Xie Lian still didn’t turn around, and asked, “Blood Rain Scholar?”

Hua Cheng said, "Your Highness the Crown Prince."

Xie Lian turned around and smiled, “This is the first time I hear you call me that.”

The young man in red sat on the mat, propped up one leg, and asked, "How do you feel?"

Xie Lian thought about it, but in the end he didn’t ask him, “Why didn’t you call me brother anymore?” He just said, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

He said, "It was you who took me away as a bridegroom that day at Yujun Mountain."

The smile on Hua Cheng's lips deepened. Xie Lian then realized that there seemed to be ambiguity in his words. He quickly corrected it and said seriously, "I mean, you were the one who pretended to be a groom and took me away at Yujun Mountain, right?"

Hua Cheng said, "I didn't pretend to be a groom."

If that were true, then it was true. The young man did not say that he was the groom. He just stopped in front of the sedan chair and held out his hand. Xie Lian followed him on his own. Xie Lian said, "Okay. Then, why did you show up at that time?"

Hua Chengdao: "There are only two answers to this question: First, I went there specifically for you, Your Highness the Crown Prince; second, I was just passing by and had nothing to do. Which one do you think is more credible?"

After calculating the number of days he had spent with him, Xie Lian said sincerely, “I can’t say which one is more credible, but you seem to be really free.”

He held his right elbow with his left hand and his chin with his right hand. He looked around Hua Cheng and nodded, saying, "You are not quite the same as the legend says."

Hua Cheng changed his posture, still holding his chin with his hand, staring at him, and said: "Oh? Then how did you know that I am mine?"

Xie Lian's mind was full of the umbrella under the bloody rain, the jingling silver chain, and the cold silver wristband. He thought that you were not hiding anything seriously, but when it came to his mouth, he didn't know why his attitude changed. He said seriously, "You are dressed in red, and you seem to know everything, be omnipotent, and fearless. No matter how you test, you are flawless. You must be at the level of 'Absolute' or above. In this case, apart from the 'Blood Rain Scholar' who makes all the gods and immortals turn pale, it seems that there is no other candidate."

Hua Cheng smiled and said, "If you say that, can I take it as a compliment?"

Xie Lian thought to himself, “Didn’t you hear that it was originally like that?”

Hua Cheng continued: "After saying so much, why didn't His Royal Highness ask me what my purpose was in approaching you?"

Xie Lian asked, “If you don’t want to tell me, will you tell me if I ask you?”

Hua Cheng said: "Then you can drive me away."

Xie Lian smiled and said, “You are so powerful. Even if I chase you away now, if you really want to do something, won’t you come back with a new skin?”

The two were looking at each other and smiling. At this moment, a rolling sound suddenly broke the brief silence in Puqi Temple.

The two looked in the direction where the sound came from, but there was no one there, only a small black pottery jar rolling on the ground.

It was the small pottery jar that held Ban Yue. Xie Lian had casually placed it beside the mat, but it had fallen down by itself and rolled to the door. It was blocked by the wooden door made by Hua Cheng, and it kept hitting the door. Xie Lian was worried that it would break itself, so he went up to open the door. The small pottery jar rolled all the way to the grass outside the door.

Xie Lian followed it, and the small pottery jar rolled onto a patch of grass and stood up. It was clearly just a pot, but it gave people the illusion that it was looking up at the stars. Hua Cheng also walked out of the Puqi Temple, and Xie Lian said to the pottery jar, "Ban Yue, are you awake?"

Fortunately, it was already late at night when they returned from the Gobi Desert, otherwise if someone saw Xie Lian standing outside in the middle of the night asking a jar what was wrong, they would probably make a fuss again.

After a while, a muffled girl's voice came out of the small jar, saying, "General Hua."

Xie Lian sat down next to it and said, “Ban Yue, are you coming out to look at the stars? Do you want to come out and see them?”

Hua Cheng stood aside, leaning against a tree, and said, "She just left Half Moon City, so it would be better for her to stay in there for a while."

After hearing his advice, Xie Lian felt it made sense. After all, Ban Yue had been in Ban Yue Country for two hundred years. If he suddenly moved to a new place, he might have trouble adapting. He said, “Then you should stay in there for a while and recuperate. This is where I practice, so you don’t have to worry about anything else. You don’t have to worry about those generals and soldiers.”

The jar shook twice, and it was unclear what it was trying to say. After a pause, Xie Lian still felt that he should tell her about the situation. After considering for a moment, he said, "Ban Yue, in fact, it's not that your snake is disobedient, it's General Pei who secretly learned your method of controlling snakes. Those people were not bitten by your snake."

Ban Yue said in a muffled voice: "General Hua, I couldn't move at that time, but I heard everything."

Hearing this, Xie Lian was stunned. Only then did he realize that Pei Su had only sealed her ability to move for half a month, and had not sealed her senses. He said, “Alright.”

After thinking for a while, he added: "General Xiao Pei did this because he couldn't bear to see the Ban Yue soldiers suffer and wanted to free them, but he used the wrong method."

"..." The jar staggered and said, "General Hua, what will happen to Brother Pei Su?"

Xie Lian put his hands up in his sleeves and said, “I don’t know. But if you do something wrong, you must accept some punishment.”

After a moment of silence, the jar shook twice again. This time, Xie Lian finally figured out that shaking like this meant nodding.

Ban Yue said: "Although Ke Mo always scolds him, Brother Pei Su is actually not that bad."

Xie Lian said, “Really?”

Ban Yue said: “Yeah.”

Ban Yue had been a loner since childhood, and was rejected by other children of the same age. She only got along well with a few young men from the Central Plains. From the fact that Pei Su was sent to attack the capital with only 2,000 soldiers, it seemed that he was also having a hard time in the army. These two people seemed to be hard to talk to, either cold or sullen, so they probably had some similarities. Xie Lian didn’t know what to say, and after a moment, he said, “By the way, Ban Yue, Hua Xie is a pseudonym, and I haven’t been a general for a long time, so you don’t have to call me General Hua.”

Ban Yue said: "Then how should I call you?"

This is a problem. If Ban Yue also solemnly called him His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, it would always feel a little strange. Xie Lian didn't care about the name, but just thought of something else, so he said: "It's up to you, you can continue to call him General Hua." It's just that there is a real person with the surname Hua here, so it might be a bit confusing to call him that. But then he thought again, "Hua Xie" is indeed a pseudonym, taking the first character of "Hua Guan Wu Shen" as the surname, so isn't "Hua Cheng" also a pseudonym? It's also interesting that they happened to choose the same surname for their pseudonyms.

At this time, Ban Yue said, "I'm sorry, General Hua."

Xie Lian turned around and said in a depressed tone, “Ban Yue, why do you always apologize to me?” He didn’t look like someone who would make people feel sorry for him, did he?

Ban Yue huddled in the jar and said, "I want to save the common people."

Xie Lian: “………………”

Ban Yue said: "General Hua, that's what you said at the beginning."

Xie Lian: “???”

He quickly said, "Wait. Wait!"

Hearing him shout, Ban Yue seemed to be stunned in the jar and said, "What?"

Xie Lian glanced at Hua Cheng, who was standing under a nearby tree with his arms folded, and whispered, “Did I really say something like that?”

This was clearly what he loved to say when he was a teenager, but he probably hadn't mentioned it at all in the following hundreds of years. Xie Lian was a little bit incredulous. Ban Yue said, "General, you said it."

Xie Lian still wanted to struggle, and said, “No…”

Ban Yue said seriously, "Yes. One time, you asked everyone what they wanted to do when they grew up. Everyone said something, and finally you said, 'My previous dream was to save the world.'"

“…”

So that's it. Xie Lian covered his forehead and said, "This. Banyue, why do you remember such a casual remark so clearly?"

Ban Yue said blankly: "Did you just mention it casually? But, General Hua, I think you are saying it seriously."

Xie Lian was helpless, he looked up at the sky and said, “Haha… Really? Maybe. I don’t even remember what else I said.”

Ban Yue said: "You also said, 'Do what you think is right!'"

Xie Lian thought to himself after hearing this: “…This is such nonsense…Why do I always say this kind of thing…I’m not that kind of person…Am I that kind of person??”

Ban Yue said: "But I don't know what is right anymore."

Hearing this, Xie Lian was stunned.

Ban Yue's muffled voice hummed in the jar: "I seemed to be doing the right thing, but the result was that I opened the gate and let the enemy in, and they slaughtered my people. My country is gone. But if I don't open the gate immediately, Ban Yue people will flow into the Central Plains and harm more people. General Hua was very good to me. When I was in the Central Plains, people on the street often threw food to me. But Ke Mo was also very good to me, and the soldiers listened to me very much. I came back with the sincere intention of being a good national teacher. However, not only did I open the city gate and kill them, I also stopped them from eating people. If they don't eat people, they will be very painful, and I can't relieve their pain."

She spoke incoherently and repetitively. Finally, she said in a daze, "It seems that no matter what I do, the results are always bad. General Hua, I know I didn't do well, but can you tell me where I did not do well? Which step went wrong?"

After hearing her ask this, Xie Lian rubbed the back of his neck in silence for a long while. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry, Ban Yue. I didn’t know the answer to your question before, and now… I don’t seem to know it either.”

Ban Yue said depressedly: "General Hua, I feel like I have no idea what I have been doing for the past two hundred years."

Hearing her say this, Xie Lian became even more depressed: “Then didn’t it mean that I have lived for nothing for the past eight hundred years?”

Leaving Ban Yue a ghost in the jar to look at the stars and calm down, Xie Lian and Hua Cheng returned to Pu Qi Temple. After closing the door, Hua Cheng said, "Pei Su hates Ban Yue people so much, how could he do such a thing because he couldn't bear to see Ban Yue soldiers suffer?"

Xie Lian sighed and said, “It’s all speculation anyway. For the half month, I’d better try to pick something that sounds more reasonable.”

He thought about it and shook his head, saying, "If Pei Su really wanted Ban Yue to be freed from Ban Yue Kingdom as soon as possible, he could have chosen to clear out Ban Yue Pass, but he had to choose to lure living people into the pass to feed the ghosts. He is really too courageous."

Hua Cheng said, "He can't. He has to lead people to clear out the enemy and go through the Heavenly Palace."

Xie Lian asked, “So what if we go through Heaven?”

Hua Cheng said leisurely, "It's very bad. Every group of priests who left the Heavenly Court, where they went and what they were going to do, are remembered clearly. If the Heavenly Court sends people down, they will definitely clear out the entire Banyue Pass, and you, the Banyue girl, are no exception. Of course, he chose to cover it up himself. All he has to do is to lure some living people to feed the ghosts when he has nothing to do."

At this point, he smiled and said, "Ascended priests, the lives of mortals are naturally inferior to those of ants in their eyes."

Xie Lian did not comment on his words, and only said, “Then he could also quietly create a clone to come down to earth and clean up those Ban Yue soldiers.”

Hua Cheng said: "The power of the clone will be weakened. You also saw Pei Suhua's clone Ah Zhao. He couldn't deal with so many Ban Yue soldiers and could only die. At best, he could slightly dissipate a wave of resentment."

Xie Lian glanced at him, remembering how San Lang had killed all the Half Moon soldiers at the bottom of the pit in an instant after he jumped into the prisoner pit. He turned around and said, “Your clone is quite powerful.”

Hua Cheng raised his eyebrows and said, "Of course. But this is my real self."

Hearing this, Xie Lian stopped thinking about anything else. He turned around, slightly surprised, and said, “Huh? Are you the real one?”

Hua Cheng said: "It is genuine."

If you want to blame someone, blame the expression on his face after he said this, as if asking you to experience it yourself. So, before Xie Lian realized what he had done, he had already raised a finger and poked Hua Cheng on the cheek.

After poking him, Xie Lian suddenly woke up, and he kept saying "Oh no" in his heart. He was just curious about what the ghost skin of the Desperate Ghost King felt like, but he didn't expect his body to be faster than his mind, and he poked it with his hand. This was really outrageous.

Being poked in the face suddenly, Hua Cheng seemed to be slightly startled, but he was always calm, and his expression quickly calmed down. He didn't say anything, but raised one eyebrow higher, as if waiting for his explanation, and the smile in his eyes was obvious. Xie Lian certainly couldn't come up with any explanation. He looked at the finger, hid it without leaving any trace, and said casually: "Not bad, not bad."

Hua Cheng finally laughed out loud, crossed his arms, tilted his head, and asked him: "Do you think my skin is good?"

Xie Lian said sincerely, “Very good. But…”

Hua Cheng said: "But what?"

Xie Lian stared at his face and studied it carefully for a while. Finally, he said, “But can I see your original appearance?”

Since he just said "this skin", it means that although this body is the original body, the skin is not the original body. This young man's appearance is not his true appearance.

This time, Hua Cheng did not answer immediately. He lowered his arm. He did not know if it was Xie Lian’s illusion, but he felt that his eyes were a little darker, and his heart was slightly lifted.