The Mortician’s Job in the Underworld

My name is Shen Du. I’m twenty-eight, a mortician at a funeral home, and I specialize in dealing with the unresolved obsessions of restless spirits. By day, I wear white gloves and arrange burial clothes, giving every deceased person a dignified farewell. By night, I serve in the underworld and wield the authority of an imperial censor, judging cause and effect between the living and the dead and guiding lost souls onward. The funeral trade, which others avoid at all costs, is how I make my living. The vengeful ghosts everyone fears are, to me, simply “the departed” who need their affairs properly laid to rest. Factions in the underworld scheme against one another, judges take bribes, and the Four Great Families secretly collude to refine soul pills. Heaven watches coldly from above as demons infiltrate the Three Realms, and the thousand-year balance between yin and yang teeters on the brink of collapse. I have no divine powers. All I have are a mortician’s hands, a needle to guide souls onward, and an eye for judging cause and effect. With the gentle heart of a mortician, I wield the authority to judge the living and the dead. I’ll be the most stoic of morticians, keep the Three Realms at peace, and uphold the true laws of the underworld.