I, the screenwriter, have experienced a resurgence of inspiration.

China, within the Great Wall.

There is a nameless City God Temple hanging above an old alley.

This City God Temple has no name, stands several dozen feet above the ground, and its shadow is sometimes clear and sometimes unclear.

It is invisible to ordinary people, and even drones can pass through it lightly, as if passing through a wisp of smoke.

Perhaps only ghosts, or players with special skills, can catch a glimpse of it at dusk.

The City God Temple is not large, with dark blue-green tiles on its upturned eaves. The temple gate is open, and two stone steps hang down in the distance.

Inside the temple, on both sides, stand more than a dozen clay demon sculptures, each with a blue face and fangs, holding water and fire sticks. Some have only one eye, some have no chin, and some have an extra face growing on the back of their necks.

The clay ghost stood in the darkness, its face illuminated by patches of light and shadow from the candlelight.

If a newly deceased soul were to stumble upon these clay sculptures, it would most likely be so frightened that it would die again.

In the very center of the small temple, there was no statue of a deity, only a long table made of old rosewood.

Stacks of translucent yellow paper were piled up on the table.

The paper was yellow paper with extremely fine lines printed on all four sides. The words on it smelled of incense ash. Each sheet of paper recorded the name, birth and death dates, and cause of death of a newly deceased person.

Of course, there are also annotations after the verification of the land temple.

……

"Splash splash splash..."

"Splash splash splash..."

Yellow paper floated up from a burning incense burner, landed on the table, and turned a page on its own, waiting to be reviewed.

Behind the table sat a fox with a limp.

It sat upright on a prayer mat, just like a person, wearing a well-fitting red official robe.

However, the robe was too long, folded three times, and the hem dragged on the ground.

The fox was holding a bamboo pen in its right forepaw and writing approvals on yellow paper.

The characters are very small and round, like drunken little ants running around aimlessly.

The fox writes very slowly; it has to stop after writing two characters, check the dictionary, or lift its paw to lick the tip of the pen.

Behind the fox stood two ghosts, one black and one white, one with a long tongue sticking out and the other with a blue face and fangs—clearly not the same batch as those in the Ghost Tower instance.

After all, impermanence is just a job title, and black and white are just uniform colors.

It's just that two of the Black and White Impermanence are so famous that many people have overlooked this point.

But the fox became the City God.

It's truly bizarre and strange.

The two ghosts waited quietly for the fox city god to approve their decision; neither of them urged the other to do so.

—When a person dies, the procedure is to have the local temple confirm the death, and then the ghost messengers will take the soul back to cancel the registration.

Every step must be perfect.

What's more... their city god is just a lame fox who has only recently learned to write.

The Black and White Impermanence exchanged a glance, seeing helplessness in each other's eyes.

……

……

"Squeak squeak squeak..."

The lame fox reviewed the documents for a while, when it suddenly heard a whimpering sound coming from under the table. It glanced at the Black and White Impermanence with its head down, but the Black and White Impermanence kept their eyes down, pretending not to hear anything.

The City God finally breathed a sigh of relief and stuck his head under the table:

A layer of soft, dry straw was laid out under the table, and a group of foxes of varying sizes were huddled on the straw pile.

There were three large ones, each with a different color: one gray, one yellow, and one black. There were five or six small ones, whose fur had not yet fully grown in. Their pointed faces were covered with soft baby fur, and their eyes were round and bright.

These little creatures couldn't stay still for a moment. One moment they were biting each other's tails, the next they were chasing their own shadows, and then they would crawl under the old fox's robe, making the official robe tremble.

The Black and White Impermanence pretended not to see it.

……

"Hehe, hehehe, there are too many foxes in the house, please excuse the poor appearance."

The fox-like city god spoke in human language, gave his two subordinates an awkward smile, and then turned to scold the little brats:

"No, no, you can't pull my clothes! I'm the City God now, no, I can't let you pick my lice, it's bad influence, it's not good influence."

—This lame fox also has a stutter.

The old fox swept its tail, pushing the nearest little black fox half an inch away. The little black fox squeaked, then scrambled back, resting its chin on the old fox's broken leg, making gurgling sounds in its throat.

"Gurgle gurgle..."

"Stop fooling around."

The fox-spirited city god's speech was still somewhat halting:

"This is a City God Temple, not some earthen cave on the mountain. What would happen if ghosts saw it?"

The little foxes wouldn't listen; they rolled over, belly up, and squeaked happily.

"Taking care of children is really, really difficult."

The old fox sighed, put down the bamboo pen, and rubbed his face with his front paws—who says monsters don't have a "human" society?

Ever since they learned that it had become the City God, every fox that was related to it sent its cubs to it.

It's not easy for monsters to become spirits, especially for animals living in the wild:

I'm exhausted just trying to fill my stomach every day, how can I have the energy to cultivate myself?

The lame fox is the most unique creature in their mountain forest.

It had its leg broken by a hunter's trap in its early years and was sent to the forestry bureau's wildlife rescue station. It was there that the lame fox gradually became intelligent and learned to speak human language.

But it never spoke.

The lame fox was later deemed "incapable of surviving in the wild" and stayed at the rescue station.

Occasionally, it would steal some chicken feed and feed it to its own kind.

Who would have thought?

Once the spiritual energy was restored, even the fox was able to take the City God exam, not to mention that it actually passed by sheer luck!

……

……

"You, your parents, are all unintelligent, yet you know to send your child here begging me to raise him. I, on my own, don't even have enough yin rice to eat this month, and I still have to plant more..."

The lame fox shook its head, grabbed a handful of gleaming, dark rice from a nearby table, and scattered it into the den like chickens. The fox cubs immediately swarmed over to eat it.

From the fox's perspective, the City God's treatment was incredibly good:

Each month, you will receive three thousand gold ingots, one hundred catties of Yin rice, Yin rice seeds, and a spirit fruit tree.

If government affairs are handled well, there will be quarterly benefits and various subsidies during holidays.

Gold ingots can be used in dungeons, or exchanged for real money, which can then be used to buy large fat chickens and large fat ducks.

The first month's salary was paid in advance. The lame fox didn't dare touch the gold ingot, so he planted the fruit tree in the backyard of the City God Temple and cooked a bowl of glutinous rice.

—It doesn't know why, but the thing looks like ordinary rice, but when cooked, it smells so good that it attracts all the wild ghosts within a ten-mile radius to gather at the City God Temple.

……

"Gulp."

Black and White Impermanence swallowed hard, and White Impermanence nodded in agreement:

"The Yin Rice is indeed delicious. It is worthy of being rice grown in the underworld. Yin Rice ripens every thirty days. My lord, why don't we dig up that empty space in the backyard and plant Yin Rice all over it?"

The wages for unofficial business are also made of unofficial rice and gold ingots.

But they have much more freedom; they can easily find a game player and exchange them for a large sum of money from a living person.

"...Okay, okay, fine."

The lame fox initially wanted to say it would damage his image, but seeing the fox cubs crawling all over him, he agreed:

"What time is it?"

"At four o'clock, all the new souls of today have been sent to the underworld."

The lame fox nodded.

The ghost messengers came and went, bringing back death certificates issued by the local earth god, and sometimes one or two ghosts whose identities were unknown and needed to be investigated.

It's like being an accountant suddenly entrusted with a heavy responsibility; you have to learn everything and ask about everything.

What drives the fox crazy is that not a single ghost messenger can explain what the underworld is really like.

It asked four ghost messengers and received four different answers.

The first one says that the underworld is underground, and if the underworld officials want to get in, they have to cross a large river without water, and the bottom of the river is full of punished people and ghosts.

The second one says that the underworld is similar to the mortal world, with streets, houses, rivers, and lights, except that the houses are made of paper and the rivers flow backwards from bottom to top.

The third one said, "Don't listen to their nonsense. The underworld is just pitch black and there's nothing there."

The fourth one was the most honest, saying that they had no memory of the underworld, only that the netherworld was constantly changing, sometimes it was a mountain, sometimes a river.

……

……

If Song Mo were here, he would understand—what the ghost messengers saw was a dungeon where player access had been completely disabled.

There was no way around it; setting up a ghost market had already consumed most of her scriptwriting points, not to mention creating a "underworld."

So she had a brilliant idea: she created countless scattered mini-dungeons that didn't require any scriptwriters, and transformed them into the "underworld."

After all, no one has actually been to the underworld, so she has the right to interpret everything.

It's like sewing together several scraps of fabric with different patterns to barely make a garment.

But the front of the garment was in the south, the back was in the north, the sleeves were broken and lying on the ground, and the buttons had moved to the other side.

—Once she accumulates enough screenwriting points, these scattered fragments will eventually be pieced together into a whole.

As for when, that depends on the scriptwriter.

……

……

After eating the yin rice, the little foxes finally quieted down and lay in their grass nest licking each other's fur.

"You're lucky."

The lame old fox muttered to himself:

"We were born during a time of spiritual revival. Back then, we were either killed by hunters or eaten. Out of a hundred foxes, perhaps only one would survive to awaken its spiritual potential."

Even if it gets the hang of it, the transverse bone in its throat won't dissolve, so it can't speak human language. It would take several more decades of cultivation before it can barely learn a few words... But what fox can live that long?

I encountered an incredible opportunity and was enlightened to become the City God, which allowed me to skip the hurdle of refining my bones.

"You can come down here and listen, you can learn. When I'm gone one day, this temple will still depend on you."

A slightly larger gray fox raised its head and squeaked twice at it.

"I don't know why humans are more powerful than beasts."

The old fox understood and scratched its nose with its paw:

"I don't know the specifics, but I guess it might be because people who look like gods are born with wisdom."

Now that spiritual energy has been restored, there are more opportunities for beings to become spirits than before, and our fellow beings are also fighting in dungeons.

You must study hard, train diligently, complete dungeons successfully, and awaken your class as soon as possible.

As it spoke, it seemed to be giving instructions to a room full of younger generations. Although the little foxes couldn't fully understand, they gradually stopped making a fuss, and one by one they pricked up their ears, sniffing around with their wet noses.

Just then, the incense burner in the center of the City God Temple suddenly vibrated with a "hum":

"!"

There was no incense burning in the burner; the half-burnt ash seemed to be blown up by the wind, rising slowly and finally condensing above the burner's opening, gradually revealing two shapes:

One was thin and long, like a python.

The other one was round and plump, with sharp spines all over its back, like a hedgehog.

"!! What the heck?!"

The old fox's fur stood on end, and he almost fell off the prayer mat: "W-what is this?!"

I've never seen the Black and White Impermanence standing next to me before.

"What are you afraid of? There are plenty of good things in the City God Temple. You'll have to explore and use them yourself."

The hedgehog-shaped plume of smoke trembled, and a hearty Northeastern accent emerged:

"You can't rely on these ghost messengers; you'll have to figure it out yourself."

"If you want to contact other City Gods, just grab a handful of incense ash, silently recite their names, and that's it. Hey, don't startle them like that, or you'll scare your little brats half to death."

The serpentine smoke hissed, as if it were sneering.

The old fox paused for a moment, then suddenly his ears twitched, recognizing the two voices.

—It was the hedgehog and snake that sat next to the City God during the city god's grand examination that day.

The first batch of City Gods consisted of ten, and these three were demons, making them outliers among their peers.

"It's you guys!"

The old fox chuckled:

"You scared me to death. I thought some wild ghost was coming to steal my things again—good thing, good thing."

I'm really worried about how to be a City God. I'm hoping one of you knows how and can teach me.