A Guide to Reforming the Underworld Emperor

The Underworld is the final destination of all living beings. Countless departed souls are reborn here, receiving the ultimate judgment according to the deeds of their lives. This is an unbreakable rule. And yet, even within an unbreakable rule, there are inevitably a few small exceptions. Because the causes and debts from certain lives are simply too vast, the established rules cannot settle them. Some emperors of the ages, burdened by deep and stubborn obsessions, can always appeal again and again, repeatedly stalling the rigorous trial process and leaving the officials of the netherworld with an unmanageable workload. At last, after a certain Mr. Liu Che had appealed for the 1,863rd time, the higher-ups in the Underworld could no longer bear it. Since the netherworld had become completely incapable of dealing with these impossible holdouts, they hoped to bring in outside help from the mortal world. They wanted someone to persuade these stubborn emperors, reform their thinking, correct their beliefs, and convince them to accept reality and submit to the Underworld's verdict. And so, as the "outside help" randomly selected by the System, Mu Qi, a seasoned corporate drudge at the Space-Time Administration, once again stood dumbfounded before the task assigned to him: "So the person you want me to persuade is... Emperor Wu of Han?" · To change the emperors of the ages' deeply entrenched beliefs, Mu Qi obtained a pass from the System. It allowed him to transmigrate with the emperors through parallel timelines again and again, using echoes of history past to support his arguments. To verify the path they had taken, they returned to the height of the Han dynasty, where the Filial and Martial Emperor, brought from the Underworld, could personally experience the hardships of life under his own rule. But as they continued their experience, Mu Qi began to sense that something was off: "Your Majesty, what do you mean by, 'Do you want to play another round?'" · To prove that the grand currents of fate cannot be reversed, they transmigrated to the late Three Kingdoms period and watched from above as the Han throne was handed over to Wei, witnessing the fall of the Han dynasty with their own eyes. Mu Qi also earnestly advised Emperor Wu and his ministers to accept their fate: "The course of the world is this: after long division comes unity, and after long unity comes division. Human effort cannot stop it. Even if all of you took part in the struggle for supremacy during the Three Kingdoms right now, you still couldn't change the bigger picture..." After delivering his impassioned lecture for several days, he realized something was wrong: "General Huo! General Wei! When I said you could take part in the struggle yourselves, I meant you could try it out for a little while, not that you should bring your own provisions and join Chancellor Zhuge!" · To demonstrate the unpredictability of rise and decline, Mu Qi took them to the palaces of Bianjing in the early Jingkang era, where they witnessed how the mighty Song dynasty collapsed in an instant amid sheer absurdity. In the midst of explaining everything, he quickly noticed another problem: "Your Majesty, I brought you into the palace to look around, not so you could strangle the Daoist Emperor of the Song with your bowstring!" "All right, I didn't mean you couldn't strangle him, but you should let me go first. I got here before you, so I should be the first to strangle him!" In short, after visiting a few parallel universes, Mu Qi's carefully prepared speech seemed to have accomplished very little, and the System finally noticed the biggest problem of all: "What are you doing?" it demanded angrily. "Are you trying to reform their thinking, or are you clearing dungeons?!" Theme: Only by looking back at the past can we look toward the future