The bottom of this scroll is dominated by the "Pool of blood and filth," and those drowning therein are usually women associated with a variety of misdeeds. In versions of this image that include cartouches, they range from lacking virtue and cursing children to lewdness and bringing ruin to the family. Yet most interesting is the register of images directly above the pool. Here a monk is able to hand one of the women a permission slip allowing her release. In fact, this entire register consists of living people who are mourning for and sacrificing to the dead, and as there are "filial wives" among the sacrificers, it is clear that this living intervention is not intended to be earmarked for the women in this pool but is representative of the living sacrificing to their dead generally. Dressed in white (the color of mourning) and accompanied by a band, these filial descendants offer incense, food and paper clothing. The role of the structure beside the filial boy is unclear, but in the late 19th century, J.J.M. De Groot described how ornate lanterns were used in southeastern China to honor the ancestors as follows:

The second division [of a funeral procession] opens with two men ... each carrying on a straight pole a great cylindric lantern of paper, the upper part of which is covered with as many flounces of sackcloth as there are generations of the dead man's family, himself counting for one generation. Each flounce only partly covers the one underneath, so that they are all visible. On one side these lanterns are inscribed with the official titles and the surname of the dead; the other side displays, in case of a man, the inscription: 'Illustrious father of (e.g.) four generations,' in case of a woman: 'Illustrious mother of (e.g.) four generations.' They are called peh ting, 'white lanterns,' or mao ting, 'hempen lanterns.' In this part of the train there are, besides, two very big lanterns of red colour, called kam ting or 'orange lanterns' on account of their resemblance to that fruit. They are suspended from the top of a curved pole and display, in variegated characters, the names and official titles of the deceased.

According to other sets of hell scrolls, the banner draping into pool is an edict granting marking the completion of torture, reading, "Pass through death toward rebirth." This scene hints toward the function of the scrolls in general as the living make offerings to the underworld officials where the dead happen to be at that point in time, offerings that beg leniency and (relatively) safe passage for their new ancestors. The monk may be Ksitigarbha who can grant salvation in hell, or he may stand for the Buddhist sangha in general because only through their intervention were sacrifices to the dead fully efficacious. That is, Buddhist monks through their purified minds and specialist rituals were themselves sacred conduits to the invisible realm, and note here that only the monk is crossing the barrier between the living and the dead. Early narratives frequently emphasize that offerings should never go directly to the dead but only via the Buddhist monasteries.