Luofeng palaces and Dongyue departments
Underworld offices have more than one arrangement.
Separate the threads first
The Emperor of Fengdu and the Lord of Mount Tai both concern the other world, but Luofeng's palaces, traditions of souls gathering at Mount Tai, and local Dongyue temple departments do not form one universally identical chart. Comparing them enriches the history of Daoist and popular culture. Forcing them together hides the sources' differences.
Luofeng and the six palaces
Daoist works including Zhengao describe the northern mountain of Luofeng and palaces of spirits. Names of the six heavenly palaces circulated in later texts, forming a religious geography. They are not simply another numbering of the Ten Kings, nor can every unfamiliar name be translated into a modern office job. The later association of this imagined mountain with present-day Fengdu in Chongqing is a further historical layer.
Why so many departments?
Dongyue temples arrange images of administration around life, death, conduct, longevity, and social affairs. Sources give counts such as seventy-two, seventy-five, or seventy-six, while names and displays vary too. Seventy-two Departments can introduce the subject; it should not be treated as a fixed inventory shared by every temple.
Read one temple as one version
Historical documentation of Beijing's Dongyue Temple includes seventy-six departments. It provides evidence for that site, not permission to copy its number and arrangement onto every region. Statues, plaques, murals, and inscriptions each preserve different information and may reflect successive rebuilding.
An index rather than a universal hierarchy
Houtu, Fengdu, Dongyue, City Gods, judges, and saving deities appear in different relationships across texts and communities. Wanlingsi's traditions page offers routes for comparison while distinguishing Daoist divine realms, Buddhist concepts, and popular offices. Its illustrations do not prescribe actual temple ritual or institutional allegiance.