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The messenger arrives while one of the monks is stitching Tianlang Jun’s left arm back on.
This (the arm-reattachment, not the messenger) is a regular occurrence; the monks of Zhao Hua Temple are no longer shocked when one of his limbs drops off while he’s pacing in the courtyard outside his small room. No matter what healing efforts the monks make, the Sun and Moon Dew Flower Seed body is always going to be an uneasy fit with his demonic energy. And for some reason, his left arm is particularly pesky. It falls off once a week, at least. Sometimes, in the infrequent moments when Tianlang Jun allows himself to remember the life he left behind, he imagines it as a sort of unpopular loot drop in a video game. Not the arm again! I’ve already got three of these!
So: the arm is not a surprise. The messenger, though—that’s unusual. Very few people have reason to visit a disgraced demon leader who almost managed to merge the Human and Demon Realms.
“A messenger for me?” he murmurs, as the monk at his shoulder continues with the even stitching. “A human?”
The monk at the door shakes his head, a touch of distaste creeping across his face. “A demon.” The members of Zhao Hua Temple tolerate Tianlang Jun—even seem used to him, by now—but they do not like demons much.
Even more mysterious. He has few friends in the Demon Realm; none, really, since the death of his nephew. “Send him in, then.”
Both monks withdraw, and a small demon skulks in, bowing low. The sky-blue skin and sharp navy fingernails proclaim him as a demon of the Northern Territory. Perhaps Luo Binghe has chosen to reach out to him. It would be interesting, at least, to see how different the child is now, from Luo Binghe-the-stallion-protagonist.
“Well?” he says, when the demon fails to speak.
“My Lord,” the demon squeaks. His nose begins to run, nervously. “I—uh—that is—. Well. My master has sent me to tell you—”
“And who is your master?”
“Linguang Jun, my lord.” It takes a moment for Tianlang Jun to place the name in his memories of Proud Immortal Demon Way: an extremely minor character, whose attack on Mobei Jun had been easily defeated by Binghe’s protagonist halo. He only remembers because there was so little to do during the long years suppressed under Bailu Mountain that he’d passed the time reviewing the bloated plots from that blasted webnovel.
“Continue, then.” (In any event he is hardly in a position to judge someone for being a minor character in a terrible book, although at least he managed to rectify the situation somewhat, by becoming—he suppresses a laugh at the thought—a half-interesting villain. Still no match for the protagonist’s halo in the end, though.)
“My master says that you and he have similar interests,” the demon says, in a rush. The nervous nose is now crusted with dozens of tiny icicles. “And similar enemies.”
Enemies? Tianlang Jun doesn’t think of himself as having enemies, really—it’s hard to have enemies when you don’t want anything, or care much about anything; apathy has no enemies. The demon, however, blathers on in a way that suggests that Linguang Jun thinks Tianlang Jun has some desire to oust Luo Binghe from his role as leader of the Demon Realm, perhaps by first undermining Mobei Jun, his hunk-of-ice second in command.
“… the interference of the human, Shang Qinghua,” the demon says. “And so my master says that if Mobei Jun is—”
“Wait,” Tianlang Jun says, forceful. “Shang Qinghua?” The demon squeaks in agreement.
Shang Qinghua, who was foolish enough to reveal his own true identity as he entered the cave on Maigu Ridge, muttering WTF, you were supposed to stay stuck under that mountain, this isn’t what I wrote, this isn’t what the outline said either, as if Tianlang Jun couldn’t hear him or were too stupid (or perhaps too fictional) to understand what this meant. He has no enemies, yes, but if he did, Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky would be at the top of the list, for burying him under the most boring plotline to ever find its way into a stallion webnovel.
Shang Qinghua … well. Perhaps he can teach the man a tiny lesson.
“Tell your master that I will assist him,” he says, to the cowering demon. “I will show him a way to remove Shang Qinghua, so that he does not interfere in your master’s dealings with Mobei Jun.”
“But the target is Mobei Jun,” the demon says, hesitant. “Not Shang Qinghua.”
Tianlang Jun pauses for a moment, considering Mobei Jun’s attack on Zhuzhi Lang on Maigu Ridge, and Shang Qinghua’s leap from the open mouth of the cave when the ice demon had fallen out. “You can tell your master that this will also weaken Mobei Jun. Now, here is what he must do—first, he must gather copper from Maigu Ridge, which has been imbued with the energy of the sword Xin Mo. Next, there is a plant, which only grows outside the gates of the Holy Mausoleum … ”
###
“Should I reduce the heat from the stove, my king?”
Mobei Jun, who is sitting rather near to the stove in question, looks up from the map spread across his broad thighs. “No,” he says, shortly. “The temperature is fine.”
The temperature is fine, for a human: Shang Qinghua’s quarters are the only place in the Northern Fortress where he can take off his great heaping mass of fur cloaks without his teeth starting to chatter immediately. (Sure—as he has told Shen Qingqiu, on numerous exasperated occasions—he could use spiritual energy to avoid the effects of the biting cold that emanates off the ice of the fortress, but he would simply prefer not to, okay??? Sometimes a man just wants to sit around feeling toasty warm without having to work for it!)
The problem is that the temperature is not fine for Mobei Jun, which Shang Qinghua knows because Mobei Jun’s robes—which usually reveal a tasteful strip of bare skin (which, to be honest, is already quite distracting)—have been wrenched open to show almost the entire expanse of his chest, which is also quite literally glistening in the heat, and if Shang Qinghua has to see one more shadowed glimpse of demon nipple he is going to combust. And he cannot combust, or throw himself at Mobei Jun’s feet (which would be wretchedly close to Mobei Jun’s rather delicate ankles, which Shang Qinghua has a longstanding, much-suppressed urge to lick) and demand to be able to serve his king in a manner that would make the author of The Resentment of Chunshan blush, because then Mobei Jun will know.
Shang Qinghua very much does not want Mobei Jun to know what he would like to do with him. Or … (one mental hand waving in the direction of the strange, warm sensation that bubbles up from his stomach whenever he thinks about Mobei Jun) how he feels about him.
And so the temperature is, objectively, not fine. Not that he intends to say so: Mobei Jun, as he often does, showed up in Shang Qinghua’s quarters about two hours ago, and has been sitting in a chair close to Shang Qinghua (and therefore close to the stove) doing various administrative tasks ever since. Shang Qinghua cannot think of a single reason Mobei Jun might choose to spend time in these quarters unless he wants to get away from the constant bustle of the throne room or the flow of demons seeking their lord in his own luxuriously icy rooms. If Mobei Jun finds Shang Qinghua’s quarters—or his presence—a soothing break from the demands of his rule, Shang Qinghua will not deny that to him. Even if it does mean that his sleep is broken by dreams of Mobei Jun’s robes slipping lower, lower …
“My lord?” A voice from outside the door.
“Come in,” Shang Qinghua coughs out.
The door opens to reveal one of the lower-level demons, who bows to Shang Qinghua, spots Mobei Jun, gawks, and bows again, extra low. “My lord, there is a messenger for you, bearing a gift,” he says. “At the gate.”
“A gift? For me?” Shang Qinghua says, surprised, and the demon bows again in agreement. Well, that seems unlikely, but even if the gift is truly for Mobei Jun, Shang Qinghua still wants to speak with the messenger first; since the events with Linguang Jun, he has been careful to investigate visitors and gifts sent to his king. He wouldn’t put it past Linguang Jun to attempt to poison Mobei Jun, or attack through some other nefarious means, assuming the demon is still alive. Anyway, this is probably a joke gift from Cucumber-bro. Shang Qinghua thinks the extra gift he sent for Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe’s wedding was hilarious, but reasonable people (or Cucumber-people) could disagree, and want their revenge. He stands, and bows. “My king, I will investigate, and return shortly.”
Just outside the gates to the Northern Fortress, an odd little ice demon messenger is waiting in the shadow of the ice wall, clutching a large silk pouch. Shang Qinghua can’t think that he’s ever seen this particular ice demon before, although there are enough demons that come and go from the Fortress that this isn’t noteworthy. “You have something for me?”
“Yes, my lord,” the demon mutters, very nervously. This is also not unusual; most of the demons know who Shang Qinghua is, and even if he’s just a human of middling height who lacks horns and sharp teeth, they know that Mobei Jun values Shang Qinghua’s service. (And if he would like Mobei Jun to value something more than just his service, the current situation is fine. It’s bearable. Mobei Jun wants him here, and sometimes Mobei Jun makes him noodles, and Shang Qinghua has a happy enough life.) “I was told to put this into your hands.”
The demon thrusts out the silk pouch, and Shang Qinghua takes it. When he undoes the cords holding it closed, a small copper hand mirror slides out. The back is carved with a bas-relief of the demon mark that adorns the foreheads of higher-ranked demons. He flips it over, his reflection staring back at him from the burnished surface, perplexed. Something—wobbles? that’s the only word for it, really—and there’s a sharp, chill prickle across the surface of his skin, rather like the feeling he gets when Mobei Jun yanks him through one of his portals. It passes, almost instantly; probably nothing more than the vertigo he still sometimes feels on realizing that he’s Shang Qinghua, character in a novel he wrote, and no longer Airplane, broke author with no artistic integrity.
“Who sent this to me?” he asks, looking up, but the small ice demon is gone. The sere tundra that spreads out before the gates of the Northern Fortress is bare of any presence but Shang Qinghua’s.
As he takes the short route through the back passage to his quarters, mirror back in the silk pouch, he reflects on the odd gift. Mirrors are not particularly popular among the population of the Demon Realm, so perhaps someone thought he might appreciate having one?
“I’ve returned, my king,” he says, opening the door, but Mobei Jun isn’t there, and these—these aren’t his quarters? The room on the other side of the door is plain and cold: no stove, no pile of furs, no comfortable writing desk with the stack of his half-finished manuscripts. The room gives no indication of the personality of the occupant, beyond a shelf beneath the window that holds a few knives and fans, rather than the potted samples of demon fauna that Shang Qinghua has begun collecting for use as antidotes; if Mobei Jun is poisoned by a Southern Territory bat-asp Shang Qinghua doesn’t want to have to undertake the long search for a starspine dropbell.
He steps back out, slides the door closed, and turns around. The hall looks just as it always does: there’s the icy stalactite that drips constantly, and the turn in the passage that leads down to the ice springs and the vaults, or out to the Fortress gates; in the other direction, the bend in the hallway that leads to Mobei Jun’s quarters or the throne room. With a shiver that has nothing to do with the temperature in the hall, he opens the door again. The room is still barren. When he crosses to the window, the view over the courtyard is the same as that he sees every morning. There are a few demons sitting in the courtyard, gambling over a game that uses human knucklebones.
While he walks down the hall to the throne room, Shang Qinghua tries to suppress the icy chill of premonition. He pulls his fur cloak closer around him, like armour. Probably he just got lost! That could happen to anyone! Absolutely nothing to worry about, nothing to do with the weird feeling when he looked into the mirror, perhaps he’s just a bit tired or seeing Mobei Jun’s chest has addled his sense of direction, it’s not that he’s been transported into—
“Ah, Mobei Jun, there’s your loyal human,” Luo Binghe says, from where he sits sprawled on the throne. Mobei Jun, lurking in the shadows behind him, doesn’t glance in Shang Qinghua’s direction; he looks much as he usually does, and yet—somehow—different. The two women draped across Luo Binghe’s knees both look up, though. One of the women is Sha Hualing and that—that’s Liu Mingyan, and … he doesn’t want to look at the woman leaning against Luo Binghe’s shoulder, because that is Qin Wanrong, and she is supposed to be dead. She died at the Immortal Alliance Conference! She was eaten by the Nu Yuan Chan! This can’t be, this can’t be …
“What’s the word from An Ding Peak, human? Are those fools on Cang Qiong Mountain still planning to challenge me?” Luo Binghe says.
—Proud Immortal Demon Way. He’s been transported into Proud Immortal Demon Way.
###
It takes five days before Mobei Jun is forced to admit the unpleasant truth: Shang Qinghua is avoiding him. That he is still in the Northern Fortress, Mobei Jun knows, but only because a number of demons have reported seeing him lurking about in some of the underground passages, near the treasure rooms. One demon even reported that Shang Qinghua had asked him “Where’s Luo Binghe? And where are all his wives?” but Mobei Jun dismissed this as the ramblings of a demon who had partaken of too much iceberry wine.
There has been no answer, these past five days, when Mobei Jun has gone to visit Shang Qinghua’s quarters. He had thought, perhaps, that Shang Qinghua was simply busy elsewhere, but today when he announces his presence outside the door of ice, he hears a scurry of movement within.
“Qinghua?” More rustling, then a bang, and a short yell, but no other answer. It sounds very much as if someone has climbed the shelves and jumped through the window into the courtyard. Mobei Jun will not force his way inside, however. It is embarassing enough that he goes so often to sit in such sweltering temperatures simply for the pleasure of Shang Qinghua’s company, when all the while Shang Qinghua likely looks upon him as nothing more than a lord to serve. If Mobei Jun’s presence is unwelcome, he will not press his attentions. He can admit, however, that it would be nice if he had some idea why Shang Qinghua is so reluctant to see him—has he given offence? Humans have many strange rules of decorum, as Shang Qinghua is fond of reminding him.
Mobei Jun descends to the ice springs to consider this, but after cracking the skim of ice and plunging in for an invigorating soak, he is no wiser as to the source of Shang Qinghua’s anger. He does not think he has recently offered violence to anyone that Shang Qinghua might consider a friend, or defiled any human temples by chasing demonic beasts through them. (It had only happened once, and he had offered to rebuild the temple.) Indeed, since the incidents with Linguang Jun—during which he had discovered, to his own shock, that he finds the idea of life without Shang Qinghua intolerable—Mobei Jun has been careful to treat Shang Qinghua softly. He has even made him noodles! Twice! Cooking for another is the most humiliating thing a demon can do! He has lowered himself in the eyes of his ancestors to serve Shang Qinghua, and this is how he is repaid?
By the time he comes back up to the throne room, Mobei Jun is in a foul temper. “Where is Shang Qinghua?” he asks the nearest demon. “Send for him at once.”
Shang Qinghua arrives some time later, in the company of two demons. He looks rather different: his hair is scraped back into a perfect knot, rather than a disorganized fray, and he is wearing less furs than usual over his robes. He looks … cringing, perhaps, as if he expects to be beaten. What is worse, Mobei Jun cannot see the leather cord that holds the gold-plated ice tiger claw he had given Shang Qinghua—not as a courting gift, exactly, although if it had been taken in that sense, Mobei Jun would have been happy, but rather as a token to show other demons who was watching Shang Qinghua’s back. There is no sign of it around his neck.
“Come,” Mobei Jun says. “We must discuss the delegation from the Eastern Territory. They arrive in nine days.”
Shang Qinghua bows and sidles to the small seat beside the throne, taking up the brush that rests there. “As you say, my king,” Shang Qinghua says, and Mobei Jun freezes. The delegation from the Eastern Territory had written three days ago to say that they were no longer coming; Shang Qinghua had muttered angrily about it while pacing his room, something about all of his preparations going to waste.
A thought scorches through him, like a sword of flame: This is not Shang Qinghua.
###
After three days surviving in his own novel, Shang Qinghua crawls into the cold bed in his small quarters and wonders if it would be so bad to just … stay. It’s not terrible, it’s really not! (And it’s not as if he has any idea how to get back, since looking repeatedly into the obviously-cursed mirror had no effect. Apparently it was only good for a one-way trip.)
The first thing he’d discovered, that afternoon in the throne room, was that he’s been swapped in with the original goods much earlier in the plot than he’d expected. There are years—or hundreds of chapters, at least—before Shang Qinghua is supposed to die, and Bing-ge, his demonic stallion son, hasn’t yet begun his project of merging the Demon and Human Realms. If Cucumber-bro were here, he’d make some comment about how much better the pacing is in their world, versus the original novel. And it’s true, but it wasn’t Airplane’s fault, bro! The only way to make money was to keep writing more and more and more and adding more and more wives and ridiculous papapa and so he’s not really to blame for how little happened in some parts of Proud Immortal Demon Way, okay?
Anyway, Cucumber-bro’s jokes aside, his long-winded pacing is a good thing now, because it means he has all the time in the world, or all the chapters in the novel, to improve his situation in time to avoid a horrid death. He’d already managed it, just a little, that first day. He’d been huddling at the back of the throne room hoping to avoid any further notice, until Luo Binghe had mentioned a name he recognized.
“That will be cured if you sleep with her, Junshang,” he’d volunteered, before he could stop his own mouth.
Luo Binghe had paused in the midst of complaining about the sudden illness that had overcome his wife-to-be (and in idly petting Sha Hualing’s hair, which is just so strange to see after seeing Sha Hualing so uninterested in Luo Binghe’s charms) and stared across the room at Shang Qinghua. He could feel Mobei Jun’s eyes on him, too, but he didn’t want to look, to know what sort of distaste he might find on that familiar face. “What did you say?”
“Uh, well, Junshang, if you—if you sleep with her? It’ll cure the illness,” he managed.
“And how do you know that?”
“I … read it somewhere?”
Luo Binghe had simply narrowed his eyes and gone back to ignoring Shang Qinghua, but the next morning, one of Binghe’s wives had cornered Shang Qinghua in the halls near the hot springs. (This had seemed a safe place to go, for someone who was avoiding Mobei Jun.)
“You will answer my questions,” she had said, commanding. He couldn’t remember her name; probably he’d never bothered to name her, in Proud Immortal Demon Way, although he assumed she had a name here. She was a tall, broad-shouldered demoness, wearing an extremely limited number of strips of rhinoceros leather in the place of robes. For a moment Shang Qinghua was embarrassed for his past self, but then remembered that subscriptions had spiked any time he described a wife in skimpy clothing, and decided that the blame lay with his readers, instead. No-one had been reading for the plot or the world building! Well, maybe Cucumber-bro.
“Of course, my lady,” he said, with a bow.
“If—just hypothetically, you understand?” She paused and stuck a small knife, which he could not believe had been hidden anywhere on her rather-revealed person, to a soft spot under his chin.
“Yes, yes, I understand,” he managed, with a squeak, going to tiptoe.
“If, hypothetically, a demon wished to marry a woman, but the woman disappeared whenever he came to court her, what should he do?”
It took Shang Qinghua a little while to put together the puzzle, during which time the point of the knife pressed in incrementally deeper. Give him a break! He had written a lot of wife plots, okay?!? The description wasn’t that detailed! There had been at least two disappearing wives, not to mention three that had been kidnapped, which was a sort of disappearance. “Is the woman a demon?” he asked, trying to narrow it down.
“Yes,” the Rhinoceros Leather Wife said.
“Ah. Well, then. I believe that the woman—just hypothetically, I understand!” (as the blade dug in) “I believe she has a golden necklace that renders her invisible when she is wearing it. If the man were to creep in and steal it while she was sleeping, she would no longer be able to disappear, and I expect she would respond positively to his courting.” There were some wife plots he would have felt bad about revealing, but this one was simple enough—the demoness had simply wanted Binghe to prove his worth by overcoming the invisibility obstacle. All Shang Qinghua was doing now was speeding up the timeline.
That must have been a success, too, because this afternoon there had been a note in his quarters, a demand from Luo Binghe: You will attend me tomorrow. With it had been a gift of a gold-encrusted quill from the great feathered serpents found in the far west of the Demon Realm.
Shang Qinghua wraps the thin blankets closer, circulating a little spiritual energy down towards his feet to keep them from cramping up in the cold. He thinks he can manage to worm his way even deeper into Luo Binghe’s good graces, with his knowledge of the plot and his superior logistical skills. He’s already found three or four things at the Northern Fortress that could be running more smoothly—the original goods isn’t bad at his job, exactly, but Shang Qinghua can easily improve on his performance. Not that it’s the fault of the original goods! He’s missing out on all sorts of inside information!
And it’s not as if there’s a happy ending waiting for him at home: whatever his feelings for Mobei Jun, they aren’t reciprocated. Life was fine—he had opportunities to write, and he enjoyed his work for his king—but there might be some relief in being away from the daily reminder that the perfect man (demon, whatever) is just out of reach. Of course, there’s still a reminder here, in the form of the original Mobei Jun, but that’s different, somehow.
The first time he’d been alone with the Mobei Jun in this world, he’d felt the difference right away. A chill, that had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Where did you get that information? About the cure for the illness,” Mobei Jun had asked, with an edge to his tone that suggested interrogation, not curiosity.
“There was a book,” Shang Qinghua said, again. “On Qing Jing Peak. They have books about everything there. It said that—Heavenly Demons—well, they can cure, uh, by, certain things—”
“Silence,” Mobei Jun said, and then paced the room, apparently deep in thought, while Shang Qinghua huddled in the corner. He had always thought of Mobei Jun as putting up with him because it was necessary, because Shang Qinghua provided good value with his services, but that was what this Mobei Jun was doing and he could feel a difference. He just didn’t know exactly what the difference was. What did Mobei Jun, his Mobei Jun, think of him?
There’s no answer to that in the cold of the night, though, so Shang Qinghua burrows back in to try to get some sleep. Just before he drifts off, it occurs to him to wonder whether Mobei Jun will miss him. Of course not, his mind responds, promptly. He’ll have the original goods to take care of him.
He sits up, shocked enough to knock off the blankets and start his teeth chattering all over again. That will not happen. Even if Mobei Jun doesn’t want him, he will not let the original goods have an opportunity to … to … embrace Mobei Jun! Or eat Mobei Jun’s noodles! Or sit near the stove with Mobei Jun, watching his robes gap open wider and wider! That is Shang Qinghua’s place, and he will figure out a way to get back to it.
###
The demons of the Northern Fortress believe the impostor to be Shang Qinghua. Even Sha Hualing, when she visits, shrugs when Mobei Jun presents her with the evidence.
“He looks like Shang Qinghua, and he sounds like a mouse trapped beneath a boot, which means he sounds Shang Qinghua,” she says, with a shrug. Mobei Jun resists the urge to explain, in detail, how Shang Qinghua—the real Shang Qinghua—is actually very attractive, thank you very much, and that being on the smaller side just makes the prospect of wrapping one’s arms around him more appealing. Sha Hualing won’t understand, anyway; she only has eyes for women, demon or otherwise.
“When he says ‘my king’ he sounds insincere,” he says, with an irritated grunt. It makes his skin crawl, every time.
“So? Who cares if he’s sincere, as long as he’s doing his job?” she asks. “If he’s not, toss him out. Those ice pits to the north seem hospitable, he’d probably survive in there for a few days.”
Mobei Jun growls, and gives up on convincing her.
Truly, though, Sha Hualing is right: Shang Qinghua is still the same in many ways. If there were a few instances in the first two days where he seemed unfamiliar with the current state of the world—there had been a flash of surprise in his eyes when Mobei Jun asked if he wanted to return to An Ding Peak soon—he seems to have found the records of the Northern Territory somewhere, likely in his own quarters, and he now seems well informed. When Mobei Jun tasks him with some element of logistics for the Fortress, he is competent and eager enough. And if he seems uninterested in spending any time with Mobei Jun beyond that required by the dictates of his job, well—is Mobei Jun so certain that Shang Qinghua ever felt otherwise? Perhaps his smile was always so oily, his responses so practiced, his ambition so palpable. Perhaps Mobei Jun simply did not want to see it.
Maybe the man is Shang Qinghua. Maybe Mobei Jun is simply seeing the plain, cold truth for once, revealed just as moonlight reveals a Corpse Serpent during a midnight hunt.
One afternoon, five days after the appearance of the impostor, Mobei Jun goes again to the door of Qinghua’s quarters. When he announces himself, a tentative Come in greets him. Inside, the temperature is as chill as the rest of the Fortress; it makes him feel ill to enter the room and find it so cold. The stove is not in use. The impostor is standing by the window, looking out over the courtyard, one of the books from the shelf in his hand.
“I will sit here,” Mobei Jun says, gesturing to his usual seat. The impostor looks surprised, but doesn’t argue as Mobei Jun arranges himself in the chair. Instead, he stares at Mobei Jun, but sideways, as if he doesn’t want to be seen looking.
Mobei Jun says nothing. The impostor says nothing. The impostor continues to stare. Outside somewhere, a demon shrieks, and then stops. Mobei Jun shifts in the chair, but says nothing. The impostor says nothing.
“Can I help you, my king?” the impostor finally says, after an eternity.
“Did you like the noodles?”
“Noodles, my king?” The man looks nervous. “Which noodles? I have not eaten noodles in some time.”
“The noodles. You requested them. After I threw Linguang Jun into the ravine.”
“Ah, well. Those noodles! Yes. Um, well, I … very good, my king. Very good indeed?” The impostor seems to be sweating; there is a slight damp patch spreading across the front of his robes. Mobei Jun has the thought that the man seems … scared. As if he thinks that Mobei Jun might beat him, for a wrong answer. There is nothing wrong with the answer, though; it is simply not what Mobei Jun would have thought Shang Qinghua would say. He had believed Shang Qinghua had truly enjoyed the noodles, and would remember them fondly. He racks his mind for another question, one that will not have an answer in the records that Shang Qinghua keeps in his room.
“Why did you leap out of the cave, on Maigu Ridge, during the fight against Tianlang Jun?”
The impostor’s eyes shift back and forth between Mobei Jun and the window, as if he might take that means of escape again. “Well, uh,” he says, licking his lips. The things that would normally be attractive on Shang Qinghua, the little adjustments he makes to his robes and hair, seem weaselly and servile now. Mobei Jun grips the edge of the chair, and waits for the answer. “You know I am a coward, my king,” the man says, finally. “I just didn’t want to be too close to the fighting.”
For a moment, his heart sinks. Maybe that’s the truth. Rescuing Mobei Jun was nothing but an accident, not the intention.
No. His hand creeps up to the spot, just inside his robes, where a miniature sword blade, no longer than the palm of his hand, hangs on a chain. Shang Qinghua had given it to him soon after the last clash with Linguang Jun: I had it made at Wan Jian Peak, he’d said. I just thought—you didn’t have a sword, at Maigu Ridge, and so you couldn’t, and then I … and I mean, I know this isn’t a real one, and it’s just tiny, but I thought, well, you know, that if I wasn’t around and you needed a sword that this one might—well. It’s silly, my king, never mind me …
Mobei Jun had taken it, and hung it inside his robes, and said only Thank you.
No, this may be Shang Qinghua, but it is not his Shang Qinghua.
A cold thought spears him: what if the real Qinghua is somewhere terrible? What if he’s hurt? He lurches to his feet, startling the impostor into climbing halfway up the shelf.
“My king?” he says, pale.
“I must go,” Mobei Jun says. “I have to get someone back.”
###
“My master says that Shang Qinghua is still there,” the small demon whines, while Tianlang Jun absently inspects his detached left hand. “It didn’t work! Our spies say Mobei Jun is angry about something, but they don’t know what, and it can’t be about Shang Qinghua.”
Tianlang Jun considers this. He has already forgotten why, exactly, he thought it would be entertaining to send Shang Qinghua into his own creation; but now that he has done it, he supposes he might as well continue down the road. “He is gone,” he explains, patiently. “It is simply that a different version of him has returned, in his place. I did not think of that, when I suggested it.”
“So what do we do?” the demon says, snivelling. Another drip of icy snot falls from his nose. Tianlang Jun shifts his foot aside to avoid the distasteful droplet.
“Tell your master to wait outside the Holy Mausoleum,” he says, after considering it. “That is where Mobei Jun will go, if he wants to regain his lost human. What your master does from there is his business.”
###
Unfortunately, Mobei Jun has no idea how to go about getting Shang Qinghua back. He can’t even convince anyone that the man who bustles after him into the throne room isn’t Shang Qinghua; determining what mechanism was used to bring him here, and to take Shang Qinghua away, seems even further beyond him.
On the tenth day after the impostor’s arrival, Mobei Jun overhears a demon outside his quarters humming The Resentment of Chunshan, and a thought comes to him. There is someone who knows Shang Qinghua well enough to opine on the Shang Qinghua-ness of this person: the man he always seeks out for tea when he travels to Cang Qiong Mountain, Shen Qingqiu. And Luo Binghe seems to think that his husband always has a solution for problems; perhaps he can help in some other away, too.
Mobei Jun corners the impostor, scruffing him by the neck of his robe—“Is this necessary?” the man squeaks—and pulling him through a portal to the small bamboo house that Luo Binghe maintains in the middle of his underground palace. As Mobei Jun steps through, Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe are frozen in a moment of overly-intimate noodle consumption, Luo Binghe feeding hand-pulled noodles directly into his husband’s mouth. Humiliating, Mobei Jun thinks. He has made noodles, yes (twice!) but he has never done anything like this for Shang Qinghua.
Then again, he thinks, as the impostor wiggles in his grip, he probably would, if it meant he had his Shang Qinghua back. There are many things he would do, to keep Shang Qinghua in his life, and it occurs to him he may have been a fool for not telling Shang Qinghua that when he had the chance.
“What are you doing here, Mobei Jun?” Luo Binghe says, letting the noodles slide back into the bowl with an annoyed splash. The impostor, in the meantime, has spotted Shen Qingqiu, and is staring with his mouth open.
“You … but you? And then—with him?” he says, sounding sweatily confused. Shen Qingqiu gives him a haughty glare.
Mobei Jun gestures at the cowering man. “I would like to ask your husband”—the impostor squeaks at this, too—“whether he thinks this is Shang Qinghua. I believe there has been a”—he considers how to describe the situation—“a swap.”
“That is clearly Shang Qinghua,” Luo Binghe snaps, obviously hoping to clear them out so that he can go back to whatever he was up to with the noodles. “Such a task would be a waste of Shizun’s time.”
Shen Qingqiu, though, raises one hand. “It’s alright, Binghe,” he murmurs. “Let us indulge this request.”
Luo Binghe frowns (Mobei Jun might be tempted to call it a pout, but he refuses to admit that Heavenly Demons can pout), but settles back into silence.
“Sit here,” Shen Qingqiu says, with a gesture, and the impostor creeps forward and—with a careful eye on Luo Binghe—sits down in the middle of the house. Shen Qingqiu considers him carefully for a long moment, then waves his fan in a way that encompasses Luo Binghe and Mobei Jun. “I must ask him difficult questions. It will be easier if you are not present.”
Reluctantly, Mobei Jun exits the bamboo house, followed by an even more reluctant Luo Binghe. Once they’re outside, however—well, not really outside, it’s still underground, but Luo Binghe has done a credible job of making it look something like the house on Qing Jing Peak—Luo Binghe tugs at Mobei Jun’s robes, making extravagant shushing gestures, and pulls him around to the stand of whispering bamboo behind the house, where they can crouch beneath the window.
“What is the other name you know me by?” Shen Qingqiu is saying, as they come close enough to hear.
“… Shizun?” the impostor tries, uncertain. Luo Binghe makes a sound of pure rage in the back of his throat; Mobei Jun elbows him in the stomach, earning him an angry glare but silence again. Very satisfying, Mobei Jun thinks. He has few opportunities to scuffle with Luo Binghe without consequence.
Shen Qingqiu must look dissatisfied, because now the impostor is trying again: “Shixiong?”
“Have you been hit on the head lately? Any falls from a height?”
“No? No more than usual?”
Shen Qingqiu sighs, loudly, then begins to rattle off a string of questions, one for every smack of his fan into his palm.
“What’s a PS4?”
“A what?”
“Danmei? Wifi?”
“Uh …”
“Stallion novel? JJWXC?”
The impostor sputters.
“Baidu? Jay Chou?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the impostor says, sulkily. Neither does Mobei Jun, but he accepts that Shang Qinghua has his secrets, and if Shen Qingqiu is the person he wants to impart them to, he will not begrudge him that. Luo Binghe, though, looks upset, his eyes bulging. And that might be a little tear, slipping down the side of one cheek. He keeps pushing against Mobei Jun to try to get a spot closer to the window, as if that will make it any easier to hear.
Shen Qingqiu says something in a language that Mobei Jun recognizes as a tongue that Shang Qinghua sometimes speaks in when he is particularly upset about something. There’s no audible reaction from the imposter, and the questions begin again, but in a different tone.
“What was the most dangerous beast you released at the Immortal Alliance Conference?”
There’s a long pause, and then the impostor must realize that Shen Qingqiu already knows that Shang Qinghua orchestrated the events at Jue Di Gorge. “The Black Moon Rhinoceros Python.”
Mobei Jun, thinking back to the events in the Gorge, does not recall that particular beast showing up. Luo Binghe steps on his foot and tries to use a hand on his shoulder as leverage to get higher up, so Mobei Jun kicks him in the hamstring. There’s a muffled thump as Luo Binghe falls back to the ground, grumbling. The two inside the hut don’t seem to have heard, however.
“And how many wives does Luo Binghe have?”
“Shizun!” Luo Binghe yelps, and leaps straight up through the open window, so that he’s suspended halfway through, legs dangling out the back. Mobei Jun, tiring of the pretense, simply portals himself back inside the house, and drags Luo Binghe down onto the floor, still talking. “Don’t say that, your Binghe would never—”
Shen Qingqiu sighs and hushes Binghe with one hand. “How many?”
“Four hundred,” the impostor says, uncertainly, with a glance at Luo Binghe. “Maybe four hundred and three? It’s sometimes hard to keep count. He might have added a few while I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Ah!” Shen Qingqiu says, sounding satisfied. “You must be the original goods!”
“What does that mean?” Mobei Jun barks, losing patience. “Is this Shang Qinghua, or not?”
It is not often that Shen Qingqiu appears at a loss for words, but now he seems to be uncertain what to say. He opens his mouth once, twice, and then finally sighs. “I believe that our Shang Qinghua”—
“My Shang Qinghua,” Mobei Jun interrupts, prompting a raised eyebrow from Shen Qingqiu, Luo Binghe, and the impostor.
“Well, then, your Shang Qinghua—I believe he has been transported to another world, and exchanged with this … version of himself, you might say.” He waves the fan at the impostor. “He is Shang Qinghua, in a way, but not as you know him. The world he comes from is …” he pauses, and glances at Luo Binghe, a soft look on his face. “Well, things are very different there.”
“Will my Qinghua be safe there?”
Shen Qingqiu wrinkles his nose thoughtfully and taps the fan. “Probably? He’s good at looking after himself. I believe the biggest threat to him will be—well—Mobei Jun. Another version of you.”
The impostor looks a little shaken at this mention, and suddenly much of his behaviour begins to make sense. “Is this true?” Mobei Jun says to him. “That you come from another version of this world? That I am a threat to you?”
The impostor nods, reluctantly. Ah. Perhaps he had thought that if he could pretend well enough, if he was accepted as Shang Qinghua, he could find safety in this world. Mobei Jun feels a pang of pity for him, but quashes it as he would crush an ice roach beneath his heel. That is not Mobei Jun’s concern. Shang Qinghua is his concern. “Well?” he demands, turning back to Shen Qingqiu. “How do I undo it? How do I get Qinghua back?”
Luo Binghe, still sprawled on the floor, begins to intercede again—“Don’t speak to him like that!”—but Shen Qingqiu taps Luo Binghe lightly on the back of the hand with the fan.
“Hush, Binghe! He’s just concerned. Now, everyone be quiet, and let me think.” He closes his eyes, apparently meditating on the problem.
A shichen drips by. Luo Binghe, back on his feet, alternates between watching Shen Qingqiu with concern and glaring at the impostor and Mobei Jun, then huffs and removes the bowl of noodles from the room. The impostor slowly creeps backwards, until he’s got his back to the wall of the bamboo house, as if this will protect him from Luo Binghe in some way. For his part, Mobei Jun simply waits. Now that he is certain of the impostor, and now that Shen Qingqiu seems to think there might be a solution, he can wait as long as necessary. As long as it’s not so long that it might lead to Shang Qinghua getting hurt, of course. In that case he will shake the answer from Shen Qingqiu by dangling him upside-down.
Shen Qingqiu’s eyes finally snap open. “It would have been simple, if Binghe could still use Xin Mo. Or perhaps if we had captured some essence of Xin Mo’s power,” he says. “But there may be a way to proceed without it. There is a plant, which only grows outside the Holy Mausoleum. The dark bell blossom. You know what it looks like?”
“I know it,” Mobei Jun says.
“Well. I have read … somewhere”—Shen Qingqiu coughs—“that it has the power of weakening the boundaries between worlds. It was used, in the story I read” (now he looks rather shifty) “in manipulating the Borderlands of the Demon Realm, during a demon’s pursuit of a wife.”
“And then what?” Mobei Jun says, impatient with the storytelling. It doesn’t matter to him where Shen Qingqiu learned his knowledge of esoteric plants, as long as it’s information he can use. “This plant will take me to Qinghua?”
“Well, if you consume the plant, it should enhance your natural ability to make portals. And then—do you have some item of Shang Qinghua’s? One that this one wouldn’t have touched.” He gestures to the impostor.
Mobei Jun reaches a hand inside his robes, to finger the miniature sword. He nods his agreement to Shen Qingqiu’s question.
“Alright. Once you’ve consumed the flowers, If you touch it, and think of Shang Qinghua, the portal you open should lead you to him. I think.” Shen Qingqiu sounds somewhat uncertain, but Mobei Jun doesn’t care. He has a task, now. A portal to the plains near the Holy Mausoleum snaps open beside him. He grabs the impostor—he has no intention of letting the man stick around, a threat to Shang Qinghua’s very existence—and leaps through.
###
Once he puts his mind to the matter, it doesn’t take Shang Qinghua long to come up with a solution. (He can almsot hear Cucumber-bro: I would’ve thought of that in five minutes, Airplane-bro! But the only Shen Qingqiu here is a villain destined to live out life as a human stick, so he ignores that.) It’s simple: he just needs Binghe to cut an opening to the other world with Xin Mo. Good thing he wrote a sword with those sorts of abilities!!! Thanks, past self.
Convincing Binghe to use Xin Mo on Shang Qinghua’s behalf is trickier, of course. By the morning of the tenth day, he’s got the outlines of a plan: extremely complicated, probably multi-chapter spanning, the sort of thing nobody would have paid to read, but it should end with Luo Binghe willingly carving a path back into the other universe. He tinkers with the details in his head while sitting on a block of ice at the back of Luo Binghe’s private reception quarters, the ones he always uses for plotting when he comes to visit the Northern Fortress. Luo Binghe, one of his nun-wives from the Tianyi Sect, and Mobei Jun are discussing some correspondence from the Borderlands, and Shang Qinghua is supposed to be there to assist with his so-called special knowledge.
And if we travel north for three days, we should come to that tunnel beneath the lake, he thinks. From there, it will only take a few months before—
“ … has fled with her through the Endless Abyss, and were seen dragging her through one of the exits in the Cave of Worlds,” Mobei Jun says, in his low, super hot voice. Shang Qinghua’s entire body pays attention when Mobei Jun speaks; he can’t help it, even if he logically knows that it’s not really Mobei Jun, not the one whose voice he wants to hear. “We cannot know where they have taken her, and there are many exits from the Cave.”
“So we’ll search all of them,” Luo Binghe says, carelessly. The nun is brushing out his curly hair.
The entire complicated Xin Mo plot collapses in Shang Qinghua’s head. He remembers this plotline! Finding the kidnapped wife-to-be by searching through the cave took a long time; Luo Binghe had indulged in papapa with a large number of succubus maidens in the Endless Abyss along the way. If Luo Binghe goes off to pursue this particular wife plot, Shang Qinghua’s chances of getting his help in the next six hundred pages will burn to ash. “Perhaps there is a better way, Junshang,” he offers, desperate.
Luo Binghe turns to stare at him, the nun pausing in her graceful strokes with the brush. Mobei Jun stalks across the room—he just moves so gracefully! no wasted movement! He couldn’t have given him one single flaw while writing this stupid book?!?—and pokes Shang Qinghua in the chest with one sharp fingernail. If this keeps up Shang Qinghua won’t even react the next time he’s poked with a something pointy. “Speak,” Mobei Jun says, cold, and Shang Qinghua shivers.
“Well, ah, Junshang, my king, as you both know—you do know? I think?—Xin Mo can open holes to other worlds,” he says, in his most humble I live to serve tones. Mobei Jun’s finger is slowly pressing a rather uncomfortable divot in his robes. “And so perhaps, if you had some assistance on focusing on the lady in question, you might be able to simply open a pathway to her current location, and retrieve her without the need for searching? Unless, I mean, if you wanted to search, I mean …”
Luo Binghe waves him to silence, leaping to his feet. The nun abandons the attempt to brush his hair with a small pout. “Yes. Excellent! What do we have of hers, that we can use as a focus?”
He needs something—something will make sense to Luo Binghe, while simultaneously serving Shang Qinghua’s needs … his hand fumbles up to his neck, slowly so as not to startle Mobei Jun into jabbing him even harder, and finds the necklace that rests there. “The kidnappers,” he blurts. “They come from the ice tiger hunters in the north, yes?”
“And what of it?” Luo Binghe says.
“I have this,” Shang Qinghua offers, pulling the claw out from where it hangs on its leather cord. “It’s a—”
“Where did you get that,” Mobei Jun says, his tone flatter and colder than an unbroken stretch of snow on a frozen lake.
“It, was, uh. A gift? My king?” Shang Qinghua squeaks. The gold-plated ice tiger claw hangs between them, dangling from Shang Qinghua’s grip.
Mobei Jun spins to face Luo Binghe, who frowns at him. “What? It’s just a necklace. If it’s an ice tiger claw, we can use that.”
“This is a demonic courting gift,” Mobei Jun says, tapping one accusing finger against Shang Qinghua’s chest. “He has an ice demon courting gift.”
The nun chuckles, and then Binghe laughs, too. “So? If a demon wants to court this little snivelling human, that’s their business, isn’t it? And he’s useful enough. Maybe someone saw an opportunity to use him in their schemes.”
Mobei Jun is still pointing, though, and Shang Qinghua can see that he is quivering with anger. He knows he should speak up, say something, invent some story—actually it wasn’t a gift at all he found it while he was searching in the vaults, no, that’ll sound like he stole it, uh, it was a gift from a dying demon, no! a dying human who had stolen it from a demon and had absolutely no idea what it meant, because after all a human wouldn’t know that this was a courting gift! WTF! Why does he have an ice demon courting gift why did Mobei Jun give this to him he’d thought it was just for protection—but he can’t think about any of that because his brain is just awash with white noise. Mobei Jun. Had given him. A courting gift? No, no, that’s not right, there must be some mistake—obviously Mobei Jun had given him the necklace, yes, but maybe it means something different in their world than it does in Proud Immortal Demon Way, or, maybe, uh—
But oh, oh, what if Mobei Jun had meant it, what if it wasn’t a mistake? It feels like his heart might rattle its way out of his chest, at the thought.
“He should not have such a thing,” Mobei Jun insists.
“Why? You aren’t jealous, are you?” Binghe says, with a sneer. Then he claps, impatiently, and draws Xin Mo, with its usual ringing aura of power. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll use it. Give it here.”
Mobei Jun extends a demanding hand, and Shang Qinghua reluctantly undoes the leather cord and hands it over. The ice demon tosses it to Binghe, who catches it in one hand as he swings Xin Mo with the other. The sound of Xin Mo cutting through the walls between the worlds sounds unnervingly like the ripping of paper.
As the slice ripples open into a wide hole just beyond Luo Binghe’s left side, Shang Qinghua peers around Mobei Jun to see where it’s taken them. This was just a guess, not a certainty—but it has to work, it has to—
And then he sees who’s on the other side, and his heart plummets.
###
The field of dark bell blossoms around the outside of the gates of the Holy Mausoleum has been violently uprooted, and the footprints in the mud seem recent. Mobei Jun wonders who, exactly, knows the secrets of travelling to other worlds, but he has no time for chasing down the thought; his focus must be on finding what blossoms remain.
“There are some in here, I think?” the impostor says, from the shadows of the oak woods that line the open field. Mobei Jun joins him in the gloom, and peers down at the black-purple flowers, drooping in the shade like night-dark icicles.
“That is the correct flower.”
The impostor stares dubiously at the blooms. “You’re really going to eat those? Are you sure Shen Qingqiu can be trusted? What if they’re poisonous?”
“Quiet,” Mobei Jun grumbles, pulling the blossoms up in handfuls. He’s not going to risk this going wrong if he doesn’t eat enough.
The flowers taste like rancid almond jelly. He chokes them all down.
“Gross,” the impostor comments, now squatting by the trunk of a large oak and looking a little nervous. “Now what? You make a portal? Don’t you have to know the place you’re going?”
“I do know the place I’m going,” Mobei Jun says, wishing the impostor would go back to currying for favour and pretending to be someone he’s not, rather than making annoying remarks. “It’s where Shang Qinghua is. That is all that matters.” He slides a hand inside his robes and grips the sword tightly. The edges cut into his fingers, a reminder of how much he needs this to work.
The portal forms with more difficulty than he’s used to, shivering just outside his grasp for a long moment before splitting open between two trees with a soft squelch. There are four people on the other side, all with their back to him, in a room that he recognizes from the Northern Fortress—it’s one Luo Binghe has used, when he comes to stay. The first of the four people is Luo Binghe, recognizable even from the back. There’s a human woman just behind him, and then, off to one side, is—there’s a vertiginous swoop in his stomach, as if the flowers have started to disagree with him—a demon wearing Mobei Jun’s robes, and with his hair, and that is. That is—
Another version of himself. Another version of himself that is reaching out to Shang Qinghua, the real Shang Qinghua, who is dropping the gold-plated ice tiger claw Mobei Jun had given him into the other demon’s hand.
His stomach sinks even further. If Shang Qinghua doesn’t want the necklace any longer, if Shang Qinghua is happy with this other version of Mobei Jun—
On the other side of the portal, Mobei Jun—no, that’s awkward; he decides to refer to him as Mirror Mobei—tosses the necklace to Luo Binghe, who he now realizes must also be some alternate version of this world’s Heavenly Demon leader. A version that is married to more than four hundred women. A version that would not want to hand-feed noodles to Shen Qingqiu. A version that still has Xin Mo, it seems, and is using it to slash open a portal.
The portal is on an angle, so neither Mobei Jun nor the impostor (who has crept over to peer in) can see through the opening. It’s immediately obvious where it goes, though: with a wretched, laboured tearing sound, a portal snaps open in the muddy field outside the gates of the Holy Mausoleum.
“Where’s this?” Luo Binghe-in-the-other-world says, and leaps through, Xin Mo extended. As he disappears from the other world, he lands in the field, a short arrow’s flight from Mobei Jun. Through his own portal, he can see Mirror Mobei scuffling with Shang Qinghua, as Shang Qinghua resists coming through.
“I don’t think—you know, my king, maybe if we—this could be a bad idea? And so maybe if he just comes back and we, you know, try again another time”—
Of course, Mobei Jun thinks, despairing. Shang Qinghua doesn’t want to come through. He wants to stay. That was always a possibility, and he will not force Shang Qinghua to return. He lets his own portal snap shut, just as Mirror Mobei tosses Shang Qinghua through Luo Binghe’s open portal and follows him into the field. Shang Qinghua lands with a thump in the mud; from this distance, he doesn’t look obviously injured. He looks alright, really, as if he’s been living a happy and fulfilled life for the past ten days.
“Who are you?” Luo Binghe says, loudly, staring at someone across the field. “And what have you done with Lin Daiyu?”
Mobei Jun spins around to find Linguang Jun standing on the other end of the wretched field, where the scrub has grown high, looking pleased with himself. Understanding floods him: if anyone has a reason to find a way to take Shang Qinghua away from him, it’s Linguang Jun.
“Lin Daiyu?” Linguang Jun says, calmly. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’m here for him.” He points at Mirror Mobei, and by extension at Shang Qinghua, crouched at his feet.
“Your problem is with me, not them,” Mobei Jun grates out, leaping from the cover of the woods.
“My king!” Shang Qinghua yells. Not to be outdone, the impostor yells “My king!” and pops out of the woods, too. Luo Binghe glances over, but seems uninterested in the fact that there are now two Mobei Juns and two Shang Qinghuas in the field outside the Holy Mausoleum. Mirror Mobei, on the other hand, is wearing a sick, dizzy look that Mobei Jun thinks must reflect what his face did when he first looked through the portal. Shang Qinghua looks upset. He must still be wishing he’d stayed on the other side, Mobei Jun thinks, glum.
“Well,” Linguang Jun says. “Maybe I’m here for him, then.” He lets his finger drift over to Mobei Jun. “Or both, I guess. I’m not picky. And I suppose, now that you’re here, I might have to take you on, too, Junshang.” He looks smug, confident, which is odd because Luo Binghe and two Mobei Juns should make short work of one Linguang Jun.
Luo Binghe growls, angrily. “You would challenge me?” he yells. Xin Mo begins to hum, little lightning sparks leaping off it.
“If I must,” Linguang Jun says, and makes a gesture. Demons begin to rise from the cover of the grassy scrub, until he is surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of armed demons.
“We will fight on my territory, then,” Luo Binghe says, and lets out a wordless cry of power. Xin Mo sparks, and a jolt flies through Mobei Jun, flinging him back and momentarily obliterating his vision. As he fights his way to his knees, there’s another sharp, painful wave of power, and then everything goes black.
###
When he shakes off the dust and opens his eyes, Mobei Jun finds himself alone, lying in a humid tangle of plants. There’s a distant hiss, like snakes gathering. Southern Territory, he guesses, but when he looks up the sky is nothing but an illusion of sun and cloud. Beyond it, he can sense a roof, arcing high above him, and beyond the nearest patch of trees is a stone wall marking the border of the jungle territory. The Holy Mausoleum, then. Luo Binghe has sent all of them inside the Holy Mausoleum—the wards wouldn’t trouble him, he’s the Supreme Ruler in his world and this one, too—and separated them.
Mobei Jun would consider this an excellent tactic, if it weren’t for the fact that the Holy Mausoleum is extremely dangerous, and Shang Qinghua, who knows nothing of the traps that lurk in the Mausoleum’s rooms and halls, is now alone in here. There are a thousand things here that could kill an unprepared demon, let alone a human.
“Qinghua?” he tries, hopeful, but there’s no response beyond the hissing sound growing closer. These must be the tombs of the Snake Race; there are dangers here that could threaten even Mobei Jun, if he lingers. With a curse, he heads east, as fast as his feet can carry him.
###
Bing-ge’s power surge drops Shang Qinghua into a broad stone room with a woman’s angry face painted on the floor. He’s sprawled at the centre of her sharp chin. The Hall of Fury, then. If Bing-ge had to blast him into any location in the Holy Mausoleum, this was possibly the best outcome; Shang Qinghua isn’t sure what he would do about Blind Corpses, or some of the nastier traps hidden among the tombs, but this room? He knows exactly what to do with this one. After all, he’s the one who wrote the trick for coming through unscathed! He’ll just make his way across, and then into the Hall of Delight—another easy one where the trap is easy avoid, much easier than the Hall of Sorrow—and from there, he’ll …
Well, from there he’ll figure out his next step. No point in planning too far ahead, not when the Holy Mausoleum must be swarming with demons (and two identical humans, he thinks, remembering the odd thrill of seeing his own familiar face). Somehow he’ll need to find Mobei Jun, and together they can make their way out.
A door near the left ear scrapes open, loud in the dusty silence of the Hall. “My king?” a voice whispers, and the figure that sidles around the door resolves into the original goods. That must be the door to the Hall of Delight.
“Don’t move,” Shang Qinghua says, because he has no desire to see his own face charred off in a gout of magma. “Don’t step anywhere on the face. I’ll come across to you, and then we should go back into the room you just left. As long as we don’t steal anything, we’ll be safe in there.”
The original goods crosses his arms, an uncanny imitation of what Shang Qinghua does when he’s being stubborn. Is it possible that he’d written this pesky minor character with some parts of his own personality? With his own mannerisms? And then put him with his ideal man … and made that ideal man kill him?!? Shang Qinghua isn’t going to think about what that says about him, and he’s never going to mention this to Cucumber-bro, either! Don’t say it, bro! I wasn’t trying to punish myself, okay???
“Why should I trust you?” the original goods says. “I don’t want to work with you.”
“I can help you go back to your world,” Shang Qinghua says. “Put everything back the way it’s supposed to be.” He starts to pick us way across the face, hopping from acupuncture point to acupuncture point.
“What if I don’t want that?”
Shang Qinghua freezes, balanced on the outer corner of the woman’s left eye. “What? Why would you want to stay here?” (Okay, okay, so he might have some idea of why the original goods would want out of Proud Immortal Demon Way. He wrote the the death scene himself, alright? But he’s not going to admit to any of that!)
“This Mobei Jun is nicer,” the original goods says, with a little shrug that Shang Qinghua recognizes, too. “And Luo Binghe’s not half-bad, either, since it seems like Shen Qingqiu’s got him under control.”
“What if …” he hops a little closer, so that they’re only an acupuncture point apart. “What if I offer you a little help? Some hints about the future, so that you can get ahead? I was doing pretty well, over there. Luo Binghe was pleased with me.”
“And Mobei Jun?”
“Sure, he liked me more, too. You’ll be fine. Maybe just avoid him in about, oh … three years’ time. Take a long journey, you know.”
“Why do you care if I stay here? If you get to stay, too?”
Because I’m not going to compete with myself for Mobei Jun’s attention! He makes the final hop, so that they’re both standing by the door. “The world will be torn apart if two of the same man stay too long in it,” he intones, trying to sound particularly all-knowing. It might even be true! It’s not like he’s ever tried it.
The original goods seems to be mulling this over. “Well, then, I don’t see why I shouldn’t get to stay here,” he says, finally, and Shang Qinghua, who would not describe himself as a violent man, lunges for him with a territorial snarl.
“Shang Qinghua?”
Shang Qinghua drops the original goods, abandoning the feeble attempt to wrestle him into submission, and cries “My king,” just as the other does the same. Standing on the other ear, by the door that leads to the Hall of Sorrow, Mobei Jun looks puzzled. He seems uninjured by the burning rains that fall from the ceiling in that room; he must have found some other way across. His king is certainly smart enough to have realized that a portal was a safer route than walking beneath the watchful gaze of the woman on the ceiling.
“Don’t try to cross, my king, I’ll come over to you,” Shang Qinghua says. “It’s good to see you, it’s wonderful to be back, I’ve, uh, well. I’m very glad to be back.” The original goods snickers at this, but Shang Qinghua doesn’t care. He wants Mobei Jun to know how he feels. He wants to ask about the necklace. He needs to know. “Actually, I, you know, I mean, you don’t know, but I missed you a lot? Because, I, uh, like you?”
“Why are there two of you?” Mobei Jun asks, instead of responding to any of that.
“Well, my king, what happened was that Linguang Jun must have found out about how to go between worlds, I don’t know how he managed that because I certainly didn’t know it was possible, but anyway he sent me a mirror that was cursed to switch me with this one.” He gestures to the original goods.
“I thought there was something strange about you,” Mobei Jun says, and then the door opens again, and Mobei Jun comes in. Now there are two Mobei Juns and two Shang Qinghuas. Shang Qinghua, the real one, the Airplane one, thinks he might pass out at the absurdity of it all.
“Qinghua,” the new Mobei Jun says, low, and Shang Qinghua realizes immediately that this is his Mobei Jun, and that he’s just told OG-Mobei Jun that he missed him. It’s easy to tell, when they’re together; the way his Mobei Jun’s eyebrow quirks up when he’s uncertain, the familiar sharp gleam of his eyes. They look the same and yet entirely different.
Mobei Jun holds up his necklace, the gold-plated ice tiger claw gleaming at the end. “I found this on the floor,” he says, quietly. “I understand. There is no need to say anything; I will take it back. I will not stop you from returning with him.” He points at OGMJ, whose expression hasn’t changed.
“My king?” Shang Qinghua tries, but it comes out garbled, around a lump in his throat. Mobei Jun wants to take the necklace back? He wants Shang Qinghua to go back to the other world? Maybe Mobei Jun hadn’t noticed that Shang Qinghua had been replaced at all. The necklace will fit just as well around the neck of the original goods, after all. “But, my king …”
With a crash, the entire west wall of the room explodes inwards. Luo Binghe comes leaping through it, landing on the forehead acupuncture point, and dances gracefully across the face towards the chin. “You want me?” Binghe yells, delighted. “Come and get me!”
A swarm of demons surges through the broken wall, and in an instant the room is consumed by bursts of shooting magma, crisping the demons unlucky enough to step on the face. They keep piling in, though, urged on by loud yells from Linguang Jun. Mobei Jun and OBMJ, at the other end of the room, are no longer visible. The heat off the magma is incredible. Shang Qinghua can feel his eyebrows starting to singe. He’d like to have had some time to wallow in his emotions, thanks very much! But if it’s not to be—
“Time to get out of here,” he mutters, and pulls the original goods through the door to the Hall of Delight. Inside, the beautiful, bejewelled woman on the wall is thankfully silent; no-one has attempted to steal any of the objects in the room yet. The original goods eyes the jewels with interest, but when Shang Qinghua gives a warning shake of his head, he seems content to follow him down the Hall.
“So,” Shang Qinghua says, when he thinks he has his emotions under control. Sort of. “Did you fool him? Did he think you were me? I’m sure you saw the advantages here right away.”
There’s no answer, for a moment, and when Shang Qinghua looks back, the original goods has stopped walking, and is staring at him. “You don’t know, do you,” he says, then laughs, bitterly.
“Know what?”
“That he’s in love with you.”
“He isn’t,” Shang Qinghua says, despairing. “You saw—he took the necklace back, he doesn’t care if I go back to Proud—I mean, to your world, he probably didn’t even notice that I was gone.”
The original goods stares at him, and then steps closer, and eyes Shang Qinghua very carefully, as if inspecting a gem for flaws. “Am I this stupid?” he mutters to himself. “Or is that just you?” When he steps back, he sighs. “I came here, and I avoided him, the way I usually do,” he says, finally. “And then the first time he saw me, he knew right away that something was wrong. I could see it in his face. He would come and ask me questions, and when I got them wrong he wasn’t angry, he was sad, okay? And then he dragged me to see Junshang and his husband—what’s going on there, by the way?”
Shang Qinghua, who is floating in a pool made half of disbelief and half of bliss, manages to find his voice. “Uh, it’s a really long story.”
“He doesn’t have any wives?”
“No wives. Just the one husband.”
“That is … I would say I don’t believe you, but I watched Junshang feed Shen Qingqiu noodles.”
“Oh. Yeah. They’re like that sometimes. A lot, I guess. It’s kind of gross.”
The original goods nods, seemingly accepting this. “Anyway, we went there, and I thought Mobei Jun was going to beat Shen Qingqiu if he didn’t come up with a way to get you back. He called you his Qinghua, you understand?”
Shang Qinghua needs to find Mobei Jun right now. He needs to say a lot of things to him, before the emotions he’s feeling burst out of him as shafts of radiant light. “I. Yes. Understand. Thank you?”
“You can thank me by giving me that information you were talking about earlier,” the original goods mutters, cross. “Show me how to win everyone over.”
“Right! Right.” They begin to trudge toward the end of the Hall again, Shang Qinghua dragging his memory for any useful information he can give that might help his alternate self achieve his ambitions. Or at least keep him from getting killed.
###
The Blind Corpses in the hall are confused, now; there are too many living, breathing creatures moving about the Mausoleum, so that when Mobei Jun turns down another endless corridor to find a crowd of them, it’s barely any effort to brush them aside. “Qinghua?” he calls. Something about Luo Binghe’s presence in the middle of the magma room had made it impossible to open a portal to the other side, forcing him to retreat back through the strange room with the weeping woman—the portal had been useful enough there—and into the maze of corridors between the various tombs, hoping to find wherever Shang Qinghua and the impostor disappeared to. Sometimes he can hear the vibrations of Luo Binghe’s one-demon battle against Linguang Jun’s army, and tries to turn in the opposite direction whenever he does; Shang Qinghua will not willingly leap into that fray. There’s another, deeper rumble coming from the north side of the Mausoleum. He doesn’t know what that is, and doesn’t think he wants to find out.
A door opens at the end of the corridor. “Qinghua?” he calls. He may have offered to take the necklace back, and to free Shang Qinghua to follow whatever path his heart desires, but Mobei Jun will not leave him to injury or death in the depths of the Holy Mausoleum.
“It is not Shang Qinghua,” a deep voice says, and when he steps forward Mobei Jun finds himself face to face with Mirror Mobei. The other demon is draped in a series of strangler vines, green sap oozing from their ends. One of his legs looks half-rotted, from the knee down. Mobei Jun thinks he recognizes the effects of a certain poison plant, from the Western Territory. “But I, too, would like to find him. He is very useful. I can understand what you see in him, to give him such an extravagant courting gift.”
“A courting gift no longer,” Mobei Jun says, stiffly. “He does not wish to be courted. I simply seek him to aid him in returning to your world, if that is what he wishes.”
Mirror Mobei considers him, then says, curtly, “You do not see what is right in front of you. I like to think that I would not fail in that way, in your place.”
“I see what I need to see,” Mobei Jun says, cold, and they stare at each other for a slow count of a hundred breaths, before Mirror Mobei’s facade of icy hauteur cracks and he begins to laugh.
“Well, and perhaps I would be a fool, too,” he says. “Your Shang Qinghua did not give back your necklace, or reject it. He gave it to Junshang to trick him into opening a portal to this world, so that he could return to you. He has no wish to return to our world. He told me, thinking I was you, that he likes you, and that he missed you.”
Mobei Jun gapes at him. “You are certain? You did not simply misunderstand?”
“I do not misunderstand words that are spoken to me,” Mirror Mobei hisses. “But mark me when I say that I will not let him stay here without a fight. He knows many things of use about my world, and I would his services well. Better than you can, I think.”
“You will not take him against his will,” Mobei Jun growls, and leaps for the other demon’s throat. They fall to the ground and roll down the hall, blocking each other’s blows; they are equally matched, it seems. But Mobei Jun can feel the demon tiring, the poison in his leg leaving him to fight off pain, too. If he can hold out, out-wait the other—
“What are you doing, Mobei Jun?” Luo Binghe pops around the corner, looking no worse for wear for a long battle with an army. “Leave him alone, I need you to come help me corner this Linguang Jun demon. He’s a slippery one. A relative of yours?”
“My uncle,” Mobei Jun says, leaping to his feet and giving Mirror Mobei a kick in the stomach that leaves him gasping. “We are not on speaking terms.”
Luo Binghe gives the breathless Mirror Mobei a cross glance. “This one looks a lot like you, doesn’t he? Another relative, maybe. Let’s keep him out of the way,” he says, and zaps Mirror Mobei with Xin Mo. The demon disappears, and Mobei Jun, pleased with his own subterfuge—Shang Qinghua would have appreciated the trick—spares a moment for the thought that a trip to the Snake Race tombs would be just the thing for his alternate version self.
“Come on,” Luo Binghe says, and trots off down the hall. Mobei Jun follows, smiling. Shang Qinghua likes him, and missed him, and when Mobei Jun finds him in this labyrinth, the necklace will become a true courting gift.
###
Things aren’t quite going according to the plan of “find Mobei Jun,” although it’s not really his fault. One minute Shang Qinghua had been telling the original goods about the wife plot for wife number four hundred ninety-eight (an embarrassingly unpopular body swap situation), and the next they’d been separated by an onrushing herd of two hundred Black Moon Rhinceros Pythons. He has a vague memory of Cucumber-bro mentioning Luo Binghe bringing them into the Mausoleum at one point, but who would have thought that they were still there?!?
From there he’d wandered aimlessly through the corridors, refusing to enter any tombs that looked green or leafy. He’d been vicious in writing those ones. But then he’d heard Linguang Jun’s voice at one end of the corridor, haranguing what remained of his demon army, and at least a dozen Blind Corpses had shuffled out of other end of the corridor, so what was a man supposed to do? He’d wrenched open the nearest door and jumped in, slamming it shut.
The room inside looks boring: just a bunch of coffins, grey-blue stone, water dripping steadily in one corner. Probably a room he hadn’t bothered describing, he decides, relief flooding through him. He can hide in here until whatever’s happening out in the hall passes, and then go out and find—hold on, his feet are uncomfortably chilly, probably need to move around a bit—
When he glances down, his feet are encased in a shroud of ice, the crystals surging up towards his knees.
Spiritual energy doesn’t seem to touch the ice; it just keeps on coming, no matter how much he throws at it. Stupid, Shang Qinghua, stupid! He knew there were freezing traps in the Ice Demon tombs, and this—the minimalist decor, the icy clean lines of the stone—is clearly an Ice Demon tomb. There are even ice crystals carved into the coffins.
“Help!” he yells, giving up on the spiritual energy. “My king? Are you out there, my king?” Shang Qinghua doesn’t want to die, he really doesn’t, but more than that, he doesn’t want to die without having a chance to tell Mobei Jun how he feels—and maybe, if he’s lucky, some handholding. Maybe a bit of kissing. “My king?”
The ice is already sprinting up his chest, encircling him in a chill, rigid embrace. “My king!” he shrieks, but it comes out weak, soft. The ice seems to be sapping his energy, too. Shang Qinghua closes his eyes, so he doesn’t have to see the ice as it rises to entomb him.
“Qinghua,” a voice murmurs, near his ear. That’s nice, he’s hallucinating Mobei Jun, a pleasant ice-induced visions, at least he’ll have some company in his final moments … “This will melt it,” the voice says, and slides something over his head.
Shang Qinghua cracks one eye open, experimentally. There’s no ice blocking his view, just Mobei Jun’s sharp cheekbones and concerned face. “My king?” he says, uncertain.
“The necklace will protect you,” Mobei Jun says. When Shang Qinghua looks down, he can just see the gold-plated ice tiger claw hanging on his chest. “It tells the tombs that you are an ice demon. Or that you are kin to one.” He rubs a thumb over Shang Qinghua’s cheek, brushing away a dusting of snowmelt. “But I mean it for a courting gift, as well.”
The last of the ice shatters, and Shang Qinghua falls forward into Mobei Jun’s arms. He realizes that he’s crying, just a little bit. Which is understandable, since he’d almost died, and now Mobei Jun has given him a courting gift (again, but this time he knows what it means), but it’s also a bit embarrassing.
“Are you alright, Qinghua? Are you injured?”
“No, no, I’m alright, my king, I’m not sad or injured or anything, I just … I missed you so much, and I, it’s just, well, I’ll stop crying in a moment, sorry, my king, I had all sorts of things to tell you when I saw you again and now I’m just, you know,” he sniffles.
Mobei Jun tugs him closer, smiling. “Do not worry. Now I am certain it is you.”
Shang Qinghua laughs, hiccups, then burrows his head into his king’s chest, the way he’s always wanted to do. “Did you mean it? A courting gift?”
“I did.”
“I thought you were taking it back. Earlier, I mean.”
“I thought you wished to return to the other world. When I saw you through the portal, you appeared to be resisting the attempts of the other Mobei Jun to bring you to this world.”
“No, my king! I saw Linguang Jun, and I thought maybe this was all a trap set for you, and I didn’t want to be used as bait in his traps again.”
“Ah.” Mobei Jun considers this, then nods. “So you do wish to stay?”
Shang Qinghua gapes. “My king, I never want to leave your side again.”
After that there’s a lot of kissing. Mobei Jun’s kisses are surprisingly warm—hot, even—for a demon whose body temperature seems to hover around water’s freezing point. Shang Qinghua thinks he could get used to that, maybe use a little kissing to increase the temperature instead of relying on his furs or the stove. Or maybe he can get the stove going and Mobei Jun will start to sweat again … he slips a hand into Mobei Jun’s robes, intending to touch skin, and instead finds the miniature sword he’d had made. “You kept it?”
“Of course,” Mobei Jun says, which sets off another round of rather feverish kisses, now accompanied by exploratory hands inside robes.
“There you are!” Bing-ge bellows, galloping into the room. They pull apart, but Shang Qinghua isn’t moving away from Mobei Jun for all the Luo Binghes in the world, and Mobei Jun seems to agree, putting a protective arm around his shoulders. “Where did you go? Looking for Qinghua, were you? Well, it’s time to—” He cuts off, and looks down at his feet, which are already iced over. “Am I freezing?” he says, confused.
Distantly, Shang Qinghua can hear the sound of something coming closer at high speed, like an angry bullet train bearing down on them. “My king?” Shang Qinghua whispers. “Could you make another portal to that same place? Where I was before?”
Mobei Jun considers, then nods, just as Linguang Jun leaps into the room, laughing. “You’re trapped now, Junshang! You can’t protect Mobei Jun any more!”
“Make it behind Luo Binghe. Right …” Shang Qinghua makes a quick calculation, based on the thundering approach of hundreds of pounding hooves, then points. “Right there. And make it pretty big.”
The portal tears open just as the herd of Black Moon Rhinoceros Pythons stampedes through the wall, hissing and squealing. The leader hits Linguang Jun square in the back before barrelling into the half-frozen Luo Binghe, who snaps off the floor like a broken icicle. He tumbles through the open portal, yelling angrily. Linguang Jun is carried through by the mass of rhinoceros bodies, shrieking and clutching for purchase on the nearest horn.
It takes a long time for two hundred of the beasts to pass by, even at top speed. “When should I close it?” Mobei Jun asks, with interest.
“Just a bit longer,” Shang Qinghua says. As the last Rhinoceros Python rumbles through the opening—he can see them rampaging on the other side; Luo Binghe has managed to get on the back of one and is riding around, chasing Linguang Jun in hysterical circles—two figures slip in through the door to the hall. The original goods is propping OGMJ up, struggling to keep him on his feet despite one rotten leg. When the original goods spots Shang Qinghua, he shrugs.
“He needed some help,” he mutters.
“Do you want to go back?” Shang Qinghua asks. He finds he doesn’t want to consign his minor character to that life if he doesn’t want it.
The original goods considers the question, then nods. “It’s not so bad.”
“Remember all the things I told you!”
Together, the Proud Immortal Demon Way pair limp through the portal. As soon as they’re through, Mobei Jun lets it snap shut. Shang Qinghua sighs, happily. This ended better than most of his wife plots! Although he wouldn’t have minded if he’d been cursed with something that could only be cured by papapa with an ice demon … then again, he suspects he can have that for the asking, curse or no. “Let’s go home, my king.”
Another portal snaps open, this time revealing the familiar contours of his quarters in the Northern Fortress. “Qinghua?” Mobei Jun says, as they make their way over to it.
“Hm?”
“What’s a ‘danmei’?”
“Uh—”
“What about a Jay Chou? Or a PS4?”
“Well, uh, my king, that’s a really long story …”