This Crayfish Is Not Edible - Chapter 217

Long quickly closed Xia’s eyes. “This place… it has been under attack…” he said gravely.

Xia whispered, removing his lover’s hands, and glanced around in shock. “By who?”

The ghoul suddenly squatted down and touched a huge spider like a crack on the ground. “I think I question should be ‘by what?’”

With a grave look, Long squatted down and glanced at the cracks on the ground. “This was created by a….. Thunder bolt…..Raijin!” he exclaimed all of a sudden.

“You think Raijin did this!” Xia exclaimed and held Long’s shoulders. “It’s not possible Raijin is not a person who would burn down a village,” he whispered in shock.

Long silently stood up and walked over to a burning house. The fire was bright golden with specks of white burning intensely without any signs of going out. ‘This flame…..why does it seem familiar?’ Long leaned closer and sniffed the flame. His eyes went wide in realisation. “Brother Raijin did not case the fire. It was caused by someone else… someone we are familiar with” he whispered.

“Who?” the ghoul growled loudly.

Long growled with a grave expression in his eyes. He glanced around at him. “By the golden tribe. They have a distinct flame cultivation that is passed on to the second in charge of their tribe. The flame looks golden and pure like heavenly flame, but upon closer look you can see the white flecks in it,” he whispered.

“oh by that prince Hua Jung’s clan. I found him disgusting in first look. Ugh, even his tribe is disgusting…” Xia mumbled, but all of a sudden a grave thought rose in his heart. “Long! Let’s check for survivors. Lets save them and hear what happened here,”

He pulled Long into the town, followed by the ghoul. They searched every house, but they were not able to find even a single survivor. Xia also went to the inn they stayed in and checked, but there was only burnt corpse inside. Xia squatted down and searched for jewels on the corpses. He found a female corpse in the first floor and his heart went still. He leaned down and tried to sniff for Felia’s scent. But he only got the scent of burnt flesh. “No…no..This can’t be Felia. She must be alive…she should be alive,” he cried and rushed down. He pulled Long to the corpse and asked him to sniff for Felia’s scent.

Long hugged his sobbing lover and calmed him down first. He then sniffed deeply. The female corpse’s scent was different from Felia’s. “It’s not Felia,” he whispered, wiping Xia’s tears away.

Xia nodded. “Let’s search more. I hope….we don’t find Felia….I don’t want to see her dead,” he mumbled and sadly walked out the inn.

“Your highness! Your highness! I found a survivor,” the ghoul’s shout from the distance attracted both. Xia and Long glanced at each other and dashed towards that location.

It was a small girl crouching in the chicken coup. Her face was completely covered with her long black hair. A huge part of the coup was burnt, leaving the side the girl hid intact. Xia rushed to her and checked for injuries. Her breath was faint, but she was not that badly injured.

Xia gently moved the hair from her face to check for injuries, but he was shocked. This girl was quite familiar to him. She was Haily, the one who gave him information about his mother’s location and also the one they saved from the black market in Juikal.

Long swiftly hugged her out of the small chicken coup and lid her gently on the floor. Xia squatted next to her. He summoned some healing pills from his space and fed her. The pills were working wonderfully. In minutes her pulse went stable and she was regaining consciousness.

“Hey, Haily. Can you see me?” Xia waved his hands in front of her half-shut eyes.

Haily blinked and coughed. The smoke she had inhaled made it hard for her to speak, yet she uttered few words. “Saviour…..”

“yes, Haily, do you want some water? Wait,” Xia pulled out a bottle of normal water and mixed it with spiritual spring water and fed it to her slowly.

Haily blinked at him with tears in her eyes. Xia gently wiped her eyes dry and patted her bony shoulders. “Don’t worry, you are safe,” he whispered in a soothing voice.

This made the little girl sob loudly. She clenched onto the corner of his sleeves and started wailing loudly. “Saviour…I was so scared…it was so scary..they…they killed everyone. They did not even spare children,”

“The golden tribe?”

Haily nodded, closing her eyes tiredly.

“Haily, did you hear any of their conversations? Like, did you find anything about a wolf?….” Long whispered hesitantly.

“yes…yes..they were talking about capturing a thunder wolf. But it was a man that they captured. They took hold of a woman as a captive and placed a seal on the man..I saw it…I saw it all…” she cried, clinging to Xia tightly.

Xia patted her trembling shoulders and hugged her close. He did not know how to soothe young children, so he hesitantly glanced at Long. Long nodded. He sat comfortably and took her from his arms. He started humming a soft tune and rocking her softly. Soon the little girl fell asleep started drooling on Long’s shirt.

Xia chuckled and wiped it with his kerchief.

Long too smirked, but his smile waned away. “They took Felia hostage and too Raijin away. Most probably the seal that Haily was talking about is the same one they placed on Oli,”

“The Kirin, Oli?”

“Hmm, him. We might have to go to Golden tribe to retrieve them,” Long whispered softly in order not to disturb the sleeping girl.

“first let us bring her home,” Xia mumbled, leaning softly onto Long’s shoulders.

The ghoul watched from the side and coughed. “I can take her home.”

And so Long handed her carefully to the ghoul and send them off safely out of town.

After doing so, Long found a sturdy horse in one of the burned stables and started their journey west. The golden tribes were to the west near the shores where sun rises first. They built a temple praying of longer sunlight and after thousands of years the priests were blessed with a drop of sun. Thus the golden tribe was formed.

Thousands of years ago they were but a pure tribe that prayed to the sun every day. But later on they became greedy for power. Soon they spread rumours about their unbound powers of their blood and started gaining the support of powerful kingdoms. If any kingdom resisted, they tore it down to pieces. Thus many kingdoms were plunged in ruins by their heinous acts.

Long had read about their tribe in just a passing sentence. He did not pay much attention to this single line, but he did not expect a small tribe to gain so much power in the human realm.

He hugged Xia to his chest and nudged the horse to go faster. They were travelling in a new path, and Xia was not sure of the direction. Long only relied on his powerful nostrils to sniff out Raijin’s location.

His blood smell was so intense that Long was frowned all the way. They passed by a small town in the way, but even this town was completely torn apart. This time Long sniffed out something sinister in the air. He jumped down from the horse and swiped off the blood from the door and sniffed. The blood smelled acidic and stinky. “This is a Rakshasa’s blood!!” he whispered, glancing at Xia in shock.

Xia rushed down and sniffed as well. He had not smelled many lower demons known as Rakshasa’s, but he was able to identify because the book he had read had defined about it. “This is a blood of a lower demon race, Rakshasa race, right? But how are they here in the human realm? Aren’t they supposed to be trapped down in the Rakshasa realm?” he whispered quizzically.

Long hugged Xia close and wiped his hands with a piece of paper. “your father….he mentioned something about Rakshasa gate before he rushed away…I have a dreadful felling that the seal of that realm is weakening or worse, it had already broken,” he said with a grave look.

“But my father can control them, right? He controlled them ten thousand years ago…he can control them this time as well and shut them out permanently, right?” Xia whispered hopefully.

Long glanced at him and shook his head. “I’m not so hopeful. Your father did not mention it explicitly but…ten thousand years ago by the end of the war, the demon lords lost control over the lower demons and medial demons. They ran rampant, destroying everything in their path. And so, the heavenly dragon clan used one of their members’ blood to seal them away temporarily in the Rakshasa realm right below the human realm.”

“Ten thousand years have passed…they seal might have weakened by now…..” Long whispered and rushed to the horse. He hugged Xia close and jumped on it. “This news is even worse….from my calculation it seems like the golden tribe might have colluded with the Rakshasa’s*”