"I appreciate your cooperation", Hua Cheng smirked sharply, before he continued. "First of all, I'd like you to explain how you knew I'm new here", he ordered, making sure to use his most authoritative voice.
The creature looked a bit surprised by the question, but proceeded to answer without much of a delay.
"Because everybody within this barrier knows every demon of your rank on sight. The honoured sir doesn't look familiar to me at all, so he clearly must have grown up outside the safety of the barrier. It is my pleasure to welcome you home", the shop owner said with a sweeping bow.
Hua Cheng's first thought was that he hadn't realised he was dealing with a mentally confused person who believed in the existence of demons and magic, however he had to admit to himself that he didn't have a much better explanation for the horns that had suddenly sprouted from his scalp. Well, he could have been drugged and be experiencing severe hallucinations right now, but he knew his mind was far too clear and focused for that to be a viable option.
Thus, Hua Cheng ignored the talk about demons, but decided to entertain the things the man-... thing was saying for now and to just go along with it.
"My rank?", Hua Cheng asked.
This time, the creature seemed to be stunned into silence, so Hua Cheng raised his left eyebrow after there hadn't been an answer for a few moments.
"Forgive me, my lord. I thought you would have been taught about our society even outside the barrier, but I shouldn't have assumed. I apologise. To keep it short, well, since the honoured sir is lacking any sort of beastly features, he is easily identifiable as a demon of the three upper ranks. On top of that, the red eyes clearly identify the honoured sir as one of the direct descendants of the Red Emperor, an incredibly rare sight even among the upper ranks."
"The who?", Hua Cheng asked, his eyebrows shooting up on his forehead.
He'd never particularly cared about his blood family, and he still didn't. He didn't know any relatives after all, and why should he care about strangers? There was no reason to. He had his gege and their children. Those were, and would forever be, the only people he cared about. The only reason he asked was because he needed to know if this emperor could become a threat.
"T-the Red Emperor. He was the one who created this city and the barrier surrounding it. He's also the one who made this place a safe haven for demons like me, and the even lower ranking ones. We were always looked down upon by the demons of the upper ranks, because of our appearance and weaker powers. He was the strongest of all the demons in existence, but he let his guard down around the wrong person and got killed because of that. That happened a few hundred years ago, and since then, the title of emperor is carried by whoever can kill the current emperor. I guess that sort of transfer of power just became a tradition at some point."
Hua Cheng could only sneer at the foolishness of that Red Emperor. Emperors or kings like Hua Cheng himself simply couldn't afford to let their guard down around anybody, ever. Hua Cheng himself didn't even let his guard down around his gege; not because he didn't trust him, but because some outside force could always pose a threat to them.
Either way, Hua Cheng felt like he was wasting time with this conversation when he could do research that could actually help his situation.
"I only have two more questions for now", he stated, instead of sharing his thoughts regarding the emperor.
"Please, ask away sir."
"Where can I find an inn in this area?", Hua Cheng asked.
The creature blinked at him in confusion.
"An... inn?"
Hua Cheng gave an impatient nod.
"I'm afraid I don't know what a... an inn is", he said, and seemed to be honestly confused.
"It's a place where you can rent a room for a night, or several nights", Hua Cheng said, frustrated that he had to explain such a simple thing to a grown man- creature, thing, whatever.
"Oh! We call that a brothel here. There is one right down the stre-"
"I am not asking about brothels", Hua Cheng snarled, properly angry now.
Being at the receiving end of such a vicious snarl made the creature jump in obvious fright.
"I-I apologise if I off-f-fended the esteemed s-s-sir, but I t-truly do not know w-what you mean by an inn. B-b-b-brothels are the o-only es-stablishments w-we have where a-anyone can rent a room f-f-for a night."
It was at this point that Hua Cheng realised it would make sense for this city not to have any travellers. If this was a safe haven for demons, obviously they would all set up permanent residences within that barrier. There would be no need for inns and such. Looking at it like this, it made sense for this creature not to know the concept of a normal inn.
"Let me change the question then", Hua Cheng said with an exasperated sigh. "How can I purchase a residence here?"
Understanding lit up in the ox creature's eyes, and he perked up a bit.
"Oh that's easy! We make deals. It can be any sort of deal as long as both parties agree to it", he replied readily.
Hua Cheng was having a rather strong gut feeling that there was more to 'making a deal' than simply shaking hands. However, the creature didn't give Hua Cheng the time to ask the obvious question before he proceeded talking.
"As it just so happens, a good friend of mine and his wife have built a new manor for themselves since they're expecting their first offspring and wanted to expand their home. They've been looking for someone to make a deal with over their previous home since last week. I can introduce you if you like", the creature said, sounding almost excited.
Hua Cheng thought about the offer for a few moments. It didn't seem advisable to go into any 'it just so happened' sort of situation without proper precautions. If this creature led Hua Cheng to his friends, Hua Cheng would be outnumbered. The pregnant wife didn't have to exist, and could be any other creature. However, there was no motive to lure Hua Cheng into any sort of trap. Well, the creature had said he'd identified Hua Cheng as a demon of the upper ranks and he also said that the upper ranks looked down on the lower ranks, which this creature was obviously a part of. So the motive could be revenge.
Though the creature had also recognised that Hua Cheng had only just arrived here and didn't know anything about this place. While this could be disregarded by some and exploited as well, this creature didn't strike Hua Cheng as that sort of character. He was rather confident in his ability to see through other people's bullshit as well, so eventually he decided to take the risk.
"Alright. But first I'd like you to answer my last question", Hua Cheng said with a bit of a frown.
"Of course, my lord."
"What's your name?"
The creature flushed a bright red upon hearing the question, and bowed several times in a rapid manner, all the while apologising before he finally straightened up again to actually answer Hua Cheng's question.
"My name is Ming Yi."
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The walk towards Ming Yi's friend's current residence was a surprisingly short one. The building Ming Yi walked up to was built in the same strange design as all the other houses Hua Cheng had seen so far, so he couldn't help but feel a little glad to get to know how the inside of these strange buildings looked as well.
After Ming Yi had knocked on the door, a crea- demon with obvious horse features opened the door. From the way that thing behaved, it was clear that it was a servant to Ming Yi's friends. It looked rather bizarre, not only because of its too big horse ears and strangely shaped jaw, but also because of the dress it was wearing. It wasn't a robe of any sort he'd ever seen before, but it did have a high collar, tight arms and waist, and the hem was indeed flowy, not unlike some variations of the robes he was familiar with. It was the finer details in the dress that threw him off; mostly because the chest area of the creature was covered with white fabric, while the rest of her dress was black, and seemed to be made out of one single piece of cloth with no apparent way to open it. And given how tight it was, it should have been impossible to put it on without tearing it open in the process.
Either way, it wasn't like Hua Cheng really cared what other people did or wore, so once he acknowledged the weirdness of the dress to himself, he simply ignored it.
The horse creature led them into a sort of sitting room, and politely asked them to take a seat and wait while she went to fetch the master of the house. Fortunately, they didn't have to wait long before she returned with both her master and her mistress.
The master of the house appeared to be a demon of the three upper ranks, but was otherwise unremarkable, at least based on his looks. He had long and straight black hair, very pale skin and, apart from the glowing blue eyes, looked as any other human did. His wife however was more interesting to look at.
She had pale hair, almost as white as Ruoye's hair was, and she had pink eyes; a colour that was certainly unnatural. Her skin was rather pale too, which was why the mark on her forehead wasn't easily missed. It didn't look like a birthmark, it was much too intricate for that. It looked more like it had been drawn there, with a very fine brush, but at this point Hua Cheng wouldn't be surprised if she was indeed born with it since it was the exact same shade of pink as her eyes were. But apart from all of these things, there was simply an aura about her that just screamed 'ethereal'. Her appearance was indeed what convinced Hua Cheng that he hadn't just fallen into the hands of a rambling madman.
"Thank you for seeing us on such short notice", Ming Yi said upon seeing them in the doorway, and rose in order to greet them warmly. So of course Hua Cheng had to rise as well.
"These are YanLi and ZiXuan", Ming Yi introduced his friends.
Hua Cheng nodded to them in greeting.
"WuMing. A pleasure to meet you.", he introduced himself, forcing himself to be polite for once.
After these annoying pleasantries were over and done with, everyone took a seat again before Ming Yi explained the situation.
The couple was delighted by Hua Cheng's interest in their former residence, and offered to show it to him right away. Thus, after Hua Cheng agreed, ZiXuan promptly stood up and walked over towards the door. However, instead of walking through it, he started running two of his fingers over it in some patterns Hua Cheng couldn't quite make out, though he admittedly felt rather confused by the man's action.
Not too much time had passed when a pattern within two circles suddenly started to glow on the wooden door, and for once Hua Cheng had to make a true effort to keep his facial expression under control.
Whatever the demon had done, it surprised nobody but Hua Cheng, and Ming Yi and YanLi simply stood up once it started glowing, and walked over towards the door as well, as if this was a normal occurrence. So of course, Hua Cheng pretended this was entirely normal as well, and followed them towards the door.
Once everyone was there, ZiXuan opened the door, and walked through it, followed by everyone else. The only strange part was that there was not the hallway on the other side of the door like there had previously been; instead there was a wide street, clearly in some other part of the city. It was the second time this day that Hua Cheng had stepped through some sort of portal and he was frankly beginning to feel fed up with this disorienting bullshit.
They had apparently stepped right in the front of the house in question however, so Hua Cheng couldn't complain too much. He didn't really like the cramped style of the city, since one house stood adjacent to the next and there wasn't even space for a piece of paper in between two entirely separate houses. The design was really terrible in that regard.
The inside of this house didn't do much for Hua Cheng either; it was indeed very small with only two bedrooms, one of which had very clearly been used by the servant, and one bathroom on the upper floor, while there was an odd mixture of living and dining space on the lower floor, with only the kitchen as another separate room. There wasn't even a cellar.
No wonder these two had to move.
"Which sort of deal did you have in mind for this?", Hua Cheng asked, once the tour of the house was done.
"Well", YanLi spoke somewhat sheepishly. "We were hoping that you would agree to babysit every once in a while in exchange for the house."
"I wasn't planning on staying here longer than necessary", Hua Cheng said, figuring it would be best to at least be honest about this much.
"Only for as long as you live here?", YanLi asked again.
Hua Cheng mulled it over for a bit, but eventually agreed. After all, he had kids of his own, babysitting wouldn't be a hard job, only an annoying one. But he was sure he could deal with it every once in a while if he had a roof above his head in exchange for that.
Once he'd agreed, ZiXuan pulled out a strange, glittering piece of parchment, and wrote the deal on it. Obviously Hua Cheng still couldn't read the foreign characters, which put him in the unfortunate position of having to trust that whatever was written on there, was indeed what they had agreed on. Once he was done writing, both YanLi and Hua Cheng had to sign the deal off, but since YanLi went first, without any sort of hesitation, Hua Cheng figured that at least that much was safe.
Eventually, he decided he would play along for now, though if it turned out they had scammed him into something else entirely, well, he could still kill them off for revenge.
After Hua Cheng was done putting his signature on the shimmering parchment, the thing disappeared into thin air, while he felt a strange sensation around the base of his left pinky, almost as if an invisible string had been firmly tied around it. He figured it had something to do with the deal, and that YanLi's pinky was tied to the other end of that invisible string. Hua Cheng figured that these creatures took their deals very seriously, and he wasn't sure he wanted to find out what happened if one end failed to uphold such a deal. He was too much out of his depth with all this magic... which was apparently real. Hua Cheng truly needed to wrap his head around this whole concept first, before he could start learning just what in the world was going on within his kingdom.
But first of all, he needed to write a letter to his beloved gege to let him know he'd been severely delayed.
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Nobody guessed Ming Yi ☹ poor guy is about the only name that hasn't been mentioned yet I think lololol
Soooooo if you follow me on twitter, you already know this but I am very worried about not being able to interact with you guys anymore if the site does go down so... yeah, I set up a new insta (which is on private for reasons but don't let that bother you pls lol) and a new tumblr account. I'd be really happy if you follow me on those, just in case 😭
Instagram: @_nana8493_
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/nana8493