Just hang up like that?
When he woke up, Hu Ziyu found himself in a different world.
Looking around, the background was dark and barren, with mountains and weeds. The people around him not only looked strange, but their clothes were filthy and messy. They all looked like they had rolled in a garbage dump and then crawled out.
No, it's weird, this is really too weird!
Is he still dreaming? Or maybe he has traveled through time!
Hu Ziyu vaguely remembered that an hour ago, he was following a large group of noisy and disorderly people on the way to Grand Avenue. Unexpectedly, he was distracted on the way, and suddenly his head felt hot and his vision went dark. When he woke up again, he found himself inexplicably in this strange place.
"What the hell! If I had known, I wouldn't have accepted the invitation from the senior from the Cooler Research Society..."
Hu Ziyu kept thinking crazily in his mind.
The Cooler Research Club was no longer some obscure taboo secret on the campus of University A. Despite this, when he saw the senior dressed as a maid at the freshman club expo, he hesitated for at least half a day just to decide whether to reach out and take the flyer.
However, thanks to finally mustering the courage to open the club activity room, which was an abandoned warehouse in the basement of the gymnasium, Hu Ziyu met his handsome and talented finance boyfriend at the welcome party, breaking away from his 18 years of single life.
However, it is really sad to think about it.
She had never touched her boyfriend's lips, climbed into his bed, held his hand, or even spent a single Valentine's Day with him. After three years of hard study, she finally got admitted to the top university in City A. Just as she was about to enter the vast and profound medical field and make her conservative parents, who were always ashamed of their sexual orientation, somewhat willing to look her in the eye, she stumbled and was thrown into a different world she had never seen before. All the achievements in life that she had worked so hard to build were wiped out in an instant.
After crossing over ( ), there was no staff to guide the tour and no manual to explain the current situation. There was only a line of expressionless zombies, and twos and threes of idiots like him, who were just confused and had no idea what had happened in the real world that led to them being teleported here.
"Excuse me, I would like to ask you a question--" Hu Ziyu called out to a woman who was about to join the ranks of the undead.
"Hey, you called me?" Hearing the voice, the woman turned her head slowly, the amplitude of the movement of her neck was not natural, and it would shake a few times from time to time, like a robot doll with a loose spring.
"Ah!" Hu Ziyu couldn't help but scream.
Half of the woman's face was gone. To be more precise, she had suffered a very violent impact. The bones on her right cheek and the skin, flesh and hair covering it were all worn away or shaved off. A large amount of blood, minced meat and broken bones kept dripping from the wound.
"Why are you yelling at me? Aren't you covered in wounds too?" The woman raised her right hand, which was shaking as if she had Parkinson's disease, and pointed at Hu Ziyu's head and collar.
It's my face that feels strange, no, is there something wrong with my head and body? Apart from feeling a little dizzy and having a dull pain, Hu Ziyu thought to himself.
Following the woman's instructions, he raised his hand and touched the back of his head.
A large, wet swelling, somewhat sticky to the touch. Looking down, he saw that his white T-shirt and light blue jeans were covered in various shoe prints and speckled with red spots. In reality, his clothes weren't much cleaner than those of the others; they were just as likely from a garbage dump.
Hu Ziyu didn't dare to look at his hands. He knew what it was.
He stood there stiffly for a long while, until his mood calmed down a little, then he looked in the direction the woman left.
It turned out that there was an inconspicuous LED sign three feet above the ground with the words "Those who died in vain, please move forward↑" written on it.
What the hell is this "unjustly dead" thing! And this LED light road sign that is so out of place in the current scene, and these reflective indicator strips buried somewhere at the feet, no one can see them!
Hu Ziyu kept muttering to himself as he followed the sign's instructions. The path leading up to the Black Mountain, formed by the lower weeds, was narrow, barely wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder. About a hundred meters ahead, he saw another sign: "Wrongly Dead, Go Ahead↑."
The strange thing was that every time he lifted his feet, he would feel a faint discomfort as if his lower limb joints were dislocated, and even his bones would make a crackling sound.
"Damn, what the hell is going on!" Hu Ziyu felt like crying, but he felt so helpless that he quickly wiped away the tears. Oh no, it seems that the blood on his hands has entered his eyes! In the dark vision, a shocking red suddenly appeared.
When passing the third signboard, Hu Ziyu finally saw the group of zombies and the taillights of the half-faced woman's car. He originally wanted to jog to catch up, but his lower limbs became more and more painful, so he had to walk and jump slowly forward.
After more than a hundred meters, the words on the fifth signboard were finally no longer "Those who died in vain, please move forward↑".
It was a wide light box, approximately five meters by one and a half meters, with the caption above it reading:
1. Please line up in order and wait for your name and number to be called.
2. Please carefully check your identity, age information and reason for registration.
3. Please collect the pure white burial clothes, wash your body, and discard the dirty clothes on your body.
4. After cleansing your body, please go to the outer hall of Yama on your own and wait for the notice of prosecution or deferred prosecution, and follow the instructions of the on-duty personnel to go to the various halls to await trial, await imprisonment, or enter the reincarnation passage.
5. Please do not escape, linger without reason, or attack or insult on-duty personnel. Violators will have their merit points deducted or be sentenced to permanent exile. Please do not make the mistake of mistaking yourself.
Hu, what on earth did I see? Hu Ziyu blinked, trying to regain his vision. After sorting out the whole story, his mood also changed from the original confusion and fear to another kind of uneasiness facing the unknown.
"It turns out that I didn't travel through time, but I died... Why is the world after death so... uh, rough and unrefined?" If he had the chance to tell his only brother Hu Zilin and his first (and last) boyfriend Chu Tianqi in a dream, he would like to tell them that hell is such a barren place.
Then, another thought came to mind: "No, this is just the entrance, and I can't make a conclusion yet. Maybe when I enter the King of Hell's Palace, I will see a dazzling golden splendor. But... then again, how did I die? When the ghost asks me later, am I going to say I don't know anything?"
Hu Ziyu kept running and now had a big swelling on his head, with blood spurting out from time to time.
"No, I can't remember, I can't remember..." He was only less than a kilometer away from the final assembly point on Grand Avenue. How could he suddenly collapse?
Could it be that he actually has a hidden disease? Liver cancer, stomach cancer, or colorectal cancer, and it is in the late stage and no medicine can cure it?
After thinking about it for a while, Hu Ziyu still couldn't get an answer that convinced him, so he had to walk through the light box in disappointment and chose a seat next to the counter where there were fewer people.
Several officials from the underworld, dressed in white, stood by the counter, their faces pale and their voices weak. They were busy calling numbers, filling out forms, ushering people to their seats, maintaining order, and comforting children who had died unjustly. When they stood next to the dead, it was impossible to tell who had just died.
On a counter table, about the size of a light box, white shrouds, folded into squares, were piled endlessly high, stretching upwards to infinity, completely obscuring the figure behind the seat. However, the man always managed to free a pair of hands between the rows of shrouds and hand over the shroud that matched the deceased's size.
Behind the counter, there are many makeshift restrooms that look just like portable toilets. Like the shrouds on the table, the restrooms are scattered all over the place, stretching forward to the end of the sight.
Hu Ziyu gave up after counting for a while.
"Huang Yuemei, born in 1967, died in a highway chain accident!" A ghost messenger holding a loud speaker in his left hand and a 12-inch white pad in his right hand shouted.
"Ah, it's me, it's me! I'm here." The half-faced woman waved her right hand, which was almost about to fall off her falling apart body.
It turned out that the older sister died in a sudden accident, which is why she lost half of her face and her joints were almost falling apart. It was really pitiful when you think about it. Hu Ziyu thought to himself.
The half-faced woman pressed her fingerprints on the registration form, received a size M shroud that was unisex at the counter, and then found an unoccupied restroom and went in.
However, Hu Ziyu couldn't help but feel worried: Even if he took a bath, the broken bones and flesh that kept flowing out of his body would probably stain the entire white shroud. When he got to the palace later, the King of Hell would not think it was impolite and inconvenient to watch. Besides, blood was still splattering on the back of his head.
After waiting for a long time and still not hearing his name, Hu Ziyu began to feel sleepy, but the ghost officials were still busy as usual, so he was too embarrassed to step forward and ask questions.
After a while, the next batch of innocent victims arrived. The previous batch of innocent victims, along with the half-faced lady, were about to board the hand-operated retractable elevator that appeared out of nowhere and descend to the palace of hell.
"What's going on this time?" a shorter ghost asked his colleague next to him.
"It was the foreign workers' fishing boat that capsized. Can't you search for the latest developments in the area yourself?" complained the taller one.
"Oh." The short ghost took out a cell phone from his sleeve and started sliding it. "No wonder you smell like fish."
Hu Ziyu was completely dumbfounded. Wasn't he in... hell? How come this place was so up-to-date, even having PADs, mobile phones, elevators and other cutting-edge products?
Wait a minute, it seems that he shouldn't spend his energy and time on this now. If he stays here for no reason, his few achievements in life will be deducted!
"Um, sorry, brothers!" The ghost messenger's voice is mostly flat and without intonation, making it difficult to tell whether it is male or female, so Hu Ziyu simply calls them "brother".
"Excuse me, has Hu Ziyu passed his turn?" The two ghost officials heard the call and looked at each other with horror.
"Why are you still here?" asked the taller one, with surprise and confusion in his tone.
"The deceased at the Si hour should have been sent away."
"That's why I wanted to ask if I was missed." Hu Ziyu said.
"What's your name? What's your birth date? What's your cause of death?" the shorter man asked in rapid succession. Hu Ziyu answered the first two questions truthfully, but as for the cause of death, he could only scratch his head and smile foolishly.
"Ah, I was on my way to a parade when I suddenly fainted... and then I died..." As for what kind of parade it was, he really didn't dare to say it clearly.
As Hu Ziyu said this, the two ghost officials' expressions became uglier. They looked back several steps, squatted on the side of the road and whispered to each other, leaving him and the fishermen who had died violently aside.
"Why do all the self-service machines have to be sent in for repair at this time? If the deceased could check and discover the errors themselves in advance, there wouldn't be any such errors slipping through the net!" said the shorter one.
"What a fish! That's a ridiculous description! So rude! The Taiyin Temple will send someone to pick it up shortly." The taller one tapped his colleague on the forehead. "Besides, our superiors are only willing to allocate five kiosks to the region. With the heavy load, they keep crashing. And with a bunch of deceased people who are unhappy with the merit calculation method constantly bashing them, it's hard not to break down."
Hu Ziyu found it funny. The two men had clearly hidden on the side of the road to talk, but they did not lower their voices at all. He heard every word they said.
Am I the one who slipped through the net? Great, this must mean that my life span is not over yet, Hu Ziyu thought to himself.
That's right, how could someone be perfectly healthy and then faint for no apparent reason after basking in the sun? He probably just had heatstroke.
However, before going back, he also wanted to learn from the ghosts who were about to be judged and cleanse his body.
"Excuse me, could you give me a set of clean clothes?" Hu Ziyu pointed at the white shroud on the counter. The group of foreign workers next to him, speaking with strange accents, had been led to the other side by another pair of ghost messengers to line up and have their names called.
The two ghosts, one tall and one short, nodded their heads in agreement. "Yes, you can go, but we should have official uniforms and casual clothes distributed to us later," the taller one replied.
After receiving the funeral clothes, Hu Ziyu chose a bathroom that looked the cleanest and had a cat sticker decorated on the door.
Although small, it has everything you need, and the interior space is much brighter and more spacious than it appears from outside. Not only is there a shower head and clothes rack for showering, but there's even a bathtub that can accommodate the lower half of your body.
However, he seemed to have no time to waste and could only take a quick shower. He didn't even have time to pay attention to the tiny injuries on his body.
How long has he been here? Does the flow of time in the underworld match that of the human world? Where is his body now? Hospital, funeral home, or sent back to his hometown? Could it be frozen or cremated? I hope not.
Thinking of this, Hu Ziyu's scalp, hands and feet all felt numb, and he didn't dare to explore further.
When I walked out of the bathroom, two ghost officials were talking to a young man who was emitting a warm golden light.
Hu Ziyu was far away from the other three, so he couldn't see the young man's face clearly. He was dressed in a dark-colored ancient costume, with a small black sand crown on his head. His clothes fluttered and his demeanor was elegant, like a courtier in a palace drama. He must have come to discuss some important matter.
Hu Ziyu felt that he shouldn't go up to talk, so he walked away. Considering that the surroundings were dim and dark, he couldn't go too far away, so he could only stand in front of the elevator and look around.
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