He and It Chapter 145: The Serpent of Pharisee (11)

Chapter 145: The Serpent of Pharisee (11)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

Xie Ning didn’t know what to say. He pitied Echidna’s suffering, but at the same time, his reason reminded him that from the mortal world’s point of view, the choice made by the Olympian Gods wasn’t wrong; Echidna’s name had been passed down from generation to generation, and the monsters it gave birth to were a mixture of gods and demons, cold-blooded and cruel, that had caused many catastrophes in which many lives were destroyed.

“I…I don’t know what to say,” he confessed honestly. “I can’t say for sure that what the Gods did was completely wrong, because…” 

He saw Echidna’s golden pupils flickering, as if burned by flames, then they soon dimmed.

Xie Ning hastened to remedy the situation, “But your problem isn’t so bad! I understand, people can’t choose their own origins. If you had a choice, surely you wouldn’t want to be Echidna, locked up in such a dark underground, right?” 

Echidna spat out his forked tongue as he lifted Xie Ning up and pressed him tightly into his arms.

“Your willingness to give up the inherent prejudices of mankind, the joys and sweetness of life, to come to me is a great gift, Dorus,” Echidna said with a sibilant murmur, “I don’t blame you for your opinion! Nor can I blame thee. If, by ceasing to do evil, I can keep the new Gods, who are obstinate and frivolous, from dishonoring my fate, and from taking thee out of my hands, so be it! I will give up my right to human sacrifices, even if it causes all the children of Gaia to assemble and laugh at my weakness and timidity.” 

…What was this? The flip side of “For you, I will be the enemy of the world,” so “For you I will be good to the world?”  Xie Ning was too dumbfounded to tell him that he had to go home.

“I, uh, cough!” Xie Ning coughed dryly, a feeling of guilt rising in his heart. It was said that people’s hearts would be revealed after a long period of time, but after getting along with him for the past two days, he found that Echidna was quite honest, and didn’t have all those twists and turns in his nature. He had a beast’s unique, straightforward character, and even a little bit of vague naiveté. Xie Ning felt a bit uneasy about hiding things from him.

“I’m rested…Let me down to go paint.” 

Echidna reluctantly let go of his arm and Xie Ning ran to the drawing board with a heavy heart. After resting for a while, and then returned to scrutinize the picture, he immediately saw the problem.

“The tone isn’t right,” Xie Ning frowned. “it’s too gray…” 

“What’s wrong?” Echidna asked, probing.

Without an eraser, there was a big problem. He couldn’t rely on an eraser for highlights, the important contrast between light and dark in sketching could only be controlled manually by Xie Ning. How could he be that talented? 

Echidna’s palace was originally dark and gloomy, but since Xie Ning didn’t have the good night vision, the snake demon set up towering candles on the four walls, and inlaid dragon’s eyes on the ceiling, so the palace was illuminated with brilliant light; as if the sun was at its fullest during the day.

With such a bright light, Xie Ning, from his position under the throne, could of course see any detail of the model, but in order to show the savage charm of the demon, he had subtly dimmed the light in the picture.

In that way, the contrast between light and dark was particularly important. The bright parts must be polished to a whiter and brighter color than the paper itself in order to show the evil vitality of the three-dimensional characters under the light of the fire.

With my limited drawing skills, I failed in my ambitious attempt.

“I don’t have an erasing tool. I don’t have it with me,” Xie Ning sighed. “So the result is that the picture is inevitably flawed…Forget it, it couldn’t be helped. I’ll just think of it as practicing the basics.” 

He flexed his knuckles, and carefully dabbed a gradient underneath the charcoal-black lines. It was something that could have been done with a small eraser, but now he had to do it with his fingertips, rubbing them black.

Echidna asked, “What do you need?” 

Xie Ning looked up at him, and said, “I need…I need something to wipe off the charcoal marks. Do you have something like that here?” 

Echidna looked puzzled. He tried to offer, “I don’t know what you mean by ‘wipe away the charcoal marks,’ but if you need to be cleansed, the offerings of ointment and wine are the most cleansing things on earth. If you scrub your body with them, the ashes will fly from your skin.” 

Xie Ning scratched his hair, “Should I give it a try?” 

He wiped his fingers clean, eagerly picked up the jar and dabbed a bit of Echidna’s special balm on a piece of oak wood, then discreetly scratched in the highlights of the picture.

–A miracle happened. The paper, which was originally covered with black charcoal, was suddenly like a smooth marble surface that had been wiped clean of dust. It was suddenly bright and shiny, like Xie Ning had just unwrapped brand new paper.

Wait, the miracle was still happening…The miracle had gone too far!

Xie Ning wasn’t happy for long, and his expression turned to horror. The “cleansing balm,” like a powerful stain remover, spread quickly from where he had scraped it on, and sent out ripples so that in less than three seconds, the black and gray lines of charcoal had been eliminated, and he was left with an empty sheet of paper.

…The white earth was so clean!

Xie Ning, “Ahhhhhh-!” 

Echidna, “HISS, HISS, HISS?!”

Xie Ning freaked out and yelled, running around the temple, almost starting to roll around on the floor, or crawl in a twisted heap.

“How did this happen?” he cried, “Your cleansing effect is a bit too strong! My painting!” 

Echidna hissed in shock as well, his hair blowing up, and the tip of his tail standing high, frozen in mid-air and quivering.

“I’m so sorry!” The snake demon swam down from his throne in a panic, his hands dropping to his waist, almost too ashamed to speak. “It was my advice that led to this, please don’t be angry with me!” 

Seeing his sad, pleading look, Xie Ning’s anger receded. Moreover, he wasn’t actually angry at Echidna.

“I’m not mad at you,” Xie Ning said helplessly. “I’m just…Oh, it’s okay! I can draw again if the painting is lost. It’s just a small problem. It’s fine.” 

Echidna was frustrated, and Xie Ning, who had been standing for a long time with a sore back, simply sat down on the ground and leaned against him. One person and one snake were downcast, as they sighed and looked at the empty drawing paper for a long time.

“In fact, for a practiced painting, the important thing is not the result, but the process.” Xie Ning consoled Echidna. “At the beginning when learning to paint, everyone’s works are all unattractive and full of defects, so the most important thing is what you can discover and learn from the process of painting, and understand where you are lacking and where you can improve…”

He saw that the demon still had a sad and unhappy look in his eyes, so Xie Ning patted his tail and then said, “Don’t be sad. Even though the picture was dissolved, I had a great time painting it. These few hours weren’t wasted. At least I’ve gained some practice time, so next time I’ll have more experience and be able to draw better!” 

Echidna was puzzled. He asked in a low voice, “How can you be considered a beginner in your art?” 

“Of course I’m a beginner,” Xie Ning laughed. “Art is a discipline that eats not only talent, but also practice time. I’ve only been in the field for a few years. In fact, in my mind, I’m not even a painter. The title “beginner” is more appropriate, and I’m not being self-effacing.” 

Now that they’d come to that point, Xie Ning sighed long and hard, pouring out some bitterness.

“Painting is sculpture on paper,” he said. “How can you draw something? How do you show its form and space? That’s a big part of the beauty…I mean for the painter, that is the most basic and important subject on the path of painting. The only way to solve that problem for someone like me, who has no talent, is to paint a lot, then a lot more, until you develop an intuition; until the whole and the structure becomes a concept that is easy to grasp, and then you have the basics in place.” 

Echidna frowned, thought for a moment, and commented frankly, “I don’t get it.” 

After that, he said, puzzled, “Why do you always have to be so presumptuous, Dorus? I know you’re so talented that even Apollo would have to look at your paper and marvel at you. The Gods are so generous to gifted men, that when Daedalus, out of jealousy, threw his nephew Talos from the walls to his death, Nemesis not only did not inflict severe punishment on him, but only snuffed out the life of his youngest son, that was all. As far as I’m concerned, you’re no worse than he was!” ¹

“I’m not…” Xie Ning’s voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat, and said, “I’m not a genius.” 

This was the most disheartening thing about him. He wasn’t a genius.

The souls of geniuses lose their minds. Their sensitivity, their awareness, their passion for creativity, could make a person restless for the rest of their life. Watching them from the side, Xie Ning could feel that talent which was like a whip hanging high above those people’s heads, forcing them to abandon everything, to pour out their hearts and souls, and to run around hungrily, going through drawing paper like starving wild dogs.

He wasn’t a genius. He was just an art student with a little talent, and that talent was enough to give him a pair of eyes to see the heights of genius, but not a pair of hands and feet to climb up the ladder. ² 

He didn’t know how to explain it to Echidna.

“You know, I was taught to paint,” he said as simply as he could, “and in my school alone, there were many better and more brilliant students than me. I wasn’t the worst, but I wasn’t the best either.” 

“When I first started school, I was scared by the gap between me and others…Sometimes I was so anxious that I couldn’t sleep. A long time ago, there was a saying circulating in our profession that ‘many people’s hard work comes from talent.’ I thought to myself, ‘How can those people work so hard when they are already more talented than I am’? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to live?” 

“…I’ve been practicing twice as hard, but I don’t want people to know that I’ve been working so hard to get to the level I’m at now. I’m so screwed up, I don’t even know who I’m competing with, who I’m earning this face for…” 

Xie Ning closed his eyes, leaned on the snake demon’s smooth, hard tail and smiled bitterly.

“In the end, I’m still over-ambitious and too greedy,” he muttered. “I want to take everything for myself, and when I see those talented players who can learn and master everything, I feel jealous and bitter.” 

Though skeptical of much of what he said, Echidna was strangely attuned to his emotions. Such jealousy and resentment were emotions inherent in his confrontation with the Olympian King of the Gods.

He took Dorus into his arms and sighed deeply. “O Dorus, where is the perfect good that can come from the vagaries of fate? The slave envies the freedom of the citizen, the citizen envies the majesty of the king, the king cannot but envy the fame and immortality of the hero, and even I, seeing the temples and monuments erected in the city to the Olympian gods, who enjoy the veneration and love of the world, canst thou say that I do not envy them?” 

He looked at the sullen boy in his arms, and hugged him all the more lovingly, for they were a miserable couple who shared the same illness, and at this moment were close together, each with his own sorrows. However, he still asked in a strange tone, “I just heard you speak of school, could it be that the nine Muses have opened a college somewhere, but did not deign to let me know about it?” 

Xie Ning hesitated for a moment, and said, “That is a secret for the time being, but I will tell you later, I promise.” 

When he said that, Echidna ceased to pester him. They looked bitterly at the white sheet of paper like two peasants staring dryly at their autumn fields that held with no harvest.

“I’ll paint another one for you tomorrow,” Xie Ning promised, patting him kindly on the arm. “And I won’t let you down.” 

It was a strange, strange feeling. Like a solid foundation that was holding Echidna’s venomous serpentine heart against the endless descending nothingness of the past.

“Well,” Echidna responded in a muffled voice that caused a low rumble in his chest that sent shivers down Xie Ning’s back. “I have you, and I will not be disappointed.” 

.

Life in the dungeon suddenly became rich and interesting.

For the first time, Echidna, as he followed his human, studied the painting materials. They studied the divine nature of the balm, analyzed how much it needed to be diluted so that it wouldn’t dissolve the whole painting at once. Dorus grabbed his hand and taught him how to paint the simplest rose. The teenager’s palm was so warm and soft that Echidna didn’t dare exert any force at all. He was careful to treat him the way he would treat a snowflake fell on the tip of his nose, when he was with Dorus, his fragile and beautiful priest.

Yes, his priest. Echidna had made up his mind, and given Dorus that highest privilege. The dungeon was like a kingdom, and he was the king at the center of it, so Dorus? 

He would give Dorus a tongue to interpret his royal decrees, a pair of hands to wield the scepter, and he would be allowed to walk about the kingdom, to speak and do as he pleased, and what he said and did would have to be fulfilled for him.

For Cilicia’s offering, Echidna had new conditions. Instead of asking for the services of the living, the brutal demon demanded the richest pigments, the finest snow-colored vellum, and other amusements for human consumption.

The king of Cilicia was utterly perplexed, unable to understand the God’s change. He was afraid to disobey Echidna, so he quickly turned to his father, Poseidon, the ruler of the seas, for help.

“Great Father!” Standing at the altar by the sea, Kostas prayed aloud, “If you are still willing to help your son, emerge from the parted waters and come to me!” 

His words were heard. The waves roared, and a carriage dragged by twelve seahorses really parted the waves and approached him with the Sea God, Poseidon, sitting on it with his trident in his hand, and his brow circled with a precious crown. With the light of a god, his majesty was as magnificent as the sea.

“What is your request, my son?” Poseidon inquired, for Kostas ruled over the mighty kingdom of Cilicia, and of all his starry sons and daughters, Poseidon favored him.

The king tilted his head and spoke to his father, of his fears that Echidna’s transformation was a trick by the demon god to escape the trap.

“I ask for your assistance, Father,” the king said. “If I do not fulfill His request, and if Echidna lets His giants plague my kingdom, I cannot deal with them all! However, if it is my offering to Him that allows Him to escape from the control of the Gods, then my sins, too, are truly unforgivable.” 

Poseidon mused for a moment, while his divine eyes looked into the depths of Arima’s dungeon.

“Do not fret over this, my son,” the Sea God encouraged gently. “Even among the many gods, the power of Aphrodite is the most pervasive. ³ The demon is delirious with love, and whatever the human in his arms asks, he will gladly allow and nothing will be denied.” 

The king breathed a great sigh of relief. Poseidon added, “I will send you a beach full of purple snails, and you will use that purple color to please the demon’s lover. As long as Echidna stays in the dungeon, you will still be the favorite of the Gods, and there will be support for your invincibility on the battlefield!” 

Deep in the dungeon, Echidna suddenly felt something strange, and the scales of his tail rippled from top to bottom. He swiftly flung his tail out, which caused the ground to crack and the bones of the bronze ox to shatter.

Xie Ning was startled, but before he could come to his senses, Echidna had stretched out his hands and pressed him into his arms, as he wrapped his long tail around and around him, until light couldn’t shine on Xie Ning’s face and body.

“If you look one more time, I’ll make your son’s bones disappear!” the snake demon hissed to the watcher. “Do not disturb my peace! Go back to your palace in the deep sea!” 

As he shouted in such a fury, Xie Ning heard the same sound he had heard when he first arrived at the palace, like a gale or a thunderclap, and it finally transformed into an incomprehensible ancient language.

“Ouch,” Xie Ning whimpered, almost squeezed into a small pancake by Echidna. “I can’t breathe!” 

Echidna paused for a moment, then relaxed his tail and moved to cover the teenager with his thick, snake-like hair instead, as he roamed around alertly and eyed any presence in the darkness that might covet Dorus.

Suddenly he felt fear. Echidna knew in his heart that he was not clever enough or adaptable enough to face the many new gods of Olympus. That he was alone, with only an ancient identity, wrapped up their original malevolence, to face the scorn and avoidance of the Gods.

He had never had it so good! And if one day the Gods of Olympus should, on a whim, separate him from Dorus, what would he do then? What could he expect from a newborn god who has been bleeding for ten years for a golden apple? ⁴

Xie Ning raised his head to look at him, and the snake demon also lowered his gaze and looked at the young man in his arms.

At that moment, Xie Ning was greatly alarmed, because of what he saw in Echidna’s expression and eyes.

–He was angry, but also as clueless as if he was about to cry.