Work Text:
There was something inside him, deep inside his belly. It wriggled and grew and left Shen Qingqiu gasping, down on his knees, and curled over further as he tried to breathe through the discomfort. He had thought that nothing could reach deeper inside of him than the heavenly pillar, and yet this thing must be all the way in his stomach.
He didn’t know what sort of vile creature had taken up residence in his belly, using his body as its cozy home, and he was terrified to seek out Mu Qingfang because that meant acknowledging that there was something there. That there was something wrong.
There were more important things to worry about, anyway. He would have given up on saving face and asked Binghe to check him over as the demon lord seemed to know Shen Qingqiu’s body better than he, himself did sometimes.
Yet Binghe was nowhere to be found.
Shen Qingqiu had been looking, had enlisted the help of Shang Qinghua to try and determine if there was some plotline that they had forgotten, some danger that could target Binghe and succeed in keeping him from coming home to his Shizun.
So far they had found nothing and all the while Shen Qingqiu’s belly had continued to swell.
—
“So. I might have found something.” Shang Qinghua carefully avoided looking at Shen Qingqiu as he spoke “It was a plotline that was briefly mentioned in the novel but was universally hated so I later retconned it out”
Shen Qingqiu narrowed his eyes, taking a sip of his tea and trying to ignore the increased squirming in his belly as Shang Qinghua spoke.
“What plotline?” Shen Qingqiu thought that he sounded very calm, yet Shang Qinghua twitched, ready to flinch away from Shen Qingqiu’s reach.
“So. I watched this documentary one night, and it was like super late at night and I was morbidly fascinated and the next thing I knew I had so many characters written and it would have been a shame to just delete them, so I posted it and it got so much hate that I, uh, delegated it to a sort of crack side story”
Shen Qingqiu narrowed his eyes, there were about a million spin-off chapters of Proud Immortal Demon Way, none of them particularly good.
“Wait.”
Shen Qingqiu had a sudden, awful feeling.
There was a sick squirming in his gut. Or, well, that was probably the- the…
BINGHE???
“You are not,” Shen Qingqiu said, forcibly calm as he avoided looking down “Talking about the tapeworm plot”
Shang Qinghua laughed nervously “Anyway,” the man said, slowly inching away from the table “There’s a cleansing flower, and Mu Qingfang probably has it in stock, but it needs to be dried and made into a tea and then we just need to figure out where Binghe actually went!”
Shen Qingqiu put his head in his hands “…And then the protagonist will be expelled from the body and turn back?” He asked, his voice muffled.
“Exactly!” Shang Qinghua said “So now we just need to brainstorm who Binghe, as a tapeworm, would choose to inhabit and… Oh” He heard the realization happen “OH,” Shang Qinghua laughed nervously again “Uh. Anyway! Hope that helps! Good luck bro!” He bolted before Shen Qingqiu could reach for his fan, barely escaping a well-deserved beating.
Leaving Shen Qingqiu alone with the husband he had been searching for. For days.
Who was currently residing in his belly.
As a tapeworm.