No sooner had he finished speaking than Langmuir watched in astonishment as… the maids became rigid, and Aiden’s expression turned to horror.
The doctor who had just walked in had a stunned look on his face, and his medicine box fell to the ground with a “thud”.
They quickly exchanged glances, their expressions as if they had swallowed a bitter gourd, especially the doctor, who frantically made faces at Aiden–see, Your Majesty, I told you earlier, the mental state of His Majesty the Holy Monarch is probably abnormal!
“…?”
Langmuir, clutching the quilt, was very puzzled and hesitantly asked, “Is it not good?”
He thought for a moment and then asked, “So, can I never use my Mana again, and what about the demonic breath?”
Aiden managed to calm down and reassured him repeatedly, “No, no, no, brother, you… you don’t worry, as long as you rest assuredly, your body and Mana will definitely recover. As for the rest, let’s talk about it after you recover.”
Langmuir thought about it and felt it made sense. With his current state of being unable to even crawl, even if he managed to return to the abyss, he wouldn’t be able to help Hun Yao much, so it was a bit too early to talk about this.
So he smiled gently, nodded, and said, “That’s good.”
Aiden and the doctor exchanged panicked glances again.
What does His Majesty the Holy Monarch mean, what does “can I still return to the abyss” mean, what does he want to do?
They didn’t dare to ask, nor did they dare to persuade. The current Langmuir was too fragile, the long-term erosion of the miasma on the lungs, the counteraction of the demonic breath and Mana on the blood vessels, and all the injuries and diseases accumulated over seven years in the abyss… all of these made the Holy Monarch’s body like a glass ball covered with cracks.
Others could only serve him tremblingly. Only after Langmuir had taken his medicine, drowsily curled his tail, and fell asleep imitating the posture of the demons, did they breathe a sigh of relief.
Then they gathered together again in a flustered and exasperated manner, trying to analyze the current psychology of the Holy Monarch–
Aiden’s face was heavy, “Brother wants to return to the abyss, and asks about Mana and demonic breath, could it be…he wants revenge?”
The doctor and the maids nodded solemnly.
This seemed to be the most reasonable and acceptable answer for them.
The next afternoon, Aiden finished most of the day’s political affairs and came to visit his elder brother.
He subtly demonstrated the current military power of the human kingdom in his words, and passionately stated that these soldiers would be ready to shed blood and sacrifice their lives for the returning Holy Monarch at any time.
Langmuir struggled to grab a pillow and slapped it towards his brother’s face.
He had worked hard for fourteen years to completely end the unnecessary war between humans and demons. Who wanted to see soldiers shedding blood and sacrificing their lives?
The Holy Monarch became agitated, and the medicine he had just drunk was vomited out directly.
Aiden collapsed: …I really deserve to die!
Now it was good, no one dared to guess wildly anymore.
Over the next few days, Langmuir gradually realized that everyone around him looked at him with an indescribable strangeness, and their words and deeds were like walking on thin ice.
He probably guessed some of it, and he was both amused and helpless in his heart, not knowing how to explain.
Occasionally, he looked out of the window and saw the winter snow falling, and he couldn’t help but think of the demons in the abyss.
Langmuir thought: This year’s winter has sunshine, they should not be too hard to endure.
Would Hun Yao still personally endure the cold at the sacrificial ceremony? Having suffered a severe backlash from the demonic breath and having lost a horn, it was not a joke.
Fortunately, the subjects of the royal court were reliable, but he didn’t know if the King was willing to rest and heal…
Langmuir couldn’t help but sigh again, rubbing his forehead.
Really, no matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t rest assured.
These two days, Aiden’s words became a lot, always chattering to him about these seven years.
Sometimes he talked about how good the kingdom became after the temple fell; sometimes he said that many city dwellers regretted what they had done to the Holy Monarch, and there were still people reading penitential texts in front of the ruins of the Brett Temple.
After all these were said, he started talking about family matters. He said that the old Holy Queen died two years ago, and her biggest regret before her death was that she had handed her eldest son over to the elders of the temple; he also said that the kingdom already had a queen, a girl with brown curly hair and blue eyes, who had always admired His Majesty the Holy Monarch.
It was almost written on his face, “The world is beautiful, brother, you should forget about the abyss soon.”
Langmuir thought: This can’t go on like this.
That night, when Aiden came to visit as usual, Langmuir thoughtfully touched the horn on top of his head.
He suddenly said, “Your Majesty, don’t you want to ask what I experienced in the abyss?”
“Ah!?”
Aiden was serving him porridge by hand, and he was so scared that he almost knocked over the porcelain bowl in his hand, shaking his head stutteringly, “No, no…”
“Uh, ah no, I mean, of course I will listen if brother wants to talk…!”
Langmuir sighed with a smile and a sense of helplessness.
He said, “Call a few recorders here tomorrow.”
…….
Even though the truth of two hundred years ago was revealed, humans still knew too little about the demons.
This deficit, the Holy Monarch himself had tasted it in the first two years of descending into the abyss.
At that time, the biggest conflict between him and Hun Yao was not who shot whom with an arrow, or who stabbed whom with a knife. It was him, as the monarch of humans, trying to bumble into the world of demons, thus causing friction with the Demon King.
Langmuir clearly knew that if everyone held a condescending pity, regarded the demons as crude and backward pitiful ghosts, or those who urgently needed the salvation and education of humans—then this so-called tolerance could never truly bridge the gap between the two races.
The demons had their own love, hatred, and dignity, and they had concepts that were different from humans but formed a whole.
They had struggled to survive in the miasma, earth fire, and cold winter for two hundred years, enduring but persistently continuing.
So now, he had to leave everything he had seen and learned to this kingdom in the form of text.
For the next month, Langmuir persisted in his daily statements.
In order to be as objective as possible, he did not deliberately hide anything. Whether it was the darkness in the slave shed, the rain that brought the miasma, or even the wild and arbitrary merging, he told the recorders truthfully.
What made Langmuir feel helpless again was that often it was not him, but the recorders who couldn’t hold on. Their hands were shaking so much that they couldn’t hold the pen, and they had to change people halfway through.
Aiden was even worse. When he came back and saw these records, he was trembling all over, so much so that he couldn’t hold the paper.
Langmuir leaned on the bed and laughed, “Don’t look like this, the Demon King is not a bad person… cough, bad demon.”
Aiden angrily said, “Brother! He–he has done that to you!!”
Langmuir shook his head and said softly, “You don’t understand, our relationship is complicated.”
“This time, I was originally prepared to sleep in the abyss forever, but he desperately sent me back.”
“He had old injuries before, and when he broke the barrier for me, he broke his only remaining left horn. Probably he will never be able to use demonic breath again. To be honest, I worry about him every day.”
Aiden was stunned, and his fingers loosened.
Those few pieces of record paper quietly fell to the floor.
“The Demon King… he never really meant to trample on me with malice, even when he hated me the most. At least that’s how I see it.”
“Later our relationship became very good. He once taught me to make bone ornaments, ride wildebeests, sing sacrificial songs, braved the snowstorm to kill the hundred-year-old Fire Fox King for me, and accompanied me to the barrier cliff time and time again to see the flowers he thought would never bloom.”
“He has a bad temper and is cruel, often threatening to slaughter this and that. But he does indeed love his people and loves the Gasuo land that many demons want to escape from.”
“He likes to fight, likes to conquer, will generously distribute the spoils of war to his subjects, and himself will take away the bones of the enemy and hang them in his private treasury.”
“He also loves to lie. I once asked him to leave a place for my bones in his private treasury. He clearly agreed, but he did not fulfill his promise. He did not keep my corpse, but forgave me, released me, and let me go home.”
“…He once told me that he hated me.”
Langmuir lowered his eyes and smiled, saying somewhat sadly, “But later he told me that he loved me and wanted me to be his queen.”
Aiden suddenly changed color, “Brother!”
Langmuir was calm and composed, he looked up at his brother and said, “He is a very good demon, I don’t know if I also love him, but at least now, I miss him very much.”
“No…no!” Aiden was completely panicked, he leaned over the bed, tightly grasping Langmuir’s wrist and shaking it, “I dare not interfere with your private affairs, but no matter what, that Demon King once insulted and hurt you so much, how could…!”
Langmuir calmly said, “I have also hurt him.”
Aiden: “In the future, there will be more and better people who love you, believe me, there will be better than the Demon King, people who are worthy of you…”
“Aiden, don’t say that.”
Langmuir’s gaze sank slightly, and there was a hard strength in his tone, “Hearing you say that, I’m a bit angry.”
Aiden choked, his face pale. He saw Langmuir shake his head in confusion and mutter to himself, “Huh, does this prove that I love him too?”
“Never mind. Anyway…I want to go to the barrier cliff in the next few days.”
Suddenly, Aiden’s vision went dark, and he was on the verge of tears.
The young monarch felt as if the sky was falling.
It was over, his elder brother, how could he…how could he get involved with that cruel Demon King!?
The medical techniques and magical foundation of the kingdom were indeed incomparable to the abyss.
A few days later, most of the bandages on Langmuir’s body were removed, and his body felt much lighter. He was no longer bedridden all day and could sit up by himself.
Today was a clear day, a rare warm day in winter. Langmuir, with the help of his attendants, tried to walk a couple of rounds and slowly moved his tail…Hmm, now he seemed to understand the subtle instinctive joy of the demons when they wagged their tails.
He felt that he could set off.
Just like in the old days, go to the barrier cliff. Look down at those compatriots through the spatial confinement.
Poor Aiden still couldn’t recover from the shocking reality that “his elder brother actually developed a love relationship with the Demon King”.
He was in a daze, even making several low-level mistakes in handling political affairs, and was scolded by Langmuir, which was really miserable.
Even so, hearing that the Holy Monarch was determined to go to the barrier cliff, Aiden still cheered up and personally drove the carriage to accompany him.
He wanted to see what kind of sacred being that so-called Demon King Hun Yao was! That he was able to seduce his elder brother, a celibate god, into learning about love!
The carriage left the royal city and drove towards the barrier cliff along the main road and small roads.
Aiden pointed out to Langmuir along the way, telling him how the citizens of the royal city had looked for him seven years ago, and where they had reunited with the released human prisoners.
Langmuir was filled with emotion and sighed, “…I thought many people would hate me forever.”
The carriage passed the watchtower that had once taken lives and stopped at the edge of the barrier cliff. Langmuir was helped by Aiden and walked step by step to the edge of the cliff.
When he climbed up, Langmuir had already sweated a lot and was panting a bit. But his spirit became very good, and he was also a little nervous, which actually quickened his pace.
Aiden was so distressed that he wanted to die, and he complained with a full face, “The Demon King must be staying in his royal court, brother, how could he happen to be at the barrier cliff.”
“You forgot, seven years ago you also loved to run to the barrier cliff, it was hard to see a demon even once in ten times, let alone a Demon…”
Before the word “King” of the “Demon King” could be spoken, Aiden suddenly widened his eyes.
He was astonished to see below, on the snow-covered barrier cliff of Gasuo, stood a small wooden house.
The Demon King Hun Yao was actually there!
But looking from afar, this Demon King was no longer the fierce and defiant figure in Aiden’s memory.
His face, arms, chest, legs…were all covered with crisscrossing scars. The originally cold and tightly arranged black scales looked as if they had been sawed open alive.
Those scars were a darker red than blood, uneven, spreading out in an ugly and terrifying way, shocking to the eye.
Langmuir watched quietly for a long time before saying, “Those are the marks left by the whole body being burned by the backlash of the demonic breath.”
On the quiet cliff, the crippled Demon King, who had lost both horns, sat alone by the side of the small wooden house, his head down, slowly plucking a lyre made of beast leather and rough wood.
The sun fell, and Hun Yao’s demeanor was very light, his red eyes half-closed. He didn’t look much like himself, but rather like the departed human.
He slowly played a sacrificial song of the demons, and then he played the song of the Golden Sun. After he finished playing, he stood up, leaned against the wall of the wooden house, and slowly walked inside.
He seemed to live here.
Aiden was so shocked that he couldn’t speak.
Langmuir slowly lifted his robe, sat down in front of the remaining spatial confinement, and reached out to touch the invisible barrier.
“King Hun Yao, you won the bet.”
“Look, you didn’t die, and I survived.”
The mountain wind blew his silver hair. Knowing that the other side couldn’t hear, Langmuir still said earnestly, word by word, “Thank you for letting me go home.”
“You should be good, take care of your injuries, and take care of your body.”
“If anyone bullies you, don’t be impulsive and willful, bear it if you can. Give me some more time.”
Langmuir closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against his palm, “…My King, wait for me a little longer.”
…….
Inside the wooden house, Hun Yao, who had just closed the door, suddenly paused and stood still with his ear to the side.
He seemed to have heard a hallucination again, hearing Langmuir’s voice.
Ever since the Holy Monarch left, he had always been like this.
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭