All Chapters of Apocalypse Temple: I Rebuilt the Underworld with Incense: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The Paper Effigy Shop stood three blocks from the temple, which in the new city meant three blocks of ruined cars, hungry shadows, and apartments whispering through broken windows.Ava insisted on coming."You have no medical training, no combat training, and a broom-based tactical history," she said. "You're welcome."Aunt Lan gave us rice balls wrapped in plastic and a knife so old it looked personally offended by rust.Madam Qiao led the way.She was eighty if she was a day, but she moved through alleys like someone who had memorized every brick and every bad decision ever made there."Paper effigies are not toys," she said. "They are vessels. Houses, horses, servants, clothing. Burned for the dead so they may receive them below.""And now below is broken," I said."So the paper remembers the wrong masters."Paper bodies should have been ridiculous.They were not.The first one crawled out of a burned offering box behind the altar, flat white limbs unfolding with dry little clicks.

The ancestral furnace was a brick kiln behind the shop, blackened by decades of paper offerings.Madam Qiao said every proper effigy passed through its blessing before burial rites. That made it a gate.Of course the seed wanted a gate.The paper boy ran on folded limbs, too fast, its black roots dragging behind it. Ava chased it through hanging paper robes. I followed, heart punching my ribs.We burst into the furnace room.The kiln door stood open.Inside was not fire.Inside was a road.Gray, endless, crowded with silhouettes carrying paper lanterns that had gone dark.[Broken Underworld Route detected.][Danger: high.]The seed leapt for the kiln.The furnace room was under the kitchen, which Aunt Lan considered a personal insult."Bad luck," she said, standing at the basement stairs with a meat cleaver in one hand and a flashlight in the other."The apocalypse?""Putting ghosts under food."The stairs breathed hot air up at us. Not fire. Wet heat, like something alive had been sl

The card smelled like wet silk and old coins.LU CHEN, TEMPLE HEIR.AVA MONROE, HEALER UNDER SHELTER.HONORED GUESTS OF THE BELOW RIVER.Judge Xue appeared beside the incense burner, reading over my shoulder."It is formal," he said."That sounds good.""It means refusal has consequences.""That sounds bad."Ava took the card from me. The ink moved beneath her fingers."Why am I invited?"The banquet card named me as honored guest, which was how I knew it wanted me dead.No one in my life had ever called me honored without following it with a bill, a problem, or a family obligation.Ava took the card before I could touch the blood letters."Absolutely not.""You don't know what it says.""It says trap. In a fancy font."Madam Qiao, who had arrived that morning with a sack of paper offerings and the calm of a woman who had outlived several governments, adjusted her glasses."It says worse than trap."She tapped the bottom line."It says family table."[Healer designation recognized.][

I had imagined meeting Lu Shen many ways in the ten hours since learning his name.None included him serving wine to drowned ghosts while wearing my face."Are we actually related?" I asked.He smiled wider."That depends on whether you trust blood, paperwork, or death certificates."Ava leaned close. "I vote none."Lu Shen laughed as if she had pleased him."Ava Monroe. The healer with hands too stubborn to let go. Be careful, Lu Chen. Useful people make painful sacrifices."The banquet hall quieted.Every ghost looked at Ava.I stepped in front of her.[Banquet rule triggered: host must offer first toast.]Lu Shen lifted his cup."To the return of the City God Temple. To my dear little brother, who lit a candle in a world starving for fire."The wine in his cup rippled. Faces pressed against its surface."Drink with me."[Do not drink.]"No," I said.The ghosts hissed.Lu Shen's eyes warmed with amusement. "Refusal is rude."Lu Shen looked like me in the way a knife looks like a ref

Water crashed through the ceiling.It did not fall. It climbed.Tables tore loose and spiraled upward. Ghosts clung to lanterns, curtains, one another. The banquet hall stretched and cracked, revealing black river sky beyond the chandeliers.Lu Shen remained perfectly still."The Below-Prayers hate interrupted meals," he said. "You should run.""With you?""From me, eventually. From them, immediately."The floor split.Hands rose from beneath it, folded in backward prayer.[Below-Prayer swarm detected.][Survival priority: escape.]The ten registered souls formed a circle around us. Their new registry slips shone on their chests like badges.Noah Ellis pointed toward the kitchen doors."That way goes out."Ava grabbed my wrist. "Move."We ran.Behind us, the banquet hall became a throat. Lu Shen's laughter followed, but when I looked back, he was gone.The river turned upside down, and gravity quit without notice.My shoes left the floor. Ava caught my belt. I caught a table leg. Dani