Reborn To Be The Imperial Consort [BL]-Chapter 68: Thalassotélos — X

"Hu Lijing— you cannot be the one fighting and risking your life!" The former clan leader yelled at him, jabbing his forefinger at his stomach, the older fox spirit added. "Think of the child in your womb! How can you hear the thought of running around in the battlefield, fighting and killing when you are this close to carrying full term?!"

There was a raw desperation on his face, voice breaking and mind in disarray as he stalked closer to Hu Lijing, frustration blazing in his eyes as he stared at the nine-tailed fox.

Hu Lijing made no sound in response, nor did he move from where he was standing at the head of the table, a map laid out on it while he studied it, finger tracing over the path drawn on the map.

"We are losing, Elder. What is so difficult to understand about the dire straits we are in?" He intoned, voice ice cold as loose amber locks hung free from his otherwise tied hair while he stood with his head bowed. "The entire clan’s young ones are either dead or dying. At this point, we must — I must — step up, Elder. This war has dragged on for too long. Far too long." Hu Lijing paused, stomach churning as he looked up at the former clan leader with a complicated look on his handsome face. "I cannot just stay back and watch everyone die. We are at our last leg."

The former clan leader fell silent. His hands dropped to his sides as he let out a long, weary sigh, reaching up to furiously rub at his face. "There is so much to regret, Lijing. I’ve watched, fought and witnessed all those young foxes die a death, some without even their corpses intact." Reluctantly, he trudged towards the table where Hu Lijing was bowing over the map. "How did it come to this? When did it all come crashing down? I don’t know."

At his words, Hu Lijing’s frown deepened as vestiges of guilt and harrowing sorrow made itself known in the deepest part of his heart, treacherous voices waltzing around in his mind.

He knew how it all came to this. He knew it all too well, in fact. To his credit, Hu Lijing had tried his absolute best for years to prepare his people and even before that.

From the day his pregnancy was discovered to the day all the major clans had turned their back on the Spirit Fox clan and declared war against them.

Hu Lijing had done anything and everything within his power.

But it was not enough. It had never been enough. If the countless bodies littering their clan territory, the scattered ashes that clung to the wind, the rotten stench of hasty burials was any indication.

They were just a single clan. The others who declared them the enemy of the realm? Too many. Way too many.

It all had happened so fast that it left the nine-tailed divine fox’s head spinning if he so much as made the slightest effort to wrap it around his head. After all these years of thankless struggling, it was almost a blur in Hu Lijing’s mind, as guilty as he felt about this admission.

Hu Lijing swallowed silently, his teeth clamping around his lips as he nibbled on the soft flesh while numbly formulating more and more defence plans with every worst case scenario that he could think of in mind.

Their forces were awfully scarce now. Able-bodied foxes too few and wounded too many.

Their cries were now a noise Hu Lijing had — horrifyingly enough — gotten used to. He sat up at nights, caressing his stomach as he poured over the worsening reports, sitting behind the walls of his residence with guilt eating him alive.

He should have been on the battlefield a long time ago, he should have been with his people, his kinsmen. He should have been there when they breathed their last, not when they came back home, gone to the world, wrapped in the clan’s flag and riding the shoulders of those they had once laughed along with.

It was a painful sight. Their conditions were so dire that most of the fallen people weren’t even afforded a proper burial with them being paid the respect they were due in their final moments aboveground.

What a miserable life it was, what a vexing crossroad.

Those dead couldn’t be buried with the respect they deserved and those alive couldn’t afford even a single moment of peace to mourn their deaths in peace.

Every moment was a struggle, every second a fight against death. All of them, all of them were brave, those who fell and those who were still fighting, they fought against their foes with all their fangs and claws bared.

Except for Hu Lijing who stayed at the back, planning, strategising and pushing them to their inevitable doom knowing full well that he would be seeing most — if not all — of their bodies brought back on grieving shoulders.

Hu Lijing respected them. He was the only one who could afford to mourn so he mourned.

Oh how he wished that he had been cruel enough, unfeeling enough all those years ago and nipped the fruit of disaster growing within himself in the bud.

But back then, he had been weak. He still was. He knew even if he were to kill this child — this unlucky star — right this instant, he wouldn’t die.

Not really.

But would killing it change anything?

It wouldn’t. He knew damn well that not a single thing would change.

Even if he were to kill this accursed seed in his womb, the parasite of the mind and body. It would change nothing, it was not as if him killing it would suddenly make the other clans stop attacking his clan.

Killing it would neither reverse the damage that has been done nor bring back the lives that were lost in this blind and bloody war fought on the whims of the oracle.

It would only serve to increase the heavy burden of crushing guilt Hu Lijing was already carrying.

With a sigh, he pushed up against the table, his left palm pressing against the surface as he wrote down the route and the strategy on the sheet of parchment with his write, the weight of a burdened sigh heavy on his chapped lips.

The time passed in a slow crawl, the people gathered in the dim lit and gloomy room sat around in silence not wanting to disturb Hu Lijing as they — amongst themselves — discussed the next course of action quietly, every so often they would pause to glance at their clan leader and the sheet he was writing on.

It was heavy, it was oppressive and so bitterly cold that it was not better than a lackluster funeral held in remembrance of those who had passed and those who soon would.

When Hu Lijing finished making the last brushstroke, he put the brush down, wiping his hands on a rag carefully as he blew a warm breath on the sheet, instantly drying it while straightening his back.

Around the table, sat the last of the clan’s best combatants, expectantly waiting for his words and to share their own veiws and opinions.

Hu Lijing gazed at them as he stood, his amber eyes flickering over each of them as if to memorise their features and brand them on his mind.

He didn’t know how many of them would make it alive today. He truthfully didn’t want to ponder upon it too much.

It hurt a lot to think of their deaths.

"Today... I shall be the vanguard." He murmured softly, pausing to take in their rather belated reactions. "I will lead you, whether it is to death or to a pyrrhic victory, that will be seen by the end of this day."

"Clan Leader!" One of the general’s eyes widened in horror as he all but gaped at Hu Lijing. "You are heavy with a child. 35 years into this pregnancy, you cannot just waltz in and — heaven forbid — lose the child!"

He hoped he did. Hu Lijing mused idly, his thoughts dark and dry.

The former clan leader nodded along as he looked at Hu Lijing from the corner of his eyes. "Clan Leader, at times delicate like this, you must be careful of the life growing within you. We cannot, in a good conscience, allow you who is pregnant to fight when we still very much can." He finished with his lips pursed in a troubled frown.

Hu Lijing didn’t oppose their words for the time being and simply waved his hand, instead choosing to continue briefing them on the strategy and telling them everything they needed to know.

By the end of the meeting, when everything had been addressed, Hu Lijing waited for them to leave, feeling too numb to think about anything in particular.

Except, they did not leave. Not a single fox spirit moved a muscle or showed any inclination of taking their leave.

Hu Lijing sat down, swallowing a sigh as he raised an eyebrow in a silent inquiry he felt too exhausted to voice.

Tense silence fell over the room, waves of distress rolling around in the flickering and dancing shadows of the darkness that surrounded the place.

Finally, shattering the brooding silence, the former clan leader — the oldest six tailed fox among them — spoke up, his hands fussing with the wrist guards he donned.

"Clan Leader Hu, please think over your decision to join the battlefield in your condition once more." Despite the threat of extermination that loomed over them, most of the warriors present in the room refused to let go of the particular set of morals they believed in.

Hence, at the end of the glum meeting all of them stood in front of the nine-tailed fox and beseeched quietly.

Hu Lijing paused, his thoughts coming to a halt, the guilt that gnawed at his heart crawled faster, sinking its sharp fangs into the cold yet smouldering home of his emotions.

"Elder—"

"Clan Leader, we implore you to reconsider."

But no, Hu Lijing was not going to waver. He was not going to back down. Not anymore.

Their worry, their willingness to look after his well-being would have been incredibly touching—

—That is, under different circumstances. Different times and different occasions.

Alas, the Hu Lijing they were facing now was no longer the Hu Lijing who was going to hesitate. He was the numb, the exhausted Clan Leader who had witnessed one too many deaths, led one to many funerals and grieved one to many young spirits.

If the price of his safety, its safety, was this big, this damning; then Hu Lijing would be damned if he allowed his kinsmen to pay the price for his own selfishness.

"No." Firmly, he rejected their pleas, coldly ignoring the looks on their faces as he tapped the tip of his fingers on the arm of the chair. "It was because of this idealistic thinking of the Elders such as yourself that I forced myself into inaction beyond the use of my mind.

"But now— now I can no longer afford such luxury. Forgive, but from this point on, I — Hu Lijing, the flame-borne nine-tailed divine fox spirit — will enter the battlefield with our warriors and leave it the same way. Whether on my own two feet or hoisted upon the shoulders of my surviving kin matters little."