Walking to his office the next morning was like swimming against the current in a river of visual noise.
Thanks to the [Perception of Chaos Threads] skill, he no longer saw the world as it was. The neon lights in the shops screamed with sharp pink and orange threads.
Car horns weren't just sounds; they were short bursts of aggressive red threads. Every person who passed him was surrounded by a faint aura of gray anxious threads or brown exhausted ones.
When he finally entered the company building, he felt like a soldier entering a warzone. The buzz of the fluorescent lights had a shape; the hum of the servers from the data room had a color.
His world, once dull and colorless, was now painfully and sensually saturated.
"Good morning, Lin!"
The voice was cheerful and full of life, which made him flinch.
He turned to see Su Ling, his new colleague from the marketing department, smiling broadly at him.
She was a young woman his age, but she was his opposite in every way.
Her eyes shone with ambition, her hair was tied back neatly, and she always carried an expensive cup of coffee from the nearby cafe.
Yuan Lin saw bright golden and yellow threads of optimism and energy swirling around her, so bright they almost hurt his eyes.
He forced a faint smile onto his face. "Good morning, Su Ling."
She approached him, her steps confident. "Sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but could you take a look at my computer? I think it's haunted or something."
Yuan Lin let out a short, soulless laugh. "Haunted?" he said, while his mind screamed, "If only you knew what 'haunted' meant. My skull is now a five-star hotel for demons and cosmic systems."
"Always happy to help," he said in a calm, professional voice. "Lead the way."
He followed her to her desk, which was annoyingly neat and organized, filled with healthy, lush plants that silently mocked the dying cactus on his own desk. She sat in her chair and pointed to her screen.
"Look," she said, moving the mouse.
"It's opening random pop-ups, and programs are suddenly crashing. It's a nightmare, and I have an important presentation this afternoon." Pale blue threads of anxiety had begun to creep into her golden aura.
Yuan Lin sat in the chair next to hers, the scent of her light, floral perfume filling the air. "Don't worry, let's have a look."
He focused his eyes on the computer screen and fully activated his perception. Instantly, he saw the problem.
It wasn't just numbers and data. He saw the clean blue threads of the operating system and the green threads of the presentation software.
But tangled among them was a reddish-black thread, spiky and sticky, like living barbed wire. It was pulsing slowly, sending out small branches that were choking the other threads.
It was a virus. But now, to Yuan Lin, it was a small, disgusting monster he could see.
"I see the problem," he said calmly, feeling a strange wave of confidence. "It's a stubborn piece of malware."
Just as he reached for the keyboard to start working, the blue screen flashed in his vision. It was a message from Wu Tian.
`[Demon Monarch Wu Tian]:" @Lord of Eternal Chaos I have meditated on the wisdom of the Trojan Horse! I feel my soul has been refined! I await your next wisdom!"
Yuan Lin froze. His hand stopped in mid-air, a centimeter from the keys. He felt the blood drain from his face.
He was here, in a well-lit office next to a pretty girl, receiving messages from a bloodthirsty demon king from inside his own head. The absolute surrealism of the situation almost made him laugh hysterically.
"Lin?"
Su Ling's voice brought him back to reality. She was looking at him with concern, her head tilted slightly. "Are you okay? You suddenly look pale."
He forced a smile, feeling the muscles in his face ache from the effort. "Ah, it's nothing. Just a slight headache, I don't think I slept well last night." An easy lie. A human lie. "Just a minute."
He was facing his first true test in cosmic multitasking.
With one part of his mind, he formulated a quick, cool reply to Wu Tian. *Good. Continue your meditation. True wisdom is a slow river, not a sudden flood. Silence is the best teacher."
At the same time, his fingers were moving on the keyboard with speed and precision. He was no longer randomly searching through files. He was following the spiky black thread directly to its source. He opened the task manager, isolated the malicious process, and deleted its associated files. The whole process felt more like performing delicate surgery than fixing a computer.
"Wow," Su Ling said with genuine surprise. "The pop-ups stopped. How did you do that so fast? It usually takes half an hour."
Yuan Lin finished his work and closed the windows. He leaned back in the chair, letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "I have... my ways," he said with a mysterious smile he didn't intend.
Su Ling stood up and clapped her hands lightly. "You're my savior! I really owe you one. Let me buy you lunch today, as a thank you."
"There's no need..." he started to say, but she cut him off.
"I insist. One o'clock, in the lobby," she said with cheerful firmness, then turned back to her work, her golden aura regaining its brilliance.
Yuan Lin remained seated for a moment, feeling the intense mental exhaustion. He had done it. He had handled a real human conversation, diagnosed a technical problem, and issued a command to a demon, all in less than five minutes.
A small blue system notification appeared in the corner of his vision.
[The Lord's prestige has been maintained. +5 Chaos Points.]
He looked at the number, then at his own back reflected in the black computer screen. Five points. A small price for that level of stress.
He realized the hardest part of being a demon lord wasn't issuing commands or fighting enemies.
The hardest part was pretending to be a normal human the next morning.