He and It Chapter 170: The Serpent of Pharisee (36)

Chapter 170: The Serpent of Pharisee (36)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

As spring and winter passed, Xie Ning traveled through mountains and sea.

He lived a frugal life with simple clothes and simple meals. Because he was a god, an eternal being who didn’t need to eat or sleep, Xie Ning seldom actively pursued material pleasures. He usually chose to walk in the countryside for several days and nights, and when he felt like stopping, he knocked on doors of farmers’ houses and asked them if they could take him in for the night. In the early morning light of the next day, he would put a few drachmas on the grassy pillow and leave quietly, as if he was an illusion accompanied by fog.

In the early days, most of Xie Ning’s money came from Xanthippe’s gift. He wasn’t a stingy person. If he encountered an old man living alone, poor farmers or slaves on the road he would easily open his hand. After scattering all his money, Xie Ning thought it over, then every time he passed by a prosperous city-state, he would set up an easel in a square, then write down the amount of money he needed to raise next to it, and treat himself as a craftsman and sell paintings.

At first, only those attracted by Xie Ning’s appearance came over. The immaculate radiance of being an Immortal One shrouded his face, and made him seem out of place in the hustle and bustle of the crowd. However, by the time he finished his first or second painting, his booth was often surrounded by people three layers deep. Lords marveled, children stood on tiptoes, rich men clutched bags of money in their sweaty palms, and the slaves of the powerful shouted to clear the way…

However, whenever he reached the amount he’d designated, Xie Ning would silently stand up, put away his easel, gather the scattered coins, then leave a few for the children around to buy candies. He’d put on his cloak again, and like a drop of water blending into the rain, he would walk into the crowd, and no one could find him again, even if they were watching his every move and while pleading with him to paint more.

He traveled like that for many years, through remote mountains, deserts and valleys. He did encounter robbers and outlaws who specialized in attacking travelers for a living, but the King of the God’s oath was permanent. The thieves couldn’t even touch the corner of his clothes, they could only watch as Xie Ning walked slowly away.

However, long before Zeus’s pledge had a chance to flex its muscles, he had been surrounded by a number of spontaneous bodyguards – demonic monsters under Echidna’s command, nightmares that lurked in the shadows and scoured the landscape for any threat. Many times, bandits with bows and arrows that would ambush passersby from afar no sooner had their fingers pressed the bowstring than a bloody maw from out of nowhere devoured them without even spitting on their armor.

Xie Ning painted the gods of mountains and forests, the gods of water, the gods of emotions, and the gods that represent certain states of being. He spent eleven years traveling around the world, and in the twelfth year, he returned to Iolcus, the kingdom that had once taken him in and then banished him.

The old king was still alive. The descendants of gods always live much longer than normal people. He didn’t know what had happened that day, nor that Palaemon, at his behest and under the influence of the Gods, had given Xie Ning poisoned wine that would kill him, the beginning of a domino run that would drive the Gods to their end.

All he knew was that the young hero, whom he regarded as his son, had died in a catastrophe that swept through everything, and that his soul had risen to the sky after his death and become an immortal constellation, while the young man that he had been thinking about was also nowhere to be found. In his mind, Dorus must have died as well, or else how could he have aroused Echidna’s wrath?

Among the old king’s children, Antheia had become a woman and a mother. Since there were not many children left in the royal family, her parents hadn’t wanted her to marry abroad, so they recruited a husband, so that she could continue to live the life of a princess in her own country.

That evening, under a sunset like blood, two young girls surrounded Antheia’s knee as they laughed and played. She smiled as she watched the girls, but suddenly had a moment of foresight. In front of her was a clear scene. A lone traveler trekking from the horizon, his cloak pulled up so that no one could see his appearance, however he was bathed in a sacred light; it was clear that the other party was a god.

The power of prophecy that Apollo had bestowed upon her had rarely manifested itself as the years passed, so now Antheia couldn’t help but blush and jump up from her seat.

Suddenly she was jolted, as if she’d been hit with a bolt of lightning in the night, she recognized the man who had walked through the vision, or rather, the god.

He was her family’s obsession, for she had unjustly sent away a man who had been a benefactor to the nation. Her father had been so despondent that he had sent Palaemon to rescue the boy who had fallen into the clutches of the Demon God, and this had led to the hero’s destruction.

Dorus, it was Dorus.

The princess was in a panic. After escorting Dorus on board the ship to Cilicia, then hearing the rumor that he was loved by Echidna, she, like a man with a sword hanging over his head ¹ , thought with anxiety of the many ways in which she could feel his revenge. The young man might perhaps incite Echidna from his pillow to have the monsters of the Demon God exterminate the people of Iolcus. Or, perhaps, he would have Echidna infect the nation with an even more cruel plague. However the vengeance she had worried over never came.

Now, just when she thought that all was well, and that the stone in her heart could be put down at last, he came, and he came as a god, a being of unrivaled power.

Antheia jumped up in fear. She ignored her panicked maids of honor and ordered her attendants to prepare a chariot. She ran out, disheveled, of the palace, through the streets, the squares, the city, the barracks, and past other many buildings until she came to the city walls, where, under the eyes of the people who were surprised and puzzled, she saw the god who was approaching with the twilight.

After so many years, youths grew into men, men became frail old men, and then old men left the mortal world to live in the land of bliss, however he was still the same as when she first saw him: carrying a drawing board, slender and thin, with not a trace of old age or fatigue in his eyes, except for the fact that…

As he stood in the midst of a surging crowd, Antheia stared at him in bewilderment.

…Except for his gray hair, which was no longer dark and soft as it had been.

How strange it was. He was young and beautiful. His face radiated the light of a god, but the color of his hair…why did it look like that of a dying old man whose heart and soul had run out?

In fact, Xie Ning has long noticed Antheia. Given the princess’ behavior, if it had still been the early years, maybe he would have complained, but by this time, now he could look back on what Antheia did to him as an insignificant stone on the road of his journey.

He took off his cloak, and nodded brusquely to the princess, as if he had met an acquaintance he didn’t know very well.

Antheia hadn’t expected him to be so gentle. She froze, and then she couldn’t help but blurt out, “Thy, thy hair…”

Xie Ning paused, and remembered the day when he looked into a stream and first noticed a strand of white hair on his head. He was also dumbfounded for half a day.

He smiled a little and replied calmly, “Painting requires a lot of energy.”

It was true. If he had been a mortal, if he hadn’t been baptized with eternal life, he would have died at the first sight of Chaos, and never have managed to put pen to paper. Even though he had become a god, it wasn’t easy for him to depict all the gods of the world, and to describe it as a “blood-soaked” endeavor would be an understatement.

With those simple words, Xie Ning didn’t bother saying any more. He walked past the princess and looked around at the changes in the city over the years.

Antheia found it hard to believe that he had let her and Iolcus go free so easily, as she looked at the god’s back in shock, her hair tangled and robe mussed, but didn’t dare to speak up and ask questions.

Iolcus had changed a lot. Its temple had become more magnificent, and the priests who walked inside were not the ones he had known. Xie Ning walked to an inn and booked a room.

He originally had no intention of meeting the royal family of Iolcus, but there were Antheia’s prophetic powers. He came here just to find an explanation for his long journey.

Xie Ning stayed at the inn for five days, occasionally taking up his brush, and before he left, he piled up all the belongings that he had saved over the years in the temple that had taken him in, and left a short letter naming them as a gift to be returned to the old King Aeson.

Having done that, he resumed his journey and embarked on a ship to Cilicia.

I have been too far from home for too long, he thought, it’s time to go home.

Ten years had passed. Xie Ning had left alone and he returned alone. The plains of Arima looked just as they had always been, except that over the ruins of the underground palace, luxurious vegetation had grown.

Tangled vines, abundant moss…Gaia briefly appeared there once, and she brought vitality which completely subsumed the long years of Echidna’s poison.

Xie Ning put down his light traveling bag, and thought, That’s good. Saves me the trouble of having to sit on the ground without even a roof over my head.

He set about building, as he tried to cobble together a habitable house from the ruins. Xie Ning had long become familiar with that kind of work. After all, when torment and longing drive a man mad, he has to do something to divert his attention from the terrible pain and loneliness.

He commanded the thick vines to weave themselves together to form a lush green roof, used half broken pillars as load-bearing walls, and smooth thick moss as flooring. Xie Ning spent several days doing that, then he went deeper into the wreckage of the palace. After half a day of searching with Gaia’s eyes, he found a few pieces of furniture that were still usable. He used the vines to drag them up, cleaned them of dust and dirt, patched up the broken parts, and placed them in his small space.

Now he had a table, a chair, a stand, and a stone pool that could hold water.

What about a bed? Xie Ning mulled it over for a while, and proceeded to make a hammock out of vines. He then removed all the branches, leaves and uneven knots on the vines, so that it would be a smooth bed that could be used for sleeping.

For the next few years, Xie Ning lived like a hermit.

The plains were bare, but when sleeping in a hammock, he could hear a lot of small, trivial, and exuberant sounds. The downy stems of the moss rustled against each other; the branches of the vines grew in secret, making a sound similar to the swelling of a grain of wheat; distant birds chattered in the forest. Insects didn’t live in the surrounding area, he could only go to the edge of the plains and find a nest of earthworms in some overturned soil from time to time, while after every rain, the soil made a sound that was sticky and wet.

He didn’t feel the silence, only the loneliness.

Of course, the life of a hermit could be fun. Whenever it rained or snowed, he used the stone pond to collect rain and snow. In those years, the rain and snow were all very clean, so when the rain dripped and the snowflakes were saved into a pool, Xie Ning used the pine needles he found, boiled them with water for tea, added a little bit of honey, and then watched through the doorway of his hut, enjoying the rain and snow, while he drank his steaming pine needle tea.

This was certainly a pleasure, but a very bitter one. Sometimes, Xie Ning wondered, if Echidna knew about it, would that fool be heartbroken?

However, when he thought that, he would inevitably get angry, and scold him in his heart: Heartache comes from heartache. Pain will do you good. Who let you be so stupid and run straight into other people’s traps?

However, the scolding never lasted very long because it was always pushed aside as his eyes wanted to fill with tears. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to cry, Xie Ning went to his paper to draw a picture of Echidna. He drew that guy too frequently, so that whenever he moved his pen, or lifted his hand, the drawing slipped out of control and drew itself incredibly fast.

It was an unspoken communication between them, and he knew that Echidna could sense him as long as he drew.

Autumn arrived, summer left, and in the spring of the fifteenth year, Xie Ning was taking a nap on his bed.

He slept more and more, and in the lazy spring, he could not muster much energy. However, for a moment, the sounds he was accustomed to hearing in his ears gradually disappeared. The birds went dead silent, the warm winds stopped, the grass and trees stagnated, and in their place, there was another familiar yet unfamiliar sound, which he had missed for twenty years.

–Scales gently collided and wandered. They dragged in a crisp sound of gold and stone on the ground.

Xie Ning slowly opened his eyes, and he saw Echidna, his curly black hair longer, his golden tattoos glowing and complex, and a pair of even more startling, trembling golden eyes.

“You came,” Xie Ning slurred. “In a dream.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d dreamed of Echidna and he didn’t think it would be the last.

“Dorus, your hair…” he heard the other’s shivering voice. “What’s wrong with you? What have they done to you…”

Xie Ning, sleepy-eyed, smiled and said, “You’ve asked me countless times. Why do you still want to ask?”

At that moment, the Demon God cried out, howling so loudly that it shook the sky and the earth and the four fields.

“It’s me! It’s me! I am back!” Echidna rushed over. His snake tail overturned the river, and lifted Xie Ning’s roof. He held him in his arms and desperately kissed Xie Ning’s eyelids, lips, and cheeks. His body carried an Abyssal aura of death. “This is not a dream, Dorus!”

Xie Ning’s eyes widened, he wanted to look into the sky, however his vision was completely filled by the dark snake hair. He couldn’t see a single ray of light from the outside world.

“You…You’re back?” Echidna held him so tightly that Xie Ning couldn’t even stretch his arms out from his embrace. “What…? But, it’s not time yet…”

For a moment, he lost all sense of reality. He just mumbled blankly, “You…you knocked half of my house away…”

Echidna’s tears flowed like rain. He held Xie Ning’s face, unable to say another word, just kissed him deeply, almost desperately, as if he wanted to prolong that hot kiss to the end of time.

Xie Ning’s eyes were sparking. His body and soul were hot like they’d been set on fire, but who cared? His brain was still not functioning, while his body had already reacted and insisted on kissing him back. They were like twin vines, entangled with each other so tightly like they could wrap around each other and climb up to the sky.

It was only when his mind was swollen with confusion that Echidna pressed his forehead against his, barely separating himself from him.

“… It’s me,” Echidna said hoarsely. “I…I was waiting for you in Tartarus, when the gates opened. The Abyss told me that my servitude was over, and that I could leave immediately. I don’t know why, but I was in no mood to find out, only to leave; the sooner I could meet you. I quickly ran out of there. I had to go around three black walls and three bronze walls…I was in such a hurry…I just remember I had to go on, day and night, without stopping for a moment. Thus I crossed the River of Fire and came to the Underworld of Hades…”

He rambled on and on, as if he were trying to get enough details to convince Xie Ning that he wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating.

“… Once in the Underworld, I was afraid that you would be alone in the most blessed land, and I was also afraid that you had waited for me for a long time, so when I saw the gatekeeper, Cerberus, I ordered him to get out of the way at once, but he disobeyed my order. I was so angry that I was about to tear off all three of its heads, when Hades suddenly appeared at the door, and, with a strange look on his face, he said to me, ‘Dorus, the Narrator and Witness, has become a god. Go to him in the world of mortals and find him, for he is waiting for you on the plains of Arima. Ah, how perplexed I am in my heart, but only unwilling to waste time, for I have tarried long in vain at the gates of Hades.’’’

As he stared into Xie Ning’s eyes, and saw the gray hairs falling around his cheeks, Echidna’s heart clenched with pain, and, with tears in his eyes, he asked, “Dorus, what have they done to you? How can you be a god when you live here, building a house on top of a collapsed palace, and living like a wandering slave? Where are your believers? Where are your servants? You’re wearing such coarse robes, your eyes are dry and your hair as white as snow…You’ll let me die again! How have you lived each day since I left?”

Xie Ning stared at him blankly, as if he was still digesting his words in his head. After a long time, like a dam opening its floodgates, he suddenly burst into tears with a loud “wow.”

“I…I’m not okay!” he yelled suddenly. “I’m not well! I’m rotten! I…I don’t…You…”

Ah, it was back to the familiar pattern of their relationship. Echidna scrambled self-consciously to pick him up and hold him close to his chest, as he let Xie Ning cling to him like a little koala.

Xie Ning cried incoherently for half a day before he could organize his broken language as he complained in a sobbing voice, “You, you were tricked! You were tricked by Olympus! They never intended to let you come out from Tartarus! As soon as you left, they gave me the Wine of the Gods, and made me immortal. I went to them to reason, to argue, but they still laughed at me…didn’t take me seriously…”

The more he talked, the angrier he got and the more he remembered. Xie Ning’s eyes swelled up. He was panting and breathing heavily, he couldn’t go on any longer, so he sat up, pushed open Echidna’s arms, and tore at the clothes he was wearing with a fury.

“No more! Too much is too much!” Xie Ning said with tears still in his eyes, as he angrily threw the shredded robe on the ground. “Now do it!”

Echidna, “Uh-huh…Huh?”

Echidna, “Oh!”

The fury had just been mobilized, when it was interrupted by Dorus’s command. Echidna was very obedient, and followed his mate’s orders with great relish. He squeezed the teenager’s waist lovingly, and followed his partner’s instructions to the letter, not only achieving his goal the first time, but the second, third…even the fifth and sixth exceeded the standard and did so with tenderness.