The Realm of the Dead is not the same as Hela's underworld, it is not a barren land, but more similar to the realm of dreams, with all kinds of fantasy dreams composed of fragments of cosmic rules, it is possible to be in a strange black forest one second, and the next second to a dark city like Gotham, for the creatures of order, everything here is chaotic.

Human souls are not completely unconscious in the process of entering the realm of death, they will fall into a bizarre dream, usually their own memories of life, and they will re-experience those memory scenes that they have been impressed by in the dream fragments, which is the so-called marquee.

But this process is actually confirming all the encoding of this soul so that the database can delete them.

For some reason, Schiller, who had died many times, experienced this loading process for the first time, first falling from the darkness, then feeling the hazy light, chasing the light and continuing to fall downward, as if the warmth of soaking in amniotic fluid enveloped him.

The feeling of weightlessness became weaker and weaker, and Schiller felt that he had bottomed out.

Trying to concentrate, then opening his eyes vigorously, Schiller suddenly found himself in a familiar church.

It's like the kind of footage shot with a special aperture, there is a hazy and dreamy halo everywhere, everything is devoid of details, but it can bring back memories.

Schiller instinctively looked back and saw a tall cross behind him and a statue of Jesus with outstretched arms and lowered eyebrows.

Suddenly, a rush of footsteps sounded at the door of the church, and a figure rushed towards this side, and the filter was broken in an instant, and when Schiller came back to his senses, he saw Natasha stretch out her hand and shake it in front of his eyes, and said, "Schiller, are you okay?" ”

"I'm fine." Schiller turned his head to look around, the scene was still a little blurry, even the outline of Natasha in front of her was not exact, judging from the reflection on Natasha's pupils, she saw that she should be just a vague human form, if it wasn't for the clear voice, she couldn't even distinguish her identity.

"We almost got into a video game." Natasha shrugged her shoulders, looked at her surroundings and herself, and said, "This should be hell, right?" Much better than I thought. ”

"This is not hell, at least not Mephisto's, if the plan goes well, this should be the edge of the realm of the dead, and it won't be long before we penetrate the barrier and enter the real realm of the dead, and then become echoes of the eternal wandering there."

"So, what's going on with this church?"

"This must be a memory of my life." Schiller didn't seem in a hurry, he walked to the window seat in the first row of the church, patted the seat next to him with his hand, and motioned for Natasha to sit down.

"Well, this is my first death, obviously not as experienced as you, now can you tell me about your plans?"

Natasha sat down next to Schiller, and the two sat together in the first row of the church staring at the huge cross in front of them, and Schiller's first words were unexpected by Natasha.

"I'm sorry, I lied to you from the beginning, although I am not really a doctor, but I was instructed by a doctor to communicate with everyone in the next way to improve their mental health as much as possible."

"Is it Dr. Schiller who entrusted you?"

"Yes, ma'am, but let me start by asking you a few questions, how are you feeling now?"

"It's hard to say." Natasha sighed, pressed her elbows to her legs, leaned forward, stared at the lattice tiles in front of her that reflected a dreamy sheen and said, "There is a feeling of exhaustion after an overdraft, but there is some indescribable relief and relaxation." ”

"Can you elaborate on that?"

"It's more like exhausting all your strength, knowing that you can't do anything, so you just stay where you are and wait for death to relax."

"So, how did you feel when we looked at the two of us fighting earlier?"

"I was drunk and didn't think much about it."

Schiller turned to look at Natasha and said, "Ma'am, now we are not in the S.H.I.E.L.D. office, this is the realm of the gods that mortals cannot set foot in, there are no bugs, there is no record book, and I am not an agent to interrogate you, I know that you have the right to say any answer, but from a personal point of view, I hope you can be honest enough, because the situation that has developed so far contains a lot of the fruits of my labor." ”

"You're really good at talking." Natasha brushed the hair from her forehead back with both hands, and instead of mocking Schiller, she made a sincere evaluation, and she found that this Schiller was indeed very good at impressing others.

"That's a little too intense." Natasha finally replied.

"Why do you feel that?"

Natasha took a deep breath and was silent for a long time, but finally shook her head and said, "There's no need to talk about this, it doesn't work." ”

"So, let's talk about my experience." Schiller did not rebuke him, but changed the subject, leaning back on the church pews and saying, "You must have heard from Professor Charles about my experience, when I was a child, I was taken to the laboratory of the mysterious organization, where I was trained for a long time. ”

Natasha's blinking frequency became slightly faster, but she still controlled herself and stayed silent.

"Their goal is to train me to be a killing machine capable of wreaking havoc, so even if I'm gifted, I'm bound to have some professional agent training."

Schiller's voice began to grow more and more distant, like the sound of the horizon echoing on the horizon.

"There was one exercise that intrigued me, and it was during that training that I realized that I felt pain differently."

As if she knew what he was going to say, Natasha's Adam's apple moved up and down imperceptibly, and the muscles in her neck twitched with it.

"The pain reflex is the most basic reflex of a person, which comes from our body's self-protection mechanism, pain is a reminder of danger, not only for external danger, but also for internal danger."

"If a person's arm is bitten by a beast, then he will follow his instinct to retract his arm and run away, if a person has a stomachache and diarrhea, he knows that he may have eaten something bad, and adjusted his diet in time to avoid poisoning, in a way, the more sensitive the response to pain in the course of human evolution, the easier it is to survive."

"But if you're looking for a killing machine, not a person, the pain reflex is unnecessary and needs to be sifted through and eliminated."

Schiller sighed lightly, lowered his head and said, "My pain reflex is naturally weak, and the non-physical aspect is more like a mental abnormality shielding a part of the effects of pain. ”

"I see." Natasha said a little sullenly, "I slashed you in the arm, but your first reaction was to think, not to retract your hand because of the pain." ”

"Although I thought about this before I did it, I didn't expect you to be so exaggerated, and you are not a professional agent." Natasha said with a little grumbling.

"So are you more exaggerated as a professional agent? Lady? ”

"Well, you're just trying to pry my mouth open." Natasha shook her head a little irritably and said, "Yes, maybe more exaggerated than you think, I don't have a pain reflex at all." ”

The two fell silent, Schiller was shocked by this fact and did not speak, Natasha waited for him to speak, but he did not wait, so he did not want to waste time, and said directly.

"As you said, it is the years of rigorous training that have eliminated this part of the instinct, even if I only have one breath left, I can still raise the gun more steadily than ordinary people to aim and shoot, and the marksmanship is still very accurate."

"Three holes in my chest in favor of it, ma'am."

Natasha shook her head and said, "No, there shouldn't have been three holes, if it was usual, you would have been killed by one shot." ”

"Even if you're infinitely close to death?"

"Even if I'm dead." Natasha turned to Schiller and said, "The muscle reflexes of my fingers also pull the trigger at the last moment. ”

Schiller was silent for a moment, and then said: "When people feel pain, they usually pray that the gods will remove it for them, but the structure of human emotions is far more sophisticated than they think, and if there is no pain, there can be no happiness." ”

"People's souls are like a big tree, and the parts that grow on the ground represent all kinds of beautiful feelings, while the parts buried deep in the ground are the pains or pathologies that they don't want to mention."

"If you blindly remove the root system from the ground, or simply separate the upper and lower parts completely, the result is that the happiness and other positive emotions in the upper part will gradually wither, and the whole tree will become a rotten tree."

"It is often said that some people die at the age of thirty only to be buried at the age of seventy, and it is not uncommon for them to reconcile with the intense emotions of their extreme desires, not because they have gotten them, but only that there is no such passionate affection that makes them want to continue to want them."

"Some people call this state of breaking through the red dust, stability and calm, but again, I prefer to call it 'numbness'."

Natasha listened quietly, saying nothing, and then she turned her head to look at Schiller, and saw his face, which was increasingly blurred in the dim light of the stained windows of the church, like the shadow of a mountain in the morning light.

"You've got all the answers you wanted." Schiller turned to look at Natasha and said, "Nick, Eric, Odin, Hela, you are all the same, you are not mentally ill, you are more stable than anyone else, you have found all the ways out of your entanglements and difficulties, but the passion is no longer in ordinary and stable days." ”

"It's just that, ma'am, your more serious problem than they are is that the trauma of those painful culling training is not gone, it still affects you all the time, and your numbness continues to grow, until one day it will suck up all the nutrients from the trees on the ground and turn you into the walking dead."

Natasha was silent for a moment, then asked, "How do you know?" ”

"Empathize." Schiller leaned his back a little further back, and said with a long breath: "All my life I have tried to balance sickness and normality, and before I had not checked pathology, which led me to madness, and the doctor sealed my sickness, and caused me to fall into a numbness of powerlessness and happiness, and my tower and abyss are gradually perfected in the process of this self-struggle. ”

Natasha swallowed, she didn't expect Schiller to dissect herself so deeply in front of her, and the female agent never thought that there would be one thing in this world that she needed to summon all her courage to do.

It's not even a difficult thing to do, but it's harder than anything else in this world, and that's to open up and be honest about how you feel.

"In your ...... As you cut me open like a fish, I felt an unprecedented intensity explode in my mind, I thought it was fear, but at the time I thought it was impossible, I thought I had evolved this emotion a long time ago. ”

Natasha smiled and said as if half-jokingly, "Then came the shock, because I actually felt pain, which I hadn't felt in years, and once my training made me completely immune to the pain reflex." ”

"It's not that I can't feel pain, it's just that after the pain is transmitted to the brain, the reflex nerves can't work, and I can use my reason to control the movement of all my muscles without abnormal parts."

"That's the secret of my mission's success rate, all those who want to trade injuries for injuries with me have come here before me, and they have been waiting for me in hell for a long time."

(End of chapter)