Chapter 21: CH 21

It wasn’t until it was time to eat that Edward appeared in front of Zong Yan again.

“Let’s go to dinner.” The little prince’s face didn’t look particularly good. He hesitated for a while, then with a touch of self-loathing finally said, “My father wants to see you.”

Edward’s father?

Wang KeMing went “OMG” in his heart and asked cautiously, “You mean King Lanchester?”

“Bloody hell.” Edward rolled his eyes. “He’s just a tottering old man.”

Oh my God, that’s not VIP treatment. It’s state guest treatment.

As he followed Edward, Wang KeMing anxiously said, “Yan Ge, I’m kind of nervous. What if I lose face for our nation….”

“Stop thinking so much.” Zong Yan sympathetically patted him on the shoulder. “Just watch your table manners and keep your mouth shut.”

Sure enough, the little fat man didn’t speak at all during the meal. Contrary to his usual chatty personality, he kept his head down and ate.

It was an ordinary meal. Instead of Buckingham Palace’s formal dining room, the food was served in a smaller space.

The small dining room had a similar layout and decoration, but it was only used for the royal family’s private meals. It was extremely elegant. Precious antique vases were placed around the room, proving that Buckingham Palace’s collection was amazing. Of course, Zong Yan and Wang KeMing weren’t able to tell the difference.

Lanchester II was a man of many years. Although he was old, everything about him was dignified. His deep-set eyes concealed a sharp gaze.

It seemed that while Edward and his fellow students were staying in Buckingham Palace, a delegation from Russia was also visiting. The old king had been dressed formally before, but he’d changed into a casual outfit to avoid making his guests feel uncomfortable.

“You’re the school chief of Miskatonic University? The younger generation is astonishing.”

Lanchester didn’t belittle Zong Yan and Wang KeMing because of their age. Instead he lifted the red wine in his hand and toasted them politely.

The occult world wasn’t a secret for the senior political officials of various countries. Cooperation was also commonplace. No one in the room thought anything was strange.

“Your Majesty is kind.”

Zong Yan took a sip from the wine glass in front of him. When he tasted it, he found it was lychee juice and realized the other party had already looked into his preferences.

Investigation might be one thing, but Lanchester II’s attitude was still quite friendly.

The food consisted of the usual British “national dish” of dark ingredients, including fish and chips as well as some items that didn’t do much to stimulate the appetite. When the meal was over, the old king asked the small kitchen of Buckingham Palace to make some desserts and send them over to Edward’s bedchamber. This act of bribery immediately won Wang KeMing’s praise.

“Good man!”

Even with Wang KeMing’s appetite, he hardly ate anything at dinner, which demonstrated the character of British national cuisine.

Edward saw how easily he was bought off and felt irritated for a moment. He dragged Zong Yan by the arm and ran upstairs to the bedroom. 

“Come on, I’ll take you somewhere.”

The side hall was built behind Buckingham Palace, a short distance from the main hall.

The little prince ran quickly. Pulling Zong Yan behind him, he hurried to the top of the building.

There was a small penthouse tower on the roof. In order to maintain the roofline of Buckingham Palace, the tower was placed on the left-hand side. Hidden by dense trees, it didn’t affect the overall symmetry of the building.

Edward took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and led Zong Yan to the top of the penthouse tower.

At the very top was a small platform. There were paints and brushes scattered around in a messy, casual way, as well as some unfinished paintings off to the side.

Zong Yan wasn’t sure why, but after he stepped into the tower he thought the cool sensation from before had grown more and more obvious. It was the exact same feeling he got when he saw the ghosts in MU.

“I used to come here when I was a child. It’s my secret base.” When he got to the top, the little prince proudly displayed his territory. “You’re the first person allowed to step foot here.”

Showing Zong Yan his secret base was probably his way to diffuse a tense situation, but Zong Yan felt a bit hesitant.

He thought about it and since he didn’t understand, he decided to ask directly. “Why are you so stubborn about wanting to be friends with me?”

Zong Yan really couldn’t figure it out. His attitude had been lukewarm and unenthusiastic at all times, but Edward seemed determined to make friends anyway.

After enough of these incidents, Zong Yan was too embarrassed not to treat him like a friend. It was just that he didn’t know why.

Edward was silent for a moment. Suddenly he lowered his voice, “It’s because you’re the only one who’s friends with Edward. As for the others—

“They’re friends with Prince Edward and the Duke of Edinburgh.”

As the youngest son of the British king, Edward had inherited the title of Duke of Edinburgh and had a large fiefdom of his own, which produced a steady stream of income.

Sometimes friendships between men were simple. Maybe it was just liking the same game or playing a round of basketball together. After that, they could happily hang out and call each other “brother”.

Edward belonged to this type. He liked Zong Yan a lot, so Zong Yan had become his only friend.

“Except for you, only my mother knew about this place.” The little prince suddenly squatted down and picked up a brush on the floor. “She died when I was seven.”

“I’m sorry.”

Even if Zong Yan had a low EQ, he was still able to sense that something was wrong.

“It’s okay,” Edward said. “It was a long time ago…. When she was alive she loved this place. She very much liked to paint here and she often brought me with her.

“I loved to paint and play the violin too, but when I was seven my private classes changed to arithmetic and statesmanship. Later, I came here to practice in secret.”

The little prince opened the highest window in the tower and nimbly climbed onto the ledge. He extended a hand and pulled Zong Yan up to the wall beside him.

Outside, night had already fallen. The sky was endless and filled with glittering stars.

Edward lay down on the wall without ceremony and looked up at the stars.

Zong Yan copied him and lay down as well. Just at that moment, he shivered.

The cold feeling enveloped him again, especially when his back was pressed against the ground.

“The palace is quite beautiful, isn’t it? But its beauty can’t conceal the fact that it’s a cage.

“I like to lie here. This is the only time that belongs to me.”

“I like that too. Find somewhere up high, lie down, and look up at the sky.” Zong Yan paused.

The sky was visible from the roof of the dilapidated tube-shaped apartment building. Zong Yan had spent many afternoons there by himself.

Later, when he went to junior high school, a piece of land nearby was acquired and transformed into a skyscraper. After that, Zong Yan’s view was interrupted by a concrete corner. Eventually, he stopped going there to look at the sky. To sum up, today was a revival of a long-lost habit.

Who could have imagined that far away in England the little prince lounging on top of a palace had the same hobby as a poor student sitting on the roof of a dilapidated tube building in Jiangzhou?

“It’s only when people look up at the stars that they can find spiritual peace. A lot of philosophers were the same as us, like Kant, Nietzsche, and Hegel.” As Edward spoke, his blond hair was obscured by the dark of the night. “I don’t like it here, and I don’t want to be a prince, but every word I speak and every move I make are watched by the world. I can’t do anything that would bring shame on the royal family, but I can’t help but yearn for freedom all the time.

“Have you ever felt like that? That feeling.”

Zong Yan thought for a moment. “Yes.

“When I used to sit in class, I liked to look out of the window. All the windows in our classroom are barred outside…. They said that some students jumped from the windows because they were under too much pressure, so the school installed iron railings.”

It was the first time he’d talked to someone about this kind of thing, so he spoke a little slowly. The only member of his audience was attentive and didn’t rush him. “Those iron bars cut the sky into pieces. From the inside, it’s like a prison.”

At this point, Zong Yan couldn’t help but laugh. “And I kept thinking, I hope one day I’ll grow wings and be able to fly out of the classroom.”

Of course, later on he really could fly. It was just that he didn’t dare fly out during the physics teacher’s class, Zong Yan added inwardly.

“Wow!” Edward imagined the scene and thought his little friend had an amazing imagination. “After your Second Awakening, you might really be able to fly. Very good. I also planned to escape from Buckingham Palace for almost a year.”

The little prince seemed to be infected by Zong Yan. The corners of his mouth held a touch of happiness, like a child who stole some candy. “As soon as I awakened, the royal family blocked the news. I secretly got the information later and ran straight to Westminster Abbey. I was able to get in touch with MU and enrolled in school through their internal channels. Act first, inform later.”

His blue eyes were radiant. “I hid it from everyone. Even the old butler didn’t notice anything was wrong…. Oh, the old butler’s the one who came to find me earlier. Although he’s a butler, he’s actually a senior agent of MI6, just like James Bond.

“Hahaha, when they locked down Westminster Abbey and couldn’t even find me on satellite, I was lying in my dormitory in MU laughing my head off.”

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Zong Yan thought of the scene and also laughed out loud.

“However—” At this point, Edward seemed to think of something, and his eyes dimmed again, like he was lost. “This time it might not be so easy.

“Agents may sound cool, but in fact they’re more about surveillance than protection.” He grimaced. “Last time I was able to escape because I had a very good disguise and they were caught off guard. This time they’ll be more vigilant.

“Look.”

Edward rose nimbly from the ground and nodded at the scene below them.

Zong Yan stood up too. He saw the lights surrounding the palace and the royal guards with tall red hats on their heads. Through the dense shadows of the trees, the iron fence was like a devil with teeth and claws. Just like his body temperature, it was getting colder and colder.

“It’s not just in the places you can see. There are satellites monitoring Buckingham Palace from high above. The cameras are everywhere. The royal guards are specially trained.”

The little prince leaned against the gray wall of the penthouse The pattern of light and darkness cut his face into distinct parts. He looked bright but also frustrated. “Unless I go through Second Awakening and become Auxiliary level immediately, I won’t be able to get out of here. I might not even be able to go to school with you next semester….”

The more he said, the more upset he felt. Even the golden hair on his head seemed to droop.

Suddenly, Zong Yan did something out of character. He grabbed Edward’s wrist and his face grew visibly stern.

The little prince automatically started to throw him over his shoulder. Fortunately he held back his instinctive reaction. “What’s wrong—?”

“It’s snowing.”

The black-haired boy stared at the treetops and flower beds below.

Buckingham Palace had the largest private garden in London. The size of nearly thirty football fields, it not only contained an expanded golf course but numerous flower beds planted with different colors of the British national flower. The River Tyburn flowed underneath the palace, bringing a plentiful water supply to the gardens and nourishing the immense royal courtyard.

In just a few minutes, at a rate visible to the naked eye, those fiery red roses were covered with a heavy frost. And it wasn’t just the roses. The sky also filled with white flakes of snow. The light brown paving stones were blanketed with white, just like a layer of icing.

From a distance they could see the commotion of the royal guards. The snow was already above their ankles. As the guards looked up, their iconic red hats were covered with snow.

It was an unbelievable scene.

Don’t talk about whether snow could accumulate to this extent in just a few minutes—it was August.

In the UK in August, no matter how chilly it felt when the temperature got down into the teens, it never fell below zero.

Unless it was the end of the world and the ice age had come again.

From the moment he came to this tower, Zong Yan felt a bone-chilling cold. He never thought it would become visible to the eye. 

But there were two different kinds of cold. One chilled the bone marrow from inside, while the other was the cold of the outside world.

“No, there has to be something wrong. How can it snow at this time of year?” 

Edward’s pupils constricted. “Wait, there—”

He pointed to the distant sky.

Zong Yan clearly remembered that just a moment ago the sky was covered with stars. Now they’d all disappeared. In their place were dark clouds like swirls of fog.

Because it was night time, the dark clouds weren’t very conspicuous. The falling snow was getting heavier and heavier.

They were standing high enough to see the twinkling stars above the line of a huge cloudbank, but they also beheld a face, pained and distorted to the point of deformity.

This horrible and repulsive face swayed within the cloud bank. Eyes like black holes suddenly fixed on something, and the snow and wind swirled down from its loathsome mouth, producing the extreme cold.

A creature!

It was definitely an alien creature!

Zong Yan had a hunch this thing had seen them.

And its goal might be himself!

Ding ding—

The next second, Zong Yan’s and Edward’s cell phones rang in the night air.

They checked their messages and saw that MU’s app had pushed a notification. Over a flood of thousands of updates, the new message had been bolded, enlarged, and framed on top of the main page.

【S-class extraterrestrial Ithaqua has appeared in Westminster, London. Urgent call for investigators in the area to travel to the alien mission site. Note: Fire attribute Awakened have priority】

“Let’s go down. Buckingham Palace has the best royal guards, and there are air raid shelters below. Now that MU’s sent an alert, the army will be dispatched soon. This is the safest place in London aside from Downing Street.”

In the cold night air, Edward shivered and tugged Zong Yan to run beside him from the tower.

“No, it’s too late.”

The black-haired boy stood at the top of the tower and gazed at the monster from a distance.

The creature saw its prey and laughed cruelly and wildly in the gale. The snowflakes suddenly turned into hail, smashing down with the snowstorm, and all the roses in the flower beds were pummeled into the ground.

“I’m afraid his goal is us…. Professor Darwin said that for S-class extraterrestrials, conventional physical attacks don’t work at all. It will be hard to get enough investigators here in time.

“We have to lead it away. Otherwise it’s very possible that everyone in this palace will be buried in the blizzard.

“Are you willing to trust me?” 

Zong Yan bit his lower lip. His fingers in his pocket grabbed a card.

Edward smiled. “Do I look like the kind of person who doesn’t trust his friends?”

The black-haired boy smiled too. He crushed the card in his hand.

After a flash of light, the elegant Night Watchman stood beneath the night sky of London. His long gray hair was swept up by the wind and snow, and the messenger bird of death circled over his head.

The curve of his smile hinted at the mystery of the night, and the earth below his feet was the boundary between life and death. The golden pocket watch in his hand ticked as if suspended in time.

“Wow, man, that’s amazing!” 

Facing the scarlet eyes of the Night Watchman, the little prince was stunned for a moment. He suddenly slapped his thigh with excitement. “Go, go, go! No one will catch me this time!”

The Night Watchman grinned and tapped his black umbrella on the ground. The shadows leapt up in obedience, wrapped around them, and melted into the night.

Before they left, Zong Yan looked back at the tower.

He finally understood why he felt such bitter cold while standing there.

Everywhere the Night Watchman could see, the tower was surrounded by a dense mass of remnant souls.

This tower was a prison of death, piled up from the bones of the dead and the flesh and blood of the living.

TL Notes:

In my opinion the British “national dish” is curry, and they’re pretty good at it! Although admittedly they had to borrow it from someone else (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥  Actually, I just looked it up and Encyclopedia Britannica quotes somebody important saying the UK’s national dish is chicken tikka masala, so there’s proof, hehe.

The younger generation is astonishing – 后生可畏 – A youth is to be regarded with respect — the younger generation will surpass the older; A ragged colt may make a good horse; An after-born should be feared; Every oak has been an acorn

defuse a tense situation – 解围 – force an enemy to raise a siege; rescue sb. from a siege; come to the rescue of the besieged, help sb.out of a predicament; save sb.from embarrassment

call each other “brother” – “兄弟” – xiōngdì

act first, inform later – 先斩后奏 – behead sb. first then make all known to the Emperor; act first and report afterwards; execute one on the spot without prior approval from the court; kill sb. first then to report

Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter:

River Tyburn – 泰伯恩河 – Tàibóēn hé

Ithaqua – 伊塔库亚 – Yī tǎ kù yà – A Great Old One that controls snow, ice, and cold and can walk through the sky as easily as it walks on earth.

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