Chapter Text
Luo Binghe is a half-demon. The protagonist of Proud Immortal Demon Way, although he isn’t aware of being a book character.
Thrown into the Abyss after his heritage had been found out, cast away by his own shizun, he had to fight claw, teeth, and bones to only survive in the harsh environment. He fought monsters multiple times his size. Slept in the cold, scavenged supplies to patch his wounds with, crafted and mended his own tools. Wrestled demonic beasts, learned to avoid the more dangerous ones. Channeled and strengthened his newfound demonic cultivation the entire time, with the thankful help of his shifu, Meng Mo, who he met with in his dreams at night. Bartered with native demons; in food, supplies, or other luxuries he could offer. Some of them carnal in nature, he had to admit.
In trying to make his way back to the human realm, he grew into himself and became an adult; not so much the child he had been when the Abyss became his home.
Qing Jing’s bamboo forest remains a vivid memory to him; it is everything the abyss isn’t. Peaceful on the surface, but harsh to live in. Its air crisp to breathe in the mornings, tinted with dew; bright during sunny days, every parcel of space tinted in some shade of green. Chilly at night, when the heat recedes and the winds are left to blow among the branches.
The abyss had that going for it; what you saw was what you got. A pit full of Rock-capped Scorpions, trees inhabited by Pearlescent Burrowers, the alluring Nightbell Vine that grows in inauspicious clearings, surrounded by Grass-tipped Hedgehogs. Or sometimes it was sulfur vapors, denoting a magma pit just beyond that ledge or another. Water that harbored a demonic creature’s eggs, invisible to the naked eye. Everything was a danger, no matter where you looked.
The bamboo wouldn’t stab you, but the verbal barbs given by his fellow martial brothers were as much as knives digging into open wounds. The blatant disinterest- if not anger- of his shizun for whatever he did that wasn’t just right. Always too much or too little, Luo Binghe never had found that balance that the peak of scholars strives for.
Yet, he wished to return to that den of monsters. He wanted to know. Why was he cast out? Why was he stepped on and treated like dirt? Why did his shizun look away every time he was bullied? And why did no one do anything?
Meng Mo told him about a sword that could be his ticket out of this place; Xin Mo, a demonic sword. He has been warned against its deceptive nature; that it would attempt to control him, to do its bidding. That it would speak to him, its words venom. To kill and slay every last thing that would cross his path, in order to feed its bottomless appetite for pain and blood.
He had to fight a horde of monsters to reach it; Not guards, exactly. But they were all drawn to the demonic aura the sword emitted, even when it was sealed. That was also how he himself could track its whereabouts down. His cruddy weapons didn’t last, and he had to resort to his claws at one point, his hands caked with various shades of demon blood.
Once the path is clear, he makes his way to it.
He removes the mass of talismans that cover it, wards and seals that he had learned about back on Qing Jing, that Meng Mo helped him master. Their sheer number meant they were to be taken away one by one, its energy slowly turning oppressive as they were removed. If he had avoided the beasts earlier, they surely would’ve swarmed him right this moment all at once. Energy this thick tasted like bitter tea on his tongue.
Luo Binghe is the protagonist of Proud Immortal Demon Way. This sword is his birthright. His destiny. He had lost Zheng Yang, so Xin Mo could become his only sword.
Its wine-red blade looked like an ugly, jagged scar, its surface ribbed like ancient stone knives, and its pommel made of a material that looked like bone.
He holds it in his hand, and what he hears is the last thing he would have expected.
‘“My son!!!!”
Luo Binghe is….. Really Fucking Confused right now.