He and It Chapter 172: The Serpent of Pharisee (38)

This is the last chapter of this story, The Serpent of Pharisee, within He and It. The next story is the last one in the series and will be posted at a later date to let the editor catch up with editing. Thank you for understanding.

Chapter 172: The Serpent of Pharisee (38)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

After hearing what he said, Xie Ning was filled with heartache, both amused and moved. With mixed feelings, he could only put his arms around Echidna’s back and rub ears with him, as they didn’t speak for a long time.

In that way, they settled down in Sicily, and lived an almost peaceful life.

Xie Ning kept his promise to Prometheus and slowly recorded one god after another on the canvas, while on the days when he wasn’t painting, he would wander around the earth with Echidna. Since Echidna was a poisonous and rebellious demon, they rarely entered human city-states themselves, just mostly just stood on outlying hills and looked at the world from a distance.

There were snakes that like to move in the bright light, but there were no snake demons that like the bright light, and even though Phoebus Apollo had already served his 230 years of hard labor in the Abyss, Echidna still despised him with an everlasting hatred.

Many times, when Xie Ning wasn’t looking, he tried to sneak into the Golden Palace of the Sun God, and take advantage of his weakened power to teach him a fierce and unforgettable lesson, but all those plans for revenge failed. The reason was that half of the time, not long after Echidna left Sicily, in his heart would rise up a lover’s reluctance and longing, along with the feeling that this was nothing worth doing – why waste the time when he could be snuggling with Dorus to do beat up some no-name gods?

The other half of the time, it was his own sloppy disclosure of his whereabouts and intentions, which led him to be caught by Xie Ning who taught him a lesson. Anyway, he was never able to hide secrets in front of Dorus.

As time lost its meaning, and the rotation of night and day became even more pointless, Xie Ning finally realized that even Prometheus couldn’t accurately foretell the future of the changing destiny. He hadn’t yet painted all the Gods, only added the figure of Thetis next to Zeus’ throne when thousands of years later, Zeus, in one of his forgetful pleasures, already had married and coupled with the goddess of the ocean.

Once the King of the Gods remembered, he jumped up, shouted at the fickleness and heartlessness of fate, and wanted to curse Dorus, the Witness and Narrator, that god who held all the other Gods in check. However, it was imperative that he repeat the same trick he had used with the original goddess of wisdom who had given birth to Athena, ¹ and swallow Thetis, who had given birth to the future king of the gods, so that she and the offspring of that sin might never again see the light of day.

However, the Gods of the ocean united. They hid Thetis, and spewed their usurping ambitions into the sky. The 3,000 goddesses of the sea, and the 3,000 gods of the rivers, all cried out in thunderous storms and waves, “As the power of the world was transferred from the earth to the sky, so now shall the currents of the sea have dominion over the heavens, over the earth, and over all living things!”

The civil war of the Gods started with a bang. Xie Ning and Echidna, who were imitating squirrels and hibernating in their nest at that moment, were awakened by the violent noise. They rushed out and stared at the enormous battle that had turned the world upside down. Both were confused and looked at each other speechlessly.

“I think…I’m still awake,” Xie Ning muttered.

When he saw that a large wave was about to crash over their crumbling mountain, Echidna made a prompt decision, and slashed out his snake tail, and in one fell swoop, smashing the mountaintop into countless small fragments, which disappeared into the curl of the surging wave.

“…Okay I’m awake!” Xie Ning grabbed his hair, and immediately fell into a frantic state. “Why are we fighting so soon? Hey! Stop playing with the water! Quickly! Save people! Save people!”

Despite being an old married couple, Echidna had wrapped Xie Ning close to him, but when he heard him say that, he could only untie the tail that was wrapped around his human’s waist one by one, then jump into the sea water to rescue the drowning human kingdom.

At the same time, Prometheus arose from the Caucasus Mountains and, walking on the waves as if he were on level ground, lifted up the lands which had been afflicted above the waters as if they were shipwrecks, piece by piece ² . Upon seeing them, some gods who didn’t want to participate in the war and didn’t want to choose sides, finally had an excuse as they rushed to support the living beings on the land.

The war between the Gods continued for centuries. Chaos lazily opened one eye and Gaia turned over in her sleep. It wasn’t until mankind had grown accustomed to the days of wandering and thought that those past lives on the earth were distant and untrue tales, that fate was finally set in its proper course, and the desired result was achieved.

Zeus, the King of the Gods, fell, and the fifth generation of Gods, like the Old Gods of the past, began to withdraw from the stage of history. As the sixth King of the Gods, the son of Thetis established himself in the sea.

The only major god of the past who did not leave was Aphrodite, who, with her children, remained a powerful Goddess with a priesthood in her hands, since she had been rewarded by the promise of The Witness and Narrator. Even if the son of Thetis was overthrown by his own progeny, she would still be the eternal embodiment of love and beauty, and of all the Gods, the last to pass away. ³

After the dust settled, Prometheus paid a special visit to Xie Ning.

“Dorus,” the Titan laughed. “When do you intend to end this generation of theocracy? From what I know of you, you don’t really want the Gods to change from generation to generation. You still want to go home.”

Xie Ning also had an inkling that he was in a difficult position. The lifespan of the gods was endless. His power was limited to arranging a destined end for them. As for when that end would come, that was a variable that he couldn’t control. If the sixth god king was like Zeus, who ruled for tens of thousands of years, he really wouldn’t have the patience to watch the stagnant world go on.

“I don’t know,” Xie Ning said with a headache. “Do you have any good ideas?”

Prometheus smiled, even though Zeus had retired from his throne as ruler, exiled beyond the curtains of Chaos, he still wore the shackles on his hands as a symbol of the torture when he had once been bound to the Caucasus Mountains.

“I do have a solution, and if you trust me, you’ll hear me out.” He dipped his goblet into the wine and traced a line across the table, “You need not add your own likeness to the canvas, for you are an accidental visitor to this age. The Goddess of Fortune can only tell your future from the moment you became a god. You only need to add the likeness of the first female Echidna, for that Echidna died at the hands of the Hundred-Eyed Giant. The monsters after her were but the result of an aberration of Zeus’ prolongation of his kingship.”

What he was saying was that Xie Ning and Echidna were removed from the fate of “the gods are destined to end.”

Xie Ning was perplexed internally, but his expression didn’t change as he asked, “And then…?”

“And then, when the new gods of the sixth generation are also recorded, you can end your duties,” Prometheus whispered. “Because the original Gods have already made a decision. Then we should leave this world, and go to a new space and time to open up new territories.”

Xie Ning, “…Huh?”

Echidna spit out his forked tongue, and hissed, “You have finally made up your mind.”

Prometheus nodded. “No god-king will be able to escape being overthrown. All traces of the Gods here will gradually fade away, day by day, into unrealistic myths and delusions…Dorus, your arrival here confirmed the reality of that end. The world to come is the world of men! One day, they will stop relying on the power of prayer and supplication, and instead tap into the depths of their own potential to determine their own future. For the Gods have departed from this world, and the loom of destiny has been shattered by your earthquake.”

When he heard that, Xie Ning’s first reaction was skepticism.

“With you and the others gone, Echidna and I will be the only two gods left. Can you really leave this place behind?”

“It was your anger that ended the power of the Gods, I have nothing to complain about.” Prometheus shrugged easily. “However, for others…to do nothing, to fight for power year after year, to see themselves overthrown by their more powerful children; to be caught in such a sad cycle is no better than being a mortal with a short lifespan. It would be better to travel to a new time and place, and seek new destinies there.”

“And what of the sun and moon and the changing of the times?”

Prometheus said, “There will be new rules to replace the Gods’ maneuvers, and they will not be allowed to collapse and be destroyed so easily.”

Xie Ning thought for a long time, and finally he nodded his head and said, “Okay, I understand.”

At the moment when the gods left, Xie Ning closed the never-ending canvas and said goodbye to the Old Gods. He saw the evening sunlight glow like blood, while meteors descended from the sky to the ground, and then ascended from the earth to the firmament, and that continued for seven days and seven nights. The people marveled at the miracle. They left their homes and went out into the boundless wilderness to see the magnificent and miraculous scene.

Everyone thought that it was a sign of new splendor, that the greatest god of all should be born at that junction of heaven and earth. However, Xie Ning knew in his heart that instead it was actually the final scene before the curtain fell, a phenomenon that would never come again.

The Age of the Gods was over.

Many years passed after that and without the control of the gods, the sun, moon, and stars gradually turned into rational and dead celestial bodies that rotated according to rules, along with the seasons. Only the sea and the land were disorganized, as it was discovered that the gods no longer responded to any of man’s calls, so many believed that the years of despair had arrived, which led to fierce battles.

Without the divine system and having lost his purpose as a Witness and Narrator Xie Ning, still no longer a mere mortal, asked Echidna in great distress, “What is to be done now?”

Echidna slid out his forked tongue. He sincerely shared his lover’s worries, and honestly suggested, “I’ll go and eat them all?”

Xie Ning looked at him expressionlessly, and after a while, raised his hand and patted him on the head.

Time passed. Fortunately, the life span of ordinary people was limited, and there were too many things to remember in a lifetime. The topic of “whether the gods really exist,” after three to five hundred years, no one discussed it much anymore. Human beings grew up on the earth in a straight and savage way. Nations rose and fell, groups migrated and settled, people of different colors spoke different languages with different accents, and each had their own customs and preferences, hatred and grudges.

“How quickly people change!” As he looked into the middle of the divine mirror, Echidna stared in amazement. While they still lived in the underground palace in Sicily, every hundred years, he and Xie Ning regularly went out for a stroll, but in that duration of time it was already difficult to capture the efficiency of human changeability. “Look at them. They are as mutable as the clouds in the sky. Today they are dear friends, tomorrow they might be mortal enemies. A palace that was built by the efforts of a million men is destroyed in a single night. I know that from time immemorial it has been the case that the difficulty of creation is greater than that of destruction, and that the speed of destruction is far greater than that of creation, yet mankind has magnified this nature so exaggeratedly, that they have a marvelous wickedness buried in their goodness, as did the gods of Olympus.”

Xie Ning said, “So it is with men, and so it is with me.”

Echidna sniffed his scent. Too many years had passed like water, and Dorus was still the same young man who had floated gently deep into his heart on clouds and fragrant breezes, without a single change.

“You are what you are,” he said. “And you are not like anyone else.”

Gradually, the course of human history coincided with what Xie Ning remembered.

King Mu of Zhou traveled around the world on the eight most powerful horses in the world, and drank and sang with the Queen Mother of the West, Queen Maya of a distant country passed through the garden of Lumbini and gave birth to the king’s son, Siddhartha, who would be called Siddhartha Gautama by more and more people in the future; the son of the Virgin Mother forgave all the sins of mankind before he was nailed to the cross, and a few hundred years later the wise men of the East were draped in refined robes and singing, chanting about saints who would not die, and the thieves who would not stop; following that the Mongols attacked the country and the people of China. After the iron hooves of the Mongol army, the Black Death swept across the European continent, named after Princess Europa, and suffered the same misfortune and torment as she did… ⁴

The arts and humanities began to revive, and after the departure of the son of Thetis, the receding of the sea and the revealing of the land, mankind once again opened up the sea routes, and called it a great geographical discovery. In a small, dark attic, a middle-aged man, spread out a multitude of disheveled manuscripts, and looked up in a trance and with glowing eyes. ⁵

“The sun!” He shuddered and whispered, “The sun…is the center of the universe!”

At last there was something new under the sun, a long span of revolution and change, condensed into a singularity of infinite tension in the few short centuries of the human world’s development. A great outburst of science and axioms, like the majestic fireworks that enveloped the whole world that shone through that long night tens of thousands of years ago, and mirrored the first spark that ignited on earth.

Xie Ning was more asleep, and less active in the land of the common man. The gods no longer needed to return from space and time, and his Sicilian underground palace had become more like a space beyond common sense, which meant that he and Echidna lived in a home that no one could find.

In order not to affect history, to be the butterfly that flapped in the storm, Xie Ning could only fall asleep. Even when he woke briefly, he just leaned against Echidna in a daze, and glanced at the divine mirror to see what kind of drastic changes had happened in the world.

“They invented the steam-powered engine,” Echidna looked at the mirror in wonder. “And discovered how to use electricity!”

Xie Ning watched sleepily for a while, then, feeling more awake, he smiled faintly. “Let’s wait a little longer, then I can go home.”

With the arrival of the second millennium, “Xie Ning” was born.

The baby croaked and made a sobbing little cry. As he stood in the hospital corridor among the constant flow of people, Xie Ning looked on with joy and in shaken silence at the small hospital room; at that young family.

“Listen to me!” The old man with gray hair but still strong, body stood up. “Mizuki Ninghui belongs to Xie’s family…Well, Xie Ning! Xie Ning is a good name, let’s call him Xie Ning!”

“…That’s me,” Xie Ning choked. “This day is my birthday, and those are…That’s my family…”

Echidna wrapped his arms around him and kissed the corners of his eyes tenderly.

“So small!” The demon exclaimed, as he stared at the reddish, incredibly tender and fragile blob of life. His fingertips itched with wonder and the urge to touch. “Ah, you’re still tiny, but…”

Echidna looked at his lover, and then at the tiny baby, and suddenly, very foolishly, he whispered, “You are mine, and this even smaller Dorus, is he not also mine?”

Xie Ning, “…” Xie Ning cried and laughed. His tears began to ebb. He abruptly grabbed Echidna’s face and admonished, “No! I…He’s just Xie Ning now. He hasn’t gotten the name, Dorus name yet, so he belongs to my family, understand?”

After being lectured, Echidna hastily begged forgiveness, and stated that he understood.

As long as they willed it, ordinary people couldn’t see or touch them, so Xie Ning followed “himself,” bought a house near his home, and watched his family’s life with mixed feelings and nostalgia.

“You’re painting!” Echidna said happily as he slid out his forked tongue, “You’re still so young, and you’ve already started to draw! You’re really talented!”

Xie Ning leaned out of the window, looked at himself scribbling with a crayon on white paper as long ago memories surfaced. He couldn’t help but smile bitterly as he said, “You forget, I was just an ordinary child. There are so many geniuses in the human race, what is there to say about my talent?”

Echidna got upset and licked Xie Ning with his forked tongue. “I hate to hear you talk like that, Dorus. If you don’t have a talent for art, then it’s like saying a lion can’t hunt sheep, or an eagle can’t fly. What would Apollo, whom you defeated, say? What would the Gods, whom you banished from this world, say?”

Xie Ning, licked who was by him, cried out and ran, but before he could fly off into the sky, Echidna grabbed him by the waist like a kitten.

As the days passed, the young Xie Ning carried his backpack between school and home. Since he had a talent for drawing, he took over the blackboard on the back wall of the classroom and came home every Friday with his hands covered in colorful chalk dust.

“That’s my best friend from elementary school, and that’s my better friend from elementary school,” Xie Ning squatted on a cloud, while Echidna licked and nibbled on his ear. “That one, that one, and that one…they were all the bear kids that I hated the most in elementary school…”

Seeing several little fat little boys joining hands to snatch little Xie Ning’s books and run around the classroom, Echidna was furious, and was about to rush down. If it weren’t for Xie Ning’s timely grab, his home city would have been wiped off the map.

“Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh!” He hurriedly sat down in the snake demon’s arms, as he physically stopped the other party. “Don’t be impulsive! If the timeline of this dimension shifts, I’ll disappear!”

Once he thought of the serious consequences, Echidna could only coil up in a ball, with Xie Ning wrapped tightly inside, while he hissed in displeasure.

In junior high school, Xie Ning enrolled in classes to learn how to draw, and saw more and more of his own kind. As well as those who were even better than him and his peers. The blow to his ego, coupled with the awakening of his sexuality during puberty, slowly made him an introvert, and the germ of an inferiority complex was planted in his heart. Xie Ning shrugged and sighed, “Look. How can you blame me?”

“Not you,” Echidna muttered. “Blame me, Dorus. If I could have met you earlier, I would have praised you with all my heart and made you the supreme treasure of my heart. Then you would not have demeaned yourself as not being the best person in the world.”

Xie Ning laughed and blushed as he leaned into Echidna’s arms, even after hearing these love words for more years than he could count.

They followed the young, naive Xie Ning, untouched by storms and setbacks, all the way to the moment he left for college.

“Look!” Xie Ning pounded on Echidna’s waist. “That’s the…What was she called, He…He Muyao…. He Muyao! Little genius, He Muyao. Yes, that’s her. She’s the most awesome freshman of our class. The professor couldn’t wait to recognize her as his god-granddaughter.”

Echidna looked at her drawings, and wondered, “She isn’t as good as you are, so where is the genius?”

Xie Ning was dumbfounded, he’d got Gaia’s eyes, and after so many experiences, and painting so many gods…forget He Muyao, which of the ancient or modern painters could compare to him? He said softly, “Of course she is not as good as I am now, but at that age, I could never compare with her.”

The young Xie Ning, carrying a drawing board, wandered unhappily around the campus. He looked at himself in a daze, and felt as if it was a lifetime ago, the troubles, sufferings and worries of his university days. Compared to what he had experienced since then, they were as light and clear as the morning mist; almost as if they could be dispersed by a breath of air.

The day before going to the Ancient Greek Art Exhibition, the young Xie Ning and his roommate from Shandong took a walk at night, while Xie Ning and Echidna followed the above in the sky, and heard their conversation.

“It’s coming tomorrow. It’s so soon,” Xie Ning said. “Time…It seems to pass in a flash.”

“Don’t be afraid, Dorus,” Echidna said, clinging to him. “You have me and therefore are not alone.”

The next day, they followed him to a crowded art exhibition. Neither Xie Ning nor Echidna had bothered to track down the golden book all these years, but there it was, glowing gold, and inscribed with…the mysterious scratches of Echidna’s drawings.

From outside the crowd, Xie Ning glanced at it, and was delighted.

“Ready?” he asked nervously. He took a deep breath as he watched push his way through the crowd towards the bathroom.

“You’ve been preparing for this moment for years,” Echidna whispered. “You go, Dorus.”

He followed the young Xie Ning, then he stepped into the bathroom and saw the white door gently closing.

After an unknown amount of time, or perhaps a moment longer than a lifetime, Xie Ning pulled the door open and saw that it was empty. There was no sign of anyone. He reached out his hand, lifted the backpack off the floor, and took out the cell phone plugged into the side. On the search bar of the browser still flickered the entry of “Ancient Greek Golden Books.”

“Home.” Xie Ning put his bag on and let out a long breath. “I’ve been away for too long. It’s time to go home.”

Seeing his love interest, hooded, emerge from the door. Echidna couldn’t help but crouch by his ear, hiss and whisper intimately, “So now, are we going to get our marriage license?”

“We’ll have to wait at least until my family recognizes you.” Xie Ning scratched his head, still feeling a sense of unreality. “I’ll go back and talk to them about it. In a few days, when you’ve changed into your human form, I’ll tell my parents that you’re my boyfriend…”

“But I’m supposed to be your ‘husband,’ Dorus!”

“Are you trying to scare my parents to death? Saying I went to an exhibition, dyed my hair gray, and married a man I don’t even know?”

“Ah! I don’t care! We’ve been partners for tens of thousands of years. How can I stand to have my status plummet? It’s like going from the clouds to the underworld!”

“Oh, you…”

As their footsteps receded, the sound of squabbling and arguing went from loud to quiet, from something to nothing.

Pedestrians on the fairgrounds walked quickly, and the early spring sunlight was warm but not harsh as it shone on people’s smiling faces. The most hopeful season of the year had come.