Right now, the only beings inside the Kiln were one supreme ghost and one god. On the surface, there were only two paths to take: either White No-Face would kill him and break through the Kiln, or they could forget about leaving and remain trapped inside forever.
But there was a third path. If Xie Lian killed himself, became a ghost, and defeated White No-Face, then he could become a supreme and break through the Kiln!
Xie Lian struggled to snap out of his shock. “…What the hell do you want?! Don’t even think about it! Why must you go this far—why would you force me to become a supreme? I’m not as crazy as you! Even if you want me to kill you, we both know that I can’t! And if you feign defeat, the Kiln might not recognize me!”
But White No-Face replied, “Is that right? You can’t defeat me? Don’t be so sure.”
As he spoke, he extended a hand. Thanks to the nearby firelight, Xie Lian could see that he was holding a mask—an exact duplicate of the one White No-Face wore.
“Do you remember this crying-smiling mask?” White No-Face asked. “It suits you well.”
Xie Lian’s eyes bulged. Terror crawled into his mind like a densely packed tide of insects.
“Take it away, take it away…take it away!” he forced out weakly.
White No-Face started to laugh. “It seems Your Highness’s memory isn’t very good. So why don’t you let me help you remember, hmm?”
He had no chance to protest. The tragically pale crying-smiling mask melded with the infinite darkness as it was pressed heavily onto Xie Lian’s face.
Chapter 95:
Penny for a Wandering Soul on Lantern Night
XIE LIAN JOLTED awake in horror.
Drenched in a cold sweat, he shot upright from where he’d been lying and buried his face in his hands.
He’d been jolted awake by a terrible nightmare. In it, his father and mother had committed suicide by hanging themselves with a white silk band. He had stared at their bodies with neither joy nor grief. He’d had no tears left to cry. Instead he woodenly prepared another white silk band for himself. Just as he stuck his head into the knot, he saw a white-clad man standing below him. The man was wearing a cry-smiling mask and was jeering at him. His heart jumped, the knot tightened, and crushing suffocation seized him.
And then, he woke up.
It was already daylight outside the window, and a voice came from the other side.
“Your Highness! Are you awake?”
“I’m awake!” Xie Lian answered offhandedly.
He violently panted for breath for a long while before he realized that he wasn’t sitting on a bed, but a straw mat. Although it was layered with plenty of straw and was unusually soft, it still wasn’t quite comfortable for him. Even now, he wasn’t used to such crude, simple bedding.
The one who had called for him was Feng Xin. He had gone out early in the morning and had just returned with food, and now he was outside urging Xie Lian to take his meal. Xie Lian acknowledged him and crawled out of bed.
The sense of suffocation in his dream was too real, and Xie Lian’s hand unconsciously went to his neck to touch it. He had only wanted to verify whether there really was a strangulation mark left there by a white silk noose—but unexpectedly, he did feel something.
Xie Lian was startled at first, and he pounced to grab a mirror that had been tossed nearby on the ground. When he looked at his reflection, he realized he had been touching the band of the black collar encircling his neck. He finally calmed himself and remembered everything.
It was the cursed shackle.
Xie Lian’s fingers probed at it.
There weren’t many privileges afforded to those banished from the heavens other than their now-mortal forms aging slower than a normal human’s. However, Jun Wu had shown mercy when he made Xie Lian’s cursed shackle and had added some accommodating clauses.
While the cursed shackle locked away Xie Lian’s spiritual powers, it also sealed his age and his physical body—he could neither grow old nor die. Furthermore, Jun Wu had told him this: “Everything in your previous life shall be forgiven if you manage to ascend again, and this shackle will be removed.”
But being forced to wear it was a bone-deep humiliation—it was hardly different from a brand seared onto a criminal’s face. Xie Lian grabbed a white silk band from nearby and moved to pull it over his head. Yet the moment he raised his hand, he recalled the terrifying feeling of slow strangulation from his dream. He hesitated.
In the end, he still wrapped the white silk band 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 on one. Feng Xin passed two over to Xie Lian, but Xie Lian lost his appetite when he saw how bland, dry, and crude they were. He shook his head, refusing them.
“Your Highness, you have to eat something in the mornings. We have to work, and it’s not the kind that gets done sitting around,” Feng Xin said.
Mu Qing didn’t bother looking up. “Yeah. You can turn it down, but there’s nothing else to eat. You can pass out again if you want, but you’ll still have to eat this in the end.”
Feng Xin glared at him. “Watch your tone.”
Xie Lian had only lived as an ascended being for a few years, but he’d forgotten what it was like to need to eat. A few days ago, he had nearly fainted and had only realized afterward that he hadn’t eaten anything for several days. This was the incident Mu Qing was referring to.
Xie Lian didn’t want the two of them to start fighting so early in the morning, so he quickly changed the subject. “Let’s go. We don’t even know if we’ll find any work today.”
Not only had Xie Lian once been royalty, but he had also once possessed a celestial body that needed no sustenance—naturally, he’d never needed to worry about working for a living. But now…although he was still a crown prince, the Kingdom of Xianle was no more; although he was still a god, he had long been banished. Since he was essentially no different from a mortal at present, he needed to take care of all the normal matters of living. The trade of a cultivator was usually ghost-catching and performing religious services, but it wasn’t as though there was a constant supply of nefarious creatures to be exorcized or rituals that needed to be performed every day. Most of the time, they needed to find other temporary work, such as helping transport goods here or performing manual labor there.
But even these odd jobs weren’t always easy to get. There were far too many displaced, impoverished civilians right now, people who wouldn’t even ask for a wage when they saw there was work—they’d be willing to labor in exchange for a bun or half a bowl of rice. They’d swarm the open positions, and Xie Lian and his coterie couldn’t possibly compete. Even if they managed to grab something, after weighing the situation, Xie Lian might decide that someone else needed the work more.
Sure enough, they wandered for half the day and still they found nothing.
“Can’t we find something more stable and respectable to do?” Mu Qing grumbled.
“Rubbish. If something like that existed, we would’ve found it a long time ago,” Feng Xin said. “You need to show your face at any respectable job, and who doesn’t recognize His Highness? How would any stable work remain that way if he was recognized?”
Mu Qing stopped talking, and Xie Lian wrapped the white bandage covering the lower half of the face tighter. Indeed, they would have to flee if anyone recognized who he was, or they’d risk being beaten and chased away. Even if they applied for work as armed escorts, what employer would be comfortable hiring someone with an unknown background who wouldn’t show his face? They couldn’t exactly take up work as hitmen either, so their choices were very limited.
