Jiang Chunian looked at the dark and dilapidated Fengdu and sighed, "It's been eighty years, and your Fengdu is still in this terrible state. There has been no progress at all!"
The ghost was embarrassed and could only pretend to be expressionless.
Jiang Chunian was walking slowly down the street when she suddenly saw an old woman walking towards her pushing a cart with a large pot on it. She couldn't help but stop and ask, "Isn't this Meng Po? Why are you closing up shop so early today?"
Meng Po raised her head and squinted her eyes at Jiang Chunian for a while before recognizing her: "Are you Jiang Chunian?"
"It's me. I didn't expect that after so many years, Meng Po still remembered me." Jiang Chunian said with a smile.
Meng Po nodded: "You haven't been here for a few years."
Jiang Chu Nian smiled and said, "Yes, it's been eighty years."
"It's been eighty years already? Time flies so fast." Meng Po sighed.
"Are you going back?" Jiang Chunian asked.
"Isn't it?" Meng Po said; "Not many people are born nowadays, so naturally there are not many ghosts reincarnated. My job is much easier than before. You come from the mortal world, so what do you think is going on with people there these days? Why don't they like to have children?"
Jiang Chu Nian smiled and said, "There are too many reasons."
Meng Po shook her head. "I just don't understand you people these days. If things continue like this, there will be more and more ghosts in Hell, and fewer and fewer people in the human world. It doesn't look right. You should also talk to your leaders in the human world about this. This child must be born. Otherwise, there will be too many ghosts in Hell, and Hell will be restless, and the human world will suffer as well."
Jiang Chunian smiled and nodded: "I will relay this, but whether the leaders listen or not, or whether the people give birth or not, I can't control it."
"Oh. What a sin." Meng Po shook her head and pushed the cart away.
Jiang Chunian continued walking towards the Hell King's Palace and asked the ghost messenger, "Is the security in Hell very bad now?"
The ghost officer nodded. "It's much worse than before. Mainly because there are too many ghosts now, and the ghost officers are still the same, so they often can't handle it all."
"Have you ever thought about recruiting more ghost officials?" Jiang Chunian asked.
"Why not? But not everyone can be a ghost messenger. There's a strict assessment process. Besides, our recruitment speed can't keep up with the number of ghosts trapped in Hell. Ultimately, it's because the birth rate in the living world is too low."
"Isn't there still the animal realm?" Jiang Chunian asked.
"The animal realm won't work either," the ghost messenger said. "Cities are being built and forests are being cut down in the mortal world. Animal habitats are being increasingly encroached upon, and their numbers are dwindling. Furthermore, humans eat everything these days, and reincarnation is faster than before. We finally managed to get a group of ghosts to reincarnate, but they all came back in less than a year. The number of ghosts the animal realm can consume is limited. Furthermore, ghosts nowadays have different perspectives than those of the past. They don't like being reincarnated as animals. Without the chance to be reborn as humans, they'd rather remain ghosts and wait."
The ghost sighed, "Working in the underworld is really difficult nowadays."
Jiang Chu Nian seemed to be thinking about something.
Soon they arrived at the Hall of Yama, where Yama was trying a case. Jiang Chunian listened from the side and it seemed that a male ghost was accusing another female ghost of marriage fraud and running away with the betrothal gifts and property. The ghost asked Yama to help him find the female ghost and get back the property and betrothal gifts.
Jiang Chunian couldn't help but widen his eyes and whispered to the ghost: "Can ghosts in your underworld get married?"
The ghost messenger said helplessly, "That's not true. There are more and more ghosts staying in the underworld, so some ghosts feel lonely and look for other ghosts to marry, giving gifts and dowries, and living together, but there is no actual marriage certificate. That's why some female ghosts pretend to agree to marry male ghosts in order to cheat them out of the gifts, and then after a few days of living together, the female ghost runs away with the gifts."
"Then why don't you learn from the human world and use marriage laws to restrain these ghosts?" Jiang Chunian asked.
"Of course our King of Hell wants to do it too, but he's short of manpower, so he hasn't done it yet," said the ghost.
"Does your King of Hell deal with these cases every day?" Jiang Chunian asked.
"Most of them, I guess." The ghost looked at Yama with sympathy. "In the past, when there weren't many cases, Yama would handle them. Later, the ghosts in Hell all thought Yama was the Lord of Heaven. They came to Yama for everything, and Yama became very busy."
"Tsk tsk tsk. When did he become so honest?" Jiang Chunian clicked his tongue and shook his head.
The King of Hell finally finished handling the case and took time out to meet Jiang Chunian.
Jiang Chunian laughed at him, "You old antique, you don't know how to adapt at all, you deserve to be exhausted like a dog."
The King of Hell frowned. "What are you doing in the underworld? You didn't come here just to laugh at me?"
Jiang Chunian snorted and laughed: "If I had known you were like this, I would have come to visit a long time ago. There would be no need to wait until now."
The King of Hell had a blank expression on his face: "Tell me, why did you come to the underworld this time?"
Jiang Chunian got serious when he talked about business. "Do you know that there is a brothel in Hell now? No, there may even be multiple brothels. They are colluding with the living world. They use women from the living world as prostitutes to entertain wealthy male ghosts. They make the women from the living world pregnant with ghost fetuses. After ten months of pregnancy, the male ghosts are reincarnated into ghost fetuses to achieve the purpose of reincarnation."
"What? Is there such a thing?" The King of Hell looked at the ghost with a sharp gaze.
The ghost messenger had heard of this for the first time, and he immediately said, "We have never received such a report before, and we didn't know such a thing existed."
Jiang Chunian released Zhang Da and asked him to recount what happened.
The King of Hell frowned: "Heaven and earth have their own rules. Humans are humans, and ghosts are ghosts. How can a ghost make a person pregnant with a ghost baby?"
Jiang Chunian sighed, "I didn't believe it at first, but that's the truth."
"As far as we know, several women have signed contracts with these hellish brothels, either voluntarily or by deception. They endure humiliation from male ghosts every night. One woman even became pregnant with a ghost baby. When we were trying to move her, we were attacked and kidnapped. Fortunately, we were prepared and didn't let them take her away.
But I also have good reason to suspect that this woman is the first to become pregnant with a ghost fetus since they started this business. They won't let her go. And if she can become pregnant with a ghost fetus, it will inevitably attract more wealthy male ghosts to seek out those women in the mortal world, and even more women in the mortal world will become victims, either actively or passively.
"What's more, in order to facilitate the male ghosts' journey to the women, they secretly built a passage between the world of the living and the underworld. When the male ghosts enter the world of the living through the passage, their Yin energy is weakened, and ordinary Xuanmen disciples will not be able to detect any abnormality. Even if they do notice something is wrong, these male ghosts can escape through the passage, and those Xuanmen disciples will have no way to deal with them. When the male ghosts become attached to the world of the living, and a large number of them remain in the human world, it will inevitably cause unrest in the human world."
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