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He is born in gold and luxury, understanding nothing of what he sees, what he hears, what he realizes.
He has a different name, similar in sound and different in characters, that he almost feels funny, scared, and wants to cry; he is a baby, so he does everything at once; fortunately, he is taken care of well enough (more than he ever was in his past life) that he has the honor of growing up a spoiled child without being what he was.
In this life, he was named Shang Di; one of his many names.
The System window was what helped him learn about where he was, but not who. As far as he can tell, as the author of the novella he woke up in, as Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, he's a character with no name. Someone who was the father to one of his main character's wives, also the only direct heiress to the throne of Celestia (the lineage ended with her, because you can't combine one long history of human inbreeding royalty with an even harder history with the Heavenly Demons), which does and does not give him leeway as the sole crown prince.
Because: first, he has no right to influence the cultivator world where all the action takes place; secondly, he was born long before the main plot, because the Qing generation in Cang Qiong hasn't ascended yet, and the current Emperor of the Demon Realm is traveling through the Human Realm, which means — Luo Binghe won't be born for another fifteen years; third, it seems he's going to be killed before he even learns to run, because the number of his dear heart relatives from the side branches are so sweet and friendly, smilingly slipping poison into his food.
Not surprisingly, by the time he was five, he had become a bit paranoid, expecting an attack from anywhere. Luckily for him, his relatives weren't particularly clever (not all of them, of course; his aunt on his mother's side is the most conniving and intimidating woman he's ever met; she's like his first mother), so he can avoid a great many death flags by stumbling into his adulthood.
A long and somewhat bloody road, if he's being honest; so much so that his best allies are demon mercenaries, whom he trusts only a percentage more than his entourage. Not to mention that if this were to come to light, he could not escape condemnation, which could entail rebellion, which he is stubbornly trying to evade. He's the future Emperor, son of a god (how ironic, isn't it?) and his word is infallible, but humans can overthrow gods if you give them the right motivation and disappoint them (and he's a pro at disappointing someone).
He is crowned with the death of his second father, whom he must have seen three times in this life when he was barely seventeen, the same year Tianlang-jun is sealed with a blood-washed ovation.
He makes laws, lots of laws, as many as no one did in the first year of his reign, and many old men want to run him over, subjugate him (which is funny, he's older than some of them), as if he doesn't know that some of these officials were involved in some attempts on his life. Even now he sees it, the envy and hatred behind the hidden smiles — he grew up in such an environment twice, he knows how to see through other people's anger.
He starts small: he starts with the people, with few rights for them, when before some had none at all. He disposes of the treasury not for war but for trade, swimming in it like a fish in water, already knowing that his world is built on the real, already knowing what parts of the world have people in them. He's redrawing the Silk Trade Route, and it's a long process, four modest new year's holidays long, but it's paying off.
It's amazing how quickly those same officials rush to kiss his feet when they all get richer.
He doesn't know what the real Emperor would spend that kind of money on, but he has a rough guess, given the poverty of the regions his pseudo-son grew up in, and how spoiled the real owner of the body might be — and he's building schools; he's building law and order; he's building a society that will work a little better than before, held together only by him, the Emperor. It's an equally long process, especially with how many times he's lied to people's faces, evading questions; never telling them half the origin of his knowledge; they still dare not cross him — or else he sends them to the scaffold. (He's not sure, but he seems to have introduced a fashion for capital punishment; and he urgently needs to clamp down on that somehow, lest it be bred into something utterly horrible.) He's also identifying the poorest regions and sending them sacks of rice as aid; he's trying to improve cities, creating a street system, a number system, requiring everyone in the country to learn basic literacy, not to mention sanitation. He even travels to some of these places on his own with the smallest procession he could bargain away from his officials, who nearly fell to their knees pleading with him to behave in a manner worthy of the title of emperor, to which he only arrogantly declared that that's precisely why he's emperor — he can do whatever he wants (his stupid phrase, which he abruptly recalled from the bowels of the net — they wrote down as wisdom; he's so ashamed).
He has malcontents, lots and lots of them, and his best friends are still demons he still doesn't trust, really.
To his surprise, he also has fans. He had expected it, he wasn't completely hopeless, thinking that no one would see the prospect of his ideas into the future. But he didn't... didn't expect his people to love him.
That's... strange.
He abolishes legalized slavery in the thirteenth year of his reign, the same year Luo Binghe is due to enter Cang Qiong, he can only hope it will be enough to distract Shen Qingqiu into reconsidering his life rather than bullying the boy.
By now, his people and officials are used to his decisions being like the ebb and flow of the sea — making sense and not making sense, completely changing the pattern of their lives or not.
And after all, he hadn't yet figured out how to start an alliance with the demons, provided that the best option for that is Luo Binghe, as a half-demon, half-human; his perfect map of what peace between them is quite possible.
Although, cultivators would obviously be strongly opposed to it, if we forget about Cang Qiong and Huanghua, he has two other major sects and dozens of smaller ones.
Oh... can an emperor retire without going head over heels?
His officials beg him to marry, saying his years are passing, though he's only thirty-five, which is honestly still an incredible age considering the increasing attempts to assassinate him. It's amazing how many mercenaries believe he's just a servant, given his simple clothes and modest room, who's passed on by at all. Often he doesn't even need to pull out any of the eight daggers he sleeps with.
He also realizes that his non-existent daughter should have been born a decade ago, but the System never demanded anything from him, rather was an endless source of information like a newsfeed. Which is also incredibly convenient, if he's being honest. It's rather nice that he can look up the status of every person he's interested in; provided he remembers their name, of course; he's found that increasingly difficult over the years.
And he's never checked on Luo Binghe, or anyone important; honestly, he doesn't want to know.
He might have gotten a little lost in time, but almost ten more years had passed, and Cang Qiong was about to burn.
The Immortal Alliance passed five years ago, Luo Binghe should have been in the Endless Abyss, should have come out of it more dangerous and stronger than before, should have conquered the Demon Realm and burned everything to appease his anger.
He snaps about six more full moons later to request information from the System, and:
[Luo Binghe is Qing Jing's chief disciple.]
This is completely different from what he expected.
He reads below, more carefully and feverishly, waving away one of the servants with food, this is nowhere near in his priorities. He reads on and learns that Luo Binghe was able to get into one of the schools he was building, it wasn't difficult, the state paid enough for teachers not to dare refuse anyone, and some schools could be turned into boarding schools at the expense of the Imperial Court's personal coffers, he didn't need the money too much anyway; and Luo Binghe fell in love with art. He had come to Qing Jing as a man who longed for knowledge, as a man who loved to create, as a man who would be everything that Shen Qingqiu hated, but the latter was too preoccupied with the fact of what was happening in the country with the new laws, what it meant to him as a former slave, why it had happened (why it hadn't happened before), and barely noticed anyone around for real. And Luo Binghe grew as a scholar, as his protagonist should — becoming the best at whatever he took on. And when Shen Qingqiu looked back, all he could see was a young man with prospects and talents he was too tired to hate.
Luo Binghe remained in Cang Qiong, even becoming the head disciple of his peak, perhaps either ignoring or unaware of his origins.
And one particular human emperor has another problem:
"Am I really going to have to dig up a past Demon Emperor for an alliance...?"
His maid drops a tray of other food, but he ignores it, no one would believe her if she told anyway.