Recap
The following lines were a completely meaningless repetition, every stroke etched deeply, as if trying to pierce the paper.
[If I die, who will remember him?]
[If I die, who will remember him?]
[If I die, who will remember him?]
“What’s wrong with this sentence?” Shen Chaomu asked, instinctively lowering his voice.
Long Shiyu was silent for a moment, then looked up at him. Shen Chaomu felt that he would never forget this look. It was too complex, filled with twists and turns, like crossing a long icy river to finally see fire, like enduring a long trek only to find himself unable to speak. Thousands of past events and unspoken words were hidden within that gaze.
However, in the next second, Long Shiyu smiled. “There really is a princess here.”
He threw himself into Shen Chaomu’s arms with an exuberant, almost violent hug. “I like princesses the most!”
___
The sentence gave Shen Chaomu a very subtle feeling. It seemed to be talking about Karen Haina, but also seemed to be speaking directly to him.
A second later, Long Shiyu was shaken by the dragon’s horn again. “Why are you shaking me again?” he complained.
“Don’t think about princesses all day long,” Shen Chaomu warned. “If you see this kind of legendary monster, run away quickly. Those corpses under the sea were probably all caused by her. You can’t beat her.”
“Ying.”
Shen Chaomu scanned everything in the room with his terminal, then carefully placed the diaries on the table one by one, ready to scan and back them up. The diaries were all handwritten, making scanning difficult and time-consuming.
Perhaps the room was too tidy and girly, and they were the villains who had barged in.
“It’s like reading the secret diary of a teenage girl,” Shen Chaomu remarked, “though it’s a necessary process to find clues and evidence.”
“It’s the princess’s diary,” Long Shiyu corrected, his gaze excitedly and cautiously exploring the little princess’s room.
Shen Chaomu paused. He suddenly remembered a question and, feeling the need to address the silly dragon’s adolescent concerns, asked, “Do you really like humans? I thought all dragons snatched princesses because it was fun and a declaration of power. This kind of act is very rare.”
“I really like princesses,” Long Shiyu insisted.
Shen Chaomu sighed. He felt that Long Shiyu didn’t understand his question. “Look, if you want to get married,” he began, carefully choosing his words, “would you want to find a man or a woman? A male or female?”
“I’m going to marry a princess.”
“Oh, so you like girls,” Shen Chaomu concluded with a nod.
He hesitated, debating whether to tell Long Shiyu that humans generally didn’t form relationships with strange beasts. It would be bad if Long Shiyu didn’t know and ended up hurt someday. There had been many examples of humans with highly intelligent beings, such as vampires and werewolves, and even rare cases with dragons. Some stories ended in tragedy, with monsters failing to suppress their nature or humans simply toying with their affections. Sometimes, what separated them wasn’t human greed or monstrous ferocity, but gossip and the association’s investigations. In the past, at its most extreme, the alliance had even forcibly hunted those strange beasts—
“He must have been bewitched by a strange beast; otherwise, he’s a lunatic.”
“She’s a weirdo! How can she be with that horrible thing? What if the beast goes mad one day?”
“I heard that kind of monster will devour its own children…”
“Why are you with that thing? Does he drink your blood every night?”
Even Shen Chaomu, who didn’t harbor much prejudice against strange beasts, found it difficult to make a judgment. If love was truly great, could it overcome completely different civilizations and beliefs? How could one decide which side was the beast beneath the skin? If their hearts were connected, could they share a long-lasting love that spanned those barriers, romantic like a fairy tale? It was a difficult thing to define.
In the end, he still didn’t tell Long Shiyu about these concerns. The scan continued. He even took out a cigarette, glanced at the exquisitely decorated room, and thought about it, but didn’t light it, just held it in his mouth for a while.
Suddenly, Long Shiyu’s eyes widened. “Why do I only like girls?” he asked, bewildered.
“Didn’t you say you like princesses?”
“Yes.”
“So that’s liking girls.”
“No.”
Shen Chaomu frowned. “Your princess isn’t a woman? Could she be a man?”
“Yes.”
Shen Chaomu stared at him, speechless. The cigarette fell from his mouth.
Long Shiyu said seriously, “I just like that kind of princess…ahhh, don’t shake me, don’t shake me!”
Shen Chaomu grabbed his dragon horn. “Who taught you this?” he demanded.
“I figured it out myself!” Long Shiyu protested. “You see, the princess will appear in the castle. The princess is very beautiful. The princess is of noble birth. The princess is petite and weak, but versatile. No one told me that the princess must be a woman…Don’t shake me! Don’t shake me anymore!”
Long Shiyu finally broke free from Shen Chaomu’s clutches, his tail curling up aggrievedly. “Why are you grabbing me and shaking me again?”
Shen Chaomu took a deep breath. “Princesses are all women,” he explained patiently. “Men are called princes.”
“No, the princess is the princess!”
“Men are princes.”
“No!” Long Shiyu was angry now, and his tail slammed on the ground with a bang.
This meaningless argument ended with Shen Chaomu’s defeat. He truly didn’t know what to say. The silly dragon’s education was clearly very problematic, resulting in a huge deviation in his understanding of the world.
Perhaps this is the consequence of being an orphan dragon who lacks the education of the dragon clan, Shen Chaomu thought with a sigh. He felt a surge of compassion and decided that Long Shiyu needed a good lesson in common sense.
The scanning was finally finished, and Shen Chaomu carefully placed every diary and the poetry collection back on the shelf. As soon as they left the room, a warning flashed on his terminal from the outpost.
The siren had appeared. A total of eleven people on five small warships were killed instantly, and fifteen were seriously injured.
Attached was a video of the scene. A few seconds later, Lu Shanhuai’s message arrived: Most of the dead were taken by skeletal mermaids, probably to be used to breed new mermaids. After facial and voiceprint recognition, it is confirmed that the siren is Princess Karen Haina of the Bei En Dynasty.
That sea area was some distance from their current location on the snow mountain, and it would take a long time to get there. The coordinates and information of the castle had been sent over, and Lu Shanhuai added: We have lost the siren, and all the skeletal mermaids have disappeared. We are searching the nearby waters with all our strength. Don’t worry too much, Uther has already gone there.
They had spent nearly ten hours in the castle and had searched almost all of it. It didn’t make much sense to stay any longer. Although the siren might return, it would be better to meet up with other hunters. With Shen Chaomu around, they would be better prepared for the next attack.
“Let’s go to the seaside,” Shen Chaomu said, checking the map. “It will be easier to descend from the north side of the castle, where the terrain is relatively flat. It’s getting late, so don’t rush. We can rest on the way.”
Twenty minutes later, the heavy north gate was pushed open by mental force. Ice and debris fell as they left the frozen castle.
Behind them, in the clean and tidy room, the old diaries remained, filled with their secrets. The teddy bear was still waiting for the princess to come back.
As soon as they walked out of the castle, they saw a cloud of mist swirling nearby. It was the mantises. They were entangled with the glacier griffins again. This time, the number of mantises that had come out to hunt was small, and they were struggling against the griffins, who had arrived in force. They might win, but it was inevitable that some mantises would be seriously injured or even killed.
Two or three more griffins rushed over, smelling blood, ready to tear the mantises apart—
Suddenly, golden catkins erupted like a shimmering water curtain, blocking the griffins’ sharp claws. A powerful mental force pressed down, scattering the griffins and sending them flying.
A chorus of hissing doubts arose from the mantises, their multifaceted eyes all focused on Long Shiyu and Shen Chaomu.
Communication between settlements was very fast, and the mantises shared information unreservedly. The group had encountered the two of them before, and soon all the mantises would know of their presence. They showed no obvious hostility. Three mantises lifted the dead griffin, ready to take it back to their settlement as a trophy. The other mantises slowly spread their wings.
“That means friendliness in their language,” Long Shiyu explained to Shen Chaomu.
“How do you know?”
“Because they never did that to me.”
Shen Chaomu merely raised an eyebrow.
Then, with a surge of mental energy, the mantises lifted them up on a cloud of mist once again. The snow-covered mountains passed beneath them. Long Shiyu poked his head over the edge of the cloud, wanting to feel the wind in his face, but Shen Chaomu pulled him back. “Be careful not to fall,” he warned.
“I can fly.”
“Be careful anyway.”
“Okay.” Long Shiyu sat back obediently.
The cloud landed in a hidden crevice on another mountaintop, and another group of mantises emerged to greet them. The only mantis who could speak the language of the alliance appeared again.
“We meet again,” he said in his strange accent, “a strange combination of dragon and man.”
The mantises who had brought them communicated with the newcomer, and the translator explained, “They said that more griffins will come at night. You may be future allies, and you should not be left alone in the snowfield.” He hissed. “You can call me Black Sickle. Tonight, the settlement allows you to spend the night with us. We will ensure your safety.”
They followed Black Sickle deep into the ice crevice. After a narrow passage, they emerged onto a relatively open hillside, where they saw more mantises. Most were lying in the cave, and a few strong mantises lined up outside to shield them from the cold.
When food was plentiful, the sick and injured were properly cared for. But when food became scarce and the settlement’s survival was threatened, the weaker ones were often willing to be devoured, all for the betterment of the group. Most of the mantises that were unable to hunt now had corrosive wounds on their bodies. The wounds were severe, the flesh rotten, and the worst of them emitted a foul smell. Judging from the location and depth of the scars, that familiar fighting style…
Shen Chaomu lowered his eyes. He had only seen a few people from the Shen family fight with spiritual ability like that. These many coincidences were starting to become truly strange.
The sky settlement didn’t have very effective medical treatments. They simply chewed some special plants that grew on the ground and applied them to the wounds. But these wounds were unique, and because they were forced to stay on the snow mountain and couldn’t find the necessary herbs, their situation worsened.
“Why can’t you return to the sky?” Shen Chaomu asked.
Black Sickle hissed. “Human, do you think we will tell you? We can only have pure cooperation based on shared interests.”
“Is it because there are too few healthy companions, and your combined spiritual ability isn’t enough to condense into cumulonimbus clouds?” Shen Chaomu could feel that the spiritual energy here was extremely disordered—those terrible wounds were seriously affecting the mantises’ fighting power.
Black Sickle remained vigilant and didn’t answer.
Shen Chaomu didn’t press for a clear affirmation, as the reason seemed obvious.
Long Shiyu tugged Shen Chaomu’s wrist with his tail and happily entered a cleaned cave. The energy ball floated in the air, casting a warm yellow light that filled the space with a comforting warmth, isolating them from the wind and snow. However, the energy of this ball was a little weak; the light was dim, and the temperature wasn’t as high as before.
As before, Shen Chaomu took out the light compressed mattress and quilt from his luggage and spread them out. “Go to sleep,” he said.
Long Shiyu, once again, began carefully shaping the quilt.
“Are you building a nest again?” Shen Chaomu asked, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Yes.”
In order not to destroy the shape of the nest, Long Shiyu began to get into bed backward. First, he tucked in his long tail, then he slowly inched his body under the covers, finally wrapping the quilt around himself until only his soft black hair and dragon horns were exposed.
During this reversing process, Shen Chaomu watched helplessly as Long Shiyu’s body disappeared under the covers, only to have his tail slowly emerge from the end of the quilt.
Sure enough, he’s a silly dragon.
Shen Chaomu grabbed the big silver tail and stuffed it back into the bed.
Long Shiyu poked his head out. “Are you still not sleeping today?”
“I’ll just take a nap against the wall.”
“Go to sleep,” Long Shiyu insisted. “You didn’t sleep yesterday. Sleeping more and not staying up late is good for your skin.” The princess should take good care of her skin, and his princess was already so beautiful.
Shen Chaomu smiled. “Where did you learn that?”
“I worked as a salesman at a cosmetics counter.”
“Why did you do that kind of work?”
“I just happened to see the recruitment ad. I’m quite popular; many customers wanted to take pictures with me after trying the products.” Long Shiyu recalled the strange, kind smile that didn’t seem to belong to someone of his age.
“It feels like their main purpose was to take pictures with you…” Shen Chaomu mused. “Then the money you earned was enough to eat, right?”
“Not really,” Long Shiyu admitted, thinking for a while. “The brand went bankrupt after three days.”
Shen Chaomu stared at him. “I hope its closure wasn’t because of you.” At this point, he was considering many terrible possibilities.
“How is that possible?” Long Shiyu said, sounding offended. “I take every job seriously.”
“I believe it,” Shen Chaomu said sincerely. “I truly believe it, but those bosses may not have.”
Long Shiyu flicked the tip of his tail under the covers in dissatisfaction.
“You should sleep for a while tonight,” he said again, shifting to make room for Shen Chaomu. “It’s warmer to squeeze together.”
“No, I’m not used to doing that during a mission.”
“Ying.”
“…”
“Ying.”
In the end, Long Shiyu got his way and snuggled up to his princess. Holding the warm and fragrant nephrite in his arms—or to be precise, being held by the warm and fragrant nephrite—Long Shiyu felt that life was good.
The light of the energy ball dimmed, and the temperature dropped even lower. His tail rubbed and shifted under the covers, finally coming to rest on Shen Chaomu.
“What are you doing?” Shen Chaomu asked.
“I’m afraid you’ll be cold,” Long Shiyu murmured, burrowing into his arms. “See? Two people are warmer. And I’m a fire dragon.”
“You’ll only breathe fire and burn my house down.”
“Ying.”
Shen Chaomu wisely remained silent.
“Tell me the story of Princess Haina,” Long Shiyu requested.
“What do you want to hear?”
“Anything will do.”
The young man in his arms was warm and full of expectation. Shen Chaomu pretended to think, but his mind actually went blank for a few seconds. “She sings well and has a special literary talent,” he finally began. “Most of the time, the people of Bei En can meet the smiling princess in the underwater market. She’s very popular, so even though it’s rumored that she was adopted, she hasn’t been subjected to too many negative attacks.”
“Yeah.” Long Shiyu listened intently.
“That was until the poet appeared—now we can be fairly certain his name was Edgeworth Murphy. In the legend of Bei En, the poet, a traveler from another planet, was walking on the beach during a full moon when he rescued the princess, who had been playing and forgot to return home. The princess fell in love with the poet and begged the dragon to bring her an alchemy potion to transform her fishtail into legs so she could dance with him. But, tragically, she turned into foam when the tide receded.”
Shen Chaomu continued, “Legends are just legends. However, when she fell in love with the poet, everyone opposed their relationship. Before that, no one in Bei En had ever been with a traveler. But the princess was determined. Every full moon, she would follow the undersea tunnel to the shore to secretly meet Edgeworth.”
“Later, the vampire Lilith was active in Bei En. At that time, the alliance didn’t fully understand the Blood Worship Church, and the princess’s legendary guards fought Lilith directly. Karen herself also confronted Lilith alone.”
“Everyone in the alliance thought it was a miracle she survived, but if she was originally a strange beast, it would make sense.”
“After Lilith disappeared, Karen escaped from the royal family. No one knew what happened to her and Edgeworth. History records that Karen died of illness, and Edgeworth vanished. After all, population records were somewhat chaotic back then; perhaps it was simply an oversight.”
“But Edgeworth wrote a book, didn’t he?” Long Shiyu said. “‘Starlight is Like Your Skirt.’ If he was a poet, he should be somewhat famous.”
“It wasn’t published, was it?” Shen Chaomu asked rhetorically, rubbing his head. “Even if he was a poet, his voice couldn’t be heard by everyone. Famous or not, there will always be unknown people in the world.”
Long Shiyu looked at him and said with a smile, “But we’re obviously not among them.”
Shen Chaomu was stunned for a moment, then smiled. “Yes,” he agreed, “neither you nor I are among them.”
The sound of wind and snow howled outside. The conversation lapsed, and neither of them fell asleep immediately. Shen Chaomu stared at the top of the cave, lost in thought.
“What are you thinking about now?” Long Shiyu asked.
“Those mantises’ wounds. That kind of corrosive injury is very unusual.”
“I think they must have been injured in another galaxy before fleeing to Bei En,” Long Shiyu said. “Because whoever could seriously injure them, if they were in Bei En, wouldn’t let them go easily.”
“Your inference is reasonable,” Shen Chaomu agreed. “I just don’t know what delayed Shen Di and prevented him from following them. That kind of person would typically hunt them down to the end.”
Long Shiyu considered this. “He must have other things to do,” he mused. “Perhaps other strange beast riots are also related to him. I don’t know why he’s targeting the sky settlement.”
“Oh, so you really do know Shen Di,” Shen Chaomu remarked casually.
Long Shiyu froze.
“Ying.”
He was so startled that he bit his own tail and was about to bolt out of bed. But the bed was warm and crowded, and he had barely moved when Shen Chaomu’s arm snaked around his waist, pressing him back into his embrace. Long Shiyu’s ears were filled with the sound of Shen Chaomu’s warm breath.
“I caught you,” the man chuckled.
___
T/N: Too cute ><
To support the author’s raw: click here.
Advance chapters, support me here: click here.
Update: Every Weekday
Leave a Reply