"The second layer is called &#%X@&$#%@&§¿~ฯ&@%$#@&%$&&..." Ming Shufeng explained.
From his perspective, he felt unable to comprehend a single syllable spoken by Ming Shufeng. It was like an foreign language distorted through a blender, making it further unintelligible. Confused, Wei Wuyin wanted to probe into her actions.
Then, without an ounce of warning, Wei Wuyin's right arm glowed.
Wei Wuyin's world started to abruptly swirl endlessly. His sense of balance and self was tumbling as his mind chaotically throbbed with intense, dreadful pain of untold levels!
Time stopped.
Everything stopped.
"GAHHHH!" For the first time in Wei Wuyin's life, he horrifically wailed as his head snapped back with blinding speed. The veins and arteries on his neck, arm, and legs bulged unnaturally and wads and lines of spit spat out from his mouth.
Thud!
His knees hit the ground as he clutched at his head with both hands. As he continued to ceaselessly scream, he could see Ming Shufeng's body was paused as if frozen in time.
"What the hell is this?! GAHHHH!!" It was like his entire body was being crushed, burned, minced, and stabbed alongside his mind all at once. He was immensely horrified by this ungodly sensation of pain, nearly feeling as if his life and soul was going to abruptly vanish into nothingness.
Zsssm!
From his right arm, the physical manifestation of his Bloodline of Sin started to drone with an odd noise that pricked the senses. It faintly glowed with dark crimson light.
There was no explanation. There was no further guidance. Wei Wuyin merely suffered this torture for seventeen seconds. An entire seventeen seconds of hellish pain that could make gods and ghosts wail. His mind neared on the verge of complete and total collapse.
It was such a difficult thing to describe what he felt, but the most accurate depiction was having ten thousand ten inches needles stabbing repeatedly in your brain, your entire body being roasted by the sun, your body distorted, twisted, and crushed by the hands of gods, kneaded to their delight, while being rip apart by every last cell.
All the while, your sense of pain was amplified by three thousand times that of an average person. It was unforgettable. It was unimaginable.
Those seventeen seconds.
When they ended, he felt his consciousness teeter on the absolute line of eternal death. Oh how sweet felt to be near, how tortuous it was to be unable to jump into its embrace. These were his thoughts. Suicidal, driven by immense pain that could barely be conceived.
Was it soul-based?
Was it all a part of his imagination?
Regardless of what, it felt as real as breathing.
"...And that's all eighteen layers. Are you satisfied?" Ming Shufeng said with a faint pout. While she remained mostly calm, she always felt unnerved recalling details of Hell. While it was a construct to punish sinners, and her as an oracle can avoid sin, she still shivered at all the unique and devious means the Heavenly Daos possessed. Every last one was torture beyond description, and only those who lacked emotions, sense of self, self-preservation instincts, memories, thoughts, beliefs, desires, and various other natural human qualities would be able to ignore them.
She was not one of them.
Wei Wuyin's pupils trembled without end. He lifted his gaze and realized that his actions of screaming, wailing, unable to even beg for it all to stop, for death to come, was unnoticed by Ming Shufeng. In fact, she had continued to explain the eighteen layers of hell in its entirety.
"..." He was silent for a while. There was a desire within his heart that swelled up, a desire to return to his mother's embrace. A desire to just hide behind his brother as he once did as a child. A desire to be protected and feel the warmth and love of humanity.
It was so intense that his eyes became wet and tears nearly fell. All those repressed memories nearly swallowed him up as those things he lost before was now seeking to claim his thoughts.
"You...okay?" Ming Shufeng questioned with a hint of uncertainty in her voice. Wei Wuyin's reaction was incredibly intense, far more than anyone she'd known who heard about Hell. Was he this terrified to experience the torments? As a Blessed, they were unlikely to be sent to Hell under any circumstance, so it seemed unnatural that this would be a fear of his.
After all, to have karmic sin, one must not have karmic luck. They were two diametrically opposing forces that obliterated the other. Committing sin took positive karma while acting accordance to the laws would be rewarded with positive karma or the abolishment of negative karma. It was this philosophy that allowed second chances for those sinners who turn over a new leaf.
Regardless, the Heavenly Daos were of the utmost fairness in her eyes. It always allowed one to change before death, but to those who followed its rules and laws, it bestowed fortune after death.
While she hadn't noticed the inconsistency and horrors in this thinking, it was highly linked to her own powers.
"I...I…" Wei Wuyin spoke softly. Was this his fate? The Bloodline of Sin was obviously unwilling to allow him to know of these calamities or of Hell's layers.
He gnashed his teeth to the point his gums nearly bled. "The Heavenly Daos directly influence one's instincts or whispers in their ears to manipulate its Blessed, yet you constantly use brutal tactics to manipulate your Sinners! Is this fair?! Are you any different?!?!" The blazing rage within his heart burned hotter than a thousand suns.
Hypocrite!
He didn't care what reason the First Sinner had for taking this action. He didn't even care if it was for his own good. It was the fact that he wasn't given a way to prepare himself! Wasn't it just like the Three Thousand Commandments of the Heavenly Daos or the fact it erased Blessed knowledge of themselves?! It propagates ignorance and lets you experience the subsequent consequences!
"No...No. No! NO!" His mind that still felt fear towards that nearly indescribable pain stabilized. Within his sea of consciousness, his Alchemic Spirit of Eden Qi started to brilliantly glow with multicolored lights. Its form directly dived into his sea of consciousness and merged with it, permeating endless alchemical energies.
This stabilized his mind and focused his thoughts. A clarity unlike any was now contained within his eyes.
When Ming Shufeng saw those silver eyes of his fixate on her face, she shivered. So intense! Did he…
She folded her arms around her chest, feeling insecure. Would this madman break his oath? While this senseless thought entered her mind, Wei Wuyin spoke.
"Explain it again."
"...What?" Ming Shufeng started. Again? Why?
"Just! Explain it again." He repeated.
Those firm eyes of his were unwilling to give up. He was given this title before his time, given barely any chance of success. While he was grateful as the Black Skeleton had saved his life by these actions, he was unwilling to lose his life like this. He had wallowed in despair for a year, quietly accepting his death.
He had given up.
But a year was enough. He was unwilling to return empty handed as he waited for his fate to disperse within these Calamities of Hell. Even if his mind collapses, he just needs one chance!
"I…" Ming Shufeng was uncertain of what to do.
"Say it! The Oath compels you to listen to me!" Wei Wuyin shouted.
Ming Shufeng truly was unable to understand Wei Wuyin, but she had to listen. Her slight hesitation had already caused quivering of his Fate Spirit of Qi. If she delayed any longer, she'd be breaking the oath and all her life's work would be over.
So, she said it again.
"&$&@&%&¿¡ฯ%!#@..." She started to explain once more.
Seventeen seconds.
Once more, he experienced that pain that could cause immortals to claim their own lives, gods to beg, and ghosts to weep swept his mind, body, and soul. All he received was an unintelligible mess.
"Is that enough?" Ming Shufeng asked after once more explaining the eighteen layers.
Wei Wuyin's eyes were bloodshot. It was as if rivers of blood were surging within those seas of white.
"No! I need you to repeat everything you said, word for word, cadence for cadence." Wei Wuyin felt his entire sense of self fracture, but he remained firm.
"...what?" Ming Shufeng was truly confused.
Earlier, her explanation was different than her last one, so the words came out different. He hadn't caught the unintelligible mess last time due to dwelling in that horrid experience earlier, but this time, he heard every last bit.
"Again! The same! I order you!" At this point, he was screaming and shouting like a madman, but he didn't care.
Ming Shufeng jumped at his aggression, but listened to his words. After all, if she didn't follow his orders exactly, her spirit would collapse. She couldn't let that happen.
"&$&@&%&¿¡ฯ%!#@..."
"&$&@&%&¿¡ฯ%!#@..."
"&$&@&%&¿¡ฯ%!#@..."
For the entire day, Ming Shufeng repeated those words over and over, and each time, Wei Wuyin experienced hell itself within his everything, but he clenched his teeth, balled up his fist, and continued with open ears.
After the 100th time, he asked her to explain using different words. Then, after another hundred, another set of different words. While Ming Shufeng likely felt that he was just torturing her, his actions had meaning.
A very purposeful meaning.
Language was a mysterious thing. There was no language without order or sense. An idea, a concept, a thing, a continuation, various languages incorporated these concepts in the form of detail. Everything has a meaning but deciphering that meaning was difficult. Halfway through, he tried to see if Ming Shufeng could display her words with hand movements, but those hands were distorted and contorted from his sight.
However, he could still make out something.
A pattern.
Regardless if it was the distortion or contorted sense of sight or hearing, one thing remained constant: the contorted and distorted changes. An unfathomable power was changing them, but it was mechanical and inflexible. It changed them all the same way. After all, she was still speaking his language, just changed.
Trying to work your way through that was a near impossible feat. After all, what was unintelligible would still be unintelligible unless you could confirm at least what something meant.
And he did.
It took numerous tries and the pain of experiencing a form of torture that could make the harshest interrogators seem like children, but he did!
It felt like decrypting the most difficult puzzles with merely the instructions from white noise, all while being tortured endlessly to prevent focus and concentration. Yet, in the end, he determined just a few things.
When the day was over, Ming Shufeng felt her binding oath get removed from her spirit. Earlier, she couldn't escape after being locked by this Spirit Oath, but now she had regained her freedom. Her bright eyes looked towards Wei Wuyin before she bit her lips slightly. In a flash, she withdrew a crystal from her storage ring and crushed it.
Her figure warped and vanished in the blink of an eye.
Wei Wuyin didn't stop her. While he could've stopped her even in his chaotic state, this was essentially letting her go; her usefulness was over. In truth, he owed her, so his previous desires for revenge was mostly abolished. In the future, when he looks back on this moment, he might even be thankful.
He sat down in contemplation. While his muscles twitched at times, his vision went blurry, and his consciousness would fade in and out erratically, his thoughts remained clear and calculating.
He focused the majority of his attention on the early portions of Ming Shufeng's explanation. While he used the middle and latter portions to help his deciphering, it wasn't focused on.
In it, he merely was capable of determining with greater certainty than others one sentence. It may not be entirely correct, but that's all he had to rely on.
"Second...survive in darkness, life passes."
This was it.
But...to him, it was enough.