Uchiha Hiko slowly rose along the green smoke billowing from the Eight Trigrams Furnace.
By instinct, he felt that familiar force of rejection descend upon him once more.
The unbearable pressure made him feel as though he were about to be crushed apart.
"Damn it, this feels even stronger than last time!"
He clenched his teeth, yet his entire body felt uncomfortable.
Oppression, chaos, unease, and even traces of negative emotions.
Only then did Uchiha Hiko realize something: the primordial mist released by the Eight Trigrams Furnace did not merely send the pure to the underworld while making the wicked descend to be burned into ash. It also cleansed the lingering resentment carried by those pure souls in their previous lives.
Now that he was forcibly breaking through from below, he had likely collided with the karmic burden of those negative emotions. These things were originally meant to descend into the Eight Trigrams Furnace and be burned away.
Just as Uchiha Hiko was about to be unable to endure any longer, his vision suddenly brightened, and the world fell silent.
He slowly opened his eyes. Before him stood a giant with a thick black beard and a hat bearing the character for "Yama."
The giant was many times larger than him, and Uchiha Hiko seemed to be no bigger than one of his fingers.
As Uchiha Hiko sized him up, he was also sizing up Uchiha Hiko.
"Who goes there? In life, you... no... this presence... a living person!"
His words were utterly disordered. King Yama had clearly noticed that Uchiha Hiko was different from the wandering souls.
The next moment, he suddenly roared in fury, "What audacity! A living person dares trespass into the underworld? Do you not know that this violates the laws of the world? Watch me