Chapter Text
Mobei-jun appears in Shang Qinghua's study in a blast of cold air. The fright would be bad enough to ruin Shang Qinghua's day, but then he drops a monster's head, gory and dripping ichor, smelling of things Shang Qinghua couldn't even describe, on Shang Qinghua's desk.
The desk gives one agonized groan and collapses.
Shang Qinghua screams.
The head, lying in the splinters of his desk, tilts to one side. The mouth falls open, displaying rows of needle-like teeth, and a long, forked tongue that droops out of the gaping maw like a overboiled noodle.
Shang Qinghua stares at it and takes another, deeper breath to scream some more. Mobei-jun says, "The rest of it is outside, of course."
He sounds like this is something he expects praise for, just like a cat who has brought a huge, half dead and very angry sewer rat into the living room and is looking up proudly to see how you will learn to hunt at last.
Shang Qinghua explodes. "What - what - why - WHAT the FUCK! What the FUCK!!!!"
Mobei-jun's eyebrows crease together slightly. "Is it not big enough?"
Shang Qinghua's eyes bulge out. "Not big enough? Not big enough?" He points a shaking finger at his ruined desk. "It was big enough to crush my desk! It was big enough to ruin my paperwork!"
Mobei-jun tilts his head like a curious raptor -- which had seemed very cool when Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky came up with it at three am. It drives Shang Qinghua absolutely bonkers. Then he looks at the mess he'd made of the study and says, in the tone of someone making a great scientific discovery: "You didn't like it."
Shang Qinghua is just barely not suicidal enough to slap the Demon King of the North upside his beautiful, apparently empty head. "Who would like it!" he says, voice shrill. "If someone showed up with - with --" he can't remember what he actually named this damned thing "--a bloody monster corpse and dumped it in front of you! Who would be pleased!"
"I would," says Mobei-jun.
Shang Qinghua stares at him. Before he can ask Mobei-jun if he's off the medication again, a disciple bursts in, screaming "Peak Lord! Peak Lord! There's a - there's a ---" before the poor kid gets a look at the grisly mass lying in the ruins of Shang Qinghua's study. Then he very sensibly rolls his eyes up to the back of his head and faints.
Shang Qinghua throws up his hands. "You caused this! You deal with it!" he says, and stamps off without waiting for Mobei-jun to respond.
Shang Qinghua locks himself in his rooms for "secluded meditation" for the night. When he comes out, ten thousand words of extremely vindictive side story about the Demon Prince of the Ice being cursed bald by an angry succubus when he failed to perform to his standards later, the monster corpse is gone. The courtyard is scrubbed clean. His desk has been replaced by an elegant one of ebony inlaid with horn, and the ugliest little demon Shang Qinghua has ever seen is standing on top of it, busily copying Shang Qinghua's ruined paperwork.
It's also eating the bloodstained papers after it finishes copying them, but honestly, that doesn't even break the top twenty of the weird things Shang Qinghua has seen since he became Mobei-jun's chief lackey.
The demon looks up. "Madame!" it squeaks.
Shang Qinghua feels his headache coming back. "It's Peak Lord," he says.
The demon nods happily. "Yes, Madame!"
Shang Qinghua gives up. The most irritating thing about all the demons calling him Madame is that it had only taken Cucumber-bro one cold and incredulous look to convince Luo Binghe's vassals to never, ever call him their Queen, ever again. Shang Qinghua, on the other hand, is so clearly Mobei-jun's bitch that he's probably lucky they just stop at Madame.
Shang Qinghua, not for the first time, hopes Shen Qingqiu breaks his favorite fan over Luo Binghe's head the next time he's being embarrassingly sticky.
"What are you doing?" he says.
"Master said, Go finish Madame's paperwork!" says the demon. "This lowly one hears and obeys!"
"I see that," says Shang Qinghua. "Why are you eating the old pages though?"
The demon looks incredibly shifty. "Master didn't say, this lowly one must not take any prerequisites."
Shang Qinghua covers his face with his hand.
"Does Madame wish to enjoy these himself?" says the demon anxiously, yet reluctantly.
"No," says Shang Qinghua. "It's fine.You can have them."
"Thank you, Madame! Madame is generous to this humble servant!!"
Shang Qinghua sighs.
To Shang Qinghua's complete lack of surprise, Mobei-jun just escalates. The next thing he drags in is huge, scaly, and smells like a Beijing back alley.
"Not this one either," says Mobei-jun, studying Shang Qinghua vomiting in the very expensive vase that has been in the Peak Lord's study for longer than Shang Qinghua's ancestors have been humans instead of monkeys. He sounds thoughtful, like Shang Qinghua's reaction is just one small but interesting point in a sea of data.
"NO!" shrieks Shang Qinghua.
"Okay," says Mobei-jun, and disappears.
Unfortunately, Shang Qinghua has exactly one person to ask about weird demon shit, and that person not very secretly thinks that Shang Qinghua deserves every bit of misery he suffers through. It's not Shang Qinghua's fault! How was he supposed to know that like, the resentment of ten thousand readers was going to coalesce or who knew what on the fucking internet into some sort of whatever, an AI dedicated to fixing his plot holes! There weren't even that fucking many plot holes! …. Per chapter.
Anyway, Shen Qinghua sucks it up and goes to see Shen Qingqiu when he knows that his husband (what the fuck had happened there, anyway?) is out beating shit up with Liu Qingge and hopefully not like, inspiring a new volume of weird BL stories.
"Dude," he says, bursting into Shen Qingqiu's completely like, ridiculous bamboo house or whatever. A humble scholar's hut, his fucking sister. You could pay for a year of rent in fucking Beijing with one of Shen Qingqiu's stupid inkstones. "Dude, seriously, like, help me, shit is so bananas right now!"
Shen Qingqiu takes a deep breath in, lays his brush down (Shang Qinghua can barely write with a brush, even now; he had to spend more time than he wanted to think about figuring out how to write with a quill, and even now his handwriting looked like someone like, made a squid fart all over the page) and visibly puts aside Shen Qingqiu and becomes Peerless Cucumber, Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky's most faithful reader and eternal nemesis. "What this time?" he says.
"Mobei-jun is like, being totally fucking weird," says Shang Qinghua.
Cucumber-bro somehow manages to express 'and whose fault is THAT, asshole?' with a single raised eyebrow. "And?"
"He keeps bringing me, like, dead shit!" wails Shang Qinghua.
Cucumber-bro stares at him. "Dude," he says.
"I'm like totally serious!" whines Shang Qinghua. "For reals, bro, this shit is freaking me out!"
"What, like it's hard," mumbles Cucumber-bro, proving Shang Qinghua's long-standing theory that Peerless Cucumber was as much of a media pirate as he was. "What type of dead shit? Rats? Mice? Baby songbirds?"
Shang Qinghua ignores this and says, "Like really fucking huge monsters and shit, dude, it's creeping me out! Is he trying to show me how easily he could kill me? I already know that shit, bro! I knew it when I wrote him!"
Cucumber-bro is never nice to him at the best of times, but right now he's giving him a look like he's going to call his village to pick up their idiot. "So like, let me get this straight. A demon lord is literally dumping giant ass, very hard to kill monsters and shit at your like, literal doorstep, and you still don't know what's going on?"
"No!" wails Shang Qinghua.
Cucumber-bro says something under his breath that Shang Qinghua chooses not to hear, and then says, "He's courting you, you fucking idiot."
"What?" says Shang Qinghua. "No, he's not. Why would he court me? He thinks I'm like, a hamster."
"Okay, then why is he dropping like, monsters and shit at your door?" says Cucumber-bro. "That's how they like, show people they can provide for them or whatever."
"Why would they do that!" shrieks Shang Qinghua. "I never --"
"It was a plot point, dude," says Cucumber-bro, in the slow, patient voice of someone speaking to a stupid dog. "It was an actual, literal plot point you typed in with your own like, sinful hands."
"No it wasn't," says Shang Qinghua immediately. "I think I would like, fucking remember writing a scene where some chick gets an actual fucking dragon corpse dropped on her door and immediately gives it up for the person who brought it!"
Cucumber-bro just looks at him.
Shang Qinghua had written a lot of that shitty novel at high speed after just like, shotgunning energy drinks that were allegedly from the States, so it's possible that he's forgotten a few minor plot points. "Okay, prove it, asshole. When did I write it."
Cucumber-bro spreads his fan out, like Luo Binghe is here to be dazzled by his elegant demeanor and gush over how beautiful he is, clears his throat and, in the most sarcastic voice possible, begins: "Luo Binghe knew he needed to conquer the beautiful maiden's feelings -- and her lovely body, and the lands she held as heir to her father, the Great Demon of the Southwest. Demons valued strength and cunning above everything, and Luo Binghe stood as tall as Mount Tai above the rest of the world in both. He smiled and said, 'Beautiful maiden, I will bring you a suitable courtship present --''"
"Okay," says Shang Qinghua, who vaguely remembers this scene now. He might have written it. It might have been fanfiction! It totally could have been fanfiction. He wrote fanfiction for the forums sometimes.
"'-- and return to your gracious side.' The maiden's eyes glowed softly, and her soft bosom trembled with her emotions. Luo Binghe --'"
"Okay, okay!"
Cucumber-bro continues ruthlessly: "'-- picked up one shining satin lock of her hair, blue as the sky above, and pressed a kiss to it before he departed. He traveled for many days deep into the mountains, fighting off the advances of a fox spirit (I'm not gonna recite that part, dude, that was foul even for you) and at last arriving --'"
"Do you expect me, a gay, to remember everything I write?" says Shang Qinghua, which is when Luo Binghe chooses to walk in.
Cucumber-bro snaps his fan closed and immediately becomes Shen Qingqiu, but not fast enough to escape Luo Binghe's notice. To be fair, if Luo Binghe was in the demon realm and Shen Qingqiu sneezed in his stupid bamboo shack, Luo Binghe would be there about ten seconds later, in tears and clutching medicinal congee, wailing that Shizun never, ever took proper care of himself!!!!! until Shen Qingqiu let him bundle him up in furs and spoon-feed him the congee.
Someone is sure whipped in that relationship, and Shang Qinghua is pretty sure it isn't Luo Binghe.
Luo Binghe darts a look at him. It's only a matter of time before Luo Binghe actually figures out the secret between Shang Qinghua and his beloved Shizun, and then Shang Qinghua will probably be strung up by his own guts -- but until then, Luo Binghe is both suspicious and jealous of Shang Qinghua.
Which was patently like, the stupidest thing Shang Qinghua had ever heard: even if Airplane Shooting Toward the Sky hadn't been a semi-abandoned single NEET living in an apartment that a roach would feel uncomfortably cramped in and Cucumber-bro a second-gen rich kid with more time and money than common sense, Shang Qinghua can pretty much gaurantee they would have gotten along like two cats in a sack.
Anyway, they're stuck together now, and Shang Qinghua thinks resentfully that Cucumber-bro could be a little more help.
"An Ding Peak Lord was just leaving," says Shen Qingqiu, smiling distantly.
Shang Qinghua dearly yearns to just like, boot Peerless Cucumber in the ass so hard his cucumber becomes a patty-pan squash. But he doesn't dare -- partly because of Luo Binghe, but mostly because Cucumber-bro took being petty to a new and almost artistic height. It's beneath their dignities as Peak Lords to engage in a slap fight, but Cucumber-bro will do it anyway if Shang Qinghua tries him.
Fine, see if he helps Cucumber-bro ever again.
Shang Qinghua returns to Anding Peak to sulk for a few days -- his disciples are flagrantly avoiding him again, but their work is being done and the reports are stacked up in front of his door along with his meals. Someone even leaves him a cookie, in what seems to be a silent show of support.
It's ridiculous to think that Mobei-jun might be in -- might want to court him. Mobei-jun is like, the incarnation of the joke that the first male lead is for the heroine, and the second male lead is for the readers. Shang Qinghua has patched him up enough, taken care of him enough, to know exactly what he's built like under his heavy winter robes. He's as handsome as Luo Binghe, even handsomer if you like the cold, loyal type.
He's even, well, not nice, exactly, but if he sees anybody else trying to bully Shang Qinghua (and everybody tries to bully Shang Qinghua, to be honest) he goes and beats them up so everybody knows that Shang Qinghua can only be bullied by him. He doesn't tell Shang Qinghua to shut up or he'll rip his tongue out when Shang Qinghua babbles at him. He --
Horribly enough, if he really looks at it, there might be the smallest possible kernel of truth hidden in Shen Qingqiu's bullshit.
Shang Qinghua stares blankly out into space. He's never had anybody like him before. This must be some sort of mistake. The System is going to reactivate at any moment and take this away from him.
There's a breath of cold air behind him, and he turns around to see Mobei-jun stepping out of a portal. Shang Qinghua regrets inventing them. He especially regrets giving Mobei-jun such a high-powered version of them. At least with Bing-ge you were made immediately aware of the portal opening because of the big fuckoff sword cutting a hole in reality. Mobei-jun, as befits Luo Binghe's assassin right hand, just kind of appears.
Mobei-jun is carrying a bundle of fur, black as night, topped off with what Shang Qinghua hopes isn't a bundle of claws and teeth. Shang Qinghua is pretty sure that the pelt had belonged to a Fire Flower Blooming Night Panther, which was extremely endangered and also one of the meanest creatures Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky had come up with for Luo Binghe to defeat and drop at the feet of a maiden with a voluptuous bosom quivering from her emotions.
Oh god, Cucumber-bro was right and he was never going to let him live this down.
Mobei-jun stands there, Shang Qinghua's beautiful, shameful dream, and waits. Shang Qinghua just stares at him until Mobei-jun gets impatient and says, "Well?"
Shang Qinghua licks his lips nervously. Mobei-jun's ice-blue eyes drop down to his mouth, and go heavy-lidded and interested. Finally, Shang Qinghua forces his voice out. "Why me?" he says.
Mobei-jun tilts his head. "Who else is there?" he says.
And he's right, of course.