He and It Chapter 157: The Serpent of Pharisee (23)

Chapter 157: The Serpent of Pharisee (23)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

In this way, peace returned to their lives. With hope in sight, Xie Ning’s heart settled down. He no longer felt lost and hopeless like before. Now, regardless of the final outcome, whether Chaos agreed to his request to return home or not, his life had a plan and a goal.

He started exercising, something that was emphasized repeatedly during his classes. People who are physically weak can’t produce good art, whether it’s painting or sculpture. Those with strong physical abilities always have extra energy to refine their work.

Echidna couldn’t understand what his human was doing, but he was happy to fulfill any request from Dorus. Every day, the youth ran, bounced, and did exercises called push-ups in the underground palace. He found it amusing, so Echidna followed along, as he genuinely found Dorus’s small figure running around the palace very cute.

Later, he wanted to join in and asked, “Dorus, will exercising like this really be effective?”

Xie Ning wiped the sweat from his face and looked puzzled.

“Exercise must be consistent and not excessive from the start,” he explained. “I’m just trying to improve my physical condition. I’m not focused on results.”

“I’ve seen how heroes in the mortal realm train.” The demon tilted his head. “The most renowned heroes are nurtured by Karong. There, they learn archery, wrestling, swordsmanship, charioteering, tactics, and how to govern armies. They’re even fed with the marrow of bears, lions, and wild boars when they’re young. If you’re interested, I can be your instructor too, and teach you skills no less than those of a hero.”

Xie Ning thought of the heroes he had seen. Their bulging muscles were larger than his head. He immediately backed off.

“No, no!” he shook his head vigorously. “That’s too much for me.”

Echidna felt very disappointed because he really wanted to play with Dorus. After a moment of thought, he came up with another idea.

“Then, how will you assess your progress? How about I chase after you to see if you can outrun me?”

Xie Ning was intrigued, but he recognized the difficulty of a chasing game.

“But that’s not fair. You’re so fast. How could I possibly have a chance of winning?” he protested.

“I won’t use my divine power, and I’ll tie a knot in my tail.” Echidna’s snake tail curled up, and formed a figure-eight knot in the middle. “This way, I won’t be able to move smoothly. Also, before starting, I’ll let you have a lead of three hundred steps.”

Xie Ning asked again, “Hmm…then I guess if I win, there’ll be a reward?”

Echidna, with a smile full of affection, hissed joyfully, “What do you desire, my love? Now, I can proudly and confidently promise you that whatever you ask for, I can provide!”

Xie Ning chuckled, “I don’t really want anything…Oh, wait, I do. I want to read, but there aren’t any books here.”

“If you win, I’ll make sure that good books fill three rooms of the palace,” Echidna replied. “However, what if I win?”

Xie Ning grinned mischievously, unable to suppress his playful mood. He replied, “Then I’ll give you a surprise!”

Echidna became ecstatic. He eagerly stood at the designated starting line and flicked his forked tongue back and forth.

“I’ll start first!” Xie Ning dashed out ahead. He chose a narrow stone path, moving faster than a rabbit. The demon listened carefully to his lover’s footsteps, while his tail thudded excitedly against the blackened bronze floor of the palace, and caused the corridor to resonate with his laughter.

“Don’t run so fast!” Xie Ning yelled in panic, as he shifted onto a wide avenue. “I don’t have any sugar syrup!”

Even though his tail was knotted, and he didn’t use his wind-controlling divine power, Echidna was almost within reach of his human’s legs and clothes. He couldn’t understand Dorus’s words, just happily anticipated the outcome.

If he caught up with Dorus, his requested prize would be ruined. For the sake of a small victory, he would deny his lover the long-awaited gift, which felt wicked and despicable…However, Dorus’s promised mysterious surprise was so tempting…What surprise could it be?

As Echidna pondered, various fantastic options floated through his mind.

Ah, yes! I could catch up with Dorus, get my surprise, and then, because of excessive excitement, reward Dorus with the gift he desires.

With his mind made up, Echidna stretched his long arm, and as they turned the corner of the third intersection, swiftly grabbed his lover’s waist and lifted him gently.

“I got you,” the demon said triumphantly. The muscles of his snake tail rolled slowly as he undid the knot. “My dear Dorus.”

Xie Ning had run until he was out of breath, was sweating all over, and his heart was almost leaping out of his throat from laughing too much. As he collapsed against Echidna’s chest, he couldn’t stop laughing.

“Okay, you win!” he panted, as he happily admitted defeat. “I surrender.”

Echidna stared at him expectantly, the tip of his tail moving incessantly. “So, what’s the surprise you promised? Just tell me, don’t make me guess.”

Xie Ning glanced at him and smiled teasingly. “I’ll tell you after I’ve taken a bath!”

Unable to resist, Echidna carried his human to the hot spring. Along the way, he tangled around him like sticky toffee, but couldn’t coax any words out of Dorus. He felt as if ants were crawling all over him, and he itched unbearably.

No one had ever prepared a surprise for him before, so the demon’s curiosity was doubled. He was eager to find out what this unfamiliar thing would be.

Xie Ning didn’t pay him any mind. He cheered and jumped into the hot water, as he washed the sweat from his body.

Outside, Echidna pondered. Then he heard the sounds of the hot spring gradually quiet down. Dorus’s voice, cut through the mist and tiny water droplets and reached his ears. “Echidna! Come in!”

Without hesitation, the snake demon dove in but couldn’t find any trace of the boy on the water’s surface. He asked in bewilderment, “What’s the matter? Dorus, don’t dive underwater to play. You don’t have gills or scales like a fish or sea snake. You’ll suffocate.”

Suddenly, a pair of warm, soft arms broke through the scorching spring water, hooked around his neck, and pulled him downwards. Echidna was unprepared for the human’s actions. However, since it was what he desired, the demon went along with it, and dove into the water which pushed the water level up significantly. Through the rippling waves, Xie Ning gently kissed his lips, and whispered a few words amidst the bubbles.

“This is your surprise.”

They kissed underwater, their air bubbles intertwining as Echidna’s snake tail coiled around Xie Ning, to ensure he surfaced.

When they emerged, Xie Ning took a deep breath. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes twinkled like stars as he gazed at Echidna with a sparkling stare.

Caught off guard by his loving gaze, Echidna’s soul almost flew out of his body. Xie Ning pushed him to sit on the stone platform beside the spring, while he clung to the snake demon’s long tail, and rode the waves.

Xie Ning tilted his face up and grinned mischievously at Echidna before he lowered his head.

In an instant, Echidna exclaimed in surprise. He stared blankly, eyes wide. His body trembled uncontrollably, and his tail thrashed restlessly. He stuck out his forked tongue, while his beautiful eyes shone with a mixture of shyness, joy, and incredulous delight. His fingers crushed the sturdy stone steps, and left behind shattered cracks.

When it was over, the snake demon was drenched in sweat, his eyes reddened from excitement, and he’d nearly knocked the pool apart. Xie Ning couldn’t swallow what he had, so he covered his mouth with his hands, and let it trickle down his chin into the pool, where it mixed with the bubbling water.

“Good thing this is flowing water…” Xie Ning murmured and chuckled. “Your…this won’t poison me, right?”

Echidna couldn’t believe that his surprise turned out to be this. He quickly lifted the boy, and spoke incoherently. “Dorus, what…? Let me wipe you. I’m sorry, I got you dirty…”

As he mentioned “getting dirty,” his heart raced, intoxicated with happiness, and wished his lover could remain dirty like that forever; filled with his scent.

They moved to another pool to soak. Even though Xie Ning had just bathed, he needed to bathe again.

“The surprise is over!” He used a towel to dry himself, as he said nonchalantly. “There won’t be any more surprises in the future, so don’t even think about it!”

Echidna remained silent for a while. After a long time, he stuttered to Xie Ning, “Dorus, you…you’re so good to me. I love you so much…”

Perhaps the surprise was a bit too intense. Although Xie Ning lost, the reward he received from Echidna wasn’t just adequate but doubled. Soon, the underground palace was filled with scrolls and clay tablets brought from the human world. If it weren’t for Xie Ning calling a halt to it, Echidna wouldn’t have stopped.

As he stood in the makeshift study, Xie Ning flipped through the scrolls, feeling embarrassed. He looked up at his lover and chuckled, “Heh. I don’t understand.”

Fortunately, Echidna didn’t assume he was illiterate. On the contrary, he was delighted, as he picked up a scroll and said, “I’ll read it to you.”

So, Xie Ning lay within the coils of Echidna’s tail, and listened as the demon’s soothing voice recited stories from the scrolls.

In this era, people had developed the concept of drama during the rituals of the Bacchanalia, ¹ and had complex plays based on stories of contemporary or past heroes. Most of those dramas were tragedies, while comedies were rare.

“People say there are two jars in front of Zeus’s gate,” Echidna said. “One is gold, filled with happiness and joy. The other is iron, filled with suffering and misfortune. Zeus often takes a bit from each jar for a person’s fate. However, happiness and joy are as light as feathers and often fly away from the hands of the gods; while suffering and misfortune are heavy as boulders, that is never diminished.” ²

Xie Ning listened intently. He asked, “Is that true?”

“False, completely false,” Echidna sneered. “Human misfortune is because the Gods manipulate their past and future. However just as human lives are manipulated by the Gods, so too are the wills of the Gods influenced by the Fates. It is that inevitability that leads humans to write more tragedies than comedies. After all, joy is rare, and sorrow is a way of life.”

As he spoke, he remembered his own situation with Dorus. Would their ending be happy? Or would the fickle hand of Fate continue to torment them?

With a firm resolve, he slowly recited the tragedy. Echidna’s voice was hoarse and low, and eventually, Xie Ning turned his head and fell asleep in his arms.

With one eye on his lover’s face, the demon stopped speaking, gently put down the scroll, and began stroking Dorus’s hair.

In any case, within the happiness of love, Echidna secretly made a final determination. When the time came for them to part, never to see each other again, he would resolutely throw himself into death. He refused to let loneliness shamelessly entangle him for another moment.

Snuggled against his lover’s body, Echidna closed his eyes in contentment as he drifted off to sleep in that warm, quiet embrace.

.

“Wow. So many paintings…” Xie Ning sighed.

“So many paintings!” Echidna exclaimed in amazement.

Xie Ning stood on the carpet and looked at the piles of parchment spread out on the ground. Charcoal-black ink covered them in layers with few colored pages mixed in.

The number of paintings he had created during that period was probably more than that from his three years of college, and the parchment took up a lot of space. Besides the paintings of Echidna, he had also drawn many partial sketches of giants, diagrams of bronze bulls, piles of gold and silver treasures in the storeroom, and many Greek portraits recreated from memory. It was a diverse collection that took up the entire floor.

“So many. It’s taking up too much space…” Xie Ning said in distress. “We need to figure out a way to deal with them.”

Echidna was reluctant to dispose of his lover’s artwork and asked, “Why? There are plenty of empty rooms here. You can put them anywhere.”

“We’re underground. The parchment will get damp.” Xie Ning shook his head. “They need to be aired out regularly. Besides, what’s the use of keeping all these? They’ll just pile up and need someone to take care of them. It’s better to give them away to someone else.”

Having made a decision, he acted on it, as he rolled up his sleeves and jumped in. First he picked out all the paintings of Echidna, then kicked aside the sketches of the palace’s architecture. What was left was what he wanted to dispose of.

“That’s all of them!” Xie Ning nodded in satisfaction. “What’s-his-name, the King of Cilicia…does he accept junk? If he does, then give him all of these.”

Echidna grumbled discontentedly about Dorus referring to his artwork as “junk,” and showed great displeasure.

The next day, he summoned a priest of Cilicia to the entrance of the underground palace, where a giant conveyed his message.

“The master wants to reward you with something!” the giant said in a rough voice. He pushed a huge golden chest forward. “You should accept it gratefully then disappear!”

The priest was puzzled. He motioned for the four accompanying warriors to step forward and cautiously opened the heavy chest. He was afraid that it might contain calamity, that it would be filled with snakes and diseases intended to destroy the kingdom.

As they struggled to open it, the first thing that caught his eye was a sketch of a giant’s bare chest – a burly giant that was staring blankly as he scratched his armpit with an expression of complete vacancy…Even the drool at the corner of his mouth was vividly depicted, illustrating the artist’s exquisite skill.

The priest was baffled.