Chapter Text
Linguang-jun looks at the little bun crying from his gaudy little crib. His screeches for attention gaining him nothing except tired lungs. No servant goes forth to help him or hold him. The little bun’s wails slowly turn to hiccupped sobs and Linguang-jun feels the cold heart in his chest ache.
It’s saddening in a way that few things remain to Linguang-jun. He had thought he had gotten rid of things like pity and compassion since he’s been reborn into this dumpster fire of a novel.
But when faced with his nephew, the child of a woman he pretended to love and the man who hated him to pieces, Linguang-jun melts.
Tufts of black hair sit oh so perfectly on the little head of his nephew. Blue tearful eyes gaze up at him. Adorable little red nose sniffling in distress. Smooth chubby cheeks of baby fat.
All together draw the picture of the most beautiful baby Linguang-jun has ever set his eyes on.
Linguang-jun hasn't felt this human since he was fourteen and forced to kill his own mother.
A trial to gut himself of weakness, his father had later justified. Like anything could justify the blue blood on his hands that came from the only person in this fucked up world that cared for him.
Still, looking at this baby, the future right hand man of the demon lord Luo Binghe, Linguang-jun couldn’t help but itch to take care of him.
So he did.
He stepped forward towards his nephew, ignoring the suddenly alert attendants, and carefully lifted his nephew into his arms. He cooed at the bun, swaying softly and watching with joy as his nephew’s tense face relaxed.
Linguang-jun spent hours like that, simply holding his nephew.
His brother, the current Mobei-jun, took one look at him and his besotted look before snorting.
“You're a weakling, timid and easy to take advantage of. You’d even take care of the child of the woman who betrayed you,” his brother sneered. Linguang-jun ignored him, too busy marvelling at the bun who was so obediently sitting quietly in his arms.
His brother reached forward to grab the baby and Linguang-jun immediately broke the hand with a snap.
His brother, surprised, let out a low curse, his hateful eyes glaring at Linguang-jun. Linguang-jun gazed back dispassionately.
“My nephew will now be under my protection. I will take care of his every need, acting as his sire,” Linguang-jun stated. He didn't need to ask, anything other than compliance was to be beaten out.
His brother knew it too.
His scowl of loathing spoke loudly of how much he wanted to gut Linguang-jun where he stood.
“Do as you like,” his brother huffed, stomping off to be a nuisance elsewhere.
Linguang-jun looked back at the little bun that was still resting peacefully in his arms.
“Guess it’s just me and you now bud,” Linguang-jun whispered in delight.
Shen Yuan had first gained slight awareness while in the womb. Apparently demon babies just grow up faster that way. He hadn’t truly understood what had been happening, only knowing that he was in a very warm, cramped, but overall safe space.
He had often come in and out of consciousness, not able to have more than three thoughts at a time before he was knocked out again.
The day he had been born was genuinely traumatic.
He was forcefully taken out of a safe haven and thrusted into the cold, his skin irritated from having to basically shove his way out of his mother’s vigina.
Needless to say it sucked.
He got his thoughts together fully when he was two months old, the full extent of what had happened to him finally clicking.
He realised he was in pidw a month later when he heard his new mother call his new father Mobei-jun.
That realisation only grew to be more in depth when his mother called him Linguang-jun.
His mother was a concubine, a snow fairy captured from the Forest of Everlasting Winter. Because she wasn't a Northern Desert Demon she was shamed with the title of concubine instead of main wife, mind you she probably didn't want to be a wife one way or the other but who cared what a random snow fairy thought.
He got his white hair from her.
It seemed to be about the only thing he got from her as everything else was pure Northern Desert Demon.
He spent his first year of new life in her comforting cold embrace, hearing her whispered stories of her home. Her small stature struggling to hold an already growing giant of a demon.
He was ripped out of her arms at only two.
His stubby little legs forced to walk away from the only home he had ever known.
His father, the current Mobei-jun, dropped him into the icy plains of the Northern Desert and ordered him to either survive or die, pushing him through a portal before disappearing.
It was a trial of strength, a way to cull the weak that might drag down the clan with their uselessness.
Shen Yuan almost died the first time he had been chased down by a demonic beast, its sharp teeth biting through his small limbs and puncturing all the way through.
It was only the instinct of his demonic heritage that allowed him to survive.
Ice spikes erupt through the ground to impale the demonic beast, killing it instantly as one of the ice spikes gouges it through the eye.
He spent that night crying as he ate the beast raw, uncaring of the blood that stained his clothes as he ached to sate his hunger.
Shen Yuan spent a year in the icy plains, killing and almost dying more times then he cared to count. He ate all his kills and in the brief moments where he could gain a moment of peace, he wondered about his family.
From his parents to his brothers, to his sister, he prayed they were safe and happy and not eating raw meat like animals.
He also thought of his new mother, wondering if she was well while he was gone, wondering what she’d do with all the stories she seemed so desperate to tell now that no one was there to listen.
His father tracked him down while he was butchering, watching as his son killed with a savagery that satisfied his expectations.
He picked him up, uncaring of his growls and biting screams of rage as Shen Yuan tried his best to kill him.
He opened up a portal and threw him through it, ordering the servants to clean him up.
Shen Yuan only came back to himself when he was dunked in water, the shock finally recalibrating him into realising what had happened.