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A stranger wanders the street. His face is hidden in the darkest of shadows, obscuring his features from all but the most eagle-eyed of observers. His black cloak trails behind him like the ghosts of his mysterious past have come to cling to his legs. A dark air warns curious onlookers, look away. Don’t get involved, you don’t know what danger he brings with him. 

Where did he come from? What evil purpose brought him here?

Why does that fucking cloak keep catching underneath his feet? 

Shen Yuan curses as he trips, not for the first time, expecting the cold sting of gravel to touch him. Any moment now. Right about…

A woman clears her throat. 

Shen Yuan slowly opens one eye, then both at once. “Oh!” He shoots up, flustered to high heaven. “I’m sorry.” He suddenly realises he’s still holding her arms—strong biceps, he manages to notice, her muscles tangible even when untensed—and snatches his hands back. 

The woman raises one eyebrow, thoroughly unimpressed with him. That’s alright, Shen Yuan wouldn’t be very impressed with himself either if he was anything like her; cold and stately and elegant. A high-collared robe in gold peeks out from underneath her black robes, and she carries a sword on her back that looks like she knows how to use it, and how to use it well. Arrogance clads her shoulders, and Shen Yuan can’t help but get the impression it’s deserved. 

Qi dances underneath his skin, eagerly rising up in response to clear danger, but Shen Yuan forces it down. He is not in danger of anything but a tongue lashing.

Luckily, the woman does not look offended—merely dispassionately amused at the idea Shen Yuan could ever pose a threat to her. “Find a tailor,” she commands. “Get your cloak taken in. You are a hazard to society like this.”

Shen Yuan rushes to nod. “I promise!” he says. “I just haven’t had… the time…” She is gone before he has finished the sentence. He stares at her back until she disappears into the crowd, then turns to leave himself. 

He has forgotten about the incident by the time he’s finally found a place to sleep. 

“Your name? How… kind of you. I suppose you want my own now.” 

The handsome young man nodded, not a hint of shame on his face. 

Years later, she still couldn’t tell you why she had done it. “How about you take a guess and I'll tell you if you’re right?” She grinned at the young man’s disappointment. “Come on, it’s only a game. My life can be frightfully boring, and I have to take entertainment where I can. Three guesses, no time limit, no repercussions if you’re wrong.”

A man throws a silver coin at Shen Yuan’s feet as he leaves the inn. “Thank you, sir!” Shen Yuan calls after him. He takes a sip of water before continuing. 

The young man narrowed his eyes. “And what if I get it right?”

She couldn’t help but laugh at his audacity. “One wish, for you to do with as you please. Material wealth, knowledge of something you’ve never even considered, prolonged life, whatever you’d like.”

“How about your hand in marriage?”

Shen Yuan suppresses a smile at the loud gasp from the curly-haired man sitting in the corner of the room. The man has been listening almost from the moment Shen Yuan has started, early in the morning (but not too early.) 

It is late now, and his throat is ready to give out on him. He decides to wrap it up before it gets damaged. He’ll still need it if he wants to have enough money to sleep in a bed. 

“Naturally.” The girl grinned, sharp and eager. “But boy, don’t get ahead of yourself. I wouldn’t allow stakes as high as those if there was any chance of getting it right.”

“Then I will be the first to do so,” the young man said, satisfied with her answer. His dark eyes blazed with confidence. “I’ll return with your name, or not at all, so… wait for me, please.”

Shen Yuan sits up straight. “Thank you for your attention. I’ll be here tomorrow as well,” he says, voice low and rough. “The tale will be continuing then.”

A buzz starts up as people turn to start conversation with their companions. One or two men lift their drink at him, and a young girl claps. Shen Yuan smiles at her, then bows over to collect the coin people had left for him during the day.

The man who had been sitting in the corner bounces over, grin wide and joyful. He moves strangely, almost inhumanly smooth and elegant. “Hello there,” he says, pulling up a chair to sit across from Shen Yuan. “I don’t suppose you could spare some spoilers for your greatest fan?”

“Aren’t you a flatterer,” Shen Yuan says, amused. Greatest fan, psh. This is the first time he’s ever seen this man. “You’ll get your story the same time as anyone else will.” 

“Not even if I give you… this?” the man asks dramatically, pulling out his wallet. He waves it at Shen Yuan, who does not fail to notice the absence of the sound of coins. 

The man puts on a pitiful face at the lack of response. “So cruel,” he says. “Depriving me of a tale like that.”

“It’s not that good.”

“It is!” the man says, leaning forward with a flirtatious grin. “You’re a gifted storyteller.” 

Shen Yuan blinks. His hands search for a fan to hide behind, but he hasn't yet had the opportunity (nor the money) to buy one for himself. “I’m really not,” he says awkwardly. “These are not my stories. Someone else wrote them; I just have a good memory.”

“And a delightfully emotive voice,” the man counters. “A real sense of tension too! I didn’t say you're a good writer, did I?”

The man’s eyes spark in an oddly familiar way. Has Shen Yuan met him before? No, he’d have remembered a man as, ah, colourful as him. And that was without even considering when he would have done so—he’s barely been here for a few weeks. Perhaps he knew him back when…?

“Having fun?” a cool voice comes from behind Shen Yuan. 

The man draws himself up, puffing out his chest and putting on a bright smile. If he had a tail, he’d be wagging it. “Su Xiyan!” he crows in delight. “I wasn’t expecting you here!”

Shen Yuan’s eyebrows pull together as he turns to greet the woman. Su Xiyan, who was Su Xiyan again… Oh. 

Oh, shit. 

Shen Yuan stares up at her, his blood fleeing his cheeks. Su Xiyan, Binghe’s mother. And that would make the man—he turns his head to the side, and fuck, how hadn’t he seen it immediately, they have the same eyes —Tianlang-jun. 

“… have been lost without your presence,” he hears Tianlang-jun say.

“It has been two weeks.”

“An eternity!” Tianlang-jun pouts. “I’d started to wonder if you’d grown tired of little old me. Days feel like years without your radiance at my side, the world so cold and drab and boring…”

Su Xiyan is a stone wall, unmoved by Tianlang-jun’s attempts at eliciting pity. Nonetheless, she lets him ramble on, listening to his every word even as she harshly rebukes his more outrageous statements.

They look happy.

He can’t do this. 

See, Shen Yuan is great at picking his battles. Now if what he thinks is important—informing idiotic writers of how stupid they precisely are—does not match with other’s idea of good hills to die on, that’s their problem. However, he doesn’t think that anyone will blame him for running away right now. 

It doesn’t take him long to gather his things. Everything he has, he carries on his person. The money that people have left for him gets shoved into his pocket, including a golden coin that hadn’t been there the last time he looked. 

A tidal wave of Qi sparks underneath his skin, enraged at the idea of running away, of being a—very sensible!—coward. 

He forces the power back inside his core. It protests loudly, can’t hold it all—but Shen Yuan has been on the verge of spilling over for weeks now, an ocean contained inside a cracked teacup, and the feeling is nothing new.

The cold air blows in his face as he throws the door open, and for a moment he dares to think he’s been able to make a clean getaway, until—

“Ah, before you leave,” Tianlang-jun calls. 

Shen Yuan pauses. “Yes?”

“Who did write these stories, then?”

“A fool,” he answers. “But a talented one.”

If Tianlang-jun says anything in reply, Shen Yuan’s not there to hear it.

A week later, Shen Yuan is still running. 

Well, walking, really. You can’t convince him to run if he isn’t currently being chased by a fearsome monster. Even then, he’d be looking for a more dignified option. Like sword travel! It’s practically designed to look cool. 

… Ah, but Shen Yuan hasn’t been that put-together in a long while. Dust stains his bare ankles now, and the hem of his robes is covered in mud. 

With every step, every touch of his bare feet to the dirt, he bleeds power into the ground. It’s a deliberate action, and a practised one. He is a pitcher filled to the brim, spilling water with every movement. It’s only sensible to try to direct the excess into something that he is sure can carry the weight without breaking.

(He used to try to grow spiritual flowers with it, back when it was new to him. He learned very quickly that its rich abundance was too overwhelming for anything as fragile as life to take root in.)

He amuses himself with the patterns left behind in the dust wherever he walks, shallow footprints and unnatural swirls both. If he focuses, he can almost convince it to fan out in great concentric circles, in curls and loops and waves. 

A figure falls in pace with him. 

Shen Yuan tears his eyes away from the dirt road, only to see… Ah. Him. 

Perhaps he should have hurried more. 

“You left!” Tianlang-jun says, sounding personally betrayed. “Now I’ll never learn what happened to the dear couple. Unless, perhaps…” His pout is achingly familiar. “Would you be willing to accompany us on the road?”

“What happened to them?” Shen Yuan says tersely. “What happens in every story like that one, of course; the young man learns her name, wins her hand, and they get married to live happily ever after.” He then realises what Tianlang-jun asked. “‘Us’?”

“Maiden Su, of course,” Tianlang-jun says. “And my nephew! I don’t think you’ve met him yet?”

I’ve heard of him, Shen Yuan almost says. Not as much as I’ve heard about you, of course, but I still know more about him than even you might. “I have not.”

Tianlang-jun slings an arm over his shoulder; half genuine friendliness, half a steel trap. “Then I’ll introduce you! He’s a little foolish—he's spent too long crawling in the dirt, I’m afraid—but he has a good heart.”

Shen Yuan hums non-committally. Despite his outward disinterest, he can’t help but be a little excited. Stories are plenty useful, but at their heart, that’s all they’ll ever be. Stories. Not even the most gifted writer can prepare you for meeting the real deal. This had been proven three years ago, and it was proven again when he arrived here.  

“I’ll walk with you,” he decides. “Just until the next village.”

Tianlang-jun squeezes his shoulders. “Wonderful!” he cries. “You’ll like him, I’m sure. Fair warning, he really does look very ugly…”

“I’m sure it can’t be that bad,” Shen Yuan says politely.

“I gave him a face that doesn’t look half-bad,” Tianlang-jun says. “But he doesn’t always wear it, especially when we aren’t near humans.”

… Shen Yuan sweatdropped. Tianlang-jun, Tianlang-jun; you do realise that this humble one has never actually been told you are a demon, no? 

“Ah, that would be them!” Tianlang-jun lets go of him to point at a fast-approaching black blob, the morning sun bright behind it. A slightly smaller figure is perched on its back. “Su Xiyan had to stay behind to take care of some… things, and Zhuzhi-lang was kind enough to offer to help her catch up with me. Well, I ordered him, but it’s really about the same thing.”

He really isn’t that ugly. 

Correction: he definitely is that ugly, but in a startlingly adorable way? In the brief moment of time that Shen Yuan has to study his in-between form before it melts away into the appearance of a fresh-faced teen, nothing comes across as especially disgusting as Airplane had warned him he’d be. 

When the transformation is complete, not much can be seen of Zhuzhi-lang’s mixed blood, other than a smattering of jade-green scales dotting his skin like a bad case of acne. His lips are permanently upturned in a way that almost imitates a smile, mirroring those goofy-looking snake pictures that circulated around the Internet. He fidgets nervously with his long braids.

Naturally, he activates every last one of Shen Yuan’s protective instincts. 

“Your scales are cool,” escapes Shen Yuan’s mouth. He closes his eyes and groans. “I mean, they look very—sturdy. Do you shed? Have you ever considered selling them for money?” That was not any better, you idiot. “I mean—forget it. Hi. Hello. Pleasure to meet you.”

He sticks his hand out of Zhuzhi-lang to take. The teen merely blinks down at it, and, after an uncomfortable few seconds, slowly reaches out and touches it. 

“Thanking Master…?”

“Shen. Shen Yuan.”

“Thanking Master Shen,” the boy repeats, looking like he doesn’t know what to do with the compliment, but is nonetheless pleased with it. (He doesn’t blush though. Is he cold-blooded? Can cold-blooded creatures blush? How Shen Yuan wishes he still had access to Baidu.)

They then stare at each other, neither knowing how to continue this social interaction. 

“Shen-wanbei,” Su Xiyan blessedly cuts in. “Apologies for this fool.” She tilts her head at Tianlang-jun. “I hope you weren’t too bothered by him.”

They both ignore Tianlang-jun’s offended cry. “I don’t mind his presence,” Shen Yuan returns, unconsciously straightening his back and enunciating his words more carefully. Su Xiyan invites that sort of behaviour; you can’t help but want to impress her. “He’s… entertaining.”

Her lips turn up slightly. “That he is,” she says, a bare hint of warmth seeping through her cold facade. “Has he already invited you to come along to something banal?”

“Merely to travel together until the next town.”

Su Xiyan tipped her head forward. “Then he will no doubt have invited you to see a play before the sun reaches the midpoint. Don’t feel obliged to say yes.”

Is that a not-so-subtle hint he should decline? Shen Yuan honestly couldn’t tell—with Su Xiyan’s air of an imposing tyrant, everything she says comes out as a threat, even if it might not be meant that way. If someone were to point to the couple and ask him which of the two is the Demon Emperor, then Shen Yuan wouldn’t think to answer with the handsome man walking next to him, humming an upbeat ditty. 

Something in her face softens. “Don’t feel obliged to say no, either.”

Having pegged Shen Yuan as needing a softer touch already, have you? He’d be offended if he weren’t so glad for it. He’s stood up against an all-powerful, omniscient, world-bending thing, his legs shouldn’t be trembling from a single ruthless lady! Nor should his heart be set to racing like that, rabbit quick, with his skin tingling in a way that for once has nothing to do with the overflowing well of power trapped within him. 

He smiles at her, and chooses to say nothing. 

Tianlang-jun transfers to reciting a love poem, voice rolling the consonants. It’s not unpleasant. He breaks off halfway through a stanza, and asks, “Do you hear that, Young Master Shen? When the author dreams about going on an endless journey to the land of misty flowers, he really is referring to—”

Su Xiyan cuffs him on the back of the head. Shen Yuan winces, but Tianlang-jun only cackles. 

And so they walk together.

It’s interesting, travelling with this trio. Tianlang-jun and Su Xiyan are the most obnoxious kind of lovebirds, with Tianlang-jun trying his best at every turn to impress Su Xiyan. Whenever she decides to give him some of her attention, he flourishes under it, a sunflower turned to her light. Meanwhile, Zhuzhi-lang trudges along dutifully, ignored save for brief moments where Tianlang-jun turns to him to invite him to share in the joke. 

Shen Yuan can’t help but be fascinated by them. There had only been time for that many stories during his final night before—before this, and those had mostly been focused on aiding Shen Yuan with survival wherever he would find himself. Not that Shen Yuan had known that that was what Airplane had been doing at the time, but…

“Ah, the road feels as if it is without end,” Tianlang-jun says, as he slows down even further. “It could be hours yet before we arrive at our destination. Would Young Master Shen perhaps be willing to ease my pain a little, with another story?”

“Alright,” Shen Yuan hears himself say. Dammit. Too late to turn back now. His mind runs through a list of all the half-decent Proud Immortal Demon Way plot lines. It’s very short. He briefly contemplates reciting a story from one of the countless other novels he used to read, but decides against it, not wanting to invite any questions. 

One of the Cultivation-realm focused ones—he doesn’t want to show off his inexplicable knowledge of various demon cultures. Nothing with a focus on Binghe doing the nasty—not just because it would be uncomfortable to narrate, but because he can’t think of Binghe in any sexual context anymore. 

“Far away from any life, both human and animal, there is a river,” he starts. “It’s nothing special, just flowing water. It doesn’t have any special properties, and isn’t particularly pretty either. It’s just a river. 

“But at this moment, it could have been made of pure gold, and the young prince couldn’t have been any gladder to see it. He swallowed, his throat as dry as the western deserts, and staggered towards the cold, soothing water…”

A glance to his side shows Tianlang-jun listening intently, hanging onto Shen Yuan’s words with enviable focus. It’s rather pleasing, Shen Yuan finds, to be looked at that way.

Seven days without water, and fourteen without food. He had not seen a single animal on his frenzied path through the forest, the trees empty and lifeless without the sound of birdsong. And yet as he looked up from the glistening stream, through the wet curtain of his curly hair, he was met with the yellow-gold eyes of a pure white crane, its graceful neck bent to sip from the life-giving water…

“Shen Qingqiu.”

Her voice is clear, even in the clamour of men who should have been cut off from alcohol hours ago. Shen Yuan freezes. He slowly, cautiously, lifts his head.  “… Yes?”

“He's your family, isn't he,” Su Xiyan says.

Shen Yuan lets out his breath. “Ah,” he says. “Do we really resemble each other that much, for it to be so obvious?”

No, seriously, do they? The bedroom upstairs he’s rented for a few days has a cheap, shitty mirror. When he looked in it this morning, he hadn’t thought he looked that much like Shen Qingqiu. He knows that face inside and out—of course he does, he’s worn it for three years—but this mix-and-match appearance that he has now leans more towards his original looks. 

“Hm.” Su Xiyan cleans a spot on the bench next to him and sits down. She casts a cursory look towards the scroll he’s writing on, deeming it uninteresting. “I wouldn’t have made the connection if you didn’t have the same surname. After that, though, it’s clear to see.”

“Tsch.” Shen Yuan pressed his tongue to his teeth. “It was mine first.” Probably. Sort-of. Time got a little strange between the, you know, various world changes. 

“So he’s your younger brother? Cousin?”

The sticky floor suddenly looks very interesting. He, master of avoiding conversations that he is, asks in return, “How did you even meet him?”

Su Xiyan raises a delicate eyebrow, letting him know she is on to his bullshit. Goddess that she is, however, she lets him get away with it. “The Immortal Alliance Conference.”

“You participated?” Shen Yuan perks up. His brush rolls from the table, forgotten. “Did you win?”

She must have. Having known her for a while, it was clear that Binghe had not only inherited his stunning looks, but also his martial prowess from her. (And maybe Tianlang-jun, but Shen Yuan had never seen him fight, since they both preferred watching Su Xiyan in her element. She could handle it.)

(There was something arresting about her whenever she fought, her sword catching the sun as she swung it in broad but clearly well-controlled motions, her dark robes blowing in the wind. Her cold expression always sets Tianlang-jun to composing love-poetry for the next three days. Shen Yuan can sympathise; afterwards, his stories always edge towards featuring stoic love-interests, too.) 

“I did not,” she says. “Take place, that is.”

“But she has won every single time she did!” Tianlang-jun chirps. 

Shen Yuan jerks back. “When did you arrive?!”

“I came in with her,” Tianlang-jun says, moving in to take up Shen Yuan’s other side. “We decided we wanted to visit you!” He folds his hands underneath his chin. “You should really ask her about her battle with the Double Winged Queen Lion sometime. It won her her final Conference with a score so-far unmatched.”

Shen Yuan looks questioningly at Su Xiyan.

“I killed it,” she says. She doesn’t continue. He suddenly misses Liu-shidi a great deal.

He bows underneath the table and grabs his brush, dusting it off. He recentres the scroll from where it had been skewed by Tianlang-jun sneaking a look. 

Lightly, he asks, “Shen Qingqiu, did he participate?” His grip tightens around the brush as the questions he really wants to ask spill out of his mouth, “And did Yue Qingyuan? Liu Qingge? Or were they merely there to politic?” He swallows. “Did they look healthy? Happy?”

Su Xiyan tilts her head. Her face is unreadable. 

“Ah, forget it,” he rushes to say. “It’s really none of my business—”

“They looked fine,” Su Xiyan says calmly. “Yes, Shen Qingqiu participated. I did not see him in person; I only noticed him because Cang Qiong’s next Sect Leader never looked away from him. I did talk to Yue Qingyuan. They chose their heir well—he left behind a positive impression with everyone he spoke with. And… Liu Qingge?”

He nods, embarrassingly eager. “Bai Zhan. Fighty type, uncannily pretty, has a mole underneath his left eye.”

Tianlang-jun whistles. “So is that your type, or—”

“He demolished the competition,” Su Xiyan says. “He ended up ranking second. He only didn’t win because he chose to fight monsters based on what caught his interest, rather than what would give him the most points.”

Shen Yuan laughs softly, affection filling his chest. “That sounds like him, yes.”

They must be getting ready to become Peak Lords right about now. However, since they’re immortal, that only means you have to think in terms of decades rather than centuries.

(Unless everything happens as it did in the future Shen Yuan knows. Then they ascend long before they are actually ready, in order to take advantage of the reputation surrounding Yue Qingyuan, Slayer of Demon Emperor Tianlang-jun.)

(Shen Yuan is not here to prevent that. However, not for the first time, he thinks interfering would be far from the worst thing he could do.)

“Perhaps, did Shang Qinghua also attend?”

“Who?”

“The next An Ding Peak Lord.” He quickly draws a sketch of the guy and slides it over to Su Xiyan. “Short, mousey looking guy. Hair in a bun. Was probably holding something to write on.” 

“Hm.” She studies the drawing. “I might have seen him. Perpetually sweaty, a tendency for staring?”

“Exactly!”

“He looked fine. Very anxious.”

Relief rushes over Shen Yuan. He lets out an overdue breath of stale air. “Good. That’s good.”

“You know him well?”

“He’s… my friend,” Shen Yuan says haltingly. “I hope I can call him that.” They hadn’t known each other in person for that long; barely any time at all. 

Tianlang-jun shuffles closer with an expectant expression. Su Xiyan’s thigh presses against Shen Yuan’s in silent encouragement. 

It’s loud in the room; the clinking of pans coming from the kitchen, the roaring laughter of a group of men sitting around the largest table. A dog is barking. Nobody is paying attention to the strange trio sitting in the corner of the room. 

“I was—bad off,” he confesses. “I hadn’t slept for longer than an hour in a month, and that night was even worse than others.” He was half-blind and incoherent with power, not able to string more than two thoughts together. That he manages to remember that night at all is a miracle. “He stayed up with me. Told me stories. Tried to distract me the best he could.

“I owe a lot to him.” His sanity, his fucking survival.  

The corner of his mouth ticks up, and he leans forward in anticipation of Tianlang-jun’s reaction. “Most of the stories I tell are his. Your favourite—the one with the cold, aloof princess and her meek servant?—I heard it for the first time that night. He’s never written it down anywhere, so other than me, you might be the only person who has ever heard it.”

“No,” Tianlang-jun breathes.

“It’s true!” Shen Yuan says, unfurling his fan and flapping it coyly. “I’ve only told it that one evening, and nobody else was there.”

Tianlang-jun swoons and lets himself fall against Shen Yuan’s side. His skin burns through Shen Yuan’s clothes, and his hair tickles where it curls against Shen Yuan’s neck. Su Xiyan watches them with an expression of barely-hidden amusement. “I can’t believe it,” he says with a tone only half-joking. “I can’t believe it! Me! An exclusive!”

Shen Yuan can’t help but smile behind his fan. He is an Emperor, surely he has received rarer, more expensive gifts before? 

Tianlang-jun abruptly draws himself up, grabs Shen Yuan’s shoulders, and looks him deep in the eyes. He does something with his mouth that makes him look extremely pitiful. “Could you introduce me? I will be sure to…” His tongue flickers out and licks his upper lip. His half-lidded eyes are sinful. “… reward you handsomely.”

Shen Yuan can’t believe him. “Your girlfriend is right here.”

“Oh, A-Yan would want to join in, I’m sure. To see her take you to bed…” Tianlang-jun sighs wistfully. “What an image that’d be.”

Su Xiyan makes a low noise of assent.

Tianlang-jun grins. “If that's your only objection—”

Shen Yuan can’t explain why he hesitates for a brief second before he slaps Tianlang-jun on the forehead with his fan. “No!”

Blood gets itchy when it dries. 

Shaking all over, Shen Yuan plucks a cloak from one of the corpses—not like he needs it anymore—and wipes his hands on it. It doesn’t help much. 

A muscle twitches, and before Shen Yuan can think twice about it, another flurry of leaves pierces the man’s body. If he wasn’t dead before, he sure is now. But what if he isn’t? What if they’re just pretending, and the moment Shen Yuan turns his back they stand up again, reach out for him, tear at his clothes—

Another branch gets emptied of leaves. And another. Shen Yuan closes his eyes and lets the wet sound of tearing flesh guide him as he sends whole trees worth of knives to the men. Only a few of them hit their target. The rest drives up dust, cracks stones, cuts bushes in half. He goes on long beyond when he should have been exhausted, for once in tune with the destructive force that calls his body home. 

The world is silent save for the sound of destruction; all animals have fled the scene. 

Eventually, there is nothing left for him to throw at them. A small measure of rationality returns to his mind; nobody, nothing could have survived that. 

That has to be enough.  

He opens his eyes, and is met with an empty clearing. There is no life left anywhere within it, nor any evidence it had ever been different, save for a red tint to the dirt. 

Shen Yuan takes a deep breath, and tries to calm himself down. 

His rage drains away, leaving him feeling oddly empty. 

He’s done. It’s done.

And yet, the power still stings his skin. It’s bubbling and churning, a bone-deep drumming building to a fever pitch. It’s loud, so very loud, and Shen Yuan can already feel the way the constant beat drives his mind to further destruction. A violent thing waiting patiently at the edges of his mind, knowing it won’t have to do anything—it was here before Shen Yuan, and it will be there long after him. It can be patient; soon he will give in to it. 

It has almost been easy, lately, to push it down. Easy, too, to forget that pushing it down was all he could do, that it wasn’t actually under his control, a force more immense than a mere human could handle. 

He had bargained for the power to kill a god—but what was he to do with it when there was no target for its rage, its purpose long achieved?

He doesn’t know. He thinks it might not know either. He thinks it doesn’t enjoy not knowing.

Left without a target, it tears at Shen Yuan instead. Violent, destructive, and uncontrollable. His skin burns, ice-cold and frostbitten, while simultaneously flames lick at his limbs, a heat unlike any other. 

It’ll all stop if you use me, it whispers to him. The pain doesn’t have to be yours. 

For one moment, the prospect sounds incredibly attractive. He's just trying to convince himself why he shouldn't do it when—

Footsteps.

He whirls around, teeth bared, Qi gathering—

“Shh,” a voice whispers in his ear, “Calm down, it’s just us.”

Shen Yuan doesn’t stop, doesn’t think he can stop. Wind swirls around him, great cutting gales, so fast it cuts at his skin and draws blood. Someone asks a question. He doesn’t listen. 

Then, a hand on his neck, forcing him down to the ground. A broad chest plasters against his back, pressing him down. There are claws around his neck, resting at his jugular. A cold rush of Qi invades his meridians and beats his own into submission, wrestling it down and back into his control. It’s all he can feel; human Qi, blissful in its coldness, soothing his veins from the inside out; demonic power, crawling over his skin and healing the bloody scrapes. 

There are two, three terrifying seconds where he doesn’t recognise it—until he does, relaxing into the touch. A calloused, thin-fingered hand collects his hair and winds it around its palm, pulling it away to bear his nape. Su Xiyan.

Tianlang-jun grunts as he moves a leg between Shen Yuan’s thighs, resting more of his weight on his back. 

Shen Yuan can’t move. Somehow, it feels safe. He knows, deeply, intimately, that the warm bodies surrounding him are there for his protection rather than as a method of confinement. 

“Ah, there we are,” Tianlang-jun says in a warm, gravelly voice. 

And suddenly it’s silent. 

He collapses, all the fight draining out of him in an instant. Tianlang-jun’s doing something, drinking in the power, taking it for himself. 

Heavenly Demons. Fucking hell.

Shen Yuan shudders, leaning into his touch. It’s a slapdash solution, won’t work for long—even now he feels the power struggling to rise once more inside of him—but it’s enough.  

Tianlang-jun pants into Shen Yuan’s ear. His grip eases slightly, enough for Su Xiyan to flip Shen Yuan onto his back. She slides underneath him, legs crossed, and lets him rest his weight against her chest. Then Tianlang-jun’s hand is back on Shen Yuan’s neck. His thumb rests on Shen Yuan’s Adam’s apple; his pinky creeps underneath his robes. 

Tianlang-jun’s red eyes are wide, nearly delirious. His hair is unbound, curls everywhere. Shadows flicker, throwing his face in sharp relief. He is beautiful. 

Shen Yuan’s eyes flicker upwards, to Su Xiyan. He recognises her scowl; that’s the frustrated face that Binghe would make whenever there was a mystery he couldn’t solve; half-confused, half-furious. She leans down—her warm breath comes to rest on Shen Yuan’s skin—and commands, “That was not human. Explain.”

… How?

It’s only when her face contorts into a scowl that he realises he said that out loud. 

“I promise I’m not trying to get out of telling you!” he says. “I just…” He can barely explain everything to himself, and he was there every step of the way. 

“It’s just another story,” Tianlang-jun murmurs into his ear. “It doesn’t have to be that hard.”

… oh. He’s right.

He takes a deep breath. Focuses on the curves of Su Xiyan’s body against his back, on the way Tianlang-jun’s wild curls drape over his shoulder. Begins. 

“Far, far away, on one of the highest mountains, so high your breath freezes on your skin, there rests power,” Shen Yuan begins hesitantly, searching for the right words as he goes along. “It’s not any more, nor any less than that. Its only ambition is to be used.”

It’s nowhere near as easy as when it’s a story that has been told to him before, but the words come to his tongue regardless. 

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on whom you ask—it’s picky about who gets to wield it. Not whether the person is good or evil, no. It doesn’t care about that. Instead, it only wants to be used for great tasks, for glorious deeds that will be spoken about for centuries after. 

He—I—the young man had no hope that his cause would be formidable enough, but he was desperate enough to try anyway. You see, he had a disciple. The boy was… a bright child. Strong. Clever. 

Shen Yuan blinks three times in quick succession. “Very caring,” he adds, “always so concerned with making sure I ate enough and that my robes were free of wrinkles and that the house was as clean as it could humanly be.”

Tianlang-jun buries a laugh into Shen Yuan’s neck, his nose cold where it touches Shen Yuan’s bare skin. “So did the lack of effort with your appearance come before, or because of the boy?”

“Before,” Shen Yuan admits. He quirks a smile. “Though it couldn’t have helped.” 

The child was in great danger. Not life-threatening, no, he would survive the horrors that were fast approaching. But soul-threatening, snuffing out his kind heart. And that was unacceptable. 

The threat could not be reasoned with. Bargaining failed, and so did bribing and outright disobedience. So, obviously the young man had to kill it. 

“Obviously,” Su Xiyan echoes. Her empty hand plays with the hilt of her sword, something dark in her eyes like she would have gladly used it to fix the problem for him. 

And so the man made his case to the power. It did not listen to him; it had no ears to do so with. It did not look at his sincerity; it had no eyes to do so with. But what it did see-without-eyes, and hear-without-ears, was the someone-something that had followed him there, clinging to his shoulders, its non-existent fingers clawed deep inside his heart. 

And it wanted.  

And when it was done, when it had devoured the threat—not to it, never to it, but to everyone else—it left some of itself behind to fill the empty space. Maybe it was an apology for using the man’s body as a battleground; maybe it cared about it the way a dog might care about the hair it leaves behind when it sheds. Maybe there was no reason at all. 

But even that little bit was more than a single human could handle.

“My friend knew that,” Shen Yuan says, slipping out of his storytelling voice. “I didn’t know him very well before then. We had barely spoken. But one morning he came to me, told me, ‘Sup, you’re going to die, you’ve got any plans?’

“I threw my fan at his face.” This makes Tianlang-jun laugh, a low rumble from deep inside his chest, and the sound fills Shen Yuan with warmth. 

Weeks passed. The man hoped he would survive, that the power would bleed out of him until there was nothing left. That he would be, once more, weak. A strange thing to desire, and not one he had ever thought he’d wish for. 

But he only got worse. Sicker. A permanent fever of heat and power underneath his skin, and a mind clouded with possibilities, temptations. Ways for him to take a role that was never meant for him—the strongest, the proudest. 

All the while, his friend plotted. 

He shivers. Su Xiyan runs soothing fingers over his waist; Tianlang-jun presses a dry kiss below his ear. His heart twinges inside his chest. 

Almost there. 

“Look at yourself!” his friend would warn. “You will die within the month.” Shen Yuan gave a faltering smile. “He was right, of course, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed hearing it.”

They had spent one sleepless night together, just whispering secrets back and forth. He knows, now, why his friend had been so uncharacteristically forthcoming; Airplane wouldn’t have to remember, this timeline would be rolled back. The consequences would be left for someone else to deal with. 

It’s a little cruel. He knows things about this current Shang Qinghua—so young, yet so old—that he would never want to be known. This Shang Qinghua had never chosen to give his secrets away, but the choice was taken out of his hands before he knew of its existence. 

Shang Qinghua made a habit of doing that. 

“So he decided to save me. And he did.” 

And now Shen Yuan was the star of a transmigrator vs. time traveller story, except he starred in both roles! Two out of five stars, not recommended. Nowhere near as fun as all those time travel novels made it seem. It was mostly just very lonely, to live in an all-new world without even the inherited connections he gained when he became Shen Qingqiu. 

“A permanent sacrifice of power in exchange for a blank slate.” 

He falls silent. 

It had hurt, and Shen Yuan had been confused and frightened and unaware of what was happening. So, naturally, he’d cursed Shang Qinghua out with his dying breath. As you do.

And now this. The past. A shit solution, if you ask him. His friends are lost to him, and diminished as the power is, it is still enough to overwhelm him. If it weren’t for the slow stream of foreign human and demonic power running through his veins, soothing and dampening the raging typhoon… 

“They don’t remember you,” Su Xiyan says, immediately drawing the ‘correct’ conclusion. “Like you’ve never existed.”

Shen Yuan hums a low note. It’s even the truth. They don’t remember him. It is like he never existed. They couldn’t pick him out of a line-up, meanwhile he lived as their close friend for three solid years, learning to know them.

Fuck. 

No use dwelling on it, though. Shit sucks—what are you going to do about it?

“I’m sorry,” Su Xiyan says in a low voice. She runs a finger down his face, impossibly tender. “You deserve better than that.”

Shen Yuan feels the urge to protest, but it's cut off at the knees by Tianlang-jun’s, “She's right, you know.” A claw underneath Shen Yuan’s chin tilts his face up to meet the demon's strangely serious eyes. “To not know you would be… an indescribable loss.”

“Oh,” breathes Shen Yuan. His cheeks are burning. 

A wide smile appears on Tianlang-jun’s face. “Now, this may come as a surprise to you, but you deserve to know,” he says magnanimously. “I’m a demon.”

A beat. Then two, three. Shen Yuan looks at Su Xiyan to gauge whether he is joking. She shakes her head.

“Alright…?” Shen Yuan says slowly. “Thank you for trusting me with your secret?”

Tianlang-jun frowns. “You knew already? How?”

Shen Yuan tips his head at the blaring demon mark on his forehead. 

“Oh, that.” Tianlang-jun resumes his grin. “Point is, I might be able to help you. Not with the lost identity part—apologies, but that is outside of even my control—but with the whole Qi thing.”

“You can?” Shen Yuan leans forward, thoughts of training montages filling his head and thus forgetting, like an absolute idiot, what kind of world he lives in. “How?”

When he wakes up, he is wedged between two warm, naked bodies. Su Xiyan has thrown a thigh over his legs, pinning him to the bed. Tianlang-jun is curled around his back, position designed to maximise the amount of skin touching. The sheets are impossibly soft, and the mattress is nearly as comfortable as the one Shen Yuan had back in his first universe.

It’s silent, save for the soft puffs of air Tianlang-jun lets out through his nose. Su Xiyan snores. It’s incredibly endearing. 

A cautious prod at his core tells him it is, for the first time in what feels like forever, at ease.

It’s dark. The bed is cosy. A hint of sweat hangs in the air, mixing in with the perfumed sheets. 

Shen Yuan smiles, and goes back to sleep.