Shang Qinghua carefully peeked at Mobei-Jun’s face and neck. Seeing no unusual shine of moisture upon them, he couldn’t resist letting out a thankful prayer. “Your body was ice-cold,” he said cautiously. “I was afraid you weren’t going to make it, so I was holding you.”
At this, Mobei-Jun scoffed. “Fool. This is my natural state; the colder my body is, the better my condition. I’m not a human, for whom cold means the onset of death.”
Shang Qinghua carefully measured Mobei-Jun’s every word and expression. Seeing him relax a bit, a smile soon spread across his face. Just when he was about to slither out from under the table like a snake crawling up the stick used to strike it, Mobei-Jun suddenly recovered his ice-cold demeanor.
“Go on. Try moving another inch.”
Shang Qinghua was instantly scared stiff. He pathetically clung to the table leg, curled into a ball under the table like a hamster.
“What do you want?” asked Mobei-Jun.
“I don’t really want anything,” Shang Qinghua said shamelessly. “I just want to follow you for the rest of my life.”
Mobei-Jun acted as if he hadn’t heard. “You’re an An Ding Peak outer disciple.”
Shang Qinghua kept feeling that whenever anyone stressed these three words “An Ding Peak,” they carried an undertone of prejudice. For fear that Mobei-Jun would deem him useless and do away with him forthwith, he stuck out his head. “My king, listen to me—I’m young, so I have opportunities to rise in status—”
“Get back!”
Shang Qinghua hurriedly retreated to safety.
Satisfied with this distance, Mobei-Jun said, “The assistance you lent me, was it for ‘opportunities to rise in status’?”
As proud and arrogant as expected. He hadn’t used “save,” a verb that would have implied being the weaker party in the situation, but rather “assist,” which implied it had been merely support.
Shang Qinghua chuckled, playing dumb. If he said no, the credibility rating of his response would be less than three percent. But if he said yes… Mobei-Jun rather looked down upon such spineless reprobates. This was the reason Mobei-Jun hadn’t thought twice about killing the original flavor Shang Qinghua, because he had never planned on letting him live in the first place. How could Shang Qinghua shamelessly admit that he had done it just to grind friendship XP?
Fortunately, Mobei-Jun had already come to a conclusion, and he slapped the label of “Greedy for Life, Afraid of Death, Slippery Bootlicker, Sect Sellout” right onto Shang Qinghua. He didn’t need him to respond before letting out a cold snort, and he lay down once more.
Shang Qinghua waited for a long time, not moving another step. Had he received a concession for the time being? Or…had Mobei-Jun fainted again?!
In the end, Shang Qinghua didn’t dare to rashly approach and remained crouched under the table, making do for the rest of the night.
After struggling with himself for half the night, as soon as he woke the next morning, Shang Qinghua officially began a busy day of being ordered left and right.
By noon, Shang Qinghua had worked hard without complaint, running up and down the stairs more than twenty times and changing the water in the bathtub seven or eight.
This water was to help Mobei-Jun heal his wounds. Soaking in water was the best option for this ice-powered great lord, after all. But a perfectly good tub of warm water didn’t last an hour before he turned it into icy slush. Shang Qinghua huddled in the corner, chewing on some rations he had with him while watching Mobei-Jun undress, nursing both extreme envy toward and extreme admiration for the figure and abs he had longed for in his dreams.
As he watched, he suddenly realized Mobei-Jun had stopped undressing and was staring at him, an unhappy look on his face.
Shang Qinghua chewed a couple of times, hurriedly swallowing a few extra bites, just in case Mobei-Jun suddenly demanded he hand over his rations.
“You’re very fishy,” Mobei-Jun said.
“Not fishy,” Shang Qinghua said hurriedly. “This one is sweet.”
He didn’t have the chance to eat more than a couple bites before a few strips of black shadow hit him full in the face.
So, Shang Qinghua couldn’t stand around fishily anymore, as he had to go wash his newly claimed master’s clothes.
Indeed, this young demonic heir had only brought one change of clothes, and now it was full of holes and blood and sweat. How could he wear them any longer? Obviously they had to be sewn and mended and washed and dried.
Low-fantasy xianxia worlds doggedly adhered to these kinds of unromantic, dismal, and disgusting principles of realism!
Shang Qinghua swore that if he ever had the opportunity to change back into “Great Master” Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, his next book would be high-fantasy xuanhuan of the sort where wild plot bunnies ran rampant and science was fed to the dogs. Characters would weave clouds into garments and trim the moon into a belt, and all manual labor would be resolved with the twitch of a pinky finger. There would never again be a need for dismal existences like those of An Ding Peak’s disciples!
Shang Qinghua considerately patched the hole in Mobei-Jun’s clothes that had once covered his kidney, wrung them dry, and hung them up in the room. He felt he had made a very good show of himself that day. So, that night, with the confidence of the ignorant, he thickened his face and crawled toward the bed. But before he got close, history repeated itself and he was again kicked off.
He sat on the ground, tears in his eyes and voice trembling. “My king, you won’t let me on the bed. What if during the night you get cold, thirsty, hungry, or want to turn over… What then?”
Mobei-Jun lifted an eyebrow. “Easily seen to.”
So, he ordered Shang Qinghua to find a length of cord. One end was tied to his finger, while the other was tied to Shang Qinghua’s…
Finger?
In your dreams. It was tied to his neck, nothing more.
Shang Qinghua lay on the ground like a corpse. The fuck, he thought to himself. Dogs have it better than I do…
The only comforting thought he could scrounge up was that at least Mobei-Jun wasn’t some sort of pervert; the other end of the cord could’ve been tied to his 【beep—】. That treatment would have been truly inhumane.
Shang Qinghua spent only four days suffering such hardship, but he honestly felt the days dragging by like years. Even his nights were an unceasing nightmare.
On the final day, in the middle of the night, Shang Qinghua was sound asleep as he once again dreamed.
This time he dreamed he was still in the real world, crying and weeping at a computer screen. Beside him was a fiendishly large man holding a thorny cucumber shaped like a rather hairy lower leg. He was fiercely thrashing Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky’s face, and as he thrashed, he roared, “Everything you write is unhinged trash!”
Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky dodged the cucumber like his life depended on it as he strove to explain himself. “It’s been so long since I’ve updated. Cucumber-bro, don’t be like this!”
“Then hurry and update!” With this, Peerless Cucumber tied a corded loop around his neck.
Submerged in great suffering, Shang Qinghua fought to wake up only to find the cord still tightening around his neck. Following it with his gaze, he found Mobei-Jun lying on the bed, mechanically pulling on the cord tied to his hand.
“My king, what do you require?” Shang Qinghua asked lifelessly.
Only after asking a couple more times did he discover that Mobei-Jun wasn’t tormenting him on purpose. He was profoundly passed out and was merely tossing and turning in extreme discomfort while unconsciously yanking on the thing in his hand to try to find relief. As the unfortunate soul around whose neck the other end of the cord was tied, Shang Qinghua’s eyeballs were nearly squeezed out of his head under the force of the pulls.
Mobei-Jun creased his brow, restlessly flipping back and forth. Shang Qinghua quietly tiptoed to his bedside. When he saw the shallow beads of sweat seeping from Mobei-Jun’s smooth forehead and felt the faint heat radiating from his clothes, he understood.
The wound on Mobei-Jun’s back looked just like a little cut, not anything alarming, but in truth, the situation was a bit serious. It was just that he was stubbornly trying to ride it out and had refused to admit it. In addition, it went without saying that the ice demons hated hot weather more than anything. It was the height of summer, and the wound was possibly becoming something similar to inflamed, or even beginning to fester.