I Owe Eight Trillion to the Underworld

Fresh out of college, Zhang Yichang wakes up to find he has inherited a staggering eight trillion Yin-de (merit) coins in debt from his grandfather, owed directly to King Chujiang, the Second Ruler of the Underworld. In exchange for his life, he is granted a weekly-refreshing supernatural ability and a Netherworld employment system, thrusting him into a perilous debt-repayment career straddling the mortal realm and the underworld. From acquiring the scholarly genius of Eastern Han astronomer Zhang Heng in his first week to gaining the power of fate-sight, Zhang balances bizarre supernatural tasks assigned by the underworld while uncovering a conspiracy far deeper than a simple botched investment. The lost karmic system of a fallen dynasty, a century-old layout by the Five Great Guardian Clans, seals left by a scribe four centuries ago, and a faceless watcher codenamed "Zero-Seven" weave a massive, 420-year-old web. In truth, this insurmountable debt is a navigational map leading to the core of the ancient dynasty's karmic system. Over the course of fifteen intense days, Zhang retraces a path eleven generations have waited 420 years to walk—from his grandfather's seventh-day post-mortem visitation and subterranean loan offices to ancestral wind-and-water studios and the sealed gates of Night-Cry Ridge. Ultimately, Zhang shuts down the obsolete karmic system, breaking the generational curse carried by eleven generations of the Zhang family. Yet, just as he believes it is all over, a thin-as-cicada-wings jade sliver hidden within an official seal fragment, buried twelve feet down near the urban village, points toward an even greater mystery yet to unfold.