The King's Mate - Part 2: Yaoshi

Chapter 24

In his dream, Hua Cheng was searching the forest through his butterflies for what seemed like an eternity. However, eventually, one of his butterflies came across a scene that turned this dream into a nightmare.

He saw the moment of impact, when some ridiculous looking demon kicked his already bloody gege into the stomach, and sent him flying.

Hua Cheng's eyes snapped open, and in the blink of an eye he threw his dice, opening a portal to where his butterfly had come across the scene. The moment he stepped through it was the moment his gege landed on the ground, hard. From where he was standing, Hua Cheng could hear several bones breaking, as well as his daughter's terrified scream.

For once in his life, Hua Cheng felt himself properly panicking, and he could only think of sending his butterflies over to Ruoye in order to protect her, while sending another bunch to encircle the demon, in order to keep it from escaping. Hua Cheng himself moved as quickly as he physically could to his gege's side, kneeling down into a puddle of blood that was already seeping out from underneath the love of his life.

While frantically checking for his gege's pulse, he couldn't help but notice in what a physically bad shape his gege was. He was much thinner than he should have been; his face looking gaunt and ashen, nowhere near as glowing and healthy as he was when he had last seen him in Banyue.

Hua Cheng did manage to find a pulse, but it was weak, and kept getting weaker, causing Hua Cheng to feel nothing but dread and a bubble of hysteria. He didn't know what had happened to his gege to put him in such a state, and he certainly couldn't focus on such a comparatively minor issue when his beloved gege was in the process of dying.

He truly didn't want to, but Hua Cheng opened his gege's torn inner robe, which was more red than white at this point, and was horrified by the wound he found underneath.

The wound consisted of three separate slashes, each of them as wide as three of Hua Cheng's fingers, and they seemed to be extremely deep as well. On top of that, there were several other wounds, none of them as lethal as this last one, but all of them bleeding profusely, looking extremely painful each in their own right.

Seeing his gege's mangled body, and feeling the pulse underneath his fingers slowing even more, Hua Cheng realised that no human, no matter how strong and fit, could possibly survive such wounds. The realisation made his whole body tingle with the sheer amount of terror he felt, and something in his mind simply snapped.

Hua Cheng didn't think about it before he did it, he didn't consider any consequences it might have, for anyone involved, he just knew, on his most primal level, that he could not lose his gege.

Thus, he leaned over his gege's still body, until his lips touched his beloved's neck.

He bit into it, on the exact same spot where their mating mark used to be. He bit into it much deeper though, until his teeth broke through the bonding barrier. The moment his teeth had penetrated this particular tissue, he withdrew, and focused on the pulse in the wrist he still held in his hand.

At first, nothing changed, and Hua Cheng thought he was going mad that his theory was wrong, and his gege couldn't be saved this way, but after a few tense moments, the pulse was starting to become a bit stronger again, instead of stilling completely.

Breathing a cautious sigh of relief that it seemed to have worked after all, he carefully closed his gege's inner robe again as best as he could, torn up as it was, and then finally forced himself to turn around, and check on his daughter.

"Ruoye", he called, because he couldn't bring himself to let go of his gege completely.

The moment she heard his voice, his daughter turned around, and stared at him for a moment in bewilderment, before realisation seemed to sink in, and she started tearing up.