Work Prophet

"When did you get here?" Xu Mengyuan asked Li Yu, who was standing at the door.

"Five minutes ago."

"It seems you've already started to blend into the corporate culture of the Third Age, though there's still room for improvement."

Xu Mengyuan gave a slight smile and at 8:57 unlocked the electronic lock on the main door, "The receptionists usually arrive in the last minute, and the others aren't considered late as long as they arrive before 9:20. I came a bit earlier for you. Come in, there's a lot to do today."

Li Yu followed Xu Mengyuan into her office—a room labeled number 2.

Unlike room number 8, this was a typical office layout with desks, chairs, computers, printers, filing cabinets, and everything looked no different from any ordinary company department.

Well, there was a slight difference, Li Yu noticed the ergonomic chair that Xu Mengyuan was sitting on was by Herman Miller.

Such a chair's online retail price was between ten and twenty thousand, and even with bulk purchases, it wouldn't be much cheaper. Even the top internet companies rarely had the heart to equip their employees with such chairs.

Xu Mengyuan hung her shoulder bag on the pegboard on the wall and placed the soy milk and fried dough sticks she had bought from the breakfast store downstairs at her workstation.

Then she opened a drawer, took out a black folder, and handed it to Li Yu.

"Based on your request, we agreed to talk about the contract after you finished your first day's work. So, how about it, do you have an answer now?"

Li Yu took the contract, found an office chair to sit on, and quickly scanned the general content. Then, he read through it word by word, sentence by sentence, twice over.

After confirming that there were no text traps or any annoying non-compete clauses, he put down the contract and looked up, "Aren't you guys worried at all that I'd go to the police after I left yesterday?"

"Taking on new staff always involves some risk," Xu Mengyuan replied, lifting the paper cover off the soy milk, "Since you took the first step, we ought to reciprocate your trust."

"Your so-called reciprocation of trust, does it include unexpectedly locking me up in room number 8?" asked Li Yu.

"I didn't want to do that either. But as the saying goes, the beginning is always the hardest. I told you right from the start, without seeing that world for yourself, there are some things you would never believe, no matter how much I explained," Xu Mengyuan said.

With one hand, she grabbed a fried dough stick and with the other, she scooped up a spoonful of soy milk, blowing on it before eating.

"Besides, even if you're not interested in this job and don't want to part ways amicably, we also have a public relations department to handle such matters."

"Handle it how, by killing me?"

Xu Mengyuan shook her head, "We're a legitimate company, we don't do anything illegal."

"But if I had died in that world yesterday..."

"You won't die there," a voice said from outside the door, "umm... more accurately, you will die there, but it's no big deal, you'll come back, whole and unharmed, because your godhood sequence is that legendary [Reborn], identical to the one found in Christianity's most famous Prophet."

The speaker was a handsome mixed-race guy who looked about the same age as Li Yu, with chestnut hair, wearing a Forza Horizon 4 fan T-shirt and, below, a pair of brightly patterned beach shorts.

He didn't look like he was here for work; he seemed more like a playboy on his way to a beach holiday.

He reached out to Li Yu as soon as he entered the room, saying warmly, "Hephaestus, Equipment Department. My hair isn't dyed, by the way, since my mom is Slav. Oh, and I should especially emphasize, I am not gay."

"Li Yu." Li Yu shook hands with Hephaestus, "You just mentioned that [Reborn]..."

"Oh yeah, your godhood sequence. It was first mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, also in Mark's Gospel, chapter sixteen, verse nine, and in Peter's First Letter... But unlike other godhood sequences, [Reborn] is just so, so, so rare.

"After that guy, no one else has had it, and we weren't even sure it really existed, until you came along and ended this millennia-long debate."

The handsome mixed-race guy looked at Li Yu with burning eyes, as if staring at a shiny, gold-foil, limited-edition character card he'd just pulled from a loot box.

"Thanks for telling me you're not gay in advance, but I still don't quite understand..."

"Simply put, you have a special capability for infinite rebirth." Xu Mengyuan, munching on a fried dough stick, added.

"Interdimensional travel is bizarre enough, now you're also trying to tell me that the stories in the Bible are true?" Li Yu frowned.

"Partly, yes," nodded Hephaestus, "though there might be some discrepancies in the narrative. So far, we've confirmed the existence of more than sixty different godhood sequences, spread across Nordic Mythology, Celtic mythology, Indian Mythology... The Bible has the most, since it was written closest to our time, making it easier to verify.

"These godhood sequences are the precious treasures granted to us by those ancient visitors from another universe. It is their legacy that allowed the company to establish itself and venture into this blue ocean that no one had previously touched, much like the Mayflower reaching the New Continent."

"What exactly are you trying to do, plunder another universe for its gold, products, and energy?" Li Yu asked.

"No, no, no, that would be too barbaric. The New Continent and the Mayflower are just metaphors; we are not like those greedy, cold-hearted European colonists. And as you might have noticed, we can't take anything physical from that world. In fact, there's only one thing we can take—faith."

"Faith? Isn't that just an abstract concept?"

"Faith is real and it's also a very expensive and unique resource that can flow freely across universes, without the constraints of dimensions." Xu Mengyuan, having finished her fried dough stick, wiped her hands and explained.

"Since its inception, the company has been devoted to mining and utilizing faith. All of our work revolves around these two objectives."

"Let me summarize," said Li Yu, "if I've understood you correctly, you just implied that many of the historical myths are real, left behind by visitors from other dimensions, for the purpose of mining this special resource of faith on Earth.

"And now, the Third Era is inheriting the technology left by them through some means, and also going to other dimensions to collect faith... What about Taoism, then? Does it also originate from another universe?"

"No, Zhang Daoling is one of our own," Hephaestus said with adoration, "He's my idol, a completely self-taught genius. His methods of utilizing faith might be crude and primitive, but they are still very enlightening to our research to this day."