Chapter 45: Respecting the Land
Sister Hanba nodded happily. Then, just before turning to leave, she cast a lingering look toward the roaring incinerator, as if an idle thought had suddenly crossed her mind. “Oh dear… if a living soul receives a death certificate, then they become a dead person. What a pity.”
Lin Huai blinked, feeling genuinely puzzled.
If a living person died, they became a dead person—what else could they possibly be?
Lin Huai frowned slightly. She studied Sister Hanba closely, realizing that the crematorium manager had acted strangely ever since she arrived today.
Especially after learning that Lin Huai was heading toward the Earth God Temple dungeon, her behavior had grown even more bizarre. Speaking in cryptic riddles, reciting poetry, and indulging in gloomy melancholy were completely unlike Sister Hanba’s usual personality.
Remembering how Sister Hanba had abruptly bitten her tongue and gone silent the last time Lin Huai tried to coax system secrets out of her, an intuitive spark flared in Lin Huai’s mind. She snapped her gaze up, staring straight into Sister Hanba’s eyes with a silent, questioning look.
Seeing that she had finally caught on, Sister Hanba gave her a deliberate wink, nodding subtly. “Lin Lin, you mustn’t die. You have to stay alive.”
Lin Huai nodded slowly, her expression turning dead serious. “Sister, thank you. I’ve taken it to heart. I will definitely live.”
Slipping back behind the wheel, Lin Huai caught a glimpse in her rearview mirror of Sister Hanba’s red dress fluttering in the gloom before fading away at the facility gates. Outside the boundary, the dark highway once again swarmed with monsters and wandering zombies.
She refocused her attention on the empty asphalt ahead.
The entrance to the Earth God Temple dungeon would spawn along the shoulder of the highway. It typically appeared as a small stone archway, roughly the height of a grown person, carved with the characters for “Earth God Temple.”
According to the laws of the netherworld, after a person dies and enters the underworld, their soul must pass through twenty distinct checkpoints, traditionally known as the Twenty Stations of the Underworld. Although Lin Huai had never cleared the full storyline chain in her past life, she already knew that the so-called “main story dungeons” were built around these very twenty stations.
The Earth God Temple served as the very first stop for departed souls. Here, a spirit had their name struck from the register of the living and received a road pass, granting them permission to enter the subsequent trial stations down the line.
The Earth God held a modest divine rank, sitting at the grassroots level of the celestial bureaucracy. Even so, his role was critical, governing the registration and movement of all souls within his designated territory.
Lin Huai had not driven very far before the familiar entrance rose into view.
A bluestone archway stood quietly by the roadside. As her hearse drew near, an invisible barrier shimmered across the roadway, halting the car in its tracks. With the road ahead completely blocked, drivers had no choice but to step through the archway.
Carved across the header of the stone gate were three characters—Earth God Temple—rendered in a grand, imposing calligraphy.
Lin Huai parked, locked the hearse securely, stepped out into the damp air, and walked straight through the entrance portal.
The Earth God Temple was by far the simplest of all the main story dungeons. In fact, it was so straightforward that Lin Huai had always felt it belonged in the beginner tutorial period rather than the post-protection phase.
Stepping beyond the archway, she found a long, covered walkway stretching ahead. A string of white paper lanterns hung beneath the wooden eaves, casting a pallid, ghostly glow over the stone path.
A cold, biting draft whistled down the corridor, setting the lanterns swaying back and forth. The pale halos of light danced across the floor, washing over the weathered crimson pillars in eerie, shifting flickers that created an unsettling atmosphere.
The environmental design of this game was unnervingly authentic. Every time she stepped into a dungeon, she felt as though she had crossed the threshold into the true underworld. The heavy, deathly chill in the air was so suffocating that it almost made her feel like a corpse herself.
Walking to the far end of the corridor, she emerged into a wide circular plaza. Soul-calling banners made of white cloth fluttered from every post, while countless funeral wreaths hovered silently in midair, adding bizarre splashes of color to an otherwise bleak, monochrome landscape.
At the front of the courtyard stood a modest stone shrine. Built from dressed bluestone with whitewashed walls and dark green roof tiles, its design was plain and rustic. Above the shrine doors, the words Earth God Temple were carved in an ancient seal script.
Currently, players from across Zone 444 were gathered in the plaza, busy running the temple’s introductory quest.
Lin Huai brought up her system screen to check the public chat and group messages.
In the general lobby, countless survivors were actively trading tips on how to clear the objective.
Meanwhile, inside the Elite Squad channel, everyone was commenting on how laughably easy the quest seemed, wondering if there was some kind of hidden catch.
Lin Huai opened the core squad group and sent a quick message:
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: I’m back. I just stepped into the Earth God Temple. Have you all finished the quest?
[Dragon Emerging from the Sea]: It’s completely straightforward. You just go in, line up to cancel your household registration, and collect your road pass. The moment the pass is in your hands, the quest is marked complete.
[Old Wang from Building Materials]: Mine is already done too.
[Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar]: We’ve all cleared it, Boss! Brother Jiao Long gathered everyone in the squad to run through the steps together.
They’ve all completed it already…?
An uneasy feeling tugged at Lin Huai’s chest, as if she were already one step too late.
Yet in her previous life, she had followed this exact routine: you stepped into the shrine, lined up at the desks, waited for the clerks of the underworld to cancel your mortal registration, and traded that paperwork for a travel permit.
The travel pass was required for every subsequent story dungeon down the road, making it an indispensable item. Without it, a player would be barred from entering future main storyline checkpoints and locked out of numerous side instances.
Lin Huai walked into the open plaza, gently pushing through the milling crowd, and headed straight toward the main hall of the temple.
Since she was visiting the shrine of the local deity, proper etiquette demanded that she first pay her respects to the Earth God himself. That was simply the proper order of things.
Rather than joining the registration lines right away, she stepped into the tranquil hall beneath the green-tiled roof. Sitting directly across from the entrance was a weathered stone statue of the elderly Earth God.
The altar before the statue was already piled high with various food offerings, and the large bronze censer brimmed with smoldering incense sticks, showing that other players had stopped by to pay their respects as well.
Lin Huai opened her inventory, retrieved several fresh fruits, pastries, and a bottle of clear white liquor, and arranged them neatly on a clean ceramic platter before setting it reverently onto the altar table. She lit three sticks of incense, bowed three times from the waist, and planted the fragrant sticks firmly into the ashes.
Having completed the ritual, she looked up at the weathered stone face of the deity and whispered a silent prayer:
“I, Lin Huai, present this sweet incense and pure wine to pay humble respects to the Venerable Earth God. May your divine grace watch over my journey and grant me safe passage on the long road ahead.”
Lin Huai’s prayers were heartfelt and sincere, yet the stone statue remained completely motionless, showing no divine sign.
Just as in her previous life, nothing unexpected happened. Lin Huai turned and walked back out into the crowded courtyard, casually choosing one of the shorter queues to join.
Lined up along both sides of the plaza were long wooden desks where ghostly clerks worked feverishly, surrounded by throngs of eager players.
The underworld scribes were so overwhelmed that they never once lifted their heads. They kept their eyes glued to the parchment, writing names, applying heavy red stamps, and handing out household cancellation certificates at mechanical speed. Players then took those stamped slips over to the distribution counters flanking the temple walls to pick up their official road passes. It looked like an orderly, relentless administrative assembly line.
Because the Earth God Temple was an exclusive regional dungeon, every player in the square belonged to Zone 444. Many had seen Lin Huai during the afternoon battle for the town, so the moment she walked into the yard, warm greetings rang out constantly from the crowd.
A few players even followed her lead, running inside to offer incense to the stone statue before hurrying back to take places in line behind her.
When the survivors queued up ahead of her noticed that the server’s top-ranked player was standing right behind them, they immediately insisted on giving up their spots, practically urging her to take the front of the line.
Lin Huai politely tried to decline their kindness, but the enthusiastic crowd gently guided her forward anyway, pushing her straight to the very front of the registration desk.
