Chapter Text
Shang Hua is seven years old, playing in the cold shallows of the Luo River, when the storm rolls in.
His curly hair is wind tangled and damp against his forehead from chasing frogs all afternoon. One of the older children told him if he caught four of them, they would bring good luck to his home. With his mother so busy trying to make ends meet, Shang Hua devoted himself to the task.
Now, with the clouds rolling in and the sky growing dark, Shang Hua thinks he should head home. Three frogs croak miserably at him from the basket on the shore and he glances back to the reeds.
He just needs one more.
Thunder rumbles, distant drums rolling closer and closer until lightning cracks across the valley and Shang Hua screams.
.
The washerwoman finds him hours later, long after nightfall has further darkened the stormy skies. She is drenched to the bone from searching in the storm for her son and nearly missed the soaked through heap hiding near the shore.
Her relief is audible when she finds him, fevered and cold, but breathing. Even for a scrawny child of seven, he is dead weight in her arms, but she has carried heavier to provide for him before. She bundles him close, thanking the gods, and hurries home.
.
Consciousness is a fickle thing as memories slide against his mind like water across stones.
He is Shang Hua, an orphan boy found and cared for by a lonely woman.
He is Luo Hua, a teenager abandoned in the rift between estranged parents and their new families.
He is Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, a man struggling to survive with only his words.
He is seven. He is twenty-eight. He is thirty-five and he is desperate to start living on his own terms.
There is an image, a day dream, a prophecy of what is to come. A man standing on the bones of the three realms, an emperor with the world at his fingertips and an ache in his heart that can never be soothed.
Shang Qinghua, Emperor of the Three Realms.
Shang Qinghua, Protagonist of Proud Immortal Demon Way.
Shang Qinghua, bound role of User001, Luo Hua.
Role of Shang Qinghua equipped with Protagonist’s Golden Halo.
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When the fever finally breaks and Shang Hua sits up on his own, his mother weeps as she wraps him up in her arms. What little savings they had must have gone to the apothecary for the herbs and medicine at his bedside, but she says nothing of it. She doesn’t guilt her child for needing help, doesn’t threaten to hold it over him for years to come.
She just pulls him against her chest and begins to comb through sweat tangled locks. “My Xiao-Hua,” she says softly, her relief palpable. “You must be blessed.”
Shang Hua rests against her, content to share her warmth and bathe in her love while he has it.
She never notices the green venom and divine gold glow that backlights her son like a halo. And he is simply too tired to deal with it himself.
For now he has her. And he will let himself soak in her kindness. He only has a few years of it left.
.
When his mother dies, it is a quiet, awaited thing. Shang Hua watched from the corner of his eye during those years as the venomous glow was slowly purged by divine light, all the while doing what he could in their little village to repay the one parent he’d ever had.
He finds all the herbs the apothecary hides behind his counter out in the wilds free of charge. Shang Hua learns the recipe himself from Airplane’s memories, doing all he can to ease the old woman’s illness. But even the writer can’t cure everything when his powers are sealed.
Shang Hua is twelve years old when he weeps at his mother’s bedside, her hand still and cold in his. He weeps until he has nothing left to give, until every sorrow is washed out of him with his tears.
Luo Hua never got to mourn his family. He was the one that may as well have been dead, what right did he have to cry and mourn when they would never have done the same for him?
Airplane stands up from the bed, looking down at the woman who raised him, and wonders what he’s meant to do to honor her. If anyone ever did the same for him.
.
With his mother put to rest, Shang Hua turns his back on the river valley that cradled him for all of his new life. There is nothing left here, no one, no plot. But he knows where to go, and he hasn’t been alone since the night the storms raged.
“System?” he calls, unafraid of being heard as he walks down the valley road.
There is a soft ping as the golden interface pops into existence, its light dancing in chocolate brown eyes and illuminating the foggy morning.
Greetings Admin! [1] new quest available!
Call To Adventure: Ascend The Mountain!
Do you accept?
The text floats along with him and Shang Hua stretches his arms up over his head as he walks. He contemplates viewing the rewards, but this is a hero’s journey he knows all to well. Only this time, this Shang Hua will not be walked all over by his martial elders.
Airplane had been so frustrated when he wrote that angsty whump fest. Therapy hadn’t really been an option when he was flat out broke, so he had opted for the next best thing: throwing all of his trauma and then some on top of a boy who could one day for sure overcome it all.
Except at some point the story he wrote to heal himself had become the noose threatening to close around him. He wrote whatever fans demanded of him, desperate to keep that one bit of income. It was better than the odd jobs he found, better than asking his parents to bail out a stranger. He told himself that every day, and sometimes he believed it.
But he missed writing for himself. He missed the notes that fell to the wayside because he knew it would never sell.
When Airplane first hit publish on chapter one of Proud Immortal Demon Way, it had been for himself. His story. His happiness. The last time he hit publish, Airplane barely recognized the words on the page.
Stuck in the body of his protagonist, bound to the world he created, he doesn’t need that trauma anymore, no thank you.
This will be his story.
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The road from the Luo Valley to Cang Qiong Mountain is a long and winding one, but Shang Hua never worries about the dangers most would find along the way. He travels by foot or by cart with bartered herbs a child such as himself was so lucky to find along the way. He sleeps beneath the stars and shelters in barns when the nights are cold, always able to find a thread of good luck when he needs it.
He catches an apple from a man on a donkey who cheerfully points him towards the mountain and thanks him, never catching the raised brow the cultivator gives him before their paths part.
The man told him he had just missed the sect’s entrance exam and that he was perhaps better off journeying to another sect if he was so insistent on beginning his training. But Shang Hua just continued to smile and insist that Cang Qiong would be his sect no matter what.
.
At the foot of the great mountain, he stares up the Heaven Ascending Stairs and rolls his shoulders. “A xianxia elevator would be really great about now,” he mutters to himself.
“What are you doing, boy?”
He spins on his heel and there is a young man in sect robes approaching him. Small glasses perched on his nose and a dozen scrolls tucked under his arm. The young man looks severely overworked and Shang Hua could guess he was a disciple of An Ding well before he took in the robe’s bamboo greens.
“Climbing the mountain,” he says with a grin.
The young man pinches his nose. “There are arrays, kid. You can’t just climb the mountain. You’ll just have to wait until next year’s ceremonies if you’re trying to join.”
Shang Hua bows politely. “Thanking shixiong, but this one would like to try anyway.”
“I am not your… Never mind.” He sighs and shifts his hold on the scrolls before crouching at Shang Hua’s level. “It’s not a matter of trying. You won’t be able to make it up. You’re just going to climb a lot of stairs, for a long time, and then eventually one of my shimei is going have to lead you back down here. Just, go on home, okay?”
When they inevitably come to an impasse, the young man just shakes his head and wishes Shang Hua the most sarcastic of ‘good luck’s before ascending the mountain on a newly drawn sword, as if that would prevent Shang Hua from following.
He tips his head back to watch the disciple above join with another cultivator in similar robes returning to the sect. This cultivator spares a glance down in his direction, but backed by the sun with a head of heavy curls, Shang Hua can’t make out what expression the traitorous Peak Lord sends his way. Doesn’t matter, they’re both gone in moments and Shang Hua is left to his should-be-Sisyphean task.
It’s just a real shame that the arrays can’t account for a Protagonist with Admin privileges.
Of course, it’s still not an easy hike. He is still a child with no cultivation foundations to speak of yet. He’s barely half way up and already through the first layer of arrays when he starts to notice eyes in the sky. A cultivator here or there who seem to aimlessly fly past him, though he feels their eyes on him every time.
No one stops him, no one tries to even engage. They just watch, each one more curious than the last until Shang Hua finally feels himself break through the final array. The silence of the mountain suddenly lost to the evening bustle of activity in a prestigious sect.
The curly haired man from earlier stands further up the path with his arms crossed, sharp eyes trained on the scrawny child who just clawed his way through their defenses. But Shang Hua doesn’t give a shit about his little traitor son right now.
It’s the man beside him who’s captured his attention. In deep blue robes, towering over both Shang Hua and his shidi, as if they were no more than ants beneath his heel, stands Mobei Jun, the esteemed Qing Jing Peak Lord and the first true villain of Proud Immortal Demon Way.
Shang Qinghua might have been his self-insert, but Mobei Jun had always been his favorite. He was tall, handsome, cold, strong, dangerous, beautiful, and a dozen more adjectives Airplane had used liberally anytime the man was on the page. He was everything Airplane wanted — to be or to have, he wasn’t picky really. How could he not be his favorite?
Then the noose that was a stallion novel started to tighten around his neck.
By time his protagonist had been at a point where Airplane was comfortable to start pushing certain filial boundaries in an enemies-to-lovers tale… that just wasn’t what the readers wanted. They wanted Shang Qinghua to seek vengeance, to establish himself as the only dominant lead, the only one who could woo anyone, have everyone — except the one character Airplane wanted him to have.
There was rent to pay and he needed to eat. So Airplane took all of his notes and buried them deep down. He couldn’t even call himself a sell out (though certain people certainly did), because you had to be making actual money for that.
Now though. Now there were no fans to appease, no bills to pay. He could greedily unearth his original outline and no one, not even the System, could stop him.
With the final step of the Heaven Ascending Stairs under his feet, he clasps his hands and bows at once to the silent Peak Lords. “This Shang seeks admittance to Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. He knows this is not the usual way, but he hopes these great masters will reconsider.”
“Tch.”
“Hn.”
He hides his face behind his sleeves so they can’t catch the twist of laughter on his face. Ah, his sons. So eloquent. What lofty immortals you both are.
There is a discussion, a borderline interrogation, from the master of strategy and the snake in the grass, before it is decided that it is late and Shang Hua may stay one night before the sect leader can decide his fate.
Luo Binghe opens his mouth, hand half raised to instruct the boy to follow him, when Mobei Jun simply says, “Come,” and turns towards Qing Jing peak without once looking back.
“Mobei-shixiong, I really don’t think—” but his frustration falls on deaf ears as both the man and the boy are already half way down the path.
Shang Hua will admit, he hadn’t expected to catch the eye of the An Ding Peak Lord, but he feels that forge hot gaze boring into the back of his head as he trails after his future shizun. He is an anomaly now, not just another child digging a hole. It shouldn’t surprise him the snake wants to keep an eye on him.
Thankfully, Mobei Jun is just as vindictive and calculating as he knew he would be.
They might be martial brothers, but Mobei Jun never trusted Luo Binghe. His favorite was too smart to overlook the viper coiled beneath the roses. Luo Binghe’s interest in him only cemented his future on Qing Jing peak. Check and mate.
It is only once they are on Qing Jing peak and half way down the path to the Plum Blossom House that Mobei Jun turns to address him at all.
“You are not a disciple,” he says as point of fact. “You are not allowed into the dormitories.”
Ah, so kicked right into the wood shed, huh? Damn shizun, couldn’t even extend a courtesy to a supposed guest? He really did you write you mean.
“Shang Hua will sleep in this master’s home.”
If Shang Hua wasn’t completely sure the Protagonist Halo wanted to keep him very much alive and well, he would assume he was concussed at some point. “Huh?” he manages, just as eloquent as either of his lordly sons.
Mobei Jun doesn’t deign himself to explain, merely continues on the path leaving Shang Hua to follow or not.
A few disciples in Qing Jing blues look at the road worn child at their shizun’s heels curiously and he can’t help but wonder what rumors will already be spreading across the mountain before he meets the sect leader.
That being a distinctly tomorrow problem, he follows Mobei Jun inside. And for as out of character as he thought the frigid man was just moments ago, inviting him into his home, finding himself sleeping on the cold hard floor of said home quickly rights that presumed deviation.
Can’t even spare a pillow from that bed of yours, Shizun? Yeesh.
Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations!
Important things must be said three times!
Quest Call To Adventure: Ascend The Mountain has been completed!
Reward: 200 Protagonist Points
Admin may apply PP to any Protagonist Skills at his leisure!
Heh. PP.