Kitsune no Yometori

by Gaby007

Summary:

As he's busy wondering how to engineer his scum Shizun's downfall, Luo Binghe accidentally learns something extremely interesting about Shen Qingqiu and immediately pounces on the opportunity to drag the lofty Peak Lord by utterly destroying everything he believed about his very being.

Of course, the ascendant Junshang gaining an Empress worthy of him is nothing but a coincidence. Truly.

Chapter 1

When he was lost in the Endless Abyss, Luo Binghe occasionally thought about how he would make Shizun – Shen Qingqiu – this scum bastard – pay a hundredfold for throwing him down in this accursed place. It wasn’t that often, he needed to fight for his life every moment he spent in the Abyss and it left him far too exhausted or poisoned or hungry most of the time for him to indulge in carefully constructed fantasies of bloody revenge.

 

After escaping to the Southern Demon lands, after he started gaining a reputation as a rising power and establishing his kingdom, the Heavenly half-breed now had more time to seriously ponder how to best ruin that scum – if he would do it immediately after coming back to the cultivation world, or if he would keep the bastard for the end after razing Cang Qiong to the ground.

 

He wondered if he should flay this smooth, milky-white skin from the scum’s bones, for letting everyone look at the disgusting mess hidden behind this aloof, regal handsomeness. If he should rip these luscious, perfectly coiffed hair and break these slender fingers, such symbols of pride for the haughty scholar.

 

Should he force Shen Qingqiu to live in a pigpen without a shred of cloth to protect himself from the weather, just like Shen Qingqiu forced Luo Binghe to sleep in the woodshed without even a blanket on which he would rest instead of sleeping on the dirt ? Should he serve the Peak Lord trash to eat, just like Luo Binghe had been reduced to feast on the wretched flesh of demonic beasts to avoid starvation ?

 

So many options he could choose. He would entertain one of them for a while, before considering another and another and another, never content, always seeking for the perfect punishment. Shen Qingqiu’s ultimate fate needed to be one to remember – one that humans and demons both would speak in terrified whispers – one that would serve as a cautionary tale for the generations yet to come in millenia.

 

It needed to be nothing short of excruciating for the man who believed an innocent disciple that wanted nothing more than please his master deserved to suffer in a hellish dimension merely for being born from a demonic bloodline.

 

The cultivation world likely wouldn’t understand how it was a crime, since a cultivator would help repelling demonic raids against the human kingdoms, you might even say a cultivator naturally was demonkind’s sworn enemy. No, Shen Qingqiu’s fall from grace had to come from another accusation.

 

It would be hard, to ruin one of the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect’s most senior and influential Peak Lords. Or maybe it wouldn’t ? Luo Binghe could remember the whispered suspicion about the Qing Jing Peak Lord being involved in the Bai Zhan War God’s gruesome demise, how curious for such a gifted young man to have a qi deviation while he was meditating in the Ling Xi caves, was the matter seriously investigated beyond a token effort ?

 

And the many, many times Shen Qingqiu blatantly and shamelessly went to the brothel, without a care for the standards a Peak Lord was intended to uphold, surely it deserved for someone to call it for the travesty it was ?

 

Luo Binghe wasn’t a naive, wide-eyed brat anymore, it wouldn’t be enough for the scum bastard to utterly lose face, but it was a beginning – it was the start of Shen Qingqiu’s downfall, he just had to investigate further in the human world to gather other crumbs and tidbits of information regarding the man he hated more than anything under the Heavens.

 

So he went. His brand-new advisors and bedmates and soldiers started to get on his nerves, anyway – demons quickly grew bored when they weren’t fighting or preparing for fighting and would jump on the slightest opportunity to squabble and annoy and irritate, hoping someone would retaliate and give them justification for a brawl or a full-blown bloodbath.

 

Also, Luo Binghe wanted to see how the cultivation world fared – how powerful the great sects currently were, and what kind of opposition he would have to destroy when he would emerge as the one true ruler of demonkind.

 

Of course the cultivators would try and kill an Heavenly Demon about to restore the bloodline’s glory and power, Luo Binghe had heard some tales of them briefly unifying the sects in order to put the previous Junshang down. This time, Luo Binghe would use the war against humankind in order to unify demonkind and fully consolidate his grip over the throne – everything would come around.

 

Luo Binghe didn’t care much about fate, but he certainly enjoyed the irony.

 

A most effective tactic would be to ingratiate himself to a powerful sect, playing the traumatized disciple that couldn’t bear to come back to Cang Qiong because of the bad memories associated with his fall into the Abyss, how could he burden them with such horrors ? The Huan Hua Palace likely would eat it with a spoon, the Old Palace Master couldn’t stand the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect judging from Yue Qingyuan’s brief discussions with Shen Qingqiu about how the Immortal Alliance Conference would be this year – they might enjoy the opportunity to drag their rivals’ name into the mud…

 

At least, they would be a surer bet than the Tian Yi Overlook – exclusively focused on training female cultivators – and the Zhao Hua Temple – far too much emphasis on ascetism and restrain for one such as the Heavenly half-breed – so the Huan Hua Palace it would be. Hadn’t Luo Binghe been initiated to his senses and physical pleasure by one of their disciples ? He couldn’t remember her name, but it nonetheless could be entertaining to find her again, this time as the one in charge, how surprised she would be.

 

Still, not as surprised as this scum would be when Luo Binghe would reveal how much he failed to kill his disciple. The Demon Ruler ascendant couldn’t wait to see how Shen Qingqiu’s perfect face would become ugly when they would meet again.

 

He wasn’t expecting for their reunion to happen so soon, right as Luo Binghe was busy engineering a situation that would allow him to draw the Huan Hua Palace’s attention, a monster rampaging at the border between their territory and the lands ruled by Cang Qiong.

 

Shen Qingqiu wasn’t supposed to be there, the Qing Jing Peak Lord firmly refused to leave his peak unless forced by Yue Qingyuan for some mission or because he wanted to scratch an itch at the brothel. Unbelievable – even unaware of Luo Binghe’s presence near, this scum would ruin everything !

 

The Heavenly half-breed was unsure about bursting out laughing or scream in fury as he cooly watched his former teacher fighting for his life. For all his many, many flaws, Shen Qingqiu had earned his seat as a Peak Lord – a few graceful sweeps with his fan were enough for wind blades to shred the monster to bloody meat, tar-like blood splattering the grass and the trees and the pristine cultivator.

 

Well, wouldn’t that be infuriating ? Shen Qingqiu used to be so fussy and tedious about his appearance, refusing to show himself to his martial siblings and students if his clothes and hair were less than immaculate. And now, he was covered with black goop…

 

He was… fainting ?

 

Luo Binghe blinked. Was his aloof Shizun so obsessed by cleanliness, he couldn’t stand a bit of smudge upon his esteemed self ? Then, this lord would certainly cover him with mud and blood in order to drag him low !

 

Or maybe Shen Qingqiu was having a qi deviation, he had been prone to these when Luo Binghe was his whipping boy. Shite.

 

How dared this scum try to die in such a pitiful way, long before Luo Binghe could implement his revenge ? No, he wouldn’t get off that easy !

 

Luo Binghe wouldn’t allow him.

 

 

Chapter 2

« Such an interesting guest Junshang brought back to the palace » Shan Su mused, five of her eyes closed as the three that stared at Luo Binghe were openly curious.

 

The Heavenly half-breed snorted.

 

« No matter how much you insist, this lord is not letting you eat him » he warned her.

 

The spider demoness delicately shrugged, seemingly unbothered by his refusal to let her indulge her clan’s hunger.

 

Spider demons came in many shapes, and just as much bloodlines with their own idiosyncrazies – some of them renowned for their silk, some of them solitary hunters that would build traps, some of them tiny enough to pass as children and some of them towering over Luo Binghe who was far from being small. Still, a lot of them enjoyed eating the flesh of sapient beings – something about the pleasure being lesser when the prey couldn’t truly understand how outmatched they were.

 

The Shan Spider Clan was famed for their knowledge about venoms – they could bite their prey and the hapless victim would suffer from various ailments such as vomiting, muscle cramps, delirium or the skin and organs rotting. It made them quite feared as enemies, but they also carefully dosed the venoms in order to produce medicines that were far too convenient to allow their utter extermination.

 

Shan Su’s older brother currently served as Luo Binghe’s court physician, partly because he was interested in learning more about healing, partly because the Shan Spider Clan wanted someone to defend their interests to the new Junshang of the Southern Demon Plains, partly because he was quite attached to his sister and as such was easily managed so long Shan Su enjoyed Luo Binghe visiting her bed.

 

She wasn’t such an ugly sight, for her obvious inhumanity. Shan Su’s hair and skin were a sandy shade between brown and pale yellow, her eyes were round and entirely black, her fangs were visible when she smiled and she had three pairs of arms, something that made her quite the handful between the sheets. She also tried to bite Luo Binghe and devour small morsels of his flesh when he fucked her with such vigour she thought he was distracted.

 

Luo Binghe had broken two of her arms the first time it happened, then he decided to let Sha Hualing punish her whenever she would do it again. Spider demons refused to submit to male dominance, many of their menfolk so much weaker and good only for breeding, so a spider demoness wouldn’t bow if her opponent wasn’t strong enough to be acknowledged as a matriarch worthy to lead her own clan.

 

As the Saint to the Sha clan, his dear bloodthirsty Hualing was more than enough to force Shan Shu to submit. And Sha Hualing’s loyalty went to Luo Binghe, as the one who helped to go through the trials needed for her to become her father’s successor instead of her sisters.

 

« This one merely wanted to express how surprised she was, to find a human cultivator brought there by Junshang. »

 

Of course she was – Luo Binghe made no mystery of his wish to wreck havoc on the cultivation world for cruelly rejecting his attempts to fit in, she likely remembered his dramatic proclamation that he would slay any human with the misfortune to be lost in the demonic lands. Then he went to gather information on the great sects, and he came back laden with an unconscious human, asking for his physician to tend to said human.

 

« This lord – has plans for the cultivator » the Heavenly half-breed decided to admit, prompting Shan Su to open all of her dark, round eyes, a hint of bloodlust glistening in their black depths.

 

« Does Junshang want for this one to use her venoms in order to free the prisoner’s tongue ? I shall confess, that would be the first time I would test their efficiency upon a first-grade golden core. »

 

Luo Binghe sweetly smiled at her as he rose a hand and patted her hairbun, a surprisingly elaborate hairstyle since the spider demoness gathered her hair into a silken net decorated with carved beads and secured with bone hairpins.

 

« A-Su is forgetting her place, presuming to know this lord’s intentions. Does this lord need to call for Sha Hualing ? It has been so long since a-Su enjoyed the full brunt of her attention » he said.

 

Shan Su shivered, her expression caught between fear and desire. Wasn’t she adorable, her pride refusing to let her relish the prospect of Sha Hualing breaking her legs and cutting her on the belly and the chest ? Because she did enjoy it – the gasps and moans she would emit at every punishment session were far from being shocked or pained.

 

Luo Binghe might supervise the punishment. To ensure Sha Hualing wouldn’t go too far, of course – it wouldn’t do to annoy his current physician into skulking back to his ancestral house by letting his first and most favoured bedmate torture said physician’s precious sister to death.

 

Demons could be so tiresome, really.

 

Speaking of the devil (spider demon, rather), a soft pitter patter on the floor signaled Shan Xu’s arrival. He very much looked like his younger sister, his sandy hair pulled into the same elegant bun, his multiple eyes lazily blinking at Luo Binghe as the physician whispered a greeting, his six hands slender and long-fingered as he was carrying the tools of his trade – the main difference lied in how short and delicate the male spider demon was.

 

No wonder he was so quick to obey Shan Su, she was two heads and a half taller than her older brother. Said demoness smiled as her sibling approached, her fangs fully in display.

 

« Xu’er, did you manage to not kill the cultivator ? » she asked. « Junshang is quite insistent on the matter, you see. »

 

« This one managed » the physician reassured his sister and his lord, and Luo Binghe felt tension leave his shoulders.

 

Entrusting Shen Qingqiu’s care to a spider demon more used to poison humans than cure their afflictions had been a gamble, but Luo Binghe’s luck always had been odd and whimsical, granting him unexpected boons in the most strange circumstances. He had chosen to risk it, he didn’t have many options after all. Was he supposed to open a portal to Cang Qiong, asking for Mu Qingfang’s help ? It would have been ridiculous.

 

« Well ? Will he live ? »

 

It was so important for Shen Qingqiu to live. This scum now was under Luo Binghe’s power, and Luo Binghe would have his revenge – he would force this bastard to cry tears of blood, he would make him scream and beg for mercy, he would rip his eyelids for Shen Qingqiu to have no choice but to watch the whole Tian Gong mountain range burn to ashes, he would do all this and so much worse to this false jade that deserved everything Luo Binghe’s maddened anger could conjure…

 

But he needed Shen Qingqiu to live, in order to enact his plans.

 

Shan Xu bowed.

 

« The patient still draws breath, and might this one thank Junshang for such a unique opportunity to study how human cultivation impacts demon metabolism ? Truly, it’s fascinating... »

 

The Heavenly half-breed frowned.

 

« What are you talking about ? »

 

Shan Xu smiled – the expression sought to appease, but the glistening yellowish fangs in his mouth made it more unsettling than soothing.

 

« The cultivator Junshang entrusted to this one, they are no human. They are huli jing. »

 

 

Chapter 3

The person in the bed still looked like Shen Qingqiu with his thin lips and his high cheekbones and his straight nose, but their hair had been carefully bleached to achieve a fascinating quicksilver shade, a pair of fox ears the same colour half-hidden by the disordered tresses, their fingers were topped off by short obsidian claws, and a fluffy tail emerged from their sleeping robes.

 

They were soundly sleeping, curled on their side with their hair unbound, barely the shadow of a frown on their facial features, and Luo Binghe couldn’t help looking at them, trying to digest everything this meant.

 

This cultivator Junshang brought in the Palace, they are no human.

 

« Shan Xu » the Heavenly half-breed snapped, a mite too curt really but he wanted answers, « tell me about huli jing. What is that ? »

 

The spider demon hummed, a low vibration in his throat that sounded like an insect buzzing around.

 

« A very good question, Junshang. Some folks believed a huli jing is a fox old and wily enough to acquire magical powers and immortality, yet some tribes will claim they are the offspring to the great Daji, she who caused the Second Royal Dynasty’s downfall in the Human Realm. It’s hard to determinate the truth, these creatures are quite well-practised when it comes to obscure their true nature, the most accomplished masters of shapeshifting one will ever find in the Three Realms. »

 

A fox. It certainly fit with Shen Qingqiu’s brand new appendages, and Luo Binghe briefly thought of petting them – letting his fingers comb these starlight locks, will it have the same fluidity as the quicksilver ?

 

« This lord knows of Daji » he admitted. « The most beautiful woman to live in the Middle Kingdom – why, to gaze upon her face was to become enthralled, for she was so lovely the birds in flight fell from the heavens as they saw her and the flowers wilted from shame as they couldn’t compare to her. And she was the most rotten, vicious and cruel being to plague the mortals, for what pleased her the most was tormenting them and hearing their pained screams. »

 

A young Luo Binghe, still covered with dirt from the trial he underwent to be accepted as a Cang Qiong disciple, had beheld Shen Qingqiu in his immortal glory and believed the man was a peerless fairy having fled the Upper Realm. How could he ever imagine the depths of cruelty and pettiness lurking behind this flawless jade-like mask ?

 

Was it a racial behaviour ? Was Shen Qingqiu secretly indulging his inhuman nature and relishing in his instincts ? Had the Qing Jing Peak Lord been emulating the notorious consort all this time ?

 

« Tell this lord, was this… huli jing using his shapeshifting in order to live amongst humans without being discovered ? »

 

The physician snorted.

 

« The huli jing’s powers were sealed, Junshang. This is likely how they managed to learn spiritual cultivation – it happens sometimes for a demon to harness the human magic, but they need to be very young or very weak in demonic power, or it will wreck their bodies and sanity. Looking at my patient, their growing demonic abilities have started to clash with their golden core, causing the qi deviation that Junshang wanted for this lowly one to cure. »

 

Qi deviations. Shen Qingqiu had been prone to qi deviations since a rather long time – the conflicting energies should have killed him in a matter of months, if not days, Luo Binghe himself suffered tremendous agony to adapt to his Heavenly Demonic inheritance while retaining his spiritual cultivation potential and was still struggling nowaday, his Shizun was much weaker yet he stubbornly had kept on living.

 

Luo Binghe hated this scum, but he nonetheless conceded Shen Qingqiu’s determination was nothing to sneeze at – he would almost admire the bastard for it.

 

Ah, he could see the red ropes wound around Shen Qingqiu’s wrists – Immortal Binding cables, good enough as a stopgate, keeping the meridians dry and deprived from the qi flow usually running through them.

 

Shan Xu saw where the Heavenly half-breed was looking, and explained his reasoning :

 

« Since the illness comes from the golden core trying to repress the demonic qi surfacing, it would be best to temporarily seal the huli jing’s spiritual cultivation. Their body won’t struggle as much as they finally mature, and as a benefit, the prisoner won’t be strong enough to try and escape from the palace – if it pleases Junshang. »

 

« This is very pleasing to this lord » Luo Binghe rumbled, a dark red flame lighting in his gut.

 

Shen Qingqiu helpless and unable to flee from his grasp. Better still, Shen Qingqiu powerless to prevent his own body from betraying him as it turned the haughty, prideful Peak Lord into one of the beings he loathed so much, a filthy demon – Shen Qingqiu waking up only to learn he now was the wretched beggar reduced to beg for Luo Binghe’s scraps.

 

Would he scream and hurl verbal abuse at his new master, as he enjoyed so much doing when both of them were living on the Qing Jing Peak ? Would he break down and cry, fat tears running down these pale cheeks carved from the purest jade ? Would he try to slit his throat or shred his face with his newly grown claws ?

 

Luo Binghe wouldn’t allow Shen Qingqiu to die, and he wouldn’t let the Peak Lord maim himself either – wouldn’t it be a fitting punishment, to have a mirror installed in the scum’s bedroom, forcing him to look at the creature he now was condemned to stay ?

 

And what fine features they were. Luo Binghe wanted to dress Shen Qingqiu with the whitest silks he could find, shackle him with necklaces and bracelets of pearls and silver, the palest shades to suit his complexion and his starlight tresses – he wanted to turn the scum into the most lovely doll, something so delicate-looking you would be afraid to play with it and instead would keep locked away forever.

 

Shen Qingqiu would hate this, so much – he would be so ashamed, so humiliated to be nothing but a toy for the Demon Sovereign, and he would have no other choice but submit.

 

As Luo Binghe idly daydreamed, the spider demon still was talking.

 

« One last thing, and this will be important, indeed, especially for one gifted with a constitution such as Junshang, huli jing naturally are blessed with exceptional reserves of yin energy. Since they can change gender on a whim, it’s rather easy and often very enjoyable to dual cultivate with them. »

 

« Shan Xu is dismissed » the Heavenly half-breed declared. « Tomorrow, he will find several manuals of surgery, brought from beyond the Western Sea. »

 

The physician deeply bowed at the waist, two of his hands clasped together as the others quivered with satisfaction.

 

« Your Majesty is far too generous towards this lowly servant. »

 

« This lord will reward you so obscenely merely if you keep up with the good work » Luo Binghe reminded him. « Fail this lord, and you will be sent back to your clan as breeding stock and food reserve for when you won’t be able to sire brats anymore. »

 

Truly, the demon bloodlines had the most strange and revolting traditions, but Luo Binghe needed to roll with it if he wanted for things to be done as he wanted. Shan Xu retreated with a soft pitter patter of silken slippers on the stone floor, leaving him alone with a sleeping Shen Qingqiu.

 

A smirk appeared on Luo Binghe’s face as he slowly bended over the huli jing to whisper in a fox ear.

 

« Wake up, Shizun. This Disciple cannot wait for you to open your eyes. »

 

This is going to be so amusing.

 

 

Notes:

The Four Great Beauties are described thus: Xi Shi sinks fishes, Wang Ziaojun entices birds to fall, Diaochan eclipses the moon, Yang Guifei shames flowers -- idioms that can be used to describe exceptionally beautiful women. Unfortunately, three of these women suffered tragic demises for the influence they exercised upon the kings and emperors in their era.

The historical Daji, favorite consort to the last king of the Shang Dynasty, likely was fully human. However, she was identified as a fox spirit since at least the Tang Dynasty, blamed for the fall of King Zhou by corrupting his mind and encouraging him to torture his subjects as a fun hobby and neglect responsible governance. In many works of fiction, she couldn't be killed in human form since she was so beautiful that her would-be murderers hesitated, and she was thought to have fled in Japan and became Tamamo-no-Mae, another legendary courtesan.

Chapter 4

When Shen Qingqiu finally decided to regain awareness, Luo Binghe had lost track of time, far too busy as he was to consider the Qing Jing Peak Lord’s slightly changed features – even when he neglected the more obvious changes such as the hair colour and the extra appendages, it seemed to him that his shizun looked… softer. Maybe the sleep ? Maybe the lack of inner turmoil caused by his conflicting energies ?

 

Thick silvery eyelashes shivered and trembled, then the formerly human cultivator slowly, almost shyly opened his eyes – marvel of marvels, the cold and dark irises had turned into twin pools of quicksilver, entrancing as the colour swirled in endless eddies and tides, a promise of poison and fascination in one.

 

Not even these thin lips suddenly distorting themselves in a scowl could ruin such perfection.

 

« Is Shizun awake now ? » Luo Binghe purred. « Does he know who I am ? »

 

« Beast » Shen Qingqiu snarled, « you dare show your face again to this master ? »

 

The huli jing was shivering from anger and indignation, how sweet. He still believed he was the one holding all the cards there.

 

This is going to be so good.

 

The Heavenly half-breed pouted, well aware that his eyes and the crest on his forehead were glowing crimson.

 

« How rude. Is that how this Disciple is thanked for saving his Shizun’s life, in spite of everything ? »

 

« You are no Disciple of mine, after lying and practising your demonic arts on my Qing Jing Peak » Shen Qingqiu fired back.

 

A fire needle cruelly pierced Luo Binghe’s chest. Yes, of course the scum bastard would hold this over his head, without even caring he had no other choice, Luo Binghe knew how despised half-blooded brats were even when their parent was a mere barbarian originating from outside the Middle Kingdom, it was so much worse for a demon’s offspring, he would have been stoned and beaten and buried alive for the sin of being born at all.

 

(sometimes Luo Binghe wonders if the woman who bore him was so ashamed, she decided to drown the abomination in the icy waters that instead carried him to a lonely washerwoman that was so desperate for anyone to love, she would even take a half-dead newborn in)

 

« Even after half a decade, Shizun still is so ruthless towards me » he softly hissed. « No matter if I am an eager Disciple or a fearsome lord, he will show nothing but disdain for this one. »

 

« I am showing you nothing you didn’t deserve, beast » the bastard mercilessly claimed, as if Luo Binghe deserved boiling tea poured over his head, deserved the beatings and the endless chores and the half-assed teaching, deserved to be cast in the depths of Hell itself…  !

 

Xin Mo shrieked in his inner ear, begging to be unsheated and unleashed, begging for blood to be spilled and offered to it, and his fingers twitched and wanted to wrap themselves around this smooth swan-like neck and squeeze…

 

The Heavenly half-breed managed to restrain himself, opting to tenderly pet the formerly human cultivator’s head right at the junction of his brand new fox ears with the scalp.

 

« This one wonders if Shizun secretly craves for death, insulting his rescuer » he mused, doing his best to ignore the blood roaring beneath his skin.

 

Shen Qingqiu stilled under his touch. Were even Luo Binghe’s fingers loathsome to such a haughty immortal ?

 

Then the scum writhed, trying to push himself in a reclining position, several locks of his bleached hair falling in front of his eyes and upon his clawed hands, and his breathing gained a harsher tone.

 

« … What is that ? What have you done to me ? »

 

Oh. Oh, Shen Qingqiu had gotten a glimpse of his new self. The smirk threatened to swallow the Heavenly half-breed’s face whole, his lips were pulled so wide.

 

« What did I do ? Shizun » he purred, « that’s the beauty of this matter. I didn’t do anything , not a thing . You see, it turns out… you are not so different from this hateful demon in front of you, after all. »

 

Shen Qingqiu looked so magnificently, so gloriously faint, panting as he looked at his hand as if it would suddenly turn against him. Luo Binghe sat on the bed and gently gathered the huli jing in his arms, taking care of not letting the formerly human cultivator squash his fluffy tail as he sat upon the Demon Sovereign’s lap.

 

The smell of this pale skin was intoxicating, sweet as honey yet spiced with ginger and cinnamon and pepper, Luo Binghe wanted to bite down on this vulnerable neck and taste the blood that would flood his mouth, would it taste just as good ? The former street urchin liked his spices, deprived from the opportunity to enjoy them as he was growing up happy if his mother and him could consume rotting radishes with a rice bowl and the Demon Realm didn’t know anything about cooking, they would burn meat to charcoal and call that a meal without any other embellishments.

 

Truly, Shen Qingqiu might have sneered at Luo Binghe for being so happy to cook, but he would vomit if presented a sample of demon delicacies. Hum, that was an idea – a demon ought to be fed with demon food, after all. See how many days Shizun would endure until he decided to starve or beg for his lord’s mercy.

 

But for now… for now, he would relish in the bastard’s horror and shock as his true nature was unveiled to his own eyes. Revenge was a savoury meal, and he would take pleasure in every single crumb of it.

 

« Disgusting, isn’t it ? » he sweetly whispered, as if he was cajoling an unhappy demoness in his bed as she sobbed and yelled insults at him. « That’s alright, this lord will forgive Shizun for lying about the real him. You had no idea, didn’t you ? »

 

Shen Qingqiu startled like a scalded cat and twisted his body, his claws finding the Demon Sovereign’s cheek and managing to scratch him. Luo Binghe wanted to burst out laughing, was his fearsome Shizun really so weak when deprived of his golden core ? So many demons had left worse scarring upon him, heck, even several of the women he fucked had left worse scarring upon him !

 

« You » hissed Shen Qingqiu.

 

« Me » he sing-songed. « The only one that can stand to be in your presence, Shizun. Or are you seriously considering going back to Cang Qiong in such a state ? »

 

The twin ponds of quicksilver were glittering with hatred and defiance, such a beautiful sight he internally lamented his lack of ability for painting and drawing, he wanted to capture it forever yet knew he could never truly do it justice. Ah, how unfair.

 

« Even if you could, I wouldn’t let you. Shen Qingqiu owes a heavy debt to this lord, and it shall be paid a hundredfold » the Heavenly half-breed annunced, his face darkening.

 

He was aware he could be terrifying to behold, since he had fully harnessed his demonic inheritance and matured into a grown-up man with the height and the muscle to match. The disgraced Peak Lord refused to bat an eyelash.

 

« As if the beast you are has the means to break me » he hissed. « You never had, and you never will. »

 

Luo Binghe’s expression was more bloodthirsty than amused, this time.

 

« Your challenge has been heard, and this lord will answer. »

 

It was going to be so good.

 

 

Chapter 5

Keeping a cultivator imprisoned was rumoured to be quite difficult. The infamous Water Prison in the depths of the Huan Hua Palace gained such notoriety for being absolutely reliable, and it was constantly watched and updated by the Palace Master and his most trusted sealing masters.

 

Luo Binghe didn’t have the Water Prison, and he couldn’t trust the Immortal Binding Cables to last more than a few months. He needed something slightly more permanent in order to keep Shen Qingqiu hobbled and unable to draw on his golden core – he had heard of demonic blacksmiths creating shackles or innocent-looking jewellery able to suck cultivation from the meridians and dispel it without letting the bearer access their qi, maybe he ought to buy some pretty necklace from one silversmith ? Yes, a collar around this bastard’s throat, the visible proof that he was fully under Luo Binghe’s control.

 

The Demon Sovereign also would have to keep the walls and door reinforced to prevent an escape attempt. Fortunately, Shen Qingqiu had been put in one of the subterranean bedrooms – the Southern Demon Plains could get scorching when the weather was hot and dry enough, so many of the settlements were built beneath the surface and criminals would be cruelly exposed to the heat wave, crippled and chained to keep them unable to move and seek shelter – so he didn’t have to worry about a window serving as a potential weakness.

 

And he had to consider the huli jing’s health, too – Shen Qingqiu’s body was finally able to mature and gain access to his demonic inheritance, but that wouldn’t be ideal if the scum mastered his racial abilities and qi control enough to fight against Luo Binghe, far from it. The Heavenly half-breed needed to keep his prisoner weak, yet not so weak he would liable to sicken and perish from lack of care.

 

Shan Xu would be a good helper on this point, the spider demon looked tremendously excited to study a huli jing and would hate to lose his subject research. Still, Luo Binghe would have to keep an eye over the physician or Shan Xu would end up vivisecting Shen Qingqiu in his enthusiasm and thirst for learning.

 

Speaking about Shan Xu and his involvement in watching the prisoner, it would be smart to appoint guards for the bastard’s bedroom. More than a few servants would get curious when they would hear about Luo Binghe having a cultivator or a huli jing brought in the Palace, or one of the demonesses whose bed he regularly honored with his presence would get nosy. Sha Hualing was quite bad on the matter, she got bored so easily and constantly sought for shiny new toys and playmates and games.

 

She wouldn’t appreciate to find the Peak Lord that prevented her from ravaging Cang Qiong as Luo Binghe’s guest, surely. She would insist to butt in, and Luo Binghe would have to firmly punish her in order to remind the Sha Saintess he had his boundaries and refused to share his own toys with someone that would rough them too much for him to enjoy afterwards.

 

It would be a tedious affair, and Luo Binghe refused to let anything regarding his revenge against his Shizun become tedious. He wanted to savour every single crumb of it, he wouldn’t let anyone spoil this no matter if they were his second most trusted general and currently favoured bedmate.

 

That would be so difficult, to find warriors he could trust to not be stupid and peep inside the bedroom, or greedy enough to let someone else than their lord inside after a consequential bribe. And it would be just as complicated to find reliable attendants for his prisoner.

 

Oh, Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t be allowed attendants for a while, he first needed to be broken and learn his best interest was to stay inside his bedroom, it should be enough to keep him chained to the bed without a shred of thread to cover himself.

 

His Shizun was so haughty and prideful, he would never allow himself to be seen naked outside his bath. Of course, a demon’s threshold for shame was much lower than a human’s, just look at Sha Hualing wearing nothing but translucent red veils strategically placed to cover her naughty bits, but Luo Binghe earnestly believed Shen Qingqiu would be more influenced by human morality on the matter.

 

It was good. Shen Qingqiu was his – his to keep secluded, his to own and torture, and he intented for no one else to enjoy what was so deeply his.

 

When his Shizun finally would have been tamed, when Luo Binghe would have him obedient and reluctant to step outside the bedroom, then he would be allowed attendants – chambermaids to help him dress and bath and keep the room clean, people that would need to be subservient to Luo Binghe first and foremost to ensure they would follow the instructions he would give them regarding the huli jing’s care.

 

In the meantime, Shen Qingqiu would see none but the physician and Luo Binghe. He would stay isolated, stuck in a room with nothing to do except thinking about his wrongs and nothing to look forwards but his captor’s visits.

 

Slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the mind could be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body, there were records of mighty demon warriors suffering breakdowns and turning into drooling wrecks after being forgotten a bit in dark cells. Of course, a cultivator meditating was cheating since they were focused on advancing their cultivation, but Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t have this modicum of comfort, being left without protection against the degradation of his sanity.

 

Left without protection against Luo Binghe’s presence, and the Demon Sovereign couldn’t wait to see his Shizun cry and scream for the filthy demon to stay besides him, to not cruelly abandon him just like he did to his unlucky disciple that wanted to please him more than anything. It would be appropriate – it would be fitting.

 

Luo Binghe wanted to utterly destroy and ruin Shen Qingqiu, to annihilate him until there would be nothing left from the Qing Jing Peak Lord. Keeping him isolated to cleanse the scum from the slightest shreds of his personality… it certainly had its appeal.

 

Of course, the idea of Shen Qingqiu forgetting why Luo Binghe was tormenting him wouldn’t do, the bastard needed to remember everything if he had to genuinely repent and beg for his mistreated Disciple’s forgiveness. Luo Binghe was disgusted by empty words, he wanted – he needed for this apology to have substance.

 

Then he would consider it. He wouldn’t grant mercy – nothing would be enough for Shen Qingqiu to wholly expiate his sin, he would spend a lifetime and beyond repaying this debt – but he would consider softening, letting his prisoner outside the bedroom if not outside the Palace. Maybe letting him in the library – Qing Jing had been so very proud of the many tomes of knowledge entrusted to its keeping, Shen Qingqiu would enjoy reading materials – it was such a pitiful collection anyway, he wouldn’t find anything able to let him escape from the Demon Realm and go back to Cang Qiong.

 

Cang Qiong likely believed him dead, anyway – after several days without news, they would try and send a research party only to fail in finding his whereabouts, and they would gladly conclude Shen Qingqiu had perished on a mission. They couldn’t stand him, so they wouldn’t care about seriously looking for him.

 

No one would ever come to rescue Shen Qingqiu, not even Yue Qingyuan that always seemed to nurture an unexplained fondness towards someone constantly snarling and spitting abuse at him. That was the truth his prisoner would have to accept.

 

None would ever come.

 

 

Chapter 6

When Shen Qingqiu told this wretched half-breed – a Heavenly Demon, if the Endless Abyss wasn’t enough to kill him, then the Qing Jing Peak Lord really wondered what would do the trick – nothing imagined by Luo Binghe would be enough to break him, the cultivator wasn’t boasting. It was a mere fact he was delivering.

 

Shen Qingqiu had been a slave brat in the streets and a slave brat in the Qiu manor and a slave brat on the roads with Wu Yanzi. Luo Binghe could try his best to torture him and still it would fall short of Shen Qingqiu’s past.

 

The Peak Lord wasn’t grateful to his former owners for giving him such a high ability to withstand pain and mind games, everything he was, he owed to himself. He knew what he was worth and he knew he gained this worth because he was fighting a world bent on grinding him under a pitiless boot, and he refused to let this world win.

 

So the cultivator wasn’t impressed by the shackles keeping him on the bed. Only two of them, for his right wrist and ankle, and the ankle shackle was attached to a chain long enough to let him roll on his side and fall on the floor. Well, he wasn’t interested in falling on the floor, but it gave him access to the bucket besides the bed instead of forcing him to shit and piss himself.

 

Wu Yanzi had relished using a freezing charm on his so-called apprentice when he got tired of Xiao Jiu’s mouthiness and letting him wallow in his own filth to teach him obedience. Truly, this little beast was so amateurish regarding pain and humiliation, it was quite the embarrassment – if he was spoiled enough to consider his treatment on Qing Jing Peak as bullying, he wouldn’t have survived more than a few shichen in the streets.

 

Or maybe that disgusting spider demon with far too many eyes and arms and its mouth full of fangs had pleaded for leniency, pointing how unproductive for its medical research it would be for Shen Qingqiu to fall sick from soiling himself and suffering bedsores that would get infected.

 

Because Luo Binghe had enlisted the services of a demon curious about learning how bodies would work, what made them tick. Xiao Jiu had seen people with the same curious glint in their eyes, people that would steal corpses and abduct passerbys in order to conduct more or less horrifying experiences such as cutting someone’s hands and feet to see if the subject’s identical twin would feel pain out of empathy. He had killed many of these maddened dogs claiming to study medicine only to become first-grade torturers after ascending as a Peak Lord, and that was a rare duty his martial siblings had approved.

 

Now he was stuck at the creature’s mercy, because it was interested in studying huli jing, this kind of demon is so rare you see, actually this lowly one isn’t even sure huli jing is a demonic race to begin with.

 

Because Shen Qingqiu wasn’t human anymore. Had never been human, actually.

 

He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip his bleached hair and the appendages he could feel growing out on his scalp and lower back and he wanted to tear these darkened claws from his nailbeds, maybe he would get lucky and bleed to death.

 

When he tried, energy he couldn’t recognize surged within him and forced the wound closed. He tried again and again only for the beast to walk upon him and command his pet spider to force a sedative down Shen Qingqiu’s throat, and when he woke up his arms and legs had been restrained, his head fuzzy and a cold metal pan stuffed right beneath his groin.

 

« Shizun shouldn’t try to harm himself » the beast had softly whispered as he cradled Shen Qingqiu’s head in a nauseating parody of tenderness. « Does he really believe this lord is going to let him ? I am far from being done with you, Shen Qingqiu. »

 

The cultivator was unsure about how much time went by as he was utterly helpless, but he would guess it was around three days. Luo Binghe wasn’t smart enough to confuse him with irregular meals and visits, but the sedative would turn his mind foggy to the point he barely noticed when someone was talking to him.

 

When he was allowed to move his left side again, the message had been sent : Luo Binghe wouldn’t hesitate to turn him into a vegetable rather than giving him the freedom of death. Shen Qingqiu wasn’t that bothered by the prospect of dying – why would he even want to live anyway, no one cared about this, not even the one person that was there since the very beginning – but he refused to let his mind disintegrate from constant drugging.

 

If he could think… then he could find a way to escape the beast’s grasp. He could pretend he was broken just like he learned to cower in the Qiu manor when it wasn’t possible for him to hide inside Miss Haitang’s bedroom, then he would set this fucking place ablaze with the beast and all his pet abominations trapped within the inferno, then he would go back to Cang Qiong for Yue Qingyuan to kill him or he would die to ensure Luo Binghe wouldn’t walk away from this attempt against his life.

 

Shen Qingqiu would die at the end of this venture. He just couldn’t keep on living as he now was – he couldn’t be a Peak Lord anymore, he was a demon and who ever heard of a righteous cultivation sect letting a demon in their upper ranks. That was fine, he was waiting for this since the day he finally understood the one person he believed he could trust had decided to drop him like trash and forge a shining new path for himself.

 

No one cared about Shen Qingqiu – no one even cared about Xiao Jiu, so there was nothing left to do but die. He merely had a long road to tread before he could finally rest, but he never had been scared of working hard, or he wouldn’t have been picked as the Qing Jing Peak Lord when the former generation decided they were tired from ruling.

 

So he would have to pretend he had been beaten down. It would take some time to be convincing – Shen Qingqiu was notoriously strong-willed, he couldn’t crumble after barely a month imprisoned in solitary confinement and the beast wasn’t that stupid, he would suspect something fishy if deprived from the opportunity to indulge his revenge fantasies.

 

Waiting it was. Shen Qingqiu was good at waiting, how many years had he faithfully waited for Qi-ge to come back ? For Qi-ge to explain why he disregarded their promise ? And that wasn’t like he had nothing to focus on.

 

This alien, unfamiliar, disgustingly enticing energy that just manifested in his body, he needed to harness it. On the matter of fighting, Shen Qingqiu firmly believed there was no weapon wretched enough to not be used if there was the tiniest chance for it to grant the fighter victory. If Shen Qingqiu had to harness the demonic arts in order to gain the opportunity to put the beast down, so be it, that wasn’t like he would live long enough to be corrupted by this newfound power.

 

Infiltrating a demonic nobleman’s circle by playing himself as harmless in order to rid the Middle Kingdom from a potential threat. He had seen worse, as far as demises were concerned.

 

At least he would be useful for something.

Chapter 7

You could trust juicy gossip to spread much quicker than the stench of a corpse, especially when it was about notorious figures or scandalous behaviour. On this point, demons were just as bad as humans – and everyone already knew about Luo Binghe bringing someone back to the Palace to keep them secluded in a small bedroom barely the day after it happened.

 

Strangely enough, Shan Su was firmly keeping quiet in spite of being very well informed and as such in a position to enjoy public attention if she decided to come clean. Luo Binghe briefly pondered over her behaviour before deciding her brother likely asked for her silence or he wouldn’t be able to work in peace – for one belonging to a matriarchal clan, she was surprisingly eager to dote on her male sibling.

 

The Heavenly half-breed idly wondered if Shan Su would stubbornly hold her tongue when Sha Hualing would start pestering her for more details. It might be a good way to test her worth as a secret keeper, on the other hand… He would keep an eye over the situation.

 

Deprived of any hints regarding the truth of the matter, servants and warriors and advisors were busy speculating and imagining various possibilities about the mysterious guest – so far, barely a few amongst them insisted it was a human cultivator whom the Demon Sovereign wanted to gruesomely torture, purely because he wished to launch a devastating assault against the great sects and wanted to gain experience about making humans scream. None of them was even suggesting it might be personal for the Heavenly half-breed, if it was then Junshang would have made a spectacle of publically flaying then drowing the cultivator in a vinegar barrel !

 

Demons as a rule believed in blatantly and very obviously settling their grudges, and it meant their executions tended to be quite gruesome and doubled as entertainement for the masses. They could be subtle, but they disliked it for not being as enjoyable.

 

Several of Luo Binghe’s warriors maintained he had stumbled upon some new creature he wished to study, something that might be a bad omen for the Demon Realm if allowed to invade with its fellows, or something that might benefit them as food or loot, they were unsure but the physician being called and blatantly refusing to discuss his brand new research was rather telling, wouldn’t you agree ?

 

Finally, some attendants had gathered their bravery and shyly asked if Junshang had abducted a consort he still was seducing, and if the beauty’s clan would be liable to try and attack the Southern Plains in order to rescue their stolen daughter. Also, Junshang’s current bedmates would have to be informed and the dynamics between them to adapt, once more.

 

Luo Binghe carefully listened every guess and refused to tell the truth, keeping a smirk on his face no matter how close or far the speculation hit from the mark. Still, he almost choked when his servants had started wondering about his prisoner being bound for his women’s quarters.

 

Luo Binghe certainly would never allow for Shen Qingqiu to step inside the women’s quarters – either the demonesses would attempt to kill or seduce the bastard, or the bastard would try to slaughter the demonesses, forcing him to constantly intervene in both cases. Also, Shen Qingqiu wasn’t a woman – at least, he didn’t believe so… Shan Xu had mentioned huli jing were able to shapeshift and casually swap genders, but the Qing Jing Peak Lord had spent his life in the Human Realm, he likely considered himself a man.

 

… That might be interesting, to humiliate the scum by forcing him to shapeshift into a woman. After losing his certainty that he was human, Shen Qingqiu would have to lose another pillar of his identity – bound into something else than his true self, wouldn’t it be destructive for his spirit ? Wouldn’t it drive the bastard to rage and despair, from being turned into something weaker, something lesser than he used to be ? Luo Binghe knew what male humans thought of girls and women, he had shared lessons and night hunts with teenage boys and heard them commenting on womanly shapes and tempers, and wasn’t Shizun a frequent patron in the brothels ? Of course he would associate women with sex, and he had been so strange around Ning Yingying, always favouring her, always letting her babble and prance as he watched with soft eyes…

 

Wouldn’t it be justice for Ning Yingying, if Luo Binghe forced Shen Qingqiu to suffer the same kind of attention she had to endure at the hands of the Qing Jing Peak Lord ? Yes, Luo Binghe had earned his revenge, but she was owed retribution too. She likely would be happy if Luo Binghe punished their scum Shizun in her stead – Ning Yingying was such a sweet person, she would understand why he had done this, yes she cared for the bastard but she would quickly agree he deserved everything Luo Binghe would put him through when they would be reunited, when she would get to see him alive and so much more than a pitiful disciple that was a slave in all but the name on the Qing Jing Peak.

 

Would she be impressed by his newfound fame and wealth in the Demon Realm ? Or would she feel scared instead ? A cultivator was supposed to hate demons, and Ning Yingying was so sweet yet she was one of Cang Qiong’s disciples, would she choose to stay with the sect once he would wage war against the Middle Kingdom ?

 

The idea of the nice if slightly ditzy shijie he fondly remembered as the lone light in his dismayal disciplehood as his foe, the righteous opponent to the Demon Ruler he now was… it sounded like the plot for a spring novel, the kind you would use as toilet paper after reading because it was so stupid and badly written. Luo Binghe never liked these books, their plots far too contrived and convoluted, and as he was confronted to the eventuality of one silly plot becoming his life, he mused he found them more hateful than ever.

 

A spring novel’s plot wasn’t funny or endearing at all in the real world, it was just painful and sad, and he hated the idea of someone reading his life as entertainment when it was a serious matter for him. He hated the idea of a god high in the Heavens, bent on throwing mishaps and monsters and misfortune on his path to see how far he would progress until he finally stumbled and died, a broken toy unable to fulfill its function and quickly forgotten for another.

 

If he learned the name of the god responsible for saddling him with such wretched luck and such a horrendous fate, he would desecrate their shrines and slaughter their devotees until said god was reduced to a pitiful shadow of themselves. He certainly owed nothing but disgust and hatred to such a cunning being ! He would forgive Shen Qingqiu long before he would forgive the engineer of his fate, and he had no intention whatsoever to forgive Shen Qingqiu.

 

Not in this millenium, certainly, and the bastard would have to grovel all the time. Or maybe not, since letting Shen Qingqiu grovel would deprive Luo Binghe from the opportunity to torment and punish the scum.

 

It surely could be a better use for this time.

 

 

Chapter 8

Shen Qingqiu refused to talk. It likely was his way to be defiant, after Luo Binghe firmly made him understand he wouldn’t get to maim himself – three days spend so utterly bound by cursed shackles and drugged to the ears was harrowing enough an experience for the most daring fighter to sit and hesitate to repeat the mishap that led to the punishment.

 

Luo Binghe had hoped the drugs would upset and weaken Shen Qingqiu to the point he would get to slip inside the scum’s dreams, only to be unable to grasp the mind he so greedily wanted to lay bare in front of him. He had summoned the Dream Demon, and the old fart had immediately declared he couldn’t do anything.

 

Huli jing were fluid and slippery by nature, the Dream Demon had declared when Luo Binghe asked why he didn’t even try, just like their body would morph according their wishes and mood, their minds would shift and twist and prevent a dream walker from exploring them because they just wouldn’t stay open in the same place long enough. So sorry, hope you wasn’t hoping too much from peeping into this one’s thoughts, they tend to be quite vicious when you want something from them.

 

Even after he unlocked his demonic inheritance, Luo Binghe still was foiled by Shen Qingqiu. It was infuriating, and he had been in a very dark mood this day – not even beating several of his best fighters in the yard had helped, and taking one of his demonic bedmates right after training had been less satisfying than he would have wanted, Xin Mo hissing in the back of his mind all the while.

 

Sometimes he really wanted to throw this blasted sword down back in the Endless Abyss, then he wouldn’t have to deal with its constant moodiness and loudness, it was worse than dealing with his court and his women – at least demons could be intimidated or seduced into calming down, but he would swore Xin Mo only get noisier with time.

 

Unfortunately, Luo Binghe needed the sword and its obscene power to keep the Southern Plains in line, and he would need it even more if he wanted for the whole Demon Realm to bow to his might. At least until people would be so used to his rule they wouldn’t be able to imagine defying him, but it would take more than a century to achieve this, demonkind was hopelessly stubborn and slow to accept authority.

 

Hopefully, breaking Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t take this long, even if it would be difficult – the scum refused to talk to him, to look at him, when Luo Binghe came down in the bedroom serving as the formerly human cultivator’s cell.

 

(how nostalgic, Shizun won’t even look at him, won’t even look at Luo Binghe as if he was someone worthy to be his disciple, worthy to be treated with kindness, worthy to be acknowledged as a person no matter how much this dumb little sheep does his best)

 

On the other hand, the bastard also refused to talk to Shan Xu – who did his best to force the huli jing to communicate, so curious he was about the Qing Jing Peak Lord’s background, and Luo Binghe would confess he too felt curious.

 

Everyone back at Cang Qiong believed Shen Qingqiu was a noble bloodline’s scion, he certainly had the cultured manners and the haughtiness commonly found amongst the courtiers in the Imperial court. However, Shen Qingqiu being a huli jing permanently invalidated this possibility – of course there were rumours of noblemen happening upon a fairy or another kind of spirit whom they would marry, but even the most lustful and ambitious of courtier would have refused to make a huli jing his bride, after the Second Royal Dynasty’s downfall engineered by Daji.

 

Then, where did Shen Qingqiu come from ?

 

Luo Binghe wondered as he slowly, carefully caressed the white expanse of his Shizun’s hip, right at the junction between the leg and the trunk – the skin was so delicate and soft, the best silk couldn’t compare, and it would take barely a pressure from his nail to open a crimson wound in this flawless jade-like flesh…

 

Shen Qingqiu was tense under his hand, and Luo Binghe wanted to laugh. The bastard did his best to ignore the Heavenly half-breed, only for his own body to betray him when Luo Binghe indulged his craving for physical contact, a minute shiver he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been so utterly focused on the scum.

 

Shen Qingqiu loathed a demon laying his hands upon him, so Luo Binghe had started petting his hair, fondling his shoulders, massaging his feet and wrists, marvelling at the smoothness and relishing the carefully hidden horror and disgust beneath the formerly human cultivator’s emotionless mask.

 

Such agony, it was delightful – and how ironic, Shizun had been shameless when he went to the brothel to sleep around, Luo Binghe wasn’t doing anything really and Shen Qingqiu was acting the offended maiden ! How lovely ! Shizun, why did you expect this Disciple would fall for such a lie, of course you had no problems cuddling all these whores, or maybe you are not liking the fact you are the one to submit ? Maybe you are ashamed from having to let a much more powerful man to grope your beautiful figure ?

 

Too bad for Shen Qingqiu, Luo Binghe had no intention to stop his ministrations – no intention to stop at fondling, either.

 

The scum had pretty lips, reddish and full and soft-looking, a ripe fruit asking for someone to lick and bite and taste them. Waste not, it was the first and foremost lesson a young Luo Binghe had internalized when he still was living in the streets with his washerwoman mother and needed to treasure every single crumb and scrap of cloth – how could he waste such a lovely mouth by refusing to kiss it once ?

 

Shizun would hate it so much, maybe so much he would break his vow of silence and start screaming and heap verbal abuse upon Luo Binghe as he used to do when he still was the Immortal Master and the Heavenly half-breed a measly disciple. Maybe he would even sob, and Luo Binghe would get to taste his tears – demon physiology could produce very strange bodily fluids, and huli jing was uncharted territory so who knew if Shen Qingqiu would cry salty tears, they might be oily or bloody or bitter.

 

Shizun would hate it so much, would he attempt to fight Luo Binghe off ? The Demon Sovereign no longer was lacking in experience when wrestling was concerned, he still practised daily between the sheets since demonesses liked it rough. Roughing the scum had its appeal, he couldn’t deny it, yet Luo Binghe considered being soft and tender as he held Shen Qingqiu in his arms, treating the bastard as a lovesick bridegroom would embrace his bride on their wedding night, wouldn’t it be worse for the bastard, to be shown such gentleness when he expected violence ?

 

In some demon bloodlines, being gentle with a bedmate was a tremendous offense, implying you thought them fragile and unable to care for themselves. Surely his fiercely independant Shizun would hate the implication he was weak and dependent ? Even better, Luo Binghe could treat him as human noblemen would treat their wives and concubines, a pampered and cosseted little thing forbidden to ever leave the courtyard.

 

How insulting for the Qing Jing Peak Lord, who had ruled his Peak with an iron fist, who got used to be on the top of the world, and now wouldn’t even be able to pick his robes for the day. It would be nothing short of horrendous for him.

 

Yes, Luo Binghe very much liked this idea.

 

 

Chapter 9

It was hard, keeping himself from lashing out and tell the beast what exactly he was thinking of him. Yet Shen Qingqiu had decided it would be the best way to annoy his captor, this fucker Qiu Jianluo had been just the same, always waiting for Xiao Jiu to tell or do anything he would interpretate as a reason to beat the slave brat. Of course, he would beat and abuse Xiao Jiu merely for being in the way or just because he felt like it, but he wouldn’t take any pleasure from the latter occurrences – and the beast was carved from the same wood, always whining for people to pay attention to him, to pity him.

 

Shen Qingqiu had been the Qing Jing Peak Lord, Cang Qiong’s strategist and left hand to the Sect Leader. Between politics and teaching and furthering his own cultivation and mastery of the four arts, he had no time for a fucking spoiled brat that just wouldn’t follow the rules and would constantly skip on his training. Yet the beast was acting as if Shen Qingqiu had been possessed with a personal feud against his wretched self – as if, Luo Binghe never had been important enough for the Peak Lord to think about looking at him.

 

Of course, he now was a threat to the Human Realm, so he could be considered important in a way – but it wasn’t enough for him to genuinely matter on a personal level. Shen Qingqiu constantly faced demons and warlords as a Peak Lord from the most prestigious sect in the Middle Kingdom, Luo Binghe was but the latest in a very long line, and not the most cruel or inspired when you looked at the situation from an objective viewpoint.

 

So Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t even talk to his captor – the beast hadn’t earned it, wasn’t remarkable enough for him to bestow such favour. It was hard, keeping himself quiet and unmoving when the Heavenly Demon was in the room, Shen Qingqiu’s first impulse was to snarl and hiss and it became worse since he woke up with these disgusting appendages and these bleached hair yet it was worth it to see the sheer frustration on the beast’s chiseled features.

 

It was harder to stay serene when Luo Binghe started touching him.

 

Shen Qingqiu hated males laying hands upon him, he hated it, his skin was crawling with disgust as these loathsome fingers idly petted and groped and fondled him, why was the sick bastard not whipping or slashing him as Qiu Jianluo and Wu Yanzi had enjoyed to do, what was he trying to achieve with this pretense of softness, it was nothing but a lie and Shen Qingqiu would shred his throat with his teeth when he finally wouldn’t have to play along anymore, he would kill him kill the beast kill him kill him…

 

It was almost soothing to sink into bloody fantasies as the beast was busy marvelling at the smoothness of his skin, as he whispered praises of Shen Qingqiu’s beauty – who wanted to be pretty, when all it would grant a slave was to be sold at a brothel or raped by every orifice because they were asking for it, they shouldn’t be so pretty if they didn’t want for people to be tempted and fuck them out of uncontrollable lust and desire, so many times Xiao Jiu had wanted to take a hot iron or a knife to his own face but he couldn’t because Qi-ge needed to identify him, then he was the Qing Jing Peak Lord and a perfectly pristine appearance was part of the package, at least he was looking the part of an Immortal Master.

 

Nowaday he just looked like a demon, and of course the beast would find this attractive, demons were nothing but perverts and the ruling bloodline was the worst of them all, Shen Qingqiu had heard of their last princess fucking a demonic snake and bearing its spawn, how horrendous, who would dare to do this unless they were wholly and utterly insane ?

 

Unless the princess had sought to create a Naga – then, it would have been… still horrifying, yes, but a Naga was a fearsome being, a living bridge unto Heaven once it gained power enough to shapeshift at will between human and snake, guardians of earthly treasure and able to summon devastating storms and floods as they were innately gifted with water manipulation. Such a powerful being paying homage to a demon princess, for she was their mother and they owed her filial piety… well, the Human Realm would have been well and truly fucked.

 

However, the princess died in some battle or another, the details were fuzzy since it was long before the last true ruler of the Demon Realm – the beast wasn’t a contender, far too weak and stupid – came to the great sects’ attention, and no semihumanoid divine serpent had made their existence known in the previous decades. There had been a snake demon in Tianlang-jun’s retinue, but it had disappeared after its master’s sealing, likely slaughtered by some cultivator from the alliance that assembled to fight the Heavenly Demon this fated day.

 

… What was Luo Binghe’s degree of kinship with Tianlang-jun, by the way ? Heavenly Demons had been such a rare breed, thank fuck for their limited numbers or they would turned the Three Realms to cinders and charred corpses, so Shen Qingqiu was pretty sure their bloodline had a single line of descent.

 

The old fart from the Huan Hua Palace had claimed his beloved head disciple had been assaulted by Tianlang-jun, and no one ever saw Su Xiyan again, it served as the casus belli for the great sects banding together and putting an end to the Heavenly Demon at the risk to enrage demonkind into a full-blown war against the Middle Kingdom… did Su Xiyan conceive after her encounter with the Demon Ruler ? Would she have tried to kill the whelp by throwing it in the Luo River, if she had been unable to abort it for a reason or another ?

 

If that was how it happened, then Shen Qingqiu pitied the woman – not only she failed to rid the world from Tianlang-jun’s brat, her spawn had grown up into the worst kind of man. Surely, she was despairing from the Underworld as she gazed up the Mortal Realm and saw how the beast was spending his time. Still, he wasn’t pitying her that much – Su Xiyan was dead and long gone, she had no use for pity anymore as nothing and no one could touch her except for the other ghosts.

 

Shen Qingqiu currently was in far more pitiful a situation, even if he would rather be flayed alive with all his nails ripped than accepting anyone’s pity, Yue Qingyuan’s constant whimpering had worn the very meager tolerance he had for it and he couldn’t imagine he would regain his immunity, not after the life he had. Pity was less useful than lipstick on a pig.

 

(had she felt the urge to puke when the demon started to paw at her, did her skin crawl for hours after he went away, did she ever want for her mind to just stop and not register what was happening to her, did she feel trapped and small and powerless and so, so alone)

 

Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t complain, even if the circumstances worsened as he suspected they would.

 

 

Notes:

In this house, we stan badass Zhuzhi-lang. Supreme danger noodle for the win!

Also:

LBH: Shizun is the bane of my existence! My sworn nemesis! He did everything to ensure I could never move beyond him!
SQQ: Who are you already?

Chapter 10

When it finally happened, Shen Qingqiu was foolishly shocked, he had been warned through so many little things yet it felt so sudden he couldn’t help the shock.

 

Maybe it was because the beast had taken a leave, in order to seek some rare artefact as the spider abomination cheerfully stated when it brought the formerly human cultivator his meal of bland congee – Shen Qingqiu was surprised to be fed something else than rotting meat or raw plants, the Demon Realm wasn’t known for its chefs but he definitely ate worse than congee so he wasn’t complaining, especially since his cultivation was out of his reach and left him dependent on food like a mundane human.

 

The Peak Lord would have asked what kind of treasure the Heavenly half-breed coveted so much he would decided to interrupt his daily torment of his prisoner, but the spider abomination was the babbling kind, it would share what it had learned without any prompting. If it didn’t say what the treasure was, it likely didn’t even know.

 

In the meantime, he had relished the opportunity for quietness and freedom from unwanted groping, focusing on the weird trickle of energy nestled right beneath his navel, somewhere in the proximity of his lower dantian. It didn’t feel like his kidneys, it was so strange and slippery and dark and wet, and above all it was hungry. Shen Qingqiu wanted to shiver and never poke at it again, but he needed something to use against the beast and it might be useful, so he meditated and tried to gather the dark energy beneath his belly button.

 

He was so bent on harnessing it, he didn’t even notice the beast coming back until this hateful voice whispered right in his ear.

 

« Wake up, Shizun. This Disciple has a present for you. »

 

Shen Qingqiu wasn’t sleeping, but he wouldn’t point this because he would have to speak and he refused to grant Luo Binghe this honour. He slowly allowed for his eyelids to separate, letting him see the beast that was smiling as a happy child about to attend a festival. How repulsive.

 

« Shizun » the beast repeated and Shen Qingqiu wanted to rip his tongue, how dared he still call him thus when he had lost any right to be affiliated to Cang Qiong, « don’t you feel a little bit curious about your body ? This lord still can remember how surprised he was, after landing into the Abyss and discovering he was so much stronger and healthier and his blood so eagerly bending to his will. Aren’t you wondering what you can do now ? »

 

Shen Qingqiu wanted to glare and spit he didn’t wait for the Heavenly half-breed’s blessing in order to start experimenting with his new abilities, the beast actually disturbed it when he was busy doing precisely this. He kept quiet instead, his breathing slow and steady.

 

Luo Binghe refused to lose his smile – it actually widened.

 

« So this lord rummaged a bit around the library, and he found tidbits about huli jing. Not a lot, since your breed is such a secretive one, but they all insist on shapeshifting. Everything you can imagine, a huli jing can become, so long they have the power. »

 

So Shen Qingqiu could turn his hand into a sword and decapitate the beast, or he could turn into a mouse and give the slip to his shackles – speaking of these, he suspected them from being cursed for more than cutting his access to his golden core, they likely prevented him from using any racial powers at his fingertips or Luo Binghe wouldn’t spill so precious information right now.

 

The beast was now caressing his neck with a single finger. It should have been ticklish, yet it burned Shen Qingqiu as painfully as hot embers, the kind in which he had been pushed by Qiu Jianluo when the man had drank a bit too much and decided to punish the mouthy slave brat besides the oven.

 

« Shapeshifting is rather a common talent in the Demon Realm, so you can understand people have means to protect themselves when they suspect someone from having the ability to turn into mist. Look, Shizun, isn’t it pretty ? »

 

It looked like a silver torc with characters carved within the metal, weird shapes Shen Qingqiu was unable to read but he could guess it was bad news for him as the beast slipped the collar around his neck, locking it closed with a soft clik sound.

 

« It has been designed for near permanent wear, and it cannot be removed unless by the one that locked it » the beast grinned. « Get used to it, Shizun. »

 

Shen Qingqiu didn’t answer, as a gasp ripped its way free from his mouth, something was twisting deep in his belly, burning between his legs, his chest threatening to burst and he could feel how it was done but he wasn’t the one doing it and it was wrong, wrong, so utterly wrong…

 

Then it stopped and he was left shivering and panting in the bed, his whole body shrieking with wrongness and itching so desperately that being flayed alive surely would be an improvement, everything felt ungainly and heavy and awkward, he couldn’t breath…

 

« Oh Shizun. Look at yourself. »

 

Luo Binghe was fondling his chest… and it was swollen with two growths that definitely weren’t there before. Shen Qingqiu squeaked, it was too much for his mind to comprehend.

 

Why did he grow breasts  ?

 

« What have you done » he tried to roar but only managed to whisper, «  what have you done ?  »

 

« Does this Disciple really have to explain ? Because it seems a bit useless, when you can see with your own eyes » the beast pouted, he had the gall to pout, this was too much !

 

Shen Qingqiu kneed him. The bastard was sitting on his pelvis, it allowed the Peak Lord to hit his back as strong as he could while he snarled and tried to claw this fucking face off, see how he liked unexpected body modification, too bad if he didn’t !

 

« Not very nice, Shizun » the beast complained as he yanked Shen Qingqiu’s hands above his head, his eyes glowing scarlet in his barely scraped face.

 

Shen Qingqiu howled in fury, his gums aching to bite and tear apart, the itching beneath his skin threatening to drive him crazy but wasn’t he already mad, locked in this room for how many days, unable to rise from this damned bed, he fucking hated it, he fucking hated the beast for doing this, hated him hated him hated him…

 

His mouth was covered by hot lips, and he yelped in surprise, the beast immediately pounced on the opportunity to slip his goddamn tongue within Shen Qingqiu’s mouth, unfilial wretch , it was wet and hot and tingling with energy begging to run free…

 

Shen Qingqiu wasn’t thinking anymore. Following instincts he couldn’t remember having until now, he leaned into the kiss and sucked as much as he could of this burning lava-hot energy, it tasted of sunshine and harshness and dryness just like a blazing heat wave spreading over the country when summer was at its highest point, and it seeped deep inside Shen Qingqiu’s bones as he drank and drank, the more he drank and the more he thirsted.

 

Luo Binghe growled against his mouth as he embraced him, fuck he was so big and heavy, he weighted so heavy as he was laying himself over Shen Qingqiu and clumsily rucked his sleeping robe up and pulled his own robes open, so clumsily Shen Qingqiu heard cloth ripping.

 

Suddenly both of them were naked from the waist down, and something was burning beneath Shen Qingqiu’s belly button and he wanted to cry of sheer frustration, then the beast jerked his hips and he felt his legs kick because his pelvis was splitting and stretching and it hurt and he hated it…

 

« Shh, it’s alright, it’s alright, just wait, it’s going to be good, Shizun is going to feel so good... »

 

And he did, Shen Qingqiu yelped then sighed as harsh sunshine flooded his belly, flooded his limbs until he went limp in Luo Binghe’s embrace, his eyes closed because he couldn’t keep them open.

 

He barely noticed the dark and damp energy being slowly sucked out of him for the beast.

 

 

Chapter 11

« Good morning to you, Junshang. Does Your Highness need hot water and towels ? » a slightly awkward Shan Xu inquired, as his multiple eyes carefully took in the scene in front of him.

 

Demons usually were rather free about sex and romantic entanglements, but Luo Binghe would admit anyone would be rather shocked to walk on their lord fucking the prisoner he previously was bent on exquisitely torture without any warning. Well, not fucking, it was done since several shichen, but the newly minted Demon Sovereign nonetheless was lying in the bed, his robes carelessly thrown on the floor, his huli jing captive asleep in his embrace and the whole room stinking of carnal activities.

 

Surprisingly enjoyable carnal activities. A small part of Luo Binghe – the one still clad in the Qing Jing white and green disciple robes – was shrieking and beating his breast, for he had defiled his own Shizun, truly he had deserved to be called a lustful beast and worse. Another part – a darker part still choking on the poisoned fumes of the Endless Abyss – snarled he had been too soft, he should have mounted the scum until he split into halves, Luo Binghe certainly had the stamina to do so and it would have been so satisfying. Yet the Heavenly half-breed mostly felt… content. Eager to do it again.

 

Xin Mo seemed to be in agreement with this plan, he could hear the tainted blade purring in the back of his thoughts, akin to a satiated tiger that just had found new grounds to hunt fat, delicious prey. It was quite predictable – anything feeding the sword’s unending appetite for yin would receive Xin Mo’s approval.

 

So far, Luo Binghe had fed the tainted blade on the battlefield as he warred against tribes refusing to bow to his authority – yin was released at the moment of death in more or less important quantities, and it took heaps of corpses for Xin Mo to grumble instead of howl in his inner ear. He thought the blade also fed its cravings when he was entertaining a demoness in his bed, but it was rather hard to say, many demonesses tended to be yang-alignated after all – yang was harshness and agressivity, both characteristics essential when one wished to struggle their way to the top in the Demon Realm.

 

Shen Qingqiu – Shen Qingqiu was so overwhelmingly yin, almost like falling into the deep, dark waters of an icy lake, Luo Binghe was amazed his skin didn’t cover with goosebumps after he took the huli jing’s maidenhood – for it undeniably was the first time Shen Qingqiu had been the submissive partner, he wouldn’t have been so angry and reluctant otherwise, so dismayed to lose his purity as a noble daughter dishonored by some unwashed ruffian.

 

Shen Qingqiu had been so furious yet he had very much enjoyed the experience, and Luo Binghe firmly intended to hold this over the bastard’s head, to remind him how he relished being taken and dirtied by his half-demon disciple, how could the former Qing Jing Peak Lord still claim to be righteous when he enthusiastically feasted on Luo Binghe’s yang qi ?

 

Quite surprising, that. Luo Binghe wasn’t expecting the scum would try to feed upon him, as jiangshi were rumoured to feed upon mortals when they managed to catch them, as succubus were wont to feed upon lost travelers and the fools they seduced under the guise of offering them a good time.

 

« This lord wouldn’t be opposed to get clean » Luo Binghe stated as he stroked Shen Qingqiu’s length of quicksilver hair, so thick and silky under his hand. « However, he’s more interested in finding answers to his questions. »

 

« Oh ? » the physician breathed.

 

« Are huli jing a vampiric species ? This one has devoured a lot of my qi. »

 

« Is Junshang feeling well ? » the spider demon asked, several of his eyes glittering with curiosity more than worry. « Qi draining isn’t an affliction one can swap under the rug. »

 

« I have a lot of it » the Heavenly half-breed shrugged. « And Shan Xu has not answered my query. »

 

The physician scrunched his nose, but conceded the point and started to talk.

 

« As Junshang knows, every living being needs qi in order to live. In such barren lands as ours, the Demon Realm as a whole, it’s easier to directly consume this qi by eating other living beings, or having intercourse with them if you want to mix pleasure and necessity. Many demon bloodlines indulge in this, and the ones that don’t nonetheless are gifted with the possibility of doing it if the situation truly becomes too dire for them to survive otherwise. »

 

« What you are saying, is that I am right and huli jing are a vampiric species » Luo Binghe flatly summed up.

 

Shan Xu idly waved a hand in the air, as if he sought a fly to pluck and use as a snack – his sister occasionally did this, more out of boredom than true hunger, even if she admitted she liked the crunching sound when her fangs closed on the hapless insect.

 

« Demons as a rule evolved in this direction, so this lowly one is guessing huli jing are just the same. And he would advice Junshang to be careful, just like he would if Your Highness took a fancy to a succubus, since it wouldn’t do for the new Demon Ruler to survive so many battles only for his dick to be his downfall. »

 

« This lord believed it was one of the most acceptable ways to be killed there » Luo Binghe pouted – and he wasn’t lying, it genuinely was less humiliating to be fucked to death than break your neck by falling in a hole or choking on your meal.

 

A spider demon eying someone with disapproval was really something, since they had so many eyes to express said disapproval.

 

« One of the most acceptable, yes » Shan Xu acknowledged before immediately adding : « but not entirely acceptable, especially when the concerned party is a grounding and stabilizing power for the land. How is this lowly physician supposed to further his craft without your esteemed patronage ? »

 

Of course it was a matter of self-interest, it always was with the demons. Anyone claiming to have purer motives was trying to be manipulative, insane or high on some aphrodisiac or alcohol for a reason or another. The trick was to force your vassals’ self-interest and yours to coincide, then they wouldn’t dream a lot about turning against you or it would be a half-assed attempt at best.

 

« I heard you. Now, run and bring the hot water and towels you wanted to give this lord earlier, it really starts to stink here. »

 

The physician immediately bowed, then swiftly ran in the corridor, his slippered feet whispering on the stone floor as he put as much distance as he could between him and the primal scene he had accidentally stumbled upon.

 

Luo Binghe sighed, tension leaving his body as he kissed Shen Qingqiu on a fox ear. The Heavenly half-breed never actually saw the ocean, but he couldn’t help associating the salty smell of his release with the aforementioned water body, how curious.

 

One day, he would go and look the sea with his own eyes – when things would be finally quiet in the Demon Realm, when he could trust a subordinate to not steal his crown after turning his back on his kingdom for some measly days. He wanted to see the water and the sea melt into each other on the horizon.

 

Maybe he would bring someone with him, to share the wonder.

 

 

Chapter 12

Shen Qingqiu never had felt such a curious mix of emotions and feelings in his life. It was confusing, and he was pretty sure he didn’t like this.

 

There was deep, primal satisfaction, warmth in his bone marrow and surrounding him, his belly filled until it felt a tiny bit bloated and uncomfortable, the thirst in his throat quenched as stars gently tickled the inside of his mouth.

 

There was exhaustion, as he couldn’t feel the dark and damp energy beneath his belly button and his limbs quietly ached, he would almost believe he had fought several rounds against the Bai Zhan brute – but no, Liu Qingge was dead because Shen Qingqiu was too weak to do anything else than destroy, they would never get to fight each other again and it should be a relief yet he couldn’t help mourning, what a waste of good feelings for the brute.

 

There was horror, something awful just happened to him, something he should have died rather than allow, and he couldn’t remember what, he was so tired, his mind foggy and sluggish as it sometimes was when he slept a bit too deeply in the brothel, but it wasn’t the brothel, he wasn’t safe, he needed to escape…

 

« Hush, Shizun. Let this Disciple take care of you. »

 

Did he grumble ? He knew he wasn’t a quiet sleeper when agitated, Qi-ge and the courtesans often commented on this quirk of him, they sounded more fond than annoyed but he would feel so exposed and stupid for this.

 

A wet cloth on his groin and inner legs, and it was wrong, it cleaned wrong, he could feel the sensations on his body yet it wasn’t his body, it lacked something rather important and it was soft and his pelvis itched, it fucking itched so much he moaned and jerked his hips but it wouldn’t stop.

 

« I said, calm down , Shizun. »

 

The same voice than earlier, and it was wrong too. It was male, and Shen Qingqiu couldn’t stand males, they did nothing but hurt and scowl and hate him, he refused to let a male near him especially when he was feeling sick, he wasn’t safe…

 

And yet he was ? He remembered – sunshine, and this male voice purring praise in his ear as he was cradled and hugged and pleasured until he blacked out, and he wanted to puke and he wanted to snuggle and he didn’t know what he wanted, it was so confusing and he was so tired.

 

His skin itched, and metal was surrounding his throat as he swallowed. Was he… a slave again ? Had the slavers finally sold him for being a mouthy little shit and a waste of rice ? What about Qi-ge, he needed to watch over Qi-ge, the older boy was so dumb and helpless when he was facing real problems, he wouldn’t survive half a day on his own…

 

He yelped as cloth was ripped from him and cold air swarmed him, trying to twist only for a warm hand to keep him still while he was given a bath with the wet tissue from earlier, and it itched so much beneath his skin, his chest was so heavy, he could barely breathe.

 

« There you go, nice and clean. Was it so bad, Shizun ? »

 

Shen Qingqiu frowned as he was wrapped in silken robes, he hated this term said by the voice, he had earned it but the voice’s owner had lost the right to call him such, why was he unable to remember how it happened, his throat ached with the need to scream…

 

With an exhausting amount of willpower, he finally opened his eyes.

 

He was embraced by a man in dark red and black robes, his hair wavy and unruly, his eyes shining crimson just like the crest on his forehead, his lips smirking as if he just heard a good joke and waited for Shen Qingqiu to understand the punchline. Shen Qingqiu couldn’t remember why the man was so familiar but he knew he hated him.

 

Beast , a voice that sounded like his snarled deep inside his thoughts.

 

« I hate you » Shen Qingqiu stated, because he needed to say something yet he knew he made a mistake as the words left his mouth.

 

The beast arched a black eyebrow.

 

« Shizun doesn’t seem very convinced of this » he pointed. « Is that possible Shizun changed his mind after this night ? »

 

« Don’t call me this » Shen Qingqiu hissed as the adress threatened to burst his eardrums with its falseness.

 

« Oh ? Shall this lord call you Qingqiu, then ? » the beast playfully asked as he stroked Shen Qingqiu’s lips with his thumb.

 

The former slave opened his mouth and bit down. A metallic taste flooded his tongue, and he almost gagged but it was better to suffocate than hear this fucking name Qiu , he couldn’t stand autumn.

 

The beast still was smirking, and his expression widened as Shen Qingqiu swallowed the blood spilled in his mouth and spit the stupid thumb, what an asshole. He deserved to be mugged and stabbed a hundred times in a dark alley reeking of piss and wet dog.

 

« This one is Shen Jiu  » he growled, and it was right, he was Shen Jiu, he was slave brat number nine, the brat that should have died and yet thrived in spite of everything, family name Shen written with the character for liquid because he was nothing but adaptable and after hearing his Shizun explain the meaning he had insisted to be called this instead of Xiao Jiu.

 

He hated Xiao Jiu and wanted for this boy to be forgotten as he deserved. He – hated Shen Jiu a bit less, because Shen Jiu had worked hard to earn his Shizun’s approval, and Shizun ultimately saw him, didn’t he ? He saw him and he entrusted his Peak to Shen Jiu, and Shen Jiu wanted to cry because he wasn’t worthy anymore, Shizun had picked the wrong heir to his legacy, he couldn’t remember how he failed but everything was ruined because Shen Jiu always ruined everything.

 

His skin itched, but his eyes were burning and it was so much worse.

 

The beast stopped smirking, his brows furrowing as he scowled in thoughtfulness, then Shen Jiu was cradled against this warm, broad chest, a big hand covering his nape and the other gently supporting his backside in order to let him sit upon the beast’s lap, it was such a childish position and Shen Jiu could feel his tail fluffing up from annoyance and outrage.

 

Since when did he have a tail ? It was twitching according his moods, and he could make it move as he wanted if he really needed, but he was quite sure it was a recent development and rather a distressing one.

 

« Alright then. If Shen Jiu you wish to be, Shen Jiu this lord will call you. How fitting, actually » the beast mused as he massaged his nape, « since the most powerful members of your breed are known for having nine tails. »

 

Your breed ? What did he mean, your breed ? Shen Jiu was one of a kind, and proud of it. He growled his displeasure, but it quickly turned into a moan as the hot fingers helped his neck muscles to relax, threatening to cause a cascade effect along his spine and turn him into cooked jellyfish, he was so tired and the embrace was so warm and comfortable.

 

His skin still itched.

 

 

Chapter 13

Luo Binghe knew he was far too careless, far too impatient still in spite of his struggles to conquer this unruly part of himself – something that wasn’t helped by his demon subordinates who tended to outright jump into the fight without planning ahead. Truly, a high-ranking demon such as Mobei-jun – who was just as cool-headed and calculating as the ruler of the merciless Northern Demonic Mountains needed to be in order to see their people fed and clothed through the blizzards and the landslides – was a rarity, one he sorely appreciated even if he abstained from voicing it, a demon that could plan was one of the biggest threats in this realm after all.

 

He had wanted to take his revenge slowly with this scum, only to upend his carefully crafted plans by bedding Shen Qingqiu – Shen Jiu, the huli jing was Shen Jiu, and Luo Binghe already was suspecting something since Yue-zhangmen just wouldn’t stop calling Shizun Xiao Jiu in spite of the other man’s obvious distaste for the nickname, but it was good to see it confirmed, he liked being right for once about the bastard.

 

Now that Shen Qingqiu was awake, it was obvious the sex had deeply impacted him. The bastard was… drunk ? High ? It looked like he had consumed strong alcohol or a substance with nefarious effects on the mind, but on the other hand, it didn’t sound quite right, it felt deeper. Shen Qingqiu still seemed hostile, but it lacked his usual venom – it was more confused, as if the formerly human cultivator was a sleep-deprived actor trying to give a performance when he couldn’t remember what his role entailed.

 

Maybe it was because he consumed so much of Luo Binghe’s yang qi ? But the Heavenly half-breed had had several encounters with Madam Meiyin’s girls, and they never reacted this way after feeding on him. So what had caused such behaviour ?

 

He wasn’t actually complaining. Alright, he wanted to complain a bit, since he couldn’t very well torture Shen Qingqiu for his mistreatment of Luo Binghe when the scum was far too high to be aware he had disciples on this Qing Jing Peak of his – Luo Binghe was fair in an unfair world, and it wouldn’t fair to punish someone that couldn’t understand the sheer scale of his sins.

 

He had been left with Shen Jiu instead – Shen Jiu who curled on Luo Binghe’s lap, who blinked lazy, confused quicksilver eyes, who purred when he was massaged and swaddled in blankets. How like a cat – there were cats on Qing Jing Peak, mainly to keep mouses and rats away from the library and the disciples were fond of cuddling the beasts who climbed on them as they studied. Luo Binghe had never been blessed with their attention, though – they always hissed and fled as he tried to pet them, likely smelling the demon in his blood long before he learned of his birth origins.

 

Luo Binghe didn’t know if he liked cats, but he could imagine himself growing fond of this strangely innocent version of his Shizun. Of course it wouldn’t last – one day, Shen Qingqiu would wake up with his full mental abilities, then Luo Binghe would repay him a hundredfold for the abuse and he would be left wistfully mourning the soft and compliant huli jing.

 

… In the meantime, he was allowed to indulge himself as much as he wished, wasn’t he ? Luo Binghe had ascended as the ruler of the Southern Plains from the Demon Realm, he was called to unify the demon clans as one of the Heavenly bloodline, surely he was entitled to everything he wanted ? Any ruler could take what they craved when they saw something shiny and coveted it, so why wouldn’t he ?

 

And Shen Jiu – in a way, Shen Qingqiu owed Luo Binghe this softness. Luo Binghe had been an orphan when he came to the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, begging for nothing but a sweet voice and the reassurance he wouldn’t have to face a cruel, uncaring world on his own, and when he first laid eyes on the icily beautiful, pristine immortal that picked him as his disciple he foolishly believed Shen Qingqiu has left the Heavens to answer the desperate plea of a lonely child.

 

Only for the Qing Jing Peak Lord to spit on his duties and trample Luo Binghe’s heart under his boot. But Shen Qingqiu now had been reduced to Shen Jiu, and Shen Jiu – could give Luo Binghe the attention he lost hope from obtaining, coming from the aloof cultivator. Shen Jiu would let himself be handled, and his gaze wasn’t hateful, and his skin and hair were silken as Luo Binghe laid besides the huli jing, he wanted to keep this unexpected treasure for himself, wanted to come back to this bedroom and glut himself on this softness and sweet smell of honeyed ginger and dazed obedience…

 

He wanted . He wanted so badly, he could feel a blaze setting aflame his kidneys and intestines, he could hear the red and black maddened whispers of Xin Mo encroaching further and further on his thoughts, he could see his blood boiling beneath his skin from sheer desire, even the few drops Shen Jiu had swallowed.

 

That was right, Shen Jiu had drank his blood. He had no idea of what he just did, no idea of how important it was, but he had swallowed Luo Binghe’s blood, he put himself fully under the Heavenly half-breed’s control, he would never get to escape Luo Binghe because the latter would find him wherever he tried to run in the Three Realms.

 

A Heavenly Demon only would bestow their blood on their best beloved, their most treasured captives – people theirs to enslave or cherish, sometimes both. Luo Binghe certainly had no love for the scum, even if he allowed the Heavenly half-breed to grew into a fearsome specimen of his bloodline with his unrelenting harshness, but he had no intention to send Shen Jiu away – Shen Jiu needed to stay besides him, needed to witness everything Luo Binghe had achieved and would become, no matter if he didn’t have the brain power to understand anymore.

 

Shen Jiu belonged to him, and Luo Binghe intended to relish in this fact. He would visit the huli jing as much as he wanted, maybe he would let him outside the bedroom to appear in front of his courtiers and let the Demon Realm to know Luo Binghe had managed to tame one of Daji’s brood, and when Shen Qingqiu would finally remember who he was and what he did, Luo Binghe would shove his hatefully handsome face into the fact he was nothing but a slave to the Heavenly half-breed’s whims, a toy he could break and maim on an impulse and he was unable to do something about it, he would never be able to attempt to separate his fate from Luo Binghe’s as he wanted to do by pushing his freshly awakened to his demonic inheritance Disciple into the Endless Abyss.

 

Shen Jiu was his, forever and always, and Luo Binghe could feel himself shivering as he fully digested the reveal and the ripples it would cause down the line.

 

He would bear them. He survived the Endless Abyss when it was supposed to be a punishment for sins he wasn’t guilty of committing, surely he would endure the consequences for sins he made with his two hands – he actually was a bit excited by the prospect.

 

After all, he could understand being punished if one rightly earned it.

 

 

Chapter 14

The beast just wouldn’t stop coming back.

 

Shen Jiu hated him, he always made his skin itch – well, his skin was constantly itching, like fire ants crawling over his muscles and inside his bones, but it was so much worse when the beast came in the bedroom with his awful smile, sweet like poisonous honey – his head always went foggier after letting him climb in the bed, and the aura surrounding him screamed of danger and power, it gave Shen Jiu the desperate need to flee quick and far, danger and power never were a good mix when you were a nobody struggling to live another day.

 

Yet the beast let him drink his fill of sunshine again and again as he kissed and petted Shen Jiu all over, and when he tore Shen Jiu’s insides apart with his ridiculous pillar, Shen Jiu couldn’t help giggling every time the beast dropped his pants and gave him a clear sight, it looked like a silly caricature drawn by a maiden completely lost in her daydreams and unaware of what a wedding night truly entailed, and gods did it fucking hurt when it firmly sheathed itself between Shen Jiu’s legs but it turned the sunshine blinding and it was so good, Shen Jiu greedily sucked until he felt ready to burst and the beast just smiled and let him.

 

After the sex, the beast would clean Shen Jiu and it was such a hassle, the itching at its peak and Shen Jiu snarling and hissing as every cun of his body was cleaned, even the unmentionable parts. Fortunately, it would end with clean and soft robes wrapped around him, and the beast would brush his tail and hair.

 

Shen Jiu vaguely remember the sisters and aunties combing his hair when he went to see them in the brothel, they were so careful and tender, yet the beast handled his fur and locks as if they were made of genuine silver instead of merely having the colour, as if he was a lowly slave doing his best to serve a god, and Shen Jiu relished in this worship.

 

After a few visits, the beast had started to experiment with Shen Jiu’s hair, braiding them and combing them into a topknot or twin high buns, secured with silken white ribbons.

 

The beast enjoyed dressing Shen Jiu in white, white ribbons and white robes, was Shen Jiu supposed to be dead or something ? But the robes were soft and warm and far better than the rags he used to wear when he was a slave starving in the streets, so he won’t complain too much.

 

When he said that – he didn’t meant to, but his head was so foggy after the sex and the cleaning and the hairbrushing, his mouth betrayed him and he confusely knew it wasn’t the first time his tongue wagged too much for his own good – and the beast frowned, he was thinking Shen Jiu was lying and it was infuriating , Shen Jiu slapped him as a warning to never do it again, next time he would use his claws to rip a crimson eye out of this hatefully handsome face.

 

The beast laughed a bit when he heard this, but he never frowned this way again so Shen Jiu won. He very much liked winning, especially when his opponent was much more powerful and convinced of his own superiority.

 

He might have power on his side, but Shen Jiu was smart even with his thoughts so confused and his mind scrambled, so he wouldn’t lose, people that relied on strength alone would lose against him. Liu Qingge had relied on strength alone and he would lose their spars and he would yell and redden in anger because he hated losing, too bad for him because Shen Jiu enjoyed winning too much to not give his everything and if it meant cheating, so be it. When you wanted to win, you didn’t care about cheating.

 

If Shen Jiu ever wanted to kill the beast, it would be easy, just rip his dick with a twist of the claws and he wouldn’t be able to live without his most precious organ, males hated eunuchs for a reason and it was because eunuchs scared the piss out of them for their lack of junk. Shen Jiu didn’t really care about having junk, he used it only when he wanted to take a piss and he still could relieve himself in spite of having something else entirely down there, but he was pretty sure the beast cared a lot about his.

 

Still, Shen Jiu wouldn’t kill him so long he was properly fed and warm, with a lot of pillows and blankets for his bed and no one beating him. If the beast even thought about beating him, Shen Jiu would eat his tongue next time he would try for a kiss.

 

It was a simple life he had, inside the bedroom : eating, fucking, sleeping, he almost felt like he was turning in a big cat, he already had the ears and the tail. Shen Jiu had been fond of the cats living in Qing Jing Peak’s library, they were so fluffy and always happily purred when he petted them, he could almost think they liked him – unlike dogs, Shen Jiu hated these mangy beasts that would eat trash and were covered with lice and barked every time they saw him and he knew they barked because they wanted to bite him.

 

His first memory was a dog chasing him to do precisely this until Qi-ge intervened, and that was the moment Shen Jiu had decided Qi-ge was his.

 

Shen Jiu didn’t know where Qi-ge was now, and he wanted to cry a bit but the beast would ask so many questions if he saw Shen Jiu with reddened eyes and a runny nose, and Qi-ge belonged to Shen Jiu alone, he wasn’t supposed to be shared with anyone else. It was better to keep the tears inside, Shen Jiu was used to this anyway, a crybaby would get beaten more by the slavers for being useless until they learned to keep dry eyes or were killed by the beatings.

 

Shen Jiu refused to die. He wanted to live, and to live in comfort, and the beast provided all the comfort he wanted so the skin itching would be tolerated, even the creepy spidery physician with its fanged smirk that wanted to poke at Shen Jiu but the beast wouldn’t let it, it only could ask questions as Shen Jiu squirmed on the beast’s lap and did his best to seem deaf.

 

Of course he wasn’t deaf, but it was useful to look like he was stupid because people would talk about a lot of very interesting things when they believed you couldn’t understand them. In that case, it was about Shen Jiu’s hidden abilities.

 

Because he was supposed to have these, but he just couldn’t unlock them. Maybe it was linked to the wet and cold feeling beneath his belly button, but it was extremely weak, moreso after having sex with the beast – was it because the sunshine was smothering the wet ? No, it couldn’t be as both energies sometimes touched each other and they slided along instead of reacting badly.

 

Maybe… maybe the beast was stealing the wet from Shen Jiu, just like Shen Jiu was stealing the sunshine from the beast. That wouldn’t do at all, Shen Jiu needed to find a way to stop this, or he would never get to use his powers.

 

Alright, he didn’t need them as he already had everything he could ask for, but it always helped to have a secret knife in your boot.

 

 

Chapter 15

Luo Binghe had stopped indulging his favourite bedmates. He will still fuck them, of course, he wasn’t entirely forgetting their charms but he wasn’t as enthusiastic as before about them, and they weren’t so blind they wouldn’t see it. Several of them had decided to be cold towards him as a consequence, one wanted to be sticky in a very mistaken assumption he was tired of her usual aggressive approach.

 

The Demon Ruler wasn’t tired of them, but he had found a very unexpected enlightenment – the reason why Kings and Emperors picked a favorite consort amongst a flurry of beauties, because people might enjoy variety and novelty yet they would come back to a singular dish out of sentimentality.

 

Luo Binghe had tasted of Shen Jiu’s fruit, and he wanted to eat it again and again.

 

It wasn’t merely the sex, he loved the quiet hours in which he cradled the huli jing as a child would hug a well-loved doll, in which he dressed the formerly human cultivator and groomed him as a child would tend to a doll. He loved having Shen Jiu docile in his arms, his eyes dazed and his yin energy barely flickering in his lower dantian.

 

When he finally got a feel of his Shizun’s meridians and detected how weak his energy was, Luo Binghe had immediately summoned Shan Xu, the physician thoroughly examinating the sleeping huli jing in his bed before he could hazard a guess.

 

« This lowly one knows Junshang can practise dual cultivation, but is Your Highness aware of what a cauldron is ? »

 

Luo Binghe had softly growled as a warning. Of course he knew, disciples everywhere would be warned of letting another cultivator get too close if they were not blessed with the knowledge of carnal endeavours and the ability to stay fully in control of their qi, or it could get awfully messy, sometimes in a very permanent way.

 

A cauldron was what happened when a sexual partner got too greedy and wouldn’t give back as much qi as they received. It could be a honest mistake, but it far too often was committed with the full knowledge of the consequences because demonic cultivators had no care for anyone beyond themselves, no care for the broken lives they would leave in the wind after feasting on ill-gained vitality.

 

Qi was integral to a healthy living being, after all. Disrupting the delicate inner alchemy would bear weighty damage on the victim, it could be physical like qi deviations or spiritual like the lifeforce itself being corrupted to the point it would never sustain a solid foundation for cultivation or mental like the victim being left a drooling idiot…

 

A drooling idiot…

 

Shen Jiu’s unexpected compliance, right after Luo Binghe lost control and fucked him this first night…

 

« Are you telling this lord, he was responsible for ruining the huli jing’s mind ? »

 

Luo Binghe couldn’t help but have mixed feelings on the matter. Shen Qingqiu had been so proud of his iron-cast control and his smarts, keeping him unable of having coherent thoughts would be a fitting revenge – and the way for letting him stay an obedient prisoner was so pleasurable… So why did it taste like ashes upon his tongue ?

 

The physician was wringing his hands as he quietly hissed in frustration.

 

« There is something wrong about this endeavour. If Junshang was liable to hoard his bedmates’ qi, why is this the first incident ? Surely Junshang would have made a cauldron of the Sha Saintess, or this lowly one’s younger sister, or another lover of his. »

 

And that was a very good question. Luo Binghe had pondered over the matter for a while.

 

« Would it be mere backlash, perhaps ? The huli jing first tried to devour my yang qi, to turn this lord into his own cauldron, so I might have… inverted the process when I reciprocated ? And he would have been too weakened to recover his mind when this lord came back to be served by him. »

 

The spider demon had eyeballed him. Truly, Luo Binghe would never get used to so many eyes considering him with blatant suspicion, it was more than uncanny in a single face.

 

« We are missing something » Shan Xu had ultimately decreed. « Junshang’s guess sounds plausible enough, but it rather feels lacking in substance. With Junshang’s blessing, this lowly one will monitor yours and the huli jing’s qi levels after his service to you. He also thinks it would be prudent to watch over your bedmates, to ensure they won’t start suffering spiritual and physical repercussions. »

 

It was nothing but reasonable, and Luo Binghe had bowed in front of his physician’s advice. People tended to imagine an absolute ruler had no need for advisors of any kind, more the fool them – experts would give their opinion no matter how much the ruler didn’t care for it, because reality would unravel in very unpleasing ways when said ruler wanted to force their will upon the land and was unaware of some tidbit of information.

 

Also, he couldn’t help but remember how confused his bedmates – mainly Sha Hualing as she was his favorite from all the demonesses in his retinue – sometimes were when he truly let loose. He had believed they were impressed and drunk on the afterglow, but what if they weren’t ? What if it was a diluted version of the huli jing’s current state ?

 

It was quite alarming a prospect, and many demonesses that fawned over the new ruler to the Southern Plains surely would balk and sneer at him if they ever learned sharing his bed could turn them in lackwits – demons had a very strong sense of self-preservation, and lackwits would be killed in short order in their pitiless realm, no use for them except as a waste of time and food.

 

They would be even more alarmed to hear the spider demon blatantly musing about potentially using the dulling of wits to prevent a bedmate from rebelling against Luo Binghe.

 

« Shall this lord remind his physician who from his bloodline is receiving this lord’s affection ? » he deliberately pointed, weary of a trap.

 

The physician shrugged.

 

« If my sister isn’t strong enough to stop Junshang from scrambling her brain as a cook would scramble eggs, then she deserved her wits dripping by the ear » he casually claimed, with all the heartlessness of a spider demon born and bred in a barren realm where dogs just wouldn’t stop eating dogs. « And this lowly one has heard of Daji and what she induced the mortal king to do after wrapping him around her fingers. Junshang’s huli jing is far more manageable this way, at the least he’s far too feeble-minded to think about seducing you into his puppet, won’t you agree ? »

 

It was a good argument, even if Luo Binghe hadn’t been familiar with Shen Qingqiu – and he remembered too well the immortal master being acclaimed as a peerless strategist and a ruthless foe for all his flaws. No, allowing the Qing Jing Peak Lord the slightest opportunity to backstab the Heavenly half-breed – the slightest opportunity to try the Endless Abyss again – was the worst possible idea.

 

On the other hand, Luo Binghe knew cauldrons often would die from constant abuse… but Shen Jiu would probably be fine, wouldn’t he ? He managed to become one of Cang Qiong’s foremost immortal masters, he wasn’t that frail, and Shan Xu was there to ensure his health wouldn’t degrade too badly.

 

Shen Jiu would be fine. He had to.

 

 

Chapter 16

With a physician carefully monitoring his health and body for the slightest change, of course Shen Jiu’s accumulation of qi around his lower dantian would be noticed. Luo Binghe first had suspected the huli jing from trying his hand at molding demonic qi, only for the puzzled Shan Xu to reject the possibility after a physical since it looked very much accidental.

 

« This lord doesn’t care if it is accidental or premeditated » the Heavenly half-breed had snarled, « I want for it to be purged from his body. »

 

« This lowly one believes it would be a mistake » the spider demon had answered. « Begging for Junshang’s patience, I need more time… three months in order to be sure, but if I am right… then it can be a very good thing. »

 

Waiting for three months to pass had been horrendous, especially since Luo Binghe could feel the disgusting qi knot curled within Shen Jiu’s belly, potentially about to steal the formerly human cultivator from his rightful owner, and it put the Demon Sovereign into a piss-poor mood.

 

He was pretty sure his subjects were praying for him to drop dead or be struck dumb at the end of the prescribed time, so angry he was that he would blow his top at anyone breathing a mite too loudly in the same room. Even fucking his women was more painful and annoying than relaxing, and Xin Mo’s wailing in his head had reached a newfound high note.

 

Then the physician finally delivered his diagnosis.

 

« Junshang’s guest isn’t sick at all. They are carrying Junshang’s child, and this is the accumulation of qi Your Highness is detecting – Junshang’s unborn heir, feeding and gathering lifeforce from their bearer. »

 

Luo Binghe first believed he heard wrong.

 

« Tell me again. »

 

« Junshang is going to have an heir of his own. It will be… around a year before your guest can safely give birth ? It’s hard to know when you are throwing so many demon bloodlines together, and frankly it’s a surprise for Junshang to have managed at all... »

 

The Heavenly half-breed glared hard at the spider demon.

 

« Isn’t that lord virile enough to put a brat into one of his consorts’ womb ? Especially when he’s not neglecting the intended mother. »

 

« This lowly one isn’t trying to berate Your Highness’ obvious manliness » the physician placated his irate ruler, « but this is a fact, half-breeds might be fearsome and powerful on their own, they tend to be rather useless when their clan needs to expand… if Junshang can understand my meaning. »

 

Luo Binghe understood – donkeys and horses were able to breed together, only for the resulting mule to be barren and when it happened against all odds, it was nothing short of an ill omen. It wasn’t supposed to be, after all.

 

And yet – once again, Luo Binghe’s luck spat in the fate’s eye and laughed out loud and made the impossible possible.

 

Luo Binghe would become a father in a year.

 

Luo Binghe would have made a family of his own.

 

Luo Binghe wouldn’t be a lone Heavenly Demon anymore.

 

An hysterical giggle – worthy of Ning Yingying in her most airheaded moods – was bubbling in his chest and threatened to spill out of his mouth, worsening as he remembered this whelp was currently growing within Shen Qingqiu – Shen Jiu – his Shizun ultimately would grant the measly orphan fresh from the streets the family he desperately craved, but in a very different way than he ever envisioned.

 

Guanyin, You who hear all the world’s lamentations, Merciful Goddess, You sure are gifted with a quirky sense of humour, the Demon Sovereign internally screamed. That is not at all what this wretched brat was praying for You to grant, but he nonetheless will bless You for listening.

 

He was about to have a family – if Shan Xu wasn’t wrong, if the spider demon wasn’t playing a nasty prank on his lord…

 

Brutally sobered, Luo Binghe’s qi surged, turning his eyes and forehead crest a bloody scarlet, making them akin to fresh wounds.

 

« Shan Xu does understand he will pay with his life if he’s lying over such an important matter. »

 

The physician softly growled, his lips opening to reveal yellowish fangs glistening with a wet shine.

 

« If Junshang cannot trust in this lowly one’s prowess as a doctor, then he should trust this one’s survival instinct. If anything befell Your Highness’ precious consort, then my life and my sister’s life and potentially my whole bloodline would suffer Junshang’s wrath, for this humble servant has watched Your Highness since he went to your court and he’s aware of your fearsome temper and ability to hold a grudge. »

 

Good enough an answer. However, there was a small mistake in Shan Xu’s argument.

 

« You called the huli jing my precious consort. He’s not. »

 

The spider demon bowed.

 

« Begging for Junshang’s understanding, the huli jing is bearing your child, they are to be mother to your heir. Demonic mores are quite varied according the lineage and dwelling, yet they are in agreement when it’s about acknowledging a mother’s influence on their spawn. »

 

Just like the woman who first bore a son to the human Emperor would be elevated to Mother of the Nation, future Empress Dowager, be she a noblewoman or a measly slave. Shen Jiu wasn’t a mere prisoner anymore, he couldn’t be Luo Binghe’s and his alone.

 

The Heavenly half-breed felt his mouth twist in a snarl, he wouldn’t share his Shizun, he waited for too long. But – would it be truly sharing, when the unborn child would be Luo Binghe’s first and foremost ? When the whelp would help to further Luo Binghe’s ambitions – with a designated heir, surely demonkind would understand he was fulfilling his duties with the utmost seriousness…

 

There would be attacks against his bloodline as long as his heir would be unable to defend themselves – not only it basically was traditional to target a lord’s children until they finally killed their would-be murderers, some demon clans weren’t happy to see the Heavenly bloodline reemerging after several decades of freedom and would strive to neutralize Luo Binghe’s growing influence and powerbase. His heir and said heir’s mother would have to be protected, especially with Shen Jiu’s mental abilities so diminished, they needed to be as isolated from threats as possible…

 

Something dark inside Luo Binghe’s gut happily twisted as he considered turning Shen Jiu into a secluded Empress, protected from the world itself and so hopelessly pampered he would quickly forget how to survive on his own, while the whole Demon Realm was wondering what kind of beauty could ever deserve such devotion and begging for a glimpse they would never enjoy, for the Demon Sovereign wouldn’t share his most treasured possession with the wretched creatures he ruled.

 

But it would come later. For now, Shen Jiu would stay quietly locked inside his little bedroom until the birth. Then Luo Binghe would hold a one-month celebration to reveal he tamed a huli jing and sired an heir – it would be quite a controversial move, well-established lineages would grumble for losing the opportunity to marry him to their daughters or nieces or sisters or another kind of female kin, but he also would gain prestige for seducing one of the most rare, cruel and whimsical demon breeds, politics always were teethering on the edge and demon politics likely were even more cutthroat on this point.

 

And Luo Binghe would make a statement , one that would stay with Shen Jiu even if the formerly human cultivator regained his memories and loathing towards the Heavenly half-breed – he would introduce Shen Jiu as his , formally and irrevocably.

 

It wasn’t a proper wedding, yet Luo Binghe felt himself blushing as a young bride while he thought of it.

 

 

Chapter 17

Shen Jiu hadn’t been informed of what was happening to his body. Luo Binghe honestly wondered if the huli jing retained brainpower enough to process the news of his pregnancy – also, he felt wary of potentially giving himself bad luck by rejoicing so soon. The Heavenly half-breed had been blessed by luck, yet it was as cutting as a double-edged blade : he would survive the Endless Abyss, but he needed to fall in the Endless Abyss to survive.

 

And he remembered how cold Shen Qingqiu had been towards his disciples, even when he wasn’t loathing them with all his heart. How would the formerly human cultivator react if he learned he was carrying a child when this child still was helpless and barely formed in his womb ? He might attempt something awful and permanent to kill the unborn, and Luo Binghe couldn’t allow this – no one could raise a hand against what belonged to him, not even his subjects, and Shen Qingqiu most of all.

 

So he said nothing, and he made the physician swear to keep quiet on the matter. It should be fine until Shen Jiu grew a bit too fat to believe it was the lack of exercice ruining his shape – or maybe he would think the dishes he was happily eating were at fault ?

 

Since the huli jing was about to give him a child, Luo Binghe couldn’t very well feed him on nothing but bland congee, it wouldn’t have been good for mother and baby – also Shen Jiu deserved some kind of reward, for finally making reparations and giving something unambiguously good to the Heavenly half-breed.

 

And it was good, after all these years of the aloof immortal sneering at him for doing menial work and snipping Luo Binghe might be unsuitable to cultivate if he enjoyed slaving in the kitchen so much, after getting boiling tea poured on his head and every dish he prepared afterwards rejected for a reason or another, it was good to see his prideful Shizun eating Luo Binghe’s cooking and wanting more.

 

Figuring Shen Jiu’s palate had been very much trial and error : as demons universally consumed flesh in order to survive in their barren lands that allowed for rare greens and quite hostile vegetation, of course the huli jing would be content to eat meat. Shan Xu had babbled about the spawn of Daji likely managing to survive on raw qi when circumstances grew too dire, comparing them to succubus who could use this ability, but Luo Binghe refused to confirm the hypothesis as long as Shen Jiu would be in his delicate condition.

 

Maybe the Demon Sovereign would deprive his prisoner from food in the future if Shen Jiu decided to be unruly, but it wasn’t for now. Now, the main preoccupation was to stave any potential cravings, and Luo Binghe wondered if it would be relatively harmless – such as apples or even tree bark and chalk – or rather hazardous – such as the liver and kidneys of a thousand-year-old fish that lived in the depths of the iciest lake in the Northern Mountains. Luo Binghe had sought much rarer treasures for less noble motives than his bloodline enduring and prospering, so he would do this without complaining, but he wanted to be warned.

 

Fortunately, Shen Jiu apparently was focused on pastries and sugary treats once Luo Binghe had brought him sweets one day. It was rather difficult to find honey and sugarcane in the Demon Realm, and the Heavenly half-breed wasn’t that fond of baking, but Shen Jiu lighted up like the Moon in the night sky every time he saw dessert on his meal tray.

 

If only the naive brat Luo Binghe had been before he was pushed into a place that made Hell look like the Heavens themselves had been aware his ruthless, heartless Shizun could be placated with candied fruits and fried dough, he would have spared himself so much grief. Still, Shen Qingqiu should have accepted the offering for the gift it was intended to be and not see it as a poisoning attempt, so everything pointed at it failing. Ah, well, Luo Binghe wasn’t that brat anymore, and he had mastered the trick anyway – leading to a blissed out huli jing napping on his lap after greedily devouring his meal.

 

Shen Jiu had started to sleep much more, waking up only when he was gently shaken and quickly going back under when he wasn’t stimulated anymore. The spider demon suggested the prisoner’s body currently was devoting all of its resources and energies to the unborn’s growth, and it could afford such behaviour since Shen Jiu had no need to fight for his life or forage for nutrition, Luo Binghe taking care of everything. It wasn’t that common, the Demon Realm was rather unforgiving after all, but the phaenomena happened enough times for people to label it as relatively harmless, the mother would get back to their former energetic self after whelping or spawning – demon reproduction could involve live births or eggs or even plants, one needed to get creative to let your lineage spread around.

 

Luo Binghe was rather happy to learn Shen Jiu’s current state wouldn’t last after the child’s birth – yes, the huli jing needed his rest, carrying a powerful demon’s offspring was exhausting, moreso when the mother was much weaker (the Heavenly half-breed had no idea of one of Daji’s power levels if left unshackled, and he wasn’t interested in learning more because he wanted the formerly human cultivator under his control, power would go against this), but it wasn’t amusing when you had nothing to do except watching someone sleeping, especially after getting used to romp together.

 

Luo Binghe still had sex with Shen Jiu, it was needed to keep the prisoner compliant and let the huli jing feed on yang qi, but it was rather frustrating when one’s partner was so busy snoring they didn’t even care about the pillar inside them. Luo Binghe’s bedmates would cry or curse his name or shower him with praises after fucking, but they wouldn’t snore – once again, his Shizun refused to follow Luo Binghe’s expectations and it was almost infuriating.

 

Almost, because Luo Binghe intended to ride Shen Jiu once the huli jing would have recovered from labour, he would ride Shen Jiu so hard that his Shizun would have no choice but scream in pain and pleasure both, his wits hopelessly addled by the Heavenly half-breed’s prowess and his body begging for more as a common whore would beg for a customer to lay with her, like an addict would beg for another bit of drug.

 

It was his second most important thing to do for after the birth, since the first would be to introduce the huli jing to the child they created together. How surprised Shizun would be – would a small part of him remember their former relationship and wail in outrage and despair in front of their shared sin ? Would the huli jing immediately cradle the infant in his arms, or would he try to strangle it – the latter wouldn’t be allowed, but Luo Binghe hoped he wouldn’t have to permanently separate his heir from their mother, how could Shen Qingqiu repent from his awfulness otherwise ? How could he learn to be a good, loving person as he should have been from the very beginning, if he couldn’t even love his flesh and blood ?

 

The Demon Sovereign really hoped he wouldn’t have to seek a wet nurse, he didn’t need an interloper in his own family. He wanted for this space to be only his and the people intimately linked to him.

 

He wanted for this future to be perfect.

 

 

Chapter 18

There was something really, really wrong with Shen Jiu’s body.

 

He was exhausted, he just wouldn’t stop sleeping, only waking to let the beast spoon soup and pastries in his limp mouth, yet it wasn’t helping, he barely managed to open his eyes and moving was even worse, he was turning into a cloth doll to swaddle and tuck in its overstuffed bed, and yes he was lazy but he hated this sluggishness imposed over him so much.

 

Even the harsh sunshine wasn’t enough to allow him to fully wake up, Shen Jiu wanted to cry in sheer frustration, even glutting himself on the radiant energy wasn’t helping, he could barely taste it before it was used…

 

It was used… for what ? He could feel it accumulating in his lower dantian, growing more and more complex everyday, and the more it grew the more it felt alien to him, something he ought to cleanse his body from or it would suck him dry, it would develop into a threat.

 

But Shen Jiu was so weak, his grasp over the damp darkness that would have smothered the foreign sunshine rooting in his guts was slippery, he was powerless to fix the problem before it could become so strong, even the damp darkness wouldn’t be able to hide this burning light.

 

He hated it. He wanted for it to disappear forever, just like a slave brat once prayed for Qiu Jianluo to die and be swallowed by the Eighteen Hells, to never reincarnate again, he certainly was awful enough to deserve such a fate.

 

He hated it almost as much as he hated the beast that would softly hum as he cradled Shen Jiu in his arms, his huge hand tenderly massaging his bloated stomach and his warm breath tickling Shen Jiu’s ear, so warm, warm as the sunshine in his belly…

 

« So alike... »

 

« Hum ? Did Shizun say something ? »

 

Did he ? Shen Jiu was so tired, sometimes he barely registered his eyes were opened and his hair brushed and his robes swapped for cleaner ones. What did he say ? Something about warmth…

 

« Warm in my belly » he whispered. « Warm like you. »

 

The beast’s humming slightly hiccuped.

 

« Is Shizun feeling our baby ? »

 

Shen Jiu forced his eyelids apart with a towering effort. A huge, tanned hand carefully laid upon his belly, since when was his tummy so round ? He shouldn’t be chubby, his body leaned towards slenderness even when regularly fed. He wanted to squirm, but he was so tired he was reduced to furrow his brow.

 

« What baby ? »

 

The beast’s warm thumb was right above his belly button, right above the sunshine busy purring and swirling in soft eddies.

 

« Our baby, right there. Isn’t that exciting ? Shizun is going to be a mother. »

 

Shen Jiu’s mind was foggy, but he was pretty sure there was a big, big obstacle for the beast’s obvious inanities to be possible.

 

« Not a woman » he grumbled as his eyes closed, only for the beast to kiss the top of his head like one would kiss a silly child asking if the tooth fairy was real.

 

« Not a woman, but Shizun can be one. He can be a mother too, won’t it be sweet ? A little one you will cuddle in bed, and you will brush their hair, and you will tell them stories on the evening. »

 

The beast’s voice sounded wistful, and at the same time it sounded pleading. For what ? Who was he remembering, who was he appealing ? Shen Jiu felt the beginnings of a headache threatening to encroach on his mind, he was far too exhausted and he hated it.

 

« Makes me tired » he complained in a yawn. « Don’t like. »

 

« It’s only for a little while, Shizun. It won’t be forever » the beast soothed.

 

« Soon ? » Shen Jiu pitifully asked. « It ends soon ? »

 

« In a few months, so you have to be patient. You can do that, Shizun is much stronger than he gives himself credit, then you will have a new bedroom for you and the baby, and people to do everything you want, I promise. »

 

A new bedroom ? Shen Jiu was happy with his current bedroom but he wasn’t that attached either. And slaves for him ? Such a silly idea, Shen Jiu was a slave, he wasn’t a spoiled young master, you needed to be a spoiled young master in order to have slaves.

 

Everything he wanted… what did he want ? Shen Jiu wanted to not be tired anymore, he wanted for the sunshine nestled within his guts to disappear, he wanted to not be saddled with a brat sired by the beast.

 

He wanted to not be chained by a child he wouldn’t be able to love because it would take after the beast, he could feel their energies and they already were far too alike for his comfort and peace of mind.

 

Slaves couldn’t give him this. The beast couldn’t give him this. Everything Shen Jiu had ever wanted, he had been forced to labour and suffer to earn. No one would merely give him things, unless they expected something.

 

Maybe it was that, the beast expected for Shen Jiu to whelp a brat then he would shower him with luxuries because he thought it would be enough an apology for the inconvenience.

 

Shen Jiu hated him. Shen Jiu hated the sunshine eating him from the inside. Shen Jiu hated himself for being powerless to escape from this fucked up situation.

 

Shen Jiu was so tired. He wanted to sleep and forget everything about this discussion, maybe it would turn out to be a dream, maybe his belly was fat from eating too much.

 

Maybe.

 

« Aw, is Shizun asleep ? This lord understands, the mother to my unborn heir is so delicate. This lord will have to coddle you so much, Shizun will be so spoiled he will forget how to walk because this lord will carry him everywhere, and when he won’t be Shizun will be resting in his bedroom after our lovemaking. What a pampered Empress you will be, Shizun. »

 

Shen Jiu wanted to spit blood as nausea swirled in his belly, the idea of him turned in a plaything for yet another wealthy and powerful asshole horrendous enough to make him shiver, the idea of him as a helpless doll that couldn’t even stand on his own disgusting enough to make him furious.

 

Yet he was so tired he couldn’t do anything but lying in the beast’s embrace while the beast’s whelp was growing inside his belly, so tired he didn’t even notice when he was carefully wrapped with several blankets and furs to stay warm and deposited upon a soft mattress covered with fluffy pillows, with such tenderness one would believe he was a glass statue.

 

He was so tired he couldn’t even feel the beast kissing him on the brow then the tip of his nose, hesitating in front of his lips then losing his nerve and leaving the quiet, dark bedroom without making more noise than a dark-furred wild cat on its cushioned paws.

 

 

Chapter 19

For all the criticisms laid at her dainty feet, Sha Hualing was far from being an idiot. Her blood ran hot and she got bored easily, yes, a thousand yes, these flaws had been acknowledged since a very long time and she wasn’t that interested in correcting them, but the demon Saintess wasn’t actually stupid.

 

So when Luo Binghe – the Junshang ascending, her lord and master and occasional lover – suddenly gained an unnerving focus for something he wanted to keep a secret between him and this creepy little spider demon that claimed to be a healer yet was a mite too enthusiastic about experimentation and surgery, Sha Hualing had noticed.

 

She had tried asking Shan Su, the spider demoness was so very close with her older brother, but the other woman refused to tell. Still, it had led to several entertaining fights and just as entertaining cuddles in the aftermath, so the Saintess wasn’t complaining that much – if Junshang picked them as his brides, and he really should start building alliances this way as many lineages were grumbling and dragging their feet to yield in front of the Heavenly bloodline’s return and might, Sha Hualing would be quite happy.

 

She already was quite happy, she was powerful and she served a master who was a pretty good fuck and trusted her to fight so many uppity foes in his stead, but Sha Hualing was a demon born and bred – she would always covet, she would always be hungry for yet another crumb. Any truly great demon would be one that had mastered self-control and kept their greed firmly leashed to their side, and Sha Hualing was self-aware enough to know how far she still was from this goal.

 

It meant she was very much annoyed by the mystery currently unraveling in the Palace, and very much determined to learn the truth of the matter – it was a challenge, and the Saintess from the Southern Demonic Plains was too proud to fall back and admit it was above her level, she would fight and fail just like she did when she launched an assault against the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks.

 

She had lost to this fucking immortal master with his haughty expression and his silly fan, but she didn’t nurse a grudge, he had fought with every dirty trick he could muster and managed to kick her down his mountain range, he had proven he was stronger. The Demon Realm would bow to the strongest, no matter how they achieved their power.

 

That was why she offered her allegiance to Luo Binghe – a Heavenly Demon would grow into something terrifying, even with his blood diluted by mankind, and she really wanted to keep such a monster on her side. Also, he was a very good cook – Sha Hualing openly cried the first time she sampled one of his dishes, handmade noodles served with fish soup and mushrooms, years later it still made her drool as she remembered how divine it had been.

 

The Upper Realm likely supped on this kind of cooking, and Sha Hualing could understand why demonkind would hate the gods that much. Anyone constantly threatened with starvation would hate people growing fat with fine dishes – and yes, even the demonic nobility needed to watch their steps if they wanted to sleep without their belly screaming.

 

And human beings couldn’t understand why demons were constantly raiding the fertile Mortal Realm. Truly, they deserved to be eaten if they were that stupid.

 

Sha Hualing wasn’t stupid, but she wanted answers very much. Her pretty venomous spider wouldn’t give her answers, her lord and master wouldn’t give her answers, so she would have to find these answers by herself. It would be dangerous, but the Saintess from the Sha lineage was used to danger since she first wriggled out of her mother’s embrace to toddle on the ground.

 

It took several days of careful spying on the creepy little spider – never would she dare to spy on Luo Binghe, his wrath would lead him to punish her and not in the fun way – to finally discover the room he often disappeared in, a room located in a disaffected wing from the Palace. Of course the Junshang would hide something he wanted to keep away from prying eyes in a place no one would ever go. Then it took several days of her carefully studying the lock in order to open it without breaking the mechanism and informing Luo Binghe she saw his precious, precious secret.

 

When she finally entered, Sha Hualing’s gaze immediately fell upon the bed. It would have been difficult to not see it as it was the lone furniture in the room, and someone was soundly sleeping inside – someone with quicksilver tresses spread on the pillows and blankets, such a brilliant shade the Saintess would swear it was glowing in the darkness.

 

So that was it, Luo Binghe had captured a demoness that inflamed his lust and was keeping her comfortable yet isolated in this room to prevent an escape or a rescue from a furious clan. Sha Hualing wasn’t surprised, bride-stealing was quite the popular tradition in the Demon Realm, but she couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed, after the fancy turns her imagination had taken only for reality to conform to the rumor mill of the servants.

 

Still, she went so far to learn as much as she could, and now that she was aware an opponent for Junshang’s bed had appeared, she would gather information on the demoness. Sha Hualing crept closer, internally cursing the soft jingling of the bells in her hair and serving as her jewellery, but the sleeping demoness refused to bat an eyelash.

 

Fuzzy triangular ears from the same shade as the moonlight hair. Some kind of beast lineage ? It didn’t smell like dog in the room, nor like deer but the musky odor was rather potent, so much the Saintess scrunched her nose as the stink brutally assaulted her nostrils.

 

Sharp features that seemed carved in mutton fat jade, yet the face couldn’t be called pretty or conventionally beautiful – it was striking, a mysterious quality of it arresting the gaze, and Sha Hualing would concede the silver-haired demoness wasn’t lovely but she certainly was charming enough for the Junshang to notice her and take her to his bed.

 

A silver torc around the sleeper’s neck, covered with characters sluggishly glowing with dark qi. A restraining bolt ? Sha Hualing quietly hissed between her teeth, putting a cursed shackle on a demon to prevent them from using their abilities would be done when the aforementioned demon was able to rampage through the countryside and cause heavy damage if left unchecked. What kind of demon was this woman, and why did no one heard about her before she found herself in this room ? Surely someone would have spread tales of a silvery-haired demoness blessed with fearsome strength !

 

Her heartbeat loud enough to echo in her ear, Sha Hualing carefully lifted the blankets wrapping the slumbering body to further her investigation : rather a slender figure, wiry enough for a decent fight in the sparring courtyard in spite of this disgraceful belly pouch…

 

A belly pouch…

 

The Saintess swallowed as she laid her hand upon the small fleshy mound, looking for demonic qi – and finding a tiny accumulation of it, qi that startingly reminded her of Luo Binghe’s own energy when he had sex with her.

 

Oh fuck. Of course the Junshang was keeping that under wraps – you would have to be suicidal to boast about your consort bearing your heir before the birth, any nobleborn from the Demon Realm would aim for their foes’ children, they were such soft targets.

 

Luo Binghe made a lot of foes when he took power, and they would relish the opportunity to end his lineage before it could grow powerful again.

 

Sha Hualing almost wanted to scream, it was too much for her.

 

« Well, well, did this lord ever tell Ling’er was welcome in this room ? Because he distinctly remembers not . »

 

 

Notes:

Before you start screaming at you, no, Sha Hualing didn't peg the silver-haired, beast demoness as the very male and human Qing Jing Peak Lord she met only once in her life. Why the heck would she?

Chapter 20

Luo Binghe wouldn’t lie and claim he was hopelessly in love with Sha Hualing, but he would confess he was fond of the Saintess for being one of his most useful subordinates and a rather good lay. He would daresay he would be upset if she ever died.

 

It was rather hard to remember this as he found her in Shen Jiu’s bedroom, in spite of his command that none but him and Shan Xu were allowed to enter in this part of the Palace, and she was touching the huli jing.

 

« How lucky Ling’er is » the Demon Sovereign purred as his hand was wrapped around Sha Hualing’s throat, « to be a good general of mine and a good asset to ensure the Sha clan won’t even think of betraying me. Otherwise this lord might indulge his temper. »

 

Such a soft, slender throat she had, his Hualing. How easy it would be to crush her windpipe, her constitution was stronger and more resistant than a human’s but Luo Binghe was from the Heavenly strain and able to wrestle a Black Moon Python Rhinoceros to the ground with his physical might alone. How easy it would be to rip her pretty little head from her bird-boned shoulders, her blood staining her translucent silken veils.

 

She was aware of the thoughts buzzing in his head, he would bet on it, he could see the sweat beading on her forehead and her irises shrinking in terror even if she refused to move one muscle, still and quiet as if her breathing would unleash a cataclysm upon the lands her clan was ruling.

 

Xin Mo was rattling in its sheath, begging for its blade to be used – maybe not for a decapitating strike but surely his Hualing could live without her arm or her nose ? No, it would tarnish her prettiness – and fear suited her so well, he could feel his groin warming, he could rip her flimsy veils and take her right on the floor, it wouldn’t be very comfortable for her but she was a demoness, a bit of roughness wouldn’t kill her and she deserved for him to handle her without gentleness for her disobedience, didn’t she ?

 

Shen Jiu quietly breathed out of his mouth in the bed, the blankets whispering as they slided off his slumbering body and let no barrier between the air and the huli jing in sleeping robes.

 

Unacceptable. Shizun was so delicate in his current state, he shivered when he wasn’t wrapped in a warm cocoon, he couldn’t sleep without his blankets or he would fall sick.

 

Luo Binghe let go of Sha Hualing. He needed to tend to Shen Jiu.

 

The huli jing mewled as he was tucked anew, his slender body hidden from prying eyes, his eyelids briefly trembling but ultimately glued together as he once again sank into dreamless sleep. Luo Binghe wanted to kneel at his bedside and look at the mother of his unborn child for shichen, until his back ached and his legs turned into stone. How he wanted, but he needed to deal with his errant subordinate.

 

Sha Hualing was uncharacteristically meek and silent as he dragged her outside the bedroom, her head bowed and her bells jingling less merrily and more ominously at every step she made – a silly cantrip she learned in her early childhood, putting a bit of her emotions in her bells to let everyone know of her current mood, quite useful when one thought about it but it would have been a better fit for Mobei-jun, the ice demon was almost impossible to read.

 

When they stopped in a hallway, not so far from the inhabited part of the palace, she still wouldn’t look at her lord and master.

 

« What am I going to do with you, Ling’er ? » Luo Binghe sighed. « This lord has no need for a general that won’t follow his commands, and he doesn’t care for a bedmate so nosy she would peer on his most precious secret. »

 

The demoness kneeled on the dusty stone tiles. Luo Binghe raised one dark eyebrow : even when she pledged herself and her clan to his person, she stood upright, a hint of a defiant smirk on her lips. Seeing her so submissive – it didn’t feel like Sha Hualing at all.

 

« Ling’er has no wish to witness the consequences if Junshang’s consort came to be slain while she’s carrying your heir. »

 

So she understood the sheer gravitas of the current circumstances, very good. She also was sorely mistaken about Shen Jiu’s gender, but huli jing gleefully swapped sex in order to seduce their prey and if Luo Binghe’s consort was known to be a woman, it would hopelessly blur Shen Jiu’s true origins. The Heavenly half-breed decided he wouldn’t complain on these points.

 

There were several others that still pissed him off, though.

 

« Is this lord so terrifying ? » he mused, a dark chuckle stuck in his throat.

 

« Ling’er has heard of the previous Junshang’s fall, when a human cultivator seduced him into an ambush. It took every Great Sect and many others in the Mortal Realm to subdue Tianlang-jun alone, and he was unprepared and so easygoing he never took his battles as seriously he should have. My lord would be far more difficult to stop if he ever decided to let his temper run free. »

 

She was scared of him destroying the whole Demon Realm out of revenge for his unborn child’s demise. She wasn’t wrong to fear such an issue – Luo Binghe certainly could imagine himself razing the Southern Plains to the ground, turning the Northern Mountains into ashes and charred bones, but he wouldn’t merely stop at the Lower Realm. No, he would set the Three Realms ablaze as a worthy offering to the loss he would have suffered, the crumbling of his hope to fix everything rotten and wrong in his wretched existence.

 

A wolfish grin slowly pulled his lips in an expression that would have reduced Sha Hualing to incoherent terror if she hadn’t been bowing her head and keeping her gaze firmly on the floor.

 

« Then Ling’er understands how important it is for my unborn heir to be kept safe, along with their mother. This lord was already wondering who amongst his retainers could be trusted to serve as guards and handmaidens. »

 

The Saintess twitched – barely noticeable under her diaphaneous veils, but he was looking at her waiting for her reaction, it was impossible for him to miss it.

 

« Ah… Ling’er doesn’t really have the right character to serve as a handmaiden. »

 

The Heavenly half-breed snorted – quite the understatement, Sha Hualing really was a spoiled young mistress in a very demonic way. She would be liable to accidentally poison her master if she wanted to cook and her skill with a needle was limited to stitching wounds shut rather than embroider gowns.

 

« Ling’er is competent enough to dispatch would-be assassins coming after her. This lord has no doubts about her ability to extend such prowess to my consort and heir, or the Sha lineage will have to give me a very good reason for why they produced a boastful weakling of a daughter. »

 

He didn’t gave precisions about what he would do if the Sha lineage failed to provide such a reason. Truly, he had no idea, and sometimes it was better to leave the target fill the blank by themselves.

 

« My lord’s will be done » Sha Hualing whispered, still kneeling on the dusty floor.

 

Luo Binghe took her by the arm to let her know she could stand again. As her bells jingled from the move, he considered her.

 

« Does Ling’er believe this lord is a tyrant ? » he asked with genuine curiosity.

 

The demoness snorted, her dark red eyes so deep a carmine it verged on purplish.

 

« Junshang is Junshang » she answered. « A true ruler should want to be just as loved as they’re feared, but if they cannot have both, tis better to be feared and powerful than loved and weak. »

 

« How insightful of you » the Heavenly half-breed commented.

 

« Ling’er did listen to her father when he was in a philosophical mood. Very occasionally. »

 

What a surprise. But after learning of his Shizun’s inhumanity, Luo Binghe would endeavour to keep a broad mind.

 

 

Chapter 21

Shan Su was surprisingly happy about Sha Hualing breaking into Shen Jiu’s bedroom – or maybe it wasn’t that much of a surprise, since the Sha Saintess would stop beating the spider demoness silly in order to force a confession out of this fanged mouth now that she had satisfied her curiosity.

 

« Hualing certainly is fearsome in her beauty and beautiful in her bloodlust » the spider demoness wistfully sighed as she lied over Luo Binghe’s chest, right after sex, « but sometimes, she can be... »

 

« Annoying ? Tiresome ? » Luo Binghe suggested.

 

« Tiresome, yes. Ah, well, more than a few jades have their flaws, and are not they more endearing for it ? Truly, perfection is for the gods alone, and Junshang is aware of what his subjects do think of the Upper Realm. »

 

Luo Binghe was aware of the loathing directed towards the Upper Realm by the Lower one, and he couldn’t help sharing it a bit – for one who had suffered from the gods’ lack of mercy and virtue would find himself lacking the urge to praise and worship them. His fondness for Guanyin, She of the Boundless Compassion, could be considered a childhood habit, one of the last ties he still had with his late mother – she gifted him this false jade pendant carved in the Merciful Goddess’ likeness right before she died, and it had been his most treasured possession until Ming Fan stole it.

 

One day, Luo Binghe would repay Ming Fan a hundredfold for his cruelty towards the youth Shen Qingqiu’s Head Disciple should have treated as a martial younger brother instead of a diseased dog covered with filth. He was partial to feeding the treacherous Head Disciple to a pit filled with angry fire ants, but he also considered following the Southern Plains tradition by chaining Ming Fan naked under the harsh sun and letting him starve.

 

Maybe he would force the bastard to look at Luo Binghe fucking Shen Jiu before killing him – Ming Fan had been so devoted to the Qing Jing Peak Lord, surely his heart would break in two from witnessing such a scene. And he already was slated to die, so it wasn’t like he would reveal anyone the truth about Luo Binghe fucking their Shizun.

 

« Junshang ? »

 

Shan Su’s voice interrupted the Heavenly half-breed’s daydream. The spider demoness had raised herself on her elbow and was looking at him with her multiple eyes, all of them glistening like black obsidian in the weak light of the brazier.

 

« Is a-Su begging for another round ? » he purred.

 

He wasn’t really in the mood for taking her anew, he had resumed his usual visitations to his bedmates since Shen Jiu couldn’t handle the brunt of his attentions with his pregnancy nicely progressing along, but he nonetheless had stamina enough to make her scream her pleasure if she truly itched that much.

 

« This humble servant actually want to discuss something important with Junshang, about her current status in his Palace. »

 

Luo Binghe frowned.

 

« Is the Shan matriarch displeased with your performance ? »

 

« My lord truly has a gift for understatement, it seems » Shan Su snorted. « This humble daughter of the Shan clan was supposed to gain influence over Junshang’s generals and officials, only for Junshang to lavish honours and recognition over her older brother instead. A male, honoured over Matriarch Lu’s twelth daughter. This is a terrific humiliation my lord inflicted upon his humble servant. »

 

Luo Binghe felt a headache gleefully poking at the back of his head and loudly breathed out his nose. Of course a matriarchal lineage would feel offended because he was giving a powerful position to a male, in spite of said male being well qualified for it and belonging to their clan. Why couldn’t he slaughter them all ? It certainly would put a stop to such aberrant behaviour.

 

« This lord still could marry a-Su, if she craves power that much » he idly suggested.

 

The spider demoness eyeballed him, sneering in open disgust and incredulity.

 

« Are you seriously asking this one to let a male be formally her equal ? To let a male have power over me ? »

 

She seemed ready to bite him with her strongest venom for the insult, so Luo Binghe decided against stroking her hair to calm her down.

 

« Of course this lord wasn’t talking seriously » he claimed instead. « This lord knows a true spider demoness would never subordinate herself this way. »

 

Spider demon clans as a rule refused to acknowledge marriage as a legal procedure. Marriage implied two partners working together, with rights and obligations established between them, and spider demons loathed sharing. They also loathed the very possibility of a male being allowed more than living after being fucked for breeding – they typically would eat their brothers and sons when they grew too old for working and sex, and wouldn’t it be rather inconvenient for your food resources to have rights ?

 

Shan Su told Luo Binghe she would never be anything but his bedmate the first night he spent with her, even the prestige of snaring the ruler of demonkind not enough for her to overcome her loathing of a male being considered her equal. He had been alright with this – Shan Su wasn’t the kind of woman he would have wanted to marry even if she had been human.

 

Unfortunately, it put him in a delicate position – Shan Su couldn’t leave his court since her brother would follow her back to the Shan clan and Luo Binghe refused to lose his physician, but she would have no choice but obey her matriarch if she really was deemed unable to be a proper courtier…

 

« So what do you want from this lord, a-Su ? »

 

Yellowish fangs appeared as the spider demoness grinned, trying to be demure and completely failing courtesy of her physique.

 

« This humble servant cannot attend Junshang, but she would be happy to serve Junshang’s primary consort. Indeed, Matriarch Lu would be very proud if her measly daughter became a lady-in-waiting to the Empress, part of the most powerful woman in the Demon Realm’s household. »

 

That… that could work, actually. Luo Binghe needed to find attendants for Shen Jiu, people he could trust to care for the mentally diminished huli jing. As his physician’s sister, Shan Su easily could serve as a nurse if needed, and her brother wouldn’t allow her to kill his latest research subject. Beyond venom, Shan Su was a deft hand with weaving and embroidery, she would ensure Luo Binghe’s consort would be clothed as befit an Empress – and she would keep Hualing happy, the Saintess could always torture the spider demoness if she got too bored from her duties as Shen Jiu’s guard.

 

A smirk creeped on the Heavenly half-breed’s face.

 

« This lord shall consider your request » he politically said. « Handmaidens cannot be named before the official proclamation of my having taken a consort and produced an heir, a-Su will understand this. »

 

« Then a-Su will take good care of reading court protocol again » the spider demoness impishly vowed. « Her Empress deserves the better this humble servant can give her. »

 

« And your lord does not warrant such respect from you ? » Luo Binghe pouted.

 

This time, Shan Su was openly mocking as she smirked with her fangs fully displayed.

 

 

Chapter 22

After naming Sha Hualing and Shan Su as guard and handmaid respectively to the mother of his heir – it would be part-time for the Saintess, she was far too useful on the battlefield and far too bloodthirsty to become a full-blown bodyguard, it would cause violence and complains down the line if she found herself unable to run amok occasionally – Luo Binghe had to seriously consider the matter of Shen Jiu’s future household.

 

The Demon Realm was far more equalitarian than the Mortal one, it was such a dangerous wasteland everyone was forced to pull their weight, but demonkind nonetheless acknowledged a pair of rulers would have different duties and households of their own. Demons tended to have an independent streak and often leaned towards territorialism, having separate dominions to influence helped to reduce the conflict that would arise from two rulers forced into close proximity.

 

So it was expected for Luo Binghe’s main consort to have attendants of their own. However, it was supposed to be Shen Jiu’s household, and the Heavenly half-breed picking his consort’s ladies in waiting and guards… well, more than a few clans likely would accuse him from being a tyrant. On the other hand, they might approve the initiative to limit a huli jing’s ability to influence their surroundings, Daji’s offspring had quite the reputation after all.

 

Luo Binghe would have to be careful. He would have to select people that wouldn’t pounce on the opportunity to betray their employer in spite of the consequences, and it would be hard with Shen Jiu’s current mental state. Any demon worth their salt would shamelessly manipulate a weaker demon, and Shen Jiu was such a perfect target for ambitious courtiers seeking to latch on someone that would grant them riches and influence…

 

Shan Su could help to chase unwanted influences away if needed, but letting a handmaid rule the Empress’ household would send a bad message. Implying Luo Binghe’s consort was unable to take care of himself would imply Luo Binghe himself was weak, that he could be bullied into compliance if only the clans put pressure enough.

 

Unless he was so fearsome he could allow to have a useless consort – good for nothing beyond bearing him heirs aplenty, that was something Shen Jiu could still do and it could be considered his most important duty – but it would be a long road for him, and the whispers would never fully quiet down. Politics, how he hated them.

 

Luo Binghe needed to pick people that wouldn’t make a fuss, the kind of people that would be too nervous and shy to even think about rebelling. He needed the demon equivalent to sentient rabbits – rabbits would bolt away from everything hinting at danger, they would outright die from fright if spooked too much. Unfortunately, the only rabbits in the Demon Realm were from the carnivorous bend and completely lacking in sapience so they wouldn’t do at all.

 

He couldn’t ask yet another bedmate of his to join Shen Jiu’s household, they were too strong-willed for it to work and he couldn’t help but picture them indulging their envy and outright mistreating Shen Jiu and his heir. Even if he executed them for their crime, the failure to catch them in time would bear tremendous consequences.

 

Maybe he could ask Mobei-jun to loan him some frost imps ? The Heavenly half-breed had been a guest in the Northern Ice Palace twice or thrice, and these imps would constantly run around to keep the hallways clean and the windows perfectly see-through – Mobei-jun also mentioned they would be devoured when starvation was knocking on the Palace’s gate, and Luo Binghe remembered how queasy he felt for several days after learning this. Still, it was the Southern Plains with its hot and dry biome, frost imps would be liable to die from heatstroke even if they were kept in the subterranean Palace and constantly importing servants would be bad for his purse. And Mobei-jun wasn’t the kind to ask a lot from someone he acknowledged as stronger, but his advisors were far more greedy and Luo Binghe couldn’t directly intervene in the Northern Mountain’s court so long he wouldn’t be the absolute ruler of all demonkind – he was making progress on this front, but he still wasn’t there.

 

What if he picked hostages ?

 

Demon tribes and clans would rather kill their foes to the last child, but they did practise hostage-taking, mainly because they wanted to make a point of lording their superiority over the vanquished tribe or because they wanted something from the conquered lands. Or a tribe wanted another lineage’s help but was too weak to force the other clan to yield, so they would send a tribute that would be accepted or tortured until death.

 

So many clans wanted something from Luo Binghe, now that he officially was Junshang over the Southern Plains. Maybe he should start answering a few requests, so long as the lineage begging for his intervention had a sweet-tempered daughter they wanted to lose, but not so much they would rebel while said daughter was living at court or he would have to kill her in order to prove no one trifled with him, then he would have to look for another attendant.

 

Let’s see… Shan Su for the wardrobe and medical emergencies, someone to help with the baby since Shen Jiu likely would struggle due to his current mental state and his naturally aloof disposition, someone to clean the bedroom and ensure the bathwater wouldn’t be too acidic or polluted, someone to ensure the food wasn’t poisoned when Luo Binghe had to leave on a military campaign… It made four handmaidens already, and it wasn’t taking the guards in account.

 

It was tempting for the handmaidens to be able to fight, but Luo Binghe wanted for them to be meek and that was rather impossible to mesh with a warrior’s prowess. So Shen Jiu’s ladies in waiting would have to turn into meat shields if the Empress suddenly was endangered and unable to call on experimented fighters.

 

Sha Hualing would be delighted by the opportunity to beat the chosen guards into shape – she wasn’t that much of a teacher, true, but it would let the guards learn what kind of opposition they were supposed to defend their charge from if asked, and it would force them to improve if they wanted to keep breathing.

 

Still, Luo Binghe supposed he would have to supervise some of the training, or Sha Hualing would break very important bones and accidentally cripple a good warrior into uselessness. That would be infuriating for everyone, and the Heavenly half-breed already could feel his teeth ache from annoyance as he pondered over the scenario.

 

Shen Jiu’s guards needed to be good, yet not so good they could assault their charge – or he merely needed to pick hostages again, people that would be genuinely gifted and so desperate to toe the line they would obey his every command. They likely would be from the female persuasion – human rulers would have their wives surrounded by eunuchs to prevent unfaithfulness, but a male demon would never consent to lose his pillar and it was possible to find women perfectly able to lay waste to their opponent in the Lower Realm, that would be quicker and less complicated this way.

 

He would start with a protection detail in the dozen, then he would see if he needed to weed out some candidates, but he wanted at least six bodyguards watching over Shen Jiu and his heir. It should be enough when he wasn’t there.

 

Of course, they would be redundant when Luo Binghe would come visit the huli jing, as the Heavenly half-breed could easily fight two tribes at once without support and he still was honing his power.

 

Soon, not even an alliance of every sect in the Mortal Realm would be able to oppose him.

 

 

Chapter 23

Luo Binghe needed to prepare a full suite for Shen Jiu to live in, after the huli jing would have been formally acknowledged as his Empress. The Heavenly half-breed half-heartedly considered to keep the formerly human cultivator in his own bedroom, that would be so much more enjoyable and ensure Shen Jiu and their child would have the best protector possible in nighttime, but it wasn’t as feasible as he wished.

 

A spouse needed their own space, and it was even more important when said spouse was a demon – it was partially because one could want to be on their own for a while, partially because a separate room could be turned into a shelter when the consort felt threatened by their partner. Luo Binghe was rather unhappy about this second part – Shen Jiu was his now, and Luo Binghe cared for what belonged to him – but the idea of a safe place for his Empress and heirs to flee when he wasn’t there, well he would be a fool to not implement it.

 

Of course, he was keeping the huli jing in his current subterranean prison room until the birth and the one-month celebration, but Luo Binghe genuinely needed to start planning and furnishing the suite if he wanted for the place to be suitable for his Empress. One’s consort’s comfort wasn’t a joke, and one’s Empress’ comfort wasn’t a joke – mix both of these together and failure definitely wasn’t allowed.

 

His safest bet likely would be to recreate Qing Jing Peak as much as he could. Still, he would put a veto on the bamboo – the variants that managed to grow in the Demon Realm tended to drink blood or suck a hapless traveler’s bone marrow because the soil was so poor it was the only way to find the necessary nutrients for life. What if the mind-addled Shen Jiu or Luo Binghe’s toddler child wandered in the grove and was assaulted by the plants ? It would be shameful and terrible ! Anyway, since the Palace was mainly built underground, greenery was hard to find and quickly wilted from the lack of natural light. Fungi on the other hand…

 

Luo Binghe briefly pondered if Shizun would like colourful mushrooms instead of flowers in his garden, then decided he didn’t actually care about this kind of detail. A garden was a luxury, and he had to focus on the useful such as the bathroom.

 

Bathing and drinking were quite dangerous in the Southern Plains courtesy of the harsh, dry climate – water was a precious good, more precious than jade and gold, since it was so rare to find and it was even worse when one wanted to find drinkable water, far too often the precious liquid was stained with various substances that turned it toxic or hazardous for the health at the very least.

 

As a result, many lower-ranked demons were horrendously dirty, or they suffered from various ailments resulting from dipping in poisonous streams such as blindness or discoloured scales and skin or malformed limbs, but they nonetheless lived and for many inhabitants of the Lower Realm nothing else mattered. So long as one lived, one could hope it would finally get better.

 

Of course, nobility had privileges . They could bathe with clean water, but they tended to be frugal with the precious liquid and kept it rationed. They made use of pit latrines and chamberpots, they scraped and scoured their body with sand of all things before applying oil to keep the skin moisturized and avoid stinking everywhere, they locked their clothes in a metal container before heating them high over a fire to destroy lice and fleas and other pests.

 

Luo Binghe remembered how floored he had been when Sha Hualing first showed him how he was supposed to clean himself with nothing but a bucket of sand – even when he was a starving street urchin, he and his mother had been able to bathe every five days thanks to the Luo river’s proximity. Still, he would bet Mobei-jun struggled even more than him, since the Northern Mountains were covered with ice and snow one could let melt to obtain water.

 

Luo Binghe wanted for Shen Jiu to enjoy bathing, just like any resident of the Qing Jing Peak would, but the huli jing would only be granted the right to bathe once a month, trying for more would be seen as unbearably wasteful and Luo Binghe wouldn’t call himself a miser, but he was relatively uneasy on the matter of waste, even when it was something as silly as water.

 

Well, water was silly in the Mortal Realm, where there was a lot of it. And he was half a Heavenly Demon, so he would have to roll with this peculiar flow or his subjects would complain and rebel, and he would have to put them back in their place when he could enjoy himself. Much better to avoid the problem to begin with, even if it caused him headaches now.

 

After water, he had to fret about clothing. That would be easier, the Shan Spider Demon clan was more known for their expertise in poisons and medicines but they had a few outliers who enjoyed spinning and weaving silk. Shan Su could embroider and sew well enough, she would give Shen Jiu a full wardrobe – Luo Binghe just needed to tell her how he wanted for the dresses and gowns to be cut and colored, she would be liable to comment on his choices but she would respect them.

 

Luo Binghe couldn’t wait to behold Shen Jiu draped in pristine white silk, his gown so obviously meant for an elegant, beautiful Empress and not a haughty scholar that would hide his sneer behind his painted fans.

 

He couldn’t wait to behold Shen Jiu carrying their child in his arms, as he sat on the bed.

 

It would be a bitch and three of her pups to procure everything a newborn needed without hinting the ascendant Junshang had produced an Heir to his bloodline – Shan Su would help with the clothes again, but the crib and the teething rings, some demons were born with a full set of fangs and tended to gnaw on everything, and now Luo Binghe worried about his whelp accidentally injuring their mother as they nursed.

 

Shan Xu insisted that a mother refusing to breastfeed her spawn was liable to develop infections and fevers, and it helped to bond with the offspring anyway so the huli jing would be less likely to try and break his child’s skull if he fed them from his own body. Luo Binghe considered the reasoning sound, but worried about Shen Jiu potentially loathing their child if the experience was painful – and a demon brat accidentally biting your nipple off because they were too hungry to care about swallowing milk or blood, well, it definitely would be painful.

 

Shen Qingqiu deserved painful, but Shen Jiu was Luo Binghe’s consort and deserved nothing but the best when it came to comfort. And he would have it – it was the least he was entitled to have, since the huli jing would enter his newfound suite and never set a foot outside afterwards. For his safety, mostly, but also because the Heavenly half-breed couldn’t trust anyone with his Empress.

 

Also, Shen Jiu had been the Qing Jing Peak Lord once upon a time, even if he couldn’t remember this part of his life. His prison cell would be gilded and silken, but a prison cell it would be. Never again would the huli jing be free to walk under the Heavens.

 

Shen Jiu wouldn’t miss it – Luo Binghe would take such good care of him.

 

 

Chapter 24

Shen Jiu was twelve-months pregnant when he finally decided the whelp had lazed enough in his belly and entered in labour.

 

Shan Xu had made some noises about giving the huli jing a special tea to forcefully induce the birth, or outright cutting his stomach open – the latter option was the one the physician favoured, his multiple eyes gleaming with excitment as he gushed over the Western manuals depicting what kind of blades would be efficient to cut the unborn out of the womb without hurting it.

 

Luo Binghe had threatened to break his arm – all of them – if he continued talking about slashing and hurting his Junshang’s consort, and made very clear that he wanted the huli jing to be saved if it was a choice between letting the babe die or its mother.

 

« As long as he lives, he can bear me another child » the Heavenly half-breed declared. « This isn’t like a dumb brat is more valuable than a fully trained Heir. »

 

The demon spider had squinted with two of his eyes, but ultimately bowed to his will, and when he was finally called for the birth, he utterly abstained from even implying he would have to use his scalpels.

 

A huli jing wasn’t likely to have difficulties with giving birth, anyway, courtesy of their shapeshifting. Yes, Luo Binghe had forced a cursed shackle upon his Shizun, but Shen Jiu was quite healthy and stubborn, he wouldn’t dare to bleed out or to grow feverish. Luo Binghe would force blood parasites down his throat to repair everything if the birth went that bad.

 

It was late in the night when Shen Jiu started to whimper and wiggle in his embrace, his qi erratically flowing in his meridians and pooling in his groin, while the unborn’s own qi shuddered and curled up on itself, slowly floating away from their mother’s own lifeforce.

 

Shan Su had been snoring next door for two weeks, waiting for the signal that her brother would have to be fetched, and ran as quickly as possible after being dragged out from under her covers. Luo Binghe busied himself with soothing the distressed huli jing as the spider demons were preparing everything and came back to the bedroom.

 

Shen Jiu obviously wasn’t understanding what was happening – why his belly suddenly hurt so much, why his little parasite suddenly was acting out. How cute he was, his tail fluffed in alarm and his eyes widened in pain as he weakly struggled against the Heavenly half-breed’s grip, panting as his robes were opened to not put undue pressure on his cramping tummy.

 

When Shan Xu finally appeared, his hair messily gathered in a lopsided bun and half of his eyes still blinking sleep away, he immediately went to work between the huli jing’s legs. On the other hand, Shan Su – enlisted as her brother’s assistant – was fiercely scowling at Luo Binghe.

 

« It takes hours for a mother to whelp a live brat, Junshang. Surely my Lord would want to spend his time in a more enjoyable way ? »

 

« This lord will decline to miss his Heir’s birth » the Heavenly half-breed snapped back – Shen Jiu was his, everything about Shen Jiu belonged to him, his love and his pain and his triumph, and Luo Binghe wouldn’t be deprived from such an important event, his Shizun bearing Luo Binghe’s offspring into the world.

 

The spider demoness hissed her disgust, displaying her yellowish fangs.

 

« And who exactly is going to drag my Lord outside when he will faint from an excess of emotion ? Because let me tell you, men are useless when the mysteries of childbirth are unfolding, they will literally be underfoot ! »

 

The Demon Sovereign blushed so deep a pink, it verged on bright crimson, in front of the accusation, but he stubbornly refused to leave the room. He survived half a decade in the Endless Abyss, helplessly watching his Empress as he twisted and moaned and sobbed while shitting blood and crap and amniotic liquid and piss in his desperate quest to force a whole sentient being out of his nethers… well…

 

He could still do it. He felt light-headed and he very much wanted to puke and he was falling back on breathing exercises intended for meditation as his heartbeat raced, but Luo Binghe could do it. Really.

 

Then Shen Jiu hiccuped, a wet and pitiful sound, and something red and wrinkled slipped right in two waiting hands of Shan Xu with a plaintive cry.

 

« Looks like a male. Congratulations to Junshang and his consort for the birth of a healthy prince. »

 

A son. Luo Binghe frantically blinked, a suspicious wetness threatening to glue his eyelashes together. Shizun gave him a son, a healthy boy. Wasn’t he supposed to be delighted ? Any ruler wanted sons he could mold into righteous successors that would carry his name and bring good fortune and fame to the clan. Yet Luo Binghe felt nothing but a slightly hysterical fear, what was he supposed to do with this brat ?

 

He knew how to cook a hundred dishes, he knew how to kill people on the battlefield or turn them into terrified wrecks in their dreams, why couldn’t he know anything about interacting with an infant ? Why was he so scared, as when he had been fourteen years old and powerless to protect himself and Ning-shijie from a Skinner demon ?

 

Shan Su carefully wiped the whelp with a fluffy towel before laying him upon the exhausted huli jing’s chest, the small head right between the breasts. Shen Jiu softly exhaled through his mouth, a sound filled with utter incomprehension and shock.

 

« There you go, little prince » the spider demoness cooed. « Isn’t that soft ? Doesn’t it smell good ? »

 

The tiny creature mewled, his chubby fingers clutched in a fist, his face purplish and swollen under matted, fine black hair. How was it possible for Luo Binghe – he wasn’t vain but he definitely was aware of his handsomeness, demonesses just wouldn’t stop commenting on his pretty looks – and Shen Jiu – once famed for having a face that belonged to Heaven and a heart worthy of Hell – to produce such an ugly thing ?

 

The Demon Sovereign shyly tickled the tiny fist with his finger and – the baby grabbed it. It would have been easy for Luo Binghe to shake such a weak grip off. He didn’t. He couldn’t dare.

 

Xin Mo was wailing in his mind, this fucking sword wouldn’t shut up since he first picked up, but it was harder to hear it with his blood rushing so loud through his ears.

 

« Little beast » Shen Jiu muttered, and it sounded more confused than genuinely angry. « Little-er beast ? Littlest beast ? »

 

Luo Binghe huffed a laugh and gently kissed the huli jing on his ear, the furry appendage twitching under his lips.

 

« Yes, he’s tiny, isn’t he ? I bet he didn’t feel that small in your womb, Shizun was so bloated at the end, he looked like he swallowed a ball. »

 

Shen Jiu wrinkled his nose before hissing as the physician massaged his gut. He likely would have slapped the spider demon if his hands hadn’t been encumbered with a newborn, Luo Binghe firmly keeping his arms stuck.

 

« Consort Shen still needs to expel the placenta, or they won’t be able to eat it » Shan Xu candidly said.

 

Really, demons. One could trust them to be disgusting.

 

« And why would he do that ? » Luo Binghe asked.

 

« It improves the mood and the lactation, and it increases energy » the physician blithely answered. « Wouldn’t my Lord want for his Heir’s mother to quickly heal, after such a trial ? »

 

Alright, it still was disgusting but the Heavenly half-breed couldn’t complain about his pet healer doing his job. Medicines weren’t supposed to be appetizing, anyway.

 

Maybe to traumatize the disease to the point it would flee and never come back.

 

 

Chapter 25

Shen Jiu wasn’t feeling so good.

 

It started with the weird cramping in his gut, for fuck’s sake it hurt so much, maybe worse than Wu Yanzi and definitely worse than everything cooked by Qiu Jianluo, how was that even possible ? He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t been forced to live through it, his guts threatening to dissolve and leak out of his body while he simultaneously felt too hot and too cold, the beast pawing at him and hyperventilating as if he was about to faint.

 

Shen Jiu already knew that beast was no good, but that useless ? He would have sneered if he wasn’t focused on shitting his intestines and maybe his liver too.

 

But that wasn’t his intestines he finally expelled from his tummy, it was this small knot of dry sunshine that stubbornly refused to die in spite of Shen Jiu’s hopes and prayers for it to be snuffed, and when the spider abomination lifted it to be laid on Shen Jiu’s chest, he saw it was just as ugly and misshapen as expected but really, it came from Shen Jiu. Of course it would be awful.

 

It was a purplish red and wrinkled and chubby and grasping, its tiny mouth hiccuping as it took its first breath and its limbs flailing and flopping without any gracefulness. Did Shen Jiu ever look this way, when Qi-ge stumbled upon a half-dead infant lying in a ditch ? Why would Qi-ge ever have picked him up, if that was the case ? How could anyone love such a disgusting creature, coming from such inauspicious beginnings ?

 

Shen Jiu hated it, but it was an exhausted kind of hatred – he mainly wanted to sleep a long, long time, this horrible little creature had forced him awake and prevented him from slipping back into unconsciousness with the cramps.

 

« Come on, Your Highness, open wide. This humble servant swears you will enjoy the meal. »

 

The shredded pieces of meat were slippery and bloody as the spider abomination fed them to him, but it was food and Shen Jiu had learned to never reject food when he could have it, who knew when he would get to eat again ? It was bad in the streets with the rats and the dogs and the other urchins and it was bad in the Qiu Manor with Qiu Jianluo that would starve his slaves into compliance and it was bad on the roads with Wu Yanzi more interested in torturing his so-called apprentice because he could practise inedia and thought gold was better spent on everything else but food.

 

He softly whined after the last piece, only for the beast to pet his hair, how he loathed this possessive gesture, something one master would do to a dog or bed-slave when he was in a good mood this day.

 

« Since Shizun has eaten his fill, will he be a fair Master and allow this child of his to eat his fill ? »

 

Shen Jiu blinked, uncomprehending, what was it supposed to mean ?

 

On his chest, the ugly little beast had started pawing and grasping at the swollen lumps that served as his breasts, and these itched in a weird way, they felt unpleasantly full and that was like having a full bladder and desperately wanting to piss but you weren’t able to relieve yourself.

 

Shen Jiu wasn’t feeling his bladder, by the way. His body beneath the waist just felt hot and aching and tingling, and it reeked of blood and crap. He wanted to hiss as the spider abominations – both of them – cleaned as much of the mess as they could, using a lot of perfumed oil to do so.

 

Then a small greedy mouth pinched his nipple and he yelped. His attempt to wriggle was stopped by the beast that firmly held his hands, preventing Shen Jiu from seizing the little monster and throw it away, maybe against the wall for the tiny skull to shatter into a hundred of shards.

 

« What’s happening ? Is he injured ? »

 

« He shouldn’t, this lowly servant has checked and Junshang’s heir has no teeth at all. Most likely, your consort is oversensitive after giving birth, just let him get used to the sensation... »

 

Get used to what sensation ? Shen Jiu squirmed as the pressure on his nipple refused to alleviate, the little beast now clutching his breast and it wasn’t comfortable, not a bit, get it away ! He didn’t want that ! He never wanted any of that !

 

Suddenly something laced with the wet and dark energy within himself was sucked out by the little monster that enthusiastically swallowed, and it wouldn’t stop suckling, its finy fist clenched and its breathing barely audible because it was so focused on drinking its fill – just like Shen Jiu would be desperate to consume as much of the dry sunshine as he could get from the beast when he laid besides Shen Jiu in the bed.

 

It felt so weird, and at the same time Shen Jiu’s swollen breast started to feel less full, less ready to burst from holding so much. He was conflicted about it.

 

« So weird... »

 

The beast was breathing right besides his ear, and it was hot and slightly too loud. Everything was a bit too much, now that he had been freed of this heavy weight in his belly.

 

« This Lord thinks Shizun looks quite good this way. Of course, it’s slightly unbalanced, so maybe I will impregnate Shizun again ? Then you will be able to nurse both of our children at the same time, wouldn’t it be a sight. My beautiful Empress, feeding my heirs with his own body. »

 

It didn’t sound like something Shen Jiu ought to crave, rather like the beast’s half-formed fantasy. A dream in which Shen Jiu was nothing but a passive vessel that served as a way to achieve the desired result of creating a pretty, domestic scene.

 

Shen Jiu wasn’t pretty, and he was not especially domestic either. If anything, he was an ugly, feral thing to be disdained and left alone to rot in its designated corner, and he lived very well with it.

 

Now his head was throbbing from his attempt to seriously think about his circumstances, alongside his chest and his lower body – his everything hurt, actually, and he hated this, his brows drawing themselves in a frown.

 

He was aching and he was so tired. He needed to lose conciousness, this way he would get… well, not better, but at least he wouldn’t be aware to suffer.

 

« Is my Empress sleepy ? Alright, this Lord will let him rest, after the blessing he just bestowed upon me. A-Jiu doesn’t need to worry for the aftercare, this Lord will be there for every single step. This Lord will take care of everything. »

 

Shen Jiu refused to trust in the beast’s words. Qi-ge promised he would never leave once upon a time, and Qi-ge disappeared from Shen Jiu’s life. Shen Jiu had cared for Qi-ge, so much more than he could for anyone else, to the point there was nothing left for the beast. Shen Jiu couldn’t trust the beast at all.

 

But it was the only thing he had, and he was so tired, and so he slowly floated away in the deep, dark waters of dreamless sleep.

 

 

Chapter 26

Luo Binghe allowed himself the luxury of a whole day leisurely spent doting on his drowsy Empress, cuddling the huli jing and keeping him focused on their infant son – Shen Jiu obviously struggled to bond with the ugly, wrinkled creature that screamed when it was forced to stop suckling on its mother’s teats, but that was alright, it could be corrected, Shen Jiu would learn how to be the sweet, devoted spouse and parent Luo Binghe wanted for him to be.

 

He would have wanted more time – how he craved more time with this tiny family of his, he still couldn’t believe he finally created one with his own two hands – but Luo Binghe wasn’t merely Luo Binghe anymore, he had decided to turn himself into the mightiest Demon lord to ensure he would be the one trampling instead of the one trampled, and look where he now was, ruling over the Demon Southern Plains.

 

Soon, he would rule over the Lower Realm in full. He didn’t have a choice – the Heavenly Demon strain alone was entitled to such a prestigious honor, and he forever would be pursued by paranoid, ambitious noblemen fearing his potential even if he rejected the throne.

 

Luo Binghe might have chosen to brave the danger if he had been the lone person concerned, but he had produced an heir and needed to ensure said heir would never fret about starving or freezing to death or losing his mother to disease, and that meant securing power and wealth enough to grant Shen Jiu’s firstborn everything the brat could ever dream of.

 

The throne came with its own warning, of course, because nothing was entirely safe in the Demon Realm, but at least Luo Binghe wouldn’t have to fight two battles at once, first in the political arena and second on the bare necessities front, to protect this fragile happiness he still was building and reinforcing.

 

He already had the Southern Plains, and he would have the Northern Mountains’ allegiance through Mobei-jun – the ice demon technically wasn’t the rightful king of his people but the incumbent holder of said title was dying by inches and Linguang-jun far too busy brooding over past failures and slights to pose a genuine challenge to his nephew, moreso when the nephew had the support of a Heavenly Demon wielding the cursed blade Xin Mo – so it was leaving the Western Marshes and the Eastern Floodplains for him to conquer.

 

These lands would be tiresome to wrestle into bowing to him, since the clans roaming there were used to guerilla warfare, drowning armies in quicksand and rivers while unleashing swarms of gluttonous mosquitoes and poisonous moths that would carry so many kind of illnesses – Shan Xu would rhapsodize over the Flesh-Rotting Yellow Fever and Qi-Sucking Cold and others cut from the same mold, all of them a guarantee to suffer an ignominous demise covered in piss and vomit and gore.

 

Such a situation was a good way for Luo Binghe to remember why Mobei-jun had been smart in picking Shang Qinghua as his spy within Cang Qiong – and wasn’t that a surprise, to learn of Shang-shibo’s treachery since the man had always seemed focused on his duty to the sect but appearances would fool anyone just like Luo Binghe had been fooled by Shen Qingqiu’s pristine beauty into believing him a peerless, benevolent Immortal Master – since the human cultivator was caring for the An Ding Peak, tasked with logistics.

 

An armed force without resources to feed itself or stay healthy and deprived of transportation to flee bad circumstances would be defenceless. Any general worth their salt would try and find the best logistics officer ever, and if it meant stealing said officer and bribing or threatening them into obedience, so be it.

 

And in a way, Shang Qinghua would still serve Cang Qiong by helping his disgraced martial nephew to unify the demon tribes under a single banner – if the clans were cowed by their Sacred Ruler’s prowess, surely they wouldn’t dare to venture in the Mortal Realm for raiding and fame-seeking through battle without his say-so. And if the Mortal Realm was left alone by the demons, humans could focus on their wretched lives – truly, they ought to be careful but of course they wouldn’t be since they loathed the Lower Realm and that for so long it was impossible to remember why both races had started to hate each other.

 

Luo Binghe used to dream about going back to the Middle Realm and force everyone living there to repent for how shabbily they treated him. Now it was more an idle thought, easily batted away, nothing like the almost overpowering, all-consuming fantasy it first began as, and the Heavenly half-breed strongly suspected he already knew the reason behind such a change.

 

He used to dream about going back to the Middle Realm because he couldn’t grasp the Moon reflected in the water, the peerless illusion of the flower in the mirror that Shen Qingqiu was. But Shen Qingqiu had been dragged down from his lofty pedestal, had been dragged down into Hell with the wretched disciple he once sought to murder, his fate forever and irremediably entwined with the ascending Junshang’s.

 

Luo Binghe could be content to never leave Hell, so long as Shen Jiu was there.

 

He just needed to tame Hell itself – then it would become the perfect prison for Shen Jiu, one that the huli jing would be unable to escape as his shackles would be silken and gilded, such a beautiful cage he would confuse it with the Heavens themselves, and Luo Binghe would never let him think otherwise.

 

The Heavenly half-breed would never let him escape, once he would have the huli jing brought into Tianlang-jun’s abandoned palace – Luo Binghe personally wasn’t very interested in that crumbling ruin, and the former Emperor likely had shared his viewpoint since the rumors pointed at the pure-blooded demon wandering everywhere in the Middle and Lower Realms instead of dwelling in his ancestral home, but taking the palace would send a powerful message that he was here to stay and actually serious about being Junshang. Also, such a palace was warded with such esoteric arrays that none still alive was able to comprehend, even less break them – the perfect place to keep a secluded, helpless Empress.

 

And Luo Binghe would have to secure the palace, along the Western Marshes and the Eastern Floodplains, in less than a month. It would be a nightmare to implement such a quick military campaign, Luo Binghe likely would thoroughly abuse Mobei-jun’s knowledge about portal arrays to smooth everything, and his control over the lands would be extremely shaky unless he wanted to burn them to cinders and charred bones, but it would be useful to establish him as ruthless and mercilessly efficient when he genuinely coveted domination – so many demon noblemen were sneering at him and calling him soft for taking so much time with the Southern Plains and the Northern Mountains, as if they would have fared better freshly evaded from the Endless Abyss and utterly deprived from allies.

 

And this way, Luo Binghe’s enthronement would double as his son’s First Month celebration – well, the demons were more familiar with the first birthday as their spawn died in clusters before this deadline, but they nonetheless would understand him wanting to gloat about ensuring his bloodline.

 

This celebration would formally see Shen Jiu bound to him, and for such an occasion he couldn’t waste time in playing war more than two weeks and a half. The Demon Realm would fall to their knees before the auspicious date.

 

Luo Binghe would make it a reality. He was very good when it came to force his wants to become real.

 

 

Chapter 27

Notes:

Hello there!

Sorry for not updating any of my stories last week, my family went in vacation and that was only after going there (lovely place, really, come and visit Périgord anytime) that we learnt the house had no Internet at all, fuck my life sideways with a fistful of chili peppers.

Anyway, I am BACK, and I hope a double update will be enough of an apology for the oops.

Luo Binghe couldn’t afford to keep Sha Hualing sidelined, no matter how irked he still was about the Saintess snooping in his back and learning of Shen Jiu’s existence. If he wanted to utterly crush the Western and Eastern parts of the Lower Realm into submission, then he needed every single advantage he could gather and that meant not neglecting his allies.

 

For all her flaws, Sha Hualing was a fearsome warrior and a genuinely good general, a hot-blooded, agressive and female counterpoint to the icily logical and dispassioned Mobei-jun – she would fight and redeem her name on the battlefield, then he would force her to watch over his Empress and infant heir after officially reclaiming the title of Sacred Ruler. The demoness wouldn’t complain about her new duties, since the clans would send their best assassins after Luo Binghe’s family to express their displeasure about his choice of spouse and test his ability to protect his best beloved ones, that should keep her entertained until the assassins had been culled enough for the clans to understand how futile their endeavour was.

 

Before that, however, none would try and slaughter the helpless huli jing with his babe as none beyond Luo Binghe’s very restrained inner circle knew about them, so he would let Shan Su to attend their needs. The spider demoness wasn’t the greatest fighter, her skills for poisoning and laying traps would make her more of an assassin and an ambush predator, but she would do in a pinch if Shen Jiu and the brat needed protection – something that likely wouldn’t happen.

 

Something with good odds to happen, however, was Shen Jiu suffering complications in the aftermath of giving birth, or failing to properly care for his newborn son, and for that a physician would be useful. Shan Su had proven her competence by helping her brother – just like Sha Hualing, Shan Xu was far too skilled for Luo Binghe to leave him behind as he waged his conquest against the tribes that wouldn’t acknowledge him as their ruler, and the physician would be extremely unhappy if he was refused the opportunity to further his studies in the field of battlefield surgery.

 

Humans believed technological progress was possible in peacetime when scholars were allowed to think as much as they could, and demons believed technological progress would be achieved in wartime when warriors were driven to creativity out of sheer desperation. Luo Binghe could very much understand the reasoning behind every option, if applied in divergent fields.

 

The Heavenly half-breed wasn’t worried about Shan Su’s ability to handle the huli jing. Even if he couldn’t ask Mobei-jun to bring him back to the palace through a portal, Shen Jiu’s wits currently had been scrambled but good by several months spent to serve as Luo Binghe’s cauldron. Even if a dry spell would eventually let him regain his sharp mind, it would take a year at least according Shan Xu’s careful estimations.

 

Also, the cursed shackle would prevent the huli jing from wielding his shapeshifting, trapping Shen Jiu in an unfamiliar, cosseted body that never had been allowed to leave the bedroom, surely the former Qing Jing Peak Lord had lost much in physical might, his muscles wasted and softened by leisure and pregnancy.

 

And maybe, just maybe… Shen Qingqiu would remember how tenderly Luo Binghe had cared for Shen Jiu. How the Heavenly half-breed would cradle the huli jing in his embrace as the most precious treasure, how he did everything to ensure Shen Jiu would be comfortable as he carried and delivered his firstborn. How easy it would be, to turn his back on Cang Qiong Mountain and fully accept Luo Binghe’s love, to bask in being a pampered, cherished Empress that would want for nothing.

 

Maybe Shen Qingqiu would remember – maybe he would understand, he would finally look at Luo Binghe and smile as he always smiled for Ning-shijie and occasionally Ming Fan and Yue-zhangmen…

 

Still Luo Binghe would stomp on this fragile flower of hope – he had been hopeful once upon a time, and his years of mistreatment in Qing Jing Peak had slowly strangled this flaw in his breast. He wouldn’t do the same mistake twice – never would Shen Qingqiu accept him, not after throwing him in the Endless Abyss without a single hint of remorse.

 

Luo Binghe would have to content himself with Shen Jiu, and he was perfectly alright with this prospect. It didn’t mattered if Shen Jiu refused to smile for him – the huli jing was utterly compliant and accepting when the Heavenly half-breed lavished his attention and care upon him, his barbed words lacking the venom and strength that would have make them truly sting, his body eager to be fucked and petted and hugged as long as possible.

 

Shen Jiu was everything Luo Binghe could wish for an Empress, and the ascending Junshang felt himself dying a bit inside as he was preparing his departure for the campaign – for so many hours away from this small, dark bedroom in which he had hidden his heart and soul.

 

He repeated himself that it wouldn’t be that long an absence, that he could come back whenever he wished, that he was doing what was needed for their little family to enjoy the luxury and privileges they rightfully deserved through Luo Binghe’s bloodline – had he cursed his lineage enough for bringing him so many troubles, he wouldn’t lose the opportunity to milk as much as possible its lone benefit – but the small, cold knot gripping his insides stayed there, and he could feel it growing heavier and heavier.

 

It wouldn’t dissolve even as he kissed the huli jing on his forehead in order to say goodbye. Shen Jiu blinked dazed eyes as he registered the warm lips applied on his soft, pale skin – Luo Binghe usually would kiss the top of his head or a fuzzy ear, no wonder he was so adorably confused.

 

« Are you going away ? » the former Qing Jing Peak Lord whispered, and the Heavenly half-breed refused to repress a cocky smile.

 

« Is Shizun going to miss me ? »

 

The huli jing tried to glare at him, the quicksilver of his irises softly glinting in the candlelight.

 

« I pray for you to get killed » Shen Jiu answered without any strength behind the words.

 

Luo Binghe snorted before carefully adjusting the thick blanket covering the bedbound mother – Shizun had been so cold all the while he carried their child, and his health would stay delicate for a long time even after giving birth, he needed so much coddling.

 

« This lord too shall think of you » he said.

 

Shen Jiu closed his eyes and sighed. Soon his breathing went deep and regular, indicating the huli jing had slipped in the dark waters of unconsciousness – besides his bed, their son laid in a wooden cradle, his breathing more of a whistle as air was borrowing a smaller passage.

 

Luo Binghe had heard his martial siblings playing every kind of musical instrument under the Heavens, yet it was this simple harmony of two respirations that he couldn’t help but deem the superior composition.

 

« Junshang » Shan Su softly called from where she stood besides the door, reminding him that he was on a schedule.

 

Luo Binghe straightened, his bones creaking as he rose to his feet.

 

« This one still isn’t Junshang, technically » he told her. « Call me that sometimes in the next month, it will be more appropriate. »

 

The spider demoness’ yellowish fangs wetly gleamed as she bared them to smile.

 

« This humble one surely will, my lord. »

 

 

Chapter 28

Notes:

Me again!

For the ones that directly stumbled upon this chapter, this is a double update! Backtrack and enjoy yourself!

The beast had decided to leave.

 

It wasn’t the same as the previous times, with him allowing Shen Jiu some measure of peace and rest by disappearing from the bedroom – no, something about this peculiar time felt much more impactful.

 

Shen Jiu could compare it to him having to go on a night-hunt because Shizun wanted for him to gain experience about the country and what kind of beasts would ravage it, or what kind of scum would try to cast the blame upon monsters in order to hide their own sins. Shen Jiu could accept this kind of departure.

 

Still, since it was the beast, he would have preferred for the absence to be more like Qi-ge’s failure to keep his word and come back to burn the Qiu Manor to the ground and rescue Xiao Jiu, even if he couldn’t become a cultivator, he would have found a way because Qi-ge was resourceful when he actually used his wits instead of letting his stupid dumb heart tell him what to do.

 

Qi-ge. Shen Jiu wanted to sob as he remembered the Qiu Manor reduced to a smoking ruin by his own hands, because Qi-ge never came back. What happened ? Who killed him – because nothing but death would have been enough to keep his brother away, not even slavers and beatings and illnesses and starvation. Were Qi-ge’s bones rotting in some forgotten ditch, deprived from the tiniest pebble to show a grave was there ?

 

Shen Jiu wanted to be with Qi-ge, even if it meant laying in cold, stinking mud under dark, uncaring Heavens. He would rather be dead and buried with his brother than stuck in this bed with its silken blankets and its overstuffed pillows, watched by a spider abomination and forced to nurse a disgusting little whelp that wouldn’t stop pinching his nipples and yowled when it couldn’t suckle anymore.

 

A baby. Why did he have a baby ? Pain throbbed within Shen Jiu’s midsection, the spider abomination giving him smelly teas to drink in order to numb his insides while she patted him and confirmed that no, he wouldn’t shit his liver out today, before she sent him back to sleep.

 

She wouldn’t let him break the brat’s head against the floor when it shrieked too loud and gave a headache to Shen Jiu, constantly watching every interaction between him and the greedy, noisy thing with her many eyes that never blinked.

 

« No matter how favored you are, this lowly one doesn’t think Junshang would be very happy with you if you kill every single whelp he put in your belly after pushing them out » she tittered, her tone light and almost amused.

 

Shen Jiu didn’t care about keeping the beast happy. He really couldn’t care less – all he cared about was escaping this bedroom, and if he could do that by letting his body fail him to the point that keeping him alive would be an impossible chore, that would be perfect.

 

Unfortunately, the spider abomination seemed to know about his wish, easily manhandling him to force-feed him and prevent him from ripping his wrist open with his teeth or his disgusting claws. And no matter how much he hissed and kicked her, she would stay serene as if she was taking the trash out.

 

It was so fucking humiliating, he wanted to puke – and he did, all over her to express his appreciation of her efforts to not let him abandon the living plane. Her only reaction had been a sigh, then she had wiped his mouth and chin like she would wipe the brat’s after it gorged itself on milk and spat a bit of it.

 

« Why won’t you let me die ? » he managed to snarl at her.

 

She snorted.

 

« If you die, then Junshang will slaughter me and my brother will kill himself, be it by his own hand or by our relatives. Surely you understand why this lowly one is invested in foiling your death wish. »

 

Shen Jiu understood far too well, and he hated her for reminding him of himself – if given the choice between torturing someone he didn’t give the slightest fuck about and saving Qi-ge, then he would have turned in the best torturer he could be without even taking time to ponder his decision. Of course one would pick their family’s well-being over a stranger – if you acted otherwise, then you were a fool or a saint. Shen Jiu personally never had seen any difference between both these categories – compassion was the quickest way to get screwed oneself silly and not in the good meaning of the word.

 

He hated her so much for reminding him of himself, in spite of her many black eyes glinting like wet obsidian in candlelight and the fangs filling her mouth when she talked, the way her six arms would ruin the shape of her figure whenever she moved.

 

He hated her so much for taking care of him in spite of his attempts to make her flee, reminding him of the flowers that called the Warm Red Pavilion home and how they would stay even when he was yelling about this or that, or sobbing a storm, or caught in the throes of a nightmare.

 

He hated her so much, he couldn’t call her anything but his enemy. One day, he would finally remember how to wield his qi, and she would be the first person to fall under his wrath. Shen Jiu misliked raising a hand against women, everything sweet and bright in his life had been bestowed upon his wretched self by women, but she wasn’t female, she was a spider abomination skinning herself with the airs of a handmaiden, as if Shen Jiu would ever be highborn enough to deserve a personal attendant.

 

« You might be surprised about it » she told him when he tried to throw this cold, harsh truth to her face. « Fate seems to delight in pissing all over men and demons’ planning alike, so why would you be spared from such mischievousness ? »

 

It was a good point. She always would have a retort when he attempted to fling insults and threats at her – and he did that often, since she was the only thing in the bedroom that would condescend to talk back to him.

 

The furniture wouldn’t talk back, because wood wasn’t known for being a dazzling conversation partner, and the brat wouldn’t talk back because it wasn’t gifted with brainpower enough to do more than shitting itself and yowl when it was hungry or displeased. Shen Jiu had no great hopes about the former or the latter ever improving regarding their ability to discuss very important matters from the philosophical kind.

 

Shizun had always claimed philosophy helped to open your mind and not let yourself be cornered in a narrow viewpoint, but Shen Jiu would maintain philosophy only was the way scholars considered acceptable to wage war against each other without having to beat themselves on the head like the Bai Zhan brutes would do as they disagreed.

 

The spider abomination didn’t care very much about philosophy.

 

« Begging your pardon, this lowly one is far too busy wondering how to stay alive until next month to ponder about her place in the grand tapestry of the world. She’s pretty certain it wouldn’t be much of a thread, anyway, especially when compared to Junshang. No one wants to hear about the servants when they could learn about rulers, you know. »

 

Of course Shen Jiu knew that, he had been a slave after all. And in spite of everything he did, he never amounted to something of value.

 

 

Chapter 29

Quite frankly, Shan Su was a mite disappointed by her future Empress. Yes, she was aware that her lord needed to keep the huli jing’s wits hopelessly addled to prevent Daji’s spawn to go on a rampage that would see the Southern Plains turned into more of a wasteland than it already was, but still…

 

When one gloated about being the Empress’s foremost handmaiden, one would dare to imagine it wouldn’t have to involve vomit and incoherent babbling and preventing said Empress from murdering her newborn – regarding the third point, the spider demoness could empathize a bit with the huli jing who obviously never agreed to submit to Luo Binghe, anyone would be irked with Shen Jiu’s current situation of secluded broodmare.

 

Still, her ability to empathize and understand didn’t prevent her from doing her duty as a nurse, if she allowed her brother’s patient to kill themselves, Shan Xu would be quite unhappy with her. Also, her lord would be mightily displeased, since he was stupidly obsessed by this huli jing – something the legends got right, one of Daji’s brood was gifted to inflame lust and passion within their targeted victim and they wouldn’t let go until they sucked the last drop of lifeforce, wealth and pleasure from the hapless lover.

 

Shan Su would abstain from commenting on such a strategy – for a spider demoness, criticizing someone else for mercilessly exploiting males would rank of staunch hypocrisy, and she was far too self-aware for this kind of behaviour.

 

Instead, she brewed as much medicinal tea as she could to dump the sweet-smelling liquid down the huli jing’s throat. Her brother had written pages upon pages about herbal drugs and how it could influence the mood, dragging a patient into the bleakest despair or the most giddy cheerfulness. So far, her success to cure her future Empress’ wish to maim everyone around and themselves had been mitigated, but she refused to lose hope.

 

She strongly suspected the dark mood was linked to Luo Binghe’s absence and the ensuing dry spell. Yes, the huli jing had been ill-tempered before, but they nonetheless stayed compliant and biddable as Junshang fucked them into submission and allowed them to feast on his yang qi, an endeavour that would have carried a death sentence for anyone not blessed with the potent Heavenly body inherited by the ruling bloodline.

 

Maybe the huli jing was feeling pangs of hunger, after spending slightly more than a year gorging themselves every day. Shan Su really hoped that Junshang would keep his word and find time to regularly attend his spouse’s needs, as she knew some demons would start jumping on everyone they saw in order to fulfill their cravings and the spider demoness wasn’t interested in sharing a huli jing’s bed, Sha Hualing was a handful already.

 

Speaking of Sha Hualing, the Saintess was currently helping Junshang to bring the rebel tribes to heel. Shan Su hoped the red-clad demoness would cover herself with more than sheer veils when she would have to traipse through swamps or the mosquitoes and fleas would immediately devour her.

 

No, she wasn’t metaphorically speaking – wildlife in the Demon Realm was stunningly agressive, even when the weary traveler did their utmost to not provoke it. Shan Su had read some travel logues written by humans, and she still couldn’t believe why they would moan and bitch over a fly leaving a mere welt instead of ripping the flesh of their arm.

 

Really, humans were ridiculously coddled, demonkind would have brought them to heel long ago without their cultivators and sheer numbers – the Middle Realm could support and feed tremendous masses of inhabitants, and a demon by itself was powerful but a fearsome lion would ultimately be consumed by a swarm of rabid ants. Shan Su wished not for the Lower Realm to be drowned by mankind’s flood, and for this she hoped Luo Binghe would ultimately forget the half-baked dream he once confessed to her, coming back to the Human Realm.

 

Tianlang-jun had wanted to explore the Middle Realm, and mankind had managed to imprison him under a mountain. Compared to Luo Binghe, the previous Sacred Ruler had been a full-blooded Heavenly Demon that had mastered every single blessing bestowed upon his mighty lineage – and he nonetheless had been sealed away.

 

Unless Luo Binghe did something so utterly outrageous that it would completely break the cultivation sects and the Middle Kingdom with them, the spider demoness couldn’t see a way for him to conquer mankind. Humans were far too unruly to serve as cattle, and they likely couldn’t be tamed into behaving as docile pets.

 

Demons knew of unruly beasts. There always would be some hot-blooded fool to try their hand and be gruesomely gored or miraculously triumph over nature, but the general consensus was to leave them alone unless you were so desperate you would die anyway, and you felt it was better to join your ancestors in a blaze of glory than rot alive until you couldn’t breathe anymore.

 

No, tis was far better to focus on what you had than lose your time daydreaming about impossible feats – Junshang wasn’t living in a fancy novel in which everything would go as he wanted, the sooner he learnt this, the better it would be and he could actually start ruling instead of playing the warlord. Yes, a King needed to be a military general, but not every general could ascend and become a King – war couldn’t feed and clothe your people, it was only good for throwing safe bases and the ruler had to build upon these.

 

Either Luo Binghe would rise to the challenge, or he would have to find advisors and officials that would agree to work for him without too much backstabbing – underhanded plots were a fact of life in a royal court, even among humans. His Empress was supposed to help him, or at least not impede his attempts to keep demonkind in line, but Shan Su couldn’t see the huli jing as they currently were, shackled to restrain their powers and mind, doing so.

 

And that was the reason why it was so important for the spider demoness to become a handmaiden to Junshang’s primary consort – if the Empress herself was unable to rule the household, then the power would be handled by her foremost attendant. Alright, Shan Su had no illusions about her ability to have Luo Binghe’s ear, the man was stubborn to a fault, but it nonetheless was power and if she played her cards well it would be hers.

 

Even her matriarch couldn’t complain that she lacked ambition. As befit a spider demoness, she would bid her time and weave her web, carefully checking every step to ensure she couldn’t be easily murdered for overreaching or fulfilling her duties with an excess of zeal. Maybe she wouldn’t be the most influent player, but she was set to be a player and she had sworn herself she wouldn’t lose, no matter what.

 

Shan Su had a good life in Luo Binghe’s court – she didn’t have to worry about her brother being devoured as soon as she couldn’t see him anymore, she didn’t have to compete with her sisters and cousins for their matriarch’s regard and she got to enjoy a Heavenly Demon and the Sha Saintess when she wanted to scratch the itch. It was perfect.

 

And she only needed to watch over a depressed huli jing to keep living this way. Definitely worth it.

 

Chapter 30

Luo Binghe expected for this war of conquest to be a fucking bitch, and he was wrong.

 

This war against the Western and Eastern parts of the Demon Realm to an accelerated rate was a pox-ridden, rabid bitch followed by a full litter of a dozen mangy, hungry pups that wouldn’t stop howling for food.

 

The native tribes would wage guerilla against his army, unleashing plagues and towering monsters and luring scouts into traps. His warriors would complain about the heat and the diseases and would fight over loot when they sacked a stronghold. And Xin Mo wouldn’t stop shrieking in his ear, barely quieting when he offered the blade gallons of blood and fucked Hualing into unconsciousness after a day struggling through swamps and floodplains.

 

«  You were the one that decided to undertake such an absurd campaign » the Elder Dream Demon had snorted without any hint of sympathy. « If you want to bitch and lament your hard life, go and weep into some sweet little thing’s lap. Haven’t you found several of these ? »

 

Luo Binghe did – after ten days mercilessly ravaging the Western Marshes, he already crushed seventeen tribes under his heel and agreed to spare them as long as they surrended a daughter to him. The clans had brought him a varied selection – bird-girls and cat-girls and lizard-girls, haughty and snarling or shivering and frightened, barely dressed or covered with paints and scars, every single one looking at him and bowing her head with more or less genuine resignation as they vowed to serve him as hostages.

 

The more fiery girls, Luo Binghe sampled them as bedmates and interrogated them on the landscapes and everything he still needed to fight before finally being acknowledged as ruler of the land, then he surrounded them with warriors devoted to him to ensure they wouldn’t try something unbearably stupid like trying to slit his throat after fucking. It wouldn’t work – a Heavenly Demon was able to regenerate from the most grievous wound, something the half-breed had painfully discovered after being thrown in the Endless Abyss – but the ascending Junshang wasn’t interested in healing a sloppy assassination attempt when he could focus on important matters.

 

The meek and compliant girls, he refused to touch and merely commanded Sha Hualing to set them aside and pick some of them if she wanted servants, but to not maim them since they were intended to guarantee their tribe’s obedience and a clan would rebel if their precious princess lost a hand or a nose because Luo Binghe’s right hand in military affairs couldn’t control her enthusiasm. Also, his Empress deserved handmaidens that wouldn’t offend his sensibilities – and no one liked a disfigured slave, even among demonkind in which scarring often was considered bragging rights.

 

Shizun couldn’t stand anything less than perfection. How many times had he scolded and beaten his students for substandard work ? Luo Binghe couldn’t remember, but he had been one of his most frequent targets – for being clumsy, for being too emotional, for his curly hair that wouldn’t stay properly combed and his almost perpetually dirty clothes.

 

Luo Binghe had struggled and struggled to finally show himself worthy of Shen Qingqiu’s acknowledgement and approval, until he broke down and let his heart blacken as dark as charcoal. Wasn’t that ironic, for the extremely flawed Demon Lord he turned into, to finally have his Shizun in his grasp ?

 

He certainly tasted the irony, even if Shen Jiu currently was unable to properly appreciate it in his addled state of mind – a state of mind that threatened to unravel the longer the huli jing was deprived of his daily ration of yang qi.

 

In ten days, Luo Binghe had been unable to visit the former Qing Jing Peak Lord more than twice and he had seen how much of an impact his absence left on his Shizun – his irritability and temper rising to their former levels, as if both of them were still living in Cang Qiong and that wouldn’t do.

 

Luo Binghe wanted for Shen Jiu to be soft and content with his fate of coddled consort to the Sacred Ruler of the Lower Realm. A seething, sneering harpy wasn’t of use to him – wasn’t even enjoyable, not even after breaking, Luo Binghe could have his pick of demonesses for such a purpose if he wished it.

 

Yes, he really needed for this campaign to be concluded as soon as possible, no matter how much his army was cursing his name and calling him a tyrant behind his back, no matter how much his advisors bemoaned he was far too quick and wouldn’t take time enough to consolidate his power. The Heavenly half-breed actually thought he had been glared at by Mobei-jun himself, and the ice demon wasn’t the kind that would easily allow annoyance to have some hold over him.

 

Maybe Mobei-jun also was feeling annoyed because he wasn’t free to spend time with his own Cang Qiong Peak Lord. Luo Binghe honestly doubted the relationship there was the same as the one between him and Shen Jiu – the ice demon didn’t look like he indulged in carnal passions at all, a rarity for demonkind that would fuck everything that moved and a few things that didn’t, but what did you know, one could never be arrogant to the point of believing nothing could surprise you anymore because the gods delighted in pissing all over mortals.

 

All in good time, though, when Luo Binghe would gather the many, many tribes and clans scattered in the Demon Realm to formally acknowledge him as their Junshang, Mobei-jun would be allowed to run away in his snowy palace to do whatever he did to Shang Qinghua.

 

Speaking of the spy, the Heavenly half-breed strongly suspected that Mobei-jun would want to bring him to Luo Binghe’s enthronement ceremony – when demon lords had to spend time in close proximity to each other, they would flaunt their achievements and why would the ice demon not brag about subverting a cultivator to betray one of the most powerful sects in the Human Realm ? And if Shang Qinghua came in Mobei-jun’s retinue, then he would have the opportunity to see the new Empress of the Lower Realm…

 

Of course, the odds for Shang Qinghua to peg the silver-haired, female-bodied huli jing as the dark-haired, stubbornly male Shen Qingqiu were horrendously low, but Luo Binghe really couldn’t underestimate a man that successfully bamboozled his martial siblings into believing he was nothing but a sycophantic, helpless paper-pusher. Oh well, since murdering Shang Qinghua would irk Mobei-jun – killing a favored servant was a very good way to infuriate their master, and Luo Binghe wasn’t that stupid or ungrateful towards the ice demon who faithfully supported his endeavour to reclaim his bloodline – Shen Jiu would have to be disguised.

 

Shan Su was a good weaver, she could produce a veil – something misty and pure white, nothing but the purest white would suit Luo Binghe’s Empress. Yes, a veil was an excellent idea – it would hide the huli jing’s features and it would send the message that the Empress’ beauty was for no one else’s eyes than Luo Binghe’s.

 

If a dumbass even tried to look beneath the veil without having been granted the privilege – tough luck, Luo Binghe would restrain the honour to himself and Shen Jiu’s handmaidens – then the Sacred Ruler would force them to eat their eyeballs for coveting such a peerless treasure.

 

Very much a fair punishment, that.

 

Notes:

So the more I'm writing Bingge, the more he has Taxian-jun vibes... Is that just me ?

And on the matter of locking Chu Wanning away, I cannot help but fully empathize. Have you seen Luo Yunxi in all his ethereal glory ? STOP BEING COWARDS AND GIVE US THIS SERIES, TENCENT !

Chapter 31

Shang Qinghua couldn’t stand a mess. That was partially why he despised his so-called martial siblings – always leaving a mess for him to clean, always sneering at him for doing so and not even bothering to thank him for his efforts, always forgetting how they caused the mess and doing the same mistakes again and again.

 

Truly, that was very understandable for him to betray Cang Qiong Mountain – Mobei-jun might be a heartless bastard that enjoyed beating his servants to the point that the An Ding Peak Lord occasionally feared for his life, but at least he grunted some kind of approval once in a blue moon.

 

That was because of his fussy, tedious nature that Shifu picked him as his successor – him ! A brat so poor that his family had been happy to sell him for some measly coppers, lacking even a surname and forcing the former An Ding Peak Lord to name him after his birth province of Shang – and sometimes Shang Qinghua vehemently cursed the man’s private parts to be swarmed by blood ticks and his arms to rot off in order to prevent him to scratch, because how the fuck was dooming him to the unending hell of slavery-in-all-but-name supposed to be a good idea ? It was driving him so mad, he actually felt giddy about helping Mobei-jun to thoroughly ruin the Immortal Alliance Conference in the hopes to kill some of the other Cang Qiong Peak Lords !

 

Mu-shixiong likely would tell him it was unhealthy to bottle his emotions that much, since it would be released in a fountain of violence and cruelty. Shang Qinghua couldn’t care less and would gladly call the healer out on the hypocrisy – everyone was fucking repressing the hell no matter the Peak, how fared Yue-zhangmen by the way ? Because the Qiong Ding Peak Lord was much, so much worse than Shang Qinghua, and the logistician really wanted to be as far away as possible from the Tian Gong mountain range when the Xuan Su Sword would finally collapse into a mess and drag the whole sect with him. That was the kind of spectacle better watched from the other side of the country at the very least.

 

That was the kind of spectacle he strongly suspected from being ready to happen – in a few months, in a few weeks, even in a few days , if Shen Qingqiu refused to strut his way back to Qing Jing Peak.

 

The An Ding Peak Lord personally didn’t give a shit about the scholar – on one hand, he was a despicable man that drove everyone around him to wretched sobs or steaming anger through his awful temper and his impossible standards, but on the other hand, he was equally awful towards everyone he met and would leave you alone if you did your best to steer away from his path. Also, he murdered Liu Qingge – Shang Qinghua had loathed the Bai Zhan Peak Lord for being a classist, sanctimonious asshole that would constantly dismiss him as a cowardly servant and barely worth to be called a cultivator, so when he heard of Shen Qingqiu skewering him with his own sword as he was secluded in the Lingxi caves, he certainly hadn’t been heartbroken by the news.

 

Qi Qingqi’s head disciple had been, but she was Liu Qingge’s younger sister, of course she would wail and beat her breast and make a fuss over the tale, foolishly calling for Shen Qingqiu’s blood to be spilled – as if Cang Qiong could lose yet another Peak Lord, the dumb brat couldn’t see beyond her grief and understand how devastating it would be for the sect to suffer such a deep political upheaval, surely the Huan Hua Palace and the Tian Yi Overlook and so many others would jump on the opportunity to break the Twelve Peaks further !

 

But of course Liu Mingyan wouldn’t get it – she was Liu Qingge’s younger sister, and he had been hopelessly dense for everything not related to fighting.

 

How annoying. He wondered how much she was praying for Shen Qingqiu to lie dead in some ditch or some monster’s belly. Or maybe she was hoping for his survival, since she wanted for him to suffer the indignity of a trial that would declare him guilty and allow her to gut him ?

 

Shang Qinghua personally hoped his fellow Peak Lord would decide Yue-zhangmen had been punished enough and let everyone know he still was living and bent on staying such – since the An Ding Peak Lord’s best escape plans would see him hiding in the Demon Realm until dust settled, and he currently was unable to put these plans in action due to the war.

 

A war caused by Luo Binghe, former whipping boy of the Qing Jing Peak and current claimant to the throne of the Sacred Ruler of all demonkind. Shang Qinghua certainly didn’t see that coming – but in hindsight, it certainly explained why the boy had disappeared in the Endless Abyss when it opened at this fated conference.

 

A fucking Heavenly Demon hiding in a righteous cultivation sect. This was the kind of ridiculous story written by trash authors without any idea of how the world was working, and Shang Qinghua still was shaking his head in incredulity because yes, it was happening in reality and he wanted to lock himself in his leisure house and drink until he couldn’t see straight anymore.

 

Meanwhile, said Heavenly Demon brat was determined to claim everything he thought his by blood or clan-affiliation – he had to be related to Tianlang-jun, after this whole mess a bit more than two decades ago – and that meant completely upending the Lower Realm and making it even more unstable that it already was, not a measly feat since demons enjoyed backstabbing and war as if there was no tomorrow.

 

And of course, Luo Binghe wanted for Mobei-jun to hold his hand because a great King needed a good general – leaving Shang Qinghua deprived of the protection afforded by his status as the ice demon’s pet cultivator. It was slightly humiliating to be seen as barely worth the consideration granted to a prized stallion or a trained hound, but the An Ding Peak Lord refused to complain as it was enough to keep him alive when he was visiting the snowy palace hidden deep in the Northern Mountains.

 

It was a blade without a hilt, though – being a demon nobleman’s pet meant said nobleman’s enemies would target him to piss the heir to the Northern Mountains, hoping it would force him to trip and make a fatal mistake or merely for the sake of being assholes. And one of said assholes, the worst of them all actually, was Linguang-jun himself that tormented his nephew for being a most suitable candidate to rule.

 

Needless to say, Shang Qinghua would have to be suicidal if he decided to walk around the palace when he wasn’t explicitely shadowing Mobei-jun. That or so infuriatingly dumb that his death actually would be a blessing since he couldn’t spread his sheer stupidity around anymore.

 

The An Ding Peak Lord was a fussy, tedious logistician and slowly was losing his mind out of resentment towards his so-called martial siblings, but he liked to believe he wasn’t an idiot and he rather enjoyed living when he wasn’t called for fixing one mess or another.

 

He would survive. No matter what the world and Fate would throw at him, Shang Qinghua would survive it.

 

 

Chapter 32

When Luo Binghe’s army finally found themselves in front of the sealed gates to the ancestral palace in which the Heavenly Demon bloodline had traditionally dwelled, barely three days remained before the half-breed’s self-imposed deadline of a month-long campaign.

 

It had been awful and exhausting and he was pretty sure everyone from the vanquished tribes to his more faithful vassals were heartily cursing his name to the Eighteen Hells for dragging them into his madness, but he had done it. He had conquered the whole Lower Realm.

 

He still wasn’t the Emperor, though, merely a very successful warlord – a claimant to the throne needed for the tribes to gather in the palace’s great hall, formally declare himself the Sacred Ruler and slaughter everyone that would raise an objection over his ambition. If the claimant survived until next morning, then he was fully and wholly acknowledged as Junshang by his bloodthirsty subjects.

 

Demons cared for nothing beyond the survival of the fittest. The weak died and the strong ruled, and their Sacred Ruler ought to be the strongest of them all if he wanted to show himself worthy of being followed.

 

That would be a fucking walk in the park for Luo Binghe, holder of the cursed blade Xin Mo and last scion of the Heavenly strain. He couldn’t see anyone managing to kill or even force him to submit unless he was fighting another Heavenly Demon, and the whole clan had been slaughtered several decades ago – but could you really call that a clan, when it was reduced to a pure-blooded scion and his deformed nephew ? Luo Binghe certainly would, he remembered being a family with the washerwoman who took care of him and it had been only the two of them.

 

Thinking of her – his heart still wanted to break a little. What kind of unfilial son was he, not being able to give her a proper burial instead of allowing the masters to throw her corpse in a trash-filled ditch for being too poor, not being able to remember her features or her name ? He just knew she had been middle-aged and sweet enough to care for a half-feral brat whom nobody wanted in their home and now she was gone and almost entirely forgotten, who cared about a lowly washerwoman ?

 

He would remember her, he would grant her a tablet in the Heavenly Demon bloodline’s palace’s ancestor hall, and wouldn’t that be a lark ? All these powerful warlords, sharing space and worship with a weak, human woman whose heart was far too big.

 

It wasn’t enough to honour her memory. Nothing Luo Binghe could do in her name would ever be enough and he wanted to weep because of that.

 

She should have been there to share the glory with him – she should have been there for when he would introduce Shen Jiu and their infant son to the clans. Surely she would have been overjoyed to have a grandchild, surely she would beam with pride to behold Luo Binghe taking a bride.

 

But she wasn’t there, and Luo Binghe’s family was one of three people instead of four. Maybe four was the less auspicious number, but the half-breed didn’t think so on this particular matter – and it wouldn’t have stayed four anyway, since he intended to keep sharing Shen Jiu’s bed and that kind of activity would produce offspring.

 

The huli jing had been so very beautiful, when heavy with Luo Binghe’s firstborn. And a wise ruler wouldn’t put all his hopes upon one single successor’s shoulders, moreso when said ruler was a demon. Siring half a dozen brats was extremely recommanded in order to see a viable heir reach maturity, as illness and murder and infighting would take care of the rest.

 

Alright, the ancient wards on the ancestral palace were a guarantee for higher odds of survival where Luo Binghe’s descendants were concerned, but he still wanted to be careful. Especially with Shan Xu reminding him of his hybrid physique potentially impending his fertility – it would be very good if Shen Jiu bore him three children in the same decade, but it likely would be less.

 

But it was a worry for the future – now, Luo Binghe had commanded the female tributes (some clans didn’t have daughters to offer but they had surrended their sons to serve as various servants, advisors and soldiers) to clean the palace wing that used to be inhabited by the various rulers’ bedmates and children. As they bowed and whispered it would be done, he could see them shiver and eye each other, obviously wondering how many of them he would retain in this wing as permanent residents.

 

He would let Shan Su weed them out, as Shen Jiu’s primary handmaiden. Luo Binghe didn’t think the huli jing himself would be invested in the vetting process, as he still refused to discard his hatred towards demonkind in spite of not being human anymore, never having been human to begin with. Ah well, Shen Jiu would ultimately cease this childishness after several years spent as the demonic Junshang’s Empress. Luo Binghe would obtain what he wanted, and he would thoroughly enjoy it.

 

While the girls were busy dusting and stumbling upon ancient traps with more or less injuries from escaping them, Luo Binghe told Mobei-jun to use his portal ability and bring him to the Sha dwelling as he wanted to instruct Shan Su about moving something very important to the palace they just had conquered.

 

From the way Mobei-jun frowned and squinted at him, the ice demon likely suspected Luo Binghe from hiding a big secret but that was fine. Mobei-jun would never tell anyone about his idea, even if the Heavenly half-breed wasn’t ready to let him know of his little family before the Demon Realm as a whole.

 

After his comeback, the victorious warlord had immediately visited his consort’s bedroom and honoured the huli jing until both of them were reduced to panting, sweating messes that couldn’t even see straight. Courtesy of demon stamina, it took three shichen and a half – leaving a grumpy spider demoness to bottle-feed an infant who certainly didn’t care for the experience and fussed because it wasn’t his mother’s teats.

 

Luo Binghe understood far too well his firstborn’s rejection of the bottle when the brat could suckle on Shen Jiu’s nipples. The female body forced upon the huli jing was quite soft and curvy, and pregnancy only made his breasts more abundant and sensitive, the Heavenly half-breed barely needed to twist them for Shen Jiu to yelp and wet his panties.

 

After a month-long dry spell, the huli jing’s body was desperate to be fucked anew, to be loved anew, in spite of Shen Jiu’s breathless protests that he didn’t give a shit about Luo Binghe surviving, he would be happy to see his rotting corpse lying on the battlefield.

 

« Such a liar Shizun is » the Heavenly half-breed laughed in a fuzzy ear while he pounded the former Qing Jing Peak Lord from behind, « just look how you’re taking me well, just hear yourself screaming for more of my dick. Face it, Shizun, you have missed me. »

 

« N-not at a-a-all » the huli jing moaned, arching his back while his pale, slender fingers gripped the bedsheets with such strength it threatened to rip the cloth apart.

 

His pitiful lie gained him a kiss on the nape.

 

« Shh, it’s alright, this lord won’t leave anymore. He will come for you every day, won’t you enjoy it ? Shizun turned into such a slut, you will fall to pieces without me fucking your brains out, but why would you care for brains ? Let me take care of you, a-Jiu » Luo Binghe breathed, « let me take care of everything for you. »

 

Shen Jiu hiccuped, or maybe it was a sob, hard to say in the throes of passion, but he refused to answer to that.

 

 

Chapter 33

Shen Jiu didn’t really care about leaving the small, dark bedroom in which the beast imprisoned him, especially since he suspected he would end up in another bedroom just the same, a cell calling itself a luxury suite and utterly failing at pulling the wool over Shen Jiu’s eyes.

 

The spider abomination handled the move, forcing him in a cushioned box with the whelp after giving him some tea to keep him drowsy and prevent him from smothering the brat. What a pity, it would have been easy to roll over the small body and claim it was an accident, so sad.

 

When the box opened again, Shen Jiu saw a bedroom hastily cleaned and still vaguely smelling of dust and mold – the smell one would find in old buildings which no one cared to inhabit for decades in a row, he would know, he was a cultivator and these buildings were breeding grounds for restless ghosts and low-level monsters. It was a big room with several doors leading to other rooms, and it was cold enough to justify the presence of five braziers scattered around, and it was utterly empty of clothes or books or little trinkets that would hint at someone ever using the place as somewhere to live.

 

« Junshang will change that soon » the spider abomination casually declared when he pointed that. « But for now, we have to focus on something much more important, and this is preparing you for the big feast. »

 

Shen Jiu frowned when he heard the word feast, flashes of tasteless food in beautiful bowls and well-dressed people donning sneers and flinging sharp comments rising from the depths of his muddled mind.

 

« Don’t like feasts » he complained. « Safer… to kick a white-tailed bull hornet’s nest. »

 

He remembered how lethal a white-tailed bull hornet on its own could be, even for a cultivator. A nest would sting any perceived threat with extreme prejudice until the hapless intruder saw their insides turned in mushy, toxic sludge by the hornet’s venom, their skin rotting and falling off in darkened patches.

 

The spider abomination snorted, obviously familiar with the species.

 

« You don’t have to worry that much, you know. With Junshang glowering at every single guest in the great hall, you will have nothing to do but sit there in your finery with your whelp on your lap. Speaking of the brat, have you picked a name for him ? It’s a bit soon, but Junshang really insists to do things the human way, and if the mother cannot choose then the father will bestow the name instead. »

 

Choosing a name for the whelp ? Shen Jiu wanted to hurl in disgust, as if he wanted anything to do with raising the small beast that wouldn’t stop yowling and pawing at his chest and looking more and more like its progenitor. If Shen Jiu had no other choice but to force a name upon the squealing thing, it would be less a blessing and more a curse…

 

Wait. An insult. Maybe he had an idea.

 

« Yue » Shen Jiu said. « Written like high mountain . »

 

The spider abomination eyeballed him – he would never get used to so many eyes focused on him, glinting like obsidian spheres set in her sandy skin.

 

« Cultivators live on mountains, this lowly one has heard » she slowly recalled.

 

« They do » Shen Jiu confirmed as he tried to picture who bore this surname once upon a time, someone he hated for betraying him in exchange of a good life for himself when they used to be nothing but numbers, both of them.

 

Something like a sob wanted to twist and shiver in the back of his throat and he swallowed to make it disappear without great avail. The spider abomination ultimately shrugged.

 

« As you wish, even if Junshang complains. Now, stay still, this lowly one needs to weave your gown and that will be complicated enough, with the feast happening this night and this lowly one not being the quickest seamstress. »

 

Shen Jiu couldn’t help but wonder what kind of standards the spider abomination had for a good seamstress, as she took barely two shichen to cut pristine-white robes, two layers of cool silk she draped over him as she grimly nodded, softly grousing over the flower embroidery at the hem and high collar that she considered inferior quality from rushing work.

 

Then she stripped him in order to carefully wash him, one couldn’t attend a feast stinking of grime after all, using a pair of arms to slather perfumed oils all over Shen Jiu’s pale skin while the second pair was weaving a frail-looking veil and the third pair was ruthlessly untangling his hair with a bone-carved comb.

 

Shang-shidi would be crying in sheer envy , Shen Jiu couldn’t help but think, the thought immediately dispelling when he tried to grasp it better and put a face to the name.

 

The male spider abomination – the depraved creature that dared to call itself a healer when it only wanted to vivisect and butcher at its heart’s leisure – entered right as his female counterpart was putting the white robes upon Shen Jiu anew after patting him dry.

 

« Are you finished soon ? » it asked.

 

« We would have been ready sooner if this lowly handmaiden hadn’t been alone to attend the Empress » she cheerfully fired back. « Tell that to Junshang, will you ? »

 

Her male counterpart snorted.

 

« After this night, you will have more help than you need. Sixty-four female tributes, can you imagine ? And a third of these meek enough for your purpose. »

 

« Acceptable variety of choices » she claimed. « Now, make yourself useful and swaddle the brat while I put the finishing touches, you will be a dear and I won’t complain abour your uselessness to Matriarch Lu. »

 

The finishing touches, as she called them, were gathering Shen Jiu’s quicksilver mane in a silken net decorated with carved bone charms and fastened with bone hairpins, putting delicate slippers on his feet and hiding his face behind the freshly-woven veil. She chuckled to herself as she admired her handiwork before letting Shen Jiu look at his wretched self in a polished bronze mirror.

 

He immediately thought he looked like a ghost, painted in grey and white shades, his features slightly blurred by the distortion in the metal, his eyes empty over the veil. He looked like a porcelain doll dressed in a silk gown, waiting for a spoiled brat to play house with him, delicate and fragile.

 

He hated this ghostly doll reflected in the bronze. He wanted to rip this soft veil and the pale skin hidden behind the silk to expose the true ugliness inside.

 

He wanted but the spider abomination already was taking him by the arms to guide him in the hallway, her male counterpart following them with the whelp in its arms.

 

« Tonight is your night » she excitedly whispered in Shen Jiu’s ear. « Every single demonic bloodline will know of you, and they will despair from losing the dignity of Empress to you. »

 

« Not an Empress » Shen Jiu managed to protest, the silken veil undulating as he spoke.

 

The spider abomination bared her teeth in a gleeful smirk.

 

« Not yet » she conceded, « but soon. Very, very soon. »

 

 

Chapter 34

One thing you learned from meeting incubus and succubus, they didn’t care about playing it fair. Only about screwing their opponents silly in both meanings of the word.

 

So when Luo Binghe had officially claimed he was revendicating the throne and the title of Sacred Ruler in front of a sea of demons coming in all shapes one could imagine and several one very much wouldn’t want to unless one was suffering nightmares, the Master of Flesh – spokesperson to the incubus and succubus, currently male-shaped but perfectly able and willing to shift their sex on a whim since they were obsessed by the pursuit of pleasure no matter their shape – had waited for disgruntled self-inflated fools that believed themselves worthier to rule or merely couldn’t stand Luo Binghe for daring to be a half-breed or wanting to rise above them all and curtain the freedom demonkind had enjoyed since Tianlang-jun’s fall to launch the first offensive and miserably fail. Then the sex fiend had released a potent cloud of aphrodisiac pheromones in the great hall, causing several demons among the weaker-willed to jump on their neighbours and in barely a few fên, the crowd was churning and panicking as it teethered on unleashing a riot or an orgy.

 

The Master of Flesh had been grinning as they strutted towards Luo Binghe, obviously confident in their chosen strategy and eager to fuck the Heavenly half-breed into drooling submission. Well, they grinned until Luo Binghe slashed their nose open with Xin Mo – then, they shrieked and yowled and moaned in a very unappealing way, partially because of the pain and partially because their perfect looks were ruined without any hope of recovery courtesy of having being caused by a very cursed blade.

 

Luo Binghe very much felt grateful towards Shan Xu for giving him a libido-dampening potion right before he made his claim to the throne, or things would have gone quite badly for him. After that, it was a matter of throwing the windows open to dispell the aphrodisiac vapors, separating demons busy fucking or fighting their neighbours to protect their own chastity or because they wanted to use the confusion to settle old grudges, cleaning the various fluids spilled on the ground and kicking the Master of Flesh out of the great hall for their abject and extremely public failure to enthrall their target.

 

Some lineage heads among the oldest nodded and commented on the mess being very much everything they expected from a new Sacred Ruler taking the throne. Tianlang-jun apparently fought half a hundred candidates and persuaded twice this number to support his ascension with his silver tongue – Luo Binghe was unsure about the expression focusing on the former ruler’s charisma or his gift for oral sex, maybe it meant both. It wouldn’t be that surprising, knowing demons and their sexual appetite.

 

As night was darkening the outside, long tables were brought for the guests to sit, alongside several huge cooking pots and roasting spits laden with charred monster corpses butchered while Luo Binghe was waging his month-long campaign and preserved for such a feast. The tribes cheered and yelled their approval as the servants cut the meat and started to circulate between the tables to distribute it, eager to dig in the fresh food. Even the bones wouldn’t be spared, carefully broken for the marrow to be greedily devoured.

 

Luo Binghe considered that a pitiful excuse for a feast, after living in the Human Realm and getting to cook with another recipe than burning the meat and genuine vegetables that wouldn’t try to dine on the wanderer seeking to harvest them. Truly, a perk of being Junshang was him sending Mobei-jun (because Shang Qinghua could hold the ice demon’s hand and stop him from bringing the wrong supplies back) on grocery runs, letting him free to cook real dishes.

 

He might experiment with demon ingredients one day, but he wasn’t holding his breath about this.

 

Obviously, everyone was focused on their bowl’s content, thinking there wouldn’t be anything important happening tonight and waiting for him to signal it was time to eat. However, Luo Binghe had sent Shan Xu to the family wing right before the great hall was prepped for the banquet, and if he wasn’t wrong in his calculations, then the healer and the people he was tasked to bring with him were about to enter…

 

And they did, the gates groaning as they let the spider demon siblings pass through, both of them escorting a vision in snowy white and quicksilver grey. The Heavenly half-breed swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.

 

Shen Jiu glowed , a white star in the great hall as he slowly walked towards Luo Binghe, their child cradled in his arms, and every single demon present in the room was gaping at him.

 

A deathly silence reigned while Luo Binghe stood up and gently kissed the huli jing’s forehead, unwilling to taste silk by putting his lips on Shen Jiu’s veiled mouth. A spark of annoyance glinted in the silvery depths of his consort’s gaze, and the newly enthroned Junshang huffed a soft laugh.

 

« My Empress is beautiful as the Moon on a wintery night » he declared, raising his voice for the tribes to hear and know who they had the honour to behold. « I hope our little one has been good for you today ? »

 

Shen Jiu refused to answer, but the whelp cooed and tried to kick his swaddling cloth open – without any success, the spider demons knew their bindings after all.

 

Hissed whispers exploded everywhere in the hall as Luo Binghe’s subjects realized what they were seeing, the rumor turning harsher as someone identified the fluffy tail peeking from under Shen Jiu’s gown as belonging to a fox and from this pegged the new Empress as huli jing.

 

Daji’s spawn , the rumor breathed, swelling and tinging itself with the stench of bafflement and fear, fox spirit, beautiful as the morning and the snow upon the mountain, treacherous as the sea and the storm, spring of love and well of despair !

 

Hundreds of eyes gleamed with accusation and horror as they stared at the Sacred Ruler who grinned at them, casually sprawled on his seat and holding his Empress on his lap.

 

« Well ? » Luo Binghe said. « Is no one hungry anymore ? I could have sworn all of you wanted to partake, but I still can ask the servants to take the meal back if such is your wish. »

 

Demonkind was paranoid about losing the opportunity to eat – when one lived in a barren wasteland, every mouthful could be the last for a painfully long time so when a demon was offered the possibility to gorge themselves, they indulged until their stomach threatened to burst. Threatening to deprive his guests from the food waiting for them to tuck in did its little effect – the tribes didn’t even wait for his sentence to end, and the great hall was filled with slurping, crunching and tearing sounds.

 

The Heavenly half-breed snorted as he gently petted one of the huli jing’s fuzzy ears, his own plate neglected for now. He wasn’t that hungry, but he wondered how he could handfeed Shen Jiu without lifting the veil too much, risking for someone to get a glimpse of the Empress’ face.

 

The whelp nestled against the huli jing’s plump chest suddenly sneezed and scrunched his tiny nose, obviously offended by his lack of control over his own body. Luo Binghe patted the brat between his barely defined eyebrows and snorted as his son went cross-eyed.

 

« Did you pick a name ? » he asked Shen Jiu.

 

He wanted for the formerly human cultivator to have done so, to have bestowed something upon their firstborn, something that would tether him further to Luo Binghe and the familial unit they now were. He wanted for the huli jing to soften, to slowly turn into a loving, devoted spouse and mother – everything Shen Qingqiu loathed, Shen Jiu would become.

 

Shan Xu softly coughed.

 

« Their Highness the Empress has granted their firstborn the name Yue, Junshang » the spider demon admitted, half hidden behind his sister.

 

Luo Binghe felt his grin freeze on his face.

 

Yue. Fucking Yue Qingyuan , Shen Jiu wanted to honour Yue Qingyuan in spite of being a fox demon and the current Empress of the Lower Realm, he was pining after the man heading the most powerful cultivation sect in the Middle Kingdom, a man that wouldn’t stop pining and simping after Shen Qingqiu… !

 

Xin Mo shrieked for blood in his ear, attuned to his bad mood. Shan Su was eyeballing him with her most unimpressed expression, obviously thinking he brought this upon himself.

 

Shen Jiu’s eyes stared at him above the pristine veil, poisonous as quicksilver. Luo Binghe darkly chuckled.

 

« As my Empress wishes, so be it. But this lord hopes his Empress is ready for the consequences when we will retire for the night. »

 

Maybe the huli jing deserved for Xin Mo to muddle his mind even more, in order for him to utterly forget the Xuan Su Sword.

 

 

Chapter 35

As the future Mobei-jun’s pet cultivator, there was no way in the Eighteen Hells for Shang Qinghua to not attend his shizi – was the Heavenly Demon whelp still worthy of being called such, the An Ding Peak Lord supposed he was since the brat had been thought dead in the Immortal Alliance Conference’s invasion and it precluded disownment – Luo Binghe’s enthronment ceremony.

 

The ice demon was the new ruler’s best general and his right hand, he had to be there as a witness to Luo Binghe taking back his bloodline’s mandate and title – and a nobleman, be he a demon or a measly human, had to surround himself with a retinue fitting the revel.

 

Shang Qinghua being an Immortal Master was the living proof of Mobei-jun’s influence in the Mortal Realm in spite of the jianghu’s best efforts to keep the realms apart, the ice demon couldn’t refuse to bring his pet cultivator or the other noblemen and women would believe he felt insecure and weak, and everyone would gang up against the heir to the Northern Mountains.

 

Shang Qinghua could understand the reasoning. He still told the majestic asshole that he wanted suitable robes and accessories for the event, and yes, Mobei-jun would pay these. Since he intended to parade his pet in front of demonic nobility, then he ought to actually care for his pet !

 

Mobei-jun had delivered deep blue robes embroidered with fractal patterns of frost on the collar and the cuffs, alongside a silver necklace with a sapphire pendant – a tiny array carved on the gem would raise a shield if Shang Qinghua felt threatened and injected some qi in the jewel, that wouldn’t last long, barely a fên but it could mean life or death in a battle.

 

The An Ding Peak Lord had been pretty content with the garment, and so he warned his Disciples he would take some time for himself before letting the ice demon sweep him to the Lower Realm.

 

The enthronment ceremony – well, it was a mess, a very ugly one, and Shang Qinghua still couldn’t believe how irresponsible these demons could be. Fortunately, Mobei-jun had insisted for everyone in his retinue to drink antidotes for several poisons and aphrodisiacs, and the mix had been rather effective in fending the effects of the incubus spokesperson’s pheromones, even if the An Ding Peak Lord found himself gripping his King’s sleeve and panting as some overheating dog.

 

Mobei-jun hadn’t struck him for the sin of not keeping his full wits intact. From the drowsy gaze, maybe he wasn’t entirely unaffected by the pheromones himself – that certainly would explain why he started to absentmindedly pet Shang Qinghua’s hair, almost taking his crown off. The human cultivator would have slapped the cold, heavy hand away, but he was supposed to be an obedient pet so he gritted his teeth and endured.

 

Then Luo Binghe decided to admit he completely lost his marbles after fighting his way out of the Endless Abyss, by showing his new Empress off.

 

Shang Qinghua first approved the power move – married and a father already, the new Sacred Ruler had just destroyed the tribes’ ambition to wrestle control over the throne by offering a daughter that would worm her way into the Heavenly Demon’s bed and produce the next heir – then he saw the fluffy, silver-haired tail peeking from under the pristine gown’s hem, and he heard the whispers rising in a frantic pitch all around him, and every single one hissed the same word, the same condemnation.

 

Huli jing. Daji’s spawn.

 

Luo Binghe had married a fucking fox spirit – he gave it access to the Lower Realm as a whole – didn’t he learn how the Second Royal Dynasty in the Middle Kingdom had seen a gruesome end, peasantry and nobility alike banding together in order to slaughter the depraved ruler and his vixen consort as thoroughly as possible ? Shen Qingqiu certainly wouldn’t have neglected such an important history lesson, not when it perfectly illustrated why one couldn’t let a demon gain power over oneself, especially one in a position of strength !

 

Shang Qinghua couldn’t throw a knife in the creature’s back, the angle was far too awkward and Luo Binghe was right there, ready to intervene if his Empress suddenly had to fear for its life, and the An Ding Peak Lord had practiced plausible deniability far too long for his reflexes to not kick in – when seeking to commit murder, it was capital to avoid doing the deed in front of a mob full of witnesses, lacking any escape road !

 

So he sat quiet and still like a good little pet, and when the feast finally ended up and the guests were sent back to their homes or their rooms in the palace if they were important enough to the new Imperial Court (Mobei-jun was), he allowed his mouth to open and spill his true thoughts on the matter.

 

« This slave begs for the reassurance that his King was unaware of Luo Binghe taking a fancy to one spawned by Daji. »

 

« This Mobei-jun didn’t know anything » the ice demon confirmed, his widened eyes betraying how frazzled he actually was beneath his aloof, emotionless facade. « But it certainly would explain some of Sha Hualing’s recent moods. »

 

An hysterical giggle wrenched its path free from Shang Qinghua’s mouth. How could he not laugh, when the Lower Realm was more screwed than a pox-ridden streetwalking whore ?

 

« Well ! » he cheerfully said, his lips baring his teeth as they tugged on his facial features and twisted his expression in a half-demented grin. « Does my King wish for this slave to cook a successful assassination attempt on the new Empress ? Begging for his forgiveness and understanding, it likely will take several weeks for a good one... »

 

The ice demon frowned, his hand twitching – shit, was he about to be slapped ? He should be ready to flatten himself on the floor and moan as convincingly distressed as he could, but Shang Qinghua was a very good actor after all these decades playing both sides…

 

« Shang Qinghua. Do not, ever, say that again. »

 

The An Ding Peak Lord usually would follow every command given by the majestic asshole treating him as a pet. Usually.

 

« Excuse me, my King ?! You were right there in the room with me when he paraded his abomination in front of the tribes assembled ! You have been raised with the same warning tales about Daji’s brood than the lowliest peasant in the Middle Kingdom ! So, why in the name of my Ancestors’ moldy, dusty bones and crooked souls… ! »

 

Mobei-jun’s fingers were so cold they burned as they gagged the very human cultivator – yes, Shang Qinghua had cultivated a golden core but he was the weakest in the Qing generation and he actually was alright with that but everyone else insisted to mock him for being a lackluster example of a Peak Lord and this would turn the most patient being salty – and Shang Qinghua couldn’t force them to release their grip in spite of biting down with all his might. To be fair, it wasn’t a lot of might.

 

«  Someone is going to hear you !  » Mobei-jun hissed, an unexpected panicked tone in his monotone voice and that…

 

Oh yes. They currently were dwelling under Luo Binghe’s roof – they couldn’t trust the walls because there would always be a servant or some array eavesdropping for blackmail material or potential treachery – stupid, talking about murdering your host’s wife under his roof when you didn’t know who was standing right behind the door !

 

Shang Qinghua went limp in order to show the ice demon he had understood. Mobei-jun snorted, his breathing harsher than usual.

 

« Fuck » the heir to the Northern Mountains said as he ungagged the An Ding Peak Lord. « What a day. »

 

What a massive understatement.

 

 

Chapter 36

Luo Binghe expected for some fool blessed with more ambition than common sense to launch an attack against the newly-revealed Empress, but he didn’t think it would happen the very evening of his ascension as the Sacred Ruler.

 

« That will teach you ! » the Elder Dream Demon guffawed in the back of his mind. « You’re ruling over demonkind now, easy sleep will elude you forever and ambushs will be your new normal ! »

 

Luo Binghe refused to grace the old fart with an answer or any hint of him hearing the warning, but he nonetheless could recognize how right the elder stuck in his head was. Really, he should have been more careful.

 

Still, for one of Shen Jiu’s newly picked handmaidens – one of the many girls he expressedly set aside for their meekness and compliant disposition – to attempt murder, he didn’t know if he was supposed to be irate or impressed.

 

The girl was a frog demon, her skin bright yellow marbled with bluish-green sending a warning signal to all potential predators that she could poison them with a mere touch – an interesting ability she sought to wield against Shen Jiu, and she would have succeeded on laying her venomous fingers on the huli jing’s unprotected arm if Shan Su hadn’t been watching for foul play.

 

Now the frog demoness was helplessly lying at Luo Binghe’s feet, wretchedly sobbing while the other girls offered in tribute looked at the scene, barely daring to breath and obviously wondering what kind of atrocious punishment their new ruler would devise for one that tried to harm one explicitely under an Heavenly Demon’s protection.

 

The half-breed pouted, his mouth twisted by annoyance.

 

« Why would you ever think to kill my Empress, hmm ? Even if you had managed to do so, this lord would have never allowed you to walk away from your sin with all your limbs. Maybe he would have taken your life, and your clan’s lives for your offense – everything done to me, I shall repay it a hundredfold, be it good or evil. »

 

The girl – how old was she ? Nineteen, maybe, but she couldn’t be above the twenty-one years mark – hiccuped, a wet and strangled sound.

 

« A-at least t-this one w-wouldn’t ha-ave to s-serve the a-abomination » she sniffled. « T-this one had h-heard the t-tales, e-everythi-ing huli j-jing do when they g-get bored, and e-execution is b-b-better. »

 

Many girls around them frowned or grimaced in sympathy, obviously agreeing with the pitiful criminal. Luo Binghe furrowed his brows.

 

« I could chain you to a pillar in the Southern Plains, and let the sun cook you until you have turned into dessicated leather » he mildly told the frog demoness. « I could gut you open and throw you in a pit for hungry beasts to feast on your innards while you still draw breath and have eyes to watch. I could drown you in piss and vomit and leave your corpse bloat and rot in these foul liquids. I could do all these things and so much worse to you and everyone you treasure, for the crime you attempted to commit. »

 

The girl sobbed anew and tried to hug his ankles, only to be deterred by a swift kick in the face.

 

« D-do this ! » she begged, her wide, round eyes flooding with tears. « D-do this, d-do everything y-you w-w-want, p-p-punish m-me however you s-s-see ffit, but d-don’t make me attend the huli jing  ! »

 

These last words had been shrieked with all the despair of a wounded warrior about to die from gangrene and praying his sworn sibling to cut his head off before the infection could ruin his wits and turn him in a disgusting shadow of himself.

 

Luo Binghe couldn’t help feeling surprised. Yes, he had been aware that Daji and her spawn were infamous in two of the Three Realms, but for Shen Jiu to cause such a violent reaction…

 

Shan Su was looking at him, one pair of arms crossed upon her chest and another pair resting on her hips, and he could hear her thinking you brought that upon yourself . Well, he wasn’t exactly disagreeing, he wanted to make a point by choosing an Empress coming from the most vicious and cruel bloodline ever yielded by the Lower Realm, but that wasn’t like he actually told his subjects he would grant Shen Jiu freedom to run amok !

 

He wanted to sigh, but he was Junshang and couldn’t let slip any hint of weakness. He would punish instead.

 

« Shan Su » he called, « this lord believes you and your brother enjoy playing with poisons. Surely you would be interested in new research materials ? »

 

The spider demoness blinked, then grinned – someone whimpering at the sight of her glistening fangs.

 

« Junshang is far too good to his humble servants » she purred.

 

« Do remember, she needs to be kept alive or her tribe will rebel » the half-breed casually reminded her. « Beyond that, do as you please with her. »

 

Shan Su chuckled , a raspy, eerie sound, before she seized the frog demoness by the waist, lifting her above her head as if she weighted no more than a leaf, and quickly exited the hall – eager to show her brother their new toy and start playing.

 

Left alone with a small crowd of terrified girls, Luo Binghe decided to release a smidge of black qi in the air to further the pressure and make even more difficult to think straight without panicking. He stopped when he heard someone hiccuping and several anxious moans.

 

« This was the first murder attempt against my Empress » he mused, « and this lord isn’t foolish enough to believe it will be the last. But he will hope this will be the last time one of you will dare to conspire against me and mine, or I won’t be that merciful with the next offender. »

 

He smiled then, aiming for reassuring and serene. The girls shuddered but you couldn’t win them all in a single day.

 

« Scram, all of you. Tomorrow, Shan Su will pick the ones she deems fit to attend my family – and if you are very eager to follow her commands, maybe you shall be allowed to leave after a few months. »

 

If the prospect of being a huli jing’s servant was that scary, maybe it was a better idea to rotate the handmaidens – the girls woud be desperate to be in the next batch to leave, and would do their utmost to please the one responsible for the household’s management.

 

Of course, Shan Su likely would be displeased by the added workload – she would need to remember who deserved a treat and who would be kept on the rolls a mite longer – but she just was granted a shiny new plaything, so she wouldn’t grouse as much as she would have in other circumstances. Also, she had wanted power in Luo Binghe’s palace, that wasn’t the Heavenly half-breed’s fault if she couldn’t deal with the consequences trailing after power.

 

Luo Binghe had been aware he would walk in a viper pit when he decided to ascend as the new Junshang, but that wasn’t like demonkind would have left him on his own, free to spoil Shen Jiu and their child to his heart’s content. This way, he would have some measure of control over the outcome.

 

Every option for his future caused a mess, but he would learn to choose the one that would cause the less.

 

 

Chapter 37

Sha Hualing wasn’t a dumbass that would brave her lord and master’s wrath by snooping around said lord and master’s future Empress and primary consort again when she obviously was spared on a whim the first time, but she would lie if she claimed she wasn’t curious.

 

A silver-haired demoness, likely hailing from some beast lineage, powerful enough to wear a cursed shackle. Who wouldn’t crave more information about the woman ? Who wouldn’t want to know who the ascending Sacred Ruler had deemed worthy to bear his heirs ?

 

Alas, her dear cunning spider had firmly refused to share the secret, outright laughing at Sha Hualing’s face when the Saintess tried to press and telling everything would be revealed when their Junshang would finally take the throne.

 

When a-Su was in such a mood, it was useless to ply her with sex or beatings, so Sha Hualing dropped this potential path to the truth. Instead, she seized Luo Binghe’s sudden craving for war and conquest as her best opportunity to inquire and investigate about a potential disappearance, surely such a demoness couldn’t vanish into thin air, people would have noticed her strength, her tribe wouldn’t let go of their daughter without a fight.

 

Frustratingly, Sha Hualing couldn’t find anything. One would almost believe the silver-haired demoness was born from a wish carelessly uttered around some kind of blessed treasure – there were tales and stories about such artefacts, but the Sha lineage had been warned against trying to find one, either their power had been spent long ago or the wish would turn wrong because more than a few spiritual entities were unable to think along the same lines than the wisher or they were blatantly malevolent.

 

And it was much more enjoyable to obtain what you wanted with your own hands, anyway, not because you asked for it. That was a mindset for deities and the fat, spoiled nobility lazing around the Mortal Realm, not for demonkind.

 

Still, maybe Sha Hualing would have made an exception for the knowledge regarding Luo Binghe’s pregnant consort, because the woman was so annoyingly mysterious. She just wanted to know ! She merely wanted to learn who she was expected to serve as her Empress, if the woman could bear the mantle of royalty and bear it well – maybe learn what kind of power needed to be restrained with a cursed shackle, the Saintess always was on the prowl for new, interesting sparring partners and it might be dangerous to her life and limbs to outright challenge the silver-haired demoness but danger was a tasty dish and Sha Hualing enjoyed her life flavoured, so then.

 

Then Junshang finally claimed his throne, inviting every tribe and clan and lineage he could find in the Demon Realm to behold his triumph and glory, and Shan Su was giggling so much, it was obvious something would happen to make this day a completely unforgettable one.

 

Sha Hualing wasn’t expecting a huli jing.

 

A fox spirit. One of Daji’s brood – who didn’t hear of her, the famed courtesan who was so greedy and hungry for luxuries and suffering she was responsible for the Upper Realm directly intervening on the mortal plane ? For bringing low a royal dynasty and almost starving a whole country by bewitching their ruler ?

 

Demonkind knew of Daji, her tale hissed in whispers and snarls in darkened rooms or across a campfire, her beauty put on the same level than a truly calamitous disaster such as a fire mountain drowning the country in ashes and lava or an earthquake turning mountains into sand or a famine sweeping through the land for decades until nobody could remember crops growing in the fields.

 

Daji wasn’t one whose memory would be fondly remembered, far from it – demonkind would rather spit on her pictures and burn them on a pyre made of excrements, for she would do the same to them if given the opportunity. Daji had targeted mankind because they were softer, more prone to indulge their thirst for beautiful things instead of honing their bodies and preparing for war every day, but she would have turned her unending appetite for cruelty against the Lower Realm on a whim if she had decided it was a good idea.

 

There were stories about her royal lover capturing demons and bringing them in front of her to be maimed and slaughtered as she pleased, just like she maimed and slaughtered humans. Daji enjoyed cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and she didn’t care about whose blood flowed, merely about blood flowing in obscene quantities, enough to fill a riverbed.

 

And now, her spawn was in the Palace built by the Heavenly strain, officially acknowledged as the Empress and surrounded with a lot of extremely vulnerable people – a Heavenly Demon was horrendously hard to kill, but foxes were cunning so if the huli jing really got bored and decided she would rather be an Empress Dowager than a mere Empress, she would manage to cook an assassination no matter how resilient Luo Binghe could be.

 

And Sha Hualing was supposed to protect the monster instead of ripping her veiled head from her fine-boned shoulders, dismembering her corpse and throwing the remains in a lava lake to ensure the huli jing wouldn’t come back to avenge her demise. No, it wasn’t fucking overkill, it was common sense to go that far when you were dealing with a fox spirit !

 

Why didn’t Luo Binghe kill the silver-haired abomination when he stumbled upon her ? Surely he heard the stories, even if he had been raised in the Mortal Realm, or maybe the cursed shackle had been the best he could do…

 

Yes, it had to be that, the Heavenly Demon needed some time to figure the way to dispose from the huli jing, she likely had planned something atrocious in the event of her murder, something devastating enough for Luo Binghe to think twice about slaying her on the spot. Maybe a flesh-rotting plague, or maybe a blood rain that would flood the Demon Realm for a decade.

 

Sha Hualing shivered as she tried to imagine what kind of horror a huli jing would deem sufficient to unleash on the Southern Plains, but the shivers weren’t that bad when compared to these caused by the prospect of watching over the new Empress. Alright, the abomination was hobbled by the cursed shackle, but still ! Sha Hualing would rather jump in the Endless Abyss without a shred of clothing on her back, she would have better odds for survival !

 

She would have to hope for the huli jing to be content with mutilating the handmaids – when given the choice between an easy prey and a fierce game, demons tended to pick the softer target by sheer pragmatism, one never knew if someone else would try to jump you in the near future and it was better to preserve your strength and energy.

 

Sha Hualing could ignore the screams. She could even ignore the sights, if she was forced to be in the same room than the huli jing. As long as she wasn’t the main entertainment, the Saintess could ignore anything and maybe it was heartless from her, but the handmaidens would throw her to the wolf pack without batting an eyelash if they were offered the choice between sacrificing Sha Hualing or gruesomely perishing.

 

When one wished to survive, one couldn’t be dumb enough to indulge into silly notions of mercy.

Chapter 38

Following the frog demoness’s murder attempt – likely the first of many, many others yet to come, Luo Binghe knew his luck and how it enjoyed making his life interesting in the cursed meaning – Shan Xu had insisted for the whelp to be given his first thorough physical, in spite of being so very young demonkind would consider it a waste of resources, children weren’t worth shit as an investment until they survived to see their second birthday.

 

On the other hand, Luo Binghe was now the Sacred Ruler and his hybrid constitution meant he would struggle to produce children, so it was better for him to be overprotective according demonic standards. If anyone dared to complain, he could feed them to Xin Mo for daring to believe they could criticize their Junshang, that would intimidate his naturally unruly subjects into submission for a little while.

 

The physical would establish a baseline for the whelp – Luo Binghe couldn’t use this fucking name , this goddamn reminder of the Xuan Su Sword, this wretched insult hurled at his face by Shen Jiu in spite of everything the half-breed did for the huli jing – but the freshly enthroned ruler strongly suspected his hopelessly curious researcher of a spider demon really wanted to study an hybrid born of the two strongest, most fearsome bloodlines ever produced by the Demon Realm. Heavenly Demon and fox spirit melded together in a tiny package, who wouldn’t feel the tiniest bit curious about the spawn’s future abilities ?

 

At least, that was the plan. Then Shan Xu got to examine the brat in depths and quickly stumbled upon something unexpected and quite annoying for him.

 

« There’s nothing but Heavenly strain in this whelp » the physician declared as he poked at the child’s chubby cheek. « Barely watered with human blood. If this lowly one didn’t know who bore the young master, never in a hundred years would he guess it was a huli jing ! »

 

Luo Binghe would freely admit he was surprised too. After the reveal of Shen Jiu’s pregnancy, Shan Xu had been very diligent in gathering information about mixed bloodlines – as secretly as he could, because none could even suspect the reason why the ascending Sacred Ruler wanted to learn about that before he finally secured his power and influence over the Demon Realm to ensure a full-frontal assault against his Empress and his heir would be a very painful way to commit suicide – and his snooping had established a lot of guidelines for marriage between divergent tribes.

 

Nonetheless, when one threw lineages into the pot and stirred it, the resulting stew would always bear some reminder of both ascendants. It might be weaker or stronger or equally shared, but no bloodline could truly be snuffed out by another, even if it had to go dormant for several decades until it resurfaced in a descendant.

 

« Nothing but the Heavenly strain and human blood, is Shan Xu truly confident in his discoveries ? »

 

The spider demon balefully eyeballed Luo Binghe. It was a very expressive look, and the Sacred Ruler of the Demon Realm swallowed to wet a suddenly dry throat.

 

« That should not be possible. »

 

« I know  ! » the physician hissed, his voice caught between frustration and glee. « It goes against the rules for genetics, but huli jing is almost a complete unknown in the medical field, so who can say what they are hiding in their lineage ? »

 

The brat softly whined, obviously disgruntled by the healer’s insistent poking at his soft forehead on which a tiny red stain was taking shape – a mortal might have believed it was a birthmark, but any demon would identify it as a bloodline crest.

 

« What does it mean, for this whelp to fully take after his father ? Would he have been huli jing, if Junshang’s consort had sired him instead of bearing him into their womb ? Or is it something in the diet – in the surroundings – maybe some trigger we missed in the first months of pregnancy ? »

 

Shan Xu was fully ignoring his lord and master, now, but Luo Binghe would forgive the spider demon for his lack of manners – the healer was busy trying to unravel a mystery that concerned the Imperial family, after all.

 

« There must be something , this one doesn’t think huli jing as a demon bloodline sprang from foxes gaining sentience. Maybe at the very beginning, but nowadays, it would be more likely for the uplifted beast to become something entirely different… but if they can reproduce, how are they doing it ? »

 

The spider demon sighed and deflated, managing to shrink onto himself from several cun.

 

« My apologies, Junshang, this lowly physician is very much lacking in data to offer you a proper answer to this current enigma. Maybe if there were more people hailing from Daji’s brood to study... »

 

Luo Binghe snorted.

 

« You said it yourself » he reminded his Court physician, « a half-breed tends to be rather useless when it’s needed for the tribe to add new members to their ranks. This lord shall do his utmost to prevent his lineage from being snuffed as one would snuff a candlelight, but it’s liable to take a few years at the least for him to sire a spare heir. »

 

« True science will unfold over time, this isn’t the kind of thing one is allowed to rush or it will literally explode in your hands » Shan Xu shrugged. « This lowly physician will grin and bear it. »

 

« You’re not grinning right now » Luo Binghe pointed because he felt in the mood to tease and Shan Xu was the only target in his immediate surroundings.

 

« Begging for Junshang’s forgiveness, this one might have been led to believe my lord didn’t enjoy the sight… at least, this is what he concluded from his sister’s quite detailed reports of the nights Junshang sometimes shares with her. »

 

Luo Binghe twitched. Yes, he was aware that demonkind had a very different opinion on sex and appropriate behaviour, and they utterly lacked in shame to the point the Heavenly half-breed was a mite surprised by the fact they actually had a word for the feeling, but telling one’s brother about your nightly activities ?

 

Also, Shan Xu was a physician. It made the whole thing even more humiliating, really – it was much worse than Mu Qingfang coming to Qing Jing in order to explain a dormitory filled with teenage boys why they suddenly felt new and powerful urges around the girls, since the sheer embarrassment had been diluted among the male Disciples. Now, Luo Binghe found himself the lone recipient for a simmering heat buzzing in his ears and nape, a very uncomfortable sensation and one he would gladly avoid until he breathed his last if it was in his power to do so.

 

« Have you finished with the physical ? » the Heavenly hybrid couldn’t help but snap.

 

The spider demon sniffed as he wrapped the whelp anew in a soft, silken scarf, likely a cloth made by his sister. Luo Binghe started to get familiar with the silk produced by Shan Su’s body – even if it wasn’t a skill she was interested in practising around him, arguing it was more useful for mundane tasks.

 

« There you go, young prince. Nice and healthy and very much your father’s child, aren’t you ? What do you think of intimidating the Lower Realm into bowing to you before your twenty-fifth birthday ? »

 

« Are you encouraging my spawn to rebel against me ? » Luo Binghe inquired, half-offended and half-amused.

 

« Well, every child wants to rebel against their parent when they grow up enough for their blood to drive them mad from running hot » the physician fired back. « Really, if you cannot handle your chosen heir stealing your throne, then maybe Junshang deserves to lose it. »

 

Really, Luo Binghe would never understand demonkind on the matter of politics and child-raising.

 

 

Chapter 39

The beast was pissed off when he came to force himself upon Shen Jiu this night, and the formerly human cultivator couldn’t be happier about that.

 

Well, his pleasure was a bit marred by the beast trying to pretend everything was fine – Shen Jiu hated the very idea of the beast enjoying himself, especially when he just showed Shen Jiu off in front of the whole Demon Realm.

 

Oh, Shen Jiu knew what it was about, this humiliation – he had been a regular to the Red Warm Pavilion once upon a time, and the courtesans treated him less as a customer and more as a pampered and indulged younger sibling in which they could confide, even if he was much, much older than the flowers themselves. These women had sighed and whispered about highborns and wealthy merchants treating them as living ornaments to parade and look impressive, mainly when it was time to attend a business meeting with one’s rivals.

 

Shen Jiu could understand the beast’s reasoning, humiliating his prisoner and forcing his freakish subjects to acknowledge how manly he was. He would understand but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be infuriated, especially when he was involved.

 

He might not be worthy from the title of Qing Jing Peak Lord, but he nonetheless had his pride, earned after surviving the gutters and the Qiu manor and years on the road with a demonic cultivator. He wouldn’t bend, and he wouldn’t lie down and pitifully endure whatever tortures his current enslaver could imagine.

 

So far, the beast had been pretty determined on forcing Shen Jiu to act the ill-conceived, disgusting part of a wife while he played the doting husband and father. How nauseating – the formerly human cultivator would rather have him angry and slaking his thirst for sex without concerning himself fot his bedslave’s comfort, but no, the beast wanted to lie to himself, wanted to drape himself in the illusions of self-righteousness and virtue. It was enough for Shen Jiu’s new fangs and claws to itch.

 

Fangs and claws had been gladly used against the Heavenly half-breed when said bastard had come to Shen Jiu’s bed. It made the sex quite rough, and Shen Jiu had bitten the inside of his mouth bloody to not scream as his pelvis threatened to split under the assault, as his breasts were mercilessly groped and sucked to the point they were left black and purple.

 

Truly, he went soft in the last months, his body weakened by pregnancy and soft luxury, if he couldn’t deal with a bit of pain. Still, at least he was exhausted enough to fall unconscious after being impaled three times on this stupidly huge cock, had the beast’s progenitor been a donkey because his equipment was large enough for one, and his brains were barely better !

 

When Shen Jiu woke up, it was to unknown hands tending to him in spite of shivering.

 

The spider abomination had been there, smiling with all her yellowish fangs, her obsidian eyes glinting with the same spark as the one that burned in the slavers’ irises when they were given fresh meat to break and mistreat as they saw fit.

 

« Good morning to you, my Empress » she said in obvious mockery because Shen Jiu wasn’t an Empress, born in the gutter as he was. « This humble one hopes your new handmaidens won’t disappoint you. »

 

Handmaidens ? For him ? Was he a coddled young mistress who couldn’t go outside without someone to hold her hand and ensure she wouldn’t trip on her gown ? What kind of a farce was this whole thing !

 

Surely, it was the beast’s new idea to humiliate Shen Jiu, there was no other explanation. He was implying his prisoner was helpless and couldn’t dress or even feed himself without any assistance !

 

Consequence of this understanding, Shen Jiu’s mood had taken a turn for the worst, and many of these so-called handmaidens suffered for it. They deserved everything he would throw at them anyway, first because they were the beast’s instruments against Shen Jiu, second because they were demons and could handle much worse than a shackled prisoner slapping them around and snarling in their faces.

 

Some of them actually cried and cowered in front of his rightful wrath, just like the beast did when he still was playing the sweet, confused Disciple who just wouldn’t listen or follow the rules like his older martial siblings – these handmaidens only earned more of his scorn and fury.

 

The spider abomination pouted as she was sewing the long, bloody scratch left by Shen Jiu’s claws in a handmaiden’s cheek with silk thread.

 

« How mean this Empress is towards their servants. Beware, or one of them just might decide enough is enough and slit your throat open. Or maybe she will use poison ? »

 

A murder attempt ? Shen Jiu was at peace with the prospect – why would he care about living when he was reduced to a weak, wretched creature stuck in a body he hated, forced to pleasure a demon and cater to his disgusting fantasies of domestic bliss ? If he died, he wouldn’t have to endure this farce anymore, how could it not be a positive in his book ?

 

Maybe he would get to be reunited with Qi-ge in the underworld… because Qi-ge died, didn’t he ? Shen Jiu was unsure, it rang both right and wrong in his thoughts, but he still was left with the conviction he would never see his brother in his current life, no matter how much he tried.

 

So. Dying. Not that much of a deterrent, and if the spider abomination believed it was a good argument to persuade him to stop abusing the handmaidens, she was so utterly wrong it utterly spiralled onto itself and almost turned right again, emphasis on almost.

 

Shen Jiu was under no obligation to care for the servants forced upon him, unlike the brats he took on his Qing Jing Peak as students. He couldn’t care less about these demons’ tearful faces and terrified squeaks as they cowered in front of his hatred and loathing for everything they were and represented. If they sought to flee the quarters in which he had been imprisoned, he wouldn’t run after them to beg them to stay. If they dropped dead from sheer fright in front of him, he wouldn’t waste his bodily fluids by sobbing over the corpse but would rather spit on the remains.

 

If they insisted to dress him and comb his hair and slather oils on his skin, then they would have to accept he would fight them at every step, he would do his utmost to torment them into leaving the place because they couldn’t stand it anymore. If they still wanted to come back day after day after day after day , they could blame none but themselves.

 

Sure, they could blame the beast, but truly, it would be far too easy. One could die proudly standing up, or one could live on their back and their legs spread. Shen Jiu knew what he would pick, and he despised these cowardly wretches for falling lower than the whores he had been a confident of, when he still was a Peak Lord.

 

The Red Warm Pavilion had been classy, but of course asking that from one originating from the Demon Realm would be too much.

Chapter 40

« Let me tell you, Ling’er, it’s a good thing for the handmaidens to be on a rotation because our Empress seems extremely determined on abusing them into fleeing the palace » her poisonous spider commented.

 

The Sha Saintess and the spider demoness were currently enjoying a luxurious bed covered in plump cushions, located in one of the many, many abandoned rooms in the freshly reconquered palace. Sha Hualing loved cushions and pillows, she loved sprawling upon them, she loved burying herself under them, she loved squeezing and hugging them, so when her wanderings led her to the discarded bedroom that apparently served to store all the cushions she could imagine and more… well.

 

She had appropriated the room as her personal haunt, and if Junshang wanted to bitch and complain about it, she would fight him to retain the right to her hideout. He already had the whole palace, surely he could spare a measly bedroom !

 

Of course, Sha Hualing knew a demon was never very reasonable or logical on the matter of belongings and territory, they were naturally greedy and avaricious. She would know, she was a purebred specimen of demonkind, and her only recourse was for Luo Binghe’s human half to temper his feelings on the matter.

 

Still, Junshang’s greed seemed to be focused on people, just look at his little game with the abomination he called his bride. After a week, Sha Hualing had come to the horrifying conclusion that her lord and master was utterly and completely in love with the huli jing – not even lusting after the monster, that could be forgiven because shapeshifters were quite sought and coveted for the endless fantasies they could fulfill, but in love .

 

She couldn’t trust him to do the right thing when the huli jing would finally get bored and decide to slip off its leash. People in love – men in love – lost any hint of wit they ever owned, they would gladly jump in a volcano to protect the object of their devotion, they would burn kingdoms and ravage empires for the sake of their beloved.

 

So Sha Hualing needed to rely on the spider demons, because they directly monitored the abomination and could inform her of the slightest hint of upcoming disaster and bloodbath. Thankfully, her dear a-Su was more than happy to share the details of her new posting with her best sparring partner and bedmate – and by the way, the spider demoness had very much gloated about her matriarch having to praise her for becoming the new Empress’ foremost lady-in-waiting, even if said Empress belonged to the most despised and depraved bloodline to ever spring from the Lower Realm.

 

Sometimes, the Saintess wondered why she felt so much fondness and attraction towards people who were hopelessly insane – one couldn’t be sane when one wasn’t immediately jumping on the opportunity to murder a huli jing on sight – wait, did that mean she was the rational one ? Oh Ancestors, she wanted to puke and beat her chest and wail in misery as she considered this dreadful, dreadful possibility.

 

But that would be silly to do that when she could pet her precious poisonous spider’s silky-smooth hair, wonderfully spread on the embroidered cushions as a sandy river.

 

« Why is a-Su so surprised ? Junshang has taken a huli jing in his household, of course the abomination is going to mistreat the staff » Sha Hualing snorted.

 

Truly, she didn’t envy the hostages picked by their tribes to serve as a guarantee of obedience, and now forced into service to a monster that would gladly string them up to be slowly roasted over hot coals and forced to consume their own limbs when they would have been cooked enough.

 

One of Daji’s many, many ways to amuse herself. She favored demons for this torture, humans would always die far too quickly, even when they were powerful cultivators.

 

Hopefully, the cursed shackle put upon Junshang’s pet abomination would keep it addled enough to prevent it from getting too bored and inventive. Or maybe Junshang could fuck another whelp into its womb, the huli jing had been pitifully helpless as it was carrying the new Sacred Ruler’s firstborn and heir…

 

« Well, yes » a-Su pouted. « Yet this humble lady-in-waiting is watching her Empress and said Empress’ bad moods, they do appear more spiteful than anything, so I was wondering if bullying the servants was revenge against Junshang ? You have to admit how insulting it would be for your future partner to choose the people allowed to attend you. »

 

A very good argument, but Sha Hualing really didn’t want to consider the possibility of the huli jing acting on more than gratuitous, careless cruelty. She barely managed to fall asleep when she repeated herself that the abomination was kept dumb and sluggish by the cursed shackle thrusted upon it and it couldn’t keep the nightmares away, so if she was given a reason to suspect it could feel anything, it could feel justifiably angry and offended…

 

She heard Dongying was a nice country, very mountainous and blessed with a lot of hot springs. Or maybe she ought to run somewhere in Tianzhu, surely one of these five kingdoms would let her stay – and she was curious about their elephants and rhinoceros, how the people there managed to tame the beasts and used them to carry burdens and highborns.

 

The Saintess briefly pictured herself proudly sitting on an elephant’s neck, the mighty animal obediently going whenever she wanted. Wouldn’t that be something ?

 

Or maybe she could leave for the Great Golden Peninsula, the warm and fertile countries beyond the Southern Ocean, nobody but fearless human merchants and adventurous demon eccentrics went there. Surely the huli jing wouldn’t dare to pursue her so far, a fox spirit’s anger and thirst for revenge was endless but they were known to be on the lazy side, they wouldn’t have such an enduring taste for luxuries otherwise, and they never cared about fighting when they could force someone else to battle in their stead.

 

The more Sha Hualing thought about the many, many potential places in which she could flee and save herself, the more she found herself pondering on the Demon Realm’s place on the food chain. She grew up there, she had always believed the demon race would be the strongest no matter how numerous humans would grow to be, but the world… it was pretty huge, wasn’t it ?

 

It made her feel small, and Sha Hualing was most displeased by this feeling. Being small meant being vulnerable. Being small meant one couldn’t protect oneself as good as when one was fully grown and trained. Being small meant death in the Southern Plains, so many times.

 

Unless one could hide themselves behind a Sacred Ruler worth the title. Yet Luo Binghe was young still, even if he had potential aplenty – would he too feel small in front of the world ? Maybe he would, or maybe he wouldn’t, this Junshang of hers could be so cocky, she would almost believe he was favored by the Fates and could accomplish every whim he would conceive in his curly-haired skull, no matter how stupid or seemingly impossible it was.

 

Sha Hualing hoped he would shape up. She had betted on him, and she hated losing, even by proxy. Heavenly strain or not, she would make him regret a failure.

 

 

Notes:

Tianzhu is the historical Chinese name for India, also referred to as Wutianzhu (五天竺, literal meaning is "Five Indias"), because there were five geographical regions in India known to the Chinese: Central, Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern India.

The Golden Peninsula was the name used for the Malay Peninsula by Greek and Roman geographers in classical antiquity, while in Ramayana, there are mentions of Suvarnabhumi (Land of Gold) and Suvarnadvipa (the Golden Island or Peninsula), but some in modern times argue it would rather point at Sumatra.

Chapter 41

Luo Binghe knew Shen Jiu likely wouldn’t be happy about having handmaidens to attend him, the huli jing never looked enthused when the ascending Sacred Ruler casually adressed the matter, but why would he expect otherwise ? Shen Qingqiu had loathed being surrounded by Disciples on the Qing Jing Peak, and he had been staunchly bent on taking care of himself, even Ming Fan hadn’t been allowed to stay more than a fên in the bamboo house.

 

And none of these Disciples had been a demon – well, except for Luo Binghe. Of course his new Empress would be upset when introduced to his new household.

 

Still, the Heavenly half-breed wouldn’t budge on keeping the huli jing under constant watch – with his wits addled and his body weakened by the lack of exercise and practise with his bloodline gifts, Shen Jiu couldn’t be left on his own. Also, if the huli jing spent his days slapping his attendants around, he wouldn’t have time or energy to try and mistreat his firstborn, or to try and get the cursed shackle off his neck – yes, it was supposed to be impossible to remove unless Luo Binghe himself gave his blessing to the endeavour, but Shen Qingqiu had been a cunning soul, full of tricks and mischief, if anyone could find a path yet unseen to freedom then it would be the formerly human cultivator.

 

Yes, the handmaidens would have to suffer, but as long as their new Empress wasn’t outright killing them and causing their parents and siblings and other relatives to riot and rise in rebellion against Luo Binghe’s authority, they could deal with it. These girls had been offered to the new Junshang as tribute for him to do as he pleased, if he wanted to fuck them or cut their hands or make them clean every corner of his palace with their tongues, nobody could complain.

 

Luo Binghe had survived on Qing Jing Peak, bearing the full brunt of Shen Qingqiu’s cruelty when the man still was in full possession of his razor-sharp mind. The attendants would survive Shen Jiu with his impaired reasoning and his lack of golden core that wouldn't allow his whippings and beatings to be much more painful to suffer than the usual punishment.

 

Shan Su would intervene if she believed the huli jing went too far, anyway, and she appeared to have the household well handled. Alright, maybe it was a bit too soon to tell, barely a week and a half after Luo Binghe’s enthroning, one couldn’t really get someone’s measure before a month unless the candidate was so hopelessly stupid that they would cause disturbances no matter the smallness of the task they were entrusted with.

 

And the Heavenly half-breed had been far too busy to really focus on his Empress’ domestic struggles, because he now was Junshang and that meant responsabilities and duties and so many other things he would rather not deal with.

 

Luo Binghe could deal with murder attempts, and he could deal with military campaigns with their diseases and boredom, but paperwork ? Mornings spent in courts with many, many petty lords and officials whining about some problem or another they wanted to kick upstairs because they couldn’t be bothered to think about solving it themselves ?

 

The Heavenly half-breed remembered several among the older demons sneering about Tianlang-jun fleeing his duties to wander in the human countryside and couldn’t find in himself to blame the previous ruler, if that was the kind of endless drudgery the man had endured day after day after day . Anyone would abdicate and run away as far as possible.

 

Still, Luo Binghe couldn’t very well flee, not when he was so new still, so unproven in the eyes of the Lower Realm. The demonic nobility would never leave him alone, especially not with Shen Jiu and their child being such tempting targets, unless Luo Binghe had the power to make them think twice about harming him and his. As long as he had the power to protect what was important to him, them Luo Binghe would gladly accept any price asked for it.

 

That was the mantra he constantly repeated in his inner thoughts as he was forced to listen yet another petty noble grousing about the neighbour poaching in his river and mining in his mountain, yet another servant muttering about the new ruler’s mixed blood and how much of a bad omen it was for demonkind. Sometimes it was enough to keep him seething at low-level instead of indulging Xin Mo’s shrieking and let the sword taste some blood – he couldn’t always kill the people irking him, but maiming was fine because it let the cursed blade to feed on pain and demonic regeneration was a thing, so losing an arm was less of a disaster than it would be to a human.

 

Sometimes, Luo Binghe would storm out in the courtyard in order to beat on Sha Hualing or Mobei-jun – they actually could offer a challenge to him, and he could bitch about fucking paperwork to Mobei-jun without feeling condemned, the ice demon was slated to inherit the throne of the Northern Mountains and was already doing a great deal of the duties associated with the ruling, with his father dying.

 

Still, the Heavenly half-breed couldn’t help but suspect Mobei-jun from having some help in his dealings with the bureaucracy. It was more of a gut feeling – the ice demon’s face wouldn’t betray anything, and Luo Binghe occasionally wondered if the Northern heir had replaced his heart with carved ice long ago – but Luo Binghe’s gut rarely led him astray. If true, then he would find a way to mimic his subordinate’s method, or he would outright poach the helper if he felt desperate enough. Mobei-jun wouldn’t be happy, but surely he would understand a fellow sufferer would want to reduce the paperwork and headaches coming with it ?

 

Or maybe Luo Binghe would invoke the Imperial Privilege : when one was Sacred Ruler over all demonkind, one was entitled to take everything one wanted. Of course, a neglectful ruler that would abuse said privilege on a whim was asking for a coup to chase them from the throne, but once in a while was accepted. Eighteen Hells, demons actually expected for the nobility to do that and tolerated it if their overlord was strong enough to divert a swarm of rabid locusts threatening to eat the crops, the cattle and the peasantry as it migrated.

 

Being a tyrant had its perks in order to soften the blows inflicted by the duties chaining the ruler to the throne. Now, Luo Binghe was left to decide if the perks would outweight the duties to the point he wouldn’t abdicate and leave his firstborn and heir struggle with the paperwork and the morning audiences while he took Shen Jiu on their well-deserved, long-reported honeymoon. Or maybe he would do that even sooner – after naming a regent skilled enough to ensure the Lower Realm wouldn’t crumple back into anarchy, and terrified enough by the Heavenly bloodline’s power to not even consider the possibility of stealing the throne for themselves, of course.

 

How complicated it was, tending to a whole empire, and Luo Binghe whimsically pondered the likeliness of Shen Jiu giving him advice on the matter, surely being a Peak Lord in the strongest sect of the Middle Kingdom couldn’t be that different from being a ruler, and Shen Jiu had been officially acknowledged as his Empress, he was supposed to help his husband with governance…

 

Unfortunately, the odds for Shen Jiu embracing his newfound status were lower than the odds for Liu Qingge to come back from the Underworld – Cang Qiong took quite seriously their Peak Lords’ burial and ensured they would climb on the wheel of rebirth immediately after their demise with the appropriate rites.

 

Ah, the pains of ruling. Why couldn’t anyone warn their heirs and successors ?

Chapter 42

After a few days of deliberation, Shan Su picked a crane demoness from the Floodplains as nursemaid to the little prince.

 

Really, it was common sense no matter how unorthodox – many bloodlines would rather entrust their spawn to various relatives on the grounds it was safer to trust one’s sibling or grandparent or cousin than a stranger that might be in a foe’s pocket and ready to murder your helpless heir when you stopped watching them. Of course, this reasoning wasn’t entirely foolproof, the spider demoness had heard of a mishap involving the soon-to-be effective ruler to the Northern Mountains and his uncle…

 

But the new Junshang had no relatives left on this plane of existence – yes, Tianlang-jun was still alive, but he was imprisoned in the Human Realm and as such not a fitting candidate – nobody wanted to see another huli jing at court even if they were related to the new Empress, and that meant you had to seek for a competent babysitter out of the family.

 

And a nursemaid was sorely needed : Luo Binghe looked like he cared about his heir but the duties of an Emperor would always come first and retain his attention and energy. The Empress could barely stand breastfeeding the brat, and Shan Su really didn’t want to give them the opportunity to strangle the infant with their bare hands.

 

So, the little prince needed someone to actually focus on nurturing him, helping him to grow until he could claw an assassin’s eyes out on his own instead of uselessly panicking and screaming for a grown up to intervene.

 

The spider demoness very quickly decided on the hostage gifted by the crane bloodline. For a demon tribe, these birds were rather passive and eager to flee rather than stand their ground, so passive and nonconfrontational that they actually would trade with the Human Realm with some success, bartering rugs and clothes and various herbal teas in exchange for foodstuffs or cattle. Not the most honourable way to survive for a demon, but survive they did and that alone was commendable.

 

The daughter they offered to Junshang when the new ruler invaded their ancestral grounds was pretty enough, wearing her blood-red hair in a thick braid, covering her milky white skin with an elbow-length capelet and a knee-length skirt adorned with feathers in a dizzying array of white and black shades. When Shan Su called for her, the female immediately came and kneeled on the cold tiles without any prompting.

 

Such an obedient girl. She would be perfect as long as the little prince would be a toddler, but once he would be old enough to be a smidge aggressive, he would have to be separated from her. She was too soft, she would be an hindrance to guide an Heavenly Demon’s emerging instincts and cravings for conquest.

 

« From this day, you will raise Junshang’s offspring as if he hatched from one of your eggs » Shan Su bluntly told the kneeling girl. « If the little prince fails to thrive, Junshang will gladly rip your legs and send them back to your father. If you keep the child alive and sound until his leaving for the warrior’s training, your tribe will receive as much wealth as you can dream. Any questions ? »

 

The red head stayed bowed towards the ground.

 

« What if Junshang and the Empress produce another child ? Will this lowly servant be expected to raise them too ? »

 

A good reason to worry, that. It was hard to determinate if Luo Binghe would yet again defy the curse laid on anyone born from a half-breed union and sire a younger sibling to his heir, and that might happen in two years just like it might happen the next century.

 

And if the same nursemaid cared for both children, how would the older feel about that ? Killing one’s sibling wasn’t uncommon in the Lower Realm, some tribes and clans actually encouraged it because it weeded the unworthy spawn and spared resources when the circumstances were dire, but there, it would certainly be more of a complication to the eventual succession…

 

Shan Su ultimately snorted.

 

« Do well with your current charge, and we shall see if you are worthy to be known as one that raised two scions of the Heavenly strain. »

 

« This lowly servant supposes… she won’t be expected to stay far from the Empress’ rooms, if her Majesty asks for the child to be brought to his mother. »

 

The spider demoness couldn’t help the frown on her face.

 

« You will bring the child to her Majesty when he needs to be fed. Otherwise, you will tend to him in another suite. Surely, even a measly handmaiden can understand how important it is for a threat to not find mother and child in the same room. »

 

Shan Su very much wanted to chew her tongue and lips to bloody ruin, as she considered that the huli jing themselves was the worst threat to the little prince’s safety and well-being – if Luo Binghe really wished for his heir to see his seventh nameday, then mother and child had to be kept apart and fuck this silly fantasy Junshang had, about the huli jing suddenly growing maternal instincts and doting on the brat.

 

Really, males . One couldn’t trust them, they were so foolishly sentimental and prone to dumb fancies.

 

The crane demoness kept quiet for a fên, then she lowered her forehead to the cold tiles.

 

« This lowly servant hears and obeys, milady. »

 

A shiver of pure pleasure tickled Shan Su’s bone marrow as she heard the respectful title, milady , yes she was one of Matriarch Lu’s daughters, but now she was so much more, she was the foremost handmaiden to the Empress, the shadow ruler in the Imperial household.

 

Of course, wanting a ruler’s power meant she had to shoulder a ruler’s duties and responsabilities to fix the problems popping up in the household, such as the matter of putting the little prince under a nursemaid’s care, but the spider demoness trusted her own ability and that said ability would grow and blossom with time and experience.

 

Now, she merely had to grant the crane demoness one of the unused bedrooms in the wing reserved for the ruling bloodline. That would be easy, so much space left without anyone claiming it, maybe she could fix some traps in order to give the nursemaid an additional layer of protection ? That wouldn’t do for the heir to leave his sire’s carefully tended array of wards, focused on the Empress and ensuring everyone in said Empress’ immediate surroundings would have nothing to fear from a sudden assault.

 

Shan Su idly wondered how many months Luo Binghe would take to notice the new arrangements in his Empress’ household, the Heavenly half-breed currently was far too busy with paperwork and his vassals testing his patience and bloodlust to do more than energically fuck his consort when he came to visit the huli jing before going to sleep like a brute and depart on the morning without even saying hello.

 

Well, that might be a positive, it would let the little prince bond with his nursemaid and any male when given the choice between enjoying a peaceful household or raising a stink by disrupting the internal harmony of the clan would pick the peace, because males were busy fighting wars outside the household and didn’t want to come home and fight on a very different battlefield.

 

Sure, Junshang might pout about his domestic fantasy being ruined, but he needed to learn the world wouldn’t always bow to his diktats. Really, that was a lesson people, be they human or demon, had to register when they reached their second year of life.

 

Even an Emperor couldn’t force the world to revolve around him.

 

 

Chapter 43

Shang Qinghua returned to the Cang Qiong Mountain with the conviction that he would hear of gruesome happenings in the Lower Realm very soon. Even with the huli jing contained, surely there would be some kind of bloodbath in the palace, be it caused by the abomination or by desperate demons doing their utmost to kill their new Empress.

 

No matter how suffocating the Twelve Peaks currently were, it was the safest shelter for the An Ding Peak Lord since it wasn’t in the same realm to begin with. Even the majestic asshole he was serving couldn’t find a good counter-argument to that and allowed him to go.

 

Since it was in the Human Realm, it also was a pretty safe place to work on his murder plots – because this huli jing needed to die for yesterday, Luo Binghe would rage over his chosen Empress’ demise but quickly get over it, that wasn’t like the demon tribes and lineages were lacking in daughters and nieces and sisters and other female relatives that would gladly open their legs to a Heavenly Demon – well, Shang Qinghua worked on his murder plots when he found time enough for it between his usual chores, because his so-called martial siblings didn’t know anything about him being a demon’s pet cultivator.

 

Shang Qinghua actually considered dropping the tidbit of information at their monthly meeting. Sure, they likely would try to rip his head from his shoulders for the perceived betrayal, as if they gave him any reason to feel genuine loyalty to his position, but at the very least they would feel alarmed by the existence of a fox spirit, and the ravages it would potentially cause if left unchecked.

 

Ultimately, he abstained. First because cultivators couldn’t stand demons, so they wouldn’t care about the huli jing because it was living in the Lower Realm and its first casualties would be the demon officials and nobility able and willing to turn the tribes into more than unwashed, disorganized hordes that couldn’t find their way out of the toilets without a map and a guide.

 

Second because they had lost the War God who were their foremost fighter, they had lost their tactician who still couldn’t be found, be it alive or dead, and their Sect Leader’s health wasn’t that good nowadays because of said tactician’s disappearance. Trying to lead an assault against the Lower Realm in order to murder the Demon Empress in the Imperial Palace was guaranteed to end with huge losses for Cang Qiong Mountain, even if the war concluded on their victory.

 

So Shang Qinghua kept quiet, because babbling wouldn’t help – and that was a lesson he learned quite early in life, when he was so poor he wasn’t worthy of a family name, nobody liked a tattletale no matter how noble the reason behind the loose tongue. He kept quiet, he kept his ear on the ground, and he plotted.

 

The more scared and foolhardy demons started to launch their assassination attempts after three weeks and a half, giving time for the rumours about the Empress abusing her handmaidens and barely tolerating her own whelp to spread – it always was better for your crime to look half-justified, it was so much harder for your peers to condemn you in front of such dire circumstances.

 

None of the attempts succeeded, as reported by Mobei-jun who got to behold the consequences for the conspirators and looked mildly unsettled when remembering the way they perished – and for an ice demon to appear the slightest bit unruffled, it had to be utterly beyond disgusting.

 

Shang Qinghua didn’t even ask about the execution method, merely allowing the ice demon to eat his secret stash of melon seeds and water chestnuts – alright, the majestic asshole would steal these anytime he crashed in the An Ding Peak Lord’s leisure house because everything his pet owned was his possession, but just this once the cultivator wouldn’t complain and whine about it, and he also would bring Mobei-jun a jar of wine brewed on the Zui Xian Peak.

 

That was something he would never do in the future, because spiritual wine seemed to have a weird effect on the Heir to the Northern Mountains. Being compared to a rat in flowing poetry was quite the surreal experience, and Shang Qinghua misliked having to brush and comb his hair into a proper topknot because a drunk ice demon stole his haircrown and petted his locks until he nodded off.

 

Mobei-jun seemed to be weirdly fixated on Shang Qinghua’s hair as a rule – the ice demon relished in pulling them in order to punish his slave – and the An Ding Peak Lord occasionnally contemplated shaving his skull to annoy the majestic asshole. He only would have to claim he stumbled into some kind of vegetal trap that thoroughly ruined his tresses, and even his so-called martial siblings would feel sorry for him.

 

That wasn’t like Shang Qinghua had anyone left to honour by letting his hair grow long. His parents and siblings surely died long ago from old age or starvation as peasants were wont to do, and his Shizun never had been the most warm or endearing even before departing the Twelve Peaks to pursue Ascension. As for the other Peak Lords from the Qing generation, they weren’t shy about letting Shang Qinghua know they had no respect for him and would care about his death only because they would have to seek someone else to do the paperwork in their stead.

 

When thinking about it, Shang Qinghua’s most meaningful relationship was to be enslaved to a demon nobleman that enjoyed tormenting him and wouldn’t bat an eyelash if he had to personally strangle the human cultivator.

 

Wasn’t that fucking pitiful ? The An Ding Peak Lord almost wanted to laugh because it was so messed up – his entire life was fucked, since the very beginning, so why would he even hope for it to go right for once ? The Upper Realm likely would keep it this way as they had to be involved, it was impossible for a mess of such caliber to have been caused by nothing but luck, it reeked of deliberate involvement, a child ripping an anthill open and waiting to see how the measly beings would rebuild their home again and again.

 

It wasn’t that funny when you were one of the ants, but who cared about them ? Nobody, that was, just like nobody cared about slaves and pets, because the world was an awful place in which fairness was a pretty illusion children would believe until real life slammed them hard and popped the dream away.

 

Mobei-jun would kill Shang Qinghua one day when he would get tired of his pet cultivator, because Shang Qinghua couldn’t weave his way out of danger forever, or maybe his Immortal body would get pushed too hard after one beating too much. The An Ding Peak Lord always knew he would die at the very end of this path, that was what happened to anyone walking with demons. Just look what fate befalled the treasured First Disciple of the Huan Hua Palace, in spite of everything the Old Palace Master did to keep her besides him.

 

Of course, when one looked at the Old Palace Master, maybe it wasn’t that bad for Su Xiyan to be dead after all.

 

 

Chapter 44

Shen Jiu couldn’t rely on these useless handmaidens to learn what was happening outside the Palace – indeed, they weren’t reliable even when it came to hear about what happened right outside the huli jing’s bedroom, they were far too busy cowering and crying and shivering in front of him, the fucking twits.

 

He was kept informed of the latest developments only because the spider abomination enjoyed gloating and chattering in his ear, as if she was one of the many flowers in the Red Warm Pavilion eager to share gossip and secrets the lustful pigs sharing her bed had let slip beneath the covers.

 

(Shen Jiu wonders how fare the courtesans, how much time it has been, has Meigui finally earned money enough to buy her contract back, can Lanmei finally play the xiao without sounding like a choking duck, is Madam Tang taking good care of her heart after falling so sick this autumn, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know)

 

This was because of her that Shen Jiu was aware of people trying to murder him. She eagerly told him, her many eyes glinting with anticipation as she waited for his reaction.

 

« If they cannot do the job, they deserve to get caught and killed for it » Shen Jiu merely answered, and the spider abomination’s fangy grin grew wider and wider, what kind of secret test did he just pass according her ?

 

The assassination attempts were focused on him instead of the brat, and Shen Jiu could vaguely understand the reasoning behind the act – he wasn’t deaf, he had heard how upset and ready to piss their pants everyone had been when the beast paraded him in front of the demon tribes, there was something about the fox spirits that nobody liked and it meant he was the primary target in spite of the fucking brat being utterly helpless and a very big obstacle for any ambitious courtier that wished to see their grandchild or nephew or cousin as the next Sacred Ruler of the Lower Realm.

 

Ah well, Shen Jiu supposed it was hard to remember a brat when they were easily pushed out of sight. So demons would rather vie for the position of Empress and for that plotted his demise – really, Shen Jiu would gladly allow any demoness dumb enough the mantle, especially if she was able to retain the beast trapped between her legs and not let him wander towards the huli jing’s bedroom.

 

Shen Jiu loathed the beast most right after fucking, when the half-breed was whispering sweet nothings to him and cradled his limp body as a child would hug a treasured doll after deliberately breaking its limbs to make it more interesting. That was when his claws and fangs itched most, desperate to shred flesh until it couldn’t heal anymore, until it finally bled out.

 

Really, he would welcome a concubine in order to lessen the weight put on his shoulders by this disgusting farce of common life. Said concubine could try and murder him if she wanted, he would accept it as his deliverance.

 

Unfortunately, potential consorts for the beast likely had been intimidated into reining their bloodlust by the punishment inflicted to the conspirators. Many handmaidens fainted in sheer horror as they heard of it, while the spider abomination herself swallowed and looked mildly disturbed, truly ridiculous when her sibling would enjoy playing with knifes and her with poisons.

 

On Shen Jiu’s side, he merely regretted not being that to watch the spectacle. It grew boring, to be kept locked away between four walls, and it grew horrendously reminiscent of the Qiu manor in which he had been a slave and a well-loved pet to Miss Haitang.

 

Miss Haitang either wasn’t allowed to leave the manor, coddled and pampered as she was by her brother and father, and so she latched upon the wretched Xiao Jiu because he couldn’t leave and as such understood her so well. Shen Jiu couldn’t help feeling his heartbeat falter as he mused the reverse hadn’t been true – Miss Haitang had been unable to understand his true feelings, or else she wouldn’t have looked so betrayed and angry when he set the fucking place on fire.

 

Had she found another fiancé to take care of her, someone that would reduce the traumatic memory of this night to yet another nightmare soothed in the morning ? Shen Jiu dearly hoped so – Miss Haitang had been sweet to him, as much as a coddled young mistress could be sweet towards a slave brat. Towards a boy she couldn’t decide if he was more akin to a doll or a pet songbird.

 

Shen Jiu would currently lean towards songbird, imprisoned as he was in a fancy bedroom with his gaoler wanting for him to sing pretty lies about love and devotion, but the formerly human cultivator would slit his own throat first. No, he would slit the beast’s throat first. Or maybe he would commit a murder-suicide ? Yes, that had been the plan…

 

Fuck, it was so hard to think, especially in the morning when the beast finally scampered away after a night of fucking, abandoning Shen Jiu to his bruises and aches which the useless handmaidens tried to erase with oils and powders, as if anyone would see them.

 

It was so hard to stay focused, to slog through the haze of anger and indifference, was he stuck in a perpetual qi deviation now ? It had been so long since the cursed shackle had been locked around his throat and cut him off his golden core, Shen Jiu was quite sure that Mu Qingfang would have very strong words on the matter, the kind that reduced the most arrogant shit to frightened quivering in front of his utterly icy and polite wrath.

 

And the beast that wouldn’t stop drawing on the wet, dark qi now produced by Shen Jiu’s body – could it be the recipe for some kind of disaster ? Maybe Shen Jiu ought to use that, pushing the dark qi within the beast’s meridians with strength enough for them to shatter, even a Heavenly demon would be grievously injured by the act and the beast was but a mere half-breed. Yes, he would recover, but in the Lower Realm, one weren’t allowed to show weakness, not even for a fên, for it was giving anyone else the opportunity to jump on you.

 

The more Shen Jiu thought about it, the more it appeared to be an excellent idea in spite of his mind being a confused, drunken mess worthy of cultivating on the Zui Xian Peak. Yes, he would attempt that – what a disaster it would be in the court. Maybe someone would manage to kill the beast, or at least to trigger a revolt against the new ruler ? It was impossible for a brand-new monarch to be very popular with people faithful to the old guard or the opposing faction, after all…

 

As he plotted how he would try to injure the beast when the half-breed would visit his bed, Shen Jiu found himself in a good mood. The worthless handmaidens noticed and cowered, so he kicked one and raked his claws on another’s face to shred her cheek to ribbons.

 

When he would finally run out of patience and slaughter one of these twits, maybe they would learn to stop snivelling.

 

 

Chapter 45

This was after the seventh assassination attempt that Shen Jiu’s new pregnancy was discovered.

 

While he raged and thundered over the sheer audacity of the unruly bat demon that dared to hide in the Palace for several months until he judged the moment was right to launch his attack, Luo Binghe couldn’t help feeling baffled and a mite confused regarding the stubborn, unrelenting hatred directed toward his Empress.

 

Yes, huli jing were hated with the passion of one thousand burning suns, but after so many weeks without notable incidents, wouldn’t Shen Jiu be considered unlikely to commit grievous harm to the Demon Realm ? His handmaidens were another thing entirely, alright, but a great deal of low-level demons were trampled underfoot by the nobility and nobody complained about that so that looked rather illogical to wail over the formerly human cultivator’s victims, especially when he wasn’t even killing them ! Luo Binghe had heard of lineage heads somwehere in the Floodplains that devoured their staff on a whim, without caring if they were hungry or annoyed !

 

Yet the Lower Realm still bayed for Shen Jiu’s blood. Well, Luo Binghe had wanted to show off how insanely powerful and confident he was in taking a consort belonging to the most loathed bloodline in the Three Realms, so he could blame nobody but himself for not cutting it – and if he couldn’t properly embody the boast and protect his Empress from every assassin jumping out of the woods, then he wasn’t allowed to lament over life’s unfairness, it was unfair to begin with and he was the dumbass who was too weak to force his views upon fairness upon the world !

 

These were Shan Su’s words – the spider demoness had been very blunt when he tried to appeal to her compassion, that would teach the Heavenly half-breed for forgetting about her being a spider first and a nurse second.

 

On the other hand, physicians and healers could be quite ruthless indeed when doing their utmost to destroy the disease and tend to injuries, so the endeavour was lost no matter what. Ah well.

 

Shan Su had been the one that checked on Shen Jiu after the failed assassination – so close, far too fucking close, one handmaiden cut in halves without even realizing what was happening, and three others injured but only because they had been trampled and bruised by the servants rushing to flee and abandon their mistress for the assassin to deal, Luo Binghe wanted to throw them in the dungeon in order to teach them a lesson in loyalty but Sha Hualing had spoken for these girls and promised she would keep an eye over them – then she had called for her brother, and barely a quarter of a shichen later, the Sacred Ruler had been informed that he would soon have another heir to succeed him.

 

Shan Xu insisted to call it a miracle, and Luo Binghe was from the same mind – demon fertility wasn’t the best, a half-blooded demon’s ability to reproduce was even worse, and for it to happen immediately after the eldest child, when the Empress still was recovering from the birth ? Truly the new Junshang was born under a lucky star !

 

Shen Jiu had thrown an horrendous tantrum over the whole matter, outright trying to gouge one of Shan Xu’s many eyes when the demon physician gleefully told him of the upcoming whelp and nastily biting Luo Binghe’s hand when the Heavenly half-breed stopped him. Shan Su would have to watch him very, very closely in order to prevent the huli jing from doing anything that might cause a miscarriage.

 

The spider demoness glibly suggested to strap the fox spirit to his bed, or keeping him sedated until the delivery, and Luo Binghe would lie if he claimed these weren’t alluring options – he couldn’t very well allow his Empress to raise a hand against the imperial heirs, or his demon vassals would see that as their permission to rebel against Luo Binghe’s authority since his bloodline was that unstable and verging on full extinction.

 

For this reason, the Heavenly half-breed could understand why Shan Su had taken his firstborn away from the mother to be raised by a nursemaid. Alright, he had been quite infuriated when learning of this tidbit, but who wouldn’t have been ? It happened under his own roof, and nobody thought about telling him ! The Sacred Ruler !

 

To that, Shan Su had fired back that it was an internal matter in the Empress’ household, and was Junshang hinting he lacked trust in the spider demoness to do her job ? Because she would have grounds to take it as a dire insult indeed, and even Junshang wouldn’t like to deal with an annoyed spider demon – the blood parasites would prevent death by poisoning, but your Majesty would be amazed by what you can live through…

 

Luo Binghe carefully reassured his Empress’ foremost handmaiden that he meant no insult – even if he didn’t actually apologized, because he was the Sacred Ruler and was above begging one of his subjects’ forgiveness, that would be a distasteful show of weakness and a full-blown humiliation if he did – pissing the royal physician’s favorite sister wasn’t a good survival strategy if he meant to rule over the Demon Realm more than a few years.

 

Sometimes, the half-human former cultivator seriously considered throwing the towel and fucking off with Shen Jiu and their shared offspring, leaving all these annoying, stupid demon tribes and clans tearing each other to pieces, since they enjoyed chaos so much and wouldn’t fall in line unless the Junshang constantly breathed down their neck. But soon he remembered nobody would let him alone or even living, for the blood running down his veins – and his children wouldn’t be left alone either, for the same reason.

 

Children. More than one. Luo Binghe wanted to giggle as he thought of it, the back of his throat tickling as he pictured yet another little brat with curly hair – wait, no, his soon-to-be eldest whelp looked like he would have straight locks, maybe that one would be the same – and dark eyes, toddling around the Palace and getting to eat as much as he wanted, and nobody would dare to beat him for daring to be hungry.

 

Now, if only Luo Binghe could make Shen Jiu understand he ought to act like a proper, loving mother – the huli jing had no other choice, he wouldn’t be allowed to escape the Demon Realm, allowed to escape the Palace , his life would be spent between these four walls locking him in a courtyard so why would he insist on making himself unhappy and wretched ? Wouldn’t it be so much more comfortable, to dote and be doted on ?

 

Of course, Shen Qingqiu hadn’t been interested in gaining his students and martial siblings’ love, merely in terrifying them and lording his power over everyone he cowed into mindless obedience, and Luo Binghe wanted to grit his teeth as he remembered these awful days in Qing Jing Peak’s illusory peace and harmony, Xin Mo’s shrieking harmonics in the background of his memory.

 

He needed to calm down. These memories were nothing but that, memories. Now, Shen Qingqiu had been replaced by Shen Jiu. Soon, Shen Qingqiu would be fully erased by Shen Jiu.

 

Soon, Luo Binghe would finally have the loving, devoted consort he deserved.

 

 

Chapter 46

Pregnant.

 

Fucking pregnant.

 

The spider abomination – the male, not the one he was forced to endure day after day, not the one constantly chattering at him, not the one he was resigned to see every day just like you would grow resigned to a slave brand or a missing limb – dropped the news upon Shen Jiu as if it was a good thing. As if Shen Jiu was supposed to be happy about yet another parasite in his gut, sucking his vitality until it finally decided to see the world.

 

Why did women agree to do that, and more than once ? Shen Jiu honestly couldn’t understand, one of the many mysteries a male would never be able to fathom and Shen Jiu was male, fuck the swollen breasts on his chest and fuck the cunt between his legs.

 

Wait, no, no fucking the cunt, he didn’t want for the beast to come back for more, he already was unrelenting in his lustful, disgusting want, this need for Shen Jiu’s body that led to the current situation.

 

That was because of the beast, if he wasn’t such a depraved, debased monster, then the former Qing Jing Peak Lord wouldn’t have to live through this nightmare again.

 

Shen Jiu didn’t want another brat. He didn’t want the brat he already had – and that had been a while since he last saw the whelp, maybe the beastling realized it was unwanted and decided to die as a good little monster was supposed to do ? Shen Jiu really hoped so.

 

Now, if only the whelp’s sire also could croak, that would be perfect. As long as he abstained from dying while he was humping Shen Jiu, that is – impossible to imagine more undignified a demise, but alas, that was the lone moment of vulnerability the formerly human cultivator could exploit in order to engineer said demise. Ah well, he had been a slave to Qiu Jianluo and an accomplice to Wu Yanzi and a so-called martial brother to the other Cang Qiong Peak Lords, he had endured so much worse for the sake of much lesser causes.

 

He needed to do the deed quickly – before he was forced to whelp this new brat, or he well and truly would lose it. Even the mere idea of watching his belly bloat, feeling the little parasite kick his innards as it grew and grew, it was enough for Shen Jiu to be nauseous, puke threatening to spill in a smelly waterfall at his feet and splatter his bedsheets and attendants.

 

But if he had to act, Shen Jiu needed to convince the beast that he was harmless. That would be difficult, it had been too long since he had been forced to swallow his anger and play the downtrodden whipping boy, and he never had been the most skilled at it.

 

He needed for the beast and both spider abominations to believe he couldn’t possibly try and harness the wet, dark qi present in his body – and it was so fucking difficult, so sparse because the beast would take it all when he came to fuck Shen Jiu into oblivion in exchange for his dry sunshine of lifeforce, so slippery because it wouldn’t answer to the methods Shen Jiu had learned when he was struggling to build his fragile foundation and later his endlessly unstable golden core…

 

So slippery, so whimsical, almost like a feral animal wanting to play but wondering if the shadow hidden in the tall grasses was prey or predator ? Yes, that was it, how would one tame a beast ?

 

When looking to bridle a horse, one had to sit in the meadow and stay quiet and still – then the equines would come closer, and when the one you wanted was close enough, you would slowly creep towards it, slowly because it would bolt at the slightest inkling of greed, and you threw the bridle over its head. You needed to look harmless , because the horse wouldn’t feel imperiled but curious, even playful for some.

 

Frankly, Shen Jiu would rather look harmless for the wet, dark qi produced by his disgusting body than for the beast – at least using the qi would be rewarding and lead to something useful instead of dreadful humiliation.

 

Of course, using that dark, wet qi would be the point from where he couldn’t return, wouldn’t it ? He wouldn’t be able to claim he was different from demonkind if he started to use qi in a way that wasn’t spiritual cultivation – wielding his lifeforce as if it was a tamed hound to unleash against his foes rather than a finely crafted, carefully honed blade, that would mark him as a demon through and through.

 

How much had Shen Jiu to lose yet ? He lost his freedom, he lost Qi-ge, he lost his body, he lost the right to decide who he allowed to touch his body, he lost the right to not sire offspring, he lost his very humanity, now he was losing even the flimsy claim to be above demonkind, to be different from this barbarian species that relished in sowing chaos and defiling everything and everyone on their path, even their own people and lands.

 

He rather wanted to cry, but that wouldn’t do any good – a lesson he learned a long time ago, he couldn’t remember when exactly, was it while he was with Qiu Jianluo ? No, it was even before that, when Qi-ge still loved him… he had yelled at Qi-ge for sobbing over a dead bird in the gutter, a tiny sparrow they couldn’t even eat because it was covered in dirty gunge, why the fuck would a bird care about being mourned by a starving street urchin ? Qi-ge could be so stupid, really, so hopelessly sentimental…

 

Shen Jiu missed Qi-ge, so much it felt like the phantom pain an amputee would complain about when it rained too hard. Shen Jiu missed Qi-ge, enough for his eyes to burn with wetness that wouldn’t spill on his cheeks because he forgot how one was supposed to cry, it had been too long since he stopped allowing himself to be that weak, too long since he was a dumb brat that didn’t know better.

 

Maybe it would have been a mercy for him to be killed at this point in time, long before Qiu Jianluo, long before Wu Yanzi, long before the Cang Qiong Mountain and the beast in this stuffy, smothering palace. The world seemed to enjoy harming little kids.

 

Maybe it would be a mercy for this whelp in Shen Jiu’s womb to perish before it could be born. If it lived, it would have a beast for sire, and Shen Jiu wouldn’t stand to care for it anyway. Truly, it would be like this Buddhist folk tale about the princess that drowned her infant sons to allow them to reincarnate in Heaven instead of dragging their existences on Earth.

 

Murder seen as compassionate, when morality commonly held it was motivated by nothing but greed and malevolence. People could be really funny sometimes, especially where you expected it the less – paupers and monks weren’t supposed to be anything but miserable and quietly suffering under the nobility’s boot, they weren’t supposed to be people at all.

 

They weren’t supposed to look at death as anything but deliverance from this wretched coil of existence, and that Shen Jiu understood maybe a tad too well.

 

 

Chapter 47

Shan Su’s Empress was depressed by the prospect of becoming a mother yet again, no need to be a fortune-teller on the same level than the famed Madam Meiyin in order to see it.

 

The spider demoness could understand why the huli jing wouldn’t care about spawning again, giving birth to live younglings was horrendously uncomfortable, be it the process itself or the need to carry them in your guts for several months, something that made you forget how pleasant the act of conceiving could be, especially when your bedmate knew what he was doing instead of wondering in which hole he was supposed to stick his cock.

 

Really, laying eggs to be fertilized later was much more reasonable, if someone wanted to ask for her opinion. Still, that wasn’t her fault if Junshang and his favoured consort didn’t have the right equipment to minimize the embarrassment and pain.

 

Now her Empress had nothing to look forward but the repeat of what happened when they whelped Junshang’s firstborn, and they were fully aware of it because Shan Xu was a dumbass who couldn’t hold his tongue when he was too excited by the prospect of yet another specimen to study – something about inheritance patterns, how it might potentially explain why huli jing were so rare or why the Heavenly strain was considered potent above all, Shan Su hadn’t understood this part too well, it was hard to stop her brother when he was rambling.

 

At least someone else than Junshang was ecstatic about this upcoming new heir, Shan Su was pretty sure that the whole Lower Realm was already praying for the new Sacred Ruler’s heir by his fox consort to die before his fifth year, partly out of political ambitions, partly because of the lingering fear that the brat would take after his mother.

 

Shan Su had intervened thrice to prevent an assassination against the whelp and his nursemaid – or it would be more truthful to confess Sha Hualing intervened in her stead, because the Sha Saintess might not approve of Luo Binghe’s taste regarding Empresses but she was very invested in keeping him sane and not bent on utterly slaughtering the demon nobility in a fit of wrathful revenge for the loss of his offspring.

 

Three murder attempts were uncommonly low for a scion of a noble bloodline, so either the Palace’s defenses were that good at preventing more, or Luo Binghe was just that terrifying with his obvious insanity – seriously, wielding Xin Mo and fucking a huli jing, the Sacred Ruler couldn’t reek more of crazy if he wanted to make an effort in this direction. People likely were holding back in the hopes that they would manage to put a crony of them in the potential Crown Prince’s retinue when he would grow up a bit, and for this plan to succeed they needed a living Crown Prince.

 

You couldn’t very well rule a country if you were dead, no matter the opinions of this backwards tribe from the Southern Plains – Sha Hualing once told her of that bunch of hillbillies living right there in the desert, addled by the sun and the merciless heat to the point they would mummify their dead and claim the mummies were speaking to them. What a waste of good meat, and what a waste of time if the dead really insisted to stay stuck in their decaying corpses instead of moving on the wheel of rebirth.

 

When one was struggling to live another day in the Lower Realm, it was disturbingly easy to turn mad or to grow rather kooky. The spider demoness guessed that was why humans couldn’t stand demons, pampered as they were by their fertile and safe lands. Well, unless they wanted to cultivate – for all the fighting and slaughtering between both factions, demonkind and the jianghu were startingly similar in their quest for gaining power and influence. Wasn’t that ironic ?

 

Maybe it was a bit sad, but sadness wasn’t something a demon would agree to feel. That was a luxury, because sadness meant you got attached to something or someone, and that was a weakness because you would crumple and shatter after losing the thing or the one you cared for.

 

A coddled Empress certainly could feel sad and mope because they didn’t want to bear more children – even if Shan Su wouldn’t feel any sympathy for Shen Jiu. Since the huli jing wasn’t allowed to directly involve themselves in the Demon Realm’s day-to-day ruling, their usefulness was rather limited to their function of sex toy and baby-maker for Junshang. Nothing to do but wait for the Sacred Ruler to fuck them and for their waist to balloon.

 

What a meaningless existence, and of course the Empress was dismayed over it.

 

Following the initial freak-out – the huli jing almost ripped Shan Xu’s eye in their fury and handmaiden or not, Shan Su would have slapped them for the daring if Junshang hadn’t been there to prevent the injury – Shen Jiu was now busy laying on their bed, refusing to stand up or even look at anyone trying to talk at them. Classical hints of someone who lost the will to live.

 

Also classical hints of someone busy cooking a trap and waiting for a stupid shmuck to walk right inside said trap to be devoured or gruesomely maimed. Were huli jing ambush predators ? That was when she had to ponder over this kind of question that Shan Su grew annoyed with everyone having ever fought a fox spirit because they wouldn’t give details about their lifestyle or hunting preferences, they merely repeated it was for the best to cut their head immediately after identifying their bloodline !

 

That was fucking annoying, having to guess, having to watch her target and wondering if she was completely misinterpretating the clues, if she needed to comfort her Empress or warn Junshang to be wary of a potential agressor, one that was already in the Palace. Yes, as a spider demoness Shan Su was used to complicated plotting but that didn’t mean she enjoyed it !

 

And Sha Hualing refused to understand her complains because the Sha Saintess merely wanted for the Empress to die for yesterday, and if Luo Binghe was too blind to see the danger that was too bad but idiots weren’t blessed with a long lifespan in the Demon Realm anyway. Idiots wanting to rule suffered an even shorter lifespan.

 

It was hard to argue against Sha Hualing when she said that, no matter how much Shan Su repeated there was a quite thin frontier between stupidity and greatness, and Luo Binghe made for a very interesting ruler because he would mix both in variable amounts. If one needed to submit and spit on their pride as a demon, well, one could as well pick the candidate that would ensure your life would never get boring. After that, it was a matter of staying far enough from the madness to never wind up as the entertainment for today.

 

Survival always was a matter of balance in the Demon Realm, or even the Mortal Realm, it was a matter of knowing when one would be better served by running away or daring the opponent to fight. Be you noble or a lowly slave, be your dwelling a wasteland or a palace filled with treasuries beyond imagination, it would be the same.

 

It was about knowing when one was beaten – and when one wasn’t. And Shan Su was unsure about the Empress’ knowledge on this peculiar matter.

 

 

Chapter 48

It was exhausting, trying to familiarize himself with the wet, dark qi that laid torpid in his meridians, a black poison, a black rot that always was lurking under the surface, deep in the watery depths of Shen Qingqiu’s sea of qi, waiting to be noticed, waiting to be called upon in order to spread and taint everything it will ever touch.

 

Shen Jiu wanted to puke as the wet darkness started to twitch and shiver under his focus, he wanted to scream and rip his face and scratch his fucking skin off until he was nothing but a bleeding, disgusting mess, ugly within and without, no more pretty appearance to hide behind, no more lie thrust upon him, no more mask to prevent the truth from being clear in daylight.

 

But what would be the point, when he was constantly watched ? Also, he decided to use that ugliness deep inside him, he would make use of that in order to destroy the beast and so he had no time to lament his own decisions, when you have picked a path to tread, you have no right to bitch and moan about the mud and the crap and the animals wondering if you would be a tasty meal. Surely that would be nothing but the height of hypocrisy, and for all his flaws Shen Jiu wasn’t a hypocrite, no matter how much his martial siblings sneered at him for having been apprenticed under a demonic cultivator.

 

Wu Yanzi’s cultivation path – this wasn’t the same path as this, not at all. Wu Yanzi stole other people’s cultivations, Xiao Jiu actually saw him ripping a rogue cultivator’s golden core and crunch it in his mouth, it made the same noises as tanghulu in Xiao Jiu’s own mouth, and just like tanghulu the golden core was swallowed and digested and consumed.

 

Really, it wasn’t that much of a surprise for the man to be labelled evil in the jianghu’s eyes, for his name to be reviled today still. Who wouldn’t hate such an shameless thief, after all ? Stealing lives and blood and lifeforce for the sake of his own ambition and comfort.

 

At least the dark wetness was nothing but Shen Jiu’s, the taint originated from the former Qing Jing Peak Lord only – what would have Wu Yanzi done with that, Shen Jiu wondered, if he had learned his so-called disciple was a monster playing at being human ? Would have he tried to consume Xiao Jiu too ? Would have he been poisoned by the attempt ? Because Shen Jiu was nothing but poison, everything he tried to touch he spoiled and destroyed, just look at Qi-ge, just look at Liu Qingge.

 

Hopefully, his poison will be strong enough to overcome the beast’s ungodly regeneration – hopefully the beast won’t be immune from gorging himself night after night on Shen Jiu’s qi, drawing the wet and the dark as much as he could into his body while filling Shen Jiu with the dry sunshine of his own lifeforce and his seed, leaving the formerly human cultivator stuffed and soiled and shamefully wanting for more.

 

With the beast’s unending appetite, it was hard to try and retain even a measly amount of the wet darkness in his body, to be sheltered in his meridians as he used to do with spiritual, untainted qi when Xiao Jiu still was a mere outer disciple on Qing Jing, working his ass off to prove he wasn’t lesser because he had been taken as a charity case and so late, too late to fully unlock his potential, and he did it, he forged a golden core even if his foundation was unstable and doomed him to suffer qi deviation after qi deviation, he still did it when everybody else living in the Twelve Peaks believed he wouldn’t hack it, believed he would be thrown in the streets again to starve.

 

Now he couldn’t feel his golden core anymore. Was it possible to create a demon core ? Surely it was, otherwise high-ranking demons wouldn’t be such a threat to the jianghu – not on the level Tianlang-jun managed to reach.

 

Shen Jiu was pretty sure that the beast hadn’t forged a demon core – all he did was relying on his cursed blade, the one sweating malevolence even when sheathed in dark leather, and in order to appease said blade he would fuck Shen Jiu and steal his dark wetness. Wasn’t that funny, the beast acted just like Wu Yanzi, and Shen Jiu would have laughed if it had been actually funny and not merely his despair talking. That and his disgust, because the beast was so fucking lazy, he would rather use tools and people than making an effort to improve himself.

 

Really, the former Qing Jing Peak Lord ought to have allowed Liu Qingge to steal the brat to Bai Zhan, he would have quickly killed the beastling and that would have been it – for all Qing Jing derided Bai Zhan as filled with meatheads and brutes barely able to read the simplest sentences, they nonetheless acknowledged the sheer violence in their physical conditioning. The final product – their finest product – had been Liu Qingge, the War God that would break steel swords with his mere skin because he couldn’t be bothered to dodge, this way was more efficient in intimidating the shit out of an invading army.

 

Of course the only person that could kill the brute would be Liu Qingge himself. Nobody else would be strong enough for the feat – nobody else would be dumb enough to dare.

 

The beast would have perished in less than a week, left to the War God’s nonexistent mercy and idea of good training – moaning and wailing all the while it wasn’t fair, everyone was mean and he hated them because they wouldn’t waste their precious study time in drying his tears, this wretch had been skilled in sobbing rivers and nothing else in spite of the hallmasters’ attempt to drill some knowledge in this curly head.

 

Unfortunately, Shen Jiu couldn’t muster the physical might to attempt a physical assault on the beast, every bite and clawing of his easily diverted by his target when he came at night and took his pleasure. So poisoning it would be, and that meant creating a demon core for the lone goal of making it explode, felling the beast and Shen Jiu and the unborn parasite in a single stroke.

 

He just needed to hide what he was doing from the spider abominations. The beast wouldn’t notice anything – far too lacking in intelligence for that, he was cunning but animals could be cunning and play tricks on the hunter – but both spiders fussed over his health and checked on his meridians and patted his belly when he wasn’t hungry and refused to eat. If Shen Jiu needed to deceive someone, that would be these sibling horrors.

 

He would have to play the depression card to the hilt – not that difficult, meditation rather looked like sleep and it was quite hard to leave the bed when the whole world was arrayed against your lowly self. Shen Jiu nonetheless had made a point of rising up because he never cared about the world to begin with, but the spider abominations didn’t know that. They might be fooled if he was very careful.

 

It always paid to be careful, in this world or the one near.

 

 

Chapter 49

When it finally happened, everyone was very surprised – but in hindsight, they ought to have been prepared for that, huli jing were the embodiment of trickery and nastiness, weren’t they ?

 

Still. You couldn’t very well slaughter your main food provider if you didn’t want to starve in very short order, especially when said food provider was your only shield against the masses howling for your blood, unless you were hopelessly pining for death or so deeply stupid that it would be a mercy to be murdered and prevent your dumbassery from plaguing the realm further.

 

So Shan Su would freely admit that no, she hadn’t planned for her Empress to make an attempt against Junshang’s life. Not after almost two years of relative peace, with Shen Jiu being content to torment their handmaidens and throw tantrums and bear children to their lord and master.

 

How stupid, the first rule when hunting was to wait and wait and wait until the moment was right, until the prey felt so safe that they wouldn’t watch their surroundings anymore. Of course a huli jing would know that – and shamelessly exploit it.

 

As usual, everybody had left the bedroom when Junshang came for his nightly visit – some lineages had no qualms with fucking their spouses and lovers in front of their servants, seeing that as showing off their superior skill in love-making, but the Heavenly strain never had been one of these and Luo Binghe had been raised in the Mortal Realm, they were infamously prudish there. So when the young Sacred Ruler wanted for his Empress to attend his bodily needs, he would order everyone out, even the guards.

 

That wasn’t like the Empress was allowed a weapon – yes, they still had their claws and teeth, but Junshang quickly healed with his blood parasites and really, getting a mite violent and bloody between the sheets wasn’t that uncommon. It actually was considered a mark of great passion, to want for your lover to bear a reminder of a night spent together.

 

Then Junshang yelped – actually yelped, his voice more surprised and wary than pleasured, but nobody worried yet. Until the explosion.

 

Well, calling that an explosion – yes, it was that but it wouldn’t encompass the whole experience, the feeling of utter stillness and darkness and dampness that washed over the whole wing in the Palace, a feeling that made Shan Su shiver deep inside her bone marrow and blink her many eyes as she wondered if she suddenly had been thrown in the depths of a lake, right where the light couldn’t reach anymore.

 

After such a phaenomena, of course she rushed back inside the bedroom, she needed to confirm if Junshang and the Empress had felt it and if so, would they need medical help.

 

They did. Luo Binghe had been busy gaping and choking when she opened the door, struggling to force his heart to keep beating and his lungs to keep breathing instead of shutting down, shivering like a wet dog as he was laying over the unconscious Shen Jiu who wasn’t breathing at all, his face pale as bone after being licked clean from any hint of flesh, barely a hint of yellow in the white.

 

The spider demoness had howled for her brother, because she couldn’t face this crisis on her own, he was the one who studied medicine and two healers could keep two patients alive. Leaving Junshang to die would be a very bad idea, but leaving the very pregnant Empress to die when the Heavenly half-breed was unhealthy possessive of his little family, well, that wasn’t a palatable option either.

 

Fortunately, Shan Xu came quickly and immediately declared it was a case of yin poisoning. Quite the rare affliction, that, demons and even humans were more likely to suffer an excess of yang energy, mainly because yang was life and much easier to find and collect. It ended up in wondefully violent rampages if left untreated, and could be halted in its tracks if you could guess that the sufferer growing short-tempered and aggressive wasn’t a personality flaw but a genuine medical condition.

 

It was quite hard, preventing yang poisoning when you lived in the Demon Realm.

 

Yin poisoning on the other hand – Shan Xu was gushing over it, so uncommon, wasn’t he lucky to have witnessed it in his lifetime !

 

« Very lucky » Luo Binghe snarled in an exhausted tone, obviously not as ecstatic as his court physician since he had been the one felled low by the affliction. « What is that supposed to do ? »

 

« This is very simple » Shan Xu admitted. « Yin is quiet and darkness and the lack of movement, so one suffering from an excess of yin will merely see their body – stop. Heartbeat, thought, breathing, everything necessary for life to continue will cease. A painless demise, and a very effective one. »

 

The Heavenly half-demon looked at his physician, his crimson eyes narrowed, before turning his attention towards Shan Su who still was fussing over the huli jing.

 

« How fares my Empress ? »

 

At these words, the spider demoness allowed her lips to pull themselves in a hideous grin, filled with yellowish fangs.

 

« It seems they had been quite naughty. And so smart, for hiding the reserves of yin enery so well – that’s only now that this lowly one can see it, when I was constantly peering at their meridians… Truly a cunning mind, worthy of my service if this servant may say so. »

 

Junshang’s presence, even diminished by the recent assault against his health, was just as terrifying and oppressive as when he was bent on making an example of someone who had annoyed him into murder – that was depressingly common, the young ruler enjoyed spilling blood and his threshold for patience was extremely low for anyone not fucking him.

 

« Congratulations, your Highness, the Empress has attempted to kill you and you have survived » she declared. « They retained a part of their yin energy and refined it until it was enough for a high-ranked demon to drop dead on the spot from ingesting it, and when your Highness came to bestow your favour upon the huli jing, they forced the yin energy down your own meridians. »

 

« Oh, so that was why Junshang’s meridians and core were so cold when this lowly physician poked at them ! » Shan Xu marveled. « Was Junshang’s Heavenly inheritance the reason why he wasn’t killed from the shock, or was it because he grew used to consume huge amounts of yin from dual cultivation with the Empress, so even that enormous dosage could be managed... »

 

Obviously Luo Binghe cared not for the spider demon’s scholastic fugue, his mien growing unsettled and infuriated and – betrayed ? Shan Su blinked, but it still was there, as the Heavenly half-breed stared at the slumped Shen Jiu.

 

Ah well, a young ruler tended to be naive in the first years after their crowning. If they lived long enough to become worthy of remembrance, they learned to mistrust everything and everyone, even themselves for the most paranoid ones.

 

Luo Binghe would learn, and he would learn swiftly after such a kick in the pants. Nothing like your spouse turning in your would-be murderer to ensure you would be motivated to improve your vigilance – and maybe the half-breed would stop being too indulgent with the huli jing.

 

Shan Su still could hope for this latter point.

 

 

Chapter 50

Shen Jiu hoped he wouldn’t open his eyes again after forcing what he labeled a demon core into the beast’s meridians to wreck havoc in his system. Really, he ought to have known better, the gods delighted in his misery.

 

When he woke up, his body was sore – not only between his legs, but everywhere, even his hair was hurting – and tingling, he could feel the little parasite softly kicking his kidney, oh, and the beast was staring at him.

 

Looking angry. Good, Shen Jiu had no stomach for the half-breed when he played at being the doting husband at his wife’s beck and call. He was a monster, he always had been a monster, he always had been a dirty liar, even when he was failing his studies on Qing Jing Peak, but Shen Jiu never had been fooled by his attempts to impersonate an innocent little lamb.

 

Innocence couldn’t survive very long in this world, it had to be stamped out. Anyone claiming they retained bits and pieces of it was a coddled idiot or willingly blind or a liar.

 

« Shen Jiu » the beast said, his voice low and seething. « You attempted to kill me. »

 

Shen Jiu bared his teeth. He could feel how long and pointy they were, and he wanted nothing more than bite down on his lips, bite down on his tongue and chew until he couldn’t taste anymore, until his lower face was utterly ruined.

 

He already tried that once or thrice, only for the spider abomination to stop him and force remedies down his throat, leaving him intact. Now he was reduced to imagining the deed.

 

« Obviously I failed. »

 

The crimson huadian between the beast’s brows shone and glistened as freshly spilled blood, mimicking the scarlet eyes beneath – twin pools of blood in which ugly creatures swam in a frenzy, snapping and eager to shred each other.

 

« You would dare to raise your hand against me ? After everything I gave to you ? After everything I did for you ? »

 

Was he really that dumb ? Shen Jiu rolled his eyes and wondered how the fuck the little freak managed to stay on his Qing Jing Peak more than three days if that had been the level of intelligence he was operating on. Maybe the other Disciples had been far too happy to saddle him with the laundry and cooking to let him go, spoiled young masters and mistresses would seize any opportunity to force an obedient slave into making their chores…

 

« Would I dare to kill a rapist ? Absolutely » he declared.

 

The beast reeled backwards, his expression stunned as if a frog had been dropped in his collar.

 

« How am I a rapist ? » he fired back. « I gave you nothing but pleasure. I gave you children ! »

 

Shen Jiu snarled. The sound vibrated low in the raw flesh of his throat, painful yet soothing. After so many years stewing in his own bitterness and grudges, anger was more than the formerly human cultivator’s second nature, it could be called his usual state of being.

 

« Have I ever asked for your disgusting parasites to take root in my body ? » he hissed. « Have I ever asked for you to ride me every night ? No, of course not, but you wouldn’t even care about that, you just came and took your pleasure again and again, because you’re nothing but a beast fancying itself a civilized being ! »

 

« If this venerable one is a beast in spite of ascending to a throne, uniting the demon tribes and surviving the Endless Abyss, then what does it make of Shen Jiu ? » the half-breed sneered. « You are nothing beyond me ! You keep on living because I won’t let my vassals rip you apart ! »

 

Because not killing someone was supposed to be praiseworthy ? For fuck’s sake, Shen Jiu would almost burst out laughing if he wasn’t so annoyed.

 

« I am nothing ? This lord ruled over the Qing Jing Peak of the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, he whipped brats into cultivators and Imperial officials alike, and he never lost a single fên moaning and complaining because life was unfair. Look at you, beast, crawling back to me night after night to beg for crumbs of tenderness when you could have slaughtered me and fulfilled your thirst for revenge. Are you sure this isn’t you who is nothing beyond your pathetic, childish obsession for this master ? »

 

« I AM NOT PATHETIC ! » the beast howled, so loud that the walls shook and the cursed sword hanging at his waist rattled in its sheath, and Shen Jiu idly prayed for the blade to slit his throat but the half-breed reined his temper in, what a fucking waste. « I – I trusted Shizun, to be a righteous, an upstanding teacher, someone who wouldn’t harden his heart against me – you owe me, Shen Jiu, you owe me this care... »

 

Shen Jiu snorted.

 

« I owe you nothing at all, beast . Nobody owe you anything. You have to struggle and earn every single thing important in life, and you do that by your deeds. Congratulations for earning my contempt by being a spineless wretch, and congratulations for earning my hatred by being an hypocritical rapist. This is certainly what you rightfully deserve. »

 

How disgusting, to see the beast in all his towering, dark-clad glory to be so utterly shaken, so completely brought low as Shen Jiu uttered these words. One would believe the formerly human cultivator had stolen the cursed blade – no thanks, this blade reeked of miasma and his meridians already were in a pitiful state, he wouldn’t worsen his health so – and shove it into this carelessly bared chest – even the flowers from the Warm Red Pavilion wouldn’t be that shameless and expose that much, and they had no more chastity to lose.

 

Qi-ge could be proud, Shen Jiu finally had stumbled upon someone more repellant than the Qiong Ding Peak Lord when he was whimpering apologies after apologies, without even explaining why…

 

But Qi-ge wasn’t here, and Shen Jiu was stuck into Hell with the beast.

 

After a while, the half-breed finally looked at him again, his eyes dry and lifeless and the ugly brownish crimson of crusted blood.

 

« One day, Shen Jiu, you won’t even remember these words. One day, you will look at me as if I am your entire world – and I will be. »

 

Still rejecting reality, huh ? Obviously the beast was far too stupid to register any kind of useful information no matter how many times you would scream it in his ear.

 

« One day, I will kill you » Shen Jiu promised, « and I won’t even shed a tear over your corpse, because you still will be nothing to me. »

 

After saying that, he closed his eyes and breathed out, uncaring of the beast potentially answering to that. He had officially reached his threshold for abject idiocy today, and he was sore from his failed assassination attempt.

 

He would need to do better next time, but he suspected he wouldn’t be allowed to rebuild the demon core by the spider abominations. What a fucking drag, that was why he hoped for it to work on the first try, it would have been so much less hassle and destroyed three demons at once, the beast, the unborn parasite and Shen Jiu himself.

 

Of course it had been far too good for it to happen.

 

 

Chapter 51

Sha Hualing wouldn’t crow at every corner in the Palace that she knew it when she heard of the huli jing finally making its move and attempting to murder Junshang while he was busy taking his marital rights, she enjoyed living and Luo Binghe wasn’t a merciful ruler when people called attention to his mistakes.

 

However, she wouldn’t claim she was surprised that it happened at all. When one was crazy enough to marry a fox spirit, you were dooming yourself to spend what was left of your lifespan watching over your shoulder and mistrusting everything slipped in your cup or your plate.

 

What was more of a shock to her was Junshang refusing to kill the huli jing for its crime, even after the creature had revealed its untrustworthy, treacherous nature. Alright, it was carrying his secondborn, so the Sha Saintess could understand if he had wanted for a potential heir to be born before slaying the mother, a ruler needed to have their pick of potential successors to ensure their estate wouldn’t be run into the ground after their demise.

 

Yet Luo Binghe wouldn’t even do that. He had commanded for the huli jing to be closely watched until it whelped the brat, before storming out of the Palace with Mobei-jun, obviously intent on quelling the hints of rebellion in the West, these peasants refused to know their place on the pecking ladder, then he came back right in time for his spawn’s birth, yet another male showing nothing but Heavenly inheritance without a single hint of fox, and he merely ordered for the huli jing to stay imprisoned in its bedroom !

 

How was that different from what he already did ?

 

Really, Sha Hualing had sworn herself to a madman and she wondered why she kept following Luo Binghe when he obviously couldn’t care about staying alive, you were supposed to keep your distances from anyone dumb enough to lack a survival instinct because there were pretty good odds for them to cause collateral damage when they ultimately croaked.

 

Wait, she knew why she entered his service, that was because he wielded Xin Mo. When the madman refused to let the Endless Abyss consume him whole and instead stole this fucking sword from the ungodly place, you gave him everything he wanted, be it your utter loyalty or your body – the latter wasn’t that unpleasant, Luo Binghe had a nice face and nice muscles and nice stamina in bed, but Sha Hualing found herself favouring her dear poisonous spider as her bedmate.

 

At least Shan Su was baffled too by their Junshang’s behaviour, even if she was far too enthusiastic about studying the huli jing and recording her findings for posterity – as if demonkind could record something longer than a generation, warlords enjoyed burning or breaking their conquered lands and people’s history while slaughtering anyone able to remember someone else ruling before their arrival.

 

« If that is what love leads people to do, then I shall endeavour to murder anyone making me feel this way » the spider demoness bluntly declared, cuddled against Sha Hualing’s breast as they were hidden in their secluded nest. « This one cares too much about her wits and has spent too much time honing them to lose them in such a disgusting, ridiculous manner. »

 

The Sha Saintess giggled – her darling spider was so lovely as she spoke of killing and murder in such a casual tone – refusing to care about her heart skipping a beat.

 

(Shan Su would murder anyone she falls in love with, yet she never even tried to kill Sha Hualing, not even once, not even as play-acting)

 

« But, seriously, am I the only one to worry about the huli jing being left free to plot again ? » she said after her laughing fit died.

 

Shan Su snorted.

 

« Of course not. Or have you no ears to hear the handmaidens bemoaning their fate and Junshang’s staunch refusal to save them from their duty to attend the Empress by cutting the huli jing's head ? »

 

« Still unsure it would work » the Saintess muttered in her darling spider’s silken hair, idly wondering if she ought to start kissing the tan nape and shoulders.

 

« Cutting the head or ripping the heart is quite effective to kill a demon no matter their lineage. This one heard about Heavenly demons being wary of the possibility, and everybody knows of their potent self-healing ability » the trained nurse pointed. « And huli jing being killed on the spot immediately after being identified, well, it means they are vulnerable to something, aren’t they ? »

 

Sha Hualing never thought of that. Of course, that likely was because the tale of the human exorcist who came to slay Daji and ultimately couldn’t because he was mesmerized by her radiant beauty made for a far better tale, so tragic and gruesome, to be so close and fail in fulfilling your self-imposed duty.

 

She personally couldn’t see why Junshang was so obsessed by the huli jing. If he wanted a pretty face to warm his bed, he could have beauties aplenty as he wandered through the Demon Realm – demonesses actually threw themselves at him in the hope of being noticed and blessed with the best night of lovemaking they would ever know. Yet it seemed Luo Binghe indeed was a male, with the sheer bull-headedness it involved and all the disasters it caused.

 

She would have to hope for his newfound wanderlust to keep going strong – alright, he was the Sacred Ruler of all demonkind and a dereliction of his duty didn’t sound good for the future, but Tianlang-jun did that all the time when he held the throne !

 

On the other hand, Tianlang-jun already had been pretty well established and known in the Lower Realm when he ascended, at least thirty-three years of sowing his wild oats and battling people he misliked on a whim and infuriating his would-be vassals. Luo Binghe’s ascension had been akin to lightning – a sudden flash coming from blue skies, startling everyone by its swiftness and leaving them frantically blinking the light from their dazzled eyes.

 

Yes, that was a good simile for this Luo Binghe, a bolt of lightning that dazzled and startled and roared and would kill when you had the infortune to be on his path. Quickly coming, but would he disappear just as quickly ? Lightning wasn’t known for being lasting, after all. Would Luo Binghe’s rule come to a swift end, too, if he stubbornly kept on ignoring the many warnings he heard ?

 

Crud, Sha Hualing would have to plan for a way to escape the fallout from this potential disaster – when a ruler died, be it in an accident or natural causes or at war or because someone got lucky with their murderous impulses, a purge among the nobility was impossible to elude. Since she was one of the current Junshang’s most trusted, the Saintess really needed to take steps that would ensure her survival.

 

Would she include her dear poisonous spider in these plans ? Shan Su was deeply self-serving and strongly independent, but she also wished to keep her brother alive and far away from her matriarch so she might accept to follow Sha Hualing in the Southern Plains for that alone, even if they stopped fucking.

 

Something to consider and keep in mind, if the Sha Saintess trusted the spider demoness enough or decided the other woman was valuable for her skill in poisoning and healing.

 

(she carefully avoids thinking that she might love this person, even if her heart is skipping a beat and hurting)

 

 

Chapter 52

They took the smaller parasite away from Shen Jiu immediately after it forced its way out of the formerly human cultivator’s body, without even the decency to be a stillborn, howling and screaming as a handmaiden cradled it in her arms before fleeing in the hallway.

 

Shen Jiu couldn’t care less about the tiny abomination’s fate after that. Maybe it would die, maybe it wouldn’t, but at least he didn’t have to carry it in his gut anymore, feeling it kick and flail and greedily suck on his qi as it grew and grew.

 

Several of the handmaidens looked at him askew in the days following the birth. They likely disapproved his lack of maternal instinct, as if having a womb meant you obviously were supposed to fawn over any dirty, stupid brat thrusted upon you. As if Shen Jiu meant to have a womb instead of the beast forcing it upon him, along with a cunt to fuck as much as he wanted, the lustful, unfilial wretch.

 

Not so lustful, nowaday, after the tongue lashing Shen Jiu gave him when the murder attempt failed. The former Qing Jing Peak Lord wasn’t complaining about finally being left alone at night, about not having to suffer the beast’s foolish domestic delusions, but he nonetheless felt wary.

 

Wary and maybe a smidge hungry – maybe more than a smidge – but he had been a slave brat and a servant in the Qiu household and Wu Yanzi’s so-called disciple, hunger was an old friend and even cut off from his golden core, he could practise inedia so it wasn’t like it would actually kill him.

 

No, what might kill him, as always, was the beast. Shen Jiu wasn’t that bothered by the prospect as long as he could drag the half-breed in front of King Yama with him, but he would like to be warned. Certainly, a change in long-ingrained habits would be a good reason to expect the worse, especially from an unstable brat who would rather listen to the obviously cursed sword at his belt than show one inkling of critical thought.

 

The spider abomination – the female one – refused to agree with him on the matter. How she guessed his thoughts, he couldn’t know, it wasn’t like he was speaking his mind aloud and he did his best to cultivate a frozen mien that couldn’t betray him, a strategist and Peak Lord from the most famed sect in the jianghu needed that in order to survive even the low-level politics.

 

« Junshang cares far too much about his Empress » she declared, « even if your Majesty does everything in your power to slay him. Really dumb of him, but what can you expect from a male ? They’re hopeless as a rule. »

 

Shen Jiu likely ought to have been offended since for most of his life, he went around with something very male between his legs, but when he remembered Yue Qingyuan and this brute Liu Qingge, well… it was hard to claim that the spider abomination didn’t have a point.

 

He still hated having breasts and a cunt, because he never asked for them to begin with, and the beast lavishing attention upon these unwanted grafts only increased his loathing for them. If Shen Jiu could choose anew, he would try to be a man again – much safer. Not entirely safe because nobody was ever wholly safe in this world, but safer than being a woman. The world enjoyed hurting women and reducing them to helplessness and powerlessness.

 

Even the title of Empress was an empty one, since an Empress could be demoted and sent to a Cold Palace merely because the Son of Heaven grew infatuated with a prettier, younger maid who said sweet nothings and batted her eyelashes just right and wasn’t ruined yet by childbirth and nursing.

 

Empress. The spider abomination and the handmaidens called him an Empress. What a fucking travesty, when he was locked in this bedroom to rot, more a sex toy than anything else. He barely remembered the beast parading him in front of his court the time of a feast before sending him back to this room, never to be let outside again.

 

Really, how was this title supposed to not be a mockery of his former glory and influence as the Qing Jing Peak Lord ? The beast was petty enough for that.

 

And the spider abomination wasn’t much better, saying the title as if it meant Shen Jiu currently had power, looking at him with this unsufferable, almost expectant smirk, as if she was waiting for the formerly human cultivator to merely rip the cursed shackle around his throat and unleash his spiritual cultivation once more…

 

… Would she let him cultivate the dark qi now running through his meridians, instead of running to the beast ? No, she was brought there by the half-breed, she was under his employ, one of his creatures, she couldn’t be trusted.

 

But could Shen Jiu mistrust her ? Sometimes, as he observed her in the weak candlelight, the yellowish glint reflected by the multiple obsidian spheres of her eyes, he was tempted to say no to that question. To think she might not impede him as much as she could.

 

Perhaps he had been given this impression because of the other spider abomination, the male one who always was fascinated by his unexpected anatomy and seemed willing, able and ready to cut his belly open in order to marvel at the insides. She seemed fond and indulgent as she listened his ramblings, almost like an older sister doting on a younger sibling –

 

No, no he wouldn’t think of her this way. She was a demon and nothing else, one whom he couldn’t escape since she was always around, tutting as he slapped the handmaidens for flinching and blubbering meaningless apologies and pleas, snorting when he pointedly ignored the silk thread and needles waiting on the low table as a measly offering to relieve his boredom, humming as she stretched her long, long fingers in complex patterns as if she was drawing a spiderweb in the air.

 

Shen Jiu couldn’t help noticing things about her. Secluded to his bedroom as he was, barely allowed books or painting materials (likely because ink and paper could be used for arrays and talismans, and no demon would ever give a cultivator the opportunity to defend himself or slaughter his way out of Hell), surrounded by sniveling twits, he had nothing else to do.

 

At least she was more interesting to watch than the furniture. Even if she unsettingly grinned with long, far too numerous fangs glistening with the dampness of poison every time she noticed his glances.

 

At least she was female-shaped. Shen Jiu hated when men took notice of him, knowing what they would happily do when they could indulge themselves, what they did because they had the power and why did it matter, when it was a slave who was hurt ?

 

At least she wasn’t the beast. It was pretty hard to trump that kind of advantage, even if she was on the half-breed’s side. She wasn’t the one who raped Shen Jiu – she stood behind the door and she never said a word to lambast her master, but a servant quickly learned to never talk back to the Master, there laid the path to a whipping or a shallow grave in the courtyard.

 

She wasn’t the beast, and that shouldn’t have been such a comfort to Shen Jiu yet it was.

 

Chapter 53

How did he dare.

 

How did he dare !

 

Luo Binghe’s anger burned so hot that he would swear thin wisps of smoke rose from his skin, maybe his blood boiling in his veins and evaporating through his pores. Mobei-jun certainly looked at his sworn liege with all the wariness that the prospect deserved – a demon as powerful as the ruler in all but name of the Northern Mountains wouldn’t melt from high temperatures as his weaker subjects were prone to do, but the ice demon nonetheless loathed being near warm things and always chilled his beverage enough for frost to decorate the cup before drinking.

 

Xin Mo shrieking in his inner mind didn’t help either, and that certainly was shrieking. Obviously the sword wasn’t happy about having being stuck in the back of the new Sacred Ruler’s thoughts and was now taking its revenge by annoying the piss out of its wielder.

 

The cursed blade also had shown him images of Shen Jiu bereft of his limbs, Shen Jiu with his stomach slashed open and his innards spilling in a disgusting mess on his bedroom’s floor, Shen Jiu with his head cleanly separated from his shoulders by one mighty swing.

 

So very tempting, and Luo Binghe had almost allowed his bloodlust to take over his mind.

 

How did he dare. After everything I did for him !

 

However, Luo Binghe promised himself so very long ago in the Endless Abyss that he would be his own master, and nobody or nothing would ever force him to do their bidding no matter how much the demon half-breed found the prospect appealing or alignated with his own interests. He wouldn’t bow anymore, not after having his eyes open to the only road it would lead him to tread, the path of a measly slave who would die as a mangy dog in a dirty trash heap.

 

Also, killing Shen Jiu would have pleased the huli jing – it was obvious, and wasn’t that a surprise for the man to be so serene in front of his potential demise – and the Sacred Ruler wasn’t in the mood to give his Empress anything that the huli jing would enjoy.

 

But the Heavenly half-breed was angry still, and he couldn’t vent his anger on his faithful subordinates either – he wasn’t lowly scum cut from the same cloth as the former Qing Jing Peak Lord, even if his vassals and servants were demons and more used to rough handling than human teenagers – so he went in the countryside in order to personally fulfill some pleas for help that landed on his lap.

 

Much better than filling paperwork for somebody else to fix the problem. Luo Binghe got to murder wild beasts and sentient murderous trees with gleeful abandon, fucking a string of grateful maidens on his way – he wasn’t stupid, he knew these demonesses mainly wanted to boost their own strength by dual cultivating with a powerful partner and maybe fall pregnant in the hopes of becoming his mistress and live in the Palace, but the joke was on them, it was a miracle for the demonic half-breed to have two brats already, if one of these girls claimed she bore him a bastard then she was lying and he would crush her bastard offspring’s head in front of her before killing her.

 

People didn’t get to lie to him. Ming Fan lied all the time about Luo Binghe being lazy and stupid and unwilling to work hard, and one day his darling shixiong would be made to repent for this sin by losing his tongue. Without his tongue, he couldn’t lie – oh ! Maybe he ought to lose his lower jaw ? But that would need for the injury to be cauterized shut or Ming Fan would quickly die from shock and blood loss and he didn’t deserve a quick demise. It had to be painful, and it had to be very long.

 

How did he dare.

 

Revenge was a dish best served cold, cold enough for Mobei-jun to be appreciative, and Luo Binghe found wisdom in this maxim. So he wouldn’t punish Shen Jiu while his blood was running hot with the sting of betrayal and rejection. No, he would show himself creative.

 

Leaving had been the result of an impulse, but it could be exploited. A huli jing fed on yang energy – and since Shen Jiu had stumbled in the Demon Realm, since he had been brought to the Heavenly half-breed, the formerly human cultivator had always been well-fed. Allowed to partake in dual cultivation with the new Junshang, the most bountiful source of yang energy in the Lower Realm, and that every day except for Luo Binghe’s month-long campaign to fully unify the tribes and clans under his banner and make them bow to his authority.

 

But if Shen Jiu was dumb enough to bite the hand that fed him, but he wouldn’t get to eat anymore. Let him starve until he couldn’t even think – Luo Binghe had been a street urchin, then the son of a lowly washerwoman, more than often he went to sleep with his innards trying to digest themselves because there was nothing else in his belly, he knew the dizziness and the cramps and the lethargy as his childhood friends. Now it was time for these friends to be introduced to his unruly Empress.

 

Of course, the huli jing might assault and devour or rape one of his handmaidens – living energy was yang by default – if he got too peckish, but really that wouldn’t be a great loss. These girls were gifted to the new Junshang because they were weak and their relatives couldn’t find them more useful a situation than hostage to the rising ruler, who would actually cry for them if they got injured or killed ?

 

They were weak, and they were demons – they wouldn’t live long anyway, and surely their parents and siblings and other relatives had written them off after learning they were supposed to serve a huli jing as their mistress. Even in the Human Realm, servants wouldn’t last very long in the household, not always because of the madam or the master, other servants were far too happy to annihilate what they perceived as their competition, even if said rivalry wasn’t real beyond their own imagination.

 

They wouldn’t be a good meal for the huli jing, barely enough to wet his appetite. Shen Jiu would remember how much better it had been to lay with Luo Binghe and regret his wretched ungratefulness, but Luo Binghe wouldn’t come back to him.

 

Not immediately, at least – the punishment had to last longer than a month, or it wouldn’t be worthy to be considered traumatizing. A year would be much more reasonable, if Luo Binghe did his best to solve his subjects’ problems as quickly as possible and didn’t accept others while he was on the road.

 

A year and a half, maybe a bit longer than two years if he dragged his feet. Ruling his kingdom still was feasible, since he had Xin Mo and Mobei-jun, both of them able to create portals and go anywhere they pleased – alright, the blade could access the Endless Abyss and Mobei-jun couldn’t – so the Heavenly half-breed would use the ability to relay his wishes and orders.

 

Really, he had his fill of paperwork for the next century, he had deserved a vacation with nary a hint of brush or paper around the corners.

 

Chapter 54

Mobei-jun was nervous. For anyone lacking familiarity with the ice demon – that meant everyone in the goddamn Three Realms except for a much abused An Ding Peak Lord and wasn’t that fucking hilarious, the kind of comedy one obtained after much bleakness, so much that you had to laugh because you already cried all the tears your body was able to produce for the present and the future – it wouldn’t have been obvious.

 

Shang Qinghua could see the anxiety, and he knew it was very bad news because the majestic asshole was as unfeeling as the iced wastes he called his homeland, so for the ice to crack it meant a major upheaval.

 

Such as the Empress attempting to murder the Junshang and utterly failing at it.

 

Shang Qinghua wasn’t surprised – even in the Middle Kingdom, it wasn’t rare for a wife to strangle or poison her lord and master out of madness or spite or scorned devotion, and more than a few Empresses would indulge in palace intrigues that would doom the Son of Heaven or reduce him to a mere puppet or outright kill him. For all they were supposed to embody the will of the Upper Realm and be akin to a Heavenly Official, the Emperors tended to die like mortal men – messily, noisily, and utterly lacking in dignity.

 

A huli jing breaking their favored toy ? Not even worth a comment, and it included I told you so because it was so fucking predictable.

 

Fortunately, the creature has missed its goal – Luo Binghe was keeping the Lower Realm unified and stable, if he suffered a gruesome end then demon tribes and bloodlines would immediately celebrate the deed by raiding and pillaging human towns and farms, and that would need cultivators to fix and defend the hapless citizens, and that would heap more work on the An Ding Peak Lord’s shoulders and he already had enough of it, thank you very much.

 

Unfortunately, Luo Binghe still wouldn’t kill the damn beast in spite of barely avoiding a close encounter with King Yama and his panel of judges. What the fuck was wrong with him ? Shang Qinghua seriously wondered if the Heavenly Demon strain was afflicted with a lack of wits in order to compensate for their ridiculous strength and power, Mobei-jun told him things about the previous Sacred Ruler that he barely could believe, but since Luo Binghe was such a dumbass, Tianlang-jun might have been the twit he was painted as by the stories still floating around the noble lineages in the Lower Realm…

 

Instead, the new Junshang went on a road trip all around his kingdom. Which wasn’t that dumb, actually, because the huli jing was kept under tight watch in the palace and couldn’t kill him at distance – maybe some aggressive plants and beasts would try to chomp on the half-breed, but if Luo Binghe could fall within the Endless Abyss and survive, Shang Qinghua assumed it would take nothing less than a martial deity to finally put him down – a true Heavenly Official, not someone far too self-righteous for his own good like the late Bai Zhan Peak Lord.

 

And unlike Tianlang-jun, who often abandoned his subjects to run after any pretty shiny thing that catched his attention and only reappeared weeks later after refusing to indicate what he was doing, at least Luo Binghe would send word back. About his health, about his latest activities, about things he wanted to be done by his vassals and staff left in his Palace.

 

Regarding the Palace, the matter of the highest authority there was a mite complicated and had the potential to evolve into a political hot button. As the Sacred Ruler’s most trusted general, Mobei-jun would be unflinchingly obeyed by the majority of guardsmen and soldiers, and many among the nobility that would know of his personal power after growing up in the same generation, but for the clerks, the menial staff and the administrators…

 

Well, such people fell under the purvey of the Empress, traditionally. Since the Empress obviously couldn’t fulfill its duties, the foremost handmaiden of the Empress’ household was stepping into the role.

 

Shan Su, a spider demoness who was Sha Hualing’s paramour – they cavorted rather publically in the palace, everyone knew about the affair but kept their mouth shut since their Junshang refused to care about his bedmates fucking each other – the younger sister of the court physician who enjoyed playing with living subjects for experimental surgery a smidge too much, and one of the many daughters of Matriarch Lu who dissolved so many people in her venom that it boggled the mind to not see her swamped by a battalion of irate ghosts wherever she went.

 

Spider demons enjoyed manipulation from all kinds. Mobei-jun was skilled on the battlefield and Linguang-jun constantly trying to off him had been a boon to force his cunning and survival instinct to grow quickly and sharply, but he wasn’t breathing the kind of court intrigue that Shan Su would casually unleash against the Northern Mountains if she felt he was threatening her seat of power.

 

A handmaiden depended upon her Empress to have influence. If the Empress was removed, then the handmaiden wasn’t needed anymore unless she ingratiated herself somewhere else. With the spider clans hating menfolk as they did, Shan Su would never agree to fully subordinate herself to Luo Binghe, or to coast on her brother’s prestigious position. She might try to use her affair with Sha Hualing to her advantage, but the Sha Saintess wouldn’t be able to bring as much power and ability to control the Lower Realm as a secluded Empress that everyone feared.

 

Shan Su promised to be a fucking pain in the backside, and Shang Qinghua really wanted to stay as far away as possible from her.

 

Unfortunately, the majestic asshole insisted to drag him into this epic nightmare, because he had noticed the An Ding Peak Lord’s gift for survival and threatened to kill his pet cultivator if said cultivator refused to give him a plan to fix the situation in such a way that it would leave the intended target very dead, Mobei-jun alive, and Luo Binghe utterly unaware of the fact that his right hand man and best general just committed high treason.

 

Fuck, wouldn’t that be material for a fucking epic novel ? The faithful general despairing as he saw the Emperor he swore his loyalty spiraling into madness and depravity, doing his best to cleanse and purge the corruption infecting the very palace but unfortunately exposing himself to the retaliation of a much more wily and politically savvy opponent invested in keeping the status quo intact out of greed… Cliché, but people would gladly read it, especially if it was well-written.

 

Shang Qinghua didn’t know if he was a good writer, but he knew it was impossible to have too much money, and the majestic asshole was majorly inconveniencing him since he decided to make him his favourite slave to punch. Also, Mobei-jun never read anything that could be classified as fiction, so he wouldn’t flay the human cultivator alive for selling the story.

 

Of course, it would need a few tweaks – nobody would agree to buy a copy if it happened in the Lower Realm, demons weren’t civilized enough to have palaces and court intrigues after all, much better to claim it was a human kingdom in the distant past…

 

And it still left a major plot point hanging – would the general succeed in his mission ? Or would he fail ?

 

At this point in time, impossible to say.

 

 

Chapter 55

After a month, it was obvious that the new Junshang had decided to take a leaf from Tianlang-jun’s book – the former Sacred Ruler had been an avid collector of books and scrolls he brought back from his travels in the Middle Kingdom, but far too often these books were filled with drivel about humans courting and fucking each other in variously confusing ways – and stay away from the palace in order to indulge his whims.

 

Well, that or he was indulging his cursed blade’s thirst for slaughter and sex. Shan Xu had commented on this possibility with a frown, when his sister had pointed it – after all, not even demonkind would be alright to let a sword rule them, especially a sword as malevolent as Xin Mo, and when one was aware of some deeply messed up succession rules in the Lower Realm, it said a lot on the matter.

 

Still, Shan Su couldn’t exactly complain about the Sacred Ruler’s absence, since it made her the most powerful person in the Palace – the most powerful person in the Lower Realm ! Even if she officially was the foremost handmaiden to a despised Empress, whose life was suddenly threatened every single day.

 

When the guard dog was in the courtyard, burglars and wild beasts naturally would stay away from the house. But when the guard dog wasn’t there anymore, well, there was no reason to not raid and pillage at one’s heart’s content, was it ? And surely, if Junshang was so far, killing the Empress right now would leave the guilty party some time to prepare an alibi or outright run somewhere in the countryside.

 

Sha Hualing had finally been forced to step up as the huli jing’s bodyguard and was rather unhappy about it. Still, she feared Luo Binghe too much to displease him by allowing his favorite plaything to perish, and the assassins were a boon to kill her boredom and quench his thirst for bloody action, so the Saintess kept her unhappiness a secret and blatantly proclaimed her loyalty to her lord and master by following the orders left for her, no matter how much they went against her personal opinions.

 

Another person who obviously was disgruntled by the court’s current politics and turmoil caused by the Sacred Ruler’s departure was Mobei-jun, but Shan Su had no illusions regarding the ice demon’s feelings about her – if he could, he would steal any crumb of power she claimed for herself and wouldn’t raise a single finger to rescue her if someone else managed to cause her fall. She wouldn’t begrudge him the attitude, she would act the same in his place after all.

 

That didn’t mean she couldn’t and wouldn’t plot her retribution if he ever was suspected of moving against the spider demoness, be it by attacking her directly or by trying to murder the Empress or the young princes. The most appropriate punishment likely would be to maim his sweet little pet, the human cultivator who constantly lurked around the ice demon and did his best to appear unruffled in spite of his inner distaste for demonkind. Mobei-jun still could find another human to drag in his wake if he wanted to, the Middle Kingdom just wouldn’t stop spitting saints and cultivators to raise their blades against demonkind.

 

It was very entertaining, devising various tortures for the ice demon’s cute little pet, almost as entertaining as cheerfully discussing her day’s activities while she was tending to the huli jing.

 

That was playing with fire, Shan Su was deeply aware of it. A fox spirit was innately cunning and devious, give them a tidbit of knowledge and they would put it to use in order to screw you and everyone who ever talked with you, even as a mere acquaintance, and it wouldn’t be the fun kind of screwing.

 

Alas, the weakness of schemers everywhere was the need for a captive audience to listen their plans and marvel at their deeds. As a spider demoness, scheming was as natural as breathing to Shan Su, and it was hard to be more captive than a secluded Empress forbidden to leave their rooms since they had been brought there.

 

So she casually talked about her day while she helped the huli jing to dress and comb their silver hair. At least they looked interested, a glint in their eyes while these immaculate features stayed frozen and unemotive. At least the huli jing wasn’t fighting her slight medical touch on their meridians while they were focusing on her words.

 

After the nasty surprise that the yin qi poisoning was, it was better to keep a very close eye on the fox spirit’s meridians to prevent another buildup of poison – Junshang wouldn’t fall in the same trap twice, otherwise shame on him and good riddance to bad rubbish, but the Empress could accidentally end their own life with careless handling of their yin qi and then Shan Su would utterly lose every benefit she gained since Luo Binghe had officially taken the throne.

 

Fortunately, the Empress was far more prudent than expected, but on the other hand, they formerly played at being a human cultivator so they would know the basis. The good basis that allowed a human to build a solid foundation for their spiritual core, there existed a lot of so-called manuals filled with nonsense and barely worth to be burned in order to stay warm through the night.

 

The Empress actually appeared to – build a core entirely made of demonic qi ? Such ambition, especially after their latest antics.

 

Shan Xu had been ecstatic when she reported that to him, instructing his sister to closely watch and document the progress made by the huli jing, cheerfully wondering how the cursed shackle preventing the Empress to wield spiritual qi would impact the whole thing. Another courtier would have been horrified by the very idea of a fox spirit building their strength and potentially turning into a deadly foe, but Shan Xu was hopelessly curious about living organisms, how they would grow and adapt in stressful circumstances, and Shan Su…

 

Well, Shan Su was hopelessly soft for her brother. She couldn’t help it, he was one of the few males smart enough to not be immediately bred and slaughtered after the deed. She would even weep when he would finally die – she had no illusions about her lifespan since she added herself to the retinue of a young Heavenly half-breed with more enthusiasm for battle than common sense, and she couldn’t see the other courtiers surviving more than a decade when it was so easy for Xin Mo to leave its sheath and unleash its wielder’s bad temper.

 

Shan Su would die one day, and her brother would die, and the Empress would die when one assassin would finally get lucky or when Luo Binghe would finally get tired of them, but in the meantime why not enjoy yourself ? Why not attempt to dance on the fire mountain about to erupt ?

 

Maybe it was the reason why huli jing were fascinating as much as they were repelling to demons and humans alike, maybe you would lose your life and maybe you would end gruesomely maimed and maybe you would lose everything you held dear, but you certainly wouldn’t get bored, you would too busy wondering what thoughts were currently churning behind these eyes as pretty and deadly as quicksilver.

 

Shan Su certainly did.

 

 

Chapter 56

Three months passed by, and the beast still refused to inflict himself upon Shen Jiu. Maybe he finally took the hint that he was unwanted and all his efforts would only lead him to abject failure ?

 

The formerly human cultivator almost immediately discarded that thought when it shyly appeared in his mind – even on Qing Jing Peak, the beastling had been too stubborn in his sulleness, his refusal to learn how to stand upon his own feet instead of sniffling and hiding behind his martial sisters’ skirts. Truly, it was a minor miracle from the bad kind that he decided he wouldn’t lie down and perish in the Endless Abyss when everything Shen Qingqiu saw from him till that point indicated the Heavenly half-breed would wait for anybody else to save him rather than be strong.

 

Even after gaining a blade spitting miasma, vassals cowed into giving him all their wealth and utter obedience, a whole realm for him to submit and crush under his heel, the beast still couldn’t understand what strength was, and he certainly didn’t learn to leave a hopeless cause well enough.

 

On this latter point, he was almost infuriatingly akin to Yue Qingyuan and this brute Liu Qingge – the Sect Leader and the War God always lost their hearing ability when Shen Qingqiu told them to scram, told them to leave him the fuck alone, he wasn’t interested in suffering fools more than strictly necessary for the Twelve Peaks to smoothly run themselves…

 

Still. Neither Yue Qingyuan or Liu Qingge had actually raped Shen Qingqiu – the brute wouldn’t stop coming back for battles but bruises were the extent of his willingness to touch the Qing Jing Peak Lord and for that, Shen Qingqiu was content since he knew fighting, you could fight back in a duel – so both of them were far above the beast’s level. But it had to be expected, a demon was born to sin and sin again until he was crushed under his malevolent karma.

 

So Shen Jiu wasn’t that heartbroken over the beast’s disappearance. Finally he was spared the disgusting sight of this handsome face claiming his heart was as fair as his features, only to reveal a rotten carcass filled with quivering maggots in his chest. If the beast could drop dead and cause a succession crisis that would see his realm wrecked and his palace burned with all his servants, generals and Shen Jiu trapped inside, it would be the absolute best.

 

As he was waited for the potential news of the Heavenly half-breed’s gruesome demise, Shen Jiu was busy meditating and building his demon core.

 

Such a counterintuitive endeavour it was – spiritual qi was made to be gathered and structured, it followed Order as defined by the Heavens and the Earth, so it was natural for people desperate to obtain Immortality to build a foundation and ultimately forge a golden core. Yet demon qi was nothing but a willful horse constantly bucking under its master’s commands, and the rider needed to constantly keep in mind their heart’s desire to force that qi into making this desire a reality.

 

Add to that the cursed shackle around Shen Jiu’s neck, locking his meridians and the ability to assume a male shape away from him, crackling ominously while the huli jing was meditating and a potential threat to his goal. If the shackle tried to enforce his helplessness while he was focusing on the wet, dark pellet slowly growing in his dantian, it likely would cause a literally explosive result.

 

Shen Jiu had accepted his upcoming death – but he couldn’t deny he felt a twinge of annoyance at the prospect of not finishing his work. As the Qing Jing Peak Lord, he never allowed a painting or a war strategy to go unfinished, so why wouldn’t he keep this same ethos ?

 

(of course he know the answer to that, he’s a demon and he’s not supposed to explore this part of him he ought to entirely reject and despise, he’s nor supposed to strengthen his demon abilities and body, he shouldn’t)

 

(yet that’s the only weapon left for him to wield, and the street brat won’t hesitate to use the dirtiest trick in his sleeve to edge a win, that’s fucking common sense)

 

Besides the cursed shackle holding a possible explosin above his head, Shen Jiu faced another hurdle – hunger.

 

He was familiar with hunger since he was old enough to toddle, and hunger kept dogging his footsteps as he was enslaved to the Qiu family then by Wu Yanzi. Even after being dropped on Qing Jing Peak as an unwanted disciple whose cultivation was ruined, Shen Jiu still knew hunger – seeing all these young masters and mistresses in their finery complaining about having to actually work and study for once in their pampered lives, seeing Qi-ge not even bothering to explain he considered Xiao Jiu a burden and trying to buy his good will with gaudy presents, it had a way to make him nauseous to such a point that the idea of putting food in his mouth was repelling in spite of his cramping belly.

 

Unfortunate as it was, the beast was good for quenching this dark, unrestrained hunger deep in his meridians, a hunger that looked at the shivering handmaidens and both the spider abominations, saw the yang energy brimming right beneath their skin and wished to devour until there was nary a crumble left.

 

Shen Jiu wouldn’t die from hunger, his body wouldn’t let him. And if his body couldn’t handle the task, then surely the female spider abomination would be glad to feed the formerly human cultivator one of these useless handmaidens – otherwise the beast would lose his favorite plaything, Shen Jiu had seen Qiu Jianluo throwing tantrums over his father discarding some kind of knicknack he apparently outgrew and that had been far from pretty or dignified, and it quickly became very unpleasant for Xiao Jiu when the young master decided to vent on the slave brat.

 

The beast was cast from the same mold, so his servants had a vested interest in keeping perpetually content if they didn’t want to feel his wrath. As servants, they were disposable and needed to flee this truth as much as they could.

 

Surely nobody would mourn if one of these useless handmaidens was left brain-damaged by Shen Jiu feeding on her ? They already were so dumb, it wouldn’t make a big difference, and they barely could dress Shen Jiu, he was better doing that on his own or letting the spider abomination help him.

 

Truly, if someone deserved the title of handmaiden in this household, it was this demoness with far too much eyes and hands, with her smile filled with poisonous fangs, and Shen Jiu wouldn’t like her, he couldn’t like her when she was a lackey of his rapist, but her constant presence was less of a pain than everybody else in this forsaken palace.

 

He would never say her that. Why would she be allowed to know ? It would only drive her to be insufferable, for her to have attained nobody else managed to possess. Shen Qingqiu had been an unpopular Peak Lord but he had been a Peak Lord and as such Disciples were warring to gain his attention. When you were in a position of power, there would always be someone to hug your thighs and hope you would carry them to greatness.

 

The spider abomination was first and foremost caring for her own interests. Shen Jiu perfectly knew that.

 

 

Chapter 57

When the huli jing finally decided to snack on their handmaidens, it was less violent than expected. Surprisingly gentle, actually, and Shan Su would admit she almost didn’t pay attention because of that – usually, when a demon wanted to feed on another one, there was a great deal of loud screaming, wild flailing and puddles of blood on the ground.

 

The handmaiden – a pitiful wretch with pallid skin, her skull covered with tiny scales that followed her spine in a smattering of greyish creams – had been busy tidying the blankets carelessly thrown on the floor when the Empress rose to dress themselves. That was when the fox spirit came back in the bedroom that the silly girl had been noticed.

 

The handmaiden softly squeaked – it never was a good thing for the huli jing to notice, they had established themselves as nothing short of mean and delighting in beating their subordinates and servants – but she couldn’t run away, stuck as she was between her boss and the bed.

 

The Empress took advantage of the circumstances, languidly walking on the girl in order to seize her face in their slender, elegant hands, almost a parody of caress, their quicksilver eyes gleaming with a metallic, predatory sheen.

 

Shan Su could barely breathe, feeling something shift in the air yet unable to move a single fingertip, vaguely aware that she was beholding a predator hunting, about to pounce on the prey. A predator that didn’t even care about showing off their strength, because they had already won, because everyone around them was so beneath their own station that they didn’t deserve the attention.

 

It was magnificent in the way of an earthquake and a tidal wave, because you suddenly felt so very small and powerless in front of a cruel – no, not cruel, cruelty meant intent, careless would be much better as a descriptor – nature ready to swallow you and leave nothing to show you once were alive and part of it.

 

The Empress slowly, hungrily put their lips on the handmaiden’s. The girl didn’t even moan or try to struggle – maybe she was too surprised, maybe she thought it was far better than receive a violent beating, maybe she was too stupid to understand what would befell her.

 

Shan Su wasn’t stupid – she knew, but she was curious to see what the results of a huli jing feeding would be, when the target wasn’t a Heavenly demon so brimming with yang energy that he could afford to have a consort actively devouring their weight in it everyday.

 

It took half a shichen before the handmaiden quietly crumpled in the huli jing’s embrace, her complexion more sickly green than pallid, her breathing shallow and her eyes a thin white line between her almost closed eyelids.

 

The spider demoness would confess she was a mite surprised by the girl’s survival, but the Empress might not have been that hungry, or was planning to consume another girl’s lifeforce to quell their appetite. Snacking a bit on several chosen preys, it was a good strategy when you were wary of people banding together to kill you because you slaughtered all of their nieces, daughters, cousins and other female relatives one at the time.

 

When Shan Su confirmed that the handmaiden would be able to come back and serve anew, a few girls quietly took the victim away for her to rest and the spider demoness found herself free to focus on the huli jing.

 

The Empress was casually licking their lips, frowning in curiosity more than displeasure.

 

« Was the meal to your Majesty’s taste ? » Shan Su politely asked – she was the foremost handmaiden, her duty was to ensure her mistress would be comfortable and enjoy the privileges granted to one of such power.

 

The fox spirit languidly blinked, seemingly remembering they weren’t alone in the world, or even the Palace.

 

« Oh, that… that was different. From the usual » they admitted.

 

That was expected. Junshang couldn’t compare to a measly handmaiden from a weak lineage – at least, not where he could hear it and take offense. Many noblemen were deeply sensitive on the matter and would rather for their subjects and vassals to compare them to various beasts such as tigers, bears or dragons. They believed it was flattering.

 

Shan Su really couldn’t understand why. As a spider demoness, she and her brother were well-placed to know height and physical might weren’t everything, especially when you could ruin your opponent with one drop of venom.

 

« Different in a good way ? » she pressed, because this was the kind of detail her brother thrived on, how the yang qi felt from one lineage to another, from one species to another, from a weakling to a powerful fighter…

 

The huli jing delicately shrugged. So very beautiful, so very confident and relaxed, and that was so much easier to understand why nobody couldn’t actually bring themselves to murder Daji when she was committing mass murder and mass torture and every single disgusting atrocity her sick brain would spit that week – who cared if the fox spirit was dangerous when you were too busy basking in their mesmerizing aura ?

 

« More diluted. Likely because there’s less of qi. These twits are barely worth the effort to kill them. »

 

« Well, that’s the reason why they were sent there » Shan Su agreed, modulating her tone to make it sound like she was apologizing for the inconvenience and the sub-par quality of the meal. « If you have to sacrifice someone in your bloodline, it’s better to get rid from the one who’s not strong enough to pull her weight and contribute. »

 

Something glittered in the quicksilver depths of the Empress’ swirling irises, and the spider demoness brutally repressed the need to shiver and fall down on the floor to play the dead.

 

« Or maybe it’s better to get rid from the one everybody hates already, no matter his contribution and constant struggle to protect your good-for-nothing hides, because you have decided he would bear the brunt of your sins no matter what » they said in a bland, colourless voice and it was said so quietly it hurt to pay attention closely enough to hear it.

 

Shan Su refused to answer, because she strongly suspected the huli jing would tear her throat with their teeth in a wrathful fit if she raised her voice now. Still, she registered the words because that sounded like past experience and wasn’t that interesting ? Did the Empress try to live somewhere only to be loathed for their inheritance ? It was disturbingly plausible a scenario…

 

On the other hand, the words rang with the harsh twang of prediction. At least the Empress was smart regarding their popularity or rather lack of – when they weren’t drooling in the mattress after being fucked silly by Junshang.

 

Yes, it was necessary to deprive the huli jing from their wits and freedom to shapeshift if you wished to not constantly wonder when you would die choking on your own blood, but Shan Su would acknowledge it was quite sad after beholding the Empress in their unashamed predatory glory.

 

Several people at court would call her mad for it, and her darling Hualing would be the one screaming it above all others. Let them shout – Shan Su had known the path to power wouldn’t be easy or enjoyable to tread.

 

At least she was attending an Empress worthy of her service.

 

 

Chapter 58

A new schedule had been quickly established among the handmaidens : which one would get to be serve as the Empress’ meal for today, and how many days of rest she would need before serving again.

 

With thirty or so girls, it made for a lot of reactions, of course. It unanimously unleashed a great deal of sobbing and teeth-gnashing when Shan Su casually dropped the information, though, because everybody believed the huli jing had tired of merely slapping the servants around and would now devour them as messily and painfully as possible.

 

Completely wrong, of course – when the Empress fed, it was through a kiss and always the victim would slowly lose awareness until she fainted, to be taken away by the other attendants watching the scene.

 

The attendants were quite fun to observe. Some would squirm and some would sneer in despair, yet several looked rather intrigued and a few actually blushed. The latter easily crumpled and stuttered when teased about their enjoyment of such a simple act, that wasn’t even proper lovemaking after all, did one of your ancestors commit the nasty with one human for you to be such a prude ?

 

Still, that was among these blushing, embarrassed maidens that volunteers appeared, bright-eyed girls who shyly bowed to their Empress and straddled their lap to offer their lips, and the huli jing regally accepted the offering, stroking their faces and their hips before feasting.

 

Shan Su loved watching a willing handmaiden in all her virginal eagerness with the confident, haughty Empress. It made for such a different show than what she got to see at Matriarch Lu’s estate – when you and your siblings were born in batches of twelve and reached puberty around the same time, it gave you some skewed ideas on intimacy. Because when you shared one single room with eleven hormonal brats, there always was someone busy jerking off or blatantly exploring themselves with an helpful friend or cousin – from the female persuasion, males were wary of fucking unless the Matriarch blatantly commanded them to breed for the lineage’s continued future.

 

Shan Su was fine with fucking Junshang, really, he was a very experienced lover and would never let her unsatisfied, but her first forays in lovemaking happened with females, be it with her acting or viewing, and females would always fulfill her more than males. There was a reason why she shared her dear Hualing’s bed so very often.

 

She was unsure about Junshang knowing for her and Hualing. Twice or thrice, he fucked both of them at the same time because he was hornier than usual, but beyond that, he seemed pretty apathetic regarding their relationship.

 

The spider demoness wondered how the Heavenly half-breed would feel about the Empress willingly kissing their handmaidens. After all, he was the man who kept the huli jing secluded for their safety, yes, but also because he couldn’t stand the prospect of another male laying eyes on his chosen bride.

 

Maybe he would rage. Maybe he would fuck all the handmaidens until they were left as weeping, broken shells of themselves, in order to show them where they were supposed to take their pleasure rather than indulging in debauchery with the Sacred Ruler’s most precious treasure. Then Junshang would fuck his consort dumb again, pounding them into the mattress and not relenting before their wits drooled on the floor.

 

Shan Su pictured the scene in the eye of her mind and decided it wasn’t as pleasurable as watching the Empress effortlessly, serenely dominate their chosen meal. Junshang’s wrath was fearsome, yes, because he couldn’t control it and you dreaded it because it would hurt a lot before it vanished – the Heavenly half-breed repaid everything a thousand times, and it was easier to offend him than to gain his mercy.

 

And it ultimately appeared so inefficient. So – petty, when one had witnessed the clear clarity of perfect composure.

 

Obviously, the handmaidens knew that. Even the most vocally opposed to the feeding schedule, the ones who screamed and sobbed rivers of snot and tears, would enter the huli jing’s bedroom on shaking legs to kneel at the Empress’ feet and faint in their embrace when their name was drawn for the day. Demons would acknowledge strength even when they loathed the one wielding it, and strength wasn’t only how to not cut your own leg when you were waving a sword. Such a shame for so many people to believe otherwise.

 

Shan Su knew she was starting to think heretic thoughts – things that would see her swiftly murdered in her bed or dragged down from the royal favour if the court started suspecting her of having these thoughts. The icy general – with his fussy human pet – certainly wouldn’t lose any sleep if he obtained the opportunity to ruin her.

 

That was fine, she would do the same to him. Not out of personal inimity, mind you – that was because the future Mobei-jun likely was the one behind the odd sequence of incidents currently afflicting the Empress’ quarters.

 

It didn’t seem worrying at first glance, a tiny imp claiming it lost its way in the Palace, small droplets of melted ice in the halls, one handmaiden confessing a servant wearing the dark blue so loved by the Northern Mountains’ natives talked to her. But Shan Su was a spider demoness and as such, intrigue and court plotting was in her blood.

 

People didn’t care about the Empress’ quarters because it was pretty , they always wanted something that the Empress alone could give them. And since Junshang’s coronation, all the tribes, lineages and clans that called the Lower Realm home craved one thing and one thing only from the Empress, their demise.

 

Obviously, Shan Su disagreed with their plans and would violently object to any attempt to terminate the huli jing before the time of parting naturally came for them – and nobody knew how many years it meant exactly, demons were quite hardy and the strongest would live more than three hundreds years if they were smart or powerful enough to avoid being killed that long – well, preventing assassination attempts were supposed to be Sha Hualing’s job but the Sha Saintess thoroughly lacked motivation.

 

Maybe Shan Su ought to show her darling Hualing one of the Empress’ feedings. Then Hualing would be spooked by the possibility of the fox spirit deciding they wanted to sample her if she wasn’t dutiful enough, or she would be aroused by the sight of (what appeared to be) two females sharing a sensual embrace and conclude the Empress wasn’t that bad after all.

 

The spider demoness hoped for the arousal. It might spice their evenings together – good sex didn’t spontaneously happen, you needed to have ideas and to practice to be sure these ideas were good and not stupid. Nothing more destructive to the moral than dumb sex that wouldn’t even feel pleasurable.

 

And no, she wouldn’t picture the three of them – her, Sha Hualing and the Empress – sharing one bed, first because laying with the Empress would only happen if the fox spirit wished to torture her (it was horrendously obvious how much they despised everybody in the Palace), second because laying with the Empress had pretty high odds to be considered high treason and deemed worthy of a gruesome punishment, third because laying with the Empress likely would spook Sha Hualing into fleeing to the Middle Realm and become a nun in one of these quaint little convents.

 

Wouldn’t it be something, her darling Hualing playing the nun ?

 

 

Chapter 59

Sha Hualing wanted to screech in sheer horror – and maybe some terror, the kind of dread that saw you pissing and shitting all over your legs because you were about to fucking die as gruesomely and painfully as you could imagine, so your best bet was to make your meat as unpalatable as you could to force the monster to run away in disgust or in the pitiful hope that said monster would fell sick from eating your shit-covered flesh.

 

Shan Su had definitely lost her mind. Another, much more awful possibility was the huli jing managing to enthrall her in spite of the cursed shackle forced on it – the Sha Saintess had heard the stories about Daji’s attendants, eagerly bringing her victims and cheering on her torturing, as long as they got a pat on the head and a condescending smile from the peerless, inhuman beauty they had crowned their Empress…

 

And now the spider demoness was dragging Sha Hualing in the huli jing’s living quarters – in the fox spirit’s own bedroom, and Sha Hualing wasn’t deaf, the staff was whispering in the hallways, something about the Empress raping her handmaidens now that Junshang wasn’t there anymore to sate her depraved cravings…

 

The Saintess wanted to retaliate against her captor, but her dear poisonous spider had scratched her neck with one of her medical needles – one bathed in a paralytic mixture, because spider demons enjoyed snacking on living prey and needed a mean to keep them helpless while they dined on their legs and slowly went up until they finally consumed something vital and put an end to their wretched meal’s suffering.

 

Sha Hualing couldn’t raise a single finger to defend herself, allowing Shan Su to hoist her upon her shoulder and the Saintess would have been impressed and rather aroused by her darling spider’s muscles if her situation hadn’t been so dire.

 

« A-Ling, my dear, you really aren’t taking your job seriously » the spider demoness had sighed as she travelled towards her crimson-clad bedmate’s doom. « Hasn’t Junshang named you a bodyguard to the Empress ? Yet nobody has ever seen you around her living quarters, and it’s been already three years since you obtained your position ! You’re lucky for Luo Binghe to be such a weak man, or you would have already been punished for dereliction of your duty. »

 

Sha Hualing wouldn’t call herself lucky, considering her present circumstances. Her wits were busy drooling by her ear as she fretted over the possibility of the huli jing learning of her existence – something she absolutely did her best to avoid, that was why she stayed far, far away from this wing in particular – and deciding on a whim to torment her, out of a perceived offense against its unnatural existence.

 

Being trained as a Saintess, the sixth daughter of the Sha lineage couldn’t faint to escape the dreadful reality. She really wasn’t happy about that right now.

 

« There we are ! Your Imperial Highness, may this humble servant introduce Sha Hualing to you ? »

 

A tiny squeak managed to escape the Saintess’ throat as she was deposited on the ground, Shan Su cradling her head in order to make her look at the scene unfolding in front of her.

 

The huli jing was sitting on a bed lush with embroidered silken blankets and plump cushions, a bored pout on its flawless face, a plain-faced, dazed-eyed girl sitting on its lap. Obviously the feeding had been interrupted, and Sha Hualing’s heartbeat kicked into high gears.

 

Ancestors, don’t let me become the dessert…

 

« I see her » the huli jing commented, its voice lacking any hint of emotion.

 

On its lap, the girl moaned and blushed, leaning against the curvy body of the fox spirit only to be casually shoved away and her hair violently pulled.

 

« Did I give you my blessing to be so unashamed in your desire ? » the huli jing whispered, so tightly controlled and yet seething with fury, a deadly blizzard howling and lashing out at the Northern Mountains. « If I wanted a whore, I would go to the Middle Kingdom and visit a brothel, the service is far better than your disgusting wantonness. »

 

The handmaiden hiccuped, a tremor shaking her full body, utterly vainquished without even a lashing or a whipping to mar her dusky epidermis.

 

« A thousand apologies for this wretched one’s failings » she stammered, only to yelp when the lock of her hair imprisoned in the long-fingered, pale hand of the huli jing was pulled again, so suddenly that Sha Hualing half-expected for the foolish girl to be partially scalped.

 

« Do I appear interested in apologies ? Have you no pride in yourself, to grovel at my feet ? You truly are a beast. »

 

This voice was so completely controlled, Sha Hualing’s bladder threatened to give up under the sheer pressure. Also – and most terrifyingly – a hint of arousal poked at her nethers and she didn’t want to feel that !

 

Sha Hualing despised being humiliated, she loathed being helpless, but she was weak to power. That was why she fell in love with Luo Binghe when he came out of the Endless Abyss, dripping with monster guts and so crazed with bloodlust that he slaughtered two of her older sisters before coming back to his senses and understanding he had given Sha Hualing the opportunity to seize her place as her father’s heir.

 

The huli jing should have been unable to spread its malevolence, shackled as it was, secluded as it was, and Sha Hualing suddenly understood why it had been so hard for people to muster the will to rebel against Daji when they beheld her, if she had shown half the regal composure, a quarter of the self-confidence that the abomination casually sitting on the bed was sweating as if it was no problem.

 

And now the predator was locking lips with the handmaiden who went utterly limp, putty between these taloned hands to be destroyed or spared on a whim, and the crimson-clad demoness would have nightmares about this scene.

 

Fiendishly attractive nightmares but nightmares nonetheless.

 

« Do you see now ? » Shan Su whispered in her ear. « Do you see what I wanted to show you ? »

 

Yes, Sha Hualing was seeing far too much, and she was seeing something she would have rather ignored until she finally passed on the Wheel of Rebirth. When the paralytic would cease its effect, she would have to drag the spider demoness to their safe haven by her carefully coiffed hairbun and fuck her to quell her extremely frayed nerves.

 

Ancestors, please let Junshang quickly end what he was doing in the countryside with the roving bands of bandits and come back to the Palace, he was the only person able to control this cursed huli jing.

 

Sha Hualing really hoped that Luo Binghe would be vulnerable to the prospect of his designated Empress and another of his bedmates sharing a bed this way, or she would have to spit on her sworn oath and murder him in his sleep. Nobody would dare to accuse her from high treason if she confessed being almost fed to a fox spirit.

 

Crap, she really hoped that Luo Binghe was a jealous, insecure little man who couldn’t stand the idea of his women having fun with each other instead of himself. Please let him be a jerk who wouldn’t accept a challenge to his masculinity.

 

Please don’t let him be alright with the prospect of feeding Sha Hualing with a person-skinned monster.

 

 

Chapter 60

Shen Jiu would admit it, the beast was a far superior snack to all these foolish twits serving him. At least he had so much yang qi that his huli jing captive could glut as much as he wanted and the beast wouldn’t faint from the exertion.

 

That was his lone advantage – otherwise, he was just as wretched and repulsive than the handmaidens, because all of them were demons, and couldn’t keep their fucking hands to themselves in spite of being duly chastised again and again.

 

Really, the formerly human cultivator bitterly missed the Red Warm Pavilion. The flowers there had been far too professional to do anything he explicitely told them he didn’t want – their embraces nothing but safe and comforting and warm instead of fumbling and grasping for his chest.

 

One of the girls actually lifted her skirt in front of him. Her bid for attention saw her kicked down to the ground, and Shen Jiu had sneered she could go and whore herself to everybody else until she caught a pox and was left to die in a ditch, if she was so eager to lie on her back for someone higher on the food chain.

 

Xiao Jiu had seen several courtesans who fell on hard times because a client gave them a venereal disease, their skin marred and rough with scarring and sores, their teeth rotten and falling out, their hands swollen and distorted, their hair greasy and thinning to allow a glimpse of a bone-pale scalp beneath. And that was in a town in which the residents were human, surely the Lower Realm had cooked something much worse for anyone slutty enough to carelessly fuck without checking if their current partner was healthy.

 

Knowing the beast, he likely fucked with someone diseased. Shen Jiu hoped it was the kind of disease that would turn his pillar black with gangrena and lead it to fall off. And maybe the disease would also infect his cursed brats – the formerly male-shaped cultivator didn’t know if he could be affected by such a venereal infection since he was currently lacking the required equipment. It might rot his breasts instead – Shen Jiu didn’t feel too broken over the possibility, he despised how sensitive they were when groped, at least scarring ruined your nerves.

 

Mu Qingfang would be horrified by his refusal to care for his own health, Shen Jiu could picture the Qian Cao Peak Lord staring at him with this fixed expression he had when the brutes of Bai Zhan came to bang at his door yet again, but Mu Qingfang wasn’t there. And his job was to tend to Cang Qiong first, humans second, and demons never.

 

Shen Jiu could never bring himself to entrust his health to the healer anyway. He couldn’t very well give a man power over him, after struggling so much to become someone not beholden to another person – well, technically, Yue Qingyuan as the Sect Leader was above Cang Qiong’s strategist but Yue Qingyuan lacked the guts to force Shen Qingqiu to follow his will, so nothing to fear from this side.

 

Yet now he was stranded in the Lower Realm, with the beast going back and forth in this bedroom as he pleased and doing everything he wanted. Wasn’t that a hoot ? At least Shen Jiu was surrounded by dumb girls he could keep in line, not a very complicated endeavour considering their meekness and eagerness to please, you didn’t need to have a past as a slave to find the signs among their group.

 

Slapping them around actually started to get boring after a while. Why couldn’t these twits learn crying never solved anything ?

 

Maybe it was out of boredom that Shen Jiu decided to teach them weiqi and xiangqi – one evening, he just snapped at the nearest girl to go and find him a board if she didn’t want for her throat to be slit, Shen Jiu was quite sure that his claws were nasty enough to shred flesh. It took a shichen and a half for the girl to come back, panting and stammering she had to look into some disused parts of the Palace before stumbling upon half a dozen of dusty boards with a lot of missing pieces, the previous junshang apparently was curious about human entertainment but nobody cared about the strategy games after he foolishly listened to his dick and got himself sealed under a mountain.

 

The girls were complete idiots when they tried their hand at the games, of course, beginners as they were. Pitifully asking for the rules, why did you have to move the pieces that way or this way, as they first sat in front of him – Shen Jiu despaired of the possibility that one would ever grow into a proper player, not someone who might give him a challenge because obviously they weren’t picked for their brains when they had been sent to the beast’s Palace.

 

He nonetheless played with them, because it was so fucking boring between these walls and trouncing these twits at weiqi and xiangqi allowed the former Qing Jing Peak Lord to lambast them when they lost a game. Even the spider abomination struggled to be more than a shame to players everywhere in the Three Realms, and she was the best from this bad lot.

 

Mainly because she quickly understood she couldn’t rely on her own, wretched skill and shamelessly cheated, as much as she could, in the hopes to balance the scales. Shen Jiu didn’t even bother to call her out – even with her attempts to move the pieces when he appeared unfocused on the board, he kept trouncing her again and again. Even Liu Qingge had been more of a challenge – for all his brutish ways, the Bai Zhan War God had been taught the basis for strategy, he merely had discarded it out of personal preference and sheer laziness, why would you need to use your brains when you could crush everything and everyone under overwhelming might ?

 

The spider abomination never burst into tears after losing a game. She frowned and scratched her forehead and gaped as she begged for Shen Jiu to explain how he did it this time, when did he turn the tables on her – as if she had ever been in control of the board – and the former Qing Jing Peak Lord haughtily sniffed and fanned himself with one of the spider abomination’s gifts – a round fan made of woven, undyed silk and iron wire – and bluntly pointed every single mistep she had committed, while the handmaidens listened all around them and eyeballed the board.

 

That was – almost nice. Almost reminiscent of Qing Jing Peak, when he was teaching the inner disciples who had earned his personal attention instead of being entrusted to the hallmasters. Almost reminiscent of the Warm Red Pavilion, when the jiejies and the aunties begged him for tips to appear more refined and sophisticated as they were called to entertain a wealthy, intellectually-leaning customer.

 

That was almost peaceful, the closest thing approching peace that Shen Jiu would ever know in this life, and in the formerly human cultivator’s chest, his heart was clenching and hurting as if it was about to burst and weep a bloody flood of burning tears.

 

Peace in Hell, peace among demons ? Was he Guanyin now, the Bodhisattva whose sheer compassion had turned King Yama’s dreadful torture chambers into heavenly gardens when she was cast in the Underworld ?

 

Don’t make him laugh.

 

 

Chapter 61

Shan Su started bringing her paperwork in the Empress’ wing after a while.

 

A great deal of people at court – led by Mobei-jun, obviously, with the ice demon’s human pet cheering him on – would call her insane for giving a huli jing access to important information, no matter its nature – seriously, who could read a scroll longer than you were tall about the finest points of soil erosion on the southernmost fire-mountains without yawning, it beggared belief.

 

To that, the spider demoness would point it actually was rather important to keep the Empress stimulated, or the huli jing would get bored. Bored demons as a rule did stupid things such as stealing their most powerful neighbour’s bride and causing a full-blown war with consequences for the Lower Realm that would last a hundred years. A bored fox spirit – well, the odds for a Lower Realm to exist when the dust would settle down weren’t that good.

 

When one had to compare, it was impossible to not pick the lesser evil – unless you were a hopeless madman seeking for utter and complete annihilation of your species, and even Shan Su wasn’t gone that far. Junshang might potentially choose this road in the near or far future, it depended on how much he grew reliant on this cursed blade he refused to throw back in the Endless Abyss, and if it came to pass…

 

If it came to pass, the Demon Realm would need to stand strong or the petty bickering that followed Tianlang-jun’s imprisonment in the Middle Kingdom would raise its ugly head with a vengeance, and this time there might not be a strong candidate vying for the throne and able to unify the bloodlines and tribes under a single ruler Shan Su shivered as she considered this potential future – yes, Luo Binghe had produced two brats, but putting all your bets on a snivelling, whimpering kid never was smart until the brat finally grew old enough to be considered mature. Brats were prone to change, and change made ruling unstable.

 

So the spider demoness would hedge her bets on the Empress, who already was there if secluded, who was desperately bored and needed something – anything – to fill their days, and who was rather smart if one was judging by the way they barely cared to look at the weiqi and xiangqi gameboards before they unleashed a devastating counterattack against their current opponent.

 

Alright, maybe board games weren’t the best option to conclude if one was suitable to rule, but it implied a modicum of strategic planning and it was a vital component of survival in the royal court of a demonic Sacred Ruler.

 

Also, when the Sacred Ruler was busy somewhere, obviously the Empress would be the designated regent. Nothing in the laws specified it was forbidden for the monarch’s spouse to be unable to wield power when they were a huli jing – likely because everyone assumed nobody would be that dumb or crazy to marry a fox spirit, so they didn’t bother to write it down and if Mobei-jun tried to complain, that would be the argument Shan Su would throw in the ice demon’s teeth. If it’s not explicitely a crime, then it cannot be lawfully a crime and Shan Su merely was acting as a dutiful follower and handmaiden, giving her mistress what was rightfully theirs. Try and trap a spider demoness in twisty loopholes if you dared, you always would be the one looking silly at the end of the line.

 

So the spider demoness decided to ease her Empress into ruling – you couldn’t force a demon, this way laid bloodbaths and devastated palaces. No, when you wanted for a demon to do something, you had to let them believe it was their idea to begin with.

 

Shan Su brought some scrolls and her favorite brush – carved with one of her late father’s fingerbones, it was childish to be so nostalgic really but she couldn’t throw the tool as rubbish, her own sentimentality wouldn’t let her – while the Empress was busy humiliating their handmaidens over the game board, sat down in a corner and started to work.

 

It worked perfectly . Barely a fên after she opened the first scroll, the spider demoness could feel a pair of silvery eyes pointed in her direction, acutely watching her behaviour, and she repressed a smile, truly it was a mite too simple but she wouldn’t complain about prey willingly jumping in her web.

 

« You. Give me this scroll. »

 

Shan Su weren’t done with her reading, but when your Empress commanded you, then the only thing to do was to stand up and bringing the huli jing the item they asked for, and you bowed deeply when doing so.

 

All the other handmaidens were barely breathing as they stared the fox spirit casually handling the scroll and reading its contents, obviously wondering if they would be forced to witness Shan Su’s gruesome murder for one reason or another – well, maybe not murder, but the Empress still had the nasty habit to beat the shit out of their attendants when their mood dropped too low.

 

The Empress ultimately snorted as they throw the scroll at their foremost handmaiden’s head.

 

« Are you really losing your time with such idiocy ? » they sneered.

 

Shan Su politely bowed.

 

« Unfortunately, Junshang isn’t there to terrify or fuck his subjects into compliance » she reminded the whole room, « so we have to make do with our own means. »

 

« This wretched beast never learned responsibility at all » the huli jing sniffed. « Even when he was nothing but a snivelling, lying brat, so wouldn’t he keep eschewing his duties nowaday ? »

 

Huh, that sounded rather personal. Did the Empress and Junshang met so very long ago ? Luo Binghe was extremely tight-lipped regarding his background, it was only known that he was half a Heavenly breed and had to fall in the Endless Abyss for his potential to fully unlock, yet beyond that, the Sacred Ruler could have been a blank expanse of snow-covered countryside. That would explain why he stubbornly refused to murder the huli jing in spite of his court pressing him on the matter, a great deal of people were weird about killing acquaintances.

 

Or maybe it was an elaborate revenge, from the way the Empress insulted Junshang ? Apparently honouring someone by giving them a royal title but voiding said title from authority and prestige in the facts – no, Shan Su had seen how disgustingly fawning Luo Binghe would get over his pregnant consort. A mere obsession, then, a boy wanting a pretty thing and seizing it after he grew old enough, powerful enough for fulfilling his wishes instead of having to hear no again and again.

 

That was interesting and offered an enlightening viewpoint on the Sacred Ruler’s mindset, but that wasn’t what Shan Su actually cared for. She made plans to turn the Empress in a political player for the Lower Realm and it went very good so far.

 

The huli jing pretended to turn their nose up in front of the paperwork, but they obviously craved stimulation, they wanted to learn bits and pieces about the outside world, even if it was for their own benefit. And Shan Su could give them exactly them, through her scrolls filled with complains and reports and economical planning.

 

Soon, the Lower Realm wouldn’t have a single monarch to rule over the clans. Soon, demonkind would have an Empress .

 

Shan Su couldn’t wait to see this day.

 

 

Chapter 62

Really, the spider abomination was awfully transparent in her goals and desires. That was the reason why Shen Jiu effortlessly trounced her every time she played a game of weiqi or xiangqi against him, the silly chit actually believed subtle meant yes please, use a sledgehammer to break my knees and weaken me.

 

That was a smidge pitiful, and Shen Jiu almost wanted to burst out laughing. Even Ning Yingying wasn’t that obvious when she batted her eyelashes to obtain more money she would waste on pretty ribbons and sweets.

 

A smidge pitiful, and more than a little nonsensical. When, exactly, did the formerly human cultivator, a Peak Lord from the very sect that helped to imprison the previous Heavenly Demon to rule over demonkind, give any hints that he would be interested in governing this wretched species living in the Lower Realm ? On the other hand, the beast was obviously insane for wielding this cursed blade and allowing his lust to blind him to reality, these dumbass twits serving as his so-called handmaidens could barely breathe without someone to remind them how, so it seemed a demon was cursed to have no common sense whatsoever.

 

At least the spider abomination had the excuse of being unaware that Shen Jiu had failed to be a proper Peak Lord – not strong because his foundation was ruined by his heart demons and evil cultivation and age, not loved because he wouldn’t smile prettily and utter sweet nothings that weren’t true at all for assholes who didn’t deserve it, not respected because everyone could guess he was a fucking rat daring to wrap itself in silken robes and loathed him as a consequence.

 

But in spite of this knowledge being kept hidden – at least he assumed, nobody ever tried to taunt him about not being a human after all, about being a monster skinning himself with civilized airs to be left unmolested in the Middle Kingdom, so except for the beast they likely had no idea of the truth – Shen Jiu still was horrendously unpopular. Long before he started slapping these silly twits around, the so-called handmaidens didn’t care about hiding their distaste for him.

 

If he had put a hint of effort, he could have made them confess why they loathed him, but what would have he achieved ? What would have it changed, truly ? Shen Jiu had been hated in the Middle Kingdom, why wouldn’t he be hated in the Demon Realm too ? That was fine – he was used to it, the cold seeping so deeply in his fragile bones that he forgot how it felt to be warm a very long time ago, when Qi-ge escaped without any intent to come back and rescue stupid little Xiao Jiu from the Qiu Manor.

 

Everybody hated him, and he hated everybody, and when he would finally die, he would drag as many of the wretches surrounding him as he could in the Eighteen Hells, they would keep each other company.

 

But in the meantime – well, Shen Jiu was bored. And between starving your body and starving your mind, he earnestly believed the second option was the worse. Sure, when a slave wasn’t eating, he would grow weaker and weaker until he was discarded on a trash heap to be consumed by the dogs and the pigs, but when he wasn’t given anything to think by himself, he would allow his master to chain and beat and overwork him because he couldn’t imagine something beyond this pitiful existence. When your mind was starved, even dreams were exhausting to create.

 

Sure, the spider abomination’s paperwork was drier than bones forgotten in a scorching desert, but it was something to read. Something to criticize, even if it only was the spider abomination’s messy calligraphy that scrawled on the low-quality paper and very much looked like she had wildly swung her brush above the scroll to leave hazaphard splatters.

 

Who taught her to write so sloppily ? Shen Jiu would enjoy to hang them by their toes over an excrement pit, that would be funny to see them flailing and ultimately fall down and drown in maggot-infested shit. Or tie their limbs and drop them in the pigs’ enclosure – wait, did the demons have pigs or something equivalent ?

 

From the many, many complains about food shortages, they didn’t. That – might explain why they would raid the frontier villages so frequently, to loot everything that wasn’t nailed down. When you were hungry to the point that you barely managed to raise your hand, you would devour your neighbours if they were even more pitiful and weak.

 

And if a demon smarter than the others – not a very high level to reach, frankly, and wasn’t that disgusting – wanted to keep some farm animals for the future, other demons likely would mock their efforts or they would immediately steal the animals because they were starving now and couldn’t comprehend planning for a future famine. Really, that was self-sabotaging to the highest degree.

 

Shen Jiu explained that to the spider abomination. Loudly. With as much details as he could. The spider abomination weathered the storm without even blinking, her many hands demurely clasped in front of her and her head bowed.

 

Then she asked more details about the pigs, and how they were supposed to be raised, and what they were supposed to look like, begging for my Empress’ forgiveness but if you could draw me a picture, here’s my brush, here’s some ink and paper.

 

Shen Jiu drew the picture, and several handmaidens oohed and ahhed and pouted in front of the funny picture. More than a few pointed the lands claimed by their tribes would never be able to support pigs because it was infested with mosquitoes and ticks and midges so big and disease-ridden that an animal raised in the Middle Kingdom would be stripped bare to the skeleton in a fên, and its meat definitely wouldn’t be safe for consuming, even for scavenging demons.

 

So many others muttered about writing to their fathers and brothers and cousins, stealing breeding sows and hogs and keeping them as safe as could be, maybe stone enclosures with protective arrays carved on each stone ? That surely would have some kick against roaming predators and too-curious or ill-intentioned neighbours…

 

Surrounded by girls busy using their wits for a change, Shen Jiu wasn’t bored anymore. He didn’t feel content – how could he be, when he was stuck in the Lower Realm with the beast deluding himself in believing it wasn’t rape if you forced your captive to bear your spawn – but he felt marginally better, now that he was doing something else than laying on his bed and watching his belly swell with yet another half-breed dirty brat.

 

The former strategist of Cang Qiong was perfectly aware that the spider abomination had plotted all of that, she was so painfully transparent, but since she was polite enough to abstain from gloating and rubbing everyone’s face in her plan, he would be polite and ignore the role she played in the matter.

 

He didn’t like her. He couldn’t like her, she was a demon and one who gladly served the beast and for that he couldn’t forgive her, but he found her tolerable. She could learn and she was well-mannered, and he didn’t ask for more.

 

So many times, people in the jianghu weren’t even that.

Chapter 63

Notes:

WARNING: mention of non-con at the end.

Luo Binghe had been away for more than three years, almost four, when he finally decided enough was enough and he needed to go back to his Palace and his kingdom.

 

It wasn’t his fault – mostly. The Heavenly half-breed had the strangest luck, he couldn’t go anywhere without stumbling on a crime to investigate or a maiden begging for help or a disaster looming over some village and that wasn’t like he could ignore that, not when he had accepted the mantle of ruling over the Lower Realm. If he couldn’t even try to care for his subjects, then disgruntled commoners and nobility would band together and march on the Palace to do their best in murdering him, or gruesomely maim him at the very least.

 

Could the Mandate of Heaven apply, when you took the throne of demonkind’s Sacred Ruler ? Surely the Upper Realm would look kindly upon a sovereign doing their utmost to enforce order through their lands, yet on the other hand it was considered common knowledge that the Heavens felt nothing but distaste for Hell and its citizens, so the question would likely be fiercely debated for quite a long time.

 

Anyway, Luo Binghe felt tired of running around, plugging holes that demons never seemed able to fix either because they were too stupid or because they lacked some context or information very much spread among humans, and so he rose one day with the firm intent to draw Xin Mo and open a portal to his Palace, then he would behead anyone asking him to work on some public matter or another for the next week. Surely his court would be able to survive, Luo Binghe had been a mite too busy in the last years to actually communicate with his generals and courtiers about policies and reforms.

 

If anyone had exploited his absence to try and usurp him, he would ask Mobei-jun and the Shan siblings for the conspirator’s name and he would publically slaughter them alongside their whole bloodline. That ought to suffice as a reminder he wasn’t to be trifled with.

 

So he slashed the air with his cursed blade, terrified a few servants and errant warriors when he appeared in a courtyard less empty than expected, waved stuttered greetings for his return off and went to sleep in his rather dusty and cold bed for the first time since several years.

 

When he opened his eyes anew, Mobei-jun was at the feet of the bed and staring at him. No matter the ice demon’s current mood, these icy blue, almost white eyes refused to lose intensity and it made for pretty unnerving conversations – Luo Binghe understood far too well the reason why Shang Qinghua was so fidgety around the demon who claimed him as his pet.

 

Also, he got used to pretty maidens ogling him with blatant lust being there for when he woke up, and it was quite jarring for Mobei-jun to stand there instead.

 

« Mobei » he grumbled. « If the Palace isn’t in fire or invaded by a swarm of black-blooded acid-spitting wombats, we are going to have words. »

 

Seriously, what was the point of becoming Junshang if people roused you from your rest to torment you with bad news ?

 

The ice demon refused to flinch.

 

« Your Empress is stealing your kingdom beneath your nose » he accused in his usual flat voice.

 

Luo Binghe blinked. That he wasn’t expecting. Then annoyance swiftly replaced confusion, as Shen Jiu still managed to make his life difficult in spite of being a prisoner in all but name.

 

« And, pray tell » the Heavenly half-breed lazily drawled, « how did the Empress achieve such an endeavour when they are secured quietly in their quarters ? I have precisely ordered for nobody to let my consort set one foot outside their bedroom, actually. »

 

Mobei-jun’s glare took an exasperated shade, something that clearly meant I cannot believe I have to explain something that dumb you ought to be ashamed of yourself .

 

« Huli jing never needed to dirty their hands in order to rule a country, when they could fuck the right people into mindless subservience. »

 

Luo Binghe’s mood dropped faster than a mistreated disciple falling down the Endless Abyss after being kicked there by their scum shizun.

 

Shen Jiu. Fucking other people. When Luo Binghe had taken him for his Empress – Shen Jiu, lavishing attention upon other people, Shen Jiu looking at other people when he ought to focus on Luo Binghe and Luo Binghe alone –

 

He barely noticed he was standing up, Mobei-jun startling and almost white eyes slightly widening, then Xin Mo howled in his ear and space teared apart, the slash sloppier than usual –

 

He was standing in the bedroom he granted to his Empress, and it was positively crawling with handmaidens, some of them reading scrolls and tablets that looked terribly official, some of them playing weiqi or xiangqi, a trio in a corner holding a pipa and a xiao and a xun, Sha Hualing having her hair braided by Shan Su’s many deft hands –

 

And on the bed, Shen Jiu was embracing a girl who moaned in ecstasy, their lips locked together and completely ignoring their surroundings.

 

The girl shrieked when Luo Binghe brutally seized her hair to rip her away from Shen Jiu’s lap and throw her against the wall, leaving the huli jing exposed on the bed, his robes surprisingly tidy and his expression baffled by the sudden interruption.

 

«  Shen Jiu  » the Heavenly half-breed snarled, his demonic qi swirling around his body as storm clouds, so powerfully agitated that it could be seen by a mere mortal.

 

Whimpers and squeaks emerged from the handmaidens’ throats. Shen Jiu quickly smoothed his expression into utter contempt, a lofty Peak Lord forced to behold dog shit.

 

« Beast, I was busy having a productive time » he sneered. « But of course, you won’t ever learn manners, to disturb people in spite of being very much unwanted and unneeded. »

 

Unwanted. Unneeded.

 

Luo Binghe’s blood was boiling in his veins, he could feel it turn gaseous because it was so hot now, burning with betrayed anger because after all this time, after all the efforts Luo Binghe focused on making the huli jing understand, on forcing the fox spirit to change his mind, Shen Jiu would spat on him still and defile himself with his handmaidens, just like he used to defile his rank of Peak Lord with whores.

 

The Heavenly half-breed’s spell slammed the doors and the windows shut in the entire wing, ensuring nobody would get to escape his retribution.

 

Shen Jiu yelled then screamed curses and insults as Luo Binghe tore the huli jing’s fine robes and forced him to lay upon the soft sheets in order to remind him who he married, who gave children to him, who alone was entitled to kiss and grope and fuck the slender, pale body, with much less gentleness than the Junshang gave to his bedmates from the three last years but a sinner didn’t deserve gentleness.

 

The handmaidens cried and cowered as they watched the coupling, meaningless background noise for the Heavenly half-breed who was too busy punishing his wayward Empress to remember their existence, but once he would have exhausted Shen Jiu and left him a shivering, bruised wreck, then he would turn his fury against them.

 

Apparently, since they were so deprived that they would fuck their Empress, he would have to show them what a man was. And once they would have learnt their lesson, maybe they would understand how much of a bad idea it was to covet someone that never was meant to be theirs.

 

 

Chapter 64

When Luo Binghe came back, Shang Qinghua had urged Mobei-jun to go and denounce the Empress’ political intrigues as soon as possible.

 

The An Ding Peak Lord would be the first to acknowledge how fine a ruler the huli jing was, or at least appeared to be – the policies it tasked Shan Su to implement aimed to reduce the famine and ensure economic growth, giving demonkind the means to fill their bellies without having to fight their neighbours or loot the Middle Kingdom for resources. A true ruler knew how much of their power relied on their people – on the common people who couldn’t fight or cultivate worth a damn but would produce food and cloth and ore and all the necessities to lead a comfortable existence.

 

When the ruler controlled the common people, they enjoyed a staunch popularity and support. Even if the disgruntled nobility and army tried to complain, they would be left naked and starving by pissed off commoners since they depended on them for so many little things.

 

The commoners had good memories, but they were prone to fickleness, prone to trust any authority figure granting them more privileges and more help to do their work – demonkind might remember Daji and her monstruous excesses, but if their current Empress gave them prosperity as they never had seen before, plenty to eat and plenty to relish not only for them but for their children and grandchildren, how much longer before they started to praise the Empress to high Heavens ? How much longer before they started to bless the huli jing with as much fervour as they previously cursed it ?

 

And if the huli jing grew loved, people wouldn’t keep bothering watching it, keeping it in check, they would give it the freedom to do whatever it wanted and what would happen then ?

 

Shang Qinghua didn’t believe in the fox spirit’s potential goodness, but he certainly believed it was cunning and above all patient. The most fearsome opponent wouldn’t be content to improvise a plan on the spot, they would play the long game with twelve steps already taken in account when you still were busy realising you were playing.

 

The huli jing had to be reined in, and the only person powerful enough to do that was the dumbass who lusted so much after the creature that he thought it would be a terrific idea to marry it. So Shang Qinghua resolved that Luo Binghe needed to be warned immediately after coming back from his travels through the Lower Realm.

 

The An Ding Peak Lord didn’t know what he hoped to unleash when he encouraged the majestic asshole to go and speak to the Sacred Ruler, but Mobei-jun came back distinctly frazzled and burdened with a scary tale about Junshang’s reaction when he checked on the Empress and found it feeding on a handmaiden.

 

Everybody in the Palace was aware of what happened to these girls, and it surprisingly was the less horrifying thing about the Empress. Yes, getting one’s lifeforce sucked out by a ruthless predator was the stuff of nightmares, but the Empress was rumoured to be so beautiful it shamed flowers, and it fed through a kiss, and people – be them human or demon – really enjoyed the idea of two women sharing a passionate embrace, so when this rumour was bandied around the Palace’s courtyards and hallways it was always repeated with more arousal than dread.

 

Luo Binghe apparently didn’t enjoy the sight, since his reaction was to brutally violate the Empress and every single handmaiden present in the bedroom – at least twenty-six women, talk about a massive orgy – before ordering for the huli jing to be taken to the dungeon and left there until he decided otherwise.

 

Personally, Shang Qinghua couldn’t see his dumbass martial nephew finally beheading the fox spirit, since it was obvious now that the Heavenly half-breed was easily led by the dick. Maybe it was the sheer annoyance that drove him to commit something extremely, deeply stupid, because who in their right mind stealthily infiltrates a prison with a tiny dagger to be forgotten in a monster’s chest ?

 

Seen close, the huli jing truly deserved the title of calamitous beauty – its features were carefully carved from flawless, pristine jade, the quicksilver luster of its hair mesmerizing to behold, even in the badly-lit cell and in spite of its bedraggled state, torn clothes barely keeping it decent and purplish-black bruises marring the pale skin.

 

Shang Qinghua swallowed his unease as he beheld this beautiful face – why would he think it familiar ? It was the first – fortunately – huli jing he ever met in his life, after all.

 

Quicksilver eyes opened, their glint metallic and swirling and treacherous, and they stared at the An Ding Peak Lord who found himself deeply happy for the heavy, shapeless dark robes he was wearing, along the featureless mask hiding his identity – wouldn’t do for someone to get a glimpse of Mobei-jun’s human pet lurking somewhere he really oughn’t to be, so a disguise it was.

 

Why was he sweating like that ? His stomach was lurching, and Shang Qinghua was clutching his dagger as a child would clutch a soft toy in order to fight their fear of the monster waiting behind the door.

 

« So ? Are you going to do it ? » the huli jing finally asked in a bored voice, as if braving a murder attempt was barely worth the attention one would grant to taking out the trash. « Or maybe do you fear too much the beast’s retribution to commit the deed ? »

 

As it sneered the word beast , the tone finally triggered a memory in the An Ding Peak Lord, one of the many monthly meetings in which the logistician tried to beg his so-called martial siblings to be more careful with the things they broke, and their most senior member after Sect Leader Yue drawled his words in such a way it was obvious what he was thinking of you, your intelligence or rather lack of, your ancestors and your appaling hygiene.

 

And these features – obviously twisted and softened to fit the female mold, obviously tainted by demonic inheritance but – it was Shen Qingqiu, the missing Peak Lord.

 

No wonder he was missing, if he had been in the Lower Realm all this time. And no wonder he went missing to begin with, if the infamously haughty and proud Qing Jing Peak Lord had suddently awakened some demon blood he was previously unaware of, for what kind of righteous cultivator would agree to let live a demon, moreso a demon who fooled the whole jianghu for decades ?

 

… Yue Qingyuan would absolutely do that. Years after Cang Qiong’s strategist vanished in thin air without giving any warning, the Sect Leader kept acting like he buried his treasured wife yesterday, it honetly was a mite pathetic. A bubble of hysterical hilarity threatened to pop out within Shang Qinghua’s chest as he pictured the mourning Yue Qingyuan learning the truth regarding Shen Qingqiu, that would be a spectacle for the ages !

 

But what was he supposed to do, now ? Killing a huli jing was one thing – killing your martial brother when said sibling was infamously devoted to a cultivator’s ideals, well, it was so much more gnarly.

 

Ancestors, Shang Qinghua’s martial nephew was fucking his own shizun, the wretched, unfilial beast. Well, all Heavenly Demons were rumoured to be perverts from the highest grade, just look at their last princess carrying an affair with a giant snake.

 

All these thoughts were gleefully clashing inside the An Ding Peak Lord’s mind, while Shen Qingqiu – the Empress of the Lower Realm and fuck, what a doozy – kept glaring at him, as offended by his refusal to take action.

 

When Shang Qinghua retreated, he hadn’t touched one single lock of quicksilver hair.

 

 

Chapter 65

Shen Jiu hurt everywhere – and he meant it, his hair hurt, his teeth hurt, even his fingernails were hurting and that was something he would have been very happy to ignore until he gruesomely perished as the scum he was. Even Wu Yanzi and Qiu Jianluo hadn’t been imaginative – or spiteful – enough to push his body’s pain threshold that far.

 

Truly the beast was good for one thing and one thing only, and it was showing himself the worst he could be to the man he used to call his Shizun with almost slavish devotion, now with bitter irony but always with disgusting, unrestrained lust. And for such petty reasons, too.

 

How dare you look at somebody else than your lord and master , the beast howled as he forced himself upon Shen Jiu, why would you keep doing that when you’re not in a position allowing you to indulge your whims, why why why –

 

Shen Jiu had spat at this fair face distorted and made ugly – more faithful to the truth of the thing bearing it – by envy and wrath, he had screamed and blindly lashed out with his clipped claws as his cunt was torn open and left a bleeding wreck, as yang qi flooded his meridians with all the harshness and cruelty of a two-year-old drought bent on drying the countryside until nothing was left but thirsty dust that could never be soil again, even after drinking a river’s worth in water.

 

The yang qi was lingering still in the formerly human cultivator’s body and it wasn’t comfortable at all, like a sunburn slowly consuming his meridians from the inside as he struggled to assimilate the too-hot, too-dry lifeforce.

 

Shen Jiu was unsure of what happened after the beast finally left him alone to turn his anger against the silly twits picked to be the huli jing’s handmaidens, he had been far too busy trying to breathe through the dizzying pain and violent need to puke his guts in order to choke on the blood and bile.

 

He remembered the screaming. He remembered the pleading, begging for the Junshang’s mercy, it was only games and music, it was supposed to be harmless, please Junshang have mercy, please don’t do that, please –

 

These stupid girls. When the master was pissed off and looking for a way to unwind, nothing the slaves were saying would be enough to make him change his mind.

 

Shen Jiu wondered in the back of his mind how many handmaidens had survived their punishment.

 

(and in spite of his self-professed stone heart, he wants to cry a bit because these girls, he taught them weiqi and xiangqi, he taught them music, and they started to shyly expose him how hard it was for their families back home to make a living, and they started to giggle as they tried to compose poetry and only managed to produce bawdy songs)

 

(they just acted as the female disciples on his Qing Jing Peak and the flowers in the Warm Red Pavilion, silly and naive and attentive and ultimately harmless so he didn’t have to fear for his life and well-being around them)

 

Shen Jiu didn’t know how many handmaidens were still alive – how many girls had been injured and reduced to quietly sob on the floor, clutching their broken limbs or their bleeding wombs – when the beast dragged him outside the bedroom to lock him in the darkest, loneliest part of his dungeons.

 

« This time » the beast had hissed after tying Shen Jiu up with so many Immortal Binding Cables that the formerly human cultivator appeared more a mummy than a huli jing, « this time, you will be alone to think on your sins and repent. Enjoy your secluded meditation, Shizun . »

 

And he stomped away in a flurry of black and red silks, this fucking brat eager to throw a tantrum and turn his life in the most melodramatic play ever written by a dumbass playwright. Even if he hadn’t been vergering on blacking out, Shen Jiu would have been unimpressed.

 

His new room certainly was a downgrade from his previous accomodations – he was lying on cold, hard stone without even a cushion, without even a light for him to see his own nose, he was bound with so many cables that he couldn’t even move the pinky without great effort, and every cun of him was hurting from the beast’s fit of jealousy.

 

Still, it could be worse – he could be stuck hearing the beast ranting about Shen Jiu’s ungratefulness and coldness. The former Qing Jing Peak Lord would rather take the isolation, it wasn’t like he never used the Lingxi caves when he believed he was human and as such entitled to go there – or was forced to go there because his Shizun wanted for him to reflect on some flaw or another in his behaviour.

 

But at least Shen Jiu’s Shizun wanted a Disciple that wouldn’t shame his Peak, that proved himself successor material – the beast only cared about having a pretty little doll whose head would be far too empty to consider the possibility of saying no to him.

 

The formerly human cultivator closed his swollen eyes – the beast really had been so infuriated that he couldn’t care less about leaving bruises on his so-called Empress’ face, how ill-mannered and yet another proof he was unfit to claim the title of ruler even over demonkind – and slowly breathed out as he focused on the turmoil spread throughout his whole body.

 

First and foremost, he needed to assimilate all this yang qi if he wanted to manage anything without desperately itching to scratch his meridians out of his flesh. He likely would feel extremely bloated and uncomfortable for a while, but it would keep hurting much longer otherwise.

 

Then Shen Jiu would start cultivating his demon core. He allowed these silly twits with their political frettings and their sinful lack of education to distract him these latest years, but now it was time to get serious. He needed to cultivate a core, no matter its nature, or the beast would have no reason to restrain himself when he was in a bad mood and wanted to rape the designated victim for his disgusting lust.

 

The Immortal Binding Cables would complicate the endeavour, but Wu Yanzi had enjoyed tying Shen Jiu and the malnourished teen learned how to get around the restriction – it was hard and the end result was pretty crappy and unstable, but it could be done and that was the only thing the huli jing cared about.

 

He breathed in.

 

Now he needed to enter the right mindset, that always was the most annoying part of meditation – trying to empty your mind, it was a guarantee for a lot of silly, intrusive thoughts to invade the skull and start running amok with the cheerful vigor of a herd of wild horses trampling the countryside under their hoofs.

 

The trick wasn’t to empty one’s mind – it was to let these noisy thoughts to flow through your mind without trying to catch them and sure enough, they would be taken away by the stream of consciousness, an autumn leaf flying away from the tree on which it grew.

 

He breathed out. He breathed in.

 

In. Out.

 

In… and out.

 

 

Chapter 66

When you were deep in meditation, things became a smidge weird. You didn’t perceive the world the same way.

 

For Shen Jiu, it was surprisingly peaceful – surprisingly, because peaceful wasn’t something he did. He would be snippy and angry and fearful, even in his sleep because nightmares wouldn’t let him rest unless he went down to the Red Warm Pavilion and begged the flowers there to play music until he dropped.

 

It was peaceful in a greyish manner – the soft feeling one was exposed to, when it was very early in the morning, when the world was floating between day and night, not dark enough for you to be fully blind, yet not light enough for you to see clearly what was around you, the blue hour in which it was easy to lose oneself in another dimension out of time.

 

It was peaceful and it was quiet and Shen Jiu would have felt maybe a tad lonely if he had been more of an extroverted, not as focused on building his demon core.

 

It went slowly, but building a core – even a demon core – was a slow matter if you wanted to avoid exploding as an overfilled pig bladder, and the Immortal Binding Cables didn’t help it to go quicker, so it couldn’t be helped.

 

Time stretched in the greyish floating, and lost all meaning. Shen Jiu was far too deep to pay attention to the fên, the shichen, even the days ticking away, just as he was far too deep to pay attention to people visiting him.

 

« … so that’s your new strategy to spite me, Shizun ? If you’re sleeping, you don’t have to look at me... »

 

« … careful, Junshang, and no, you cannot force the Empress out of the trance. Do you want to suffer yet another episode of yin qi poisoning... »

 

« … so it truly is Shen-shixiong. This wretched one doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry… look at us, Peak Lords and involved with demons. Still, Shen-shixiong is in there more deeply than me, heh ? »

 

Words brushing his ears, but it was tiring to listen and actually bother to ascribe them a meaning. He just wanted to be left alone and finish his work.

 

In the soft twilight of his mindscape, there was nothing to see except for Shen Jiu and the core he was building – well, see was a bit of a misnomer, since he didn’t have eyes in his inner mind, it was more like… hearing ? Yes, something like that, Shen Jiu was reduced to a harsh melody played on the qin by a stern professional, and he was trying to arrange a melody that would go well with his.

 

Composing music was hard, any musician with a hint of skill in the art would say so – and it was harder when the melody decided it wanted to follow its own rythm instead of the one you wanted.

 

Yes, the melody – the golden core ? – apparently developed something akin to sentience, and Shen Jiu didn’t know how it happened, but there it was, a flash of white teeth grinning in a vulpine muzzle before disappearing under a bush, now you cannot see me anymore, come and look for me, come and play with me !

 

Playful, when it came from Shen Jiu, and the former slave turned demonic cultivator turned Peak Lord turned prisoner in all but name couldn’t for the life of him understand how it managed to be so different from its creator. That boggled the mind, truly – after all, when a tiger reproduced, its spawn wasn’t a goose, that just wasn’t possible.

 

It could hear its progenitor’s confusion and it delighted in it, giggling in silvery tones reminicent of wind chimes made from the finest glass and metalwork before sending him something that felt like… it felt like… Shen Jiu didn’t actually know how it felt like.

 

Maybe a kiss on his cheek. Maybe downy fur brushing against his hand. Something that meant I love you , no matter the way you tried to twist it, no matter the angle from which you tried to look at it. I love you , no matter what, no more and no less.

 

That was stupid and maybe disturbing, because Shen Jiu was trying to build a demon core, but the more he pumped his qi within it, the more it grew and gained in complexity, the less it looked like a core. Did Shen Jiu accidentally collapse his golden core – the one he couldn’t access anymore due to the beast putting a cursed shackle around his neck – and started molding a Nascent Soul ?

 

In spite of being deep in meditation, the former Qing Jing Peak Lord was horrendously aware of how dangerous the process could be – fail the tribulation and you would spend years reduced to a drooling, gibbering lunatic if you were one of the lucky ones. Shen Jiu never had been very lucky, just look at his life, gods relished in pissing all over him.

 

On the other hand, forging a Nascent Soul would tremendously raise the level of physical might and spiritual power the cultivator could wield, and that would certainly be useful against the beast. Also, when a cultivator started to do something to their cultivation when in secluded meditation, it was impossible to stop the process unless you wanted it to end very nastily. Most of the time, it involved explosions.

 

Hum, why would qi tend to cause so many explosions when disrupted ? A question for the ages, Shen Jiu felt, and the potential Nascent Soul that definitely wasn’t a demon core agreed with him.

 

Shen Jiu misliked explosions. They were messy, and they tended to spread fire around. After burning the Qiu manor to the ground, Shen Jiu didn’t like fire very much.

 

He didn’t like cold either, after a childhood spent shivering in the streets and wondering if he would froze to death because the slavers would kick him outside in a fit of meanness – and unfortunately, the yin qi that now flowed through his meridians was cold and damp, exactly the combination a street urchin wanted to avoid because it guaranteed you would sicken and perish, with your body abandoned in the gutters to rot and feed the vermin, or thrown on the trash heap because people refused to stain their shoes by trampling it.

 

This potential Nascent Soul didn’t feel cold. It wasn’t warm, but it was soothing – when you were tossing and turning in your bed, tormented by the fever, and suddenly a wet handkerchief was dropped on your forehead and it stopped hurting that much.

 

Yet again this weird feeling almost like a kiss, almost like a caress, of course I won’t harm you, I love you .

 

As if it meant anything. You couldn’t trust anyone in the Three Realms, no even someone who claimed they loved you. Maybe you actually ought to mistrust them the most, because they would make you lower your defenses and then you would be helpless to prevent your heart from being ripped out of your chest, stomped and scattered in a thousands shards for the crows and the dogs to devour.

 

To Shen Jiu’s cynicism, the potential Nascent Soul answered with nothing but the weird feeling, more insistent this time, I love you, of course I won’t harm you .

 

Just you wait and see.

 

 

Chapter 67

Shan Su knew she was committing a major crime by stealing a prisoner personally condemned to rot in the dungeon by the Sacred Ruler of Demonkind. As a leal subject and a prominent member of the Heavenly half-breed’s faction, she would admit it was a very repulsive behaviour.

 

As a spider demoness and a woman, she sneered and considered Luo Binghe deserved it.

 

Sure, he was the Junshang and as such could do everything he wanted to any demon weaker than himself. He could eat them, he could torture them, he could shame them and their whole bloodline for millenium and nobody would have complained. So if he wished to violate his Empress with all her handmaidens, well, he was strong enough to do so – and certainly virile enough – and all these girls were weaker so they deserved to be trampled, that was what everyone present at court and a lot of noblemen and women would declare regarding the matter.

 

Shan Su nonetheless was a spider demoness. She didn’t play fair, she was playing to win – and that meant disregarding the rules if she found herself at a disadvantage. She didn’t follow anyone, she would choose to bestow her services upon the one she considered worthy of it.

 

As a male, Luo Binghe never had any chance to be ever worthy, that was a mere fact of existence. Men were so much more stupid and irrational, but they could be tolerable once in a while. They even could be shaped into something approximating a good leader, if the women holding their leashes were crafty and cunning enough.

 

As a male who forcefully took her against her will, after making her and the other handmaidens watch the Empress be thoroughly defiled, Luo Binghe had utterly lost her respect and deserved to be taken down several pegs, to the point he would fall into the Eighteen Hells burdened with so much humiliation that King Yama’s worst tortures would feel like a gentle lover’s tender caress.

 

And for that, there was nothing better than discreetly freeing the Empress and watching the Heavenly brat throw a fit over his captive’s disappearance.

 

Shan Su had prepared a lot for the breakout. Mainly by sweet-talking her darling Hualing into asking Junshang a few questions about his dream-walking abilities – if he could expose her as the one behind his punishment, then everything would be ruined, so the spider demoness needed for her mind to not be vulnerable and open to a noisy brat lacking the ability to register intimacy as something existing and very dear to some people.

 

For all she had shared in Shan Su and the Empress and the handmaidens’ predicament, the Sha Saintess had been rather hard to persuade to go along with the plan – the poor thing was too influenced by a father present in her childhood, and of course was hesitant to encure the possibility of Luo Binghe’s wrath again.

 

Shan Su had kissed and embraced her darling to comfort her and cajole her into acceptance. She also poked at her sore pride the tiniest smidge, since Hualing had been the runt of her clan, the sixth daughter who wasn’t supposed to achieve anything worthwile because her older sisters would have already stolen and did everything important.

 

Is that truly the Saintess of the Sha lineage in front of me ? Or is this one speaking to a measly peasant ? Remember who you are, choose who you are, and choose well.

 

Hualing made her choice, and Shan Su was pretty happy with her pick. Being a Saintess, a strong, fearsome, confident woman who would wreck terrible retribution upon the dumbasses opposing her suited very well her beloved.

 

So she was busy distracting Luo Binghe – with sex or with a complain about tribal feuding in the Southern deserts, as long as she made a lot of noise about it and dragged the matter for a couple of shichen – in order for Shan Su to slip inside the dungeon and steal the Empress away.

 

The spider demoness wasn’t expecting to see the huli jing in good state, since the Junshang threw them in the dark immediately after getting bored of climbing them like a rutting beast. She really hoped they weren’t delirious from fever or bloated by gangrena and needing more to be put down than rescued, that truly would be an ignominous ending for such a lovely being and it wouldn’t be as satisfying to bury a corpse somewhere it will never be found by the Heavenly half-breed.

 

She really wasn’t expecting for the Empress to be in a comatose state, and her heartbeat stuttered as she untied the many, many Immortal Binding Cables crisscrossing over the still form, were they so ruined by Luo Binghe’s tantrum that it led to this ?

 

She carefully took her Empress’ wrist in her hand and took a look at the meridians there.

 

Oh. Well.

 

It – wasn’t surprising, actually, for the Empress to be with child. Luo Binghe had raped them, and even if the sex wasn’t consensual or enjoyable, both these conditions weren’t exactly needed for reproductive functions to be triggered. What was surprising was the unborn not being miscarried since their mother was imprisoned in wretched circumstances.

 

And also – it felt very different from the Empress’ previous pregnancies. The two young princes had been distinctively yang-alignated, just like their sire, their Heavenly Demon blood shining bright for nobody to doubt their inheritance, but this child was so heavily skewed towards yin qi, it couldn’t possibly be a Heavenly Demon that waited to be unleashed in the Three Realms…

 

What if it was another huli jing ?

 

Shan Su knew she was grasping at thin straw there – how a huli jing was created was something lost to the mists of time, and people generally wanted to prevent such an event, such was the legendary cruelty and depravity of the fox spirits that people in the Lower and Middle Realms united to clamor for their utter eradication.

 

And yet, this child growing in the Empress of the Lower Realm’s womb, this child about to be born in a few months, had the potential to be one.

 

Shan Su was unsure about what opinion she was supposed to have on the matter. Her only certainty was that her brother would never forgive her if he couldn’t study this once-in-a-lifetime event, and she wasn’t able to refuse Shan Xu something when he asked. Maybe it made her a less than perfect spider demoness, but at least it meant she wasn’t an utter failure of a sister.

 

Change of plans, then : she would stash the Empress somewhere safe, and she would inform her brother of the huli jing’s current state. There was no reason to fear the court physician would deliver her to Junshang, he hadn’t been very happy with Luo Binghe since he nursed his sister back to health, and he also wouldn’t want to jeopardize his access to the most fascinating patient he was given the opportunity to study.

 

Hualing might be a harder sell – for all she had been convinced to help Shan Su to deliver righteous retribution, she nonetheless stayed terrified by the Empress and letting them bearing yet another member of the fox spirit bloodline could be a step too far in her opinion.

 

The spider demoness likely would have to seduce her again, gently, softly. She used to be more assertive in the past but after Luo Binghe decided to be an arsehole, well, it certainly put a damper on their enthusiasm for rough sex. And for the prospect of having sex together.

 

They would heal from that. Shan Su would be damned before she would let a male control her life to this extent.

 

 

Chapter 68

« … amazing, truly amazing, the Empress is a wonder... »

 

Something had changed around Shen Jiu, and he was unsure of what or why. Still, it felt – a good change ? Not a threat to him, or his potential Nascent Soul.

 

«  If you could stop fawning for a fên and actually start the physical, everyone would be very happy, don’t you think ?  »

 

Foreign qi lurking at the edges of his own, but Shen Jiu couldn’t rouse the energy to slap them away. And it wasn’t intrusive anyway – soft and weightless, akin to spiderweb strands carried by the wind and gently falling upon his skin, a curious gaze brimming with curiosity, what are you, who are you, can you tell me ? Can you show me ?

 

This kind of attitude could get tiring very quickly, when the one with this behaviour wouldn’t stop throwing questions and insisting for them to be so detailed that it verged on a lecture, but on the other hand – well, this kind of attitude indicated you were at least passionate about the matter, and wanted to learn as much as you could to avoid mistakes in the future.

 

Shen Jiu loathed mistakes, because every mistake you suffered when a street brat or a slave could spell your doom. It wasn’t much better as a Peak Lord, with the whole jianghu starved for scandal and only waiting for an opportunity to tear him down if he let slip his heavy mask for one moment and exposed a flaw in his image as the perfect, aloof scholar.

 

«  So that is...  »

 

«  Absolutely ! How splendid, truly splendid, can you even imagine, getting to study a newborn huli jing and how they grow up ! Nobody ever had the chance !  »

 

« Mainly because nobody actually wanted to have the chance, dear brother, don’t forget reality in your enthusiasm.  »

 

«  Who the fuck cares about reality, anyway ?  »

 

Two people – speaking above his head ? Not quarreling – how weird – it sounded like teasing, actually, and one of the voices evoked familiarity and a weird kind of trust, he wouldn’t let this person watch his back of course, but they were useful ? Such a rare flower, people enjoyed wallowing in uselessness with occasional flashes of intelligence, just like Yue Qi who used to be such a promising brat in their street urchin days, only to grow in a spineless, cowardly wretch who wouldn’t even confess the truth of his feelings towards Shen Jiu after abandoning him.

 

The potential Nascent Soul softly quivered and chimed in crystal tones. Obviously they returned the curiosity. Shen Jiu wanted to wrap himself around it and prevent it from moving and doing something stupid – a sure, easy way to die was to indulge your curiosity because this beast looked weird, or this flower smelled good and you wanted a closer look, and before you knew you were stuck in a stomach filling with digestive juices if you were born under a lucky star.

 

«  Do you know when they’re going to wake up ?  »

 

«  Hard to say… But I think it’s linked to the pregnancy, as long as our Empress is devoting all their energy to the unborn’s growth… huh, maybe that’s why fox spirits are so rare, if they’re so helpless while reproducing, they cannot do it very often...  »

 

Waking up… ? Shen Jiu likely would have to do this soon, when the potential Nascent Soul would finally achieve completion. Frankly, he wasn’t looking forwards this moment, it was always deeply unsettling to put an end to a meditative trance, to leave the serene emptiness for the loud, noisy mundane world.

 

Sometimes, when he still was a Peak Lord, when he had been nothing but a measly Disciple among so many others, Shen Jiu had considered becoming one of these hermits secluding themselves in a cave or the woods for centuries and rejecting any kind of human interaction, that certainly appeared very resting. But he ultimately would reject the possibility again and again, out of foolish attachment towards Cang Qiong, towards Yue Qingyuan, towards his Disciples – a genuine hermit needed to rise above worldly cravings, and Shen Jiu was carved from far too rough stuff to ever hope to know such purity. Now that he was aware of being a demon, it was even more applicable.

 

«  Sleep tight and well, your Majesty. This faithful handmaiden will wait for you to open your eyes again.  »

 

Was someone stroking his cheek ? Did he fall asleep in the Warm Red Pavilion again ? It had been a long while since it happened, didn’t it – Shen Jiu didn’t know why, but the courtesans really enjoyed petting his hair, pulling his head on their laps and kissing his cheeks when he was too busy indulging in rest instead of tossing and turning in his bed, insomnia snipping at his heels with all its cruel determination.

 

These silly twits who served him got brazen too, when he fed on them, and lately, he had allowed some of them to sit on his lap because his skin hungered for contact, remembering the flowers and their soft, feminine touch, and the handmaidens were there and willing, and where was the harm in this ? They seemed to enjoy it when he combed their disheveled locks into something more aesthetically pleasant to the eye.

 

The potential Nascent Soul shifted and poked at the memories floating at the surface of Shen Jiu’s thoughts. Memories of the Warm Red Pavilion and the bedroom in which he had been imprisoned for years, both places filled with girls playing music, playing board games, gossiping about poetry and politics and how to clip your nails and draw pretty flowers on your forehead and dimples.

 

Something like curiosity and longing flashed through the qi construct. Shen Jiu couldn’t help the mental eyebrow raising – when one was developing a Nascent Soul, it was a sure sign that the cultivator was shedding worldly desires. At least, that was the accepted theory and unlike so many ugly truths in the jianghu, there wasn’t evidence enough to debunk it – because any cultivator breaking through this stage was exceptional to begin with, a million to one chance.

 

Of course Shen Jiu wouldn’t be able to do that as it was meant to be, he always screwed everything no matter how much he tried his best. Of course his Nascent Soul would diverge sharply and far from the perfection it was supposed to be.

 

It didn’t feel so much like perfection than a weird mix of beast and person, and it was exhausting to wonder where the beast ended and where the person began – a great deal of people deserved to be degraded as beasts after all, and as a Peak Lord who fought and traveled in varied circumstances Shen Jiu had had the opportunity to meet a great deal of beasts fulfilling several criterias for being considered people in their own rights. No matter what, it was uncanny.

 

His Nascent Soul was uncanny. But it was his , wasn’t it ? That meant nobody was allowed to trash-talk it. Shen Jiu had nothing to his name – he wasn’t a Peak Lord anymore, and this wretched beast had proven he would take back every thing he claimed was a gift for his so-called Empress – nothing but this flawed Nascent Soul, and as he learned in his street urchin days, a possession was a luxury and a privilege for which you needed to fight tooth and nail.

 

Shen Jiu certainly was a greedy, possessive soul who couldn’t let go. Ever.

 

 

Chapter 69

When the pain came, Shen Jiu found himself gritting his teeth to not scream.

 

It was hard. Much harder than when he was beaten and starved in the Qiu Manor, when he was beaten and used for demonic cultivation experiments under Wu Yanzi, when he was used and abused for the beast’s selfish pleasure and breeding.

 

It was painful, because Shen Jiu’s potential Nascent Soul had decided it finally was ready to face the world and was busy claiming its independence and it fucking hurt like every single torturer working in the Eighteen Hells at once, a pain so deep that the formerly human cultivator could only compare it to his previous qi deviations and how they always seemed to tear bits and pieces of his soul.

 

Once upon a time, Shen Jiu believed that was how he would ultimately die, his soul pushed beyond its limits by yet another qi deviation, shattered in far too many pieces to ever hope being put together again.

 

Still, this time was different – he wasn’t breaking into a thousand of thousands shards, he was torn into halves, one so much more smaller than himself but it was supposed to be a Nascent Soul, described as somewhat looking like an infant in the old texts about this specific breakthrough, so it kind of made sense for it to be tiny…

 

His thoughts were scattering and spilling everywhere, but as long as he was focusing on inanities, he could swallow his screams down. Nobody would have the privilege to hear him howling in distress, that he swore so many years ago, he forgot when it happened.

 

«  … come on, your Highness, just breathe, you’re almost there...  »

 

Was that the spider abomination ? A cool, papery-feeling hand was resting on his forehead, while the other was holding his hand and he was breathing just like she said, he couldn’t trust her but he knew her, she had this infuriating habit of doing interesting things and that was better than languishing in his boredom so it tended to be a good idea to listen to her.

 

Also, for all she was a demon and one of the beast’s lackeys, she never personally rose a hand against Shen Jiu. The disgraced Peak Lord strongly doubted she would start now, after all this time.

 

And – someone else ? Between Shen Jiu’s legs ? He was lying on his side and that was nice, because it prevented his tail from being crushed under his own weight, not a comfortable feeling that and he really was growing so spoiled, when he used to sleep in the mud and the cold and oftentimes it was the preferable, safer option because going inside meant other people , people who waited for the first opportunity to inflict harm to him.

 

«  … can see the head now, one good push ought to help, so if it pleases the Empress ... »

 

Fuck, it hurt and Shen Jiu dry-heaved. Why was he nauseous ? He was pretty sure he ate nothing for – how long now ? The beast certainly couldn’t care less about feeding him, now that he unveiled his true colours and stopped pretending he was a nice, upstanding husband, as if a man such as him could ever see anyone else as a partner rather than a hole to fuck when his dick wanted to take a dip.

 

The huli jing hiccuped and allowed the powerful, desperate urge nipping at his heels to overpower what was left of his rational thought processes – and pushed as he harshly panted, pushed so hard and so long that he hysterically wondered if he was shitting his own guts out of his body, what a mess it would be to clean the bed if such was the reality, and the potential Nascent Soul quivered and slipped through his fingers , no no nonono –

 

Shen Jiu choked and his eyes flew wide open, frantically blinking to chase the grainy silver motes invading his vision and coughing because his throat wouldn’t work, wouldn’t letting him call for help because he just lost –

 

« Your Highness ? Your Highness, are you awake now ? »

 

The spider abomination was staring at him with her numerous eyes, and he wanted to raise his hand and gouge one, her voice was grating on his nerves and he was tired, so exhausted that he could barely move his head, so he merely hissed at her. She grinned with all her yellowish fangs in display.

 

« Welcome back to the land of living, my Empress » she greeted, « and might this humble servant be the first to congratulate you for your third child’s birth ? »

 

… Hum.

 

Shen Jiu blinked.

 

« Ah, are you sure about that ? » Another voice, the male spider abomination this time. « Do remember how their Highness lacked even the slightest hint of care for their older spawn. »

 

A soft mewl punctuated this sentence, and the formerly human cultivator shivered. Was the room cold ? Surely that was the explanation for this physical reaction…

 

The spider abomination kept staring at him, with the tiniest thoughtful frown.

 

« Show them the brat ? I have this strange feeling it might be different this time. »

 

« If they try to attack, I will have to retaliate in order to protect my specimen, you realize. »

 

« Shut your trap and come here. »

 

The male abomination sighed and entered Shen Jiu’s vision – he was carrying something wrapped in a bloodly cloth, something tiny and pale – moonlight skin and fuzzy hair darkened with moisteness but already showing quicksilver glints, the same shade as these eyes already open and inquisitive and now focusing on Shen Jiu –

 

The child – the infant huli jing – smiled, a happy smile filled with pearly white teeth, as if nothing could please them more than Shen Jiu’s very existence, wasn’t that a fucking hoot, and cooed.

 

Shen Jiu blinked again. Nope, still there. It likely wasn’t an hallucination, then.

 

You were supposed to be a Nascent Soul, what the fuck kind of trick did you just play on me ? He wanted to hiss, but his throat still refused to work and the brat was still laughing, why were they laughing ?

 

« Put the baby in their arms. »

 

« Really, I’m not sure... »

 

« Look at them – does the Empress look ready to commit kinslaying ? Just lay the brat on their chest, gently, softly, there you go... »

 

The child was warm all over when they were deposited right on the top of Shen Jiu, and the formerly human cultivator automatically embraced the small body cuddling close to his skin, he could feel how soft the birdlike bones were under his hand and he was a mite dizzy, licking his chapped lips as he struggled to force his brain into finding its wits anew.

 

The child still felt like the Nascent Soul he spent so many time growing within himself, and Shen Jiu really wanted to be pissed off about that, all these efforts wasted on a brat, but he was exhausted and couldn’t muster the strength to complain.

 

Yes, it was exhaustion that was keeping his tongue silent, why would it be something else ? The former Qing Jing Peak Lord wasn’t known to be very fond of children, even when they were able to walk on their own and stay clean because they would immediately run everywhere to leave a mess and wailed a storm when punished for their unruliness in spite of being grown enough to understand the rules and the consequences of breaking them.

 

Shen Jiu was tired, and so he went to sleep, the child safely nestled in his embrace.

 

 

Chapter 70

« Truly, it’s amazing » Shan Xu gushed and his sister couldn’t help it, she groaned and whacked him on the back of his head.

 

« This is the eleventh time you said that » she complained, « do I need to slip something nasty in your cup to rot your tongue and prevent you from doing it again ? »

 

« My sister is a barbarian unable to appreciate how important my work is, aiyah » the physician sighed as he kept watching the Empress with such intensity that Shan Su would have believed he wanted to passionately fuck them if she hadn’t been his sister and aware of his lack of interest for sex.

 

Said Empress had slept like the dead for half a day, woke up ravenous, drained a wretched demon out of his yang qi – Shan Su plucked the hapless prisoner from the dungeons, she took care and picked someone that wouldn’t be missed, a servant who displeased his master for some reason or another was easily forgotten and easily replaced, especially when the master was Junshang – and now was breastfeeding his youngest spawn with the bamboozled expression of a hen stumbling upon a knife and wondering what the fuck this thing was.

 

For a little while, the spider demoness had worried about the infant accidentally biting their mother – a very common accident with baby demons, since they often were born with a full set of teeth – and the Empress throwing a fit over the injury and beating the brat bloody as a consequence, but either it didn’t pierce the skin, or the Empress had a high threshold for pain because the grown huli jing barely flinched when the small hungry mouth latched on their breast.

 

Compare and contrast with the Empress obviously seething when their firstborn needed to nurse, barely waiting for the brat to finish before ripping it away from them and discarding it in the attendants’ arms. It wasn’t a gap anymore, it was three whole realms of different existence.

 

Shan Xu believed it was a matter of blood kinship – demon lineages could be very distinctive, and when two of them or several mixed together, it could produce weird results. The offspring could take after their parents, or they could take after their grandparents, or they could favor one side of their inheritance only. So far, it seemed that for a huli jing, the offspring would take after them or not at all.

 

Identifying the trigger for the offspring to be another huli jing promised to be a long, complicated endeavour, and Shan Su had no need of a soothsayer to predict she would have to slip a sedative in her brother’s tea or he would be too busy guessing and making hypothesis to remember sleeping at night helped to stay healthy.

 

Anyway, the offspring not taking after their huli jing parent seemed to be a reason for the brat to be rejected by their mother – after all, if the breed was endangered and threatened with extinction, wasting time and ressources to care for a spawn that wasn’t carrying the right inheritance would be stupid, and being stupid ensured your lifespan would be quite short.

 

So Luo Binghe hoping for the Empress to dote on their Heavenly-blooded children was stupid, because the Empress would never care for these brats. They literally couldn’t, because their brain wasn’t wired for it, but since the Sacred Ruler didn’t know that, he forced mother and spawn to spend time together and wondered why his bride did their best to commit kinslaying.

 

Both the spider siblings wouldn’t tell him anything about their recent discoveries, because they strongly suspected the Junshang would throw a spectacular tantrum, then he would ask Shan Xu to perform neurosurgery on the huli jing to fix the problem and that had all the odds to tremendously backfire on everybody involved, but Luo Binghe wouldn’t listen since he was the Sacred Ruler of Demonkind and he never had met something or someone he couldn’t fuck or fight until submission.

 

Arrogance tended to be a monarch’s downfall. Unfortunately, a monarch wasn’t an island, so they dragged a lot of people with them into the abyss – and the Shan siblings weren’t eager to figure among their numbers. It was funnier when the guy you couldn’t stand was the one picked to be sacrificed and buried with the King as part of their ghostly retinue.

 

So they would keep their trap shut, and when the Junshang would remember he had thrown his Empress in the dungeon and want to visit only to find a fat load of nothing in the cell, the spider siblings wouldn’t volunteer the information that yes, they knew where the huli jing was currently hidden and by the way, they were responsible for the escape.

 

They weren’t suicidal, and after Shan Su’s violation, it would be fair for Luo Binghe to suffer a bit. When a spoiled little emperor started getting too big for his britches, you stole his favorite toy and buried it in the backyard to ensure it wouldn’t be found until you deemed the punishment had lasted long enough.

 

Yes, their plan was for the Empress to leave the Palace – they couldn’t stay in another wing of the place when surely the Junshang would overturn every single room to seek for his vanished consort, and add the baby to that, a newborn was noisy and couldn’t register the concept of secrecy so anyone could hear it scream in hunger or boredom and that would be the end.

 

So, Shan Su wanted for the fox spirits to depart for the Middle Kingdom. That was perfect, nobody would ever guess a demon willingly leaving the Lower Realm when they weren’t a marauder or looking for slaughter or loot, not for seeking sanctuary.

 

Of course, finding sanctuary would be complicated – humans went everywhere, they asked a lot of questions when someone new came into their neighbourhood and they didn’t need a lot of evidence to whip themselves in a frenzy and form a mob baying for blood – but Shan Su had some time to plan and prepare the perfect hideout, the Empress had to rest and recover after giving birth, and Luo Binghe didn’t look like he was about to visit the dungeon and blow their cover.

 

In the meantime, Shan Xu was left to gladly observe the Empress and their spawn interacting, and he couldn’t be happier. Really, Shan Su’s brother could be so silly, and she was just as silly because she allowed him his weaknesses. Still, in these circumstances, it was more helpful than not – if the Empress cared for the infant huli jing, they would want to ensure the child would survive, and you couldn’t do that if you didn’t know anything about the demon bloodline you were supposed to attend.

 

He would be heartbroken when the moment of departure would be upon them. Shan Su was unsure about regular letters being sufficient to quell his upset – yet another complication, someone had to stay with the Empress in their exile, someone trustworthy enough to watch over the huli jing and not freaking out because of their breed, someone strong enough to protect the fox spirit if anyone knocked on the hideout’s door asking for blood to be shed or to prevent the huli jing from running away if needed.

 

Sha Hualing wouldn’t do it, because she still was terrified by the Empress. It couldn’t be Shan Su or Shan Xu because their work at court wouldn’t let them take a leave of absense, and none among the Empress’ handmaidens could be trusted because these girls hadn’t been picked for their strength or their wits.

 

Ah, the pains of finding qualified staff, impossible to evade them. Shan Su was ready to bet even the Upper Realm wasn’t spared.

 

 

Chapter 71

Xiao Yue knew he had a father and a mother, but he never got to meet them.

 

When he was small – smaller than now, even smaller than his baby brother – he used to believe his nurse was his mother because she was the one feeding him, cleaning him and dressing him, putting him to bed and slapping him around when she decided he was naughty, then one day Lady Shan visited and she laughed and called him a dumb twit and told him the truth, that his mother was the Empress and not a common servant.

 

Lady Shan and her brother the physician often visited – the brother more than Lady Shan because it was important for Xiao Yue to stay healthy and strong, he didn’t know why but if the doctor and his nurse insisted it was important then it was, and Lady Shan was already very busy since she was attending Xiao Yue’s mother.

 

Xiao Yue sometimes wondered what an Empress was supposed to be, but it had to be very important for her to never come and see him. It looked to be fun too, because he got to hear women and servants speaking in the halls and they spoke of games and singing and kisses when you were with the Empress.

 

Nurse liked to sing when she was weaving clothes for her and Xiao Yue and his baby brother to wear, and Xiao Yue liked to listen to her. He could sing with her, and she tutted and rolled her eyes because even if he could sing that didn’t mean he could do it well, and he remembered half a hundred different tunes with their lyrics.

 

Nurse would hug him and his baby brother, but she didn’t kiss them a lot and Xiao Yue thought he wanted a bit more of these, because it felt good when her lips were tinkling his head, right on the top of his hair or on his red birthmark between his eyebrows, that was the best.

 

Nurse didn’t enjoy games a lot, she always complained she was exhausted when he wanted to play tag or shuttlecock so she told him to wait for the physician if he really wanted someone else to entertain him, or to go and play all alone, she needed to care for his baby brother.

 

Xiao Yue didn’t hate his baby brother, but he didn’t like him a lot, especially when the baby wouldn’t stop whining and yelling for some reason or another, and no matter how much Xiao Yue slapped him the brat just wouldn’t shut up, he actually yelled even louder and that was absolutely awful.

 

Xiao Yue was pretty sure that his mother knew how awful his baby brother could be and that was why she never gave him a name. Nurse told him how special, how important a name was because that was when you actually became a person instead of being something to ignore – since his baby brother wasn’t nice, then Xiao Yue would never acknowledge him as a person, even if he took a name for himself later !

 

On the other hand, Xiao Yue had a name. His mother the Empress gave him a name, so that meant he was special to her, important to her, and when he was laying on his cot at night, he would close his eyes and whisper his name again and again, the name she gave to him, and that was almost like she was there, holding him, hugging him, and she was smiling and she was beautiful and sweet and she loved him so, so much, just as much as he loved her.

 

One day, when Xiao Yue wouldn’t be a baby anymore – for that, the physician told him he needed to survive until his seventh birthday, so that could be his gift, a gift he would give to himself – he would meet his mother. He would tell Lady Shan to show him the path, and she would bring him to this room filled with games and songs and laughter in which his mother was waiting for him, and she would be so proud to see how big and strong Xiao Yue was, and they would never be apart after that, together forever and always.

 

His baby brother wouldn’t come because he was a brat, the physician could keep him and make him play a lot of his weird, boring games like identifying the shapes and colours drawn on wooden tiles he would pull from his sleeve. Nurse had to come, because she enjoyed singing so she would like the Empress too, Xiao Yue just knew it.

 

She pulled a weird face when he told her his wish for his seventh birthday, so weird that Xiao Jue actually laughed, and she sighed and patted his head and told him she would do anthing to see him happy, and he didn’t really understood that but he supposed it was how the grown-ups agreed to so something. They spoke very fancily sometimes and it made Xiao Yue cross-eyed to listen to them.

 

When they spoke of Junshang, that was when they were really, really fancy. Because of that, Xiao Yue was a bit annoyed every time he heard of Junshang.

 

Xiao Yue also knew Junshang was his father, but that wasn’t really important, not as much as his mother who lived in the Palace and laughed and played and would meet him someday, because Junshang was gone somewhere in the Lower Realm, Nurse didn’t know where exactly, but it was too far for Xiao Yue to care about the place. To care about Junshang.

 

That wasn’t like fathers mattered, because the physician explained him how to make babies and that was the female who did all the work, laying the egg or growing so fat that she would almost burst until the baby was ready, but the male just had to produce semen and give it to the female and that was it, he stopped being useful after that.

 

So Xiao Yue supposed he could claim he had a father, but that was like saying the sky was dark at night, not the kind of thing people actually need to hear because it’s not that interesting, everybody already knew that and that was a mite boring, so why wouldn’t you focus on something really important, like your mother ?

 

So that was on who he focused, his mother and his nurse and the physician because it was important to listen the doctor in order to grow healthy for his seventh birthday, and Lady Shan also was important because she was attending the Empress and she always claimed women were smarter than men, and Xiao Yue knew more important women than important men so she had to be right and that meant he had to respect her.

 

However, these last days, something weird happened in the Palace, Lady Shan and the physician didn’t visit for a long while now, and Nurse looked so tense and the servants in the corridors were jumpy and scared-looking and some of them were smiling but that was a nasty kind of smile, one Xiao Yue really didn’t like.

 

Apparently Junshang was back from somewhere in the Lower Realm. And he made everyone unhappy in the Palace.

 

Xiao Yue didn’t think he would like his sire a lot, if the man did that. And he really hoped Junshang would leave soon and stop spoiling everything .

 

 

Chapter 72

The main obstacle to the Empress leaving the Palace would be Junshang’s blood parasites in their body – at least, that was Shan Su’s opinion. Everything else could be dealt with later, but as long as the huli jing would carry Heavenly Demon blood within them, Luo Binghe would have the perfect mean to track them and that wouldn’t do at all.

 

Luo Binghe needed to be punished, and it wouldn’t be an effective punishment if he knew where his consort had fled – the stubborn Junshang would immediately run to bring the fox spirit back to the Demon Realm, because he was so powerful that demonkind was bending backwards to accommodate him and grant any craving he might have, and it taught terrible habits in life really, especially when you stumbled upon something you couldn’t fight or fuck into submission and was forced to cope with that.

 

So, the blood parasites needed to be eliminated for yesterday if possible. Shan Su had seriously considered the possibility of cutting the Empress’ wrists open and let them bleed until it was pretty certain that any foreign elements weren’t in their bloodstream anymore, but ultimately concluded it was far too dangerous an endeavour, the Empress might actually die exsanguinated and the spider demoness – wouldn’t be happy with that prospect.

 

Wasn’t that a marvel ? So many demons – Shan Su was unsure regarding the Empress’ handmaidens and her darling Hualing, after being exposed to the huli jing so long, surely their belief had been suitably impacted by the experience – would call her insane for that and ask for the surgery to be done, uncaring of the Empress’ wellbeing and potential survival odds. Some might actually claim it would be a much better punishment for Luo Binghe, something more suitable to a demon mindset – you ruined my fun, so I broke your toy, now both of us are unhappy and miserable, hope you’re feeling awful for pushing me to that extremity because that’s your fault entirely.

 

Ah, as if the Sacred Ruler wouldn’t go on a rampage for his Empress’ demise. Then he would drag the body to the Sacred Mausoleum to force a revival, and he would learn nothing from the adventure, content to put it behind him and continue on his path.

 

For such a character, the pain of uncertainty was so much worse. Luo Binghe was the simple kind of man, watching the world through a black and white lense, hating shades of gray and confusion no matter the shape it took, so uncertainty he would have, and the spider demoness would ensure he would choke on it until he couldn’t breathe anymore.

 

But for that, she really needed a way to remove the blood parasites – oh, Junshang would rage so much when he would try and use them to track his wayward spouse, only for them to fail to activate. Of course, Shan Su would have to grab her brother and her darling Hualing and get the heck away from the tantrum it would cause, but as long as she could behold this face, it would be worth it.

 

She had considered treating the problem as a poisoning. When it happened, it was best for the afflicted to vomit the poison, wasn’t it ? Shan Xu certainly had been intrigued by the idea when she discussed it with him, even if he retained his doubts – the parasites dwelled in the bloodstream rather than the stomach, after all, but if he could prepare a drug that would target the foreign elements in the blood, something that would force these foreign elements to leave the body…

 

Bloody sweat, how delightfully gruesome. The Empress would look like a murder scene afterwards, and likely would feel wretched as one, but Shan Su knew they would accept it as the necessary price to pay in order to rid themselves from Junshang’s influence.

 

After that… after that, the cursed shackle was the obvious thing to discard, and the spider demoness could see how it made sense to destroy the silver torc preventing the huli jing from shapeshifting into another skin entirely – it was easier to lose yourself among the people when nobody could be sure of your very appearance.

 

On the other hand, the cursed shackle was a high-grade item, crafted on Luo Binghe’s specifications, and for all that he was an immature brat, he was paranoid and cunning enough to ask the blacksmith to put a seal on the necklace. Blood seals weren’t uncommon in the Middle and the Lower Realm, varying in their ability to stand up to an intruder – the generally used model would allow for one single person to open the seal, once upon a time the whole bloodline would have shared the key but since it was a common tactic to steal a helpless kinsperson and force them to open the gate or the chest or the forbidden library, nowaday you had to be a twit to safeguard your belongings with such a – very much proven unsafe – measure.

 

Shan Su was betting on Luo Binghe alone being able to remove the cursed shackle from the Empress’ throat, and only if he was fully aware of what he was doing, and willing to do so. That was the kind of twisted, possessive reasoning the Sacred Ruler of demonkind would follow, and the spider demoness acknowledged how smart it was while she was cursing his name and his rule and his manly bits with all the passion she could muster.

 

Fuck it all, that wasn’t like the Empress would die from wearing the cursed shackle. A bit less than a decade – Shan Su was unsure, was it six or seven years since the Heavenly half-breed had summoned her and her brother to check on the strange demon he found and confirm they were huli jing – and the fox spirit was still quite healthy, if not as much as they should have, but that could be laid at the feet of Luo Binghe violating them, a huge discharge of yin qi that didn’t succeed in killing Junshang, and many years locked in their bedroom without ever leaving the place.

 

Alright, the Empress had had handmaidens and later politics to make their life more lively, but spending every day between the same four walls was bound to become hopelessly boring after a while. Surely the huli jing would enjoy the opportunity to flee the palace and travel around the Middle Kingdom a bit, even if they couldn’t properly disguise themselves to avoid the mobs baying for demon blood to be shed.

 

Maybe they could stay in the countryside ? Shan Su had heard how harmless the human mountains and plains and woods could be, their most fierce predators barely interested in eating two-legged guests or laying their eggs into their still warm, living bodies. With an infant in tow, the Empress ought to be happy in a small hut of their own, that wasn’t like the beasts could actually injure them, even in their currently weak circumstances.

 

Once or twice, the spider demoness and her brother got a glimpse of the Middle Kingdom – they had been visiting the borderlands because the black market had so many hidden surprises – and they came to the conclusion that it was too – clean for them to ever feel alright with the place. No hint of steel or sulfur or blood in the air, no low-level threat around you forcing constant vigilance, it would get pretty unnerving quickly.

 

Bah, the Empress was cut from sterner stuff than one of Matriarch Lu’s offspring – that was why some people would ascend as royalty, and why the others would serve them.

 

 

Chapter 73

Shen Jiu was used to other people speaking about him when he was in the same room or standing right besides them. Sometimes it was a genuine coincidence, sometimes it was a nasty way to insult him. So far, the spider abominations seemed far too busy plotting and earnestly convinced that he was too focused on the bleached leech he whelped to pay close attention to their babbling.

 

These twits – especially the female spider, didn’t she realize after spending so much time in his bedroom with the other handmaidens that he had mastered a rather useful ability named multitasking ? Really, he could despair of everybody else’s intellect, but it often served too well for him to bluntly call them out, his job as a tactician was made so much easier when he had to bamboozle dumbasses.

 

Also, this pale brat who had the sheer audacity to disguise itself as a potential Nascent Soul wasn’t that much of a disruption to his brainpower. When it wasn’t sleeping, it was happy to stare at him with wide, gleaming quicksilver eyes in which flecks of white and black were slowly swirling, as if Shen Jiu was the most fascinating person it would be blessed to ever meet and nobody ever looked at the former Qing Jing Peak Lord that way, not even Yue Qingyuan, not even the little beast – already lustful that one, on this first day when he ruined a perfectly good cup of tea and claimed having nothing but pure intentions, but these dark eyes were filled with desire and Shen Jiu had to stomp that out before being consumed, letting desire run unchecked would lead to tears and wounds and ultimately Qing Jing would burn to cinders just like the Qiu Manor had burned to the ground.

 

Well, in a perverse, awful way, he got what he wanted, with the beast focusing his depraved, wanton craving upon his own Shizun and forgetting the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect now that he had obtained what he wanted. The formerly human cultivator idly wondered what would happened when the beast would remember his existence and try to torment him anew, only to find the dungeon empty and the prisoner having vanished into thin air ?

 

Surely it was the prelude to a spectacular tantrum. Maybe the beast would go back to Cang Qiong in the ridiculous hope to find answers there, answers he would never get. Shen Jiu likely ought to worry about this possibility – but he couldn’t find in himself the strength to care. That wasn’t like he had many good memories from the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks beyond Yue Qingyuan tolerating his presence, his Shizun before the man left to pursue Ascension or quietly retire in the countryside, and the occasional brilliant Disciple who was blessed with sense instead of letting the common rules of the jianghu strangle their wits in their infancy.

 

No, it was time for Shen Jiu to close the door on this part of his life, for good this time, and become somebody else. That would be nice, to have some time for himself…

 

Time he wouldn’t get, since the female spider abomination apparently was bent on considering him and the pale whelp as a package deal, as if he wanted the burden of motherhood to be thrusted on his shoulders, as if he had the ability to care about another living being than himself, wasn’t the utter failure of him to bond with the two beastlings he had been forced to carry before this one a sufficient proof ? Truly, there had to be something in the Lower Realm’s air and water for its residents to be so crazy and lacking in basic reasoning !

 

On the other hand, this peculiar brat wasn’t as repulsive as the beast’s older spawns. It wasn’t shrieking madly for attention, it wasn’t pinching his teat when suckling for milk, it was almost uncannily quiet and obedient, more a doll than a living, breathing infant and Shen Jiu knew he was supposed to be disturbed by such behaviour, but he exhausted all his patience for noise and fussing long ago, so he would be happy with a flesh doll if it kept being quiet instead of giving him an ungodly headache when he just wanted to rest.

 

The huli jing wondered if these brats had died already. Ancestors, he certainly hoped so – what kind of monstruous offspring the beast would sire on him, if allowed to grow to maturity, surely it would be nothing but a disaster worthy to be slapped with the label of Calamity by the Heavens, the Upper Realm wouldn’t bestir themselves for less and for all his depravation, the beast hadn’t earned this title.

 

Maybe he would never get it, as the Upper Realm’s refusal to involve themselves in the Middle Kingdom’s troubles for so many centuries would point at them losing any shred of interest for humankind. Shen Jiu wouldn’t blame the place’s denizens for that, it would reek of stank hypocrisy if he dared.

 

He was fed up with humans, and he was fed up with demons – Eighteen Hells, he just was fed up with people . If he was given a command to go and live in total isolation on a mountain, he would gladly accept his exile – he might even smile as he received the order.

 

Now, that seemed like a pretty good idea, actually. Mountains were quite isolated as a rule, if a cultivator went there with the intent to stay, the jianghu would agree it was for the best to ignore them politely unless they wanted something and left seclusion. Some peaks still were forbidden to guests in spite of the resident Immortal not making their presence felt since a century or two…

 

Alright, if the Immortal was still alive and kicking, they might be annoyed about a small demon retinue intruding upon their peace – Shen Jiu knew he would be, when he was the Qing Jing Peak Lord he couldn’t stand Disciples and hallmasters whining at him when he unequivocally had been busy painting or writing a music piece – he would have to grovel, then, but that wasn’t like he still had pride to spare, he only wanted to spend his days away from people, surely that would be a compelling argument ? Cultivators hated noisy neighbours, if Shen Jiu was nothing but the very soul of discretion, if he could make the resident Immortal forget his very presence…

 

That might just work. Of course, it was better for the Immortal to be a bleeding heart to begin with, especially with Shen Jiu’s accursed lineage working against him, anyone sane would throw a sword at his head immediately after seeing the tail and the ears. Would it work to don a veiled hat ? The kind with panels so long, they would reach the ankles ? Not very common an accessory, it just was cumbersome for a traveler on the roads, but it was effective in hiding yourself, you couldn’t see anything expect for the feet.

 

This kind of trick wouldn’t work on a high-level Immortal, but if you wanted to be ignored by the rabble, that would suffice – with the spider abomination donning some glamour or finding another way to hide she had far too many eyes and hands, claiming to be a handmaiden watching for her mistress who had just lost her child’s father and now was coming back to her parents’ dwelling in order to not be left destitute in the streets…

 

People would gossip, obviously they would because the rabble relished tragic tales just like flies enjoyed eating shit, but they wouldn’t pry too much, that wouldn’t be polite, and so they would allow for Shen Jiu to go unmolested until he reached his destination.

 

Now, where should he go ?

 

 

Notes:

This fanfic now is translated in Spanish on Wattpad ! If you're interested, the link is https://www.wattpad.com/story/341757430-kimetsu-no-yometori

Now, I just need the fanart :)

Chapter 74

« Zhengmei Mountain. »

 

Shan Su’s many eyes blinked all at once. She wasn’t expecting for the Empress to speak loudly, not when they seemed so utterly uninterested by what was unfolding around them, not when they had just whelped a child they actually liked this time.

 

« Might this humble one ask for more details ? » she politely inquired.

 

She took the habit when she started to introduce the Empress to paperwork and the many complains commoners and highborns alike wouldn’t stop submitting to the Court – the spider demoness or a quivering handmaiden would describe some plague or a locust invasion or a skirmish between two stubborn Head clans, and the Empress would bark a curt answer that left everyone baffled and not enlightened at all regarding the best way to fix the situation, and so you had to beg for the merciful, understanding ruler to shine a bit of their boundless knowledge over your face because your brainpower was so much more limited.

 

The Empress would sneer at them with annoyance and exasperation, obviously wondering how they could breathe and walk at the same time, but they would explain, so it was worth the slight humiliation. It was better to admit your ignorance and look like a fool for a fên than keep quiet and stay a fool for a lifetime.

 

The huli jing closed their eyes and slowly exhaled, this familiar expression flittering on their face and Shan Su almost smiled in fondness and nostalgia, after a while even the most nervous handmaiden had stopped fearing the way the fox spitit would pout and frown.

 

(maybe Shan Su ought to investigate about the most fragile handmaidens, she knows several of them have been left in the Empress’ wing in order to clean the place and she wasn’t allowed to go back and visit, Luo Binghe calling her compromised and biaised )

 

(she wonders if some of these girls ultimately decided the Emperor violating them had been too much and killed themselves to escape the shame and despair, and this prospect causes a weird twinge beneath her ribs)

 

« It’s – a celestial mountain. Very secluded. Quite deeply warded against intrusions, moreso when they are demonic in nature. The local Immortal really doesn’t want to be disturbed… »

 

Secluded and warded against demonic incursions – was the Empress suggesting a hideout for when they would escape the Lower Realm ? Shan Su arched an approving eyebrow but nonetheless pointed at the obvious flaw in this plan.

 

« If the place is warded against demons, this lowly one doesn’t think the resident Immortal will be happy to see us. »

 

The Empress shrugged.

 

« Maybe she won’t. But even for the jianghu, she was considered – eccentric. That’s when you want to be polite, because you’re less powerful and don’t want for your nose to be broken. If you are a rank or several above that person, you just call them crazy and you laugh at them and nobody will call you out. »

 

The spider demoness didn’t react to that. Things weren’t that different in the Demon Realm – when you were weak, you were trampled because nobody would suffer punishment for it. When you were strong, you were respected because you could retaliate if you weren’t given the honour you believed you were due.

 

« She’s rumoured to leave seclusion once a while » the Empress continued to speak, « to pluck street urchins in the gutter and bring them back to her mountain. Some people think she’s eating them because the kids are never seen again, but do you think they care ? It’s only a bunch of little beggars and whorespawn, no value at all. Worthless to call a cultivator, even if you suspect play foul. »

 

That was… surprisingly bitter, and the spider demoness frowned. Why would a huli jing care about a bunch of street rats ? Especially when they weren’t the same species at all – but the Empress had been found in the Middle Kingdom, so maybe they had the opportunity to meet some of them ?

 

Had the Empress been one of them ? After all, that wasn’t like people would open their home to a young huli jing, especially one who couldn’t control their powers, so it was probable for the fox spirit called to become the Empress to be driven in the streets…

 

Shan Su shifted, inexplicably disquieted by the picture her mind was quickly drawing for her. She decided to erase it by focusing on something else.

 

« And where is this… Zhengmei Mountain ? In order for the Immortal to possibly choose to grant asylum to your Highness, your Highness will have to present themselves in front of that person. »

 

The huli jing waved a hand in the air, his tail lazily flicking on his lap.

 

« Well, everybody knows where Zhengmei Mountain isn’t  » they glibly declared, and the spider demoness couldn’t help the snort escaping from her nose. « But ! This one isn’t a fucking dumbass , so we can be pretty sure that it’s somewhere in the Henan Province, and I would even bet on Yanling County, near Xuchang City. At least, she was seen there the most, even if it’s barely three times but when she deigns to show her face in a city once, it’s quite the remarkable event. »

 

Alright, that was impressive. Shan Su bowed her head to the fox spirit, laying on the bed as if it was a throne draped with brocade and pearl tassels.

 

« As expected from your Highness, truly your wisdom is beyond this humble servant’s meager abilities » she praised, partly out of desire to keep her patron in a good mood, partly out of genuine admiration.

 

Judging from the way the white-furred tail vibrated, as if to flatten a pesky flea, the Empress wanted to slap her with the appendage. It had happened twice or thrice when a handmaiden pushed the huli jing’s patience too far, but it never actually hurt, the hit lacking the force to truly bruise the skin even a smidge – probably because the Empress had been unaware of their true nature before being brought to the Lower Realm and as a consequence wasn’t used to wield their tail as a potential weapon.

 

« Grabbing my thighs won’t lead you anywhere, you would be better inspired to help your brother to find how to purge the beast’s blood parasites in my bloodstream. And if your wits are not up to the task, make yourself useful by weaving garments fit for a widow. Not too wealthy, but not the ragged kind, we don’t want for slavers to believe they have a chance to jump us on the road. »

 

Clothes for a widow, that meant undyed white silk – that Shan Su could do, she absentedly mused as she repressed a wince. Sure, it was intended as protection for the Empress as they traveled to their chosen destination, but dressing as a widow when your husband was still alive and breathing ?

 

Well, that certainly was a very elegant, very pointed mean to bluntly tell said husband you’re dead to me , I don’t care anymore unless it’s for witnessing your funeral and believe me when I say it will be the most wonderful social event I will ever attend in my life . Truly, it was almost a shame that Luo Binghe would never see the Empress wearing their new attire.

 

Still, Shan Su fully intended to enjoy the sight. It would warm the cold cockles of her heart for the coming decade, at least.

 

 

Chapter 75

After several decades cultivating a golden core and wandering around the Middle Kingdom to slay various creatures, Shen Jiu had rather lost any potential reluctance to find himself covered in disgusting substances, courtesy of progressing towards his current goal. Bloody sweat was far from the worse – more reminiscent of his numerous qi deviations, actually.

 

So when the male spider abomination offered him a murky brown potion, grinning with so many fangs it would make the worse dunderhead taught by Bai Zhan shiver in fright and think twice about assaulting him, and claiming the alchemical concoction would force the parasites in his bloodstream to leave through his pores, Shen Jiu unblinkingly downed the chalky-tasting potion as if it was a cup of water and he a thirsty traveler lost in the desert.

 

« Your Highness might want to be warned, it won’t be a comfortable experience they will have to endure » the female abomination warned just a smidge too late.

 

Shen Jiu snorted, staring at her with his most unimpressed gaze.

 

« Does this one look scared to you ? As long as it allows me to obtain whatever I need, pain is no deterrent. You will have to find something else if you ever hope to make me throw the towel regarding a decision or another. »

 

The female spider abomination smiled, and the expression was just as crazed as her brother’s, an array of glistening yellow fangs dripping with poison, truly a sight worthy to be pictured in a dark nightmare, yet the formerly human cultivator couldn’t be bothered to be scared. He knew her far too long for that, and also…

 

She was jubilant, as if she just heard her daughter or niece was ready to get married to the Minister of Rites or had vainquished a demonic qilin, deliriously happy and more than a bit smug and when you were aware of that, suddenly it was hard to be wary of her. Smiles were like the plague, when you saw one it was easy to catch.

 

(something Yue Qingyuan knew and shamelessly exploited in their street urchin’s days, claiming people were mollified by a beaming face, easier to con and influence, and obviously he kept doing it after ascending as the Qiong Ding Peak Lord because that would be stupid to discard a method that worked on your mark, and cultivators weren’t that different from the slavers and merchants they claimed being above)

 

(Shen Qingqiu always had been an exception to the rule, smiles just annoyed him because it was people baring their teeth, and when feral dogs and rats in the gutters bared their teeth it never was a good omen)

 

« Your Highness has a willpower worthy of one suited to rule, indeed » the female abomination declared.

 

Ah, so that was it, the demonic appreciation for strength. Lose an arm without screaming and you would be honoured as a warrior, drink poison without batting an eyelash and people would barely wait for you to survive before fawning over your determination and vital energy.

 

No matter the species, one would stumble over brainless commoners and followers bent on worshipping meatheads doing stupid things because they were so powerful . If Liu Qingge hadn’t been so anal-retentive and insistant on upholding the separation between the Realms, surely he would have found an adoring crowd in the Lower Kingdom – yes, he slaughtered a lot of demons, but that wasn’t like demons weren’t murdering each other in droves, so.

 

Would Liu Qingge reincarnate as a demon in his next life ? It had been a while since the Bai Zhan War God fell in the Lingxi caves, time enough for him to get booted from the Eighteen Hells because he was too much even for King Yama’s stooges, time enough for him to drink Meng Po’s forgetfulness soup. Did he pick the Lower or the Middle Kingdom in order to be reborn ?

 

Shen Jiu considered the matter for a few fên before deciding it didn’t matter. Even if by some ungodly coincidence he was cursed to meet Liu Qingge yet again, the man wouldn’t be the Bai Zhan War God anymore. He wouldn’t be the formerly human cultivator’s shidi, and the former Qing Jing Peak Lord would have no right to call himself a shixiong to the reincarnated soul.

 

It was done, a chapter of his former life he couldn’t rewrite, and he didn’t have the energy to waste on lamenting the might-have-beens. Especially since he started to ache and itch all over his body, the potion was taking effect and fucking yeowch .

 

It really was disgusting when you were sweating, your hair plastered to your nape, your armpits and groin on fire and you couldn’t scratch them because it wouldn’t actually help, your inner robes smothering your skin as it drank and drank the expelled fluid and turned sticky and stinky – if this one wasn’t burned, Shen Jiu would throw a fit, goddamnit, he never wanted to see it again.

 

Still, the former Qing Jing Peak Lord refused to moan or whine. He had endured worse, and at least there was a point to this utter indignity, unlike being forced to let the beast climb in his bed. Or being forced to bow his head to Qiu Jianluo or Wu Yanzi.

 

Soon, he would leave this forsaken palace. Soon, he wouldn’t have a master anymore, be it the beast, Qiu Jianluo, Wu Yanzi, or the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.

 

He focused on that as he shivered and sweated and thoroughly ruined the bedsheets and his inner robes by spreading blackish red ooze on the cloth, a slight metallic stench attached to the sweat almost making him nauseous and Ancestors, he really hoped he wouldn’t puke all over himself or one of the spider abominations would have to clean him and he didn’t care for that kind of humiliation, he wasn’t a brat anymore and never had been a drunkard so it was two excuses he wouldn’t get to use, wouldn’t want to use anyway.

 

Speaking of brats, the pale whelp currently was laying in the embrace of the female abomination who was quietly humming or purring too low for a non-enhanced ear to pick the tune, while another pair of her arms was weaving a long band of cloth, it was too soon to identify it as a veil or a robe or maybe even a sling to keep the brat safe and secure against Shen Jiu’s chest, because he couldn’t cheat with additional limbs.

 

The whelp didn’t make a noise to signal annoyance or incomfort, but wide quicksilver eyes were peering at the grown up huli jing, as if wondering why Shen Jiu was taking so long and neglecting his duties when he obviously was the more comfortable seat. Barely a few days of life and already unhappy about something, Shen Jiu couldn’t deny it was his spawn indeed, the Cang Qiong Mountain Peak Lords would have a field day with that.

 

Well, they would, if they were ever informed of the former Qing Jing Peak Lord having reproduced, but they would never know, just like they would never know what really happened to Shen Qingqiu when he never came back from this fateful mission. Nothing but a never solved mystery left at their door, for them to briefly ponder before putting it aside as one of Yue Qingyuan’s many unwanted gifts, forgotten in the back of the closet.

 

It was better that way. Nobody to chase after him and remind him of a past he dragged around his neck as a slave collar, for so many years it was a strange prospect to finally discard it.

 

Nobody to know who he used to be, and who he is now. None but him.

 

 

Chapter 76

Sha Hualing was picked as their distraction while the small party of three – Shen Jiu and his spawn and the female spider abomination – discreetly left the palace through an entry for the servants, highborns rarely bothered to remember how dangerous their staff might be. For the demons, it often was justified by their minions’ utter lack of brains and their own personal strength turning them immune to many methods used for assassination.

 

Shen Jiu didn’t want to know how the Sha saintess would keep the beast’s attention focused on her, but he suspected the way she would pick and a dark, nauseating feeling was swirling in his gut, threatening to coalesce in a heavy stone and rip him apart.

 

(there’s one thing and one thing only that the beast expects from a woman)

 

(the saintess was there with the handmaidens when the beast decided to rape every single person who had the misfortune to be physically present in Shen Jiu’s bedroom)

 

(yet another sin to be laid at the formerly human cultivator’s feet, maybe one of the worst because when you’re dead nothing matters anymore but if you stay alive after being violated, after getting everything you are disrespected and trampled underfoot, and you cannot even consider avenging yourself because you’re too small and weak, and you will have to see your rapist day after day, living his life as if he didn’t do anything wrong, as if you were a mere ant to stomp into the dirt and forget, as if your pain had no value of its own, as if you were worthless)

 

(why is he feeling pity for a demon when he doesn’t even like her and she’s obviously scared of him, but they share this united nightmare in which the same beast is hurting them and for that Shen Jiu cannot bring himself to fully dismiss her, this demoness who assaulted Cang Qiong so many years ago, this girl who’ s helping him to escape by facing their shared monster again, this Sha Hualing)

 

The male spider abomination stayed behind as well, in order to give his sister an alibi if the beast wondered where she fled, claiming he needed some ingredient or another and she volunteered to do the chore for him, begging for Junshang’s understanding, she wished for fresh air and surely your Highness wouldn’t want to be bothered for such a small thing.

 

The beast wouldn’t be happy with such a story – he wasn’t taking his duties as a ruler seriously, jumping on the first excuse to romp around the countryside and fight all the monsters on his path, while fucking all the women he met. Still, he couldn’t very well complain, especially when his courtiers and vassals were pushing for him to be more involved in their plots for more power, more independence and whatnot.

 

Of course, the female spider abomination couldn’t waste time after dropping Shen Jiu and his spawn at the chosen hideout, she would have to go back and be prepared to stare the beast in the eyes and lie about her whereabouts, and Shen Jiu really wanted to puke as he thought about it, about everything she was doing for him and his spawn.

 

He wanted to keep hating her, as he hated her in the first days of his captivity in the Lower Realm, but it was hard to keep holding on this feeling as they were passing through the gate, their distinctive features hidden behind dirty, all-concealing cloaks and veils – demons native to the Southern desert would fully cover their bodies to prevent the heat and light from hurting too much, the perfect disguise in a hurry – the pale whelp stuffed in a basket strapped on the spider abomination’s back as she softly hummed under her breath, some lullaby to soothe the brat and prevent it from chirping or moaning or making any kind of noise that would give the game away.

 

She shouldn’t have worried, the whelp was the quietest living being Shen Jiu ever saw. Did it have vocal chords to begin with ? It had to, or both the spider abominations would have noticed the deformity after giving it a physical…

 

Still, the disguise would become useless when they would reach the frontier, the place where it was possible to step out of the Lower Realm and into the Middle Kingdom. Then, Shen Jiu would have to don the widow’s garments freshly woven by the spider abomination – she let him admire the product of her efforts before carefully putting them in their luggage and it was perfectly acceptable for a mildly wealthy merchant household – while she would have to secure some carriage or a beast for him to mount, the Heavens forbid a mother with a child having to walk until they reached safety.

 

One of the trinkets stolen in the Imperial Palace would do to rent a carriage, surely – the spider abomination had to ask Shen Jiu for tips regarding the kind of material possession a trader struggling to make a living on the frontier would be likely to accept, because gold and silver and jade couldn’t be eaten or might give another street rat a motive to slit your throat in your sleep and rob your corpse. As for stealing these trinkets, Shen Jiu had no remorse whatsoever, they did nothing but catch dust and that wasn’t like the beast cared about them anyway, he spent so little time in the Palace that he couldn’t be very attached to it and how it was decorated.

 

And he had been Wu Yanzi’s apprentice, it thoroughly destroyed his reluctance about committing murder and burglary a long time ago.

 

What worried him was the necessity to buy horses or a donkey to pull the carriage or for him to ride. Animals were sensitive to hidden threats humans would ignore because they were more in tune with their instincts, bolting away when they were given a reason to suspect a predator was lurking near their current surroundings. If they detected their new master was hailing from an impure bloodline – if they guessed the spider abomination could slaughter them with one bite – it would be impossible to keep them tame and obedient, and the travel to Zhengmei Mountain would immediately become so much more complicated and dangerous.

 

Alright, two (seeming) women and a brat were the kind of party easy to attack, when an outlaw desperate for warmth or lacking the ressources to target someone more wealthy-looking was waiting on the road, so they would have to fight on the road, it was a guarantee – at least the spider abomination would enjoy the meat, and Shen Jiu supposed he might drain their yang qi dry before giving her the corpses, it wasn’t like outlaws were contributing to society in a positive manner or would be earnestly missed by anyone. Maybe their families since filial piety was a thing but beyond that…

 

And at the end of the road, the Immortal on Zhengmei Mountain had to decide it was more interesting to listen a pair of demons beg for asylum instead of killing them on the spot when she would be able to detect their qi in her mountain range. Sure, she was rumoured to be quite unorthodox and eccentric, but the more the deadline was coming close, the more you started to wonder if your plan wouldn’t pitifully fail.

 

Ah, well, Shen Jiu would face that when the problem would stare him in the face. For now, he and the spider abomination still had to walk through the Southern plains until they found a frontier town, and the formerly human cultivator wasn’t in the best physical shape after years of imprisonment and giving birth three times.

 

At the least, his wretched state on arrival would help his companion to bargain for a carriage. Since his street urchin days, Shen Jiu had always been good at looking pitiful.

 

Chapter 77

So the frontier town was so poor that it was impossible to find a carriage for sale, it would be dismantled in the time it took for blinking. Really, Shen Jiu should have expected it.

 

That was fine, it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to walk from when he wasn’t a Peak Lord – a demonic cultivator or a slave or even a disciple needed to walk, something about the physical exertion being good for their soul but everyone knew it was mainly to enforce how lacking in importance they were.

 

On the other hand, they managed to find a donkey – a very ill-mannered specimen of the breed, so much that the owner was threatening to sell it to the butcher for being reduced in dumplings but had been just as happy to discard the burden beast when the spider abomination offered a fistful of coppers for it – not even gold or silver but fucking copper, really this donkey had to be afflicted with a dreadful temper.

 

Well, that wasn’t like the demon party of two – and a brat – would suffer the consequences of such a temper. After being introduced to its new masters, the donkey suddenly became extremely quiet and tame. It likely could detect that the spider abomination was waiting any reason to sample its meat, donkeys and mules could be surprisingly smart – certainly smarter than most people.

 

Shen Jiu whimsically decided to name it Apple Blossom, after the white stain on its black head – vaguely flower-shaped, yes, but this wasn’t like the donkey had a voice or even an opinion on the matter. Animals as a rule didn’t care about names, they lived without just as well as they lived with one, as long as they had warmth and food and safety.

 

It was a human flaw to want a name, because it implied you were something more than a donkey or a dog or a rat in the gutter. Even if you lived just the same as a donkey or a dog or a rat, at least you could take pride in a name.

 

The spider abomination probably expected that Shen Jiu would name his infant whelp. The formerly human cultivator carefully avoided to linger on this thought as he and his companion found a dark corner in order for them to swap clothes.

 

The white silken robes were smooth and cool on his skin. He carefully gathered the pale brat in his arms while the spider abomination brandished a comb – that she sewed in one of her many sleeves – and proceeded to untangle the snowy mane spilling from his head, carefully securing his topknot with a carved bone hairpin before crowning him with the veiled hat.

 

The world became hazy and misty as the cloth panels fell around his knees. Well, nobody would be able to stare at his face and wonder if they might have seen him already – or be able to put two and two together if the beast wanted to spread a description of his features thar far away from the palace.

 

With a bit of luck, the Heavenly half-breed would conclude his prey had perished somewhere in the Southern plains, his corpse picked apart by scavengers before it could be found by his lackeys. But Shen Jiu’s luck always had been from the negative bent, so it was better for him to be safely hidden on the mountain he chose as his best bet for survival when his escape would be discovered.

 

« How do I look ? » he asked.

 

« Like a venerable widow, milady » the spider abomination answered – she had donned much more plain garments, with a heavy cape thrown over his shoulders in order to hide her inhuman body shape while she covered her head with a heavy turban, something she could pull over her multiple eyes when she would be in the Middle Kingdom. « Now, if milady would like to ride, your mount is awaiting. »

 

Apple Blossom anxiously snorted and quivered when the huli jing carefully sat on its back but abstained from bolting out and causing a riot – good for the beast, Shen Jiu didn’t remember the last equine to do so fondly, since it had been responsible for several years of pain and misery in the Qiu Manor.

 

The spider abomination gently took the reins and started guiding the donkey out of the dark corner and on the road, acting the dutiful handmaiden tending to her bereaved lady’s need to ignore everything around her and sink into depression while she was led to her fate.

 

Ah, what a pitiful scene, it certainly deserved to be painted or poetically described in a trashy play, the kind of thing that would entertain the lowest rung of society for a mouthful of spit, that was how wretched it was.

 

That wasn’t the kind of scene Shen Jiu would want to paint or turn in poetry, no matter how much he was paid for the commission, no matter if someone begged on their knees. He had taste , thank you very much. He might feel no qualms in casting his pride away if it was a necessity for his survival or his comfort, but he wouldn’t compromise regarding his taste. He had been responsible for the Scholar’s Peak of Cang Qiong and righfully earned this place, let no one forget it, the jianghu had less memory than a concussed goldfish and frequent reminders had to be applied, so often that the former Peak Lord had lost hope for one of them to stick, it would have involved a genuine miracle for it to happen.

 

The jianghu probably forgot all about Shen Qingqiu these days. Or maybe not, a hunger for gossip and scandal wouldn’t allow the rumor of him running away, leaving his so-called martial siblings shamed and incommodated by his sheer gall, to decline into nonexistence, and that wasn’t like anybody in Cang Qiong cared enough to waste their time and energy dispelling the noise. Maybe they actually encouraged it – Qi Qingqi had the pettiness for such behaviour, and that wasn’t like Yue Qingyuan still was forced to pretend in order to save the sect’s reputation.

 

Fuck, he really should stop thinking about that, his mood was darkening and it might just cause the whelp in his arms to fuss and whine – wait, no, the brat was sleeping. It had to be the donkey’s regular pace rocking the infant to sleep.

 

That was – nice of the whelp, to be so quiet and obedient. Shen Jiu was feeling the awful, resigned possibility that he would grew to… not actively dislike the brat if things continued to unfold this way.

 

The aforementioned whelp sniffled and nuzzled closer to the huli jing’s nape, softly mewling in the way of a kitten drunk with warm milk and dozing near a roaring fire. Shen Jiu’s heartbeat hiccuped, and he would have sworn his cardiac organ was trying to twist itself upside down for some unknown, impossible to comprehend reason. That wasn’t like he earnestly loved the brat, just look at what happened to the beast’s previous spawns that were forced upon him !

 

So it was nothing but a weird, annoying physical reaction – a smidge like farting and burping when you were attending a feast with the more pretentious snobs you could gather among the nobility and that was a harsh competition, you better believe it.

 

Really, nothing more than physical.

 

Chapter 78

Zhengmei Mountain in the weak light of morning was surrounded by cool mist, and Shen Jiu couldn’t fully repress a shiver as he and the spider abomination entered the cloudy, hazy white barring the road. He did spend several years locked in the Lower Realm’s Imperial Palace, in which temperatures rarely cared to fall beneath warm enough for you wandering around half-naked not being considered shocking but culturally appropriate, in spite of all the talismans and wards engineered to keep the heat at bay…

 

Speaking of wards, a tingling kind of feeling just made his skin itch. Not so awfully that he would scratch himself bloody, but nonetheless annoying, in the way of a mosquito bite, and he shifted on Apple Blossom’s back.

 

« Did milady feel that ? » the spider abomination quietly asked, aware of having entered a very powerful Immortal’s domain and wary of bringing her attention upon their small party sooner than when it would be impossible to avoid it anymore.

 

« A ward based on intent » the former Qing Jing Peak Lord stated, internally impressed by the sheer level of power and care for detail it took to establish one of these . « Well, it seems we might have a chance to gain asylum after all. »

 

It was easy work to build an array forbidding entry to a broad category such as demons – very common in the Middle Kingdom, even if such arrays were frequently too weak to genuinely repel the true threats – or males – looking at you Xian Shu Peak, a man needed to earn a special key token in order to visit and Qi Qingqi bluntly stated to Shen Qingqiu she would do anything in her power to prevent him from ever putting his hands on one – but intent  ? Intent supposed a certain knowledge of good and evil, and everybody blessed with a minimal amount of wits would know how difficult it was to define what good was, and what evil was.

 

If killing someone was wrong, then it meant war was nothing but massively scaled crime, and every single human guilty of bearing arms to defend their homes and families ought to be thrown in a dark pit – but that would leave invaders free to slaughter and rape their way through the countryside, and that was indeed a bad thing.

 

If stealing was wrong, then starving street urchins ought to be slaughtered immediately after being weaned in order to rescue their souls from the taint of sin, no matter if they picked pockets because the slavers would rather drink themselves stupid than feeding the brats they sent begging in the streets. But apparently, even the most heartless official found a towering pile of children’s corpses unsettling, and that was wrong.

 

Good and evil were deeply subjective notions, and casting a ward of intent needed for the caster to have extremely defined ideas of what fitted in one category or the other – with his stubborness and insistence on seeing the world in black and white shades as if the Middle Kingdom was a panda, Liu Qingge would have been very successful in attempting the endeavour if the brute hadn’t lacked the slightest interest for any intellectual pursuit.

 

Curiouser and curiouser, this Immortal was shaping up to be, and Shen Jiu felt a long-forgotten stirring of curiosity in his breast, almost vergering on eagerness to meet the woman face to face and having a conversation with her – but really, he had been positively starved of intelligent conversation for half a decade, the swarm of twits calling themselves his handmaidens had been woefully doomed to mediocrity no matter all the efforts they poured in learning board games and music, and that was just too pathetic for him to keep his heart hardened against them.

 

(he’s never going to see them again, at least they ought to be safe from further retaliation by the beast since they lost their affiliation to the Heavenly half-breed’s object of fury)

 

The wards were humming all around their small party, and the whelp unhappily whined as the foreign qi prickled at their delicate skin beneath the layers of folded silk in which they had been wrapped. Shen Jiu slightly opened his mouth, tasting the weak charge of yang energy flavouring the air – it wasn’t filling at all, more akin to snacking on tanghulu as one waited for dinner to be served – what a strange taste, muddy and deeply watery and a dark shadow lurking beneath the river’s peaceful surface…

 

Oh, fuck. She was already there. The former Qing Jing Peak Lord firmly stomped down on his urge to grimace. He wouldn’t snivel and beg, he would act as a civilized being and remember proper manners.

 

« This unworthy one greets the Immortal Master and hopes she fares well. »

 

Besides him, the spider abomination had stopped walking and stiffened, unsettled by the unknown presence lurking in the mist. Under his backside, Apple Blossom was breathing loud and deeply, an indicator of deep anxiety and the huli jing prayed for the beast to not bolt away in a fit of panic.

 

A slow, deep rumple rose in the hazy surroundings, as if a giant throat was gargling with pebbles.

 

« I am certaintly well, and I would even add entertained . This is the first time I have been visited at home, you see. »

 

« You weren’t easy to find » Shen Jiu acknowledged.

 

A massive shape shifted and darkened the cloudy blanket.

 

« True, true. But I do loathe spending too much time in a human disguise, and mortals scream so shrilly as they behold my full glory. After a while, it become just so… tiresome . »

 

The mist parted and Apple Blossom brayed, a terrible noise filled with ungodly terror and that was a minor miracle for the spider abomination to keep on the donkey’s reins such a strong hand that it couldn’t throw its burden on the ground and make a break for freedom, away from the mountain and from the gigantic muddy dragon now staring at the small party.

 

Almost completely pure black from head to paws, soft whitish and greyish splotches splattered all over the squat, powerfully muscled body, the mythical creature could swallow her guests whole if she opened her maw half-wide. Fortunately, she didn’t appear to be in a hungry mood, her amber eyes glinting with mischief and focus.

 

The spider abomination softly whimpered. The muddy dragon snorted, her breath ruffling Shen Jiu’s garments and bringing with it a stench of old leather and plant matter left to rot in a stagnant pond.

 

« Not even fainting ? Colour me impressed » the mythical beast who cultivated to such a high level that she attained sapience and gained a human shape commented.

 

« The worse you will do is killing us » Shen Jiu answered. « My experiences taught me that sometimes death is a blessing. »

 

The amber eyes turned towards him, and his spine itched. This predatory gaze was focusing on a point far beyond the clothes and skin and muscles, even the bones, something hidden deep in the soul.

 

« What a cynical opinion. If you’re dead, it’s well and truly impossible to reverse your fortune. A lover cannot hope to be reunited with their sweetheart, a child cannot hope to grow up in a man or a woman, a poor peasant cannot hope to see their homestead flourish and prosper. So many opportunities lost. So many tales cut short. »

 

« So much suffering avoided. Dead people cannot feel pain, after all. »

 

The muddy dragon slowly blinked.

 

« I would like to hear your tale, to learn why you came to such a conclusion. »

 

« Surely you will come to regret it. This is no great enjoyment to find in Shen Jiu’s life so far. »

 

« So, your name is Shen Jiu, huh ? Are we exchanging names ? Names can be such a tedious thing to choose, and so ill-fitting when other people insist to saddle you with their own preconceptions disguised as an epithet. Ah well, that’s polite after all. »

 

The sight of the enormous maw doing its best approximation of a smile would certainly feature in Shen Jiu’s nightmares henceforth. Far too many teeth, and each one was longer than his forearm.

 

« You may address this one as Baoshan Sanren. »

 

 

Notes:

Soo... the crossover kinda crept on me...

The author regrets absolutely NOTHING! *mad cackle*

For the culture minute: "muddy dragon" is the name given to the Chinese alligator in historical records. It's hypothesized that the critter actually inspired the tales about dragons, since it was a scaled, reptilian monster strongly associated with river and lakes, considered relatively harmless for humans as long as they were left alone -- contributing to Asian dragons being depicted as deeply benevolent rain-bringers and water deities.

Chapter 79

As the towering muddy dragon guided her unexpected guests towards a small terrace she considered more appropriate for discussing the reason why they decided to intrude upon her territory, Shen Jiu saw people.

 

They were mainly children – some small enough to be in the hopelessly stumbling and chubby stage, some definitely tall enough to teether on the frontier between childhood and grown up, dressed in plain garments made for working and sweating. Three or four adults were scattered among them, but they acted just the same as the children, standing besides the road and watching the intruders, their faces blank and nothing but their eyes betraying some mild curiosity.

 

Well, Baoshan Sanren was known for taking brats in – and since these brats were never seen again, obviously they didn’t leave her mountain. They would grow up, grow old and maybe sire whelps of their own, and that would do for a thriving community.

 

At least, if the muddy dragon agreed to let him stay on Zhengmei Mountain instead of gobbling him whole or kicking him in the countryside to roam moneyless and selling his hard-earned skills for painting and poetry, the formerly human cultivator would enjoy a small measure of familiarity. And he wouldn’t be stranded alone and away from potential help and services if he wanted or needed something for him and his spawn.

 

(once upon a time, Qi-ge and Xiao Jiu dreamed of escaping the town and the slavers to settle in a small village, the kind everybody would ignore because it was so quaint and boring, nothing was ever happening there but for both street urchins, that would be perfect, interesting when you lived in the streets was a guarantee of the slavers beating you to an inch of your life or the local magistrate sending more guards to slaughter beggars and pickpockets for daring to disturb the peace)

 

(Qi-ge isn’t there anymore, Yue Qingyuan became someone interesting and will never abandon his Peak Lord status, moreso if he lays eyes upon the former Qing Jing Peak Lord in all his demonic glory)

 

(Qi-ge isn’t there anymore and there’s a pale whelp in his stead, looking at Shen Jiu with the same starry eyes Qi-ge used to have)

 

« There we are » the muddy dragon rumbled, and Shen Jiu forced himself back to reality.

 

The terrace barely deserved the name, a mess of weeds reaching the spider abomination’s waist, blossoms in every possible shade of rainbow scattered among the grass and stinking the air with a strong perfume of pollen, fat bumblebees drunkenly buzzing around as they obviously wondered which flower they ought to plunder next before the yellow dust coating their black fuzz became too heavy for them to go back to the hive safely nestled in a hollow trunk at the other end of the terrace.

 

Apple Blossom snorted and started to munch on fluffy purple thistles – trust a donkey for eating this specific weed – the tension slightly bleeding back from its body as it now focused on its dinner rather than the gigantic predator far close for its sanity.

 

The pale whelp sneezed, likely because of all this pollen in the air, and immediately scrunched their nose as they went cross-eyed.

 

Baoshan Sanren huffed a laugh, and the sound was like a river flooding without the slightest warning.

 

« Delightful little twerp » she declared. « I usually cannot stand human spawn when they’re not big enough to speak in a coherent manner, when they begin to have some inkling of intelligence, but you appear to be a very unusual case. »

 

« It’s already quite unusual to practise cross-species adoption » Shen Jiu retorted as he clutched his spawn closer to his chest – not nervous, he certainly wasn’t nervous. « Why would you want to suffer so many human kids in your vicinity ? »

 

Reptilian amber eyes slowly blinked.

 

« Partly out of boredom. Children will say the most inane things, I could write every single absurdity that fell from their mouths in the last month, sell them as poetry or philosophy and the whole Middle Kingdom would hail me as the most profound genius to live in the current era. And partly to remind me I should keep an open mind. »

 

For a fên, the silence was only broken by Apple Blossom’s noisy chewing.

 

« Children are constantly asking why . Always insisting for details behind your reasoning. They’re seeing everything from a fresh perspective, they don’t get right and wrong as morals define them without long conditioning. It helps me to keep a grip on the human mindset, and it reminds me how much I still have to learn. The day I will believe my answers are always correct, it will be the beginning of my downfall. »

 

Shen Jiu softly hummed, low in his throat.

 

« Absolute power cannot stand the very possibility of contradiction. »

 

« Oho ? So you understand ? Aren’t you a person of taste. »

 

The huli jing couldn’t help the grimace that sprawled on his face – truly, he was rusty after half a decade stuck in the beast’s palace, as he could yell and scream as much as he wanted between the four walls of his prison, having no use for a courtly mask.

 

« It’s more like I recently suffered a bad experience with someone thoroughly unsuited to wield the slightest drop of power, so picture the disaster when he climbed his way to a throne. »

 

« I will have to decline your request » the mythical creature delicately sniffed, as delicately as she could in spite of being an enormous Spiritual Beast whose breath managed to influence the soft breeze around the party. « It seems to be a disgusting image and I don’t want for it to be stuck in my mind when I have a limited ability to process trauma for a very long lifespan. »

 

« I shan’t blame you. But I would beseech you to take pity on me and my spawn, since we were seeking for a place in which we won’t be disturbed by the aforementioned distasteful individual, and your mountain appeared to be our best hope. »

 

It was too blunt, it betrayed his desperation for asylum, and yet it was Shen Jiu’s best bet when dealing with Baoshan Sanren, the Immortal who wasn’t a human woman potentially charmed by good manners or a pretty necklace or the promise of a favour by an influent Sect. You couldn’t bribe a muddy dragon with gold, the beast would only care about filling their stomach if they were feeling peckish that day and you were unlucky enough to dive in their river.

 

Maybe she would refuse – especially since he blurted he made a foe of someone powerful, and anyone smart sought to avoid potential problems down the line by not associating with criminals who encurred the wrath of highborns or well-ranked officials and magistrates, and Shen Jiu never had been the most likable fellow even when the jianghu was holding him for human…

 

« I suppose I have brought worse back there. »

 

Or maybe she would be crazy enough to agree.

 

The spider abomination quietly choked on her saliva while Shen Jiu raised one eyebrow.

 

« You have brought worse than a huli jing to your mountain ? » he slowly enunciated, to check his ears weren’t playing a bad trick.

 

« You’re able to hold a witty conversation with me instead of crying and begging for your wretched life after beholding my shape, and you have a delightful little twerp I will have the opportunity to watch bumble and commit mistakes after mistakes as they grow a personality. I have certainly interacted with worse. »

 

That was the most surreal answer he got to hear in his life, and that was without the context of the other person being a muddy dragon.

 

 

Chapter 80

Obviously, the spider abomination wouldn’t stay on Zhengmei Mountain.

 

If she disappeared from the Lower Realm alongside Shen Jiu, surely the beast would suspect something fishy – he was hopelessly stupid, the former Qing Jing Peak Lord still couldn’t believe he had learned how to read and write his own name, but the Heavenly half-breed nonetheless was gifted with a peculiar brand of cunning grown on the streets. No, it was better for the spider abomination to go back to the Imperial Palace, she could misdirect him and convince him to follow shadows that wouldn’t lead the beast anywhere close to Baoshan Sanren’s domain.

 

Second, the demoness was blatantly terrified by the muddy dragon, barely able to squeak in her presence and her face whiter than the most highly-priced powder bought by the courtesans to smooth their complexion. The huli jing couldn’t very well blame her for that, people listening to their survival instincts were such a rarity nowaday.

 

Also, that wasn’t like he actually needed her. Shen Jiu had taken care of himself for several decades before he was dragged in the Lower Realm and saddled with handmaidens to attend his sex-addled, drooling self. Now he wasn’t forced to let the beast violate his mind and body every day, now he had recovered his wits, now he didn’t feel any urge to ask for help.

 

Sure, he would have to raise the brat and that would be a shitstorm and a half because Shen Jiu knew himself and how utterly lacking in care for children he was, even when he was a child. But if Baoshan Sanren managed, and she was a fucking muddy dragon, then he had no excuse whatsoever for a potential failure.

 

And it seemed the whelp inherited more of Shen Jiu’s flaws than the beast’s. That alone would be a massive boon, having to suffer yet another beastling near him would be fucking suicidal and dumb, and if the brat ever hinted they were following in the Heavenly half-breed’s footsteps, then the fox spirit would beseech the muddy dragon to devour the whelp. At least when a Spiritual Beast was consuming a scion from a powerful bloodline, the odds for a vengeful ghost to escape the creature’s digestive track fell quite low.

 

But that would be a worry for much later. Now, Shen Jiu had to send the spider abomination back, since bidding goodbye was an unfortunate social obligation one couldn’t merely ignore as you would ignore the infuriating itch or desperate yawn begging for you to take action and relieve your body when you were surrounded by a great deal of courtly pit vipers, hungry for the tiniest bit of weakness.

 

The spider abomination was smiling, all her yellowish fangs on display and glistening in the hazy mist around the mountain’s gentle slopes.

 

« This humble servant hopes her Empress won’t miss her company too much. »

 

That was so ridiculous, Shen Jiu almost burst out laughing. A soft snort actually escaped his nose in spite of his tremendous restraint, and the fangy smile imperceptibly widened.

 

« You can drop dead in a ditch » the formerly human cultivator claimed, gathering the tattered remains of his dignity to drape them over his shoulders as a tacky cloak. « I won’t shed one single tear over your corpse. »

 

« That might be for the best » the demoness mused, « my brother is sensitive enough for half the Southern Plains. He would cry a river and single-handedly solve the drought plaguing these lands since their creation. »

 

« Oh Ancestors » Shen Jiu groaned, « I can see it. And because the Southern Plains are unused to such a massive volume of water disturbing the ecosystem’s balance, they would have to deal with floods, drownings, mosquitoes invading... »

 

« Looks like this humble one will have to stay alive » the spider abomination solemny concluded, « otherwise my Empress will scold me for bringing disaster upon her subjects. Even if my Empress decided they wasn’t interested in ruling anymore. »

 

« Who cares about ruling a bunch of twits unable to wipe their asses without someone holding their hand and bringing a map ? » the huli jing sneered. « The beast is welcome to it, he should be palatable since he’s on their intelligence level. »

 

The demoness sighed and briefly closed her many eyes. When she opened them again, they glinted and shone as polished obsidian beads embedded in her face.

 

« Your Imperial Highness won’t miss this humble servant, and that’s good. The tiger shouldn’t concern itself with the opinion of the sheep, or is it a dragon for the company you will now keep ? Anyway, it will be for the best. Many wishes for my Empress and your distinguished offspring as you begin this new life. »

 

« I never needed wishes for my health or my success in order to survive wherever my path led me » Shen Jiu retorted. « Indeed, my closest acquaintances were praying for my demise or fall from grace, yet here I am, alive and safe. »

 

« Here you are » the demoness agreed, her fangs flashing, a glimpse of lightning in the whitish mist.

 

She unfurled a pair of her arms, gently seizing one of Shen Jiu’s hands in her own and lifting the long-fingered appendage to her mouth in order to lay a soft kiss on the knuckles – a flittering sensation, akin to a moth opening its wings right above the skin, so light and delicate was the contact.

 

And just like a moth would fly away, she let his hand drop and go back from where it came.

 

« … This humble servant is going to miss your Imperial Highness. »

 

Her voice was soft, as if she wasn’t speaking to Shen Jiu at all, and her voice was serene with acceptance, already shouldering the weight of her decisions and how it would reflect on her future.

 

Shen Jiu didn’t shiver. He didn’t even blink in front of this shameful confession laid to his feet, an offering for him to discard or to treasure.

 

« How sentimental Shan Su is. »

 

His words were casual and devoid of warmth yet the demoness flinched and twitched, several of her eyes blinking as she registered the use of her name, a name the formerly human cultivator never bothered to utter in spite of knowing it, because when you named something, well, it wasn’t just a thing anymore, was it ?

 

To bear a name was to exist. To be named was to matter in the eyes of someone. Even if you wound up losing your health, losing your fame, losing the roof over your head, losing your martial prowess or your gift for composing poetry and song, you couldn’t erase a name so easily.

 

For a long, long time, Shen Jiu had been shackled to slavery and infamy and Cang Qiong Mountain through the name someone else bestowed upon him. He would never underestimate the power hidden in a name.

 

And for this reason, and because he would never see her again if everything went as it was supposed to be, because she never stopped caring for him and ultimately brought him to safety when she was in the beast’s employ, for the first and last time he named her.

 

She was a demoness, yes, she was a spider-shaped abomination, but she wasn’t only that , and he was acknowledging that as their fates were separating from each other. Maybe it could be considered a meager gift from one who used to be an Empress and a Peak Lord.

 

Yet from the way she helplessly smiled, so open and vulnerable in spite of her fangy maw, he didn’t regret this choice of gift.

 

 

Chapter 81

Shang Qinghua couldn’t help feeling mildly upset about Mobei-jun coming to his leisure house – that was supposed to be his place ! No annoying so-called martial siblings or Disciples bearing paperwork or ice demons prone to beat their beleaguered subordinates over a flimsy excuse to disturb him there – and staunchly refusing to evacuate the place.

 

Still, he wasn’t raging at the majestic asshole – bad idea, that, demons had a very loose definition of personal property and boundaries and the highborns were so much worse since they could claim everything their subjects were entitled to have, even in the best issue possible Mobei-jun would only stare at him with uncomprehending bafflement – for a very simple and dreadful reason.

 

Luo Binghe’s fox consort finally played his ultimate trick over the half-blooded Junshang by running away.

 

The An Ding Peak Lord found himself unable to truly begrudge Shen Qingqiu – his former martial brother – such a decision, Ancestors knew just how disappointing the Heavenly half-breed was as a person. Also, the former Qing Jing Peak Lord had loathed when he wasn’t respected by his peers, that opinion was one commonly held in the jianghu but cultivators hadn’t been so dumb as to actually say what they thought on the matter of Shen Qingqiu to the man’s face. This way laid a social disgrace for the ages, as the former Qing Jing Peak Lord would swiftly flay the idiot alive with his scorching tongue then would dig every single nasty skeleton buried in their backyard and shamelessly wave them in the breeze for the whole Middle Kingdom to behold.

 

Truly, Yue Qingyuan likely was the only living being who could potentially insult Shen Qingqiu as blatantly as he wanted, and not fear retribution. On the other hand, it was pretty obvious that the Sect Leader would never dare, and that might have been the reason why his former right hand and tactician would tolerate the intense awkwardness between them.

 

Luo Binghe wasn’t Yue Qingyuan and never would be, even if he worked hard a hundred years on his frightful temper and stopped smiling as a hungry tiger in order to ape the serene expression painted on Buddha’s face. Of course Shen Qingqiu ran out of patience and fucks to give.

 

So the huli jing vanished from the dungeon – and Shang Qinghua strongly suspected an internal accomplice, someone to open the door and remove the Immortal Binding Cables, especially with Shen Qingqiu deep within his meditative state, and wouldn’t that be a fun investigation, finding the traitor hidden in the Imperial Palace ?

 

Mobei-jun was innocent, the most innocent name you would utter regarding the matter, but he nonetheless decided he wasn’t interested in dwelling in the same building as the Junshang while the Heavenly half-breed was throwing a tantrum over the loss of his personal pet. Which showed there was something else than ice beneath this sleek white mane, the majestic asshole could properly think after all and Shang Qinghua felt weirdly smug because two of Cang Qiong’s Peak Lords were involved with demons and he was the one who stumbled on the superior product !

 

Well, he couldn’t actually boast of his good fortune, but that was nice. Just a smidge.

 

Anyway, Luo Binghe’s tantrum. Because after spending a great deal of time sulking in his room or in the countryside – and pointedly avoiding doing his job as a ruler, but that was fine since officials and scribes had been appointed by the missing Empress and oh, Shang Qinghua was deeply uncomfortable about that, but these bureaucrats very smartly abstained from mentioning who picked them and instead focused on mitigating the Junshang’s neglect as proper subordinates ought to do – the Heavenly half-breed remembered his disgraced consort and went down in the dungeon to check if Shen Qingqiu woke up and was in a mood to beg for his former Disciple to take him back, and holy crap was Luo Binghe delusional and utterly blind to the former Qing Jing Peak Lord’s character if he had earnestly believed that load of complete shite , and he found nobody in the cell since that was more in line with the martial sibling Shang Qinghua had known for several decades, when Shen Qingqiu was unhappy with a situation he would take measures to remediate to it and implement them. And no, he didn’t care for the guilty party’s desires , who would ?

 

Hence the tantrum, and everybody steering very clear from their Junshang as he raged and howled and waved his cursed blade around, carving deep gouges in the walls and cutting to ribbons anyone stupid enough to stay in the same room as him. Oh, and threatening to spill oceans of blood if his consort wasn’t brought back to him, alive and sound.

 

Shang Qinghua personally didn’t believe Shen Qingqiu would reappear, be it in the Lower Realm – really, putting a whole dimension between oneself and a former spouse wasn’t a bad strategy when the divorce was as sour as that one – or the Middle Kingdom with its very low tolerance for demons. Maybe he left for a foreign country ? The An Ding Peak Lord had heard tales about Da Qin, a great empire in the West always hungry for novelty, maybe they would think a huli jing was charming and lovely and open him the gates of their brilliant city built on seven hills ?

 

Being a logistician, he briefly considered the possibility of Shen Qingqiu being abducted before thoroughly discarding it in the mental bin for sheer inanities – no demon would ever dare to arouse Luo Binghe’s temper that way when a mere assassination attempt would send the Heavenly half-breed in a murderous rampage, and Shen Qingqiu would shred them to pieces as abduction would imply he was a helpless maiden and the former Qing Jing Peak Lord would relinquish his pride when the Eighteen Hells would freeze, and maybe not even then.

 

No, Shen Qingqiu had escaped and now this fucker was enjoying a premature retirement, freed from nagging Peak Lords and blatantly insane half-demon rulers. Shang Qinghua didn’t know if he wanted to curse the huli jing to King Yama’s worst punishment for that or raise a drink to his admittedly well-deserved success.

 

He likely would take this drink, because hosting Mobei-jun in his leisure house – built on An Ding Peak, so a part of Cang Qiong and the Sect hadn’t repelled their policy of wariness towards the Lower Realm – wasn’t good for his perpetually frayed nerves. And no, he wouldn’t allow the majestic asshole a drop of the good stuff, the ice demon had no taste for wine anyway, he would rather consume barrels of this slightly cloudy, light brown alcohol coming from far beyond the Northern Sea.

 

The An Ding Peak Lord had sipped the beverage and couldn’t claim he enjoyed it, it was far too sour for him to not immediately spit it back and the alcohol level was so hopelessly weak that even a cultivator saddled with a piss-poor golden core could empty an overflowing cellar of the stuff without even getting tipsy.

 

Really, his King had some very queer tastes sometimes – and Shang Qinghua considered their relationship as master and pet quite the damning example, even if he flat-out refused to admit it out loud, he wasn’t suicidal or stupid.

 

He just was exhausted from all the excitment and praying for it to end very soon.

 

 

Notes:

I pictured Mobei-jun drinking kvass (a fermented cereal-based alcohol) because it's a Slavic drink and quite popular in Russia. No, it couldn't be vodka because the era in which PIDW happens is waaayy too early for the recipe to have been invented, and also because it's funny for the big meanie ice demon to enjoy a very diluted alcohol.

Da Qin was a Chinese name for the Roman Empire.

Chapter 82

Shen Jiu was gone.

 

Shen Jiu was gone.

 

Shen Jiu was gone .

 

Luo Binghe wasn’t angry. He was wrathful , since he decided the huli jing might have getting bored with his tantrum and stopped ignoring him – really, falling asleep in order to not have to acknowledge his lord and master, could he be more childish and petty – only to find the cell empty and utterly devoid of the slightest traces of its former prisoner.

 

Xin Mo never howled stronger in his inner ear than when he had just stumbled upon the cursed blade and had to mentally fight it into submission instead of letting his mind be devoured whole and his body be turned in a husk puppeted by a bloodthirsty sword that didn’t care for being sealed and left to rust for several hundreds of years.

 

This time, the Heavenly half-breed was too pissed off to consider keeping Xin Mo fully under his control. And who knew ? Maybe seeing the consequences of an attack against him and his would intimidate the traitor responsible for that bloody mess into confessing their guilt.

 

Because Shen Jiu couldn’t have escaped on his own. Not when he was wrapped in so many Immortal Binding Cables you could barely see the pale flesh beneath the cords, not with the cursed shackle around his neck cutting his access to his golden core and the huli jing racial abilities. No, Shen Jiu was helped by someone.

 

It drove Luo Binghe bitter and a bit incredulous, that his despicable Shizun was able to gather support around him when everybody was aware of his dirty blood or his wretched personality. When he had been a haughty Peak Lord who relished tormenting his Disciples, Shen Qingqiu has been put on a pedestal and almost worshipped by Ming Fan and Ning Yingying and Yue Qingyuan himself, and that merely were the three more prominent names. When Shen Jiu had been reduced to a huli jing consort locked up in Luo Binghe’s palace, he nonetheless succeeded in seducing his handmaidens who formerly loathed and feared him so much, a few of them had begged to become Shan Su’s test subjects for new poisons instead.

 

It was confusing. It was maddening , and the Heavenly half-breed screamed his sheer frustration to the uncaring Heavens.

 

Why would you be worthy of love, when everything you do ought to make you despised and rejected by everyone you ever met ? How can you be worthy of love, when nothing I ever do is enough and I am trying, I am ripping myself at the seams to give people what they want and in their ungratefulness they take and take without nary a thanks for my sacrifices, but you blatantly trample them under your merciless foot and they revere you ?

 

Ruling through hatred cannot be the answer, because I tried that too, you know, I slaughtered so many demons and I made no mystery of the fact that it was a choice between following my orders or being given a long and painful demise, and still in their eyes I see nothing but fear, not a single hint of genuine adoration, but when your handmaidens and your Disciples were staring at you, yes there was the fear of disappointing you, of bringing your anger upon their heads yet this fear was mixed with respect and love, as if you hang the moon and the sun and all the stars in the nighttime sky.

 

How can you do that ? Why you and not me ?

 

Luo Binghe needed to find the traitor – to force them out of their hiding place – and enlighten them that it was a fucking bad idea to play such a nasty prank on the Sacred Ruler of demonkind. And when the traitor will have understood deep in their bone marrow – Luo Binghe will carve the message with his blunted nails if he has, as long as it hurt like a little bitch – they will be allowed to confess where Shen Jiu was before they would be granted their Junshang’s permission to die.

 

Because Shen Jiu would be brought back to Luo Binghe – the formerly human cultivator, the former Qing Jing Peak Lord had nobody else who would agree to love him, who would protect him from all these people rightfully angry about being scammed and deceived by a filthy demon all these years, who could prevent the consequences of his sins to reach him. He had no other recourse – and if he thought he had one, well, Luo Binghe would show him how superior an option the Heavenly half-breed was.

 

Obviously, the huli jing wouldn’t be grateful – Shen Jiu was so filled with hatred, he spat on the hand that fed him instead of praising the one who refused to let him starve alone in the cold but his Junshang’s mercy was boundless, just like Guanyin. Did Shizun even remembered his former whipping boy used to bear a false jade carved in the likeness of the goddess ? Probably not, he was too focused on his perceived misery for details pertaining to somebody else to leave a big impact on his mind.

 

But that would come for later, once the huli jing secured back in Luo Binghe’s Palace – and he couldn’t run too far, the Lower Realm was far too hostile and threatening for an Imperial consort kept in luxury, soon the real world would break his independence streak and force him to understand there was no existing beyond the borders defined by Junshang. In the meantime, the Heavenly half-breed would have to hunt the traitor.

 

Obviously it couldn’t be one of Shen Jiu’s handmaidens, these poor silly twits had been easily cowed into behaving by a showing of power, not even the worst Luo Binghe was able to unleash, and their contact with their charge had been cut short by Shen Jiu’s sojourn in the dungeons. So not one of them, they lacked the brains and the means and the tiniest motive.

 

Luo Binghe didn’t believe it was Mobei-jun either – yes, the ice demon had been very much opposed to his Empress since the reveal of Luo Binghe’s wedding at his ascension to the throne, but Mobei-jun disdained working in the shadows. When he misliked something, he bluntly told his ruler what he thought – helping the huli jing to escape the Imperial Palace was the kind of plot that was so utterly contrary to his character that it just couldn’t be him as the mastermind behind the intrigue.

 

Sha Hualing, well, that was the same reasoning than for the handmaidens. He dearly liked her as a bedmate and a general who always was happy to support his conquests, but she was straightforward in a way that prevented from doing more than lead from the front and inspire her soldiers in giving their best if they wished to avoid falling under her claws rather than the opponent’s. She would have been so much sloppier if she had been the guilty party.

 

The Shan siblings… Luo Binghe hesitated. The spider pair of brother and sister had been nothing but loyal to his rule, and he never even raised a hand against his court physician, and Shan Su wasn’t happy about endorsing a man as a ruler but she was easily mellowed by her little plays in the shadows…

 

Plays in the shadows… and Shan Su wasn’t there in the Palace.

 

Maybe it was nothing, with her brother casually mentioning she needed to go and appease their Clan Matriarch over some silly dispute or another.

 

Still, that was why Luo Binghe learned dream-manipulation from Meng Mo – you couldn’t believe how unguarded a sleeping mind was. And the spider siblings were his vassals, he was entitled to obtain answers to his questions.

 

Especially on such an important matter.

 

 

Chapter 83

Shan Su had hoped to be back before Luo Binghe could remember the fox consort he had thrown in the dungeon – and the odds had been very much favouring this possibility ! Alas, people were people instead of easy statistics, and they would wreck the most carefully laid plans by doing something impulsive and emotional on a whim.

 

The spider demoness wouldn’t complain – too much – because she occasionnally suffered this unfortunate affliction just like everybody she ever met, but she could certainly grimace over the matter, especially when it complicated her existence.

 

It would have been so much easier for her to be present between the Palace’s walls for the disparition to be revealed – and yes, it had to be very public as the Heavenly Demon bloodline tended to be hopelessly sentimental and kept a piss-poor control over their feelings with decades of specialized training, training Luo Binghe as a half-human mixed offspring wouldn’t have received – as the Junshang was a suspicious shit. Any ruler who hoped to last longer than a few days sitting in this throne needed to stab their shadow when it moved, better to be see enemies everywhere or you would be blind to the knives or the poison when they were in the open for your whole court to behold.

 

Luo Binghe was more than suspicious, he was a controlling shit. Locking the Empress away, picking their handmaidens in their stead, throwing a fit when their consort deviated magnificently from the schedule expected from them ? A textbook case. And a controlling shit didn’t care about secrecy – well, it was fine when he wanted it, but when someone else claimed the privilege ? Suddenly you would have nightmares all night long, and when you were too exhausted to stand wthout yawning, Luo Binghe called for you and gleefully rattled all your dirty little secrets to teach you a lesson.

 

Nothing ought to be beyond the reach of a Sacred Ruler, but their current one truly was taking that to an exceptional level.

 

Shan Su knew she turned suspicious in the Heavenly half-breed’s eyes for not being immediately at hand when he learned of the Empress vanishing and terrified the whole Palace in treading on eggshells around him, because she couldn’t immediately swear she was innocent of the crime – absent people were always in the wrong – so the doubt would have fermented in his mind.

 

And Luo Binghe wasn’t a man of half measures. When he decided he owed someone, he would shower this person with favour and blessings even if the humble peasant begged for Junshang to merely leave it alone, please, because a debt needed to be paid. When he decided someone owed him, then he would harass this person until the slightest drop of blood in their body had been drunk dry even if the offense had been so completely stupid that literally the Three Realms would have laughed and forgot the incident.

 

No, he would be suspicious, and so Shan Su would suffer nightmares, all the better to breach her mental defenses and ransack her mind. And if she attempted to protest and argue for her right to a private life, the Heavenly half-breed would interpretate that as her wanting to betray him as she was supposed to be his and have no existence, no character beyond what he wished for her to be.

 

Ah, what a joke. And what a boring life it would be, to know everything about the people sharing your life. Even Shan Su didn’t know everything about her darling Hualing, and the Sha saintess wasn’t the most complex individual to walk upon the Demon Realm.

 

And that was why the Empress was so awe-inspiring. Besides them, Shan Su had always been hungry for more – she could have faithfully served the huli jing for thousands of years and still she would have kept on learning bits and pieces and details of her Empress, a whole new world covered with verdant woods and scorching deserts and lush farmlands and majestic mountains, thousands upon thousands of marvels to admire or lose or never get confirmed as real.

 

Aiyah, it had been an adventure, wasn’t it ? Even if it wasn’t Dongying, or Tianzhu, or the Golden Peninsula, Shan Su nonetheless was grateful and honoured to have been blessed with such an experience.

 

That was an adventure for her, for the spider demoness had been deemed worthy – worthy to relish the gift, to properly enjoy it. That wasn’t an adventure for Luo Binghe, who cared not for it unless it was according his own terms, and these terms always reflected his inner world, leaving him constantly treading the same paths and he was so blind, he couldn’t even comprehend how deep a gouge his footprints were leaving in the ground from constantly stomping the same plot of soil.

 

As a demon, Shan Su was a deeply selfish creature, and she wouldn’t share the gift she was given by her Empress with someone who could have obtained this same gift if only he had tried to understand there was someone else in the Three Realms that wasn’t him, and was too lazy to make the effort. She wouldn’t allow for the flawless jade pearl to be cast to a grunting hog wallowing in its muddy shit.

 

Of course, she was aware of the consequences. Maybe she ought to have run, maybe she ought to have never returned from the travel to Zhengmei Mountain. That certainly would have been the pragmatic decision, but Luo Binghe was born under a cursed star, not cursed for him but for anyone potentially of interest to him. Anything he coveted, he would stumble upon – sometimes in truly bizarre circumstances – and the spider demoness wasn’t that lucky.

 

Also, she was a demoness, a spider demoness whose pride had been trampled by a male, and she was petty as fuck . She would stand at the feet of Luo Binghe’s throne and she would spit in his eye and she would laugh as she confirmed she was responsible for his losing the Empress, next time you might hesitate before raping a bedmate of yours, she might not be entirely genuine when claiming she put it behind her.

 

Well, that was if he was bent on suspecting her. He might not – there was a small chance of it, but the spider demoness wouldn’t bet on it. Not a measly copper shard.

 

So she would have to execute her plan in the throne room. Would her darling Hualing be there ? Shan Su hoped the Sha saintess had begged to be allowed to visit her father – his health wasn’t that good lately, pretty sure it was an illness and not one of his other daughters poisoning him to steal her sisters’ part of inheritance – after witnessing Luo Binghe in the throes of his tantrum. Otherwise, that would get a wee bit distressing.

 

She wondered if Shan Xu had been thrown in the dungeon as the sibling of one suspected by Junshang to have betrayed his authority. He wouldn’t have been able to snitch anyway, he had willingly ingested a memory-targeting poison before Shan Su’s departure with the Empress and the infant huli jing. Nothing too bad, just enough to make his remembrances of the Empress quite blurry in the latest month, and definitely enough to erase his knowing of where the Empress had decided to hide.

 

The Shan spider clan had a great deal of recipes for poisons, some deeply esoteric – after all, poisoning a soul was possible, and you couldn’t hold it in your hand, not like you could hold a body.

 

In the right amounts, any medicine could become poison. And any poison could become a cure. Two sides of the same coin, really, and it never changed the disgusting taste.

 

Poison or medicine, Luo Binghe would have to swallow, and it would be quite the bitter experience, Shan Su was guaranteeing it.

 

 

Chapter 84

There were nobody else but Luo Binghe in the throne room when Shan Su entered it. Rather curious, that – not even a single curious bystander, bent on watching in order to report their findings to the people puppeting them from the shadows, or merely to enjoy the spectacle ? My, how gruesome had Junshang’s tantrum been, to intimidate his whole court into fleeing in the darkest corners of the palace ?

 

That wasn’t a good omen for her fate, and the spider demoness literally heard her odds for survival plummeting somewhere around her ankles – with a small whizzing breeze, almost like a buzzing mosquito.

 

That wasn’t a good omen either for her brother. Rain or shine, be he healthy or sickly, Shan Xu would never leave his sister face such a trial on her own. Family was everything, after all – well, it was everything to the Spider demon clans, too many bloodlines scoffed at their very scions and gleefully attempted to slaughter each other, how many murder attempts did the young Mobei-jun link back to his uncle already ?

 

« Shan Su, you have finally come back when this lord called you » Luo Binghe casually commented, his tone mild and his eyes glistened with the freshness of newly spilled blood.

 

The spider demoness smiled with all her fangs in display.

 

« A thousand apologies for this humble one’s lateness, but duty waits for no one » she answered. « How fared my brother in my absence ? Did he remember to feed himself ? To leave his lab and studies at some point ? »

 

There, playing the concerned sister, and it wasn’t that much of a cover, but it was the perfect excuse to glean information.

 

The Heavenly half-breed didn’t move, one arm lazily resting on his lap, the hand far too close from the cursed blade Xin Mo, the perfect position if he wished to draw the sword and wield it against her – and Shan Su was nimble and swift, yes, but she couldn’t evade a maddened berserker forever…

 

No need to evade forever, merely to evade just long enough.

 

« Quite a funny tale, that » Junshang drawled, and he sounded like he might have genuinely enjoyed the story yet his words were edged with wicked thorns. « Could you believe a man sleepwalking into drinking poison ? When this lord understood what the ruckus made by the servants tending to his bedroom was, he was unfortunately too late to prevent himself from getting short a court physician. »

 

Sleepwalking, huh ? So Luo Binghe had been so very suspicious that he decided to ransack Shan Xu’s mind, and because the male spider demon was prepared to any eventuality, even the one in which he would be forced to betray his most beloved sister, he bit down on the poison pill he always carried under his tongue and ensured his whole head would be dissolved in acidic fluid.

 

Not the nicest way to die, but Luo Binghe couldn’t drag a soul back from the Eighteen Hells with the Mausoleum if the corpse meant to host this soul was destroyed beyond a defined point.

 

Under Shan Su’s own tongue, the pill was waiting. She kept smiling.

 

« Such a pity. And what, exactly, was Junshang doing, for my poor, unfortunate brother to be reduced to that ? As a physician, he was gifted with a very loose grasp of morals and an almost complete lack of squeamishness, so it would have been truly beyond the pale... »

 

Crimson eyes glittered and the handsome features of the Sacred Ruler briefly twisted themselves in a mightily ugly scowl before smoothing, as flat and serene as water in a shallow bowl.

 

« Very bold to accuse this lord from being responsible of a death when he wasn’t in the same wing of the Palace when it happened. »

 

« As if Junshang couldn’t kill a target from the other side of the country ? This humble one wouldn’t think about denying you the means » the spider demoness declared with a pointed glance at Xin Mo. « What she wishes to know, however, is why she lost her brother. »

 

She already knew, of course, but she wanted to hear it from Luo Binghe’s own mouth. Let him admit the sin. Let him dig the grave in which she will lay her brother and herself at rest.

 

« And what this lord would like to know » the Heavenly half-breed snorted, « is why my court physician would plot against me by helping my Empress’ abduction. He might have lamented Shan Xu’s demise a smidge more otherwise. »

 

That was it. He said the words. Shan Su didn’t stop smiling.

 

« Really, this humble one thought Junshang was smarter than that ? You ought to stop wielding your dick and your sword for a while and start using the limited amount of brain cells between your ears, if you still have some of these left. »

 

And the scowl was back, uglier than the glimpse she got of it, and it was there to stay.

 

« Does Shan Su remember who she’s adressing ? »

 

« She’s adressing the man who raped her and all the other women in the room for the crime of having the Empress’ favour when the Empress wouldn’t even look at him with anything but disdain » the spider demoness snapped. « That is who she’s adressing, and nobody else. »

 

The snarl ripping itself free from the Heavenly half-breed’s throat could have been produced by a hungry tiger roaming the woods after the hunter drove a spear within its guts, condemning the great beast to a slow, agonizing demise.

 

« So that’s your reason ? » he spat, hurling words and saliva at her. «  You steal my Empress out of pettiness  ? You betray me for such a measly reason ? »

 

« Thus speak the man who believes he has no sins to haunt him back » Shan Su hissed, baring her fangs as venom was flooding her mouth, readying her for the bite. « Thus speak the man who hurts and maims and destroys and because he enjoyed it, he cannot comprehend anybody else wouldn’t enjoy it too, his victims above all, because he’s the only one who matters in the Three Realms. Such a man isn’t fit to tend to a slave, or even a pet, and if he is unworthy to bear such a measly burden, then he’s undeserving of having an Empress at all !  »

 

The walls rang from the shouted sentence, and Shan Su felt her ears popping, her stomach twisting and churning as if the world itself had noticed her and focused the weight of thousands upon thousands of curious minds on her, wondering what she would do next, as Luo Binghe jumped to his feet, his wrath blazing and suffocating, Xin Mo foreboding and eager in his hand, would she run, would she keep screaming defiance, would she regret her words ?

 

Well, let’s give them a final for the ages, won’t we ?

 

Her brother was beckoning, and the pill crunched as she splattered it all over her palate, and she wanted to laugh and laugh because she was about to die and the secret Luo Binghe wanted would die with her, the Empress would be safe and able to raise their child in peace, away from the Imperial Palace, away from Luo Binghe and his way that brought ruin to the ones he claimed to love, away .

 

She wanted to laugh, but there was something she wanted to say more, something that would hurt the Heavenly half-breed so much, something that would express her genuine feelings towards the one and only ruler she ever wanted to serve.

 

« Long live the Empress ! »

 

Shan Su died smiling as the poison devoured her brain.

 

 

Chapter 85

Everything was awful and Xiao Yue knew it was Junshang’s fault entirely.

 

That was obvious – since Junshang came back, everybody was unhappy. His nurse did her best to playact as if nothing was weird, but her smile wasn’t as wide as usual, her body was so tense when she hugged him, and when she shushed his bratty baby brother it was with a sense of urgency, as if she was afraid somebody would hear and come to yell at them.

 

Which was silly, because all the servants in their wing wouldn’t dare – they were servants, so they were beneath Xiao Yue and his baby brother, and they couldn’t complain or get angry at their betters. Still, there was someone above everybody else, and that was Junshang. Junshang had the power to yell at Xiao Yue’s nurse.

 

Xiao Yue decided he didn’t like Junshang at all, for making his nurse worry and fret so much. And he already didn’t like his baby brother very much, but now he liked him even less because the baby brother wouldn’t stop fussing and making noise, and noise could bring Junshang’s attention down on Nurse, and the baby brother didn’t care ! At all !

 

Nurse claimed it was normal, babies couldn’t help being stupid, but Xiao Yue didn’t like the explanation. If babies were always stupid, then babies didn’t deserve to exist, and when Xiao Yue would grow big and scary enough, he would tell everybody to stop having them, this way there would be less stupid in the world ! And it would be more quiet, too.

 

But he wasn’t that big yet, so he had to listen to his nurse instead of dropping his baby brother somewhere in a dusty corridor, hoping for someone else to come and rid them from the noise and the brattiness forever , and he was left hoping for Junshang to leave quickly, as quickly as possible, as the Palace wasn’t quiet anymore, the servants were upset and Nurse was upset, and Xiao Yue hated that, he hated it with every single cun of his tiny, weak body.

 

But Junshang refused to leave.

 

Worse, Junshang did something to the Empress – to Xiao Yue’s mother, and he didn’t know what because the servants stopped whispering when they saw him spying on them – and they always saw him because they were grown ups and had years more of experience playing hide and seek and Xiao Yue couldn’t wait to grow up and finally getting to surprise them – and Nurse wouldn’t tell when he asked her what happened, not even when he begged, not even when he threw a tantrum in spite of not being a brat like his baby brother anymore, she claimed it was too awful and something only for grown ups to know.

 

It didn’t stop Xiao Yue from having nightmares, in which there was black everywhere and somebody crying – the voice kinda sounded like Nurse and Mistress Shan but he knew it was his mother’s voice – and somebody yelling and breaking things and it didn’t sound at all like the doctor but Xiao Yue knew it was Junshang, busy scaring his mother the Empress.

 

Nurse was always there to wipe his tears clean and hug him after a nightmare, but the nightmares kept coming. It was awful, and Xiao Yue knew it was Junshang’s fault because he hurt Xiao Yue’s mother, his beautiful mother who smiled and laughed and enjoyed games, and now she had to be crying because that was what you would do when you were scared and hurting, you cried and cried until you wanted to puke and that wasn’t nice at all, and Junshang did that to the Empress.

 

Xiao Yue really didn’t like Junshang at all.

 

Then it became even worse, and for several days Xiao Yue didn’t knew why everybody was so much more afraid, but he thought he heard screams ? Somewhere deep in the Palace, and it sounded like an angry monster. Well, Xiao Yue had never seen a monster in the flesh, but that was how he imagined them sounding, when they were angry and about to trample you, or maul you, or eat you.

 

When he asked his nurse what kind of monster it was, because the guards in the Palace were so very strong so the monster had to be very strong or very smart to enter in the Palace in spite of the guards protecting it, she made a weird face and she told him it actually was Junshang in a bad mood. Because something bad happened to him.

 

Since Xiao Yue didn’t like Junshang, he wasn’t that upset about him having a mishap. Maybe it would make him understand he should go back in the countryside and stay there ? That would be so very nice !

 

Junshang didn’t understand. He killed Mistress Shan and the doctor instead.

 

Well, nobody actually told he killed them, but he was angry at them, and they died, and Xiao Yue wasn’t stupid, and Junshang was mean and bent on ruining everything so obviously he would kill the doctor and Mistress Shan who had been nice if a bit annoying when they came and visited Xiao Yue and his baby brother.

 

Xiao Yue knew what killing was, since his nurse needed to kill scorpions and fleas when they wanted to hide under the bed or within the slippers. Killing was leaving a red splatter where something alive was wriggling right before, and now Mistress Shan and her brother the doctor had been killed, and that was Junshang’s fault.

 

Junshang told everybody Mistress Shan and the doctor deserved to be turned in red splatters, because they took the Empress away and hid her somewhere she couldn’t be found. That meant Xiao Yue’s mother wasn’t in the Palace anymore, and even after becoming a big boy of seven years old he couldn’t meet her, he wouldn’t get to hear her laugh or see her smile or smell her hair when she would hug him and marvel because he was so big now, and she had waited for so long to meet him, and she loved him so much that she had given him a name, and now they would be together forever.

 

But they wouldn’t. Xiao Yue wouldn’t meet his mother, because she wasn’t in the Palace anymore. Junshang told it was Mistress Shan and the doctor’s fault, but everything had been fine until Junshang decided he was bored with the countryside so it obviously was his fault.

 

He did that, all of that, and Xiao Yue really, really didn’t like him at all.

 

He might actually dislike Junshang. A bit. Or more than a bit. Because Junshang was so mean, and ruined everything worse than Xiao Yue’s baby brother, because babies were stupid but Junshang was a grown up and grown ups were supposed to know better ! They were supposed to fix things when they went wrong, not making things wrong when they were right !

 

Xiao Yue was still small and weak, and so he couldn’t do anything while Junshang was spoiling everything. But one day, he wouldn’t be so small or so weak – one day, he would have the power to right everything Junshang had done wrong, and he would use it, and Junshang would be forced to leave for the countryside and never come back again, and maybe the years of experience in playing hide and seek would help Xiao Yue to find his mother the Empress, and he would finally learn the shape of her smile.

 

One day, Xiao Yue would be strong, and he couldn’t wait for this day to come.

 

 

Chapter 86

Shang Qinghua didn’t believe his former shizi could disappoint him further, but Luo Binghe seemed bent on thwarting everybody’s expectations – first by being a Heavenly half-breed in spite of his hopelessly wimpy demeanour when he still was attending Qing Jing Peak’s classrooms, then by refusing to die in the bowels of the Endless Abyss, then by crowning a huli jing his Empress instead of slaughtering it, and now…

 

Well, now, Mobei-jun likely wouldn’t leave the An Ding Peak Lord’s leisure house for a very, very long time, maybe not until the Qing generation decided to retire and considering the fact half of them currently lacked an appointed successor, that would be in thirty years in the most hopeful projections of the future.

 

Shang Qinghua wasn’t exactly happy to keep hosting the majestic asshole eating his snacks and sleeping in his bed – why do you insist on taking my bed, my King, and why won’t you let this slave sleep in the side-room ? He’s not a soft toy for you to grip at night, and your muscled arms are so very cold, his weak cultivation will see him catching pneumonia after a while – but he acknowledged it would be a very painful suicide to stay in the Imperial Palace when the Sacred Ruler of demonkind was still raging.

 

Seriously, what did Shan Su tell him before she died ? By the way, reports were infuriatingly vague regarding the spider demoness’ demise – some claimed Junshang wildly beat her head in with his fists until her face was reduced to bloody paste, not unlikely when taking a Heavenly Demon’s natural strength in account, and some claimed she willingly killed herself with a secret Shan poison recipe to avoid the gruesome punishment about to befell her.

 

Shang Qinghua personally believed the latter hypothesis was the right one – from what he saw of Matriarch Lu’s twelth daughter, she was a spiteful thing who refused to give a male power over her, so allowing a man to slay her ? She would have never agreed with such an end, and it didn’t matter if the male was the Highest Emperor himself. No, she died at her own hand, and she probably hurled carefully picked last words at the Junshang – maybe a reminder that he lost his Empress, and now he would lose his last chance to retrieve the huli jing ? It certainly would explain a lot about Luo Binghe’s murderous mood.

 

No, calling him murderous was an understatement. He was more akin to a natural disaster, having turned a quarter of the Imperial Palace to wrecked ruins and butchered more than a hundred servants, warriors and courtiers with the bad luck to be in his path.

 

Good luck to find somebody wanting to rebuild the place afterwards, and to hire qualified staff since anyone with a modicum of intelligence and self-preservation instinct would immediately hide in the nearest mousehole when news of that tantrum would spread in the Lower Realm. And it would spread, because it was easier to destroy a reputation than to build one, as people gossiped mainly about the details that made you appear at your pettiest, nastiest, while ignoring all the good and righteous points.

 

If Luo Binghe had been blessed with virtues, these had dried long ago. Now Shang Qinghua was quite certain his subjects were praying any fell power – Ancestors knew demonkind wouldn’t beg for the Heavens’ intervention, not even if they were vergering on extinction – that might be listening to snuff the Junshang’s life and let them return to the squabbles and struggles for power and survival that became commonplace and accepted following Tianlang-jun’s sealing.

 

Mobei-jun wasn’t openly praying, but there was something in his expression when he was speaking of the Heavenly half-breed lately – very subtle, and the An Ding Peak Lord would have missed it without the days and months and years forcing him to gain the knowledge of the majestic asshole’s intimate moods under pain of getting beaten – implying he wouldn’t be exactly heartbroken if his oath of obedience and loyalty was interrupted by a tragic case of gruesome death.

 

The ice demon wouldn’t commit the deed himself, of course, as one of his endearing quirks was to keep his word. For a demon, it wasn’t common behaviour, and when Shang Qinghua had carelessly pointed that, Mobei-jun had snorted and declared someone needed to respect the treaties or nobody would even care about writing them since they were useless at the end.

 

Truly, Shang Qinghua’s life was tangled with a very strange lord, but he wasn’t complaining, not when his King was plainly sane and somewhat gentle according demon norms. Thank his Ancestors, that wasn’t Luo Binghe who took a fancy to him – well, for that to happen, the Heavenly half-breed ought to have been a Disciple on An Ding, and the majestic asshole wouldn’t have taken kindly to potential competition around his pet cultivator. Maybe the ice demon would have strangled the little bastard after divining his mixed inheritance, and the Demon Realm would have been saved from the turmoil it currently faced.

 

Was Shen Qingqiu flattered, wherever he was now, to be responsible of such chaos ? Any righteous cultivator was supposed to applaud calamities striking the demons, since it decimated their numbers and quelled their assaults against the Middle Kingdom. Or maybe he didn’t know – maybe he fled so far, he wasn’t in the Middle Kingdom anymore and was more keen on forgetting the years he spent in Luo Binghe’s bed as one would forget a nightmare when day was shining through the window.

 

Good luck to him if that was the case, this unfortunate sod. At least, Shang Qinghua wished nothing but the best to his former shixiong – considering Luo Binghe was rampaging courtesy of his Empress’ disappearence, more than a few demons had to curse the huli jing and his lineage to the eighteenth generation for being the root cause behind their misfortune, wondering if it might not be better to suffer a fox spirit for an Empress as long as it came back and kept the Heavenly half-breed focused on it.

 

After all, deprived of an outlet, the Junshang was the Lower Realm’s problem. And he might potentially become the Middle Kingdom’s problem if he decided he wasn’t happy with merely tormenting his subjects, or suspected his Empress from hiding among humans – or demons might want to flee in the Human Realm as refugees, and considering all the bad blood between the two species it promised to be a fucking mess.

 

Such a fucking mess that all the great Sects in the jianghu, and a lot of small ones likely, would be forced to hold a truce in order to restore a measure of peace and order in the Middle Kingdom – demons couldn’t care less about mankind wanting to autodestruct, they wanted for their problems to have the priority, so inconsiderate and it was a species-wide flaw. On both sides, because demon or human, people were people and people were a bunch of self-centered bastards.

 

Shang Qinghua prided himself on knowing people, that was necessary when dealing with logistics and planning for everything to run smoothly, and even if he wasn’t exactly happy about being a demon noble’s pet cultivator, he liked to think it gained him some experience on this level and broadened his mindset to increase his efficiency. Being efficient always was a good thing, you couldn’t be yelled at for laziness or mistakes.

 

Except for the work piling more and more upon your shoulders, because you were so reliable . That wasn’t so nice.

 

 

Chapter 87

If anyone asked a-Yuan, Zhengmei Mountain was the best place to live, ever.

 

There was weird flowers everywhere ! The other day, a-Yuan stumbled upon a hive hidden in a crumbled pile of rocks and the bees were blue and they had buzzed around his head and it tickled when they rubbed their poofy fuzzy butts all over their cheeks ! Zhe could splash in the river with Auntie Baoshan and climb over her to jump into the water to make a bigger splash ! Xing-gege was his new brother and he loved hugs too !

 

Xing-gege also told a-Yuan a bit about the places outside Zhengmei Mountain. Just a bit, since Xing-gege wasn’t as smart as Auntie Baoshan or a-Yuan’s own Mama, but that was enough for a-Yuan to be sure there wasn’t a better place to live than Zhengmei Mountain ! Here, there wasn’t people who yelled at you when you were hungry and wanted to eat a loaf of bread, or kicked you because you were sleeping on the ground instead of carrying you to bed, or threatened to bury you in the trash heap because they thought you were trash and not a person !

 

People outside Zhengmei Mountain were awful and a-Yuan was so very glad for Auntie Baoshan bringing Xing-gege and several others there, these nasty people certainly didn’t deserve their sweet geges and jiejies and aunties and uncles !

 

Mama had snorted when a-Yuan explained that and claimed of course, people were awful, they were people and couldn’t help it. A-Yuan found it very weird because her pretty, nice Mama certainly wasn’t awful, at all ! Neither was Auntie Baoshan, or anybody living on Zhengmei Mountain !

 

But Mama could be silly sometimes. Especially when his necklace was bothering him – Mama didn’t like it because it was a bad memory from someone he really didn’t like, but Mama couldn’t remove it because of a trick and Auntie Baoshan was still looking for anybody who would help with that when she went outside – or when he woke up in the middle of the night, his breathing all woozy as if he had been running instead of sleeping.

 

A big silly moment had been when Mama named a-Yuan. A-Yuan couldn’t remember it, zhe was too small at the time, but apparently he was running ? And collided with a wall ? And the wall was old and already crumbling so it obviously was ruined but Mama decided it was funny and now a-Yuan was a-Yuan, written with the character for wall , because she wrecked a wall when barely figuring what their legs were for.

 

Still, that was nice enough. A-Yuan liked being a-Yuan – liked their silvery hair and their silvery floofy tail, just like Mama’s, liked being able to run quicker than everybody else, liked being able to answer yes when Uncle Twenty wanted to know if zhe was a boy or a girl today.

 

Uncle Twenty was very silly about that, insisting you had to be one or the other, and you couldn’t be both or neither. That girls would have tits on the chest, and boys would have peepees between the legs. But that was stupid – Auntie Baoshan had no tits most of the time because she was a muddy dragon, and she didn’t stop being a girl, and Mama didn’t have a peepee but he decided he was a boy anyway, and sometimes a-Yuan would grow a peepee and later it would vanish back inside, so ! Uncle Twenty was just silly, and he sulked a lot about it, while everybody else was laughing at his silliness.

 

Still, Mama frowned a bit when a-Yuan grew his hair or nails longer, or added freckles on their shoulders, and always wondered how it happened and when a-Yuan answered it just happened then he got all grumpy and pouty and unless pastries were in the cupboard he would stay that way until it was bedtime.

 

And it made a-Yuan upset too, but they really couldn’t explain why their body shifted. It was like breathing ? You just did it and when you started to wonder how it worked then you quickly stopped doing it and it would hurt all over because it was kinda needed for you to live ?

 

Well, maybe shifting wasn’t that much important to live – Mama never shifted at all and he was the same species as a-Yuan, and much older and so very smart, so obviously he could shift ! But he didn’t, so that couldn’t be so important.

 

But a-Yuan was doing it anyway, and zhe didn’t know why, and it was a bit upsetting. A tiny bit. Especially when Mama got grumpy over it.

 

Auntie Willow claimed Mama merely worried about a-Yuan possibly injuring herself, or shifting into something they wouldn’t like to be and being stuck that way, because he was Mama and that was what Mamas did. You couldn’t ask a Mama to not fret over their baby, that would be silly, just as much as scolding a rabbit for eating grass – and by the way, a-Yuan, Auntie knows you were responsible for bringing the bunnies far too close from the vegetable plot when playing with them, now we don’t have any radishes to put in the soup and guess who’s at fault !

 

A-Yuan wasn’t exactly fond of radishes, but he really liked bunnies – they were fluffy and cuddly and they could jump so high and they ate their poop without anyone finding it disgusting because it was good for their health and their ears wouldn’t stop twitching !

 

A-Yuan loved animals as a rule, even Mama’s cranky donkey who did its best to chew on her hair and ears when zhe came to say hello and feed it apples, even the owls that screeched at night and sounded like a scared woman, even the mice that chewed their way through the furniture to build a comfy nest with the papery residues. One day, he wanted to become the best animal handler ever, and write a book about every beast zhe met in his life, to let everyone else know how awesome animals were and really that was stupid to scream when a wasp was buzzing besides your head, it would only scare it and then it would sting you and nobody would be happy.

 

Auntie Baoshan had laughed in her rumbling, reptilian throat when a-Yuan cheerfully exposed her their big dream for the future, and declared zhe would have to cultivate a golden core because a great deal of beasts wouldn’t let anyone weaker than this stage near them and if you cannot obtain first hand data, well, your research isn’t really good. So do your best, a-Yuan, if you fail then you will get eaten by some Demon Beast, or this Auntie Baoshan will have to do the eating herself out of shame for teaching such an uncultured brat.

 

A-Yuan had giggled, aware that Auntie Baoshan wouldn’t actually eat her, Mama would get upset at the muddy dragon and no one wanted to upset Mama, he was scary even if he didn’t shout or raise his hand !

 

Mama also had been informed of a-Yuan’s grand ambition, and he frowned and declared he wouldn’t miss a-Yuan at all when zhe would leave Zhengmei Mountain and never come back, but a-Yuan knew his Mama far too well, he would stare at your ear when he was saying something untrue.

 

A-Yuan would miss Mama too, when the time of departure would come.

 

 

Chapter 88

Living on Zhengmei Mountain – well, Shen Jiu wouldn’t call that peaceful exactly.

 

Baoshan Sanren apparently deemed him her new favourite drinking buddy – where did she find the wine plum, and in sufficient quantities to quench her monstruous thirst, it was beyond his imagination – and insisted to discuss philosophy and ethics in the dark of the night when he mainly longed for his bed. Apple Blossom constantly escaped his paddock to wander around the place and always wound up fighting another beast or upsetting one of Baoshan Sanren’s brats. Said brats wouldn’t stop begging Shen Jiu for some music after hearing him practise on the guqin and no amount of threats would intimidate them into leaving him alone – because when you were raised by a gigantic muddy dragon, it very much skewed your perception of danger.

 

And a-Yuan – he couldn’t forget a-Yuan.

 

Shen Jiu was unsure about his feelings regarding – that child – the diminutive huli jing – that brat who beamed at him as if he was responsible for hanging the moon and the stars in the night sky – who came back to their modest hut drenched in mud and pollen and clutching a chicken or a bunny wriggling to escape the unwanted favour of an enthusiastic whelp – who called him Mama –

 

Mama . Ah. What a fucking joke. Shen Jiu wanted to scream – or laugh – or cry – how is he supposed to react in front of that smile, that unending trust and love, was he ever that naive, when he still was starving in the streets, hopelessly thinking he would never be separated from Qi-ge ?

 

And such softness didn’t come from the beast either – Shen Jiu remembered him, always scowling beneath the tears he allowed to flood his cheeks, always whining and playing the victim to soften his martial sisters. Always, there was a hidden anger, a calculated edge to the innocence and purity, and that was why Shen Jiu couldn’t stand him, a street scum identifying another street scum, if you blink first then you lose your street corner, you lose your target, and you’re left to starve in the gutter and the trash heap.

 

There was no hidden motive with a-Yuan – just like watching the clear water of a pond in which carps swam and frolicked, jewel-toned and their scales gleaming when daylight stroked their bodies. There was no hint of lie within a-Yuan.

 

Nothing but the transparency of genuine, childish love, still untainted by the world’s ugliness, and that might be the most terrifying thing Shen Jiu had ever stumbled upon in his wretched life.

 

Yes, he definitely had mixed feelings about being Mama to this child – why would anyone in the Eighteen Hells or the Upper Realm saddle him with a-Yuan as a daughter ?

 

« So I have noticed quite the odd detail » Baoshan Sanren pointed one night, after loudly slurping a whole barrel of liquor as easily as a mundane man would guzzle a measly jar of wine. « You’re always calling a-Yuan your daughter, sometimes your child, but never your son. Is there a reason for that ? »

 

The grown huli jing snorted.

 

« Why would I want a son, really ? For my womb to spit a little brat that will grow up in a disgusting beast, panting after any woman unlucky enough to catch his fancy and throwing a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way ? Men are nothing but pigs, wallowing in their filth and spreading it all over everything they touch. »

 

A reptilian golden pair of eyes stared at the formerly human cultivator.

 

« … You identify as a man » Baoshan Sanren slowly reminded him. « In spite of having tits and a cunt. Does that mean you’re different from the other males ? »

 

The huli jing glared at the muddy dragon. Once, such a glare had cowed half the jianghu into speechless submission and reduced more than a few Disciples and hallmasters on Qing Jing Peak to gibbering hysterics.

 

« Men are pigs » Shen Jiu repeated. « And there’s no exception among them. »

 

The Spiritual Beast blinked as she digested the information.

 

« Alright, you are messed up. »

 

« And you’re an animal who struggles to get a grasp on the human mindset by virtue of achieving sapience away from civilization instead of being guided to it » Shen Jiu fired back.

 

« So if I declare you are messed up, that might a warning that you are fucking messed up » Baoshan Sanren insisted, before seizing another barrel of wine between her claws and pouring the fragrant liquor in her nightmarishly fanged maw.

 

After that, what was left of the night was spent in silence, with Shen Jiu uncaring about flinging a retort to his host. He wasn’t in the habit to argue against the blunt, plain truth, after all – he was a mess from the kind you would douse with oil and set on fire rather than attempting to fix, because it was impossible to do, even for a Heavenly Official blessed with patience and determination.

 

That was a major miracle for him to have failed to ruin a-Yuan so far. He still might, knowing his awful luck and his ungodly talent to rot every good thing that fell on his lap.

 

But then he looked at this child with her radiant smile, the way she would run to him and latch on his hand as if it was her lifeline, the measly twigs and colourful pebbles she would proudly show off as she babbled about the adventures she had finding them, and suddenly it was hard to hold on his belief that he would end up destroying her.

 

It was terrifying, because he knew this song and dance, he went through it so many times, too many times for him to remember every iteration, promises of happiness crumbling to ashes and blood at his feet, prospects of peace turning rotten and sour in his mouth, that without fail. That was his fate, and that wouldn’t change.

 

He couldn’t change, he was too set in this path – no matter the niggling feeling that huli jing were supposed to be creatures of change, just look at a-Yuan doing it without the slightest training, as easily as breathing, unable to explain how because there was nothing to explain, merely a way of living.

 

It was different for a-Yuan – still pure, spared by the world’s ugliness and cruelty, people delighted in crushing little girls’ innocence and naivety, she could be anything she wanted because she didn’t have the experience to tell her otherwise, to trample her ability until it was permanently broken. She was everything Shen Jiu ceased to be a long, long time ago, long before Wu Yanzi, long before the Qiu Manor, maybe before the slavers, as he couldn’t remember anything but coldness and hunger in his most faded, distant memory.

 

Maybe – if Shen Jiu was lucky – a-Yuan would only break after growing up and leaving Zhengmei Mountain to explore the Middle Kingdom – she wanted to produce a bestiary, when her calligraphy was atrocious and her painting barely better – then she would be ruined anyway, but at least that wouldn’t be Shen Jiu’s fault.

 

He barely dared to hope for this possibility. As he already said, his fate wasn’t that kind – and when it appeared to grant him a reprieve, there would be a heavy toll to pay in exchange.

 

What if a-Yuan – no, no she wouldn’t. Shen Jiu would pay the price, as usual. Not her. Not his daughter.

 

He wouldn’t let her, and fuck the gods if they wanted to complain about that.

 

 

Notes:

Yes, Shen Jiu is struggling with Shen Yuan potentially identifying as male. There's several reasons for that:

1) Shen Jiu has been heavily traumatized by men (Wu Yanzi, Qiu Jianluo, Luo Bingge). To him, male equals bad. A male offspring will obviously betray and later harm him. But a daughter won't dare.

2) As the Empress, Shen Jiu was expected to produce heirs and in Ancient China, heirs meant sons -- there was a lot of prestige riding on producing sons, and having a girl was often worse than disappointment, it was genuinely shameful. Shen Jiu already was forced to bear two sons to Luo Binghe, but if Shen Yuan is a girl, then Luo Binghe loses the honour of siring a third son and Shen Jiu gets to spite his rapist.

3) Shen Yuan has a very fluid gender identity, so him having male days can be rationalized as a whimsy or a fancy, like wanting to eat a peculiar dish or wearing a weird hat but not really impacting the person. Yes, that might be gender-erasure, but China isn't exactly open-minded about LGBT matters.

By the way, Baoshan Sanren having a taste for wine? Surely it cannot be a call-forwards to a certain necromancer who really enjoys his liquor to the point he would smuggle it in the Clouds Recesses ;)

Chapter 89

For all Zhengmei Mountain’s isolation from the world, be it secular or the jianghu, they nonetheless weren’t fully ignorant of the outside happenings from beyond the ward. Mainly because Baoshan Sanren enjoyed patroning tea houses and eateries and markets when she suddenly longed for a visit in the human towns and cities, and people frequenting these places would gossip as if their lives were depending on it.

 

Alright, so maybe it wasn’t the most trustworthy way to gather information, considering how prone to exaggeration and hypocrisy and gullibility the public opinion was. The commons would treat news of a demon invasion or a high-placed official’s shameful fall from grace as if they were attending street theater – a spectacle to enjoy or heckle, really it could go either or, especially if they had drunk a cup of wine too much or had been fired from their job earlier in the morning.

 

Shen Jiu himself had been mostly reliant on the flowers from the Warm Red Pavilion to ferret scandals and secrets out of their den. It was amazing, the sheer number of powerful men, wealthy men who would forget any idea of secrecy and sell the Middle Kingdom’s current weaknesses on the pillow, and until he lost contact with them it was a rare day when their information was proven wrong.

 

Still, the crummy tales heard by Baoshan Sanren as she haggled for liquors or smelled the flowers were information, and Shen Jiu used to be a street urchin and the strategist of the most influent Sect in the jianghu so he wouldn’t discard any hint of intelligence – it could mean the difference between life and death, it had been the case far too often in his past.

 

« So this new Supreme Ruler or whatnot in the Demon Realm, he’s really quite unpopular. Even among his own subjects. »

 

The huli jing forced himself to keep relaxed features. From her negligent tone, the muddy dragon – shapeshifted in her reptilian form anew, she couldn’t see the appeal of human feet if you paid attention to her complains when she had to turn in something that would terrify peasants into screaming for a cultivator’s help – wasn’t suspecting her foxy rescuee to be linked to the man who made himself an object of gossip.

 

Big mistake for the beast, that, allowing his rule to be deemed unpleasant. Demons were known for being hardier than humans, so much less likely to nag and whine about their circumstances, so when they decided something was bad then the humans would immediately suspect it was truly horrendous according their own standards.

 

« Have they openly rebelled against his rule ? » he casually asked, without holding hope for it to be the case – the beast’s conquest still would be too fresh in the Lower Realm’s memory, it had to fade a bit more with the coming years, the Heavenly half-breed’s flaws had to be given more time to spread and expand in order for him to grow more loathed than feared.

 

Some rulers wished for their subjects to love them, a foolish endeavour since their affection was fickle and easily lost at the first misfortune befelling the kingdom. Some rulers strove to be feared, an endless endeavour since there would always be someone dumber or more spiteful than the cowering masses, ready to corrupt them by serving as an example, and you had to cull these bad seeds again and again.

 

Above all, a ruler should avoid to be hated . Thank the Ancestors, the beast was a dimwit and never bothered to listen his teachers – admitedly, it was more the kind of lessons one was taught on Qiong Ding Peak, where Disciples were formed as politicians, than on Qing Jing Peak, with their cursus focused on the arts and literacy. But still.

 

Baoshan Sanren snorted, her breath warm and moist as it was noisily released from her snout.

 

« For one noble clan to entirely flee the Lower Realm in order to emigrate in the Middle Kingdom, he surely did something quite wrong. »

 

Shen Jiu’s eyebrows almost lost themselves in his hair.

 

« What clan ? » he blurted, because no matter the popular depiction of the demon species as one monolithic horde thirsting for blood and battle, it was so very far from the truth, a truth he was forced to learn as he was locked in this bedroom with around thirty handmaidens each coming from a lineage with their own traditions and beliefs, some more peaceful than the others, peaceful enough to integrate with mankind, but what if it wasn’t one of these ?

 

« Let me think… a bunch of cattle-raiders, they argued for lands and herds when they plonked their stuff in the Qinghe province but they swore to defend their neighbours in exchange, and the family head actually took the local magistrate’s daughter as his bride. Not abducted her, he asked and he brought a load of gifts to sweeten his future in-laws on the prospect of half-demon grandkids – people are still disgusted but hey, if the demons can learn to politely ask, you won’t dare to criticize too much, that wouldn’t be nice. »

 

Shen Jiu would acknowledge it was a fine power play – demons were stereotyped as only interested in stealing and taking by force, so negotiations and compromises would be a sheer novelty that would blindsize anyone facing them, long enough for the demons to get everything they wanted until the other party found their footing again.

 

On the other hand, this peculiar demon clan was encroaching on the Middle Kingdom, and the jianghu tended to mislike when that happened, no matter the purity of the motives involved and the amount of bloodshed not spilled on the ground.

 

« And how did the great Sects answer to that ? »

 

« We-ll » Baoshan Sanren drawled, her tongue briefly lolling out of her nightmarishly fanged maw, « Zhao Hua Temple is still busy contemplating the higher mysteries of the Universe and content to not make a move as long as there isn’t an officially registered complain, Tian Yi Overlook is currently mediating a dispute between the white dragon’s nest near Caiyi Town and the sun birds in the Nightless City and it seems it’s going to last a good decade or two, and the Huan Hua Palace doesn’t give a shit about anything when they cannot get treasures or Imperial favours from it. Does it sound like they’re able to mount a defence for the Middle Kingdom ? An effective one ? Against a bunch of refugees ? »

 

«  Demon refugees » Shen Jiu reminded her.

 

« Still refugees. That’s not the same threat level as the previous Sacred Ruler of the Lower Realm. Ah, that was a man worthy to bear the crown, a mite too oversexed and far too easily distracted by a pretty maiden batting her eyelashes or weaving a sob story plucked right out of the pages of a spring novel, yet a far better sight than the successor now plaguing his former lands. »

 

Since Shen Jiu’s very limited interactions with Tianlang-jun only happened on the battlefield, as scores of cultivators were struggling to endure and survive the Demon Emperor’s wrath until he was sealed under a mountain, he allowed the muddy dragon’s opinion to wash over him, that wasn’t like the huli jing was qualified to counter her argument.

 

Still, he would concede the point that the previous Sacred Ruler had been far better than the one currently sitting the throne.

 

 

Notes:

Do you remember how the Qinghe Nie compound is called? The UNCLEAN Realm, and they also cultivate in a way that encourages bloodlust, and I found myself with a headcannon budged in my head and it wouldn't leave.

Also, the Qishan Wens being sun birds, I first considered turning them in phoenixes but Eastern phoenixes are not like the Western variant of a firebird, so I used sun birds -- in the Chinese myth, they were responsible for scorching the Earth and killing everybody out of petulance until nine of them were killed by Houyi, that's a nice parallel with the Sunshot Campaign.

Chapter 90

Obviously, because Mama was so wonderful, he knew a great deal of things like reading and writing and painting and breaking somebody else’s nose with nothing but a fan, and because Yuan’er was related to him then zhe had to learn all of this too.

 

That was fun ! Alright, it wasn’t fun as swimming in the river to try and tickle the fishes, or clucking at the chickens to speak with them in a way that would let them understand your words, but that was still fun. Just, a different kind of fun.

 

Mama insisted on Yuan’er being always elegant and composed and so many other words that meant pretty in a slightly intimidating way when studying under him, even when he taught her all the violent curses and vulgar kanguage needed for people in the streets outside to realize you weren’t there for pleasure but business, and for people to understand they needed to back off because they were Stupid and Dumb and if they kept inflicting their Stupidity on everyone around them, they deserved for their kidneys to be sneezed out of their ears. And also their liver.

 

That made for an amazing picture within the young huli jing’s mental landscape, and Mama was very impressive as he glided on the path to their home or helped Granny Peony with her memory troubles, so Yuan’er did his best to mimic Mama – to hold their fingers and wrists just the same, to look at people with a half-lidded gaze that already knew what they wanted to say, to walk as if there weren’t gravel under your bare feet but squishy clouds. When you looked like something, then other things and people around you believed you were that thing, even if you actually wasn’t a wasp but merely a fly imitating one to avoid being eaten.

 

Also, Yuan’er could become a boy or a girl or neither or both, and they could have a freckled face or purple hair or big hands or even translucent scales – he had been watching a small grass snake and wondering how big the world had to be for the critter and suddenly zhe was growing scales on her hands and their teeth turned a smidge pointy, quite like fangs, and Mama hadn’t been very impressed, are you my child or are you a grass snake, but his lips were twitching and threatening to smile, so.

 

Maybe Yuan’er could actually become anything she wanted by looking like it very hard. But it still asked for a lot of work ! Things always were complicated, even a blade of grass could have a lot and a lot of tiny details and you had to make them right , otherwise it would look and smell weird and the donkey wouldn’t want to eat it. And if you cannot fool a donkey, then you won’t fool someone so dumb they are unable to walk and speak at once – donkeys are very smart, it’s because of their stubborn behaviour that people are mean towards these poor animals.

 

People tended to be very mean towards everything they didn’t like. Yuan’er learned that from listening the grown ups and his jiejies and geges discussing the land beyond the protective ward surrounding Zhengmei Mountain.

 

Yuan’er tended to eavesdrop a lot on these conversations, but zhe kinda was obligated, if he wanted to go and explore the Middle Kingdom to write a bestiary ! You had to be informed about the best places to sleep and shelter, the places most dangerous to wander around, the places where the interesting creatures enjoyed to patron ! Of course they had to spy – and Mama never was angry about Yuan’er wanting to learn more, even what he wasn’t supposed to learn yet, that would only be worth a slight slap at the back of the head and a scolding, if you wanted to spy then why don’t you do that well ?

 

So far, Mama and Auntie Baoshan were the only people Yuan’er couldn’t spy on. They were so awesome !

 

Auntie Baoshan also taught a great deal of things to Yuan’er, but she was more on the practical side of things – finding a river that wouldn’t give you the shits for drinking its water, or building a small hut with three twigs and five big ferns, that kind of things. It made sense, because she was a muddy dragon – she liked talking philosophy and watching the stars late at night to establish astronomy charts, but her inner nature pushed her to live rough, as her reptilian cousins lacking the ability to speak and reason as people.

 

Yuan’er firmly intended to travel with two or three qiankun pouches – redundancy was always useful, that way you wouldn’t be helpless if you lost one – but he nonetheless listened because that would be impolite to spit on her auntie’s advice, and maybe they would suffer a truly unfortunate streak of bad luck one day and would have to fall back on survival training, so.

 

Mama’s training would help to draw the beasts and write all their habits and needs in her book, and it would help to interact with people outside. Mama claimed it was better to appear to be someone important and confident, and he was so pretty to watch, and Yuan’er really enjoyed watching him, it had to be the best behaviour ! On the other hand, Auntie Baoshan disguising herself as a human-shaped woman, well, that was funny because it was so reminiscent of a chameleon – Yuan’er never had been gifted the opportunity to see the weird beastie in the flesh, but Auntie Baoshan sometimes brought books about foreign lands back to Zhengmei Mountain and in one scroll you could find the description of that small lizard with a long sticky tongue and googly eyes and completely vanishing in its surroundings and Yuan’er really wanted to meet one. Chameleons sounded wonderful.

 

Auntie Baoshan playing the chameleon, that was weirdly subtle for a big muddy dragon – but when Yuan’er pointed that, she laughed in her rumbling, gravelly tone and claimed she wasn’t that consistent sometimes. It was a people thing, the lack of consistency, just look at yourself Yuan’er, not the same at all from the morning to the afternoon, and maybe zhe was a very extreme case but people as a rule displayed quirks not fitting with their personality, bits and pieces of weirdness and eccentricity, and that was why getting to know somebody else was so exhausting yet rewarding, you never got bored. You would always discover something new.

 

Out of curiosity, Yuan’er had followed the reasoning to the logical end and deducted there existed someone just as extreme as themselves but on the opposite side ? Someone fully and wholly consistent, whose mind was smooth as a river-polished pebble, without the tiniest hint of contradiction in their life.

 

« Obviously such a person exists » Auntie Baoshan had admitted, « but they sound rather boring, don’t you think ? And not really someone you would actually like or want to know. If any living being grows, changes or evolves, then what does it say about that person, to be the same from their birth to their old age ? Really, a rock as a pet would ask as much involvement. »

 

Yuan’er had meditated on this answer, before concluding Auntie Baoshan was right – but she was so much older and wiser, obviously she would be right very often – a person who didn’t hide anything beneath the surface, well, that was kinda sad. And boring, but mainly sad.

 

So the young huli jing was very happy for his family to not be that kind of people.

 

 

Chapter 91

Shen Jiu really wondered if he should teach a-Yuan cultivation.

 

He wasn’t a righteous cultivator anymore, after all. He lost the ability to call himself such years ago, and even when he was the Qing Jing Peak Lord, he hated having to interact with all these young pests, always whining and complaining after tripping on the grass, they wouldn’t have last a fên under Wu Yanzi. He wasn’t made to educate, really, and that was a miracle for him to have managed to pass several important skills to a-Yuan.

 

Maybe it was because a-Yuan was so hopelessly attentive – so obviously drinking every single word dropping of his mouth, a mite like the beast when he still donned the guise of a wide-eyed, unbearably naive young Disciple, but there was nothing in a-Yuan’s demeanour and adoration that rang false.

 

How could have that child inherited anything from two rotten, disgusting souls and flipped it off to turn in an endearing quality ? It beggared understanding. Or maybe it was because a-Yuan was huli jing, was a shapeshifter – nothing could stay the same with a shapeshifter taking an interest in it.

 

The shapeshifting. That was yet another reason for Shen Jiu to hesitate about teaching cultivation to the whelp. A-Yuan constantly shifted – she didn’t even notice, it was more of an instinct or a reflex, just as much as breathing for a mortal, so what if her meridians shifted ?

 

The formerly human cultivator was far too familiar with the consequences of knotted, twisted meridians on a humanoid body. He suffered too many qi deviations in his tenure as a resident of Qing Jing to be unaware of them – and he only avoided them now because his golden core had been sealed out of his reach.

 

If he ever succeeded in discarding the cursed shackle around his neck, would the qi deviations return at once ? Shen Jiu nonetheless would accept them as the price to pay for his freedom. Nothing was freely granted in this world, especially not something as precious as the absence of slavery.

 

In the meanwhile, he would have to content himself with the use of demonic cultivation.

 

How strange, even after being forced to assume this inhumane shape and getting stuck with it, that the icily damp, darkened energy flowing through his body would keep startling him. Just like falling in cold water when you weren’t expecting it.

 

Baoshan Sanren had poked at him, more out of idle curiosity than a genuine craving for experimentation – the muddy dragon was blessed with the most ginormous amount of yang qi that Shen Jiu met in his life, and he included the late Bai Zhan War God in that. But it made sense, a Spiritual Beast as old and wily would be on another level entirely, and she was a predator, yang was agressiveness and the active pursuit of what you wanted.

 

He qi tasted markedly different from the beast’s, or all these silly twits attending him – to his utter annoyance, being around her, feeling the sheer power she casually disgorged through any cun of her muscled, scaled body, it was enough for Shen Jiu’s mouth to water and his innards to grumble.

 

She had noticed, in spite of his best efforts to pretend anything was alright.

 

« Well, if you’re hungry, eat. Starving yourself won’t help you or your whelp, and this isn’t like you will actually drink me dry with your appetite. At least three tails too early for that. »

 

When he or a-Yuan were hungry, the muddy dragon would scratch herself until beads of blood dripped from her mighty paw, and the grown huli jing would collect that blood in a jar to drink – blood was life, blood was carrying qi, and that might be horrifying and a behaviour that Cang Qiong wouldn’t call anything but demonic, but that was still better than the beast forcing himself on Shen Jiu again and again.

 

(what if he never escaped, what if a-Yuan had been born in the Lower Realm, would have the beast assaulted a-Yuan under the flimsy pretense it was the only way to ensure the child’s health and survival)

 

(the beast certainly had fallen so low as to consider the option and Shen Jiu feels the urge to vomit when the thought comes to him)

 

The blood tasted always warm, like sipping liquified sunlight – like sitting near a roaring bonfire, wrapped and bundled with layers upon layers of woolen blankets – like sunning oneself on a flat rock under the summer sky. It tasted quicksilver swift, like a lizard fleeing on a wall to disappear in the grass.

 

It tasted really different from the beast’s unrelenting, dry qi – the Heavenly half-breed was encompassing and rather smothering, Shen Jiu never could discard the notion that he ought to be careful as he was devouring as much as he could or he would choke, the qi would fill him to the brink and not leave any place for air. And it was so different from the handmaidens’, that was almost an insult to make the comparison – these silly girls had been weak wine diluted even further with water, barely a hint of spice but it was alright to keep going.

 

Baoshan Sanren’s delicious qi likely was a consequence of her being a Spiritual Beast rather than a demon, she would be more in tune with natural energies – untainted forces that wouldn’t have been ruined by the pernicious, corrupting influence of sentient greed and lust. Oh, nature was quite cruel and uncaring towards suffering, but it definitely lacked malevolence, it retained a measure of purity – a tiger didn’t consume its prey because it bore a grudge but merely out of hunger.

 

Even if that was cold comfort to the prey, alright.

 

Should he fill some jars and put them in a qiankun pouch, slapped with all the stasis charms he could remember ? A-Yuan wanted to travel around the countryside, and it would take the young fox spirit away from the main provider of qi, of food – a-Yuan would have to starve or prey on humans, and the latter option was deeply unappealing as someone would sick the righteous Sects on her, any being feeding on humans was to be hunted and slain, that was the rule.

 

Also, a-Yuan was still naive, still good and sweet and everything Shen Jiu ceased to be so long ago, he wondered if he ever had displayed these qualities. Having to kill a human-shaped dinner would definitely break her heart, if she even could bring herself to commit the deed and Shen Jiu seriously doubted of it. She would let herself starve until she could only drag herself on the side of the road to perish.

 

The very idea couldn’t be borne. No, it was safer, much better, for a-Yuan to travel with bottled blood to be consumed at her discretion – the muddy dragon’s life-giving fluid was potent, a drop or two every day would suffice and a-Yuan could always claim it was medicine, people would sneer and heap unwanted pity on the young huli jing’s shoulders but they wouldn’t suspect a trick. Nobody wanted to pay attention to someone else’s health, except for a physician out of professional curiosity.

 

It should have to be a qiankun pouch from the mid to large range. Or several from the little kind ? This way, losing a pouch wouldn’t be too much of a disaster, it was best to plan for redundances. Too much was always the best option, if given the choice between that and not enough.

 

Unless it was about a human-faced swine’s unwanted attention. Then, it was very much the reverse that applied.

 

 

Chapter 92

Time was like water, it ran through your fingers when you wasn’t paying attention to it, and quite often you were regretful for not closing your hands and prevent the spilling.

 

Shen Jiu certainly wondered how could Yuan’er grow so quickly – no, the shapeshifting wasn’t good enough a justification ! Even if the younger huli jing had a pretty good handle on her racial skill nowaday.

 

Not because of him – he had no experience in the art, couldn’t guide her at all as she experimented and practised, was left fretting and worrying when she walked around the mountain, her hair turned into feathers or her skin glowing blue-green, what if she was forever stuck this way ?

 

By sheer miracle, Yuan’er reached her sixteenth year without dire harm inflicted to herself. Now, when she wasn’t mimicking one of her aunties’ nose or chin for a lark, the young fox spirit appeared to be quite tall for a young woman, her figure slightly lopsided since she enjoyed having wide hips yet couldn’t see the appeal of a large bust, her gleaming quicksilver hair often pulled in an elaborate crown of braids to keep it away from her shining eyes.

 

Yuan’er had finally settled a bit, and spent most of the day as a girl. She claimed it was because people would look at a boy weirdly for wanting to be pretty, but they found it natural when it was a woman, so there ! Gender was like being an actress, you could paint your face and dress in so many colourful costumes and nobody would glare at you for doing your job, that would be silly.

 

Shen Jiu frankly doubted gender was merely performative – most of the men he met in his life would have rather jumped in an excrement-filled pit in order to drown in piss and crap than consider the possibility to act as a woman for one single shichen, so there had to exist some inherent quality to malehood or womanhood for people to be so vehement on the matter.

 

Even if Shen Jiu never had felt deeply on the matter. He just – was. And in such an ugly world, a man would be given more dignity than a woman, always, so he was content to be a man. It didn’t change in spite of the cursed shackle forcing him to don a female shape, and it likely never would.

 

And it meant he couldn’t help the lingering fear gnawing at his mind, mostly in the early morning, or when he heard Yuan’er gleefully poring over yellowed maps or babbling about the animal species she absolutely needed to behold in their natural habitat, she looked like a young woman and the world relished destroying girls and women.

 

At least Baoshan Sanren and Shen Jiu had taught her how to handle a knife, and to aim for the groin and the eyes. At least she could assume the likeness of a young man if her circumstances turned desperate. Yuan’er wasn’t entirely helpless, even if her mindset still was naive and dumbly confident that people held some crumb of innate goodness deep within their wretched souls – how could she still believe that, when she was stuck with him as her parent, he couldn’t comprehend.

 

And he couldn’t understand why her favourite shape was a younger, female version of Shen Jiu – she copied the way he walked and the way he fanned himself, and she mimicked his high cheekbones and the arch of his eyebrows and his thin mouth but softened by girlhood and the perpetual glimmer of humour and sweetness constantly with her, and he couldn’t decide if he should be horrified or ashamed.

 

Once he tried to suggest she might want to adopt another face, something prettier, aren’t you always claiming to enjoy being pretty ? And she stared at him as if he just declared the sky was purple spotted with pink, and confirmed that yes, she did, and Niang is the prettiest of all, and why should I hide our blood relation, I want for people to look at us and be able to tell we are parent and child, I want to point at you in the crowd and for people to exclaim it’s obvious and we really ought to have guessed on your own.

 

At this point, Shen Jiu was frantically blinking tears away. His self-control was utterly shot to the Eighteen Hells, but on the other hand, Yuan’er was born with the fearsome ability to thoroughly and effortlessly bring him to his knees with a few words.

 

She wanted to share a face with him. She wanted for everybody to know she was his, his blood, his daughter, his legacy.

 

Nobody had ever wished to be associated with Xiao Jiu this way, and when people sought for a connection to Shen Qingqiu that was for the fame and the influence coming with the name of the most powerful Sect in the jianghu, and when the demons had been forced in close proximity with their so-called Empress they were driven by disgusting lust or fear.

 

He wasn’t made for love, that was a fundamental truth underlining his whole existence yet this silly, naive girl whose conception and birth had been forced on him –

 

Always smiling when she saw him and asking how he enjoyed his day and proudly bringing him samples of embroidery and drawings and bad poetry for him to evaluate and talking his ear off about all the places she wanted to visit and all the creatures she wanted to discover…

 

Yuan’er wasn’t Ning Yingying – how did his Disciple fare, after all these years left on her own ? Did she even remember him or did she move on ? The latter was probable, it wasn’t fair to ask a young girl to mourn a wretched man well into adulthood – but sometimes her enthusiasm turned Shen Jiu melancholic and prone to nostalgia.

 

He nonetheless advised Yuan’er to steer far, far away from the Sects and anyone calling themselves a cultivator, be they righteous or treading the crooked path. Yes, Yuan’er could shapeshift and she had accepted to wear veils and hats in order to obscure her identity and nature further, but it would be easier if the people most liable to guess her true species never crossed her path to begin with.

 

Yuan’er believed it was because she was nonhuman. She also believed she couldn’t reveal her species to a demon if she ever stumbled upon one of these because their stupid blood feuds would try and drag her into their mess. But she didn’t know being huli jing was the worst thing one could be born as, under the Heavens. She didn’t realize how Daji’s gruesome tale could have consequences for her – why would it have ? Daji was Daji, slaughtered centuries ago, and Yuan’er was Yuan’er, that wasn’t so hard to peg the difference, right ?

 

Silly, sweet Yuan’er who didn’t understand how dumb, how hateful the common people could be, no matter if they were peasants or officials or distinguished Immortals or noble-borns, because she had been raised in safety and comfort, allowed to be pure and innocent, a perfect girl in her perfect little world.

 

Shen Jiu wanted for her to be this perfect little girl always, but time was like water and ran through his fingers and soon she was tall and grown yet still happily smiling as she was leading Apple Blossom – the donkey only turned grumpier with age – carrying several bags of what she had deemed essential to her journey and what Shen Jiu had added to her long list, down Zhengmei Mountain.

 

Baoshan Sanren would bring her to the nearest town, and would explain her how to behave for the first time she would interact with humans, the muddy dragon already disguised as her human self.

 

Shen Jiu didn’t care about that. Really, Yuan’er had been preparing this travel around the Middle Kingdom for years, so that wasn’t like he lacked a warning. He wasn’t upset at all.

 

His guts weren’t twisting themselves into knots as Yuan’er cheerfully waved at him one last time, as she gleefully shouted :

 

« I will miss Niang too ! »

 

… Shen Jiu wasn’t crying. Not a single tear.

 

 

Chapter 93

« Yuan’er, you might want to stop gaping and cooing like a country bumpkin freshly escaped from their tiny little hole in the ground. Otherwise, scammers will start thinking you are the perfect target for them to fleece » Baoshan Sanren yawned, uncaring about hiding her mouth behind her hand and putting all her teeth on display – even in her human disguise, they were quite pointy.

 

Yuan’er – wait, no, they had left Zhengmei Mountain and were about to begin zhir travel all around the Middle Kingdom, so a pet name wouldn’t do anymore, not when zhe was currently facing the trial of becoming a fully-fledged grown-up – Shen Yuan merely widened his eyes under the brim of the weimao stuck on her quicksilver heap of hair.

 

« But look ! There’s – so much  ! »

 

All these people ! Men burly and bearded or slim and slender-boned in the face, women smiling as they carried their groceries or scowling at the content of their money purse, kids quietly clutching a parent’s hand or skirt or running down the street screaming their head off as if a tiger was chasing them to gulp their small body whole ! So much more than all of Zhengmei Mountain’s inhabitants !

 

All these buildings ! Tea-houses and seamstresses and more or less disrespectable inns, built in wood or bricks or rock, more or less clean, more or less crumbling and threatening to fall down on the neighbouring plot ! So much diversity, so many colours !

 

There was just too much and Shen Yuan didn’t know if they wanted to faint in sheer exhilaration or hide beneath Baoshan Sanren, trying to let her poor ears and eyes to slowly agree with the amount of visual and odoriferant stimuli. Knowing the muddy dragon, she likely would complain a lot about the young huli jing using her as a soft toy to soothe nerves because why would you look at scales and fangs and think, oh yes, I am not threatened at all ? Where are your survival instincts ?

 

Excuse me, Master Baoshan, Shen Yuan did have survival instincts ! And right now, he was staying in the vicinity of the biggest, baddest predator around the block since no matter the mortal disguise, the mundane commoners nonetheless refused to bother the false cultivator – well, false human cultivator, Baoshan Sanren did practise a Way but that wasn’t one taught by these fancy Sects in their own mountain ranges.

 

That reminded Shen Yuan, Mama warned her to be very careful if they met a human cultivator, because these people were noisy and always wanted to stick their nose wherever you didn’t want for anybody to rummage as a dog going through the butcher’s trash, and Baoshan Sanren was kinda a minor celebrity in the jianghu ? Because almost nobody knew anything about her, and if Shen Yuan was identified as a Disciple of hers, then the cultivators would never stop questioning him about Zhengmei Mountain, where it was and how many people lived there, and soon or later Shen Yuan would panic and blurt something best kept secret and it would be a disaster.

 

Well, it would be painful mainly for the cultivators, since the muddy dragon would snack on those trying to harass her on her mountain, and also for Shen Yuan, such a big mistake was so shameful that people would keep talking of it a century after the deed !

 

So, that would be much easier to never mention Baoshan Sanren at all. There, simple yet effective ! Mama would be very proud, he had impressed on Shen Yuan how important it was to have a good story to feed to the masses or the enemies, he was unclear on the distinction between both these categories, and a good story was one you could remember without contradicting yourself too much. Hesitation were a proof of weakness, and humans were nothing more than well-dressed animals walking on two legs, they would mercilessly jump on the slightest trace of weakness to exploit it.

 

Shen Yuan couldn’t help thinking that it might be a tad unfair to accuse people from behaving this way when you didn’t know them at all, but Mama was so much older, Mama had spent so many years in the Middle Kingdom, and above all Mama never told Shen Yuan a lie since it was simplicity itself to check the facts in a book or compare one scroll to the landscape, and with one version not saying the same thing as the other, you knew something went wrong somewhere.

 

Also, what would be the point to lie to Shen Yuan ? That wasn’t like the young huli jing could give anything but love to his mother, and Mama knew that. And Mama was alright with that, and Shen Yuan was alright with that.

 

Love wasn’t a lie. Love couldn’t be a lie, not when you had tasted it your whole life, and Shen Yuan always scrunched his nose when he was reading these old fraying novels about a man who lost everything he held dear and maintained true and lasting bonds were nothing but a pretty illusion one needed to pop as soon as you could – what a piece of bullshit advice, really, you should rather say you’re a lazy butthole not interested to put an effort in a relationship with another person and content to wallow in a shallow existence that obviously doesn’t make you happy !

 

Hey, would she find a lot of these novels in the Middle Kingdom ? It couldn’t be a well-spread opinion, after all, otherwise Shen Yuan would be forced to admit that Mama might just have a point about mankind being a bunch of dumb twits, and that would just be depressing. They wanted to stumble upon somebody nice  !

 

Somebody who would like animals instead of blindly killing them when they panicked or were angered by their boundaries being trampled. Somebody who would be lovely to look when you were talking with them, because that wasn’t very nice if you couldn’t stop staring at the big wart on your interlocutor’s nose, and just because Shen Yuan enjoyed pretty things. Somebody who would understand why Shen Yuan wanted to see all there was to behold in the Middle Kingdom and maybe further, beyond the sea and beyond the barbarian lands, and maybe they would agree to come and share the wonders of discovery with the young huli jing and wouldn’t it be so fun  ?

 

Shen Yuan very much wanted to meet somebody like that, and he was quite certain this person was real and existed somewhere in the Middle Kingdom because that was a huge country and when you had enough foodstuffs on your table, then you would inevitably taste a dish you enjoyed. You just needed to be patient and find it.

 

Maybe it would take several years ? Shen Yuan didn’t like this possibility very much, but she was aware it had high odds to happen and so it was useless to get disappointed. Instead ! If she believed it would happen late in their travel, only for this companion to appear much earlier, then it would be even sweeter ! And so lucky !

 

Yes, looking at the world this way was nicer. Seeking for the pretty things, the gleams of luck and good fortune, without losing hope. Because the world was much bigger and more complex than a map painted in grayscale, flat and colourless.

 

The world was an adventure.

 

 

Chapter 94

Ultimately, came the moment for Baoshan Sanren to go back to Zhengmei Mountain. Yes, the muddy dragon enjoyed wandering around the Middle Kingdom but it had to be on her terms, since in spite of skinning herself with a human disguise she stayed an apex predator and heavily misliked when her boundaries were infringed upon. Shen Yuan didn’t begrudge her for that, it was a fact of life that ignoring nature’s laws would see you trampled or messily devoured and anybody trying to ignore that was such an idiot that it was a mercy for them to be removed from the breeding pool before they could force their idiocy on future generations through their descendants.

 

Still, she had been quite considerate and kept watching over Shen Yuan for a whole week, showing the young huli jing how you were supposed to talk to the merchands with their stalls overflowing with snacks and interesting trinkets and how you were supposed to book a room in a clean inn and how you were supposed to pull a thief’s innards through his asshole when he tried to jump on you in a darkened street, because for all of her claims in believing people ought to fight for themselves or die in the ditch, Baoshan Sanren was startingly soft-hearted and gentle for a gigantic lizard with a nightmarishly fanged maw.

 

That or she didn’t want for Shen Yuan’s Mama to yell at her for dropping his beloved child alone at sea, because Mama was a first-grade worrywart and thought everyone was out to hurt the first person they met as they left their house in the morning to work in the field or in the Palace or whatnot. Alright, a great deal of people might be just as awful as depicted but surely it couldn’t apply to the entire human species ! Otherwise the Middle Kingdom wouldn’t function as an institution because the officials and workers would be too focused on backstabbing to prevent the infrastructure from crumbling to pieces !

 

Seriously, there was healthy paranoia and there was what Mama was suffering from. Maybe Shen Yuan could find a physician and ask if they had pills to soothe chronic anxiety ? That would be such a nice souvenir to bring back from his travels ! Almost as good as a new little sister – because Baoshan Sanren had stumbled upon yet another street urchin shivering in the gutter, and she decided she wanted to keep doting on a sweet little thing now that Shen Yuan was leaving the nest, and even if she had been a smidge baffled by the cultivator lady’s offer to take her in, the girl had accepted.

 

Obviously the man who owned her – what an idea ! How can you own a person, really ? People aren’t things , that was so much of an evidence that it was just like claiming the sky was blue or water was wet, saying it out loud was completely silly because it was common knowledge the dirtiest, most uneducated peasant would retain from the very days of childhood, and if you thought otherwise then you had to be insane as it was a thorough violation of common sense – tried to cause a fuss by complaining it was stealing and insinuating that Baoshan ought to pay him, as if a life could have a monetary value instead of being something unique and precious, and Shen Yuan had felt so weird .

 

Suddenly they understood Mama’s worry a bit more – if the people living in the Middle Kingdom were just as insane as that, and they had to be if they allowed for slavery, then it would be quite hard indeed to become friends with them. You had to be patient and understanding and gentle with someobody mentally unfit, and Shen Yuan was rather lazy and prone to annoyance when other people wouldn’t get her viewpoint, so zhe likely wouldn’t enjoy the experience even if she did hir best.

 

Baoshan Sanren was just the same, except that she was quickly pissed off and instead of quietly withdrawing from all the stupidity and preserve her own sanity, she would get aggressive and once more, she allowed her displeasure to spill in the light of day by casually suggesting the nasty man could wind up in her stomach if he kept yapping and shaming himself in public. No, she wasn’t bluffing, and yes it was a crime according human law, but do you see an official around to force the commoners to follow said law ? Of course, cultivators might be alarmed by the news that man-eating happened but it would take some time for the news to reach their illuminated ears on these lofty peaks and you, sir, would be thoroughly disgested and shat at this time. Are you still whining ?

 

The man stopped whining and the newly formed trio of Baoshan Sanren, Shen Yuan and a far too skinny street urchin departed for a teahouse, the girl needed hot soup and meaty dumplings to put some flesh on her birdlike bones, Shen Yuan could have broken her in halves by sneezing in her general direction ! Something had to be done !

 

After that, Baoshan Sanren decided it was time for her and Shen Yuan to go their separate ways, she had a brat to introduce to everyone back at the mountain and it would be better for Shen Yuan to put some distance between themselves and that awful man, some people were far too stubborn for their own good and he might try and complicate your life if you linger longer than the afternoon in this village.

 

Well, it couldn’t be helped, so the young huli jing drank his tea and cheerfully kissed his new meimei on both cheeks – so gaunt, it wasn’t comfortable at all, she really needed some pudge for Shen Yuan to lavish all the cuddles and hugs in the Three Realms upon her because they belonged to the same community now and that meant treasuring each other, and what better way to express that than physical affection ? Then he told Baoshan Sanren to reassure Mama that he was doing alright, more than alright, yes I have barely started my pilgrimage but you know how he is.

 

Then she donned her veiled hat – the translucent panels reaching her waist, that was so much more reasonable than the ankle-length one Mama had wanted for her to stuff in her qiankun pouch, aish, so horrified at the prospect of anyone beholding her face but this poor a-Yuan kinda needed to be able to move and nor fret about tripping on her veils at every step, you know – and she climbed on Apple Blossom’s back – the old donkey was quite happy to be far from Baoshan Sanren, it never truly got used to the muddy dragon in spite of almost two decades spent in her proximity – and she departed the village after asking directions to the nearest town, don’t worry for me, good men, I may not look like it but I am perfectly able to protect myself ! How nice of you to suggest we travel together, we will be able to kill time by discussing together, that’s going to be fun ?

 

My name ? Ah, why don’t you try and guess it ? If you cannot, that’s alright, just call this one sanren-jiejie, that’s not like I will get offended. And maybe you will find a cute nickname for me.

 

If I like it, I just might keep it.

 

 

Chapter 95

The day Wei Changze’s life went upside-down, it was raining so much he wondered how the sun was supposed to look like because he certainly was too wet to remember any hint of warmth.

 

Yes, he was a cultivator and not a bad one at all, even if he was far from being exceptional. Yes, he hailed from Yunmeng and his training had been mostly spent swimming laps around the lakes and the rivers so he was used to stoically endure massive amounts of water in his vicinity. He nonetheless was annoyed by the unending downpour, with his robes and hair clinging to his face and body, the droplets running in his eyes and forcing him to blink, and the way his boots were squelching and foaming every time he took a step.

 

Besides him, Jiang Fengmian looked just as pitiful and miserable and obviously extremely repentant of his decision to go and visit Gusu in the hope to be granted access to the Cloud Recesses – for it was said the white dragons’ nest harboured a library to rival with the Qing Jing Peak of the Tian Gong mountain range’s archive of knowledge.

 

If they successfully were allowed to enter the place, Wei Changze would commit genocide with extreme prejudice – that would teach the dragons to unleash torrential rain when travelers weren’t safely hidden in a dry place. And yes, he was aware it was extremely petty to murder an entire species for such a reason, but he was gloomily certain the dampness was reaching his bone marrow. Also, he really wanted to fight a dragon.

 

That was the reason why he insisted to come with Jiang Fengmian when the young Heir to Lotus Pier cooked this scheme for furthering his studies – and potentially to avoid Meishan Yu’s third young mistress who he was arranged to marry in spite of being extremely awkward around her – the opportunity to face a dragon, one of these beings commanding the storm and the lightning, and to check if there was a kernel of truth in all these rumours about their fierceness and strength.

 

Jiang Fengmian had deeply sighed when his martial brother bluntly explained why he wouldn’t be deterred from following the young Heir and claimed Wei Changze was far too fight-happy for his own good, especially considering his cultivation level, and would ultimately bite something too big for him to properly chew if he kept trudging on this path.

 

To be entirely fair, that wasn’t such a disturbing prospect to Wei Changze. All things needed to die one day, and in the meantime, he would hone his skill with the sword, he would protect the lands and the people threatened by the monsters he would put down, and he would get to behold wonders and marvels as he wandered through the Middle Kingdom.

 

Yes, he very much enjoyed traveling – even if sometimes, he genuinely hated his circumstances, see the current downpour cheerfully attempting to drown him and his fellow traveler on land. But that was part of the package when one wished to be untethered to a Sect, low or high, you gained uncertainty and lack of comfort.

 

On the other hand, you found a surprise sometimes, and stumbling upon an elegant little pavilion standing proud in a field far away from civilization, it was a surprise indeed.

 

It was quite a simple yet sturdy building, four pillars carved of redwood supporting a conical roof tiled with glossy black stones, and huddled inside, safe from the rain, stood a donkey and sat a maiden in pristine white garments, a veiled hat on her head demurely safeguarding her features from anyone interested in seeing her face.

 

« Ho there ! » Jiang Fengmian cheerfully greeted. « Might these two wretched souls beg for the Young Miss to take pity on them and allow sanctuary within this fine pavilion ? We are about to melt and dissolve in all this rain... »

 

It sounded a smidge more desperate than the Jiang Clan’s Heir should have let heard in his voice, but he was barely exaggerating when he claimed both the young men were slowly dissolving. Truly, they had to be a disgusting sight as a silvery laugh rang among the pitter-patter of droplets.

 

« Come in, come in, you proud warriors ! Such a terrible foe, the rain, isn’t it ? Come in, and be mindful of Apple Blossom, he’s rather grumpy when it’s damp, terrible on his joints. »

 

« A thousands thanks for the Young Miss’ benevolence » the purple-clad youth gushed as both Jiang cultivators finally stepped in blessed dryness. « We owe you our lives. »

 

« Well, this is the kind of weather that gives the hacking cough and a running nose, so I suppose I have saved you a great deal of discomfort in the near future… Wait, are you cultivators ? Can you even get the cold ? »

 

As Jiang Fengmian proceeded to be his amiable self and chat with the maiden, Wei Changze proceeded to twist and wring his soaked robes and ponytail to force as much water as he could on the pavilion’s wooden floor, leaving him standing in a puddle quite soon. Fuck, his feet would be freezing for the major part of the upcoming week.

 

« Oh my, aren’t you the prettiest thing to ever exist in the Middle Kingdom. »

 

Wei Changze choked as the words dropped upon his shoulders and wildly turned his head to protest, his cheeks flooded with burning heat and now his skin was itching from the sudden change in temperature.

 

Gray.

 

The maiden had lifted the veil spilling from her hat’s wide brim – her eyes were deep and gleaming and delighted in her pale, gentle face, a liquid quicksilver shade in which white splotches and black smears were constantly swirling together, slowly surfacing and diving back again, as delicate and ethereal as wintery moonlight dancing between snowflakes.

 

Wei Changze’s nape could have cooked an egg cracked right between his shoulder blades as he painfully swallowed.

 

« I – I don’t care about being – being pretty » he managed to stammer.

 

« I must confirm » Jiang Fengmian intervened, « my martial brother only cares about honing his fighting ability rather than tending to his looks. Believe me when I say a great deal of Yunmeng’s inhabitants are dismayed about it. »

 

« Wait, a cultivator, this beautiful man ? Surely not ! He’s made for drinking chrysanthemum tea and writing poetry about the ducks going to swim together on the pond while the autumn light is declining » the maiden fired back in a genuinely floored voice, as if her entire viewpoint had been shattered by the reveal.

 

Jiang Fengmian couldn’t help the snorting escaping through his nose.

 

« Wei Changze, writing poetry ? Perish the thought, he barely manages to read a single poem when he opens a book for his studies, so writing them ! »

 

« Wei Changze ? That’s your name ? It sounds quite pretty, everlasting luster , that’s it ? Tell me if I am wrong. »

 

« Ah… that’s right. »

 

« She guessed on her first attempt » Jiang Fengmian marveled. « Would the Young Miss care to repeat her exploit with this one ? »

 

The gray eyes swiftly glanced at the purple-clad youth, before coming back to Wei Changze, as if he was a magnet.

 

« Judging from your clothes’s colour… somebody from the Yunmeng Jiang lineage ? I am sorry, my Master is living in seclusion, I am not up to date with the jianghu’s shakers and players » the maiden confessed, sheepishness entering her voice.

 

« The Young Miss doesn’t have to worry, it’s hard to remember so many names… and by the way, mine is Jiang Fengmian, so you almost had it. Would you care to complete the introduction ? »

 

A slow blink.

 

« A name for me ? How would you name me, if you had the choice ? »

 

Jiang Fengmian made a thoughtful noise, but Wei Changze barely noticed, still unable to focus on anything beyond this quicksilver shade swirling in the maiden’s eyes. Really, she was wise to hide her face behind a veil, who wouldn’t be entranced by such a colour ?

 

A colour to hide… the hidden colour…

 

« Cangse » he abruptly said. « I would call you Cangse. »

 

The gray eyes minutely widened and her lips softly twitched as she smiled and it was Wei Changze’s turn to blink.

 

« Cangse » she repeated. « Cangse. Yes, it sounds lovely. So very lovely. That can be me. A thousand thanks for your gift, I shall treasure it. »

 

The youth in his dark soaked clothes wanted to go back under the rain and melt in a puddle.

 

« That’s only a name » he argued.

 

Yet she kept smiling as she gazed at him.

 

 

Chapter 96

Shen Yuan was living his dream. No, wait, it was even better than zhir dream, because it was real – in spite of his Niang ominously warning the younger huli jing that dreams ought to stay dreams if you wanted to avoid the ineluctable disappointment that would come with their materialization in the real world.

 

It pained Shen Yuan from admitting it, but Niang might have been wrong for all his wisdom and worldly experience. After all, he constantly claimed everybody living outside Zhengmei Mountain was nasty and begging for the opportunity to backstab their fellows but just look at Shen Yuan’s new travel companions !

 

Well, technically, Shen Yuan was the one who joined them as a new travel companion. Jiang Fengmian – sorry, Young Master Jiang because he was a noble Heir in Yunmeng and it was important to stay polite unless given permission to be more familiar as you could make people upset or uneasy by being too pushy and that wasn’t nice at all – wanted to browse through the Cloud Recesses’ library in Gusu, and obviously such a huge and famous library would have bestiaries ! Shen Yuan could read them and study how they had been written, how they presented the animal and monstruous species, and everything she disliked she would improve ! She wanted to produce the best monster guide in the Three Realms, and for that they needed to know what kind of product the readership would expect and enjoy !

 

Also, the Cloud Recesses were inhabited by dragons. Shen Yuan was curious about them and how exactly they diverged from Baoshan Sanren – who happened to be a muddy dragon, so she had the water affinity and predatory instincts and the tremendous might coming with the status of illuminated beast but apparently she didn’t consider herself a true dragon ? More like a landbound subspecies firmly linked to the Middle Kingdom.

 

To Shen Yuan’s eyes, Baoshan Sanren nonetheless was a wonderful Master, true dragon or not. Let’s see if these so-called true dragons hiding on their flying mountain – a flying mountain ! The huli jing shivered with anticipation – would be up to the standard she set.

 

So Shen Yuan politely wondered if Young Master Jiang would agree to let them come with him and his friend, and the nice young man – so gentle ! His wife would be so lucky, he was nothing short of a perfect darling – agreed ! Shen Yuan had been unable to contain his pleasure and kissed him on the cheek to express their gratitude – and the poor highborn scion blushed crimson as a sunset and stared at his own feet and Wei Changze had fiercely scowled at the huli jing.

 

« Shameless ! » the black-robed young man had hissed. « Have you done embarrassing yourself and Jiang Fengmian ? »

 

A nonplussed fox spirit had blinked beneath the half-unfolded veil sown to their wide-brimmed hat – now that they weren’t strangers to each other, they deserved to speak face-to-face, not face-to-veil, so the sheer gauze meant to obfuscate Shen Yuan’s features had been carelessly piled on the hat while the part in her back stayed draped on her shoulders and spine.

 

« How is that embarrassing to repay somebody else’s kindness ? » had he inquired, earnestly baffled. « Young Master Jiang is granting this wish of mine, so I sought to show appropriate levels of gratefulness. Oh – don’t you like kisses ? It always felt nice when my mother kissed me, so I believed... »

 

Had Shen Yuan been accidentally rude ? That would be so awful ! As the huli jing’s face utterly crumbled, Young Master Jiang waved both his hands in the air, very much looking like he was having a seizure and attempting to murder an annoying fly at the same time.

 

« That’s – that’s alright » the purple-clad aspiring cultivator choked out, his face a glistening pink a few shades off a broiled lobster. « Just – next time, deliver some warning, so I can properly agree – I, I mean... »

 

« Do I have to remind you that you have a betrothed waiting for you in Meishan ? » Wei Changze had pointed in a very flat tone.

 

« Young Master Jiang is betrothed ? » Shen Yuan had marvelled. « How wonderful ! Blessed be your life together, and may you never grow weary from each other. »

 

Young Master Jiang had quietly swallowed and almost shyly turned his face towards the road, so Shen Yuan deemed the purple-clad youth had filled his quota for social interaction today and wanted to enjoy some quiet – Niang also had his quiet moments in which pestering him would only cause him to turn in a grouch, Zhengmei Mounta in’s residents had swiftly learned this lesson.

 

That was fine, the huli jing would delight his eyes by sneaking glances at Wei Changze. They were quite certain that surrounding yourself with beautiful things and pretty people was a huge boost to your happiness levels – after all, when you had the money, the influence and the freedom to have anything you wanted, you bought lovely paintings and tended to a handsome garden and showered your family with glittering silks and jewels. If beauty truly didn’t matter, then why would so many poets rave about it ? Why would kings and emperors ruin their lands for a favourite consort to smile at them ?

 

Yes, Shen Yuan loved anything and anyone pretty, and Wei Changze was so very beautiful – the confident way he moved, as if nothing in this world could be a threat to him, the inked lock of hair struggling to escape the confines of his ponytail and how gracefully he tilted his neck to force this lock away from his gleaming eyes, the pouty lips hinting at well-hidden dimples as they scowled and frowned, even the startling dark brown of a beauty mark on this porcelain cheekbone, unexpected and yet lovely.

 

Everything about Wei Changze was beautiful, and Shen Yuan wanted to admire him forever. She wanted to learn everything about him, to find so much more wonderful details about him – they suspected even his snores would be endearing – and maybe she also wanted for him to bestow another lovely gift upon her.

 

A gift just as sweet as the name he decided she deserved – Cangse , the hidden colour, and demon culture maintained you didn’t matter unless you were named, you couldn’t truly exist until someone looked at you and called for you, acknowledging you were worthy of an identity.

 

Of course, the young huli jing already had a name, already was Shen Yuan to Niang and Baoshan Sanren and everybody living on Zhengmei Mountain, but – potentially a consequence of being a shapeshifter – they sometimes felt a smidge stuck to be only Shen Yuan. To be only a daughter, a student, a beloved mischievous mite for their community.

 

They wanted – they craved becoming more – becoming known as a scholar on the subject of monsters and beasts, as a fearless wanderer, as a friend – maybe a lover one day, when the right person would appear. Maybe even a parent.

 

They loved being Shen Yuan, but the prospect of growing into Cangse Sanren – it felt right . It felt just like something she had been waiting for since the day of her birth, something so intimately and deeply hers that no matter how many times she would shift, how many shapes she would take, it would always be the fundamental truth of her being, that she could be anything she wished to embody.

 

And she owed this understanding of herself to Wei Changze.

 

She would never stop being grateful to him for that. He deserved the best gift ever as a reward, a mere kiss simply wouldn’t cut it.

 

So she would follow him, in order to tailor the perfect gift for the black-robed cultivator, and while she learned and carefully worked on this reward, they would spend time together and that would be absolutely wonderful because it couldn’t be anything else, not when you travelled with such nice companions.

 

How very lucky !

 

 

Chapter 97

When their little trio happened upon a small town after half a week spent getting acquainted with each other, Wei Changze had drawn the conclusion that Cangse Sanren was, indeed, extremely sheltered and had never left her Master’s mountain before now, be it for a meager reason.

 

She merely was too curious, just too ecstatic every time she saw… anything, really. She looked at anything with the gaze of a newborn infant for which everything was a miracle beyond understanding – or a young mistress who had been hopelessly coddled and pampered by her overprotective mother, ignorant of the world beyond the ancestral house’s courtyard.

 

Thinking about it, the latter comparison likely wasn’t the best. Such a pampered young mistress – well, Wei Changze as Jiang Fengmian’s main companion had seen and interacted with a few of these highborn girls at social events, banquets and festivals thrown to improve diplomacy between Sects and whatnot, and they tended to be… it wouldn’t be respectful to bluntly call them dunderheads , yet that was the word on his lips. Unable to see further than the tip of their nose, unable to truly relate to any subject unrelated to household matters or fashion or badly written poetry about torrid love affairs under the moonlight, and since the black-clad cultivator favoured swords and training and monster-slaying, he was beneath their attention.

 

That and he was a charity case, the get of farmers slaughtered by water ghouls as they were traveling on a boat to sell their crops in the nearest city, and because he was blessed with a spiritual root and the Jiang cultivator who ultimately slew the ghouls felt guilty for not coming sooner, Wei Changze had been brought back to Lotus Pier to learn cultivation in spite of lacking wealth, or even a family to support the endeavour.

 

(it has been so long since the water ghouls attacking and Wei Changze had been so very young when it happened, faces and voices are permanently blurred in his memory but he thinks he had a younger sister, and he knows he will never see her again otherwise the name Yan’er wouldn’t fill his breast with such wistfulness)

 

A properly bred, properly raised young mistress couldn’t take the slightest interest in Wei Changze, except in his tenure as Jiang Fengmian’s foremost companion – when somebody was parading his pet in front of polite society, manners commanded for you to throw some crumbs of praise at the very least.

 

A properly bred, properly raised young mistress wouldn’t keep staring at Wei Changze and teasing him and poking at the story of his struggle to grow stronger while – not ignoring Jiang Fengmian but it was obvious he was playing the third wheel, and that was what Cangse Sanren was doing.

 

(she’s answering back to the name he blurted and his heart is beating too strong against his ribs every time she does)

 

(she poetically claimed naming something or someone was allowing them to be real and then she looked at him with this tiny, fond smile and he felt dizzier than in the aftermath of drinking four jars of wine)

 

Cangse Sanren was silly and coddled, opening wide eyes as Jiang Fengmian gently disabused her of the wild and fanciful notion that cultivators would always appear cool as fuck after a night hunt – you mostly found yourself covered with mud and sweat and gore and puke, so you looked and smelled and felt like crap buried in shite – or insisting Monstruous Beasts only wanted to live according their natures and that’s just so mean to slaughter them for being themselves – Wei Changze really hoped she wouldn’t say that around anyone whose relative had been devoured by a rabid tiger, they would have choice words for her opinion – yet her naivety was tempered by a thirst for learning, a wish to try everything the world had to offer, good and bad, almost taken to an insanely suicidal level because really, studying the most dangerous beasts in the Three Realms as if they were no different from cats and dogs was absolutely begging to be turned in a snack, but Wei Changze couldn’t actually tell her off without looking like an absolute hypocrite, since he wanted to fight all these beasts she endeavoured to study and analyze.

 

Maybe she would need a bodyguard to watch over her when she would leave for the wilderness – wait, no, he couldn’t project himself in such a future. He was currently sworn to Lotus Pier, and yes he intended to have his own life one day – he loved Jiang Fengmian as his blood brother yet he couldn’t thrive in the heavily structured, stratified game of subtle politics the Sects wouldn’t stop playing and the Heir to the Jiang clan was groomed to play it since he had been a wimpy tadpole in his mother’s womb – but he wasn’t strong enough. Yet.

 

And she might not want for him to follow her. Sure, she appeared to enjoy his company currently, but people could change their minds, mankind’s essence was fickleness. And it wouldn’t be very proper for a man to travel with a maiden unrelated to him, imagine what kind of rumours would swell and ruin Cangse Sanren’s reputation !

 

(yet that would be worse for a maiden to travel the countryside entirely on her own and Wei Changze’s innards twist and burn as he remembers how sweetly and earnestly she trusted him and Jiang Fengmian, two men against one maiden, yes they were honourable but not everyone was and Cangse Sanren might be able to defend herself but her temperament, what he saw of it, doesn’t seem the best for preventing an assault and then it would be too late)

 

No, he had to focus on the now , on their current travel to Gusu in order to brave the white dragons and gain access to their library. Well, that wasn’t exactly now, it was in the very near future, and technically now would be their sojourn in a small inn as they rested and washed the roads’ dust and exhaustion off their bodies.

 

Obviously Cangse Sanren was blatantly cheating – she didn’t have to walk when she could ride her donkey – so that likely was the reason why she retained the energy to excitedly blabber about the tea and the little cakes served with the tea and the soft green painting on the inn’s inner walls, was that meant to be bamboo or a grove of reeds, anyway the shade was just so soothing, perfect after a hard day of travel !

 

The Madam allowed the happy babble to spill from Cangse Sanren’s mouth, a small smile tugging at her lips because the maiden’s cheery mood was infectious , but it also might be caused by the small mountain of food her guest had inhaled, just as much as both her companions and Jiang Fengmian appeared a smidge confused as he plainly wondered how a delicate-looking girl could stuff all this in her gullet without her belly grotesquely distending.

 

If she fell pregnant, how worse would it become ?

 

The thought flashed in Wei Changze’s mind, bright as lightning and just as horrifying to endure, and the black-clad cultivator barely avoided choking. Fortunately, everyone agreed he drank his tea too quickly instead of suspecting foul play.

 

He really had to contain himself. Maybe these white dragons could offer him counsel ? The Cloud Recesses were infamous for their staunch ascetism, after all.

 

 

Chapter 98

When the Madam of the teahouse had mentioned the crumbling shrine to an unnamed god near the city’s gates, Cangse Sanren – her name ! That’s her name now and she loved it – knew she absolutely had to take a look at it.

 

On the matter of Heavenly Officials, his Niang had been rather dismissive – they delight in pissing all over me so if they think I am going to worship or beg for their help they are so fucking wrong it’s not even funny – and Master Baoshan had been flat-out uncaring – yeah they’re real but they don’t bother with what they deem inferior lifeforms so there’s no risk of meeting one of these, you should rather focus on actual threats to you if you want to travel one day – leaving Yuan’er alone with a great deal of unanswered questions.

 

Well, since it was a crumbling shrine, it likely wouldn’t offer a lot of answers but the huli jing nonetheless was intent on visiting ! And sure, fox spirits weren’t deeply liked by humans and demons alike, but surely that would be fine if they brought an offering ? Ah, but what kind of offering would please that god ? Cangse Sanren didn’t know without knowing anything about them !

 

Young Master Jiang and Wei Changze had agreed to come and see with her instead of resting in the teahouse – such politeness ! Their brides would really be extremely lucky to be married to these upstanding young gentlemen – and so the trio went.

 

The Madam wasn’t lying when she warned them about the shrine being crumbling – Wei Changze stared at the roof as if it would fall on their heads because it looked ready to break down, and inside, Young Master Jiang’s constantly gentle expression broke down into stunned disgust in front of all these stains, and the dust, oh the dust, and that wasn’t a veil hanging over the statue’s head, it was a gigantic spider-web, the kind allowed to be woven over several years without anybody intervening.

 

That was it. Cangse Sanren knew the perfect offering. If a shrine was something like a god’s bedroom, then such a dirty room couldn’t be borne ! That was just too sad !

 

«  Cleaning a shrine is meant to be done by a god’s worshippers » Wei Changze pointed as the huli jing exposed their plan. « And if the shrine fell into such dereliction, the god likely has been forgotten. »

 

« That’s even sadder  ! » Cangse Sanren wailed. « You understand why something has to be done immediately, now ? »

 

The black-robed cultivator scrunched his nose in a cutely confused expression that bluntly screamed he didn’t understand at all, and his purple-clad friend’s body langage said the same thing but differently, yet both of them bowed in front of the huli jing’s distress and threw themselves into cleaning the place until it appeared a bit less wretched.

 

Nothing could be done for the rotten floorboards and missing tiles in the roof because no one in their little trio was a carpenter or a mason, but all of them had packed soap and rags in their travel bags and qiankun pouches, so they could wash the walls and the statue and they could chase the spiders outside – quite common spiders, their webs weren’t the kind you could stockpile for selling in the market – and it took them at least two shichen but finally, the shrine seemed somewhat ready to entertain guests.

 

Cangse Sanren was quite happy about the effort, and she would swear the statue was smiling too – a gentle-faced pretty man holding a sword in one hand and a flower in the other, and there were wild flowers in the fields, alright daisies weren’t fancy but they smelled nice and they were nice to admire and you could braid them in a crown, so.

 

« Really, Cangse Sanren isn’t an ordinary woman » Young Master Jiang mused in an amused tone, as the huli jing had climbed on the offering table at the statue’s feet in order to crown the stone effigy with a brand new daisy wreath. « The offering table is meant for offerings, not for people to climb. »

 

« And flower crowns are meant to be headgear » the maiden cheerfully retorted. « There ! Does your Celestial Highness look good ? »

 

Wei Changze grunted, because he was the kind of man who needed for beauty to be pointed with a big insistent finger before noticing it and then he was left tongue-tied and blushed and would quietly slink away until he felt less intimidated.

 

« My, how appropriate » a silken smooth, honeyed baritone declared from the threshold. « Tell me, young Miss, were you aware this is a shrine dedicated to the Flower-Crowned Prince who pleased the Gods ? »

 

The huli jing gleefully laughed.

 

« Ah, so I was right ! See, Young Master Jiang ? »

 

« Cangse Sanren was right » the purple-clad Clan Heir agreed as he glanced at the newcomer, « and now she can go back on the ground with everyone else. »

 

The fox spirit jumped down from the offering table, gracefully landing on her feet, and bowed deeply to the man in rich crimson clothes and silver jewelry – you would have assumed he was a bridegroom seeking for the Heavens to bless his wedding, and maybe he was ?

 

But on the other hand, his qi was a smidge too weird for him to be human, cold and damp as the air when you entered a tomb. Still, Niang had raised a polite child, and fighting in a shrine would be inexcusably rude and ill-mannered, especially after all these efforts to clean it ! So, no shrieks. And the man appeared nice enough, if a bit scary with his eyepatch.

 

« Hello to you, good sir ! Are you a devotee, or a mere passing traveler just like us ? »

 

« Passing travelers ? Surely you jest » the one-eyed man amiably argued. « Why would you care about cleaning a crumbling shrine when you’re not worshipping the god dwelling there ? »

 

« That was her idea » Wei Changze immediately admitted. « We got swept into the movement. »

 

« And that was very nice of you to help » Cangse Sanren earnestly thanked. « I am sure his Highness will be happy too. Nobody enjoys to have a house filled with dirt and dust and insects, yes ? Unless you’re a weirdo. »

 

The red-clad man slowly blinked his lone eye. His attention was focused on the white-clad feminine silhouette with the wide-brimmed hat, as if he was suspecting her from saying part of the truth instead of the whole truth.

 

Shen Yuan gazed back at him, a low humming in their throat and a gentle smile tugging at the corner of their lips.

 

« What an uncommon soul you are, young Miss » the man ultimately decided to declare. « May this one ask for your name ? »

 

« You may call me Cangse Sanren » the huli jing chirped, his heartbeat happily jumping in his chest as he uttered the words, his name, that was his name, and such a beautiful one.

 

« Cangse Sanren » the man repeated. « I shall remember it, for later. »

 

For what, exactly ? Oh, maybe he thought they would cross paths again ? Maybe it would happen or maybe not, the Middle Kingdom was so big and it was time for Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze and the Young Master Jiang to go back on the road, towards the Cloud Recesses and Gusu, and it was a bit far, so.

 

It would have to be a pretty big coincidence with low odds to happen, but that would be nice if it unfolded. A pretty big shot of luck.

 

 

Chapter 99

If small villages were wonderful, then Caiyi Town was a whole new level of marvellous. It was so much bigger ! The way people wandered the streets, looking down their noses at you so much that they actually looped back at looking up ! The wine they called Emperor’s Smile, it smelled so good even through their waxed seals that you wanted to drink the entire jar !

 

Wei Changze had outright thrown Cangse Sanren over his firmly muscled shoulder to prevent her from buying more than one jar, since she already was giggling as she stared at her own nose and felt her feet so light that she almost stumbled. Who would have thought being drunk could be so fun ?

 

Well, maybe she would have to be careful in the future with her alcohol intake, she had understood her control over her shapeshifting was slipping barely a fên before she sprouted four cun in height and had to quickle wrestle her body back into order. They didn’t want for Wei Changze and Young Master Jiang to be uncomfortable because zhe was suddenly taller, men could be very silly about that.

 

Anyway, Wei Changze’s shoulder. Such a wonderful shoulder, that, maybe a smidge too hard to be truly comfortable without the padding provided by several layers of silken robes, but it was a shoulder any protagonist in a yellow novel would have envied ! The kind of shoulder made to carry a wounded brother in arms or a fainting maiden while the fiercely handsome and peerlessly skilled cultivator was single-handedly – because the other hand needed to keep his human-shaped burden still instead of letting them falling to the ground – slaying the bloodthirsty legions of the Demon Tyrant ! Wei-ge, truly you were too much, this poor Cangse’s heart couldn’t bear it !

 

« Might this one suggest for Cangse Sanren to avoid wine in the future » Young Master Jiang commented, his voice shaking and quavering as he attempted to smother a burst of hilarity. « That would be best for your and Wei Changze’s dignity, surely. You cannot see it, but he flushed scarlet. »

 

« Fengmian » the black-robed youth hissed, more like a dying kettle than a venomous snake.

 

« Sorry, you’re flushing crimson. Quite a fetching shade, and if you’re not careful, you’re liable to wear it instead of black, that’s obvious as the sun in the sky. »

 

As Wei Changze choked, Cangse Sanren giggled anew and twisted on this magnificent shoulder in order to turn hir face towards the Heavens and check if really, there was a sun today – Mr Sunshine could be quite shy or maybe lazy, to hide himself behind a fluffy blanket of clouds, so.

 

She narrowed her quicksilver eyes and lifted her veil to have a better look.

 

« Hey, take a look. Up in the sky, is that a bird ? »

 

He managed to hear Wei Changze inclining his head back, his ponytail sliding back on his robes with a gentle whisper, and squinting.

 

« Is that a house ? » wondered the black-clad cultivator whose vision was much better, since it was a matter of survival for one who enjoyed hunting to have an excellent set of eyes.

 

« That » Young Master Jiang grandly announced, « is an island . Behold the Cloud Recesses, where the Lan lineage of white dragons dwells, and our final destination. »

 

Cangse Sanren’s jaw outright dropped as they gaped.

 

« Huh, wow. Now that’s something else. I mean, my Master’s mountain was impressive, but that ! How are they keeping it in the air ? Why isn’t anyone freaking out because can you imagine, if the arrays ever fail and the whole damn thing crashes down on Caiyi, that would be a first-grade disaster and I don’t wanna know how many hundreds of deaths it would cause. »

 

« How huge is that place ? » Wei Changze pondered. « It’s so big, in spite of being so high... »

 

Young Master Jiang softly coughed in his fist.

 

« Well, the Lan Clan proudly boasts of two hundred and thirty souls, and they are welcoming students and guests from everywhere in the Middle Kingdom, so they need a lot of place… And I also believe they can adjust the arrays, to bring the Cloud Recesses closer to the ground and Caiyi Town. Living up there in the clouds is nice for a dragon, but we humans are gifted with a more delicate constitution that often disagrees with such extreme surroundings » the purple-clad cultivator explained.

 

Wei Changze grunted.

 

« So they can lower the compound, huh. That’s how we will climb up ? Waiting for them to come down ? »

 

That really sounded like the more realistic option, Cangse Sanren idly mused. Sure zhe could grow wings and fly to the white dragons’ gate, but ordinary humans would lack the possibility since they weren’t inherent shapeshifters, it forced them to find another way to access the Cloud Recesses.

 

That was mankind’s great strength, their ability to churn solutions in order to compensate for their absence of natural assets such as claws and fangs. Baoshan Sanren certainly believed so, her voice softly rumbling as she told these words.

 

« Actually, the dragons have built a flying carriage to allow easier transportation » Young Master Jiang revealed and Cangse Sanren’s brain swiftly decided to explode.

 

« Flying carriage ? They invented a flying carriage ? Wei-ge, we absolutely, totally have to steal it ! Picture that, flying above the countryside, laughing in the wind and basically do whatever these dumbass writers believe bandits do instead of slitting throats and stealing people’s purses ! But better, because it’s in the sky ! »

 

« Didn’t you want to study beasts, instead of committing to banditry ? » the black-clad cultivator tartly pointed.

 

« I can study winged beasts with a flying carriage ! » Cangse Sanren fired back, stars filing the quicksilver in hir eyes. « I can be a sky bandit and a beast researcher at once ! I can be anything I want ! »

 

« You can be sober in a few moments » Young Master Jiang said. « Seriously, we need to keep her away from the wine. If that is the result after one single jar, I dread to imagine what would happen at a banquet without anybody to restrain her intake. »

 

« To the Eighteen Hells with you » Wei Changze groused, « now it’s going to haunt my nightmares ! »

 

« Are you certain it won’t rather haunt your dreams ? Maiden Cangse doesn’t seem in a hurry to stop sprawling over your shoulder, after all... »

 

The huli jing giggled.

 

« I love feeling like a delicate princess in the valiant cultivator’s embrace » zhe confessed. « But the cultivator needs to be Wei-ge, he’s absolutely perfect in this role ! »

 

The aforementioned cultivator hiccuped and made a noise of drowning chicken. Cangse Sanren patted his head, aiming for the junction between his skull and his ponytail – so sleek a mane ! They wanted to fingercomb it forever.

 

« One day, Wei-ge will finally accept he deserves every single crumb of praise raining on him, and I will be there to thoroughly bury him under my adoration. »

 

« Aish, couldn’t you keep him alive ? » Young Master Jiang asked in a mirthful tone.

 

« Wei-ge is called to become the greatest hunter ever, he can survive anything » Cangse Sanren declared.

 

And if impossible survival wasn’t a major hint flagging a protagonist, then Cangse Sanren for the life of them didn’t know what qualified as such.

 

 

Chapter 100

So the flying lift for the Cloud Recesses wasn’t a wondrous piece of engineering – and what a disappointment it was, really. It actually was more akin to a big basket with a huge handle for a startingly small white dragon to clutch and try to not shake too much as they flew upwards, towards the floating island.

 

There was a lot of fluffy cushions and padding spread on the seats bolted to the basket’s floor, so it wasn’t as extremely uncomfortable as it could have been. Still, Shen Yuan expected something more dignified, more worthy of a draconic bloodline ! Not a basic chore for a juvenile scion of the clan ! Or, wait…

 

« Do you think they’re on punishment duty ? » the huli jing whispered in Wei Changze’s ear. « I mean, spending the day going back and forth, between Caiyi town and the Cloud Recesses, it’s kinda boring to tears and exactly what you force a hot-tempered nitwit to do in order to cool their heads a bit... »

 

The black-robed cultivator scowled – no, he pouted, meaning he was considering the argument and thinking it had some merit, and he looked so cute, Cangse Sanren itched to sketch this face for posterity and feasting her eyes when it would be cold and rainy and gloomy and she would need to comfort herself.

 

« You know a dragon’s ears are more sensitive than a human, don’t you ? » Young Master Jiang amiably pointed.

 

Yeowch, obviously the man had a point, it was pretty insensitive and Cangse Sanren blushed behind zhir veil – by the way, the sheer gauze wanted to flap around due to the winds caused by the ascension and the altitude, the fox spirit had to firmly grasp the tips of it in their hands to keep it somewhat disciplined – what was the best way to apologize to a dragon ? Master Baoshan had been pretty easy, just bring her several barrels of high-quality wine, but the Cloud Recesses apparently didn’t believe in drinking alcohol ? In spite of Caiyi town being well-known for their speciality wine, the Emperor’s Smile because it could cheer the Son of Heaven himself with one sip, and Cangse Sanren found the gap pretty weird.

 

That was good wine. Maybe too much for him – unfair ! Cultivation was supposed to prevent the cultivator from getting piss-drunk unless they consumed a whole crate of the most potent liquors known to the Three Realms, so why would this poor unfortunate Yuan’er reduced to dumb giggles and a fuzzy brain swimming in a candy pink ocean of pure zen after one measly jar ? Anyway, that was the good stuff, and depriving oneself from the opportunity to enjoy it, the Lan clan might call that a necessary sacrifice in the pursuit of enlightenment but the huli jing just thought it was sad.

 

Well, as Auntie Willow would say, that was their choice to make, and respecting other people’s choice was important even if you believed it was a bad one. If you protected people from the consequences of their decisions, they would never learn how to separate the good ones from the bad ones, and they would refuse to think before acting since they weren’t fretting about a possible mistake.

 

A possible mistake like not watching your feet and accidentally falling from the floating island. Cangse Sanren hoped they put railways there – what if Young Master Jiang or Wei Changze got lost and wandered out of the grounds ? They couldn’t turn in birds or grow wings ! Could they even fly on their swords, it was supposed to be an advanced technique and sure Wei-ge was a peerless cultivator so he likely mastered it but zhe was unsure about his purple-clad companion…

 

Fortunately for the huli jing’s peace of mind, there were railways when their carrier dropped the basket on a quiet courtyard tiled with pale blue pebbles, on which somebody was waiting for their arrival.

 

It wasn’t a man, in spite of looking like one – and wow, if you needed to disguise yourself, why would you choose to appear as a fuddy-duddy, Cangse Sanren internally lamented. The man-shaped person obviously attempted to aim for an ethereal, refined image, but the huli jing desperately wanted to give him some castor oil to relieve his intestines, what if the constipation drove him mad because it could happen, the brain poisoned by the slow accumulation of nightsoil that wasn’t evacuated down the line !

 

Also, she might shave this beard off. Sure, a beard was a mighty tool in order to intimidate your students into bothering to pay attention to the lecture you were delivering, but some people liked them and some people couldn’t stand them, and Cangse Sanren was firmly stuck in the latter category. Especially when she could glimpse rather handsome features beneath all these hairs and wasn’t that a shame to hide them ? The world needed more beauty ! Stop fretting and relish in your own prettiness, you will doing the Middle Kingdom a huge favour ! This Cangse Sanren believed in you and supported your efforts !

 

Young Master Jiang had disembarked from the basket and was politely bowing his head at the man-shaped person, as he plucked a letter in his qiankun sleeve to hand over.

 

« This one is honoured about receiving a positive answer to his request to study in the Cloud Recesses. I am Jiang Fengmian from Yunmeng, and these are my companions, Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren. »

 

The one-person welcome committee took the letter, golden eyes swiftly reading it before coming back to observe the purple-clad cultivator.

 

« Greetings to Young Master Jiang and his companions as our honoured guests » he answered as mildly as his human interlocutor. « I am called Lan Qiren, and I am tasked with handling lectures on various academic subjects. We might be called to see more of each other in the near future. »

 

Cangse Sanren couldn’t help her eyebrow jumping towards his hairline. Lan Qiren – Master Baoshan’s information about the movers and shakers in the jianghu and the secular kingdom tended to be dated at the best, since she would only learn of the latest scandals and other things when she left Zhengmei Mountain for a grocery run and they tended to be pretty espaced in time, sometimes a whole decade would flow without her feeling the need for mundane interaction, but the muddy dragon had mentioned the Lan white dragon bloodline, once or twice.

 

The current Head should be titled Qingheng-jun, yes, and Lan Qiren didn’t introduce himself like this so he probably wasn’t this person ? But he certainly was quite closely related, a-Yuan had forgotten the fine details, some first cousin or maybe a half-brother ? Draconic clutches could be a complicated mess, since it wasn’t literally an egg clutch but everyone born in the same generation and they generally viewed themselves as siblings, no matter if they actually were related by some third uncle on the maternal side once removed.

 

So, a big name in the clan, welcoming them personally ? Either Lan Qiren was trying to butter Young Master Jiang, or he was really, really polite and did that to every guest. Cangse Sanren would rather lean towards the first option, since the second would be exhausting and eat a lot of time, and surely if Lan Qiren was a teacher he had far better things to do when he wasn’t bullying his students for daydreaming instead of acing their quizzes.

 

Oh, well, that was a problem for latter. Right now, they were in the Cloud Recesses ! Monster studies for everyone !

 

 

Notes:

And we have reached the 100th chapter threshold! Thank you to everybody reading this story!

Chapter 101

The Cloud Recesses were everything people said it was. Maybe it was better, actually – well, except for the cold. Yuan’er had long misliked the creeping freezing of his poor nose when it was early in the wintery morning, and for a place much closer to the sun than a great deal of mountain peaks, the floating island was so cold that you would turn in a giant ice cube in the night by forgetting to burrow in a heap of blankets and furs.

 

Seriously, Yuan’er quietly shifted back to their fox shape – the first time it happened to them, Niang had looked completely freaked and made her swear to never do that again where it was possible for someone else to be present at the scene and see and Yuan’er shivers every time zhe recalls hir beloved, haughty, confident mother’s voice sounding so frantic but the cold has nothing to do with that peculiar chill – and actually gave themselves a much furrier pelt than a mundane fox would have, when the curfew was enacted and the students and guests were supposed to put themselves in bed and sleep tight.

 

Thankfully, courtesy of the Lan dragons believing in gender-segregation, nobody could walk on Cangse Sanren shapeshifting. She usually would complain a great deal more, because really that wasn’t like gender was a thing , sure you could have gendered works because some arrays wouldn’t trigger if you weren’t blessed with the right equipment between your legs and wasn’t that silly, but any distinction between male and female was essentially cosmectic when you thought about it. So the Lan bloodline was deeply silly by insisting to keep the men in one side of the compound and the women in the opposite side, what if somebody switched in the middle of the night ? What if somebody felt like both at once, or neither ? Where were they supposed to go ? Would the white dragons kick them down to the ground and watch them go splat ? Because that wasn’t very nice, Young Master the Sect Leader’s Younger Brother !

 

Cangse Sanren wanted to say all that to Lan Qiren and watch him twist his brain in a knotted rope, huff and puff as he tried to find a retort that wouldn’t sound dumb and ridiculous, then finally bow to her genius reasoning as he grimaced and shaved his stupid beard as his penance – alright, yeah, she was mightily petty on the latter point but come on, the more she stared at this silly facial hair, the more her fingers twitched with the need to brandish a pair of scissors and chase the dude all around the Cloud Recesses until she fixed his attempt to uglify himself.

 

Anyway, Niang had raised a polite, well-mannered child with the help of the ragtag bunch of misfits dwelling on Zhengmei Mountain – with the glaring exception of Master Baoshan because Master Baoshan was a muddy dragon, her idea of politeness was not devouring somebody for disturbing her afternoon nap and most commoners and officials in the Mortal Realm apparently didn’t share her viewpoint so – and that meant Cangse Sanren wouldn’t indulge in her newfound passion for a career as hairdresser. And wouldn’t bemoan the dumb gender-segregation, in spite of the rule keeping her away from her travel companions.

 

Well, at least Young Master Jiang arranged things to cross her path at least once a day. Sometimes it was quite fleeting, merely a glimpse in a lecture hall or beyond the tables as the bleary-eyed masses were choking on bland congee for breakfast, and sometimes they got to discuss in the library around a compendium until it was time for the building to close.

 

Wei Changze would be with the purple-clad cultivator, obviously, but Cangse Sanren couldn’t cuddle with him, because of the stupid gender-segregation. No matter if she was freezing, and Wei-ge was so big and his lifeforce so heavily skewed towards yang that he basically was a walking furnace, and that was so tempting to slide under his arm, beneath his heavy black overcoat, to enjoy being surrounded by his warmth…

 

Hurgh , why couldn’t this dumbass Lan An write less rules on this fucking Wall of Discipline ? Cangse Sanren only begged for that one to be removed ! Just one ! Surely that wasn’t too much ?

 

Apparently it was, and now the huli jing was sulking as they retreated from this fun-sucking old bag with the gall to claim interactions between men and women were a foolish distraction – excuse you, lady, what kind of gender-mixed interaction led to your egg hatching, exactly ? And because the huli jing was in a bad mood, they decided to vent by exploring .

 

Sure, the parts open to guests were wondrous and very interesting to behold, but when you showed anybody a door and officially claimed it was forbidden unless authorized to open it, it was guaranteed someone would break it to go through when the watcher would blink.

 

Alright, the parts of the compound which access was refused to guests were meant for privacy as personal housing or vaults filled with dangerous items or whatnot, but Shen Yuan considered himself blessed with good sense and survival instinct, he would shy away from anything looking funky or private, like a bathroom – who wanted to sneak into a bathroom anyway, it often stank so much there, even when the fox spirit was human-shaped and his ability to smell diminished as a consequence.

 

The trouble when wandering in uncharted places, you quickly get lost and then you felt deeply sorry for yourself as you tried to remember if you needed to turn left or right at the second waterfall only to stumble upon yet another unknow road, and your feet started to itch from all the walking around.

 

When Cangse Sanren saw the modest-sized house surrounded with bright blue flowers – gentians ? In spite of the cold ? Plant cultivation had to be involved, one way or another, there was no other explanation – they were too tired to care about the scolding waiting for them if they begged for directions to the women’s dormitory.

 

The maid – she didn’t have fancily embroidered robes so she likely was a servant, and she didn’t feel like a dragon with the hint of scales in the qi – stopped hanging the laundry as she watched the intruder walking towards her.

 

« Who are you ? » the woman asked, baffled and maybe a bit wary.

 

« I am very lost ! » Cangse Sanren cheerfully admitted. « Might this wretched one sit down on your threshold for a while ? My feet are worn to the bone, I swear. »

 

« Hm, well » the maid started to huff.

 

Before she could deliver a coherent answer, another female voice escaped through the house’s open window.

 

« Who are you talking with, a-Min ? »

 

« Nobody ! » the maid immediately answered, furiously blushing.

 

« It didn’t sound like a nobody, young lady ! Come and invite them inside, if you want to gossip then you will have to put more of an effort in excluding me ! »

 

« Lan-furen ! » the maid squeaked. « You’re supposed to rest . »

 

Lan-furen ? Like the Sect Leader’s wife, Lan Qiren’s sister-in-law ? Crud, now Cangse Sanren had no hope whatsoever to escape this scolding. Unless Lan-furen put a good word in hir favour, she sounded like she was less of a fuddy-duddy than her relative by marriage – or did the Lan lineage practise cousin marriage ?

 

« I do nothing but rest all day long, and soon I will be in the grave to enjoy eternal rest ! Now, finish with the laundry and let them inside ! I am already preparing the snacks ! »

 

Well, that’s very nice, snacks ! Walking was hungry work after all.

 

 

Chapter 102

Lan-furen was old.

 

Seriously, really old , with whitish thinning hair carefully combed to look dignified in spite of their pitiful state, her face wrinkled as these old apples forgotten too long in the cupboard, the back of her hands spotted with light brown as they’re resting on her blanket-covered lap.

 

Lan-furen didn’t rise up to her feet to greet her unexpected guest. Was she too old for her legs to support the effort of doing so ? Or maybe her status as the Sect leader’s – mother ? Grand-mother ? Meant she was above showing courtesy to a measly outsider lacking an infamous name or a powerful consort. Her dark eyes nonetheless gleamed, the lone part of her that still retained a piece of youthfulness and vigor, as they roamed all over the wide-eyed huli jing with the veiled hat.

 

Said huli jing was mesmerized . That was the very first time Shen Yuan met someone completely and utterly marked by years passing by – Master Baoshan and Mama shamelessly cheated by virtue of being supernatural creatures with a natural lifespan of several centuries without serious cultivation, and everyone dwelling on Zhengmei Mountain had mastered Qi Condensation at the very least, it ensured they would keep their teeth and retain healthy hair even as they pushed eighty years old.

 

Obviously, Lan-furen wasn’t a cultivator at all. That was easy to guess – a slight nudge when you were around somebody able to manipulate their life energy, a low humming that never was the same from person to person, sometimes the soothing warmth of a hearth, sometimes the gentle breeze in the early morning, sometimes the annoying prickling of static electricity on your forearms. There was nothing of that as Cangse Sanren stood before Lan-furen.

 

The old lady just felt human. Hopelessly, wholly human, in spite of the Cloud Recesses being a floating island serving as a white dragon lineage’s nest and shelter.

 

How did that happen ? Cangse Sanren’s ankles ached from sheer curiosity biting and pinching at them, and she wanted to vibrate out of her skin as she worked to not immediately launch an assault of inquiries until she lost her voice. That wouldn’t be polite, not when zhe was an intruder in Lan-furen’s pretty house.

 

So the fox spirit donned his most amiable smile and introduced himself as Cangse Sanren, here on a research trip with Young Master Jiang and Wei Changze who hailed from Lotus Pier in Yunmeng, but we actually met on the road, this humble one was raised on a mountain by her mother who had been taken in by a secluded master, no idea whatsoever if Lan-furen would know her…

 

« Would this secluded Immortal Master answer to the name Baoshan Sanren ? » Lan-furen wondered as her maid poured tea in bone china cups so cute and delicate, Shen Yuan was terrified at the very idea of handling them.

 

« Oh ! So you do know of her ! »

 

« Anyone belonging to the Lan clan has heard of Baoshan Sanren. She was a great friend and later lover of the third Clan Head, Lan Yi, did she ever tell her Disciples of Lan Yi ? » the old lady asked, only for her guest to frown and slowly shake their head. « Ah, well, maybe she was a bit embarrassed. Both of them apparently made a point of scandalizing absolutely everyone in Lan Yi’s family, and the jianghu as a whole. There’s letters from this time, detailing their little escapades and mad schemes, and I swear a Heavenly Demon would blush from the audacity. »

 

« Lan-furen » the maid quietly whimpered, obviously mortified to hear her mistress sharing the shameful family history that nobody wants out in the open, unless the wine was flowing for the very late evening and people as a consequence were too drunk to actually remember what they said to induce fits of laughter in their neighbours.

 

And Cangse Sanren did laugh, a small giggle as she mentally pictured a black muddy dragon and a white serpentine dragon – yin and yang ! Ancestors, they had to be perfect for each other – racing from one end at the other of the Cloud Recesses, shouting Gathering Plantain and The Good-looking Boy at the tops of their lungs, while a bunch of decrepit fuddy-duddies were fainting in sheer outrage.

 

It was too bad for Master Baoshan to have kept all these stories about her youthful mischief with her love for herself. Maybe Mama would have found them funny. He sometimes shared tales of his own childhood in the street gutters, and alright it was sad and weird most of the time, but the way he would complain about Qi-ge and how stupid the older boy was and how much disaster it caused him, it always made for a good laugh.

 

Maybe Baoshan Sanren kept the stories for herself because if she did, then the same glint that sparkled in Mama’s eyes when he remembered his older brother would shine in her gaze. Maybe she didn’t want to speak because Lan Yi wasn’t there anymore to remember with her.

 

Shen Yuan knew the current Lan Clan Head was named Qingheng-jun, and was very much a male, and she might be fuzzy on which number he was, but he certainly came long after Lan Yi.

 

So, what happened to Lan Yi ? What happened to Master Baoshan’s great love ? For the young huli jing couldn’t remember the muddy dragon showing any craving for romantic companionship. Yet Lan-furen claimed she used to be Lan Yi’s lover – surely the Lan Clan’s third Head was someone else, somebody exceptional to obtain Baoshan Sanren’s love in this way.

 

Something to research in the library. That shouldn’t be too difficult to charm the clerk into leading him to the history section – seriously, what kind of classification had been put there ? Cangse Sanren couldn’t start to guess – unless Lan Yi’s disappearance was deemed far too shameful for the main family to release it for anyone to read, and swiftly hide all the evidence in their personal archive.

 

Well, in this case, Cangse Sanren will focus hir charm on Lan-furen. That shouldn’t be a chore, the old lady was so very sweet and delightful, and she appeared rather eager for company.

 

Maybe she felt alone, as a human lacking cultivation surrounded by white dragons able to shapeshift and throw magic arrays as freshly cut flowers or candies. Or maybe dragons couldn’t help snoring at night, and she needed to burrow herself in this quaint little house lost in the middle of a field to flee the ungodly amount of noise. People did crazy things for even crazier motives, after all.

 

Anyway, that was a wonderful afternoon as huli jing and old lady idled the shichen away, Cangse Sanren cheerfully discussing the little towns on the path to the Cloud Recesses and how wonderfully quirky every one were, and Lan-furen sipping her jasmine tea and dropping hints that the Lans weren’t wholly stewed in rules and propriety to the point they would bore anyone sane to tears. And since good things unfortunately came to an end, the fox spirit noticed the golden colour of the sunling passing through the window darkening with soft pinkish undertones and realised the curfew was about to take effect.

 

« Lan-furen, may this one beg her gracious hostess’ forgiveness and understanding ? But if I cannot walk back to my assigned dormitory, the night watcher is going to pout at me. Alright, and drag me to the Discipline Hall to get my poor buttocks whipped until I scream instead of sitting, but a Lan kinswoman pouting at you really is a dreadful experience ! » Cangse Sanren shivered.

 

Lan-furen smiled, a little laugh echoing in her throat.

 

« Poor you. Alright, then, shoo, shoo. And since you were lost when you stumbled upon my home, I will ask for a-Min to show you the way back, what do you say of that ? »

 

« Lan-furen is far too nice » Cangse Sanren immediately declared.

 

« As long as you agree to come again and see me in the afternoon when I send her to you. I am an old lady quietly crumbling away, after all, I need to pester the youth into entertaining me and you, my dear, are quite entertaining. »

 

A new friend ? A new friend who thought Cangse Sanren was funny ! That afternoon was officially the best ever.

 

 

Notes:

As you might have guessed, the author has PLANS for Lan-furen.

*maniacal laughter while stroking an imaginary Persian white kitty*

Chapter 103

Obviously, Cangse Sanren had to explain her whole adventure in the wildness of the Cloud Recesses to her companions, first because it was the kind of funny story you just needed to relate to people you liked, second because Young Master Jiang was a young master and as such, he could give her pointers to avoid being accidentally mean towards Lan-furen !

 

Cangse Sanren had no wish to insult or annoy Lan-furen. She was an old lady, and she looked more than a bit lonely in her house among the gentians, far away from all the bustle and agitation of the white dragons and their guests, and if her brand-new friend started to be mean then surely she would be sad ! And it being an accident, well, the huli jing deemed it made everything so much worse  ? When you put effort in being nasty, at least that indicated you cared on some awful, twisted level. But when it was an accident, it was saying to the offended party that she didn’t matter at all, that she wasn’t important enough for you to study her character or to brush your best manners off, and Cangse Sanren wanted to sob a bit as she considered the possibility.

 

Of course Lan-furen was important, she belonged to the Lan lineage, but first and foremost she had been sweet and nice and so very kind, and the huli jing would do her utmost to repay her. When someone offered kindness to you, answering back with cruelty was senseless, truly !

 

Unfortunately, she had barely started to expose what she did of her afternoon that Young Master Jiang almost fainted ! Wei Changze had to drag him to a stone bench for him to sit down and breathe heavily for a while, and he asked if a healer was needed in his most awkward voice, poor Wei-ge really couldn’t deal with unexpected social relations but if it was for his friend’s sake, he would force himself to bear it and that was so very nice of him, and when she thought about that Cangse Sanren felt her heartbeat jump and twitch and flutter, almost as much as when she was feasting her eyes on Wei-ge’s pretty, pretty face.

 

Finally, the purple-clad cultivator reassured them that no, a Healer wouldn’t have to be dragged all the way there, he just was a smidge surprised because whew, Lan-furen, really ? Cangse Sanre, how did you do that, really ?

 

« I got lost in the Cloud Recesses » the huli jing cheerfully repeated. « And then I stumbled upon her house, and she invited me inside. What more does it need to be said ? »

 

Young Master Jiang wheezed and choked as his shoulders quivered from laughing.

 

« Only you… ! Only you, Maiden Cangse, if I was reading your tale I would accuse the writer from having too fanciful an imagination yet here we are ! »

 

He looked at her, and his eyes were fondly incredulous, as if he was wondering if she was pranking him and the huli jing pouted beneath his veil.

 

« Then what happened ? » Wei Changze asked, fidgeting and nervous, when people were discussing about highborns, he always got uneasy, maybe since he used to be a commoner when he was very small he didn’t like nobility very much but it was unclear, and Cangse Sanren never insisted as she refused to make him sad by making him linger on matters that blatantly upset him.

 

So the huli jing gave the details about the discussion. And the tea, and the treats served with the tea. Oh, and now Lan-furen wanted for Cangse Sanren to come back and chat more, and obviously Cangse Sanren couldn’t refuse the invitation. For one, it wouldn’t be polite, and then, Lan-furen was the matriarch of the Lan white dragon clan – that was her home turf, everything she wanted would be granted. That was a mere truth of the Universe.

 

As she spoke, the fox spirit could see Wei Changze’s expression growing alarmed.

 

« She’s really nice, you know » zhe insisted. « And so very old, you could break her by sneezing in her general direction ! If you’re free to go when her attendant will bring me back there, come and serve as my plus one, you will see her with your own eyes and you won’t fret as much. »

 

Because the black-robed cultivator was fretting, and that was dumb since Lan-furen was entirely unable to harm Cangse Sanren no matter what but the fox spirit knew anxiety didn’t work like that, couldn’t be fought directly, but if Wei-ge was given a chance to do something about it, if Cangse Sanren helped him by giving him the right tools, then it would quiet down and slink back into its dark little hole.

 

Anxiety wasn’t funny at all, and friends were supposed to make you feel good, and Cangse Sanren really wanted for Wei Changze to receive all the good feelings and none of the bad.

 

« I – don’t know if Lan-furen will be alright with that » Young Master Jiang gently intervened. « First, she’s living in the female-restricted area, doesn’t she ? Second, she’s only expecting you, and unexpectedly bringing yet another person, without nary a warning, it might be a lot for such an old lady... »

 

« These are very good points » Cangse Sanren admitted, « but I am pretty certain Lan-furen will forgive me after getting to behold Wei-ge in his unrelentless handsomeness. »

 

The black-robed cultivator choked on air.

 

« What ? People will forgive a lot of gruesome sins for love of beauty, you know ! They will excuse murder and thievery and outright treachery, so barging on an afternoon tea party is nothing at all, if you ask for my opinion » the huli jing shamelessly argued.

 

« Ancestors » Young Master Jiang whispered, his shoulders wracked with shivers as the countryside in the throes of a mighty earthquake, « if that doesn’t end in a wedding, and if she’s not the one to propose, then I shall be a donkey’s uncle. »

 

« Excuse me, what is that about a donkey ? Young Master Jiang, do your siblings indulge in forbidden relations with animals ? Because if the beasts didn’t cultivate to sapience, I think it’s a crime and not very nice for these poor animals » Cangse Sanren panicked, and Wei Changze hid his flushed crimson face behind his hands.

 

The purple-clad cultivator idly waved a hand in the air.

 

« Don’t worry, I am an only son, that was a mere expression… Anyway, bringing Wei Changze to your next tea with Lan-furen ! You should question the attendant, she would know best. »

 

« This attendant was a fuddy-duddy » Cangse Sanren complained. « Not as much as Lan Qiren because it’s impossible to be that much of a fun-sucking twat, he’s kinda unique in this regard and it’s likely because he put effort in it and that’s the saddest goal ever when he could have chosen literally anything else. Anyway, she’s quite sour the watcher, she didn’t even want for Lan-furen to speak to me ! »

 

« Perhaps she’s not fun, but she tends to a venerable Madam and from your observations, Lan-furen is much frailer than a white dragon. Why wouldn’t she be overprotective ? »

 

« And that’s why I went and told Young Master Jiang everything about my venture » the huli jing sighed. « You consider angles I would never notice. »

 

The delicate pink flush flooding Young Master Jiang’s cheeks made for a lovely association of shades, right near his lavender robes.

 

 

Chapter 104

A-Min ultimately refused to bring Wei Changze in the female-restricted part of the Cloud Recesses, because a true Lan would rather die a stuffy, boring old fart than have an interesting life. Nonetheless, she admitted the black-robed cultivator was very cute, so Cangse Sanren would be gracious and acknowledge her good taste in men.

 

Lan-furen outright laughed when she heard the little tale, and declined the opportunity to smuggle Wei Changze into her house for her to behold his sheer prettiness, arguing she was a married woman and would always be partial to her husband.

 

« From what you told me about your Wei-ge, he’s far too easy to fluster and embarrass » the venerable old lady commented above her tea cup. « My darling will do absolutely anything I ask of him, even the most shameless, the most ridiculous thing you can imagine, and he will do it with as much gravitas as if the Highest Emperor was issuing a command to him. Can you picture the sheer dissonance ? »

 

« Lan-furen » the handmaiden sobbed. « Please do think of Qingheng-jun’s dignity as a Sect Leader. »

 

« A Sect Leader he may be » Lan-furen retorted, « and under my roof, he shall be my husband first and foremost, and my children’s father second, and everything else a distant third. I will speak of him as I please, such is the privilege of a spouse. Especially one who suffered through his bumbling attempts at courting. »

 

« Was he very silly ? » Cangse Sanren couldn’t help but inquire, a blush tickling the inside of his cheeks pink since they were discussing courting , and the huli jing really wanted to fall in love one day in the near future and so it made perfect sense for zhim to investigate how people did it, what you were expected to do as a rule and what you should avoid as the plague.

 

The old lady wistfully smiled.

 

« He was a mess . Tripping over his words, bringing me fine silks I had no use for – my folks were farmers, we went around in ramie and hemp, how do you think silk would stand up to field work, when you’re planting the rice or trying to wrestle the pig away from the mud puddle ? And this outstanding young gentleman, he would look at me feeding the ducks as if it was the most novel idea ever. So sheltered, my darling... »

 

Lan-furen sighed while Cangse Sanren frowned, remembering Niang and the many uncles and aunties on Zhengmei Mountain when they were in the mood to discuss politics, how they always would bemoan the highborns and wealthy merchants doing their best to ignore what being a commoner entailed and how dangerous it was for the peasantry, since these patrons with the money and power to ruin your life would ask too much from your lands, would insist for you to try newfangled whims that would cause the cattle to sicken and perish in droves, and obviously it never was their fault since they were so powerful, they didn’t have to dirty their hands to fight starvation day after day.

 

« Begging for Lan-furen’s understanding, but that sounds like your husband is rather dumb. »

 

The handmaiden glared daggers at the huli jing, but the fox spirit was focused on the old lady sitting at the other side of the low table.

 

« Well, I certainly didn’t marry him for his wits. Oh, my darling can have his bright moments, as long as he’s given time to ponder the circumstances and rely on his brother and other trusted advisors, but mainly ? He’s there to dazzle his political opponents by sheer charisma and charm the masses through his careless kindness, and nothing else. »

 

Cangse Sanren frowned.

 

« Being kind is not a flaw » she argued.

 

Lan-furen softly smiled.

 

« It certainly isn’t a flaw for a husband to be kind. Truly, if the man you fancy cannot bestow a shred of genuine kindness upon you, then you ought to drop him immediately. And never forgive him. »

 

« What if he learns of his mistakes ? »

 

« Do you really think you would trust him from the bottom of your heart ? Without ever looking behind your shoulder, always wondering if today will be the day of his backsliding into his former awful behaviour ? »

 

Lan-furen’s eyes were dark and attentive and very somber above her pleasant smile, and Cangse Sanren opened her mouth before closing it.

 

« I… don’t know ? I mean, Lan-furen is speaking as my mother would do, and Niang is the untrusting kind, the kind who wouldn’t give somebody else the slightest opportunity to commit a betrayal, and when it happens anyway, well, my mother would slit their throat from one ear to the other. Or poison them in becoming a drooling wreck for decades. »

 

Niang wasn’t the kind of person who did things by halves. Thinking about it, Master Baoshan was the same, but she would devour the poor idiot who dared to believe they could bamboozle her.

 

« I am not asking what your mother would do, my sweeting. I am asking what you would do » the old lady insisted.

 

« How am I supposed to know that ? » Cangse Sanren wondered aloud. « I never was betrayed by anyone, and I hope nobody will ever betray me, but I suppose we need to be realist. Still, I don’t think I will know before it drops on me, and I would like to believe I would forgive… but I am my mother’s child. »

 

Xiao Yuan wasn’t stupid. He was aware he had been sheltered from the world by his mother, by Master Baoshan and his uncles and aunties. He was grateful to everybody living on Zhengmei Mountain for raising him with nothing but love and care, but sometimes he wondered what kind of consequences it had on his temperament.

 

One was a product of one’s circumstances, after all. Who would Cangse Sanren be revealed to be, if she was pushed to her breaking point ? The question fascinated the huli jing as much as it worried her, because it was so blurry, the answer veiled in mystery wrapped in unknown.

 

Ah well, zhe supposed it was called growing up . For all they appeared all-knowing and endlessly confident to a frightened, ignorant kid, mature adults were constantly performing in front of their children, and in front of each other, trying to hide how lost and confused and out of their depths they actually were, just like kids except they couldn’t brandish their age as their excuse anymore.

 

Until they grew so old they started to complain dementia was robbing them of their mental faculties. Which was sad. Fortunately, Lan-furen appeared in full possession of her mind and sanity, even if her body was frail and slowly crumbling and decaying all over herself.

 

That would have been a real tragedy, if she had started to forget her husband and how happy he made her. It was easy to see how deeply her feelings for him ran, for she was glowing inside whenever she was speaking about him in spite of her tone being casual, she shone warm and blissful as the sun in the morning spring, when flowers were peeking out of the grass and began to dot the green with a rainbow of shades.

 

Someday, Cangse Sanren wanted to fall in love like that.

 

 

Chapter 105

In hindsight, Cangse Sanren should have prepared herself for a meeting with Lan-furen’s children.

 

The old lady obviously cared about her family, from the way she brightened when mentioning them. And for somebody to be loved so wholly, they had to be nice, wouldn’t they ? Not the kind of assholes that would drop their poor aged wife and mother somewhere in a lost hovel and never visit because they were busy having a social life with wealthy fucknuts.

 

Still, when it happened, the huli jing wasn’t prepared at all. She was busy chattering amiably about her first attempts to learn painting a scroll instead of covering zhir clothes with ink and pigments, and Lan-furen was thoroughly engrossed in the tale, making small noises of empathy for his Niang who was rather unimpressed by his now rainbow-hued child, when the door opened with more strength than usual, especially in the Cloud Recesses.

 

« Muqin ! Muqin, who is that ? »

 

Cangse Sanren blinked as her eyes registered the sight in front of her. Wasn’t Lan-furen old ? Like, really old. So old that any child borne of her womb ought to be in their late twenties at the very least, because after reaching too many years a woman just couldn’t fall pregnant at all. If she was mortal, and Lan-furen certainly was, cultivating eternal youth made the situation a smidge complex.

 

Lan-furen was pouting.

 

« What ? » she comically complained. « Is that how my children greet me now ? Not even a hello, not even asking me if my sleep was resting or if I have missed you ? Because I did miss my sweetings so much, you know. »

 

If the first boy shyly looked down and fidgeted with his long sleeves, the other one immediately ran to throw himself in Lan-furen’s waiting arms, and the old lady laughed.

 

« My Zhan’er, ah ! Maybe you thought about me a little, after all. »

 

The boy mumbled something, but since he was fiercely cuddling Lan-furen with all the might afforded to his tiny body, his high-pitched voice was muffled by her gown’s pristine silks.

 

Cangse Sanren was kinda busy having her brain melting down and dripping through her ears. Thank fuck she was sitting down on her – carefully hidden beneath the folds of her own robes – fluffy tail, because it wanted to wag like crazy.

 

Just. Smol babies. So very smol.

 

They couldn’t possibly be more than five years old. Smol little porcelain dolls with dainty hands, wrapped in their child-sized coats and heir hair pulled in tiny little buns and the one who wasn’t cuddling had big golden eyes the shade of summer afternoon sunshine and chubby cheeks so utterly pinchable and aaaaahhhhhhhh…

 

Would Lan-furen be very angry if the huli jing kidnapped one of her kids to be pampered to an inch of his life ?

 

Surely she would understand ! They were so cute ! Tiny little dumplings, all round and white like the mantous you put in the soup – Cangse Sanren wanted to gobble them up, to squish these pudgy cheeks and hear if they squeaked, and Lan-furen had two children and that was unfair, so greedy ! Ah, Cangse Sanren kinda wanted to cry because the universe was so mean. Also because the kids were so utterly adorable.

 

« Now, children, this is my guest Cangse Sanren, a wandering cultivator who decided to attend the Cloud Recesses in order to prepare her travels all across the Middle Kingdom. Won’t you be darlings and greet her, hm ? Show her how sweet boys you can be. »

 

The huli jing already could see that ! Please have mercy on your poor guest, Lan-furen, zhe was on the verge of an aneurysm, your babies’ cuteness is overloading his senses…

 

« A-Huan of the Gusu Lan lineage greets Mistress Cangse » the shy one said in a small voice and Cangse Sanren was very firmly sitting on her hands, no grabbing the tiny poppet to be kissed until fainting since he might panic and causing distress to such a darling baby surely was deserving of the death penalty.

 

The other child, the cuddly one, glanced at the huli jing without leaving his mother’s embrace, a bright golden eye peering at her very much like a fluffy kitten would as it crawled beneath the house’s floorboards and pitifully mewled at you to ignore it because you were so big and scary and unknown.

 

« … am Zhan’er... » he whispered, before hiding his face again in Lan-furen’s robes.

 

Alright, that was official, Cangse Sanren’s ovaries were quietly imploding and when she would leave the house surrounded by gentians, her first priority would be to find a sweet and kind man and pop as many cute babies as she could. Thirteen would be a good start.

 

Unbidden, Wei Changze’s face rose at the forefront of her thoughts and her nape burned hot and deep, he was so cute when he blushed and he was so completely awkward but at the same time weirdly gentle but did he even want kids ? He was focused on learning how to kill monsters after all…

 

(why do you believe he might be the one, that person who will turn your world upside down for what’s left of your lifespan, maybe for eternity if you’re really lucky)

 

(maybe he’s only a friend and you’re just confusing friendship for love because you never got to feel one or the other before departing from Zhengmei Mountain)

 

(maybe you’re in love, maybe it’s friendship and it will grow, you don’t know, you just don’t know)

 

Working on pure muscle memory as her brain soup was flat-out useless for more than escaping from her head, Cangse Sanren managed to smile. Politely. Softly. Not the wide grin she wanted to actually do, she only would look like a dork and the babies would deem her crazy and her heart would utterly break, that it would.

 

« That is very nice to meet such lovely children » she carefully enunciated. « Why, Lan-furen, you didn’t tell how cute they are. »

 

You didn’t tell me how young they are.

 

The boys were really, really tiny and that was kinda ridiculous and the huli jing wondered if she had ever been so small, logically she knew it had been the case but her mind was so far collapsed that it wouldn’t register the data.

 

« Boys ? Boys, are you there already ? I swear, these children... »

 

Frack, Cangse Sanren was far too familiar with this peculiar voice. She pulled a face as the voice’s owner entered the house.

 

She felt his gaze falling upon her and immediately disapprove her very existence.

 

« Brother-in-law » Lan-furen mildly commented. « I think there’s two little noodles who evaded your watch. »

 

« And I think there’s an unexpected guest under Lan-furen’s roof » he answered, just as mildly.

 

« Excuse me, I was expecting her. That’s you who suddenly picked today to bring the children for a visit and by the way, thanks for that. »

 

Lan Qiren stared at the scene of the old lady now holding on her lap two perfectly adorable young boys.

 

« They had much they wanted to share with their muqin this week » he claimed. « Might I borrow your guest while they are telling you everything ? It would be more intimate. »

 

Well, that was plainly obvious the old fuddy-duddy wasn’t trusting Cangse Sanren to be anything but a perfect guest for tea when Lan-furen called for her ! A mite vexing, that, and the huli jing would have her vengeance one day.

 

On the other hand, the babies absolutely deserved to bask in their mother’s undivided attention, so what can you retort to that ?

 

 

Chapter 106

Cangse Sanren could hear the gentians spreading their petals as she followed Lan Qiren outside and to a pretty respectable distance from Lan-furen’s house, allowing her some privacy with her babies. Cute little dolls apparently born to a woman old enough to be their great-grandmother instead of their mother.

 

Yeah, that silence was a bit too much. And since Lan Qiren liked being a teacher so much, surely he was used to answer questions ?

 

« So these nephews of yours are adorable » she first admitted because it was the truth and to soften the fuddy-duddy, « but seriously, they are so tiny, I barely manage to believe it. »

 

Lan Qiren snorted.

 

« A great deal of beasts, mundane and spiritual both, are barely bigger than a fingernail as they come into the world. And a fully-grown white dragon from the Lan lineage will easily reach the size of an Imperial summer palace. »

 

Cangse Sanren whistled under her breath.

 

« No wonder your clan would rather walk around in a human guise, otherwise you would have to constantly worry about accidentally crushing somebody or their residence and just, hello complains and money wasted in rebuilding ! Let’s hope your nephews won’t have their growth spurt for a while… that would be when ? Ten years or eight ? Oh, and cultivation as yet another factor, when you start young enough it stretches your bones or something... »

 

Lan Qiren stopped walking.

 

« Cangse Sanren » he said, his voice weird and the huli jing couldn’t exactly put her finger on the reason why, the emotion hidden behind the flatness. « Do you actually believe my nephews are five years old ? »

 

« Why ? Are they younger ? Dunno the maturity rate for Gusu Lan’s dragons, since you are a reptilian species and if you’re taking more after a lizard, then childhood is pretty short, but muddy dragons and varans tend to take longer because they have to consume more meat and give their muscles and skeleton fuel and time to properly develop... »

 

The huli jing was rambling, and her voice softly stuttered to a halt as she realized the white-clad humanoid dragon was staring at her, obviously uninterested.

 

Lan Qiren turned his gaze towards the brilliant blue flowers and sighed, a deep and long breath evading the depths of his lungs.

 

« My sister-in-law was quite young when my brother met her and decided she would be his one and only bride. He properly courted her, which wasn’t exactly swift for a mortal, but when they married, she had seen one and twenty springs and she was just as fresh and sweet as these gentian blossoms her husband gifted her as their wedding present. »

 

A pause, short yet filled with uncertainty, a bird hesitating before jumping out of the nest and unfurling his barely fledged wings.

 

« She gave birth to Huan’er one year later, and a-Zhan was conceived five winters after his brother. »

 

Cangse Sanren couldn’t find the words for what seemed to be an eternity, and maybe it actually was.

 

In hindsight, she shouldn’t have been so surprised. Dragons were natural-born immortals, or so long-lived the only way to get rid of them was disease, violence or Ascension to the Upper Realm. Everything about them went slowly and carefully because they had so much time they could afford plans spanning decades, centuries in the making, so wouldn’t it make sense for their childhood to proceed just as slowly ?

 

Slowly enough for a fresh, rosy-cheeked young bride to weaken and age and shrivel into a wrinkled, bedbound decrepit ruin whose teeth and hair were falling while her cute little children had barely learn to not soil their diapers and were so far still from becoming men…

 

Lan Qiren was staring at his sister-in-law’s house now – no, he was glaring at the building, his mouth twisted and baring startingly pointy teeth.

 

« She’s reaching her eighty-sixth year now, mainly because my brother brings her medicines to extend her lifespan » he acknowledged, spiting the words as if he was accusing his kin from bribing an Imperial official, « but medicine cannot bring you far when you have no aptitude whatsoever for cultivation. My brother knew that when he courted her, he knew he would outlive her when he took her for his bride, and now she’s dying very soon and when it will happen, he will be so busy mourning her and wallowing in his grief that I will have to be the one explaining my nephews why their mother won’t be expecting them to visit anymore. »

 

Oh. That’s – a lot of resentment and anger and pain in this rant. Cangse Sanren wanted to shrink unto herself, as this really felt deeply, hopelessly personal, not the kind of thing you would casually expose to a complete foreigner not linked to your family by blood or alliance unless you’re some exhibitionist who thrives on horrifying people.

 

Or maybe Lan Qiren just lived too long with these feelings lurking under the surface, the persona of the rigid fuddy-duddy, the aloof perfectionist who would rather die than allow anyone to see him as more than a breathing, walking stone carving, and one single poke was enough for the confession to spill and rush in daylight. Sometimes a dam get damaged in a strategic point and it let the river flood.

 

Cangse Sanren swallowed as she searched the right words. It was complicated, because Lan-furen was old and her babies were so very young and that meant she wouldn’t get to see them learn cultivation, she wouldn’t get to tease them for falling in love with a muscled girl or a pretty boy, she wouldn’t get to celebrate more birthdays with them, because soon she would be dead .

 

Suddenly Cangse Sanren wanted to run as quickly as possible to Zhengmei Mountain and embrace her own Mama and sob on his shoulder because, just the idea of Mama not being there when a-Yuan was still small and a complete baby, that was the stuff of nightmares and the huli jing’s belly was burning inside, she was going to be so sick later but right now she couldn’t, not in front of Lan Qiren.

 

That was him who should be comforted, not her. That was his family on the line.

 

The fox spirit breathed out and shyly suggested :

 

« Maybe Sect Leader Lan would actually help you with that. They are his children too, right ? »

 

Lan Qiren haughtily snorted.

 

« My brother has always been much better a husband than a father, or even a brother. He does try, mostly because my nephews are her children and because Huan’er will inherit leadership one day, but mark my words – I won’t be surprised if he entirely forgets the boys’ existence in the wake of their mother’s funeral. »

 

Cangse Sanren was left speechless again, and that time she suspected her tongue wouldn’t waggle for a full shichen at the very least, as she registered the distasteful reveal – alright, fathers weren’t needed in the grand scheme of the Universe, a-Yuan had been raised by his Mama and Master Baoshan and a whole mountain of uncles and aunties without the shadow of his sire anywhere and look at the young fox spirit as she currently was, perfectly sane and healthy !

 

But having a father right there, having a parent right there, and knowing he wouldn’t even attempt to care for you since he deemed you weren’t important enough ? Surely that was a whole new level in Hell, forged by King Yama’s endlessly sadistic imagination.

 

And Lan Qiren’s nephews were babies .

 

Years later, the huli jing still wouldn’t be able to explain why she didn’t cry in front of Lan Qiren.

 

 

Chapter 107

Wei Changze liked to believe his ability to be surprised and baffled over Cangse Sanren’s endless confusing behaviour had burnt out in the two first weeks of their meeting, but obviously this belief was nothing but vanity and empty promises for she had thrown him yet again in the most complete mental disarray and he had no fucking idea of any possible reaction that would defuse the situation.

 

On the other hand, when a woman suddenly came to you with an expression plainly revealing she wanted to sob her heart out and clung to you as if she couldn’t see the light anymore and you were the lone anchor reassuring her she wasn’t entirely lost in the darkness… well. Maybe another man wouldn’t know what he was supposed to do either.

 

Jiang Fengmian certainly appeared just as lost and alarmed as Wei Changze currently felt.

 

« Maiden Cangse, if something’s wrong, we cannot possibly help you if we are left unaware of the wrongness’ nature » the Sect Heir gently spoke, attempting to coax their female companion out of her quietness.

 

Cangse Sanren wasn’t a quiet person. She constantly commented on something, or carelessly spoke her thoughts out loud, she even hummed or sing-sang under her breath, but she was always making noise. But right now – there was nothing.

 

She felt cold under her soft cotton robes and patched overcoat, so Wei Changze awkwardly embraced her. As a yang-primary cultivator, he was running warm, almost feverishly so, surely it would help her ? At the least she wasn’t pushing him away to complain he was improper – but Cangse Sanren had a very broad opinion of what could be construed as improper and ill-mannered after all.

 

« … Say, Wei-ge, have you ever thought about dying ? »

 

Her voice was soft and small, the black-clad cultivator’s ears strained to hear the words and when they finally registered in his brain, Wei Changze’s confusion only managed to worsen. What the fuck had prompted that kind of philosophical pondering for the ditzy maiden ?

 

Also, he was lost for words – because he actually didn’t think about that, his life ending. What would be the point ? He was going to cultivate a golden core, strong enough to last him two hundreds years of life and health, and he didn’t plan to perish at the hands of a demon, a ghost or a rabid beast when he wandered the countryside looking for foes to vainquish.

 

As he was chewing on his lower lip, Jiang Fengmian decided to intervene.

 

« In a way, Maiden Cangse, to be a cultivator means walking with death. Death you would inflict upon beasts and evil cultivators and all the evils meant to be slain by righteous blades, death you would find as commoners and merchants and nobility alike suffer in the wake of disasters begging for you to be summoned, death you would face as your martial siblings and teachers are ripped apart and need for a burial. It just… happens. »

 

Obviously the Sect Heir, the young man called to be responsible for hundreds of lives in the future, dwelling in Yunmeng and beyond, would grow philosophical on the matter. One decision he took could spell mourning and despair, if he wasn’t careful, if he neglected his duty to serve his fellow human beings as their shield – cultivators usually would identify themselves with the blade, the weapon to destroy evil, but sweet-tempered Jiang Fengmian was saddled with a gentle soul that wished to protect.

 

Beware , Wei Changze sometimes felt the urge to tell the purple-clad youth who was as good as his brother, beware this sweet heart doesn’t break in grief, I would hate to see you wrecked in the aftermath, I would hate to see somebody unworthy trample on your feelings.

 

(he thinks he used to know someone just like Jiang Fengmian from before Yunmeng Jiang took him as a charity case, someone who constantly smiled even when the one he obviously loved spat venom and loathing at him, but the memory is fading and distant in the shadows of the years gone by)

 

Cangse Sanren shifted in Wei Changze’s arms, the night pearl’s weak glow giving silvery undertones to her thick hair – she seemed to be crowned with quicksilver, the shade of her mesmerizing eyes.

 

« There’s a woman I met in the Cloud Recesses, and she’s so gentle, and her babies are so cute, and – and she didn’t cultivate at all, so she’s going to die soon and there’s nothing her family can do and that’s just not fair, not fair at all, Wei-ge, why would the gods ever decide to invent death and go, that’s a wonderful idea let’s implement it, who’s going to fret over a pair of boys having to grow up without their niang ? Three guesses and fucking dumbass Cangse doesn’t count, apparently. »

 

Wei Changze’s eyes were swimming in their sockets and he dizzily wondered if a fish drowing in a pond would be just as bamboozled as him.

 

« You’re ranting » Jiang Fengmian pointed.

 

« Sorry… but you understand why that’s awful ? »

 

With her face hidden in Wei Changze’s black robes, Cangse Sanren wasn’t in the right position to witness Jiang Fengmian’s expression – certainly it was upset and compassionate, for the tragedy about to befall a happy household, but it was guarded, the mathematically dosed empathy of a man groomed to carry a great burden upon his two shoulders and aware he couldn’t waste too much on every single happenstance of misery he found, otherwise he would crumble and turn thoroughly useless.

 

That was the price to pay in exchange for a loving heart, it was so easily trampled by life and needed to be walled off, for the sake of survival.

 

Wei Changze wasn’t cursed with a loving heart. He was cursed with a simple mind painted in shades of black and white, a man who wouldn’t be deliberately rude or cruel but would nonetheless keep everyone else to arm’s length, unless you were the kind of exception found once in a million opportunities.

 

Jiang Fengmian had been an exception, and Wei Changze had genuinely believed he would be the first and only. People’s fortune came in limited amounts, why would you be greedy and crave for more when you already had stumbled upon the perfect jade ?

 

Thing is, Cangse Sanren didn’t care for rules or mundanity or common sense. And maybe Wei Changze couldn’t bring himself to deem her another exception, another flawless jade miraculously lost among common stones, his arguments grew weaker and weaker every day, as he beheld her smile, as she chattered in her expressive voice about her latest studies and the pranks she planned to pull on so-and-so.

 

Maybe she wasn’t an exception yet , but he didn’t like to see her miserable.

 

« I would like » he carefully enunciated, « to be the owner of a silver tongue, because I would say something inane and comforting to make you laugh, then you would stop being depressed and making me feel goddamn useless. »

 

Jiang Fengmian eyeballed him, clearly thinking that wasn’t appropriate at all.

 

A tiny hiccup tickled Wei Changze’s skin beneath his black robes, as warm air was breathed out of Cangse Sanren’s mouth as she quietly laughed.

 

« Ahh, seems your wish has been granted » she whispered. « Look what you have done to me. »

 

She still looked somewhat dejected and awful, but her smile was back and Wei Changze’s heartbeat fluttered in his throat.

 

He might have followed Jiang Fengmian on his travel to fight mighty opponents, but getting to protect that smile, that wasn’t a bad option.

 

 

Chapter 108

When the broad-shouldered, one hundred eighty centimeters young man in his heavy black and red robes introduced himself as Xiao Yue, the people on his road couldn’t help raising one eyebrow but what could they say on the strange and unfathomable mysteries behind the bestowing of a nickname ? Maybe the boy had been a runt in his childhood before shooting up like a weed after his balls dropped.

 

Xiao Yue couldn’t care less about humans speculating on the reasons why his name had been given to him. All that mattered was the fact that his name was a gift of his most beloved mother, the deeply lamented Empress of the Lower Realm.

 

Sure, there was a few stubborn elements bent on sneering and spitting on her memory – merely for being huli jing, not because she actually was responsible of horrendous crimes. Really, when one wanted to accuse somebody of sinning far beyond the ability to forgive, you rather should point at the current Sacred Ruler of demonkind.

 

Xiao Yue refused to acknowledge that disappointing man as his sire, it already was deeply unfortunate for him to have offered half of his lineage to the young Heavenly Demon. That was fine, for Luo Binghe wasn’t eager on treating the two offsprings yielded by his short-lived marriage as his children by blood. One would find it suspicious, considering his claims of undying devotion to the Empress – as much as a Heavenly Demon was able to devote himself to anybody, Xiao Yue’s nurse and Mobei-jun with his quaint little human pet had been insistent that it was more an obsession than genuine attachment – how could he look at her sons without his heart being moved ?

 

Well, regarding his secondborn, it was understandable that he would be disgusted. The brat had never truly grown out of being a useless crybaby, always hiding behind his nurse’s gown, always running away in a corner to lick his wounds and bemoan his infortune instead of getting even – Xiao Yue couldn’t stand his younger brother and had sworn to throw him to a pack of these giant silvery shadow direwolfs roaming the Northern Mountains after ascending to the throne.

 

Obviously, for Xiao Yue to gain the throne and gleefully get rid the Lower Realm from the eyesore daring to be a son of the Empress, Xiao Yue would first have to murder the current Sacred Ruler. Sealing him in a dark hole somewhere, a place entirely devoid of females to fuck into braindead obedience or peons to cow into complete subservience, also was a possible strategy but demons heavily favoured patricide when it came to the matters of inheritance and succession.

 

Such was the logical endpoint of the demonic principle enshrined in their way of life, the survival of the fittest. One would rise to the top through overwhelming power and would retain influence and command respect as long as one could keep a grasp on said power. And when this power started to decline and weaken, the former ruler would be discarded and dragged down from their conquered throne, to give rise to a new, stronger, better monarch.

 

Killing one’s parent wasn’t disrespectful – it was filial as the offspring showcased they had surpassed their sire or dam, and would carry the clan and bloodline to ever-greater heights of fame and glory. That was the only problem Xiao Yue could see with his planned patricide, his future subjects deciding his behaviour was a the conduct of a loving son sparing his sire the shame and dishonour of sliding into blatant weakness when there was no hint of love existing between Luo Binghe and the Empress’ eldest child.

 

That prospect itched at the back of his thoughts all the way to the Human Realm, as he slipped outside the Imperial Palace and hitchhiked on a blacksmith caravan, leaving for wealthy lands that would pay for their wares rather than stealing them after beating them bloody.

 

That had been the first true experience of life among the commoners for the princeling fancying himself the next Sacred Ruler, hearing a gaunt demon explaining he taught his children to haggle with human customers in order to secure their dinner. The human realm might not enjoy the same bounty of ore and jewels as the demons’ dimension, but unless one was born with an extremely special constitution, one couldn’t consume metals to fend off starvation.

 

Xiao Yue wanted to be the ruler Luo Binghe disdained to be – he wanted to be the ruler his mother had been barely a few years, her reforms and legal drafts still whispered of in the Imperial Palace’s halls, every ruling she made possessed with uncanny intelligence and wisdom aiming to improve the peasantry’s lot and bring the kingdom closer to prosperity and stability.

 

Only the Northern Mountains appeared to enjoy bits and pieces of the dream the Empress briefly attempted to build for demonkind, and that mostly was because of Mobei-jun’s quaint little scrawny pet, the human constantly whispering ideas in his master and lord’s ear.

 

If a meager human displayed such knowledge about the daily logistics and bureaucracy needed for a kingdom to thrive in earnest, then Xiao Yue’s road was plain as daylight in summer. He needed to study human mores, he needed to behold their cities and fields, he needed to understand why their children grew fat and happy, and he needed to bring this accumulated knowledge back to the Lower Realm.

 

He also needed to study their strategies, their cunning for war, everything that might give him a leg on Luo Binghe when the time for patricide would come. Then he would topple the man who didn’t care about doing his duty as a monarch, he would allow this man’s corpse to be desecrated rather than entombing him in the Holy Mausoleum alongside all the previous Emperors and Kings to have enjoyed power over demonkind, and he would start implementing his vision for his subjects.

 

They would fear him, yes, a Sacred Ruler ought to be feared and dreaded as no one else. Yet they also would love him, for everything he would bring them. And most of all, they would respect him for his achievements, for being the greatest Sacred Ruler in living memory and for being a monarch whose ambition and drive to carve his name into history went far beyond all his predecessors’ petty dreams and wants.

 

Truly, it was time for demonkind to obtain such a Sacred Ruler – even when Luo Binghe wasn’t taken in account, the previous monarch Tianlang-jun had been pretty happy to botch the job by dropping all the annoying parts of ruling on ministers to gallivant all around the countryside, listening bad poetry and attending raunchy theater. Well, to be fair, the man at least appointed competent ministers and was personally terrifying to the point they refused to consider betraying him until he found himself stuck under a mountain in the Middle Kingdom. Then every Clan Head and lineage chief fell headfirst in squabbling for territory and influence, and Luo Binghe wasn’t truly interested in fixing the constant power jockeying unless it threatened to upset his pleasure, then he proceeded to slaughter all these faces he deemed weird enough to not deserve his mercy and abandonned them in the dust to wonder how they were meant to come back from such humiliation.

 

Xiao Yue would put a term to that. It would be an unholy amount of work, it would steal an unholy amount of years – decades, centuries, for one unblessed with a Heavenly Demon’s almost endless lifespan it would have been the stuff of despair in front of the required work.

 

Xiao Yue wasn’t the kind to despair, he was the kind to run on sheer and utter spite.

 

 

Chapter 109

For all her attempts to plaster a happy, careless grin on her features, it was blatantly obvious that Cangse Sanren was deeply bothered.

 

Frankly, Wei Changze thought she was a smidge too invested in the tragic fate of a woman she barely knew, having met her a few weeks ago, far too early for a bond to grow beyond shallow.

 

(as if your own relationship with her isn’t just as shallow, a tiny whisper snickers in the back of his mind, you first laid your eyes upon the maiden not even half a year ago, and she enjoys making you talk about Lotus Pier but she doesn’t care about throwing you more than crumbs about her childhood)

 

The thing is, Cangse Sanren loved swiftly. After meeting you, when she deemed you were worthy of her attention and care, she would dote on you as if she knew you from the cradle, as if you were her most treasured childhood friend.

 

It should have been awkward, such familiarity when manners prevented a man from getting too close to a young woman, and Wei Changze couldn’t help the brief puff of shame in his chest as he remembered the lessons he was given as Jiang Fengmian’s companion, in order for him to never stain Yunmeng and the Sect Heir’s reputation by his distasteful behaviour.

 

It should have been awkward and yet Wei Changze couldn’t bring himself to put a barrier between him and Cangse Sanren. To remind her that society would like a more defined boundary when they interacted with each other. Not when he had witnessed this radiant smile, heard the teasing voice in which she would call him Wei-ge, drawling a bit on the second part of the nickname, her eyes shining and twinkling as pristine snow under the moonlight.

 

The spark was gone now. Or was it more correct to claim it was flickering, threatening to disappear in the cold wind of reality ? Sometimes the black-robed youth could see her grin wide and genuine as someone was complaining about losing their paper only to find it covered in funny scribbles of weird beasts, as she was looking through the window to watch the orange sun slowly rising above the clouds in the morning, as she was hearing a xiao or a guqin fumbling a tune and nonetheless moving on – then her smile would disappear, would dull and lose any hint of shine, would turn in a painted expression lacking true life to brighten it.

 

Wei Changze was trying – to let Cangse Sanren enjoy these moments, to allow her to gather more of these moments, yet it wasn’t enough, far from it. As a man turned blind after an injury or an illness, he missed the warm glow of sunshine, of her careless happiness – how everything around her used to be colorful even if he couldn’t comprehend it, even if he was occasionally annoyed and mortified by her stubborn insistence on bowling over social cues, maybe she was earnestly unaware of the rules she was breaking but truly, it wouldn’t be out of character for the wild maiden to decided she wasn’t interested in playing the game at all when it couldn’t fulfill her need for thrills and fun.

 

How funny, for Wei Changze to notice all the colours and light surrounding Cangse Sanren only after the world turned grey and gloomy. It made something itch deep inside his innards.

 

It made his legs itch for departure. Maybe she would start smiling again if she was away from the place in which she stumbled upon sadness ? Maybe she would allow herself to be distracted by so many sights and encounters on their travel path that she would entirely forget she was supposed to be depressed ?

 

The more the black-clothed youth thought about it, the more the idea grew endearing. Also, that wasn’t like he was learning best in a classroom – sure, the Cloud Recesses provided maps and compendiums and that was a great help to his endeavouring to become the best wandering cultivator he could be, but Wei Changze was the kind of student who progressed by leaps and bounds when he was on the field, dirtying his hands and tripping into shite and banging his head against trees and rocks, so.

 

He went to Jiang Fengmian and plainly exposed his reasoning.

 

« Cangse Sanren isn’t smiling anymore, and I don’t think I can improve my fighting stances all up there in the sky, and you cannot help making noises about the Cloud Recesses being so isolated that you’re fretting about what is happening in the Middle Kingdom. Don’t you believe we three might need a change of scenery ? »

 

The Jiang Sect Heir snorted as a small amused grin pulled at one corner of his mouth.

 

« You know, I earnestly believed you would have started gnawing at the walls barely one week into our sojourn, but you bravely held your ground for three months and a half ! Congratulations for surprising me. »

 

« You don’t have to look that impressed » Wei Changze fired back in a grouchy tone. « I was taught manners and etiquette with you, does my lord suspect this humble one from being unable to put his feelings aside for his companions’ good ? »

 

« I really don’t like hearing you speaking in such a self-deprecating way, how many times did I tell you already ? » Jiang Fengmian sighed, as his shadow of a smile vanished. « Anyway, on the matter of our sojourn there, I first negotiated for one month when we were welcomed in the Cloud Recesses, and when this first month came to an end I managed to lengthen our stay by three other months. »

 

« So that means we still have a few days between these walls to endure ? » Wei Changze checked, and his purple-clad companion nodded.

 

« I suppose I will have to go and warn Lan Qiren of our imminent departure. If you want my opinion, he won’t be too heartbroken by the news. »

 

Wei Changze frowned. He remembered the white dragon scion quietly seething in front of Cangse Sanren’s brazen behaviour and her taste for pranks and her shameless questions regarding life in the Lan bloodline, how Lan Qiren always seemed ready to swell and cover himself in scales to gobble the insolent woman up.

 

He also remembered baffled glances, filled with a silent confusion as the quicksilver-eyed woman hummed under her breath or showered a picture book with praise for being so lovingly tended for. The same confusion filling Wei Changze’s breast, as he watched Cangse Sanren and internally wondered how it was possible for someone to be so cheerful, so sweet, without even trying to do so.

 

Perhaps he was reading too far – who truly knew the heart of a white dragon ? Surely a mere human being couldn’t boast he was blessed such, not with their respective species serving as a barrier between them.

 

Also, guessing at somebody else’s feelings was the kind of thing Wei Changze instinctively misliked, as it sounded too much like spying or voyeurism to his taste. He wouldn’t like a foreigner picking his brain and his heart, reading his deepest secrets and casually trampling the intimacy of his mind under ill-advised curiosity.

 

Still. Lan Qiren might not be as gleeful to witness their leaving as Jiang Fengmian thought. But who could truly say, except for the white dragon himself ?

 

 

Chapter 110

After being informed they would soon depart the Cloud Recesses, Cangse Sanren made a point of visiting Lan-furen to inform the aged woman they couldn’t see each other anymore, because it was polite, and also to promise she would do her utmost to send letters filled with all the pretty wonders one would behold, as they roamed through the Middle Kingdom.

 

This second point was an indulgence for the huli jing, as they wanted to work on their calligraphy and on their narrative abilities, and writing letters would be a good exercise, right ? But zhe also thought Lan-furen needed more colour and excitment in her life, and since she couldn’t very well leave her house with her bad health and her two cute toddlers to raise, Cangse Sanren would bring the world to her ! That was the only possible solution !

 

Lan-furen had laughed when the young fox spirit had stammered his way through hir reasoning, before patting her hand and praising her for being such a sweet, well-mannered young maiden.

 

This compliment had terribly flustered Cangse Sanren, so much that she had been reduced to discreetly slink inside this fuddy-duddy Lan Qiren’s house in order to shave his silly mustache while he was asleep. It did wonders to soothe her nerves, but at the same time it had been awful because Lan Qiren lacking facial hair to distract the wandering eye from his perfectly carved features, well.

 

Maybe the white dragon had a point after all. If he went exposing this peerless face to everyone coming to study at the Cloud Recesses, the Middle Kingdom and the jianghu both would soon be dragged in dreadful war and anarchy !

 

Shen Yuan swiftly ran away from the house, not waiting for his target to wake up and throw a fit over his makeover – in the hopes to lessen his devastating handsomeness a smidge, the huli jing decided in a panic to remove his eyebrows and eyelashes too, alas that didn’t help as much as it was meant to – and went back to the guest dormitory. Her own, as she currently had adopted a female persona, and her traveling companions didn’t know she could be one or the other or neither – mostly neither, people felt really weird strongly about gender, which okay ? Their right ? Even if Shen Yuan was left baffled by all the fuss – otherwise she would have been able to bask in Wei Changze’s comforting and familiar loveliness.

 

If she ever wanted to be a male around him, would he more flustered by their perceived shamelessness, or would the black-robed cultivator shrug it off as mundane male behaviour ? The latter would be rather sad, part of Wei Changze’s charm came from the way he blushed and groused and stuttered over everything she did, while his eyes were helplessly shining with curiosity.

 

Lan Qiren would grouse and shriek and kick a fuss over everything Cangse Sanren did, but his eyes held nothing but annoyance and exasperation, so. And Young Master Jiang wanted to be nice and accommodating and that was very sweet of him, but when he was confused that felt more awkward than funny.

 

If Niang ever learned Shen Yuan met so many young men and grew friendly enough with them to pinpoint differences in their reactions to the younger huli jing’s behaviour, the older fox spirit surely would try to murder the three of them. Thinking about it, Niang was strangely mistrustful of men, wasn’t he ? Always warning they would jump on the first opportunity to be nasty and hurtful and if they believed Shen Yuan was vulnerable, they would do something unbearably ugly and that was the only thing you could trust them to be.

 

Even Master Baoshan had confirmed Niang disliked men very much, but the muddy dragon never truly bothered to explain why Niang couldn’t stand them.

 

(might it be linked to the one who sired Shen Yuan, the young huli jing ponders the possibility and their innards pinch and shudder as zhe doesn’t know what it means for hir relationship with Niang)

 

One day, Cangse Sanren hoped to introduce Niang to Wei Changze, as the living evidence a man could be gentle and kind and all the good things the older huli jing claimed men weren’t. But that surely was due to the fact that Niang didn’t like to go outside – Shen Yuan couldn’t remember him expressing the tiniest want to go back into the world, not even for a shichen – so when he stumbled upon a bad example of the male gender, obviously it soured him on the gender as a whole.

 

Still, introducing Wei-ge to Niang was the kind of thing better done later, much later, as Cangse Sanren definitely wanted to see more of the Middle Kingdom – more weird critters ! More wonderful sights ! More lovely friends to meet – and also wanted to gain some experience in telling people things that might just upset them in a way that would limit their anger and grief. That was a skill you couldn’t practice enough, because people were a complicated and delicate matter to handle, be you a little kid or a wizened crone.

 

Cangse Sanren liked to believe she wasn’t as naive as she used to be right after Master Baoshan dropped her in this little town to start her travel, but apparently the world didn’t think the same. Well, that was her conclusion, since Young Master Jiang wouldn’t stop glancing at her with this strange expression, as if he wanted to wrap her in soft blankets and keep her locked in a comfy room, away from anyone liable to misunderstand her and since it was horrendously easy to misunderstand your own parents and siblings and children in spite of having shared so many years of life together, that meant secluding her away from the entire world.

 

Cangse Sanren could appreciate the intentions behind the glance, but she nonetheless misliked the glances themselves. She wasn’t a dumbass, really !

 

If she was, then Lan Qiren would have immediately stormed the guest dormitories on the female side, to heck with the gender segregation, in order to make a scene over his absence of facial hair but since he didn’t, obviously he couldn’t guess she was the one responsible ! How was that for cunning, Young Master Jiang ?

 

Of course, she would wait for the three of them to have departed the Cloud Recesses to gloat and relish in her successful prank. Maybe one day or two of distance would be enough, the huli jing wanted to be real sure that the fuddy-duddy couldn’t eavesdrop on her words with some bullshit white dragon secret technique, they studied music as if their lives were hanging in the balance and so they studied sound waves and how they propagated in the air, that was simplicity itself.

 

Cangse Sanren personnally enjoyed music more as entertainment, but if the Gusu Lan bloodline wished to put so much efforts in it, well, they were allowed to do so. Cangse Sanren would keep studying critters and working on her compendiums, and maybe one day she would gift the final product of her work to the Cloud Recesses’ library, to be learned by the future generations, and the white dragons wouldn’t dare to refuse since they were a little bit obsessive about hoarding knowledge.

 

Really, dragons and their hoards.

 

 

Chapter 111

So far, Xiao Yue had only been able to find shelter and food by slaughtering lowlifes trying to assault him on the roads and stealing everything in their pockets and qiankun pouches. It was quite distressing, actually – the Heavenly scion decided to explore the Human Realm in order to find another way, a more cultured and diplomatic way, only to fall back on tactics highly prized by demonkind.

 

And he tried to prepare himself beforehand, though. He carefully questioned this blacksmith who had dealings with human merchands, learning how greedy they were for precious ores and jewels and so many components of the Lower Realm’s mineral wealth, so he stuffed at least five qiankun pouches full with gold and silver nuggets and garnets and turquoises shamelessly pilfered in the royal treasure, that wasn’t like Luo Binghe would ever notice somebody helped himself to the heaps of loot he brought back to the Palace after yet another rampage, or the heaps of tribute delivered to the Palace as bribe to prevent Luo Binghe from going on a rampage in the gift-giver’s general direction.

 

Humans really did love wealth, but Xiao Yue obviously lacked a few important details because when he wanted to spend the inn in a modest inn, the innkeeper freaked after being handed a silver ingot, and that was so embarrassing Xiao Yue ran away outside. After the same scene repeated thrice – he attempted to offer a fistful of rubies, a jade nugget from the size of his thumb and just as thick, and a gold necklace studded with amethysts in order to find a proper payment – in three different inns, the Heavenly scion was so exhausted he just laid himself in a field and went to sleep, foregoing the prospect of a soft bed and a roof above his head as long as he couldn’t comprehend mankind’s hysterical tendences.

 

He had been awaken by a bunch of beggars bent on stealing every single jewel carried on his person, and slitting his throat afterwards. Xiao Yue would have gladly offered them wealth if the beggars had consented to advice him on the functioning of human mores and society, but they were obviously rabid and unlikely to listen so he killed them. That had been so easy the Heavenly scion had deemed it a chore more than an enjoyable activity – because that always was fun, to infuriate your foe by sheer refusal of going down, then turning the tables on them and make them cry for their life.

 

Yet another fascinating difference between the races, a human could barely handle a love tap without their skull exploding in a shower of blood and gore, and playfully tugging on their arm would see it ripped from its socket ! How instructive and how utterly baffling at once, since such a frail species managed to fight demonkind several times in the past, driving them back to the Lower Realm with all the fierceness of a snow lioness on the prowl.

 

Maybe Tianlang-jun had stumbled upon a genuinely enlightening knowledge, as he roamed the Middle Kingdom, drinking of their wines and reading their literature and talking with their shopkeepers and actresses and craftsmen. Xiao Yue still deemed the man rather lacking by virtue of neglecting his duties as a monarch to wallow in his personal pleasure, a flaw shared with his successor to the throne, but at least Tianlang-jun had chosen a good hobby, a valuable activity, instead of drowning his wits in carnal pleasures and mindless violence.

 

Ah, he really wanted to study mankind in depths. Mentioning his wish to learn as he amiably chatted a maid bringing him a meal in a teahouse led the girl to suggest he might join a cultivation sect – Xiao Yue had smothered his laugh with tremendous effort and commented his constitution wasn’t suited at all for such a pursuit – or trying to pass the Imperial exams, surely there must a teacher or another bright mind willing to share the light of knowledge with the rising generation ?

 

Xiao Yue slipped the maid a purse filled with copper coins for her good advice and sought centers of knowledge. The cover of claiming to study for the Imperial exam wasn’t a bad one, and he might actually turn it into the truth – it was meant to shape minds and carve them in efficient administrators and governors, and Xiao Yue’s ambition called him to rule the Lower Realm as the land never had been ruled before. He would put all he could on his side, and frankly that would be stupid to the extreme to not follow a path sweetly whispering of greatness rightfully achieved.

 

That was with this goal in mind that he entered Caiyi Town, seeking to obtain an invitation to enter the Cloud Recesses’ famed library – such a well-known and expansive library had to possess copies of previous Imperial exams’ questions and how best to prepare for them – but the juvenile white dragon serving as the gatekeeper on the ground snorted at his sight and glared at him.

 

Dragons were messengers of the Upper Realm, servants to the Heavenly Officials and order, and as such opposed demonkind and their chaos with every cun of their being. Of course they would suspect Xiao Yue from seeking to cause mischief in their den and wouldn’t believe he was an earnest student looking for wisdom.

 

Xiao Yue had avoided a fight by swiftly bowing his head to the white dragon and leaving the grounds, but his innards pinched nastily beneath his skin.

 

He knew the struggle to elevate his species, his future subjects above mere bloodthirty brutes would be long and full of hardships, but that didn’t mean he wished for a reminder to kick him in the teeth as some ill-tempered donkey…

 

Speaking of a donkey, was that one braying near ?

 

It was. A particularly loud ass, making an ungodly racket for the sake of inconveniencing an elegantly purple-clad young man desperately clasping his hands over his ears to escape the noise, while a black-garbed youth was staring at him with such an unimpressed expression he seemed about to turn in a wooden statue, and the veiled maiden in white sitting on the donkey’s back shook from repressed hilarity.

 

That was such a ridiculous scene that Xiao Yue couldn’t leave them alone.

 

« Ho there ! Is the young master in dire need of a rescue ? » he amiably joked.

 

The black-garbed youth turned the head and his dark eyes narrowed as he analyzed the details of the Heavenly scion’s appearance, how he positioned his feet and kept his hands relaxed at his sides – a fighter’s mindset, Xiao Yue was used to it and that was just so weird for humans to not do that kind of scan as they introduced themselves – a posture as unthreatening as Xiao Yue could pretend to be.

 

It wasn’t enough for the young man with the high ponytail to relax his own stance. Ah well, he was blessed with survival instinct, always nice to treat with these, they tended to act rational instead of fainting or blustering in a baffling display.

 

« Ho there ! » the maiden cheerfully answered back. « As qianbei can see, upsetting a donkey by eating the last apple is not a good idea if you care for avoiding deafness. »

 

« That sounds like quite the amusing tale » the Heavenly scion smiled. « Mind if this humble student wants to know more ? »

 

« Come there, come there ! The more the merrier, as they say. »

Chapter 112

Wei Changze’s hackles were triggered by the sheer proximity of their new travel companion – this so-called Xiao Yue and wasn’t that a perfect alias ? Bland and boring and common, exactly the name a young noble scion would pick in order to gallivant all across the Middle Kingdom.

 

Because this so-called Xiao Yue was born a noble, or Wei Changze truly was a dog half-plagued by lice and fleas as so many youths belonging to Jiang Fengmian’s wealthy social circle liked to sneer and claim.

 

Sure, his hair wasn’t properly combed as a few strands evaded his high topknot in tight curls – hint of foreign blood, that, maybe an exotic concubine as a mother – and his robes and nails weren’t the cleanest either, faded spots of gore and muck and grass still apparent to an enhanced sight in spite of a hasty washing. But his complexion lacked the slightest scar or hint of tan, his broad shoulders and towering stature nicely muscled hinted he had all the food and sword teachers he could wish for growing up, and most of all, his demeanour.

 

The man did his best to be polite, and that was deserving of respect. But arrogance was always lurking beneath his words, confidence dripped from every footstep he took, the arrogance and confidence of a man used to be the biggest deal in the room since he was a suckling babe squealing out of fright as it was dark outside.

 

Wei Changze had seen this kind of men since he joined the Jiang Sect as their Heir’s martial brother. They generally weren’t worthy of his trust, as he was a mere pet to Jiang Fengmian, and a great deal of them weren’t that great for their retainers and servants either as they first and foremost focused on their grand ideas and plans for the future, and if for that you needed to sacrifice a few things, well. You could always pick another retainer.

 

Fortunately, Jiang Fengmian was familiar with these snakes, and quickly fell back into long-acquired habits as the purple-clad Sect Heir amiably chatted with their new travel companion, humble-bragging about Lotus Pier and Yunmeng yet carefully avoiding to confess anything more substantial beyond the information already released for the other provinces to know, about the many types of flowers available in the markets and how spicy the cooking there, if there’s one thing the Cloud Recesses have to concede to us measly humans, that’s our ability to whip out dishes you will actually want to consume instead of a bowl of bland nutrients.

 

The so-called Xiao Yue listened every single word with the awed mien of a court official writing down the Son of Heaven’s decree, and that was yet another reason to mistrust him. He was a smidge too interested, a bit too impressed for one with his supposed background. Sure, he was sturdily and humbly dressed for traveling, but his claims that he wanted to pass the Imperial exams betrayed his origin, even a lowly rice-farmer wouldn’t dare to entertain such a fanciful ambition, not when studying involved so many books to buy and read. And these books weren’t cheap to begin with.

 

When the black-dressed cultivator grunted it was quite the ambition, the outlander casually admitted he didn’t truly believe he would succeed but he nonetheless thought the attempt would teach him what priorities a proper leader was meant to display in their rule over their estate, be it grand or small. Jiang Fengmian made impressed noises with his mouth while his eyes glinted with cool calculation.

 

Cangse Sanren wasn’t saying anything, in spite of being the one who invited the so-called Xiao Yue to join their party. She hummed low in her throat as she guided her donkey with a firm hand, the beast appeared to loathe their guest as it screamed at his face and tried to kick him in the chest, a blow that would have felled a helpless mortal by shattering the ribcage.

 

Animals generally had good instincts around threats. Sometimes they could feel earthquakes a shichen before they broke the countryside in twain, sometimes they would turn mad and irate as a hungry ghost was lurking in the neighborhood.

 

So, it was a lot of good reasons for Wei Changze to keep his hand on the hilt of his sword. Still, if it came to a fight, the so-called Xiao Yue appeared fully able and willing to give him a hard time, forcing the Jiang cultivator to work for his victory. That was a man who breathed fighting as casually as air, and Wei Changze idly wondered what lineage would produce such a scion. Even the most martially-minded general would take years before reaching that level of confidence in his own abilities, and the outlander was too naive to be one of these Immortal Masters enjoying eternal youth through their potent golden core.

 

He had his suspicions, and he didn’t like them very much. Still, he would abstain from voicing them loud – because he just might be wrong, the world was just insane sometimes and you needed to keep an open mind if you wanted to avoid humiliation or death. And because he didn’t know how enhanced the outlander’s audition was, so trying to warn Jiang Fengmian and Cangse Sanren could potentially trigger a disaster.

 

Jiang Fengmian could take care of himself, Wei Changze left on several night hunts with the Sect Heir and they always came back alive and barely scratched at a few opportunities, but Cangse Sanren ? The maiden might have been apprenticed to an Immortal Master as infamous as she was secluded, but she lacked the temperament of a warrior. She would be vulnerable, the so-called Xiao Yue would view her as a weak link, a possible hostage – a cultivator was meant to protect these people who couldn’t protect themselves for one reason or another, people who trusted their strength to watch over them.

 

Cangse Sanren trusted him from the first moment she laid eyes upon Wei Changze, when he was soaking wet and busy swallowing his tongue in front of her beautiful eyes. How could he ever consider disappointing her ?

 

She trusted Wei Changze and because of that, the black-robed cultivator had to keep her safe above fighting the outlander, no matter how much the prospect tickled his fancy, no matter how many times he heard the blades whistling through the air in his dreams.

 

Wasn’t that funny ? For years, Jiang Fengmian had worried about his martial brother’s taste for battle, fretting over the possibility of it overriding his survival instinct when the function already was barely existent for the commoner-born cultivator, who had nothing but his battle prowess to pride himself in since he had no name or family to smile at him. And in less than six months, this unknown maiden stumbled in his life, as bright and colorful as fireworks in the night, and she completely overturned him without even wanting it so.

 

Maybe Jiang Fengmian could be something beyond a peerless cultivator. She certainly made him feel that way, when she was around him. As if she was holding a door open, on a vast and foreign country, eagerly expecting for him to take her hand and go with her, to become somebody entirely different yet wholly himself at the same time.

 

Maybe that was love, looking at yourself through someone else’s eyes and discovering unexpected wonders.

 

Maybe.

 

 

Chapter 113

Cangse Sanren wasn’t an idiot, no matter Wei Changze’s opinion on her mental abilities. Alright, maybe it was a smidge too annoyed, he did genuinely respect her knowledge of herbs and creatures and her dedication to gather more information about this, but it nonetheless was obvious he didn’t trust her to be more than a ditzy, endearingly naive intellectual.

 

That was vexing. It was sweet when you suscribed to the whole patriarchy deal, men having supreme authority over their womenfolk – which is… there was no words to plainly explain how deeply nonsensical the theory of that was, women could be fucking scary and you didn’t need to look further than Master Baoshan for that. She was terrifying and she was smart and any man believing he had the right to command her merely because he was born with a dick would be swallowed in very short order.

 

So yeah, Shen Yuan didn’t think they were a major supporter for this patriarchy thingy, and if Wei Changze was one, that was just tragic and he needed an intervention as soon as possible. The huli jing would devote several decades to unbrainwash the poor handsome guy if that was the price to pay – fortunately, Wei Changze wasn’t the kind to complain when you called him on his mistakes, he would strive to avoid repeating them so that was one step in the right direction ! Now he had to be made aware that his attitude was potentially trouble down the line…

 

Anyway, Cangse Sanren wasn’t an idiot. Obviously she could see their new travel companion wasn’t human at all. Poor dude, he was doing his best but from his speech and behaviour, the huli jing guessed he hadn’t been prepared at all for a trip in the Middle Kingdom. That reeked of a demonic youth wishing to leave the house for a little while and find some excitment in the neighbourhood next to his usual dwelling.

 

Alright, so Cangse Sanren might also qualify for this description. But ! A-Yuan did the homework ! He pestered Niang and his uncles and aunties and all the newest arrivals on Zhengmei Mountain for details on human towns and customs, and Niang actively coached them through different situations that just might happen – a lot of them tended to be scary, Niang really had a very frightening imagination – and zhe even read these weird etiquette books busy gathering dirt on the higher bookshelves, the place where you carelessly dropped books and scrolls you liked the least because it was too dry or barely understandable, so Shen Yuan had been ready to face a whole new realm when they left the mountain.

 

Obviously Xiao Yue didn’t do anything of that. He looked like the kind of wealthy scion who barely bothered to study until the exams were almost upon him, because he trusted in his natural brilliance to keep his head above water. Cangse Sanren wasn’t impressed – sure, natural talent helped a lot, but if you didn’t care to polish your skill then you would swiftly flounder and stagnate at the same level, or somebody might spring a nasty surprise by coming at you from a hidden angle and you would be very sorry and deeply flustered as you were dropped in the shitter with such strength it sucked you all the way up to the armpits. Then you had to swim back to the bank, covered in crap. Yeah, not funny, that.

 

Lucky for Xiao Yue, he was curious as a monkey. And he didn’t throw a fit when Wei Changze lost his patience with his endless questioning and snapped at him – that implied he belonged to a distinguished lineage, if he was so powerful, so secure in his strength, that he wouldn’t take offense to a human cultivator not being respectful enough for his taste.

 

Another point hinting at him hailing from a powerful bloodline was the fact he blatantly struggled with boundaries. He wouldn’t take the gentle hints that the Young Master Jiang would casually slip in conversation, that the purple-clad cultivator wouldn’t pursue this line of inquiry, no really, that’s it , and sure, maybe Xiao Yue was only displaying bad manners because he was a gadfly who enjoyed putting other people ill at ease or because he didn’t listen to the etiquette teacher or because demon etiquette was an entirely different beast when compared to human etiquette, but.

 

When the first day of their shared travel came to an end, their little band started to put the encampment together, Wei Changze leaving in a huff to hunt a poor unfortunate critter for the stew pot and Jiang Fengmian going to check if the river near would be alright for laundry, and Cangse Sanren was left alone with Xiao Yue. Of course, she wasn’t truly alone, as she knew Wei Changze would immediately fly to her rescue if she screamed, but it was enough privacy for Xiao Yue to decide he was entitled to question her.

 

« So, what is your tribe ? »

 

Cangse Sanren blinked.

 

« And how is that a concern of yours ? »

 

Because it really wasn’t. Sure, a demonic lineage could tell you so many things about the fighting abilities, the loyalties and the way of life, but demons generally weren’t subtle, they would be happy to break your back for showing off and they would gladly ignore you if they had no need for you. So they didn’t care about investigating tribes, except as a brief fancy.

 

Also, Cangse Sanren was huli jing. Niang and Master Baoshan had been very insistent that it was absolutely forbidden for a-Yuan to admit being one, even if you are drowned in a barrel of horse piss, do you hear ?

 

Xiao Yue stared at her weirdly, as if she just insulted his ancestry on eighteen generations to be fucked in the ass by a rabid hedgehog confusing their butthole with a burrow, his brow furrowed in annoyance.

 

« I have asked you a question » he slowly drawled.

 

« And I refuse to answer » she calmly fired back. « Do you actually believe you have power over me ? »

 

Xiao Yue had opened his mouth a bit too hastily, a bit too arrogantly for the answer to be anything but a blunt yes , and who would say that unless they were born into wealth and influence ? Anyway, he thought better of it and bit down on his tongue until Young Master Jiang and Wei Changze came back from their respective chores.

 

That should have been the end of it. Yet it wasn’t, as Xiao Yue would sometimes ignore Young Master Jiang’s amiable conversation in order to poke at Cangse Sanren, wondering out loud about her, where she was taught cultivation, if she wasn’t missing her family too much. It sounded simple and casual, and it was everything but.

 

Cangse Sanren flat-out refused to answer him back, petting her donkey or cheefully commenting on a flower growing near the path, and sometimes Wei Changze would indulge his chauvinistic indoctrination by growling and claiming she had no wish to be harrassed, what a darling.

 

She had no intention to answer, ever. Let him learn some frustration, let him understand the world couldn’t always revolve around him in spite of the wealth and influence a lineage and personal skill might afford him. That was good for the soul.

 

Truly, somebody unable to realize their whims wouldn’t be constantly fulfilled after growing older than two years old would be quite the disgusting character.

 

 

Chapter 114

Xiao Yue couldn’t help it – the woman, Cangse Sanren, was the most intriguing person he ever met, and he just had to poke and prod at her.

 

She was so entirely different from the demonesses that could be found in Luo Binghe’s palace, some of them giving themselves airs of wildness and independence, some of them playing the aloof and self-centered card, yet all of them ultimately bowing down to the man who didn’t deserve the title of Sacred Ruler.

 

He asked Sha Hualing once, the Saintess who sometimes acted as Luo Binghe’s most bloodthirsty warhawk and general, why would she bother with such a boorish, unworthy lout, and she stared at him with empty eyes and a crooked smile.

 

Because he can kill me if I displease him ? Oh sorry, I forgot Junshang is a gentleman , he loathes killing women, as if it makes a difference for the corpse. Cunt or dick, a corpse is a corpse at the end, all that’s left is the wailing of the ones who used to cared for them.

 

Sha Hualing occasionally shared Luo Binghe’s bed, but everyone could see she wasn’t in love with him, far from it. Everyone could see she would be among the first people to cheer and rejoice if the Heavenly half-breed was finally devoured body and soul by his cursed blade Xin Mo, before going to pay her respects to her once-lover’s grave and repeat the news.

 

Xiao Yue couldn’t remember the name of the spider demoness who had been his mother’s faithful attendant, Luo Binghe had forbidden for her memory to haunt the Palace’s halls out of sheer spite for having being an accomplice to the Empress’ disappearance. If the young Heavenly Demon exerted tremendous effort, he would be rewarded by the glimpse of a fangy smirk, long-fingered hands so careful as they handled his preteen body in the throes of illness or a temper tantrum, maybe the echo of a voice, but that wouldn’t go further. She was gone, following her mistress in the darkness of oblivion.

 

Yet another sin to lay down to Luo Binghe’s feet, the careless destruction of the pillars keeping Xiao Yue’s world stable and grounded, leaving the young Heavenly Demon cold and alone and looking for a pale imitation of the women he used to know, only to get disappointed again and again.

 

Xiao Yue had only met demonesses greedy for the power and influence they would wield if they could snag Luo Binghe’s dick long enough to get pregnant and pop a potential heir to the throne – their wretched hopes had been crushed again and again, the miracle that saw Xiao Yue and his younger brother’s births in short succession unique to the lost Empress, and it was well-known that Luo Binghe was a fickle, uncaring prat who would barely notice a third offspring long enough to throw them at the nearest battlefield until they got killed, then he would entirely forget their existence.

 

Sometimes, these demonesses would make a play for him , as he was a young Heavenly Demon who blatantly despised his sire to the point of murder, and the opportunity to become the new Empress was quite the glittering one. Xiao Yue had rejected them every time, as their naked greed gave him the urge to puke, and because they couldn’t see beyond killing Luo Binghe and crowning him the Sacred Ruler – they saw nothing but themselves surrounded by finery and luxury, their every whim catered and pampered into uselessness as long as they fluttered their eyelashes and said the right words…

 

Cangse Sanren didn’t care about fluttering her eyelashes. She said words Xiao Yue had been rather displeased to hear. She plainly stated she wouldn’t give him power over her, that he never had power over her to begin with, in spite of the faint whiff of demonic qi clingling to her pristine robes and her veiled hat. She only paid attention to this measly human in black garments, this Wei Changze who was unmistakeably gifted for one hailing from the Human Realm yet couldn’t reach the same heights as a scion of the Heavenly strain no matter how many centuries he cultivated his golden core.

 

Xiao Yue couldn’t help it, he was mesmerized by her behaviour, by the way she wouldn’t even care to acknowledge him. For the better and the worse, he was used for the Demon Realm to notice him, for Luo Binghe’s vassals to warily eyeball him as they wondered if today would see him attempting a palace coup, for demonesses to beg for a single crumb of his attention.

 

Cangse Sanren glanced at him with the icily dispassionated eye of a porcelain afficionado deeming a piece unfit for their exacting standards. It was maddening and confusing, this unexpected happenstance in which someone looked at you and blurted you are not enough before proceeding to continue with their life, crushing you further with the plain evidence you were unsufficient to gather further notice.

 

It was maddening and confusing and it lit a bonfire deep inside Xiao Yue’s innards, the dark craving for these quicksilver eyes to brighten in awe as they looked at him , for this woman to think she might have dismissed him too swiftly after all, perhaps he was worthy of her, perhaps he had always been worthy and she judged him hastily, but that was fine, a mistake was forgiveable and he was a merciful lord for a demon.

 

Several demons at Luo Binghe’s court would have sneered at Xiao Yue, if they had been present to witness this latest development in the young prince’s travels. They would have derided him as a fool and a dumbass, pining after a blatantly uninterested woman when throngs of perfectly tasty demonesses would throw themselves at the Heavenly scion in the Lower Realm, if only he gestured at them to come and serve him.

 

Xiao Yue would hurl the accusation of foolishness back at them. Now he understood, a woman who could be swept off her feet with a mere gesture, with mere gold or promises, wasn’t a woman worthy to be conquered.

 

And conquer Cangse Sanren he would. Xiao Yue would slowly but surely awe her as he learned everything he needed to know to reform the Lower Realm and slaughter Luo Binghe as the pig he was, he would dazzle her with the brilliance of his ambition and farsightedness, he would seduce her through the low cunning of a Sacred Ruler who wasn’t hungry for yet another warm body to add to the tally of his concubines but truly coveted a strong-willed Empress to rule besides him.

 

Xiao Yue’s mother had been strong enough to rule in spite of her husband’s absence and her seclusion in her quarters. Xiao Yue would honour her by picking a woman just as strong to be her successor to the mantle of Empress.

 

Obviously, her infatuation with Wei Changze presented quite the snag for this wonderful future to become a reality but that was fine. Some competition spiced life, and the black-garbed cultivator was the lesser option – he was doomed to be weaker as a consequence of his species and his meridians not being from good stock, and he was a servant to Lotus Pier, unable to provide a bride from Cangse Sanren’s merits the lifestyle she rightfully deserved. No matter their tribe, demons were attracted to power and Cangse Sanren was a demon.

 

Yes, she would slowly fall out of her childish crush for Wei Changze. That was fated.

 

Chapter 115

Xiao Yue expected the confrontation. It was a tedious yet unavoidable part of courtship when one was interested in a woman as beautiful, as strong-willed, as peerless as Cangse Sanren was – throngs of suitors did gladly duel and sabotage each other in the past, to be granted the honor of showcasing their fitness to be taken as a husband to the maiden who enticed their minds. Why Mobei-jun’s great-grandmother had almost brought ruin upon the Northern Mountains, since men and woman wouldn’t stop warring with each other to gain her attention – forcing her to bring all the clans to heel and claiming she would only marry the one able to wrestle her into submission.

 

The Ice Princess had died happily unwed, in spite of producing a score of brats who didn’t inherit her devastating beauty, allowing the Northern Mountains to rest and recover from the conflicts.

 

And that was Mobei-jun’s ancestor alone – demon records were brimming with such stories, war and battle unleashed on the Lower and Middle Realms for the sake of love. So the Heavenly scion had been expecting for his infatuation to be noticed and deemed worthy of taking umbrage, that was part of the natural process of things.

 

What was surprising to him, was that Wei Changze wasn’t the one to bring him away from the encampment in order to talk – no, it was Jiang Fengmian, his purple-clad, higher-born travel companion and wasn’t that a doozy.

 

Unless he was in love with Cangse Sanren too ? That was a reasonable possibility, after all. Who could blame the human cultivator, when it was so easy to fall for the maiden in white ?

 

Jiang Fengmian’s mien was as blandly polite as his usual – well, usual when he interacted with the Heavenly scion. He was much more animated – if subdued – when adressing Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren, likely because the black-garbed youth was his servant and because of the maiden’s qualities.

 

« Young Master Xiao » the human cultivator gently hummed as a start, « we might have to discuss an important matter. »

 

« We just might » Xiao Yue cheerfully agreed, wondering if the man would attempt to gouge his eyes first or tear him into halves with his sword – he would fail, obviously, since demon regeneration was nothing to sneeze at, but that would be so interesting an experience !

 

You couldn’t truly know people until they were launched in a battle for their life. Then you would behold their bravery or cunning or distasteful cowardliness – diplomacy could be useful, but there was something to say about life or death circumstances that couldn’t be compared to paltry words.

 

Jiang Fengmian sighed.

 

« Love will make a fool from the wiser man to dwell beneath the Heavens, and it will unleash the worst calamity upon a peaceful kingdom. Lan Qiren of the Cloud Recesses told that in one of his lectures. It’s… a smidge extreme... »

 

« It’s entirely truthful » Xiao Yue answered back, fully empathizing with the white dragon’s point of view.

 

« Also that. Since Young Master Xiao is unafraid of facing cruel truths, then I shall be frank with him. Cease to pursue Maiden Cangse. »

 

A grin pulled at the Heavenly scion’s lips, lighting his face with a somewhat hungry and impish expression.

 

« This one certainly won’t » he casually declared.

 

The purple-clad cultivator raised an eyebrow.

 

« She has made her lack of interest quite obvious » Jiang Fengmian insisted, not one to stumble at the first hint of stubborness from his opponent.

 

« Because we are strangers to each other still » Xiao Yue said with the confident arrogance of a highborn son who always got what he wanted at the end. « Give us some time, and her eyes will be open to everything I can provide her, everything she will achieve if only she chooses to entrust her heart to me. »

 

The eyebrow raised even higher, almost disappearing in the neat hairline of Jiang Fengmian. A purplish gaze scanned the Heavenly scion’s faded and stained garments, obviously considering him delusional, yet retaining a degree of wariness. How many stories started with a Heavenly Official or a powerful spirit hiding their glory under a wretched disguise to challenge human compassion, after all ?

 

« And what if she beholds everything you offer her, and nonetheless decide to not choose you ? » the human cultivator pondered.

 

Xiao Yue laughed. It was a laugh coming from the belly, the kind of huge, thundering hilarity unleashed by someone uttering something so entirely outlandish you didn’t have any choice but peeing your pants, maybe choke a bit as you couldn’t breathe properly from chuckling madly.

 

When the laughter died, Jiang Fengmian was staring at Xiao Yue, and his gaze was filled with – was that pity ?

 

The Heavenly scion blinked. Never had anybody looked at him this way – with seething resentment and hatred, certainly, with unbridled greed and lust, too many times to remember, even indifference in spite of how recent this one was, but pity  ? Who would dare to believe one hailing from the most potent and ancient demonic strain to plague the Three Realms, one raised in luxury and grimly bent on shaming the man who sired him by ascending as the most glorious ruler born to demonkind, would deserve such a feeling ?

 

« She won’t choose you » Jiang Fengmian softly declared, his voice gentle and unyielding as a river slowly running towards the sea. « Cangse Sanren has entrusted her heart to one man, and this man isn’t you or me. »

 

A puff of annoyance unfurled beneath the Heavenly scion’s ribcage, only to dispell itself just as swiftly as it appeared. Wei Changze was no obstacle, no genuine hindrance – at the most, he was a distraction for Cangse Sanren, a nice plaything she would soon discard when she would understand how truly unable to satisfy her it was. What was the point in envying the man for the present, when the future would belong to Xiao Yue ?

 

« Unlike the rumors spread by theater and yellow novels » Xiao Yue haughtily commented, « a first love isn’t forever. Indeed, it only serves to lay the ground for the next love, a love guaranteed to last longer than a fumbling initial attempt at feelings. »

 

« It may be so » Jiang Fengmian muttered. « The thing is, Cangse Sanren really doesn’t like to listen other people’s opinion, no matter what they have to say. She’s one to follow her own path. »

 

« Anyone will follow the path with the most to obtain at the arrival » the Heavenly scion argued, tiredness looming over his thoughts as this measly human just wouldn’t understand how right he was and stubbornly languished in his shortsightedness.

 

The purple-clad cultivator snorted, a very incongruous noise for the well-mannered highborn heir of Yunmeng.

 

« Are you really, genuinely sure your opinion on a delightful prize to obtain and Cangse Sanren’s are one and the same ? »

 

« This discussion is leading nowhere » Xiao Yue concluded. « Unless you wanted to annoy me into beating your face to force you to keep quiet, so in that case I would praise your effort as it’s working towards a successful conclusion. »

 

« Far from it » Jiang Fengmian demurred. « This one shall free Young Master Xiao, and pray for him to find enlightenment in the matters of love. These can be quite thorny and awful, you know. »

 

Xiao Yue barely hears the last sentence, since he already was leaving swiftly towards their encampment.

 

 

Chapter 116

« If there’s anything bothering you, you know you can tell me ? »

 

Ah, Wei-ge looked so cute, awkwardly scowling as he was staring over Cangse Sanren’s shoulder, his hands behind his back in order to hide their fidgeting. The huli jing helplessly smiled.

 

« There’s nothing wrong I can see in my life right now » she said. « Especially when Wei-ge is filling my view, and what a view it is ! »

 

The black-clad cultivator’s complexion turned a fiery crimson blush, red and pink as sunset creeping beneath his robes’ collar and invading his hairline and earlobes. That was sweet, but crimson and scarlet would suit him much better if only the pigment was splattered all over his garments – no, not because he just murdered somebody, more like bridal couture you know ?

 

Gosh, the bride he would pick would be so lucky, and Shen Yuan definitely envied them because that was Wei-ge who was strong and gentle and entirely wonderful so yeah, there was a lot to envy.

 

« Are you certain ? » Wei-ge insisted, his voice steady in spite of his brand-new broiled lobster chic, and now the fox spirit was frowning.

 

« I am starting to think you are the one having a problem and doing your best to ignore it by projecting on me » zhe bluntly guessed, with all the tact they could muster but really, how were you supposed to talk about that without hurting feelings ?

 

Wei Changze twitched and the pouting angle of his mouth got even scowling. Right in the bullseye, it seemed.

 

Cangse Sanren patiently waited. It was just like he wanted for his Niang to hug him in spite of the older huli jing explaining they were tired and why are you so clingy anyway, you are a big kid now and shouldn’t be that eager for my apron strings and come there, won’t you, don’t strangle me by accident when you latch on my neck.

 

Niang’s hugs were worth all the waiting, and it was very good practise for the future.

 

« This… Xiao Yue » the Yunmeng martial cultivator ultimately sighed, the words dropping from his lips as if they physically pained him. « I – mislike the way he’s looking at you. »

 

The huli jing snorted, loud and wet and entirely undignified as they petted her donkey’s flank, the beast snacking on a spot of dark green clover and thoroughly ignoring the two-legs having a conversation, as animals were wont to do when engaged in serious matters such as sleeping or scratching their back on tree bark.

 

« Is that it ? » Cangse Sanren inquired. « Because I mislike his attention too, but that’s not like it’s a major problem. »

 

Wei-ge openly grimaced.

 

« It might become one in the next month. This person doesn’t look like someone who ever got refused anything no matter the context. »

 

The fox spirit rolled their eyes.

 

« Honestly, I cannot bring myself to care. I mean, that’s not a very nice thing but the world is a big place, and Master Baoshan and Mama warned me it’s impossible to love or even like everyone you meet, and they were right, I suppose. Xiao Yue is a very polite young gentleman, and his goal to attend the Imperial exams is praiseworthy and I wish him all the luck under the Heavens for the endeavour, but I am not invested. He’s… am I allowed to say meh ? He’s making me go meh inside. »

 

A veiled-hatted head tilted, quicksilver eyes shining bright as they focused on the black-clad young man standing in front of their owner.

 

« He’s just not you. Wei-ge certainly isn’t meh . »

 

« Cangse Sanren » the martial cultivator stressed. « What if he tries something you deem distressing ? »

 

« Then I shall relieve him from his tongue and his hands, maybe his eyelids and his ears if I am pissed off to the point I wish for him to suffer a slow and nasty demise from dehydratation while flys are eating his eyeballs » the huli jing casually declared. « Are you reassured now ? »

 

Wei Changze kept grimacing.

 

« Oh, you worrywart. What was this event Young Master Jiang wanted to attend ? The Immortal Alliance Conference ? Cannot remember if that’s a tournament or something else for young dumbasses to beat each other black and blue with their swords... »

 

« It’s a monster hunt, actually » the black-clad young man corrected and the huli jing gasped in sheer want.

 

« Alright, we definitely need to be there, so many critters to admire ! And since it’s a public event, there will be a lot of cultivators, right ? Big names and not so big ones in the jianghu, and the ones that believe themselves big when they have nothing but hot air to blow ? »

 

« The attendance rate is more than acceptable. It’s hosted by the Huan Hua Palace, and the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks never miss the opportunity to bring less than a small army of Disciples to compete. »

 

Apple Blossom started to lick Cangse Sanren’s qiankun pouch, obviously convinced she was hiding some treats within.

 

« Stop that, you’re only succeeding in drooling all over my purse. Ah, this goddamn arse, one day I will sell you to the butcher, and you will be quite sorry to never have been so obedient that I would have chosen to keep you in a nice little meadow for you to enjoy old age. Anyway, the attendance rate for the Conference. Xiao Yue will be surrounded by cultivators, several of them able to casually trample him by batting their eyelashes, he shouldn’t start trouble unless he’s entirely devoid of brain and anyone wanting to undergo the Imperial Exams is far from stupid. »

 

Wei Changze snorted.

 

« You are confusing intelligence with wisdom. He just might be that prideful, or that spiteful, to disdain the potential consequences. »

 

« Then he can suffer these potential consequences » the huli jing fired back. « It’s a lesson everyone must endure, and I am not emotionally invested in him to the point I am going to lose my head and protect him from his damn stupidity. Especially when there’s monsters in this Conference. »

 

« You and your monsters » Wei Changze sighed. « Sometimes, this one ponders over Maiden Cangse’s interests and priorities, and he’s still unable to understand them. »

 

« Well, that’s okay, I guess » the fox spirit hummed. « We have all the time in the world to deepen our mutual understanding of each other. I mean, if you want this. For us to try forever. »

 

Ah shite, what the heck was she saying ? It sounded so much like a yellow novel and her heartbeat was jackrabbiting in her throat, fever hot and deafening.

 

Wei Changze blinked at her. Suddenly his expression was shy, almost hesitant, the kind of lonely reverence you would feel in the very early hours of the morning in winter, when the light is grey and blurry, when speaking would break the spell interwoven with the very silence of the world awakening.

 

« I think I would like that » he quietly said. « Forever to try to get to know you. »

 

Cangse Sanren’s heartbeat wasn’t deafening anymore, but it definitely stuttered.

 

 

Chapter 117

Jiang Fengmian couldn’t claim he was very familiar with the Immortal Alliance Conference – after all, this was a gathering aimed for the Great Sects and they deemed the quaint little clan dwelling in Yunmeng far too new and untested to deserve their attention, far too linked to the mundane world instead of focusing on enlightenment, wait five centuries and ask again, please and thank you.

 

Jiang Fengmian personally suspected one Immortal Master or several had been relieved from a treasure or two by the founder of the Jiang lineage – who happened to think piracy was a fine hobby indeed, until he settled to build Lotus Pier with his ill-obtained gains and raise a brood of children who later did their best to bring more respectability to their surname, but generations later it still was a work in progress.

 

Still. Maybe the purple-clad young Heir couldn’t afford an invitation to participate to the trials and win the adulation of the masses, but he certainly could afford to be a curious witness to the events, just like his companions. The Immortal Alliance Conference certainly opened the doors wide to anyone hungry for spectacle and ready to spend a few taels or spirit stones – say whatever you wanted about the Huan Hua Palace, they loved wealth and they knew how to accumulate it, that was impossible to deny.

 

Xiao Yue had been rather thoughtful when Jiang Fengmian had spoken the name of the Huan Hua Palace, as the Sect tasked to organize the tournament and the trials and the prizes. Apparently, he had heard of the unfortunate affair that befell them decades ago, when Tianlang-jun lusted after First Disciple Su Xiyan and a war broke over his assault of her.

 

By contrast, Cangse Sanren hadn’t. A consequence of being raised in isolation, Jiang Fengmian concluded while the pristine-clad maiden loudly expressed her shock and horror as Wei Changze related her all the gory details of the war that saw Tianlang-jun sealed beneath Bailu Mountain for the low price of a small pile of cultivator corpses. Obviously the black-clad young man could wax poetry about the gruesome battle as if he was present for the fighting, his descriptions nauseatingly vivid in the sheer level of precision they reached, Wei Changze was passionate about every single opportunity of bloodshed that unfolded in the latest couple of centuries, be they against the barbarian hordes in the east, pirates in the sea, peasant rebellions or demons invading.

 

Leaving his travel companions engrossed in their historical re-enactement for the pleasure and instruction of a sheltered maiden, Jiang Fengmian went to inquire about how the week would proceed, and to book some seats near the tournament grounds instead of waiting outside the walls for news to be heard in the mouths of people specifically trained for this.

 

If the weekly program was easy to obtain, the seats were another thing entirely – the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect contingent decided to bring what appeared to be half of their entire Disciple population, mostly since the Qiong Ding Peak Lord was coming and what a surprise it was, even a small lineage such as Yunmeng Jiang was aware that the Xuan Su Sword mourned still – people were unclear on the matter of his loss, some claimed it was a dearly beloved mistress, a few insisted it had to be a very close blood relative like a father, but Yue Qingyuan’s mourning was obvious and impossible to soothe, the man refusing to leave his Peak for almost two decades now.

 

So for him to move, in a public setting no less, it likely was an hint that his depression was on the mend. Or maybe his subordinates were growing desperate and dragged him to the Immortal Alliance Conference to provoke a reaction, which would be somewhat rude yet understandably tragic, the purple-clad cultivator would reserve his judgement until he could gather more facts.

 

And because the Cang Qiong Sect Leader was in attendance, a great deal of more or less important figures in the jianghu rushed to the Conference in the hopes to pull some politics without having to wait several months for an audience or being stonewalled and stuck discussing an agreement with a measly secretary – alright, that didn’t matter if the secretary was competent at their job, but for a few highborn souls it rankled somewhat fierce to be deemed unworthy of the Sect Leader’s attention.

 

Yeah, these seats on the inside were quite hard-won. Jiang Fengmian haggled for a shichen at the very least, and he departed with a promise of him and his companions standing at the back in the audience but that was nonetheless something, and since they were cultivators it wasn’t like they would feel truly uncomfortable from not being able to sit down.

 

On the other hand, Cangse Sanren might just plead for Wei Changze to carry her on his shoulder, because she was absolutely ridiculous and didn’t care a wit for the prospect of making a scene as long as she got whatever she wanted. And Wei Changze might just consent to her wish, as he was thoroughly ensnared by her charms, that was plain as daylight.

 

Watching the hunt for monsters would be a good distraction from the ongoing romantic drama unfolding in their little band, the purple-clad cultivator mused. If Xiao Yue was too distracted by the bloodbath and the awe-worthy stunts of these distinguished youths aiming to bring glory to their Masters and Sects, he wouldn’t try to court the pristine-clad maiden who had eyes only for Jiang Fengmian’s sworn brother. That would be a relief for everyone, reading that kind of tale might be endlessly amusing for some quite silly people but nobody liked being stuck living it in real life, surely, unless you were fond of mental torture and that generally hinted you needed urgent help in order to not wind up a danger to society and yourself.

 

Fortunately, not even Cangse Sanren was that much of a weirdo. She merely was obsessed by monsters, and Jiang Fengmian could already hear her talking his ears off about the monsters unleashed in the Jue Di gorge to be tracked down and slain by the competitors, while lamenting the beasts being gruesomely slaughtered for prestige instead of being left alone in the countryside to do as beasts were wont to do – he literally could hear her, busy launching herself in an energetic tirade as the two healthy and fearless young men besides her started to look like stunned hamsters that just took a dive from the roof to land on a hardened soil head first.

 

Well, the historical re-enactement seemed to have come to an end, it was time to gather the survivors and stop their misery – which the young Sect Heir did by offering for their party to enjoy some refreshments, we walked for hours and then we stood just as long under the hot sun, it will do a lot of good to all of us, what do you say of that ?

 

Cangse Sanren pouted.

 

« I was about to deliver my main argument » she complained as she obediently followed her companions. « It would have convinced Wei-ge for sure ! »

 

« Let’s agree to disagree » the black-clad youth quietly answered to that opinion, and the maiden hummed low in her throat to mark her agreement.

 

« Everyone there comments on brash young cultivators facing dangers and threats in the arena » Xiao Yue commented on a tone mixing irony and tiredness, « why is no one watching for threats in the audience ? »

 

That was a good question indeed.

 

 

Chapter 118

Wei Changze wasn’t lost. His tracking skills would allow him to find his travel companions when it would be time for the main event to start and for the audience to squeeze themselves into the seats reserved for them if they were lucky, or to stand on their tiptoes in the meager hope that they would manage to see above the heads of the people surrounding them to get a glimpse of the wide crystalline panels showing what happened within the Jue Di gorge.

 

So far, it seemed their little band would be stuck with the commoners. Wei Changze couldn’t help being bothered by the prospect, as he unfortunately was aware of the numerous obscenities and crude behaviours men would allow themselves when their blood ran hot as they witnessed violence and drank a cup too much of strong wine – and picturing Cangse Sanren in the middle of such a crowd… it would only be a matter of time until somebody attempt to be lewd towards the pristine-clad maiden, and the Jiang cultivator couldn’t trust himself to remain undisturbed and serene at this moment, not when she was disrespected thus.

 

A righteous cultivator should protect the weaklings and the innocents, the ones lacking the means or the resolve to defend themselves. Cangse Sanren certainly was rather far from being weak, but her sweetness couldn’t be denied, and Wei Changze refused for it to be trampled by a wretched drunkard who didn’t care to keep his tongue in check.

 

So he was roaming around, looking for a place that looked somewhat decent – or a good escape road for when he would fling Cangse Sanren on his shoulder and storm away from all these human-clothed pigs drooling after her, that would be nice too – bumping shoulders with bystanders busy discussing with each other or placing their bets on the future bloodshed in the gorge or the potential winners, and alright, he might have went a smidge too far from his initial position, the clothes started to get wealthier and showier, he should backtrack…

 

« Gege ?! »

 

No, he wasn’t lost. He merely needed a moment to get his bearings back, then he would find his way to his comrades – he was pretty certain this watchtower had been on the far right when he was separated from Jiang Fengmian as the Sect Heir bargained for a written report of the event’s program with a servant…

 

«  Ge !  »

 

Somebody latching on his elbow – Wei Changze stiffened, his spar-honed instincts roaring to life under his skin but it was supposed to be a safe event, it would be stupid for a cutthroat to attempt murder when they were swimming in well-trained cultivators with so many weapons on their person, so don’t punch, don’t kick, just turn around and look at the fucker’s face –

 

Well, the woman was hiding her face behind a veil. Wide dark eyes above the delicate gauze, staring at the black-clad young man as if he was a ghost who escaped from the infamous furnace on Tonglu Mountain that occasionally spat Calamities to be unleashed on the Middle Kingdom. Pink and purple robes in a style somewhat familiar – wait, wasn’t that the emblem of Xian Shu Peak from the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect hanging at her belt ? And a rather fancily carved one in mutton fat jade, so the veiled woman likely held an important rank in the sect.

 

Ancestors, the commoner-born Jiang Disciple really hated having to make nice with higher-ranked people, they always managed to give him a slimy feeling and it was a pain and a half to make it pass afterwards. But that wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter, she jumped on him as a starved mangy dog on a broken bone.

 

« Greetings to the esteemed Maiden » he coldly and politely saluted her. « Do you wish for this one’s assistance ? »

 

She kept staring at him, and he firmly repressed the grimace pulling at the corner of his lips. As gently as he could – she was a maiden, if she screamed and kicked a fuss for a reason or another, Wei Changze would immediately get flagged as a criminal and potential rapist and he had no wish whatsoever to ruin his day with that kind of hysterics – the Jiang Disciple lifted his hand in order to unlatch her fingers from his elbow, leaving the slender digits hanging in the air.

 

« It’s improper for a maiden to have physical contact with one as low as myself, when this one isn’t even a retainer to her household. »

 

A small gasp made the veil flutter, the pained wheeze of a dying soul who had just noticed the blade thrown deep in their heart. Sweat was beading on Wei Changze’s nape and it itched, he just wanted to get away from the woman before a well-intentioned soul noticed the weird drama between them and decided it needed for some intervention.

 

« Wei-ge ! Wei-ge ! »

 

Cangse Sanren was bouncing on her feet as she was approaching him, and it was improper for a man to lay hands on a maiden when he was unrelated to her but seeing her coming to him, the quicksilver of her eyes glittering and lit up by her bright smile, Wei Changze couldn’t help himself.

 

His hands found her waist, and her hands found his shoulders. Her body was warm as she pressed herself against him, warm as her joyful expression.

 

« Found you, Wei-ge » she chirped.

 

« Hm, you did » he acknowledged.

 

« Young Master Jiang wonders if you got lost in the Jue Di gorge because you wanted to kill the monsters yourself instead of leaving them to be slaughtered by a bunch of kids unable to peg the difference between a knife and an hairpin » she commented.

 

He rose an eyebrow and she giggled a bit, obviously stricken by the ridiculous picture – the black-clad cultivator might enjoy fighting, but he wasn’t that desperate that he would steal the opportunity for mere children to hone their bladework. That would be pathetic, and not the funny kind.

 

« Were you making friends instead ? Please do introduce me ! »

 

The radiant smile turned towards the purple and pink-clad maiden – who stood still, the stillness of dark waters filled with the seeds of a plague killing its victims in a flood of tears and puke and blood, her dark eyes flatly hostile above the gauze veil.

 

« Shen Qingqiu » she said, and the name was thoroughly unfamiliar to Wei Changze’s ears.

 

(it sounds like the name of somebody he ought to offer an apology, he doesn’t remember why, but he thinks he did that person a disservice he will never be able to erase by saddling them with the consequences of his own foolishness, and that’s not right, making another one to pay for a sin they bear no responsability for)

 

Cangse Sanren blinked.

 

« Who ? »

 

« You know very well who I am talking about » the purple and pink-clad maiden insisted. « Stop putting a front. »

 

Wei Changze snorted, bringing the focus of the two women back on him.

 

« Cangse Sanren is the most genuine person to have been born in the Middle Kingdom, and you are calling her a liar ? » he carefully uttered. « Truly, the Immortal Alliance Conference is a place of wonders and surprises, but this one doesn’t think me and my companion will enjoy them much longer. Please forgive us for the inconvenience... »

 

He was softly pressing down on Cangse Sanren’s waist, an hint they were about to go, find Jiang Fengmian and leave him all these exhausting politics as he was the one trained to handle the social scene, only for the unnamed maiden’s composure to crumble on the spot.

 

«  Wait  » she pleaded, her voice wavering. « Don’t – please, just… may this one introduce you to her Shizun and her Shibo ? They – they will be able to explain better, so much better, all the answers you want. But don’t go. I beg of you. »

 

Now that she was on the verge of sobbing, obviously they couldn’t go, Wei Changze mused with a heaping dose of bitterness, aware of his lack of personal status, and Cangse Sanren had no status either in the greater jianghu, both of them helpless in the front of everything the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect would hurl at them for making one of their members upset.

 

Nothing to do but follow her and pray for this farce to end soon.

 

 

Chapter 119

First Cangse Sanren attended the Cloud Recesses’ lecture to gain access to their library of bestiaries and herbal compendiums, only to stumble headfirst in a friendship with Madam Lan. Now she attended the Immortal Alliance Conference in order to ogle the monsters and critters brought as part of the trials, only to get dragged alongside Wei-ge in front of the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect’s Peak Lords.

 

Was that the beginning of a pattern ? Was an Heavenly Official eyeballing her as the main character of the fate they were currently weaving ? Because the young huli jing would like to submit a complain, zhe didn’t enjoy that at all, it was so bad for hir tummy and hir nerves, think about their quality of life ruined by the stress of rubbing elbows with powerful, entitled people who got upset when you accidentally trampled all over the etiquette in their general surroundings !

 

Unless Wei-ge was the target, since this weird lady in pink and purple bothered him first, and seemed to get pissed at Cangse Sanren as some afterthought ? By the way, thank you Wei-ge for glaring at Pink Maiden, maybe she didn’t have to like Cangse Sanren’s face – she would have changed it if that was so upsetting but cultivators generally mistrusted shapeshifters and the fox spirit wasn’t stupid so – but she didn’t have to be rude about it, really !

 

Rudeness was quite upsetting when you were on the receiving end, so Cangse Sanren might have latched on Wei-ge’s arm to comfort themselves, and Wei-ge refused to shake her off because he was a very nice young man, and if Pink Maiden was glancing at them while she guided them towards the Peak Lords’ private box for the event, well, too bad for her if she was jealous, but Cangse Sanren wasn’t sharing. Especially not a wonderful treasure such as Wei-ge, and especially not with such a displeasing woman !

 

« This Liu Mingyan begs for her Shizun’s understanding » Pink Maiden declared as they entered the private box, « but she stumbled upon something these esteemed Peak Lords would deem of high interest. »

 

Cangse Sanren was listening with half an ear, focused on the array of characters lounging around the box as she was – there was a man with a weird hat speaking with a dude whose muscled arms were covered with old burns and scars, and this rodent-like man in the corner had a startingly icy qi that didn’t seem entirely human, and there was a woman wearing ornate pink and lavender silks busy pinching her mouth and frowning at the maiden who brought them here, and also…

 

There was a man sitting where everybody else was standing, and he looked kinda sickly ? His dark hair heavily streaked with white, his black and dark grey robes giving him some bulk but from the gauntness of his hands and his face, he couldn’t have a lot of meat on his bones actually, and you could have stuffed a fully grown elephant in the dark bags beneath his eyes. Why would anyone force that poor man to attend a public event instead of leaving him at home to rest ?

 

These dark, exhausted eyes bruised with purple turned in her and Wei-ge’s direction – and widened .

 

Cangse Sanren blinked. Who was Xiao Jiu ? It was the name whispered when the sickly man opened his mouth as he stared at her, like a dying soldier holding his guts in his hands would look at the physician swearing to put him back together, better than new, you will see.

 

Everybody was staring at her and Wei-ge now, likely because of the sickly man’s reaction, or because the Pink Maiden summed up her disastrous meeting with them. The black-clad Jiang cultivator was blatantly grimacing right now, but he nonetheless remembered to be polite as he bowed his head low, as befitted a common-born cultivator, and Cangse Sanren swiftly mimicked him.

 

« Greeting to the esteemed Masters » Wei-ge intoned, doing his best to sound awed and honored but only managing to betray how eager he was to fuck off very, very far away from their current company. « This one is Wei Changze from Yunmeng Jiang, and with me is Cangse Sanren. »

 

Cangse Sanren smiled, doing her utmost for the expression to appear gormless and ditzy, nothing like that for people to avoid you and sure, they were Peak Lords from the most powerful and revered Sect in the jianghu, but Wei-ge felt uncomfortable in their presence so she wouldn’t force him to remain a single fên more than needed to satisfy the etiquette.

 

« Well » the rodent-like man with his icy qi uttered, « Liu-shizi certainly brought us an interesting quandary. »

 

A weird note in his voice, Cangse Sanren couldn’t say if he was amused, annoyed, freaked out or ungodly pissed off. Maybe he was all that at once, feelings could be complicated.

 

« Mingyan » Pink and Purple Annoyed Lady said, as she eyeballed Wei-ge like if she couldn’t believe he was real, « are you sure… ? »

 

« Yes » Pink Maiden snapped back, an hint of desperation in her tone, « I am. Don’t you think I would know, since we actually shared so much ? »

 

Wei-ge twitched, uneasy, and Cangse Sanren frowned because it sounded like an angry, spurned highborn lady who couldn’t accept her lover lost interest in her, and it was suspect since Wei-ge blatantly wanted as less as possible to do with the nobility, and when a highborn person with the power to whip you bloody or turn you destitute or gruesomely kill you if they disliked your answer wanted to be in a relationship with you, it certainly was deeply iffy on the matter of consent.

 

If Pink Maiden – Mingyan or somewhat – wished to reduce Wei-ge to her boytoy, Cangse Sanren would claw her eyes out. Fuck the rules about interactions between nobility and commoners, she deserved the agony and punishment and the huli jing wouldn’t be sorry in a thousand years.

 

Alright, zhe might be slightly on the edge. Just, the way the sickly man was staring at them, it was weird and a smidge offputting.

 

« Ah » he breathed out, or rather wheezed and would he stop being so pitiful, please, Cangse Sanren was struggling to hold on her mistrust by her fingernails, « would… the name Shen Qingqiu be familiar to the young Maiden Cangse ? »

 

Qingqiu , the huli jing never heard before, but the Shen surname ? And he called for somebody named Xiao Jiu earlier, and Mama used to be Shen Jiu , but still…

 

« It depends » the huli jing decided to evade. « Who’s asking ? »

 

« Yue Qingyuan » the sickly man answered. « Formerly known as Yue Qi, but not really wiser since he took another name. »

 

Wait. Yue Qi  ? Just like…

 

« Qi like Qi-ge ? » Cangse Sanren blurted. « The dumbass street brat who once puked two days straight because he ate a bunch of rotten melons ? The starving urchin who shrugged off jumping in a cold river because his temperature was fever hot no matter what, and that was nice when you didn’t have a blanket in winter because you could snuggle with him ? »

 

Wei-ge was eyeballing the huli jing with a mildly horrified mien, and all these fancily dressed cultivators in the box ran the gamut of outraged expressions, while the sickly man – Yue Qingyuan – was the very picture of a prisoner thrown in a dark hole for several decades, now released and watching the sun rise for the first time in many, many years.

 

« You know me » he breathed out.

 

« Fuck me sideways and call me a golden monkey » Cangse Sanren gaped. « You are my uncle  ?! »

 

 

Chapter 120

It was absolutely exhausting, trying to keep on living when your beating heart was ripped out of your chest and nobody around you would even care about that.

 

Obviously, Yue Qingyuan quietly resented his martial siblings for their behaviour – for dropping the search for Shen Qingqiu, for barely putting on a show of mourning, for whispering it wasn’t a great loss anyway, Shen Qingqiu was known to be cruel, Shen Qingqiu was known to be arrogant, Shen Qingqiu was known to be an all-around awful specimen of human being, and who would want to be saddled with such a person as your fellow cultivator longer than strictly necessary ?

 

That was all they saw, Shen Qingqiu being cruel and arrogant and awful to them, without ever wondering if he was more than all that. If he ever was more than they saw, if he might be hiding the deepest parts of himself from their gaze.

 

Of course they wouldn’t want to know, especially following the unfortunate incident in which Liu-shidi lost his life. Yue Qingyuan resented them nonetheless, and he resented them even more for not letting him quietly slip in a qi deviation and allow his dantian to collapse and turn this sad, pathetic sword playing to be human in melted steel and a disgusting meat slurry.

 

They wouldn’t allow him to die, because he was the Qiong Ding Peak Lord, their so-called Sect Leader – Shen Qingqiu used to be the Qing Jing Peak Lord, their foremost strategist and brilliant mind, wasn’t that important too – and so they dragged him to this Immortal Alliance Conference, in the hopes to show him the Sect was doing well under his guidance, so they still needed him.

 

As if Yue Qingyuan wasn’t delegating three quarters of his duties and paperwork nowadays. He wanted to bitterly chuckle, but that would require more emotional investment than he was ready to give.

 

Yet in hindsight, that was a great idea. Because Liu Mingyan – silly girl never moved beyond her brother’s demise, and in spite of her burning loathing for Shen Qingqiu whom she deemed guilty even if he didn’t strike the fatal blow, Yue Qingyuan found a nugget of understanding and sympathy in his soul for her, both of them stranded in the depths of mourning without an exit road and that was a sad commonality but it was a common point – brought back two people, and it was obvious why she would be interested by the black-clad young man with the too pretty face and the stony mien, but the maiden latched on his arm…

 

Eyes not poisonous green but just as poisonous a quicksilver shade, peeking at her surroundings from beneath a wide-brimmed veiled hat, her expression wary and far too innocent instead of a haughty pout or stern wrath at the sheer idiocy of mankind, but the way her hair would escape her coiffure to gently stroke her cheek, the delicate wrists hidden by the snowy sleeves, the shape of the nose and the mouth…

 

It couldn’t be a coincidence. It just couldn’t be, and Yue Qingyuan was choking on hope, barely able to whisper his inquiry, praying for anyone in the Upper Realm who might hear to have mercy on his wretched soul…

 

And these quicksilver eyes lit up and shone, the mouth opening to shout half in bafflement half in childlike glee :

 

« Fuck me sideways and call me a golden monkey, you are my uncle ?! »

 

Uncle, she would call him uncle, and for all the martial siblings forced upon him when he ascended as the Qiong Ding Peak Lord, Yue Qingyuan would never acknowledge but one person as his sibling for everything they survived together, and that was Xiao Jiu.

 

Xiao Jiu. Shen Qingqiu. Had lived, when everybody claimed he surely died.

 

Xiao Jiu had lived, to produce a child.

 

Xiao Jiu had a child, and his daughter was standing right there, latched on the arm of a young man whose features were too much alike to Liu-shidi, whose qi burned too much alike Liu-shidi’s, to not be Liu-shidi reborn and wasn’t that a great joke the Heavens played on them all, Liu Qingge’s reincarnation and Xiao Jiu’s daughter apparently being so comfortable with each other, but Yue Qingyuan would happily laugh because she was there, she found her way to Cang Qiong by sheer hazard, and she was nothing less than beautiful.

 

How could she not be ? When she was the walking, breathing, living evidence of Xiao Jiu’s continued survival, and if she knew these tales of his wretched youth in the streets with Yue Qi, then he had been comfortable enough to be open and candid with her – he had been content , and for Xiao Jiu to be content and safe was the only thing Yue Qingyuan could ask.

 

And maybe he had been unable to ensure Xiao Jiu’s safety and happiness when he still dwelled on Qing Jing Peak, a fact it was impossible for him to deny, but now that Xiao Jiu’s daughter was there, no matter what she wanted, no matter what she asked of him, Yue Qingyuan would give to her. Anything, as long as she told him.

 

She was Xiao Jiu’s daughter. How could he not provide for her, and cherish her, and ensure Cang Qiong would be safe for her to visit if such was her whim ? He didn’t know if she even nurtured a desire to join a Sect, her life was a complete mystery to him and that stung, but that could be fixed, the Immortal Alliance Conference was meant to last one week and it was the first day still, he could extend an invitation for her to take tea with him and they would speak together.

 

Would she bring Liu-shidi’s reincarnation with her ? As a maiden, one who didn’t belong to Cang Qiong, raised outside a Sect, naturally she would be reluctant to spend time alone with a man, older and in a position of power over her, she would want somebody she already trusted to watch her back just in case.

 

If Liu-shidi had retained his stubborn loyalty and refusal to admit when he was beaten or facing dangerous odds after been reborn, then he was the perfect protector for her. Yue Qingyuan was… happy, yes, he was happy for them to have found each other. Did Xiao Jiu know already, for his daughter and Liu-shidi’s reincarnation ? Ancestors, if he didn’t, then it would be absolutely memorable a scene and Yue Qingyuan wondered if he wished to witness the disaster or huddle in a cave somewhere at the other side of the country.

 

Was it possible for him to be reunited with Xiao Jiu ? He wanted – he wanted so badly to see the other man’s face once again, he wanted it more than anything, he wanted it so much more than when he had been a stupid, dumb Disciple eager to burn the steps and who only succeeded in getting imprisoned in the Lingxi caves for too long, so long that the opportunity to save Xiao Jiu was wasted when he finally emerged anew.

 

Maybe he would die without this last blessing, but really, one shouldn’t be too greedy. Yue Qingyuan had been gifted with the wonderful opportunity to meet Xiao Jiu’s daughter, and he wouldn’t exchange that for all the treasures in the world, for all the wisdom in the Three Realms.

 

She was standing there, and none of the marvels birthed by the Middle Kingdom were half as beautiful as her.

 

 

Chapter 121

Shang Qinghua really disliked it when life decided to throw a surprise at him, since every single time it happened it would keep him awake at night and ripping his hair out because of the extremely unwanted consequences.

 

Alright, the consequences of him selling himself and his services to Mobei-jun’s mood swings were keeping him awake at night for an entirely different reason – and the An Ding Peak Lord still felt baffled over the situation he currently was living, but hey, as long as it netted him some privilege and less beating, why not indulge ? The fact was, in order to wind up in said situation, Shang Qinghua had been forced to suffer a hurricane of crap and he didn’t care for the experience very much.

 

The current situation ? It was so much worse, and it embodied very much Shang Qinghua’s justifications to dislike surprises.

 

Because Shen Qingqiu – the vanished Qing Jing Peak Lord, the missing Empress of the Lower Realm – had managed to spawn again, and now this spawn was grown enough to come bother the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. Well, if you asked Zhangmen-shixiong, it was no bother at all, the man looked more alive than long before Shen Qingqiu’s disappearance, but everybody gifted with eyes had been able to see how weirdly attached he was to the haughty scholar in spite of their infamously tense relationship.

 

For Shang Qinghua, it certainly was a major bother, especially if he was right in suspecting the other parent of the spawn to be a hopelessly nuts and blood-crazed Sacred Ruler, who still wasn’t over his Empress running away a bit less than two decades ago, the An Ding Peak Lord was unsure of how many years exactly since time tended to slip between one’s fingers after you cultivated a golden core and stretched your lifespan over two or three centuries.

 

Luo Binghe would be extremely interested to learn the existence of a third heir to his throne by his Empress – wait, screw that, Luo Binghe didn’t care about ensuring his kingdom’s continued wellbeing and survival, he would rather be interested by the possible lead to Shen Qingqiu’s whereabouts. As for the spawn herself… well, it was a very open-ended question.

 

Considering the Heavenly Demon scion’s complete dismissal and scorn toward his sons no matter what they did, Mobei-jun’s human spy would bet his Peak’s yearly budget in spirit stones that he wouldn’t spare a thought for a daughter either, once she would have served her purpose of reuniting him with his forcibly wedded spouse. Indeed, the Sacred Ruler’s treatment of women was quite appaling most of the time, and Shang Qinghua spoke his opinion as a man hailing from a land in which women could be lawfully imprisoned in a single courtyard their whole life without anyone deeming it shocking.

 

No, that would be the major players at court, these ambitious lineages and clans that hungered for more influence or stability and felt bitter and disappointed about Luo Binghe not providing one or the other, that would be the most desperate to lay a claim on a female offspring of the Sacred Ruler – seduce her, put a brat in her belly, and you would have a Heavenly Demon-blooded heir to the throne raised by their paternal family and ready to enact their agenda on the Lower Realm, and that could be as much of a good thing as a deeply bad idea, it depended on the planned agenda.

 

For this reason, Shang Qinghua seriously considered hiding the existence of the female spawn to Luo Binghe. Maybe he would reveal her to Mobei-jun – because you could never be too well-informed, you could never have too many secrets hoarded in the waiting of the right opportunity – but Luo Binghe ? After Shen Qingqiu’s glorious escape from his clutches ? After all these years the half-breed spent displaying how utterly unfit he was to rule, or even to cultivate on Cang Qiong ?

 

That would be scarily easy to do so. After all, the Sacred Ruler was hell-bent on finding his missing Empress, publically known to be a huli jing. He wasn’t looking for a human cultivator named Shen Qingqiu, and nobody in the Lower and Middle Realms both were supposed to stumble upon the connection beyond Luo Binghe, since the Heavenly Demon scion had kept his spouse secluded in a heavily guarded and isolated wing of the Palace, claiming it was for the Empress’ safety.

 

Shang Qinghua learning the Empress and Shen Qingqiu were one and the same had been an accident, something he was alone to know, something he confided to no living soul. So him being introduced to Shen Qingqiu’s daughter at the Immortal Alliance Conference, well, it was an entirely human matter, wasn’t it ? Surely the Sacred Ruler had no reason to bother with such measly news, as he abandoned and discarded any tie he formerly had to the Human Realm in order to focus on his demonic inheritance.

 

The more Shang Qinghua pondered the option, the more he liked it. Luo Binghe left wallowing in the dark as the weight of his own deeds’ consequences crushed him, while the An Ding Peak Lord was free to observe the third heir to the Lower Realm and learn everything he could about her – good or bad, no detail would escape his attentive gaze, nothing would be discarded as unimportant and unrelated to his information-gathering.

 

Right now, the two details that mattered were Zhangmen-shixiong immediately taking a fancy to her – and the gears were clinking beneath the skin of his skull, if Yue Qingyuan’s health took a turn for the better, what would it mean for Cang Qiong’s influence and power in the jianghu, what would people say about him fawning and doting over a maiden who was entirely outside his sphere of control – and her being accompanied by a young man who blatantly was Liu Qingge’s reincarnation.

 

This latter point was a thorny bush, not only because it was Liu Qingge being reborn – Shang Qinghua for the life of him couldn’t regret the brute’s demise, not after all the collateral damage he had been expected to fix and reimbursate – but because reincarnation as a rule was a blade lacking a hilt, as Wei-shixiong was fond of claiming.

 

A reborn soul could soothe past grievances, or it could tear them open. You couldn’t know, not before facing the reincarnation and presenting them the facts and waiting for their reaction, good or bad.

 

Liu Qingge’s gruesome and unexplained death had struck a heavy wound on Cang Qiong’s functional inner relationships, since another Peak Lord had been heavily suspected of doing the deed yet had never been properly investigated or outright condemned. That wasn’t the kind of disturbance one could expect to heal cleanly, in a few years – it would be the constant work of a lifetime, at the very least.

 

Liu Mingyan certainly wasn’t acting like she put the past behind her. And from the way she was staring at the black-clad young man, her wound was about to be torn open and expel an ungodly flood of puss for everyone close enough to be splattered.

 

Now, how would the reincarnation act ? Since he seemed rather close with Shen Qingqiu’s daughter, while he wasn’t behaving as if Liu Mingyan was somebody he held dear to his heart… oh boy.

 

There would be fireworks, from the brand that burned your hands when you weren’t dropping them immediately after lighting it, and Shang Qinghua needed to map these exit roads for yesterday.

 

Yes, there was a good reason why he disliked surprises when they were sprung unto him.

 

 

Chapter 122

Wei Changze struggled to register the apparent reality that Cangse Sanren, who giggled and flirted too much after a few cups of wine, who would clean a ruined shrine because she felt bad for the deity meant to dwell there, who threatened to shave a white dragon’s goatee for upsetting her, was linked to the most powerful Sect in the jianghu – to their Sect Leader himself, currently busy staring at her as if she bade the sun to rise in the morning.

 

It was a smidge unbelievable, and also caused a pinge of hurt somewhere between his ribs, near the heartbeat because – well, highborn maidens tended to deem him Jiang Fengmian’s faithful pet more than his martial brother, and Cangse Sanren wasn’t like that at all, but with such tremendous connections, would they try to influence her ? Would they insist that she was far too good for the likes of him, that she ought to aim higher, instead of wasting her time sighing after a servant in all but name ?

 

(she doesn’t care about that, a whisper deep in his thoughts attempts to reassure him, you know she’s far too stubborn to allow customs and traditions and people upholding them to sway her opinion when she’s truly determined)

 

(yes but that’s an entire society against her, a society ready to grant any of her wish)

 

(and since she met you, her only wish was to stay besides you, don’t you remember that)

 

Still, he would rather wallow in fright and uncertainty about their future together, the possible crumbling of their plans to keep traveling through the Middle Kingdom, than afford the maiden in pink – Maiden Liu, that was it – a tiny hint of attention, otherwise she would pounce on him and this prospect thoroughly unsettled him.

 

The way she stared at him, he just wanted to hide behind a wall or a screen. Something that would be a barrier between his flesh and this flensing glare, searching for what, he had no idea, but it felt like she wouldn’t hesitate to rip the meat and the muscles from his bones, to break his bones in order to get a glimpse of the marrow, in her maddened quest.

 

Wei Changze enjoyed hunting, and because of that he was aware that sometimes, you would accidentally disturb a big, dangerous predator, and the next best plan after not dying was to put as much distance as you could between you and the beast. Unfortunately, with the Sect Leader apparently charmed by Cangse Sanren, she wouldn’t leave before a while in order to be polite and he refused for her to be stranded alone in unknown territory.

 

The man with the cloth hat and a truly stupid mustache was approaching him, his mien gentle and very deliberately so, as if he was handling a spooked rabbit.

 

(seriously, that mustache, a thought coming from nowhere poked at the back of his mind, it didn’t suit you before and it still doesn’t suit you now, what in the Eighteen Hells are you thinking)

 

« Wei-qianbei » the man politely greeted, « this one is Mu Qingfang from Qian Cao Peak, and I would like to commiserate with you on the truly unexpected turn this day has taken without even a warning for us to prepare. »

 

Wei Changze couldn’t help the amused snort. The healer – Qian Cao was renowned for producing physicians and surgeons so skilled the Imperial court enlisted a great deal of them when they completed their studies – was fancily complaining, but the black-clad youth absolutely empathized with the feeling.

 

« At least bring him some plum wine before bellyaching » the former discussion partner to the healer said – and from the scarred, powerfully muscled arms, the sturdy apron carelessly worn over startingly plain hemp clothes, he seemed to be some kind of blacksmith. « Wei Qingwei, by the way. »

 

« Any relation ? » the rodent-looking man in the corner pondered, his dark eyes flittering between his martial sibling and the Jiang-affiliated cultivator as they glittered with a blatant craving for information.

 

« Don’t think so » Wei Changze answered. « A peasant doesn’t need a surname, but when I was taken in by Lotus Pier, they slapped me with Wei as the province because one of the hallmasters went there on a visit. Thought it was a nice place, so why not. »

 

If asked for his opinion on such an arbitrary naming, the black-clad youth would shrug and refuse to complain. It might not be poetic or impressive, but that was his surname, a surname he earned through his cultivation prowess and one he wouldn’t disparage as a consequence.

 

« A peasant ? » Maiden Liu echoed, her voice filled with some hard-to-name emotion, it didn’t sound like distaste but on the other hand, it wasn’t exactly enthused either.

 

For fuck’s sake, let her conclude she couldn’t care for a man unable to name more than two generations in his family and that it would be much better for her to find another toy. Let her be just as much of a snob as so many others walking in the same circles as Jiang Fengmian…

 

Shite, Jiang Fengmian had to be worried, it already was too long for Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren to go on a walk, what was he thinking right now ? Add to that Xiao Yue to wrangle on his own, and the black-clad youth just wanted to apologize a lot to his martial brother. Fuck, what would do the trick ? Any monsters able to provide good loot to improve cultivation had been already captured to be thrown in the Jue Di gorge for all these Disciples to make a spectacle of themselves in front of their Sects…

 

Would Jiang Fengmian enjoy an introduction to the Cang Qiong Mountain’s Peak Lords ? With their Sect Leader obviously fond of Cangse Sanren, that would be so easy to obtain one, surely the Qiong Ding Peak Lord would wish to know more about her travel companions. Well, it would mean giving the same access to this Xiao Yue, and Wei Changze wasn’t sure it would be a good idea, that man was far too smart for everybody’s sake but if he was handed an opportunity to sate his political ambition on a silver platter, he just might relent in his unwanted pursuit of Cangse Sanren.

 

Maybe Wei Changze ought to push him at Maiden Liu, Xiao Yue certainly behaved as one who was born into privilege and couldn’t even picture losing this privilege one day, and with one of her own kind ready to claim her attention, surely Maiden Liu would swiftly forget a poor, lowly cultivator from another, much modest Sect, and both Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren would freely breathe and relish in their utter lack of persistant suitors.

 

Or maybe Yue-zhangmen would take a look at the strange young man who insisted to court Cangse Sanren when she obviously wanted for him to pull back and harass somebody else, and he would choose his newfound niece’s happiness over a possible political union ? Wei Changze couldn’t say, he only heard bits and pieces about the man, mostly regarding his bad health and his almost complete seclusion on his Peak while his subordinates were handling the Sect’s matters in his stead, but he gave off this feeling of… spinelessness when one dear to him was begging for a favour ?

 

It wasn’t very nice, but fortunately nobody around could read Wei Changze’s mind.

Chapter 123

Obviously Shen Yuan never lacked in family, growing up on Zhengmei Mountain with all these orphans and street urchins serving as so many siblings eager to tease and pamper on a whim, those of them who aged enough becoming aunties and uncles who enjoyed scolding and bestowing their wisdom on anyone not swift enough to scamper away in time, and Master Baoshan was this weird mix between a snarky grandmother who saw too much of the world to be surprised by any new event and a drunken auntie encouraging you to mess up and be an idiot because it was more fun that way and life was too short to waste your time in lamentations.

 

And there was Mama, couldn’t forget Mama when he was a major pillar of Shen Yuan’s world with his constant presence, his elegance and his unyielding stance – just like precious jade smoothed and sanded down by time instead of human craftsmanship. Mama who sometimes mentioned an older brother, when he was commenting on a new street urchin being brought to Zhengmei Mountain, an older brother Yuan’er thought dead long ago since every time the younger huli jing directly asked about Qi-ge, Mama went deaf until it was bedtime at the very least.

 

So Yuan’er couldn’t learn anything about Qi-ge beyond tidbits of childhood tales, and as there was no mention of a grown Qi-ge, that was easy and logical to conclude the boy who used to be a big brother to Mama had perished from illness, because winter had frozen his shivering body dead in a barn somewhere or because he drank from a spoiled well, or because a noblemen disliked having a starving wretch ruining his day by begging for alms and stomped the annoyance beneath his horse’s roofs.

 

Except that Qi-ge didn’t die – sure, he looked like he wasn’t healthy at all, but sickly wasn’t dead ! Big difference ! And he was somebody powerful in a major Sect of the jianghu, when taking in account the fancy clothes worn by everyone present in Cang Qiong’s private box, talk about going from rags to riches, that was the stuff of a fairy tale !

 

Wait until Cangse Sanren went back to Zhengmei Mountain and explained Mama his big brother from the gutter was safe and sound, that ought to be a riot ! Mama surely would lose his composure for once, and maybe he would insist to immediately visit Cang Qiong and compensate for the lost years, that would be quite nice.

 

Especially if Qi-ge – sorry, Yue Qingyuan, this dignified gentleman in regal robes of black and dark grey with lavish silver thread embroidery deserved more respect than being slapped with such a childish nickname – if Yue Qingyuan’s health couldn’t recover. Surely Mama would deserve the opportunity to say goodbye ?

 

In the meantime, Cangse Sanren would thoroughly relish her newfound uncle, and he seemed rather giddy to have a nibling too, as he was smiling to her – it wasn’t wide, you couldn’t see the teeth, but his eyes glittered and sparkled like stars reflected on the ocean at night, and that meant he was happy since when you smiled in spite of being unhappy inside, your eyes would be dull and flat.

 

People should be happy more often. Their eyes were so much prettier then.

 

« You smile just the same as Qingqiu-shidi » Yue Qingyuan was claiming, and Cangse Sanren ducked her head to fight a blush.

 

« Forgive me if I cannot see the likeness » the Pink and Purple Annoyed Lady snarked under her breath but frankly, any cultivator’s sharpened hearing would pick up her voice so if she wanted to be subtle then she ought to keep her opinion to the safety of her thoughts, « considering Shen Qingqiu was patently unable to express joy. »

 

Now that was rude, and untrue. Mama could and did feel happiness, but he wasn’t the kind to show it loudly. Like a morning glory flower, when you weren’t paying attention, you would miss the flower in blossom and you would have to wait next morning for another opportunity to behold the lovely sight.

 

Wait, did this annoyed and annoying lady speak as if she already met Mama ? But Mama never implied he had been aware of his Qi-ge surviving to become a revered Master cultivator… maybe the annoying pink lady went on a mission somewhere in the countryside, and her path crossed Mama’s there for a while, enough for them to keep a bad memory from each other ?

 

But Yue Qingyuan called Mama Qingqiu-shidi , implying Mama had been part of the same Sect as him and all these fancy cultivators ? Why would Mama choose to leave and raise Yuan’er on Zhengmei Mountain, there ?

 

Maybe Mama decided he didn’t care for the annoying pink lady snarking at him anymore, and wasn’t interested in giving her access to Yuan’er. That would have been a miserable childhood for sure, growing up saddled with an auntie who wouldn’t stop quarrelling with your mother.

 

Still, why was Cangse Sanren hesitating ? What was this strange foreboding in her gut, one whispering that the situation was a thoroughly tangled and thorny bush for her to unravel and expose the dark innards to the light ?

 

Zhe had no idea, and zhe found that extremely unpleasant.

 

So much more unpleasant than the pink annoying lady. Fortunately, she and the girl also wearing pink and purple that caused Wei-ge to be upset seemed to be alone in forgetting their manners to indulge their bitchiness – most of the cultivators were doing the polite blank face Cangse Sanren started to associate with politics courtesy of Young Master Jiang pulling the same expression as he discussed other Sects and the government, the blacksmith and the physician with the dumbass facial hair were quietly frowning, and the rodent-like man with the icy aura appeared focused .

 

Was he pondering the same questions as her ? Cangse Sanren couldn’t help her gaze lingering on the small – for a cultivator – man, and he minutely twitched as he stared back for a fên, his eyes dark and slippery as frosted rock when you were climbing a cliff and your fingers just couldn’t latch on the grisp that would save your life from an imminent death by falling over several hundreds li in height.

 

It was but a glimpse, barely a moment, a fraction of a moment, before the smallish man in his plain beige and pale yellow robes broke the eye-contact, a muscle shivering and pulling at the corner of his lips as if he just remembered the funniest jape ever and had to bite his tongue since nobody but him and maybe Cangse Sanren would be able to understand it.

 

Curiouser and curiouser.

 

The huli jing decided zhe would have to investigate this man later, he was a riddle taunting her and zhe very much wished to poke at him until answers fell down from his lips or his pockets, zhe wouldn’t be difficult on their origin as long as she obtained them.

 

Or maybe Yue Qingyuan would provide the answers instead, but Cangse Sanren wasn’t feeling very comfortable with the prospect of using the poor man to indulge her curiosity when his interest in her was completely pure and innocent, that seemed rather exploitative and ungrateful and her skin itched worse than when she hadn’t shifted in a while, because people were weird on the matter of shapeshifters.

 

Wait, did Yue Qingyuan know about Mama ? They were childhood friends so he had to know, right ? Since Mama didn’t have the mishap ruining his shapeshifting yet at the time.

 

Cangse Sanren would have to wait for them to be alone in order to check.

 

 

Chapter 124

Wei Changze desperately wanted to focus on the current discussion, now revolving around Cangse Sanren’s supposed father, Shen Qingqiu.

 

The maiden in white looked very innocent, a carefully studied expression the black-robed young man saw her don more than once when they were guests in the Cloud Recesses, and somebody was complaining about being pranked. Unless you were familiar with her, you wouldn’t realize there was a thread to spot.

 

Why would she look like that, when she obviously was at ease with the Cang Qiong Sect Leader as they exchanged memories and tales about said Shen Qingqiu ? Was she aware of a secret regarding the man, or might something else suggest a discrepancy between the parent she remembered and the martial sibling Yue Qingyuan was remembering ?

 

(hearing them talk about this person, seen through two different lenses yet nonetheless painted as loving and kind if stern and aloof when one hadn’t earned his trust, Wei Changze feels a weird pang deep inside his gut, the longing for something he might have enjoyed and yet never got because he was too stupid to go and search for it)

 

(would Cangse Sanren agree to introduce him to her father, so far he was perfectly content to picture both of them only in a future barely formed in his mind, but a man isn’t an island, what if she wants to share a bit of her happiness and newfound companionship with her family that would be logical and reasonable, what would the man say as he meets Wei Changze, this insolent youth who dared to grow attached to his daughter)

 

(Wei Changze thinks he should offer an apology, and it feels deeper than merely offending a father’s sensibility by charming his daughter)

 

Still, as weird and suspicious as Cangse Sanren’s expression was, her cheerful chatter to the Qiong Ding Peak Lord – she now was sitting right besides him ! And she was holding his hand because she claimed it was good for the soul ?! Wei Changze was a lowly commoner and he almost fainted from the shamelessness and willful rejection of property – was perfect to divert Maiden Liu’s attention, even if said attention was entirely negative, the female cultivator in pink and purple growing more and more furious the more she heard. In spite of veiling her face, she was startingly easy to read.

 

Things came to an end when Cangse Sanren regaled Yue Qingyuan with the tale of her childhood community – and she carefully avoided naming the place, sure it might not be named to begin with, it happened with so many tiny hamlets far away from the major centers of civilization – bestowing upon Shen Qingqiu the title of most benevolent scholar to have cultivated in the Middle Kingdom and how he blushed when the surprise was sprung unto him, so sweet…

 

«  Sweet  ?! How dare you to call this filthy murderer sweet or, or benevolent ? How can you !  »

 

Cangse Sanren startled, her hand twitching on Yue Qingyuan’s wrist, and the sickly man suddenly gained a much more fearsome aura as he stared down Maiden Liu who was too busy shivering from repressed wrath to pay attention to the intimidation factor.

 

« Mingyan » Qi Qingqi hissed as she laid her fingers on her Disciple’s shoulder, « it might not be the appropriate moment... »

 

Maiden Liu roughly forced her shizun to drop her hand from her garment, the wrinkles on her silken veil pointing at her teeth grinding behind the cloth barrier.

 

« No » the pink-clad young woman outright snarled, « she doesn’t get to spread lies about this man , not after what he did ! »

 

« … What happened ? » Cangse Sanren quietly wondered, blinking dazed eyes, uncomprehending of this unexpected show of aggressiveness, and Wei Changze reflexively tensed, readying himself to jump on Maiden Liu if she physically assaulted the maiden in white.

 

(a righteous cultivator shall defend one helpless when a threat is looming, a righteous cultivator won’t raise a hand against a maiden pure and innocent but protect her from anyone wishing her harm)

 

(that’s what he thinks a cultivator ought to be, since he was old enough to have an opinion on the matter, to actually understand the word cultivation , and perhaps he was thinking that long before he was born in this current existence)

 

« He murdered my poor brother, how’s that for your oh so sweet and benevolent Shen Qingqiu ! »

 

Cangse Sanren blinked again, now sharing a baffling resemblance to a hen stumbling upon a lacey ribbon and wondering why in the Eighteen Hells mankind would go and invent such a silly thing.

 

« He didn’t do that » she blandly declared, her tone flat just like she had heard it was raining candy and a flying whale was serenading the Son of Heaven while juggling rainbow ducks.

 

Maiden Liu turned a nasty shade of crimson, one that sorely clashed with her pink and purple attire.

 

« He came out of the Lingxi caves covered in blood ! » she howled. « Dragging my gege’s corpse behind him ! How do you call that ? »

 

« I don’t know, a fucking tragic accident ?! »

 

A pin dropped in the complete and utter silence that just befell the private box.

 

Cangse Sanren wasn’t the one who talked. Wei Changze was breathing loudly, his blood roaring in his ears and his throat, silvery black moths fluttering at the edge of his sight, he was so mad that he would have torn a tiger barehanded, fuck his weak golden core.

 

Maiden Liu hiccuped, staring at him as if he betrayed her in the cruelest way, as if her entire world was crumbling because of him, and he couldn’t bring himself to give a shite. Not when she was creeped him out, not when she was harassing a kind soul who didn’t do anything to deserve the vitriolic scorn spat at her.

 

« Ge ? » she uttered, barely a whisper for Wei Changze in his rage to ignore.

 

« It was nothing but a stupid accident » he hurled at her, his voice ringing with the deafening clang of truth , « and if your brother couldn’t avoid falling victim to a qi deviation, don’t blame the man unlucky enough to be stuck with him at the moment of his death ! How does that make sense, huh ? »

 

The rodent-like man in his corner – was the fucker grinning ? A smidge unhinged, but mostly he gave off the impression that he wanted to burst out cackling and snack on melon seeds while he was enjoying the free drama.

 

Wei Changze breathed out, his heartbeat spitting burning lava in his bloodstream.

 

« Get out » he managed to spit between his gritted teeth. « Get out if you have no intention to apologize, because I have never raised my hand to a maiden and I am not stomping on my principles for the likes of yours, not today, not ever. »

 

The pink-clad young woman made a step back, her eyes wide and growing wetter, before fully pivoting on her heel and running out of the private box, her Shizun immediately following behind her.

 

« Well » the blacksmith commented in a mildly wavering voice, « no need for the spectacle in the arena, we have so much of it there. »

 

Mu Qingfang eyeballed his fellow Peak Lord with blatant judgement. Wei Qingwei refused to move a single muscle in contrition.

 

« Changze ? » Cangse Sanren softly called, her quicksilver stare shining and glistening. « Thank you. »

 

The black-clad young man felt his anger vanish, as if it never existed at all.

 

« You’re very welcome. »

 

 

Chapter 125

Shang Qinghua was desperately busy repressing the mad giggles struggling to erupt from his throat and horrify everybody else in the private box, since that was the kind of demented cackling a deeply bloodthirsty evil cultivator would make as he was about to drown a baker’s dozen of wide-eyed orphans in a vat of acid for amusement purposes.

 

Well, that was how the majestic asshole would describe it. Mobei-jun could have a startingly colourful vocabulary when he wasn’t doing his best to mimic a plank of wood that happened to have a face, or would it be more appropriate to describe the ice demon as a chunk of cold rock ?

 

Anyway, he was repressing his extremely unwanted hilarity, but the An Ding Peak Lord was pretty certain his lips were betraying him as they were hurting at the corners, just like they did when he smiled so widely and brightly that his face was ready to rip in halves courtesy of the strain and pressure underwent by the facial muscles.

 

But really, who would blame him when you took in account the whole fucking mess unraveling in front of his eyes, courtesy of Liu-shizi and her reincarnated brother ?

 

Shang Qinghua personally never mourned for the Bai Zhan War God’s demise, he felt no obligation to weep over a goddamn meathead that wouldn’t stop causing property damages and piss off merchants and Disciples alike with his refusal to care about manners, but obviously Liu Mingyan would be saddled with the opposite opinion since that was her brother – and from the fact she never bothered to mention other relatives, he might have been the only kin she cared to acknowledge as such, or maybe the only one left to her.

 

Obviously she would latch on her resentment towards Shen Qingqiu, who had to be Liu Qingge’s murderer, he had the means, he had the opportunity, he had the motive, so why wouldn’t he ? Even Yue Qingyuan merely forbid to discuss the matter instead of loudly and openly arguing for the Qing Jing Peak Lord’s innocence, wasn’t that a major hint of his personal opinion in spite of his blatant and relentless favouritism directed at the ingrate and sullen Shen Qingqiu ?

 

Shen Qingqiu had been deemed guilty without any trial, because there couldn’t exist another explanation to the tragedy deep inside the Lingxi caves, surely.

 

Only for the victim himself to come back from the grave and thoroughly shatter this well-seated conviction by calling it bullshit and revealing the heinous crime as an accident instead – and because he was the victim, who could ever throw the shade of suspicion upon his words ? Of course, reincarnation might blur recollections but Liu Qingge was the kind of pigheaded brat who wouldn’t tolerate Meng Po’s brew preventing him from correcting what he saw as a wrong, and a falsely accused martial sibling, even the one you couldn’t stand, the one you were constantly insulting and glaring at while you obviously seethed with the need to ruin his reputation, that would be a wrong.

 

The Bai Zhan War God used to be unbending that way, and rebirth apparently had been powerless to soften the edges.

 

No, what succeeded in softening this infuriatingly self-righteous soul was Shen Qingqiu’s third spawn, currently staring at the black-clad young man as if he hung the sun and the stars in the Heavens above, and him suddenly shy and awkward, that was so cute Shang Qinghua wanted to lock them together in a bedroom and drop the key in a bottomless well. Some of us wretched attendants to demon royalty are allergic to dog food, you know ! Have some care !

 

For fuck’s sake, that was exactly the kind of drivel maidens such as Liu Mingyan ate with a spoon. Well, would have eaten with a spoon, since the brat ran away to cope with the unexpected collapse of the pillar keeping her sane and somewhat motivated to rise in the morning instead of wasting from depression, maybe a qi deviation or two from sheer grief.

 

Maybe she would manage to rebuild herself on another foundation, or perhaps she would fail to do so. Shang Qinghua couldn’t really care on the emotional level, she wasn’t his Disciple – Qi Qingqi could keep that dubious honor – or his lover – Mobei-jun would be rather upset if he suspected anyone from ogling his pet cultivator in this specific light – or his sibling – Liu Qingge’s reincarnation was the one with the qualifications to claim this title and he appeared entirely uninterested on that front, so.

 

Nonetheless, extreme as it was, her reaction was nothing but the reflection of Cang Qiong having to re-evaluate their beliefs about Shen Qingqiu. The An Ding Peak Lord wasn’t blind, and he served his majestic asshole of a king as a spy for several decades at this point, he was aware of his so-called martial siblings nervously glancing at each other or grimly pursing their mouths.

 

A spectacle indeed, and he was currently seated in the audience. Now, if only he had some melon seeds to crunch beneath his teeth, it would have been even better.

 

Anyway, what would happen next ? This interlude was quite entertaining if you only sought scandal and unbridled passion, but when you were a spymaster or a Peak Lord desperate to connect with an unexpected niece, that was more of an awkward anecdote you would have to digest for a few weeks before considering viewing it with serenity.

 

Yue Qingyuan gently coughed in his fist in order to put an end to the silence.

 

« Young Master Wei is quite the gallant youth, to be so fierce in Maiden Cangse’s defense before anyone else could intervene » he praised.

 

The War God reborn warily eyeballed the Sect Leader and wasn’t that a change from his previous life, when Liu Qingge used to hold the Qiong Ding Peak Lord as the supreme authority who always would have Cang Qiong’s best interests at heart.

 

« Who else would have intervened ? » the black-clad youth ultimately said. « We are but outsiders to your Sect, barely introduced to each other on this very day. »

 

Yeowch, that likely burned Yue Qingyuan inside. Following Shen Qingqiu’s disappearance, the man turned quite snappish and hostile when anyone, be they a Hallmaster, a Disciple or another Peak Lord, implied the missing cultivator was unworthy of such devotion and that the Sect Leader really ought to move on, surely you couldn’t be that close, not when you were unable to say more than five sentences before he verbally blew at you.

 

Shen Qingqiu’s offspring wasn’t the man himself, but she nonetheless was related to Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan would have no qualms transferring his frankly unhealthy and disturbing massive amounts of devotion to her. Questioning such devotion, no matter if the point was deeply reasonable and well-thought, was guaranteed to put the dubious soul on the Qiong Ding Peak Lord’s shite-list almost immediately.

 

Liu Qingge’s reincarnation apparently was hell-bent on alienating his previous comrades in arms with the gleeful abandon he used to invest in his night hunts. Truly, the love a huli jing managed to breath in their chosen tools was to be feared, just look what Shen Qingqiu did with the Shan spider siblings, his spawn cheerfully following in his footsteps.

 

That would be a mess and three quarters, and Shang Qinghua couldn’t help the morbid curiosity rising in his breast.

 

Ancestors, he really needed to find these melon seeds.

 

 

Chapter 126

Xiao Yue couldn’t help the twinge of guilt as he was planning to skimp on the very first day of the Immortal Alliance Conference – his companions would be left to happily comment on the prowess displayed by this bunch of hot-blooded, still wet behind the ears Disciples, and he would have to grin and nod as if he understood their references and allusions. What a cruel fate, truly.

 

Alas, his ambition took precedence over pleasure. He was born to rule over the Lower Realm, but he still had to hone his ability to do so. Learning from mankind’s wisdom was well and good, but having the opportunity to actually question your predecessor ? It was priceless.

 

Obviously Xiao Yue wasn’t speaking about the waste of space that sired him, Luo Binghe was thoroughly unworthy of his exalted status. No, Tianlang-jun was the one holding his current interest.

 

Every demon inhabiting the Lower Realm and more than a few that roamed beyond the place knew the tragic tale of the fallen Sacred Ruler, seduced to his doom by a female human, a cultivator hailing from the hateful, gold-loving Huan Hua Palace. Her name had been lost to the mists of time, but her Sect was still infamous and rightfully despised for daring to intervene so blatantly in demonkind’s affairs, by assaulting their rightful overlord instead of targeting a lower-graded retainer or lord.

 

This Sect was the one taking care of everything for the Immortal Alliance Conference – running the booths, ensuring the safety of the guests, preventing any intruders, keeping the lodges clean – meaning their manpower would be focused on the Jue Di Gorge and its surroundings for an entire week.

 

So they would have much less cultivators able to respond if somebody was leading an assault against the Huan Hua Palace itself. Or if somebody decided to go inside the Bailu forest in order to search for the Sacred Ruler they were keeping sealed there, until his potent Heavenly Demon body finally gave up and quietly died in the dark and the cold.

 

Was Tianlang-jun still alive, after all these years ? Was he still sane enough to entertain a civilized conversation, instead of immediately assuming his unexpected guest was a snack for him to recover his strength ? Nothing in the anecdotes revolving around the man would point at him devouring humans or demons – it was just so crass when you could visit the Middle Kingdom and dine on their bounty, or when you were just so powerful that you could bully your subordinates into giving you all the food you wanted – but frankly, Xiao Yue didn’t see the Huan Hua Palace feeding their captive when they had imprisoned him under a mountain, that seemed quite silly for them to be so polite after so much hostility.

 

Nonetheless, Xiao Yue would go, and he would see with his own two eyes what befell Tianlang-jun nowadays. If the older Heavenly Demon was nothing but a withered corpse, the younger Heavenly Demon might steal his bones to grant them some matter of dignified funeral – for all his eccentricity and overindulgence in his own enjoyment, Tianlang-jun’s rule had been the last truly bit of stability tasted by the Lower Realm before the warring tribes era, then Luo Binghe’s inefficient tyranny that didn’t care to fix the troubles.

 

If the older Heavenly Demon was alive, of course, that would be so much more nicer. It always was a hassle to search for a proper necromancer when you were hell-bent for answers to your question and wouldn’t let a measly case of unaliving to deter you from your quest for truth. Humans tended to go homicidally bonkers and get executed, while the demons wound up hiding away from any hamlet with more than one soul dwelling there as ghosts could be so possessive of anyone able to hear their wailing and demands.

 

Anyway, to go back to his potential meeting with Tianlang-jun, it had to be as soon as possible. The Huan Hua Palace, as previously stated, was too busy reveling in their own greatness and power and trying to impress the other Sects as a cheap whore would don gilded finery and overpowering perfume to force a lord’s eye upon her, and Xiao Yue’s companions were somewhere in the crowd, the young half-breed scion could easily claim he got lost and couldn’t find them before the evening, it would be enough to go to the Bailu woods, search for an entrance to the seal holding Tianlang-jun in his fetters, conduct whatever business he would find there, and go back to the Immortal Alliance Conference as if he never left at all.

 

Now, if he was just like any other human cultivator attending the event, it would be complicated to leave the grounds without someone noticing him. Sure, a crowd tended to pay attention to the spectacle unfolding for their pleasure, but two or three outliners would be guaranteed to focus on a funny occurrence somewhere that wasn’t the designated scene. Xiao Yue would rather minimize the risks, for nobody to even catch a glimpse of his disappearance and turn at risk to remember no matter how low the odds – in the Lower Realm, an excess of paranoia often turned out to be barely enough to escape with your life and your limbs more or less salvaged from a gruesome fate.

 

Fortunately, Xiao Yue wasn’t like any other human cultivator. He wasn’t even like any other demon warrior. He was called to ascend as the next Sacred Ruler of demonkind, and that came with perks.

 

« Mobei-jun » he softly hissed as he crushed one of the frosty crystals dangling from the braided leather cord carefully hidden in his sleeve as a last resort, « your prince would call upon you. »

 

Perks like a vassal able to open a portal to any destination you wished for, and unlike Xin Mo, the ice demon wouldn’t ask to be paid with slaughter and orgies – only with some time off to go and bother his human pet, who admittedly was quite cute if you liked these squirrels able to stuff nuts in their cheeks until they grew swollen and thrice the size of their head.

 

« Little Prince » Mobei-jun flatly greeted, raising an unimpressed eyebrow – and because the ice demon was so pale and his hair just as pale, you had to watch for the twitch on his forehead or you wouldn’t have seen it. « It’s been some time since you graced the Imperial Palace with your presence. »

 

« Beware, or this Prince will start believing his sire has noticed or cared » Xiao Yue fired back, his tone so heavy with sarcasm that the words ought to have dropped from his lips and sunk into the ground until they were entirely buried.

 

The ice demon snorted. It was a very expressive snort that said everything there was to say about Luo Binghe being aware of his eldest offspring currently gallivanting in another realm.

 

« That’s what I thought. So because we couldn’t care less about a donkey’s braying, let us bother with valuable wisdom. Tell me, are you familiar with the Huan Hua Palace’s territory ? »

 

Cold eyes, the shade of frozen water so clear it was almost impossible to guess at its blue tinge, narrowed in a promise of violence if not given a satisfying reason for so blatantly prodding at painful memories.

 

Xiao Yue’s grin was wide and very reminiscent of a cat that just pounced on a mouse.

 

 

Chapter 127

Obviously the path leading to Tianlang-jun’s prison wasn’t straightforward and an open secret, not when he could serve as a rallying point for any of his followers zealous enough to keep serving him in spite of the many years since he had been sealed, and not when the Sect that did the deed had a major specialization in maze arrays.

 

Xiao Yue didn’t have the time or the patience to waste, struggling to find the right way, so he decided on a true and certified solution – forcing somebody familiar with the lay of the land to be hs guide.

 

That somebody happened to be the ugliest wretch he had the misfortune to behold, and he met some pretty ugly demon lineages in the Imperial Palace. The Heavenly half-breed couldn’t help his upper lip to curl in distaste while refraining his intense desire to slaughter the mismatched mix of human and snake parts, warily eyeballing him with unsettlingly verdant green irises.

 

« Such a feeling cannot fool one who spends time enough around another scion of the Heavenly strain » Mobei-jun bluntly confirmed, his voice bland and bored as he was staring somewhere above Xiao Yue’s head, blatantly waiting to be let off his leash in order to go and lay in ambush for his pet human. « This wretch indeed is Tianlang-jun’s most trusted confident and general, Zhuzhi-lang. »

 

« His most trusted, really ? I can believe that, if you would remain in these woods all this time, waiting for the right opportunity to spring your Junshang out of this dirty hole in the ground » Xiao Yue mused, focusing on the distasteful wretch. « Well, seek no further than I – this honored prince could be persuaded to help you achieve your goal. »

 

The wretch perked up, and for an unholy fusion of snake and man that should have been thrown on the pyre immediately after hatching, the likeness to an eager puppy was uncanny.

 

« It comes with a caveat, however. I am not interested in liberating a measly bag of bones, or a raving madman. Bones ought to stay in their grave, after all, and a madman is as good as dead anyway. So I would ask for an audience with your lord, in order to check on his sanity and survival. Not so lurid a demand, don’t you think ? »

 

The wretch folded. How pitiful, to be that naive when he was supposed to be a general and aide to the latest great Sacred Ruler of Demonkind – or maybe he was just that desperate for allies, which would be just as pitiful but coming at it from another angle.

 

Anyway, he eagerly fulfilled his task as a guide, showing Xiao Yue and Mobei-jun a rather treacherous path among the trees that led them to a cave entrance, roughly carved in the mountain’s rock – a dark hole that stunk of rot left to pollute water, a bit like a corpse dropped in a pond.

 

With such a stench as their greeting, the travelers were expecting an horrifying spectacle to assault their eyes when they would go down and behold what was left of Tianlang-jun still. They weren’t disappointed. Mobei-jun actually twitched.

 

Potent regenerative blood was the gift bestowed unto the Heavenly demonic strain, allowing them to thrive and endure in the most gruesome circumstances. For the most fearsome offshoots of the lineage, outright cutting their head off wouldn’t be enogh to put an end to their existence, something that caused much grief to their foes.

 

Right now, however, this potent blood was causing much grief to Tianlang-jun himself.

 

The man – no, it barely looked like a man anymore. It was – a mass of raw meat, the yellowish white of bones and sinews glinting among nauseating shades of red flesh in the low light, black blood occasionnally dripping from the glistening scarlet and crimson heap of muscles and organs to feed the many, many charcoal-tinged vines spearing the meat into the ground, growing into the meat, a nightmarish blend betwixt flesh and plant just as the confident turned out to be a repulsive mix of snake and man.

 

The stench was so much worse down there, and Xiao Yue forced himself to breathe by the mouth, but even so he could taste the rot, the sickly, overpowering iron of bloody flesh, so strong he was almost blinded.

 

It – it had to be dead meat, wasn’t it ? It had to be, because nothing could endure living in such a state, not after getting stuck at this level of punishment…

 

The wretch slithered across the damp soil, his bloated and sallow body squelching all the while, and hissed and gargled – fuck, did the general lost his sanity, perhaps Xiao Yue ought to kill him after all.

 

Then the heap of meat snorted . It spoke, it spoke with the raspy voice of a dry, toothless mummy that fed on dust and spider corpses for so long that its throat would shred as rice paper if you only breathe upon it.

 

« Guests, after all these decades ? You will forgive this venerable one for not entertaining you with all the pomp and ceremony such a joyous event would usually warrant, I fear I am a little bit… tied up. »

 

As it spoke, the raw meat flinched and shivered, and the charcoal vines keeping it firmly secured to the ground croaked and groaned from the minute pressure shifts.

 

It was speaking. It was joking about its horrendous shackles. Xiao Yue’s brain, the part of it that wasn’t busy gibbering and howling in the flaming wreck of his sanity, was pleading for it to jump in Mobei-jun’s arms and command the ice demon to open a portal and leave this nightmare behind forever.

 

The Heavenly scion couldn’t move, his feet rooted to the damp ground, his hands hanging limp and cold to his sides.

 

« Shy, are we ? » the meat kept talking, oh Ancestors it was still talking. « Tis natural to be tongue-tied when you are standing in a presence such as my esteemed self, I will forgive you. Unless… hmm… another Heavenly scion ? Nephew, did you notice ? »

 

The wretch coughed. At least, it sounded like coughing, the wet, painful kind in which you endlessly choked on bits of your lungs getting stuck in your throat. It didn’t sound like any rational language, but demonkind could be flat-out crazy when it came to communication – Xiao Yue would never forget the brawl unleashed by a dog demon accidentally insulting a moth demon’s maternal ancestry when they attempted to welcome the emissary with a dance, of all things, an entire wing of the Palace had to be rebuilt when dust settled.

 

« What a delight ! What a surprise, truly, I wasn’t expecting to find more kin after darling Zhuzhi literally fell on my lap. You are too young to be another brat of my sister, that’s for sure… Are you mine ? Maybe not my child, but a grandchild ? It’s been long enough for that, and you don’t feel that old. Ah, Zhuzhi, darling, this uncle of yours is an old man now ! So old he has a grandchild ! Should I be offended or delighted ? What do you think ? »

 

The wretch sneezed. It wheezed just a tad incredulously, and it was perfectly expressing the sheer exhaustion of a harassed slave dealing with an eccentric master’s whimsy.

 

Xiao Yue was empathizing with the wretch. Why was he empathizing with the wretch ? Why wasn’t he running outside screaming his head off ? What was wrong with his mind, for both the aforementioned reasons but first and mostly for having the idea of visiting Tianlang-jun’s prison ?

 

He wanted to cry. Or maybe puke. The stench certainly gave him the hopeless urge to do both options.

 

 

Chapter 128

Decades after his rule, tales about Tianlang-jun were still bandied in the demonic lineages and tribes’ mouths, slowly twisting the picture of him into something akin to a myth in flesh – and why not ? When he had been the last true Sacred Ruler of the Lower Realm, brought low through treachery out of love for a human woman, a passionate lover of everything his species was unable to comprehend. Truly, it was fertile soil for a folk hero to arise.

 

From what he read and heard in his travel across the Middle Kingdom, Xiao Yue certainly could confirm human whimsy was set aflame with much less. Tianlang-jun’s tragedy wouldn’t have been a mere mention in a poetry book, it would have been an entire opera on the matter.

 

Still, the Heavenly scion couldn’t bring himself to believe the poets and writers would want to comment on the trapped monarch’s horrendous circumstances. Even a demon’s iron-clad stomach had its limits, and he found his.

 

The heap of meat being so – cheery – only made the experience worse. Deprived of the opportunity to converse with another soul beyond his wretch of a nephew, whose intellect couldn’t be that sparkling when he was stuck in this ungainly, bloated flesh utterly lacking in stealth and health and likely to fall apart if a cultivator stumbled upon the distasteful sight, Tianlang-jun was quite eager to learn who Xiao Yue was, why was he smelling of the Heavenly strain, what is your parent’s name ?

 

Naming Luo Binghe hadn’t lit a single flame of familiarity in the older Heavenly demon’s mind, but giving his description…

 

Tianlang-jun had been reduced to a heap of raw meat, yet the room grew cold and darkly hostile as the fallen ruler carefully listened Xiao Yue stammering his way through a more or less faithful depiction of the current brat plonked on the Imperial throne.

 

« Isn’t that interesting » the raspy voice whispered. « Why, he does appear to be a male version of my Xiyan, don’t you think, Zhuzhi darling ? »

 

The wretch softly hissed, poison-green eyes staring at Xiao Yue with renewed suspicion and the target of his attention carefully swallowed. Xiyan, just like Su Xiyan ? The much lamented First Disciple of the Huan Hua Palace who caused her Sect to march for war, after being mercilessly defiled by demonic wiles ?

 

Xiao Yue’s lone comfort in this thorny situation was that Mobei-jun would open a portal to evacuate them if the ice demon was given a reason to think he or his charge were about to gruesomely perish. Now, would he be swift enough to evade the wretch’s fangs ? Snake demons could move like lightning when motivated…

 

« And the young master Xiao does smell a bit human. Just a bit. Ah, what a filial grandchild, coming to visit this ancestor when his good-for-nothing father won’t even bother » the meat chuckled, and the fine hair on Xiao Yue’s forearms tingled beneath the dark cloth of his vestments.

 

« Don’t » he snarled, and he really shouldn’t do that but this word, applied to this pitiful excuse of a man and even more pitiful excuse for a ruler, it was gleefully trampling on his temper, « call this Luo Binghe my father. He was content to shoot his seed in my mother’s womb and wash his hands from the result afterwards. »

 

Silence fell upon the dark cave, heavy and quietly suffocating as a pool of blood, when a soldier was stuck under his comrades’ corpses and unable to free himself from the mud stained with the red fluid spilling from their shredded throats and bellys.

 

Then Tianlang-jun chuckled anew.

 

« I think I understand now, why an energetic young man such as you would seek an audience with this venerable one. You covet the throne, do you ? Do not attempt to lie, boy, I have seen your like so many times among my retainers and vassals. You hunger for lordship, and you are unable to achieve it courtesy of another being in your way. »

 

The heap of meat didn’t sound disappointed, as he discussed the prospect of his newfound grandson usurpating the offspring he never got to meet. He didn’t sound angry either. Perhaps it was a smidge of respect in this desiccated voice, a crumb of amusement somebody would display as they doted on the pet cat bringing dead mice and songbirds back to their owner – acknowledgement of the natural bloodthirstiness in the species.

 

And, truly, that wasn’t like the idea of an heir succeeding the previous lord through murder was unknown to demonkind. Royalty was earned in violence, every time, for war was the universal langage shared by all the tribes and clans earning their survival day after day in the Lower Realm.

 

Xiao Yue swallowed again, and narrowed his eyes, Mobei-jun’s cold presence standing behind him. That was it, that was his opportunity to explain himself, no matter his shivering bones.

 

« Luo Binghe » the Heavenly scion stated, keeping his voice steady, « is unfit to rule trash. I have seen what kind of behaviour he deems befitting of royalty for years, and I would rather tear his limbs, his tongue and his eyes, before entombing his distasteful remains beneath the raging waves, than follow his example. »

 

« And which vision would you rather follow ? » Tianlang-jun pushed on. « What is lordship to you ? »

 

It’s almost funny, but Xiao Yue finds hard to see the heap of meat now. Not when Tianlang-jun – the fallen monarch, the Emperor who took mythical qualities as the tales of his wanderings around two realms were told again and again – was speaking with such weight grafted to his inquiry, such gravitas and stern dignity that you were on the verge of glimpsing the majesty of him at his best and most powerful, the Sacred Ruler of demonkind unafraid of walking among humans.

 

Not once did Xiao Yue’s heart beat so loudly when he was enduring Luo Binghe’s presence. That – was being royalty, that was being an Emperor.

 

That was what Xiao Yue greedily wanted to become, and his hands quivered as he contemplated earning a mere fraction of Tianlang-jun’s effortless charisma.

 

« My vision » he carefully uttered, « would have the tribes and the clans finding agreement through other means than ceaselessly tearing each other to pieces. My lordship would see art and bureaucracy flourish to create a civilization and culture we would proudly call our own, instead of wallowing in the brilliant shade of the Middle Kingdom’s enlightenment. »

 

The heap of meat chuckled darkly and bitterly.

 

« This venerable one thought as you do, once. Look what fate it brought upon me. »

 

« What use is the past, if we cannot learn from our esteemed ancestors’ failures and mistakes ? » Xiao Yue fired back. « I do no wish to emulate you. I wish to eclipse your glory, and what better than bringing your aborted dream into reality ? »

 

Silence again, more contemplative than hostile, yet the younger Heavenly scion barely dares to breathe. Was he too proud ? Did he accidentally offend the fallen monarch by reminding him of his shameful inability to fulfill his grand plan ? Still, he couldn’t regret saying the words.

 

Nothing he told was untrue, after all.

 

Then Tianlang-jun laughed, and the cave’s dark stone walls echoed with the booming echoes of his hilarity.

 

« Very well, let nobody claim my blood is lacking ambition ! This venerable one shall gamble upon a-Yue, and even if you stumble on the road to your coveted greatness, may the path so far entertain me ! »

 

Xiao Yue’s lungs were burning as they filled with fresh air, and kept burning courtesy of the unbearable stench of rotting blood.

 

At least he was making progress on the way to achieve his ambition.

 

 

Chapter 129

As a show of good will for their future harmonious relationship, Tianlang-jun asked for Xiao Yue to provide him a little thing, really, you just had to walk to the plant and pick a few beans, simplicity itself.

 

Obviously the younger Heavenly scion was immediately suspicious. When somebody wanted for you to be helpful and claimed it would be merely a trifle, it was guaranteed to end in bloodshed, traumatized screaming and a devastated landscape, just look at the many, many ventures of Luo Binghe starting in that way.

 

On the other hand, that was Luo Binghe and he was a worthless waste of air who never cared about solving trouble beyond stabbing it with his cursed sword, or fucking it into drooling submission. Quite a road to avoid when one wished to abstain from escalation, that.

 

Still, that never hurt to be careful. Maybe that plant was poisonous, maybe it was a rare treasure coveted by the jianghu for one reason or another, or maybe it was a silly thing to put in congee in order to belch sparkly rainbows, but Xiao Yue wouldn’t know if he didn’t ask the question.

 

« Might this humble one learn the plant’s name ? »

 

The heap of meat laughed.

 

« A curious one, aren’t you ? Don’t worry, young and healthy as you are, that’s not the kind of thing you will need as long as you’re not stuck in my unfortunate circumstances. Shedding my current body to jump in a prepared construct will be a pain, but it’s certainly more painful down there. »

 

Yes, that would be an excellent reason, wouldn’t it ? Xiao Yue was able to see a great deal of unfortunate consequences if the endeavour failed, or even if it succeeded – soul possession and transfer was often described in extremely gory details in several horror tales whispered in the Imperial Palace when courtiers and servants got bored and wagged their tongues to make the other blink first – but really, when the alternative was to remain in a damp cave, watching and feeling your meat slowly rot as you suffocated under a cultivator’s array…

 

The serpentine wretch quietly hissed.

 

« Darling Zhuzhi, are you really sure you’re not interested ? If this venerable one is to gain a new body, perhaps you also are in the mood ? And since we now have two nice youngsters to prevent a screw up, you won’t have to fret over my poor bones as they are remembering the amount of flesh necessary to carve such handsome features as mine. »

 

More hissing. This time, it sounded a bit harassed, or exasperated, Xiao Yue wasn’t the most fluent in snake langage, and when the subtle moves were hampered by a bloated, scaleless body, his mental ability to translate worsened a lot.

 

« That’s your decision, alright. Shall you take them to the place, then ? You know my direction sense never had been the best, and after so many attempts, you are the best guide they can hope to find. »

 

The wretch pulled a face in spite of lacking lips to properly pout in disapproval, expressing how much of a failure Tianlang-jun’s blatant try at buttering him up wound up being. If he had been stuck in such a state as long as his lord and master had been reduced to a heap of meat, he likely had practised for years until he managed to convey his feelings through his lidless eyes alone.

 

« This humble one still would be honored to learn what kind of plant he’s expected to bring to your Excellency » Xiao Yue insisted, because a plant able to provide a new body to replace your failing flesh wasn’t commonplace, would he properly identify it with a name ?

 

« It’s a Sun and Moon Dew Mushroom, but you wouldn’t have heard of it unless you enjoy spending time in dusty libraries » the heap of meat snorted. « Or traveling across the whole country, maybe seeing what’s beyond the country’s boundaries. I always wanted to see what lies from the other side of the eastern sea, do you know ? Meet this witch-queen whose traders were speaking about… a witch, or a shamaness ? Zhuzhi, what was she already ? My memory is failing me. See, that’s what you should do things, you will remember them so much better. »

 

« A hundred thanks to Tianlang-jun for his wise advice » Xiao Yue quietly said, as his legs itched to lead him outside, to enjoy fresh air anew rather than the damp stench of rot in the darkness.

 

« Merely a hundred ? What a disappointment ! » the heap of meat loudly complained. « Zhuzhi ! Take this brat away from my sight and don’t let him come back without checking he did his chores ! »

 

Really, the younger Heavenly scion dumbly thought as he, Mobei-jun and the wretch finally abandoned the remains of the former Sacred Ruler to the loneliness of his captivity, meeting Tianlang-jun had been quite the experience and he still was unsure if that was a positive or a negative.

 

On the positive side, he now would have support in his quest to ascend to lordship, a powerful ancient demon to actually teach him the intricacies of the Lower Realm’s politics and legitimize his coup further than mere might of arms.

 

On the negative side, he now was saddled with a mostly-insane demon who appeared content to behave like a child in spite of being far too old to lay claim to true childishness.

 

Yeah, he would need some time to ponder the question, and potentially lament his choice. And a few bottles of wine, perhaps, that would be nice. Oh, he could suggest Cangse Sanren to drink with him ! She enjoyed her liquor, and if he seemed depressed enough, she might feel bad and attempt to comfort him ? Mobei-jun’s human pet claimed it was a good strategy to appear pathetic when courting your beloved.

 

Speaking of the ice demon’s tamed cultivator, Mobei-jun likely would drop Xiao Yue back to the Immortal Alliance Conference after picking this mushroom, and would go to pester his human pet for a couple of days so would be impossible to reach. At least, not for the younger Heavenly scion, ignoring Luo Binghe when he was commanding for you to drop everything would give him an incentive to throw a tantrum and these were tiresome to fix in the aftermath.

 

Soon , Xiao Yue promised himself, soon that would not be Luo Binghe the one Mobei-jun would attend with the utmost devotion and loyalty. Soon the Lower Realm would bow to a new power, one that would drag them towards prosperity no matter how loudly the ignorant minds thirsty for blood and barbarism would shriek and complain.

 

But that would come for later. Right now, the Heavenly scion was tasked with picking a mushroom. Growing in the middle of a subterranean pond, and apparently the wretch was unable to swim there because the light would scald his sensitive, bloated flesh. Also, he would have to pick the mushroom with his teeth and that would put him at risk to accidentally swallow the plant, which would be quite infuriating.

 

When something delicate needed to be done, it was always better to entrust the task to somebody with fingers, really.

 

 

Chapter 130

A pair of soaked boots later, Xiao Yue could proudly show off a fistful of plump mushrooms to the pitiful serpentine wretch, whose eyes glistened in a suspiciously wet manner. He likely wasn’t already weeping from utter relief and joy at achieving the goal set by his lord and master because he physically wasn’t able to cry, considering his hideous and misshapen body.

 

Since he wasn’t keen on going back to the dark cave and facing the heap of meat anew, the younger Heavenly scion decided to sacrifice his handkerchief in order to secure the mushrooms and tying the clothen lump around the wretch’s road, close enough to not fall on the ground yet loose enough to be undone without the necessity for hands – a luxury both Tianlang-jun and his faithful general currently lacked.

 

« Now we are done with that » Xiao Yue sighed as he stared down at the wretch. « When your lord will feel better, this one shall be waiting for him. We have a lot to discuss, after all, and that kind of conversation goes so much more better when there’s pillows to sit on and tea to drink. »

 

Maybe the younger Heavenly scion was a shameless hedonist, but when you grew up in a realm thinking a hard rock for a seat was nothing short of tremendous wealth, well. Obviously you would relish any opportunity to wallow in comfort, and that wasn’t Mobei-jun who would scold Xiao Yue for that when the ice demon constantly stole his human pet’s delicacies to snack on.

 

The serpentine wretch enthusiastically bobbed his head low, perhaps in a shallow mimic of a reverent bow, and fled from their sight, his bloated body hissing and groaning as it dragged on the mossy soil and the grass and the fallen leaves covering the ground.

 

Left on their own, Xiao Yue allowed himself a brief moment of weakness to massage his eyes.

 

« Mobei-jun, tell me the truth, your prince commands you. How much am I at risk to be fucked by this deal in the near and far future ? »

 

The ice demon snorted.

 

« As long as you keep your word, Tianlang-jun won’t move against you. And he’s not interested in ruling over his former lands, he wouldn’t have delegated so much to his generals and ministers otherwise » he reminded his charge who openly grimaced.

 

« Yeah, yeah, I guess. Let us hope he will swiftly die after helping me gaining this throne, alright ? Maybe he and this worthless waste of space Luo Binghe could slaughter each other, that would solve two problems at once. »

 

Sure, Tianlang-jun was a pureblooded Heavenly Demon when Luo Binghe’s strain was weakened by his human half, but the half-breed had spent decades honing his fighting prowess and survival instincts by relentlessly battling everything the Fates spat on his path when he was on a wandering mood, while the heap of meat had been quite busy slowly rotting underground. That ought to balance the scales a bit.

 

Also, Xiao Yue refused to act the part of a filial demon child murdering his sire as the progenitor started to decline, allowing him to retain a measure of dignity and might rather than sinking into dementia and helplessness. No, if the progenitor of a strain – which would be Tianlang-jun in these specific circumstances – deemed a scion unworthy and took upon himself the duty to remove them from existence just like he bestowed the privilege of breathing long ago unto this distasteful offspring, that would be a first-grade humiliation, and Luo Binghe would be remembered as nothing more than not good enough by the generations to come.

 

Yes, that would be the last, perfect insult towards the disgusting man who provided his seed for Xiao Yue to be conceived in his mother’s womb – to not be remembered as the man who seized the throne back after so many years of instability in the Lower Realm, the man who successfully wielded the cursed sword Xin Mo longer than any previous bearer did before getting devoured mind and soul by the ever hungry blade, the man who wedded a huli jing to force two princes out of her without losing his life.

 

No, Luo Binghe would be reduced to a mere in-between, the neglected link allowing the transition from Tianlang-jun’s rule to Xiao Yue’s ascension as the new Sacred Ruler of demonkind. A mere afterthought to the common man, a matter of interest for the most rabid historians only. The younger Heavenly Demon quivered as a warm wave of bliss went through him, starting from the top of his skull to wind up in his toes, summoned by this glorious prospect.

 

« My prince » Mobei-jun grunted, shattering the zen moment and bringing the upcoming ruler back to reality, « aren’t we meant to go back to this cultivator’s tournament ? »

 

He was right, but the ice demon also seemed a smidge nervous when you were familiar with the minute expressions flittering across his stoic features. Didn’t he suffer an unfortunate meeting with a bunch of Huan Hua disciples when he was a child yet ? Xiao Yue was unclear on the details, except that it was the day Mobei-jun stumbled upon a measly human and fancied himself in a mood to adopt a hysterical, high-maintenance pet he could alternatively spoil and scold.

 

Ah, so that was it, Mobei-jun thought he waited long enough and was now owed his leave. Well, Xiao Yue was a generous prince, he would be kind with his faithful retainer – that and he also really wanted to go back to his own sweetheart, the one person making herself at ease in his heart as if it always belonged to her.

 

Xiao Yue hoped Cangse Sanren didn’t felt too bored in his absence. Bored or upset, considering she went to the Immortal Alliance Conference for the sake of gushing over the monsters brought to the Jue Di gorge merely to be killed by youths thirsty for glory. Still, he wasn’t too worried, with Young Master Jiang and this bland attendant of his keeping her company, the maiden would have been well cared for.

 

And it couldn’t have been so long since the younger Heavenly scion departed, the sun in the blue heavens barely moving from his previous position, so Xiao Yue could easily claim he only sought to piss or take a breath of fresh air, and got lost in the crowd, that answer was simple and likely. When a lie was simple and likely, people would swallow it as they would swallow mouthfuls of water by a hot summer day.

 

And the liar would be alone to know what actually happened, which wasn’t without its own thrill. Even if the adventure hadn’t been that glamorous or exhilarating as it unfolded.

 

« Alright, then. Carry me to a somewhat isolated point, someplace away from the wards. If they manage to detect our arrival, the whole conference will decide the hunt would be nicer out of the Jue Di gorge and in the audience instead. Nicer for them, I mean. »

 

Mobei-jun balefully eyeballed his prince, obviously thinking very loud that yes, he was aware of that, he wasn’t stupid. Xiao Yue stared back, unflinching.

 

It always paid to repeat your commands, just to be careful.

 

Chapter 131

Finding his travel companions was shaping up to be a startingly complicated endeavour, worse than the time Xiao Yue got lost in the dusty, unlived wing of the Imperial Palace for three days. Sure, as a scion of the Heavenly strain, he was barely dehydrated or starving when he finally stumbled outside a window and dragged his ten years old body back to the Palace’s gates, fighting more than a few pests wondering if his flesh would taste sweet and half a dozen guards and courtiers seeking to take his worth or abduct him for a political scheme, to be reunited with his tearful nurse who had tremendously scolded him for worrying her so, and congratulated him for showing himself a skilled, enduring young gentleman.

 

Xiao Yue was unsure if Luo Binghe ever heard of the incident. Since it never was brought up any time in the future he got a glimpse of the wasteful lecher, either the half-breed didn’t, or he didn’t care at all. Both were quite likely.

 

Ah, the day Luo Binghe’s bones would be drying in the Southern desertic plains would be one of the happiest memories of Xiao Yue – but the first and foremost would obviously be the day he would be enthroned as the Sacred Ruler of demonkind, Cangse Sanren standing besides him in the garments worthy of an Empress, and his nurse witnessing how far he managed to reach.

 

What a glorious, golden day it would be, for the Heavenly scion and for the Lower Realm.

 

The undercover demon royal forced himself to stop adding details to this wonderful picture and focus on his surroundings instead, on the throngs of people loudly chattering about such or such young prodigy not performing as well as they ought or one brat who had to be cheating but it was hard to see on the screens, on the throngs of people who noisily chewed or picked at their teeth with sweet-scented sticks because they weren’t in the mood to flap their gums but needed to bluntly send the message that no, they weren’t interested in striking a conversation, on the throngs of people who were frantically scribbling on a bamboo scroll or reading a silk-bound novel from dubious content because they didn’t want to be there but couldn’t politely decline someone else inviting them without looking ungrateful or assholish.

 

He couldn’t see the pristine flash of Cangse Sanren’s white clothes anywhere, or the rich purple dye of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect Heir, he couldn’t even see the stiff posture of this bland-faced attendant who seemed envious of the young masters and misses in the Jue Di gorge since they were allowed to draw their swords and force the pushing crowd back to get some breathing space.

 

Shite, maybe he should have slipped a few drops of his blood in his travel companions’ food. Xiao Yue had idly considered the prospect as they were about to arrive to their destination, but had dismissed it since wasting his blood parasites on two human cultivators who did nothing hostile towards him was just a smidge too paranoid and that wasn’t like they could genuinely succeed in killing him at their current level of cultivation, and waiting for his bride to freely drink of his blood on their wedding day was somewhat of a tradition among the Heavenly strain, one he could endorse with the maidenly heart of a boy not yet grown enough to have fully lost the gentle illusion of finding love in a marriage between two people coming from starkly unequal backgrounds.

 

Now the decision was backstabbing him in the weirdest way possible. Using your blood parasites to track your travel companions because you lost them at a festival, wasn’t that a funny jest for a demon ? Xiao Yue mentally swore to himself that nobody would ever learn of this mishap except for him, and he would deeply bury this knowledge in the darkest recesses of his mind because nightmare demons were a thing and thrived on being voyeurs and nastly little collectors of secrets they then used to blackmail their way to comfort, or merely for their trollish enjoyment. After ascending to the throne, one of Xiao Yue’s first decrees would be to track down the one Luo Binghe had found to be taught in the mind arts and seal him forever in a dusty room of the Palace.

 

That would be quite the righteous punishment, for this old fart who had more than once tormented a sleeping Xiao Yue’s dreams when he was a child still, driving him to wake up in tears and shamed from wetting his cot in sheer dread when he was supposed to be too mature for such infantile behaviour.

 

And really, it was only proper to ensure a dangerous threat to his rule’s necessary secrets would lose its teeth before it was given the opportunity to clamp its jaws around the juicy morsel. Someone whose entire existence revolved around the violation of your deepest intimacy was inherently unworthy, indeed.

 

As he was idly planning how he would thoroughly purge the Imperial Palace from the lickspitters, the various spies with more ambition than sense and the assassins bent on ruining his rule before it could truly take off the ground, Xiao Yue kept moving through the crowd, doing his best to catch a glimpse of the trio of white and purple and black, or to hear a familiar voice in spite of the chaotic storm of shouts and laughs relentlessly beating on his ears.

 

Ultimately, he found purple. But it only was purple – the young master Jiang had managed to be separated from his attendant and Cangse Sanren while he was exchanging polite inanities with some monk bloated with his Sect’s importance at barely three centuries and forty years of existence, and since Yunmeng Jiang was younger still the Heir to Lotus Pier couldn’t escape immediately the old bag’s rambling, not without giving serious offense and he had been raised more dutifully than that.

 

Xiao Yue commiserated openly and blatantly – politics, a plague upon the Middle Kingdom and the Demon Realm both, that was depressing really to see that – as he was furrowing his brows and mentally cussing in fifty dialects, one for each tribe currently having a foot at the Imperial Palace and unable to openly slaughter the opposite tribe or bloodline’s representant so forced to settle for insulting them to the eighteenth generation under their breath and in their family’s native language to minimize the risk of getting caught and punished for causing trouble and disturbing the peace.

 

Mobei-jun had been surprisingly helpful in sharing barbed words and curses, since his kingdom in the Northern Mountains was constantly struggling with three frontiers, and each frontier was home to six tribes at the very least, some coming from lands so cold that the sea froze all year long, some riding through windswept plains to tend to massive herds of cattle and horses, some dwelling rather close from the Middle Kingdom yet gifted with quirky little traditions no human would imagine in a thousand years. The Northern Mountains were a chaotic mess of cultures and people, and Mobei-jun’s human pet being blessed with an uncanny ability to bring order in the middle of chaos had to be the reason why the ice demon was so protective of the rat, otherwise he would swiftly drown under the weight of so many expectations tugging at him from so many directions.

 

Xiao Yue could only hope his Empress would be just as skilled at wrangling all the tribes and lineages calling the Lower Realm their native plane. But he trusted her, he trusted in her charm, in her subtle charisma.

 

It was so easy to fall in love with Cangse Sanren, after all.

 

 

Chapter 132

Shang Qinghua succeeded in begging for some time away from Cang Qiong’s private box, claiming he needed to go and check on some Disciples who followed him not to compete in the Tournament but to help with the travel and the lodgings, and Mu Qingfang watched him run away with a heavy dollop of envy in his mien, obviously the healer also wanted to take a bit of distance with the drama he was forced to witness.

 

Too bad for the Qian Cao Peak Lord, he was cursed with a bleeding heart and the stringent vows of a physician that wouldn’t let him hide when the possibility of someone dying from an aneurysm or committing murder was higher than zero. Fortunately for the An Ding Peak Lord, he was born lacking any ethics or shame and so wouldn’t hesitate in ensuring his own well-being first and foremost.

 

Right now, that meant discreetly leaving the grounds of the Immortal Alliance Conference – it was barely outside the wards, but that was enough for any cultivator donning the yellow robes of the Huan Hua Palace to find themselves blind as a cave bat – in order to have a shrieking fit of hysterical laughter, because what kind of other reaction would be more appropriate than this after the mess he beheld with his own two eyes ?

 

And because the Heavens delighted in fucking with Shang Qinghua since he was born, a majestic asshole from the icy persuasion picked that moment to startle him.

 

Shang Qinghua didn’t fell down in the grass as a heap of flailing limbs, but only because the Northern ruler was holding him in a death grip, as if the towering demon whose arms were as thick as his human pet’s waist was a mere babe terrified by the dark and latching on a stuffed cloth doll.

 

Then Mobei-jun opened his mouth and spoke, and maybe Shang Qinghua wasn’t too angry at him actually.

 

« The Young Prince has summoned this King in order to visit Tianlang-jun’s prison, and we found the vainquished Sacred Ruler alive and ready to bargain for his freedom. »

 

Shang Qinghua hissed between his teeth as his brain was whistling in a panic and analyzing the potential disaster in a hurry. Fact : Tianlang-jun had been laid low by the four Great Sects allying, he was that dangerous in his prime. Likely, the Heavenly Demon wouldn’t feel in a forgiving mood regarding cultivators, or mankind, if he stumbled out of his hole in the ground. Also likely, the former ruler would have been heavily weakened, both physically and mentally, by several decades of sealing, doomed to rot as his demon subjects kept living without his authority looming over his head, that had to sting, such a headspace might impede a potential attempt at revenge or a possible comeback on the Lower Realm’s political scene…

 

Fuck it, Tianlang-jun was a Heavenly Demon. One who never officially abdicated his throne, and he hadn’t been ousted by a proper successor – the Lower Realm had been in a limbo on the matter of governance, Tianlang-jun’s nephew and most trusted general having disappeared in the same battle that saw the Sacred Ruler thrown from his high pedestal. If Tianlang-jun was interested in claiming his authority back, well, that wouldn’t be against the law…

 

Luo Binghe would never agree to this. The Heavenly half-breed would immediately rage at the prospect of another Heavenly Demon, one whose strain was purer, one whose mastery over his bloodline gifts was superior, toppling him from the throne – Luo Binghe would declare war against Tianlang-jun.

 

How many would follow the Heavenly half-breed in the fires of conflict ? Luo Binghe wasn’t loved as a monarch, he wasn’t even respected . He was plenty feared, certainly, and that helped to keep the tribes and clans into something approximating compliance, that and his blood parasites threatening to shred a traitor’s innards if they behaved in a manner displeasing the half-breed.

 

Tianlang-jun had been feared too, but this fear had been tempered by the knowledge that he would ensure his subjects’ comfort and survival. He had been well-liked enough, if quite japed at for his eccentricity. Even if his sanity had collapsed under his lust for revenge against his gaolers, there would be people remembering life under his lordship, there would be tales about the golden age under his ruling. Many lineages would choose to gamble on the former Sacred Ruler.

 

Especially if they saw the current First Prince standing besides Tianlang-jun, and wasn’t that a cunning little plan coming from the brat ? Demonkind would warily eyeball a spawn of Luo Binghe as one who might inherit his unchecked appetite for women and his disdain for the administrative drudgery ensuring a kingdom wouldn’t starve or freeze or fall to a barbarian invasion, but an offspring seeking to hone himself as a warrior and lord by joining a more powerful and competent man liable to want him as his heir, well, that was saying another story entirely, and demons wouldn’t be so anxious about the future with the assurance that Luo Binghe wouldn’t have tainted the next generation to have authority over their wretched existences…

 

Shang Qinghua suddenly frowned.

 

« Wait. The Young Prince is there ? In the Middle Kingdom ? Near the Immortal Alliance Conference ?! The worst possible event for him to be in the vicinity, since it’s basically a gathering of cultivators eager to show off by hunting, oh I don’t know, why not a young Heavenly Demon ? Such a rare treat, that breed ! »

 

Mobei-jun’s arms squeezed the And Ding Peak Lord’s waist, and if the spy hadn’t been blessed with a golden core the majestic asshole in his quiet freak out would have snapped him in twain.

 

« Shite » the human breathed, a headache poking at the back of his left eyebrow, « recklessness and abject dumbassery in one fell swoop, if the Young Prince is bent on proving he’s not taking after his sire, then he’s doing a godawful job of it. »

 

Mobei-jun kept holding him, without uttering a word.

 

« My King ? I am starting to feel really uncomfortable, and also you will have to let me go at some point because Cang Qiong will notice a Peak Lord vanishing into thin air, especially if he’s the one bothering with feeding the horses for the travel back to the Sect, or lighting the candles. »

 

Sure, the unexpected arrival of Cangse Sanren and the reincarnation of Liu Qingge was a heck of a distraction, but distractions were a short-lived phaenomena. Soon or later, a Disciple or hallmaster would notice an absence among the Peak Lords, and it would swiftly turn chaotic and put Shang Qinghua’s demon activities on the side at risk to be exposed for everyone to be stunned and shocked.

 

And because the Lower Realm would soon explode in bloody violence courtesy of a civil war between two claims to royalty, Shang Qinghua couldn’t very well hide his wretched person in the Northern Mountains, as one of Luo Binghe’s foremost vassals Mobei-jun couldn’t afford the luxury of neutrality – yet at the same time, that wasn’t like he was truly attached to the Heavenly half-breed…

 

Shite, the Northern Mountains would have to pull a con, wouldn’t they ? Looking like they would keep following Luo Binghe’s whims to avoid being savaged by Xin Mo’s wrath, while not pushing back against Tianlang-jun as much as they could, that would ask for subtlety and the majestic asshole wasn’t exactly blessed in this category…

 

Shang Qinghua wanted to moan in disarray as he mentally pictured the sheer amount of work piling high in his near future. Yeah, the Heavens truly hated him.

 

 

Chapter 133

Xiao Yue was expecting to find Cangse Sanren and the young master Jiang’s unbelievably boring attendant, but he wasn’t expecting for a Disciple wearing garments associated with the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect to walk up to him and the purple-clad cultivator in order to extend an invitation by the Peak Lords to come and greet them in their private box.

 

Immediately the Heavenly Demon scion had been wary, for it was their current Sect Leader, the Xuan Su Sword, who bore the last and most shattering blow to the fearsome and mighty Tianlang-jun when the former Sacred Ruler had been at the glorious apex of his power – Xiao Yue in his youth and strength yet to grow fully certainly wasn’t ready to face the Qiong Ding Peak Lord and hope to survive.

 

Was it a trap ? Did the Huan Hua Palace somewhat got an inkling of his discussion with the fallen demon monarch and commanded for the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect to finish the job they had started decades ago ? Would Xiao Yue have to flee hastily, to save himself from being sealed in a dark and damp cave, reduced to a quivering heap of meat while his wits rotted out of his skull ?

 

His hand twitched, his claws itching to shred throats and faces as he escaped the throngs of noisy, smelly, blissfully unaware humans more focused on the bloodbath currently unleashed in the Jue Di gorge than on searching for demon intruders among their numbers –

 

His face remained serene and politely bland as the young master Jiang eagerly thanked the Disciple for the invitation, we are following you, because the purple-clad cultivator was raised to be mindful of politics and saying no to the most powerful and influent Sect in the jianghu would be committing such a social suicide that Lotus Pier would never rise from the ashes and cinders of their humiliation.

 

Maybe the Huan Hua Palace hadn’t noticed a thing. Mayve Xiao Yue was jumping at shadows. Sometimes the mysterious glowing eyes on the ground were but a splatter of yogurt the maid forgot to wipe clean as she brought the snacks.

 

Still, if he was lured in an ambush, then the Heavenly scion wouldn’t hesitate for a fên before using Jiang Fengmian as his shield. Sure, the man was a pleasant travel companion and Xiao Yue would mourn the loss of a smart mind, but he valued his freedom and his intact limbs, and he learned righteous cultivators could be weirdly sensitive about sacrificing an innocent human – could be , they weren’t always, some were coldly and ruthlessly pragmatic and would set fire to a whole village in order to fulfill their goal and half of the time they weren’t the evil kind of cultivator.

 

He didn’t allow for his suspicion to marr his expression, and quietly followed in the young master Jiang’s footsteps, as the Disciple led them away from the crowd – and what a relief it was to reach the private boxes, in which spell arrays were deafening the ambient noise, so many people breathing and chewing and speaking at once were nothing short of absolute murder on a sensitive pair of demonic ears – and to the Peak Lords.

 

To the Peak Lords and their guests – because Xiao Yue and Jiang Fengmian weren’t first in tickling the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect’s curiosity, and suddenly the reason why it was impossible to find Cangse Sanren and her black-clad shadow wasn’t such a mystery anymore.

 

« You got there ! » Cangse Sanren was beaming, sitting besides the Sect Leader himself – it had to be Yue Qingyuan, this aura of authority was a clear indication of his status, but really Xiao Yue couldn’t help being startled by the man looking so exhausted, wasn’t he a first-grade cultivator ? What could have done such a number on his health ?

 

« Fengmian » the black-clad attendant to Lotus Pier’s young Heir uttered, his mouth twisted as if he was choking on sour milk candy. « As you can see, we have been kidnapped by the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks. »

 

« Really ? » the purple-clad young master mused, an amused gleam in his eyes and nothing but mild steel in his voice. « Surely the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect has all the Disciples and Hallmasters they could ask for and need, instead of lowering themselves to poach their less fortunate and prosperous neighbours ? Your name wasn’t Huan Hua, last thing I heard. »

 

A muscled fellow with burned and scarred arms snorted as he grinned behind his hand, and nobody among the Peak Lords attempted to defend their yellow-clad counterpart’s honour – rivalries were just as serious between human Sects as they were between demon clans and bloodlines, it seemed.

 

« A thousand apologies for any misconduct on our part » Yue Qingyuan intervened, his low voice pleasant and warm as he gently patted Cangse Sanren’s hand , « but rarely one is able to exercize complete control over one’s feelings, when one is unexpectedly reunited with long-lost family. »

 

Wait, what ?

 

« Young Master Jiang, Young Master Xiao » the pristine-clad maiden cheerfully declared, « may I introduce to my parent’s older brother, Yue Qingyuan ? Picture that, me having an uncle ! I wouldn’t have believed it, if you claimed he was running a Sect ! »

 

Oh. Xiao Yue’s heartbeat settled in a more sedate rythm, and his fangs stopped hurting with the urge to rip the Qiong Ding Peak Lord’s eyeballs to chew them raw and swallow. Yue Qingyuan wasn’t an old lecher lusting after a much younger, hopelessly naive maiden, he only was a doting uncle for a newfound niece.

 

That was… much better than the alternative.

 

« My goodness gracious » the young master Jiang whispered, « truly ? What a prestigious lineage, indeed – oh, let me congratulate Maiden Cangse on her good fortune... »

 

« Aiyah, don’t do that, Young Master Jiang ! I am going to lose face there » Cangse Sanren lamented as her cheeks blushed softly behind the shelter of her veil.

 

Yue Qingyuan was smiling as he watched her, and Xiao Yue struggled to abstain from frowning deeply at this sight.

 

He was a Heavenly scion currently plotting to release Tianlang-jun from his imprisonment, and the Cang Qiong Sect Leader not only had been the man to do the deed, he was related to Cangse Sanren and likely would have opinions on the kind of man he would like to see married to his newfound niece.

 

It sounded like a yellow novel’s plothole-ridden narrative, a tale of star-crossed lovers that wouldn’t fail to reduce dozens of matrons and maidens into wretched tears over the sheer tragedy of the matter, the kind of thing you couldn’t see happening in real life because that would be just too ridiculous for you to believe.

 

And yet it was happening to him – perhaps he had been cursed with a shred of Luo Binghe’s uncanny and wretched luck, that caused a string of unlikely events to befall the Heavenly half-breed whenever he wanted to set a foot outside the Imperial Palace and sometimes he didn’t even have to leave the grounds of said Palace for his luck to act up.

 

It certainly wasn’t the kind of inheritance Xiao Yue cared to have, and he found himself praying for the mess looming over his upcoming marriage to be cleared up swiftly and without too much awkwardness.

 

 

Chapter 134

People tended to saddle Yue Qingyuan’s former Shizun with the achievement of turning him in an accomplished politician able to talk you out of your undergarments when you came at Cang Qiong’s door looking for divesting them of their wealth. Said Yue Qingyuan would acknowledge his Shizun had tremendously helped in refining his skills, but he did only that, refining and polishing what already was there.

 

Being born in the gutter and spending your whole childhood wondering who could be safely scammed and who was likely to rob you blind was a merciless training path, and it flawlessly served the grown street urchin as he was facing highborn mundanes, haughty merchants, arrogant cultivators and so many other people from any venture in life – Yue Qingyuan had learned how to read people since he could toddle, that literally was a matter of life or death, and it stayed a matter of life or death far too often in the viper pit that was the jianghu.

 

So whan he laid eyes upon the second travel companion who went and attended the Immortal Alliance Conference with Xiao Jiu’s daughter and Liu Qingge’s reincarnation, he immediately suspected the young man from hiding a major secret.

 

That was in the way he held himself, so confident for one who claimed being nobody of import yet unmistakenly wary, not nervous as oh my Ancestors I am breathing near a living legend from the cultivation world and I absolutely need to carve this moment into my brain cells to bore my grandchildren to tears as I remember it again and again, and it wasn’t nervous as oh my Ancestors I am breathing near somebody with the rank to command my murder on the spot and the martial might to do the deed by sneezing in my general direction without having to draw his sword. No, it was a very different breed of anxiety.

 

It was the kind of anxiety screaming oh my Ancestors I am breathing near the man who could and would murder me on the spot if he manages to guess I was responsible for destroying his most efficient subordinate’s career out of pettiness and greed. Quite the interesting variant, this one.

 

The young man called Xiao Yue was unmistakenly wary around Yue Qingyuan, and wasn’t that the riddle ? Add to that the calloused hands and muscled shoulders – a man who had been raised to hold a sword and brawl since he was in the cradle – the curly hair bursting out of a topknot failing to contain the fluffy mane – an hint of foreign ancestry – and the carefully understated yet sturdy clothes, such a shame Shang-shidi departed for taking a break because he would have been able to peg the robes’ provenance with a single glance and how expensive they were…

 

Also these specific features. They were blunted and smoothed by an unknown factor, but the likeness nonetheless was there. Sure, Yue Qingyuan’s recollection was a smidge impaired by the many decades that unfolded after the event, but when you found yourself involved in something as important as the sealing of the Sacred Ruler of demonkind, well, the least you could do was to pay attention to your target’s face.

 

Xiao Yue looked like Tianlang-jun – not so much that he would startle any cultivator who fought in this ambush merely by showing himself, yet enough for one to feel uneasy and flat-footed. Was he a relative, one descendant through a bastard line ? Heavenly Demons were known to have boundless sexual appetites, after all, that wouldn’t be so far-fetched, even if the Huan Hua Palace had staunchly insisted the bloodline was reduced to the Sacred Ruler and his half-blooded nephew…

 

So, this young man who called himself Xiao Yue wasn’t human. Yue Qingyuan personally couldn’t care less, as long as the youth wasn’t disturbing the peace by acting as foolishly as the previous Sacred Ruler and raping a human maiden whose family or Sect would immediately attempt to avenge out of sheer loving wrath. Still, were his travel companions aware of his nature ?

 

The purple-clad Sect Heir, Jiang Fengmian from Yunmeng, likely didn’t know. Or maybe he did, as his amiable demeanour and polite smile were infuriatingly reminding the Cang Qiong Sect Leader of himself when he was younger, that was a man who always would hide his true thoughts to anyone he didn’t fully trust.

 

Xiao Jiu’s daughter, Cangse Sanren, it was hard to say with her. She introduced Xiao Yue with a spurt of bright chattering, but it sounded startingly bland even as she boasted he ambitioned to undergo the Imperial exams, not a small thing that, but her voice was lacking in excitment or pride, you would believe she was speaking of the weather. Did she care about a detail as potentially explosive as demon ancestry ? Did she actually care about her travel companion as a person ? Yue Qingyuan would stay alert.

 

Liu Qingge’s reincarnation – ah, that was interesting. The black-clad man in his modest robes was minutely scowling at the broader, taller man, before glancing at Cangse Sanren in a protective, watchful demeanour, his body tensing in discomfort as he prepared for an altercation. Liu Qingge always had been blessed with peerless instincts when it came to fighting, so if he deemed somebody wasn’t safe enough for him to show them his back, that wasn’t a good omen regarding this person.

 

Liu Qingge – no, his name was Wei Changze nowadays, wasn’t it ? The core values were the same, but that didn’t mean he had been fully spared by change – would jump to serve as a shield for Cangse Sanren if the young man calling himself Xiao Yue twitched wrong and showed hints of wishing to follow in Tianlang-jun’s destructive footsteps. Previously, Liu Qingge would have rather focused on assaulting the demon first and foremost, firmly convinced that the best defense was overwhelming offense annihilating your foe before it could cause genuine trouble, leaving to his martial siblings the care to avert damage to the surroundings and local residents.

 

Yue Qingyuan wouldn’t begrudge Wei Changze for putting Xiao Jiu’s daughter above the opportunity of a good fight – he would actually rather praise his reincarnated martial sibling for changing his priorities, and that wasn’t like the Cang Qiong Sect Leader was afraid of crossing his blade with a young demon’s.

 

Sure, his health hadn’t been that good since Qingqiu-shidi vanished in the countryside without nary a warning, but he had been nothing but a measly, panicking Disciple when he faced Tianlang-jun, a tremendously skilled and experienced Sacred Ruler who constantly wrestled with half a hundred demon tribes on a daily basis when he flexed his authority, and perhaps he survived more out of luck than talent this day but he nonetheless survived.

 

Now he had seen a great deal of battles, enough for them to blur together in his memory, and this cocky demon brat with the gall to wander among cultivators from every major Sect in the jianghu wasn’t Tianlang-jun at all. That wasn’t criticism, that was a fact.

 

Yue Qingyuan could take care of the trash, he wouldn’t even breath hard in the aftermath, Mu Qingfang wouldn’t be given an excuse to lambast him. Really, the most distressing aspect of this whole matter would be to explain Cangse Sanren why he killed an acquaintance of her, but she seemed the practical sort just like Xiao Jiu, she would understand if he explained himself.

 

Xiao Jiu always understood, when you explained yourself, even if he might dislike it. Yue Qingyuan should have remember that much sooner in their lives.

 

 

Chapter 135

The tension between Yue Qingyuan and Xiao Yue – and wow there’s Yue in both names, isn’t that a funny coincidence especially with them being so different – was so blatant that Cangse Sanren couldn’t help feeling awkward.

 

Seriously, the way the human Sect Leader was smiling, it was so polite you could feel the hairs on the back of your nape and your forearms dancing wildly as they tried to uproot themselves and flee for greener pastures that wouldn’t see them murderized in very short order. Shen Yuan was kinda in awe, because they never saw anyone being that threatening with such a mild expression, when Mama was pissed then he looked like he was going to strangle you with your fresh innards still smoking from being extracted out of your disemboweled corpse, and Master Baoshan was a gigantic muddy dragon so every time she was grinning it was nightmarish by default.

 

Also, the older man with grey streaks in his hair was holding Cangse Sanren’s hand, and that wasn’t exactly the soothing skin contact aiming to express helpless fondness towards a beloved niece. It was firm and strong just like a single parent venturing in a bad neighbourhood because they had no other good choice, and they had to keep a tight grasp on the tiny child walking besides them to prevent them from being taken away, you know what happens to little kids when they are left alone don’t you ?

 

Cangse Sanren wasn’t a little kid anymore, even if he would admit he still had to learn so much about the Middle Kingdom and the jianghu and people in general, and right now he was learning a great deal about body langage and how to wield it to subtly bully a younger discussion partner into unease. Seriously, the huli jing could glimpse a thin shine of sweat upon Xiao Yue’s forehead, these frizzy curls would get plastered to his skin and that would itch like crazy…

 

Ah, that wasn’t the right time to lose oneself in fancy daydreaming, something had to be done to chase the awkwardness, otherwise it would hang over the whole meeting’s heads and that would make for depressing memories afterwards ! And because Cangse Sanren was linked to Yue Qingyuan and Xiao Yue both, no matter how shallow because one she couldn’t care less about and the other she barely was introduced to, the dire duty to do so befell her !

 

« Do you know, Young Master Yue is studying to attend the Imperial Exams ? Unfortunately, he couldn’t go up and visit the Cloud Recesses, these silly white dragons were too busy to allow too many foreign students enter the hallowed grounds of their libraries, so would your Qing Jing Peak be opened for a humble seeker of knowledge to plead for his cause ? »

 

As the fox spirit was uttering these words, zhey fluttered hir eyelashes at Yue Qingyuan – alright, Shen Yuan knew he looked stupid rather than dainty or demure because it was a cringe and cliché behaviour, and Wei Changze was likely wondering what in the Eighteen Hells she was playing at, but the Sect Leader seemed endeared and charmed so it was a score ! All hail the spineless uncle, provider of good services and fancy gifts !

 

« That might be a tad complicated » the healer, Mu Qingfang, softly coughed. « See, the Qing Jing Peak Lord has vanished decades ago, and it threw the Peak’s inner hierarchy in disorder. It ultimately got better, but there’s no denying the teachers and Hallmasters grew quite insular in the wake of the tragedy that losing their most important scholar and strategist was. »

 

Cangse Sanren frowned.

 

« … Is Shen Qingqiu the Peak Lord still ? » they wondered. « Even after so many years of absence ? »

 

If Shen Yuan had been the Sect Leader, he definitely would have replaced the Qing Jing Peak Lord when it turned obvious the man wouldn’t come back, at the very least to ensure the Disciples would peacefully keep studying and working on their cultivation because lacking a clear authority figure couldn’t be good in such a competitive, high-stakes environment. Also, when you weren’t doing the job, things and subordinates would nonetheless change as life wasn’t in stasis, and when you wanted to look back you would be bereft of everything familiar you might have used to get back on your feet.

 

Yue Qingyuan’s huge, warm hand twitched on Cangse Sanren’s dainty, smaller limb.

 

« Qingqiu will never find Cang Qiong Mountain closed to him » the man who led the Sect swore, his obsidian eyes glittering with sharpness and fierceness, as sharp and fierce as the blade piercing your flesh in the heat of battle or the icy premeditation of an assassination. « Even if the world turns their back to him, he will stay part of our Qing generation – that I promise to you, who bear his blood. »

 

Ah, huh, that was – that was intense ? A pinkish red blush threatened to warm Cangse Sanren’s cheeks and nape as the huli jing struggled to not choke under the weight of the Qiong Ding Peak Lord’s devotion, no wonder he managed to stay at the top in the ruthless and cutthroat game of politics played by powerful cultivators if that was the quality of charisma he was able to gather and unleash upon his hapless target, the most powerful person in the jianghu would be seized with vertigo !

 

Yet if that is so , a nasty little whisper hissed in the huli jing’s thoughts, if Cang Qiong’s Qing generation is just as close-knitted as you insist they are, why oh why did my mother flee to Zhengmei Mountain instead of dwelling on your glorious mountain range ?

 

Maybe Yue Qingyuan’s feelings were entirely personal in nature – perhaps he would be the only one to care about supporting Mama if the older fox spirit was derided and named the worst enemy mankind would see appear in the Middle Kingdom in millenia. If that was the case, then it was even more important to have him as an ally, wasn’t it ?

 

Cangse Sanren mercilessly forced his facial muscles to arrange themselves in a relaxed, soft expression, nothing to see here but a demure maiden, really.

 

« Then could I write to him, in order to inform him of my meeting with his martial siblings, and young master Xiao’s craving for higher education ? Surely he ought to be informed of such dealings. »

 

« Indeed he should » Yue Qingyuan eagerly confirmed, and the light in his dark eyes shifted, less a blade ready to strike and more a door opening on a festooned hall for a grand party people would remember for ages, and Cangse Sanren felt a pinch of remorse between their ribs.

 

Shen Yuan had no idea whatsoever of what unfolded in the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, but he knew his mother and his fiery temper, and this letter likely would induce a first-grade screaming meltdown, the written answer surely would cause the scroll to be set on fire from the sheer virulence of the spite contained within the ink !

 

Or would Mama be so incensed, he would leave Zhengmei Mountain to personally scold his offspring ? No, wait, that would be silly, nobody who went to dwell upon Baoshan Sanren’s mountain would leave it, since it was so peaceful and removed from the mundane world’s noise and politics.

 

So Cangse Sanren was safe from that, and what a relief it was.

 

 

Chapter 136

Finally, Sect Leader Yue decided he was done with today’s excitment – and the Qian Cao Peak Lord was approving of him going to rest since his health wasn’t good lately and he needed to take care of himself, especially with nobody ready and willing to replace him if he was incapacitated – and invited the small band of travelers to lodge with the Cang Qiong contingent if they pleased.

 

Wei Changze was extremely torn on the matter. On one hand, getting to sleep on comfy beds was always a plus, and he wouldn’t have to suffer longer the presence of people far too used to wield their power and influence over those born in the gutter such as him. On the other hand, when the strongest cultivator in the jianghu was politely asking for you and yours to be guests under his roof, it was nothing short of a nicely wrapped command.

 

For fuck’s sake, Wei Changze never signed for being surrounded by noblemen and noblewomen all day long, and this veiled girl in pink and lavender silks would be lurking in the background to jump at his face when he would relax and cease to pay proper attention to his surroundings, and he couldn’t beat any of them because they would immediately deem him uppity and giving himself airs when he was nothing but a favored servant to the young heir of a hopelessly minor lineage.

 

Jiang Fengmian wouldn’t be able to help, he was working his hardest to make himself charming and amiable in order to gain connections and open a gate for better relations between Lotus Pier and the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks but that would take at least a dozen of weeks, maybe a whole year, before the Peak Lords started to think of him as somebody worth their precious time and not one among the endless flood of parasites eager to latch on their skirts and drain their fame and wealth for selfish purposes without giving anything back in turn.

 

Xiao Yue… yeah, enough said. The young man was highborn to the core, he wouldn’t bat an eyelash if Wei Changze was gruesomely murdered right in front of him and would merely tell Jiang Fengmian to pick a more lucky retainer next time.

 

Cangse Sanren – well, that was different where she was concerned, and the black-clad cultivator instinctively fought the blush warming his cheeks and his nape. She never made a mystery of his fondness for Wei Changze, and the Qiong Ding Peak Lord was inordinately attached to her, the niece he never knew he had yet was bent on cherishing with all the thwarted intensity of two decades spent in loneliness.

 

Ancestors, that was quite the insane level of care, directed to a relative who was barely more than an acquaintance at this point in time. Shen Qingqiu – the lost Qing Jing Peak Lord, Cangse Sanren’s unseen parent – really had to be something, to earn such devotion.

 

Speaking of this man, the maiden in white insisted to write a letter to him when safely ensconsed in the lodgings gracefully provided to Cang Qiong Mountain, because it had been so long now and surely everyone was fretting back home, wondering if she wasn’t too bored, if she made friends who shared her interests instead of blindly agreeing to whatever she said and dumbly fawning over the tiniest silly thing, and constantly moving around wasn’t conducive to writing a letter when you would have to constantly search for a merchand or a messenger willing to deliver your missive and unlikely to lose themselves as they couldn’t find the right place, but Cang Qiong Mountain was filled with high-level cultivators and surely you have trained messengers, or trained delivery birds, or maybe you have some teleportation array ? Something linking two boxes, you put your letter in one and close it, and your friend at the other end of the Middle Kingdom open the other box and there is the letter !

 

Everyone had stared at Cangse Sanren while she cheerfully exposed the principles behind the twin boxes before they started to furiously whisper in each other’s ears, apparently that was quite the novel idea and An Ding Peak Lord Shang Qinghua would like to discuss it with you, Maiden Cangse, if you please ?

 

« Shang Qinghua ? » the young lord who wasn’t acknowledging himself as such repeated, his eyebrows rising towards his hairline.

 

« Would you be familiar with our martial sibling ? » Wei Qingwei wondered, his eyes cooly inquisitive as his hand was carefully resting on the ornate guard of the sword hanging at his side.

 

« It depends » Xiao Yue confessed. « A good friend of mine is extremely reliant on somebody wearing this name’s financial advice to keep his subordinates in line – they are quite the unruly bunch, but just as much of a gold mine in trade goods from futher Northern lands, somewhere near the Northern Sea, so you cannot just ignore them for behaving like idiots. »

 

« That does sound like Shang-shidi » the blacksmith hummed, « courting a wealthy trader bringing exotic goods for his Peak to sell back to inflated prices. »

 

« This humble one really doesn’t know about courting  » Xiao Yue demurred, putting an ambiguous intonation in this last word, « but they certainly appear to not actively dislike each other’s company. »

 

« Really » Mu Qingfang mildly commented as he glanced towards Wei Qingwei, a twinge of a frown pulling at the corner of his eyelids.

 

Huh. What was happening there ? Wei Changze’s battle instincts were quietly hissing at him that the blacksmith was holding himself as if he was expecting for violence to be just behind the corner, and from the healer’s facial expressions he was rather nonplussed yet ready to offer support if need be.

 

His own gaze flickered in Jiang Fengmian’s direction, dark briefly colliding with purple, and the Jiang Sect Heir politely smiled and wondered if Sect Leader Yue would condescend to bestow his wisdom upon a young and foolish soul as they left the private box and went back to the guest lodgings, and surely Maiden Cangse was tired, would she take pity on a poor nobleman and latch on his arm as they walked the path ?

 

Cangse Sanren outright laughed and claimed she would allow for Sect Leader Yue to keep holding her hand, really that man didn’t care about his dignity, what would the other Sects think from seeing you doting on a young woman not from your own Sect ? Perhaps were you looking to drag some of your ardent political foes in a flagrant case of hypocrisy if they dared to take umbrage to the whole scene ?

 

« Fuck these narrow-minded fools » Yue Qingyuan answered with all the serenity of an enlightened soul basking in the pure freedom from the suffering brought by worldly concerns, his martial siblings opening wide eyes at the crass langage. « I have been reunited with Qingqiu’s daughter, I am not letting go of her until tomorrow night. »

 

Cangse Sanren laughed again while the Cang Qiong cultivators choked at the sheer impropriety of an older man implying he would spend the evening with an unmarried maiden, no matter if he was her uncle – you could marry your niece, after all, even if that wasn’t too common either.

 

Wei Changze’s lone consolation as he grimaced was Xiao Yue openly frowning at this scandalous behaviour.

 

Chapter 137

The evening had been a delight, spent in a blink as Qingqiu’s daughter was laughing and waxing poetry about the Cloud Recesses – well, not so much poetry than theatrical complains regarding one Lan Qiren whome she deemed the absolute worst kind of fuddy-duddy, such a waste of a pretty face under this dumb facial hair, seriously that mustache is almost as awful as your Mu Qingfang’s sorry excuse of fuzzy lip but Mu-shidi didn’t bat an eyelashe, he was used to people lamenting his choice of grooming and actually favoured it since it meant his patients would be likelier to listen his medical advice instead of sexually harassing him – and the monster compendium she hoped to write someday, while relentlessly teasing and fawning over a crimson-cheeked Liu Qingge – Wei Changze – who seemed about ready to crawl in the Eighteen Hells and willingly undergo the tortures there because that couldn’t be worse than what he was currently suffering.

 

It had been a delight, but every good thing had to end and soon, far too soon, the youthful travel party was yawning and lazily nodding off – except for this Xiao Yue, but his stoic and quiet mien could have been his way to hide his exhaustion – not helped by their cultivation not allowing true sleeplessness or inedia yet, and inquired about a bedroom in which they could lay their heads and rest.

 

They had been given two bedrooms – sure, it had been tight, and stuffing all of them in a single room would have been more efficient, but Yue Qingyuan would rather see this young man calling himself Xiao Yue as far as it could be managed from Cangse Sanren. He couldn’t provide her the use of a room for her single enjoyment, alas, and letting her alone would potentially encourage this Xiao Yue to creep within her boundaries as she was vulnerable and exposed, but he trusted Wei Changze to watch over her, and to have the honour to not even touch a maiden not married to him.

 

Not yet – considering how much Qingqiu’s daughter was piling on the charm and flirting around him, Yue Qingyuan didn’t need to ask for a soothsayer if these two silly young things would perform the three bows before the year’s end. Ah, he would need to prepare a worthy gift for the wedding, perhaps some matter of obedient, weak beast as a pet for Cangse Sanren ? Something rare she could pamper and appreciate as the living evidence of the universe’s strange sense of humour, the weirder the monster, the more she gushed over them…

 

« Zhangmen-shixiong ? »

 

Wei Qingwei was staring at him, his lips pinched as his hand was resting on Hong Jing’s sheathe, Mu Qingfang hovering right besides him. The Xuan Su Sword focused back on the present – it was time to be the Cang Qiong Sect Leader, unfortunately, trouble had no concept whatsoever of politeness and would constantly impiege on his free periods of rest and relaxation.

 

« So is he a demon ? » the black and dark grey-clad cultivator pondered, his voice serene and mild as if he was commenting on a bone china tea seat’s painted pattern of plum blossoms. « This Sect Leader has noticed a subtle likeness to Tianlang-jun, mostly in the curls and the eyebrow shape. »

 

The Qian Cao Peak Lord’s own eyebrows jumped towards his hairline and almost vanished beneath his cloth hat, while the Wan Jian Peak Lord scowled, his mouth pulled into a grimace.

 

« Hong Jing mislikes his presence » the blacksmith confessed. « Since it wouldn’t jump out of its sheathe in order to cut his head or gouge his heart, I suppose he doesn’t nurture any hostile intent regarding our Twelve Peaks. »

 

The scarred Peak Lord paused as the muscles beneath the skin covering his face twitched and shivered, a flurry of thoughts struggling to gain control over his lips and his eyes and his forehead and be known to the world and his martial brothers.

 

« Of course, that might change. If he truly was harmless, Hong Jing would not be awake at all around him. »

 

Yue Qingyuan sighed. What a shame, the young demon appeared quite the amiable fellow, and the rare times he had piped on this evening when Cangse Sanren wasn’t filling the air with her cheerfulness and vibrancy, he unveiled an interesting wit, which had to be Tianlang-jun’s lordly charisma flowing through his blood. Why was it always such that the most entertaining conversationalists the Qiong Ding Sect Leader met were unfailingly people he was legally compelled to slay, exorcize or throw into a jail ? Perhaps he was cursed by a Heavenly Official that presided to interpersonal relationships with bad luck…

 

No, it couldn’t be, Cangse Sanren wasn’t slotting in this specific hypothesis. She was too sweet, too pure, too innocent to hide a dark secret, resplendent as the morning sun in a cloudless sky.

 

« Might it be » Mu Qingfang carefully suggested, « that the young man is planning to pull a nasty trick on ours hosts ? We are near the Bailu woods, after all, and nobody there needs to be reminded of what is buried under these woods. »

 

Yes, that would be a mess and a half, wouldn’t it ? Still, there was something else Yue Qingyuan had noticed, something much more alarming for Cang Qiong.

 

« This delightful young man has mentioned he was friendly with one of Shang Qinghua’s acquaintances. This Sect Leader’s memory isn’t that good anymore, but did our shidi explain where he obtained some goods of dubious provenance ? »

 

The blacksmith awkwardly shifted his weight on his left foot, suddenly very interested in the window’s carved wooden frame.

 

« … He provided Bai Zhan and Wan Jian products for tending to the swords » Wei Qingwei painfully admitted, each word dropping from his lips with all the grace and gentleness of a rotten tooth torn out of its socket by a vigorous physician. « Very good ones, rather heavy in yang, but you don’t have to visit the Lower Realm to pick up ores and herbs steeped in yang qi… And you really don’t want to annoy the man with access to the goodies. »

 

Yue Qingyuan wasn’t rolling his eyes, but he wasn’t surprised – unlike Mu Qingfang who was eyeballing his martial sibling with a stern and somewhat disappointed expression. That was a very understandable behaviour, greed wouldn’t be one of the three poisons if it wasn’t so spread among sentient beings, if it wasn’t so hard to uproot and cleanse from your soul.

 

« This Sect Leader has no taste for a public scandal that would drag our Twelve Peaks’ name in the mud, but he will have a word with our An Ding brother. Merely an advise to be careful when he’s looking for contacts in his merchant web, sometimes you will bite down in a wormy apple and unless you are truly desperate for meat, it’s not a good idea to keep eating the apple. That’s a good way to make yourself sick as the worm decides your gut will do as comfortable lodgings and cause you to fade and starve. »

 

« This physician believes Zhangmen-shixiong is not well-taught on the matter of parasitic worms, it doesn’t actually work like that. »

 

« Well, this is an allegory » the Xuan Su Sword nuanced. « They tend to not follow the truth that closely. »

Chapter 138

Shen Yuan hummed low in hir throat as they were busy scribbling an attempt at poetry failing to wholly capture Wei Changze’s peerless beauty and sweetness – obviously it would fail because you would have to be a Heavenly Official from the literary kind in order to properly translate such a fresh-featured face on a writing medium ! Still, poetry was better than drawing, merely thinking about drawing Wei-ge was giving Cangse Sanren heart palpitations and a staunch feeling of despair at the enormity of the endeavour.

 

Still, Wei-ge was only a tiny part of the letter meant for Mama – only three sheets of paper ! Three on a total of twenty-five, and Cangse Sanren wasn’t done with her draft, so it was liable to grow up, but that wasn’t entirely her fault, the younger huli jing saw many wonders, learned so much interesting pieces of knowledge, met so many colourful people ! How was he supposed to pick up and discard anything in this mess, huh ?

 

Mama would appreciate, though, because he enjoyed reading – well, he certainly enjoyed tearing trashy novels apart, and Shen Yuan couldn’t help but feel a smidge nervous at the very prospect of hir mother grading his attempt at poetry and complaining she still couldn’t follow the proper standards for an essay – and because it would inform him of everything his offspring had been blessed with the opportunity to do and experience since they left Zhengmei Mountain with Master Baoshan’s agreement !

 

Would Mama be alright if Cangse Sanren’s travel companions added some words of their own to the message ? Shoot, the younger huli jing truly hoped the men’s calligraphy wasn’t too bad, Young Master Jiang had the highest odds to excell since he was a true blue-blooded scion and had been taught in the Four Arts since he could waddle in a straight line without crawling on his four limbs, but Wei-ge was quite mono-focused on swordsmanship and hunting strategies and tactical games such as go and weiqi so he might have neglected this aspect of being a true gentleman and Xiao Yue might ambition to undergo the Imperial exams but that didn’t actually say something about his ability to hold a brush and produce a script aesthetically pleasing to the sight or even readable.

 

And would they even want to say anything to Cangse Sanren’s mother, when they never met him in real life ? The fox spirit couldn’t help having hir doubts on the matter. Zhe nonetheless asked, because who knew, they might agree, or they might not, but if they weren’t given the choice to have an opinion, obviously they wouldn’t.

 

Xiao Yue was too busy thinking to actually listen to her and awkwardly excused himself out of the room because he wanted some fresh air on the balcony, which was fine because it had been quite the exciting day, and Young Master Jiang amiably declined on the grounds he wasn’t too familiar with your esteemed mother but give that person my best wishes for health and peaceful years, alright ? Shen Yuan nodded and scribbled the appropriate formula at the end of their current sheet of paper, it was how many now ? He had lost the count…

 

Wei-ge turned deeply quiet for a moment when asked, then he sat down besides Cangse Sanren to produce his own message, something that took him half a shichen, the incense stick almost entirely consumed when the black-clad martial cultivator finally concluded it was the best he would succeed in writing after several disastrous drafts because he was a man who let his deeds speak for himself, mostly because his tongue was clumsy and far too blunt for people to enjoy listening very long without getting upset or annoyed.

 

It was a short message, constrasting with the thirty-two sheets blackened by Shen Yuan’s gleeful sacrifice of an inkstick and a quarter, painfully exacting in formality, as if Wei-ge was adressing a report to the Grand Empress Dowager in her lofty golden palace of the Imperial capital – Mama would like it, his self-esteem wasn’t really the best but he was a stickler for etiquette when he was in the superior position – and affirming he would watch over Cangse Sanren as long as he would have hands to swing his blade, and as long as she tolerated his presence besides her.

 

Silly Changze, he was more than tolerated, didn’t you understand that already ? He blushed and refused to look at the huli jing in the eyes when she teased him about that, waggling eyebrows all the while. So shy ! And Cangse Sanren was the one currently in the shape of a maiden, yet it seemed the martial cultivator could give him a run for his money where behaviour was concerned !

 

Anyway, that was a very long message and Cangse Sanren really needed this qiankun pouch – filled with a great deal of little trinkets bought or crafted or picked on the roadside to serve as mementos and gifts – to store the overflowing amount of paper within, carefully bound with leather to prevent them from losing their proper order, if thirty-three parts got tangled and mixed up then trying to read the letter would turn in a puzzle from the most infuriating kind.

 

Mama’s relationship with puzzles wasn’t what you would deem friendly. He swiftly lost his temper with them after trying half a dozen solutions and ultimately broke it to pieces, which also was a way to solve the riddle if you lacked the patience. Personally, Shen Yuan was more liable to try permutations again and again without ever making progress, sometimes going backwards when they genuinely believed they had it in the sack. They had no idea of Cangse Sanren’s opinions regarding puzzles – she ought to attempt one in the future, because she was Shen Yuan yet at the same time she also was Cangse Sanren and that meant a slight difference in mindset and approach to problem-solving.

 

Cangse Sanren was growing, she was evolving and changing, and she hoped Mama would be just as thrilled and excited by the prospect, he could be so grumpy over small things sometimes and Shen Yuan couldn’t understand his melancholy over the taste of tanghulu even after all these years, but surely your child blossoming into a complex and self-possessed person was a reason to be proud ! Cangse Sanren certainly would be proud when it would happen to hir own child !

 

When they would have a child, obviously. So not in the near future, and certainly not before meeting someone who wanted a family too, that was possible to look for a one-night-stand or search for a mystical flower or mushroom meant for this specific endeavour, but Cangse Sanren used to be a romantic kid and zhe wanted for a partner invested in creating new life, you couldn’t raise a life in being balanced and sane when you lacked consistent and positive support, just look at Mama who had Master Baoshan and all the Uncles and Aunties and jiejies and geges on Zhengmei Mountain to help him with Shen Yuan when he was unsure of the right path to follow !

 

Wei-ge looked like he would be a nice pillar. Protective and unyielding, but gentle, it was very important to be gentle since a great deal of people seemed to believe you had to be an asshole no matter what and the younger huli jing found that offensive on a soul-deep level, as if kindness wasn’t a worthy strategy to survive ?!

 

Anyway, the letter was done. Now for delivering it.

 

 

Chapter 139

Shen Jiu certainly wasn’t moping since Yuan’er departed from Zhengmei Mountain, no matter how much that drubkard Baoshan Sanren enjoyed ribbing him over his grumpy mien – well, grumpier mien – and ostentatiously composing poetry about a crane mourning the emptiness of its nest – what an absurd analogy, there was nothing alike to a crane in Shen Jiu, not anymore.

 

He might have been compared to one, a very long time ago, when he used to be the Qing Jing Peak Lord and believed himself human, when he used to swallow his bitterness and resentment down every single day as his so-called martial siblings derided him as a mistake, the ugly blemish on Cang Qiong’s pristine reputation for raising righteous cultivators without a fail, because he was concerned about survival than virtue and wouldn’t apologize for that, not in a thousand years.

 

He was unsure he still wanted to hear the comparison. He was a fox through and through – a cunning being who would lie and cheat and feel no remorse about his sins, and would go to sleep without caring a whit about his previous victims and the duties he abandoned. And there on Zhengmei Mountain, nobody would bat an eyelash for his behaviour, especially not Baoshan Sanren who was in the business of teaching human beings to enjoy a somewhat moral existence since two centuries at the very least yet couldn’t actually grasp the deal as if she had merely started yesterday.

 

That was… nice, and he really appreciated that.

 

What he didn’t, was Baoshan Sanren in a teasing mood. And she just wouldn’t stop lately, not even spiking her wine with bitter moss would prevent her from going down this road with all the cheery optimism of a fool convinced beasts wouldn’t savage them only because they were wearing a good luck charm embroidered by their almost blind grandmother instead of being properly blessed by a fully-fledged priest.

 

But really, he wasn’t moping. Or brooding. Or another word for a depressed state, caused by his cherished daughter’s absence from his surroundings. He absolutely wasn’t.

 

And if he jumped on his feet when this boy Xiao Xingchen entered in his house when he was painting and announced a message from a-Yuan had just been delivered, well, obviously he was surprised ! Zhengmei Mountain was supposed to be hidden from the jianghu and the mundane world, nobody suspecting a presence there ! How would Yuan’er manage to send a letter without it to not get lost ?

 

« Ah, shishu » the boy stuttered and stammered under Shen Jiu’s icy glare, as poisonous as its quicksilver hue, « that was, a strange automaton bird, it looks like a messenger bird and it was carrying a qiankun pouch... »

 

An automaton bird ? Now Shen Jiu was well and truly anxious, and he commanded Xiao Xingchen to immediately bring him to Baoshan Sanren – who had first stumbled upon the bird and found it a delightful piece of craftmanship, for a muddy dragon she was inordinately fond of shiny trinkets and you would believe she used to be a magpie before she cultivated to sapiency.

 

Of course the bird was a smidge broken when the huli jing walked upon the reptilian beast busy to rumble with such enthusiasm that the ground around her was slightly quaking.

 

« Oh, a-Jiu ! There you are ! Don’t worry, your letter is waiting, unopened by myself truly but it cannot be helped, you need opposable thumbs for the endeavour and my shape is rather unwieldy and inappropriate to handle delicate materials. But look at that ! »

 

That was the fine mechanisms hidden in the false bird’s innards, a lattice of gears and careful painted arrays that surely were meant for the artificial lifeform to be able to fly and follow a command and lock onto a target for the mail it was supposed to carry to destination. It was the kind of fine work that couldn’t possibly become more than a fancy dream sketched on paper without a great deal of money, a great deal of wits and a great deal of free time to waste on building it to perform as expected.

 

Shen Jiu’s anxiety and paranoia were now reaching an aneurysm-worthy level. What had Yuan’er done , to send such a fancy toy back to Zhengmei Mountain in order to deliver a message ? Who did she meet, and what would be the price to pay for her asking that favor ?

 

Oh, the older huli jing would certainly have words with this mysterious backer for daring to prey on his daughter’s naivety and trust in people’s inner goodness, then he would have words with Yuan’er for being so reckless and putting herself at risk by dealing with wealthy people, don’t you know the ones with more money they could hope to spend in their whole life are always hidden their rotten hearts under a gilded smile ?

 

He threw his hand within the qiankun pouch and brought back a small booklet, bound with colourful silken ribbons – that girl, couldn’t she be less ridiculous and frivolous – and started to read with a tremendous scowl.

 

As he was slowly assimilating the sentences cheerfully splattering the booklet’s pages, his scowl grew more fearsome and annoyed, giving an outsider watcher the peculiar impression that the huli jing was choking on a bucketful of salted lemons and preparing himself to gut a hapless dumbass with his bare teeth and feast on their raw organs and warm blood.

 

After reading once, he went over the booklet a second time, carefully, his finger casually tapping at some characters, as quiet as the absolute peace and stillness right before a tidal wave drowning the coast and turning a bountiful and prosperous port town in a dreary wasteland suffocating under mounts of beddraggled corpses.

 

After a while, Baoshan Sanren stopped poking and prodding and marveling at the automaton bird and rose her scaly head, slowly blinking her eyes. Xiao Xingchen, who was blessed with survival instincts as a way to balance his utter lack of diamong-grade skin level of toughness, had run away a few moments ago.

 

« Well » the muddy dragon mildly commented, « do you intend to give me the sinner for me to crunch between my jaws as they scream for their pitiful life, or do you intent to parade their broken body through the entire Middle Kingdom in order to provide nightmares to a whole generation of children ? Because you look positively murderous , my dear, darling a-Jiu. »

 

Shen Jiu chuckled. It was a small, soft noise, and filled with so much bloodlust and unhingedness that a lesser soul, one who wasn’t a predatory as great and unrepentant as Baoshan Sanren who could lay in waiting beneath the river’s waves and break a ship by chomping on the hull, would have fainted from complete and utter fright.

 

«  Just murderous ? » he wondered. « How quaint. I would rather march on a whole mountain range filled with all kinds of people and slaughter them all, from the highest authority to the most wretched servant, and then burn the mountains to the ground and danse upon the charred remains and cinders. »

 

« Alright, so you are pissed off » Baoshan Sanren summed up. « Isn’t your little spawn something, to trigger that reaction in you ? What did she do exactly ? »

 

Shen Jiu chuckled anew and offered her the booklet to read.

 

 

Chapter 140

Time flew swiftly when you were busy, that was a truth Cangse Sanren learned very early in hir life on Zhengmei Mountain yet it remained startling when it got proven time and again.

 

She didn’t got the opportunity to focus as much as she would have wanted on the arena filled by young cultivators doing their best to dazzle the crowd and show off their mightiness in controlled settings instead of roaming the countryside looking for trouble, and most importantly filled with plants and animals brought from every corner of the Middle Kingdom, some from the barbarian steppes or from beyond the ocean, because the Huan Hua Palace wanted to remind the jianghu how much power there was to be found in their endless wealth and buying exotic critters was a surefire way to gloat you had gold aplenty.

 

Speaking of the Huan Hua Palace, Cangse Sanren had been given the dubious honour to be introduced to the Old Palace Master – the reason why she couldn’t properly watch the competition in the arena, she was staying besides Yue Qingyuan as he was her newfound uncle and he looked so sad and lonely, obviously she melted and needed to keep him company while he was busy slogging through the thick mire of politics.

 

The young master Jiang had been a lovely dear and offered himself as moral support, claiming with a wink it would help his future as a Sect Leader to observe how a master of the great game was playing, and as Wei Changze’s sworn brother he would rather keep an eye over Cangse Sanren and rescue her from trouble if that was needed – poor Wei-ge had no stomach at all for politics, he would quickly suffer a terminal case of boredom or he would wind up blurting something very insulting and cause a bloodbath, which he might enjoy since he would get to use his sword instead of desperately fighting his urge to yawn.

 

Cangse Sanren had beamed and warmly thanked the purple-clad youth for being so considerate towards her and Wei-ge, and Young Master Jiang had blushed pink to the hairline, a gentle shade of pink that went extremely well with the deep purple of his garments.

 

« Who do you think her mother was » she had heard the blacksmith, the one who was named the same as Wei-ge but wasn’t a relative of the black-clad youth, frantically whisper to the doctor with his sorry excuse for a mustache, « because I don’t remember Shen Qingqiu flirting like that with anybody ! »

 

Flirting ? Who was flirting ? Cangse Sanren was polite and nice and wanted to acknowledge people making an effort to be decent and kind, how did that qualify as flirting ? Seriously, the world outside Zhegmei Mountain could be so very strange sometimes.

 

It could be a smidge scary too, just like when the Old Palace Master amiably greeted her, after introductions were made – Yue Qingyuan openly calling her his niece and actually not saying she belonged to Lotus Pier in Yunmeng but at the same time he wasn’t not saying it, and young master Jiang was apparently very happy to let the misunderstanding stand and so Cangse Sanren firmly kept her mouth shut because politics and she was a complete novice at these, she would trust in her friends to not lead her astray regarding the matter – and the Old Palace Master in his gaudy yellow robes embroidered with gold thread in auspicious patterns was speaking gently and kindly, but his eyes…

 

It felt really weird to have his eyes upon her, weird as if a spider was crawling all over her body in search of the perfect place to bite and you just wanted to slap the critter away but you couldn’t do it, not now because it would only startle it into biting sooner. It was weird and more than a bit scary, and Cangse Sanren might have been accidentally rude by being so quiet and letting Yue Qingyuan and young master Jiang speaking for her, but she wasn’t feeling in a talkative mood.

 

Also, people in the Middle Kingdom tended to be alright when a man was answering them instead of the woman they were adressing. Something about being demure and maidenly ? It sounded silly, like a great deal of customs associated with that patriarchy bullshite, but as long as it played in Cangse Sanren’s favour, she wouldn’t complain too much.

 

Fortunately, the Old Palace Master seemed more interested in poking and prodding at Yue Qingyuan’s unexpected presence, it had been so long since the Cang Qiong Sect Leader decided to show his face in a public setting after all, are you sure you are feeling quite alright ? And Yue Qingyuan smiled and parried the sly verbal assaults with his own wits, and it lasted far too long for everyone stuck there without the possibility to politely excuse oneself, or at least lacking the shamelessness to claim you had to run to the toilet under pain of shitting yourself, because merely being awful people was making you sick – which really wasn’t nice to say.

 

After a while, the Old Palace Master decided he bothered the Cang Qiong delegation enough for the day, and he went somewhere place, likely to pester and annoy a representant from the two other Great Sects left in the jianghu, and Cangse Sanren allowed herself a huge relieved sigh.

 

Yue Qingyuan patted her hand.

 

« Yes, meeting Old Master Chen tends to be quite the experience » the Qiong Ding Peak Lord admitted, his mouth still blandly smiling under his flat, dark eyes.

 

« Is Maiden Cangse alright ? » young master Jiang worried, and the huli jing sniffed because he was there, he saw the old fart in his golden robes never was given the chance to lay a finger upon Cangse Sanren, nothing happened at all so everything was fine, really.

 

Everything had to be fine, but the purple-clad Sect Heir wouldn’t believe her and he went to denounce her to Wei-ge who immediately fretted and ran to find her, swearing under his breath a litany of curses and nasty things he wanted for the Old Palace Master to suffer in the near future, alongside several dubious accusations regarding the old fart’s sexual hygiene and his previous lives in the samsara.

 

That was nasty, but Cangse Sanren giggled anyway because of the creativity. That and Wei-ge was gently holding her elbows, as if he wanted to hug her and was too shy to go all the way, and wasn’t that adorable ?

 

Yue Qingyuan was watching them with a raised eyebrow, his smile now reminiscent of a cat watching a birdcage in which a nightingale was too busy singing and preening to notice the predator taking note of its routine, and young master Jiang had his arms crossed over his chest and looked like he was waiting for something, and he had been waiting for a long while, and when would it actually happen because he was getting rather tired, please ?

 

And now Wei-ge was dropping the physical contact and wouldn’t even look at her in the eyes. Cangse Sanren pouted in sheer and complete disappointment.

 

Really, men could be absolutely ridiculous, and she had been very smart to claim a female identity in the jianghu.

 

 

Chapter 141

Xiao Yue didn’t know a lot of things regarding the Middle Kingdom and the jianghu, and even after immersing himself among mankind he nonetheless could guess he still had a long path to tread before getting closer from full comprehension, but he knew enough to be wary of the Old Palace Master.

 

After all, that was the man heading the Sect that managed to ambush Tianlang-jun and imprison him under a mountain – Xiao Yue didn’t care for giving them an opportunity to repeat the feat with a younger scion of the Heavenly bloodline, unless he succeeded in throwing the wastes of flesh he was forced to acknowledge as his sire and his mewling sibling at the Huan Hua Palace’s nonexistent mercy, then he would watch with snacks ready to be chewed and digested.

 

Speaking of Tianlang-jun, the older Heavenly Demon’s plan to escape his gaol apparently was going well, the wretch serving as his attendant having found the perfect place to grow a mushroom body until it could host a fearsomely powerful soul such as the one held by the previous Sacred Ruler of Demonkind. Obviously, maintaining the mushroom body functional instead of letting him burn or rot or shatter from the inside, consequence of the sheer soul pressure wearing down the artificial flesh or the clash between the Heavenly Demon bloodline and the wholly spiritual Sun and Moon Dew Mushroom flesh, that promised to be a chore and a half, but that was another problem entirely.

 

It had been complicated and delicate to go back to this damp and dark cave in order to check on the escape plan’s progress without anyone belonging to Cang Qiong Mountain decided they were curious, or that the curly-haired youth traveling with their Sect Leader’s newfound niece was starting to appear suspicious – and Xiao Yue might be aware that yes, Cangse Sanren also was a demon, she wouldn’t raise a single finger to rescue him if he was caught helping somebody named enemy to the jianghu and unveiled as nonhuman and Lower Realm royalty.

 

He didn’t blame her, demonkind was quite selfish by nature. Also, if you couldn’t save yourself from being forever trapped in the ground, perhaps you were an unworthy suitor, and unworthy to seize the throne for all you would sneer at the current dumbfuck plonking his ass on the seat. Might and cunning would showcase your valor, and in order to display these qualities one needed to be sorely tested.

 

Xiao Yue fully intented to rise up to the challenge. Being willfull would be a blessing, as the shape of his future was looming closer and closer, and it wasn’t a promising one.

 

See, the Cang Qiong Sect Leader, Yue Qingyuan, was thoroughly insistent on bringing his newfound niece to the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks as a honored guest, and the pristine-clad maiden wasn’t exactly adverse to the prospect – that was the most influent Sect to thrive in the Middle Kingdom, after all, a Sect that could open the gates to theirs libraries wide to a young lady cultivator who went on a learning journey to gather all the knowledge she would unearth and compile it in a book of her own. Also, the young master Jiang would enjoy rubbing elbows – or was it shoulders, ugh, idioms could be so weird sometimes – with all these young noble scions studying on Qiong Ding or Qing Jing Peak, and his black-clad servant could lurk on Bai Zhan for some tips about fighting, everyone would win !

 

Everyone, except for Xiao Yue – who was a Heavenly Demon fully aware of his gifts, and also aware that the Twelve Peaks were surrounded by a protective ward forbidding anyone with a measly drop of nonhuman bloodline to put a foot on their mountain range if they were actively flexing this drop and practising with their hereditary gifts. Perhaps a loophole could be accessed, if you joined the Sect when young enough, lacking any kind of experience wielding demonic qi, then the Peak would grow accustomed to your presence and wouldn’t trigger the alarm if you awoke to your lineage, but if you sought for entry after gaining a tiny bit of control over your bloodline talent ? Xiao Yue wasn’t betting high on your survival odds.

 

Protective wards as old as the one encompassing Cang Qiong weren’t gentle with the ones deemed to be a threat. And they likely would feel just as oppressive towards a prisoner, or a guest coming under false pretense.

 

Wait, how would they react to Cangse Sanren ? Would the Sect Leader explicitely deeming her a personal guest of his be enough to circumnavigate the wards ? Surely as the supreme authority ruling over the collective formed by the Twelve Peaks, he would get to enjoy some perks, so why not that one ?

 

And even if he didn’t… well, Yue Qingyuan certainly appeared spineless when it came to doting on someone he cherished, but he was the one who brought Tianlang-jun low when he still was a Disciple. Even with his diminished health, that was the man who successfully led Cang Qiong for several decades, and you couldn’t achieve that without a degree of coldbloodedness and utter lack of shame in taking what you coveted. If he didn’t have a mean, then the Qiong Ding Peak Lord would surely cajole or threaten until he finally got his way.

 

He was a powerful man, and a powerful obstacle on the road to obtain Cangse Sanren’s attention. Perhaps… perhaps it would be best for Xiao Yue to go his separate way, while the pristine-clad maiden was studying at the Twelve Peaks ? Surely she would take her time there, and Xiao Yue would emerge as the new Sacred Ruler of Demonkind long before she concluded Cang Qiong got stale and boring, and that she would have to move on, to search another place of learning.

 

Still, the prospect of not getting to see her every day, that was quite unpleasant and Xiao Yue’s fangs were itching with the urge to tear something and relieve the stress. He wasn’t good with sharing, he never had been and how his poor nurse had lamented that flaw as she was stuck raising him and the whining little shite daring to share a mother with him, but that was in the exhausted, fond voice of a demon who was a deep connoisseur of her species’ flaws – being open-handed was an human incongruity, one that would never cease to amaze and baffle citizens born in the Lower Realm.

 

Spending the near future stuck with a much older Heavenly Demon whose sanity was thoroughly dubious in order to plot a palace revolution instead of gazing upon a fierce and joyful maiden entertaining herself would surely be a chore, and Xiao Yue wasn’t looking forwards to it, but… he swore long ago, that he would be dutiful and a greater ruler than Luo Binghe who always neglected his duties as a sovereign to chase after his own pleasure – and it didn’t even work to satisfy him, boredom plain upon the Heavenly half-breed’s handsome face when his features weren’t twisted by unholy bloodlust, from the whispers at court the bastard was unable to retain a measure of happiness for all his frantic hedonism.

 

First the hard work, then you could relax and enjoy yourself. That would be the principle Xiao Yue would follow.

 

 

Chapter 142

The Immortal Alliance Conference was almost done, and Cangse Sanren would be lying if they claimed she wasn’t looking forward the farewell feast that would signal the end to the gathering of politicians more eager to flaunt their Disciples being so well-trained and obviously superior to the inferior products spat back by the other Sects than to actually cheer for their success, especially when they were facing something really dangerous even with all the care put in the arena and the selection of monsters to slay.

 

Also, Shen Yuan was extremely done with all these old farts gaping at him for being the missing Qing Jing Peak Lord’s unexpected child – and the way they snorted afterwards, the way they said yes obviously Immortal Master Shen would sire an illegitimate child , and Yue Qingyuan was very nice to verbally flay them for that, and Wei-ge was so very comforting, but once, twice, thrice, after a while they all blurred together and the young huli jing was just…

 

Why was everyone obsessed by legitimacy, or the lack of ? Humans were weird and exhausting and Cangse Sanren had currently no wish whatsoever to try and understand their viewpoint, because they wouldn’t stop forcing it down her throat and that was suffocating.

 

At least it would be quieter in the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks. And Yue Qingyuan had promised he would introduce the young huli jing to hir parent’s foremost Disciples, Ning Yingying and Ming Fan who found themselves saddled with the duties to keep Qing Jing Peak afloat in the aftermath of their Shizun’s distressing disappearence, and they would be very happy to meet Cangse Sanren, don’t worry, they will love you, Cangse Sanren is a very lovable person.

 

Shen Yuan found this attempt at being reassuring a smidge silly. People as a whole were worthy of love, so him wasn’t inherently more worthy than anyone else, but Yue Qingyuan was speaking as if love was something to be earned by a sweet behaviour when it was entirely irrational – Master Baoshan had been quite philosophical on the matter, and Mama had been quite possessed of a strong opinion too, and from listening their intense debate Shen Yuan had concluded it was nice when it happened but that wasn’t a guarantee, you couldn’t force yourself to care for somebody even if they bent themselves backwards to shower you with attention and gift, that was unfair but such was life.

 

Life had been very good to Cangse Sanren so far, blessing them with Mama, and Master Baoshan, and all the aunties and uncles and cousins on Zhengmei Mountain, and Wei-ge and Yue Qingyuan. Zhey would never forget to be thankful for that, as long as hir existence would last and considering their nature as a fox spirit that might be quite a long time indeed.

 

Still, Cangse Sanren would brace herself for her upcoming sojourn to the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, because several Peak Lords were still a tiny bit awkward around her, and surely Maiden Liu wouldn’t be alone in hating the pristine-clad cultivator merely for being related to Shen Qingqiu – which was deeply pointless but humans actively enjoyed being stupid sometimes and could be quite pissed off when faced with the evidence of how wrong their behaviour could be – so that wouldn’t be all fun and games.

 

And there was the farewell banquet to endure, one last opportunity for the Huan Hua Palace to show off their wealth and influence by rubbing the jianghu’s collective nose in it, you would think they would stop after ten days but nooo, seriously, people could suck so much…

 

Yue Qingyuan had asked Cangse Sanren if she wanted a brand-new gown for the feast and she actually had to yell at him because come on, that was ridiculous, unless he wanted for his shimei – that purple lady with the angry eyebrows – to loan some clothes then he wouldn’t have time for that kind of gift, just forget it and prevent rude old farts from commenting on me being obviously a rude, ill-mannered peasant who won’t speak with them because they are boring me to tears but I cannot actually say that since etiquette forbids it, so let’s just ignore each other, it will be wonderful.

 

The Qiong Ding Peak Lord had agreed, even as he lamented he couldn’t actually sit at the same table because Sect Leader , he would have to share his espace with his martial siblings and all the other authority figures attending the even and whew, wouldn’t that be tiresome, while Cangse Sanren and her travel companions would mingle with the Cang Qiong Disciple contingent in spite of being technically outsiders, sure the young huli jing was kinda a relative by his formerly a Peak Lord parent but zhey hadn’t been added to the registry yet, the paperwork would have to wait for everyone to go back to their mountain range.

 

So it had been decided, and Young Master Jiang had laughed a bit when he learned the sitting arrangements but there was a steely glint in his eyes, and Wei-ge was looking plainly desperate for it to finish and Xiao Yue wouldn’t stop sighing and twitching, obviously he wanted to do something more productive with his time but he was stuck by his own manners, truly the most dreadful trap invented by a twisted and sadistic mind, you knew it was torture but it was so deeply baked in social interactions that you would never truly escape it.

 

The Cang Qiong Disciples were very nice, and that was a real change of scenery after spending almost the whole Conference keeping company to Yue Qingyuan, who was kind and lovely but nonetheless much older than Cangse Sanren, sometimes you just needed to connect with a person who wasn’t so ancient that they would have been busy having a career as a scholar or a general or an artist while you were struggling to figure the finer points of this complicated achievement called walking on your two feet without falling flat on your nose, or when you were a squishy tadpole working on turning in a human being while your mother was carrying you in their womb.

 

Everything was going somewhat fine, so obviously that was the moment everything went topsy turvy, because Master Baoshan was a muddy dragon and couldn’t care less about manners, when she wanted to go somewhere, then she went and she tended to crush all the obstacles in her path – not because she was willfully destructive, she just couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to her surroundings – and that apparently included the gate to the banquet hall.

 

The Old Palace Master didn’t look very happy. And a great deal of cultivators, Masters and Disciples, were holding their swords aloft, ready to wield them against the perceived monster.

 

Master Baoshan snorted, and her leathery stench filled the entire hall – not a small affair, that.

 

« What a delightful welcome » the muddy dragon mildly commented, looking as threatened as a mighty tiger surrounded by a bunch of kittens stumbling upon her tail. « Is that how the jianghu greets an esteemed Master who deigned to leave seclusion ? If so, then this one fully understands a-Jiu’s decision to join her in her dwelling. »

 

That was then, Shen Yuan noticed the white-clad figure riding astride the muddy dragon’s back, his back unbendingly straight and glaring at the diners as if he hoped they would be set afire by the sheer loathing in his gaze.

 

Well, they certainly weren’t expecting to see Mama today ! What a nice surprise !

 

 

Chapter 143

The spoon held in Shang Qinghua’s hand didn’t snap or shatter, it was outright crushed into fine bone china dust as he was startled by the sudden and unexpected guests at the feast – weakest among his so-called martial siblings he might be, the logistician nonetheless was a Peak Lord who genuinely earned his rank by forging a golden core and being worked like a donkey from sunrise to sunset, sometimes even longer than that.

 

He wasn’t alone in destroying the tableware, his ears casually registering bowls breaking and chopsticks splintering and goblets exploding. The Huan Hua Palace would be quite unhappy with the bill to replace all their fancy dinner ware the next day…

 

Still, how were you meant to react when an infamous Peak Lord who had mysteriously vanished around two decades ago, decided to give the whole jianghu a heart attack by riding a freaking giant muddy dragon into the Immortal Alliance Conference’s closing banquet ?!

 

Really, Shen-shixiong, what a dramatic little bitch you are. Shang Qinghua wanted to bury his face in his hands and shriek – perhaps in despair, or maybe it would be the cackling mirth of one losing his mind.

 

Well, at the very least, the returned Qing Jing Peak Lord was hiding his most animalistic features, the furry ears and the fluffy tail that would have outed him as huli jing – and the jianghu really wasn’t ready for that tidbit of information, and likely would never be – even if he hadn’t taken the time to dye his hair that spread on his shoulders and his back as a snowy waterfall, almost as icily perfect as the majestic asshole’s pristine locks.

 

Shang Qinghua discreetly glanced at his fellow Cang Qiong cultivators – most of them appeared stunned, the Bai Zhan contingent – still sore about Liu Qingge’s demise and hesitant to change their suspicions regarding it being potentially a murder just because they had heard an outsider to the Sect claimed it was an accident – glaring bloody murder at the muddy dragon and Ancestors, please don’t let them attempt to ask for a duel with the gigantic Spiritual Beast, several Peak Lords looking constipated and Zhangmen-shixiong gaping as if he was a bridegroom lifting his bride’s veil on their wedding night and beholding her dazzling beauty for the very first time.

 

Seriously, that man was a lost cause. Shang Qinghua rather wanted to puke, dog food wasn’t his favorite flavour, it gave him a headache.

 

On the other side of the table, Shen Qingqiu’s female offspring was pouting in a way hinting at her being overjoyed to see her parent again, and sheer annoyance because said parent was making a scene and bothering everyone who only wanted to slurp their soup quietly, Liu Qingge’s reincarnation was twitching likely in preparation to jump between the female spawn and the fucking muddy dragon – had Shang Qinghua already commented on the beast being gigantic ? Because these teeth had to be just as long as his arm, and there were far too much of him for his sanity – the Jiang Sect Heir was openly grimacing in panic, and the Young Prince was furrowing his eyebrows, obviously struggling to process the sight and what it involved for the near future.

 

The An Ding Peak Lord was empathizing with Luo Binghe’s eldest spawn, and he didn’t like that. He grit his teeth and wrenched his attention back on the intruders, mimicking all the other people in the banquet hall.

 

The Old Palace Master rose himself from his seat, which was logical since he was hosting the Conference and such an incident was begging for him to intervene under pain of losing a great deal of face.

 

« Greetings » the old fart managed to utter, looking like his toenails were ripped out slowly and his tongue would be next. « Might this one be made aware of what could bring the likes of a Spiritual Beast and its handler to show the breathtaking rudeness of showing themselves when they have not received an invitation ? »

 

The muddy dragon loudly snorted, and the stench of wet leather and stagnant waters fouled the confined atmosphere in the banquet hall. Oh crap, was it smiling ? It certainly was baring so much more fangs than before, and why in the Eighteen Hells would the Heavenly Official tasked with crafting beings before they came into existence think it was a good idea to give a beast that many teeth  ?

 

Then he glanced up at Shen-shixiong, and the fucker was smiling too , and that was definitely worse than the obscene amount of fangs displayed by the reptilian mountain parked under the huli jing’s ass.

 

« As long as this humble one is made aware of how the Huan Hua Palace could bring themselves to tolerate a demon among their revelry, as it otherwise would hint at them completely losing their edge when it comes to anti-demon warding. »

 

Silence. Absolute and heavy, the stillness looming in a buried tomb, the quietness hanging over a battlefield abandoned by crows and feral dogs because they glutted on so many corpses they couldn’t finish the work of cleaning after the armies.

 

Shang Qinghua had stopped breathing, because what the shite , what was the madman pulling out of his sleeve, was he about to out himself to the jianghu, the logistician’s brain literally wasn’t functional anymore because it was overheating from pondering the reason why all this –

 

And right before someone, a great deal of people actually, started screaming for answers – Shang Qinghua could hear the breathings that hitched and gathered air for more potency in the volume – the huli jing threw something small and glinting – threw it in the corner in which Cang Qiong’s guests were seated – threw it in the direction of his spawn –

 

And the Young Prince yelped then howled as his demon qi lashed out , the huadian betraying his Heavenly lineage shining crimson and bloody on his brow, Liu Qingge’s reincarnation springing out of his seat and gathering Shen Qingqiu’s daughter in his arms before retreating behind a human wall made by Cang Qiong Disciples, the Jiang Sect Heir following closely in his footsteps, focused on getting to safety while the other youths in the banquet hall were grabbing their spiritual weapons, while hallmasters and monks were screeching in horror and confusion –

 

Shang Qinghua’s heart had stopped beating, a leaden and useless weight stuck between his ribs, and what the shite, Shen-shixiong astride the muddy dragon had crossed his arms over his chest, his face scowling in disgust and showing no hint of mercy toward the young demon he just condemned to death and that was Luo Binghe’s eldest spawn, meaning he also was Shen Qingqiu’s offspring , wasn’t that thoroughly fucked up but really huli jing were monsters cut from a whole another caliber and the Qing Jing Peak Lord never had been a paragon of righteousness even when he was playing at being a respectable cultivator –

 

« Seize it » the Old Palace Master shouted, his voice high-pitched and frantic. « Seize the demon ! Seize it, I say !  »

 

Golden embroidered robes jumped at the call, rushing to the freshly unveiled intruder who startled and waved a hand, releasing a dark flood of qi that caused the first assailants to be bowled over, squealing as they fell in a heap, but that wasn’t enough…

 

The Young Prince howled , a frustrated, wrathful sound, and Shang Qinghua barely managed two words – a name – in that storm of noise, a name extremely familiar.

 

A black portal slashed the air, a taloned, pale-skinned hand rising from the wound in the dimensional wall to seize the Heavenly half-breed by the collar of his robes and drag him away, likely in the Lower Realm, somewhere there wouldn’t be one cultivator for miles around, an army of them even less.

 

Silence fell anew on the banquet hall, now filled with ruined tableware, forgotten food, and shell-shocked cultivators whose minds weren’t busy enjoying themselves now. Oh, and a huli jing riding a muddy dragon, couldn’t forgot them when they were responsible for this entire mess.

 

Shang Qinghua buried his face in his sleeve and started to giggle. It rather sounded like sobbing, if you paid attention.

 

 

Chapter 144

Shen Jiu sneered at the stunned masses surrounding Baoshan Sanren’s reptilian body – utterly ridiculous, was that meant to be the finest the jianghu could display ? A bunch of twits unable to do the most simple duty of a righteous cultivator and slaughter the beast in front of them ?

 

Even if he hadn’t been a monster himself, the blood running through his veins dirty and tainted, he certainly wouldn’t have taken back his former position as a Peak Lord in the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, since that would have forced him to interact with these wastes of flesh and teaching. Zhengmei Mountain was superior for providing intellectual stimulation and rest, really, no wonder nobody wanted to leave the place.

 

Well, except for Yuan’er, but look at how this foolish endeavour had ended up, Shen Jiu’s precious daughter basically throwing herself in the arms of Yue Qingyuan…

 

Yue Qingyuan who was standing among the other Sect Leaders, and he looked… well, Yuan’er certainly wasn’t exaggerating his sickly mien, seriously, couldn’t Mu Qingfang do his fucking job anymore and tend to his martial siblings…

 

(Qi-ge never learned how to properly take care of himself, always too reckless, always needing to be scolded and watched closely, otherwise he would get in so many mishaps and accidents, you just wanted to shackle him to his bed, that way he wouldn’t hurt himself)

 

Because the Sect Leader is so pitiful in health, Shen Jiu will be patient and wait a bit before releasing his anger and deciding of a punishment – seriously, was Yue Qingyuan hoping his sin of cowardliness would be erased if he ingratiated his wretched ass to Yuan’er, talk about being gutless…

 

Speaking of Yuan’er, where was she ? The older huli jing’s eyes scrutinized the crowd, searching through the youthful contingent in the Cang Qiong section, and there she was, carried in the arms of a young man who soon will lose these limbs if he couldnt guess what was good for him and let go of the maiden he was handling so carelessly, right in front of her parent, how daring, how bold, how suicidally stupid and Shen Jiu almost couldn’t believe the gall and dumbassery involved…

 

Wait. That face. And there was a bit too much distance to get a feeling of the young man’s qi, but… It had been long enough, Shen Jiu supposed. Long enough for a soul to be released from the Underworld and pick a new body to walk upon the land anew.

 

Liu Qingge never had been blessed with anything similar to survival instincts. It wasn’t that surprising for the affliction to keep plaguing him in this new life.

 

(Shen Jiu doesn’t feel guilty as he beholds the face of the man he failed to save, he doesn’t feel regret either, mostly he feels exhausted and weary, yet at the same time there’s a strange, lingering glimpse of peace, the relief to know it’s going to be alright at the end, it won’t be just like before because things happened, impossible to deny that, but life will go on, as it always did and always will)

 

(it still won’t be enough to spare Liu Qingge, because no one is allowed to lay hands on Shen Jiu’s beautiful, wonderful and perfect daughter and when he says no one he means no one )

 

Yuan’er appeared untouched, if a smidge annoyed by all the twits uselessly chattering and wringing their hands around her and the brute reincarnated, and thank fuck for that, something dark and heavy untwisted in Shen Jiu’s innards. The world could be so cruel toward a young woman, especially one so naive and innocent, just look at what it decided to put on his daughter’s path.

 

Yuan’er had mentioned the demon in her letter, complaining about its rudeness while acknowledging his thirst for knowledge, its wish to attempt the Imperial exams and immediately alarm bells shrieked in the former Peak Lord’s mind, a demon wishing to infiltrate the higher levels of the Middle Kingdom ? Who knew what kind of untold ravages it was intending to cause, without anyone identifying it as the root cause before it was far too late to fix more than the shallowest part of the disaster ?

 

Shen Jiu might have been a monster born and made, his blood thoroughly rotten and soiled, but the idea of allowing society to crumble was too much for him. What if Yuan’er was caught in the aftermath ? How many maidens just like her, left to suffer and toil ?

 

So he pestered Baoshan Sanren into carrying him to the Immortal Alliance Conference in order to check on the situation – and wasn’t that startingly easy to do, the muddy dragon roaring mirthfully and commenting on empty nest syndrome , as if that was relevant to their current problem – and borrowed a little device made to briefly disrupt everything qi-based. Not even shatter, merely aiming to disrupt, yet that was unsettingly useful, it could bring potent wards down, and it would incapacitate fearsome cultivators courtesy of the pain caused by the unexpected intrusion of foreign energy pushing your qi out of control just for a little moment, but so many people treading the path leading to the silver bridge utterly forsook control to focus on power and might instead, one single moment was a mistake they couldn’t recover from.

 

One single moment had been enough to unmask the demon hiding in the middle of all these foolish, careless twits, bidding its time for an unknown scheme, and now that it fled, it would be so much more complicated to learn what it planned for the Middle Kingdom, what it already implemented, what could be salvaged and what should be purged. Truly, since Su Xiyan’s demise, the Huan Hua Palace’s quality had taken a sharp turn downward, and it didn’t seem like it would get better anytime.

 

Well, since the demon had been sitting at the same table than a bunch of Cang Qiong Disciples, obviously the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks couldn’t exactly gloat and lord their superior efficiency over the Old Palace Master’s bunch of pampered brats.

 

(Yuan’er isn’t at fault, she’s literally too sweet and optimist for her own good, always wishing to see the best in everyone and Shen Jiu despairs as he anticipates having yet another discussion with his daughter on the fact that people don’t deserve her sympathy and kindness, so why do you insist on wasting them)

 

Truly, Shen Jiu found himself unable to regret his willing exile from the jianghu. Already he could hear his intelligence battered by the sheer amount of idiocy in the air, and it wasn’t helping with his temper. Alas, he couldn’t actually command Baoshan Sanren to devour all these dumbasses, she didn’t deserve to make herself sick by consuming unworthy meat – and trying to order a gigantic muddy dragon with fangs bigger than your head was basically asking to become a crunchy snack.

 

And he couldn’t just grab Yuan’er – in spite of really wanting to do so – and fuck off to escape the stupidity because she would make a fuss and dig her heels and try to lure Baoshan Sanren on her side, and the Spiritual Beast would be no help whatsoever, finding the entire quarrel hilarious and ogling the qi-infused liquors and wines bought by the Huan Hua Palace for the feast.

 

Wait, she was actually sniffing a barrel, her snout twitching in covetous want, uncaring of the shouting masses surrounding her and slightly alarmed by her behaviour, because can you picture a reptilian mountain of flesh drunk off her ass in the middle of such a crowd ?

 

Shen Jiu’s teeth were clenched as he resigned himself to the ugly truth – once again, he was the lone person possessed with common sense in the whole jianghu.

 

 

Chapter 145

Yue Qingyuan’s heartbeat was racing so swiftly, so mightily against his ribcage that surely it was a minor miracle for the bones to not have broken yet and the flesh torn itself to allow the organ to escape in the Heavens.

 

Xiao Jiu – Qingqiu – he was there again. Because it was him, his hair might have the snowy sheen of moonlight by a wintry night and his garments barely worthy of a Peak Lord, more what you would give to moderately wealthy commoners or craftsmen, but the way he sneered at the gaping masses surrounding the Spiritual Beast carrying him, the haughtiness rising off from every cun of his body, as if he was an Empress abasing himself to endure the crass mundanity of earthly existence among unwashed peasantry.

 

Yue Qingyuan would know him anywhere. The oceans could dry and the mountains could crumble and he would know the other half of his soul anywhere.

 

« Qingqiu » he breathed, his voice wavering, a supplicant prostrated on his two knees and face at the divinity’s altar.

 

So focused is he on the slender, pristine figure atop the gigantic muddy dragon, the Sect Leader barely noticed Qi Qingqi sharply inhaling besides him.

 

« Zhangmen-shixiong » she hissed as quietly as possible, a distinct note of confusion underlying her usual acridity, but she couldn’t say more as Xiao Jiu decided to make his move, gracefully rising from his perch on the towering reptilian mountain of flesh, stepping on a fan – where was Xiu Ya ? Yue Qingyuan couldn’t help the slight anxiety as he pondered the blade’s glaring absence, Qingqiu had been so proud of his spiritual sword, unlike the Qiong Ding Peak Lord whose own relationship with Xuan Su had always been fraught with the shadows of his sin – in order to get down at the level of the Cang Qiong delegation, right in front of the Sect Leader.

 

These eyes weren’t green anymore, they turned the shade of quicksilver – a dizzying mix of white splotches and black smears that constantly swirled and ebbed in eddies – yet they remained just as poisonous as ever.

 

« Yue-zhangmen » the greeting was curt and icily polite, betraying the seething rage boiling deep under the surface. « It’s been a while. »

 

What an understatement, it had been forever, it had been an eternity stuck in waiting and wondering what happened to his most important person, and in his extremely bad days, Yue Qingyuan had wondered if that was how Fate deemed the right punishment for one who failed his other half from slavery, after all Xiao Jiu likely suffered the same torment in the Qiu Manor.

 

« Yes » the Qiong Ding Peak Lord softly acknowledged. « It’s been very long. »

 

« Ah, Zhangmen-shixiong ? » Wei Qingwei intervened. « Are you certain this is our missing martial brother  ? Because there is... »

 

The blacksmith was staring at Shen Qingqiu’s chest – huh, perhaps the confusion was understandable. Yue Qingyuan blinked as his brain suddenly registered a soft curvature that never had been there in his memories of the Qing Jing Peak Lord, and even less so in his remembrance of a starved street urchin playing sick to divest bystanders of their coin.

 

Under the wintry locks, the harshly handsome features – and they have a bit softened but not that much, still unmistakably Qingqiu and no amount of white hair or unexpected breasts will succeed in erasing that – are reddening deep crimson from utter wrath.

 

« Some cunt of a demon » the formerly lost Peak Lord spat as one would spat a chewed spider that hid in the vegetable broth and was discovered too late, « thought it would be entertaining to saddle this one with a vagina, and to lock the transfiguration with a cursed sackle keyed to it alone, otherwise this one would have lifted the change already. »

 

Besides her Sect Leader, Qi Qingqi made a choked noise. Was she stunned to behold the man she long decried as an unrepentant lecher, who ought to be kept away from all women, now technically qualifying to play with the other side of the quarrel ? Yue Qingyuan had no idea whatsoever.

 

« Well » Shang Qinghua drawled in a most grating tone, « that would explain a lot about Shen-shixiong vanishing into thin air, if a demon took a fancy to him – oh, do forgive this wretched one, must we call you shijie now ? »

 

The An Ding Peak Lord was fortunate that glaring couldn’t kill him on the spot, since the formerly lost cultivator’s gaze would have flensed the logistician to the bone marrow, and Yue Qingyuan wouldn’t have twitched his little finger to prevent it, far too busy not breaking under the assault of cruel and awful imagery flooding his mind.

 

He used to be a slave brat in the streets and as the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect Leader, he had been exposed to yet more horrors, be they perpetrated by mankind or demonkind. He knew what befell women when someone too powerful and too unaccustomed to be denied was seized by lust.

 

(and what does that mean about Cangse Sanren, this sweet and gentle maiden who happily and gladly talked your ear off about her parent and her Master Baoshan and her many Aunties and Uncles and cousins yet never, ever mentioned a father, oh Ancestors let it not be that, it would destroy the pure, innocent child to suspect her birth was the product of an unforgiveable sin)

 

« I » Shen Qingqiu snarled, his face twisting and seemingly shifting into something devilish and uncanny, as if a monster was trying to break free under the smothering mask of the skin, « am a man, and a man I will remain, and forcing a womb unto me doesn’t change anything to that. Call me a female again, and that will be the last time you will flap your lips before I tear them off. »

 

Shang Qinghua didn’t even whimper in fright, which was rather a surprise – but he was a Peak Lord of Cang Qiong, even if that was hard to remember that detail most of the time…

 

« Cang Qiong’s libraries are still open to our martial brother » Yue Qingyuan declared. « Surely they will hold a cure, a mean to destroy the shackle upon you. »

 

Shen Qingqiu’s eyes glittered, and how strange it was to not find the poisonous green shade in these familiar orbs, but a quicksilver glint instead. Just as toxic and threatening, yet it was a danger borne from liquid metal, not a death carried by leaf and flower. Cold and unyielding, instead of organic and adaptive.

 

« Yue-zhangmen should really not promise things he might not be able to bestow upon a wretched suppliant begging at his Sect’s gates » the formerly lost Peak Lord haughtily snorted. « Will you never learn this lesson, after all these years trying to hammer it within your thick skull ? »

 

No need for Wei Qingwei to wave Hong Jing in the air, no need for an exhaustive amount of questions asked, that was Shen Qingqiu in truth, the mix of exasperation and disgust barely held in check by a fearsome willpower couldn’t be faked, and Yue Qingyuan wanted to laugh long and hard, so long and so hard he would weep at the end, great undignified and relieved sobs, because finally he was seeing an end to the living nightmare dogging his steps for more than two decades.

 

« Qingqiu isn’t a wretched suppliant, he’s our Qing Jing Peak Lord. That will never cease being true. »

 

 

Chapter 146

Wei Changze very much loathed the gross feeling of sweat clinging to his skin beneath his datk garments, and he loathed the events that caused him in be in such a state even more.

 

First of all, the gigantic muddy dragon crashing the feast. That hadn’t been nice on many great attendants’ nerves, and several servants and junior Disciples were fearfully eyeballing the Spiritual Beast as it noisily slurped and chewed the contents of many barrels of wine and foodstuffs swiftly brought to sate the reptilian mass of flesh’s appetite, instead of letting it sup on the guests.

 

Second, their travel companion had been outed as a demon in front of half the jianghu and that promised to be tremendously awkward for Jiang Fengmian in the future, people were noisy gossips and would relish in flinging scorn and ridicule at the next Jiang Sect Leader for being so blind and badly trained that he wouldn’t notice a demon prancing under his nose for months.

 

Third – and maybe the worst thing in this whole disaster – Cangse’s parent was there. Currently busy exchanging curt and pointed words with the Cang Qiong Peak Lords, especially the Sect Leader who was looking like he might die from sheer happiness rather than allowing sickliness to drag him in the grave with nary a complain.

 

Wei Changze very much wished to hide his wretched self under one of the tables, but Cangse Sanren was holding his hand and she was literally vibrating with excitment, humming low in her throat as her foot was impatiently tapping on the tiled ground, you would believe she was waiting for a dance to start in order to sweep her partner away for a night of revelry and enjoyment.

 

The black-clad cultivator attempted to swallow, only for his extremely dry throat to itch and pain him. He was going to die soon, and he was going to die screaming – Cangse Sanren’s parent looked like he methodically enjoyed demolishing his food before putting an end to their suffering.

 

(he looks weird with the white hair, and Wei Changze doesn’t know why he’s expecting black locks and a vividly poisonous green gaze, it’s just a bit startling and just enough to make him feel dizzy, reality out of synchronization by two steps and a half)

 

A tug on his wrist, and Cangse Sanren was taking him toward the Cang Qiong Peak Lords, oh Ancestors, why couldn’t she be interested in the gigantic muddy dragon ? Wei Changze could fight a muddy dragon, that would be fine, he liked testing himself against huge and aggressive predator beasts, but he wasn’t trained to deal with parents angry to see him breathing in their daughter’s general direction, that was supposed to be Jiang Fengmian’s ordeal !

 

« Mother ! » Cangse Sanren sweetly called, her voice nothing but light and casual, as if today had been nothing out of the ordinary and perhaps Zhengmei Mountain actually was used to that level of crazy antics. « If you have done talking, might this one kiss you hello ? »

 

The white-haired, person-shaped doom of Wei Changze – whose robes would be permanently stained with gross, dried sweat if Fate wouldn’t stop throwing unwanted surprises at him – turned and stared at their child. Stared with quicksilver eyes so alike to Cangse Sanren’s, and so unlike at the same time, cold and harsh as a slow-acting poison where the pristine-clad maiden’s gaze was entrancing as a brief glimpse of Heaven.

 

« Yuan’er. We are going to have words on the kind of acquaintances you have stumbled upon. »

 

That voice could have cut diamonds in a thousand tiny shards. Cangse Sanren – Yuan’er ? Was that her milk name ? – pouted and snorted as regally as a long-haired cat sprawled on a hopelessly fluffy cushion.

 

« Excuse you, I would like to point Wei-ge is nothing short of a perfect gentleman. I mean, look at him ! »

 

Oh no. Was that the moment of his death ? It certainly felt like it. Wei Changze wanted to shrink as this pitiless glare ruthlessly pinned him under its cold weight. Cold as the grave. Cold as dark caves in which nobody would hear a dying man’s howling for help.

 

« … I am sorry. »

 

He said these words softly, and it came not only because this white-haired person-shaped doom was blatantly infuriated by him being near their daughter and unmaimed – it came from something much deeper, beyond Wei Changze himself, from the darkness filling the gaps in the samsara where one life had ended yet the next one hadn’t started yet.

 

« For what are you apologizing, huh ? »

 

The quicksilver glare was still devoid of pity, and it hadn’t truly unthawed, yet the coldness somewhat abated. Less of a winter storm doing its best to suck all the warmth out of your body and reduce you to a frost-dusted corpse in the countryside, more of the delicate lace blossoming all over ponds and trees to shimmer under the pale sunlight.

 

These eyes kept looking at him, waiting for an answer.

 

For what was he apologizing, truly ? Wei Changze frowned as he attempted to seize the answer, but it slipped between his fingers, switfly fleeing deep within the unknown water of his subconcious mind.

 

« It’s… for… being an ass ? »

 

The black-clad cultivator mentally despaired as he uttered this pitiful try at not leaving the other person hanging, it didn’t exactly taste like the wrong answer to give but at the same time it seemed it wasn’t the entire tale to be told.

 

Cangse Sanren’s parent stared at him before sighing softly.

 

« Better late than never, I guess. But as a warning, don’t ever try to apologize again, it doesn’t actually fix anything and merely aims to soothe one’s guilt. If that’s forgiveness you wish, you can earn it by your deeds. »

 

« Oh » Wei Changze breathed. « Thanks for the advice. »

 

(it’s so weird because he doesn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle, all the hints needed to solve the enigma, and he doesn’t understand what’s happening between both of them yet it feels like chains have been removed from his limbs, perhaps it comes too late but at least it was finally said, it was one ghost put at rest after waiting for a lifetime)

 

Cangse Sanren was smiling, a bit proudly, a smidge smugly, but mostly it was cheerful and happy.

 

« There, what was I saying ? Wei-ge is a perfect gentleman, it’s impossible to not love him after one meeting. »

 

Wei Changze twitched and a treacherous blush burned hot and merciless in his nape and his cheeks, while a pair of cold quicksilver eyes narrowed in suspicion. Oh Ancestors, maybe he would be murdered after all.

 

« A perfect gentleman, really » the white-haired person-shaped doom drawled, a biting hint of incredulity injected in their flat tone.

 

« Too much of one » Cangse Sanren groused. « Can you believe he won’t even dare to hug me ? Hugs are so very important to physical and mental health, you know ! »

 

The black-clad cultivator would pass on the benefits of physical embrace, even if Cangse Sanren was the one offering. He had no wish to be torn apart by a wrathful parent, really.

 

 

Chapter 147

There was no words to fully express how entirely humiliating it was to have to beg Mobei-jun for help when Xiao Yue was bent on proving himself a worthy successor to the mantle of Sacred Ruler, but right now, the young prince was kinda too busy aching all over to care about that.

 

He wasn’t expecting to be outed, his Heavenly bloodline plainly exposed for the whole jianghu to witness, so the exceptional circumstances might be forgiven. Just might. After a while to chew on the incident and how it thoroughly ruined his plan for spending more time in the Human Realm, learning their mores, keeping an eye open for Tianlang-jun healing and escaping his confinement in darkness, and courting his future Empress.

 

Merely thinking about it made his hackles rise, and Xiao Yue certainly would have words with the one intruder atop the gigantic muddy dragon for that. How rude, after all, to disrupt a feast by revealing a secret that wasn’t theirs to tell ! Did this person hail from commoner stock, to trample etiquette so blatantly ?

 

Xiao Yue would have to devise a way to avenge the affront, once he would have healed from the shock to his mind and body – his blood parasites had been extremely freaked by the assault and buzzed under his skin for several shichen, not a very good feeling that, it was like his bloodstream was filled with vapor. Boiling hot vapor.

 

Anyway, fantasies about revenge were the silver lining that prevented him to fully succomb to despair as his worthless sire was now aware that his eldest son had been outside the Imperial Palace, and when a Prince wasn’t in the place you wanted to keep him nice and bundled, well, it implied things from the rebellious bend.

 

Alas, it couldn’t be helped – when Xiao Yue had screamed for Mobei-jun to evacuate him as the whole jianghu was readying to drag him beneath Tianlang-jun’s mountain to be sealed and reduced to a fresh pile of quivering meat, the Northern demon had been attending a meeting alongside a great deal of generals and officials trying to get a rise of Luo Binghe on some troubles in the Lower Realm, and there hadn’t been any time for Mobei-jun to excuse himself and proceed to rescue his young prince in someplace less exposed to prying eyes.

 

Xiao Yue was grateful to the icy general for rescuing him swiftly, he was, but the fact remained it happened in front of a dozen people, and Luo Binghe was at the very forefront of these people, and now the so-called Sacred Ruler wanted answers regarding his wayward offspring’s previous whereabouts.

 

Ah, it wouldn’t do to appear too nervous. More than a prince of past dynasties had lost their heads or limbs for failing to lie convincingly about their lack of interest in plotting a coup, and that wasn’t merely among demonkind it happened, men as a species could be endearingly ruthless on the matter of palace intrigue.

 

The younger Heavenly scion did his best to smooth his features into something more akin to a pampered brat frustrated because his nurse had forbidden him to dip in the swamp in search of yellow-throated lobster-shrimps, sure it was demeaning and maddening but it was safer to be deemed an impulsive brat than an ambitious princeling.

 

Luo Binghe’s complete boredom when he had to interact with his spawn likely would help. The man was unable to believe one born of his seed was blessed with the ability to focus on anything but his sword or his pillar, since it was a problem of his and everyone knew a tiger would sire another tiger, not a dog or a rabbit.

 

« I must say » the so-called Sacred Ruler mildly commented, his voice devoid of emotion beyond something sounding like sleepiness, « gallivanting through the Human Realm because one was searching for yellow novels to criticize ? Isn’t that quite pitiful ? »

 

Alright, maybe the pretense Xiao Yue had blurted was silly, but that was why it was such a good lie – liars wanted to keep things simple, boring, as it was easy to believe it really unfolded as they claimed. On the contrary, dropping an outrageous rumor was guaranteed to be remembered and it paradoxically reeked more of sincerity, who would invent such craziness after all ? It was well-known, fiction couldn’t achieve the same levels of insanity as life in spite of writers, poets and actors doing their utmost to stun their targeted audience by the heights of ridiculous they would improvise by their imagination.

 

So, Xiao Yue hadn’t been visiting the Human Realm to learn from them the tactics needed to seize a kingdom and rebuild it into a glorious testament to your people’s might and culture, he had been on a venture to amuse himself just like his worthless sire spat on his duties as a monarch to amuse himself with demonesses or the occasional human stranded near his lands – the thing was, Xiao Yue was content with literary pursuits from the dubious kind instead of getting rid of his stubborn chastity.

 

Demonkind enjoyed flinging scorn at the older prince for not wetting his wick, depriving himself of a potential weapon to gain allies. Xiao Yue would argue any weapon could be turned back against the owner, and after being raised in the shadow of a man who made a big fuss of being married yet had no qualms fucking every female on his path, his feelings on the matter of sowing oats were definitely lukewarm.

 

Even a badly written, openly pornographic yellow novel had been more appealing than any meager amorous conquest of Luo Binghe. Which wouldn’t be admitted, obviously, the man would view it as some challenge and decide to abase himself further, and the title of Sacred Ruler was already stained enough as it currently was, it didn’t need more dirt smeared all over it.

 

Also, it had been startingly fun to read these awful novels. Often the writer had no idea whatsoever of the sheer impossibility of the scenes they wanted to portray, or the characters would behave in a ludicrous manner – well, maybe it wouldn’t be so ludicrous for a man, or someone familiar with a human mindset, but Xiao Yue was a full-blooded demon and raised by demons so – and that was just so inane, you had to laugh.

 

The Heavenly scion hoped he could exposit his opinions about one novel long enough for his sire to conclude it was too boring to warrant more of a deep investigation and command him to not plague his existence with the sight of Xiao Yue’s face in the so-called Sacred Ruler’s surroundings. Ancestors, he found himself missing Jiang Fengmian with his blandly polite smile and his reflexive courtesies, who managed to persuade the grumpiest, the most sullen old fart to chatter and complain while he was nodding and carefully injecting little sentences at strategically chosen lulls in the diatribe to keep it running. Or Cangse Sanren who would endlessly titter and speak about such or such critter without repeating herself once, too captivated by her chosen field of study to allow other people to be spared by her sheer enthusiasm and the breath of her knowledge.

 

Things were so much more simple when you were facing them with competent help.

 

 

Chapter 148

Luo Binghe wouldn’t claim he hated his spawn, no matter how much the brat inconvenienced him, no matter the seething disdain in these blood red eyes in a face so similar to his. However, he would be lying if he claimed to have some inkling of a fondness towards the brat.

 

Once upon a time, the Heavenly half-breed believed Shen Jiu would finally discard his useless loathing for everything Luo Binghe was and embodied, especially after bearing their child. Yet the huli jing stubbornly held on his negative feelings, ingrate as he was, and fled as soon as he got his opportunity, wholly uncaring about leaving his offspring behind – what kind of mother would willingly discard their flesh and blood ? What kind of mother would rip their flesh and blood away from their breast to be thrown in the cold streets ?

 

(Luo Binghe shouldn’t have been that surprised, having been discarded in the river he ought to have been well-aware that motherly love was nothing but a pretty tale repeated by naive children refusing to face reality, that having a mother was no guarantee that you would be cared for, that you would be cherished, that you would have worth in somebody’s eyes at the very least)

 

The brat has been meant to soften Shen Jiu, and he failed in that. What was the point in caring for a broken tool, an inferior piece of craftmanship that wouldn’t sell in spite of being at the forefront of the market stall ? Luo Binghe had been far too happy to dump the brat with a nursemaid, and later several generals taking an interest in beating the spawn black and blue under the pretense of training, as long as it didn’t go so far as to kill the brat – unloved he might be, he nonetheless remained linked to the Heavenly half-breed by blood, he had been expected and coveted for his potential once upon a time, and for that he deserved the courtesy of being kept alive.

 

Still, Luo Binghe wouldn’t, couldn’t bring himself to do more than forbidding to kill his spawn. It was unseemly for a ruler, moreso a ruler from the demonic strain, to coddle their offspring too much. Children were meant to claw their own path as soon as they were able to understand the nails on their fingertips could serve as a crude weapon, and that happened in the cradle for almost every lineage and clan dwelling in the Lower Realm.

 

Sometime, the path they chose led them to topple their parent’s throne and supplant them as a lord. Luo Binghe knew this was an open possibility, the brat had no filial piety whatsoever, and if he dared to make a move in the clear light of unambiguous rebellion, then Luo Binghe would endeavour to deal with him as he dealt with all the other pretenders to his authority – feeding his lifeforce to Xin Mo. Maybe that would be such a sin, slaying his own blood, that the cursed blade would quiet for more than a week.

 

And that was the brat he managed to tolerate – the younger one had been entirely useless, wholly taking after Luo Binghe’s impotent, disgusting days on Qing Jing Peak when he was a meek, submissive slave in all but name, too blind to realize he would never be accepted by his fellow Disciples, too frightened to seize what he craved instead of begging for crumbs. So repulsive, Luo Binghe did his best to stay away from the whelp as he strongly suspected he would end up slaughtering the younger spawn if he had to behold this failure of a Heavenly Demon – as anytime his generals and the officials and the demonesses at court laughed as they discussed yet another failure of the whelp, the Sacred Ruler felt Xin Mo quivering in its scabbard and the desire of putting the brat out of his misery was almost blinding in its intensity.

 

At least the whelp had done something right, and that was to run away in the desert after one humiliation too much. The nursemaid had been the one to report the younger spawn’s escape, plainly distressed for some bewildering reason and not even Luo Binghe’s charm had brought a smile back on her face – sending a squad after him would be pointless, nobody would want to do the chore after all, let him to perish because of natural circumstances instead of enticing his sire’s people to raise a hand against the shame of the Heavenly strain, then Luo Binghe would be obligated to punish them and that would be tedious.

 

Once upon a time, Luo Binghe had believed fatherhood would be a grand and wonderful adventure yet this belief had been the ultimate evidence his former naivety was still clinging to his mind. His spawn disappointed him again and again, be it the oldest or the younger.

 

Ah, well. At the very least, hearing why his offspring had been forced to call on Mobei-jun for help was something to do, and it was a smidge less boring than uncovering yet another plot aiming to destabilize him or a vassal of his.

 

Going to wander in the Human Realm, did the brat secretly nurture a craving for death ? Luo Binghe had learned so long ago, when his heartless Shizun threw him in the Endless Abyss, no peace would ever be possible between the races. It was far too entrenched in the culture, in the mindset, to seek the other’s utter annihilation.

 

That was Luo Binghe’s personal experience, and it happened so far away from a crowd baying for his death as the seal put on his Heavenly bloodline broke and unveiled his mixed ancestry for anyone around to behold. The spawn decided to top that by attending the Immortal Alliance Conference – and wasn’t that weirdly nostalgic in a twisted way, for him to suffer just like his sire had suffered – only to get outed as a demon by another guest more suspicious than the fools responsible for the event, in the middle of a bunch of cultivators far too eager to prove their righteousness by slaying the monster hiding among their numbers.

 

Luo Binghe would have laughed yet ultimately decided to abstain from such behaviour. That would teach the brat to waste his time gallivating around the Middle Kingdom, playing at being lesser, it never wound up in anything but tragedy. Diminishing oneself was never the answer, you had to greedily reach for the best thing in the world, otherwise you would never amount to more than a scapegoat for other people’s troubles and loathing.

 

On a whim, he wondered out loud why the brat would bother with witnessing such an event as a cultivator’s gathering, especially if he only cared about entertaining himself with dubious literature, and the spawn shrugged, apparently he wanted to meet people, that always was an interesting experience, and he started to describe several of them, these old and self-important farts claiming dominion over the jianghu because they had money and a pristine reputation, and the Heavenly half-breed listened with half one ear…

 

« And Yue-zhangmen was quite the amiable man when he wasn’t busy doting on his late Qing Jing Peak Lord’s daughter... »

 

What.

 

What ?

 

That was impossible. Shen Jiu had produced sons only, the Sacred Ruler of Demonkind would know since he played a part in that. There was no daughter.

 

But. The brat had mentioned the late Qing Jing Peak Lord, and through Mobei-jun’s little pet human Luo Binghe had been made aware that the jianghu had concluded Shen Qingqiu perished long ago, since he never came back from this fateful trip.

 

A daughter.

 

What could that mean ?

 

His emotions had slipped on his face, surely, for the spawn was now shutting down, staring at his sire with narrowed, attentive eyes.

 

Luo Binghe bared his fangs, as Xin Mo shrieked in his inner ear. He needed answers.

 

 

Chapter 149

In the wake of the complete disaster that the reveal of a demon hiding himself among the guests had been, the Huan Hua Palace had been far too busy smothering the fires caused by rumours spreading and accusations flying and outright threats of reneging on alliances and contracts to pay a great deal of attention to the Cang Qiong delegation packing their luggage and high-tailing towards their mountain range, away from all these politics.

 

Obviously, Shen Jiu came because Yuan’er insisted to visit, and her hangers-on needed to be there too because one was hopelessly drooling after her skirts – and the formerly human cultivator still was unsure he would ever forgive Liu Qingge’s reincarnation for the gall and the daring of such an outrageous behaviour, coveting a maiden so far above his brutish ways that he ought to slit the throat for the sin of allowing her shadow to fall upon him – and one nurtured the ambition to bring his meager Sect above their humble level, and Baoshan Sanren decided to come because she deemed the whole mess so entertaining she had no wish to miss further shenanigans, also out of thirst for all the spiritual wines she could sniff on the Peak Lord responsible for these.

 

Trust the muddy dragon to find the shortest path to the wine cellar and drink everything within. That was one of the first lessons one would learn as you lived on Zhengmei Mountain.

 

She had been in such a happy mood at the tantalizing prospect of more drama and more liquor for her, Baoshan Sanren had graciously accepted to serve as Shen Jiu and his daughter’s mount for the travel back to Cang Qiong, since both the fox spirits were lacking spiritual blades of their own – oh, the former Peak Lord mourned Xiu Ya so much, he was pretty sure the beast had willingly left the beautiful sword behind in the Middle Kingdom when he first abducted the one he used to call Shizun yet never properly respected as such.

 

Sure, Yue Qingyuan had offered a carriage for their use, but Shen Jiu wasn’t a dumbass, the Sect Leader wasn’t healthy enough to fly under his own power or he would be at risk of falling off and splattering mushy meat and shattered bone all over the countryside. No, that was his personal carriage he was offering, and climbing inside would mean exposing oneself to his unrelenting groveling and fawning and useless apologies, Yue Qingyuan never acknowledged Shen Jiu could freely bring disaster upon his own head, it always had to be the Qiong Ding Peak Lord’s fault for not watching better for threats, for not persuading Shen Jiu to show his belly as a whipped dog instead of snapping and baring his teeth.

 

Ah, would he also blame himself for Shen Jiu being huli jing ? That sounded unpleasantly likely, that idiot wouldn’t even care about being technically guilty of colluding with demons, worse, with Daji’s spawn, so desperate he was to hold on his lost martial brother.

 

How strange, to have that much trust in Yue Qingyuan after everything between them. Perhaps parenthood had softened Shen Jiu’s fangs and rotten his brain, blinded him to the one and only truth in the world outside Zhengmei Mountain – Baoshan Sanren is a Spiritual Beast, she’s not beholden to the same standards of treacherousness and duplicity than manking, she literally was working on a different level sanity and morality-wise – everyone will ultimately sell you down the river when the right opportunity for them to ascend above their previous status will appear.

 

It wasn’t a lot of trust, yet it was something, especially after several decades of carefully restrained resentment and a barely functionable leader-subordinate relationship and then utter absence. It was vergering on being a miracle, and for that alone Shen Jiu would remain wary – a miracle was nothing but misfortune waiting to spring its trap around your ankle.

 

« A-niang, look ! Did you actually rule one of these mountains ? »

 

Yuan’er was chipper and politely excited as she pointed – pointed ! Like a child ! How could she be so innocent yet, after all these weeks in the Middle Kingdom, Shen Jiu wanted to shake her for inviting people to take advantage and hug her with all his might for being untainted still by the filth of mankind – one peak that happened to be An Ding, surrounded by its sibling peaks and reaching for the Heavens.

 

« That one on the far left » the older huli jing corrected. « With all the silvery green groves, that would be the bamboo. »

 

Did the young morons on Qing Jing Peak remember to tend to these groves ? Obviously they would have, neglecting them would have caused the feng shui to degrade and that would have poisoned the entire harmony of Cang Qiong, it couldn’t be borne. One Hallmaster surely would have known all the details – and explained them to who ? Who had replaced Shen Jiu as the absolute authority on the scholar peak, who had chased the unwanted shade of his rule just as the brilliant dawn forced the dreadful night to retreat on the morning ?

 

Shen Jiu ought to have been wrathful, but what would be the point ? It wasn’t like he could take his position back, not in his current circumstances, and that wasn’t like he felt a burning desire to do so. Not when he felt so deeply removed from the persona he used to wield as his shield and sword against his so-called martial siblings, against rival Sects and entitled nobility, against the world itself.

 

Yuan’er hummed as her fingers were tapping a small rythm on the cloth-covered flesh of her knee.

 

« A-niang, you will forgive me if I wait to explore a bit before praising the place. If this humble student hastily shapes her judgement, Baoshan Sanren just might get upset and try to stuff me in her gullet for not being properly appreciative of her personal mountain. »

 

« I just might » the muddy dragon amiable conceded, because a predator would never refuse a fresh meal no matter the manner in which it ended up in their belly. « Unless I am in a very good mood, or I snack on some of these Disciples busy gaping at me as if I was a tamed bear doing tricks in the street for awing the masses. »

 

She didn’t have to rise her voice on the latter part of this sentence, as one big-ass reptilian critter tended to be quite easily heard. Somebody squeaked in fright and a rumble shook the titanic body. Fortunately, it wasn’t so strong that the two vulpine passengers on her back would have lost their balance and opened their skulls on the dirt beneath.

 

Which wouldn’t be a dignified comeback, especially for Shen Jiu who might be glumly convinced nobody will care to remember him as more than a stern, merciless taskmaster after so long and wouldn’t that be the crowning humiliation, to lose that reputation he carefully cultivated until his Disciples were quivering in their boots every time they thought of him ?

 

Ancestors, it would already be difficult to be introduced to them in this female shape. Ming Fan just might have an aneurysm from shock.

 

If Ming Fan was still there. If he remained faithful to a cold, haughty Peak Lord who mostly valued his ability to stay quiet and help with the admnistrative workload.

 

And what about Ning Yingying ?

 

Shen Jiu had no inkling whatsoever, but soon he would know.

Chapter 150

Being one half of the Qing Jing Peak Lorship was so hard, sometimes Ning Yingying went to sleep far too exhausted to weep over her wretched fate. How did Shizun ever manage on his own ?

 

Frankly, she had no idea of how she would have fared without Ming Fan besides her, tackling the paperwork and the day-to-day planning and all these gritty, hopelessly boring little details one had to face and defeat endlessly when one was tasked with the duty to corral a herd of hormonal teenagers and a bunch of stubborn, opiniated hallmasters and teachers.

 

This had been an eye-opener, no wonder Shizun used to be so grumpy and pissed off all the time, if that was his existence. Ning Yingying felt so petty and remorseful for all the less than gentle comments that would brew and form in her silly little head, before the disappearance.

 

Before she was forced to grow up by volunteering herself to mantle half of the duties meant for the Qing Jing Peak Lord in spite of Ming Fan clamoring she didn’t have to do anything, really, but for all his efforts he was as musical as a dumb rock and couldn’t draw more than diagrams and arrays on a level surpassing fine and encroaching upon mastery, and doing half the work was almost as bad as not doing the work at all, Shizun surely would be infuriated by learning you neglected the arts in his absence, anyway that was only for a little while, so we can cope, right ?

 

It had been for a little while, at the beginning, then it was for a while, then it was for a long while, and nowaday new Disciples with their wide eyes and eager demeanors would call Ning Yingying Shizun when they were accepted on Qing Jing because they couldn’t picture anyone else in her stead, and no matter how many times she reminded them that she wasn’t actually part of the Qing generation they wouldn’t stop doing it.

 

It was… well, it was bittersweet. More bitter than sweet, really. Ning Yingying couldn’t find in herself the strength to rage and despair, lately. Negative emotions had always been so energy-costly for her, it was so exhausting to nurture a grudge until you choked on it, until it squeezed your heart dry, until your eyeballs popped within their sockets under the pressure.

 

The Hallmasters and teachers praised her for maturing, and Ming Fan too – he certainly stopped being an arsehole towards youngsters lacking his experience and well-off background, perhaps because he was working too much to have the time to spare in bullying his subordinates rather than being effective, being nasty was a waste of everything after all – waste of talent, waste of energy, waste of productivity.

 

Being a Peak Lord, even a half of one, was just too much, but that wasn’t like Ning Yingying could drop the burden. Not when Shizun was lost to Cang Qiong, beyond the reach of Bai Zhan’s best trackers – and wasn’t that a heavy blow inflicted upon the Sect, moreso when grief threatened to consume the Sect Leader too as a consequence of this disappearance.

 

By the way, Ning Yingying was hoping that attending the Immortal Alliance Conference hadn’t been too much of a trial for the frail Yue-zhangmen. Still, they would have sent word back if his health suddenly took a turn for the worse.

 

To her shame, she and Ming Fan had forgotten when the delegation had been meant to come back from the Huan Hua Palace’s turf, and when they remembered it already was late – so they were reduced to run as elegantly as they could in order to not embarrass themselves further, so as to join the other Inner Disciples and Hallmasters and authority figures trusted to watch over the Tian Gong Mountain Range while the Peak Lords were away.

 

Wait. Was that a muddy dragon ? Monsters and beasts in the Jue Di Gorge were slaughtered and their corpses could be brought back to the slayer’s Sect for the fame and prestige, but that reptilian towering amount of flesh was startingly alive. Ning Yingying boggled, and Ming Fan she could hear gaping in such a way that Qing Jing’s notoriety as the Peak of aloof and refined Immortals would be seriously criticized for having a Disciple blatantly unable to embody the place’s essence.

 

And – right besides the muddy dragon, there was Yue-zhangmen busy talking with a white-haired person whose body langage was a disturbingly familiar mix of exasperation and boredom. The cultivator responsible for taming the beast ? They had to be powerful and skilled, then, to keep such a critter under their control.

 

« Yue-zhangmen » she politely greeted as she made her path towards the small gathering, « this one greets you and your guest. »

 

The Sect Leader smiled at her – oh dear, it had been a while since he smiled, and Ning Yingying blinked in astonishment.

 

« Greetings to Ning-shizi, but I will have to correct her mistake, for this is no guest standing there. »

 

Not a guest, a previous member of Cang Qiong then ? One who decided to wander through the countryside and indulge in the lethally insane hobby of beast-taming ? Ning Yingying squinted, far from subtly but sue her, with a muddy dragon so near she wasn’t in the mood for subtle.

 

« … Hello, Yingying. »

 

That voice. A smidge softer than in her recollections, and the hair were pure white instead of jet-black, and the quicksilver eyes weren’t at all the poisonous green they should be, but the way they said the words, they way they tilted their head, awkward and shy and desperate to veil every hint of gentleness under the haughty mien of a peerless scholar, and it managed to be even worse in the privacy of the bamboo house in spite of nobody being there but her and…

 

Her and…

 

But that couldn’t be. He was gone , so long ago, almost three decades now, wasn’t it ? Even for an Immortal with eternity at their fingertips, three decades weren’t nothing. And it was a lifetime for a common mundane, one bereft of the ability for cultivation or the craving to try and reach for the silver bridge.

 

A lifetime was enough to lose hope for a reunion.

 

A lifetime was enough for people to change, so much you needed to look closer to be sure that yes, you weren’t mistaken, this weird feeling was your heart singing, that’s you, that’s you, missed you .

 

« … Shizun ? »

 

Ning Yingying’s own voice was meek and broke the word in halves, and she loathed its weight upon her tongue, because it was laden with tears – tears in her throat, tears spilling on her cheeks because that was Shizun and he was there and she had stopped waiting, when did she stop, she couldn’t peg the exact point in time but she did as there was merely too much for her to do, she just didn’t have the time or the strength to wait for Shizun to find his way back to Qing Jing Peak, back to his students, back to her and Ming Fan who was hiccuping and swaying…

 

And she was stumbling, surging forwards, and her arms were around Shizun and that was the stiffness she remembered, he always was midly panicked every single time her younger self wanted to be physically affectionate, you would think hugs and kisses were entirely foreign to his childhood for him to be so confused…

 

Ah, so that’s truly you. There you are.

 

« Shizun » she choked quietly. « Welcome back. »

 

 

Chapter 151

Shen Yuan might have been a tiny bit – just the tiniest bit – worried as they neared the Tian Gong Mountain Range, all of its twelve peaks proudly looming over the chattering crowd making way home, because hello ? Major sect ? They tended to not enjoy inhuman people setting foot on their turf, and also Zhengmei Mountain was fully covered by a ward meant to keep intruders out, that would be logical for Cang Qiong to have a variant of it…

 

But everything went fine, except for the moment when they entered what likely was the Sect’s boundaries, the younger huli jing had perceived a shiver running up and down hir spine, that wasn’t cold and that wasn’t hot either, and it seriously itched and it vanished just as swiftly as it came, but Cangse Sanren had sprouted fox ears beneath her veiled hat and whew, was that uncomfortable, the ears were all frazzled and kinda squished under the hat and no, Cangse Sanren couldn’t remove the headgear as the whole jianghu freaked about Young Master Xiao being forcefully revealed as a demon.

 

Still, that was the people who reacted badly. The mountain range seemed much more reasonable, waiting for Shen Yuan and his mother to make a move before going for the throat. How nice !

 

Shen Yuan already was liking it there, and they thought hir travel companions might too. Well, the Young Master Jiang at least, Wei-ge was more of an enigma, staring at the peaks proudly reaching upwards and frowning weirdly, as if he was trying to remember a very important detail but his brain wouldn’t provide the right information unless it was prompted by the right song associated with the stench of fully blossomed magnolias – look, magnolia was a real pretty flower yet it also smelled real strong, Shen Yuan’s head was dizzy merely from walking near these trees in spring.

 

Perhaps it was linked to that pink and purple young miss who caused a scene in the Peak Lords’ private box. Cangse Sanren desperately wanted for the whole incident to be forgotten, but if life were a yellow novel that certainly qualified as heavy-duty foreshadowing and you couldn’t have a trope without it being grounded in truth, so…

 

As the younger huli jing was chewing on this pearl of wisdom, a-Niang was slightly jumping off Master Baoshan’s wide, scaly back – and there was several dozens of cultivators arrayed in a semicircle to gape at the Spiritual Beast, quite rude a behaviour, that. Master Baoshan wasn’t a market entertainment spectacle, she was a person in her own right who merely happened to have a mouthful of fangs and believe in quadrupedal locomotion. Why would you treat her as such a shocking view ?

 

Oh, look, two people brave enough to approach and politely greet their Sect Leader and a-Niang – and the woman was hugging a-Niang ? And she was sobbing ?? Both of them were sobbing actually ?!

 

Alright, that wasn’t a bad thing for a-Niang to get hugs – hugs were nice ! Uplifting for the soul ! And a-Niang definitely was shy and awkward about physical affection, since Yuan’er used to be a little kid, he wouldn’t require cuddles in spite of plainly suffering a fit of hypoaffection – yes, that totally was a word, and that absolutely was a genuine illness for when you were feeling a bit under the weather since nobody kissed your forehead or pet your hair for more than two days, Yuan’er had studied it and stumbled upon the right treatment in her childhood !

 

Just. The tears. Seeing people cry, well, that never was a good thing ! It was loud and messy and implied there was trouble afoot and the situation had to be fixed as soon as possible, otherwise the sobbing wouldn’t end. Cangse Sanren didn’t believe in tears shed out of happiness, if you’re content then you laugh, or you smile !

 

Speaking of smile, the younger fox spirit donned his most peppy, brightest grin as Wei-ge politely helped her to go down, it was time for introductions.

 

« Greetings to these esteemed cultivators ! Shall this one receive a hug too ? »

 

The man who remained standing there while his friend was cuddling a-Niang noticed there were other people waiting and started to cough.

 

« Ah, hm ! » he stuttered, frantically blinking. « A thousand apologies, we were quite startled to be reunited with… wait, you look very much like... »

 

Cangse Sanren retained her smile as the man’s eyes widened. A-Niang snorted and stepped back, just enough for the woman to let go of him, and casually lifted a hand for Shen Yuan to take – their fingers twined together, slender and pale, almost the same size.

 

« Ming Fan, Ning Yingying » a-Niang said in a stiff, rather formal voice, « my daughter Shen Yuan, also known as Cangse Sanren as she wanders on the roads. »

 

The man coughed again, and the woman opened her mouth, closed it, and softly squeaked.

 

« Shizun » she breathed, « congratulations on your child. »

 

Her voice was wavering, likely because of the tears still trapped in her chest, yet there also was a huge part of surprise in there mingling with utter glee and the younger huli jing couldn’t help the giggle – crud, you had to be deeply silly to giggle in a public setting, that was one of these unwritten rules to be accepted by society.

 

« Why, thank qianbei for being so nice. »

 

« Shijie » the woman complained. « If you are Shizun’s daughter, then you must call me Ning-shijie, I shan’t accept anything else. »

 

« Still bent on being shijie ? » a-Niang wondered, and he rather sounded nostalgic and… bitter, that was the right emotion, as if he reminisced about a memory that was good when it happened but later events soured the recollection forever.

 

« Tis more comfortable than Teacher Ning. Do I look like responsible enough to deserve such a lofty title ? »

 

« Certainly more responsible than last time I have laid eyes upon Yingying. »

 

The woman – Ning-shijie – sniffled at these words, her eyes glistening with a treacherous dampness.

 

« Yeah… three decades ago, guess I have changed in the meantime. »

 

Whew, so exhausted ! And the self-deprecation lurking behind the sentence ! Shen Yuan quivered, barely enough for anyone paying very close attention to notice – so obviously Wei-ge took note of the reaction and slipped his big strong hand in the one unused to hold a-Niang’s fingers.

 

« Not so much that your Shizun wouldn’t know Yingying » the older huli jing declared, and the woman sighed, a big relieved sigh coming from the very depths of her lungs, and she stepped forwards for another hug, this one much less wet, praise the Ancestors.

 

« Shizun has been deeply missed there on Qing Jing » Cangse Sanren managed to hear, muffled as it was by a mouth shaping the sentence on a silk-covered shoulder. « You wouldn’t imagine. »

 

« You are right, I cannot imagine anyone mourning my disappearance. »

 

Aya, that was gloomy  ! A-Niang, why would you say that ? And a lie, truly ! Would Ning-shijie greet you with a tearful hug if you were a butthole ?

 

A-Niang could be so silly sometimes.

 

 

Chapter 152

Shen Yuan decided Ning-shijie was really a pleasant person, as the female cultivator looped her arm around a-Niang’s elbow, while the younger huli jing was still holding their mother’s other hand, and nudged them toward the rainbow bridge and a destination she picked, brightly chattering about her latest mishaps as one half of Peak Lordship, truly Shizun, raising your daughter would have been a leisurely walk in the countryside no matter how much of a hellion puberty turned her into, but try to juggle a hundred of creatively disobedient brats at the same time, oh wait, you don’t have to do that anymore, Shizun is so lucky.

 

The menfolk – Wei Changze, the Sect Leader and this Ming Fan person who kept making a strange face – followed in their wake, speaking low as if they were discussing important matters but that couldn’t be politics since the Young Master Jiang wasn’t there, Cangse Sanren got a glimpse of him being engrossed in a debate over the advantages and flaws of a Sect favoring bloodlines instead of bestowing the heirship on the most deserving student with a bunch of Hallmasters and wide-eyed Disciples, obviously the purple-clad cultivator would staunchly defend Lotus Pier’s honor and traditions until he breathed his last, these poor lambs had no idea of the monster they unleashed…

 

And Master Baoshan remained sprawled at the top of the stairs for a long nap, sunlight bouncing off her black and greyish scales, moving all this meat wrapped around her massive bones were quite costly on the matter of energy after all, even for a Spiritual Beast and that was why she would shapeshift in something more humanlike when traveling, in spite of complaining humans were too frail and lacked proper fangs and walking in two legs was just silly . So, a nap as she reclined on warmed stone, and Cangse Sanren hoped this Peak specialized in brewing alcohol would be nice to offer the muddy dragon something to drink and help her to recover her strength.

 

Anyway, their guided tour ! With Ning-shijie bringing them to one Peak positively reeking of bamboo – alright, maybe not reeking, but it did smell strongly of bamboo, and bamboo was everywhere, and a-Niang was slightly frowning. He didn’t look properly nostalgic, more like he was thinking about memories more bitter than sweet but the sweetness had been important too ? It appeared to be a deeply complicated feeling.

 

The more Cangse Sanren learned about a-Niang, the more her mother grew complex and the more she wondered about her ability to read his emotions right. The huli jing supposed it was ineluctable, part of maturation and coming into your own as a person, and that included to understand and accept your parent as flawed and having a life beyond their offspring, but she nonetheless concluded the whole process was incomfortable and dizzying.

 

Or perhaps Cangse Sanren was reading too much and a-Niang was having a headache courtesy of the potent bamboo smell. She certainly could hear Wei-ge sneezing a bit behind them, and Yue Qingyuan might be laughing a bit at the martial cultivator ? Not in a mean way ! But it was laughing because of something ridiculous nonetheless.

 

Oh, was that a house ? A fancy one, the kind of effortlessly elegant that took an ungodly amount of money and time to build and keep that way, because the very apex of elegance was to make something hard look easy. It was the kind of house that the Gusu Lan white dragons would have endlessly wondered if it was too luxurious for them or just enough because of their wish to avoid wallowing in decadence, as it was so much harder to remain righteous when you were busy indulging in wealth.

 

« Here we are, Shizun » Ning-shijie said, her voice noticeably subdued after the lively, peppy tones she used on the path leading to this place. « The bamboo house, and this silly one, swears we did our best to not disturb anything inside when we went and cleaned a bit, to prevent rot and vermin from getting too comfortable. »

 

A-Niang didn’t blink. He softly exhaled through his barely open mouth, a sigh escaping from between his lips, weary and contemplative, and Shen Yuan couldn’t help squeezing his hand, he really sounded like he needed this little gesture of comfort.

 

It lasted a little while, as swift as two heartbeats and as long as a mountain stretching toward the Heavens, before the older huli jing answered the female cultivator in her teal and white robes.

 

« Would you show me the painting studios now ? Some of the brats you picked as your students might not be entirely hopeless. I am not crediting them with talent yet, but it might be entertaining to behold their failures to understand proper sketching. »

 

Ning-shijie tilted her head, and she reminded Shen Yuan of a sparrow on the windowsill, eager to peck at the food on the table yet rightfully worried about the cook surprising it in the attempt to feast.

 

« Does Shizun want to come back later, then ? When he will feel tired ? »

 

« … I don’t think so. This is the dwelling meant for the Qing Jing Peak Lord, isn’t it ? And this isn’t like this Master has done a lot to fulfill the duties coming with the title in the three last decades. »

 

« Shizun is Shizun » Ming Fan loudly declared, behind the female-shaped trio. « He’s retired now, but he’s part of the Qing generation, and he has taught this one and Ning-shijie. He doesn’t need to do anything to deserve what we offer to him. »

 

The former Peak Lord snorted and rolled his eyes – exasperated yet an undercurrent of begrudging fondness was blatant for anyone able to watch his face.

 

« You shameless flatterer » he groused.

 

« How can it be flattery when this humble one is merely stating a fact ? »

 

Alright, this Ming Fan was rather endearing in his stubborn devotion to a-Niang. A bit like a hound trained for hunting yet not fully grown, more interested in begging for treats and resting its head on its master’s lap than running after the hares and the deer. Cangse Sanren would have to further their acquaintance – would they take tea together, with Ning-shijie and Wei-ge ? Tea was so much more tasty when you were drinking it with several friends as thirsty for gossip than warm leaf juice.

 

« My decision is one I won’t change » a-Niang ultimately concluded. « And I crave a scenery change. Are the painting studios still near the library, or did someone had the brilliant idea to move them ? »

 

« And deprive the painters from all these references next door ? Perish the thought, Shizun » Ning-shijie immediately reassured. « That and it would have disturbed the feng shui, but small details, you know how that is. »

 

« Disturbing the feng shui is a small detail  ? » Wei-ge muttered, incredulous.

 

« Artists tend to have their priorities in a somewhat different order » Yue Qingyuan diplomatically pointed. « No need to aim for the silver bridge, they just won’t think as you and me, poor martial cultivators struggling to understand the depths of their reasoning. »

 

The fancy house was left behind as they departed the bamboo grove, conversing all the while.

 

 

Chapter 153

Since their little party – well, not so little but after travelling with a whole contingent of cultivators any band under twenty people felt small – had started touring Qing Jing Peak, it itched in the back of Wei Changze’s thoughts.

 

It wasn’t painful, far from it, but it wouldn’t cease and that was the kind of pesky annoyance driving the most steely mind to distraction – a mosquito buzzing right in your ear as you wanted nothing more but sleep and in spite of all your efforts to flatten the cursed insect it would always remain barely out of your reach…

 

It itched in the way hinting at you having forgotten something that used to be extremely important in your childhood, then you grew up and put childish things away to dedicate yourself to your family and your career, until you suddenly stumbled upon these things again as you were triaging old trash in the basement, wondering how much you should keep out of nostalgia or in the hopes of making it useful anew, and how much you should discard in the trash heap.

 

It itched, and this man Ming Fan staring at Wei Changze in a less than subtle manner – obviously he did his best to not be noticed but training as a clerk and artist was pretty inefficient for that – wasn’t helping at all.

 

« So… Wei-qianbei hails from Yunmeng ? We – might have heard of Lotus Pier. Occasionally. »

 

The man was painfully awkward, unable to bring himself to confess how tiny and unremarkable a lineage created by a pirate settling down after two decades of looting everything he could gather on his boat without it sinking down would be, how unworthy of the Great Sects it would be. Ah well, it was nothing new – Wei Changze was used to highborns and wealthy cultivators sneering down at him.

 

But this cursed itch just wouldn’t stop. It was almost enough for him to beg Cangse Sanren’s parent to put an end to his suffering – surely the man would gladly fulfill his request.

 

(but really, a tiny whisper scoffs in the inner depths of his awareness, he already stood accused of murdering you once, forcing him through this song and dance would be the very apex of rudeness and ungratefulness don’t you think)

 

(also Cangse Sanren would be dismayed and you just don’t want to upset her, these eyes weren’t made to shed tears when she was brought into the world)

 

« It cannot be helped » Yue Qingyuan commented, serene and polite. « At least their Young Master appears to be quite the proper gentleman, and his Sect certainly will flourish with him to guide them. »

 

Wei Changze softly grunted. Jiang Fengmian was a smidge tender-hearted, some might say he was too amiable to thrive in the greater jianghu, among these hugely influent, massively spread Sects for which half a hundred Disciples were but a drop in a well filled with potential talents to prune or discard or encourage according nebulous criterias revolving around mundane connections or bad omens or whatnot – but he had the strength of a river, he wouldn’t bend and he wouldn’t bow, he would make his own path just like water carved rock and soil to establish a riverbed.

 

Now, would Wei Changze be there to see that ? More and more lately, the black-clad young man would consider the prospect of drifting away from the river, just like boats would drift toward the sea and foreign countries – of drifting all over the Middle Kingdom because there was this maiden who enjoyed discovering new monsters and beholding new sights and she wasn’t helpless, far from it, but surely she could do with a travel companion to watch her back ?

 

That wasn’t if her parent didn’t take her back to their mountainous dwelling. This Shen Qingqiu person seemed to be fiendishly overprotective, so much that he would curse his daughter into an eternal sleep and seal her in another dimension entirely and slaughter any curious soul nearing a tad too close from the entry.

 

Wei Changze couldn’t believe he hadn’t been flensed alive by the sheer judgement in these quicksilver eyes, so alike Cangse Sanren’s gaze but less mesmerizing and more openly toxic.

 

« Ah… Wei-qianbei, are you content there ? No wish to join another Sect ? »

 

The black-clad young man balefully stared at Ming Fan whose forehead suddenly glistened with cold sweat.

 

« Are you trying to poach me for your Twelve Mountains ? » he growled – seriously, what was up with the Cang Qiong younger generation ? First this pink-clad veiled maiden who mercilessly antagonized Cangse Sanren, now this one !

 

« Wei-qianbei » Yue Qingyuan intervened, raising a hand to hover above Ming Fan’s wrist, no contact needed for the younger cultivator to calm down. « Do forgive my shizi, he was making assumptions on a flawed ground. »

 

The martial cultivator snorted. It still itched in the back of his thoughts, and he was done with people poking at him for what was left of the week.

 

« It won’t work » he bluntly declared. « A Great Sect, this isn’t for me. Too many people, too many duties, too many rules. Unless I am doing my own thing and then what’s the point of belonging to an organization if you behave like a rogue element ? »

 

(that’s something he has understood such a long time ago, long before he was Wei Changze you might say, no matter the name borne by his soul he always has been restless and prone to suffocate when he couldn’t indulge his wanderlust and need to challenge himself to ever greater heights, always arguing responsibility wasn’t for him because he would choke on it long before he could wield it properly but did they listen, they most certainly didn’t)

 

Yue Qingyuan was looking at him and – it was strange and weird, as if the Sect Leader was seeing somebody else and at the same time he was considering Wei Changze, and the black-clad young man minutely shivered as his spine cooled and stiffened.

 

« Of course » the Xuan Su Sword ultimately uttered. « Wei-qianbei is very lucky to have this opportunity in this life, I suppose. As long as you’re happy with that – and as long as you take care. »

 

It sounded… well, not bitter. But there was a note of finality in this soft voice – a book closing on the last page, the first snowflake dropping from the greyish skies to herald the end of one season and ushering the next. It sounded like a goodbye, lacking even the potential for see you later.

 

It still itched in the back of Wei Changze’s thoughts, but the feeling relented the tiniest bit. An acknowledgement of Yue Qingyuan’s words, solemn and heavy.

 

(when you replace the hull and the sail, is a boat still the same boat that it was when first built ? When a soul get reincarnated, grows up loving another set of parents, gets friendly with another set of acquaintances, is that truly fair to deem them the same as their previous incarnation ? Would it be better to merely view them as the inheritor of a former existence’s karma ? Some might say no and some might say yes and some might be undecided still)

 

(the thing is, everything change, and maybe that’s the secret)

 

 

Chapter 154

Obviously, Ning Yingying’s verbal flood of comments and crunchy gossip and updates about everything that happened on Qing Jing Peak specifically and the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect more vaguely would dry up someday. Obviously she would get curious and ask for what reason her Shizun never came back from this fateful mission, almost three decades ago.

 

Shen Jiu wasn’t ready, a leaden weight twisting his innards at the very thought of looking at her in the eyes, this woman who used to be a young girk tugging on his sleeve to beg for another pretty hair ribbon or submit a piece of calligraphy to his review, this woman who used to be a naive girl doting and fussing over the wretched beast waiting to sink his venomous fangs in his own Shizun’s flesh and defile him in the most humiliating and debasing way that demonic brain could ever conceive.

 

Surely she would cry if she ever learned the truth of the matter. She would cry and she would never forgive herself, because she had been the one insisting for a little shidi to order around, didn’t she ? Without her input, surely the wretched beast would have been claimed by Bai Zhan Peak and – well, teaching a Heavenly half-breed martial cultivation would have only turned him more of a threat, but it wouldn’t have been Ning Yingying’s crime to bear.

 

Even so, the beastling’s descent into insanity and depravity wasn’t her sin to bear. Rotten blood would always stink up, no matter how much you freshened the body in which this blood was stagnating – the ungodly brat would have indulged his demonic instincts anyway, be he educated and disciplinated on Qing Jing Peak or Bai Zhan Peak, lacking the blessing of common sense or any sense of shame or decency.

 

Perhaps it was for the best, Shen Qingqiu being the target of his unfilial lust. What if he seized Ning Yingying instead ? That disgusting little pervert, always staring after his shijie with covetous eyes, always whining in her skirts that life was unfair to him, as if he was alone in getting trampled and pissed over by Fate and people gifted with more wealth and power than him – but for the wretch, the world’s boundaries would never extend beyond his experience, his narrow opinion.

 

Shen Jiu wished him a long, torturous eternity of loneliness with his distasteful self. Nobody would ever agree to fawn over him as he attempted to force Shen Jiu to care for him – not without getting anything as their price, and that was something the beast couldn’t tolerate, the idea of people only seeking his favour for the luxuries he could provide.

 

Ah, why was he ruining his mood, lingering over this wretched beast stuck in a dark torment of his own making ? When he was surrounded by children devoted to him ? Well, not so much children now, but that was startingly easy to surimpose the memory of youthful features over Ning Yingying, Yuan’er and Ming Fan’s faces.

 

« Wao, so this muddy dragon we saw is ruling her own mountain ? »

 

« A muddy dragon ? You have been taught by that fangy creature ? »

 

« Yeah, ain’t she wonderful ? I mean, anyone can study under a human master, but a Spiritual Beast is really something else. And she just loves raising Disciples not belonging to the same species, it grants her so many opportunities for debate because let me tell you, a reptilian brain does not work the same as a human mind ! »

 

Yuan’er enjoyed herself as Ning Yingying and Ming Fan questioned her, Ning Yingying with eyes glittering in pure awe and excitment, Ming Fan with a tone wavering between bewilderment and stunned horror.

 

That was – nice, Shen Jiu supposed. Even if that peaceful scene was marred by the carefully hidden nature of the Shen lineage, a bloodline spawned by the most beloathed being to have plagued the Human Realm, a despicable creature that Heaven wanted put to death and so the shadow of her unnumerable sins tainted her entire species.

 

Would Ning Yingying keep smiling at Shen Jiu, if she glimped a furry skin beneath the hem of his overcoat ? Would Ming Fan scream for a monster-slaying blade if Yuan’er forgot herself and shifted as she was wont to do, just like an ordinary person would breathe and sigh ?

 

They might have been reunited, yet a wall of secrets kept them apart, as if Shen Jiu was standing on the eastern beaches on which ships from Dongying would drop the anchor, while his former Disciples were beyond the western wind-blown deserts roamed by horse-riding barbarian tribes. No matter how warm the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect would greet the previously human cultivator, the disgraced Qing Jing Peak Lord, that was a distance they were powerless to erase.

 

« Shizun ! Did you really name your daughter after she banged her head against a wall ? What about seeking a fortune-teller to obtain a more ladylike name, ah ! »

 

« Why is Ning-shijie complaining over my milk name ? I see no trouble in retaining it, and Wei-ge gifted me quite a beautiful one, so that’s not like I cannot switch to this one... »

 

« Yes, this Ming Fan has heard it, Cangse Sanren, was it ? It certainly befits more an elegant maiden with our Shizun as her parent. »

 

« Wait, did you just accuse me from being elegant ? That – I have no words anymore... »

 

« Untrue, you are babbling right now. »

 

« Wei-ge, ah ! On which side are you ? And that’s supposed to be me teasing you, remember that ! »

 

The children were cheerfully bickering, and they dragged Liu Qingge’s reincarnation in the teasing – Liu Qingge’s face was just as bored-looking as it used to be when the Peak Lords were meeting each month to discuss the latest events in the Sect, yet the softness in his gaze was genuine. Would it remain so, if the maiden he took as a travel companion was revealed as nonhuman ? The Bai Zhan War God had been more interested in slaughtering beasts and demons on his path than in befriending them, after all, and even less in… in possibly… no, Shen Jiu wouldn’t dare to consider that prospect, his blood was already boiling in fury and then the afternoon would be definitively ruined.

 

It was a good day, and Shen Jiu wasn’t so naive as to believe it would last forever. Soon, far too soon, Ning Yingying or Yue Qingyuan would poke at some detail in Shen Jiu’s cover story with a tad too much stubborness, and everything would be spoiled. Or perhaps the huli jing would leave the Tian Gong mountain range long before that moment, because what was the point of lingering in Cang Qiong nowaday ? That didn’t feel like home anymore, not like Zhengmei Mountain, not like Baoshan Sanren’s towering shadow.

 

The huli jing couldn’t picture Yue Qingyuan or Ning Yingying or Ming Fan accepting his departure with grace and a smile, considering their horrendously emotional reactions to his suddenly popping back in their existences. And that certainly was an unpleasant thing, the prospect of their tears, pinching and itching deep inside Shen Jiu’s ribcage, so near his heart.

 

Still, that wasn’t like he intended to leave tomorrow… so he might enjoy his sojourn until then.

 

 

Chapter 155

Yue Qingyuan knew how to be patient. It had been forcibly beaten within his flesh, his blood and bone marrow and nerves over a whole agonizing year stuck in the Lingxi caves, when he still was a foolish young dumbass so desperate to fix things, he ultimately saved nobody in trying to accelerate the due process.

 

So he wouldn’t ask the question burning his lips and tongue. Not as long as Xiao Jiu wasn’t ready. Certainly not while the man who had been lost and was returned, was busy listening his Disciples and his daughter and the reborn Liu Qingge to quietly bicker and poke at each other, and the man wasn’t smiling yet there was something of a gentle glow – the delicate shine of a pearl resting on the finest silken cushion – lighting his features.

 

Was that a consequence of leaving the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect behind ? Or was it caused by Maiden Cangse’s birth ? The Xuan Su Sword couldn’t even start to guess the right answer, because so many things went wrong in Xiao Jiu’s life, for so long, it was hard to point at a specific moment and claim that was the root of Xiao Jiu’s unhappiness.

 

The Qiong Ding Peak Lord’s dark gaze glanced at the former Qing Jing Peak Lord’s neck – a silver torc in which ominous seal script had been carved, twisting around the pale flesh, half-hidden by the robes’ collar and the half-unbound waterfall of icily pristine hair.

 

Well, the cursed shackle certainly played a non-negligible rôle in the formerly male-shaped cultivator’s seething wrath at the world right now, and for several decades already. Getting stuck in a body that just didn’t feel like you was the kind of curse with potentially debilitating and long-lasting consequences on the mind, and people who managed to endure more than a few weeks were few and rare.

 

Still, Yue Qingyuan wasn’t surprised. Xiao Jiu had survived in spite of the slavers, the Qiu Manor and Wu Yanzi, obviously he wouldn’t stand for a meager thing such as his own body not fitting his preferences to break him. Or a pervert lusting after him.

 

What happened to this demon who locked the shackle around Xiao Jiu’s neck, by the way ? Surely he couldn’t be alive still, the former Qing Jing Peak Lord had very entrenched opinions on the matter of foes and why it was utterly contemptible to leave them breathing or at the very least, blessed with four functional limbs.

 

Ancestors, if that shackle was keyed to an owner’s will… Yue Qingyuan had never been faced with such a case until nowaday, but he had heard his Shizun mentioning some truly depraved practises in evil cultivators’ researches and studies, a slave brand that would replace the slave’s ability to think by themselves, a slave collar that would force the one wearing him to immediately obey the slaver’s command no matter how humiliating or terrible – that was a disgusting matter, but that was where he ought to begin.

 

Perhaps Mu Qingfang would have more records about cursed shackles and their sinister ilk and uses. It was quite likely, for treating the aftermath on the body and the mind and the soul. Maybe Xiao Jiu would have overcome his plain distaste for the healing halls since he departed on this fateful day ? Always he would complain and seethe and latch on a meager and ridiculous excuse to avoid a check up in Qian Cao Peak, far too used to lick his wounds on his own.

 

Except that some troubles couldn’t be made to disappear through the relentless efforts of a single person giving their all to the endeavour. As a Sect Leader nominally responsible for herding twelve Peaks each gifted with a different viewpoint on the world toward a common goal of unity and harmony, Yue Qingyuan would know.

 

« Sect Leader Yue, what are you thinking about ? »

 

The lost and returned Peak Lord was scowling at him, his quicksilver eyes narrowed by the shriveling suspicion that he was ready to commit some wrath-inducing idiocy deserving of Shen Qingqiu strangling him with all his might.

 

Yue Qingyuan softly smiled.

 

« I was thinking this torc around your neck is quite ugly. Would you care to improve it with one of Wei-shidi’s great forge hammers, after removing it ? »

 

Xiao Jiu pouted, obviously considering the option.

 

« That, or Wei-shidi could fling it in this special oven he has for destroying tainted artefacts. Unless somebody caused it to go cold ? »

 

Ah yes, that oven. It has seen great use since Wan Jian Peak had been established – blades soaked in bloodlust and resentment sometimes couldn’t be salvaged through a blacksmith’s patient care, you had to know when to cut your losses. That was the primary function, but the furnace carved with potent arrays for cleansing and constantly kept lit with a flame so fierce it wasn’t rare for your eyebrows to burst into cinders would consume more than blades, whenever a Disciple on a nighthunt would bring a dubious item back after investigating a string of madness or sudden demises in a city or another.

 

« It’s well-stoked and hungry as ever » Yue Qingyuan answered. « If such is your preference. »

 

Xiao Jiu was the kind of man who… enjoyed wasn’t the right word, but he took a grim satisfaction in doing his dirty deeds or his grand displays of skill without a third party. And for all he attempted to scrub the streets off his soul, living in the gutter would teach you a viciousness that wouldn’t fade no matter the number of years weighing on your brow and shoulders.

 

The formerly black-haired cultivator softly hummed, low in his throat, and the Sect Leader’s breath almost hitched, his ears warm and tinkling.

 

When would it stop being a wonder, to turn his head and see Xiao Jiu standing there ? To hear the sound of his voice and to be reminded it wasn’t a memory playing a cruel trick with his ears ? After almost three decades struggling with a hole gouged in reality, a void shaped just like the Qing Jing Peak Lord, surely having the absence filled wouldn’t cease being amazing soon.

 

Yue Qingyuan would always be grateful, though. For Xiao Jiu coming back, and for coming back alive instead of being stuck in a funerary urn or a coffin, and for coming back with a daughter he plainly cherished and another Immortal Master who obviously cared for him and for whom he cared, even if he would rather allow his tongue to be ripped out of his mouth with red hot pincers than admit it.

 

It was long, almost thirty years of solitude, but at the end it could be borne since there had been a reunion to look forward. An entirely happy reunion, unmarred even by the spiteful will of this scum villain who dared to steal a Cang Qiong Peak Lord away for his vile amusement.

 

Nothing would taint this joy – could be allowed to ruin this joy, and if anything tried… well, Yue Qingyuan wasn’t so weakened that he couldn’t draw Xuan Su and teach the disruption a strongly-worded lesson, from the permanent kind.

 

 

Chapter 156

« So you have studied in a white dragon’s nest ?! » Ning-shijie boggled, obviously impressed by the prospect.

 

« Aren’t they a most reclusive species of illuminated beast ? » Ming Fan couldn’t help wondering, his voice rather incredulous.

 

Obviously, Ning-shijie’s flood of chatter had to dry up at some point, no matter how much she had to tell, and that was when Shen Yuan slid in with hir own tale of wandering across the Middle Kingdom.

 

It had to be him as the new storyteller, because a-Niang didn’t look ready to indulge his former Disciples’ curiosity no matter how much they quivered with anticipation and the burning desire to know more about his mysterious disappearance and the circumstances leading him to join yet another Immortal on her hidden mountain. When somebody wasn’t ready to explain the latest happenings in their quaint little existence, you gave them a bit more time to gather their composure.

 

Cangse Sanren could play the distraction, and gladly – she had so much to share, even if it was complicated to navigate between the tidbits of information and opinions safe to share with a bunch of human cultivators, and the ones that weren’t. Still, the Immortal Alliance Conference had been good training for that.

 

« I wouldn’t deem them reclusive actually » the younger huli jing corrected, « they do open their gates to anyone bothering to seek them and humbly asking to be taught... »

 

« Which is asking for a lot of bravery » Wei-ge snorted, « because dragons . And they have a lot of rules about manners, also. You have to abide by all of them if you don’t want to be expelled. Might be a factor in the low attendance. »

 

« True, true » Cangse Sanren sighed. « How to best describe the Wall of Discipline ? Such a forbidding and crushing landmark, that, looming over the Disciples’ heads to constantly remind them of everything they are not allowed to enjoy ! »

 

Ning-shijie made appropriately horrified noises as the huli jing launched herself in a full-blown detailing of the sheer dullness and boredom involved in the day-to-day life in the Cloud Recesses, while Ming Fan retained a neutral mien, likely because his bureaucratic soul lacked the imagination to perceive how truly horrendous a fate it was. Shen Yuan pitied him, truly.

 

Well, until he decided to sympathize with this fuddy-duddy Lan Qiren over Cangse Sanren pranking him. Alright, compassion was a good thing, but come on ! It was Lan Qiren ! This man’s favourite hobby was to watch ink dry after defacing his students’ essays with grim commentary on their inability to pay respect to honored authors – screw these dudes who claimed they were in the right when Cangse Sanren actually had seen a white-needle iron pine in blossom and that was in summer , not winter as these twats had established in their so-called tomes of wisdom ! She knew she was in the right !

 

When her rant stopped, Ming Fan was frantically blinking and Ning-shijie was openly giggling, have you heard that, Shizun, she’s exactly like you that one time the Marquess of Xian boasted of his painting prowess and insisted for Shizun to honestly criticize his attempts at making art, poor man had no idea, after such a ruthless verbal evisceration he wouldn’t show his face in public until he took sick and died five years later.

 

A-Niang pouted, his brow furrowed as he plainly couldn’t remember the incident. Yue Qingyuan looked like he wanted to burst out laughing, or perhaps he would rather sweep a-Niang off his feet and in the Sect Leader’s arms and – and Shen Yuan wouldn’t go further. Unless it was to picture chaste cuddling. Yes. Cuddling was good.

 

Wei-ge looked like he wanted to sit down near the hearth with hot tea and listen to her rant about so many things, and he would never stop paying attention. That… was nice.

 

Once their sojourn among the white dragons had been told almost in its entirety – Cangse Sanren wouldn’t breathe a word about Madam Lan and her children yet too small to lose her to anyone not belonging to the Cloud Recesses, that was too intimate – the huli jing had to mention how their little travel party grew with the unexpected addition of another companion.

 

Wei-ge tensed besides her, and the younger fox spirit could hear his mother’s slowly rising wrath as zhe was casually reminding how an uncannily handsome youth clad in black had volunteered to rescue the Young Master Jiang from an upset donkey and sure, he had seemed a tad weird but not actually a threat, you know ?

 

Cangse Sanren won’t admit she had swiftly pegged Xiao Yue as a demon. Human people tended to be irrational on the matter of demonkind, and the younger huli jing was pretty certain it wouldn’t help Xiao Yue’s case at all. He had been outed at the Immortal Alliance Conference in front of the whole jianghu, let the discrimination end there, surely he wouldn’t dare his face out of the Lower Realm for a couple of centuries after such a fright.

 

No, Cangse Sanren wasn’t thinking that out of fondness towards the demon youth. He had been rude, after all. Far too insistent on disrespecting her boundaries, far too pushy when she didn’t want for him to keep pestering her, far too comfortable in the belief that his personal might would ensure the world would twist itself in a sailor’s knot to cater to his humble whim. Seriously, you couldn’t enjoy such a person’s company, unless you wanted to manipulate them into bestowing influence or wealth upon you.

 

Yet for her personal distaste and her disapproval of Xiao Yue as a person, that didn’t mean Cangse Sanren wanted to witness him murdered by a frenzied mob, merely because he bore a crimson huadian between his brows, that sounded like the silliest motive ever to erase a living being from the Middle Kingdom and drag him towards the wheel of rebirth. That sounded barbaric and what was the point of the Middle Kingdom claiming to be the apex of civilization if their behaviour mimicked the unruly tribes waging war against the fringes of the Empire ? That was a major contradiction if you asked Shen Yuan for his opinion !

 

Anyway, Xiao Yue was gone now, and he wouldn’t be back, and Cangse Sanren was quite happy to deem the matter close. Sure, Wei Changze and a-Niang were annoyed because of the way he had been around the younger huli jing, but everything was fine , that wasn’t like he attempted to hurt one hair on her head ! If he did , well, that would have been awful, but he didn’t, he never even was given the opportunity, and when one started to ponder the what ifs and a butterfly fluttering their dainty wings and the lack of a nail to shoe a horse, you swiftly devolved into a panic attack because your brain went in overdrive, spitting all manners of dreadful scenarii that never happened in reality.

 

Seriously, so many philosophy exercices would only drive the hapless soul bent on mastering them to tears and madness. Cangse Sanren would rather not studying at all and enjoy what they had right now instead of breaking their mind by worrying.

 

Especially when nothing pointed at these worries coming back to haunt her and the people she cherished.

 

 

Chapter 157

Yue Qingyuan couldn’t help marvelling at Cangse Sanren’s blunt, unrelenting innocence as the maiden pouted and complained about her parent being far too protective, I am saying nothing happened, why are you ripping your hair over what-ifs, it’s going to ruin your blood pressure and sure, a visit to Qian Cao Peak might be interesting but it certainly won’t be enjoyable if that’s because a-Niang made himself sick with worry.

 

Such innocence was the province of gently-raised, heavily pampered and coddled female scions of well-bred bloodlines that could retrace their origins over several centuries, stretching to a millenia in the most respected lineages – seeing it manifested in Xiao Jiu’s daughter, who couldn’t name her grandparents except for a guess that one of them likely was a prostitute too poor to afford a useless mouth pawing at her tits without paying a measly copper for the privilege, that was just a smidge startling.

 

Or perhaps it wasn’t. Disciple Ning used to be just the same, several decades ago, until her Shizun’s disappearance stole her faith in the world’s innate kindness and benevolence – Shen Qingqiu always did pamper little girls latching at his painter apron’s strings with a blinding smile and a sweet voice begging for treats.

 

« Even if the demon had attempted to seize what he had no right to covet » the Sect Leader intervened, mostly to prevent Xiao Jiu from throwing a fit – that shade of red spreading all over his cheeks heralded a truly fearsome wrath unleashed on the hapless soul poking at his ruthless self-control, « surely Wei-qianbei would have cut his hand off before it could land. Quite the watchdog, that one. »

 

Wei Changze snorted, staunchly and stoically staring right in front of him. Liu-shidi used to behave this way when he was praised for doing something he viewed as the lowest needed to fulfill his duty to hunt evil and destroy it through the merciless wielding of Cheng Luan.

 

Speaking of Cheng Luan, would the spiritual sword react to her former master’s reborn soul ? It broke after Liu-shidi perished in the Lingxi caves, but Liu Mingyan wouldn’t accept to bring the shards back to the Liu compound to be buried with her brother’s ashes, and so Wei-shidi had took upon himself to forge the blade anew and enshrine it deep within his Peak’s vaults, awaiting for another swordsmaster to come and resonate with its mind well enough to be allowed to brandish it.

 

A spiritual blade could follow a lineage, some swords were peckish like that, or they could stubbornly refuse everyone but one single wielder, be they born anew as a woman, a monk sworn to never raise their hand in violence, or a cripple lacking a hand to learn swordsmanship. Now, was Cheng Luan one of these whimsical blades ? According Wei-shidi, a sword got more and more troublesome as it gained years and might, and the late Bai Zhan War God’s blade hadn’t been ancient – it had been relatively recent, maybe a decade and a half forged when it chose Liu-shidi as its master – but it had been very powerful from daily battles against all matters of villains, beasts and demons, so…

 

On the other hand, would Wei Changze even wish to use his former life’s weapon ? As a foremost retainer to a rather small Sect, such a gift as a mighty spiritual blade could open the door to the Young Master Jiang hurling accusations of poaching , even if that was as simple as giving a previous comrade his things back and not a shameless bribe aiming to entangle a talented cultivator into implicit disownment of his liege for not providing lushly green pastures – appearances were so important in the jianghu’s politics, and when Sect Heirs and Sect Leaders were involved then it would irremediably sink into politics.

 

Also, Wei Changze seemed more annoyed and wary of Cang Qiong than intrigued by the amount of attention his face and qi were gathering among the Peak Lords and everyone old enough to remember the black-clad young man’s previous incarnation. He just might reject Cheng Luan out of sheer determination to spite the Twelve Peaks’s dogged insistence on establishing a link with him.

 

Ah, wouldn’t that be a shame ? Liu-shidi had taken such good care of his weapon, it was just like watching an amnesiac soldier spurning his long-suffering faithful bride. Also, Yue Qingyuan internally mused as his dark eyes glanced at the sword hanging at Wei Changze’s waist, Lotus Pier might be a reliable Sect yet for all the privileges and rights one commoner would gain from joining the Yunmeng Jiang lineage, it was so far beneath the wealth and comforts any cultivator alliated with Cang Qiong had at their fingertips.

 

Funny thing, that, the discrepancies in fame and money when you entered the jianghu. As Qi-ge and Xiao Jiu idly daydreamed about becoming Disciples to a righteous Shizun, they had been somewhat aware some Sects were better than the others, but in their ignorant minds whose viewpoint on the world had been hobbled by a blatant lack of life experience beyond their impoverished neighbourhood, a cultivator was a cultivator and as such automatically above these fat merchants and highborns wearing fine silks and fancy jewelry and dining on any food they craved. Surely one walking the path leading to the silver bridge would enjoy luxury beyond measure – luxury beyond two starving urchins’ feverish imagination.

 

Always, the lack of information would break under reality’s unrelenting assault – and that was part of why Cangse Sanren’s innocence was so startling. Especially after the unveiling of a demon in her travel party, and all the speculation about what he just might have wanted to do with her…

 

Fortunately, Wei Changze and the Young Master Jiang’s watch over Xiao Jiu’s daughter had been flawless, and the demon unable to make a single step before he was forced to show his true nature for almost the Middle Kingdom’s worth of cultivators. Cangse Sanren’s innocence and faith in the world’s innate gentleness and benevolence wouldn’t be shattered yet, for a little longer.

 

In spite of it obviously infuriating Xiao Jiu right now, the former Qing Jing Peak Lord likely wanted it that way. No parent wished to see their child in pain, and such a kind soul as Cangse Sanren was guaranteed to be heartbroken when the veil of ignorance would be lifted off her quicksilver gaze – the harder the fall, after all, when one was at the very top of the mountain, able to embrace the countryside for miles upon miles with a mere glance.

 

Yue Qingyuan could only pray for her heart to not harden in the aftermath, as it pieced itself back together. There wouldn’t be avoiding scarring, scars were a fact of life in such a ruthless world as the Middle Kingdom, but you could prevent infection and rot from worsening them, causing you to potentially lose a limb, your sanity, or outright your very breath for existence.

 

With a properly cleaned wound, at least you would only ache in the dark night when it was cold and damp, or when you were reminded of the circumstances in which you gained the scar twisting your flesh into something more or less awful to behold, more or less disgusting for anyone laying eyes upon it.

 

Some scars were barely there, and Yue Qingyuan hoped Cangse Sanren’s heart would bear nothing but these.

 

 

Chapter 158

The more details about the undercover demon spilled from Shen Yuan’s lips, the more Shen Jiu felt disgusted and itching for some dummies to demolish on a training field, or perhaps he would go for several rounds of sparring with Baoshan Sanren – wait, no, she never was taking these bouts seriously and the formerly human cultivator had always despised when people went easy on him, too much like pity, too much like the condescending mercy of many highborns not wanting to bother to acknowledge a wretched slave.

 

Maybe he could spar with Liu Qingge’s reincarnation ? The late Bai Zhan War God appeared less likely to complain and whine about cheating and dirty fighting if he was kneed in the groin or got his inner ear ruptured so as to make him so dizzy he would be unable to retaliate, busy puking his guts out as he would be. Wait, no, Hallmasters and teachers and potentially one Peak Lord or two would scream in outrage and accuse the huli jing from seeking to kill Liu Qingge again, once wasn’t enough for such a scum villain, really people were tiresome when they were bent on holding you as the embodiment of everything evil under Heaven…

 

So, there wasn’t a good way to vent his quietly seething temper as he heard Shen Yuan – his daughter, his precious white cabbage who grew pure and untainted by the world’s ugliness and lechery – slipping and carelessly admitting how that… that perverted, debased abomination, that living insult towards decency and good manners, had flittered around her, had ogled, had coveted.

 

Ning Yingying was cooing in sympathy, patting the younger huli jing’s arm as the human young woman was agreeing that yes, this so-called Xiao Yue had been so very pushy, really he ought to have known better, but from the barely hidden glances she was directing at the black-clad guest on Qing Jing Peak, she was saying that mostly because she was fancying a grand love tale between a gentle maiden in white and a devoted brute leashed to this maiden’s frail wrist, rather than because she was actually offended by the demon’s repulsive attitude.

 

Ning Yingying never had been able to acknowledge boundaries were needed, when she used to be a wide-eyed young girl, after all. Always laughing when this little beast was sniffling and whining in her skirts, insisting he was so cute and helpless and of course she had to pamper him, he was so pitiful, what else was she supposed to do ?

 

As if a wolf couldn’t mimic the begging and affectionate dog when it was so very hungry. Sure, the travestry would last very long, but it didn’t have to be forever, merely to last long enough for a sucker to fall in the trap and offer a naive hand looking for pets and only managing to get this hand bitten off and chewed raw.

 

Ah, so that was the reason behind Shen Jiu’s bad mood. It was poking too close at the dark memories he kept under lock and key in the deepest recesses of his mind, the poison that lurked over a great many years of his existence and now threatened to overtake his beloved daughter’s careless joy.

 

Truly, forcefully unveiling the demon right in the middle of the jianghu’s most bloodthirsty and demon-hating elements hadn’t been punishment enough. Shen Jiu ought to have launched a dart to slit its throat open and explained why he had spat on guest rights later, once the body would have cooled and turned ready to be paraded as evidence able to convince the most narrow-minded imbeciles. That would have been nothing but the least it deserved, for bringing these decades stuck in the Lower Realm closer to his conscious thought process.

 

Shen Jiu reined himself in, closing his eyes and breathing through his nose slowly and deeply and carefully. He was fine – he had escaped the Lower Realm right under the beast’s nose and never had been found after almost two decades, protected as he was by Zhengmei Mountain’s wards and Baoshan Sanren’s isolationist tendences. His daughters were fine, both of them – the beast had been unable to lay a hand on Ning Yingying before he was dropped in the Endless Abyss and later focused all of his repellent lust upon his own Shizun, while this new, younger beast had been kept away by Liu Qingge’s reincarnation and the Young Master Jiang and had been reduced to flee for saving its awful life from several assorted Sects very much willing and able to slaughter it and use its remains as trophies in their halls.

 

« Xiao Jiu ? »

 

The former Qing Jing Peak Lord grumbled, without opening his eyes.

 

« Seriously ? » he groused. « Three decades in which we didn’t see each other and you insist to use that disgusting nickname. »

 

Yue Qingyuan smiled – yes, Shen Jiu could hear him smiling, that was in the shape of his answer, the softness crafting the words.

 

« Well, you weren’t there to remind me of your loathing for it, and your Qi-ge is very stupid, you have to repeat everything you say to him a thousand times. »

 

« You ass  » the older huli jing scoffed, but it lacked the venom, the wrath he used to inject in his sentences when he used to believe himself part of the human species. « You shite-leaking, greedy for spanking, unmitigated arsehole . Why did your Shizun pick you as heir and successor, it beggars understanding and surely he’s repenting for his decision every day in his corner of the Eighteen Hells. I bet King Yama is making him watch your dumbass self as you’re bumbling all over the mountain range. »

 

The Sect Leader hummed low and quietly under his breath.

 

« It might be » he answered, mild and diplomatic and nonindicative of personal opinions on the matter.

 

For a favoured Disciple and inheritor of one’s estate, it was kind of suspect for the idea of your hellish torments to be greeted with such indifference, but Yue Qingyuan and his predecessor’s relationship had always been distant. The former Qiong Ding Peak Lord was determined on gifting people a value according their degree of usefulness to the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks, and never bothered with feelings on the way, a consummate politician to the bone marrow and the fingertips. Yue Qi had grown up a slave brat, taught from the cradle to mistrust anyone in a position of power and authority over him – it would have been deeply suspect for him to get attached to his Shizun. His subordinates were much safer, devoid of the same potential to ruin him with a simple gesture.

 

Love was the absence of fear, and what was there to fear from a weaker being ? At the most, they would annoy you by clawing at your jacket, and that was easily forgotten as you went back to dote upon them.

 

Shen Jiu was quite certain that some slavers weren’t lying when they insisted they loved one of their harassed, long-suffering pets unable to do anything to put them in their place as disgusting pigs and lechers – what could stop them from inflicting their twisted brand of affection ?

 

Well, perhaps the pet snapping and burning the manor down to the ground until it was naught but cinders and ashes.

 

Chapter 159

Luo Binghe had long come to terms with the simple truth that his luck was a fickle, unreliable bitch, just as two-faced and hypocritical as the many demonesses simpering as long as they were on their back while he fucked them, yet immediately plotting to use him as their political tool for their clan’s benefit when he wasn’t watching them anymore.

 

Sure, he had wealth and he had power and he had women, a whole dimension’s worth – for the meager price of an endlessly bloodthirsty sword constantly shrieking in his ear, his mother dying and unable to enjoy all the material comforts he would have showered upon her if only he had been able to provide for her as a good son was meant to tend to his parent, a Shizun who never looked at him as more than a wretched beast and fled to unknown parts instead of acknowledging he had been wrong to abuse Luo Binghe so mercilessly in the past.

 

Yes, Luo Binghe’s luck was quite the petty thing. And as the brat he sired spouted an unexpected piece of news, the Heavenly half-breed couldn’t help to wonder – what would that mean for the future ?

 

Shen Qingqiu’s daughter. The whelp had been very insistent upon the girl’s parentage, and Luo Binghe would believe him – if Yue Qingyuan was ready to claim her as such, there wasn’t any point in arguing, the man had been startingly devoted and close to his most senior shixiong in spite of Shen Qingqiu’s blatant and unrelenting distaste for him. Surely the Cang Qiong Sect Leader wouldn’t suffer an imposter, no matter how well she had been trained, how well informed she was about the circumstances unfolding in the Twelve Peaks.

 

So, a daughter for the formerly human cultivator. The whelp had been evasive about how old she was – women could be so touchy regarding the subject, and cultivation blurred the trail further by preventing the youthfulness in one’s features to fade long after middle age. And Shen Jiu couldn’t have broken the cursed shackle on his own, so he had been stuck in his huli jing body, ensuring nobody would even crave him for a quick fuck – no creature was more despised than a fox spirit, after all, Daji’s remembrance a shadow looming over two realms for centuries past and yet to come.

 

Meaning – Luo Binghe had a third child. A daughter.

 

It sounded weird. Sons he knew – being saddled with two of them – you had to beat on them until they shaped up, until they stopped whining and complaining it was unfair, and you had to keep an eye on their antics to ensure you wouldn’t be surprised unaware when they would attempt to usurp your throne. But a girl ?

 

All he could see in his mind was a dizzying mixture of his many, many bed partners as they pouted and primped themselves and giggled and fawned over gifts, and also Ning Yingying as she latched on Shizun’s wide sleeve to chatter a storm about her day and her cheek being lovingly stroked in turn, and would have Shen Jiu behaved like that toward their daughter ?

 

Luo Binghe once hoped bearing a child – his children – would finally thaw Shen Jiu’s cruel heart, only for his prayer to be ruthlessly dashed and tramped underfoot. But what if these children being male had been a problem – the Qing Jing Peak Lord made no mystery of his enjoyment for whores and shamelessly doted upon his female Disciples, and after being crowned as the Lower Realm’s Empress had seduced his handmaidens until they forgot to fear him and started to worship him instead.

 

According the whelp, the girl had spoken nothing but fondly of her mother as Yue Qingyuan was groveling at her feet as a famished beggar receiving warm soup from the Merciful Goddess herself, asking her for more details – Shen Jiu had raised her instead of rejecting her as he rejected her brothers, had cared for her as he used to care for Ning Yingying and never for Luo Binghe, and it resulted in a girl who sounded so much like Ning Yingying it made the Heavenly half-breed’s teeth ache in nostalgia.

 

Cheerful and innocent and beloved, a girl enjoying Shen Jiu’s parental affection with nary a care in the world. Yes, it was Ning Yingying writ in the next generation, fox-skinned and pristinely clad and cherished by any man laying eyes upon her.

 

Any man except for her sire.

 

Luo Binghe’s teeth weren’t aching from nostalgia alone now, they were grinding in thwarted anger and outrage, for wasn’t a female the property of her father ? Sure, the Lower Realm would disagree with that specific opinion since strength alone mattered for a great deal of lineages, and that was when you weren’t taking the matriarchal tribes such as the spider Shan clan in account, but Luo Binghe had been raised in the Middle Kingdom for his formative years, in a culture deeming women belonged to their male relatives, be them a father, a brother, a husband or a son.

 

Xin Mo was howling in his inner ear, already anticipating the fight he would bring to the Middle Kingdom, to the very steps of the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect – to the place in which Shen Jiu surely had run away, the whelp had mentioned the circumstances in which he had been forced to escape the jianghu and if the one responsible for unveiling the Heavenly brat right in the middle of a crowd of a cultivator wasn’t Shen Jiu, then Luo Binghe couldn’t guess who it would be, such blind hatred in this act of sheer spite, just as pushing your pleading Disciple in the Endless Abyss, the guarantee of a gruesome and painful demise if the target hadn’t been blessed with a few life-saving tricks beforehand.

 

Shen Jiu was back, and Luo Binghe would take his wayward Empress back – he would teach the huli jing a lesson, that happiness wasn’t to be found in the Middle Kingdom for Shen Jiu’s wretched soul, only besides the Sacred Ruler of Demonkind, and whoever wanted to argue against that, the Heavenly half-breed would gleefully slaughter until Shen Jiu screamed in despair and broke and begged for his forgiveness, and Luo Binghe would magnanimously grant it after a suitable period for punishment had passed.

 

And he would take his daughter too, the girl Shen Jiu had loved and raised, the living evidence linking the huli jing to Luo Binghe, and Shen Jiu’s daughter would love her father as a daughter was meant to love and honour her sire. She would be the Imperial Princess – the title had fallen in disregard after Tianlang-jun’s younger sister perished but it did exist – sitting at his left hand as he was ruling from his throne, gentle and obedient and kept safe under his shadow, as the clans and tribes would rival for her favour just like they fought for Luo Binghe’s attention, gifting her with endless piles of treasure in the hope of a nod from her or a wave from her hand, and all of this fighting in vain for she would always cherish Luo Binghe above everyone else.

 

A daughter was meant to honour her father after all. Shen Jiu’s girl – Cangse Sanren, that was the name uttered by the whelp – would love her sire, Luo Binghe was sure of it.

 

 

Chapter 160

When the sun dawned on Qing Jing Peak’s bamboo groves this morning, it was shaping up to be an unremarkable morning.

 

Well, as unremarkable as it was possible to be with a bunch of eccentric guests, Ning Yingying couldn’t help musing, as she gently clapped in her hands right besides Maiden Cangse’s head.

 

« Good morning » the artistically-leaning young woman sing-songed, « good morning, good morning ! Time to open your eyes, you slothful thing. »

 

« Noooo » Maiden Cangse whimpered, her arm flailing as she flopped on her belly, almost throwing her porcelain pillow on the ground. « Mornings are evil, wanna sleep... »

 

Under the cloth portion of her nightgown that covered her backside, a fluffy tail twitched and attempted to raise itself from the mattress, only to be betrayed by its limp nature.

 

That had been quite the surprise, the first time Ning Yingying woke up to her new roommate – you couldn’t stick Shizun’s daughter in the Disciple dormitories or the ones for guests, that would have been such a blatant show of disrespect – sprouting a tail or fuzzy ears, or with her hair painted in a dizzying rainbow of glittering shades. Of course, it would vanish as soon as Maiden Cangse was properly awake – that likely was safest for her, cultivators tended to be negative on the matter of shapeshifters, mostly because a great deal of them made use of their power to indulge in evil deeds.

 

Ning Yingying knew her duty as a cultivator taught by Cang Qiong would have been to report Maiden Cangse’s inability to master her shape to an Elder or a Peak Lord, but.

 

But that was Shizun’s daughter, and when you actually spoke with her, it became plainly obvious that Cangse Sanren was just as able and willing to plot an evil deed as a tortoise was to grow wings and race an eagle among the clouds – it would only result in a confused stare and worried fussing over you potentially needing a physician because if such an inane idea was cooking between your ears, surely you couldn’t be well !

 

So Ning Yingying kept quiet. Because Maiden Cangse was sweet and gentle and innocent and didn’t deserve to be poked and prodded and eyeballed as the prime suspect to a gruesome murder, and because Shizun likely wouldn’t want for the reason behind his daughter’s shapeshifting to be explained to the twelve Peaks.

 

After all, Shizun did mention he had been cursed to have a woman’s body – perhaps it was the curse tainting his offspring in the womb, saddling her with a fluidity in her being that allowed her to switch her features or her mass or whatnot… or perhaps it wasn’t the curse at all, but it was an unwanted inheritance from Maiden Cangse’s father.

 

Shizun never hinted at having a husband or a lover – which was a good thing, otherwise Yue-zhangmen would have been utterly heartbroken and considering his recovering health, it might have been deadly for the Qiong Ding Peak Lord – and Maiden Cangse would cheerfully mention her martial aunts and uncles and siblings, but no father whatsoever.

 

Ning Yingying used to be a naive little girl, once upon a time, but even her younger self would have understood the unsaid words, the quiet accusation. Really, lifting the curse couldn’t be done swift enough – Yue-zhangmen had thrown himself at the task with a terrifying energy, one you would never accuse him to possess after such a long illness of heart and body, dragging ancient tomes out of the libraries and harassing the Ascetic Peak on the finer points of exorcisms from sunrise to sunset.

 

It had been a week and the Sect Leader still was as enthusiastic as the first day. Shizun kept looking at him with this mildly baffled expression, as a young girl whose sweetheart had just declared he meant to officially beg her father for her hand and her brain hadn’t caught up yet to the understanding that yes it was genuine, it was happening.

 

Well, Maiden Cangse was deeply fond of Yue-zhangmen, so she ought to be pleasantly supportive if the Sect Leader took his renewed acquaintance with Shizun in that direction. Ayah, wouldn’t that be the sweetest thing ?

 

Such a shame that Liu Mingyan was currently brooding and moping on Xian Shu Peak, all of her Shizun and martial sisters’ efforts to comfort her through her depression failing so far – it was the kind of romantic tale she would usually eat with a silver spoon and write for all the future generations to enjoy, childhood lovers ruthlessly forced apart by the uncaring Fate, only to be reunited after so many trials and decades, still as passionate about each other in spite of all the suffering they underwent.

 

Perhaps Ning Yingying would record the tale instead. Her calligraphy was very good, especially after polishing mountain after mountain of paperwork, and she was reasonably poetic when she was in the mood, but she low-key fretted about how much she could write without being a frightful gossip intruding on private matters. Shizun had such a thin face, that didn’t change no matter the three-decades-long sundering, he would wilt in shame and wrath if something he never meant to share with the world was discussed in the street as yesterday’s groceries.

 

The consequences of being an extraverted soul, Ning Yingying supposed, you had to remember other people’s boundaries were kept much closer to their chests and respect that, even if you couldn’t help thinking they were a tad ridiculous. Sometimes people had a good reason to not tell you a piece of prime information regarding them.

 

Something like the reason why Maiden Cangse could and would shapeshift as she was dead to the world, drooling on her mattress with all the bliss and serenity of a milk-drunken infant, but would staunchly retain a fixed set of features as soon as she fully opened her eyes.

 

Ning Yingying didn’t believe Shizun’s daughter was aware that she accidentally revealed her secret, and the young woman had no intention to admit she was in the know. When somebody didn’t willingly share their secret with you, you had no right to lay claim to their trust, the polite thing was to behave as if nothing happened, as if you had been struck with short-term amnesia that blanked the latest moment out of your memory.

 

At least, that was how Ning Yingying defined politeness. It took her several years and more than a few dreadful and positively embarrassing mishaps for her to finally stumble on this conclusion, but she was rather content with the result. Her fellow Disciples and the Hallmasters certainly appreciated.

 

One day, Maiden Cangse might want to bare her secret to her shijie, but it likely wouldn’t be today. Today was a day for studying and painting and drinking tea as you exchanged news about various events in the jianghu, and in order for this day to begin, Maiden Cangse would have to drag her fluffy little backside out of this bed and dress herself. Come on, she could do this ! Ning Yingying had faith in her ! Don’t grumble so much, and that’s not nice to complain about your shijie’s singing voice, it’s a really nice voice, just ask Ming Fan if you think I am too biased.

 

Yes, that would be a nice day.

Chapter 161

How nostalgic it was, standing at the feet of the Tian Gong Mountain Range again.

 

The first time Luo Binghe beheld these proud peaks, he had been a sniveling brat shivering in mended rags, his feet blistered from walking and walking until he found his destination, his eyes filled with faraway stars whispering dreams of glory and plenty if only he could climb up these stairs, if only an Immortal Master in all their peerless might deemed him worthy to receive their wisdom and attention.

 

Now he was the Sacred Ruler of the Lower Realm, a cursed blade eager to be brandished quivering at his side, a crimson mark of sin burning on his forehead, an army slowly growing behind him as warriors were spilling from the wound ripped in the dimensional veil by Xin Mo, waiting for his command.

 

Quite frankly, Luo Binghe didn’t feel great hope for a peaceful ending to this errand in his childhood realm – even if he denounced Shen Qingqiu as a huli jing for the Twelve Peaks to disown him, and they would since the former Qing Jing Peak Lord had never been the most beloved among his martial siblings and surely those were begging for an opportunity to permanently cast him out now that he was plaguing their lives anew, Yue Qingyuan had always shown undeserved favoritism towards his foremost shixiong and wouldn’t let him go without raising a stink. Especially if a Heavenly Demon was asking, courtesy of the whole nasty business with Tianlang-jun so many decades ago.

 

It was fine. Luo Binghe is owed retribution – the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect promised a glittering future and it refused to deliver. Truly, such a scam ought to be thoroughly reduced to ashes and charred cinders, in order to protect future urchins desperate to improve their wretched existences, unsuspecting that nothing would change as there would still be bullies and masters bent on tormenting anyone beneath their exalted, lofty status.

 

Also, demons enjoyed bloodshed – with a bunch of them murdering and getting murdered in this little jaunt, they would be too busy enjoying themselves to pester Luo Binghe no matter the reason for two months at the very least. Truly, a major win for everyone – except for the Sect, he supposed, but who cared about them  ?

 

Anyway, it was time to make their presence known. That would be extremely easy, the mountain range was positively brimming with wards able to detect a demon sneezing in their general direction, some of them likely intended to repel but Luo Binghe had Sha Hualing on his side, she already successfully forced herself and her army beyond the entrance stairs and she didn’t have Xin Mo or the tremendous physical power of a Heavenly Demon at her fingertips.

 

On the other hand, Sha Hualing didn’t have to contend with a muddy dragon lazily sprawled all over the entrance stairs, darker than black scales splattered with greyish splotches drinking the midday sunlight as a drunkard would guzzle cheap wine by the barrel.

 

Well, Luo Binghe had stumbled upon all manners of beasts as he roamed in the Lower Realm and the Endless Abyss. Surely he could slay a muddy dragon.

 

« Somebody is thinking stupid thoughts, and it disturbs this Master’s nap. Who dares to be so rude, pray tell ? »

 

The beast’s eyes were closed still, but the nightmarishly fanged maw had moved, and that voice sounded like the roaring of a flooding river shattering mighty boulders impending its path. So it was able to speak, and it also seemed gifted with some cunning – that would complicate the hunt, that, intelligent beasts noticed when you wanted to lure them in a trap or a false sense of security.

 

He needed more information, that was best to know all the various means a target would use to maim you if you missteped, so he would play the game for a little while.

 

« This one is Luo Binghe, who has claimed rulership over the Lower Realm » the Heavenly half-breed introduced himself, with all the confidence earned with his position.

 

A derisive snort escaped from the reptilian mass of flesh’s towering muzzle.

 

« Rulership over disorganized packs of violent assholes who hate anyone wanting to tell them how to live ? Good luck to you, then. Now this Master has been validated in her opinion regarding your lack of wits. »

 

Luo Binghe gritted his teeth, thumbing Xin Mo’s sword tassel. Such lack of concern, such scorn directed his way – that was just like speaking with Shen Qingqiu at his most haughty, his most unbearably prideful and self-important, so certain that a measly starving orphan would never amount to anything…

 

Well, you were wrong Shizun, just look at what I have achieved. And look you will, for I am about to drag you back to my side, a side you would have never fled if you had known what is good for you.

 

Yes, somewhere in this mountain range, Shen Jiu was waiting. Him and their daughter. Ultimately, the muddy dragon was unconsequential, merely an obstacle on Luo Binghe’s path – and after years upon years of misadventures in the Lower Realm, the Heavenly half-breed grew quite savvy on how these things would unravel. At the end would be the reward, and in order to go there, Luo Binghe would be faced with so many trials, but he would triumph. He always triumphed, that was how his luck was.

 

Xin Mo gently slid out of its sheath, the blade basically purring in sheer anticipation of spilling guts and blood.

 

« Oh there, that definitely is a stupid move » the muddy dragon commented, its tone bored and stoic as if it was bearing with an annoying neighbour singing off-key as they were noisily cleaning their home late in the evening when everyone sane was going to bed. « But since you have come with an army on your heels, you likely weren’t seeking to admire the sights. »

 

Squat paws flexed and the sunlight glittered on midnight black scales as the reptilian mass of flesh moved and rose up from its sprawl. Golden slitted eyes landed on the Heavenly half-breed, and the stench of wet leather and rotten meat went and tickled Luo Binghe’s cheeks as the beast opened its maw.

 

« Last warning to you. This Master would enjoy finishing her nap peacefully, but if slaughter is what you crave – slaughter you shall receive and won’t enjoy. It’s a hundred centuries too early for you to hope besting Baoshan Sanren, brat. »

 

« I have slain bigger than you » Luo Binghe retorted, Xin Mo madly giggling in the back of his thoughts, the cursed blade vibrating in his hand of sheer excitment.

 

« Size isn’t everything. That’s a common mistake when males assume anything, and let me tell you, it’s quite irking after a while. Some will mature out of it, but you… nah. You’re not cut from the right cloth for that. »

 

The world blurred

 

jump !

 

PAIN exploding in his chest as stone-hard flesh wrapped in scales crash against him – ribcage almost reduced to thousands of shards under the impact –

 

landing on the merciless ground and PAIN again, his blood parasites already in a frenzy to heal him

 

a nightmarishly fanged maw chomping down on a screaming demon and spitting the torso back at another demon – how did it move so swiftly, such a huge creature should be slow

 

you idiot, it’s a muddy dragon and it was sunbathing when it decided to attack, of course its reflexes will be enhanced from the ambiant heat !

 

Luo Binghe gritted his teeth as he got back up. That would be a bitch and a half.

 

 

Chapter 162

A filial son likely would run towards the towering reptilian creature currently batting his father around, just like a cat would bat a mouse or a cricket around out of cruel playfulness than true hunger or bored bloodlust. He would howl threats of ungodly revenge and dire curses, as he swung his blade in a fit of anger too potent to remain contained in his flesh body.

 

Xiao Yue wasn’t a filial son, far from it. That wasn’t like Luo Binghe deserved loyalty or devotion, anyway, and if he accidentally inspired both these feelings into some naive soul, he would swiftly piss them away by his usual behaviour. So the prospect of him devoured or at the very least torn apart by one beast too hardy for the all-solving Xin Mo to be effective for once ? More of a blessing than a dreadful future, indeed.

 

And that would greatly simplify Xiao Yue ascending to the throne. Sure, a few chieftains and clan heads might grouse and complain his strength was untested, as he wasn’t directly responsible for the previous ruler’s gruesome demise, but the cunning and cold-bloodedness required to stand there, knowing your sire was doomed to perish unless given a helpful hand, and staunchly refuse to lift one single finger, well, it was guaranteed to impress that Xiao Yue was no weakling.

 

Alas, the Heavenly scion couldn’t enjoy the spectacle of the worthless being that contributed to his birth finally getting his richly deserved fate, for he had a lovely lady to find somewhere on these twelve Peaks. A lovely lady who was owed the truth of her former travel companion’s origins, and a proposal that would see her crowned as Empress of the Lower Realm, mistress over all demonkind, the power of life and death over thousands of lives at her fingertips – and Xiao Yue as her faithful servant, for a lord might rule over his lands but a lady would rule over her lord, that was right and proper.

 

He couldn’t wait to kneel at her feet and offer his whole being to Cangse Sanren. As soon as he would learn of her whereabouts.

 

To this end, he discreetly grabbed Sha Hualing while everybody was falling into a disorganized mess courtesy of the muddy dragon busy wrecking them without putting a great effort in the endeavour, as if it was stomping on a bunch of ants on an errand in the countryside, and quietly hissed at her to show him the path to Qiong Ding Peak.

 

That was the logical course of action – Sha Hualing once led an assault against the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, if a failure of one that happened several decades ago, so she would have the advantage of a vague familiarity with the land. And obviously Cangse Sanren would be on Qiong Ding Peak, it was the Sect Leader’s dwelling and the man had been so eager to lavish care upon the pristine-clad maiden, to dote on her with such gusto that you would assume she was born a first-rank Imperial Princess…

 

Well, becoming an Empress was not so far of the exalted status of an Imperial Princess, wasn’t it ? Yue Qingyuan might appreciate the opportunity it would bestow upon Cangse Sanren, as long as he wasn’t going in a snit courtesy of the suitor’s blood being less than pure and as a consequence repellent to human sensitivities.

 

Which was an obstacle to be sure. Xiao Yue would have to explain his upcoming reforms for the Lower Realm and how it would benefit the Human Realm too, and their Son of Heaven had no qualms gifting his daughters’ hand to barbarian chieftains harassing the fringes of his kingdom or petty monarchs beyond the sea in the hope of peace and trade, why did it have to be different with Cangse Sanren ?

 

Sure, she was demon-blooded, but the Sect Leader nonetheless cherished her, and possibly thought she was human – Cangse Sanren wasn’t the kind to flaunt her lineage as she was traipsing in the Human Realm, and she wouldn’t even tell Xiao Yue when they belonged to the same species so the odds for her to confess this little detail to a man who helped to seal Tianlang-jun himself under a mountain were so low, they were rolling on the ground and threatened to carve grooves in the soil.

 

« This way, my prince » Sha Hualing pointed at him, the bells in her hair and at her wrists chiming in excitment and eagerness. « Hualing’s memories are not so bad that it would let her forget that. »

 

Xiao Yue, soon to be the new Sacred Ruler of the Lower Realm, how soon would depend on how quickly the muddy dragon would get bored with her new plaything and gore him so badly that the Heavenly blood parasites would be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of damage to fix, smiled. It was not a nice expression, greedy and predatory and every flaw humans relentlessly accused demonkind from having.

 

Then the Hallmaster appeared – the Heavenly scion believed it was a Hallmaster, his robes too plain and sternly functional to not be the work garments favoured by a disciplinarian – and it wasn’t too much of a surprise, with twelve Peaks filled with Disciples, teachers and menials, stumbling upon someone was unavoidable.

 

The cultivator yelped, his hand flying at his hip and finding nothing – how nice, to be so comfortable and secure in your Sect’s mighty wards that you would forget to carry a spiritual weapon at your belt – and Sha Hualing grinned as she tilted her head, the silver bells braided in her black tresses quivering and calling for a spat just as ruthless as it was swift.

 

Xiao Yue rose his hand in a peacemaking gesture and inclined his head, just enough to be polite, but he was demon royalty, he wouldn’t scrape and bow as a beggar. He would establish himself through his actions.

 

« Greetings to you. This one was hoping for an appointment with Sect Leader Yue ? »

 

The Hallmaster gaped at him, obviously startled and nonplussed.

 

« Ah… excuse me ? » the man managed to stammer, sweat beading on his forehead, fear or confusion ?

 

Xiao Yue tried his best to mimic Yue Qingyuan’s casual, bland smile, the one expression donned by the Sect Leader as he was politely interacting with other powerful names in the jianghu.

 

« Begging your forgiveness for the lack of warning, truly, but this one assures you, the rudest members in our party are currently regretting a great deal their uncouth behaviour. This muddy dragon sure lacks any patience when it comes to boors uncaring of the social niceties. »

 

The Hallmaster grew paler and paler as he understood the hint of a bunch of demons getting mauled by a reptilian mass of towering flesh, on their hallowed Sect’s very stairs, no less. These so-called righteous organizations in the jianghu were so weird about keeping their estates clean and untainted by violence, it certainly was very different in the Lower Realm – more than a few lineages would proudly show off the stains left by an enemy’s gruesome slaughter in the main hall when they entertained guests, why would you be ashamed of the evidence that you were stronger than so many fools who failed at destroying you ?

 

The Heavenly scion kept smiling, waiting for the human to have his little breakdown.

 

« I – I will bring you to the Sect Leader » the man ultimately muttered in a broken voice.

 

« Wonderful » Xiao Yue chirped.

 

Everything was going so well.

 

 

Chapter 163

Today, Cangse Sanren and Wei-ge were sitting with Yue Qingyuan for tea under a nice little pavilion. Young Master Jiang was happily networking with the Sect Leader’s First Disciple and several paperwork grunts – at least, that was the best way to describe them, even if they insisted on prettying their job with fancy titles – and a-Niang couldn’t be there because Ming Fan and Ning Yingying were still helping him to learn everything that happened on Qing Jing Peak for his decades-long vacation.

 

Cangse Sanren found Qiong Ding Peak rather impressive in its stately, stern beauty, but the picture of aloof elegance had been thoroughly sunk by the many, many Disciples and Hallmasters coming to her in order to lavish tearful and abundant thanks upon the younger huli jing, courtesy of her dragging Yue Qingyuan’s head out of his depressed butt.

 

Cangse Sanren couldn’t help the blushing. She didn’t thought the Sect Leader’s circumstances used to be so bad ! Even if he looked sickly when she had been introduced to him ! But picturing him so deeply lost in mourning and grief over a-Niang disappearing, he would passively allow himself to die, no matter how long and hard it was for a powerful cultivator on the Xuan Su Sword’s level to fade from emotional pain, well.

 

She might have been a tad upset about that. And when she told a-Niang, the older huli jing got pissy and yelled at Yue Qingyuan for being an absolute dumbass who never obtained his blessing to die, and never would. The black-clad Sect Leader had listened the scolding with a blissed smile, refusing to lose it even when a-Niang slapped his arm in exasperation.

 

The pristine-clad maiden wondered when her mother and the Sect Leader would announce the Cang Qiong Sect they intended to marry each other. Seriously, at this point, they so blatantly behaved as a married couple, it beggared understanding that they didn’t already made the three bows.

 

Perhaps it could be a double wedding – wait, wait, why are you thinking that ? Sure, teasing Wei-ge was funny and all and he was hopelessly pretty and so very kind, but you have barely met the young man ! What if he said no ? What if he already had a sweetheart, because you had to be blind to not notice Wei-ge was prime husband choice !

 

« Maiden Cangse, are you alright ? » Yue Qingyuan inquired. « You are staring at this pebble on the sand as if it meant to wreck havoc on your Master Baoshan’s mountain. »

 

Shoot, how could she answer without confessing the truth, because surely the younger huli jing would perish in shame ! Fortunately, any possible answer dropping from her lips was prevented by a great shout :

 

« Yue-zhangmen ! Yue-zhangmen ! Someone to see Yue-zhangmen ! »

 

That didn’t sound like an unexpected yet welcome guest, more like the Eighteen Hells loosing a bunch of their executioners and torturers on the Twelve Peaks. Cangse Sanren blinked, and Wei-ge scowled, but Yue Qingyuan retained a serene mien as he sipped at his teacup.

 

When the hapless man shouting dragged himself in everyone’s close sight, he was followed by someone very unexpected indeed. After the whole scene that unfolded at the closing banquet for the Immortal Alliance Conference, Cangse Sanren naturally assumed the Young Master Xiao wouldn’t care to visit the Middle Kingdom for a long, long while.

 

Yet he was standing there, smugly smiling as if he was listening to the best joke ever uttered in the Three Realms, a crimson huadian bleeding between his proud brows, facing the most powerful cultivator in the jianghu without nary a fear of being slain by the Xuan Su Sword. Either he lacked the barest crumb of gray matter between his ears, or he was saddled with such a massive set of balls that he was doomed to remain celibate unless he wished for any maiden he bedded to be split in twain from his sheer girth.

 

« Greetings to Yue-zhangmen » he amiably said, before his eyes slid towards Cangse Sanren. « And to Maiden Cangsen. »

 

The huli jing waited for him to greet Wei-ge, but he never did. Such bad manners ! Her eyebrow twitched as it wanted to furrow, and she longed for her veiled hat. Alas, the headdress had been left in her bedroom.

 

« Well, this is quite the surprise » Yue Qingyuan mildly commented, his voice casual and refusing to betray any hint of confusion.

 

« Truly sorry for the inconvenience » the young demon highborn sheepishly laughed. « And for the mess on your main stairs, by the way. Some idiot in my traveling party staunchly believed it would be a marvelous idea to provoke the muddy dragon napping there. »

 

Now Cangse Sanren wasn’t bothering anymore with a pretense of serenity, she was openly frowning.

 

« Your idiot better not give my Master stomach pains » she warned. « She tends to really mislike these, and when she’s uncomfortable she gets cranky, and soothing her mood when she’s bent on opposing the endeavour at every step of the path is certainly not enjoyable. »

 

Shen Yuan actually never got saddled with the chore, but he nonetheless heard his aunties and uncles grouch a lot about the matter – when Master Baoshan accidentally swallowed a river boulder and couldn’t vomit it, having to wait until her physical body as a Spiritual Beast managed to ground the rock down to be safely shat wasn’t exactly painless and in order to distract herself from the process, she demanded her Disciples to entertain her.

 

« Cangse Sanren doesn’t have to worry » the Young Master Xiao claimed, « this Master of yours appeared to be a sensible woman. Rotten meat isn’t good to consume for one dwelling in the Human Realm, and this idiot is the most rotten person you will have the misfortune to meet – well, no longer, since he’s about to die. »

 

If the idiot was so stupid as to disturb Master Baoshan’s nap, he certainly earned a violent maiming. Still, Cangse Sanren would abstain from baying for death – she didn’t knew this person, after all, and you cannot speak with the slightest tinge of authority about someone or something you ignore everything about.

 

« Your apologies for the mess have been heard and accepted, young master Xiao » Yue Qingyuan uttered. « If this is your name in truth, rather than an alias aiming to safeguard your identity. »

 

« Xiao Yue is the only name this one shall accept to bear » the demon highborn retorted. « But in the future, I will answer to a mighty title indeed. »

 

« Oh ? Would that be the Sacred Rulership of the Demon Realm ? » the Sect Leader idly wondered, relaxed and confident, he sounded like he was asking for next week’s weather patterns.

 

« Yue-zhangmen would be right » the Young Master Xiao admitted and wait, he was a prince ? A genuine prince of demonkind ?

 

Huh, that explained the smugness and the arrogance and the unending curiosity about all the small things in the Middle Kingdom, actually – and Wei-ge was flat-out scowling, his mien dark and stormy and without Cangse Sanren to stroke his arm, surely he would have jumped over the low table to provoke the demon highborn to a martial duel.

 

But it wasn’t time for a duel. Somehow, Cangse Sanren could guess the Young Master Xiao wasn’t there for fighting.

 

 

Chapter 164

Wei Changze’s hands were gripping the cloth covering his knees with such strength that it threatened to rip the high-quality silk as cheap hemp.

 

How could he not ? When a Heavenly Demon was standing right there, cheerfully confessing his ambition to reunite the broken and scattered Lower Realm in a mighty empire – demons already were a plague upon the Middle Kingdom when they were reduced to a bunch of squabbling and disorganized tribes and lineages, how much worse would they wreck havoc if a proper lord and general beat an inkling of strategy and common sense in their thick skulls ?

 

Also, for all he was adressing the Cang Qiong Sect Leader – Yue Qingyuan’s cool and self-controlled serenity was quite awe-worthy, by the way, being able to treat this unwanted intruder with all the courtesy of one hosting a tea ceremony – this so-called Xiao Yue just wouldn’t stop glancing at Cangse Sanren. His dark eyes gleaming with want, betraying less than innocent aims towards the pristine-clad maiden.

 

Fortunately, she hadn’t noticed, or perhaps she was actively choosing annoyance and mild boredom instead to paint her face. And she wasn’t alone, surrounded as she was by the Xuan Su Sword and Wei Changze – the Yunmeng Jiang cultivator was far from Yue Qingyuan’s level of might, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t play the part of a protector. And with the racket made by the poor Hallmaster who showed the Heavenly Demon the path, surely the other Peak Lords would soon swoop down as a flock of murderous raptors unleashed in a great hunt.

 

Surely Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t see the Heavenly Demon merely existing near his beloved daughter as anything but an unbearable sin deserving a very cruel and unusual demise, that was plain as day.

 

Wei Changze was pretty sure Yue Qingyuan aimed to distract the Heavenly Demon in order to give his martial siblings time to get there and finish what the jianghu couldn’t achieve when the so-called Xiao Yue had been forcefully unveiled in the middle of the Immortal Alliance Conference. And for stalling the would-be conqueror and emperor, well, it was obvious that asking questions about his grand vision for a reunited Lower Realm was a safe bet.

 

And it was smart too, learning what your foe intended to consolidate and entrench his powerbase. You could plan how to best oppose him, how to prevent his dream from inconveniencing you and yours.

 

Fortunately, the Heavenly Demon was happy to boast of his future greatness – and bent on insisting he wouldn’t allow for his empire to be forged upon a bloody foundation, as if any grand endeavour was possible without dirtying your hands a lot, demonkind would rather grow a genuine culture and develop these few crafts and trades currently etching a meager survival on the fringes of their racial preference for absolute violence…

 

Wei Changze wanted to loudly snort and roll his eyes at the prospect of a demon writing poetry or selling one of these gaudy knicknacks for people saddled with too much coin in their purses. He wished the Heavenly Demon luck in his reformation project, if he was genuine about that and not hiding a more sinister purpose.

 

« Quite the ambition your Excellency is nurturing » Yue Qingyuan ultimately commented, his tone polite and mild as a bland smile was pulling at his lips. « Some might claim, too heavy an ambition for it to not break your back as you are building your empire. »

 

« And that is why a ruler cannot shape a kingdom on their own » the Heavenly Demon sighed, dramatically as if he was the main character in a stupid novel about a wretch rising to the top. « The burden of a crown is lifted when carried upon two heads. »

 

Wei Changze mightily scowled. The fucker was speaking fancily and luridly, courtly speech would never explain things in a straightforwards manner, you had to wrap them in nine freaking layers of poetry and literary allusions and metaphors, and that was the perfect recipe for a headache.

 

Truly, Wei Changze never could understand Jiang Fengmian’s utter ease when he was doing politics. At least on a night hunt, you didn’t have to wonder if the ornery boar covered in giant leeches was trying to offer you its sister as a concubine or subtly threatening to slander your uncle if you refused to sell your estate, you only had to hit it with a sword until it stopped twitching.

 

Still, he thought he was seeing the plot behind these greedy eyes and he really, really wanted for his knife to slash this insolent throat to ribbons.

 

« A lord is nothing without a consort » the Heavenly Demon claimed, his covetous eyes now staring at Cangse Sanren – who wasn’t even looking in his direction, busy pouting as she slowly turned her teacup within her hand and tried to make sense of the patterns drawn in soggy leaves.

 

« I guess » the pristine-clad maiden mumbled before raising her voice : « Well, that shouldn’t be too hard for your Excellency to find a bride. Since you are soon to seize the throne, women will break your palace’s doors down to offer themselves to such an august character. Power is quite the argument for a great deal of people. »

 

« It is » the Heavenly Demon acknowledged. « The most intoxicating prospect any demon could face. Not only a demon, but humans too. I have studied and wandered and watched as much as I was allowed in the Middle Kingdom, and truly the Human Realm isn’t much better than us when it came to the lure of titles vested with authority, even a smidge of it. »

 

« Alas for both our species » Yue Qingyuan lamented under his breath, more for himself than for the Heavenly Demon.

 

Said demon was now smiling. It was blissful and ecstatic as he kneeled down, a devout worshipper paying respect to the shrine of the divinity, and screw the hunting knife, Wei Changze was ready and willing to rip his face with his nails, and since they were cut short for easier cleaning that would be messy and drawn out and so cathartic that the black-clad cultivator was fine with suffering the inconvenience.

 

« It’s for you to seize » he breathed out, his cheeks blushing and a hand resting upon his chest. « The kingdom I shall build, the armies gathered beneath my banner, the crowds waiting for a word of mine to be death or life, all is yours. My arms to embrace, my lips to offer praise, my heart to consume, it all belongs to you – Cangse Sanren, my one and only, my consort, my Empress, my everything. »

 

By a stupendous exercize in willpower, Wei Changze didn’t jump on his feet to howl his outrage. From the way the Qiong Ding Peak Lord’s forehead was suddenly marred with lines, Yue Qingyuan was facing the same trouble.

 

Cangse Sanren – kept staring in the depths of her teacup as she carelessly waved a pale and slender hand, a gesture meant to repel a fly buzzing too loudly near one’s ear.

 

« Eh, no thanks. Not my thing, truly. »

 

And now Wei Changze was biting his lower lip bloody to not burst a gut guffawing at the utterly bamboozled expression spreading on the Heavenly Demon’s face.

 

 

Chapter 165

Yue Qingyuan calmly watched the young lord inelegantly gaping wide open, caught flat-footed right as he was rising to glorious heights and now free-falling without even trying to catch himself on the ledge of that cliff, so stunned was he.

 

The Sect Leader saw a great deal of young men cut off the same cloth, cloaked in the all-encompassing certainty that the world would never refuse them anything, be it courtesy of their wealth or their influence, if your target couldn’t love them then you would settle for their fear or their greed instead.

 

The Sect Leader saw a few of these young men stumbling upon an obstacle to their desires, an obstacle they couldn’t bribe or seduce or intimidate into giving away. It always made for such a funny spectacle, a sight that warmed the dark cockles of his heart, a heart that never truly managed to erase the stain of being raised in the streets, having to watch all these young masters and mistresses casually showing their privilege off, comfortable in the knowledge they could do whatever they wanted, they could have whoever they wanted, only by pointing with a finger and commanding.

 

Also, that maiden coveted by the young lord was no mere maiden – she was Qingqiu’s precious daughter. Yue Qingyuan was a politician, he knew what happened in a royal court at the best of times, and he wouldn’t have wished that on the pure, innocent and sweet Yuan’er – and that was for a human royal court, how much worse would it be in the Lower Realm with their lack of distaste for blatant violence ?

 

Fortunately, Yuan’er was a headstrong girl. She knew what she wanted, being a rogue cultivator studying beasts and plants at her heart’s pleasure, and she wouldn’t let the prospect of a crown deter her from this objective.

 

She also was plainly, hopelessly infatuated with Liu Qingge’s reincarnation – and Yue Qingyuan was using infatuated because she was mainly gushing about his pretty looks, but there was potential nonetheless as she noticed how gentle he was with her, how she teased him to the point of blushing and stammering, how she claimed she trusted him not with the naivety of a child believing in their parents’ awesome authority but with the deeply rooted tenderness of a travel companion who had to rely on a protector again and again and never was disappointed once. Infatuation, yes, but slowly unfurling into love, genuine and whole, with all the quiet stubborness of a snowdrop poking out of the frozen soil.

 

Cangse Sanren was growing out to love Wei Changze, and it was blatant that he was returning her feelings. Liu Qingge had been a man of action, and that didn’t change now that he tasted Meng Po’s brew and gained a new body : everything was said in the gentle reverence held in his eyes as he turned towards her, as if he couldn’t believe she was real, in the way his steps would easily follow in the same rythm as hers in spite of his naturally longer stride, because he wanted to walk besides her rather than be at the front and unable to watch her or to listen her chattering.

 

Yue Qingyuan could see the shape their love was gaining, something slow and gentle-paced and holding its breath in front of other people because it only was ever meant for a matched set, it was a private matter, it was something for both of them and nobody else. When their wedding would happen, it wouldn’t be a grand celebration, far from it – you wouldn’t even guess they did the deed, because they would be so discreet about it.

 

It was sweet, even if Yue Qingyuan couldn’t fully understand it, so much in his life had been a public venture in a way or another, and he didn’t hate speaking with people, mingling with people. Still, he was familiar with secrecy, with hiding things to prevent the slavers from stealing or ruining it, so he would gracefully bow down and allow the young couple their intimacy.

 

Contrasting with that, the young lord’s gaze upon Cangse Sanren burned . There was nothing gentle or delicate about that, it was raw passion from the kind that drove a foolish youth whose blood burned hot to the point of searing and scorching his arteries to single-handedly fight an army with tens of thousands soldiers ready to rampage all over the country, to stand under a closed window for a year and a day without eating a crumb or drinking a drop in the hope to obtain a brief glimpse of a shadow moving behind the heavy wooden shutters.

 

It was the kind of passion birthing dozens of songs and paintings over centuries. It was the stuff of nightmares for a young maiden who didn’t care about the glory of being crowned an Empress, of holding a whole country’s fate in her dainty hand – worse than being stripped naked and paraded in town for a crowd of rowdy drunks to ogle her breasts and rump as they catcalled and wolf-whistled and bawdily commented on the sight.

 

It was the kind of passion that demanded to be reciprocated, or else to consume the one who loved. It was the kind of passion that could magnificently bear rejection from a cold, haughty target whose heart was closed to all and sundry, but would violently self-destruct if this cold and haughty soul ever softened for another.

 

Because such was the curse of a sentient being able to feel envy, always. You could live hungry, you could live shivering in the icy winter, as long as you knew the world was merciless, would trample upon everyone and everything, would relentlessly push you to the breaking point without granting you the slightest moment to rest. When there was nothing to covet, it was easy to not feel envious of your neighbour.

 

But having to see someone eating as your belly was screaming in hunger, having to see someone enjoying the warmth of a cosy house while you were stuck outside under the heavy rain, having to live with the knowledge people could be lucky and happy but you hadn’t been picked at birth to enjoy these blessings – well. That was a nasty, ugly feeling.

 

For that, Yue Qingyuan pitied a tad the young lord – in all his glory and arrogance and might, with an entire realm poised to fall under his rule but unable to gain a maiden’s affections for she had already deemed another worthy of the prize. And nothing he would say, nothing he would do, nothing he would be, could ever fix the situation in his favour, for he wasn’t the one taking the ultimate decision.

 

Yes, the Sect Leader pitied the demonic scion, but it was merely a tad. The young lord wanted to drag Cangse Sanren into courtly politics, after all – demon courtly politics, even worse – when he ought to be aware she had no taste for them, after spending several weeks traveling in the same party as her. He wanted to court her when she had been blatantly interested in Wei Changze rather than him, for several weeks already.

 

For that kind of entitled young master, the only possible and deserved reward was disappointment, and Yue Qingyuan would relish every single drop of the spectacle.

 

 

Chapter 166

« Ah – ha... »

 

Young Master Xiao sounded like he was choking on a pastry stuck in his throat, not a pretty thing to undergo, that.

 

« Ah ha ha… Cangse Sanren is so very modest » the highborn demon scion ultimately, stiffly and awkwardly laughed. « Really, there’s no need for her to be demure or shy... »

 

« Demure ? Shy ? Me ? » the younger huli jing commented as they turned towards Wei-ge who blinked, obviously just as nonplussed as zhe felt right now. « Since when am I any of these things ? That’s the first time I stand accused of these qualities and I am wondering if I ought to complain for slander and false representation. »

 

« Cangse Sanren actually pulled a pretty good impression of demureness at the Immortal Alliance Conference » Yue Qingyuan gently intervened, a slight smile pulling at his lips to show he was teasing in the way your uncle would tease you about some embarrassing mistake or youthful prank when you were a snotty brat.

 

« Alright, alright » the pristine-clad maiden groaned, « I walked into that one. Still. »

 

With a sigh, she faced the Young Master Xiao who remained on his knees, staring up at her with a lost and confused expression, one who plainly asked when she would stop japing and put an end to the joke because it wasn’t funny, even with a lot of explaining.

 

Thing was, there wasn’t a joke.

 

« Young Master Xiao. Why in the Eighteen Hells would this lowly one even want to be crowned Empress ? Have you ever read a yellow novel about palace intrigue ? I can recommand you The Chrysanthemum is Open on the Branch and Pluckable if you want, it’s quite awful when the author is describing papapa so just jump over these sections, and there’s certainly a dearth of exotic pets in this court, a true sin in my opinion... »

 

Wei-ge suddenly coughed in his sleeve, his cheeks flushing bright pink as he did his utmost to scowl at the ground and avoid Cangse Sanren’s inquiring gaze.

 

« Oh, sorry. But that’s pretty informative about what happens in the inner palace. You know, ministers framing each other for the Emperor to torture them, servants doing what they can to escape notice otherwise they will get beaten or raped on a whim, all the rot birthed by power stuffed in a single place, focused in the hands of a few people. And by the way ? That’s a human palace, they tend to frown on unlimited violence and bloodshed. »

 

Quicksilver eyes pitilessly stared at the highborn demon scion as the younger huli jing kept lecturing.

 

« Demons are a bloodthirsty species by nature. Sure, your Excellency aims to reform them, and I shall pray for your success, truly, but do you actually think they will bow to your ideals immediately ? No, there will be violence, and it will be raw and wholly stomach-churning and disgusting, and I hate violence for its own sake. I have no desire whatsoever to face a bunch of ornery demons every single day, fretting about a possible riot happening in the throne room or for it to be contained to a singular maiming. »

 

A pause as the pristine-clad maiden breathed in.

 

« My second point, building a kingdom takes time. So much fucking time, and so much energy, surely your Excellency will be stuck in the palace for several years in a row as he’s riding his vassals into obedience. Time and energy, you will invest in ensuring your peasants won’t starve, your trade with foreign polities won’t dry up, instead of enjoying yourself as you nap in the countryside or draw funny caricatures of frogs or gorge on apple cakes. »

 

The pouty lips twisted in a small frown for a heartbeat.

 

« An Emperor’s foremost bride isn’t the Empress, far from it. This is the Kingdom, your Excellency, there is your peerless spouse, the one you shall dedicate your heart and your thoughts to. An Emperor’s concubine must be lacking in jealousy, for never will she be the Emperor’s lone object of devotion, and I am a high-maintenance bitch on the emotional level. I want a husband who will love none but me, just as I will love none but him. I am a greedy bitch who doesn’t know how to share, I hate to let somebody enjoy the tea snacks so picture what a disaster I would be, having to watch my husband sinking himself in his Kingdom while I am but an afterthought. And that brings me to the third point. »

 

A sigh, a shiver in the air before the night suddenly dropped on your shoulders and blinded your sight with boundless dark.

 

« I am not in love with you. I never was. Some people might marry for money, or for safety, for power or an alliance, and these are valid reasons. But as I have just said, I am a high-maintenance bitch on the emotional level, and I will never marry anyone I do not love. That’s my last word on the matter. »

 

Cangse Sanren had uttered these words with all the aloof calm of a highly-taught teacher unflappably demonstrating an intricate piece of calculus to an arrogant young student drunk on his previous grades from past year, and now fumbling in front of the next step.

 

Yue Qingyuan was serenely smiling in his teacup, looking ready to toast her. Wei Changze was slowly blinking, his teeth sucking on his lower lip as he obviously was deep in his thoughts. As for the Young Master Xiao…

 

Well, Cangse Sanren had seen corpses that were less pallid. This handsome face was so white it turned slightly greyish, and wait, Heavenly Demons could do weird things with their blood, was that linked ? Perhaps it was.

 

The highborn demon scion opened his mouth, his voice coming out meek and wavering, far from the confident tone he displayed when he first arrived on scene.

 

« Some people need just more time to fall in love. With… with the right incentives… would you – at least consider... »

 

Cangse Sanren loudly snorted and rolled her eyes so hard, they almost fell on the ground.

 

« Oh please, as if love could be bought, or induced. It’s a fundamentally irrational feeling which happens to occur among sapient species because we are, in fact, crazy and prone to act whimsically and idiotically. Nothing makes less sense than love, I swear to you – I asked my martial aunts and uncles, and they told me things about their previous experiences, it would frighten you, but the best example is maternal love. A mother is supposed to cherish their child, right ? And yet, the number of my aunts and uncles who were beaten, or starved, or sold by the one who carried them in her body, who brought them into the world, that’s just depressing. Love doesn’t follow rules, love doesn’t come because you think it should be there – love is, or it’s not. No bargaining, no compromises, all or nothing. »

 

Truly, love was the greatest mystery in the Three Realms, you could ponder at its nature for kalpas and still you wouldn’t have the inkling of an answer to the whole deal.

 

 

Chapter 167

She said him no.

 

She said him no.

 

She said him no.

 

These four words wouldn’t stop circling within Xiao Yue’s head, a mangy dog snapping at its own tail because it was too desperately hungry to remember it was part of its body, and no matter how many circles they did, digging a trench deeper and deeper in the recesses of his mind, they still weren’t understandable at all.

 

She said him no.

 

Because how in the Eighteen Hells was that reasonable, sane behaviour ? Cangse Sanren was a demon, if one who easily passed for human. Any demon would thirst for power, for the thrill of seeing people lower on the food chain twitch and quiver as one rose a hand, opened the mouth to speak. Any mean to gain power would do, be it murder or bribery or marriage.

 

Who cared if your spouse was someone you didn’t like very much ? You merely had to tolerate them when circumstances forced you to interact together, and if even that was too much, well, the option of becoming a merry widow was always open. That was marriage for demon lineages and clans, and that was marriage for more than a few clans in the Middle Kingdom too, Xiao Yue could read between the lines and for their haughty claims of moral purity, humans truly weren’t that much better than demons but they wouldn’t admit it unless you were ripping their nails slowly with red-hot pincers, sometimes not even that would do the trick.

 

Xiao Yue could live with Cangse Sanren not liking him very much, as long as she was seated besides him, adorned with an Empress’ regalia and commanding with all the authority vested in an Empress, with him as her foremost servant and vassal. Merely having her in the Palace would suffice to delight him – having her to help him reform the Lower Realm and build an Empire worthy of songs and tales uttered a thousand years after his demise would be everything he could ask for, how did that matter if she wouldn’t see him as anything beyond an ally in this endeavour, never a husband or a lover ?

 

Sure, that would be nice for her to slowly yet surely fall for him – Xiao Yue had read a great deal of yellow novels in his wanderings, he thought he grasped the human courting process a tad better now, it certainly wasn’t as simple as the worthless waste of space busy getting maimed by the muddy dragon down there made it seem, women needed more than a swift and thorough fuck when they complained to be happy – but the future Sacred Ruler couldn’t afford the cheerful blindness of optimism, not when he had been raised in a court filled with plots and schemes preying on the slightest show of emotion, not when he was preparing himself to handle that court with all the ruthlessness and cold-blooded calculus of a ruler worthy to engrave his name unto history and unafraid to dirt his hands to achieve this goal.

 

He had been ready for Cangse Sanren to agree to marry his throne instead of him, and that was fine with him. Love was a luxury, one that an Emperor wasn’t guaranteed to enjoy, so rare and precious it was – he would settle for companionship, his own feelings would keep him warm for two.

 

He hadn’t been ready for Cangse Sanren to entirely reject his proposal.

 

She said him no !

 

And – for what ? Because the court was too violent for her tastes ? They were demons ! She was a demon too ! How could she deny such an intrinsec part of their being ? That would be just as dumb for her to be repelled by people breathing, an essential bodily function you barely noticed as it was so commonplace and you were doing it since you were born, how was that alarming ?

 

Her greediness for a man who would put her above everything else, above his own ambition, above his own Kingdom – that Xiao Yue could understand and accept better than the previous point. Demonkind was a greedy, envious species after all, selfishly hoarding treasures for themselves, for their lineages if they managed to extend their sympathy to the point they saw them as the evidence of their martial and economical influence, something that reflected upon them for good and evil.

 

But surely the lure of power was more than enough a counterweight ? And Xiao Yue had no wish to take another consort after Cangse Sanren – she was perfect for him, always bent on searching for the silver lining yet serious when it came to her studies, able to remain poised and unflappable in spite of being surrounded with cultivators – people who wouldn’t hesitate to slit her throat on a whim if they learned her true nature, such bravery and daring were necessary to survive in a royal court – she was the best fit for his future Empress, all she needed to do was to accept his proposal, why couldn’t she see that ?!

 

It was maddening, Xiao Yue’s thoughts buzzing and circling within his head as a swarm of drunken wasps trapped in a flagon half-filled with thick wine, knocking themselves on the glass and dropping in the liquor to drown.

 

She said him no !

 

And – for what ? Because she wanted to be in love with her husband ? He was already in love with her ! Surely that would be enough ? If love was needed in a harmonious marriage, then he would cherish her, he would honour her, she only had to agree to his proposal, it was that simple ! Surely she could see that ?!

 

And yet.

 

And yet.

 

He was on his knees – because he had kneeled down for his proposal, that he confusedly remembered, his head too noisy with the roaring of his thoughts circling and circling again within his skull – and he was crawling towards her, crawling as a worm, as a dog, something dirty and mangy and disgusting and so, so hopelessly hungry, his hand lifting to grasp at her skirt, at her knee, at her dainty hand, he had no idea but he was about to touch her –

 

Cold steel slapping his knuckles and he hissed, more out of surprise than pain. The black-clad servant always following behind Jiang Fengmian, his face grim and scowling, staring down at Xiao Yue in plain distaste.

 

« The maiden has listened to your proposal and given her answer » the servant spat. « What kind of scum are you, to force unwanted attention upon her ? »

 

« Alas for the Lower Realm » the Sect Leader sighed, and if his mouth was blandly smiling his eyes were glittering as sharp knives carved from obsidian, his hand resting on the hilt of his spiritual sword, « their Sacred Rulers have quite the trouble with listening when a lady doesn’t care for their favour. Tianlang-jun was the most blatant example for the Middle Kingdom, but there’s a great deal of rumours about the current holder of the title. Your Excellency indeed follows in their path. »

 

The servant shoving a blade in Xiao Yue’s chest would have hurt less than hearing the Sect Leader comparing him to the worthless waste of space who sired him. He was aiming to be better than this wretch Luo Binghe, after all – be it as an Emperor, or a person, or a husband.

 

But she said him no…

 

Cangse Sanren remained seated, her quicksilver eyes tranquil and serene, her face betraying nothing but mild boredom as she quietly poured herself another cup of tea. As if that was the most important thing for her to do at this moment. As if Xiao Yue was nothing to her.

 

Hot wetness stung at the Heavenly scion’s eyelids. That was unfair.

 

 

Chapter 168

Wei Changze was struggling against the incredulous, digusted sneer pulling at the corners of his mouth. The Heavenly Demon might have cast all his dignity to the dogs, but that didn’t mean he was an example to follow.

 

Truly, how pathetic could he sink ? For weeks, he had traveled alongside Cangse Sanren, and never once did she hint at any measly romantic desire towards him. How did he dare to spill tears as an offended maiden as she rejected his proposal – with more politeness than he deserved, the prick, but Wei Changze supposed Cangse Sanren was of a more diplomatic bent when the Yunmeng black-clad cultivator was firmly stuck in a martial mindset – as if his heart had been cruelly trampled underfoot out of sheer delight in his misfortune ? Get over yourself, the world isn’t revolving around you !

 

That was a sin highborns enjoyed indulging, thinking everything and everyone ought to bow to them. As one born in a peasant family and taken in Lotus Pier mostly out of pity, Wei Changze would never cease deeming such a flaw repelling, and he hated the tantrums these spoiled young masters and mistresses threw when denied more so.

 

Tantrums that could swiftly grow in a threat to their surroundings, just like a flooding river could drown fields and farmers in the blink of an eye if you couldn’t run quickly to escape the danger. The Heavenly Demon crawling on the ground – dragging himself on his knees and hands, wholly forgetting his power and dignity as one laying claim to kingship and behaving like a worm, surely one who coveted a throne should remember a monarch didn’t bent or bow no matter the circumstances – crawling towards Cangse Sanren, what if he turned violent ? What he grabbed her, what if he dragged her out of her seat ? Some men really hated to be spurned, because women weren’t raised to deny them, and grew wrathful out of incomprehension at the prospect…

 

Wei Changze had drawn his blade, stepping between the pristine-clad maiden and the Heavenly Demon – a breed of demon that took an alliance between the four great Sects in the jianghu and countless minor Sects to be brought low and sealed away, last time one of them showed his colours as a rapist, and Wei Changze was a single cultivator, not the mightiest to have trained under the Heavens, hailing from an humble clan.

 

Sure, Yue Qingyuan was there, but as blood was roaring in the Jiang First Disciple’s ears, he hadn’t paid attention to the Xuan Su Sword’s existence at all. Not when Cangse Sanren was at risk.

 

Ah, Jiang Fengmian, this wretched servant shall have to beggar your forgiveness and understanding. For my soul and heart have dedicated themselves to a maiden fairer than silver and ivory and pearls, and what can a servant do but attend his lady as she requires for him to stand against the gods if her well-being is on the line ?

 

The worst thing was that Jiang Fengmian would not blame him. He would smile sweetly and tease his sworn brother for bestowing his loyalty upon a maiden rather than investing all his energy in mastering the blade, and insist for them to write as regularly as they could on their travels across the land. Wei Changze already felt his nape blushing from embarassment, and he really didn’t want to deal with that, right now.

 

« Ah, Xiao Jiu… ! »

 

Well, some Heavenly Official must be listening and decided to throw him a rope to be dragged out of the flooding river. Or perhaps this Heavenly Official wishes to pour oil unto the flames – because the former Qing Jing Peak Lord certainly wasn’t the kind of person who would react in a measured and sane manner if given a good reason to suspect his precious white cabbage was courted. Add to that the Heavenly Demon being the one demon whom Shen Jiu had unveiled in the middle of the Immortal Alliance Conference… oh boy.

 

Wei Changze discreetly shuffled backwards, as closely as he could from Cangse Sanren without being too close. As long as he was standing in her near vicinity, he likely would be safe from the mauling about to take place. Yue Qingyuan… eh, the Xuan Su Sword had survived Tianlang-jun, he would have to repeat the feat.

 

« A-Niang ? What brings you there ? » the pristine-clad maiden wondered. « I thought you were busy on Qing Jing Peak. »

 

« So busy with checking on the library » Shen Jiu softly hissed, the hiss of serpentine scales on a layer of autumn leaves, « that I wouldn’t go to see you as I hear of a demon barging on Qiong Ding Peak when you are visiting that worthless Sect Leader who remains sitting on his ass instead of taking out the trash ? »

 

« Master Baoshan has already taken care of the trash » Yue Qingyuan amiably answered, unruffled by the insult directed at his ability and usefulness. « And his Excellency was quite polite as he exposed his future plans for the Lower Realm, so this one as a politician was bound to listen until he gave me a motive to handle him as ruthlessly as he deserved. »

 

The Qiong Ding Peak Lord was carefully shaping his sentences, strongly implying he wasn’t opposed to murdering the Heavenly Demon in spite of entertaining him as a guest, and from the way he had rested his hand on Xuan Su’s hilt as the Heavenly Demon was having his undignified fit of tears, he had been ready to do it. A cold chill itched and tingled in Wei Changze’s spine – that was a level of heartlessness he was unsure he liked.

 

That was why he never would enjoy politics. You had to be a monster to be good at it.

 

« His Excellency, hm ? » the former Peak Lord haughtily snorted. « What a fancy title for one sprawled in the mud as a slave. I could whip him until my arms ache from the effort, and he wouldn’t even roll on his side to protect himself from the pain. »

 

« A-Niang » Cangse Sanren intervened, « that’s not a very nice thing to do ! Especially when I have already rejected his proposal, he had enough humiliation for what’s left of the week. »

 

Wei Changze twitched and swallowed a whimper down as the air suddenly tasted like an icy blizzard falling upon the countryside and freezing cattle and crops solid in its wake.

 

« A proposal » Shen Jiu repeated, his voice the lying smoothness of the ocean before a tidal wave.

 

« A proposal your daughter has immediately declined » Yue Qingyuan mildly reminded, « as a well-mannered young lady who’s aware of her worth and won’t settle for nothing short of the best, as she deserves the best. »

 

How would you define best ? Wei Changze couldn’t help but ponder. If you are ready to refuse a Heavenly Demon gifting you his kingdom on a platter, then what could possibly be good enough to top that ?

 

Of course, he knew Cangse Sanren’s criteria, she had just explained them after all – a man she fell in love with, a man who would love none but her. It seemed so little, and it was so much to ask.

 

Love was such a mysterious, unbending clause.

 

 

Chapter 169

Shen Yuan never saw his mother truly, properly angry. Sure, a-Niang would get in a snit over ink spilled on his painting, or because a-Yuan ate the rice cakes locked in the kitchen’s cupboard when it wasn’t dinnertime yet, or when Master Baoshan was in the kind of drunken mood that drove her to argue poetry and philosophy as rudely and crassly as a Spiritual Beast extremely in tune with the basic instincts for fighting and fucking could be.

 

And when a-Niang outed Young Master Xiao as a demon in front of every single cultivator who was attending the Immortal Alliance Conference. Then, he was really in a bad mood, but it wasn’t as bad as now.

 

Now… a-Niang wasn’t foaming at the mouth, a fox in the throes of rabies, desperate to sink his teeth in anything coming too close in a frenzy of pain and terror and aimless rage. But he certainly looked like he wanted to be.

 

He certainly looked like he wanted to tear his Excellency bit by bloody bit with his teeth and his nails, no matter how long it would take, how gruesome and messy the endeavour would be. Like he was already picturing the wet snap of the bones breaking between his jaws, the meaty sound of the flesh lacerated by his wrath.

 

Shen Yuan never saw his mother in such a state before, and zhe didn’t know how they were supposed to feel about that. Disturbed likely was a good bet. And worried, for a-Niang because anger tended to make you say things and do things you usually would regret once the boiling in your bloodstream had simmered down to tepid.

 

Wei-ge shivered under his dark robes, but he staunchly remained on his feet, standing between Cangse Sanren and his Excellency as the older huli jing glided towards the Heavenly Demon, ominously graceful and awe-inspiring as a blackened storm cloud about to vomit heavy rainfall and lightining strikes upon the helpless countryside.

 

A slender hand seized the highborn demon-blooded scion by his black collar, a cruel grasp that couldn’t care less if the one thus scruffed choked and strangled himself in the folds of constricted cloth.

 

« So » a-Niang uttered, wintery in his fury, «  that would dare to believe itself worthy of panting after my daughter ? Would dare to lust and covet what never was fated to dwell in the mud ? A swam belongs in the Heavens, and a toad in a swampy ditch, any attempt at matching them truly is an insult to common sense and sanity. »

 

The Heavenly Demon softly whimpered, his eyes wild and damply gleaming with drying tears. Apparently he was too caught in the dismay of his failure of a badly considered proposal to react, when it had to be extremely incomfortable for him right now.

 

The older huli jing narrowed his eyes, his upper lip baring his perfectly straight, deathly white teeth in the very picture of a snarl, and for a heartbeat Cangse Sanren wondered if she was about to witness her mother biting down on somebody’s face to leave a skinless skull behind.

 

« Look at these features. Your sire is Luo Binghe, isn’t he ? You are him written younger, when he still was a beastling that barked far too loudly for one unable to put the effort in being a proper menace and cease to be a disgrace. »

 

Luo Binghe ? Who was this person ? A-Niang spat the name as if it was some half-chewed maggot he accidentally tasted when he sampled a juicy plum, and Cangse Sanren glimpsed Yue Qingyuan tilting his head and frowning, obviously he wasn’t fully unfamiliar but he didn’t seem like he could accurately peg the one thus discussed…

 

His Excellency managed to remember he had been gifted with a tongue at birth and croaked, his voice now quite different from his silken and honeyed tones used as he was exposing his awful idea of a wedding between him and Cangse Sanren :

 

« This one – has the misfortune to be related to Luo Binghe, yes. »

 

Yeowch, a-Niang’s disapproval, your blood kin unhappy to have you in his lineage, Shen Yuan already knew he never wanted to be introduced to this Luo Binghe person, they sounded like a major asshole. And the younger huli jing had no time to waste dealing with assholes when herbs and critters were waiting to be discovered and admired, with Wei-ge tagging along to enjoy the adventure.

 

The answer displeased a-Niang – if the older huli jing was angry before, this simple sentence had completely and utterly infuriated him to the point of premeditated slaughter.

 

« You debased wretch  » he hissed, his voice low because he couldn’t raise it in a shout, his vocal chords would be shredded from the strain put in expressing just how hateful he felt towards this demon-blooded highborn scion. « Obviously the brat will be a beast when the sire is a beast… ! How dare you ?! How fucking dare you ! Drooling over your own sister, I should have shattered your head against the ground as soon as you slid from between my legs !  »

 

Cangse Sanren blinked.

 

Hm. What ?

 

Perhaps he had fallen prey to an unexpected and sudden auditory hallucination – no, Wei-ge was opening wide, startled eyes, his mouth hanging open from shock, and Yue Qingyuan was staring at the older huli jing as if a-Niang just revealed he was sick and it was too late for any medicine to do more than delay death for a few weeks, and his Excellency…

 

His Excellency was making a very blank face. It was nice to have someone else lost at sea with you, because Shen Yuan kept struggling to register your own sister and then a-Niang’s accusation of the Heavenly Demon popping out of the older huli jing’s womb, and that was…

 

Well. Surely a-Niang couldn’t have produced a child before Shen Yuan, otherwise it would have been two little fox spirits raised on Zhengmei Mountain instead of the one, you couldn’t just pick one baby and abandon the other, that was so mean  ! The kind of meanness written in yellow novels to provide the main characters angst galore, and unleash a whole comedy of errors and misunderstandings that wanted to be funny but far too often stumbled into cringe.

 

(seriously, growing an infatuation on your long-lost sibling is not funny at all when it’s cheerfully described in black ink on leather-bound sheets of pristine paper, incest is incest no matter how prettily the author wishes to gussy it up, and maybe Cangse Sanren will vomit a wee bit in the bamboo groves after everything will be done, that’s even more cringeworthy in real life)

 

« Xiao Jiu » Yue Qingyuan intervened, a bland smile pulling at the corners of his mouth and it was so clearly fake that Cangse Sanren’s eyeballs were aching and she wanted to launch a wet and floppy fish at his head in order to make the smile vanish in a hurry, so horrific it was. « I think it would be better for our unwanted guest to be taken back to the exit, don’t you think ? »

 

It didn’t sound like a Sect Leader wishing to avoid a diplomatic disaster with the potential to trigger an interdimensional war between demons and mankind, more like an exhausted man who really wanted for the world to stop just one moment as he gave his sanity time to recover instead of blowing up to bits. Shen Yuan was empathizing so much with the guy.

 

A-Niang snorted, low and disgusted, before dropping the Heavenly Demon. His Excellency crumbled at the older huli jing’s feet in a pitiful heap of black robes and tangled curls.

 

« Very well. That’s not like it was welcome there, anyway. »

 

 

Chapter 170

Luo Binghe snarled his hatred as his crushed bones knitted back together, rivulets of crimson blood running back within his arteries – a small trick he had figured on his wanderings across the Lower Realm, it was less exhausting than having to regenerate gallons after gallons of the life-filled fluid when he was fighting and getting maimed. Which happened with a depressing regularity.

 

The muddy dragon lazily blinked its eyes as it quizzically tilted its massive head.

 

« Dear me, aren’t we the little cockroach ? It must be the fourteenth time this Master has broken your legs and ribcages… Is the number right ? Anyone ? »

 

Nobody volunteered any kind of answer – be it the demon corpses strewn on the ground, the few survivors of the first skirmish that swiftly decided to fall back and let their Sacred Ruler deal with the Spiritual Beast since he at least couldn’t be killed unless you were inflicting massive body trauma, and several cultivators hanging above the battlefield, safely behind Cang Qiong’s lowest wards against demon intruders.

 

« Well, fourteenth it is. This Master must commend your stubborness, brat. Nonetheless, after a while, beholding an idiot beating his head against a wall again and again and again, it stops being funny and turns merely sad. »

 

How he loathed this creature – not only it humiliated him repeatedly, tearing his innards out and ripping his limbs as easily as a maiden would pluck daisies in a dewy field, it was plainly obvious that the muddy dragon wasn’t taking the fight seriously. It was acting and sounding bored, as if the Sacred Ruler of Demonkind, Luo Binghe who survived the Endless Abyss and three decades of his people throwing assassinations and rebellions and honeypots at him for many decades already, was nothing more but a snotty brat whining because he couldn’t solve the mystery of adding one to one to obtain two.

 

Worse, Luo Binghe’s blood parasites couldn’t breach the blackish scales to tear at the vulnerable flesh beneath the reptilian inborn armor. He saw a glimpse of hope when it casually gulped his severed arm down, only for the beast’s belly to be filled with gastric acids of such corrosive potency, so deeply soaked in natural qi, that his demonic inheritance had been immediately neutered, dissolving into nonexistence almost at once.

 

And he couldn’t manage to lure it away from the stairs. The infuriating beast remained standing at the same spot in which it had been busy sunbathing and dozing when the Heavenly half-breed finally came back to the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks after all these years, its long muscled tail lazily serving as a thick whip for long-distance attacks – and because it was a Spiritual Beast, it could infuse qi in their surroundings and wield grass and water droplets as tiny blades or stones with an unmatched dexterity and versatility. Since everything alive was heavy in natural qi, you never could know where would the next attack come from .

 

It was strong. It was mighty. It was smart . And it was impeding Luo Binghe’s path.

 

Sure, it ultimately would perish – Luo Binghe’s luck was uncanny like that, every single obstacle preventing him from going any further would yield to his power and determination and ruthlessness, even if it wasn’t protecting him from undergoing a nasty beating beforehand – but right now, it was hard to remember this pesky detail. Hard to focus on anything beyond the cursed beast that wouldn’t lie down and allow itself to be slaughtered.

 

He was supposed to deal with more important matters than waste his time putting an annoyance down.

 

« So, what will this Master do with your wretched self ? Quite frankly, the prospect of devouring you doesn’t appeal. You tasted quite rancid, truly, when your arm fell within my stomach. It’s all this bad karma heaped on your shoulders and an indecent amount of time spent indulging bad lifestyle choices, I wager. Righteous people are so much less offending to the tastebuds, and I would know the difference. »

 

Somebody squealed on the stairs among the cultivators gathered to witness the one-sided beating, obviously aghast by the casuel admission to man-eating from the kind you couldn’t even try and justify under a thin veneer of deserved retribution.

 

« What ? This Master was barely starting to cultivate sapiency at the time, obviously one’s instinct would be to go for the enjoyable morcel. And for the record, this Master has stopped consuming monks and cultivators after achiveing logical reasoning, since that was enough of a stockpile for her to finally have a breakthrough in the intelligence category, and when you are smart, you can finally intuit a solution on your own instead of borrowing other people’s brains, that’s so much more satisfying, I can guarantee it. »

 

Such a blatant display of murderous behaviour should have done the trick of driving these so-called benevolent and righteous cultivators in a battle frenzy as they dove upon the beast and did their utmost to slay it for its previous sins. Unfortunately, all of them had been cowed into silence and immobility by the creature’s display of might as it gored Luo Binghe over and over for an endless moment – how long had it been, time was never as weird as when you were focusing on killing whatever was in front of you, days could run between your fingers as water.

 

Yet again, the jianghu’s hypocrisy stunk to high heavens and that was a marvel for the gods to not smite them all for the inconvenience – when the target of a cultivator’s wrath could be stomped underfoot with the slightest amount of effort, they would eagerly do the deed and pat themselves on the back for bravely saving the Middle Kingdom from yet another threat, no matter if said threat had been a starving and terrified seventeen year old boy pleading his peerless teacher to not cast him down in Hell. But when their target grew fangs and struck back at his abusers, then all these brave souls vanished from sight in a hurry.

 

At least demonkind fully owned up to their bloodthirst and inner disgusting nature, rather than waste everyone’s time veiling it behind pretenses of virtue and justice and kindness.

 

« Master Baoshan ? It seems you have discarded your desire for a peaceful rest on my Sect’s great stairs. »

 

That was a voice Luo Binghe could remember clear as a bright winter morning, ringing loud and confident and casual as Yue Qingyuan – the Qiong Ding Peak Lord, the man who headed the most powerful Sect in the Middle Kingdom – lazily climbed down the stairs towards the beast, his back straight and his hands folded in his sleeves, the perfect picture of a well-mannered host ready to tolerate his guest’s zany quirks with the utmost courtesy.

 

The muddy dragon snorted.

 

« Not by my own design, this Master tells you that. »

 

Luo Binghe’s firstborn spawn was meekly walking besides the Sect Leader, barely a step behind – so he fled within the Peaks and got intercepted by the Xuan Su Sword himself ? Tough luck that – and there were two others cultivators wearing the greys and blacks of Qiong Ding, likely to be Hallmasters, a startingly comely young man whose dress was far too modest to be anything but a servant, and –

 

Red eyes widened at the two heads of white hair, standing together, a demented smile pulling at the corners of bloodied lips.

 

Finally, you have come to me.

 

 

Chapter 171

Wei Changze once was training in the courtyard with Jiang Fengmian when one of the gyrfalcons kept by the household decided it would be a wonderful idea to escape the aviary, to fell a pigeon and to start devouring the corpse right there on the grass. It had been messy and gory, blood splatters and feather down spreading all over the courtyard when it used to be so nice and clean.

 

Sure, the black-clad cultivator had witnessed worse butchery since that day, yet it vividly remained in his memory, this frozen picture of ruthless animal hunger, and now he was reminded of it with the startling violence of an unexpected punch in the gut.

 

Master Baoshan Sanren, lazily blinking her reptilian eyes, had her muzzle luridly covered with brownish stains, the characteristic shade of drying blood. Blood also was absolutely soaking the stone-carved stairs and the sanded path leading to them, and among this crimson and black mess the eye could behold a few heaps of sad-looking flesh that plainly were torn and shredded offal, polluting the fresh mountain air with the stench of shit and bile and some other disgusting human fluids.

 

A bunch of demons were standing quite deliberately away from her, their body langage screaming they didn’t want to be there and would run back to the Lower Realm screaming for mercy if such a decision was entirely under their control but alas, it wasn’t, someone else was insisting for them to hold and wait.

 

Wei Changze would bet his weight in spirit stones that the dumbass commander was the one demon looking like a murder scene on two legs, so wholly caked in blood and gore that he could have claimed he just escaped from the Hell of Boiling Blood in which King Yama’s attendants would throw sinners to slowly cook in great bronze vats filled with their former life-giving fluid. If the demon had been dressed, his garments had been long destroyed by the muddy dragon’s enthusiastic roughplaying, leaving him naked and his hair a drowned rat’s mess, the coated strands sticking to his cheeks and his chest. It made for quite the obscene sight and the black-clad cultivator hoped for Cangse Sanren’s eyes to be covered by her parent’s long sleeve.

 

Yue Qiangyuan stepped forwards with all the poise and aloofness of a politician about to adress a fellow nobleman instead of some madman wearing his own guts as the twisted proof of his cockroach-like stamina and hardness to be killed – Wei Changze couldn’t help being in awe.

 

« His Excellency has mentioned a member of his retinue was rowdy so as to inconvenience an esteemed guest of my Cang Qiong Sect » he smoothly declared. « Would that happen to be you ? »

 

The bloodsoaked walking mess standing upright twitched, the white sclera surrounding the crimson of his irises popping out against the darker scarlet and black rivulets staining his skin. Then a wound opened in the drying crust caked on the face, a bright white wound baring gleaming fangs to the daylight, and Wei Changze distantly noticed his hand was grasping at his sword’s hilt, ready to slide it out of the sheath.

 

« Yue-shibo » the horrendous person-shaped spectacle uttered, his voice hoarse – likely from unending screaming, it couldn’t be a silent business to be so torn apart that you would produce so much blood and innards to decorate several square feet of a mountain. « This former shizi offers apologies for showing himself to you in such a wretched state. »

 

Wei Changze’s eyebrows jumped towards his hairline as whispers exploded among the demons waiting down on the sanded path, and the gaggle of cultivators hanging around on the stairs. A hiss just a step behind him, it had to be Cangse Sanren’s parent expressing his sheer displeasure at the demon adressing the Qiong Ding Peak Lord as his martial uncle – which was fully justified and understandable, considering the circumstances.

 

Yue Qingyuan remained unruffled and undisturbed, serene and mild as a lifesized Buddha carved in pristine mutton fat jade, so entirely above worldly concerns that he wouldn’t flinch at birds nesting on his lap and in his topknot.

 

« This Sect Leader offers a reminder that no demon was ever recorded as a Disciple on Cang Qiong’s twelve Peaks since their inception. Surely there must be a mistake at work. »

 

The bloodsoaked mess laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. It grated, like nails on a jail’s tiles as the prisoner was scrabbling at the walls in a worthless attempt to break them down yet only succeeding in shattering their fingers down to the bone.

 

« Yes, there wouldn’t be any record, right ? Not when the demon thought himself human. I beg you to believe me, Yue-shibo, that was an honest mishap. Would you truly blame a lowly child for never suspecting he might belong to another species ? »

 

« What this Sect Leader will blame you for » Yue Qingyuan amiably answered, « is for disturbing the peace and quiet of these stairs. Thinking of it, an appropriate punishment would be for his Excellency to command you to clean them properly, don’t you think ? »

 

This laugh again. Wei Changze’s teeth were aching, he truly loathed that sound, it seemed to him the herald of ill-fortune, a crow mockingly crowing at a soldier the night before riding to the battlefield.

 

« You assume this brat has the power to command me ? »

 

« Isn’t he your young lord and Master ? Or has the Heavenly Demon lineage fallen so low, for its latest scion to warrant no obedience from his retainers ? »

 

Standing right behind the Sect Leader’s broad shoulder, said brat was silent as the grave, his eyes vacant and glassy, his hands limp as they hung at his wrists. So utterly shattered by the truth dropped earlier on his lap that he couldn’t be bothered to react at the insults launched in his direction, and Wei Change found in himself to pity the highborn demonic scion.

 

Sure, he had wanted for the ill-mannered brat to back down and dump his unwanted courting of an uninterested Cangse Sanren, but the way his wish had been granted… it had been nothing short of cruel and awful, he had no qualms acknowledging it.

 

« What a curious world it would be, for a son to have the authority to command his father as an unruly dog, have you considered that, Yue-shibo ? »

 

Well crap. It seemed the gods of Fate weren’t done laughing at them as they unfolded new truths to drop on their spine at the wrong time, right when you weren’t staring over your shoulder and bracing for the impact.

 

Cangse Sanren’s parent wasn’t hissing anymore, now that was a snarl rising from his mouth.

 

(drooling over your own sister, that was the words hurled at the young demon lord and it’s obvious that Cangse Sanren and Xiao Yue share a mother at the least but what about the father)

 

(the former Peak Lord snapping how he has been cursed with a womb, and nothing in his words or his behaviour is pointing at him begrudging Cangse Sanren for existing, for being born, but there’s bitterness and hatred for the fact of bearing her, of her conception happening at all, that’s plain)

 

« Let me freshen my identity back in the Middle Kingdom. This one is Luo Binghe, who previously was a Disciple of Qing Jing Peak under Shen Qingqiu’s guidance. »

 

Crimson eyes flashed in the blood-streaked face.

 

« What a pleasure to see you again, Shizun. »

 

 

Chapter 172

Well, that promised to be a bitch of a diplomatic mess to navigate, Yue Qingyuan coldly concluded as he stared down these baleful eyes shining crimson in a drying sea of carmine blood streaks.

 

That was a nasty little secret of the jianghu, that more than a few Disciples, Hallmasters, teachers and other dependants inherited a drop of demonic inheritance. A trifle, barely enough to gain swifter reflexes, to unlock a slightly deviant mindset, but cultivation was supposed to set you apart, make you something a little bit more, a tad different from mankind – who could pay attention so closely to one specific case among the crowd of colourful eccentrics eager to tread the silver bridge ?

 

A trifle of demon blood would be enough to condemn you if you were too blatant in using it. For all the jianghu claimed they rose above humanity’s foibles and discarded worldly concerns, the Sects high and low nonetheless followed the gutter’s first and foremost rule – when planning a scam or thievery, don’t get caught . You wouldn’t like the consequences if you were too dumb or unlucky to huddle back in the shadows after playing your hand.

 

Unless you were so powerful and dreaded it wouldn’t matter, obviously. Everything always came back to that, ultimately.

 

So, the current Sacred Ruler of the Lower Realm revealing himself as a former Disciple of the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks ? Quite a lot of egg on the Sect’s face, especially when it was one of the Heavenly Demon lineage, they weren’t discreet or subtle even when they tried, just look at Tianlang-jun’s antics as he played the whimsical, hopelessly spoiled and utterly out of touch with ordinary life nobleman – if you could miss one such as he when he was prancing right under your nose, it implied bad things about your intelligence level.

 

Thank fuck, the Huan Hua Palace wasn’t there to witness the disaster, or they would have gleefully jumped on the opportunity to dirty Cang Qiong’s good name, mostly because it would lower their own shame at letting his Excellency, the Lower Realm’s Crown Prince, attend the Immortal Alliance Conference in spite of all their safety measures.

 

Speaking of the younger Heavenly Demon, he still was unresponsive. A pity, Yue Qingyuan actually liked him, and that certainly would be more enjoyable to negotiate with him than with his sire.

 

Because at the end of the line, his Excellency had backed off when his proposal had been rejected – even if it had been less than graceful. And when he was doing the proposal – he was staring at Cangse Sanren with the awed reverence of a devotee worshipping at the shrine of the divinity, a faithful retainer kneeling in front of his queen’s throne. Misguided his feelings might have been, they had been pure and true.

 

This Luo Binghe was hungrily smiling at Xiao Jiu as a tiger would smile at its future dinner, as the slavers would smile at the girl they were about to sample to ensure she wouldn’t bother her future master by crying and screaming too much when he would laid a hand upon her flesh. It made Yue Qingyuan’s teeth ache and Xuan Su ominously hum in the sheath hanging at his belt.

 

Once upon a time, slave brat number seven was powerless to step between slave brat number nine and the slavers, the masters, the freeborn who didn’t care if they trampled a malnourished, freezing body in their supreme indifference to the lower strata of society. No longer.

 

The Huan Hua Palace ambushed and sealed Tianlang-jun beneath a mountain to avenge the defiled Su Xiyan. Yue Qingyuan won’t hesitate to slaughter another Sacred Ruler for the sake of Xiao Jiu.

 

Xiao Jiu who stood behind him, and you could hear the disgusted sneer pulling at the corners of his mouth, no need to turn one’s head for that.

 

« It’s certainly no pleasure to see you again, you wretched beast. »

 

Luo Binghe – the Heavenly Demon – mournfully sighed, lifting a hand to rest upon his breast. His attempt at painting himself as a tragically put-upon, long-suffering yet magnanimous soul was firmly ruined by his stark nudity clad in gore and drying blood. Also, the sword in his hand – if Wei Qingwei had been present, he already would have gone in a fit over the blade’s cursed aura, it seriously reeked to the point that anyone blind to qi would feel uneasy around it.

 

« Such hurtful words launched at mine humble self ! Truly, Shen Jiu, is that how you greet your children’s father after so many years of separation ? »

 

Well, it was nice to get confirmation that the Sacred Ruler of the Lower Realm was meant to die for yesterday, as quickly and gruesomely and efficiently as possible. Ancestors, why did Master Baoshan decide she was in the mood to play with her food instead of eating it ?

 

Said muddy dragon’s heavily armoured tail was now flicking around, brushing the sandy path with a low hiss as the scales slid over it. A drop of sweat itched beneath Yue Qingyuan’s high collar as he noticed the behaviour, as the Spiritual Beast opened her nightmarishly fanged maw.

 

« So you are the rapist. Is that what you are saying ? »

 

Funny how a word could blot daylight when uttered. Sure, the Qiong Ding Peak Lord expected it, he guessed Xiao Jiu wouldn’t have willingly lain with any man no matter how nice and polite they were, far too many bad experiences with people of the male persuasion in his past for him to even consider the prospect, and yet.

 

It was just like taking a punch in your face, breaking your nose and shattering your teeth in so many shards of bone. And you just had to stand there and take it, because you were too slow to avert the hit, the attack, the violence.

 

(oh Gods, what is Cangse Sanren thinking of all that ? She’s right there and she’s a maiden sweet and innocent, and her parent’s rapist has come back to haunt them all, what is she going to do with this knowledge ? Please let Wei Changze give her support while Yue Qingyuan and Xiao Jiu and Master Baoshan are handling this fuck up of a situation)

 

The Heavenly Demon refused to lose his offended mien in front of the word hurled at him with all the spite of an arrow tipped with poison.

 

« Now » he said, smooth and genial as a wise hermit about to explain a simple philosophical concept to a bunch of idiotic urchins, « Shen Jiu must have claimed I was a great deal of things, after he stormed out in a huff... »

 

Blood-crusted jaws snapped . A pity for the Heavenly Demon to have jumped out of their range – these gigantic fangs would have shredded his entire chest, this lineage’s regenerative abilities were straight bullshite but surely they couldn’t heal from their intestines, their lungs and their heart being torn out at once ?

 

The muddy dragon’s eyes were amber, laden with judgement and the complete lack of mercy.

 

« It’s been at least five centuries since this Master has opened her mountain to people in need of a haven, and she had learned a lot about abuse and harm and criminal behaviour in this time. She will know a rapist when faced with their smug refusal to repent. »

 

Muddy she might be, Baoshan Sanren was nothing less than a true dragon ready to call the fires of Heaven’s justice upon a sinner at this moment.

 

 

Chapter 173

In the back of Cangse Sanren’s mind, a tiny little voice was currently busy raging this day was going in such a downwards spiral, it was even worse than the climax of Plum Blossom Stranded in the Viper Pit and that was a hurricane of clichés barely strung together by a piss-poor excuse for a plot, obviously the author was more focused on shocking the readership by pulling lurid reveal after stunning secret rather than lingering on the mental and social consequences of this newfound knowledge for his characters !

 

Seriously, learning your travel companion wanted to be your suitor only for your mother to acknowledge him as your long-lost sibling, and the barbarian warrior assaulting your host’s demesne had forced himself on your poor mother long ago, all in one day’s work – truly that was too much ! What dumbass was writing this piece of crap ? Shen Yuan would give him a piece of their mind, there was a little something called literary integrity and surely it had been trampled worse than the soil after a herd of buffalos left for greener fields !

 

(a rapist, this demon so utterly covered in blood that he looks like a person-shaped walking clot has been called a rapist and a-Niang never mentioned another parent for his huli jing child, you would easily assume there wasn’t a sire and that Yuan’er has been the product of a fertility elixir or a mystical bamboo root and suddenly the reason why this silence is so much more heavy and accusing and sinister)

 

Anyway, Master Baoshan was about to do something extremely ugly and her younger fox spirit disciple wasn’t comfortable with watching a sentient existence get torn apart in front of his very eyes, especially with a great deal of willful and deliberate malice.

 

As a Spiritual Beast, Master Baoshan needed to gain good karma if she wished to rise upwards in the ladder bringing you closer to true enlightenment – and that was reached through compassion and pacifism and serenity. Which she wasn’t displaying right now, considering her plain sadistic glee and icy wrath. Not good at all, that.

 

« Master Baoshan ! » Cangse Sanren called, and Wei-ge twitched besides her. « May I beg for your assault to cease ? Just for a moment ? »

 

The noise a-Niang made was so clearly inhuman that Shen Yuan’s entire back rippled. And his forearms too. If he had been hairy there – she wasn’t, because having hair anywhere but the skull and the eyebrows just felt weird, it itched so much – surely the younger huli jing would have fluffed up to the point of turning in a puffy ball.

 

« You foolish child » he snarled, « what in the Eighteen Hells are you doing ? »

 

« Merely searching for clarification » Cangse Sanren uttered, unflinching and sweat beading on hir forehead, these robes would have to be dropped in the laundry as soon as possible because they were about to get absolutely drenched with the stench of stress. « Luo Binghe ! You have claimed to be the Young Master Xiao’s father. Is that right ? »

 

A crimson gaze fell upon her, and the younger huli jing felt her mouth drying in a hurry. These eyes were burning – burning as lava, so hot that merely waving your sleeve above the liquid fire would cause the silk to catch fire.

 

« I am » he confirmed – he purred, and that sounded so sleazy, like flirting, which – no, just no, Cangse Sanren was so much younger than the dude, and if a-Niang was well and truly the Young Master Xiao’s other parent, that made them related and it would be even more wrong and incestuous than the Young Master Xiao’s ill-fated crush on Shen Yuan. « Alas, for he’s quite the disappointment to this venerable one. »

 

Cangse Sanren frowned.

 

« How so ? » she wondered, bravely pursuing her line of questioning in spite of Wei-ge laying his hand on her elbow and gently squeezing in a transparent attempt at shutting her up. « The Young Master is nothing short of intrepid, isn’t that something prized in the Lower Realm ? And seeking to educate oneself, isn’t that praiseworthy in the Middle Kingdom ? Indeed, he embodies the best of both worlds, if you are paying attention to his qualities. »

 

Alright, so Shen Yuan might be a tad unsubtle with the praise, but the Young Master Xiao genuinely was gifted with courage aplenty and a wonderful thirst for knowledge and self-improvement. Also, the poor thing was so pale since a-Niang proceeded to verbally traumatize him in mute catatonia, the younger huli jing couldn’t help the guilt rising in their chest, that would be too sad for him to remain this quiet shadow of the brilliant and confident youth who traveled alongside Cangse Sanren, Wei-ge and the Young Master Jiang for how long it remained for him to live – and demon lifespans could be so long indeed.

 

The Young Master Xiao stayed silent and still, without hinting he heard at all. Well, Shen Yuan had tried.

 

The person-shaped walking bloodclot dramatically and mournfully sighed.

 

« Unfortunately, all these qualities mean nothing when the filial piety is lacking. For all the gifts and blessings this venerable has chosen to bestow upon his flesh and blood, this ungrateful spawn of mine doesn’t even care about repaying them. Such is the curse of producing sons, I suppose – they forever attempt to show themselves superior by spitting upon their fathers. »

 

The crimson eyes burned anew.

 

« How delightful it would be to have a daughter, instead. An Imperial Princess to cherish and treasure as she deserves to be. »

 

A-niang snorted, loud and ugly.

 

« A daughter for you ? You , who cannot be bothered to notice a woman when she’s not lifting her skirt and shoving her cunt in your face ? You who cannot be bothered to gain your heir’s respect ? »

 

Yue Qingyuan’s hand was going white as the Qiong Ding Peak Lord was grasping at Xuan Su’s hilt, and it was a minor miracle for the pommel to not shatter under the pressure – truly, Wan Jian Peak’s prowess when it came to forge blades was nothing to sneeze at !

 

Shen Yuan stroked his mother’s back, slow and gentle.

 

« A-niang » they whispered, « I have an idea. Just, let me speak, okay ? »

 

The older huli jing hissed, a boiling kettle melting from being abandoned far too long over the hearth, but ultimately didn’t utter a refusal for his offspring to act upon their plan. The younger fox spirit breathed out.

 

« Luo Binghe » they said, and their voice rang clear and loud. « Would you truly give this daughter of yours anything she asks ? No matter how it pains you ? Even if the trial is too much for you to bear ? »

 

The person-shaped bloodclot didn’t laugh, but he plainly wanted to do so, his crimson eyes lit in triumph, his smile a bright wound in his gore-streaked face.

 

« Trials I have faced unnumberable since I have ascended as Sacred Ruler of demonkind – and long before that ! Monsters I have slain, blood I have shed, yet I have won all the same. Name your boon and it will be granted. »

 

« You do swear so ? » Cangse Sanren insisted. «  You will grant my heart’s desire ? »

 

« I do. Ask, and you will receive it. »

 

That bright wound-smile was blinding to behold, and Cangse Sanren smiled back, gentle and soft as a drop of poison slipped in a bejewelled chalice.

 

« So you have spoken, and so everyone has heard. Such is the boon I ask of you, then – disown me ! »

 

The person-shaped bloodclot startled, and the smile slipped off his face as the droplets of gore staining his features.

 

« W-what ? » he stammered.

 

Cangse Sanren kept smiling.

 

« My heart’s desire, Luo Binghe » she cheerfully confirmed, « is to have nothing to do whatsoever with court intrigues, and certainly not with a man loathed so by my mother. As a commoner I have lived, and a commoner I will happily remain until my last day. Having been raised without a father, I expect nothing of you but this last freedom. »

 

The younger huli jing’s grin widened.

 

« Being disinherited. »

 

 

Chapter 174

Shen Jiu didn’t cackle – in spite of lacking the ability or even the will to seize the duties of the Qing Jing Peak Lord back, he nonetheless retained dredges of elegance and dignity. That meant he couldn’t loudly guffaw in front of a distasteful wretch getting his ridiculous and horrendous ambitions slashed in a thousands shreds for the dogs to carry away in the gutter to mingle with the piss and the shite.

 

Frankly, he had been worried when Yuan’er, silly sweet Yuan’er who remained so unaware of the world’s true ugliness after leaving Zhengmei Mountain to explore the Middle Kingdom in all its corruption and flawed vainglory, insisted to speak with the beast. He had been ready to forbid her to utter one single word, to drag her back and force her to let Yue Qingyuan and Baoshan Sanren and perhaps Liu Qingge’s reincarnation do a far better job of protecting her, truly she had no need to involve herself in that mess.

 

He didn’t, because at the end of the line, he couldn’t refuse his precious white cabbage anything. She could command him to gift her the Moon and he would find a way to throw Chang’e out of her lunar palace with her jade rabbit. No matter the hardships and the pain he would have to suffer in order for Yuan’er to obtain her heart’s desire.

 

He was blessed as a parent, for her wishes to be such simple things – to eat sweets with her tea, to read awful yellow novels, to write a compendium about plants and animals, to see the world with her own two eyes. Alright, so the last wish had been quite the bitter pill to digest, and he fussed long and deeply before grudgingly letting her depart Baoshan Sanren’s abode, but it was one occurrence among several, he could be forgiving.

 

Shen Jiu was quite forgiving, especially when he was in a good mood (which didn’t happen far too often, because people around him insisted on being dumbass fucks and there was nothing more infuriating than idiocy), and if witnessing his darling daughter mercilessly putting the beast back in his proper place didn’t do the trick, then nothing could.

 

Well, it might be a tad marred by Liu Qingge’s reincarnation making cow eyes at Yuan’er. He likely thought he was suitably discreet but whatever how long he had been stuck on the Wheel of Rebirth, it certainly hadn’t been enough to bestow a crumb of subtlety upon this stubbornly straightforward soul.

 

On the other hand, the beast was opening wide, stunned eyes as a fish stranded on the riverbank, hopelessly flopping around as it struggled to slide in the mud until it fell in the water anew, yet only succeeding in digging its own grave or summoning a dog or starving fisherman far too happy to stumble upon an easy meal.

 

« You » he stammered, confusion and petulance battling in his voice, a spoiled child denied a toy or a cake for the very first time in his gilded existence, « you can have everything. Wealth, fame, armies, you only have to extend your hand, and it’s for you… ! »

 

Yuan’er delicately pouted, her brows scrunched in an unimpressed frown.

 

« What I want, is to be disinherited » she repeated, serene and patient, a wetnurse facing a tantrum with the experienced stoicism of a woman who didn’t care for rudeness no matter your age. « What you have promised, in front of witnesses may I add, is to give me what I want. I am waiting, Luo Binghe. Will you grant me this boon of mine ? »

 

She was the very picture of a well-mannered maiden for whom noble lineages would desperately beg to marry into their household, a fragrant blossom bent on braving the icy wind and the cruel frost to herald the spring and put an end to the cold season. For all she sneered at the title, Shen Yuan looked and acted the Imperial Princess as if she was born in a jade palace and drilled in courtesies and court intrigue since the cradle.

 

Obviously, the beast couldn’t stand this image of the perfect Imperial Princess he so coveted besides his throne to reject him, and proceeded to throw a fit.

 

« No – NO ! » he screamed, his meaty hands grasping his blood-matted locks of hair and threatening to tear them out of his skull, his whole body quivering as he rocked on his feet. « You’re not supposed to be like that ! What kind of daughter would spit on her father ! »

 

« What kind of father would get spat upon by his child ? » Yuan’er retorted, her frown lingering on her features. « Seriously, you have such rancid vibes, it’s no wonder Mama ran away, and for the Young Master Xiao to want as little as possible to do with you. Yes, it’s very sad to be in this position but maybe you could work on being less of a terrible excuse for a sentient being ? I don’t know, perhaps you could begin by listening what I am telling you, instead of offering things that don’t matter. Communication is very important, you won’t go anywhere if you insist on monologuing rather than having a conversation with the other person. »

 

Shen Jiu snorted. Wasn’t that the beast’s major flaw ? He never cared about paying attention beyond anything validating his viewpoint, you couldn’t have a true conversation with that man – after all, a dialogue was exchanging your opinion with someone else’s, gradually shaping a whole new viewpoint together, instead of going round and round until the groove carved into the soil was deeper than you were tall.

 

By the way, said beast was doing right that – not paying attention as it was so much more satisfying to wallow in his hurt feelings. The older huli jing was half-expecting for the walking bloodclot to stomp his foot out of sheer frustration. Or rolling on the ground. Brats did that sometimes, wouldn’t they ? The former street urchin wouldn’t know, as rolling on the ground when it was stained with muck and shite and trash was begging for a painful demise of sickness.

 

« I am Luo Binghe ! » he howled, his eyes crimson and crazed, paired with his blood-streaked face and the blood-matted strands glued to his cheeks and nape, he definitely was a frightful thing to behold. « I have conquered the Lower Realm ! I have survived the Endless Abyss when I had nothing but the clothes on my back ! Nobody dares to say no to me ! »

 

« I just did » Yuan’er sniffed. « Ah, Master Baoshan, if you please ? It starts to get awkward and I don’t think he will listen if asked to leave... »

 

It always was uncanny, Shen Jiu dimly thought as a nightmarishly fanged maw chomped down on the beast’s legs and snapped the bones of Heavenly strain with all the casual ease of a farmer snapping a twig by treading upon it, how quickly a muddy dragon could move when on the chase for prey.

 

The beast managed to scream shrilly and loud as his upper body fell upon the sandy path, while his legs and hips vanished within the scaley throat.

 

« Blech » the Spiritual Beast rumbled, « does anyone here know how tiresome it gets, trying to gnaw on the same piece of offal for a shichen ? You wind up longing for another flavour on your tongue… ah, well, if my dear sweet Disciple is politely asking, who is this Master to refuse her ? »

 

 

Chapter 175

That wasn’t the first time Luo Binghe had been cleaved in twain, and by some manner of humonguous beast. It always was tedious to regrow a pair of legs, sometimes a pair of kidneys and a brand new intestine alongside his pelvic bones, especially when the beast was still around and hungry for more.

 

The Heavenly half-breed’s regenerative ability was swift to work, but he nonetheless trained himself to defend his upper half when he was thus indisposed – he had been given so many opportunities to practise, after all, so he could fend off (if not attack with all the fury and wrath earned by the offender) the attempt to maim or devour him further.

 

All the while his thoughts were screaming in disbelief and outrage.

 

She told him no.

 

Once upon a time, a great deal of people refused Luo Binghe no matter how much he begged, no matter how lowly his request. He couldn’t have a mouthful of congee to bring to his dying mother, he couldn’t have a bed in the dorm with the other Disciples instead of sleeping outside like a mangy dog, he couldn’t be spared for the sheer crime of being born a demon-blooded bastard. As if the Heavens themselves wondered how far they could go in taking everything meant for life to be enjoyable from a wretched brat.

 

Then Luo Binghe stumbled upon Xin Mo in the darkest depths of the Endless Abyss, he clawed his way back to the Lower Realm to sit upon the long-neglected throne, and suddenly nobody dared to refuse him anything.

 

Sure, a Clan Head or a maiden might pout or complain or offer an apology trying to justify how difficult it had been lately, but that was nothing more than coyness or hypocrisy. When Luo Binghe pushed a bit, all these false pretenses would crumble in nothingness and he would be given his due as the Sacred Ruler and one belonging to the Heavenly Demon strain.

 

Such was the pillar upon which rested the Lower Realm – anyone mighty enough could reach with his hand and seize anything he pleased, it was his for the taking. For all his carefully hidden distaste for the more repellent parts of demon culture, that was one wholly reasonable and logical.

 

She told him no .

 

Of course, Luo Binghe wasn’t providing his best showing right now, with this thrice accursed muddy dragon mangling him with determination and bent on finishing the job – and skilled with the blade he might be, his cunning helped to carry him further when it came to survival. It included the ability to acknowledge when it was best to retreat – to flee with his tail firmly stuck between his legs, a beaten dog that didn’t care for sticks and stones breaking its spine under their merciless weight.

 

It burned, yet not as much as the humiliation shaking his bones and muscle fibers.

 

She told him no.

 

Xin Mo eagerly jumped in his bloodied palm to slash an exit in reality – the angle was awkward, but that was fine, Luo Binghe rolled and dropped inside the portal that quickly closed behind him, the muddy dragon’s nightmarishingly fanged maws snapping shut on air instead of warm flesh, truly the dark blade was far too useful for him to drop it in a fire mountain in spite of its unending gluttony for slaughter and sex, he couldn’t remember how many times he used the portal function now. Perhaps it was a thousand, perhaps it was a million.

 

Anyway, where had Luo Binghe landed ? The surroundings appeared to be a forest – one located in the Middle Kingdom, so the odds of him being ambushed while he was healing were somewhat lower. He could rest, regenerate his knees and feet, and plan for his next move.

 

She told him no !

 

If the Heavenly half-breed has been one to lose his nerve at the first hint of hostility, at the first obstacle on his path, he wouldn’t have survived the Enless Abyss. He wouldn’t have survived his first month as a whipping boy and slave in all but name on Qing Jing Peak. But his stubborness had always risen to the challenge, and allowed him to endure until he could reach a better haven, until he could elaborate a brilliant answer to the problem biting on his shoulders and neck.

 

This place… it was unfamiliar to him, but he could taste qi in the air – an emergency measure, dual cultivation would serve him better but considering his groin was currently unserviceable for a shichen or two, he was reduced to inhale the life energy passively soaking the atmosphere as it was the better next thing, a strategy learned through his mishaps in the Demon Realm’s untamed wilderness. Said qi was rigidly orderly, the kind of unbending perfection achieved through regular check-ups and a plain lack of creative spirit.

 

Had he landed in another Sect’s turf ? That certainly had the potential to worsen his circumstances, if a bunch of Disciples stumbled upon him and freaked over his scarlet crest or his healing legs – or it could turn to his advantage, after all.

 

If a bunch of Disciples stumbled upon a helpless victim soaked in blood and obviously wounded and exhausted, if the victim claimed he barely escaped Cang Qing Mountain with his life if not his physical integrity, if he reported he saw a pair of huli jing there, bewitching the Sect Leader himself and behaving as if they were entitled to dwell among righteous souls – well, such dire accusations deserved for an investigation, wouldn’t they ? For all the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks’ peerless fame in the jianghu, people were hungry for scandalous gossip and loved dragging a swan in the mudhole hosting a plague of toads, because the sight of these pristine feathers offended their sensibilities, nobody could be entirely innocent in spite of loudly claiming it for all to hear.

 

Yes, it was a wonderful plan. Facing the entire jianghu, Cang Qiong would have to bow, Shen Jiu and his daughter would either be captured to be slaughtered, giving Luo Binghe the window to rescue them (and what a lesson it would be, teaching the pair of fox spirits that no safety was to be found outside of the Sacred Ruler’s shadow), or they would flee the mountain range and make of themselves vulnerable targets for Luo Binghe to seize. The latter would be the more daunting option, as Shen Jiu already succeeded in vanishing so utterly once, but this time Luo Binghe would be ready and waiting for such treachery.

 

This time, Cangse Sanren would be in his grasp, and she would have to see – she would be made to understand how cherished she would be as the Imperial Princess, how foolish it was to disdain the inheritance waiting for her to take.

 

She told him no !

 

That had been the silly, ignorant answer of a child blind to the world’s truth. You couldn’t let a child pick their own future, they would quickly choose the most impractical and horrendous things such as farming lotuses in a desert, merely because they didn’t have all the information. A child was supposed to remain safe under their father’s wing, until their father deemed them ready to take flight.

 

Truly, Cangse Sanren wouldn’t be ready for such a long, long time.

 

 

Chapter 176

Xiao Yue dully watched the wretched soul claiming to be his sire vanishing in the wound slashed in the air by Xin Mo, evading the muddy dragon’s crushing jaws as they moved to fully devour them and only managed to snap shut on a void.

 

« Well, that’s a bust » Sect Leader Yue uttered with the boredom of a king witnessing a praying mantis mangled by an oriole, so one-sided was the meeting that you couldn’t be bothered to be invested in the predictable result. « Now, what are we going to do with you ? »

 

Dark eyes slanting in Xiao Yue’s direction. Oh. Was the Sect Leader adressing him ? That was – hard to focus on his surroundings currently. As he was busy registering the awful truth dropped on him without any care to soften the blow.

 

(drooling after your own sister, your own sister, your own sister)

 

(I should have shattered your head against the ground as soon as you slid from between my legs)

 

« You have a fucking sword » that voice snarled, fury bubbling in every word and spilling all over their intented target and Xiao Yue couldn’t help flinching as his skin burned and itched and hurt from the overheated venom. « Have you grown so lazy in three decades, for me to behead the beast with my two hands ? »

 

That person – was speaking of him.

 

(narrowed eyes the colour of quicksilver and bared teeth of pristine white in the very picture of a hateful sneer, so wintery cold that the Heavenly Demon felt his blood freeze in his arteries)

 

(I should have shattered your head against the ground as soon as you slid from between my legs)

 

« As Cang Qiong’s appointed Sect Leader, this one must carefully consider any opportunities offered to him » the Qiong Ding Peak Lord kindly sighed as his hands smoothly slid within his sleeves, granting him a posture reminiscent of amiable councilors willing to bestow crumbs of polished wisdom upon the ignorant masses. « Isn’t a Demon Sacred Ruler open to negotiate with the Middle Kingdom, or the jianghu at the very least, a marvelous opportunity ? »

 

« Please » that person snorted, « as if the beast’s lineage could yield anything of true worth. »

 

(Xiao Yue used to fantasize about how his first meeting with his revered mother the Empress would go and always he pictured her smiling and laughing and loving him because he heard the tales about the Empress teaching the arts and playing with her handmaidens as she wisely ruled the Lower Realm and he had wanted that too, he wanted to hear his mother’s laugh and learn the shape of her smile and he was so confident that would happen one day because the Empress is his mother and a mother has to love the child she bore in her womb for so long, won’t she)

 

(he used to dream about their first meeting)

 

(I should have shattered your head against the ground as soon as you slid from between my legs)

 

« Hurry up and kill it already, I am tiring of standing there when it stinks of offal. »

 

(he took for granted that his mother would love him because what mother wouldn’t love her child)

 

(what kind of mother wouldn’t)

 

« A-Niang, that might be best for you to bite your tongue and rest a while, exhaustion and nerves drive you to behave in a very silly manner. »

 

A gentle yet steely voice, expressing an unbending opinion. A startle coming from another head of pale hair.

 

« Excuse me, you disobedient brat ?! » this person said and for all the disbelief and anger at the disrespect, the filial rebellion, there was no hint of deep loathing, no true hatred.

 

Entirely unlike the feelings directed at Xiao Yue.

 

(drooling after your own sister)

 

(a maiden sitting tranquil and serene as she spurned his proposal, her face mildly bored as she poured herself another cup of tea as if that was the most important thing happening to her)

 

(drooling after your own sister)

 

Quicksilver eyes staring at him with focused intent.

 

« Twould be best for your Excellency to depart immediately » she advised, poised and calculating and everything an Empress should be. « The tensions are running hot here in Cang Qiong as you can see, and with the current Sacred Ruler incapacitated and needing time to recover, you would have an easy time of seizing power in the Lower Realm if you move swiftly. »

 

Yes. That would work – he didn’t know where Luo Binghe fled, but with his dire wounds, it would have to be somewhere in the Human Realm, trying to go back to the Lower Realm would be too much for his weakened body no matter the blessings of the Heavenly strain’s regenerative ability. If Xiao Yue went back right now with Sha Hualing to support his coup, he just might have a chance…

 

A chance to rule – alone. No Empress besides him, when he passionately used to picture Cangse Sanren sharing the throne with him, it was wide enough for both of them.

 

« Come with me » his mouth blurted and his heart leaped and his hand reached towards her, not touching her but giving her the possibility of reaching back. « You are so smart, and it’s going to be a mess, and ruling needs advisors, you can be one for me, please. Please.  »

 

His voice breaking on this last word, and he could hear a disgusted hiss, he could hear the frowns twisting this person’s features and this black-clad servant’s face at his audacity, but he needed for her to agree, he needed for her to follow him, to help him as he struggled with the truth and the ruling of a kingdom he always coveted.

 

That was fine if she never wore the finery of an Empress, if she never loved him back, all he asked of her was to come with him.

 

She didn’t take his hand. Quicksilver eyes briefly glinted with something akin to pity.

 

« Your Imperial Highness » she gently answered, oh so gently. « Your kingdom is waiting for you. »

 

So… that was how it ended.

 

Him enthroned as the Sacred Ruler, leading his species to a glorious future of civilization and art and science. On his own. Alone.

 

His sight blurred with wetness, and he painfully swallowed as he turned his back, slowly going down the stairs in order to go back to the survivors of the muddy dragon’s assault – they would serve as witnesses of Luo Binghe’s unforgiveable idiocy, how he couldn’t manage an assault against Cang Qiong because he would attack wildly without sending any distraction to catch the cultivators flat-footed, and ultimately got so mangled he abandoned his soldiers and heir in enemy territory. Let him try and seize the rulership anew with his reputation smeared so.

 

Xiao Yue walked down the stairs, the muddy dragon’s amber gaze weighting upon him for a heartbeat before the mighty beast snorted and started to lick its forepaw clean of blood.

 

Xiao Yue walked down the stairs, towards the throne, towards the Lower Realm.

 

Xiao Yue walked down the stairs, away from his mother, away from his sister.

 

He walked down the stairs towards glory and away from love.

 

 

Notes:

Fun fact, I was listening "All I Ask of You" from the 2004 movie Phantom of the Opera when it dawned on me -- the whole deal with Xiao Yue is very much like Eric's life.

Seriously, the dude is born "monstruous" (Eric's face is twisted, Xiao Yue is a Heavenly Demon), his mother won't even care for him because of that, he grows pretty mentally fucked up courtesy of his circumstances, he nurtures ambition (Eric is writing an opera, Xiao Yue wants to rule) and is pretty skilled at it, he falls deep and unhealthily for someone who ultimately picks another man to love as she can see he's too much of a nutso to enter in a balanced relationship. And ultimately, he lets her go.

Chapter 177

After the Young Master Xiao – sorry, his Imperial Highness from the Lower Realm, that was important to remember a title and to use it – departed with the few survivors of his retinue that Master Baoshan didn’t care to mangle, a-Niang turned burning eyes towards his offspring.

 

Cangse Sanren fearlessly stared back. That wasn’t like she had done wrong.

 

« So » the older huli jing all but snarled, « are you happy about saddling us with a problem in the near future ? That beastling will lick its wounds in the safety of the Demon Realm, then it will be back to raids and slaughters among the commoners ! »

 

« This Qingyuan struggles to picture the youth allowing for his vassals to act so » the Sect Leader mildly intervened, his hands folded within his sleeves, the very picture of relaxation. « I have spoken with him, earlier, you know, and he seemed more interested in pursuing intellectual and administrative achievements. »

 

A-Niang balefully glared at the Qiong Ding Peak Lord who didn’t even flinch, unbothered by the sheer disgust emanating from the fox spirit as a duck would be unbothered by water sliding down its feathers.

 

« Its blood is rotten » Shen Jiu insisted, his voice seething with wrath and suddenly it was easy to picture him as a teacher – the kind of teacher suffering a fit of temper when his students just couldn’t grasp whatever he had explained to them several times already, and desperate to flog them all bloody in the hopes their brain would finally be stimulated by the pain. « A tiger won’t sire anything but a tiger, it’s hopeless to pray for this wretched thing to be more civilized than the beast Master Baoshan has chewed for half of a shichen. Heavenly Demon ? Ptoo, more of a cockroach, this lineage is just as stinky and fit for wallowing in garbage and bent on plaguing the world by being hard to kill. »

 

Now, that really wasn’t nice to say that about his Imperial Highness ! Sure, Cangse Sanren wasn’t too fond of the guy – he had been so very pushy when their little party was traipsing from Caiyi and the Cloud Recesses to the Immortal Alliance Conference, always seeking to poke and prod at the younger huli jing no matter how uninterested she had been in him, and she hadn’t been shy in showing it yet he willfully blinded himself to reality and that never was an attractive quality in potential marriage partners.

 

Cangse Sanren didn’t think she would ever agree to spend more time with him as a consequence, the memories of his unrelenting stubborness grating and itching as ill-fitting clothes, and that was why she rejected his offer for her to serve as his advisor – that and she had no political training whatsoever, reading a bunch of yellow novels focused on court intrigues wasn’t a substitute for an expert course at all, truly, but…

 

At the end, his Imperial Highness let her be. Even if it came after the mind-blowing and awkward reveal of their siblinghood – he let her be. So, he could learn, and that deserved to be acknowledged at the very least. Dismissing him as worthless and a savage who could never rise above the basic instincts of a beast too focused on survival and comfort to reach true sapience or a meager inkling of it, that was mean .

 

« Tell me, a-Niang » Shen Yuan wondered, partly because he wanted to be a little shite since hir mother was behaving impossibly rudely and nothing like a taste of your own medicine to put things in perspective, partly out of genuine curiosity, « do you loathe his Imperial Highness so because the man who sired him hurt you that deeply ? »

 

Wei-ge’s breathing hitched. Yue Qingyuan’s features smoothed themselves with such alacrity it was a tad vertigo-inducing. A-Niang appeared fit to explode in the way of a fire mountain belching cinders and great plumes of flames all over the Middle Kingdom, felling crops and cattles and peasantry alike until the country was firmly stuck in the grasp of starvation and darkness.

 

« You won’t understand » the older huli jing spat, his face twisted by anger and bitterness and resentment, an ugly mask glued to the kind if aloof mother who raised Yuan’er so carefully and tenderly for a whole childhood.

 

« I certainly won’t if my mother refuses to enlighten me on his opinions » Cangse Sanren blithely answered back. « Master Baoshan teaches her Disciples to argue and explain their viewpoint, doesn’t she ? And you are one of her favourite debaters, I know it because I was there when she called you in a philosophical mood and you would spend the afternoon flinging words at each other. »

 

« More like flinging barbs at each other » the muddy dragon quietly rumbled, briefly pausing in her cleaning of her blood-drenched claws to slip a jab in the current conversation.

 

Shen Yuan was standing straight and proud, their pristine hair gleaming white in the sunlight and haloing hir head with a brighter than bright crown.

 

« Tell me » she said. « I will listen. Tell me, and allow me to craft a judgement of my own, but I cannot do that if you deny me information. »

 

Cangse Sanren wanted to write a compendium about beasts and plants one day, and even before she studied at the Cloud Recesses, she had been aware that a researcher worth their salt would investigate their field in depths, otherwise they would propagate misunderstandings and false beliefs and that couldn’t be borne.

 

What loomed in her mother’s past… well, it wasn’t that different, wasn’t it ? People instead of beasts, but sometimes the boundaries between both could be heavily blurred, so.

 

Shen Jiu recoiled, you would believe his spawn had just slapped him silly, with enough strength to throw him on the ground and bruise his cheekbones black and blue. Shen Yuan blinked.

 

« Ah, Maiden Cangse » Yue Qingyuan sighed, and the grey strands in his hair caught the light and it had been several days since he had been reunited with the formerly human cultivator, these marks of disease and age appeared to be there to stay, « some things are better left unsaid and buried deep underground to prevent them from releasing poison in their surroundings. Nobody enjoys hearing how ugly the world can get. »

 

« Just because you close your eyes » the younger huli jing commented, « the world doesn’t cease to have colours. It’s just out of your reach, and personally I don’t care very much for the dark. Too easy to imagine ghosts ready to jump out of the corner and gobble you whole. Or a bandit laying in ambush on your path. »

 

Yuan’er used to dream a lot about ghosts and bandits when zhe was a tiny little thing, mostly after reading or listening to tales about them – bad idea when it was almost bedtime, a brat’s constantly active imagination wouldn’t give them any peace – and that always was a disturbing experience she had to mitigate by slipping themselves in his Mama’s bed, because Mama was much more scary than ghosts or bandits could ever dream of being.

 

The thing is, Yuan’er isn’t a tiny little thing anymore, she had grown up and she went exploring the wide world with all its cruelty and ruthlessness. She’s aware there are ghosts and bandits waiting in the darkness.

 

 

Chapter 178

Since the day he met a pristine-clad maiden and bestowed the name Cangse upon her for the lovely quicksilver eyes hidden behind a gauzy veil, Wei Changze had been aware she was burdened with a mysterious past.

 

Sure, she would talk his and Jiang Fengmian’s ear off about beasts and plants and yellow novels and how pretty Wei Changze was – every time it happened, he rather wanted to crawl under a rock for a century or two, especially when she was doing it in a public place – but when it came to her childhood and the Sect she belonged, the maiden was startingly vague, mastering the highborn skill of saying a lot yet revealing barely a few crumbs of information.

 

The Jiang First Disciple hadn’t pushed for answers, because it would have been impolite for a man of his lowly status to bother a maiden with such refined manners, indicating a well-bred background. Also because he didn’t really care anyway – nothing could make Cangse Sanren less of the gentle soul who eagerly cleaned a wrecked shrine out of compassion for the unnamed deity worshipped there, who looked at a man born a servant as if he mattered just as much as the Yunmeng Jiang Sect Heir.

 

Nothing could, and yet. This Heavenly Demon, clad in gore and smiling as if he wanted to bite down on his prey’s flesh and gobble up the meat raw and bloody and screaming still, he called her his daughter.

 

And. Cangse Sanren hadn’t denied the claim. In a twisted way, she acknowledged it, for asking to be disowned was to point there was some familial link to sever, wasn’t it ?

 

So that meant…

 

« Cangse Sanren » Wei Changze said, and his voice rang loud and clear in the offal-scented air, not a perfume you would enjoy unless you had been desensitized to it as a butcher’s apprentice or a soldier in training for the Imperial army, « are you demon-blooded ? »

 

It was a query heavy with consequences, the black-clad young man knew that. The Middle Kingdom mistrusted demons as soon as they set a foot beyond their infernal realm, and that wasn’t unjustified – so many raids unleashed by their greed, one Sacred Ruler abducting the Huan Hua First Disciple to defile her without a care if war followed in the wake of that sin, and now that Heavenly Demon throwing a tantrum because he was denied something he coveted. Not a brilliant track record, that.

 

(Wei Changze wondered if that royal demon who used to be their party’s traveling companion will manage to civilize his people a bit, it kind of seemed an uphill fight and he certainly didn’t envy him the task)

 

(a royal demon who ultimately got quiet and left when Cangse Sanren made very clear she wasn’t interested in his offering a crown to her, unlike his sire and where did that decency come when your main rôle model for a man and a ruler is an emotional toddler stuck in an oversized body, that beggared belief)

 

Silence followed the query. Cangse Sanren’s parent was glaring at him, his jaw clenching and his muscles tensed as if he wanted to choke the life out of him, Sect Leader Yue was frowning and minutely shifted in a position to swiftly react if the conversation devolved in a fight, and Cangse Sanren…

 

Cangse Sanren blinked, serene and unbothered.

 

« Does it have any importance ? » she asked, dancing around providing an answer.

 

She sounded earnest. Truthful. She genuinely believed it didn’t matter, it never did – and wasn’t that right ? Because if she was demon-blooded, then she had been demon-blooded when she met Jiang Fengmian and Wei Changze, when she studied with them at the Cloud Recesses, when she cheerfully embraced the sickly and desperate Yue Qingyuan as a beloved uncle. A demon-blooded, pristine-clad maiden who threw a flower wreath around the neck of a wrecked statue honoring a god nobody remembered to worship, because she thought it was too sad for the deity to not receive offerings anymore.

 

And wasn’t that something, that demon-blooded girl overflowing with unexpected kindness, when the Middle Kingdom’s long experience with the Lower Realm denied the very prospect for her to be so ?

 

« It does » he answered, « because if Cangse Sanren wishes to explore the countryside in order to write this compendium she raves so much about, this humble one needs to be aware what kind of monsters he must kill before allowing her to come close. There are some breeds of critters favouring demon flesh, aren’t they ? »

 

« Heyyy » she snorted, « it’s more because their diet is yang-heavy and demons tend to lean toward yang qi as a rule but not always, I mean, my own qi couldn’t be more skewed toward yin... »

 

« You » her parent – Shen Qingqiu – scowled, cutting her ramble short, « little brute, what are you uttering ? Have you lost your mind ? »

 

He was staring at Wei Changze with the mildly crazed expression of a housewife paranoid about a merchand scamming her, and unable to guess what trick he pulled on her to obtain more money than she wanted to spend. Wei Changze forced himself to not flinch.

 

(he always used to scowl and snarl whenever honour was mentioned, as if the very idea was a scam, yet another trick meant to persuade your foe to lower their attention, and it used to be infuriating but now the anger was gone, the flame went out and left faintly glowing embers of bitterness behind, now it’s mostly sadness that dominates the knee-jerk emotional reaction because a peasant born in the mud can acknowledge this ugly truth, honour is a privilege for the ones strong enough to defend their right to choose this path, anyone weak can merely pray and hope for a positive end)

 

« This one is quite sane » the Jiang First Disciple retorted, because his duties as a Disciple-wrangler necessitated for him to have a cool and firm head on his shoulders, there was no time for fantasy or delusion.

 

« And you would travel with a demon-blooded scion ?! »

 

Harsh and angry and afraid to hope – Cangse Sanren pinched her lips, staring at her parent with worry. Wei Changze stood upright in his boots, unwavering, unbending.

 

« She is Cangse Sanren » he said. « A more justified question would be, how could this wretched one turn his back on a maiden so kind ? Surely the Heavens would judge me for not fighting on her behalf, when her morals wouldn’t let her raise a blade against a living being. »

 

Because Cangse Sanren didn’t care for battle. She cared for watching her surroundings and marveling at them, for speaking to strangers and learn what kind of books they enjoyed reading or their favourite theater play, for gifting a fistful of rice to ducks and a dumpling to a stray dog even when they hissed and growled at her. Perhaps she would step back, maybe she would flee when a threat grew too dire for her to willfully ignore, but she wouldn’t fight. It wasn’t in her nature.

 

Wei Changze could fight, and well. Wasn’t it logical for him to protect her ?

 

« … You are an idiot » the white-haired man ultimately concluded. « Do as you please, but at least your death will serve a purpose if you fall instead of her. »

 

« And if I won’t allow him to perish ? » Cangse Sanren wondered, her nostrils flared.

 

A soft flush tickled the black-clad young man’s earlobes and nape at her indignant tone. He couldn’t help it.

 

 

Chapter 179

« Shut your mouth » Shen Jiu hissed, his arms crossed over his bosom to prevent himself from throwing one of the many, many useless trinkets strewn all over Yue Qingyuan’s office desk.

 

« I said nothing » the Qiong Ding Peak Lord amiably pointed, his dark eyes gleaming with a merry fire.

 

« You thought it. So loudly that it was impossible to not hear it ! »

 

« How curious, this humble cultivator must have been remiss in his studies, for he assumed his guest’s lineage was more skilled in shapeshifting than divining the mind’s innermost secrets. »

 

Another man would have been swiftly relieved from his pillar and stones, perhaps his nose and his lips, for daring to allude to the condemning inheritance saddling Shen Jiu and Yuan’er when the parent-child pair of huli jing were dwelling on a mountain range filled with people prejudiced not only against their race, but against their lineage specifically.

 

That was Yue Qingyuan, however. This dumbass would rather slaughter the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks with his own two hands than suffer the formerly human Peak Lord and his child to be persecuted over their bloodline, so he was afforded some privileges.

 

« It had to be him » the older fox spirit sighed as his shoulders slumped. « Of everyone in the Middle Kingdom, why did it have to be him ? »

 

« You cannot complain he’s not devoted to your daughter. If he’s insisting on protecting her when he was taught to view her parentage with hatred and loathing, I daresay Cangse Sanren won’t find a better man to cherish her and tend to her wishes and needs. »

 

« You have always been partial to the brute » Shen Jiu complained. « Always praising him for being honourable and all this tripe, when you ought to have known better. »

 

« An honourable man won’t try to backstab you, he will challenge you to a duel in plain day » the Sect Leader pointed. « And if you win by following his rules, then he has no recourse beyond faithfully obeying your command. Quite the asset, no ? »

 

« Politics » the former strategist snorted. « Obviously that would be your argument. »

 

« This Qingyuan is heading the most influent Sect in the jianghu and had been educated among students called to fill the ranks of the Emperor’s ministers, advisors and bureaucrats, surely it would be strange for it to leave no marks upon his thought process ? Anyway, better Liu Qingge even if he’s now a moneyless peasant indentured to a pirate’s descendant. Or would you rather see her besides the Young Master Xiao as Empress to the Demon Realm ? »

 

This last sentence caused the huli jing to bare his fangs as a terrible noise scraped itself out of his raw throat. Yue Qingyuan remained unflinching, waiting for his former shixiong to claw his way back to something approximating calm.

 

It took more than a little moment. How could it not, when Shen Jiu so plainly remembered what being officially acknowledged as Empress of the Lower Realm meant ? All these unending days wallowing in a locked bedroom, surrounded with handmaidens begging for him to drop dead, the beast claiming to be a husband taking his rights as such in bed yet flying in a murderous temper when Shen Jiu wouldn’t let himself to be reduced to a mere vessel for physical pleasure…

 

Truly, that so-called glory was nothing more than a gilded monkey’s paw, waiting for a naive soul to seize it before dragging them to a gruesome end and Shen Jiu had no regrets escaping the Palace to Zhengmei Mountain and Baoshan Sanren’s bunch of eccentric twats.

 

(if Shen Jiu must regret anything, that might be the fate of the handmaidens left behind to face the beast’s appetite for flesh, perhaps they perished from the humiliation, perhaps they are still alive and stuck in that prison with carved walls and fancy trappings, he finds himself praying for the former as he would wish the latter on nobody)

 

That wretched beastling that sprung from the greater beast’s loins had rotten blood running through his limbs and heart, surely he would be just as horrendous toward Yuan’er for all his professions of love and tenderness – that was how the smarter slavers would reel more prey in their net, looking nice and gentle and patient to better lure you in a false sense of safety, and when they cast the pretense away it was too late to flee, too late to not wound up injured in your body and soul.

 

Praised be the Fates, Yuan’er had seen through the honeyed false promises and flat-out rejected both the greater and lesser beasts. Her judgement had been flawless on the matter, nothing was worth a lifetime under the thumb of a monster donning a man’s skin.

 

Now, if only Shen Jiu’s precious white cabbage had extended her judgement abilities to the brute reborn, had understood men as a rule were so beneath her that not a single specimen of this despised gender deserved her attention, that would have been perfect. Alas for the foolishness of youth that cheerfully ignored their elders’ hard-won wisdom to thrill in launching disasters because it seemed amusing and novel.

 

It infuriated the fox spirit to admit it, but Yue Qingyuan was right – Liu Qingge’s reincarnation was the lesser evil. At the very least, he was too enamorated with his vaunted principles to consider raising his hand to a maiden as long as she refused to hit first – and he wasn’t panting after his own sister, which was yet another layer of depravity showing the Heavenly strain should have been entirely erased from the Three Realms, but of course the Huan Hua Palace botched the job and had been happy to seal Tianlang-jun under a mountain and call that a day…

 

« Xiao Jiu ? »

 

« Don’t call me that » the huli jing reflexively snapped. « What ? »

 

Yue Qingyuan was staring at him.

 

« The Young Master Xiao, his personal name was Yue. And I don’t think Luo Binghe cared enough to name him, he certainly doesn’t appear to like him a great deal... »

 

Oh, that asshole. Quicksilver eyes menacingly narrowed.

 

« That was an insult » he carefully declared. « Sect Leader Yue managed to bear a grievous blow to Tianlang-jun, the last true Sacred Ruler of demonkind, when he was yet in his Disciplehood. How shameful would that be, for a scion of his to be cursed with his enemy’s name ? »

 

It actually had been more aimed at the beast, Shen Jiu vaguely remembered, but this period of his life was hazy from being used as a cauldron and cunt to grope and fuck relentlessly, he couldn’t be more precise on the matter. Still, that was spiteful and pointed, so he was content with that.

 

What was that dumb smile spreading on Yue Qingyuan’s face ?

 

« Were you thinking of me ? » the Sect Leader wondered. « Imprisoned in the Lower Realm, you used me to throw shade at your opponent ? »

 

Shen Jiu poked him in the chest, harshly. The bastard didn’t budge, courtesy of his superior muscle mass – muscle that replaced his brainpower, just hear at him speaking such distasteful things !

 

« Are you good to anything beyond me using you for that purpose ? » the huli jing fired back.

 

Yue Qingyuan kept smiling. Asshole.

 

 

Chapter 180

Shang Qinghua wasn’t the kind of man to beg his physician for soothing incense, poppy-infused tobacco or another miraculous drug allowing you to drown in blissful dreams for a little while. First because he knew firsthand how ugly unchecked addiction could turn, and these substances were far too easily abused to the point you relied upon them more than your flesh and blood legs. Second because the effect would always end, and you would still be stuck with your problem, but you needed to cope with the hangover afterwards and that wasn’t helping to find a solution.

 

Right now, however, it was painfully tempting. Or maybe he could steal a few barrels of wine from his drunken shixiong… No, forget it, the An Ding Peak Lord was pretty sure all the witnesses gathered on the stairs when Luo Binghe went and made a spectacle of his dumb self would have consumed all the good liquor there was to drink in the Tian Gong Mountain Range. Not that he would blame them, dealing with the Heavenly half-breed on a good day wasn’t anybody’s definition of a good time.

 

Fortunately for a spy whose life was literally hanging on the balance if he couldn’t learn juicy gossip with potential relevancy to his patron’s interests, drunkeness turned people chatty, or they just might be eager to gossip about the dreadful knowledge freshly gained from the little showdown at the feet of the great stairs, people were always hungry for bad news, it seemed.

 

Well, in the current circumstances, Shang Qinghua was unsure you could call that bad news. Luo Binghe losing his grasp on the Lower Realm wasn’t really a tragedy, for demonkind or mankind no matter the angle you forced it to adopt in order to squint. Too invested in indulging his whims and satiating his cursed blade’s unending craving for slaughter and fucking, that wasn’t exactly conducive to ruling a kingdom.

 

With the Young Prince sitting the throne instead, things would surely start to move in another direction, after stagnating so long in a warring period between the clans, lineages and other tribes. He was an ambitious soul, that one, and a measly broken heart wouldn’t hobble him too long…

 

Yeah, Shang Qinghua had heard of the Young Prince coming back from the mountain with Shen Qingqiu, Cangse Sanren, Yue Qingyuan and Liu Qingge’s reincarnation, and these guys might be tight-lipped on the matter but it was no mystery that everyone in their little party had been pretty awkward and pissed off and just a tad depressed. So… the An Ding Peak Lord would bet his fur coat there had been a little family reunion, and because Shen Qingqiu had been involved, it had been less than enjoyable a reveal.

 

Shang Qinghua idly wondered how in the Eighteen Hells the Young Prince survived his second meeting with the former Empress of the Lower Realm, who had already attempted to drive the whole jianghu to tear him apart at the Immortal Alliance Conference. Truly, miracles were just as unexpected as they were uncommon ! Perhaps Yue Qingyuan had intervened, since a Demon Realm open to peaceful trade and exchanges could be an asset on the political field ? The Qiong Ding Peak Lord had secluded himself from the world so many years and it caused whispers about declining ability to rise up in the lesser Sects, so establishing he still had it with such a daring masterstroke would be a viable strategy…

 

Sure, it lacked subtlety, but wherever the former Qing Jing Peak Lord was concerned, the Cang Qiong Sect Leader completey lost his rational brain – no need for the huli jing to enthrall him through sweet words or a heartfelt gaze, Yue Qingyuan had been seduced long before Shen Qingqiu’s true nature surfaced courtesy of Luo Binghe insisting on crowning him Empress of the Lower Realm. And a Middle Kingdom less hostile towards demonkind wouldn’t be as desperate to slay the formerly human cultivator, after all.

 

Of course, this would never fly if Shen Qingqiu’s specific bloodline was exposed for the world to panic at the prospect of a huli jing breathing and existing unmolested, so the fox spirit couldn’t be entirely truthful regarding his species. Remaining vague would be best, if he wished to retain his comfortable status as one affiliated with the most powerful and influent Sect in the jianghu.

 

Speaking of vagueness, Shang Qinghua would have to draft a plan about official relationships with the Northern Mountains, but without outright admitting he had been a demon sovereign’s pet spy (and a bit more but that detail would remain firmly private, thank you very much) for several decades, long before he ascended as a member of the Qing generation actually. Mobei-jun would complain his kingdom didn’t need anything humans could possible offer, but Shang Qinghua could predict that would be empty posturing, the majestic asshole was just as greedy for human luxuries as his fellow demons from warmer lands and as long as it wasn’t the Huan Hua Palace making noises about interspecies cooperation, he would at least consider it as genuine and not a trap.

 

By the way, the Young Prince had to be back to the Palace now – if he hadn’t been too depressed, he would have summoned Mobei-jun to teleport him there, secured the place by killing or imprisoning all the fighters, bureaucrats or courtiers liable to oppose a coup, and declared himself the new Sacred Ruler. When a claimant to the throne was holding the Imperial Palace, it was almost as good as having a whole army waiting to flood the province on your command. Sure, the Young Prince still needed to crush dissensions from Clan Elders, Heads or Heirs bent on having more ambition than common sense… but the Heavenly strain was a sturdy one, just look at the various mishaps and disasters that befell Luo Binghe and failed to rid the Three Realms from his noxious presence…

 

Oh yeah, the Young Prince’s little palace coup wouldn’t succeed if his predecessor was alive and upset about losing his status as royalty. As it had already been said, Luo Binghe was a survivor, and the Young Prince lacked experience. Hatred and loathing towards his sire, a potent desire to send him howling to King Yama for judgement and divine punishment, he certainly wasn’t lacking, he had these in staggering amounts, but feeling without the martial might to impose it upon reality was doomed to achieve anything, that was well-known in the Lower Realm.

 

Witnesses swore the muddy dragon had eaten Luo Binghe’s half. That kind of injury wasn’t enough to fully kill a Heavenly Demon, even a half-breed, this strain was as resilient and stubborn as a cockroach when you thought about it, but it nonetheless was dire. It would need time to heal, and Luo Binghe had been verbally lambasted and humiliated by Cangse Sanren beforehand – and Shang Qinghua would reluctantly admit he was quite impressed by the brazen balls on this maidenly-presenting fox spirit, bluntly refusing an obviously unstable demon warrior when she wasn’t the martial type of cultivator – the wound shredding his ego would take even longer to fix.

 

Every fên Luo Binghe was reeling and off-balance was helping the Young Prince to consolidate his influence and power. Shang Qinghua prayed for the older Heavenly Demon to remain distracted as long as possible.

 

 

Chapter 181

An ominous haze was hanging low over the Cang Qiong mountain sect, waiting but a single twitch to fully drop upon everyone’s heads – quite the worrying metaphor yet Ning Yingying thought it the most appropriate regarding the current circumstances.

 

An ominous haze woven from whispers and suspicious glances, since the incident at the feet of the great stairs – an incident that saw the muddy dragon coated with blood and gore in properly indecent amounts, it took a dozen Disciples (mostly young brats who misbehaved and needed to be punished) to scrub all these scales wholly clean.

 

An incident that saw the unexpected return of a former Disciple, one long believed dead – Ning Yingying had burned joss paper for him, because nobody else would, he confided in her that his mother died before he went and sought his luck at Cang Qiong and he hadn’t been the most popular on Qing Jing Peak, now she wondered if it would have better for her to abstain considering what he boasted he did – one who unveiled himself as a demon, a special breed of demon meant to rule over the Lower Realm.

 

Luo Binghe.

 

Ning Yingying… she struggled to believe it. The Luo Binghe she remembered, the shidi she begged her Shizun to accept on Qing Jing Peak because she wished to be shijie for once, the boy she sweetly called a-Luo once upon a time, he used to be a shy thing, wasn’t he ? Shy and prone to tear up and awkward and fun to tease and unable to protect himself when Ming Fan was in a bad mood and sought to vent it by bullying someone lower in the pecking order, he had been quite the awful boy before Shizun’s disappearance forced him to grow up…

 

Shy and tearful and so eager to please and desperate to become a righteous cultivator – how could that boy turn out to be a demon ? Wasn’t a demon supposed to be ruthless and cruel and selfishly destructive in fulfilling their whims, just like the Sha Saintess who launched an assault against the Sect in order to celebrate her recent ascension ?

 

Ning Yingying couldn’t understand it. Sure, she intimately knew time and experience would change a person, wasn’t she the living evidence of that ? Wasn’t Ming Fan ? If both of them could leave their childish foolishness and naivety and insensitivity behind because Qing Jing Peak needed for them to be mature and responsible grown-ups, why couldn’t her shy and awkward shidi be twisted in a terrifying, merciless demon lord after getting separated from Cang Qiong and learning the truth of his inheritance ?

 

Twisted to the point – to the point he would –

 

She couldn’t think about it, she didn’t dare. Her mind, her ethics, everything in her rebelled in sheer horror and disgust, as her senses would rebel in horror and distaste if she stumbled upon a lamb born lacking eyes and a mouth and its innards outside its belly – a foul abomination trampling upon the natural order of things and beings.

 

She couldn’t reconcile her timid and sweet shidi with a man able to indulge in such a despicable sin and proudly boast of it. She couldn’t.

 

Ming Fan had been much less torn on the matter. But after all, he never truly liked Luo Binghe, since the day the other boy had been accepted on Qing Jing Peak – not hated , their relationship was nothing more than the silliness of boys on the cusp of manhood eyeballing each other and flinging their egos at each other in a vain struggle for dominance, petty and nasty and immature and the kind of thing you would ultimately remember with a slight tinge of shame because Ancestors, were you truly such an insufferable young twit ? So yes it had been incomfortable for everyone involved – how Ning Yingying used to be infuriated by them reducing her to yet another reason to feed their rivalry, entrenched as they were in the belief that friendship came with an obligation of exclusivity – but it wasn’t painful, it wasn’t gutwrenching, it wasn’t the sheer depth of feeling needed to earnestly hate since hatred took just as much of you as love, and love could be so intense you choked on it.

 

Now, however ? Ming Fan certainly loathed his former shidi.

 

« Don’t call him so » he snarled, his features an angry, ugly mask plastered on his face. « Never shall I honour a beast that would dare to sully Shizun with such a respectful title as shidi. »

 

Ning Yingying quivered and barely succeeded in preventing acidic bile from spewing out of her mouth and splatter her boots at the awful, awful reminder of Luo Binghe’s crime.

 

A teacher was meant to be another parent to you. What kind of filial child would lust after their parent ? Would lay with them, as husband and wife would lay together ? Would do that not once, but several times, until offspring sprang from this sin ?

 

The whispers were confused on the matter of the young lord who went and visited Yue-zhangmen on Qiong Ding Peak, later departing with more dignity than his potential sire, but it was impossible to deny Cangse Sanren was Shen Qingqiu’s child – his darling daughter whom he adored with his whole being, a daughter sweet and lovely and she wouldn’t exist without Luo Binghe forcing himself on the most sacriliegious way imaginable upon the man supposed to be a parent to him.

 

Ning Yingying wanted to puke her guts. She wanted to weep. She wanted to run after Luo Binghe, no she didn’t know where he fled after the muddy dragon attempted to devour him once for all but she didn’t care a bit about that pesky detail, she wanted to find him and wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze until he went purple and wheezy or until he confessed why he acted in such an horrible way.

 

Once upon a time, Ning Yingying used to care about Luo Binghe, because she wanted a little shidi to spoil and tease and dazzle with her seniority and in hindsight maybe Shizun ought to have gifted her a pet dog, one of these silly, yapping, long-haired creatures that mostly annoy everyone not their owner with their hysterical behaviour, she could have cooed over a dog just like she used to coo over a-Luo and Ming Fan wouldn’t have dared to bully a dog for being too friendly with her, Shizun wouldn’t have done worse than complain about the dog’s unruliness, and most of all…

 

Most of all, one of these silly, long-haired, small yapping dogs wouldn’t destroy a lot of things. At the worse, they would shred your slippers to pieces and bury your paintbrushes in the garden. They wouldn’t cause you such heartache that you suddenly fantasized about killing them and you wouldn’t even feel sorry about doing the deed.

 

So yeah, Ning Yingying thought she hated Luo Binghe now, more than a bit. She certainly regretted burning joss paper for ensuring his soul’s comfort in the afterlife. She remembered all the times she encouraged him to be diligent in his studies, all the times she smiled and cheered this boy in a stained uniform, and wondered if she truly did the right thing, considering what he later became.

 

She thought she hated Luo Binghe more than a bit, for taking all the nice memories she retained of him and staining them with the shadow of his sin.

 

 

Chapter 182

An ominous haze had been hanging low over the Tian Gong mountain range and it took the Sect Leader’s departure with his former Qing Jing Peak Lord for it to fully turn in a storm.

 

Considering the atmosphere, it was more than a smidge foolish for the Xuan Su Sword to leave Cang Qiong – however, the man was extremely invested in breaking the cursed shackle forcing Shen Jiu into a female shape, and his ardor in researching the matter had tripled following Luo Binghe’s impromptu information drop. If the one person you cherished above all had been dragged into womanhood kicking and screaming to serve as a bed-slave, wouldn’t you want to soothe his trauma by giving them back a body that hadn’t been violated in such an ugly and despicable way ?

 

Qing Jing’s library ultimately produced a possible answer, with a dusty silken scroll carefully plucked from storage by Ming Fan – and the man might be dull but when he was gushing about stasis arrays and copist work with the finer details of ink and paper his technical expertise was so tremendously deep and passionate that you would spend a shichen or two listening to him – mentioning the White Rainbow Temple, an organization meditating upon freedom and bonds and how to find one and discard the other in everyday’s life. Mostly, they cared about philosophy but the nature of their studies led them to become skilled locksmiths and fetter-breakers.

 

Obviously, they weren’t really popular among the wider Middle Kingdom since one of their foremost griefs was the entire institution of slavery. Not only they protested in town squares and in front of the Imperial Palace’s gates, they quite often encouraged slaves to escape their masters and used to be quite the nexus of freedom trails. As a consequence, a great deal of merchants and highborn banded together in order to purge the White Rainbow with all the fearsome ruthlessness and pitilessness of people stubbornly enforcing the status quo that benefitted them so much.

 

If the White Rainbow survived, surely it had been extremely diminished from the movement’s glory days as Yue Qingyuan, a former slave, never even heard of them in the slightest whisper. However, the light of hope would blind the most cynical soul if glimpsed at the right moment, and the Qiong Ding Peak Lord decided that would be how the cursed shackle around Shen Jiu’s neck would finally be destroyed.

 

The formerly human cultivator certainly didn’t believe it, scoffing at his childhood acquaintance in blatant annoyance but resigned to let the Xuan Su Sword drag him in the countryside to investigate potential hideouts for a bunch of slave liberators to huddle – as he complained quite loudly and profusely, Yue Qingyuan was a dumbass and liable to hurt himself without a sensible mind to bonk him on the skull and remind him of his absent brain whenever a trap loomed on the path, and he really couldn’t afford wrecking his health further after neglecting his body and soul for more than two decades.

 

He said that as he was standing right besides the Sect Leader whose smile never wavered in cheerfulness and warmth – the smile of a bridegroom about to go on a pilgrimage with his newly wedded bride for their union to be blessed by the most holy authority to dwell under the Heavens and among mortal beings.

 

Jiang Fengmian wouldn’t be surprised if the Xuan Su Sword used that expedition to elope with his ambiguously human former shixiong.

 

(Jiang Fengmian still is unsure about Shen Jiu but Luo Binghe’s obscene confession strongly hints at Cangse Sanren not being a pure-blooded human and Lotus Pier’s Young Master cannot help staring at the pristine-clad maiden, her unending gentleness and her constant joy and her unbroken innocence and all his life he was taught demons were bad, demons were a taint spoiling everything they touched and the lone way to cleanse their infection from the Human Realm was to hunt down the tiniest trace of their ventures in the Middle Kingdom to purge it through fire and blade but that is Cangse Sanren)

 

(does she even deserve death, for the circumstances of her birth ? Such wasn’t hers to decide when she still was waiting on the Wheel of Rebirth for her soul to be embodied in a new vessel)

 

(does Jiang Fengmian even have the courage to lift a sword against her when he knows Wei Changze will oppose him with every crumb of training the First Disciple pushed onto himself, when he knows the maiden won’t even raise a finger to defend herself, merely staring at the purple-clad Sect Heir with her mesmerizing quicksilver eyes and quietly asking if they stopped being friends altogether)

 

(somehow the prospect of her heartbreak feels worse than the picture of her lying cold and still on the ground, her chest pieced by a blade he would have wielded in his hand)

 

So the Sect Leader departed Cang Qiong with his former Qing Jing Peak Lord, surrounded with a retinue deemed appropriately competent for tending to the Qiong Ding Peak Lord’s health and safety yet not so numerous that it would spook the White Rainbow remnants – if remnants there were, perhaps the Temple had been wholly exterminated in the zealous crusade to ensure nobody would dare to question the right of a man to enslave his unluckier fellows again – into retreating deeper in their hideouts. Their leaving didn’t cause much fanfare, and if anyone in the mountain range was emboldened by the Xuan Su Sword’s absence to express hostility towards the pristine-clad maiden dwelling in their care neither Jiang Fengmian or Wei Changze or Ning Yingying got a whiff of them.

 

It was better for everyone to remain quiet. The air felt just like the stillness before a storm suddenly raging out, sparks readying themselves to dance in the dry atmosphere before it could soak ungodly amounts of moisture – and Jiang grew up aware of the terrible and destructive strength of water no matter its shape.

 

Unfortunately, the tense peace didn’t last more than four days. Truly it was the most wretched fortune for the event to happen when the Sect Leader – a masterful politician and the most powerful fighter in the jianghu in spite of recovering from two decades of persistent self-neglect – was absent from the grounds. That was the kind of coincidence found in these yellow novels Cangse Sanren enjoyed tearing apart with barbed comments on the author’s lazy mind and reliance on overused plot clichés.

 

The Huan Hua Palace came at the gates of Cang Qiong. They came many, and they came bearing the awful accusation of willful collusion with demonkind, which was so much worse than a demon pulling the wool over their own eyes at the Immortal Alliance Conference, ignorance could be corrected with the right teaching and the right mentor but someone willingly indulging in sin was another level of depravation entirely.

 

Considering the entrenched rivalry between the Huan Hua Palace and Cang Qiong, that intrigue wasn’t too startling but it couldn’t come at a more awkward moment – especially when an ambiguously human maiden was there for them to point and use as a focus for hatred and that kind of hysteria was hard to halt in its tracks before at least one death befell a more or less deserving victim.

 

Jiang Fengmian hoped Wei Changze would keep Cangse Sanren hidden while Ning Yingying and the Qiong Ding Head Disciple took care of the gold-clad mob.

 

Chapter 183

For all she was proud of belonging to Qing Jing Peak, Ning Yingying wouldn’t deny there were a great many wise tricks to learn from Cang Qiong’s other Peaks. Right now, she was internally blessing Yue-zhangmeng for showing her it was possible to blandly and sweetly smile at somebody you wanted to see lying exsanguinated at your feet.

 

Alright, she also was cursing him for being absent – if the Xuan Su Sword had been present, he would have made short work of the Old Palace Master who was busy reeking of confidence as he was standing at the gates of the Sect, fifty-plus cultivators clad in garments so dense with gold thread it was more armour than silk or cotton waiting behind him, probably for a signal to cause disorder and violence.

 

On the other hand, Yue-zhangmen had taken Shizun away from Cang Qiong, and Ning Yingying really didn’t want for her Shizun to suffer another attempt to invade the mountain range, he suffered enough for a lifetime. Having to behold the Old Palace Master’s horrendously smug face when the man should have been licking the wounds left by his public humiliation at the Immortal Alliance Conference was the kind of thing that used to irk him, so much that he really would have done better with a visit to Qian Cao Peak for treating a stress ulcer. And when you had cultivated a Golden Core, developing an ulcer became so much harder, so that was an ungodly amount of stress indeed.

 

The young woman just might ask Mu-shishu for a check – considering the circumstances, her growing an ulcer wasn’t a far-fetched option.

 

« This is quite the audacity » uttered Peng-shixiong who was the Head Disciple on Qiong Ding Peak and as such Cang Qiong’s representative whenever Yue-zhangmen couldn’t fulfill his duties – he was given several decades of practise following Shizun’s disappearance and very much cheered when the former Qing Jing Peak Lord decided to drag the Sect Leader out of his depressive state by coming back with a daughter, truly Fate was unkind to drop that crisis on his shoulders when he hoped he was out of the woods. « Daring to accuse our Tian Gong Twelve Peaks from consorting with the Lower Realm, when the Huan Hua Palace ought to revise their own safety measures to ensure no unexpected guest will obtain the opportunity to disturb an inter-Sects event. »

 

Several gold-clad cultivators sneered and frowned at the reminder of them losing face for the whole jianghu to witness, but the Old Master refused to twitch, the smugness soaked in the wrinkles of his aged features.

 

« When two dogs are baring their teeth, surely the most reasonable course of action is to first neutralize the one most likely to cause dire harm upon the innocent » he fired back, unruffled and arrogant. « A demon exposed in the middle of our Disciples and Hallmasters is a grave matter, this Master won’t deny it, but that nonetheless pales besides the prospect of allowing Daji’s spawn to surface anew and wreck their malfeasance upon the entire Middle Kingdom. »

 

Cang Qiong’s Disciples and Hallmasters were trained to never shame the Sect by an excess of emotion – yet at the very mention of Daji and the legacy she plagued the Middle Kingdom to dread, an horrified shiver crashed upon their crowd and burrowed deep in their bone marrow.

 

Ning Yingying’s mouth was dry. She remembered Shizun’s daughter half asleep in the morning, fluffy tail and ears sprouting from her nightgown and pristine white hair, and she wasn’t that familiar with canine breeds, at the most she could differentiate between a wolf and a mastiff, but…

 

(but Maiden Cangse is Shizun’s daughter and she’s a lovely soul and she cares for Shizun so much and Shizun, does Shizun have family, he never alluded to relatives when he still was teaching and Yingying was his favorite student, he might hail from a not entirely clean lineage)

 

(Luo Binghe is a demon but he’s a Heavenly Demon, being able to regenerate all this blood and so many limbs when you are repeatedly eaten is quite distinctive, if Maiden Cangse is another kind of demon she cannot have inherited that from him so it must be the other parent)

 

(Shizun who was brusque and stern to the point of reducing many Disciples to nervous bundles of tears and fear but never raised a hand against Ning Yingying, who so plainly loves his daughter and is cherished in turn, and Maiden Cangse who’s gentle and wants to learn everything about monsters and weird critters and smiles at Yunmeng Jiang’s Wei Changze as if he’s the only man in the world and Wei Changze looks at her as if she’s the only woman in the universe)

 

(how can you think of Daji when you know them, Ning Yingying just cannot)

 

« This… is quite the heavy accusation to wield » Peng-shixiong ultimately said, his frown stuck in a deeply unhappy mien hinting at painful constipation. « Does the Old Palace Master have any evidence, or does he merely seek to fan the flames of hysterical conspiracy ? »

 

« A witness came to us » the old fart claimed. « Grievely wounded, he warned us of Daji’s lineage embedding itself in a Great Sect, obviously hungry for power and influence. Twas a recent happening, he swore, so the beast’s poison didn’t have time to drip and defile and twist honourable souls in its devoted thralls, but time was a commodity we could ill-afford to lose. Every fên the abomination is free and unshackled brings your Sect closer from a necessary purge to eradicate its pernicious corruption. »

 

Ning Yingying’s brown eyes narrowed, unnoticed by everyone since she wasn’t the designated speaker for the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. A witness. Who ? And he mentions grave wounds.

 

A suspicion was taking shape in her mind, and she strongly misliked it.

 

« And how would the Old Palace Master offer to cleanse this corruption ? Huan Hua is focused on divination and maze arrays rather than exorcisms. This Peng would readily accept the Tian Yi Overlook or the Zhao Hua Temple’s expertise on the matter, but he’s unsure about your cultivators’ ability to uproot evil when there’s more to do than brandish a weapon. »

 

« Tianlang-jun was sealed by our efforts » the Old Palace Master snorted, a tad annoyed to be called incompetent at his face.

 

« By a collaborative effort between the Huan Hua Palace, the Tian Yi Overlook, the Zhao Hua Temple and our own Ascetic Peak » Peng-shixiong snapped back. « You hold the Palace still and we can provide our monks, but this Peng sees no Zhao Hua abbot or Tian Yi nun in your retinue. What’s the point of dragging yourself at our gates if you don’t even bother to seriously search for a cure to what you claim is ailing us ? »

 

Now the old fart was slightly reddening beneath his white beard and heavy gilded guan. Ning Yingying had to acknowledge Peng-shixiong’s point, that was very hasty and badly prepared, if a threat from Daji’s caliber was nestled in the Twelve Peaks… perhaps the Palace Master was losing his edge with age ? She couldn’t remember exactly how old, but he passed a century and a half at the very least…

 

Or maybe, just maybe, it was that unnamed witness urging him to decisive action, to hit swiftly before the shock could fade – merely mentioning Daji unleashed panic among commoners and cultivators alike, if Peng-shixiong had immediately folded out of desperation to not potentially unleash a fox spirit upon the Middle Kingdom…

 

But who would have spilled such a tale to the Old Palace Master ?

 

If this is who Yingying thinks… it better not be. Or Yingying will get upset, and a-Luo might have forgot it but Yingying can turn really nasty when she’s upset.

 

 

Chapter 184

Cangse Sanren wouldn’t claim she was flawless – considering she was busy running toward the second attempt to disturb Cang Qiong’s peace and tranquility in barely less than a week, but really that was quite the widespread flaw among sentient people, just tell them to flee because something awful was about to be unleashed and it was guaranteed a crowd would remain standing there to gawp at the spectacle.

 

Well, she might be more justified in wanting to investigate the whole business, courtesy of what happened with this walking bloodclot and the Young Master Xiao, it might be something just as messy and complicated and utterly painful for everyone dragged within the drama – and if Cangse Sanren wasn’t aware of that, she couldn’t very well prepare for retaliation ! Master Baoshan and Mama always insisted on the importance of intelligence before choosing your next action on the battlefield !

 

Speaking of them, the younger fox spirit was rather grateful for her Master and her parent to have briefly departed the mountain range. Master Baoshan mangling a demon lord, that was one thing, the Lower Realm had an extremely casual relationship with violence, to the point that throwing a knife at a fellow Clan Head’s throat was a valid greeting in more than a few lineages, but the stammering and panicking Disciple that informed her of the new intruding force mentioned they came from another Human Sect, and mankind tended to balk at shameless assault.

 

If Master Baoshan snacked on their leader’s lower body half, they likely would get upset, and they would want to kill Master Baoshan. Since she was an ancient muddy dragon, their murderousness wouldn’t achieve anything, sure, but that would cause so much awkwardness for both parties – fortunately, Master Baoshan was absent. And she was somewhere with Mama, who would have suffered flashbacks in earnest, he would have claimed otherwise and behaved as if everything was fine but Cangse Sanren knew her parent, he never told you when he was upset, that was a tad distressing after a while.

 

Anyway, learning whatever was unfolded at the gates of the Sect, Cangse Sanren wouldn’t and shouldn’t refuse to do so, don’t even argue for her to remain behind Wei-ge, if you worry so much then follow me and you will be able to watch my back but you will have to be quiet ! If the crowd is chattering between each other, it grows so much harder to understand why the guys at the center are yelling, you will miss details.

 

Wei-ge was smart, so he followed and he kept his mouth shut while the younger huli jing narrowed hir eyes at the scene – Ning-shijie standing besides one Disciple wearing the Qiong Ding stately uniform of black and dark grey, Yue Qingyuan was wearing it much better but it had to be a perk of being the Sect Leader, she was standing very still and quiet and she very much looked like a snowy mountain in the dark hours of the hopelessly early morning, when it’s just warm enough for your tent to suddenly find itself buried under ten feet of frozen water. And in front of her, there was an old man clad in golden silks, Cangse Sanren scratched her brain for a little while before remembering the dude was the Huan Hua Palace Master, one thing she discovered after leaving Zhengmei Mountain was how bad she was at identifying people she wasn’t familiar with since her childhood.

 

Alright, so she could name Yue Qingyuan and Ning-shijie and Ming-shixiong and Wei-ge and the Young Master Jiang, but she was spending a lot of time with them, it helped her gray matter to retain their personal data. Of course her mind wouldn’t care about recording the features of some old fart she was introduced once at a gathering for all the major and several minor sects in the jianghu.

 

The Old Palace Master was red and somewhat angry in his mien, as if he just swallowed something he strongly disliked but couldn’t spit on the ground because he was attending a fancy dinner and courtly manners deemed you had to consume everything in your bowl you then put in your mouth, under pain of being labelled a filthy barbarian. Cangse Sanren idly wondered what kind of foodstuff could do the trick – perhaps something really plebeian ? The old fart was the very picture of well-bred and haughty blue blood, not a man to mingle with the commoners unless it was a matter of his life or death, and even so he might decide to perish.

 

Ning-shijie and the Palace Master were positively surrounded by Disciples and Hallmasters, which was nice as Cangse Sanren and Wei-ge could get closer without bringing too much attention upon themselves – still, better to not breathe too loudly, just in case – yet at the same time it increased the tense atmosphere because more people meant emotions running rampant and preventing critical thinking from being at its best. One person could be smart, a mob was nothing but a bundle of issues – one of Mama’s wisdom sayings, the product of a long life spent outside Zhengmei Mountain and Shen Yuan used to deem it depressingly cynical but right now the saying was blaring in Cangse Sanren’s mind and she had to pay attention.

 

Ancestors, she really hoped it wouldn’t turn as chaotic as the previous attempt at invasion. With the walking bloodclot all but admitting he was a rapist as his victim was right there, and Young Master Xiao’s embarrassing proposal that wound up even more embarrassing with the reveal of a biological link, it was bad enough – and it was downright private as a setting, the few witnesses easily sworn to silence or moderation in their gossip after the action.

 

Here ? There would be no smothering the truth of the altercation. Somebody would slide through the cracks and spread a rumour, and rumours were worse than wine stains or mud stains, at least wine and mud would merely ruin your clothes.

 

Wait – who was that dude in the Huan Hua crowd ? Their head was covered with a hood, and they were wearing black. Which wasn’t exactly screaming subtle when you were standing in the middle of cultivators who believed you couldn’t gild your clothes and accessories too much, but if you remained hidden behind your travel companions, that could work…

 

Cangse Sanren frowned. The stranger in black was too far, and surrounded by golden uniforms, and was wearing a hood, so she couldn’t exactly go and poke at them. Still, that was curious, bringing somebody plainly unaffiliated with your Sect… maybe that person was just like the Young Master Jiang and Wei-ge and Cangse Sanren, a traveller searching for wisdom and teachers wherever they went ?

 

Yet her gut whispered it wasn’t the answer, look beyond the surface, there is something quite wrong with that whole deal, pay attention very closely.

 

Well, alright, she was, but what was she supposed to notice ?

 

Wait, what did the old fart just say ? Something about… Daji’s spawn ?

 

Cangse Sanren swallowed as Wei Changze’s hand clasped her elbow, gentle yet impossible to shake off, a self-proclaimed protector smelling ozone on the air and readying himself to jump and carry his charge to safety, even if it takes him on the other side of the kingdom.

 

Whatever it was, it didn’t sound too good.

 

 

Chapter 185

Wei Changze’s hand was itching to draw a blade and divorce the Old Palace Master’s head from his shoulders, but in order to commit the deed he would have to leave Cangse Sanren’s side and that couldn’t be borne, not with the crowd uneasy and ready to get twisted in a fierce mob baying for blood.

 

As Lotus Pier was somewhat young and lacking in influence among the Sects, they naturally would rely more on their peasantry, merchants and all these ordinary people helping with everyday’s quaint boredom of functional mundanity. That meant Jiang Fengmian was acutely aware of the threat a bunch of commoners could be, when properly motivated – sure, they didn’t have a great deal of firepower to call their own, a weak yao or cultivator would slaughter a dozen of them without breaking a sweat, but ants could ultimately fall a bear if given time and numbers.

 

A mob could be just as fearsome as a weak cultivator when motivated by bloodlust or the righteous drive to cleanse the land from a perceived foe. And the mob wouldn’t stop in their tracks to ponder if the target they were about to drown or stone to death was indeed guilty of the crimes heaped upon their shoulders.

 

The Old Palace Master was speaking of a demon staining the Twelve Peaks by mingling with the Disciples and Hallmasters and Peak Lords. Cangse Sanren, for all she was entirely harmless and benevolent, was technically fitting the description. If you were a hardcore spiritual cultivator bent on enforcing separation between the species. Which wasn’t wholly wrong as a viewpoint, since the Lower Realm would produce men like the walking scene crime that got mangled by Master Baoshan a few days ago.

 

Now, was the Old Palace Master actually speaking of Cangse Sanren ? He was mentioning Daji’s spawn, after all, and the huli jing lineage… well, it gained infamy for a very good reason. So far, the pristine-clad maiden had shown nothing of these typical traits – she wasn’t sadistic, she wasn’t oversexed, alright she was startingly beautiful but she wasn’t wielding her enthralling features to manipulate everyone around her, and she outright rejected the opportunity to gain power over a kingdom by accepting Xiao Yue’s suit for her hand. Truly, when the critter isn’t walking like a duck and isn’t quacking like a duck and isn’t looking like a duck, then it cannot possibly be a duck.

 

Unfortunately, a mob would only define a duck as waterfowl you can eat and would eagerly pounce on a goose, calling it a duck all the while, especially with the annoying neighbour insisting to ruin your day by claiming he saw a duck in your courtyard.

 

Could the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect declare the duck had flown away ? If they admitted having been visited by the Lower Realm’s Crown Prince, that would be a heavy blow upon their pride, but at the very least he was gone before the situation could devolve in major awkwardness, and you could argue he was fitting the oversexed and immoral criteria, alongside the hunger for power and ruthless ambition, since he was so passionate in bringing demonkind back from the brink and wanted to court a maiden who couldn’t be more plainly uninterested in him.

 

But wait, the Crown Prince had been outed as belonging to the Heavenly Demon strain at the Immortal Alliance Conference, and the Old Palace Master was searching for a huli jing… unless Cang Qiong swore his Heavenly inheritance was only half the package, and the other half was fox spirit blood ?

 

Which forcibly reminded Wei Changze that the walking scene crime had gloated about raping the former Qing Jing Peak Lord – Cangse Sanren’s parent. Fuck, his reasoning was stuck in a circle, chasing after its tail and unable to glimpse another path to escape the ditch.

 

Cangse Sanren as a sly and cunning seductress… no, the very picture was so ridiculous he would suffer a brain aneurysm from the sheer dissonance, or from repressing violent laughter because he couldn’t very well fling that suspicion to the pristinely-clad maiden’s face.

 

But of course, the picture was ridiculous to Wei Changze because he knew Cangse Sanren, the maiden who heaped praise on his blushing self as she breathed, the maiden who chattered about studying weird flowers and weird critters all over the Middle Kingdom and perhaps a tad beyond, the maiden who sobbed a flood of tears after learning Madam Lan would never get to see her beloved sons growing up to be men. A mob wouldn’t know any of that, and wouldn’t care to learn any of that.

 

Disciple Ning might hesitate – she was so very fond of her former Shizun’s daughter, after all. And she stared at the Old Palace Master as if she wondered why glaring at him wasn’t enough to set his gold-embroidered robes afire with such potency it would turn his bones to charred powder, quite the feat when you were aware of the ungodly resistance to flame bones would have.

 

Wei Changze also pondered why that couldn’t happen. Was it a skill meant for Heavenly Officials only ? He had heard a tale or two about a roaming ghost able to shoot with its eye, though…

 

« Hey, Wei-ge ? » Cangse Sanren’s whisper brought him back to reality. « Do you see that guy in black, behind the Huan Hua first line ? They look shady . »

 

The Jiang First Disciple narrowed his eyes. Yes, there was a tall figure stranded in the gold-embroidered crowd, and the way they were standing… You could learn a lot from posture, if someone was nervous or irked or cheerful, and when you were in the night hunting business it became extremely important to get familiar with body langage as quite often, you didn’t have time to talk with your partner before the hungry ghost jumped on your party, or the target wouldn’t be able to explain what was actually unfolding courtesy of a tongue-tying curse.

 

That person with the black hood – they stood like a hunter waiting for their prey to finally slink outside its den, after an entire week spent crouching at the same spot in wet grass and mud and they were done with the cold and the dampness and the bugs trying to crawl beneath their garments to get warm, they wanted for the mess to be over already so why won’t this accursed prey show the tip of its muzzle and provide a nice meal or pelt or whatever ?

 

Fraying patience and rising frustration, quite the deviation from the Huan Hua cultivators being irked about Disciple Ning and her fellow from Qiong Ding stonewalling their Palace Master. There were something indeniably intense about this person, something that reeked of a personal matter.

 

Wei Changze swallowed.

 

The walking bloodclot – Master Baoshan did her best to make a snack out of him, in spite of loudly complaining anyone would be disgusted after spending a shichen chewing on the morsel without making any progress regarding the eating, but he nonetheless escaped through a portal. And for all his dire injuries, the Heavenly Demon strain was blessed with mighty healing…

 

Alright, his brain really hated him sometimes, suggesting such a dreadful prospect.

 

And yet.

 

And yet .

 

Chapter 186

A black hood thrown over his head to prevent anyone to witness his disgusted expression, Luo Binghe was glaring at the Old Palace Master for allowing a pair of Disciples to impede him.

 

Truly, the old fart didn’t deserve to be respected and admired as one of the most cunning minds currently heading the jianghu. Just look at how swiftly he folded in front of Luo Binghe’s will when the Heavenly half-breed was brought to the Huan Hua Palace.

 

Sure, the burning shame of having been humiliated in front of the other Great Sects at the Immortal Alliance Conference likely weighted in his behaviour, but Luo Binghe expected more questioning and investigation from the Old Palace Master, only for the aged cultivator to immediately believe the report about a pair of fox spirits dwelling in Tian Gong mountain range and summon every fighter he deemed qualified enough to storm Cang Qiong’s gates and destroy the rival Sect’s face for the entire Middle Kingdom to remember in the faraway future.

 

Well, it wasn’t like the Sacred Ruler of demonkind was truly complaining about obtaining an obedient meatshield to bear the brunt of the public opinion. And his daughter was somewhat pretty, if saddled with a frightful temper worthy of the Lower Realm’s denizens and already married with a man far too nice to be anything but hopelessly bland and boring – two things that never stopped Luo Binghe to seek comfort in a feminine embrace, especially when Xin Mo was shrieking loudly in his inner ear.

 

However, he abstained from doing more than saucily winking and throwing flowery praise at the Little Palace Mistress – when Shen Jiu would be back where he belonged, back in the Heavenly half-breed’s palace, then it would be the right moment to vent the sexual frustration and sheer anger swelling in Luo Binghe’s chest, these negative feelings that never were dispelled since he learned the prisoner carefully secured in his dungeon had vanished as dewy mist under the rising sun warming the air.

 

The Old Palace Master possibly thought differently. He appeared to be the kind of man unafraid to groom his offspring to be a seductress of men, be they married or celibate, for the ruthless sake of advancing his agenda – Luo Binghe briefly wondered what the bland son-in-law could bring to the table, before concluding it had to be a matter of money. The Huan Hua Palace loved their gaudy luxuries and outrageous displays of wealth, all of that was logically expensive and what better remedy to poverty but a good marriage to a financially secure party ?

 

Luo Binghe would know – he never took a consort after officially naming Shen Jiu his Empress but he enjoyed bedmates and mistresses aplenty. More than a few female demons actually fought each other to the verge of death and maiming out of greed for the status and gifts bestowed upon an Imperial mistress, a bloodthirsty behaviour very much approved by the Lower Realm as it culled the weak and ensured the strong alone would receive the Sacred Ruler’s attention.

 

Barbaric and simple to the point of dumbassery, but demonkind was just a lost cause at this point. The species was built for peerless fighting, just like mankind was supposed to be blessed with the gift of common sense and smarts, which wasn’t often obvious when you were dealing with the Middle Kingdom that proudly claimed to be the most civilized example of society under the Heavens.

 

Prime counterargument to that claim, the Old Palace Master currently turning a rather ugly shade of puce as the Disciple in the austere gray and black Qiong Ding robes was demolishing his righteous belief that he would be granted audience by mere virtue of having an army behind him and waving the specter of the Second Royal Dynasty’s collapse, Ning Yingying standing there with her face stoney and unreadable.

 

It was the opposite behaviour of her youthful days, when she still was the lone ray of light in Luo Binghe’s wretched struggle to not be crushed by his fellow Disciples’ bullying or his Shizun’s cold displeasure at his continued presence on the Qing Jing Peak – so opposite that the Heavenly half-breed squinted for a while and pondered the odds of Ning Yingying getting abducted and replaced by a skinner demon or an animal eager to squeeze itself in a shape closer to enlightenment.

 

But ultimately, she wasn’t the one he craved so much the companionship. He used to long for her love, but now he could see he outgrew her a long, long time ago as he ascended to be Sacred Ruler, the wielder of Xin Mo, he who survived everything the Lower Realm had so far thrown at him in a convoluted attempt to get him gruesomely slaughtered or reduced to the drooling puppet of a woman more ambitious than the usual bunch of curvy maidens falling to his knees after getting a taste of his sexual performance.

 

He hoped she might not impede the retrieval of her former Shizun and said Shizun’s child too much, but considering how naively confident in Shen Jiu’s purity of intention when he was doting upon her – ah, considering what the older huli jing did with the handmaidens attending him, that reeked of grooming a compliant target for later consummation, it was harder to refuse somebody who always showered you with gifts and care since your prepubescent days – she just might dare. Shouting it couldn’t be, yelling she would never forgive you for going that far, all these petty strategies of her to prevent Ming Fan and his cronies from tormenting their designated whipping boy and never worked because a bully doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your forgiveness, they’re only interested in your pain.

 

Ning Yingying always had been too sweet for the merciless world, in which rats would battle each other to the point of grievous injury or protracted agony while human society wasn’t paying a lick of attention to their misery, just like they weren’t paying attention to their own’s misery. Luo Binghe wanted to feel a pang of remorse for shattering her last illusions on the matter of Shen Jiu, but Shen Jiu deserved the pain and hatred and mockery sure to ensue after being forcibly exposed as a fox spirit for all to despise, Ning Yingying’s heartbreak was a paltry price to provide for this goal.

 

Of course, in order to be exposed, Shen Jiu had to be there. Quite cowardly of him, to retreat behind Disciples and remain safely behind, in the depths of the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect that repelled more than a few demon invasions and survived at least two eras of total war between the Great Sects without getting wiped out. Cowardly and annoyingly effective, as every fên he stayed hidden out of sight was a fên threatening to expose Luo Binghe as the one man who got mangled by a muddy dragon for several shichen on Cang Qiong’s threshold.

 

The Old Palace Master lacked the spine to truly denounce the Heavenly half-breed, in spite of him hailing from the thrice accursed lineage that drove the late and deeply lamented Su Xiyan to be lost to her Sect, but the Huan Hua cultivators might not see the whole thing in the same light – when you were in a position of authority, there always would be a funny guy to disobey, that was a fact.

 

 

Chapter 187

Neither Master Baoshan or Mama were very clear on why exactly it would be bad for Shen Yuan to be exposed as a huli jing – merely saying people didn’t like these, but from the mob busy arguing with the Cang Qiong cultivators stubbornly refusing to let them through, Cangse Sanren couldn’t help thinking it just might be worse than disliking. You disliked black tea or the stench of your spouse’s toes in the morning, but when you wanted to flat-out hurt someone you never met before because of something they were born with, not even something they did…

 

Ah, she thought people having an emotional, stupid reaction when learning something upsetting their viewpoint was a thing that only happened in yellow novels ! The kind of trashy literature nobody would take seriously because it was so plainly exaggerated, surely it must be a parody of real life ! Except that no, mankind really behaved that way. It was a tad depressing actually.

 

Anyway, Mama and Master Baoshan had been extremely clear on what Shen Yuan was supposed to do if the neighbourhood wasn’t safe anymore, and reading so many stupid novels was enlightening on how not to behave, if out of sheer embarrassment by proxy, so the path to follow was a simple, delineated, obvious one.

 

When trouble is knocking at your door, endeavour to be away from home.

 

Well, the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect wasn’t home, that was Mama’s former workplace and dwelling. Really nice to visit, especially with Mama being reunited with Yue Qingyuan, and the library sure was something but ultimately Cangse Sanren would depart. There were too many things she needed to behold in the Middle Kingdom, perhaps beyond the Middle Kingdom if she was feeling quite adventurous and wished to explore Annam or the barbarian plains or even take a boat to the Kingdom of Wa on the other side of the sea.

 

Also, that person in the black hood was absolutely drenched in creepy vibes, and that was how the Universe would tell you someone was bad news, so the pristine-clad maiden had no wish whatsoever to expose herself further to this unpleasant individual’s proximity. If she discreetly departed while everyone was busy yelling at each other – they certainly appeared ready and willing and able to argue a whole week on the spot, truly cultivation nullifying the need for rest and food was peak cheating – they likely wouldn’t have any idea of where she skedaddled and couldn’t stalk after her. If that black-hooded person had a specific interest in her – Cangse Sanren couldn’t tell, because she couldn’t see their face, how was she supposed to identify them without seeing their face ? Alright, big odds for her to not manage too well even with the face shown for everyone to ogle, but that would help !

 

She gently tugged at Wei-ge’s narrow black sleeve and he immediately glanced at her, his weight shifting as his posture turned from wary, on the verge of jumping with his sword drawn out of the sheath, to defensive, on the verge of leaping to carry her to safety no matter how big the distance between the threat and safety.

 

« I think it’s the right moment to leave. Off the mountain, I meant. »

 

The black-clad Jiang First Disciple frowned. It wasn’t angry, it was thoughtful, and a hint of sadness lurked in these dark eyes.

 

« I don’t think Jiang Fengmian will want to come » he ultimately said. « He cannot afford controversy as the Heir to his Sect, Lotus Pier is too small and unknown to compete with the great names such as Cang Qiong or Zhao Hua, all they have is their reputation. The slightest hint of scandal, it would ruin them. »

 

Ah, that was right. Cangse Sanren pouted, but it lacked genuine scorn – Young Master Jiang was a darling of a man, someone she would treasure calling her friend, and dragging him in her trouble, that wouldn’t be very friendly from her. Poor thing was about to marry, too ! No, he had everything to lose, so she would have to say goodbye and thank him for being nice company on the road, truly, this one hoped all the other travel companions she would have would rise up to the standard he set, alongside Wei-ge…

 

Speaking of Wei-ge.

 

« What about you ? » Cangse Sanren wondered, blinking quicksilver eyes. « First Jiang Disciple ? Won’t it be a disaster for your face if you insist to attend this poor wandering maiden ? »

 

The black-clad young man softly snorted.

 

« I am of peasant stock, and not that strong. Not a great deal to lose. »

 

His eyes softened.

 

« A great deal to gain, though. If you wish for my blade to keep ensuring your protection. »

 

Cangse Sanren’s arms snaked around his neck, and she lengthened her legs in order to not force him to bend his back too much as she hugged him, that was the kind of thing to put a crick in your vertebra and yeowch, not enjoyable at all.

 

« You silly, silly man » she breathed in his ear. « The answer has always been yes. »

 

They would have to pack their qiankun pouches – left on Qing Jing Peak because nobody expected for things to go sideways this morning at breakfast, oh and Cangse Sanren was still reading A study of the Wu county’s idiosyncratic qi-touched fauna so she might borrow the book until she came back, and she would because it was Yue Qingyuan’s Sect and she wanted to see him again – and explain to the Young Master Jiang there were trouble brewing at the gates, sorry to steal your First Disciple please don’t be too angry at me, I promise I feel a smidge bad about it really, and then retrieving Little Blossom the donkey from the meadow it was very busy turning in a desert, seriously could a donkey turn overweight from eating too much because Little Blossom was putting its best effort to be the very first one ever recorded and Cangse Sanren wondered if she ought to put a stop to it or treat that as the opportunity for research.

 

Ah well, now that it was back on the road, Little Blossom surely would lose the fat in a jiffy – and would be extremely unhappy to not be able to nap beneath the bamboo and roll itself in comfy grass. But really, Cangse Sanren wasn’t interested in working her feet to the bone – the hipbone, as she intended to travel a lot.

 

Wei-ge would probably be alright since he had a sword, he could clim on it when he was tired – wait, was it some advanced cultivation technique, keeping your sword in the air ? Everyone mundane in the Middle Kingdom assumed all the cultivators with a spiritual tool could pull the trick, but there were stables and horses in Cang Qiong ! Unless it was for the Disciples and menials ? Ah, now the question would bother her so much !

 

One thing to investigate when she and Wei-ge would have left the mountain range – stuck together as they would be, no way he could refuse to sate her curiosity.

 

 

Chapter 188

While Cangse Sanren was busy drafting a letter explaining to Disciple Ning her departure and a letter reassuring her parent that she was entirely safe under Wei Changze’s protection, the soon ex-First Disciple went and told Jiang Fengmian he couldn’t go back to Lotus Pier with the Sect Heir.

 

It was – less bitter than he expected. Startingly so – Lotus Pier had been home since Wei Changze lost his parents as he was a mere toddler, surely he ought to be torn and upset about breaking his vows to follow a maiden who might not be of purely respectable extract. And yet.

 

No vacillation, no hesitation. Wei Changze made his bed and he wanted to lie within, gladly.

 

Jiang Fengmian understood. That wonderful, far too kind man called to lead a Sect in a world that didn’t care too much for kindness, he understood what his soon-to-be former subordinate could barely articulate, why he would throw his entire life in disarray over a seemingly idiotic whim that was entirely logical and rational.

 

« You know you will always be welcome to Lotus Pier » the Sect Heir said, his purplish eyes shimmering with a soft sadness. « You and Maiden Cangse. Whenever you will be in the mood to visit. »

 

Wei Changze bowed his head.

 

« A thousand thanks to Jiang Fengmian. Once again, he’s far too good to this one. »

 

« Let’s agree to disagree about that, hm ? Just one last time. »

 

That was the shape taken by their separation, gentle and overwhelming as that specific kind of pain lingering in your chest, in your ribcage, squeezing your heart with a quietly crushing grip all night long and driving tears to spill over your cheeks and bedding until it was soaked.

 

Wei Changze breathed out through the pain as he walked towards the meadow, where Cangse Sanren was waiting for him, standing near her faithful donkey that grumpily waggled its long ears to let the mountain range know how unhappy it was to leave such a nice pasture – and seeing her smiling toothily, blindingly as she scratched the beast’s greyish neck to soothe it and apologize, his heart was squeezed anew but it wasn’t pain this time.

 

Who would have known happiness could be a vertigo ? That a single smile was enough for your knees to weaken, for your hand to shake so badly you wouldn’t be able to draw your blade, rendered helpless and you wouldn’t hate this newfound powerlessness ?

 

Wei Changze never had been the most philosophical cultivator in the jianghu, but he couldn’t help feeling he was teethering on enlightenment, one of these great truths overturning the Three Realms’ very pillars of existence. Or perhaps he merely was drunk on his own foolishness, stumbling blind in the overpowering glow of love.

 

« Are we ready ? » she asked, white eddies and black smears merrily chasing each other in her quicksilver gaze, ready to disappear beneath the gauzy veil of her hat.

 

« We are » he confirmed, before offering her hand to help her climbing on the donkey – the beast loudly snorted and balefully eyeballed the black-clad cultivator as if he was the one responsible for such an unexpected departure.

 

« Now, since the big gates currently host an altercation, we are going to borrow the paths treaded by the menials. I must confess, that’s a bit exciting » Cangse Sanren happily babbled. « Taking the backdoor to quietly escape the grand estate ! It’s so cliché, I cannot believe I am actually doing that. »

 

« Your literary tastes are shite » Wei Changze bluntly pointed, and the pristine-clad maiden laughed.

 

« Obviously, that wouldn’t be so fun otherwise ! »

 

As she cheerfully exposited just how stupid book plots could grow to be and he listened, Wei Changze guided the donkey towards the exit. Everything was going fine, the Huan Hua Palace delegation far too obsessed by their perceived legitimacy in banging at Cang Qiong’s front gate to bother with smaller doors when a good hunter – and the one who used to be the Jiang First Disciple was a pretty qualified hunter when he was brought on a night hunt – would be aware of any possible way open for the prey to flee, and act to cut them off.

 

Unfortunately, that wasn’t one of the Huan Hua Palace who was waiting to ambush them – no yellow silks embroidered with more gold thread than needed, it was pink and lavender garments, and it was a veil hiding the mouth but it was obvious the maiden was scowling.

 

So maybe everything wasn’t fine.

 

« Begging for the maiden’s understanding » Wei Changze politely uttered, keeping his body stiff, « we are leaving the mountain range for a little while. »

 

Dark eyes narrowed above the veil, glittering with malice.

 

« Right when a very interesting rumour is waved at the gates about a monster skinning itself in humanity hidden among us ? One would think there’s a guilty conscience at work. »

 

Wei Changze stared back, quiet, stoic, unflappable. The pink-clad maiden shifted, her hand nervously thumbing the sword’s hilt hanging at her waist.

 

« It would explain… a great deal of things. About you and her . Why you would be so defensive, so eager to jump between her and the jianghu. »

 

« Surely this lowly one is beneath the noble maiden’s attention » Wei Changze fired back, his shoulder blades slightly damp with sweat. « Really, she doesn’t have to bother with such a wretched being, as he never was her concern. »

 

« Of course you are ! » the Xian Su Disciple exclaimed, her voice rising so loud that the donkey flung its head backwards in alarm, almost hitting his rider on the shoulder. « Of course you are important to me ! »

 

Oh no, that wasn’t good at all. When a spoiled young mistress was bent on having her way, it was best to be far away from the imminent tantrum if you wanted to avoid a beating.

 

Well, considering the previous interactions with her, Cangse Sanren was the one at risk to be targeted for a beating – and that was something they couldn’t afford, it would cost them precious time and it might raise such a commotion that everyone at the front gates would stop bickering and come to see what was the trouble, and it would be a disaster.

 

Wei Changze’s nostrils flared while his temper rose. He didn’t try to keep it in check.

 

« This one does not care for your protection » he carefully uttered, blood simmering hot in his arteries. « And he does not care for your clumsy attempts at shoving yourself within my life to impose your opinions, when it’s blatantly clear these are uneeded and unwanted. Get out, for this one has no wish to hit a woman but he certainly won’t hesitate with the likes of yours. »

 

The pink-clad maiden reeled back, the words hitting her with all the strength of a mighty blow, her veil shivering from the pants escaping her mouth. Then her gaze fell upon Cangse Sanren, who sat quiet and straight-backed on her donkey, her mouth pinched with disapproval for such unruly behaviour.

 

« You » the Xian Su Disciple snarled, « you dirty vixen slut , you ensnared him with your wiles ! Hateful TRAMP ! »

 

Metal shrieked as a blade was suddenly drawn from the scabbard.

 

 

Chapter 189

Liu Mingyan knew it had been just a bit more over three decades since her ge died – and she knew everyone moved beyond that loss. Her family, the Disciples and Hallmasters on Bai Zhan Peak, even the Peak Lords as a whole. Someday, you need to stop crying and remember life goes on, that was the message they wouldn’t stop repeating, more or less gently, more or less irritated by her ongoing grief, her steadfast bereavement.

 

She wanted to kick them, to cleave them in bits with her sword. To shout, don’t you think I just might wish for that too, for my heart to cease hurting, for my mind to finally register he won’t be there whenever I come back from a successful mission ?

 

She very much felt like this spider she once saw, trapped in a shining amber gem wide as her fist – the insect forever caught in the throes of an agonizing drowning. Eternally a prisoner, while the world moved on, because grief had this terrifying and heartrending ability to rip you out of a linear timeline and keep you stuck at a defined point in history, one that caused your entire universe to implode.

 

Liu Mingyan tried – oh, she tried – but she just couldn’t. Sometimes, she wondered if a cruel god wanted for her to be defined by the loss of her brother, to be nothing beyond a sister lacking a sibling now, the last mourner at a funeral now deserted for decades. With some of the tales bandied in the countryside, heard as she was on a night hunt in faraway provinces, as far as the frontier with Annam once, it wouldn’t be so ridiculous a prospect.

 

She just couldn’t, even when Shen Qingqiu – the man who had been there when ge perished in blood and gore and pain and why wouldn’t he attempt to defend himself, why would he keep this stone-faced mien as he carelessly dropped the announce that the Bai Zhan War God perished, that was his martial sibling and you’re not supposed to react this way, why whywhy – had vanished on some errant to be declared most likely dead, there was blood on the scene and the beasts roaming near had been fond of sentient flesh.

 

Perhaps she would have been happier if she had been the one to kill the filthy murderer with her own two hands. Liu Mingyan remembered she pondered that question, dully and despairingly, in the aftermath of Cang Qiong learning they lost another Peak Lord before the Qing generation could ascend together. But ultimately, it wasn’t how Fate decided it would go, and she tried to comfort herself with the fact that her brother’s killer wasn’t plaguing the Middle Kingdom with his continued existence.

 

The pain remained. As she woke up in the morning, as she practised her swordplay and ribbon dance, as she was shredding yet another failed novel to pieces – the pain remained. The absence of her ge, just like an amputee won’t stop stretching their stump towards a mug or a brush only to fail at grasping it because the hand isn’t there anymore. An amputee’s body couldn’t remember it was incomplete now, and Liu Mingyan’s mind just wouldn’t stop forgetting she lacked a brother now.

 

Shizun did her best to help, she truly did, but Liu Mingyan wasn’t the lone cultivator on Xian Su Peak. There were other girls in dire need of guidance and comfort, and her own pain was decades-old, she wasn’t a priority. And everything was so complicated and a struggle with Yue-shibo wallowing in his own grief – and she would sympathize because she knew that feeling, but Yue-shibo was mourning Shen Qingqiu, and, well.

 

So it went. Until the Immortal Alliance Conference. When Liu Mingyan saw her brother’s face in the crowd anew.

 

Obviously she first assumed her mind finally cracked, she was having hallucinations now and she really needed to throw herself at Qian Cao’s healers in a jiffy, but her gut instinct had screamed at her to go and talk with him , and.

 

It was him. It was her brother’s voice and it was her brother’s face, it was her brother’s flatly annoyed tone and it was her brother’s stiff mien –

 

It was her brother’s mannerisms when he was forced to speak with somebody he couldn’t stand. Annoyed and curt and plainly waiting for the first opportunity to flee without even saying goodbye.

 

The pain had flared anew – and later this evening, Shizun had gently, oh so kindly told her it was why Immortal Masters were generally discouraged from seeking lost acquaintances or beloved relatives after they reincarnated in another body.

 

This Wei Changze used to be Liu Qingge, yes, but Liu Qingge wasn’t Wei Changze. Rebirth involves deep change, and it’s very distressing to behold just how deep these changes will run.

 

But – he was her brother. Liu Mingyan beheld the body – and Shizun and Mu-shibo attempted to forbid it, insisting she would have nightmares and they were right, the blood and crushed bones and the sheer stillness when her ge was permanenly coiled with tension and vitality, it caused her to wake up breathless and sweating so many times but ge was ge, how could she not do that – she saw him mute and unmoving and now he wasn’t, and she needed that. She needed to see him alive. She needed to hear his voice. Just once. Just one time more.

 

It had been so long. When she wanted to see his face, she only had to remove her veil and gaze in a mirror, but the deep baritone, the confident stride ? These were fading in the mists of oblivion, slipping through her memories as water in a sieve. What if she forgot again ? She didn’t want to forget.

 

Liu Mingyan needed for him to remain. Even if she only saw him from afar – she needed for him to be near. To be safe. To be alive.

 

And he couldn’t be safe, he wouldn’t stay alive for long if that awful, horrendous tramp bearing Shen Qingqiu’s hateful face kept latching on his arm. Prettily pouting and fluttering her eyelashes, inanely babbling about monsters and flowers, the very picture of a hopelessly sheltered young mistress who couldn’t survive without someone to hold her hand through the day, every single day of the year.

 

Why did he tolerate her company ? Ge had always hated hothouse flowers, anything pampered and spoiled to the point of uselessness had brought his mistrust and loathing upon themselves – so why  ?!

 

Obviously the answer would be sinister, because the world was unkind – a huli jing, a fox spirit, a man-eater skinning itself in sweetness and false gentleness to lure prey, closer and closer, until the trap’s jaws snapped shut on their necks. This twisted species enjoyed corrupting the innocent and righteous souls, and ge had been possessed of such mighty principles, surely death and rebirth couldn’t manage to wash them away no matter how deep he drank of the forgetfulness potion, he would be the perfect target for the beast’s wiles as she bound him in a tangled net of her charm and ruthlessness.

 

No, it wouldn’t happen. Liu Mingyan wouldn’t allow it. She already lived through her brother’s loss once, she wouldn’t do it twice.

 

Never. Again.

 

 

Chapter 190

Shen Yuan never enjoyed reading about women cheerfully slapping each other silly over a man. Just, why in the Eighteen Hells would you shuck your dignity down in the dumps for the sake of somebody likely uninterested, or plainly unworthy of attention if he enjoyed having people debasing themselves for an ego-boost ?

 

Now that Cangse Sanren was assaulted by a bafflingly wrathful pink-clad and veiled maiden, the youg huli jing could confirm it was far from a pleasant experience to endure. Seriously, girl, have you no shame ?! Have you no eyes to see Wei-ge would rather have nothing to do with you, so why would you draw the insane conclusion that beating on his travel companion would persuade him to look upon you with fondness ?! How utterly ridiculous, truly ! A scene that would be luridly described in a badly written yellow novel fit only for wiping your ass, because the author couldn’t be bothered to provide effort in depicting characters blessed with a teaspoon of common sense and wits !

 

Apple Blossom screamed – and what a terrible noise it was, the scream of a burden beast that suddenly faced the prospect of a gruesome and painful demise – as Cangse Sanren fell from the saddle to avoid Pink Maiden’s blade, she could shift her organs around to avoid her heart or lung or something else important for her survival getting pierced and ruined but it was better to not practise the skill when evading was possible. That and the fox spirit couldn’t bear it if the poor donkey got injured by Pink Maiden, cultivators in a snit weren’t too careful about averting collateral damage and no, it wasn’t merely a flaw limited to the left-hand practicioners gathering strength from suffering and devastation.

 

Cultivators tended to be assholes as a rule, that was Master Baoshan and Mama’s staunch opinion, and right now Cangse Sanren was quite agreeing with them. Also deeply lamenting their absence, Mama would have punched Pink Maiden into the next week before the veiled girl could even think about removing her sword from its scabbard – but on the other hand, such behaviour pointed at Pink Maiden not thinking at all. Ah, why were humans so irrational and dumb ?

 

« Stay there ! » Pink Maiden screamed and whew, her veil didn’t do anything to fully hide the horrendous grimace she was pulling. « Stay there and let me kill you ! »

 

Yeah, no. See ? See how humans are stupid ? Wanting for their opponent to give them an opportunity to butcher them, as if said opponent hadn’t been blessed with survival instincts at birth. Cangse Sanren wanted to shake her head in dismay, but that wasn’t the right moment, when a madwoman was throwing herself at you with a gleaming blade, you remained focused on avoiding the blade until she got tired –

 

Or until your travel companion jumped on her from behind. Boy, did Wei-ge look pissed, and the huli jing wholly understood why he would be annoyed and furious, nothing like your party getting attacked to wind up in an awful mood. Moreso when it was done by your stalker, the one you explicitely rejected yet was too mired in self-delusion to listen and respect your decision.

 

Now, Wei-ge was a man, tall and well-fed and endowed with healthy muscles and broad shoulders from a lifetime spend swimming in Lotus Pier’s river and practising the blade, but cultivation had a way to bridge the gap between men and women. Especially when you cultivated long enough, and in the jianghu someone who seemed youthful far too often wasn’t.

 

Pink Maiden was initially startled, but she swiftly recovered and kicked Wei-ge to the ground. Cangse Sanren’s ears twitched and winced as something nastily snapped – oh fuck, please don’t let Wei-ge having broken ribs !

 

This fucking bitch had hurt Wei Changze. How dare you when you professes caring for him !

 

A growl tore its path outside of the huli jing’s mouth, a mouth suddenly filled with razor sharp fangs, so many fangs they were growing in three rows on the lower and upper jaw each. Nails lenghtened and hardened and blackened, the claws thus obtained shredding Pink Maiden’s heavily reinforced overcoat as the fox spirit pounced on her, pounced with dainty feet turned misshapen paws as they burst out of their slippers.

 

Still Pink Maiden wouldn’t fall. She was an experienced cultivator, and Shen Yuan had been raised safely and comfortably on Zhengmei Mountain, cloisetered away from any threat foolish enough to brave a muddy dragon’s threshold – then after departing for his grand tour across the Middle Kingdom, had shamelessly relied on Young Master Jiang and Wei-ge and later his Excellency the future Sacred Ruler to divert foes upon their much capable hands.

 

The odds weren’t favoring Cangse Sanren, but Cangse Sanren currently was running on sheer and utter spite – the all-encompassing craving to beat Pink Maiden’s face so badly, she would need the veil to hide her bruises and shattered teeth rather than keeping herself chaste.

 

« Finally ! » Pink Maiden roared, her voice crazed and climbing in a painfully shrill register. « Finally the beast shows its true self ! As disgusting and repulsive as expected ! »

 

Cangse Sanren roared back, half in anger, half in pain for hir right hand now pierced by the cultivator’s spiritual blade and yeowch did it hurt, the steel must have been imbued with mystical properties regarding nonhuman foes because that sting couldn’t be normal, it was distracting and there was no time to be distracted, don’t stop focusing or you won’t like the consequences…

 

On the ground, Wei-ge stirred and groaned, his ribcage creaking.

 

A white flash tore through the air – and his hand grasped a sword’s hilt, a blade that made a token effort to be elegant but anyone laying eyes upon it would immediately know it was a weapon meant for slaughter and the hunt.

 

He rose back, stiff and awkward, a puppet jerked by a new hand pulling on the threads knotted around its limbs.

 

Cangse Sanren hopelessly blinked to dispell the white glare scattering glowy fireflies all over her sight, and Pink Maiden didn’t look much better.

 

« Cheng Luan ?! » the female cultivator gasped – then she hiccuped, lowering her gaze towards her belly and the weapon stuck within, diving in her flesh with such fluidity that you wouldn’t notice before it happened.

 

Not a mortal wound, especially not for one treading the path leading to the Silver Bridge and immortality, but certainly a nasty injury to be treated as soon as possible. Cangse Sanren was more familiar with beast and monster anatomy, but she was pretty sure it nicked the liver and intestines.

 

Wei-ge twisted his wrist before removing the sword from Pink Maiden’s flesh with a wet noise, leaving her to fall backwards on the ground. He was staring at Cangse Sanren – the huli jing with her numerous fangs and her bloodied talons and the misshapen body swaddled by pristine garments, and suddenly zhe felt awkward and a tad fearful, Wei-ge still was holding this new sword…

 

« It’s better to go now » he said, his voice serene and unbothered, as if they merely remembered forgetting a bit of luggage and going back to search for it.

 

Cangse Sanren swallowed, as her fangs vanished and dulled back into mundane teeth while her body shrinked and her claws retracted themselves into nails.

 

« Alright. »

 

 

Chapter 191

The blade fits perfectly in his hand, as if the hilt had been carefully molded around Wei Changze’s fingers, and he could swear his meridians were humming in pleasure from bearing the steel’s weight.

 

As he trained and ultimately was deemy skilled enough to not immediately perish on a night hunt, the Jiang First Disciple had wielded many swords – for beating on his fellow disciples, then for killing wild beasts and demons and hungry ghosts – but not a single one ever resonated with his core, as an extension of his will and strength.

 

Mostly, it was seen as further evidence of the foolishness it was to allow a mere servant born of peasant stock to crawl towards the silver bridge – a spiritual blade was far too good for the likes of him, obviously.

 

Wei Changze somewhat wondered what these proud, spoiled highborns would say if they beheld him right now, holding such a peerless sword – one that clearly wanted for him to use it, one that effortlessly let itself to be carried and used as if he practised with it for years.

 

One that felt like an old friend he had to abandon for a while as he traveled abroad, but now he was back and that friend was nothing but happy to see him again.

 

« So… do you think you will sheathe your brand-new sword someday ? Just asking. »

 

Cangse Sanren blinked at him, the silken panels hanging off the brim of her wide-brimmed hat fluttering in the slight breeze and baring her face for a fên before hiding it anew. She was sitting very primly and straight on her donkey, led on a leash by Wei Changze with his left hand, and he was holding his unexpected blade in the right.

 

What an alarming spectacle they must be, to any passing traveler on the road. Surely the bystanders would assume this black-clad and scowling man without any qualms brandishing bare steel was up to no good – and that wasn’t like he could actually deny it. After all, he did assault a cultivator hailing from the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect with this blade, before leaving the maiden half dead in the wake of his escape, carrying the sword when nobody actually gifted it to him or gave him allowance to borrow it.

 

Sure, the maiden had been quite aggressive and stubborn and wouldn’t stop pestering him in spite of his plain refusal to indulge her pushiness and entitled behaviour, but being in the right wasn’t as much of a shield as you would believe. She belonged to the most influent and powerful Sect in the jianghu, possibly to a fairly well-off bloodline if you assumed she was one of these daughters carefully shunted somewhere she could help her lineage to gain prestige through a cultivator in their records, and Wei Changze was a nobody who used to belong to a hopelessly recent – for the jianghu – and small organization, and now he didn’t even enjoy Jiang Fengmian’s protection as his future Sect Leader since he willingly severed himself from Lotus Pier. When the maiden would get treatment for her injuries, she would cry for justice against the cur who dared to raise a hand to her, and everyone would jump to fulfill her command.

 

The Cang Qiong Mountain Sect would search for the pair of fugitives, and perhaps they would be offended to the point of enlisting the Huan Hua Palace’s support in the endeavour – the Old Palace Master already was darkening their gates, after all, and having his suspicions about foul play thus vindicated would encourage his zeal for Cangse Sanren’s blood to be spilled.

 

A crappy situation all around. If that was a night hunt, with both of them stranded in the wilderness and knowing there were brigands or rabid beasts hot on their trail, Wei Changze would suggest to try and find a refuge in the nearest town, one with the high walls and guards to withstand an hostile force bent on committing slaughter and bloodshed.

 

Wait. That wasn’t such a bad idea. Unfortunately, Wei Changze wasn’t that familiar with the landscape, especially where safe housing aiming to remain hidden from the lawful authorities was concerned – but Cangse Sanren, for all she grew up sheltered under a muddy dragon’s tremendous shadow, was rather more informed on the matter of disrespectable cities in which you could vanish for a while, as long as you were ready to pay the price. Because she was a demon – he saw her sprout talons and fangs and throw herself at the pink-clad maiden with the intent to bare-handedly gut her.

 

The sword hummed in his grasp. Truly a wondrous blade, steel glistening with sharpness and might, a weapon intended for monster-slaying no matter how tough the monsters attempted to be.

 

A weapon Wei Changze wished to wield against anyone, righteous cultivator or demon or flying squirrel, wanting to do harm upon Cangse Sanren. In spite of the claws and the teeth, because at the end of the line he wanted for his purpose to be laying down his life in order to protect another’s life. A life that would be pure and kind and good, and having talons or pointy teeth didn’t seem like a major obstacle to that.

 

As he came to this conclusion, he thought the blade snorted in a corner of his mind, but it was an amused sound, the kind of noise Jiang Fengmian would do when he was commenting on Wei Changze’s choices, of course you would do that, it was stupid of me to expect otherwise, I am supposed to know you better and now I just feel idiot.

 

« We need to hide » he blurted. « Somewhere the jianghu will never dare to brave, otherwise we soon will find ourselves swimming in shite up our hairline. »

 

« Welll » the pristine-clad maiden drawled, « it’s going to be just a smidge difficult to do that. Cultivators are kinda famed for snooping right where you don’t want them, after all, even in the Demon Realm – and we certainly won’t be hiding there. »

 

« Certainly not » Wei Changze agreed as he scrunched his brows – delivering themselves to the Heavenly Demon strain lineage by walking around their turf as a civil war was raging, definitely not a good idea.

 

« Let us see… even if cultivators are causing a disruption, what if there’s somebody who would take offense to that behaviour… someone powerful enough to stand up to a great Sect… huh, I think – Mama told me about the Ghost Market once, and Master Baoshan goes there sometimes when she’s in the mood for disgusting snacks. Has Wei-ge heard about the Ghost Market ? »

 

The former Jiang First Disciple couldn’t help the grimace twisting his mouth.

 

« That – would be the Ghost Sovereign’s den, right ? The most powerful being in the Human and Lower Realms since Tianlang-jun’s sealing ? »

 

« Dunno about powerful » Cangse Sanren pouted. « He doesn’t do a lot, you know ? He’s never trying to impress his followers or mankind by going on a rampage, except for this mischief with the thirty gods… I am pretty sure he won’t pay attention to us if we wander in his market as long as we keep a low profile. »

 

Wei Changze privately admitted it was a good point – the Ghost Sovereign wouldn’t have a reason to notice a pair of outlanders who never met him before.

 

 

Chapter 192

Nothing beneath the Heavens could or did travel faster than gossip, that was a truth long acknowledged by everyone gifted with a mouth to repeat juicy rumours.

 

« Say, are the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect and the Huan Hua Palace at war ? Invading another Sect’s turf just like the golden peacocks did, that cannot be forgiven ! »

 

It had been a whole week since Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze had fled the Tian Gong Twelve Peaks, they had a donkey and a golden core allowed you to keep a brisk walking pace – and they really weren’t interested in lingering on the path because of the possible pursuers snapping at their heels, Shen Yuan bemoaned the missed opportunity to enjoy the sights but survival took precedence over learning and amazement – yet it seemed the Middle Kingdom already knew what happened on this fated day.

 

Well, they didn’t truly know, but their imaginations certainly were working in overdrive. One innkeeper claimed the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect lost their moral fiber after losing too many Peak Lords and started colluding with twisted abominations whose very existence defiled the air and the soil, and the innkeeper wasn’t shy in providing gruesome details on the kind of sins an abomination would have to do in order to be deemed such. A busker clad in gaudy linens swore up and down that the jianghu had been carefully manipulated by a ruthless agent of the Imperial Court, perhaps that one prince sent into exile half a decade ago, because the current Son of Heaven couldn’t bear for the ones treading the silver bridge to remain apart and not officially his vassals to command yet couldn’t directly face a bunch of peerless warriors casually able to shred demons like a measly sheet of paper so trickery was a must. A fancily made up and prettily dressed maiden twittered the Old Palace Master lost his composure after laying eyes upon a Cang Qiong Disciple tragically reminding him of his lost Disciple Su Xiyan and couldn’t stand the prospect of her belonging to another Sect so he led an army of his cultivators to abduct the young beauty.

 

These were only a few theories and tall tales in a flood of them. Cangse Sanren was utterly entranced by the sheer absurdity and passion mundane people were ready to sink in this incident when it unfolded far, far away from their home but hey, zhe liked reading yellow novels, the trashier they were the funnier they were to tear apart, so he couldn’t criticize too much or that would stink of rank hypocrisy.

 

Wei-ge frowned or flat-out grimaced every time he heard bystanders cheerfully debating the news. Private person as he was, he likely was weirded by his association with the latest hot topic to be analyzed in the town markets, when you are waiting for the butcher or the seamstress to deliver the goods and slightly too bored to focus on your immediate surroundings.

 

Apple Blossom being a donkey couldn’t care less about its rider being involved in the scandalous mystery rocking the Middle Kingdom to the foundations, as long as she kept feeding it freshly plucked apples.

 

What would think Mama and Yue Qingyuan when they would hear ? Shen Yuan easily pictured his mother throwing a fit and asking for Master Baoshan to drop by the Huan Hua Palace and messily devour all these twats in golden finery, but Yue Qingyuan wasn’t that familiar right now. Would he get indignant about another attempt to intrude on his territory, so soon after the first ?

 

As Cangse Sanren pondered the matter, the young huli jing and her faithful protector kept trudging towards their t arget, the Ghost Market.

 

Visiting the Ghost Market wasn’t the same as visiting the Demon Realm, no matter how many demons came to relish the atmosphere there – the Ghost Market, as indicated by the name, was first and foremost a place in which everyone of disrespectable reputation sold or bought or traded or bartered ill-gained wares, under the uncaring supervision of the Ghost Sovereign who only bestirred himself when a customer or guest decided to level the town, or his favorite gambling den, the rumours were unclear on this point.

 

They also were quite unclear about the Ghost Sovereign’s appearance, some of them claiming he was a maimed soldier, a few of them depicting him as a confident lord dripping with his station’s wealth, and the most funny version guessed he actually was a young child, hungry-looking as any other street urchin.

 

The Ghost Sovereign likely overlaid a glamour upon his face before showing himself to his people, Cangse Sanren concluded since zhe was a shapeshifter and as such open to consider all the skins ascribed to the Ghost Market’s ruler as based in reality. It wasn’t so hard to do when your cultivation reached a high level, just look at Master Baoshan who perfectly could don the two legs and soft complexion of a human woman, she merely had no drive to do so most of the time.

 

However, that was a good deterrent to the idea of making a nuisance of themselves on the Ghost Sovereign’s turf – it never was smart to mouth off to somebody with the power to ruin your day, Mama and the many aunties and uncles on Zhengmei Mountain had repeatedly told that to Shen Yuan, a wisdom painfully gained in the blood and tears of their younger years. Sure, Cangse Sanren wanted to keep her head low in the Ghost Market, and Wei-ge was far too aware he couldn’t very well watch over her if he went and got eaten by a demon or ghost much older than his usual targets for a night hunt, but it couldn’t hurt to have a little reminder.

 

Also, did the Ghost Market do long-term hiding ? Surely some traders and merchants and peddlers had a permanent stall and the storage space to stuff their wares and a little housing unit for them or their employees to ensure nobody would steal the goodies or the stall while they were away, so an inn or a bedroom for rent could be found, but how would the pair of a huli jing and an ex-First Disciple to a minor Sect pay for it ?

 

Cangse Sanren wouldn’t ask for Wei-ge to sell his brand-new sword, even if it looked very fine, because spiritual blades tended to have opinions on being bartered instead of earned, no matter what the black market attempted to claim. Perhaps she could offer her services as a scribe ? All these notes and drawings she scrawled to prepare the first draft of her compendium about fantastic fauna and flora gave her a pretty good hand at calligraphy, she liked to think – at the very least, this fuddy-duddy Lan Qiren never groused about her essays being unintelligible…

 

Their living situation was going to be really precarious, it seemed. And it wasn’t taking Apple Blossom in account – knowing the demon appetite for anything and everything, Cangse Sanren would have to fend off the butchers wanting some fresh meat to garnish their morning run, and selling the poor aged donkey to be consumed by the hungry masses would be poor thanks for the beast’s years of hard and faithful service.

 

Ah well, there was time still before their arrival. Time to plan for their sojourn in a most crooked and corrupted city.

 

 

Chapter 193

Hearing about a place named the Ghost Market, it was somewhat logical for Wei Changze to assume it would look a bit like Lotus Pier on a sunny day, when stalls sprouted at every street corner as mushrooms after the rain, overflowing with cloth in every shade of the rainbow, flowers thickening the air with so many perfumes it was enough to give any unexperienced bystander a terrible headache, and so much food – lotus seeds and all the fishes caught the very morning in the river and the ponds and spices guaranteed to cause your eyes to water merely when you witnessed how red they were, and it was but a few items on a very long list of them.

 

And don’t forget the people, because it wouldn’t be a true market without grocers insisting their fruits and vegetables were the best quality you could find so stop haggling to lower the price, old grannies complaining they used to buy silk thread cheap once upon a time but now it costed so much you would think it was a luxury good meant for the Imperial Court only, buskers yowling a bawdy song or butchering an epic poem until somebody threw mud or a fistful of coins at them to shut the noise, street urchins waiting for a target to con out of their purse.

 

Yes, Wei Changze had expectations when he heard the word for market. Surely it couldn’t be too different from the usual in the Middle Kingdom, even with demons and ghosts as the main customers and staff ?

 

Yet it was.

 

Their first glimpse of the Ghost Market was a faint reddish glow at the end of their road, music quietly playing under the darkening sky. Cangse Sanren, who was busy nodding off, straightened up and intently gazed at the scarlet haze waiting to swallow the travelers in its depths. Apple Blossom nervously snorted, the donkey’s tail whipping its legs, yet the beast meekly resigned itself to its fate as Wei Changze firmly tugged on the bridle to clearly warn no attempt to escape would be tolerated.

 

« Alright, then » the pristine-clad maiden whispered. « Whew, doesn’t it feel weird to stop hiding my essence so much after all this time. »

 

The former Jiang First Disciple glanced at his protectorate. Behind the silken panels hanging from the wide hat’s brims, Cangse Sanren’s face has slightly sharpened, her long hair bleaching until it turned the smooth and shining shade of mutton fat jade, and the hands demurely laid on her lap were now wickedly clawed.

 

They discussed how to best remain unknown and unnoticeable in the crowd on the road, and ultimately deemed it would be safer if one of their company was plainly and obviously a demon, someone fully in the right to visit the market for nebulous wares you wouldn’t be able to find in a mundane town. A cultivator would rouse suspicions, but if Wei Changze kept his spiritual blade hidden beneath his coat, the bystanders would be liable to dismiss him as a puppet or indentured servant to his demon mistress.

 

Another cultivator would have bristled at the pretense, even Jiang Fengmian would have balked at the humiliation of putting a front of submission to a demon, but Wei Changze was used to bow his head and swallow his opinion in front of the highborns. Really, how was that a departure from this when his audience belonged to the Underworld ?

 

As they came closer from the Market’s entrance, the crowd was growing – and what a crowd it was ! A great deal of the beings haunting the grand street bathed in scarlet glow was donning a gallery of masks, enough to open a theater and entertain with tales of long-horned ogres, white-faced witches and scowling brutes. There were blue-skinned towering things with pig snouts and a protruding belly, there were greyish-skinned corpses softly hopping on the ground as they wove through the crush of bodies, there was a massive emerald green torso with eyes stuck in the usual places for nipples holding a waiting line of mourning-clad ghosts shrieking for some reason or another.

 

The air absolutely reeked – it reeked of sweat, the kind that remained unwashed until it got crusted and flaky in the creases of the garments, especially the armpits and the groin. It reeked of bloody offals and meats as it was slaughtered right there and now, ensuring your dinner would be the absolute freshest you could taste and tainted with the memory of terrified screaming as said dinner was gutted and carved open in front of your hungry eyes. It reeked of sewers and decay, both a reminder of the grave in which so many customers were dwelling and the natural consequence of people dropping their trash and refuse to be trampled underfoot or greedily devoured by the more depraved guests of the place.

 

Above the crowd, bloated lanterns were gently waving, hanging off the threads linking the buildings on both sides of the grand street, a set of jeweled girdles ornamented with dangling chains of glistening rubies and garnets, bathing the faces and the stalls and the wares in a bloody crimson tinge worthy of a hellish furnace waiting to consume everything and everyone pushed within.

 

Wei Changze glanced anew towards Cangse Sanren – the maiden remained still and serene on her donkey, and in the scarlet light that dyed her clothes and the silk veiling her face, she seemed dressed for her wedding, a bride led to her groom’s house – why was he thinking about that ? The priority was to explore the market and search for a hideout, not to drool as a dumbass and remain a walking target for a demon in the mood for a snack. Sure, stalls were offering food, but considering how naturally ruthless and violent demons were, the black-clad cultivator would assume cannibalism wasn’t the worst crime that could and did happen in that street. In such a place, no law or rule would protect the guests.

 

Well, the former Jiang First Disciple always craved more opportunities to practise his swordsmanship, and he had to familiarize himself with his new spiritual blade at some point. It was a lot of demons… but he wasn’t afraid.

 

Cangse Sanren was depending on him. He couldn’t afford the luxury of fretting and going to pieces over the prospect of demons and ghosts making a snack out of him, because a maiden stranded in that den of sin and vice would suffer so much worse – and dying wouldn’t stop the torment, far from it.

 

Deep breaths. Out, and in.

 

« Where are we to go, now ? » he softly asked, and his voice almost got lost in the din of screams and shouts and conversation guaranteed to spill out of any market when it was the rush hour.

 

Cangse Sanren waited a little while before answering.

 

« Let’s walk around. I don’t see any inns near the gates but surely they exist somewhere in this town. Or we could just try and sit in a teahouse ? A nice little shop with good food to forget how long the road was. »

 

Wei Changze grimaced as he watched a terrifyingly huge boar throw a wailing human on its stall, swiftly hack their head off with a hatchet in a shower of blood and proceed to rip the belly open to gain access to the twitching innards.

 

« I don’t think we can trust any of the offered food there. »