Chapter 4
One week remaining until the Trial deadline.
In the sky above the Styx River of the Fifth Hell, a squad of seven angels flew by. Each angel was carrying a cubically shaped cage, with a black muddy sinner locked inside.
An angel in the squad swooped down and shoved a limbless rotten body into his cage. Then he flew up into the air, joined back with his squad. The seven angels were gossiping while they were roaming the Fifth Hell.
"That's the last one on the list."
"That's the minus two hundred grand guy, right."
"Ah."
"Fudge. He's lucky. He should've been thrown into the ninth level."
"We're done here, let's go back."
"..."
"By the way, if I remember correctly, isn't it here Tong was sent to?
"Hah! Yes, now that you mention it."
"Ah, oh yeah, the poor lad, right?"
"He should be within that barrier dome."
"Hahaha! I can't wait for the show."
"Me too."
"Me three."
There was a scandal event going, gossiping among the angels and the devils. Over 450,000 years ago in Hell Calendar, a certain sinner was sent here, and an interesting incident happened.
The sinner was immune to all poison, curses or mental toxic of the River Styx. It was well known by all, that only those whose karma was over ten thousand positive, were immune to such.
This immunity was the blessing of the gods. It was aiming for all angels who were doing their duty on this level.
However, for such sinner with positive karma to be sent here would cause an uproar. It was found out that a demi-immortal employee, who was supposed to help the angels allocated the sinner, was lax in the duty.
The demi-immortal had only glanced at the list of the crime that the sinner committed, then send him to hell without looking at karma or good deeds the sinner had done in his life.
The sinner committed the crime of murdering two people and cripple a politician for a lifetime. Thus, his good deeds karma were overlooked.
Anyone who committed murdering would result in a serious negative in karma. But that only applied if one killed an innocent.
Surprisingly, one of the 2 victims were also grave criminal while the other was an innocent. The criminal that was murdered committed many heinous deeds, such as human trafficking, drug dealing, ravaging underage schoolgirls and countless cases of homicides.
Thus, killing such a person wouldn't result in negative karma, nor increasing any karma. It ended up canceled out each other. Killing someone was still against the code of conducts by the gods in the end.
But the crippled man that the sinner had done in flipped the situation around.
The crippled man had originally had been scheming a coup d'etat. He even supported several terrorists and underground organizations overseas. He also bought over the police, judges and a few politicians, waiting for the day he became a dictator and stealing the wealth of a country.
If the plan had succeeded, several hundred thousands of innocent people would have been lost. And several millions of citizens of the country would have been suppressed. Then it would also provoke a war with the other freedom-loving nations if they had any clear evidence of the connection with any terrorist organization.
The special sinner crippled the politician man to satisfy his vengeance before he was shot to death. Because of the homicide and shooting, the opposition political parties had enough reason to issue a search warrant, and legally raided the crippled man's resident.
The result of the raid found shocked the entire world. Drugs, firearms, explosive materials, unknown-source stashed amounts of cash and computer histories were dug out. The pieces of evidence from the raid flushed out several accomplices, turning themselves in to reduce the punishment.
As a result of the overwhelming evidence, the crippled man was charged high treason, had all his properties confiscated, and a lifetime imprisonment in a solitary confinement, without any further chance to go into the higher court.
Tong, the policeman, who died killing the crippled man's family members, was praised as a hero who died protecting his country. The country held a national funeral for him and his parents later. A statue was planned to be built on his tomb.
For Tong to sacrifice himself to expose the hidden calamity of millions of people, and even recognized and worshiped by his fellow humans, from the heaven eyes, was indeed a heroic act. Even though Tong did it unknowingly.
Thus, the deed gave Tong massive merits to the point that he no longer had negative karma from murdering Ping's mother, and ended up with over ten thousand positive karma points.
In Heaven, someone with over 10,000 karma would have enough qualification to become an angel or be able to live his life as an immortal in Heaven for the rest of eternity.
Sending a good angel candidate to become a sinner in Hell was like a slap to the face of the gods. The involved personals that made the mistake were sacked and replaced on the spot.
The head of the Archangels personally visited the deepest level of Hell, the hidden tenth level. He begged the Lord of Hell, who resided there, to return Tong to Heaven.
The Lord of Hell refused, he even gave the archangel a harsh curse for abandoning a good soul.
The Heaven then requested to allow Tong to choose a realm he wanted to be in on his free will. But Hell Lord still refused.
"Since the Heaven doesn't want him in the first place, then he is mine!"
It was a declaration of the Hell Lord that slapped the faces of Heaven further.
Heaven and Hell were like different countries. Aside from the allocation when a soul first arrived in the netherworld, they could not transfer, order, or kidnap someone in the other realm without the owner's permission. If such action were done, a war was guaranteed. Therefore, they both avoided confrontation as much as possible and been working alongside each other for millenniums.
There was nothing the archangel could do, so he withdrew.
But as if fate was playing a prank on them, 450,000 Years later, the main computer server, responsible for choosing a random sinner into the Trial Program in the Heaven, rolled one hundred random lotteries. And Tong happened to be one in the list to take the Traditional Trial.
When the hundred Trial participant name list, personal data, and previous life deeds were announced, every citizen noticed the abnormality in Tong's karma. The computer only picked the sinners in Hell that were suffering in the fifth through the ninth level. How could someone with positive karma get picked up? And how had he been sent the Hell in the first place?
The entire scandal from ages back was resurfaced then it became viral.
...
"Do you realize that you have become a celebrity of the 3 worlds?"
"Did they know about my life?"
"Yes. Your face. Your deed. A very heroic deed."
"Sister, if that's a joke. I can't laugh at that."
Medusa was sitting on the edge of the ship while Tong was moving in the swamp, swinging his blade in his hand towards a skeleton in front.
Tong was already aware of how he could be immune to the River Styx poison. Medusa told him the three conditions of the person who could become immune. He just had to fulfill one.
One was to have high positive karma, which Tong, Medusa, and every other angel here fulfilled this condition.
Two was to let the others hit you without fighting back, which Ping achieved this by chance. Because he had no limb and couldn't fight back, he was repeatedly beaten by Tong and came back to his sense by himself.
And third was natives that were born in Hell, such as Friday and other devils, mouth rocks and wandering monsters nearby.
"Why? Doesn't every human want to become famous?"
"Nope! Nope! So much NOPE! There's going to be over 300 billion people watching me 24/7 even when I'm taking a poop. Hell, if I were to get laid, everybody will see it too. So no thank you."
After Tong made the decision of his cheat skill, Medusa forced him off the yacht and had him fight with several skeleton soldiers that she created with every kind of weapons for the remaining 49 years.
At first, Tong was clumsy with the sword, bow, and spear. After Medusa coached him, he got the basics down.
She had Tong started off fighting a skeleton on a one on one fight, then she increased the number of his opponents by one for each month passed.
Each skeleton was using different weapons at first. But after the number of the skeleton reached 50, Medusa had all skeletons used the same kind of weapons. However, they will fight in a formation.
The skeletons were as tall as Tong. But Tong's legs were half-knee into the swamp, restricted his movement, while skeletons were walking and skating on water.
With that differences on the stance and footing, the skeletons would be two heads taller than Tong when they actually fought.
Even though 49 years had passed, Tong never won against Medusa's skeletons even once. The swamp restricted his movement, so he got owned by the skeletons all the times.
Tong suffered near-death injuries once every five minutes on average. But Medusa dragged him out and stopped the skeletons before they could kill Tong every time. Having Tong died here many times might cause soul damage and won't be good in the Trial.
Now, there were over 500 skeletons, surrounding Tong in several layers of the formation. Tong's back got stabbed by seven spears at once.
"Gah! This spear formation again!"
Tong coughed out blood and kneeled into the swamp. He lost again.
"Alright, that's enough. You don't have to train anymore."
Medusa stopped the skeletons and dragged Tong up the ship with her tail. Tong's injuries healed up within 5 seconds. Then Medusa threw Tong into the swimming pool.
"Take a bath. For the next week till the D-Day, you will rest."
Medusa glanced with her sense, Friday was peeking them by the edge of the corridor inside the ship.
'Now, for the final push.'
Medusa smirked. She barred Friday from interacting with Tong, causing her to throw tantrum for years.
In Friday's entire life, she felt indifferent when she saw the thing of a man. She thought it was just something stinking and disgusting, but painful when it was cut off, yet fun for her to cut it off, whenever she saw any naked male sinner. When he saw Tong's little brother before she invited him into her ship, she also wanted to cut it off.
Medusa later reeducated her about the anatomy of humans and devils. Now she came into close contact and spending times with Tong for years, and she got her first kiss stolen by Tong. She finally became aware of the thing between man and woman.
Sometimes, Medusa put Tong to sleep and inject him some aphrodisiac, causing him to have an erection in his sleep. Then he stripped Tong naked and taught Friday how a man body functioned, without touching or doing anything to Tong. Friday's head was always on smoke every time she attended this class.
Although she taught her in many different ways, in the end, with Medusa's interference, Tong and Friday hadn't talked to each other for 49 years.
"Friday! Take Tong back to your room to take a bath. For the next 7 days till the trial, you two can do whatever you want."
Medusa commanded and left them, leaving the nervous Friday.
...
Tong finished taking a bath in Friday's room. He walked out in a bathing robe while rubbing his hair with a white towel. Friday was sitting and fidgeting on the middle of her bed. The atmosphere was awkward.
"You're not playing games today?"
Tong asked.
"No."
Friday replied. The room became silent again.
"H-Hey." Friday talked. Her voice was trembling.
"What is it?"
"If you passed the trial, which realm do you want to go?"
"I-uh…"
"You will come back here, right?"
Friday's voice became more tremble. It was as if she was about to cry. There was only one week left to spend time together. She had a dream that Tong abandoned her to Heaven and she could no longer meet him again. The dream frightened her.
Tong was stunned. He was about to say "Heaven" without thinking. Now watching the trembling Friday, the sentence "You will come back here, right?" was like a lightning striking into his heart, his mind, and his soul. He realized he almost made the biggest mistake he had ever done in his ever existence.
Thinking back about the time they spent together, over 450,000 years was like an eternity to Tong. But some parts of the conversation he had with Friday could still be remembered. The scenes of the exchanged conversation between him and Friday when he was in the mud and Friday was chilling on the ship could still be painted like a camera photo in his mind.
The 100 years together in the yacht, they were playing games and swimming together, smiling and laughing together, playing a prank on each other when the other party let the guard down. When he went to sleep in his bed, Friday sometimes sneaked into his bed after he had already slept and cuddled with him till morning.
The last 49 years, Tong could only see Friday at a distance and could not talk to her. But he could notice that she would always look back at him. Medusa would punish him every time he approached Friday, and also punished Friday if she approached Tong too.
Now that they could see each other, touch each other, and talk to each other. The first thing he was about to do was told Friday that he would be leaving her?
'I'm an idiot, no I'm a moron, NO! I'M A FUCKING RETARD!!'
Tong walked towards Friday and sat on her bed. Then He soothed her by patting her head. A tear dropped from Friday's eye.
"I will come back to you."
Tong's hand moved down and caressed her cheek, wiping a trace of a teardrop with his finger. Friday looked up to Tong's eyes. Her eyes were still moist and trembling.
"I promise, I will come back to you."
Tong reaffirmed.
"Be it as a sinner or as a devil, I will come back to you."
Friday's eyes became wet. Tears were dropping like overflowing dam. She raised her shaking hands to touch Tong's hand that was placed on her cheek.
"I'll be with you till the end of time."
"…You promise?" Friday asked with her choked voice.
"I promise you…"
Tong leaned his head towards Friday's head. His lips touched hers. Friday trembled for a second, then she closed her eyes, She wrapped her arms around Tong, embracing him, accepting everything of him.
Tong then gently lay her on her bed. Their lips were stuck glued together. He peeled off her clothes one by one without rushing. Their tongues were ….
The further details shall be omitted.
...
'Good job, my daughter.'
'And good job, my future son.'
'It took you all a while, but the wait is worth it."
'I guess I don't have to use aphrodisiac anymore.'
Medusa was sitting in her room, sensing her surroundings.
"Godfather, the job is done. The rice has been cooked."
…
"Well done, Medusa. Stand by for the trial, I'll take care of the rest."
A static sounded vibrated in Medusa's mind.