Legend Management Bureau

The three stood quietly at the entrance to the dilapidated house and looked around. There was not a single wandering soul or Yin Immortal nearby.

"Sister Bai, have you been here before?"

"No. I've only heard of the Legend Management Bureau. I've never been here."

Legend Management Bureau Netherworld Office.

The name sounded fairly official, but what was with this air of decay?

"Our assignment is to take Du Yu inside... We can't just stand outside." As she spoke, Xie Jin reached for the door.

Du Yu looked at the rundown house and suddenly felt rather reluctant to enter.

"If you pushed open the door and found something different from what you expected, would you still go inside?"

An ethereal voice suddenly sounded behind them. All three whipped around to find a white-haired old man standing there, though none of them knew when he had arrived.

The old man had a kindly face, and his age was impossible to tell. He wore plain, casually styled clothes, and his expression suggested he had been standing there for quite some time.

Without looking at Xie Jin or Fan Xiaoguo, he walked straight up to Du Yu.

"If it isn't what you imagined, will you still go inside?"

Du Yu looked at the old man, unsure what he meant.

The old man continued, "If you don't go inside, will Cui Jue still remember you?"

Du Yu frowned, as though something had occurred to him. "Sir, are you saying..."

The old man nodded. "You're very clever. Only with a before can there be an after. That is what we call 'cause and effect.' We're very short on time. Come inside with me. We've been waiting for you a long time."

The old man passed the three of them and pushed open the door.

"Waiting for me a long time? But I've only been dead for two or three hours..." Du Yu was puzzled.

"Two or three hours?"

Before stepping inside, the old man glanced back at Du Yu. "No, not merely two or three hours. We've been waiting nine hundred years."

The three cautiously followed the old man through the doorway, and the space inside opened up before them.

From outside, the single-story building looked no bigger than a public restroom, yet its interior was extraordinarily spacious.

The entire interior was built of pure white stone. Dozens of people hurried in and out, but what astonished the three most was that screens covered the room, each showing something inconceivable.

On the screen before them, an enormous giant separated heaven and earth, his body transforming into mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas;

On another screen, a little monkey wielded a huge staff, then shakily lowered his cloud and flew straight into the sky;

On a screen farther away, a frail woman sat beneath the Great Wall, weeping toward the heavens. A tremendous force from some unknown source shattered the entire wall.

Xie Jin and Fan Xiaoguo looked around as well. Every screen, without exception, showed a legendary tale, some familiar and others unheard of.

"So the Legend Management Bureau really has been working all this time?"

"That's right. Every legend that has ever taken place will never fade away. It becomes part of this world, a 'cell.' Our world is made up of countless such 'cells,'" the white-haired old man explained earnestly.

"But do you know? Cells can 'fall ill.' Once a legend becomes sick, it proceeds toward a different ending, and that change in history alters our present world. If the effect is slight, people who never originally existed will inexplicably appear. We call them 'Supreme Pivots.' They have subtle effects on this world, such as your death."

Du Yu seemed to understand a little, yet not quite.

"Ah!" Xie Jin said. "When you offered Zhou Zhuangshi your seat today, he was supposed to accept. That was the manner of death recorded in the Book of Life and Death. But he saw a Supreme Pivot in the back seat, so he didn't accept your offer and went to stand with that Supreme Pivot girl instead. Even the Book of Life and Death can't predict changes caused by Supreme Pivots."

"Exactly. When a cell falls ill, it produces Supreme Pivots. If it becomes too sick, our world may cease to exist. For example, if Pangu suddenly decided one day that he didn't want to split heaven from earth, what would happen to us now?"

"But..." Du Yu asked, "even if Pangu really decided not to do it, there wouldn't be anything we could do, would there? That happened in ancient times, after all."

"A good question, Xiao Zhan." The white-haired old man stroked his beard and patted Du Yu's shoulder.

"Xiao Zhan?"

"That is precisely the duty of our Legend Management Bureau: to 'intervene' in legends. When a legend develops a minor error, we can interfere through 'voice transmission.' That said, even without intervention, minor errors won't have any serious consequences. But if a legend is terminally ill, we can only temporarily seal that story away and wait for a remedy."

"A remedy?" Du Yu seemed to understand. "We need a remedy to cure the legend. Is that what you mean?"

"Precisely, Xiao Zhan." The white-haired old man nodded.

"No, who exactly is Xiao Zhan?"

"Sorry." A woman wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a professional uniform approached and greeted them. "The director has some dementia. He's mistaken you for someone else."

"You are...?" Xie Jin asked.

"Hello, all three of you. I'm Dong Qianqiu, assistant to the director of the Legend Management Bureau."

"The director's assistant? Doesn't that make you the second-in-command here at the Legend Management Bureau?" Du Yu studied Dong Qianqiu. Apart from her impressive bust, his only impression was of meticulous precision. Her hair was carefully tied back, without a single strand out of place. Not one white speck marked her jet-black uniform.

"I really must be getting senile. I forgot to introduce myself. I'm He Suoyi, director of the Legend Management Bureau." The old man smiled at the three of them, then addressed Xie Jin and Fan Xiaoguo. "Bi'an, Wu Jiu. Thank you for your efforts, too. Leave him with me, and give my regards to the kings of hell."

"We... we wouldn't dare accept that!" Both women waved their hands repeatedly. "We're only descendants of our ancestors..."

"You don't need to explain any more. I understand," Du Yu said. "My assignment is to help you find that 'remedy' and cure those sick legends, right?"

"Did this old man fail to explain himself clearly?" He Suoyi said. "We aren't asking you to 'find' the remedy. You-'are' the remedy."

"I... am a remedy? What's going on?"

"There's no time for a detailed explanation," Dong Qianqiu said to Du Yu as she leafed through the documents in her hands. "Simply put, we need you to enter a legend and set its story back on track."

Du Yu couldn't quite process it. He understood what the sentence meant, but it was completely beyond anything he had expected.

"Eighty-one years ago, we discovered a legend that had gone off course and could only seal it temporarily. That seal is about to expire. If this legend continues down the wrong path, our present world could be destroyed."

As Dong Qianqiu spoke, she pulled Du Yu toward a machine and began attaching tubes from various instruments to his body.

"W-wait. I'm a science student, not a humanities student! I don't know anything about your history or legends... And you want me to go right now?" Du Yu had never expected things to move so suddenly. "I still have a lot of questions! Why me?"

While making the final adjustments to the machine, Dong Qianqiu told Du Yu, "For certain reasons, only a very small number of people can enter legends, and you happen to be the second in these nine hundred years. Though the Legend Management Bureau has many staff members, they all serve in supporting roles. We haven't had an 'Operator' for nine hundred years."

"I-I-I still have questions! Don't you have employee training or something? What am I supposed to do?" Du Yu's voice began to tremble. He wanted to understand as much as possible about what he was about to face. After all, Cui Jue had said this would be extremely dangerous. He turned to Xie Jin and Fan Xiaoguo. "You have to help me! Otherwise, you won't be able to report your assignment completed either, right?"

Xie Jin and Fan Xiaoguo shook their heads helplessly. Both the Xie Household and the Fan Household had ancestral instructions, and the first rule of each was: cooperate unconditionally with the work of the Legend Management Bureau.

"There's no time for employee training, Xiao Zhan." He Suoyi approached slowly. "The seal on this legend will break within an hour. You must enter the legend within that hour and complete it within seven days. Otherwise..."

"Otherwise what?"

He Suoyi stroked his beard and said meaningfully:

"Otherwise, you will fade away in the past, while we perish in the future."

Was it really that serious?

Du Yu had thought only he would be in danger. He had never imagined that so many lives were at stake.

"Then... one last question," Du Yu said. "Which legend am I entering?"

Dong Qianqiu reached out and pulled a screen in front of him. On it was a dark-skinned, capable-looking man in coarse cloth clothes, drenched in sweat. With his face toward the earth and his back toward the sky, he kept digging with a hoe. Du Yu looked closely and saw ten suns in the sky.

"Yi Shoots Down Nine Suns?!" Du Yu could hardly believe his eyes. Could he possibly intervene in a legend of this caliber?

"Correct. Yi Shoots Down Nine Suns," Dong Qianqiu explained. "I'll tell you the legend's script now, so listen carefully. Under normal circumstances, Da Yi should receive guidance from an Immortal at eleven, spend ten years comprehending the Dao, and attain a half-immortal body. At twenty-one, he draws his bow and shoots down nine suns, saving all living beings beneath heaven. Have I made that clear enough?"

"W-wait!" Du Yu felt more nervous than he had during his college entrance exams. "Which part of the legend has gone wrong?"

Dong Qianqiu pushed up her glasses.

"The problem is that Da Yi never received guidance from an Immortal at eleven. He remains an ordinary mortal all the way to twenty-one."

Du Yu gave three bitter chuckles.

"You mean that I, an ordinary mortal, have to help another ordinary mortal shoot down nine suns?"

"Correct."

If he had known the assignment would be this difficult, Du Yu would never have come.

It was hell difficulty right from the start. If he could choose again, Du Yu would choose to wait seven hundred years.

At least his soul wouldn't be scattered to the winds, and he could become a rich kid.

"I remember learning in elementary school that those were nine huge firebirds up there..."

"Unfortunately..." Dong Qianqiu shook her head. "In many previous versions of the legend, Three-Legged Golden Crows acted as the nine suns, but our colleagues have already investigated this instance. All ten Three-Legged Golden Crows remain perched in the Fusang Divine Tree and have made no move. They don't understand the situation this time either. So... you'll have to devise a new way to shoot down the nine suns in the sky."

"What?!"

"Since you're also an ordinary mortal, we'll help you as much as possible." Dong Qianqiu handed him a booklet resembling a menu. "You may select two of these departed souls to bring into the legend. At critical moments, you can ask them to possess you. But remember, each soul can possess you for only five minutes."

Du Yu took it and found a long list, with a considerate instruction at the top: "Please place a check mark beside your selected souls."

Soul possession? Five minutes?

Du Yu cursed inwardly. What use was such a short time?

Even if he chose Sun Wukong, surely he couldn't knock down nine suns in five minutes?

Wait, Sun Wukong?

Du Yu was puzzled. For some reason, the Victorious Fighting Buddha-Sun Wukong-was prominently listed.

"Sun Wukong is dead?" Du Yu blurted out.

"No," Dong Qianqiu said. "When Sun Wukong attained Buddhahood in his physical body, he abandoned his seven po. We took one of them."

"Great! Sun Wukong it is!" Du Yu thought that, surely, Sun Wukong could knock down at least one sun in five minutes.

Even if the legend changed from "Yi Shoots Down Nine Suns" to "Yi Shoots Down One Sun," that ought to be passable, right?

"All right. Just check the box to select Sun Wukong. Have you chosen your second soul?"

Du Yu examined the list carefully. Every entry was indeed a known figure, including famous historical generals such as the Han Martial Saint, Guan Yunchang. But most were mortals. Du Yu pondered what practical use these souls might have. Without an exceptionally powerful divine ability, entering the story of Da Yi shooting down the suns would be futile.

"I can only bring one more soul. Who should I choose..." As Du Yu stared at the densely packed names, only one thought remained in his mind-

No matter who I choose, this is impossible.

"Let me recommend someone." He Suoyi slowly approached, sat beside Du Yu, and said quietly, "A seemingly impossible assignment must have an opening somewhere. Strength alone isn't enough to find those openings."

He Suoyi pointed to a name: Han Chancellor Crouching Dragon-Zhuge Kongming.

"Sometimes, you need to use your head."

Du Yu looked at the name, deep in thought. Could using his head really help him shoot down nine suns?

Even if Zhuge Liang's mind was so brilliant that he could design and build an intercontinental cruise missile in five minutes, it still couldn't knock down a sun...

"Please hurry a little." Dong Qianqiu looked helpless.

"Oh... almost done."

Du Yu gritted his teeth and stopped quibbling with the woman before him. Zhuge Liang it was. The old man seemed muddled, but his words weren't without reason. He picked up the pen and placed a check mark beside Zhuge Kongming.

"All right." Dong Qianqiu turned to a staff member. "Go fetch the souls and prepare the Crossing Starter Pack. Everyone else, begin the soul transfer."

Everyone in the Legend Management Bureau sprang into action, and instruments and screens began lighting up.

Was it starting already?

Du Yu clenched his teeth. He had never encountered anything so absurd. Just a few hours earlier, he had been sitting on a bus playing with his phone, yet now he was about to travel into a legend.

"Remember, if you fail to complete the legend within seven days, the ten suns will remain forever. Not only the past, but our present world as well will see its living beings plunged into misery, with cries of suffering everywhere."

After these final instructions, Dong Qianqiu placed a strange hood over Du Yu's head.

Du Yu felt a tearing sensation in his head and instantly lost consciousness.