The rain was coming down harder now. It scoured Jun Wu’s resting face, washing away the blood that flowed from his wounds. As it poured across his skin, Xie Lian thought that the three lesions on his face had faded somewhat. Maybe it was his imagination.
After a moment of silence, Xie Lian took the bamboo hat from his back and lowered it over Jun Wu’s face to shield him from the rain.
The cursed shackle on Mu Qing’s wrist had broken off on its own, and Mu Qing punted the thing into the lava with a swift kick before forcing himself back into his cool, calm demeanor. The fetus spirit jumped down from Feng Xin’s shoulder and crawled to Jun Wu on all four limbs to touch him cautiously. Its attitude was completely different than when it was stomping on Feng Xin’s face, and Feng Xin stomped his own feet in anger at the sight.
Xie Lian, however, didn’t care for anything else. With a battered face, he dashed straight for Hua Cheng like he had been reborn—in truth, he had only barely escaped death—and pounced on him.
“San Lang!”
Hua Cheng had just reached a hand out to Xie Lian when his tackle pushed him back a step. He wrapped his arms around him and smiled happily.
“Gege, you see? I told you that you’d win for sure, didn’t I?” He lifted Xie Lian’s face and carefully inspected it, then sighed. “You’ve gotten yourself all scraped up again.”
A tiny silver butterfly fluttered where his fingers caressed, and the cuts faded. Xie Lian smiled happily in response. “I’ll be more careful next time!”
Hua Cheng arched his brows, pretending to be cold and harsh. “There is no next time.”
After a pause, Xie Lian withdrew his smile and said seriously, “San Lang, back when we were inside Mount Tonglu, I said that I wanted to tell you something after we got out. Do you still remember?”
Hua Cheng smiled. “Of course I remember. I remember everything gege tells me.”
Xie Lian hung his head. It took a moment before he finally gathered his courage and began to tell him the truth. “Earlier, Jun Wu divulged some bits of information about this. To be honest, I should’ve told you a long time ago. I just could never find the nerve, because I was afraid of how you’d react when you found out—”
“Found out that Your Highness almost became the White-Clothed Calamity, right?” Hua Cheng continued for him.
“You…?” Xie Lian murmured in shock.
Hua Cheng didn’t answer him directly. Instead, he bent one knee and knelt on the ground before him. He raised his head to gaze at him with a broad smile. “How’s this? Gege, do you remember now?”
How could he not? Back then, the nameless ghost had always bent the knee to him just the same! A phantom image of that pale smiling mask overlapped with Hua Cheng’s current smiling face. Xie Lian’s heart quivered, his knees buckled, and he slumped to the ground in front of him.
“San Lang…it…it was you all this time!”
Hua Cheng let out a small laugh as he continued to kneel, and his remaining eye gazed deeply at Xie Lian. “Your Highness, I’ve always watched you.”
Xie Lian could still only utter one word. “You…you…”
He finally understood what all those seemingly unintentional words from Hua Cheng had meant.
So this was it. He had never imagined that Wuming was Hua Cheng!
He knew everything. He had seen everything. He had been there all along!
All at once, thousands of emotions and millions of words swarmed into his head. There was gratitude, there was shame, there was heartache, there was wild joy, but above all else, there was incurable love.
Xie Lian’s heart was so full it was going to burst, but he could not squeeze out a single word to express himself. He could only tackle Hua Cheng forcefully with a cry of “San Lang!”
It was as if that was all he knew to say anymore, and he cried it again, “San Lang!”
Hua Cheng fell over with the tackle. He sat with Xie Lian on the ground, embracing him and laughing heartily. All his fears and worries had been swept away. Xie Lian circled his arms around Hua Cheng’s neck tightly, laughing and laughing but feeling like he was going to cry.
But before his tears could fall, he suddenly noticed something was very wrong.
Although Hua Cheng was a ghost, his body had never been any different from that of an ordinary human. And yet, as Xie Lian held him now, his vivid red robes were going transparent.
Xie Lian grabbed him, demanding in alarm, “San Lang?! What’s going on?”
Hua Cheng still seemed at ease. “It’s nothing. I’ve just overdone it a little.”
“…Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Xie Lian asked in shock. “How can you call this nothing?!”
It was the spiritual power—all that spiritual power!
When Hua Cheng transferred his power to Xie Lian, he always gave without restraint—as if he were an infinite source, as if all of it were free for Xie Lian’s taking. He just kept smiling, ever cheerful, never treating it like a burden. But his spiritual power wasn’t as inexhaustible as sand carried in by the rolling waves, so it couldn’t truly be endless.
He wouldn’t blame Hua Cheng for failing to say anything sooner; Xie Lian could only blame himself for failing to notice.
Panicked and full of remorse, Xie Lian cupped Hua Cheng’s face. “I’ll return it to you,” he said, then he kissed him.
Feng Xin and Mu Qing had been on their way over, but when they saw the scene before them, they hurriedly backpedaled dozens of meters to give them the space to do what they needed to do.
The cursed shackles were gone, so Xie Lian desperately tried to transfer all the spiritual power he could muster to Hua Cheng in the hope that he’d recover soon. He kissed him for a good while, but when he let go, the sleeves of Hua Cheng’s red robes and his silver vambraces were still translucent—half-transparent, even!
Xie Lian was shaken, fear overtaking his mind. He unconsciously reached out to cup Hua Cheng’s face again, leaning in to kiss some more, but Hua Cheng cradled Xie Lian’s face with swift hands and gave him a small peck with smiling lips.
“Although I’m happy gege is so forward, there’s no need to give me any more spiritual power. But if gege isn’t just lending spiritual power—if he simply wants to kiss me—I don’t mind at all. In fact, the more the better. I welcome it with open arms.”
Xie Lian gripped him tightly, on the brink of falling apart. “What’s going on…?!”
“I’m just taking a little break, that’s all,” Hua Cheng replied. “Gege, don’t be scared.”
Xie Lian clutched his head. “How can I not be scared? I’m going to lose my mind!”
Hua Cheng was the sort of person who would never let Xie Lian see him like this if it wasn’t a serious problem—so serious he could no longer hide it!
Spiritual power so abundant it could shatter two cursed shackles—just how much would that be, exactly? It would hardly be an exaggeration to say it’d require power as bountiful as the sea. So how could Hua Cheng claim he was fine?
They went through so much hardship to sort out this mess and tie off all the knots. They’d reopened the lines of communication between him, Feng Xin, and Mu Qing. The cursed shackles that had bound him for eight-hundred-some years had been shattered. Everything he’d always wanted to confess to Hua Cheng had already been said.
Yet when Xie Lian turned to run into Hua Cheng’s arms with a face full of smiles, what greeted him was a Hua Cheng who was about to fade away. How could he not be scared? He was going to go mad with fear!