A Cry In The Night (TGCF HuaLian)

Chapter 2

Beside Hua Cheng the Xie Lian of now dropped to his knees, eyes gone empty as he watched the scene before him. Quickly Hua Cheng closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around his lover, pulling Xie Lian into a tight embrace. Xie Lian barely noticed. He was barely aware of anything.

Except the altar

And the restraining hands

And the blade which rose and fell

Rose and fell

"This... This is real?" Mu Qing's voice shook with a horror and dismay that Xie Lian hadn't heard in it since the fall of Xianle. "This really happened?"

"There's no way." Feng Xin had been the one to call it a memory but now the sight before him had the martial god shaking his head over and over again in desperate denial. "T-this can't have...."

"It did." Hua Cheng's voice was rough with a mixture of pain and fury.

Mu Qing's hand convulsed around the hilt of his sword, knuckles going white as bone and teeth grinding together as he struggled against the instinct to lash out at the illusion. Had Xie Lian been in any state to notice the protective gesture he would have been both surprised and genuinely touched. As it was he was barely aware of the conversation going on around him. All he could do was watch the altar and feel the tears run down his cheeks, tears from the past mingling with tears of the present as his whole body began to shake.

Quickly Hua Cheng tightened his arms around Xie Lian, his tone softening as he finally managed to pull his own eye from the altar and turn them on the present form of his god.

"Don't look, gege. You don't need to see that. You're safe now. I won't let anyone hurt you again."

Dimly Xie Lian heard Feng Xin speak from his other side, the martial god's voice coming out in a shock numbed whisper

"You never said... You never even mentioned..."

"Did you ever ask him?" In an instant all the softness was gone from Hua Cheng's voice, 800 years of rage burning in every word as the Ghost King finally found a target for his pent-up fury. "Did you ever once ask him where he was all that time?"

"All that..." Feng Xin's voice faltered, his eyes widening, lips parting in growing horror. "You don't mean... Those two months?"

"What two months?" Mu Qing's head whipped toward him, eyes narrowing. Feng Xin barely noticed. He was too busy shaking his head in shocked denial.

"No... Those two months.... He was.... And when he got back I... I hit him..."

"YOU DID WHAT!?" If the ghost King's voice had been frost and venom before, now it burned with all the furious fires of Mount Tonglu. Dimly Xie Lian felt Hua Cheng's body tense and he knew that if it wasn't for the combined restraints of the draining curse and Xie Lian's weight in his arms the Ghost King would have thrown himself at Feng Xin.

Mu Qing was less restrained. His fist collided with Feng Xin's cheek with such force that the other martial god stumbled backward, an odd twisted mirror of how Xie Lian had stumbled away from Feng Xin all those years before. The sound of knuckles against flesh was loud and shocking enough that, for a moment, it even drew Xie Lian's eyes away from the altar.

"Stop it." Xie Lian's voice was weak and empty but somehow he forced the words out anyway. "It's not his fault. He didn't know."

"Your Highness..." Hua Cheng sounded like he very much disagreed with that assessment but he didn't try to contradict Xie Lian, just pulled his lover even more firmly into his arms. Behind them there was another muffled cry from the alter and Xie Lian's eyes instinctively returned to the bloody seen in the person who looked less and less human with every sword stroke.