Crown Prince and Ghost King

Chapter 49

«Yin Yu, I need you to find someone».

If the Waning Moon Officer was surprised by Xie Lian's sudden request, soon after the god came back from his trip to Mount Tong'lu with his husband, he didn't let it show. Instead, he got up from his desk – where paperwork was piling up – asked about the person he needed to find, and set out without raising any more unnecessary questions.

Xie Lian watched as Yin Yu's back disappeared around a corner, in the twisting hallways of Paradise Manor, and sighed. It was only an idea, the one he had, a thought he had mulled over while coming back. The discovery of Bai WuXiang being the Crown Prince of WuYong, as hypothetical as it still was, put his mind in a constant state of agitation, so much so he even allowed GuZi to keep staying with Lang QianQiu instead of being taken back by either Shi QingXuan or himself.

Qi Rong was about to break out, anyway. It soon wouldn't be his business anymore.

When they came back, Hua Cheng immediately started searching for books about history, the oldest ones he could find, in an attempt to uncover more stuff about the Crown Prince of WuYong. He even made, on paper, a copy of the mural were the appearance of that prince was more prominently clear, but even if Xie Lian sat down and stared at it for an entire night, he couldn't recollect anything.

He only saw Bai WuXiang's face once, and it had been so fast that he couldn't actually recognize his facial features. He only remembered something vaguely inhuman, as if his face wasn't normal, something twisted and moving on it, but it was all blurry. Right after, he died and dissipated like dust in the wind, his ashes shattered.

So, Xie Lian started thinking about something else, something that kept bothering him since they left the first temple with the murals.

That one deputy general that looked all too familiar to him, a face he had definitely seen before. And not in another painting, that much was sure.

When Xie Lian ascended for the first time, the Heavenly Capital was already new and rebuilt. There were no traces of the former court, no palaces, no murals, nothing. Not even a book with names or pictures. Similarly, the mortal world had nothing that could bring someone back to the old gods. It was weird, because mortals weren't known for destroying historical accounts so thoroughly, even when it came to heavenly officials and worship, but Xie Lian never thought too much about it.

Maybe the old heavenly court had done something to anger its worshippers, or maybe the gods themselves chose to disappear from memory. There was no way of knowing, and with nothing left of those ancient times, it wasn't worth the effort of trying.

Anyway, that wasn't the point.

It took some thinking and a sleepless night, but Xie Lian suddenly remembered who that face belonged to. In fact, the revelation was so abrupt he slammed a fist on the table he was sitting at, breaking it cleanly in half and not even realizing it.

Now it was just a matter of time.

It was up to Yin Yu, to find Mei NianQing and bring Xie Lian and his husband to him. The god knew he was still alive, even if it was more of a gut feeling than anything else. Back in the days of XianLe, that young-looking Guoshi had brought up the name of the Kingdom of WuYong. If Xie Lian recalled correctly, though his memory was a bit hazy, he even mentioned the Crown Prince himself.

At the time, Xie Lian didn't care too much about those names. They were just places and people among many others, and he never studied them anyway.

Now... now he knew the Kingdom of WuYong, already when he was the Crown Prince of his flourishing kingdom, was lost to the folds of history. No one save for his Guoshi ever mentioned it, a person that looked younger than any of the other teachers and scholars of the palace and outside it.