The King's Mate - Part 3: Guishi

Chapter 4

Xie Lian was very much on board with leaving this place as soon as possible.

Fortunately, ZiXuan and YanLi had been able to come to a decision rather quickly, and they had decided to leave with them after contemplating for not even an hour. Of course certain preparations needed to be made first, but since Hua Cheng had promised the demons to provide houses and resources for them, only very few necessities needed to be packed, and by the very early morning hours, everyone had finished their preparations.

It was a bit strange for Xie Lian to know that these people were so willing to leave their lives behind at the drop of a hat, and to see that all they wanted to bring with them was no more than the bag Xie Lian had packed when he went off to search for Hua Cheng. Though, given the circumstances, there probably wasn't much else they could do.

From what Xie Lian had gathered, the growing unrest among the demons was largely because their access to food had been extremely limited by Hua Cheng cutting them off from the human world. Since there were human farms, not everyone was going to starve, but those owning the human farms were suddenly the ones in power among the lower ranking demons. Since that was the case, their resources had suddenly skyrocketed in value, and thus they were sure to make the most out of it for themselves.

For every other demon, their lives were on the line just as suddenly if they couldn't leave to hunt for themselves and didn't have the means to make deals that satisfied the greed of the farm owners. And even those that had the means to make deals on a higher value level needed to be cautious about the situation. After all, there were only so many humans that could be slaughtered and sold on the market on a daily basis; it surely wasn't enough to feed the whole city. Thus, the lower ranking demons were facing the harsh reality that most of them were going to starve.

Xie Lian wasn't quite so sure what would happen to higher ranking demons, since Hua Cheng had only told him that they were immortal, but Xie Lian didn't know how exactly that worked out if they had to stop eating. Maybe they would just feel like they were starving for eternity? That sounded like hell, and Xie Lian wasn't sure what higher ranking demons would do under such severe circumstances to get access to food, but either way he looked at it, there was certainly violence and death ahead for anyone who happened to be in their way for sure.

Xie Lian couldn't help but feel appalled by Hua Cheng's decision to simply leave the lower ranking demons to die out eventually, and to weaken the higher ranking ones by such drastic measures. However, Hua Cheng clearly felt a heavy sense of duty to his kingdom, his human subjects, and surely felt like prohibiting the demons from entering his kingdom was the only way to ensure the safety of his subjects.

And even though Xie Lian truly did feel for the demons, he wouldn't argue in their favour. After all, what food would speak up for their consumers? If Xie Lian was honest, he had hoped that Hua Cheng would have thought of some sort of plan to free the humans that had been kept on these farms. However, when Hua Cheng had told him his reasoning against doing so, Xie Lian couldn't help but agree, no matter how sad and tragic it was. After all, these humans had never been kept in dignified conditions, to put it lightly. They were incapable of any sort of speech, they had severe health problems due to the inbreeding that they had been forced into over the past few decades, if not centuries, and they had never known any resemblance of what a normal life was supposed to be like. Xie Lian figured that at this point, they must have developed into wild animals that were simply wearing human skin. At least he felt a bit better if he thought of it like this.

Since Hua Cheng had deemed them a lost cause and impossible to integrate into a normal, human society, their fate was sealed just as much as that of the demons. So Xie Lian forced himself not to think about the issue any longer. They would leave this place behind for good, and Xie Lian would simply never think about its existence ever again.