Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 55. Kill.
“Eh? This sound?” one of the gate guards in charge of making space on the main street glanced back, then gasped when he saw two riders galloping towards him at a speed bordering three hundred kilometers per hour. “The gate! Hurry up and open the gate!” he sent his yell two kilometers ahead with the aid of his Qi and at the same time, hurriedly got out of the way. A mere moment later, the two riders struck past him, riding neck and neck, and continued charging towards the now opening gate of the Grand Palace.
“That was… the Grand Yimar?” the guard mumbled to himself, finding it difficult to believe that a dignified persona like a Grand Yimar would do something like racing through the streets of a major city. Was there perhaps a really urgent matter the Grand Yimar needed to attend? Yes, that needed to be it; nothing else would make much sense otherwise.
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“Slow down!” Mustafa shouted to his son as they were approaching the gate of the Grand Palace. He could tell they would find it hard to stop in time if they rode through the gate at full speed thanks to his good eyesight and so he wanted to cut the race short, alas… Arslan didn’t appear to be slowing down at all.
There was little time to exchange more words, so Mustafa could only click his tongue and follow suit. He and Arslan stormed past the gate at the same time and entered the large courtyard. The two of them pulled their reins and made their horses attempt to stop. Regrettably, the courtyard didn’t have enough open, unobstructed space to allow a horse to come to a stop from the speed of three hundred kilometers per hour; moreover, Hisan horses weren’t like War Horses from the south. They were more agile and could change directions easier, but when it came to putting breaks they were unable to simply turn to the side, stomp with their hoofs and rip the ground apart in order to slow down as their southern cousins would do in case of an emergency.
“I should have slowed down sooner!” Arslan only now understood why his father had told him to put breaks earlier. He wanted to win this race too much though, so he hadn’t listened to him. His father would surely be able to save him before they smashed into the wall of the building ahead of them, but their horses would end up injuring themselves quite badly… he really should have listened to his father immediately and not been so stubborn!
Mustafa sighed a little with a helpless smirk on his face. He roused his Qi and swept out with his hand, releasing a tempest of wind that acted like a cushion and brought their horses to stop before they crashed. He didn’t hold onto his mount with his legs though and didn’t resist the pressure of wind, instead allowing it to carry him out of the saddle and a few dozen meters backward. With the same helpless smile, he extended his right hand and swiftly grabbed his son, who had been unable to resist the wind and got blown out of the horseback by the tempest.
“Really.” Mustafa chuckled as he hugged his son against his chest and landed gently on the stone surface of the courtyard. “Do I need to be more harsh with you for you to listen? Am I spoiling you a bit too much, hmm?” he asked with a laugh, meanwhile sparing a brief glance at the two horses that successfully stopped without injuring themselves and were now looking at the two of them somewhat grudgingly.
That was another difference between Hisan horses and the southern War Horses; one would find it extremely hard to convince the former ones to charge head-first into an enemy army, while the latter ones had it in their blood. When in large numbers, a stampede of War Horses could lay waste to an average human army on its own, not to mention when they actually had skilled riders on their backs.
“… I’m sorry, father,” Arslan said without raising his head. He was feeling bad about not listening immediately; it was good that his father made it so that nothing bad happened, but it still was his own fault for creating a dangerous situation. “I won’t do it again. I promise to listen to you,” he forced himself to say more loudly than before, his heart still beating fast from all the adrenaline. He didn’t have enough time to settle down from that crazy ride and his thoughts were still all over the place, but more than anything else Mustafa’s words made him feel extremely guilty. He surely wouldn’t do anything without his father’s permission ever again; he wanted his father to remain the same person he loved so much and not to become some strict teacher who never smiled or fooled around.
“As long as you understand,” Mustafa said with satisfaction and tousled Arslan’s hair. He suspected that even if he wanted to he wouldn’t have been able to be too hard on his son, so it was good that Arslan knew how to reflect on his mistakes. “Our men and Yimar Sharu should be here soon. Let’s groom our horses until then. We should probably give them a nice snack to eat too,” he suggested lightheartedly, his tone clearly suggesting that he had already forgiven his son for his unruly behavior.
“Mhm,” Arslan nodded with his face hidden in Mustafa’s shirt. He was relieved his father wasn’t too angry with him, so after being let down onto the ground he quickly cooled down and wasn’t feeling
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At the same time, in one of the private sectors of the bathhouse of the Grand Palace.
“What is it again?” the chamberlain asked with a frown when his servant came in while he was relaxing in the hot water filled with many aromatic oils. “I told you not to disturb me unless the Grand Yimar appeared out of nowhere or fell from the skies,” he barked at the servant, growing seriously displeased with him. He could forgive the first interruption of his daily routine since the gifts he had received into the harem turned out to be of highest quality, but what could be so important for it to require his immediate attention once again? If the matter brought to him was something silly, then he would personally see to whoever wanted him disturbed to be punished.
“U-uh… the Grand Yimar Mustafa the Humble has just arrived…” the servant said in a cracking voice, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. How could he not have been aware that the chamberlain would have had gotten angry at him? However, the Grand Yimar was really here; what else could he do?
“What did you just say?” the chamberlain sat down abruptly, no longer leaning lazily against the side of the bath. Was this servant jesting with him? The letter they had received had clearly stated that one of the three Grand Yimars would arrive in ten days; since there had been no storms on the Sea of Betrayals, the date shouldn’t have changed by more than half a day at most. The preparations to receive the Grand Yimar were almost complete, but them being almost complete was very different from actually being complete! It was a disaster!
“The Grand Yimar just rode into the western courtyard with his son and a thousand members of his White Guard,” the servant informed once again, this time acting with a little more cool. He had gotten a bit nervous when the chamberlain had gotten angry with him, but he knew his master wasn’t an unreasonable person. Since the news of the Grand Yimar’s arrival was true, he wouldn’t be forced to face any whimsical consequences of disturbing his bath.
“Deliver the orders for me, as fast as you can,” the chamberlain said while hurriedly drying himself off with a towel. “The top priority is to finish preparing the rooms for the Grand Yimar, his son and his men. Leave everything else for after that’s done, and remember to get everything else done right afterward too!” he finished saying, put his clothes on directly from the interspatial ring on his finger and ran out of the baths. As the one managing the Grand Palace, he needed to greet the Grand Yimar personally and he already was late to do that! He couldn’t be blamed since the Grand Yimar arrived to suddenly, but would the person himself, and would Yimar Sharu care for reason in their anger?
“I shouldn’t have left the last preparations for tomorrow, I should have had everything done days ago,” the chamberlain thought to himself as he hurried towards the western courtyard. He needed to find something to occupy the Grand Yimar with for at least half an hour so the servants and slaves could finish working on the rooms, but what could he do? Should he take them to the female part of the main harems since the male part wasn’t in the most presentable state? Or should he bring them to see those two they received from Yimar Aeri? He couldn’t quite choose between the two options.
He slowed down from the reckless sprint when he arrived at the courtyard and saw the tailed of the famous White Guard entering through the gate. He also quickly spotted the Grand Yimar Mustafa; the only person in the whole group that had some gold sewed onto his otherwise white clothes. “It looks like Yimar Sharu was riding behind them, thank you Rala…” he thought with relief. He could hope to be forgiven his tardiness by the Grand Yimar, but Yimar Sharu wasn’t one to easily forgive any mishaps, may they be intentional or not.
“Rala Salar, Grand Yimar,” the chamberlain greeted respectfully and bowed deeply after approaching Mustafa. “This servant apologizes and asks your forgiveness, Grand Yimar. The accommodation for you and your men will be ready in half an hour,”
“Rala Salar,” Mustafa said calmly and flicked two fingers without raising his hand, calling the man in front of him to straighten up. “It matters not, we arrived earlier than planned. You should be the chamberlain here, am I right? Have someone lead my men to the stables and have them shown around until everything is prepared,”
“Yes, Grand Yimar. It will be done,” the chamberlain said and bowed once again, this time more briefly. He tried is best not to show the relief on his face or in his voice, but he could ill hide how glad he was that the Grand Yimar Mustafa turned out to be a reasonable person. He stepped to the side for a moment and gave the orders to his aides, some of which had smartly begun gathering at the courtyard along with many servants under their supervision.
After he was done, he walked back up to the Grand Yimar, in his heart rejoicing that he had at least done a good job picking and training his subordinates. Were it not for how well the Grand Palace operated under his administration, his men wouldn’t have gathered here so promptly and he would have needed to personally oversee all little things down the line. As it was, however, he only needed to give his people simple instructions and everything would be carried out quickly and efficiently.
“How can your servant be of use to you, Grand Yimar?” he asked, bowing respectfully for the third time. Mustafa appeared to be a reasonable person with regards to time constraints, but one never knew what pet peeve might cause a reasonable person to suddenly react in an irrational way.
Mustafa considered the answer to this question for a second, then smiled and glanced at his son. “What do you want to do until our rooms are ready?” he asked, guessing that Arslan would like to take a nap soon. Yet, contrary to his expectations…
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“I want to see something interesting.”
was what his son said without any hesitation whatsoever. “You heard him,” he told the chamberlain with a laugh, looking forward to seeing something interesting just as much as his son apparently was despite surely being quite tired after the long ride.
The chamberlain groaned inwardly. He was bright enough to guess the Grand Yimar and his son had ridden here directly from the City of Kaen, so he discarded the option of showing them around the town. While the Grand Yimar might not mind, his son was definitely too young to have enough energy for sightseeing. That left him with the Grand Palace and what was inside… what could a boy looking to be five, at most six years old, who was, more importantly, a son of a Grand Yimar, be interested in or intrigued by? This child had most likely seen all wealth had to offer in Makarash, the City of Palee paled in comparison to the grandiose wealth Mustafa had accumulated in his homeland.
“If this servant can suggest…” the chamberlain began saying as he weighed his choices in his mind. He groaned soundlessly, accepting the imperfections of this plan as he continued. “If you are interested, we received a pair of exquisite boys to our harem this morning. I could bring them to you,” he suggested carefully, trying to subtly dissuade the Grand Yimar from coming along to the harem itself. He didn’t want to him and his son to see the state of the male harem until it was properly cleaned.
“What do you think?” Mustafa asked his son with a smile. Personally, he wouldn’t mind seeing some youths, but it was all up to his son whether he was interested or not.
Arslan frowned a little, then shook his head lightly as he shook off the embarrassment. “Father, what does an ‘exquisite boy’ mean?” he asked straightforwardly, having never heard anyone describe a person in this manner before.
Mustafa chuckled in amusement and replied simply. “In this case, it most probably means a very good looking boy.”
“And there’s two of them? Are they from here?” Arslan picked up quickly, his curiosity aroused. Reian and some other of his father’s subordinates or servants were from the continent and were very good looking, but he didn’t really see any boys like that in Makarash; at most some young men that were being trained to be White Guards.
“They are from the south of the continent,” the chamberlain responded without getting into the details. He would have a hard time telling where precisely those two could have come from based on their appearances alone; he suspected their parents were of mixed heritage, but that wasn’t something he felt he should be attempting to explain in this situation and to a young kid at that.
“Then I want to see them! Let’s go!” Arslan said with renewed excitement. Maybe he could take those two along while traveling if they became friends? He knew quite a few kids his age in the hometown, but everyone always treated him with some distance; only his father and Reian joked with him and scolded him, or told him when they disliked something. Everyone else always went along with everything he wanted and were so boring he didn’t even want to have much to do with them. He would love it if those two turned out different than the others; he really wanted to make some real friends around his own age, or at least friends that weren’t adults.
“Good, let’s go then.” Mustafa nodded with a smile on his face. “Lead the way,” he told the chamberlain, who appeared like he wanted to say something but in the end chose not to and obediently led the way for the two of them.
Not long after their group of three left the courtyard, Yimar Sharu arrived with his men. He hurriedly looked around to see where Mustafa was, and when he failed to spot him he asked one of the chamberlain’s aides about the man’s location.
“Yimar Sharu, the chamberlain took the Grand Yimar and his son to the harems,” the aide answered to the best of his knowledge, opting not to bring up the details he wasn’t familiar with.
“Harems, huh…” Yimar Sharu frowned discontentedly. He wanted to make a better impression on the Grand Yimar and so he had intended to personally show him around, but harems were a different thing. Him joining the Grand Yimar at this point was more likely to incur the man’s displeasure than anything else, so he reluctantly came to terms with the fact that he would need to bide his time and wait for a good opportunity to join the Grand Yimar later on.
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“It should be around here,” Laien said quietly as he gazed at the many doors along the right side of the long corridor. He and Yin had made it here very quickly thanks to Louis’s instructions and luckily didn’t meet any guards or servants along the way; now the only thing left was to find the correct room and deal with the person inside.
They knew the one keeping Nathan here was most likely Tashakir’s older brother from the conversation Tashakir had had with the chamberlain, and they knew that Tashakir’s older brother was a martial master of the third rank from the information Flora had provided them with. An old martial master stuck at the late stage of the third Realm of Heroes wasn’t their match, but at the same time, they couldn’t afford to attack him frontally. Not when he had a potential hostage at hand and not when they couldn’t afford making a ruckus and being discovered.
“We will hear them as we keep going,” Yin whispered and urged Laien on, simultaneously being influenced by Laien’s vague thoughts and realizing that he was once again letting emotions take control of him. Were it not for their shared Spiritual Bond, he would have charged into the room the moment they found it; he really was allowing himself to become too agitated, but the things he had seen in that chamber were simply too infuriating for him to keep his calm without any help.
“Let’s pretend Tashakir sent us to him,” Laien proposed as they walked forward while making sure to keep their steps reasonably silent. “If either of us can get close to him, we can easily kill him by surprise. If not then you attack him first, I will follow up with my magic,” he explained just to be sure, despite knowing that Yin most likely didn’t need him to explain something so basic. The only thing was… Yin didn’t feel to be as calm as he usually was, even when they were in dangerous situations. It was as if… well, maybe not as if Yin wasn’t calm per say, but there was no usual composure to Yin’s emotions and it worried Laien a little bit.
“You do the talking,” Yin said, thus expressing his agreement. He also agreed with Laien that he wasn’t in the best mental state at the moment, but he didn’t say it out loud. “There,” he pointed at the door around fifty meters away from them, his ears picking up the barely audible sound of a bed creaking steadily.
The two of them approached the door hurriedly, then exchanged a quick glanced and took deep breaths to calm themselves down. They smoothed out their expressions, trying their best to imitate how two anxious and scared boys who had been sent to Tashakir’s older brother would behave.
“Right, keys,” Laien remembered all of the sudden. They could really smash the door, neither could he used magic to open them; that would give them away instantly. Sheesh, he was worrying over Yin but instead forgot about something so basic himself. He focused on one of the interspatial rings hanging from his ears and sorted out the possessions of the two door guards. The luck appeared to be on their side as he found not only a keychain, but also what appeared to be a universal key which he took out without delay. He slipped the key into the lock and turned it counterclockwise, opening the door with a relatively loud rasping sound.
“Haa?”
Hearing a displeased harrumph from inside, he pushed the door open slowly, on one hand not to anger the man and on the other to pretend to be timid and scared. As it was, the bed and the man proved to the on the left side of the room which was being steadily revealed to his eyes; and when the bed, the man and Nathan came into his full view, he stopped the door in place, his eyes widening in shock and his face draining of blood and becoming pale white.
He had seen many things in his life; he had killed many people during the past weeks and had had a chance to go around the slave districts on a few occasions. However, this was different from seeing death or watching malnourished and beaten up slaves in their cages. Even he was already having a great amount of trouble keeping his cool, so he definitely couldn’t allow Yin to see what was going on just yet. He was sure that Yin would attack that man instantly if he saw this scene without resolving himself one more time to follow the plan and not act recklessly.
“What the hell are you doing here?” the man asked angrily, pausing his movements for the time being. Yet, the one lying below him, Nathan, remained motionless like a rag doll. His eyes were closed, his breath was shallow and weak, one of his shoulders was growing purple as it most likely had been heavily dislocated; he laid there motionless, with his hips being kept up in the air by the firm grip of the man kneeling behind him.
“We were sent here…” Laien murmured quietly, his voice shaking slightly from anger. “Ta-… Master Tashakir told us to come here…” he added, stuttering a little very much on purpose. He didn’t explain anything else as to where did they come from, why were they in the harems or why was there no servant by their side; the prospect of two kids infiltrating the Grand Palace as harem slaves was so ridiculous that no one would imagine it as being a plausible option and thus, no one would suspect anything.
“Little brother did, huh…” the man frowned while looking at Laien. “You said there was more of you? Open this door so I can see,” he ordered and sat down, letting the limp body of Nathan’s slide flat down onto the bed.
As if being scared to make a fast movement, Laien pushed the door open lightly and revealed Yin’s figure. As for Yin, he kept looking onto the floor with a blank look on his face; he didn’t even look up to see what was onto the bed. From the reaction he felt Laien had had, he could tell that even if he wasn’t going to flip out, his anger would most definitely show on his face and in his eyes.
The man whistled in approval when he saw Yin. “I will save you for later. Go ahead and sit on some chair and watch. I will start with your friend, the one here has gotten way too loose for my taste,” he said with a smirk and grabbed Nathan’s body in half, then threw him off the bed and into the corner of the room.
Laien and Yin both flinched a little at this sight, but neither of them did anything else. After a few seconds of being glared at by the man, Laien began walking towards the bed while shaking visibly while Yin headed to the sofa he could see to the right, just out of the corner of his eye.
“Haha, no need to be scared. You aren’t going to die, probably,” the man said with a laugh, amused by what he interpreted as Laien’s fear. “As long as you relax and tighten up your asshole, I promise not to hurt you too much,” he added and laughed ahead, very happy that his little brother was so mindful to send him those two new kids. The one he had picked up before lasted longer than he had expected, but the fun ended before he was fully satisfied; it was a pity given how entertaining that kid’s reactions were, but oh well, it couldn’t be helped.
“Would you rather undress on your own, or should I rip those clothes off of you?” the man asked with a smirk when Laien stopped just by the bed.
Laien swallowed, barely restraining his killing intent. He almost closed his eyes to hide the disgust that was surely showing in them, then sat on the bed with his legs still on the floor and with his back turned to the naked man.
“Option two, huh,” the man said happily and grabbed Laien by the cloak and the shirt, then pulled him on his lap without suspecting anything. He laughed when Laien attempted to push away by pressing his hands on his chest; the kid had some strength, he was probably a martial practitioner of the third or fourth rank, but how could he be stronger than a martial master?
“You sure you want to go about it the hard way?” he asked, amused by Laien’s pointless struggle. He reached out to his waist to grab the base of his shirt and pull it off, his bloodied cock twitching in anticipation of what was going to happen oh so soon. He didn’t consider Laien to be any danger to him and didn’t grow worried even when Laien’s hands slid against his sweaty chest as he pushed against him and slipped close to his neck; what could a kid possibly do to someone like him?
His guard was down so thoroughly and he was so intoxicated with drugs and alcohol that he failed to even notice when a powerful mass of Qi and spiritual energy gathered in Laien’s hand. He recognized something was very wrong only when the ice-covered hand began piercing through the flesh below his chin, but at that point, it was too late from his to rouse his Qi in time. He was unwilling to die in this ridiculous, bullshit way but he couldn’t prevent it; the sharp ice pierced his mouth and swiftly dug into his brain, making full use of the fact that skull didn’t protect it from down below.
“I’ve never felt so good about killing anyone before,” Laien said with a calm fury ringing in his voice. It had taken a lot of him to bear with what was going on and wait for a perfect opportunity, but he did it, and he was feeling so happy and satisfied with himself that he was beginning to feel slightly scared; was killing someone really supposed to ever be so enjoyable?