Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Netherworld

A mighty river flowed relentlessly, stretching from the beginning to the end, from birth to death, spanning billions of worlds. Even the universe’s boundary, expanding at the speed of light, could not restrain the river’s course.

In every world born from infinite possibilities, a tributary of this river must exist; without it, life and intelligence could not arise.

Within the river’s depths drifted countless pale, ethereal souls, the very essence of life and wisdom.

They were numb and ignorant, their present lives worn away by the waters of the underworld river, cast into the whirlpool of reincarnation, becoming the nourishment for all living things.

This was the redistribution of souls. Without souls, all things would be cold and lifeless, and even the universe itself would remain trapped in chaos’s border for lack of observers.

Above the river, a tattered wooden boat drifted slowly, seeming to be here and there at once, almost everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.

The dissolving waters flowed gently beneath the boat, tame as a small stream, quietly bearing it forward.

A tall figure cloaked in gray stood bent on the boat, rowing a long oar with steady strokes, as if plunging to the river’s unfathomable bottom, yet also as if merely stirring a faint ripple.

He lifted his head; the shadow beneath his hood suddenly parted beneath the starlight, revealing a gray-white eye, inked as if drawn with brushstroke, occupying his entire face.

On the riverbank stood a figure who seemed to have been waiting long—also robed in gray but with an exposed head: a smooth, pale skull.

The underworld river had no banks, only chains linking death and rebirth. Yet here lay a dock, a resting place for the ferryman.

The gray-robed figure on the boat paid no heed to the waiting skull in gray, expertly tying the boat fast with decayed grass ropes, then stepped forward.

The ferryman was stopped by the gray-robed skull.

In a hoarse, grim voice, the skull growled, “The miniature garden is in crisis, my lord of death.”

The ferryman lifted his black-eyed gaze and quietly regarded the skull. Softly, he said, “The miniature garden has not sounded any alarms.”

The skull seemed unable to contain itself, scolding bitterly, “The miniature garden is but a tool, and tools have flaws! The watchers of the spiral of life have discovered traces of ‘that.’ I want you to dispatch the enforcers immediately… No, I will personally go and utterly destroy that disgusting tumor!”

With these words, it turned to leave, intent on fulfilling its promise.

The ferryman raised a single knuckle, lightly resting it on the skull’s shoulder. The space trembled heavily, as if a finger pressed down on a strong ant, bending the skull’s rigid spine, causing the ground beneath to dip slightly and stir up a fine dust.

“I said, the miniature garden has not sounded any alarms. The watchers are only too curious. After all, they have not seen anything beyond their comprehension for a long time.”

The skull straightened its spine with effort, supporting the heavy finger and gritting its teeth. “The miniature garden is the miniature garden! Even in the vast multiverse of infinite possibilities, there are only thirteen miniature gardens. Five have been destroyed by the Cancer of the Multiverse’s invasion! And yet you remain indifferent…”

The ferryman sighed, then his demeanor shifted, transforming from approachable to an overwhelming, unassailable majesty.

Like the death that inevitably comes to all things.

“Mortician, it was I who personally tore the crown of the lord of death from your head and yet allowed you to continue overseeing the underworld. Did my mercy give you the illusion that you could dictate terms?”

The skull’s bones cracked and groaned, fractures spiderwebbing across its form as it wildly consumed the stable space around it, turning the once orderly spatial structure into chaos.

With a resentful roar, it bellowed, “Eye of the Dead! The miniature garden is not your private possession. It was we, the sources of chaos, who created the miniature garden.”

The ferryman chuckled softly and said gently, “You should go to the deepest reaches of the underworld to calm yourself.”

Despite the immense pressure and the fracturing space, the gray-black earth cracked open with a thunderous roar, revealing a scarlet molten glow. Countless chains shot forth from the chasm’s depths, wrapping around the skull in gray robes until its form shriveled and twisted, its joints severely misaligned.

The skull struggled desperately. Gray streams of light spilled forth, but the chains remained unyielding, still bringing death to all things. Even space itself, under the influence of the gray light, began collapsing toward oblivion—descending from three dimensions to two, then one, and finally zero dimensions.

The decaying space tugged on the strands of time, dragging spacetime into a vortex of death, recreating a singularity’s birth. Boundless energy, now unrestrained, was about to explode, its light and heat rivaling a supernova, set to engulf this dead and silent land.

The ferryman gently extended his index finger to where his lips would be, softly whispering “Shh,” as if a night watchman were gently warning mischievous children still noisy at midnight.

Then, the eternally turbulent quantum sea stilled; tides in the vacuum comically froze in this timeless realm of death.

A death domain colder than absolute zero lasted but an instant—even a single Planck time unit—but it was enough.

Collapsed spacetime crystallized instantly into the hardest spatial crystal, glowing a gray-blue hue, refilling the spatial framework.

The ferryman retracted the death domain, limiting its reach to merely one corner of the skull’s robe. That neat corner, along with the space it occupied, solidified into a rigid gray-blue crystal, detaching from the robe and freezing abruptly midair.

These were two distinctly different concepts of death—the former hastened death’s arrival, bringing all to ruin; the latter stripped all things of the flow of time, freezing them forever in a realm of death.

With a wave of his hand, the ferryman silently collected the frozen spatial crystals embedded in spacetime, preventing disruption to the natural order.

The skull in gray robes struggled in despair, shouting, “Eye of the Dead, you do not understand the terror of the Cancer of the Multiverse!”

It gazed at the star-filled sky; one star flickered uncertainly, gradually staining with a murky hue.

It sneered bitterly, “Look, another universe is being swallowed. Its purpose is to destroy this world! Do you think it’s some harmless caterpillar?”

In truth, the dazzling stars in the sky were not shadows of ancient suns, but symbols of vast, magnificent universes.

The ferryman nodded. “I know. But isn’t my duty to record it all, until the day of final destruction arrives?”

The skull was stunned, then let out a beast-like, piercing roar. Strong chains imprisoned it in the deepest underworld, binding its turbulent soul with molten infernal fire.

The ferryman stroked the earth, smoothing the rift, then continued onward.

Along his path, countless death gods clad in gray robes and skeletal forms bowed in greeting.

The ferryman extended his hands as if presenting a book. A thick, worn sheepskin tome appeared from the void within his grasp.

“Now, let us continue the cycle of souls and spirits.”