After King Yu, Yu Yong, died, he had remained muddleheaded, bereft of consciousness.
Who knew how long had passed.
He opened his eyes and found the surroundings a dim yellow. A river surged forth from beneath the Nine Nethers, flowing toward an endless distance.
Within the muddy river water, human souls had lost consciousness, their pupils turned white. They formed orderly lines, wriggling endlessly through the water as they followed the current into the distance.
Suddenly, a gate filled with the metallic aura of weapons opened, and a deep voice emerged from within. "Sword, three hundred ninety-two."
The muddy river water flowed with a splash, without any response.
As the voice fell, a muddy tributary split off from the Rebirth River and flowed toward the gate of weapon-metal aura. The river water poured into it without end.
Along with the river water, white-pupiled human souls would occasionally separate from the river's main current and enter the gate of weapon-metal aura, one after another. Each soul seemed to carry a somewhat sharp and unyielding presence.
Neither more nor less, three hundred ninety-two such human souls flowed past.
After the three hundred ninety-two human souls entered the gate of weapon-metal aura, the gate vanished, and the tributary vanished as well.
"Axe, seventy-nine."
"Spear, three thousand seven hundred eighty-two."
"..."
One deep voice after another arose over the Rebirth River. Gates appeared one after another, swallowing souls with specific traits and in specific quantities from the tributaries—precise and efficient.
Besides names of weapons such as swords, spears, and axes, different terms such as "pill," "longevity," "fortune," and "emolument" also occasionally appeared over the Rebirth River, with numbers mixed in after them.
The quantities following such terms were very small, mostly single digits, and they did not appear often.
The term that appeared in