Crown Prince and Ghost King

Chapter 14

«Everyone stand back, don't go near him and don't listen to his words».

Xie Lian himself backed away, moving in tandem with the crowd, while the mud face continued to chuckle and ramble about how he was still human and wouldn't hurt them. It was horrifying, to say the least. Despite the warning, however, one of the merchants snuck back towards the field, perhaps thinking he must still bring back some herbs for the wounded. He bent down to pick of the scattered ferns he had dropped in a fright earlier, but the distraction provided by everyone backing up wasn't enough for the face not to notice him.

«Don't pick that up! Come back!», Xie Lian yelled, rushing towards the man, but it was too late. The mud face opened his mouth and a long, blood-red thing slithered out. It was a tongue, a freakishly long and fast tongue!

The Crown Prince grabbed the merchant by his collar and yanked him back, but the tongue was quicker, and it barged right into the man's ear. The body convulsed violently, limbs writhing nonstop, and the man let out an agonizing scream before falling lifeless to the ground. That long tongue dug out a large chunk of something bloody from his ear and brought it back to the face's mouth, chewing and cackling so loudly and disturbingly the sound froze everyone's blood.

Disgusted, Xie Lian jumped back, sad for the innocent life lost but unwilling to stay near that inhuman tongue. He wanted to have Hua Cheng kill the thing, so they could move on without drawing unwanted attention on them, but the face started shouting as soon as it was done chewing. Voice sharp and shrill, eyeballs bulging and bloodshot, it was a horrid and obnoxious sight.

That man, buried for over fifty years into the ground of an evil-filled kingdom, had already been molded into its soil and became something unspeakable.

Xie Lian was about to change his mind and attack the repulsive monster when the mud face screamed again, calling for a general.

A deafening cry, more savage than that of a beast, echoed in the distance. Xie Lian, against his best judgment, cursed under his breath and felt RuoYe tighten more around his forearm.

A dark shadow dropped from the sky and landed heavily in front of Xie Lian. The entire palace grounds quaked in its landing, the crowd jailed in its enormous shadow when it slowly stood up. It was a gigantic man.

His face was as grim as steel, his expression ferocious like an untamed beast, at least nine feet of feral man. Behind him, more and more similar forms appeared, men jumping off the roofs to surround the crowd. They all carried sharp tooth-filled maces on their shoulders, so easily they seemed weightless. When they encircled around the intrudes in the garden, merchants scared out of their wits and non-human entities assessing the situation – it was as if a large and unbreakable cage had fallen upon them.

They were, without a doubt, soldiers of BanYue. No longer alive, emanating a black aura, ghosts trapped in a kingdom that was nothing but ruins.

Xie Lian was tense, with RuoYe ready to attack, and he dared to spare a glance at Hua Cheng; the Ghost King was observing the figures with relative calm on his face, but his hand was ready to reach for E-Ming and strike.

Xie Lian hoped he would wait, to see what would happen. The BanYue soldiers didn't rush in to kill, instead roaring in crazed laughter and howling in a foreign language. The sound of their words were ghastly, guttural and tongue-rolling, but Xie Lian was able to discern most of it. The words were loud, simple and vulgar, not at all difficult to understand, but he didn't give them the opportunity to realize there was someone who spoke the language among their prisoners.

The soldiers, in fact, wanted to take them away somewhere, the order of avoiding to kill them for the time being one of the most relieving things Xie Lian could hear, but he didn't relax. If they wanted to take them away, then there was a reason, and the reason was definitely not good.