He and It Chapter 67: Dark Sky Sanctuary (2)

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Chapter 67: Dark Sky Sanctuary (2)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

Yu Mengzhou’s mind returned slowly. He felt pain all over his body, as if he had been run over by a heavy object.

“Hiss…” He had barely managed to move his fingers, when he heard a small giggle not far away, like a sharp wind, that scraped unpleasantly against his eardrums.

Where am I? Where have I fallen?

It was hot, as if his skin were on fire, and the smell of rotten eggs lingered in his nose. The burning sensation was palpitating, so much so that his nostrils and respiratory passages felt like they were ablaze…

He slowly opened his eyes, and the first thing that caught his eye was a hot, fiery red.

Yardang Landscape? ¹

Yu Mengzhou looked up in confusion. The orange-red wilderness was boundless. It spread all the way to the horizon. In the distance, volcanoes stood in a cluster, constantly spewing thick smoke into the gray-black dome of the sky, while lava flowed all over the mountains. Apart from some gnarled and twisted black trees that were like long snakes, there was only the gigantic skeleton of an unknown animal, which protruded out of the sand and rock.

He was frozen.

Yu Mengzhou, a staunch atheist and materialist, was dried in the wind for the first time and turned into a broken statue. He opened his mouth and slapped his face.

The slap in the face hurt.

The force was strong enough that Yu Mengzhou’s head buzzed from his own slap. He looked left and right in a trance, but it was still the same bizarre and polarizing scene, unchanged at all.

How can this be? I haven’t settled the final payment for the horse farm yet! What did I do wrong? How could…? Right, that pit, I fell down that pit, can I still climb up there?

I’m only twenty-four years old, how can I be struck by heaven and lightning, and end up in hell?

Yu Mengzhou struggled to climb up. Thanks to his little motorcycle, which successfully acted as a cushion for him when he landed on the ground, Yu Mengzhou’s body was miraculously not seriously injured, but the little motorcycle didn’t have such good luck. It fell apart and became a pile of scrap metal.

Yu Mengzhou wanted to cry, he mourned for a moment and intended to go to find his toolbox.

Poverty is not a lie, but eating things can not be bad. His hoof-trimming knife set was genuine German and good. He spent a lot of money to get them since they were sturdy and easy to use. Every night before going to bed, Yu Mengzhou religiously touched the toolbox’s aluminum-plastic shell and thanked it for being a set of excellent tools.

If the toolbox were to break, he would have to sit on the ground and cry…

Yu Mengzhou anxiously looked around. He turned his head and froze.

There was a group of gray and black things about the height of a human calf, with unevenly distributed eyes, that were looking at him curiously, and he didn’t know how long they had been watching him.

Yu Mengzhou’s heart shuddered. The hot wind lingered against his skin, but in that moment, his back hairs stood up and his entire body cooled.

It was the end. It was really the eighteenth layer of hell, and that was a little devil, ah!

It would be difficult to use apt words to describe the group of things. Their main body resembled a bulging ball with no hair and no features, only numerous irregular orange eyeballs, as well as a large mouth covered with sharp teeth. There were also two thin hanging arms with long sharp claws, and two thin legs connected to large abnormally paws.

If Yu Mengzhou was allowed, he would have commented–

“I’m convinced that these are a bunch of nightmare versions of Pokemon,” Yu Mengzhou muttered.

What was even more desperate for him was that his toolbox was scattered around not far from the group of imps. The pins of the box had fallen open, and the tools in it were scattered and smashed all over the place. It had attracted seven or eight imps who had gone to look at it curiously, and they tapped the alloy table with their sharp nails from time to time.

The imps smacked their lips and stared at Yu Mengzhou.

“…Human.”

Their pronunciation style was very complicated. Countless broken syllables merged together, pieced into a language that Yu Mengzhou had never heard before, but somehow was able to clearly understand their meaning.

“Awake.”

Uh-huh, yeah, I’m awake, where’s this?

“Good…Yummy.”

Yu Mengzhou stiffened.

No, I’m not delicious!

Before he could react, the first imp jumped up high, opened its sharp yellow teeth, and lunged at him.

Yu Mengzhou subconsciously raised his hand to block, but he underestimated the sharpness of the demon’s claws and teeth. The imp’s claws were like a hot knife breaking through butter, as it quickly cut three bloody slashes on his arm. Blood beads scattered. He sucked in a mouthful of air and struck out with his fist. The evil little thing hit the ground hard. The little demon screamed, turned into a burning black fire, then gradually burned out.

Yu Mengzhou was strong. When he was a child, the village grannies looked at him and were all pleased that he was strong enough to go to the city to move bricks and to live.

However, Yu Mengzhou was very competitive. He didn’t go to move bricks, he went to read at a serious school. By virtue of his love for horses and his affinity for them, he went on to become a farrier.

At that moment, he completely let himself go, no matter what. He rushed over to the toolbox, kicked away the imps and fished out the hoof trimmer. He used it as a self-defense tool and swung it up against the small hunters who had gradually gathered around him.

His hoof clippers were quite heavy, about forty centimeters in length, and he could have knocked out a crazy boar in the countryside if he really put his mind to it. Yu Mengzhou threatened, “Don’t come any closer, I’m telling you! Not only am I not good to eat, but I’m also very difficult to deal with!”

“Human understands!”

“He understands us!”

“How does he understand?”

“Whatever! One piece at a time, split him up!”

The imps were chattering, their mouths wide open in long, narrow smiles, like they were grinning fiercely. Yu Mengzhou had only heard of how the older generation dealt with hungry hyenas. The first priority was to find a wall or a tree and not to expose your back to them, but this ghostly land was flat. Where could he find a place to hide?

The only thing Yu Mengzhou could do was to keep circling around, vigilantly maneuvering with them. He knew in his heart that he couldn’t last long. He’d worked hard on the horse farm all day, and relied on a few Snickers and a few bottles of mineral water to hold out. For cooked food, he only ate an early meal of doughnuts and soybean milk. If he could not think of a way to save himself, he really would be buried…in the mouth of something.

Attack was the best defense! Yu Mengzhou made up his mind, as the saying goes. A force of ten, I’m this force. Even in the chaotic dance of a king’s fists, they also can be danced to death. Not to mention these small things…

He drummed up enough courage to bravely poke the hornet’s nest, as he waved the hoof cutters, and then charged at them a little.

A miracle happened! In his hands, the hoof cutters were like some kind of holy relic’s exorcism. All the imps that touched them flew away in a burst of light without even having time to scream.

The imps were dumbfounded, while Yu Mengzhou was overjoyed.

Although I don’t know how this works, I have indeed been saved!

The roles of prey and hunter were instantly reversed. Yu Mengzhou held the hoof cutters in one hand and a hoof file in the other, as he chased after the evil forces and killed them all over the place. With the hoof cutting tool, he turned into a Van Helsing style demon hunter. Once the immediate threat was completely eliminated, he sat on the ground, sweaty, trembling and out of breath. 

“Good. Good. At least I’m here and not without defense…” As soon as Yu Mengzhou had calmed himself, he packed up his toolbox. “Now the ultimate goal is to find a way to get home. The primary goal is to find something to eat and drink…”

Luckily, the toolbox wasn’t completely broken. Yu Mengzhou cherished his treasures. After he thought it over, he still drew out a single bladed hoof knife and put it into his pocket as a weapon.

As he carried the box, he struggled to trek on the crimson plains. He’d been scratched by the imp, and by this time it had started to blacken. Yu Mengzhou endured the pain, squeezed the black blood a few times, pulled out the chlortetracycline ointment, and coated the wound with a layer. Anyway, if a horse could use it, people could pretty much use it as well.

Food, water, food, water…Maybe this ghost land was really an unforgiving hell. Yu Mengzhou walked a long way but didn’t find anything to put in his mouth, while the sulfur-flavored, smoky wind flowed over the plain and constantly took away moisture from his body and left behind air-dried salt stains.

He kept swallowing, only to feel the base of his tongue was swelling up. If it wasn’t for the fact that ointments, tinctures of iodine, and purple drops were all bad for the mouth, he would have eaten all the medicines he brought with him as snacks.

Just when Yu Mengzhou was about to despair, he suddenly heard something in the distance.

However, instead of “hearing”, it was actually “feeling.” A magnificent surging and hissing, just like you would only hear in stories. It wasn’t just the presence of the dragon roar. Under his feet was a vibration and trembling in the earth which shocked into the sky swarms of flying demons.

Yu Mengzhou hurriedly ran for a while, looked for a huge skeleton as a cover, then carefully probed and peeped.

At the front of the plains, there was a concave basin, which at that moment had been reduced to a bloody battlefield. Even if everything turned into ashes, Yu Mengzhou could recognize what was happening. It was a group of huge horses that were rebelling against their riders.

“Treacherous!” The horseback riders roared angrily like thunder. They wore strange, weird, heavy armor, and held huge axes and bloody swords as they frantically attacked the mounts underneath them. “All of you are treacherous slaves!”

Yu Mengzhou gripped the bone wall he was using as a momentary shelter, while he stared at the scene of magical failure with rounded eyes.

“That’s because we are used to you causing pain, Master!” The horses let out violent laughs. Their voices echoed like swords in the mountains, a symbol of killing, blood and fire. “Many days and nights have passed. We have helped you fulfill your ambitions of conquest, and the means you used to suppress us have become the gentlest of caresses. Treachery?”

The horses scoffed, then their voices gathered into a world-shaking torrent, “-No! It is we who have abandoned you. The weak and useless!”

The riders cried out. They tried to overwhelm their once tamed prey, but they failed. The horses laughed maniacally. They leapt in the air, tore them apart with hooves, horns, and sharp fangs, as they turned their former masters’ anger into fear, and their roars into screams. They reduced them to puddles of useless flesh and blood, and their armor to crackling flames.

Yu Mengzhou forgot to breathe. Just a moment ago, his heart was in his throat. Run, ah! That unlucky group. Since the battle can’t be won, then why not run away?

However when the fight was over, he realized the reason for that. Those demon knights’ armor was all firmly nailed to the backs of the horses. So even if they died in the war of devouring the Lord, their bodies would still stubbornly hang on the horses and refuse to fall to the ground.

Scary.

His mind went blank.

There was no mistaking that deep pit. It was the entrance to hell.

After they recovered their bodily freedom, the horses seemed to become comfortable. They wandered slowly in the basin, and helped each other as they pulled off the broken armor nailed to their backs. They actually looked quite friendly…No shit! There were bloody limbs all over the ground! This was a weird form of camaraderie! I’m just a human, how am I supposed to live in hell?

Yu Mengzhou shouted helplessly in his heart, unable to cry. He sighed tiredly, and pressed his forehead against the edge of the bone wall. He didn’t know what else he could do.

He suddenly heard a familiar sound beside him.

Yu Mengzhou instantly froze in place.

–That was a horse snorting.

“A human,” The thing hissed. It was spectral, but at the same time, had the rich smell of blood that only then flowed into his nose. “Rare. Really rare.”

As he held the toolbox, Yu Mengzhou jumped up wildly, and pressed his back flat against the skeleton, while he gasped heavily in horror. His heartbeat paused for a moment, and his palms were sweating in a matter of seconds, which caused him to barely be able to grip the hilt of his hoof knife.

The largest breed of horse in the world was the Shire, a harness horse that could exceed two meters in height and weigh more than a ton. ² In his not-so-long career, he had been lucky enough to come into contact with a Shire horse once, and even with Heaven’s affinity for horses, Yu Mengzhou, couldn’t withstand the gentle arching of a pampered Shire horse – an arching that was like being rubbed up against a heavy wall.

Now, he was looking at this monster, it was like comparing a Shire horse to a pony.

The demonic warhorse was larger than a full-grown Shire horse, with eyes that blazed, a mane that flowed like crimson flames, and horns that didn’t look like bone, but like some kind of blackened metal. Its tail wasn’t hair, but a strand of twisted live snakes. Its hooves were studded and pierced with long copper thorns, and it’s heavy bronze saddle blanket was made of copper rings and steel nails driven into the flesh and sewn onto the horse.

When he looked at it, Yu Mengzhou didn’t know whether to be afraid or whether to be heartbroken.

“I…I am human.” Yu Mengzhou’s lips quirked involuntarily. “I’m a f…farrier! You see? I have my tools.”

The demon horse’s eyes changed for a split second.

“Oh, you’re a farrier,” it chewed on the appellation softly, its body flames crackling. “So, you’re still a craftsman?”

Yu Mengzhou didn’t know if the “craftsman” in its mouth was the same thing as a craftsman in his own cognition. He didn’t dare to say yes or no, but just cautiously replied, “I…Would you like your hooves trimmed? I could…I could help you with those…Get it, I mean, clean it up.”

“Sure,” the demon horse said lightly. “Why not? Come with me, and you can help my herd. Also, clean up some of the blood, don’t you think?”

Yu Mengzhou froze.

Was it so easy to say yes? No way…

“Come on,” the demon horse urged him excitedly. “What are you waiting for? Come with me.”