Capturing My Demon King Costar

MY COSTAR CLIMBS THE WALL OF MEMORY

Looking out the dark, sand-covered wasteland doesn't get them any closer to finding Si Wang, or whatever remains of Modu.

"Which way?" Yao Shen asks.

Xin Hulei looks ahead, and then turns to look behind him. "We should be facing the gates from this director, so, if we keep going forward, eventually, we'll stumble on what's left of the city."

That sounds like the only thing they have to go out on, so Yao Shen says nothing and starts walking forward, Xin Hulei and Tan Liansi silently flanking him.

He can't even imagine how it must be for them, to return after such a long absence, and to find not even e destructed wreck, but nothing at all, as if their entire city, their entire world, was wiped clean from the face of the Underworld.

The howling winds keep beating around them, picking up strength with each step. Yao Shen wraps his arms around himself tighter.

After some time, he thinks he can hear voices in the wind, he closes his eyes, trying to block out their words. He knows where this is going, from his experience traipsing through the wastes with Xie Bian and Tan Liansi that one time.

She curses under her breath. "Not again."

Yao Shen is inclined to agree. He has no intention of revisiting the experience.

"Ignore them, they might be words, but they might just be the wind," Xin Hulei says, his eyes unreadable and focused on the expanse of black sand in front of them. "Don't try to make sense of their words, do the opposite, focus in all the ways the sound are like gibberish."

That's easier said than done. The human brain is hardwired to identify familiar patterns, in everything, including sound. No matter how much Yao Shen ignores it, he can't help twitching every time an oddly familiar voice calls out, "Yao Shen!" in that same, croaky, authoritative tone he's so familiar with.

One would think that learning about the existence of reincarnation, and having definite proof and knowledge about one of his own past lives, would soften the blow of the shitty hand he was dealt in this one -- but it really doesn't.

Yao Shen doesn't feel any better about his shitty childhood. Not about the dead mother that his father always hung over his head like a threat, or the mean drunk of a father who never hit him, but often made Yao Shen wish he would, just so that he could finally stop living in terror of the day it finally happened.

The day never came, and sometimes Yao Shen feels as if he's still living under the shadow of that raised fist. All the more threatening because it never falls, and so its promise of violence lives on indefinitely.

Yao Shen notices the dark, inexplicable turn of his thoughts, but he's unable to do anything about it.

There's no point about ruminating about these things now, but Yao Shen feels compelled to pick at the scabs of his old wounds. The more he ignores the compulsion the more the urge grows.

A warm touch on the back of his neck snaps him out of his tortuous line of thinking. "You're bleeding," Xin Hulei says softly, wiping his thumb across Yao Shen's bottom lip.

Yao Shen didn't notice, but when he touches his lips his fingertips come away wet with red.

"Your hands too," Tan Liansi says, pointing at his palms, cut up in neat rows of angry red crescents in the shape of his nails.

Yao Shen has no memory of hurting himself.

Xin Hulei lowers his head to brush a soft kiss across his bloodied lips. "Don't listen, it's the wastes."