Crown Prince and Ghost King

Chapter 58

And it was.

Just like the day after, and the day after that one.

The couple took their time on the road towards Mount Tong'lu. Without an emergency urging them to run, and the imminent birth of a new Ghost King forcing their feet to be quick, there was no need to rush. Xie Lian also took that opportunity to take in the surroundings in a more thorough way, looking around with curiosity in his eyes.

Many things he had already seen and weren't new, others he missed the first two times. A bizarre animal caught his attention for a brief second, a wolf so big a human could ride it like a horse, but so swift and agile it disappeared in the blink of an eye. Xie Lian wondered how many there were, in the area, and got an interesting answer from Hua Cheng.

Not many, apparently, because they weren't creatures native of Mount Tong'lu.

«Some of those wolves are trained by a cultivation sect», Hua Cheng explained, walking hand in hand with Xie Lian on a wrecked road that was more mud and weeds than anything else. «As far as I know, the wild ones that live here all come from a litter than was abandoned here. Maybe they thought the cubs were too aggressive».

Which was a awful justification for abandoning living beings in a place as bad as Mount Tong'lu, but that cultivation sect was rich and influential, so it was obvious anybody of those belonging to it could do whatever they wanted with no repercussion.

Xie Lian made a face at that, but also snorted out a laugh: «Jokes on them, now there's an entire population of wolves here». It was a good feeling, knowing someone's bad intentions backfired so amazingly. They wanted to get rid of aggressive cubs, and ended up giving life to a whole new generation of creatures.

The wolves didn't attack them, probably due to the terrifying aura Hua Cheng let off by simply existing, so the two kept on walking with no interruptions. Every once in a while some spirit fires would cross their way, lamenting about a lack of paper money and looking for prayers sent their way by loved ones, but apart from that the rest of their journey was pretty tame.

Even less eventful than the relative quiet they experienced on the way to the last inhabited village. Xie Lian started to think it wasn't just Hua Cheng's fault, if nothing bothered them.

All in all, traveling in the area of Mount Tong'lu when nothing was going crazy or terribly wrong around them was surprisingly nice.

The mountain of the Kiln still had its peculiar gravity, forcing anybody to keep their feet on the ground instead of allowing lightness of feet in order to fly. The path was as steep as ever, and the air grew colder as they climbed higher, however the scenery was much different compared to how it normally was.

The Kiln was always covered with a thick layer of snow, a cold blanket swallowing boots that walked over it, but all the area was still recovering from the aftermath of Qi Rong emerging from the heart of the volcano. The snow was still piled up in quite a thin layer, and was dirty instead of having a pure white brilliance to it, mixed with volcanic ash that didn't have time to be hidden. The whole scenery looked dead, now. Taking away the fiery blazing of the Kiln erupting, what was left was only a barren wasteland, all life burned to ashes; something new would sprout again, with time, but the mountain body of the Kiln was just a corpse for the moment.

They didn't climb all the way up, that day. Xie Lian mostly wanted to go slow because he was enjoying that peculiar trip with his husband, but Hua Cheng seemed so uneasy that the god figured it would be nice to give him some time before entering his lair.

«San Lang», he called him, once they settled down somewhere comfortable. «Are you having second thoughts? We don't have to go, if you don't want to». While the god was curious, understandably so, Hua Cheng was under no obligations. If he changed his mind, then so be it. Boundaries were important, and respecting them didn't mean anything negative even in marriage.