Author's notes
Chang Yi questions...
Jiaoren stays...
Yunhe meets...
Chapter 13 – Conflicted feelings
She gets up with a little difficulty and observes a random point in front of her as she continues speaking in an emotionless voice, "Why not treat him that way?"
Chang Yi is surprised to see her respond with a question, only to regroup and respond, "You are not one of my subjects."
"I know this, Beijing-Zunzhu. I am your prisoner. Zunzhu has made it clear more than once that my life belongs to you. You yourself said after cutting off a lock of my hair, 'Ji Yunhe, in the past, the your life belonged to the Demon Valley. Before today, your life was the Grandmaster's. Now from now on your life is mine. Therefore, you cannot die unless I want you to.'. Therefore, considering your words, the his punishments and the fact that he inflicted pain on me when using his powers, I became his property, that is, his nulli ('debtor', 'dependent' or 'subject' being a term to refer to a slave ).You even reaffirmed this recently. Therefore, I must treat you with due respect. Well, if I look at it that way, I think the most accurate thing is to call you Nulizhu (slave master or master of a slave), but, you are the one who holds a kingdom and I think that title is not due to you. I must continue to call you by your true title."
Chang Yi had been scared when his wife considered calling him a slave master, and was later relieved that she changed her mind and after the fear passed, he was overcome by a mixture of despair, pain and sadness with the distance that arose between them after they married according to the customs of their species. Sadness was the most intense feeling of all and overcame the others.
In fact, Chang Yi made such a gesture and spoke such words when he took her out of the grandmaster's prison because his feelings of revenge were still very fresh, in addition to not denying that he caused her pain by using his powers so that the human would not be harmed deprive her of eating and to make her take the medicine correctly, aiming to restore her health.
After all, it had been six years of planning her revenge while he was aware that the real reason for locking her up was to keep her with him by restricting her, in addition to preventing any other attempt at betrayal by isolating her.
If he let her have contact with the outside or other people, especially her friends who were loyal to her, Yunhe could easily betray him again and that was something he couldn't allow.
The jiaoren confessed that after being surprised by her arrest upon discovering where the human was, his monk friend considered the hypothesis that it was a trap or a hoax for some evil plan of both of them.
In fact, Kong Ming even considered the hypothesis that the Master guardian of the demonic Valley was behind Shunde in the plan to deceive and lie to the merman to the point of only revealing her true nature by stabbing him on that cliff.
After all, there was popular wisdom that demon masters were experts at toying with and manipulating the hearts of demons, with Yunhe being reputed to have manipulated many hearts for the number of them she managed to subdue over the years by doing what the masters did of demons were referred to as taming, but without using violent methods. The use of the word tame was meant to sound pejorative to demons by equating them with animals or beasts and not with intelligent beings.
Chang Yi still remembered the pain and suffering as he fell from the cliff, as well as the extremely poignant feeling of having all his bones broken from the fall because he was paralyzed by the shock of betrayal and the wound in his heart, causing his body crashed into the various brutal ledges as it plummeted.
As a result, the jiaoren was on the verge of death after having all his bones broken and several organs damaged while he knew that he only had a slim chance of survival because at the end of the cliff there was a stream and the water prevented his life from ending.
For several weeks, the merman felt excruciating pain, but the worst pain was in his heart, arising from the betrayal he suffered. When he said upon finding her extremely bloodied and injured from the prison after taking her out that Yunhe was, 'less horrible than her human heart', it was true. Her heart was worse than her condition.
Originally, he intended to punish her more harshly and even humiliate her by using the feelings arising from the betrayal she suffered to restrict any warm feelings he wished to arise in him by making her work as a subservient servant.
However, her poor health continued even after leaving that prison, with the jiaoren unaware of the fact that Yunhe was tortured and used for painful experiments for a few years out of the six years she was in the grandmaster's sect prison, made him limit himself only to confinement and total restriction.
Furthermore, when he had considered placing her in forced and public servant labor with extremely strict rules and using his servants to supervise her and ensure her containment, as well as the inability to contact any of her friends, in addition to making her being subject to punishments determined by him and which was symbolized by cutting her locks, in addition to finding ways to force her to act submissively, the merman did not imagine how he would feel with this treatment like what she was doing for herself same at that moment.
Chang Yi always thought he could easily deal with this because he just had to focus on the events of six years ago on that cliff.
In the end, the jiaoren discovered that he had completely underestimated her strange influence on him despite having spent up until that moment a period that could be considered meager because he had been alive for many decades and his time spent with the human was less than two months.
In terms of battles and dealing with enemies, he was ruthless to the point of making his name feared, but in relation to Yunhe, she was able to easily infiltrate all of his defenses no matter how strong they were, causing had no defense against their influence.
Therefore, the merman only had to use the feelings that took him six years ago, to provide some resistance, however weak it was and which was easily destroyed when the young woman felt sick, like when she vomited all the food and the strange black blood because she knew that human blood was red.
He believed that the black color came from her demon half because his wife had an internal pearl like any other demon.
Currently, he was a demon who lived in the body of a human, something that the Emperor of the North never thought possible unless he was a half-breed born from the crossing of a human and a demon at the same time as the children from that relationship they were able to deal with both natures in their bodies.
However, these unions were rare and even rarer were children born from this relationship.
In fact, as he had never seen or heard about the existence of a hybrid in his entire life with both natures within him, Yunhe became the closest thing he had ever seen in person.
As for her unexpected influence, she was capable of making him rethink his revenge and even stopping him, with him fully feeling this only after meeting her again because until he saw her again, the jiaoren was not aware of this level of influence.
Therefore, it was a shock to find out about her unrestricted power over him, causing his original plans to collapse like a house of cards because even if the human was not seriously ill, the merman became fully aware that he would not be able to treat her as he had planned for years, let alone punish her physically or have someone else punish her. Chang Yi was aware that he would never have been able to give that order now that the human was back with him.
What the Emperor of the North could do while what was considered an uphill daily battle was to deprive her of what she most desired and provide what Yunhe hated most while having to deal with the consequences of her decision while seeking to justify her actions by stopping her from walking away from him and cheating on him again.
The merman confessed that before the appointment, when the young woman continued treating him in the same way as six years ago, he felt satisfied in a way he never imagined, although he could not define the feeling as actually being satisfaction because he could not even understand many feelings towards her.
Recalling the fateful day of the marking, the crown prince of the oceans remembers that her escape provoked and stirred him in a disconcerting shape.
When he thought about capturing her again, her gesture of laughing and having fun on the frozen lake stopped him, as well as leaving him fascinated because he got a glimpse of the real Yunhe, free and unrestrained like the wind, and this was a side that he had never witnessed it before, causing him to be stunned and then immersed in silent contemplation.
In fact, many intense feelings arose in him with impetus at that moment and it was like a disconcerting implosion that left him paralyzed as he contemplated the beautiful scene in front of him at the same time that his mind and heart were fighting a fierce and equally fierce battle.
Then, with a lot of effort, the merman manages to push down all the feelings that he considered unnecessary or that would hinder his intention, thus allowing him to move forward to intercept her while the young woman was lying in the snow.
When he ordered her to get up after regaining the cold countenance she sought to use with Yunhe and an equally icy tone of voice although there was a veiled concern that her health would worsen in the cold night air considering her physical condition, the young woman vehemently refused.
Chang Yi knew in his heart and now assumed that the irritation of her refusal and the subsequent annoyance he caused him was caused by his own anger when he interrupted the moment in which the human was free and unrestrained in that lake, thus demonstrating his true nature without any restrictions. The interruption of that scene made him angry with himself and in order to deal with her on the terms he had planned, with coldness and even cruelty, he decided to use these feelings to restrict her influence as much as possible, even if it was weak.
Her new attempt to escape after trying to deceive him had stirred him beyond any personal restraint of his and allowing himself to be carried away by his repressed instincts for years, he marked her as his life mate because the merman's mark was meant for his soulmate and it was also a marriage, making him stand under the gaze of the God of the ocean's abyss while ensuring the merman knew where his mate was and what she was doing whenever she wanted, as well as her well-being and feelings, becoming thus a form of protection, as well as being an unbreakable symbol of lifelong union, with jiaoren marking each other to demonstrate their eternal devotion.
In fact, a widower was unable to remarry.
Since he marked her, he fought hard against any feelings that wanted to arise while being aware that everything he did and said regarding his wife would be under the gaze of the God of the Abyss.
The merman never imagined in his life that he would mark someone without that person's consent because marriage in his species was not like human marriage. It was much deeper and unbreakable.
In addition to marking her against her will and without her consent, he hid the meaning of the mark and did not wish to tell her while he knew that if his companion asked directly, the jiaoren would have to reveal what it was because he never lied, even if it was to save her life and if the human asked why she founded the Northern Kingdom, Chang Yi would also reveal that the main reason was to get revenge.
Therefore, the Emperor of the North hoped that his wife would never ask such questions because Kong Ming was the only one who knew about the real reason for founding a kingdom while at the same time he was unaware of what the brand was among the Jiaoren, as well as for many species of demons. He only knew of Yunhe's ability to feel and see when he wished and believed that her friend did this to be able to keep a better eye on her.
The monk was unaware of what the mark meant because the merman did not feel like revealing the meaning while he knew that all the monk had to do was ask more details about the mark and he would end up revealing the meaning, being aware that if that happened, the crown prince of the ocean would be forced to facing more headaches because his friend always hated the demon master and wanted to make him forget about her.
After all, for Kong Ming it was enough to take revenge on the human and then go on with her life because he didn't find her worthy, in addition to seeing her as a villain.
Chang Yi knew that the monk only wanted the best for him because there were many females interested in him, with him being aware of the intense female attraction he provoked in his surroundings.
Therefore, if the jioren revealed what the brand really was and that it had entered into the culture of his people, his hearing would certainly hurt because his friend would be raving and complaining more than he already did, with the merman not doubting that he would be shouting indignantly in your ear for days.
After all, the human was already criticizing the fact that he didn't do what he had planned to do with her regardless of her health status. Knowing that he married Yunhe would take the criticism to another level.
The Emperor of the North ended up being forced to take the necessary precaution of prohibiting the demons from revealing what the mark was because there were versions of this marking in other species and they contained the same meaning in symbolizing marriage while being grateful for the fact that his monk friend never having sought to acquire other knowledge among the countless demons that surrounded them before their prohibition.
While Chang Yi's face was indecipherable at the same time as his contemplative state was visible, the human's face was the same despite her interior seething with annoyance, with this feeling being fully felt by the jiaoren, as well as any feeling that her take at that time.
