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Chapter Text

As a child, his sister seemed incomprehensible to him.

His jiejie was considerably older than he was, so he did not notice how frail and small she really was, for him, a little demon thrown by their parents into her care — she was his whole family, his whole world; and, oh, his sister was clever. His jiejie was fussy, but gentler than all the demons he had met before and since, including their parents; she spoke with such speed, as if she were trying to outrun time, running from shadows, trying to give him as much as possible in the crumbs of time they had together; she laughed a lot, more than a demon should, more than an uncrowned princess of the Demon Realm should, more softly, caressingly or loudly, than cruelly and bloodthirstily. His jiejie was the one who gave him love (the notion of it, the opportunity to experience it) for people, for others, for something more than mere duty.

"Love is a choice", she whispers to him as he falls asleep in her tender arms, lulled to sleep by one of the thousands of unimaginable stories that lived in her head; later, he would think his sister should have written books like people.

His jiejie walks around in red and black, showing plenty of skin, which is rather inherent in southern lands that don't belong to them (he will take these lands for himself when he is older, for her; not that by then there would have been anyone who would have dared to look at his sister with anything less than respect). His jiejie wears many fine gold bracelets and earrings and hairpins, smiling at him every time he pulls on one of her silks, too enchanted by the way the light of the fire dances in her jewelry, she smiles down on him, always lifting him into her arms, never saying no. His jiejie raises him so spoiled that he might be ashamed if he were familiar with the feeling — not when she was ripped from his arms, not when a cage was closed around his sister's neck with their parents' pitch, not when his sister should be who they saw her as.

Their parents were too consumed by their prejudices and their arrogance; they told him that their blood should remain pure; they told him that his sister should be his wife, and he was too young to understand any of this.

Perhaps if it had been what his sister wanted, he would have agreed; but he also saw what the same marriage had done to their parents; they didn't want to be like them.

So later, decades later (what might have been three years for a man), his sister returns for him; she finds herself below him when he catches her, wounded, in bloody robes, smelling of death, sour decay, and a heavy premonition of the storm; she smiles at him as if she never left, placidly running her cold fingers along his cheek and wailing as he grew.

His jiejie killed their parents.

For herself, for him, for both of them.

It cost her a lot of strength, too much, their parents being two Heavenly Demons, he can't imagine how many tricks, cunning and years of planning it took for his sister to embody it. His sister also falls into a deep sleep, and all he can do as a good didi is to usurp power and kill every dissenter who dares challenge it because of his age. (If this were a human world, he'd be fourteen, too young for something like that, and his defenseless sister might be twenty-eight, old enough to be Empress, but too soft-hearted for all those bastards whose heads he put on spires like garden decor.)

Time passed mercilessly, years flowed into decades, his jiejie quietly slept, untouched and unfading, paler than he had ever seen her (he had always been fascinated by her unevenly tanned skin, so unbecoming of any demon of royal blood); he received a new name, Tianlang-jun, when he captured more of the South and forced the North to bow, and his sister was not there when this happened.

Tianlang-jun also understood why his jie was always called Xiao Huo (he did not understand this, being a child for whom his older sister was the most important and the greatest being in his eyes), because she was indeed a tiny woman, but full of energy with a mischievous glint in her red eyes.

She returned to him as she always does, suddenly and without informing anyone, climbing out of bed, slipping out the door in weak and small steps to frighten some servant half to death, asking: where is her didi, and threatening not to divulge to the whole palace that she is awake. His sister simply comes in during a military meeting with the few of his generals he trusts, listening to them half-heartedly to say:

"If I haven't slept through the changing landscape of the Gu Mountains, you'll lead everyone into a trap in the underground swamps".

Did he say that his jiejie was infinitely extraordinary?

Well, he'll say it again.

Hupo-lang was the temporary head of a small serpent tribe while his brother was doing whatever-he-didn't-do-it, hidden by the thousands of seals of their ancestors, were invaded.

He expected the worst: detection, invasion, assassination, war and slaughter (his san-ge always said he was overdramatic, and er-jie crestfallen that he wished for invasion because their gated community was unbearably boring) — he hadn't expected a miniature woman in the dust, with leaves and branches stuck in her frizzy, curly and parched hair, who also violently stepped on her heel and broke one of the ancient seals from the strongest demons, as if it were nothing.

The woman raises her red eyes at him, they light up with something between childlike glee and admiration as she is beside him faster than he can see, her scarlet Heavenly Demon mark burning, and he can feel the power behind it, Hupo-lang preparing for his death without the possibility of battle, to be honest.

He is looked down upon, pressing his hand against her soft chest, and before his mind can process the moment, he hears:

"I adore snakes", sounds like a confession, the most outrageous he's ever heard, "and I've been looking for you for so long!" she jumps up, and his hand is between... between... his mind refuses to work. This shameless woman's face appears unbearably close that he can see his own reflection in her dilated pupils. "Please tell me, do you have unmarried men? Or women? I don't care, I just want to have a hot night before my possessive didi finds me!"

Hupo-lang should have said 'yes, we have unmarried and unmarried demons in the community', or 'please leave our territory and forget your way here', or 'come out and go in through the main entrance with all the procedures', but instead he was able to speak, snapping into the childish hiss that he should have grown out of:

"I'm not bus-s-s-sy?"

Hupo-lang can't understand why it sounded like a question, but the next thing he knew — his sisters were organizing his wedding.

His first memory was not of his father or mother, but of his jiujiu holding him in one hand while the other crushed the skull of a too foolish or desperate mercenary sent by the East to cause them trouble and grief, displeasing the rule of the Demon Realm Emperor. Of course, he knew nothing of this at the time; he knew only that the man with the red eyes and soft hair was his uncle, and that he protected and loved him by default. It was as if his uncle had always been there to take care of him.

Back then A-Zhu didn't know about his parents, who didn't remain in his memory, but he knew his jiujiu, and that was enough for him.

And his jiujiu loved his mother so comprehensively and deeply that A-Zhu could only love her as well, knowing nothing about her except the stories of his jiujiu, which he himself considered mundane. A-Zhu agreed with his uncle, though he had never truly understood this devotion to a woman who had appeared decades before only to give his uncle — his son, and had also dissolved into his travels. A-Zhu knew that his mother was free spirit, according to his jiujiu; a soul that should not be chained (and then his uncle's eyes become distant, seeing only something that only he can); he also knows that his father follows his mother, unable to leave her, whatever that means, but his Juju looks unhappy whenever he talks about it.

A-Zhu meets his mother when he is fifty-seven, and jiujiu has only hired trusted and proven teachers to teach him how to write.

His mother is small compared to his jiujiu, she has a frail build and scandalously short hair that barely covers her neck but is as airy as his jiujiu, she also has red eyes and a red mark on her forehead, she has exposed skin from her shoulders to her feet, with tissues in the slits on her legs, with tan stripes here and there, looking like an absolute stranger, with ugly scars around her neck wrapped like a hoop, but that is not what fascinates him in the first place.

It was laugh.

Loud, raunchy and sincere.

Not like the laughter of the women he had seen, more like the girls his age he had met in the Sha clan when his jiujiu took him with him.

Behind his mother stands a man who can't take his eyes off her, with golden eyes and green scales on his skin just like his own — A-Zhu realizes that it's his father. His mother smiles, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, and A-Zhu notices that his jiujiu can't take her eyes off either. But that's okay, A-Zhu also doesn't think he's capable of looking at anything but his mother at this moment.

But then his mother notices him, her eyes light up, and before he can greet her, he is already in the air, stretched toward the sky, toward the sun, in her arms, and her wide smile is presented to him, and there is even more tenderness in her eyes than his jiujiu, which A-Zhu did not think possible.

"My treasure has grown so!" she says, as if she had never left, and A-Zhu is pressed against her chest, warm and soft; so similar and dissimilar to jiujiu, it's just ridiculous. His fussy mother's hand is in his smooth hair, the same as his father's than the other two Heavenly Demons; his mother's voice sinks into his ears as he watches the gold earrings sway lazily; his mother's love penetrates him as easily as if he had known her all his life, and he feels a strange alien sneer as he notices the envious looks of his father and his uncle.

It seems to her that this is not her place.

It seems to her she knows everything and knows nothing.

It seems to her that the world belongs to her and that she shouldn't be here.

It seems to her she has taken someone else's place, that she is not who she is supposed to be, that she is impersonating someone else.

It seems to her that her name doesn't belong to her, that she should be different, that she shouldn't act the way she wants, that she has a role and tasks to fulfill.

It seems to her that the demons she knows, her family, her beloved men, must exist without her; so she runs away: from her adoring brother, from her beloved son, from her devoted husband.

It seems to her she must run-run-run, looking for someone, looking for something she sees in the names of rivers and mountains and the world of men; she runs and falls and falls and falls; she hides from herself and her thoughts, never feeling the freedom she craves; she finds the sword, dark and alluring — familiar one when her husband, always so desperately in love with her for some unknown reason, catches up with her; and the sword takes it from her.

When she dies, at the hands of her husband, from the sword that clouded his mind, she asks not to blame him, though she knows her heartbroken husband cannot keep that promise, then, almost in the dark, knowing almost nothing except that Xin Mo (how does she know that name?) is absorbing her powers, she suddenly realizes that she has never been a whole person.

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————— Ctrl+C Ctrl+V —————

When Luo Binghe first met his Shang-shishu, he thought he was strange.

There was something about him.

And that something scratched his skull from the inside, always telling him something and not specifying anything; there was something in the nervousness, the hurriedness, the nervous laughter and the endless fatigue; there was something that slid through the years as his shizun became kinder, and with it, life became more pleasant, and Luo Binghe brushed it aside with the skills he had learned on the streets. He could not admit that there was something that attracted him to Shang-shishu: in the weakest, most inconspicuous, quietest of all the lords of the peaks, but there was... something that made Luo Binghe's head turn away even from his delightful shizun to catch the figure of his shishu with his gaze.

Meng Mo, being rather useless on the subject, vaguely said that if his shishu were a demon, it would be a desire for his blood — longing that was never his, but still exists with those with whom he can share blood. (Which also didn't make sense, since all known Heavenly Demons are dead, and his shishu is definitely human.) So Luo Binghe ignores it, even as he gets the stray thought out of nowhere that his shishu would do well in gold as he catches the unsolicited tan lines on his neck.

Luo Binghe rejects all this, believing that if he has some bored Heavenly Demon in his family just for his shishu, then let him come and get it, damn it.

Zhuzhi-lang, turned into an ugly snake and stuck with no way to get his jiujiu out from under the thrice-cursed mountain, thinks he is going mad when he hears the familiar nervous laughter.

That laughter is inappropriate, full of panic, and belongs definitely to a man, but Zhuzhi-lang can't stop himself from reaching out to meet it.

There are three cultivators in the cave, two men in yellow and one in green; they are all perfectionists — and therefore enemies; so he lurks in the dark, listening to their conversations and watching their every move.

One of the Huan Hua Palace men, and only pure willpower prevents him from throwing himself on someone else's back and biting his neck; the other two wear the same Cang Qiong mark in the embroidery on their belts, more distinct and commanding, so the two lords of spades; the odds are not entirely in his favor, to be honest (he hates the fact that his Heavenly Demon blood has been sealed, leaving only his father's legacy and utter helplessness; jiujiu has never blamed him for this, and it only increases his guilt more).

Zhuzhi-lang was an experienced warrior, a spy, and a general of his junshang, but he cannot help but be distracted by the Lord of the Peak Tsang Qiong in yellow, who talks more and faster than all three of them combined, who waves his arms and changes his facial expressions with enviable speed, who has no shame in pleading in humiliation or asking him to leave and leave this matter in the experienced hands of the other two (for a moment he thinks he hears his mother sulking at his jiujiu, asking him to cancel the escort for an easy walk, belittling herself as if she were a maid rather than the Emperor's sister, knowing that his uncle would break like a dry twig if she ended up on the floor).

Then he realizes that people want what he wants, then he attacks people, then they decide to spare him at the mercy of the man in green hiding behind the fan; people leave, but the man in yellow — Shang-shidi, as Master Shen called him — stays for a while, looking at him... looking... he looks at him like...

It looks so much like his mother that Zhuzhi-lang is afraid to move.

The man smiles at him, and the yellow robes remind him of gold as the man takes a seat in front of him, reaching out to him but stopping, as if remembering something.

"I'm sorry", he smiled again, quick, apologetic, coming in like the wind in the heat, "I just really like snakes, and I just... never mind! Sorry, that's stupid, and extremely rude of me, sorry", Zhuzhi-lang remembers how much his mother used to apologize to all the strangers she met when she felt uncomfortable; he remembers how jiujiu looked at those poor ambassadors that the poor people almost passed out from junshang's pressure; "I shouldn't even be here, or stay with you and talk, but you just are so..." the man's eyes light up with something frightening, so-so familiar, just like his mother's when she was brought luscious snacks from the human world, just like his jiujiu's when he found the new nightmarish yellow book, "...magnificent".

The man finishes on an exhale, barely audible, and Zhuzhi-lang is glad for the first time that his jiujiu isn't around — he feels his uncle couldn't handle it; Zhuzhi-lang doesn't even think he can handle it himself; he's still afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to blink.

"Sorry-sorry, that came out too weird, huh?" the man waves his hands again and nearly falls backwards, so he straightens awkwardly; another awkward smile, a little longer, and Zhuzhi-lang thinks he might make some horrifying sound on the verge of a sob if this man just keeps. "Anyway, it's none of my business, and I can't explain, but, like, gods!" the man quickly leans toward him, saying as quietly as he can, "just know that these plants are no good for Heavenly Demons, you'll have to bathe them in the Divine Waters at the very edge of the South in the Demon Realm if you want that to work", and then the man runs away with incredible agility and speed.

Zhuzhi-lang stays where he is, not moving, still not breathing, until his snake body aches.

He thinks he has found something more than he ever hoped for.

Honestly, Tianlang-jun is full of very and very many feelings.

Above all — hatred. His desire for revenge, fueled by betrayal, is so deep that no amount of years could erase it. Second, he might call — disappointment. Extremely broad and voluminous, any sympathy he might have felt for people was overshadowed by the strength with which he was despised simply by his existence (the jiejie would be saddened by his thoughts, for she had originally given him a reason to love people). But even underneath all of his feelings there is a bit of unease. For his family, and for them alone, for his nephew, the only one he has left.

Zhuzhi-lang comes with body for him, a story about a few self-improvements, but most of all, the crazy idea that jiejie is back. Tianlang-jun does not laugh, only because he is frightened by Zhuzhi-lang's confidence, with eyes as bright as his sister's, albeit the color of this-male, and with timid, so faint-faint, smile. He does not think his nephew realizes that he smiled for the first time in century, without exaggeration.

It had been one hundred and ninety-eight years since his sister's death.

Tianlang-jun would never deceive himself with such a thing as hope, but his nephew, his A-Zhu, might have fallen for some sect bastard, just as his sister loved to trust people, just as he himself had fallen in love with a human woman.

"Don't worry, A-Zhu," he can't remember the last time he called him that, judging by the way his nephew blinks perplexedly; he shows a little more tenderness, mimicking his jiejie, wrapping his new clean hands around someone else's gaunt cheeks; he tries to smile, but it is nowhere near as soft as he would like, "I will take care of it all".

He's had enough, he'll personally tear apart the man who dared to cheat his only family.

It's strange, but sometimes, very-very rarely and barely admitting it to himself, he feels like he must be somewhere.

In the beginning he thought this place should be his world; then he thought this place should be his role as Shang Qinghua, the traitor and bastard he had created with his own hands; then he thought this place should be the Northern Demon Realm — he was wrong. Nothing inside him responded to this strange aching feeling of emptiness. It was as if he'd forgotten something important, but he wouldn't remember it until it crashed into him, as it always did.

Later, also through years, sweat, blood, and sleepless nights with papers, he met his protagonist, his mental son, Luo Binghe: his hair was curlier than he thought, and his eyes were so far black, not red, not to mention the lack of a mark on his forehead, and his face was definitely something to look at, even if the child was only thirteen when they first crossed paths.

And then Shang Qinghua thought that that feeling of emptiness required not a place, but someone.

Again, Shang Qinghua could not imagine who it might be about, so with the professionalism of a millennial, he ignored it until his problem hit him in the face.

And fate loves him so much that he doesn't forget his mistakes after a few more years.

Surely you can't blame him that this punch in the face was a whole, living and frozen like a statue, former Demon Emperor in his sect, in his house, in his room? Shang Qinghua almost gave his soul to System right then and there, the papers in his hands flying in all directions when he just spotted this outrageously-unequally-handsome man, dammit, Luo Binghe got the best of both parents, didn't he? His heart raced as he searched for some words, biting his tongue at the System notice that almost took his life in earnest:

[Synchronization...]

Shang Qinghua ignored it, despite the many profanities in his head, because, ah, did he say there was Heavenly Demon in his room? No? Well, he'll say it again!

"H-Hello", his stuttering doesn't help matters at all, but, gods, hey, he's not ready for this, he can't even summon his king, because as much as he loves Mobei-jun, he knows that Tianlang-jun is an entirely different level of boss (he doesn't think even Luo Binghe can handle him, so he didn't introduce such a monster into the plot), "y-you're doing okay? Not that we've met or anything, just, uh, glad to see you're okay. I know you, yeah, who wouldn't? Only ignorant idiots would not know the Demon Emperor's past— I mean, I don't mean that there's been a new one over the years, the political arena in the Demon Realm is such a hellboat that no one wants that crown for nothing, not that I, a human, could know anything about demon culture, it's just different rumors reaching even us and—"

[Synchronization 13%...]

Shang Qinghua talks and talks and talks, and no one stops him; Tianlang-jun stands in all his mighty splendor at his window, leaning against the window sill, not once moving or even blinking — which only makes him more nervous, his palms sweating, he smiles automatically and also reflexively presses that awkward smile. Shang Qinghua takes a breath, breathing too loudly for his ears, and the demon doesn't even budge; he lets out some undignified chuckle, even his king is easier to read than Tianlang-jun (he can't remember writing him so inexpressive; on the contrary, this man must be unbearably lively and energetic; does being under a mountain change his personality so much?). Shang Qinghua takes a few more irregular breaths, examining his intruder and possible executioner, the kinship with Luo Binghe strikingly obvious, but if he looks closely, he notices a sharper jaw line, higher cheekbones, more intense red eyes.

Eyes that don't take their eyes off him.

[Synchronization 34%...]

"Are you..." and Shang Qinghua forces himself to dryly swallow, "...okay?"

And he gets question for question.

"How old are you", it doesn't even sound like a question, more like a demand, more like a statement in the space between them. Shang Qinghua stumbles mentally, tilting his head to the side and holding back the impulse to ruffle his hair nervously, especially when those red eyes follow his caught movement. And he has abruptly forgotten his age.

Shang Qinghua desperately tries to remember how old he is in this world.

[Synchronization 56%...]

"Um, well... sixty-two?" he's not sure, because he stopped counting when his job increased exponentially a couple of decades ago.

His answer for some reason does not please the past (current?) Demon Emperor, if Shang Qinghua is brave enough, he would say that it upsets the man.

[Synchronization 68%...]

"I could have done it much earlier", and it sounds like a snarl, angry and mournful, heavy and strained.

[Synchronization 73%...]

He doesn't have to ask, but he takes his chances nonetheless.

[Synchronization 81%...]

"Do — what?"

[Synchronization 88%...]

Shang Qinghua takes a step back when, in less than a fraction of an instant, Tianlang-jun is in front of him.

[Synchronization 92%...]

"Take you home, of course", pronounces Tianlang-jun, as if it were natural, as if it were the most normal thing that happens in the universe, as if there were not a speck of madness here.

[Synchronization 98%...]

Shang Qinghua feels someone else's and hot hands on his shoulders as he is pulled closer, into an embrace — it smells like medicinal herbs, paper and ashes.

Oh, right.

[Synchronization complete].

That's what his didi always smelled like.

————— Ctrl+C Ctrl+V —————

Shang Qinghua sleeps and dreams.

In these dreams there are beautiful men: which is nothing unusual, all the men of his world are extraordinarily beautiful; but these men are different; they are close to him, even if he does not understand why.

At first it is boy, even boyish child, with an energy that knows no sunset, with a laugh that knows no silence, with timid hands that tug at his clothes, asking for attention with the feeling of a small child, and with red eyes that he knows, that he has known forever, that he has given to another person. This boy grows into a young man, no less adorable, tall and with terror written on his face as he falls, and the young man catches him with trembling hands; Shang Qinghua does not want to see the fear of this child, whose cheeks have not yet shed the softness of childhood; he touches another's face, barely-barely, his blood disfiguring the face he loves, he wants to apologize for it, but darkness creeps up on him and whispers graces him to rest, so he only notes: you have grown so. The next time, the young man has gone from being a boy to a man with a majestic jaw line and a heavy gaze; formidable, regal and lonely — Shang Qinghua wants to embrace this man.

And he embraced, and was not let go for so long that the sun came and went twice, and the man wept and wept, as if he were not the dangerous Emperor of the Demon Realm without pity and mercy, in his thin and white hands.

Then another man comes in his dreams, without the leads of his childhood and youth, though Shang Qinghua suspected that the third man of his dreams might be him. This man has amber-yellow eyes and green-colored scales instead of skin; this man — is everything and more than Shang Qinghua could have hoped to find. This man is impassive in face, but extremely expressive in the emotions that seep through his eyes; Shang Qinghua does not think he is describing such a character, but he already loves him because he is committed with even more vividness than the first man. Shang Qinghua doesn't think he deserves such an unquestioning following (worship, — if he doesn't lie to himself), but this man with the snakeskin whispers to him about how wonderful he himself is for some reason, and Shang Qinghua feels his ears burning. (Then the first man appears to stand between them, taking him along the wide, high-ceilinged corridors and drawing him into a conversation about personnel management, and Shang Qinghua takes the bait, rolling up his sleeves, exposing more of his irregularly tanned skin and forcing some poor guy with scrolls to stumble, and disappearing to do his job).

And last there is the boy. A boy with the first man's delightful cheeks and the second man's enchanting eyes; a boy with a timid smile and humble actions; a boy he would put in the place of the sun, displaced for lack of use. Shan Qinghua can't help but love this child, as if he was written to love him.

And Shang Qinghua cannot help but love all of them, and this love is so different from anything he has felt before; it is even more intense than his feeling for this world, created by his hands; even more profound than for his king.

To each of these men he must know.

Shang Qinghua thinks he owes it to himself to know them: the boy-young-man with scarlet eyes and curly hair, the man with skin in scales and hissing snake laughter, the boy who has absorbed the best of the first two.

His heart breaks with longing for them.

His mind burns, trying to remember their names before he wakes up.

His mark forehead is tormented by a sharp pain, his breathing is labored, his weak legs fail to hold as he falls through sleep.

The dreams begin and do not end.

He — is writer with bones bulging with malnutrition and red-dyed hair, with dry skin and lips cracking with dehydration, with an emptiness within himself and the aimlessness of his life as he creates a world of black characters on a white screen.

He — is demon with feminine proportions and super strength, with a scarlet mark in the middle of his forehead and the same eyes, with walls around him, a gilded cage, and parents even crappier than he already experienced.

He — is cultivator, the lord of the peak Cang Qiong sect, with a weak heart, with no choice in his life, with eternal doom over his head, with the memory of his life as a writer and the pain with tears of sorrow for a life he did not live.

Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky; Xiao Huo; Shang Qinghua.

He — is all three.

And he feels like his head is going to split into a million pieces as he keeps falling.

Until he is caught.

He opens his eyes, smeared with red, viscous and sticky, as nausea clings to him with the claws of death, and the boy, young man, man his didi looks at him, just as frightened, maybe even more terrified than he was then, centuries ago.

This time he can't raise his hand, but he smiles, and, gods, her his didi has grown again? His face is not as flawless as he remembers, but still perfect. His little brother has always been perfect, such an objective opinion doesn't change years later.

Shang Qinghua wants to make fun of this, his didi, his precious little treasure — is Tianlang-jun, the father of his main character, his son? Shang Qinghua feels the coldness of his king's seal on his side, he hears it crack in his brother's hands because he could not restrain a shudder from the ice, even through his clothes; oh, his king will be so angry with him for this (he remembers how his king threw it to him, nearly ripping his eye socket open, when he reported that this seal would tell his king if he were dying). Shang Qinghua is very sparingly aware that his didi tells him something when he tastes blood on his tongue; he thinks of how it has come to this, and recalls Zhuzhi-lang, the serpent demon he wrote of his unspoken love of serpents as a child, of his son.

And, gods, his son grew up to be so outstanding.

This is something that strikes his pride above all else.

"A-Zhu is so big already..." he notices at the last moment, glowing with joy as consciousness slips away from him and his didi looks so confused and desperate that he wants to wake up immediately.

But he can't.

Lord Peak An Ding, Shang Qinghua, was taken from under his nose.

More precisely: kidnapped.

It was so ugly brazen and disturbing that it didn't even make sense. Liu Qingge noticed it first with an accident where he wanted to bring Shang Qinghua to spar (more training), masking his desire to get his shixiong out of the stuffy office into the fresh air before he finally soaked himself there. He smelled it faster than he saw it — smell of blood.

Liu Qingge began to move faster when he heard someone else's voice and felt the demonic qi.

"—you can't leave me, not now—" if he had been more attentive, he could have recognized the notes of panic in his voice; instead, all Liu Qingge could feel was rage.

He broke down the front door of his shixiong's house, even though he had promised not to do it again, only to freeze for a second. He knows him; he knows this demon; he saw him two decades ago in a battle for which he still does not think he would have been an equal, a battle that took all four sects and involved so many dead.

Tianlang-jun, the demon that has caused nightmares for hundreds of spellcasters, the same monster that holds his shixiong and... smears his blood all over his shixiong's face. Liu Qingge freezes for the most embarrassing second of his life, which costs him the demon notices him, intercepts Shang Qinghua so quickly that he barely has time to draw his sword to rush after them.

Everything else — is screams, chases, a few explosions, some carnage, a lot of black frustration, and realizing that his shixiong is unconscious in the middle of it.

Liu Qingge, the god of war from Bai Zhan Peak was not enough to catch the Demon Emperor returning from oblivion; zhangmen-shixiong is not reported quickly enough to appear before the Heavenly Demon is gone and lost; Shen-shixiong is too, looking something in between incomprehension, indignation, and fear.

(Maybe if he looked back in his memories, he would notice the tenderness in the way his shixiong the demon pressed against his own chest, instead of leaving at least one hand free; maybe he would notice the growl from the demon, deep and primal, fierce and protective; maybe he would notice that the demon sought to hide from them, not to sow destruction.)

The Peak Lord's disappearance and the notification of Tianlang-jun's rebirth are also not something they can or have the right to hide from the other sects.

In any case, Liu Qingge sets out on a long trail, barely staying so that Mu-shidi can stitch up his flogged useless body and Shen-shixiong can ask too many questions.

The Peerless Cucumber, aka Shen Yuan, aka Shen Qingqiu, was far from well.

He was terrified.

For starters, his only (however unfortunate) friend has been kidnapped by a demon, the System knows for what purpose (knows and is suspiciously silent when he squints in her direction). Moreover, as he learned at the hastily assembled meeting of the Peak Lords in Mu Qingfang's infirmary, he was abducted by Heavenly Demon that had apparently been sealed about twenty years ago. Just how old was Luo Binghe; Shen Yuan might have appreciated the intriguing plot progression of the protagonist's backstory, if not for the fact that this is now his life. And, what-what, zhangmen-shixiong, did I hear correctly? You mean to tell me that at the same time Tianlang-jun kidnapped, allegedly abused, and did, gods know what to another cultist from another equally important sect who was not the last? You can say that again, because this shidi's rich imagination for catastrophes has yet to taste out of its comatose state. Ah, that woman, as described by Qi-shimei, looks one and the same as my precious apprentice, thank you, everyone. Now this master is in a fucking panic, thank you.

Shen Qingqiu stares fiercely at the System, which does nothing useful except hangs an empty loading wheel window, and he mentally writes her the worst review in the book of complaints — oddly enough, his way of de-stressing this time does not help.

Not the tea, not the Mu-shidi infusions, not the days of planning that followed, when Liu-shidi, being foolish and noble, rushed forward like a bloodhound.

Shen Qingqiu had broken about five fans in those three days alone, not knowing what awaited him next, not even knowing how the plot would go.

Suddenly, Shen Qingqiu realized that he was alone again.

And when he looked around, he found neither Luo Binghe nor Shang Qinghua in his house, where he had seen them often enough to stop imagining the bamboo walls without them.

And if he knew his apprentice was coming for his life, Shang Qinghua.. Airplane might have been gone forever.

(It seems to him that the last thing he talked to him about was what crappy names and names he gave the plants.

This is neither comforting nor satisfying.)

The chaos that followed the theft of their shizun (and it was theft, you can never change their minds) at An Ding's peak was more static and controlled than many thought.

For one thing, their peak was the only one with three official head students to divide their duties and not make any one person carry an impossible mountain; second, as the students themselves discovered... they were ready.

It took them a week from the time of the theft to realize that their shizun had prepared them. Taught them everything they needed to know, told them things they shouldn't have said until one of them would be Lord of the Peak, showed them secrets they probably weren't supposed to see. But their shizun was always ahead of time, knowing the future ahead of time without ever admitting it.

All the inner disciples at An Ding Peak knew or suspected that their shizun had either a gift or a curse; the way he knew things no one else knew; the way he predicted events with too much accuracy; the way he looked at you like he knew what was in your head.

Their shizun was frightening in its omniscience, if they would be frank. But he also never used it for evil. Their shizun was too often in the right place at the right time to resolve disputes, conflicts, and problems before they began, drawing them into conversations with the grace of a theater actor, knowing all your interests and antipathies; their shizun instituted so many safety techniques, including annual inspections on Qian Cao, and there was no medicine that their shizun could not get, no matter how rare or even mythical it was.

Their shizun was too expensive to even realize it, loving to overreact, therefore teaching their main students everything so that they could function without it for years, if not decades.

It didn't matter to An Ding's disciples, because their worst fear came true: their enemy found gold in their sect, and took it away, nearly destroying the entire work mechanism — but they keep working, because their shizun would be upset if all his work collapsed when he turned away.

So An Ding's disciples cry, wipe away their tears, and go on working, knowing that the shizun would be proud of them, that they try to remain steadfast.

But, unlike their all-forgiving shizun, they are angry.

Have you heard?

They say that the Demon Emperor, Tianlang-jun returned from the grave to take revenge on the righteous cultivators.

They say he took one of the peak lords of the Cang Qiong sect because they can barely function without him.

They say the demon brutally tortured and killed him.

They say he was taken hostage, for useful information.

They say that the Demon Emperor fell in love with a man at first sight.

Have you heard?

It seems that their Emperor has returned and brought Xiao Huo, his uncrowned Empress.

It seems that the people want to take their lord's heart again.

It seems a war is beginning.

Have you heard?

Snowstorms are raging in the North.

Chapter Text

He had no real name when he first heard of the man: more an image than truly having an outline or figure.

His owners began to speak more often of a premonition of doom.

They spoke of a boy who, if you picked up with the rest of them, would meet your end. They heard of the ashes that remained, and the unrecognizable corpses, without a hint of the goods. They whispered that you won't know your end until the monster (retribution, — the older boys beside him laughed caustically) comes for you.

No one gave this creature a name, because then it would become more real; names have power, he knows, all demons know that.

He didn't believe it, but he saw other people's fear, hardly feeling anything himself but emptiness and a dark, poisonous grief that didn't belong to him. He was born with it, and he would die with it, not knowing why he felt the way he did. He was ready for it.

But then everything really burns.

And a man comes, not a boy, with a sword in blood for their owners and gentle hands for them. The man picks them up and carries them away from the smoke, grumbling something about brats and plans, sighing heavily but not at them. This man's name is Nai Anxin, he is a healer of some powerful sect, he has expensive pink cloths stained with dried blood, and blue-sky eyes (the clearest he has ever seen) as he tells them he will give them a home.

Nai Anxin hides them in his sect, in his peak, in his house; he clothes them, feeds them, and never gives them orders; he treats them, he is kind to them, and he gives them names.

"Your name will be Mu Fang", the man he will call shizun tells him with a soft smile, and whom he will never be able to repay.

His shizun teaches him longer than other children.

His shizun teaches him to reveal himself, his thoughts, his emotions, his heart, his desires. Mu Fang knew that he was different from others, always realizing this on the same deep level, where there is 'talent' in his self-improvement; where there is his irresistible urge to buy women's gold jewelry in the ways between cities after errands when he has no one to give it to; where he finds little snakes all over Qian Cao's bushes and lets them live in their robes in the unfriendly winters when they are so lonely. And he realizes that his shizun also notices his difference from others.

But they don't chase him away like a freak, just help him accept other people. It's hard, he feels like he doesn't have to get out of the thick, rotten black shell he wrapped himself in. He doesn't deserve it.

But his shizun is a healer, and he helps him, although Mu Fang himself does not know what is wrong with him, it seems that Nai Anxin has an idea, but cannot confirm it, so he does not voice it.

Mu Fang learns to live among people ungrown like things, and it is an unusual experience where he discovers that he can really be a healer like his shizun, not an herbalist or researcher like everyone else in his slave group.

Mu Fang works, staying up nights, learning to read, to write, so that he can then learn three times as much.

Mu Fang doesn't stop until shizun orders him to stop, snatching medical reference books out of his hands, grumbling something about stubborn, paperwork and unappreciative older children.

And Mu Fang thinks, even though there is no reason for such a thing, he thinks treatment is something he can do to repay the past, which he does not know, but which has not let go of him.

Shizun never hid it from them, the seven surviving slaves he gave a roof over, but he didn't find them. Shizun would never lie to them, it was just that no one ever asked him why he helped them, why he set them free, and why he didn't turn away like hundreds of people before him. Shizun could only chuckle a little at the questions of the oldest of them: the three who wondered, and the three who came from a sense of community, like Mu Fang himself, when more than a decade had passed:

"You may not know it, but your shixiong can be extremely humble", Nai Anxin answers them, giving no clue who he is talking about; this 'shixiong' might as well be from any other peak; "later, when it is time for me to ascend with my brothers and sisters, you will understand. This restless brat has too much heart to ignore", their shizun doesn't swear and never insults anyone, except that unknown figure he keeps mentioning and looking like he, the immortal cultivator, has a migraine flare-up.

Their shizun sighs at his shisun's questions and disgruntled glances; Nai Anxin looks through everyone and smiles at him:

"A-Fang, will you bring more tea for this old master?" Mu Fang rises, always ready to oblige, unable to repay all the kindness and care he has received.

Even if their shizun had an ulterior motive for saving them, he still came for them and gave them home.

Frankly, he doesn't care who exactly came to help save the unwanted weak slaves who can't be sold to a brothel because they're not pretty enough — his shizun is the one who raised him.

It just means that when the time comes, he will have to help that mysterious shixiong who has a tendency to get into big trouble, judging by the way shizun almost hit his forehead on the table when he brought it up — Mu Fang was just in time to put his palm up.

It couldn't have been that bad, could it?

Then he already has the name Mu Qingfang, and he meets his siblings in the sect, the other main disciples. This is roughly their sixth meeting, where they must get to know each other and learn to get along, even though Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge seem to be trying to kill each other with looks, and Yue Qingyuan is unwittingly making things worse. Mu Qingfang feels compelled to intervene before someone's blood is spilled (presumably their future cult leader, judging by the harshness of Shen Qingqiu's words), when the doors open abruptly, slamming against the wall with such force that it shakes the stone. Which wouldn't be at all surprising if it weren't for the fact that these doors are weighted so that only a sufficiently advanced cultivator could open them with his qi; and the fact that there are few who could interfere with the 'conversation' of the main disciples except the peak lords.

Then Fu Andang, their sect leader, enters, looking politely apologetic and endlessly tired, just like his shizun when he speaks of his mysterious benefactor-shixiong.

"I apologize to all the shizhi and Qingyuan, this lord did not mean to disturb you", Yue Qingyuan almost stands up as they all do, but the man not too formal gestures asks them to stay in their seats, "this lord only wanted to make sure that Shang-shizhi does not get lost on his way to you again", just then Mu Qingfan notices a short young man behind the man; a young man who is not so much hiding behind Fu Andang's back as he is using him as a wall to write something on papers.

"I was not lost, zhangmen-shibo, you know very well about it, we walked together from the lords' meeting", a hollow voice sounds, and Mu Qingfang sees Liu-shixiong choking on air from the lack of respect in speech when speaking to their sect leader, "inventory won't do itself, but to catch Mei-shigu so she doesn't disappear while Nai-shishu asks me for more supplies, because Bai Zhan's disciples broke bones somewhere again when I kindly ask shigu for the reports that were due four months ago, last quarter, so I can know that I can trust our new meat purveyors, lest I accidentally poison half the sect, lest I then have to stand in tears in front of our partners, the only ones capable of figuring out this godsdamned sewer system that makes no sense because it was designed by a blind one-legged mole with a bottle in this very paw, pretending to be a respected engineer, and—"

Fu Andang moves fast enough to make Mu Qingfang dizzy as he places before them, apparently their sect brother; that elusive head disciple of An Ding Peak, wearing wrinkled yellow robes that are beneath him in every rank, with tassels in his hair instead of hairpins, and with such dark circles under his eyes that Mu Qingfang abruptly wanted to lay the man down on the couch and check his meridians.

"Shang-shizhi", their sect leader's hands on his shixiong's thin and frail shoulders seem exorbitantly large and pressing; though, as he can tell, An Ding's chief disciple hardly cares; "you must meet your future fellow lords, these are obligatory meetings, and you must try to make time for them".

Behind Mu Qingfang hears another cough, and he can understand them, it's not every day that you can hear a domestic speech from zhangmen-shibo.

It is a well-known secret of Cang Qiong: the chief disciple of An Ding Peak is closer to the An generation than to the Qing.

By this point, he is not too surprised by his Shang-shixiong's laughter, hysterical and mocking, as if the sect leader had told a good joke. For the first time, the eyes of An Ding's head disciple rise from the papers on which he is still writing, not even reacting when his body is moved; they are yellow like tar on old trees, like amber in the sun, like the sap of especially poisonous plants; deeply exhausted, scattered, confused, but also calculating.

It feels like he was quickly cut open, his insides examined, and back in before he could breathe. (He sees out of the corner of his eye how Shen Qingqiu bristled, no doubt noticing the same thing he did, while everyone else was still staring at their sect leader in mute shock.)

Then An Ding, the head disciple of the peak, smiled at them all as he flicked his brush across the hard side of one of the scrolls in his hands.

"Good afternoon, shixiongs, shidis and shimeis, this one's name is Shang Qinghua, head disciple of An Ding Peak and its temporarily appointed lord in perpetuity", he introduces himself as if it were perfectly normal, not hasty; everyone knows that the past lord of the peak passed away over six months ago, but no one knows how, except, apparently, the head disciple of the peak and other lords. Fu Andang does not flinch, but Mu Qingfang sees the man's skin turn slightly pale at the reminder. It was hard to live in a cult for longer than a year and not be aware of the frankly acidic interaction between the first and fourth lords of spades. "Because this disciple is not competent enough to do the work of his shizun, this one has to spend more time learning the duties entrusted to him. This one apologizes to his shixiongs, shidis and shimeis. This one did not want to neglect the time this one was given to get to know his brothers and sisters. This one admits that he is a neglected shidi and shixiong, and apologizes for the past", an awkwardly nervous bow because of the amount of papers in his arms, and the still tight grip of their silent sect leader. "This one also apologizes for the future, this one will have to bring a lot more trouble to his shixiongs, shidis and shimeis, because this one hasn't finished the job entrusted to him", another bow and a smile full of light, with a speech faster than Mu Qingfang blinked; crisp and so diplomatic that he wonders for a second what the hell they teach at An Din.

(Nor can Mu Qingfang understand what is going on inside him when he looks at this smile; it looks like pain.)

Shang Qinghua turns his head toward Fu Andang, and his smile takes on some dangerous needle-like facets:

"Zhangmen-shibo, you wouldn't leave this inept shizhi to deal with important documents worthy solely of Lord Peak, would you?" his voice is affectionate and full of pleading, but Shang Qinghua grasps the hand on his shoulder with enough force that the cuffs on Fu Andang's forearms make a sound.

Mu Qingfang had been taught not to bet money on anything, and he was more than taught by his childhood to be careful, but he was willing to bet that that quiet chuckle that came out of their zhangmen-shibo's mouth was frightened.

Shang Qinghua smiled broadly at them (which made his circles under his eyes even more unhealthy) as he made their sect leader close the doors, and wished them all a good day.

Strangely enough, it turned out later that Shang-shixiong then had an extremely busy month, and he did not sleep at all (Nai Anxin was horrified, and Mu Qingfang observed another amazing picture, where his shizun was covering Shang Qinghua who had collapsed with a blanket, and berating him with foul language zhangmen-shibo), and that, in fact, Shang Qinghua is a timid and meek man with many emotions on his face; moreover, that he is timid enough to avoid fights, and dislikes engaging in conflicts so much that he is willing to throw his apparently non-existent dignity out the window by starting a flood of tears. And in the years that followed, Shang-shixiong's behavior was enough to make most people forget their first encounter, writing it off to impressionable youth (of course, this would not have affected such suspicious people as Shen Qingqiu, their strategist, or Ning Qingjing, their peak spy lord; as well as Liu Qingge, who still, decades later, longs for a fight with that Shang Qinghua who can cut you open with one look; but he counts himself among them because he understands, he can't look away).

Shang Qinghua is such a strange and contradictory person that Mu Qingfang cannot have a clear opinion of him.

So when his shizun, between crumbling herbs for incense and flowing qi into the meridians of the deeply sleeping Shang-shixiong, mentions that Shang Qinghua is that shixiong, Mu Qingfang cannot find it in himself to wonder.

It doesn't take long, after the ascension of their masters, to understand what Nai Anxin was talking about.

Shang Qinghua appears in the doorway of his private home in the middle of the night, with a fall storm outside that can knock even experienced cultivators off their swords; his shixiong has blood splattered on his neck and his hands with the cloths of the peak Lord An Ding's upper garment with a surprisingly peaceful infant; two other older children, skinny and dirty, grab at his shixiong's clothes; one of the children has a name branded on his cheek that even Mu Qingfang can recognize the highborn family of their province.

Shang Qinghua does not look as weak or tired as he himself used to see him in their monthly meetings of the Lords — he looks up and tests him:

"Will you help them, Mu-shidi?" Mu Qingfang hears thunder rumbling in the distance among the heavy clouds, and the wind picks up dry leaves, the children trembling but making no sound; Mu Qingfang cannot imagine that anyone could refuse his shixiong when he is like this; Mu Qingfang opens the doors, letting everyone inside, and Shang-shixiong's face relaxes.

Shang Qinghua tells him that sometimes he does this: he goes on sect business and accidentally returns with street orphans or barely-living slaves, which of course is illegal under imperial orders. (Mu Qingfang cannot understand why his shixiong looks as if it is his fault; as if he is the one who gave the children such a life). Shang Qinghua does not say what he does to those who are willing to have child slaves, but Mu Qingfang sees other people's blood and smells poisons in his shixiong's clothes, and asks no questions; he also seems to smell the smoke that he inhaled when his shizun took them from that place. Shang Qinghua leans toward him, closer and even lower, golden eyes pressing so unbearably, as if the Heavenly Court itself had opened before him, and when he is asked: will he help? — Mu Qingfang does not think he could ever answer no.

(He understands why his shizun, in addition to righteousness, decided to help his shizhi — it seemed that refusal could make the whole world turn its back on you.)

He agrees, and Shang-shixiong smiles at him instead of the stars, hidden by the dark night as the two candles shiver in the winds.

"Thank you, shidi", and his heart seems to clench as the shixiong warms to him.

Oh, Mu Qingfang thinks, I could never refuse him.

When, a couple of years later, Shang-shixiong receives a mission to the capital for half the moon, and then a coup d'état occurs quite suddenly with the overthrow of the Emperor by his own fifth, barely acknowledged, son — Mu Qingfang is not surprised.

Shang-shixiong returns a little later, two brittle women larger than he left, who look at him like sunshine (not that his shixiong would ever notice the admiring glances of others at himself), and a colorful story about the mess that was going on in the capital.

When the new Emperor's first decree, after asserting his authority, was to abolish the legalization of slavery, Mu Qingfang could find no reason to be surprised either.

Shang-shixiong has sinister tendencies not to care: always in business, limping slightly; always lifting his youngest disciples into his arms (those children he has helped; those children who honor him; those children watched over by frail women and emaciated men whom he also brings to his peak), even if his injured ribs steal his breath; always in the densest of clothes, more suited to the perfectionist who spends his weekdays in battle — in small numbers (Shang-shixiong once carelessly informed him that most often he wore only two layers of clothing, and Mu Qingfang had to remind himself that his shixiong would not recognize a flirt even if he were to poke his eye out; though he had to step back abruptly for extra bandages to hide his flaming ears) and close to the body, with no flowing sleeves or loose edges to suit his rank. Not to mention the hair ornaments that his shixiong ignores; although, it is sometimes amusing to see how Cang Qiong's guests think Shang Qinghua is one of the disciples, and behave more truthfully, showing his nasty face ahead of time. Mu Qingfang believes that Shang-shixiong's choice of clothing is also a reason for Liu-shixiong to keep demanding a duel when the lord of the peak An Ding dodges his sect brother with enviable skill, which even Ning-shidi noted.

But despite Shang Qinghua's obvious tears and cries that he doesn't like pain — he gets it, harbors it, and endures it with unrecognizable acting skill.

(Mu Qingfang is very disturbed by how many bruises his shixiong has, which he hides from him, his shidi, his healer, and never comes to him or anyone at Qian Cao Peak — he had to promise, swear, that he would never ask where the injuries came from if Shang Qinghua would just let him heal.

His shixiong looks at him with the same heavy stare that would make many men shudder; it feels as if they are trying to get into his head; as if his shixiong is finding something and therefore grinning at him, bitterly and critically:

"Shidi won't ask this shixiong anything", Shang Qinghua pronounces, amber eyes sharp in the orange sunset, and it's like a law carved into a mountain rock as the yellow robes sweep away, exposing more skin.

And he sees purple bruises in the shape of his arms.

Mu Qingfang bites his tongue, tasting the blood, and asks nothing of himself while doing his job; even if it is the hardest thing he has ever done).

Shang-shixiong also doesn't worry too much about his safety in very selective moments. It is no secret within Cang Qiong that there are two of the most dangerous sword riders besides the flighty youths: it is their God of War, Liu Qingge, and their busiest lord, Shang Qinghua, who scares everyone by shouting "out of the way", while carrying an absurd amount of documents. And don't even remind Mu Qingfang of the day Liu Qingge challenged Shang Qinghua not just to a fight, but to a flying competition. Well, they all — and he's talking about the whole sect who came running to see the show — found out that they knew nothing about the speed at which you can fly a sword; Mu Qingfang, of course, does not know what 'ninety kilometers per hour' is or why Shang Qinghua called it the limit of what is allowed on some 'highway', but, as a doctor, he hopes that this does not mean that his shixiong can fly even faster. (He still doesn't understand what 'five kilometers per hour' Shang-shixiong is talking about, referring to everyone else's speed). Shang Qinghua only shrugs awkwardly for them and says that he is used to fast speeds; which also, of course, does not help him get rid of Liu Qingge's insistence. 

His shixiong can humiliate himself by lamenting over the most insignificant paper scratch if he needs to gain pity or self-loathing, and he can also avoid blinking at open fractures by not coming to him because he doesn't want to bother him. Because of this, Mu Qingfang also gets to know his shixiong's students better, incredibly protective and possessive, with wild eyes and dangerous teeth — he knows these looks, he grew up among such children; a quarter of his students consist of the same kind of adults brought here by the same person. So he asks his shixiong for help in getting their spades to get along a little better; Shan Qinghua's eyes light up, he begins to say something about compulsory first aid, sex education, and what brilliant idea, shidi! — which makes his treacherous ears blush again, but he's glad it's not so noticeable because of the headgear. Of course, his shixiong runs away and returns with dozens of young boys and girls in tow; of course, there are several fights between An Ding and Qian Cao's disciples; of course, no one wins or loses — they all got along fine after that, oddly enough. One could often find students in yellow and pink mingling together at both peaks when one had what little free time they had to smile. 

Shang Qinghua celebrated this, always lifting the corners of his lips slightly when he saw such groups, discreetly and quietly, only to return to work a moment later (of course, An Ding's disciples caught his every movement, hungry in their affection; not that the lord of spades would notice it). That must be why he looked uncharitably devoted when his own disciples turned him in with guts, where they caught their shizun more tired or particularly slow, and immediately ran after Mu-shishu like the little magpies that they were. His shixiong looked absolutely pouting when he opened the door to him, after some extraneous and suspicious noise in his house.

"I'm perfectly fine!" he begins, as if he knew it was Mu Qingfang who had come; from the open door the cold of winter strangely reeks as summer bites their feet in the green grass; his shixiong has a yellowing black eye, swollen and fresh.

"Please, shixiong", Mu Qingfang asks, asking no questions, even as he feels like pulling poison needles from his sleeves at an unseen enemy.

Shang Qinghua looks up at him, testing (always-always testing; always fighting something or someone), before he sighs, stepping aside and wrinkling his left leg, while Mu Qingfang notes everything in his mind, clutching the lamas of his bag unnecessarily tight.

When all the wounds are treated, the tea is drunk, and his hands begin to shake a little — he still doesn't ask, and Shang-shixiong smiles at him, just as he did on a stormy night many years ago.

"Thank you, Mu-shidi", he laughs, hazy with painkillers, "I told you you were my favorite shidi, right?" there's so much heat in it that it could burn; Mu Qingfang thinks in a breath that he wishes he could touch him, his cheek, near his eye, erase the awful yellowing of someone's cruelty; and he doesn't.

In long, agonizing moment, he thinks has no right.

Never again has he allowed himself to do so.

One day, for no reason at all, Shang Qinghua falls down clutching his head; he groans and cries, and there is nothing in it about his fake and showy tears; it is quiet, painful, and nauseating.

The second head disciple, An Ding, crashes into him in the corridor, after examining Liu-shixiong from his last mission, who has returned to a new set of disciples. He remembers this girl, Shui Lian, she had marks of violence in the stripes on her back that even he could not heal because of their old age; he remembers how she was afraid of men, but clung to his Shang-shixiong as if he were her only protection from the world. Now she clings to his pink robes with the same desperation and terror as their gazes cross. And Mu Qingfang runs away without even thinking about it.

It is not a deflection of qi (and he has offered some prayers to the gods that it is not; the core of his shixiong may not be able to stand it), but something very close to it; the meridians of his shixiong are in more disorder than ever; he tries to take the pain away by sending his qi, but then something breaks, and it is like a tidal wave of even more pain, which Mu Qingfang finds harder to curb.

It was unlike anything he had ever encountered, heard from a shizun, or studied in books.

Mu Qingfang is barely aware of how they got to Qian Cao, but it continued to be a struggle, and Shang-shixiong never stopped trying to get back on his feet.

"Please— I need..." another sob, another blink of unseeing eyes, "—I have to take...I can't give his away, I!—"

Shang Qinghua grasps his sleeves at his shoulders, for some brief touch of time Mu Qingfang seems to be in another place, with another name, with the same man, with red instead of yellow, and this woman—

"Mu-shidi," his shixiong chokes, and Mu Qingfang himself does not believe he is breathing; his own hands are cold and clammy, but he continues to infuse qi, along with the trusted and experienced disciples beside them, "I beg...I must—" his shixiong wrinkles and groans, almost fainting and slumping to the floor; he mumbles; he cries; his shixiong can barely breathe and apologizes, "I'm so sorry... sorry, sorry, sorry, gods, I'm so sorry, Binghe—"

Mu Qingfang has little recollection of the latter when his shixun finally loses consciousness; he works and works, and he is afraid that something might take Shang Qinghua away.

Apprentice recruitment went on without the two of them, which is not unusual, half the lords of the peaks use their own methods of recruiting apprentices than the traditional ones; Shang-shixiong was on the mend, although everyone on his peak was worried about him; as far as Mu Qingfang could hear, from wondering what happened: his Shen-shixiong chose a new apprentice.

His disciples talk about the child in green and white who looks sickly most of the sunny day; An Ding's disciples lean toward him, their eyes open to sympathy, and they ask how they can help, and Shang Qinghua tells them: not to interfere in Qing Jing's affairs, — nothing but steel and sorrow in his voice, but he is adamant. This is unusual. It wouldn't be the first time An Ding has taken a 'disappointing' student from a peak that he just didn't fit (there are no children who are a disappointment, — his shixiong says to the short boy in the shabby Bai Zhan uniform, who tries desperately not to sniff his nose while his shibo helps in applying bandages, kindly taking the work from his shizhi, smiling. — There are only adults who do not always do the right thing or say the right words; your shizun, my shidi, knows not the power of words, and this shibo asks the shizhi for his forgiveness).

But not this time.

Mu Qingfang puts the invigorating tea in front of his shixiong the next morning, looking for reasons to see him. Shang Qinghua smiles, shaking his head and wrapping both hands around the cup, warming his fingers; he never lay down, working instead of resting.

"There are things much stronger than me", one gulp, one exhale, one faint insincere smile, "you know what I mean, shidi?"

Mu Qingfang doesn't understand; he doesn't know the enemies his shishun has; he doesn't know where the bruises are coming from, flowing over decades, and why they can't take another child where he would be welcome.

However, he stays by his side that morning, pouring tea and staying out of the way to work, beyond words.

(The whole thing has a strange sense of relatability.

It's like he's done this before. With someone he knew, someone he cherished, someone who conquered him. There's a lot of red, bright and strong, and a lot of laughter, loud and lively.

The same love, the same devotion, the same pain that had been there since birth.)

Shen-shixiong has a serious qi deviation, and he... changes. Of course, the man always alternates between his cold attitude and neutrality, but something comes instead. Suddenly, Shen Qingqiu became kinder to his students.

Mu Qingfang's own head disciple discusses with him what she has heard and seen, as do all of his Qian Cao disciples, that their Shen-shibo has become less violent; so rid of it that there is almost no need for those boxes of ointments for physical overwork that the two older and less visible Qing Jing disciples hide and scatter on other people's pillows before curfew.

It's alarming, but Wei-shixiong has checked the lord of spades for possession, and they're... stumped.

But really, it hardly affects their, Qian Cao and An Ding's, routine at all, except that Qing Jing Peak has become a slightly more open and welcoming place; and that student his disciples were worried about looks much healthier. Mu Qingfang wants to tell Shang Qinghua about this, but there is always some countless amount of work to be done in the lead-up to the Immortal Alliance, and there are still so many documents to fill out. Eventually the moons flow, and Mu Qingfang decides that one of An Ding's bees might have shared the good news with his shizun.

The years fly by, with soft green fabrics added to the mixed pinks and yellows, the students laughing and joking as they cross the rainbow bridge on their errands, and Mu Qingfang catches himself looking back at their backs. He would never have thought of it — none of the Peak Lords, to be honest — but Shang Qinghua and Shen Qingqiu got along frighteningly easily and quickly; as if they were always supposed to know each other. Of course, most of the time their conversations are something between hissing and shouting, but there is no real threat behind it.

There is an unaccustomed tightness in his chest, akin to annoyance, but Mu Qingfang presses this with decades of experience; he does not like it when he stops understanding himself; but this happens always when the situation concerns Shang-shixiong.

The two also often come down the mountains together, bickering and not turning back, when zhangmen-shixiong cannot refuse Shen-shixiong anything, and Shang-shixiong has taught his disciples too well in management to have everything fall apart without him, and then their sect brothers disappear for weeks, when even Liu Qingge cannot track them down.

Somehow they always come back covered in mud, branches, and gods know what else, still never stopping to argue for a second.

Somehow this becomes the norm for Cang Qiong.

And then the Heavenly Demon rises from the grave into which their elders sent him, as an unfortunate legacy; the demon comes and takes An Ding's heart, the treasure of many-many children raised into strong and possessive men and women who have given their souls to their shizun, even if they never suspected such a thing; and despite the obvious incomprehension and incipient contempt, it was Mu Qingfang who had to stop these children as he fled, after handling Liu-shixiong's wounds, with trembling hands and a lack of air in his lungs.

Mu Qingfang stops them from certain death with nothing but his premonition.

Mu Qingfang does not understand why, but he knows that the Heavenly Demon will never harm Shang Qinghua.

Mu Qingfang asks for such a thing as trust, and it is so much for those whose peace, whose sunshine, whose meaning — has been stolen; he asks them for an unimaginable payment, he knows it, they know it; he asks and repeats to himself that he makes no mistake, because he cannot let his convictions waver now.

"Alright, shishu", says Shui Lian, solemn and steadfast, nothing to do with the weakness that couldn't escape her voice, "we'll believe you. But if our shizun gets ki..." and she takes a breath, she can't pronounce it, so she takes a step toward him, the rage in her eyes leaving the storms envious, "if shizun don't come back", and her teeth grit around those words; there are no clouds in the sky, it's a sunny day that has no right to be so bright; "you will go next", is not threat, it is promise; and he knows it will be kept because they know the value of words; it is true because Mu Qingfang is the same.

And yet, he cannot bring himself to think that in the hands of Tianlang-jun, Emperor of the Demon Realm, the most dangerous demon alive today, Shan-shixiong is in danger.

An Ding's disciples look wild and fierce as he looks back at them and tilts his head in agreement:

"This shishu expects nothing less from his shizhi".

FROM THE AUTHOR:

A bit of context I made up (since this part is on behalf of Mu Qingfan, he may not have known much):

1. Shang Qinghua feels guilty about the existence of slavery because, conventionally, he created this world. Therefore, he tries to help everyone he can, especially since the System does not prevent him from doing so. Somehow, saving the children also resulted in saving everyone who needed saving (concubines, servants, those who were hated for their different appearance). And he certainly didn't expect to find Mu Qingfang somewhere in the middle of it, but he needed to rush the plot and made his unhappy and tired of the troublesome snot-nosed Nai-shishu go and help him.

2. Shizun Shang Qinghua hanged himself without giving him a polite name. He was not a good man, and in a way, the past leader of the sect should be blamed. It was Fu Anding who had to give Shang Qinghua his name.

3. In all, there are about 600-800 disciples at An Ding Peak, and they are the most numerous peak, a third of whom Shang Qinghua helped in one way or another. He would never force them to stay on his peak, they were free to go out into the world and do whatever they wanted, to be whatever they wanted; and some, indeed, left for good, and some to return and be more useful to the shizun with new skills and experiences.

4. Xiao Huo did the same thing, only with outcast half-demons and people who had nowhere to go at all. They were the most loyal to her, and thus to her didi.

5. When Shan Qinghua fell down with a headache while apologizing to Luo Binghe, it was a punishment from the System, which did not give him a chance to help Luo Binghe escape his fate. The full sentence was along the lines of: I have to help him, he's just a kid, I can't let him become part of the crap I gave him.

6. When Shan Qinghua spoke of sword-flying speed, he meant that in this world people rarely fly swords, and if they do, they hardly fly faster than their stride. Just as people invented the first automobiles and did not accelerate at high speeds. However, Shang Qinghua, being a child of the 21st century, cannot move that slowly. So he just figured out a way to use chi to glue his feet to his sword a little bit and fly as he feels comfortable.
He also prefers combat clothes because they are the most comfortable and closest to a tracksuit.  He avoids all his regalia because they seem uncomfortable to him. Also, Shang Qinghua has not flirted with Mu Qingfang about wearing two layers of clothes, he just doesn't see it as embarrassing.

7. Shang Qinghua was also more a part of the past generation lords because of such a set-up of his shizun, and the fact that someone had to do the job anyway. The past Lord of the Peak Qing Jing considered him his favorite shizhi because he had caused so much trouble for others, and he had fun watching other people's torment.

8. Mu Qingfang has no memory of his past life, but he always knows that something deep within him cares for Shang Qinghua for a reason, and that this is also the reason why they should not be too close. He has a sense of guilt that has passed on through death, and he could never allow himself to approach Shang Qinghua with anything more.

9. However, Mu Qingfang understands that 'Heavenly Demon' and 'Shang Qinghua' in the same sentence is something natural.

10. Mobei-jun behaves according to the canon; he beats, he doesn't quite think. But we'll get to him yet.

Chapter Text

Heavenly Demons — held together.

Of course, it wasn't always like this; once a long time ago, a god fell in love with a demon, left heaven, and stayed with his love; demonic and divine powers intertwined into something completely unbelievable. It was a different time, when worlds were clearly separated and people were not as powerful.

The Heavenly Demons were the ones who were never touched by illness, the ones who could always be cured, the ones who were the panacea.

It was blessing.

And it was curse.

Greed — is what ruined them instead of sickness.

When the weaker were hunted; when they were used in the lowest way imaginable; when they were cut into pieces like animals to become stronger, to drain their juices and lives, to fill jugs and saucers with their blood and flesh.

And then, in desperation, left a mountain dozen out of hundreds, the Heavenly Demons despaired enough to decide that they wanted to live.

Everyone knows that sex with a Heavenly Demon makes you stronger.

So ten demons turned into five, and five into three or two. Thousands of years of cultivating the same blood, again and again and again improving themselves: The Heavenly Demon became synonymous with the invincible. Even if the differences in their appearance disappeared, even if their numbers were reduced to one family, even if it became harder and harder for them to continue their lineage — they regretted nothing; the parents passed it on to their children, time after time; disease still did not touch them, despite the incestuousness. Didn't this speak volumes about their rightness?

Then a girl was born, just like her parents, indistinguishable from them in anything but height and size; a girl who might not have survived like the three before her — yet she made it. Small, alone and trapped among the walls while her parents ruled the wastelands, uninterested in other clans, other lands, other living creatures besides each other, trusting nothing; living in their own isolated world. (They trusted only one creature: the brother between the eldest and the youngest, who gave his freedom, his life, for them; they never learned to truly live without him.)

With no friends or company except a couple of servants, the girl grew up in isolation, among books and part of the dark sky of the Demon Realm. Empty and quiet — that's how few people who knew her at the time could describe her, unlike her explosive parents.

But one day, many decades later, a girl is handed her little brother, and she blossoms; and she lives for him, breathes and dances and looks around as if for the first time she sees meaning in this world — then, the few demons that are committed through the generations to the Heavenly Demons could tell that this was the beginning of something entirely new.

And true, Xiao Huo earned her name only after that, becoming someone who is hard to forget; becoming a princess of their world; becoming an empress even later, who would never accept her title, though the whole Demon Realm knew it. (As if there's anyone here who wouldn't know how relationships between Heavenly Demons work; just because Tianlang-jun and Xiao Huo don't show it as openly as their predecessors, doesn't mean it's not; and it's also none of their business if their Emperor and Empress decide to take other husbands and wives for themselves — they, again, are not the first Heavenly Demons to do so.)

Xiao Huo — is the one who always came to villages, to any clan, stormy as fire and ringing as the murmur of the sky; the one with whom one could negotiate for help; the one who gets to know, learn, and show interest. Xiao Huo — is the main reason they recognized their Emperor, in her stories with the ringing of her bracelets, with the songs of her smooth voice, with the love that even demons coveted. Xiao Huo — is the one who transformed diverse communities into something unified and coherent, by smoothing out conflicts: beautiful as violence, and steadfast as doom, introducing tribute and giving protection on behalf of her brother.

No one was deceived: Tianlang-jun was the one to whom they belonged; Xiao Huo was the one who ruled them.

Then, one clan full of owls and soothsayers gives their Emperor and Empress paired life-and-death pendants: the pendants will break if one of them dies — and take the other. Xiao Huo was not pleased with the gift, but could not refuse her brother; everyone knows that their rulers do not know how to resist each other's wishes. Whether or not Tianlang-jun could or could not snort at his sister's husband, no one dares to say.

However, the story was untrue: some curse cannot kill Heavenly Demon; no way, ever; they are too strong for that.

And it was a common woe.

Their Emperor's grief was monstrous; it was not something those around him could endure if he were not a Heavenly Demon; it was not something worth remembering; it was not something from which their lands would have time to recover, oozing with horrifying and crushing energy. Their Emperor puts on white, layer upon layer, barely leaving a streak of black or red; there is hardly anyone who could talk to him and stay alive, except the little heir of their Empress. Their Emperor becomes unquenchable in his grief, and the entire Demon Realm falls silent, afraid to truly do anything. (The humans have called it the most peaceful time when the demons have not attacked them.)

The years cut through the decades, and their Emperor explores the human world, bored and barely looking at his lands, his people, anyone outside of his waisheng, who got the good name Zhuzhi-lang, deservedly becoming a general; it is their Empress' heir who is busy doing everything, eleven decades after his mother died. (And no one still knows from what or how — they don't really want to know what or who it might have been.)

Their Emperor gets rid of the mirrors in his palace and removes the layers of white, leaving his belt or cloak, looking even less content but more animated, glaring at his unperturbed nephew. Their Emperor leaves the Realm and returns with people's books, dirty, crumpled and hardly worth anything. Their Emperor becomes a bit of the same, in part, with a heavy dose of playfulness: perhaps to his nephew, perhaps to himself.

Once their Emperor leaves with their general as well as their Empress — they do not return.

And the Demon Realm descends into the same chaos they were three centuries ago.

The abyss is terrifying and strange place.

Luo Binghe has been here so long, not knowing how long it's been: a year? Two? Ten? He thinks half an eternity, though Meng Mo — the only reason he hasn't gone completely insane — claims that time is distorted in this place.

His clothes turned to rags, his skin clinging to his bones, his eyes perpetually exhausted, wide open, unable to close in the circle of his enemies, his stomach so compressed that he vomited even the smell of the creature meat he'd struggled so hard to get. His bones broke, his blood boiled, mixing human and demonic, he was torn apart, his insides spilling out — and he regenerated; over and over, never stopping and unable to let it go; his mark burns; he has no part of his body that does not ache; he cannot cry from dehydration or fatigue. He survives without seeing the light, without seeing the meaning of anything except the question: why?

Why did shizun throw him here? Why did he push him? Why did he look so sad? Why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why-w h y?—

And he saw many things; more than he ever wanted to. He saw monsters the size of mountains: bigger than he could encompass in a single glance; higher than the infinitely black sky; heavier than oceans. He saw the ruins of dead civilizations; he saw walls with inscriptions he could not read or understand. He saw temples, abandoned and forgotten, but also — the safest places he could find.

The temple of dead Creator God whose name he could not read because it did not resemble any hieroglyph he knew.

Airplane.

Luo Binghe wanders, barely moving his legs, it hurts to walk, it hurts to move, it hurts to breathe, it hurts to exist, but he goes, and goes, and goes. Because he needs to know — why!...

And then he finds the sword.

The cold kisses him with the tenderness of a blade across his throat; fatigue hugs his shoulders lovingly, tearing at his muscles, and there is nothing he would not give for rest when the ashes of abandoned souls part. It is one of the temples of an old and forgotten god, more well-kept and cleaner than the previous ones: with walls cracked but standing, with floors of heavy marble but still cold (as is everything here; either very cold or very hot; never anything average or acceptable). The smell of blood and rot is fresher than in previous sanctuaries, but still old. He steps forward, going at the call, at the promise (lie, — Meng Mo shouts to him, but he's so tired he can't hear him) of power, strength, and way out of here.

It is like a painting he might have seen in the art halls of Qing Jing: a woman, bleeding and cold, lying on an altar surrounded by withered flowers, untouched by time or decay; with dark hair in the tide of blood and a scarlet mark on her forehead identical to his own; wearing gold jewelry and dusty clothes more shabby than her own body. With a hole in her chest that the mournful white cloths cannot hide, lovingly clean no matter what. A demon skeleton lies at the altar, one hand clutching the woman's palm, in the eyelids, forever.

In the other hand of the skeleton there is a sword stuck in what was the belly of the deceased.

The sword calls out to him like no one and nothing.

It's such a wonderfully obvious manipulation, but he can't contain himself; the sword promises him answers; the sword promises to take him to the shizun; and he wants to, he thinks he can leave.

Luo Binghe steps over the steps, hearing no one but his sword; he looks at the woman, beautiful, eternally young, unbound by decay, frozen dead; he touches her sign on his forehead and his own burns; similar, too identical to be a coincidence (he doesn't think about it; not now; it doesn't matter; none of it; he already has a dead mother, he doesn't need a second). Luo Binghe stands up and raises his sword, turning away from the dead; their story is already over. Luo Binghe pays his respects in a bow, despite his headache and the shouting-shouting-shouting of his sword, Xin Mo, he said his name is Xin Mo, as he leaves.

The abyss is strange and terrifying place.

Chapter Text

She he wakes up with the mother of all headaches. It hurts so much that his her eyes can't even open. Breath catches and it's hard, all of it, it hurts so much that she he wants to die.

But after all, she was already dead — he was dying before that.

It was an electric shock — it was a sword to the chest.

It was an accident — it was her husband.

It was painful, every time.

The pain comes inexorably, and her his eyes water as the cry sinks beneath the tide of agony, looming and formidable. Pain enters his her blood, her his bones, his her mind. The pain comes in images, too many, too long, too unbearable for her his mind.

It's like some idiot decides to load a two-gigabyte memory card with two hundred-gigabyte files. It's impossible; it's too much, too much, too much; it's painful.

Someone is hugging her him, someone is holding his her arms, not letting her him tear his her hair out, someone is whispering something gentle and soothing to her him, it is a pleasant and warm voice, even if he she does not recognize it. She he cries, much and incessantly, whimpering like a wounded animal, barely understanding what he she is being told, and where she he is. And who is around.

It hurts, all of it, the pain and nothing but it.

Her his body burns-burns-and-burns, the heat is omnipresent, feverish and disturbing; he she seems to taste blood on tongue; and it helps, it gets easier, just tiny, little.

She he tries to see who is holding him her; the vision is blurry, out of focus, but there are bright golden eyes and a mark on his her forehead; oh, it is her his son.

Oddly enough, smiling at her child, even terribly faint and pathetic — is almost an instinct.

Until the darkness blesses him her, hiding him/her from the pain.

Shang Qinghua wakes up again, this time he remembers his name, the pain is not going to subside, but at least he remembers himself.

He is in someone else's arms again: others, but more familiar; listening to the quiet melody of a familiar voice; he knows the song, even if he is not sure where from. He takes a breath, convulsive and deep, as a sharp pain pierces his skull; he whimpers from it, burrowing deeper into the warm embrace of someone he knows. Someone he trusts, even if he can't exactly connect the voice and the face in his suffering head.

He loves the tenderness he receives, in the mere touches he can recognize; and it must thrill him because there is no one in his life who loves him like that; to whom he can be so important.

His mind is playing with him or someone else is playing with his mind — it is of the two; he must stand up and confront it: his mind is graveyard of secrets; he cannot afford so great blunder as to control mind.

But he is loved.

He knows it; he is loved so much that this one fills him with softness himself; he is loved so naturally, and he is loved no less in return.

He is loved and he is loved back, as if it were the most unconditional part of his life.

That's not true, no one ever loved him like that: not his parents in his three two lives, not his friends, not his siblings in the sect, not his king. (Of course, he is dear to his disciples and the people he helped, but they shouldn't respect him so much — he was the one who gave them that life).

Nor Shang Qinghua, nor Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, were those who received love in return, despite any sacrifice or deed; they loved, they could not help loving with their all-forgiving weak hearts; perhaps more often than not, those who should not have been loved; but they were not given the same.

But he is loved, loved, loved, loved and loved.

And he knows it as clearly as the heavens in the world he created.

(Xiao Huo loved and was loved back.)

Xiao Huo wakes up, and her body is weak, she is weak in a way she was not even after her parents' murder; after a battle seemingly a lifetime long.

It hurts and only hurts, but she opens her eyes, even if she hates the very thought of it.

She looks up at a ceiling so familiar it is almost funny, it reminds her of how she missed her Didi growing up, only to see him become Emperor, albeit a ruthless, but still not a gratuitous tyrant; she was so proud of him.

Now she turns her head to the side, and it may be the hardest thing she has done in a century. She breathes; breath after breath, slow and careful; it hurts, everything and everything hurts. She blinks slowly, and, oh, she feels like if she decides to think about anything, she'll die of pain shock.

Her hand in warmth, tender and kind; her palm in the hands of a man pressed against his forehead, unmoving and quiet, sleeping and tired; at first, she thinks it is her husband, and then the pain strikes her heart like a blade in her ribs. She shudders, and the man beside her wakes up, anxious, frightened, and joyful — all at once, and so quickly that it can only bring her vertigo.

She knows this face, so similar to her husband, with similar yellow-snake eyes and green scales on her skin, but the face is not as soft as her husband's, there are sharp angles like her own, like her brother's; a burning yellow mark in the tone of her eyes (Shang Qinghua Airplane wrote about this in the beginning; about how demons' marks should match the pigment of their eyes; he still remembers Shen Qingqiu Cucumber's long discourses about how little it makes sense), her best clue. A-Zhu. She smiles with an ease that brings her new ounces of pain; she doesn't care, she'll smile at him, even if it's the last thing she does.

Yes, that's what happened.

"Mama!" her respectful, grown-up-gorgeous-beautiful-wonderful son shouts, pulling closer, and there is consternation and relief in it; her memory crumbles; it hurts, it hurts too much; "mama, please, you can't go to sleep", her son is so worried that she wants to soothe him, wants to hug him, wants to tell him she's okay, but she can't get up; it's hard; it hurts to breathe and her heart is not beating as it should; her son is tearing his own wrist with sharp teeth, and she is sad that she instilled this awful habit in him, "mama, I beg you, please drink my blood; your body can't take the strain, please", her son pleads, and there is nothing she wouldn't do for him, but it is hard, everything and everyone is so hard; it is like death. She knows that Heavenly Demon blood cells can work miracles, but they are not omnipotent; she knows this, she created them.

Her heart beats in her ears, hurt-hurt-hurt, her son says something to her, he turns around and shouts something at the door; she looks and looks at her little treasure, at her wonderful son, lost and mistrustful, in absolute horror — she thinks that he looks very much like his father now, then, in the dark of the Abyss, and—

She thinks she is dying.

She's dead.

From the sword in her heart; greedy-greedy blade with a history of destruction; monster capable of clouding the mind of anyone around; oh, her husband, man of honor, could not live with that.

Xiao Huo died at the hands of the man she loved, and she thinks she sees another man she loves, colder than winters and harsher than storms, with blue eyes and indifference to her fate, his fingers clutching at her throat, and her king—

"Jiejie!" she blinks back tears; it hurts: her heart is pierced, her throat is clenched; her brother and her son are by her side; they hold her, they will protect her, they love her.

Her foolish, strong and blameless men, her family.

She will wake up for them.

Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, Xiao Huo, Shang Qinghua wakes up again.

His head hurts less monstrously than before, and he remembers; he-she remembers who she-he was.

And, gods, what a lot of memories and knowledge to lay out. That's more than he's lived in his two human lives by a factor of four. He's surprised to be alive; this crappy System just wants to kill him, honestly.

It's so strange to have an entire life he's lived as a woman, confident in herself (in her looks, in her place, in her mind), as a demon at the top of the food chain (strong enough to be never afraid of anything; invulnerable enough to explore the world, laughing in her face at the dangers of the world he created; confident enough to leave and return, knowing that there is a place where she will always be welcome), as an older sister and mother (to love and be loved). Heck, he now has memories of a life that has nothing to do with his other two.

Did someone really want to be his spouse? Did someone really think he was a dangerous adversary? Did someone really fear him and want his respect?

Did anyone really love him?

His whole life as Airplane, his whole experience as Shang Qinghua, tells him not to believe it, but... he knows it; he is more confident in other people's love than in anything else; it would be wrong of him to doubt his family; so he wakes up with tears: of happiness, instead of misery.

They are there, his heart — his little brother; his sun — his son; his whole world, despite his other life, his other name, his other body.

His didi hasn't changed at all; his didi is the same Tianlang-jun, the father of his main character; monster sealed under a mountain by 'righteous' cultists, and it makes him so furious at those people, and he hates himself so much that he didn't free his brother a long time ago. (Oh, his main character, whom he's so accustomed to calling his son, is actually his nephew; isn't that weird? The whole thing sounds like a crazy dream).

His son, his A-Zhu, is definitely the most beautiful demon he has ever met (he doesn't think of his king, he can't); a general, in a rank deserved by force, a pillar of the Demon Realm where their Emperor avoided his duties (thinking of it now and knowing his brother, he definitely grieved for him); his baobei has grown into such an intelligent and matchless man; he can only be proud and nothing more.

His brother, his son — his family — hold him, they themselves seem to be on the verge of crying, so sweet indeed.

He embraces them, weakly but firmly: his son withers, tentative and soft movements wrapping his arms around him, hiding in the crease of his shoulder and neck; his brother, always so hungry for affection, sniffs in his ear, pressing his healthy and hot cheek against his cold and sore one, as he did hundreds of years ago as a child.

It makes him smile, he breathes and welcomes them:

"I'm home".

Contexts:

1. The system almost killed Shang Qinghua when it downloaded Xiao Huo's life into his head.
As Airplane and as Peak Lord he lived together for about 80+ years, and Xiao Huo lived for 450+ years, and there was a lot going on.

2. Shang Qinghua has a hard time putting his personality together, so he wasn't even sure who he was now, male or female, human or demon. Later he would decide that he would refer to himself as to who he was in life. He is a man now, so he treats himself as a man. His family will quickly get used to it, Tianlang-jun will be the first to call him "gege" (brother) in any situation, and Zhuzhi-lang will also easily call him "baba" (papa).

3. The moment with Shang Qinghua thinking that Mobei-jun is strangling him is a combination of his fears, his nightmares, and the punishment the System once gave him.
Shang Qinghua finds it very ironic that it is his fate to die at the hands of the men he is in love with.

4. Xiao Huo was quite confident and she had no doubt that she was loved - Shang Qinghua, on the other hand, because of complexes acquired throughout both lives, has no such confidence. His beliefs have yet to settle somehow among themselves.
It is amazing in general how confidence in yourself and being loved changes a person's personality. Tianlang-jun and Zhuzhi-lang actually grew up in love, so they have, to everyone's shock, a healthy self-esteem. So far, Luo Binghe is the black sheep of the family.

5. Their Heavenly Demon family is probably one of the healthiest families out there in relation to each other. Sure, there are some not-so-appropriate thoughts and desires (nod towards Tianlang-jun) with possessive tendencies, but that's the difference, those impulses are curbed, for the happiness of the other. If it had been Tianlang-jun's will, his sister would never have left the four walls, but he knew she would not have been happy, so he would never have done so.
Also, Tianlang-jun would definitely have preferred to die with his sister on the same day that she did, leaving Zhuzhi-lang alone - which is not a good thing to do. (That doesn't mean he doesn't love his nephew, just that he loves his sister more - that's a fact; he has favorites, yes, it just happens.) But since he survived, he should pull himself together and do the right thing; his sister wouldn't approve.
That's okay, in fact, Zhuzhi-lang loves the uncle he's known all his life more than he loves his mother.
That's how family relationships work sometimes, yes. They make mistakes, lots of mistakes, and try to correct them or not make them at all.

6. When Airplane first woke up, he still had enough strength to tear his hair out; the further he went, the less he could do physically. His body was exhausted, and his qi went to support his organs.
Tianlang-jun and Zhuzhi-lang succeeded each other, simultaneously staging bloody showdowns in their territory to reclaim it for themselves. They also had to give the Airplane a lot of their blood, but even then, the Heavenly Demons' blood cells would die due to the super fever. These two were incredibly scared that they might lose their sister/mother again. So they worked like hell, looking for millions of arrays, spells, and colors as well.
The Airplane didn't wake up until three months later, very emaciated and emaciated (Mu Qingfang would have had a stroke), since he hadn't eaten anything. Without this help, however, he could have failed for three years or thirty years.

7. I had more thoughts on this chapter altogether, but since my browser went out abruptly without saving anything, I'm not sure I wrote it all in. All I remembered was the idea, the change of perception of the Plane like crazy notes, and the cute thing about Tianlang-jun singing a lullaby that his sister sang to him, which he also sang to his nephew when he was little.
And she seemed to want to put in somewhere the idea that Shang Qinghua is totally subjective in his assessment of his brother and son, for him they are henceforth and forever the best men in the world. He will say a thousand epithets of admiration for them without blinking an eye. And he will claim that this is the truth, for God himself said so.
It will get funnier when Luo Binghe is stolen into the family. Poor angry boy, he doesn't yet realize how much fluff awaits him. Especially as the youngest member of the family. (Imagine Luo Binghe desperately trying to realize that there was another Heavenly Demon lurking in Cang Qiong all along, and it was someone he never would have thought possible, and who still hides his powers and demon mark; his Shang-shishu is an incredibly frightening person, as Meng Mo pointed out).

8. Actually, I wanted to write about Mobei Jun, but I don't like him too much for many reasons (his violent actions contradict my moral orients in life, that I would give him Shang Qinghua). So I'm getting my act together.

P.s. And I so want to cram a lot of incest and misunderstanding jokes in, but I'm holding back for now.
P.p.s. By the way, congratulations to Shang Qinghua, he's now a widower. Interesting status, especially for the human world. He's not happy, to be honest.

Chapter Text

When Luo Binghe copes, when he leaves that dark, cold, death-filled place — he is blinded by white. Whether the cold comes out with him or meets him again, he can't be sure — he's hungry, exhausted and wants to fall like he wanted nothing in the world. Luo Binghe doesn't fall, he chokes on the weaker air, icy enough that it burns, and meets the demon.

Shizun.

Black hair, blue eyes, and an aura like shadows. He remembered him. The one who revealed his origins; the one who came and destroyed everything at his whim; the one who caused him to fall into the Abyss — it is only fair that the same demon meet him on his way out.

Shizun.

And Luo Binghe is not blind: he sees that the demon is more dangerous than before; he sees the unbalanced lust for murder; he thinks that if he looks in the mirror, he will see the same reflection. But he's also equally angry, frustrated, and tired; he's so, so, so very tired that he has no desire to even listen to anything if they decide to talk to him.

Shizun.

Fortunately, this demon came for the battle.

Shizun.

Luo Binghe vomits his blood; he's tired, he's defeated, he's tired, he has to go, he's tired, he's dying, he's tired, he's regenerating; so he gets up. Time after time, even if the snow is staining with every step he takes, even if he is failing under his own weight, even if he doesn't know where he is or where he is going — he walks. He doesn't even remember if he killed that demon or just moved on, since his enemy didn't move.

Shizun.

Cold.

Shizun.

He's tired.

Shizun.

Luo Binghe sees only white, he sees only the bright sky, never darkening no matter how long he walks — the exact opposite of the Abyss. Luo Binghe no longer feels pain, barely distinguishing it behind the ice on his skin and the weariness on his soul. Luo Binghe knows that he has long ago cheated his limit: as a human, as a half-demon.

Shizun.

Luo Binghe falls; the snow is soft, not as hard as the black lands of the Abyss's dust; but not as pleasant as the tall grass among the bamboos. Luo Binghe cannot grieve, cannot cry, cannot get up — he cannot do anything; not even with that bloody sword; not even with those voices in his head. Luo Binghe wants to rest, just a little; he needs to close his eyes, he needs to sleep; he's tired of even breathing.

Shizun.

The endless sunny day is gone; he thinks he is being held by someone, that he is being lifted, that he is being dug out of the white-white-white; he thinks he hears something, beyond the beckoning wind and the poison of the sword's desires; he thinks he is being infused with qi, human and so sweetly warm that he is almost sure it is a hallucination before death — he is being infused with qi, demonic and powerful, and he gasps at the rush of deafening power.

Luo Binghe blinks, barely aware of himself, breathing-breathing-breathing, feeling the pain in his body again, familiarizing himself with the warmth, and he thinks he sees a recognizable face: not close to him, but he must have seen this person often to remember him; Xin Mo laughs, whispering: he has no friends, everyone knows he's a demon, there's no one to help him, and—

"You are awake!" exulted the voice, again, far, far away to him; the short hair flutters freely in the north winds, a glorious blur in the uncharted whiteness; he does not know those bright brown eyes so intimately, he does not know from whence he remembers this man, he does not know the reason for how much comfort and happiness there is in it for him; and there is a smile that he has not known from this man, that he could partly have gotten from his shizun, that he lost with the passing of his mother; "I am happy that you survived, Binghe".

A smile, as if happy for his birth.