Благословение Небожителей. Том 6 (ЛП)

Hua Cheng looked him squarely in the eyes. “Really. Why does gege ask?”
Xie Lian sighed an imperceptible breath of relief and forced a smile. “Nothing. It’s just… The way I passed my days in the earlier years wasn’t the prettiest sight. I was a mess and very much a failure. I just wouldn’t have wanted you to witness that.”
Hua Cheng laughed. “How could that be?”
But Xie Lian didn’t laugh at all. “It’s not a joke. I really was quite the failure.”
Hearing this, Hua Cheng withdrew his smile and turned solemn. “That’s fine too. Your Highness, didn’t you say so yourself?”
“Me?” Xie Lian was confused. “What did I say?”
“‘To me, the one basking in infinite glory is you; the one fallen from grace is also you. What matters is you, not the state of you,’” Hua Cheng recited languidly as he gazed at Xie Lian. He blinked meaningfully, cocking an eyebrow. “I feel the same way.”
Xie Lian was stunned speechless for a good moment, then he quickly slapped his hands over his face to cover it, feeling like his whole head was burning up. “D-did I say that?!”
“You did!” Hua Cheng insisted. “Gege, don’t deny it.”
Xie Lian used his arm to block his face. “I…I don’t think so!”
“Gege, do you want to see the proof? I’ll find it for you,” Hua Cheng said.
Xie Lian’s head shot up. “You… Did you… No way! San Lang, you… Have you been recording everything?!”
“I’m joking, joking.”
“I honestly don’t believe you…”
“Gege, trust me.”
“I don’t trust you anymore!”
The pair came to a fork in the road. Suddenly, a breeze blew in. Hua Cheng tilted his body to shield Xie Lian, raising an arm as if to protect him.
It wasn’t a strong breeze and didn’t call for anyone to block it, but Hua Cheng’s action had come completely naturally. The wind passed, leaving strands of hair aflutter, tangled in the same way as Xie Lian’s thoughts. Xie Lian noticed that Hua Cheng’s expression and the contours of his face were cold when he wasn’t looking his way. Beautiful in his nonchalance, Hua Cheng didn’t even realize he’d moved without hesitation—as if protecting Xie Lian was innate to him.
“San Lang!” Xie Lian blurted again.
Hua Cheng tilted his head to look at him, and only then did he flash a smile. “What is it, Your Highness?”
Xie Lian felt that Hua Cheng probably didn’t notice himself smiling. A clear and powerful voice in Xie Lian’s heart told him that this man really saw him as a god.
Xie Lian’s fingers clenched furtively. “Once we’re out of Mount Tonglu, there’s a lot I want to tell you.”
Hua Cheng nodded lightly. “All right. I look forward to it.”
“Have Feng Xin and Mu Qing escaped?” Xie Lian asked.
“They’re already out,” Hua Cheng replied.
“And White No-Face?” Xie Lian asked. “He didn’t catch up to us, and he didn’t go to stop them. Where is he now? How far is he from us?”
“He—” Hua Cheng’s face changed before he could finish, and he lightly pressed two fingers against his right eyebrow. A moment later, he said, “…He disappeared.”
“How could he disappear?” Xie Lian asked in shock.
Hua Cheng remained calm as he focused on searching. “He’s just gone. Completely vanished.”
This was impossible—not even a ghost could disappear into thin air while surrounded by wraith butterflies in this Cave of Ten Thousand Gods!
“Let me see?” Xie Lian blurted.
He gripped Hua Cheng’s shoulders with his hands and went on tiptoe to touch their foreheads together. Hua Cheng rested a hand on Xie Lian’s waist, then hesitated as if he was going to pull away. In the end, his hand stayed where it was and pulled Xie Lian even closer.
The scenes that Hua Cheng had seen moments earlier flashed before Xie Lian’s eyes. The white-clad man strolled through a stone cavern. Countless wraith butterflies rushed him and wrapped him in a shimmering human-shaped chrysalis. In an instant, those butterflies were engulfed in a crackling explosion of silver light, shattering them into a burst of sparkling glitter.
Once the silver light faded, the white-clad man was gone!
 
After that, Hua Cheng’s right eye brought Xie Lian elsewhere in the caverns, sweeping through countless other tunnels. However, the white-clad figure was nowhere to be seen. Xie Lian was puzzled and pulled away slightly.
“Could he have left?”
Now that White No-Face had seen Xie Lian, he would stop at nothing to harass him. Others might not understand this, but Xie Lian knew it all too well.
“Maybe our earlier speculation was correct,” Hua Cheng said. “His top priority is to use the Kiln to regain his supreme status, so he left ahead of us.”
Hua Cheng’s voice was right in Xie Lian’s ear. He only came back to himself when he heard those words, and he realized that Hua Cheng’s face was cupped in his hands. Xie Lian had pulled him down, making the taller man bend slightly at the waist. Xie Lian quickly let go.
“We have to stop him!” he cried.
Their mission was to prevent any candidates with the potential to become supremes from reaching Mount Tonglu. They’d run from the white-clad man earlier, but now that the situation was clear, they rushed through the countless divine statues in search of him. Before long, they reached the spot where he’d disappeared.
Other than some divine statues, there was not a single thing to be found. Silver shards of light covered the ground, and the little butterflies that hadn’t been completely destroyed by the shock wave were fluttering their broken wings. Xie Lian bent down; even if he didn’t know whether it would help, he still wanted to cup them in his hands.
Just then, he heard Hua Cheng’s voice from behind him. “…Gege, come over here by my side.”
His voice was laced with suppressed anger, but the rage wasn’t directed at Xie Lian.
Xie Lian looked up and saw that Hua Cheng’s blazing gaze was trained on a divine statue ahead of them.
The statue was covered head to toe with a white veil, but the general shape of it could be made out. One section protruded sharply; it seemed to be pointing a sword.
A patch of caustic red at the sharp tip of the sword’s point was spreading, staining, soaking the white silk veil.
There was blood on the sword!
Clearly there was something strange about this divine statue. Perhaps the original was no longer under the white silk and had been replaced with something else. Xie Lian leapt to his feet and stood at Hua Cheng’s side, pointing the sword Fangxin at the strange form. Hua Cheng wore a dark expression. He gave a wave, and the white veil fell with the motion.
Xie Lian’s pupils shrank.
It was a divine statue of Xie Lian beneath the white veil—a God-Pleasing Crown Prince statue. There was a sword in one hand, a flower in the other, and a smile on its face. But there were traces of blood on that smile.
The blood had come from the sword in its hand. A boy dangled there, pierced through. The boy had bandages covering his head and blood covering his body.
It was Lang Ying!
 Chapter 94: 
 From the Sealed Kiln, One Supreme Shall Emerge 
LANG YING’S HEAD had drooped to the side as though he’d lost consciousness. When Xie Lian saw it was him, he moved to save him without thinking—but he stopped dead in his tracks as his mind caught up with the situation. There was no one besides White No-Face here, so why would Lang Ying suddenly appear?
Seeing that the pure, holy statue of the God-Pleasing Crown Prince had been corrupted by dripping blood, Hua Cheng was obviously furious. His dark expression radiated rage, and the scimitar Eming exuded a chilling aura.
“Get the hell down,” he said.
With that, “Lang Ying’s” drooping head actually heeded and righted itself. He blinked open his eyes, then slowly pulled himself off the sword and dropped to the ground.