The Legend of the Underwater Palace and the Sea Dragon Prince

17. A summon with the dragon pearl, despair and hope

On the next day, Hua Cheng woke up with a strange sense of calm, and at the same time an excitement, all hopelessness gone. He couldn't help but remember the many times the crown prince kept laying lazily and invitingly between those sheets, his golden eyes on him as if saying don't go anywhere. He smiled fondly at this thought.

He got dressed and went to the audience hall, looking around at its emptiness - in the morning it looked even more desolate. He fished in his breast pocket for that dragon pearl the crown prince had given him long ago, holding it into a fist with closed eyes, as if making a wish.

He didn't know it would work, but soon enough someone walked in from outside: the Guoshi!

"You have eyes, but fail to recognise Mount Tai", he said, before Hua Cheng could show any reaction, "Because I was summoned with the dragon pearl it doesn't mean I'm here to do your bidding. I'm not your subject and I don't need to remind you of what you did - ".

Hua Cheng kept thinking, he was the pirate Crimson Rain! The bounty on his head was of a hundred thousand pieces of gold - wait, now it must be much more. Was he really going to stay there and be scolded by a yiantai stingray? He sighed: he deserved all of the scolding in the world, and more.

"We were all against that wedding, even Jun Wu. What a scum of a whitetip reef shark, forgetting favours and violating justice! But His Highness was in love, you see how pure and naïve he was - "

Hua Cheng sat down at the steps and listened with lowered head as a self-imposed punishment, and also because since that day, he never told anyone how bad he felt, how he regretted everything and if he could only turn back time... And how he missed the crown prince, madly!

The Guoshi paused for breathing, that's when Hua Cheng raised his face and said in all seriousness, "All you said is true, but if I can ever make any amends in this life, I'll do it now, for Gege: I'm going to return the underwater palace to him, to you. I swear to you Guoshi sir. For Gege - "

He felt a stinging sensation in his eyes and a roughness on his voice, but he carried on, "If gods block, kill the gods; if buddhas block, kill the buddhas: He Xuan, Black Water crew, the whole Confederation men, I'll kill them all if needs be, with my own hands. I don't care about bad karma, about hell, I - "

He paused, breathing hard, and concluded, "Then I'll sail away, and you'll never hear of me again. I think Gege himself would prefer it this way: he must hate me so much after what I did to him, and I can't blame him. He can pretend we never met - "

"Do you think that's what His Highness would want?", the Guoshi interrupted him, and, as if unable to control himself, continued, "If you think His Highness would hate you, regret meeting you, or anything that happened in that matter, you don't know him at all".

Hua Cheng widened his eye, taken aback: how could the Guoshi say he didn't know Gege? They shared so much, they were married, naturally their relationship was above the immensity of Heaven and earth!

"His Highness is a demon with thousands of years of cultivation, enlightened and unconcerned of worldly matters. He's above the red dust, the mere mortal standards and little things like hate, regrets... These are all but nothing. Only the Heavenly Dao is absolute".

Suddenly, Hua Cheng felt full of hope. "Guoshi sir. In this case, hum, do you... do you think I could possibly see him again? I know I don't deserve his forgiveness nor I'm expecting it, but if I could tell him everything. If I could at least tell him how I've been suffering, and how... how I miss him. How I want to make amends for him - "

"It's too late", the Guoshi replied, flatly.

Hua Cheng insisted, "I just want to see him, see if he's fine? If, like you said, he doesn't hate me - "