The City God Is Bankrupt

I inherited a dilapidated City God temple in the south of the city. The day after I opened the doors, the Underworld's Risk Control Department came knocking. A male ghost in a suit handed me a risk assessment report. "You have three bad karma debts under your name. If you don't settle them, they'll be deducted from your lifespan. Based on your current liabilities, you have seven months left to live."

Seven months. The vengeful woman who hanged herself in Locust Alley sixteen years ago, the unidentified male corpse sealed with iron nails beneath North Sluice Bridge, and a bad debt hidden behind encryption: three old cases, each tied to a chain trafficking forbidden goods. Someone is mass-producing magical artifacts with a lost Song-dynasty soul-subduing technique. Someone else is altering the Book of Life and Death in the Underworld's System to make themselves an "nonexistent" person. And beneath the entire city, someone is maintaining an old system that has been running for eight hundred years. Before fleeing, the previous City God sealed his spiritual lineage inside the City God seal and left it to me. With this seal in hand, I'll track down every lead. I have 570,000 strings of cash to repay, three bad debts to settle, and an underground network to shut down.

The seven-month countdown starts today.