"To Mo, what happened?" The Head Reverend asked right when he landed in front of them.
As he spoke, Xie Lian thought his voice was very different from what he had imagined before. Although the voice was cold, it sounded small, like a grunt of a child who was upset, not sounded like the voice of a cold and strong woman. If it wasn't for his good hearing, he might not even hear it properly.
"You're asking what's going on ?? They are all dead !!! It's dead !!!" cried Ke Mo.
"How could they all be dead?" The Head Reverend asked.
"Isn't that because you pushed all of them down to trap them in this damned hell!"
"Who is here? There is someone else." The Head Reverend said.
At the bottom of the hole there should be two other 'people' who were there, but San Lang had no breath or even a heartbeat, so the Head Reverend could not detect his presence. Previously, total chaos also occurred above the wall, and no one was tracking anyone who fell into the hole. Then anyone who managed to escape, so he thought there was only Xie Lian there.
"Those who killed all my soldiers! Ha! Are you happy now? Everyone you want to kill finally dies!"
The Priestess's silence, and suddenly a small explosion of light flared up, illuminating a little girl in black who was a Head Priestess with a torch.
The girl looked fifteen or sixteen years old, her eyes blackened, not that she was not beautiful, but she only looked unhappy, her forehead and cheeks were covered with bruises, clearly visible under the torchlight. The hand carrying the torch seemed to shake, causing the flame from the torch to also blink. If it hadn't been confirmed beforehand, no one would have thought that this pale-faced little girl was the Head Reverend Ban Yue herself.
The fire in his hand illuminated him and the environment around where he stood. Next to the brother there were the bodies of Ban Yue warriors who had previously been defeated by San Lang.
Xie Lian couldn't help but look to his side.
The torchlight in the Reverend Chief's hand was very small, and did not illuminate the entire interior of the hole, so they were still immersed and engulfed in darkness.
But using that tiny light, Xie Lian could still see faintly that the person next to him was dressed in red. Not very clear, and he is not very sure, but he can still distinguish what is and who is nearby. Previously San Lang's height had exceeded him, but now, maybe, he looked taller than before?
Xie Lian moved her eyes up, stopped right at her neck, then continued upward again, stopping right at San Lang's chin that looked elegantly shaped.
San Lang's upper face was still hidden in the shadows, but Xie Lian could think that the youth's lower face was clearly different from before. Still looks handsome, but the lines of his face are much clearer and firmer.
Feeling he was being watched, San Lang tilted his head, and his lips shifted slightly upward.
The way the lips shift is strangely alluring. The two of them were standing side by side, but if Xie Lian wanted to see San Lang's face well, he had to stand closer to the young man, and without himself knowing, Xie Lian took steps to at least stand closer to the young man when Ke Mo suddenly wailed from a distance, he seemed surprised after seeing the bloody tragedy before him. Xie Lian turned his head towards General Ke Mo and the Head Priestess, and despite the general's cry, the Chief Priest's expression remained stiff, and only said, "Good. They were finally released."
Amid the sadness and sorrow that attacked the place, hearing the words spoken by the Head Reverend made Ke Mo's anger reappear, "Good? What's good ?? What do you mean ?!"
The anger didn't look fake, so he must really hate the Head Reverend in front of him. "They have all been released. That is worthiness." He said, and turned towards Xie Lian who was still covered in darkness, "Did you kill them?" The words in his Han dialect sounded perfect, and did not contain any rude tone.
* Han is the dialect spoken by people of the Central Plains
"This ... was an accident." Xie Lian said.
"Who are you?" Asked the Head Reverend.
"I am a Heavenly Officer. This one is my friend." Xie Lian answered.
Ke Mo could not understand the words spoken by the two of them, but could still say that they did not fight, and he demanded, "What are you two saying?"
The Head Reverend looked at Xie Lian, looked at San Lang for a moment before quickly turning away and said, "We have never been visited by a Heavenly Officer before. I thought you all might have abandoned this place."
Xie Lian thought that they had to fight with this Head Reverend Ban Yue, but he was surprised to find that Chief Reverend Ban Yue looked this desperate, without the desire to fight. He spoke again, "Do you two want to go?"
This was a strange conversation, but Xie Lian continued to speak peacefully, "Yes, but there is an array installed in this hole, so we cannot go and leave this hole."
Hearing this, the Head Reverend walked to one wall, raised his hand and drew something, then turned and said, "There. I have let it go."
This is too easy!
Xie Lian really didn't know what to say now. At that moment a voice called out from above them, "IS THERE ANYONE BELOW?" That's Fu Yao's voice.
Xie Lian heard San Lang muttering like a 'tsk' moan beside him, and immediately looked up. There was a shadow of a man looking down into the hole, and Xie Lian shouted, "FU YAO! I AM UNDER HERE!"
Xie Lian waved his hand to signal Fu Yao, and Fu Yao shouted back from above, "Are you really down there? What's down there?"
"Um ... a lot of things. Why don't you come down and see for yourself?" Xie Lian said.
Fu Yao probably thought the same, and blew a big fireball into the hole. In an instant, the entire Sinner Hole was illuminated by the large fireball that was burning, looking bright like daylight, and Xie Lian finally saw clearly what kind of place there was.
Around him were mountains of blood piled high; The countless Ban Yue warriors' bodies were piled on top of their fellow bodies, their faces and limbs were blackened, their black blood stained the bright armor they were wearing. The corner where Xie Lian stood was the only place in the entire Sinner Hole that did not have a corpse to defile it.
All of this was done in an instant, in the dark, by San Lang after he jumped in.
Xie Lian turned to look at the boy next to her again.
Previously in the dark, he thought that San Lang looked taller and different in various places, but now, in the bright light of the fire, standing beside him was the handsome teenager he had known before. When the young man saw Xie Lian staring up at him, San Lang grinned. Xie Lian looked down to check her wrists and boots, and both were the same as before, nothing strange, but now she understood. With Fu Yao coming, it's better to hide to avoid problems that will arise. As he thought this, Fu Yao landed in the hole after he also jumped down.
"Don't you have to guard the merchant group in the desert?" Xie Lian asked.
Having just entered the hole, Fu Yao was not yet accustomed to the smell of blood that invaded and then fanned with his hand, said nonchalantly, "We waited for more than six hours and still no one has seen you, so we thought something had happened. I had drawn circle to protect them while they wait, and then come to check it out for themselves. "
'A circle' naturally meant a protection array, but Xie Lian frowned, "The circle won't last long. With you gone, what if they then leave the circle thinking you left them?"
Fu Yao shrugged, "Eight horses can't stop someone who really wants to find death; I can't stop someone who is stubborn, so it's okay. What's with the two of them there? Who are they?"
* This is an idiom and bloody is not so sure what it means ~
Fu Yao looked tense, ready to defend against two unknown figures, but he immediately found out and stared in surprise at Ke Mo, who was already deeply injured on the ground, could barely stand up, and Head Reverend Ban Yue who bowed his head in silence. .
"That one is General Ban Yue, and the other one is Head Reverend Ban Yue, they are."
Ke Mo suddenly jumped before Xie Lian could finish his sentence.
He had been lying on the ground while at the same time gathering his strength, and finally he could now jump and scream, pointing his fist at the Head Reverend Ban Yue.
A large, muscular soldier attacked a little girl, in the past Xie Lian would never let this kind of thing happen before him. But Ke Mo had many reasons to hate this Head Reverend, and this Head Reverend could defend himself well, but he didn't, so that was not Xie Lian's place to engage in other people's personal grudges.
Ke Mo shouted at the Head Reverend, "Where is your scorpion snake? Come on! Let them bite me to death! Give me deliverance!"
The head priestess was thrown like a rag doll, and grimly answered, "To Mo, my snakes don't listen to me anymore."
"Then why didn't they kill you ??"
He bowed. "Sorry, To Mo."
Head Reverend whispered. "Do you really hate us?"
The Head Reverend shook his head and Ke Mo became even more angry, "Then why don't you get revenge on the people you hate? You are a Head Reverend, if you want to kill him, we will do it for you! But what ?! Why ?! you betrayed us ?? "
The more Ke Mo spoke, the deeper the hatred drowned him, and he then grabbed the Head Reverend's hair. Fu Yao watched Ke Mo give an even harder and harder attack, and hit him with one side, Fu Yao frowned, "What are they talking about? Don't we have to stop them?"
Xie Lian also couldn't just watch there, and then he rushed forward to stop Ke Mo, "General, I think there are things that still contain misunderstandings between you two, please calm down!"
"What else do you want to say? Everything is as clear as today!" Words To Mo.
Xie Lian could not say where exactly something was wrong, only that an important part was missing in all this. Suddenly, the Head Reverend reached for his wrist.
His grip felt hard and came suddenly, and Xie Lian's heart surged, thinking he would ambush him, but when he looked back at him, the Head Priest was on the ground, his head raised, watching him attentively. His dark eyes looked at him intensely, small bruises appearing in the corner of his mouth, his lips trembling. He didn't say a word, but it seemed he had a million things to say. This attitude overlaps with images from distant memory.
After a long pause, Xie Lian said, "Are you that?"
The Head Reverend's voice also trembled, "... General Hua?"
This conversation surprised everyone in the hole.
Fu Yao rushed forward, dropped Ke Mo with his fist, and asked, "You two know each other?"
Xie Lian did not answer it. He knelt, clutched the Head Reverend's shoulder, and examined his face.
Previously they stood too far away and he could not see each other's faces clearly. Plus more than two hundred years have passed, this girl was an adult at that time, and for various reasons, she did not recognize him when he first saw her. But now that he had once again seen his face properly, it was the same face as the one in his memory.
Xie Lian could not believe it, and could not speak for a long time. Then he sighed, "Ban Yue?"
The Head Reverend gripped his sleeve, and his gloomy face suddenly seemed lively and excited, "It's me. General Hua, do you still remember me?"
"Of course I still remember you. But ..." Xie Lian looked at him for a moment and sighed, "But what have you done to yourself?"
Hearing her words, the girl's eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"I'm sorry, Captain." He murmured, and immediately knelt before him and bowed, his forehead touching the ground, refusing to rise again.
Xie Lian tried to pull him up to his feet but could not, and with so much mixed emotions in his chest, he finally just rubbed his forehead back, felt his head throb, not wanting to say a word. But in that brief conversation, there was this 'General', the 'Captain', making everything very obscure to observers.
Fu Yao looked surprised, "Captain? General? YOU? How did this happen?"
"... I also want to know how this all happened." Xie Lian said.
Xie Lian didn't answer directly, but San Lang just stood calmly and didn't join in to encourage him to explain.
"Then, the General's Tomb?" Fu Yao pushed.
"My grave," Xie Lian answered.
"Didn't you say before that you only came to collect trash two hundred years ago ???" Fu Yao asked.
Xie Lian sighed again, watching the girl in black who was still prostrate on the ground, "This ... is a long story."
About two hundred years ago, one day, Xie Lian planned to cross the Qing ridge to stay in the south for some time, so he took his compass and walked south. But the more he walked, the more he thought something was wrong, because the scenery was all wrong! There should be lots of trees and greenery, cities and there are lots of people, so why are the streets more quiet? But the suspicion was later removed, Xie Lian stubbornly continued her journey, and soon she arrived at the Gobi desert. It took a gust of wind that blew a handful of sand into his face before Xie Lian finally realized that his compass was broken, and he had traveled in the opposite direction!
Since there was nothing he could do about all this, he should take the opportunity to visit the desert landscape in front of him, and keep going. Only, he slightly changed direction and traveled northwest, and finally arrived at the border where he settled near the kingdom of Ban Yue.
Xie Lian said slowly, "Initially, I was only collecting rubbish. But the border was in trouble when I arrived, and with so much fighting, there were often soldiers who fled, so that soldiers at that time would drag anyone to be recruited into the army. to increase the number of troops. "
"So, you were dragged into the army?" San Lang asks.
"Yes." Xie Lian replied, "But doing something there is more or less the same, so it doesn't matter to me. And after chasing several bandits several times, somehow I was promoted to Captain. People respect me very much and call me General too."
"Why does he call you General Hua?" Fu Yao asked. Xie Lian waved his hand and said nonchalantly, "Don't think about it. I used a fake name at the time. I thought it was Hua Xie."
* The name 'Hua Xie' here has no meaning, but the character for 'Hua' is the same as the name Hua Cheng
Hearing that name, San Lang's expression slightly changed, his lips twitched, but his expression was still unreadable. Xie Lian did not pay attention to him and continued, "With the border broken by fighting, many orphans have sprung up. When I have free time I sometimes play with them. One of them ... named Ban Yue."
Xie Lian shook her head, "I thought the name 'Ban Yue' in the Head Reverend was a country, I didn't realize it was actually the Reverend Chief's name."
In his memory, the little girl Ban Yue always looked grim, her body and face were bruised, and when she looked at someone, she would stare from below. He is fluent in Han dialect and plays with the children of the Central Plains of the same age as him. Xie Lian didn't know where it came from, but he was a child who wandered randomly to various places, so he took it randomly. When he has free time sometimes he teaches them a song, sometimes wrestles, sometimes showing off his musician's movements, 'Breaking the Stone in the Chest', or something like that. Because this child is smaller than the others, he takes care of him better than other children, and gives him more food if available, and the two have a good relationship.
"Then?" Asked Fu Yao.
"And then ... it's almost the same as what was written on the memorial stone tomb," said Xie Lian.
"The memorial says you are dead." said San Lang after a few silences.
Regarding the issue of the memorial, Xie Lian was disappointed.
Don't memorials usually praise the deceased's good deeds and exaggerate them? Besides all the statements about demotion, why should he honestly record how embarrassing he was to die? While hiding from a sandstorm and translating writing on a tombstone, when he read the part of his death, he was so hurt that, if it wasn't for San Lang who read the same thing with him, he would pretend those times never existed. After something like that was written down, he even wanted to laugh, what else could anyone else? That when he had the courage to ask those who sought refuge in his memorial stone not to laugh when they commented and laughed at the writing on his tombstone, it made him feel very disappointed.
Xie Lian's forehead turned red from all the rubbing he did. "Oh that. Um ... Of course I'm not dead. I faked it."
San Lang did not say anything, and Fu Yao put on an expression of disbelief.
"After pretending to die, my 'body' was thrown away. I returned to the Central Plains and recovered after five to six years," said Xie Lian.
To be honest, Xie Lian could not remember exactly how he 'died', or why the battle had happened from the beginning, only it all happened because of something small. He really did not want to fight; victory or defeat is meaningless. But at that time his rank could not be lowered any lower, and no one wanted to listen to it. In the middle of the battle, everyone saw the color red, when he rushed to get out, it was a knife and sword that came to him from both sides to cut him down. Even if he could not die, he could not stand such a massacre. Cry "oh no!" on his head, Xie Lian fell to the ground to fake his death, but even in that 'death' he was trampled unconscious. How did he realize It was the water that choked his neck that woke him up, because someone's body was usually thrown into the river after a battle. Xie Lian followed the river's current, and carried water back to the Central Plains like a pile of rubbish. After he recovered, he finally reached his original destination in the south, and stopped thinking about what happened in the kingdom of Ban Yue.
"Sorry" Ban Yue muttered again.