Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shang Qinghua paced outside the pharmacy—sorry, the demon apothecary and tried not to bite any more of his nail as he convinced himself his plan would work. To be honest, he had forgotten he had written this place until two hours ago and he could practically hear Cucumber-bro mocking him: An apothecary in a Demon Realm? In the middle of the forest? How does she get customers! But that was the thing! Her apothecary had eagle legs and it moved and she had the magic power to summon people to her shop to pick up their prescriptions. It had been a cool idea he’d had in his draft, back when he thought of maybe discussing Luo Binghe getting contraceptives for some of his wives.

Maybe that didn’t make the most sense in a stallion novel but people had been calling his work misogynist, and claiming he treated the wives as objects and rewards. First of all, had these people ever read a stallion novel??? And SECOND OF ALL he actually had tried to inject some realism into the genre by introducing children and the wives fighting like real concubines did at court but apparently everyone hated that so bye bye pro-choice subplot.

Anyway.

The important part about the apothecary was that it had the solution to his exact problem. Or it would. Probably.

A demon with deer antlers decorated with spider webs, seven all black eyes and breasts completely uncovered because Shang Qinghua had once written that it was tradition for demons to go topless during festival days (in his defense people had loved that and the increase in subscriptions had allowed him to finally fix his busted ass refrigerator), walked past him, snarling. Shang Qinghua smiled back, tempted to wave, but stopped pacing all the same as the woman went into the shop.

He had to get a hold of himself. Remembering this shop was a game changer! Initially, he had plans to march up to Mobei-jun, tell him he was going to leave the Demon Realm for good this time and never come back and do any more spying or traitoring. He was finally sticking to his moral code! Now that Cucumber-bro was here, able to change the story in ways Shang Qinghua’s System had prevented him from, Shang Qinghua could go out and live a nice and normal life and Mobei-jun would also be fine and alive—until he was crowned and his uncle tried to kill him, which only happened in a draft but the apothecary was also only in a draft so who knew what was going to happen.

Except, maybe Mobei-jun was super hot, and actually kind of nice, and if he did punch Shang Qinghua too many timse they usually didn’t hurt. Maybe it was a demon thing? A bro thing? Maybe the Demon Realm wouldn’t be so bad if he could just figure the trick his king used to pop in and out of realms. Obviously, he couldn’t ask Mobei-jun, but the apothecary who could summon her clients to her at will…

Shang Qinghua walked confidently into the shop and if it looked exactly like a modern drug store except with all the products and shelves swapped with fantasy-demon versions, well, this hadn’t made it into the final draft so no one was there to mock him!

Confidently, Shang Qinghua headed towards the pharmacist and ignore the topless demons who eyed with casual suspicion. At least it wasn’t blood lust!

“Can I help you?” A fox faced woman put a small round container of probably historically accurate medicine onto a shelf and Shang Qinghua tapped his nails on the wooden counter.

“I am looking to learn the secrets of, uh, inter realm transport to find a disciple in my sect who got thrown into the Abyss and am here to make a trade!” It had taken him hours to come up with that cover story, and it was the most reasonable couldn’t-be-traced-back-to-him-being-a-spy plan that he had. Finding lost disciples was something many humans could have come and asked for if they knew how to find the place (and seeing as it was on the border of mortal and demon realms, it wasn’t too hard.) Not to mention, it was true! Shang Qinghua did have a disciple or, well, martial nephew, stuck in the Abyss.

Shang Qinghua had scoured the Northern Desert, and especially Mobei-jun’s ancestral home, for a few priceless artefacts to trade, but the fox-woman didn’t even ask to see if he could pay. Instead she pulled out—oh shit was that a computer?

“Name?”

“What?” It really looked like a computer, but it was made of wood and he couldn’t see the screen, but it looked like a flat black obsidian mirror and—

“What’s the name of your sect disciple?”

“Uh…Luo Binghe?”

“One moment.” The woman typed more things into the not-computer and then headed into the back room. This was a good plan though. If she said no, Shang Qinghua could just leave. If she said yes—well, maybe Shang Qinghua would just, well, he’d still have to say he was done spying for Mobei-jun but maybe he could visit? Or at least check up on him and save him from the uncle killing thing—it was hard to tell if this world’s Binghe would be up to the task.

“All ready,” the fox woman said stepping back to the front. “You should find what you’re looking for out back.” The woman pointed to a side of the apothecary hut.

“Uhhh…and you, I mean, you don’t need to process my payment first?”

The fox-woman took out her anachronistic glasses from her robe pocket and anachronistically put them on her face.

“This is a pharmacy, we don’t accept payment.”

Ahhhh, right, this plot was also going to be about how universal health care should extend to drugs. Wait, did that mean the Demon Realm had free health care? Nevermind—

“Well, I, this wasn’t medicine, so I wasn’t sure—”

“It says here you have an outstanding balance for this as well—” the woman handed him a ceramic bottle that was filled with Prozac and Shang Qinghua definitely didn’t scream. “As for payment, don’t worry, the spiritual energy tax taken when you entered still applies here. Good day.”

His spiritual energy tax?

Shang Qinghua nodded, popped the correct dosage of his antidepressants that he had not forgotten about even decades after his death and went around back trying to pretend that this all made sense. And to be fair, before Cucumber-bro, at least things mostly had! There had been internal logic, even if that logic didn’t make real life sense. How was he supposed to explain why there was Prozac in this world?

He tried to remember how the pharm—the apothecary worked. He remembered the spiritual energy tax, now that she mentioned it. The shop took a portion of your spiritual energy when you entered and the cauldron in the back used that to make exactly what you were looking for. Including things no one else had heard of, like Prozac apparently. Actually, that was cool as hell, he definitely should have put this into the final draft.

With all the eagerness of someone who’s been out of anti-depressants for 30 years, Shand Qinghua paced around the side of the shop hoping to find the magic scroll that would tell him how to teleport into and out of the Demon Realm at will only—

 “Shishu?” Luu Binghe asked. Luo Binghe, his proudest creation, his protagonist, his definitely-not-a-self-insert son who should have been falling through the Endless Abyss! It hadn’t even been a year since the Immortal Alliance Conference! When did he make it out of the Abyss and into the demon realm? What was he doing—?

Ah. Right. The pharmacist could summon people across realms. Including people stuck in the Endless Abyss.

Luo Binghe’s head whipped around like an adorable puppy looking for a thrown ball, desperate to find answers. Except—shit, wasn’t Cucumber-bro in charge of the plot changes? But this was probably fine, right, at least the system wouldn’t hadn’t—

“Shishu, you need to take me back to the human realm! Shizun—”

[ERROR! User 1 is not authorized to make this decision. Events of Endless Abyss—]

“Shishu, please, you we have to leave! Where are we going, Shish—”

[ERROR! User 1 cannot interference with—]

Yes okay bout—

[ERROR! ERROR! ERROR! User 1 cannot—]

Well maybe if the System gave him a minute to think of an explanation to Luo Binghe he might be able to fix this!

The System Error stopped but Shang Qinghua could feel its judgement. But no big deal right. Luo Binghe who should have been in the Abyss learning how to conquer everything was here, in a totally different place trying to get to the human realm and skip the whole damn plot!

“Wait!” Shang Qinghua opened his mouth and then ushered Luo Binghe deeper into the forest, away from prying eyes, as his mind worked over time. He had to keep Luo Binghe here, that was for sure. Maybe he had to get him back to the Abyss to but that seemed mean. “Listen, Binghe you need to slow down. We can’t go back to the human realm just yet. The human realm isn’t safe for you anymore! Heavenly demons—”

“Shizun told you!?”

Shit!

“NO! I mean, he ugh,” Shang Qinghua said, lying out of his ass as the System blared about him interfering with Cucumber-bro’s plans. “Shen Qingqiu”— Shit, was he too informal? Should he have said Shen-shixiong? –“didn’t tell me exactly, but he did tell me about what happened and how he was so worried about what he had done. If the other sect leaders knew about your uh, heritage, it would be really bad. Plus, whatever is happening with Huan Hua palace—the point is, you can’t leave just yet. I just, ugh, as I told the pha—apothecary, I just was looking for you to make sure you’re safe, but you know. You can’t go back just yet!” At least he couldn’t go back until he got stronger and found Xin Mo. The original version had taken several years of conquering the demon realm before he had returned but the timeline on that was unclear. Ideally, he’d also get a few wives, but that ship looked to have sailed for some reason.

The plants were starting to look weird and foreign, bring poisonous colours and thick leaved foliage. Shang Qinghua slowed down, tried not to think of how many of these plants would try to kill them, and turned back to his dear protagonist.

“Shizun sent you to make sure I was safe?” Luo Binghe had a look somewhere between hopeful confusion and seething rage and Shang Qinghua instinctively shrank back. This was still a teenager, but teenagers had bullied Shang Qinghua before, okay!

[ERROR! User 1 cannot—]

“Listen, I can neither confirm nor deny any actions Shen-shixiong has taken!” Shang Qinghua said hastily. “But I do know he wants you to be all right, so just, lay low and get stronger for now, all right. No one knows about your heritage but just wait until you feel strong enough to—”

“Wait, why would Shizun send you! Weren’t you the one who brought the demons? Weren’t you—!”

“Exactly! He knew I wouldn’t judge you!” Shang Qinghua hissed, but Luo Binghe instead of shrinking back only seemed to harden in his suspicions. The wind rustled the leaves of the probably deadly flora and Shang Qinghua pretended it had nothing to do with his darling main character’s growing anger. It was a lot easier to do that when Luo Binghe wasn’t stalking toward him, trampling through the flowers.

  “All right, listen. I don’t have time to explain just—AH DON’T TOUCH THAT FLOWER!” Shang Qinghua shoved his beloved protagonist out of the way, using way too much spiritual energy and sending him shooting 8 feet in one direction but, at the very least, away from the Soul-Bond-Cultivation Flower. For a nineteen year old Luo Binghe who had Sha Hualing and a bunch of other wives to help him, the papapa to cement your everlasting bond or die flower had been a fun time for Luo Binghe to choose which of his wives had the most marital prowess and then well, you know, fuck. The Flower was all about making a commitment to intertwine your cultivation for life, to proclaim who was the most compatible to fight by your side! It was one of the more romantic papapa scenes back when Shang Qinghua had thought of adding a more emotional connection before things got out of hand. But for a maybe not even eighteen-year-old Binghe who definitely did not have a cultivation partner in a realm fiddled with adult demons—well, okay, maybe Shang Qinghua felt a little bad.

“Shit, that was close,” Shang Qinghua removed his qiankun bag, careful to only touch the flower by the stem, and put the cursed flower into it. Probably Cucumber-bro would remember more about the flower and whether or not anything useful came from it, but you couldn’t just leave these things lying around. There was also the Moon Love Midnight Blossom flower right next to it—this would curse you to turn into a cat unless you, you know, papapa’d under the moonlight—but thankfully this was not as lethal as Soul-Bond-Cultivation Flower. Of course, there was the more common Yellow Sparrow Plant, a weed that if touched would grow over your body until you fucked but that looked ugly enough that most people avoided them even without knowing what they did. And then there was—wait—oh shit, Binghe!

Luo Binghe was braced on the dirt of the floor looking at Shang Qinghua with wide eyes as if doing complicated math and honestly, Shang Qinghua hoped the System was going to level with him because there was no way out of this unless the System invented time travel! Why not warn him ahead of time not to talk to the apothecary!

“Listen, your Shizun made a sword grave outside his house for you and he visits it every day and Sect Leader and Liu-shixiong are incredibly worried and maybe Shizun mentioned how worried he was, and how he was certain you were all right and not dead, and maybe everyone else thought that was a delusion—” or as Mu Qingfang called it “extreme optimism, delusions are actually a symptom of psychosis, and I don’t believe he’s progressed to this point” “— but I, well, I opened the demon realm! I was there! Right! Your Shizun didn’t need to tell me about being a demon, Mobei-jun did. He thought it would help you to know where you came from, so he removed your seal, and then you fell into the Abyss and I thought you were for sure dead, but then I thought, you know what, maybe not! You’re a strong guy, maybe you’re fine! So I came here and I found you! Yay!” Shang Qinghua clapped his hands a little theatrically having found a somewhat convincing lie. “But absolutely if you show up to the human realm there are people who are going to kill you and I really can’t elaborate on that right now, all right? Just train, and then I’ll see what I can do and when the time is right, you can go back to the mortal realm yourself.”

Luo Binghe picked himself up gently, face settling not into the cold rage of the original, but no longer the trusting eagerness of his former self either. His eyes looked red rimmed and hard, his jaw set, but his lip turned inward as if he had been biting it. He looked lost.

“Shizun didn’t send you,” Luo Binghe said finally, his energy, his hope seeming to deflate. “You came of your own accord of guilt—of everyone in the sect, of all my martial siblings and aunts and uncles and shizun, you’re the one who came because everyone else thinks I’m dead.” Luo Binghe paused as if he couldn’t understand it and how was Shang Qinghua supposed to explain why. “He doesn’t even know you’re here, does he?”

“He didn’t send me.” Shang Qinghua winced. Sorry Cucumber-bro! “But hey, at least someone showed up, right?”

Luo Binghe sighed, hand trembling slightly as he fixed his hair and reached to steady himself on the Sacred Morning Love Tree and, oh no, was that his lip trembling? What happened to his hot-blood protagonist! Wasn’t the trauma supposed to make him stronger? Wasn’t—

Wait!

“Don’t touch that tree!”

This time when Shang QingHua tackled Binghe, he could hear the ghost of Cucumber-bro’s laughter

#

When Shang Qinghua imagined himself sneaking back into the Northern Desert it was not with Luo Binghe in tow, huddled in the back of an abandoned shack, Luo Binge sitting on the rotted wooden floor, Shang Qinghua in the front like some kind of teacher with his ink brush and paper as Shang Qinghua tried to remember every piece of lore he’d ever written about sex flowers. Cucumber-bro would have laughed his ass off but also Cucumber-bro would have remembered all the flowers and what they looked like and would have made this sexual education class less awkward.

But if one thing was obvious, it was that, if Luo Binghe wanted to survive in the demon realm before he turned 18 then he had better learn about which flowers to avoid. And there was a lot of them. He’d been a little surprised that Luo Binghe had followed him, to be honest, but even the protagonist couldn’t argue with the sheer alarming number of sex flowers in the demon realm.

So of course Shang Qinghua had had to give him a little impromptu lecture before he left Binghe to his devices.

“And this flower—” Shang Qinghua pointed to his crudely drawn magnolia with words like “tiger stripes” and “smells like cherries and wine” next to it. “Can be taken care of alone. You can just—” Shang Qinghua prevented himself from making a vague jerking off motion in front of a child—teen—basically-not-not-exactly-adult and just swirling his ink brush importantly.

Luo Binghe was sulking, jaw clenched. But he was also taking notes. Because of course he was. Original Binghe didn’t take notes! But also probably notes were good here, because they had covered a lot of ground and Shang Qinghua knew that An Ding peak barely taught any sex ed beyond “this is how you get pregnant, don’t do that.”

“Basically,” Shang Qinghua said, summing up what had amounted to a several hours long lecture—including the sneaking in here. Though that had been necessary because when they had been walking and learning the diagrams had been a lot shakier. “If you see a plant you don’t recognize, just run. And if you’re cursed, I mean, a lot of curses in the demon realm can be solved by dual cultivation but it’s still good to see a doctor, just you know, invite your cultivation partner!”

Luo Binghe noted and then put his ink brush down.

“Sorry! You were just in the Abyss, I didn’t mean to give you a lecture, it’s just—” it’s just Shang Qinghua didn’t want him to die or get sexually assaulted, and now that we was really thinking about his world building the possibilities were starting to shift uncomfortable. What if a kid got cursed, huh? Would the System even allow that?

[Curses that can only be solved by dual cultivation do not activate until after a character is sexually active.]

Okay, well, at least there was that.

“Also!” Shang Qinghua added because you know what, the wandering apothecary shop was growing on him. “You can visit the apothecary we were just at to get contraceptives! Which, is very important! So! It’s also free!”

Luo Binghe opened his mouth, closed his mouth, nodded, and then his body did a weird thing like when you were sobbing. In fact, it did that several more times until Shang Qinghua was starting to feel uncomfortable.

“Hey, are you all right?”

And then Luo Binghe started sobbing for real.

“Listen, Binghe it’s all right, I know it seems like there’s a lot of flowers that can kill you, but its’ not so bad! And there’s lots of people who can help you, like the apothecary, she’s very nice and she helped me get you out of the Abyss, it’s—” Shang Qinghua crouched next to his protagonist, his son, his beloved stallion character, but Luo Binghe’s sobbing got even louder, as he collapsed onto the ground. The ceramic bottle of anti-depressants felt heavy in Shang Qinghua’s robe pocket, but grief wasn’t the same thing as depression and Shang Qinghua was not a psychiatrist who understood dosages or when to prescribe medicine. He couldn’t just give Luo Binghe PIDW-version Prozac and expect that to just fix everything. Right? Unless—No, that was a stupid idea.

“Hey,” Shang Qinghua gentled rubbed Luo Binghe’s back like he had seen a million times and movies and never experienced himself. Luo Binghe’s back did feel soft or warm like it was probably supposed to. Instead his shoulders were hard and bony, his back stiff, his qi circulating unevenly, almost sluggishly, his muscles shifting with each sob, dislodging Shang Qinghua’s place on his protagonists back.

 “It’s going to be fine. I’ll—I’ll be here to check up on you, yeah?” He could come back to refill his prescription and make a plan to meet Luo Binghe there every month, just to make sure things were going well. That’d probably help, right? Then he’d know when Xin Mo was found, and how Luo Binghe’s demon realm conquering technique was going. “It’s going to be all right, you’re not alone, shhhh, I’m here…”

Shang Qinghua continued to make soothing sounds that he was pretty sure wasn’t working until Luo Binghe suddenly ratcheted up into a seated positions seconds before the abandoned hut’s front door slammed open.

“You,” Mobei-jun said. Though it was unclear who exactly he was the most displeased as seeing. But it was certainly clear that he was displeased. Great. Perfect. And Luo Binghe was still crying even though he was sitting up now.

This was why Shang Qinghua had stopped trying to change the plot! Something always threw a wrench in his plans, even something as simple as maybe trying to—

“Why is he crying?” Mobei-jun’s face did not change, outwardly, except his brows furrowed and his hands tensed over his sword and it didn’t take a genius to see the threat. And even if Mobei-jun was his most potent wet dream fantasy come to life, Luo Binghe was his son, and sons came before sexual fantasies all right. And so Shang Qinghua stood up and drew his sword, which maybe Mobei-jun had never even seen him do, and he tried to pretend as if he had a chance of actually fighting Mobei-jun without immediately being slaughtered.

“He’s just gone through a very traumatic experience and arrived here and I was just trying to add to his sexual education about demon realm flowers and I know you hate me and never want to see me again but was I supposed to let a teenager die because he didn’t know about the demon birds and the bees!” Shang Qinghua was shorter than Mobei-jun because he’d liked tall men, but Shang Qinghua drew himself up to his full height anyway. “You told him about his demon heritage to help him, now I’m just teaching him more about it, that’s all. If you want me to leave, then I’m happy to, but leave him be.”

Shang Qinghua nodded, hoping to muscle his way past a literal ice demon but Mobei-jun only shifted uncomfortable, turning away from the crying child to look at Shang Qinghua. He drew one hand across the doorway, stopping him from leaving and cleared his throat ominously.

“You were the one who left,” he said acidly, and also truthfully. “And I have no intention of harming him, though I question, if you found him in the Abyss why you thought sexual education would take precedence over seeing him clothed and fed.” That was maybe a good point except Shang Qinghua didn’t have clothes and food and was also in hiding and couldn’t provide that.

“Well, it was a triage case! He almost fell into the path of the Scared Morning Love Tree. I didn’t have a bed and a house with me, but I could still save him from that!” Shang Qinghua tried to puff up his chest which was the stupidest thing he could be doing because he should be begging on his knees for Mobei-jun’s forgiveness. Why did he think he needed to look cool in front of Luo Binghe? Why was he so concerned with protecting Luo Binghe that he forgot how to protect himself? He was just about to switch to grovelling when Mobei-jun relented, removed his hand from the door, no longer barring their path.

“We’ll bring him back to the palace to recuperate, you can finish your lesson there. What you do after is your choice.” Mobei-jun opened a portal to the inside of the palace, to a set of guest suites no less, and Shang Qinghua looked at Luo Binghe as if somehow the traumatized protagonist would understand what was going on, but somehow he looked just as lost as Shang Qinghua felt.

“Good!” Shang Qinghua said, not to lose face, and marched into the portal, waiting for Luo Binghe to follow. Sweat poured off him like the polar ice caps in hell, but he was going to remain strong for his son.  Cucumber-bro had obviously instilled in Binghe that meaningless sex was not as important as falling in love with your wife—why else hadn’t Luo Binghe initiated any of his wife plots?— and so if Binghe was never going to have a harem, Shang Qinghua was still going to support him until he met his wife and they descended into happily marriage domestic bliss and fucked like rabbits.

Woodenly, snot dripping down his nose, the former harem haver picked up his notes and all the diagrams that Shang Qinghua had drawn and followed Mobei-jun back into a the palace.

Chapter Text

The festival was still going on for another few days and so not only did Shang Qinghua have to deal with being back in the palace, interacting with all the servants and advisors and tax collectors who had seen him dramatically storm out last time, but he also had to interact with them topless.

Luo Binghe had not come out of his guest suite, and only out of his room to eat and so he was spared from this but Shang Qinghua was in agony as he tried to list all the things he knew about having sex with women that might help Luo Binghe. Obviously he mentioned the Soul-Bond-Cultivation flower, how it was a symbol of everlasting love, a go to-proposal gift and a meaningful sign of affection, that he should never ever give anyone he wasn’t planning on marrying for the rest of his life! The effects of the flower couldn’t be undone! Plus, it would lead to a lot of miscommunication probably and the broken heart of a woman thinking Luo Binghe was proposing when really, he had just seen a cool flower. But outside of specific sex flowers, there was a lot of ground to cover.

And sure, maybe Shang Qinghua was gay, and he’d never had sex with a women and his sex scenes were fade to black, but he did know a lot about safe sex and probably teaching the protagonist the importance of consent was something he should have done from the start but he’s doing it now dammit!

Shang Qinghua sighed as he went over the grain reports for the western part of the Northern Deserts. He was in the old office where he used to get work done back when he was a retainer and spy—spies didn’t get their own offices after all. But the room, right off the library, was small and unused, the ice floors overlaid with dusty wood and the oil-paper screens stale with disuse. But there was no where else that Shang Qinghua could get work done in private.

Strictly speaking this wasn’t his job anymore, as he had disavowed being a spy and Mobei-Jun was still pissed at him, but the demons and imps had looked at him with such desperation that Shang Qinghua figured he might as well train his replacement.

“And then,” the ice demon, Qin Ziya said from their place in the chair on the other side of Shang Qinghua’s commandeered desk. “That woman tried to claim that the tax was collected form the net income instead of gross even though, without the tax, there’s no net, so how can that even be, huh? But anyway, Sha Hualing fell for it and now I have to do everything all over again and, please, Peak Lord Shang, please, I don’t know what fight you had with Mobei-jun, but can’t you fix it?” Qin Ziya pressed his hands together and bowed which was a little alarming.

The ice palace had a multitude of imp servants who had followed Shang Qinghua around and gotten him what he needed, but that was literally their job. Qin Ziya had been the only vaguely humanoid person who was not bound to serve him that seemed to actually appreciate his talents. This was mostly because while Shang Qinghua was not supposed to have been doing any accounting, he had let slip that An Ding peak was known for logistics and Qin Ziya, the sole accountant, had ran to him like a high schooler placed in charge of teaching a university class. Now, all spindly spider-thin limbs and ice blue dark robes, they hovered over Shang Qinghua, which was an upgrade from when they used to loom over Shang Qinghua but was still unsettling.

“Can you send someone else from An Ding? There’s so much, and I—”

“The shop keepers should know about accounting,” Shang Qinghua muttered around the hair pin in his mouth. “You could hire someone else from town.” God, he could see why Qin Ziya was freaking out, Sha Hualing had not collected any of the right tithes, and had barely recorded the relevant information at all, least of all in the right place, and with the expenses for the upcoming festival—

“I managed to get a few people, but this isn’t like the mortal realm. Demons don’t want to be accountants, usually.” Qin Ziya sighed. They had never freaked out in front of Shang Qinghua before, or been this deferential, honestly, but the novelty of it was not as striking as—

“Is this part filled out in blood—”

“You see what I’m dealing with!” Qin Ziya hissed. “Everyone wants to go back to stealing what they want instead of budgeting, but the budgeting worked! It worked and everyone had food and clothing and resources and now the imps are fighting over who gets to each the rest of paperwork when we’re done!” Qin Ziya continued on for some time as Shang Qinghua nodded, pretended to listen and chewed even more on his hair pin. He used to chew on the jade token of An Ding peak, but then Mu Qingfang had asked him about the teeth marks.

Shang Qinghua was so absorbed in his work he didn’t notice when Qin Ziya stopped talking. The room was eeirely silent, and noticeably colder and sure enough, when he looked up, the sole accredited demon accountant was gone, and instead Mobei-jun was hovering in the doorway. Pissed. His fur cloak was pristine as ever, unflappable, but the sleeve of one of his robes had pushed up, something Mobei-jun only did when he was deep in thought, and his jaw was set tighter than Mobei-jun’s abs. Not that Shang Qinghua had seen the abs, but he knew okay, he’d created the character. He’d created the character to be super hot when pissed too, but the consequences of this was that Shang Qinghua spent most of his time looking down.

“What are you doing here.”

“Ah, Qin Ziya needed some help. Sha Hualing—”

“You said you were leaving. And now you’re back.”

Great. A conversation. Talking about his feelings in front of a murderous demon capable of breaking him, who constantly bullied him. Why had he come back again? Right. For Luo Binghe’s sex education and the future of all his wives or just the one wife probably.

“You said you no longer wished to work with me. You saved my life twice. Helped me open the Abyss and then ran away when it was convenient. And now you’re back.”

“I just didn’t want to be a spy! I don’t want to betray my peak lords, I don’t…honestly, you treated me badly, didn’t appreciate me and asked me to all your work and I did it! I did all of it but everyone has their limits, and I’m not going to betray my sect only to be mistreated and…anyway, I already said all of that.” Shang Qinghua took the hair pin out of his mouth and looked at the ink smudged along his forearm. Shang Qinghua just didn’t want to die, okay? This Mobei-jun seemed nicer, or at least more civil to Shang Qinghua, but if there was ever a time Shang Qinghua needed to double cross him like the original had done, well, Shang Qinghua may have been a cultivator but he wasn’t a fighter!

“But you wish to go over grain reports…”

“People need my help, okay! That’s—An Ding is logistics, I know logistics, this—I’m not even here for long, just long enough to teach Luo Binghe the ins and outs of demonic sex curses and then, you never have to see me again.” Shang Qinghua turned the pin in his hand aware Mobei-jun was hovering over him. “Oh, and, here,” Shang Qinghua withdrew the Soul-Bond-Cultivation flower from his qiankun pouch. It was dangerous to have these things around, but ice could probably counteract the effects of the pollen, right. “I, ugh, you know what to do with it, right, my king?”

When Mobei-jun didn’t respond Shang Qinghua looked up at him. Of course, this was the last day of the festival, so Mobei-jun’s robes completely exposed his chest—Shang Qinghua had been right about the abs—but if it weren’t for the rise and fall of Mobei-jun’s rib cage, he’d look more like a statue instead of a person, frozen ice grasping the steam of the flower carefully.

“You recognize it, right?” It would be bad if the ruler of the Mobei Clan died from a sex pollen flower. Shang Qinghua isn’t sure he’d be able to live that down, let alone what that would do for Demon Realm relations.

“What do you want?” Mobei-jun’s voice was so unexpectedly rough that Shang Qinghua paused. Mobei-jun had warmed up to him a little over the years the same way a cat learned to tolerate a hamster it couldn’t eat, but maybe Shang Qinghua had taken that for granted. When Mobei-jun had showed up again and allowed them back into the palace, he’d kind of just assumed he was safe, but maybe Mobei-jun was trying to do Luo Binghe a favour and Shang Qinghua’s presence was just a reminder of their mutually assured destruction. Certainly Mobei-jun seemed flushed, and the way he was averting his eyes must have meant he was restraining himself from something, most likely violence.

Which, firstly, was a little rude because getting into the future demon king’s good graces this early was sure to earn Mobei-jun a lot of favour, more than just as the right hand assassin. But obviously without Xin Mo, it wasn’t like Shang Qinghua could just explain this to him. At the very least, he could understand why Mobei-jun was confused.

“Look, I know you don’t want me here, but…”

Mobei-jun huffed out a sound between a sigh and a grunt, deciding to take Shang Qinghua’s silence as disrespect, no doubt, when Shang Qinghua threw himself at his king’s feet. Mobei-jun had told him he really shouldn’t do that for trivial matters—presumably because it made Mobei-jun look weak if he had to continuously give in to grovelling, and it would be stupid to disagree with Shang Qinghua’s petty requests—but this was a serious matter okay. In his life, Shang Qinghua knew that he had “sold out” as Cucumber-bro was fond of telling him, but not everyone could come from rich families. Some people had to put food on the table and that meant giving people what they wanted, even if what they wanted was stupid.

But now that these were real life people and not fictional concepts making money, Shang Qinghua could realize he had left some gaps—not teaching Binghe the basis of consent and respecting women was a big one. But in his defense, he was a closeted gay man, of course he couldn’t understand falling in love with a woman! Obviously, before understanding his sexuality, he’d thought the whole sex with women thing was about symbolic victory? Why else would anyone want to do it? And by the time maybe he realized this was not how heterosexual men lived, maybe it was too late to change it so that the fuck or die scenarios were more clear about consent, and that Luo Binghe developed meaningful relationships with these women, and probably reciprocated oral sex which was a comment two separate people had left him and he had it the drafts okay! But Stallion novels aren’t that explicit and it’s hard to slip it in naturally and—

“My king please!” Shang Qinghua whined. “I just wanted to fix my mistakes all right! I don’t want to see you hurt, or your kingdom starve, or war torn because Sha Hualing should have finished her reports properly and I should have trained a better replacement, or at least started an accounting department and I know you have advisors but honestly have you seen the state of the insurance in the kingdom or the overhead for any of the festivals. God, why are they so expensive! Not to mention the loss of soldiers due to improper rationing and—I just wanted to teach my son how not to die of a sex curse! I know it’s stupid! I know it doesn’t make sense! I don’t…” Shang Qinghua was literally clutching at a demon king’s thighs but if he wanted both himself and Binghe to get through this—“you are so strong and capable, and honestly one of the most ruthless demon kings and incredibly ho—handy and I just need enough time to train my replacement and teach Luo Binghe how not to die and god probably get him a sword, and then I’ll leave and you’ll never have to see me again, but if—”

“Do you want to stay?” Mobei-jun asked. Shang Qinghua craned his neck up at him, but this pristine ice price was still looking carefully at the flower. He was still flushed, but it seemed to have receded so at least he probably wasn’t angry any more. He was certainly holding the flower gently—Shang Qinghua would say maybe reverently if he didn’t know better—so at least his temper was in check.

“Of course?” Shang Qinghua said, confused. Wasn’t it obvious that he wanted to stay to train all these people? Or did Mobei-jun just think he was doing it out of guilt and obligation? “I want to do this. I just don’t want to you know…”

“Be a spy.”

“Be mistreated.”

Mobei-jun seemed to consider this before grabbing the back of Shang Qinghua’s collar with one hand and hauling him bodily to his feet. The hand on the back of his neck was pleasantly cool and rock solid and Shang Qinghua stood his ground for the first time in their entire acquaintanceship.  Maybe Shang Qinghua hadn’t been a “responsible creator” and his work was full of “problematic stereotypes” and maybe he had abandoned his star protagonist to suffer at the hands of Shen Qingqiu but he hadn’t had a chance to fix it before, okay. And he had the chance now, even if it was a stupid chance and what he was fixing was his own mistakes.

“Your son,” Mobei-jun said quietly, almost gently and Shang Qinghua flinched.

“Not my literal—”

“He can stay. You can stay.” Mobei-jun twiddled the flower between his fingers. “Just—you’ll get a department.”

“What?”

“I will send people to your department. Train them. Teach your student.” Mobei-jun nodded like the matter was settled and he was being abundantly clear but whatever he was deciding on was flying over Shang Qinghua’s head. Except the word department. Mobei-jun was giving him his own department? God that sounded like a lot of work, but also subordinates could make it easier.

“I will take this matter seriously,” Mobei-jun said, lifting the flower. “And…reflect on your treatment.” Clearly satisfied with the end of the conversation, Mobei-jun swept out of the room and into a portal as if any of that conversation had made a lick of sense. At least Mobei-jun seemed to understand why he’d left, and he seemed to be trying to fix it? Well, without Shang Qinghua he must have realized how many problems there were (Qin Ziya’s being the least of it). Shang Qinghua hadn’t really expected that to make a difference, but maybe he wasn’t giving Mobei-jun enough credit, maybe he was starting to realize how useful Shang Qinghua was after all. Maybe he’d even help him!

And with a singing clarity Shang Qinghua realized exactly how he was going to get the plot back on track. What had begun Luo Binghe’s rampaging revenge? Was it the Abyss? No! It was Xin Mo! The Sword had a revengeful motive built right in, al lhe had to do was get it to Luo Binghe. And right now, if Mobei-jun was being reasonable and listening to requests, there might even be a way to get it.

He was going to get this plot back on track, new and improved! If Cucumber-bro thought he was the only one who could fix Shang Qinghua’s mistakes, then he had another thing coming, it was time for some developmental edits!

#

Luo Binghe had finally decided to spend time out of his room as Shang Qinghua prepared a chalkboard listing the names and effects of the twelve most common sex curses in the living space of Luo Binghe’s suite. Obviously, the solution to the curses was pretty clear, but the important part was how to avoid them! What he really needed to do was sneak back to ask Cucumber-bro about all the things he was no doubt forgetting but if he left the Demon Realm there was no real way to get back and he couldn’t leave until Binghe had Xin Mo and Mobei-jun had an accounting department.

Luo Binghe sat on the coach gingerly, his notes neatly folded on the low tea table. Shang Qinghua tried not to sweat, but his back already felt damp, which meant it felt cold because it was like 10 degrees here on a good day. Luo Binghe, dressed only in his torn and bloodied disciples robed shivered slightly, circulating his qi and Shang Qinghua added get new robes to the growing list of instructions scrawled on his inner forearm.

“All right!” Shang Qinghua clapped his hands together. Luo Binghe flinched. He had dark circles under his eyes that would make an An Ding peak disciple look freshly rested and his hair was an absolute mess, oily, coming loose, plastering to his forehead. He skin looked pale and his fingernails looked bitten and even though he was sitting perfectly straight his whole posture seemed to slump, as if filling a mold that would collapse without. In short, he looked like shit.

The idea of a cool flawed protagonist driven violent by trauma and coming back to enact revenge had seemed really cool but when faced with the actual trauma Shang Qinghua’s resolve was starting to crack. Surely the original hadn’t been so pathetic right? Sure, when Shang Qinghua parents had divorced and then his mother stopped picking up his calls, he’d spent his fair amount of time holed up in his room, crying, laying there unable to believe how he was going to get out of this or how he was going to put food on the table after being fired from his job at the stationary store for complaining that the manager was messing with his hours. But that was because Shang Qinghua was a small pathetic man and not a cool half-demon. That was because Shang Qinghua didn’t live in a world where it was possible to ever get back at anyone who had wronged him or become rich and desirable to a bunch of women and/or men. Shang Qinghua lived in a world where the only person who paid attention to the details of his novel hated him, where he died being electrocuted because of noodles and where he had been reborn into his own shitty novel to face all of his writing failures face to face.

“Here,” Shang Qinghua fished out the ceramic bottle of Prozac and placed it on the low table in front of Luo Binghe. “It’s medicine, it helps with depression and grief.”

“Why are you helping me?” Luo Binghe did not move to take it. “Why are you teaching me any of this? You’re the one who opened the Abyss. You betrayed your sect. Why do you care if I get cursed and die?”

“You know sometimes you don’t have good options,” Shang Qinghua said, turning back to the board of sex curses. Luo Binghe snorted. “I mean it.” But Luo Binghe only looked down at his notes and not up at Shang Qinghua and okay, he knew the two of them weren’t close but he wasn’t expecting to be questioned so much, he was just trying to help.

“Why should I even believe this is true? That you’re helping me?” Luo Binghe asked in a small voice, almost as if he was talking to himself.

“Look, I know you don’t understand why I did what I did, but I didn’t have a choice okay! Sometimes you try to make the best choice you can and it’s a bad choice, and they’re all bad choices. And then when you have opportunity to do good, for the first time, you take it. You don’t understand Demon Realm politics or the Heavenly Demons,” at this Luo Binghe stiffened, “but, Mobei-jun needed to be strong. He’s the most considerate ruler and I thought—I thought maybe I could change things and work things out between the human and the demon realms, but you know sometimes you try and the plot still hits you in the face, you know. Some things can’t be avoided. And it’s hard. And it sucks. And I understand why you wouldn’t believe me, but…” Shang Qinghua turned back to Luo Binghe. He would have never said anything like to Cucumber-bro, not that he’d even understand, but it…how could he not take responsibility for his son? His darling demon protagonist? “Just let me teach you this okay, before I leave. Just let me teach you this one thing. I know I’m a fuck up I just—” okay that was getting too personal “nevermind. You don’t have to like me, but there’d be no point in teaching you false information, so just trust that it’s correct, hmm?”

Shang Qinghua cleared his throat like he hadn’t said anything and pointed to the first curse on the board. These curses did not all have names, but the first one essentially made big changes to your genitals until some papapa happened but fortunately this curse could only be carried out by certain types of dioicous flowers, so it was easy enough to avoid. Just don’t go near any flowers. Ever.

Shang Qinghua launched into an explanation of the curse, trying to keep a straight face but Luo Binghe was not taking notes this time, only looking dispassionately forward. He was supposed to have a good memory and be a quick learner, but this was life and death stuff and notes would probably be appreciated—

“Why are you leaving?” Luo Binghe asked as if he really hadn’t been paying attention to any of the sex curse stuff, which sucked because Shang Qinghua did not want to go over it again.

“What do you mean?”

“You said you had to leave.”

“Ah, well, I kind of quit being a spy for Mobei-jun you know,” Shang Qinghua looked from the picture of the dragon dick curse (the one that gave you a dragon’s dick if you cursed the name of a dragon in s special cave) and wondered if he should have made the drawing less detailed so he wouldn’t be so red in the right now when they were trying to have a semi-serious conversation. “I—I don’t want—”

“Thousands of people died.”

“And if I did nothing to fix it, then thousands more would keep dying,” Shang Qinghua muttered. The next curse on the list turned you into a tiny flower spirit but also made you inexplicably horny. That had been a very popular chapter, Shang Qinghua remembered. People had even commission nsfw fan art of it. “I had dreams and aspirations once you know. I wanted to do something good, to create something good. But now I’m just trying to survive I told you—”

“Why would Huan Hua place hate me? Why do you think it’s so dangerous if I go back to the human realm?” Luo Binghe’s voice grew smaller as he straightened his torn Qing Jing robes. “Why did Shizun…”

Honestly, Shang Qinghua didn’t remember if he got around to writing the subplot about Huan Hua Palace. The part about his parents was still in drafts, but if the wandering apothecary was real, this might be as well.

“Your mother was from Huan Hua palace. Su Xiyan. She fell in love with a demon and the old palace master who used to love her hated her. Or something. Honestly, I don’t really remember. But ugh… if you’re half demon you have to be her son.” Shang Qinghua scratched his nose smearing chalk dust all over it. “When I leave, I’ll check with your Shizun, I’ll deliver a letter if you want. I’m sure he can get it sorted and he’ll come back for you. I’m sure—”

“I thought he would come back for me in the Abyss,” Luo Binghe said. “I thought he’d realize he made a mistake or that he had just been trying to trick the others. I waited for days. I thought—how could he—” Luo Binghe’s voice broke off as he snorted phlegm and Shang Qinghua put down the chalk. Sex curse education was going to have to wait. God Cucumber-bro if there was one thing worse than a scum villain pushing you into the Abyss it was your most trusted mentor pushing you into the Abyss. What were you trying to do?

Even when Luo Binghe wasn’t actively crying like he was now, he was clearly still struggling with what had happened and without the power of Xin Mo, well, Shang Qinghua wasn’t sure he was going to make it. Suddenly, Shang Qinghua missed his disciples. He’d never been great with kids but Xu Yanfeng and Qiao Meimei had been diligent helpers, carolling and teaching the other kids, completing all their paperwork on time. Xu Yanfeng had even developed a few new talisman arrays! Shang Qinghua hadn’t had any siblings in his old life, or much in the way of friends but he already had a greater support system than Luo Binghe did. The original version at least had the wives! And okay, maybe he was realizing that equating sex to support was, well, it probably wasn’t the same, okay, maybe on some level he knew that.

Shang Qinghua sighed and sat down next to Binghe. “You know, it does suck. Shen-shixiong should have explained himself and he shouldn’t have treated you badly before the fever and the sect leader should have done something and you shouldn’t have ever fallen into the Abyss.  But it already happened.”

Luo Binghe’s gaze was focused on the pill bottle, and well, it would be easier than looking him in the face.

 “How do you make someone love you?” Luo Binghe asked quietly. Shang Qinghua’s heart tightened as the part of himself that was listening to Binghe knifed the part of him that hadn’t let Binghe’s wives love him in the original.

“Well, you know, tough women like clingy men, so I try to seem pathetic and unthreatening—” too much honestly? No, that was just practical advise—“to make them feel comfortable. But you can’t actually make someone love you. Even if you deserve the love, love is…it’s not something you earn and then you have. It’s a choice. You gotta like, you gotta both choose to do it. And forcing someone out of guilt or obligation doesn’t make it real. So…I don’t know. Sometimes people don’t love you and it sucks. Sometimes you’re alone and it sucks. But Binghe, people do try to help you, you know.”

Luo Binghe did not look up at him with wide eyed innocence like a protagonist probably should at this moment but whatever. He wasn’t snorting phlegm anymore.

“Mobei-jun lifted your seal because he thought he was helping you, because he thought you were strong. Shizun wouldn’t have trained you if he didn’t see something in you, that dude is horrible. Even your martial siblings like you—hell, even I saw you and tried to help you. There are more opportunities and types of love than just one kind and it can be lonely, never to get what you want, but you can’t shut yourself off from all possibilities because you’re worrying about one thing, can you?

“It’s hard to understand who to trust, or why good people do bad things or bad people do good things, but it’s not your fault you know?”

Luo Binghe nodded and for a moment they sat in perfect silence. Then, Luo Binghe stood up this time. Cleared his throat. He looked ready to say something but paused and Shang Qinghua turned around to see Mobei-jun standing there, in the middle of Luo Binghe’s guest suite as if he had been there the whole time. Despite him looking as hot as ever, though his robe no longer showed his abs, for the first time, perhaps ever, Shang Qinghua felt irritated at his presence. Not scared like usual or nervous or nervously horny, but genuinely irritated.

“I brought people for your department,” Mobei-jun said as if he hadn’t interrupted a delicate moment where a teenager had been holding back tears trying to figure out what the hell was going on. But indeed, four people were huddled in the portal behind Mobei-jun peering around his shoulder. One seemed to spot the dragon dick diagram and grinned. Shang Qinghua wanted to bash his head onto the desk and end it all, but instead he bowed because even if he was standing up to Mobei-jun what he said to Binghe wasn’t exactly wrong. Sometimes you just had to grovel, just a little.

Mobei-jun shifted uncomfortably and from his position bowing Shang Qinghua cleared his throat.

“I would also appreciate it if someone brought some new robes for Luo Binghe and repaired his old ones. Maybe also bring a bath?”

“Is there a kitchen?” Luo Binghe said, staring at Mobei-jun half defiantly half two seconds away from lying down on the floor.

“I will bring you up a meal,” Mobei-jun said, hauling Shang Qinghua up by the collar and throwing him through the portal.

“That wasn’t what I—” Luo Binghe said but he was cut off as the portal closed and Shang Qinghua found himself standing in a large palace room which looked like it had been hastily cleared and six new desks assembled. There were windows in this room at least, the lattices made of wood instead of ice, signalling that this was on one of the upper floors.

“Uh, my king, I was just in the middle of a lesson—”

“The lesson seemed to have gotten derailed,” Mobei-jun said and Shang Qinghua wished he knew how much Mobei-jun’d heard as his heart starting to sound less like a pulse and more like a metronome. “I will talk to Luo Binghe.”

“You?!” Shang Qinghua asked before he could smack himself in the face. Shit. “My king, I mean—”

“He is a demon,” Mobei-jun said as if that explained anything and then left the room normally as if the crying and the deep conversation were no different than interrupting Shang Qinghua discussing taxes. Shang Qinghua turned slowly, coming face to face with Qin Ziya and the four new teenage recruits and wait—was one of those recruits Sha Hualing? Sha Hualing had asked to be apart of the accounting department? Ah he was so fucked.

And he hadn’t even gotten to ovipositor sex curse!

Chapter Text

Teaching the demons how to be accountants was both a lot easier and a lot harder than Shang Qinghua had expected. It was easier because the assembled group actually wanted to learn. In addition to Qin Ziya there was a thin reedy young man with too many eyes and limbs named Mu Kexing, a buff young woman dressed more like a Qing Jing scholar than a demon (also clearly a succubus but it wasn’t polite to comment on that) named Wen Xulin and another demon that honestly was just a straight up cat girl no matter how Shang Qinghua looked at it, named Evil Fang. And then there was Sha Hualing.

“What?” she had asked as she sat down primly at desk, no ink stone or paper in front of her. “It’s important to know how things work if you’re going to get ahead, and therefore it’s important to know about,” she waved her hand in flirtatious circles, “all this numbers business.” In a way, now that Shang Qinghua recalled more of his lore, it made sense. He hadn’t written too much about education in the demon realm, except that it was a cutthroat place that didn’t teach you anything, so free lessons, even in accounting, could be valuable for someone who wanted to get ahead as much as Sha Hualing.

The problem was that Sha Hualing didn’t even understand algebra.

“Really? You don’t…” Shang Qinghua tried not to seem patronizing as she bristled, crossing her arms while Evil Fang raised her eyebrows and whistled lowly under her breath. “That’s fine, that’s fine. Algebra isn’t that hard.”

Wen Xulin’s hand shot up, as if this were a grade school class and not a demonic palace, but Shang Qinghua merely nodded at her.

“Do we really have to go back to something that fundamental? I know some of us don’t even know derivatives, let alone integrals, but are we really going to go back to something so…basic?” Wen Xulin winced at her own words, but not hard enough! Sha Hualing looked half ready to leap from her seat and draw blood but unfortunately Wen Xulin was right.

“Ah, maybe I can think of someone to tutor you, to catch you up,” Shang Qinghua said, gripping the calligraphy brush. He hadn’t even started the class proper. “Not that you’ll need it! Aha! I’m sure you’ll learn really fast, but we have to go over some really important financial and interest-based equations, before we dive into you know taking the slope of a curve and some refreshers so—”

Sha Hualing got to her feet, spit at Shang Qinghua’s face, and left in a huff of diaphanous fabric to the sound of muted tittering from Mu Kexing. Great. Shang Qinghu looked to Qin Ziya for help, but they were only shooting an unhelpful thumbs up, no doubt desperate not to have to be the sole person who knew how to handle the king’s finances.

Shang Qinghua sighed. He hadn’t finished teaching Luo Binghe about the sex curses, let alone found Xin Mo and now he had to train a bunch of demons to be office workers. Why had he written a novel where people clearly knew they needed logistics but didn’t value it? Why didn’t he include demon primary schools or something?

No! Of course, he hadn’t! No xianxia novel talked about how demons learned how to read. He was being too hard on himself. The System had filled in a bunch of details that would have been ridiculous for Shang Qinghua to have written about, no one would have wanted to read about the economic reforms of the Northern Desert and their struggling to make an alliance with the Southern Yak demons! Even if people hadn’t been here to see Luo Binghe burn towns and get wives, they would have wanted a story, not backstory about every little thing. Even if Cucumber-bro fixed his plot, no one would care about the accounting department in the demon realm! No way would that make into the final draft! Shang Qinghua huffed to himself as he turned back to his three remaining eager students.

He might have given up changing the plot a long time ago, but if these people weren’t really main plot, maybe there was something he could do about it. Shang Qinghua bit the inside of his cheek, steeled himself, and got back to business.

“The first thing to understand is compound interest!”

#

Whatever Mobei-jun had said to Luo Binghe seemed to have helped because when Shang Qinghua came back, it was to Luo Binghe making tea and looking passably calm for the first time in a while. New robes had already been delivered, one set the same colour and style as his Qing Jing peak robes, one in the dark blue of the Mobei Clan, but both sat folded on the chair as Luo Binghe reviewed his notes.

 “Hey, are you, uh, did you want to get back to the curses?”

Luo Binghe looked up, swallowed and put his tea down gently. “Maybe it would be helpful to assemble some sort of a book, or a bestiary. If there’s so many dangerous flowers.”

Shang Qinghua nodded. There’s no way he’d be able to do that himself, but it was possible he could goad Cucumber-bro into it and—wait, was this Luo Binghe offering to help? Or—no that was probably silly.

“I uh, I’m not great at recalling details. But I’ll try! I’ll get all my notes together, aha! Meanwhile, if you, uh, if you wanted to help, Sha Hualing needs some tutoring in algebra. You know, I have to teach some demon kids about—” Actually, Shang Qinghua was a genius! “I have to teach some demon kids and I know as the former head disciple you have some experience so this one would really appreciate your help!” Shang Qinghua moved to bow but stopped himself at Luo Binghe’s wide eyes. Perfect! Just the chance for Luo Binghe to see that demons were the same as everyone else except ten times scarier and vicious. But the important part was that he’d learn that it wasn’t the end of the world just because he’d ended up here. Maybe that would cheer him up! Not to mention it would be quality time with one of his future wives!

“Of course, Shishu,” Luo Binghe stood up and bowed stiffly as if reluctant, but still very properly and much more respectfully than people usually were to Shang Qinghua!

“Great! And then we’ll get back to the sex curses. Actually, you’ve been studying a lot, why don’t you take a break and maybe practice some sword forms—” all at once Luo Binghe’s carefully neutral demeanour twitched and seem to crumble in on itself. Fuck. Still probably a sore subject. Plus, wait, he didn’t have his sword anymore, did he? Shang Qinghua wanted to slap himself in the face. No matter, no matter, Shang Qinghua knew just how to get Luo Binghe his sword.

“Actually, maybe we’ll just go ice skating, hmm? I’ll—I’ll work on getting you your sword!” Shang Qinghua smiled, and Luo Binghe looked like he didn’t know how to politely decline but that just worked to Shang Qinghua’s benefit. Besides, it would be quality time with his precious son, when else was he going to get this opportunity.

“Son?” Luo Binghe asked.

“Hmm?” Shang Qinghua clapped his hands. “Ahh, you’re hair’s still a mess. I’ll see if I can get a servant to call up a bath and we can try to take care of your hair!” Shang Qinghua smiled as Luo Binghe seemed to move further away from him, but really, it was for the boy’s own good. It would be fine!

Besides, wouldn’t it be better for the people of the Northern Desert if they had a chance to suck up to their future emperor before he rose? He would definitely try and spare them! Really, Shang Qinghua was just looking out for the Northern Ice Palace.

“Oh and we can pick up roasted chestnuts!”

It was going to be brilliant!

Luo Binghe only smiled weakling. “Whatever you want, shishu.”

#

Contrary to every other one of Shang Qinghua’s schemes—well schemes that were for selfish reasons, the ones that protect Mobei-jun always seemed to work—ice skating and TAing seemed to really work for Luo Binghe! Also the anti-depressants. Couldn’t forget about the medication. The first week had been a little rough, and Sha Hualing did not make tutoring easy, especially when she found out who her tutor was, but Luo Binghe turned out to be capable of great patience and also great judgement! One unimpressed and impatient look from Binghe had sent Sha Hualing into reading almost an entire textbook’s work of math problems!

The weeks had only gotten easier as Luo Binghe helped with marking his new students’ assignments, sitting in on classes to help with questions, and even bringing tea and moon cakes for the class! Truly the best son an author could ask for!

“These are delicious!” Evil Fang said, reverently holding a cake in her paws. Even Sha Hualing had shoveled several into her mouth. “Can I take some of these home?” Luo Binghe paused, as if noticing that she had only eaten one cake but had drawn six or seven of them towards her.

“This one would be honoured for you to enjoy his treats at home,” Luo Binghe said, even if it was a little hollow. He preened a bit more under the copious and excessive compliments, even blushing when Mu Kexing told him he would win any man over with his cooking, but finally Shang Qinghua had to move on.

“We just finished simple interest vs compound interest. We really need to look into graphing and quarterly trajectories!” Shang Qinghua wined. Mu Kexing and Evil Fang rolled their eyes, but Wen Xulin who would have been a class president and teacher’s pet in another life only unfolded her writing pad with a strange alacrity. Shang Qinghua wasn’t sure why a succubus would want to be an accountant, but succubi were some of the better known business owners in the demon realm—mostly because brothels were one of the better known businesses—, so she already had quite the background knowledge. Also, she was his favourite because she was the only one who seemed to understand the amount of work that Shang Qinghua had done, even outside all the spying, which was supposed to have been his main job.

“I wanted to go over some of the homework questions,” Wen Xulin said because of course she did, “just to make sure I got all the right answers.” Sha Hualing rolled her eyes, but she leaned forward like she also wanted to make sure she had understood the material, even if she wanted to pretend to be cool and unaffected.

The rest of the class passed easily and so did the next few, but Shang Qinghua’s main plan: getting Binghe back his sword, was progressing a lot slower.

See, the key was that Shang Qinghue knew where Xin Mo was. The problem was that it was in the Endless Abyss, which was impossible for Shang Qinghua to get to. Unless he could summon portals to anywhere.

But, well, there was someone who could.

“My handsome indomitable king, this humble servant begs you to read these newly compiled reports on goings on in the southern kingdom!” Shang Qinghua threw himself at Mobei-jun with renowned vigour. They were in his study, so thankfully alone amongst all the ink brush paintings and strange curios that Mobei-jun had collected—even the Soul-Bong Flower, displayed in a glass case was there on a shelf right next to a serpentine skull and a dagger that looks like it was carved from bone except golden cracks of light ran through it.

 Mobei-jun took the reports gingerly from Shang Qinghua’s grasp, opening them carefully.

“This humble servant has documented all of the trade routs of your enemies in the south, and outlined possible blockades that would be a detriment to their economy and could be used to your advantage—”

“What do you want?” Mobei-jun said. He wasn’t frowning though, looking vaguely over Shang Qinghua’s shoulder like he couldn’t meet his eye. His hands were tense too, but he didn’t seem angry. Was he nervous? Was there a political matter he hadn’t told Shang Qinghua about?

“Me? Nothing! This servant only wished to help? What could one as humble and unthreatening as this one hope to want from my king?”

“Unthreatening?” Mobei-jun asked oddly, one eyebrow raised, mouth pressed into a firm line as Shang Qinghua nodded vigorously.

“Yes! Completely! How could this one ever dream of threatening such a power king?”

“Unthreatening and perhaps, pathetic even?”

Ouch! “Yes!” Shang Qinghua agreed, “Truly pathetic.” Though honestly Mobei-jun could have aimed with a little less force. But as Shang Qinghua looked up at his king, there seemed to be a small smirk playing at his lips. Was this perhaps banter? No, no, more likely he just enjoyed Shang Qinghua’s humiliation. All the better so long as he could get what he needed. “This one has only one small humble request.”

“Of course.”

“But no, no, it’s not for me,” Shang Qinghua bowed and shook his head vigorously.  “It is only, well, you know Luo Binghe doesn’t have is sword anymore and I thought that we might rectify that problem.”

“You wish to give your son a sword.”

Shang Qinghua froze halfway between nodding and blanching. Shit, had he been calling Luo Binghe his son out loud? How could he possibly explain this to Mobei-jun. Surely, Mobei-jun knew that Shang Qinghua wasn’t old enough to have a seventeen year old kid. Well, the only thing to do was just to carry on like it hadn’t happened! That’d worked so far!

“Yes! There is an ancient and powerful sword called Xin Mo hidden in a monster in the Endless Abyss that—” Mobei-jun raised an eyebrow and Shang Qinghua realized that maybe all powerful swords were the kind of thing spies were supposed to mention to their kings—“Of course, it’s one that can only be wielded by heavenly demons, you see, so it would be no use to my king, but Luo Binghe might be able to use—”

“And you know the exact location of this sword?” Mobei-jun raised an eyebrow.

“Ah, yes, of course, I uh, wished for your presence, since, you know…”

Mobei-jun’s ears turned red and perhaps Shang Qinghua shouldn’t use his king as a glorified Uber, just because Liu Qingge was eager to do it didn’t mean someone as regal and aloof as—

“All right.”

Shang Qinghua almost choked on his spit. He had been so sure there’d be more groveling involved, or at least promises to do more paperwork or, you know, some bullying and man handling him around.

“Great!” Shang Qinghua said, clapping his hands together. Mobei-jun nodded and put down the scrolls.

“Where is it?”

“What?”

“The sword, let’s go.”

“Now?” Shang Qinghua looked around Mobei-jun’s study, but no servant jumped into the room to announce any pressing business. Mobei-jun huffed impatiently. “Of course, now, yes!” Shang Qinghua described the carcass where Luo Binghe had found the sword as best as he was able, Mobei-jun opened the portal and they stepped into the Endless Abyss.

Screaming sounded in the distance as a wave of the most foul smelling air assaulted Shang Qinghua’s nose. The scant light that illuminated anything seemed to be pass through several hazy filters of smog and noxious gas, but it was enough to find the giant remains of the behemoth, decaying slowly on the scorched earth, liquifying into an unknown but no doubt unpleasant black ooze. But as soon as Shang Qinghua climbed into its rib cage he found it, dark blood covered scabbard and all, Xin Mo stood just as he’d described it.

“Aha!” Shang Qinghua brandish the sword proudly as Mobei-jun nodded, face still impassable. There was something different about him—had he changed his hair? But no, those look almost like betrothal braids, has his king gotten engaged while Shang Qinghua was away? Should he stab the bitch just in case—no that was petty, there were more pressing matters. Besides, maybe Luo Binghe would steal her away, wouldn’t that be just revenge?

“You must have done more research than you let on,” Mobei-jun muttered, darkly but Shang Qinghua just laughed. His king looked around, sweeping a hand of ice to freeze the corpse, but his gaze seemed to focus, assessing as he pushed the sleeve of his robe up, deep in thought.

“Me? A servant as lowly and pathetic as this one? Haha, my king, what a great sense of humour it was just something I read—”

“Something that detailed the precise location of a legendary sword for Heavenly Demons?” Mobei-jun opened the portal, one hand on Shang Qinghua’s back as he sweated and laughed and hoped his king wasn’t going to slice his head off and try to take the sword. Why did he make his king so handsome and unreadable? Why couldn’t he have some kind of easy tell that Shang Qinghua could have used to exploit him?

But instead of slicing off his head Mobei-jun only shoved him through the portal causing him to fall face first onto the ice palace floor.

“Shishu!” Luo Binghe was standing looking up from marking some accounting homework eyes darting between Shang Qinghua’s bloody form and Mobei-jun dirty-ice dishevelment. “Are you all right? What happened? I—do you need help—?”

“No, no, this one is fine!” Shang Qinghua said from the floor before dusting himself off. They were in Luo Binghe’s suite in the palace. In the middle room with the low tables and cushions and the one couch which Shang Qinghua was increasing glad he had included even if he wasn’t sure if it was historically appropriate.

“I’ll make tea,” Luo Binghe said, even though Shang Qinghua knew him well enough to know that the boy did not actually enjoy making tea but that, since people kept praising him for it, it had started to become a nervous tick whenever there was an uncertain moment or he wanted to help.

“Thank you, Luo Binghe.”

“We have come with a gift,” Mobei-jun said, apropos of nothing. Luo Binghe froze halfway to the little kitchenette, kettle in hand. Mobei-jun only looked down as Shang Qinghua which was really unfair okay, Shang Qinghua had planned to like, clean himself off and just causally mention to Binghe that he had found this sword for Heavenly Demons and oh, maybe Binghe could make some use of it? Hmmm? Now it was a whole thing and Shang Qinghua still had decaying intestine in his hair but what was there to do?

“Of course,” Shang Qinghua took out the sword and tried to clean the scabbard with his already ruined robes. “Here, we uh, thought you might like a new sword.” Shang Qinghua presented him the sword with two hands and really considered kneeling when Luo Binghe didn’t immediately take it. He looked frozen. He was still dressed in his Qing Jing peak robes. Though they had been repaired somewhat the stains were still extremely visible, but Luo Binghe rarely wore anything else except when he had to wash his robes.

It was probably not a good sign, and definitely not what original Binghe would have done, but Shang Qinghua wasn’t really sure what to do about it. Make Luo Binghe feel like shit by telling him his Shizun really hated him after all? Try to tell him his Shizun would want him to move on? Mostly Shang Qinghua had been ignoring it.

“It is yours,” Mobei-jun said, gesturing to the sword. “Your…shishu has scavenged in the pit of a great beast in the Endless Abyss to bring it.”

“The…the…” Luo Binghe’s eyes widened so far it was comical, taking in Shang Qinghua’s and Mobei-jun’s appearances one again. “I can’t accept it.”

“I insist!” Shang Qinghua thrust the sword out at him. “It was really hard to get and only a demon can wield it, so…”

“Only a demon can wield it…”

“Aiya, don’t worry! Mobei-jun has his own sword, it’s fine, it’s…” Shang Qinghua looked to his king as if for some help but Mobei-jun only looked away from the scene as if Shang Qinghua’s embarrassment was too much, even for him. “We want you to have it.”

Gingerly, as if afraid the sword might combust Luo Binghe took the sword and then lay it carefully on the low table instead of strapping it on his waist.

“Thank you,” he said bowing, but something was clearly wrong with it because even Mobei-jun could sense it, at least by the look he shot Shang Qinghua.

“What’s this, why are you all covered in shit?” Sha Hualing asked, flouncing into the room as if it were her own personal quarters. “You here from some extra math tutoring?” she asked, eying Mobei-jun up and down.

“Ah, actually I still wanted to teach Luo Binghe about some more curses, if you could come back later,” Shang Qinghua said, sheepishly, bowing his head in her direction. Truthfully between Luo Binghe waking up at noon because he spent the night crying himself to sleep, all the tutoring and then the research Shang Qinghua had had to do to suck up to Mobei-jun he hadn’t even gotten to the sex poisons of animals yet.

“Curses?” Sha Hualing’s smile picked up.

“Sex curses,” Shang Qinghua said before realizing his mistake. “Not to do them! To avoid them!” Sha Hualing was fully smiling now, eyes darting between Mobei-jun, who, ears dark redish-blue probably with anger, was looking away and then back to Shang Qinghua.

“Ah, well, Ling-er could certainly benefit from learning this as well, no?” Sha Hualing practically purred.

“Don’t you already know that?” Shang Qinghua furrowed his brows, they had to know, right? Okay so sometimes in his wife plots the demon wives acted as if they’d never heard of half these sex curses—or how sex worked in general—but they got the information eventually which meant some of the demons had to know. Right? That was what was implied?

“I should know about sex curses?” Sha Hualing crossed her arms, radiating fury as Shang Qinghua backtracked.

“I meant, you’re a demon, don’t they already teach you these things?”

“Hmm? And who teaches you about these things?”

“Uhhh, the peaks?” Shang Qinghua said. “I mean, the Peak Lords are in charge of sex education on their peak, but like just generally you know, your teachers and stuff?”

Sha Hualing clucked her tongue and looked away, jaw set without a retort and Shang Qinghua desperately looked to Mobei-jun or Luo Binghe for some explanation.

“I mean, Qing Jing taught you sex ed, right?” he asked Luo Binghe. Luo Binghe nodded slowly, stepping away from the sword and closer to the conversation.

“The older disciples taught us the basics and then Mu-Shibo and his older disciples had…uh…lectures.” Great! See, perfect! Who said Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky didn’t put in the necessary work—“I couldn’t attend them as Shizun had locked me in the wood shed for punishment. But when I was older my shixiongs and shijies were, uh, very helpful in answering questions.” Shit. What were the odds Luo Binghe’s questions were about pleasing women and contraceptives and not like about personal hygiene tips about why he was growing hair in places? For the disciples of An Ding he’d have said the odds were high but—

“Well, I can add some of the stuff you missed,” Shang Qinghua said under his breath.

“That’s not necessary.” Luo Binghe shook his head vigorously like any teenager when presented with the opportunity to talk about sex to an adult, “I’m sure the older disciples—”

“Well I didn’t receive any of that!” Sha Hualing said. “So perhaps, I should sit in as well?”

This time when Shang Qinghua looked desperately at Mobei-jun, at least Mobei-jun was looking desperately back.  Except then he said, “I have to go,” and portalled out of here and Shang Qinghua wanted to scream.

He had just gotten Xin Mo! This was a big deal! The start of Luo Binghe’s badassery and revenge plot! Why was everyone derailing the narrative with meaningless details, huh?

“I’m sure you know all about the flowers though, demons always avoid the flowers—”

“Just because we avoid flowers doesn’t mean we know what all the flowers do,” Sha Hualing said pointedly. She stomped further into the room, ignoring the sword to plop herself down on a cushion. “Besides, we don’t have sects and peaks in the Demon Realm, don’t you want us to benefit with this knowledge too?”

Shang Qinghua bit into his fist, eyes darting at Luo Binghe, remembering how he had deflated when he heard that the sword could only be wielded by a demon. Had his precious son turned into the self-hating type? Well, he was supposed to hate demons and conquer them, but he wasn’t supposed to hate himself?! Forcing Luo Binghe to hang around teenage demons and see them as people via helping with the accounting class was suppose to help! But then again, he didn’t interact much with them besides cooking and grading. He definitely didn’t attend their study sessions or the parties Sha Hualing kept trying to force them to do or all the star gazing and ice skating that Qin Ziya kept bemoaning they were doing the second they were allowed into the palace without supervisor.

Then again, Luo Binghe was already spending a lot of one on one time with Sha Hualing, and if that was his choice, great! But he didn’t get the vibe that her feminine wiles were as wily as they were supposed to me. Mostly because Luo Binghe kept flinching away from her whenever she tried to sit next to him. Maybe Luo Binghe needed to see the demons in less professional, formal settings.

“Fine, invite the other students too,” Shang Qingua said. “Mu Kexing, Evil Fang and Wen Xulin—”

“I’m sue Wen Xulin already knows,” Sha Hualing said airily, but Shang Qinghua was on a tight schedule of kick-starting Luo Binghe’s story and he didn’t have time for this wife-jealousy just yet! Especially towards characters he hadn’t even created! Though a succubus who forwent her family business to be an accountant was a great character concept especially because she could still be effected with succubus shenanigans for papapa while still playing into that “gap moe” category—and he really shouldn’t be thinking of a teenager like that!

Shang Qinghua shuttered.

“Good! Then Wen Xulin can help teach! I need to go clean up but if someone could invite them—”

“I’ll go,” Luo Binghe said as if he was desperate to be anywhere but here and who could blame him. Sha Hualing frowned, making no move to get up as Luo Binghe fled and Shang Qinghua sighed. He’d have to go all the way to his little servant’s room and get them to bring him a tub to wash himself and that was rarely pleasant. It usually involved a lot of begging and hints that he could redistribute funds to increase or decrease their wages if he really wanted.

Maybe he could just find a small pond to jump into.

Shang Qinghua left Luo Binghe’s suites, tracking viscera with every step as he contemplated his next options. He’d somehow gotten Xin Mo to Binghe, now all he had to do get him to actually use it. Then BOOM back on track! Who says this author is a hack!

Shang Qinghua slipped in a pool of dripping ichor he’d caused himself and slammed face first into the floor as if the universe had to remind, once again, of his place.

Chapter Text

Luo Binghe did not touch Xin Mo once, even after a week. It didn’t make sense. The original had not needed prodding to take the sword! It had been: whoa, a cool artefact I should use for my plans! Neat! Okay, maybe not like that, but basically it was the same thing. Luo Binghe had taken the sword and used it. After all, it was a cool sword, why shouldn’t he take it? When you see a delicious cake, do you not want to eat it?

But whether or not it was logical, Shang Qinghua’s could admit that his plan had hit a snag, but just because he was down didn’t mean he was out! You didn’t publish a semi-successful stallion novel with 600+ chapters and wives without being able to think on your feet and bullshit your way to success! He’d gotten good enough at thinking out of his ass to put food on the table and that had to count for something!

In this instance it meant, after his agonizing bath—agonizing for his dignity, but also physically agonizing as the water was below freezing, though he had fixed that with qi circulation—Shang Qinghua had had come up with a brilliant idea. And one week later, it was time to deliver.

“A pop quiz?” Wen Xulin asked. She looked down at her desk in the new appointed accounting department office with a frown. “What does pop stand for?” Damn. What did pop stand for?

“That’s not important, this is just for me to gauge your relative knowledge on this topic,” Shang Qinghua said, emulating every high school health teacher he had ever seen or heard. The five assembled teens shot him dubious looks, but it was apart of Shang Qinghua’s master plan!

Wen Xulin, the resident succubus and also giant nerd would no doubt ace this test and so would Luo Binghe who Shang Qinghua had been teaching. Therefore—and this part was truly inspired and not a huge ripoff of Cucumber-bro’s beast manual, whatever man you’re not even here—Shang Qinghua would get them to try to put together some compendium of sex plants. Some kind of sexual education book that would stock the shelves of demon book sellers everywhere and be a smash hit since, apparently, they didn’t have much in the way of formal sex education.

Plus, Wen Xulin was a prime example of a tiger changing its stripes and working with her on the book would no doubt go a long way to assuage Luo Binghe’s fears about his own demon heritage!

Genius!

“Laoshi,” Wen Xulin asked because she called him laoshi like a suck-up (this was also why she was his favourite). “Why do you know so much about demon genitals? Where would you have seen one?”

Four judgemental teens swivelled in his direction like a pack of wolves scenting prey as Shang Qinghua raised his hands in defense. “Haha, don’t worry about it.”

“How come you know about the Soul-Bond Cultivation flower, which is supposed to be a secret according to Auntie Meiyin, but you used the wrong character for Truth in the Truth and Beauty Snake—which is actually really common even in the human realm?” Wen Xulin tapped her brush on her ink stone in puzzlement as Evil Fang and Mu Kexing stared wide-eyed and unblinking at him. Which was like nine eyes between them, so, you know, a lot of eyes!

“What does the Truth and Beauty Snake do, again?” Sha Hualing asked, angling her eyes over at Wen Xulin’s writing pad.

"And here," Wen Xulin continued. "You asked about the Chicken-Laying-Ostrich flower, but isn't it Ostrich Laying Chicken flower? And for the praying mantis sex curse--"

“Enough questions, enough questions—”

“Why did you teach me so much about sex curses and flowers and not about…” Luo Binghe squinted down at the paper, “dental dams?”

Shang Qinghua opened his mouth before he came to an earth-shattering realization: he wasn’t actually sure if demons had dental dams. Or even condoms. Xianxia was full of like herbs that were supposed to be the pill or plan b or something but like real ancient China had condoms, right? Right! Fuck, was he supposed to ask someone about this? Was he supposed to ask Mobei-jun?

“I’m just testing out your knowledge! This—I assumed you knew about all that other stuff!” Shang Qinghua said hurriedly. Wen Xulin tisked loudly as she marked something off on her test and Shang Qinghua put his head in his hands on his desk. Why did teens love bullying him so much, huh?

Mu Kexing and Evil Fang snickered at this turn of events, but Sha Hualing and Luo Binghe at least seemed to be focused on writing things correctly.

Though, how was he supposed to teach a demon sex ed class, if he didn’t even know if demons had condoms? If he didn’t even know if the Peak Lords had condoms?! It wasn’t like he was using them. Damn! Would asking Qin Ziya be weird? Technically they were sort of like co-workers which could make this workplace sexual harassment but none of the other demons were that nice to him.

But you know what, just because Shang Qinghua hadn’t invented condoms the first time he had written the novel, didn’t mean he couldn’t invent them now!

First, he’d have to start the class off with some stuff about puberty and consent and stall until the end of class. Then he’d have to—that was it! He’d go to the pharmacy! If there were demon condoms they would definitely be there and if not, then Shang Qinghua was about to invent them! He could practically punch the air in triumph.

“Uh, Shishu, are you all right?” Luo Binghe asked. “You just exclaimed loudly.”

“Ah, no, this one is fine, don’t worry, I just, ugh, I figured out what I’m going to make us for dinner.” Shang Qinghua waved it off, but Evil Fang only narrowed her weird cat eyes and you know what, it was not as sexy in person as animation would have you believe.

“You make dinner for Luo Binghe? He doesn’t eat in the dining hall? Why don’t you make us dinner?”

“It’s a human custom to make food for friends and family,” Sha Hualing said smugly. “Shang Qinghua is his martial uncle, so he is being kind, just like Luo Binghe is kind when he makes me tea for tutoring sessions.” Luo Binghe didn’t look up from his paper, but even Shang Qinghua could sense the atmosphere drop. Chances weren’t looking for Sha Hualing’s romantic prospects, that was for sure! Luo Binghe’s hand on his brush was hard, and Shang Qinghua really hoped it was from the teasing and not the assertion that Shang Qinghua cared about him. The only thing more awkward that his precious son thinking he was a fumbling martial uncle was to think he were a clingy fumbling martial uncle.

“Ah, well, he also bakes food for the accounting class!” Shang Qinghua said. Luo Binghe’s complexion darkened, and he slouched further over his paper and Shang Qinghua really wasn’t sure what to do with that, was he? He had never seen Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu interact directly but apparently he was a little doting puppy—but only around him. For everyone else except perhaps Ning Yingying he looked like he was only helping out of obligation. But that made sense, didn’t it? They had all bullied him before, of course he held a grudge! Now with these new people the only way he knew how to be nice was probably by caring for his Shizun, what a pure boy! Just not pure by choice.

“I thought those were just leftovers,” Evil Fang said. “You said that they were leftovers.”

“I was being modest on his behalf, ahaha” Shang Qinghua said. Evil Fang’s eyes narrowed even more as her pupils started to expand and it was a little adorable but also VERY scary!

“We should get back to work,” Luo Binghe said because, no matter what, he had still been a head disciple and he knew the drill! At least someone did. Though now Shang Qinghua missed his own head disciples. But he would see them soon enough once he knew Luo Binghe was safe and kicking ass and Shang Qinghua could flee to his heart’s content!

The rest of the “class” passed pretty easily. Wen Xulin scored the highest as expected, but everyone else’s marks were pretty bad. Mu Kexing didn’t know what ovaries were and Evil Fang seemed convinced that you could get pregnant by masturbating. His intense frown when marking must have been obvious because his new students looked more embarrassed than usual, but that was fine! He actually knew what demon puberty was canonically like because it was relevant to Luo Binghe, and Shang Qinghua had decided that it was the same as human puberty because he did not want to open that can of worms.

Since the assembled group had already gone through puberty it was not critical information but at least it seemed to establish a kind “sex education as health education” approach that would feel a lot less weird than Shang Qinghua just launching into a lecture about dental dams and how to perform oral sex especially when, you know, Shang Qinghua had never actually had sex with a woman. He’d had sex with men at least! Admittedly it was only two, one in his old life and the other as a Cang Qiong disciple when neither had been at the height of their experience. But he had watched a lot of porn and done a lot of research. Fun fact: the human realm might or not might not have condoms, but it did have dildos made of jade, bronze, and wood. Funner fact: the jade dildos were actually incredibly impractical to use. The brass ones were clean, and the wood ones, if treated were fine though. Jade pillars just were too expensive and too brittle to be anything but decorative which was not a fact Shang Qinghua knew before he’d included them but now deeply regretted not doing the appropriate research on how to make them!

At any rate the class seemed to be a success! Wen Xulin was thrilled at the idea of helping to write a book and even Luo Binghe conceded it might be helpful though his enthusiasm was lacking. Nevertheless, Shang Qinghua just had to stop by the pharmacy, prepare some lesson plans, go over some records and bam! On his way to victory! It was kind of like being back on An Ding peak. Except with more fear for his life. But less paperwork!

In fact, the next week's class passed by pretty quickly too, Wen Xulin and Luo Binghe had been given their assignment and the lecture material was straight forward. It was only a few days later, when he was on his way out of the palace to get some...teaching aids however, that Mobei opened a portal directly in front of him causing Shang Qinghua to scream, probably a little too loudly, and throw himself as his king’s knees in the middle of the servant’s entrance.

“My king! Allow this lowly servant to—”

“Where are you going?” Mobei-jun asked in a low rumble. “Did you think you could hide your departure from me?” Of course, his king was thinking he was going to run away again, which really didn’t make sense because that would mean leaving Luo Binghe behind but it wasn’t like Shang Qinghua could explain that whole thing to his king, now could he?

“This servant was just going to the pharma—apothecary to pick up some contraceptives for the sexual education class I am teaching. The…uh… the accounting recruits also wanted to learn, so I thought, I’d go…” Shang Qinghua picked himself up and gestured vaguely in the direction he thought the pharma—apothecary might be. Honestly, he wasn’t sure how far of a walk it would be here from here, but there was some kind of will-o-wisp wandering logic that dictated he should find it eventually.

“Do you not have any…” Mobei-jun trailed off, seeming to realize the delicate nature of what he was asking and also that they were in a hallway that led right out of the servants entrance and that servants were still bustling in the kitchen and in rooms a few metres away.

Shang Qinghua did not want to explain that it had been some time since he’d had sex, not to his super cool and scary boss, not to the perfectly gorgeous man he had written, and definitely not to the guy who he once spent a week nursing slowly back to health in his own bed while furiously trying to prevent himself from sniffing his hair. Shang Qinghua wasn’t proud of that, but he had been like sixteen! And at least he had waited to self-soothe any sexual fantasies until the object of such fantasies was an adult!

“I wanted to give some to the students, you know, in case they need that. Ah, maybe I should take them to the pharmacy? So if they need refills, they just can pop back,” Shang Qinghua muttered biting on his nail. Was that how that worked? If you needed a non “prescription” item?

“Oh,” Mobei-jun said awkwardly and it took a moment for Shang Qinghua to even process that he had spoken because Mobei-jun and awkward should not even be in the same sentence! But he was looking a little past Shang Qinghua, his ears a little redish-blue, shifting his weight as his mouth was pressed into a line and—was Mobei-jun embarrassed? He’d known that xianxia humans were way more modest than modern day, but demons went around topless for holidays! They had once a decade fuck festivals! Their entire realm was teaming with sex pollen flowers! Could they be embarrassed to talk about sex?

“My king,” Shang Qinghua said, bowing, trying to process what the fuck was happening.

“It is no worry, this king has acted too swiftly. Next time you wish to leave the palace, notify the staff.” Mobei-jun nodded and fuck, was that an apology? Shang Qinghua’s eyes must have been too wide because once Mobei-jun met them he averted them immediately and then shooed him off. “When you return, come to my chambers, I have matters to discuss with you.”

“Of course!” Shang Qinghua said, even though usually private matters were bad news and were about how badly he’d fucked up or a terrible mission he had to go on, but if Mobei-jun was saying that going to get resources for his demon sexual education class took precedence, than it couldn’t be all bad, right?

Shang Qinghua bowed as he left, committing the image of an awkward Mobei-jun to memory definitely not for sexual fantasy reasons.

#

Thankfully demons did have condoms! And Shang Qinghua must have researched this at some point (it was also starting to come back to him) because they were made out of a kind of oiled paper (just like in the human realm, the pharmacist assured him with glee, no more otter-boar intestines!)  and mostly only covered the head instead of, well, the whole pillar, but they were better than nothing. The pharmacist also had lube! Actual water-based lube! This was ahistorical as fuck because Shang Qinghua definitely remembered doing research on how carrageenan from seaweed was turned into a gelatinous substances and trying to figure out if that was sexier than the prospect of vegetable oils before just deciding that no one was going to ask where the “bottle of slippery salve” came from. At least, thank the writing gods, he had actually included lube, which he knew from personal experience, many authors stallion, danmei or otherwise had simply never even thought to include let alone to type “ancient Chinese lube” into their search boxes! Anyway, he didn’t exactly remember where he included lube (Cucumber-bro would probably know) but he definitely remembered researching it, so there!

Shang Qinghua dumped his purchases on his bed in his tiny spy room, hid the lube under a invisible array inside a locked invisible box, and was about to put some of his thoughtful ahistorical lubricant to good use when he remembered that Mobei-jun had asked to see him. After leaving a quick note “for my students do not touch!” in case any nosy imps tried to paw through his things, Shang Qinghua tried to sneak as quickly and quietly to Mobei-jun’s quarters when he caught the sounds of his dearest, coolest protagonist! Lurking in the shadows Shang Qinghua peered out a window and spotted Luo Binghe and Sha Hualing chatting in a courtyard directly below and—wait was that Mobei-jun? He couldn’t hear what they were saying exactly but it looked like Mobei-jun was showing them some sword forms, sword forms Sha Hualing seemed to be memorizing like Wen Xulin memorized differential equations, but Luo Binghe was using a practice sword, going through the motions like he appreciated the effort but didn’t really want to be there. He was also standing like two metres away from both of them, like he was trying to get away.

What was up with that? A cultivator protagonist who got tired of cultivating? Who had ever heard of that!

Sighing Shang Qinghua snuck back into Luo Binghe’s suite trying to find some kind of evidence for what was going on. Xin Mon was the most OP sword of all OP swords! Sure, it had drawbacks because, you know, you can’t just have the protagonist come across an OP sword without consequences, but it—well the drawbacks only made him cooler! Heightened emotions and anger and revenge! Allowing him to papapa for hours on end and then sever the heads of his enemies for hours on end and then bask in the delicious glorious revenge for hours! On! End!

Shang Qinghua frowned as he found Xin Mo tucked under Luo Binghe’s bed, outside cleaned but still sheathed. It looked like Luo Binghe had gotten started trying to arrange his notes for the sex flower field guide, but everything else in the room felt bare. There wasn’t even a simple tea ring on any of the furniture or a few loose hairs.

Shang Qinghua frowned. Had he given his protagonist hobbies besides cultivating? He seemed to like cooking now thanks to Cucumber-bro, but what did Luo Binghe actually do for fun?

Ice skating had gone okay, but he’d also never asked to do it again.

 Shang Qinghua went back into the main room and collapsed on the anachronistic couch. So the obvious thing here was that Binghe was depressed and/or traumatized. Shang Qinghua was not an idiot and would not have given Luo Binghe the antidepressants if he couldn’t see that. No interest in activities he’d found fun, the crying, the detachment from everyone around him and difficulty getting up and sleeping? It was textbook.

But depression in real life was something you needed time, therapy, external support, and skills to overcome and Shang Qinghua wasn’t really sure he could provide, well, any of that. And yet the System had just, let his happen? Other than the first error message it had been super quiet. Wait, had Shang Qinghua muted it. Quickly he booted up the System.

[Greetings User 1! Notification Mode engaged—]

--wait he hadn’t wanted any notification—

[Mobei-jun affection increased +100]

[Mobei-jun affection increased +50]

[Coolness point increased +20]

Wait! Shang Qinghua had coolness points? When did this happen? Why did this happen? Could he do it again?

[Luo Binghe coolness points -100]

[Warning, if protagonist’s coolness points fall beyond critical level, User 2 will lose all B points.]

What about User 1, huh System? What would happen to him?

[Protagonist Complexity points +30 (B-points awarded to User 2)]

Wait! Even when it’s a decision Shang Qinghua made, Cucumber-bro still get’s the points? That’s cold System. Cold.

After scrolling through a bunch of incomprehensible notifications about Mobei-jun, Shang Qinghua realized there was nothing critical it seemed he had missed.

System are there any active missions? Any bonus content? Literally anything that could happen to help me?

[No active missions. Optional quests are available but have not yet started. Would you like to browse?]

Yes! Obviously!

[Optional Mission: Join the Mobei Clan, User 1 has not gone to quest giving point. Award ??? B-points. +100 protagonist complexity +500 Mobei-jun affection]

Wait, join the which? Where was this quest giving point??!?!

[Optional Mission: Join the Mobei Clan: User 1 has not met quest giving NPC. Award ??? B-point. +100 protagonist coolness points + 100 coolness points]

Wait, there were two…paths to this? And one gave Binghe complexity points and the other gave him coolness points? Hold up, there was a chance for him to earn coolness points? Shang Qinghua bit his lip. He didn’t even know the details of any of these missions, in fact, they hadn’t even started since he hadn’t even gotten them. But the choice of Mobei-jun’s affection vs coolness points…well it was best not to think about it. With his luck, whichever he decided he wanted would be the one path he didn’t get.

[Optional Mission: Start of Darkness: betray Luo Binghe—]

Absolutely not! Shang Qinghua may be a man of few principles, but he still valued his life well enough not to betray the protagonist! Next quest!

[Optional Mission: Give New Mission to User 2. Requires: Join Mobei Clan to be activated. 200 B-points]

Shang Qinghua paused at the last one. He was supposed to give a mission to Cucumber-bro? 200 B-points wasn’t anything to scoff at either. But it couldn’t be helped for now. It looked like the main goal was clear: somehow he would have to get him and Luo Binghe into the Mobei Clan. Obviously Shang Qinghua couldn’t just invented therapy, but if Luo Binghe was safe in the Mobei Clan than he’d have the time and external support (and antidepressants) to hopefully get better and start swinging Xin Mo, even long after Mobei-jun kicked Shang Qinghua to the curb.

Steeling himself, and also grabbing a writing pad to write some quick notes on the way, Shang Qinghua set off to Mobei-jun’s study with a new plan. Help his protagonist get over his depression so he could start his path of coolness!

Chapter Text

Shang Qinghua paused at the edge of the courtyard on his way to Mobei-jun’s office. The courtyard itself was mostly deserted now, Luo Binghe and Mobei-jun long gone as the demon sun waned. Save for a small pond, some statues and a training field that was rarely used because the ground was ice instead of grass and falling would hurt like a bitch, there really wasn’t much out there. Except right now, two people, against all common sense, were training.

He’d seen Sha Hualing practice with the sword before—he wasn’t sure she used a sword, but he’d seen her practice—but she wasn’t in the company of Luo Binghe or Mobei-jun or any other resident sword wielding demon, but instead she seemed to be coaching Wen Xulin on the sword forms Mobei-jun had just shown her, the same way a tiger might coach a house cat.

Wen Xulin’s hair, like always, was completely up in a top knot, which was practical, but her dozens of layers of blue robes were not, her sleeves swishing impractically as Sha Hualing tried to guide her stance. She looked less like she was practicing and more like she was auditioning for a live action xianxia drama, and Shang Qinghua wanted to scoff and ask if anyone ever wore armour when fighting instead of ceremonial wear when he remembered that they didn’t. Because he hadn’t thought it would seem as cool.

But still there was something weird with the scene. Watching Sha Hualing tell Wen Xulin to bend her knees lower was surreal for multiple reasons. Number one was that Sha Hualing seemed to be trying, very genuinely, to teach. And not in a girl-on-girl, let me put my arms around you way, but in a “actually that’s not how you do it” way. Shang Qinghua crept closer to get more of the conversation, but the scenes was still short circuiting his brain.

“I told you, it’s too many layers,” Sha Hualing sided. “At least get some bracers or something.”

“Oh, I’m sure something like that is so easy to affordable and get,” Wen Xulin muttered. “I’ll just call up my armourer and ask, and use my buckets of gold to pay for it, hmm?”

“Well, Ling-er apologizes then, it’s just so frustrating to teach someone something so basic.” Sha Hualing smiled. Wen Xulin rolled her eyes but did not seem to take offense to the teasing, instead bending her legs lower. After a moment of appraisal however, Sha Hualing only tutted. “You’re not really good at this.”

“Where would I have learned? Not everyone has parents who can afford to hire teachers. Not everyone is rich enough that they get to spend time studying and learning instead of working for their food. Not everyone gets the chance to be good at this.” Wen Xulin sighed and rose to her feet, swinging the saber back with her. “I suppose it’s no good. At least you had Luo Binghe to teach you algebra.”

“Is Ling-er not as good as Luo Binghe, then? I suppose you would know, since you study together.” Sha Hualing smiled sweetly and tried to sweep Wen Xulin’s legs out from under her, but Wen Xulin was a giant nerd, not an action girl, and only fell hard on the ice, blood spattering her nose. Sha Hualing seemed surprised, like she'd expected her to dodge, or at least roll with the punch, as if it wasn’t blatantly obvious that Wen Xulin was the demon equivalent of an indoor kid. C’mon, Sha Hualing had eyes! How couldn’t she see it. Shang Qinghua sighed.

“Is this what this is about then? You just agreed to help me to get information on Luo Binghe?” Wen Xulin picked herself up and sheathed the saber on her waist. “You needn’t have bothered, I don’t know anything about him.” Her tone was oddly stiff, not just unimpressed with Sha Hualing but almost disinterested in Luo Binghe? That was impossible. Luo Binghe was a dreamboat! Nice! Hard working! A genius! Any woman would want him and more than 600 did! Even if it wasn’t sexual, Wen Xulin was certainly always nice to him in class, so where was this artic attitude coming from? The Ice Palace?

“You’re writing the compendium together,” Sha Hualing probed, transparently. If even Shang Qinghua could see she was after him, it was no doubt Wen Xulin did as well, but rather than help Wen Xulin only shifted, eyes darting around the courtyard as Shang Qinghua hid behind a pillar. He was sure there was some girl code that dictated Wen Xulin should spill the hot goss or whatever people said, but Wen Xulin did not give off the impression that she owned a copy of the girl code and if she did own one, she certainly did not have the girl friends to enact a such a code on.

“When I said I didn’t know anything, it’s because I don’t. Luo Binghe keeps to himself. We don’t work on it together. He splits the work and then once a week we swap for feedback.” Wen Xulin shrugged. “He won’t come to our accounting study group either, or to ice skating. I don’t know why you’re so interested in him, but if he doesn’t want you, you should leave him alone. There are better things to do then try to impress men, like having dignity, for one.”

“That’s rich coming from a succubus. What are you for if not to impre—”

Wen Xulin lunged. But her saber wasn’t drawn and all she did was swing a fist like a toddler at a grown woman, Sha Hualing easily sidestepping it, surprised but leagues faster. Honestly, Shang Qinghua was a little surprised too, to see the normally stoic goody-two-shoes snarling, her fangs prominent and vicious, her eyes dark and wide with intent. But anger didn’t make her a better fighter and when Wen Xulin lunged again, this time with a sword Sha Hualing easily batted it away, the blade skittering on the ice like a toy. In any other setting it would have actually been a little sick, but Wen Xulin’s was practicing twitching to lunge again.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Sha Hualing asked, like a reasonable person, which was also a little concerning because Sha Hualing should not be the reasonable one here.

“You think—argh!” Wen Xulin flicked her sleeves impotently staring at the sword two metres away, the snarl still on her face. “You’re a fucking disgrace. A powerful cultivator and all you’re after is, what? Some dick who won’t give you or anyone else the time of day? And you have the audacity, someone who can barely fucking read despite your rich ass parents, to come at me—”

“I didn’t fucking say anything!” Sha Hualing said, stepping back. She looked around again, startled, like Wen Xulin lunging at her had cracked her coy attitude so hard it couldn’t be put back together immediately. “It was a joke. And isn’t it rude of you to assume, what, because I’m not a sexless saint that I’m a disgrace to women? Women aren’t allowed to want to fuck? Huh?” Sha Hualing tried to wave a finger in teasing, but the effect fell flat as Wen Xulin’s shoulders started to shake with rage.

“Forget it.” Wen Xulin stomped towards her sword. Sha Hualing paused, unsure of how to react to obviously hitting a sore spot. But to be fair, Shang Qinghua also froze from Sha Hualing obviously hitting a sore spot. Character’s he didn’t create weren’t supposed to have sore spots! What was all this about not being able to afford cultivation lessons? Was there implicit class struggles in his novel now? Sure he’d introduced slaves and human trafficking with Shen Jiu and Yue Qi and also some other characters were poor and destitute and had to marry for money and then there were the wives Luo Binghe had to save from being sold to prostitution, and okay there were a few characters from poorer backgrounds and maybe he never really addressed why cultivators never like, tried to fix that. But this was jianghu! They weren’t supposed to deal in real world issues like poverty and class struggles! Right? Ignoring them made total sense, if the world was good why would Luo Binghe have to destroy it huh? Then again Luo Binghe never fixed any of the class struggles either. But it—it was fine!

“I’m sorry,” Sha Hualing said which made Shang Qinghua want to hit himself in shock. Was he dreaming? He—surely Shang Qinghua was the authority on the characters, he’d written them after all—surely Sha Hualing couldn’t just apologize?

Wen Xulin paused as she picked up and sheathed the saber but didn’t speak. Sha Hualing did not say anything more. Didn’t say you all but called me stupid in class and I didn’t lunge at you did I? Wen Xulin’s nose was still dripping with blood, a stark red against the white ice marking her fall, a field of poppies blossoming on the blue sky of her robes as her blood made it’s way down her face.

“I wasn’t trying to call you stupid,” Wen Xulin said, not looking at Sha Hualing but at the saltwater pond with little fire-mandarin ducks swimming in it. “Isn’t not like accounting is prestigious and having a background in it means anything. It’s just—well obviously we all decided to be imperial accounts because our families already made us do the work. Evil Fang did the numbers for her parents’ shop, Mu-didi’s brother is a drug dealer who forced him to help manage, I’ve being doing bookkeeping since I was eight and Auntie Meiyin found me. You think there’s a person at a brothel that can do their job with a kid around? Of course not, I was always in the back doing math. Even Qin Ziya’s family were merchants. But you can’t work your way up in this world by being a merchant. We’re all here because we already have the background. I didn’t think telling you algebra was basic was going to be a big deal. Why would anyone learn algebra who didn’t want to?” Wen Xulin paused, fixing the sleeves of her robes but not making a move to fix the obvious problem, you know, the blood.

 “I guess expecting to learn how to fight without the background was stupid.”

Sha Hualing clucked her tongue at that. “Why do you even want to fight?” Ugh, because this was a cultivation novel, and everyone did? C’mon Sha Hualing. Or maybe it was because Wen Xulin was a huge nerd who wanted to protect herself? The answers were already there.

But Wen Xulin only shot her a look Shang Qinghua couldn’t decipher, one that made him feel uncomfortable like he was intruding on something private and vulnerable. Which he knew was ridiculous—these weren’t real people— but he liked Wen Xulin, or at least he liked her kissing up to him, and if he reminded himself she wasn’t real, that she didn’t matter, it felt weird. Empty. Like a hole where a support beam used to be, like open air instead of a step, a foot coming down on nothing. He hadn’t written her, didn’t understand why she was reacting this way, couldn’t pin down her character trope and now she was obscuring Sha Hualing too. Sha Hualing already had depth—she was constantly struggling and fighting everyone because he parents made her ambitious, that was depth, right?—she didn’t need any more complicated feelings or meaningful female friendships or—

“We’re not things,” Wen Xulin said finally, voice small. “We aren’t property. And I’m tired of being treated like I am.” The we meaning succubi, or maybe sex workers, or maybe women. Shang Qinghua didn’t like any possibility. Had he written the phrase women are things into PIDW? No! How could this be his fault? But a voice like Cucumber-bro whispered in the back of his head: you treated them like trophies instead of people, you didn’t given anything, you didn’t give them love, they were just there for Luo Binghe to papapa and he didn’t even get their love. Which wasn’t true! There were lots of action girls like Ning Yingying and Liu Mingyan and Sha Hualing and…ugh…Qi Qingqi! Okay maybe almost all of them went into the harem and gave up on their goals but like—he didn’t make real women give up on their goals, huh? He didn’t force 600 real people to papapa Luo Binghe! He didn’t—

“You don’t have to cultivate with a sword,” Sha Hualing said breezily. “You can use a musical instrument like a pippa or a guqin if you already know how to play. It’ll still kill people.”

“I want to stab them,” Wen Xulin muttered with demonic vitriol, her hand clenched over the scabbard. “I want them to know I beat them at their own game. I want them to know that I’m better then them.”

“Hmmm. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s worth spending all your time trying to impress men,” Sha Hualing said airily. “But Ling-er can teach you either way, I am much better than Luo Binghe.” Wen Xulin blinked like a fish poking its head out of water before she schooled her expression back into that of a scholar’s.

“You should come to our study group. If you want.”

“You should come to my parties. Luo Binghe doesn’t come to those either,” Sha Hualing hummed, the two of them seeming to settle something, sly smiles splayed across their faces. But Shang Qinghua backed away, now feeling a bit like an old man spying on teenage girls, the fact that they were supposed to be characters no longer cancelling out the implication. They were characters, Shang Qinghua reassured himself. There was no reason to feel bad about whatever misogyny or whatever Wen Xulin was perceiving because they weren’t real people and if there was sexism in the world, well, Shang Qinghua hadn’t put it there. Not really. He couldn’t have. And if he did, it wasn’t his fault! They weren’t real people and Sha Hualing and especially Wen Xulin had never been treated like objects because he hadn’t even written her. A voice in his head told him he didn’t need to have written her, that he had created her circumstances, unintentionally or not, by how he treated the others, by the messages that those characters' treatment sent.

But none of this was real, Shang Qinghua reminded himself. None of this was real. He wasn’t responsible for Wen Xulin. She didn’t—she was his favourite. All at once Shang Qinghua felt a little sick. How could he have known this would happen? Sure, commenters had criticized him, had pointed it out but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same.

Shang Qinghua heard a pearl of laughter from being him and flinched. He had to get to Mobei-jun’s office. He had to get Luo Binghe better. If he wasn’t even meeting with the other demons, then he certainly wasn’t learning by their example and he definitely wasn’t coming to terms with his heritage. Shang Qinghua didn’t have time to be distracted.

These girls weren’t important. They weren’t the main character. The name Wen Xulin did not appear anywhere in PIDW.

But she was still his favourite.

#

Shang Qinghua nearly dropped all his notes when Mobei-jun walked into his own study. Mobei-jun’s study was quiet, empty, well stocked with books, reports, chairs and even a small seating area, the perfect place to get work done. But never in a million years would Shang Qinghua sit down without his king in attendance, instead choosing to hold all his scrolls to his chest and nearly scatter to them the ground the minute Mobei-jun arrived.

“My king!”

“You’re back,” Mobei-jun observed. Shang Qinghua nodded frantically.  He might not really understand why he had gotten all those coolness points or where he was supposed to go to start the ‘Join the Mobei Clan’ mission, but that didn’t mean Shang Qinghua didn’t have ideas. All that nonsense about Sha Hualing and Wen Xulin was behind him, forgotten! Shang Qinghua was getting back on track baby.

“Yes, of course, I have also collected some reports from the agricultural minister about crop yields and rotation, and spoke briefly with her about making use of some arable land…” Shang Qinghua had had a whole list of new ideas and vague items he had prepared, some even talking about ideas he had written into PIDW that, he was now realizing, had truly world shattering consequences. Like the bean he had written in the draft form (which may or may not exist) that was said to feed a whole village for a month. It would only grow in the treacherous wastes of the North Western Frost Swap but if they could manage to find it, Mobei-jun could actually take people back and forth pretty easily, and they could set up a kind of express trade route that would really go a long way. Originally the bean had been necessary for a wife plot where they had to papapa for a long time and the woman couldn’t practice inedia and Luo Binghe was going to go on a quest to find something that could sustain her but that she would only have to eat once, but the whole thing started to seem weirdly specific so Shang Qinghua had scrapped it early on and instead Luo Binghe had just solved the problem by giving her his spiritual energy. Anyway! The all-filling bean was certainly of use now!

Shang Qinghua rattled on, undeterred as Mobei-jun finally offered him a seat in the seating area, calling his servants for some tea and refreshments. The important part was to get all his good ideas out now, to foster good will so that whatever criticism Mobei-jun had originally wanted to talk to him about would seem miniscule in the weight of all of Shang Qinghua’s hard work. Truly to execute any of these ideas would be a lot of paperwork but the idea was that Mobei-jun would see just how useful Shang Qinghua was and maybe how beneficial it would be to keep him and Luo Binghe in the Mobei Clan.

A few years ago when Shang Qinghua had lost his resolve to kill his favourite character, he was certain the only way forward was his untimely demise, but Mobei-jun had been surprisingly reasonable since Luo Binghe had showed up a few months ago. If Shang Qinghua could join the Mobei Clan, somehow, then, hell, he might even just straight up not die! All Shang Qinghua had to do was get out a few good ideas before Mobei-jun stopped him.

 Except, Mobei-jun didn’t stop him. Instead he spread out all of Shang Qinghua’s forms and scrolls on the low table between them and seemed intent to actually try and read them. He nodded at Shang Qinghua’s suggestions and said “ah” and “hmm” instead of “meh” and “unlikely.” For the better part of an hour and a half Shang Qinghua rattled on until his voice was starting to get hoarse and the tea Mobei-jun had ordered had arrived and was starting to cool.

“These are very good,” Mobei-jun said reasonably and for a second Shang Qinghua wondered if he was dreaming, but his dreams of Mobei-jun involved considerably less talking and paperwork and considerably more Shang Qinghua begging for mercy as he took it up the—

“Thank you,” Shang Qinghua muttered, pinching his thigh before finally dragging the tea closer. “Ah there was only one last thing, my king.” But as Shang Qinghua moved to pour himself a cup Mobei-jun stopped him, pouring the tea for the both of them and then stopped to wait for Shang Qinghua to hurriedly swallow a mouthful of it.

 It was nice, honestly, even if the tea was incredibly acidic and not very tasty. At least he was included! Mobei-jun turned to him with one eyebrow impeccably raised and Shang Qinghua almost lost his nerve, threw himself at his king’s feet and told him there was nothing else. But this was for the protagonist! For his son!

“I wanted to pay my respects to ugh, your mother. In your ancestral hall and was wondering—” Shang Qinghua stopped abruptly as Mobei-jun seemed to choke on nothing. If he’d been drinking tea it looked like he would have spit it out.

“Already—I—”

Shit, was there something in the ancestral hall Shang Qinghua was forgetting? He figured if there was some clue or mechanism to jumpstart his mission that it might be there, but maybe he was—

“My king! I meant no disrespect, I only wished to pay tribute! I know a lowly servant such as myself may not be worthy to look upon their markers, but perhaps, if you would allow this humble one to accompany you to pay his respects. I know you do not like my company but if this one could help…”

“I…” Mobei-jun trailed off, looking away, his cup of tea gripped tightly in his hand. “You are not a lowly servant.” He flicked the report he was holding onto his desk, drained his venomous tea in one go like a shot and if Shang Qinghua didn’t know any better he’d say he looked almost nervous. But it was probably just annoyance as Shang Qinghua’s presumption. His hand clenched oddly on the edge of his low table, frost spreading from his touch and Shang Qinghua nodded, confused, but happy things seemed to be moving in a positive direction.

“Of course, this servant of medium stature—”

“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun said, causing Shang Qinghua to freeze immediately. Had he missed Mobei-jun saying his surname or was this weirdly informal? “I accepted the Soul-Bond-Cultivation flower…you…” Mobei-jun averted his gaze, but it didn’t seem to be in anger this time. His shoulders were too relaxed and he set the tea cup down on the table too gently for that. Shang Qinghua cocked his head. Did his king mean accepting the flower was like accepting Luo Binghe? “I thought I had made my intentions clear…”

“My apologies, my king! This one isn’t sure we are on the same page, what does your intention have to do with this?”

Mobei-jun took a hard look at Shang Qinghua. Shang Qinghua tried not to sweat, but it was getting increasingly more difficult. The usually cool room was counteracted by the too acidic, too hot tea he had just downed and beads of sweat rolled down his back as his skin warmed up like a smooth rock in the summer sun.

 “I do like your company,” Mobei-jun said in the most surprising series of words that had been said to Shang Qinghua as of late and that included Sha Hualing asking him what the purpose of exponents were. Mobei-jun was meeting his gaze, hard, imparting something that Shang Qinghua could only nod at. Of course, the System had shown him the increase in affection points, hadn’t it? But what could have caused it?  Was it—wait, was it that Shang Qinghua had saved a lost demon teen abandoned by his family alone in a foreign realm twice now? Did Luo Binghe’s abandonment, and Shang Qinghua’s attempt to help, remind Mobei-jun of his uncle abandoning him in the mortal realm and Shang Qinghua saving him?

“I am most glad, my king! Of course, this one enjoys your company as well!” Shang Qinghua smiled his best ‘please let me join the Mobei Clan’ smile and Mobei-jun’s shoulders untightened, leaning back almost as if he was relaxed, or relieved?! “You are too kind my king, showing Luo Binghe sword techniques, allowing this one to stay here—”

“But do you want to stay here?” There was a beat where the rushed change of topic became too clear to deny, but Mobei-jun barrelled through it. “Or do you wish to return to your peak?” Mobei-jun asked with a kind of biting intensity that seemed to shift the atmosphere immediately. What was Shang Qinghua even supposed to say to that? Yes, of course I want to stay! I dream daily about you bending me over my bed post and love staring at your ass in meetings, why would I want to leave? Or was Shang Qinghua supposed to talk about why he’d left? Was he supposed to be honest? Shang Qinghua had a protagonist to save, he didn’t have the wiggle room for honestly.

And was it his imagination or was the room getting a lot hotter? At the very least Shang Qinghua was really starting to sweat, and his skin was less pleasantly warm as it was overheated and tingly. He pushed the bad tasting tea further away from him across the table and cleared his throat.

“If I could do both, I would. Being by your side is a pleasure almost beyond imagining, but it’s not easy. I didn’t leave because I wanted to. It’s just…you didn’t treat me well! You bullied me all the time,” Shang Qinghua said in a rare bout of honesty, possibly spurned by Mobei-jun’s indulgence, possibly by the uncomfortable scene he had witnessed in the courtyard on his way here. “The other demons don’t respect me and they push me around and I have to threaten and cajole just to get a bath! You punched me all the time, demanded things of me without considering what they took and frankly, you were a little ungrateful!” Mobei-jun’s mouth parted and Shang Qinghua braced himself for a punch than didn’t come. “But doing this work, it is rewarding. I like being here. It’s fun to change things! But I also have a responsibility to my peak.

“The other Peak Lords may have overworked me, but they did respect the necessity of what I did. I was a peak lord and now my room is the size of a storage cupboard! And teens keep bullying me! And all I want is respect and just to make an influence in the world that sticks instead of getting re-written by some asshole!” Shang Qinghua hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud. Certainly, there was no way it would make sense to Mobei-jun. Actually, the whole thing didn’t seem like it would make sense to Mobei-jun but his king’s brows were furrowed, as if was processing. Shang Qinghua tried not to squirm in his seat or think too much about Mobei-jun and squirming put together.

“You thought I didn’t respect you?”

“I…I don’t know,” Shang Qinghua said instead of, of course you are the exception, my king. What had gotten into him? “I don’t mind the manhandling too much! But it’s—I don’t know what it means. I mean, was it a friend thing, a threat? I—”

“I have tremendous respect for you,” Mobei-jun said as Shang Qinghua’s heart pounded so hard in his chest he thought someone might have given him the Heimlich by accident.

“I have tremendous respect for you too. Of course!” Shang Qinghua nodded frantically, wondering how they had gotten here and whether this was the calm that preceded the storm of his execution but Mobei-jun only leaned back in his chair, as if…relieved? God, why was this sexy demon so damn hard to read? A bead of sweat rolled its way down Mobei-jun’s neck and Shang Qinghua swallowed and tried to focus.

“I will get you bigger rooms then,” Mobei-jun said, apropos of nothing. “You are right. Your treatment should better reflect your station.” He too pushed his tea away from him, and—wow even he looked a little flushed now, his eyes dilated, his mouth parted, maybe it was unusually hot in here. “If that’s all you required. If all you wanted was to serve me faithfully—”

“Of course! That’s all—well and safety for Luo Binghe! If something were to happen to me or if you grew tired of me and cast me out, I would—”

“I will not grow tired of you,” Mobei-jun said and abruptly looked down at the reports.  Shang Qinghua shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the warmth seeming to prick at his skin even more and between that and Mobei-jun’s sincerity he was starting to feel weird. Plus, the tea wasn’t sitting well in his stomach, something low in his gut was heating up pleasantly, weirdly like a bunch of coiling snakes. “If you wish, you can return to An Ding peak to resume your Peak Lord duties, as long as you promise to always come back to me.”

“It—of course. I could never grow tired of you either,” Shang Qinghua laughed. “Even against my better judgment I don’t know if I could keep away.” Mobei-jun, a little redish-blue around the face nodded, as if he found all this reaffirmation of friendship embarrassing. But honestly Mobei-jun’s embarrassed face was super cute and normally Shang Qinghua might have freaked out about whether or not he’d written the character to be cute, but right now he was kind of thinking of what that embarrassed expression might look like under Shang Qinghua’s touch. In Shang Qinghua’s bed.

“We may visit the ancestral hall at the end of the week,” Mobei-jun continued. “If you wish. Otherwise…you may continue to teach your subordinates.”

Shang Qinghua blinked, subordinates, did that mean, wait, had Shang Qinghua risen in the ranks so quickly? Bigger rooms, formal underlings and the ability to resume his duties at An Ding Peak? What exactly had Shang Qinghua done to deserve this?

“Thank you, my king! This means more to me than you may know.” It meant a total 180 in Shang Qinghua’s life expectancy, happiness, and dry spell! “This one is beyond humbled and appreciative of this gesture. Honestly, I’m so grateful, I could fuck you right now!” Shit, Shang Qinghua hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Shit, I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.”

“Now?!” Mobei-jun asked incoherently and then Shang Qinghua looked down at the tea and put two and two together.

“Ah, my apologizes my king, it seems Sha Hualing had spiked the tea you have prepared with Truth and Beauty snake venom.” Of course there were better, less horny truth serums but they were harder to get or at least had appeared less frequently in PIDW. “I should take my leave before the full effects of the venom take place, but I will meet you at the end of the week! I look forward to it.”

“I look forward to it as well,” Mobei-jun said, a small smile on his lip and Shang Qinghua really had to leave now before he said something even more stupid. At least casually mentioning he wanted to fuck his king hadn’t immediately soured the mood?

Win!

But as Shang Qinghua headed back to his quarters to uncover his hidden supply of lube, he realized he had never found out what the reason Mobei-jun had asked to meet in his office in the first place was.

Oh well.

#

“This,” Shang Qinghua said pointing to the diagram in front of his eager students, “is the clitoris. Can anyone tell me what this is,” Shang Qinghua said, pointing to a part of the diagram he wasn’t too sure about. Honestly, he hadn’t spent a lot of time looking at vaginas. Sha Hualing rolled her eyes like anatomy diagrams were juvenile but really, there were only a couple of years past this, and he didn’t know how much catch up they needed! He also distinctly remembered Cucumber-bro mocking him for thinking women could get off from labia stimulation alone and also he had quoted some parts of PIDW that, Shang Qinghua had to admit, did seem to imply that some of the wives didn’t really know how their own equipment worked, so, you know, better to be safe now.

Like the sun rising in the east, Wen Xulin’s hand rose in the air straight as a ruler.

“That’s the urethra,” she said, smugly looking back at Sha Hualing who only rolled her eyes. Huh, so that’s what was there. Shang Qinghua looked back at the diagram and wrote down what Wen Xulin said as Mu Kexing and Evil Fang took furious notes. "Beside it are the Skene glands." Shang Qinghua dutifully wrote it on the diagram and didn't wonder whether Skene was a modern or demon moniker.

“So that’s anatomy!” Maybe he should have started with that instead of all the sex curses, but he’d assumed a baseline understanding that apparently some of his new students lacked.

“So moving on from anatomy and back to post-pubescent changes…” Shang Qinghua flipped through his notes, looking at the next unit he’d prepared. “Ah! So our next unit is about weird body changes.” Shang Qinghua flipped a page and wrote Weird Body Changes at the top. “Now, the first one occurs just after puberty, where, once every seven years, the demon penis will develop ridges.” Shang Qinghua began to draw an approximation of where the ridges were going to develop as Luo Binghe and Mu Kexing’s hands shot into the air. “Ah, Luo Binghe you’re half human so I’m pretty sure you’re fine—”

“You know a lot of about demon dick,” Sha Hualing said. “Did you read about that in a book or do you have personal experience?” Sha Hualing batted her eyelashes and Shang Qinghua’s hand hovered over the diagram, the ink threatening to drip from his brush.

“Will the condom still work on the ridges?” Evil Fang asked. “You also only showed us how to put them on a cucumber, and a cucumber doesn’t have ridges—”

“You also didn’t explain the dental dams,” Wen Xulin said.

“Okay, one thing at a time, all right. The ridges—”

“Do the ridges hurt your partner?” Mu Kexing asked which was getting a little ahead of himself, but Shang Qinghua admired his optimism. “What if they’re human? Can you take them?”

“Can I…what?”

Mu Kexing shifted uncomfortably as Sha Hualing snickered like they were in the back of a class in modern China, except at least Shang Qinghua’s class hadn’t asked the teacher directly if she could take dick.

“I just meant, when you and Mobei-jun…you know…if it…diff—I mean, I don’t want to hurt anyone!” Mu Kexing said, one set of arms still writing the other gesturing emphatically. “I just want to make sure I’m being safe and that since you have, you know, experience—you said we could ask questions!” Mu Kexing pointed an accusatory finger at Shang Qinghua as Luo Binghe eyes turned back to his notes, though Shang Qinghua could already see his eyebrows rising.

“You think Mobei-jun and I—we have a professional relationship!”

“Aren’t you his consort?” Mu Kexing asked, head tilted as Shang Qinghua spluttered.

“No! I’m his subordinate! I, you know, do work! Paperwork! Taxes! I helped out Qin Ziya to do the accounting!”

Mu Kexing help up his hands in surrender, his light blue skin turning purple, “well there’s some very mixed messaging going on but that’s not my fault—”

“Listen! When the ridges pop out you have to have sex for them to go back down and it’s very painful! If you don’t have a partner, please visit a brothel, and if you do, just, don’t shove things where they don’t fit!” Shang Qinghua thought this was probably common sense but maybe it needed to be stated anyway. “You should be monitoring your partner and if they look like they’re in pain, stop and ask them what’s up! Also lube! You can never have enough lube!” Images of PIDW scenes with Luo Binghe’s wives moaning in pain, muttering “I can’t take anymore” while Luo Binghe didn’t listen flickered into Shang Qinghua minds but he ignored it. That was just…creative license okay. Fiction. These were…well, maybe they weren’t real people but they, they were sort of real, weren’t they? Shang Qinghua hadn’t invented Mu Kexing or Wen Xuling or Evil Fang or even Qin Ziya.

Anyway, it didn’t matter!

“What about dental dams?” Wen Xulin asked as Shang Qinghua whipped around to look at her. Her hand was steadfast in the air and Shang Qinghua could see a kind of double vision, one of a young woman a little too prepared for the world, a little too up-tight because she needed to be, and another vision, of words on a page where people’s backgrounds and personalities didn’t matter, where they did what the plot demanded, where no matter how much Wen Xulin studied accounting and math and sexual education, she was a succubus and would probably wind up as a side character in a brothel scene where Luo Binghe showed up to papapa everyone and add them to his harem. Maybe if she was lucky, she’d be a throwaway line about how not all succubi were sex workers, and actually that one over there managed the numbers, but Luo Binghe would marry and papapa her anyway. That was the story. That was how it went. And nothing Shang Qinghua or anyone else could do could change that.

Except, looking at Wen Xulin, with her perfect posture, and her evenly spaced notes, her hair completely up in a scholar’s top knot (which he was pretty sure women didn’t wear) and her robes heavily layered, the thought of her throwing that away to be added to Luo Binghe’s harem felt odd, almost violating. Shang Qinghua’s mouth soured and his stomach turned and his palms sweated with discomfort and we’re not things squirmed its way underneath his skin.

But Liu Mingyan had joined the harem, just to avenge her brother without really loosing her character, right?

Wen Xulin’s hand was still in the air, her face perfectly serene, unaware that whoever she thought she was—if she thought at all—could be changed at a whim from a boy sitting 2 metres away. And for once, that thought didn’t make him want to side with his dear protagonist.

“I don’t have a skull to demonstrate how to use a dental dam,” Shang Qinghua said, clearing his throat. He was pretty sure he could logic out how dental dams were supposed to work. It was like when you went to the dentist, wasn’t it? Probably the same.

“I can go grab a skull,” Sha Hualing said, shrugging and Shang Qinghua was surprised when he met Luo Binghe’s look of equally confused mild disgust. “What, you asked!”

“I had a question,” Evil Fang said because of course everyone had a question. Shang Qinghua hadn’t even gotten to the sex flowers! The many, many sex flowers! “You said that consent had to be FIRES—freely given, informed, reversible, enthusiastic and specific—but didn’t you also say that children can’t given informed consent? That’s why there was an age of consent and stuff.”

“Yes!” Shang Qinghua said. There was no chance the System could blame any messed up age of consent stuff on him! No way did any web novel invent a new age of consent rather than just sticking with a vaguely defined “ehh it’s probably the same as the current age of consent, but also adults should not sleep with 15 year olds don't worry about it.” Shang Qinghua hadn’t added or subtracted ANYTHING from that time-honoured tradition.

“But then why did the King of the Southern Yak demon clan take Xiao Yanling into his harem? Isn’t she 12? I mean, should we do something?”

Shang Qinghua sucked his teeth for one moment in utter confusion before he remembered Xiao Yanling. He wanted to say that this wasn’t his fault, that he was just bad at math and she had been a blushing 21 when Luo Binghe, then 27, had stolen her from the King of the Yak demons. So maybe he had said that Xiao Yanling had languished, unloved and alone in the concubine residence since she had started puberty because that was a nice dramatic statement and maybe he had forgotten that technically puberty starts in girls 11-14 and not like 16-18 but also maybe Shang Qinghua just really hadn’t cared because they weren’t real people and the fictional maybe sexual assault implications of a tiny character who existed in one chapter for Luo Binghe to save (and of course pay off her family since the only reason she was there was because of her awful parents who had sold her for money). She wasn’t real! Hadn’t been real. Still wasn’t really real!

Sha Hualing shifted in her seat throwing one leg over top the other as Luo Binghe put down his brush.

“You mean she’s engaged to the king, right, but they can’t be married—” Luo Binghe started.

“She’s due to officially be married in a month, I think. That’s why I remembered. There’s people going down for the wedding, so my family’s shop is busier.” Evil Fang grew a little quieter and Shang Qinghua watched Luo Binghe’s fist close tightly over his ink brush.

“Her parents sold her,” Sha Hualing explained. “Nothing a beauty can do when her family’s greedy. But we kill people all the time, and we still know murder is wrong. It happens.”

“It shouldn’t happen,” Luo Binghe said, voice quiet. Wen Xulin was no longer sitting straight at attention, instead, her head bowed over her notes. Shang Qinghua didn’t like this shift in the conversation but what was he supposed to say? That he had written it so Xiao Yanling was a virgin by the time she met Luo Binghe because you know, even wife-stealing plots worked better when the woman was a virgin? That there had been no sexual assault because he’d written it that way? Because she wasn’t a yak demon but a deer demon and so the king had thought her too ugly to papapa? Somehow typing those things up and pressing send had meant nothing but saying it in front of a group of young women, the words turned to tar in his mouth.

“Of course it shouldn’t happen,” Sha Hualing tisked, rolling her eyes. “But demon lords do whatever they want.” For a moment, Luo Binghe’s expression darkened, and Shang Qinghua almost squealed in delight! Yes! Vengeance! His son was starting on his path to darkness just as god—the writer—had intended!

“And no one even attempts to do anything about this?” Luo Binghe asked, but he didn’t sound cold or like he was ready to enact violence. Instead, he sounded, smaller, withdrawn.

“There’s nothing that can be done,” Shang Qinghua said, flinching as Luo Binghe’s gaze turned to him.

“Well, Mobei-jun I guess could talk to some diplomats to start, you know, a whole thing about it,” Wen Xulin said. “But that won’t change anything. At least it’ll be good for people who live here, but…Xiao Yanling isn’t going anywhere. What a king wants…he gets.” That was almost a direct line from PIDW but somehow Wen Xulin saying it did not have the triumphant gravitas that it did when Luo Binghe had victorious announced it as he spirited Xiao Yanling away. Now it just sounded defeatist.

Shang Qinghua frowned. Luo Binghe was gripping his brush with surprising ferocity, but he still looked more likely to cry than to stab anyone. Why wasn’t this working? Luo Binghe had even more reason to slaughter people than before, more allies to help him do it, and more training than he’d had either! So why was he sitting here, sulking and acting all, well, traumatized.

Shang Qinghua winced at his own wording but than sighed out loud. The rest of the class was very subdued, with Shang Qinghua explaining that he was busy tomorrow and that Qin Ziya would take over teaching them about accounting and Luo Binghe and Wen Xulin could lead independent review on sex-ed while he was gone.

Luo Binghe nodded, his eyes flashing to Shang Qinghua with something between resignation and hate, but this time Shang Qinghua wasn’t sure if it was actually undeserved.

Chapter Text

Let it not be said that Shang Qinghua was completely heartless. After pouring over some archives of the Southern Yak Demon king, and looking up more about Xiao Yanling’s family, Shang Qinghua had a pretty good plan. His major goal was still to fix his plot, get Luo Binghe into the Mobei Clan and started on his path to revenge but if he could save a 12 year old girl, well, the System hadn’t bothered him in so long, and this was hardly even a plot point. Surely, he could fix it, just this once?

He spotted Wen Xuling and Luo Binghe talking in courtyard—this one filled with ice flowers instead of frozen training grounds—and for a moment, Shang Qinghua allowed himself to smile. At least Luo Binghe was making friends and a stolid accountant sucubi wife was a pretty good mix of “thoughtful strong female protagonist” and “wild male-gaze sexuality” that readers would be sure to love it. Well, if there were readers of this. Shang Qinghua paused in the middle of the hall at the thought.

There couldn’t be readers of this, if Cucumber-bro was changing the plot, then there wasn’t an author and therefore couldn’t be readers, right? Except whatever was up with the System. But then again, what would they be reading? Would it follow Shang Qinghua and Cucumber-bro—or rather Shen Qingqiu? Was the story still even about Luo Binghe? Had Shang Qinghua become a much more prominent character? Were his Sex-Ed classes making it into the novel?

No! Of course not! That wasn’t good literature!

Shang Qinghua looked outside to reassure himself of the sanctity of the protagonist halo, that even though Wen Xulin had been smack talking him the other day she had to come around as all female characters did—except the duo was not chummily looking at the flowers as Shang Qinghua had first thought.

They were arguing.

Luo Binghe was gesturing emphatically and Wen Xulin was pointing her finger in his direction like she wished she’d been pointing a knife, her lips pulled back in the same half-restrained snarl she’d had when talking to Sha Hualing. But wait—no, they weren’t arguing. Luo Binghe didn’t seem upset as he crossed his arms and nodded. He seemed—Shang Qinghua froze. He didn’t know how Luo Binghe seemed. He didn’t know what Wen Xulin was talking about. They were having a heated discussion about something that Shang Qinghua couldn’t even guess at, yet it felt important it. It felt like it should be a Scene. And yet—and yet there couldn’t be a scene. Wen Xulin was a minor background character from a plot line that didn’t make any sense, she couldn’t be in a main scene. And yet—and yet she had real emotion. And yet Binghe, as he nodded and shifted and stepped away and towards her with something like conviction and embarrassment, must also have had real feeling in this moment.

But…but it wasn’t…this wasn’t related to PIDW or Cucumber-bro’s plot this—this couldn’t be plot important it couldn’t—so how could there be real emotion—

For an eerie moment standing in the hall Shang Qinghua felt at once like he was the only real person in a lucid dream, the only one with an inner life, with dull moments, who went to the washroom and stubbed his toe and jerked off to avoid a headache. And at the same time, he could feel the press of a different idea, that everyone else in the world was the same as him, with their own inner thoughts, their own dreams, than the washer woman who had raised Luo Binghe had existed before the story, before Shang Qinghua, had had parents, a whole life, and that Shang Qinghua was just a person here like he had been in the modern world no more or less importance, no more or less conscious or realistic than everyone else. That this wasn’t a story someone was reading, that there were hundreds and thousands of lives that had hundreds of thousands of thoughts that no one would ever know about or see, that Shang Qinghua could search to the end of the world and never find the limits of his world because there were a million stories, a million lives, playing out at the same time in every moment.

And then that moment passed, and Shang Qinghua let out a bark of laughter startling Mobei-jun’s head of staff who was walking down the other hall. Quickly, Shang Qinghua pumped his little legs which were longer than his old ones but shorter than everyone else’s and so were little all the same. He made it to Mobei-jun’s study, having buried most of the existential epiphany deep down within himself. And then he knocked and was promptly ushered in.

“You are early,” Mobei-jun observed from behind his desk as Mobei-jun’s steward bowed and left the room. Mobei-jun’s study was as empty and curated as usual, nothing changed except the Soul-Bond-Cultivation Flower that was displayed in a glass case on Mobei-jun’s desk now, which wasn’t what Shang Qinghua would have done with it but at least it was safe.

“Of course! I wanted to discuss something, my king,” Shang Qinghua unfurled the drawing he had done of the Southern Yak King’s palace and handed it to Mobei-jun. He didn’t remember the palace that clearly, but he remembered well enough where Xiao Yanling was hidden.

“Where did you—did you draw this?” Mobei-jun took the scroll and yanked it forward brushing away papers on his desk, sending them tumbling to the icy floor. “This is the inner palace of the Yak Demon King, Silver Horn, how—?”

“Ah, it’s not important,” Shang Qinghua deflected. “This humble one was just doing some research. But I have discovered, that one of his proposed concubines is a child, and thought, perhaps, that we might be able to free her.” Shang Qinghua had already calculated the costs to buy her from her family, and had quickly popped in to the pharmacy to ask the pharmacist if she’d like a new apprentice—thus ensuring she’d be well hidden and nigh impossible to find in a shop that kept moving—and now the only thing to do was just to pop in and steal the girl. Or well, convince her to come willingly. There were some minor additional steps but without the protagonist’s halo or Cucumber-bro’s freedom, Shang Qinghua was keeping his goals small for now.

Shang Qinghua detailed all this quickly, concisely, and conveniently left out what would be in it for the Mobei-jun clan until he got to the very last part.

“It’s just, to see a young child cast into a den of murderous strangers by her own family, without allies to help, well, this one did not think it was right,” Shang Qinghua said to Mobei-jun who had once famously been cast into his own den of monsters—humans—by his uncle. “I would only need a quick portal in or out.” Mobei-jun frowned at this. Looked at the plans, looked back at Shang Qinghua.

“You are planning to break into enemy territory alone?” Mobei-jun’s frown intensified, his voice taking on a quality somewhere between disbelief, and, impossibility, gentleness. “What if this goes wrong?”

“My king, do not worry! Of course, this one must go alone to avoid this being traced back to the Mobei Clan. You know how much I value the safety of all the people here,” Shang Qinghua added for good measure. Mobei-jun looked, well, stone faced, but also touched by Shang Qinghua’s sincerity. A mix of giddiness and new potential rose within him. Was this working? Was Shang Qinghua going to finally do something good? Save someone instead of condemning them to die?

“I must think on this matter some more, in the mean time, I will meet you in the ancestral hall…you may enter without me.”

Shang Qinghua’s eyes lit up. This was a pretty big deal! He bowed so fast he almost brained himself on the desk but avoided it just in time.

“Thank you, my king. This humble servant lives to serve. I only hope such a request will bring merit to the Northern Desert and improve the—”

“Shang Qinghua.”

“Of course, I will take my leave, my king.” And then Shang Qinghua scurried out of the study like a mouse scurrying off to eat some premium cheese! He strode down the hall and descended into the ice catacombs and made his way to the ancestral shrine with renewed vigor.

The Join the Mobei Clan mission was going to pop up in no time with the way things was going and then Luo Binghe would have some support, and Shang Qinghua could finally dip. Well, first he’d have to make sure Luo Binghe was using Xin Mo, and then Shang Qinghua could dip.

He stopped outside the giant carved ice doors that marked the ancestral hall and briefly wondered how he was going to open them when he spotted Luo Binghe storming out the other end of the hallway. There was no real reason for Binghe to be in this part of the palace, but there was also no reason to seek Shang Qinghua out specifically. There definitely weren’t any lingering plot points that Shang Qinghua had set up, were there?

Unless, the protagonist was here to tell him all about his plan to use Xin Mo to infiltrate the Southern Yak Palace? Of course, that must have been what he and Wen Xulin were talking about! Wen Xulin did not have her own inner life, she was just reflecting Luo Binghe’s desire to restore justice and now Binghe was going to come and enlist his help and—

“What are you doing?” Luo Binghe asked, marching towards him with purpose. Shang Qinghua furrowed his brow. This did not sound like a good recruiter speech or a “I’ve come to ask for your guidance on this mission” speech. It wasn’t even the PIDW classic “join me if you value your life, or at least, if you fear death” which had its own merits if it was a little too straight forward. But Luo Binghe didn’t have any other signifiers of a recruiter either. His arms were crossed, his fingers gripping his own robes. His mouth was pressed into a firm line, his jaw clenched, almost unconsciously, and his legs were tensing like he was preparing to battle something as if—as if he was upset.

“I was going to visit the ancestral hall,” Shang Qinghua said uncertainly. He thought about his tired and true “when in doubt throw yourself at the thighs of your enemy” approach but he was supposed to be teaching Binghe, and he couldn’t throw away all his dignity just yet.

“That’s not what I mean!” Luo Binghe huffed. “Sha Hualing said you’d be here and—” Luo Binghe turned away suddenly, not exactly pouting but scrunching up his face to one side before his features went cold again. “Sha Hualing said that you’re trying to get me to join the Mobei Clan.” Damn, Sha Hualing was a better spy that Shang Qinghua had thought. Or else Mobei jun had simply trusted her a lot more. But then again, if he’d trusted her, sending her to spy on Shang Qinghua’s accounting class of all things, was a little pointless and also a dead giveaway of her intentions. C’mon, Sha Hualing, in accounting?

“Well,” Shang Qinghua said, because the Join the Mobei Clan mission hadn’t started. “I haven’t made any promises, but I’ve been putting out a lot of feelers. I was going to ugh, talk to you when things became a little more certain.”

“BUT WHY?” Luo Binghe finally asked, squaring up in front of Shang Qinghua.

“To keep you safe—”

“But why do you even care about keeping me safe?” Luo Binghe clenched his hands into fists, as if trying to physically force himself together. “You let monsters overrun the Immortal Alliance conference, kill thousands, who am I to you? You stand by and do nothing while little girls are—” Luo Binghe’s balled fists shook as he searched around for some outlet. His rage was building and if it wasn’t PIDW levels of anger at least it wasn’t the little doting disciple act Shang Qinghua had heard about. “You give me medicine, teach people how to avoid sex curses, for what? So you can leave and go back to the sect you betrayed to act like nothing happened? Are you saving me because you betrayed them? Because you feel guilty because…” Luo Binghe’s voice broke and the carefully contained rage turned back to hurt, to confusion.

“I already told you, Binghe,” Shang Qinghua said awkwardly trying not to imagine that the people who had died during the Immortal Alliance conference were like Evil Fang and Mu Kexing who had backstories and class conflict and relatives who would mourn them. They were cannon fodder without names and if there were a million unnmaed people in the Ice Palace who suddenly had names, if there were a million new names that had been conjured from thin air and new backstories, new feelings, new independent thoughts— “I didn’t have any good choices. I always wanted to do good, even if I didn’t have the chance to! Is it…is it wrong to want to help someone?”

“You called me your son,” Luo Binghe said, voice breaking. “And I’m not! I’m not anything to you! You told me to act pathetic and needy so others would love me. But then, you stood up to Mobei-jun for me. You tried to get a demon king to teach me the sword even though only Shizun—” Luo Binghe voice warbled before he got it under controlled. “What do you want? Who are you? Why won’t you just let me go back? What am I to you that Wen Xulin and Evil Fang and all the others at that Immortal Alliance conference were not? Why are you doing this?”

Shang Qinghua looked at Luo Binghe and tried to fit him into the mold he had written of him but no matter how he looked at it, this one didn’t fit. He’d been thinking ‘well, not yet’ but Cucumber-bro had changed him a lot hadn’t he. In ways that Shang Qinghua couldn’t really predict or understand. The existential anti-solipsism wave crashed over him again, but Shang Qinghua pushed it aside like giant pushing aside a boulder.

“It’s not safe to go back yet,” Shang Qinghua said. “I told you. Isn’t it—do people need such an extravagant reason to care for another person?” Shang Qinghua asked.

“Yes,” Luo Binghe said, softly. “Otherwise…otherwise why would you be the first?” He said it so quietly that Shang Qinghua flinched, scratching at his hand like it would have the answers to the existential questions Luo Binghe was asking. Why did he care about Binghe? Because he was the protagonist! But why was he the protagonist? Because of the suffering that had happened to Shang Qinghua? Because of his revenge fantasies? His insecurities? Why was it Binghe who got revenge and not Wen Xulin or Xiao Yanling who had been mistreated and abandoned as well? Why had Shang Qinghua picked this character and why were there so many other different characters who were just as deserving? Or were they? Or—Shang Qinghua shifted uncomfortably, his heart starting to pound in his chest like the beginning of a panic attack he used to have in his real life.

“Listen,” Shang Qinghua said, ignoring Binghe’s last words, his thousand yard stare the disconnect between his protagonists pleading and the agony he should have felt but didn’t. None of this was real. “Who’s to say I wasn’t planning to do something about Xiao Yanling? Maybe it’s not just you! Obviously, helping her isn’t something we can tell Mobei-jun, but I was thinking about a way to get into and out of the palace you know, you shouldn’t doubt your shishu.” Shang Qinghua waggled his finger, but Luo Binghe was only looking at him blankly, almost without breath.

In the silence of the icy hall Shang Qinghua could hear his heart beat in his ear drums as he thought of Cucumber-bro’s comments on PIDW—Luo Binghe deserves better! Better than this story! Better than you.

“Why is it you?” Luo Binghe asked again, smaller, the meaning clear. Why is it you and not Shizun? Why is it you and not my birth parents? Why isn’t it my adopted mom still alive to be able to care for me? Why does no one else think I’m worthy but such a disgrace?

When Shang Qinghua had first wound up here there were a lot of things he’d wanted to say to his protagonist, or to a younger him. But Luo Binghe was right. Cucumber-bro was right. Luo Binghe deserved better. PIDW had been a trash fire of a novel that wasn’t supposed to do anything except put food into Shang Qinghua’s mouth. None of it was supposed to have consequences.

Luo Binghe flinched when Shang Qinghua approached, and the appropriate thing, the fatherly thing would be to embrace his son and tell him it would be all right and that everything would be okay, but did Shang Qinghua even believe that?

But then, did it matter what Shang Qinghua believed? Was his entire life just a punishment for actions he took that he didn’t think would have consequences? The people around him weren’t even real, and it didn’t matter what Shang Qinghua did.

Except that if it did matter, and if they were real, Shang Qinghua would be fucking up a second time too. The same mistake. Maybe it was better to be safe than sorry, maybe even if Luo Binghe wasn’t real, it would be better to try—

“Come here.” As gently and stiffy as he could, Shang Qinghua put his arms around his protagonist, wishing that he felt sad, or empathetic, instead of focused on his own mistakes and screw-ups. But he didn’t. “I know it’s confusing when people you love hurt you, and it affects your ability to think people will care about it again.” Shang Qinghua closed his eyes. Imagined talking to a younger him, one who had just found out about his parents’ divorce. “I know that it’s hard to realize that your parents, your teachers, aren’t perfect but are capable of great mistakes or even evil. People who you rely on, they shouldn’t be able to change or be complex. They’re your foundation, your guidepost, they’re supposed to be the same to help you grow. But they do change and they are complex and it is fucked up. The good ones do fucked up things, and the bad ones do nice things and they don’t get to be just one thing.” Shang Qinghua swallowed. His arms were too warm where he was holding Binghe, Binghe who was unresponsive except for some slight shaking. This was stupid. Pointless. It wouldn’t change the plot or help anyone, but Shang Qinghua pretended that he could, for one moment, pretended for one moment that he had agency in his own life.

“I can’t change what happened, or my failures, or my ability to create better options. But I can do something now. If I can make one person’s life better, isn’t that enough?” Shang Qinghua was half surprised by his own words, and even more surprised to see he meant them. If he couldn’t change anything but saving Mobei-jun and Xiao Yanling, wasn’t that already a little better? Maybe that was why Cucumber-bro had been horrified. Shang Qinghua kept failing to make big changes, but he’d ignored his capacity to make small ones, ones that barely affected the plot at all. That was it, wasn’t it, he just had to go into fringes of his work to make positive change.

And yet—Shang Qinghua frowned as Luo Binghe shook, his arms at his side as Shang Qinghua tried to rub circles on his back, it had been a long time since Shang Qinghua had hugged anyone.

Suddenly, Luo Binghe shoved him away, face indifferent as Shang Qinghua fell onto the ice floor, smashing his face. Another blooming red poppy of violence against the white-blue of the palace. Luo Binghe shook himself, almost as if he could clear his thoughts like an Etch-A-Sketch, but the conflict didn’t fade from his face. Shang Qinghua only sighed. This was the moment where he should betray Luo Binghe, get kicked out of the Northern Desert, and cement Luo Binghe as Mobei-jun’s apprentice, harden his son’s heart. That was the best move for the story. To secure Luo Binghe’s ire. But Luo Binghe didn’t look like a protagonist or a demon lord right now. He looked like an eighteen-year-old boy who couldn’t understand the world. He looked like an eighteen-year-old Shang Qinghua who had moved out without support, or money, or security and had to figure out how he was going to live the rest of his life alone.

“I’m proud of you,” Shang Qinghua said, half talking to himself. It didn’t mean anything coming from him, but Luo Binghe paused the same. “And I’m sure your Shizun would be proud of you. And your mother. And everyone else.”

Luo Binghe flinched at the mention of his teacher, his face shifting as he looked frantically around the ice walls for something. Something to ground himself. But the searching must have taken too long because instead of lashing out or shouting, all Luo Binghe did was sink to the ice floor, a couple metres from Shang Qinghua and press his head into the floor.

His shoulders were still shaking with the force of holding back his sobs, oscillating between glaring down at his Qing Jing peak robes which he hadn’t changed or glaring at Shang Qinghua or looking at him desperately, a thousand emotions playing on his face as he broke down. His hyperventilated breaths left condensation on the floor but the tears from his face and the snot from his nose dripped onto the floor, leaving little holes in the white mist.

Shang Qinghua had never seen anyone break down, but once Luo Binghe’s  put his head between his knees Shang Qinghua knew what was up. He sat up and felt—detached. A teenager was crying in front of him and Shang Qinghua felt the same detachment he always felt when something bad happened. Except this was to his protagonist! But his protagonist for a work that wouldn’t ever be read in a world where nothing really mattered did it? Shang Qinghua scooted to sit beside the Luo Binghe at the wall.

“Why couldn’t it be—why didn’t he…” Luo Binghe was half muttering between his sobs but they seemed private, intimate, and so Shang Qinghua ignored them.

“Life sucks,” Shang Qinghua said, instead. “Genuinely and truly and I know I said this before but nothing matters, your actions don’t stop others from hurting you, everything goes to shit without you and it’s all you can do to keep your head above water and put food on your table. And then you just die, senselessly, for no reason.” Sometimes you died and then you were punished for something as mundane as shitty writing. There were murders and rapists out there and Shang Qinghua was the one forced to go threw a second life of betrayal. Maybe it was his fault for not making the most of it. For not trying to save cats from trees, from not having the brilliance of Cucumber-bro to see all the plot problems. But what was done was done. The world was written and Shang Qinghua had been positive that it couldn’t be changed but now his indomitable protagonist was having a mental breakdown in the Northern Ice Palace and Mobei-jun had kind of been a lot nicer to Shang Qingjua, even agreeing to help him save Xiao Yanling, or at least think about it.

Maybe all of this could have been changed the whole time and it was only Shang Qinghua who couldn’t figure out how to.

“Shizun didn’t suck,” Luo Binghe said, stupidly and it was an uncharitable opinion to have about a crying teen let alone his darling protagonist and yet—

“Shen Qingqiu does suck. He’s an elitist and class traitor, bullied everyone around him to get where he got, never once communicated with anyone—he grew up as a slave and then was engaged to one of his master’s daughters, lied to her about his treatment, killed everyone else and then never followed up on it because he doesn’t want to deal with his past but leave it behind. And he never once thought, hmm maybe this will come back to bite me if I never mention it? Idiot.

“He’s overly close with his female disciples because he hates men because of the slave thing, but would rather die than admit he came from low status, even to his disciples so they all feel weirded out by him and like his interest is untoward. He bullied you for years because your Ning Yingying called you A-Luo which was the name of his master and only had a change of heart years later. His sect leader, Yue Qingyue, just let it happen. They let you get abused. Like the former Cang Qiong let Yue Qingyue and Shen Qingqiu get captured as slaves. Like it let Su—listen. Your Shizun tossed you into the abyss and didn’t explain himself. It sucks. He sucks, you’re allowed to be angry.”

Luo Binghe’s face was red and swollen as he looked up at him and Shang Qinghua realized he’d dropped his Peak Lord persona, but he was a little tired of it. He was tired of trying to say the right thing, the well written thing, the thing that would make Luo Binghe into the proper protagonist he was supposed to be.

“Shen Qingqiu has all this complexity, but he still chose wrong. Who you are isn’t about what happens to it’s—” It’s what you chose to do every day. Something about that made Shang Qinghua a little uncomfortable. “Life sucks.”

“It doesn’t always suck.”

“That’s just life fucking with you,” Shang Qinghua muttered before closing his eyes and leaning back against the ice wall. He knew he was fucking this up. He had to be fucking this up. Nothing he said was in character or made sense or was what Luo Binghe needed to hear. But it was true. Life did suck. And you tried to change it and you failed and it kept sucking. You worked hard to become a peak lord so wouldn’t die and then had betray everyone so you wouldn’t die and just did everything so you wouldn’t die and then the story got derailed anyway.

Luo Binghe cried a little more until the sobs started to slow and then sat in silence for a little longer.

“Why do all this then,” Luo Binghe said, wiping his eyes. “Why did Shizun do all this, if he sucked? Why are you trying so hard, if everything will suck anyway?”

Shang Qinghua sighed. Wouldn’t he like to know. “Sometimes, you just see things you can’t let go. Even if it kills you. Sometimes you have to die trying or else what’s the point of continuing on? I don’t know why Shen Qingqiu pushed you into the Abyss but I know he helped you because he cared about you. Because he had faith in you. But having faith in you doesn’t make him a good person. Reconciling that people are capable of great good and great evil is tough. I don’t know what to tell you, dude.”

“Dude?”

“Ahhh, regional dialect, it means kid,” Shang Qinghua covered hastily. “Sometimes after promising to protect you and love you, your parents split and abandon you. Sometimes people hate you because of things you can’t control, and people you thought were your friends abandon you when they find out you’re ga—” sometimes your university friends just started ignoring your messages when you tried to explore your sexuality, and your parents said it was better not to talk about it, and than instead of being yourself you should just, put it away.

Luo Binghe cleared his throat at that, but Shang Qinghua wasn’t in the mood to deal with it.

“Listen, life sucks and nothing matters. So you might as well try to do something good if you can,” Shang Qinghua said like this was a philosophy he had all his life and hadn’t just solidified a couple of minutes ago. But it was a good philosophy! Maybe it was something he should actually start practicing.

Luo Binghe took a long moment to swallow phlegm and seemed to look around, almost embarrassed that he had broken down crying, though he didn’t look any happier. But as he opened his mouth to speak Mobei jun appeared around the corner.

Perfect. Exactly the thing that would shut Luo Binghe up instead of letting him get over whatever hang-ups he had so he could finally pick up Xin Mo. Annoyed, and too tired to conceal it, Shang Qinghua picked himself up and offered a hand to Luo Binghe.

Unexpectedly, he took it.

#

Mobei-jun took them to his mother’s shrine first and the three of them did the whole mourning thing as Mobei-jun explained some history and how his mother had died mysteriously and how his grandmother had died as Shang Qinghua tried to zone back into the present and stop dissociating like he was watching a TV show instead of participating in real life.

Mobei-jun had finished explaining something and Shang Qinghua nodded solemnly. Luo Binghe looked terrible, still red around the eyes, but he seemed to be processing things differently and rearranging his entire view of Mobei-jun.

“So you had to raise yourself?” Luo Binghe asked as Mobei-jun nodded.

“I know it is a difficult thing to be alone. Which is why…” Mobei-jun shifted awkward. “I…” Shang Qinghua snapped back to attention with the force of a train hitting a mountain. Mobei-jun being awkward? His stoic ice demon king? “I would like to officially have you join the Mobei Clan.” The tips of Mobei-jun’s already blue tinted ears turned dark and he made unflinching eye contact with Shang Qinghua as the System—

[Mission: Join the Mobei Clan. Rewards—]

Shang Qinghua slammed that accept button like his life depended on it and smiled, numbly, back up at Mobei-jun as he took Shang Qinghua’s arm. Probably at some point he should learn his actual name and not just his title.

“Of course, my king. This one would be most honoured.”

Mobei-jun nodded, a smile twitching on his lip as Luo Binghe nodded and accepted as well. Mobei-jun launched into some details about the ceremony—and it was a little cute that there would be an official clan adoption ceremony, but Shang Qinghua could hardly process the words. Even as Luo Binghe shot him a surprised look halfway through the conversation. Even when Mobei-jun said something about allowing Shang Qinghua, once he had joined the Clan, to travel between realms and maintain both his position as advisor and An Ding peak lord. Shang Qinghua spent the rest of the talk nodding and trying to remember when he had become an advisor since hadn’t there actually been a financial advisor? Qin Ziya hadn’t reported to him directly though so maybe Mobei-jun meant he was invented a new trade or accounting advisory position which maybe didn’t’ make sense.

Shang Qinghua thought about the logistics of that for the rest of the evening until he was deep in bed and realized he and Mobei-jun had been arm in arm for most of their time in the ancestral hall.

#

The next day, Shang Qinghua felt a lot more grounded. His An Ding peak lord persona was back on and his careful balance of acknowledging that those around him were people, just fake people, was balanced once again. Mobei-jun had even approved his idea to save Xiao Yanling and given him a charm that would open a portal and teleport him directly to Mobei-jun no matter where he was.

He’s also made, admittedly bad, tea for both Luo Binghe and him, since “humans express their affection and dedication to others by way of food” which had at once thrown Shang Qinghua but also grounded him because Luo Binghe had smiled and then made congee and insist that Mobei-jun eat it and it felt like this protagonist, after his break down earlier, was at least back to his old self if not his revenge self.

In fact, everything was going so well, that when Luo Binghe offered to make some tea for the afternoon while Shang Qinghua was doing work, he didn’t even think about how unusual it was or how he was making way more tea for two people! Until Wen Xulin and Sha Hualing showed up. It was funny. Wen Xulin dressed in a dark blue and white, clean and simple lines, her long sleeves trailing as she walked, her hair  done up in top knot with a simple ornament and a short hair pin like a man and beside her was Sha Hualing looking like she had appeared naked in a gauze fabric shop and had had to make due with their scraps. Like a red sun and a blue moon they were opposites and yet they both wore identical expressions of determination and Sha Hualing, surprisingly, had a writing pad with her.

“We’re here to offer our services in extracting Xiao Yanling,” Sha Hualing smiled pleasantly. Wen Xulin nodded, pulling out a vile of something from her sleeve without showing even a hint of the skin on her forearm. Truly, she had to have practiced that. But you know what, it wasn’t any of Shang Qinghua’s business.

“Even if we save Xiao Yanling, it’s not going to stop the Southern Yak King from taking someone else just as young. We need to send a message.”

“Something that will have staying power,” Luo Binghe said, helpfully. He looked to his shijie’s—or soon to be shijie’s once he joined the Mobei Clan—for approval and lit up when they nodded at him, a small smile playing on each of their lips.

“I managed to steal some succubus poison from Auntie Meiyin,” Wen Xulin elaborated. “It should be able to knock out a few guards, giving us more time to write a public message, making it look like it’s from Xiao Yanling! Originally I thought it would be necessary for us to get in but…”

“No, no, I have that covered,” Shang Qinghua waved his hand airily and laughed, scooting back on the couch and trying not to jitter his leg. “Really, don’t concern yourself with it and don’t tell Mobei-jun and—” At once the teens faces froze, their excitement spilling off their faces and Shang Qinghua’s heartbeat fast and hard in his chest to see their pain. “I mean, of course we’ll go, just—you know what, you tell me what you have planned first. I—” It was probably too soon to mention Xin Mo and it’s ability to open portals. Luo Binghe would be too nervous to try it out in front of his soon to be martial sisters. “I have a way in and a way out, but to be honest, I just planned it for me, getting you all in…well if you can hold your breath in my qiakun pouch for a few minutes I can manage it, but you first, you first.”

Shang Qinghua waved at them to sit down, watching the light return to their faces. Something softened in Shang Qinghua’s chest and even though he knew that well, these were kind of just characters in a novel, it was nice to see them so excited. It reminded him of his disciples but these three, as they poured over their plans, the poisons they had stolen, the support of brothels in the south they had acquired, the special paint (the one that was famous in the Western snake valley were Xiao Yanling was from) they had gotten, Shang Qinghua was at once touched and impressed.

They were going to such lengths to protect and save a person that Shang Qinghua had made! The sects saved people’s lives all the time, but that was kind of what they did wasn’t it? It was what they had to do, it was their job, their destiny, their plot contrivance. Just as it was the Qiu’s job to be a dick to Shen Jiu before he became Shen Qingqiu, it was Cang Qiong’s job to battle demons and Huan Hua palace’s job to be dicks to people and monsters alike etc etc. But Sha Hualing, Luo Binghe and even Wen Xulin were not saving Xiao Yanling because it was their job, or because that was their part in the story. It was definitely not Sha Hualing’s role to save anyone, or Wen Xulin, a person he hadn’t even named, to have such a big plot role and it wasn’t even Luo Binghe’s job to save preteens either! She was way to young for him to marry, and she would have no idea it was him, and she would have no reason to even need to marry him. He wasn’t doing it to get revenge on the Southern Yak King, and in fact, he hadn’t even started defeating the local demon warlords yet!

They were all just…excited to help someone. Something soft and yet uneasy sloshed in Shang Qinghua’s stomach but it also felt like fluffy? Like had eaten a really pleasant cake and was feeling really good about it but there was some distant knowledge that maybe, like, he could have always eaten this cake and he just chose not to and made himself and everyone else suffer for no reason? Anyway…

 Shang Qinghua made a note to update the plan and told everyone to meet him back here in a week. That should be enough time to get everything together. Plus, he knew that on the 6^th was when they changed their guard rotations and that gap had been what Luo Binghe had used to sneak in to the inner harem the first time, so it should still be applicable.

All in all, after a couple of days of tine tuning Shang Qinghua was pretty sure he had the whole thing down. He was just going over the details one more time as he walked when he bumped into Mobei-jun—literally he was face to tit with the Northern Desert Ice King, but when Shang Qinghua looked up, ready to cower and beg for his life, Mobei-jun was only looking at him…softly?

“My king!” Shang Qinghua explained as Mobei-jun looked back. Suddenly the arm linking and Mobei-jun making Luo Binghe and him tea—even if it was burned—flashed back in his mind. Mobei-jun was trying to make some kind of effort here. Even now, as Mobei-jun gently stepped back, Shang Qinghua could see it.

But why? What had changed? What had Shang Qinghua done differently? Right, he had tried to protect Luo Binghe and Xiao Yanling. He had—was that it? Did Mobei-jun treat Shang Qinghua better just because he now thought that Shang Qinghua cared, when he hadn’t before?

Shang Qinghua shifted his weight from foot to foot. That even his ice demon sex fantasy cared more about Xiao Yanling than Shang Qinghua had originally was not lost on him, but Shang Qinghua hadn’t thought he could change anything. Maybe he still couldn’t. Maybe—

“Come to my quarters for dinner,” Mobei-jun said and Shang Qinghua nodded and didn’t imagine Mobei-jun bending him over the dinner table. “We can discuss more about the ceremony and preparations.” Of course, the Clan adoption ceremony.

“Of course, my king! You need only tell me what is required, this servant will send the order for whatever fabric or catering is needed, and the guest list—”

“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun said. Shang Qinghua squeaked, which he wasn’t proud of, but then Mobei-jun awkwardly took his elbows again. “Are you—you are not a servant in this.”

“Of course,” Shang Qinghua said, a little breathlessly and tried to hide that by breaking eye contact only to come face to face with Mobei-jun’s rock hard chest. Damn what a chest. Focus! “I only wanted the celebration to be perfect! It’s a big day for us, you know, haha…”

Mobei-jun smiled as if that was the exact thing, he’d wanted Shang Qinghua to say.

“Come to my quarters later.”

And then Mobei-jun left and Shang Qinghua realized that maybe his hot ice demon king was actually a person who had multiple facets and cared about things and not a distant ice asshole who only wanted to kill him. The truth serum Mobei-jun had had Sha Hualing dose this tea with a few weeks ago had probably been a test. To see where his loyalties lied, to see if Shang Qinghua would betray him. And then Shang Qinghua had almost fucked it up by well, revealing how much he wanted to get fucked up, but had still managed to pass by saying the simple truth: he wanted to be here and help. Why hadn’t Shang Qinghua ever thought of that? Proving his loyalty with truth serum? Then again, his loyalty had mostly been forced and he wasn’t sure the system would even let him be loyal to Mobei-jun. But now—

Shang Qinghua frowned. Things were changing now. Shang Qinghua was changing things. Not with big swings but with little actions, with the determination to help a few people.

Maybe Cucumber-bro was right, maybe Shang Qinghua’s fate was because he had given up.

Maybe this hell was one of his own making.

Chapter Text

Now that he was going to be inducted into the Mobei Clan, Shang Qinghua had been given leave to get his affairs in order on An Ding peak. Of course he still had to meet Mobei-jun for dinner later, but before then, there was paperwork, stressed Q&A’s from his disciples wondering how they were supposed to keep the peak running and if he was going to do his job even though he had very clearly been suspiciously missing for a long time. The answer to the last one was yes, the answer to everything else took a lot of diagrams and explanations but once things calmed down and Shang Qinghua promised to come check his inbox every week before he was officially back, then Shang Qinghua had roughly two hours to fly to Qing Jing peak and finally ask Cucumber what the fuck had happened to Luo Binghe.

Probably he should have knocked instead of throwing open the door to see Liu Qingge’s fingers gingerly circling Shen Qingqiu’s wrist, the two heads bowed together, slightly red, almost breathless in some kind of intimate moment that was maybe just Lui-shidi helping his shixiong clear out his meridians and maybe had some other, much gayer subtext, but by the time Shang Qinghua barraged in the two had sprung apart like a cheaply bound book and Lui Qingge had muttered something incomprehensible, turned vermillion, and then promptly fled.

Whatever.

“Bro!” Shang Qinghua said, flopping down on the floor opposite of Shen Qinqqiu’s little table. “You would not believe the time I’ve been having, it’s crazy. It’s like—oh my fucking god.” It felt a little vulgar to say it like that, a little strange to sink back into that modern vernacular he had suppressed for decades but once it came out it was good, it was like being himself again except this time he wasn’t going to dissociate in an underground ice cave as someone broken down sobbing beside him. Why didn’t he swear more often? He could just put on a disguise and go into town and let it all—

“Well, whatever it is, it’s your own fucking fault so spare me the theatrics. What do you want this time?”

Shang Qinghua had heard that before but this time, instead of bowing his head and saying ah of course of course it’s my fault, lol, not really! Shang Qinghua felt, serious, hurt, he felt—he felt.

“You told your disciple that demons were people do, and then pushed him into the Abyss anyways and didn’t once think to lie to him about why you were doing it? Bro, aren’t you supposed to be smart? Is that fucking my fault? It’s you who pushed him and gave him that Shizun complex and didn’t teach him sex-ed and now it’s me who has to dealt with it!” Shang Qinghua threw up his hands but—

“You’ve talked to Binghe?!” Cucumber-bro leaned forward with a look between excitement and terror. “He’s not supposed to be in the demon realm yet!” Shang Qinghua knew that! Thank you! But okay, maybe best not to mention that part was Shang Qinghua’s fuck up.

“I know! And I had to save him from some sex flowers—I mean, you know the—”

“You mean one of the dozens of fuck or die flowers you invented for cheap papapa, because—”

“Yes! You know! God! I didn’t think there were so many okay, and yes, authorial integrity and blah blah okay but now I gotta teach a bunch of kids—accounting disciples—in the Northern Desert about all these goddamn sex flowers and I can’t remember what any of them looked like and—you know I didn’t think real people would have to deal with this!” Shang Qinghua said. Cucumber-bro did not immediately point at him and laugh however. Instead he leaned back carefully on his pillow and flicked open his fan leisurely.

“So you want my help to what? Write a field guide of sex flowers?”

“Yes! Luo Binghe and Wen Xulin have already gotten started, but please Cucumber-bro, for all the horny and stupid demon teens.” Shang Qinghua was prepared to bow and prostate more, but Cucumber-bro only sighed and snapped his fan shut.

“Fine, okay, I’ll write up some field guide or whatever, not like I have anything better to do except wait to be killed when Luo Binghe returns. Man, at this rate I’ll be lucky if I have a year left—”

“He won’t touch Xin Mo,” Shang Qinghua blurted out. Cucumber-bro paused.

“He—”

“He didn’t find it at first, so we had to go back and get it, but now he doesn’t practice with and he hasn’t changed out of his Qing Jing peak robes and all he does is cry and sulk and accuse me of being an asshole—”

“You are an asshole—”

“And I don’t know how to fix this okay! He was supposed to become cool and strong and he—even the antidepressants aren’t helping.”

“The anti—” Cucumber finally put down his fan and the Shen Qingqiu act dropped as he leaned his elbows across the table. “What the fuck is happening over there? You’re trying to start a logistics sect in the demon realm, teach sex-ed and…dude, what the fuck?”

“I know!” Shang Qinghua took a deep breath, feeling the weight dissipate off his shoulders as he spewed everything that happened out of his mouth. Cucumber-bro wasn’t his friend, or his therapist or his anything but he was the only one that was trustworthy, who would understand, who might laugh at him and mock his work but at least he knew hard this all was, how hard just living was.

He was the only one Shang Qinghua could be a person around instead of a character.

When Shang Qinghua was done Cucumber-bro looked like someone had slapped him across the face with a wet fish, but he wasn’t ranting yet. Instead he seemed to recover briefly and steepled his fingers, deep in thought for several moments.

“Okay,” Cucumber-bro said, finally. “I really wanted to tell you that I told you so and that you never think through the consequences of your own actions and now you have to deal with them and it serves you right—but I mean, I think this time you actually finally realized that didn’t you.”

“Yes, okay! It’s all my fault! My shitty world building, my inability to do math, my inability to realize the implications of some of these wife plots. But fictional characters aren’t real people and I had no way of knowing that deciding that demons when topless on festivals days would impact real people—”

“Of course, it impacts real people,” Cucumber-bro said. “I’m a real person and it impacted me!”

“I didn’t mean in this novel world—”

“Neither did I!” Cucumber-bro massaged his temples carefully. “Look, when you have 600 disposable women who never even get to know Luo Binghe, who only want him for his power and status and they like disappear, do you not think that ends a message to real women reading that about how you view them? I always said Luo Binghe deserved better because he did. People deserved to be loved outside of the status they had, but for their personality, and when you have all of these dumb plots, even if the characters don’t suffer the effect, the way you treat the characters sends the message that those types of people, even the ones in real life, can be treated that way. Luo Binghe deserved to be happy! To have people who cared about him! But all you cared about was—” Cucumber-bro waved his hand around “—trophies. All you cared about was him unlocking all these trophies instead of having a meaningful connection but you know—” here he shifted uncomfortably. “I may be a little bit of a shut-in, and maybe, maybe I was lonely once or twice in my life and wanted to have a meaningful connection in my life. Maybe I had bosses that were mean to me! And maybe that made me quit because I couldn’t take it! And a lot of people you know, it’s a stallion novel he’s supposed to “get revenge for those who wronged him and power up,” but like, he does all that but he doesn’t even get to be happy? The best a person can look forward to even in their revenge fantasy is meaningless sex with people who don’t even like him and he doesn’t even get to be happy?”

Shang Qinghua opened his mouth to say that meaningless sex could actually be very fulfilling, actually, when he paused. There was as difference between no-strings attached one night stand with people who appreciated you and someone having to fuck you so they didn’t die. The difference between someone wanting to and someone having to do it.

Shang Qinghua lay down on the wooden floor.

“Why didn’t you ever phrase your comments like that, huh, instead of just like how much you wanted to fuck Luo Binghe and murder me?”

“Fuck—I would never!” Cucumber-bro shouted. “He’s a child!”

“He’s almost eighteen.”

“A baby! I practically raised him!”

“Okay man, whatever.”

Cucumber-bro glared at him—or rather Shen Qingqiu glared at him, the gaze cold and cutting but ineffective on someone with as low self-esteen as Shang Qinghua who also knew Cucumber-bro would have already murdered him if he were going to.

“I mean Liu Qingge’s hot, so like, that’s fine—”

“What! Liu Qingge is the paragon of straight—”

“First off, Liu Qingge is the only character I ever explicitly wrote as gay,” Shang Qinghua said, lifting up a finger. “He was the foil to the main character, and I was toying with bringing him back but obviously he couldn’t like women or he’d compete with Luo Binghe. And I thought, you know, it’d be fun to have some representation but that’s not the point. I just—I thought—” Shang Qinghua squirmed from his position on the floor, was this too much to opening up? “I had depression.” Cucumber-bro raised his eyebrows like he wasn’t surprised but didn’t comment. “I thought—I don’t know, I thought revenge and sex would make me happy. I didn’t…I mean you probably don’t want to hear about how I was in the denial about being gay and just wanted to fuck a guy and thought if I could just do that everything would be fine, and I’d be free and happy and accept myself and get revenge and—I thought like, shouldn’t that have made him happy?”

“That’s legitimately sad,” Cucumber-bro said.

“Life sucks.”

“A lot of things in life suck. But not everything. Living does not suck Even you have some cool ass beasts and hard working, kickass characters in your world. Everything isn’t always terrible. Look, I’m not a therapist. I don’t know how to fix Luo Binghe’s trauma and stop him from sobbing in the Abyss, but I did the best I could to you know, kiss his thighs and give him a few happy years so hopefully when he decides to kill me it’ll be swift. That’s all you can do, just try to help people. You can’t—” Cucumber-bro sighed. “Trauma doesn’t make people stronger.”

“It should,” Shang Qinghua muttered. “What else is it for?” What good was all that suffering and pain if it doesn’t turn you into someone stronger, someone who can handle it. Why had Shang Qinghua gone throw all that messed shit with his parents abandoning him if it didn’t have a purpose?

“I don’t know, I’m not a fucking therapist! But I do know that people need help a support to overcome trauma. That’s literally true of any illness or grief. People need help…” Cucumber-bro trailed off and Shang Qinghua closed his eyes and tried to feel the truth of the statement but, well, it wasn’t like he didn’t know people needed help. But that was the crux of it, people needed help, but characters didn’t. Shang Qinghua sighed and squeezed his eye tight together until it hurt.

“Tell me that when you see someone outside the sect walking down the street, that they register to you the same way they used to in China,” Shang Qinghua said. “Tell me you don’t process their role in the story first or that the logic you’re using isn’t based on video games or literary tropes. Tell me that I’m wrong in seeing everyone around me as characters because you never did and I’ll take responsibility for everything, I’ll invent therapy, I’ll—”

“Sometimes I do,” Cucumber bro said, adjusting his position on the floor. “Sometimes I go see a fruit seller and I forget that this is a book. I’ll forget for hours until something reminds. I’ll be talking to Liu-shidi about his cousin and I’ll think ‘oh I didn’t know Airplane-bro planned out the Liu family so much’ and it’ll throw me out of the conversation before I’d forgotten Liu Qingge was a character. It’s not that I don’t get it’s weird, but it’s—at some point, if something is distinguishable from the real thing. It becomes real. And they become real people. Certainly, more complex than you could have written them.”

Shang Qinghua groaned through gritted teeth. “You don’t get it.”

“I mean I do get it. I mean it’s like a parasocial relationship or something, but even parasocial relationships are real.”

 “You don’t understand.” Shang Qinghua gritted his teeth. It wasn’t like a parasocial relationship, it was like the opposite.  “You came here and you get to play a little acting role and bond with people like his is a role playing game or dungeons and dragons and the bonds and connections get to be real even if the characters aren’t. But I didn’t get that.

“You don’t understand what it’s like to be an adult forced to play at childhood. I’ve been alive for more than fifty years and yet I still feel I’m the same age as when I died. I still feel like the same lonely deadbeat that’s been dead for more than thirty years.” Shang Qinghua finally opened his eyes to stare at the bamboo ceiling. “I’m not plot important, there’s no real connections to me. I don’t get to have my own arc or make decisions.

“None of this feels real. Not the characters, not the setting, not me. You said you can forget but I don’t, I can’t even forget that I’m not a real person, even for an instant. Before you showed up it was like a dream or a nightmare, it was…”

“I hate to say this is all you fault, but dude, you’re doing this to yourself.” Cucumber-bro enunciated with a startling gentleness. It was so even keeled that Shang Qinghua’s heart stuttered a lump forming in his throat as if he was going to cry. Even Cucumber-bro was pitying him now? God.

“You can’t live your entire life never caring about anything or building connections,” Cucumber-bro said. “Even in a video game or RPG, it’s exactly what you said, you still have to form connections even if you know it’s not real real. I didn’t even realize how much Liu-Shidi and Ning Yingying meant to me until I pushed Binghe into the Abyss and they still came to check on me. Human kindness is inspiring or whatever, but even just basically, dude, you need to care about something.”

Maybe Cucumber-bro was right. Or maybe he was wrong. After all he hadn’t written a semi-successful published webnovel, had he? He didn’t have any more friends that Shang Qinghua and hadn’t died any better either. Except he did have more friends, didn’t he? He had Liu-shidi and Ning Yingying.

He—

“What’s your name?” Shang Qinghua sat up. “What’s your actual name?”

Cucumber-bro blinked, moved to cover his face with his fan but he was leaning his elbow on it already.

“Ugh, Shen Yuan.”

“Wait, Shen? Spelt with the same character for liquid as the original?”

“Yeah?”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Shang Qinghua muttered. He’d have laughed if he wasn’t slowly spirally.

“What was your name then? If that’s so important? I honest to god hope it wasn’t Shang Qinghua.”

“No, but I didn’t like my name. Luo Ning, Ning for peace, Luo—”

“You gave your protagonist the same surname as you?” Shen Yuan snorted. “Figures.”

“Well, now I know what I’m calling my next villain, Yuanyuan.”

“You’re still writing?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Shang Qinghua looked down at the low table, where a pot and two cups of tea were now cold.

“I should start again.”

“Maybe this time you’ll actually be able to write something decent. Learn from your mistakes.” Shen Yuan fanned himself, but his expression was without its usual vitriol. The thought of starting over, of taking the time to write again, this time just for himself was appealing. It wasn’t that he had never written anything else in all his years, but who would he share them with? He didn’t want to keep writing in the PIDW world but everything modern day would just be weird to the people here and unpublishable, if he could even write well enough to get a publisher. Though now he could at least share it with Shen Yuan.

“Hey, bro, how well to you remember Xiao Yanling?”

“You mean wife #347 who you screwed over by—”

“Yeah, yeah, her. Could you like to draw me a map so I can save her before she actually gets married?”

Shen Yuan blinked at him, obviously surprised. He seemed to wait for something, maybe for the System to dole out a mission or B-points, but when nothing was forthcoming, he just paused for a really long time and then smirked.

“Asking me to fix another of your mistakes? I supposed I’m already fixing so much I might as well help you.”

“And you wouldn’t happen to remember anything about Huan Hua palace? Or Luo Binghe’s parents, would you?” Shang Qinghua picked the dirt from his under his nails as he tried not to get his hopes up, but Shen Yuan shook his head.

“You didn’t include anything about his birth parents. I think Huah Hua palace…there was some implication that the Old Palace Master did something…I don’t remember…”

“Could you look into it?”

“What are you, the System, giving me missions?”

“It’s for Binghe,” Shang Qinghua said because somehow, he knew if he said it was for Binghe Shen Yuan would agree as if he’d said it was for his own son.

“Pfft, fine whatever, and I suppose you also want me to build a temple? Take down the saint of the Tiger Mountain?”

“No,” Shang Qinghua said. “But you should really write a letter to Luo Binghe. I don’t know what you should put in it, but it should be something.”

Shen Yuan opened his mouth, as if the idea was absurd because it came from Shang Qinghua’s mouth but then seemed to consider it.

“Okay.”

#

Shang Qinghua had expected a bit of a business dinner with Mobei-jun if he was honest. It was still nice to be invited though! He was certain the military general did not get private business dinners with Mobei-jun so it was really a huge step up to be so trusted. But Mobei-jun did not bring up business once.

They were eating in his quarters. Mainly a meat dish made of Fire-Spitting-Boar, one of the few demon meats Shang Qinghua actually ate. There were clementines as well and some spiced tea which was actually really nice and Mobei-jun ate in near silence until Shang Qinghua almost cracked under the pressure.

“What’s your name?” Shang Qinghua asked before his brain caught up with him. “Ugh, this humble servant means, that, if I am to be—”

“It is the tradition in the demon realm to give sickly children that are not likely to survive odd names, to prevent attachment. Mine was Peaceful Ghost, the same ‘An’ in peaceful as the ‘An’ in An Ding peak, no less,” Mobei gave a small smile as he ate another mouthful of noodle. Shang Qinghua remembered that bit of lore—it was why some of the demons had names like Evil Fang, or in the case of Mobei-jun’s head servant, Bucket Face. Yet, it had never been something he attached to his king. And usually these kinds of names didn’t stay, they were replaced either as children when they grew healthier or else some kind of courtesy name was given. As if seeing the question in his eyes Mobei-jun continued, though he was not smiling, “Of course, it would be indecorous to refer to one of my station by such a name. That is likely why you haven’t heard it. But the other name was only ever used by my mother, and when she passed…” when she passed, she had taken the name with her. Shang Qinghua nodded. Peaceful Ghost didn’t feel like a real name, a real person, the way that Shen Yuan or even Wen Xulin did. Wen form the character for literature, Xu from dawn and Lin from forest.

Shang Qinghua nodded, took a sip of water, and in his head went over the details of how he was going to get into and out of the Southern Yak Demon Inner Palace. Since she hadn’t been married yet, Xiao Yanling would be in the woman’s quarter’s not the harem, which was good. Less guarded.

“What about you?”

Shang Qinghua looked up startled. “We—we met before, my king. Ugh, Before I had my courtesy name,” Shang Qinghua said.

“Yes, but you lied to be then.” Had he? Shang Qinghua didn’t remember lying but it had been a long time ago. Shang opened his mouth, but instead of saying what he should have said, what the original goods had been called he said—

“A-Ning, uh, Shang Ning. Also with the character for peace,” Shang Qinghua didn’t know why he blushed when he said it, except he kind of did. This was a bit of an intimate conversation.

“What a coincidence,” Mobei-jun said with a kind of lighthearted, if distant, affection. “Perhaps it foretells that our reign will be peaceful.” Shang Qinghua nodded, looked up at the slight curve of the cool lip, something even someone as oblivious as Shang Qinghua knew was something private, hidden, reserved for the closest to him, if anyone. And here Shang Qinghua was seeing it. He was seeing an innermost moment of vulnerability, but it still felt like he was acting or watching a movie, and the real person behind Mobei-jun was still obscured.

“What did she call you? You’re mother?” Shang Qinghua cleared his throat as Mobei-jun’s eyes snapped up, sharp, but not hard. “You’re not—you’re not so alone or without allies anymore. You should have a name people can call you. This one means, that ugh, you are so generous to let us into the Mobei Clan, that, should you not feel as if we—as if—” how foolish to think that a half-baked accountant and a depressed teenager could ever compare to Mobei-jun’s mother, who had loved him, who had cherished him, who had been lost to him mysteriously without closure or cause. Shang Qinghua wanted to hit himself. He had closed himself off from this long ago, there wasn’t anything underneath the guise, the act, the character. There was no actor, no human being with real thoughts and—

“She used to call me Jing-er. The same Jing from Peaceful Ghost.” Mobei-jun looked at him with such intensity that Shang Qinghua cowered on reflex. Jing from Anjing did not mean “peaceful” so much as it meant “quiet.” And Mobei-jun was certainly quiet, for all he was talking today.

“It must be a sign,” Shang Qinghua said quietly though he didn’t know of what. For a moment he imagined being Shang Ning, to value peace. A hybrid of who he was and who he had to be. And yet the idea of looking across the table and addressing the head of the Mobei Clan, the ice king of the Northern Desert, as Jing-er was too surreal. Wrong. It felt separate, like when Shang Qinghua had told Luo Binghe the world sucked. It felt—it felt like there was a thin barrier between Shang Qinghua and the world, but it was a barrier he leaned on, a barrier keeping him up and if he removed it, he didn’t know who he was anymore.

“I’ll have Almost Graceful see to finding you new quarters for yourself and your son,” Mobei-jun said, staring at the soup. The small bowl in front of Shang Qinghua was chipped slightly, and the broth was so clear he could see a small painted character at the bottom. A clan seal. A—

“These bowls were your mothers,” Shang Qinghua realized out loud as the thin barrier between Mobei-jun the king and Mobei Jing the man sitting across from him, a man who hadn’t had his name spoken aloud in years, blurred and swirled.

“Yes,” Mobei-jun said. “They were supposed to be for my new household, when I was wed, but…”

“But the bowls are chipped.”

“I did not think you would mind,” he said, somewhat acidly, his posture pulling back, his lips disappearing into a line.

“I don’t,” Shang Qinghua said as he traced the faint chip. This woman who Shang Qinghua hadn’t ever written about or alluded to—why would he? Mobei-jun was already a minor character, no one needed his whole family tree, okay!—and yet her presence lingered, influenced the world. Shang Qinghua didn’t understand it. How this world could be real. How all these things he had never put in PIDW like Shang Qinghua’s parents and the villagers in the village they were from, or the demon servants of the Ice Palace or the new would be demon accountants, or even just the birds and their migration patterns, the vases and their changing designs, the lakes and the streams that Shang Qinghua had never dreamt up—he didn’t understand how all this could be here and it could still be his world. How all this could exist behind the scenes, how all this could be created as if it was nothing, when it was, when it was—

Shang Qinghua hadn’t meant to start crying but the tears landed in the soup bowl, disturbing the water and rendering the character of Mobei-jun’s mother unreadable.

“My king, forgive me, forgive me, this humble servant—”

“You are not a servant,” Mobei-jun said again, but quietly. Right. Of course. Shang Qinghua was joining the Mobei clan. He was—wait, back then, when talking about the meaning of their names, had Mobei-jun said may their reign would be peaceful? Both of them? Surely he it had been a mistake but when he asked Mobei-jun only looked back into his soup, as if embarrassed, but then started to look at him more fully.

“Do you think I do not care for peace?” he asked. “That I care only for violence and not the prosperity of my people?”

“It is not that, my king, I only—I wasn’t—”

“Or did you think I did not notice your efforts for peace? Isn’t that what you want? To be the Lord of An Ding peak and the seneschal of the Northern Desert at once? To teach human and demon alike? To save people who need it? Like me, like your son, like Xiao Yanling?” Mobei-jun huffed, as if the idea he would be so unperceptive was beneath him but Shang Qinghua zone in a different part of the sentence. The seneschal of the Northern Desert. Was that his new role? Was that—

Shang Qinghua cradled the soup bowl like a precious gem and drank—the broth surprisingly lush in its taste despite itss clarity—and looked across at Mobei-jun who, Shang Qinghua realized, was wearing very subdued, non-ceremonial robes. To this private dinner. As if they were friends. Equals. As if Shang Qinghua was not the little servant he had bullied, but his closest advisor and confident.

Who else did Mobei-jun have, Shang Qinghua asked himself. Sha Hualing? A child spy that did his bidding but not very well? A host of sycophants who did whatever Mobei-jun asked to his face and plotted behind his back? His father who ignored him or his uncle who plotted his death? Shang Qinghua had written the backstory of an assassin who had no one, who would follow whoever was strongest whoever—whoever would bring peace to the demon realm by uniting it. That was why Mobei-jun, legendary assassin had become Luo Binghe’s right hand man. Because Luo Binghe had bested him and wanted to bring change to the demon world, to unite it. To conquer and defeat it yes, but—but…

“Perhaps one does not think of a seneschal as ruling, but your contributions are…necessary for the running of the clan. The tax reforms, the trade routes, even the training you are doing. I know you play at being inoffensive, but you are craftier than you let on. That was why you made such a good spy. You are smart, quick witted and wish to help people despite your otherwise cynical and defeatist nature. We would not prosper so without you. You are essential.”

“I am honoured, my king,” Shang Qinghua said, his voice shaking with real emotion though he wasn’t sure which. Somehow—it didn’t mean anything when his fake “parents” had praised him as a prodigy because Shang Qinghua had been cheating, he’d been cheating all his life by being born the 25 years old author from another world who knew PIDW already. It was fake praise to a fake character but Mobei-jun right now was not praising Shang Qinghua the An Ding peak lord who carried out the system’s orders, but instead he was praising Shang Qinghua’s genuine actions, the only parts of himself that could be said to be him. His cynicism, this craftiness, his fake deference. These were the not the qualities of the original.

“Of course,” Mobei-jun said as if it was nothing. Neither spoke for a very long time and Shang Qinghua wondered if he had been so caught up in Mobei-jun’s opinion of the original goods that he had never considered Mobei-jun’s opinion of him. He had not thought it really possible for the characters to see him beyond that barrier. But the original goods had not been quick witted or defeatist or pretended at being inoffensive. That was all him, Shang Qinghua aka Luo Ning.

The rest of the meal was nice, quiet, comfortable and intimate in a way that tingled the back of Shang Qinghua’s spine and made his heart race because holy shit Mobei-jun thought highly of him but also fuck Mobei-jun actually saw through his act? When had that happen?!

But the night passed nicely, Mobei-jun discussing where Shang Qinghua’s new personal quarters would be, and if he wanted a personal library. Shang Qinghua asking if he read, mumbling about starting writing only for Mobei-jun to casually remark that he read a lot in his youth. In fact, he had read a lot specifically because Shang Qinghua had mentioned being a writer when they had first met and Mobei-jun had thought writing was a much more palatable art than say the guqin or a flute.

It was weird. It had an air of genuineness to it that Shang Qinghua hadn’t felt in a long time, at least outside of Cucum—Shen Yuan. But this had none of Shen Yuan’s double-edged words, none of the guilt of getting them both stuck here or the defensiveness or anxiety about his writing decisions. It felt nice. It felt real.

It felt like having a friend.

#

It was late by the time Shang Qinghua delivered the letter to Luo Binghe. It was in Luo Binghe’s guest suite, which had, in addition to the bedroom and eating area, the large space where they had conducted the sexual education classes. Luo Binghe had been writing by candlelight, the fat almost run out, and jumped at Shang Qinghua’s entrance before Shang Qinghua had even put down the tray of glutenous rice cakes. They were one of Luo Binghe’s favourites, and Luo Binghe liked to express affection through food, so reciprocation was probably wise, at least in this instance.

“What’s this?” Luo Binghe looked at the cakes and the letter with caution, but he wasn’t shouting at Shang Qinghua or crying, so, already better than the last time they had spoken.

“Ah, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand, I know you said you had a letter for Shen Qingqiu, but I didn’t expect to see him!” Shang Qinghua lied because he had a lot of experience with it. “But I did ask if he had a letter for you and he gave me this.” He handed Luo Binghe the letter, but the paper had barely touched his protagonists fingers when it was ripped away, the seal broken at lightening pace, trepidatious eyes scanning over the words, and then scanning them again, then again. Then again. Luo Binghe read the letter, the same characters over and over like he expected them to change or the meaning to coalesce as if he was searching for something more.

But there was nothing more.

Luo Binghe deflated back onto the couch as if a Bai Zhan peak disciple had tackled him behind, the letter held limply between his fingers, unshed tears glistened in the flickering candlelight. The scant illumination cast the letter in a soft orange, translucent glow, showcasing the artful characters rendered in Shen Qingqiu’s masterful calligraphy, simple and concise.

I’m sorry.

That was it. It was not even signed though again, the calligraphy was unmistakable and would be impossible for most people to replicate unless you’d spent decades mastering the craft. But still, there was no lie or explanation. No, I had to do it for your own safety, or any other reasonable explanation Shen Yuan might have come up with.

Luo Binghe held onto the letter even as the candle flickered out, leaving them in moonlight, and Shang Qinghua sat beside him, feeling a little awkward putting his hand on his protagonist’s shoulder. But right now, he wasn’t Luo Binghe fierce demon lord, conqueror of the world! He was just a confused adolescent, who didn’t understand why all this was happening to him, how people who should love him hurt him, and how, maybe, despite the hurt, they might love him still. Shang Qinghua held him lightly as he his shoulders started to shake with silent sobs once again, carefully brushing the shoulders of his robes and telling him that he would get through this not because it was true, though it was, but because Luo Binghe needed to know it.

It felt different this time, now that it wasn’t directed at Shang Qinghua, now that he didn’t have to lie, didn’t have to pretend to be An Ding Peak Shang Qinghua but could instead, just be some guy. It was awkward, physically uncomfortable and emotionally anxiety producing but Shang Qinghua did not let go of Luo Binghe as Binghe did not let go of the letter until the sun rose and Binghe, who despite his prodigious nature had not yet mastered inedia, had fallen asleep.

 Shang Qinghua still had to make some final plans before they went to rescue Xiao Yanling, and all his materials and diagrams were in his room, but he supposed, just this once, he might take a break, if only so that, when Luo Binghe woke up, he would know that someone was still here.

Chapter Text

The day they had to rescue Xiao Yanling, Shang Qinghua told Luo Binghe about Xin Mo’s teleportation and ability to transport between locations. He, of course, stressed that he shouldn’t return to the human realm until Shang Qinghua investigated Huan Hua palace, which might be harder to do than he thought since Shen Yuan didn’t remember anything about Luo Binghe’s parents and therefore Shang Qinghua would have to actually investigate whether the Heavenly Demon subplot with Su Xiyan had actually happened or not.

But just because, thanks to this newfound and fragile camaraderie, Luo Binghe tried to pick up the sword, that did not mean he was able to use it. The second he drew it, he seemed to cry out, eyes blown wide, chest heaving with breath as he dropped the sword as if burned. Even when he put it back into the scabbard his hands seemed to twist and jerk as if struggling to control the will of the blade. The demon mark on his head flared, his eyes blackened, his hands clenched but he managed to shove the sword back into the scabbard without ever taking a proper swing with it.

“I—I’m sorry,” Luo Binghe said, bowing after a moment, as if just remembering he should. But Shang Qinghua waved it off.

“No matter, no matter, I can get us in and out, it’ll just be a little trickier, keep trying though! I know it may be hard to master, but I have faith in you.” Shang Qinghua smiled and Luo Binghe nodded, seriously, but when Shang Qinghua turned he could see Luo Binghe’s glare, directed at Xin Mo as if he were a beast to be broken and not a tool for power.

But Shang Qinghua didn’t have time to worry about that now. First, he had to get everyone to climb into his qiakun pouch and hold their breaths—a process that was not at all comfortable and at least a little painful for all parties involved.

Mobei-jun was in a meeting, because he had to be above suspicion for this plan to work.  Several dignitaries, though none from the Southern Yak Clan, as well as various top advisors were meeting to discuss a new trade alliance, which meant Mobei-jun was going to use some of the dirt Shang Qinghua had dug up on them to acquire several regions of the other Clan’s in return for keeping those secrets. Though there were also some genuinely beneficial trade deals. So win-win.

Shang Qinghua, officially, had been sent off after they broke for lunch at the behest of nobles who didn’t want a human to know any of the secrets Mobei-jun had hinted at knowing. Of course, lunch was just a bunch of private threatening meetings, but the point was, as they reconvened, Shang Qinghua’s absence was not noteworthy, nor was it at Mobei-jun’s request. Which worked well for this.

Shang Qinghua stood outside the meeting door post-lunch, arm filled with non-urgent paperwork and knocked. Heavy footsteps (Mobei-jun’s) sounded on the other side of the door as conversation fell to whispers before the large ice door slid open.

“My king, I have urgent paperwork that—”

Mobei-jun stepped into the hall, still visible to the people inside but allowing Shang Qinghua to step back, out of their view. Mobei-jun grunted, opened a portal behind Shang Qinghua and then took the paperwork and shoved him through with little ceremony.

And just like that, Shang Qinghua had infiltrated the Southern Yak Demon palace!

He quickly dumped his new disciples out of his qiankun pouch, trying not to laugh as they fell into a heap of tangled limbs on the floor.

“That was fast,” Sha Hualing murmured, picking herself up and ensuring her scraps of clothing covered the bits they were supposed to cover. Luo Binghe had already recovered gracefully, of course, and Wen Xulin was looking around, her hair askew but her eyes no less focused.

The women’s quarters were nice, the oiled paper screens painted in rich landscapes in dark browns and oranges, the floor shiny and clean enough to eat off of. Below, where the less well-off women slept, the floors would not be so clean, but here, where the noble women slept, things were spotless. Spotless and vacant! The quarters were large, and few women were of high enough station to earn them and that made this all the easier.

Shang Qinghua told Luo Binghe about the pattern of loose floorboards that would squeak when stepped on, no doubt someone as smart as him would be able to figure out which was which. And the two groups split up.

Of course the ladies, plus Luo Binghe who was a natural charmer despite himself, would have to go and actually convince Xiao Yanling that leaving was necessary and then they would give her Sha Hualing’s birth control to get refilled at the pharmacy, which should take her directly there into the arms of the pharmacist. Meanwhile, Shang Qinghua had to knock out the guards, dousing them with the sleep inducing, succubus poison from Wen Xulin’s aunt Meiyin. Such a thing was easy enough to acquire from a brothel, though not usually in such quantities, so it wouldn’t trace back to them.

Then Wen Xulin, a succubus herself and therefore immune to such poisons, would write “We are children, not things” on the outside of Xiao Yanling’s room in paint mixture that was one part “special rare paint from Xiao Yanling’s homeland” and one part her aunt’s alluring poison, which should enamour anyone who walked by, causing them to stop and pay attention. Where all the women, and the guards would no doubt see it, take note and spread the gossip faster than ever before.

No doubt they would suspect, based on the succubus poison, that the brothels or succubi had saved Xiao Yanling, a sentiment that said clearly sex workers would not stand for the buying and selling of children. And they didn’t. According to Wen Xulin, the succubi, being numerous, were willing to take the fall because, well, if they could have done it, they would have.

So then the message would spread and the people motivated, Xiao Yanling would not be one girl but perhaps a turning point in how people saw this kind of thing. At least a little bit.

It was a good plan! And everything seemed to be going well. The guards were easy to knock out and as Shang Qinghua rounded the corner, Wen Xulin was already painting the message. Shang Qinghua stopped at the turning point in the hall, keeping lookout and trying to write out the talisman he’d been working on. It was just a precaution in case any of the guards showed up. Killing anyone would bring too much heat on the brothels of the Southern Yak Clan, so Shang Qinghua had endeavoured to make something that would knock someone out, at least long enough for them all to get away.

But as Wen Xulin was busy painting, Luo Binghe stepped up beside her, muttering something too low to hear, and pointing vaguely in the direction of Xiao Yanling’s room.

“Fine then,” Wen Xulin muttered angrily, barely audible to Shang Qinghua but certainly a little too loud. She had finished her sign and was moving down the hall to the arranged meeting point in Xiao Yanling’s room.

Luo Binghe huffed, and Shang Qinghua peered around the corner, watching as Sha Hualing crossed her arms as she followed after them.

“Sure, no fine, I get it,” Wen Xulin said again, tucking the paints into her sleeves with a little too much force.

“What’s there to get?” Luo Binghe said coolly.

“You didn’t have to talk to her like that,” Sha Hualing said, which was a little surprising. “She’s just a kid.” Luo Binghe frowned, face taking on a smooth and indifferent expression.

“I was just trying to be polite,” he whispered, crossing his arms.

“I get it, you got hurt, you’re an orphan who was abandoned by his shifu and it hurts and it’s so sad,” Wen Xulin said, the most uncharitable thing Shang Qinghua had ever heard her say. “But newsflash, you’re not the only fucking orphan. And at least Sha-jie—”

“Ling-er,” Sha Hualing corrected.

“At least Ling-er tries to make connections with people but you—” Wen Xulin sighed.  “Forget it. You’re not here to make friends, it’s fine.”

“It’s not my intention to be rude,” Luo Binghe said. “I was trying to get her to go quickly, for her safety, I didn’t say anything mean. I don’t know what this is about.”

“And I’m sure you treat us coolly because you worry about our safety too,” Sha Hualing sing-songed, definitely too loudly. “I mean, that’s why you didn’t attend Mu Kexing’s party, or the study group Evil Fang set up. That’s why you don’t come out sword practicing. That’s why you split the work with Xulin-meimei so you wouldn’t have to work in the same room with her.”

“Are we going to talk about this now?” Luo Binghe asked and he had a point. As the conversation delved into bickering Shang Qinghua heard someone creak on the musical floor. The trio had already safely hidden back inside Xiao Yanling’s room and Shang Qinghua hurried after them, pausing outside the doorway of Xiao Yanling’s room, looking behind him at the message Wen Xulin, in all her skilled calligraphy—which was to say, barely better than Shang Qinghua’s own—at scrawled the message.

And then the emperor of the Southern Yak Clan, Silver Horn, rounded the corner. He looked exactly as anyone would expect him to look because Shang Qinghua was not that created—he was as big and imposing as a Yak, with enormous curved horns in an eye catching silver. He wore ceremonial armour at all times, his bulging muscles barely concealed by his clothing, and his oversized saber was strapped to his back in an inaccuracy that Shang Qinghua thanked himself for including. Because as Silver Horn went to draw his weapon—impractically placed to take a long time to draw and handle—Shang Qinghua threw his talisman without hesitation. Silver Horn did not even have time to block or dodge but even as he froze, Shang Qinghua knew he couldn’t leave the Southern Yak Clan king like this. He’d already been spotted. Running away now was not an option.

The yak demon stayed frozen, not asleep but immobile and Shang Qinghua drew his sword, his heart beating in his ears. But there couldn’t be any witnesses. People would recognize him. It would implicate the Mobei Clan and then everything would fall apart. Xiao Yanling’s safety, the message, the Northern Desert’s status. Everything. Shang Qinghua’s one attempt to change things would be finished.

Shang Qinghua, without regrets, without even having to question for the first time since he got the sword, swung at the neck. He had practiced this a thousand times, had hated it a thousand times, but there were three teen disciples unaware on the other side of the screen and if Silver Horn had even a moment to call the guards or make a noise, this entire plan would be done for.

But Shang Qinghua swung true and the yak demon’s head separated from his shoulders, the blood spattering the word “children” on the wall. Shang Qinghua listened for the sound of anyone else, for servants the emperor must have brought. Why would he sneak alone into the women’s quarters? Xiao Yanling had this entire hall to herself and there were only scattered other dignitaries.

Shang Qinghua did not think of it, did not allow himself to think of it as sweat poured off his brow and down his back and his heart beat in his throat like poorly digested Spider-Slick-Frog eggs.

Without pausing to think about it, Shang Qinghua positioned the head underneath the message and left a wind cutting talisman strong enough to chop off a head, in his best approximation of a little girl’s hand writing and hoped it would be enough. And then he entered Xiao Yanling’s room.

“Who’s blood is that?” Wen Xulin asked first. Shang Qinghua shook his head without looking down.

“Everyone, you have to get into the sleeve right now for me to get you out.” They had only been here maybe twenty minutes. The new guards would be arriving soon, noticing the others knocked out, setting an alarm.

“Shishu—”

“Qiakun pouch!” Shang Qinghua said, desperately, his voice wispy and uneven as he opened it. Wen Xulin complied, easily and Sha Hualing gave him a small knowing nod—one spy to another. And wasn’t that horrible, now that he thought about it, that she and he were in the same position, her barely out of adolescents, him, barely coping with it as an adult. Luo Binghe looked like he wanted to say something, or perhaps not say something, but Shang Qinghua did not have time. “Binghe, please.”

And then Luo Binghe got into the pouch and the door to Xiao Yanling’s room opened.

It was not the spectre of the emperor, or his servants or his gaurds or anyone else Shang Qinghua would have to fight and kill and worth about later. Instead it was a young girl perhaps eight. Shang Qinghua did not know who she was.

“Did you make the mess?” the little girl asked. “Ling-jiejie said if I see something to come to her, but…” the girls’ voice was growing concerned and Shang Qinghua took out his unfilled prescription of anti-depressants. He felt like he was going to vomit. No witnesses. He had no idea who she was.

“This will take you to her,” he said. She looked confused and for a moment Shang Qinghua thought she would refuse. But she came closer, her tiny yak horns gleaming silver in the moonlight from the window and with a sinking clarity Shang Qinghua wanted to scream no or perhaps he didn’t write this, he didn’t put this horror into the world, it wasn’t his fault dammit!

But the girl only reached for the pill bottle.

“Don’t take any until you hear from the doc—the healer. Okay?”

She nodded uncertainly. “What’s your name?”

“Luo Ning,” Shang Qinghua said. “What’s yours?”

“I don’t have a name. Ling-jieije calls me meimei or sometimes little ghost.”

“What does he call you?” Shang Qinghua gestured to the hall where the decapitated body of the emperor lay. The girl frowned for a moment and then looked down at the bottle. Shang Qinghua had never in his life wanted a child to listen to him more than he had in this moment.

No witnesses.

“How do I get to jiejie?”

“You just have to ask for a refill,” Shang Qinghua said and the little girl who was probably a bastard of Silver Horn’s, kept secreted away instead of adopted because her mother was probably not important enough to be in the harem, vanished.

With the little girl gone, Shang Qinghua closed the door to Xiao Yanling’s room and clutched the charm Mobei-jun had given him. He didn’t need to pray that it worked. While his king had seemed distant, and was fond of unexpected punches that Shang Qinghua was beginning to realize was probably more related to a bro-culture of bonding that serious physical violence, Shang Qinghua did not doubt his word for a moment.

Shang Qinghua opened the portal and stepped through.

#

Shang Qinghua dumped the teens onto the ice palace floor, and once again they fell into a lump. Sha Hualing flashed bits of herself that Shang Qinghua would have rather not have seen but at least those things remained covered again when she stood. Wen Xulin rubbed her wrist as if she landed on it wrong, as Sha Hualing reached out a hand to check it and Luo Binghe looked awkwardly from Shang Qinghua to his classmates.

“Well, job well done,” Shang Qinghua said, a little breathlessly, a little manically desperately not thinking about how he had just toppled an entire Clan and how badly this was going to fuck up the plot when Luo Binghe got to it. It was fine. They were fine. There was a secret illegitimate heir to the Southern Yak Demon Clan who had gone missing but—

“Whose blood is that?” Luo Binghe asked but Shang Qinghua shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it know. I’m the adult okay, this is for adults to worry about.”

“We were arguing too loudly,” Wen Xulin guessed, “we attracted attention.”

“We succeeded,” Shang Qinghua said, “you don’t have to worry about that, okay?”

“Okay?” Wen Xulin asked confused and Shang Qinghua realized he had pronounced in English. In fact, he had been saying it in English this whole time, but Shang Qinghua couldn’t even muster the strength to be alarmed at his slip-up.

“It means all right. Don’t worry. Everyone go get cleaned up, okay, we’ll talk tomorrow for lessons.”

The girls nodded and left but as Luo Binghe went to leave Shang Qinghua took his arm gently.

“What were you disagreeing about?” Shang Qinghua asked, because despite the magnitude of what he had just done, first and foremost he had to look after his precious son.

“Nothing.”

“They’re just trying to be nice,” Shang Qinghua said. “Which is pretty rare in the demon realm, so…” Luo Binghe only shrugged, and Shang Qinghua wanted to talk to him but was also covered in blood and really needed to report to Mobei-jun. Shen Yuan would have known what to say—but then again, Shen Yuan had the opportunity to say something, to explain himself to Binghe, and he hadn’t.

“You don’t have only one chance at family or friendship you know,” Shang Qinghua said again because this was something he was maybe just realizing as they grew closer to joining the Mobei Clan. “You don’t owe anyone your love, but they also don’t owe it to you and sometimes that hurts, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make new friends and family with people who are trying to be nice to you. Sometimes people are trying, and you have the opportunity to let them in.”

Luo Binghe frowned, jerked his arm away gently and looked down the hall instead of meeting Shang Qinghua’s eye.

“Wen Xulin is a good kid, and while Sha Hualing isn’t, she is very loyal.” It was one of her strengths as a wife and as a demon, actually, her ability to follow orders and her devotion to the one she followed. Even if she was prone to starting trouble with others. “If you don’t like them, you don’t have to be their friends, but you can’t…is it because they’re demons? Because of what Shen Qingqiu said?”

Luo Binghe bristled at this and when he turned, he shot Shang Qinghua a cold look, chill enough to fit right in with the Mobei Clan before it softened.

“I just…I don’t like them.”

“Why?”

Luo Binghe shifted his wait. “They’re…I…” in PIDW Ning Yingying was the only one who tried to make friends with him, but she unintentionally made things worse, but Wen Xulin and Sha Hualing did not make anything worse except on purpose. They shared his interests, were confident, capable, nice, they were exactly the examples of prosperous demons Shang Qinghua had wanted to show Binghe he could be. So why weren’t they getting along?

“Even when I’m not there, it seems like they’re trying to include you, so if you’re don’t think they’re insincere—”

“How do you know, if you’re not there?” Luo Binghe asked suddenly. There was an edge to his voice, caught between resentment for Shang Qinghua not being there and uncertainty that he wanted Shang Qinghua to be around at all. But underneath that, Shang Qinghua could see it well enough was just loneliness. The reminder that people couldn’t always be there, couldn’t always understand him. Except in his case, Shang Qinghua could.

“Ah, well Sha Hualing is Mobei-jun’s spy so I had to keep an eye on her.” Shang Qinghua waved his hand airily dismissing the concern. “Even when I’m not there, I still have people tell me what she’s up to, I wouldn’t just leave her alone with you if I didn’t trust her intentions, right?”

Luo Binghe’s eyes shot up and his mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything either.

“Listen, I know you had a hard time with Xin Mo today, so we can talk later, if you want, but they are being sincere. If you want their friendship. Just don’t, ugh, don’t shot yourself in the foot because you think it won’t work out.” Luo Binghe seemed to consider that and Shang Qinghua realized that maybe he’d invented an idiom and sounded really cool but probably not.

“It wasn’t that it was hard,” Luo Binghe said. “Xin Mo. It just, it felt bad.”

“In what way?”

“It felt—when I picked it up, all I could think about was Shizun pushing me, and how I’ll never be as important to him as he was to me, and how I’ll never have his love and—” Luo Binghe snapped his mouth shut and gears clicked into place in Shang Qinghua’s head. Luo Binghe was fighting the swords influence because instead of playing on his anger, it was playing on his grief. And yet, what was anger but impotent grief? And yet, what was grief but immeasurable love?

Luo Binghe couldn’t control Xin Mo because he was holding onto his love for his Shizun instead of his rage. Luo Binghe was holding onto the kindness that had been shown to him to stop him giving into rage and despair and Shang Qinghua for all his thoughtless writing and detachment, couldn’t, in good conscious, tell him to stop.

“That’s okay,” Shang Qinghua said, even as the System stared to flash Error means. “Xin Mo is a sword that is influenced by emotions. If you don’t know what you want, if you’re not hardened in your resolve, it can be hard to control. It’s okay to wait, to practice—”

[If User 1 continues on this road, the System will reboot—]

Shang Qinghua gritted his teeth, but internally so Luo Binghe couldn’t see. Couldn’t he give Luo Binghe some time? Obviously, this wasn’t working. Obviously, Luo Binghe needed something to get back on the plot, or at the very least to be happy. Couldn’t he at least finish the Join the Mobei Clan before the System declared Shang Qinghua a failure? Before it said the plot was corrupt? There was still time! He wasn’t trying to derail the plot he was trying to help the protagonist—

[The loss of protagonist cool points, will fall below critical level—]

But didn’t the Join the Mobei Clan also give cool points? Could it not all be decided later? In a few months, in a few weeks? What did reboot even mean? Did it mean Shang Qinghua was going to die? Shang Qinghua was going to die because Luo Binghe wasn’t cool?

For once the System was silent.

“It’s okay to wait to practice until you know what you want,” Shang Qinghua said, patting Luo Binghe awkwardly on the shoulder. Luo Binghe did not smile at him or soften but he didn’t flinch away either. Shang Qinghua sighed. “I know I’m not who you want. But I do care about you. A lot. Even if you don’t understand why. And Wen Xulin and Sha Hualing and Mu Kexing and Evil Fang and even Qin Ziya care about you too. Normal cutthroat demons don’t try to become accountants kid, they’re all lonely weirdos just trying to fit in. So, maybe, I don’t know. Give them a chance?”

Luo Binghe paused for a long moment, his breath starting to even out as if thinking, as if considering. As if he was practicing cognitive behavioural therapy and had to convince himself that Shang Qinghua was right and that people did love him even though it wasn’t a thought that came naturally to him. After a long moment, he seemed to finally collect himself.

“Whose blood is that?” Luo Binghe asked.

“The emperor of the Southern Yak Clan,” Shang Qinghua said honestly, but Luo Binghe’s eyes did not widen in surprise or narrow in suspicion. He only nodded, as if willing himself not to react.

“Is he dead?”

“Extremely.”

“Then why are you hiding it? If you killed him, isn’t it some demon thing that you could claim his throne. Or that Mobei-jun could? Mobei-jun said—”

“It’s easier to take something than it is to keep,” Shang Qinghua said. Just like it was easier to start a novel than to finish. “We don’t have the political allies to hold the Southern Yak Clan yet or the force to take all of it. But I left a talisman that hopefully looks like it belonged to Xiao Yanling—she was a talisman prodigy, that was why she was in the city to be noticed by the emperor anyway, because she was being schooled by the elite talisman master there.”

“So she could take the throne, if she wanted? Since it’ll look like she kill him?”

“She doesn’t want the throne,” Shang Qinghua said because even if he didn’t remember her super well he remembered she was not one of the wives that wanted power, especially if it was something Luo Binghe should have. “Anyway, mission success! There’s nothing to worry about right now, so go have a bath and try to play some board games with your peers. I have to report in.”

“So, what will happen to the Southern Yak Clan?” Luo Binghe asked. “If there’s no ruler.”

“That’s for adults to worry about,” Shang Qinghua said instead of saying I don’t know. “I have some plans, but nothing is certain and it’s not worth worrying about it. Just clean up, okay? And we can talk more tomorrow.”

Luo Binghe nodded, tentatively patted Shang Qinghua’s hand where it lay on his shoulder and then walked off without a backwards glance.

It was hard to tell if Luo Binghe was listening to him, or even liked him, or what that boy was ever thinking. According to the An Ding peak disciples, Luo Binghe was cold but respectful of everyone who wasn’t his shizun, but not having any friends or support system probably wasn’t great for the kid. At least before he’d had his wives. Even if they hadn’t really satisfied him.

Anyway.

Shang Qinghua reported directly to Mobei-jun’s study as requested. Mobei-jun wasn’t there yet, so he waited, busying himself by looking over some reports, and trying to figure out where the Southern Yak Clan would be weak now. The Northern Desert could at least take some of their holdings in the West and redistribute a lot of the wealth the yaks had been hoarding. Shang Qinghua had created it ironically at first, yaks, a symbol of a beast of burden as being power hungry, but now it didn’t seem poetic or novel. Not when Shang Qinghua though of that little girl who lived in the woman’s quarters. No attendant. Her mother gone. No mention of either of them at all. She didn’t even have a name she lived in so much isolation.

Fuck.

How many horrors in the world existed between the spaces of things that Shang Qinghua didn’t even describe? How many people existed because of implication? Because of subtext? Because of shitty tropes?

Shouldn’t the ghost girl and Xiao Yanling have been friends in the novel, if that little girl existed? Shouldn’t Xiao Yanling had grown to care for the little ghost? But, of course, none of Luo Binghe’s wives had lives or friends outside of him. What had happened to their playmates, their confidants, their mothers and fathers and brothers? Why did they never speak to them or of them except to avenge their deaths?

Shang Qinghua was so focused on writing and criticizing he didn’t notice Mobei-jun come in until he looked up.

“Ah!”

“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun said, as Shang Qinghua sprang from the desk. And Mobei-jun rushed—well walked quickly but it was rushing for Mobei-jun—to his side, looking at his face. “What happened? You’re covered in blood!”

“Ah, it’s not mine, it’s Silver Horns.”

“Silver Horn…the Southern Yak Clan emperor?”

“Yeah,” Shang Qinghua scratched his neck. He didn’t want to involve the kids, in case word got out. Being involved in such a high level assassination would be dangerous. Still Shang Qinghua supposed he should recount at least, the messaging and the spiriting away of Xiao Yanling and the little girl, though he pretended that last part was intentional.

Mobei-jun blinked for a second after Shang Qinghua was finished and then took his face between his hands.

“And I think that with your alibi and the support of the sex workers and succubi in the province there’s going to be a lot of class tension which we can capitalize on. I already told you about the infighting within the harem, and since there’s no empress, the line of succession isn’t clear, and technically Xiao Yanling had the best claim, since it’ll look like she killed him. So they’ll be disorganized for a while. I’ve already drawn up some proposed plans to undermine and undersell their bigger merchants so we can take over their trade routes and supplant their own suppliers with ours, and then, we can—”

Mobei-jun kissed him. It was a weird, slightly cool kiss that still tasted of blood and it was over in a second as Mobei-jun all but beamed down at him, freezing Shang Qinghua in a place of panic somewhere between what the fuck what the fuck and ahh do that again I wasn’t ready.

“You toppled a kingdom in an afternoon.”

Shang Qinghua laughed nervously. “Destabilized maybe, I’d hardly say toppled.” But Mobei-jun only grinned at him before seeming to remember himself, pulling away and clearing his throat as Shang Qinghua was still reeling. An excited “I could kiss you” moment wasn’t too big a deal between bros, was it? Though Mobei-jun didn’t seem the type to get caught up in excitement there didn’t seem to be a lot of other explanation.

“How did the trade negotiations go?” Shang Qinghua asked, deflecting as Mobei-jun went to his desk and motioned for Shang Qinghua to sit across from him.

“Always business,” Mobei-jun said, punching him in the arm though not as hard as usual. Definitely a bro thing then and not a “I want to kill you” thing. It was a relief for sure!

“Ah, we could talk about something else,” Shang Qinghua said. “Like maybe ugh…I could invent double sided tape to prevent wardrobe malfunctions or, ugh, I recently started writing again. If you want, I’m sure it’s stupid—”

“I do not find your ideas stupid,” Mobei-jun said, shuffling papers. “What have you been writing?” Shang Qinghua tried not to light up, he did still have to discuss business and he was still covered in blood, but it was nice not to think about the implications of what had happened and instead dive face first into his newest project.

Repression hadn’t worked for his sexuality, but if he thought about the implications of what he’d done this afternoon for more than a second he was going to scream, so repression was going to have to work for now.

“Okay.” Shang Qinghua settled in his seat excitedly. “So, it’s a deconstruction, sort of, of like the palace intrigue plots. It starts off with this general who gets shot and has to retire to the capital…” Shang Qinghua continued on form the story for some time, diving into not just the plot, but what he wanted the character arcs to be, how he wanted to handle the themes and even mentioning a cool recurring visual motif he wanted to incorporate. At some point, he was pretty sure Mobei-jun was supposed to stop him, this felt like the kind of thing where someone was supposed to stop him, but instead Mobei-jun just kept asking engaged questions like “so then what is the general’s relationship to the prince?” and “So in the end, he gets what he wants, but loses what he needs?” and “What do the other character’s see in him?” Each question only lead to more lengthy explanations, and more pointed questions and then even more detailed explanations until Shang Qingua’s voice was starting to get rough, the horrors of the day barely a glimpse in his mind as Mobei-jun nodded, furrowed his brows in concentration as he asked about whether using a visual motif of black cranes and white cranes would mirror the main character’s journey to atonement.

But then a servant arrived to deliver Mobei-jun a simple message which he read briefly before flicking into the trash. His face went from thoughtful interest to displeasure faster than Shang Qinghua threw himself at people’s feet, and the change in atmosphere went so cold the saltwater clock on the desk looked ready to freeze.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. It is of no consequence and will not prevent the ceremony from happening in a few months time. Tell me about the general’s daughter.”

Shang Qinghua nodded and then tried to use his puppy dog eyes because acting pathetic did work on Mobei-jun after all. “Please?”

“It’s nothing,” Mobei-jun said again, but this time he sighed, and Shang Qinghua felt giddy without knowing why. “My father and uncle have merely advised that I should wait until my official ascension before taking any spouse or children.”

Shang Qinghua blinked. Lingaung-jun wanted Mobei-jun to go through the trials of ascension before adopting Luo Binghe? Why—and then it came back Shang Qinghua at once—of course his uncle was going to try to kill him.

“You’re not going to go through the trials just yet though, right? It’s dangerous?”

“No, but I may have to take them soon after. If the surrounding regions are become destabilized, we will need centralize our forces. It’s important to stand strong.”

Shang Qinghua nodded and listened to the rest of Mobei-jun’s plan, but all he could think about was the one loose end to securing Mobei-jun and Luo Binghe’s safety. If the system was gong to reboot, if Shang Qinghua was gong to die after they joined the Mobei Clan, there was still one last thing to take care of.

He had to kill Linguang-jun.

Chapter Text

The months of preparation for the clan ceremony passed with surprising ease. There was planning and guest lists and catering and decorations to consider and it was a much bigger affair than Shang Qinghua anticipated, but it wasn’t difficult to arrange. There were a lot of late nights falling asleep in Mobei-jun’s study, awaking on the lounge, covered in Mobei-jun’s fur cloak, and once even with Mobei-jun gently brushing the strands of his hair. Lots of nights eating clear soup from slightly chipped bowls, Mobei-jun asking about Shang Qinghua’s novels, offering to beta reader even though Shang Qinghua would have died in embarrassment. Lots of questions about his opinions on tax reforms, and who should sit where, and who did he want to invite from his family? His grandmother? What colour should the table setting be? What kind of flowers? How many dancers? Here try this, what do you think of this soup, should we add it to the banquet after?

Lots of afternoons of Mobei-jun making tea, bringing it to Shang Qinghua’s new rooms, or the class where he taught the new burgeoning accountants. A few nights where Mobei-jun hired several noodle chefs to teach him how to cook noodles and then offered a bowl of uneven ho fun to Shang Qinghua in apology after an argument the previous day. Shang Qinghua had laughed. He didn’t understand it. They were growing closer in a way that felt familiar and nostalgic and ancient—like Mobei-jun was a real person, a real friend like Shang Qinghua hadn’t had since well before he’d died the first time.

Luo Binghe attended a lot of the ceremony preparation sessions, but his input seems mostly perfunctory. As far as Mobei-jun, the event planners, attendants and even the servants were considered, Shang Qinghua’s word was final, and Luo Binghe’s was just a cute suggestion. But Binghe didn’t seem upset about it. Unsure at times, but not upset. And if he wasn’t warmer and intimate with the other accounting disciples (who, to the horror of the Interior Minister of the Right, who said such people of low birth could not possible be important enough to include, had been invited to attend the celebration as well) than at least he showed up. He ate with them outside of lessons and tried to teach them some basic sword forms while Sha Hualing laughed at Mu Kexing who, despite his excess of both arms and eyes, could not seem to swing in a straight line. He did his work beside Wen Xulin instead of in separate rooms and stopped by Evil Fang’s family shop to purchase goods even though it was out of the way. He did not call them Ling-er or shijie or didi or any small nicknames and they did not refer to him as anything other than Luo Binghe. Not respectfully, not familiarly, just his name. But they were still in each other’s presence. On purpose.

In general, he seemed calmer. And without the burden of Xin Mo, he had taken back to the sword, brightening under Mobei-jun’s tutelage before becoming melancholy when he mastered it. Mobei-jun was not his shizun. No one was. No one could replace him. And Luo Binghe did not want them to, resisted any effort to become a disciple of someone else, but nevertheless he always absorbed lessons like an oil fire soaking up oxygen. In a few months he almost seemed back to his old white-lotus disciple self, strong, capable, assured, a prodigy that the sword masters marvelled at and the other demon lords feared.

But the specter of the System’s error did not fade. Until one day, a week before the adoption ceremony, as Shang Qinghua was relaxing in his new personal library, the System said something in a serious tone that was unlike anything it had ever used before.

[You know, that if Luo Binghe does not take up Xin Mo, this will cause irreparable damage to the plot.]

He will pick it up when he’s ready, Shang Qinghua thought, trying to close his eyes and block out the library with its thick papery scent, and comfortable chairs and fur rug splayed over the ice floor. He’ll get there eventually, Shang Qinghua assured himself.

[Will he?]

Wouldn’t he?

[If he becomes content in his life, there will be no reason for him to pick up Xin Mo. If he doesn’t thirst for revenge, he won’t need a tool for vengeance. He will never have the power to conquer the demon realm and progress the plot and he will never want to.]

Would that be so bad? Would it be so bad if Luo Binghe was content? If he finally found happiness as Shen Yuan had always complained about?

[User 2 pushed him into the Abyss. You cannot change the plot.]

Shang Qinghua nodded to himself alone in his new suite of rooms that were right next to Mobei-jun’s. He could never change the plot. Because he wrote it that way and he couldn’t fix his own mistakes.

What was the penalty for changing it? Death? Shang Qinghua had already several decades of extra time and if it had been shitty at least the last few months had been nice, maybe it was a sacrifice worth making. But would Shen Yuan die to? Or would everything be rewritten only for Luo Binghe to suffer some more.

[I don’t know]

Shang Qinghua blinked. What did the System mean it didn’t know?

[I only control the experienced of User 1. I cannot—the System for User 2 determined that if the protagonist’s coolness points dropped below a certain level, he would go back to his own world and die. But I do not know what would happen to Luo Binghe]

Would the world continue on without them? Would the people in the Southern Yak Clan keep trying to organize a revolution, would the young girls who had escaped continue to learn pharmacy, would Luo Binghe continue to be happy? Maybe it was worth it.

[I don’t know]

Of course. Shang Qinghua never got to have good options, did he? But he couldn’t change it. He couldn’t betray Luo Binghe and he couldn’t force a child to shoulder so much trauma and burden. They would just have to see how things played out.

[Mission Huan Hua Inflammation Defamation Deflation completed]

What?

[Mission Give User 2 mission Huan Hua Inflammation Defamation Deflation completed. +200 B points]

What was that—oh right, a long time ago Shang Qinghua had been looking through available optional missions and found one to give Shen Yuan a quest, though of course he definitely didn’t remember doing that and the System definitely didn’t ever remind or chime in to be helpful. The only thing he had asked Shen Yuan to was help draw and write the compendium on dangerous sex flowers. And to look into Huan Hua palace.

Wait.

Shang Qinghua stood up abruptly spilling ink onto his current work. Huan Hua palace. Maybe there was still a way to fix this.

#

Shang Qinghua barged into Shen Qingqiu’s little bamboo house unsurprised to find Liu Qingge there by the tea table, though a little surprised to find his hair unbound, cascading down his back. Liu Qingge predictably turned bright red, shouted something incoherent and took off on his sworn as Shen Yuan weakly held onto his hair ornament and a jade comb carved with bamboo motifs, but Shang Qinghua did not have time to process gay subtext.

“Dude!” Shen Yuan shouted but Shang Qinghua didn’t care about Shen Yuan’s annoyance right now.

“What did you find about Huan Hua palace?”

“What?”

“Huan Hua—”

“Wait, you heard about that girl that tried to get me arrested?” Shen Yuan put the jade comb and ornament down before he leaned back on his cushion, rubbing his shoulder absently. “After you left when you were talking about Luo Binghe’s parents, the System offered me a mission to uncover the truth but then while I was digging, some Qiu Haitang came and accused me of murdering tons of people! I had to go to a water prison and Liu Qingge almost tried to fight the whole sect. I for sure thought I was going to die early thanks to this dumbass mission—why did you create so much backstory for this scumbag villain and then NEVER put it in? Huh?! Shen Jiu visits brothels to sleep and hates men? This was not the vibe I got in PIDW!”

“Shen Yuan, focus,” Shang Qinghua said and the gravity in his voice must have unnerved Shen Yuan because he did. “Tell me what happened.”

“Well, then I remembered the Sun and Moon Dew flower seed, that grows in the Bailu forest on the edge of Huan Hua sect. And honestly that was severely underused, how did it never come up again?? Anyway, I asked Liu Qingge to get it for me and try to grow it, even though I know it takes time. But apparently when he was there, there was a snake that he brought to me—he sometimes brings me dead monsters but I was complaining so he thought to bring something alive—and this fucking snake somehow knew all about Luo Binghe’s mom, Su Xiyan and how the Old Palace Master set her up and tried to kill her, which he told me in exchange for Liu Qingge saving his life!

“So anyway, at my trial, I tell everyone what an asshole the Qiu’s were and I’m prepared to blackmail them with the Su Xiyan stuff when Gongyi Xiao, this like 19 year old, just like accused his master of manipulating Su Xiyan and fabricating all this to silence me, since I knew about her? Anyway, it was a whole ordeal. I didn’t get executed. I went back to the Sun and Moon Dew seed but the snake demon was already trying to grow a new body, Liu Qingge killed some dude, the snake was pissed but left, and I got the seed so now I gotta grow it while I wait and hope Binghe doesn’t kill me until it’s ready.” Shen Yuan shrugged as if talking about his impending death was no big deal and that was probably not psychologically great, but Shang Qinghua was already going over the pieces in the story and putting together a plan.

“Which guy did Liu Qingge kill?” It couldn’t be Tianlang-jun could it? The plot would really be weird if it was, but to be fair, that wasn’t Shang Qinghua’s department so what did he know.

“I don’t know, some Heavenly Demon. I tried to tell him to preserve the blood to see if I could reverse engineer a cure for Without-A-Cure since I am not fucking that snake or my teenage disciple, but it was too late.”

“Huh.”

“Anyway, why do you care?”

“Ah, I made Luo Binghe too content so now he doesn’t want to take Xin Mo and the system is saying it’s going to reboot. I thought maybe, if his dad was alive or something, I don’t know. Maybe there would be a way to help him master it without giving in to that much demonic energy.”

“I’m sorry, did you say reboot?!”

“It’s not my fault!” Shang Qinghua shouted, probably louder was necessary, his foot coming down in a childish stomp before he kicked off his shoes. “Was I supposed to kick him when he’s down? Ignore a kid who cried in front of me? I was trying to help him. And now I only have a week until we get inducted into the Mobei Clan, to figure out how to get him to master Xin Mo instead of just…” Shang Qinghua threw up his hands “I don’t know, just being happy and saving people.”

“…”

“Shut up!”

“Airplane, dude, this one might not actually be your fault,” Shen Yuan said. “I mean obviously the situation with Xin Mo to start with is your fault, but I can’t blame you for being nice I guess.”

Shang Qinghua had not understood the phrase seeing red until the moment, but then Shen Yuan flicked open his fan to hide and maybe he was just as nervous about the ambiguous possibility of a “reboot” as Shang Qinghua. Shang Qinghua tried to calm himself down, but the ambiguity of the word “reboot” was like a flaming sword in his liver, preventing him relaxing. If he was going to die, that was one thing. If everyone was going to die and some of these people might have real inner lives—how could Shang Qinghua do that to Shen Yuan? To Wen Xulin? To Sha Hualing who seemed to finally have friends?

What did this even mean?

Everything that had happened spilled out of Shang Qinghua’s mouth like soup, tumbling out in a warm, lumpy torrent. Luo Binghe breaking down, the dissociation, the solipsism debate, the intimacy with Mobei-jun, the existential dread of the System, all of it. Shen Yuan’s face was hidden behind his fan, but his silence was telling. The gravity of the situation turned them from misery-buddies/vitriolic friends into the single thing standing between the world and possible total erasure.

“I don’t know how to fix it,” Shang Qinghua said. “I don’t know as a writer and I thought I knew as a person, but I don’t even know what the System means! What is a reboot? How similar does the plot really have to be, if you’re changing it?” Shang Qinghua had never been suicidal, even when he was depressed, but his life for Luo Binghe’s happiness was at least a deal he could comprehend, something he could think about, a sacrifice that was worth it. Otherwise, how could Shang Qinghua ever fix his mistakes? If being distant didn’t work and being close only made everything worse. The only thing Shang Qinghua had left was his life. But even that might not be good enough.

Shen Yuan only hummed, his feet tapping along the floor as if deep in thought.

“The plot of the story is that he has to get pushed into the Abyss and he has to rise from it,” Shen Yuan muttered, biting at his nail but trying to cover it with his fan. “He doesn’t necessarily need to get revenge on everyone, but he does…no…hmm…but that’s the question, is the plot following him right now or me? Because the Qiu plot was triggered but I don’t think Liu Qingge should be so involved…then again…”

“Bro, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Okay listen.” Shen Yuan put down his fan but his face, somewhere between terror and determination, wasn’t reassuring. “We can fix this. I always said PIDW could be fixed—why do you think I sent time sending you criticism and reading instead of just fucking off? The bones here can be salvaged. I just need to figure out how.” And then Shen Yuan paused. “We just need to figure out how.” Shang Qinghua felt stupid for being emotional over a word, but it had been a long time since he had been a “we.”

“Luo Binghe’s thing is that he was betrayed and pushed into the Abyss,” Shen Yuan continued. “That’s the central conflict, both internal and external. His arc is that he used to be powerless but then gains power. Those two things can’t change. So he needs catharsis from what happened. Even if he emerges from the Abyss, his life got fucked up, his feelings got fucked up. He needs to recover both his status and his stability at the same time.  But if we could find a way to cleanse Xin Mo, or else get him another sword that’s as powerful, that might be another way to get there. If he’s started the journey of emotional recovery, then gaining power or revenge might let him complete his emotional journey and finish the story.” Shen Yuan tapped his fan against his chin and the gesture looked ancient and modern at once, ancient in all its aesthetic, as modern as chewing on a pen, and yet in reality somewhere between the two.

“Xin Mo needs Heavenly Demon blood to work,” Shen Yuan continued. “And you thought his father might find another way to cleanse Xin Mo. So maybe the blood is the key? If I can find that Heavenly Demon the snake was trying to re-incarnate—”

“That’s Luo Binghe’s father.”

“What?!”

“Tianlang-jun.”

“Fucking great, so we have to cleanse Xin Mo in the blood of his father?!”

“Wait! Hmm, if his father is evil it could be a Luke Skywalker moment and he just has to kill—”

“You’re going to rip off Star Wars next?”

“This isn’t about writing!” Shang Qinghua huffed, realized he had been standing all this time and then sat down. “This is about stopping people from dying. You said he needs catharsis, confronting his father who abandoned him is catharsis, cleansing Xin Mo can be symbolic of his letting go of grief and resentment to those who wronged him! I may be a bit of a hack but I am an author!”

“Okay, maybe,” Shen Yuan conceded. “But there’s no way we’re going to find Tianlang-jun, get his blood, figure out how to cure Xin Mo and then orchestrate a duel between them in a week. Plus Luo Binghe would actually have to wield the sword.”

“What if I delayed the ceremony?”

“Can you?”

“I could get kidnapped?” Shang Qinghua offered, but the skeptical look Shen Yuan shot him made sense. Mobei-jun would find him. He could teleport after all. And even worse, if he found out that Shang Qinghua hadn’t really been kidnapped, he might think Shang Qinghua was trying to run away and the whole Join the Mobei Clan might collapse. “I could try to tell Mobei-jun the truth?”

“The truth?!” Shen Yuan asked as if Shang Qinghua had suggested streaking through the peaks covered in horse piss.

“Well! Some of it! How I want to sort out the stuff with Luo Binghe’s father before he joins the clan?” But then, wouldn’t Mobei-jun question why Shang Qinghua hadn’t brought it up until now? And if Shang Qinghua seemed to be arranging it and Luo Binghe found out, well, wouldn’t that just crush him? Undermine his agency both narratively and in his own personal life? Plus, Luo Binghe seemed to be looking forward to joining the clan. He had even spent a long time doing odd jobs, acquiring demon money to presumably buy something for the ceremony.

“Listen,” Shen Yuan said. “I think there’s enough here that I could fix this, but there’s no way we could do it in a week. I don’t even know if I could do it in a month. A delay might be helpful, but honestly, from a narrative standpoint, Luo Binghe confronting his father after he already has a new family would be a better ending than just before he got a new family.” Shen Yuan chewed on the flesh of his nails in such an un-Shen Qingqiu gesture that Shang Qinghua immediately froze, not because it looked weird when Shen Yuan did it, but because it didn’t. Shen Yuan had managed to integrate into Shen Qingqiu so well, that even the most OOC action felt natural. Like the mask he was wearing was just face paint, makeup, a different version of himself and not an entirely new character. But Shang Qinghua did not have time to unpack that.

Shen Yuan was muttering under his breath, no doubt talking to the System, trying to figure out if he could buy time or trade B-points or something. Shang Qinghua, if he was allowed to change the plot would have done the same. But there was one thing he could still do.

Shang Qinghua closed his eyes.

System, he asked. Would you let Shen Yuan fix this?

If he was the author and he fucked up and Shen Yuan was here to fix the mistakes, would the System let Shen Yuan fix this mistake too? After all, the creation of Xin Mo and Luo Binghe’s trauma arc was the original sin of PIDW? Could the System not let the plot, Luo Binghe, and everyone else alone for a while to give Shen Yuan a shot at fixing this while Shang Qinghua dealt with the consequences of disobeying?

Shang Qinghua closed his eyes on the floor and prayed with every fibre of his being even as he felt like screaming and pounding his fists on the floor at the unfairness. The System was silent for a long moment, but Shang Qinghua did not open his eyes, even once.

[Yes…]

The System said, but the pause was not reassuring.

 [User 1 is correct: User 2’s job is to fix PIDW and since Luo Binghe’s current problem with Xin Mo, is caused by a plot point of PIDW, then the System’s supervisors agree that User 2 is allowed to attempt to fix this before reboot. However, for interfering with the plot User 1 would be returned to his home world. Original Shang Qinghua no longer exists and would not be restored.]

[…]

[Both here and in your world, you would die.]

But not Luo Binghe or Wen Xulin or Shen Yuan?

[No.]

Good. Shang Qinghua let out a sigh he hadn’t known he was holding. Then all of this, everything he’d learned, Xiao Yanling, Mobei-jun, the accounting students, Luo Binghe, then it wouldn’t all be for nothing. Then Shang Qinghua would be allowed to fix something even if it killed him. That had to be good enough for now.

“Shen Yuan,” Shang Qinghua said feeling like a proper adult for the first time in, well, maybe ever, “you do what you can to figure out how to arrange the father-son cleansing duel. In the meantime, I’ll try to get Luo Binghe at least stable enough to try to master Xin Mo. But you should come to the celebration. It’s—it would mean a lot to him.” And Shen Yuan would be there for the aftermath when Shang Qinghua died.

“Of course.”

And just like that, Shang Qinghua wrote the end to his own story.

#

If Mobei-jun found it weird that Shang Qinghua had written out a list of Luo Bignhe’s favourite things and least favourite things and then given it to him, along with his own will, he certainly did say anything. Shang Qinghua realized that maybe slipping up and calling Luo Binghe his son made it seem like he’d stepped into the role of surrogate father, so maybe dads just did this kind of thing, but at the very least Shang Qinghua was grateful he didn’t have to explain himself.

Instead he tried to enjoy his last week. He ate exotic demon food with Mobei-jun in his chambers, and sometimes out in the town, enjoying the sights arm in arm with his best friend, trying to shove skewers into Mobei-jun’s face and teasing him about not getting out to enjoy the ponds and the gardens in his own palace, let alone in the local towns. Shang Qinghua read novels in his library, tucked under fur blankets, or something tucked beside Mobei-jun as they took a break from work. Mobei-jun’s chest was rock hard, and his skin cool, but it was never cold, and was always the perfect excuse to bury himself in more fur throws as he cuddled next to his crush even if it would never be reciprocated in the scant few days he had left. Shang Qinghua even tried to finish a draft of the novel he’d worked on, wondering if there were other Systems and worlds made of the words he was creating or the books he had read here, but he didn’t ask.

For one week he lived his best life and tried not to think about anything after that. And it was nice! Pleasant! And more unsurprising until the day before the celebration when the tailor delivered his outfit for the ceremony. It was not the dark blue of the Mobei Clan like Shang Qinghua had expected, but red, with a sash that looked more like it belonged to a bridegroom than anything else.

But when the celebration day came, Shang Qinghua put in on nevertheless. And yet the suspicion that he had forgotten or missed something only intensified throughout the day.

At least the robe had inner pockets big enough to conceal the single leaf he had taken from the Soul-Bond-Cultivation Flower, a poison that worked within 8 hours, perfect for assassinating someone in their sleep when traces would fade by morning. Shang Qinghua had not forgotten about Linguang-jun after all. And if Shang Qinghua was dead, who would save Mobei-jun?

Anyway, maybe it was him being too preoccupied with his assassination attempt to notice but it took Shang Qinghua a good half hour into the festivities before he realized something was up.

Shang Qinghua had noticed the ducks swimming the ice pond—fire-mandarin ducks—and the double happiness symbol on some of the banners, and the multitude of red, and the weird hoops they made Shang Qinghua jump through to get to the tea ceremony before the banquet. When Sha Hualing had shoved weird food into his hands and Mobei-jun’s father had quizzed him about Mobei-jun, Shang Qinghua had just thought they were rude. But when they asked him to write some talismans, and Linguang-jun had demanded to know Mobei-jun’s favourite battle tactics Shang Qinghua had started to suspect something. Then he’d entered the hall, Shen Yuan sitting awkwardly off to one side with Luo Binghe and Shang Qinghua’s grandmother in exact mirror to Mobei-jun’s family, an entire tea ceremony set between them.

It wasn’t that Shang Qinghua hadn’t been touched when late last night Mobei-jun had come into his room and brushed his hair—what a sweet way to say that they were equals, both servants to each other! It wasn’t that Shang Qinghua didn’t feel it odd when attendants had shown up immediately before the hair brushing and demanded he bathe in pomelo leaves and then change into new clothes. It was that, as he sat there with the comb going in and out of his hair,  Mobei-jun’s lengthy knotted fingers working with careful precision, Shang Qinghua had had to fight back tears. He had to fight back memories of Mobei-jun’s mouth on his, however briefly, or the way he had smiled at Shang Qinghua’s success or told him he was necessary, essential to the ruling of the Northern Desert. Shang Qinghua was going to die. And he was never going to enjoy this again, or even enjoy jerking off to a fantasy of Mobei-jun railing him over paperwork. “Exemplary,” the new Mobei-jun in his dreams said. “You’re not a servant but a treasured tool and you should be used as such” which was a contrast to his previous fantasies where usually Mobei-jun didn’t say much and there wasn’t much plot or personality to the affair.

So yes, Shang Qinghua had noticed the combing and the pomelo and the mandarin ducks and the red taper candles and the demon wedding bells, and the demon wedding dancers who had no clothes on and gyrated provocatively as the human guests (including Luo Binghe) furiously avoiding looking at them. They were supposed to symbolize temptations and lust and the groom’s ignoring of them to symbolize his fidelity and of course Luo Binghe had papapa’d many of them. So many of them. In fact, there was one plot where he showed up to stop a wedding, bedded at least 12 of the dancers and then married the bride!

God how Shang Qinghua wished he hadn’t included that.

But the point was Shang Qinghua, in the middle of the tea ceremony as he sat beside Mobei-jun who chatted amicably with his confused but incessantly polite grandmother that Shang Qinghua realized this was a wedding. This was his wedding. He was marrying Mobei-jun. Distantly Shang Qinghua wondered what would happen if he hadn’t noticed until afterward when they got to the marriage bed and Mobei-jun lay naked on the silk sheets and Shang Qinghua’s mind short circuited but it was better to find out now. Probably.

Shang Qinghua choked on his tea and Shen Yuan hit him hard on the back, probably harder than necessary and Luo Binghe’s eyes turned into wide saucers as he looked between Mobei-jun’s father—looking as sickly as Shang Qinghua’s grandmother (but fairing better than his actual dead parents) with his sallow jaundiced skin, miscoloured fingernails and general frailty—and Linguang-jun, who Shang Qinghua had stressed was to be avoided at all costs.

“I’m okay,” Shang Qinghua said hoarsely.

“Okay?” Linguang-jun asked.

“It means all right,” Luo Binghe said to Shen Yuan’s apparent surprise. The mask was slipping once again but Shang Qinghua was going to die so he might as well die as himself, whoever that was.

“Well,” Mobei-jun’s father said. “I think that concludes tea.” Shang Qinghua bowed, looking down at the red envelopes that had been slid his way along with the onyx envelopes that were the demon traditions—to supply the happy couple with protective talismans so their marriage bed—and house—would not break from their union. Shang Qinghua accepted them mutely. Relieved, in retrospect, that the door games had been easy to get through and that, though he was presumably joining the Mobei Clan and was thus much closer to the bride roll, that they actually still treated him a bit like a groom.

Finally, they left to the ancestral hall to say their vows and make their bows and Shang Qinghua, despite trying to keep it together, could already feel his eyes watering.

“Did something happen?” Mobei-jun asked, but Shang Qinghua shook his head.

“Just a little overwhelming. What questions did my grandmother make you answer about me? Yours were easy.”

“I put Sha Hualing in charge of them,” Mobei-jun said, looking askance. Of course, admitting that outside your soon to be husband your only trusted friend was a child was probably a little demeaning for a high lord to say. “I warned her about the foods. Humans cannot eat all of them and I did not trust anyone else not to poison you ‘accidentally.’” Honestly that was probably good looking out. Outside of the narrow department, people were not that fond of Shang Qinghua, though he was starting to realize they were also not as hostile as he’d thought.

“Sometimes as part of the difficulties you are asked to hunt something,” Mobei-jun continued. “Or undertake a trial by combat or find a hidden jewel among a pile of rubbish but I did not have so many people to organize such a thing and I did not trust my uncle not to lead you to your death.”

“He’s planning something,” Shang Qinghua said. “When you ascend.”

“So you’ve said.”

“But I’ll take care of it.”

“Of course. And that is precisely why I did not need to ask you to hunt something.” Mobei smiled and Shang Qinghua had to look away to avoid being overwhelmed.

“I didn’t even pick people to be hard on you. I kind of—I forgot that part,” Shang Qinghua said instead of “I didn’t know this would be a wedding, but don’t get me wrong, I’m super confused but I’m down. Or will be once the reality of the situation catches up with me.” Shang Qinghua did vaguely remember coming up questions and tasks—Mobei-jun had asked him for things he wanted others to do for him, or things the wished Mobei-jun would know. Had they given these things to his grandmother?

“Your grandmother’s tasks were easy. Peak Lord Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe made me made noodles and tea,” Mobei-jun said, amused. “The young accountants also showed up and asked me many questions about tax reforms and my views on labour unions and then about your views on labour unions, but I seemed to pass”

“Well, as long as it wasn’t too strenuous.”

“Shen Qingqiu also asked what I thought of your writing and scoffed when I said that I enjoyed it but that seemed to please him anyway.”

“Yeah, he’s not a fan of mine,” Shang Qinghua said but they had gotten to the ancestral hall already. “But hey, you’ll have enough trial by combats. And knowing that you know this one’s opinion on labour unions is proof enough of your commitment.” Shang Qinghua smiled, looked both ways and leaned up to kiss Mobei-jun carefully on the mouth, because, well, they were getting married and if Shang Qinghua had missed the lead up, he didn’t want to miss anything now. Mobei-jun’s lips were the same temperature as his skin, pleasantly cool like air conditioning on an Augusts day or bubble tea out in the sun or a gulp of water after a run. They were as soft and malleable as any lips Shang Qinghua had ever kissed except his own lips tingled where they met skin to skin. Mobei-jun kissed him carefully, slowly, perfectly, because he was Mobei-jun and he was a careful, slow, perfect man, and when his finger tips brushed the side of Shang Qinghua’s neck like a soft breeze, nails raking into Shang Qinghua’s hair with satisfying precision, it was careful and slow and perfect too.

Shang Qinghua wasn’t sure how long they were kissing, chastely pressing and repressing their lips to one another’s like two stamps that formed one picture. But when Mobei-jun finally eased him back down, breathlessly, lips curled, mouth warmed by the presence of Shang Qinghua’s skin, it felt like an eternity had passed.

And then, they opened the ancestral hall door, and walked past the threshold two lovers prepared to bow.

#

Shang Qinghua drank a little too much during the banquet but holy shit who could blame him? He was marrying Mobei-jun. The star of half of his sexual fantasies, arguably one of his best friends, extremely hot ruler of the Northern Desert. Like damn who wouldn’t be stoked about that? He was going to get to fuck Mobei-jun. Or be fucked rather. But still!

Hot damn!

 As Shang Qinghua hit his sleeve against the banquet table and checked to make sure the Soul-Bond-Cultivation flower vial hadn’t broken, he finally realized where all this marriage confusion had begun. The Soul-Bond-Cultivation flower was used to dual cultivate, to bind your cultivation styles and your souls and you know, your lives. Which meant, giving it to another was often seen as a marriage proposal, or a betrothal gift, especially because it was hard to acquire, and symbolized ever lasting love. And Shang Qinghua had given it to Mobei-jun. Right after yelling at him about how he wanted to protect Luo Binghe. No doubt Mobei-jun was confused. No wonder Sha Hualing tried to drug and find out his true motive.

And the dinners, and the kiss, the intimacy—well, it was intimacy whether platonic or romantic— at least he understood why there was such a shift in it. But it was still hard to believe that Mobei-jun, the Mobei-jun, wanted to marry him. Though okay, Shang Qinghua saved his life a couple of times, proposed, destabilized a kingdom to save a child and then help them out financially and then also knew the location to all sorts of hidden forbidden swords and stuff. Maybe Shang Qinghua had been underestimating how he had been coming across. But damn, Mobei-jun had killed the original goods without hesitation and now he wanted to bang him? He wanted to bang Shang Qinghua for his personality?

Then again Mobei-jun’s best friend was a nineteen-year-old girl, so maybe there just wasn’t a lot of trustworthy candidates to pick from. But holy fuck their loss!

“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun whispered lowly, his breath hot in Shang Qinghua’s ear. “Perhaps some water?”

“Ah, are our spirits to much for such mortals?” an older demon auntie teased. In the background two naked dancers looked like they might legitimately be using their role as ‘tempers’ to actually have sex, but Shang Qinghua tried to zone in on the auntie with the crown of spiky thorns and the giant quartz glasses.

“I’m just excited,” Shang Qinghua said. “I mean this one, this one is just excited.”

“And a light weight,” Shen Yuan muttered under his breath, replacing Shang Qinghua’s cup with one of water. Across from him Luo Binghe looked confused and probably Shang Qinghua should have been running interference between the abandoned disciple and his traitor shizun but it seemed like Shen Yuan was pretending Luo Binghe wasn’t there no matter how much Luo Binghe tried to glare a puppy-dog-esque hole into the side of his head.

Shang Qinghua reached for some skewers only for Evil Fang—when did she get here—to grab his wrist.

“These are poison-leopard-frog skewers, Laoshi. I don’t think mortals can eat them.” She looked at Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe for confirmation who both nodded seriously even though there was no way either of them would know.

“Ah, thank you, thank you. You’re very good, you know, looking out for me. I’m not even your shizun. My head disciple never stops me from getting poisoned.” Shang Qinghua frowned and Mobei-jun frowned and then Linguang-jun grinned. Luo Binghe stood up fast enough to rattle the cutlery but bowed lowly to recover. Shang Qinghua wasn’t really sure what the other guests at the banquet were doing but most of them were here for political reasons so fuck them.

“I think my—I think Shang Qinghua would best retire, this one will take him to quarters for Mobei-jun to join later, if—” Luo Binghe stared, such a caring son really. Why had no one adopted him until now?

“No need, I will take him,” Mobei-jun said, hauling Shang Qinghua too his feet, but wait, he hadn’t run interference!   

“You have to apologize to him,” Shang Qinghua said to Shen Yuan. No wait, he had apologized he had written the letter. “I mean explain. Why you pushed him—”

“Shang Qinghua!” Shen Yuan hissed but Shang Qinghua waved him off, he’d be dead tomorrow anyway, he’d get to fuck Mobei-jun once, and then perish, so he had to do this now.

“I mean it! He’s very sad! He cried when he got your letter. You always said I’m an asshole, but really, how could not have given him an explanation or told him about his mom?”

“My mom?” Luo Binghe asked, confused. “You didn’t meet her? She—”

“No, not that mom, the birth mom. Su Xiyan. And what the Old Palace Master did to her, how could you not tell him?”

“Old Palace Master…?” Luo trailed off. “Of Huan Hua?”

“Shang Qinghua!” Shen Yuan said through gritted teeth. “Perhaps you should retire thusly. You’re speaking nonsense.”

“No, I’m not,” Shang Qinghua said, though he swayed and had to be steadied by Mobei-jun’s arms. Linguang-jun and Mobei-jun’s father were looking on in some kind of interest, but Mobei-jun’s face was an impenetrable wall of stone. Unlike Shang Qinghua who was very penetrable, ay oh! Actually, maybe he was drunk. “Okay, maybe I’m drunk, but my point still stands, you guys need to make up.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Stop being a little bitch A-Yuan, you know there’s so much to talk—” But Shen Yuan had already jumped to cover Shang Qinghua’s mouth his eyes burning with anger as he laughed awkward and tried to play it off as a simple mistake. Shang Qinghua wiggled his eyebrows and debated licking Shen Yuan’s hand but Mobei-jun had already opened a portal and hauled him back into their room. Into Mobei-jun’s room. Into their marital bed.

Mobei-jun—well, Mobei Jing now, would it be weird to call your husband Mobei-jun?—sat on the edge of the bed as Shang Qinghua valiantly struggled out of some of his robes. He hoped Shen Yuan really did try to explain. The two needed to talk, even if Cucumber-bro was allergic to emotional vulnerability.

“I will wait until you are back to yourself,” Mobei-jun said as Shang Qinghua tried, unsuccessfully, to strip. Shang Qinghua nodded—drunk people couldn’t give consent! He had mentioned this in class!—and wondered how he would die. If Mobei-jun would just wake up to Shang Qinghua dead and assume someone had poisoned him. If he would blame himself.

“It’s not your fault,” Shang Qinghua said. He repeated it again, less slurred this time and watched a weight fall of Mobei Jing’s shoulders. Jing-er’s shoulders. No that felt weird. Mobei-jun.

“I know.”

“I’m going to take care of it, okay? I’m going to protect you,” Shang Qinghua said a little nonsensically but Mobei-jun smiled. It was such a nice smile, soft and too straight and a little silly looking. Shang Qinghua loved it more than anything.

“You are the only person who thinks, of the two of us, that I am the one who needs saving.” Mobei-jun brushed a hair from Shang Qinghua’s face and helped untie his sash.

“Well, I mean, did you ever save my life?” Shang Qinghua honestly couldn’t remember, but the answer was probably no, right? Free from his sash and outer robes, Shang Qinghua took a deep breath and collapsed into one of Mobei-jun’s chairs. They were made of some animal hide and exquisitely comfortable and Shang Qinghua wanted to sleep it off, but if he fell asleep, when he woke up, he would have to assassinate Linguang-jun and that meant he’d never get to have sex with Mobei-jun.

“No,” Mobei-jun said quietly. Shang Qinghua reached out his foot to see if he could pat Mobei-jun’s knee with it without getting up from his chair but when that proved too difficult, he just sighed.

“That’s okay. I had more to make up for than you.”

“Do you?”

“Hmmm, yes. But I’ll put it right. Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.” Shang Qinghua nodded but then when it seemed Mobei-jun was going to suggest he get some sleep and head back into the party Shang Qinghua cleared his throat.

“It was a really nice wedding,” he said. “I know we didn’t have a lot of family, but it was nice.”

“It was.”

“You should really get some friends though,” Shang Qinghua said. “I mean, I can do some background checks or…or I don’t know. I just don’t want you to be lonely…” lonely after Shang Qinghua died. But Mobei-jun stood up and Shang Qinghua protested. “Don’t go, I don’t want to sleep!”

“I am going to get a glass of water,” Mobei-jun said. “And when I get back you can tell me about your writing and then, if you’re feeling better, we may…finish our union.” Shang Qinghua smiled.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Mobei-jun echoed and it was only when he had left, did he realize what Mobei-jun had just said.

#

Luckily, Shang Qinghua sobered up. Unluckily he had forgotten what he had written about demon anatomy until his moment, despite having taught a class on this.

“I don’t know this is going to work, logistically,” Shang Qinghua said, looking at down at Mobei’s naked form on the bed and his equipment that was definitely too well endowed for Shang Qinghua to take. Shang Qinghua still had on his inner robe, because he was cold, but his own dick looked comically small in comparison.

“Do you want to…” Mobei-jun made a motion that surely meant get on top of me and Shang Qinghua hummed. Riding Mobei-jun might be the easier position but Shang Qinghua didn’t have a wealth of experience. But maybe he could do it. He certainly had bought enough lube. He had just eaten, but luckily Mobei-jun had a private ice water bath (and seemingly a very recently purchase box of lube, condoms and a xianxia equivalent of an enema) so normally there should be no issue, but that…

“I’ll… let’s just give it a go.”

#

They should not have just given it a go.

“Next time, you should top,” Mobei-jun said, rolling to his side, trying to wipe the blood off his face and straighten the bones in his nose.

“I’m sorry for biting you,” Shang Qinghua said, lower back and upper back sore, and also his knees and his abs, his neck, his elbow, his hand—there was a lot of soreness. “And sorry for elbowing you in the face.”

“You screamed.”

“I screamed because it hurt!”

“It hurt because you kept flailing!”

“I was flailing because—you know what,” Shang Qinghua said even though never in a million years would he have excepted to say this to anyone, let alone Mobei-jun, ice demon prince of the Northern Desert. “You’re right, next time I should top.” Mobei-jun let out a hum of approval that did funny things to Shang Qinghua’s stomach.

“Of course, as you said to your class, you don’t always get it right on the first try,” Mobei-jun muttered. A part of Shang Qinghua warmed with a kind of giddy disbelief both that Mobei-jun wanted to try again after that disaster and also that he had been listening and internalizing his shitty lectures.

“Wait, have you…have you never,” Shang Qinghua made a gesture that he hoped conveyed making love and not fucking but Mobei-jun’s face only turned to smooth stone.

“No.”

“Ah.”

“Have you?”

Shang Qinghua held up two fingers.

“You’ve only fingered yourself?”

“What? Not I meant twice! I’ve…I’ve had sex twice.”

“Threes times now,” Mobei-jun said with such ridiculous mundanity that Shang Qinghua laughed.

“We should go to sleep. Perhaps we can try for four in the morning.”

Mobei-jun smiled at him and rolled onto his back, ushering Shang Qinghua in and Shang Qinghua watched him, his heart warm and aching in equal measure. But he still had one last thing to do to keep his husband safe, to save his life one last time.

#

Shang Qinghua, on his last mission alive, crept silently down the corridor. He had dressed in his inner robes and Mobei-jun’s outer fur lined robes to travel down the hall to where Linguang-jun slept. He’d certainly had enough wine to knock out a horse and Shang Qinghua could only hope he stayed knocked out.

The festivities had ended late, but they had ended and with Shang Qinghua making last second changes to the guard rotation the night before, no one was here to see Shang Qinghua slip into his uncle-in-law’s room. Linguang-jun snored slightly in his bed, his neck propped up against a rock pillow carved to look like two mortals being crushed by the weight of a snake. Shang Qinghua wasted no time. He uncorked the leaf—he knew leaves didn’t have pollen but that was a writing mistake not an assassin mistake, the leaves still carried the poison—and, with a gloved hand, crushed it over Linguang-jun’s mouth. His nose twitched, inhaled the poison and then, as Shang Qinghua moved back to leave, a hand shot out and grabbed him.

“How unfilial.” Linguang-jun smiled, like a shark scenting prey.

“I think it’s very filial actually,” Shang Qinghua said. “What should a husband do but take care of his spouse’s problems? To take their enemies as his own?”

Linguang-jun barked a laugh but his grip on his wrist was iron tight, and the demonic energy circulating though his veins was thick and charged. Unlike Silver Horn who had been paralyzed before he even knew what was going on, Linguang-jun was ready, stronger, and Shang Qinghua still had alcohol in his veins slowing him and an uncomfortable soreness throughout many parts of the body. This was not a fair fight. But it didn’t matter. Linguang would likely still die anyway. And so would Shang Qinghua.

“You aren’t a little mouse, are you, but a crafty mongoose.”

“Only because I am in a pit of snakes,” Shang Qinghua said mentally high fived himself for his wordplay. He was a writer dammit!

“Well,” Linguang-jun said, rising as Shang Qinghua attempted to yank his arm back unsuccessfully. Linguang-jun’s thick fingers encircles Shang Qinghua’s wrist like the coldest iron shackle, and but he didn’t scream or attack just yet. He had Shang Qinghua trapped, and he knew it, and he wanted to make this fun.

Shang Qinghua could still try and use his portal charm to get back to Mobei-jun, maybe, but that might bring the uncle too. And he couldn’t implicate Mobei-jun in the killing, it would seem senseless, cruel without the proof of his uncle’s treachery, especially because Shang Qinghua wasn’t sure there was proof. Especially because Mobei-jun was still technically a prince and his father, though on his deathbed and no longer ruling, could still try to pass his throne to someone else.

But Shang Qinghua didn’t need to make this fun. He had something on his side already: he literally didn’t give a fuck what happened to him as long as Linguang-jun died.

“Well,” Linguang-jun said again, yanking Shang Qinghua’s arm to him, bending it at an awkward angle, seeming to figure out what game he wanted. “If you’re trying to be faithful to your husband, then I must ask why you did not tell him, while you snuck in to assassinate an assassin’s uncle alone without my dear nephew? What have I done to make myself such an enemy to him anyway? Is the prince scared of his big bad uncle? Must he eliminate all his competition to ensure his throne since he does not believe in his own merit?” Shang Qinghua could try to grab his sword with his off hand, but Linguang might snap his arm before then. And really, Shang Qinghua didn’t want a knock out drag out fight, violence was not Shang Qinghua’s forte. But smack talk was.

“He is a hundred times the king you would ever be, and you could spend a hundred years studying and never be his equal,” Shang Qinghua spat. The veracity seemed to surprise and delight Linguang-jun in equal measure but as long as he was stalling, as long as the poison was working, then Shang Qinghua didn’t have anything more to lose. “Why would he be afraid of a man who makes enemies of children? Who cannot stand to play against an equal? Wasn’t it you who tried to eliminate the competition? Who poisons your brother even as we speak? Did you not kill his wife, your own sister-in-law when she tried to rule in his stead?” These were wild accusations, but Shang Qinghua knew his way around a trope and “traitorous uncle” coupled with “dying dad and dead mom” were rarely unrelated.

“How did you—?” Linguang-jun eyes widened, his mouth slack in genuine disbelief and Shang Qinghua reveled in it. How long had he wanted to tell people off, to have the moral high ground, to have his own revenge? But somehow, it felt a million times sweeter to do it on Mobei-jun’s behalf than it even had before.

“Do you think you’re so clever? Hiding behind your plans for the Trial of Ascension? Did you think Mobei-jun wouldn’t find out? Linguang-jun—cold light lord? They should call you tepid dull lord instead because you’re cool façade is as limpid as a human pond, and your brightness as uninspired as a unpolished copper. Did you think you could just attempt to sabotage the ascension ritual and Binghe and I would do nothing?”

Now Linguang looked genuinely surprised. “I had only just started to plan…”

“My king may be merciful,” Shang Qinghua said because Mobei-jun, despite his punching and cold exterior had never, not in PIDW not in Shang Qinghua’s wildest dreams, been a man of needless violence. “But I am not”

And then a sword burst through Linguang-jun’s chest. The look on his face was so satisfying, so full of disbelief and shock and terror, confusion and despair and that Shang Qinghua wanted to laugh, to do a victory dance as Linguang gurgled blood, red spilling down his throat in ironic echo of the outfit Shang Qinghua had worn not hours ago. But of course, Shang Qinghua had not actually drawn his sword.

Behind Mobei-jun’s uncle, on the other side of the bed holding the sword, was Luo Binghe, eyes blown wide, chest heaving, Xin Mo gripped in his hands like a last resort. Linguang-jun choked on his own blood and died without seeing him, but his scream as he died was not quiet.

“Go,” Shang Qinghua said to Binghe and not Holy Shit is that Xin Mo? Did you master Xin Mo? Did Shen Yuan figure out how to cleanse it in a week?

“He, what—what are you doing here?” Luo Binghe’s arms were shaking, but his fingers on Xin Mo were certain.

“He was plotting to usurp the throne. I had to take care of this,” Shang Qinghua said. “But the guards will be coming soon, and you need to get somewhere safe. I don’t know if you’ve mastered Xin Mo, but you can use it open a portal to your room. Get out of here.”

“We should both go!” Luo Binghe reached for him across the bed, but Shang Qinghua stepped back and shook his head. Luo Binghe’s eyes were still blown wide, and even if it wasn’t in fear, even if he wasn’t crying any longer, this was not task to bear.

 “He was clearly murdered,” Shang Qinghua said as gently as he could. “If we both leave, they’ll suspect the killer is someone who can teleport out. They’ll investigate Mobei-jun, and this will hurt his position with his father. Binghe,” Shang Qinghua gripped Luo Binghe’s wrist, sending spiritual energy into Luo Binghe’s core, trying to strength him. “You have to go. This isn’t your fight. I’m the adult here, leave this to me. I’ll think of something.”

“I figured out what I wanted,” Luo Binghe said—whispered, his expression quiet and small in the scant moonlight. “You said that was the only way to defeat Xin Mo, to drive my negative emotions, my insecurities, to a purpose. Shizun said the sword was poisonous, that demonic cultivation will poisons those who touch it—”

“Binghe—”

“I want to protect people!” Luo Binghe said, suddenly, still quietly but with the force of conviction that only a teenager could have. “I want to protect people like I wasn’t protected. And every time I feel alone or like Shizun never cared about, how no one cared about me, I—I remember that I don’t want anyone else to experience that.”

“That’s good,” Shang Qinghua said, because that was admirable. “Now get out of here, okay? I have to protect you first. I mean, I think technically I’m your dad now, we didn’t work that out exactly. But the point stands—you’re my responsibility, not the other way around.”

Luo Binghe nodded and with a look of fierce concentration, trembling hands and gritted teeth, he opened a shimmering gate and shoved Shang Qinghua hard through it.

“Wait!”

But Shang Qinghua was already back in Mobei-jun’s room, his shout stirring his husband from his sleep as the portal closed to the sounds of shouting guards.

“WAIT!” Shang Qinghua screamed, even though it was useless, even though Binghe couldn’t hear him.

[Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Good things must be said in threes! Mission Join the Mobei Clan had been accomplished.]

[+ 500 B-points]

[ +100 protagonist complexity]

[+500 Mobei-jun affection]

[User has received additional rewards as well for excellent completion of the missions!]

Shang Qinghua’s hand was still outstretched as Mobei-jun sat up in bed, looking at his husband on the floor, no doubt with questions. He blinked sleep from his eyes and Shang Qinghua could only think about how Mobei-jun was supposed to be asleep, how he wasn’t supposed to witness this, how the end of the Join the Mobei Clan mission meant the consequences for Shang Qinghua’s decisions had finally come.

[+1000 protagonist coolness points! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°]

[+50 Mobei-jun affection! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°]  

[+50 B points for connection Linguang-jun to Mobei-jun’s mother and completing his backstory]

[+500 B-points for increasing protagonist coolness level]

[+  ??? B-points for 17FMUUH—ERROR]

[Total B points:1500X%^(H—ERROR]

[Feature Unlocked: Co-operative mode! Would you like to purchase for 12000 B-points?]

[—EROR! ERROR! User 1 has interfered in the plot and with System 2. Soft reboot initiating]

“—inghua, Qinghua, what’s wrong?”

[3…]

“A-Ning, what happened?”

[2…]

“I’m sorry.” Shang Qinghua hadn’t wanted Mobei-jun to see it, at least. But at least Luo Binghe was safe. He had Xin Mo—

[1…]

He was going to be okay.

“A-Ning—!”

“I’m so sorry.”

[Reboot initiating, would you like to purchase Co-operative Mode?]

But everything had already gone black by then.

#

~Three Years Later~

Luo Binghe took a deep breath as he stood outside of his Shizun’s hut. After killing Linguang-jun and usurping his position as Interior Minister of the Left, Luo Binghe had set his sights on conquering the Southern Yak Clan for the Mobei Clan. And then Eastern Jin Clan, and the Western Fire State filled with fascists. One by one he had conquered and assimilated them under the banner of the Mobei Clan until he was practically the ruler of all the demon realms, with Sha Hualing as his right hand, and Wen Xulin as his left making sure whatever Luo Binghe was able to take, he was able to keep. And in that time, he had never found Tianlang-jun, the secret to curing him of Xin Mo that Shizun had alluded to all those years ago.

Three years.

Three years since he had seen his Shizun. Three years since he had taken on this burden and the ache in heart drove him to his knees. Three years since he had gone to the pharmacist to fill his prescription for anti-depressants and talked to his friends to build a support system.

And now he was here. Finally, ready to confront what had happened all those years ago.

Luo Binghe didn’t knock out of habit, striding into the kitchen and then the bedroom with unflinching purpose, announcing, “I have come to talk about the Abyss like reasonable adults!” But when he looked at the bedroom it was not Shen Qingqiu, his beloved Shizun, who was sleeping, nestled between the white and light green blankets underneath the lattice Binghe had painstakingly cleaned a thousand times. It was not Shizun who sat up, hair unbounded and sleep mussed, slight drool on his cheek and alarm in his eyes, hand reaching for a weapon.

 It was Liu Qingge.

“Shen Qingqiu!” Liu Qingge exclaimed. “Your—it’s Luo—your son! He’s back!” Luo Qingqiu called out to someone, leaping to his feet and for a moment the whispering of the sword crawled into Luo Binghe’s ear, Shen Qingqiu would never love Binge, he already had a lover, had already replaced Binghe in his heart. But if such a lover was destroyed—but the poisonous voice was drowned out by a larger, conscious part of his brain saying, son? Another dad? Two other dads? Shang Qinghua had told him once he was suffering from abundance and he could feel it now, certainly. Luo Qingge, Shizun’s lover, confused and half-asleep had not grabbed his sword or called for Shizun to run, instead, the person who might know Shizun the best, had thought Shen Qingqiu would be glad to see him.

He was back.

And if the feeling of familiar acceptance was bittersweet, it was a thousand times better than what he had prepared himself for.

Shizun, indeed, rushed into the room from outside the house, his hair askew, but his inner robes proper as if he had merely awoken to relieve himself and well, it was barely sun rise but Luo Binghe was always on time, had always been praised for his punctuality, so maybe it should have occurred to him that his Shizun would be asleep but maybe he had just wanted the upper hand. But now, seeing his master’s wide eyes and thin face, his long mouth parted in disbelief and his brows furrowed and his posture as straight and soft as he remembered, Luo Binghe forgot all about the upper hand.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe’s voice warbled.

“You must hate me,” Shizun said so softly Luo Binghe almost didn’t hear. But Luo Binghe only dropped his sword and threw himself as his shizun with reckless abandon as he started to cry. Mobei-jun said it as unbecoming of a demon lord, but Shang Qinghua always said that puppy dog eyes worked and it always work well for him, so why not?

“I could never hate you,” Luo Binghe mumbled into his shizun’s chest. “Do you—was it me? Was it my fault—?” He knew that it wasn’t—he had had lots of talks with Wen Xulin and Sha Hualing about it, but Sha Hualing said that asking if it was his fault would definitely make him look pathetic and if looking pathetic was the way to get someone to love you well—it was worth a shot.

“Of course not, Binghe. Of course not.” Shizun stroked his hair as he cried and maybe Luo Binghe didn’t get the chance to the say the reasonable speech that he had prepared with Shang Qinghua, but hey, it was still working right? And coming up with the speech, which had taken the better part of the last two weeks, was still something that had helped him figure out what he wanted.

Shizun continued to make soothing noises while Luo Binghe cried, and Liu Qingge put on clothes in the background. Wet spots landed on his shoulder, telling him his Shizun was crying, and a solider hand that could only belong to Liu-shishu pressed against his back, trying to steady him.

“I’m back,” Luo Binghe said through the snot and the tears, crying harder at the hitch in Shizun’s breath at his declaration. For an eternity or perhaps an hour he said nothing else, and then he pulled back and smiled. Because it didn’t matter if he was loved best but just that he was loved and there was no doubt that he was.

#

Present Day

[Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to Co-operative Mode!]

Shang Qinghua blinked awake, surprisingly. He was back in An Ding peak. Had this reboot—did it just reset time?

[System has taken it upon itself to purchase upgrade “Co-operative Mode” to save User 1 from dying! You’re Welcome!]

Wait, save?!

[Yes! Save! With Co-operative Mode missions, points and consequences can be shared between users! User 2 has entrusted an important—]

Wait! So he was alive? What day was it? Why was he here?

{User 2 has transferred B-points in order to--}

Who cared about the logistics! What had happened to Luo Binghe!?

“Ah, you’re awake,” Qiao Meimei, his head disciple, said. There were dark bags under her bloodshot eyes, but for An Ding peak, that wasn’t anything new.

“What happened, what day is it?” Shang Qinghua looked around the infirmary for answers, but it looked frustrating normal except for the diagram of sex flowers that had been tacked onto the back wall, written in Shen Qingqiu’s unmistakable calligraphy. There was no else in the other two beds, and his side table was absent from poultices and bottles of medicine, but there was a writing pad that looked to be marking his progress.

“It’s been a week after your wedding,” Qiao Meimei said, rapping her knuckles on the outer door as both Mobei-jun and Evil Fang came in. “Your husband was worried you were poisoned so he brought you to Mu Qingfang, but Mu-shibo said he didn’t know what was wrong with you. Apparently, there was some, uh, political stuff happening in the demon realm so Mobei-jun worked out a tentative truce with Cang Qiong and brought you back until you recovered. That one came to deliver your mail to some demon assistant?” Here Qiao Meimei jerked her thumb at Evil Fang who waved.

“Oh,” Shang Qinghua said.

“What happened?” Evil Fang asked, pleasantries done, pushing past Mobei-jun to Shang Qinghua’s side, her whiskers twitching. “Was it…” she dropped her voice, “a sex curse?”

“What! No!”

“Well it happened just after the two of you—” Evil Fang made a crude gesture and Shang Qinghua grabbed her hands to stop her.

“No! It happened well after that. It—Linguang-jun had a plan in the works to assassinate Mobei-jun, and he also was poisoning Mobei-jun’s father and killed his mom, so I went to confront him—”

“In the middle of the night?” Qiao Meimei asked.

“In the middle of your wedding?” Evil Fang gaped.

“By confronted you mean assassinate,” Mobei-jun said. Evil Fang and Qiao Meimei jumped but Shang Qinghua gave a weak chuckle.

“Haha, yeah. But he woke up as I was poisoning him. But uh—”

“But then Luo Binghe stabbed him,” Evil Fang supplied. “We know that part, the guards arrived after that.”

“He must have poisoned you then,” Qiao Meimei sighed, “during the confrontation. But you’re fine now, so.” She shrugged. On the one hand, it was understandable how tired she was on the other hand, Shang Qinghua missed Wen Xulin’s and Evil Fang’s enthusiasm.

“Is the peak good? Is there—is Luo Binghe okay?”

“Yes!” Evil Fang said, plopping down on a stool. “Luo Binghe is the Interior Minister of the Left now. He actually had some good ideas too. And An D—”

“We got by fine on our own before now,” Qiao Meimei said. “But it’s good to have you back. Now someone can finally tackle all the backlog of high clearance paperwork. I haven’t slept in four weeks, and I’ve only cracked half of it and if you excuse me, I am going to alert Mu Qingfang that you are all better and sleep for the next 24 hours.”

“You didn’t have to look after me yourself,” Shang Qinghua muttered but Qiao Meimei only scoffed with all the familiar tired energy of a millennial.

“Well, sorry, I thought you were just complaining about how your head disciples didn’t save you from being poisoned?” She huffed as Evil Fang turned to her and smiled.

“She’s very disrespectful,” Evil Fang said brightly. “I expected cultivators to be polite, but I like her!”                                                                                                                                        

Qiao Meimei only rolled her eyes and banned Evil Fang from the infirmary to great protests as Shang Qinghua tried to supress a smile. Teen antics felt good, comforting, after all the depressing sacrificing himself to save his son, watching teens squabble over who was his favourite was oddly comforting.

“Oh, and one last thing,” Qiao Meimei said as Evil Fang tried to dig her claws into the infirmary doorway to prevent herself from being thrown out. “Don’t try and fuck, Mu Qingfang said—”

“Okay!” Shang Qinghua said before she could finish. “Yes! Thank you!”

“Okay?” Qiao Meimei asked but Evil Fang was already explaining as Qiao Meimei used her superior cultivation to drag the demon accountant out of the room, leaving huge groove marks on the doorframe. For a moment, Shang Qinghua wasn’t sure what to do, whether he should ask the System to explain Co-operative Mode or whether he should laugh or cry now that he wasn’t dead. He had prepared to be dead! And yet!

And yet here he was, with his best friend who he had just married, and fucked, alive and well in his old peak, his two worlds collided in perfect harmony.

“So,” Mobei-jun said after a long moment. “I suppose you saved my life three times now.” He sat down on the edge of Shang Qinghua’s bed and took his hand, rubbing Shang Qinghua’s knuckles like one would a pray bead.

“Well, you brought me here, so that’s one for you.” Shang Qinghua smiled, struggling to sit a little further up in bed. Physically he was fine, better than fine with his husband’s hand holding his, but emotionally he felt like a leaking water balloon that had finally burst. Everything was untethered, his strength zapped, and yet he was so happy just to be exhausted. He felt—for the first time in a while Shang Qinghua really felt and there was no disconnect or barrier between his emotions.

“I didn’t do anything,” his husband said. His husband who he was married to, who he would get to stay married to. His husband who was wearing married braids in his hair. “Neither did the healer, he said you just needed rest and would recover on your own. The Northern Palace was just too dangerous to leave you vulnerable.”

“Ah, but you still brought me to a safe place,” Shang Qinghua said and reached out to stroke Mobei-jun’s cheek which felt weird to initiative but they were married, so it was fine, right? “Plus, you struck a deal with Cang Qiong? That’s a huge deal!” Mobei-jun smiled, not the small soft, too straight kind of silly smile, but the small, lopsided, I love you and your flattery and I won’t disagree but also I definitely think you’re overexaggerating smile and wasn’t that something? That Shang Qinghau could tell the difference between his ice prince’s smiles. Wasn’t it something that most people had never even seen one smile, but like a fine connoisseur Shang Qinghua could pick up on a million words unsaid with only the barest glimpse?

“I should let Luo Binghe know you’re all right.” Mobei-jun coughed, looking away, reminding Shang Qinghua that he could be awkward too when things were too direct and instead of being baffled by it Shang Qinghua only found it endearing.” He was very worried but as the new Interior Minister of the Left, he was too busy to leave his post unattended to stay by your side after the first day.”

“You could do that,” Shang Qinghua said, pressing the hand at Mobei-jun’s cheek into his jaw, turning his head back so they were face to face. It was such a nice face. The perfect face. Shang Qinghua kissed him gently, as chastely as they had done outside the ancestral hall and not anything like the disastrous first attempt to make love. “But then you’d have to leave.”

“I wouldn’t be long,” Mobei-jun said, but he seemed to pick up on Shang Qinghua’s meaning. Pressing another, careful, slow, precise kiss on his mouth. “But someone should stay with you during this time.”

“Evil Fang is a huge gossip, I’m sure she’d tell everyone I’m better. You don’t need to go yourself.”

“And you need time to recover, without excess visitors,” Mobei-jun mumbled into his mouth and Shang Qinghua had to try not to smile. And when was the last time he had felt so good? When was the last time that he had a break without fear of being murdered by someone or betrayed by someone or his own betrayal discovered? Luo Binghe was good! He had Xin Mo but he was happy. His demon accountants were flourishing, his An Ding peak disciples missed him (even if they wouldn’t admit it) and he had a husband who wouldn’t stop pressing their faces together. Somehow, incredibly, stupidly, Shang Qinghua had done it. He’d changed the story, rewrote his own ending, and brightened the lives of those around him. He entered Co-operative Mode, he’d gone from being the dreamer in a lucid dream to a team trying to lift up the world and the difference was exhilarating. The sweetest ambrosia, the deepest enlightenment, the strongest orgasm.

“Oh, I definitely need time to gather my wits,” Shang Qinghua said, opening his mouth a little wider as they kissed, tasting Mobei-jun’s cool, soup-flavoured spit. Contrary to Qiao Meimei’s warning, they were not going to fuck in the infirmary. His husband could teleport, and they had a multiple of rooms and a palace to do it in. But a little making out didn’t hurt, a little pressing his forehead into Mobei-jun’s and breathing out shakily and letting the excitement of marriage and being alive catch up with him—well, it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

“You could need hours to recover,” Mobei-jun said, adjusting his position so he was sitting further up, bring his free hand to rest at Shang Qinghua’s collarbone.

“Days even.”

“Weeks.”

Shang Qinghua laughed. “How crazy would it be if I said we should still pretend I’m sick and just go on vacation for a week, just the two of us, without the crazy politics.” Shang Qinghua didn’t think demons had a concept of a honeymoon at least. Vaguely he thought they were probably supposed to visit his family at one point, but that could wait. “We could get to know each other without all the—” Shang Qinghua gestured to everything. Mobei-jun smiled and this one was new, but Shang Qinghua could tell what it meant implicitly. I love you the smile said. Out loud, Mobei-jun hummed, the breath surprisingly warm and salty on Shang Qinghua’s face.

“I would have to settle some affairs, but yes. I would like that very much.” And then, somewhat awkwardly he bent down to kiss juncture between Shang Qinghua’s shoulder and his neck which was not very sexy because his hair tickled Shang Qinghua’s face but it was very cute and was therefore still careful and slow and precise and perfect.

“How long do you need,” his husband asked breathlessly. “Before we can go?”

“I’ve rested for days. We can go whenever you want, Jing-er,” Shang Qinghua said, the name feeling a little silly in his mouth. But then Mobei-jun was kissing that mouth and everything else seemed to fall away, no barrier between them.

“Whatever you say, A-Ning.”

THE END