves into the air, forming the Bureau's ancient seal. Voices whispered through the corridor — overlapping, mechanical, divine.
> "Welcome back, Legacy Entity."
"Authorization: Divinity Restored."
"Rebooting Heavenly Framework."
Ne Job's badge dissolved into his palm, replaced by a burning mark — the same circular seal Yue had seen in the Gravework Nexus. It pulsed faintly, synchronized with his heartbeat.
He stared at it, half in awe, half in dread. "Yue… what if this was always meant to happen?"
Yue looked up sharply. "Don't say that."
"What if I'm not the mistake Xian said I was?" His tone darkened. "What if I'm the correction?"
Bao blinked. "You mean like… the Bureau messed up Heaven so bad they built you as a divine software patch?"
"Exactly."
The ground split beneath them. A spiral of light opened — not fire, not magic, but pure divine data. The Bureau's main core was exposed: the Central Archive, a colossal engine of golden script spinning between realities.
Yue's screen crackled. "It's calling for synchronization! Ne Job, it's trying to merge with you!"
"Then stop it!"
"I can't — the override's locked to your ID signature!"
"Then I'll talk to it myself."
Before Yue could stop him, Ne Job stepped into the light. The golden storm swallowed him whole.
---
He was standing inside the Archive.
A vast ocean of memories stretched in all directions — countless scrolls floating like stars, voices whispering every forgotten record the Bureau had ever kept.
And then, from the void, came a figure.
Tall. Bright. Clad in divine armor that shimmered like living flame. His face was Ne Job's — but older, sharper, terrible.
> "You are the rewrite," the figure said. "I am the original."
Ne Job felt his pulse stutter. "So you're the old me. Ne Zha, huh?"
> "What's left of him." The figure's voice was calm but resonant — every syllable a divine echo. "They cut me out, replaced me with a bureaucrat's puppet, and buried my fire in paperwork."
"Guess they wanted something easier to control."
> "Then they failed."
Their eyes met — god and intern, mirror and reflection.
> "You've seen it, haven't you?" the original said. "The cracks in the Bureau. The endless files. The broken souls waiting for approval that never comes. Heaven forgot why it exists."
Ne Job clenched his fists. "And you think burning it down fixes that?"
> "Not burning. Rebooting. Heaven's system is obsolete. It needs a reset — and only a Legacy Entity can trigger it."
"You mean me."
> "Us."
The Archive began to quake. Streams of data cascaded between them, merging their voices, their memories. Ne Job saw flashes — the wars of Heaven, the fall of the first Bureau, his own birth rewritten by divine decree.
> "Accept the merge," said the original. "And we'll restore Heaven's balance."
Ne Job hesitated. Restore — or erase everything that came after?
He saw Yue in his mind's eye — standing alone in the trembling Bureau, fighting the system to keep him grounded. He saw Bao, Lord Xian, the endless lives they'd touched. All those imperfect, mortal things.
He smiled bitterly. "No thanks. I've seen what happens when gods rewrite the world. I'd rather file the mess manually."
> "Then you choose corruption."
"Maybe. But at least it's mine."
He slammed his palm against the Archive's seal. The data stream reversed, feedback flaring like divine lightning. The original Ne Zha screamed as his image fractured into code.
> "FOOL—YOU CANNOT DENY WHAT YOU ARE!"
"Watch me."
The Archive collapsed in on itself, code folding, light screaming, the system rebooting.
---
Back in the Bureau, Yue screamed as the light burst from the core. Then — silence.
When the glare faded, Ne Job lay in the center of the chamber, unconscious but breathing. The seal on his palm was gone.
Yue fell to her knees beside him. "Ne Job… hey. You did it, didn't you?"
His eyes fluttered open. "Define… 'did it.'"
She laughed through tears. "You stopped a divine system reset with stubbornness and bad humor."
He grinned weakly. "Classic intern solution."
Bao peeked in from the hallway. "So, uh… Bureau's not exploding anymore. We still getting lunch?"
Ne Job pushed himself up, staring at the fractured ceiling of Heaven. "No. We're getting answers."
Yue tilted her head. "From who?"
He stood, brushing the ash off his Bureau coat. His voice was quiet — but resolute.
"From whoever wrote the Bureau's real ledger."