He and It Chapter 95: Dark Sky Sanctuary (30)

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Chapter 95: Dark Sky Sanctuary (30)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

Compared to the two problem children over there, Yu Mengzhou had more important things to deal with.

After those three short heartfelt confessions, Falchion’s body became heavier and heavier, even though his trembling arms were still tightly wrapped around the spirit in his arms, his bones and heart were all rumbling with an unbearable burden, just like a suspension bridge that had been taut for thousands of years, the moment the ropes completely loosened up, that was also the moment it started to disintegrate.

“Falchion…Falchion?” Yu Mengzhou sensed that something was wrong, but due to being held too tightly, he couldn’t see Falchion’s expression at all. He could only tilt his neck up and scream like he was drowning, “Hey! Don’t faint! Pull yourself together!”

The centaur’s body didn’t know what to do, but his soul and will were in close contact with the human he loved so much. Holding Yu Mengzhou in his arms, Falchion fell to the ground like a steep iceberg melting into the sea.

Yu Mengzhou was heavily pressed down on the ground, almost like being locked in an impermeable cage, and all that could be said was that it was a good thing he was in the state of a soul at the moment.

“Is he alright?!” Yu Mengzhou struggled and called out. “Was he knocked silly by me? You guys come and take a look!”

While Gao’er took care of watching the other two, Blasphe rushed in to save the day – though he wasn’t sure whose day he was saving. He trotted over, and took a good look at Falchion’s condition.

“He’s fine, just passed out.” Blasphe was eager to help pick the man up, but unfortunately, while his heart was in the right place, even though he had been knocked out of his mind by the hammer, Falchion’s magic power was overflowing furiously, like a pack of crazy beasts roaming the territory, and whoever dared to take Yu Mengzhou away from him, he would want the other person’s life.

Yu Mengzhou hurriedly said, “It’s alright, it’s alright! Since he’s passed out, it’s fine for me to watch from his side. There’s nothing urgent anyway…”

He looked over Falchion’s arm, and Yu Mengzhou saw that Striker’s and Crusade’s faces that were so happy that they’d turned red. He exclaimed, “Of course, there’s you two! There’s something about you guys I’ll talk to you about in a bit!”

Oh yeah? Striker had an expression of joy.

Uh-oh. Crusade blinked, afraid to make a sound.

.

Falchion seemed to be dreaming.

The pupils of his eyes reflected a hazy halo of light, soft and not blinding, while the tip of his nose was buried deep in an aroma strong enough to penetrate the soul; vibrant and lively, unadulterated by the stale stench of fear and pain, only soft and richly perfumed, like the most impractical of dreams.

He had smelled it in the past, and before he even realized it himself, had been clumsily learning to love the owner of the scent. Unfortunately, he was a demon after all, gifted at killing and clueless at loving, and by the time he really figured it out, he’d missed it for far too long. Humans often said that when the flowering period passed, the flower that bloomed in the coming year would no longer be the one you loved so dearly this year, so even if he cried the deserted Demon Realm into an ocean, he couldn’t get his flower back.

“I…Was it a dream?” he asked softly, hoarsely, afraid that if he pushed a little harder, he would blow away the dream, which was more fragile than a bubble.

Something soft, something warm, was touching his cheek.

“What did you dream?” someone asked.

…It was truly the voice he had longed for! He would give everything he had to hear that voice once more, to see the person who had it once more, let alone just answer the question he posed.

“I often, often dream…I was walking through an empty wilderness, and the ground around me was red, as red as blood, and the sky was black, so black that I couldn’t see a single light,” he said slowly. “And I just kept running in there, running as hard as I could, trying to get out of this place that was quieter than death, but no matter what I did, even if I ran in there until my legs and bones bled and I fell to my knees, I couldn’t get out of it. A second was as long as a year there.”

Falchion’s pupils were lax, and in actuality he was laying in Yu Mengzhou’s lap, as his hard horns rested against the other. “In my dream, I so wanted to hear movements other than mine, to see colors other than black and red. But when the terrible dream is over and I wake up, I don’t want anyone to see me, to speak to me, to make noise…They aren’t the people I want to see, and the words they speak aren’t the sounds I want to hear…”

“Then must you resort to such drastic methods to find someone?” Yu Mengzhou whispered, heartbroken. “There are many important things in life. You aren’t alone. You still have your loved ones, and what’s more, you’re the Emperor of the Realm now. There’s always a responsibility…”

Tears broke through his eyes and moistened Yu Mengzhou’s palm. Falchion’s voice was also hoarse, “Yes. I was born to be an emperor, but the power and strength symbolized by this position does not belong to me alone.”

“When I was enslaved as a lowly servant, I was the Emperor; when my compatriots were forced to kowtow with their legs broken and tortured in front of the Demon Realm, I was the Emperor; when I finally saw the dawn of freedom, the hope of revenge, and had a beloved who filled me with joy and tenderness even when I thought of the name, I thought that the pain could be ended. But in the end, I still had to watch him die in front of me until his body was burned to ashes by venom…Just because I’m the Emperor, all of this is the sacrifice and retribution I deserve!”

He lost his voice and cried in pain, his body shaking violently, as veins blossomed on the backs of his hands, and his sharp nails dug deep into the hard ground.

“If I were not an emperor…If I were just an earthly horse, not able to speak, yet able to accompany you; only able to eat grass and express my emotions with my eyes, yet able to receive your concern day and night…If so, until the day I die, I be happy all the time, more than a million times what I have gained in this life.”

Falchion could no longer speak. His sobs came out between agonized gasps, and every tear was like a burning fire, and scalded Yu Mengzhou’s heart.

The youth bent down and hugged Falchion’s shoulders and neck. Yu Mengzhou also cried. In fact, he really wanted to say, intelligent beings that can think and laugh are always happier than unenlightened animals, and you still have so many landscapes you haven’t seen, and so many people and things you haven’t experienced.

However, even as the words came to him, he suddenly realized that there was really no way he could go against his heart and cajole Falchion by telling him that there would surely be more times that you would feel happier than a simple pony.

“I don’t know,” he said through his tears. “But this isn’t a dream. I’m really sorry for making you so upset, but if you’re going to ask me if I regret going to take on Angola on my own, I’m still going to say no, because while the pain of death was only for a moment, the freedom you guys got is forever, and I think that it was worth it.”

He thought for a moment, and with a shimmering hand, he gently placed it on Falchion’s horns.

“Let’s go to the human world together, shall we?” Yu Mengzhou whispered into his pointed ear. “We’ll buy a large estate and live secluded in the mountains. There, the sky is blue during the day with the sun hanging above, and although the sky is dark at night, there is a moon and stars in the sky. The forests are deep and secluded, and every morning a white mist rolls over the mountains, and there’s birdsong. Birdsong is very nice…”

He sniffled, made up his mind, and said, “If it makes you happy, I’ll be your rider, won’t I?”

Falchion didn’t answer right away. His pupils suddenly narrowed and then spread wide.

— It was a direct touch from the soul. It was not a sweet rain, but a monstrous flood that washed directly over his parched, scorched to the point of chafing, soul.

His rigid bones instantly went limp, and along with his flesh and blood, they all became fluid, waiting to be remolded. The Emperor of the Demon Realm was like a handful of sticky, melting honey at that moment, and the fact that his love interest had dared to tease him so boldly caused him to want nothing more than to entwine the other man completely, wrap him up in a hell of eternal sweetness, and eternal scalding heat.

“I…I…” His throat was strained, his eyes red, and he couldn’t muster a single intact syllable.

Falchion was awake, completely awake, and Yu Mengzhou remained blissfully unaware of it, he just looked at him in relief.

Since he had already made the decision to be Falchion’s rider and take responsibility for his years of madness and suffering, at that moment, the youth didn’t hide his curiosity about the horns. He indulged himself in touching them to the east and pressing them to the west, sometimes lightly scratching the uneven lines of the horns with his fingernails, or following them around in a circle; sometimes pinching them at the sharpest, sharpest tips, taking his fingers to pinch them delicately…

Falchion couldn’t catch his breath. The muscles in his hind legs and belly twitched uncontrollably, and consumed his whole body and nearly collapsed his last thread of sanity.

Yu Mengzhou waited for his answer, “Is it good?”

Is it good? What’s “good”?

In fact, Falchion didn’t even hear what he was saying. At that moment, even if Yu Mengzhou wanted Falchion’s life, wanted the Monarch of Hell to chop off his own head and present it to him on a golden plate, Falchion would do it without hesitation.

“…Good,” Falchion responded haphazardly. “Good.”

“Good? I think it’s good too,” Yu Mengzhou laughed quietly. “By the way, didn’t I tell you how I came back? Haha, it’s a funny thing to say…”

Falchion could no longer hear what he was saying. All he knew was that his lost and found lover was making the most passionate and direct pleas to him, and that their first union should be a testament of love and lust, a contract of souls to embrace each other for the rest of their lives.

Yu Mengzhou would destroy him completely, and he would destroy his human – in an incomparably slow way, until the human cried out because he was so delirious that he couldn’t take it anymore.

The Monarch of Hell tilted his head in a predator’s stance. His serpentine tails twined and swam, and if they had possessed heads, they would certainly be hissing in unison with exuberance at the moment, and dribbling a poisonous saliva secreted out of longing all over the place.

“…Then I woke up, and then I saw The Weaver…”

Before he could finish his sentence, just when Falchion was poised to strike, the door to the chambers rumbled loudly, and a painfully crying centaur stretched his head out and shouted, “Hu, human!”

Ohhh, that familiar little stuttering accent!

Surprised and delighted, Yu Mengzhou naturally lowered his hands from those horns and laughed, “Catastrophe, you…You’ve really changed!”

This was true. After gaining his human body, Catastrophe could not be seen as an easily shy Demon Horse. Compared to the rest of the centaurs – such as the deep-faced Falchion – his features were slightly lighter in outline, closer to the features of an Oriental. Combined with his black hair and amber-colored eye pupils, he actually looked handsome as hell.

Falchion, “…”

Catastrophe, “…”

Catastrophe caught a glimpse of the human’s hand that had been lowered from the horns of the chief, and before he could recover from the ecstasy of the human’s return, he felt like he’d been hit head-on with a hammer blow.

Falchion’s eyes were already looking like he was going to eat a human…Or eat a centaur.

“So what? I’m not, not Catastrophe,” Catastrophe gulped and said. “I’m, I’m Striker. I’ll just try, try the shapeshifting technique, haha. I didn’t think I’d trick, trick you into it…”

Yu Mengzhou, “?”

“I still have something to do. I, I’ll leave first,” Catastrophe hurriedly said. “You guys first, chat first.”

Catastrophe’s head retracted again.

Falchion looked at his human as an afterthought, and they stared at each other in silence for a long time before Falchion managed to turn his rusty thoughts, then recalled bit by bit the words he had babbled to his human before…

… Shit.

“I’ve had Gao’er bring the departed members here,” Yu Mengzhou took a deep breath. “If you don’t mind, we’ll start by addressing the split in the herd…Falchion?”

He interrupted the centaur’s dumbfounded look. Ah, he frowned and still looked sad.

Yu Mengzhou reached out and wrapped an arm around his waist, as he offered a soft, comforting smile.

“Hey, it’s okay. You always have to face them, but they’re family.” 

Falchion’s ears drooped and he immediately chose to return the hug.

His return hug wasn’t just a snuggle, he held Yu Mengzhou flat on his chest and placed his lips next to the top of his hair. “So…” He hung his head and said, “Is what you just said to me that you want to be my master?”

“Uh, what master?” Yu Mengzhou asked in panic. “Did you hear it as master? I just said I want to be your rider, la.”

Well, not only is the ritual of courting gone, but now he doesn’t even want to be the master…

Falchion said sullenly, “I’ll see my herd, all of them.”

Yu Mengzhou was squeezed against his chest. It felt too close, but when he thought about Falchion’s situation, it made it seem normal. “Uh-huh. Okay.”

“I’ll take care of the Demon Realm’s mess, and before long, we’ll go to earth.”

“Sure! You guys can leave whenever you want. I’ll be here anyway.”

“And…” Falchion reluctantly relaxed his arms and looked him straight in the eye.

“What am I in your heart, really?”

Yu Mengzhou froze.

“Family, I guess…” He pondered, “Call it a best friend too! Anyway, like Radiant Angel said, love is a very vague concept to you guys, so I don’t feel the need to make a distinction specifically.”

There was another reason he didn’t say more. Compared to the demon who was very frank in both words and actions and dared to stand in the center of the world and shout out love, Yu Mengzhou’s circumstances of origin dictated that he was a giant in actions and a dwarf in words. Ever since he decided to live with the Demon Horses, he was also determined to adapt to their way of socializing, so whatever Falchion said, he blanketly agreed and understood.

Falchion was silent for a long time and whispered, “I just called you beloved. You heard me.”

“It feels weird though…” Yu Mengzhou was also puzzled. “However, I understand what you meant! Don’t worry.”

…I’ll be damned if you understand.

Falchion stared at him for a long time, with only one thought in his heart.

Good, Radiant Angel, you’re good.

 

Author’s Note: 

Falchion: *serious* I love you, you understand.

Yu Mengzhou: *nods* I understand.

Falchion: *still serious* Do you really understand?

Yu Mengzhou: *still nodding* I really understand. But even though I’m not really comfortable with this expression, I know that I love you guys and you love me.

 

Falchion: *faints once again*