From Earth to Heaven, From Heaven to Earth (TGCF HuLian)

Chapter 6 The Poet's Pen

 -Four Days Earlier-

"Forgive me, your highness..."

At first everything is a haze of panic and fear. Xie Lian clutches Wu Ming's body to him as though any moment some new threat will loom up out of the snow and try to steal him away again.

Never again, Xie Lian swears, never again.

...Not unless he sends me away.

There's a pang in Xie Lian's chest at the thought but he pushes it quickly aside. Later, he'll deal with that later, once Wu Ming is safe and well. Right now they have bigger problems. Wu Ming is bleeding badly, his gouged out eye a terrible sight and his whole body already scored with other injuries from before he did... What did he do? Some sort of ritual?

Xie Lian glances at the scimitar still held tight in the ghost's hand but he doesn't have time to study it now, not when the other problem is beginning to swarm all around them. The people, the humans Wu Ming was protecting.

"What happened to him?"

"Will he survive?"

"Should you be holding him like that?"

"He's a ghost right, doesn't that mean he'll be alright?"

"Gods! His eye!"

"Daozhang, what's happening?"

"Here let me have a look!"

Xie Lian's head is spinning, with fear for Wu Ming, yes, but also with panic of another kind. It's been about 11 years since Xianle fell. 11 years, that's how long it's been since he's been surrounded by a group of people looking to him as a leader, begging him to do something, to help. The sensation brings back all sorts of memories, snatches of the war, of his final days in the palace.

For a moment he's overwhelmed. 'Don't look to me for help! Don't expect me to have the answers!' He wants to shout. 'Look how it turned out last time! I'm not a prince or a god anymore! I haven't been able to save anyone! Not even my last believer! Don't come near me or my bad luck will just kill you too!'

For a moment he wants to give up but even as he lowers his head he looks down at the body in his arms and if that first panicked voice in his head sounds like the frightened prince he once was the voice he hears now is more like the calamity he became.

'So what?' It asks him scathingly. 'Are you going to give up just like that? You came all this way for what? To find Wu Ming? To repay him? And after all that talk you're just going to fail him again?'

Xie Lian stares down at the unconscious ghost in his arms and takes a deep breath.

He has to do this.

He can do this.

For Wu Ming, he can do anything.

Xie Lian rises to his feet, the ghost still in his arms. He holds Wu Ming tightly to his chest, protectively even, as though he won't allow even the other humans to touch him.

He won't let anyone touch him.

"Daozhang?"

"Daozhang, what is it?"

"Daozhang, What's wrong with him?"

"Let me have a look."

Xie Lian clears his throat and when he speaks it's no longer in the quiet self-deprecating voice of the scrap collector he's become, it's the voice of the prince, the voice of the god.

"Everyone stay back. You must give him space."

The group of humans freeze almost as one, momentarily stunned by the change in his voice.