The King's Mate - Part 2: Yaoshi

Chapter 2

The moment Hua Cheng realised that something was off with his appearance, he ducked into the closest side alley and gave up on his pursuit of the creature for now.

Of course he didn't just do it because of his vanity regarding his looks, but because there were several things very wrong with the current situation, and he needed to gain at least some sense of understanding before he proceeded in his endeavour.

Before he'd ducked into the alley, Hua Cheng had taken a quick look back over his shoulder, which was one of the reasons why he was indeed very concerned about his current predicament. He knew very well he'd just been in a forest and stepped underneath a pagoda before the blinding pain had hit him, and he'd suddenly found himself standing in the middle of a bustling road without having moved a single step.

While it was already beyond unlikely that he'd missed this road and its noise on the opposite side of the pagoda, it was even more unlikely for a whole city gate to have appeared right behind him, seemingly out of thin air.

It wasn't easy to make Hua Cheng feel disconcerted, but for once he was truly struggling. After all, he knew his body well; his instincts were excellent and he wasn't fooled easily either. And he knew for a fact that, while the pain had been so intense that it had been almost all-consuming, he hadn't allowed himself to pass out because of it and had kept aware of his immediate surroundings to know that nobody had touched, or attempted to move him during those few moments. This was why it made even less sense for his surroundings to have changed so drastically in such a short instance. And without him having moved.

Realising he couldn't wrap his head around the situation with logic, he decided to accept it as it was for now, and do a thorough investigation on the issue later. For now, it was important to find out more information about his current location.

For a short moment, Hua Cheng had considered simply walking back through the city gate and to his entourage, but his physical changes would most likely cause all of them to die of a heart attack. And even if this was some sort of illusion created by... whatever it was that caused this insanity, there would still be these strange creatures prowling around the area, and he simply couldn't leave without making sure his family wouldn't be harmed by these things when they would eventually move here. No, he needed to make sure he investigated this until he came to a conclusion on how to deal with this mess first.

Of course, staying in Banyue and abandoning his plans to move here at all would be an option to keep his family safe, but he also had a duty to ensure the safety of all of his subjects as well. And since Guishi wasn't too far away from this place, and had already been affected by strange and unexplainable kidnappings... Well, the possibility of those disappearances being connected to a strange place such as this was certainly worth investigating. This was simply not something he could afford to ignore.

Hua Cheng knew that the quickest way of gathering information was to sit himself down in a tavern, or an inn, and listen in on some conversations, maybe ask the waiter to entertain him with current gossip. However, these methods would not work in this case. The accuracy of the information couldn't be verified with such methods since people tended to exaggerate to begin with. Never mind the fact that there were no people around; there were only weird creatures here and Hua Cheng didn't know their habits and customs, if they even had any, well enough to blend in.

Thus, Hua Cheng decided to find a library first, in order to do some proper research. He needed to figure out what this place was, what these creatures were, why he suddenly had an altered appearance, and what exactly he could do to ensure his people's safety from these things.

Under normal circumstances, Hua Cheng would have simply walked along the main street of the city until he came across a library, however even the city itself looked strange.