Chapter 256 The Changes in the Underworld

In the dawn mist, the scout whose neck had been bitten off by the armored wolf lay a pitiful corpse in a pool of blood and mud. His eyes, wide open even in death, still held the primal fear of death.

However, death is not the end of everything in this completely transformed wasteland.

The scout felt a strong sense of weightlessness. Immediately afterward, the sounds of gunfire from the front lines, the howls of the wolves, and the angry roars of his comrades all receded like a tide, replaced by an absolute silence.

The world around us lost its color, turning into an endless gray-white mist.

The scout stood up. He looked down at himself and found that he was not decapitated, nor was he wearing the tattered tactical vest.

Under the laws of the netherworld, the appearance of the deceased is not the broken physical remains at the time of death, but a projection of the soul embodied by the deepest self-awareness in one's heart during life.

At this moment, his soul was a translucent grayish-white. He tightly gripped a phantom high-frequency vibrating blade in his hand, and along his spine, a dark red bio-engineered spiritual root phantom, like a small crimson dragon, was completely fused with his soul. This was the obsession he had left deep in his subconscious during his life, a desire to survive and pursue power; even in death, this blood-stained obsession had not dissipated.

Splash!

A resounding clang of chains echoed from the mist. Two ghostly soldiers, clad in black lamellar armor and their faces concealed within the black fog, pierced through the wreckage of the mortal realm and gently placed a soul-binding chain, radiating a ghostly blue light, around his wrist.

The scouts did not resist. Or rather, in the face of the laws of the underworld, souls were simply incapable of even entertaining the thought of resistance.

His ambition, lust for blood, and fear in life were forcefully suppressed the moment his body died and he stepped into this world. He fell into an extremely numb and dazed state.

He strode forward with a blank stare, following the ghostly soldiers, and stepped into a deep black vortex.

When he appeared on the road to the underworld, the scene before him was enough to make any high-level cultivator's scalp tingle.

The underworld is overcrowded.

The once wide and boundless ancient road to the underworld was now densely packed with countless souls of the dead. There were no heart-wrenching wails like those of the mortal world, nor any life-or-death struggles. All the souls were like puppets without strings, moving slowly in an enormous, yet deathly silent, queue towards the gates of hell.

Incredibly, right in front of the scout, a massive, wolf-like ghost with a soul covered in illusory metallic scales was walking forward in the same direction as him, seemingly oblivious.

Half an hour ago, they were tearing each other apart in the dense forest of the wasteland, wishing they could devour each other's flesh raw. But now, freed from the constraints of their physical bodies, the human and the demon, under the absolute pressure of the Netherworld, are devoid of any intelligence, merely two spheres of causal energy awaiting sorting and judgment.

In the deepest part of the underworld, inside the solemn Yama's Palace.

Zhao Feng, dressed in a dark black imperial robe adorned with the mythical bird, sat regally on a wide, cold throne. As one of the highest rulers of this land of reincarnation, the oppressive aura of the Ten Kings of Hell surrounded him with extremely dense black aura of law.

He doesn't need to maintain order personally; as long as he sits here, the underworld will remain calm.

But at this moment, he was wearily rubbing his temples. His trouble wasn't a rebellion of ghosts, but rather "overload."

"King Yama".

A judge dressed in a bright red official robe floated into the main hall with an extremely solemn expression, holding a Book of Life and Death that was flashing red light intermittently. It was a concrete manifestation of the conflict arising from the underlying logic of cause and effect.

"In the past, high-intensity battles have broken out one after another in the mortal realm. The number of human souls that have flowed into the Yellow Springs Road has exceeded 470,000; while the number of those who have gained sentience and been killed by demons has reached an astonishing 630,000."

The judge opened the Book of Life and Death, and a trace of blood even seeped through the pages.

"The guiding formation at the Gates of Hell is already operating at full capacity. Although the souls of the dead are suppressed by the Netherworld, the efficiency of the Yin soldiers in guiding them is far behind the speed at which the mortal world is creating death."

Zhao Feng took a deep breath and looked down through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Yama Palace at the endless army of dead souls below, which resembled a gray ocean.

It's too quiet. And there's too much of it.

When Gu Qing first established the Underworld, it was just a simple "first version of the reincarnation framework" used to handle human birth, aging, sickness, and death. At that time, the Underworld's extradition process was carried out in an orderly manner.

But now, an extremely brutal infighting among species has erupted in the mortal realm. Human hunters cultivate demonic power by devouring demons, while demons evolve by consuming metal and human flesh. The entire wasteland has become an incredibly efficient meat grinder. The vast causal forces being shredded every day transform into a massive number of chaotic souls, flowing into the Netherworld like a burst dam.

"Pass down the order: send those ordinary human souls who have lingered in the underworld for more than a year and whose karmic burdens are relatively light directly into the human cycle of reincarnation. Clear out the outer city space first. In addition, relax the recruitment standards for underworld soldiers. Select a group of resilient individuals from the human hunters who died in battle and confer them godhood on the spot to serve as ghost messengers."

Zhao Feng issued the diversion order with extreme decisiveness.

"Lord Yama, the shortage of manpower can be gradually resolved by expanding the workforce." Judge Wen did not step down, but instead handed the burning Book of Life and Death in his hand to Zhao Feng's desk with great difficulty, his voice carrying a deep sense of powerlessness.

"The real dead end that the Underworld is facing now is that the 'logic of judgment' cannot be closed."

Zhao Feng frowned and opened the Book of Life and Death.

"You see. When these souls step onto the Mirror of Retribution, waiting for us to settle the karmic accounts, the 'Iron Laws of the Underworld' that were originally set up... have revealed an inexplicable logical paradox."

The judge pointed to a particularly glaring page of record. It was the life story of an extremely ordinary human wandering hunter.

"In his lifetime, in order to obtain resources to upgrade his bio-spiritual root, this person slaughtered 372 first-order intelligent demon beasts and drained their life essence. According to the first version of the Law of Killing, slaughtering sentient beings is an extremely heinous crime and should be sent to the eighteenth level of hell to be tortured with knives and saws to cleanse his evil aura."

Judge Wen turned to another page, which contained the life story of a mutated demon wolf.

"This monstrous beast killed forty-five human hunters in its lifetime, and even devoured the flesh and bones of three of them to strengthen its own metallic scales. According to the Law of Cause and Effect, those who eat humans will be burdened with karmic obstacles and will be reborn as animals, forever destined to be ants."

Judge Wen raised his head, looked at Zhao Feng, and presented an extremely fatal, fundamental deadlock.

"King Yama, according to the existing laws, the more than one million souls queuing outside, whether human or demon, are all extremely wicked people with blood on their hands, and they should all be sent to the eighteenth level of hell."

"But the problem is, their killing in the mortal realm is for survival in this wasteland! For the evolution of the entire species! They are practicing the law of 'survival of the fittest'!"

"Humans will die if they don't kill demons, and demons will be eliminated if they don't kill humans. In the mortal realm, they are pawns evolving in accordance with the laws of survival, so how come they all become evil spirits destined for hell in our underworld? Logically, this is completely contradictory!"

Zhao Feng stared at the intricate, tangled, blood-red threads of cause and effect on the Book of Life and Death, and fell into an extremely long silence.

He finally realized the seriousness of the problem.

Gu Qing's cyber wasteland cultivation system, which he promoted in the mortal realm, forcibly raised the life energy level and survival difficulty of Earth in an extremely violent way.

However, the underworld, as the "pre-death settlement system" of the mortal world, still remains within the original simple "good and evil dualism" framework.

A causal settlement formula based on ordinary, mundane society is simply incapable of handling the massive data flow in the apocalyptic meat grinder, where infighting is rampant and even biological instincts are beginning to change.

When the laws of the underworld cannot explain cause and effect in the mortal world, the entire cycle of reincarnation will become blocked.

Zhao Feng's fingers tapped lightly on the cold armrest of the throne, a ghostly wind ruffling his imperial robes. He knew that as the administrator of this cycle of reincarnation, he had to verify and resolve this fatal problem.