HourglassGod

"I can explain!" Shang Qinghua blurted out.

Yue Qingyuan looked at him with the same mild smile that he always wore, but there was a heavy sense of disappointment in it. If Shang Qinghua wasn't fully aware that he was selling the entire sect out to save his own skin he would be crushed under it. He was still squirming under this gaze, actually.

"What explanation could excuse colluding with demons?" Shen Qingqiu demanded. His eyes gleamed with triumph. Finally, the traitor was caught!

"This isn't betrayal! It's love!"

"What," Qi Qingqi asked.

"Yeah! I ran into Mobei Jun dying when I was a disciple, and saved him, and we fell in love," Shang Qinghua babbled. This was absolutely humiliating, but he was going to do his best to sell this and hope that his king didn't absolutely skewer him for these outrageous claims. Mobei Jun had to be aware that they couldn't fight all the peak lords and win. A little bit of wild lying had to be acceptable.

Mobei Jun dipped his head respectfully, ice blue eyes fixed on Shang Qinghua. "This king has been courting Shang Qinghua for a long time," he agreed.

"What," Qi Qingqi repeated.

"I'm not betraying the sect, I just didn't know how to explain it. Mobei Jun wouldn't hurt us," Shang Qinghua continued to explain in a rush. "He helps me get a lot of the supplies we use from the demon realm, actually. It's a huge benefit! Did I mention we're terribly in love?"

"You're in love," Mu Qingfang said in shock.

"This is a joke," Liu Qingge demanded.

"This king is honest in his pursuit of his Qinghua," Mobei Jun said firmly. "This king will make Qinghua his queen."

"Yeah, he's gonna-what?" Shang Qinghua whipped around to stare at Mobei Jun and gave off a nervous giggle. "What was that last part?"

Mobei Jun stared down at Shang Qinghua. "This king will only have a queen he trusts at his side."

Shang Qinghua gulped and nodded. Okay, this was more intense than he expected. Still, surely this would help them get away with this!

"And what do you have to prove that we should accept this alliance?" Yue Qingyuan asked. His gaze had softened. He was buying it, good!

Mobei Jun reached through the shadows and began to bring out a large bounty of treasures. "This king has many gifts for my Qinghua's sect."

Shang Qinghua gave off another nervous giggle. Okay, that was way more than he expected. He was going to have so much work to make up for this loss.

"He's still a demon," Liu Qingge growled.

"He should be thrown out," Shen Qingqiu agreed.

"This king will take his Qinghua if you throw him aside," Mobei Jun declared boldly. He scooped Shang Qinghua into his arms. He stepped back into the shadows and through to the Ice Palace.

Shang Qinghua shivered. Great, they got away! Shang Qinghua could never go back, but they got away alive!

Mobei Jun nuzzled Shang Qinghua. "My Qinghua," he rumbled.

Shang Qinghua laughed nervously. "You don't have to keep acting, my king."

"This king is not acting."

What?

emperor bing-ge gets a prophecy that he needs an empress to truly gain happiness so he starts testing out the wives for the position, mostly in order--Yingying is a little too cheerful and nothing gets done cos she won't order anything of consequence as she doesn't want to bother anyone, Mingyan flat out refuses cos its too much work (or she makes citizens rpf her danmei book plots)

the less said about the twelve hours Sha Hualing was empress the better, related this is also why he does not try the little palace mistress out (she does not take that well)

qin wanyue seems overwhelmed, qin wanrong is easily distracted, qiu haitang is passable but then stops paying attention to anything remotely relevant and he runs into the issue that all his human wives don't give a fuck about the demons and his demon wives don't care about the humans and his etc wives have their own issues, like his tree spirit wife who can't understand the passage of time and either takes two seconds for a question asked during an audience or six hours

eventually everyone, including the wives is tired of this shit and bing-ge spends a while tracking down the source for the prophet who created this prophecy and it's this weird ass hermit guy who spends most of his day looking at different monsters and traveling through towns handing out herbs and shit for various minor ills and has an eclectic but good reputation among all the villagers

and bing-ge is like WTF is this and the hermit guy (shen yuan obviously) was misquoted by this ancient prophetic being he had NO IDEA was using him for anything (they sensed his otherworldly presence) and thought he was merely discussing fan theories like in the forums--SY gets really annoyed and was like "I DID NOT say that, I said, if Bing-ge wants to be truly happy he needs to find someone who will love and accept him and SHARE his burden, like an empress. I mean if I had to pick one of the wives, I'd go with liu mingyan she's clearly the best."

insert bing-ge following hermit nerd shen yuan around trying to figure out what the fuck is his deal and plotting revenge on how he wasted like an entire year on this shit and it almost fucked up his entire rule and meanwhile shen yuan is doing his usual head pat, ooo tell me about monsters and cool fights appreciation thing and wifebeaming the hell out of him

then bing-ge figures it out and is like hey out of curiosity what are your ideas for the 3 realms that an empress should do and shen yuan has thought extensively about this now that he's seen some of the world building in person and comes up with some TOP NOTCH ideas (including universal childcare) that bing-ge starts slowly testing out and people go bonkers for--and his ideas are for everyone not just humans or demons

bing-ge tries to bait him with terrible things he's done to get him to reject him but shen yuan is like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pobody's nerfect and passing all the tests thinking about how cool it is he gets to explore the world and be friends with bing-ge

meanwhile bing-ge is getting official empress shit together and planning a wedding for him and shen yuan

binghe's content does a complete 180 after that, moving from michelin-level recipes to 'cooking on a budget' and 'time-friendly' meals. peerlesscucumber occasionally will send another picture of his poor, neglected fridge and ask for suggestions. luo binghe always fulfills his requests!

The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain or sadness. The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not.

And the child is right.”

Page 34

yeah that's right, rocky full sentences time.

i also need you all to know the actual translation of "pebble" isnt like the small rock pebble, it does literally translate to "baby" and simon would hear it as "baby". i wrote "pebble" because grace translated eridian babies as "pebbles" for his own amusement. therefore: you, the viewer, get the grace terminology.

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close ups \/

Page 28

ill be real with yall, i have the next 3 pages finished. but since i believe in buffers between media im gonna space these out so they're uploaded every other day. soooooo yeah, there's kind of an upload schedule for these next few pages. very sorry but dont get used to it, it'll be chaotic again once these run out

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close ups (+ transcript) \/