Jiao Ziyu had questions. Jiao Ziyu had so, so many questions, and yet the youth wouldn’t answer any of them, moving over to the nearby table to take a seat, keeping his eyes closed and his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

And Jiao Ziyu followed him and waited. He waited and waited and waited until he could finally wait no more.

“Who are you?” he asked again with little preamble, because while Jiao Ziyu could certainly have been more courteous about it, he’d been a bit too rattled by recent events to really bother.

“Depends,” the youth finally said, still not looking up.

“Depends on what?” Jiao Ziyu asked.

“It⸺” the other began, then trailed off into silence before sighing. “On second thought, screw this,” he then said. “I can’t deal with this right now. Jun, forget about the tea. I’m⸺”

The prince of the Demon Realm appeared beside him before he’d even finished speaking, and indeed, he did appear within a single heartbeat, just like Huilu had said.

“It’s fine,” the other said, his voice deceptively gentle. “I’ll handle it. But only if you say ‘please’.”

At that last part, his lips curled into an impish grin, especially so as the youth lifted his gaze to level him with an outright glare.

“Go fuck yourself,” the youth said, to Jiao Ziyu’s mounting horror.

“Oh?” said Youming Jun. “But I’d much rather fuck you.”

“Maybe I’d rather fuck him,” the youth said, pointing to Jiao Ziyu, who was definitely not onboard with this sort of thing and especially not when the demon’s gleaming eyes shifted towards him, pupils now slit.

“We could do a threesome,” Youming Jun finally said after some consideration, his voice somehow making itself heard over the sound of Jiao Ziyu’s internal screaming, and so did the youth’s disgusted snort, surprisingly enough.

“What?” Youming Jun asked. “I’m just trying to be flexible here and accommodate my lovely Yue’s wishes. Is that such a bad thing?”

“Flexible?” said the youth, who was apparently called ‘Yue’. “Accommodate my wishes? Don’t get cocky, you bedwarmer. Since when have you ever held my wishes above your own?”

Bedwarmer?

Jiao Ziyu felt his face heating up even further as he desperately attempted to grasp the unfolding situation. Was this a relationship spat? Because it sure as heck sounded like one.

Jiao Ziyu wondered whether or not he ought to grab the still unconscious Bai Mingyue and simply make a run for it or⸺

Well, Mingyue would undoubtedly kill him anyways, so Jiao Ziyu abandoning him here wouldn’t make the slightest bit of a difference. Well, not to Mingyue anyways. Ah, Hell.

Jiao Ziyu forced himself to calm down and then cleared his throat, drawing their attention back towards him instead.

“Okay,” he said, finding his voice to be surprisingly steady. “Forgive this humble one for speaking so plainly, but: You guys seem to have a lot going on here, and I obviously don’t want to stick my neck into any of that, but... Mingyue should’ve woken up by now, and he hasn’t, so⸺”

Predictably, this spurred a reaction.

 

---

 

Truth to be told, this whole affair had been fishy from the very start. There had simply been too many coincidences lining up beside one another to not make Jiao Ziyu suspect that something was up. And something was indeed up, although Jiao Ziyu had yet to properly get to the bottom of things.

First and foremost, there was obviously some sort of relationship in-between these three: the Peak Lord, the rogue cultivator, and the demon prince. There was obviously some sort of past connection – and a fair bit of bad blood as well, albeit not to such a degree that they’d necessarily want to kill one another. Or, to be specific, that the urge to kill was mutual.

Still, the existence of such a relationship was, quite frankly, a mystery. It was a mystery because Mingyue only rarely left the Green Jade Peaks; Jiao Ziyu could count the number of occasions upon a single hand, and Jiao Ziyu had accompanied him on most of them. As such, he was pretty sure that he would’ve noticed it if something had happened, either then or afterwards and⸺ Wait.

Suddenly, Jiao Ziyu remembered it; one of the rare qi deviations he himself had actually been around for. It had happened shortly after their return from an excursion, and while it hadn’t been as major as the one that had taken place after, Jiao Ziyu had found it a quite frightening ordeal. He’d found himself annoyingly powerless as well, because before he’d been able to do anything – before he’d been able to even try – Sect Leader Yeguang had promptly ushered him out and dealt with it himself.

Frankly, it irked him – his own powerlessness, that is, and not the Sect Leader’s intervention. Rather, he’d been deeply grateful for that, finding himself quite out of his depth.

Cheng Kong had apparently been quite displeased though, clearly dismayed that the Sect Leader had once again been forced to intervene and risk his own cultivation simply because Bai Mingyue couldn’t keep himself under control.

For once, the other Peak Lords hadn’t agreed with him though, instead shaking their heads while mumbling that Sect Leader Yeguang was indeed the most suitable candidate to deal with such things.

And indeed, he was. Compared to him, Jiao Ziyu was effectively useless – or rather, he was good for little else but to accompany Mingyue on forays into the great forest northwest of the Green Jade Peaks to gather up plants and other medicinal ingredients.

And it had been during one of those forays that Jiao Ziyu had stumbled upon some scorched patch of land in the middle of the forest and pointed it out to Mingyue like ‘Look at what I’ve found! This is so weird’, and Mingyue had⸺

Yeah, Jiao Ziyu hadn’t been paying too much attention to the other’s face back then, because he’d been kind of distracted by those scorch marks seared into the landscape. Jiao Ziyu had been distracted by the traces of qi left behind by some high-level demon in such close proximity to the Green Jade Peaks.

Those scorch marks. The appearance of the ‘Little Hermit’ in the city of Wú Jiǔ, and the appearance of the ‘Red Devil’. It would’ve taken at least a couple of months to get to this point, both for the Good Doctor’s reputation to build and for word to spread in general. The timeline certainly seemed to add up – not completely, perhaps, but enough for certain conclusions to be drawn.

“Say,” Jiao Ziyu said, before he could think better of it. “Those scorch marks out in the forest northwest of the Green Jade Peaks... Do they happen to have anything to do with the two of you?”

It would be far stranger if they didn’t, given the number of coincidences that seemed to be lining up and all. Rather, they no longer seemed like coincidences but rather like patterns forming and stretching into unknown territory.

“Scorch marks?” Yue repeated, pausing momentarily in his ministrations. As it turned out, he too – much like another carrying the name ‘Yue’ – seemed adept at handling acupuncture needles. “Ah, that must’ve been my old camp. Some demon bastard must've set it ablaze to send a message and to bully the elderly...”

Send a message? Bully the elderly?

“Yeah, sure,” the Demon Prince readily admitted, offering up a mild shrug. “Let’s go with that.”

Huh. “What really happened then?”

“Well,” the other said, smiling all the while. “My beautiful but immensely stubborn spouse didn’t want to abandon that hovel, and so I made sure that there wasn’t anything to return to. Besides, Yue didn’t want Bai Mingyue to find him, and that guy’s pretty persistent so... I figured, this way, he’d stop looking sooner. That said, maybe I shouldn’t have bothered. I mean, it took you guys this long to find us, and you only really found us because I decided to let Yue out of the house more often.”

There were plenty of things wrong with that statement. In fact, Jiao Ziyu wasn’t even quite sure where to start!

“Did he kidnap you?” he blurted out.

“Yes,” Yue said, just as the Demon Prince answered “Nope”.

Then, faced with his alleged spouse’s death glare, Youming Jun remedied his response to a “I mean, technically, I guess I did, but⸺”

Ah. What was this situation? “Did he kidnap you and confine you?”

“Yes,” Yue deadpanned. “He was very annoying about it.”

“Rude,” said the Demon Prince, still smiling. “And I’ll have you know that my lovely Yue was very annoying as well.”

“He deserved it,” Yue said, retrieving his needles.

“I guess I did deserve it at least a little,” the Demon Prince said, holding out his hand – and Yue reached out to take it, but then drew in an alarmed breath as there was suddenly another set of fingers locked tightly around his wrist.

Mingyue was awake, and his glacial eyes burned as they locked upon the face of young Yue.

“Get out,” he said.

None of them moved though – Jiao Ziyu because he was frozen into place, Youming Jun because he obviously didn’t want to, and Yue because the Peak Lord didn’t let up on his grip one bit, even as he got to his feet. No, if anything, then the grip only tightened, pulling young Yue even closer.

“Get out,” Mingyue repeated, his voice as cold as his presence, which was positively frigid, making everyone’s breaths come out as clouds of white mist.

“Mingyue,” Jiao Ziyu began, but a frigid glare his way immediately made him think again.

“Master,” young Yue gasped, and whether it was what he said or his tone or something else, Mingyue finally relented, chill dispersing. The grip still remained tight however.

“Get out,” Mingyue said again, and this time around, a burst of qi physically removed them, sending them tumbling out of the room before the doors slammed shut behind them, leaving Jiao Ziyu to stare at them alongside a similarly ejected Demon Prince.

“Well,” Youming Jun said, dusting off his clothes. “That went about as well as expected. Want some snacks?”

Jiao Ziyu just stared at him. “Aren’t you even the slightest bit concerned?”

At this, the Demon Prince kicked up an eyebrow. “About what?”

Not sure how to explain it, Jiao Ziyu just pointed towards the doors. “That.”

“Ah, that,” Youming Jun said, thoughtful. “No, not particularly no. I rather think it’s a conversation that needs to happen. And I for one am happy not to take any direct part in it.”

Huh. Well, now that he said it, Jiao Ziyu found that he could very much relate, because although he was undeniably curious, he was also terrified and thus quite relieved to be on the outside rather than within. Still⸺ “Mingyue might⸺”

Actually, Jiao Ziyu wasn’t even entirely sure as to what Mingyue might do, other than that it might be something drastic.

“Nah,” said Youming Jun. “If he tries anything, I’ll handle it.”

Huh. “And if you can’t? High-ranking demon or not, there’s only one of you.”

“There’s only one of me, yes,” said the other. “But there’s only one of my uncle as well, and most know not to pick a fight with him.”

Ah. Well, considering that this person was calling himself ‘Youming Jun’, odds were that he was either an adopted or born member of the Youming clan. The red markings certainly indicated such.

No, rather, they served as proof, and while Jiao Ziyu was by no means an expert in the politics and clan traditions of the Demon Realm, he had a feeling, and it was one of great concern.

“Would that uncle of yours happen to be related to the Demon King?”

“Yes,” the other said, enjoying this very much. “Youming Hongyan. My uncle.”

Ah.