The Emperor’s Daily Nitpicking - CH 29

Oswald paused at the sound and held back his disgust as he swept round with his insect lamp. The path under his feet ended here, and there was no longer a visible trail in front of him. It was relaced with a large cluster of trees higher than the height of a person, the branches were thick, sharp, straight upwards, and each one was covered with clumps of fine thorns.

At first glance, it looked like an over-nourished patch of tall thorns, but these thorns were not solitary. The winding vines on either side of the path twisted up the roots of the thorns, almost becoming one with them. The large leaves hung in layers, obscuring the view behind the thorn bushes.

“This is –” Kevin heard Oswald say, “Does the path end here? Where is the tomb of the God Phae?”

Kevin shook his head and stepped forward, bending down to pull something at the side of the road twice. Pulling a few stalks of vines apart, he pointed with his chin and said, “Look – a tablet.”

A copper tablet was halfway revealed in the mud when he looked at the place where his chin pointed

It was unknown how many years ago this square tablet had been buried here. It was covered in a green flower that had mottled and blocked most of the tablet’s surface, leaking a rotting and heavy smell.

Kevin switched the insect lamp in his left hand to his right and hung it directly over the top of the tablet. The yellowish light shone from top to bottom, and some of the carvings appeared vaguely from beneath the rust, but they were too faint to be distinguishable.

“What does it say?” Oswald frowned as he took two steps and crouched directly in front of the tablet. He squinted close and read the tablet for a moment, then leaned his neck back as if giving up and simply raising his hand to cover the surface.

Kevin let out a “tch” as he saw his movement. “You know how to feel the words? What does it say?”

Oswald glanced at him, ignoring him, and slowly moved his fingers, carefully touching the tablet row by row.

It was a little slow because of the heavy rust, and Kevin didn’t stop him, nor was he in a hurry to rush him. He was a little sore from holding the lamp on his arm, so he looked around and simply leaned against the back of the monument and sat on the ground after failing to find a suitable place for support. His elbow was on the top of the tablet so that the insect lamp would hang down, stretching his two folded long legs quite comfortably.

Oswald lifted his eyes and scowled at him before continuing to grope.

After a while, Kevin straightened his legs to change position, kicking His Majesty’s venerable ankle and asking, “Until what rows have you touched?”

“Can you settle down for a while?” Oswald looked sideways at his offending leg from the corner of his eye and reprimanded, “Take away your hoof. Don’t rub it against me.”

Kevin: “…..” Can you be a little more reasonable? There’s a vast difference between kicking and rubbing.

Oswald looked extra impatient after he kicked him for some reason, frowning with a strained face and a look of disinterest. After a few more minutes of work, he finally patted the rusty crumbs on his hands and stood up straight.

“Finished?” Kevin tilted his head to look at him.

“Mm.” The answer from His Majesty the Emperor almost sounded like a nasal grunt. “The tablet says this is the entrance to the passage of the Tomb of the God Phae, and the god’s body lies here. Everyone is not allowed to enter, or they will be considered blaspheming the god and suffer the severest curse.”

He paused and added with an expression that didn’t look too good. “It’s followed by a curse that curses people’s eight generations of ancestors. In short, the intruder will die without a burial site, die without progeny, and so on.”

Kevin raised an eyebrow and said “oh” with an expression of utter indifference, not even a hint of surprise.

The difference in height between the two of them, one standing and the other sitting, was vast. Oswald overlooked the expression on his face for a while before whispering, “You seem to have known the contents in that tablet already.”

“Do I?” Kevin replied casually.

He was a strange man at times, who was full of big and small mysteries but gave the impression that he didn’t really care. He never mentioned anything voluntarily and wouldn’t say anything if you didn’t ask. If you asked, he would cover it up, but not in the slightest way. If you got straight to the point, he would say something like “even a fool would think that’s not true,” or he would just admit it.

It was as if what you thought was important or unimportant didn’t mean anything to him.

“You’ve been here before.” Oswald skipped the questioning and stated it calmly and directly. He simply folded his arms and looked as if he intended to interrogate him on the spot. “You’re well acquainted with the location of Whitehead Hill and Eternal Waterfall. You’re clear about what kind of strange creatures are living in this underground. Now, you can even find the old copper tablet that has been hidden for many years in a short while…..You’ve clearly been here before.”

With his fingers shrouded in the light of the insect lamp, Kevin did not speak, practically acquiescing.

“A place like this is obviously more suited to lose one’s life than for an outing.” Oswald glanced around before adding, “Then, why did you come here before?”

Without waiting for Kevin to say anything, he recalled something. “Your constitution that can’t die unless stabbed in the heart…..must have something to do with this place, right?”

Kevin looked up at his words and raised his eyebrows at him.

“It seems like I’m right.” Oswald’s deep, slow voice continued, “So when you heard the physician say ‘the holy water in the Phae’s altar could lift the petrification disease,’ you easily believed in those words, not even thinking that the legend was in all probability a falsehood. Why? Because your ability comes from this place and may have something to do with the holy water. So, you fully understand how miraculous is the holy water?”

Kevin lazily shifted his posture and commented, “Your logic is quite smooth.”

Oswald: “…..”

From Oswald’s understanding of him, if he didn’t directly reject it, that meant he had guessed something correctly.

Many images suddenly flew through the young Emperor’s mind, from the first time he had met Kevin, to the time when Kevin had lazily sat at the table and enjoyed his afternoon tea while making him spin around, to the rare occasions when Kevin had been serious and told him some rumour stories he had heard from somewhere ……

Although he was reluctant to admit it, the truth was that when he was a young master, he was impatient with Kevin on the one hand and attracted to his certain aura on the other.

When he was young, he was so rebellious, so opposed to heaven, earth and himself, that he didn’t want to think about the reasons for those emotions. But when he thought about it in his adult life, he had an explanation – That so-called special aura …… was probably a sense of calmness beyond age and physical boundaries.

This kind of temperament could easily arouse the instinctive mentality of a child to admire the strong. It was like the inexplicable worship he had for the once invincible God of Light when he read > as a child.

Kevin was at most seventeen or eighteen when he arrived at Pache Manor. He was supposed to be a new recruit to the reserve regiment who had never seen a battle before, but there was no sign of his youthfulness in how he carried himself.

Previously, Oswald had only thought this man had been born with a foul mouth, bad hands, and thick skin and hadn’t seen anything wrong with him. Now that he thought about it …… everything was wrong!

No one was born with a specific character from the time they learnt to speak, and their character was only shaped by experience and exposure. How much experience and exposure can a seventeen or eighteen years old have?

Oswald pondered for a long time, hesitating to speak.

Kevin’s neck was sore from tilting his face up, so he looked down and rubbed the back of his neck. As soon as he did, he saw Oswald suddenly take a step forward and crouch.

He pressed Kevin’s hand on the tablet, narrowed his light, almost transparent eyes, and said in a low voice, “How long have you lived?”

Kevin froze.

The young emperor looked extremely oppressive at this point, and he leaned closer and lowered his voice after finishing this sentence. “I was thinking just now. You’ve already entered the reserve troops when I first saw you, and you seemed to spend all the time afterwards in the barracks. It was almost impossible if you wanted to secretly sneak into the Tomb of the God Phae unnoticed during that time…..So, when did you get in?”

Not used to being so close to people, Kevin subconsciously backed a little, but his back came up against a thorny bush of tangled vines.

Oswald, however, moved closer and pressed forward again. “When you came to the Pache Manor, were you really seventeen years old…..”

His voice was so low that it was almost a whisper, and the tip of his nose was close to touching the tip of Kevin’s nose.

Oswald finished the last few words before he realised that his tone was extremely calm, and his brain was getting excited. He had never seemed to see Kevin like this before, up close and in a towering way.

It wasn’t just condescension in the sense of perspective –

The back of the bastard’s shoulders, which always made people’s teeth itch, rested against the vine stem. Because of the twisted angle, his waist and hips were outlined by the top in a lean silhouette. There was no way back and no way to avoid it; he had to be trapped in such a small area.

It was truly a suppressed stance.

It would have been better if Kevin had been gentle and easy-going, but this man looked like a jerk and was tough. And when he was rarely quiet and expressionless, he had an icy and impenetrable aura.

The occasional sign of softening in such a hard-headed man had an indescribable appeal.

In a moment of inexplicable excitement, it suddenly dawned on Oswald that he had been trying to get into trouble with the man in front of him for a long time, whether it was to provoke him with sarcasm or biting remarks so that he could see such a special side of him.

Because no one else could see it!

The young emperor’s gaze moved for a moment, landing under the tip of Kevin’s nose, then darted up again and spoke slowly. “How many…..other things are you hiding?”

Kevin listened, his gaze straying to the side for a moment, not knowing what he was looking at.

Oswald subconsciously frowned and followed his gaze to nothing in particular except an insect lamp propped on top of the tablet and darkness slightly further away.

The moment he turned his eye again, he noticed that the pinned-down Kevin had quickly regained his frank and calm appearance, and the bastard actually dared to raise his hand and pat his cheek, saying two words in a shamelessly roguish tone. “You guess.”

Oswald: “…..”

Just as the two confronted each other, the Giant Beastman, Dan, led the young lion Ben down the path and yelled as he rounded the corner. “I just knew you guys fumbled through the road here. I’ve seen the insect lamp in your hand – F**k?”

Before the previous sentence was finished, the two men, one large and one small, were already dumbfounded in their places.

Dan’s mouth was open, and he stared dumbfounded at the crouching Oswald, then at Kevin, who was circled and pinned against the vine stem by him. Then, he covered Ben’s eyes, lifted the boy, and turned him around on the spot, using a neutral machine tone to say, “This kid can’t see. He’s blind.”

Oswald: “…..”

Kevin: “…..”

Oswald stood up straight and reached out to pull up the unsteady His Excellency Fassbinder. When he wanted to explain a few words, the soft ground under their feet suddenly shook.

This is one of my favourite moments in the story. Oswald starts to figure out what he wants from Kevin…..and the little nose touch ₍՞◌′ᵕ‵ू◌₎