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[ (muffled gay screaming) ]
Being a Peak Lord has lots of perks, one of them being that it's a whole lot easier for Shang Qinghua to wave off his regular trips to the Demon Realm as ""business trips"" now that he has no superiors to come up with convincing lies for. Zhangmen-shixiong isn't a bad sect leader, but he's just so trusting. That, and...no one ever reads the logistics reports, yet another example of An Ding Peak's hard work going overlooked. But it works out in Shang Qinghua's favor, so he's not going to complain. Maybe if Cang Qiong Mountain Sect didn't want their Peak Lords to become corrupt and misappropriate sect resources, they shouldn't make it so easy?
Ah, well. Not like this is really Shang Qinghua's chosen lifestyle, he'd be off living a life of happy obscurity if it weren't for the System cornering him into this stupid plotline. If he hadn't faltered when he and Mobei Jun first met, when he'd actually had the opportunity...ugh, but he can't even bring himself to regret that, either! Besides, having Mobei Jun for a boss...hasn't been as terrible as he thought it would? He's nicer than Shang Qinghua remembers writing him towards the original goods, although admittedly there wasn't a whole lot of that in the original novel because...haha.
Because he fucking died so early on in the plot!!!
The thought is really weighing on him right now, in particular because the information he's bringing Mobei Jun this time is early intel on the sect's participation in the Immortal Alliance Conference. The System cornered him into this life, but he's not so willing to give it up, so he's been trying to butter up Mobei Jun from the start. You save someone's life once, you get some gratitude, sure, but if you make yourself indispensable to them? Well, Shang Qinghua definitely isn't at that level, but he always brings snacks or some other novelty from the human world along with the information, and he hopes it's working. It seems to be, at any rate. Mobei Jun doesn't beat him up on the regular, although...it does kind of make Shang Qinghua worry that something's gone wrong. Don't get him wrong, he doesn't want to get the shit kicked out of him, it's just that it feels off, that's all...
It's just...the Mobei Jun he remembers writing was, hmmm, more sexily menacing, you know?
Maybe he really is just grateful to Shang Qinghua for saving him and all his continued service. He also probably just likes having someone to shove paperwork onto. Whenever Shang Qinghua comes to deliver intel, he inevitably winds up sitting around and doing a bunch of logistics legwork for the demons, so in that sense, it really is basically...just a business trip.
Shang Qinghua pokes his head into Mobei Jun's chambers before inching inside. Mobei Jun's mood could well change at the drop of a hat, so Shang Qinghua stays on his toes. You just never know with a guy like that, okay! The man has a face like a stone wall. An incredibly manly chiseled stone wall, but still—
"Hello, my king? I come bringing gifts..." He holds up an armful of scrolls, a bag of melon seeds in one fist. One of the scrolls slips through his arms and falls to the floor, and the second he moves to try and pick it up, several more tumble out of his arms. So it's gonna be that kinda day, huh. Ahh, fuck. "Haha, sorry, sorry, I'll get those—"
Ah, well. Not like this is really Shang Qinghua's chosen lifestyle, he'd be off living a life of happy obscurity if it weren't for the System cornering him into this stupid plotline. If he hadn't faltered when he and Mobei Jun first met, when he'd actually had the opportunity...ugh, but he can't even bring himself to regret that, either! Besides, having Mobei Jun for a boss...hasn't been as terrible as he thought it would? He's nicer than Shang Qinghua remembers writing him towards the original goods, although admittedly there wasn't a whole lot of that in the original novel because...haha.
Because he fucking died so early on in the plot!!!
The thought is really weighing on him right now, in particular because the information he's bringing Mobei Jun this time is early intel on the sect's participation in the Immortal Alliance Conference. The System cornered him into this life, but he's not so willing to give it up, so he's been trying to butter up Mobei Jun from the start. You save someone's life once, you get some gratitude, sure, but if you make yourself indispensable to them? Well, Shang Qinghua definitely isn't at that level, but he always brings snacks or some other novelty from the human world along with the information, and he hopes it's working. It seems to be, at any rate. Mobei Jun doesn't beat him up on the regular, although...it does kind of make Shang Qinghua worry that something's gone wrong. Don't get him wrong, he doesn't want to get the shit kicked out of him, it's just that it feels off, that's all...
It's just...the Mobei Jun he remembers writing was, hmmm, more sexily menacing, you know?
Maybe he really is just grateful to Shang Qinghua for saving him and all his continued service. He also probably just likes having someone to shove paperwork onto. Whenever Shang Qinghua comes to deliver intel, he inevitably winds up sitting around and doing a bunch of logistics legwork for the demons, so in that sense, it really is basically...just a business trip.
Shang Qinghua pokes his head into Mobei Jun's chambers before inching inside. Mobei Jun's mood could well change at the drop of a hat, so Shang Qinghua stays on his toes. You just never know with a guy like that, okay! The man has a face like a stone wall. An incredibly manly chiseled stone wall, but still—
"Hello, my king? I come bringing gifts..." He holds up an armful of scrolls, a bag of melon seeds in one fist. One of the scrolls slips through his arms and falls to the floor, and the second he moves to try and pick it up, several more tumble out of his arms. So it's gonna be that kinda day, huh. Ahh, fuck. "Haha, sorry, sorry, I'll get those—"
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Mobei Jun is, narratively speaking, the entire reason he is in a position to get murdered in the first place, and even though it has in fact been super cool to spend all this time with his hot OC, the knowledge that a real person who's seen the internet is inhabiting that body has kind of harshed the buzz, and Shang Qinghua is feeling a little resentful. But then again...the fact that Mobei Jun's been way nicer than he expected, even calling him a valuable asset, that has been kind of OOC, but at the same time, it means that those sentiments were maybe actually genuine??
Augh. Shang Qinghua's brain feels like a blender that someone has tried to stuff two iPhones into. After another little pitiful gurgle, he lifts his head and sighs. "So, are you a fan, or...?"
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Well, at least he can stop worrying about that now, right? And so can Shen Yuan! They can combine their efforts to prevent Shang Qinghua's canonical fate from happening. And he can't pretend the idea of having some company wouldn't be...
"... Ah." Is he... a fan? Of course not! Never mind the merch that was all over his desk when he died. "No."
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"Ah." He looks at should-have-been Mobei Jun, trying to figure out how he feels about all this. This is just...so much more than he was prepared to deal with today. "Well, if you've never read the book, you did a pretty good Mobei Jun, haha..."
The System probably helped too, yeah, he would've had to get around the OOC lock first. But still...maybe they can still be friends?? God, they'd better be friends, because it's not like this guy is going to stop being Shang Qinghua's boss thanks to Story Reasons.
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"I read the book," he clarifies. "I just thought it sucked."
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"Did you read the whole book?" he asks hopefully. Maybe this guy didn't! Maybe he quit early on and didn't get to the end, that'd explain why he thought it sucked, right?
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"Yes, and I wish I hadn't. It started out promising, the protagonist was interesting, there was some cool worldbuilding, some side characters with potential... but it ended up repetitive and inane and riddled with plot holes." He waves a hand dismissively. "It was a mess."
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Normally when someone's clearly a hater just there to hate, the kind of person who comes to the table with all conclusions already drawn, it's not hard for Shang Qinghua to brush them off. Some people just can't be pleased! But this is Mobei Jun.........
"I mean, yeah, sure," Shang Qinghua hedges, "it's really long, I guess there are parts that seem kind of repetitive, and some plot threads just get dropped over the course of developing the plot, it's one of the hazards of publishing an ongoing story, you know? But I don't know if I'd call it a mess, I mean, it's pretty impressive just that someone managed to write the whole thing, right?"
Because yes, he'd sacrificed artistic integrity in the name of soliciting more subscribers here and there, but at least when it was all done, he could tell himself he'd accomplished something!
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"What's wrong with the final arc?" It's not so much that Shang Qinghua wants to continue having this conversation as it is that he's not sure he has another option. Would Mobei Jun pull rank on him if he tried to bolt? Either way, at the end of the day, this guy is still his boss...fuck.
More than that, though, the way he lists off critiques sounds kind of familiar...
"Wait, were you on the forums?"
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"What was your username?"
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"Peerless Cucumber..."
GOD that is wretched to say out loud with his mouth.
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"Oh, come on!" If this is a cosmic joke it is a very unfunny one. Shang Qinghua never had any trouble laughing off Peerless Cucumber's faux-intellectual tirades when they were separated by screens, but now he is Shang Qinghua's boss?? And presumably holds Shang Qinghua's pathetic little life in his stupid manly hands?? In Mobei Jun's manly hands, but this guy has been Mobei Jun all along?? He knocks angrily on the System, demanding an explanation, and it declines to provide him one.
"Of all people, you had to transmigrate here, too? And into my favorite character!" Shang Qinghua slaps his hands to his face and turns his head skyward with a profoundly whiny groan. "This is so unfair!"
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"You know if I ever told you to delete your account I couldn't literally make you do it," he says snippily, which is frankly a weird adverb to experience from Mobei Jun but Here We Are,
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"No shit you couldn't make me do it, you were literally paying for my posts. Not that it stopped you, which, to be honest, I'm not even really sure what your whole damage is, if you hated it so much you could've stopped reading at any time!"
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"... You're the author. Oh my god. Are you kidding me?"
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"B-because it was to highlight Bing-ge's cooking! Obviously! You know, it's a kind of metaphoric virginity, experiencing real human food for the first time—" He bites off his own stupid babbling and gives Mobei Jun a look of wary bemusement. "Wait, you didn't think I deserve to get executed?"
Obviously Mobei Jun seemed like he wanted to keep his rat around, but Shang Qinghua figured it was for purely practical reasons, you know?
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"What?? Obviously not?" He frowns slightly, looking a little betrayed. "I thought you were, you know, just a kid, when we met! And I was making you do this! How would it be fair to let that happen!" Yes, of course in a story Shang Qinghua should have died rather than give away his righteous sect's secrets to a demon, but in practice it turned out it was really hard to judge a terrified teenager for not making that choice!
"... Of course, that was before I knew who you really were," he huffs petulantly.
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"Well, at least we both agree on one point, which is that I definitely should not die." That shouldn't really feel like a concession, it should be a given, and yet. Shang Qinghua heaves a sigh. "We just have to convince the System to join the consensus. So...I guess...we just go along with the plan for now?"
Obviously, what else are they going to do, but it feels weird now? It's not like they can go back to pretending they don't know they're both transmigrators, right?
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“If the System says it’s okay, it definitely couldn’t hurt,” he agrees. As much as he’s still very much processing the misery of his transmigration buddy be Peerless Cucumber, at least he’s made it clear that he doesn’t think Shang Qinghua deserves to die. So Mobei Jun will probably protect him if anything goes wrong, right! For sure!
But he stops and frowns then, because while he’s theoretically in the clear, that still leaves Mobei Jun awaiting his fated beating at the hands of Luo Binghe, and while it has to happen—obviously! It’s integral to the arc!—he’s never really relished the thought of his fav getting beat up, and he guesses he doesn’t really want Peerless Cucumber to get his ass handed to him, either… Well, maybe a little. But he’d still have to watch it happening to Mobei Jun (T⌓T)
“Maybe we can tweak a few other things while you’re up there,” he says, though he’s still trying to remember the exact sequence of events that led to that particular fight. It was one of the early arcs, who could remember all that stuff without notes! “Make it so Bing-ge won’t give it to you so bad when you have to face off.”
See! Look! What a helper.
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