Ten Kings of the Underworld
Ten courts, and many ways of telling their story.
How the ten courts took shape
The Ten Kings form a Chinese underworld system combining Buddhist judgment and rebirth with local administrative imagination and funerary observances. Chinese Ten Kings texts circulated around the late Tang and Five Dynasties period; Dunhuang manuscripts preserve important evidence. The sequence connected seven weekly observances with later commemorations at one hundred days, one year, and three years.
The atlas's sequence
The familiar morality-book order begins with Qinguang, then Chujiang, Songdi, Wuguan, Yanluo, Biancheng, Taishan, Dushi, Pingdeng, and Zhuanlun. Some texts reverse Dushi and Pingdeng. Yuli Baochao elaborates court duties and punishments, but it is popular morality literature rather than a single canon shared by all Buddhism and Daoism. The kings' surnames and identification with historical officials belong to particular later traditions. Their courtroom images convey accountability, while the religious histories behind them remain diverse.
You’ve met the spirits. Write your own story.
These fictional games are for entertainment. Scores, probabilities and character outcomes do not represent traditional karma or actual destiny.
Play the game