The Seventh Year the Demon King Captured the Holy Monarch

On this night, Hun Yao went to the slave shed to find the spoil he had brought back from the human world to the abyss.

 

Upon seeing Langmuir for the first time, Hùn Yào even doubted his own eyes. He immediately realized that Mo Duo was not lying.

 

That figure, obviously much weaker than the demons, lay quietly in a damp and dirty corner of the slave shed. Silver-gray hair scattered on the ground, forming tiny frost in the severe cold.

 

The former Holy Monarch looked emaciated, so thin that he was out of shape, even worse than the days when he was stabbed in the chest by the Demon King and deprived of his Mana.

 

Not far away, several slaves who were also chained were grinning, spitting out a series of unbearable insults at the dying human. This filthy language abruptly stopped when the Demon King stepped into the shed, and the slaves all lay down.

 

Hun Yao pushed open the iron gate and walked in. The deeper darkness shrouded the Demon King’s gloomy face, and he turned the motionless human over with his black tail.

 

Later… until many years later, Hun Yao would still reenact what he saw at this moment in his nightmares.

 

Langmuir’s face was pale, his slightly opened eyes were lost and hidden under the messy silver hair. He had obviously fallen into a coma, his limbs felt wet and cold, as if every drop of blood in his body had lost its temperature. Two beetles were biting the scab on his fingertips, and they quickly crawled away with a rustling sound at this moment.

 

Hun Yao’s mind was blank for a moment, and the first thought was: Did he just die like this? 

 

After a long time, he saw a faint fluctuation in the human’s chest.

 

“My…my King.”

 

The slave officer who managed the slaves knelt down tremblingly, “We are indeed feeding him according to the rules of ordinary slaves, but… maybe humans can’t eat the food of the abyss… maybe because it’s going to be winter…”

 

All the demons hate humans, but slaves were the property of the master. If the king’s slave was starved to death in his hands, this matter could be big or small.

 

That’s why the slave officer was so scared. This morning, he offered two strings of dried meat and a pot of wine to Lord Mo Duo, begging the lord to help probe the Demon King’s intentions.

 

Hun Yao stared at Langmuir on the ground, and asked without turning his head, “Can’t eat? What are you feeding him?”

 

The slave officer said, “The roots of the Po Suo grass, deformed beans, live beetles…”

 

“……”

 

Hun Yao shook his head irritably. These were all foods severely contaminated by the miasma of the abyss. When humans ate them, the harm was no less than chronic poison.

 

Or rather, he found it harder to believe that Langmuir had actually eaten these things for nearly two months.

 

That human, who had grown up in the temple since childhood and was as clean as if he were the light itself, could survive for two months on poisonous grass roots and insect corpses…

 

Hun Yao waved his hand at the slave officer. “You can go.”

 

The demon retreated two steps as if pardoned and quickly fled.

 

Hun Yao stood alone for a moment, patting Langmuir’s cheek with his tail.

 

“Langmuir.”

 

“Wake up, Langmuir.”

 

Langmuir’s eyelashes flickered. He couldn’t wake up, struggling for a while, his expression only became more painful. Suddenly he coughed twice, and blood foam overflowed from the corner of his mouth. The warm liquid dripped onto Hun Yao’s tail.

 

At this moment, Hun Yao suddenly felt a deep confusion.

 

He wondered, why did he bring Langmuir back?

 

The Demon King suddenly couldn’t see his own heart clearly. Langmuir, his enemy, opponent, and obsession, the source of his suffering, his countless midnight dreams over the past seven years…

 

He brought this human to the abyss, threatened him with his deeply loved kingdom and people, and got his submission. What was he aiming for?

 

Was it just to torment him into a non-human form, to die as shabby as a rag? Was that an insult to Langmuir, or an insult to himself?

 

The slave shed was silent in the middle of the night. Hun Yao knelt down beside Langmuir, reaching out to strangle the human’s throat.

 

He felt the human’s body temperature, and the delicate blood vessels weakly bouncing under his palm.

 

He had already won, Hun Yao thought, and Langmuir was the one who had been defeated. He should not be so obsessed, making the foolish attempt to raise a human in the abyss. It’s not too late to end it now. It can barely be considered a decent ending.

 

But just then, Langmuir’s eyelids moved.

 

Just as Hun Yao was about to exert his strength, Langmuir slowly opened his eyes, and a faint light gathered in his pupils.

 

He was as weak as a thread. “…my King.”

 

Hun Yao’s fingertips stiffened.

 

He stared at Langmuir in the silent night.

 

“My King, don’t kill me…”

 

Langmuir turned his head, resting on his silver hair.

 

The human covered Hun Yao’s black scale claw with his pale fingers, smiled gently, and his lips moved like a dream.

 

Hun Yao bent down. He heard Langmuir whispering in his ear, saying: I don’t want to die.

 

Hun Yao remained silent and motionless. The darkness spread, smearing the figures of the demon and the human like a sculpture.

 

After a long time, Hun Yao hoarsely opened his mouth. “Langmuir, you no longer have the ability to decide your own fate.”

 

He said, “You are about to die.”

 

He said, “Even if I don’t kill you, you will die soon.”

 

He said so, but he did not tighten his fingers. He also did not let the sharp claws pierce the human’s neck.

 

He didn’t even correct Langmuir’s wrong self-reference. This person should have referred to himself as “slave”, it seemed he forgot again.

 

Invisible time was flowing away moment by moment, Langmuir closed his eyes tiredly. They didn’t speak anymore, and there were no more actions.

 

In the early morning, Hun Yao left.

 

He walked alone through the long stone road of the royal court, stepping on the scorched earth of the abyss, and walked to the door of his sleeping chamber in the howling wind.

 

He stared at the frost-covered steps for a long time, then suddenly turned back.

 

When Hun Yao came back again, he was holding Langmuir’s chain in his hand.

 

Langmuir walked with difficulty, his face was as white as paper, and he had to lean on something after a few steps.

 

Later, when he couldn’t hold up anymore, he still refused to give up. So he knelt down, crawled, until his whole body was wet with cold sweat, and every breath was like the last breath before dying.

 

It was unknown how many demons stopped in surprise. They asked each other, only to know that the Demon King said to this dying human, if he could walk back to the palace from the slave shed, he’d let him live.

 

But the surprise did not decrease but increased, not only because they had never seen such a determined human, but also because they had never seen the Demon King have such good patience—

 

The short distance of a hundred steps, Langmuir struggled for almost an hour, and Hun Yao really just watched him by the side holding the chain for an hour.

 

When he was still a dozen steps away from the steps, Langmuir finally fell down due to exhaustion and gradually became motionless. Behind him was a mottled trail of blood, extending all the way to the direction of the slave shed.

 

The onlooking demons let out wanton laughter. There was even a guy who picked up a stone, trying to see if he could wake him up.

 

Hun Yao bent down. All the onlookers thought that the king had lost interest and decided to strangle this human.

 

But Hun Yao picked up Langmuir, carried him on his shoulder, and walked into the sleeping chamber without changing his face. His movements were smooth as if he had been waiting for this moment.

 

A group of attendants cast astonished glances. The Demon King calmly walked deeper, saying as he walked, “There is human food in the spoils, cook some for him to eat.”

 

****

 

To put it bluntly, that time, it was almost a miracle that Langmuir could survive.

 

To put it more bluntly, Hun Yao almost killed him.

 

It’s not easy to raise a human in the abyss. On this desolate and dark land, there was not only no food that humans were accustomed to, but even the drinking water was contaminated by miasma.

 

As winter approaches, the fire veins hibernate, the temperature gets colder day by day, even the sick or injured demons were in danger of life, let alone a dying human.

 

In the pitch-black night, the snow outside the palace was like a white monster.

 

The attendant stoked the charcoal fire, the witch doctor brought the medicine soup, and they came and went around that big bed. The flame in the copper lamp flickered, casting long shadows behind all those who were hurrying.

 

Langmuir’s body was already depleted, even wrapped in a blanket, it was cold.

 

Hun Yao disliked the witch doctor’s timidity, so he simply embraced the unconscious Langmuir, supporting the drooping neck, used the chopped barbarian sheep horn to pry open his clenched teeth, and poured the bitter medicine in.

 

That was the first time Hun Yao held Langmuir in his arms. He saw the human’s motionless skinny fingers, and saw the wrist that was rotting and about to break off.

 

…At least he shouldn’t have let him wear shackles, the Demon King thought in a daze.

 

Later, Hun Yao also casually mentioned that incident to Langmuir, trying to find some traces of resentment or hatred, but all to no avail.

 

The Mana stripped by the honey gold dagger, the beating suffered that night, and even the nearly two months of torture and humiliation in the slave shed… In Langmuir’s view, all these were like ripples on the lake.

 

The wind comes, the water ripples; the wind goes, the lake is calm. With no traces left.

 

Just like back then, the first complete sentence Langmuir actively said to the Demon King after waking up from a long illness was surprisingly, “That old woman…My King, how did you know she was an assassin?”

 

—The attitude was so calm, as really humbly asking for advice.

 

Hun Yao couldn’t determine the true intention of this person, but at that time when he saw Langmuir getting better, he probably relaxed a lot unknowingly, so he still patiently answered.

 

He mentioned the eyes, the corners of the mouth, the fingers, the tense muscles, the smell of sweat…..Of course, the most clever assassin could deceive everything. So there was intuition, and there was habit.

 

“Habit?” Langmuir tilted his head on the pillow. His eyes were too clean, and when he asked a question, he would bring a bit of confusion that anyone could see clearly.

 

“Yes, habit. Thanks to you, Langmuir,” Hùn Yào pointed to his own head, “Do you know how many assassinations a broken-horn demon king will encounter every month?”

 

“……”

 

“Between the tribes of the demons, there has always been only suspicion and hatred. They have been killing each other for so long, no leader is willing to accept the people of the enemy tribe, and captives never believe that they will be forgiven. Moreover, a broken-horn is regarded as a disgrace, I don’t know how many guys want to kill me, it’s not normal without assassins.”

 

“But,” Langmuir frowned, and asked in a daze, “Aren’t you the king of the abyss? You even… broke the barrier for the demons of Gasuo…” He struggled a bit, but didn’t know where he pulled the wound, and lay on the bed coughing.

 

Hun Yao suddenly turned his head, he stretched his facial features, and laughed lazily. “What are you pretending to be stupid, you must know what ‘Demon King’ means, right, Langmuir?”

 

“That is a gifted bloodline, not a status or title…hm, you of course know. Otherwise, why did you shoot me with an arrow seven years ago?”

 

“…..”

 

The light in Langmuir’s eyes dimmed, he lay on the bed with his pale face up, and closed his eyes and stopped talking.

 

When Hun Yao unconsciously began to count the frequency of the human’s breathing, he heard a low sigh. “I’m sorry.”

 

Seven years have passed, Hun Yao still remembered the strong sense of absurdity that arose in his heart at that moment.

 

It’s better to say that Langmuir himself was an absurd guy, he not only did not hate, but he could even say sorry to the culprit.