The Underworld's Disgraced Bureau: I Guard the Primordial Wilds

The Beast Division on the Eighth Layer of the Underworld is the most remote and miserable of the Netherworld's useless offices.

For three hundred years, its authority has been eroded, its standing undermined, and its influence pushed aside. This once-proud, ancient and orthodox bureau has been reduced to a dilapidated office and half an empty building, ignored by everyone and bullied by anyone. Its successive chiefs have all stepped down to avoid trouble, while its ghost officials keep to themselves, feigning idleness and neglect to hide their true purpose as they silently guard a terrifying secret.

Li Gou, a bottom-ranked judge with no connections, supernatural gifts, or backing, is assigned to this forgotten corner of the underworld on his first day. He plans to coast through the job and live in peace, but accidentally uncovers secret after secret beneath the bureau's useless facade. What looks like an idle, worthless office is actually a prison spanning the Three Realms, built to suppress the ancient ancestors of the primordial beasts. The timid wardens everyone mocks are all exceptionally skilled guardians who have lain low for three hundred years.

War rages in the mortal realm, murderous fury fills the skies, and the seal on the Reincarnation Well is quietly cracking as ancient fiends begin to awaken. Meanwhile, the various factions, led by the Bird Division, eye the situation hungrily. Through political schemes and bureaucratic power plays, they close in step by step, hoping to tear open the seal and plunge the Three Realms into chaos.

The idleness of the weak comes from helplessness; the quiet of the strong comes from patience. From retrieving souls and guarding the well to sorting records, purging old abuses, and restoring the truth, Li Gou sheds his mediocrity and naivety. As a mortal judge, he challenges three centuries of entrenched decay, breaks the shackles of Netherworld politics, and restores the crumbling order of the Beast Path.

The abandoned bureau rises again, and the myriad beasts return to the cycle of reincarnation. Though schemes entangle the heavens and dark currents surge, he stands firm alone, guarding the ancient seal, suppressing the world's fiends, and bringing peace to the Three Realms. The orthodox Beast Division, fallen into obscurity for three hundred years, will once more rise to the summit of the Netherworld.