Underworld, Netherworld, Ten Hall Yama Kings.
It was a place even more terrible than the Eighteenth Layer of Hell—the so-called Nineteenth Layer of Hell in the eyes of ordinary people. Darkness stretched everywhere, with deathly silence without end, broken now and then by shrill cries that wandered back and forth. Owls wailed atop heaps of bones, yet there was one place of brief tranquility.
"Why do you insist on this..."
"We have come this far together from more than eight thousand years ago, weathering countless hardships and dangers before achieving what we have today. Now the Human World and the Heavenly Realm are holding each other in check. I know what concerns you. You think the Human World is weak, and that humanity and the other creatures there are weak too. You're willing to help them, but isn't that also a tilt in the balance of power?"
A refined-looking man tried to persuade the one sitting before him, a man who appeared to be in his early thirties. He wore a robe, his left leg folded beneath him and his right foot planted on the ground, one wrist resting on his knee. His head hung low. He neither spoke nor looked at the person trying to persuade him.
The former sighed, his voice sincere as he spoke:
"You want the Underworld and the Human World to stand together, is that it?"
"But wasn't this already agreed upon in the First Year?"
"The affairs of the Underworld belong to the Underworld alone. If the Underworld takes sides in the struggle among the Six Realms, then one day, Yin and Yang will be thrown into chaos, and the balance of all things will be lost. Would you ignore the great calamity that will one day bring Yin and Yang into disorder and