Gu Chenling took a step off the edge, both his feet leaving the ground.
As someone who had just died and who was still used to walking instead of floating he was bewildered at this sensation of weightlessness. At the same time he felt a sense of exhilaration.
Mankind had spent countless years trying to fly. From inventing planes to trying to create jetpacks, humans had always been fascinated with flying. But who could have known that it would come so easily after death?
Gu Chenling slowly descended while taking in the view. The dizzy feeling from before was long gone as excitement took its place.
He felt a slight pull from his jade pendant as it led the way. Soon he approached a small floating island and landed. However, it was only small in relation to the other islands that Gu Chenling had seen on his way down. The island that he was currently on still spanned several hundred hectares. And there were even mountain forests and a large lake on the island.
Gu Chenling, however, barely spared a thought on the surroundings as he stared at the closed gate of the courtyard house he had landed in front of.
"Is this my future residence?"
And as if to answer him, the gate swung open, welcoming him in. He hesitated for only a moment, but quickly caught himself and entered.
Upon entering the main gate, he found himself in a small front courtyard. It looked empty so Gu Chenling already played with the thought of filling the space with potted plants to make it less sad looking.
When he went through the second gate, what greeted him was the sight of a compact inner courtyard with one story houses surrounding it. There was a lone peach tree in the courtyard, lending shade to the stone table and chairs underneath its branches.
Gu Chenling looked through all the buildings and nodded to himself. He was quite satisfied. There were two side halls, a study, kitchen, along with the main hall which contained his bedroom with a bathtub tugged away behind a screen and a dining area. The only thing that was not there was a toilet. But ghosts do not have to go to the toilet anyway so Gu Chenling had nothing to complain about.
While the general layout and looks of the courtyard house followed traditional Chinese architecture Gu Chenling was glad that the amenities followed modern standards. He wouldn't want to take several trips to transport water in buckets from a well to his bedroom just so he could take a bath. And he had no experience cooking on a fire wood stove either so having a proper modern kitchen stove with oven was a relief.
Ghosts do get hungry occasionally so he would have to either cook for himself or buy food. And Gu Chenling preferred to cook for himself. Maybe he could even partially grow his own food.
He had learned from his jade that the land around his courtyard up to the lake shore ten meters behind his house also belonged to him. So growing some vegetables and herbs to cook with sounded like a good idea.
Once he was done exploring his new home it had gotten dark outside.
'Ah… So there is day and night in the underworld,' Gu Chenling thought to himself as he settled down on his bed.
Knowing that he lacked information about the underworld and how things worked here, he sank his consciousness into his jade pendant. He began with examining all the different functions of the jade pendant and then looked into important common knowledge points about the underworld.
Half an hour later he felt like he had gotten the gist of it.
The jade pendant served like an all-in-one tool with many different functions and purposes. The most important one was determining your social standing and the corresponding restrictions and benefits while also serving as some sort of bank card. It also held a storage function with limited capacities that could be expanded through the usage of merit points.
Furthermore, through the jade pendant you could access what could only be described as the internet of the underworld. It held functions like information research, voice and text message transmission. On top of that, there was even some sort of online mall from which you could order things that could be delivered to you no matter where you are thanks to the localization function of the jade.
Upon receiving the jade pendant for the first time it can transform one's physique and heal wounds and other injuries. The degree of transformation and healing depended on the grade of the jade. This explained why the sinner he had seen earlier that day still looked like he had just died in a dumpster. A low grade jade did not have enough energy to help transform his physique unlike what had happened with Chenling.
After the initial transformation and healing if one was in need of healing again, one would have to pay merit points. So even if those fifth or forth order jade holders did not get their injuries healed sufficiently when they first got their jade pendants, they could still try collecting merit points to heal themselves. This was, however, a luxury that almost no one with a low grade jade could afford.
The jade pendant itself was soul bound and would always return to its owner even when dropped somewhere. So stealing it was of no use especially when all its functions were only accessible to the jade owner.
People usually wore the pendant on their neck like a necklace, attached them to their belts or, like Gu Chenling, wore them on their wrists like a bracelet.
Another thing that was of interest to Gu Chenling was the fact that the jade pendant could change in grade or add new features if specific conditions were met. He could not find out much about these conditions. So all he knew was that these conditions were rarely met so it felt more like an urban legend that did not apply to the regular people.
Aside from the information about the jade Gu Chenling had also checked the cost of living and some important places he needed to know.
Housing cost five hundred merit points a month for everyone just like the civil servant had said. However, you could upgrade your housing and add personalized features by spending more merit points.
Gu Chenling did not consider this for now as he was satisfied with his current accommodation. He had all his needs covered.
After analyzing the living costs which included groceries and clothing, he could estimate that 1 merit point was roughly worth 10 yuan. Knowing this, Gu Chenling checked how many merit points he had stored in his jade.
Seeing the number, he froze.
'Over 2,500,000 merit points!'
How did he accumulate so much? That was roughly equal to 25,000,000 yuan!
Gu Chenling quickly used his jade pendant to search for an answer. And what he found out dumbfounded him.
"So organ donation is profitable even after death…" He sighed to himself.
The bulk of his merit points came from donating his organs and indirectly saving lives. Another part came from donating all his remaining assets to the orphanage, helping the poor. And the smallest part came from good deeds he had done throughout his time alive.
With this many merit points in his possession there was no urgency to find a job soon.
Although, he had no intention of reincarnating for the time being, he still checked how many merit points he needed for reincarnation. And then he was stumped again.
'Only 499,000 merit points?'
He already had five times that amount. Even if he set aside these 499,000 merit points for his eventual reincarnation, he would still have more than enough to spend for an average human lifespan.
Gu Chenling swiftly looked up how much others had to collect and he quickly understood.
On average people with second order jades had to pay 500,000 merit points to reincarnate. Owners of first order jades had to pay even less, roughly 250,000 merit points. Third order jade holders had to pay around 1,000,000 merit points, forth order jade holders about 2,000,000 merit points and fifth order jade holders were cursed to work until they had 4,000,000 merit points on average until they could reincarnate.
Again, Gu Chenling was faced with the class divide of the underworld. He could only imagine how many years those fifth order jade owners had to work until they could reincarnate, especially considering how they could only work low paying jobs that barely covered the housing costs. This was probably their punishment for committing too many sins during their lifetime.
It was like they were stuck in a low-paying, physically straining dead-end job with a huge debt to pay off. They might even suffer from hunger just to save up some merit points. Maybe they would even give up housing just so they did not need to pay for their housing. And there was no escape either. They could not run away somewhere else to start anew nor could they end it all by committing suicide.
The difference in treatment between them and Gu Chenling who did not even have to work to get the opportunity to reincarnate was so stark it gave him a mild case of whiplash.
He could just loaf around, spending his merit points as he wished until he had enough of life in the underworld or until he was down to his last 499,000 and he would need to find a job.
Gu Chenling, a certified workaholic, was at a loss for words.
During his lifetime he had done almost nothing else but work and help out at the orphanage, basically never taking a break. The only time he was not busily buzzing around like a bee was the time he spent in the hospital during his last few months. But that was also only because he was forced by his deteriorating physical condition.
Now that he had the opportunity to just relax and do nothing, Chenling did not know what to do with all the spare time he had. He was not a big spender either. And he had even less of an idea what to spend all his merit points on.
Gu Chenling had never thought that he would run into this problem of having too much money and not knowing where to put it. Being faced with such a first world problem, he did nor know whether he wanted to laugh or to cry.
He did not want to turn into someone like those rich second generations throwing their money around, buying yachts, cars and women. During his time alive there had even been cases reported on the news where some rich second generation kids flaunted their money by burning wads of cash and posting their actions on social media.
Buying unnecessary stuff aside, Gu Chenling doubted that it was even possible to burn his merit points as merit points did not seem to have a physical entity. Not like he wanted to do that anyway.
Maybe it was time to find new hobbies…