Hell

“In the black abyss, souls fall with the posture of conquerors,

I clearly see those punished for their lust—

Their skeletons wallowing in decayed pleasures,

While loathsome maggots pitilessly gnaw at them.

Oh! You who can witness such misery without trembling,

See how they bleed, beneath the talons of a false love,

In hypocritical joys and frivolous oaths,

Yet still able to smile, wrapped in light shrouds.

Their eyes are pale wells, trembling with remnants of the past,

Their lips, now gone, allow their souls to escape.

They are famished and parched, yet dare not bring their lips to that chalice—

Where their blood is about to run dry.

Yet they continue to walk, with hesitant steps,

Sliding toward the edge of the cliffs of that bottomless abyss.” (From Baudelaire’s 《The Martyr》)

If the secular world is a place of cacophony and the astral realm is a place of silence, then this place is one of endless clamor and madness. Li Yue pinched the bridge of her nose; she found it difficult to even look at this place. The last time she had come here, it had been a landscape of lush green and pale white; now, only endless pitch-black and a color as revolting as bloodstains remained.

“After the World Tree fell, this place became Hell.” Li Yue stood upon a small boat, controlling it as it drifted toward an unknown shore. She did not know where the homeland in her memories lay; she was simply trying her best to approach it.

“Hell... Polluted souls have accumulated here for thousands upon thousands of years, merging with the remnants of its power to form this wasteland.” Li Yue looked around, momentarily speechless.

“It seems that after the catastrophe of those years... there were likely no survivors among the humans living in the Holy City.” Li Yue let out a shallow sigh. She looked up at the pitch-black yet seemingly burning sky, where a “sun” that was nothing more than a ring of light hung. The entire world here was illuminated by it—or rather, it had ignited the black sky. The light carried by that darkness shone upon the world, barely giving it a hint of color.

Everything here seemed isolated from the secular world. The artifact known as the Gate of Hell had completely severed the connection between the two sides. She still remembered how that artifact had been made. Fate and she had used her complete snake bones to craft it, casting the remaining remains and the crystallized flesh of her trunk into the secular world, waiting for her future self to gain power from them hundreds of years later and use her authority to revive here.

Those peaks, like black crystals, were her once-complete skeletal remains, encircling this world once. Now, her divine body consisted only of the consciousness within the Death Abyss and the flesh-and-blood body she had obtained by chance.

However, the purpose of her trip was not for this. Those mountain ranges could continue to block off Hell. Her journey this time was solely for the fallen World Tree.

Within Hell, those maddening powers continued to erode Li Yue’s body and spirit. She endured it all silently. She had long since grown accustomed to the erosion of madness; this level of intensity was like adding a minor scratch to a fatal wound. If she didn't pay attention, she couldn't even feel it.

“Once, this world had the astral realm, the secular world, and the Underworld,” Li Yue murmured to herself. “In the astral realm upon the World Tree lived countless gods. The place closest to the astral realm was the Holy City, where souls that were kind and possessed a hint of divinity would live in that prosperous city.”

“Back then, sinful souls would be reborn at the lightless roots of the tree.” Li Yue looked around, feeling a sense of loss. “They possessed the ‘original sin’ of desire, and even a lifetime of effort was hardly enough to atone.”

“Now that the World Tree has fallen, they are all dead. The Underworld has mixed and crushed all their souls together. I used flesh and blood to reshape their forms once more, and then... there was the Royal Court.”

“Now, this world has the secular world, the Underworld, and Hell...”

Li Yue let out a soft sigh. She recalled an incredibly distant afternoon when Metis, the God of Wisdom, had caught her as she was running about and insisted on telling her an interesting story.

She said that the souls of dead gods would eventually go to heaven, so there was no need to be sad for them; they would all be very happy in the end.

Now, the souls of all the gods were trapped in the gap between the starry sky and the secular world. Li Yue didn't know what kind of place it was, but it certainly wasn't a beautiful heaven.

Only by truly killing them would they perhaps enter that heaven?

“How could that be...” Li Yue laughed playfully. “In the end, they will still flow into the River of the Dead. It was just a lie made up to reduce the psychological burden when I kill you all in the future.”

“Truly... foolish, naive...” Li Yue sighed softly. Her eyes, now tinged with a murky hue, surveyed her surroundings. The air was always filled with eerie laughter, screams, and sounds of writhing.

“But heaven... truly should exist, if the world can be created anew...” Li Yue looked back. Behind her was total darkness—the path she had come from. Through that heavy darkness, she didn't know if she was seeing the future or the past.

“Clo, you must create a beautiful heaven.” Li Yue smiled faintly, and the sadness of this desolate place seemed to vanish.

“As for me... I might as well go to Hell.”

The small boat beneath Li Yue’s feet was pushed toward the sky by pitch-black waves of blood. Even here, only the black of stagnant blood filled Li Yue’s vision.

“This world is still too dark.” Li Yue reached out as if she could touch the sky. A longsword like blood crystal appeared in her right hand. The aura she released slowly spread, stirring the fear of this Hell.

She swung the longsword forcefully toward the sky. The scarlet blade-light tore through the burning heavens. Amidst a chorus of miserable wailing, countless leaf-shaped fragments began to fall toward the ground, which was a vast expanse of scorched black earth.

“The Tilted Continent...” Li Yue gazed into the distance. Under the illumination of the scarlet light, the sharp outlines of the land were revealed for a brief moment.

“Returning to the old land... how does it feel?” Li Yue leapt high and landed gently, feeling the soft texture beneath her feet. She closed her eyes; everything seemed like it was only yesterday.

“Homesickness,” Li Yue sighed.

“There is a kind of homesickness where you haven't completely destroyed your hometown, and returning to find it a mess brings a certain sorrow.” Li Yue made a joke to the madness in the air; she knew it could hear her.

“The things they left behind that were of no use to me... I have come to take them now.” Li Yue’s gaze was low as she looked at the boundless black continent in the distance.

“I will send you all... to heaven.”