Work Text:
It started with a tug in his stomach.
Following closely was a sudden pain, not too bad, just enough to make Shang Qinghua wonder if he had eaten something bad. Then came another tug and more pain, like something had stabbed him from within, and it took all his willpower not to keel over.
Shang Qinghua started to sweat; something was clearly wrong. He gave a quick look to his surroundings. Mobei Jun was standing next to him — they were greeting a group of vassal demon lords in the great hall — and Shang Qinghua thought it best he made a subtle exit. He wasn't really needed for this anyway and it was better than staying and risking making a scene.
Or worse, considering the current situation, show any weakness.
When no one was paying attention to him, Shang Qinghua did a quick bow and headed for the exit leading further into the castle. He had barely gotten halfway before another stab of pain, this one far more intense, and the taste of copper in his throat. Shang Qinghua hurried his steps — which suddenly felt so loud in the hall, echoing, and the guests could definitely tell something was up now, he could practically feel their stares on his back. He covered his mouth with a hand for the fear of coughing up blood in front of an audience.
Shang Qinghua threw open the doors leading out into the hallway — any attempts at subtlety long gone. He wasn't even sure where he was going anymore, just that he needed to get away. All he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears, all he could feel was the pain spreading through his abdomen. Dread was pooling in him as his mind reeled; something was really, really wrong.
There was another stab of blinding pain and this time, Shang Qinghua was sure someone must've stabbed him, surely there was a blade embedded in his gut. He came to a stop and his knees gave in, he fell over with both his hands covering his mouth, muffled coughs filling it with blood. It was strange, he thought for a moment that he could still hear his own footsteps but ah, no, the sound came from someone else coming up behind him.
Cold hands touched his shoulders, a seemingly distant voice called his name, and Shang Qinghua turned towards it to find his king kneeling down next to him.
"Shang Qinghua", Mobei Jun repeated, a dark look on his face.
Ah , Shang Qinghua thought. Of course he'd be angry, after I made such a mess of this meeting.
Mobei Jun grabbed his wrist and tried — with uncharacteristic gentleness — to pry away the human's hands from his face. Shang Qinghua resisted, he didn't know who was watching, didn't want to make things even worse.
Mobei Jun frowned and tugged harder and Shang Qinghua couldn't hope to resist on a good day, let alone as weak as he felt now. As his hands was pulled away, yet another wave of white hot pain rushed through him and the blood flowed out, followed by a cough bringing up even more. Shang Qinghua whimpered and thought, oh, I'm dying.
Suddenly his vision blurred and Shang Qinghua felt as if he was falling, except what had happened turned out to be Mobei Jun lifting. Another day, Shang Qinghua might have felt embarrassed about his king holding him in the princess carry.
Things blurred again and they were moving, Shang Qinghua felt the signature weightless moment of passing through a portal, except he couldn't for some reason figure out what that meant, his mind filled with the terrible pain and fear of death, his vision darkening at the edges.
"Shang shidi!?" he heard a familiar voice exclaim, as unconsciousness claimed him.
————
Shang Qinghua woke up to unfamiliar surroundings, white sheets and the faint smell of herbal medicine.
“You’re awake.”
Ah, so that’s why it was unfamiliar. With Shang Qinghua’s penchant for avoiding danger, he was rarely a guest of Qian Cao peak. Shang Qinghua tried sitting up to properly great the other peak lord, but was stopped by an ache deep in his stomach.
“Careful”, Mu Qingfang said. “You’ll reopen the wound”.
Giving up, Shang Qinghua laid back on the bed and stretched his neck to look around in the room. The walls were filled with shelves, cluttered with jars of herbs and roots or pills, and sharp-looking medical instruments that Shang Qinghua would rather not examine too closely. Against the other wall there was a desk with scrolls and documents scattered about, and sitting by it was Mu Qingfang himself.
“This is…”
“My study”, Mu Qingfang said, without looking up from the scroll he was studying. “I needed to keep you close, for observation. After all, the damage from a blood rose centipede can be quite tricky to deal with.”
Shang Qinghua shuddered. Blood rose centipede? That’s a creature he remembers rather vividly, mostly because simply writing about it had made him uncomfortable. Actually experiencing it was… something else.
Mu Qingfang glanced at him, “Do you want to see it?” He reached for a sealed jar in one of the shelves closest to him. “It should still be alive.”
“No!”, Shang Qinghua balked. “Are you telling me you haven’t killed it!? Why!?”
“For studying”, Mu Qingfang said blankly. “It’s a rare creature to find in the human realm after all. Is Shang shidi familiar with it?”
“Y-yeah…” He was familiar with it alright! The idea had come to him when he caught a nasty looking centipede in his apartment, so he wrote it into the story. Regrettably, it led to him being unable to rest easy until he had checked every corner to make sure that his apartment was centipede free from then on.
Wait, if it had been a blood rose centipede, then…
He used a hand to lightly grope his stomach under the covers. Sure enough, there were bandages under his robes, and under that, right below his navel, there was likely to be a decimeter-wide incision. To remove the nasty parasite, you would have to put the patient to sleep (or have them be unconscious from pain, which was likely to happen), make the cut and at the same time, use spiritual force to find it and pull it out. If the centipede had time to react or realised beforehand it was in danger, it would burrow deeper down into the guts and use its many, many feets to grab onto the intestines. Trying to pull it out at that point would likely be fatal to the patient, but leaving it be had the same results. In fact, most infected never even made it to a healer capable of helping them, since the damage to internal organs was increasingly rapid once the blood rose centipede had hatched from its pupa stage.
Shang Qinghua, contemplating how close he had been to literally spilling his guts, didn’t notice Mu Qingfang observing him with a thoughtful look.
“Shang shidi… That demon lord of yours, his residence is in the northern region of the demon realm, correct? Yet the blood rose centipede is native to the south regions. How did you come in contact with it?”
Shang Qinghua blinked, interrupted from his thoughts. “That… I’m not sure?”
“It enters the host in the nymph stage, feeding of the blood for about two months before reaching its adult form. So it would have been about two months ago, if that helps you remember?”
Yes, thanks, I know! I don’t want to be reminded I carried it around for that long, okay!
Shang Qinghua thought back. He hadn’t been anywhere near the south in a long time, and nothing had been delivered from the region to the castle in that time frame either. “I’m afraid I can’t think of anything.”
Mu Qingfang sighed, “While we realise you have a… position of sort at that Mobei Jun’s side, we… well, zhangmen shixiong has expressed some concern that you’re putting yourself through unnecessary danger.”
Meaning they think someone did this to him, deliberately. That’s… well, rather likely, actually. Similar attempts had happened before, though none of them turned this grave. Which still made it rather reasonable for Yue Qingyuan to persuade Shang Qinghua to “resign” and simply be a peak lord from now on.
But how would that work out, really? How would he resign from something he didn’t really officially have? Shang Qinghua had never really been given a new role after his task as a spy ended, not an spoken one at least. He had simply been given new orders and made to follow Mobei Jun wherever he went. Shang Qinghua supposed he could do a repeat of the stunt he pulled after Mobei Jun’s inheritance and simply leave, but… thinking about it made him ache in a way that had nothing to do with any parasite.
Thinking about his king made Shang Qinghua realise something.
“My ki-, that is, Mobei Jun, where is he? He brought me here, didn’t he?”
Mu Qingfang nodded, “You’re lucky he did, though it gave us quite a scare. He’s waiting outside.” The Qian Cao peak lord sighed. “We tried to make him leave the mountain, since Luo Binghe’s ban should really apply to his men too, but he refused to budge. Zhangmen shixiong was reluctant to use force, as a fight may have disturbed your recovery, so we let him be.”
“Then, uhm-”
“I’ll inform him you’re awake.” Mu Qingfang stood up and glanced around the room, “... Keep an eye on him, would you?”, before leaving.
As if my king would be interest in nicking any of your stuff! The nerve! Is this some sort of discrimination against demons!?
Shang Qinghua quickly realised that getting angry wasn’t a very good idea, as the tension made the pain in his abdomen flare up. He had barely recovered before Mobei Jun entered the study.
Shang Qinghua felt a sense of relief at seeing his king again, which soon turned to anxiety after observing the dark look on the demon’s face.
“My king…”, he swallowed and looked down to his fists clenching the covers. “This humble servant would like to apologise for disrupting my king’s important meeting.”
He dared a glance to Mobei Jun’s face but averted his gaze again when he saw the other looking furious.
The silence between them stretched on and Shang Qinghua’s anxiety had time to triple before Mobei Jun spoke.
“Someone did this to you. This Mobei Jun demands to know who.”
Shang Qinghua looked up, surprised. “Who…? Forgive me, my king. This servant has tried to figure it out but have been unable to.”
“It must be someone who has had recent contact with you. When we return, I shall clear them all out”, Mobei Jun decided. Meaning, he intended to kill them.
“My king! That is really not necessary!”, Shang Qinghua protested. “Besides, I’ve most likely carried the parasite for over two months already,--”
“Then this Mobei Jun will clear out all who have been in contact with you for the period of three months.”
My King!! Please don’t scare me by speaking of unnecessary mass murder so casually!! Especially not while inside a righteous sect!!
Shang Qinghua looked down to his lap, mind scrambling for a way to dissuade the other. “Please, my king, to go to such lengths for someone like this humble servant… I’m afraid people will misunderstand my importance!” It might even make me an even bigger target , he cried internally.
Another silence fell. When Mobei Jun didn’t break it this time, Shang Qinghua looked up. When he saw his king’s expression, his mind came to a still.
He looked… lost? Resigned? It wasn’t a look Shang Qinghua had seen on him before.
After what felt like an eternity, Mobei Jun finally spoke.
“I thought you understood. Before.”
When Shang Qinghua just looked puzzled, he continued. “Before you left. I thought you understood me. And I thought I understood you.” Mobei Jun looked away and let out a huff of breath — one that almost sounded like a self-deprecating laugh, but surely not. “It turned out that was not the case.”
Shang Qinghua didn’t know what to say. He had never heard his king speak his mind in such a way before.
“I want you to understand me”, Mobei Jun continued, still not looking at him. “And I want to understand you.”
Shang Qinghua stayed quiet, suddenly very nervous, as if this conversation were about to change something big. Reshape their very relationship.
“I thought I had time to make that happen, when you came back. But I hesitated. And now, you…” Mobei Jun finally looked back, meeting his gaze. Shang Qinghua felt his breath catch at the look in the other’s eyes. It wasn’t much, not something people who hadn’t spent so much time with Mobei Jun would catch, but Shang Qinghua saw the vulnerability hidden deep in there.
“I almost lost you”, Mobei Jun said, voice unusually quiet. “You almost died, still thinking you were unimportant. To me.” He took a few steps closer to the bed, looking at Shang Qinghua’s face intently. “So I need you to at the very least, understand my… intentions towards you.”
Shang Qinghua felt a sudden rush of adrenaline, like he was falling. Was this really going where he thought it was going…?
“Intentions… my king?”
Mobei Jun swallowed visibly — and was that a faint blush on his face?
“Romantic. Intentions.”
Shang Qinghua’s head spun, feeling so dizzy as if he was falling for real this time. Romantic…!? Was this real? He was awake, right? And alive!? He hadn’t actually passed on and been given this vision by the system out of pity!? But his wound still ached, keeping him latched onto the reality of the situation.
Mobei Jun had romantic intentions towards him?!? Since when!? Suddenly, his mind provided him with a long-dismissed memory, of when Luo Binghe had asked his court for romantic advice. Mobei Jun had then responded with ‘beat them up, three times per day’.
Shang Qinghua, the man Mobei Jun used to beat up three times per day: “…………”
“My king”, Shang Qinghua started, “I think I might be the densest person alive.”
His king let out another puff of breath — and it was a laugh, wasn’t it — and replied, “Probably.”
Shang Qinghua’s heart was pounding loudly. What sort of reality was this? He had before him his ideal man, an ideal he had created with his own words, and this ideal had feelings for him. Shang Qinghua felt as if he was the protagonist of a wish-fulfilling romantic transmigration novel. Wait, so maybe he actually did transmigrate into the protagonist?? Ha! Suck it, Luo Binghe! I’m the protagonist now!
“Shang Qinghua”, Mobei Jun’s voice brought him out of his (rather embarrassing) thoughts. “This Mobei Jun would… would like your answer.”
Shang Qinghua blinked, surprised. Answer? Honestly, the thought of rejecting Mobei Jun was absurd. It hadn’t even crossed his mind!
But how does one properly give an answer to such a heartfelt confession? Shang Qinghua could feel himself start to sweat. “I… This servant… M-my king, I— I’m love you! ”
……………………
Shang Qinghua wanted to cry. I’m love you!? Not only did he already ruin things by dropping the damned L-word so soon, he couldn’t even do it with proper grammar!? Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, aren’t you supposed to be a writer!
He squeezed his eyes shut in shame, face flushed hot, until he felt a blessedly cool hand touch the side of his face. Opening his eyes again, he could see his king — so close!! When had he gotten so close!
Before Shang Qinghua’s thoughts could catch up to what was happening, Mobei Jun leaned in for a kiss.
It was brief, just a light touch of lips on lips for a single moment, but it was enough to make Shang Qinghua feel as if fireworks had exploded in his mind, heart and soul suddenly feeling so full of, of — the L-word thing!
Mobei Jun leaned back and, oh heavens, that was a smile on his face. Very slight, but still. “I accept your feelings.”
“Now then”, Mobei Jun straightened, once again looking like his usual icy self. “This Mobei Jun trusts you have no further objections to me clarifying your importance to the court by clearing out any possible perpetrators."
Shang Qinghua felt certain he would aggravate his wound into reopening before they would be done with this discussion.