Chapter Text
As much as Shang Qinghua had told himself, in the months following his little forget-me-yes ritual, that he would definitely return to the Temple of Lost Memories and give back the heavy sword he’d taken with him back then, he’d never actually managed to find the courage to do so, even after he’d quickly replaced such an unpractical sword with a much lighter one, more suited to his size. Still, he kept that sword stashed away in his qiankun pouch at all times, telling himself day after day that ‘oh I’ll go there next week, this week I’m too busy with [insert excuse of the week here]’.
His hesitation didn’t come from a place of fear of retribution from a long unknown deity; instead, he didn’t think himself capable of facing the little array he’d constructed that day and that had led to his life changing in a way he’d never considered before.
Therefore, upon teleporting away from the Northern Fortress, the first place he went to, rather than his old village and his little, cozy hut, was the Temple of Lost Memories.
Nothing had really changed since he’d last been there; the array was just as he’d left it, unchanged by time, even if there were weeds and moss growing in the cracked spaces on the floor, and the faceless deity’s statue was still there, stony and unfeeling, all seeing yet blind.
Shang Qinghua retrieved the heavy sword from his pouch and returned it to its rightful place, before moving to kneel in front of the statue, similarly to what he’d done all those months ago yet differently, standing closer to the statue.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, so dispirited that he couldn’t even muster the energy to laugh at himself for talking to the statue of a deity that had long ceased to exist and was very likely not listening to him. “I thought I’d be happier if no one remembered me and that I’d be able to live a quiet life away from all the trouble of the cultivation world, but instead I ended up right where I was, unhappier than before.”
He paused, dimly realizing there were tears streaming down his face again, and he shuddered as a quiet sob racked through him.
“What do I do?” he asked, almost hoping he would have an answer. “Do I press that button?”
That button was, of course, the ‘Return Home’ button. Said button had never stopped blinking at him in the System screen, always flashing a red ‘Yes’, as if tempting him to press it, but Shang Qinghua, in his new life as Li Wenyan, had never had a reason to consider it.
But now… His life was once again entangled with Mobei Jun’s, and he ached for it to not be so. He almost wished for Mobei Jun to forget him again, vowing to stay away from him this time and make sure they never met.
But, “Please,” he quietly asked – begged – the deity, “please let me revert what I did.”
As he expected, there was no answer, no earth shattering moment, and he cried himself to sleep right there, curled up within the array that had cost him his previous life.
* * *
“Qinghua,” a deep voice sounded next to him, and Shang Qinghua grumbled, slowly regaining consciousness but refusing to open his eyes. “Qinghua, you can’t fall asleep at your desk.”
Shang Qinghua ignored him.
He’d had a really long day, and he’d even had to skip dinner to ensure the reports on the latest conflict between the Northwestern clans – as usual, because those demons just couldn’t keep out of each other’s territories – were up to date and ready to be reviewed the next day, before he and Mobei Jun went on a diplomatic mission to resolve said conflict.
They hadn’t had any plans to eat dinner together – he and Mobei Jun, that is –, so he’d simply asked the kitchen attendants to please put aside some soup for him which he would retrieve once he was done with his work. Evidently, he’d fallen asleep before he could.
His lower back ached and his neck was stiff, but he was warm and comfortable, enveloped in the fur hides that Mobei Jun had gifted him in the months following Mai Gu Ridge, and he refused to open his eyes and move from his position. Mobei Jun wouldn’t know he’d woken up, anyway.
Unexpectedly, Shang Qinghua felt a pair of sturdy arms circle him from behind, before he was being shifted into a more pliable position, and an arm instead supported his knees while another supported his back.
Mobei Jun was carrying him, he realized. Focusing on regulating his breathing so that Mobei Jun wouldn’t realize he was awake, he let himself be carried.
He hadn’t been far from his rooms, having chosen to do his work in the library, and Mobei Jun didn’t seem to want to put him through the queasy, suffocating feeling of traveling through his shadows, even while he was asleep, so he was walking the short distance instead.
Well. If he was asleep, surely Mobei Jun wouldn’t find it odd if he burrowed his head deeper into his chest?... At least, while he was asleep, he could take from Mobei Jun the closeness he seeked.
Mobei Jun only tightened his arms around him in response, and Shang Qinghua fell asleep again even before they’d reached his rooms.
.
.
.
When he regained consciousness, Shang Qinghua was cold, hungry and miserable. He groaned as he opened his eyes, grumbling to himself as he pulled his fur hide around him more tightly.
Mobei Jun hadn’t gifted Li Wenyan any fur hides, thankfully, but Shang Qinghua had still taken one of his old hides with himself when he’d left. After all, they were literally in his room, even if no one seemed to know where they’d come from or who they belonged to.
He was glad for it though, as he definitely needed the warmth and the comfort. He’d had the worst sleep he could remember having in– years, really. Dream after dream after dream, he’d relieved countless memories spent with not only Mobei Jun but the entire Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, as well as some disturbing flashes from his early childhood with his second family and, at one point, a long burrowed memory of a fight between his parents – the original ones, from his first life – blaming him for–
Anyway.
“Li Wenyan,” came a deep voice from behind him, and Shang Qinghua startled so badly he managed to nearly suffocate himself in the fur hide he was hiding under, as he’d twisted too far in his place.
“My– Mobei Jun,” he corrected, coughing violently as he freed himself from the hide and stood up to face the Lord of the Northern Desert. “What are you doing here?”
“You were gone,” Mobei Jun said, looking at him in confusion. “I knocked on the door to your room last night to apologize for my uncle but I didn’t receive an answer, so I left. This morning, after you failed to show up for court, I asked the attendants to check on you but they said you weren’t there.”
“How did you know to come look for me here, though?” He had almost certainly tried to find him in his little hut first, surely.
“The gemstone,” he said, and ah – that made a lot of sense. He should have chucked it in the nearest river when he had the chance.
“Are you not coming back?” Mobei Jun asked, looking at him intently.
“I don’t think so, Your Highness,” he said softly, lowering his gaze to the ground.
“My uncle scared you.” A statement. A true statement, of course, but not the reason he’d left. “I apologize. He has the same mentality as my father before me.”
“He did,” he confirmed, “but that’s not why. I simply don’t think I’m suited for that line of work.”
“You’re an excellent advisor,” Mobei Jun said, and the words of praise only cut deeper into Shang Qinghua’s heart.
“Your Highness, do you know why I left my cultivation sect?” Mobei Jun shook his head. “I wanted to lead a quiet life,” he explained, much the same way he’d explained it to Shen Qingqiu months ago. “I wanted to do other things and move to a smaller location. Be a part of a community.”
“If you’d rather spend more time back at the village–”
“No, Your Highness,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry. I just want to go back to my old life.”
Mobei Jun hesitated. “Is there anything this king can do to make you reconsider?”
Shang Qinghua smiled. “I’m afraid not.”
He nodded then, accepting his advisor’s resignation, and turned to leave. As he neared the temple doors, Shang Qinghua couldn’t help himself – this, this felt like a true ending, a true parting between two characters whose fates had been entangled for so very long – and very quietly, nearly in a whisper, said, “I was really happy to see you again, my king.”
He didn’t hear him, of course. A breeze rustled through the crisp leaves lying on the floor of the temple and Shang Qinghua froze as the untouched array glowed under his feet. His stomach dropped in anxiety – had he somehow activated the array again? Had Mobei Jun truly forgotten him again? He knew he’d entertained the idea, but that hadn’t been what he’d begged to that statue the previous night! He hadn’t even bled on the array!
Not now that he’d finally found another home for himself, how could he go back to the village and do it all over again?!
But before he could call out to Mobei Jun and ask him to turn around, wanting to test if he still remembered at least Li Wenyan, he looked up and–
“Qinghua?”
Mobei Jun was looking at him in a way that he hadn’t seen in far too long. His eyes were wide in complete bewilderment and he was clearly confused as to what was going on, but the way he looked at him…
“Don’t come any closer,” he warned, unconsciously taking a step back himself. If Mobei Jun remembered him – him , Shang Qinghua – and he’d been chasing after him… Who knew whether he’d try to attack him? To his surprise, Mobei Jun obeyed. “Who am I?”
“Qinghua,” and Shang Qinghua could have cried there and then at hearing that word — he didn’t think he’d ever hear anyone utter that name again, much less Mobei Jun.
“Why were you chasing after me, that day?”
Mobei Jun looked confused at first, before a look of understanding flashed through his eyes. “You called me.”
“You didn’t come,” he accused. “Your uncle — right before he beat me up, he told me you’d been looking everywhere for me, but when I called you you didn’t come.”
“I tried,” Mobei Jun said, and his voice sounded rougher than he’d ever heard it; maybe only as rough as the day he’d left him at the end of his ascension ceremony. “But my uncle— he warded the area and I had to teleport somewhere close by in order to go around it. By the time I made it there, you were already gone.”
That seemed… acceptable, and he faintly remembered Linguang Jun saying something to that effect – something about how Mobei Jun wouldn’t be able to join them –, but his heart was still very much in turmoil and he didn’t want to let Mobei Jun off so easily.
“And then?” he prompted.
“And then, I saw Linguang Jun.”
Mobei Jun explained: Linguang Jun had been lying on the ground, halfway between consciousness and unconsciousness, with a dark red stream of blood coating the right side of his face where Shang Qinghua had hit him. Mobei Jun had been furious — such a scene could only mean Shang Qinghua was probably not faring any better.
Once Linguang Jun had spotted him, he’d been able to accelerate his healing and get back to his feet, trying to prevent Mobei Jun from going after Shang Qinghua. Mobei Jun had, of course, beaten him to a pulp and thrown him off a cliff expeditiously, unconcerned with whether or not he lived or died, and had promptly gone after his former advisor.
But he’d been too late. He’d managed to see Shang Qinghua enter the temple and, as such, he’d desperately tried to go inside and talk to him, but by the time he was able to bust open the doors—
“I no longer knew what I was doing here,” he concluded. This was probably the longest Mobei Jun had ever talked for in his entire life, even if with a few breaks in between to gather his thoughts and, he imagined, his memories, but he was surprisingly composed. “There was an unknown human in front of me, and no matter how much I tried to recall why I’d been so desperate to enter this temple, I simply couldn’t.”
Shang Qinghua nodded, slightly mollified, and moved to sit at the foot of the deity’s statue, gesturing for Mobei Jun to take a seat as well.
He acquiesced, but was careful to keep a considerable distance between them. Shang Qinghua couldn’t help but feel bitterness over it — he was only doing it out of the respect he felt for Li Wenyan, not him.
“And what would you have done?” he suddenly asked, breaking the silence that had settled between them. “What would you have done if you hadn’t forgotten me? Would you have beaten me up and dragged me back to the Demon realm? Or maybe you would have killed me outright?”
Shang Qinghua’s tone was casual, but Mobei Jun’s eyes widened in surprise at the suggestions.
“No!” he exclaimed loudly, surprising both himself and Shang Qinghua. “I was— this king only wanted to ask you to return.”
“Ask?” he repeated dubiously. “Not force?”
“Ask,” Mobei Jun confirmed. “I was prepared to give you anything you wanted in return.”
“Anything?” Shang Qinghua eyed Mobei Jun in suspicion. This was definitely not what he’d expected to hear, even if it had been one of his most prominent fantasies. “Like what?”
“You could hit me.” Hit him?! Mobei Jun wanted him to hit him?!
“Why would I do that?” he asked, completely bewildered over such a suggestion. “You’ve hit me enough for the both of us.”
Mobei Jun looked mildly ashamed. “Retribution.”
Ah, Mobei Jun. You were willing to let your ‘human pet’ hit you just so he’d go back to you?
“And what then?” he asked, much firmer than he was actually feeling. “I’d go back and everything would be the same? You’d drag me around however you wanted and hit me three times a day?”
“No.” Mobei Jun actually seemed pained at the suggestion. “Qinghua said— Qinghua said he didn’t like it, so this king would stop. No more hitting.”
Shang Qinghua crossed his arms, looking at Mobei Jun analytically. He seemed honest enough, and he’d had proof over the past few months that Mobei Jun was now capable of acting decently towards a human, but…
“What else?” he asked, even though he knew Mobei Jun would never know what he most wanted.
“Anything else you want,” he repeated.
“Oh? If I asked you to make me hand pulled noodles, would you make them?”
“En.” Mobei Jun… you’re really making this too difficult on this poor author, okay?! Don’t just agree with everything so easily!
“Do you even know how to cook?” he asked, somewhat helplessly.
“I’d learn.”
Shang Qinghua sighed, standing up from where he’d been leaning against the statue’s legs, striding over to Mobei Jun slowly. He… all he wanted was an apology, okay? But did Mobei Jun even know how to give one? Had he ever?
As if on cue, Mobei Jun stood up as well, and they stood there facing each other, still with a good arm’s length distance between them.
“Do you regret it?” he finally asked, feeling so vulnerable that if Mobei Jun actually said no he might really press that stupid ‘return home’ button.
“I do,” Mobei Jun said, his voice barely higher than a whisper, and the way he stared at him was so intense, so honest and— and, most importantly, so different from the way he’d looked at Li Wenyan. He much preferred this look. “I’m sorry, Qinghua.”
Shang Qinghua swallowed, and they stayed in silence. There were so many things he still wanted to ask, things he wanted to demand – he wanted to ask why he favored Li Wenyan so much, he wanted to ask Mobei Jun to compliment his work, but would those things actually satisfy him?
“Qinghua,” Mobei Jun said, breaking the silence between them, hesitating before he took one step closer to him. “I didn’t know any better. I grew up resenting humans, knowing they would hunt me without a second thought, and I thought that only by being stronger and merciless would I be able to ensure your loyalty to me.”
“Did I not prove myself to you over the years, though?” he asked. “Did I not save your life enough times to show you you could trust me?”
“I tried to change.”
“You did,” he agreed. “But it wasn’t enough. You still beat me and you still–” Shang Qinghua paused, trying to organize his thoughts. “The way you acted towards Li Wenyan was the way you should have acted towards me.”
“I know.” Mobei Jun’s voice was hoarse, and he looked at him so intensely that he felt like his legs would give out at any moment. “If I would have been able to find you after the ascension ceremony, I…” He trailed off. “But Li Wenyan– in a way, something drew me towards him. He felt familiar.”
Oh. He’d never considered the reason Mobei Jun seemed to favor Li Wenyan so much could be because he still felt close to him even without his memories. Was it so unthinkable that Mobei Jun couldn’t stay away from Li Wenyan the same way he couldn’t seem to stay away from Mobei Jun?
Shang Qinghua realized then that this was pointless – it was pointless to compare his behavior and it was pointless to waddle in the ‘what ifs’. Before, he’d thought if Mobei Jun’s memories returned he would get the answers he seeked; now, he realized the only way he could get those answers would be if he turned back time and never completed the ritual, and… well, he wasn’t particularly interested in inventing time travel.
“Ah, my king,” he said, his tone softer than Mobei Jun would have expected, before he finally nodded and reached out to hold Mobei Jun’s hand in his. Mobei Jun looked surprised, but infinitely pleased.
“Let’s go home, my king.”
There would be so many other things he would need to worry about — saying goodbye to the little village that had been his home and comfort for a year, promising to return whenever he could and write as often as possible;
Returning to An Ding Peak and facing the consequences of being away for such a long time, a pile of unsigned paperwork stacked on his desk even though everyone could have sworn the Head Disciple had been on top of everything;
Facing Shen Qingqiu and his horribly thin face and seeing the regret on his face as he realized he hadn’t been a very good martial brother before, even as he’d gotten his happy ending, to the point that Shang Qinghua hadn’t wanted to reveal his real identity as Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky (‘Your writing still sucks, though!’);
Figuring out the new dynamics of his relationship with Mobei Jun and working around the careful distance he maintained between them, needing to make the first step towards something more (somehow, Mobei Jun was too scared).
Yes, there would be many, many things to worry about, but for now, all he wanted was to keep holding his king’s hand as they made their way back to the Northern Fortress, where Mobei Jun would clumsily but efficiently make him the greasiest, saltiest bowl of hand pulled noodles, and Shang Qinghua would happily devour them, unsure if the tears on the corner of his eyes were due to the salt or due to how emotional he was feeling to be back – fully, this time.
And, at the end of it all, he would reflect that while Li Wenyan might have led a more content life than his own, Shang Qinghua undeniably led the happiest one.