Chapter Text
“Are you insane?!”
“Shut up.”
“What do you mean, ‘thank you for the fucking meal’?! He’s—!”
“Shut. Up.”
“But Xie Lian—!”
“Shut it already!”
Mu Qing has to physically drag Feng Xin all the way out of the restaurant and back to the car park. So much for trying to survive the stupid dinner without being embarrassed to death. What a picture they must make! He’s holding Sabre’s leash in one hand and pulling Feng Xin’s sleeve with the other. If one of the two had to resist being led, it should’ve been the dog, shouldn’t it? This man is the least self-aware moron he’s ever had the misfortune to encounter.
When they’re finally in front of their vehicles, Feng Xin roughly shakes himself free.
“Happy, now?” he barks. “I bet you are. You were always elated when Xie Lian had to eat shit.”
“Sure, I’m overflowing with joy,” Mu Qing deadpans before unlocking his car.
The beep triggers both Sabre and Feng Xin into action. She prepares to hop into the car, while he gets in the way to prevent Mu Qing from opening the door.
“We’re not leaving until we figure out a way to help Xie Lian,” the absolute imbecile declares.
“May I suggest you start by using your brain, for once?” Mu Qing lashes out, gesturing at Sabre to stay put. “What help does he need, exactly?”
Baffled, Feng Xin tries to formulate a sentence at least three times, then gives up and flails his arms. “Paranoia?” He finally manages. “Hello?!”
“And what makes you so sure he’s really got a paranoid disorder?”
“Are you fucking with me right now?” Feng Xin takes a step forward in an attempt to corral Mu Qing against the motorbike. He stands his ground. “We just came out of the damn restaurant, it’s too soon for your gaslighting.”
“I’m just saying that you’re putting too much faith in the word of a man who only thought to mention this severe mental illness after 90 minutes of rambling about literally everything else.”
The notion seems to make it through Feng Xin’s dense skull, albeit confounding him to the point he looks about to short circuit. Seeing him like that, Sabre paws at him and then looks at Mu Qing with big, round eyes, prompting him to roll his.
“Move aside,” he orders and hands Sabre’s leash to Feng Xin. “I need my work laptop.”
“What for?” Feng Xin asks, miraculously managing to stay focused on Mu Qing despite the fact that Sabre, who understood (correctly) that she’s now in charge of him, is eager to get his full attention.
“There’s only one thing we can trust in the midst of this shit show, and it is in our company inbox,” Mu Qing explains, without really caring if Feng Xin can hear him from outside the car and while he’s bending to take the laptop bag from underneath the front passenger’s seat. “Xie Lian is one hell of an actor, but his music is disgustingly earnest.”
“You can’t judge a person’s character by what they create,” Feng Xin rebuts. “People who write murder mysteries aren’t usually murderers, you know?”
“I’m not trying to diagnose him.” With the laptop at hand, Mu Qing loses no time getting out of the car. The air inside is hot and stagnant, this parking spot is shit. “I just want to listen and see if that helps me understand why the fuck Jun Wu thinks this Heaven’s Will’s nonsense is feasible.”
Feng Xin concedes that Mu Qing has a point with a nod to the side. Then, he finally caves into Sabre’s nudges and kneels. She loses no time putting her front paws on his shoulders and proceeds to lick his entire face. It’s gross. A tiny part of Mu Qing, deep inside his heart, thinks he’s jealous. In reality, what he feels is betrayal. Back when he was researching dog breeds, he was told again and again that Akitas were no doormats, that they had good judgement and didn’t just allow any human to get close. In general terms, experience has proven this to be true, but somehow, Feng Xin wormed his way into Sabre’s trusted circle. For fuck’s sake, he was the person Mu Qing had the most interest in keeping out of it! Where did he go wrong?!
“When you’re done there, look Withering Lotus up,” he instructs bitterly, leaning on his car to better support his laptop with one hand. “Search Heaven’s Will and White Lotus as well.”
There’s a muffled sound of understanding coming from deep inside Sabre’s luxurious fur, where Feng Xin has buried his face. Mu Qing has told him a million times that, no matter how well trained she is, her breed isn’t exactly known for being dumb teddy bears. He has verbally absolved himself of any responsibility in the event she decides to bite the man’s face off, but it’s not as if that would really help their case if it happened.
One day, Feng Xin will finally get his shit together and adopt a golden retriever. Mu Qing sighs longingly and focuses on his screen.
The folder Jun Wu shared with them isn’t called ‘Withering Lotus’, but rather ‘Black Lotus’. Mu Qing remembers that, back when they were in talks to sign with Immortal Records, the label pushed for White Lotus to be called that instead. They had a few tortuous meetings about it before the execs realised that they wouldn’t be able to change their minds. It’s kind of awkward that Jun Wu files Xie Lian’s newer music under that discarded name. There’s something to be analysed and deduced from that, for sure, but right now, they have a hundred more pressing matters to consider.
“Connect to the sound system of your car,” Feng Xin suggests, somehow having noticed through the thick maze of dog’s fur that Mu Qing was looking for his earbuds.
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that, if this music was supposed to be listened to by anyone who happens to be in this car park or wherever, Jun Wu wouldn’t have sent it in an encrypted folder to our company e-mails?”
“He didn’t say shit about keeping it secret,” Feng Xin refutes, peeking from Sabre’s fur at last. His face is so close to her open mouth that her moist breath condensates on his cheek. “Besides, why would anyone make music for only their former boss to listen to? You heard Jun Wu, Xie Lian isn’t signed back yet. He must post his stuff somewhere; it was just sent to us like this for convenience.”
Mu Qing scoffs. He can’t say Feng Xin is wrong, but his common sense is telling him that they’d better not flaunt this playlist around. Technically speaking, Xie Lian shouldn’t be making music for a living, least of all metal. The deal, or sentence, that he struck with Immortal Records was so harsh that rebuilding a career from where he ended up would be nothing more than a dream of the utterly delusional. Even if Xie Lian never let pesky stuff like reality get in his way, the point stands. Whichever way he found to release music under the Withering Lotus name, it must be extremely limited, probably kept within private forums or old school mailing lists.
“Whatever, just stop making my dog’s hair all oily and disgusting, and start looking Xie Lian up on platforms,” he grumbles, scrunching his nose at the sweaty mess around Sabre’s collar.
“Alright, alright…” Feng Xin stands up, and then bites his lower lip, as he does on the rare occasion when he has a thought. “What if that triggers his paranoia?”
“A decade of work in cybersecurity and you don’t know how to look someone up without them finding out?” Mu Qing shoots him a pitiful look.
“Fuck you.”
With a roll of his eyes, Mu Qing turns to activate the peripheral systems of his car, and then connects the sound. Now, he just has to select the first song and press play. Although, maybe, it’s better to pick by title. He slowly scrolls down. Ominous Star, Silk Embrace of Death, Akin to Evil, 104 —is that a play on words?— Cursed Suffocation… Burn it all… Do You Hate?…
What the fuck are these? They don’t sound like Xie Lian at all!
“Just pick one at random,” Feng Xin chides, seemingly guessing his tribulation. “It’s gonna be weird, no matter what you play first.”
That much is true. Resigned, Mu Qing scrolls up and down, moves the cursor around for a bit, selects something, braces himself, and presses enter.
It takes at least half a minute and two volume adjustments for them to hear something: the slow creaking of old wood over a base of cavernous white noise. Soon after, there’s gurgling water, which could be from a small stream, or perhaps a boiling pot. Even Sabre stops licking and nudging Feng Xin in favour of listening, her triangular ears twitching slightly with the introduction of each new sound.
When the background white noise takes a breath, the three of them bristle.
Things hang from wood
In the house and the forest
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mu Qing mutters. He could’ve sworn the base was a heavily distorted sample of wind, or a motor; anything but a human voice, never mind Xie Lian’s voice.
Outside, the leaves
Inside, two corpses
A screeching, overtly synthetic squeak evokes an old door opening. Instead of dying out, it continues in a series of dissonant patterns that can’t quite be called a melody, although they’re intentionally structured in some way.
“What instrument is that?” Feng Xin asks stupidly.
Who cares what the fuck that is, when the lyrics are what they are, and they’re being sung in a growl so gravelly that Mu Qing’s throat hurts just hearing it?
There are flowers in the branches
And fresh dishes on the table
There’s mist around the trunks
And smoke in a kitchen that burns
A veritable wall of sound, made of the densest guitar and bass tracks, takes over the song like fog coming from the sea. It’s not loud or aggressive, just suffocating. The trembling squeak from before barely stays afloat, and the voice, whilst still heavily distorted, changes registers to remain intelligible. Sabre gives her body a shake from head to toe, and Mu Qing is tempted to do the same.
When the son finds his parents
His despair finds a rope
“Fuck,” Feng Xin blurts out. “This can’t be him.”
“Didn’t you just tell me that not all murder mystery authors are murderers?” Mu Qing tries to sound snarky, but there’s no punch behind his words.
He ties it around his neck
He climbs a chair
He takes a step
Mu Qing inhales sharply, noticing from the corner of his eye that Feng Xin did the same. Both hold their breath, knowing instinctively that they’re about to get hit.
(To get close, close, close…)
“Mother, don’t leave me alone!”
The screams are so jagged and desperate that Feng Xin ends up leaning on his motorbike for support. Mu Qing doesn’t know at what point one of his hands stopped holding his laptop to press against his mouth instead.
(As they sway, sway, sway…)
“Father, don’t go away!”
Looking at how shaken they are, Sabre wags her tail hesitantly. Mu Qing offers her the hand that he used to cover his mouth, and the soft texture of her fur is like a grounding balm. The song goes back to the wall of sound from before, and stays there, simmering.
“Can you imagine if his parents listened to this?” Feng Xin says after some contemplation. “I don’t think his mother could cope.”
She would undoubtedly struggle to cope, but not with sorrow, as Feng Xin is implying. It would be with shame, with the utter humiliation of listening to her only son, the one she abandoned, crying after her like a wounded animal. She couldn’t cope with such a crude reminder of the fact that the Xie household never ascended to the heavenly realm, and that they’re just human like everybody else, creatures of the mud who shit and piss.
His latent resentment against her and her husband catches Mu Qing by surprise. It’s been so long, yet the oppressive control they exerted over Xie Lian and White Lotus as a whole still weights in his heart. It doesn’t matter that the Xie family paid for Mu Qing’s musical training, that their money saw his little sisters through school or covered all the expenses of his mother’s medical treatment. He can’t feel grateful, he won’t ever think about them with anything but contempt.
The breeze knocks a bloom down
The rope snaps the beam in half,
The fall makes the flower die
But the son who falls survives
It was all for show, for themselves and their image. Everything they did “for Xie Lian” was actually to make him behave and perform the way they wanted. Under the guise of loving advice, rewards and attention, they defined every aspect of his life, down to the people he was allowed to call friends. Mu Qing should know, he barely made the cut. And the worst part was that Xie Lian knew how things worked and did nothing about it. For him, that was just the natural way of the world. It drove Mu Qing mad. It still does.
He decides not to think about it any longer, and braces himself for more screams.
(Why? Why? Why?)
Don’t leave me behind!
(Please, please, please)
Somebody, set me free!
The wall of sound finally relents, and the audio falls back into a dull, environmental landscape of decrepit wood and running water. It’s weirdly muffled, as if Mu Qing had gone partially deaf. He’s not sure if it’s intentional or if the density of the sound just exhausted him.
Things welter in the dirt
In the house and the forest
Outside, it’s the worms
Inside, the forgotten
The last word sinks in the sound and becomes the background white noise from before. The song probably loops perfectly, but Mu Qing doesn’t want to corroborate.
“That was…” Feng Xin starts after a long silence, during which both have been scratching Sabre for comfort. It’s good she’s so big that they don’t really have to be close to each other to do so.
“Not Heaven’s Will style,” Mu Qing supplements, feeling prickly all over, as if his entire body was waking up from an unsettling numbness.
“Right.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not even death.”
“Exactly, like, how do you listen to this and decide it’s gonna be the future of the most famous tech-death band in history?” The absurdity is starting to make Mu Qing a little hysterical. “This is the literal opposite of tech, it’s…”
“Noise?” Feng Xin offers, and frowns when a slightly maniacal chuckle escapes Mu Qing’s lips. “In a good sense, I mean, this is doom, noise is a good thing in doom!” he rambles, getting more agitated the more Mu Qing’s smile widens. “Shut up already!”
“I haven’t said anything!”
Feng Xin groans, and his voice sounds stupid and tiny compared to the massive gutturals of the song they just heard. Seriously, Mu Qing won’t believe that Xie Lian can sing like that until he witnesses it. He’ll need to hear it face to face, with no console, not even a microphone involved. He wants evidence in its purest, rawest state.
The dissonance between this and the music Xie Lian made eight years ago is untenable. Mu Qing needs answers. He must find this man he hasn’t seen since they were boys and shake him until he explains what happened. He also needs to travel back to a time when he knew nothing of this drama. To the mid-autumn celebration he had with his family the day before, away from the city and blissfully unaware of this hideous stain on his character, now brought to light.
It’s so uncomfortable. Xie Lian himself told him to fuck off and forget about him, so why does he feel guilty now? For what, exactly? It could all still be a ruse!
“Are you going to look him up or what?!” he shouts at Feng Xin with no warning. Startled, Sabre whines.
She has had a less than ideal afternoon. They all have.
“On it,” Feng Xin grumbles, and sitting properly on his motorbike, he takes his phone out.
Taking a deep breath to recentre himself, Mu Qing sets the laptop aside for a moment and crouches until he’s at his dog’s level. He doesn’t hold eye contact, as it could be interpreted as a threat or a sign of aggression. Instead, he just combs gently the fur of her neck and shoulders to make it more presentable.
“We’ll stop for longer at the park tonight,” he promises, speaking quietly. “We’re almost done here, too. Do you want to sit in the car while we wrap up?”
She understands the word car, and trots in place to express her agreement. With an amused huff, he pats her on the shoulder, stands up, and opens the back door to let her in.
“Withering Lotus is registered in Fragmented Core.” Feng Xin reports. “The account is on hold for copyright infringement.”
That’s unexpected. Xie Lian is too arrogant to commit plagiarism.
“He’s also on SpiritPower, but his content is blocked for violation of community guidelines,” Feng Xin adds and scratches his poorly shaved chin. “It’s probably the themes. I’m pretty sure they don’t approve lyrics mentioning things like suicide.”
Mu Qing clicks his tongue. “Not all his music can be like Ancestral Desecration .”
“ Ancestral excuse me the fuck what now?!”
“That’s the title of the song we just listened to.”
Feng Xin drags the hand he had on his chin up his face until he can massage his forehead. Sabre, who’s peeking out the car’s window, tilts her head to the side.
“He’s a moron,” Mu Qing explains to her.
The title is lurid, yes, but it doesn’t merit a scandal. As he told Feng Xin before, Xie Lian is earnest to an embarrassing degree with his music. Calling this song Ancestral Desecration is just his clumsy, rather on the nose way to signal that he’s aware of how this is an affront to his family’s name.
“Don’t listen to him,” Feng Xin tells Sabre while giving Mu Qing the finger. “He’s an incurable asshole who should shut his gob forever.”
“Woah, so mature.” Mu Qing rolls his eyes.
“I can’t wait for the day when that damn habit of yours finally makes your eyes fall off your face.” Feng Xin frowns at his screen. “There are no recent results under the name Xie Lian. Do you know under which fake name he tutored Qianqiu?”
“Fang Xin, I believe.”
“‘Fang’ as in upright or as in fragrant?”
“Fragrant, obviously.”
“Why obviously?”
“He’s always had a thing for flowers, remember?”
Feng Xin considers it for a moment (or maybe he’s trying to come up with a witty retort), then just shrugs. “And Xin as in what?”
“Heart, like in the guitar Zhu Xin.”
The bit of information makes Feng Xin deflate as if he just lost five years of life.
“I still can’t believe he got that thing fixed and used it for work,” he mutters, scrolling down. “It’s so stupid, especially for someone who supposedly wants to stay unnoticed.”
Mu Qing picks his laptop up again. The most likely explanation is that Xie Lian didn’t have any other guitar to work with. He probably had to pawn the others for money, or, if it’s true that he’s mentally ill, he might have left them behind while running away from the ghosts in his head.
The real mystery is who fixed the guitar without snitching. Mu Qing didn’t get to actually see it in Xie Lian’s hands, but the general agreement was that the poor thing had been gutted. Out of the three of them, he is the only one who knows his way around repairing instruments. There’s no way Xie Lian managed anything more complicated than changing the strings.
“He probably thought he’d be safe saying it was a replica,” he suggests with little conviction. “I think he could’ve convinced Qianqiu that such was the case, if he wanted to. Who knows what made him decide to spill the beans instead.”
Feng Xin hums, focused on his phone. “There is one deactivated account called Fang Xin on SpiritPower, and a page for him in The Metal Scrolls,” he reports after a while, during which Mu Qing’s hand has been hovering above his keyboard, unsure of what to type. “He’s listed under tech-groove and djent. When you put that together with what we heard, I can maybe see how someone like Jun Wu would think of Heaven’s Will.”
“It’s still a stretch.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m just saying.”
Mu Qing decides to type ‘White Lotus’, knowing very well that he’ll get nothing of use if he doesn’t add several more keywords to narrow his search. In retrospect, Jun Wu and the execs weren’t wrong when they tried to change the name of the band. It sucks. It’s a metaphor so overused that it barely holds any meaning, weak both in an artistic sense and for marketing purposes. The fact that a ton of other things in and out of the music industry are also called that doesn’t help. Eight years later, there’s no way he’ll get any relevant result if he doesn’t at least add the word band…
“Feng Xin,” he calls weakly, his voice so brittle that Sabre sticks the front of her body out the window in order to check on him.
“What?”
There are hundreds of results, all extremely recent. With mounting horror, Mu Qing scrolls down video previews, images, blogs and forums showcasing their names and faces, explaining what type of band they were, their backgrounds, and the scandal that took them down.
“What is it?” Feng Xin presses, stretching his neck in an attempt to catch a glimpse of Mu Qing’s screen.
There are also many bootleg videos of a concert by a band called Heavenly Damnation, which Mu Qing has never heard of before. However, it features someone whose hideous face he’d recognise anywhere.
“Mu Qing.” Feng Xin snaps his fingers to get his attention. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
He might as well have!
“It’s Body in Abyss, Heart in Paradise ,” he manages to get out.
Feng Xin’s jaw drops, and it’s a miracle that he manages to lower his hands until his phone leans against the motorbike’s seat, instead of dropping it too.
“H-How?” he croaks.
Unable to answer with words, Mu Qing clicks on the video with the best looking quality. The sound system of the car comes to life, and the furore of a multitude startles Sabre back inside it. Mu Qing knows he should reassure her, but he’s paralysed by the nightmarish vision of Hua Cheng, owner of the music industry’s underbelly and prominent frontman of a number of inexplicably popular, insufferably pretentious metal projects. The video shows him swaggering around an outdoors stage with the same mad look he sports whenever Mu Qing has had the misfortune to see him, the revolting eye of his tacky custom bass swirling wildly to make it all worse.
“It’s time for this rancid industry to change,” the man roars, and his image becomes a blur of red when the person recording, and the people next to them, shake in fervent approval, “and for that we got together to bring Heavenly Damnation!”
“Is that Hua Cheng?!” Feng Xin shouts, outraged, while the video descends into chaos; the band goading the crowd to cheer louder.
All Mu Qing manages is to nod woodenly. The stage is built in a park that has to be inside the Ghost Realm. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be learning about the fact a whole day after it happened. Hell, even if the event was held in Hua Cheng’s territory, it had to be some sort of guerrilla concert in order to slip under Jun Wu’s radar. If he’d caught wind of Body in Abyss, Heart in Paradise being performed in any shape or form, he wouldn’t have summoned them to a dinner, he would’ve sequestered himself with his lawyers at the office to start a war!
“Heavenly Damnation, what shaped us into the scourge of the Heavens!” Hua Cheng continues. “We’ll burn every temple until we break all the shackles down!”
“What the fuck is he talking about?!” Feng Xin despairs. “Let me see!”
“This is White Lotus’ Body in Abyss, Heart in Paradise !”
Mu Qing doesn’t actually remember how the song was supposed to go. Xie Lian had a few different ideas that he was developing on his own, and he didn’t get to share much with them before showing his progress to Bai Wuxiang and fucking everything up. Even so, there’s an uncanny familiarity to what he’s hearing that’s slowly turning his stomach inside out.
After a few seconds, Feng Xin reaches out and makes him turn the screen so they both can watch. Whoever is recording the video stands fairly close to the stage, enough to see a person dressed in white appear beyond the fence shortly after the first chorus. They don’t look like part of the logistics team, nor like a VIP guest. Instead of jumping or singing along, they just stand there and watch, risking permanent hearing damage and rubbing their arms as if they were cold.
“Fuck me,” Feng Xin says when he notices them. “I knew it! I FUCKING KNEW IT!”
Before Mu Qing can tell him to keep it down, or Sabre can peek out the window again to join him with a howl, Feng Xin straight up screams towards the ceiling, hits the front panel of his motorbike with his forehead twice, and then turns it on.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Alarmed, Mu Qing takes a step away from the vehicle before Feng Xin can run it over his feet.
“THAT’S XIE LIAN, YOU TWAT,” Feng Xin shrieks, spit flying everywhere. “The moment Jun Wu said he disappeared near the Ghost Realm, I knew that fucker would find him!”
“And what do you plan to do? Go and rescue him?!” Mu Qing’s guffaw sounds deranged even to him.
“I’m not gonna sit on my ass while fucking Hua Cheng messes around with our Xie Lian! ”
“OUR?!” Mu Qing explodes, barely stopping himself from flinging the laptop at the imbecile in front of him. “WHAT ‘OUR’? WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID?”
“THAT’S MY LINE!” Feng Xin punches the handlebar of his motorbike with both hands. “HUA CHENG HAS NO RIGHT TO PLAY THAT SONG!”
“AND HOW DO YOU SUPPOSE HE GOT HIS GRUBBY HANDS ON THE SONG, WHEN XIE LIAN IS THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS IT?”
“HORSESHIT!”
“NO, FENG XIN!” Mu Qing is so furious that his whole body is trembling. “HE GAVE IT TO HIM, DON’T YOU SEE?! THEY HAVE TO KNOW EACH OTHER!”
“THEY DON’T! HE WAS COERCED!” Feng Xin stomps repeatedly on the right footrest of his motorbike. “HE WOULDN’T SHOOT HIMSELF IN THE FOOT LIKE THIS WHEN THE CHANCE TO SIGN BACK WITH IMMORTAL IS RIGHT THERE!”
“DON’T BE OBTUSE!” Mu Qing knows that his plea is futile, but he has to try nonetheless. Exhaling hard through his nose, he forces himself to lower his voice in an attempt to guide the conversation back to civility. “Look, this can’t be a coincidence. Xie Lian must have sold his ass to Hua Cheng who knows how long ago. The negotiations with Immortal about Heaven’s Will are most likely what they came up with in order to lead Jun Wu into a trap and fuck us all over.”
“Why would Xie Lian want to fuck us all over?!”
“I don’t know, revenge?!”
“Have you ever met him, listened to anything he said?!” Feng Xin’s veins are popping out his forehead at this point. “Why do you always think the worst of everybody?!”
“All I’m doing is looking for the most logical explanation to this!” Mu Qing flails his laptop, which is still playing the video. “How else would he be at this concert nobody knew anything about, in the first row, hearing how Hua Cheng declares war against us and then plays a song that shouldn’t exist?!”
“Jun Wu told us! Xie Lian got lost in the Ghost Realm during some sort of psychotic fit!” Feng Xin insists. “Hua Cheng found out and took advantage of him!”
“And he made him write this long ass song down, to then put it together with a live band in three hours?” The hypothesis is so stupid that it physically pains Mu Qing to say it out loud. “Be serious.”
“Who says that’s the song as it was supposed to be? It could be an entirely different thing, and Hua Cheng will just manipulate Xie Lian into saying that that’s how it originally went.” Somehow, Feng Xin manages to unclench enough to shrug. Mu Qing decides that this is a good sign. “Personally, I don’t remember it. I don’t think anyone besides Xie Lian and maybe Bai Wuxiang have a clear idea of it any longer.”
“Well, I might not remember much, but I recognise some of these lyrics.” Mu Qing focuses on the video, frustrated because the person recording is too fixated on Hua Cheng for him to get a clear view of Xie Lian or of the other members of the band. “The bass track is in my style during White Lotus instead of Crimson Rain’s, too.”
Feng Xin offers no comment for long enough that Mu Qing’s annoyance starts turning into nervousness. Taking his sight away from the screen to question him with a look, he finds him with his bulky arms crossed over his chest, his jaw tense, and arched brows in a gesture of utmost disdain.
“What?” he hisses defensively.
“I’m trying to assess whether your bitterness and pettiness could really go so far that you actually remember Body in Abyss, Heart in Paradise , or if Xie Lian’s disorder isn’t the only one I’ve been overlooking.”
For a moment, Mu Qing feels as if the wall of noise of Ancestral Desecration has taken over his brain once more, laying itself thick on his ears until they buzz.
“Diso—?!” he manages before Feng Xin interrupts him with a scoff.
“Yeah, asshole, it’s a disorder to be this self-centred,” he explains and points at Mu Qing’s laptop. “There’s a 99% chance this is a predator taking advantage of a friend, and yet you’re betting for the 1% that says it must be a conspiracy against you.”
“A-Are you accusing me of paranoia?”
Feng Xin splays his hands as if saying, ‘what else?’.
Before he knows what he’s doing. Mu Qing has already thrown his laptop towards the car’s hood and lunged at Feng Xin, landing with a fist punching right under his diaphragm. The force is enough to make the motorbike fall on its side, taking them with it.
“IF HE’S CRAZY, HE DESERVES HELP, BUT IF I’M CRAZY, I SHOULD GET FUCKED, IS THAT IT?!” he hollers, fighting to grab Feng Xin’s collar so he can smash him against the asphalt. “YOU HAVEN’T SPOKEN TO HIM IN EIGHT YEARS AFTER HE SENT YOU TO HELL, BUT OF COURSE YOUR DEAR PRINCE CAN DO NO WRONG, HE’S THE HEART OF THE WORLD, JUSTICE INCARNATE!”
“LET GO OF ME!” Feng Xin manages to kick Mu Qing to one side.
“IF I REALLY WAS A PARANOIAC, YOU WOULDN’T GRANT ME THE SAME GRACE YOU’VE BEEN GRANTING HIM, DESPITE HAVING ZERO PROOF THAT HE’S ILL!” Recovering quickly, Mu Qing somehow drags himself close enough to hit Feng Xin’s jaw with an elbow. “YOU’D LEAVE ME TO DIE IN A DITCH! HOW DARE JUN WU TELL ME TO WORK AGAIN WITH A PIECE OF SHIT LIKE Y—UGH?!”
Air escapes his lungs when something heavy lands on his back. Partially under him, Feng Xin freezes, his eyes wide as saucers. A current of warm breath hits the back of Mu Qing’s neck, and he finally processes that the growl echoing in the car park isn’t coming from the motorbike.
“Stop looking into her eyes,” he whispers furiously to Feng Xin, who seems to have forgotten how to blink. “Sabre, get off me,” he commands, not quite managing to hide his alarm, but at least his voice sounds acceptably firm.
She barks, the sound booming and threatening. Mu Qing can count the times he’s heard it with the fingers of one hand, which pretty much means that they’re fucked.
“Sabre, get off!” he repeats with more conviction, and then drops his voice to a whisper again. “Back off without making any sudden movement and stand up as soon as you can. Don’t turn your back on her and don’t try to touch her or me.”
Feng Xin swallows. “What if she bites you?”
If it comes to that, Mu Qing can only hope she’s thorough, because he refuses to live on if his own dog chooses another man over him.
“It’s too late for you to care,” he hisses. “Back off, now .”
Feng Xin does as he’s told, accidentally jabbing Mu Qing in the ribs with one knee on his way out from under him. Sabre keeps growling despite Mu Qing’s steadfast words of assurance. Once Feng Xin is on his feet and far enough, she finally steps down his back, going to stand between them.
With all hackles raised in a fiercely protective stance, she has acquired the apparent size of a tiger. Mu Qing could cry. No matter how he’d wish he could allow her to take a bite, so the fucker learns his lesson, he can only count his blessings because Sabre knows Feng Xin well enough to hesitate before tearing him to pieces. He may be a gym rat who keeps bragging about his deadlift records and whatever, but that means nothing in the face of a dog bred to take bears down.
Standing up, he glances at his car. The laptop balances precariously near the opposite edge of the hood, and there are a couple of scratches at the base of the window’s back door. From this distance, he can’t assess how deep they are.
“Sabre, drop it.”
Her ears turn towards him, but otherwise, she remains focused. It takes too many repetitions for Mu Qing’s comfort before she finally disengages.
“Wait until she’s in the harness before lifting your bike,” Mu Qing instructs without sparing Feng Xin a glance, and then gives his dog some soothing scritches under the base of her jaw. “We’ll be home in no time, baobei. I’ll give you a good brush.”
She pants, still tense, although settling back into a normal mood. Mu Qing can’t say the same about himself. His heart is going to break through his chest, and his hands are unstable. Fear rises through his body like the murderous aftershock of an earthquake, and he can’t let it show without risking losing what’s left of the authority he’s got over her.
“Mu Qing.”
“Stay away.”
He reaches for the harness.
“I’ll, uh, do some digging and text you later with what I find.”
“Not interested.”
“You c—!”
Sabre’s face twists into a snarl, and Mu Qing barely has time to prepare himself for the blast of another thunderous bark, so strong that it could probably make birds freeze and fall mid-flight.
“Quiet,” he orders her —both of them, really— and pushes down his desperation while he clasps the definitely too flimsy hooks of the harness. Sabre could easily rip them apart, why did he buy something so obviously cheap? “We can consider it again when I find a way to dispose of his body.”
“Hey!”
“I said quiet .”
When he’s done with the harness, Mu Qing gently pinches the folds of skin at both sides of Sabre’s neck. He wants to touch her forehead with his, maybe hug her, but it’s not the right moment for cuddles. “We’re going home, okay?”
She makes one of her funny vocalizations, a mix between a squeak and a grumble, and as soon as Mu Qing lets go of her, she lies on her belly.
“Good girl,” he praises softly, and closes the back door to go and retrieve his laptop.
In cue, Feng Xin picks his motorbike up and sits on it.
“You can’t just walk away,” he blurts suddenly, focusing on the straps of the helmet he’s holding instead of looking Mu Qing in the eye. “Regardless of what has happened and what ends up happening, we must speak with Xie Lian.”
“Which Jun Wu is arranging for us, in case you forgot.” Shooting a last glance at the bruise darkening in Feng Xin’s jaw, Mu Qing opens the driver’s door. “I have no intention of doing anything about this until that meeting.”
“Yeah, right,” Feng Xin grumbles. “Liar,” he adds petulantly, and before things can escalate again, he puts his helmet on.
Mu Qing blinks, caught off guard by the childish behaviour.
“Don’t contact me,” he decides to demand after a second. “Especially not if you get yourself trapped in the Ghost Realm.”
Feng Xin revs his motorbike, drowning all other sounds around him.
“And don’t even dream of making amends with my dog!” Mu Qing shouts anyway.
With a nasty roar, the motorbike disappears in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Mu Qing stares at the car park exit for a few seconds, shakes his head in mild disgust, and gets behind the wheel.
“Finally, some peace,” he tells Sabre, extending a hand to pet her. “Thank you for just now, but never do it again, okay? I don’t know if I’ll be able to defend you if you hurt someone trying to defend me.”
Sabre flattens one ear and shoots him an unimpressed look. Mu Qing smiles weakly, straightens up and closes his eyes.
“With everybody on holiday, the streets are gonna be empty,” he says and opens them again. “It’s gonna be a short ride home.”
He turns the motor on. Sabre licks her teeth. The laptop lies on the front passenger’s seat, with the video in one tab and the folder with the playlist in another. Mu Qing wants to finish the album he was listening to when he arrived, but Feng Xin was right, he can’t just pretend like nothing happened.
“Well, these are both shitty options,” he prefaces while backing up out of the parking spot. “Should we listen to Xie Lian, or to Hua Cheng?”
Wisely, Sabre just yawns. Mu Qing chuckles despite himself and, deciding that he wants to decipher the meaning behind the title 104 , presses play on the laptop before driving towards the exit.