I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

As the first rays of sunlight pierced through the clouds and shone upon the steel jungle of the new Chang'an City, the biting cold that had permeated the entire night finally receded like a tide.

For ordinary people around the world, it was an extremely terrifying and long night.

The internet has completely exploded. Countless blurry videos, recordings with screams, and bizarre footage from surveillance cameras are spreading like wildfire across various forums.

Someone captured a semi-transparent headless phantom wandering at a crossroads late at night; someone recorded their home security camera footage showing a deceased relative lying on the ceiling in an extremely distorted posture; and European netizens uploaded images of pale ghostly figures floating in an ancient castle.

In this new era where cultivation and technology coexist, humanity thought it had witnessed the brutality of monsters and the devastation of heavenly lightning. However, when those "ghosts" that have no physical form and are immune to physical damage actually appear at the bedside, the fear of the afterlife that originates from the depths of our genes still easily breaks through the psychological defenses of all mankind.

However, this extreme panic did not last long.

As the sun rises, the yang energy of heaven and earth regains its dominance, and the wandering spirits let out mournful cries, disappearing into the dark corners like melting ice and snow.

Following this, Bureau 749 and major global supernatural management organizations quickly released official "Guidelines for Dealing with Spiritual Beings".

The guide clearly states that while these newly emerging "spirits" are immune to conventional physical weapons, they are not particularly threatening. Unlike high-level demonic beasts, they cannot directly tear apart reinforced concrete; they primarily rely on the infiltration of yin energy and mental pollution to create illusions and absorb the yang energy of the living.

More importantly, the official method for restraining them was announced: high-intensity condensed spiritual energy and pure yang qi and blood containing vigorous vitality.

"By circulating one's cultivation technique and highly compressing spiritual energy onto a magical artifact, or by biting one's tongue and spraying it with a martial artist's blood, these newly born Yin spirits can be easily defeated!"

This announcement acted like a shot in the arm, instantly stabilizing the global social order that was on the verge of collapse.

"They were just a group of low-level energy beings without physical form!"

"That scared me to death! I thought it was some kind of indescribable monster. If high-concentration spiritual energy and pure yang blood can kill it, then what is there to be afraid of?"

"We're living in an era where everyone's cultivating immortality! Even a novice at the first level of Qi Refining can imbue their blades with spiritual energy. These monsters are just freeloaders!"

Human fear often stems from the unknown and the inability to resist. Once it is discovered that the opponent not only has a health bar but also extremely poor defense, the fear quickly transforms into a condescending fanaticism.

Over the next three days, a massive "literacy campaign" was launched around the world.

New Chang'an City, West District.

Xu Feng, the captain of Special Operations Team 3, is leading his team in a sweep of an abandoned, unfinished building.

"Over there! At nine o'clock!"

Following the beam of the flashlight, a hanged ghost, its body radiating a gray-black aura and its face deathly pale, hovered in mid-air, emitting a sickening wailing sound. It attempted to disrupt Xu Feng and the others' sanity with its mental fluctuations, but such a hallucination was negligible to the resolute military cultivators.

"Break it!"

Xu Feng was fearless. He strode forward, his crimson pure Yang spiritual energy highly condensed on the military-modified psionic battle knife in his hand, like a red-hot branding iron.

"Whoosh—!"

With a single slash, the ghost, imbued with extreme yin obsession, didn't even have time to escape. The moment it came into contact with the high concentration of spiritual energy, it let out a shrill scream. Its entire illusory body exploded like a punctured balloon, instantly turning into countless wisps of gray smoke that dissipated into the air.

"Captain is awesome! This is the twelfth person our team has helped to pass on to the afterlife today!" Young team member Xiao Liu excitedly recorded the data. The fright of the past few days had vanished, replaced by a relaxed sense of hunting.

Xu Feng sheathed his sword, let out a long breath, looked at the surrounding temperature returning to normal, and nodded: "It seems that although these evil spirits are strange, they are ultimately no match for our righteous energy. Let's call it a day."

This scene is playing out all over the world.

Taoist priests, Buddhist monks, and even rogue cultivators who had just learned a few fireball techniques took to the streets to "exorcise" the nascent ghosts hiding in dark corners. Humanity seemed to have once again firmly occupied the top of the food chain in this reshuffling of spiritual energy.

However, just as all of humanity was celebrating their victory in this "exorcism battle,"

Gu Qing frowned coldly as he looked at a statistic on the system panel that was plummeting.

[System notification: The global paranormal fear index is plummeting.]

Humanity's awe of the "afterlife" has transformed into "hunting and contempt."

[Rendering speed of the "Netherworld" scene has stalled; current progress: 21%.]

Because the ghosts exhibited very low physical destructive power and were completely suppressed by the high concentration of spiritual energy, mortals were no longer afraid of them. Without pure fear, the construction of the underworld naturally came to a standstill.

But Gu Qing's focus at this moment was not on the shutdown of the Underworld.

His eyes, which seemed to be swirling with the Tai Chi symbol, were fixed on the gray traces left behind by the cultivators who had "killed" them inside the Earth's atmosphere.

In the eyes of ordinary cultivators, cleaving a ghost in two with a single strike is equivalent to "liberating" it and completely eliminating it.

But in Gu Qing's eyes, who had mastered the principles of Yin and Yang, the real scene was terrifying.

Xu Feng's strike did indeed shatter the hanged ghost's obsessive form. However, the shattered gray smoke did not dissipate into microscopic particles and return to the world like it did in the era without magic, nor was it completely annihilated.

They were simply shattered into even smaller fragments by the intense spiritual energy. These fragments, mixed with dense yin energy, slowly descended onto the floor of the unfinished building, seeped into the soil, and drifted into the air like invisible dust.

As time went on, this invisible "yin energy dust" accumulated more and more. Nourished by spiritual energy, it became like living mercury, instinctively attracting each other and re-gathering.

one day.

Just one day later, in the abandoned building that Xu Feng and the others thought had been completely cleaned up, the scattered fragments were pieced together again. The hanged ghost reappeared in the same corner! Moreover, having absorbed other scattered fragments of resentment, its form was more solid than three days ago, and the resentment in its eyes was even deeper.

"The ritual to deliver the deceased is ineffective."

Gu Qing looked down at the planet below, which was gradually being permeated by the cold, deathly aura, and slowly uttered four words.

He finally understood what the serious warning the system had issued earlier—[planetary-level underlying architecture logic conflict]—truly meant.

Human cultivators believed they were slaying demons and monsters, unaware that they were merely using a sledgehammer to smash a block of solid ice. Even shattered ice shards remained water. As long as the spiritual energy of this world persisted, it would eventually refreeze.

Because there is no "stomach" on Earth that can digest these evil spirits.

The world has lost its ability to purify itself. Or rather, with the interference of the resurgence of spiritual energy, the world's original mechanisms for dealing with death have completely failed.

Unless there is a true "underworld" to forcibly extract and reshape these souls, no matter how many times the cultivators scatter the ghosts, they will revive.

They cannot be killed. They are the dregs of humanity that cannot be cleaned up.

Even more frightening is that this superficial "sweeping" is accelerating the collapse of the Earth's ecosystem.

Because once the ghosts are dispersed, their yin energy seeps into the environment. This causes the magnetic field and feng shui of normally normal intersections, hospital morgues, and desolate areas to undergo extremely eerie distortions.

"Quantitative changes are finally about to lead to qualitative changes."

Gu Qing lightly tapped his finger in the air, bringing up several areas highlighted by red halos.

In those places, the accumulation of yin energy has reached a critical point. Ordinary ghosts are indeed not very dangerous, mainly relying on frightening people. However, when hundreds or thousands of scattered fragments of resentment reassemble in a hospital or on a highway, that place is no longer the territory of the living.

That will evolve into a region independent of the laws of reality—the "Yin Realm".

In the underworld, the pure yang energy that the living are so proud of will be suppressed to its limit, while those originally fragile ghosts will gain terrifying power that is almost at the rule level.

"System." Gu Qing withdrew his gaze, his voice cold and utterly devoid of emotion.

【exist. 】

"Since mortals think ghosts are nothing special, let them see what will be born when these unremovable dregs devour each other and completely pollute the environment."

"Mark those places with the heaviest yin energy as natural paranormal replicas. We don't need to force it; we just need to follow the rules of yin-yang imbalance and let it evolve naturally."

[Command confirmed. Yin-Yang imbalance point locked.]

[Location 1: Second basement level of the morgue, Third People's Hospital of Jiangnan City. Yin energy accumulation: Extremely high. Danger level: Rising.]

[Coordinate 2: An abandoned intersection on a section of National Highway 318. A large number of fragments of resentment from car accidents have been detected merging; independent spatial rules are being generated...]

Gu Qing looked at the coordinates on the panel and slowly turned around.

"When the first midnight bus drove into the inescapable fog, when the temperature in the morgue could no longer be measured by scientific instruments..."

"Only then will you realize that without the protection of the underworld, this human world is itself a giant purgatory."

……

Just a few hours after Gu Qing issued the order.

On the internet, a forum for extraordinary individuals, which was originally filled with an optimistic atmosphere due to "sweeping away low-level ghosts," suddenly had a strange SOS post appear, which quickly became a trending topic within minutes.

The poster is a verified Qi Refining mid-stage rogue cultivator.

His writing was filled with an extremely chaotic and desperate tone:

"Help!!! Don't go to the second basement level of Jiangnan City Third Hospital!!!"

"Our team went in to deal with a low-level female ghost... I clearly cleaved it in two with one sword strike! I swear I cleaved it in two!"

"But...it didn't disappear...the walls are bleeding, and all the drawers in the morgue are opening by themselves...my spiritual power here is like a match thrown into an icy lake, it can't even last a second!"

"This isn't a ghost! This is... a rule! A rule we can't understand!"

"The captain was dragged inside by hair through the crack in the door... My hands are frozen to death... Help me... Someone please help me..."

The post ended with an extremely blurry photo.

The background of the photo is a corridor covered in frost. The sign that should have read "Morgue" has been smeared with blood, resulting in two distorted characters.

[The Underworld].