The Stone King's Lover (石王的愛)

Chapter 1

Wen Reian

2004 years after The Long Night

Sanlín City

<Spring Festival>

It just so happened that they'd arrived on a special day. The three boys followed their Master through the bustling streets, staring wide-eyed at the vendors, the flags and colored ribbons overhead and the flowers being thrown from rooftops and windows.

Wen Reian bent to pick one up, examining the five-petaled flower with pink tips and blinking in surprise as it curled up in his hand, shyly.

"Can you believe this?! We should come every year!"

Xie De was bouncing up and down on his heels, gripping Reian's sleeve excitedly.

Seeing his friend grinning, petals stuck to his hair, the younger boy couldn't help but shake his head. Beside them, little Jin Yu looked unbothered.

"We are only here to assist Master Hao with the restless spirits," A'Yu said. "We can't come back."

Xie De was momentarily distracted by a young lady on the side of the road selling hand-stitched kites, but quickly turned to both of them and frowned, crossing his arms.

"I for one don't plan on being a shut-in my whole life! Just watch! The day The Three Masters think I'm ready I will pack my bags. I'll hunt every ghost from here 'till the end of the world, just you wait-"

Reian opened his mouth to respond when they all three froze, turning toward the familiar sound of their Master's voice. He stood a few paces away down the road, beckoning them over with a nod...

"Gather 'round please," he said.

The apprentices quieted and went to him, although Reian caught Xie De sticking his tongue out from behind Jin Yu's back-

"Master?"

Master Hao Xue-feng stood beside the wooden doors to an Inn, and he smiled ever so faintly at the three boys when they all bowed their heads.

"This is where we will be staying while we are here," the older man said, voice as warming and familiar as a crackling fire.

"Tomorrow morning I will take you to the church and we shall begin our work. Usually I would suggest you all to spend the hours between then and now resting, or meditating. Seeing as there are festivities all around us, I'll allow you until ten to explore-"

Xie De couldn't hide his excitement, Reian felt it radiating off the boy...

Their Master raised a finger, "Remember, boys. You represent all of us at Jingshén, I expect you to behave yourselves accordingly."

Then the man sighed, "Return before ten or there will be a scolding."

The three apprentices bowed twice to him, all loudly over-expressing their gratitude. They stayed bowed until the Master could be heard entering the Inn.

Reian stood up carefully, immediately being caught under the arm of Xie De, who was already dragging him and Jin Yu back down the main road, laughing and shouting something about how his freedom had come early.

After satisfying their curiosity of the spring festival, taking turns throwing petals on each other and running through the flags, even Jin Yu couldn't hide his smile.

Reian's heart warmed at seeing his friends have fun. A gratitude for his Master, and also the beautiful town they were in settled in his chest as they playfully chased each other around the flower-soaked streets. The perfume clung to their clothes, every deep breath feeling twice as sweet...

Reian followed the two toward some lights up ahead, holding back his laughter as the older Xie De teased Jin Yu with tugs on the boy's hair.

"Wen Rei!" Xie De called. "Don't you think A'Yu would look even prettier with a flower in his hair?"

Jin Yu enjoyed his pestering, even if his face turned red and he pulled away.

"Don't be shy..."

Reian smiled, tucking the flower he'd found earlier behind the boy's ear and laughing when it bloomed again, bright pink petals beside his raven colored locks.

"It looks sweet," Reian said.

Entering into a courtyard where all the lights had led them, Xie De and Jin Yu collapsed, exhausted, at a table outside an empty restaurant.

"I haven't run that much in years!" Xie De complained. "My lungs are going to burst-"

"Wen Reian?" It was Jin Yu's small voice, "Are you okay?"

Realising that when he'd entered the courtyard, he had stopped dead in his tracks, the boy blinked a few times at what he was seeing.

An unsettling feeling, like being in a dream that was almost too vivid, had come over him. The lights strung above faded out, until Reian almost swore the brightness he was seeing was coming from the statue at the center of the square.

Following Reian's gaze, his friends frowned.

"Wen Rei?" Xie De called. "What are you looking at?"

Attempting to snap himself out of his wild daydreams, Reian forced his body down onto the bench where his friend's curious eyes met him immediately.

"What is it? Is the statue important? Do you sense something from it-"

Interrupting Xie De's barrage of questions, Reian raised his hand, still a bit dizzy and confused.

"I don't..."

"You boys must not be from 'round here!"

Three heads whirled around to the restaurant behind them where an old man was sitting in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe.

"No sir," Reian bowed. "We are from Jingshén."

The man stopped rocking, leaning forward in his chair. With eyes pure white to the center, it was clear the man was blind. His gaze didn't fixate on any particular one of them as he smiled, smoke billowing up.

"Ah, that explains it. You don't know about The Stone King, do you?"

The boys exchanged curious and intrigued glances with each other...

"That statue," Reian said confidentally. "It was once alive."

Jin Yu and Xie De looked shocked, but the old man nodded.

"Correct. That piece of rock was the first thing in this city seven hundred years ago, when the land was still part of Xi Qiáng Forest."

"Pardon me sir, but how did that statue come to be?" Xie De glanced at it again.

The statue was nothing extravagant. It depicted a man, his hands bound behind him on a post, eyes covered with a piece of cloth that seemed more for show than to actually blind him.

Reian couldn't help but wonder what the feeling he'd had upon seeing it meant. He was certain there was still a soul somewhere inside that statue. The Stone King might still be alive, he just wasn't sure how it was possible.

"Are you kids hungry?" The man asked, sending up another puff of white smoke.

"Mmhmm..." Jin Yu answered shyly.

"Then give me just a moment. If you will stay to dine, I will tell you the legend of The Stone King."

Reian didn't need to look at his friends to know that they were nodding too.