I, Chen Ping'an, a rising star of the Daoist sect, had barely come down from the mountain when Black and White Impermanence blocked my door.
The reason: my unreliable master owed the Underworld 870 million merit points and had skipped town!
A master's debt falls to his disciple, so I was forced to become a temporary underworld laborer, with a three-month probation and KPIs tied directly to a sky-high debt.
I thought the road to the Yellow Springs would lead to solemn, classical vistas of the netherworld. Instead:
The road to the Yellow Springs was jammed like a parking lot, while lonely ghosts scrolled short videos and cursed up a storm;
The Lookout Terrace had become a livestreaming hotspot, with Yang Yuhuan selling cruises down the River of Forgetfulness;
The Judge used Excel to decide who lived and died, and there were so many bugs that good people could end up in the animal realm;
Ox-Head and Horse-Face slacked off at work, more eager to team up for online games than to collect souls...
This Underworld is doomed!
To pay off the debt as soon as possible and return to the human world to pursue romance, I had no choice but to pull out my master's books, Enterprise Management and Introduction to Psychology.
A massive traffic jam at the Bridge of Helplessness? I used talisman-based programming to build a queue system and set up an express lane for Meng Po's soup. Pay merit points by scanning a code to cut in line.
Underworld officials slacking off? I introduced an Underworld-style KPI system and the mobile game Soul Reaper, with task completion directly tied to merit bonuses.
Unfair distribution among the Six Paths of Reincarnation? I designed a Soul Tendency Assessment System, with MBTI offering a direct route to the next life.
The King of Hell was impressed and promoted me to director of the reform office.
But I soon discovered that the Underworld's problems went far beyond inefficiency...
High-quality souls were being blocked from reincarnation, something stirred in the depths of the Reincarnation Well, and a dream message from my master pointed to an ancient conspiracy...
Even more troubling was Lin Qingyue, the human policewoman who kept coming to investigate cases. She didn't believe in ghosts and gods, but had yin-yang eyes from birth, and she was looking at me with ever-growing suspicion.
"Chen
