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Beautiful. Haunting. Horrible.
The words fly by, none suiting this vision before him.
Luo Binghe, emperor of the conjoined realms, sovereign of all he sees… had not come to expect this.
A world where he has a kind Shizun… how could he have foreseen such a beauty?
Ming Fan, the intolerable wretch, stares at him as if seeing a ghost. The bodies at his feet would certainly point to him as such.
His pathetic counterpart lies amidst writhing hordes of ants, burrowing back into Ming Fan’s skin, his blood, as if they belong there.
How invitingly awful his Da-shixiong’s become. A mirror, mocking and dark. Luo Binghe would laugh had he not been left bereft. Again.
Ming Fan’s stupid scars, stretching over and beyond his lips... Like a starburst smile, they reflect blood wonderfully.
Those dull mud brown eyes glare with such intensity. Luo Binghe could be forgiven for thinking he was drowning in the sinkholes of the south.
His robes, the shadowy black of a rogue, the lining Qing Jing green broken by blood and a subtler red…
Luo Binghe breathes, Xin Mo screaming in his subconscious. “Did Da-shixiong wish to emulate this lord? He is a pale imitation, this shidi is sorry to say.”
Ming Fan’s eyes burrow deeper. Luo Binghe feels the muck and mire creep into his very veins as ants begin to break out of rough pores. Ming Fan’s masculinity is still there, ruddy and average.
But without the plain face, with his paints on… he is gorgeous. In fact, without that clinging baby fat… he is akin to Shen Qingqiu.
The thought drives Luo Binghe mad. That not one, but two beauties deigned to make him naught but a whipping boy. A laughingstock. His blood boils.
Ming Fan’s sword, a rarely drawn thing, is soft. A shadow. Like his robes. It is slender and light. Luo Binghe remembers watching him ride the slight thing with wonderment. He’d been so precariously balanced, so graceful.
He then remembers mocking it. So small in comparison to his own Zheng Yang. Especially so to Xin Mo.
He’s made jokes in the interim, about how his Da-shixiong, much like his sword, was a small, petty thing. Dangerous only to the weakest of the weak.
But Shen Qingqiu lies, eyeless and faceless, upon the floor. Xiu Ya is being dragged back to scabbard by the hordes as Ming Fan stares. His ants are everywhere, and as one breaks precious skin...
Luo Binghe’s eyes widen. Heart Bursting Fire Pollen. He’s immunized himself since the incident with the help of a now nameless, shapeless wife, but his counterpart had no reason to wander southwest.
His Da-shixiong has been very busy. Luo Binghe is upon him, Xin Mo howling through the air.
Ming Fan’s fist plants itself upon his demon mark as the blade finds purchase. But his hand… qi suffuses it after a half-heartbeat. The blast sends Luo Binghe scrambling back, concussion ringing ears and watering eyes as the concentrated energy bursts through him like an arrow.
Ming Fan hisses, a thin scratch above the bared pectoral that heaves as he dances back, flinging leaves sharpened with qi.
Luo Binghe’s eyes catch the perked, hardened nub first, then the ants crawling from under, to burn and close the wound he’d left. Ming Fan, in all his vanity, his rage, had found a way to emulate his blood parasites…
A living, breathing horticulture of ants and poisons. Luo Binghe’s breath is caught. He’s transfixed. Mesmerized by the horrific, cruel being before him. For so long… through so many dead counterparts…
He’d come for the kind Shizun. He’s left without that. But this thing before him… does he know now? Could he…
Could he understand…?
Luo Binghe, breath caught in his throat, asks. “Ming Fan… what is it to be the unwanted child?”
His Da-shixiong scoffs. His eyes full of judgement. “Luo Binghe…”
He sends more flurries of poisoned herbs. He sends ants with dripping venom. He sends sword flares of demonic qi.
Luo Binghe dances between, stalwart and more sure with every wound. With every ooze of pus and blood, he knows. This creature… This creature can understand him. Knows the venom in his heart. The whispers in his ear.
Ming Fan, demonic cultivation flaring to life, unconcerned with hiding, dances them out into the open.
Luo Binghe hears screaming. He doesn’t listen. He doesn’t care. All that matters is the dance. The courtship. The pursuit.
Ming Fan, who’d seemed so petty and fake. Ming Fan, stupider than any other head disciple, despite the strategy peak’s standards. Ming Fan, handing him death and telling him it is knowledge.
He was a lie. A mask. A ruse Luo Binghe had been meant to see through. To find. He’d failed. Gods, how he has failed. In every lifetime, every world, he has been too blind to see the opportunity.
But now…
Now he sees. He knows this creature. This thing born of love found absent. Of praise ripped away. Of corners dusty and forgotten. Stories flare to life again.
Da-shixiong, left without letters the other young masters held dearly.
Da-shixiong, who knew a demonic cultivator’s signs like the back of his hand, but couldn’t spy demons.
Da-shixiong, always so accommodating of Ning Yingying, but unable to woo her, despite he having the keys in front of him.
Da-shixiong, Da-shixiong, Da-shixiong.
“I’m right here, you filthy little beast.” The breath on his lips, the trembling peck squeezed between his heavy claws. Luo Binghe has never felt so alive. “Enjoying this, are you? Shidi is disgusting, preening under my pets.”
Ants are in his blood, as his parasites are in their queen’s. Burning and scorching one another without and within. Their crazed, hateful gazes locked into place.
Luo Binghe breathes, “Shall I cut you a sleeve to lie on for your troubles?”
Ming Fan snarls, “I’m going to cut off your pillar and stuff your mouth with it. Spouting nonsense like this is unbecoming, shidi.”
Luo Binghe shudders with desire. With so many toxic, swirling things fluttering in his gullet. He remembers Shen Qingqiu’s mangled, stripped form… both of them.
Perhaps it is a sign. For he remembers how the bastard wept for his precious sect leader… how he’d resisted even after failed suicide. How Luo Binghe, decades of trying later, could not change him.
He remembers the decades of world swimming. Looking, searching… how many peaks has he left leaderless? How many of his counterparts has he killed for burning Qing Jing?
How many of his apparently divinely appointed selves have found this already? Have benefited from his rage? His chase?
How many have a Ming Fan somewhere, burning meridians, chaining them in place?
Jealousy comes to him more naturally than breathing, it seems. Kissing follows shortly after, thankfully. His Da-shixiong’s pec is so firm, so appetizing under his bruising grip. The bastard ruts into him, words not forgotten as a surge of pests aim for his pillar.
Luo Binghe presses sharp-tipped fingers to that place. Ming Fan falters, undone for a moment by the scandalously hidden bud within all men.
Ming Fan bites, greedy and vengeful. Luo Binge bites too. Aiming for lower than a throat. Bruised skin parts easily, tit eager for him by the twitching of the nub there.
Ming Fan shouts as he is pierced by a blade thicker than any Luo Binghe thought to dispense upon him before. Leaking and oozing, they continue to wound each other. To scorch and mar and ruin.
They were meant for this, he thinks in delirium. Xin Mo brought dreams. Visions of a man. Slight and pathetic. With Luo Binghe’s curls.
He watched the man spill noodles and burn. He watched him slave over fools and alter Luo Binghe’s life. He saw the sorrow at losing his first, fleeting vision fo that life. Now he remembers.
A shidi comes upon a mountain. His shizun is cruel, sharing his past. Beaten and used and forgotten to streets by young masters.
His da-shixiong is a young master. Cruel and petty. Until a true demon appears. Before it finds the black in the golden core of Ming Fan.
Before Luo Binghe knows a secret. Holds the leverage. Uses it. Abuses it. Has Ming Fan down to his level. Back under a thumb where the wretch belongs.
Before Shizun tries to run through a demon, only to watch his head disciple dispatch it first with a hearty kick into the maw of hell.
The shidi comes back upon the mountain, fake, petty face well-learned. He brings fire and ruin. He leaves with more than he bargained for.
As Luo Binghe spills again, he watches the toned abs give way after struggling and holding. Becoming soft and supple under the fulfillment.
He kisses his empress. Found again after parasitic machines died screaming for want of foresight. For fear of forgotten background characters.
Ming Fan, painting Luo Binghe’s robes white, pants hotly. With bloodshot, wild eyes does he rip robes. He growls, “Wear green for me again, shidi.”
Luo Binghe’s heart swells. Parasites and ants swirling in his veins, he makes a vow. A solemn wish. “Always for Da-shixiong.”
Xiang Fei stares down at the blinking face of Cucumber. He whispers, remembering watching as others numbly cleaned up the mess made by his creations. It’s been years, and he’s tired. “I’m sorry, bro. I uh… I forgot to warn you about that first draft.”
He smiles wetly. “But hey… at least now the plant body finally came in handy, huh?”
Shen Qingqiu’s eyes narrow. “Who are you, and where is Shang Qinghua?”
Xiang Fei’s heart stops at the cold glint in those eyes. “S-Shen Qingqiu?”
A broken, half-hearted whisper answers. He’s been followed. By the worst candidate. “Xiao Jiu?”
The veneer of cold control dissipates instantly.
Disbelief, hope, terror… All flit about as the prodigal son snaps his head back. “Qi Ge?”
Xiang Fei has a really, really bad feeling that he’s not imagining the cursing and digging coming from his own plant patch. Guess the system really was trying to be good for something.
Whoops.