Chapter Text
“Y-Your Majesty! This lowly one truly doesn’t know how Your Majesty's future mate could escape our observation!”
A drop of sweat slid down the demonic underling’s scaled temple. Shivers wracked his entire massive body and yet he had to speak.
True, he had already signed his death certificate by losing sight of the venerable Third Prince Shen who held the Second Southern King’s heart in the palm of his hand without even knowing that his King existed. But evading this interrogation would prolong the process into a neverending torture.
With Tianlang-Jun, there was still hope. The older of the two was known to give out second chances on a whim.
But Bingge-Jun would tally every little grievance and dish out his vengeance a hundredfold. He had no whimsies. Just pure calculation of rights and wrongs towards him.
Crumpled like into a heap on the throne room’s obsidian floor, the demonic underling sensed his future ending here.
Luo Binghe stared down at the trembling, helpless lizard hybrid under his command without releasing the poor wretch from his gaze.
A faint smile was playing across the Heavenly Demon’s lips.
It looked more horrifying than a frontal attack with swords and hammers.
More excuses poured out of the lizard demon’s mouth.
“As your Majesty is aware, Third Prince Shen hardly leaves his Peerless Palace. The entire realm is clueless as to why he would suddenly bolt and leave, embarking on a cultivation journey.”
His Lord’s face softened when the subject of his beloved was brought up.
The iciness in his eyes melted like winter show that met a blast of the sun's pure flame.
It almost looked like forgiveness. But it wasn’t.
“Indeed, this lord knows,” he spoke slowly. His clawed finger gently and slowly traced the armrest of his throne. “A-Yuan loves the quiet, so I rid the court of those who’d want to break his peace with any useless schemes. A-Yuan loves his wildlife observation, so I directed birds and beasts to not evade his touch in any area within my influence in this demon realm. A-Yuan doesn’t like to put in too much effort into cultivation, so I secretly shared the most top-notch manuals of demonic cultivation for his comfort.”
Visually, nothing in the throne room was happening.
Bingge-Jun was simply expressing the degree of his devotion toward the person he wished to claim as his mate.
But the lizard hybrid’s throat closed.
Forceful, domineering energy spread across the throne room, and it left no spot free of it.
Murderous, fierce, only capable of being gentle with one person only… and perhaps not even then.
-And that one person’s whereabouts were unknown. Through the underling's own negligence.
“Th-this lowly one has failed Your Majesty. But I’m begging for another chance!”
“Haa.” Bingge-Jun let out a sneer. His delicately sculpted face was beautiful and terrifying. “These years that I’ve been playing out mediocrity must have made me look too soft.”
“As soon as we received the news, I sent out my best subordinates and set out to check the scene of his departure personally. I covertly questioned every clan. But-”
“Yes. You lost my A-Yuan.”
Luo Binghe’s lips thinned.
The demonic energy that choked the room like invisible thick smoke now reached a crescendo.
There was no movement in the hall. No sound. Just a spell of tragic, foreboding silence.
And then-
Squeash.
The demon underling’s body disintegrated in a spray of blood.
It hardly took a moment.
“Still too easy,” Luo Binghe said with a calm indifference.
The scattered droplets of crimson liquid fell with soft splat sounds. Once settled on the obsidian tiles, they were slowly pooling together.
Luo Binghe effortlessly directed one of his mindless slaves whose souls were robbed by his Blood Parasites to clean the mess.
Despite his lack of remorse, excitement, or any other strong emotions, light satisfaction still sparked in his heart for a second.
So many centuries had passed, and he still savoured how easily crushing lives came to him; how far he’d come from the useless child who couldn’t even protect his mother’s last meal from the bullies trampling on it.
After that tiny spark died, however, an avalanche of other emotions drowned him.
The indifference slid away from his face, revealing his true self.
Pitiful and longing.
Without any eyes he couldn't control, the guise of the supreme lord that shrouded Luo Binghe like a fierce draconic costume fell apart.
His lip trembled slightly like a wounded child’s until he stubbornly pressed it down into a strong line, clenching his jaw.
He couldn’t loosen his body, however.
He was one tight string bound to strike like an arrow at any little trigger.
After he had closed the debts of his past and renounced everything he’d ever owned back in the world that had conjured him into this miserable existence, Luo Binghe now only boasted of one trigger, really.
Shen Yuan.
Shen Yuan would never know how much this supreme Heavenly Demon feared losing him from his sight.
In fact, in this world, Shen Yuan cared so little about Luo Binghe's existence that he'd never even attempted to show up in the Heavenly Demon court, preferring to offload all the politics to the rest of his family.
It was a completely one-sided parasocial relationship where one party ardently chased the other from the shadows, while that other party lived his own happy life in total ignorance.
At least Shen Yuan looked happy.
Far better than when Luo Binghe found Shen Yuan just to see him die the same day in his arms.
Far better than when he opened the portal to yet another world only to discover that Shen Yuan didn’t exist there at all.
Far better than when Shen Yuan would be guarded by other Luo Binghes, each of them empowered and brought to the peak of power by having their love returned, thus completely trouncing his own advances.
It was here that the Luo Binghe of the most miserable world with the least happy ending finally saw his chance.
And he cradled that chance like the most precious, the most fragile treasure, to the point he didn’t even dare show his face around the person he so loved.
Because what if he met Shen Yuan only to ruin him?
Luo Binghe had never known gentleness. Just conquest.
That’s why he had only observed and made sure to confront any other suitors behind the scenes.
His feelings were too strong to be expressed in person.
Luo Binghe felt that, if Shen Yuan absolutely rejected him even here, the last threads of humanity that grounded him would snap, and then-
He was too afraid to think of "then".
But now, he was rethinking that approach.
In all his calculations Luo Binghe hadn’t counted on Shen Yuan to have a damn midlife crisis and escape his carefully built cage by sheer luck and coincidence alone.
Now, facing his mistake…
He wasn’t a Heavenly Demon, the former emperor of the Three Realms.
Luo Binghe was a pathetic man brought down so low by endless, unresponded yearning.
By travelling tirelessly across dimensions, across worlds. By finding his obsession, burning up with hope, only to have that hope fall into cold ashes in his chest when his beloved was defended just as fiercely by his other selves.
He was desperate, but so were they.
A smile painted his face. It was both sad and mad. It was a madman’s grimace he would never show to his beloved but which crystallised the essence of his being better than the kingly authoritative aura he usually exuded to establish his dominance in this hellscape.
Although his mouth stretched in a smile, his dark eyes were deep and solemn.
“A-Yuan. You only have yourself to blame for embodying everything that I desire.”
Meanwhile, the culprit was oblivious to the crashout that his dimension-crossing stalker was facing on his own.
Shen Yuan was limply lying on his stomach in a nest of velvet cushions of a high-end inn, as if he were a depressed puddle of red silks, pale long limbs, and soft white furs.
Dreamily fluttering pink and gold gauze curtains - suspended from the ceiling - hid the tantalising scene from the sight of a casual onlooker.
Not that just anyone could peek.
Shen Yuan had sealed his temporary quarters by sticking black-paper talismans on the walls in an array that obscured the sight of anyone rude enough to sneak on him while he was having some quality time with his own thoughts.
Now, he regretted arranging that protection.
Dissatisfaction and disappointment gnawed at him so relentlessly that he’d welcome a distraction - even if it dropped on him in the form of some assassin.
Shen Yuan’s lips stuck out in a lazy pout over his steepled fingers as he leaned his head on them. His fluffy nine tails softly beat the tiled floor around his silk-clad form. As he was resting in his half-human, half-fox form, his ears proudly perked up on his head - or rather, drooped, in the same state of grogginess and unwillingness to do anything as the rest of him.
‘Exploring the jianghu all by myself is such a letdown. I found the super rare Seven Lighted Lark who is only born once every five hundred years this morning, and don’t even have anyone whose ears I can talk off about it.’ Shen Yuan sighed, unsteepled his fingers, and ran one of them over the velvet cushion's threads in meandering circles.
Damn Airplane had written in so many anachronisms for the sake of smut variety, why couldn't he have put in the internet and forum chats!
Shen Yuan would have to spice things up, or he would have to awkwardly return home just weeks after declaring to his family that he was embarking on a grand adventure to see the world!
His siblings would poke and tease him about it for years if that’s how this trip ended.
Now, how did all those RPGs go?
‘Ah, right! Let’s go entice a companion into my adventure!’
‘...But if I take along a seasoned cultivator, won’t they notice that I’m not exactly human and try to screw me over while spewing some self-righteous bullshit?’
What could be an alternative? Not an experienced cultivator and not a simple mortal... Obviously not a demon, either, because then there would be no point in going to the mortal realm...
In a moment Shen Yuan’s eyes brightened.
A big fat light bulb lit up in his mind.
‘A disciple! That’s right, I can just take in some gullible village kid who will never even dream that his respected shifu is a loathsome demonic scum… from a human perspective.’
As for his requirements, Shen Yuan was very clear.
‘Look, I’m not asking for a genius! Any laidback, sweet kid would do. Maybe a cute, cheerful girl- No. This is PIDW. With my luck, she’d be some wife number 572 and her storyline would elevate me into her tragically poisoned Shizun whom she’d dedicate her life to avenge. Or Bingge would consider me a love rival and tear my guts out.’
Shen Yuan absolutely refused to compete for love with Luo Binghe!
He'd rather stay single forever! Shen Yuan was even willing to swear it to Luo Binghe to his face! That Shen Yuan - would - absolutely - never - fall in love or date!
The transmigrator contented himself with being the best wingman for the future Heavenly Demon's romantic life.
Shen Yuan nodded, impressed with himself.
‘A boy. It’s gotta be a boy disciple.’
‘A future hotshot like Bingge wouldn’t give a damn if some random demonic Prince like me teaches a male disciple.’
‘Right. Just how hard would it be to find an adorable, obedient, unambitious kid with no impact on the plot and no problematic emotional luggage? A kind kid who listens well. Easy peasy!’
With a contented smile, his fluffy white ears perking up happily, Shen Yuan closed his eyes and dreamed of an energetic smiling cutie following him around like a little chick.