155: Chapter 155 Beating These Two Bastards to Death

The city lord stood up from the stone platform, pulled his hands out of the cuffs of his thick leather robe, and pressed down the noise from the crowd below.

His tone was natural as he announced a routine matter that happened at every North Wind Festival.

Next, all the female distinguished guests present are requested to stand up and silently recite the prayer together with their eyes closed.

This is the final segment of the North Wind Festival; females belong to the yin, which allows them to better channel the blessings of the Wind-Walker.

The local women in the square had already stood up one after another with practiced movements, obviously doing the exact same thing during the exact same segment every year.

The female relatives from several merchant caravans were also coaxed and pulled up by their companions, and some were still tidying each other's leather robe collars.

On the viewing platform, Third Princess wrapped her fur cloak tightly around herself and slowly stood up.

The city lord stood up from the stone platform in the very center of the viewing platform, holding a rough pottery bowl with both hands, which contained half a bowl of warm blood just collected from the throat of a musk ox.

He raised the pottery bowl above his head, recited a prayer in a loud voice using the Northern Wilderness vernacular, and then switched to jiuzhou mandarin, his voice echoing across the square.

"The God of the Wind has protected Irkut for hundreds of years. Today, the North Wind Festival ceremony is complete, and the blizzard will soon subside. Before the wind stops, the god needs to hear the voices of all the daughters on this land. You may sit down after finishing the silent recitation, regardless of how long it takes."

He put down the pottery bowl, felt out complete and smooth white fox skins, and placed them on the stone platform in front of him.

"These are the best white fox skins of this year, six in total. Every woman participating in the prayer can claim one after the gathering disperses."

The blizzard had dwindled to nothing but fine, sparse snow particles. The moment these females closed their eyes, the frost condensed on the surfaces of the six totem poles in the center of the square grew another layer thicker.

Grayish-white fluorescence silently flowed across the bodies of the columns, and something was peeking out from inside the columns.

The Shaman raised her bone staff, the tip pointing in the direction of the viewing platform.

A trace of a satisfied smile surfaced on the city lord's face as he picked up the pottery bowl again.

"The God of the Wind has chosen this guest who has come from afar. Please step forward to receive the god's blessing."

Third Princess lowered her head, walking down the steps of the viewing platform with a bizarre gait as she walked toward the center of the square.

She stepped heavily, as if she were wrestling with something inside her body.

When passing by Xie Feng, she glared at him fiercely and extremely quickly.

She didn't know what was wrong with her today; her pace was fast but awkward, and her face was flushed red.

Xie Feng and Tu Ziguan on the side desperately held back so they didn't laugh out loud.

The city lord above didn't realize anything either, and at this moment was chanting the prayer together with the Shaman.

That's right, this 'Third Princess' was actually the imperial older brother, who had been made up and was walking with difficulty in a semi-crouch.

Zhou Jinglan.

This terrible idea was thought up by Xie Feng and Tu Ziguan. The siblings had similar facial features; with makeup, a crouch, and a cloak wrapped around the outside, plus Xie Feng using a small Spell on the side to cover for them, ordinary people simply couldn't tell.

The real 'Zhou Jinglan' behind them looked at her older brother with a pale face: "After Imperial Elder Brother goes back, this palace will personally stew a pot of Ganoderma soup for him."

Tu Ziguan pulled the fuse out of his belt, weighed it in his hand, and gently placed it on the ground.

He stared at the faintly glowing five-toed footprints in the center of the square and said in a low voice: "Come, let's see just how lucky this lucky lady you've chosen really is."

Xie Feng leaned against the armrest of the low stool, holding the cold crystal blind staff in his hand, his three-lobed pupils locked onto Zhou Jinglan's back.

He silently counted the resonance frequency of the totem poles in his heart. In just a little while, the frozen soil at the bottom of the poles would completely sink to the trigger depth.

Lu Mingyuan's fingertips lit up with a silver-white halo, and he was ready to log off and run away at any time.

Xu Liujing squatted in the last row, pressed the last runestone into the frozen soil, and silently chanted for the blessing of the Ancestral Master in his mouth.

Suddenly, a mass of snow appeared on the altar—a constantly changing, formless mass of snow. It was not just a whirlwind mixed with flying snow, although countless snowflakes were flying up and down around it at this moment... That mass gradually disappeared, as if dissolving into the falling snow, until finally there was nothing left on the altar. That thing was the surrounding snowflakes, flying everywhere and omnipresent. (——August Derleth, The Snow-Thing)

"The Snow-Thing?"

Xie Feng instantly opened his mouth.

The Snow-Thing is one of the Incarnations of Ithaqua, also known as the "Manifestation of Ice".

This Incarnation is a self-aware mass of snow, with a pair of glowing giant eyes inside the snow mass. Its arrival is often accompanied by a ruthless and bitter cold, and creatures near it will be frostbitten by the low temperatures. Although there will be no obvious scars on the victims' bodies, their bones and internal organs will suffer severe frostbite.

The Snow-Thing slowly appeared and locked its gaze on Third Princess. 'Third Princess' stood in the center of the altar, turned her head, and gave several people an expression of "are we really going to do this?", and Xie Feng and Tu Ziguan nodded earnestly.

Zhou Jinglan nodded with a look of resignation to his fate.

Changing from a squatting posture to a standing one, he suddenly flung open his fur cloak in the center of the altar.

It felt like some kind of pervert stopping women by the roadside.

Over his dark-black imperial prince's daily attire, he wore an extremely ill-fitting women's leather robe, the collar hanging crookedly on his collarbone, and the flush on his face burned all the way from his cheekbones to the roots of his ears.

That bright yellow inner robe was dazzlingly bright in the blizzard; that was the brand personally imprinted by The King in Yellow in the Bloodline of the Zhou family.

The yellow robe remained motionless amidst the flying snow particles, and all the snowflakes falling on the surface of the robe evaporated silently the instant before touching the fabric.

The Snow-Thing's pair of glowing giant eyes suddenly contracted.

It recognized the yellow robe, and recognized the bright yellow figure sleeping deep within the Aldebaran Star Domain behind the yellow robe. The relationship between the Wind-Walker and the Lord of the Great Deep and Starry Sea can be traced back to the era when the Great Old Ones still walked freely on Earth.

And at this moment, Hastur's brand was being unreservedly radiated from a man wearing a women's leather robe with a face as red as a boiled crab.

Third Princess suddenly stood up on the viewing platform, her eyeballs staring out as if they were about to fall out of their sockets.

She had expected her imperial older brother to take the stage for her, but she hadn't expected her imperial older brother to open his cloak in front of a Great Old One's Incarnation, ramming the mark of The King in Yellow directly into the Snow-Thing's face in the most primitive way.

"Imperial Older Brother, have you lost your mind?!"

Xu Liujing squatted behind the pillar of the animal-skin shed in the last row with his hands hugging his head, his facial expression somewhere between breakdown and reverence: "You bastards! What are you making His Imperial Crown Prince Highness do?!"

Xie Feng and Tu Ziguan were already completely in the zone.

Tu Ziguan bounced off the low stool, cupped his hands around his mouth, and roared toward the altar with all his might: "Your Highness! The lines! You haven't recited the lines yet!"

Xie Feng stood up leaning on the cold crystal blind staff, the corners of his mouth beneath his veil splitting into an extremely dangerous arc, and followed Tu Ziguan's rhythm with another roar, his voice echoing across the sky above the square: "Show us a likeness, little baby!"

Zhou Jinglan stood on the altar, hearing the shouts of these two bastards, and a trace of the impulse to beat someone to death with a staff right on the spot finally surfaced on that expressionless face.