The King's Mate - Part 1: Banyue

Chapter 8

Notes:

!!!!! PLEASE READ !!!!!

Okay so... I know I said I wasn't gonna upload these chapters for long time yet, but heck if so many people's opinion differ I'll listen.
I'm not brave enough to against such a majority.
But! I just don't think it's fair to people who really have to deal with the war much more personally than most, so I'll do it like this:

I'll post the whole chapter the way I wrote it last year and I'm not making any changes to the original version.
However, after the chapter is done, there will be 2! lines, and under those lines I'll put the summary version of the chapter which has already been here for the previous months.
So, if you don't want to read anything too closely related to war, you can skip the chapter, and just read the summary version at the end in order to keep up with what's happening at least a little bit, despite the overarching content.

I'll also put this explanation in all the notes for chapter 7 to 11, and I won't add anything else so you can just skip those notes if you're here for the whole thing.

Personally, I still think it's too soon but I hope this way works for everyone, somehow x.x

Chapter Text

Saying goodbye to Hua Cheng wasn't easy.

Obviously the king couldn't send him off the way he wanted in front of the troops; it'd make everyone exceedingly uncomfortable, and Xie Lian really didn't want to display such a private moment to the soldiers he was supposed to lead, either. So they said goodbye early, in their inner courtyard.

"I wish I could accompany you", Hua Cheng started, to which Xie Lian could only shake his head exasperatedly.

"We've already talked about this, San Lang. County Magistrate Zh-...The County Magistrate is undertaking such a long journey for your meeting, you can't just cancel it."

"I could. I'm sure County Magistrate Wang wouldn't mind waiting for me to come back", Hua Cheng said challengingly, but with an amused smirk at Xie Lian's mishap of forgetting the man's name.

"San Lang. If you keep this up, I'm going to be exasperated", Xie Lian warned his alpha good naturedly. "You can trust me to be successful, even if you stay here. I won't let this chance be in vain."

"That's exactly why I'm worried, gege. I understand how much this means to you, but please don't do anything too reckless. And remember that you can always depend on Pei Ming, Feng Xin and even Mu Qing. If anything goes awry and if things get too out of control, just flee and come back here. I know Xian Le is important to you, but there's no need to put your life on the line. If the blitz fails, we'll just declare full out war on the whole of Yong An", Hua Cheng rambled on rather uncharacteristically, his scent overflowing with concern and misery.

Seeing his alpha worry like this, Xie Lian couldn't help but smile softly, before he stood up on his tiptoes and gave him a sweet little kiss on his nose.

"I've trained all my life for battle, San Lang. I know I can't win anything without depending on my comrades, you don't have to worry about those things. I promise we'll be very quick with it, and I'll be back before you can even miss me", he tried to cheer his still moping alpha up.

"That's not possible, gege... I always miss you as soon as you're out of my sight", Hua Cheng pouted.

Xie Lian had to admit that he felt quite the same as well; he didn't want to say goodbye to Hua Cheng for any extended amount of time. He already knew he was going to miss his alpha a lot, and while he realised he had been especially sticky those last few days of preparation, he was also extremely unapologetic about it. It wasn't like his alpha had been any less sticky anyway.