I had imagined countless times before that the real scene of Hades must be twisted and hopeless, that it was the sum total of known human fears, that its existence had transcended death itself.

In other words, Hades is a continuation of death.

I prefer that after death, everything will return to nothingness, without pain, sorrow, without any consciousness to disappear at the end of the netherworld, without a past life, without an afterlife.

Unfortunately, this is just my one-sided fantasy.

Hades is real.

All the folklore about the underworld has been ruled out by me, and I know that the real underworld must be very different from human cognition.

But I never imagined that my first stop in the underworld would be born in such a strange place.

There was light on the walls of the cell, I could see it faintly, the dust surging in the air, everything was so real, the most inexplicable thing was that I was still breathing, and I could even faintly hear my own heartbeat.

I pinched the root of my thigh with some reluctance, and it hurt.

Nervously looking around, my attention locked on the middle-aged man on the bed opposite.

Between me and him, there was a deep rectangular pit, from which came the cries of noisy men and women.

I didn't pay attention to the middle-aged man immediately, but looked down at my hands and said...... Sure enough, it was cleared, all the aura was gone, and I even had some trouble clenching my fists.

"My surname is Song, call me Old Song, what about you? What's your name? The middle-aged man came again in a hurry.

I stared at Lao Song and asked him, "Why is your voice so indistinct?" It's like saliva. ”

At this time, Lao Song stretched his neck forward and opened his mouth wide: "See if there is a young man?" My teeth are all gone, why are they gone? Because I jumped off the building and killed myself, haven't you seen that scene? is different from what you imagine, after a person jumps off a building and falls to the ground, the appearance of his body is basically intact, except for the tooth, which is all gone! ”

"After the jaw bone is shattered, not a single tooth can be saved, and the upper and lower rows of teeth all fly out, so don't feel strange if you pass by the scene of the suicide by jumping off the building and accidentally step on the teeth."

Lao Song's simple description, listening to my brain straight chills, I took a deep breath, moved a few times, and replied: "In other words, after people enter the underworld, they still retain the appearance of when they died. ”

"Not exactly." Lao Song replied vaguely: "Some people are, some people are not, who can tell?" ”

Because of the lack of teeth, as soon as Lao Song closed his mouth, his two lips contracted tightly into a black spot, which was both eerie and distorted.

In the cell of the two, Lao Song and I looked at each other across the rectangular pit, and the cries from above and below were even more heartbreaking.

Lao Song stared at me for a long time, and suddenly tilted his neck: "Young man, I feel that something is wrong with you?" ”

I asked him, "What's wrong?" ”

"When other people come to this underworld, they all cry and cry, regret, and fear and urine, but you are different, why are you just like a nobody? At a young age, you're pretty open-looking, huh? ”

I asked him, "Aren't you normal?" ”

Lao Song sighed and said: "I am the old tenant of this five-hundred-story hell, I don't remember, how long I have been dead, since the day I came to the underworld, I have been staying here, and I have never gone out." ”

"What kind of people haven't I seen yet? In the underworld, some people cry and some make trouble, some people go crazy and hit the wall and beg for death, and some people are like wood, motionless, but those who are as calm as you are still the number one. ”

I said, "Tell me, brother, what's going on with these 500 layers of hell?" ”

Lao Song suddenly laughed gloomily: "Don't worry, it's not time yet, when the meal comes, you will naturally be clear." ”

Meals?

I suspect that I heard it wrong, the soul is in the underworld, do you still need to eat?

"Is there any need to eat here?" When the discomfort had subsided, I stood up, went to the pit vigilantly, looked down and up again, and I seemed to understand.

There is also an identical pit in the ceiling.

In other words, this 500-story hell is a vertical structure, and all the rooms are also vertically connected, this rectangular pit is connected from the first floor to the 500th floor, and judging from the "34" written on the wall, the room where Lao Song and I are located is located on the thirty-fourth floor.

From here, you can see the rooms on the 33rd floor, and down to the 35th floor.

When I was observing the vertical passage, Lao Song was also observing me, his face hidden in the shadows, and only a wrinkled mouth came out:

"What did you just say?" The sound in Lao Song's throat was like that of a mule and horse chewing forage, and I even suspected that he had two rows of teeth in his throat.

I repeated the question I had just asked: "Is there any need to eat here?" ”

Lao Song smiled messily: "Of course there is, if you are hungry, you have to eat, and if you don't eat, you will starve to death, such a simple truth, don't you understand wow?" ”

"I don't understand." I shook my head and looked around the passage a few more times: "What kind of meal is the soul eating?" ”

"Hey, hey......" Old Song's laughter became even harsher: "No, we are not souls, we are ghosts!" People eat food, and ghosts eat food, young man, if you judge what is happening here by human common sense, then you will go crazy sooner or later. ”

"Hurry up and abandon the thoughts of human beings, forget everything in life, you are a ghost, you are a ghost, you are a ghost!!"

Old Song yelled at me viciously, and at this time, an even more piercing female voice came from the 33rd floor: "Old immortal scumbag, can you shout again?" Disturb my practice? Believe it or not, I jumped down and strangled you? ”

Lao Song hurriedly closed his voice in fright, pointed up secretly, and whispered to me: "Don't mess with the woman upstairs, she is more scary than a ghost." ”

Due to the limited field of vision, I was standing on the edge of the vertical passage and could not see the woman upstairs.

She just mentioned the word cultivation, and I guess that woman may have been exposed to metaphysics before her death, right?

She tried to get rid of the suffering of the underworld by improving her Taoism, but this method has already been tried, and it doesn't work.

After a short silence, I came to Lao Song's side and continued the topic just now: "We are ghosts, yes, ghosts will feel pain and be tired, I can accept these, but you say ghosts will starve to death?" I still don't understand this. ”

Lao Song sighed: "When we were still alive, we should take it for granted that the world we live in is real, and the underworld does not exist, but when we die, we really come to the underworld, and our cognition is also subverted, the longer we stay here, the more you will have an idea......

"This is the most real world, the world is completely imaginary, our life is a meaningless dream, and now we wake up...... Can you see what I mean, lad? ”

I nodded, in fact, Lao Song's statement has his truth, the two worlds of life and death, there is a river in the middle, and the people on both sides are opposite each other across the river, and in the middle of the river is a thick fog.

Maybe life is really just a ridiculous dream, and the world after waking up is the most real.

In that case, it is not surprising that we will be hungry.

Lao Song told me that he had been in the Netherworld for too long, and during this time, he had been thinking hard, trying to uncover the secret between life and death, and whenever he thought about it, he had a headache, so Lao Song came to a conclusion - with human wisdom, he couldn't understand what the underworld was at all.

The walls of the room, made of cold metal, and there was a washbasin in the corner, and I tried to unscrew the faucet, and there was cold, muddy water flowing from it.

"Drink it when you're thirsty, it's fine." Lao Song said with a smile.

I took a sip of the letter suspiciously, a smell of earth, but the taste of the water was a hundred times more real than what I had drunk in the world, and I could even clearly perceive the whole process of water entering my throat and integrating into my blood and internal organs.

After turning off the faucet, I leaned my back against the wall and asked Lao Song, "Who was in the room with you before I came?" ”

Old Song replied weakly: "It's another inconsequential person." ”

Me: "What about others?" ”

Old Song: "It's dead." He winked at me slyly: "If you think that death is liberation, then you are very wrong, in the underworld, we will never die in the true sense of the word...... Those who die in hell, or ghosts, will soon be resurrected and return to hell, and even the god of death will not try to save us from here. ”

"That poor unlucky ghost, after being resurrected, was assigned to another floor, right? I've been in contact with too many fellow inmates, not a hundred, but always seventy or eighty. ”

After a pause, Lao Song continued to add: "The rule here is, no matter how you die, in short, don't be starved to death, remember, young man, this is the most important and most unviolable core of the 500-layer hell, you must not be starved to death!" ”

I tasted a faint hint of blood, my scalp exploded, and I asked him, "What happens if you starve to death?" ”

Lao Song seemed to think of something terrible, covered his chest tightly with his hands, sat on the edge of the bed and trembled wildly: "That's ...... You're going to be a violator, and you're going to be taken to a place worse than hell, and believe me, you don't want to go there......"

"Don't break the rules, don't starve to death......"

Lao Song's performance made me feel frightened and curious about everything in the underworld, which also made me more and more convinced that the torture of the dead in the underworld was crazy, bloody, twisted and desperate.

The hell is like this, what kind of hell is more terrible than the hell?

I finally understand now, why did Chen Liang enter the demon after leaving hell back then, he saw things that were not supposed to be seen by humans, those things exceeded the limit of what he could bear fear, if it was replaced by someone else, his soul and mind would have been twisted into pieces by fear, but Chen Liang was not a mortal after all, he persevered.

Over the years, Chen Liang, who lived in seclusion in the wild no man's land, wandered wildly between demonic and sober, thanks to the existence of the palace, I found the coordinates that belonged to Chen Liang and summoned him, which allowed him to completely get out of the demonic state.

This shows how terrible hell is.

A few minutes later, Lao Song finally woke up from the horror, he turned his head to me and said: "This hell is said to be copied after a certain scene in hell, but fortunately, its torture intensity is much weaker than that of hell, after all, this is the first stop in the underworld, and it is not good if the intensity is too high." ”

I frowned and said, "Brother, I've listened to you for a long time, and I still don't understand, what is the content of the torture in this hell?" ”

"Someone will come and punish us?"

Lao Song shook his head with a blank expression and said: "No, you are too naïve to think, the things that exist here are far more terrifying than any punishment, as for the content of torture, it can be simply summarized in two words." ”

"Hunger!"