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“Let go of me.”
“I won’t,” Mo Xuanyu said, clutching Xue Yang’s arm. “I won’t, I won’t! You’re my only friend here!”
Xue Yang looked down at him in what he thought was mostly exasperation, but might have also been a little fondness – after all, if it’d been anyone else who’d grabbed him, he’d have stabbed them.
He still didn’t know why he didn’t stab Mo Xuanyu, too, but in all honesty, he wasn’t that interested in exploring it. He did what he wanted, and right now, he didn’t want to murder Mo Xuanyu.
Irritating as he sometimes was.
“Little brat,” he said. “I have important business to go do.”
“It’s not something that he ordered, though!”
“So what?” Xue Yang bristled. “I don’t just do what he tells me!”
“But that means he won’t cover for you, and that means you’ll get in trouble!” Mo Xuanyu argued. “How can I let you go all alone to get in trouble? You have to take me with you! What will you do without me? Who’ll keep you entertained and sneak sweets for you if not for me?”
Xue Yang’s lips twitched. Okay, maybe there was a reason he kept the brat around.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “This is something I’ve got to do – something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’m going to kill a lot of people and get into a lot of trouble, more trouble than ever before. I’ll probably lose my life. How can I possibly take you with me?”
Mo Xuanyu scowled up at him. It was a very weak scowl – barely more than a pout. “You think that’s going to make me not want to come with you?”
Xue Yang’s eyebrows went up. “You cry at the sight of blood!”
“I cry at a lot of things!”
Xue Yang wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It was true, Mo Xuanyu cried at a lot of things.
“Maybe if I come with you, it won’t be so bad!”
Yeeeeah, Xue Yang wasn’t going to count on that.
“Or maybe you don’t have to go…?”
“I have to go,” he explained. “If I don’t go, I can’t get revenge, and I have to have revenge.”
Mo Xuanyu blinked up at him.
“I don’t really understand, but okay,” he said, and tugged on his arm. “Let’s go together, then. I promise I won’t cry!”
-
He cried.
He cried a lot.
-
“Stop fucking crying.”
-
“Just – ugh. Listen. You’re ruining the mood.”
-
“If you can’t stop crying, go away. Now. Or I’ll stab you!”
-
“Okay, see, look, I just killed the leaders, see? Just the old men. Everyone else is just locked in their rooms. Once the sect leader comes back, I’ll kill him too, and that’ll be all. Okay? Everyone else lives. I promise. Now stop crying, okay?”
-
“I don’t want to know,” Jin Guangyao said when they got back. “I don’t want to know at all.”
“Good,” Xue Yang grumbled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Enough people heard about the reason for what you did that opinions are mixed as to whether your actions were the Chang clan’s just rewards for their former misdeeds or if they were actually wrong,” Jin Guangyao said. He looked irritated. “But you still killed high-ranking members of a sect, and you left enough alive that they’re demanding your head on a platter. You’re going to need to run away.”
Mo Xuanyu hesitantly gestured as if he wished to speak.
“Yes, you can go with him. Now that my father is dead, no one cares where you are.”
Mo Xuanyu beamed.
“You’re just going to let us go?” Xue Yang asked suspiciously. “That seems unlike you. What’s in it for you?”
“Oh, I’m not just going to let you go. I’m going to give you money, too,” Jin Guangyao said. “And all you need to do for me is one little tiny favor –”
Pity that that was when Xue Yang stopped listening, too busy staring at Mo Xuanyu’s delighted face and counting all the way he was in for it now.
-
“I’ve always wanted to take care of a baby,” Mo Xuanyu said happily.
“Good for you,” Xue Yang said darkly as he stalked through the streets.
He would rather that Jin Guangyao had needed a body buried and a death covered up or something – and judging by the baby’s perturbed expression, it probably agreed with him. Fuck, maybe Jin Guangyao had meant for them to murder the baby once they got it far enough out of the way. It was just as plausible as Mo Xuanyu's assumption that they were supposed to take care of it.
Damnit, maybe he should have been listening.
“Listen, neither of us are equipped to handle a baby. Go find a woman to help us – someone poor and helpless who doesn’t have any other choice.”
“Okay!”
-
Xue Yang shut his eyes. “What exactly,” he said slowly, “did you think I asked you to get us a woman for, exactly?”
“To…watch the baby?” Mo Xuanyu guessed. “When we’re busy or sleeping? Anyway, what’s wrong with A-Qing, anyway? She’s nice!”
“I’m not nice,” A-Qing said. The damn brat was smirking – and for once it wasn’t his damn brat, but some blind brat with a cocky expression. “I stole your wallet and you burst into tears and it was really embarrassing.”
“He does that,” Xue Yang said wearily. At least he’d noticed the theft this time – all of his lessons in ‘how not to be a sucker and get constantly taken advantage of’ were maybe having something of an impact. Maybe. “For some reason I’m apparently into it.”
He couldn’t explain it any other way.
“…loser.”
“I will stab you,” Xue Yang threatened. “I don’t care if you’re blind.”
“Won’t someone tell me why A-Qing isn’t a perfectly good babysitter?” Mo Xuanyu demanded. He was holding the baby in his arms again – the baby liked him more than it did Xue Yang, which meant that between Mo Xuanyu and the baby, the baby had better self-preservation instincts – and he was trying his best stern scowl which was of course barely more than a pout and a so-called ‘fierce’ expression that made Xue Yang want to laugh.
Not even Mo Xuanyu’s horrific make-up skills could make that face intimidating. Or maybe it was just that the person behind the face was just so completely unthreatening that there was no help for it?
“Well? Tell me!”
Xue Yan opened his mouth, then shrugged and shut it again.
A-Qing patted Mo Xuanyu on the shoulder. “I’m too young. No milk.”
“…milk?”
“You know. The thing babies eat?”
“…milk,” Mo Xuanyu repeated, only now he looked absolutely heartbroken at having failed the mission that Xue Yang had assigned him almost entirely just to get him out of the way while Xue Yang collected some spare cash and threatened their way onto a ride out of this piece of shit town.
“It’s fine,” Xue Yang said hastily. “We’ll just get a goat or something, I don’t know.”
“Okay, I actually only came here to laugh at you,” A-Qing said. “But now I’m legitimately worried about this baby. Don’t you two know anything? How’d you even get a baby, anyway?”
-
“Stop laughing. It’s not that funny.”
-
“Seriously. Stop laughing, or I stab you.”
“Don’t worry, A-Qing,” Mo Xuanyu said. “He doesn’t mean it! Threats are just how he expresses affection!”
“It most certainly is not.”
“That is absolutely amazing,” A-Qing said, wiping her eyes. “Best thing I’ve ever heard., if by best I mean worse-but-hilarious. I mean. If that’s what he considers affection, what must his flirting be like?”
“No one is flirting with anyone!”
-
“Are you going to leave at some point?”
“Obviously not,” A-Qing said. She’d caught the same ride as them, using Xue Yang’s cash no less – Mo Xuanyu had insisted that it was the least they could do after the whole milk misunderstanding, which was stupid, she ought to be paying them for wasting their time. Xue Yang couldn’t wait to get rid of her, although he had to admit that she’d been pretty useful in terms of putting on the ‘poor sad blind girl and her two brothers all alone in the world’ act to get them a room at the inn at prices even Xue Yang felt comfortable paying. “Are you joking? This is so much funnier than walking by myself. Anyway, I enjoy watching people crash and burn.”
“Aren’t you too young to be such a bitch?” Xue Yang hissed. “And, I don’t know, blind?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t care what you –”
The sound of crying came from the other room.
It was quickly followed by a second set of crying.
Xue Yang felt the onset of a headache.
“…truce?” A-Qing suggested sweetly, as if she knew exactly how much it pissed him off and thought it was the funniest thing ever, which was…probably accurate, actually. “I’ll get the baby to stop crying if you do the same with Mo Xuanyu.”
Yeah, that was definitely a headache. The sort of headache called why do I like that brat.
Mo Xuanyu owed him so much candy for putting up with this shit.
“Fine,” Xue Yang said begrudgingly. “Truce. Temporarily. And then you leave!”
-
“So we live here now, huh?” A-Qing said, looking around the house they’d claimed. “That’s neat.”
“Why do you live with us again?” Xue Yang asked her, though by now he barely even meant it. A-Qing was clearly another one in the same mold as Mo Xuanyu: you just couldn’t say no to her…or, rather, you could, at length and top volume and with threats, only it just didn’t stick. “I definitely did not recall asking you to stay.”
Though it was nice to have someone else around that wasn’t going to get immediately ripped off by literally anyone who came their way. Mo Xuanyu’d started getting conned by the literal infant that they were taking care of – he was completely hopeless.
Also, questionably blind or not, at least A-Qing had no hesitation about beating people with her stick if they struck her the wrong way, which was a life approach Xue Yang agreed with wholeheartedly.
“She’s going to learn to cultivate!” Mo Xuanyu chirped from where he was applying his make-up. “Demonic cultivation, too! We had a whole discussion about it while you were out getting groceries!”
That made a certain amount of sense, Xue Yang supposed. You didn’t need talent to be a demonic cultivator – technically speaking, given his bloodline, Mo Xuanyu was more naturally gifted in cultivation than Xue Yang, which was just wrong on all sorts of levels – and it was certainly more effective a defense mechanism than A-Qing’s stick. If there were two of them, they could protect Mo Xuanyu and the baby more effectively, taking shifts when needed, and Mo Xuanyu, who was also going to learn demonic cultivation no matter how many times Xue Yang had to hammer it into his head, could be the last line of defense, largely since no one would ever expect him to be able to do…anything…and they’d be right, too.
So it wasn’t the craziest idea in the world, only…
“…who is she going to be learning from, exactly!?”
-
“Have you ever considered charging for your skill in teaching cultivation lessons instead of your skill in stabbing people?” A-Qing asked one day. They were lying on the ground and having the corpses they’d raised fan them to try to reduce the temperature – it was that sort of day. Also, Mo Xuanyu, who might’ve objected, wasn’t around. “You’re not actually that bad at this. Might be more profitable, and less work. Just a thought.”
“Shut up. I’m great at stabbing people.”
“Yeah, but then after a while we have to move because people get annoyed at that, and it’s getting a little annoying to have to pack up all the time.”
“We’d have to move anyway. We’re wanted criminals, remember?”
“We could be wanted criminals with a house. Besides, wouldn’t you like to be called Teacher Xue?”
“What? No. Gross.”
-
“So you see, it turns out that they were teaching demonic cultivation in a safe and organized fashion,” Xiao Xingchen explained enthusiastically. “They’d even gathered up their own little sect! And of course everyone heard what the Chang clan did, so there’s no need to worry about them going around and murdering people at random – it was a targeted revenge scheme.”
“We’re working on teaching them regular cultivation,” Song Lan agreed, nodding. “To help mitigate the negative effects of demonic cultivation…well, we started out by just teaching them.”
“It turned out that they’d been secretly teaching all of the local delinquents, too, or at least Mo-gongzi had been teaching a few and Mistress Qing was teaching a few others, and even Sect Leader Xue had a few disciples,” Xiao Xingchen said, politely omitting or possibly having not noticed the fact that Mo Xuanyu had been teaching his ‘friends’ (read: scammers trying to take advantage of him), while A-Qing and Xue Yang had each been trying to form competing gangs and/or obtain lackeys. Xue Yang didn’t mind the oversight, largely on account of the fact that A-Qing had been winning, damn her – he’d kept getting distracted by inventing new things. “And a few of them had real talent – and you know that Zichen and I have always wanted to start a sect of our own, with no bloodline ties –”
“We’re joining their sect,” Song Lan said. “We’ll be leading the orthodox side, while they lead the demonic cultivation aspect – safely, of course.”
“I guess it’s better than them being crazy,” Jiang Cheng said. He sounded dubious. “I don’t like it, but at least all the demonic cultivators can be in one spot, you know?”
He made it sound like they’d be dropping off new ones there in the future.
Like they’d opened up some sort of pet rescue and were taking in unwanted puppies or something.
“Agreed,” Nie Mingjue said. “To the extent that they aren’t causing active harm, containment seems an appropriate remedy here. Who seconds the motion?”
“I do,” Lan Xichen said, and smiled at the newly agreed-upon sect. “Welcome back to the cultivation world, Sect Leader Xue.”
-
“I don’t want to know,” Jin Guangyao said, glaring.
“Don’t worry,” Xue Yang told him. “This comes as much of a shock to me as to you.”
The glare intensified, but that was fine. Jin Guangyao’s facial expressions, however minor and generally overlooked, had been the only thing getting him through that awful, awful meeting just now where people kept trying to salute him and make him salute back and if he didn’t then he was letting down Mo Xuanyu (who would send him a sad look) and A-Qing (who would hear about it from Mo Xuanyu later and then find a way to step on his foot right when he was concentrating on something).
Not to mention their two new resident lovebirds, who looked so righteous and proper from the outside but who also may or may not have accidentally full-on actually resurrected some dead asshole cultivator more or less the first time they’d joined Xue Yang in his demonic cultivation laboratory – which would have been fine, you know, that happened in demonic cultivation though not normally to quite such a wow-is-he-actually-alive extent, except that the guy’s intermittent moments of clarity suggested that his two new sect members might have just brought back the Yiling Patriarch himself, which was going to make all of them wanted criminal again the second anyone found out about it.
Ugh.
Being called sect leader was completely not worth this shit.
Xue Yang comforted himself with the reminder that later today he was planning on publicly introducing Jin Guangyao to the Xue sect’s head junior disciple “Xue Song” and announcing loudly that the brat needed some lessons in manners, that he’d heard that that was Lianfeng-zun’s specialty, and nominating him to take care of the kid while they were visiting.
See how the fucker liked that.
“I always knew Xue-gege could do great things!” Mo Xuanyu said, clapping his hands as A-Qing rolled her (by now, Xue Yang was almost definitely sure not actually blind) eyes behind his back. “As long as I went with him!”