Fusang-Weiyin died late one night after working overtime and awoke in Hell. On the first level, the Tongue-Pulling Hell, a System pop-up told her: "Those who use dialects will receive twice the punishment." She instinctively clenched her fist. Hiding her accent and her origins had been second nature throughout the decade she'd spent surviving in the big city. But she soon discovered that Hell's rules weren't set by the gods. They seeped from the fears deep within her bones: the more she feared something, the more the rules resembled it; the more she tried to escape, the closer the punishment pursued her.
Each of the eighteen levels of Hell was a trap tailored just for her. Iron shears cut the fingers with which she'd spoken too many insincere words. The barbs of the Iron Tree drew out the guilt she'd buried for half her life. The Ice Mountain forced her to face the regrets she couldn't bear to look back on. The cauldron of boiling oil fried away, layer by layer, the pretense of finding self-satisfaction in her own suffering. With every level she passed, she gained another wound that would never heal, and pried open another layer of the hard shell around her heart, the one called "adulthood."
The one who accompanied her through every level was a shadow split from the 3.7 percent of her that was true to herself: Jinming. He bore 30 percent of her pain for her, but also grew by feeding on her true self. The clearer he became, the closer he came to replacing her. At every turn, she would see the same fingernail scratch as her own. It was a mark she'd left behind in earlier cycles. She had been trapped in this loop countless times already.
But this time, at the mouth of a volcano, she called out "Mama" in the Dulong language. Beneath a stone mill, she admitted, "This is just who I am." In the City of Wrongful Death, she heard two sisters sing an old tune about sending their loved ones home. Level by level, she reclaimed the mother tongue, guilt, cowardice, and sincerity she had cast away.
Theme: Hell never comes from outside. It is a mirror reflecting the true self we have forgotten.
