The dead were not detained in all ten hells for the same length of time. In the tidiest versions of this inter-life period, they spent seven days in each of the first seven hells - and hence this combined period is known as the seven sevens - but then the journey lengthened. They left the eighth hell only after being dead for a hundred days, the ninth hell after a year and the tenth after three. These last three periods coincided with the traditional Chinese ritual mourning schedule. Regardless, descendants could offer sacrifices to any of the ten kings when their new ancestors were passing through their respective jurisdictions. That is, the hell scrolls provided one means of tracking their movements and identifying which king should be receiving special offerings at a given time.

Other accounts of hell, such as Voyages to hell, Chapter 42, contend that these tidy systems of duration, while broadly believed, aren't in fact true. Individuals may need to endure years of a particular punishment, and once that punishment is completed, they move on to the next. Voyages to hell also notes that the punishments and duractions get progressively worse in the higher numbered hells. Still other accounts such as modern Tibetan descriptions in Meditative state in Tibetan Buddhism describe how time is in fact warped in hell, a day for the living being years or even centuries in hell.

Most likely compiled some time between 720 and 908 C.E., "The scripture of the ten kings" was a sung, chanted and worshipped text that survives in several recensions. The illustrated versions of this Tang work are among the chirographic ancestors to these scrolls, and they already spell out the varying lengths of time the dead spent in each stage of purgatory. In its hymns, the fate of the new ancestors is dependent upon the descendants and their offerings as is evident in the song coinciding with King Du Shi's hell, here translated by Stephen F. Teiser:

At one year they pass here, turning about in suffering and grief, depending on what merit their sons and daughters have cultivated.
The wheel of rebirth in the six paths is revolving, still not settled;
Commmission a scripture or commission an image, and they will emerge from the stream of delusion.

If there is a theme among the various texts and cartouches on this particular scroll, it may be addressing the issue of why people do not seem to get their just rewards within their own lifetimes. The couplets on either side of the magistrate note that humans are not capable of analyzing all the calculations that go into a person's karma, and within the various cartouches are four named historical personages who shared the common fate of having been unrecognized for their goodness. Regardless of theme, the tortures are here nearing their end, and the wheel of rebirth at last awaits in the next hell.