The King's Mate - Part 2: Yaoshi

Chapter 28

While Hua Cheng's first thought was indeed to put the blame on Ling Wen, he forced himself to think about the implications rationally, and consider all possibilities where it could've gone wrong.

There was the postmaster, the delivery method, the creature that was sent to deliver the letters, guards in Banyue not accepting deliveries of shady looking characters... In the end, Hua Cheng had to remind himself that there were many possible reasons why the letters hadn't reached his gege. Thus, he decided to start investigating at the start of the chain, with the postmaster.

But first he needed to send his kids back to safety with YanLi; who knew how ugly things were going to get once he started his questioning. Unfortunately, E'ming had fallen asleep quite a while ago and wasn't easily detached from his daddy, having the blanket in an iron grip with his tiny fists. Still, Hua Cheng was stronger, and somehow managed to pluck his grumbling son off the bed without really waking him up.

Ruoye opened a portal all by herself, extremely proud of herself for having learned something so useful so quickly, and they all successfully stepped into the living room of YanLi and ZiXuan.

Hua Cheng didn't stick around long enough for small talk, but left one of his butterflies on Ruoye's shoulders, much to her delight, before he opened another portal back into his bedroom. There, he made sure to readjust his gege's pillows and blanket, and made sure he was still in stable condition. Only once he had confirmed that he was did Hua Cheng leave the bedchamber, and made his way into his throne room.

He hadn't bothered to perform his royal duties at all for the first months of his rule, and so the guards outside the throne room were slouching around ungracefully, before they noticed him and straightened up in a hurry.

"Bring me the bat demon postmaster from Edge Town", Hua Cheng commanded while walking past them, sounding more irate than he had intended.

"Right away, Your Majesty", they replied in unison and disappeared within the blink of an eye.

Hua Cheng hadn't bothered to stop and wait for them to reply on his way to the throne, but he was rather pleased with the prompt response.

Inside the throne room were several more guards positioned, all of them either slouching or lounging on the floor, playing cards. Though, when Hua Cheng had walked in, they scrambled to get into their proper positions and hide the evidence. Hua Cheng didn't bother chastising them; he would have been more surprised to see them stand at attention after so many weeks of nobody using the room. Thus, he simply walked down the aisle, and sat down on the throne.

"I will be questioning a bat demon from Edge Town here in a few moments. I want him to be tied up and unable to move in any way before I do so", he ordered.

Two of the guards promptly stepped forward once he was done talking, and positioned themselves on either side of the massively long runner carpet that went all the way from the entrance doors to the platform where his throne was placed on.

They didn't have to wait long before the guards he'd sent to fetch the demon stepped out of the portal that had manifested itself just a bit down the rug from where the other guards were already waiting for them.

Getting that bat demon through the portal seemed to be a bit of a struggle, and there was a lot of yelling and violence involved before he was eventually overpowered enough to tie up his wings, hands and legs. The guards pushed him to kneel before Hua Cheng, and two of them kept a hand on one of his shoulders each, while also holding daggers close to his throat, successfully causing the demon to stay still once they had him on his knees.

Hua Cheng rather liked that they weren't messing around much.

The bat demon only seemed to realise where he was once he was unable to move, and visibly blanched when he saw Hua Cheng lounging on his throne.