In 2046, the human world has changed, but not for the better. It's become much harder to keep in line.
As cyber-rituals spread, the Underworld suffers the worst “merit inflation” in its history. People no longer burn joss paper. They scan QR codes to “pray with one tap” and “make offerings in the cloud.” Incense has become data packets, but data packets can't feed the old gods. Bad debts pile up at the Underworld Bank, and the King of Hell is about to lose his pension contributions. The gods have no choice but to descend to the mortal realm in droves and work off their debts.
At the same time, the extreme stress of modern society produces a new kind of pollutant: “spiritual entropy” (anxiety, hostility, workplace bullying, and that pointless urge to hustle at two in the morning). It condenses into semi-solid parasites of negative energy, commonly known as “negative entities,” or modern ghosts. These ghosts don't eat people. They feed on people's quality of life, and they're experts at it.
To resolve the gods' employment crisis and maintain order across dimensions, the “Urban Negative Entropy Bureau (UNB)” quietly opens its doors. Its headquarters are in the back courtyard of a defunct foot massage parlor in the Magic City. Its motto: “Drive out the ghostliness, restore the humanity, or, to put it another way, patch up this broken server called ‘the mortal world’ so it doesn't crash.”
