New Times, New Hell

Chapter 3 - Hell Organisation in the Human World

Shang Que appeared too natural, and too serious. While feeling absent-minded, Yu Zhengdu suddenly had the misconception that everything in front of him was as it should be.

The atmosphere that was supposed to be extremely horrifying had an inexplicable sense of comedy. Yu Zhengdu felt like he should shudder in fright for a while out of courtesy, but he really couldn’t feel the slightest bit of fear. He stared fixedly at Shang Que for a long time, then finally asked, “What kind of organisation is this exactly?”

“To explain it in a way that’s easier to understand……” Shang Que thought about it for a moment, then answered, “It should be a Hell organisation in the human world?”

Yu Zhengdu fell into a trance. “Hell?”

“Un, the one you’re thinking about right now.” Shang Que smoothed his hair out. “Let’s talk inside.”

They entered Shang Que’s office. Shang Que sat down in his chair, and his expression suddenly changed. “Hold on for a moment.”

After he spoke, he dragged his keyboard over and his fingers seemed like they were flying as they “pitter-patter” like mad on the keyboard for awhile, then his expression softened. He didn’t forget to curse angrily, “Damn it, someone killed me while my computer was turned off.”

“……” Yu Zhengdu cooperated with no emotion in his voice, “How despicable.”

Shang Que turned his head around to look at him. “Do you know how to write hacks? I want to hunt him down to the ends of the earth.”

Yu Zhengdu uttered his suggestion very slowly, “You can just get your ghost employees to scare him.”

Shang Que, “……”

Shang Que logged out of the game and pretended as if nothing had happened. “Let’s get down to business.”

“Simply put, our company is Hell.” Shang Que dispensed with the formalities and dove straight to the point, “Which is the afterworld as understood by the human world. We’re in charge of the six paths of reincarnation, and we’re responsible for putting humans on trial for the merits and demerits accumulated throughout their life — we’re the netherworld’s Hell that decides what the next life of the dead should be.”

Yu Zhengdu was so shocked he hiccuped. From the corner of his eye, he studied this office again that seemed a little plain, and deeply doubted his boss’ words. But his fingers still subconsciously pointed downwards, “Shouldn’t Hell……be underground?”

Shang Que placed one leg over the other and said in this graceful posture, “Well, that would date back to what happened fifty years ago……”

Ever since Pangu, separated the Sky from Earth, formless chaos was divided into three realms — heaven, the human realm and earth. Heaven became the divine realm, Earth became the ghost world, and between the heavens and the Earth was the human realm. Aside from these, there are the six reincarnation cycles, which differ from one another.

The existence of the three realms and six cycles is mainly maintained by spiritual power and belief, but with the passage of time, spiritual energy is gradually thinning out, The divine realm and the ghost world — that require a lot of spiritual energy to be maintained — became turbulent, and their foundations destablised. However, they were still barely held up by beliefs of the human world.

“Until fifty years ago……”

When he spoke up to this point, Shang Que paused for a moment. Just one glance at him and you could tell that it must have been a period of history that unfolded on a magnificent scale.

Yu Zhengdu couldn’t help but move forward a little, and his tone sounded slightly agitated as well, “What happened fifty years ago?”

Shang Que’s gaze seemed profound as he said, “Fifty years ago, China launched a large-scale campaign to Destroy the Four Olds and swept away everything related to ghosts and monsters. Belief in ghosts and gods in the human world collapsed completely, and this was equivalent to pulling the carpet from underneath the divine realm and ghost world that was on the verge of falling apart in the first place……”

Once faith was lost, heaven and earth collapsed as well. The immortal world and underworld that once enjoyed the incense of the human world and possessed supreme power met their demise. Although the ghost world disappeared, there was still life, old age, illness and death in the human world, so ghosts were retained in the human world after death and their reincarnation relied purely on luck. The six paths of reincarnation was once in a very chaotic state.

At the beginning, things like good people reincarnating into livestock and evil ones being born into rich families would occur once in awhile.

“The only way to resolve this problem is to reopen Hell. But the underworld has already caved in and disappeared, so now we can only rent offices in the human world to start work.” Shang Que smiled slightly. He leaned forward and gently patted the back of Yu Zhengdu’s hand, then comforted, “But don’t worry. Our company has undergone all the necessary procedures; we pay our taxes regularly every year, so we won’t default on your salary.”

Yu Zhengdu, “……”

He had received too much information at once and didn’t know how to react for a while. After a long pause, he asked with a dull look, “You’re saying that, the destruction of heaven and earth was caused by the Destroy the Four Olds campaign?”

Shang Que thought about it, then said, “Not really. Destroy the Four Olds was just the last straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Yu Zhengdu continued looking dull. “Do you know I got full marks in my Marxism class?”

“Marxist Philosophy?” Shang Que nodded and displayed a great deal of admiration. “Lingxi showed me your academic transcript. It’s very outstanding.”

Yu Zhengdu let out a prolonged breath and rejoiced, “Fortunately, I’m graduating soon. If I were to take the exam now, there’s an eighty percent chance I’d fail.”

Judging by how his materialistic beliefs had just been shattered into pieces alone, it was likely that he would never be able to confront examination papers regarding the scientific outlook on development with a normal mindset again.

As a ghost, Shang Que’s temper was considered not bad. Perhaps it was because he was afraid to scare away the programmer they took a lot of effort to recruit, but he was quite patient with Yu Zhengdu and explained the nature of their company to him properly. But that was it.

“Take your time to settle down ba, we can talk about work again tomorrow.” Shang Que issued a notice of leave to his visitor.

Yu Zhengdu got up dizzily. Right before he left, he turned back again to ask, “If this is the organisation of Hell, then aren’t you……?”

He looked at the face that could delude people even without the magic of any supernatural being, and just found it absolutely unfathomable. “Yama?”

Shang Que looked disgusted. “Of course not.”

Yu Zhengdu, “……then you are?”

Shang Que, “I am the legal representative of the company.”

Yu Zhengdu couldn’t help but diss, “……a ghost representative ba.”

Shang Que saw his speechless look, and only then did a sudden realisation dawn upon him. “Are you asking me about my previous identity?”

He smiled slightly. “A thousand years ago, people in the human world who offered sacrifices to me generally called me the Ghost King of Luofeng Mountain.”

Yu Zhengdu left Shang Que’s office and saw a dozen colleagues outside looking over with their heads stretched out and their gazes burning with the spirit of gossip. The one called Kang Jin asked guiltily, “New colleague, do you know everything now?”

Yu Zhengdu looked at them expressionlessly. “That you’re all ghosts?”

As soon as he finished speaking, he saw the expression of his uptight colleagues suddenly relax and they all nodded one after another. “Yeah, yeah.”

Kang Jin also breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s good that you know now, it’s really difficult for us to keep pretending to be humans.”

After he spoke, he held his head with both hands. “I was so scared just now that my head fell off.”

Yu Zhengdu quickly shouted at him to stop, “STOP THAT!!!!”

Kang Jin looked over with a baffled expression.

Yu Zhengdu cried in surprise, “Don’t take your head off! I won’t be able to stand it!”

Kang Jin: “……I just wanted to straighten my wig.”

He felt a little aggrieved. “Our boss doesn’t like bald employees.”

Yu Zhengdu sighed. “So even ghosts can be bald too.”

If he had a choice, Yu Zhengdu wouldn’t want to work with ghosts. Although Shang Que assured him that they were a very proper company, they are still ghosts in the end ah!

At present, however, he has no choice. According to what Shang Que said, the labor contract he signed with Luofeng can not be easily breached because one of the parties involved is part of the netherworld, so it was considered a contract between a human and a ghost. Otherwise, the one who breaches the contract would likely suffer a backlash.

Most importantly, the company claims to be responsible for the reincarnation of the dead. Although it looks very much like a hoax, if it was true, Yu Zhengdu fears that they would take revenge in a hundred years if he were to just pat his ass and walk away now. He could even end up reincarnating into a chicken or duck in his next life.

Yu Zhengdu sighed and sat back down at his workstation.

Unexpectedly, people were still chatting passionately in his WeChat class group. Looking at it carefully, he saw that Hou Guangzong was the performer.

Hou Guangzong: [Actually, Nova isn’t much la, it’s not as high-end as everyone thinks it is)

Hou Guangzong: [But there are quite a lot of impressive people here, it’s quite a pity that Zhengdu didn’t come]

Hou Guangzong: [Which company is Zhengdu working in now? It must be even more amazing than Nova ba]

Hou Guangzong: [@Yu Zhengdu, where are you? Tell everyone about your new company ma]

Hou Guangzong: [Isn’t Zhengdu being a bit too petty? What’s there to hide]

Hou Guangzong: [@Yu Zhengdu]

Yu Zhengdu looked up at his new colleagues. After their identities were exposed, they were obviously much more relaxed both physically and mentally. For example, right at this moment, a colleague was floating straight to another colleague’s workstation. “Help me take a look, how should I set up this excel formula……”

Yu Zhengdu, “……”

Forget it, forget it, it’s fine as long as they don’t perform an act where their heads start dropping all over the place.

Yu Zhengdu: [Un, my new company is especially amazing]

Yu Zhengdu: [The kind that can scare people to death, smile.jpg]

* * *

Yu Zhengdu formally started working in Luofeng. After a few days passed by like this, he had also come to know a lot more things.

For example, this company purports to be the Hell Organisation in the human world, that they’re in charge of all management work dealing with people after their death……and they were especially poor. When Shang Que said that the company had to scrimp to save enough money to hire him, he was actually telling the truth.

The so-called increase in business refers to the start of the second child policy, which led to an increase in the number of reincarnations. It doesn’t actually make any money.

Yu Zhengdu, “……”

The colleagues of this poorass company also agreed unanimously that they couldn’t be blamed for being poor, they could only blame the human world for not accepting hell bank notes, otherwise their boss would be the richest man in the world.

Yu Zhengdu felt that their reasoning was so logical that it was impossible to refute.

The little money they have of the human world in their account was contributed by people who took their name at face value, who believed that this company was involved in businesses such as career planning and personal health management.

Yu Zhengdu: worrying about my salary everyday.

At noon that day, he went downstairs to eat in the dining hall alone.

Due to the remote location of the Science Park in the development zone, there weren’t a lot of restaurants in the vicinity at the beginning. In order to attract companies to set up their offices here, the Science Park turned one of its floors into a dining hall.

Yu Zhengdu was the only living person in the company, so he would report to the dining hall every day.

He had just picked up his food when three girls suddenly came over with trays in hand. The one in the middle with a bob hairstyle waved to him.

Yu Zhengdu glanced at them and thought they seemed a little familiar.

The short-haired girl smiled a little shyly at him. “Hello, I often see you eating alone here.”

Yu Zhengdu thought about it for a while, then remembered that he seemed to have met them several times before. They would even size him up secretly from time to time.

Yu Zhengdu has always been good-looking since he was a child, so he was used to this type of situation. He smiled and said, “Hello, the three of you seem to eat here often as well?”

The short-haired girl and the girl on the right glanced at each other, then grumbled coyly, “Whaaaat? There’s clearly only the two of us here.”

The girl on the right also said, “Aren’t you being a bit too mean? Trying to scare us right at our first meeting.”

Yu Zhengdu felt a sudden chill run down his spine; he abruptly broke out in a cold sweat and all his hair stood on end.