Langmuir, barefooted, stepped on the ground, replacing the wick of the copper lamp at the head of the bed that was about to go out.
After the merge, he had just taken a bath, and his whole person seemed to carry a faint mist. The human struggled to tiptoe, his hands half-enclosed the wick, and with two “huffs”, the flame gradually brightened, illuminating the originally dark palace.
Hun Yao sat on the edge of the bed watching, pondering when Langmuir learned to light the lamp, his thoughts were a bit drifting.
“The most important thing for a king’s merge partner is to obey,” he said. “Those who talk nonsense, dare to point fingers at the monarch, are very troublesome, and cannot leave such hidden dangers.”
When he said this, Hun Yao was stunned for a moment, and immediately added nonchalantly, “Except…”
“Except me.” Langmuir understood, “Because there is no other use for me. This slave understands.”
Hun Yao hummed vaguely, turned his face, propped his forehead with his knuckles, and continued to talk about Liu Sha. “She, she is still smart, knowing that she can’t come here in the future. Self-mutilation is a sign of weakness, she wants to beg me for mercy, look at the last feelings and reward something. So that their family can have a better winter.”
“But Liu Sha is not smart enough. If you make a mistake, just bite yourself a few times, shed a few tears, not only will there be no punishment, but you can also walk out of the palace with rewards…Where is there such a reason in the world?”
There are other attendants outside, what do they think when they see this?
One pass ten, ten pass a hundred, what do the demons in the royal court think?
In the future, all guys, whether they make big or small mistakes, come to use this trick, can he still be this king?
Hun Yao did not think that his disposal was inappropriate.
Unexpectedly, Lanmiel gave him a helpless look and said, “You are really harsh.”
“Isn’t she the lover of my King? Just because of a word’s boundary…”
“Lover?”
“Love…fond of?” Lanmiel stumbled.
“Love.”
Hun Yao looked at him meaningfully, suddenly tilted his head and asked, “Langmuir, what is love like above the abyss?”
“Like the sun, like the flowers?”
“…!”
Langmuir’s breath trembled abruptly.
He lowered his head, his slender fingers quietly gripping the bed sheet.
Hun Yao no longer looked at him, but beckoned for the human to sit in his arms. The rough palm slid down from that delicate neck, stroking all the way down along the spine.
He quickly touched the scales. Those were the new scales on Langmuir’s body, the coarse hard material covered the originally smooth skin, symbolizing that the human was gradually being eroded by demonic breath.
“In the abyss,” the demon king said in a low voice, “not every demon has the qualification to talk about marriage.”
“The vast majority of inferior demons will not marry in their lifetime. They have multiple merge partners, not only to satisfy their desires, but also to leave as many offspring as possible, because the death of young demons is too common.”
“Only when a demon has certain resources and status, such as the elders, leaders, and generals in the tribe… When they want to enjoy their partner alone, or to ensure the purity of their heir’s bloodline, they will hold a grand wedding ceremony and form a marital relationship with the other party.”
“As for love…”
“Love in the abyss is not what you imagine.”
Hun Yao said, looking around casually. The palace was mostly hung with bone ornaments, nothing luxurious. He rummaged at the head of the bed, and finally pinched out a ruby that had fallen into the crack at some point.
“Here, such a one.” The demon king casually put the ruby into Langmuir’s palm, “If it is offered to the leader in other tribes, the food that can be exchanged is enough for Liu Sha’s half-dead old father and the crying sister to eat for another two months.”
“Liu Sha may also love me, but if she is asked to choose between a jewel and ‘being the merge partner of the demon king, but no more rewards’, she will choose the former without hesitation.”
Langmuir was stunned for a moment, slowly holding this gem in his palm.
In fact, in his eyes, the quality of this “gem” was really rough, if in the human kingdom, as long as there was some extra money, it could be bought from merchants.
But for the demons, it was already a treasure that could be offered to the leader.
“Attendant Liu Sha…loves her family very much.”
“Yes. But if winter comes and there is not enough food, what do you think she will do?”
Langmuir was silent for a moment, and asked softly, “Loot?”
Hun Yao raised his eyebrows unexpectedly, “Interesting, but unfortunately still wrong. Liu Sha is an inferior demon, and she is weak in physique. How can she have the ability to rob her own kind?”
“When there is no way out, she can only kill her seriously ill old father and use the only food to raise the younger ones, instead of hugging the three of them to starve to death.”
Langmuir was speechless.
“If there is still not enough food…you guess again?”
“Will her sister…also be killed by her?”
“Wrong, Liu Sha is stronger than you think.”
Hun Yao suddenly reached out and pulled Langmuir’s shoulder over, pinching his lower jaw to straighten his face.
In these short breaths, the demon king’s expression became very serious, no longer with a playful and cruel attitude. He leaned close to Langmuir’s ear and whispered softly.
“——!?”
Langmuir took a short breath, his pupils trembling slightly.
He seemed to be scalded and dodged back, but the demon king held him tightly, as if applying some kind of torture, he finished those horrifying words in the human’s ear one by one—
–She would eat her old father with tears in her eyes. With the flesh and blood of her closest kin, she would nurture herself and her younger sister.–
“You humans don’t call this strength, but cruelty, evil, sin… right? In your eyes, demons are rats in the gutter, dirty and smelly.”
“But rats can never crawl out of the gutter, what can they do? Dirty and smelly, just simply not live?”
“Langmuir, this desolate land of Gasuo is the gutter in your eyes, it is our deeply hated and deeply loved motherland, the place where our bloodline is born and dies; every time it welcomes winter, countless desperate demons survive by relying on the flesh of their own kind.”
The demon king’s voice was not cold, not even sharp, but it seemed to be mixed with the vast snow, freezing the air in the bed curtain at night.
“..…”
Langmuir closed his eyes, as if some invisible heavy shackle had bent his shoulders, trembling incessantly. The silver-gray long hair fell in waves, covering the human’s expression.
Hun Yao looked at him deeply and said in a deep voice, “This is love in the abyss, Langmuir.”
“It is not possession, but sacrifice; it is not sunshine and flowers, but the bones held by the cold sufferer at the extreme cold ceremony.”
…..
By the time Hun Yao’s claws let go of Langmuir, there were already five shallow bloodstains on the human’s shoulders.
Said a bit too much, Hun Yao thought irritably. It’s like explaining something, even though demons never deign to explain.
He stubbornly added, “You asked, so I told you a little bit. Consider it a reward for accompanying me in the merge.”
The story was over, the demon king blew out the lamp and went back to bed. Langmuir was still stiff there, like a sculpture.
Hun Yao had already laid down, and had to prop himself up again, patting his back with his tail to signal him to go down and not to disturb his sleep.
Unexpectedly, he thought Langmuir would cry, but he didn’t.
Through the dark night, there was no joy or anger in those drooping pupils.
****
Not long after, Hun Yao began to regret that night a bit.
His slave was too stimulated, from a clam shell at night to a sculpture during the day, the demon king thought.
Since then, Langmuir had been spending more and more time by the window.
Sometimes when Hun Yao left the palace in the morning he was there, and when he came back at night he was still there, most of the time he was motionless, looking at the light on the boundary cliff, quiet and silent.
Even if Hun Yao hinted many times that “Liu Sha is not a completely ignorant person, she dare not look at what she should not look at, she left before the start that night”, and “you are with me, no demon will eat you, I will not feed you demon meat”.
It was no use.
Langmuir said, “Can my King bind me somewhere else?”
He thought for a while, very unskilfully put his hand on the placket of his chest, and slowly said, “Whatever you want, it’s okay.”
The last time he made this request, Hun Yao scared him and wanted to feed him firestone.
This time, the demon king looked at the snow outside the window, anxiously calculating the remaining days of winter in his heart.
When winter passed, the fire veins under the ground began to awaken.
The temperature began to warm up, the ice lake began to thaw, and the sound of beasts moving gradually came from the vast Frost Horn Mountains.
Hun Yao finally managed to take Langmuir out of the palace before completely spoiling the human.
Just a casual stroll. Hun Yao thought so, and then casually put the bone key on his own beast skeleton throne.
“What does my King mean!?”
Countless demons were terrified, discussing privately.
Before this, Langmuir had always stayed in Hun Yao’s palace, and many demons’ deepest impression of him was still during the battle of the human’s royal city.
They only remembered a blond saint in a white robe, who was stronger than humans and was the only one who could face their king head-on.
In the blink of an eye, more than a year had passed, and now seeing the king and this human slave inseparable, the demons only felt cold sweat.
Especially those who had wantonly insulted Langmuir in the first year, every time they came to see the demon king, they were worried that their horns might not be safe at any time.
Many demons ran to find the high priest Tada with a bitter face, begging him to calculate.
The old man touched the bone chips mysteriously, and finally made a final decision. “Oh…this is the king’s marriage.”
“Marriage!?”
Duogu jumped three feet high, his old face twisted in horror, “What is marriage? Tada, your divination must be wrong again!”
“Heavens, let the earth’s fire burn this old man!”
The old witch doctor yelled with flying saliva, grabbing his messy braids, “I have cast a powerful curse on him before, if he bears a grudge against me, and speaks ill of me in front of the king…”
The high priest stepped back two steps in disgust, too lazy to care about him.
Hun Yao himself didn’t care about these. Since he started to walk the human, countless new things have made Langmuir dazzled, just like the shoot buds in the mountains that had regained vitality.
After a few days, this person returned to his daily routine of asking questions by the demon king’s side, no longer acting like a sculpture.
When Hun Yao was in a good mood, he would answer some of his questions; when he was in an average mood, he would ignore him; if he was in a bad mood, he would play some tricks, deceive him, and scare him.
If he could see Langmuir showing a bewildered or helpless expression, Hun Yao’s mood would instantly clear up.
In short, the earth fire awakened, and Langmuir also came alive.
Everything was thriving, and the demon king was very happy.
“In the abyss, there are about twenty large and small tribes of demons, all named after their leaders. Among them, the powerful ones are Watie in the northeast, Heitor in the northwest, and Zhenzan in the south…”
On idle days, Hun Yao would unfold the sheepskin map, his sharp nails casually pointing at those mountain and river lines, chatting with Langmuir.
“According to the ancient rules left by our ancestors, if a demon king is born, all tribal leaders must submit; but the same ancient rules, a broken horn demon means disgrace.”
“The leaders are good at being leaders, who wants to submit for nothing? Naturally, they use the excuse of erasing the disgrace of the demons, and ponder every day how to slaughter me…”
This was the first time Langmuir understood the situation Hun Yao was facing.
Although known as the demon king, it was actually treading on thin ice.
“So…how has my King coped over the years?”
Hun Yao: “Hmm, just subdue them.”
Langmuir: “.”
The Holy Monarch, who had a thousand political struggle stories flashing in his mind, deeply reflected on himself.
Perhaps, he might need some time to really get used to this group of demons…
