Death Knocks on Hell’s Door Chapter 63

Chapter 63 Kindred Spirits

Thanatos had recently become addicted to internet, obsessed with chatting with the Black and White Impermanence.

He felt a deep connection with them, as if they were kindred spirits. After a few conversations, he finally understood what it meant to regret meeting someone too late in life.

Having guided souls for a thousand years, the Black and White Impermanence understood human nature all too well. The White Impermanence, Xie Bian, in particular, was highly perceptive and had devised a meticulous, step-by-step approach to closing the distance between them and the socially anxious God of Death.

The key was not to jump straight into persuasion. Thanatos was too guarded for that. Simply bombarding him with words of wisdom would be useless. The God of Death had been born a god and had lived for tens of thousands of years, standing on equal footing with King Yan. The number of souls he had reaped far outnumbered those they had ever captured. The principles they spoke of, he might not necessarily fail to understand. In fact, he may even comprehend them more deeply than they do.

But as the saying went, knowing all the right lessons in life doesn’t mean you can live it well. Understanding was one thing, truly achieving open-mindedness was another.

So Fan Wujiu and Xie Bian created a group chat, pulled Thanatos in, and immediately expressed their excitement at meeting a fellow soul collector. They had long wanted to exchange thoughts with him. Then, without preamble, they launched into venting about their work.

How they always hesitated when taking the souls of children, unable to bear the sight of their innocent, wide eyes. How they wished they could drag murderers to the underworld along with their victims. How, when collecting the souls of parents who had died in accidents, they often found the children cradled in their arms, alive and unharmed, and could only sigh at the cruel twist of fate.

The Black and White Impermanence sang in harmony, with one echoing the other. At first, Thanatos remained silent, merely listening. Then, he started to agree now and then. Finally, he couldn’t help but join in, pouring out his own grievances.

Their struggles resonated with him too much! Every hardship they described had been experienced by him. He had kept these feelings bottled up for millennia, and now that he had finally found someone to confide in, he couldn’t hold back.

Once he opened up, the words poured out, and with them, the barriers around his heart began to loosen.

Fan Wujiu: Brother, we truly share the same sorrows!

Xie Bian: Your Highness is truly kindhearted.

Thanatos stared at the message. He had no heartbeat, but at that moment, he felt something stir within his hollow chest.

Kindhearted……?

Countless people from ancient times to the present have denounced the God of Death as ruthless and vicious. It was rare to hear someone praise him for being kind-hearted.

He hadn’t done anything remarkable. He just shared some of the tragedies he had witnessed in his work, moments that had left him with an unavoidable sense of sorrow. The Black and White Impermanence had experienced the same things. Even after seeing death countless times, they had never grown numb. Feeling sympathy in the face of suffering was simply human nature.

What kind of kindness was it?

Thanatos: ?

Xie Bian: Lao Hei and I were once human, which is why we empathize with them. But you were born a god destined to preside over death. For you, mortality should be nothing more than the natural order of things. But you still feel for the departed, you struggle with guilt, you hesitate in sorrow. That is not the nature of a god. It is the nature of a human. Some gods stand above all, viewing mortals as mere ants. Others hold the world in their hearts, carrying the weight of its suffering. You are the latter. That is why you are kind.

Fan Wujiu: Exactly! I used to think you were just some emotionless soul-reaping machine. Those foreign myths really don’t do you justice……

Xie Bian recalled the message.

Xie Bian muted Fan Wujiu for one minute.

Then, he sent him a private message: If you don’t know how to talk, just shut up.

Fan Wujiu: ……

Thanatos: What myths?

Xie Bian: Nothing important. Just some rumors that spread to China through various translations.

Thanatos responded by tossing over a link.

While Xie Bian was still scrambling for an excuse, Thanatos had already searched the internet to see how their people perceived him.

The black robe and scythe were the classic features. As for what lay beneath the cloak, speculation ran wild. Since death was seen as ominous, humans had always imagined the God of Death to be cold and ruthless. His appearance, too, was often depicted as terrifying. Some claimed he was an old man with a thick beard, while others believed he had no flesh at all, that beneath the black robe was nothing but a grim, hollow skeleton.

Xie Bian: ……

This was bad. Thanatos had seen all these unsettling descriptions. How was he supposed to comfort him now?

The God of Death was already sensitive and self-conscious. It had been bad enough being misunderstood by the Greeks. Now it seemed the whole world shared the same misconception. That had to sting.

Thanatos: No need to comfort me. This version is already much better than the one in Greece.

The Greeks also speculated that the God of Death was unbearably ugly, which was why he was always hiding beneath a black robe.

To be fair, they weren’t entirely wrong about the skeleton part…… He did have a skeletal form.

Room 201.

Xie Bian: “We need to think of a way to comfort Thanatos.”

Fan Wujiu: “Didn’t he just say he didn’t need comforting?”

Xie Bian: “……Has being in a relationship done nothing to improve your emotional intelligence?”

Fan Wujiu: “I used up all my emotional intelligence on my relationship. I don’t have any left for anything else.”

Xie Bian fell silent for a moment before asking, “What was the name of that horror movie we watched last time? The one where the ending turned out to be about a mental illness?”

“It was called Haunted House,” Fan Wujiu replied. He still remembered it clearly, after all, it was the first movie he and Xiao Bai had watched together. It had sentimental value. “Why are you bringing it up now?”

“I recall that movie had a depiction of King Yan,” Xie Bian said as he typed the title into the search engine. A flood of movie stills popped up, and it didn’t take long before he found an image of King Yan with wide, glaring tiger-like eyes, a thick, unkempt beard, and a face more terrifying than any ghost in the film.

Fan Wujiu: ……Come on, don’t do this. That looks nothing like King Yan.

Xie Bian saved the image and sent it to the group chat.

Xie Bian: Don’t worry, our King Yan looks like this in the eyes of mortals too.

Thanatos: ……

Thanatos: Thank you. I feel much better now.

Fan Wujiu: “……”

Xiao Bai was really clever! To comfort the God of Death, he didn’t hesitate to sell out their own King Yan.

Thanatos’ reputation among mortals hadn’t improved in the slightest, but at least King Yan’s image had suffered equally. If one must suffer, it was better to suffer together. Nothing soothed the soul like shared misfortune.

Looking at the picture, Thanatos actually felt a bit amused. It was one thing for humans to make wild guesses about his face. After all, he always hid beneath his black robe. But he didn’t expect Yanluo, who was so good-looking, to be considered a fierce ghost by humans.

Suddenly, an image of Yanluo’s flawless, strikingly elegant features flashed through Thanatos’ mind. His face heated up. For a moment, he even imagined the nonexistent sensation of a quickening heartbeat.

……It occurred to him, quite suddenly, that Yanluo was indeed very good-looking.

Fan Wujiu: So you (您) see, there’s no need to take the views of mortals too seriously. Even our King Yan doesn’t have a great reputation among them.

Thanatos: Just using ‘you (你)’ is good enough.

Being addressed with the respectful “you (您),” still made Thanatos uncomfortable. He had always been hesitant to ask for anything, but this time, he couldn’t help himself.

Fan Wujiu copied the message again and replaced the respectful “you (您)”: So you (你) see, there’s no need to take the views of mortals too seriously. Even our King Yan doesn’t have a great reputation among them.

They used the honorifics out of politeness. After all, Thanatos was an innate god, much older and of higher rank. More importantly, he might even be King Yan’s boyfriend, so they couldn’t help but show some respect.

Since Thanatos had said as much, it was natural for them to adjust their tone, making their words feel more friendly and familiar.

Thanatos smiled faintly.

These Eastern gods were truly interesting.

Thanatos: So Yanluo’s reputation is really that bad?

Fan Wujiu: Oh, it’s terrible. In ancient times, parents would invoke King Yan’s name to stop their toddlers from crying at night. Whenever a child cried, all the parents had to do was say, “Stop crying, or King Yan will come and eat you,” and the child would instantly quiet down.

It was hard to imagine Yanluo, refined and elegant even during meals, picky with delicacies and gourmet dishes, as the kind of figure who would devour human flesh and drink human blood.

Fan Wujiu: You know that our King Yan’s appearance can be considered astonishingly beautiful, right? He’s the face of our underworld, even though I personally think Xiao Bai is the most handsome. But the living have never seen King Yan, so they just guess wildly. Now, King Yan’s name is synonymous with ugliness. Mortals even use it to describe ruthless, domineering people. It’s such a shame. We often joke about how he works us to the bone, but he’s neither cruel nor tyrannical, and employee benefits are pretty good.

Thanatos tilted his head slightly. He recalled how the Black and White Impermanence had often complained about their work, particularly in the early days when there were no temporary impermanence ghosts, and the two of them had to handle all the soul-reaping on their own.

They’d gotten so exhausted that they had a lot of grievances. But now, the Black Impermanence was speaking up in defense of Yanluo.

It was true that King Yan was frugal to the point of being stingy, so much so that a group of his subordinates had even created a chat just to vent about it. But when it came to serious matters, however, these same subordinates were the first to defend him. A king who could truly command respect must have qualities worthy of admiration. If not, they wouldn’t be referring to him as King Yan in private venting sessions.

Thanatos: Is he really that good?

Xie Bian: King Yan is very good.

Xie Bian: Your Highness, it is very rare for a primordial god to be able to empathize with humans. I’ve seen only two gods who were born as underworld gods yet still felt compassion for the living: one is you, and the other is King Yan.

Thanatos was silent.

He stared at the screen, unsure of what to reply, until a long message from the Black and White Impermanence popped up.

Xie Bian: Lao Hei and I have only been gods for a thousand years. Chinese history spans far longer, and even before history was recorded, humans already existed. Before the Northern Song Dynasty, those souls were personally collected by King Yan himself. He’s about several tens of thousands of years old and has captured far more souls than we ever will.

Fan Wujiu: When Xiao Bai and I first arrived in the underworld, King Yan said he appreciated our affection and righteousness. He gave us the role of Impermanence, telling us he needed a rest. I focused on the first half of his words at the time, but after capturing countless souls and witnessing the world’s joys and sorrows, I understood that when he said “rest,” he probably meant he was truly exhausted.

Fan Wujiu: In China, the appearance of the Impermanence Immortals is like the arrival of the Western Grim Reaper. We once asked King Yan why we were called Impermanence. He told us that impermanence symbolizes all things that cannot endure forever. Everything eventually dies and fades. The world itself is in constant flux, and the only constant is change. If one can understand this, they can let go of their attachments and re-enter the cycle of reincarnation. Therefore, the responsibility of the Impermanence is to guide the souls to reincarnation.

Xie Bian: In the beginning, humans had no afterlife, only the present life. Evil people wouldn’t receive their retribution and would become malicious ghosts, continuing to harm the living. Good people could not achieve a peaceful end, and their lonely souls were devoured by evil spirits. The gods, high above in the heavenly courts, refused to open their eyes to the suffering of the mortal world. The gods lived eternally, detached from the world’s affairs. They should not interfere in mortal affairs. To do so would be to break the heavenly rules. King Yan was originally a heavenly god, but he saw the suffering of the human world, understood the workings of karma, and chose to descend from the clouds into the underworld. There, he established the Six Paths of Reincarnation, where good people are rewarded and evil ones punished. He suppressed thousands of evil spirits in the River of Forgetfulness and wrote perfect afterlives for the virtuous. For this, he willingly took on karmic burdens, enduring a thousand years of flames in the Hell of Incessant Suffering, all to challenge the Heavenly Dao. King Yan was originally a heavenly god, but he’s mistakenly seen as an evil spirit by mortals.

Xie Bian: If anyone can truly empathize with you, it is not us. It’s King Yan.

A/N: The content of this chapter is entirely my personal idea and not based on orthodox mythology.
***
It was said that King Yan is not exempt from the torments of Hell. Despite his role as a judge of the dead, he is also subjected to punishment like any other soul. Three times a day, when he is not busy judging souls, King Yan is tied to a burning hot metal surface and forced to endure the agony of having molten metal poured down his throat. This brutal punishment is said to be the reason why his skin appears red.

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