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Jing Yuan was an expert when it came to this game. Each move of his was smooth and unpredictable, like a flash of lightning in the clouds — striking so quickly that even his successor found herself unable to predict his moves.
Lady Fu had found the loss deeply offensive to a point she refused his offer for a rematch, but the opponent sitting before him finds himself more than willing to accept defeat when the General slices the head off his last man standing and its crown falls with it.
When Luocha laughs at his own lack of skills, Jing Yuan reassures him that it was nothing more than bad luck, and insists he should get another chance — persuades him to challenge him again, reels him into an endless cycle of praise and humiliation for his own entertainment, providing him with all that he asks for as long as he reciprocates his requests.
Preparing for another round, Luocha holds his pawn between his fingers, his nails — slightly longer than the norm and carefully sharpened like he was a blacksmith and his nails were his sword — holding its head with precision. He needs to plan his next move carefully.
Starchess is far more difficult than the original variant of chess that Luocha knew in his home world, and given the expertise of the General, he finds himself caught between the jaws of the snake.
“Lend me a hand, General.”
“I’ll teach you the ins and outs of Starchess and its strategies if you answer my questions, Luocha. I don’t understand why you have tried to escape my sight for so long— are you afraid of an old man on the edge of retirement?”
“Elders whose authority is about to escape their grip are often the most threatening,” he stated as he made his first move. “I have witnessed too many men in power become corrupt the further they prolonged their time on the throne. All forms of ruling are a tyranny— only those who aren’t responsible try to sugarcoat it.”
“Is that so? Do you think of me as a tyrant?”
“My time is limited, so don’t make me repeat myself. It’s your turn now.”
Jing Yuan placed his pawn over Luocha’s. One man down.
“I’m sure we have all the time in the world, since my little fledgling has told me you worship the Plagues Author.”
The Plagues Author.
Luocha hates that name. It is unfitting of the deity which presents all living beings with more than one chance at life — it is nothing more than an abhorring insult to their benevolence, born from the greed of men older than even the General could comprehend.
Those who blindly worship the Reignbow Arbiter know nothing of the real Plague.
They know nothing of the church, the devils, the bloodshed of the innocents blamed for the sins of the clergy, the limbs torn from those who tried to repent through self mutilation because they believed the illness to be divine punishment, as if the bacteria was the living version of the fire that struck the cities of Gomorrah and Sodom.
A plague from the so-called cultured and Christianized.
Luocha remembers the suffocating stench of death as if it followed him across every universe and every planet.
Luocha remembers the piles of bodies, the betrothed kneeling over the unrecognizable body of their beloved, the vultures and the animals feasting on the carcasses about to be burnt to hell and back, and he remembers—
“The Alliance does not ban Pathstriders of Abundance from stepping foot on the Xianzhou Luofu, so I don’t understand the reasoning behind your vigilance.”
“Given the nature of recent events, I want to make sure that there are no ulterior motives behind your visit.”
“I’m merely passing through to conduct business.”
“Mm, is that so…”
Jing Yuan leaned back in his chair, wearing his aloof smile and tilting his head like a feline examining what it still had to judge as prey or toy or both.
“Why are you bringing a corpse with you, then?”
…Of course, his problems always circle back to the coffin.
Luocha made a promise a long time ago. Despite the malignant nature of the dead within, he has done nothing but uphold his promise with utmost determination, dragging the heavy case on his back as he trudged through the desert.
That endeavor tired him to the point where bandits were able to capture him despite his skill with the sword - he remembers the humiliating feeling of his legs giving out from exhaustion like it was yesterday.
It was a really bad day for him.
He never thought he'd be rescued by a teenager; the teen girl who saved him back then reminded him of that careless Cloud Knight soldier that tried to save him and that young Vidyadhara.
Her skill with the sword was lackluster, but he allowed her to take the credit for holding the enemies back, even if he knew that if he hadn't been there, he might have had to break his promise to the Sky-Faring commission.
The girl in his memory was reckless, but she brandished the sword even better than he could.
“The coffin is just a tool of my trade,” he replied after he gave the casket a quick glance, hoping he didn't offend the host. “It helps me conduct business.”
“How so? Do the Abominations of Abundance stashed in there put up a puppet show?”
Jing Yuan needed to pry further into this man's business. He had given the Helm Master the order to look into his history, only for her to deliver the news that no one under the name he went by was registered at the IPC.
His name stood for "man-eating demon", but Luocha looked relatively uninterested in his flesh and blood. If anything, the cross he always held in his hand gave away that his love and his body were devoted to his God and no one else.
Jing Yuan had already questioned Luocha about his fake name a few weeks prior to this interrogation set up under the guise of a personal invitation to a game of chess.
Luocha claimed it was for the sake of the locals due to it being easier to pronounce than his real name. Jing Yuan noted that he blended in well within the Xianzhou Luofu despite his clothes being a dead giveaway of his outwordly origins.
When he asked him about his real name, Luocha smoothly swayed the conversation to other topics Jing Yuan doesn't remember very well, because Luocha was undeniably beautiful in the sunlight and the General wanted to savor some eye candy for once.
Jing Yuan crossed his arms as he waited for his answer.
“No, General,” Luocha rebutted as he sighed — but the General saw the faintest hint of a smile on his face — “The locals are interested in the coffin, so as I tell them about it, the business is done. They've taken up so much of my time that they'd feel too guilty to leave me empty handed.”
“Oh, that’s clever. Do you tell them you're short-lived?”
“I can tell that your question is if I am, in fact, short-lived.”
Luocha adjusts his posture and crosses his legs, a mannerism he was taught back in his homeworld. Involuntarily, parents turn children into something similar to themselves — they call that "education".
“What do you think, General? I'm an outsider. There's no reason people should believe I'm any older than thirty.”
“I think I should ask you how old you are, Luocha. You carry yourself like an elder, speak like a middle-aged man, but look barely a day above twenty-five.”
“It's rude to ask a lady her age, General Jing Yuan.”
Luocha answers with a chuckle as he shakes his head. He redirects the conversation, not because his longevity should be a secret to someone who already knows of it, but because he doesn't know how to answer the General's question – he stopped keeping count of his age a long time ago.
”You flatter me far too much. You yourself don't look any older than the age you've just attributed to me, General.”
“Do you think so? I thought my grey hair would make my old age crystal clear.”
“Many people in my homeworld were born with white hair, including an old friend of mine, so I often forget about the association most people make between hair color and age.”
Luocha is speaking empty flattery that he hopes offers some comfort to the old man.
His old friend — is not real.
She's a kind lady who often appears in his dreams. He doesn't know her name, but she knows his.
She appears in his nightmares, too. He vividly remembers the gruesome scene of her being brutally murdered in front of a crowd, as if she was the scapegoat chosen to die for the sins of those cheering for her death, as if she was the son of God and he was one of her apostles hopelessly watching her die.
“Truth be told, I have found myself often fascinated by your hair, Luocha. If you're as old as you're trying to imply you are, then I assume you must take great care of it.”
Jing Yuan places his elbows on the table, deleting the Starchess hologram off of it with a swift gesture of his hand. He lends his hand out to the blonde — as if waiting for him to give him something — when Luocha realizes he's approaching him like this to get a feel of his hair.
Given the look in the General's eyes, he expected him to be interested in anything but something as mundane as this — it's true, he does take great care of his hair, but he's seen better — but Luocha sighs as he realizes that the bedroom eyes look on the Dozing General is attributed to his constant need to sleep.
“May I?”
“I'm afraid I have to say no, General Jing Yuan. You should get to know me better before asking me for something like this.”
Jing Yuan smiles.
He likes this merchant. He's no trouble, but he's entertaining. He watches him walk down the alley like he's keeping an eye on a storm approaching his ship at sea, but with patience, that storm reveals itself to be nothing more than a few raindrops. The aftermath leaves behind revitalizing dew.
Now is his chance to bask in the rain.
“I have some free time today. I would like to spend it with you, if you'll agree to accompany me. I have been bound by mundane duties for years, and I'm becoming a rather boring person… but travelers like you manage to bring something of interest into my life.”
Luocha finds it ironic. The General has the occasion to sustain a long and fulfilling life, but because of his duties, his time is limited and thus very precious… time which he wants to spend with a man who cannot hold an exactly fruitful conversation.
“I'll honor your request.”
——
Luocha didn't sleep that night.
Dreams, nightmares, memories, whatever they were, were unrecognizable to him at this point — they faded into each other, fusing with one another, impossible to separate from his own experiences.
The memories of the Plague came back to haunt him almost every night. The crooked bodies, the mauled corpses, the vultures, the rats, the locusts, the damned, the clergy, the cross, the boy, the betrothed, the infected, the blood, the stench, the blood, the stench, the blood, the stench, the blood, the stench, the stench the stench THE STENCH–
He knows that these memories are merely images from his nightmares, but it is because the smell of the dead is so familiar to him that these fruits of his imagination often become one with the roots of his consciousness.
He bit at his nails like a rodent. The agitation brewing within him manifested itself like this every night. He struggled in his own bed, turning around every few minutes, curling up like a fetus and feeling the nails slowly break off his fingers with every bite he took at their edge. He sunk his teeth into his thumb, and his blood was warm.
It was something deep within him, cast into his subconscious, that longed for a warmth so unfamiliar to him that it drove him to desperately seek it out within himself, but it was a warmth that was with him for a very long time; the warmth of the first love the world offers to us — not the warmth of our mother, our creator, but the warmth of her flesh and blood that loved us until birth.
The first love Luocha received in his life came not from his mother, whose name he doesn't know anymore, but from flesh and blood; within the uterus, a liquid of dissolved flesh. His birth is the proof of the love he received from the fleshy membrane. It was flesh and blood that formed his inward parts; knitted him together in his mother's womb.
He doesn't know if his mother is ███████ ████████ or Sabrina Schariac. Both of these people are merging into one in his head, their faces melting into a gruesome, unfinished mold of a mother figure who was supposedly never there for him even though he still remembers the sound of her voice lulling him to sleep.
The more things he remembers from back then, the less he remembers from now — he feels as if his centuries of a lifetime are a fabrication.
The flesh of his mother melts like a candle, her face is pulled apart as if a plastic mask, and her body falls, weightless, to the invisible ground — a man he's often seen in his dreams crawls out of her as if he was wearing her like a suit. He’s dressed like a priest.
The man does not speak to him like the girl does.
The man smiles at him. Nothing more, nothing less.
Luocha often feels compelled to talk to him, but he's so caught up in his thoughts that today he cowers before him and can only beg on his knees for an answer he’s been searching for ever since their memories began to converge.
Were you me?
We may not speak of this. Or rather, being as we are, two very different persons, we may not even be silent together on this point.
Luocha cried that night, and ate his nails off like a vulture tearing the flesh off a fresh carcass. He fell asleep with bloodied hands tightly holding onto the cross he always carried with him.
His cross emitted a soft, green glow as its healing properties worked their way through his self-inflicted wounds.
Most people in his situation would crave the blood of Christ, but Luocha had faith in flesh and blood.
A person eats another from hunger. But I fed myself with my own placenta. And I’m not going to bite my nails.
——
He found a letter at the bottom of his doorstep that morning, which he disregarded before recognizing the bird at his window as one of Jing Yuan's pets. Luocha knew carrier pigeons to be a bygone tradition with the invention of phones, but the Xianzhou Luofu insisted on keeping it alive one way or another.
The contents of the letter were nothing special.
The General had invited him to play chess — the original version that Luocha briefly mentioned while they were browsing through the bazaar yesterday — but this time without Cloud Knights supervising them.
Luocha had been struggling with boredom lately. He couldn't say no.
——
This time, General Jing Yuan had no pressing questions for him. The hostile attitude he received alongside accusations of violating the laws of the Alliance were absent — thankfully so — and he was kind enough to even offer him tea, which, given his mostly sleepless night, Luocha was glad to accept.
“Did you sleep well, General Jing Yuan?”
“You can drop the formalities, Luocha,” he stated as one of his pawns demolished one of Luocha's towers. “You’re my friend now. You don't have to call me that.”
Jing Yuan found it difficult to build relationships with other people because of his status, but Luocha was peculiar in his perception of it. He respected the formalities expected out of any person speaking to the General, but seemed not to care for that title of his.
“To answer your question: I had a good night's sleep. I'm sure you know why they call me The Dozing General…”
He sighed, but it was a sigh of relief more than anything else. He appreciated this little running joke between his people because he hoped that they'd realize he was just a tired old man through it.
He placed one of his pawns forward without looking at the chessboard.
“You don't seem to have slept well. Was there any ruckus outside your motel?”
Luocha freezes in place as he thinks about last night, holding his pawn mid-air before he slowly places it back into its original position, as if hesitating his next move.
He hasn't told anyone about what he's been going through. He's sure no one could find the answer he's been looking for ever since his nightmares began to haunt him.
“Ah. You have a keen eye… I struggled to fall asleep last night. I didn't sleep very well.”
“How come?”
“I’m not used to another bed. My current accommodation… is uncomfortable.”
Luocha replied with a faint smile on his face. He knew it sounded ridiculous, given his nomadic nature forced him to sleep in a new place every few weeks at least, but what he said wasn’t entirely untrue — he doesn’t miss his home, but he does miss the king sized bed he had back then.
“Oh?”
Jing Yuan tilted his head ever so slightly as he observed the corners of Luocha’s mouth curl upwards into a smile. Luocha didn’t smile often, so when he did, Jing Yuan basked in his joy as if he could feel it. It was as if Luocha was the sun, often eclipsed by storm clouds, revealing its rays of light under the right conditions.
“If that’s the case, you can stay here for the night, if you’d like.”
Luocha is silent for a good minute.
Maybe the time has come for becoming a bit cold right here, to learn caution — better yet, to look away, to go away.
“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m not allowed to get into bed before...”
“Haha, you misunderstand, Luocha.”
Jing Yuan laughs heartily.
“Interpret it as a sleep-over, if the juvenile term helps you understand what I mean.”
He’s gotten to know Luocha better over the time they’ve spent together, but his religious devotion always takes him off guard.
It’s not that Luocha doesn’t long for sin, it’s that Luocha is not allowed to sin; in his attempts to respect his God’s wishes, he becomes most dishonest in front of his God, pretending that his customs are ones he willingly adheres to.
Jing Yuan has found that Luocha’s asceticism cannot be swayed by rational explanation — his previous attempts to absolve him of his discipline have resulted in failure.
His discipline stems from sacrifice: sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence — this antinatural sacrifice is a spiritual form of self-mutilation.
Defiance of his God, to Luocha, is defiance of oneself.
“I’m not sure, Jing Yuan. I’ve been alone for as long as I can remember. I don’t think companionship is what I need right now.”
Luocha shakes his head as he speaks. Jing Yuan has been trying to offer him his whole world for as long as they’ve known each other, but Luocha doesn’t want the world served to him on a silver platter; Luocha wants to see the world with his own eyes — he wants to savor its beauty.
Luocha doesn’t know that to an old man bound to this ground by his duties, a traveler like him brings the world with him everywhere he goes.
Jing Yuan wants to savor Luocha’s beauty, too. The Dozing General feels alive in front of him. A primordial hunger rises in his heart when their eyes meet.
Jing Yuan has repressed his feelings for the sake of his role for a long time.
“All events are profitable, all days holy and all people divine,” He rebutted. “Is that not one of His teachings, Luocha?”
Luocha feels a lump in his throat as Jing Yuan speaks to him — his words make him remember his oath.
All experiences are useful, all days holy, and all people divine.
He holds tightly onto his cross, its edges brushing against the leather of his gloves, threatening to rip into it through the force with which the boy held his pendant close to his heart.
“Yes,” Luocha replied. “He did say something like that.”
——
Jing Yuan’s bed is comfortable.
Luocha can only compare Jing Yuan to the sun. His warmth closes in on him like a moth to a flame — he holds his cross pendant close as Jing Yuan reaches his hand out to him.
The General’s hands, who have been harshly roughed up by violence, rest over his face as lightly as a butterfly to a flower.
Luocha heaved a sigh.
He is not ashamed of his clothes or the lack of. He’s honored to be able to witness Jing Yuan in his most vulnerable form — naked. There is no commandment against nakedness in his religion; he can freely show himself to Jing Yuan as he is, in the same way that he can.
Luocha finds no embarrassment in their nakedness, nor any temptation. Nakedness is, after all, the true form of all human beings — naked we came from our mother's womb, and naked shall we return. It is an undeniable truth that we were born naked, free of restraints over our desires, desperately hungry for flesh and blood, so much so we were willing to devour even the insides of our mother by parasitizing her body.
He silently recites to himself that he has faith in flesh and blood more than anything else, but when he feels his blood rushing through his veins beckoning to become one with the flesh of another, Luocha retreats to his blind faith in a God that never loved him.
Luocha knows love as merely a more refined form of parasitism, a form of settling down in the weak spots of another soul, sometimes even in the flesh — he knows this because even the first love he had received was of this parasitic nature. Flesh and blood could protect him as long as he fed off of it.
Luocha reaches his hand out to the sleeping man, cupping his cheek gently, then briefly places his lips on his forehead.
Jing Yuan is undeniably beautiful. His body is precisely sculpted by years of hard work but soft to touch, and his scars resemble lightning strikes — there are few that stick out as incisions left behind by blades and stitches.
The Dozing General’s chest rises and falls as he breathes rhythmically. Luocha finds a sense of reassurance when he watches Jing Yuan keep a stability that he hasn’t been able to uphold for many nights now.
When he felt his mind fade into the realm of dreams, his hand held out for Jing Yuan’s, holding onto it as if he could anchor him to reality.
If his body reacted to his nightmares as violently as it always would, Jing Yuan would surely be woken up by the claws on Luocha’s fingers digging into his knuckles — he’d wake up, and he’d wake him up from his nightmare, too.
He was wrong — Jing Yuan was right. Companionship is exactly what he needs right now.
Luocha latches onto his friend, and closes his eyes.
——
The man is here again. His church attire is gone — his naked body is corrupted beyond salvation by a force greater than any God that they have ever known. His wounds, seeping with something golden rather than red, remind Luocha of broken ceramics stuck back together with lacquer painted gold.
Their memories are fragmented, puzzle pieces not meant to go together forcefully shoved into each other, conjoined like twins from the motherly womb.
His memories latch onto him like a malignant tumor, burrowing themselves into his brain like maggots gathering to a carcass, devouring everything in their path including his memories.
You would not believe, old friend, what an abundance of suffering life has unloaded upon me, at all times, from early childhood on. But I made myself into a soldier, and this soldier, in the end, did become you.
Luocha doesn’t know which man he is. If he is the good man who saves lives, or if he is by far the most horrible human being who has existed so far — if he is the horrible man who knows the pleasure in destroying lives, the horrible man who is a creator in good and evil, an annihilator, a heretic, a soothsayer, a fool, an unholy man and a villain.
This breaking of oneself rips his soul apart, tearing it to pieces like the back of his skull was being split in half — as if a third thing neither the good man or the bad man was going to break out.
I am giving freedom to you. First I rip the sack of fluid, then I cut the umbilical cord so you are alive on your own accord.
——
Luocha cried in Jing Yuan’s arms that night.
His nails dug into his flesh — the pain woke up the Dozing General and the smell of blood brought Luocha to his senses — begging violently, but silently, for help.
The General held him close to his chest. He ran his fingers through his blonde hair as drops of blood fell from his wounds.
Jing Yuan called Luocha’s name, but his answer was silent.
Luocha hid in the crook of his neck — he bit down on it in an attempt to ground himself to reality through flesh and blood, but his dull teeth were unable to break the warrior’s tough skin.
Jing Yuan had pushed him away with gentleness. Even though his hands were still bloodstained — fresh blood still seeped out of the wounds between his knuckles — he clutched Luocha’s chin with rough, calloused fingers. He parted his lips and put his forefinger inside — felt the soft tissue of his gums, traced the ridges of each canine and each molar like he was examining the insides of his friend with surgical purpose and precision. He then pulled his finger out, wet with blood and saliva, painting a streak of red over Luocha’s cheek as he caressed him with the gentleness only an old man like him knew how to share.
The General realized his head was in the clouds — he meant to clean his companion up, but made a bloody mess of him.
“Oh, Luocha… I apologize. You must be shaken, and I'm not of much help. I didn’t mean to—”
Luocha’s bloody lips met his, his teeth broke into the soft tissue of his lips, and his tongue lapped up the blood that followed with an animalistic desperation — something like bloodlust — so voracious and so violent that Jing Yuan would have never expected it out of a man who often suffered from religious neurosis.
Jing Yuan returned the gesture — he was scared, but his heart was beating, full of life, rushing blood to each corner of his body. The martyrdom of an inexplicable untimely sensuality made his heart beat faster than ever.
Through much disassembling and self-overcoming, he turned his perception of intimacy into something precious and not something to be ashamed of. He was too old to be ashamed.
The preaching of chastity is a dangerous dietary restriction. It is a mockery of men’s nature. Sublimation of the sexual instinct yields nothing.
On this night, bodies affect bodies, their intertwined flesh forms a saliva-moistened thread that connects skin to skin. Soul and body touch. The soul eats the body.
“Demon,” said the General, lips covered in his own blood, “Man-eating demon.”
All earthly pleasures circle back to the act of eating. Consumption is the root of all things — the primary primordial activity. We feed when we are born. We become food when we die. All creation is attributed to nutrition.
In friendship, one must learn how to be a sponge in order to be loved, or the overflowing love will eat the friend, or, worse, feed on him.
Sharing one’s flesh as bread and one’s blood as wine symbolizes union, and to enjoy your friend’s flesh in every bite and his blood in every gulp with bold, sensual imagination, is the only way a sinner can absolve himself from the sin of falling for the siren song of carnal sin.
We can rage against our own flesh only for so long before something bursts out of our chest. Our baptized sins agglomerate into a swarm of carnivorous insects. Locusts eat us from the inside out to wear our skin like a costume. We become animals. Emotional and vulnerable, as animals are, but seeking flesh and blood to sustain oneself, as many animals do.
No disciple contests their Father’s right to impose his concepts and values upon His children. But that night, the man who always held a cross in his hands and let its sharp edges cut into his palms when he believed he deserved divine punishment— he drowned his cross in a sea of blood.
He chose to indulge oneself.
He chose to defy God.
His self-imposed punishment does not cleanse him, on the contrary, it pollutes his soul worse than the sin does. His own flesh and blood have been his source of faith for too long now, and a new animalistic procreative hunger — born not of bloodlust but lust itself — yearns for his friend.
Jing Yuan held him close to his chest. His muscles felt soft enough for Luocha to consider falling asleep right here. He was able to hear the old man’s heartbeat under his breastbone.
He relished the sound in its disturbing nature, cherished its consistency, adored its persistent efforts to pump blood through vein to vein. Its rhythmic thumping felt like a lullaby.
Luocha kissed his breast — his heart below the layers of skin beat enticingly. He kissed him again, again, and again, moving up until he reached his neck, nibbling at the skin he couldn’t break, the untouchable flesh and blood of the General of the Xianzhou Luofu. He kissed the marks he had left behind in his feverish state, using his affection in place of a plea — a prayer — for absolution. He lingered on them longer than he should have. His marks took on a purple hue.
Once they found each other face to face, blood on both of their faces and nothing but love in each other’s eyes, Jing Yuan pressed his lips to Luocha’s, and lightly bit his bottom lip — enough to startle the young man and reel him in, but not enough to break skin. Luocha showed him that even this form of violence is rooted in love.
Affectivity, or love.