Yama Rising

A second later, a stream of white paper money abruptly began to shoot into the air from the heart of the roiling Yin energy, scattering about endlessly as though paving the way for the arrival of an important person. It was followed quickly by the blares of sornas that played a shrill and peculiar piece, before dozens of humanoid paper effigies marched out of the roiling clouds, beating on gongs and drums as they did.

An old, withered hand lifted the curtain, revealing a blood-red eye that peeked out from the darkness within. The remaining golden glow of the sun revealed the faint appearances of the man within.

The old man had white eyebrows but no beard. His eyes were scarlet in colour, and he was dressed in a long, majestic robe that was befitting of emperors. His skin was covered with old age spots. He appeared to be a living person, yet at the same time seemed to be devoid of any traces of vitality, almost as though he was an entity that had just crawled right out of the grave.

Seconds later, the wall of Yin soldiers standing in front of Pusan neatly parted, making way for a two-meter tall bone horse carrying Emperor Wu of Song in the full glory of his gilded golden armor. The netherflame in his eyes flickered brightly, and he stared at the old man directly across the waters, before finally lamenting, “So… it’s you…”

“That’s right. It wasn’t easy.” The old man responded hoarsely as he laughed.

“I’m not trying to make an enemy of you.” The old man let down the curtain of his palanquin once more, “I’m looking for something. Grant me passage, and I promise not to touch a single hair of the Hanyang underworld.”

“Cough cough cough…” Violent coughs could be heard from within the palanquin, “So… Hell is actually still in existence… That’s right. I did sense some fluctuations resembling the establishment of an underworld just about a year ago… Excellent. Truly excellent… To think that you would speak of such matters in such a righteous way…”

Before he even finished speaking, Yin energy erupted from the palanquin like a raging tsunami that rose a hundred meters high into the air! Innumerable spots of netherflames lit up in the darkness within, while a cacophony of ghostly cries filled the air. It was almost as though a rift had been opened to the Eighteen Abysses of Punishment!

Emperor Wu of Song remained taciturn, but he held his ground stoically.

They were lines of red lanterns that appeared to line a boulevard leading straight into Fengdu Necropolis. An eerie nethergale swept through the path, while Yin spirits abounded around it.

“Because you, too, wish to rise up against the authority of Hell! Our goals are aligned! We no longer want to be puppets of the old Hell. The world is our oyster, and it’s ripe for our taking… So, let me ask you again - what basis do you have to take the moral high ground in our conversation over here?!”

He raised the spear in hand gently, and the thousands of Yin soldiers standing in formation did likewise in a majestic fashion. Then, they all pointed their spears directly towards the palanquin as Emperor Wu of Song continued, “I am an existence that is blessed by the heavens and possesses eternal life! I deserve the throneship over all of Cathay! I’m not an existence that can be compared in the same breath as the rest of the twelve envoys, much less the daolords of the six paths who are no different from Yin fiends in my eyes!”

Back in the palanquin, the old man’s eyes shrank when he heard these words. His grip tightened around his armrest, and the nails on his hands suddenly extended by an inch or so. The whites of his eyes turned black, while his needle-eye shaped pupils abruptly turned white. Following that, copious amounts of Yin energy began to pour out of his seven apertures. There wasn’t a single trace of humanity left on him in this very moment.

It was corpse water.

Within moments, the corpse water began to make a sizzling sound on his clothes, before slowly corroding it at a speed that was visible to the naked eye!

It was a child’s hands.

“You can try.” Emperor Wu of Song chuckled contemptuously, before raising his spear to the sky once more. A split second later, earth-shattering thumps of war drums echoed from Pusan and swept across the surface of the waters, causing the sea to stir violently. Then, the wall of mounted soldiers parted like the red sea once more, and thousands upon thousands of Yin foot soldiers rushed out to the beating of the drums.

BOOM!

And this wasn’t all.

Whoosh… One of the arrowheads lit up like an eerie fire in the dead of the night. Like a trigger, the other arrowheads soon began to light up on fire as well - a second… a third… a hundred… a thousand… five thousand… ten thousand!

“Thirty thousand soldiers… Hahaha… Liu Jinu, feudal officials are only entitled to an army of five thousand. What audacity. To think that you would raise a private army!” The old man didn’t sound panicked in the slightest. Instead, he simply laughed shrilly, “I understand. What you’re saying is that it doesn’t matter which of the twelve envoys rise up against the new Hell. Whoever succeeds will be the one who is blessed by the heavens to reign supreme. But… I, a daolord, am precluded from all of this?”

“What I’m saying is that none of you qualify at all!”

The Yin energy on the sea in front of Pusan grew thicker and thicker, until it finally swallowed up all of the skeletal hounds laying prone on the ground, and only innumerable spots of glowing red eyes could be seen peeking through the darkness. On the other side, the thirty thousand Yin soldiers were lined up in formation, awaiting the signal to rush into battle. The Yin energy that poured out was so dense that they blotted out the sky completely, while the red spots appeared no different from constellations in the sky. The silence was suffocating.

After an inordinate amount of time, the sound of a pin dropping was heard across the vast seas in front of Pusan. Then, there was a cold snort, “Alright… I’ll refrain from taking action just this once. But, I’ve got a question, and I hope Emperor Wu of Song will answer me truthfully. Otherwise…”

Emperor Wu of Song responded disdainfully, “Shoot.”

“Heh…” Emperor Wu of Song held his horse reins tightly and laughed uproariously. And then, he squinted into the darkness and quipped, “Are you afraid?”

In that instant, the number of red spots in the cloud of Yin energy rapidly multiplied. It had numbered in the thousands before, but now… the number went up to the tens of thousands! In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the number exceeded… a hundred thousand!

There was a deafening silence as the clouds of Yin energy continued to stir. A second later, countless humanoid paper effigies with simple drawn-on appearances, wearing tall hats, black robes and wielding mourning staves flew out of the clouds of Yin energy like a scattering swarm of bees!

Not even Emperor Wu of Song was able to keep his pupils as placid as before.

Emperor Wu of Song chuckled softly and lifted his head, “I don’t know where it is either.”

Whoosh… As he departed, so did the thirty thousand troops under his command recede like an ebbing tide.

Several minutes later, a Yin spirit dressed in ancient Cathayan garments like a scholar drifted towards Emperor Wu of Song, “My lord, he’s left.”

Emperor Wu of Song looked up at the darkening sky and murmured to himself, “The Book of Life and Death… The Yin energy of the new Hell is incredibly weak, and nobody would be able to locate the new Hell if they’re bent on remaining hidden. But if they’ve managed to secure the Book of Life and Death for themselves, then Hell’s Yin energy would most certainly receive a great boost, and they would instantly become visible. In other words… even a blind man would be able to tell if the new Hell has managed to secure the Book of Life and Death.”

And if it were… who?

Emperor Wu of Song’s eyes gleamed coldly, “Dispose of them.”

“Yes!”

The cufflinks of each corpse were etched with the mark of an albatross.

1. Emperor Wu of Song’s other name, apart from Liu Yu.