Chapter 100: Full-Scale Assault, Crush Them Completely

“Why is this happening?” At lunch, Qin Ye stood before the silicone doll with a pale face, his voice cold as he asked. The morning had been nothing short of hellish. When he was finally announced as ranking fifth in the Combat Department, he still had to maintain a perfect smile—it was utterly frustrating!

Arthas was watching the horror movie Ju-on and barely blinked at his words. “Do you have any self-awareness about what kind of rubbish you are?”

“It’s not... wasn’t it supposed to be that underlings easily get crushed by their peers? I slaughtered a few soul captors and even Cao Youdao felt no pressure. Why do these human geniuses seem possessed by the god of spring, each one stronger than the last?”

“That ghost… is at the ‘Hua Sheng’ level? Can the Fusang Kingdom produce Hua Sheng-level entities too?” Arthas frowned at Kayako for a few seconds before realizing. “Remember my words clearly: only ‘same-tier ghosts’ can maintain dominance, not same-tier humans.”

“How am I supposed to keep up the act if it’s like this?”

“Fool.” Arthas yawned, then noticed a reply on QQ and opened it: “〃誐芯裡蒦銪イ尔﹃ィ固ぐ。见嗰媔嗎？”

Qin Ye tensed instantly.

Arthas’s silicone fingers flew over the keyboard and he responded immediately: “〃滚。”

Damn... this evolution is way too fast... not only do you understand Martian text, but you can reply too...

Qin Ye had a bad feeling. Arthas closed the chat window and said calmly, “It’s simple.”

“The primary goal of cultivation, no, the entire cultivation world, is to slay ghosts. You said you’re in the Combat Department now? Then countless missions await. Once the school knows your battle records a few times, no one will dare criticize you.”

“But I still feel something’s missing if I can’t show off to the school…”

Arthas impatiently tapped the keyboard. “Your current goal is survival! Understand? As a husky, can you not have some husky self-awareness? You’re in a wolf pack but want to stand out? Aren’t you afraid of being exposed too soon? By my standards, you did well today.”

Qin Ye was annoyed. “I don’t want to, but... the mentor rankings probably affect resource allocation and student distribution. We’re heading to Daishan City to study soon. The first batch of students will arrive after that. I don’t have much time!”

Arthas finally tore his gaze away from the computer with difficulty and thought for a moment. “Actually, it’s not impossible…”

She glanced at Qin Ye. “This morning, I got a general sense of parts of society, starting with the school. Remember, although you’re secretly hidden in the cultivation world, it’s still called a school. And schools don’t just assess combat.”

“Over time, they’ll learn your achievements against ghosts. But before that, the school must have other covert assessments, like... attending classes.”

Qin Ye’s eyes lit up.

Arthas lightly tapped the keyboard. “You’re not formal teaching staff. Even if trained, the school won’t fully trust you. They’ll definitely have supervisors observing classes, just like ordinary schools. I’m not underestimating them, but with current human strength, many ghosts might be unheard of.”

“For example?”

“For example, parasitic spirits,” Arthas said calmly. “Born with yin veins and living in the land of shadows, once possessed by a ghost, the ghost thinks it’s kin and parasitizes the human body. It remains dormant until eruption, and when it does, it reaches at least the malevolent spirit level! In my reign, three outbreaks of parasitic spirits reached terrifying Hua Sheng level. Entire villages were wiped out instantly, turning a hundred-mile radius into a nest of malevolent spirits.”

“Or generational spirits. Their occurrence is even rarer. The maternal line is ghostly; before transforming into a ghost, they give birth to ghost infants. After several generations, descendants may mutate into ghosts without any contact with yin spirits. Their level is equally high—at least as strong as Uncertain Spirits!”

“There are also mother-child spirits, nightmare spirits… and more. Just throw out a few topics like these, no matter how extravagant other mentors’ lessons are, you’ll dominate the leaderboard.”

Such tactics?

“No... your insight is remarkable...” Qin Ye looked at Arthas deeply, regretting opening the door to the internet for her.

---

“But is this the time to worry about that?” Arthas said quietly, his voice heavy. “The school competition has begun, which means the underworld has fully gathered. Don’t you want to see your territory?”

Of course he did!

That afternoon, Qin Ye did nothing, avoiding Arthas’s poison. He went out with Wang Chenghao for a stroll, watched two movies, and by the time he returned at night, it was almost time.

Midnight.

“Hold the other Yanluo Seal in your hand. Whenever you wish, you can instantly enter the new underworld.” Arthas naturally took his hand.

Qin Ye glared angrily. “Let go.”

“I can’t enter without holding it! Do you think I want to?” Arthas shot him a fierce look.

Qin Ye disdainfully let Arthas hold his sleeve, pulled out the other Yanluo Seal, took several deep breaths, and his vision suddenly went black. When he awoke, he was standing on a vast expanse of land.

Wailing winds filled the sky; in the distance, tsunami-like dark clouds hung—pure black, impenetrable.

The area was about two or three square kilometers. The cracked earth was brownish-yellow, covered with fissures from which emerald-green ghost flames flickered sporadically, faintly echoing soul wails. Rows of black trees with blood-red leaves swayed on either side, forming a crimson forest.

At the end of this blood-red path stood a massive building.

A palace.

It spanned about a kilometer. At the entrance stood a square tripod cauldron three meters wide and six meters tall, burning pale incense candles with curling blue smoke. The palace was elaborately carved and painted, draped with white spirit banners. Paper money, drifting from unknown origins, fluttered by. Black tiles and white walls, with intricate Xiezhi statues carved on the protruding eaves.

The ancient palace and windows revealed an interior lit by candle dragons holding lamps, sculptures of yakshas, rakshasas, the White and Black Impermanences, Ox-Head and Horse-Face scattered in orderly fashion. A several-hundred-meter-long table faced the entrance, backed by hundreds of black chairs. The tabletop was covered with white cloth. Rows of black wooden railings divided the space into hundreds of sections.

Above the main hall hung a black wooden plaque inscribed with three grand calligraphic characters: “Ghost Gate Pass.”

Below was a couplet:

Upper line: “In the mortal world’s three lifetimes, all harm and injustice come from you.”

Lower line: “In the underworld’s realm, who has ever been spared?”

The horizontal inscription read: “You’ve finally arrived.”

“Heh…” Arthas looked at the couplet with some feeling. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this.”

“Little ghost... your power now is immense. Things you can’t imagine, just don’t lose your true self.” Arthas gazed deeply at Qin Ye. “Otherwise, I’ll be the first to kill you.”

Qin Ye restrained his smile, folded his hands respectfully before the couplet.

This is the very meaning of the underworld’s existence.

No matter how much you harm heaven and earth, cheat and deceive, even if you are an old man of sixty, if justice cannot touch you in the mortal world, if the police want peace over justice, if it’s privately settled—

Your sins are already etched in the underworld’s Book of Life and Death.

You either live with a clear conscience or suffer the eighteen layers of hell after death.

---

He exhaled deeply and looked at the railings ahead. “What is this?”

Arthas answered, “This is the first thing any soul sees upon entering the underworld, commonly called Yin Pass. Every spirit passes through here. Do you see the side doors on either side of the palace? That’s where the underworld officials come and go. No one else can enter or leave the underworld—this is the law of heaven.”

Qin Ye tried to walk around the palace inward, but even he could not pass.

It felt as if an invisible wall blocked him completely.

Arthas continued, “These railings are where spirits enter the underworld. The chairs behind are for the examiners. In the mortal world, these examiners are called ‘death judges.’”

“Ox-Head and Horse-Face summon souls, underworld officials guide them, and at this point, they verify again if the name appears in the Book of Life and Death, and if any official has neglected their duty or mistakenly marked someone who shouldn’t die.”

Qin Ye was stunned. “There are such negligent officials?”

“Of course,” Arthas said firmly. “These officials are all intelligent fierce ghosts. Except for you, the rest are ghosts! Ghosts with intelligence equal to humans, naturally with their own thoughts.”

“Every year, names of those to die are copied precisely down to the second from the Yanluo Hall’s Book of Life and Death. But some officials arrive late, or the soul undergoes changes—like becoming a fierce ghost—and can’t complete their job. Not wanting to spend resources asking others, some officials will randomly mark names.”

“The souls arrive here revived in intelligence, queue up to enter, then cross the Yin-Yang Road, the Bone Bridge, until the ferryman.”

Qin Ye nodded thoughtfully, suddenly his eyes flickered. “Then... why are there no souls here?”

There shouldn’t be none.

The underworld is open, and souls must be arriving today. Why is it empty?

Arthas sneered, “Your little underworld, though officially part of the underworld system, can only influence the next village in Bao’an City at most. How many people die in one village? Not seeing souls for three or five days is normal.”

Qin Ye nodded, looking at Ghost Gate Pass with some emotion. Although empty now, he could imagine how magnificent it once was—hundreds of officials writing furiously, countless ghost guards escorting soul after soul in and out.

Could he really start from digging into the Special Investigations Department’s corners and rebuild such a vast realm?

Wait...

He suddenly remembered something and turned toward Arthas, whose face wore a sinister smile. His lips trembled. “By the way... where are the civil servants?”

“Oh? You’ve figured it out?” Arthas covered her mouth, chuckling. “Naturally... there aren’t any.”

“Damn it!!” Qin Ye almost jumped up. “You’re not seriously asking me, the mighty Yanluo King, to be a civil servant!”

Arthas smiled wickedly, sitting on the table, lightly brushing her human hair-like sideburns. Her silicone face was kind. “Comrade Qin... I think you still don’t quite understand the current state of the underworld…”

“First, I must tell you, although this underworld is newly established with a radiation area of only one village, at the beginning, every spirit can feel it—it’s instinct, the law of heaven. So…”

Qin Ye looked at the sky in despair. “A huge wave of spirits is on its way?”

Arthas nodded with certainty. “Full-scale attack. Crush them.”