Chapter 136: The East Wind Arrives

Lin Han gazed deeply at Qin Ye's face.
Overflowing with affection, intensely devoted, and staring without a single blink... just like the two dolphins in *Dolphin Bay Lovers*.
Oh... wait, there are no dolphins in *Dolphin Bay Lovers*...
"Could you please move your sickening gaze a little bit away," Qin Ye said, sketching something on a piece of paper with a completely Zen expression, his voice calm as a stagnant well. "I am a straight man, thank you very much, straight as a steel pipe. No matter what position, whether top or bottom, 1 or 0, or KY lubricant, it's a hard no from me."
"For a straight man, you sure know a lot..." Lin Han couldn't help marveling, lowering his voice. "What's going on with those dark circles under your eyes? That's the classic look of excessive indulgence... I must say, you've still got it. Before the rest of us even had a chance to nourish the flowers of our motherland, how did a guy of your average looks manage to score the first prize?"
Qin Ye, who had been channeling his inner Zen just a moment ago, instantly became displeased: "I really don't like the sound of that. What do you mean by 'average looks'? Before you showed up, I was the undisputed standard of handsomeness, alright!"
Lin Han felt inexplicably happy.
Too lazy to argue with this muscle-headed blockhead, Qin Ye subconsciously started spinning his pen. Right before his eyes, blueprint sketches of several Underworld buildings were stubbornly taking shape under his rather poor drawing skills.
It had already been five days.
Ever since he last entered the comprehensive map of the Underworld, a full five days had passed. Every day, aside from sleeping three or four hours, he spent almost all his time memorizing and sketching the infrastructure a village-level Underworld should possess. Right now, he looked no different from a giant panda.
Right there on his practice workbook was one of the most basic Underworld structures. It resembled an ancient pavilion with copper coins tied to its four corners, from which scattered, fluttering red threads hung down. On the outside, it looked at most a bit eerie, but the interior was inscribed with countless tadpole-like scripts. Especially at the center, the tadpole scripts converged from all directions, leaving a one-meter-wide blank space.
The Soul-Guiding Platform.
This was the absolute core and priority of all "entrances" into the Underworld. It served only two functions. First: When spirits arrived from the realm of the living into the underworld, it made them forget everything about the mortal world, realize their own deceased status, and feel awe toward the Underworld.
Otherwise, ghostly officials would encounter countless obstacles when rounding up souls. No one was ever willing to leave the mortal world right after dying; who would willingly be strung up on a rope by ghostly officials like grasshoppers? Once a single soul escaped, or if the ghostly officials failed to arrive in time, the consequences would be unimaginable.
Second: To receive special souls.
Some souls were too powerful after death—such as humans who had achieved mastery in cultivation. Their souls could even choose to linger voluntarily in the mortal world, or wake up the very instant they touched the jurisdiction of the Underworld, a place they shouldn't go. In such cases, the Soul-Guiding Platform was required to directly drag them down by force.
Are you kidding me... Doesn't the Underworld need talent? Doesn't the Underworld need to build? Isn't everywhere supposed to contribute to modernization?
"The agonizing part is... the power of the Soul-Guiding Platform comes from the Six Paths of Samsara. It's like a sub-brain of the Six Paths; the Six Paths is the main brain, and the sub-brain possesses some of the main brain's functions without being identical to it," Qin Ye said, his head throbbing so hard he almost snapped his pen in half. "Originally, the Soul-Guiding Platform could suppress a spirit's memory until they walked onto the Naihe Bridge, but now... at most, it only lasts a single day..."
And so, a problem arose.
Should he build this low-spec version of the Soul-Guiding Platform, or should he not?
Qin Ye nudged Lin Han with his elbow: "Let me ask you something?"
"Hmm-hmm?" Lin Han replied with a high-and-mighty expression, humming as if he were listening attentively to a lecture.
Sun Tzu once said—wait, no. "If—and I'm saying *if*—you wanted to have a child, but didn't want one right now. Would you and your partner buy a box of condoms to deal with it, or just hold back?"
Lin Han looked at him as if he had seen a ghost, wearing an expression that read, "I have already seen through everything." "I genuinely never expected you to have such antiquated thinking..."
Qin Ye felt his temples throbbing. Why were the people around him all capable of letting their imaginations wander into such bizarre directions!

"I said *if*! Can't you understand a hypothetical?!"
"I understand." Lin Han's face was full of unfathomable profundity. "Whenever I used to be too embarrassed to admit something was about myself, I'd start sentences the exact same way... Repeating it twice makes it sound like it's not about you, which is the absolute textbook definition of 'the thief shouting stop thief'... Alright, alright, put the fountain pen down, and let's have a civilized discussion..."
He gave a light cough. "Though I have no idea which female college student is involved, you first need to realize that we are law enforcement personnel. Having children on campus is irresponsible to others, and we cannot break the law while knowing it... Holy crap, where did you get that knife?! Put it down, buddy, let's talk this out nicely..."
After thinking for a long time, he cautiously offered: "Get an IUD installed? And then extract the fertilized eggs in advance? Have them later?"
Qin Ye was almost amused to the point of anger by this idiot. He shouldn't have brought up such a stupid analogy, and sneered, "Why don't you go get a vasectomy instead?"
"That hurts so much!" Lin Han looked at Qin Ye in terror. "Why make yourself suffer when you can have someone else suffer?"
So how on earth did you ever pass the Special Investigations Office's screening?!
"Such an intensely straight-man response... I'm convinced you'll never find a girlfriend in this lifetime..."
Realizing their minds were clearly on completely different planes of existence, Qin Ye abandoned all communication with him. His gaze fell back onto the practice workbook. After a long while, he sighed and crossed out two of the three buildings on the page.
The Soul-Guiding Platform, and the Underworld Sacrificial Altar.
The Underworld Sacrificial Altar allowed offerings from the three major ghost festivals of the mortal world to enter the Underworld. Mind you, this meant entering the Underworld government treasury! It did not fall directly into the hands of individual ghosts.
To put it simply, this was part of the national treasury. There were Underworld Sacrificial branch offices in urban districts, sub-headquarters in provincial capitals, and the main headquarters located in Fengdu. Every year, the paper money, carriages, and horses from the mortal world's three major ghost festivals—and occasionally strange items like luxury cars and inflatable dolls—would automatically enter the national treasury via the Sacrificial Altar, before being redistributed to individuals. However, a ten percent "nether-transit tax" was deducted from the total.
This was downright outrageous.
Just how massive was this sum? According to Alsa's incomplete statistics, during her two-century tenure, she used this money to build an imperial palace at the foot of the 5A-level Tianlong Mountain in Feng Province...
Please note, this was an imperial palace—a genuine complex of pavilions, towers, pearl-inlaid corridors, and exquisite murals, luxurious to the extreme. It was said that the gates were plated with gold dust, the tiles were specially fired glazed tiles using a craft that was nearly lost to history...
Although he didn't yet know how the financial system of the old Underworld operated, the mere thought of giving up such a colossal sum of money made Qin Ye's hand shake as if he had Parkinson's when he crossed out the Sacrificial Altar.
"When it comes to making a fortune off the dead, you folks really take the crown..." he muttered bitterly to himself. He turned his attention to the final building.
The Soul-Probing Altar.
The sole purpose of this apparatus... was to detect the possibility of any surrounding spirits mutating!
Once discovered, ghostly officials would be dispatched immediately to execute them on the spot!
It was the Underworld radar.
After pondering for three full minutes, he crossed this one out as well.
"Baoan City is extremely safe and doesn't need this right now. When we develop the next city, it won't be too late to bring it up. The most important thing right now is to first ensure that all ghost citizens have a place to live and tasks to do. Building residential complexes can solve both of these problems simultaneously... As for these other things... we'd better set them aside for now."
When the class dismissal bell rang, Qin Ye let out a deep breath of relief as he looked at the practice workbook in front of him.
What a colossal engineering project the reconstruction of the Underworld was; it could truly be called the greatest undertaking in the world today. Previously, he had no idea how much planned area to reserve or the precise dimensions of specialized structures, leaving him walking on thin ice and constantly hesitating. But now, it felt like an autumn morning breeze, sweeping away the gloom completely!
What should be built and what shouldn't; how to plan and how not to—after a five-day offensive battle, he had finally managed to untangle a thread of clarity from a thousand chaotic thoughts.
"Everything is ready, except for the eastern wind." He leaned back wearily in his chair, relaxing as he felt exhaustion surge over him like a tide. His body, like a tightly wound spring that had finally loosened, found every single cell cheering in relaxation.
Without even returning to his dorm room, he drifted off to sleep right there in the classroom.
"The Chinese characters we write turn brushstrokes into paintings, preserving five thousand years of history and letting the world know..." At some point, a ringtone began to play. Qin Ye rubbed his reddened eyes, let out a massive yawn, and answered without even looking at the screen: "Hello?"
"Hello, Mr. Qin. I am the secretary to General Manager Sun of Longteng Real Estate. You can just call me Secretary Wu."
Qin Ye's sleepiness instantly vanished into thin air. He wiped his face and asked, "Have the engineering machinery and equipment arrived?"
If rebuilding the Underworld was a matter of having everything ready except the eastern wind, then this *was* the eastern wind he needed!
"Yes. Would you like to inspect them now? The location is No. 4, Subsidiary of No. 231 Qingquan Street, the former cable factory."
"I'll be right there!"
Human beings were strange creatures. Without a goal, Qin Ye could idle away day after day like a dead fish to an infuriating degree, but once he had a goal, he felt filled with boundless drive and energy.
Checking his phone, he saw it was already 9:00 PM. He hailed a taxi and immediately headed toward the agreed-upon location. Once in the car, he realized this was the outskirts of the outskirts—a place where nobody ever went normally, and quite far from Huishui University.
A full hour later, he finally arrived at the factory gates. A man in his twenties, accompanied by a dozen people, was already waiting there. Spotting Qin Ye, the man extended his hand: "Mr. Qin, General Manager Sun gave strict instructions that we must provide you with flawless service. These are our tour guides and representatives from various companies."
Qin Ye didn't waste any breath; he was already too eager to witness the opening prelude of the Underworld's grand unveiling. After a brief handshake, he walked straight toward the former factory with its towering perimeter walls behind them. As the iron gate, standing over three meters tall, was pushed open, the view suddenly broadened before him.
It was unclear how long this place had been abandoned, but the original factory buildings had long since been demolished, and the site clearly received regular maintenance.
The ground was completely flat, with not a single trace of the rubble from the demolished buildings left behind. Right in this empty factory yard, which was about the size of a football field, numerous giant engineering machines stood in orderly rows, alongside neatly stacked building materials resembling a steel forest under the sunlight.
Zhaozhou Heavy Industry, Taizhou Machinery, Lanjiang Steel... His gaze swept across the silent steel behemoths, looking at the familiar names of heavy industry conglomerates he had usually only heard of through fragmented bits of information, while a sudden, burning heat flared up in his chest.
Finally...
From his initial refusal, to his eventual acceptance, to his current proactive dedication, until it finally became the goal of his long life... Over the course of several months, the desolate Underworld, awaiting revival, finally had a chance to reclaim its former glory!
Even though this opportunity had only just begun and was still very small, it represented a beginning.
A brand-new beginning!
A glorious opening chapter that would make the entire Chinese Underworld tremble!