The smile on the Demon King’s face visibly froze.
“Langmuir,” Hun Yao’s gaze turned gloomy, “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yes, I do,” Langmuir calmly replied.
He was well aware that his words bordered on madness, but Langmuir was not bluffing. Since the demons were now stationed outside the city, either they had failed to siege the city, or they were wary of the reinforcements that were about to arrive, and had voluntarily withdrawn after breaching the city.
Regardless of which it was, the Holy Monarch was very clear that the numerical disadvantage of the demons determined that they could not engage in long-term warfare in the hinterland of the human kingdom, and they would have to retreat back into the abyss in a few days.
Of course, even so, to exchange the lives of nearly a thousand prisoners for the submission and dignity of a defeated person sounded outrageous.
No matter, the asking price always had to be high, Langmuir thought calmly.
He waited for the Demon King to laugh at him, to belittle his value to less than mud–just like the first sentence of every haggling buyer.
But Hun Yao just stared at him gloomily, not starting to haggle.
Langmuir felt the hairs on his back stand up under the stare, but he held on without showing fear. The strange silence continued for a while, and the Demon King finally said in a low voice, “Tell me to what extent you can go.”
Langmuir: “Under the premise of not betraying my country, and not betraying the basic conscience taught in the holy teachings, I will obey all your commands.”
Hun Yao: “What if I want you to call me king from now on, wear a slave chain, and crawl on the ground in front of the demons forever?”
“What if I cut off your tongue, gouge out your eyeballs, and then display you naked in front of millions of demons, proclaiming that this is my trophy?”
Langmuir: “If I belong to you, that is your right.”
“What if I reward you to my people, want you to become a cheap commodity for the demons to vent their anger, and spend the rest of your life in a worse-than-death trampling?”
Langmuir: “Choosing to relinquish this right, of course, is also your right.”
“Ha, good! When the time comes, they will make you lick their feet, drink their urine, feed you mud and maggots. Every day there will be a dozen demons coming to rape you, then let their hunting dogs rape you. They will torture you for fun, and also want you to beg like a dog —— Langmuir, are you sure you really know what you are giving up!?”
Langmuir still said, “I am confident I know what I am doing.”
Hun Yao suddenly stood up, his eyes seemed to be burning. “Good, very good, you just sold yourself cheaply! The abyss is not a place humans can endure, Holy Monarch, I am waiting for you to regret!”
Langmuir was stunned, he was first puzzled by the Demon King’s sudden temper, and suddenly realized that Hun Yao actually meant to agree.
—— My God, is there no custom of bargaining in the abyss? Just like that, a fixed price?
The Holy Monarch was quite shocked, and hurriedly blurted out. “I swear by my God, I will never regret!”
……
So, what is the value of the submission and dignity of the human Holy Monarch?
This kind of elusive thing is really hard to say.
However, when the Demon King and the Holy Monarch completed this transaction that sounded even a bit ridiculous, both parties were filled with a dreamlike sense of unreality.
—— Yes, at that time they both firmly believed that they used the most worthless things to exchange for the most priceless treasures in the world.
Perhaps the Demon King’s generosity was really surprising, Langmuir asked again, whether he could be allowed to say a final farewell to this royal city.
Hun Yao agreed. At least before Langmuir truly became a slave, he didn’t mind giving this enemy enough respect.
So many human captives were still pressed in the demon army, he believed that Langmuir would not dare to play any tricks, so he generously gave the Holy Monarch three days to go back to heal and rest, say goodbye to his family and citizens, and bring his personal belongings back.
Looking back many years later, it really didn’t look like the treatment of a captive. It was more like a princess who was forced to marry after losing.
The road back to the city was neither long nor short. But Langmuir was seriously injured and walked very slowly.
When he came to the bottom of the royal city, he couldn’t help but pause.
That huge and towering city had already been branded with the traces of war, the walls were full of scratches left by the demon’s scales and claws, and there were also missing corners.
What was even stranger was that there was a gloomy stake outside the city gate, and there were more than a dozen charred long objects hanging on the city tower, swaying eerily in the wind.
Langmuir didn’t recognize what it was at first, and was horrified when he got closer: those were actually charred corpses.
…The sky of the royal city had changed.
That day, after the demons retreated from the outer city, the soldiers and citizens hugged each other and cried, thanking the Goddess for her blessing.
Without the teachings of the temple, no longer following the rigid doctrines, they held their weapons tightly with their clasped hands, and the miraculous victory still favored this city.
Everyone witnessed this miracle, not the “protection” promised by the prophet and the Son of God, but the miracle they created with their own hands…
Prince Aiden took off his sweaty armor and loudly ordered the guards to bring out the stake.
“Tie them up!”
The clergy, led by the elder prophet, had already been sealed with magic and put on coarse long clothes worn by criminals.
The guards tied a layer of straw mat on them with oil-soaked hemp rope, and then pushed the sinners onto the stake regardless of their frantic struggle.
Aiden shouted again. “Light the fire.”
The prophet twisted his body, rubbing desperately under the bondage of the hemp rope and straw mat, like a fat fish pressed on a chopping board.
“Prince Aiden! Are you crazy, are you possessed by a demon!?” He roared, “I am a hundred-year-old prophet, a prophet protected by the Goddess——”
The guards who had received temple education since childhood looked a little pale. “Your, Your Highness, you really want to…”
Aiden raised his hands in front of the stake.
“If my actions offend the Goddess, let God’s punishment fall on me!”
The young man’s lips were tightly pursed, and although he didn’t say much, the courage and anger contained in his brown eyes transformed into a power that could shake people’s hearts.
“Burn!” A roar came from the crowd.
“Burn!” “Burn!”
In the cascading waves of sound, Aiden pushed away the guards, lit the torch himself, and walked step by step towards the stake.
“No, stop, stop, a bunch of fools!! The Goddess will not let you go!! You can’t, can’t——no——”
“I can.” Aiden said hatefully. His eyes were red, and he leaned down to the prophet’s ear, “Remember, this fire, I lit it for my brother.”
With that, the young man dropped the torch. It touched the straw, bark, and oil stars piled under the stake, and immediately burst into flames.
The flames quickly climbed up, in an instant enveloping the prophet’s toes, then the calves and thighs, followed by the waist, chest, and skull…
“Ah! No! Save me! Save me! Ah ah——save me, ah——”
The old man wailed and screamed in the flames, and the sound of wood cracking kept coming from the stake.
“I am——a prophet——ah ah ah——protected by the Goddess——ah ah ah ah!!”
The prophet’s piercing scream first turned into cursing, dirtier than any foul language spat out by a street thug.
Then it turned into begging for mercy, more despicable than the crying of the most timid coward.
The flames made the ugliness nowhere to hide.
The citizens widened their eyes and silently witnessed all this. This execution of a criminal by fire was even more solemn than a collective prayer service.
As time passed, the voice weakened, but the smell of human flesh burning became stronger in the wind.
Finally, the old man no longer made any noise.
The flames burned out, the thick smoke gradually dispersed, and only a charred corpse remained on the stake, declaring the end of an ignorant era.
“Good!!”
Cheers erupted from the crowd, “Good, good! Burn well!”
“Burn the liars, burn down the Brett Temple that uses the Goddess!!”
The Brett Temple fell from a high place, it fell into the dirtiest mud, accepting the fate of being trampled by thousands of people.
In the following few days, the clergy who were in cahoots with the elder prophet, the Golden Sun Knights who had oppressed and exploited the common people in the name of the Goddess… all were pushed onto the stake by angry people.
All of this, Langmuir was unable to witness in person.
But he soon experienced it in another way. As soon as the Holy Monarch entered the city gate, a civilian quickly recognized him and shouted.
Then, hundreds of people gathered in a short time, and before Langmuir could react, he was hit in the back with something like a stick——
“Uh…!”
Langmuir was seriously injured at this time, both inside and out, fragile like a porcelain covered with cracks.
The pain made his vision go completely black, and he could no longer stand, stumbling and falling on the street, blood immediately gushing out from the “cracks” all over his body.
The people were stunned for a moment, and many were frightened. The person who swung the stick trembled. “I, it’s not, I——didn’t use force——”
But there were still angry people who pushed away those dumbfounded guys from behind, pointed at this defeated monarch, and listed his crimes.
“The temple has always been deceiving the people, hasn’t it!?”
For the evil deeds of the Brett Temple forging miracles over the years, Langmuir confessed without denial.
In an instant, on this broken street, everyone was cursing the Holy Monarch’s despicableness.
Some people left with tears streaming down their faces. They came back a moment later and splashed a bucket of dirty water on Langmuir’s face.
“Pooh!” The person shouted in sorrow, “What Son of God, you are a liar!”
“Your Majesty the Holy Monarch, we used to love you so much! But you…”
Someone else sternly questioned. “Tell us, how did the temple teach you to use those hypocritical tricks to deceive people!?”
Langmuir had originally just closed his eyes to endure the scolding, but at this moment he was taken aback. He looked up with a pale face, dazzled by the sunlight and shadows.
The voice raised a bit more. “Those years, when you were giving alms and treating patients, it was all fake, wasn’t it!?”
“I…”
Langmuir was stunned. This overly young Holy Monarch had never faced such a situation before, and for a moment he didn’t know whether to argue or not.
He sat on the dirty street, pressing on his still bleeding wound, and showed a somewhat pitiful look of confusion.
The crowd pointed at him in a flurry.
“It must be fake, deceiving us to be grateful and support him as the Holy Monarch!”
“Prince Aiden is the one who was raised by the old Holy Monarch since childhood, how could Langmuir force his father to appoint a successor without gathering prestige in the name of the Son of God?”
“I heard that demons with broken horns are very weak, but he can’t even beat a Demon King with a broken horn!”
“Of course, once a liar loses his tricks, his true colors are revealed!”
More absurd charges were placed on Langmuir one by one, some of which were even logically contradictory. After being stunned for a while, the Holy Monarch probably had a clear understanding of his situation, so he lowered his eyes and decided to listen to the verdict in silence.
Some citizens also began to feel uncomfortable, but the moderates always found it hard to restrain the radicals, so they could only leave quietly.
The scolding escalated, and suddenly a shout was particularly loud.
“Langmuir Brett has committed treason! He colluded with the demons, he is a traitor!”
The Holy Monarch knelt in front of the temple.
The Brett Temple had already been burned to ruins by a large fire.
People ordered Langmuir to kneel here and repent, and started a discussion on the matter of “whether the Holy Monarch had committed treason”.
“Did he or didn’t he?” “How could he not!” “If not, how could he have come back safely from under the Demon King’s hand?”
Langmuir was still wearing the silver snow-like luxurious robe he wore when he went out to battle, but it was already covered with blood stains and dirt.
His deep golden hair messily covered his gentle face, his eyes were downcast, and he was reciting the confession word by word.
Someone walked up, looked down at the Holy Monarch and asked, “You tell us, did you betray the country and the people?”
Langmuir paused for a moment, his voice hoarse. “No.”
The person asked again. “Do you have anything else you want to say to this royal city?”
Langmuir closed his eyes tiredly: “…I’m sorry.”
Then the man turned around, like a victorious hero, excitedly raising his arm and shouting. “Listen, he admitted it!”
In the distance, some people looked terrified.
An old man frowned and shook his head repeatedly. “In my opinion, His Majesty did make a mistake, but those people are also really…”
“Who asked the Holy Monarch to act so noble on ordinary days? Now that he’s been exposed, it’s only right that he suffers a bit.”
“Oh, alright, we should quickly report this to Prince Aiden, if he keeps kneeling like this, it could be fatal.…”
Unfortunately, the guards’ report did not reach the prince in time.
Aiden was too tired. When the demons were attacking the city, he donned his armor and fought personally. After the demons left the city, he punished the elder prophet and other clergy, presenting the evidence collected by Langmuir one by one to the public.
After the situation had barely stabilized, he couldn’t hold on any longer and returned to the palace to sleep.
Aiden slept for two full days, and when he woke up, he was starving. The maids hurriedly served him food.
The prince chewed on bread while rubbing his sore thigh.
After confirming that the demons had not returned, he let out a sigh of relief, and couldn’t help but think of his brother who had disappeared without a trace.
For some reason, during the few days of battle, although the demons claimed that their king had captured the Holy Monarch, they neither hung the Holy Monarch’s head on their flag to show off their power, nor did they bring the Holy Monarch to the front line to show the public.
Aiden couldn’t help but harbor a glimmer of hope, perhaps his brother had successfully escaped?
Until the evening, the old Holy Queen hurried over, tearfully saying, “Aiden! My child, they say your brother has committed treason, what is this all about…”
Aiden suddenly stood up, knocking over the chair with a bang!
“Who’s talking nonsense!” He even lost his royal manners, shaking with anger, “My brother risked his life to protect the city——”
The old Holy Queen urgently interrupted. “But I just heard that Langmuir is now kneeling outside the city, kneeling in front of the Brett Temple confessing his sins!”
