A while later, more and more cold sweat was rolling down the forehead of the State Preceptor as he divined, and he mumbled, “No wonder…no wonder…no wonder he ruined the Heavenly Ceremonial Procession; no wonder the spirits of the black pagodas grew excited upon sensing him; no wonder the Palace of Xianle was burned too… This…this…this is truly…”
“Truly what?” Xie Lian asked.
The State Preceptor wiped his cold sweat and suddenly backed dozens of meters away. “Your Highness, you really brought something you shouldn’t have up the mountain! That child is toxic! He bears a fate of extinction, the sign of the Star of Solitude!17 He is destined to bring destruction to all save for himself—truly the kind that evil loves most! Whoever touches him will have misfortune befall them, and whoever gets close will lose their life!”
Before he even finished, there was a loud scream. Honghong-er leapt to his feet, rushing the State Preceptor to headbutt him.
Although his voice was young and tender, his screams were filled with rage, as if his heart were filled to the brim with inexhaustible pain and despair. The sound made the hearts of many of those present squeeze. That young child was covered in injuries, yet he tore and lashed out like a red-eyed rabid dog, violent and aggressive to the extreme.
The Deputy State Preceptors blocked Honghong-er, and the State Preceptor backed away, yelling, “Make him leave the mountain, hurry! Don’t touch him, I mean it! That fortune is too toxic; don’t touch him!”
The Deputy State Preceptors hurriedly moved aside, and Mu Qing and Feng Xin didn’t know whether to act. Seeing that everyone was avoiding him like he was poisonous vermin, the child was shaken and started thrashing even harder, biting and screaming with all his might.
“I’m not! I’m not!! I’M NOT!!!”
Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped around his waist, encircling his small form. A voice came from above his head.
“You’re not. I know you’re not. Don’t cry, now. I know you’re not.”
The young child pressed his lips closed tightly, grabbing on to the pair of snow-white sleeves around his waist with a desperate grip. He forced himself to hold back for a long time, but in the end, he couldn’t. A stream of tears suddenly rolled down from that round, black eye, and he burst out into sobs.
Xie Lian embraced him from behind and reiterated with conviction, “It’s not you. It’s not your fault.”
Honghong-er whipped around, buried his face in Xie Lian’s chest, and wailed.
This wailing contained no words, utterly meaningless, and was nothing like the sound of crying, but was nevertheless hair-raisingly dreadful. Without looking at the source, it would sound like the desperate cries of a full-grown man breaking down, or the struggling of a small beast on the brink of death with its throat slit open by a knife—as if only by immediate death could it be relieved. Anyone could make such a sound, but it shouldn’t be coming from a child of ten years. Everyone was shaken.
A while later, the State Preceptor said, “I mean it. It’s best if you let go.”
Feng Xin finally came to his senses and exclaimed, “Your Highness! Let go! Be careful of…” But in the end, he didn’t have the heart to continue.
“It’s fine,” Xie Lian said.
Zhu-shixiong, however, was quite concerned for His Highness’s welfare and saw that Honghong-er was smearing blood and snot all over Xie Lian’s white robes, so he ran over to pull at the young child, berating him, “Hey, kid, stop it!”
Yet the harder he pulled, the harder that young child held on to Xie Lian. He refused to let go no matter what, using both his hands and feet to grip on and screaming in anguish. Several more people came forward to try and tear him away, but that just made him hang on to Xie Lian like a little monkey. Xie Lian found it both funny and pitiful. He held Honghong-er with one hand, gently rubbing up and down that tiny emaciated back to comfort him, while raising the other hand.
“Never mind. Don’t worry, let him be.”
Some moments later, sensing that the child in his arms had stopped struggling and quieted down, Xie Lian asked the people close by in a low whisper, “Was anyone else hurt in the fire at the Palace of Xianle?”
“No,” Mu Qing replied. “We were the only ones inside at the time.”
As the Palace of Xianle was burned to a crisp, Xie Lian naturally could no longer stay there. After making sure it was only the building that burned and not any of the people, those who came to help extinguish the fires started to clean up the area, feeling rather distraught from all the charred precious gems and treasures.