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Zhuzhi-lang pokes the body with the toe of his boot. It doesn’t move. He sighs a little. This is all going to be a lot to clean up.
Tianlang-jun had really gone all out on this group of upstart cultivators who had burst into the demon palace and declared that they were taking over by harnessing their power with the strength of a thousand suns or something like that. The young master at the head of their group is definitely dead—Zhuzhi-lang had watched with only mild surprise as Tianlang-jun had beheaded him with a single swipe of his nails. The rest of the army, dressed in red and white like a regimented battalion rather than the canon fodder they actually were, had been quick to follow their leader into bloody oblivion.
Once it was all over, Tianlang-jin had tossed his hair back with a satisfied smirk and winked at Zhuzhi-lang. “You don’t mind a little extra housework, do you?” he asked as though he had spilled a glass of wine rather than murdered an army. “Just throw the ones that are still alive in the dungeon. Or,” he’d shrugged carelessly, “feed them to someone. Up to you.”
So now Zhuzhi-lang bends down to press two fingers into the clammy neck of what is probably a corpse. Better to be safe rather than sorry, he supposes, since the flesh-eating flowers prefer that their prey not struggle too much.
To his sudden surprise, he realizes that under the skin, he can feel the faint telltale throb of life. Before he has time to process this—this is the first living person he’s found so far, in a stack of at least a hundred bodies—a hand grabs his wrist, moving faster than any human cultivator has any right to.
Zhuzhi-lang could crush the bones in this hand in an instant, but something makes him pause. He watches carefully as the man uses his other hand to shove his blood-matted hair out of his face to blink up at him with the darkest, most intense eyes Zhuzhi-lang has ever seen in a human.
“You’re alive,” Zhuzhi-lang says before he can stop himself. “That is very impressive.”
“You don’t have a golden core,” the man rasps. He doesn’t sound angry; Zhuzhi-lang chalks that up to shock. He just sounds… baffled. “Your cultivation is demonic. I told the young master—” he cuts himself off with a rattling, hacking cough that wets his chin with blood. Zhuzhi-lang hurries to help him sit up, even as the man flinches away from his touch. “I told him we would all die.”
“It doesn’t seem like he listened to you,” Zhuzhi-lang says with sympathy. He understands unreasonable bosses. “You must be wise. Though you weren’t quite right. You, at least, are still alive.”
The man looks down at his own right hand dully, and then up at Zhuzhi-lang with surprise. “Why am I alive?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Zhuzhi-lang says politely. “You were covered by a lot of corpses, though. Maybe you were knocked unconscious and spared most of the fray.”
The man shakes his head slowly, gaze not leaving Zhuzhi-lang’s. His eyes really are marvelous—shining out of his bloodstained face with a fire and a hunger that makes something in Zhuzhi-lang feel strange. “I mean, if everyone I swore to protect is dead, why am I still alive?”
“Oh.” Zhuzhi-lang thinks about it for a moment. “Maybe you’re supposed to find that out on your own.”
The man’s eyes narrow. “You’re a demon.”
“Er.” Zhuzhi-lang is fairly certain that this was made obvious by the scales patterning his cheeks and throat. “Yes?”
“Why didn’t you kill me on sight?”
This is a good question. Zhuzhi-lang does not really have a good answer for it. Because he was surprised to see that one of the soldiers was still alive? Because Tianlang-jun has left yet another frustrating mess to clean up, and a tiny act of unimportant rebellion is all he can do about it? Because it has been a long, long time since anyone has touched Zhuzhi-lang, let alone grabbed his wrist?
“You are interesting,” is what he says after a beat. The man’s eyes widen, and Zhuzhi-lang is close enough to hear his short intake of breath. Whatever he expected, it wasn’t that. “I would like to know more about you. This would be difficult if you were dead.”
The man relaxes a tiny bit. His shoulders slump down in a nearly imperceivable way, and Zhuzhi-lang fights the sudden, inappropriate urge to smile.
“I suppose if I have no reason to live for, that is as good a one as any,” the man says softly, and reaches up to touch a gash on his forehead with the hand that isn’t still occupied with holding Zhuzhi-lang’s wrist. “I may need some medical attention, then. If you would like to know more.” His grip tightens for a moment, and his intense eyes are back on Zhuzhi-lang. “I warn you, there is not much to know.”
Zhuzhi-lang feels his lips twitch up against his will. “I doubt that very much,” he says.