I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

In the deepest part of Earth's folded space, in absolute darkness and nothingness.

As Gu Qing uttered "As you wish," an extremely dazzling beam of dark blue light pierced straight into the earth's core, forcibly creating a vast and boundless inner world in this dimension that did not belong to the real three-dimensional space.

Gu Qing's divine sense transformed into a green robe and slowly descended onto this newly formed land.

What comes into view is a magnificent ancient city so vast that it could instantly suffocate any megalophobia sufferer.

The pitch-black city walls, thousands of feet high, seemed to be cast from the bones of countless living beings, exuding an ancient and chilling aura. At the very center of the city walls, a massive bronze gate stood tightly shut, and above the gate hung a plaque that appeared to be constantly seeping blood—[Gate of Hell].

Beyond the Gates of Hell lies a long, ancient road covered with scarlet spider lilies. At the end of this road, a wide, dark river, murky and swirling with gray mist, stretches between heaven and earth—the legendary River of Oblivion, said to be able to melt away all things of the mortal realm.

Across the river lies the Naihe Bridge, silently inscribed with ancient runes. Beyond the Naihe Bridge lies the endless, majestic, and terrifying main city of Fengdu, and the nascent eighteen levels of hell, buried deep underground and radiating extreme resentment.

This is the ultimate refuge for souls and vengeful spirits—the Netherworld.

Gu Qing walked along the empty road to the underworld, her footsteps echoing lonely in the deathly silence.

The laws here are completely stable, and the yin energy is extremely dense. For the souls of the dead, this is simply the perfect place for rest and punishment.

However, Gu Qing walked all the way to the Yama Palace in the main city of Fengdu, but did not see a single ghost.

In this vast underworld, apart from his divine consciousness as the creator, there wasn't even a single newly born low-level ghost.

Gu Qing frowned slightly. He stopped, his cold voice echoing in the empty hall: "System, explain yourself. The underworld's infrastructure is fully operational, so why weren't those remnant souls from the mortal realm automatically sucked in here?"

[Reply to host: The Yin-Yang principles on the Earth's surface have been severely disrupted; the system's automatic guidance program has failed.]

"Invalid?" Gu Qing's eyes turned cold.

Yes. In the normal cycle of Heaven, after a mortal dies, their soul, deprived of the protection of the physical body, naturally descends to the Netherworld along the natural Yin-Yang magnetic field of Heaven and Earth.

[However, in order to accumulate faith power, the host allowed ghosts in the mortal realm to run rampant. This resulted in the appearance of numerous 'yin domains' on the Earth's surface. These yin domains not only distorted the physical space of reality but also resembled giant 'cathode magnets.']

The vast majority of newly born souls are forcibly absorbed and trapped in the mortal realm by these powerful underworld forces at the moment of death. The remaining pure yang energy in the mortal realm acts like a thick firewall, completely blocking their access to the underworld.

The system used an extremely rational data stream to display a map of the Earth's spiritual energy magnetic field distribution on Gu Qing's retina.

On the map, the blue grid representing the mortal realm is filled with glaring black vortexes. These are the yin realms of varying sizes. They are like giant clumps of hair stuck in a sewer pipe, blocking all the dirty water from reaching the ground.

Looking at the riddled magnetic field distribution map, Gu Qing let out a rare sigh.

This Yin-Yang system is completely in chaos.

"System, is there any way to forcibly break through this barrier?" Gu Qing asked.

[Driving simulation in progress...]

[Option 1: The host can use their own innate divine power to forcibly tear apart the underworld around the globe, wiping out all the ghosts in one fell swoop and stuffing them into the netherworld.]

[Disadvantage: This approach only addresses the symptoms, not the root cause. As long as humanity continues to reproduce, new people will die every day, and the host cannot forever act as a fully automated "cleaning robot."]

"Rejected." Gu Qing refused without hesitation. He went to great lengths to create a god so that he could look down on the evolution of civilization from above, not to go around collecting corpses on Earth every day.

Option Two: Establish a comprehensive "job system" and "base station network."

The host needs to establish numerous 'anchor points' in the mortal realm, serving as outposts connecting the Yin and Yang worlds.

[Simultaneously, the system needs to recruit a large number of 'managers' and 'executors,' namely: Yama, judges, city gods, Black and White Impermanence, and millions of underworld officials. They will wield guiding implements to travel to the mortal realm and manually forcibly detain and escort the lost and trapped ghosts back to the underworld.]

Upon hearing Option Two, a profound light flashed in Gu Qing's eyes, which were swirling with the Tai Chi symbol.

"This is the only long-term solution."

Gu Qing raised his head and looked at the ten empty and solemn main halls of Fengdu City, as well as the vast and boundless underworld square outside the halls, which was large enough to accommodate billions of troops.

"Since the passage is blocked, then we'll use manual transport. Since the mortal realm has the Immortal Cultivator Association and Bureau 749 to maintain order, then the underworld naturally needs a violent institution with absolute power and law enforcement authority as well."

But the question that follows is: who will be the underworld official? Who will be the master of this ghost town?

Gu Qing's current creator authority does indeed allow him to directly expend faith power to create countless emotionless "system NPCs" to catch ghosts. However, such rigid programming is simply incapable of dealing with the extremely complex cause-and-effect relationships and entanglements of good and evil in human society.

Furthermore, it lets mortals know that the gods in the underworld were once beings just like them, who were deified after death because of their great merits or strong convictions in life. In this way, the living will have the motivation to do good and will continuously contribute the highest quality faith to the underworld.

"It seems that not only do we need to recruit new employees from among mortals, but it's also time for those old faces who died fighting for the Immortal Cultivation Era to 're-employ' themselves."

A deep smile curved Gu Qing's lips as several names flashed through his mind.

However, before selecting the first City God, he must first issue a "version preview" to all of humanity.

Over the past three days, due to the ineffectiveness of physical exorcisms and the formation of a large-scale underworld, human society has fallen into extreme despair and chaos. Those high-ranking cultivators have discovered they cannot deal with ghosts, while mortals live in constant fear, unable to even stay up all night.

The panic has reached its perfect critical point.

If we don't give them some hope and some rules, the social structure of this planet will completely collapse.

"System, prepare to activate global miracle projection." Gu Qing's divine sense soared into the sky, directly piercing through the barrier of the underworld and arriving outside the Earth's atmosphere.

He looked down at the blue planet shrouded in darkness, where many cities had imposed curfews out of panic.

"Since they so desperately want the gods to clean up this mess, then in the name of Heaven, I hereby formally announce the arrival of the Underworld to them."

……

At the same time.

Earth, New Chang'an City.

It was already four in the morning. As the cultivation capital with the highest defense level in the world, New Chang'an appeared lifeless at this moment. There were no civilian vehicles on the streets, only military armored vehicles patrolling back and forth.

The headquarters building of Bureau 749 was still brightly lit.

All the high-ranking officials, think tank experts, and bigwigs from the Immortal Cultivator Association were staring intently at the national map on the large screen in the conference room, their eyes bloodshot.

The map is covered with thousands of red skull markers.

"The Yin Domain of the Third Hospital of Jiangnan City has expanded by another fifty meters. The temperature on the outside has now dropped to minus thirty degrees Celsius. Any life detector that enters it will become ineffective within three seconds."

"In the Sichuan direction, that No. 404 midnight bus picked up two more private cars on the provincial highway last night, bringing the number of missing persons to eight. The high-level sword cultivators we sent can only watch from outside; if they use spiritual energy to attack, they will be directly devoured by the Yin Domain."

An intelligence officer reported the battle situation over the past few hours in a hoarse voice; every word was like a dull knife cutting into the hearts of everyone present.

There is no chance of winning.

Faced with these spatial rules stitched together by countless deathly energies and resentments, humanity's existing cultivation system appears utterly powerless.

"Could it be... that the era of cultivation we've just begun is about to be destroyed by a group of unkillable ghosts?" An elderly official with white hair closed his eyes in anguish.

"What did Kunlun say? Are they just going to abandon us?!" someone slammed their fist on the table in despair.

However, just when the atmosphere in the conference room reached its most oppressive point, and everyone was on the verge of being driven mad by this powerless despair.

"when----"

A deep, ancient bell tolled, seemingly transcending endless ages and dimensions, and without warning, resounded deep within the minds of everyone on Earth!

This is not a sound wave that travels through the air, but a sound of law that strikes directly at the soul!

All the military generals and high priests in the conference room stood up in unison, looking out the window in shock.

This was the darkest hour before dawn.

But everyone saw that dawn had broken.

It wasn't the brightness of the rising sun, but an extremely dazzling, eerie blue light, exuding endless solemnity and pressure, swept in like a tsunami from the depths of the eastern sky, instantly illuminating the entire night sky of the earth!

Then, four billion people around the world, whether in bustling cities or remote wilderness; whether asleep or crying in despair.

They all looked up at the same moment.

Deep within the sea of ​​clouds above the nine heavens, where stars should have been twinkling, a massive, indescribable black ancient city phantom was projected like a mirage!

The phantom stretched across half the sky. Even in a fleeting glimpse, everyone could clearly see the towering city walls built of white bones, the ceaselessly flowing, dim yellow river, and the ten Yama Palaces that soared into the clouds, exuding an aura of suppressing eternity.

Compared to the phantom of this colossal city, humanity's proud skyscrapers look like laughable toothpicks.

Above the tightly closed, massive city gate, four ancient seal characters, seemingly cast with the blood of gods and demons, radiated a terrifying light that suppressed all evil spirits.

Even foreigners who don't understand classical Chinese will automatically grasp the absolute meaning of those four characters the moment they see them—

The Underworld!

At this moment, the world was deathly silent.

The arrogant, dark mist of the Third Hospital of Jiangnan City, upon contact with the eerie light emanating from the four large characters in the sky, was like a mouse seeing a cat, letting out an extremely shrill and terrified scream, and actually shrank back more than a hundred meters!

Just as all of humanity was so shocked by this scene that they even forgot to breathe.

Gu Qing's voice, devoid of any human emotion and as majestic and awe-inspiring as divine thunder from the heavens, resounded across every corner of the earth, accompanied by the supreme laws of the heavens:

"When Yin and Yang are in disarray, a hundred ghosts roam the night. Concerned for the suffering of all living beings, I, in the depths of the netherworld, will reshape the cycle of reincarnation."

"Today, the underworld is established for the first time."

"However, the netherworld is vast, and a million positions for underworld officials are vacant. From this day forward, all those who have performed great deeds, possess unwavering resolve, or even those who have suffered injustice yet refused to yield, may enter my netherworld to be assessed for their roles as ghosts and gods!"

"It controls life and death, judges good and evil. With this, it suppresses all evil spirits in the world!"

As the voice faded, the magnificent phantom of the ghost city on the horizon slowly disappeared into the clouds, and the eerie blue light dissipated, just as a red sun burst forth from the horizon.

However, the living people on Earth have fallen into an unprecedented madness.