The Legend of Min Hong

The gourd was so plain like the normal ones one would see in the martial arts movies made on earth in the nineteenth century…

There was not a single thing special about it, and thus, Min Hong uncorked it and took a large gulp, and then;

Blergh!

He puked almost instantaneously, as Cui laughed at him before collecting the gourd and downing another large gulp…

Cough! Cough! Cough!

Min Hong almost coughed his lungs out before he finally calmed down…

But after another brief moment of scrutiny, Min Hong doubted his thought process about this place…

Everything he was feeling was extremely real and not an illusion like he had thought earlier and to a certain degree was even almost identical to how the 'Realm of Creations' deals damage to his physical body whenever he received a hit within the trials…

Or it could be possible if everything was actually real, after all, for a beast on this level to transfer a mortal realm cultivator's entire being into a separate dimension would be as easy as making a giggle…

But if it was that, then that would go against the entire illusion of the massive beasts and the heavenly bodies that just happened…

"Who says illusions can't be real…?"

Cui asked with a wide and happy grin as Min Hong once again grabbed some different meanings to Cui's question before continuing his pretense and asking once again;

"Then, what exactly is this place?"

Min Hong knew he was somewhere within Chaos itself which was even with Oblivion, and instantly, the story of the Oblivion Dao trials began to replay within his head, and he remembered when Oblivion had created Chaos using Dao of Will, due to its desire to have a companion…

Then Cui's response finally entered his ears;

"It is whatever you specifically want it to be; it is your beginning and you end, it is your truth and your lie, it is something you own and also something that doesn't belong to you..."

"It is also the most absolute truths and the uttermost lies…"

"But that makes no sense whatsoever…"

"It is not supposed to make sense to you…"

Cui took another large gulp after muttering that statement beneath his breath…

But he looked up to the sky and its population of heavenly bodies and mumbled;

"Seven Worlds, Eight Desolaces, Nine Hells, Ten Heavens are nothing but just the beginning of the journey itself…"

"…"

"Do you want to hear a very interesting tale…?"

Cui turned over to Min Hong with a broad smile and an expression full of unadulterated mischief…

Min Hong took a glance at his face and for some strange and mysterious reasons, he really began to feel like this middle aged man with unkempt beards cut the figure of the most forlorn human being he had ever had the chance to meet in his entire three lives… 

"What type of story?" Min Hong asked with a curious expression…

"How does that matter? It is not as if we have any other thing we can do within this realm…"  Cui simply smiled in response…

"I most certainly do not want to alert any other thing within this realm of my presence. So, go ahead then…"

Min Hong subconsciously accepted the nature of his current situation a little too early and easily as he got comfortable by sitting directly opposite to Cui, facing him…

Cui downed another large gulp from the gourd as he began narrating his story;

"Once upon a time, in a place not too far away… there was a place called the Netherworld…"

"It was place made for the demonic… the darkest and the most evil beings are sent there…"

"It was not a place for the living and was the dorm of devils and demons who are born and bred to torture the inhabitants of this place…"

Min Hong became completely engrossed in this man's story from the moment he said the first sentence, it did not matter to him if they may be true or false, or if it was real or simple made up, he just wanted to listen as if something within had held his attention like never before…

"These demons and devils are born out of blood and scorching fire…"

"They had no sympathy, no pity and no emotions for the poor souls that have been roasting for years …"

"They were almost senseless beings who only awaken their intelligence when it was time to inflict scalp-tingling pain to others… "

"Like the mortal world they had; the strong and the weak…"

"These devils could, cultivate, corrupt the hearts of men and become stronger…"

"The Netherworld is not a world despite have the word; 'World' in it… It was a plane of existence that existed everywhere and yet nowhere…"

"It had nine levels or rings… these nine rings have been ruled by twelve supreme beings, who have been, since before time came into being…"

"They were what were referred to as the 'First Immortals' that controlled and managed everything…"

"The three strongest were called the 'The Originals' and beneath them were the nine 'Kings of hell'…"

"These beings had multiple forms of manifestation and were strong beyond the 'Fantasy of fantasies'…"

"For billions of eons, everything had all played out the same way; A world had been born, its residents gained sentience and all developed Ethics and Morals, including Virtues from whatever standards they had set for themselves..."

"Furthermore, whosoever should go against these laws would be sent down to the netherworlds by the overhead heavens…" Cui went quiet with a sense of nostalgia radiating from him…

"Okay???"

When he went silent for too long Min Hong who had been abnormally engrossed in the story brought his attention back to it with his question…

"Then… it all changed, at least for one figure…"

"It was from a different young planet, where a race of humans existed, which decided to forge a new path for themselves…"

"Then embarked on a path that didn't practice cultivation and simply focus on their mortal needs…"

"Soon enough within this planet, cultivation became something straight out of a myth and the 'fantasy of most imaginations…'"

"Soon enough, this planet tore itself apart… it depleted all its talents, valuables and resources until there was nothing left for it to survive on…"

"Then, like its predecessors, all its inhabitants passed into the afterlife; for most of them, the netherworlds, for some chosen few, to the heavens…"

"One of its inhabitants which went to hell was this one individual who was said to have had a drastic change in destiny…"

"This man was called; Luo Sheng, and unlike most of those who were here, he didn't commit any evil deeds…

The only misdeed he did, was to have dipped himself into the deepest waters of indecent indulgences…

Thus, for countless eons he suffered by being scorched by the flames of hell and being parboiled in the yellow springs of the netherworld section for unrighteous souls…

When he was alive, he clearly knew what was right and what was wrong but because he had a weak will when it came to indecent indulgences such as;

Lust, fornication, adultery, petty theft, different vices and the likes, and as a result, he accepted his punishments without blaming anyone or anything else other than himself…"