Chapter 289: Those Whose Souls Were Eaten by The Devil [Part 1]
The giant snake entered the cave while carrying Cillin, Hadar and White Night on its back. It was clear that there was a lot more space inside the cave, and some parts of the mountain were dug out to make even more room. The passages were wide enough that not even the giant snake had problems traversing; the scale of the project obviously grand judging from this alone.
The best thing about the construction was that the entire mountain range was a perfect blend between the natural and the mechanical. Countless mechanisms and secrets were installed into the mountain range; high end technology applied onto a foundation of nature. If someone tried to invade this place without permission, they could flip the entire mountain range around and not find anything unusual. Further transgressions might even result in the planet exploding.
This place was in every sense of the word, the real core of this planet.
There was no artificial illumination inside the passages, only traces of light peeking out of the gaps of certain rocks. Some time later, Cillin finally saw a place with light. It was wide area that was surrounded by walls. Light entered through a hole on the ceiling and brightened the place considerably.
As they approached, a large, circular pond entered everyone’s vision. Light was reflecting off of it. There was a tiny house floating above the pond, but the giant snake didn’t allow them to approach it. There were also some small flowers growing on the grassy land around the pond.
It was a very warm place.
The trio got off the giant snake’s back and enjoyed the scenery before them.
The walls were littered with drawings. They were processed so that rain water couldn’t corrode them, and that they could be permanently preserved.
The drawings were very simple drawings. The ones at the beginning even looked childish. However, they gradually grew in maturity, smoothness and depth as if they were the records of someone’s growth to adulthood.
As Cillin stared at the drawings, he had a feeling that it was a tale about the snake and a person. There was a sketch of a little man with a thread surrounding his arm. It was probably the snake at its youngest.
Most of the drawings were about a man and a snake. A little man tossing a snake to their head, a little man holding a snake by the tail and swinging it in circles, a snake trying to eat a fruit and somehow getting itself stuck like a ribbon…
Three light screens appeared and flew to each person. Some pictures and written logs were recorded on them. The light screens flashed once, and they were surrounded by a rectangle hologram. The hologram was meant to give them a full body experience, and the light screen their guide to whatever they wished to look, check or analyze.
Under the table of contents, Cillin chose the origin of the organization that was Black Viper. It wasn’t a popular category. Most people chose to start with a summary of Black Viper’s origin, but Cillin chose to start with the stories under the category.
The hologram around Cillin changed after he made his choice, almost as if he had teleported to a different location. A boy was sitting quietly inside a courtyard. He looked like he didn’t belong there, and he was different from the other children present in that scene. No one wanted to talk with him, and even if they did they normally left with uncomfortable expressions. It was because the boy either reacted with a blank stare or words that made no sense in context. It was no wonder that things turned out like this.
The boy was the other key person behind the beginning of Black Viper. Thousands of years ago, he was the fourth son of the Mist Bodhisattva Emperor, MB. Freeman.
Cillin was very interested in MB. Freeman, and he learned a lot about him from the logs. He even took the time to watch every video recording with MB. Freeman in it. The development of Black Viper, the combat strength and destructive power they possessed—he only gave those a perfunctory glance.
MB. Freeman had incredibly low presence among his brothers. In fact, he was often the subject of a gossip because of how different he was from other children. He was quiet, he spoke infrequently, he looked at everyone like they were strangers even when he was facing his parents, and he was absorbed in his own entertainment. It was like he was living in his own world.
Some time later, Freeman found a little viper with black spots in the garden and decided to raise it. The viper was injected with injected with toxin decomposer so that Freeman wouldn’t be in danger of being poisoned.
And so Freeman made his first friend ever when he was seven years old. His friend couldn’t speak, couldn’t smile, and wasn’t even a person. Freeman called it “Black Viper”.
Just like Cillin thought, most of the drawings on the walls were drawn by Freeman.
Freeman was a quiet person, but he spoke more than usual when he was around Black Viper. To others, it might look like he was talking to himself.
Cillin was attracted by Freeman not only because of his curiosity. The very first video recording of the boy was when he was just two years old. Inside the video, Freeman was playing with a floating blocks game that was pretty popular at the time. Since Freeman was a loner, he spent most of his time alone inside his own room. Currently, Freeman was building a toy plane.
The floating blocks game was a fine game that allowed any child to unleash the full power of their imagination. Most of the kids would try to assemble a weird object while playing or treat it as a hobby, but Freeman’s level of concentration was at a completely different level. When he played the floating blocks game, he looked like he was performing a mission.
His creation looked similar to the toy plane on the table beside him. Every movement he made looked like they were practiced beforehand. He didn’t make any mistake from beginning to the end, and it wasn’t long before he finished assembling the toy plane.
Setting aside whether a normal child could even complete a task like this alone, they would normally brag about it to their parents or their peers to win their praise and envy. But Freeman did no such thing. Instead, he disassembled the toy plane to pieces with one swipe of the hand and began assembling a second time.
However, this time he didn’t refer to the original toy plane model. He didn’t even start from the head of the toy plane; he chose to assemble the body of the toy plane first.
Not only did he use much less time to finish assembling the toy plane, the end product was much more perfect than the initial product. He was building with toy blocks, but the way they fitted one another was almost flawless.
Freeman was only two years old at the time.
When Freeman was done, he disassembled the toy plane again and began the process a third time. This time though, the toy plane he made was slightly different from the original model. To confirm this, Cillin brought up the real plane the toy was modeled after and gave it a look. Some details of the real plane were omitted from the toy as a matter of course, but Freeman was able to reproduce all of them without having seen the real thing during his third assembly.
Freeman was undoubtedly a genius.
Moving on to the next few video recordings. Freeman started tinkering with more delicate toys as he grew older. Every time, he was able to disassemble and reassemble them into stunning creations.
When the Mist Bodhisattva Emperor realized how special his fourth son really was, he had tried to find a teacher for him. However, the results were pretty depressing. Teacher-student interactions were inevitable no matter the subject. Even if no such interaction exists, a student should at least perform the homework a teacher asked them to perform, right? But Freeman did no such thing. He continued to do his own thing like he had done from the beginning, and it was as if no one else existed in the world besides the tiny viper wrapped around his hand.
Left with no choice, the Mist Bodhisattva Emperor gave Freeman a corner of the palace and let him do whatever he wanted. He provided all the “toys” Freeman could possibly need and some educational videos for guidance.
Eventually, Freeman faded away from people’s minds and gossip. On the rare occasion he was mentioned, he was called “the child whose soul was eaten by the devil”. That was their description of Freeman.