A Hell Of A Passage

Out of the casino's door, they saw a long snaking queue of ghosts while guards pushing some out of line in to form a tidy line in a dank, dimly lit tunnel where Alex heard muffled speech and pleas amidst the gloomy atmosphere.

"Is that the waiting line for reincarnation?" Alex asked, out of curiosity as he watched the queuing ghosts trudged past him, dragging their feet unwilling, opposite the jubilant reactions in the reincarnation lottery.

Horse-face shook his head. "Lottery winners go directly to Mengpo. This is the line for the First Court of Hell."

"We have to queue?"

Horse-face shook his head again. "Express lane up ahead."

"There's no queue there?"

"Ox-face and I are your express lane. Automatic head of the queue."

Shrill screams of agony rang out through the passageways as Kanghui and Arahabaki followed the two guards in front. Alex cringed alongside the other panicking ghosts.

"Sound effects," Ox-face grunted, out of earshot from the ghosts. "Scare them more."

Alex stared at Ox-face. "Why?"

"Just in case we have escapees."

Escape? Alex stared at Ox-face, who was busy eyeing the ghosts as the guards pushed them back into the queue. How could any ghost escape if primeval beings were more powerful?

Alex could believe the part on undercover Court officials out to catch unregistered ghosts but not escaping ghosts.

"Inefficient," Arahabaki muttered while Kanghui remained silent. "If the bottom rung can escape, the top isn't too smart."

A commotion broke out far ahead, catching their attention.

An unwilling male ghost with disheveled hair in a modern pant suit had rushed out of the line, running towards them until he spotted Horse-face and Ox-face in front. He turned around to face a hopeless situation at the back where five guards approached with their pole arms aimed at him.

Like a cornered animal, the ghost crunched down in an offensive stance, ready to lunge at him.

Alex cursed his luck. His new existence was unfurling like a damn Hollywood movie. Lots of action and he is the unwilling character.

Greenish miasma begun flowing out of it as the gas swirled through the passageways.

Great, I get to meet Slimer too, Alex thought as the ectoplasmic green entity movie 'Ghostbusters' popped into his head. If he was any luckier, he might meet the destroyer in the movie too.

"Watch how ghosts can become a threat if not contained or unhappy," Kanghui folded her arms and leaned against the wall as her eye watched the ghosts on the opposite side who were now clutching to each other in anxiety.

A sharp yet horrific screech came out of the escaping ghost as its body distorted into a large monstrous skeleton with neon greenish wisps emanating from it.

"Seriously, I am not impressed," Arahabaki stood aside, pulling Alex next to him. "It's just one ghost and we have the grand opera here."

Neither was Alex. All the while, he thought primeval beings were like the apex to the ghosts even at their weakest. Yet Horse-face and Ox-face proved him wrong.

"If you think you can beat this one without damaging the passageway, be our guest," Horse-face retorted.

"Is that a challenge?" Arahabaki's eyes gleamed as the chains around his wrist rattled loudly.

"Hang on," Ox-face jumped in between Horse-face and Arahabaki.

"You are not accepting the challenge, Ara," Kanghui said. "He is."

"He? Who?" Alex looked around, clueless.

Next thing Alex knew, a push and he flew right into the ground where the horrific ghost was.

Alex slowly looked up and gulped at the towering image of the gargantuan greenish apparition.

For a split second, both parties glanced at each other. One clueless and the other desperate to escape. That does not bode well as Alex stared into the empty sockets of the ghost. There was an endless darkness within.

That's no fucking Slimer but the Incredible Hulk in front of him.

"F—fuck," Alex uttered in panic as he scrambled while his hair flew at the roar of the ghost.

"If you fail, your soul may shear," Kanghui's voice called out as Alex grimace at the cruel situation that she had thrown him in.

Fail what? Fail to escape? Alex stared at the entity. Is she kidding about soul shearing?

He scrambled back and concentrated on escaping. The ghost was about to deal a colossal blow from the massive miasma accusations around its fist, and Alex didn't want to stick around to find out how much damage his soul can take.

"C-c-chongli, help?" Alex whimpered.

No answer.

"Just FIGHT IT!" Arahabaki yelled.

Shit, where was Chongli when he needed him the most?

"W-what am I supposed to do?"

"HOW THE HELL DO YOU USUALLY FIGHT?"

"Do I punch him? He's kinda transparent in a way."

Alex turned around while struggling to keep two sides in his view. Kanghui's arm blocked Arahabaki from venturing to assist. What reason did she have to throw him in the eye of the storm?

The greenish arm of the ghost was bearing down. Alex scrambled his way away just in time to avoid the hit. Then it swung backwards, slamming him high into the wall where the other ghosts quickly fled from the vicinity accompanied by the guards.

*CRACK*

"I am so fucking dead," Alex muttered as he slid down the jagged rocks. "Deader than dead."

The greenish miasma came bearing down on him. He was being crushed.

***

From the corner of Arahabaki's eye, a flash of a tiny small blackish wisp zigzagged out from behind. Damn, the device didn't vanish totally from the casino. It has concealed itself somewhere else.

Should he tell Kanghui, Arahabaki wondered. He almost couldn't sense it. Before he could speak, it flew towards the slumped form of Alex.

"Yasomagatsuhi didn't just come to gatecrash," Kanghui muttered.

"You knew?"

"I recognize the signature of the device, but what is Yaso doing with an obsolete Xitian device?"

"Not ours. It belongs to the Celestial Crows of the Ten Suns. We learnt how to create the devices from them. So design wise similar," Kanghui glanced at the blackish wispy orb lingering near them.

Born from the celestial chaos, that's what Arahabaki remembered about the Celestial Crows. Considered a primeval being, yet not one.

Whichever Celestial Crow sent the tracking device over, there was a nefarious reason. Was it a warning? Or something beyond his understanding.

The Celestial Crows held a dangerous reputation among the hidden dimension. Benevolence and malevolence were a Russian roulette with them. They were not primeval beings that went through the final evolution. No one knew their origin except they came from the vast space of the universe.

"Your devices will belong to Amatsumikaboshi," Kanghui added. "And Takamagahara's devices are from Yatagarasu, but given they never allow you to access theirs, you think it is ours."

"True," Arahabaki muttered at the mention of Yatagarasu.

Even the famous Yatagarasu, whose symbol is the three-legged crow, is a Celestial Crow. The same Yatagarasu who wrought misfortune on Arahabaki and the rest of the Jomon primeval beings by supplanting them with Takamagahara.

Arahabaki clenched his fist in frustration. He should have known better when Yasomagatsuhi shown up.

Yet, Arahabaki remained powerless against one even with Takamagahara's support.

More than a million years ago, all factions, including Takamagahara and Xitian formed an alliance to fight the initial onslaught more than a million years ago when the Celestial Crows decided to destroy a few worlds.

However, almost all these celestial creatures hardly shown themselves unless a mass planetary event was coming.

Arahabaki gestured his head at the orb. "Why don't you take it down?"

"They came from emptiness. And the emptiness was everything. They will forget everything. Yet, possess everything." Kanghui recited an old stanza about them. "To the gates of exhaustibility…"

"And to enter the fields of infinity. That's their old celestial doctrine," Arahabaki completed her recitation. "What has it got to do with the device?"

"It will disappear again. They may have taught us how to build our technology, but they only gave us the basics," she replied. "Some are that silly to believe that they taught us everything."

"Well, I thought it was obsolete, so…"

"Not obsolete, just very rare because only the Celestial Crows operate their own. That's why the parameter alarm didn't go off. Their tech is so advanced that others, like us, can't use it," Kanghui replied as she watched Alex thrown in the air.

"I see," Arahabaki muttered.

"No coordination." She suddenly palmed her face at Alex's hopeless progress.

Then Alex went flailing into the walls with another loud crack.

"Poor reaction time," she added.

The ghost swung Alex around into the guards, bowling them over easily into a pile. A quick shove and a kick, Alex struggled to get up among the otherworldly forms who shoved him off, face flat in the makeshift arena.

"Too weak."

Arahabaki tilted his head at Kanghui's odd commentary and then pointed at Alex. "is that the way you test the newcomers?"

She nodded as he stared at her in disbelief. No wonder Da Siming mentioned that she is the nineteenth level of hell.

Arahabaki's eyes glowed as he scanned Alex's soul core. If intact, the seven soul components have no risk of shearing apart. In the middle, a dark line formed on the core, a size of a pea. Not good news.

He nudged Kanghui.

"I know. He is a little soft," she shrugged before Arahabaki could speak. "But if a Celestial Crow wants to know about him, he better know how to defend himself."

"Against a Celestial Crow, even I am no match. Let alone Mr Supreme Fire Chongli in Alex's soul."

"Increase his survivability to escape for help. It isn't like we never went against them, as you can recall," Kanghui said.

"It took all the factions to unite against them. That's how scary one is on their own."

"If Alex can't take a battering from a mere ghost, he won't even last a millisecond against one."

Tough love and one hell of a passage rite but Kanghui had a point. Arahabaki shook his head at the huge greenish ghost, sending Alex smashing into the wall with a swipe.

"What a hell of a passage rite into our world…" Arahabaki chuckled.