Chapter Text
Shen Yuan really was growing to hate this fanfic world.
Nothing matched the lore! That village shouldn’t have been deadly and should have been filled with portals. Instead, they’d been poisoned... which could have happened to Luo Binghe, but he was, of course, immune to poisons.
He’d only just remembered that the demons in this village were immune to any attack from a metal blade, but incredibly weak to wood. Of course, the demon who had taken him to be sacrificed had just had to talk and talk about the plans and how everything worked.
Because that’s what cannon fodder level idiot low-IQ enemies did.
And then Liu Qingge had saved the day and gotten them away. The poison, Qi Consumer, another great name from Airplane, hindered only cultivators. Liu Qingge had gone limp after their meal. But since it didn’t affect him, a demon had just punched Shen Yuan unconscious. His head still hurt from that, but at least he didn’t feel so woozy anymore.
Now that Liu Qingge could focus on the poison, he should be able to remove it from his system and get them back on the road. Shen Yuan looked around to see where they had ended up. The strange metallic leaves were familiar, but they were so small...
He racked his brain as he tried to place it. Leaves... metallic leaves in a forest.
There were lots of forests in Proud Immortal Demon Way that this fanfic world could have drawn from. But the leaves were the odd part, a detail that had to mean something. And so far he hadn’t even seen a sign of the rare, once in a lifetime flowers and herbs that grew in apparently every forest in the world here.
Ridiculous how many miracle flowers just showed up that no one but the protagonist ever knew about. Oh well, that was the power of the protagonist halo.
Besides, none of the magical flowers had ever been metallic.
The only heavily featured metal item, aside from the swords, obviously, had been a Mirror of Desire.
Shen Yuan jumped to his feet.
Of course!
Man, this fanfiction writer had really gone all out. Even he, the primary editor and maintainer of the PIDW wiki, hadn’t immediately remembered this location because it never technically appeared in the story. It’d only been mentioned in passing.
Luo Binghe never set foot in the Forest of Mirrors. It burned down long before he was born, but several of the leaves from its trees had survived and been turned into mirrors. One of his wives, number 267 if Shen Yuan remembered right, had given him her tribe’s keepsake, a leaf from this long-gone forest that was known as the Mirror of Desire.
The leaf reflected only the viewer’s deepest desires, nothing else.
Wife 267 (what Shen Yuan wouldn’t give for the internet to look up and verify if he was right) had actually planned to use the mirror to kill Binghe when she gave him the mirror. He’d conquered her tribe; her father had surrendered and then offered her to be Luo Binghe’s bride.
On her wedding night, she gave the mirror to Luo Binghe.
She’d planned to kill him as he stared into the mirror since the reflection of their desires would mesmerize most people into losing all sense of time and space.
But instead, she’d glimpsed her own reflection and saw her own deepest desire, which was of course papapa with Luo Binghe.
She’d then immediately given up her assassination plans and thrown herself at Luo Binghe for a night of passion and then disappeared into the faceless mass of the harem.
It’d been incredibly disappointing because despite Luo Binghe looking into the mirror, Airplane never wrote what he saw there!
Not even a hint.
Only whatever he saw there wasn’t enough to hold his attention away from his new bride. And the mirror had never been mentioned again after that arc.
So, this place must be the Forest of Mirrors, which would mean these leaves were all incredibly dangerous for non-protagonists. He pondered how to handle this potential disaster.
Also, why did this place even exist? It burned down ages ago. What was the timeline the fanfic writer was using?
Shaking his head, he mentally reviewed Luo Binghe’s journey until he remembered there’d been another similar location, the Cave of Nightmares, that was filled with illusions of your greatest fears.
Luo Binghe had gotten through that by blindfolding himself and using his superior hearing to navigate his way out without falling into terror like everyone else before him. His reward had been some priceless treasure that never even got named.
Hack Airplane struck again.
Now that he had figured out what this place was, he wanted to look at one leaf. What would he see? Ah but he was keeping watch while Liu Qingge meditated out the poison and he couldn’t get distracted from his duty by shiny leaves.
He had a promise to keep!
Sitting back down, he watched the fire for a bit before looking at Liu Qingge. The War God was by far the most interesting thing here to look at, so of course he had to admire the other man.
Even a totally straight man like Shen Yuan could appreciate how beautiful Liu Qingge was.
Truly this author had made him the epitome of beauty, fitting for the older brother of the woman so beautiful she had to hide her face at all times!
The beauty mark under his eye was an amazing detail too. Shen Yuan wanted to touch it. Would the mole have a different texture or would it feel just like the rest of his face? Even his hair was beautiful! Shiny black like spilled ink and effortlessly pulled into a ponytail with no frizz despite their chaotic escape.
He self-consciously touched his own hair, dark brown and frizzy. He’d half-hoped that hopping into this strange world would magically have given him long beautiful hair too!
But no, his hair remained short and messy.
Would he see himself with long hair in the mirror when he looked? Was that his deepest desire?
He glanced towards the tops of the trees. Dozens of leaves glimmered like stars, and he couldn’t believe how plentiful they were. This place looked like a just-formed forest with these tiny glimmering leaves. The mirror Luo Binghe was gifted had been almost the size of a man, so these leaves had a lot of growing to do.
What a strange choice for this fic author to bring a location Luo Binghe never even visited. The place was never described in the novel, just a throwaway line from the master hack Airplane to explain his latest magical artifact that added nothing to the plot.
He looked back at Liu Qingge, grateful that he looked a little less pale now. The meditation seemed to work well. The poison only impacted cultivators, which was bullshit, so Shen Yuan wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to do because Luo Binghe was immune to all poisons. But from how Liu Qingge acted, it clearly affected motor movement and muscle control.
He was just grateful he’d been able to help for once.
So far he’d mainly just felt like a burden on this journey. Especially since the fanfiction world wasn’t quite the same as Proud Immortal Demon way so his information was wrong. How were they traveling so easily through the Endless Abyss? It should be deadly for a human like him to even be here with the level of demonic miasma in the air, but he felt fine. Liu Qingge could even use sword flight and meditate in a place like this.
What was really going on?
He wished he knew which of the forum sisters had written this since he could make some guesses depending on who it was. So far he could rule out ‘Mobeis_Left_Tit’ since there had been no sign of the Northern Desert or Mobei’s family and she always wrote about them.
But it could be any of the others. A lot of them had written Bingqiu in the past too, but he didn’t know of anyone who paired Shang Qinghua with Mobei Jun. Or anyone who even liked that rat of a peak lord, and that was saying something since some people even liked the scum, Shen Qingqiu.
If he could just get a better understanding of which sister had written this fanfic he’d fallen into, then he could figure things out better and help make sure Liu Qingge didn’t get hurt like this again.
His stomach grumbled, and he groaned. Why weren’t there instant noodle trees in this world?
Earlier he’d heard a river earlier and fish liked shiny things, right? He could use a leaf to attract some fish attention and then catch and cook them for Liu Qingge and him to have a hot meal to help recover. Some of the fish in the Endless Abyss had not been deadly to eat, so he could probably make this work. While cultivators could practice inedia, most still ate.
Perfect! He’d make their dinner while Liu Qingge meditated.
Their last meal had been poisoned, so surely anything Shen Yuan made would be better than that!
He found a small leaf on the ground and tucked it into his hand, careful not to look into it as he walked back towards the sound of water. He found it easily enough and then realized he didn’t have a rod or net. Hm...
Well...
Shen Yuan hesitated before taking his jacket off and tying it into a makeshift bag that he could probably use to scoop some fish if they were really mesmerized.
He scooted over to the water’s edge and pulled the string from his hoodie to tie it around the stem of the leak. It was makeshift but would probably work? He tossed the leaf into the river and then stood on top of the other end of the hoodie string so the leaf didn’t go floating down the river.
When he realized he’d probably have to step off of it to actually catch a fish, he reluctantly summoned his fake Xin Mo into his hands and used that to hold the string down. Then he scooted closer to where the leaf floated in the water and waited.
It didn’t take long at all until a few fish gathered around, staring up at the leaf as if mesmerized. Perfect! He swooped in with his bag and actually caught about 4 small fish. He couldn’t believe it had worked!
He pulled on the string, and the leaf lifted out of the water.
VICTORY!
That was when he realized his mistake. The fish were no longer mesmerized and still in his hoodie.
Several fish leapt out of his shirt bag and back into the river. Shen Yuan wasn’t used to live fish jumping at him and stumbled backwards, tripping over his Xin Mo replica and dropping into the edge of the river, soaking himself.
He sat there in stunned, annoyed silence before shoving his leaf on a string into his soaked pocket. Grumbling, he stomped back to the camp and began stripping off his wet clothing. Even his shoes were drenched now!
A nearby tree had some bare branches just low enough for him to toss his things onto it. He kept on his boxer briefs because, well; he had some dignity! But everything else hung on the trees. With the warmth and the fire close by, it shouldn’t take too long for everything to dry. Hopefully before...
He glanced back at Liu Qingge, startled to see the man’s eyes open.
Shen Yuan hadn’t really noticed before, but the War God’s eyes weren’t a solid black, but a dark purple color. Well, of course they were. In a fanfiction, everyone had to have beautiful, unnatural eye colors.
But that meant he had just stripped right in front of Liu Qingge....
Well, it was fine; they were both men, so it didn’t matter. Both very straight men, so even if they were in some fujoshi’s world, that didn’t mean that stripping in front of a man was inherently gay.
“Feeling better?” he asked casually
“Why are all your clothes wet?” Liu Qingge eyed the tree of hanging clothing.
“I wanted to wash up,” he lied. “The river is very refreshing and nearby!”
Liu Qingge didn’t look particularly convinced as he stood up and stretched. “Sleep, I will keep watch.”
Shen Yuan wanted to argue and ask about dinner, but honestly he was exhausted after everything that had happened, especially now that he had gotten drenched and felt a little chilled.
Liu Qingge opened up a pouch at his side and pulled out some blankets and a pillow and offered them over. Who would have guessed the tough War God traveled with blankets and soft pillows? He took them gratefully and got comfortable near the fire.
“Don’t look at the leaves too much,” Shen Yuan warned.
“The... leaves?”
“They’re mirrors that will show you your greatest desire. They make it almost impossible to look away, so people have starved to death by being too mesmerized. So don’t do it!”
Liu Qingge nodded. “I won’t look into the leaves,” he promised with a hint of amusement in his voice.
“I’m going to sleep for just a bit. Don’t go anywhere while I’m asleep, promise?”
Liu Qingge nodded again. “I will be here. You have my word.”
Shen Yuan nodded. He remembered that a cultivator’s word was like their life, so he trusted that Liu Qingge would be there waiting when he got up again. How nice to have such a reliable man to go through this adventure with him. He really couldn’t have gotten any luckier.
He slept peacefully, and when he woke, the scent of cooked fish filled his nose. He opened his eyes to several fish skewered on sticks surrounding the fire. All of them smelled amazing even if they looked slightly out of some horror movie decoration.
“Hungry?” Liu Qingge asked when he noticed Shen Yuan moving.
Shen Yuan nodded as he sat up. The bedding really had been the softest, nicest things he’d slept on in a while. He thought there’d been no way he could get such a good sleep in a world like this, but clearly Liu Qingge had proved him wrong.
Happily, he ate the fish skewer handed over to him and enjoyed every bite. It wasn’t anything like he ate at home, but it still tasted familiar, like the smoked fish from one of his favorite restaurants.
“We should keep moving,” Liu Qingge said once Shen Yuan had eaten his fill.
“Okay,” Shen Yuan nodded. “Let me dress first.”
He touched his clothing and frowned when he felt they were still damp.
“Here.” Liu Qingge held out a set of robes in a pale green color.
“Ah, you have extra robes too? You always travel so prepared?”
“En,” Liu Qingge nodded.
“So reliable!” He beamed and tried to put on the robes.
He wasn’t sure how some of them tied into place and after watching him flail for a few moments, Liu Qingge approached and helped him dress with quick, gentle hands that absolutely did not make Shen Yuan feel things except for gratitude at having such a good, helpful, friend with skilled touches.
“You will not stick out as much like this,” Liu Qingge said.
“That makes sense. Thank you.”
Liu Qingge started pulling his old clothing from the tree and paused as he shook the hoodie. A few dead fish flopped to the forest ground. They both stared at the fish in silence.
“Shen Yuan, why are there dead fish in this jacket?”
“Ahaha I have no idea!” Shen Yuan said as he rushed over and grabbed his clothes to shove into his magical qiankun bracelet.
Liu Qingge didn’t push it and instead just shook his head before looking around the forest.
“You said the leaves were dangerous?”
Shen Yuan nodded, grateful for the change in topic. He would not be reliving his fishing failure, thank you very much. “They can mesmerize. I think the best way would be to blindfold ourselves and-”
A blast of warm energy washed over him, and then the sound of a thousand metal leaves shattering. Tiny pieces of glitter rained down over his head as he stared in shock. Had Liu Qingge just destroyed every leaf because Shen Yuan warned him?
“You.... but they!!”
Liu Qingge looked at him and tilted his head with an almost mischievous smile. “This was faster, wasn’t it?”
Shen Yuan had to agree, but he still didn’t like it.
“We will travel on foot; trees are annoying to fly around,” Liu Qingge said.
Shen Yuan sighed and grumbled about the dangers of stepping on broken glass, but, strangely, even the shoes that Liu Qingge had given him fit well. How did he have a set of clothing that almost perfectly fit Shen Yuan just in his bags??
Liu Qingge kicked out the fire and then started walking.
Shen Yuan scrambled after him. “Ah, where are we going? Liu Qingge!! Wait for me!”