Chapter 48: The Old Prince Next Door 1

[Mission time ended. Calculating mission settlement. Settlement complete. Reincarnator No. 399, please proceed to the Feedback Department to collect your reward.]

Su Huandan wore a blank expression. All the happiness and fulfillment from before she closed her eyes had vanished completely. Her mind was now clear, her mental state steady, and in an instant she was back to being an Underworld wage worker.

It wasn’t that the Underworld had used some method to strip away Su Huandan’s emotions. Rather, during the sixty years of training she underwent in the Underworld before her rebirth, she had seen far too many scenes of disobedient Underworld civil servants being punished.

Now it had become a conditioned reflex. The moment she returned to the Underworld, she knew what she should do and what she shouldn’t.

After rubbing her face again, Su Huandan opened her Work Interface. While many functions had been grayed out and unusable when she was reincarnated into the mortal world, they were all available again now.

She opened the teleportation interface, entered the Feedback Department, and after clicking confirm, Su Huandan was directly teleported there.

There was no need to queue here. There were plenty of office workers handling affairs, and their service attitude was excellent.

The moment you entered the Feedback Department’s main hall, a staff member would ask what business you were there to handle.

The Feedback Department was one of the Underworld’s old, established departments. It was responsible for distributing wages and benefits to civil servants. Unlike the Reincarnation Department, it was not a newly opened division.

In less than half an hour, she had handed over the mission receipt, received her reward package, and without lingering any longer, Su Huandan activated the teleportation function and sent herself straight back to the Reincarnation Department.

Behind the main hall of the Reincarnation Department were dormitories specially built for Reincarnators like them. They were rows of small courtyards, each covering about five mu of land. This place was considered the Reincarnators’ home in the Underworld.

According to the work manual, every time a Reincarnator completed a mission, they could rest for three days. These three days referred to time in the Underworld, which converted to three years in the mortal world.

Su Huandan did not dare actually rest that way. Looking at her bare little courtyard, she felt a bit anxious. The courtyards of the Reincarnators next door were already full of fragrant melons and fruit, while hers still looked exactly as it had at the start. Just looking at it made her anxious.

She went back inside and lay down on the Yin Jade Bed. This thing was part of employee benefits, an excellent item for condensing and nourishing the soul.

While nourishing her soul, she opened her reward package.

After completing the pioneering main quest, the reward was one skill from three options: embroidery, cooking, or calligraphy.

After thinking it over, Su Huandan chose cooking.

She did know how to cook, and her skills weren’t bad, but they were nowhere near the level of a truly good chef. In her previous life, she had lived in luxury and been pampered, so ordinary meals were honestly hard for her to swallow.

So she wanted to choose cooking first. At the very least, when she couldn’t afford to hire a cook herself, she would be able to make something decent and appetizing on her own.

With the main quest reward claimed, it was time for the sub-quest.

Although raising that big shot son hadn’t required much effort, she had still gone through pregnancy and childbirth for him. The reward couldn’t possibly be too shabby, right?

When Su Huandan saw the reward for the sub-quest, her face flushed red with excitement. A Spiritual Spring. It was actually a Spiritual Spring, the kind that could continuously produce Spiritual Spring Water.

She quickly claimed it and set it up in the back courtyard. The Spiritual Spring automatically transformed into a well, and it even came with a restriction on it, so no one but Su Huandan could use it. That delighted her to no end.

From now on, she no longer had to worry about running out of the Spiritual Spring Water issued by the Reincarnation Department.

She had only given birth to one big shot son, and she had already earned herself a Spiritual Spring. In that case, she could definitely keep taking this kind of mission in the future.

Then perhaps in the future, she would not merely be muddling along in the Underworld, getting through one day at a time like a monk forced to ring the bell each day¹, but might actually have a chance to step onto the Immortal Path?

Good, this was good, very good. Before, she hadn’t been able to see any hope. Now that she could, Su Huandan felt even more motivated to take on missions.

She rolled off the Yin Jade Bed and hurried off to find her superior, Horse-Face, at the Reincarnation Department.

The moment Horse-Face saw the expression on Su Huandan’s face, he knew she had gotten something good and couldn’t wait to come claim another mission.

Once she’d seen the benefits, wasn’t her motivation here now?

Horse-Face looked down on several of his other colleagues. They used coercion to force the Reincarnators under them to become mothers so those Remnant Souls could reincarnate and be reborn. How could that compare to his method of enticing them with profit? If you kept forcing people in the end, something was bound to go wrong.

“I thought you’d rest for a few days. This is more like it. Did you really think all those benefits our great Underworld organization talks about were fake? As long as you Reincarnators work hard, at worst you’ll still be able to become formal employees of the Underworld in the future and work alongside me. So work hard.” As Horse-Face spoke, he showed Su Huandan the worlds the Underworld had discovered but had not yet had time to establish the Six Paths of Reincarnation in.

Modern, alternate ancient, Qing dynasty, Dream of the Red Chamber², interstellar, prehistoric, period era, beastmen, national destiny, forbidden lands, and so on. Each one was marked with only one or two words, giving a rough indication of what kind of world it was, but without any detailed information. After all, the Underworld had only discovered these worlds and had not yet established the Six Paths of Reincarnation to govern them.

Su Huandan closed her eyes and pointed at one at random. When she opened them again, she found she had casually picked an alternate historical world.

But really, what difference did it make which one she chose?

She would just treat it as trying a different flavor.

Then she received a Coordinate Jade Cocoon from Horse-Face.

As they walked together toward the Reincarnation Gate, Horse-Face asked Su Huandan whether she wanted to continue giving birth to big shot sons. Su Huandan nodded.

Horse-Face patted her on the shoulder. “Smart. This mission really isn’t difficult. Pregnancy and childbirth are hard, sure, but other than that, it’s not troublesome at all. You don’t even need to teach or guide them. Think about their identities. Even if their memories haven’t returned, they’ll still grow up to be among the elite. Go on, complete the mission.”

After parting with Horse-Face, Su Huandan lowered her head and plunged straight into the dim gray Reincarnation Gate.

When she opened her eyes again, Su Huandan found herself inside a sedan chair.

Outside the sedan chair was a bustle of noise, as if she were on a street. Everywhere there were the cries of peddlers hawking their wares.

As usual, Su Huandan crushed the Coordinate Jade Cocoon first, and only then did she begin receiving the original host’s memories.

The memories were very complete. The original host was only twenty-four years old now. She had married at fifteen, and just three months after the wedding, she became a widow, without even having a child.

Now both her parents-in-law had passed away as well. She had moved out of the Duke of Yi Household and was living in a small two-courtyard residence directly across from the Duke of Yi Household, which just so happened to be wedged between the Marquis of Ruyang Estate and Prince Chen’s Estate.

This residence had originally been property of the Marquis of Ruyang Estate. Well then, the newly elevated Duke of Yi had just inherited the ducal title, so naturally he had to show at least some care for his younger brother’s widow, who had become widowed the moment she married into the family, didn’t he?

So they went to Marquis Ruyang and bought this residence, and after the various branches of the family split off, they could settle the widowed sister-in-law of the original body right under their noses, making it easier to look after her.

Don’t get the wrong idea. The original body was the younger brother’s wife of the newly elevated Duke of Yi, his real sister-in-law by blood relation through marriage, and she was being cared for as a sister-in-law. If their father and mother hadn’t both died and there were still elders in the family, how could they possibly have let a widowed younger brother’s wife move out of the ducal residence?

Wasn’t it because public gossip could be so frightening?

Besides, the original body was also the blood-related younger cousin personally raised by the Duke of Yi’s late mother. Even if she weren’t a sister-in-law, she was still a close cousin. How could they not make proper arrangements for her?

The original body had only moved out of the ducal residence half a year ago, and today she had just returned from a temple outside the city, where she had held memorial rites for her late husband.

Just as they were nearing the city gate, the horse was startled, and she struck her head and died on the spot.

Translator’s Notes