"Drought demon... What exactly do you mean by that?" Wang Xiaomie inquired, perplexed.
Wen Fengjin and An Kai turned to face him. Before Wen Fengjin could respond, An Kai answered openly, with a hearty smile and a carefree attitude, "Ahh~ It’s a kind of corpse transformation."
"The corpse will be the same as it was while alive, but it will bring drought and the vegetation will dry up wherever it goes."
"Oh!" Wang Xiaomie nodded. So that’s how it is.
An Kei altered his sitting position and set aside the small blue cup filled with wine on the low table. He supported himself on the low table with one hand while embracing the person in his arms with the other.
The young general's face was as handsome as it had been at first glimpse, and his wine-stained lips were drawn in a curve.
"Madam has been in a deep sleep for thousands of years, nourished by the demon lord's blood sacrifice, and has preserved your former appearance after waking up, so you don't understand this point very well. In fact, the requirements for a transforming zombie to become a drought demon are exceedingly stringent."
"Is that right," remarked Wang Xiaomie, frowning. "Then how did you develop into a drought demon?"
"That's a long story, but there's wine and company today, so I'll tell Madam about it." An Kai's lips twitched, "The world was in upheaval following the fall of the Northern Kingdom. Several short-lived little countries emerged one after the other, only to crumble. At the same time, the Great An kingdom was created, and it was engulfed in war and civil strife... I won't get into it."
"When I was younger, as a descendant of Duke Qing, I was a prince's study companion and got along well with the Third Prince..."
Although the little kid was born into a noble aristocratic family, his elders warned him before entering the palace to befriend which prince to secure a good position in advance, but how can people's hearts be so easily controlled?
Especially when a person is still in the grip of childhood ignorance?
An Kai's brows and eyes softened, showing a reminiscence look.
An Kai, who didn't understand anything yet, merely believed what he saw. It was impossible to effectively defend against the palace women's trickery. The waters in the harem were far deeper than those in the imperial court.
Despite being the eldest son, Eldest Prince was not born to the empress. His mother was an imperial concubine with no power who died of illness quietly in the harem conflict. The empress thus raised the eldest prince. The mother appeared to be loving and the son filial, but everyone knew that the prince who would eventually sit on the throne in the future would not be Eldest Prince, but Second Prince, the empress's biological son. Furthermore, the empress was supported by her powerful clan, so Second Prince's succession to the throne was already a foregone conclusion.
What about Third Prince?
His mother was the Virtuous Imperial Concubine, and her family was likewise solid, but the ministers privately deemed Third Prince to be a 'short-sighted, sissy boy, incapable in managing people.' Simply put, he was delicate like a woman, lacked the imposing style of a monarch, and lacked knowledge and experience. He was weak, gullible, and didn't have the credibility to recruit allies.
But when the seven-year-old An Kai beheld Third Prince, who was five years his senior, he was immediately captivated by the androgynous prince's gentleness. An Kai could only judge people based on their appearance because he had not yet learnt or seen anything of the world.
The youngster's heart was left with an unforgettable memory of that startling glance back.
Unmanliness had transformed into gentleness, cowering had transformed into tolerance, and ignorance had transformed into tenderness.
He reasoned that the ministers must be blind.
An Kai smiled emotionlessly, his fingers pressed on his face, and the tip of his little finger pressed against his pale lips.
Wang Xiaomie was a bit stunned when he heard this. Why did he feel that— An Kai seemed to like that Third Prince’s appearance?!
No, no, no! How is this even possible? It must be my rotten eyes that I see gays everywhere! Wang Xiaomie knocked himself on the head and continued to listen.
Wen Fengjin, who had caught this scene out of the corner of his eye, licked off the wet wine stains on his lips, cocked his brows, and smiled wickedly.
An Kai couldn't help but disobey his family's orders and kept in touch with Third Prince. He eventually sided with Third Prince, which enraged the powerful empress and Second Prince.
It was young love, but back then, boys married at the age of thirteen, and An Kai, who was eleven years old at the time, knelt in the ancestral hall for three days and refused to give in. The Duke Qing's household, which had only this one descendant, had no alternative but to be a neutral faction with whom scores would be settled at the appropriate moment.
An Kai was freed of his responsibilities as a study companion and asked to return home to reflect.
But he never stopped communicating with Third Prince. The two depended on palace staff to trade messages and express their longing in secrecy. An Kai was immersed in the sweet loveliness day after day, year after year, and every night dreamed about that gorgeous face...
Wang Xiaomie: ... The more I listen, the more I get the feeling that the two were secretly in puppy love! What's going on!!!
After a couple of years, the imperial palace had undergone even more changes. In correspondence, Third Prince frequently expressed his fear that his Second Brother would murder him when he ascended to the throne.
"So, when I was thirteen, I traveled to the border. That was the quickest way to excel and rise in power." An Kai's head was filled with ideas about obtaining power and pushing Third Prince to the top at the time. He gave up the comfortable and opulent life of the aristocracy, and several times he tried his hardest to die on the battlefield, entirely unconcerned that he was the lone descendant of the Duke of Qing and nearly killing him out of rage!
As he scoffed at himself, An Kai lowered his eyes, snorted, and smiled sadly. "My mind was preoccupied with the person I was interested in at the time. Who had the time to think about family, parents, and whatnot?"
The young general drenched in blood grew up, and beneath his hearty exterior was a heart of steel and ruthlessness. Killing the enemy and spewing hot blood over and over had long separated him from the past.
The tender part behind his stony shell had been surrendered to the imaginary beauty in his heart.
An Kai, at the age of nineteen, was already the youngest general. He forcibly pushed Third Prince to the throne with the support of his military might and Duke Qing.
"......"
As I thought... Sure enough, he’s also gay!!! If this isn’t true love, laozi will live-stream himself eating a keyboard!!!
Wang Xiaomie lowered his face and pinched Wen Fengjin's thigh, who was smothering his laughter beside him. Wen Fengjin simply cocked his brow and leaned close to Wang Xiaomie’s ear, and smoked red Wang Xiaomie’s face with a deep sexy male voice smelling of the sweet wine.
He said, "Shixiong, I hurt~"
"......" Wang Xiaomie gnashed his teeth and muttered quietly, "Don't blow air into my ears! I'll make you hurt even more, believe it or not!" The Iron Fist of Justice was raised and ready.
Wen Fengjin chuckled cheerfully and sat inclined in a somewhat frantic manner, drinking down the cup of wine, without going over to molest Wang Xiaomie.
"As expected, I'm still so envious..." An Kai also drank up the wine and sighed as he poured another cup.
"You too, uh, it's pretty good." Wang Xiaomie cast a glance at An Kai and the person he had been holding in his arms all along. "Aren't you two already together now?"
He didn't expect An Kai to burst out laughing when he heard it. "Together? In that case, I wouldn’t have turned into a drought demon."
Wang Xiaomie: Huh?
But An Kai didn’t go on with his story, just like the fairy tales that always come to an end when 'and at last the prince and the princess lived happily ever after.'
Because even storytellers understand that what came after intense love was not necessarily happiness.
The same was true for An Kai. The self-delusion in his mind that was older than him, incredibly kind and pure, with all imperfections erased by his brain, was the 'Third Prince' he had always loved.
And how could the real Third Prince possibly take a child's love seriously? The Duke of Qing, who was behind An Kai, was what mattered.
After tasting the sweetness of An Kai's favor, the Third Prince deliberately tried to please An Kai.
The Third Prince and his imperial concubine mother researched all of those sweet notes and hints in the notes An Kai received.
That so-called secret love had long been dragged out and dissected countless times.
The Third Prince was five years older than An Kai, and when An Kai went to the battlefield at the age of thirteen, the Third Prince was eighteen and should have been married. But both the Third Prince and his imperial concubine mother knew that with the empress’s suppression at the time, how could a girl from a powerful family marry the Third Prince?
So the Third Prince simply did not marry, and a few clean palace maids were arranged to ‘attend’ to him temporarily, claiming that it was for An Kai’s sake...
"Actually, it wasn’t the ministers who were blind, but me."
An Kai's frank smile remained as he ripped open the bloody dark fairy tale to a stupefied Wang Xiaomie.
Whenever An Kai returned from the frontier and wanted to be intimate with the Third Prince, the Third Prince was coy and said bashful words to avoid An Kai. But An Kai was blinded by his own fantasies at the time and didn't doubt him.
Later, as soon as he established the Third Prince on the throne, the border requested emergency aid. Some of his information suggested that the occurrence was suspicious, but he nevertheless went for the sake of his beloved's country. Surprisingly, immediately after arriving on the battlefield, the Third Prince, who had now become Emperor, executed the entire clan of Duke Qing on bogus charges!
Then he turned around and severed An Kai's army's supplies and vanguard, trapping him in the enemy's encirclement...
Efficient and decisive, as if he'd been looking forward to this day for a long time, barely falling short of pushing him on the final journey.
"......" Wang Xiaomie also picked up the wine cup and took a sip in silence.
Too tragic. F*ck, it's too tragic, isn't it?
After annihilating An Kai's whole army, the newly appointed general commanded the army to immediately settle the war situation. They all thought An Kai was dead, but An Kai survived and relentlessly returned to the Imperial City like an evil spirit, despite his injuries, which surprised everyone.
The Duke of Qing's Mansion was in ruins because of his 'love'. An Kai sniffed the smell of blood on his chest expressionlessly, and sneaked in through the secret passage that he had originally used to hang out with the Third Prince in the palace.
So, while the new emperor was celebrating, An Kai strangled all of the newly crowned princes and princesses (he had no idea the Third Prince already had children), as well as the concubines, palace maids, and court eunuchs.
They were all cleanly dispatched!
The commotion quickly drew notice...
It was still the imperial palace, no matter how cautious he was. An Kai came in front of the new emperor while he was being hunted, and using his ample resentment and hatred as the driving force, he captured the new emperor despite his innumerable lethal wounds.
In truth, An Kai was already dead at that point, but his mind was foggy and he didn't realize it.
After executing the largest vengeance murders in history, An Kai grabbed the Third Prince, who was scared witless, and dragged him to the border without shutting his eyes, with assassins pursuing him.
An Kai omitted the ups and downs of that journey, just stating that the Third Prince still felt like struggling to kill An Kai during the process, but An Kai's body had already mutated and resisted the knife. Instead, An Kai pulverized the Third Prince’s legs with rocks!
An Kai's body gradually developed livor mortis. His eyes turned scarlet, his body began to stink, and he sprouted very long red hair. Even the assassins and chasing soldiers were terrified by his appearance and refused to approach.
Everyone believed that General An had already perished on the battlefield, and that his raging resentment had transformed into a demonic entity.
In this way, An Kai also brought the Third Prince to the battlefield where all of his subordinates had died, and killed the Third Prince with his own hands before killing himself...
"Now that I think about it, I understand it wasn't death..." An Kai stated: "The innumerable grievances and slaughter on the battlefield at the time shaped me into this monster. Later, fearing that I would do something evil, the newly chosen child emperor listened to the Taoist priests' advice and instructed the Taoist priests to bury me in Qi Mountain."
"They knew the score of how I died, so the child emperor erected a sign for me and my murdered brethren and placed it in the Martyrs' Shrine to placate popular sentiment."
An Kai downed his wine and hugged the person in his arms. "I love him, and he loves me too. But if he makes a mistake, I will correct him."
"Even if it means shattering his bones, I will correct his mistakes... he can’t move, can’t speak, but that’s okay because he’s the one I love."
An Kai laughed loudly and heartily before using a rough palm full of scars to grab the head and neck of the person in his arms through the plain white fabric and kissing him. Gods only know if it was Wang Xiaomie's imagination, but he seemed to see the white cloth bundle trembling.
Even if the white cloth bundle didn't tremble, Wang Xiaomie was sure as hell on the verge of doing so.
He was wrong...
This man was way too similar to Wen Fengjin okay!
Wang Xiaomie glanced at An Kai's candid smile, and his intimate actions with the person hidden behind the white cloth made his scalp feel numb. It wasn’t that An Kai didn’t understand reality; rather, even if he did, it didn't matter!
He liked the Third Prince in his memory, and if the other party did not match his memories, he would just knead the other party into the appearance he preferred.
Murder all your children and then break your legs, turning you into a crippled zombie unable to run away or speak, and papapa have sweet sex with you even after you die, making even suicide impossible...
Dead but not at peace, this paranoia was absolutely perfect!
Wang Xiaomie was so shocked that his jaw was about to drop, but Wen Fengjin nodded in appreciation, "Not bad."
"Senior is too kind."
"Hehehe."
"Hahaha."
The two men exchanged smiles, touched their cups, and continued to smile and sip the wine.
"......"
Wang Xiaomie cast a solemn glance towards An Kai's white bundle. He had the impression that Friend White Bundle had long switched into vibration mode...
Then he continued to glance at Wen Fengjin and An Kai in turn. One was more handsome than the other, and one had a brighter smile...
F*ck me.
What the heck is this unique devil’s love?
Divorce, must divorce!
***
The author has something to say: [Small Theater]
Wang Xiaomie: My mother was right; a handsome man is a tiger!
Third Prince: Wuwu!
Wang Xiaomie: Divorce, must divorce!
Third Prince: Wuwu!!!
Wen Fengjin: Hehe.
An Kai: Haha.
What? An Kai is not buying soy sauce[1]. Everyone will understand in the next chapter okay! And a little cutie even guessed An Kai's love story, hahaha!