3. If I Don’t Enter The Underworld, Who Will?

Yu Dongxi looked down and saw that the shoes she had casually taken off outside the door were now neatly placed on the shoe rack outside. Her jacket, which had originally been discarded at the door, was now hanging on the coat rack outside Room 202.

The first thing that came to Yu Dongxi’s mind was what the man across from her had said last night.

“Sorry, I have a bit of OCD. When I see something messy and disorganized, I just feel the need to tidy it up.”

Yu Dongxi instinctively raised her head and looked toward the room across from hers. To her surprise, she noticed that the light in that room, which had been on when she went upstairs, was now suddenly turned off. At the same time, the door to that room slowly began to close, as if someone was gently pushing it from the inside.

The door hinges creaked, and then with a loud bang, the door shut completely.

The sound of the door slamming seemed to strike directly at Yu Dongxi’s heart.

At that moment, her legs felt as though they were made of lead, unable to move at all. Once she regained her senses, she panicked and used all her strength to run into her own room, grab her belongings, and sprint toward the elevator.

Although she had never passed a physical test in her life, Yu Dongxi now displayed incredible explosive strength. As she ran, she screamed at the top of her lungs, “Damn it! There’s a ghost! Help!”

Once she entered the elevator, Yu Dongxi’s body was still trembling from the shock. When the elevator doors opened, she dashed outside the motel, her face drenched in cold sweat.

Yu Dongxi ran across the street and crouched beside the curb, gasping for air for about ten minutes before she could finally catch her breath. Her hands were still trembling uncontrollably.

At this moment, she really wanted to light a cigarette to calm herself down, but unfortunately, she didn’t have any cigarettes on hand, and she didn’t even smoke.

Yu Dongxi looked up at the motel, and she saw a figure standing in front of the window of the room she had stayed in, seemingly staring intently at her. As soon as the figure noticed her gaze, it slowly raised one hand and waved at her.

The familiar mechanical motion made Yu Dongxi’s hair stand on end. Just as she was about to scream, the light in the room suddenly turned off.

Yu Dongxi covered her mouth, still in shock. In the next moment, the sound of a car horn blared, and without thinking, Yu Dongxi turned her head. But the car was so close, it hit her and sent her flying more than 20 meters away.

In the final moments of Yu Dongxi’s life, she didn’t experience the typical “life flashing before your eyes” sensation. Instead, the fragments she saw were of three people—perhaps the happiest days of her life.

It was her school days, with her grandfather, her friends… and him.

Yu Dongxi smiled, then closed her eyes.

Yu Dongxi was dead.

After death, everyone enters the underworld, and the appearance one has when entering the underworld is the same as when they died.

That’s why makeup artists are truly a great profession: when they do makeup for the living, they help alleviate appearance anxiety, when they do makeup for the dead, they ensure the deceased can still look presentable when they enter the underworld.

Yu Dongxi was now glad that she died in a relatively decent way. Of course, this was a matter of comparison. On the long, long Naihe Bridge, there were vendors on both sides.

The lady on the left shouted, “Dream dumplings, dream dumplings! Five for three yuan! No risk, no loss! One dumpling lets you visit your relatives in your dreams, and for just three yuan, you can meet your relatives five times in a dream!”

The old man on the right wasn’t any less enthusiastic: “Low-cost lodging! Fifteen yuan a night, you can pay later! Just arrived in the underworld and don’t have a place to stay? Come check it out! Absolutely good value for money!”

After death, a person’s five senses gradually fade, eventually disappearing. But right now, Yu Dongxi could still distinctly feel the spit of the old man and woman possibly spraying onto her face.

Yu Dongxi wiped her face expressionlessly and smiled as she looked at the group ahead.

The smile was forced, after all, she was dead—who could truly feel happy? It wasn’t realistic to have a grand send-off to the underworld with drums and fanfare.

Yu Dongxi looked around at the others.

The lame older brother, the girl with a rope around her neck, the boy drenched in water…

What a damn long line.

Yu Dongxi sighed deeply. By the time it was her turn, she figured even the Meng Po soup (the soup of forgetfulness) would be unnecessary, because time was the greatest enemy of memory.

It was so boring. From poetry and songs, Yu Dongxi’s thoughts drifted to philosophy.

Suddenly, she thought about something unrelated. A few years ago, people were concerned about a population explosion in the world due to birth rates, but now it seemed like that wouldn’t happen. Every day, the number of people dying didn’t seem to be less than the number of those being born.

If she considered this as a topic and researched it, it might even make for an excellent report.

It was clear now—she really was dead. When she was young, her teachers often stressed that if you didn’t study now, you’d regret it when you were dead, and it would be too late.

Looking at it now, indeed, it was too late.

Just as Yu Dongxi was about to drift into unconsciousness, the line finally reached her. Damn it, everything went smoothly in the end, and as expected, the person who came to greet her was a handsome young man.

Well, at least the first step was successful.

Thank goodness it was a handsome guy, otherwise, Yu Dongxi would have truly lost her composure.

Yu Dongxi, along with a few others, followed the man with the arrogant walk into a room.

The man sat across from the first elderly man and asked, “How did you die?”

The elderly man stared blankly at the man for a while before saying, “Huh?”

The man patiently looked at the elderly man, then lowered his head to flip through a document on the table, smiling gently and nodding. “Alright, sir, you can reincarnate now.”

The elderly man shakily stood up, glanced at the direction the man pointed to, and then slowly walked out the door.

The man shifted his gaze to the second girl, who was soaking wet. He asked gently, “How did you die?”

The girl lifted her eyes, her hair sticking to her face, and gave a pale smile. “I… drowned myself in the river.”

The man nodded, took a few tissues from the table, and handed them to the girl. He spoke softly, “You can reincarnate now, silly girl. Don’t believe what men say. There isn’t a good one among them. They’re the best at pretending to be deeply emotional to move themselves.”

“But you’re a man too.”

“Exactly because I’m a man, that’s why I know these things.”

The girl sniffled, nodded, and tearfully thanked him before slowly leaving.

The man stepped over Yu Dongxi and directed his attention to the middle-aged woman at the far end. “Sister, how did you die?”

The woman sighed and said, “I died from illness. Sigh… I should have found someone else after my divorce. Now, I don’t even have anyone to take care of me in my old age. People really need a partner. Otherwise, you’d die alone, all lonely.”

“But if you don’t die at the same time, you’ll still die alone in the end,” the man replied.

The woman sighed again. “Sigh… When the time comes, I’ll brew a pot of rat poison so that at least everyone has some company on the way.”

Although it was a bit extreme, it was a way of thinking.

The man nodded and said, “Alright, sister, you can go now.”

Finally, the man’s gaze shifted to Yu Dongxi.

“How did you die, beautiful?” The handsome guy crossed his legs, looking less like a leader and more like a relative of a leader—yes, exactly, the type of relative who just shows up for a paycheck and drifts through life.

How did she die?

If he hadn’t asked, Yu Dongxi wouldn’t have even thought about the fact that she was already dead.

Yu Dongxi narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, but her brain suddenly froze. This question…

Yu Dongxi sighed and said, “Hold on, let me think about how to explain this bizarre and dramatic sequence of events to you.”

Yu Dongxi carefully recalled her experiences before her death. She remembered that she had been first tricked by some grave robbers, then stayed at a terrible hotel, and then… then she was run over and killed.

Wait, run over??

Yu Dongxi looked down at her hospital gown and began to carefully replay exactly what happened before her death.

Something didn’t feel right. Something was terribly off. How could she have been so slow to realize this?

First of all, this hotel was located in the suburbs, and there were very few cars around, mostly trucks. Even if she had bad luck, and someone happened to be driving a private car that night, she was clearly standing by the curb. From her perspective, the car was heading straight toward her. This was clearly wrong.

Moreover, the car had an out-of-town license plate. If Yu Dongxi remembered correctly, in that area, vehicles from outside were not allowed after 8 o’clock in the evening.

This meant that the car didn’t seem like a normal vehicle in the usual sense.

Yu Dongxi slammed the table and exclaimed in surprise, “Oh my god, that car just appeared out of nowhere!! I was really hit and killed for no reason at all!”

Hit and killed.

The man’s smiling face suddenly became awkward and strange. After a moment, he let out a confused “Hmm?”

“Think again, how did you die?”

“Hit by a car? No, that car, I didn’t even see it. How could a car just suddenly appear out of nowhere?” Yu Dongxi was truly shocked now.

She looked down and tugged at her sweatshirt, saying, “Where did this outfit come from?”

She clearly remembered not wearing this outfit before she died. How did she end up in it?

Could it be that after people die, they wear different clothes in the afterlife than what they were wearing at the time of death?

Of course, what she was wearing didn’t matter now—at least she wasn’t naked.

On second thought, now that she was dead, what did it matter if she was naked?

Yu Dongxi sighed. She had once imagined various ways she could die, even fantasized that if she were to commit suicide, it would be tragic and shocking, but here she was, quietly and weakly dying without making a sound.

It really fit the saying: “She lived in a carefree manner, and in death, took nothing with her.”

“So when did you die? Do you remember?” The man asked, watching Yu Dongxi calmly.

“December 22nd, around 9 PM.”

The man glanced at the death record sheet, which read: Yu Dongxi, died in the hospital, December 21st, 20xx, at 10:34 PM.

This meant that Yu Dongxi had actually died earlier.