The Son of God, Langmuir Brett, ascended to the position of Holy Monarch on the day of his eighteenth birthday.
The old Holy Monarch was advanced in years and had been ill, harboring intentions of abdication for some time. The Son of God had gradually been exposed to state affairs over these three years, remaining as benevolent and wise as he had been in the past fifteen years. The transition of the monarch occurred without a ripple, only receiving the cheers and support of the people.
However, it was unknown when people began to notice that the young Holy Monarch often had an elusive emotion, like fog, lingering between his brows. Whenever he smiled, there was always a hint of sadness at the corners of his eyes.
But what could the Holy Monarch be sad about?
From a young age, he had been nurtured and pampered, never having suffered or been tired. He lived in the most beautiful palace, with his food, clothing, and daily necessities meticulously arranged. He had the love of his family, the loyalty of his ministers, and the adoration of his people.
His kingdom was prosperous and stable. His faith was eternal and bright.
What could such a being, who was like a child favored by the Goddess, be sad about?
People were puzzled.
So they said, the sadness of the Holy Monarch was a symbol of his compassion for all things, a quality of the Light Son of God.
Langmuir offered no explanation. He began to delve into the study of magic arrays and the art of miasma purification.
He collected ancient books that had long been unread by anyone. Some of them he couldn’t understand, so he started learning from the obscure ancient characters.
In the quiet palace late at night, the newly enthroned Holy Monarch would light a candle alone, calculating the rules of Gasuo’s seal on parchment over and over again.
He was still persistently seeking an answer, a path of redemption that would not let down all his brethren.
However, reality had thrown cold water on him time and time again.
“Your Majesty, the Holy Monarch, please give up.”
On a bright spring afternoon, in the worship hall of the Brett Temple, the elder prophet received the young Holy Monarch who had come to pray, as usual.
The elder, walking side by side with him for a few short steps, lowered his voice ominously, “The miasma in the abyss has become so dense that it cannot be dissipated by individual power. The answer you imagine simply does not exist.”
Langmuir merely closed his eyes lightly, clasping his hands in front of the statue of the Goddess, murmuring a prayer.
Over these two years, the elders of the temple had begun to fear him. They thought they had tamed the young man of that year, thinking that a naive and passionate soul had frozen to death in the snow, and what returned was a numb puppet.
Langmuir’s behavior seemed to confirm those words, his character becoming more and more gentle and tolerant. He no longer mentioned the abyss and the demons, nor did he pursue the mental torment from the temple during that time. The elders thought this was what a person looked like when they were hollowed out.
But when they began to realize something was wrong, Langmuir had already ascended to the throne–those calm, soft violet eyes would look down on this land from the top of the palace, and all the people on the land loved him madly–he was no longer the little Son of God who could be arbitrarily controlled by them in the temple.
“Prophet.”
As he descended the long steps, Langmuir passed by the elder prophet and suddenly said in a low voice, “Over these years, every so-called protection of the Goddess has been a false miracle created by humans, am I right?”
The prophet’s eyelids twitched slightly.
Langmuir: “You incite the people of the kingdom to pray to the gods, but in fact, under the guise of receiving faith, you steal their Mana for your own use.”
“People won’t know that it’s not a miracle at all, but their own power. This kingdom should have more mages, not just believers who can only pray to the gods for help.”
“Your Majesty, why are you still saying such naive words?”
The elder prophet laughed darkly, “Conflict is human nature, having a few hundred or thousand more mages in this kingdom will only cause countless disputes and turmoil.”
“Besides, without the faith in the Goddess, how can such a huge amount of Mana be gathered to achieve the great cause of the kingdom?”
Langmuir also laughed, not saying much.
He left the Brett Temple, not looking back for another glance.
…….
When Langmuir was twenty years old, the old Holy Monarch died.
As the shadow of death descended, the old Holy Monarch dismissed his attendants. The old man looked sadly at his eldest son, gripping Langmuir’s hand tightly and asked, “Langmuir… Langmuir…do you still blame Father?”
The sleeping hall was filled with the bitter smell of medicinal soup, Langmuir sat quietly by the bed. He held his father’s cold, wrinkled hand, but his gaze was directed out the window.
The old Holy Monarch’s breathing became rapid, he lifted his neck from the pillow, “Langmuir, there is a limit to what humans can do…Father knows, I can only protect so many people…I had to make choices…”
“But you’re different, you don’t understand this principle, you’re unwilling to make choices…my child, are you really going to walk a path of no return…”
“No, Father.” Langmuir lowered his eyes and said, “I’ve been on this path for a long time.”
Unexpectedly, after the funeral of the old Holy Monarch, his younger brother Aiden stopped him.
“Brother.” Aiden stiffened his neck, his eyes red, “What did Father mean by his last words?”
“You…eavesdropped?”
At that time, Aiden, who had been honored as a prince, had begun to possess the steadiness that a royal family should have. Only when facing his brother did he still have a sincere and enthusiastic childishness.
He had just cried his eyes out because of his father’s death, but now tears were streaming down his face again, “Ever since you went to the abyss that year, you’ve changed a lot…But Aiden is your own sibling, Brother! What secret can’t you tell me?”
That day, Langmuir finally couldn’t resist his brother’s plea. Fortunately, Aiden truly believed him, and one more person knew the truth about the demons.
When he had nothing to do, the Holy Monarch would sneak off to the barrier cliff to look at the demons below, occasionally bringing Aiden with him.
But the barrier cliff was not only a forbidden place for humans, the demons also didn’t like to approach it, Langmuir rarely saw those mutated brethren.
Hun Yao was rather a frequent visitor among the demons. Over seven years, more than two thousand five hundred days and nights, the Holy Monarch had successfully spied on the Demon King four times from the barrier cliff, three of which were in the first two years.
Later, the Demon King stopped coming. Langmuir didn’t know if Hun Yao had died, or had lost interest in looking up at the human world.
In the fifth year, a familiar figure appeared on the cliff again.
By then, the Broken Horn Demon King had grown tall and rugged. The red eyes that once gazed at the Cliff Moon in confusion had become gloomy and chilling, making people shudder.
He wore a bronze curved knife around his waist, draped a gray and white spotted beast fur cloak over his shoulders, with dark red tassels hanging on both sides, and bone ornaments adorned the black scales like wind chimes.
The Demon King climbed up the barrier cliff in the night, holding a newly tempered honey gold dagger in his palm, sitting silently on the top of the cliff for a long, long time.
The Holy Monarch also accompanied him on the barrier, listening to the sound of the wind all night, and the tinkling sound of the bone ornaments colliding.
Many years later, Langmuir learned that that day was the day Hun Yao established his court.
In the year 898 of the Great Light Calendar, Gasuo’s barrier broke.
The guard of the barrier cliff had always been the responsibility of the temple, however, years of accumulated fear and suspicion caused the elders to not immediately report to the palace when they received the report of “Gasuo’s anomaly”.
Only four elders, leading the Golden Sun Knights directly under the temple, went to the barrier cliff to investigate and prevent the spread of the miasma.
They set off with contempt–even if the demons really crawled out, what kind of waves could a Broken Horn Demon King, leading the increasingly declining demons, stir up?
And the palace, surprisingly, didn’t learn of the news until the afternoon of the next day.
At that time, the Holy Monarch was sitting in the palace study room, drinking tea and chatting with Prince Aiden. The floor suddenly shook violently, with a crash, Langmuir accidentally knocked over the porcelain cup, and tea spilled all over the floor.
“Brother!” Aiden suddenly pointed out the window and exclaimed, “Look, the sky – the sky is turning black!!”
Langmuir looked up abruptly, only to see a corner of the northern sky, birds were fleeing in all directions like mad. Below, the dark miasma was slowly rising.
After the Golden Sun Knights were defeated, the last elder who tried to escape was personally caught by the Broken Horn Demon King.
The elder, who had shown a lofty attitude to people for nearly a hundred years, was dragged along by a rope. By the time he was brought to the front of the demon army, the whole person was bloody and could only make a weak groan.
Tianpo, with sharp eyes, was the first to see the figure of Hun Yao bringing back the captive.
She laughed wildly, “How about it, who said we couldn’t catch up? I told you, our King has the fastest horse in the abyss!”
The demon soldiers were simply ecstatic.
The four elders of the temple were quickly hanged. The white robes of the elders, a symbol of honor, were stripped off, and the demons mockingly smeared mud on their private parts, spat and urinated on their faces.
“Demons, demons!!”
The captured elders were terrified like four quails, they were tortured to the point of tears and snot, only knowing to shout, “You group of demons…!”
After using a round of humiliating methods, the demon soldiers began to whip with horsewhips, excitedly counting the methods that could be used on humans.
One demon shouted, “First cut off the pig’s tongue!”
Another one yelled, “No, you have to dig out the pig’s eyes first!”
And another one shouted, “Pah, of course, first cut off the pig’s nose!”…
The Broken Horn Demon King always rode his horse, watching from a distance.
He was not as excited as his soldiers, but was instead shrouded in an indescribable gloom.
Behind him, the leader of the Zhenzan tribe looked at the Demon King’s back in confusion, and came to Moduo’s side, “Hey, what’s wrong with our King, he seems to be in a bad mood.”
Moduo lazily said, “What else could it be, he didn’t see his old enemy at first sight when he came out, he’s angry.”
“Enemy?”
Moduo pointed to her own head.
The leader of the Zhenzan tribe finally understood, “Oh…”
The warm wind from the human world blew, and the flowers and grass on the barrier cliff swayed.
Demon King Hun Yao closed his eyes, raised his head to let the sunlight shine on his scaled face, feeling the temperature that didn’t exist in the abyss.
“Langmuir…Brett.”
He muttered the name he had just forced out of the captive’s mouth.
“Holy Monarch of the human race, Langmuir…”
“You’ve disappointed me so much.”
“The human world…”
“Has disappointed me so much.”
Hun Yao suddenly laughed sarcastically.
…Grandfather, is this the home you’ve been thinking about until your death?
The image of the dying old priest appeared in his mind again, Grandfather was holding his young hand tightly, staring with his eyes, full of unwillingness when he was dying.
How silly. Hun Yao thought as he laughed, where is there any home on the land above the barrier for the demons.
Our home was sunk into the ground by humans, turned into an abyss under the miasma and earth fire. Humans regard us as demons, wishing they could exterminate us quickly.
Not brethren, not blood.
Aliens, enemies.
The end of the human race and the demon race, it’s probably like this, right?
Hun Yao gripped the iron spear hanging on the saddle.
He thought: Grandfather, don’t blame me.
“Pick one of those four human priests, let him go back and tell the Holy Monarch of the human race–”
When he was giving orders to the messenger, the Demon King hesitated.
He originally wanted to come up with a brutal threat, preferably like a ghost demanding a life, to scare the Holy Monarch pale.
But seven years was too long, his obsession with the blond youth had long been too deep to express in words.
So in the end, Hun Yao could only say in a low voice.
“He will become the slave of the Demon King.”
Soon, the released elder priest scrambled away. When he left, his nose was blue and his face was swollen, his body was naked, and several of his teeth had been knocked out.
Next, he would run miserably to the nearest city for help. But no one would believe that this was an elder–nonsense, the elder was protected by the Goddess–people would only avoid him with disgust, whispering: Hey, that must be an old madman who was beaten up by street thugs.
“My warriors, march with me!!”
On the barrier cliff, the Demon King turned around and shouted, leading the army forward on horseback.
His wildebeest neighed high, raising a string of flames when it lifted its hooves, burning the flowers swaying in the wind along the way.
