All living beings in hell

Chapter 118 - The Snake God Mahan
The lotus lantern at the entrance was lit up, and the office welcomed No. 70 No. [-] customer.

"My lord, I have admired your name for a long time, and seeing it once is better than hearing it a hundred times."

The guest pushes the door and walks into the room—to be precise, not walking—a strange gesture somewhere between human walking and snake crawling.This guest has the head of a cobra, with a neck more than half a meter long.The place connected to the neck is a male human body.The body is burly and strong, with full chest muscles, and the lower body is covered by a white linen cloth.On his wrists and ankles, there is a ring woven with golden silk, exuding a certain ancient sacred aura.

"I didn't speak your language originally, please forgive me if I express it improperly." The snake-headed man clasped his hands in front of his chest and bowed slightly.

"It's okay, your expression is very clear, I can understand it now, please sit down."

The snake-headed man sat upright on the wooden chair, adjusted his posture, straightened his back, solemnly reminiscent of ancient Egyptian pharaoh statues.

"Excuse me, what should I call you?" I spread out my pen and paper and asked according to the procedure. "Mehan, from the seventh dynasty of ancient Egypt, is a descendant of the Nordic serpent Uroboros."

I wrote down the name of the smuggler on a piece of paper: "Okay Mahan, what is the reason you are looking for me today?"

Mehan looked very cautious, his pair of snake eyes narrowed into thin lines, and the black snake letter stretched and retracted, making a hissing sound.I didn't urge, just looked into his eyes, and waited patiently.

"I hate cats, my lord. You have cats in you."

"It is true. If you feel uncomfortable, you can move the chair away from me before talking."

Mehan got up and picked up the chair, moved it to the opposite wall and then stopped, and sat down again.Now he is very far away from me, and I can no longer observe his expression.

"Why do you hate cats?" I try to raise my voice.

"Cats are the natural enemies of snakes, and snakes are also natural enemies of cats. We are enemies of nature." Mehan also amplified the volume, and the whole office resonated with his voice.

"Then are you going to talk to my friend now?"

"The natural world is a matter of the natural world. As gods, we should overcome the troubles caused by natural habits."

"You're a god, I'm not! I'm just an official from the underworld!" I basically had to shout at this distance, and it was a bit strenuous, "Do you want to consider overcoming the troubles caused by natural habits? Although we are You may be enemies in nature, but that is caused by animal nature. Since you are a god, divinity should be able to train animal nature well, right?"

Mehan didn't speak, I couldn't see his expression, I didn't know what he was thinking.After a while, he suddenly spoke.

"You are right, I decided to stay with you."

There was a hissing sound of chair legs dragging on the ground, and Mehan dragged the wooden chair back to my desk again, and sat upright again.

"God has a certain amount of doubt about everything, including you."

"Understandably, so do animals. They are all self-protection mechanisms."

"What I want to talk to you today is, trust."

"Trust? How to say?"

"I want to know, what is trust."

I lightly pressed the end of the quill to my temple, and tilted my head to look at the serious snake god in front of me.

"What do you think trust is?"

"I don't know, so I want to ask you."

"You must know a little bit, but you don't recognize the 'little' trust you know, so you want to hear my thoughts. Before I express any opinions, you are a guest today, so your thoughts are better than mine. more important."

Mahan stopped talking. He opened his mouth and let out a breath. A purple mist came out. The smell of bitter almonds reminded people of some kind of highly poisonous chemical.

"Trust is when you believe that someone other than yourself has the ability to help you accomplish something or achieve a certain purpose. If this person does it, then the trust is entrusted to the right person. If If this person doesn’t make it, then it’s a wrong payment.”

"Can you give a specific example?"

"The Seventh Dynasty of Egypt is a dynasty that is not worth mentioning in history. It only existed for less than a hundred days. In this less than a hundred days, more than 70 princes competed for the throne of Pharaoh. Soldiers and horses exchanged , Poison assassination.

The dynasty ended without a powerful pharaoh making decisive decisions.The whole dynasty is a farce of selfish desires, full of blood and death. "

"What does that have to do with trust?"

"Among the more than 70 princes, I once deeply trusted nine of them. As one of the Egyptian gods, I conspired with these nine and made a tailor-made plan for them to jointly establish a dynasty. If they Do as I said, although there may not be a centralized pharaoh, the nine princes can govern this continent smoothly and prosper for a hundred years.

It's a pity that these princes said a set of words in front of the gods, but they did another set of words behind their backs.I trusted these nine people, gave them my wisdom, and shared my strategy with them, but what I got was the endless secret fight for these nine princes.They didn't want to govern the country well from the beginning, they just thought about how to fight for the throne of Pharaoh.

I watched a continent full of hope become a battlefield for power struggles, and watched countless poets and scientists become senseless victims of the war.My trust was gone from the day the Seventh Dynasty fell, and I will no longer trust any human beings.

From the perspective of the gods, I learned one thing about human beings—no matter how noble the royal power and wealth seem on the surface, they only care about the fame and fortune in front of them.For the sake of fame, they would rather abandon the possibility of creating a better continent.Humans are short-sighted, and humans are not to be trusted. "

"So your concept of trust comes primarily from your interactions with humans?"

"With humans, and with gods."

"Do the gods trustworthy?"

Mehan didn't answer me, his black letter was bobbing rapidly up and down in the air.

"It seems that the gods are not very trustworthy. Does that mean that the gods are also short-sighted?"

Mehan hissed and looked a little annoyed.

"It is not allowed to slander the reputation of the gods like this."

"If you don't answer me, I can only guess by myself."

"You don't understand the difficulties of the gods. You shouldn't speculate on the motives of the gods like this."

"There's no speculation, we're just talking about trust."

"The part I want to explain has been explained, now it's your turn to say it." There was an irreversible majesty in Mehan's voice.

"I think you have a very partial view of trust."

"Why do you say that?"

"Trust, to me, is an element that exists in the mode of interaction and is closely related to personal security and habits. At present, it sounds like your understanding of trust only comes from interacting with humans. The interaction between gods and humans It's unequal in itself. How much trust can there be in a relationship that's unequal in itself?"

"Even in a peer-to-peer relationship, trust is not necessarily 100% reliable."

"Ha, so you admit it, the gods sometimes don't keep their promises."

Mehan didn't look very happy, as if he was suppressing his anger, the gold rings on his wrists and ankles were rubbing: "Okay, our gods don't keep promises, so what?"

"What I'm curious about is, why do you want to talk to me about 'trust', and what do you hope to learn from me?"

"In addition to 'trust', I also have many other topics that I can talk to you about. This is the first that pops up in my mind, maybe the most important, maybe the least important, so I just asked, There's no particular reason."

"Trust is a thing to practice, it doesn't exist by itself. Just like learning how to love yourself and love others, it's something that needs constant practice."

"Why practice? Isn't trust the truth that should come naturally?"

"It is precisely because it is a kind of truth and kindness that it requires practice, especially for human beings living in the world. Of course, the purpose of training is not to trust others 24% uninterrupted [-] hours a day. Learning to 'trust' is waiting to be lied to."

"Then what are you going to train?" Mehan seemed to be interested, his body leaned forward slightly, and the gold thread ring stabilized.

"From my personal point of view, training is the ability to recover and continue to believe in love after being hurt related to trust. This process is not so much a practice of how to trust others, but more like a practice of how to trust yourself .”

"Trust yourself, trust yourself..." Mehan showed a thoughtful look.

“After you see the seventh dynasty of Egypt fall, you lose trust not only in humans, but also in the decisions you make, don’t you? You may have moments of strong self-doubt, but anger will Let you attribute all the reasons to the human breach of contract. Of course breach of contract itself is a kind of breach of trust, but why do you no longer trust yourself?"

"How do you know I don't trust myself anymore?"

"If your knowledge of humans ends with the Seventh Dynasty in Egypt, then you doubt yourself pretty badly."

"Throughout history, human beings in general have been untrustworthy. They pursue power and money more than truth and truth, which I despise."

"If all human beings become enlightened and become gods and Buddhas, wouldn't you lose your job?"

"If human beings are really enlightened, it would be great. I really don't understand why you still insist on doing this job. Do you believe in human beings so much?"

"I'm practicing trusting myself."

"Why do this?"

"There is nothing better than love and hope in this universe. Even if you get hurt because of a crisis of trust, compared to watching the seeds sprout and grow, all the hurts can be tolerated in the long river of time. .”

"Sounds very righteous."

"Your gods are righteous, I am personal. I just like beautiful things and work hard for them, that's all."

"I still maintain my own opinion on your remarks, and I don't want to trust humans."

"Well, I respect your choice."

Mehan stood up, straightened his full chest, and bowed slightly to me: "It's not a very pleasant chat, but I have to go, and I still have work to do."

"Well, go get busy."

Mehan didn't say much, he turned around and left the office with big strides.

(End of this chapter)