He didn't see the person speaking to him at the first moment. After getting up from the ground, what he saw was the vast earth and the clean and refreshing sky.
He stood on the top of a towering mountain and looked down through the clouds at the river, villages, rugged and steep undulating slopes...
This is a beautiful and magnificent picture, a rich and vibrant land.
The fresh air soaked into Victor's spleen and lungs, and a rare sense of joy pervaded his whole body.
He closed his eyes and felt the beating of his heart and the rise and fall of his lungs.
So clear, so healthy, like the rising sun at noon.
He is still alive, and he is sure that his body is full of activity and he can feel everything in the material world.
But why did the voice just say that he was dead?
Finally, Victor remembered that man, and he continued to hear the sound of an ax chopping wood in his ears.
Turning around, he saw a man whose upper body was naked and his lower body was only wrapped in a rag.
The man's skin is oily and dark, and his body is skinny and looks like he is malnourished.
With trembling arms, he raised the lumberjack in his hand fiercely and chopped down at a thick tree in front of him.
boom!
The ax kept striking at the same position, but maybe because the man's strength was too weak, the mark was not deep at all.
Victor stared at the other person warily, but suddenly discovered that the other person looked extremely similar to the statue.
"It's you?"
"What am I?"
"You look exactly like that statue..."
"I don't know what kind of statue anyone has made of me..."
After a brief exchange, the man raised his ax and began to chop. He was panting and obviously almost exhausted.
Victor's eyes flickered and he asked speculatively: "Are you that... Shivers?"
"Sivers? I don't know, I'm just a wood splitter..." The thin man wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked helplessly at the tall tree in front of him.
This tree is very strange. The entire trunk and branches are bare. There is only a strange blue flower growing on the treetop, swaying slightly with the breeze...
"Hey... I still keep cutting before the sun goes down. I have to start all over again tomorrow..."
The other party said strange words, but what Victor cared about was what he said at the beginning - "Someone can complete the sexual transformation ceremony after death..."
What does this mean? Could it be that...
"Have I completed my gender transformation?"
"Who knows... After you died, I observed that there seemed to be changes in the secret transmission on your body. Maybe you completed the conversion ritual of the path rules unintentionally... It's just a pity that you are dead and there is no need for it...
…”
The other party kept teasing, but Victor was suddenly startled and looked at him warily again: "You know the rules of the path? You also know the secret transmission and sexual relations? So you are also a seer?"
The skinny man threw away the axe, looked at the tree trunk and sighed: "I didn't say I was a mortal? But so what? I'm not imprisoned here as a lumberjack..."
"Imprisonment?" Victor was slightly surprised.
Then, the skinny man showed him the chain on his leg. The end of the chain was connected to the ground under his feet. A big hole was dug there, but the end of the chain was not dug. It was obvious that the skinny man
Already tried it.
The chains that bound him seemed to penetrate directly into the deepest part of the mountain.
"He said that if this tree can be cut down before the sun sets and it dies completely, I can be free..." The thin man scratched his chin.
"He?" Victor was suddenly surprised.
The skinny man continued: "Yes, that's the great god who is served by many citizens of Olympia!"
"Are you imprisoned by the gods?" Victor became more and more surprised and took a breath.
The skinny man waved his hand: "I don't know! He just asked me to cut down the tree, and I can only leave after cutting it down..."
Victor took a step back, thinking of the villages and residents at the foot of the mountain, and immediately asked: "Where is this place? You said I am dead? Why am I still standing here alive?"
"Um..." The skinny man raised his forehead, as if thinking about how to explain it in an easy-to-understand way.
Just listen to him say: "Anyway, this is not the material world..."
"It's not the material world?" Victor didn't understand. "Is it in the secret place?"
"It's not..."
"Is that a dream? No...the dream and the secret are not so real."
Victor pinched his face, felt the pain, and became even more convinced that he was still alive.
However, the guy in front of him explained: "Even your memory can deceive you, let alone the five senses... Mortals always hope to find the answer to the world from logic. They never thought that logic might be just a lie. The world is idealistic.
Materialism is also the compromise of consciousness being trapped in the physical body..."
Shen Shen Na Na Na...
Victor scoffed and continued to question: "Then what do you mean, where is this place?"
Ahem...
The skinny man coughed twice, spread his hands and confessed: "As you can see, this land belongs to Olympia, the country of ashes..."
Olympia?
Victor was confused. Before he came here, the place he was dragged into by Miria was also Olympia. Compared with this place, Olympia was too desolate and depressing, as if it had been burned by a fire.
"Whether you believe it or not, this is Olympia, a country in history, not the place you stayed before..." The skinny man continued to pick up the axe, akimbo, and looked up at the treetops.
So...this is the other world of the other world?
Victor could only understand it this way.
"Am I dead?" he continued to ask.
"died……"
"But why..."
"There is no reason. If you die, you will die. People from your world cannot easily reach where I am, unless you die..."
Victor took a deep breath and looked confused: "Then you are dead too?"
"No...I have no life or death, I'm just a trapped lumberjack..."
After saying that, the skinny man raised his ax and struck it hard, but it still landed in the same position and could not leave too deep a mark.
He exhaled harshly and shouted to Victor: "I said... you have nothing to do, so come and help me cut down the tree! You cut down the other side, and we will finish the work earlier and get out earlier!"
After he finished speaking, for some unknown reason, an ax appeared out of thin air under Victor's feet.
Victor looked at the ax in surprise, and the thin man in front continued to move.
"Pick it up and let's do it! When I'm released, maybe I'll feel better and I'll tell you more secrets!"
After hearing this, Victor gritted his teeth, picked up the ax on the ground, and started to chop the other side according to the opponent's rhythm.
The two of them kept chopping, and although the efficiency was slow, the marks on the trunk were getting deeper and deeper.
At this speed, even without Victor's help, the skinny man should be able to chop down the tree in a day or two.
But he seems to have been imprisoned here for a long time. The marks on the tree seem to have appeared only after being cut in the morning until noon. Is it possible that he just started cutting down today? Or has he been lazy in the previous time?
Victor was very puzzled and cooperated with him to continue working until nightfall and spent the whole night. When dawn was about to come, the two of them finally connected the incisions, and the tree trunk was about to fall to the ground...
But at this time, the skinny man looked very impatient. He picked up the ax and increased his speed, shouting: "Faster! Faster! Faster! Damn it! It's just a little bit close!"