Chapter 39: CH 38.1

The Jinshi Empire was flooded with refugees from elsewhere in the past few days. They came mainly from the north-west, with those from the Beifeicu Empire, Leiyin City and Peida City accounting for a significant proportion. Some were stateless people living between the borders of various kingdoms, including many from the Scattered Land.

Their main purpose was one–to seek holy water.

Oswald poured one of the three pouches of holy water from the Tomb of Phae into the Sousse River. Another was given to the Giant Beastmen, along with some other insect protection equipment for Dan to take back with him, and Oswald intended to keep the other one for emergencies.

“How did they get over here? The military reports sent back from the Red Iron Army stationed along the Carat Long River didn’t even mention them.” Oswald asked in a deep voice.

“Some of them fumbled their way over from the Ghost Moon Forest, and the rest supposedly went even further. They were unsure of the purpose of the Red Iron Army garrison and didn’t dare to come over the Carat Long River.” Peter, the commander of the Patrolling guards, replied, “St. Andis is heavily guarded, so those who have managed to get here are a minority. More of them are in the area of the Qinye City.”

Standing on the city walls, Oswald could see the tidy streets of St. Andis from afar. Some of the marketplaces had come alive again, and people moved in and out of the stalls and shops on Main Street, gradually returning to their old life.

He could vaguely see people, men, women, old and young, crouching or sitting in ragged clothes at the corners and even at the edge of the altar in the central square, carrying packages of all sizes on their backs. Some had even brought their families with them, with several children gathered around them.

“Carat Long River is a little further around, and apart from the Ghost Moon Forest, it’s Eagle Mountain.” Oswald said, “The Ghost Moon Forest is full of fierce beasts, and the Eagle Mountain range has a living mountain crossing it. Whichever way they came from would kill half of the ordinary people.”

Peter nodded, “Most of those refugees were badly sand-petrified. I saw a few older men and children who were completely stoned and were carried over by their families. The worst was a woman whose husband’s head was probably a bit taller than mine, and the load was imaginable with all that muscle. His whole body was petrified to the point where he couldn’t move anything but his face. She had come over from the Ghost Moon Forest with him on her back.”

Peter talked with increasing intensity and a long sigh as if he wasn’t the one who usually wandered the streets with a stern face.

Oswald pondered for a moment and gave an order.

The next day, a watershed was built on the outskirts of the towns with simple cloth tents to gather the refugees. All the refugees who had fled had to pass through the gathering place, record their names and origins, and then receive a share of water at the water distribution table.

Thus, this group of people stayed for a while.

The news that the Jinshi Empire had holy water spread and attracted more people from other countries. The movement of people was so apparent that it was hard not to notice. The kings of the two large city-states, Leiyin City and Peida City, and some of the smaller city-states around them, had simply sent letters and personally travelled here.

Old Sapir, who was still reportedly bedridden, was suspicious and did not like to have anyone else near him when he was ill. He only trusted his son, so all instructions came through his youngest son, Bott.

He was unable to see for himself what was going on outside, and Bott was an arrogant fool, so the whole of the Beifeicum Empire became even more chaotic with a series of commands.

Sapir couldn’t stand the idea of people fleeing to the Jinshi Empire to survive and felt it was a betrayal of his country, something he would not tolerate in the extreme. In a rage, he banned the country’s borders and forbade all people to cross them.

On hearing this, Oswald ordered the Red Iron Army stationed at the Carat River to be more vigilant. At this rate, there was no guarantee that Sapir wouldn’t go mad and bite someone at some point.

While all these countries, big and small, were in chaos, something went wrong with Kevin, who had been confined to his bedchamber for many days.

That afternoon, there was an unsettling rainstorm outside, with occasional thunderstorms passing by. Oswald’s left eyelid had been twitching during the meeting in the hall, and he felt that something was going to happen, so he hurried to the inner courtyard after dealing with the refugees.

Just as he was walking down the corridor, a scream came from Cynthia in Kevin’s room. Oswald’s eyebrows raised, and he immediately hurried over with great strides.

Inside the house, the little girl clutched Kevin’s arm, crying and wailing over his face.

Kevin had a knack for dealing with tough kids, but he had no idea what to do with a soft little girl like this. He patted her fluffy head blankly and said, “Eh….. what are you crying for? Are you afraid? I’m not even crying over this bloody hand, but you’re the one who’s howling first.”

The little girl had developed a deep bond with him in just a few days, probably second only to her intimacy with her stern-faced uncle.

Instead of stopping, Cynthia howled even harder when she was comforted by the bastard’s nonsense.

Kevin’s arm, which she was holding, was a bloodied mess. It was impossible to see below the elbow, and the flesh of his fingers had already disappeared to the bone as if it were a long, slender chicken claw.

Kevin simply covered her eyes, afraid she would be more frightened if she saw more.

The little girl struggled to get one eye out while trying to hold Kevin’s arm, afraid of touching his wound. In her fumbling, she cried her heart out as if it was herself who had a rotten arm.

“It’s okay. It’ll be fine in a minute. I was just teasing you.” Kevin’s voice had a slight chuckle as he flexed his chicken-claw fingers a few times, making a little bone-clattering sound as if that would speed up blood circulation and heal it as quickly as possible.

A few moments later, though, his brow finally furrowed–not only was the hand not starting to heal, but the one covering Cynthia’s eyes was not looking good either, with a few small cuts cracking from the elbow.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go out and find someone else to play with for a while, little girl……” Kevin said as he withdrew the hand covering her.

As he lifted it away, the hand became bloodied and lost its flesh.

This was the sight Oswald saw as soon as he entered the door.

“What’s going on?!” Kevin heard him ask in a strained voice.

“Right on time. Hurry up, and carry this girl away. Her snot is running down my bones.” As soon as he saw someone coming to help, the bastard Kevin actually joked as he sighed in relief, “I’ve got enough blood all over me to give her a bath, and she doesn’t like it when I tell her to stay away.”

“Let go.” Oswald, someone who, despite spoiling anyone, was still very intimidating when he was stern-faced, reached out to hold Cynthia and wiped the tears from her eyes.

The little girl met her black-faced uncle’s eyes as soon as they opened: “……”

She stifled a sob with a flattened mouth and sheepishly let go of her hand.

Kevin: “……”

Oswald carried her to the door in a couple of steps, handed her to the summoned female officer and then turned back to the room.

“Is Fa …… Fa going to die?” Cynthia asked with a whimper as she grabbed his sleeve.

“Fa?” Oswald was in a hurry and didn’t respond for a moment to the words. Cynthia usually only called people by the first syllable of their first name. This was the first time she had called them by their surname.

He froze for a moment and was about to dismiss her when he heard Kevin in the room raise his voice and answer back, “Not with your kind words.”

Oswald: “……” The bastard was back to not speaking in human terms.

“Does it…..never mind.” Oswald decided that he was probably not thinking clearly. He subconsciously wanted to ask, “does it hurt,” but his hand was already missing flesh, so how could it not hurt? But then the man would have waved his hand and said, “It’s just like scratching an itch.”

“Close the door, please.” Kevin dangled his two chicken-clawed hands and said to Oswald, “Don’t scare the guards outside the door again.”

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Oswald closed the door with a backhand, then fumbled around in his shirt pocket near his chest and found a key in a hidden compartment.

“Isn’t the keyhole blocked……” Kevin failed to respond.

He blinked and watched as Oswald approached him with a frown on his face, head lowered, and hands hovering as if he wanted to touch and didn’t know where to start.

“It’s not easy for me to scare the Emperor so much that his hands are shaking.” Kevin teased again, brought both hands up to Oswald, moving the grimy white bones as if to frighten him, and asked, “Does it look like a clean gnawed chicken claw? Touch it if you want. This bone doesn’t really feel like anything.”

“……” How could he even think of making such a joke at a time like this? Oswald gave him a tense blank look.

He carefully held the bone of Kevin’s hand, then turned the chain around the clogged keyhole, flipped the lock over to reveal a more concealed hole underneath, and inserted the key in his hand.

With a clicking sound, the handcuffs were unlocked.

It was only after he opened the other handcuff with equivalent caution that Kevin exclaimed with relief, “All your brains have gone into this stuff, haven’t they?”

Oswald was afraid that the cuffs would rub against his finger bones again, so he smoothly put the coils away and set them aside. He didn’t answer Kevin’s question, only staring at his hands, and asked, “Didn’t they stop showing wounds two days ago? What’s going on today?”

Kevin hadn’t had more wounds on his body in the previous two days. Oswald even thought he had fully recovered and planned to release him today, but this had happened.

Kevin shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “I’m not really sure. I was telling your little girl a story, and it was suddenly like this.”

“How come it hasn’t healed yet?” Oswald frowned, staring intently at Kevin’s hands, barely blinking, and looked at them with extra care as if trying to see every little subtle change.

“I don’t think it might heal for a while.” Kevin tried to move the tips of his fingers but found they were a little more sluggish than before and almost out of control, “It’s been a while since earlier. Normally, the skin should have grown at least by half.”

“Has this ever happened before?”

Kevin thought back briefly and waved his hand. “I’ve been alive for so many years. I don’t remember that well. I probably had.”

Oswald’s anger flared when he said ambiguous words like “maybe,” “possibly,” and “probably.” It was as if he didn’t even care about living or dying, not just pain.

If he could live, he would live. He would die if stabbed in the heart or some other danger. Oswald even felt that Kevin’s mentality was utterly contrary to the norm, as if his “body” was unimportant. Not sure if it was because he had lived too long and felt he had enough or something else.

But whatever the reason, this attitude appeared infuriating to Oswald.

“Don’t you care about your own body?!” Oswald could not help but ask in a cold tone. “Is there any solution? Since you have lived for so long, you should have some solution, right?”

Kevin gave him a somewhat stunned look. “Why are you exploding all of a sudden?”

Oswald: “You!”

He choked on one word, looking so angry he didn’t even know what to say and stared coldly at Kevin for a long moment before relentlessly looking down and wiping his face, saying stiffly, “Forget it. Just think back to see if there’s a way to deal with it. I can send someone if you need anything or anyone.”

Kevin stared at his half-lidded eyes for a moment and suddenly let out a laugh, saying, “If I remember correctly……when you were a kid, you were so riled up that you said on several occasions that you would make me come smiling and return crying when you grew up. How come you’ve changed your nature now and are actually happy to run errands for me?”

He used a pair of hands with only his finger bones left to forcefully straighten his clothes, mostly soaked with blood, and said, “I realise I don’t really understand brats. Amazingly, they can be so different as children and as adults ……”

“……” Oswald began to get angry when he started to talk nonsense, but he couldn’t let it out for no reason, so he just raised his eyes and shot him a comment. “Don’t be so hard on your bare chicken claws as if you can still wear these clothes after you fix them.”

Seeing that he finally had the heart to be mean, Kevin said, “That is your usual style.”

Oswald: “……”

“Don’t look at me with a board face,” Kevin said, and as he saw Oswald’s face get even worse, he had to smile and say something human again. “After all those years of being buried underground, I’ve even pretended to be a corpse. This little rag of skin is nothing. I think it has happened before, and it always gets better eventually anyway, so I didn’t care. I probably didn’t explain to you that the healing of a wound can actually be affected by many factors.”

Oswald raised his eyes at that. “What factors?”

Kevin raised his hand and gestured out the window, “Like the environment, like the weather, then-”

“If you want to talk, just talk. Can you stop gesturing with those two claws of yours?” Oswald wore a scowl and stared at his fingers for a long time. He was worried that the joints weren’t connected enough and that if he moved them a couple more times, all those bones would fall off one by one.

“Tch-” Kevin squinted at him. “Why do you bother? I can’t feel my fingers quite so much anymore; moving them a couple of times keeps them flexible. Got a problem with that?”

Oswald said coldly, “Yes.”

Kevin: “Hold it back.”

He gave a small smile as if he suddenly remembered something and raised his hand to scratch the tip of his index finger bone on Oswald’s chin. “Or……are you actually afraid of such things? The handsome and majestic Emperor, did you ever cry from ghost stories when you were a child?”

The odd sensation of the tip of the bone across his skin was a little uncomfortable.

Oswald raised his hand to slap his paw away. But before he could do so, he stopped his movement for fear of breaking the ghost’s paws and said back in an unpleasant voice. “Bullshit, you are making up rumours. I haven’t shed a tear since I can remember. Keep your hands off me!”

Having had fun, Kevin raised his eyebrows and withdrew his hand, pointing his paws out of the window, “Where was I? I forgot when you interrupted. Oh! The weather and the seasons. It heals faster in spring and autumn, as you can see that the trees and fruits grow faster outside for the same reason. However, it is too cold in winter, so the bleeding stops easily, but the wound is easily frozen. You have to peel it off a little by hand, which is quite troublesome. As for summer, when the temperature is high, and the humidity is strong, the meat will easily rot when you leave it to dry. It will also attract some insects…..”

The first part of the sentence was still reasonable, but the metaphor became more and more ridiculous in the latter part. It made Oswald’s eyebrows jump, but he couldn’t help but think about what he was saying and interrupted after two paragraphs. “Okay. I got it. I’ll gag you if you continue to describe it. The healing situation is affected by external factors. Are…… you really not making this up?”

Kevin slightly withdrew his joking expression and shook his finger. “I’m serious with you.”

He finished and added very proactively, “Even though you finally got a conscience and uncuffed me, I’m probably going to have to stay cooped up inside for the next two days. Otherwise, I can scare up a troupe if I go for a walk.”

Oswald was eager to keep him from jumping out, so he naturally didn’t have any objections.

Kevin thought for a moment but had nothing more to say, so he waved his hand and dismissed him. “What are you doing here? Do what you have to do.”

Oswald had never seen a wounded man waving his skeleton in such a lively manner and was at a loss as to what to do with him, hesitating to leave. He raked his brain and asked, “Are you sure you don’t have anything you need?”

“I don’t think so. Oh, yes–” The Lord looked at his rag-like bloody clothes and ordered with a jerk of his chin. “Please get a tub of water. I need a bath.”

Oswald: “……………………………………”

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