The tone and demeanor of Tianpo, what she said at the end was obviously a lie.
Could it be…the Demon King’s always adamant claim of “hating to raise children”, was that also a lie to him?
Langmuir began to seriously consider this question.
The Holy Monarch was a worrisome character, even to the point of wishing to worry about others until the last second before his breath ran out.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have shouldered the hatred of the two races on his own.
After sitting by the bed at night and finishing his bedtime medicinal soup, he suddenly remembered.
Several years ago, he indeed had a conversation with Hun Yao about offspring. That was when he and Hun Yao were discussing human concepts of marriage and love.
“A human can only marry another human? And after marriage, they can only merge with that one person?”
At that time, Hun Yao, with a stern face, refuted him confidently, “Your logic is wrong. Not to mention other things, what if the person you fall in love with is infertile? What if it’s same-sex love?”
“——Then there won’t be any children!”
Langmuir laughed, “Must there be children?”
Hun Yao was shocked, even abruptly standing up, “How can there be no children!”
But the Demon King thought about it, quickly reacted, and then composed himself and sat back down, pointing at Langmuir and saying, “Hmm, right, you are humans, you don’t have to worry about the problem of insufficient reproduction leading to extinction.”
Hmm… At that time, Hun Yao did care quite a bit about having children. It was normal, the number of demons was decreasing year by year, and it seemed that in another two or three hundred years, there would be no more descendants, naturally, they cared more about the continuation of the bloodline than the human race.
Could it be, Hun Yao actually always wanted children, but gradually discovered that he was infertile…so he began to stubbornly claim that he hated children?
Could it be, the Demon King in these years no longer sought other partners to merge with, because he was afraid that the female demon would not be able to conceive for a long time, exposing his own illness?
Could it be that the King was so upset when he saw the fifth sentence in the scroll that day?
Langmuir thought anxiously, tossing and turning in his bed.
When he used to have worries, he liked to stay awake, sitting by the window alone, looking at the Cliff Moon to calm his mind. But now, Liu Sha and other attendants were watching him, a patient, very strictly. He couldn’t be as willful as before.
Langmuir also thought that Hun Yao’s reputation had never been very good.
Not to mention the nickname “Broken Horn Demon King” that had followed him since his youth, he was later laughed at by many demons in private for being lustful and foolish because he “exchanged” the human’s royal city and human captives with the Holy Monarch.
Later on, Hun Yao was persuaded by him to use human knowledge to transform the royal court, doing something almost impossible against great resistance. The criticism he received at that time was the most severe, and words like traitor and rebel were considered civilized insults.
After finally calming down, there was a scandal at a grand ceremony where it was “abandoned halfway”, and rumors spread for a while that the Demon King was “impotent”.
During that time, Hun Yao was greatly wronged, and Langmuir even suspected that one day when the Demon King couldn’t stand it anymore, he would drag him in front of the clan for a show.
But in the end, Hun Yao just made a show of tossing him around a few times at night, and the matter was dropped.
The demons valued face more than anything else, and compared to them, Hun Yao was surprisingly open-minded.
He even said, “A bad reputation is something that you feel ashamed of when you carry it once, and you feel wronged, as if the sky is falling. But when you carry it many times, you don’t care anymore.”
“Langmuir, I hate you not because of the nickname ‘Broken Horn Demon King’, but simply because I want to hate you… it’s only between you and me, it has nothing to do with other demons.”
At that time, Langmuir thought the Demon King was quite interesting, speaking of hatred as if it was a confession of love.
But no matter what, the issue of infertility, let alone in the demon race, was a bit hard to mention even for humans. It was understandable that Hun Yao didn’t want to bring it up.
As for why Tianpo suddenly brought it up to him… Langmuir thought that the young king probably still blamed him. If it wasn’t for him shooting off Hun Yao’s horn back then, the Demon King wouldn’t have had to live so hard these years, and he certainly wouldn’t have fallen ill.
That night, Langmuir had insomnia.
He pieced together a logic that could barely convince himself, but still felt something was not quite right.
On the one hand, he thought: I must ask clearly. On the other hand, he hesitated: What if I ask and find out? I can’t have a child for Hun Yao.
Just as Langmuir was struggling, there was a noise outside the palace.
Familiar footsteps sounded.
……
The Demon King stepped on the moonlight of the Cliff Moon on the floor tiles under his feet. He walked very slowly, as if his body was not very coordinated. His right hand’s fingernails were always lightly touching the wall, as if he couldn’t tell the direction without doing so.
“My King!”
Liu Sha, holding a small lamp, hurriedly greeted him.
Even though she was mentally prepared, when the lamp shone, the female attendant still gasped.
Hun Yao’s head and neck were strangely drooping, his dim red pupils were hidden under his black hair, and he looked like a moving shell in the night.
The originally deep black glowing scales were now like burnt ashes, all lost their luster, and there were even tiny blood threads on the surface.
–No one could have imagined that the legendary Demon King who had conquered the entire abyss with his iron cavalry would become like this in just a few days.
Suddenly, Hun Yao stumbled. Liu Sha quickly helped him, and the temperature felt by her tentacles was scorching, as if he was running a high fever.
But the attendant knew that this was not a fever caused by ordinary illness, but the result of the old injury acting up, causing the uncontrollable demonic energy to wreak havoc in the blood.
“My King,” Liu Sha said sorrowfully, “…If you continue like this, you will die sooner than the lord.”
“…Quiet.”
The Demon King’s eyes moved, he slowly raised his head, pointed at Liu Sha’s mouth and said, “If you wake him up, I’ll make you swallow all the fire stones from a whole furnace.”
Liu Sha anxiously lowered her voice, “My King can no longer use any more demonic breath. Today, Lord Langmuir came to me looking for you, saying he has something to ask…”
Hun Yao: “Alright, then tell him, if he agrees to move to the barrier cliff, I will come to see him.”
Hun Yao pushed Liu Sha aside and walked inside. He passed by the empty window, glanced at the lounge chair where no one was sitting anymore, and then cast his gaze on the bed with the curtain down, and couldn’t help but be lost in thought for a moment.
He had lost count of how many times he had secretly used demonic breath to treat the human after Langmuir had fallen asleep. He also lost count of how many days in a row he couldn’t even fall asleep.
Every night, the backlash from the old injury became more intense.
And every day, all he was greeted with was deeper despair.
Langmuir couldn’t even detect that he was receiving treatment from the incantation every day, which was enough to show how weak the effect was.
Hun Yao knew this was not the way. Liu Sha had said it, and so had Duogu, how could he not know?
But he really had no other hope, he held Langmuir in his palm, but saw the human’s life turning into sand leaking from his fingers. The Demon King had never tasted such suffocating despair even in the most difficult times.
What would happen tonight?
Even if there was just a glimmer of hope?
Hun Yao walked towards the bed in a daze, his scaly tail was dragging on the ground, the scales were broken, and the blood seeping out left traces on the floor tiles.
He couldn’t hold on any longer. If he still couldn’t see a glimmer of hope tonight… he really didn’t know what else he could do.
If the so-called Goddess of Light that humans believe in appeared at this time, claiming that she could save Langmuir, would he kneel down and pray?
Hun Yao didn’t dare to think, but there were no signs of the Goddess of Light coming.
A son of god as devout and pure as Langmuir was not saved, and the Holy Monarch who would rather sacrifice himself to save his people was not saved…God was indeed false.
The Demon King brought his palms together in front of him, and the demonic breath gradually gathered into the shape of a healing incantation.
He was panting with a gray face, looking down at the incantation in his palm, as if holding a faint light.
However, just as Hun Yao quietly lifted the bed curtain–
A pale arm suddenly reached out from under the blanket, as if catching a mischievous child, accurately grabbing his wrist.
“My King,” Langmuir turned over, his eyes cold, “What are you trying to…”
But the next moment, when the human saw Hun Yao’s appearance clearly in the faint moonlight of the Cliff Moon, his originally calm expression instantly changed.
Langmuir sat up abruptly. “King!?”
Hun Yao was startled and blurted out. “Why aren’t you asleep yet!?”
The violent movement just now had brought on a bout of dizziness and chest tightness, but Langmuir couldn’t care less.
He breathed rapidly, gripping Hun Yao’s burning wrist tightly. “My god, you…how did you get like this! Who did you go out and fight with!?”
“…”
Hun Yao was at a loss for words, feeling as if all the blood in his body was rushing to his face!
Sneaking out in the middle of the night to heal the “enemy” and getting caught, the Demon King wished he could dig a hole and bury himself. His mind, which was already not very clear due to the backlash of the demonic breath, couldn’t even come up with a single excuse!
“You–”
Langmuir’s gaze hardened, he saw that in Hun Yao’s other hand hidden behind him, there was a faint glow of demonic breath incantation.
Hun Yao waved his hand and quickly shattered the incantation.
“Your illness came on so suddenly and progressed so quickly, it’s not reasonable.” The Demon King forced himself to calm down, “I used an incantation to test if you were pretending…”
“Healing incantation.” Langmuir said.
Hun Yao: “…”
Langmuir laughed in anger, “You used a healing incantation to test if I was pretending to be sick…!?”
The human knelt upright in the bed, pinning the Demon King to the bed by the horns on his head. Anger quickly colored his pale face.
“How long has this been going on, has it been like this every night for the past few days? My King, you’ve been avoiding me for days, just for–”
Hun Yao really started to panic then, he was afraid that Langmuir’s body would worsen if he got too emotional. Just as he was about to give in, the latter suddenly shivered.
Langmuir withdrew his hand, staring blankly at his palm, panting and unable to speak.
“What’s wrong, Langmuir!?” The Demon King was frightened, he simply got on the bed and pulled Langmuir into his arms, pulling over the latter’s right hand, and saw the mottled bloodstains, his face instantly changed color, “You’re bleeding? You cut yourself?”
Langmuir looked up blankly, he looked at the horns on Hun Yao’s head, where he had just held.
He softly said, “…It’s your blood.”
Hun Yao let out a sigh of relief.
He kissed Langmuir’s neck from behind, comforting him in a heartbroken tone. “You’re going to scare me to death. It’s okay, injuries to the horns of the demons are the most common, they’ll heal by tomorrow, it’s okay, it’s nothing.”
Langmuir’s lips were tightly pursed, he suddenly started coughing. He pushed Hun Yao away while coughing, his emotions unclear whether it was anger or sorrow, just staring at him like that.
In the night, those pair of eyes were actually soaked with a not so obvious hint of water light, not knowing if it was tears coughed out or something else.
“Why?”
“You, doing it for me…why?”
Hun Yao’s throat was choked up.
Where could he…answer such a question?
After asking the question, Langmuir’s expression became lost.
“…My King should hate me,” he said, “Why, to save the life of an enemy?”
“Could it be, you don’t hate me anymore?”
Hun Yao couldn’t bear to see Langmuir’s eyes like that, he turned his head and closed his eyes, a sharp shadow swept from the corner of his eyes.
He sighed heavily. “Langmuir, it’s been a long time…since you asked me why.”
Langmuir’s heart suddenly hurt so much that he couldn’t breathe.
For so many years, he knew that Hun Yao treated him well, not like a slave or a captive. But at least they were still enemies.
He thought: In the abyss, even love can be cut off. The King is a decisive king, a cold-hearted king, would he be reluctant to cut off an enemy?
So why doesn’t he hate me anymore?
Langmuir thought sadly, this was not the farewell he had imagined.
Did he do something wrong? But he had never deliberately tried to please the Demon King, never wanted to break away from the relationship of enemies with Hun Yao. They agreed to be eternal enemies, how could they say they don’t hate each other anymore.
“Why.” Hun Yao suddenly laughed self-deprecatingly.
He laughed and laughed until he had no strength left, the tone that should have been harsh turned into a powerless murmur.
The scarred Demon King, holding the weak human in his arms, gently stroking his thin back, said, “Of course it’s because I hate you.”
“Langmuir, you owe me, I hate you. Only seven years, how is that enough, I still want to…torment you…retaliate against you…use you…”
“Until a hundred years, better two hundred years, until we are both very old, basking in the sun and dying…by then, we will go to hell together.”
“Langmuir, you see how much I hate you.”
Hun Yao closed his eyes, his head drooping in defeat. He rubbed Langmuir’s shoulder with his forehead, whispering with a plea. “What should I do, to keep you from dying…”
😭😭😭