MXTX Author Notes:
This book is set in the past timeline; this is about the first banishment after the fall of Xianle. Follows after Book 2. Not too long~
Ch.181: Lantern Night; Penny for a Wandering Soul
Xie Lian jolted awake in horror.
His body was drenched in cold sweat from the scare, and he shot up from his rest, burying his face in his hands.
The reason he awoke in shock was because of a dream. Within the dream, both his father and mother had committed suicide, had hung themselves. He saw it, but there was no joy or grief, no tears to flow, and he woodenly prepared himself another white silk band. Just as he was sticking his head into the knot, he saw below there was a white-clad man, wearing a crying-smile mask, jeering at him. His heart jolted, the knot tightened, and a crushing suffocation came. Then he woke up.
It was already daylight outside the window, and from the exterior came a voice.
"Your Highness! Are you awake?"
Xie Lian answered offhandedly, "I'm awake!"
It was only after having violently panted for a good while that he realized he wasn't sitting on a futon. Instead, it was a sheet of straw mat under his body. Although it was layered with many batches of hay, extraordinarily soft, to him it still wasn't quite comfortable. Even now, he still wasn't used to such simple and crude bedding.
The one who called for him just now was Feng Xin. He went out early in the morning and had just brought back food, and was urging Xie Lian from the outside to go take his meal. Xie Lian acknowledged him and crawled up.
That sense of suffocation in the dream was too real, and his hand unconsciously felt his neck. He had only wanted to verify whether there really was a strangulation mark left behind by a knotted white silk band, yet unexpectedly, he actually felt something.
Xie Lian was shaken at first, and he rushed to grab a mirror tossed on the ground not far away. When he looked at his reflection, he realized it was the band of a black collar encircling his neck. Thus, he finally calmed, and remembered everything.
It was the cursed shackle.
Xie Lian's fingers probed at it.
Once banished to become a mortal, other than aging slower than normal humans, there weren't many other privileges. However, when Jun Wu first fabricated Xie Lian's cursed shackle, he still showed some mercy, and left him room for accommodations.
While this cursed shackle locked away his spiritual powers, it also sealed his age and flesh body at the same time, allowing him to neither age nor die. Furthermore, Jun Wu told him: if you manage to ascend again, then everything in your previous life shall be forgiven, and this thing will be removed.
But, to wear such a thing on the body was no different than a criminal whose face was branded as a sinner; no doubt, a bone-deep humiliation. Having thought this, Xie Lian reached out to the side and grabbed a white silk band, ready to pull it over his head. Yet the moment he raised his hand, he suddenly recalled that terrifying feeling of his neck slowly being strangled in his dream, and he hesitated. However, in the end, he still pulled it out and wrapped it thoroughly around his neck and the bottom half of his face before going out.
Feng Xin and Mu Qing were already waiting for him outside. Feng Xin had brought back steaming-hot buns, and Mu Qing was slowly munching at them. Feng Xin passed two over to Xie Lian, but when Xie Lian saw those dull and dry crude buns he lost his appetite. He shook his head, refusing them.
"Your Highness, you have to eat something in the morning. We have to work afterwards, and it's not labour that can be done just sitting around," Feng Xin said.
