Chapter 1599

The Realm of Death is not the same as Hela's Underworld. This is not a barren land, but more similar to a dream realm, with fantastic dreams composed of fragments of various cosmic rules. It's possible to be in a strange black forest one second, and arrive in a dark city resembling Gotham the next. For beings of order, everything here is chaotic.

Human souls are not completely unconscious during the process of entering the Realm of Death. They will fall into a bizarre dream, usually memories from their own lives. In these dream fragments, they will re-experience those memory scenes that left a deep impression on them, which is the so-called "life flashing before one's eyes."

But this process is actually confirming all the coding of this soul, to facilitate the database in deleting them.

For some reason, Shiler, who has died many times, is experiencing this loading process for the first time. First, falling from the darkness, then feeling a hazy light. Following the light, he continued to fall downward, as if the warmth of being soaked in amniotic fluid enveloped him.

The feeling of weightlessness grew weaker, and Shiler felt that he had hit the bottom.

Concentrating his spirit, he then forced his eyes open. In a daze, Shiler discovered that he had appeared in a familiar church.

Just like the images shot with a special lens with a halo, there was a hazy, dreamy glow everywhere. Everything lacked detail, yet everything could evoke memories.

Shiler instinctively turned his head and saw the tall cross behind him and the statue of Jesus with arms spread wide and brows lowered.

Suddenly, a burst of hurried footsteps sounded at the entrance of the church. A figure rushed toward this side, and the filter was instantly broken. When Shiler came to his senses, he saw Natasha waving her hand in front of his eyes and saying, "Shiler, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Shiler turned his head to look around. The scene was still somewhat blurry, and even the outline of Natasha in front of him wasn't precise. Judging from the reflection in Natasha's pupils, she should also see him as just a blurry human shape. If it weren't for the voice being quite clear, it would be impossible to distinguish his identity.

"We're like we've entered a video game." Natasha shrugged, looking at the surrounding environment and herself, and said, "This should be hell, right? Much better than I imagined."

"This is not hell, at least not Mephisto's hell. If the plan goes smoothly, this should be the edge of the Realm of Death. Before long, we will penetrate the barrier and enter the true Realm of Death, and then become echoes wandering there forever."

"Then, what's with this church?"

"This should be a memory from my life." Shiler didn't seem anxious at all. He walked to the first row of the church, closest to the window, sat down, patted the seat next to him with his hand, and signaled Natasha to sit over.

"Alright, this is my first time dying, obviously not as experienced as you. Now can you tell me your plan?"

Natasha sat down beside Shiler. The two of them sat in the first row of the church, staring at the huge cross in front. And the first sentence Shiler spoke exceeded Natasha's expectations.

"I'm very sorry, I lied to you from the beginning. Although I am indeed not a doctor, I was entrusted by a doctor, and in all subsequent communications with everyone, the purpose was to improve their mental health as much as possible."

"Was it Dr. Shiler who entrusted you?"

"Yes, ma'am, but first, please answer a few questions. How are you feeling right now?"

"Hard to say." Natasha sighed, pressed her elbows on her legs, leaned forward, and stared at the checkered floor tiles reflecting a dreamy luster in front of her. "There's a kind of exhaustion after overdrawing, but also a sense of relief and relaxation that's hard to describe."

"Can you elaborate?"

"It's more like having exhausted all my strength, knowing that the matter is impossible to accomplish, so I just stayed where I was, waiting for death—a kind of relaxation."

"Then, let's cast our gaze back to earlier. How did you feel during the process of the two of us fighting?"

"I was drunk, I didn't think too much."

Shiler turned his head to look at Natasha and said, "Ma'am, we are not in the S. H. I. E. L. D. office right now. This is a divine realm that mortals cannot set foot in. There are no wiretaps, no record books, and I am not the agent interrogating you. I know you have the right to say any answer, but from a personal perspective, I hope you can be honest enough, because the situation developing to this point contains quite a lot of my hard work."

"You really know how to talk." Natasha smoothed the hair in front of her forehead to the back of her head with both hands. She didn't mock Shiler again, but gave a sincere evaluation. She discovered that this Shiler was indeed very good at moving others.

"That was a bit too intense." Natasha finally answered.

"Why do you feel that way?"

Natasha took a deep breath, was silent for a long time, and finally shook her head and said, "No need to talk about this, it doesn't work."

"Then, let's talk about my experience." Shiler didn't reproach her, but changed the subject. He leaned against the back of the church pew and said, "You should have heard a part of my experience from Professor Charles. During my childhood, I was taken to the laboratory of a mysterious organization and received long-term training there."

Natasha's blinking frequency sped up slightly, but she still controlled herself not to turn her head, staying where she was without a word.

"Their goal was to train me into a killing machine capable of creating chaos, so even if I was gifted, I inevitably had to undergo some professional agent training."

Shiler's voice began to grow more and more distant, like a sound from the horizon echoing in the sky.

"One of the training items interested me very much, and it was precisely during that training that I discovered my feeling of pain was different from ordinary people."

Natasha looked as if she knew what he was going to say. Her Adam's apple moved up and down imperceptibly, and the muscles in her neck twitched accordingly.

"Pain reflex is a person's most basic reflex, originating from our body's self-protection mechanism. Pain is a reminder of danger, not just external danger, but also a reminder of internal danger."

"If a person's arm is bitten by a wild beast, they will follow instinct to pull the arm back and then run away. If a person has a stomachache and diarrhea, they know they might have eaten something bad and will adjust their diet in time to avoid poisoning. To some extent, in the process of human evolution, the more sensitive one is to pain, the easier it is to survive."

"But if what you need is a killing machine, not a person, then the pain reflex is unnecessary; it's something that needs to be artificially screened and eliminated."

Shiler sighed lightly, lowered his head, and said, "My pain reflex is naturally weaker. It's not physiological; it's more like mental abnormality shielding a part of the influence of pain."

"I can tell." Natasha said somewhat sullenly. "I sliced your arm with a knife, but your first reaction was to think, not to pull your hand back because of the pain."

"Although I considered this point before I acted, I didn't expect you to be so exaggerated. You're not a professional agent." Natasha complained a bit.

"Then, as a professional agent, aren't you even more exaggerated? Ma'am?"

"Alright, you just want to pry my mouth open." Natasha shook her head somewhat irritably and said, "Yes, it might be even more exaggerated than you imagine. I have absolutely no pain reflex."

The two fell silent. Shiler was shocked by this fact and didn't speak. Natasha waited for him to speak, but didn't wait for a long time, so she didn't want to waste time and said directly.

"Just as you said, it was years of rigorous training that eliminated this part of instinct. Even if I only have one breath left, I can still aim and shoot more steadily than ordinary people, and my marksmanship is still very accurate."

"The three holes in my chest agree, ma'am."

Natasha shook her head and said, "No, there shouldn't have been three holes. If it were usual, you would have been killed by one shot."

"Even if you were infinitely close to death?"

"Even if I were already dead." Natasha turned to look at Shiler and said, "The muscle reflex in my finger would still pull the trigger at the last moment."

Shiler was silent for a while again, then said, "When people feel pain, they usually pray, hoping that the gods can eliminate the pain for them. But the emotional structure of human beings is far more precise than they imagine. If there is no pain, there will be no happiness."

"People's souls are a big tree. The part growing on the ground represents all kinds of beautiful emotions, while the part buried deep underground is the pain or morbidity they are unwilling to mention."

"If you blindly eliminate the root system underground, or simply separate the upper and lower parts completely, the result is that the happiness, joy, and other positive emotions in the upper part will also gradually wither, and the whole tree will become rotten wood."

"People often say that some people die at thirty, but are only buried at seventy. This is not uncommon. They reconcile with the intense emotions they extremely crave, not because they obtained them, but because there are no longer such intense emotions that make them continue to want them."

"Some people call this state 'seeing through the red dust,' call it stability and peace, but as I said, I prefer to call it 'numbness'."

Natasha listened quietly, saying nothing. Then she turned to look at Shiler, seeing his side profile, which became increasingly blurry in the hazy light of the church's stained glass, like the undulating mountain shadows under the morning light.

"You have already obtained all the answers you want." Shiler turned to look at Natasha and said, "Nick, Eric, Odin, Hela, you are all the same. You are not patients with mental illness; you are more stable than anyone else. You have found all the ways out for your entanglement and predicament, it's just that passion is no longer there in ordinary, stable days."

"It's just, ma'am, your problem, which is more serious than theirs, is that the trauma related to the training of pain elimination hasn't disappeared. It is still affecting you every moment. Your numbness is still growing, until one day, it will suck dry all the nutrients of the big tree on the ground, and then turn you into a walking corpse."

Natasha was silent for a while with a blank expression, then asked, "How did you know?"

"Empathy." Shiler leaned his back further back, let out a long breath, and said, "Throughout my life, I have been trying to balance morbidity and normalcy. In the past, I didn't restrain morbidity, leading to madness. That doctor sealed my morbidity, making me fall into a numbness unable to feel happy. My tower and abyss are gradually perfecting in this process of self-struggle."

Natasha swallowed. She didn't expect Shiler to analyze himself so deeply in front of her. The female agent had also never thought that there would be a thing in this world she needed to summon all her courage to do.

This wasn't even a very difficult thing, but it was harder than anything else in the world, and that was to open her heart and describe her feelings truthfully.

"When you... when you sliced me open like slicing a fish, I felt an unprecedented intense emotion explode in my brain. I think that was fear, but at the time I felt it was impossible. I thought I had long ago evolved this emotion away."

Natasha smiled, as if half-joking, and said, "Then there was shock, because I actually felt pain. I haven't had this feeling for many years. The training I received in the past made me completely immune to pain reflex."

"It's not that I can't feel pain, it's just that after pain is transmitted to the brain, the reflex nerves cannot work. I can use my reason to control the movement of all my muscles, and there are no abnormal parts."

"This is the secret of why my mission success rate is so high. All those targets who wanted to trade injuries with me arrived here earlier than me. They were already waiting for me in hell."