Chapter Text
The Master of Night
His presence was like an ocean swell of power, felt long before he entered the room. Every eye turned to watch him stride through the dragon gate, his midnight cloak swirling back from his muscular shoulders. His fabled weapon was unsheathed, and people gasped to see the deadly, gleaming arch of steel in his hand as he swept by. Even the supplicants who had never before seen him knew immediately that it was indeed He: the High Lord of Dixing, the Heir of Darkness and Master of Night, the Undisputed Ruler of this realm: the one warrior against whom the armies of the World of Light had never been able to stand. When his night-dark phoenix eyes fell on the bound maiden, who had been forced to her knees before his onyx throne, she gasped. Horror stabbed deep within her as she felt the deep, instinctive yearning to yield rise into her breast – her natural feminine desire to surrender to a dominant man’s masterful, commanding touch. But no, she could not! However much this man’s overwhelming virility battered her untried defenses, she must not give in. She was the guardian of her people, and their fate depended upon her!
The Dixing Lord's Virgin Captive
“Look, all I’m saying is, it’s a dick move to run off to Dixing alone.” The strident voice drifting across campus stopped Shen Wei in his tracks. “I am so over his high-handed ‘Lord of Dixing’ shit at this point. After everything they’ve been through, he still thinks he gets to decide for the both of them?”
A student with a huge stack of books nearly ran into him, and they both murmured absent apologies as Shen Wei changed course. If he’d heard correctly – and he had – the speaker was on the far side of the botany building, near the greenhouse.
“... the best option. He’s a protector, and he’s Dixing’s rightful ruler, and their best warrior, too! So yeah, he has to go himself. And of course he has to go alone! It’s not like he can take a Haixing leader to the palace. That’d be, like, a political –”
“Ahem,” said Shen Wei, forebodingly.
The two women ensconced on the bench next to the lily pond jumped in surprise. A half-empty lunch box nearly slid off the knees of the one on the left, and she hastily scrambled to catch it. Both women had entirely failed to react to the dark energy surge of a portal opening up mere meters from their perch, and neither now gave any sign of recognition or apprehension as Shen Wei stepped closer. No traces of dark energy lingered around them, either.
If they were not from Dixing, and didn’t know who he was, perhaps this was something other than what he had initially assumed.
“Professor...?” ventured the short-haired woman on the right. It sounded like a guess. “We’re on our lunch break. We’re sorry if we were too loud...”
Shen Wei gathered in his energy, rounded his shoulders and found a mildly apologetic smile, adjusting his glasses for good measure. “Pardon me for interrupting. I couldn’t help but overhear.” The women relaxed immediately, relieved of the fear of inadvertent wrong-doing. “Are you studying ancient literature? I wasn’t aware of any courses currently on the curriculum that discussed those particular legends.” And he would most definitely have been aware, had there been any.
“Oh, uhm, no, we were just talking about a novel?” said the one who’d spoken before. She was fidgeting a little, glancing at her companion as though in search of moral support. “It’s not for university. I mean. We just like it.”
He waited out their reluctance with another mild smile. Finally, the quiet one gave in and pulled a thick paperback from her backpack, ducking her head as she held it out to him with obvious reluctance.
“The author’s actually really popular,” her friend jumped in nervously. “I mean, obviously it’s not great literature or anything, but –”
Shen Wei snatched the book from the woman’s hand, barely registering her startled squeak.
The Dixing Lord’s Virgin Captive, the title screamed in garish golden letters. The cover depicted a bare-chested man wearing a hooded black cloak, a mask chased with silver, and thigh-high boots over extremely tight leather trousers. He held a swooning woman clad in equally impractical attire in one arm, and brandished a sword with his free hand. The woman was clutching a lollipop, and both figures were buffeted by particularly dramatic gales of wind as streams of lava flowed past their feet.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to confiscate this publication,” Shen Wei managed, sounding slightly strangled in his own ears.
Or, as Zhao Yunlan might say: What the ever-loving fuck.