“Why do you want me on your side? To take your life?” Xie Lian demanded sharply.
White No-Face only chuckled softly. “Your Highness, you are a beautiful block of jade,” he said warmly. “Allow me to guide and educate you.”
Xie Lian could not immediately formulate a response. Feeling both incredulous and furious, he couldn’t help but click his tongue. “You? Educate me? My master is the State Preceptor of Xianle. What the heck are you?! Where did you come from, you monster?!”
White No-Face extended a finger and waggled it.
“You’re mistaken again. Your Highness, perhaps it would be better to say that I am the only one worthy to educate you. Your master? The State Preceptor of Xianle?” His voice turned strangely arrogant and condescending. “That thing isn’t worth mentioning in my presence. On the contrary, you’ve been absorbing my lessons very well.”
“What did you teach me?” Xie Lian spat angrily. “What the heck are you talking about? I don’t understand at all!”
White No-Face snorted a laugh. “The first thing I taught you is that you are powerless in the face of many things in this world.”
At his words, countless chaotic images and voices flashed through Xie Lian’s mind. He gritted his teeth and lunged with his “sword,” but White No-Face easily evaded.
“The second thing—”
He seized Xie Lian, making him lose his balance and almost trip. Xie Lian felt a hand stroke the top of his head.
“Do you want to save the common people? They don’t need you to save them. They aren’t worthy.”
Xie Lian’s movement faltered for a moment, but then he slapped that hand away before turning and stabbing again. White No-Face snapped the branch in his hand and dodged behind Xie Lian, quickly placing two ice-cold fingers on a fatal point on the back of his head!
Xie Lian was sure his brain was going to be pierced at any moment by those prodding fingers. He froze in place.
From behind him, White No-Face spoke again. “If you don’t come to my side, then you will never win against me, and I will always defeat you.”
Xie Lian panted and said darkly, “…Come at me anytime!” He paused for a moment, then kept speaking, saying each word slowly and clearly.
“I can’t win, but that’s only for now. You can defeat me countless times, but you can’t kill me. And as long as you can’t kill me, I will surely defeat you one day!”
When the ghost fire heard his words, it blazed even more ferociously, like it was going to brighten the entire night sky.
Behind him, White No-Face was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I can’t kill you?”
Xie Lian held his breath and didn’t speak. In truth, he didn’t fully know what the undying body Jun Wu had granted him could handle. If White No-Face really did pierce his skull in a moment of fury, would he still live?
White No-Face continued, his tone even, “Indeed, I can’t kill you. I won’t kill you either. But don’t be too confident, now—I hope you don’t have any regrets about this later.”
Regret? What would he regret?
Xie Lian hadn’t yet figured it out when a hand chopped his neck violently. He instantly sank into darkness.
***
Within that darkness, there was light and warmth some distance ahead. Xie Lian moved toward the light and regained consciousness little by little.
He opened his eyes slowly. The first thing he saw was a ball of ghost fire floating above him. It seemed that the little ghost fire was the source of the light and warmth he had felt while unconscious.
Seeing that he was awake, the ghost fire immediately pressed close to Xie Lian, then quickly decided that getting too close wasn’t acceptable and backed off a little. Xie Lian couldn’t help but consider this ball of ghost fire exceptional—if he remembered correctly, it was the same one who had created a formation to block his path through the woods. He wanted to reach out and poke at it, yet when he tried, for some reason his hand didn’t move at all.
Xie Lian was perplexed and instantly snapped out of his reverie. He dropped his head to look and quickly discovered why he couldn’t move his hand. His arms and legs were bound.
He was firmly tied down on the altar atop the scorched base of the missing statue. There were many people squeezed around the altar, and hundreds of round, unblinking eyes were staring up at him.
Chapter 100:
A Heart Pierced By a Hundred Swords, A Wrath Ghost Takes Form
WHY WERE THEY all staring at him like that?
Suddenly, Xie Lian heard a whisper from below.
“So similar…”
“He’s not just similar…he’s the exact same!”
“Is it really him?”
Someone bluntly asked, “Are you…that prince?”
Out of habit, Xie Lian blurted, “I’m not…”
Yet he trailed off when he realized that the white silk he used to cover his face had been untied. He was trussed to the altar by that same white silk, and his face was fully exposed to the crowd surrounding him.
Xie Lian’s heart jumped to his throat, but he steeled himself and met the gazes of the crowd.
He didn’t know if it was his mind playing tricks, but he felt those stares turn strange. But thankfully, perhaps due to the imminent danger, their eyes at least didn’t bear the disgust or anger he had feared. And that imminent danger made itself known in the next second as a wave of inhuman howls rang out from outside the temple!
Xie Lian tried to twist his neck around and discovered that the howling was coming from the disfigured wretches he had already knocked down. They had somehow regained their footing, and there were more out there now. They had surrounded the Temple of the Crown Prince, and they screamed as they circled it hand in hand like they were performing some horrifying ritual, or perhaps it was purely the wild dancing of demons. The crowd inside the temple huddled together, cowering in absolute terror. A young child burst into tears and his parents took him into their arms, covering his eyes and ears. Every face in the room was stricken with fear.
“What do we do? What do we do?”
“Will they break in…?”
“Even if they don’t, they’re so close—will we be infected…? What will we do if we catch it?!”
Xie Lian fought against his bindings but couldn’t loosen them in the slightest. It seemed that the white silk had been tampered with, likely injected with spiritual power.
With veins visible on his forehead from his ongoing struggle, Xie Lian roared, “White No-Face!”
There was no response. Instead, an icy-cold hand patted his head. Xie Lian froze, hair standing on end from the touch. And when he twisted his head back, what he saw had dread prickling from his head on down his spine.
No wonder the people below him were giving him strange stares. Not only was Xie Lian’s face exposed, but White No-Face was seated in the darkness right behind him.
Confronted by such a strange-looking character dressed all in white, no one dared to breathe, let alone move carelessly. So White No-Face ignored them entirely as he helped Xie Lian sit upright under the watchful gaze of the crowd.
Xie Lian was pulled into a sitting position from where he’d been lying, and now he was sitting atop his own divine altar like a bound, living statue. Aside from his eyes and neck, he couldn’t move at all.
Although his situation was beyond eerie, the howling Human Face Disease victims outside were more terrifying. The attention of the crowd below soon returned to the disfigured wretches outside.
“…From what I heard, anyone in the same district can infect you, and the disease spreads incredibly fast!” someone muttered. “We’re so close, they’re right there, we’ll definitely, definitely—!”
Anguish, panic, and despair filled the temple at the thought that they would soon fall victim to the horrifying plague.
