Chapter Text
For over a decade, the emotion that Mobei-Jun most associated with humanity was disgust, and as far as he was concerned its mutuality was absolute. In that damned water prison, as a child, it had pervaded the air like thick incense smoke, pouring off every human who laid eyes on him, accumulating in that stagnant chamber, layer by suffocating layer. Fear was blended in, despite the demon they so feared being a near-helpless caged child. Once that child escaped and gained a little height, the fear from humans who witnessed him became an even more pervasive scent than the disgust, and for a time he thought there was some victory in that.
Until the anomaly of all anomalies showed up—clinging like a tick to his thigh, reeking of terror and anger aimed at his own compatriots, who Mobei-Jun had heard from downwind, so eagerly urging him to jump in front of the face of his own imminent death. The fact the young man had refused to fully draw his blade even at their urging had been the first anomaly, excusable because he seemed to be an obvious coward. Though the cowardice was accompanied by unexpected stickiness that had to require some gall, especially given the human addressed him with almost the correct title—inaccurate in a way that could easily be perceived as flattery or even a promise if it came from a real loyal servant, but… there was such a strange conviction in that shrill and terrified voice.
It had successfully distracted him long enough that the human was still alive when Mobei-Jun’s world finally went dark from his injuries. The next anomaly was that he woke up at all, instead of being vengefully murdered by the human, as he had honestly expected.
Being unconscious for some time, it took him a while to really notice that oddest part about this cowardly little cultivator. He didn’t notice it before passing out, nor when he kicked the boy off the lower corner of his bed for continuing to cling to his legs even when unconscious, but he did notice it through a half-lucid fugue, when the bumbling fool spent most of the night aggressively fanning him. Foolish though he looked, and scared though he still smelled, even with the air in the whole tiny little room fully circulating, there was no trace of disgust in that air. Just determination, sweat, and that piquancy of the fear of imminent death.
Falling in and out of consciousness several times, a shichen between each, he admitted that for a weakling, this human had a certain diligence to his work ethic. As a prince with no backing and very few followers, it was a diligence he admittedly did not see enough. Not that he was impressed! He was just—surprised. In court, he was accustomed to such cowards being lazier.
Though as he had that final thought, he did hear the human finally lose his fight against exhaustion and tumble—not onto the floor. Mobei-Jun felt the faint impact of a sweaty brow near one of his ankles. It would have been possible to kick him off again, but… he’d witnessed himself the human hadn’t been able to choose a landing spot. Instead, the ice prince let his eyes fall shut and the loudly calling darkness swim up to take him again.
The following day he opened his eyes blearily, but his head was a bit clearer. The human had wisely removed himself from the mattress again upon regaining consciousness, confirming in Mobei-Jun’s mind that the out-of-place thunking in his dream earlier had probably been from an external source. The human was seated at the table this time, instead of under it, and was at first glance manhandling some very familiar fine fabric across his lap.
“My cloak?” Mobei-Jun growled.
“Yes, your humble servant has been mending it, now that it’s dried. It was a hassle to get all the blood and poison out.” The human, who on closer and more wakeful inspection was in fact wielding a needle and thread with practiced ease, nodded at the side-table by the bed pointedly. From there, Qinghua observed the ice prince in tiny glances from under the sweep of his long eyelashes, in between pulls of the thread.
Mobei-Jun glanced to the side and winced, seeing the Huan Hua Palace's Ling Hua dart that had been formerly working its way through one of his kidneys, now extracted and resting harmlessly on the tabletop like a bit of morbid decor, with three bloodied petals fully unfolded. Only then did he realize he had been stitched up and bandaged, as well, and not ineptly, either. “Do you bandage up a lot of people?” After a slight pause he added, “And perform minor surgery?”
“This servant has gotten in a lot of practice. Outer disciples from An Ding go up and down mountainsides faster and more often than anybody else. Humans are more breakable, too, especially before the whole immortality thing. I’ve removed tree limb pieces bigger and more complicated than that dart from a human and they didn’t die. You being a demon just meant you gushed significantly less, and had even higher survival odds.” His icy body temperature and absurd level of power had to do with that too, Qinghua knew, because he’d written Mobei-Jun that way, but it had still been pretty unsettling to witness, so he didn’t care to bring it up.
That answer was nice, simple, and straightforward. It made sense. If only the rest of the man did. “Are you part demon or something?” Mobei-Jun asked, his tone almost as annoyed as it was reluctantly curious about this man's strange flippancy.
“No! Probably. Well, about ninety percent sure. There were fan—ahem—family theories, but this one couldn’t confirm anything either way, on last check. Just mundane human evil there.” He scowled a bit at the thought, not very consciously. He did resent that he got reincarnated into a guy with an even more dysfunctional family than the ones he’d had in the prior life—just with a bit more money and status to fund their excesses. The only reason he went nosing after the demon heritage rumors at all was to be sure it wouldn’t be detectable to anybody in the Cang Qiong Sect. If he was going to walk into a lion’s den wearing zebra blood, then he preferred to know how many lions, their feeding schedule, their preferred zebra condiment choices for to avoid wearing, etc, to better his survival odds.
To Mobei-Jun, this answer’s seeming absolute candor about theoretical demon ancestry, from a Cang Qiong sect member, was rather staggering. As was the fact Mobei-Jun was pretty sure he had a similar scowl on his own face whenever his uncle came up in conversation. Seeing it reflected in another young man’s face for a change, instead of the mirror, was making him uncomfortable. Asked the demon, “What sort of theories?”
“Fox or rat, my king, both rumored at different points in family history, from different lines of descent, which merged on the paternal side three generations back. One of the two seems likely to have reached me, but only if one or both claims couldn’t be proved not to be slander, which this servant couldn’t prove. Either way, it was four or five generations back, if at all. No signs of demonic energies, just mundane human ones, in that time.” Honestly, some fans who loved Mobei-Jun almost as much as his creator had given more thought to his little helper minion than Airplane himself ever did. He had liked the theory some fans came up with that the reason the peak lord of An Ding was such an easy sellout to demons was to do with a distant ancestor, some sort of cunning little animal demon.
All Airplane did was put up one fan poll over which small furry creature they could imagine skulking around behind their beloved Ice King, giving his sins plausible deniability in a number of key cases. Then he forgot what the final result was before reincarnating. How foolish of me to lack such foresight, Qinghua thought to himself sarcastically.
Surely that wasn’t enough for Shang Qinghua’s demon blood to be canon in this universe full of living breathing people, right? Haha. Haaa. Honestly the poor beleaguered reincarnated writer had no idea anymore. That cucumber bastard might have had some point about his plot holes, because the auto-fill functions on this universe might just kill him before Mobei-Jun could—at least, if any more of their auto-fill functions were like the rest of the Shang family. He had burned that bridge when he came to it already, though.
Airplane’s sincerest hope was that if he didn’t go fishing for clues among his family too hard, then maybe he could be far enough away on An Ding peak, or in the Ice Palace, to not be involved whenever such a curse came to fruition or whatever, if it was even canon, which he had not been able to fully confirm due to his family’s long history of committing arson-based insurance fraud.
“Hmph.” So if he even was a hybrid, then he was so thinned out as to make no difference, thought Mobei-Jun. Still, at the end of the day, functionally just a human, with no demonic Qi. He did not even smell of demon blood in the slightest. “Not uncommon, for those shapeshifters, back then.”
The (mostly?) human nodded agreement.
“What is the name of my new servant?”
For a moment a bright grin flashed across the human’s face. It made his face look suddenly very young, especially compared to his world-weary words. Also a bit… pretty. “Shang Qinghua, my king. At least, it will be, once this servant ascends to peak lord.” There was an unusual surety in his voice, a mixture of sly calculation, resignation, and an almost sleazy self-assurance.
“And whatever will you do with your embroidery skills then?”
The grin flashed even wider, making him look very open and breezy in a dishevelled and cute way—a discovery Mobei-Jun was determined to ignore. “I regret to inform my king that this servant is not qualified to repair embroidery. At least, not any that a respectable person would plan to wear in front of others. Unless this is a request that I practice?”
Mobei-Jun was genuinely uncertain if this was an insult, a flirtation, or just a playful rejoinder. “You do come from the peak of such skill diversification.”
Again, a little frown of disapproval appeared on his face despite a lingering healthy fear in his scent—the same as when he earlier told the demon that discrimination by peak wasn’t very nice. For all that he was willing to betray his sect, he seemed to still dislike his peak being looked down on so bluntly. He would simply have to grow accustomed, Mobei-Jun decided firmly.
“There’s a lot of things we’re better at than advertized, but if anybody actually—” He cleared his throat, making a minor tone correction from aggrievement to advertizing. “If it’s given proper thought, they seem obvious. One could say An Ding is tragically under-utilized in all of the interesting ways, and worked to the bone in all the mundane ones.” He then offered a grin that was oddly sharp and out of place on his youthful face, still round-cheeked with a hint of genuine baby fat. “If anything I’m offering you VIP service for what An Ding peak is uniquely capable of doing expressly because nobody believes in us.”
“VIP?”
“Apologies—it’s a colloquialism from my hometown—it means my king is in a special class of clientele for An Ding’s future,” said Shang Qinghua, oozing persuasion. “The point is—since nobody believes anything of interest happens there, all sorts of interesting things can hide in plain sight.”
Like you? He wondered. For this youth who had looked very much like a curled-up hamster under that table last night, even claiming to be a rat seemed aspirational for him, but there was a base ambitious cunning in his beady little eyes that did make Mobei-Jun wonder. Maybe, just maybe there was a fox in there, deep, very deep down, under all that fluff and indignity. “The more you talk, the less normal you seem.”
“Huh? Nah. That’s probably the blood loss talking,” Qinghua said quickly, waving away the accusation with his needle-bearing hand for a moment. “This humble servant of yours is as normal as the very dirt.”
“No cultivators are normal.”
“Well that—I cannot argue with. Yeah, it’s eccentrics all the way down.”
“You also hold no disgust toward demon-kind, making you unusual among cultivators.”
For some reason that made the young man a bit tenser—and he had already been more taut than the average bowstring. “Well—yeah.”
“No explanation this time?”
Shang Qinghua thought about it, his expression scrunching in a way that put Mobei-Jun back in favor of the rat allegations. “Not much to explain. Qi is Qi, people are people, and the rest is politics.”
“Your politics being in favor of demons?”
After his mouth emitted a small sizzling noise like he had been trying to dance around a hot coal and missed, the human elaborated, “Look—this may sound weird given how many of my apparent companions you killed off when we first met, but honestly they were useless baggage the whole trip, gossiping indiscreetly and making my life more difficult. That is the only occasion I personally have been inconvenienced in any way by a demon, and as a result I kind of think the people who are too zealous about their demon-loathing kinda have some problems in their brains, and possibly a few rocks. Most of my problems are with other humans, across the board.” And one System.
[-5 B points.]
And that is why, Qinghua thought, radiating bitterness intensely for a moment.
Mobei-Jun blinked several times rapidly, his brow furrowing. “You’re a strange person.”
“As stated, it’s eccentrics all the way down. Did you think that in such an eclectic and inconsistent array of people there would be zero sympathizers within the ranks?”
“You think you could find more?”
The human nodded. “Absolutely.” I even know which of them would’ve ratted out the original goods, and which ones are actually good for it. A total of six known-good eggs is superior to the original’s half-rotten dirty dozen. He would ‘find’ them slowly over coming months. “Quality only. No time wasters.”
“Is this… an already organized group?”
That cunning grin returned. “My king, while that faith in me is inspiring, this servant hasn’t even gotten started yet, having had no backing until now.”
“I have no backing either, you know.” Mobei-Jun’s eyes narrowed when the man only nodded. “How did you know who I am?”
The human struck up a much more informal tone suddenly, as if to make a point about the lack of identification he’d been offered, “Strictly speaking, I don’t, since my king hasn’t given me a name, but I know what that mark on your forehead means, and you changed the temperature and atmospheric pressure so drastically over such a large area, even while grievously injured. That power output is definitely indicative of royal bloodline. Only one royal demonic lineage is known to Cang Qiong that uses ice as a primary weapon, which is the northern kingdom's Mobei clan. Also, you look fairly close to my age—seventeen if you wondered.”
“I didn’t.” Mobei-Jun considered this. The human was actually one year his senior, but he was under no circumstances planning to tell him that. "You may continue to address this Mobei-Jun as your king."
He nodded thoughtfully. “Your age helped this servant down the number of known descendants of the northern throne my king could be,” the human explained further, returning to politeness. “See? Straightforward logic, really.”
Not agreeing with that assessment in the least, given most cultivators had far less knowledge concerning the distribution of kingdoms within the Demon Realm, Mobei-Jun said coldly, “I’ll admit you may not be as stupid as you look.” Loathe as he may be to admit it, this human was aptly demonstrating more intellect in this conversation than a number of extant members of his court. Perhaps this kid would be a half-decent investment after all, despite all that humanity. “This is a hotel, correct?”
“Yes, my king.”
“Is a bath available?”
“It will be made so, just a moment.” He tied off the thread he’d been sewing with, and bit the needle off the end, stabbing it back into the heart of his sewing kit on the table. He then stood up while spreading the mended cloak, shaking it free of loose pieces of thread and brushing off any that insisted on clinging, then folded its bulk a couple times and draped it over back of the chair he had just been seated in. With it held up to the light like that briefly, the demon took note that about a third of the largest tears had been neatly mended so far. “This servant will return shortly, my king.”
Mobei-Jun watched him go, feeling extremely puzzled. He bit his thumb with one sharp canine and traced a few sigils on the headboard in his blood, summoning a basic imp, which manifested from an icy little burst of shadows before the sigil. The scaly little gargoyle-looking creature was the height of his palm, winged and clawed, with an obediently dull glint of intellect in its beady little gaze. “Camouflage yourself. Keep an eye on him. Alert me immediately if he attempts to flee, or is in danger.”
The imp minion nodded assent, and cloaked itself in invisibility before fluttering away and audibly scrabbling under the closed hotel door to follow after Shang Qinghua.
~~
The imp relayed a variety of useful information to him. Initially nothing much, as the human made no attempts to reach out to his sect, and was continuing to interface with hotel staff as though he were the servant of an impoverished elderly aristocrat with barely a title and little money left—an admittedly decent cover story. He apparently did not loot his companion’s corpses, which seemed like a missed opportunity, at least at first.
On the day his new servant’s stomach drew him fully from the hotel though, Mobei-Jun suspected the imp would become vital, and it did. To his credit, his new pet spy did not seek out his fellow sect members intentionally; the imp sent to Mobei-Jun's mind the scene of them surrounding him in public just after he finished inhaling some rather sad-looking congee. He was almost concerned to see Shang Qinghua collapse in the middle of the street, but the imp’s monitoring included a health indicator, which showed no issues, and patterns indicating he was fully awake, while his peers milled around him with deep concern.
Mobei-Jun made a mental note to test Qinghua if he tried to fake fainting to get out of a task in future. Especially since it required others to relocate his ‘unconscious’ body, which was now Mobei-Jun’s problem, as they hauled him all the way to Qiong Ding Peak. The ice prince continued to watch the imp’s spy feed in his mind, and did at least find out why the cunning little rat hadn’t looted his peers’ corpses. He knew they would be found, and didn’t think to share that information, which Mobei-Jun took careful note of.
His spy had ‘regained’ consciousness, and been offered more food, which he did honestly appear to need. Mobei-Jun had noted some of the roundness lost from his cheeks while in these rooms, but based on how his peers reacted, his health must have been poorer than the demon realized. Humans were more fragile than he thought.
As annoying as it was, his new spy being taken far away so rapidly, Mobei-Jun reasoned that this cheap hotel bed was of poor quality. He might as well use the energy he’d replenished thus far to impress upon his new servant just how easily reached the peaks were, via his teleportation.
So he watched the performance of this newly acquired spy under the pressure of the others in his sect. The first one Qinghua regarded with genuine tension was in the Qiong Ding Peak's makeshift morgue, wearing the uniform of a disciple from Qing Jing Peak—a creature radiating elegance, and control.
In comparison, Qinghua gave off the air of a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown, trembling very convincingly, but not quite as convincingly as Mobei-Jun had seen and felt in person. It was most likely as false as the tears that his little spy allowed to rain down profusely. His methods seemed childish to Mobei-Jun—all these emotional displays, and coughing like he was trying to dislodge a respiratory blood clot, in effort to evade making concrete answers—but they worked well, and his spy used the conflict between the too-elegant man and his peer, who Mobei-Jun recognized as Yue Qingyuan by his sword, to slip out of the conversation unscathed and with remarkably little further probing.
Mobei-Jun wondered if part of it was deliberate choices the An Ding disciple made in order to make himself more unpleasant for them to deal with, which was a cleverness Mobei-Jun hoped to never need invest in, himself. He continued watching, his new pawn getting promoted along the way, until he found out which dormitory in the Leisure House was Shang Qinghua’s, and teleported there.
~~
Shang Qinghua would like to think it was to his immense credit that he did not scream when he turned to suddenly find Mobei-Jun laying on his previously-empty bed without warning. The new teacup gift he dropped was a casualty and would be missed. Why he hadn’t been able to drop his much sturdier tin cup of water instead, only the inescapable domain of cliches Airplane himself made could be blamed.
“My King…”
“Following me the rest of your life, en?”
The little human’s eyes became as wide and round as saucers. Shang Qinghua babbled nonstop, "My king, let me explain. That day as soon as I went outside, I just wanted to drink some congee and come back, but who knew, fate was fooling around with me, I ran into a familiar Shixiong. I was afraid he'd ask too many questions and I'd let something slip, and he'd take people to look for you, my king, and cause trouble, that wouldn't be good. In addition, your injuries weren't causing you serious trouble anymore, I thought it through from different angles and decided I had to endure disgrace for my mission and follow them back, from then on if I saw an opportunity I would…"
The hand Mobei-Jun was using to prop up his temple seemed to have gotten tired, and he switched to the other, massaging his temple impatiently. ”So they told you to return, and you just followed them back?” He knew this wasn’t entirely the case, prodding, testing.
Rather than pleading his case that he had 'fainted', Shang Qinghua argued, aggrieved, "So, what else could I have done? Refuse to submit unto death? Show my hand and fight? That wouldn't do, aside from the fact that I can't defeat them, the important thing is, I still had to be an undercover agent for you, my King. How could I tear down my face for Cang Qiong Mountain this early?” In the midst of this wildfire burst of enthusiasm, he struck while the iron was hot. "I report to my King, I've already become an inner disciple, isn't that showing ample drive? Doesn't that have a lot of upward potential? ..."
It was interesting to Mobei-Jun that he didn’t admit to feigning unconsciousness. Hiding that card up his sleeve for later, perhaps? Accordingly, Mobei-Jun applied a light general beating before returning to the bed. “We’ll continue tomorrow.”
After the lightest annoyed push back concerning bed access though, his new servant eventually subsided with a pillow, using more of his healing cultivation on his injuries, which he seemed about as adept at as bandages, though his Qi circulation was still young and overly simple by Cang Qiong sect standards. He did not possess any great innate power, nor any genius talent for cultivation, but remained so confident in his aspiration to peak lord of An Ding.
This was also the first time Mobei-Jun heard the foreign words “fuck” and “shit” used halfheartedly several times in the only half-decipherable mumbles of swearing from Shang Qinghua before he curled tighter around the pillow under his head and passed out with remarkable speed for a man who had spent almost a quarter of his afternoon playing dead. Given it was nothing but half-conscious mumbling, Mobei-Jun chose to ignore it for now.
Mobei’s foremost emotion towards humanity remained disgust. It was just this one particular human that caused him to experience mild bafflement and suspicion instead. Not that different, really. So far.
~~
Honestly, Shang Qinghua wasn’t altogether certain why Mobei-Jun lurked around hogging his bed for another three days. If he had the strength to teleport back, then it seemed like it would initially make more sense for him to just go somewhere colder than An Ding, and finish his healing faster, but no. Napping for nine shichen a day in the Leisure House seemed to suit him better and, somewhat alarmingly, not even the most senior visiting Cang Qiong sect members picked up the faintest trace of a demonic presence during his stay.
Perhaps I made his halo too strong, Qinghua thought, several times per day.
At least Mobei-Jun didn’t seem to mind the human food prepared for him by his new servant. It had been awhile since Qinghua flexed those skills, so it was gratifying enough not to have the ice prince turn his nose up at any dishes, even if they did have the occasional vegetable. While consuming noodle soup the first night with all apparent neutrality, the prince asked about any demonic artifacts in the possession of An Ding and the other peaks.
“Ah, yes.” Shang Qinghua wandered over to his desk and grabbed a small stack of papers he had tucked into the false-bottom of a side drawer, which he shut again before bustling back over to his patient's bedside. “I put this together; it’s everything I already know about, but I’ll send you updates now that I have backer to shop the vaults for both in and outside An Ding.” He set down the papers beside the demon’s hip on the bed, as Mobei-Jun set aside the now-empty bowl.
Upon picking up the small stack, Mobei’s eyebrows raised. The information was not only useful, but well formatted, easy to read, and the final page even had a color-coded chart for the listed useful items, artifacts and resources of An Ding, since Qinghua had the most data for it easily at hand. “When did you make this?”
“This morning, while you were sleeping in.”
“You are… prompt.”
“Thank you, my king.”
“I also question how you know the usefulness of many of these things to demons.”
“Your servant just has approximate knowledge of many things, my king.”
Mobei-Jun frowned at that, but could hardly argue. He reasoned that perhaps it was the theoretical demon blood buried deep in his ancestry, but it seemed this human had a preternatural knack for knowing more than he should. “You have a number of items on here marked as easily stolen.”
“By me anyway, especially after the recent promotion.” He reached down to his hip and jangled a ring of a few new keys that he’d been given, now hanging from his belt.
“It seems theft comes naturally to you?”
Of course; all great writers steal, Qinghua thought to himself, smirking just a little smugly. “It’s a knack.”
“Noted.” Mobei-Jun was a little disturbed at how eager the human was to prove himself, and how sincerely he preened at being called a thief to his face. Maybe he really did have both rat and fox buried deep in his ancestry. “What is this section, Diplomatic Gifts?”
“My king mentioned having little in the way of backers and support in court. The items marked in magenta there are the best available bribe materials to spread influence around the court and foster loyalty,” said the human.
Mobei-Jun stared at him again, face back to his default resting bitch face, making the human in front of him very nervous. “You’re educated in matters of demonic courts?”
“I mean… a court is a court? Some stuff is universal,” Qinghua hedged nervously. “This servant also has good instincts for what’s valuable to demons generally. As the centralized mercantile arm of Cang Qiong Mountain, An Ding is very concerned about not accidentally selling items usable for nefarious purposes, so this servant treated the list of such forbidden items as guidelines. Are some of them in the list inappropriate or something?”
Mobei-Jun looked back over the magenta sections. “Not inappropriate, no.” In fact, they were all startlingly good suggestions. “Who are you?”
Just for couple long seconds, Shang Qinghua’s entire body was very still, for the first time in their acquaintance. Not a twitch, not a whimper, not a breath. Then instantly the facade of amiability switched back into the On position. “Just another not-normal human cultivator from the basket of eccentrics, my king.”
“Hm.” Doubtfully, Mobei-Jun returned his eyes to the chart again, already spinning together plans. He could think of several parties to gift these suggested materials to. “How soon could you steal these?”
“How soon can my king arrange a pick up?” Qinghua shot back, blasé. “By the way, how is your new servant here supposed to contact this king in future? Or an appropriate subordinate if my king has a spymaster already? My king can probably send just an imp with a note or something, but this one doesn’t exactly have a secure mailing address for the northern demonic kingdom.” He then squeaked, but did not struggle when icy shadows radiating intense demonic Qi formed a large sigil on the floor around his feet, frost creeping out from them to coat the polished bamboo floor around him precariously so that the human stood very still just to avoid a mortifying pratfall in front of his perfect man. “Uhhh, my king?” He then jolted as all those black squiggles locked into a stable shape, which then stretched out towards the four directions then imploded inward, wrapping and mixing up with Qinghua’s own shadow.
The human swore he could feel it moving around his body with every twitch and whirl of it visible around his shadow, like a spiralling cloud of falling snow, but creeping up his body rather than following the natural flow of gravity. He gave a full-body shudder, partly because it genuinely was freezing cold and covered every inch of his skin with goosebumps, but also because it felt a little bit like a caress and like most righteous sect outer disciples he was only getting relief on his touch starvation these days during sparring practice and thus this sensation felt kind of really good. He then heard the click and searing sound of a seal locking into place, and the whole wash of sensation stopped all at once, leaving him blinking and a little bereft in its wake.
“If you say ‘King’s Message’ with papers in your hand, they will be sent to my desk. If you have any other item to deliver it’s ‘King’s Shipment’ and if you are imperilled on a secret mission for me you may call out ‘My King’ and assistance will arrive.”
“Wow,” Qinghua breathed, sincerely delighted. “That’s new. Very impressive, my king.” He tentatively stepped out of the already-melting circle of frost without slipping and falling, giving a little sigh of relief under his breath afterward. In his old life as Airplane-juju, he had at some point given at least half a thought to the logistics of communication between Mobei-Jun and his cannon fodder lackey, no matter what a certain cucumber might say otherwise, but had admittedly decided it was too difficult to bother working out in detail for a character who didn’t really matter and nobody liked.
[Character backstory unlocked. +50 B points, +100 Loyalty Points to your sovereign, +100 cool points.]
Okay, System, you win this round; I don’t hate this fill-in material for my plot hole, this one singular time. That was sick as hell.
Mobei-Jun snorted at the flattery, but was not displeased by it, to his own chagrin. This human, while easily startled, was already proving weirdly difficult to surprise when it came to information about demon-kind. It was good to know that some of his capabilities there still remained well beyond Shang Qinghua’s ken. “Humans are easily impressed.”
The human in front of him made a noncommittal noise in response, picking up the empty soup bowl and chopsticks beside his king.
“Make a chart like this for Huan Hua Palace as soon as you are able.”
“Your servant will set about it right away, my king, though completion will take much more time,” the human concurred. “They are friendlier with An Ding than a number of the other peaks right now, but they are still a very insular sect.” Of course, he’d already more than half finished that chart with his cheat knowledge from writing this world into existence, but only in his head. He hadn’t trusted his clever ice king not to start snooping through his desk while he was away long before now, and did not envy the prospect of explaining how he had that knowledge yet. There was time to release it slowly, piece by valuable piece, in a way that did not make him look like he was some sort of psychic. “In your servant’s humble opinion, being that insular has driven them all crazy antisocial, frankly, but it does keep their freaky secrets fairly well. It’ll be easier when this one has the income to afford much more liquor and the occasional truth serum to ply people with.”
Mobei-Jun’s eyebrows raised. He was not impressed, he would have insisted, had anyone else been present and dared to ask. He kept the rest of his expression as carefully blank as he would in court. “Keep your king updated on all progress.”
“Yes, my king.” Qinghua then stepped out to handle the dishes.
~~
On the second day, Shang Qinghua gifted him an item that was of value as an elixir both to human and demon cultivators, an ancient ginseng with a neutral aspect and potent water energy, both of which would be very complimentary to the nature of—say—a powerful ice demon.
It came with a firm warning not to consume it until he was fully healed and his Qi flow restabilized, the human narrowing his eyes at him with a daring hint of demand in his tone. This, combined with the fact he had only chosen to bare a single tooth only when it was a matter of Mobei-Jun’s personal health at risk, was a surreal experience for the ice prince.
“No one will notice its absence?”
“Mm, unlikely. It was buried under several ugh archaeological layers of unsorted elixirs and other junk down in a basement accessible with my new keys. A small group of other inner disciples had apparently been tossing anything down there they didn’t want to do all the paperwork for, over the course of several years. I suspect as much as a quarter of the pile might be technically stolen,” Qinghua’s voice held a mixture of amusement, and exasperation. “Ugh, they were all so dusty.” He looked down at himself in disgust.
“Yes, I see that.” Mobei-Jun eyed his servant’s filthy robes with displeasure. He did smell like he’d rolled around in a scholar’s crypt. It almost completely covered up his natural smell of honeysuckle and human. “Go clean up.”
“Yes, my king.”
Mobei-Jun stared at the ginseng, wrapped in fine silk and resting in a finely carved wooden box, lacquered and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He could not help but note there was no dust on any of that, interestingly enough, despite the man who delivered it looking like he had been used to sweep an attic floor with his body. “What the hell is archaeology?” he muttered to himself. Confusion and a few other emotions he was significantly less interested in identifying were co-mingling together in his chest like dyes caught in a waterspout.
Resolving not to think about it, Mobei-Jun re-folded the silk around the gifted ginseng with uncharacteristic care, and closed the box gently, setting it close at hand on the nightstand.
~~
On the third day, Mobei-Jun spent more time awake then at any point in the previous week and a half. His strength was almost fully returned, but still he loitered a little longer. This had nothing to do with how good the human’s cooking was. The man had insisted on doing it himself in the kitchens, muttering about royalty and security. Mobei-Jun’s exposure to human cuisine during his stay in the Huan Hua palace had been meager and very occasional, with nothing to speak of in terms of flavor. Before his capture by them, he had consumed a few things around a street market with his uncle that had haunted his tastebuds for ages.
Shang Qinghua’s cooking put all of those memories to shame. Resoundingly. It took an effort, frequently, not to besmirch his own dignity over it, and he was only mostly certain those efforts were successful. The human had already begun subtly altering things to suit his taste even further with each meal, not making this easier on his royal master in the slightest.
Demon cuisine was as diverse as demons themselves, but most species in the far north generally had adapted to an almost exclusively carnivorous diet by necessity, and simple and hearty fare that was extremely filling was the apex of cooking technology, especially given how many demons liked their meat uncooked altogether. Fermentation was also popular for meats, potent alliums, and hardy root vegetables. This Mobei-Jun's mother, though she died young, had been a foreign-born ice demoness whose father was from the south, and his palate was thus very different from most in the ice fortress as a result. He required his own private chef, otherwise the rest of the castle's day to day 90% meat fare was simply too… monotonous, in both flavours and textures, for this prince's liking. Shang Qinghua's cooking had none of these issues.
Mobei-Jun was uncertain if the blame fell upon the food culture of An Ding Peak, or the Cang Qiong sect altogether, or the mysterious ‘hometown’ his new human servant flippantly referred to whenever he used language that Mobei-Jun found entirely foreign. He was doing his level best not to become curious. It was an unsuitable fixation for a demon in his position.
However, food could not occupy him the entire day, when he could no longer sleep like the dead through most of it, nor move about freely. He did take time to thoroughly go through his spy’s personal desk. It was mostly mundane, beyond how well-organized the man was. The color coded charts were apparently a theme. Mobei-Jun also found some pages of a short fiction story, penned in his spy’s hand, that seemed set in a strange world that made little sense to him. An odd hobby, but better than a vice.
The most perplexing things he found were notes written in a strange alphabet he was certain he had never seen anywhere in this world. He copied the shapes as best he could onto a blank sheet of paper, and once the ink dried, he folded it up and pocketed it as a sample to take back to the royal library to see if he could find any other examples of such strange lettering there.
Following that, he decided to peer through the eyes of the imp he’d set to follow Qinghua around, just to kill time.
Somehow he had not expected to see combat training out on a grassy hill. He also had not expected to see his new spy sweaty, stripped to the waist and barefoot, and performing somewhat respectably with a spear against another An Ding inner disciple, a young man with a murderous glower on his face who did not appear to be treating this as a simple harmless practice spar. Mobei-Jun was slightly shocked how much muscle was hiding under the man’s usual disciple robes, but mused that perhaps running for his life up and down mountainsides was great exercise by human standards.
Qinghua looked a little bit afraid, as was merited since he wasn’t quite as skilled as his opponent, but he was also faster and not as angry, which was putting him on surprisingly even footing with the other man (also stripped to the waist, but Mobei-Jun did not really notice as much) who was calling Qinghua a perfidious coward who did nothing but save his own skin.
After squinting a bit at Qinghua’s opponent, it occurred to Mobei-Jun that perhaps he was a relative or friend to one of the disciples Mobei-Jun had so effortlessly parted from their mortal coils on the day he’d met his little spy. He didn’t recall any of the faces of those killed that day, but that voice reminded him of the foolish disciple who had been so intent on getting Qinghua to go against the grain of his entire cowardly nature and launch himself at the face of death for honor and glory.
At first glance, it looked like Qinghua’s usual excessive caution was allowing him to be pushed around in this fight, but after a time Mobei-Jun realized he was wearing out his enraged opponent by keeping him charging again and again, while expending as little energy as possible himself. The demon could tell Qinghua was saving energy because he wasn’t bothering to put on any false flailing emotional facade at all, his eyes clear despite the occasional cartoonishly scared noises that escaped his expressive mouth. Qinghua’s movements were not those of a master or even an ingenious adept, but they were practiced, functional, efficient, and wasted no movement. Every twitch had purpose.
Once his opponent’s blows lost about a third of their strength and speed due to exhaustion, the tables turned quickly, and Qinghua began to do the pushing around, just for a bit, before managing to down his opponent a bit creatively with the butt-end of his spear to the throat. The blow sent his opponent tumbling down and wheezing violently.
Qinghua himself looked as surprised that worked as the choking man who had fallen to his knees because of it. “Looks like you got beaten by a perfidious coward,” he mused gleefully, with a malevolent shit-eating grin when his opponent glared up at him, using healing cultivation unsteadily to repair his fractured hyoid bone and try to minimize inflammation.
Mobei’s attention remained fixed on that grin for several long moments. He had noticed his new servant wasn’t ugly, even if just by human standards, but this was the first occasion he realized the man was actually… a bit handsome. Not just pretty like a decoration as he'd already noticed, but in the right light he was also handsome like a well-crafted blade. He did not like this realization so he elected to ignore it at every opportunity. Even so, he remained watching the scene instead of opening his eyes.
“You bastard!” the downed opponent rasped, leaping up to launch both fists before their instructor ran over to grab him and separated the pair, one with arms still pinwheeling with rage. Qinghua’s grin became soft and boyish and innocent just before the instructor lay eyes on him—a nigh beneficent expression that looked very sincere, but Mobei-Jun didn’t believe it for an instant, and most of the other inner disciples around him clearly did not either. The instructor, though, had heard only Qinghua’s opponent doing the shit-talking during that fight, and saw the sore loser try to start a fist fight after, so to her perhaps the little spy seemed genuinely innocent.
Now that was the two-faced behavior Mobei-Jun had come to expect, after the tearful display in the morgue that he’d also witnessed via imp. He nodded to himself, as this finally confirmed some of his bias.
After the instructor dragged off the sore loser, a few younger disciples came to ask Qinghua if he was okay after hearing all that.
Quinghua offered them a wobbly half-smile. “Seeing what I saw? I don’t think anybody in An Ding wouldn’t take the coward’s route. There was just… so much blood, so quickly…” He let his voice break naturally, as though on a suppressed sob. He accepted comforting words and touches for a few moments, then quickly excused himself with his whole expression now wobbling. It continued until he was out of earshot of the remaining disciples in the practice grounds, then he relaxed that facial expression with a tired sigh, and picked up his robes from among the folded piles on the mostly-empty sidelines. The others there were busy performing first aid though, paying Qinghua no mind as he put his robes back on and slunk his way off between two hills, taking a slightly scenic route back towards the Leisure House, in order to obscure more of his departure from the view of the chosen practice venue.
“Hmmm… what to do for lunch? I wish I had enough oil to deep fry something. Ugh, this budget. I’m gonna have to start embezzling soon,” Qinghua muttered to himself. “Which means I have to learn accounting. I’ve put it off long enough, and it’ll be vital for starting multiple side businesses.” He sighed. “Maybe hand-pulled noodles? I left practice early enough I think I’ve got time for that before hunger drives him to throttle me.”
Mobei-Jun considered cutting off the feed. He’d found some reasonably interesting books around his spy’s dorm. There was no real reason for him to watch the human gather ingredients from the pantry and larder of the Leisure House, and the unusually lengthy process he went through to make a dish for himself and his King.
The prince watched regardless. If the ingredients and the process happened to stick with him, captured in the steel trap of his mind forever, that was between himself and the gods. And maybe Mobei-Jun’s chef back at the palace, once she received the recipe, written in the prince’s handwriting, within the year.
~~
Mobei-Jun expected the new human spy to require effort and maintenance enough that he would grow annoyed quickly, and find an excuse to kill him off sooner rather than later. Either that, or the little rat would begin leaking his information to other humans, playing both sides. Unexpectedly, years of service from his spy seemed to pass by in a blur, and the most troubles the human had caused him during their span were from a half dozen of his own near-death experiences whilst out running sect errands. Even then, the threats were low-level by demonic standards, such that Shang Qinghua could easily be extracted by his tracker imp finding the nearest lesser demon that could be compelled to obedience, and using them grab the human by the back of his robes, and carry him away from the peril. Shang Qinghua also continued to gain rank within An Ding, as well as influence within and outside it.
As usual, the more that this human proved himself a good investment, the more uneasy the ice prince became. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being proven wrong about a person, so he did his level best to find all evidence to the contrary, but it was thin on the ground, no matter how much imp surveillance footage he reviewed.
Over time Mobei-Jun learned new peculiarities about the weird little man. For one, Qinghua had a slightly excessive number of inner pockets hand-sewn into all of his robes, and when working they were stuffed full of a wide variety of talismans, covering a broad array of contingencies and functions. Shang Qinghua knew not to rely on his own pathetic brute force, and armed himself with an array of smaller arms likely to give him elemental and terrain advantages through which to squeeze out his slippery little life from the jaws of death. On good days, he was like a generator of endless inconveniences for anything trying to chase him, and by the time he was in the running for head inner disciple of An Ding, he had more of those good days than bad.
Qinghua was never a direct attacker, always a support from the rear, when given a choice in the matter, and even then his greatest tactic was the Wounded Bird method, of which the ice prince had seen no greater master, of any species. It took three full years before Mobei-Jun saw the human draw his sword in a fight, and it turned out to be a feint for a dagger in his sleeve instead.
That memory stuck with the ice prince—the trembling sword-hand being knocked away, only to reveal the rock-steady upward journey of a dagger dealt up through a bandit’s chin into his brain. That particular recording from his imps wound up saved on a local device in the prince’s study in the northern palace. He put it in a bowl of other similarly-sized trinkets on a side table (some also embedded with memory) and tried not to think about the impulse to save footage of that pure and clear moment when the feigned sobs turned into an offended sneer and his little spy spat, “stupid cannon fodder,” at his dying opponent, as though the bandit were lower than the dirt beneath his toes. He especially didn’t think about the little shiver that went down his spine the first time he had watched that footage.
After some studies, the ice prince found out about field artillery used in some human regions where spirit cultivation was less widespread. Apparently human infantry sent to charge into said artillery were said to be fodder for them, like they were being fed into the open maw of some beast. Mobei-Jun thought all of that very fitting for humanity, and made a personal note to find out what such human explosive weapons looked like someday. Their literal firepower was enough to make an ice demon particularly concerned. He also was still, at the end of all of that, unclear on the context for Shang Qinghua using it after killing that guy—another ‘colloquialism’ of his, perhaps? The number of those strange phrases had grown over the years, too, to include several he still did not understand: PIDW, shitstorm, DPS, tropes, and cheat-skill among them.
Mobei-Jun’s attempts to research the mysterious script and language his spy occasionally wrote notes in, and spoke in, had turned up nothing. No demonic scholar had seen them before, and most human scholars Mobei-Jun had kidnapped to question also seemed genuinely ignorant. He had no real evidence that these simple, rounded characters had something to do with the mysterious and compelling word “fuck” (or its variant “motherfucker”) which would spill from his spy’s lips in moments of intense crisis, pain or frustration.
He had asked what it meant exactly once, and the human had turned bright red in the face and croaked, “Just a, uh, very… rural expletive—er—referring to the copulative act.” For many years, he would not again hear his very word-savvy little spy fumble all his verbiage so very awkwardly. Perhaps someday, he mused.
The human spy had several of what he called “side businesses” from selling melon seeds, to rebinding ancient books, and ancient scroll restoration with zero questions asked, despite there being a string of mysterious scroll thefts throughout all the righteous sects lately, and a solid quarter of which had been conducted by Qinghua himself. Mobei-Jun had initially paid attention to them, but quickly lost interest. He was simply no longer surprised by whatever odds and ends his human spy had taken sudden interest in peddling, over the years. It didn’t seem very important.
Until one day, five years or so into their acquaintance, the ‘King’s Shipment’ he received in his private storage hall, from Qinghua, was an unconscious middle-ranked human cultivator from Huan Hua Palace that Mobei-Jun recognized from his childhood time spent in the water prison, with an immortal binding cable tying her wrists. The note attached to her chest said the truth serum in the woman’s system would remain active for another 10-14 shichen.
Then Mobei-Jun recalled what the little spy had mentioned needing all that money for. Somehow, the thought of Shang Qinghua fully unleashed with a potent truth serum and a decent liquor supplier, felt a little thrilling, like finding out that a famous local pyromaniac was in charge of the evening’s fireworks show. The weaselly little human was an untrustworthy and grasping little traitor, but his truest gods-given skill seemed to be digging up this world’s most obscure information, and Mobei-Jun was a wise enough prince to accept those gifts with an open palm. If asked, Mobei-Jun would rank lying and obfuscation as the spy’s 2nd and 3rd most gods-blessed gifts.
Once those long truth serum shichen were up, time which Mobei-Jun genuinely enjoyed spending with a member of Huan Hua Palace for the first occasion in his life, the ice prince once again teleported into the Leisure House on An Ding Peak.
Shang Qinghua was half-reclined on his bed, looking the worse for wear, and had very nearly finished eating an apple. He had several detoxifying patches on his bared arms where he was resting on his bed in a sleeveless gi. He looked up when he heard the demon take a single step closer and tried to sit up sharply, but stiffened with a groan halfway into the process and slowly eased himself backward onto his pillow array again, realizing he had been overly optimistic. “My king,” he greeted, in a light and airy tone like that embarrassing thing hadn’t just happened.
Mobei-Jun cut to the chase. “How did you catch that woman?”
“Would my king believe me if I said it was a turf war between merchants?” He sounded more fatigued than persuasive, his energy level low and movements sluggish. Even his nervous gesticulating was limited for once, the apple (mostly core) scarcely moving from its place instead of being bounced around like a prop as the human more usually would.
“From you, that seems possible.” He would still check the imp footage later, but he had been too impatient to bother, this time.
“Oh good, thank you for understanding, my king.” The genuine relief in the human’s voice was immense. “Huan Hua Palace didn’t used to be so ruthless about outside righteous sects selling wares and making mercantile business connections in their territory, but it seems times are changing, and the little palace mistress was itching for a direct conflict with your humble servant. My king’s recent gift was the only one your servant was able to isolate, during the chaos of the attack, from others’ sight long enough to dose, question, and deliver her.”
After contemplating the symptoms on display, Mobei-Jun asked, “You were poisoned?”
“Just a bit,” Qinghua confirmed, sluggishly holding up his thumb and forefinger about a thumb’s width apart. He then reached over to his nightstand with his free hand, opened a drawer, and pulled out two very familiar objects, though each had only opened one petal so they were caught early—Ling Hua darts. They had been wiped off, but Mobei-Jun could still smell his spy’s blood all over them. “Caught them early though, and they hit bone in my arm, instead of lodging deep into my torso, so the poison didn’t spread as fast. That said, my cultivation isn’t able to handle poisons that potent yet without assistance.” He gestured at the large gauzy fabric patches stuck over the still-open wound sites, infused with healing Qi from another cultivator and the astringent smell of a medicinal poultice. “And a long rest.”
Mobei-Jun nodded thoughtfully. “Those darts…”
“Based on a demonic organism.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, she’s not high enough level to know that much—probably. An Ding’s library contains a couple accounts of Qing Si though, according to my peers who also had samples like these to study.” Qinghua was, strictly speaking, lying, but he did request a search of the library be done for it, and they found some good information about the poison on the petals being of demonic biological origin.
Qinghua just wanted his king to know for sure where Huan Hua Palace had gotten their inspiration. The other weapons they managed to create based on the specific biome they encountered would be nothing but trouble in future, for the northern court and through it Bing-ge and his wives. Might as well get the northern kingdom’s equivalent of demonic R&D at work on it early. Taking credit for problems evaded was difficult, but Qinghua was here to shore up as many crumbling walls as he could, in the hopes he wouldn’t be caught in their collapse later.
Mobei-Jun nodded, but remained slightly suspicious. This little rodent as always knew too many peculiar things. “My own studies of it indicated much the same.”
Shang Qinghua nodded. “How is court?” he asked suddenly.
“Your gifts are doing their work.”
“Wow. Very vague,” he muttered, unimpressed, but a hint of appeasement glittered in his eyes regardless. He did like to hear his efforts appreciated a little, even if in the form of a deliberate non-answer.
Mobei-Jun glared at him a little. “It is not human business.”
The human in question had the temerity to roll his eyes, causing the demon to take another, more threatening, step closer. Qinghua recoiled with genuine fear. “Apologies, my king.” He sounded pleading but did not attempt to feign more sincerity than he could muster in his tired-looking state. It was odd to see such deep dark circles under those bright eyes, in contrast with his round little face, baby fat now gone, but a certain essence of dignified chipmunk still lingering regardless.
“Mm. You did well. Feel free to send any more people of that rank or higher from Huan Hua Palace my way.”
Shang Qinghua looked honestly shocked by the praise—even more shocked than Mobei-Jun was to give it. “Noted, my king.”
The prince nodded thoughtfully. “Now rest,” he commanded, and vanished almost instantly back into the shadows of the room.
Qinghua stared at the spot he had just occupied for several long seconds. “Huh. Wow.” He grinned, a bit stupidly. Maybe his favorite ice tyrant wasn’t the worst boss, sometimes. Of course then he realized his day to day at An Ding was so chronically under-appreciated that a single compliment from a demon made his night and scowled again. This incarnation was so mean!
[-5 B points for being a whiny little bitch.]
Fuck you too, Qinghua thought very loudly. If he said it out loud there was no guarantee he’d be able to control the volume, and it was getting pretty late. It had been a long day, dealing with people of higher rank, discussing all (or in Airplane’s case, almost none) the nitty gritty details of the attack from Huan Hua Palace yesterday.
He did not consider that part of the reason the compliment made his day was because it came from the hottest man alive in this world according to his own authorial opinion. Considering that was the mind-killer, the fumble-inducing cringe that made him embarrass himself the absolute worst. So he ignored it, as he was by now very adept at doing, and lay down to rest.
Well, he intended to rest, but there was a tingle of inspiration threatening in his fingers. He had written all of one story since he had reincarnated, and it wasn’t enough, but it was hard to beat this now-decade-long block when all the evidences of his writerly failings kept making his day to day life so difficult. Just right up in his face, all day every day, all the failures.
But hey. Yesterday was a success. Even Mobei-Jun couldn’t find a reason to hit me over it. I almost got a thanks! Almost.
He ended up fiddling around with a few different poem structures, unable to get into the flow of any of them, before crossing it all out, and going back to rest in his bed properly, like his king had told him to. If he made a point of ‘acquiring’ a Huan Hua Palace disciple a couple times per year after that to send to his king, well. Just one more job well done for a scum villain.