Yin Long's eyes couldn't help but narrow, his pupils trembling softly without him noticing. None of the records he had read had spoken about just how the Netherworld worked, what powered it and how it treated those who fell into it. It was called the Netherworld so it was needless to say that it wouldn't be pretty, but the actual truth was beyond what he could have expected, the corners of his lips twitching a handful of times.

"Heh, yeah, I guess expecting anything close to normal or comfortable would be foolish, wouldn't it?"

Sinister and cruel, those were the only two words he could think of to describe the Netherworld. It gave you life and it gave you hope, it would let you do exactly what you wanted and then some. It let you live until you cursed life itself, and then it let you live a bit longer just so even those curses could fade into nothing. Happiness would turn to sorrow, sorrow would turn to anger, anger would turn to despair, and finally, that despair would turn to a final glimmer of hope. But there was no hope in the Netherworld, only the final wait before that hope also turned to ash and you finally became empty.

"Of course it would be foolish to expect the best. But the world is pretty foolish to begin with, life is just a stupid thing from start to end. So go ahead and do your foolish things, have your stupid dreams, join the world in its foolishness and then fade away and be forgotten like a good human, that's how the world turns."

The shade spoke, its empty face contorting with each word. Yin Long found it annoying to look at as he stood there. The twisting darkness beneath the empty eyesockets, it was impossible to tell what sort of expression it was trying to pull off. It was also hard to discern any emotions from its voice, the best he had was some guesswork and instincts, but it was far from concrete.

Living beings were born with faces to show off their thoughts and emotions, they would slip into their expressions even if they didn't notice it themselves. Thanks to that, as long as you paid attention, you could get a general grasp of how people were feeling as they talked to you, and you could spot glimpses of their emotions.

Whether you liked it or not, this inevitably meant that your approach would change slightly, that was just human nature. But there was none of that with this shade, it was the first time Yin Long had ever experienced such uncertainty while interacting with someone. But as Yin Long was experiencing this uncertainty, he felt a familiar warmth clench his hand.

"You don't need to listen to him too much, Young Master. The world will only ever be what we ourselves make it so only we have a right to decide if it's stupid. And I... I know that any world that can birth someone who can smile for other people's suffering can't possibly be foolish."

As was to be expected, two different beings with different upbringings saw the world in two different ways. One was cynical and believed that the world made the man while the other could be described as more hopeful in thinking that the man made the world. Who among them was right, if there even was a right answer to the question?

Yin Long didn't know, he'd always been too focused on moving forward to ever give it any thought. But what he did know was that right and wrong didn't matter right now, the one he had failed to protect and make happy had spoken and that was all that mattered, he had to listen so that he could make up for his failures. Perhaps the shade could sense that as well, something that resembled a chuckle slipping out from the darkness.

"It's fine if you don't believe me, those caught between despair and determination rarely do. But that's fine, the beautiful thing about truth is that it doesn't need people to believe in it, it just is. I hope you enjoy your time here, human, all the way until you don't."

The empty face contorted again and the shade collapsed onto the floor, returning to the darkness it had risen from and returning the Resting Station to its eerie silence. Once again it was just Yin Long and that familiar warmth, that scent that seeped into his very being. And the source of that scent looked down at the darkness beneath them, a soft murmur breaking the silence.

"Poor thing. Don't you think that he too is trapped by the same principles as these resting souls? Stuck here in his barely changing world, just clinging on to his last few desires to maintain an existence that he is slowly starting to despise."

It was an interesting question, was a being that seemed to be tied to the Netherworld affected by the same forces as those who fell into it? It would fit the image of the Netherworld, a cold place for all creations. But at the same time, Yin Long had to admit that he found it somewhat...sad. An existence that ground down everything it touched, even if it wanted to love, even if it did love, it would never be loved in turn. Such an existence, what would the years turn it into?

"You know, Young Master, there's a thought I've had about your law of Yin."

Lan Yun's voice reached him again as he thought about her previous words. His gaze slid towards her, her own eyes lingering on the woman resting on the earthen bed, her desperate and almost pleading gaze intertwined with Lan Yun's.

"The Source of Pain, the Prime Evil, the Primordial Fear, the Grand Law of Misery, the Original Corruption, isn't that what Hongzai called the law of Yin? Such heavy names, each and every one of them saddled onto the law over the years."

Lan Yun crouched down as she spoke, word for word reciting what Hongzai had told Yin Long when she first saw him use the law of Yin. That was when Yin Long had first learned what this yellow law of his was, as well as his first contact with the world of swordsmen.

Lan Yun still held onto Yin Long's hand as she crouched, but her other hand reached towards the woman on the bed, gently brushing aside the dirty hair that had fallen in front of her face. The shade didn't show itself again so it probably didn't view this as disturbing the resting. Lan Yun spoke again after brushing aside the hair, her voice barely a whisper.

"But you know what, Young Master, I don't think the names are coincidences. A law is only named after what it rules over, so Yin must truly rule over things such as pain, evil, and misery. In that case, Young Master... If you have the law of Fire, does it mean that you can only conjure fire into an area?"

Her whisper snuck into his ears like a maggot into bonemarrow, burrowing into his brain so it could fester in his deepest parts. It was nothing more than a whisper, but it acted like a shout atop a snowy mountain, a single syllable enough to start the unstoppable chain event known as an avalanche.

"You mean..."

The law of fire, were those who controlled it limited to just calling forth fire? No, they could control fire as they pleased, a flick of their finger would make all the flames in the world dance. And a second flick... would extinguish all the fire of the world and plunge it into darkness.

"Yes, I knew you would understand it, Young Master, my lovely smiling Young Master. Misery and pain, suffering to all who fall, despair to all who live. That is the Netherworld, that is how it works. But isn't it sad, Young Master? How many of those who fall are sinners? How many committed grave sins? And how many are like you and the others, just innocent people who accidentally got touched by Yin? Do they deserve the misery and the suffering, do they deserve to fade away like that, not even able to scream? I... I think that it's wrong. I think they deserve a chance to at least be heard, a chance to at least retain their hopes as they move on to the next life."

Lan Yun slowly stood up as she spoke, a pained and thin smile on her face as she turned to look at Yin Long. From the very first moment and all the way to their very last together, Lan Yun had always been Yin Long's better half. While he only looked at the sword, she was able to look at the wider world, that was what he had always thought.

And as she spoke now, he realized that he was indeed right. She felt pain for those in the Netherworld, those who the world saw as the worst kind of existence, to her they were just people mired in misery. He couldn't do that, he had never been able to do that. At the very least, he thought that, but it seemed like Lan Yun had other thoughts.

"Don't look like that, Young Master, don't have such thoughts about yourself. Didn't I tell you earlier, everything I know I learned from you? If I look at the wider world then it is only because you taught me how, if I think about the suffering of those around me then it is only because you did the same for me."

Her other hand reached out and grasped his other hand, her warmth now filling both his palms. She leaned close, leaning her weight against his chest as she rested her chin on his shoulder, the warm moisture of her breath hitting his ear.

"We made... mistakes as we lived, Young Master, I truly think we did. When we fell, do you think anyone prayed for us? When we died, do you think anyone rose up for us? If we had done things just a little differently, would there have been more people who came to help us? Would we have gotten enough help to hold him off long enough? The thoughts, they swirl around in my mind like vultures around a carcass, they shriek as they refuse to leave me."

Yin Long, he wasn't the only one suffering thanks to their fall. The familiar scent and warmth, the source of them suffered just the same. Uncertainty, fear, what if's, they haunted her every second, Yin Long was sure of that. After all, they haunted him just the same, didn't they? That was why she was whispering to him, fueling the avalanche.

"Visrama. The prayer for the abandoned they called it. I think they deserve to be saved, I think they deserve the same smile that I got, both for their sake and for ours."

The weight that rested on his shoulder was lifted, Lan Yun raised her head so that she could lock eyes with him. The eyes were the window to the soul, the deepest core and desires of a person, and in Lan Yun's he saw himself reflected thousand times over, a yellow crack splitting open his forehead to reveal a single gently smiling eye.

"Please, Young Master, can you save them? The prayer for the abandoned, can you pick it up and turn it into a prayer for the salvaged? The screams stolen by the Netherworld, can you give them a voice so they can have their peace? That way... perhaps we can make up for some of our mistakes, that way we can hopefully ease some of our despair."

Yin Long almost felt his breath catching in his throat. Requests. How many times had Lan Yun made requests of him in the past, how many times had she asked him to do something? And perhaps above all, when had she ever asked him to save someone? He couldn't remember, his head felt fuzzy thanks to the familiar scent that tickled his nose, the warm breath that still clung to his ear.

She was suffering due to their death, the mistakes they had made that led up to it, they pained her as they bore down on her. If... If he could ease that pain, if he could give her comfort by just saving others... Then he would do just that, she deserved that much.

"I will try. For you, I will try as many times as it takes."

Lan Yun smiled at him again, but it was still the same fragile and sorrowful smile she occasionally showed him. Her hands left his and reached up, her fingers sliding into the corners of his mouth and pulling them up into a forced smile.

"Then please smile, Young Master. I will help you smile, I will pull up your lips until they pull up on their own and you can smile truly."

Yin Long wasn't someone who frequently saved others, that was how he viewed himself, that was how he knew himself. So he did indeed need someone to help him smile, because he did not think that he had a smile that could save others.

But with Lan Yun twisting his lips upwards, he crouched down in front of the bed and locked eyes with the desperate woman. He didn't say anything to her and just reached out his hand, placing it on top of the wound that put her in this state. He didn't really know what to do from here, he hadn't used the law of Yin enough to call himself proficient with it.

But it seemed like he didn't actually need to do much. He touched upon the law and called it forth, he filled it with his intent like he was speaking to another person and then pushed it forward. The yellow energy rose up from deep within and then moved along his arm, seeping out from his fingertips and entering the wound. And then, once he and the woman were connected, he felt it. Pain.

The first pain was the pain of a scraped knee. A child that ran too fast and ended up tripping over a branch, her knee scraping along the stone-covered ground of the forest as a result. The next pain was the pain of a slap, a child struck by her mother for coming home late. Then came the pain of punches, a fistfight the now slightly older child ended up losing. The pain of her first heartbreak, the pain of her first betrayal, the pain of her first stab, the pain of her first childbirth. And then, the pain of her first death.

He felt it all, he experienced it all thanks to their connection. All the pain she had felt in her life, all the suffering that had descended on her, all of it was transferred to Yin Long through that yellow energy. She had suffered, and now he took that suffering upon himself. But the suffering didn't end with her death, she did not have that mercy.

The fear of uncertainty as she found herself in a strange land, the fear of those around her, the fear as she ran for her life from the big city she had suddenly ended up in. And then, the pain of her second death, a bestial claw tearing open her chest. But once again, her pain was not allowed to end with death, and Yin Long felt it all. The pain of starving as she laid there in the forest, the cold pain of rainwater seeping into her bones, the thirst she felt when she was unable to take in even a single one of those falling drops.

Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. It was all just pain and misery, the law of Yin cut out the good parts, the happy memories she had gathered over the years. That was the domain of Yang so it could not transmit them. But the pain and suffering, the fear and despair, it could transfer them with perfect clarity to the one who chose to bear them. So Yin Long suffered as the pain was transmitted to him. And finally, after all this time, all this suffering, there was someone to hear the scream of this woman, there was someone who could testify that she had indeed lived, and she had indeed suffered.