Chapter Text
Shang Qinghua stumbled, tried to keep his balance, and fell on one knee.
The ground was frozen, but not rocky. That was luck. His robes weren’t in such a bad state, too, still covering his legs. That was also luck. Others in the line were dressed in tatters which exposed their knees and elbows to the elements, their skin split and bleeding.
Altogether, he was pretty lucky!
The cangue around his neck seemed to be getting heavier every time.
With a moan, he made himself stand again and keep walking. If he didn’t, the movement of the others would send him sprawling—pulling in front, pushing in the back—and then getting back up would be ten times worse. His wrists and ankles were in manacles, joined by a chain. They were about ten or fifteen prisoners in the line, all in locked cangues connected by a long rope.
Nothing really hurt, because he was so delirious with exhaustion he couldn’t really feel his body anymore.
They had been walking for two weeks. At night they just sat down to sleep: the cangues kept them from lying down. Two prisoners had died already, their bodies left on the side of the frozen road.
Wusses, he thought. Honestly, how did a body even shut down that fast? What had they even died of, eh? He wasn’t going to die like this. He was going to survive this, and then the next thing, and the next.
Or maybe he was going to die of thirst. Yeah, the thirst might do it.
Every time a slave trader passed by on a horse, cantering up the line, all the prisoners started yelling “Water! Water!” in a horrible concert of discordant voices. Of course the demons didn’t stop, didn’t even seem to hear them. So far Shang Qinghua had survived by eating snow off low branches as they walked, the only way he could drink since the cangue kept his hands from reaching his mouth.
But now they were out of the forest, crossing a desolate plain. And it hadn’t snowed in two days.
As they sat down for the midday break, the impossibility of lying down was for a moment almost worse than the thirst, worse than the hunger, worse than the pain. Shang Qinghua felt like all the bones in his body were going to dislocate. Every night he told himself he couldn’t possibly get back up in the morning. Every morning, he did.
“Water,” he rasped as more of their captors rode past, dispassionately checking their prisoners. “Shui.” He swallowed on a cracked throat, tried the northern dialect. “Varzha.”
He screwed his eyes shut for a moment under the constant glare. There was no night here, this close to the Northern Desert. The cloud cover never broke. As a result the sky was a permanent flare of white, burning through his brain.
He had to survive another day. Just another day. Then they would get to Xue Xue, where they would be sold. The manacles and the cangue would come off. Whoever bought him would feed him. They wouldn’t buy him just to leave him to die!
Of course, in the Demon Realm, humans were sometimes bought to be eaten themselves.
And of course, Shang Qinghua had actually no idea how far they were from Xue Xue. Around two weeks’ walk from the vent, was what he remembered writing. He had lost track of time despite his best efforts. They could be just a few hours from their goal. Or a few days. A few days would mean death for at least half the remaining prisoners. A few days would definitely mean death for him.
Something snorted close by, hot and damp. He reopened his gummy eyes and looked tiredly to the side. One of the huge white stallions the demon warlords rode had stopped next to him.
The next moment, there was the thump of a rider dismounting his horse.
“Varzha,” Shang Qinghua said again. The others were keeping silent now, hunching down, terrified, but he was desperate. “Varzha!”
Someone gripped his hair, painfully, tilting his head back as much as the cangue would allow. And then—something prodded at his lips.
It was an icicle.
He opened his mouth, gagged when the piece of ice was forced too deeply into his throat, making him taste blood. Thankfully it wasn’t too sharp, and the heat of his parched mouth quickly started melting it even further. The coolness of the water trickling down his throat was the very definition of heaven.
He sucked at it despite his already chapped lips cracking and bleeding as the ice stuck to them. He was aware of the warlord watching him humiliate himself, but he was so far past caring. He just wanted all of it.
As the icicle began melting for good, he got his wish: the warlord shoved in the rest and kept his gloved hand firmly over Shang Qinghua’s mouth, the other still painfully twisting his hair. Shang Qinghua convulsed, his body rebelling against the aching cold which felt like a knife through his teeth. Eventually it was over, and the leather-clad hand moved away from his mouth, leaving him gasping for air.
He needed to thank the demon, he needed to do it now, but he couldn’t breathe just yet despite his best efforts.
“You speak the northern tongue?”
Shang Qinghua nodded desperately, as much as he could in the cangue, finally managing to suck down some air.
The warlord said nothing for a moment. Then he asked, in the southern demonic dialect this time: “What is your name?”
“Sh-Shang Qinghua,” he panted.
The looming shadow of the demon moved away, but his horse remained, snorting and shifting. It smelled like dead meat. The demonic mounts were carnivorous: Shang Qinghua had seen them feed on the body of one of the dead prisoners. He could do nothing to move away from it.
He heard a voice say, “I’m taking this one.”
Then the flash of a knife, cutting quickly through the rope running through his cangue. He was dragged to his feet, away from the line of prisoners. A lower ranked demon was already moving in to tie back the ends of the rope together.
The warlord pushed and shoved him away from the road, and eventually let him fall to his knees again. He positioned himself behind Shang Qinghua, who heard a scrape of metal against metal.
One of the other riders stopped near. “Are you taking off the cangue, Fifth Prince?”
“It would complicate the ride,” was the short answer.
The rider laughed. “Keep the manacles on, or your little meal will run off in the tundra!” Then demon and horse moved away.
The warlord said nothing, still working at the cangue’s locks with his knife. And then, it happened, a thing Shang Qinghua had forgotten was possible: the heavy wood around his neck clacked open.
He couldn’t help sobbing as the weight was lifted off his shoulders, to be tossed carelessly aside. Just like that, it was gone. It was an extraordinary feeling: he felt as if his entire body was lighter than air, as if he was rising off the ground.
He would have folded over if not for the blade coming under his throat, forcing his chin up.
“You will not run from this lord,” said the Fifth Prince, his voice cold and soft like snow. With the overcast glaring over him, he was just a shadow to Shang Qinghua’s watering eyes. “Or your death will be slow.”
Shang Qinghua couldn’t nod or shake his head; even swallowing felt dangerous. “This—this slave will not run, my king.”
The Fifth Prince hummed. Maybe he liked the title, despite the obvious, pathetic flattery of it. The blade moved away.
“Up.”
Shang Qinghua got up, at which point the pain, hunger and exhaustion caught up to him and made his world go black.
*
When he stirred, he was over a leather saddle, the pommel digging painfully into his ribs. That wasn’t what had woken him up, but rather the horse coming to a stop. If the new aches in his body were to be believed, they had been riding for several hours.
The Fifth Prince dismounted, then grabbed him like a sack of flour, throwing him over his shoulder like he weighed nothing. Shang Qinghua wheezed as the air came out of his lungs, but kept himself from jolting in pain. If he was being carried, he might as well try to make it last.
The sloshing sound of snowmelt under the Fifth Prince’s boots became an echoing, clacking noise as he went up stone steps. Then, for the first time in weeks, there was the cool darkness of the inside of a building. Being away from the perpetual glare of the white sky was such a relief Shang Qinghua almost passed out again.
He was dumped unceremoniously on the hard ground, and this time he couldn’t hold back a cry of pain.
“Wash him,” the Fifth Prince said. “Then bring him up.”
As he moved away, an imp grabbed the chain of Shang Qinghua’s manacles and pulled. Getting up was hell—but was it really, now that he didn’t have the weight of the cangue on his shoulders? Surely this was heaven!
He blinked around, only just catching sight of the warlord’s retreating back before he was led down service steps, under arches of stone, through a busy kitchen and into the scullery. An inn. They were definitely in Xue Xue.
His half-ruined clothes were cut off his body, then he was dumped in a corner with a rag and a bucket of ice water. Being allowed to wash himself was the greatest kindness he had been offered in weeks, though realistically the imp didn’t want to waste its time rubbing him down like a horse when he could do it himself.
He started by drinking his fill, in long desperate gulps that gave him a stomachache. Then he cleaned off the grime and blood, noting the numerous sores and scratches he had stopped registering as his exhaustion worsened over the days. His shoulders were the worst, bruised black and scraped red from the constant chafing weight of the cangue. His hair was stuck in a horrific rat nest. He combed it with his fingers, dislodging a hundred little twigs that had caught into it when he had licked and bitten at frost-covered branches like the other prisoners, hoping to soothe his thirst. Then he grabbed the strongest twig and used it to comb through his hair again, determinedly ripping through the tangles until they were all gone. Being able to run his hands through it freely was a miracle on par with the cangue lifting off his shoulders.
He needed not to look like a dog. That was the first step not to be treated like one.
By the time he was done, he was shivering, though not too badly: the scullery was lukewarm, another miracle he could have sobbed over. He did not allow himself to start. Nobody had time for that!
The imp came back with robes of rough cotton for him to wear. The sleeves were slit so he could put on the garment despite his manacles. Once he was dressed, to his surprise, he was given a steaming bowl.
It was barely food, the detritus of a kitchen that never stopped running. To him it was a feast fit for a king. And it was still hot. He ate every last scrap of it, hurriedly, choking and crying a little. After wiping his hands on the rag, he carefully tore the clean half of it into stripes, which he wound around his wrists and ankles to soften the chafing from the cuffs.
When the harried imp came back, it seemed pleased Shang Qinghua had been quick at least. This was encouraging! If he could please an imp, he could please a demon lord!
As he was being led away again, his brain slowly coming unstuck from his receding hunger, he started to think on the one who had grabbed him. The Fifth Prince? From what clan? He had always written a bunch of heirs for every royal family he mentioned, in order to make them all sound more important and powerful. In real life it meant vicious internecine quarrels. A Fifth Prince would never get onto any sort of throne, unless incredibly fortunate or brazenly murderous.
Shang Qinghua was brought back up through the blue stone hall, this time daring to look around a little more. The inn was relatively luxurious by the shitty standards of Xue Xue, the last demon city before the wide and featureless expanse of the Northern Desert. There, far beyond the tundra, stood the eternal palaces of the Mobei Clan, the distant scions of eldritch creatures who had risen millenia ago from the Endless Abyss, through boiling vents in the permafrost. He would much rather be on this side.
The Fifth Prince had been set up in a large room with a roaring fire, from which he sat far away. The reason was obvious: when he looked up from the papers in his lap, his eyes were a bright, cold blue, just like the clan mark on his forehead. He was an ice demon.
Shang Qinghua stumbled forward, then clumsily knelt at his feet. “My king, t-this slave cannot tell you how much—”
The Fifth Prince thrust his sheaf of papers at him. “Read this.”
Shang Qinghua blinked. “M-my king?”
The blow that came was so unexpected he didn’t feel it until his head had already jerked to the side. At least it had been a slap, not a punch, but still so harsh he couldn’t breathe for a second. The pain was blooming red and hot across his cheek.
“This lord,” said the Fifth Prince in that measured voice again, “does not repeat himself.”
“…this slave apologizes,” Shang Qinghua managed. He took the papers, shook them out. It was trade agreements, or some kind of diplomatic treaty, or probably both at once, written in the southern dialect. Clearing his throat, he began: “As it was agreed—”
“Northern,” the Fifth Prince immediately interrupted.
Shang Qinghua stupidly opened his mouth to tell him the treaty wasn’t written in the northern dialect, then bit his tongue just in time. He remembered the Fifth Prince asking for his name in the southern tongue: now that he had enough brain power to actually process the words beyond just their meaning, he realized the demon’s accent had been atrocious.
For a demon lord to ask a random slave’s name had been very odd, come to think of it. Unless… that lord had been asking the first question that came to mind to check whether he had miraculously stumbled upon a trilingual human captive he could just toss over his horse.
Clearly the Fifth Prince of a northern clan had been saddled with negotiating a treaty in a dialect he didn’t speak, set up to fail. Shang Qinghua grimly did not thank the System for his automatic proficiency in all Proud Immortal Demon Way languages—that was the least this piece of shit owed him. Was he the Author or not? He had made up this world and everything in it, including the dialects! It only made sense he could speak them!
This was good news. This was great news. He could be useful! He would be useful!
“As it was agreed,” he started again in the northern dialect, stumbling with the effort of translation, “between the contracting parties…”
The Fifth Prince made no comment throughout, just interrupted him once to snap at him not to stammer so much. Shang Qinghua, who did not want a second slap, did his best; but what little energy he had regained over the few hours he had spent passed out across his master’s saddle was dissipating, along with his concentration, and before he could read more than a few pages he was hit again, this time a boot to the chest that sent him sprawling.
“M-mercy, my king, this slave—this slave is still recovering from his ordeal,” he rasped as he knelt back up, gathering the papers. “You have so generously taken him in—he will only get better and more efficient every day, to repay your bounteous investment.”
The Fifth Prince said nothing, but held out a clawed hand for the papers, and Shang Qinghua hurriedly gave them back with great relief. It was very late, the thick curtains on the windows allowing for actual darkness. The room was still wonderfully warm from the fire, which—why was there a fire at all? Had this ice demon asked for one, out of consideration for his new servant?
That sounded completely ridiculous, yet Shang Qinghua couldn’t think of another reason.
The Fifth Prince got up, looming over him. Even allowing for the extra effect of Shang Qinghua kneeling on the ground, he was… extremely tall. His embroidered silk robes, wide open on his chest—a common trend for ice demons in the North, the better to demonstrate their indifference to the cold—revealed a body sculpted out of pure muscle, the skin so pale it had a blue tinge. He looked like a marble statue, handsome, cold and perfect.
“Attend to me,” he said.
Shang Qinghua immediately pushed to his feet, eager to avoid another blow, and began with taking off the black cloak with its luxurious fur collar—all for show since, again, this warlord couldn’t feel the cold. After carefully folding it over the chair, he undid the belt, then slid off the four or five layers of robes to be separated and sorted later. Maybe that was crass, and he should have peeled off each layer individually? He actually had no idea how to do this.
The Fifth Prince did not seem to object or, indeed, notice. He was watching Shang Qinghua, cold eyes roaming absently over him.
Shang Qinghua felt uncomfortably… soft. Even though he felt like he had been starved for years, he hadn’t had time to lose too much weight. He was not tall, but he was pretty solid, thanks to a combination of hard labor and abundant food. His padding of fat had been an absolute blessing during the horrific walk through the icy tundra. Most of his fellow An Ding disciples hadn’t been so lucky. A lot of them had died on the first day, though mostly for trying to fight back.
Frequent demon raids in the Human Realm for slaves, amusement and food: another fantastic detail he now deeply regretted having ever written.
“Boots,” the warlord said. It was all he was wearing now.
Shang Qinghua flinched. “Oh! F-forgive this slave! So scatterbrained, aha…”
He knelt down again to unlace his master’s boots, who stepped out of them. Shang Qinghua’s heart rate was picking up, as if it knew something he didn’t.
Hints were accumulating in his brain—the warlord watching him drink desperately from the melting icicle; the request to have him washed; those cold eyes roaming over him a moment ago; and now this disguised order to kneel.
When fingers sank into his hair, closing in a painful fist at his nape, Shang Qinghua screwed his eyes shut.
Oh, he hated being right.
The Fifth Prince made him look up. He was gloriously, proudly naked. His pupils had bloomed like a cat’s, darkness thinly ringed with blue. The intensity of his interest was almost more terrifying than anything else.
“M-my king,” Shang Qinghua said. He was hyperventilating. “My king, I’ve—I’ve never—”
“Open your mouth.”
Shang Qinghua opened his mouth, and gagged slightly when two clawed fingers slipped into his throat. He did his best to accommodate them as they pushed, prodded, to see how much he could take.
He was trying not to look at the warlord’s erection. It was… considerable.
“Please,” he stammered desperately when the hand came back out, briefly connected to his lips by a trail of drool. “My king, please. This—this slave begs you to—have mercy—”
“Mercy?” the Fifth Prince said, in that deceptively soft voice again. “Is this lord hurting his slave?”
Actually, his grip in Shang Qinghua’s hair was extremely painful, but saying that wouldn’t get him anywhere. They looked at each other for a moment, and Shang Qinghua understood there was nothing he could do to stop this happening.
“Open your mouth,” the warlord said again.
Shang Qinghua screwed his eyes shut again, so at least he wouldn’t see it happen.
*
It was, honestly, an embarrassing affair. He gagged and retched so much that it was almost a blessing: just like on the road, sheer physical discomfort kept him from lingering on anything else. After a messy few minutes, the Fifth Prince pulled him off with a hiss of anger.
“You can do better than this.”
Shang Qinghua kept his eyes closed, swallowing convulsively. “This slave—” Fuck, he sounded so hoarse. That was almost more humiliating than the drool on his chin, the tears down his cheeks. “This slave is—s-sorry—m-my king.” He swallowed again, and managed: “This s-slave has never—d-done this—before.”
He was pretty sure he shouldn’t have pointed it out again. He was pretty sure the demon liked that idea. But he was desperate for excuses, for anything that might get him some respite.
The Fifth Prince said: “Hm.”
He took himself in hand, without letting go of Shang Qinghua’s hair.
“This lord will be lenient. This time.”
For all his apparent frustration, his pupils were still blown, never looking away from Shang Qinghua’s face. He kept looking at him as he brought himself to the edge with a few efficient strokes and, when the moment came, said for the third time: “Open your mouth.”
Shang Qinghua did; the tip came to rest on his tongue, and the next moment the demon pulsed his release all over his mouth, down his throat, some of it spilling over his chin. It was bitterly cold. As soon as he could, Shang Qinghua swallowed, hoping it would be enough.
It was not enough.
The Fifth Prince released him so abruptly he fell forward. The next moment, a foot came to weigh on the back of his neck, pushing his face close to a few white stains on the ground.
Another order came, once again soft like snow. “Lick it up.”
Shang Qinghua did not move.
A few seconds ticked by in ringing silence. Then: “Oh?”
The Fifth Prince sounded dangerously calm.
“Is it… beneath this slave?”
Now’s not the time to find your dignity! Shang Qinghua yelled at himself. You were almost there! Just fucking do it! How is it any different than the rest?
And yet his body just wouldn’t obey.
Hot, angry tears spilled out of his eyes again, staining the ground, too. He swallowed convulsively and just waited. Either his spine would finally get the message and bend the rest of the way, or the Fifth Prince would kick him in the jaw—which would either make him lose a few teeth, or kill him.
The foot came off his neck. He waited for a few thrumming seconds, his blood beating so hard in his head he was seeing spots.
No blow came.
The warlord moved away, crossed the room, leaving him there. Shang Qinghua heard him strip the bed, then get comfortable.
He didn’t dare kneel up for long, trembling moments. He wiped his eyes, his cheeks, then—wincing—his mouth and chin. He kept expecting that cold voice to call him again.
It did, but only to ask: “Where are you from?”
His stupid mouth tried to clench shut again, but this time he overrode it. “Cang Qiong. M-my king.”
“Mm,” was the answer.
And that was all. After twenty excruciating minutes, it became clear that the Fifth Prince had simply gone to sleep.
Shang Qinghua crawled in front of the dying fire and, forgetting even what had just happened, enjoyed the greatest luxury of all: lying down without a cangue around his neck forcing him to sit up. He lost consciousness almost instantly.
*
Waking up the next morning was a brief but intense emotional rollercoaster. The cangue was gone, and he was no longer on the road! He had a demonic master who didn’t want to eat him!
But—
He uncurled with a wince, aching from an uncomfortable night on stone, and from the hellish two weeks before. Having eaten a proper meal and drunk his fill helped a lot, though. The hearth was still smoldering, and he had woken up before the demon: two great blessings.
Sighing, he sat cross-legged—fighting against the manacles before he could get his legs in position—and held out his hands to the fire. He still had a sour taste in his mouth, which he would not acknowledge.
Except that, pathetically, he was already tearing up again.
Ahh, come now. This transmigrator wouldn’t get anywhere like this! What happened once would surely happen again. Better make peace with it now! And his master was extremely handsome. Did that not make it better?
No, Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky thought. It doesn’t.
A whisper of sheets warned him. Quickly, he wiped his eyes, then stumbled to his feet and bowed.
“Good morning, my king. This slave hopes my king slept well. Would my king like this slave to fetch him anything?”
The Fifth Prince was sitting up. He was still naked, still sculpturally beautiful, his blue eyes still unreadable and alien. Shang Qinghua couldn’t help noting, with pathetic relief, that he was not hard. Possibly ice demons had a different physiology: the System had made his lazy clichés into such a biologically complex world it still baffled him sometimes.
“Come,” the warlord said.
Shang Qinghua had to force himself to walk over.
But: “No,” the Fifth Prince said when he tried to kneel. He nodded at the bed next to him. “Sit.”
Shang Qinghua’s confusion cleared up when, a moment later, the ice demon grabbed the chain around his ankles. He wrapped his large hand around the manacles, which became abruptly unbearably cold but, before they could burn Shang Qinghua through the rags, shattered like ice.
He repeated the maneuver with the cuffs around Shang Qinghua’s wrists. Then he grabbed his chin, making him go rigid.
“If you run,” he said, “this lord will make sure it takes hours for you to die.”
“I heard you the first time, my king,” Shang Qinghua replied.
The Fifth Prince looked at him for a moment. But, as Shang Qinghua had expected—alright, fine, hoped and prayed for—he did not hit him. He seemed to like a little spirit.
That was… not necessarily good news.
But Shang Qinghua wasn’t going to survive Proud Immortal Demon Way by keeping his head down and never trying anything. He was in a better position than the day before! It was up to him to make sure he would be in an even better position tomorrow!
“This slave will not run,” Shang Qinghua went on, holding the Fifth Prince’s gaze. “This slave knows his luck.”
The demon watched him for another minute, then released him.
Then he pushed his slave off the bed to his feet—not even too harshly! Shang Qinghua barely stumbled!—and got up, stretching shamelessly, with a deep tiger’s yawn.
Dressing him was a less fraught experience than the other way around. Shang Qinghua even had enough bandwidth to notice the embroidery of his robes, which pinged something in his mind. What clan was it again with the silver patterns… An ice demon clan… Dark blue robes…
Oh, fuck.
Really? As in, fucking really? But what was one of them doing here, riding along a slave trading route? What was he even doing on this side of the Northern Desert…?
Oh, fuck!
The good news was that Shang Qinghua knew what storyline he was in now.
The bad news was that the Fifth Prince of the Mobei Clan was riding straight into a scheme expertly orchestrated by his uncle, which he would not survive. And, surely, neither would his slave.