Hua Cheng seemed to have snickered, but Xie Lian didn’t notice. His heart was busy racing as he unsheathed a cold and shimmering verdant blade at least four feet long, marveling as he did so.
“Has gege found any that he particularly fancies?” Hua Cheng spoke up again.
Xie Lian’s entire face was bright and glowing, and he was unable to stop singing praises. “Yes! Yes! All of them!”
“Originally, I was thinking gege didn’t have any useful weapons on hand, so if there was anything here you fancied you could just take it for yourself,” Hua Cheng said. “But since gege likes them all, I’ll give them all to you.”
“No, no, no, there’s no need,” Xie Lian quickly said. “I have no use for weapons anyway.”
“Really?” Hua Cheng said. “But I clearly see that gege loves swords?”
“Liking them doesn’t mean I have to own them,” Xie Lian said. “I haven’t used one in years. Just looking makes me happy. Besides, I’d have nowhere to put them if you gave them all to me.”
“That’s easy to solve,” Hua Cheng replied. “I’ll give this entire armory to you.”
Xie Lian took that as a joke and grinned. “There’s no way I could take away a room this big.”
“No need to take it away,” Hua Cheng said. “I’ll give you the property too. Just come visit when you’re free.”
“No, it’s okay,” Xie Lian said. “An armory requires constant maintenance. I’d hate to neglect the weapons.”
Xie Lian placed the sword carefully back onto its holder and said nostalgically, “Once upon a time, I owned an armory like this too, but it was burned down. All of these weapons are precious devices to be desired; you have to cherish them, San Lang.”
“That’s easy too,” Hua Cheng said. “If I’m free, I can help gege maintain the armory.”
Xie Lian laughed. “Well, I certainly don’t have the guts to ask My Lord the Ghost King to do chores for me.”
All of a sudden, Jun Wu’s warning right before he left for this mission echoed in Xie Lian’s mind: “The scimitar Eming is a cursed blade, a blade of misfortune. To forge such an evil weapon would require terrifyingly cruel sacrifice and bloody determination. Do not touch it, and do not let it touch you either. If you do, the consequences will be unimaginable.”
Xie Lian contemplated but still decided to ask in the end. “But San Lang, none of these weapons are a match against your scimitar Eming, right?”
Hua Cheng cocked his left brow. “Oh? Has gege heard of my scimitar too?”
“I’ve heard some rumors,” Xie Lian replied.
Hua Cheng snickered. “I bet they weren’t nice rumors. Did someone tell you that my scimitar was forged by an evil, bloody ritual? That I sacrificed living humans?”
Sharp as always. Xie Lian responded, “Nothing too horrible. Everyone has negative gossip said about them, but not everyone would believe it. But perhaps I might have the honor of seeing the legendary scimitar Eming?”
“You’ve actually already seen it, gege,” Hua Cheng said.
He took a few steps closer to Xie Lian and said softly, “Look, gege, this is Eming.”
The eye upon the scimitar that hung at his waist rattled as it swiveled in Xie Lian’s direction. It might’ve been Xie Lian’s imagination, but he thought that silver eye was subtly squinting into a crescent.
Chapter 16:
Borrowing Luck, Night Crawl in Paradise Manor
AND SO XIE LIAN bent at the waist and greeted it. “Hello there.”
Hearing the greeting, that eye squinted harder, turning itself into a full crescent, like it was smiling. The large eye spun left and right, extremely lively, as if it wasn’t just a pattern carved onto a scimitar hilt but the real, living eye of a human.
Hua Cheng’s lips curled upwards. “Gege, it likes you.”
Xie Lian raised his head. “Really?”
Hua Cheng raised his brow. “Really. It’s too lazy to spare a single glance at those it doesn’t like. In fact, there are very few that Eming actually likes.”
Hearing this, Xie Lian smiled at Eming. “Thank you, then.” He turned to Hua Cheng. “I rather like it too.”
At his words, the eye blinked madly, and the scimitar started shaking all of a sudden from where it hung at Hua Cheng’s waist. He reprimanded it, “No.”
“‘No,’ what?” Xie Lian asked.
“No,” Hua Cheng reiterated.