Work Text:
“Fucking Linguang-Jun! One day, this father of yours is going to fuck you up so bad, your own mother wouldn’t recognize you! Just you wait! One day, I’ll be strong enough to bite your fucking heart out of your fucking chest! When this Laozi is finished with you, you are going to wish you had never been born! You don’t think I can get even with you, because I look like I’m twelve? This uncle is forty-five this year! You just hide and watch, you miserable bastard!” Shang Qinghua fumed as he stumbled through the forest, burning with fever and pain. He leaned into his anger, because leaning into his fear would have been a bad idea. He could play scared and helpless, but he could never be that way again. That way madness lay.
Shang Qinghua had almost gotten out of his devious uncle’s snare. It hadn’t been particularly clever, as snares went, and Shang Qinghua had known it was coming, so he had taken steps to be sure that it not only failed, but blew up in his uncle’s face.
Literally.
Fireworks were so very dangerous, weren’t they? How very negligent Shang Qinghua’s minders were to allow the boy to walk around with a pocket full of the terrible things! And these fireworks just so happened to be charmed to burn like white phosphorous until their fuel had been completely exhausted, ferociously devouring clothes and flesh indiscriminately all the while.
What a terrible accident that had been~! Demon children mature so slowly that little Shang Qinghua certainly couldn’t have had the mental wherewithal to plan and execute such a counterattack; he was but a bean~!
So, Shang Qinghua’s plan had half succeeded. Linguang-Jun was certainly going to be bed-ridden for a while and his handsome face would never be the same. Shang Qinghua would have to apologize to his uncle profusely for that when he returned home, Shang Qinghua thought, with a small, evil grin.
Unfortunately, Shang Qinghua was still overheated, and still injured, and still fucking -lost- in the human realm, a place famously inhospitable to demons like himself.
Shang Qinghua couldn’t keep up his anger for long, though. He was just getting too tired for it. He really wanted to lie down and go to sleep, but he knew that he was losing too much blood. The only way he could survive this is if he met Mo Bei, the An Ding Peak disciple who would one day become its peak lord and betray the sect for Shang Qinghua-Jun.
Even as Shang Qinghua found it becoming harder and harder to keep moving, he began to be driven forward by the thought of what would come next; meeting Mo Bei. Shang Qinghua’s first crush had been Sesshomaru and he had 100% modeled the cold, callous, vicious Mo Bei on that delicious daiyokai. Even if Mo Bei decided to brain Shang Qinghua with a rock instead of saving him, at least the last thing Shang Qinghua would ever see would be Mo Bei’s beautiful face. Shang Qinghua smiled at the thought.
Shang Qinghua tripped on an unseen obstacle and fell smack into the ground. He produced a quiet, high-pitched moan of agony between his teeth as he lay on his face and hands. He held still until the pain faded a bit.
“Shiiiiiiiiiiiit…” Shang Qinghua lamented, as he considered the uphill battle that getting back to his feet would require. Staying put would mean bleeding to death out here in the middle of nowhere and letting his evil uncle defeat him, but getting back up was going to hurt. Shang Qinghua gritted his teeth and pushed himself up inch by inch, the poisoned wound in his stomach screaming at him the whole time.
His uncle had coated the blade with a poison that caused overheating. Shang Qinghua had obtained the necessary antidote on his birthday, knowing this this year would be when his uncle pulled this stunt, but Shang Qinghua hadn’t known exactly when the attack would come. As soon as Shang Qinghua had gotten away from his assailant, he had downed the antidote and started walking the way the System had indicated.
Of course, getting stabbed with a tainted blade and taking an antidote was Shang Qinghua’s second choice for how this event should go down. He had tried to avoid being attacked altogether, but his uncle had proved damned persistent and Shang Qinghua’s minders (emphasis on plural) had proved amenable to bribery.
As he began stumbling forward again, Shang Qinghua promised himself that the first thing he did when he got back home would be to think of ways to murder his minders. He couldn’t just attack them outright, or that would seem suspicious. After all, no twelve-year-olds go around murdering people, not even demon twelve-year-olds. He would have to spread out their deaths, maybe make them look like accidents. Linguang-Jun might catch on, but maybe not.
Hell, maybe Linguang-Jun would kill them himself to cover his tracks. That would probably be the smart thing to do. Shang Qinghua hoped his uncle would do that and save Shang Qinghua the trouble. The new vacancies might give the vindictive bastard a chance to plant traitors in Mobei-Jun’s staff, but replacing old traitors with new traitors sounded like a wash to Shang Qinghua.
Shang Qinghua thought about the two women who had been with him when the attack came, or rather, had distinctly not been with him. They had ducked away just before his uncle had shown up. The two women had been nice enough. One of them had even been around long enough to have changed his diapers. He felt a small pang at that thought, and then hated himself for it.
They were never family. They were never friends. They were just people who Shang Qinghua’s family paid to look after him and who he got on well enough with. He didn’t need any connections to others. He had never needed any. Other people were only around while it was convenient and not a moment longer. Shang Qinghua was the same way. He would discard those two women, just like they had discarded him. There was no point in being upset about it. It was just the way things were.
He wasn’t upset about it.
People had always been stepping on him and stepping over him. Even after he had transmigrated into his favorite character, that treatment had continued. Shang Qinghua sighed.
“Why, oh why, did I have to make my almost-self-insert have such a shitty childhood? That didn’t help me process shit and now I have to slog through a crappy childhood, waist deep in the excrement of shitty people, all over again!” Shang Qinghua whined.
After another few minutes of walking, Shang Qinghua heard voices from up ahead. He was so relieved and excited to have found help, that he almost called out. The System beeped at him in warning and Shang Qinghua held his tongue.
“Right, right,” Shang Qinghua thought. “The future Mobei-Jun didn’t just recklessly call out for help. He looked to see who was there first.” Never mind that Shang Qinghua knew that the people up ahead included his savior, Mo Bei, who would carry Shang Qinghua away to a soft bed, with clean sheets and fluffy pillows, and wait on Shang Qinghua hand and foot, before becoming Shang Qinghua’s spy.
Shang Qinghua only wished that his savior, the future stern and handsome lord of And Ding Peak, wasn’t so money hungry. Shang Qinghua had money on him, sure, but would it be enough? He prayed to any god who could hear him that it would be.
Shang Qinghua rested against a tree and listened to the voices of the people ahead. They sounded young, but of course they would be, Shang Qinghua thought with some difficulty. Man, it sure was getting hard to think straight. The heat was really getting to him. He started to take off his top, but only managed to loosen it before the System beeped at him again for OOC behavior. Shang Qinghua tsked, but left his clothes on.
As he listened in on the conversation of the young An Ding Peak disciples ahead of him one thing very quickly became clear: those brats were laughing at Mo Bei! How rude! It wasn’t Mobei’s fault that Shang Qinghua had written him having such an angry face!
Intending to go out there and give those little jerks a piece of his mind, Shang Qinghua pushed away from the tree and stumbled out into the road. He tried to tell the boys off for being mean to Mo Bei, but his voice was rather weak all of a sudden.
“What are you mumbling about? What’s wrong with-?” One boy gasped and took a step back. “Demon! DEMON! It’s a demon!” He screamed.
“It’s injured!” Another cried. “Hey, calm down! It’s injured! We can take it!”
“Yeah! Get it!”
Oh, shit. Shang Qinghua had not planned for this part.
As a disciple’s sword came flying at Shang Qinghua’s chest like a snake, Shang Qinghua lashed out blindly. His power cracked through the air with a sound like a thunderbolt. His magic filled the space between himself and the An Ding Peak disciples with a wide arc of jagged ice spears that grew too fast to be tracked by the human eye.
It was all over in an instant.
“Shit,” Shang Qinghua said, as he observed how all of the young cultivators seemed to have been impaled on ice all of a sudden. Theoretically, Shang Qinghua had known that he would have to kill all these kids, but he hadn’t exactly planned for it before he stumbled onto the path. It was actually highly distressing to see so many dead children and to know that he had just murdered them.
“Oh, shit,” Shang Qinghua said, eyes roaming from body to body and stomach roiling. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to kill you. I’m sorry.” Shang Qinghua stumbled back a few steps as his vision blurred and his knees weakened. He was afraid he really might throw up.
Then, a movement drew Shang Qinghua’s gaze. He looked up into the eyes of the only surviving disciple. It was pure luck that anyone was left standing, but Shang Qinghua was sure that it was the power of the plot that had preserved this particular boy.
Mo Bei’s eyes were so bright blue that Shang Qinghua’s first thought was that they were glowing. The boy, though only eleven or twelve, seemed unafraid of the demon before him. How brave his little Mo was! And he was even more beautiful than Shang Qinghua had imagined him to be. He had the resting bitch face that Shang Qinghua had given him, but his cuteness levels were still through the roof.
“You’re so cute,” Shang Qinghua said breathlessly, and then he passed out, crumpling forward onto the road.
Mo Bei face reflected nothing but bewilderment at this statement. For a while, he only stared at the younger looking boy where he lay in the road. Then, Mo Bei picked up a big rock from the side of the road, stumbled back over with his burden to Shang Qinghua, and raised the rock over his own head, as if to bring it down on with deadly force on the back of Shang Qinghua’s skull. Then he paused. With the improvised weapon poised to crush Shang Qinghua’s head in, Mo Bei began to blush.
A long moment passed.
And another.
And then, Mo Bei dropped to his knees and laid the stone down in the road. His severe features where twisted by confusion and embarrassment as he looked upon Shang Qinghua’s unconscious face. His blush had spread to his ears.
Finally, Mo Bei cleared his face of emotion, picked up the much smaller frame of Shang Qinghua, glanced over his dead disciple siblings, and proceeded down the road towards town.
…
Shang Qinghua awoke in a bed, a hard bed, in a room, an unfamiliar room that smelled like cheap soap, and wished he hadn’t. His body felt like lead, bruised lead. Sliced lead. Hm… Maybe mistreated bread was a better metaphor for his current state, he thought. Bread that had started out as a happy little loaf, warm and crusty, before being sliced and crushed. Yeah, that sounded better, Shang Qinghua thought muzzily. If he ever wrote about what it felt like to be beaten, stabbed, and poisoned, there would be a simile about bread in there. At least the antidote seemed to have worked, because his fever was gone.
“Do you… want some bread?” a voice asked.
Shang Qinghua jerked in surprise, causing his stomach wound to protest hotly. He gasped in pain and held still, trying to wait the pain out.
“Oh, shit. Did I pass out?” Shang Qinghua asked. That hadn’t happened in the book! He was supposed to have made a deal with Mo Bei before Mo Bei agreed to look after Shang Qinghua.
Mo Bei nodded. Shang Qinghua asked the obvious question.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” Mo Bei’s expression didn’t change, but, as Shang Qinghua watched, Mobei seemed to redden.
“I thought about killing you and taking your purse, but I decided that I could make more money if I kept you alive,” Mo Bei said, as serious as an forensic accountant looking over Al Capone’s financial records.
“Woah. You really hate being poor, huh?” Shang Qinghua asked tactlessly. He knew it was a stupid thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth, but he was too exhausted to feel bad about them. Man, it was a good thing Shang Qinghua had worn some of his nicer clothes today, or Mo Bei would have run the cart over Shang Qinghua’s head! “Well, alright. Be my spy and I’ll pay you lots.”
Mobei nodded, looking only a little perplexed.
“I didn’t realize my first spy would be so cute though,” Shang Qinghua said groggily. Then he sighed and rolled over to go back to sleep, completely missing the way Mo Bei blushed hotly and rushed out of the room. Mo Bei was so embarrassed and in such a hurry to leave that he slammed his shoulder into the doorframe on the way out. Now pained and doubly embarrassed, Mo Bei staggered downstairs and out into the street to see if he could find a vendor selling bread.
When he found none, he came back with noodles instead.