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mejomonster · 10 months

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Modu by priest was truly such a good read. If you like romance? It has a sweeping romance, with a well done bisexual and gay lead (and straight best friend) all written in ways that manage to feel realistic, it's got features people likely found it for when looking for a danmei - rich manipulative younger man, older investigator who's got a hero streak, and yet those categories don't really do justice to them (and of course tao ran is the more grounded detective story lead who keeps his theories to himself and worries about dragging others into his mess).

They're so much more... Fei Du is a traumatized young man who's worried he's as monstrous as the people who scarred him, who is preparing to take the leap and cross the line to become an even more terrifying version of himself if it will destroy the corruption poisoning this city and harming so many, Luo Wenzhou is a cop that used to want to be a hero and learned he will fail people and be unable to save people and holds onto Fei Du as someone who reminds him he DOES fail but also reminds him why he wants so hard to keep Trying to help people even when it seems impossible... why trying and putting in effort to care and help Even when its too late to fix things is Worthwhile. Tao Ran is a contrast to them both, Fei Du living in a world where there's only monsters and victims and Luo Wenzhou desperately trying to force the world to be a place where justice CAN prevail and win even as he sees it fail over and over, trying so hard to believe all people have the capacity for everything and are worth trying to save. Even though Fei Du doesm't believe that, being around Luo Wenzhou makes him want to consider it. Tao Ran, their contrast? Believing the world can go either way, and its up to people like him to create any justice at all, any structure at all, or else everything is just meaningless suffering chaos. As characters, the three of them serve to explore how the world works and views on it in terms of a detective murder mystery encompassing the whole city, the small scale version of the world. Modu is a romance, but its also fully commited to being a murder mystery that wants to tackle the kind of themes that come up in the setting it's created. Its characters are so much more than Insert Character Ship types here. These characters were made this way to explore these ideas (just as the villains are all made to parallel and contrast Fei Du to explord these ideas in comparison to our point of view Fei Du moments, our impressions of Fei Du from Luo Wenzhou and Tao Rans varied perspectives, all of them are different lenses to view humanity and how it works, if the world is just or if we have to make it good, if we can be inherently good and if good people will reach out to us if we just keep treading water to survive, if its luck and chaos, and how much... and much more frankly).

Modu is like. If you want a story about a corrupt city and its victims, symbolizing a corrupt world and all of us at its mercy, and you want to see the heart of the people doing something about it. First the main trio, but also every victim Fei Du recruits to help, every murderer recruited to the corruption, all the people in the cases swayed to some side. Thats what Modu is about.

The romance is just one facet of exploring that, the personal debate about what these things mean about the world as told through two people who view this world incredibly differently. Yet find some way to exist in the same space, same mutual world, when together. It hooks you in and doesn't let you go and youre wondering right there with them, left to draw your own meaning in the end. Hopefully that its worth trying, that doing something is worth trying even when its just the trying you can do and not the succeeding, at least thats what I got from it (at least in regards to Fei Du and Luo Wenzhou meeting each other, unable to live up to the pillar they put each other on but trying anyway, is what I felt from them).

Then like? Modu gives you THAT story, which in its own right is enough to make you contemplate.

And if you're like me and care about people, about characters? Well it gives you, like I said, those big themes and a city's nightmares symbolizing the world, and brings them down to an individual level. You read from the mind of the little girl who grew up in this (one of my favorite scenes and when I felt this novel was going to not shy away from dark psychological moments and bringing them to you). You read from the mind of Fei Du when he knows himself, when he doesn't. You read from the minds of all kinds of people, and the heart of much of the investigation is peoples motives and things they'd gone through and how that shaped what they'd do next. Why they'd do it. Leaving you to wonder who's right. Jaded idealist Luo Wenzhou who wants to believe in the goodness of the people he loves, but also is willing to risk that strangers may have good intent? Fei Du who thinks theres only victims and perpetrators and everyone is going to fall into one in the right circumstance? Tao Ran, who feels the world is too messy to dare declare predictable, who thinks even your closest can betray you and even you can accidentally hurt them, nevermind strangers, and the only thing you can control and rely on is your own choices? Some mix? None of them? The side characters as they come up, grow and evolve, do they understand the world better or worse, and is the world they experience different than anothers and justify why their worldview is likewise different? Modu gives you that up close and personal, over and over. Im still thinking about it. And the way its done, they all get to feel like lived in people. Not structures to tell the themes only. But on their own, there's a personal struggle between Fei Du feeling like a monster who'll destroy Lup Wenzhou if he loves him, like his dad destroyed his mom, and Luo Wenzhou carrying the guilt he could never save Fei Du and desperate to believe in Fei Du (and keep trying to save him in that way if only that way) as person who can do good despite not being saved and despite Fei Du's fears. You could cut the entire city's plot away, all of the crimes and make the city calm, and still that core of their plot would be carrying a Lot of weight. Theyre playing a game of "enemies" to lovers sure, or whatever romance story structures they fit into. But they're also made to be deeply rooted into each other, their personal beliefs tied into the outcome of what they hope or fear happens if they are close together. Modu made me care about that. Its like the fears many people might have, abiut theur own flaws, about getting close to others, about trusting and being unsure if that trust is safe to give. Its that and magnified into bigger form, in this landscape of a fucked up city and the tragedy of Fei Du and Luo Wenzhou's meeting and former lives.

Its like. Id love to to read another danmei (Ive got a lot on my to read list). But what's going to give me roo

#modu #silent reading #lb #meta #like... modu was so fucking good.#it was 3 characters symbolizing their city symbolizing the world in terms of worldviews morality justice and if theres a point to #trying to help at all. like damn #i want to read ANOTHER danmei that makes me weigh those questions. that uses the characters this personally and intimately with the readers #because the Characters weigh the themes in their OWN lives so heavily.#like... i know priest can probably give me this kind of huge delivery in can ci pin and sha po lang (at least i estimate #priesr probably can as theyre very popular novels by priest)#and 2ha can (because ive read half and know its themes)#but like. what other danmei can? can thousand autumns? can peerless? can wu shang jie?#can Mistakenly Saving the Villain?#like... the only non priest danmei i read was svsss and i got supremely lucky #cause i personally LOVE satire and critique commentary affection for the topics it explores #and svsss AS a satire is incredibly well done. having read 2ha first? and seen Eternal Love?#svsss does an amazing job at critiquing webnovel culture and flaws. at the way capitalism effects writing #at the way some tropes have become staples of certain genres and when used well yeah you get 2ha but when used badly you get #the fake novel svsss was making fun of that there Are many real novels like

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tcfactory · 10 months

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Please imagine:

[5k words of an outline for a big Bingge centric AU, mentioned QiJiu and MoShang and potentially one-sided BingQiJiu. Time travel, fix-it(?)

Warning for canon typical child abuse and torture, mention of sexual abuse, minor mention of cannibalism, Bingge is his own warning let’s be real]

Binghe goes insane from Xin Mo and abandons his humanity completely, then devolves further into a rabid beast until Mobei and the Wives all work together to put him down. Xin Mo is so entangled in him that it can’t exist past its host anymore, so it unleashes all that it has left to prevent Binghe’s death.

That’s when the reset happens.

It’s like coming back from the brink, when your head breaks the water and the dark recedes from the edge of your vision as air fills your lungs. Sanity is a cold thing when surfacing from the depths of madness, but it keeps the warm animal-hunger of bloodlust and beastly instinct on the edges of his consciousness and that’s fine.

He’s a child again when he regains conscious thought, standing in front of the tea set, about to make that first cup of tea for his future Shizun, and he can’t afford to be a beast right now. There’s a part of him that feels different, the parts that Xin Mo devoured alongside his sanity have now been returned to him, soft and squishy and human. It’s strange, coming back to humanity after so long - how long? Decades? Centuries? Time has lost all meaning to a beast that could hunt and breed whenever it pleased.

Binghe doesn’t remember how to make tea. He’s not certain he ever knew at this age, but the beast in him recoils at the memory of scalding tea dumped on his head. He looks around, as subtle as he can, to find something that might help him avoid that. Shen Qingqiu is talking to Ming Fan, rattling off the necessities they need to provide the first new disciple since Ming Fan became head disciple, but Binghe can feel the man’s attention on him. Shen Qingqiu has noticed his hesitation and he’s waiting to see what Binghe is going to do next. There’s no help to be had there.

Ning Yingying lurks around, too curious of the new shidi to stay away, and Shizun indulges her as long as she stays close enough that he can track her. She would know how to make tea. She has always been one of his smartest wives - she made the array that pinned him down and stripped him of fang and claw and poison so Mobei Jun could shove portals under his skin, drain him of his healing blood and finally unmake him.

It was an agonizing way to die. He deserved all of it and more.

When it seems like an opportune moment he quietly asks Yingying shijie how to make tea fit for their Shizun. She pretends to tie his hair for him - shidi can barely see through this fluff, this won’t do, here’s how you tie it properly - and tells him the instructions in a whisper so quiet even he can barely hear it.

Shen Qingqiu notices, of course he does, but he pretends that he doesn’t. The tea is not great, but it’s palatable and Shen Qingqiu drinks all of it while he runs Binghe through the rules of the peak and the expectations placed on a scholarly disciple of Qing Jing. It’s such a jarring difference from the first time when he got sent away right after the tea incident that he can’t help but drift in his chaotically spinning thoughts instead of listening. This is not the kind Shizun, he thinks. So why did the tea make such a big difference? (Years later Yue Qingyuan happily tells him how he blackmailed one of the rich boys into showing him how to make tea for his own peak’s tea ceremony because he didn’t trust the adults enough to ask and couldn’t afford to seem lesser than those of higher birth and Binghe finally Gets It.)

His thoughts are interrupted when Ming Fan arrives and shoves the ‘new disciple care package’ in his arms. Binghe is still not used to being tiny again, so he tries to hold all of it like he would as an adult and can’t, dropping his manual and the writing kit in the process. Yingying immediately hops to pick it all up, scolding their shixiong for bullying the new shidi while Shen Qingqiu watches with a cold mask of indifference.

The manual has fallen open and it gives her pause when she picks it up. “Shizun, I don’t think this manual is right.” Shen Qingqiu says nothing, but he takes it from her and glances at the pages.

Binghe is certain that he’s the only one who notices how Shizun’s hold on the book tightens in anger until his fingers turn white. “It’s an older manual,” he says, neither voice nor expression giving away the rage he must feel to grip the book so tight. Luo Binghe knows even his smallest tells and the man is seething. “Go to the library pavilion and pick up the proper edition for your shidi. Dismissed!”

It’s a few days later when Binghe is trying to find a good spot in the library to practice his calligraphy - he knows how to write, in theory, but he forgot so many of these mundane little rituals in his madness that he needs to refresh the memory - when he walks into the range of a silencing array. It’s obviously a fluke that it extends into the corridor, but if Binghe puts his ear to the wall he can clearly hear Shen Qingqiu rage at his hallmasters and the head of the library pavilion because of the manual. The fake, harmful cultivation manual, one of many that have ruined and killed lonely disciples before, the ones who didn’t have friends or other support to notice that something was wrong.

Manuals Shen Qingqiu has ordered removed and destroyed when he became peak lord. Orders that the hallmasters ignored. Does Peak Lord Shen think they have the time to waste on something like this when the peak is already short staffed? There are more important parts of the collection to maintain than the beginner manuals - the only ones who would ever fall prey to the false manuals anyway are the charity cases, and they are not the ones who fund the scholarly peak. Really, this wouldn’t even be an issue at all if Shen Qingqiu didn’t let Liu Qingge goad him into taking on a dirty beggar child. Don’t they all know that things crawling in the dirt are never worth the trouble? Once filth, always filth.

Luo Binghe is almost bowled over when Shen Qingqiu storms out of the meeting, blind to his environment. The man’s qi roils, razor sharp like shattered glass, his anger driving him to the cusp of a qi deviation. Binghe has a hunch that whatever this is about, it’s not about him. Shizun would not be so angry on his behalf.

He could never figure out why the man mistreated him, could never break Shen Qingqiu open enough to get the answer he needed. This feels like an opportunity, a chance to unravel this puzzle, and it tickles his instincts to have something to chase, to press his nose to the trail and hunt.

So he starts to sniff around. People overlook children so easily, it’s almost effortless how he finds piece after piece. He learns that the people on the peak - the cultivators from his generation in particular, the pavilion overseers and the hallmasters - don’t respect Shen Qingqiu and often undermine his authority when he’s not there to personally force them to adhere to his standards. There’s an especially tense period every time after the Peak Lord leaves for the city - for the brothel, they say, to drown in his lust or to use some hapless girl as a cauldron and bolster his own mediocre cultivation - when they seem especially bold, holding his indulgence over his head like a finely balanced sword.

He learns from Yingying that he’s the first disciple to get into the peak through the selection for the last decade. All the other disciples are young masters and scholarly prodigies who come recommended by their mentors. They don’t need their Shizun’s encouragement to try and bully Binghe, even when he’s not rolling over like he did in his first life. He fights back, tooth and nail, a rabid little thing that leaves scratches and bruises on anyone who would provoke him and he doesn’t have to worry about sleeping in the woodshed because more often than not the dormitory overseers isolate him from the others as a form of punishment.

Shen Qingqiu doesn’t interfere. He looks with the same disdain at both perpetrators and victim, bruised black and blue, and forbids them from leaving the peak until they are presentable again. It’s not until a particularly bad fight when Binghe takes a bite out of one of them, digging his teeth into a soft cheek and swallowing both the bloody chunk and the screams of terror with dark satisfaction, that Shizun’s hand is forced. Binghe is thrown into solitary confinement until the boy’s parents can come and demand fitting punishment for permanently disfiguring the rich brat. Binghe is grateful for these few days of isolation. He needs them to shackle the instincts screaming for blood, to calm his demon side that’s straining against his seals. It wasn’t like this the first time, but he came back as a beast in a boy’s skin so it’s not surprising.

He puts on the face of a lamb when they lead him outside, to the cold morning light and then to the punishment hall. The boy’s parents - a high-ranking official in the mortal Emperor’s court and his lady wife - look at him like he’s less than dirt, but there’s a glint of cruel satisfaction in their eyes when the stone faced Shen Qingqiu announces his punishment: by their demand, Binghe is to receive ten lashes with the discipline whip, or fewer if he passes out.

The Sect Leader came to oversee the punishment and the horror on his gentle face is obvious to all. The disciple whip is a cruel thing, one that can cripple even advanced cultivators, and will set Binghe’s cultivation back by years if it doesn’t ruin it altogether. The Sect Leader gives Shen Qingqiu a pleading look and Binghe lifts his head to tell him not to bother - when could Yue Qingyuan ever influence Shen Qingqiu for the better? - so he catches the Sect Leader’s expression when Shen Qingqiu flicks the case open and takes out the whip. Just for a moment, his expression flickers into surprise, then relief, before it turns into a blank mask. Binghe has no time to ponder what the hell that is about, because Shen Qingqiu swings the whip with the ease and confidence of practice and the line of fire down his back startles a scream out of him. He lived a whole life as a warlord and demon, but this body is that of a human child, unaccustomed to this sort of pain.

The world fades to black after two more strikes.

When he comes to, he is laying in a soft bed. The bedding smells clean, but oddly stale - like a guest bed they only air out every other day, but never use. He turns his head and the bamboo house comes into focus. It’s Shizun’s room and Shizun’s bed, but that makes no sense - where does the man sleep if not in his own bed? His cultivation isn’t good enough to forgo sleep altogether. There’s something here, a corner piece to this puzzle Binghe is struggling to fit into the big picture. Is this why Shizun keeps going to the brothels? Can he only find rest in the embrace of women? Binghe, formerly a very active master of a harem with hundreds of wives and concubines, can’t judge him for that. He already dismissed the rumors about Shizun abusing a cultivation cauldron; dual cultivation is one of the few methods to mend ruined meridians and Binghe still remembers how wrecked Shen Qingqiu’s cultivation was when he caught him.

There is yelling from the main room, Mu shishu’s incensed voice and the low rumble of the Sect Leader as he tries to calm him. Eventually a blank faced Shizun leads both of them inside and Mu shishu ignores all etiquette to rush to the bed and take stock of Binghe’s injuries.

“These… these are not the marks of a discipline whip,” he says, confused and relieved.

“Of course not,” Shen Qingqiu scoffs. “I don’t keep one of those wretched things around on my peak. As if those fools could tell the difference between a discipline whip and a regular slaver’s whip. All they wanted was to hear the little beast scream.”

The Sect Leader hurriedly reassures Mu shishu that the whip strikes are painful, but with the right treatment they won’t even scar.

“Zhangmen-shixiong, are you saying that from experience?” Mu Qingfang asks, massaging his temples and startles a little when Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan say “Yes!” in perfect unison. Another corner piece for the puzzle.

After his injuries are treated and Yue Qingyuan shepherds the healer outside, Binghe is left alone with Shen Qingqiu.

“What am I to do with you, little beast? If you don’t learn to rein yourself in, I will kick you off my peak before you can drag our reputation down.”

“He deserved it. They started it.”

“And? This is not Bai Zhan. You are in no position to make such a ruckus about things. Your stunt lost Qing Jing almost a tenth of our yearly funding. My own shizun would have beaten me to death if I pulled something so idiotic.”

“Then why didn’t you?” He’s starting to understand Shen Qingqiu, the wretched little slave, who clawed his way up to become Peak Lord despite his ruined cultivation and digs his teeth into what’s his so nobody can take it away, but he still wants to hear it from the man himself. “Do I remind you of yourself, Shizun?”

“Little beast, you are asking for a beating.” Shen Qingqiu forgot his fan, or else he’d be hiding behind it, as always. Binghe’s Shizun has such a terribly thin face. “You have potential and drive to make something of yourself. I want to see how far it will take you. If you learn how to hide your claws better.”

Oh, Binghe knows exactly how far he can go. But he humors his Shizun and does a demonstration of his White Lotus routine. Shizun fetches a fan just so he can smack him over the head, but says that it’s an adequate act, for now. However, if Binghe can’t fool the peak into believing that he mellowed out from the punishment, then he shouldn’t expect help from his master!

They settle into an understanding over the next few years. They are not of a kind, but they are both beasts after a fashion and now that he finally peered under Shen Qingqiu’s unbreakable armor, he doesn’t resent the man as much. Is he himself not a violent, monstrous thing once you peel off his pleasant facade? What filled the human child with fear and resentment entices the adult demon that now lives in his skin. Besides, Shizun hasn’t hurt him in this life. Shen Qingqiu usually lets him be, only interacting with him as much as any other discipline, but sometimes under the guise of chores he takes remedial lessons to perfect his act. The years he let go of his humanity took their toll and he needs the guidance to set some of the details right.

“I think I might be part demon,” Luo Binghe says one day, sipping tea in the bamboo house. For two hours straight Shizun poked and prodded at his insecurities, reaching for a level of unpleasantness he doesn’t often aim at him and Binghe kept his mask of a perfect, demure youth all throughout. At the end of it Shizun poured him a cup of tea and reluctantly praised his acting. It’s a thorny thing, Shizun’s praise, but it has set a warmth in Binghe’s chest that refuses to go away.

“You are fifteen. It’s probably just puberty.” Binghe laughs at his Shizun’s expression of disgust. Shen Qingqiu is technically not wrong either, because it’s his steadily growing sex drive that keeps aggravating his demon half. “I have met men who wish they could be demons. I don’t care as long as you don’t tarnish the reputation of the sect.”

“The sect or Qing Jing Peak?”

“The sect. Drag me down with your madness if you want. I chose to take responsibility for you as your Shizun, but leave the others out of it.”

The others in this case, Binghe has learned, means Yue Qingyuan. Binghe is not sure what ties the two men together (ten thousand arrows and a throat split open on the shards of a blade) but it’s a kind of devotion and he wants it for himself. He set this thread of fate against Xin Mo’s blade and it remained unbroken, so he wants to tangle himself up in it until he can forget that he has no thread of his own. He couldn’t find true peace in the embrace of a thousand women, but when he imagines himself sandwiched between Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan, the most resilient and the strongest man the human realm can offer, he thinks he could be satisfied. Shen Qingqiu’s sharp edges stimulate the demon part of him that wants to court with his fangs and claws bared and Yue Qingyuan’s soft brotherly manners soothe the neglected human boy he tried to rip out of his soul, but never managed. They would be perfect.

But first he has to find out why Shen Qingqiu keeps pushing the Sect Leader away and mend their relationship somehow, and a crucial step to that is making sure Liu Qingge lives. Binghe now suspects that the Bai Zhan War God’s death was an accident, but it drained Shen Qingqiu of any will to stand up for himself and he can’t allow that to happen this time around.

“When I passed Liu shishu earlier I sensed that his qi was unbalanced. He is heading to a deviation soon.” He can blame it on his Shizun that he learned to sniff out impending qi deviations, because Shen Qingqiu had them often and always, always tried to cover them up. “I know he is going to Lingxi caves for isolated cultivation and I overheard Mu shishu say that Shizun is following him in a fortnight. I want Shizun to be prepared to call for help if Liu shishu turns violent and attacks him.”

It’s a battle to convince Shizun to take the emergency talismans, but Binghe eventually wears him down. He spends the whole night before Shizun enters the caves drawing the talismans; it’s his punishment for bothering Shen Qingqiu so much in the past two weeks. Soon after, the Sect Leader leaves and Binghe doesn’t remember the exact timeline anymore, but it sounds like things are happening the way they did before; Liu Qingge’s death and the demon invasion was barely a week apart and Yue Qingyuan was absent for both. So Binghe loiters around the emergency medical team and waits.

Nobody notices it when he slips into the backline of the emergency team, keeping pace with them through the winding pathways of the Lingxi caves until something calls out to him, his instincts suddenly on high alert, and he falls behind, just as unnoticed. The side cavern is almost completely blocked off and once Binghe squeezes inside he can’t see anything, but he doesn’t need his eyes to tell what happened. Poisonous, disturbed qi saturates the cavern, heavy on his tongue with pain and fear and desperation, the rage of a dragon trapped in a bottle, thrashing to break free. He can feel the marks gouged into the walls when he touches them, can taste the blood saturating the surface when he licks along a deep crack.

A beast was trapped in here, a beast that tastes like Yue Qingyuan.

The discovery makes him giddy and he has to tear himself away from the cavern before the qi could damage his human cultivation or the sweet song of blood could awaken his demon half. Outside he finds that things happened as he expected, and to his relief both Peak Lords live. Liu Qingge seems unbearably insistent on undoing the damage he did to Shen Qingqiu’s reputation in the past, but Shizun seems just as annoyed by his attempts as Binghe, so it’s fine.

The demon invasion happens just on schedule and Binghe goes in with a plan to use the demon elder’s poisonous attack to pretend that was what awakened his demon half. It's a good plan, one that's immediately dashed by Liu Qingge, who can't bear to sit and watch when Shen Qingqiu gets to fight. For a blissful moment Binghe entertains the idea of revealing himself anyway and ripping Liu Qingge limb from limb, but he restrains himself and moves right on.

The encounter with Meng Mo is different. In the dream realm Binghe is not a child and he shuts off access to the dream before the old demon can pull anyone else in with them. Then he bows to the elder with all the respect his old mentor earned in that other life. “This Binghe is overjoyed to see Meng shushu has found him again.”

It’s strange, to explain what happened to him to someone who can’t possibly remember those events, but Meng Mo takes it all with grace, even when Binghe admits that Xin Mo trapped the demon in his own nightmare and slowly consumed him. Binghe doesn’t strictly need the grandfatherly old demon in his head - because as much as Meng Mo would deny it, Binghe has met enough demon families to now recognize him for the very typical demonic grandfather that he is - but his presence feels right and his power can tide them over until Binghe decides to break the seals.

Together they hatch a plan to trap his Shizun and his Shibo in a dream until they are forced to talk to each other. It’s easier said than done, because with Liu Qingge nipping at his heels again to demand a spar (get a hint already shishu, Shizun doesn’t see sparring as a bonding activity and you never told him that you mean it that way!) Shen Qingqiu refuses to go down to the brothel to sleep. Finally, when sleep deprivation is driving Shizun to the brink of a qi deviation, Binghe has enough and bluntly presents him with a sleep tonic. “You can take it willingly or I can hit you over the head and take you down to the city. Your choice, Shizun.”

It’s enough of a threat that Shen Qingqiu allows Binghe to distract Liu shishu with a barrage of very specific questions about an upcoming nighthunt and sneaks out to the city himself. The distance would usually be a bit bothersome, but Binghe can grasp the thread tying Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu together and pull them into a joint dream in the middle.

It’s worse than he expects. He gets a front row seat to their worst nightmares and even fully knowing that these are only memories, his demon blood burns to rip their enemies apart. Meng Mo bodily drags him outside of the dream so his enraged howling can’t disturb the long overdue reconciliation between Xiao Jiu and his Qi-ge.

“He was so cruel to me in that first life, I never imagined that he ever had it worse,” Binghe admits quietly when his rage has cooled, pale as a ghost as they watch the shade of Qiu Jianluo force himself on his child slave.

“Have you ever…?”

“No. Even I had my limits. I made sure they wanted me, even if they regretted it afterwards.” How many women did he feed to Xin Mo’s endless appetite over the years? He never counted. Meng Mo just hums and then shoos him away; the old demon can maintain the dream until the humans are done sorting themselves out and it’s probably not good for Binghe’s psyche to watch all of this.

The next few years are a blur. Binghe keeps his distance from Shen Qingqiu when it becomes clear that the reconciliation followed them out of the dream. He doesn’t want Shen Jiu to think of him as a disciple, a child, he wants to leave and return as a dashing suitor, so he watches from afar as things slot into a much more pleasing picture than before. With Yue Qingyuan’s broad shoulders propping him up, Shen Qingqiu finally gains the power to back up his words and a genuine confidence to match his proud bearing. He kicks all his detractors off Qing Jing and calls an audit from An Ding to clean up all the leftover filth before the new hallmasters take their post. Yue Qingyuan shuts down a nasty comment during a peak lord meeting about Shen Qingqiu’s brothel visits by reminding everyone that they are allowed to visit their family outside the sect if they want to, and this is everything the sect gossip talks about for the next sennight. It prompts Ning Yingying to bashfully admit to her trusted Luo shidi that her mother is one of Shen Qingqiu’s 'sisters', that she joined the sect on his recommendation. Maybe A-Luo would like to meet her sometime? He’s like a little brother to Yingying and she wants him to meet her family.

Not everything is perfect, of course. Qing Jing is still heavy on the physical punishment, second only to Bai Zhan, because the fear of pain works extremely well on the rich brats, but Binghe’s growing restlessness sees him punished more than all the disciples put together and on him it has a very different effect. He can’t help it, his libido is out of control and the people he wants are out of his reach, so the only things he can channel his restless energy is aggression and too long nights of masturbation that leave him too tired to function the following day. At one point Shen Qingqiu even threatens him with the whip again if he doesn’t cut it out, and the thought of Shen Qingqiu whipping him bloody fuels his fantasies for the next several weeks.

It’s three months before the Immortal Alliance Conference when Meng Mo digs his heels in about the course of their future.

“We are not getting Xin Mo.”

“I need it if I want to become strong again.”

“I reviewed all of your memories and I can confidently say that’s not true. The wretched thing hurt you more than it ever helped.”

“I will never get out of the abyss without it. I need it for that long and then I will lock it away.”

“If you pick it up you will never be able to put it down again. Just like in that other life.”

“Then what do you suggest? Am I to just stay in the abyss and perish?!”

“No, of course not. Ask Xiao Mobei to teach you his portal trick.”

“... Let’s start with the obvious that it would not work and let’s not go into the logistics of how I’m even supposed to get hold of him.”

“You have actively used Xin Mo for fifteen centuries.” Was it really that long? It didn’t feel that long. “You have absorbed enough of its residual energy that with the right teacher you should be capable of learning portal manipulation. Whether the Mobei boy is willing to teach you or not is another matter.”

“We were friends before I went insane.” Before he merged the realms and accidentally destroyed Mobei’s entire kingdom and all his subjects in the process. “I think I have a way to convince him.”

Thus starts the long chase to get into Shang Qinghua’s house so Binghe can talk to him in private. It’s much easier said than done. Much as Qinghua has made his peak self-sustaining, he is still busy as hell and when he's not then he's in his leisure house which is the most well-warded building in the entire sect. They only manage a meeting with two weeks left to go before the conference.

At least convincing Shang Qinghua is easy enough. “I recently found out that I'm part demon and I want your prince to help me get away after the conference” is a clear motivation why Binghe would want to talk to Mobei and “I can see from your bruises that he's trying to court you - very carefully, by his standards, I don't see any frostbite - I can make him understand that you are not interested or how to do it the human way, whichever you prefer” makes Qinghua’s expression twist into something both calculating and flustered. The wonders a millennia lived as mostly a demon does, Binghe muses. He was too young and too human to realize that Mobei was pining hard for his little snake of an advisor the first time around. He's not surprised when it all turns into a Human Courting Dos and Don’ts 101. He's not sure if Qinghua is really interested or he's just too scared to turn Mobei down, but when he comes to finalize the details of his getaway the leisure house stinks to the high heavens of happy ice demon, so it's working at least.

He talks Mobei down from letting his entire menagerie loose on the disciples (Qinghua breathes a sigh of relief. He might be able to keep his position as a spy and not lose all his enrolled disciples after all) and shows him where to send the most dangerous beasts for a more targeted attack against Huan Hua’s adult cultivators. Binghe doesn't much care about the disciples, but the least amount of damage done against the sect, the more likely Shen Qingqiu will take him back soon once he returns.

The night before the Conference he finally visits Shen Qingqiu in his dream to show the man his true self. “I told you that I'm a demon.” In the dream Qingqiu is scrawnier and not quite the perfectly polished image of a peerless immortal. Binghe revels in tracing his eyes over all the scars he can see that have been long erased from his skin in the waking world. “I need to leave for a time, after the conference. But do not fret. When I return I will be Junshang and lay the demon world in front of you and Sect Leader Yue as a courting gift.”

He keeps Shen Qingqiu in the dream long enough that his Shizun can't talk to him in person before the event begins. It would spoil the fun to have a fight with his future intended before the hunt.

This plan, unlike the demon invasion one, goes off without a hitch. When Qinghua is portaled into Mobei’s palace a week later for one last report before Binghe leaves, the man has only good news - the sect only suffered injuries and no deaths, and as an added bonus the Iceclaw Assassin Wolf they dropped into the Huan Hua ranks took out the Old Palace Master and his most trusted people before it self destructed. It’s a better outcome than he dared to hope for.

Mobei refuses to teach him portals (for now) but gives him a token that can portal him out of the abyss if things get dicey or Binghe is done training, so that's fine as well. All is ready. Binghe is going to go into the abyss and then seven years later he’ll come back out, fully in control of his heavenly demon heritage and as much of a beast in body as he is in spirit.

The Northern Consort greets him coldly, glaring at him from under a huadian painted with Mobei Jun’s blood that leaves no doubt in anybody’s mind about the king’s devotion to his little human husband. “What took you so long?” Shang Qinghua asks, unwinding one of his many layers of fur and dropping it on the shivering Binghe. The pelt barely covers his shoulders, but it warms Binghe all the same. “Zhangmen-shixiong has been hounding me day and night about your return. Shen Qingqiu refuses to hold their wedding without you there.”

“Ah, but Shang shishu.” Binghe spreads his arms wide, showing off his new physique with a grin. “I promised to lay the demon world before their feet. I couldn’t possibly return before I was capable of upholding that promise!”

Consort Shang is unimpressed.

“Next time, just get them a stick of tanghulu to share. Much easier to get and I bet you anything they would appreciate it more.”

He might not be wrong about that. What is the demon world to a pair of slave boys who rose to the top of the cultivation world on their own power? Comfort food made by his own hand is a much sweeter gift.

Binghe is still going to conquer the demon world for them regardless. He promised, after all, and what kind of husband would he be if he went back on his promises?

#svsss #luo binghe #shen qingqiu #shen jiu #bingqijiu #tc writes #if I ever find the energy to write all these fics it will be all over for you #Bingge is a bit removed from his grudge against SQQ bc it happened so long ago #but in exchange he can be a feral beast in human skin #as a treat #there was no good spot to fit it in there but Bingge also forgot how to cook #he had to have turned into a literal abyss monster for the others to finally decide to put him down and it did no favor to his tastes #poor Yingying had to experience a lot of undercooked or questionably seasoned meals during their friendship #also please imagine YQY going through a few less palatable iterations during his time in the cave #before he remembered that he was supposed to be a boy and was let out #locked in the dark trying to remember that he's not a sword or a beast that's all hunger and sharp edges #his shizun kept him in there until he stopped roaring and screeching and started screaming like a proper human should #I like my Yue Qi with Hidden Layers and at least half of those are also very feral #they conflict nicely with how much of an enabling wet blanket he is #and I say that with all the fondness in the world #I like Yue Qi I want to give him headpats and lock him in a room with Xiao Jiu until they sort their shit out

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