Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

If there was ever a more ironic way for an overworked manager to die, Jing Yuan thinks he’s got them all beat.

Because really—what would be funnier than dying because you tripped down the stairs because you were so tired because you were the only one left at work because you decided to get in a few more hours of overtime?

Nothing, that’s what.

His colleagues have told him to lighten up, and while he does go out to join them for drinks, Jing Yuan finds himself either holed up in his office or in his bedroom staring at his computer screen for most of the day. Even his slave driver boss has started to shoot concerned glances at him every time he finds Jing Yuan at work early, only to be informed that Jing Yuan never actually left the place at all.

And really, it’s not like he loves work, and he’s definitely not married to his job, but…

Everything else is just so boring. At least work can keep him occupied, as much as it gives him a headache.

But, Jing Yuan thinks morosely as his foot twists and his hand just misses the rail he needs to grab onto to steady himself, he thinks he at least should have died a more dignified death than this.

His actual last thought is that that thought is a pathetic one to have, and that he probably should be thinking about nice things.

And then—

Darkness.

Finally.

Except that when he wakes up again, it’s most definitely not the sweet darkness of death he was expecting.

Jing Yuan blinks. Feels his head muddle, and though the pillow isn’t quite as soft as he likes, he’s had to endure worse hardships than an uncomfortable pillow, so he turns onto his side and curls up in the hope for more sleep.

Hopes and dreams which are dashed by the hand on his shoulder, lightly shaking him.

“Shidi, you must wake up. You really do need a check-up.”

Jing Yuan doesn’t groan, as much as he wants to. Instead, he blinks his eyes open and winces a little at the light.

But… hadn’t he just fallen off a staircase? Why is he on a bed? Had someone actually found his corpse and dragged it to the hospital?

“Finally awake?”

Jing Yuan’s eyes follow the voice to a person he hasn’t seen before.

She looks intimidating, is the first word he thinks to come up with. She’s wearing what looks to be something out of those high fantasy war shows Jing Yuan used to indulge himself before he got distracted by reading webnovels online. Her dark grey hair is tied up into a tight ponytail, and her clothes scream both wealth and battle-readiness. Despite that, she looks at him in concern when Jing Yuan blinks once again to make sure he isn’t hallucinating and raises a hand to his forehead.

“Take it easy,” she tells him. “Collapsing in the middle of the day with no reason is… a cause for concern. Lingsha-shimei hasn’t been able to discern the reason yet, but all your spiritual energies are coming out fine.”

Jing Yuan’s head spins.

What the fuck is this woman talking about?

[Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Important things must be said three times! User has activated the secret route of ‘My Cute Protagonist Can’t Be This Dark’! I am your System, and will be guiding you through this stage as well as giving out missions and collectibles and rewards for doing a good job in aligning this story to the author’s true intentions!

Role: Jing Yuan

Character Role: Qing Jing High Elder, Xianzhou Luofu Arbiter General

Weapon: Starfall Reverie

B-Points: 50]

Jing Yuan blinks at the glowing blue screen in front of him. Oh no, he thinks faintly. He cannot  be in the novel that he was just reading a few days ago. The author, he vaguely remembers their name, TileDiviner4ever, must be laughing at him from beyond his grave, to be put into their novel where he ends up as the scum villain with no chance of redemption.

“Jing Yuan? Are you okay? Headache?”

Jing Yuan manages a mute shake of his head, turning to the woman and seeing the same blue screen pop up beside her like a character introduction card.

[Character: Marshal Hua

Title: Leader of the Arbiter Generals, Qiong Ding High Elder, Xianzhou Sect Leader

Weapon: Lux Arrow]

“I’m fine,” he manages to say, when Marshal Hua—that’s her name, apparently—looks at him in concern. “Are you… sorry, I don’t remember getting here.”

Rather than look reassured, her frown deepens. “You collapsed in the middle of the day,” she tells him, “Lingsha has been taking care of you, but I was in the area and thought to check up on you.”

“Many thanks,” Jing Yuan says, trying to think about if he should try to throw himself out of a window to verify that this isn’t a dream or a death-fuelled hallucination. “I… feel better now. Thank you.”

Marshal Hua looks at him for a moment longer, before she nods and stands up. “If that is so, I will not take your time. I will send Lingsha to make sure, but she already said you are free to leave once she’s seen to you.” And then she turns and leaves Jing Yuan alone with the dawning realization that no matter how much he pinches himself, he’s not going to wake up from a dream.

[User is currently on tutorial mode. Would user like a refresher on story events?]

Almost crying, Jing Yuan presses the yes button.

He remembers this novel, is the thing. It had an interesting premise of the main character being bullied and abused to the breaking point but unlocking a demon heritage that he used to get revenge—basic, so far as plots go, but the first few chapters had Jing Yuan wanting to read more. Of course the novel had started out by making him sympathetic to the main character.

That, and he just thought the character on the cover of the book was cute.

And then the book itself had fallen into the depths of hell right before the main character had fallen into the abyss—it had put him through so much that Jing Yuan was left gaping at his screen, reading through the rest of the novel in horrified and morbid curiosity as the main character went through chapters and chapters of dogblooded angst and pain before he’d fallen into the abyss and started on his journey of lonely revenge, before he had to stop himself before he actually went into cardiac arrest on his break at work.

Yanqing, he remembers the main character being called.

What else does he remember?

Oh, right! Just the fact that he’s apparently now in the body of the villain who was the source of Yanqing’s torture during his time on the ship! The villain who ended up being strung up by his limbs and had then cut off one by one!

Jing Yuan swears he hasn’t done anything at all to deserve this kind of treatment. He pokes a little at the floating blue box, hoping to trigger it, but there’s nothing but silence.

Realign the story with the author’s intentions.

How vague and annoyingly unhelpful.

The thing was that it was good at first. The way the first chapters were written promised justification and character development, dropping in little easter eggs of the protagonist’s development and the friends he would make along the way, even the potential love interests he was interested in, the way his cultivation skills developed—for an avid reader like Jing Yuan, all of those plot points were carefully laid out in a masterful way that had made him eager to read the rest of the book.

But then it all went to shit. All the character development? Gone. All the easter eggs? Eaten by dogs. All the hopes and dreams the main character had, snuffed out by the cruel world and his teacher’s hands and subsequently everyone else he encountered.

Jing Yuan had been much too surprised by the drastic decrease in the writer’s skills. He’d been hoping, even, for some tragic backstory for this character that shared his name, but it just so happened that the author apparently grew tired of writing good things and devolved into utter nonsense, beating the protagonist black and blue just because they could—Jing Yuan’s even wondered at some points whether the author was just using the main character as a punching bag to vent their stress—and Jing Yuan does not want to be the instigator of half the punishments the main character went through at the hands of his scum teacher, thank you very much!!

Even now, he finds himself shuddering thinking about it. The abuse that Yanqing had borne at the hands of his teacher were one of the most detailed parts of the book, and Jing Yuan had to thank the author that they only used the original’s title for him and not his name so Jing Yuan wouldn’t flinch every time his own name appeared on the page.

The last thing he remembers…

Right. It had been the absolute dogshit ending that had Jing Yuan flipping out in a rage—very, very contained, he only threw one paper across the room—where Yanqing had finally started to be happy again after enacting his revenge on all the people who wronged him. The love interest wasn’t named at all, and that should have been a sign. The only hint the author gave was that it was an older man who took care of Yanqing—Jing Yuan had been surprised by how nice the author had made him out to be—but he should’ve known that it was a trap.

Because just as the main character was starting to let go of his past—the cultivation world found him again, and, still furious at all the damage and destruction he caused, the havoc he put the entire world in, they ambushed him and killed his love interest.

And then upon finding out, the main character went batshit insane and killed everyone in his sight, which included all of the cultivation world, and then, cradling his lover’s dead body, weeping for the life he never had, killed himself in grief.

The end.

…really, Jing Yuan remembers thinking in despair, after closing his phone and staring blankly across the room at his wall in depression—he couldn’t have had one good thing? He almost wanted to find the author online and wanted to leave a comment asking why?! but he’d been interrupted by one of the staff at work and, in hindsight, it would’ve been rude to do anyways, considering that Jing Yuan was the one who chose to read—and keep reading—the book in the first place.

At least, he consoles himself, if he’s transmigrated into the world itself, maybe—maybe there’s a chance to set things right. Help Yanqing out instead of hinder him, and maybe Yanqing would consider giving him a quick death instead of stringing his limbless body up in the town square.

“Jing-shixiong!” another woman enters the room. She has horns. Jing Yuan vaguely remembers the existence of both dragons and foxians in this universe, but hadn’t given it much thought since the main character was just a normal demon without any of the extra features.

Well, as normal as he could get for a heavenly demon, anyways.

“Are you feeling better? I ran a checkup on you when you were asleep, but it didn’t yield any results,” the lady says. Lingsha, he remembers Marshal Hua saying.

[Character: Lingsha

Title: Cauldron Master, Qian Cao High Elder]

“I might have a headache,” Jing Yuan offers. “Though, that may be because I’ve slept four hours in the past week.”

Lingsha tilts her head at him and frowns, which is of course not a good sign. Jing Yuan’s beginning to sweat and think he’s said something wrong when she finally says, “It’s the fifth day of the week.”

So it’s still Friday?

Jing Yuan smiles at her, and he must look pained enough that she gives him a cup of tea and tells him to go rest back on his own ship.

Right.

His own ship.

Which he definitely remembers the way back to, of course.

Fortunately, since they are flying ships in the sky, Jing Yuan isn’t actually expected to fly back all on his own—there are transport ships along a rainbow bridge that he can ride. It’s almost a little unbelievable, still, despite the still-red mark on the inside of his wrist where he keeps pinching himself. To experience something like this…

Well, he’s either actually gone to heaven or he’s in a hospital bed in a coma and hallucinating everything.

He’s deposited back onto his own ship—he owns a ship and he has no idea how the fuck to do anything system help—and at least it cheerfully provides instructions on how to get back to his house.

Which he hasn’t even explored for five minutes before there’s a knock at his door.

“Come in,” he says, and prays he’s not about to be ambushed, because while his character might have had his martial skills, Jing Yuan is at heart an overworked middle-aged man who spent maybe two days a week in the gym so as not to waste his membership.

The door opens to reveal a young-looking person who Jing Yuan thinks might be a disciple, based on the way he bows and—

“Shizun!”

Fuck, he feels old.

“Hm?”

“This disciple apologizes for his behaviour! This one has punished the little beast accordingly for his crimes against shizun!”

Come again?

“Who?” Jing Yuan says blankly, and the disciple looks at him with wide eyes.

“The little—disciple Yanqing! He was the one who made shizun faint in the middle of the lesson!”

“Right,” Jing Yuan says, and pretends he doesn’t almost flinch at the sound of the protagonist’s name. “What have you done with him?” This is fine. He can handle this. It’s just like training an intern, after all, how hard could it be?

“This one has given him a beating and locked him up in the shed!”

Very hard, apparently.

Jing Yuan tries very hard not to sigh and mostly even succeeds.

“Bring him here,” he says tiredly. “I’ll take care of him.”

The disciple’s eyes grow wide, no doubt thinking of all the horrible and cruel things Jing Yuan’s going to inflict upon his shidi, and stammers, “Understood, shizun! This Ming Fan will just be a minute!”

And then he flees, and Jing Yuan sighs as he settles down at the table. It’s quite organized except for a few pieces of sect logistics, and the budget sheets gathered on the desk at least gives Jing Yuan an idea of how things are done around here.

He’s skimmed through a few of them when Ming Fan returns with another boy in tow, smaller and dirtier. Despite his size, he’s thrown to the floor, and Jing Yuan waves a hand to dismiss Ming Fan. The door slides shut with a soft clack.

The boy looks up.

Why is he glowing, Jing Yuan thinks desperately, before the boy—Yanqing—gathers himself quickly into a kneel, knocking his head against the ground so harshly that Jing Yuan winces. “This disciple apologizes. It was because of this disciple that shizun collapsed. This disciple accepts any punishment that shizun might give him tenfold.”

The words sound practiced, rehearsed, like someone’s trained it into him. Not for the first time, Jing Yuan wonders why the original had abused Yanqing to the point that he went after the entire world for bloody revenge—the author never stated the reason. When the torture arc had happened, Jing Yuan had been hoping for some kind of explanation or dramatic reveal of the scum villain’s horrid past, but it had never come up—instead, it was just more chapters of all the horrible ways the author could think of to torture the scum teacher, including but not limited to killing everyone he knew in front of him.

“Get up.”

The boy quivers, and stands up.

Fuck, Jing Yuan finds himself thinking, the moment Yanqing raises his eyes to meet his, that’s just a baby!!!

The baby in question looks at him with wide golden eyes, a bruise on his cheek that makes Jing Yuan’s heart ache. His blond hair is matted with dirt and streaked with blood, and Jing Yuan has never wanted to hurt a child before but he imagines making Ming Fan run around the ship until he collapses and then some more.

He was just following orders, Jing Yuan tries to tell himself, from the previous scum teacher. It’s not his fault.

Right. Medicine. Jing Yuan noticed a pot of salve on the table that the original has helpfully labelled Bruises and Cuts, so hopefully it’ll help with the swelling—

Just as he raises his hand, the system chimes in his head.

[Warning! Warning! Warning! OOC! The character Jing Yuan would not give out a pot of medicinal salve! B-Points will be deducted if user goes through with this action!]

What the fuck, Jing Yuan thinks.

“Put this on your face,” he says, and slides the pot forward towards Yanqing despite the system blaring warnings in his head and giving him a headache. “No disciple of mine should be seen this… unkempt. Clean yourself up.”

Yanqing turns wide eyes towards him. He looks surprised enough that Jing Yuan squishes down the urge to pat his cheeks and call him a good child. The system goes silent in his head, apparently accepting his actions as… not out of character, he thinks. “Yes, shizun.”

Jing Yuan watches Yanqing scurry forward and take the medicine, and then hold it in his hands as if it were something precious. Just as he’s raising a hand to dismiss him, Jing Yuan remembers. A crucial detail that led to Yanqing’s cultivation being crippled for the better part of the first book before it had been fixed by unlocking his latent demonic powers by being thrown into the abyss and being beaten black and blue by various monsters until he got angry enough to start actively making himself stronger. Jing Yuan, in his heart, wails pathetically for the little boy who had tried so hard to be kind and soft who had been thrown into a world that forced him to be cruel and unforgiving—especially when Yanqing just looks so… cute and gullible in front of him right now.

“Wait.”

Yanqing’s head snaps up.

“Yes, shizun?!”

“Your cultivation manual. Give it here.”

Yanqing tilts his head to the side, as if in thought, and—his eyes grow wide, as if he’s come to some sort of conclusion in his head. “Begging your pardon, shizun!” he says, bowing so suddenly and sharply that Jing Yuan can’t stop himself from flinching at how close Yanqing comes to hitting his head on Jing Yuan’s table, “This disciple is slow, and hasn’t been able to keep up with his lessons despite the cultivation manual. This lowly one promises to work ten times harder!”

Jing Yuan wants to sigh and hit his own head on the table, because how could someone have possibly abused this absurd little child?! Look at him! he’s got self-esteem issues!

“No.” He holds up a hand, cutting Yanqing off, and tries not to cry because of the way the boy looks like he’s about to cry. “You need a new one.”

Yanqing lights up. There’s no other way to describe the way he literally beams in happiness as he reaches into his sleeve and pulls out a tattered, worn-down book that he hands over to Jing Yuan.

“Dismissed.”

Yanqing bows and nearly skips out of the room.

Jing Yuan wants to scream.

But he’s a mature adult, and he thinks he’s supposed to be even more mature now, so he simply puts his head in his hands and gets to work finding a better cultivation manual first.

It’s not hard. The original Jing Yuan must’ve loved reading, because there’s an enormous shelf that takes up half the wall of the bamboo house, packed with books and practically spilling over. Despite being a horrible person, Jing Yuan at least has to thank the original for keeping things well-organized, so it doesn’t take him too long to find a stack of manuals he guesses he probably gives out to new disciples when they join the ship.

And when he compares it to Yanqing’s old, beat-up one, it’s so completely different that he has to restrain the urge to throw it and himself into a fire.

Patience, Jing Yuan, he reminds himself, you don’t even know how long you’ll be staying here.

That being said…

System, how do I stop being OOC?

[User needs to complete a prerequisite mission for to unlock OOC function!] the voice tells him cheerfully. [Upon successful completion of the mission, the OOC function will be unlocked and the user will be free to do as he wishes!]

Right, and what if I try being …OOC now?

[User will be returned to his previous world!] the system says, in far too cheerful of a voice for saying what essentially amounts to we’ll kick you back into your fucking corpse, bitch.

Right. Right, so he can’t… do anything, right now.

Even the excuse of not wanting people to see Yanqing being treated badly was paper thin, so the mission…

He figures he’ll force his way through it, if nothing else.

On the other hand, he is supposed to be one of the most powerful ship masters in this universe. He looks at the giant devastator glaive resting on the wall that he’s been politely ignoring this entire time.

No time like the present, he thinks, grabs the glaive and leaves his house. It’s surprisingly light. Or maybe it’s his own martial prowess in this alternate universe that allows him to carry and wield such a heavy weapon with ease, but either way, he’s not complaining

The courtyard is a huge walled thing, with ample space to train—Jing Yuan wonders what kind of person got himself a whole mansion complete with an entire backyard and still ended up like that—and he spends a few minutes testing out the extent of his power, before putting the glaive away because he doesn’t want to accidentally destroy any plants because apparently he is that powerful.

Enough to leave a scorch mark on the ground when he calls his spiritual power and swings it, making lightning arc down from his fingers.

Jing Yuan quietly pats the ground in apology and retreats back indoors.

The rest of the day is spent familiarizing himself with everything in the house. The kitchen looks unused, and Jing Yuan figures that he hasn’t been hungry ever since he arrived, so he’s not going to bother with that until it’s a more pressing problem. He finds an armoury, where he does spend a few minutes aweing at the weapons all put on display and looking like they’ve been cared for very well. Spends a minute worrying about the upkeep of the weapons if he’s supposed to be the one doing it, because he has absolutely no idea on where to even start, and then figures he can muddle it along as he goes. Surely he can find manuals on taking care of weapons in this world.

He finds folders of sect logistics that the original goods kept and organized, and spends most of the day poring over them before he trusts himself to handle the ship, even as a pseudo-leader, and when he figures that it’s good enough, goes the fuck to sleep.

He deserves a nap.

The next morning finds Ming Fan notifying him that sparring classes will be starting, and Jing Yuan abuses his position to get Ming Fan to lead the class in his absence because he’s still not actually sure how to use his spiritual energy, much less teach an entire class on how to direct their spiritual energy. He does make the time to travel outside, to where the disciples’ courtyard is, watching them from the sidelines. There’s no mistaking the way they stand a little straighter when he’s around, which is the most support he can provide at this point.

He keeps an eye on Yanqing, too. The boy trains a little further away from everyone else, and when everyone else pairs up to practice in pairs, he continues training by himself. His moves are all wrong, Jing Yuan thinks. It’s a wonder how he even got this far with the wrong cultivation manual being given to him—

Oh, Jing Yuan thinks, as Yanqing turns critical eyes at his classmates and moves slowly to replicate their moves, he’s copying them because he doesn’t have his manual.

Which is a point in his favour of Yanqing being the smart and cool protagonist, because of course he’d claw his way up from practicing copied sword forms from his peers to ruling over the entire world, if he’s as observant as this.

When practice is over, Jing Yuan sends them all off to lunch, and holds Yanqing back, ignoring the snickers all sent his way by the rest of his classmates.

“Shizun?” Yanqing says, wringing his hands, peering up at him with wide eyes. He’s flushed red from exertion. Jing Yuan wants to pinch his cheeks to make him redder. “Is there… anything wrong?”

Instead of replying verbally, Jing Yuan hands him a book.

Yanqing’s eyes light up as soon as he realizes what it is. “My cultivation manual!” he says excitedly, flipping it open. It’s a testament to how much he must’ve studied his old one, because he immediately frowns and looks up at Jing Yuan.

“This… isn’t the same,” he says, and then winces as if expecting to be scolded.

“This is better for you,” Jing Yuan says instead, ignoring the creeping warning the system wants to give him for showing favour to the protagonist. “Practice it. The Wardance Conference is coming up—we cannot have the sect looking like a disgrace.”

Yanqing straightens up, and bows. “Yes, shizun!” he enthuses. Jing Yuan doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone as happy as Yanqing to receive more homework. “This disciple will do his best! Thanking shizun for the guidance!”

Jing Yuan waves a hand and dismisses him. Heart lighter just by a little smidge, he returns to his house where he spends the rest of the day testing his spiritual powers a little more and studying the rest of the books and files he’s found in the little office area of the house.

Really, it’s such a large space—why would anyone have use for such a large house when most of the rooms seem to be untouched? The kitchen looks like a ghost could live in it.

When he wakes up the next day, though, there’s a new notification waiting for him.

[Congratulations! User has unlocked the quest: Lingering Hearts and Captive Audiences! Go into town to investigate a mystery case! Complete this mission to unlock all OOC functions!]

Great, he thinks. Just in time, so he can actually work on building his own personality instead of trying to act all cold and aloof like the original goods.

He picks a select few disciples to go on the trip with him. This case hadn’t even been mentioned in the original books, so Jing Yuan can only assume it’s a special mission tailored for him—even so, he can’t resist taking Yanqing along with him, simply because of the kicked puppy look Yanqing sends his way when he thought Jing Yuan wasn’t looking.

Their descent from the ship itself to the ground where the civilians reside is undertaken in a smaller open-air ship that Jing Yuan does feel partially guilty for riding, seeing as that he gets his own room within it and the rest of his disciples are outside on the deck.

While looking out, though, he gets the chance to observe Yanqing.

He sits by himself. He looks very much like he’d like to become one with the ship, even more so when the others notice him and start to yell his way, but they must be on their best behaviour because they don’t do anything more than that. Yanqing, on his own, looks contemplative. It’s such a serious look for someone his age that Jing Yuan finds himself smiling a little, wondering if that’s just how he is. The book had given details on his character, sure, but it’s another thing to be experiencing it in real life.

A youth who loves swords, and would have spent all the money he had on them if he could, it said. Jing Yuan’s always wondered why Yanqing was chosen for Qing Jing Ship rather than Bai Zhan, or even Wan Jian, with his interest in swords that the author made sure to point out every few chapters or so. There were always hints that it wasn’t what it seemed, that some history had happened during Jing Yuan’s time, but… as always, the author never elaborated, and Jing Yuan hadn’t ever been someone who hounded the comment section begging the author for more plot holes to be filled.

Their descent to the ground is smooth. In no time, Jing Yuan’s standing on solid ground, and his disciples obediently line up behind him as they make their way to the town head.

Jing Yuan barely keeps himself from curling his lip up in distaste when the man greets him with a girl hanging off his arm.

“It’s awful, Master Cultivator,” he’s saying, looking for all the world like he isn’t luxuriating in his own palace, “So many young girls have been affected by this demon, it really has no end to its appetite…”

“We will do what we can,” Jing Yuan promises him, just because he really wants to get out of here. He might have experience dealing with people like these, but it doesn’t make the experience that much more bearable any time he has to do it. He turns to his disciples. “Spread out in pairs and investigate,” he directs, mostly because he has no idea what he’s supposed to do. “Report any suspicious activity you see to me. We’ll come up with a plan afterwards.”

“Yes, shizun!”

As he leaves the room, he sees Yanqing, hanging around by himself. It’s only when he does a headcount of his disciples that he notices that they’re an odd number, and, because of that, Yanqing has been left behind once again, looking around at people with a furrow to his brow like he’s trying to decide whether to disobey Jing Yuan or force him way into another pair.

“Yanqing,” he calls, and watches with trepidation as Yanqing flinches at the sound of his voice. “With me.”

“Yes, shizun,” Yanqing says, as he falls into step beside Jing Yuan, who starts leading them away from the mansion, towards the markets. It’s a lively day despite all the murders happening, and Jing Yuan feels himself relax slightly at the warm sun on his face. He hasn’t felt this in a long while, he thinks, too busy in his office and mind too overtaken by his tasks that he’d never had the chance to appreciate even the weather.

He doesn’t talk. Beside him, Yanqing is looking around with wide eyes, flicking back and forth across all the market stalls and the goods on replay. It’s obvious that he wants to go and look, but he’s a good child—staying in place and only looking as Jing Yuan strolls leisurely across the roads.

“Look, if you want,” he says, not too gently, “If you have any savings, now would be a good time to spend them.”

Yanqing perks up. He doesn’t say anything; only nods rapidly as he starts towards a stall selling sword tassels in all colours and configurations. Jing Yuan follows him at a more sedate pace, looking around at the people—it really isn’t that different from his own universe, he muses, with all the haggling and the yelling and the people grouped together, albeit with different clothing and mannerisms—and catches Yanqing looking longingly at a pretty gold and red tassel hanging from the stall door.

“Ah, the young master has a fine eye!” the storekeeper exclaims, materializing at the possibility of a buyer, “One of a kind! Specially crafted from the gold lotus in the northern region, and is the most durable! You could keep it for a lifetime!”

“O-oh,” Yanqing says, and steps back. Clearly embarrassed, he stammers, “I—I’m sorry, sir, I don’t… I don’t have any money. I’m just looking.”

“That’s okay!” the man says, though now with definitely less cheer than before. “Feel free, then! Please excuse me.”

Yanqing shakes his head sadly. He doesn’t seem to be aware that Jing Yuan’s watching him, and takes one last look at the tassel before shaking himself and walking away from the stall to wander towards another one. Jing Yuan watches him go, head tilted to the side. Does Yanqing not have any money? All the disciples living on the ships received some form of an allowance, he remembers. Does Yanqing not receive anything similar? Had either the original goods or Ming Fan bullied him into giving it up?

Shaking his head, Jing Yuan raises his voice. “Shopkeeper!”

“Oh—how may I help you, good sir?”

“This one,” he says, tapping the tassel Yanqing had looked at earlier, “How much?”

“Good eye! That one is two gold pieces.”

Jing Yuan stares.

The shopkeeper sweats.

“One—one and a half, special discount,” he stammers, “Just for the esteemed cultivator!”

Jing Yuan stares. Narrows his eyes just the littlest bit.

“Ten,” the shopkeeper bargains. “Ten silver pieces. You really can’t get a deal sweeter than that here! You can ask around!”

“Hm,” Jing Yuan says. Turns around and makes to leave.

“Five!” the shopkeeper yelps. “Five silver pieces! The lowest I can do!”

Wordlessly, Jing Yuan reaches into his money pouch and gives him five silver pieces. Plucks the tassel off the wall and waves away his offers to package it up for him, and goes after where he’d seen Yanqing last.

Which is….

The food stalls.

But Yanqing isn’t there anymore.

Frowning—Yanqing should have had the sense to stick close to him, despite how he’d been allowed to look at the stalls—Jing Yuan spends a few seconds looking over the crowd to confirm that his disciple, in fact, isn’t there.

Pretending like his heart hasn’t picked up in speed, Jing Yuan takes a deep breath to calm himself. Right. He’s an immortal master with years of experience under his belt. He should be able to find his wayward disciple easily.

A movement from the corner of his eye has him snapping his head towards it. Something dark, undetected by normal people—it might even be the demon they’re out looking for. And if it got Yanqing…

Sighing, Jing Yuan follows the presence that surely grows stronger past the market stalls, until the crowd thins out and he ends up in front of an old temple that’s surprisingly abandoned by the rest of the world, and—

Then he blacks out.

“Shizun!”

What is with the racket, Jing Yuan finds himself thinking irritably. There’s a crick in his neck from falling asleep at his desk again, and if some intern thought it was good to disturb him when he spent the better part of the night working—

“Shizun!” a desperate voice calls out, and suddenly Jing Yuan is yanked back into what has supposedly been his reality for the past few days. That’s Yanqing’s voice, he thinks blearily, struggling to open his eyes and wincing when he finally does, despite the low light of the room—which, in all honesty, looks like a dusty basement. Jing Yuan hopes he isn’t going to start having any allergic reactions—do cultivators even have allergies?

“Oh, look at you,” another, female, voice purrs, “not one, but two esteemed cultivators in my grasp; and the Qing Jing Ship Master, no less… my, my, maybe you cultivators aren’t really all that you say you are.”

And, the thing is, she’s right, Jing Yuan thinks sourly. It’s entirely his own fault that he was incapable of scenting out a low-level demon tacky enough to monologue just because he doesn’t know how to use his powers. Embarrassing. Jing Yuan thinks he might need another tutorial for this.

“Don’t say that!” Yanqing cries out. It makes Jing Yuan wince, and only then does he realize that he’s tied up, with Yanqing right beside him, and his little disciple is doing his best to wiggle out of the ropes, except—

“Don’t even think about trying to break free,” the demon scoffs. She’s still shrouded in shadow, and her voice echoes all around the room. “Those are Immortal Binding Cables—even if the greatest cultivator in the world was trapped in them, he wouldn’t be able to get free.”

Jing Yuan begs to differ—there is one ridiculously overpowered cultivator in the world that can break out of them—but, alas, that person has not gone through his character development arc yet, and therefore will not be breaking out of any ropes any time soon, Immortal Binding or otherwise.

“If we can’t escape,” Jing Yuan says, drawling his voice in the exact way he knows his company executives used to hate, “then why don’t you show us your face, Die’er?”

The name of the young girl who had been hanging off the town head’s arm, earlier, who had been introduced with such a sickeningly sweet voice that Jing Yuan had thrown up a little in his mouth.

“HOW?!” she shrieks now, and Jing Yuan winces.

“It’s not that hard,” Yanqing points out, sounding a little incredulous, like how could we not? “I thought it was obvious.”

“That’s because you’re the only one with a brain around here,” Jing Yuan mutters under his breath, only realizing a bit late that he might be in trouble if Yanqing hears—but his disciple doesn’t seem to, showing no outward reaction to the words. Jing Yuan clears his throat. “So you decided to go after cultivators, hm?”

“These bodies might be young, but they don’t hold up well at all,” Die’er complains. Now that her identity has been found out, she has no trouble stepping into the light where she can then continue her dramatic monologuing. Beside him, Yanqing lets out a soft, annoyed exhale.

“So why not waste the chance when I have two cultivators falling right into my lap?” the demon says, stalking forward and running a fingertip across Jing Yuan’s cheek, making him shiver in revulsion. “I don’t usually go for men, but… you do have exquisite skin. And a cultivator… who knows how long you’ll last…”

And look, it’s not like Jing Yuan hasn’t been hit on in his past universe. He knows he’s not entirely unattractive, but none of those women—or men—actually wanted to skin him and wear it. The well of spiritual power he’s been feeling this entire time has been cut off entirely, and it makes something antsy run under his skin despite only having the power for a few days at most.

“Why would you wear his skin,” Yanqing blurts out suddenly. “Obviously he’s the greatest now, but… think about it. I’m the one he chose to be by his side for this mission. Don’t you think you’re making a mistake?”

What are you doing, Jing Yuan wants to yell. Is he actually trying to bait the demon to sacrifice himself? Yanqing! Have some self-preservation instincts! This bitch was trying to get you killed up until a few days ago!!! You’re the protagonist of a whump novel, protect yourself!

“Hmm,” the demon says. Tilts her head to the side, eyes roving over Yanqing’s small frame like it’s a delicious snack. “I do prefer the younger ones…”

“Are you stupid?” Jing Yuan blurts, because he’s stressed and the thought of Yanqing being hurt makes his chest go tight. “Like, genuinely?”

“Shizun,” Yanqing says, and he has the gall to sound exasperated. Jing Yuan’s going to get him, the little insolent brat.

“How dare you!” the demon hisses, “to even—to even!” In her anger, she lashes out. Jing Yuan braces himself for the hit to come, for the pain to hit, but all he feels is the cold gush of wind against his chest, and when he looks down—

What the fuck, he thinks.

What kind of…

With the way this novel went—wasn’t he supposed to have his chest sliced open?!

Beside him, Yanqing squeaks.

“Pesky little cultivators!” the demon is saying, pacing around, “You sorry bunch annoy me so much, I should just—!”

Jing Yuan forgoes listening to her in order to think what the fuck repeatedly, because his clothes have just been ripped open, and the only thing protecting his modesty is the red ropes still keeping him bound up. But that makes him think… in a world as ridiculous as this… He’s not the protagonist, bound by the rules to fail at any attempt, right?

“Yanqing,” he murmurs under his breath, “Strain against the ropes as much as you can.”

Because the two of them are tied up together, and if Jing Yuan’s logic is correct, he can’t use spiritual power but he can use normal strength—and if these ropes were low-grade like he’s hoping a minor villain would use…

Sighing, and apologizing to Yanqing in his head for what he’s about to see, Jing Yuan tenses up and—

Snap!

Cheap novel tropes, thank you for existing!

The demon stops. Turns around slowly to stare at Jing Yuan holding the tatters of the binding rope in his hands, one sleeve dropping from his shoulder to pool at his wrist.

“Shit,” she says, very eloquently.

Jing Yuan summons his glaive.

“Fuck,” she says, and it’s the last thing she does.

Breathing a little heavier, Jing Yuan turns around to see Yanqing staring at him with wide eyes. His face is entirely red. Oh gods, is he catching a fever?

Before he can check, the system pings its horrible little congratulatory sound at him.

[Congratulations! Tutorial mission complete! OOC function unlocked! As a bonus for completing the mission on hard mode, user has been granted an additional boon: all suspicious changes of personality will automatically be excused by other characters! B-Points: +100!]

Happy story correction! Please continue your efforts!]

HARD MODE?! HE WAS PLAYING IN HARD MODE THE ENTIRE TIME?!

Jing Yuan feels his eye twitching. Oh, when he gets the system… system, when he gets you…

But he has to focus on Yanqing first.

“Alright?” he murmurs, stepping up to Yanqing and undoing his bindings. He holds a hand up to Yanqing’s forehead, frowning when Yanqing goes even redder.

“I’m fine!” Yanqing yelps, practically hopping away from him, eyes looking everywhere except Jing Yuan, “Shizun should—should take my robes! Shizun shouldn’t be cold!”

“Oh, ,” Jing Yuan says, looking down at himself. It seems that the protagonist of the world was still a little flustered at seeing other men half-clothed. It was true that even in the original, the protagonist had shunned all romantic advances because they’d always turned out to be a ploy to get him to drop his guard and humiliate him, and by the time he rose as the feared heavenly demon, no one had dared to get close to him.

He can’t take Yanqing’s coat, is the thing. Yanqing is half the size of him, and trying to wear something that small would just make Jing Yuan look funny. No, it’s just a short walk back to the mansion, Jing Yuan should survive.

“Let’s go,” he says, “This master will survive a few minutes without a coat.”

Yanqing frowns like he wants to argue, but he doesn’t say anything more, trailing behind Jing Yuan as they begin their walk back in silence, but just before they reach the house, Yanqing’s voice stops him.

“Shizun!”

Jing Yuan turns around and startles slightly at the sight of Yanqing bowing low towards him. “Hm?”

“This disciple is sorry!”

“What for?”

“If this one hadn’t been captured in the first place, shizun wouldn’t have had to look for me! It was my fault shizun ended up with this—this indignity!”

Jing Yuan can’t help it—he laughs. Not meanly, but it’s loud enough that Yanqing’s head snaps up to look at him with wide eyes, and he looks so bewildered that Jing Yuan wants to reach out and pat his head for it.

And then he remembers that he can do whatever he wants now, so he does. Yanqing flinches when he draws nearer, but he stays frozen in place, his eyes growing even wider as Jing Yuan gently pats his head a few times before putting a hand on his back to help him straighten up.

“Everyone makes mistakes once in a while,” he says gently. “Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“I…” for a moment, Yanqing looks like he’s contemplating saying something, but then he gets a determined look on his face. “Yes, shizun! This one promises to be the strongest in all the realms!”

Fuck, was he accidentally accelerating Yanqing’s blackening? But that didn’t seem like a revenge line—so Jing Yuan will take it and count his small victories.

Jing Yuan announces his seclusion a few days after they return from the mission. Now that he has the freedom to do what he wants, he figures that there should be enough time to plan for what he knows. Namely, Yanqing’s banishment to the demon realm—he’d lain awake multiple nights about it, trying to find a loophole, yet everything he’s thought of has been rebutted by the system. Everything else, Jing Yuan’s sure he can find some type of workaround for. Yanqing’s abuse at his hands had been the main reason for others to follow in the scum villain’s stead and treat him much worse than he deserved.

If Jing Yuan started treating him well and protected him… it’s safe to say that he could avoid most of Yanqing’s blackening at the scum teacher’s hands! Which the system didn’t pipe up with a warning for, which means that he’s doing alright with the aligning the story with the original intentions part—

Which still leaves the issue of the Abyss.

Jing Yuan’s plan has one pitfall in it—namely, the fear that Yanqing will get attached. Jing Yuan’s no stranger to having interns imprinting on him like ducklings because he takes the time to help them out where needed, and he fears it might be somewhat of the same situation for Yanqing if he suddenly changes his personality and starts being nice to the boy.

Which would make the betrayal all the deeper when Jing Yuan has to push the boy down into the abyss, and possibly reset all the goodwill he had earned the years before.

And despite his life hanging on the line, Jing Yuan doesn’t want to see him suffer. Doesn’t want to hurt him.

He tries to take his mind off those matters when he gets permission for secluded cultivation. At least in the Lingxi Caves, he might be able to grow stronger.

And if what happened in the novel is going to happen again… Jing Yuan can only hope that the system’s weird powers will give him the opportunity to fix a plot point that he’s been dreading.

Feixiao’s death.

A general of the Xianzhou Yaoqing, and the High Elder of the martial Bai Zhan, the Merlin’s Claw Feixiao was one of, if not the strongest cultivators of their time. She was described as a war-hungry general, often missing for most days from her ship because she was off hunting some magical monster or tracking down demons to kill, and since she was so strong, nobody really had the guts to tell her that she really wasn’t running her ship—and it’s not like it was a big problem, anyways, since her two retainers—a foxian trained in the healing arts and an unnamed swordsman she’d adopted—were more than adept at managing the ship in her stead, and so nobody actually wanted to go through the bureaucracy of asking her to step down.

That being said, as the reader, Jing Yuan was privy to one more secret that General Feixiao had—

Her bloodlust.

The world had, quite messily, separated the foxians from their “abyssal” cousins—the borisin—by introducing them as the blood-hungry demons that roamed both the Abyss, the demon realm and sometimes crossing over into the human world. Characterized by their healing abilities that could fix normal wounds in seconds, the borisin had plagued the lands as long the foxian had lived them, as they had shared a common ancestry, until the ancestor of the borisin had gotten themselves cursed and doomed themselves and the rest of their lineage for centuries to come, labelling them demons from the abyss rather than another mythical species of the world.

And, if a foxian was ever so unlucky, they would experience the moon rage that most borisin suffered, the bloodlust rearing in their veins and making them lose sight of anything but their enemy in front of them—whether they were actually friend or foe.

It was only because of a throwaway line in the original novel that Jing Yuan had remembered that Feixiao was one of those susceptible to those fits of craze, and that the only reason she had managed to survive so long without falling to her madness was that she had an abundant amount of spiritual power that she’d started training with at an early age.

Of course, this wasn’t explicitly written in the book, but it was enough for Jing Yuan to surmise that the reason Feixiao travelled so much was for her to curb the killing instincts that overtook her every so often, and that perhaps her retainers were trying to work on a cure that could permanently contain her madness.

It had been all for naught in the end, though.

Because Feixiao had died—in the Lingxi Caves.

And if Jing Yuan was lucky, he would make it in time to prevent that from happening.

Despite her cultivation being as high as it was and her spiritual energy being top notch, being in the Lingxi Caves had triggered a violent response from her curse, and she ended up dying of a qi deviation.

All while the original Jing Yuan had stood there and watched.

It was a mystery as to why he’d been so hostile towards her—to be fair, the original goods was hostile towards everyone, but both the hatred and the outright dismissal he’d shown her had been baffling and Jing Yuan had suspected that there was something more at play. Of course, none of this was explained so he’d been left to his own conjectures.

But now, he has a chance to save her, and well… he’s gonna need all the allies he can get.

Entering the caves is something like having a bucket of water thrown over his head on a hot summer day; shocking to the system at first, but as his nerves settled and his spiritual energy readjusted to the influx of energy being thrown at him, Jing Yuan felt like he could breathe properly. The cave’s natural bioluminescence lights everything in a blue-green glow, and Jing Yuan finds himself wondering if he could, instead of meditating as he came here to do, lie down for an uninterrupted nap for once in his life.

And then a shockwave echoes through the cavern, and he remembers—right. Not here to nap.

Following the violent spiritual energy that billows out immediately afterwards, Jing Yuan is greeted with a sight that—not that he’ll ever admit it to anyone—almost makes him piss his pants.

General Feixiao, in the middle of a qi deviation, eyes wild and rabid, lips curled up in a snarl as she lunges at something only she can see, smacking into the wall with such force that the entire cave trembles and sends little pieces of dust and debris tumbling to the floor.

And then she spots Jing Yuan, and he has a minute to think oh fuck before she’s lunging towards him. It’s only because of some type of muscle memory that he manages to duck to the side. And maybe falling on his ass isn’t the worst thing ever when it saves him from being clawed to death.

You know what they say, he finds himself thinking hysterically as Feixiao blindly cuts a wave of spiritual energy at him that makes him stumble, put them into the deep end, it’ll help them learn—a phrase he’d used to say about the interns and something he desperately wishes wasn’t applying to himself right now.

But he manages, somehow. He doesn’t know how long he’s been fighting, trying to find a weak spot that he can exploit without being exploded to bits, but Feixiao’s tiring. The qi deviation is sapping her of her energy, and it’s a precarious balance between that and the point of no return of it that Jing Yuan has to take advantage of in order to—

There, he thinks, when Feixiao staggers herself by blasting the cave, that should be it!

Ducks in close and sends a palm strike to her stomach, wincing when she falls back with a winded choke and doesn’t get up, breathing in stuttered gasp.

Muttering a small apology to whatever god out there is listening for the compromising position he has to take up to transfer spiritual energy to her, Jing Yuan winces when the full force of her turbulent energy hits him. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing—cultivation novels barely ever expanded on the mechanics of spiritual energy sharing itself—but as he pours more of his power into her, Feixiao seems to calm. On her head, her ears twitch sporadically. Jing Yuan is almost overtaken with the urge to try and touch him.

When the violent energy in her subsides, Jing Yuan takes a breath to try and clear his head of the pounding headache that’s been building up steadily, and feels along her spiritual pathways to at least staunch some of the rips and tears he’s noticed while feeding his spiritual energy into her.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, sweating and breathing heavily, doing his damned best to keep her from dying—he’s not even sure it’s entirely working—the Lingxi Caves only help so much. Replenishing both their spiritual energies comes far easier with the caves as a supply, and yet it makes him feel scraped raw every time he opens his own energy to the caves—which makes sense, he can rationalize to himself, considering that the caves only supplied the raw spiritual power needed for cultivation refinement, and definitely ended up as a crude replacement for the healing arts.

After what seems like a lifetime, when Feixiao’s spiritual veins aren’t pulsing in agitation every time Jing Yuan tries to stop the staunching, he finally sits back on his heels and tries not to collapse from sheer exhaustion, breathing heavily and trying not to move even just a smidge because he thinks he might throw up.

“Jing… Yuan?”

The voice has him tensing up despite the nausea, and Jing Yuan whips his head up, bracing himself for an attack that never comes. Instead, Feixiao, where she’s lying on the floor, looks up at him, eyes green and clear instead of the vivid red they’d been earlier, and Jing Yuan lets himself collapse with a sigh of relief.

Just in time, the system chimes up.

[Congratulations! User has successfully averted General Feixiao’s death! Story alignment: 5% completed! +300 B-Points! Keep up the good work, user! (وᵔ▿ᵔ)و]

Fuck you, Jing Yuan thinks vehemently.

“General Feixiao,” he manages to reply in as stable a voice as possible. “Are you…”

“I feel like I’ve been mauled,” Feixiao says immediately, groaning and throwing an arm over her eyes. The coat she’s wearing is tattered and ripped to shreds, and yet she still manages to make it look halfway cool as she sits up and groans about the aches in her bones. “Jing Yuan, you…”

Jing Yuan would be shivering if he didn’t have appearances to keep up. As it is, he only holds up a hand to stall her words. “Think nothing of it,” he says evenly. And to keep up an effort of staying at least a little bit in character, he continues: “You think my reputation can survive if everyone thought I killed you?”

Feixiao only blinks at him. She opens her mouth to say something else, but Jing Yuan cuts her off again.

“If that’s all,” he says, standing up and brushing the dust off his pants—a futile endeavour, considering he is more dust than person at this point—“I must be attending to my own cultivation, General. I hope you make your way to General Lingsha immediately—your qi deviation may have passed, but a check-up would not be remiss.”

“Right,” Feixiao says faintly, and when Jing Yuan turns to look at her, she’s still sitting on the ground, staring at him like she’s trying to remember something but not quite succeeding. “I—thank you. I would be dead without you.”

She doesn’t know how true the statement is, and Jing Yuan plans to keep it that way. Waving a hand, he exits the cavern.

It doesn’t take him too long to find a spot that he thinks would be good to meditate in; first, he needs to heal his own exhaustion and injuries. And then he can actually focus on refining his cultivation—he only hopes Feixiao makes her way out safely instead of recklessly trying to cultivate further, but even without actually appearing in the story, Feixiao had seemed, at least, like a sensible type of person. Jing Yuan thinks that the author killed her off early because otherwise she would be too troublesome for the protagonist to fight

He shakes his head—time to focus on himself. And if he can unlock all those powerful stuff his original had used….

Meditation is weird. Time passes both too fast and not at all, and all too soon a month has passed and Jing Yuan exists his meditative state feeling just a little bit more settled in his own bones. Calling upon both his glaive and spiritual energy. comes easier now, and he tests out a few light strikes against the walls of the caves as he leaves, which are all thankfully absorbed by the caves itself.

But as he exits the cave, Jing Yuan gets the sense that something is wrong.

The air, he thinks, looking up at the sky. The ships are high enough in the clouds that they’re rarely bothered by the clouds or rain. But the sky today is a dark orange, like the sun set too soon, and then—

Smoke.

“Shizun!” a voice cries in the distance, and then Jing Yuan’s met with a panting disciple who cries out in joy at seeing him up close. “Shizun, the demons—they’re—they’re attacking! You have to—”

“Go contact the other generals,” Jing Yuan instructs immediately, “Where’s Marshal Hua?”

“She left on business!” the disciple tells him, hurrying to keep up, as Jing Yuan materialises his glaive and steps onto it, directing himself to the ships above—no time to wait for a travelling vessel, and he’s sure he can make it. “The others have gone to fetch General Lingsha and General Feixiao, but they just left and they’re the farthest out! I came to see if I could get shizun instead.”

“Good,” Jing Yuan tells him, “Round up the others. Keep them safe.”

“Yes, shizun!”

Putting on speed, wind whipping against his face, Jing Yuan lands safely in the square of the Xianzhou Luofu, where most of his disciples are gathered, facing off against a myriad of demons.

A cheer rises up from the crowd when they see Jing Yuan’s arrival.

“Our shizun is here!” Ming Fan’s voice rises up through the crowd. “Lowly demons—you think you can ambush us? Cut off our travel routes so we can’t even ask for help from the other ships?!”

Bless your expositioning NPC heart, Ming Fan.

A demoness steps forward, and, right—Jing Yuan remembers her. The demon saintess, Xiao Hong—she’d been a demon lord that the protagonist eventually killed off because of her betrayal of him after they traversed the abyss together. She was one of the characters that Jing Yuan had found two-faced right from the start, and every time she’d shown up, he’d groaned a little inside his head.

Obviously peeved but reluctant to admit it, she bows towards him—a shallow one that no doubt would have had her punished if she were one of his disciples.

“This Ling’er apologizes for the damage done to your ship,” she demurs. Jing Yuan dislikes her immediately. “This one is young still and couldn’t control her subordinates. Please accept this one’s apologies.”

“You can apologize by leaving,” Jing Yuan says. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yanqing hurrying towards him, a training sword by his waist and yet not looking any worse for wear.

“But this one arrived on the ship to get pointers from the esteemed cultivators,” Xiao Hong simpers. “She was really hoping to teach her subordinates something—and now that they’ve come, they won’t leave without a fight, General.”

Jing Yuan really, really wants to pinch the bridge of his nose. Was that the excuse she was going with?

“Then what do you propose?”

Xiao Hong gets a wicker glimmer in her eye that immediately makes Jing Yuan want to pull out his glaive and point it at her.

“Three matches!” she proclaims, skipping forward. Her bells jingle obnoxiously where they hand from her waist and ankles. Jing Yuan’s going to get a headache. “To exchange tips! Surely the general would be amenable? It would satiate my subordinates’ need for a fight too.”

What baloney, Jing Yuan thinks. “If it’ll get you to leave,” he says acerbically, “Then by all means. I’ll take the first match.”

Xiao Hong’s eye twitches, but she gestures towards her crowd of demons.

“Elder One-Arm!”

Jing Yuan barely has time to stop himself from laughing out loud at the ridiculous name before the demon in question walks out, and—fuck, that’s a large demon, even by their standards. Time to put his new skills to the test—Jing Yuan finds that he’s almost looking forward to learning what he can do, at the risk of ending up as paste on the floor.

“Shizun,” Yanqing whispers from beside him, tugging at his sleeve, and Jing Yuan chances a look down at him.

A mistake.

A big, big mistake, because Yanqing is staring up at him with wide, worried eyes that really makes him look like a puppy, and fuck, Jing Yuan can’t handle that much cuteness all at once! How did something like this turn into an edgy dark and vengeful protagonist! Author, he’s going to have some words with you!

“It’s okay,” he reassures the boy, and then gives in to the urge to pat his head once more—this time, Yanqing leans into the touch with teary eyes. “Don’t worry about me.”

And then he turns back to Xiao Hong—“Do you think this master incapable?”

“I promise you that Elder One-Arm is not an insult to you, General. He’s more capable than anyone in my batta—in my ranks.”

“Hm,” Jing Yuan says, and steps forward. “Then allow me to level the playing field—I will fight without moving from one place at all.”

Shocked cries rise up from the crowd, but nothing is quite as satisfying as the look on Xiao Hong’s face—she’s absolutely pissed, but she can’t say anything about it. Ah, the joys of being an inconvenience to other people, Jing Yuan has missed you…

Not even bothering to draw his glaive, Jing Yuan steps forward, posture relaxed and easy, as Elder One-Arm advances towards him.

“Begin!”

Jing Yuan plants his feet into the ground, takes a deep breath, and sends out a wave of spiritual power so powerful it has his opponent stumbling. The air crackles with the remnants of his lightning, and Jing Yuan himself feels electrified in a way he’s never felt before. The first blast unlocked some type of well in him, and he can feel the spiritual energies in his veins collecting, flowing through him, ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

Demons are hardy, he’ll give them that. Elder One-Arm grunts and advances towards him quicker than he recovered, and his next attack would’ve thrown Jing Yuan clean off the ship if not for the golden shield he throws up. The resulting shockwave then the demon’s hammer hits the shield sends a blast of air through the makeshift arena.

His shield is still strong when the elder recuperates, crackling with both golden and purple energy, and Jing Yuan resists the urge to reach out to try and touch it, for the sake of keeping up appearances.

“Well?” he asks. “Two attacks and you’re already tired? I thought better of Hong-guniang’s best subordinate.”

With a roar, he’s attacked again. And again and again, until Jing Yuan starts to actually get bored of standing there letting a demon attack his shield—which has held up surprisingly well—and throwing out the occasional blast of spiritual energy.

Taking a deep breath, Jing Yuan calls to mind one of the original’s powers; a Spiritus granted to him by the heavens—a large semi-corporeal spirit to aid Jing Yuan in battle. It had been the only thing he couldn’t test out in the caves in fear of its structural integrity. He calls upon it now, materializing the upper body of it, and—

Flicking Elder One-Arm across the forehead.

The demon flies across the courtyard, and doesn’t get up again.

Jing Yuan disperses Lightning Lord just as his disciples start to cheer, heckling the demons and yelling out insults at them, while Xiao Hong’s face looks as if she’d just sucked on a lemon at the display of power Jing Yuan had just shown her.

Good. Jing Yuan hopes he’s sending a message.

“Shizun!” Yanqing says excitedly when Jing Yuan returns to stands with the crowd, and Jing Yuan, unable to resist, gives him another pat on the head.

“Congratulating the general on his victory,” Xiao Hong says, gritting her teeth. “But for the next matches, would it not be good to send out someone else? After all, how are we supposed to improve if only the general fights with us? This one will take the honour of being the second contestant.”

Jing Yuan frowns, ready to object, when a small girl steps out from the crowd. “Fight me,” she demands, fire in her voice. “I will be the second contestant!”

Jing Yuan remembers her. Yunli, from Wan Jian Ship. She’d been one of the few characters that hadn’t betrayed the protagonist, and yet had hurt him all the same with her death and accelerated his blackening. Jing Yuan had a soft spot for her only because she’d reminded him of one of his friend’s goddaughter, and had been rooting for her and Yanqing’s sibling relationship ever since she showed up and forcibly made herself Yanqing’s friend.

Which should be… right around after this match. As the story went, Yanqing would be impressed by her mastery of her swords and she would offer to teach him a few sword tricks to make his life easier.

Of course, nothing would ever be easier for the protagonist—having the granddaughter of Wan Jiang Ship’s friendship meant that Yanqing started to be cast in a more negative light, people gossiping about him being ungrateful and all sorts of other nonsense Jing Yuan’s sure the writer pulled out of their ass. Even Yunli herself, despite how angry the rumours made her, was helpless to the whims of gossip and rumours.

“This Xiao Hong is honored to fight an… esteemed cultivator such as yourself,” the demoness says, with a curl to her lip that Jing Yuan doesn’t like at all. They take their places across from each other.

It would almost be a funny picture, if Jing Yuan didn’t know what’s coming afterwards. Yunli wields a claymore that’s twice her size. She looks comically small next to both it and the demon saintess—but she’s not to be underestimated. She’s fast with the claymore, expertly dodging Xiao Hong’s swipes and nearly getting a hit in more than once.

But this exact scene happened in the novel, and Jing Yuan’s sure it’s going to happen again.

Yunli loses.

She might be a powerful cultivator, but she’s still young, unused to actual battle experience. Xiao Hong might barely be any older than her, but she’s grown up a demon and has more experience in fighting than most Bai Zhan disciples could dream of having. It’s a close match at least, although the demons regain their fervour as Xiao Hong wins, and Yunli bows her head before walking to Jing Yuan.

“This one has failed the ship,” she says, bowing formally. “This disciple promises to do better in the future.”

“You did your best,” Jing Yuan says gently. It’s not her fault things were quite literally written out to be this way. “Train, but don’t overexert yourself. Progress will come to you, as long as you will it.” Absentmindedly, he reaches a hand out to pat her head.

Beside him, Yanqing freezes. His gaze is fixed on Jing Yuan’s hand, and he seems to frown, just slight enough that Jing Yuan notices because he’s looking at him.

Sighing a little, he removes his hand. Aiya, getting so protective over your little sister already? Don’t worry, Jing Yuan isn’t going to be like the original goods. He has some measure of dignity and morals, thank you very much.

“Go,” he urges gently. “Rejoin your friends. There is still one last match left.”

Like an obnoxious pop-up in at the worst possible time, the system dings with a notification.

[Warning! Protagonist must participate in one of the battles! Failure to do so will result in -1,000 B-Points!]

Jing Yuan sighs.

But it’s not as if he hadn’t seen this coming—this battle was one of the starting points of resentment and hatred that Yanqing grew over the years. In the novel, Yanqing had gone into this completely blind. No training, no weapon, nothing at all—and he’s gotten horribly humiliated for it.

The original hadn’t cared about anything but the cruel amusement he’d gotten from Yanqing stumble around and get beat up by an opponent twice his size—and what’s worse, everyone afterwards treated him horribly for it. Telling him that he besmirched the honor of their ship, that he was just too weak, that he didn’t even deserve to be a disciple. The only one who had stepped in was Yunli, saying that she should be shamed because she lost her battle too, but what could she do? She was young and, to boot, from another ship, where all the rumours never really reached her until it was too late.

Through it all, the protagonist had gritted his teeth and clenched his fists and thought—

One day, I’ll show them all.

That kind of wilful streak, unbroken by his scum teacher and his shitty martial brothers and sisters, was what it took for him to emerge from the abyss, seeking revenge and pain upon all those who wronged him, and because Jing Yuan’s life couldn’t ever be easy, it was a very, very long list.

“Yanqing.”

“Yes, shizun?”

Looking at him… Jing Yuan stifles a sob mentally. How could anyone ever look at Yanqing and practically send him out for slaughter?! Yanqing’s looking at him with the widest eyes possible, looking so trusting. It makes like he’s about to send his dog to the vet.

But… it must be done. Jing Yuan’s banking on the fact that since Yanqing could learn his cultivation properly—he’s a quick learner, of that Jing Yuan’s certain—and then maybe he would have a chance. Unless some sort of unlucky failsafe was in place to make sure that Yanqing never actually could win.

“It’s your turn,” he tells him, swallowing down the lump in his throat. “Go.”

“I—shizun?!” Yanqing exclaims, panicked. His eyes sweep over the horde of demons, who are becoming increasingly agitated with no ongoing battle. “Shizun, I can’t—”

“You can,” Jing Yuan says, with all the confidence he can master. “Show me what you’ve learned, Yanqing. I know you can win.”

Yanqing stares wide, unblinking eyes up at him, and then he gets a determined steel to his eyes—the look of someone who’s made up their mind. And on a protagonist, child as he is, the look is very effective indeed. Jing Yuan almost feels himself being swayed by the stormy look in Yanqing’s eyes.

“I will, shizun,” Yanqing says quietly, all traces of his earlier trepidation gone—“I promise I’ll win.”

“Good,” Jing Yuan says. Inside, he’s falling to his knees and crying. “I expect much of you.”

And with that and a light push, Yanqing’s walking out of the crowd into the clearing made for their impromptu matches.

Xiao Hong curls her lip when she sees who Jing Yuan’s sent, but she doesn’t comment.

“Elder Tian Chui!” she crows instead, “It’s your turn!”

The demon that lumbers forward makes Yanqing audibly rethink his promise to Jing Yuan, and he can see why—the demon is a massive, hulking seven-foot-tall beast of muscle and armour decorated with sharp spikes that might hurt even to brush past.

And Yanqing has to face him off.

Fuck, Jing Yuan thinks, and pretends he doesn’t start immediately doing the mental equivalent of biting his nails when the battle starts.

He doesn’t shriek when the demon’s first pass with his sword almost nicks Yanqing. He doesn’t. He thinks it very loudly instead.

In his defense, Yanqing is very good at dodging. Jing Yuan’s not sure if it’s because of his natural protagonist abilities or if it was something he learned while avoiding blows from other people, but Yanqing is quick to move. Even through the distance, Jing Yuan can see his eyes accessing his opponent once he gets over his shock, looking for weak spots.

Truly, a one-of-a-kind protagonist.

Unfortunately, this demon really is too good. He must be a high rank of sorts for Xiao Hong to send him out; all the while, he keeps spitting taunts and heckles at Yanqing, who grits his teeth against them and says nothing back.

It goes on for an agonizingly long period of time. Yanqing is faltering, Jing Yuan knows. He’s gone from training with an unusable manual to a new one—only the protagonist could show the leaps and bounds of improvements that Yanqing has—but he’s not sure if it’s actually enough to override the inherent setting that says that the protagonist must first get beat up.

And then—

Elder Tian Chui falters. Just one single misstep. By the time he corrects himself, it’s too late; Yanqing has already flown forward, knocking the flat of his blade into the Elder’s stomach. He feints to the left, and just as the Elder’s responding to it, just a little bit too late, jumps and flips through the air to hand a hit on the Elder’s back that sends him sprawling.

He rolls over to Yanqing’s sword at his neck.

Silence.

Even the demons are, for once, quiet. It’s obvious that they never expected someone like Yanqing to fight a demon elder and win.

Even Yanqing himself looks astounded by his victory, but then it settles in. Jing Yuan sees the exact moment a huge grin overtakes his face and he turns in a flurry, yelling across the stage at Jing Yuan—“Shizun! I won!”

Jing Yuan should be annoyed. That he’s being singled out, that his disciples’ attention will be on him, will know of his growing affection for Yanqing, but… looking at the bright grin on Yanqing’s face? It’s enough for Jing Yuan to send him a soft smile of his own.

“You did,” he says, quietly, measured, not even sure if his words each Yanqing. “I knew you could.”

And then the cheers.

Yanqing looks absolutely gobsmacked that people are cheering for him that he goes a little still for a few minutes, before bowing towards everyone, making his way back to the crowd—

A flash of a movement.

Jing Yuan shoves Yanqing behind himself just in time to block Elder Tian Chui’s sword with his glaive—but he’d been unprepared. His wrist creaks warningly, and Jing Yuan grimaces at the feeling. It, at least, adds to the harsh glare on his face as he growls, “Watch your subordinates, Hong-guniang. Or else I might have the liberty of taking out the trash myself.”

But Xiao Hong doesn’t get to reply, because the Elder drops his sword and lunges forward.

Starfall Reverie sinks into his chest.

At the same time, a piercing pain makes itself known in Jing Yuan’s hand.

His wince doesn’t go unnoticed by the demon.

“Our General Cultivator got pierced!” he crows, laughing maniacally even as he falls backward and topples over onto the ground. “Oh, what a delightful turn of events—General Cultivator got pierced by Without-A-Cure!”

Well, if that name doesn’t sound daunting.

“Beast!” Yanqing yells. Too suddenly, he’s at the demon’s side, sword pointed at his neck. “Tell us what it does! Now!”

It would be a comical sight—a child threatening a fully grown demon, but Jing Yuan supposes that the aura of a protagonist cares not for their age, because Yanqing looks absolutely fierce and wild, digging the tip of his sword into the demon’s neck when he only chortles.

“What does it sound like, little whelp?” the demon spits out, “It’s called without a cure. Your precious shizun will be dead before the night ends! Hahaha!”

Shlick.

The wet sound of a sword piercing flesh—and then the demon is dead, limp on the ground.

Across the courtyard, everyone falls silent.

But not Yanqing, who stalks towards Xiao Hong with purpose in his steps to point his sword at her. His hand is steady, even despite his fierce battle just minutes ago.

“Tell me the cure,” Yanqing demands. “You can’t just wear poison like that without having a cure! Tell me!”

“Young master,” Xiao Hong says, involuntarily taking a step back as he advances towards her, “I—really, there’s no cure for it.” She almost even sounds regretful. “I wish there was, maybe I’d even get a price for it… but there isn’t.”

But her eyes turn sharp the next second. “And if your General is indisposed…”

Fuck! Jing Yuan hadn’t gone through all of that work for nothing!

Like a miracle dropping from the sky—quite literally—the winds pick up. And then, with a thunderous blast, someone drops from the sky with a mighty crash that has the winds whipping around them and knocks a few lesser demons off their feet.

“Sorry I’m late,” the Bai Zhan War God says, a feral grin that’s more teeth than smile, “Did I miss the fight?”

“As a matter of fact,” Xiao Hong snaps, “Yes. Yes, you did miss the fight. Everyone! Fall back!”

And with a perfectly synchronised roar and an opened portal, all of the “unruly subordinates” retreat instantly. Only the few that are stragglers are unlucky enough to immediately be felled by Feixiao’s axe before the portal closes up and silence reigns once again.

Jing Yuan’s starting to feel the effects of the poison, it seems. Why else would there be two of Yanqing right in front of him.

“Yanqing,” he manages, when his little disciple rushes forward to hold him steady, placing a hand on his shoulder half out of praise and half out of the need for stability, “You fought well. And I’m proud of you.”

The last thing he hears before he loses consciousness completely is Yanqing’s frantic shouts calling for a healer.

When Jing Yuan’s aware of his surroundings again, he isn’t in pain. It almost feels as if he’s floating, which is surprising considering he’s supposed to be on the verge of death.

When he opens his eyes, he understands why.

It’s because he’s standing in the middle of nothing—if nothing can be described as muddy brown with the sound of absolute silence. He remembers the scene from the early chapters of the book; this is what the dream realm looked like before it had anything—anyone—to latch onto.

What’s even more consternating is the fact that he’s not supposed to be here.

Because unless this is a very, very big coincidence, this dream was supposed to be inhabited by the protagonist and Yunli. Right after they first noticed each other during the battles, they would meet properly in the dream realm, where their differences would first come to light—and despite the rocky meeting, they would work through the event together a la Bonding^TM—and where, after Yunli was removed from the dream, Yanqing would first find out his demonic heritage.

Jing Yuan is not supposed to be here.

Maybe it’s a different dream that he’s been pulled into, he rationalizes with himself. Maybe the original did have a dream here too but it was never written down because he told no one of it—or maybe Jing Yuan is the one hallucinating because he’s been stressing out about the plot of the book and this is just a really bad stress reaction after being dozed with literal poison.

Maybe this is even just a normal dream, because dreams are weird like that—

“Shizun!”

Nevermind. There go all his hopes and dreams.

The boy doesn’t run up to him as much as he appears from thin air running full speed towards him, hitting his chest with a soft oomph. Jing Yuan puts a hand on his back to steady him as he stands up straight.

“Shizun,” Yanqing says again, and Jing Yuan really thinks he shouldn’t sound so relieved. “Where—where are we?”

“This master assumes it is a dream realm of sorts,” Jing Yuan says lowly. Absentmindedly, he strokes Yanqing’s back, a gesture of comfort that Yanqing leans into quite easily. “Any idea whose?”

Yanqing shakes his head, but it doesn’t take long for a scene to form.

People. All faceless, wandering around them.

“Shizun…” Yanqing says, unease palpable in his voice. Jing Yuan knows how this scene goes: it leads to Yanqing being bullied first. After he breaks free of the dream, Meng-Weiba will find him and tell him of his demonic heritage, and Yanqing’s supposed to keep the secret until the Wardance Conference happens and it comes out in the most horrible way possible.

“We can find a way out,” Jing Yuan reassures him. It’s more that Jing Yuan will be booted out from the dream while Yanqing goes through the first part of his character development arc, but semantics. “Is there anything you recognize?”

Just as Yanqing opens his mouth to answer, a group of people pass them.

“They have faces,” Yanqing says, pointing towards them. His other hand is clutched in Jing Yuan’s robes. “Could they…”

“Let’s follow them.”

With a mute nod, they make their way towards the group, following them, and it isn’t long before they come to a stop in a dingy little alleyway, and it’s then that Jing Yuan realizes that following them might have been a bad idea—

Because there Yanqing is, small and barely older than seven, curled up in the dirt and whimpering softly as blows rain down on him.

Children, Jing Yuan thinks—so needlessly cruel at the worst of times—but he supposes he should blame the author for the way that this world would always show Yanqing the darkest sides of the people he encountered, in order for him to become a demon lord himself.

Before he has the mind to draw Yanqing away from the scene so they can at least wait it out, Yanqing rushes forward. He’s conjured a dream sword, ready to slash through the figures, and Jing Yuan only barely catches him in time for him to stop hurting himself.

“Shizun!” Yanqing cries out, struggling in his grip. “You have to—let me go—I need to—!”

“Yanqing,” Jing Yuan says sternly, and it seems that Yanqing is at least a little still afraid of him, because he freezes, as if he’s just now realizing who he’s struggling against. “Don’t. Hurting people in your dream realm will only hurt you. This is your dream, is it not?”

Sniffling, Yanqing nods his head, chastised.

“Here,” Jing Yuan says, closing his hands around Yanqing’s ears. It means that he has to bear the brunt of the sounds of thuds and kicks and the pitifully quiet sobs, but anything is better than making Yanqing go through the same thing over again. “Just focus on me. This dream will be over soon.”

Yanqing’s small, frail hands come up to clutch at Jing Yuan’s wrists. His fingernails dig grooves into Jing Yuan’s flesh as he scrunches his eyes shut, lips drawn into a tight line.

Not long now, Jing Yuan tells himself. He remembers Yunli helping Yanqing through this by distracting and aggravating him, but Jing Yuan isn’t in any position to do so, so he stands staunch and lets Yanqing hold onto him like a lifeline.

The dream melts away soon after. Leaves them in the same blank space, and Jing Yuan’s almost thinking that the demon isn’t going to show up after all, when a voice echoes around them.

“Well, well, cultivators,” it mocks.

“Who are you?” Jing Yuan says, because it’s stereotypical and he’s not actually sure how to handle another demon interaction, especially one who was supposed to be Yanqing’s—other—abusive teacher.

“You dare to ask who I am?” the demon cackles. Jing Yuan very politely does not mention the fact that he knows the demon’s name is Meng-Weiba already, because he’s a very courteous side character. “You aren’t needed here, useless cultivator.”

With those cheerful parting words, Jing Yuan finds himself slipping away from Yanqing, who reaches a hand out to him in panic, mouth open to yell something, before—

He wakes up.

Bolts upright in bed, more like, and startles someone at his bedside.

It’s the dead of night. A few candles are scattered around the room, keeping it warm and lit enough for Jing Yuan to realize that it’s Lingsha.

“Sorry,” he offers, through the headache ringing in his ears. For a moment, he wants to go back into the dream realm, if only because nothing really hurt, there. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

The Cauldron Master shakes her head. A smile plays at her lips. “I’d rather you startle me by waking up than stay asleep forever. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been run over by a bu—horse. A horse.”

If Lingsha notices his slip of the tongue, she doesn’t comment. Instead, she hands him a cup of medicine that Jing Yuan grimaces at when he swallows, and lets her take his wrist and send a warm stream of energy through his spiritual pathways. Jing Yuan finds himself relaxing at the surprisingly soothing feeling of her healing.

Which… brings him to another issue, which, namely, is the movement atop his head. Something’s swishing his hair around uncomfortably, and the only time Jing Yuan’s ever felt something of this sensation was…

“Master Lingsha,” he says very seriously and very still, “Please tell me the truth.”

Lingsha pauses in the middle of her healing. “Hm?”

“Is there a spider on my head?”

Lingsha stares at him for a moment, and then bursts into laughter.

Bemused, Jing Yuan lets her get the most of it out—he’s not sure what he said that would make her laugh so much, but her reaction tells him that there isn’t really a spider on his head, so Jing Yuan deals with the discomfort for a few seconds until Lingsha wipes at the tears forming at the corner of her eyes.

“Oh, shixiong,” she wheezes—as elegantly as a lady can wheeze—“I never knew you had a funny bone in you. I didn’t expect you to ask like that, but here you go.” While speaking, she hands him a mirror.

Jing Yuan stares.

Blinks extra hard to make sure he’s not hallucinating.

The fluffy ears on his head don’t go away.

In fact, they twitch.

Jing Yuan feels them twitch.

He barely stops himself from saying what the fuck because he doesn’t want to damage his reputation that badly, but he does turn questioning eyes on Lingsha, because he’s not sure how to handle this—the original Jing Yuan hadn’t turned into a foxian of all things. How is he supposed to take care of himself now?! Oh gods, what do foxians eat?

“That’s…” Lingsha says, in the voice of a parent who’s about to tell their child that their puppy went away to live on a farm, “not the only thing?”

Jing Yuan sighs. “There’s more?”

Lingsha nods at something just past Jing Yuan.

At first, when he twists around, he doesn’t understand. All he sees are the bedsheets, a pillow, and a surprisingly fluffy white blanket he would’ve thought they wouldn’t use in an infirmary—

Wait.

He checks again.

That’s not a blanket.

As if even thinking it made it come to live, Jing Yuan starts to feel it. Right at his tailbone, where nothing should be—feels the soft flutter of fur against his skin, and a foreign muscle moving.

It’s fine. It’s fine! He’s completely calm about this! What’s one more change in the grand scheme of change he’s going to have to make to change the world for the protagonist! Surely Yanqing likes fluffy things, he’s a child. Maybe Jing Yuan can tempt him to the good side by letting him cuddle with his tail?!

Seemingly taking pity on him, Lingsha starts to speak. “Would you like the good news, or the bad news first?”

Jing Yuan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Does that matter? You’re already going to tell me, anyways.”

Lingsha chuckles lightly. “If that is your choice. So, Jing-shixiong, the bad news is that you were indeed poisoned.”

“Joy.”

“The good news,” she continues, ignoring him entirely, “is that when I ran some tests on you, your DNA showed some latent foxian genes, which were just enough that when the poison hit, it actually cancelled the poison out but had the unfortunate side effects of revealing these unrevealed foxian traits.”

That… that sounds like such a fucking hack. DNA?! DNA exists in this fucking wuxia verse?! And what is it with his “latent foxian genes” being able to repel poison, where no other foxian ever went through the same thing?! Hello?! Author, some plot consistency?! Is that too much to ask?!

The incredulity must show on his face, because Lingsha giggles.

“It does sound a little unbelievable,” she admits, “that something like this would happen—you really are lucky, shixiong. But it doesn’t come without any side effects either.”

“More?”

“Mhm. Your spiritual pathways will be weak, after this. Your genes only negated the first hit of the poison—which means that you will not die, but using your spiritual energy for too long will make them stagnate. I recommend starting practice slowly, or perhaps doing a few tests with me to find your limits first. If you don’t… there’s this condition, actually, among the Denizens of Abundance—a group of demons in the far east. They’re a long-lived race, but it comes with the downfall of their demonic energies and memories being tainted the longer they live—it causes them to first weaken, and then turn into mindless abominations that rapidly burn out their own spiritual energies.”

Which is a lot to take in, and Jing Yuan does not like the implications of the disease being so easy to trigger. He’s an immortal master, for gods’ sake, how is he supposed to prevent his memories from tainting him?

He’s calm. He’s fine. He can compartmentalize, and if he feels anything, he can come straight to Lingsha, who’s been very helpful so far.

“And… if they stagnate,” Jing Yuan says. “How do I take care of that?”

“Myself or any other High Elder will be able to help you circulate your energy properly,” Lingsha tells him. “I’d prefer if you came to me first, but Feixiao-shijie says her spiritual energy is a good match with yours—which, thank you, for saving her in the Lingxi Caves.”

Trying to keep up with the conversation is giving him a headache. “It’s no problem,” he manages, and honestly, it doesn’t sound too bad. Not the worst-case scenario—at least he isn’t going to drop dead any time soon.

“Speaking of, she dropped these off for you earlier,” Lingsha says, and taps a neatly-wrapped package placed on the bedside table. “Don’t forget to take it when you leave in the morning.”

“What is it?”

Lingsha smiles, and it’s then that Jing Yuan manages to catch a hint of the shrewd woman who was one of Yanqing’s biggest obstacles in becoming the demon lord. It’s a little terrifying. Jing Yuan only cocks his head to the side.

“Fur oil,” she says sweetly, “for both your ears and your tail. Please keep them in top condition, shixiong. It would be a disgrace for our Xianzhou Luofu General to look so unkempt.”

The morning finds him traipsing back to Qing Jing Ship, yawning all the way back. He’s lucky that he’s handed off most of his teaching duties to Ming Fan and the other senior disciples, and only needs to drop in every so often to make sure that everyone is progressing well in their studies.

The tail and ears are definitely a new addition. The muscles in those places are a little bit sore from being stretched out too quick, but he’d been given medicine for it. No, what he’s having the hardest time adjusting to is the fact that he can feel them. The ears on his head swivel at every sound and near sends him into fight or flight because someone was a little too loud when he was walking on the streets. His tail keeps brushing against things and it keeps making him jump because he hasn’t quite registered that he has an extra limb now.

Perhaps the only upside is that he’s really fluffy—enough that he’d spent five extra minutes in the morning getting out of bed because he was stroking his own tail, and it was so damn soft.

He gets stares on the roads too. The downsides of being a General, apparently, is that everyone knows his face, and by extension, everyone is absolutely aware of the way he’s been transformed into a foxian. People giggle as he passes by them, and it takes all of Jing Yuan’s willpower not to even twitch at the sound of them. His ears, however, flick uncontrollably on his head.

He's just imagining getting into a warm bath and relaxing after the harrowing day he had, when he steps off the starskiff onto his own ship. Despite only having familiarized himself with it for a few days, it’s still a little comfort to return to his own place.

When he gets back to his house, however, there’s someone waiting for him.

“Shizun!” Yanqing says, waving excitedly. Child, who taught you that? Jing Yuan is supposed to be your cold and cruel heartless master! Why are you waving?! “Shizun—huh?”

Right. The new decorations.

“These?” Jing Yuan says, raising a hand to his ears. “Side effect of the poison, unfortunately. Don’t fret.”

Yanqing doesn’t reply. He only keeps staring at the fluffy new appendages on Jing Yuan’s head, long enough that Jing Yuan has to cough to draw his attention.

When he does, Yanqing yelps. “S-sorry!” he stammers. “I… just wanted to see if shizun was alright, after the… after the dream.”

“This master is fine,” Jing Yuan says, and sighs. He doesn’t want to stand out here anymore. “Come in.”

Yanqing dutifully trots after him like a puppy, and in no time Jing Yuan’s led them to his barely-used kitchen. He’s a cultivator who was apparently regularly practicing inedia, which means that, more often than not, especially with his busy schedule, Jing Yuan found himself forgetting to eat.

At least the kitchen is stocked with tea leaves.

“Wait!” Yanqing yelps, when Jing Yuan starts boiling a pot of tea on the stove, “Please—let this disciple do it.”

Jing Yuan raises an eyebrow but he doesn’t protest, content to let Yanqing do as he wishes. It’s just tea, how hard can it be?

The answer is apparently very hard, because Jing Yuan takes a sip and almost moans when the flavour hits his tongue. He didn’t know tea could taste like this. Was boiling tea a secret protagonist strength that the novel never elaborated on? Was Yanqing just that naturally talented at something as inane as boiling tea?

“Is it good, shizun?” Yanqing’s eyes peer up at him anxiously.

“Mhm,” Jing Yuan hums, and takes another sip, before setting his cup down. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I just…” Yanqing looks frustrated. He’s biting his lip, not meeting Jing Yuan’s eyes, even though it’s obvious that he has something to say. “This disciple…”

Abruptly, he stands up. Jing Yuan barely manages to school his own expression when Yanqing kneels on the floor and bows. “This disciple is sorry,” he says, through gritted teeth. “It was because of this one’s carelessness that shizun was poisoned. It was this disciple’s fault that shizun was drawn into the dream realm. This disciple will endeavour to protect shizun in the future and willingly accepts any punishment shizun would decide to give.”

Jing Yuan has to blink a few times for the words to actually sink in, and when they do, he sighs. Reaches forward to grasp Yanqing’s arm so he can pull him back into a sitting position in a chair, even though Yanqing’s still avoiding his eyes.

Jing Yuan sighs and flicks the boy on his forehead.

Yanqing cries out, surprised, and it’s only then that he looks at Jing Yuan, an adorable pout on his face.

“Listen,” Jing Yuan starts. “First, it’s not your responsibility to look after me—quite the opposite. My duty as your shizun is to make sure you come to no harm,” he holds up a finger, “and that includes taking care of you when you can’t do it yourself. Second, it’s not your fault, either of those situations. You are not to blame for anything, Yanqing.”

His little disciple’s eyes start welling up with tears. “But—but shizun got hurt because of me,” he blubbers.

“And? I would do it all over again, if I could.”

A little too close to the truth, a little too sincere, Jing Yuan thinks, and pushes a cup of tea towards Yanqing to help soothe his sniffles. “Here. Drink.”

Yanqing cups the cup in his hands, falling silent, even though he remains looking contemplative—Jing Yuan doesn’t press, just sips his tea leisurely as he starts running through his duties in his mind. Patience is a virtue, after all, and Jing Yuan has had practice in waiting out both his superiors and subordinates whenever he wanted to get information out of them.

Finally, Yanqing opens his mouth. Asks, in a small voice, “Are all demons evil?”

Jing Yuan blinks. Somehow, that was not the question he’d expected, even as Yanqing sought him out in front his home to ask it.

But it makes sense, that Yanqing would be unsure right now. After the revelation that he himself is half-demon, right after being attacked by a group of them… Jing Yuan doubts that the original Yanqing would have even bothered trying to talk to his shizun after all that he put him through.

But somehow, Yanqing’s mustered up the courage to ask him this one innocuous question that means the whole world to him, and so Jing Yuan finds that he cannot be anything less than truthful. Fuck it. He doesn’t need to be in character anyways. And as for the fallout…

Well. He’ll deal with that when the time comes.

“No,” he says, definitively. The word rings out like a gavel. “They’re not.”

“But,” Yanqing says, looking conflicted. “We—cultivators. Kill them.”

“Because more often than not, they’re causing other murders in the human realm.”

“So then they are evil?”

This boy. Is he actively trying to make Jing Yuan say that all demons are evil? Is he a masochist?

“Demons live a very different culture than we humans do,” Jing Yuan tells him. “And yes, while they do tend to be more violent, more physical… there’s no possibility that demons living in tribes and societies just like our own are inherently evil—it would be counterproductive. So, no, to answer your question, Yanqing, all demons aren’t evil. It’s just that we only tend to know of the ones who are.”

Yanqing tilts his head to the side in contemplation, and Jing Yuan resists the urge to ruffle his hair.

“And besides,” he continues gently instead, “It’s not as if humans are all that well and good either.” Yanqing should know, since he was the main victim of the worst sides of humanity. “I’d wager that humans have their own fair share of evils and misdeeds, don’t you think?”

Slowly, hesitantly, Yanqing nods.

“So if a human can be evil, why can’t a demon be kind?”

Jing Yuan’s casual question seems to leave Yanqing shaken, just a little bit, from the widening of his eyes and the way he freezes up just a little on his seat.

“I… see,” he murmurs, minutes later, and then he bows his head. “Thanking shizun for the guidance.”

“Think nothing of it,” Jing Yuan dismisses it, and as an extra assurance—“You must be shaken from the demon attack. Make sure to get plenty of rest. As much as you need.”

Yanqing’s yes, shizun! is cheerful but a little more subdued than usual, as he stands up and prepares to take his leave. Jing Yuan, not one to be rude, follows him to the gates of his house and watches him leave, still deep in thought.

“Yanqing.”

His disciple whirls around at the sound of his voice. Jing Yuan merely crosses his arms and leans against the doorway. “Where are you going?”

“To… to rest?”

“Not in the direction of the disciple dorms?”

Yanqing, at that, looks distinctly embarrassed. “I… my bed is in the wood sheds, shizun.”

Fuck.

Fuck!

How could Jing Yuan have forgotten such an important point?! Alright, maybe it was Ming Fan who sentenced Yanqing to it, but the original had known and done nothing about it! And Jing Yuan himself had been so busy trying to keep himself together that it had completely slipped his mind until now.

Right. Not the time for self-flagellation, he thinks.

“Pack it up,” he orders, hesitates for just a minute, before throwing all caution to the wind. Heck, he has a house that’s half unused that could be filled with a full family and still have space left over, and besides, as a General, isn’t he supposed to have some sort of retainer? He doesn’t know what the original’s deal was. “And move in here—take one of the guest rooms.”

“Shizun?!” Yanqing looks as shocked by his words as Jing Yuan is to have said them. “I—This one, really—”

“Go,” Jing Yuan instructs, although he does level a half-smile at Yanqing, who straightens up and stares at him, managing to look both grateful and deeply suspicious at the same time. “You have lessons still, yes?”

“Yes, shizun,” Yanqing says, almost automatically.

“Then return in the evening. Now, shoo.”

Yanqing bows towards him so low it’s a wonder his head doesn’t hit the ground, and then he’s running off with a hastily-yelled thank you shizun! that has Jing Yuan shaking his head in exasperation.

There go all his plans for the protagonist to not get attached to him, Jing Yuan thinks morosely, as he cleans up the tea set.

Oh, well. What’s done is done. It only means that Jing Yuan has to plan something for Yanqing’s fall to the abyss.

And he certainly isn’t looking forward to it. Not one bit.

When he gets back home at night, after leaving in the afternoon and checking on his disciples, delivering a few reports to An Ding Peak and wrapping up a few loose ends of the sect logistics that the senior disciples hadn’t had the authority to approve, what greets him first is not Yanqing, but the smell of a meal wafting through the living room. From where he stands, he can see that the kitchen door is open, light spilling out from it into the doorway.

It smells heavenly.

Jing Yuan enters the doorway, pausing for just a few minutes to watch Yanqing hum as he stirs the pot. It’s a comically sweet image; Yanqing is still a child, barely having grown any taller in the time Jing Yuan’s seen him, though he doesn’t seem to have any difficulty in cooking. It makes Jing Yuan wonder if he’s had any experience, or if he’s just that talented.

When Yanqing approached him earlier in the day after his lesson ended to ask if he should wait for Jing Yuan to go home and Jing Yuan had just told him to make his way home first instead, this wasn’t what he’d expected to find.

Already, there’s a serving of meats on the table. It’s not too much, but that’s probably because Yanqing might not have money of his own to spend and Jing Yuan’s kitchen is sparsely stocked.

Chicken stew, it looks like, cooked with garlic and topped with spring onions—Jing Yuan spares a passing thought as to how they grow food in the Xianzhou and hastily shoves that thought away because out of all things, he is not an agricultural student, and he’s probably better off not knowing where they grow.

“I’m back,” Jing Yuan says softly.

It still makes Yanqing jump as he whirls around.

“Shizun!” he says, eyes flicking to the pot behind him, “I hope you don’t mind—I thought you would like a meal? I wanted to thank shizun, and I hadn’t seen shizun eat this entire day…”

“I don’t need it,” Jing Yuan says, and then, to rectify the pout that immediately forms on Yanqing’s face, “But I do eat, of course. I am happy to do so with whatever you provide me.”

Yanqing visibly brightens. “Chicken stew! And congee!”

“Of course,” Jing Yuan says, “Should I set the table?”

“No,” Yanqing blurts out, looking sufficiently ashamed for his curt word just a second later, “This disciple means—! Please sit, shizun, you must be tired—I can have everything ready in a bit. The congee is almost ready.”

Humming, Jing Yuan takes his place at the chair. It takes a little manoeuvring to sit comfortably with his new tail, and in the end, he just lets it hang off the side of the low stool he’s sitting on. Who cares if it looks inelegant? No one’s around to see him anyways.

Sitting at the table gives Jing Yuan free reign to look at the protagonist as he bundles around the kitchen, gathering spoons and fetching a bowl, eyebrows furrowed cutely in concentration as he carefully ladles spoonfuls of congee into a bowl.

A few seconds later, Yanqing sets it down in front of him proudly. And, Jing Yuan can admit, it really does look delicious. Soft and fluffy, with an egg cracked into it and fragrant in a way that Jing Yuan’s own watery congees never seemed to be because he wasn’t really all that interested in cooking for himself beyond what he could cook for his own survival.

“Please enjoy, shizun!” Yanqing says cheerfully, standing at his side.

And then he… doesn’t move.

Just stands there expectantly.

And stands there, blinking wide golden eyes at Jing Yuan.

“Uh,” Jing Yuan says, “Are you not eating?”

“Oh!” Yanqing seems to realize. “I can eat after shizun’s done.”

“Nonsense,” Jing Yuan waves it away, “Get a bowl for yourself. Eat with me.”

Yanqing looks absolutely scandalized. Jing Yuan doesn’t know why, because it’s not as if eating dinner with someone equated to marriage in this universe, but thankfully, the boy doesn’t protest much, instead fetching his own bowl and taking a seat opposite Jing Yuan to start eating.

It’s only then that Jing Yuan eats his own food, and—

Oh gods.

It’s absolutely perfect.

How?! is the only thought going through Jing Yuan’s head as he eats another spoonful. Is the protagonist actually blessed with heavenly powers? He never even had a chance to show it to anyone, Jing Yuan despairs, when he realizes that this wasn’t mentioned in the novel at all. An absolute travesty, he thinks.

Swallowing his next spoonful after he notices Yanqing staring expectantly at him, Jing Yuan tells him, “It’s good.”

It’s a testament to how much the boy hasn’t been praised before that he absolutely lights up at Jing Yuan’s simple words, muttering a quick thank you and burying his face into his own bowl. It’s annoyingly cute. He’s not even spared the indignity of pretending to be aloof, because he feels his tail wag, slowly and lazily, swiping across the floor, and he thanks all the gods he can remember that Yanqing is sitting opposite him and can’t see the motion.

The rest of dinner passes by silently. Jing Yuan’s content to enjoy his food, and he makes sure to compliment Yanqing on his stew, too. More flavour could be used, for certain, but Yanqing already has a knack for using whatever he can find, it seems.

Jing Yuan’s just lamenting that he’ll never eat the protagonist’s food again, when Yanqing sets his empty bowl down on the table, and says, after a moment of looking like he’s trying to decide between jumping off the ship or throwing himself headfirst into a firepit, “If… if shizun enjoyed this one’s cooking, perhaps… perhaps he would not mind if this disciple cooked for him again in the future?”

Ah, Yanqing! You really do spoil this old man!

Jing Yuan tries not to sound too eager, and he even mostly succeeds—only his ears give him away, swivelling towards Yanqing excitedly. “This master won’t stop you. But make sure it doesn’t interfere with your training, hmm?”

Yanqing’s eyes sparkle. Jing Yuan feels a sudden rage forwards whoever saw that look in his eyes and wanted to snuff it out.

“Thank you, shizun!” he cries, “I promise I can handle it!”

Jing Yuan makes an affirmative sound, because, well, he is looking forward to seeing what else Yanqing can cook.

“I’ll give you an allowance,” Jing Yuan says, because, well, he’d taken a look at his treasury and almost fainted at the amount of both treasures and gold and silver pieces in it, and then proceeded to ignore it because surely if he can’t see it it won’t exist anymore, right?

He’s aware that these are all valuable things that the original goods had collected over the years. Looking at the accounting records showed him that although the original hadn’t left the ship much, all the people he’d deigned to leave the ship for to help were wealthy people who paid him exorbitantly for his services—and then there was the monthly allowances for sect upkeep and such. Thankfully, the original hadn’t skimped out on the maintenance and the upgrades, because Jing Yuan had explored the ship and everything had looked almost brand new or at least very well-cared for.

Everything else, however, he’d kept for himself. And earned a pretty hefty fee chasing down demons, it seems.

And, well, he’s not around to see it being spent, so Jing Yuan has no qualms about handing the money over to someone who makes him good food.

He tells Yanqing to show him which room he’s taken as his own, and his disciple dutifully leads him to a guest room not far from his own bedroom, shuffling nervously from foot to foot like he thinks he’ll still be kicked out after all, and, honestly, it’s not such an irrational concern, seeing how the original had treated him.

Jing Yuan leaves him to his devices and returns a few minutes later with a pouch of money in his hand, and when he hands it over, Yanqing’s eyes bug out of his head.

“Shizun,” he implores, “This—this really is too much, this disciple really can’t accept…”

“Just keep it,” Jing Yuan tells him flatly. “Since you’re so worried, just make sure you get good bargains when you buy food. Otherwise, the rest is yours to keep.”

He leaves Yanqing like that, gaping in the doorway, as he wishes Yanqing a quiet goodnight and turns to traipse back the few steps to his own bedroom. He can feel Yanqing’s eyes on his back as he walks, and wonders how long Yanqing will keep standing in the doorway before he remembers to close the door.

(Unbeknownst to him, Yanqing’s fingers clench around the money pouch he’s been given. It’s not the money that made him speechless, though it had come close. No, it was actually Jing Yuan’s tail, fluffy and swinging behind him gently as he walked that had Yanqing losing all thoughts other than the singular it’s so fluffy!!!!!!!! that had kept bouncing around in his head long after he’d tucked himself in to sleep. He’s seen the unused fur oils forgotten in the living room, tossed onto the table. He starts planning.)

It’s after that the things seem to calm down a little. After such an eventful time, the system seems to take pity on Jing Yuan—he doesn’t get any more major quest plots, with the system only chiming in occasionally to give him a minor few sidequests that lets him gradually rack up points—which are still not enough to override the daunting negative ten thousand that he’ll need if he wants to ignore the abyss questline directly.

But in the meantime—he gets to spend time with Yanqing.

He’s never really had favourites, even back when he had a part-time stint as a high-school teacher, but such, he supposes, is the draw of the protagonist. Yanqing is a hard worker, of that he’s certain.

Now that Jing Yuan’s actively shown an interest in his well-being, the other disciples don’t dare to hurt him, and sometimes Jing Yuan even finds them working together. They’re not on friendly terms, as the word defines, but it’s enough that Yanqing doesn’t seem to hold too much resentment against them for all their bullying against him. On their side, the disciples are muted around him, as if they’re entirely aware that Jing Yuan will punish them if they decide to act out.

Jing Yuan gradually starts taking up more teaching duties. He learns sword forms, speedruns his way through learning the guqin—Yanqing had caught him once playing a fast-paced instrumental of an anime song one of his interns had shown him—and brushes up on his painting and calligraphy skills. As a middle-aged man living in modern China, Jing Yuan had received lessons on those when he was younger—and it must be the muscle memory guiding him as well—and soon he finds himself settling into an actual teacherly role where he’s confident enough to correct his students where they go wrong.

All along, Yanqing is by his side. He seems to have gotten it in his head that Jing Yuan will forgive everything he does, because he grows more and more impertinent by the day. He shamelessly asks for feedback on his cooking, makes Jing Yuan look over his calligraphy practice and his artworks, delays Jing Yuan in the living room after dinner to have a match of starchess—which Jing Yuan finds himself surprisingly adept at. Lucky, because he doesn’t think losing to his own disciple in his first match would be a very good story to tell people.

But by far, the activity Jing Yuan finds himself enjoying the most—albeit with a little touch of guilt—is when Yanqing offers to brush his tail for him.

His ears are fine. Most of the time, Jing Yuan can rub a bit of oil on them and call it a day after running his fingers through his hair to straighten the fur out, but his tail is another matter. After finally getting used to it, he almost forgets that it exists, most of the time.

But his tail?

The only reason Jing Yuan isn’t cutting it off is because he’s not sure if he can even do that. And, well, he can admit that it does look quite good when it’s groomed properly.

But the best thing, however, Jing Yuan will admit in the depths of his heart, is how fascinated Yanqing is with it.

Every week, he’ll sit down with Yanqing to go through the process of properly oiling his fur and having it brushed out. Yanqing takes his time with it, gentle and skilled, as Jing Yuan fights not to fall asleep from the feeling. Yanqing will meticulously brush his fur out until it’s all smooth and shiny, and Jing Yuan always makes sure to thank him when he does.

The actual surprise comes a few months into the routine; Jing Yuan had been having a hard hair day. Most of the time, he’s learned to pin it up in the way he’s seen of the character’s fanarts, and even does a pretty decent job of it, but that day found him sitting on his bed trying to untangle the knots in his hair and growling softly whenever the comb gets caught in his hair. It was so much thicker and longer than his own—it’s something he hasn’t quite gotten used to just yet.

It's how Yanqing finds him, late in the night, when he comes to say his goodnight before tucking himself into bed.

“Shizun?”

Jing Yuan growls a little, startled, before remembering that he’d given Yanqing permission to come into his room whenever needed.

“Yanqing,” he says, clearing his throat apologetically. “Are you sleeping soon?”

Yanqing looks at him, a strange look in his eye. Jing Yuan wonders how strange he must look, sitting on his bed, fighting a comb, with his tail lashing from side to side in annoyance and its fur standing straight in agitation.

“Yes,” Yanqing says slowly, “but… if if I may ask—what are you doing, general?”

Jing Yuan sighs. “Trying to comb my hair,” he offers, trying not to sound as pathetic as he feels. “It’s been a while since I’ve had this much trouble with it, evidently.”

Yanqing hesitates. His pale hand grips the doorway tighter for a few seconds, before it relaxes again, and he says, “Would shizun mind… having some assistance with it?”

Jing Yuan blinks at him, one ear flicking towards Yanqing as if to belatedly make sure he heard correctly.

“As in?” he asks carefully. He’s not actually sure if Yanqing meant the words he insinuated, but surely—

“I could comb it,” Yanqing says. It’s honestly very endearing and sweet that he manages to speak so bluntly even as his face is slowly growing pinker. “If the general doesn’t mind.”

Jing Yuan doesn’t even have much time to think over it. Yanqing already combs his tail, how much more of it would really matter? And besides, Yanqing always has more patience for helping Jing Yuan than Jing Yuan himself does, so it might not be a bad thing.

“If Yanqing wouldn’t mind,” he says, and watches his little protagonist light up and leave with an exclamation that he’s going to get his own hair oils, and obediently sits up as Yanqing returns to the room in just a few mere seconds.

Just once, he promises himself. An indulgence he probably should take advantage of. Yanqing is a growing boy; he has enough on his hands as it is.

Jing Yuan falls asleep before Yanqing is done combing his hair.

And the next week, when Yanqing shows up in front of his room with both hair and fur oil, looking up at him with wide, hopeful eyes, well, he can't find it in himself to refuse.

He’s spoiled, truly, by the protagonist.

And hey, it might not be entirely all his fault—because Yanqing was the one who asked in the first place. Months that turn into years of living together found him a little bolder, a little playful. It was so different from what Jing Yuan had known about him—either the miserable bullied boy or the vengeful demon lord—that from time to time, he ends up wondering how Yanqing turned out this way, and if he’s at fault for it, but he finds that he really doesn’t mind.

Not when Yanqing looks so much happier nowadays. He’s taken up the mantle of cooking for Jing Yuan every day, and Jing Yuan thinks he could die happy if only he could eat the protagonist’s cooking as his last meal. One would think that it would be more work for him but no—Yanqing seems to delight in cooking up both meals and snacks for Jing Yuan when he’s lazing around the house. It almost makes him feel bad for taking advantage of the boy, but Yanqing always looks so happy whenever Jing Yuan praises him for his food, so he hasn’t had the heart to tell him to stop just yet.

Yanqing’s martial prowess has been improved by leaps and bounds as well. Now no longer fumbling and unsure, Jing Yuan spars him almost every day to keep his skill sharp. Sure, Yanqing might be stronger than him in a couple years, but he’s still a growing boy as it is, so Jing Yuan defeats him every time before they move to practicing swordwork and Jing Yuan correcting Yanqing on his techniques that he used when they were sparring.

The only thing that Jing Yuan’s slightly concerned about is the fact that… well, Yanqing keeps tripping. It’s dangerous to trip during a practice and it would be lethal in the battlefield, but to Jing Yuan’s eternal consternation Yanqing doesn’t ever display that sort of clumsiness when he’s sparring with the others. It’s only when they’re alone and Jing Yuan is helping Yanqing practice—yes, he’s well aware that this very much looks like favouritism, but he’s pleased that his normal trips around the market and talking to all the old grannies there have paid off, because people are now just making the simple assumption that Yanqing is being groomed into being his retainer, which is almost the truth, anyways. He just… won’t stay with Jing Yuan long enough for that to happen.

More importantly, Jing Yuan has only recently found out that Yunli and Yanqing have been exchanging letters. For a moment, he’d been worried that their friendship would not blossom, but it seems like the universe has a vested interested in keeping some plotlines consistent, because he’s seen them exchanging letters from time to time. What’s odd is that Yanqing never requests a leave or a day off to actually ever go see her, and neither does Yunli visit him, which, from the way Yanqing always frowns with a thundercloud on his face when he opens her letters, Jing Yuan can’t actually decide if it’s a good or a bad thing.

So everything is fine, actually. Better than fine. Yanqing’s progressing in leaps and bounds, and even has people he can call friends. Jing Yuan’s finally got the hang of living in this wuxia universe. He even has friends, which is strange to think—but Feixiao joins him sometimes for a drink, and he’s even visited her on her ship and been introduced to her two retainers, who looked at Jing Yuan a little bit like they wanted to poke him with needles.

Jiaoqiu is a lovely man, Jing Yuan will concede. Just when he’s on a separate ship away from Jing Yuan. He’s the one who reminds Feixiao to drop by Jing Yuan’s house from time to time to make sure that Jing Yuan doesn’t drop dead from his cultivation being clogged up; otherwise, Jing Yuan finds the time to visit Lingsha and bring her some snacks or monster materials when he and his disciples go out hunting. No harm in having people on his side, he thinks, and he does quite enjoy her company when she’s not stressed under the weight of a larger number of patients, and even more so when Yanqing tags along one day, and she manages to teach him a few basic fundamentals of how to clear Jing Yuan’s meridians up in an emergency should he ever need.

Fu Xuan is another person Jing Yuan likes to bother from time to time.

Not much was expanded upon the An Ding Ship Master, but the ship had played a role in the Yanqing’s blackening—namely, as the logistics ship, someone from the ship had opened a portal to the abyss which monsters would come out of and thus force Yanqing’s demonic seal to break, thereby humiliating him in front of thousands of people. It was during this event that Yanqing would turn beseeching eyes on his shizun and beg for the first time in his life, only to be cruelly thrown into the abyss and left to die.

The author hadn’t provided details on that, however. Jing Yuan had been stewing in frustration for most of it, because someone on An Ding isn’t really inductive to his search at all, and after meeting the Master Diviner of An Ding Ship, Jing Yuan’s reasonably almost entirely sure that Fu Xuan couldn’t be the one who set the events in motion.

Jing Yuan hesitates to call her uptight. She isn’t, really, but after one conversation with her, she’d dumped his own sect logistics on him and demanded that he should read through them first before ever making demands in the future again. She’s a tiny woman, but everyone on the peak cowered under her glare as she glided through the hallways with Jing Yuan trailing after her asking if she would like some tea to relax.

He even brought the blend that Yanqing assured him that the Master Diviner would like. How Yanqing got this information Jing Yuan doesn’t know, but after hearing the words ‘So I bribed—’ Jing Yuan had told Yanqing to not implicate him in any crimes and left it at Yanqing grinning mischievously at him.

Jing Yuan grows to be quite fond of Fu Xuan over the next few months. Sure, she’s harsh and unrelenting, but she’s a hard worker willing to do anything to assure that everything runs smoothly under her control. And as their relationship progressed—as Jing Yuan started bothering her more and more—she’s even deigned to pause her duties when he visits to enjoy a cup of tea and some snacks together with him. The only thing that’s slightly out of the ordinary is how Yanqing looks when Jing Yuan tells him he’s leaving to go visit Fu Xuan. Annoyed that he can’t monopolize Jing Yuan’s time, perhaps.

Out of all the Ship Masters and Generals, she’s the only one who hasn’t raised much of an eyebrow at him suddenly starting to become friends with everyone. Jing Yuan has wondered on more than one occasion if she’s divined that he isn’t the original Jing Yuan, but she’s never brought it up, so he won’t be the first one to approach it.

No, the one that’s making Jing Yuan raise an eyebrow is Fu Xuan’s assistant, Qingque.

She’s a little… odd, is the thing.

Jing Yuan doesn’t remember her being introduced in the original novel, but that’s not an uncommon case for anyone the main character hasn’t interacted with. Qingque is a diviner as well, both working for and apprenticing under Fu Xuan, and the thing is…

Well, Fu Xuan speaks of her with equal pride and annoyance. “Because that girl can do anything she puts her mind to, but what she puts her mind to is gambling and not working,” Fu Xuan would grumble, and when Jing Yuan would sympathize with her, saying, “Well, Yanqing thinks being made to wake up two hours later is a punishment from the gods,” Fu Xuan would sigh and say, “we should just trade them out, I think.”

The thing is, Qingque sounds like a normal person. But the first time she’d seen Jing Yuan in Fu Xuan’s office, bothering her about getting new papers and inks for his disciples, she’d dropped that stack of papers she was holding and quite literally ran away until Jing Yuan had turned to Fu Xuan, bemused.

“She doesn’t normally act this strange,” Fu Xuan had offered. “Maybe shixiong is scaring her and perhaps he should leave.”

Jing Yuan had not left. Even helped Fu Xuan with gathering her papers because he’s a nice person, and then he’d left.

But Qingque doesn’t seem to get over her trepidation of him. She always looks a little unsure, a little scared whenever he’s around, and it makes Jing Yuan wonder if the original and her had some history that made her like this—gods, he hopes not—and he’s seen her chatting to the other disciples and staff, so it’s only him that she’s subtly freaking out over.

When he poses the question to Fu Xuan, however, he always only gets a shrug in return. “I wouldn’t know,” she admits, “Qingque will yap my ear off about celestial jade, but one question about her personal life makes her clam up faster than an Astronomical Sky Trap. So I’ve just learned to pile more work on her.”

Jing Yuan had nodded, and by the time he’d visited again, he’d put it out of his mind. There’s nothing he can do, especially not when it looks like Qingque would start crying if he so much as even stepped towards her direction.

Another unlikely ally that he’d made by virtue of Yanqing’s friendship(?) with Yunli is General Huaiyan, Yunli’s grandfather and the general of Wan Jian Ship. Jing Yuan had first started talking to him after accompanying Yanqing to retrieve his spiritual sword, because, as Plot and Circumstances would have it, Yanqing’s retrieval of his sword had been delayed by a few weeks because he fell ill—from a disease no cultivator should be able to catch, even—and after seeing Yanqing sniffle miserably in his bed for three days straight Jing Yuan had given in to the urge (and the puppy eyes) when Yanqing begged him to go together with him to have his spiritual sword made.

General Huaiyan is easy to like, that’s for certain—it’s just that Jing Yuan can’t help getting the… for the lack of a better word, the heebie-jeebies around him. Perhaps it’s because he’s one of the few ship generals older than Jing Yuan himself—although when the original had lived a couple thousand years, Jing Yuan hadn’t exactly inherited it. He’s just… doing his best.

The only thing that hasn’t changed much at all is… Yanqing.

Literally.

Because, okay, Jing Yuan might not have read a description in the book, he’d had to assume that the protagonist would be at least be above average height like they tended to be in novels like these, but Yanqing just… doesn’t grow all that much. Sure, he’d gained a couple of inches, but even that was only just enough for the top of his head to be barely level with Jing Yuan’s shoulder.

A tiny baby, Jing Yuan finds himself thinking sometimes, especially when Yanqing stands in comparison with his martial brothers and sisters—who are all at least of average height with a few stragglers.

He doesn’t seem to be particularly mind, either. Jing Yuan remembers his days in highschool where everyone was competing with each other to see who could grow the tallest, but it seems that that was apparently not a thing in this universe, and Jing Yuan actually really doesn’t mind if Yanqing stays the same size forever. Prime cuteness material—and maybe he won’t try to take over the world with bloodshed and revenge if he doesn’t have the height for it (Jing Yuan gets a good laugh out of himself at this one)? At this point in time Jing Yuan thinks that if Yanqing pouts at someone hard enough they’d hand over all their mortal possessions to him.

He should know, because he’s had that urge several times himself.

Besides—Yanqing has taken up the hobby of napping on Jing Yuan’s tail when they’re alone in the living room. Jing Yuan’s grown used to the warmth of Yanqing curled up around his tail, and he can admit that the sight of Yanqing all scrunched into a little ball with Jing Yuan’s tail for warmth is a sight that Jing Yuan can never grow tired of seeing.

Jing Yuan settles himself, in this world. In this life. Honestly speaking, there wasn’t much at all back home. He had friends he’d see maybe once six months, and the rest of it was spent by himself or with his coworkers. Most days when he wakes up, his past is a distant afterthought in his mind.

But all good things must come to an end.

The Wardance Conference is announced.

In the original novel, it had happened at a truly unfortunate time. The Wardance Conference was an event held every five years in order for the different ships to gather in one place and catch up with one another, a more formal way of trading news with each other that didn’t require urgent meetings or missives from one ship to another, while for the younger ones it meant a way to show off their cultivation and progress. It was something of a glorified get-together, but for Jing Yuan it was an unavoidable headache.

Because it was then that Yanqing’s demon seal would be broken, and he would get kicked down into the abyss by his scum teacher in front of hundreds of people who were watching.

The Wardance, despite its name, was held in an arena. Jue Di Gorge, Jing Yuan finds out, at a meeting discussing the logistics of the event taking place. The competition had all the younger and trainee cultivators who participated gathered in a large mountain range, and then set them on each other until there was only one clear victor remaining. Everyone else could surrender by releasing their emergency fireworks or being incapacitated.

In the novel, someone from An Ding ship had colluded with demons in order to open a portal into the arena and cause the deaths of multiple disciples, and, namely, break Yanqing’s seal in order to reveal him as a half-demon and get him kicked into the abyss, further completing his blackening process and starting him on his revenge arc to take over the world.

But when Jing Yuan confronts the system about it, all he gets is that the story is in 15% alignment and the protagonist’s blackening sits at a nice number of zero percent. He’s not sure what to do with the information other than it must be what the author wanted because surely if the author wanted the protagonist to be blackened he’d be in more trouble?

He tries to put it out of his mind most of the time, but well, the abyss arc is something that resides in the back of his mind, always there, looming, threatening.

The day they wake up to travel to the venue, Jing Yuan’s stomach is in knots. Even the light breakfast Yanqing made him after he saw Jing Yuan’s green face wasn’t enough to soothe the tension running through Jing Yuan.

When they’re all gathered on starskiffs, all the disciples talking about how excited they are, all Jing Yuan feels is trepidation.

He has plans, of course. He wouldn’t be Jing Yuan if he didn’t. It’s just that he doesn’t know how well any of them would actually work.

It’s gotten bad enough that Jing Yuan’s tail won’t stop swishing in agitation, and he’s given up trying to control it. He’s about this close to having Yanqing sit on it to stop it from moving—but it’s a surprisingly strong tail. He’s sure Yanqing will just be swished along with it.

The image he puts in his own head makes him smile, just a little. It also makes Yanqing tilt his head at him from the other side of the skarskiff where he’s talking with some of his juniors.

Ever since Jing Yuan formally appointed him as his retainer, the animosity between him and the other disciples have gone down quite a lot. Jing Yuan’s own Cloud Knights—his own small army of the ship—are, most of the time, happy to receive orders from Yanqing in Jing Yuan’s stead, and the few times someone had spoken out against him, Yanqing had thoroughly trounced them into the dirt with moves that were utterly humiliating.

He's grown so much, in such a short time, Jing Yuan muses. Today will be the deciding factor of it all, where Jing Yuan will either reap the benefits, or suffer the consequences.

The starskiff ride passes too quickly and not at all. One moment Jing Yuan is thinking and the next they’re alighting at the opening of Jue Di Gorge already, and all the disciples have disembarked. It’s only when Yanqing comes up to him curiously that Jing Yuan realizes that they’re one of the few people left on the ship.

“Shizun? Are you alright?” Yanqing says, concerned. His hand rests naturally on the hilt of Yanzhou, ready to draw it whenever. Looking at him like this, a confident boy with mischievous eyes, always willing and eager to aid Jing Yuan when needed—how could Jing Yuan bear to throw it all away?

Like a warning, the system chimes [The Endless Abyss Arc must be completed. Failure to do so will result in -10,000 B-points. Warning. User must completed the Endless Abyss Arc.]

Fuck that, Jing Yuan thinks irritably, wishing he could swipe the damned thing away in the air like an annoying fly.

“I’m fine,” he remembers, belatedly, to answer Yanqing’s question. It only makes the boy frown at him a little more. “Really. Oh, before I forget…”

Jing Yuan had been clearing out his inventory last night, because it was only recently that he realized that one of the perks of being a transmigrator was that he had a system-allotted inventory space that he could use. Of course, having shitty customer service, the system hadn’t told him about it, and so it had only been the night before that Jing Yuan had remembered it.

The red and gold sword tassel he bought for Yanqing, all the way back during their first mission together. It had been so many years ago. Yanqing’s such a different person from back then; Jing Yuan can hardly pride himself on teaching the boy, because Yanqing was the one who worked hard for all his development. Even so, Jing Yuan can’t help it.

“Here,” he says, taking the box out and handing it to Yanqing. “I’ve been meaning to give it to you, but… I just forgot, I suppose. This master apologizes for the delay.”

Eyes wide, Yanqing unboxes the sword tassel; and it’s clear that he remembers it from all those years ago, from the way his eyes widen and flick to Jing Yuan’s.

“This…” he says, trailing off, “Shizun…”

“I did mean to give it to you,” Jing Yuan says apologetically, “but we were distracted by the skinner demon, and afterwards, it kept slipping my mind. Now was a good time as any to give you a gift that’s been years overdue.”

“I… Thank you shizun!” Yanqing says, and he’s bowing, sudden enough that Jing Yuan blinks, “This disciple appreciates your gift! This disciple will do his best in the tournament to make shizun proud!”

It’s then that Jing Yuan stands up, patting Yanqing fondly on the head. “You don’t have to,” he murmurs, not sure if Yanqing actually hears him, or if his words are meant for himself. “I’m already proud of you.”

They join the others. It’s a few minutes of snacks and socializing before all the participants are led away to prepare for the Wardance, and it leaves Jing Yuan with the rest of the Ship Heads along with other sects from the mountains to mingle.

Marshal Hua is present for this event. Jing Yuan sees her talking to the Sect Leader of Tian Yi Overlook along with some other minor sects.

When he sees Feixiao, he makes his way over to her. A surprising occasion—both her retainers are with her, Moze and Jiaoqiu, and they both greet him warmly after their general does.

“General,” Jing Yuan greets, “Betting on your disciples?”

“Me? Betting?” Feixiao says, but only lasts a moment before she’s laughing boisterously. “But of course! My disciples are the best in fighting, you know! They’ll all kick your disciples’ asses!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Jing Yuan says amusedly.

“Ah, yes, your favourite,” Feixiao says teasingly. Jing Yuan’s stressed enough that he doesn’t even rebuke the words that she’s been mocking him with for years now; and he does admit that he talks about Yanqing enough to be obvious that Yanqing is his favourite, and it really doesn’t have anything to do with Yanqing being the protagonist or his favourite character. “Well! We’ll see, Jing Yuan! If you’re that confident, how much are you betting?”

“Three thousand spirit stones,” Jing Yuan says, and relishes in the quiet murmur that picks up within the crowd around them.

Feixiao whistles. “That confident, huh?” she says, smirk tugging her lips up, “Alright! Someone record that before he can take it back!”

Shaking his head fondly, Jing Yuan makes his way to the seats where the audience can watch the proceedings. He’s prepared as much as he can for this moment—all that’s left to do is watch and wait.

It takes an agonisingly long time for the Wardance to actually start. Someone reads the announcements and rules over what’s a glorified loudspeaker. Viewing stations are set up so that everyone can see what’s happening between the mountains and the forests. Jing Yuan had almost spit blood when he realized that they were just basically this world’s form of live television.

Once the starting horn sounds, Jing Yuan takes a deep breath, and settles back to watch.

Despite his nerves, it is exciting to watch. Due to the large number of disciples participating, most of them usually banded up for the first few hours, often from the same sect, and only split off later to fend for themselves. It was during this moment that demons were let loose inside the force field surrounding the mountains.

After the first hour, where the Marshal Hua had come over to greet him, Jing Yuan is mostly left alone. The rest of the sect elders and generals are mingling, talking about their disciples, the states of their sects and ships, but for Jing Yuan, all of it fades to white noise in the background. All Jing Yuan can focus on are the cameras following the disciples around, catching glimpses of Yanqing here and there.

He'd taken the chance to strike off on his own, though this isn’t a different decision from the original novel. Even now, as he incapacitates his opponents with ruthless efficiency, there’s a single-minded determination to do whatever it takes to prove himself.

Two hours in, someone drops to sit in the chair by his side.

“General.”

Jing Yuan looks to his side. “Master Diviner.”

Fu Xuan nods at him. Beside her, Qingque sits nervously in her seat, eyes flickering about from place to place, never settling for too long. She looks almost as nervous as Jing Yuan feels, and that’s the thought that causes Jing Yuan to narrow his eyes at her. Could she be…?

Perhaps noticing his gaze on her, Qingque flinches a little.

Fu Xuan, however, doesn’t seem to notice. Or, if she does, she doesn’t show it. “General,” she says, and then, softer, “Jing Yuan.”

“Hm?” he looks at her. There’s a worried furrow in her gaze, something she only gets when she’s received troubling news from the Matrix of Prescience. Jing Yuan’s always wondered why she couldn’t use that thing to divine who the traitor was, or even the details surrounding Jing Yuan’s transmigration, but she’d told him before in vague terms that readings from the Matrix were hard to come by and even harder to comprehend—that just because she asked didn’t mean that she would receive an answer.

“There’s something… about the Wardance,” she says, grimacing. She looks like she half-expects Jing Yuan not to believe her. “I don’t know what it is, but… but it’s dangerous. If your disciple is in there…”

“He can take care of himself,” Jing Yuan says, with more confidence than he feels.

Fu Xuan doesn’t look reassured in the slightest. A frown mars her face as she contemplates for a moment, as if deciding what information to share with Jing Yuan.

“I have reported what I know to the Marshal,” she says eventually. “And I hope, for all our sakes, that what I have seen doesn’t come to pass. But…” she hesitates. Jing Yuan hums, to show her he’s listening and to nudge her to continue. The only thing that gives him away is a twitch of his tail on his lap, and he resists the urge to hold it still. “Your disciple. Is there anything about him that I—that the Alliance should know about?”

Has she correctly divined that Yanqing is a half-demon? If so, why hasn’t she taken action against him in the first place?

“Nothing at all,” Jing Yuan smiles. “Unless you mean the fact that he is an incredibly outstanding and filial retainer who has improved by leaps and bounds over the years.”

His words make Fu Xuan sigh and look like she wants to roll her eyes with him at the same time. “If you’re sure,” she says reluctantly, and pats herself down as she stands up. “Now, as for Qingque…” she looks at her assistant, who smiles at her nervously, “She wanted to talk to you about something. Don’t scare her.”

With that statement, Fu Xuan leaves in a flurry, moving to the other side of the viewing platform to talk to some other Generals. Jing Yuan instead turns to Qingque, gesturing for her to speak.

“Qingque-guniang,” he says carefully, unsure of how to actually address her, “Is there anything…”

For a moment, Qingque looks like she’s steeling herself, taking a deep breath to speak.

“General,” she says nervously, “I wanted to ask, since the general is known for, um, perusing books and novels—” Jing Yuan raises an eyebrow; sure, he’d taken the time to read some novels while in this world, but it couldn’t have been that newsworthy, right? “This one wanted to know if the general has read a book called, um, ‘My Protagonist—‘”

A scream. The sound of an emergency firework going off, and Jing Yuan’s immediately switched focus. Just in time for everyone else to notice that multiple fireworks have gone off in a row from different areas, and everyone starts crowding around the viewing screens to wonder at what’s going on in the arena.

Demons.

The invasion has begun.

In the ensuing rush of outrage, Jing Yuan loses Qingque in the crowd. Instead, he finds himself beside Marshal Hua, containing the pandemonium cause by the demons.

“We’ve located a portal letting all the demons in,” Fu Xuan says, arms crossed and swiping across a screen, “Cultivators who are capable should take up arms and pursue the demons inside.”

“Why not just let down the barriers?” someone yells in outrage, “Our disciples are in there!”

“If we let down the barriers, the demons would escape,” Jing Yuan interjects. “This venue is on the edges of neighbouring villages full of civilians who can’t defend themselves. The only option is to go in and rescue our disciples ourselves.”

A few grumbles, but no one dares to oppose his words when Marshal Hua nods in agreement. In a few seconds, all the cultivators who can fight are ready and gathered, and Jing Yuan takes one last swig of his now-cold tea before he stands up to join them.

“General,” Feixiao stops him with a hand to his arm. “Are you sure?”

“The sect’s disciples are in there. Do you expect me not to go?”

“Without-a-cure?”

“I have it handled,” he says, holding his wrist out for her to do a quick check and takes it back when Feixiao nods reluctantly. “Come. We shouldn’t waste any time.”

With that, he manifests Starfall Reverie, and is the first to leap out of the viewing platform into the barrier. People can go in, but they can’t come out. Jing Yuan would scoff if he had the time for it. Such an obvious trope.

He’d noticed Yanqing sending up his own emergency flare just before he left, so he travels to that location, praying that Yanqing is still holding up well enough to be there when Jing Yuan arrives. On the way, Jing Yuan manages to kill all the demons he comes across in short time, and even rescue a few disciples and direct them towards the safe spots he knows the others are making based on the coloured flares they’re letting off every so often. He’s not so sure Yanqing will know to make his way to them, so he makes the journey even as the demons increase in number.

Finally…

A flash of blond.

There!

Just in time, it seems. Jing Yuan knocks a spider demon out of the way just as it lunges forward towards Yanqing, when the boy’s blade is just a little too slow to catch it.

“Shizun!”

There’s no time to talk. The demons come upon them in droves, and it’s quite a while before they stop, slowing to a trickle, until they all die down for a few moments where they can catch their breath. A few quivering disciples huddle around a snow-white flower blooming on the ground, creating a barrier against the demons.

“Go,” Jing Yuan directs them, “Follow the green flares. They’ll keep you safe.”

Everyone goes, nodding and thanking both him and Yanqing in quiet voices. For his part, Yanqing’s only breathing slightly heavier than normal despite having been fighting longer than Jing Yuan.

“Yanqing,” Jing Yuan says, and takes a moment to grasp his shoulder, take him in. He fears it’ll be the last time he can do so, even as the system flashes a warning in the back of his mind that he ignores.

“Shizun,” Yanqing’s voice is determined. A little confused. “The demons…”

“Someone let them loose inside,” Jing Yuan tells him, looking up at the sky. It should be time now. If not now, then very soon. “Yanqing.”

From where he’s been preparing to leave, Yanqing stills. “Shizun?”

For a moment, everything is still.

Jing Yuan remembers a conversation they had, years ago, after the demon invasion on the Xianzhou Luofu.

“Would you do anything if it means you’d be strong?” he’d asked, and then elaborated when Yanqing had looked confused. “Say, to be the next sword champion. That is one of your goals, yes?”

The history of the Sword Champion had been blurred and mired in what Jing Yuan believed to be lies and half-truths. The history books all had been banned or altered entirely not to mention the previous champion’s name, and since the original novel hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort, Jing Yuan had believed it to be something the author didn’t put much thought in. But he’d found out one day that Yanqing wished to be such, and, well, who is Jing Yuan to curb him from his desires? Better off if he’s trying to be Sword Champion and not taking over the entire world.

“Yes,” Yanqing answers slowly. “Anything…?”

“Would you go through all these… trials,” Jing Yuan says, collecting his thoughts a little. He’d blurted the question out without meaning to, but he finds himself musing on it. “Tribulations, so to say, if it could get you anything you wanted?”

Yanqing’s face does something complicated then. A little like he’s eaten a lemon. “I think it would depend,” he thinks, dropping his formal speech amidst his thoughts. “What… on what I wanted most.”

“Oh?” Jing Yuan says, intrigued. “Is it not being Sword Champion?”

Yanqing takes another moment to think, and then shakes his head no. “Then?”

Slowly, Yanqing says, “Being a Sword Champion… it’s a good goal. This one does want to be a Sword Champion. But… there are things more important than that.”

“Oh? Like?”

“Family.” The word surprises Jing Yuan. Sure, Yanqing has him, and the rest of his shipmates, his martial brothers and sisters, but Jing Yuan hadn’t known that they were that close. “And… y’know. Other people. I think protecting them would be more important than anything else. Being Sword Champion would be conducive to that goal, anyways.”

Shaking his head with a fond smile, Jing Yuan settles back into his seat. Ah, he finds himself thinking, youth. To hold both such lofty ambitions and the willingness to see them through.

“Then, if it was to protect the people you love,” Jing Yuan says. “Would you do anything? Go through hell for them?”

Yanqing looks at him, then. There’s some kind of raw trust in his eyes that gets under Jing Yuan’s skin. Makes him feel like Yanqing’s seeing through all his layers, all his titles and commendations, just to see him.

His words take him by surprise as much as they do Yanqing himself. “For the general,” he murmurs, though the words come out loud, inescapable in the stillness of their shared space. “I would do anything.”

Jing Yuan’s heart near stops in his chest.

A moment later, Yanqing seems to realize what he’s said and blushes a deep, deep red. He stammers out something unintelligible, and then he’s fleeing, giving Jing Yuan a quick goodnight as he leaves.

Jing Yuan sits there for another hour, continuing to read his book, unseeing of the words on his page, thinking about how Yanqing stated it. Just like… a certainty. Just a fact that he was happy to live with.

He sighs, and puts his head in his hands. If Yanqing really does see him as someone… someone he would go through hell for, then… he might be able to use that.

It wouldn’t be fair to Yanqing. But it’s the only option Jing Yuan can think of to make sure that the protagonist isn’t blackened completely.

Now, Jing Yuan remembers that conversation. Yanqing is still looking at him with impatience in his frame, eager to get back and regroup with the others.

Jing Yuan opens his mouth.

The ground cracks open.

It’s only his reflexes that save Yanqing from twisting his ankle as he scrambles to stay standing, and just after Jing Yuan yanks him back, the ground shifts more, opening up to reveal a crevice that bleeds red. The jagged edges that the ground turns into make them move back, until the system in Jing Yuan’s head shrills with notifications and it’s all he can do to grimace and at least mute the damn thing before his head explodes.

“Shizun,” Yanqing is saying, gripping onto his sleeve, knuckles white. “We—we have to—”

What they have to do, he never finds out, because something steps out through the smoke and the haze and the debris. In the novel, it was supposed to be Moon Python Rhinoceros, a great beast that would fight Yanqing and force him to reveal his demonic powers because the other choice would be to be rammed to death by the beast.

And so, Jing Yuan can’t quite say he expects something else to step out onto the ground.

The smoke clears. A howl rings through the night.

And Jing Yuan’s heart freezes in his chest.

Hoolay. One of the highest-ranking lords of hell and the Brood Lord of the Borisin.

He wasn’t supposed to show up this early! Jing Yuan screams at the system, which conveniently chooses to go silent right at that moment.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” the Brood Lord says. Jing Yuan finds himself stepping forward with Starfall Reverie out, pushing Yanqing behind him.

“Lord Hoolay,” he says, in a voice cordial as possible, “What honour do we owe the borisin to show up at our Wardance Conference.”

Hoolay laughs, then. A large, booming laugh that gives Jing Yuan a headache and rings with derision and hatred. “What use do I have for puny little cultivators,” he sneers, but then he sniffs the air. “Hm. Interesting. Go take the rest. I’ll handle these two.”

On his orders, the borisin behind him move out. Jing Yuan grits his teeth and fights against the urge to follow after them, knowing that his role here is to be with Yanqing, no matter what.

“Immortal, yet not immortal. Demon, yet not demon. Interesting.”

Jing Yuan doesn’t have to look to feel the way Yanqing tenses up behind him.

“If you’re going to fight,” he says, tense, “Then do it. No use in drawing it out, is there?”

“Very well.”

And then—it all becomes a blur. Hoolay comes for him first. Jing Yuan barely manages to dodge the blow before another strike is coming. It’s by pure muscle memory and some sort of gift from the gods that he manages to block that one and send a strike of his own, though it sends a shockwave up his arm that has him rattling in place. Jing Yuan grits his teeth and sends bolts of lightning raining down on Hoolay, but the demon only shakes them off like they’re annoying flies. He moves purely on instinct after that. Dodges, lunges, twisting around to narrowly escape the borisin’s claws, but it’s not enough. Hoolay, enraged, swats Jing Yuan into the trunk of a tree hard enough that he sees stars and takes a moment to reorient himself.

Unfortunately, that moment is enough for Hoolay to advance towards him and get a hand around his throat, cutting off his hairway. Just as he’s about to beat Jing Yuan into a bloody pulp, however, a flying sword hits him in the chest.

It shatters upon contact.

And then again, and again, and Jing Yuan’s taken back to the day Yanqing had managed to master the technique of his flying swords, a feat most other swordsmen would be unable to replicate. Years ahead of schedule, Jing Yuan had thought.

And now, Yanqing is using it to distract Hoolay from Jing Yuan.

“Don’t think I forgot about you, little demon,” Hoolay sneers, and lumbers towards Yanqing. Jing Yuan falls to the ground, gasping for breath.

“Don’t,” Yanqing’s voice is shaky, but he stands strong. “Don’t hurt my shizun. Or else.”

Hoolay’s laughter is a hateful, derisive thing. “Or else what,” he mocks. “Don’t think I don’t see you, little demon. You think that you shizun will still accept you? After what you’ve done? After what you are? Humans are all the same. You would do well to remember that.”

“I—” Yanqing’s voice shakes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t, do you?” Hoolay’s voice is mocking, pitying. “You will, after I’m done with you.”

Jing Yuan can barely see through the haze of his own agony as Hoolay advances on Yanqing. He gathers his spiritual energy to help, to get that monster off Yanqing, but all he gets is—a weak fizzle of his spiritual energy. Without-a-cure, he realizes, with a sinking feeling in his bones. Of course it would strike now, because he’s in a novel with the tendency to strike up the worst misfortunes at the worst possible times.

Yanqing is fighting Hoolay. Doing quite well holding his own, actually, but he can’t last forever. Even now, he’s tiring against the sheer power and might that is Hoolay, and Jing Yuan manages to get to his feet just in time to see Hoolay reach towards Yanqing and release a burst of demonic energy that has Yanqing crumpling to his knees.

Jing Yuan can’t help it; his vision goes red.

Another trick up his sleeve, something he hadn’t used in fear of going out of control, but desperate times call for desperate measures, he thinks, and summons all the will and spiritual energy left in him to call upon—

Lightning Lord.

With a terrible cry, the spiritus takes Hoolay by surprise. The arm he holds up to protect himself from Jing Yuan is cleaved in half. It makes Hoolay let out a roar of pain and anger, even as Jing Yuan staggers to his feet and makes another swipe at him.

It’s a blur, then. Jing Yuan advances with all he has, gritting his teeth against the pain and dizziness that threaten to blind him. Hoolay growls, but he’s weakening too. A true test of the will, Jing Yuan thinks wryly, before he’s lunging forward in another strike. Too fast. It makes him dizzier than he can stand.

Hoolay advances on him. Gets last Lightning Lord and is almost on him before he freezes.

When Jing Yuan looks down, he can see why.

It’s because his feet are frozen to the ground.

Yanqing had always been adept with his element, his spiritual energy that coalesces into waves of ice, Jing Yuan remembers now. And when the sounds of multiple swords slice through the air, Jing Yuan watches with grim satisfaction as they pierce cleanly through Hoolay’s hide, incapacitating him. It’s up to him then, to deliver the final blow with Lightning Lord, as the swords finally burst in a brilliant scattering of light and shards that has Jing Yuan blinking light out of his eyes.

And then it’s quiet again.

Over. Done.

The abyss is still gaping in front of them.

Just to be sure, Jing Yuan thinks to himself. Calls on a last check.

System, does Yanqing have to go through the abyss?

[The protagonist must go through the Endless Abyss in order to further his character development. It is the most important plotline.]

Go through the Endless Abyss…

Right.

He can do this.

Jing Yuan limps his way over to where Yanqing is standing, staring unseeing at the gash of the Abyss right in front of him. It’s only when he gets closer that he sees why.

There, on his forehead, is a perfectly clear and bright red zuiyin—a mark of a Heavenly Demon, as denoted by his bloodline.

 Oh, Jing Yuan’s read all about it. Coupled with his knowledge from before he came into the world, with the extensive and harried research he’d gone through in this one—he doesn’t think there’s anyone else out there with as much knowledge on Heavenly Demons as him.

“Shizun,” Yanqing says, and his voice is trembling, close to breaking. Jing Yuan’s heart breaks for him too. “Shizun, this disciple…”

“Shh, don’t speak,” Jing Yuan says. As an indulgence, he stands in front of Yanqing, cupping his cheek with his hand. The other rests on Yanqing’s back, holding him close, as if he can protect him from the horrors of the Abyss. “It’s okay, Yanqing. Don’t be scared. It’s okay.”

“Shizun,” Yanqing warbles, and throws his entire body at him, clinging so tightly to Jing Yuan that he feels himself aching at the knowledge of what he’s supposed to do. “Shizun, I’m—I’m so sorry, I didn’t—I couldn’t tell you, I’m—please don’t—please don’t leave me, please, shizun, I didn’t mean to—”

Jing Yuan shushes him, lets out soothing sounds. His own ears are twitching in agitation, but he lets his tail curl around the both of them in some mimicry of comfort. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, “I don’t hate you, Yanqing. You are not a bad person. I promise.”

That only makes Yanqing cry more.

The moment is, of course, ruined by the shifting of plates. Of the ground rumbling. The Abyss is closing up.

“Yanqing,” Jing Yuan says, drawing him away. He doesn’t restrain himself from the urge to wipe Yanqing’s tears away with his thumb. “Listen to me. Do you remember what you said, about doing anything it takes to keep the ones you loved safe?”

Despite how confused he must be, Yanqing rubs at his eyes and nods.

“I’m going to need you to do that now for me, Yanqing,” Jing Yuan says, and can’t quite keep the desperation out of his voice. “Please, Yanqing, do you trust me?”

Yanqing nods. “With my life, general.”

This boy, Jing Yuan thinks fondly, and tries not to cry. “Then you have to go, Yanqing. Into the abyss. Do you understand?”

Yanqing’s eyes grow wide, and then he opens his mouth as if to argue, but he stops. Seems to think it over for a moment, before nodding.

“Do you?” Jing Yuan says, desperate. “Yanqing. Do you understand why?”

This time, a little more resolute, Yanqing nods his head mutely.

“I’m sorry,” Jing Yuan murmurs. “I’m sorry it had to be this way.”

Yanqing takes a breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, there’s something determined in them.

“Shizun wouldn’t send me in if he knew I wouldn’t survive,” he says, and surprises Jing Yuan by how sure he sounds. Is he that trusting of Jing Yuan’s character? “I know it. Shizun wouldn’t send me to my death. There’s a reason. Shizun can’t tell me. I understand.”

Jing Yuan could cry. Bless you, protagonist! Bless you for understanding this old man and having a pure and untainted heart!

“Good,” Jing Yuan says, and pretends that he isn’t choking on his words. “Here,” he says instead, and puts a qiankun pouch into Yanqing’s hand. “Necessities. They should last you a while,” he says, rushed. “I’ve put everything I can think of in here. I—be safe, Yanqing.” It’s a horrible ask, he knows, especially when he’s sending Yanqing into the depths of hell.

But Yanqing only nods, determined.

“Okay,” he says. And then he falters, just a little bit. “Shizun. If I—before I go, if I may make an impertinent request—”

“Anything,” Jing Yuan is quick to promise.

“Close your eyes.”

It takes him by surprise, but with the system’s warning countdown in his ears, Jing Yuan does what Yanqing asks.

And then he’s yanked down by the front of his robes, and doesn’t even have time before—

Yanqing’s kissing him.

He has his eyes closed, but who else can it be? The protagonist who told him to close his eyes kisses him; messy, uncoordinated, the markings of a young boy trying something out for the first time; it surprises Jing Yuan enough that he freezes entirely, standing still while Yanqing kisses him like the world is ending.

And maybe, for him, it is.

The kiss is ferocious enough that Jing Yuan only feels the sting of a cut on his lip when Yanqing pulls away, and only then does he open his eyes again, still a little bit in shock and watching dumbly as Yanqing walks to the edge and peers down.

And then he tastes the blood, the iron of it in his mouth and remembers.

“Yanqing!”

His call has Yanqing looking up, and Jing Yuan wastes no time; reaches forward and kisses Yanqing himself. He shouldn’t be doing this. There are so many reasons why. The protagonist is more than half his age. They’re both frenzied, high on emotions. Yanqing can’t possibly want someone who told him to jump into the Abyss. Jing Yuan can’t possibly want his student, the protagonist he’s been thinking of for years, more than Yanqing could ever know.

But all those thoughts are discarded from his head as Jing Yuan kisses Yanqing, deep and hard like he’ll never get to again. And he won’t, he reminds himself fiercely, because after this, Yanqing will return to his senses and realize that he made a mistake, and then he can hunt down his old master to get his revenge if he so wishes.

But he has to be alive until then. And he has to know that Jing Yuan will always be there for him. In spirit, if nothing else.

And so Jing Yuan takes his lower lip between his teeth and bites. Swallows Yanqing’s yelp of pain until Yanqing’s blood floods his mouth. It’s only then that he lets go of Yanqing and swallows the blood, grimacing at the taste of it—opens his eyes to see Yanqing staring at him with wide eyes.

“Go,” he says, voice hoarse, dangerously close to cracking. “Come back out, Yanqing. This master trusts in you.”

“Okay,” Yanqing says, soft, so soft he almost doesn’t hear it. “Orders received, general.”

And then he turns, and with a single breath, jumps.

Jing Yuan reaches out for him, out of instinct, voice caught in his throat, watching Yanqing descend—

And then the ground closes back up. Neatly stitches itself up like nothing had ever happened just minutes before, only the trees and the scorch marks left on the surrounding area to prove it was ever there in the first place.

A golden gleam catches Jing Yuan’s eye, and he falls to his knees in front of a pile of sword shards—Yanzhou, he knows. The sword tassel he gifted Yanqing just earlier that day is right there, dirtied on the ground in front of him.

It’s how the rest of the sects find him.

Alone, mourning in front of a mound of sword shards that he scooped up with dirty, bloody hands.

They see Hoolay’s body, lying a few feet away from them.

They come to their own conclusions.

The only good thing, Jing Yuan supposes, that could come out of one’s disciple and retainer being presumed murdered in cold blood is that people assume that he is in grieving and leave him alone most of the time, giving him a much-needed holiday.

Even if there’s a sour taste in his throat at the thought of relaxing as Yanqing goes through hell without him there to help.

He’s the protagonist, Jing Yuan reminds himself, whenever he can’t sleep at night, lying awake staring at the ceiling, he can go through this. If he could go through the abyss in the original novel with his crippled cultivation and come out stronger, he can breeze through it now.

Despite his knowledge, despite the—surprising—reassurance of the system, it’s one thing to know and another to actually believe that Yanqing is doing fine in the Abyss. Jing Yuan packed him supplies. Enough to last him quite a while, perhaps more if Yanqing is smart with his resources. He will be, Jing Yuan knows. He still can’t help but worry.

Is this what parental worry feels like, Jing Yuan thinks to himself one day, and is immediately slammed face-first with the memory of the warmth of Yanqing’s lips on his, and discards that train of thought immediately.

No, he tells himself. Bad Jing Yuan. That was a fluke, on both his and Yanqing’s sides, and it absolutely will not be happening again. Don’t be a pervert.

He hadn’t realized how ingrained Yanqing had become in his life until he suddenly isn’t there anymore. Jing Yuan had been worrying so much about how Yanqing was going to get through the Abyss that he’d forgotten to account for his own needs—namely, a house too big for him to live in alone, meals he prepares for two only to turn around and realize that Yanqing isn’t there anymore. When he falls asleep in the courtyard under the tree, he wakes up alone and cold instead of with Yanqing napping on his tail. When he gets home, the house is cold and empty, and in the end, Jing Yuan just finds extra staff that Qingzu recommends to him just so his house doesn’t fall apart.

She’s been a godsend. With Yanqing gone, she ends up taking some of his duties, like bringing paperwork to Jing Yuan, updating him on things around the ship, and, most importantly, reminding him to eat.

All those little things remind Jing Yuan how much he misses Yanqing. The way he’d respectfully step into the Seat of Divine Foresight only to bother Jing Yuan until they can eat lunch together. The way he’d drag Jing Yuan from his duties with the excuse of training together while they’re at home so that they can at least take some fresh air together. The way he indulges Jing Yuan by playing starchess with him every time he asks, even though Yanqing still hasn’t won any of their matches.

His despondency must show in his frame, because the rest of his disciples, at least, try to cheer him up. They welcome him extra cheerfully at practice, put on their best performances for them, and Jing Yuan makes sure to appreciate them all by patting them on the head and telling them that they’ve improved by leaps and bounds. It helps, for a while, to see that even Ming Fan looks both sad and annoyed about the fact that Yanqing is gone.

Yunli sends him a letter once. Her writing is unusually formal, sending her condolences and well-wishes for Jing Yuan. She talks briefly of how Yanqing had admired him, and Jing Yuan has to take a break from reading because his eyes well up with tears and he has to look up at the sky and blink them away. Don’t be stupid, he tells himself. Yanqing is alive. You know this. Stop acting like he’s actually died.

But the fact that everyone around him is acting like Yanqing actually did—it makes Jing Yuan’s heart squeeze something painful.

He isn’t remiss in his duties, but he goes through everything mechanically, reading reports and planning lessons, working late into the night with no one there to stop him and drag him home. He visits Lingsha, sometimes. She introduces him to her new apprentice, a child-like Vidyadhara called Bailu who takes care of him very aggressively and gives him candy. Jing Yuan can’t say he doesn’t appreciate it.

He only realizes that the days are passing in a haze and that he hasn’t been visiting his friends regularly when Fu Xuan shows up at his house, with Qingque in tow.

“This has to stop,” she announces when he opens the door, swanning into the room with all the reassurance of someone who knows it is her right to be in Jing Yuan’s living room.

“Hello to you too, Master Diviner,” Jing Yuan replies cordially, offering them both a place to sit like a good host. Unfortunately, the process does involve removing a few takeout boxes, and he’s so ashamed at Fu Xuan’s judgemental stare that he obediently takes them all to the trash before returning to ask if they want tea.

“Please,” Fu Xuan says haughtily, “The blend I got for you last time. I know you haven’t opened it.”

Jing Yuan grumbles under his breath as he goes to the kitchen. “Did you divine that one too?”

“What was that?”

“Nothing!”

A few minutes later, they’re settled around his living room table with three cups of steaming tea in front of them, and Jing Yuan clears his throat.

“Was there something you needed to talk about, Master Diviner?”

Fu Xuan scoffs. “No. You do.”

“Pardon?”

“You need to talk about whatever’s bothering you. Is this about your retainer?”

Jing Yuan closes his eyes. “I thought that you’d avoid talking about him out of courtesy like everyone else has been doing,” he says dryly.

“I am the Master Diviner of An Ding Ship,” Fu Xuan retorts. “There is no time for courtesy.”

And, Jing Yuan supposes, she’s right.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he says, deferring. “What is there to say?”

Fu Xuan takes a breath, like she’s fed up with him. It’s her default being, most of the time when she’s around him. “Anything about the fact that your retainer is actually alive?”

Jing Yuan, very carefully, does not react nor freeze up at the words. He only blinks guilelessly, even taking a sip of his tea as he says, “Excuse me?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Fu Xuan says. “Your disciple is alive. You let him go.”

“Where?”

Fu Xuan’s eye twitches.

“Jing Yuan,” she starts. “I know you are not this stupid. Stop denying it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says airily. “Would you like some cookies?”

“Jing. Yuan.”

Just as Jing Yuan’s opening his mouth to ask them if they want sugar cookies or jam-topped ones, he’s interrupted.

“She knows!”

Both of them jump, and Jing Yuan turns his head to look at Qingque, whom he’d almost forgotten was there for a moment on account of how still she had been for the entire time.

“Excuse me?”

“She knows,” Qingque repeats. Her eyes dart around the room, looking everywhere but at Jing Yuan as she speaks hurriedly. “I—she divined most of it, from—the Matrix. And—and—”

“And you folded like a wet towel,” Fu Xuan says, in a voice Jing Yuan would hesitate to describe as snooty. Disdainful, perhaps. Fu Xuan sighs, crossing her arms. For the first time since Jing Yuan’s met her, she breaks posture, slouching back against the couch and staring up at the ceiling.

Sensing that Jing Yuan isn’t going to open his mouth anytime soon, Fu Xuan sighs, and addresses Jing Yuan. “I’ve known that your disciple was a half-demon for a while, now.”

Despite himself, Jing Yuan flinches. He’d expected that to be the direction Fu Xuan went in, but he’s surprised at how bluntly she said it. Perhaps he should’ve have been; he’s always known her to be direct, after all. It’s surprising that a character like her showed up only a few times in the plot, when the author decided that it was convenient for her to.

She continues blithely. “If you’re wondering why I didn’t tell anyone—what harm was he doing? You kept him under your wing so tightly I don’t think even Lan themselves would have been able to separate you from him. Besides, think of the paperwork. The news that would have to be contained. Too much work, yes?”

Jing Yuan nods.

“But,” Fu Xuan says, sighing. “That was only thing I could diving from the Matrix.”

“Then how would you know if he’s alive?”

“I’m getting to that,” she snaps. “It was because of Qingque.”

“Hm?”

Jing Yuan turns to her again. She fidgets in her seat.

“Excuse me?” he says, very, very carefully.

After dropping the bomb, Fu Xuan stands up. “It’s a talk you two must have for yourselves,” she says primly, draining the last of her teacup. “I will retrieve Qingque in a few hours. General, please remember that she is my assistant and I would be forced to retaliate if you lay a hand on her. And both of you,” she says blithely, as she swans across the room to the door dramatically, “Please do remember that despite being head of the logistics ship, I am a Ship Lord in my own rights, with the power to divine and foresee things that took most of my life to master.”

With those ominous parting words, the door clicks shut, and Jing Yuan is left alone with Qingque, who looks like she’d literally rather be anywhere but here.

“Tea?” Jing Yuan is asking, when she interrupts him.

“I’m sorry!”

Jing Yuan blinks. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry,” she says miserably. “I didn’t want to tell you, but… Lady Fu Xuan insisted. She said you deserved to know.”

“That…?”

Qingque takes a deep breath. “That you’re not the only transmigrator here,” she says, straightening up. Her voice still shakes, a little but unsteady, but she holds herself like she’s preparing for a fight.

Jing Yuan blinks once, as the words register in his head.

There’s only one reason that a side character who never showed up in the original book would be telling him this.

“You’re one too?” he guesses.

Qingque nods.

“And…” Jing Yuan murmurs, closing his eyes and thinking aloud. Suddenly, it seems to fit. Sure, it could be anyone else. But the fact that another person from his world transmigrated into the body of a seemingly nameless NPC—the odds that it was just a coincidence are very, very low.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asks. “The spy from An Ding. You released the demons.”

Qingque sighs. She loses all her fight suddenly, as if she’s relaxing now that she knows Jing Yuan isn’t trying to attack her. “Yes,” she says miserably. “The system made me. I—I would have died if I didn’t.”

“It threatened me too,” Jing Yuan offers, despite the immediate anger that rises to the surface. It’s not her fault. She’s as a victim of the story as Jing Yuan himself is.”

“But it didn’t…” Qingque murmurs, then sighs. “Well, no use in thinking about it,” she says. “In the novel, my character was a spy for the demon realm. Later, she was killed off.”

Jing Yuan blinks. “That’s it?”

Qingque fidgets. “That’s it,” she admits. “It was kind of… well. You’ve seen the quality of the original books.”

Jing Yuan, unfortunately, can’t disagree.

“So then, you’re—another reader?” he wonders. The little webnovel he’d found online only had the most hardcore of angst readers who enjoyed everything being dark and grim with no hope at all. “How did you…”

Qingque winces. “I was eating noodles and playing mahjong online,” she says miserably, even though Jing Yuan meant to ask how did you find the book? “And then I lost a match and then I got so angry, but I forgot I was eating my noodles so they spilled! So when I tried to clean it up, I didn’t notice the power cord, and, well, here I am.”

Jing Yuan winces. Being electrocuted to death also does not sound very fun.

“How long have you been here?”

“Since I was born. Why? Were you not…”

“No,” Jing Yuan says. “Ah, I almost qi deviated. I’m not sure if you heard of it. I only, erm, came to pilot this body after that.”

“Oh…” Qingque says, reminiscing, and then her eyes grow wide. “Oh! So that’s when! I wasn’t sure, but I knew for sure after the, um, the demon invasion on the Luofu.”

As an ever-present reminder, his ears flick at the memory. “I suppose that that would be a giveaway for someone who knew the novel.”

Qingque nods emphatically. “Right! Of course the scum master wouldn’t try to save the protagonist!” She falls into grumbles. “Of course that’s not what I wanted, but who cares about what the author wants? Pah, all those losers online—if I didn’t have any bills to pay then I would’ve—”

“Wait,” Jing Yuan interrupts her, some type of morbid horror growing in his brain at her words. “Bills to pay? You’re the author? What, TileDiviner4ever?”

Qingque clams up immediately. “Ahaha,” she says robotically, looking like she wants to shrink into the couch cushions. “Surprise?” She squeaks when lightning flies off Jing Yuan’s fingertips, eyes wide.

Jing Yuan, for his part, has to tell himself to calm down, that just because Qingque is the author doesn’t mean she was putting Yanqing into actual danger with her own hands. She was just writing a story to… pay the bills, she’d said. It’s not her fault that both of them were transported into this universe with worldbuilding that was built on straw sticks.

“I’m—it’s fine,” he sighs, shaking his spiritual energy off and pinching his brow with his hand. It doesn’t help, though it does remind him of another matter. “Master Diviner said she knew?”

“She caught me liaising with a demon,” Qingque says promptly, “I planned it, actually. I didn’t want to die. So I let her put me in the Matrix to prove my innocence, and so she’s been helping me lie to the demons too. Double… double agent, I think it counts as.”

“Right,” Jing Yuan says, sighing. “Right. And she knows about me too.”

“Not… all of it,” Qingque offers, which, evasive as it is, is not a good sign. “She knows you’re not the original, but anything she’s tried to divine about you comes up blank. Transmigrator halo, maybe.”

Suddenly, Jing Yuan feels tired. There’s another transmigrator now here, and so what? He knows that he’s changed things enough that even if the author were here, they wouldn’t be of any help with predicting where the plot would go next.

“Thank you for telling me this,” Jing Yuan remembers to say. “I… I don’t know how it can help, but you should keep in touch. Keep me notified, if anything happens.”

Qingque nods enthusiastically. “Lady Fu Xuan said that I can use her communication device to send you messages if needed! And, if it’ll help, I can write down things I remember from the book and send them to you!”

“That would be much appreciated. Thank you.”

Just in time, as Jing Yuan is escorting Qingque to the gates, Fu Xuan shows up, with a little bag of treats that she hands to Qingque as soon as she sees her.

“I take it you’ve talked things out?”

“Yes. I take it I can trust your silence?”

“Please,” Fu Xuan rolls her eyes, “If there’s anyone better at it than me, I beg you to find them. Come, Qingque. Let’s go.”

With a half-bow, she leaves Jing Yuan looking after her until she and Qingque disappear from the horizon, before moving his gaze up to the sky.

It’s evening now. The sky has turned pink-orange with fluffy clouds and the beginnings of darkness. As he stands there, the wind rustles through the air, ruffling his fur and ears. The streets are quieter during this time. People are going home or gathering in the market.

Jing Yuan’s hit with déjà vu, suddenly, when he remembers an evening just like this. His semi-day off, he remembers, how he’d just been preparing to go out for a walk when Yanqing had come whistling down the road, a bag of skewers in his hand from the stall they both like. As soon as he’d seen Jing Yuan, even from that distance, Jing Yuan saw his face light up with happiness, and how he’d started jogging to get closer faster.

He looks at the road. He can almost see Yanqing now, grinning brightly at him. Can almost hear the jingling of the longevity bells Jing Yuan had gifted him for his birthday, years ago. Can almost see him in the blue robes of the Qing Jing Ship, blending in with the rest of the disciples, sword hanging by his side.

Jing Yuan exhales softly, closes the gate, and turns around to begin the long walk back to his house.

Fu Xuan isn’t the only friend he’s neglected, unfortunately. It takes him a while longer, but he looks up one day and realizes that he can’t quite seem to remember when he last visited Feixiao and her two retainers, and promptly fixes that.

Fortunately, she’s on the ship when he visits. She greets him enthusiastically, not like they haven’t talked in months, and treats him to the finest liquors available on the Xianzhou Yaoqing.

It’s how he finds himself facedown on a low table in the middle of the night as all three of them surrounding him as Jing Yuan sighs morosely into the wood. Feixiao has a pitying but understanding look on her face, while Moze pats his back and Jiaoqiu looks at him like he knows all the secrets hidden deep inside Jing Yuan’s heart.

“You’ve been alive for hundreds of years,” Feixiao points out. Annoyingly, she’s still only a little bit tipsy despite having drunk more than Jing Yuan. Moze had refused, saying that he needed to be in top form to assassinate the Arbiter General of the Yaoqing, but it had seemed like an inside joke between the three of them, so Jing Yuan hadn’t pried. “What makes it so different from anyone else?”

What makes it different is that Jing Yuan is an entirely different person who hasn’t experienced this type of loss before.

But he can’t say that, so he just says something unintelligible and accepts Jiaoqiu’s offer of a bowl of soup.

“Spicy,” he comments, and then takes another sip. It’s also annoyingly addicting.

“Perhaps the general is experiencing the loss of something he hasn’t experienced before?” Jiaoqiu suggests.

Jing Yuan almost freezes up, mind whirling as his half-drunk mind conjures the thought of what had happened just because Yanqing jumped into the Abyss, but then he realizes that Jiaoqiu’s talking about the loss of a student, which Jing Yuan doesn’t remember having happened in the original novel.

He makes a sound, and it must sound pathetic enough that Moze continues rubbing his back very nicely and Feixiao even deigns to give him a few consoling pats on his shoulder before moving the conversation topic to something Jing Yuan can listen along to without wanting to burst into tears.

In the morning, in the time that Jing Yuan takes to wake up, Feixiao’s already woken up, run several laps around the Yaoqing, worked out for an hour, had breakfast, and then worked out for another hour waiting for Jing Yuan to get up.

“Shixiong!” she greets him cheerily when Jing Yuan stumbles out of the guest room, squinting with furrowed brows at her, “Come, have breakfast, it’s almost cold!”

Breakfast is served hot, not cold, by Jiaoqiu, who takes one look at Jing Yuan squinting at Feixiao and tells him, “You’ll get used to it. Ignore her until then.”

Jing Yuan thanks him for the breakfast of a nice hearty omelette with chicken and rice, and wipes the entire thing in five minutes.

“Good, isn’t it?” Feixiao asks, amused. “Perks of having my own cook, I suppose.”

“I thought Jiaoqiu was your retainer?”

“Please. As if you don’t have your retainer playing pretty little housewife for you.”

Jing Yuan opens his mouth, about to say no, he just doesn’t let me do anything, before realizing what he’d meant to say and snapping it shut. Feixiao grins at him in victory anyways.

Their conversation is cut short when someone comes with a message for Feixiao and she leaves him with instructions to visit more, or else she’d come to his ship to bodily drag him off to go on a hunt with her, which is as terrifying a thought as facing an angry Fu Xuan.

He leaves the ship feeling a little lighter, a little more clearheaded.

Life goes on, as it always does.

Jing Yuan throws himself into his duties, except this time around, he makes Qingzu and Yong Hai remember when he’s supposed to meet with his martial brothers and sisters. He puts in time to visit Huaiyan and Yunli too, even if she escapes his presence most of the time.

Meetings with Feixiao turn monthly, and then twice a month, and then once a week when she starts dragging him out for night hunts despite his insistence that he has work to catch up on.

(It’s a farce. Feixiao ends up fighting the monsters half the time anyways; Jing Yuan usually just sits on a nearby rock and tries not to get hit by either the monster or Feixiao.)

Two years in, Fu Xuan visits him with a suspicious package.

“Happy birthday,” she says, and promptly hands him a letter from Qingque. Jing Yuan carefully doesn’t say anything about how the Master Diviner of the An Ding has been relegated to playing messenger. It must show on his face, because she gives him a particularly nasty glare as she directs the delivery worker to set the box down in Jing Yuan’s garden.

The box is wriggling.

“Why is the box wriggling?” Jing Yuan says, instead of acknowledging the fact that it is neither his birthday nor would Fu Xuan know the date of it.

“See for yourself,” Fu Xuan says primly, and leaves in a flurry of silks and ribbons.

Left alone with a box that is wiggling ominously—as no boxes should do—Jing Yuan decides that it’s probably best to rip the bandaid off. He’s reasonably sure that Fu Xuan wouldn’t attempt to assassinate him in his own home, much less on his own ship. He thinks that she would be more creative than that, if she ever really wanted to do anyways.

It’s when he crouches that he notices that there are holes cut into the sides of the box. Not the ones for carrying—these holes look like the insect jars Jing Yuan used to keep as a kid. He starts praying that a giant grasshopper isn’t about to jump up into his face.

Warily, Jing Yuan opens one flap, and then the others.

He stares.

In the box is a cat.

Not a cat, he thinks, when the little thing stands up when the light falls on it, arching its back, stretching itself out. Jing Yuan squats in place, marvelling a little at how white it is—it looks like it might glow, in the moonlight—and tentatively reaches out a hand for it to sniff as it starts poking its nose around its surroundings.

It looks at him, eyes wide and round.

No, Jing Yuan tells himself. You shouldn’t get attached.

It’s nose twitches.

No, Jing Yuan. Do not fall victim to a cat like many others have before you.

The little thing stretches its arms up, and Jing Yuan, helpless to the whims of a small, cute animal, reaches forward to hold it up, lifting it out of the box and standing up so that it’s—she’s—at his eye level.

“This is a lion,” Jing Yuan says flatly, to his garden.

The cub yawns.

Jing Yuan can’t help it; he melts.

He doesn’t know if it’s his own cultivation or actual strength that he manages to cradle the cub like it’s a baby, but it doesn’t seem to be bothered at all, batting a paw at him as it makes little sounds.

Oh, gods, Jing Yuan thinks faintly. He doesn’t know how to take care of it.

Just as he’s about to start panicking in the middle of the day in his garden, he notices a parcel, taped neatly to the side of the box the cub came in, and it detaches easily enough to reveal itself to be a book on the care and keeping of grimalkins, as the book calls the little cub.

…it’s not a cat?

Diviner Fu Xuan, did you check your product after your purchase?

Or is this actually this universe’s version of a cat, and Jing Yuan is the one who’s uneducated?

No. Surely not.

Despite himself, Jing Yuan heads to his library—surely there should be something… a bestiary, sure, that could help, he thinks, and skims through it to find a smaller subsection on cats, that, to his relief, depict cats as he knows them back from his original world.

In his arms, the cub lets out a small meow.

“Hungry?” Jing Yuan asks it, and suddenly becomes hauntingly aware of the fact that he’s responsible for making sure that this baby doesn’t die under his responsibility.

He’s not prepared for parenthood?! At least Yanqing had already known how to feed and clothe himself?!

Fu Xuan’s nice enough to have left him a few bags of feed, at least, and he pours the dry kibble into a bowl he finds, patting Mimi’s head and promising that he’ll go pet shopping for her the day after.

He needs so many things.

Curse you, Fu Xuan.

Mimi grows alarmingly fast. Jing Yuan thanks himself for the foresight he had buying an extra large bowl for her, because she would have outgrown a smaller one in a week—Jing Yuan’s left to wonder how this level of growth is even possible as he watches her lounge on his sofa while he sits on the ground because there’s no space left for him on there.

“I’m spoiling you,” he’s horrified to realize one day, as he’s spooning fresh raw met for her into her bowl. Mimi purrs and rubs her head against the side of his waist. She’s as tall as his waist. She can’t be more than a few months old, Jing Yuan thinks, not that he’s any expert on feline ages. “I should feed you kibble for the rest of your life so you don’t get taller than me.”

Mimi turns huge, beseeching eyes on him.

Jing Yuan gives her the raw meat.

One of the perks, Jing Yuan supposes, about having an entire courtyard all to himself is that Mimi can roam about as much as she likes. Jing Yuan thinks that she must’ve been half potty trained already, because it doesn’t take much to teach her to go outside when she needs. Jing Yuan ends up leaving the door open most of the time so she can make her way as she pleases. Another perk, of course, of having doors that are possibly twice his weight and height, because it also allows Mimi free roam of the house when she decides that she doesn’t want to be outside.

Jing Yuan decides that he’s raising the most spoiled cat in existence, and very carefully and selectively forgets about the fact that as her sole caretaker, he’s the one spoiling her.

Mimi grows well. She reminds him of a little sticky disciple of his. The first time she’d nudged her way into coming to work with him, Jing Yuan had overheard whispers of the assistants and the secretaries about bringing his pet to work, which were quickly silenced by how Mimi had prowled around the room, curiously sniffing everything before coming to settle at Jing Yuan’s feet.

There’s a lion-sized pillow at his table now, for her to nap on. Jing Yuan shamelessly had it brought into work and had even endured Qingzu’s exasperated eyeroll for it.

Before he knows it, a year has passed, and he’s staring at the lion who is larger than him, who has taken over his bed, and he decides that drastic measures have to be taken.

It’s a pain, getting her her own bed and making her sleep in it, but Jing Yuan is nothing if not stubborn, and, slowly, most nights Mimi will retreat to her own bed in the opposite corner of the room with only a few disgruntled sighs.

The other nights—well, Jing Yuan only thanks the gods the he doesn’t wake up dying under two hundred pounds of lion.

(“How’s your grimalkin doing?” Fu Xuan thinks to ask, one day when they meet up for a semi-formal meeting between ship masters and a chance to catch up. “You’ve bothered me less since. Is it keeping you busy?”

Jing Yuan sighs, and takes a long sip of his tea.

“It’s not a grimalkin.”

Fu Xuan almost goes purple from rage.

“What?!” she sounds like she isn’t shrieking only because she’s a lady and she has standards, “That—lying seller—and the delivery person!”

“It’s a white lion,” Jing Yuan offers. “Which I’m sure would already be more valuable by weight alone.”

Fu Xuan stares at him like he’s grown another head.

“I must admit I have grown quite fond of Mimi,” Jing Yuan tells her. “The house feels less lonely, nowadays.”

Almost imperceptibly, Fu Xuan softens. Despite how she acts, Jing Yuan knows that she has a soft heart underneath it all; sometimes, she will enquire about his well-being. She’s also saved him from more than a few social blunders than he can count, purely because he was supposed to know something the original did but very inconveniently forgot at the wrong time.

“Good,” she harrumphs, and for a moment, looks inordinately pleased. And then she frowns. “You named a fully grown lion Mimi?”

Jing Yuan takes another long sip of his tea.

“In my defence,” he says. “She was not a fully grown lion when I named her.”

Fu Xuan doesn’t hit him, but she comes very, very close.)

Jing Yuan opens his eyes to darkness.

It takes him a few moments to realize that he’s standing upright, and another few to realize that the darkness is hazy. Fuzzing out a little at the edges.

He hears a voice, distorted, jumpy, like… slow internet, he thinks, the comparison coming to him slowly after years of not using it. Like it’s taking time to load.

“Shizun!” A voice says.

Jing Yuan wakes up in his own room, in the middle of the night, shivering at the feeling of cold sweat against his brow.

He was dreaming of something, he’s sure, but it slips away from it now, despite how he racks his mind searching for it, and he’s tired enough that the moment his head touches the pillow, he falls right back into it.

He doesn’t dream again.

Waking up that morning is more disorienting than anything. Mimi nudges him gently with her nose as he prepares breakfast for himself, and Jing Yuan absentmindedly pats her head as he yawns. Something trips at the edge of his subconscious, begging to be remembered, but then Jing Yuan runs his fingers through his hair, pushing his fringe back out of the way and the thought dissipates.

He goes through the rest of the day with a restless heart and wondering if he’s forgotten something important.

Those dreams happen a few more times. Jing Yuan, most of the time, doesn’t quite remember what happens in them, except for a voice calling out for him, which wakes him up as soon as he hears it. It’s only when he offhandedly mentions it in a letter to Qingque and gets a response that he realizes how stupid he’s being.

Oh, that sounds like Yanqing trying out his new dream realm powers! That’s how I described the starting sequences, anyways. It’s amazing that he got the hang of it this quickly! Despite being the first demonic skill he learned, it was supposed to take the longest to master since it’s a completely mental skill.

That being said, do you think he’ll leave the Abyss early? I heard from my demonic contacts that he really is progressing by leaps and bounds, and surely he’ll be able to find Guyun and get out in no time.

The dream-controlling abilities… how could Jing Yuan have forgotten? It was one of the core components, that, when Yanqing mastered, he used to psychologically torture his opponents and leave them as empty shells of themselves before brutally striking them down.

He only hopes that Yanqing will use it to say hello to him and not use it to haunt Jing Yuan’s dreams, even if he, quite privately, thinks that he would deserve it.

Going to sleep after that knowledge is, as expected, harder than one would think. After all, the anticipation of dreaming would actively impede the process of falling asleep, and Jing Yuan had laid awake that night, wide awake, and, in the end, given and had Mimi join him on his bed just so he’d have a warm weight to fall asleep next to.

He almost forgets about it, in the following days. An uptick of demons bothering the human realm, and so Jing Yuan gladly takes the distraction and travels to the mountains himself to take care of them, not even bothering to bring Feixiao along. It’s when he returns from that little trip that the dream returns.

“Shizun!”

Jing Yuan blinks open hazy eyes. He’s lying in a field of grass. Above him, the sky is orange. The sun’s dying rays streak across the sky and leave a wash of reds and pinks and purple. As Jing Yuan watches, the clouds in the sky form a picture. A dog, bounding across a meadow. A bird, soaring high. A cat, lazily batting a puff of cloud yarn.

A dream, he thinks. Awareness comes to him sharper than the other times he’s realized he’s in one, maybe because this is so clear. He can feel the wind on his skin. Dancing around his ears. It’s when he hears light footfalls that his suspicions are proved correct.

A dream realm.

And a pleasant one at that.

A face appears in his vision.

“Shizun,” Yanqing says, looking no older than the day Jing Yuan last saw him. Jing Yuan sits up, slowly. Lets himself feel the breeze before looking up at his disciple.

Not his disciple anymore, he thinks, wryly. Yanqing’s past that age.

“Yanqing,” he greets. “How have you been?”

Jing Yuan doesn’t know the intricacies of the dream realm. How much Yanqing is consciously controlling, and how much he isn’t. But as Yanqing flops down to sit next to him, Jing Yuan finds himself studying him, as if he can spot the changes in Yanqing’s personality. Wonders if he can see the weight of the years in the Abyss, and is unsurprised when he doesn’t find any.

This dream realm is moulded to Yanqing’s taste—he must be missing the days of when he was younger, able to spend time with Jing Yuan without worrying about anything else.

“I’ve been okay,” Yanqing says softly. Despite himself, he seems at a loss for words.

Unconsciously, Jing Yuan raises a hand. Yanqing watches him curiously, and doesn’t flinch when Jing Yuan pats him on the head.

“That’s good,” Jing Yuan returns, equally as soft. He thinks that if he speaks any louder, this whole dream will dissipate into nothing at all. “Tell this master—tell me, how you’ve been. The enemies you’ve fought.”

Yanqing smiles a little, and starts with the Hundred-Horned Hog.

Jing Yuan listens to him. Watches Yanqing gesture animatedly when he starts piecing the demons together, when he starts weaving a tale about his traversal through the abyss. There’s something enchantingly childish about the way Yanqing describes his adventures, like a child telling an impressive story where good defeats all the evil in the end.

He doesn’t know how time passes, and he doesn’t care to find out. All he knows is that at some point, Yanqing’s voice peters out and he sighs, listing a little to the side. Jing Yuan, on instinct, moves a little closer so that Yanqing can lean against him. Curls his tail around Yanqing for warmth, even as he wonders if Yanqing would still appreciate the gesture.

“I missed you, shizun,” Yanqing says, soft, in the quiet. “I… I really missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Jing Yuan tells him, unabashed, and when Yanqing doesn’t move away, wraps an arm around Yanqing’s shoulders in a side hug. “I… It wasn’t the same, without you.”

Yanqing sighs, and even in the dream, something goes loose in him. Like hearing Jing Yuan say those words made him relax, took a weight off his shoulders Jing Yuan hadn’t realized was there—hadn’t realized Yanqing was holding himself so tensely.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Yanqing says next. A quiet murmur, but there’s no doubt in his voice as he asks. Like he figured it out years ago, and is only asking for confirmation now. “That I was… half-demon. That’s why you weren’t surprised.”

“Yes.” Jing Yuan allows. “I was… I knew, since that dream we had together. After the invasion.”

Yanqing makes a considering little noise. “So… shizun didn’t have a problem with it,” he says, slowly, like he’s sounding the words out, giving Jing Yuan time to refuse. “Shizun knew. And he didn’t do anything.”

Jing Yuan hums in confirmation. When Yanqing doesn’t speak again, he tilts his head and looks down at the boy beside him, and offers, “It is as I said before—just as humans have the capability to be evil, demons have the capacity to be good.”

Yanqing looks up at him, then. There’s a look in his eyes that Jing Yuan hesitates to call determined, but it’s the same look Yanqing used to get when he was sure he would beat Jing Yuan at starchess only to lose only a few moves later. He’s not entirely sure what the outcome of that look will be, now that Yanqing is older.

“Demons—they’re protective,” Yanqing says. Despite his start, he seems to struggle with his words, but he soldiers on, “They have tribes, down in the Abyss. And then when you get to the demon realm, they have—they have cities. Sure, it’s not the prettiest, and there’s plenty of gore and blood, but… they have clans, like we have sects. They have politics. Though most of the politics are about who’s fighting who. And—they have leaders too.”

“I know,” Jing Yuan says, and laughs a little, when Yanqing looks at him with wide eyes. Jing Yuan’s memory might be interfering, but he still looks as cute as the day Jing Yuan first saw him. Jing Yuan really wants to pinch his cheek. “Silly boy,” he says fondly. “Did you think your master would have made his judgement if he hadn’t known? Of course demons have their own society. As you said, they might be more bloodthirsty than us humans, but they’re not all that different.”

Yanqing stares at him, and then he exhales. With it goes a great tension, and he offers Jing Yuan a tentative smile.

“I’ve conquered most of the Demon Realm,” he says bashfully, like it’s not an achievement in of itself. But Jing Yuan supposes that this is when the protagonist comes into power. After he’d vanquished the entire demon realm in the books, Yanqing had gone on to merge the human and demon realms, causing mass havoc and wreckage across the entire world. Jing Yuan’s just glad that Yanqing seems to be limiting himself to the Demon Realm for now.

“Is that so?” Jing Yuan says. “What do you plan to do, afterwards?” He has to ask, though. Just in case.

Yanqing looks up towards the sky. When he answers, it’s not something Jing Yuan really expects.

“I hate administrative work,” Yanqing says petulantly. Jing Yuan has to blink a few times to ensure that he’s hearing the words correctly. “Shizun, this is why demons are like humans. There’s paperwork in the Demon Realm! You’d think that it’s all fighting and violence, but they have paperwork.”

“You helped me with mine all the time,” Jing Yuan points out, amused.

“I didn’t have to make decisions,” Yanqing says, aggrieved. “Anyways, I’ve left a few trusted demons in charge. I’d really rather not think about it.”

Jing Yuan huffs a small laugh.

“I…” Yanqing starts, and then stops. Looks at Jing Yuan like he’s wondering if he should say the next words or not. “Shizun, I have to admit something.”

“Oh? By all means.”

“The borisin,” Yanqing says. “I killed them all.”

Oh, Jing Yuan thinks.

“Oh,” he says, opening his mouth to ask why, and then closes it. Really, would it be hard to guess? It was because of the Brood Lord of the Borisins that Yanqing turned out this way. While Jing Yuan is glad that Yanqing chose to channel his anger at the rest of Hoolay’s tribe instead of him, he spares a moment to think a short prayer for all those who stood in Yanqing’s way. The path of the protagonist is not easy—Jing Yuan, of all people, would know.

“I just… I couldn’t stand it,” Yanqing admits. “The way he was talking. The way he threw you around—how he hurt you. Every time I see one of them, I can only see Hoolay. Hurting you. I’m… and then I lose control of myself. I’m… you think that humans and demons aren’t so different, but, shizun… I’m one of them. I’m a monster.”

This child, Jing Yuan sighs to himself, even as he draws Yanqing tighter into his arm. One moment trying to convince Jing Yuan that not all demons were bad, and the next moment admitting he’s a monster himself. What’s Jing Yuan to do with him? And the fact that he’d focused on how Jing Yuan had been hurt, instead of fixating how Hoolay had revealed his own parentage…

“You aren’t a monster,” Jing Yuan says firmly. When Yanqing shakes his head, he draws back just a little, enough to make Yanqing look at him as he repeats. “You are not a monster, Yanqing. I know you. And anger gets the best of us, sometimes. Even I’m not exempt to it.”

Yanqing looks like he wants to argue. Jing Yuan interrupts before he does. “Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Believe me when I say this, Yanqing—you are not a monster. You are a kind, wonderful, bright boy who was wronged by a number of people, Hoolay included. I do not fault you for taking your vengeance.”

Sniffling, Yanqing draws his knees up so that he can hide his face in them, wrapping his arms around his legs to curl up into a ball. Jing Yuan has no choice but to hug him from the side, patting him on the arm gently from time to time.

“I’ve changed,” he whispers into his arms, so soft that Jing Yuan has to strain his ears to hear. “Shizun, I’ve changed so much. What if… what if I see you, and you don’t… you don’t recognize me anymore?”

There is no universe in which I wouldn’t recognize you, Jing Yuan wants to say. I have sat with you through the worst of your life. I have been by your side when you were grieving and hurting and all alone. And I have watched over you as you grew into your power and made sure nothing would ever be able to hurt you again. And I have seen you lonely with that power, grieving for something you never could have had.

He doesn’t say that, of course. What a ridiculous notion, to even think that.

“Silly boy,” Jing Yuan chides. “Do you think this master blind?”

Yanqing looks up at him mulishly, and Jing Yuan can only sigh. “There is no universe in which I wouldn’t recognize you,” Jing Yuan decides to say. The first part of his thoughts should be safe to say out loud. “Because you are you, Yanqing. Despite everything, it’s still you. I would know you anywhere.”

Yanqing sighs, a great exhale that has him pressing more into Jing Yuan’s side. He takes the weight gracefully, despite being in the dream, comforted to know that Yanqing still trusts him enough, after all he’s done.

“Sorry, shizun,” Yanqing murmurs, a few minutes afterwards. “I… this disciple…”

“There is no need for apologies,” Jing Yuan says firmly. “Not from you.”

Yanqing’s eyes grow wide. He hasn’t missed the implication of Jing Yuan’s words. “Shizun,” he begins fiercely, stopping when Jing Yuan raises a hand to interrupt.

“No, Yanqing. I must. This master apologizes for all the wrongs he’s done you. I shouldn’t have told you to brave the Abyss alone, no matter how certain I was that you could survive. You were only a child.”

“But I did,” Yanqing says vehemently. “I did survive. Shizun, it’s not your fault. You even—you even packed my luggage,” he says, exasperation leaking into his tone when Jing Yuan shakes his head in disagreement. “Shizun, I don’t blame you. Why are you blaming yourself?”

Because Jing Yuan knew. He knew the future and what it entailed and yet he was still powerless to stop it from happening. And that makes him worse, he thinks.

But he can’t say that, not to Yanqing. Not when even thinking about revealing his status to the protagonist has the system popping up with warnings about the unfinished storyline.

Jing Yuan doesn’t reply. Only lets his head fall back, tips his face up towards the sky, and closes his eyes. Feels Yanqing move closer to him, tuck himself under his arm.

The action is more comforting than it has any right to be.

Time passes, though Jing Yuan doesn’t know how long. All he wants is to stay in this safe little space, made for the two of them together.

When he opens his eyes, Yanqing is looking at him, head tilted in the way he tends to do when he wants to ask Jing Yuan a question.

“What is it?”

“You…” Yanqing says, hesitates. It’s quite unlike him, but, well, Jing Yuan hasn’t seen him for three years now. Something’s bound to change. “Years ago, you… you swallowed my blood.”

He had, hadn’t he? Right on the edge of the abyss. A hope that it would work out, somehow, a keepsake for Yanqing if he could learn of his abilities in time.

“Yes,” Jing Yuan says. “I did.”

“Were you…” Yanqing shakes his head. The next time he speaks, his voice is a surer. A statement. “You were aware. Of what it meant.”

Jing Yuan sighs. Opens his eyes to stare at the sky Yanqing’s made for him. It’s shifted to a pretty pink-orange, just like the evenings they’d wake up together in the courtyard after falling asleep taking a break from training.

“Yes,” he admits freely. “I was.”

“Why?”

The simple word is spoken, and Jing Yuan finds that he can give many answers. Because I thought it might have washed out by the time you were aware. Because I wanted you to feel safe. Because I wanted you to know that I was always there with you, at least in some part. Because I knew that if you wanted to hunt me down in revenge, you deserved it and I would take it willingly.

He says none of those things.

“Why do you think?” he says instead, just like before when they were just master and disciple, when Yanqing consulted him on problems he couldn’t work through on his own and Jing Yuan guided him to the answer instead of just telling him. And just like before, Yanqing frowns at him. Still so adorable.

“Shizun is being mean again,” he pouts.

And Jing Yuan can’t help it; he laughs. It’s not even funny, but the relief hits him all at once, seeing Yanqing act like he used to do with him. Pouting up at him like nothing’s changed, like they aren’t worlds apart and only connected by the fragile tether of Yanqing’s dream-controlling abilities.

He laughs. And laughs and laughs, and slowly his laughs turn into strange, hollowed out sobs that refuse to leave his throat properly, coming out choked and scalding. His hand clutches at his chest. He thinks he isn’t supposed to feel pain in his dreams, but the pain that rends him nearly immobile is ever-present and threatens to tear out his heart and spill it over Yanqing’s snow-white shoes.

He heaves. There’s something ugly crawling up his throat, some sort of sigh of relief and a sob of agony, all rolled into one. He feels Yanqing fluttering anxiously by his side, unsure of what do to. This is ridiculous. He’s supposed to be the mentor. He isn’t supposed to be acting like this. Even Yanqing, earlier, had not displayed this level of insanity, even as he was unsure of where Jing Yuan stood.

And then there’s a push at his arms, his legs. More forceful than Jing Yuan expects, and it makes him easy to move, for Yanqing to crawl into his lap. For Yanqing to tuck himself small into Jing Yuan’s chest and curl up right where he is, and slowly the static filters out from Jing Yuan’s head as Yanqing starts to talk.

“I’m here, shizun,” he’s saying quietly, mumbled into the front of Jing Yuan’s robes, “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’m safe, and I’m alive, and I’m not here with you but I promise I’m doing well. I promise to visit you as soon as I can. Please trust me.”

Jing Yuan lets out a great, shuddering breath. His hand finds purchase in Yanqing’s robes, splayed over his fragile shoulderblades. Not fragile anymore, Jing Yuan has to remind himself, even though Yanqing is but a tiny thing in his lap. He doesn’t know if it’s an illusion, but here, sitting like this, Jing Yuan thinks that if he were to hug Yanqing, he would disappear from sight completely.

The thought makes Jing Yuan feel safer than he would like to admit.

It takes him another few moments to breathe properly, and then a few more after that to find his voice again. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse.

“You shouldn’t have to see this master like this,” he says sorrowfully, even as he tightens his arm around Yanqing’s waist, unable to make himself let go. “This—I—apologize.”

“It’s okay,” Yanqing says firmly. His tone tells him that Jing Yuan should just give up and not argue. “Shizun, however you are, I want to see you. You don’t have to hide any part of yourself from me.”

The words make Jing Yuan ache. In lieu of a reply, Jing Yuan closes his eyes, and buries his nose into Yanqing’s golden hair, and lets himself breathe.

The next stack of letters from Qingque arrive with a little wrapped up bow. Not for the first time as he sees her scrawling handwriting, Jing Yuan wonders what kind of person Qingque was in her previous life. She speaks as if she’s a lot younger than him, which is a thought that makes him shudder.

It’s great that Yanqing is responding positively to you! Honestly, I don’t know why you were worried—it’s clear that he’d do literally anything for you.

Jing Yuan frowns and keeps reading.

I know what you’re thinking! And I know you have that disappointed look on your face! But you have to listen to me. Everyone and their mother knows that Yanqing would burn the Luofu for you if you asked. Even when I wasn’t talking with you at all, it was pretty evident.

And look, isn’t it great? Now he won’t have to go through his revenge arc and you two can live happily ever after together! I think you changed the genre by simply existing, general. Or else Yanqing would have been a lot worse off by now.

Jing Yuan doubts it’s that easy. Such is the life of a protagonist—to be hit with unexpected tragedy just because the narrative decided so.

As for the matter you inquired about last time, well… to be completely honest, general, I have absolutely no idea. And I’m not saying this because I’m lazy—it genuinely don’t know anymore. The way you described it, Yanqing isn’t hell-bent on getting revenge anymore, so I’m a little lost as to what he would continue to do. That’s something you’ll have to ask him yourself, I’m afraid.

But otherwise, I don’t think there’ll be any problems going forward. There might be external interferences, but I would like to think that Yanqing could beat all of them, especially because he’s very OP right now after his return from the abyss.

Actually, I just remembered something—the drafts for this novel. Sigh, I had a lot of them but my computer died and froze, so in a fit of anger I ended up writing what’s currently online. It makes me so sad, honestly. But if you’d like, I can try and remember some of it, especially Jing Yuan’s backstory, though I’m not sure anything from the drafts did end up in the world currently. But it might help.

Hope you’re having a pleasant day, general!

Jing Yuan sets the letter aside. Qingque’s included a few plot points she thinks they might have avoided, as Jing Yuan asked, so he can rest easy about it. But the mention of a backstory does have him curious, because it would mean that there would be some substance to the character instead of him being an unapologetic asshole.

Jing Yuan hadn’t thought he was depressed before, but he finds himself going through his days a little lighter, now that Yanqing’s made contact with him. It’s apparently evident enough that Qingzu had commented on him looking the slightest bit healthier as he’s leaving to oversee the disciples’ training for the day.

Feixiao takes one look at him and toasts him for something unintelligible before whisking him away onto another night hunt. Fu Xuan must have gotten the news from Qingque, because she only rolls her eyes and mumbles something about how she hates him under her breath before dragging him outside his house to get good together.

All in all, it’s nice.

It’s also a few weeks more before Yanqing visits him in his dreams again. Jing Yuan doesn’t begrudge him of that, of course, knowing what he does about Yanqing’s time in the Abyss and the kingdom he undoubtedly has to wrestle to get under his control, but even he can’t help going to sleep at night wondering if Yanqing will visit him again in his dreams, only to wake up disappointed the next day.

Which is something he might have to work on, he realizes one night, as Mimi lets herself be pet contentedly before stalking off into her own bed, because he knows he can’t live like this forever. Yanqing, after he returns from the Abyss, will find something greater for himself, his true calling—and Jing Yuan can’t stand in the way of that, even as Yanqing thinks now that he might want to spend more time with Jing Yuan. All good things come to an end, after all, and Yanqing’s always been a free spirit. Jing Yuan will not be the cage that binds him.

Yet, that night, as Yanqing finds him in his dreams, Jing Yuan has to hold very hard onto his resolve.

“How have you been, shizun?” Yanqing chirps. He’s fashioned them into a dream version of Jing Yuan’s courtyard this time, and Jing Yuan wonders, not for the first time, if it’s because he misses the familiarity of it, or if he just wants someone to share the space with.

“I’ve been fine,” Jing Yuan tells him, and tries to think back a little. Most of his days have blurred into one large ball of paperwork, duties, training, and occasionally leaving the ship to go hunt monsters. And, of course—“The other generals are fine, as well. General Feixiao’s retainers are still trying to wrangle her. And Lady Fu Xuan and her assistant have been swamped with work, as usual.”

Yanqing pouts. He shouldn’t look this cute, lying with his lap in Jing Yuan’s head, staring up at him with wide, gold eyes. “I asked about you,” the little brat says. “Not the other generals.”

Jing Yuan sighs, but even he can’t hide his smile has he tugs on a lock of Yanqing’s hair. “Brat,” he says, because he can. “Have some patience, hm? My days have been fine. It’s all very boring, honestly. I’m not sure what you’re expecting, you did help me with a lot of my duties.”

“But I haven’t been there for years,” Yanqing says. “Who else is helping you—did you get another retainer?”

Did Jing Yuan imagine it, or did it just get colder in the dream? “Qingzu and Yong Hai, mostly. And there’s more cleaning staff around.”

Yanqing, almost imperceptibly, relaxes. Jing Yuan doesn’t have the time to question it before the boy is speaking. “Good,” he says firmly, “The general should have more people so he doesn’t overwork himself?”

Then why did you not want me to take another retainer? Jing Yuan doesn’t ask. He hums instead, and remembers another crucial thing he might have forgotten to mention earlier.

“Oh, you should meet Mimi,” he muses. Unconsciously, his hand has moved so that he’s running his fingers through Yanqing’s hair, straight and silky under his touch. “She’d love to meet you.”

“Mimi?” Yanqing says after a beat of silence. There’s something strange to his tone that Jing Yuan doesn’t understand.

“Mhm,” Jing Yuan agrees, wondering a little if he can try to project his thoughts so that Yanqing can see her. Surely he has some degree of control over his own dream? In the end, he forgoes it. He doesn’t want to disturb the quiet peace. “I think you’d get along well with her. Fu Xuan certainly does, but don’t tell her I said that.”

“Right,” Yanqing says slowly. “And she is…”

“I think about two years old?” Jing Yuan wonders, “I actually haven’t asked Fu Xuan how old she was when she dropped Mimi off. But you know, they really do grow like weeds, so I’m busy with that. You’d love her. She reminds me of you.”

Yanqing is quiet, for a moment. When he speaks, there’s the barest hint of hurt in his voice. “But what about…”

Jing Yuan looks down at him. Without thinking about it, Jing Yuan’s finger finds his way to where Yanqing’s brows are furrowed, futilely trying to smooth them out.

“What about?” he asks, encouraging. He has no idea what Yanqing means to ask.

“Nothing,” Yanqing says, even though there is something bothering him about Jing Yuan said. It’s something he’s said, he’s sure of it. Why else would Yanqing clam up so quickly? “I—I should leave you to your sleep, shizun. Pardon me.”

And then Yanqing rises, and the dream ends, and in the middle of the night, Jing Yuan wakes up, groggy and disoriented, to the overly loud chime of the system blaring in his ears—a sound he hasn’t heard properly in years making his heart race even as he’s unable to move his limbs in the wake of his dream

[Congratulations! Protagonist’s heartbreak points: +100! Story complexity: +20%! Continue the good work, user!]

…huh?

After the very confusing dream and the more confusing system notifications, Jing Yuan doesn’t get anything for another month, but it niggles at his brain all the same.

Heartbreak points. It feels illogical that he’d be earning them now, instead of when he pushed Yanqing into the Abyss—wouldn’t it have made more sense to earn them when Jing Yuan betrayed Yanqing when he was much younger and more impressionable?

The system, useful as always, doesn’t reply to any of his prodding questions except with a cheerful please continue to improve the story, dear user! that makes him want to punch it in its non-existent face.

He’s apparently moody enough about it that even Feixiao notices and prods at him with a question the next time he visits.

“What’s got you looking so down?” she asks, pushing a cup of wine across the table. Jing Yuan drinks it thankfully. “You were looking so much happier the past few weeks. Did something happen?”

And, well, Jing Yuan can’t actually tell her, so he shrugs his shoulders instead, and says something about the more frequent reports of attacks that have been arriving at his desk lately.

“Oh, those,” Feixiao says, unusually somber. “I’ve been getting them too.”

“Is there a reason for them? I haven’t had the time, but perhaps you’ve gotten more leads?”

Feixiao shakes her head. Her ears swivel around in something that might be discontent. “None,” she tells him. “I’ve been trying to look into it, but whoever’s organizing it—if they’re organizing it at all—is very thorough in erasing their tracks.”

Jing Yuan sighs. Even though he’s meant it as a distraction, it’s a fact that’s been bothering him for a while, now, since they’re actually piling up higher and higher that he’s started sending out more disciples in groups to help quell the unrest—even travelling down to the mountains when he has the time himself.

It makes him wonder if any plot points are brewing in anticipation of the protagonist’s return from the Abyss, but Qingque just shrugs helplessly when he asks her and Fu Xuan turns up her nose at him when he asks her if she knows anything.

What a pair, those two. Jing Yuan thinks they’re perfectly suited for each other.

“Perhaps if we put our minds together, we might find something of use on your next night hunt,” Jing Yuan offers, and almost regrets it when Feixiao’s eyes light up.

“Is the Dozing General really offering to go on a night hunt with me?” she says excitedly.

Jing Yuan winces at the nickname. An unfortunate fact of circumstance and entirely his fault, because his predecessor surely would not have been graced with such a nickname. But Jing Yuan has nothing to say for himself, except that the weather is always really nice in the training fields. And in his office too. It’s not his fault he can sleep through people talking and shuffling throughout the room. And this isn’t his body so he’s going to blame it all on the person who wrote this, dammit.

(The author had laughed herself sick when she first found out. Even Fu Xuan had cracked a rare smile at the title.)

“I only think it is right to investigate what’s going on before it balloons up into something worse,” Jing Yuan says primly. “If it is within my power to eradicate, of course I should stop it.”

Feixiao presses a hand to her forehead and swoons dramatically, cackling at herself when she tips too far back and ends up on the floor. She isn’t even drunk, Jing Yuan thinks. They’ve barely finished a full jar of liquor between them.

He retires early that night, citing exhaustion and an early work day the next day, and Feixiao lets him go, but not without some snacks from Jiaoqiu, and, really, who is Jing Yuan to refuse some heavenly snacks? Even though they make his stomach shrivel up a little inside whenever he eats them—but that’s the perk of having an immortal body, he thinks. What’s the point of super healing when he can’t even enjoy the spicy snacks that were absolutely intolerable back in his original body?

That night, he dreams again. Only twice has Yanqing visited his dreams, but Jing Yuan feels familiar with it, all the same. This time, he’s in an unfamiliar room, dark and dimly lit. He’s aware, on some level, that he isn’t supposed to feel things physically in dreams, but he thinks that the room is cold. Very cold, with the way his breath comes out in a cloud of mist when he breathes.

It takes a moment for him to get acclimated to his surroundings—and another to realize that Yanqing isn’t visiting his dream so much as he’s in Yanqing’s.

On the wall hang a multitude of swords. Jing Yuan steps forward to take a closer look; it’s likely that this might be Yanqing’s bedroom, with the way the bed looks unmade and rumpled. On the table is a stack of papers that have a few unintelligible scribbles on them.

The door opens, and Yanqing stomps into the room before slamming it shut and heaving a great sigh. Jing Yuan feels it from the depths of his soul—mostly because he’d sighed that exact same sigh earlier that day when one of his disciples had faceplanted into the mud trying out a technique too hard for them.

“Long day?”

Yanqing jumps.

It seems that he hadn’t been aware he’d drawn Jing Yuan into his dream at all, because Yanqing turns around, looks at him once, and panics. He’s a flurry of apologies and bows, and Jing Yuan has to grip his arms just to stop him from trying to eject Jing Yuan from the dream again like last time.

“It’s okay,” he says gently, and then guides Yanqing with a hand pressed to his back towards the bed, where he makes him sit down. Jing Yuan grabs a chair and sits in front of him. “Would you like to talk about it, since I’m here?”

Yanqing sighs. “it’s just the same old stuff,” he says mulishly. “Wars, violence, paperwork. But… I think I have it under control. And…”

Jing Yuan hums encouragingly, and after a moment, Yanqing speaks again. “I think I can get out soon,” he says softly, as if he doesn’t believe the words. “I… I’ve found a sword, that can create portals.”

Guyun, Jing Yuan thinks. In the original story, about half of Yanqing’s actions had been influenced by the sword. His desire for revenge was amplified by the demonic nature of the sword and he’d been almost entirely corrupted by it near the end of the novel—there were levels of despair that Yanqing had gone though using it that had even Jing Yuan wincing for him—but there was always something off about it. The protagonist—or, well, the author—would mention at the most unfortunate times that Yanqing felt something from the sword, some sort of emotion, but it was always glossed over in exchange for more battle and bloodshed. It didn’t help that the sword seemed to grow stronger every time Yanqing wielded it. Jing Yuan had half-thought that the protagonist’s end would come after wielding the weapon beyond what he could handle.

It worries him, even now, but that must show on his face, because Yanqing looks at him determinedly. “Don’t worry, shizun,” he promises. There’s something bright and fiery in his eyes. If he’s claimed Guyun, if the sword has corrupted him, he doesn’t show it. “It’s just to get out. And then… and then afterwards, I can destroy it.”

Jing Yuan doesn’t know how easy it’ll be, considering that it’s the most powerful sword in the entire universe, but he encourages the idea anyways. One less cursed sword, the better.

“That’s good,” he says instead. Pauses for a moment, unsure.

Yanqing seems to be in the same boat as him. His eyes flick towards Jing Yuan, towards the ground, biting his lip like he wants to say something but he’s unsure about how to say it.

But despite being an all-powerful demon lord, Yanqing still doesn’t have the same amount of patience Jing Yuan has, so he’s the first to break.

“If—when I come back,” he says. Swallows. “Do I… where do I go?”

And Jing Yuan is floored.

Because this is the protagonist. This is the person who, above all else, had the entire world to himself, could do anything he put his mind to, and didn’t care about what other people thought. This was the person who was supposed to bathe the whole world in blood and be relentless and remorseless about it.

And yet, looking at him now, sitting on a bed with his feet dangling off the edge and his head hung low between his shoulders, all Jing Yuan can think to do is get up and wrap his arms around Yanqing, holding him tight—no matter if he can actually feel it or not.

Yanqing’s arms come up to wrap around him, and he buries his face into Jing Yuan’s stomach. He doesn’t cry, not quite, but he’s much too still for someone with so much energy.

“Oh, Yanqing,” Jing Yuan says. It’s easier to talk to the wall as a lump forms in his throat. “I’m sorry, if I ever made you think my doors would not be open for you. You can come to me anytime, Qing’er. I promise my home will always be yours, too. Nothing will ever change that.”

Yanqing doesn’t cry. But he grips Jing Yuan just the slightest bit tighter and doesn’t let go for a long, long time.

“Here you go. Reports I received from the northern border. Apparently we can add two mysterious swordsmen to the list of confounding circumstances,” Feixiao tells him the morning he arrives on the Yaoqing so they can take a starskiff down to the mountains together.

It’s just the two of them this time. Apparently having retainers or guards or disciples were “overkill” for two generals going night hunting together. Jing Yuan begs to differ.

“I’ve heard of them too,” Jing Yuan says. “I must admit I came on this night hunt partly of my own curiosity.”

“Oh?” Feixiao grins at him. “What has our general so curious that he must leave the safety of his own house?”

“Don’t make me sound like a recluse,” Jing Yuan says, and has a stray thought hoping that Yong Hai will drop by his house to feed Mimi, which is a concern he has because he really does have some beautiful plants in his garden and he’s seen Mimi looking at them appreciatively just a little too many times to be comfortable. “It’s peculiar, isn’t it? None of the previous reports have said anything similar to this. I don’t think they’ll be the culprits, but if they’re in the same area, it wouldn’t hurt to ask then anything.”

“Right on, general,” Feixiao says, and shoves a bag of snacks into his arms that Jing Yuan munches on happily as they wait for the starskiff to land.

On the ground, it doesn’t take them long to start racing across rooftops, and then, when the scenery changes, the treetops. Jing Yuan might not be as adept at qinggong as Feixiao is, but he also didn’t become one of the Arbiter-Generals for nothing, and he might be lazy but his paranoia has not let him slack off on his training.

A few hours later finds them at nearing the location where the swordsmen had been spotted.

“It might be easier to track them down that we thought,” Feixiao says wryly, over the wind.

She has a point. Even as they near the forest, there’s the sound of clashing blades. It only takes them a few more minutes before they’re landing in the cover of some treetops, both of them taking opportune positions to attack if they so need.

Which… doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, because the two swordsmen are busy fighting each other.

The more Jing Yuan watches, however, the more confused he becomes. The two of them are tangled in a fierce duel. From what he can see, one of them holds what looks like a greatsword. He’s dressed in dark robes. Even from this distance, Jing Yuan can see the bandages wrapped around his arms and neck, making him wonder why he’s fighting so ferociously.

The other man, dressed in lighter colors of teal and white and using a spear, however, seems to be on the defense. He looks like he’s only blocking the first swordsman’s blows—but what’s strangest for Jing Yuan is the fact that he has short hair, curling around the nape of his neck. It takes him a moment to remember that he’s in a novel and to shake away the intense déjà vu that rolls through his head at the sight—by this world’s standards, the cultivator must have done something bad to have had all his hair cut off.

And then, in Jing Yuan’s single moment of distraction, something surprising happens; the short-haired man, in a single swipe, forces the other man back, and with the distance he creates between them, jabs his spear into the other’s stomach. Even Feixiao doesn’t have the time to intercept it.

Jing Yuan winces.

And look, it’s not as if he hasn’t become used to sights like this after living in this world for however many years, but it still makes him mentally grimace a little to be hearing something like this up close and personal.

The swordsman looks at the spear in his stomach. He says something Jing Yuan can’t hear to the other man, and then he’s slumping forwards, losing consciousness, and it’s only then that Jing Yuan remembers that he’s probably supposed to, like, intervene.

Fortunately, Feixiao gets there first, jumping down lightly behind the short-haired swordsman and making him turn around. It at least gives Jing Yuan the opportunity to make his own descent, though the swordsman doesn’t turn around to look at him just yet.

“What have we here?” Feixiao says. Her voice would be cheerful, if Jing Yuan were not one of the few people to recognize that she’s holding herself tense—surprisingly, the remaining swordsman seems to realize this as well.

“This one does not mean to impose,” he says carefully, gathering his hands and leaning forward in a bow, “But this matter is between me and… this man. Please do not interfere.”

“I think the fact that you are fighting in Xianzhou territory rather makes it our business,” Feixiao says cheerfully. Jing Yuan can’t see the look in his face, but he notices the way the man tenses up at the mention of the Xianzhou Alliance. Someone on the run, perhaps?

“I… apologize,” the man says slowly. His voice, now that Jing Yuan’s hearing it, seems oddly familiar. Maybe it’s similar to someone he’d known back in his original world, though he can’t quite place who. “I had not realized we’d crossed over into Xianzhou territory. We’ll just be taking our leave now—”

“That fast?”

The voice doesn’t belong to either Feixiao or the swordsman, and Jing Yuan watches in something like fascinated horror as the man who’d been stabbed in the stomach sits up from where he’d been lying prone on the ground. The hole in his stomach is closing up already.

The other swordsman turns around, and Jing Yuan gets a semi-good look at his face; resigned, as if he’d been prepared for his… enemy? to rise again.

Jing Yuan most definitely isn’t, that’s for sure. You didn’t tell me there were zombies in this universe, he yells a little hysterically at the Qingque in his mind. Unsurprisingly, it does not make him feel any better.

What happens next is… very weird.

Both of them—both of the swordsmen take one look at him and freeze. Their following reactions are wildly different.

The short-haired one’s eyes widen. Something passes across his face, something like regret and anxiety, just fast enough that Jing Yuan barely catches it. He’s the first to realize that the two of them are being flanked by Jing Yuan and Feixiao from the first and back.

The other one, the one who just miraculously revived himself, only looks at Jing Yuan with a crazed gleam in his eye. He doesn’t say anything—his mouth only curves up into a grin so wide and manic Jing Yuan wonders if the first swordsman might be right in trying to kill him. Jing Yuan shudders at the thought of him being an unkillable clown like in one of the horror movies he used to watch.

“State your names, cultivators,” Feixiao says from behind them. Her axe is held lightly over her shoulder, ready to be used at a second’s notice. “You are on Xianzhou territory. Abide by our rules.”

The short-haired one is the first to speak. “Dan Heng,” he says, not taking his eyes off Jing Yuan, who looks back at him in return despite how awkward he feels at the prolonged eye contact. And then, like he knows his enemy isn’t going to introduce himself, tacks on a reluctant, “and this is Ren.”

For a moment, there is silence as none of them speak. Over Dan Heng’s shoulder, Jing Yuan makes eye contact with Feixiao. Whether they try to apprehend them or not is up to her, though he doesn’t really want to get into a fight with a man who can get, y’know, revived from being dead.

What surprises them, however, is when the long-haired swordsman speaks.

“Of five people,” Ren says. His voice is raspy. Jing Yuan is reminded of the one singer from his original world that one of his younger coworkers had shown him. “Three must pay the price. You are not one of them, Jing Yuan.”

Oh, good, Jing Yuan thinks hysterically, I don’t even know what I bought!!!

And then he doesn’t really have the time to think anymore, because quick as lightning, Ren twists around to jab his sword into where Dan Heng would have been only a few seconds ago if Jing Yuan hadn’t gotten to him first. He doesn’t look back as he takes a hold of Dan Heng and leaps onto a treetop, leaving Feixiao with Ren—they’re probably much better suited for each other in combat, anyways.

He only touches down on the ground again when he’s sure that they’re a reasonable distance away from Ren, panting a little in his haste.

“There you go,” he says quietly, as Dan Heng pats himself down and nods at him in thanks. “I’m not sure what was happening between you and him, but this should give you a head start.”

Dan Heng blinks at him. A look of confusion passes over his face, like Jing Yuan’s words are a mystery to him. Squints a little—it’s not hard to see where his eyes are going towards—Jing Yuan’s ears, twitching on top of his head. The movement is so subtle that Jing Yuan wouldn’t have noticed were he not taking in Dan Heng’s every action, but because he is, he notices Dan Heng tilt his head to the side and flick his eyes down towards where Jing Yuan’s tail would be.

“Thank… you,” he says slowly. He looks like he wants to say more, but is holding his tongue.

“I’ll just have to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind,” Jing Yuan says. “Anything you’ve seen about the abominations of abundance would be helpful. You do know what those are, yes?”

“Yes,” Dan Heng says faintly. He does look like he’s ready to faint any second now, but he does make an effort to answer Jing Yuan’s question. Out of politeness, perhaps. “Um, I was tracking a few down, actually. I did manage to kill a few demons, but I crossed paths with Ren and, well. You know how it is.”

Jing Yuan very much does not know how it is, but he’s not going to unpack that anytime soon. In fact, he thinks, he should just throw out the whole suitcase while they’re at it. He doesn’t think he’s going to get any more information out of Dan Heng anyways, and his gut’s telling him that that’s probably the case.

“Right,” he says. “Of course. Well, you’re free to go then. Just make sure you fight… outside, next time. Thank you for your help with the abominations.”

And with that, Jing Yuan turns to trace his steps back to the clearing he left Feixiao in, hoping that she and Ren haven’t accidentally razed the entire forest to the ground in his absence.

He’d hate to have to replace a whole forest, especially when Fu Xuan would judge him and not Feixiao for it.

Thankfully, miraculously, the forest is still standing when Jing Yuan touches down on the ground once more. Feixiao is there, cleaning the blood off her axe, and she looks up when he makes an inquisitive noise.

“There you are,” she says.

“Here I am. Where’s Ren?”

Feixiao makes a face. “Escaped. Said he didn’t want to waste time fighting with me. Shame.”

“At least you didn’t destroy the forest,” Jing Yuan offers.

“At least,” Feixiao agrees. “And besides, I think they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Jing Yuan sighs. Despite having let Dan Heng go, there’s still something niggling at the back of Jing Yuan’s brain. Something that tells him he should know more than this, that there’s something about the way Dan Heng had looked at him that has Jing Yuan on edge, like he’s supposed to know something but doesn’t.

Oh, well. Maybe he can claim a traumatic brain injury and subsequent amnesia? Those don’t really seem hard to get, especially in the setting he’s in.

“Come on,” Feixiao says, standing up and letting her axe dematerialize. “We should at least look for some abominations to kill.”

They do find some, a nest of them after looking for a few hours, and between the two of them, make quick work of it. Jing Yuan even manages to catch a trailing abomination and cut off its route to wherever it’s going, and only needs a spiritual energy transfer from Feixiao once in the process.

Afterwards, he separates ways with her to travel to the Xianzhou Xuling.

It might be a good time as any to update both Fu Xuan and Qingque on the situation, he thinks. However, the scene he stumbles onto in their office almost makes him feel bad for interrupting—Qingque is lying with her head on Fu Xuan’s lap while the Master Diviner is looking through some reports. Qingque is something inaudible, but it makes Fu Xuan laugh quietly.

It's a few moments of Jing Yuan leaning against the doorway before they notice him. Qingque is the first to do so, when her eyes slide over to where he’s watching them amusedly. She sits up so hard she hits her head on the low table and goes right back down, making Fu Xuan frown and rub at the spot on her head where she got hit.

Jing Yuan wants to coo.

“General!” Qingque yelps. “I—What are you doing here?!”

Fu Xuan levels him with a look that promises twelve layers of pain if he so much as hints towards how he found them, and so, Jing Yuan shrugs.

“I’ve just returned from a night hunt with the Merlin’s Claw,” he says, “I’d like to make a direct report. Of course, that is—if the Master Diviner is not too busy to receive me?”

Fu Xuan gestures towards the other side of the low table, and Jing Yuan sinks into the cushion gratefully. Beside him, Qingque fixes her hair with a pout, and then leaves with the excuse of getting tea and snacks ready for all of them.

“Your report,” Fu Xuan prompts, when  Jing Yuan doesn’t speak for a few minutes. “It sounds eventful.”

“It was,” Jing Yuan says slowly, trying to gather his thoughts. He’s not sure where to start. “Perhaps it might be best if we wait for Qingque-guniang to return.”

Fu Xuan raises an eyebrow. “Is this about… your original world?”

For someone who’s been told that they’re a fictional character, Fu Xuan seems to have taken it in stride—but Jing Yuan isn’t really surprised by that fact. Out of all the people, she does seem like she’d be best suited to it.

“Yes,” Jing Yuan says, and rethinks. “Maybe. I’m not too sure, yet.”

Qingque returns in quick order after Fu Xuan nods an affirmation.

“Here you go! Lotus tea and honey cakes.”

“Thank you,” Jing Yuan murmurs, and takes a small sip of the drink, setting it down with a gentle clink as he gathers himself to speak. “Have you, perchance, heard of the names Dan Heng and Ren?”

Qingque doesn’t spit out her own tea all over the Master Diviner, but it comes quite close.

That being said, she does choke on it quite a lot with the effort not to spit it up, and Jing Yuan watches with a small grimace as Fu Xuan slaps her back. The scene would be funny if the reaction isn’t setting off alarm bells in Jing Yuan’s head.

“Where,” Qingque rasps when she recovers, and coughs to clear her throat. “Where did you hear those names?”

“I… met them,” Jing Yuan says slowly, apprehension creeping up his spine when Qingque’s eyes grow wide. His report is succinct. “They were fighting each other, in the north. General Feixiao and I went to that area to clear out some abominations—I let Dan Heng get away, and the general said Ren escaped after she tried to engage in a fight.”

“Oh,” Qingque says a little faintly. “Oh no.”

Well, if that isn’t ominous.

“Oh no?” Jing Yuan repeats. He shares a look with Fu Xuan, who looks like she’s preparing for the worst headache of her life. Jing Yuan should probably be doing the same.

“I didn’t…” Qingque says, and then she gets up and starts pacing. That’s how Jing Yuan knows it’s bad; Qingque would never be moving physically otherwise. “I didn’t know the drafts made it in! Oh no, this is so bad…”

Jing Yuan balks at the idea that this might be something even worse than the original published novel that even the author herself is saying it.

“Why is it bad,” Jing Yuan asks, bracing himself for the answer. “And why did the both of them look like they knew me?”

Qingque turns on him, then, eyes blazing. “Because they do!”

“Oh no,” Jing Yuan repeats faintly.

“They’re your tragic backstory!” Qingque says, pointing a finger at him accusingly. And then her eyes grow round. “But if they’re here, then… then everything else from the drafts is also going to be true, isn’t it?”

“That makes sense,” Jing Yuan says helpfully. “Why, does something bad happen?”

“It’s not,” Qingque struggles with her words. “It’s not that something bad happens. It means that it’s already happened, but since I didn’t actually write anything about the outcome of it, I don’t know what’ll happen? It could be over, or it could be very, very messy.”

“First things first,” Fu Xuan says, cutting in. “What did happen? Perhaps you should start from there so you can figure out what to do it.”

“Right,” Qingque says, sitting down with a fwump. “So, basic Xianzhou history right, they’ve been at war with the abominations and the borison forever. So this one happens about… in the middle of it, I think. You’ve heard about the High Cloud Quintet?”

Fu Xuan nods. Jing Yuan shakes his head.

They both stare at him like he’s grown an extra head.

“What?”

“You aren’t aware of who the High Cloud Quintet is?”

“Am I supposed to?”

“I would hope so,” Fu Xuan says. “You were one of them.”

What.

“Pardon?”

“Oh, he doesn’t know,” Fu Xuan mumbles under her breath. “Why don’t you know?”

“I—no one told me?” Jing Yuan says, bewildered. “And I’ve gone through all the original’s books. There’s no mention of it at all.”

“That’s not surprising,” Qingque points it. “If you—he—were the only one literally left alive out of your group of friends, wouldn’t you want to forget about it all too?”

“Was it that bad? There was a war, right?”

Qingque winces. “I mean. Out of the five, one died in a starskiff crash, one got cursed, one was forced into a molting rebirth, and the other went insane from being infected by mara. You tell me.”

“And the last one?”

Perhaps he shouldn’t have asked, Jing Yuan thinks, as Qingque looks at him wryly. “He abused the protagonist because he was a jealous and petty man?”

“Ouch,” Jing Yuan says.

Qingque takes a deep breath. “Oh, this is… this is worse than I thought,” she bemoans, “This means that the protagonist’s birth made it in!”

“He had to have been born at some point, right?” And honestly, Jing Yuan’s never understood why the protagonist’s origin was never expanded on in the novel when it could be used to gather pity points for the protagonist and fixate even more on his sad backstory. “Or was he… created? Or something?”

Qingque grimaces. “Something like that,” she says. “Okay, okay. So the basic notes are that the High Cloud Quintet was made up of five high-standing cultivators: Jingliu, the Sword Champion and the General and High Elder of Bai Zhan, Dan Feng, the High Elder of Qing Jing, Yingxing, the Furnace Master of the Zhuming, Baiheng, a Qiong Ding senior navigator, and Jing Yuan, head disciple of Bai Zhan and Jingliu’s apprentice.”

Jing Yuan starts. He recognizes the name Jingliu, because Yanqing had mentioned it once in passing when he said he was aiming to be the Sword Champion, but he hadn’t investigated any further than that. Dan Feng sounds eerily similar to Dan Heng, too.

“This is all information that’s kept under wraps,” Fu Xuan tells him. “You might be able to find a few history books, but very rarely are they accurate—most of the ships rallied together to destroy the history of that era, when I was an apprentice myself.”

“So the five of them, great friends, right?” Qingque continues. “But as I said, there was a war against Shuhu, who was quite a powerful abomination of abundance—and Baiheng, as a navigator and scout, often went into dangerous situations by herself. She was always lucky, but one day her luck ran out.

“Dan Feng and Yingxing were the ones most affected by her death,” Qingque says, unusually somber. “And so they broke one of the cardinal rules of the Vidyadhara lineage, using the Transmutation Arcanum, together with Shuhu’s flesh, to revive her. But it failed, and it created an abomination. In the aftermath, High Elder Dan Feng was forced into a moulting rebirth, and Yingxing bore the brunt of the backlash of using Shuhu’s flesh and it turned him immortal. And uh, little bit manic.”

Jing Yuan would like to say a lot manic, but he keeps his mouth shut.

“And so Dan Feng was locked in the Shackling Prison for most of it,” Qingque continues, gesturing widely with her hands as she speaks. “So it fell to Jingliu to kill both the abomination and get Yingxing under control. And she did! She killed the abomination, and Yingxing escaped the Xianzhou, but because of the trauma he’d gone through, he was set on getting revenge against her and Dan Feng for their ‘crimes’. That’s why you saw him fighting with Dan Heng earlier. On that note, after his moulting rebirth, Dan Feng turned into Dan Heng, and he spent a while in the prison before escaping and roaming the earth as a wandering cultivator. Their story is very much chasing each other down until the ends of infinity, and all that.”

Jing Yuan stares blankly at her, and Qingque seems to come back to herself, ducking her head a little in embarrassment. Fu Xuan sips pointedly at her tea.

“ANYWAYS,” she continues loudly. “So Jingliu kills Yingxing again and again, and because of that and the abomination she’s cursed with mara too, and goes kind of insane and starts slaughtering her own people, so Jing Yuan defeats her in combat and puts her under a mountain! And uh, succession crisis and all that, so that’s why despite being a Bai Zhan disciple, Jing Yuan ends up as the Luofu general and Qing Jing High Elder, because Marshal Hua told him to!”

Qingque’s breathing heavily as she finishes speaking, and she gratefully takes the teacup Jing Yuan slides across the table for her to drink.

In the silence, Fu Xuan lets out a sigh. “So that’s what happened,” she murmurs, seeming to think over the new information she’s received while Jing Yuan goes through a full-blown 404 error crashout. “I could never divine the details of that event, but if that’s how it went…”

Qingque nods emphatically. “It was actually supposed to be really sad! A whole arc about war and the terrible things you do in the face of death and the revenge and how it twists you into a horrible person! And it was supposed to parallel the protagonist’s own descent into a hell of his own making!” She sighs despondently. “But my bills…”

Jing Yuan reaches over and pats her gently on the shoulder. What else can he say? He’s having a hard enough time taking this in as it is.

“But…” Fu Xuan says, seeming to remember something. Jing Yuan’s glad she’s here to be level-headed for the both of them. “You said something about Yanqing’s birth? How did that happen?”

“Oh, that,” Qingque says. “Well, when Dan Feng and Yingxing created the abomination, something else also came out of it—they and Jingliu were just too focused on the abomination itself to notice. So, uh, well, Jing Yuan got there in the aftermath, he was the only one who noticed the… half-demon, half-dragon… egg.”

Jing Yuan stares at her disbelievingly for a moment.

And then he sighs and pinches his nose.

“Really?” he says, because he’s had enough on his hands trying to raise a half-demon, he’s not sure how he’s going to do the same thing when the half-demon is also half-dragon. Does that make Yanqing not human at all?

“Really!” Qingque says brightly, before she deflates when she realizes that Jing Yuan meant it sarcastically. “He’s technically still human, just a little bit… how to say, his base is a reincarnated Vidyadhara. But because he was part of a product of Shuhu, who was one of the main Emanators of the Abundance tribe, he got the heavenly demonic powers that they did.”

Jing Yuan, not for the first time in Qingque’s presence, finds himself speechless. But from what she’s saying, the rest of the history is unfolding before his eyes. Jing Yuan thinks he’s beginning to understand the magnitude of what the protagonist had been going through.

“And!” Qingque continues, obliviously completing Jing Yuan’s train of thought. “Of course, Jing Yuan was the only one left, so he took the egg in, except that he couldn’t really give it away after it hatched, so he put it in the sect. There was supposed to be a whole thing about his conflicted feelings and how he tried and failed to be a good parent to the only piece of his friends that was left with him, but in the end, failed to do so, just like his friends had failed him years ago.”

Qingque, as she tells the story, sounds quite proud of herself for coming up with her story, but the moment she meets Jing Yuan’s eyes, she deflates.

“Of course, all that really didn’t matter when all my readers were bloodthirsty emo teenagers who only wanted to see death and war,” she mutters darkly. “I don’t even know how they had the money to pay for extra chapters when they were probably all just freeloading off their parents.”

Jing Yuan, very tactfully, chooses not to respond to that statement. Everything Qingque said makes sense, somehow. It feels like some sort of karmic retribution that the original goods would not be able to stand seeing the child formed by his oldest friends. Abusing him about it does sound irrational, but Jing Yuan supposes that any type of abuse rarely ever is.

“Is there anything else I should be aware about?” Jing Yuan asks tiredly. Honestly, all he wants is to go home and take a nap.

“Not that I can remember right now,” Qingque offers. “But if I do remember anything, I’ll write to you about it!”

“Great.”

Jing Yuan jumps when the sound of a notification flashes through his head.

[Story alignment 50% complete! Congratulations to both users for fixing the story! Please keep up the good work!]

Judging from her startled jump, Qingque has received the same notification. Fu Xuan looks between them with her eyebrow raised.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jing Yuan tells her, and turns to Qingque. “On that note, what are your true intentions? It might be helpful to know which direction you wanted the story to go in before the whole… catastrophe happened.”

At that, Qingque starts to steadily blush a bright red. She squeaks out something unintelligible.

“Sorry, what?”

“She wants a happy ending,” Fu Xuan says, with the voice of someone who’s had a horrible realization, and turns towards Qingque, who’s taken to hiding her face behind her hands. “That’s why you’re reading all those cheesy romance novels all the time, isn’t it? You actually want a happy ending?”

Qingque wails.

Jing Yuan has his answer.

“Alright,” he says, standing up and leaving them to contend with one another. “Thank you for the information, shizhi. It has been most enlightening. I will be taking my leave. Master Diviner.”

Fu Xuan waves him off with a hand, and then Jing Yuan starts making his way back to the Luofu.

He gets home in a haze, turning all the new information in his head around, looking at it from different angles. It makes a lot of sense, all the things Qingque said—all that was supposed to happen but couldn’t. It would have, admittedly, made for a more compelling story if she’d been permitted to write everything out.

The only thing, Jing Yuan thinks, that’s still bothering him a little from the original novel is the identity of Yanqing’s final lover. There are too many unknowns for him to properly try and find out who it is to prevent their death.

But with the way the plot is going, it might not even happen at all. Qingque has mentioned several times that nothing was going the way she expected it to.

Tired and weary from the day he’s head, Jing Yuan sighs as he steps into his gardens. The night is silent save for the wind rustling the trees. Despite himself, Jing Yuan relaxes as he steps into his house. Fictional world or not, he’s become a little too comfortable living in luxury.

There’s a light on in his house.

Jing Yuan frowns. He’s sure he hadn’t left anything on when he left the house—who could have gotten in? The only other people who have an access key to the mansion are the cleaners, and they’re not scheduled to arrive for another few days.

Tensing up slightly at the thought of someone trying to rob his house, Jing Yuan lightens his steps and walks into the living room. There’s the sound of someone moving around—in the kitchen, of all places. He’d have thought that they’d at least try to go for the treasury.

Frowning, Jing Yuan approaches the kitchen, coming to a stop in the doorway.

He has to pinch himself to make sure that he’s not dreaming again.

Because—standing there is Yanqing, with his back to Jing Yuan, with a white apron tied around his waist. Jing Yuan has to pinch himself discreetly to make sure he hasn’t fallen into one of his dreams of the past. He’d know that blond hair anywhere. Yanqing’s form as he stirs the pot, leaning forward to taste it—Jing Yuan is thrown back into his past, where he’d come home to exactly this sight after a long day and how he’d felt warm all over, not from the soup but from the care and devotion with which Yanqing treated him.

But then Yanqing turns around, and Jing Yuan is hit with the fact that it’s not so simple anymore.

Because there, on Yanqing’s forehead, is a dark zuiyin that denotes him as a Heavenly Demon, an antithesis to Jing Yuan’s kind, so far apart from a righteous cultivator and tainted with Abundance blood that he should have struck him down where he stands.

Jing Yuan doesn’t do any of that.

Instead, he watches as Yanqing’s eyes grow wide at the sight of him first, and then slowly soften into something like a shy smile.

“Shizun,” he murmurs, and oh, how Jing Yuan has missed his voice—dreams really weren’t the same, couldn’t compare to the real thing—and before he knows it, he’s stepping forward inelegantly, reaching out towards Yanqing almost as if he were in a dream.

And then his fingers press against Yanqing’s shoulder, and Jing Yuan distantly realizes that Yanqing hasn’t really grown at all. If it were not for the mark on his forehead, Jing Yuan would believe that he’s been sent back into the past, into a tiring day where he could come home and enjoy Yanqing’s cooking.

But Yanqing looks up at him with the same eyes, the same blond hair, and Jing Yuan can’t help it—

He drags Yanqing into a hug so tight he feels the breath whoosh out of his disciple. Jing Yuan holds him so tight, afraid that he’ll disappear if he lets go. He can’t begin to imagine what the original felt, seeing Yanqing like this, but what Jing Yuan’s feeling now is purely independent of any thoughts or feelings he might have had about Yanqing being the protagonist, or the child of a demonic dragon, or even the remnants of his supposed old friends.

No, all he knows now is that Yanqing is safe, wrapped up securely in his arms again, and Jing Yuan buries his nose into Yanqing’s fine hair, and breathes.

Yanqing’s arms come up to hold him in reciprocation too. Jing Yuan can feel the lean strength of his arms even through the layers of cloth, and it’s another stark reminder that Yanqing’s changed too.

But it doesn’t matter.

“Shizun,” Yanqing says, voice soft and muffled. “I’m home.”

Jing Yuan lets out a wet laugh and squeezes his eyes shut. “You’re home,” he repeats. “I… Good. That’s good, Yanqing. I’m glad you’re here.”

And Yanqing’s hands fist in the back of his robes, and Jing Yuan finds himself wishing to never part.

Later, after Yanqing has taken the pot off the stove and served them both a heaping of lotus root and pork rib soup, Jing Yuan takes the time to properly look at him.

Yanqing had always been a capricious boy; but it seems that he’s grown into his own features, sitting up a little straighter. Even as he relaxes, Jing Yuan can see the line of his body taut and prepared for anything.

How they grow up, Jing Yuan finds himself thinking wistfully.

They eat in silence. Jing Yuan finds that he doesn’t have much to say, with all the new revelations in mind, and it’s not like he can share those with Yanqing. In the end, he just lets Yanqing update him on life in the Demon Realm and how things are working out down there.

“Do you not need to go back?” Jing Yuan wonders, when Yanqing brings up his plan to destroy Guyun once again. “The Demon Realm…”

“Will survive without me. And I…” Yanqing looks away, looking a little shifty. Jing Yuan’s just about to ask, when he continues. “I’ve learned how to make my own portals.”

What the fuck, Jing Yuan thinks. He didn’t know how to do that in the original novel?! What kind of OP nonsense…

“That’s good,” he says, instead of verbalizing his thoughts.

Yanqing ducks his head, bashful, like he isn’t the fearsome leader of the Demon Realm, and Jing Yuan can’t resist reaching forward to pat his head gently. He’s missed the action more than he realizes.

“Shizun…” Yanqing says a little hesitantly. At Jing Yuan’s hum to continue, he gets a determined look on his face. “I’m ready to meet her.”

Jing Yuan blinks. “Who?”

Yanqing blinks right back at him. “Mimi?” he says, sounding unsure. “You did mention her…”

“Oh,” Jing Yuan says, delighted by the fact that Yanqing remembered. “Of course, you must meet her. Come, we should feed her dinner. She must be starving.”

They wrap up their own dinner quickly, though Yanqing’s strangely silent throughout it. Jing Yuan doesn’t think too much of it, and pulls out a pre-prepared container of raw meat for Mimi. When Yanqing sees it, his eyes widen a little, and his brows furrow, but when Jing Yuan asks him what’s wrong, he only shakes his head and urges Jing Yuan to lead him.

The house is quiet, so Jing Yuan goes straight outside, and of course, that’s where he finds her, lazing in the courtyard, stretched across a boulder he’d specially had to have carried into his garden because she was despondent from the lack of it. She does perk up at the sound of his arrival, however, which Jing Yuan knows is only because he’s holding food and not because she actually loves him, the little brat.

“Yanqing, meet Mimi the grimalkin,” Jing Yuan says, with a slight grin. He really should explain the joke to Yanqing, except that his disciple really just looks too cute looking at him with wide, dubious eyes like he’s wondering if Jing Yuan’s finally gone insane. He feels like it—doesn’t even try to stop his own tail from swaying from side to side in happiness. Jing Yuan runs a hand through Mimi’s fur gently as he sets the container on the ground for her to enjoy at her leisure. “Mimi, meet Yanqing, my disciple.”

Mimi ignores them both in favour of her food.

Jing Yuan shakes his head with a small laugh, and turns around to say something to Yanqing, only to find him staring at Mimi with wide eyes.

“This is Mimi?” Yanqing says, when Jing Yuan nudges him gently. Stares up at him with wide golden eyes. “You were talking about a lion?”

“Was that not obvious?” Jing Yuan wonders. He could have sworn he’d mentioned it somewhere. “Besides, what else could it be?”

Yanqing lets out a choked laugh that’s half relief and half amusement, and he doesn’t say anything more. Only buries himself into Jing Yuan’s side against the cold night sky and hangs on, and doesn’t let go.

“Come,” Jing Yuan says gently, some amount of time later, rubbing his hand on Yanqing’s back. “It’s late. You must be tired.”

Yanqing peers up at him, with that look in his eyes that says he’s going to be smart-mouthed little shit. “Shizun,” he says, “Of course I’m not tired—but shizun needs the rest, doesn’t he? Or else he might fall asleep in the middle of the day…”

“How do you—you know what? I don’t want to know. Please excuse this old man for wanting a good sleep.”

Yanqing snorts and lets himself be led through the house. Mimi trots after then contentedly as Jing Yuan deposits Yanqing in front of his room.

“There’s…” he hesitates, unsure of whether Yanqing would appreciate the fact that Jing Yuan’s always kept his room neat and tidy, awaiting his return, and then thinks, fuck it. “There’s some old clothes of yours, if you want. I’ve kept everything as it is, but if you need something, you can ask. Good—goodnight, Yanqing.”

Jing Yuan takes a step back, ready to leave to his own rooms, when Yanqing catches him by the sleeve.

He turns around.

Yanqing has a strangely determined look on his face, one that usually doesn’t bode well for Jing Yuan, because it means he’s going to dig his heels in until he gets what he wants.

“Actually, shizun,” he says. Bites his lip and looks elsewhere, but his gaze eventually return to Jing Yuan’s, determined and fiery. “I do—need something.”

“Hm?”

“This disciple… this disciple would like to sleep, with—in your room, tonight.”

Jing Yuan blinks. Out of all the requests he’d been expecting, this was not it. But where normally he wouldn’t have thought before agreeing, something flashes in his mind that makes him hesitate.

“Yanqing,” he says slowly, gently, trying his hardest not to sound like he’s letting Yanqing down. “You shouldn’t…”

“Please,” Yanqing says, and oh, gods, is he going to cry? Jing Yuan could barely handle crying children before, how is he supposed to handle a crying demon protagonist?! “I just… I just got you back, shizun. I couldn’t—this one couldn’t bear to part, and I’m… worried that this is all just a dream.”

This boy, Jing Yuan thinks exasperatedly, really… knowing where to strike Jing Yuan where it hurts. For a moment, he wonders if he’s accidentally given Yanqing too much power—the power of knowing him, just by letting him live with him for a few years.

And then Yanqing is blinking up at him with wide, wet eyes, and Jing Yuan decides that he doesn’t care.

“Fine,” he grits out, and turns around to step towards his room. Behind him, a set of feet and another set of paws follow happily. “But if Mimi takes your spot on the bed, there’s nothing I can do.”

Yanqing hums happily, all traces of sadness gone, as he excuses himself to prepare himself for bed while Jing Yuan tends to himself, washing off the grime and the dust of the day. By the time he’s done, Yanqing’s already sitting on his bed in sleep clothes, with Mimi purring up a storm with her head in Yanqing’s lap.

Unbelievable, Jing Yuan thinks, so fondly it hurts. Does the protagonist have secret animal charming powers as well?

“Shizun!” Yanqing brightens. And then he turns bashful. “Shizun, if… you would allow, could this disciple brush your tail?”

As if reminded back into existence, Jing Yuan’s ears twitch.

“If I say no, will you listen?” he says, amusement colouring his tone when Yanqing blushes a light pink. “Then fine. I suppose it’s been a while since I did it.”

A while translate to almost never, because he doesn’t ever have the patience to brush his own tail out, with the snags and tangles it gets caught up in. The most he does is wash it and air dry it, and sometimes if Mimi can’t stand the look of it she’ll hold him down to groom him, which was not at all terrifying the first time it happened.

Yanqing brightens. “Thank you, general!”

Somehow, miraculously, Jing Yuan manages not to fall asleep for the entire duration of the time Yanqing takes to manage his fur. Afterwards, it’s all the effort he can exert to flump onto the bed—he doesn’t even have the energy to chastise Yanqing for sliding so boldly under the covers with him.

But then the lights are flicked off, and in the darkness, Jing Yuan somehow regains some awareness as Yanqing settles against him.

He doesn’t say anything about how, as a mentor and disciple, as a high elder and a demon, they shouldn’t be doing this. That they shouldn’t be as close as they are now, sleeping in the same bed with Yanqing’s head tucked under his chin and curled up against his chest. That he shouldn’t be this close to his own disciple, not after he’s already crossed the line once.

He doesn’t say anything, as Yanqing’s breaths slow. He doesn’t say anything, as his own eyes droop with fatigue, about how his own arms are curled around Yanqing like he can protect him from everything in the world.

[Protagonist satisfaction points: +500! Keep up the good work!]

Shut up, Jing Yuan tells it furiously, drowsily, before he drifts off into sleep.

The next few days are slow ones. Jing Yuan, for one moment, considers going to work, but then Mimi and Yanqing look at him like that and he folds faster than a stack of napkins. It doesn’t help that Yanqing looks so happy to be flitting around him again that Jing Yuan feels his heart aching a little bit whenever Yanqing is in his periphery.

And besides, he’s really been doing nothing but work for most of the time Yanqing has been gone. It’s high time he uses his accumulated rest days. He still has to go out for disciple training, of course, but by all rights Ming Fan, as the senior training disciple, has everything under control so Jing Yuan only drops in once every few days to check up on everyone’s progress.

Most of his time is spent with Yanqing.

No one knows that he’s back yet—it would be more accurate to say that no one knows that he’s even alive, save from Fu Xuan and Qingque—and Jing Yuan, honestly, does not want to bear the questions and accusations that will come with people finding out about Yanqing’s survival.

“I could just pretend I was thrown in by a demon,” Yanqing suggests, one day when they’re outside, relaxing in the chill morning air in the garden. “And miraculously fought my way out. It’s not far from the truth.”

“Your lineage would be called into question,” Jing Yuan points out, like he isn’t half-slurring his words from drowsiness because Yanqing is putting braids into his hair. “And it would invite too much suspicion from the Marshal.”

Yanqing hums in assent. “Maybe this one can dye his hair black and the general can say he took on another disciple. Hiding my zuiyin is not that hard.”

Despite himself, Jing Yuan snorts, because he’s aware that he’s been moping for the years Yanqing has been one—there aren’t many people likely to believe him if they think he’s replaced his retainer. No, better to stick to something else, even though he doesn’t verbally agree or disagree with Yanqing.

The morning passes by in a haze. The gentle silence is filled with Yanqing’s quiet chatters once in a while, talking about the Demon Realm and the tribes he’s met, the ones he’s made his followers, the ones he had to fight.

The reality settles in Jing Yuan, then, calm and knowing, that Yanqing is grown up now. There’s a responsibility to his shoulders that he carries with grace, knowing that a whole realm, legions of demons are behind him, ready to respond to his every command.

But he carries the weight easily. Jing Yuan will sometimes see him penning letters and instructions. He receives his own updates with a little pin he keeps on his person. He asks Jing Yuan for advice, not because he doesn’t know what to do, but because he wants to include Jing Yuan in his thoughts.

Yanqing is too young for this sort of thing. Jing Yuan’s never asked his age properly before, but he doubts that Yanqing is barely in his twenties, if even that. But he takes it all with the grace that he used to do his duties with; bright and cheerful, even though he’s started treating Jing Yuan as more of a friend and started complaining to him about the goings-on of the Demon Realm, most of which Jing Yuan probably shouldn’t be finding as funny as he does.

He blinks heavy eyelids when he feels Yanqing’s warmth move away from him, only to be replaced by Mimi’s unmistakeable rumbles as Yanqing makes his way around him.

“Tired?” Yanqing whispers knowingly. “Please rest, shizun. I’ll take care of things.”

Jing Yuan doesn’t want him to take care of things. He’s already taken care of so many things. He deserves to rest too.

It’s with this half-thought formed in his mind that Jing Yuan’s hand finds its way around Yanqing’s much smaller wrist, tugging him down until he’s sitting on the ground, leaning against Mimi too. Jing Yuan shifts so that his tail is on Yanqing’s lap. It’s an effective trap not because of its weight but because Yanqing immediately starts running his fingers through Jing Yuan’s fur, relaxing as he does so.

“It’s a good morning for a nap,” Jing Yuan says sleepily, and pats Yanqing’s head where he can reach. “Rest. You’ve done well.”

Yanqing makes a little sound. Jing Yuan isn’t quite awake enough anymore to decipher what it means.

Later, Yanqing wakes up curled around Jing Yuan’s tail. He looks quite well-rested, which Jing Yuan envies him for because he’s never getting enough sleep these days. He thinks he might have to go into hibernation to recuperate from his entire life.

But Yanqing is just cheerful, just persuasive enough that Jing Yuan lets him engage him in a friendly spar.

It would be an understatement to say that Yanqing’s improved in leaps and bounds. With the protagonist halo, how could he not? If he was a particularly talented swordsman under Jing Yuan’s tutelage, he’s well on his way to becoming legendary now. His strikes are smooth and fluid, each and every one carefully calculated. Not a single sword out of place.

He’s refined his flying swords technique as well. Jing Yuan still marvels about the fact that Yanqing had read about it in a fantasy book once and managed to replicate it perfectly when making and controlling one’s own swords was a feat that most normal cultivators could only ever dream of.

Jing Yuan, obviously, loses.

Sure, it might be the fact that he was treating this as more of training session while Yanqing was actually showing off, but he’s quite aware that with the protagonist’s power level, he wouldn’t be able to beat him if he were using the full extent of his Lightning Lord powers.

As it is, he ends up on his back, with Yanqing’s knee on his chest and the tip of his sword pointed at Jing Yuan’s throat, close enough that it chills him even without touching him.

“I win,” Yanqing says breathlessly. In the dying light of the sun’s rays pinkening the sky, he looks like he’s glowing. His eyes sparkle happily at his victory, and Jing Yuan has a thought:

He’s beautiful.

It isn’t enough to freeze him. It’s not the first time he’s thought that the protagonist was cute or adorable or anything of the sort, of course. He’d thought that the allure would be just that, because he’d spent a quite a large number of years of his life reading about him, but this is the first time that he thinks that, without any other thoughts, without any attachments of the protagonist title onto Yanqing.

Just that. A simple thought.

That Yanqing looks positively content like this, half-kneeling on Jing Yuan and winning a match he’s been waiting so long for.

The thought settles into his bones, into the marrow of his being, and Jing Yuan breathes with it as he smiles up at Yanqing, just a little bit.

He’s never claimed to be a good man. In any case, this is just proving what he already knew. And Yanqing himself seems happy enough to stay by his side. Why ruin a good thing?

“You’ve improved,” Jing Yuan says, just to see Yanqing’s eyes light up with excitement. He doesn’t mind lying on the ground just a little bit longer, he finds. “Well done.”

“Thank you, shizun!” Yanqing chirps, but he doesn’t move. Instead—

Instead he lets his sword dissipate, and then he’s leaning forward, settling himself more comfortably on Jing Yuan’s stomach. Jing Yuan realizes now that there’s a tiny cut on his cheek where Jing Yuan had nicked him earlier, but only the blood remains. The cut itself has been long healed.

Without thinking, Jing Yuan raises a hand to rub the blood away, and, to his surprise, Yanqing leans into the touch with his eyes closed, sighing contentedly.

Jing Yuan swallows. Takes a moment to realize that Yanqing’s braced his arms on either side of Jing Yuan’s head. If anyone found them like this, it would indeed be a compromising position.

He lets out a slow breath, when Yanqing opens his eyes to look at him again. Something about his makes Jing Yuan want to duck his head, want to escape the way Yanqing’s looking at him. His demon mark pulses softly on his forehead, a small, contained thing.

“Come,” he murmurs, when Yanqing doesn’t say anything for a long moment. It’s only when he makes to sit up that Yanqing slides off him without a word, eyes still inquisitively tracking Jing Yuan’s every moment. “You just reminded me—there’s something I should give you.”

The walk back into the house and to the treasury is silent. Yanqing is very obviously beside himself in curiosity, but he must know that Jing Yuan wouldn’t give him any hints, so he follows along obediently.

“Here you go,” Jing Yuan murmurs. “I thought you might want it back.”

Yanqing holds Yanzhuo in his arms, speechless.

Jing Yuan had the sword reforged shortly after Yanqing’s descent into the Abyss, and it had made everyone around him look at him pityingly as he did. Which, in their perspective, was understandable, because no one had known that Yanqing was alive, let alone that he was going to return.

And since then, he’s kept up with taking care of it in Yanqing’s absence. He doesn’t have the obsessive need to polish and shine his swords and weapons as much as Yanqing himself does, but he wants to think that he at least does an okay job of it—Yanqing’s sword is the only one that he personally sees to, anyways. All the others except his own devastator glaive are taken care of by the servants.

“Shizun…” Yanqing says, at a loss for words. He finally looks up at Jing Yuan. “Shizun… reforged this for me?”

“Mhm,” Jing Yuan agrees, “I know you have Guyun now, but… you were planning on destroying it, were you not? In that case, you can use Yanzhou as a backup, if you ever need.”

Yanqing doesn’t say anything for a moment, running his fingertips across the length of the sheath, down the tassel that Jing Yuan had cleaned and reattached to the hilt of the sword.

And then Yanqing is hugging him, arms wrapped tight around Jing Yuan’s middle, and, really, what else can he do but hug back? But Yanqing’s back as he shivers a little in place.

Neither of them say anything.

And then Jing Yuan will lead them to the kitchen to prepare dinner, and Yanqing will press to his side like the stickiest rice ball known to humankind, and they will chatter idly about work, updates about the ship, and Yanqing will tell him about the animals and demons of the abyss he thinks Jing Yuan will be interested in.

And for now, it is enough.