"The matter began thirty-five hundred years ago..."
King Yama pondered for a moment and started recounting his story.
As soon as he spoke, time was pulled back to a distant era.
The history narrated by King Yama was clearly different from what Chen Xiao had learned.
According to King Yama, at that time, the Nine Provinces were divided into nine vassal states.
King Yama was one of these vassals, governing the Liangzhou region, and was known as King Yama.
The Nine Provinces were plagued by constant warfare and endless disputes.
Each vassal hoped to unify the Nine Provinces and take control of the grand mandate!
However, King Yama was an exception. At that time, he desired immortality more than unifying the Nine Provinces.
Then, a person appeared and promised him immortality, but at a price.
King Yama declared that if he could achieve immortality, he would pay any price.
Following this, the person taught him a cultivation method that used souls as nourishment.
And this person was the Iron-Clad Man.
Ghost cultivators, from then on, appeared in the world.
Over the next five hundred years, King Yama's lineage of ghost cultivators flourished and grew increasingly powerful.
But strangely, after teaching him ghost cultivation, that person vanished without a trace.
As for the price, King Yama did not know.
It wasn't until five hundred years later, three thousand years ago from the present, that the Iron-Clad Man returned.
He orchestrated a plan to lure King Yama's ghost cultivator lineage into this Underworld and placed Zhulong in the River of Forgetfulness.
From that moment on, the ghost cultivator lineage was imprisoned here.
While ghost emissaries could still leave the Underworld to claim souls in the mortal realm, King Yama could not.
Even if he stepped half a step beyond the Bridge of Helplessness, Zhulong would emerge from the River of Forgetfulness and drive him back.
Only then did King Yama realize that what he had gained was not immortality, but an endless curse.
But it was too late to regret; he couldn't even kill himself.
His spiritual power had grown so immense that he was incapable of ending his own life.
After listening to King Yama's account, Chen Xiao was filled with many questions.
The Iron-Clad Man was a given; Chen Xiao's doubts about this person grew heavier.
He was even unsure if the Iron-Clad Man was a righteous figure or a villain, as this person seemed to be playing a grand game spanning thousands of years across the Nine Provinces.
Furthermore, there was the matter of ghost emissaries claiming lives. By what criteria did they summon souls and claim lives?
Upon hearing Chen Xiao's questions, King Yama produced an ancient and heavy notebook, inscribed with the words 'Book of Life and Death'.
"The Book of Life and Death actually exists?"
Chen Xiao's eyes widened in astonishment.
"This Book of Life and Death was also given to me by the Iron-Clad Man,"
King Yama explained.
"The Book of Life and Death is not as the legends claim, that it controls the lives of all. In fact, it only lists those who are advanced in age. When we ghost emissaries claim souls, it is only after an elder has breathed their last, and then we collect their souls. Those who die prematurely are not included."
"Of course, some wandering spirits, if discovered by ghost emissaries, are also apprehended, but their names do not appear in the Book of Life and Death."
King Yama added.
Hearing this, Chen Xiao was utterly stunned.
What kind of advanced technology was this, capable of predicting a person's death and then having it appear in the Book of Life and Death?
"And after they are apprehended? Are all those souls refined by you?"
Chen Xiao pressed.
"Not at all, not at all!"
King Yama smiled and shook his head.
"We ghost emissaries and spirits in the Underworld are all from the initial group who cultivated with me."
"Although there are those who cultivate the ghost path in the mortal realm, they do not belong to our ghost cultivator lineage. Therefore, for thousands of years, the number of ghost cultivators in our Underworld has remained relatively low."
"With so many departed souls, how could we possibly refine them all!"
Chen Xiao frowned and asked again, "Then what about the remaining departed souls? Surely they don't reincarnate, do they?"
"Reincarnation? To my knowledge, no such thing occurs!"
King Yama stated, "In reality, most of the departed souls we claim are thrown into the Soul Refining Furnace!"
"The Soul Refining Furnace? What is that?"
"The Soul Refining Furnace is a vessel for refining departed souls, similar to an alchemy furnace, capable of refining departed souls into black crystals, which we call soul crystals,"
King Yama explained.
Chen Xiao's expression became extremely peculiar. The matter sounded plausible, yet it was inherently repulsive, as those departed souls were, after all, living people in their lives.
As a human, Chen Xiao naturally could not accept such a thing.
Although from another perspective, this Soul Refining Furnace somewhat resembled a garbage incinerator...
Observing Chen Xiao's expression, King Yama then explained, "Master Chen, please do not misunderstand. Refining soul crystals using the Soul Refining Furnace was not our intention. The Soul Refining Furnace was left by the Iron-Clad Man, and he instructed us to refine soul crystals. If we did not comply, Zhulong would fly out of the River of Forgetfulness and cause trouble..."
Chen Xiao asked, "You said the soul crystals are refined for the Iron-Clad Man. How do you deliver the soul crystals to him?"
"We don't deliver them; he comes to collect them."
King Yama explained, "Every five hundred years, he visits the Underworld once to collect the soul crystals refined during that period. Speaking of which, five hundred years have passed since he last collected soul crystals, which means the Iron-Clad Man is due to arrive again."
Upon hearing this, Chen Xiao's mind stirred.
After a moment of contemplation, he picked up his judge's brush and wrote with great flourish on the ground.
"I am by the Soul Refining Furnace!"
With a flash of light, the next moment, Chen Xiao found himself in a vast underground palace.
Above him, over a hundred feet high, was a vaulted ceiling of rock and stone.
Before him lay a massive, circular abyss, its opening with a radius of thousands of meters.
A very peculiar aura emanated from the opening.
The aura possessed both an eerie coldness and an unbearable heat, giving one the sensation of being in a state of ice and fire.
This aura permeated the entire underground palace, becoming more intense the closer one got to the opening.
The edge of the opening was inlaid with a ring of thick, ancient, dark yellow metal.
Chen Xiao frowned and examined it closely before realizing that this ring of heavy yellow metal was the mouth of the Soul Refining Furnace.
The part below it was the Soul Refining Furnace itself.
And the dual ice-and-fire aura was the aura used to refine departed souls.
Chen Xiao peered into the Soul Refining Furnace; it was pitch black, like the void, and nothing could be seen.
Just then, to his left, about several hundred meters away, a squad of ghost emissaries was escorting a group of departed souls towards the furnace opening.
The departed souls were expressionless, like walking corpses, arranged in two columns.
The two departed souls at the front of theιε had already reached the edge of the Soul Refining Furnace's opening.
The ghost emissaries kicked them, one by one, and the expressionless departed souls, like dumplings, plunged into the void...