The King's Mate - Part 2: Yaoshi

Chapter 1

If you've read this before, you're probably confused so let me explain xD I felt like The King's Mate was becoming too long for just one continuous story (I'm currently working on chapter 59) so I decided to break the 3 parts I had planned from the very beginning into different stories altogether instead of separating one huge story into arcs... I also feel like the tone of each of the 3 parts is different enough to justify separating them like this so... yeah. That's what we're gonna do here. We'll see how it works xD

Anyway, I hope you're ready for this lol

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Part 2

Hua Cheng had left Guishi only a few moments ago and was rather glad that there were no more people lining the streets outside the city walls so that he could finally drop the act of benevolent king. It wasn't that he particularly disliked his subjects, he just preferred everyone to stay away and leave him alone.

He leaned back to lounge in his closed carriage, only moving his arm to support his chin in the palm of his hand while looking out of the window and enjoying the tranquil forest scenery while reminiscing about his gege.

Every time Hua Cheng had to go on one of these tedious trips, he couldn't help but miss him dearly. Of course he missed his kids too, but Xie Lian always had been and always would be, the single most important person to him. Sometimes he still had a hard time believing that his gege had accepted him so wholeheartedly, just the way he was, and had stayed with him for the better part of a decade already.

Despite Hua Cheng messing up sometimes, he never got fed up with him to the point where he'd voiced wanting to leave him, and Hua Cheng was eternally grateful for the time he was allowed to spend with his gege on this earth. And to think he'd even gifted him not one, but two children- their very own children, small people personifying their union... it was almost too much for his heart to handle to even think of it sometimes.

Hua Cheng had learned the art of musing while still being alert to his surroundings a long time ago, and thus he had no trouble noticing the figure standing deep in the forest, after only a short while of travelling.

Growing cautious, because there could always be a reason for an ambush, as well as the fact that the figure was far away, with too many trees obscuring his view. Hua Cheng moved his eye patch out of the way in order to gauge the person's intention more accurately.

He rather disliked doing this when people could possibly see him, but he wanted to take the risk of an ambush even less. And as ugly as it was, his right eye was rather convenient when it came to things like this. While his left eye worked perfectly fine as well, the vision his right eye could provide him with was much clearer. He could see things much further into the distance with the same precision as if they stood right in front of him, and even in complete and utter darkness it was as functional as it was during the day, unlike his left eye, which was very limited in its sight during night time because of the darkness. It was rather handy in this way.

As expected, he could see the figure in the forest much better now, however he could scarcely believe what he was seeing.

It was a humanoid figure, enough to be unassuming in its outline, however it seemed to have fur instead of skin. He couldn't make out a human nose on its face either; it looked more like the snout of a rat and it possessed two rows of pairs of equally rat-like beady eyes. Its fur was also black, like a shadow had come to life. And if Hua Cheng's right eye wasn't deceiving him, it had a rat-like tail as well.