He and It Chapter 83: Dark Sky Sanctuary (18)

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Addis note: This book ends with chapter 104.

Chapter 83: Dark Sky Sanctuary (18)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

“Concentrate on the road,” Falchion said indifferently. “Is the front clear?”

Ether gathered his pouch and said in a muffled voice, “Further ahead there’s a large army. Looks like the arsenal is out in force.”

“Yes.” Falchion ordered decisively, “No need to expose too much power at once. We’ll split up. The left flank will follow Deathstar. You’ll lead the right flank, and let Ether scout the enemy ahead. Flank and bypass this army. Radiant Angel will monitor the whole situation. Is that okay?”

With a whistle, the Demon Horses on either side scattered in unison, as they dashed off in different directions. As far as Yu Mengzhou could remember, this was the first time they had dispersed.

“Is this really okay?” he asked Falchion worriedly. “Will nothing happen?”

“In the past, we didn’t split up because there was no other way. Our powers were too weak and splitting up would be like asking for death,” Falchion replied. “Now, the situation is very different.”

Even on the steep mountain peaks, the herd was still speeding along like it was flat ground, and didn’t slow down at all. Yu Mengzhou looked far into the horizon, and finally saw what Ether called “the horde” of the army.

“Wow!” He couldn’t help but marvel. “It’s like dumping a bag of sesame seeds onto the ground; a huge black mass. That’s a lot of people…”

Falchion said, “Twice as many wouldn’t help. We’re going into the shadows. Are you ready?”

Yu Mengzhou gave an uncertain “hmm,” only to hear Falchion call out Gao’er’s name. In a flash, the Demon Horse shifted forms and blended in with the night, as he surrounded the herd in a shadow as thick as ink, which obscured their scarlet eyes and their manes as they blazed with fire.

Night was the best barrier. After having bloodied all the blocking advance troops one after another with lightning speed, the Demon Horses ignored the army behind them that was to really play the main event, and left without looking at them.

They sped straight through the darkness of the night, and with the help of the shadows their hooves were no longer as deafening as thunder, but rather as soft and silent as swallows in water.

“Find a stronghold,” Falchion commanded. “And once settled, no more power.”

“Radiant Angel sees one, just ahead!” Inside the Shadow, Gao’er’s voice came out, “It’s just a bit far, let’s pick up the pace.”

At that moment, Yu Mengzhou was tired.

He didn’t wear a watch so he didn’t know how much time had passed. At first, he had spoken to the Demon Horses on the way, but now he clutched his toolkit as he lay self-absorbed on the back of the spacious horse and let the reins tie him up in knots.

He knew that Falchion was doing his best to smooth out his body so that he didn’t have to lurch that hard on the horse’s back, but just sitting in a cart for a couple hours would wear on the human spirit, let alone riding a horse for so long.

“Anyway…You’ll call me when you arrived…” He yawned. “Kind of sleepy, I’ll fall asleep…”

The end faded as he drifted off, his eyes closing in a moment.

“Fall asleep?” Blasphe hissed the words out softly, “He’s really asleep?”

Striker ran a few steps faster. He wanted to get to the chief’s side, and carefully probe and sniff the human. Falchion gave him a cold, sidelong glance. Striker immediately shrank his neck in fear and hurriedly hid behind him.

When Yu Mengzhou woke up, it was already noon the next day.

“We ran all night?” he asked in surprise. “I can’t believe it took that long…”

“This is only the first round,” Falchion said. “Once Angola’s own trials begin, there will be no end to it unless he is completely killed.”

Yu Mengzhou moved his aching body and bared his teeth as he rose to his feet. Compared to the extravagantly rich palace, the new place seemed to be a long abandoned fortress. Under the beds was profoundly pickled with a stale odor, but in any case, it was a hundred times better than sleeping in the open.

“That said, we are now just…Fighting guerrilla warfare? They chase, we hide until I get you all fixed up, and then you make a big counterattack?” Yu Mengzhou asked.

Falchion mused, “You could say that.”

“Nice simple plan.” Yu Mengzhou shrugged. “But usually the simpler and more direct the plan, the more effective it is. Got any food? I’m hungry.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Striker immediately toppled open the door to the room, not hiding the fact that he was eavesdropping, and ran in giggling, as he bit into a bag of dried food.

“Oooh, look at you. As dirty as rolling in mud,” Yu Mengzhou laughed and patted his large head. “I’ll wipe you off later.”

Falchion silently looked at the sky through the window, and suddenly said to Yu Mengzhou, “There is no hurry before scrubbing. You’re just in time, Sevenfold Eyes and the others haven’t come back yet, but Crusade is here. You first help him with the sealing things. It’s about time, too.”

“Oh, oh!” Yu Mengzhou hastily wiped the dry food crumbs from around his mouth. Crusade never said anything, which was also a piece of his heart. “It’s fine, Striker. You just wait a little longer. First I have to help Crusade fix his problem…”

Striker’s eyes widened. He looked at the human, and then looked at his chief. He really couldn’t believe that his single moment to have him wash away the filth was reduced to nothing…

Striker was aggrieved! However, Striker didn’t say anything. Instead, Striker huffed and ran.

“Hey, he’s angry.” Yu Mengzhou looked worriedly at the Demon Horse’s back. He sulked and ran away, only willing to leave a stubborn ass for him to see.

“It doesn’t matter. He’s quick to get angry and quick to forget,” Falchion said gently. “Ten minutes later, you can look at him again, and he’ll still look like he’s having a good time.”

As soon as he thought of that image, Yu Mengzhou couldn’t help but laugh. However, after laughing for a while, he suddenly noticed that something was wrong and turned skeptically to the herd’s chief, “Wait. You didn’t bully him just now, did you?”

“?” Falchion flapped his ears in surprise. “Why? Why would I bully him?”

Well, it’s true, Yu Mengzhou thought for a moment, it wouldn’t make sense for Falchion to bully the youngest Striker…

But still, he lectured Falchion as if he were a child, “Of course it’s good that you didn’t bully him. Because you’re the chief, they don’t disobey you, so you shouldn’t treat them badly.”

It felt strange. No one had ever said such a thing to Falchion in such a tone. His ears itched and his heart itched, and he couldn’t help but flap his ears several more times before giving a dull “hmm.”

Yu Mengzhou filled his stomach and then carried his box to Crusade.

“Crusade!” he shouted. “Here, let’s cut your brass rings!”

Crusade looked up at him in surprise, as if to say “Yes?”

“Yes, that’s you!” Yu Mengzhou beckoned to it. “Quickly, before Sevenfold Eyes comes back. Let’s fix this.”

Crusade was happy. With a smile in his eyes, he joyfully trotted over and laid down in front of Yu Mengzhou.

Striker watched the scene from a distance. He wanted to “hum” loudly, but was afraid that the human thought he had a problem with him, so he only made a small “hum.”

Yu Mengzhou didn’t hear it, and Crusade was pretending not to hear it as he craned his neck and showed the brass lip rings to the farrier.

“Take a look…” Yu Mengzhou carefully turned him a bit, wanting to see if the metal had managed to grow into the flesh. Luckily, despite the long period of inactivity, Crusade was still rocking those heavy copper rings back and forth in his daily life, not making them fixed in a certain position.

Upon closer inspection, the rings weren’t just smooth, they were skillfully carved with intricate spells and gory designs, the links of which were even thinner than a strand of hair.

These could be called works of art – if they didn’t have such vicious qualities.

Yu Mengzhou felt sorry for him. He decided to clamp one end of a brass ring with his pliers. As he slowly applied force, the strong and sturdy refined metal, like frozen butter under a hot knife, rapidly deformed, then collapsed until it broke into pieces.

After making a large enough opening, he lowered the pliers and slowly turned the brass ring with one hand, while holding Crusade’s mouth with the other. He turned it slowly out of his upper lip and then backwards out of his lower lip.

“One!” Yu Mengzhou held up the broken copper ring and held it to Crusade to see, “Voila! Easy, isn’t it?”

Crusade stared at the gagging device. At that moment, his eyes flashed with gloomy and tyrannical fire. However, his anger was only transient, and in the next second, he looked at Yu Mengzhou’s eyes with tears in his eyes.

Seeing his eyes, Yu Mengzhou hurriedly threw away the garbage and continued to work.

The first, the third…by the fourth time, he could already see that, due to years and years of carrying this cumbersome heavy equipment, after removing them, the horse’s lips already appeared to have varying degrees of deformation. He did not think that the ointment here would improve the situation…

Fifth, sixth…Yu Mengzhou didn’t stop working. He wiped the pliers clean of the metal powder, grabbed those carved delicate patterns, and watched them fracture and collapse.

Seventh, eighth, ninth – “Done!” The youth happily put down the pliers, and with a soft cloth, wiped away the splattered copper shavings from the horse’s lips, while he looked, pained, at the openings.

“Now, try opening your mouth?”

Crusade struggled to flick open his long bonded lips and tongue. He tried to make a sound, but because he tried too hard, he instead clumsily spat out his long blood-red tongue, which drooped down to the skin of his mouth for a moment.

He stared at the tip of his nose in panic, tossing his head back and forth, but he didn’t know how to take his tongue back.

Yu Mengzhou looked both amused and saddened as he pinched Crusade’s soft and smooth tongue and pushed it in little by little. The demon horse knew which muscle to control, and only then did it successfully retract his tongue back behind his teeth.

“Uh-huh…” He shook his head vaguely at Yu Mengzhou, who understood what he meant.  Revoicing wasn’t something that happened overnight, and he was still trying to get used to it.

“Yes,” Yu Mengzhou wiped his hands clean. He saw that Sevenfold Eyes still hadn’t come back yet. He thought about it, then whispered to Crusade as if he were a thief, “Can I fix your hooves too?”

Crusade’s eyes lit up, “Uh-huh!”

Yu Mengzhou stood up, and picked the right height of stone with a hard texture for Crusade to stand on its edge.

“First, I must think of how to fix your armor…” He rubbed his chin, muttering to himself.

The closed armor, wrapped Crusade tightly. Along with his lips, it formed a dripping closed loop, as if the person who forged the armor was determined to confine him completely, and not allow a single ray of light to reach his fur.

However the armor also had more nails for fixing, and those should be the breakthrough.

At that time, Yu Mengzhou only hated that he hadn’t brought some iron shears and other sharp objects to cut that armor away piece by piece. The best way now was to twist down the nails one by one, and then tear off that prison of confinement.

However, with each set of nails that came out, Crusade’s flesh and blood flowed. As he cast them out one by one from the Demon Horse’s body and that set of blockade armor, it was accompanied by a fight for his life.

Every time Yu Mengzhou removed a nail, he heard the sound of blood being stirred up mixed with the sound of metal friction. Every nail pulled out left a deep bloody hole.

“That Demon Prince, he really, really hates you, doesn’t he?” he whispered with difficulty. “From what Falchion said, he screwed you over because he didn’t understand your power…”

“Uh-huh,” Crusade made something akin to a laughing gas sound as he shook his head. “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

“You don’t regret it?” Yu Mengzhou grudgingly smiled a little. “I should think so. Give that lousy bastard a good straightening. No one will regret it.”

As the nails fell one by one, Yu Mengzhou’s hands began to tremble slightly. At some point, Falchion stood behind him, and looked at him quietly.

Yu Mengzhou suddenly understood why Crusade was powerful as it was, Falchion still had to put him in the back of the line, and didn’t mention the horse to him until today, when he told him that it was the right time to do it.

–If there were not so many previous Demon Horse’s with padding, if he didn’t not understand that “pain is the source of power,” then in the face of Crusade’s injuries, he would certainly succumb to collapse from heartache, and his arm would also tremble and shake until he could no longer hold his tools.

“Angola hated Crusade the most,” Falchion said softly. “The day Crusade came was the closest he ever came to annihilation, and he nearly fell from the Demon Realm to nothing. “

Yu Mengzhou drew in a long breath as he nodded briefly, to show that he was listening, and then proceeded to devote himself to Crusade. He spun and twisted the shaped steel spikes in an action that bordered on the mechanical.

“So how did he manage to evade?”

“As I told you before, demons can be killed by concepts they do not understand.” Falchion said softly, “But in some particularly powerful, extremely ancient individuals, the law shrinks the conditions again, causing them to be harsh.”

“- Archdemons are only killed by concepts they do not understand.”

Falchion looked at Crusade, perhaps remembering his defeat back then, or perhaps remembering his long-suffering. The herd chief hung his head and said, “He was the first one Angola caught, so he possesses a restraining attribute that was used against all the Demon Horses that were born afterward.”

Yu Mengzhou haphazardly nodded, but he didn’t speak. Falchion also didn’t make another sound, until one hundred and ninety-nine copper nails fell to the ground in a dense layer. He straightened his body, and began to remove the black and thick plate armor.

Tearing off the tail covering, peeling off the four leg braces, as for the horse cloak armor, Yu Mengzhou used every ounce of strength, and rigidly broke the connection at the chest and abdomen, and then lifted off a large piece from the spine. Finally, the neck and forehead armor was also removed ring by ring…

A soggy, mane clad in sweat and a blood-soaked Demon Horse stood before Yu Mengzhou.

His posture was robust and handsome, and after removing those messy attachments, Crusade’s fur was very beautiful, as light and scarlet as the sky’s sunset.

“You…” Yu Mengzhou couldn’t help but say. “You’re so beautiful.”