Chapter 12: CH 12

A long, long time ago, the old man was the keeper of a tower of imprisonment.

This tower was located in the most barren land of the Underworld, even more barren than the legendary untouched entrance to the Underworld. Apart from this stone tower, it was a wasteland where even ghost crows flying through the sky would drop dead due to the lack of spiritual energy.

No one knew where he came from, nor did anyone know the origin of the tower, but the old man knew that there was a demon, a mysterious demon, locked inside the tower.

This demon was said to be so dangerous that it needed to be imprisoned for eternity with the harshest of seals.

When he had just become a tower keeper, the old man had once seen the demon, a very quiet looking being with a beauty that the old man could not describe. Even being locked in a dark stone tower, shackled by the ugly stone locks, couldn’t hide away his breathtaking image.

He showed absolutely no signs of danger at all.

The tower keeper was told not to go near the demon, so he took in a boy who had been abandoned in the wasteland as a handyman in this stone tower to look after the demon.

The boy who had black hair and beautiful obsidian eyes, didn’t know where he came from; he couldn’t even remember his own name.

The demon locked up here didn’t really need water or food, but the new little handyman was stubborn and disobedient, taking rations to look after the demon every day, day after day……

During that time, the old man also learned more about things related to that mysterious demon. He came to know that there were two different bloodlines in the demon’s body, one from his mother and one from his father.

The power from his mother was gentle and seemed to be a rare race that had fallen out of favor, often lingering at the entrance to the underworld.

And the power from his father’s bloodline…… Seemed to be the main reason why he was trapped and locked in the stone tower.

Unfortunately, no one knew who this demon’s father was or what that dangerous power was ……

All this time, the demon was locked at the top of the tower, while the old man and the boy lived at the bottom, day after day, year after year.

One day, however, the boy, who had grown a little older, suddenly came up to the old man and asked him –

“Grandpa, can I go out and play with Lord Qingxing?”

The old man shook his head helplessly and replied to the boy with an apologetic look, “No, Lord Qingxing is imprisoned here by the order of very, very powerful people and he may not be able to leave for the rest of his life.”

The boy, who could already understand many things, stood there in silence for a long, long time and suddenly spoke, “If one day I managed to become more powerful than that very, very powerful person, will I be able to take Lord Qingxing out of here?”

“……” The old man remembered that he was stunned at that time, but in the end he just treated the boy’s words as a joke and replied, “Sure, but we’re just tower keepers, and at best we can only rise up to be the most powerful handymen in the underworld. “

“Then I won’t be a handyman. One day I will take Lord Qingxing out of here and go where he wants to go the most!”

The clear, crisp voice still sounded like a joke, but the boy’s figure really disappeared from the stone tower.

The stone tower was still the same.

The keeper of the tower was still the same.

He didn’t know how many years had passed, but the wasteland outside the stone tower had become more and more desolate, giving rise to sand storms.

And a young boy in a black cloak appeared in front of the old man.

“Little….. Si?” The old man looked at the familiar face and tried to call out the long forgotten name.

“Grandpa, it’s been a long time.” The young man’s expression looked very tired, but his eyes were still bright, “How is Lord Qingxing?”

The old man still remembered the teenager’s experiences after he had left the stone tower. After leaving, he had stumbled along the way and eventually reached the edge of the Underworld, known as the entrance to the Underworld, and became a guide to a certain ghost town.

He had gone to see the landscape that Lord Qingxing had always wanted to see.

And he was delighted by his experience.

It was hard to imagine how such a young boy had made his way through the wasteland to the edge of the underworld, under the threat of so many evil spirits and beasts. All the old man knew was that the “scenery” along the way was definitely more terrifying and frightening than what the boy himself had described.

“Shall we go and meet him?” The old man pointed to the top of the tower.

But the boy shook his head and said, “I’ve come all this way because of the promise I made to Lord Qingxing. All in all, I can’t go to meet Lord Qingxing yet when I haven’t even accomplished anything!”

The teenager said that he was so good at his job at the ghost town that someone wanted to promote him. But the teenager gave up a more comfortable work environment and volunteered to join the army of the Underworld and go to a certain battlefield.

“You will die.” The old man knew the wars of the Underworld well; except for the leaders of both sides, the rest were just cannon fodders waiting for death.

“But if I survive, I’ll be one step closer to Lord Qingxing.” A smile appeared on the young man’s weary face.

The teenager had survived.

He didn’t know how many years passed, but the old man saw the teenager again…… The teenager had grown into a young man, but his condition…… was bad.

Tattered armor, drooping right hand, blood all over his body, his originally black hair had somehow turned silvery white, even those beautiful obsidian eyes were wrapped with coarse cloth to stop the flow of blood.

“Si!” The old man would probably never forget an image like that.

The bloodstains trailed all the way into the stone tower, and it was hard to imagine how on earth the man hand managed to reach this place.

“Grandpa, it’s been a long time.” Saying the exact same words as back then, the youth just sat down at the doorway of the stone tower, “How is Lord Qingxing?”

“If you don’t go up to meet him again, maybe he won’t even remember you anymore.” The old man felt his nose go sore1, “Go and see him after all this time! But wait until I’ve taken care of your wounds first!”

The old man hoped that the demon could at least know that there was somebody who had never stopped fighting for his freedom, whether the price was sweat or blood, he had paid it all. That there was such a man who had fought tooth and nail, all for a promise he had made years ago.

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But the youth still just shook his head, smiled weakly and said, “Compared to me, it’s more painful for Lord Qingxing, who can only ever look up at the sky with the stone shackles weighing down his feet.”

“Grandpa, I’m going to a very dangerous place soon.” The youth straightened his expression, “When I return, perhaps I will have the ability to take Lord Qingxing away from here!”

“Where are you going!” The old man had an ominous feeling.

“If I can’t come back……” the youth’s eyes dimmed, “then it will be a good thing if Lord Qing Xing doesn’t remember me.”

“Son, is it worth it for you to do this?” The old man did not understand what the youth had done, nor did he know what he wanted to do. In the old man’s mind, he would always be that little child lying in the wasteland waiting for somebody to pick him up. Yet, this child wanted to take a path that was impossible to reach the end of.

“It was worth it.” The youth smiled and looked into the distance, “Do you know, Grandpa? Along the way, I have seen many beautiful sights, many wonderful things, many interesting people, and heard and met many stories……”

“If I had been a little handyman in the stone tower forever, I might not have had so many experiences in my life.” The youth’s eyes twinkled. Such an expression was one that the old man had never seen before.

“I would love to…… take Lord Qingxing with me.”

This child……

As the old man watched, the youth, who had roughly bandaged his wounds, disappeared once again into the wasteland.

For the youth, that Lord Qingxing had become more than just a youthful dream and longing. He had become a belief that sustained his life, a belief that drove him to constant growth!

After that…… It was day after day, year after year of solitude, and the place remained a stone tower that no one visited……

It was just an abandoned place.

He didn’t know exactly how many years had passed, but just when the old men thought that the youth had met his demise somewhere, an army marched to the wasteland!

There were people in black uniforms all over the place, carrying black flags with an unknown design……

The man in the black cloak walked with heavy steps to the old man and removed the hood from his head.

“Si……”

The old man was about to say something when he suddenly found himself unable to make a sound at all. Inexplicably, the old man seemed to see the familiar and unfamiliar man in front of him shake his head slightly.

“The tower keeper.” The man’s voice was cold and detached, as if he had never seen the old man before him, “I have come to free the prisoner in the tower, and from this day onwards, I will be his betrothed.”

Ever since the beginning of the promise a hundred years ago, after struggling through blood and tears, encountering countless life and death situations……

He had finally found the only way to set Qing Xing free.

Thinking of the past, the old man could not help his eyes from reddening.

If he could, he really wanted to tell that Lord Qingxing, that during the years when he had endured deathly loneliness and isolation, he was actually not alone, for there was that one person who had always fought for him.

And at the cost of his own life, the man had finally managed to deliver the treasure called “freedom” into his hands.

×××××

Legend has it that the entrance to the underworld appeared in a variety of different ways – it could be a street, a hospital, a run-down classroom, a haunted tour bus, or a cinema with a new movie on…..

After cooperating with the inspector’s supervision, Su Qingxing went back to work, leaving all the other tasks to Zhu Sha, completely ignoring his friend’s painful wails.

When Su Qingxing opened his eyes, he saw that he was facing a giant movie screen, which had no images on it, and the lights had not been turned off in the cinema. Obviously, the movie had not yet started.

But right above the movie curtain, there was a very rustic banner—

[Welcome to the premiere of Bride of the Dead].

“I’ve really seen this movie!” An argumentative voice came from beside Su Qingxing.

Su Qingxing moved his slightly stiff neck and turned his head to see that there were only four people sitting in his row in this empty cinema hall, and they should be the people who were participating in the trial this time.

One of them, a handsome teenager in a white shirt, was trying to convince the other trialists to believe in his words. “It’s a very old horror film, but it’s really good!” he exclaimed excitedly.

“Death comes to the mortal world in search of his bride, but the person he wants to find must not be afraid of death. Even in the face of their greatest fear, they would have to learn to overcome it with a steady heart! But if the person Death is testing shows fear and panic, the following second will usher in a brutal and gory death!”

“What’s the use of you talking about that!” Sitting next to the teenager was an arrogant looking woman, wearing a professional suit, with delicate make-up and an impatient look, “Where exactly is this place? If no one explains, I’ll leave. Time is money, UNDERSTAND?”

“Sorry, I don’t like horror movies either.” There was another man in a denim suit who, after smiling casually, was ready to get up and leave with the professional woman.

“You can treat it as a romantic movie!” It was unclear just how much the handsome teenager really enjoyed watching horror movies, “At the end, the Grim Reaper finds himself a bride who isn’t afraid of the skeleton under the black cloak and is willing to kiss his white bones, and the two live happily ever after! Ageless and immortal!”

The teenager finished with a look of longing and shyness on his face, as if he had been transformed into the protagonist of the movie, intoxicated by ‘romantic love’……

Seeing such a scene, Su Qingxing was silent for a rare moment.

Why did he feel like…… Something weird was going on?

The author has something to say: The third story is starting, beat the drums, sound the gongs! Guess who will be the first to appear, the big one or the small one!

Ngl I felt really sad for the ML when I read this chapter. The thing I absolutely love abt this story is the way the characters have been written. Even though its mostly shown from the third person perspective and focuses on Su Qingxing, he is probably the one character the most mysterious of all. What he feels and how he acts may not be the same. He is super unreliable as a narrator, and he’s running from a lot of things. Even though he is supposedly a ‘lantern spirit’, he is shown as a human.

I personally feel like even though their past was explained right at the beginning, it’s a lot more deeper than what is shown. The romance is healing. I hope SQX can see how much he is loved by his betrothed.

Also, am I the only person who lowkey squealed when ML came and said he’s come to marry MC? So sad that MC still doesn’t know that ML is the kid with the obsidian eyes who brought brightness to his life…..

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