Most people believe that once you die, you descend into the gloomy, terrifying underworld. Yet after Yu Xiao crossed the Yellow Springs Road, he miraculously grew younger and younger.
As he explored further, he discovered that the world after death was not as simple or frightening as he had imagined.
Here, territory was divided according to family lineage.
The dead were arranged in order of generation, with their lineage stretching as far back as the eighteenth generation. Whenever a new soul arrived, the first-generation ancestors would decide where it should be reincarnated, based on their contributions and standing in life.
When a soul from the nineteenth generation arrived, any first-generation ancestors who had yet to receive a chance at reincarnation would face two choices: be driven out of their ancestral lands and left to wander without a home, or accept a mission and be sent beyond those lands to carry out some unknown duty.
So the seemingly mysterious afterlife, governed by countless rules, was the true meaning behind the phrase people so often used: “the eighteen generations of ancestors.”
