Work Text:
Mobei-jun's father had once entreated him to be lenient with his uncle, Linguang-jun, and to indulge him his petty plots and troublesome behavior because Mobei-jun's father had stolen Linguang-jun's wife in order to produce an heir. Shang Qinghua had written that into Proud Immortal Demon Way, just a few short lines to explain why such a terrible uncle had been permitted to live for this long. Nothing difficult to understand, nothing he had thought about too hard.
Shang Qinghua regrets it now. He regrets writing Linguang-jun at all, and has from that first day he met Mobei-jun's uncle, but what he regrets specifically right now is that line about being lenient. It had made sense at the time, because of course Bing-ge had to be the one to fight all the cool fights, especially in an arc that hadn't even had any papapa, but it had been a mistake.
What was it that Cucumber-bro's scathing review had said? Something like: It makes no sense! It makes no sense that Mobei-jun has let him live this long! You disgrace of an author, let characters solve some of their own problems sometimes! Applied like this, Luo Binghe is a poor miracle cure for family drama, you should have had him give Mobei-jun the chance to stand up for himself! There had been at least that many exclamation points, and hundreds of words more of specific criticism that he'd definitely deserved.
Bing-mei has turned out to be an even worse cure for family drama than Bing-ge, considering he likely still doesn't know Linguang-jun even exists, and in his place Shang Qinghua had only barely managed to scrape Mobei-jun through the peril unscathed. And at least Shang Qinghua did that much, sure, but it really hadn't solved the problem because without Luo Binghe there to kill Linguang-jun...well, Mobei-jun had been lenient. And Mobei-jun will never not be lenient, because it isn't in his nature.
Linguang-jun has therefore continued to swan in and out of their lives. An attempted assassination here and some deliberate, costly sabotage there — sometimes it's pure showboating, ruffling Mobei-jun's feathers and strutting around just to prove it. Other times it's more serious, more sinister. It looks like taxes from the westernmost region of Mobei-jun's lands gone missing, a spate of trigger curse-traps in areas that should have been clear of such things, or Linguang-jun's fingerprints all over the opinions of those advisors closest to Mobei-jun.
Still, Mobei-jun does nothing. His late father had asked him to be lenient.
Occasionally, Shang Qinghua has brought it up. "My king," he's said, a little hesitantly. "That uncle of yours..."
"Yes, he's causing trouble again," Mobei-jun would say, frowning more than usual even as Shang Qinghua drops carefully into his lap, or scoots over to lie against his side, or lets his hand dangle just so to brush against Mobei-jun's.
"We should do something," Shang Qinghua would continue. "This really is the last straw," he'd add every time, and each time mean it a little more passionately.
"It is," Mobei-jun would agree, his face thunderous and his qi furious.
But then, because it is in his nature, he would only chase Linguang-jun away. Injure him, sure. Imprison him, once in a great while. But never kill him. Never even seriously try.
Maybe Mobei-jun will stop being lenient, someday. If Linguang-jun goes too far. Even more likely, circumstances will conspire to put Shen Qingqiu into the path of one of Linguang-jun's more deadly plots and then Linguang-jun will be paste because Luo Binghe doesn't know what 'lenience' means when it comes to Cucumber-bro.
Shang Qinghua had even, briefly, thought it might be best to just invite Shen Qingqiu to Mobei-jun's stronghold as frequently as possible. Just to have all the pieces in place. The universe has a natural trend towards springing wife plots onto Shen Qingqiu, ever since he bent Luo Binghe's protagonist halo! It would have worked pretty quick.
Quick isn't the same as immediate, is the problem, and Shang Qinghua has run out of patience.
On this occasion, the potentially dangerous disruption that Linguang-jun has brought to Mobei-jun's doorstep is represented by three avian demons, all of them beautiful. "Potential brides," Linguang-jun had said with one of his soft and terrible smiles. "Looking to help settle that troublesome dispute of yours in the mountains."
This may or may not be a wife plot that Shang Qinghua himself once penned; he doesn't remember. He'd definitely had at least one reader who was solidly freaky about birds, but who knows if these three ladies had been harem members or enemies or just vaguely implied to exist — Shang Qinghua isn't Cucumber-bro, he can't remember that kind of thing and it doesn't even matter anymore. What's important is that they're the daughters of a mountain lord who's been causing a lot of trouble and that this is a trap.
If Mobei-jun rejects them, he angers the lord and the Mobei clan goes to war.
If Mobei-jun accepts them...he has to marry them. Which, make no mistake, Shang Qinghua's king is going to have to find a lady to marry some time, because otherwise who will inherit, but not like this. Definitely not like this.
Especially because there's no way that that mountain lord came to the conclusion on his own that sending his daughters here to be wed was the right choice. No, they'd literally arrived with Linguang-jun, so it's obvious where this idea had come from and where all the trouble in those mountains had come from in the first place.
Linguang-jun has been putting feelers out for allies, deliberately stirring shit to see how Mobei-jun would react, and now he's putting Mobei-jun in a difficult political position either because it serves some larger goal or just because he can. Because Mobei-jun will be lenient.
But you know who doesn't have to be lenient? Shang Qinghua. Shang Qinghua can be as unlenient as he wants to be.
He could never, of course, beat Linguang-jun in a fair fight. Shang Qinghua probably couldn't even beat most of his own disciples in a fight, if he's being honest! It's just not one of his skills. No, Shang Qinghua is good at fetching, carrying, making tea...An Ding specialties. An Ding gets shit done.
One of the things An Ding especially gets done is putting things in storage. All the time, people are coming back from this night hunt or that investigation and turning over heaps of things to An Ding that they weren't originally sent out with. Skulls of things they killed, pests that have snuck into bags, handfuls of leaves that fell into this or that bag or basket. Shang Qinghua makes his disciples catalogue all of it and stow what might one day be useful away careful. There's nothing like saving budget for some rare ingredient that Qian Cao needs once in a decade by already having some tucked away because it got caught on some horse tack and dragged back to An Ding accidentally.
Unlike most things, Shang Qinghua remembers why An Ding gets so many odd but useful things. It's because he'd had plans for a plot with original goods Shang Qinghua — cut from Proud Immortal Demon Way because it hadn't involved enough of Luo Binghe's 600 wives — involving him just happening to have exactly the right poisonous leaf in An Ding's stores to kill an ice demon.
Poison, of course, isn't the sort of thing a Cang Qiong Peak Lord was supposed to keep around. Shang Qinghua can only imagine the horrifyingly disappointed faces Yue Qingyuan would make if he knew! But being from An Ding isn't like being from the other peaks. An Ding is about doing hard work for little recognition. An Ding is about logistics. An Ding is about looking at a problem and finding a solution.
Shang Qinghua has located a problem. And a solution.
Linguang-jun has a habit of ordering Shang Qinghua to bring tea, because he likes to remind Shang Qinghua that he's a servant. As expected, these are nearly the first words out of his mouth when it comes time to sit down and negotiate with the three potential brides.
"Of course," Shang Qinghua says, "of course." he hurries off obediently to brew the cold tea preferred by ice demons, which involves less heating of water and more vigorous stirring.
The leaves of the fireflower birch are stowed neatly up his sleeve. One red leaf would cause indigestion, two red leaves would cause dizziness. Three would keep Linguang-jun bedridden for a week, and four would cripple him for a year or more. Five leaves...
Shang Qinghua doesn't remember. He adds a fifth leaf to Linghuang-jun's cup as it brews and supposes he's about to find out.