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There were many who would complain about life on An Ding peak, but He Caihong honestly found it quite peaceful and rewarding. Sure, it wasn't exciting hunts and sword-flying most days, but there was always work to do and she got a healthy amount of satisfaction knowing her actions directly helped all the other Peaks do what they did. So it was paperwork - she didn't mind. In fact she had a neat hand and was incredibly detail oriented, which is likely one of the only reasons she had risen to the position of An Ding's head disciple. That, and she didn't complain when Peak Lord Shang Qinghua left his work to her and her fellow disciples.
In fact that is where she had made the routine, after once he was gone for a week and forgot to tell anyone - the back-dating of paperwork and flood of correspondence had been a nightmare. So every morning she would go about her day as normal, with training and exercises and teaching the younger disciples, and then around noon she would take lunch to Peak Lord Shang Qinghua's residence. If he was there, she was sincerely thanked for bringing him his lunch, as he would be elbow deep in finance records; if he was not, then she ate his lunch as she would address the waiting correspondence for him.
It was easy to keep the papers separated - when he was here, Shang Qinghua kept things more or less organized, and Caihong was familiar with the way he liked things ordered. Sometimes she did so well that the Peak Lord forgot someone else had handled things until he saw the calligraphy was different than his own - she was sure that was the reason he didn't praise her very often for her diligent work. She was just too efficient. A good problem to have, she assured herself.
Today, however, there was a book out of place that caught her attention. It was in with his personal correspondence, but it was a cheaply bound book of simple paper, and when she extricated it from the stack there was no title. A notebook, like the one the younger students used? Someone must have accidently left it when they dropped off the most recent batch of letters. She opened it to see who's handwriting it was, and her eyes caught on the words…
She almost dropped the book in shock. This was…
Not student writing - at least not students writing their tenents. It was a… novel. She flipped to the front page again, checked the back page. Was this one of Liu Su Mian Hua's works? But that was unlikely; so far as Caihong knew, she had kept her source material very ah, focused in scope. Not that she had read the copies passed around the disciples - not very much at least - but she still had never seen or heard of one that featured the Demon Lord Mobei-Jun. The curiosity got the better of her, and she read on and almost dropped the book again. Mobei-Jun and… Peak Lord Shang Qinghua?
It was certainly no secret that Shang Qinghua had been working with the Demon Lord for a while now, and that the position had moved from… whatever it had been previously to a tentatively-acknowledged diplomat with the Demonic regions. There had been flack, sure, but one couldn't argue that things were much quieter since Luo Binghe and Mobei-Jun had quelled any sort of uprising among the lower ranked demons.
Caihong considered putting the book back, piling the papers back on it, and scrubbing the event from her mind. But, what if Shang Qinghua came back, found it, and disposed of it? Then she would never know where this story had been going, and she was a desperate sucker for a good story.
Taking the book over to settle at the desk again, she began reading. It wasn't, bad, really; more clumsy than anything, but she smiled despite herself at the idea of the huge and terrifying Mobei-Jun showing fond gestures and gentle words to the least intimidating Peak Lord ever.
It was nearing evening when she finished reading the book, feeling mildly irked when she found there was little to no story, mostly excuses to fuel the sort of spring dreams some of the younger disciples fell into. Ah well, at least it had been an interesting read. As she closed the book, her hand stilled as she looked down at the book again.
She only now realized this was Shang Qinghua's handwriting.
Caihong stuffed the book back where it had been, covered it entirely with papers, and left the rest of the correspondence for tomorrow, in hopes she could forget it ever happened.