Chapter Text
“Three representatives!” the upstart young demon declares. “Three matches! The eternal conflict between man and demon, continued! Emotions running high, blood being spilled…” He sighs wistfully. “A story for the ages. Now, Sect Leader Ning. What do you say?”
Ning Yingying’s lips twitch. “Young man,” she starts.
“Tianlang-jun.”
“That’s a very big name for one so young,” she says. “But alright. Tianlang-jun. You come here, invade our home, injure my disciples… for a game?”
Tianlang-jun pouts. He suddenly seems rather familiar; has she met him before? “I mean, I could just slaughter you all.” He motions at the small army he has taken with him before. “I wouldn’t even need them. But that’d be boring, right? Blah blah, demons murder a bunch of humans, humans swear revenge, humans get squashed like a bug. So overdone! Now this? This is something new! Something fun! Something that will make people stop and think—”
“—that no one could actually have the audacity to demand that and expect to be humoured,” Luo Binghe cuts in. He turns to her. “Zhangmen-shijie, you can’t really be considering this?”
Ning Yingying shrugs. “He has come all this way,” she says. “It would be rude not to indulge him, no? It’ll be good practice.”
Luo Binghe’s upper lip pulls away from his teeth. Ning Yingying, long used to seeing their sharpness aimed at her, refuses to budge.
Luo Binghe grinds his teeth. “You, Shen!” he barks. The single Shen twin present jumps. She wonders if he knows which of the two it is. “You’re up.”
“Ohoho,” Tianlang-jun chirps. “Good choice! For the first match, I volunteer my favourite little brother.” A gigantic snake slitters forward and opens its mouth, revealing fangs as big as a man’s head, dripping with venom. Tianlang-jun stage-whispers, “He’s the only one I like out of my siblings. And I’ve got a lot. My father is a bit of a slut, you see, and he has horrible taste.”
Ning Yingying looks at Tianlang-jun, then at Luo Binghe. Tianlang-jun, then Luo Binghe again. A thought crashes over her with the force of a tsunami. “A-Luo.”
“Zhangmen-shijie.”
“A-Luo, you did not,” she says in a tone that says she’s very aware A-Luo, in fact, did.
“What's it to you?” Luo Binghe snaps. “My love-life is not any of your business.” Anymore.
“Yes, but—a snake? Really?” How did that even work?
He snarls at her again, then turns away. “What are you waiting for?” Luo Binghe snaps at his disciple. “Get to it! And don’t let me see you lose.”
The Shen boy steps into the clearing with the air of one about to meet his death. This would be the one that’s been here longer, then—Yuan, was it not? His brother would never deign to let any fear show like that; he’s too scared for that, ironically.
He turns back once, staring at her and A-Luo. She gives the boy an encouraging nod, aiming to convey: ‘If it looks like you’ll die, I’ll tear the demons to pieces.’ Her attempt at comfort is circumvented by Luo Binghe’s ‘If it looks like you’ll die, I’ll be first in line to piss on your corpse.’ Shen Yuan only pales further.
The nerves don’t seem to hinder him in the fight, though. The signal goes off and he jumps into action, weaving in and out of battle, attacking from a distance. Her lips twitch as she sees the points where his inexperience betrays how hard he’s trying to look effortlessly elegant. She should introduce him to A-Yan. In a few years, he could be a right terror.
His face is blank as he focuses on the battle to the exclusion of all else. A good thing in this case, for all that it won’t serve him well off this mountain. He’d collapse into a flustered puddle if he noticed the way his Shizun’s eyes lingered on his form. Oh, if A-Luo only paid his disciples the slightest bit of attention, they’d never grow so hungry for it!
A jump, and Shen Yuan twists through the air into the snake’s blindspot. An opportunity to go for the kill has finally arrived.
The sun glints on his raised sword as, last second, he wrests it to the side. It misses the snake’s vulnerable soft scales by a hair. The effort unbalances him. The snake takes this opportunity to coil itself around the boy until he can’t escape.
Tianlang-jun laughs, wild and loud and slightly forced. “Well done, Zhuzhi-lang,” he praises. The snake appears to blush. He steps up to its side, patting its scales in congratulation. Surely its only coincidence that that is where Shen Yuan’s sword would have struck. “The first win goes to us!
“Now, my turn,” chirps Tianlang-jun as he waves them to the sides again. “So who is it gonna be?” He tilts his head. “I liked the last one! He fought very prettily. I think I’d have enjoyed facing him myself.” Shen Yuan abruptly pales and walks away a little faster. “I don’t suppose you have another one just like that?”
In a move surprising no-one, this is enough to get Yue Qi to volunteer. She doesn’t think Shen Jiu is even here to see himself be protected. Ah, this disciple of hers is really such a fool, Ning Yingying thinks fondly.
Tianlang-jun is—very strong. Ning Yingying could beat him, of course, but she would break a sweat doing so. When he’s all grown up…
Maybe she should resume her more serious training sessions with A-Yan. Just in case.
In what case, you ask? Here, this before her: Yue Qi has won without even drawing his sword. Tianlang-jun is enraptured.
It worries her. She’s going to have to keep an eye on him to make sure that this fascination doesn’t fester into a full-blown obsession. Maybe find him another target, if he does not do so himself. Yue Qi’s attention is already spoken for, so this could end in nothing but grief. (It doesn’t have to, a part of her heart whispers, but… No. No exceptions.)
They go into the third round with a win each.
After seeing the clashing of forces that was the second battle, none of her disciples meet her eyes once she goes looking for a volunteer. The other side doesn’t seem to have this problem: after a glaring contest, a tall demon strides forward. His robes gape at the chest, but there’s not much to display there yet. In a few years, maybe—a thought that she finds herself having a lot today. Ugh, is she getting old?
It’s enough to distract Shang Qinghua though. All of his fellow disciples simultaneously take a step backwards—what is only amusing to her is still imposing to them—and he is left there, alone, mouth open as he stares at the demon. He squeaks when he notices and tries to rejoin the ranks, but there is no room for him anymore.
His solution to this problem? “I surrender!”
Ning Yingying pinches her brow. Beside her, Luo Binghe makes an outraged noise. “Come back, disciple Shang,” she orders. “You can’t surrender before you volunteer.”
Tianlang-jun clears his throat. “You could argue that he has been volunteered to fight against Mobei-jun.”
That’s ridiculous and he knows it. He’s teasing: there is a sparkle in his eyes (A-Luo’s eyes, right now more than ever) that tells her he doesn’t truly think that she would go along with this farce, but that he’d like to see how she—
Shang Qinghua throws a punch at Mobei-jun, screaming wildly. The force is not inconsiderable, with all the muscle they have over on An Ding.
Mobei-jun stomps him into the ground as an answer. The battle is over almost as quickly as it was the first time. Shang Qinghua gives a tremulous thumbs up (that boy and his strange gestures). Mobei-jun kicks him again.
One win, two losses. Ning Yingying sighs and draws her sword.
“I wonder if Ling’er knows someone else is calling themselves Emperor,” she tells Mingyan later that night.
“I’ll tell her next month,” Mingyan says sleepily, already half asleep. “It should be funny.”