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Shen Yuan stares at Luo Binghe’s perfectly styled hair and deep black eyes from across the cafe. He looks out of place amongst modern mundanity - smirking in a way that reveals one pointed fang and donned in an outfit better suited for presiding over court than for battle, elaborate and heavy and only adding to the imposing frame of his figure. Every time Shen Yuan looks at him his heart beats just a bit faster, thrilled by the aura of such an incredible protagonist.
Luo Binghe, being only a life-size cardboard cutout standing in the corner of a PIDW collaboration cafe, does not stare back. Cardboard cutouts also can’t righteously blind Shen Yuan for the discourtesy of staring, though, so it’s not all bad.
…Fuck! What a good printout! Who hired the artist for this pop-up cafe? Who spent the money to get that art printed to those dimensions?
And, most critically, what does Shen Yuan have to do to take that standee home?!
Don’t get him wrong - he doesn’t harbor any impure thoughts towards it! That standee is a work of art, a national treasure, and exactly the sort of thing that a mindless fangirl would want to take home to do all sorts of immoral things to! Shen Yuan’s intentions are only to rescue Luo Binghe’s image from that sort of fate!!
Shoulders set with grim determination, Shen Yuan approaches the cafe’s counter. He’s been quietly biding his time - he knew as soon as he realized what he must do that it would be easier to convince the staff to go along willingly around closing time - so the staff recognizes him as he comes up.
This time, though, Shen Yuan isn’t here to simply purchase a seventh drink just to justify his existence in the shop.
Closing time is in less than an hour - surely, Shen Yuan would be allowed to purchase that Luo Binghe cardboard cutout now, right?!
“Ahem,” Shen Yuan says very smoothly and confidently. “Ah, ahem. I, uh - ahem. That is -”
“Another Abyssal Lord Red Passion Tea with 200% sweetness?”
Shen Yuan winces. “Actually, I was curious about the cafe standees… this collaboration event ends today, right?”
“Yes,” the staff answers politely, as if Shen Yuan hasn’t already asked this three times today, and checks their watch briefly. “...At this time, we are able to sell the standees. Congratulations.”
In the privacy of his own mind, Shen Yuan throws his hands into the air and completes a vicious celebratory dance.
“Which one did you want?” the staff asks, moving towards where the collection of cardboard cutouts are gathered in one corner for photo ops.
‘Which one,’ as if there isn’t an obvious answer! Shen Yuan is performing a rescue operation, not participating in the sort of contemptible activity that might drive the average male PIDW reader to be drawn in by one of the cutouts of the women and their excessive cleavage.
Honestly, have some respect! Those are Luo Binghe’s wives, not yours!!
“I want Luo Binghe,” Shen Yuan says firmly. The staff member looks back at Shen Yuan with an exceptionally bored gaze.
“It’ll be extra for the main character.”
“Obviously,” Shen Yuan snaps. Then, remembering himself: “I mean - of course. Yes, of course. To the fact that I’ll pay it, not, uh, not ‘of course he costs more,’ though that’s also true…”
“Just pay at the register,” the staff member sighs, and Shen Yuan hurries to obey.
The faster he pays, the faster he can take Luo Binghe home!
Er, wait, that seems to have come out a bit wrong…
Well, in any case, it is quite the ordeal to take such a large and precious piece of cardboard home. Shen Yuan had spent the better part of the last several hours in that cafe considering how he would transport it safely, and in the end, he’s still a bit uncertain as he heads to the nearest train station. A private taxi would have been ideal, but the train would be easier to keep Luo Binghe standing upright in, avoiding creasing the cardboard…
No matter. Shen Yuan will simply purchase the standee a disposable rain poncho before boarding the subway, so even if it’s dirty on the train, Luo Binghe himself will survive unscathed.
As he starts scanning the nearby shops to find a suitable convenience store, though, it seems like something is a bit… off.
Despite being nearly rush hour, Shen Yuan is the only person on the streets. The sidewalk stretches out ahead of him into an unsettling darkness, as if the streetlights further down the block have all gone out and there isn’t a single shop open to illuminate the ground in their place. Shen Yuan realizes belatedly that he can’t hear the faint sound of traffic anymore, either, only the faint electric buzz of the lamp nearest him - one of the last few that seems to actually be working on this path.
…Well, Shen Yuan isn’t an idiot! That’s more than enough to clue him into the situation, thank you!!
Resolute, he spins on his heel to start heading back the way he came. Except - it’s dark behind him, too, and even though Shen Yuan knows he had just passed a group of high school girls walking the opposite direction, he can’t see them anywhere.
The darkness on all sides of him seems to be creeping closer, now, too. The light above his head flickers ominously before eventually dimming down to a weak pale glow no better than what the moon could provide.
Shen Yuan clutches the Luo Binghe cardboard cutout a bit closer to him, just to better keep it safe.
And then, suddenly, the faint hum from the weakening streetlamp vanishes altogether. The light remains, but when Shen Yuan whips his head back over his shoulder to check -
Shit. It really is just the moonlight!!
Where am I?! Shen Yuan cries to himself, frantically taking in his surroundings. The street he had been on has completely vanished, and though the pale wash of moonlight extends further than the dying streetlamp did, all it illuminates is a barren plane and the sharp peaks of some mountains in the distance.
Mountains that were definitely not visible from Shen Yuan’s home town.
Okay, stay calm, he thinks to himself. Don’t speak aloud, because you’re either being pranked or you’ve just transmigrated into an unknown land with who knows what sorts of dangers that will pounce as soon as they hear you, and -
“What’s this?” someone asks behind Shen Yuan, their voice low and dangerous. “A lost little rat, wandering around in nothing but some odd underclothes?”
Shen Yuan shrieks in a way that is best left described only as ‘dignified, manly, and very understandable.’
“Who -?!”
“A noisy rat,” the man scoffs as Shen Yuan whirls around to look at him.
…Shen Yuan turns right back around to put his back to the man and stare down at his feet. His fingers clutch the Luo Binghe cardboard cutout a bit more closely.
Wow! What are the odds! A man who looks just like Luo Binghe, out here in the middle of nowhere, right after Shen Yuan had just been spirited away from his pleasant walk home!
“You’d dare ignore this Lord?” the Luo Binghe impersonator asks. Shen Yuan chances a hesitant look over his shoulder, wondering if he’d simply been mistaken, but -
Damnit, that’s really Luo Binghe! It isn’t possible for a man to be so beautiful otherwise!! Eyes that glint like dark, perfectly polished jewels, a strong jaw just the right size to cradle with a reverent hand, hair that looks effortlessly soft despite the lack of modern products, an intricate demonic mark on his forehead that casts an otherworldly red glow across his face…
Shen Yuan swallows thickly. That’s really Luo Binghe. The Luo Binghe, who Shen Yuan has been reading about and cheering on for years. That Luo Binghe.
The same Luo Binghe that also hasn’t had a single encounter with a male character outside of Mobei Jun that didn’t end with their death in the last fifty published chapters, and who is currently staring down at Shen Yuan with nothing short of contempt.
Shen Yuan nearly strains something with how quickly he throws himself to the ground. The perfectly reasonable modern day outfit he’d worn to the PIDW collaboration cafe rides up a bit with the moment, and Shen Yuan manages to make room for mortification underneath his panic.
“Lord Luo!” he cries. “This humble, unworthy one begs forgiveness for the grave sin of not recognizing Lord Luo’s esteemed figure in the low light at first sight! I’m only -”
“- a fan?”
Shen Yuan freezes. Luo Binghe had only muttered it quietly to himself, but Shen Yuan’s every nerve ending is currently frayed from the sheer intensity of the attention he’s put onto Luo Binghe, so he heard it loud and clear.
Ordinarily, Shen Yuan would not hesitate to confirm that he’s a fan of Luo Binghe. Who wouldn’t? Especially within what must be the actual world of PIDW, where Luo Binghe exists in a grandeur and beauty that the text failed to properly convey?
Ordinarily, though, Shen Yuan isn’t lugging around a cardboard cutout of Luo Binghe, which makes the idea of being called a fan much more embarrassing.
Shen Yuan had abandoned it when he fell to the ground in prostration, but the standee seems to have settled balancing upright behind him. Luo Binghe - the real one, a thousand times more real and deadly than what a mere cardboard papercut could deliver - is currently ignoring Shen Yuan entirely to examine the standee instead.
“What sort of art style is this?” Luo Binghe asks. “The material is odd as well.”
“It’s - uh, really really thick paper,” Shen Yuan mumbles, still pressed to the ground between the two Luo Binghes.
“Then this is an expensive portrait,” Luo Binghe remarks. “A tribute?”
Shen Yuan casts a furtive look around them. What the hell would he be doing with a tribute to the emperor of the combined realms out in the middle of nowhere?!
Luo Binghe seems to take his silence as something else.
“Ah,” he says, his sharp teeth flashing in a dangerous grin. “You don’t want to part with it, even after bringing it nearly to the foot of my palace.”
What palace?! Though Luo Binghe’s main palace is underground, so perhaps there’s something here after all…?
“This humble one would not dare withhold anything from Lord Luo,” Shen Yuan says carefully.
He paid a lot of money for that standee, but if Luo Binghe wants it, Shen Yuan will hold back his tears and let it be taken! It’s probably safer for Luo Binghe to assume that Shen Yuan really had been simply wandering around near the palace with a tribute anyway. A sniveling NPC that brings unremarkable gifts and then vanishes into the night has a decent survival rate, so long as they don’t do anything stupid during the presentation of the gifts themselves!
“Would not dare to withhold, but would still dare to wish to keep it to yourself,” Luo Binghe says. “How eloquently put.”
…Fuck! Shen Yuan had already fucked up the moment he hesitated when Luo Binghe had asked if it was a tribute!!
“That isn’t - ah, a thousand apologies for the misunderstanding, but rather -”
“Looking at it now, the portrait seems a bit strange beyond its construction,” Luo Binghe interrupts, stepping forward to examine the standee a bit closer.
His boot comes close enough to Shen Yuan’s face, still pressed close to the ground, that Shen Yuan can smell the sharp metallic scent of blood on it. Shen Yuan tries not to shake too obviously.
“This Lord hasn’t worn that particular outfit for any painter to study,” Luo Binghe continues. “And even though the art lacks delicate shading, the artist has taken the unusual liberty of making this Lord’s chest appear quite flushed.”
Shen Yuan’s face, apparently feeling like it has to compete, very quickly becomes much more flushed than the artistic pink that had been gently airbrushed across the Luo Binghe standee’s breasts from where they peek out of the low dip in his robes.
“And with this rat not wanting to actually give it up…” Luo Binghe trails off.
For a few terrifying moments, there’s nothing to fill the silence between them except Shen Yuan’s shaky breaths.
Then, seemingly determined to ensure that things only get more terrifying, Luo Binghe stoops down and reaches out to grab Shen Yuan’s chin, roughly pulling his face up to face his.
“Ah,” Luo Binghe says, his eyes glinting with something like interest. “Perhaps not an ugly thing like a rat after all.”
“I can be a rat!” Shen Yuan rushes to reassure. “That is, if Lord Luo thinks this one is a rat, then I must be a rat, so…”
Shen Yuan is suddenly overcome with the feeling of an intense wave of pins-and-needles, like he’s been suddenly dunked under freezing water except it burns.
“Not a cultivator,” Luo Binghe says to himself - which means that feeling just then had been his qi, holy shit - and tilts Shen Yuan’s chin this way and that to examine him better. “So a mortal traveled this far with that sort of image…”
Luo Binghe’s mouth splits into a sharp smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“...you must like me quite a bit.”
Shen Yuan swallows thickly. His mouth feels dry, and his stomach is roiling in a way that makes him certain he’s just one bad move away from throwing up.
And his face, still just as red as it had been moments ago, burns with heat.
“Well?” Luo Binghe asks, cocking his head to the side.
“I - uh, yes,” Shen Yuan manages. He tries to nod shakily along, but Luo Binghe is still holding his chin and the movement causes his claws to dig just slightly into Shen Yuan’s flesh, so in the end he aborts the movement. “I - this one - there isn’t anyone better than Lord Luo.”
Luo Binghe’s eyes glint with satisfaction.
“That’s right,” he says, releasing Shen Yuan’s chin and standing back up. Shen Yuan has to steady himself quickly to avoid falling face-first back to the ground. “This Lord will allow your affection for a short period, to recognize how far you must have traveled.”
“Thank you,” Shen Yuan says in a rush. “That’s extremely kind of Lord Luo, to bestow such allowance of my affection -”
He pauses, blinking stupidly up at Luo Binghe.
“- wait, my what?”
---
Shen Yuan is deposited into one of the many guest rooms of Luo Binghe’s underground palace the same way someone might set aside an interesting shaped rock they picked up on a walk around the park.
Luo Binghe doesn’t seem especially interested in visiting him again afterwards, and as a fully intact man Shen Yuan is of course unable to enter the harem to meet the women there, so he spends most of his days on his own.
Which is perfectly fine, of course! It’s probably even for the best, considering how Shen Yuan’s classification in this world is likely only half a step above that of a male NPC - someone with terrible survivability rates within PIDW.
And anyway, not being able to meet any of the characters he’d read about doesn’t mean he’s completely abandoned within the palace. Being put up in a guest room seems to have flagged Shen Yuan as ‘just barely above contempt’ amongst the palace staff - someone who still gets three meals a day delivered to his room, and is provided with robes of reasonable quality, and who can ask for directions without fear of having their head bitten off.
…Admittedly, Shen Yuan may have been quite a bit more sour about this whole thing if that last part had not been true. There isn’t any point in mourning the transmigration itself - he’s at least genre savvy enough to know such a thing would be pointless - but the circumstances of the transmigration are another thing altogether.
No cultivation, no cool demonic heritage (at least no cool demonic heritage that counts, considering he still looks perfectly human), and not even his own phone to keep him occupied. Shen Yuan had truly been dropped into the world in his own body without a single upgrade. It seemed as if all his luck in the process had been used up allowing him to meet and speak briefly with Luo Binghe, even if he’d been too stupid and scared at the time to make proper use of it.
Having no cultivation right now doesn’t mean having no cultivation forever, though. Since Shen Yuan is able to do as he pleases so long as he remains courteous, and the guards of the palace are willing to answer questions about where to find what - isn’t it possible that Shen Yuan might be able to teach himself something from the palace’s library?
Sure, he might be well past the age at which cultivation is easiest to pick up, but there had been at least four separate wives within Luo Binghe’s harem whose defining feature had been secretly learning some small cultivation tricks as an adult.
Shen Yuan may not have the proper equipment to breast boobily across the palace, but surely he could still be somewhat qualified to learn the same way. It’s slightly different, but Shen Yuan’s existence here…
“Are you the guest who’s in love with Lord Luo?”
…it seems to be considered as something similar to a wife going through an unrequited love arc, even if such a consideration is wildly incorrect!
“This one is the guest who arrived with the to-scale portrait of Lord Luo’s likeness,” Shen Yuan corrects, bowing politely to the young woman who’s approached the table he’s currently reading at.
In the short time that Shen Yuan has been here, he’s quickly realized that the library is never empty. There are simply too many people living in the palace to allow for that. He’s under the impression that there’s a separate library inside the inner palace for Luo Binghe and his wives to enjoy, but even that must get crowded, as Shen Yuan has seen several women he recognizes as low-level wives inside this library instead.
This is the first time one of them has approached him, though.
“So you’re in love with him,” she says, putting her hand on her hip and tilting her head up to look at him with contempt. “Lord Luo doesn’t marry men, so scram.”
Shen Yuan hides the sudden twitchiness of his eye by smiling politely. Little lady, if you get this worked up about every random guest who shows completely platonic devotion and admiration for the emperor, how the hell do you survive living in a harem this big?!
…Also, on that note, isn’t ‘the guest in love with Luo Binghe’ too vague?? Surely every other guest falls at least a little bit in love with him after seeing him just once!
“I also do not marry men,” Shen Yuan says cordially, “so it seems there is nothing to worry about.”
The wife - number 127, who Shen Yuan recognizes easily by the startlingly doll-like look to her hair, as if it’s made of fabric - huffs.
“You won’t marry men,” she says warningly. “Not this one, at least.”
“Of course, Concubine Ye,” Shen Yuan agrees easily.
Ye Xiaofang, clearly gearing up to launch into another completely unnecessary accusation about Shen Yuan’s straight manliness, pauses.
“...Do I know you from somewhere?”
“Concubine Ye is Lord Luo’s wife. Everyone knows you, even if you don’t know everyone else.”
Ye Xiaofang’s expression turns a bit odd. She stares at Shen Yuan for a long moment as if contemplating him before eventually breaking into a sly grin, all her animosity melting away in a moment.
“You really do like Lord Luo!” she laughs, reaching out to slap Shen Yuan’s shoulder. “It isn’t just dragging around a portrait that’s the right size to embrace, but memorizing each of his concubines to the point of recognizability?”
“I never said I didn’t like him,” Shen Yuan sniffs, feeling a bit offended at the implication. “I only said I wasn’t in love with him.”
Ye Xiaofang laughs again, louder this time, and slaps his shoulder with more gusto. Her doll-like hair shifts with the movement in an extremely uncanny way, all of it moving together as if it’s a single object rather than many small strands bundled together.
Fascinating. Certainly not worth learning that this, too, was somebody’s kink when Shen Yuan had first read that chapter of PIDW, but fascinating to see in real life nonetheless.
“I don’t think you’re as bad as they say,” Ye Xiaofang says.
“Who’s ‘they?’”
“In fact,” she continues, completely ignoring Shen Yuan’s sudden concern, “I think you’re alright. When it comes to sharing Lord Luo with others, it’s better if they’re absolutely obsessed like you rather than the wishy-washy, vapid type that’s slipping in through every crack these days.”
“Calling it an obsession is a bit much…”
“Hey, did you memorize the staff too? Who’s that?” Ye Xiaofang asks, pointing at one of the servants dutifully reshelving books some paces away.
“I’m not a walking wiki page,” Shen Yuan says irritably. Random servants are rarely named within PIDW, so how is he supposed to know?
…Although, the servant’s skin appears to be rather pale, doesn’t it? The library is warm, so it’s unlikely that a northern demon would be stationed here as part of their regular duties. Perhaps some sort of demon from the far west, then, in the land that bordered where the stagnant souls of the dead lay restlessly until they could be reincarnated. The demons from that arc had all been described as having skin as pale and unnerving as a wonton wrapper, ghostly and thin. They’d all had such irritating names, too, because Airplane had the originality of a washed-up musician making ends meet by rereleasing their same top hits every other month, so -
“Wu-something or another,” Shen Yuan says, glaring at the poor servant that can’t possibly have understood the poor fortune they had to be created during one of Airplane’s worst copy and paste moments. “From that clan, all the servants are Wu-something.”
“And that?” Ye Xiaofang asks, quickly pointing at someone else sitting by the balcony on the floor above them.
“...This one is more than willing to assist Concubine Ye where her sight may not be clear,” Shen Yuan says dryly. “Since that is Concubine Sun, who entered the palace only some weeks after Concubine Ye, and whom Concubine Ye would surely not need me to recite the name of.”
Ye Xiaofang blinks up at Sun Rui. Sun Rui, sensing their gaze, looks up from her book and waves one porcelain-jointed hand at them.
Shen Yuan quietly resolves to keep his distance from Sun Rui. Ye Xiaofang’s hair is one thing, but if Shen Yuan can make out those odd ball-jointed fingers from across the library, then Sun Rui’s doll-like appearance really is twice as uncanny as Ye Xiaofang, just the way Airplane had written it. That back-to-back chapter special had truly been terrible, after all!
“Oops,” Ye Xiaofang says. “Well, I was only testing you anyway. Hey, can I see the portrait of Lord Luo everyone’s talking about?”
Shen Yuan bites his tongue to prevent the instinctual refusal from spilling out. Even if he’s hoping that this apparently common misconception about his reason for being here is enough to trip a wife-plot-enabled cheat for late-stage cultivation education, Shen Yuan isn’t actually a wife-plot character. He’s only a guest. If he refuses an actual wife, isn’t that the same as politely bidding his own life goodbye?
“I would be honored,” Shen Yuan says with a tight smile. “However, since the portrait is kept in my room, it would be inappropriate to show Concubine Ye. I would not dare to bring one of Lord Luo’s wives into my own quarters.”
“Obviously,” Ye Xiaofang says. “Just bring the portrait to the library next time. I’ll see it here.”
Where everyone else can see, too?! Pass!
“Perhaps a different -”
“Here. Tomorrow. Or I’ll report you as a spy even if I am flattered that you know my name,” Ye Xiaofang says sharply. Then, after a beat, her amused smile comes right back to life. “Okay?”
“...Okay,” Shen Yuan agrees.
Where everyone else can see, it is, ah!
---
Shen Yuan becomes something of a spectacle in the library after that.
Well, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the life-size cardboard cutout of the emperor of the combined realms becomes the spectacle it was always meant to be, but Shen Yuan himself is certainly not left out of the spotlight.
“My, I had forgotten Lord Luo had a mole here… Shen Yue, did you notice that yourself, or did you manage to bribe a royal painter to do this for you?”
“And this hair crown, too! Isn’t it reserved for inner court presidings? Shen Yan, how did you manage to see this in person to know the exact shades of each gem?”
“Hey, just how much are you selling this portrait for, Shen Yulun?”
“It’s Shen Yuan,” Shen Yuan says through gritted teeth. “My name is Shen Yuan.”
The gathering of low level concubines titters. One of them even takes the moment of distraction to reach out a hand to touch the cardboard cutout with one delicate finger, oo-ing and ah-ing over the smooth texture so unlike an ordinary painting.
Ye Xiaofang, the one responsible for spreading the news that the infamous standing portrait of Lord Luo would be present in the library today, grins wickedly at Shen Yuan.
“You should put the portrait up for auction amongst the concubines,” she says. “You could make quite the profit, Shen Yang.”
Shen Yuan closes his eyes and counts the number of stupid flowers within PIDW that were all named as Star-Catching [Color] Posies. When he opens his eyes, the concubine that had dared to touch the standee now has both hands on it and is beginning to inch away from them with it in a clear attempt to steal it.
“Concubine Lin,” Shen Yuan calls, already exhausted despite the early hour of the day. “If I recall, the punishment for theft of an idol figure is twice that of an ordinary piece of art, isn’t it?”
Lin Huiyin freezes in her attempt to steal the cardboard cutout, then quietly shuffles back towards Shen Yuan and deposits it back beside the chair he is desperately trying to read quietly in. The other concubines’ tittering increases in volume once more.
“An idol, he says!”
“My, he really does like Lord Luo, even praying to him each night!”
“Well, he wishes he was praying to Lord Luo each night,” Ye Xiaofang snickers.
“Don’t we all?” Lin Huiyin sighs wistfully. The rest of the concubines mimic the same wistful sigh as if they’re nothing more than ornamental, extremely ineffective electric fans.
“The respected concubines seem to have misunderstood something,” Shen Yuan says, eye twitching. “It isn’t like that.”
Portraits of the emperor have been considered as subjects for idolatry ever since that western demonic tribe had exalted Luo Binghe as their deity some years ago - it isn’t like that was Shen Yuan’s opinion personally! If anything, Shen Yuan had just been calling the standee like that to impress the importance of Lin Huiyin returning it to him swiftly!
Unfortunately, the concubines don’t seem convinced.
“There’s no need to be shy about it!”
“That’s right, you’re in like-minded company, now!”
“No, really,” Shen Yuan insists, “I don’t -”
It’s too late. Being married to the single most powerful and incredible man in the combined realms has given this group of concubines an incredible amount of self confidence despite how little they actually see their husband. It’s more than enough for them to find the self-justification needed to steamroll right over Shen Yuan with their own belief of what is going on.
Unfortunately, Shen Yuan soon loses any will he had to protest strongly. With the approval of a mere handful of Luo Binghe’s wives, his status seems to have upgraded from ‘mildly interesting guest’ to ‘welcomed guest who is probably staying here forever.’
Although Shen Yuan had not been mistreated before, it had been obvious that there was a watchful eye on him at all times, waiting for him to turn into the sort of villainous NPC that comes and goes within a single chapter. Now, with Shen Yuan more often than not accompanied by one or two of Luo Binghe’s wives, that suspicion seems to have been lifted. He’s still being watched, of course - no man would ever be allowed to spend time alone with the emperor’s concubines - but it’s much more relaxed.
And, critically, guards no longer stiffen and start reaching for their weapons when Shen Yuan wanders over to what had previously been an off-limits section of the library!
The books that Shen Yuan had access to previously had been interesting, of course. Accounts of dangerous beasts, field guides for fantastical worlds, descriptions of long-lost pocket realms… the sort of thing that would have made Shen Yuan weep if Airplane had ever bothered to include that kind of deep world building!
They just hadn’t been all that helpful to Shen Yuan’s ultimate goal, which, in retrospect, made perfect sense. In a post-combined-realms world where one of the major cultivation sects has already been razed to the ground, who would put cultivation manuals on the shelves any idiot off the streets could read from?
Surely, though, there must be one or two of them in this more restricted section of the library…?
“Hey,” Ye Xiaofang calls, clearly bored. She’s leaning against the shelf that Shen Yuan is currently perusing, watching him occasionally skim through a book before putting it back. “What exactly are you looking for? We keep all the yellow books about Lord Luo in the inner palace’s library, so -”
Shen Yuan puts a book back with perhaps a bit too much force.
“I’m not interested in that sort of thing,” he says stiffly.
Ye Xiaofang’s gaze shifts slowly away from Shen Yuan to the cardboard cutout of Luo Binghe that’s currently propped up behind him.
After the third attempt someone made to steal it, Shen Yuan became a bit obsessive about never being more than an arm’s length away from the thing. He drags it from shelf to shelf like this as he searches, and when he settles down to read, he always does so with the cardboard cutout standing right beside his chair, as if Luo Binghe himself is accompanying him to read over his shoulder.
Is it embarrassing? Yes. Is it completely inconvenient? Also yes.
Would Shen Yuan be able to survive the consequences if the one item that seemingly granted him permission to stay in the palace vanished under his care?
He doesn’t want to find out!
“Right,” Ye Xiaofang says, clearly unconvinced. “Very, very uninterested.”
“Very,” Shen Yuan emphasizes.
“...There’s at least one volume that puts Lord Luo on the bottom, if that’s your preference -”
“It’s not!” Shen Yuan yelps. Then, before he can stop himself: “Who even wrote that? Who keeps it?? That - is Lord Luo aware?? He can’t be, right?!”
“Concubine Liu, I think,” Ye Xiaofang says, completely unbothered. “All the interesting stuff comes from her.”
Shen Yuan blanches. He realizes belatedly that asking any sort of follow up question at all had been a major mistake. There must be another concubine with the surname ‘Liu’ that Shen Yuan has managed to forget. There must be, or else Shen Yuan truly won’t be able to live with this knowledge!
Shen Yuan clears his throat awkwardly. “I’m only looking for topics about cultivation.”
“Oh, the dual cultivation manuals -”
“Not those either!” Shen Yuan rushes to say. “Just - ordinary cultivation. The sort that a mortal might be able to read as a beginner’s guide.”
Ye Xiaofang blinks, then breaks into a leering grin.
“Ah, of course. A mortal’s lifetime is too short compared to Lord Luo’s, isn’t it?”
Shen Yuan swallows back the instinctual refusal. If he wants to make use of the fact that wives get cheats for starting cultivation late in their lives, he has to accept being mistaken for a wannabe wife!
“Unfortunately, those aren’t here, either,” Ye Xiaofang sighs. “Lord Luo keeps those in his personal library only.”
Shen Yuan frowns. “Not even in the library in the inner palace? Didn’t you just admit that a mortal’s life is too short compared to Lord Luo’s? What about the human, non-cultivator concubines?”
There had at least been two or three noble daughters in the harem with nothing interesting to offer outside of political gains. Surely they would be allowed to learn cultivation after marrying in?
“Lord Luo shares his blood with us, so no one has to learn anything special to have their lifespans extended,” Ye Xiaofang shrugs.
Shen Yuan tries not to look too fascinated at the lore drop. He already knew that Luo Binghe mixes his blood with all the wedding wine his wives drink, of course, but he didn’t know it could even extend lifetimes. Is that due to some loophole in the way the blood parasites identify what needs ‘healing?’ Something like healing the old and fraying cells and proteins within the body and unexpectedly providing a sort of rejuvenation as a result, perhaps, assuming that ‘death’ itself cannot be considered an ailment to be cured…
Shen Yuan shakes his head, dismissing the thought for later, and steps back to look over the shelf he’s in front of - and then the shelf next to it, and the shelf behind him, and the shelf a row over.
There’s really not a single book that looks like it might promise even the hint of a cultivation secret. Instead, all that seems to be shelved here are various recounts of Luo Binghe’s adventures.
“Why is this section more restricted than the rest of the library, then?” Shen Yuan asks, irritated. “Isn’t everything here standard knowledge?”
“Standard?” Ye Xiaofang parrots. She takes a moment to look around them, too. “What… Shen Yuan, just how obsessed with Lord Luo are you?”
“A normal amount,” Shen Yuan says snidely. “Which is to say, please stop calling something that isn’t so extreme as an ‘obsession.’”
“What great emperor would want the details of every conquest he completes as public record?” Ye Xiaofang asks, shaking her head in disbelief. “Outside of major issues, Lord Luo’s court makes a habit of preventing the circulation of books like this. Otherwise, any of his enemies could have an easy time researching his strategies.”
“Lord Luo can’t be countered that easily. If a strategy is known, he’ll think up a new one.”
Not to mention how many of Luo Binghe’s later ‘strategies’ had simply been the brute force enabled by his heritage and Xin Mo that no other demon or cultivator could hope to rival.
“And anyway,” Shen Yuan says, taking out another book and flipping through a few pages, “most of these aren’t fully accurate to begin with.”
Ye Xiaofang squints at him. Shen Yuan shrugs.
“You know, normal edits for a book meant to frame the emperor as great as he is,” he explains. He flips the book around to show her, pointing at a passage in it. “See here, where it says he overcame a pit trap full of Seven-Tongued Wasphead Snakes by beheading them all in a single motion?”
“Oh,” Ye Xiaofang says, “that’s right, Lord Luo wouldn’t have fallen into a pit trap to begin with, would he?”
“How would I know the details of Lord Luo’s every action?” Shen Yuan lies. “But if he were to fall into a pit trap full of Seven-Tongued Wasphead Snakes, he wouldn’t have been able to defeat them by beheading them. This type of reptile only dies if you rip out the stinger at the end of their tail, but the poison that coats the stingers results in the skin of your hand corroding away…”
Shen Yuan trails off, turning the book back around to look at it properly. There really isn’t a single mention of the state of Luo Binghe’s hands in it, even though Shen Yuan knows that Luo Binghe’s flesh had given way to expose bone by the time he’d killed all the vile reptiles in this particular pit trap.
“This isn’t right,” he says, furrowing his brows and flipping through a few more pages. “Lord Luo doesn’t get hurt once in this account of this adventure.”
“Why would he get hurt?” Ye Xiaofang asks, sounding genuinely confused. “Lord Luo is Lord Luo for a reason.”
“Exactly,” Shen Yuan says, slapping the open page of the book for emphasis. “Lord Luo’s strength comes from overcoming challenges! If, for example, he were to severely injure his hands from handling the stingers of these Seven-Tongued Wasphead Snakes, he would surely use the moment he healed from that to learn about how the tendons and nerves of the hand are grown, and could -”
Shen Yuan flips to the end of the book, where the description of Luo Binghe defeating the main antagonist of the arc is written.
“- use that information to make extremely precise cuts to an enemy’s hand, rendering them incapable of gripping anything, thereby forcing them to drop a key item that otherwise would have remained permanently bound to the grip it was in if Lord Luo had simply cut the man’s hand off at the wrist!”
Ye Xiaofang blinks at him. Shen Yuan hurriedly shuts the book and clears his throat.
“As a theoretical example, at least,” he says. “Who really knows, after all Lord Luo could just as easily have learned about the biological composition of a human hand from a book…”
“Of course,” Ye Xiaofang says, eyeing the book in Shen Yuan’s hands. “Say, how would you feel about writing that down? Or any other theoretical examples you might have, as inspired by the books in this section?”
Shen Yuan isn’t a complete idiot. Even he’d be suspicious if an otherwise totally normal and exciting request to correct people about Luo Binghe’s life is worded like that.
“Why?” he asks, half turning his body away from her as if shielding the book with his body.
“Because a concubine of Lord Luo is telling you to,” Ye Xiaofang says cheerfully. “And if you don’t, I’ll scream very, very loudly.”
Shen Yuan spares a moment for an especially vicious thought about how Luo Binghe really should have been more critical when choosing who and how many women to marry.
“I think Concubine Sun would provide me an alibi,” Shen Yuan sniffs. “The other day, I even helped her repair one of her favorite scrolls that some other cruel concubine had accidentally torn…”
Ye Xiaofang, the cruel concubine in question, clicks her tongue.
“You’ve gotten harder to blackmail,” she says, though it sounds more like praise than a genuine complaint. “Alright, then, how about this: I’ll let you look at my personal cultivation manual.”
“You have one?!”
Ye Xiaofang isn’t human, after all. She looks very much like one, but in the end, both her and Sun Rui had been mere dolls given consciousness to carry out errands and the like by a cruel family of cultivators. In PIDW, falling in love with Luo Binghe had been the proof of their ‘humanness’ and earned them both consecutive spots within his harem, but they still were only exceptionally well-made dolls. It had been explicitly stated within the text that neither of them possessed spiritual pathways to cultivate with, as their creators had been afraid they would use any earned abilities to overpower them.
“I have one,” Ye Xiaofang says, looking rather smug. “It was a souvenir I took from my old household as dowry. I figured it would make for a good bargaining tool in the future, so obviously I can’t let anyone look at it for free…”
Shen Yuan bites down on his tongue to prevent himself from looking too eager.
Ye Xiaofang has been more or less good to him thus far, hasn’t she? Surely, she wouldn’t do anything too bad with a handful of silly notes, if Shen Yuan were to write them. And anyway, wouldn’t it be fun to correct some poorly written historical accounts?
“Alright,” Shen Yuan resolves. “So long as Concubine Ye understands that these are purely theoretical thoughts of mine and likely shouldn’t be spread too far.”
“Of course,” Ye Xiaofang says, smiling sweetly at him. “Who would I even tell?”
---
The next day, Ye Xiaofang brings a hoard of concubines twice as large as the group she’d brought that first day to inspect Shen Yuan’s cardboard standee of Luo Binghe.
“Concubine Ye,” Shen Yuan says through gritted teeth, “I thought these notes were only for your own personal reading pleasure?”
“My, didn’t you know? Personal pleasure is often derived from the involvement of others.”
“Still, this is -!”
“Correct,” one of the gathered concubines says, looking over the notes. “This - and this one too, I heard about it after the fact.”
“Here too,” another chimes in, reading over the first one’s shoulder. “Outside of myself and Lord Luo, no one else was there that day, though…”
Shen Yuan blanches. He hadn’t realized it at first, but the wives that Ye Xiaofang brought this time… seem to be almost all related to the books Ye Xiaofang had pointed out for him to write ‘theories’ on.
“It only takes a seed of gossip for something to become widespread knowledge,” Shen Yuan says a bit weakly.
“They aren’t just ‘theories,’ then?” Ye Xiaofang asks, grinning sharply.
“Well, any suggestion based on rumor can also be called a theory, since there’s no way to know for certain without asking the involved parties,” Shen Yuan says, clearing his throat awkwardly.
One of the concubines gathered around the notes steps back, eyeing Shen Yuan warily.
“Isn’t this the guest we keep hearing about that never parts from the standing portrait of Lord Luo?” she asks. “And now he knows this much, too… isn’t he just a creepy stalker?”
“Stalker?!” Shen Yuan cries. “That’s absolutely not the case!”
“That’s right,” Ye Xiaofang says, “he’s just very in love.”
“I think it’s romantic, personally,” another of the newly introduced concubines says, sighing wistfully as she picks up one of the notes. “Look how sweetly he’s described the shade of blood Lord Luo would shed if pricked by a Thousand Year Throned Apple Tree - even I didn’t think to describe it this way, and I was the one getting Lord Luo’s blood spread all over me when we lay beneath its branches and -”
“Ahem!” Shen Yuan says. “Ahem, ahem! That’s - quite alright. Thank you, Concubine Han.”
“It’s definitely romantic,” Ye Xiaofang agrees. “That’s why I wanted your opinions. This should be enough, don’t you all think?”
“Enough for what?” Shen Yuan asks. He’s summarily ignored.
“It’s definitely enough,” Concubine Han says. Several others murmur their agreement.
“I still think it’s creepy,” one of them says, “but Lord Luo has brought several other wives into the harem I think are creepy, so you’re probably right.”
“Enough for what?” Shen Yuan tries again. Ye Xiaofang shushes him, then turns back to the other concubines.
“So we’re in agreement?” she asks. When the concubines nod, she turns her wicked grin to Shen Yuan. “Alright, Shen Yuan. We’ll find a way to give you one chance, so don’t waste it!”
---
Shen Yuan doesn’t get to fully discover what sort of threat Ye Xiaofang had unleashed upon him until several days later.
Ye Xiaofang had brought her personal cultivation manual to the library to show Shen Yuan as she’d promised, but deciphering it has proven… difficult. The hard science of cultivation was so rarely explained in PIDW, and with no mention of any sort of ‘elemental spiritual root’ or related system, the world seems to have filled in the gaps with a hodge podge of nonsense that would make better cultivation writers fall to their knees in agony.
And so while Shen Yuan makes slow progress in trying to figure out what the fuck the manual is describing during the main hours that Ye Xiaofang accompanies him in the library, his evenings are spent decompressing.
Despite himself, he’s found himself continuing the hobby of writing out corrective notes for the books in the restricted section. Not to share with Ye Xiaofang or anyone else, to be clear - these notes, Shen Yuan is careful to keep purely to himself - but it’s interesting to examine the patterns of what sort of corrections have to be made.
Omissions of instances where Luo Binghe had been hurt are the most obvious and egregious offense, of course, but it isn’t the only one. Seeing them all written out, there are also several moments where a wife who hadn’t been instantly charmed by Luo Binghe had been altered to act otherwise, and any woman that had slept with Luo Binghe but then not married into the harem seems to have been excluded altogether.
There’s also, not once, a single mention of how Luo Binghe’s plans or actions may have been influenced by his poor education on Qing Jing or the years he spent in the Abyss.
This new hobby of recreationally correcting books about Luo Binghe’s life should have been fine. Shen Yuan is very careful about always taking the notes with him and stashing them safely in his guest room, and he never works on them when Ye Xiaofang is around to get up to no good again.
Unfortunately, he had failed to realize that when Ye Xiaofang and her gaggle of nosy harem sisters had left that day talking about what was ‘enough’ for whatever nefarious plan they had, they had taken a few of Shen Yuan’s original notes with them.
He had also failed to think, even for a moment, that they would dare to show them to Luo Binghe himself.
Shen Yuan presses himself lower into the armchair he’s reading in, peering over the top of his book with wide eyes at Luo Binghe, who’s standing by one of the nearby library desks. He’s dressed in elaborate formal robes, so he must have come straight here from handling court matters for the day, but Shen Yuan can’t imagine what the hell he’s doing here. If he needed some sort of reference material to learn a bit more about a problem that was brought to him from a petitioner today, surely he could find it within his personal library, or at least the larger one in the inner palace directly?
Then Luo Binghe’s gaze, which had been idly scanning over the library and its small number of evening occupants, catches on the cardboard cutout image of himself standing guard right beside Shen Yuan’s chair.
Shen Yuan hunches ever lower in his seat to avoid attention. It doesn’t work. Luo Binghe’s gaze shifts to him in the very next moment.
Holy shit, Shen Yuan thinks, panicking in that odd, dissociative way that comes with any sort of emergency that is totally and completely unbelievably actually happening, I thought I was a catch-em and stash-em character, Luo Binghe shouldn’t have any reason to actually talk to me again, right?! Did I overstay my welcome??
“The cute little rat,” Luo Binghe says to himself, as if recognizing Shen Yuan only belatedly. He crosses the distance between them in so few steps it really puts into perspective just how big of a man he is. “You’re the one writing these… notes?”
Luo Binghe waves a piece of paper that Shen Yuan vaguely remembers being one of the notes Ye Xiaofang had tricked him into showing that gaggle of nosy concubines.
Oh, no, Shen Yuan thinks, feeling a bit light headed. It wasn’t a matter of overstaying my welcome, but rather the fact that those damn wives turned me into a recurring character, and now Luo Binghe has to reassess my qualifications to continue living, ah!!
“This one offers his most sincere apologies that Lord Luo’s time was taken up by such a silly thing,” Shen Yuan wheezes out from his position half-eaten by the cushions of his chair. “Those were merely some small musings that were used to entertain a few of Lord Luo’s esteemed concubines. They certainly aren’t worth the trouble of Lord Luo coming all this way, so I, uh, I could take them back off your hands, if you’d like…?”
“The entertainment of this Lord’s women can hardly be delegated out to an unrelated man,” Luo Binghe says, his lip curling to show off a set of especially sharp teeth, “so perhaps you’d like to try again. What, exactly, is this?”
Shen Yuan opens his mouth. He then remembers every single time that he’d berated the villains within PIDW for even daring to think they could fool Luo Binghe with any sort of sloppy lie, and shuts his mouth again.
Luo Binghe hums, accepting Shen Yuan’s silence as its own sort of answer, and reaches down to pluck the book out of Shen Yuan’s hands.
“Ah, wait, hnhgm -”
Shen Yuan practically swallows his tongue in his hurry to stop himself from daring to tell Luo Binghe to wait. The audacity!
His panic and desire to stop Luo Binghe hadn’t been for no reason, though.
“More of them?” Luo Binghe observes quietly, lifting a scrap of paper from between the pages of the book he’d taken from Shen Yuan - one of the notes Shen Yuan was sure wouldn't have been a problem for him to make, so long as he kept it private! “And yet there isn’t a single one of this Lord’s women nearby for you to be entertaining, is there?”
Shen Yuan’s gaze darts around the library restlessly. There had been a few of Luo Binghe’s wives still hanging around despite the late evening hour, but he doesn’t see any of them now; they’d likely bailed as soon as Luo Binghe had shown up.
And now that he thinks about it, hadn’t all the wives that had been around today all been from that group that had agreed Shen Yuan’s notes were ‘enough’ for whatever bullshit was being planned over Shen Yuan’s own head?
If I survive this, Shen Yuan swears, I am going to kill you, Ye Xiaofang!
“Let’s see… ‘skipped depiction of palace security during siege, missing details about associated construction workers’... And where, exactly, have you gotten your information on this Lord’s security that you think you know any better?”
Shen Yuan swallows thickly. He feels sick. If he dies here, who’s going to stop those thieving concubines from taking his Luo Binghe standee??
Still, he’s already realized that lying is useless.
“An informant known as ‘Airplane,’” he says weakly.
Luo Binghe looks up from the note he’d read aloud from to look at Shen Yuan with an unreadable expression, his eyes glinting red in the warm light cast by a nearby fireplace. Shen Yuan feels like an insect pinned in place.
Perhaps wording it like that - as if Shen Yuan has been spying on Luo Binghe by contracting out informants - had been a mistake.
“It’s just like Lord Luo had deduced upon first meeting this humble one - I’m a fan,” Shen Yuan rushes to say. “If it’s possible, then to know more information about Lord Luo is an honor. I swear there are no ill intentions.”
Luo Binghe taps one clawed finger against the spine of the book still held in one hand. The other still holds the condemning note.
“Tell me more about that informant,” he says slowly. “Their other… clients, for example.”
Shen Yuan tries not to cringe too obviously. Holy shit, is he going to have to make up a whole secret spy network as an excuse here?? What happened to not being able to lie without being killed for it?!
“This useless one is not familiar with all the specifics,” he says weakly. He feels like he’s getting sweatier and more pathetic by the minute. “I only wanted to read more about Lord Luo, so I didn’t pay the most attention…”
Something odd flickers across Luo Binghe’s face. For the first time since Luo Binghe entered the library, Shen Yuan gets the feeling that Luo Binghe is paying direct attention to Shen Yuan himself rather than what threat Shen Yuan might pose.
“And what is the name of the little fan that’s this devoted to learning more about me?” Luo Binghe asks, watching Shen Yuan intently. Shen Yuan starts sweating even harder.
“Lord Luo can call this one ‘Shen Yuan.’”
“Shen Yuan…” Luo Binghe looks back down at the note in his hand, absently brushing a part of it with his thumb. “Shen Yuan, do you often call me this?”
“This one would always show Lord Luo the respect his name properly deserves -!”
“No,” Luo Binghe corrects, “not as your lord. The way you’ve written it here.”
Shen Yuan could, if needed, fill a small kiddie pool with the amount of sweat he is currently producing.
After taking up the hobby of writing these corrective notes only for himself, Shen Yuan had stopped bothering to write Luo Binghe’s full title in every one of them. Instead, he’s only ever been writing his name as ‘Binghe.’
“You do, then,” Luo Binghe says, watching Shen Yuan squirm.
Please make my death swift, Shen Yuan prays silently. Please don’t draw it out, oh god, please -
Luo Binghe turns to look at the cardboard cutout standing proudly beside Shen Yuan’s chair.
With him standing so close to it, some of the artistic liberties of the cutout become a bit more apparent - the stylistically large eyes, the red color fade at the ends of the hair - but overall, the cutout really is well done. It stands perfectly even with Luo Binghe, and Luo Binghe manages to pull off the shoulder-to-waist ratio the standee has as if it’s a totally normal sort of human proportion.
“To be so invested, remembering every small detail and even daring to call me so familiarly… Shen Yuan must have enjoyed that story very much.”
Oh my god it’s not going to be a swift death at all I’m going to die in SUCH a slow and painful way and I am going to blame Airplane for every fucking second of it, WHY does he know about the story -?!
“Story?” Shen Yuan asks, barely able to feel his tongue in his own mouth. “Why does Lord Luo call it a story?”
Luo Binghe turns to look at Shen Yuan. His gaze is startlingly intense.
“The history of this Lord’s life,” he says, “is often told in stories. Isn’t that how your informant conveyed his information?”
…Ah.
Shen Yuan could practically hit himself. Obviously an emperor’s life is told in stories! He’s been sitting around writing corrective notes based on the literal books that were written to tell the stories of Luo Binghe’s life!
“Ah - ahaha, ha. Yes, I -” Shen Yuan clears his throat, “- I like these sorts of stories a lot. Which is why I’m reading more of them now. Like that one, uh, that Lord Luo is holding.”
The spark of interest in Luo Binghe’s expression sputters out. Shen Yuan, despite the immense pressure and stress he’d felt only moments earlier when that interest had been focused on him, can’t help but feel a bit bereft.
Still, he breathes a quiet sigh of relief. Luo Binghe really hadn’t been referring to PIDW, if he was able to be diverted this easily. Thank fuck for that.
Luo Binghe has suffered too much in this life to be told that it had all been for the sake of entertainment, after all. If he learned that every misfortune he had faced had been crafted by a shitty author and read as cheap wank material by a mass of ingrates on the internet, who knows how he’d react.
And anyway, who’s to say that’s even the truth? Shen Yuan exists now within this world in as real a way as he had in his old one. Luo Binghe, standing before him, clearly exists in every way that matters too. If transmigration is real, then it’s just as possible authors exist as mediums to describe worlds that already exist as it is that authors actually create those worlds.
Shen Yuan would much rather keep up this stupid, incredibly stressful lie about Airplane being a mere informant of some crazy spy network than tell Luo Binghe that his life’s suffering had been designed by some idiot looking for a quick buck.
He clears his throat again awkwardly.
“I like them most because of Lord Luo himself, of course,” he says. “Lord Luo’s life is the most interesting thing I’ve ever read about.”
Shen Yuan isn’t sure how he’s expecting Luo Binghe to respond to that. He isn’t even quite sure what motivated him to say it in the first place, instead of obediently remaining silent unless directly addressed to avoid any unfortunate and sudden losses of his tongue.
He’d just been thinking - foolishly, absolutely foolishly! - that he wanted Luo Binghe to look at him with that intense sort of interest again.
Instead, Luo Binghe scoffs and turns away.
“Of course it was,” he says. “If it wasn’t even interesting to an ordinary man who bothers to drag around my image in such a pathetic way, it really would have been for nothing.”
And then, before Shen Yuan can even begin to think of what the hell to say in response to that, Luo Binghe leaves. The library door closes behind him with a solid-sounding thunk that seems to echo a bit more across the room than it ordinarily would without all of the library’s ordinary patrons filling the space.
Shen Yuan waits for the library to settle back into complete silence before he lets out a massive, frustrated sigh.
“What,” he says, turning to address the standee next to him, “was that?”
Unfortunately, he doesn’t even get to speak with the standee in peace.
“What was what?” Ye Xiaofang asks, slipping into the library.
Shen Yuan tenses back up all over again at her intrusion. She never visits the library this late in the evening, but she’d also clearly been at least part of the reason that Luo Binghe had shown up at all. Likely, she’d presented those stupid notes to Luo Binghe during court that day and then followed him along to the library to see how his confrontation with Shen Yuan about them would go.
“Nothing Concubine Ye doesn’t already know about,” Shen Yuan says spitefully. Ye Xiaofang rolls her eyes, coming up to stand in front of him.
“I was going to give you some space to clean up, but Lord Luo didn’t stay here very long, did you two…”
She trails off, giving Shen Yuan a once-over before frowning.
“Well, at least you tried,” she says, reaching out to delicately pat his shoulder twice as if in consolement. “I suppose it was a longshot to hope Lord Luo would give a man a chance after all.”
Shen Yuan somehow winds himself up even tighter.
“I was not attempting to sleep with Lord Luo,” he says in a perfectly even and ordinary tone of voice.
Ye Xiaofang nods along pensively. “The denial of effort is easier than the acceptance of failure…”
“No, really, I -”
“Still,” she sighs, “I really did think you had a chance. Lately, Lord Luo has been especially interested in people like you.”
Shen Yuan pauses, his protests evaporating in midair.
“...What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, you know,” she says, waving a hand rather dismissively. “People who get all worked up about his past suffering, that sort of thing.”
“Doesn’t anyone?” Shen Yuan asks, perhaps a bit defensively. Ye Xiaofang raises one eyebrow at him.
“Why? The records of the sorts of misfortunes Lord Luo underwent in his trial to rise to power are all over a century old. He’s spent all the rest of that time living as the emperor, so isn’t it rude to pity him still?”
Shen Yuan finds himself at a loss. Does suffering become less painful just because good things follow? Isn’t it more insulting to pretend that suffering no longer affects Luo Binghe today just because some time has passed?
“But you just said he prefers when people get upset about his past suffering?”
“Only recently,” Ye Xiaofang shrugs. “There was some sort of incident a while back - a qi deviation, maybe. I wasn’t there, really, you know I spend more time in the outer palace than the inner. Too stuffy in there.”
“Lord Luo suffered from a qi deviation?!” Shen Yuan asks, bolting up from his chair. “That - is he alright?!”
“Maybe a qi deviation,” Ye Xiaofang corrects. “The whole thing was weird. He apparently tore through the palace like a madman for a day before becoming pretty withdrawn for the next week. There were even rumors he visited the dungeon he used to keep his old teacher locked up inside of, you know.”
“He tried visiting that scum?!” Shen Yuan asks, now doubly concerned.
This many years after Luo Binghe would have finally killed that miserable pickle pot bitch… it must have been an exceptionally bad qi deviation.
“That right there,” Ye Xiaofang says, snapping her fingers and pointing at Shen Yuan. “Ever since that incident, he’s been paying extra attention to anyone who has that sort of attitude. He never used to like when concubines tried to coddle him, but apparently he doesn’t even protest it anymore.”
Shen Yuan sends a concerned look towards the library exit, despite how long ago Luo Binghe had left.
“Surely Lord Luo has plenty of wives that will worry after him if that’s what he wants?”
“Surely,” Ye Xiaofang agrees. “I personally was able to earn an extra night with him for an especially good performance of worrying, you know.”
Shen Yuan snaps his head back to look at her with suspicion.
“Performance?”
“I think he figured out I didn’t really mean it pretty early into it, honestly,” she sighs. “Lord Luo is so dashingly smart and clever… I’m sure I would worry about him, if something happened to him in the present and not only in the past!”
Shen Yuan presses his lips together in a thin line. His gaze drops to the book he’d been reading before Luo Binghe had entered, discarded on the table in front of him.
The notes and corrections he’d been making aren’t beside it, though. Luo Binghe must have taken them with him.
“No,” Shen Yuan says at length, “I think someone really should be worrying about him right now.”
---
Shen Yuan agonizes over whether he’s made the right decision all the way up until the moment he’s standing in Luo Binghe’s throne room, being called up as the next petitioner in line.
After all, hadn’t he just been thinking how awful it would be to tell Luo Binghe that he was created as a character within a story? Hadn’t he just avoided telling Luo Binghe about that very thing the night before? Wouldn’t correcting himself now be an open invitation for Xin Mo to get acquainted with the inside of his bowels??
But if Luo Binghe has truly been… distraught recently - or at the very least, shaken badly enough that he’s been accepting and potentially even seeking out coddling from his wives - then Shen Yuan isn’t able to sit on his hands and do nothing about it.
Perhaps PIDW really had only been a prophecy of this reality handed to the worst author in the world to write down. Perhaps Airplane hadn’t actually created any of the suffering that Luo Binghe had experienced, or any of the vapid, stupid wives that don’t properly care for him. Perhaps there won’t be any real change or accomplishment that Luo Binghe can gain from learning about PIDW anyway.
PIDW is what Shen Yuan has to offer, though, and damn it if a bit of righteous violence hasn’t done wonders to calm Luo Binghe down in the past!
If it has even the slightest chance of improving Luo Binghe’s mood, then Shen Yuan will happily serve that wretched hack of a writer up on a silver platter to him for him to vent his frustrations onto. And if the thought of killing the author of his book doesn’t spark joy for Luo Binghe, then he can simply hold Airplane by the throat and force him to write out a happier, better ending for him instead.
It’s a no-lose situation!
Strong-arming himself into this sort of mentality, Shen Yuan steps over the dead body of the last petitioner to stand before Luo Binghe’s throne. The lifesize Luo Binghe standee he takes with him everywhere comes with him, and he’s especially careful to set it down somewhere out of the way of any of the blood on the ground.
“This one greets Lord Luo, emperor of the combined realms!” Shen Yuan says as he bows.
“You?” Luo Binghe asks, distinctly unamused. “This Lord doesn’t have any more to say to you, little rat.”
Shen Yuan deepens his bow.
“Lord Luo can consider this as my pathetic attempt to right a mistake,” he says. “When Lord Luo first found me, he presumed that the portrait I carried of him was brought as a tribute.”
“You’re finally willing to give up something that should have rightfully belonged to this Lord to begin with?” Luo Binghe asks wryly. “Too bad. This Lord is no longer interested in that portrait, or you. Leave.”
Shen Yuan, once more, bows a bit deeper. He’s beginning to regret not bothering to stretch a bit before coming here.
“This portrait is a bit abnormal,” he explains.
“Are you deaf or simply stupid? Leave, rat, before I cut you down.”
“This portrait is, actually, out of this world levels of abnormal,” Shen Yuan rushes to say. “That is, it literally does not originate from this realm.”
Shen Yuan hears Luo Binghe shift in his throne, the heavy ornamental fabrics and beading of his ceremonial robes brushing together.
“Many artisans have claimed their work is divinely influenced,” Luo Binghe says. It’s clearly meant as a rebuke, but he also hasn’t moved to make good on his threat just yet, so Shen Yuan pushes on.
“If this one was to be so bold,” Shen Yuan says, “the world this portrait came from could hardly be described as divine. It’s mundane, lacking both cultivation and the supernatural, and the people there can only dream of Lord Luo’s existence.”
Shen Yuan takes a deep breath. This is it! Farewell, sanity! He truly has been deserted by any sort of reason, if he’s really going through with this after all!
“It’s also the realm in which the man I called ‘Airplane’ exists in.”
Shen Yuan feels Luo Binghe’s attention sharpen on him.
“An ‘informant’ that exists in another realm?”
“Calling him an ‘informant’ was an, ahem, abstraction of his actual job,” Shen Yuan admits, keeping his head bowed low. “If Lord Luo were to ask him himself, he’d describe his job as that of an author.”
There’s a beat of silence. When Luo Binghe next speaks, the dismissive tone of voice he’d been using earlier has all but been replaced with something much, much more intense.
“Clear the room,” he commands. “Everyone out - except for you, little rat.”
There’s a hurried shuffle of movement as guards, petitioners, and even a spare handful of wives that had been lounging by Luo Binghe’s throne all hurry to obey. The number of times that Luo Binghe had demanded that his throne room be fully cleared out within PIDW had been small, but each one of those times had been impactful enough that Luo Binghe’s instructions now are followed without hesitation.
Fuck, Shen Yuan thinks with great feeling. Now no one will even be able to recount how I died, in the end.
When the throne room has fallen silent once more, leaving only Luo Binghe and Shen Yuan in the echoing chamber, Luo Binghe speaks again.
“Raise your head. Do not look away again unless this Lord allows it.”
Feeling a bit shaky, Shen Yuan obeys. Even with this much distance still between them, the intensity of Luo Binghe’s attention on him feels immense.
“You,” Luo Binghe says lowly, “had better have something good to offer me, Shen Yuan.”
Shen Yuan swallows thickly.
“‘Airplane’ wrote a book about you, Lord Luo,” he says. “Whether he had the capability to divine the truth of your life and simply wrote it down as he saw it in order to profit on it and perversely expose it to everyone who cared to read it, or if he truly had some awful ability to genuinely influence Lord Luo’s life and purposefully brought misfortune into it -”
Shen Yuan gestures to the cardboard standee.
“- either way, this portrait should allow Lord Luo to track him down and seek whatever dues would satisfy you. Since it’s from that world, and has been created with means and materials that do not exist in this one, it should be able to act as something like a medium between the two worlds, something that Lord Luo’s Xin Mo can use as an anchor to -”
“This Lord is aware of how his own sword works,” Luo Binghe cuts in sharply. “What good is it?”
“Lord Luo can take his revenge on that awful author,” Shen Yuan says eagerly. “Hasn’t he wronged Lord Luo enough to justify it? It - maybe, it could help Lord Luo feel a bit better.”
Something unreadable passes over Luo Binghe’s expression. Shen Yuan, very reasonably deciding that it’s better to assume any unknown emotion is a dangerous one, backpeddles a bit.
“Or Lord Luo could do something else! Besides just righteous revenge, Lord Luo could take other things from that man. For example, if Lord Luo is willing to test the possibility that Airplane truly has some power over this realm, perhaps that influence could be used to twist Lord Luo’s current ending into something a bit happier…”
Shen Yuan trails off. The long, completely unblinking gaze that Luo Binghe is watching him with is getting more uncomfortable by the second.
“Continue,” Luo Binghe demands, when Shen Yuan doesn’t begin talking again after a beat. “Happier, how?”
“That was presumptuous of me,” Shen Yuan immediately apologizes. “I didn’t mean -”
“Didn’t you?”
Shen Yuan wets his lips. He has a feeling that if he lies here, he really will die for certain.
“...I did,” he says at last. “It would mean a lot to me, if Lord Luo could live well. Because I’m a fan, and all that.”
“Then continue,” Luo Binghe says again. “Tell me how you would make my life happier, Shen Yuan.”
Shen Yuan fidgets with the hems of his borrowed guest robe.
“Xin Mo shouldn’t be so hungry,” he says hesitantly. “Lord Luo should be able to live quietly for a time without it causing backlash. Everyone needs a vacation, every once in awhile, and Lord Luo certainly deserves one. Perhaps Airplane could write that for you.”
“What else?”
“The merge between mortal and demonic realms should be resolved a bit better,” Shen Yuan says, feeling a bit more confident. “All the places where the corruption of the Endless Abyss seeped into the in-between spaces and created uninhabitable lands are essentially acting as a new sort of barrier between the realms, preventing a true merge. Lord Luo worked too hard during that arc for it to end like this.”
Luo Binghe leans forward in his throne.
“What else, Shen Yuan?”
“Lord Luo’s wives should cause him less trouble, maybe. At the very least, their families should stop acting as if it isn't always an honor for the emperor to marry their daughters, and there should be less assassination attempts, and just one of them should tell them that they love Binghe outside of papapa -”
“There it is again,” Luo Binghe says. “You really do call me that way.”
Shen Yuan chokes on his own breath. Fuck.
“Those are just examples,” he says stiffly, pretending like he hadn’t just gravely insulted Luo Binghe. “I can’t guarantee that ‘Airplane’ actually has any power over this world, but if Lord Luo is willing to try, then the portrait I brought with me into this world can surely help.”
“Just like Shen Yuan’s other ‘theories,’ these examples are very detailed,” Luo Binghe muses. “It seems like you really did read that story after all.”
Shen Yuan blinks.
Wait a second. It’s occurring to Shen Yuan a bit late, but the way that Luo Binghe has been reacting this whole time…
“Lord Luo already knew about it? This story, I mean.”
“It’s been something of an interest of mine, lately,” Luo Binghe says, watching Shen Yuan with gleaming eyes. “There’s someone related to it that I’m interested in meeting again.”
Shen Yuan nearly feels bowled over with defeat. Even this, he hadn’t actually managed to provide Luo Binghe with. Perhaps this makes sense, though - in what world could someone like him provide information that Luo Binghe didn’t already know? Luo Binghe must have known, at least vaguely, about PIDW for quite some time now.
Shen Yuan is reminded of the ‘qi deviation’ that Luo Binghe had supposedly had some time ago. Had that been more like some sort of divine revelation, revealing the truth of the world to him?
“That’s why Lord Luo was originally interested when I mentioned that my ‘informant’ was named Airplane?” Shen Yuan asks, genuinely curious.
The world is always adjusting itself to better repay Luo Binghe for the suffering he faced when he was young, after all. Perhaps it finally decided on its own that Luo Binghe should be able to tear retribution from the author himself long before Shen Yuan ever got involved.
“Something like that,” Luo Binghe says.
Shen Yuan shifts his weight, feeling oddly confused. If Luo Binghe had already known about PIDW, and had even recognized the name ‘Airplane,’ then why had he left Shen Yuan alone in the library that day? There were a million ways Luo Binghe could have made him talk, if it was something Luo Binghe was truly interested in.
“Does Lord Luo already have a reliable information source on this matter…?”
“Another information source? No, that isn’t it,” Luo Binghe says. “It seems Shen Yuan is rather precious.”
Shen Yuan feels his face warm. “That - um -”
“However,” Luo Binghe says, rising from his throne with the lazy fluidity of a large predator, “the one I’m looking for would tell me about my story, because he likes me so much.”
That hack author? Liking Luo Binghe? On the best of days, Airplane seemed to like Luo Binghe’s promise of profitability, maybe.
“What a relief it is that Shen Yuan has told me in the end,” Luo Binghe continues, leisurely descending the stairs leading up to his throne and approaching Shen Yuan. “You were who I thought you were, after all.”
Shen Yuan… admittedly feels a little bit lost. Would he be killed for asking for some clarification on the subject matter here??
“I’m a fan,” Shen Yuan tries to reaffirm.
Luo Binghe, coming to a stop in front of him, hums in agreement. He looks rather pleased. Ordinarily, Shen Yuan would be delighted by the sight, but when Luo Binghe is standing so close, practically looming over him… Shen Yuan can’t help but shiver.
“That’s right,” Luo Binghe says. “A fan. And this…”
Luo Binghe’s gaze slides over to the cardboard standee next to Shen Yuan.
“A medium between worlds, is it?”
He brings a hand up to it, pressing his palm flat against the cardboard. It doesn’t look like anything is happening to Shen Yuan, but there’s a subtle static energy in the air that he’s begun associating with the feeling of people using their qi nearby, so he assumes Luo Binghe is inspecting the cardboard for any lingering energy signatures.
Shen Yuan breathes a subtle sigh of relief. They’re back on track to the original point, then.
“In stories like this, people who hop between worlds rarely get to take anything with them,” he says. “Since this came with me, it has to have some sort of purpose. If used correctly, it should definitely be possible to open a door between realms with it.”
Luo Binghe hums. He turns to smile sharply at Shen Yuan, not removing his hand from the standee.
“I see,” he says. “How good of you to tell me.”
And then, before Shen Yuan can process what’s happening, Luo Binghe sends a pulse of dark energy through the standee and burns it to ash within moments.
“What -?!”
Shen Yuan cries out in shock, instinctively shooting a hand out to the poor, completely innocent standee, but his fingers only close uselessly around the remaining soot.
“Why would you - what - Lord Luo, why -?!”
“You seem to have misunderstood something,” Luo Binghe says, flicking the hand that had set the cardboard cutout ablaze as if simply brushing off some dust. “Men who take it upon themselves to write out the history of my life are a dime a dozen. Rather than bother meeting the author of that book…”
Luo Binghe reaches out to grab Shen Yuan’s jaw, forcing Shen Yuan to look away from the ashes of the cardboard cutout and face him instead. His grip isn’t quite painful, but there’s a firmness to it that Shen Yuan doesn’t dare test. One of Luo Binghe’s fingers curls just-so in order to press into the pulse point in Shen Yuan’s neck, and Shen Yuan can feel his own heartbeat drum away too fast to be anything but nervous.
“...I’d prefer that a certain reader of that story doesn’t have a way to leave in the future,” Luo Binghe says, his smile stretching wide and showing off teeth too sharp to be human. “You see, I’m rather fond of him, and I’ve already let a version of him slip through my fingers once.”
“I - uh, no, that’s - me?!” Shen Yuan fumbles. “Lord Luo, I - if any of the dreams I had back in my world were real, I swear I didn’t mean any of it!!”
Luo Binghe laughs. Shen Yuan can’t help but think it sounds especially mean, and then is mortified when the next thought that crosses his mind is how pretty it sounds despite that.
“I’m very good at making dreams come true,” Luo Binghe purrs, dipping his head down close until his breath ghosts across Shen Yuan’s cheek. “But no, I haven’t met you before. Not before you showed up on my doorstep yourself.”
“Then Lord Luo doesn’t mean me after all,” Shen Yuan says in a rush of relief.
Luo Binghe’s grip tightens, his fingers pressing into his skin hard enough that the pinprick feeling of his claws begins to hurt.
“It’s definitely you,” he swears, eyes glinting with mad excitement. “And how lucky for me - this time, you already love me.”
“I - this one - ahem, well, perhaps Lord Luo’s wives have overexaggerated my feelings to some degree -”
“Do you think I deserve a happy ending, Shen Yuan?”
Shen Yuan nearly chokes with how fast his protests die in his throat. He tries to swallow around the feeling, but it just makes him more aware of the press of Luo Binghe’s fingers against his skin.
“Yes,” he says at last, weaker than he means to sound. “Of course.”
“That’s right,” Luo Binghe hums. “Then you love me after all.”
Shen Yuan swallows uselessly again. Luo Binghe tilts his head even closer.
“Don’t you, Shen Yuan?”
And Shen Yuan -
Damn it, carting around that lifesize standee of Luo Binghe hasn’t helped him build any sort of immunity at all to the real deal. It might simply not be possible for anyone to grow immune to the way Luo Binghe shines like a dark star, horrible and mighty and better than anyone else in the world.
Shen Yuan doesn’t like men, so he isn’t in love with Luo Binghe, but that hadn’t been what Luo Binghe had asked. He’d only asked if Shen Yuan loved him in general.
“I do,” Shen Yuan admits, quietly enough he can barely hear himself. “I - yes.”
Luo Binghe’s smile stretches wider, wicked and pleased. And as he dips down to close the gap between them, Shen Yuan can’t help but think -
Fuck, he couldn’t have just asked me to stay without burning up my hard-earned lifesize standee of him?!