Pocket Dimension
1
“...THEN CLICK HERE, and then you just need to set a PIN.” Zhao Yunlan started to pass the phone to Shen Wei, then changed his mind and held on to it. “Forget it, I’ll set one for you. You can never think of anything new anyway.”
Shen-laoshi was firmly set in his ways. Every last one of his passwords was set as the unit number of their home. He had absolutely no concept of cybersecurity.
“Good thing you don’t have much money,” Zhao Yunlan said.
At the day-to-day level, Comrade Shen Wei showed every sign that he really knew how to enjoy life. Having turned his attention from manipulating the Three Realms to eating, dressing, and living well, he was more than prepared for the task.
Looking at the bigger picture, however, it was clear that Shen Wei had never truly engaged with the world. In tumultuous times, he’d hole up somewhere on a mountain. In times of peace, he’d rent some random place and live there for a while. Despite all his years wandering around the Mortal Realm, he had no savings or assets, never mind real estate or housing. To this day, other than his salary card, he didn’t have a single penny to his name.
As for all the famous mountains and rivers of the world, well, the government ran all of that now, and he certainly didn’t get a cut of the tourism money.
“Here, let me teach you how to send red envelopes again.” Zhao Yunlan hooked an arm over Shen Wei’s shoulder, ruining his elegant pose. Under the pretext of teaching, he took Shen Wei’s phone and sent himself a red envelope, and then, very pleased with himself, accepted it. “Congratulations are in order! This generation’s final remaining antique has officially entered the age of mobile payment… Tch, not again.”
His phone had started ringing before he’d even finished speaking. Zhao Yunlan glanced at it, but he didn’t want to answer, so he put the phone face down. But the caller refused to give up. They called three times in a row before realizing he was ignoring them and calling his office landline. Zhao Yunlan stepped over the little sofa and poked Daqing, who was busy grooming himself. “Damn fatty, pick up the phone.”
With Shen Wei there, Daqing didn’t dare express his fury. He leaped onto the desk, tail swishing in outrage, and slapped the phone, pretending it was Zhao Yunlan’s face. “Hello, Special Investigations… Huh? Ha ha… Good afternoon, sir… You’re looking for Bureau Chief Zhao? I’m afraid he said he’s not here at the moment.”
Zhao Yunlan had a sinking feeling. He flipped his phone back over and saw that not all the calls had been from the same person—the last two were from his dad. All he could do was get up, head aching, and drag himself over to the desk. “Don’t these monsters have anything better to do than pull strings through my dad?”
The Special Investigations Department in the Mortal Realm, otherwise known as “the Soul-Guarding Order,” had always been a combined daycare and labor reform center.
Other than xiao-Guo, who was a mortal, and comrades like Wang Zheng and Sangzan, who had been taken in by the Guardian, everyone at the SID could be divided into two categories: those like Zhu Hong and Lin Jing, who had been sent by their elders or family to gain some practical experience, and those like Chu Shuzhi, who were there to serve out a sentence. Since the Soul-Guarding Order’s original purpose was coordinating between the Three Realms and maintaining peace in the Mortal Realm, they often had to clean up after all kinds of violent monsters that were on the run in the Mortal Realm, all while following mortal laws and regulations.
It was a thankless job, and their boss was a mortal. Working under him didn’t do their cultivation any good, so hardly anyone with actual skill had wanted to sign up.
But everything had changed now. The Great Seal had gone out with a bang, the Four Hallowed Artifacts had returned to their places, the new Reincarnation Cycle had been made complete, the King of the Gui had become a god, and Kunlun had returned. None of this was widely publicized, but it also wasn’t a secret among those in the know in the Three Realms. Overnight, the tiresome job of working at the SID became a highly coveted golden post. Now everyone wanted to get their foot in the door so his immortal aura might rub off on them. Zhao Yunlan, annoyed beyond bearing, rejected every single applicant with the excuse of “there’s a limit to how many names can fit on the Soul-Guarding Order.”
The Order couldn’t fit that many names, but the Special Investigations Department—an executive branch of the government—certainly could.
As a result, in order to have some kind of link to the Soul-Guarding Order, those with brains started to make use of their connections. Using their influence, they managed to have the Special Investigations Department in Dragon City changed into the “Special Investigations Bureau Headquarters, with regional offices in various other cities.” It all sounded very official.
Just like that, Director Zhao, who spent his days coasting by at 9 University Road, suddenly found himself with a new title: “Bureau Chief Zhao.”
This year, for the first time since they’d been upgraded to be the Special Investigations Bureau, they were hiring. Zhao Yunlan, who’d been living a peaceful life caring for his vegetable garden, received orders to leave his little attic and properly oversee their expansion. New hires might not be able to enter the Soul-Guarding Order, but they would still fall under the umbrella of “regional offices.”
Zhao Yunlan didn’t want to hire just anyone—he’d maxed out his quota for employees without brains—and with their limited hands on deck in the main office, hiring on a large scale was unrealistic. With that in mind, for this first round they’d restricted the applicant pool by distributing a limited number of applications to the various yao tribes and cultivating sects so that they could oversee the initial round of vetting candidates.