My Basement Leads to the Underworld

Seventeen-year-old Lin Mo moved into the old house his late grandfather had left him.

There was an iron door in the basement that only opened from midnight to four in the morning.

Four rules, written in blood, were carved into the door, and a black mark appeared on his palm.

He was the last "Guardian of the Border" in the Lin bloodline.

The underworld beyond the door was not the realm of the dead described in Buddhist scriptures, but a parallel dimension built from the collective consciousness of humanity.

It had six layers, each deeper than the last: the Borderlands, the City of Mists, the River of Forgetting, the Judgment Platform, the Abyss, and the Return to the Ruins.

Someone was waiting for a living person to arrive on every layer.

Some wanted to devour him.

Some wanted to use him.

Only a half-soul girl called "Xiao Qi" wanted him to survive.

But survival came at a price: the deeper he went, the closer he came to an ancient truth.

The worlds of yin and yang had once been one. What split them apart was an "Original Consciousness Core" sleeping in the depths of the Return to the Ruins.

And now, someone was deliberately damaging the seal.

When Lin Mo finally stood before the core of the Return to the Ruins, the entity asked him just one question:

"Will you seal me away, or become me?"

He chose a third path.

But he forgot that those who choose to become a "higher being" often lose themselves first.

The day the iron door closed, Lin Mo returned to his second-year high school classroom.

He thought he had won.

Until the girl sitting beside him passed him a note:

"Your grandfather wasn't the first guardian. There's something beyond the Return to the Ruins."

The world was far bigger than he had imagined.