Hua Cheng quietly sighed, extended his arms, and once again folded him into his embrace, “Your Highness, I’ve always watched you.”
This was the second time he said this, but his voice was softer than before. Xie Lian clutched the red robes at his chest, asking, his mind blank, “I know, I know. But… What should I do now?”
Hua Cheng’s long and slender fingers gently combed through Xie Lian’s mussed hair, “Then, Your Highness, do you know why I refuse to leave this world?”
Xie Lian couldn’t understand why Hua Cheng could still be so calm at a time like this, as he was panicking so hard he was trembling. But while feeling lost, he still simple-mindedly asked,
Hua Cheng replied quietly, “Because I have a beloved who is still in this world.”
Hearing this, Xie Lian was slightly stunned. He seemed to have heard this somewhere before.
Hua Cheng continued, “My beloved is a brave, noble and gracious special someone. He’s saved my life, I’ve looked up to him ever since I was young. But, I wanted to catch up to him more, and become an even stronger person for him. Although, he might not remember me well. We never really talked. I want to protect him.”
He gazed at Xie Lian, “If your dream is to save the common people, then, my dream, is only you.”
Relying on his memory, Xie Lian asked with a trembling voice, “But…. You won’t, be able to rest in peace…. Like this…?”
Hua Cheng answered, “I pray to never rest in peace.”
In that instant, all of Xie Lian’s breathing stopped, frozen in this moment. He could faintly hear two voices, one questioning the other answering.
“If your beloved knew you couldn’t rest in peace because of him, he might feel guilty and troubled.”
“Then I just won’t let him know why I haven’t gone.”
“After having seen so much, it’d be known sooner or later.” Xie Lian said.
“Then I won’t let him find out I’m protecting him either.”
That ball of ghost fire. In that lantern night, that weak little ghost fire he bought with a few pennies. That ghost fire who wanted to pull him up from the burial graves in a frozen winter night. That ghost fire who blocked in front of him before White No-Face and wouldn’t let him go near danger. That ghost fire who had screamed in torment for him during the time when a hundred swords pierced his heart!
Hua Cheng said quietly, “Your Highness, I understand your everything.”
“Your courage, your despair; your kindness, your pain; your resentment, your hate; your intelligence, your foolishness.”
“If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the corpse bones you need to trample to climb up, the sinner who deserved the butchering of a million knives. But I know you wouldn’t allow it.”
He said as the maple red of his robes slowly faded away.
Xie Lian’s shaking hands tried to grab hold of him, and he never stopped transferring spiritual powers, but even then he couldn’t prevent Hua Cheng’s form from fading slowly.
His eyes were going blurry, his speech staggered, and he stammered, “…Alright don’t say anymore, I get it… but, but don’t be like this, alright? San Lang? I… I’ve borrowed so much spiritual powers from you that I haven’t returned yet. And, I’m actually not done saying all that I wanted to say earlier, there’s still so much. It’s been so long since anyone listened to me talk, won’t you stay? Don’t… actually do this. I won’t be able to take it. Twice, it’s been twice already! I really don’t want there to be a third time!!!”
Hua Cheng had already vanished from this world twice because of him!
However, Hua Cheng only replied, “To die in battle for you is my greatest honour.”
Those words were like a fatal blow. The tears in Xie Lian’s eyes could no longer be restrained, and they came pouring out.
Like he was hanging on to the last straw of his life, he pleaded, “You said you would never leave me.”
However, Hua Cheng replied, “There is no banquet in this world that doesn’t come to an end.”
Xie Lian bowed his head and buried it deep into his chest, his heart and throat in constricted agony, unable to speak.
Yet soon after, he heard Hua Cheng say above him, “But I will never leave you.”
Hearing this, Xie Lian’s head shot up.
Hua Cheng said to him, “I will come back. Your highness, believe me.”
p.s.: *can't stop crying omg*