Two hours later, Xie Lian’s mind was still spinning as he walked down the street.
It was too much. Everything he’d just learned was too frightening for him.
How could the Kingdom of Xianle have been destroyed? Father and Mother are perfectly well. And how can they say I was the one who destroyed it? I lost a war? I destroyed my own kingdom? I was banished twice? I became a scrap collector?
He went through it again and again, and told himself over and over: Impossible. Impossible. Absolutely impossible!
He wanted to convince himself that none of it was true, that some evil mastermind must be orchestrating all this. But all the vague abnormalities—the odd dialects, the odd dress, the odd architecture, even the odd Feng Xin and Mu Qing—they were all telling him that this wasn’t a bad dream or some sort of illusion. There was no nefarious creature that could cast such a grand and realistic spell.
Eight hundred years really had passed.
How had eight hundred years passed?
How had he ended up like this after eight hundred years?
The Kingdom of Xianle had fallen, his parents were dead, Feng Xin and Mu Qing had ascended…and he’d become a scrap collector.
How had it turned out this way?
It couldn’t have. It shouldn’t have!
Xie Lian walked faster and faster until he broke out into a run, as if there were an infinite darkness on his tail about to devour him whole.
Suddenly, a red shadow appeared—and a tall, slender figure stopped in front of him.
“Daozhang, where are you going? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
It was San Lang. Forever smiling, he approached and tried to take his hand, but now the sight of him made Xie Lian’s hair stand on end.
“Don’t come near me!” he shouted.
San Lang faltered but retained his unbothered air. “What’s wrong?”
Clenching his hands into hard fists, Xie Lian asked coldly, “Who exactly are you? What do you want?”
“I thought we had a nice conversation yesterday and decided that those small details were no longer worth discussing?”
“You lied to me,” Xie Lian said.
After a brief silence, San Lang asked, “Have you already found out?”
“Yes,” Xie Lian said. “That the present time is…”
Eight hundred years later.
It shouldn’t have taken him this long to notice all the things that were wrong, but this man had been keeping him in the dark on purpose, which made him lose his bearings. Otherwise, how would it take him an entire day to discover the truth?
San Lan took a step forward. “Your Highness.”
Xie Lian backed many steps away. “Don’t get near me!” he barked. “Take one more step, and I’ll hit you!”
His voice and body were both shaking in terror. He wasn’t scared of some hellish ghost, nor was he afraid of this man who appeared both evil and divine—he was terrified of this entirely foreign world. In this world, he possessed neither pride and glory nor loyal subordinates, nor parents who loved him, nor his kingdom, nor devotees who adored him. He had nothing, nothing, nothing!
San Lang still took another step toward him. “Don’t be afraid, Your Highness.”
“…”
Xie Lian’s face changed when he heard him. He suddenly recalled the man in his fragmented dreams who had whispered next to his ear, “Don’t be afraid.”
How had he not realized it?
That tone and their voices were exactly the same!
Xie Lian was convulsing with anger. “It was you… It really was you…”
This man had deceived him and made him go around in circles, made him weep with gratitude, filled him with good feelings and had him call him “gege.” The mere thought of it sent an unstoppable rage surging through Xie Lian, and he struck out.
“You liar!”
His strike hit San Lang squarely in the chest. But as Xie Lian tried to strike again, he found that he couldn’t move a muscle—his own body had stopped him!
Xie Lian didn’t understand what was happening, and San Lang caught his hand amidst his confusion.
Startled, Xie Lian gritted out, “Do not touch me! You liar. You lied to me. I will never trust you again. You—”
“Your Highness, trust me,” San Lang said gravely.
Xie Lian was furious. “I won’t! I…!”
But in the same way he’d been unable to attack, the words “I don’t trust you” refused to pass his lips. The concern and pain in this man’s eye were real and true, without a doubt. No one who witnessed such an expression would question its sincerity.
As if to isolate Xie Lian from the foreign world he so feared, San Lang finally pulled him into his arms. He pressed his lips to his head to brush kisses through his hair as he whispered softly and gently, “Don’t be afraid, Your Highness. It’s all in the past. Your Highness, you’ve already made it through.”
“…”
It was a long time before Xie Lian ceased his resistance and went slack in his embrace.
Tossing aside his mortification, when Xie Lian really thought about it, the man’s voice that called to him in the fragmented dreams was always extremely gentle, without a shred of coercion. As for himself…although there had certainly been pleas and weeping, he could tell that he hadn’t been reluctant in the least.
The only reason he hadn’t noticed until now was that he simply hadn’t wanted to face it.
Xie Lian finally understood why he couldn’t help but want to trust this man at first sight. The relationship between San Lang and the him of eight hundred years later was probably…not so simple. He fully gave up on fighting his body and went along with what his heart wanted.
With his face buried in San Lang’s chest, his voice was muffled when he began to speak. “We’re…”
“Mmm,” San Lang replied.