Chapter 179 Extra 2: The Current Working Situation of Investigators and Ghost Messengers: The Surveillance Bureau is a Conspicuous Source of Laughter, and the Rites and Music of the Underworld are Collapsing
Xiao Wei has been troubled lately.
He was a regular Class B investigator in the Investigation Division. Due to their busy work schedules, most investigators in the Bureau of Investigation, including him, were single and mostly lived in the Bureau's dormitory building.
Not long ago, a building suddenly appeared next to the investigators' dormitory.
Every morning when Xiao Wei wakes up and looks out the window at the wild leopard-print building next to his dormitory, he feels dizzy.
I heard that this building is inhabited by supernatural talents who were once abducted by the main god. These retired infinite flow players are all good candidates to be investigators.
However, since most of these players come from parallel worlds, they lack knowledge of this world. In addition, they spend years relentlessly clearing supernatural dungeons, which inevitably leads to some psychological issues.
Therefore, these players need to undergo psychological counseling in that building first, learn common sense about society, and enhance their sense of belonging to this world. Only after passing the assessment can they leave.
Xiao Wei thinks that these players probably have a distorted aesthetic sense because they frequently play through supernatural dungeons and are under too much psychological pressure, so they painted the exterior of their building like this.
He could understand their feelings, and graffiti should also be a way to release psychological stress. Although it was a bit jarring, he could get used to it after a while.
What made Xiao Wei despair was that some idiot couldn't stand the leopard-print building next door and sent a complaint email to the newly appointed logistics minister, angrily criticizing the leopard-print paint on the building next to the dormitory as an eyesore and demanding that it be restored to its normal appearance.
After reading the email, the newly appointed head of the logistics department, for some reason, probably felt that his investigators were resentful of the other's leopard print paint job. So one day, the investigators' dormitory building was also renovated.
Thinking of this, Xiao Wei sighed deeply, dragged his heavy steps out of the dormitory building, and looked back once.
In the soft morning sunlight, a leopard-print building and a zebra-print building stand side by side.
Xiao Wei was too exhausted to complain anymore. All he wanted to do was find out which guy sent the complaint email, then knock him out of the way and beat him up.
What was originally just a leopard-print building has now been transformed into a zebra-print dormitory building, alongside the leopard-print player building, making them the two most flamboyant and eye-catching buildings within the Bureau of Supervision.
Xiao Wei didn't know what was going on with the players inside the leopard-print building. But investigators coming out of the dormitory building might have zebra-print body paint on their faces or bodies.
Although the zebra stripe paint only lasts for one day and grants a strong speed and strength boost after it fades, the way the zebra stripes are displayed is rather unseemly—the paint is distributed very irregularly, either covering the entire face or only appearing on the eyelids or lips.
This outrageous body painting made these investigators look like performance artists doing body painting, or beauty bloggers with cutting-edge eye and lip makeup.
Previously, some people were secretly admiring the cat ears on Captain Hong's head and his newly grown tail, but now, no one should laugh at anyone else.
Xiao Wei mentally prepared himself and checked his appearance in selfie mode on his phone.
Thank goodness, perhaps because he frequently went to the City God Temple to offer incense and pray for blessings, he was never selected for the zebra painting project.
He's going on vacation in a couple of days, and he's praying that he can get the zebra paint on his day off. Xiao Wei is really craving the speed and strength boost that the paint will give him after it fades.
After obtaining the zebra stripes, he simply lay in his dormitory for a whole day.
Actually, it wasn't a big deal. If you have zebra stripes on your face, so be it. Just consider it a special camouflage pattern.
But I don't know which prankster started a thread on the internal forum of the supervisory bureau.
That guy secretly took many photos of people's zebra stripes and posted these artistic painted photos in a thread, which was then featured by the moderator.
It's reasonable to suspect that the person who posted the photo was from the monitoring or intelligence department, because only these two departments could take such a clear headshot.
This is outrageous! We considered you our comrades, but you posted us online.
And that's not all. This post also spawned various bizarre beauty pageant posts and gossip threads—[Artistic Zebra Stripe Body Painting Contest 101], [Top Ten Most Handsome Zebra Stripe Body Paintings Appreciation], [Inferring the Secret Hobbies of the Linjiang City Bureau Chief from Zebra Stripes and Leopard Prints] (this post was quickly deleted), [My Cat-Eared Captain, My Zebra Teammate], [The Most Secretly Lucky Investigator of Zebra Stripes Ranking]...
Members of the supervisory bureaus in each city can log in to the intranet forum to view posts. If someone is photographed and posted in the "Fun Collection" thread, it's incredibly embarrassing, a nationwide social disaster.
It's quite terrifying; even when facing an A-level vengeful ghost, Xiao Wei didn't experience this much psychological pressure.
After leaving the dormitory building, Xiao Wei went to the cafeteria for breakfast.
If there's any benefit to the leopard-print building, it's probably that the food in the supervisory bureau's cafeteria has become tastier.
There was a retired player named Xiaohui who played the "Infinite Flow" game. She and her teammates were among the first players to graduate from the Leopard Print Building. Now they run a stall in the Inspectorate's cafeteria.
After this angelic young lady rectified the workplace, the uncles and aunties cooking in the supervisory bureau's canteen finally gave up making those bland, perfectly healthy meals and started trying to adjust the flavors.
Xiao Wei took a big bite of the scallion pancake with a happy expression.
...This is life! Finally, I don't have to sneak out to order takeout anymore.
There's something strange about it. For some reason, I've never seen Chef Xiaohui and her teammates cook any chicken dishes. They seem to have a phobia of chicken, and their faces turn as pale as if they've seen a ghost whenever they hear the word "chicken soup."
Perhaps he got tricked by a chicken in some supernatural dungeon. Xiao Wei has heard the saying "When a rooster crows, the world turns white," so it's very likely that supernatural dungeons will use a rooster's crow to end the supernatural event.
Xiao Hui and her friends probably died during a paranormal dungeon because they couldn't find the rooster in time, which left them with such severe psychological trauma.
It was so tough, but thankfully the main god that forced them to clear the dungeon has disappeared, and they can finally rest in this world.
Before officially starting work today, Xiao Wei, as usual, devoutly lit three incense sticks in the City God Temple in the office building of the Disorder Investigation Department, greeted the temple keeper Qin, and then began his work for the day.
Since the City God Temple and the local temple were built, their investigators' work has become much easier.
Both the temples of the city god and the temple of the city god have talismans for warding off evil spirits and protecting the home. The shamans and nuns of the temples of the city god can also command low-level divine soldiers. If people encounter supernatural events or are entangled by weak ghosts, they will go directly to the nearest temple of the city god for help.
The City God Temple also has day and night patrol gods who lead ghost soldiers and underworld troops on patrol every day, so that even if a particularly dangerous ghost appears, it can be dealt with in time.
The daily work of the investigators at the Supervisory Bureau, besides their regular patrols, involves cleaning up cursed items that cause paranormal events. These inanimate objects are not within the scope of the ghost soldiers and spirits of the City God Temple.
Investigators also need to mark and clean up yin-related places during patrols—such as locations with many car accidents; ominous places caused by the resentment of those who died violently; places where yin energy gathers and leads to suicide due to a high number of suicides; or cursed feng shui formations created by evil feng shui masters. Investigators need to find and clean these up in a timely manner.
Another issue is dealing with [human-to-human harm incidents] – now that the supernatural has resurfaced, some bad people will use ghosts and monsters to harm others, which is when investigators need to step in.
Because investigators now need to be highly mobile, and with both the evil god and the main god gone and posing little threat, the closed office complexes that the Bureau of Supervision used to build for security, resembling military fortresses, are now somewhat outdated.
So the director of the supervisory bureau decided to set up several smaller branches and disperse the supervisory bureau personnel throughout the city.
Xiao Wei's job today is to lead the way for the renovation and demolition team building the branch office building.
I heard that the demolition team was specially borrowed by the bureau chief from Liwan Apartment.
Although he was mentally prepared, Xiao Wei was still shocked when he actually saw what these people were doing.
The demolition team consisted of only three people: two Taoist priests and one gardener.
The two Taoist priests were responsible for replicating and moving the building, while the landscape architect was responsible for the landscaping next to the building.
Watching the two Taoist priests, with their otherworldly airs, wield small iron hammers and quickly build a building like stacking blocks, Xiao Wei felt a sense of awe.
A building every few minutes—that's quite a sight! No wonder they're from the Liwan Apartments; they're incredibly talented.
*
Since the world was repaired, the underworld's reincarnation mechanism has not only returned to normal, but the underworld's ghost messengers have also received new uniforms.
Now, the ghost messengers can freely choose their own clothes to wear at work, instead of having to wear rigid black suits or black funeral clothes.
Fan Wujiu stared at the group of soul-collecting ghost messengers passing by, his face ashen, feeling that the world was going to the dogs.
As the original Black Impermanence, Fan Wujiu is one of the Ten Underworld Marshals, commanding the ghost messengers of the underworld, and is known as the Eighth Master.
Because of his serious appearance, he is extremely intimidating when he is expressionless.
If it were the ghost messengers of the past who saw Fan Wujiu in his current state, they would definitely be filled with trepidation and reflect on what they had done wrong and whether they had made a mistake in their work.
However, these ghost messengers, with their multicolored hair and bodies, who were passing by him, dared to greet him with smiles, without a trace of fear on their faces.
This made Fan Wujiu even angrier.
These newly appointed ghost messengers are all investigators from the Bureau of Investigation who have died in the last ten years or so.
In the early stages of the supernatural resurgence, they sacrificed themselves, using their lives to suicidally seal away the evil spirits, slowing the spread of the supernatural and saving many lives.
With the blessing of great merit, and because the underworld had accumulated too many souls due to its shutdown over the past few years and urgently needed manpower, these investigators escaped the cycle of reincarnation, successfully coming ashore and transforming from civil servants of the mortal world into civil servants of the underworld.
Influenced by a powerful and innovative boss who had returned to his divine position, these young ghost messengers, who had been dead for over a decade, began to customize their uniforms and even change their hairstyles according to their own preferences.
Our bodies, hair, and skin are gifts from our parents; how can we cut them short or change their color at will?
This is truly a collapse of morality and social order! A collapse of morality and social order!
"Don't be sullen, brother. This is the new trend in the underworld. You should change your image and keep up with the young people's style." Xie Bi'an said, fiddling with his phone without looking up.
As he looked on, Xie Bi'an seemed to think of something, and let out a soft sigh:
"It's a pity that no matter what equipment we use, we can't capture that person's image now. After his divine status was elevated, his appearance can no longer be observed by us lesser gods. Sigh... I was actually quite looking forward to seeing that person dancing at the gates of the King of Hell's palace."
Xie Bi'an's silence only made Fan Wujiu angrier.
Looking at Xie Bi'an, who was dressed in a sequined white suit, with a wolf tail hairstyle and white highlights, Fan Wujiu clenched his fists, which were as big as sandbags, so tightly they cracked.
The moral order has collapsed! This is utterly a collapse of moral order!
Fan Wujiu felt that he was probably corrupted by the power of the void, otherwise why would he have developed a desire to attack his own brother?
No, I need to calm down.
Fan Wujiu took a deep breath and changed the subject: "How are those ghosts in Liwan Apartments doing now? Are they still unwilling to return to the underworld?"
It's not good for those ghosts to linger in the mortal realm for too long.
Since the gates of the underworld reopened, Fan Wujiu went to the apartment intending to bring them to the underworld, to judge those who needed to be judged, and to reincarnate those who needed to be reincarnated.
As it turned out, those ghosts were all holdouts; some of the little ghosts preferred to study at the abandoned ghost school rather than be reincarnated. If you beat them too badly, they would even cry and go to complain to the person who gave them the punishment—these little ghosts were truly troublesome!
Xie Bi'an put his phone away and looked at him with some surprise: "Don't you know? The Liwan Apartment and its surrounding facilities are now under the jurisdiction of the City of the Wrongfully Dead system. Souls who died violently before their lifespan was over can choose to live in the City of the Wrongfully Dead in the Underworld or at the Liwan Apartment."
Hearing this, Fan Wujiu frowned and said coldly, "This is against the rules! No matter how dark the apartment is, it is still in the mortal world. How can the dead stay in the mortal world for a long time?"
Xie Bi'an waved his hand: "Don't be so rigid, Lao Fan. That's where that person lives now. The rules of the underworld were all set by that person. He can decide what to add."
Fan Wujiu pursed his lips, about to say something, when he was suddenly interrupted by a paper figure that fell from the sky.
It was a very artistic paper figure, with dazzling long hair, a stunning face outlined in more than thirty colors, and a round and heavy body made of a lot of paper pulp.
The paper figure lay on its side like a mermaid who had just gained legs, holding up the Soul-Binding Lock in its hand: "Lord Black Impermanence! Your package has been delivered, please give me a five-star review!"
Seeing the familiar paper figure, Fan Wujiu was furious.
Although he had been dead for a long time, he seemed to feel the high blood pressure of a living person again... Fan Wujiu closed his eyes tightly, trying to calm the increasingly agitated emotions in his heart.
Seeing that he didn't move, Xie Bi'an took the Soul-Binding Lock from the paper figure for him.
After the package arrived, the paper figure seemed quite happy. However, its body structure was too weak to support it standing, and it could only thrash about on the ground like a large carp that had just jumped out of a fishing net.
Xie Bi'an checked it and handed the Soul-Binding Lock to Fan Wujiu: "Here, your equipment has arrived. The blacksmith did a pretty good job repairing it; it's like new. But it's a bit slow. I'll go to the Ghost Market to see why my Mourning Staff hasn't been repaired yet."
Fan Wujiu coldly accepted the Soul-Binding Lock, then kicked the paper figure that was still struggling on the ground away: "Then I'm going to work overtime."
It was too much to bear. After finishing the pile of work, he applied to work in hell. He didn't want to look at these fancy colleagues and paper figures for even a day.
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