Kyushu · Endless Nagato

Chapter 70 The Hell in the Fire of the Prologue
He Xingshu's noble career came to an end when he was 17 years old.Before that, he had thought that he would be able to live a relaxed and comfortable life all his life, whistling across the sky and the ground of Ningnan City, until one day he hugged a beautiful red girl in a brothel run by human beings, and was drunk under the influence of alcohol. Died comfortably under anesthesia.

But many years later, He Xingshu appeared in front of people as a white-haired old man with rough skin and calloused hands, wearing patched coarse clothes.The torment of life has done so much damage to his body that as a pure-blood feathered man, he can no longer condense his wings and fly high, even on the day when the moon is most powerful.The blood of nobles who were once full of pride seems to have been replaced with inferior shochu.

"I'm getting old... I'm not strong enough mentally." He always explained vaguely like this.

The decrepit misfortune of this former noble son stems from the upheaval when he was 17 years old.The father who has always been the backbone of the family, He Lan, a well-known astrologer in Ningnan City, saw the messenger of the gods in the winter of this year, or in the words of many people, he went crazy, and the day when he went crazy was when the star hit the ground that day.It was a star with a very hidden trajectory. If it hadn't happened to hit the land near Ningnan City, no one would have known about it—except for Helan.He is the only one who has captured the star and calculated its orbit.

"I will be the first astrologer on the land of Kyushu to witness the fall of the Bo star, and I am destined to be famous forever!" Father said.Vanity made him choose to conceal his discovery, and he rode a horse alone on the night of the arrival of Bo Xing, and went to the suburbs to wait for that historic moment.

At that time, He Xingshu was in an entangled relationship with three girls, so he didn't have the heart to care about his father's messy affairs.That night, he kissed a girl, was severely scolded by the second one, and was chased by the third brother holding a bow and arrow in Ningnan City for more than half a circle before he managed to escape.He returned home exhausted, and just lying on the bed, a dull and distant explosion came in from the window.Although the distance was very far away, he could still feel the bed trembling slightly.

This is probably what my father said about the star falling to the ground, right?Don't be crushed to death, old man.He Xingshu thought about it, and slowly fell asleep.

After waking up in the morning, he found that his father had returned and was sitting alone in the yard in a daze.Ningnan is the largest commercial city in Ningzhou, which has absorbed a lot of human cultural characteristics, so the nobles gradually abandoned the tree house tradition, and lived in Donglu-style courtyards.

"How is it? Have you found the star that made you famous in history?" He Xingshu asked glibly.But his father's reaction was unbelievably intense - he stood up abruptly, and grabbed He Xingshu's lapel.The strength used by his father was so great that the young and strong He Xingshu felt as if he was about to suffocate.

"Hell! That's hell!" My father roared like a wild animal with his red eyes open. "The gates of hell have been opened!"

"What hell?" He Xingshu was petrified.In his simple mind, he had never seriously thought about the question "what is hell?"He was only shocked by his father's ferocious expression that was almost crazy, his father's hair that turned gray overnight (He's hair was always light brown), and the fear revealed in his father's eyes.

Perhaps only in hell can such a terrifying expression appear?He Xingshu thought about it, but couldn't help calling out: "Father, I'm going to be out of breath! Let go!"

His father pushed him away casually, but kept mumbling to himself: "The gates of hell have opened...the gates of hell have opened..."

This is just the beginning.Except for the words "the gates of hell have opened" which are difficult to understand, He Lan did not tell his family what he saw that night.After a while, he did another unimaginable thing: he organized a cult, a cult that preached that the end of the world was coming, and he really looked like a lunatic through and through.It was during the missionary process of this cult that people finally knew what he saw on the night of the star and the night that followed.As the only person who calculated the time when the Bo star hit the ground, he was also the only witness.

"...After the star Bebo hit the ground, the earth completely turned into a sea of ​​flames, filled with a scorching smell," He Lan, who was wearing the leader's white robe, said to his followers, "In the sea of ​​flames, what did I see? I saw figures! Countless figures! Figures that suddenly appeared from the wilderness of that desolate place!"

"I braved the heat of the flames and got a little closer. The gradually clear vision made my heart almost stop beating," He Lan's voice was gloomy, as if he was scraping a stone with the tip of a knife, which made people feel The hairs stood on end, "I realized that what I saw was not a human being at all, but an evil spirit! An evil spirit crawling out of hell!"

Helan's memory drifted back to the night when the star Porcelain came.This star was more powerful than he had imagined. After hitting the ground, it exploded violently, forming a deep pit on the ground.The shock wave from the explosion knocked him to the ground.He got up in a daze, only seeing a raging flame in front of him, these flames made him a little afraid, but with a strong longing to engrave his mark in the history books, he still walked forward regardless of the danger.Then he fell down again - with sudden, great fear.

Everything in front of him is hard to see even in nightmares.He saw countless figures crawling out of the flames, and when those figures approached him, he could see clearly how terrifying those people looked.

——They still have the basic human form, but each one of them looks like a skeleton, almost covered with skin and bones. The heads with protruding white bones are especially terrifying, and the black teeth are shining like devils.They had shackles on their hands and feet, no hair, and their flesh had been burned in the flames, even scorched black. The unburned skin was covered with pustules that ooze black blood.

But they are not afraid of pain, or they seem to have no pain at all, or all feelings.With abscesses and flames, they crawled silently into the distance. The thin layer of skin on their knees was quickly worn away, exposing the white bones, but they still didn't care, and they still seemed to be unconscious.

This is totally a scene from hell, He Lan thought with fear.According to those ancient legends, this is the appearance of the ghosts who have suffered so much in hell. They have no flesh all over their bodies, have been tortured by various tortures, gradually lost their five senses, and have no pain or desire.

The most frightening thing is their eyes, which are a pair of numb, completely emotionless eyes, as if they were carved out of stone.There was ice-like gaze in those eyes, and they blankly swept over He Lan, as if he didn't exist at all.They just crawled forward with all their strength, which made He Lan have a strange idea: they were running away from something, something that made them fear from the bottom of their hearts.

This thought made it difficult for Helan to suppress the panic that rose from the bottom of his heart. He turned around recklessly, ignoring the horse he was riding, and flew back to Ningnan City with his wings.The last thing he saw was that some monsters finally stopped moving under the scorching fire, and their bodies crawled on the ground, while the rest of the companions still didn't realize it, and continued to crawl forward with their skeletons. .Except for the hiss of flames and the sound of bones rubbing against the ground, there was no other sound in the fire scene, but He Lan felt that he heard thousands of souls wailing in pain.

The next day, after his emotions calmed down a little, he returned to the place where Bo Xing fell to the ground yesterday.He found that the place was already full of citizens who came to watch the fun, pointing out the deep pit on the ground and the scorched marks everywhere around, and were amazed.But Helan found that the humanoid monsters he witnessed last night had all disappeared without leaving any traces: hair, blood, footprints, burnt flesh, bones... nothing, as if they had never existed at all However, he never crawled towards the distance in the flames so persistently, never injected the eternal nightmare into Helan's heart.

He Lan returned home in a daze, not even caring about teaching her disobedient son a lesson.He didn't sleep all day and all night, but he didn't feel sleepy at all. He just kept talking to himself over and over again: "Is that hell?" But he couldn't get the answer.

It wasn't until late at night that the extremely sleepy Helan fell asleep in a daze, but was awakened after a short sleep.He opened his eyes and found that there was another person in the room, to be precise, it was a figure whose whole body was enveloped in a soft white halo.This figure couldn't see his face clearly, but when he spoke, he was filled with a convincing nobility and dignity.

"You are the one chosen by God," said the figure. "You have the honor to witness God's creation, and you have received God's revelation because of it. Yes, what you saw was the gate of hell. The gods opened this gate. Use the fire of hell to cleanse the evil in the world. And you, will become the spokesperson of the gods..."

He Lan locked herself in the study for several days, and when she reopened the door and came out, she lost a lot of weight, but her face was filled with the calmness of enlightenment.

"The messenger of the gods told me clearly that the star is the final revelation given by the gods to the world," He Lan in the white robe solemnly told his believers, "Those monsters like skeletons are the evil spirits in hell. The illusion of ghosts. The gods want to tell us that the end of this world has come, the gates of hell are about to open, and the flames of the devil will destroy everything in the world. This is the divine will, an unstoppable divine will. Only when we understand it before the end Only by following God’s will and listening to God’s teachings can one obtain God’s forgiveness and redemption.”

He Lan's face was full of piety, and this piety also infected the believers.In fact, completely different from those cult leaders who make up a few teachings of a false god and then jump out to cheat money and sex, Helan saw the envoy with his own eyes, truly believed in the oracle brought by the envoy, and sincerely wanted to save the world. This kind of sincerity won him a lot of followers, and when the cult was finally destroyed, he was punished very severely.

Ningnan City had always been the territory of the nobles of the Yun family in history. Based on this city, the Yun family of Ningnan fought against the Feng family of Yandu for hundreds of years.Later, the Yu Clan went through several internal and external wars, and these two huge families gradually declined, and were finally taken advantage of by other families.Today's Ningnan is controlled by another Feng family. Although the surname is also Feng, it has nothing to do with the former Yandu Feng family, but migrated from Lanzhou.This emerging family was able to finally defeat the Yun family to occupy Ningnan and occupy the huge city-state centered on Ningnan. The strong support of the He family is a great contribution.Therefore, the status of the He clan in the city-state is second only to that of the Feng clan, and each branch has been conferred permanent hereditary nobles of different ranks. Helan's ancestors were once excellent medical officers who healed the head of the Feng clan's arrow wounds. Therefore, he was also named a hereditary viscount.Although there is no real power, at least it can guarantee that future generations will have a good salary and no worries about food and clothing.

But now, as a parent, He Lan has embarked on such a muddled path, completely ruining the happy future of the whole family.The Yu family has always attached great importance to combating cults, and it is an intolerable crime for a nobleman to pull a cult out.He Lan was beheaded, his family's title was revoked, his family property was confiscated, his clan members were reduced to slaves, and they lost their freedom. Everything was logical.Since then, that short-lived sect has never been mentioned again, and the surprise brought to people by the night of the stars has quickly dissipated.

He Xingshu, who was supposed to be a Viscount, could only become a slave of other nobles in the end, aged rapidly under the torture of all kinds of heavy work, and died suddenly with ailments all over his body when he lived to be in his fifties.Before he died, he was lying on a broken wooden bed covered with straw, with a sharp gasp like a knife in his throat, trying to spit out the last mouthful of phlegm that made it difficult for him to breathe.Suddenly, his eyes passed through the thin wooden door, through the curtain of time, through the doomsday history of family suffering, and saw the moment when his father was executed more than 30 years ago.According to the laws of the Yu clan, those who use cults to incite the people like this should be hanged on a specific giant tree in the local city-state—commonly known as the punishment tree—and hanged.But the lord was furious at Helan's noble status, and personally ordered that this damn cult leader enjoy some special treatment.

"Didn't he always say 'the gates of hell are about to open, and the flames of the devil will destroy everything'?" The lord sneered, "Then let the flames of the devil destroy him first."

So Helan was finally sentenced to fire.For the Yuren who worship the forest, wasting wood to burn a person to death is probably the most severe punishment.

On the day of the execution, He Xingshu was taken to the execution ground to watch.Full of grief and resentment, he cursed the old man to die quickly, but when the executioner lit the pyre, the inseparable family affection finally overwhelmed everything.He couldn't help crying loudly.

But Helan's expression was calm and compassionate, like those ghosts crawling out of hell, he couldn't feel pain when the flames burned him.Just at the moment when his body was about to be completely swallowed by the raging fire, he opened his mouth and let out a roar in an unbelievably high-pitched voice: "You ignorant people! That is God's will! The gates of hell, It's already opened!"

"The gate of hell...is open." He Xingshu on the hospital bed said in an inaudible voice.The father is being burned, the son is dying, and the gates of hell are open to both.

(End of this chapter)