Thread by @Foxypepsi1

🧵 Thread fic

#XieLianWeek2022

🌼 Day 1 Prompt: Calamity Falls
Book 2, Xianle Days
Hong-er POV+bonus hualian 800 years later

Hong-er was there when it all began.

Rumors spread through Xianle, first among the street urchins. Words of a drought and the royal family's spending.

Hong-er didn't understand it at the time.

He just changed the simple white flower in his self-made statue's hands (it's nowhere near perfect, still ridiculous, but he's getting better.)

His soldier days were a blur. Images of His Highness haunted him:
His Highness fighting on the battlefield, graceful, dazzling, masterly wielding the blade.

Hong-er was there too, he went straight for the kill whoever tried to get close to His Highness.

The events on Beizi Hill.

Hong-er was there too, first what happened left him confused, flushed, the picture of His Highness pierced through by his own sword left him horrified. Words of all, his thoughts often wandered to something indecent, something that couldn't be stopped.

The newfound bittersweet taste of want made him a man.

Hong-er was there when the disease started.

His Highness tended to the infected, even slept among them. Hong-er laid his blanket on him, watched how his handsome eyebrows furrowed under the weight of a kingdom he carried.

He also heard the pleas: "Your Highness, save me!", "Your Highness, protect the people!", "If there's a cure, Your Highness, tell us!" He looked from afar as the gilded statue collapsed.

Yong'an was getting stronger.

Something had broken that day at the gates—it was much more than His Highness' leg. Confusion spread, whispers of doubt, all regarding His Highness' might.

Hong-er called it bullshit and continued to protect him viciously with curses and fists, often getting beaten up.

Still, he never forgot to change the flower, even when the temples, shrines, and statues were gone.

Hong-er couldn't care less for the useless trash, all could have rotten, only His Highness is worth a damned thing in this world.

He fully believed in what the Xianle people couldn't see—"To fall is also human".

And with that, upon the kingdom of Xianle, calamity has fallen.

The Kingdom of Xianle has fallen.

And with that, Hong-er has also fallen.

He died with his most prized possession of a red coral pearl in his hands, with a flower in the other. And with a wish in his heart, greater than himself.

-800 years later-

"San Lang, isn't it too much?" Xie Lian asked, his eyes glazing over his own statue.

It was wearing daoist robes of stone (although Hua Cheng refused to carve the well-worn edges), his expression serene, his hands extended, one holding a red thread.

It led to the Ghost King statue next to it.

Their first statues as a pair.

Hua Cheng leaned back, admiring his handiwork. He teased the red string that connected the statues, single eye twinkling with a giddy gleam.

"Are you sure it's alright, San Lang? I'm not supposed to be worshipped here. It's your shrine after all."

But Hua Cheng only shrugged.

"What's mine is yours, I told you already. Besides, the people praying here should feel grateful that Your Highness is benevolent enough to hear out their mundane problems. I usually just roll some dice to decide whether I'm willing to answer, but—

—with a real god, the only, true god here, they are given double the luck and twice the invincibility."

Hearing these words, Xie Lian felt stunned, heat creeping up his face.

"S-San Lang is very passionate when it comes to worship, I see."

"En," Hua Cheng agreed, smirking. "I'm going to show you how much exactly. But before that, one last thing."

He moved forward, placing something onto the statue's open palm.

It was nothing but a delicate, white flower.

//END🌼 - Thank you all, see you on Day 2 with Wuming POV!