Archive of Our Own

"Please, Junshang—let this humble one join your next journey!"

Luo Binghe regarded the cat demoness, bemused.

Up until this point, she had been a generic conquest. Cute, prone to tripping over her own paws, not a peerless beauty but plenty charming enough for a very satisfying tumble—bedding her through her ill-timed heat had been a good time.

He had planned to drop her off at the Inner Palace before continuing on his quest to unite the realms, with a vague thought that some wife or other or perhaps one of his children had wanted a pet cat, but here she was at the gates, cupping her hands respectfully and asking to... keep going?

"I can stay in cat form!" she chirped, green eyes shining. "You'll barely know I'm there. I won't get underfoot, promise!"

He snorted. If the past two weeks were any indication, she would do nothing but get underfoot.

...That said. She was cute, with expressive, fluffy ears and a pretty face and a body well worth appreciating. Earnest and excitable and easily embarrassed. And the level of attention she gave him when he spoke was... nice.

(Rare.)

"Shen Yuan," he said, after an embarrassingly long time trying to remember her name. He'd heard it once and immediately started calling her Xiao Mao instead, because it suited her better. And because it made her blush. "You know I'm not going to refrain from spending time—" in the sheets "—with others. Traveling together won't change that."

She gave him a confused look, like she had no idea why he'd even brought it up. "Yes, of course, Junshang." A flicker of amusement passed across her face. "The stallion cannot be stopped, after all."

"And the road won't be easy," he added, ignoring her odd choice of words, and she nodded smartly. "And if you come with me, you won't be spending many of your nights as a cat, if you catch my meaning."

It was the kind of thing that went without saying, given that they were, if not married, then enmeshed similarly (she'd said she didn't want a ceremony, and after as many weddings as he'd had, he didn't care), but saying it got him a very slow once-over with enough admiration and trepidation to make his gut curl pleasantly as her face turned a very enjoyable shade of pink, and then a strangled, "W-well, of course! Given that I'm a, um. Er—that is to say..."

"Xiao Mao," he said, partially to cut her off and partially because the nickname fit her exceedingly well in that moment. Kitty cat. Cute.

"Yes!" she squeaked.

"If you agree to these terms, you may accompany me," he said graciously, and she lit up. "Tell me when you wish to return."

In reply, she shifted to her three-tailed cat form and trotted up to him obediently, looking up at him for his next command.

Well. His life could be intense. He would see how long she lasted.

He was used to being simply too much for people.

Ning Yingying couldn't take the violence, Liu Mingyan couldn't return the affection, Sha Hualing couldn't listen to another being to save her life, the only thing he could do with Xiao Gongzhu was fuck her, and so on. It stood to reason that Xiao Mao would be the same as all the rest, but he didn't know which part of him would get her to tap out in the end.

Apparently, it was not the violence.

"That. Was. So. Cool!" Her eyes shone, the pupils a perfect circle as the green iris was pushed to a thin ring, and she squirmed in place like she couldn't help it, tails swaying in eager greeting. "Junshang is amazing."

Surrounded by a bloodbath on the more brutal side, Luo Binghe knew better than to wipe the blood away and leave ugly streaks that would be ten times harder to remove. Besides, he knew he looked better like this.

(He was privately a little glad that she wasn't squeamish about the show; demons usually weren't, but she was... soft in ways that made him think of the Ning Yingying he knew when they were teenagers, so he hadn't been sure.)

He snaked an arm around her waist and purred, "Amazing, you say?"

"Everyone knows Junshang is a peerless warrior," she said, breathless. The look of admiration was a little addicting. "I always wanted to see him in action myself, and I was so sad there was no need for it when... when we... you know. Met." She cleared her throat and forcibly gathered herself, puffing up and stilling her tails, and that composure was more than a little tempting. "It was even better than I'd imagined..."

That last sentence spoken in that dreamy tone turned the shape of his desire from 'mm want' to 'now, please'. He walked her backwards, a bit away from the blood soaked 'battlefield'. Fucking on the fallen bodies of his foes sounded much more romantic than it was, he knew from experience.

As he guided her back, he put his mouth next to her ear and murmured, "Peerless, you say..."

She nodded quickly with a shiver and hitch in her breath as she let herself be backed into a tree. "U-um, you know, the fights, and how no warrior could, ah, st-stand against you... Junshang?"

"Mm, go on," he said, dipping his nose to her hair and drawing his fingertips up her inner thigh.

"Junshang?!"

He hit slick wetness much earlier than he thought he would, and let out a groan of approval. He traced a few idle patterns there, enjoying the way her breath shook and letting the sensation of it travel down to his cock, then slipped his hand inside her skintight bottoms to test her cunt.

"H-here?!" she squawked, scandalized, then gasped in his ear as he fit two fingers into her burning, soaking entrance easily.

"Here," he agreed cheerfully, then hooked the crotch of the fabric out of the way with his thumb, lined himself up, and sank his aching cock into that exquisite sheath with a sigh of relief.

"Jun-shang—" Xiao Mao started on a yelp and ended on a sigh, her soaking walls starting to flutter before he was even halfway in. "Sh-sh-shameless...!"

She was already pretty, but seeing her face twisted up with mortification and stained red with arousal made him bottom out a bit more abruptly than he intended to. "Who is here to see?" he said innocently, winded and heated in spite of his attempts at composure. "It's just you and me."

"And-and-and like a hundred dead bodies..." she choked out, then moaned as he began to thrust—gently, so as not to hurt her, ignoring Xin Mo's biting hunger.

"Eighty seven," he corrected, then muttered, "Fuck, you're tight, squeeze there—right th-nnngh," and nothing more intelligent was said for a while.

Afterwards, he healed the scrapes on her back from the rough tree bark and carried her back to their camp while she was still fucked sloppy and dripping his cum, and halfway there, she recovered her wits enough to start talking about the clan he had just slayed, detailing their members and goals and mentioning a fascinating artifact he could bring back as a trophy as he wanted.

He waited out the ramble, inordinately charmed, then kissed her into silence and promised her they'd look in the morning before spending another half shichen fucking her much more thoroughly into the bedroll, slaking his own thirst almost as well as Xin Mo's. Almost.

Xiao Mao had the damnest pillow talk whenever he let up before she passed out.

He suspected some amount of seer blood, given how accurate and extensive her knowledge was, but she didn't use it on events, no. Instead, she was a walking bestiary and botanical encyclopedia, with a side of treasure hunter.

He'd started to stop when he sensed danger ahead and ask her what she thought it was, and, invariably, she could take a handful of clues and turn them into a prophetic vision. Invariably, he was very impressed, and invariably she blushed and preened and fluttered, and, invariably...

No, it was pretty variable whether or not he could keep it in his pants long enough to defeat the villain before taking her fast and messy on the nearest available surface while she gasped and protested and desperately urged him deeper-faster-harder, or if it would have to wait until after.

She... listened.

It didn't sound like much, in the grand scheme of things. Everyone listened to Junshang. They didn't have a choice. She wasn't special because she could repeat what he'd said to her back verbatim.

But she listened like she would have if she had a choice, too. Like she would have listened to him if he'd turned up as a disciple with nothing but bruises and tangled meridians to his name. Like his opinions didn't matter as Junshang, but as Luo Binghe.

It was terrifying.

He talked about his revenge plans for those who had done him wrong, and she listened with stars in her eyes. He talked about what he'd do for the people who'd done him well, and she listened with a dreamy little smile. He talked about what he'd do to her if she kept looking at him like that, and she listened with bitten red lips and a mortified glare and—whenever she was wound up enough—a full orgasm from his voice alone.

(He didn't want to think about the possibility that he'd be just as easy for her if her face was any thicker.)

He voiced his opinions on the weather, on their location, on pretty flowers or rare animals he wanted her to notice, on the terrible trashy novels she would die before admitting she loved, on weapon upkeep, on the long gone Cang Qiong Mountain, on wandering cultivators, on the inn food they were forced to eat when they had to lay low...

And she listened like she wanted to write a book on the subject of his soul.

They had been traveling together for three weeks when Xiao Mao, his precious, idiotic little lover, tried to sacrifice her life for him.

They had been fighting two Lion-Headed Vipers and his attention had slipped for all of one blink—and she had slammed into him bodily, knocking him out of the way of a stream of venom, only to take the entire shot of it down her side.

He killed them immediately—he had been playing with them, because Xiao Mao tended to droop a little if he won too quickly, and he wasn't anywhere near above showing off for a pretty girl—and rushed to her side to ask her what the hell she had been thinking?

She gave him a sheepish, paralysis-drugged smile. "Reflex."

"I would have healed much more easily than you will," he snapped, an imperceptible tremor in his hands that he felt like an earthquake as he stripped her of the venom soaked clothing. As usual, there wasn't much to remove. He slashed open his hand on Xin Mo and forced the cut into her mouth.

She looked even more sheepish. "I know, I know," she said after she swallowed down his blood parasites. "I wasn't thinking. My body moved on its own."

"I believe it," he said darkly, getting the damage the venom dealt as quickly as possible. "You stupid, stupid, stupid cat."

She blinked at him, still laid out perfectly naked at his knees, startled by the rare insult.

He got what he could with his blood, but it was clear the poison had attacked her meridians as well, and the vestiges of it were enough to turn her into a stuffed doll. "Going to need to dual cultivate for this," he told her roughly, and pulled her limp form into his lap less carefully than he had ever treated her before. Into the crook of her neck, he whispered, "Don't you ever pull this stunt again. I can heal. You can't."

He could hear her eyelashes flutter in confusion, the tiniest smacks of her eyelids sharp against his overstressed hearing and her tails terrifyingly still in front of him.

"...Yes, Junshang," she whispered back, meek, while he covered his length in oil just in case she wasn't fully ready to take him under these circumstances.

He fucked her rough and hard as he stewed in his frustration, and then slow and sweet as the level of care involved in trying to give up her life for him sank in, then back to rough and hard at the thought of her trying to leave him, whatever her reasons, then back to slow and sweet in the abrupt terror of hurting her so soon after she'd done something so stupid and so wonderful for him.

He trembled in the aftermath while she looked even better than she had this morning, and somehow this topsy turvy day ended with her gently combing his hair until he stopped shaking.

Something changed after that—he realized that not only did she not mind looking after him in these little ways, but she seemed (in her own defensive-yet-overeager way) touched that he would ask at all.

If he'd known it was an option, he would have asked much sooner.

Their nightly routine of 'retreat to their tent, Xiao Mao gets fucked until Junshang is satisfied, sleep' turned into 'retreat to their tent, Xiao Mao brushes Luo Binghe's hair, then gets fucked until Junshang is satisfied, sleep', and Luo Binghe promptly discovered that heavenly demons could purr just as well as cat demons under the correct conditions.

Conditions such as Xiao Mao gently running a comb through his locks over and over until all the snarls of the day are distant memories, delicate fingers scritching his scalp the same way he scritches her ears, her own purring a soothing counterpart to his.

He would let her do anything with him after a quarter incense time of that treatment, and by the end of the stick, he'd beg her to do it. At that point, his skin always felt like shimmering, molten gold, trails of sparks and fire following her touch, the very air in his lungs thick and syrupy and hot.

Usually, what she did was style his hair.

Tamely, at first—simple sleeping braids he never learned how to do to corral the curls, the high tail he'd favored before his Guan Li, the half-half style he wore with his crown now—but once she ran through them all a few times, she started branching out.

Tonight, it was two braids that clung close to his skull from his temples to the base of his head, then hung over his chest, tied off with black and red ribbons.

He suspected it meant something to Xiao Mao's sensibilities that it didn't to his, because when she held up the thin bronze mirror for his inspection, the surface trembled from her suppressed giggles.

It was a fairly feminine style, he supposed. Childish, too. The style of the ribbons was all off, too thin and too ostentatious. He felt too good all over to feel anything but amusement and overwhelming fondness at the sight.

"Good craftsmanship," he praised, his voice thick from disuse and the hazy lust that always subsumed him during this ritual.

The mirror shook harder for a moment, then stilled as she took a (distractingly) deep breath. He could just see the tips of her ears flickering behind it and he wanted to flick them.

So he did.

She yelped and let the mirror fall, revealing a sweet face full of both mischief and guilt, like a young child who didn't know yet if she was going to get away with a prank.

It really was a very kissable look, and not being in the habit of denying himself anything, Luo Binghe swayed into her space, gaze fixed on that pert mouth.

She let him get close, then tipped backwards ungracefully with a strangled snort. "Nope, nope, can't do it."

"'Can't'?" he echoed, pouting. Everything felt so blissfully floaty. It was a fight not to smile stupidly at the sight of her, the existence of her.

"You—you look like a—my Junshang is a—" She made another strangled noise that fluttered through her lovely body like a laugh, her ears laid flat back against her skull as she leaned away from him and then turned away. "Junmei. Shangmei. Meimei."

"Jiejie..." he cooed, following her with his pout hanging on by a thread. "You're so cruel..."

"No! Stop!" she said, but she was shaking all over with sweet giggles that were flowing into him like a cure-all panacea. "I can't— My Junshang, I cannot possibly take you seriously like this—"

She was fully laying on the floor now, chest down, twitching with strangled laughter, the shadows around her delicate shoulder blades and the curling of her bare toes unbearably erotic. He was always so hard it hurt after these grooming sessions, but it was even worse this time.

"Does jiejie need to take me seriously to take my cock?" he asked innocently, pressing her down with a hand in the middle of her back and pinning her there. Everything was so hot and so sweet and he wanted, wanted, wanted...

She squawked right on cue, and flailed directionlessly in protest, all three of her tails puffed in her fluster. "Junshang!!"

Tugging her bottoms down released a fresh wave of the scent of her slick, making his mouth water even as he slid a hand between her thighs and checked her readiness and found her so meltingly soft and wet that it would be a crime to leave her empty.

"Nooooo," she whined as he did so, fluttering around his fingers and making no move to leave. Then she glanced over her shoulder at him and instantly started choking on laughter, her inner walls contracting. "I-I can't—"

"Jiejie..." he singsonged, pushing his robes aside just enough to draw out his purplish, leaking cock, and then plucking her hips off the ground to give himself a better angle to penetrate her with.

The first thrust did what it always did, which was to make all the strength in her body leave, her eyes rolling skyward as her mouth went slack, but after a few more, she glanced behind her and saw him again, which set her off with choked giggles that he could feel deep within her, contracting and rippling around his cock, and—perhaps he should make a fool of himself in bed more often, if this was what was on offer for it.

It would be silly to claim the rest of the night was anything but making love—lazy and giggly, moving together without urgency, reveling in the feeling of her skin on his and her flesh in his hands—so he didn't bother.

He fell asleep buried inside her and wondered if he would feel this truly, wonderfully warm tomorrow morning.

(He did.)

He took to carrying his little kitty cat on his shoulder, her claws hooked loosely into his over robe and her curious green eyes taking in the whole world with undisguised interest. She was under strict instructions not to speak in that form unless they were truly alone.

He visited the Inner Palace like that, scritching her behind the ears when he needed to calm himself—it worked better than expected—as he tried to sort out harem politics and got increasingly irritated by the wives he was supposed to visit, based on the auspicious dates Ning Yingying handed him.

Xiao Mao peered over his shoulder at the chart, and, oddly, he wanted to hide it from her gaze. It didn't matter—she'd known what she was getting into right from the start—but it still felt... gauche.

"Don't I have enough children already?" he asked of his first wife, who looked about as exhausted with the whole thing as he was. "What would I do with more?"

Ning Yingying's expression said quite clearly, about as much as you already do, A-Luo, but in interest of keeping the conversation on track and not about his horrible parenting skills, she didn't say it. Their three children had long since grown and were handling things around the palace admirably.

"It's not about the children," she said with a sigh, "it's about the politics. Xiao Gongzhu in particular is getting... difficult. At least visit her. A new baby would calm her. And people are starting to whisper about Liu Mingyan falling out of favor."

Liu Mingyan, at least, was happy enough to let him take a nap on her settee instead of fucking her, and would be amenable to drinking a miraculous conception elixir in interest of keeping the peace, but Xiao Gongzhu... Privately, he hoped her poisoning attempts backfired one day.

He stroked Xiao Mao's head with his fingertips, and she vibrated in a soothing purr.

"I see you got a cat...?" said Ning Yingying, looking about as bemused as one would be to find her husband with his first pet in many decades.

"Xiao Mao," he introduced her.

"Mao," said Xiao Mao.

Ning Yingying smiled for the first time since he'd walked into the room... and probably for the first time in several visits. "What a cutie."

"Mm-hm," Luo Binghe agreed with a small smile of his own, and scritched her behind the ears.

Xiao Mao purred louder.

After a moment, he said, "Do you think if I give her some very good dreams and feed her a potion...?"

"A-Luo, a wife is a lifetime responsibility," Ning Yingying chided with a stern point, but immediately undercut it with a sigh. "...Maybe. You should make them very, very good though. Maybe stretch it out over a few weeks."

His sigh came out more relieved than he meant it to.

Ning Yingying tilted her head. "Everything okay, Junshang? It's unlike you to be so... uninterested."

He couldn't say, I've been fucking one woman unconscious every night for two months and it hasn't gotten boring yet, so I'm not in the mood to switch it up, without raising questions he didn't want to answer, so he said nothing.

Xiao Mao headbutted his jaw and licked him with the very tip of her barbed tongue, concerned.

(When she was pushed beyond shame, knees to her chest, five orgasms in, the look in her eyes softened into a kind of awed adoration that felt like it was aimed at him, not his titles or prowess, so knowing and accepting that it cut to the bone. He'd been coming faster and harder for that look than he had in decades. The idea of giving that up in exchange for tying up a vicious brat for a spanking or submitting to Liu Mingyan's remote beauty sounded... profoundly uninspiring.)

"A-Luo?"

He shook his head. "Not in the mood."

Ning Yingying was puzzled, but let him be, for which he was grateful.

"I'm heading out tomorrow," he said, standing. "Thank you, Yingying."

"Take care, Junshang," she said with a faint smile.

He retreated to his suite, setting Xiao Mao on the bed as he undressed, and she looked around with even more interest than before.

When they were both lying in bed, him lying on his side and her curled into the nest of blankets he'd arranged for her, she cautiously whispered, "Junshang... why not attend your other wives?"

He was silent for a moment, wondering at the strange sting in his chest. "Didn't I say it before? I'm not in the mood."

"Is this room so bad?" she wondered dryly, touching his forehead with her nose. "You certainly seem 'in the mood' on the road."

He drew her out of the nest and into his chest; she wasn't big enough for a proper cuddle, but it was still better than not touching her at all. "Something like that." He closed his eyes. "Sleep."

Her single tail waved thoughtfully, but in the end, she obligingly tucked her head under his chin and began to doze.

Two weeks later, they were tied up in a cell together, in immortal binding cables, waiting to be transferred to the bandits' main hideout. Xiao Mao had, somehow, been mistaken for the local shrine maiden, despite her very clear demonic traits, and Luo Binghe had gotten himself captured right alongside her.

The bandits, led by a treasure hunting duo, had gotten their information on the local artifacts by dosing her with Tonic of a Thousand Truths—a fairly safe truth potion that would make the victim babble one thousand truths and then wear off naturally, with nothing but a few spilled secrets worth of damage—and Luo Binghe was discovering, to his absolute mortification, that he really might be 'just as easy' for her as she was for him.

"I would never have admitted to it, but I dreamed of your cock for so long, Junshang," she breathed, scarlet in the face and ears quivering in humiliation. "That's the hundred and eighteenth fact. Every time I read—heard another tale of your newest wife, I imagined I was her and couldn't stop touching myself—that's the hundred and twentieth fact."

If she didn't shut up, he was going to explode. And, currently, she physically could not shut up. She couldn't delay by talking about how she felt about having to say it out loud, either, because she'd run through those already before she thought to start counting off the facts to double their weight.

The next safest ('safest') topic appeared to be talking about how desperately she wanted her lover (very unlikely to contain vital secrets, very likely to embarrass whoever was listening in so much they tuned it all out), so he was on his knees, arms bound behind his back, unable to break free and take her against whatever surface they met first, and he was so aroused he couldn't think.

She'd already told him, at length, what it felt like to take his cock in every position—from behind on all fours felt like she could taste him in her mouth, mating press made her feel like she had been born solely to be bred by him, curled around each other front-to-front made her feel treasured in ways she'd never dreamed of being treasured before—and he was panting hard, barely remembering to swallow down the drool before it could escape him and turn him into nothing more than a slavering beast, and she still had four hundred and forty truths to go.

He loved this stupid potion. He hated it. He wanted it to break immediately. He wanted to keep her dosed up on it indefinitely.

"Wh-when I heard that you'd taken Qin Wanyue for your first, all I could think was that I would do it better. That's the hundred and twenty second fact. Even a dumb virgin like me could have treated you better, if I was her. That's the hundred and twenty fourth fact."

In the back of his mind, he wondered where she'd found that information, when her seer blood seemed more focused on flora and fauna, but the note of sulky possessiveness in her voice was doing things at the base of his spine, and he found a part of himself wishing he was seventeen, terrified, taking up with a pretty girl because she'd begged for it as her dying wish, only to be met with his kitty cat's raw adoration and thinly-veiled eager attention.

...Although, he might take any situation in which he was free to touch her at the moment. He was going to go insane for real this time.

"I want it so bad right now," she said, and chewed her lip around her cute needle-point fangs. She looked like she'd rather die than say any of this, and he wanted to devour her. "That's the hundred and twenty sixth fact. Sometimes when you tease me, I imagine sitting on your face just to shut you up. That's the hundred and twenty eighth fact. I'm so upset about having these teeth because that means I can't suck your cock. That's the hundred and thirtieth fact. I've gotten myself off so many times imagining blowing Junshang on his throne. That's the hundred and thirty second fact. He would look so fucking good like that, I—that's the hundred and thirty fourth fact."

If he'd been in his right mind, he would have teasingly ordered her to finish that thought. As it was, he was one or two more vivid fantasies or perhaps another obscenity away from embarrassing himself fully clothed in a jail cell.

"I still can't believe I know what Luo Binghe looks like when he's about to come," she blurted, and the rare, reverent use of his name jolted his stomach almost as hard as his cock. "I still can't believe I know that because he's spending every night coming inside me so many times I fall asleep feeling cum-bloated—"

And he was done.

Gasping as he emptied his balls into his pants, he tried not to notice the thrill the humiliation sent through him. He had plenty of kinks and he really didn't need a new one, especially not this one.

Xiao Mao bit her tongue for long enough for him to regain his bearings after the (frankly incredible) orgasm she'd just been forced to give him, and he rewarded her by saying, "You know, I could teach you how to hide those fangs. So you can properly blow your Junshang on his throne."

Her blush redoubled as she frantically chewed her tongue, then she spat out, "Yes, please, I want to, so m—that's the hundred and thirty eighth fact."

He grinned, and she glowered.

So worth having to deal with the bandits and kidnappees with cum-stained pants.

He'd told her he wouldn't abstain from sex with others. Keeping her peace about it had explicitly been a condition of her joining him.

...So why did he feel like he was doing something wrong right now?

They (well, he) had just saved a small town from demonic troubles, and the mayor's daughter had been the clear damsel in distress—heaving bosom, doe eyes, rosy cheeks and all—and was very clearly willing to offer her body and hand in marriage in thanks.

He shouldn't be hesitating. It wasn't even like he'd gotten bored of her, like he had the rest of his harem. He would be able to go through the joy of discovery again, the satisfaction of learning all her buttons and using them to make her shriek.

But.

Xiao Mao averted her eyes whenever she looked at her, her carefully controlled expression unable to disguise the slight dip of her ears or the agitated flick of the tip of her tail, and it made the new girl a little less attractive every time.

Now, leaving his and Xiao Mao's shared room to find the girl, motions almost entirely born of habit, he saw her claws flex in and out of the pillow she hugged, her ears laid flat back, the faint rumble of her purr at a tone for healing instead of happiness, and felt... wrong.

Fuck that. He didn't gain nearly a hundred lovers by caring about one woman's little jealousy tells. Pointedly ignoring them was just how Luo Binghe operated.

He got as far as kissing the girl (whose name he really just could not remember) before he realized that the shape of her was killing his desire for sex in the first place, feeling ugly and dirty where they touched. The kiss was too wet; her moans too breathy; her body too buxom, too short; her eyes... too distant.

She'd gag and run if he told her half the things that went through his mind. She wouldn't hesitate to leave him to his fate if things got too dangerous. She didn't... she was wrong.

He didn't bother to give her a decent excuse before he left, leaving her spluttering indignantly.

He returned to the room he shared with Xiao Mao, snapping the door shut behind him and making use of the lock.

"...Junshang?"

He didn't answer; he had the horrible suspicion that if he opened his mouth, he would apologize and Junshang didn't apologize, ever, but especially not when he had done nothing wrong.

He shucked his outer robes and cleaned his face at the small vanity, trying to scrub the feeling of that kiss off of him. He couldn't remember ever having an embrace that had shut down his libido like this, and it was disconcerting. He wanted it off.

Xiao Mao rose, the picture of feline grace, and padded over to him, fluffy ears pricked in curiosity. She ran a hand down his back, soothing. "You're back... sooner than I thought. Did something happen?"

He swallowed down the apology with great effort. "Wasn't feeling it."

He felt her startle and stare at him in disbelief. "I didn't know the great Junshang was capable of 'not feeling it'."

Neither had he, but why did her saying it sting?

He avoided her gaze, and felt her soften. She asked, "You want...?" and picked up the comb to wave it in his peripheral vision.

Silently, he nodded.

It took him much longer to relax than it usually did, even with his arms around her waist and his nose buried in her flat stomach, but when her purr finally shifted from healing to content, he felt the heat start to properly unfurl in his gut.

...Eighty six wives was a respectable number of wives, he supposed. No real need to add to the collection now. Surely that would only cause more trouble for the harem, and god knew Ning Yingying didn't need any more of that.

He took Xiao Mao slowly at first, then gained speed and fervor as she gasped and clung and came, again and again. He choked out, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," to her collarbone as the slapping of flesh and the vice-like clutch of her jarred it out of him, and prayed she didn't hear it.

He left her body a mess of hickeys and bruises and scratches that he commanded his blood parasites to prevent healing, like he could somehow mark himself in the vision of her, and felt... marginally better, if only just.

He had not fucked up a portal with Xin Mo in many, many years, and certainly never to the point where he was having a brief but vicious altercation with an exact double of himself, which ended with him so injured, he ended up staggering into the arms of a long-dead ghoul.

Shen Qingqiu was not a face he'd ever wanted to see again, ever, and the idea that he might have escaped the long, arduous process of destroying him mind, body, soul, and body again made Luo Binghe's veins turn to ice—but, as injured as his double left him, he couldn't fight back, only snarl through the pain whenever the man opened his mouth.

(And, somewhere in the middle of it, the cadence of the man's voice tugged at the back of his mind—uncanny and nauseating, and just confusing enough to still his hand. He was familiar, not as Luo Binghe's long-dead enemy, but as... something else. He woke up from being healed through the night wondering why the source of that qi, clear and spiritual as it was, wasn't purring.)

Xin Mo was gone in this world, which meant he needed to find another way back, circling this... strangely non-violent vision of his scumbag teacher for information.

Whoever 'Luo Binghe' had been in this world, he'd been... young. Fully grown, but still a disciple, just the same as Ming Fan (alive, hatefully, if he had to stay here he would be the first to go, since apparently his double had ended up too pathetic to do it) and Ning Yingying.

He approached Ning Yingying first.

"Yingying," he started the conversation, hoping his first wife had at least some of the answers to this puzzle (she always did), then blinked when she recoiled.

"What is wrong with you, A-Luo?!"

Damn, he thought. Was the break up really that bad?

"Did you hit your head?" she demanded, her pretty face pale. She looked to be in her mid-twenties or so now—around the age they'd gotten married. "'Yingying'?! That's terrifying!!"

He blinked again. Even if they'd broken up, she was acting like she'd never heard him call her that, which was... odd. He'd been calling her that for years at this age, hadn't he?

"Why didn't you call me 'Ning-shijie'?!"

"Ning-shijie," he corrected obediently, and felt... utter relief?

She sighed in relief herself, patting her chest, and gave him a much more cheerful smile, happier to see him than she'd been in a long, long time. His chest twinged oddly.

And then she fed him some entirely bizarre drivel about Shen Qingqiu doting on him, and how, supposedly, he was possessive of the chores around that absolute bastard's place of residence, and it was only his long-held beliefs about never raising his hand against a woman that kept her from becoming a qi-charred roast on the spot.

He escaped that conversation as quickly as possible. Perhaps his ever-reliable wife had come by a qi deviation in this world, and that was why everything was so incredibly strange.

He went to his next most reliable wife—Liu Mingyan.

She was at Xian Shu Peak, still a disciple, and respectfully addressed him as 'Luo-shixiong' before he could so much as get a word out—and immediately assumed, just the same as Ning Yingying, that he was there on business for Shen fucking Qingqiu, like a loyal dog or perhaps an especially pathetic servant.

...Maybe it was his alternate self that had qi deviated, and come out the other side without a fucking brain.

(It was strange to realize that the only part that upset him about this was the fact that that scum's name kept coming up with the assumption that Luo Binghe paid him any respect. He had neither expected nor wanted Liu Mingyan to want him. It would have been nice, maybe, if she regarded him as warmly as Ning Yingying regarded him, but Liu Mingyan hadn't regarded anyone that warmly in a long, long time, especially not him. And he...

He didn't miss it.)

The three Taoist nuns who had given him a handful of enjoyable nights and then vanished into the depths of the Inner Palace together fidgeted, staring at him and blushing, and he didn't particularly feel like returning their attentions either.

He wondered if he would find Xiao Mao here.

...He hoped not. He didn't think he could take it if she looked at him with that same cool distance as Ning Yingying and Liu Mingyan.

The three nuns left a book in their absence that he idly picked up to keep himself occupied while waiting for Liu Mingyan. Regret of Chunshan.

He got three pages in, then skipped around, then narrowly avoided being sick. Or, perhaps, qi deviating himself. Perhaps he already had, and this was all a spectacularly strange hallucination.

Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu.

It was clearly just erotica with highly dubious choice of main characters, but the fact that his double hadn't yet eradicated every copy on the face of this sorry continent spoke further to the absolute insanity of this entire farce.

He turned the book to so much ash in his palm and wished Xiao Mao were here to whine at about it. He hadn't been without her for this long since he'd met her. He missed...

...Huh.

He returned to the man at the center of it all before Liu Mingyan returned with Qi Qingqi.

Shen Qingqiu made him wait, bringing back years long past of being made to wait for his punishments, and by the time the man walked through the door, Luo Binghe was nearly vibrating.

"...Binghe?" said Shen Qingqiu, gentle and melodious, and suddenly Luo Binghe understood Ning Yingying's reaction when he'd switched up the address on her.

Luo Binghe raised the training sword he'd picked up on the way back and aimed it at the Xiu Ya Sword's throat. "Thanking Shizun for his tender care. This Junshang would like to know what his intentions are, and why everyone in this forsaken dimension thinks you shouldn't be in a pickle pot."

It gave him at least some satisfaction to see the man blanch whiter than bone. "Binghe—"

Luo Binghe shifted his grip on his sword, as though preparing a swing, and saw Shen Qingqiu take a step back and start to form a sword seal. "You will address me as Junshang. And you will tell me, in detail, what you've done to my double, so that I may tally your sins for the retribution you deserve. Have you made him a cauldron? A thrall? Everyone here seems to think he's your eager servant."

It was a sick kind of pleasure to see his old tormentor stagger back a few more steps, clearly terrified in the way he had made Luo Binghe feel over and over again, the kind of terror his own shizun had never afforded him, no matter how hard he tried.

This version understood exactly how awful his deeds were, and knew he was getting what he deserved.

"Shizun!!"

...Of course the fucking thrall would reappear now.

No sooner had a boy wearing his face and clothes appeared than a second voice, wonderfully familiar, cried out, "Junshang!! Junshang, wait!!"

Without really thinking about it, Luo Binghe lowered his borrowed sword.

Xiao Mao, in her human form, froze at the scene—and the duplication of her Junshang—before meeting his eye and lighting up in relief. "Junshang!!"

She rushed to him in much the same way Shen Qingqiu rushed to his double's side, and he spared only a moment to make sure she was alright before shuffling her behind him, so he stood between her and the scum villain.

And, thus, they were at a standoff.

One that Shen Qingqiu broke by saying under his breath, in a very strange voice, "...Wife number eighty-six?" Then he raised his volume. "You, er, cat. What's your name?"

Xiao Mao glanced at him briefly, carelessly. "Shen Yuan."

If Shen Qingqiu had been struck by a bolt of lightning at that moment, he would look less shocked. "...You're a wife?!"

For some reason, that took Xiao Mao's attention off of Luo Binghe. She stared at his old shizun with at least half as much shock. "Who—?"

"Peerless cucumber," said Shen Qingqiu, faint and enigmatic in equal measure. While ordinarily Luo Binghe would have enjoyed anything that flustered his hated master this much, he didn't much like that it was mutual familiarity with Xiao Mao that was flustering him now.

In the corner of his eye, he saw her tails puff. "You're the scum villain!"

"You're a wife," Shen Qingqiu repeated with an edge of hysteria. He pointed his closed fan at Xiao Mao. "You're a woman?!"

"At least I didn't beat him half to death and shove him in the Endless Abyss!!" she shot back, which... a tug at the back of his mind made him wonder how much he could pin this on seer blood, when there was clearly something else going on.

Shen Qingqiu flinched, paling once again, and Luo Binghe's double rushed to his side with an expression that was incredibly befitting of a loyal dog. No wonder everyone had made their assumptions about them. Ugh.

"Scum villain," Xiao Mao repeated, ignoring the glare his double shot her for it. Good girl. "What, did you turn this into a Green JJ dog blood danmei?"

Shen Qingqiu, interestingly, appeared to understand this string of nonsense syllables as something noteworthy, and turned from white to red in record time, fan snapping up too late to hide the look.

"Oh, my god," Xiao Mao said faintly. "You did."

"Shut up," Shen Qingqiu hissed, getting even redder. "It's none of your business. You're a woman!"

"At least I didn't make the novel change sites!"

"Oh, I'm sure you stayed so faithful to the vision."

"The vision was absolute tripe, but at least I'm still on Zhongdian Lit!"

"What genre, wife number eighty-six?"

Xiao Mao turned a pretty shade of red and gritted out, "...Erotic Romance."

This signaled the end of the screaming match. Shen Qingqiu folded his fan slowly, and gave Xiao Mao an indescribable look. "Did they rename it, 'How I Became a Catgirl and Seduced the Stallion Demon Lord'?"

"I don't want to hear it from a Green JJ gay," Xiao Mao sniffed.

"Shizun," Luo Binghe's pathetic double broke in carefully. "Do you... know this woman?" There was a clear edge of jealousy that Luo Binghe found himself unwillingly sympathizing with.

Shen Qingqiu and Xiao Mao traded an irksomely communicative look, and then Shen Qingqiu started, "We... well. Due to... various matters, she and I are... duplicates. Like you two. Sort of." It seemed to cost him something immeasurable to say, which was a comfort, if a chilled one.

Xiao Mao nodded in concurrence.

Silence.

Luo Binghe wrapped a definitive arm around his Xiao Mao, and gave the strange man claiming to be her a glare as his duplicate latched onto him with a monkey-like cling. He formed a sword seal, summoning Xin Mo out of his duplicate's grip and dissolving the talismans suppressing it with a little push of power.

"I'm going home," he said, ever polite. "Xiao Mao."

She obligingly shifted into her cat form and hopped up onto his shoulder, headbutting his jaw with a trilling meow, and with a moment of concentration, he slashed a portal back to his own dimension.

Much later, after they'd stopped at an expensive inn and he'd had a chance to put his mouth all over her in a more proper greeting, he sucked a messy hickey into her inner thigh and announced, "I'm dissolving the harem."

"...What?!"

Ning Yingying took this news about as well he'd expected.

She gave him a long stare, then exhaled a massive sigh and said, "You're not just doing this so you don't have to visit Xiao Gongzhu, right?"

Elbow on knee and chin on fist, he gave her a flat look. "Of course not. If that was all, I'd just kick her out."

She arched an eyebrow right back. "And Xin Mo's backlash is something you can handle without having a harem to help?"

He nodded. Xin Mo cared surprisingly little for the harem right now, for all that it had jealously coveted and protected it for as long as he'd had one. Xiao Mao had been keeping it well-sated.

Ning Yingying folded her arms, leaning back. "And you know how much effort it will be to get them back if you change your mind? Some might not come back at all."

They both knew that wasn't true; anything he set out to get, he would get eventually.

"I won't."

"What are we doing with the children?"

"They may stay or go."

Ning Yingying rolled her eyes, and he shot her a bland look.

"Keep them in education, make sure they have enough money to live how they like," he elaborated. "The younger ones can stay in the Inner Palace as long as they need to."

"And the wives?"

"The same."

The twist of her mouth was wry. "And... me?"

"A salaried position," he said, waving a hand. He was under no illusions that he could run this place a fraction as well as she could. "You can decide how much. You always did know your worth better than I did."

That, finally, wrung a real smile out of his first wife. "Careful, Junshang, or I might steal it all."

"Forced to wander the lands as a rogue cultivator... earning my way doing night hunts... never knowing where I'll end up next..." He grinned at her. "Nostalgic."

She tapped his head with a clean calligraphy brush. "Brat," she said fondly.

They hashed out a few more details, and she promised she would have the official documents ready for him to stamp by the time he visited home next. He responded by handing her his stamp.

At her look, he raised his eyebrows. "Do you want to wait for me?" Haven't you done enough of that already?

She took the stamp and grumbled, "I'm paying myself double for this, just so you know."

"Let me know if I need to conquer a few more realms to cover it," he said, and stood. "Yingying."

She stood as well, tilting her head.

He pulled her into a rough hug, burying one hand in her hair and breathing her in. His first friend, the third person in this world to ever love him and the only one to have known him then and lived long enough to see him now. "Thank you." He exhaled on the edge of a laugh. "My heart's been spoken for, but if there's anything else you need from me, just ask."

He felt her give him an odd look for the 'spoken for' comment, and wondered briefly if he'd said too much, but then she gave serious thought to the question.

"...A miraculous conception elixir. I miss having children."

He squeezed her, and she squeezed back. "Consider it done."

Ning Yingying followed him out of their private meeting chamber, past the silencing wards, and saw Xiao Mao near a statue as the cat habitually cleaned her long, graceful tail.

"Xiao Mao," Luo Binghe said, feeling the stress of the past few days sluice off him like water, a smile he couldn't fight stealing over is face.

"Mao," she replied, and leapt into his arms happily, giving him a purring headbutt as he scritched her shoulder blades.

"Hang on," Ning Yingying squeaked, a strange look on her face as she looked rapidly between him and Xiao Mao. "Hang on, hang on, hang on. Your heart—the cat?!"

"Now, Yingying," he scolded, fighting embarrassment and a grin both, "don't talk about my precious Xiao Mao that way."

She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, pale. "Qi deviated. He's qi deviated. We're doomed. All of us, doomed."

"Prrrrrow?" asked Xiao Mao, flicking her tail in idle curiosity.

For a moment, he debated pros, cons, and comedic timing, then decided, fuck it, and said, "I told her I was in love with you, and I'm afraid she's not taking it well."

The words in love sat oddly on his tongue, weighty and unfamiliar and terrifying, but it was worth it for Xiao Mao's ear-splitting shriek of, "You're WHAT?!"

He muffled giddy laughter in the fur of her side, and beside them, Ning Yingying muttered, "Well, at least it's a talking cat. That's better, right? ...Right?"

Xiao Mao was squirmy and blushing for weeks after that revelation, coming apart under him easier than ever and shyly stealing kisses when she would have simply given him a 'come hither' look before, and he couldn't say it was good for his health, but a heavenly demon could heal from just about anything, and... you know.

It still took him a while to work up to what he wanted to do.

He cheerfully taught her how to retract her canines and helped her suck his cock on his throne, the wrecked, awed adoration in her eyes doing even more for him than the adorably clumsy tongue playing with the head.

He made her his empress, decked out his rooms to share, and defended her from no less than three assassination attempts from his former wives.

He (with difficulty) convinced her to drink another truth tonic, this time with the freedom to act on all the filthy things she was forced to admit, and she refused to look him in the eye for the next week.

He grumbled to her about the absurd alternate dimension he had been subjected to after Xin Mo's mistake, and she sighed about chasing his double all over the place while he ignored her, and he made it up to her by burying his face between her thighs for a shichen.

After all that, it was still... intimidating to do this.

"Jue Di Gorge?" she asked wonderingly as they made camp a little bit away from the overgrown valley that had once been an abyssal rift, long ago. "This is where the Immortal Alliance Conference used to be hosted, isn't it?"

He hummed from inside the tent, forced himself to drink the elixir he'd brought for this exact moment, and waited for it to take effect.

When he left the tent, he was physically seventeen again, a mock-up of the cradle seal back in place and wearing a white disciple's outfit—the closest he could bring himself to wearing Qing Jing colors. He held his hands behind his back so she couldn't see the tremors.

He wasn't a powerful, untouchable emperor like this. Not her beloved Junshang. He was a human—scrawny, weak, young. He'd had faith that she would love him just the same, but standing before her like this reared insecurities he hadn't felt in a very long time.

She gasped. "Junshang?!"

He bit the inside of his cheek and forced his voice to be steady as he said, "Nope. I'm your Luo-shidi now... Shen-shijie."

To his relief (and burst of affection), she turned bright red. "...Oh."

It was a silly thing to call her, maybe, seeing as she was very clearly a demon, but he liked saying it anyway. In another world...

"You did say you'd thought about my first time," he explained, scrabbling for every little bit of face he possessed to say it as breezily as he did. "And it sounded like you thought about it quite a lot. So I was... curious." Read: incredibly aroused. "How would you deflower this shidi of yours, Shen-shijie?"

It wouldn't be difficult for her to be better than Qin Wanyue, and he wanted to taste it.

(The curiosity had come to him he more he thought about that other world, and how that other version of him had never bothered with a harem, instead devoting himself to a single person who claimed to be the same soul as Xiao Mao. Giving up the harem he'd collected after coming to know her had been absurdly easy—if he'd had her at the start, would he ever have bothered collecting them at all?)

She blushed deeper, a few complicated expressions flickering across her face, then she sighed and shot him a certain look. "Couldn't you have warned me that tonight I'd be taking the innocence of my sweet little didi?"

He frantically directed the blood parasites away from his dick but couldn't focus well enough to keep them from his face, and told himself for the sake of his dignity that he was only reacting this strongly because this body was a seventeen year old virgin.

"That would have spoiled the surprise," he replied, looking away from the almost predatory gleam in her eye. "And that's Luo-shidi to you."

"Sorry, sorry," she said, insincere, a hint of fangs in her smile as she strolled towards him, every inch of her feline. "Luo-di."

Luo Binghe gulped, his traitorous feet backing him up against a tree as she closed the distance. Junshang might have corrected her again, but seventeen year old Luo Binghe would apparently have been soaked rice paper in her hands.

The shade of her smile changed as she approached, and by the time she had him against the tree, it had gone from predatory to earnestly delighted.

"White lotus Luo Binghe," she said, almost to herself as she studied him. White what? "I thought I was too late to ever meet him, given how toasty my Junshang was when we met." She caught his chin and made him look down at her dilated starry green eyes, the distinctly un-cat-like smile dancing on her lips. She blushed and traced his lower lip with her thumb. "Can... can I really?"

Luo Binghe leaned against the tree for much-needed support and nodded weakly. He had entirely lost contact with his blood parasites now.

The kiss was unbearably soft, and he pretended he didn't know what he was doing just so he could feel her guide him with little touches and whispered instructions.

Together, they slid to the ground, where Shen-shijie used fussing over his comfort as an excuse to touch him more—or maybe she was using touching him as an excuse to make sure he was comfortable—and the sweetness of it all was making his teeth ache like nothing else. She admired the scrawny, half-grown planes of his torso with gentle strokes and urged his hands to play with her breasts, first over her clothes and then beneath them.

He could blame it on being as close to human as he'd been since he was actually seventeen, or he could blame it on this body being unused to touch, or he could blame it on Xiao Mao having learned every one of his preferences over their months together, but he knew it wasn't any of those.

It was that she was looking at him, touching him, teaching him and responding in turn, while he was in a state he'd never once thought of worthy of it.

She made him lie back, and then she made him move when a tree root dug into his back, and then placed a pillow of her robes under his head, and by that point, he was chewing his lip bloody in order not to explode—into orgasm, tears, or both. He was going to be absolutely mortified if he made it out of this alive.

"Ah, didi, don't do that," she whispered to him, drawing his lip out with her fingertips and leaving a trail of healing qi behind. She paused, struggled with herself, took a deep breath, and gave him an exceptionally brave smile to say, "You're too sweet for that."

Even a dumb virgin like me could have treated you better, if I was her, he remembered her saying, and it sounded like—it sounded like this was something she'd imagined saying to him before.

The little whimper that tore out of his throat was entirely unpremeditated.

When she freed his cock and gave it a friendly, familiar stroke, he had a brief moment of being able to tell himself that it was just because she knew his body so well and he had been—unprepared, and that was why he—

And then she asked so sweetly if he was ready, waited for him to nod, and then fitted it into her entrance and sank down on him slowly, holding onto his hips like she fully expected him to try to sheathe himself too fast and was prepared for it.

He couldn't. He was frozen to the core, watching his second most vulnerable part slide into the hot, tight, wonderful clutch of her, unable to look away until their hips met and he was surrounded to the hilt.

And then he looked up.

She met his eye and smiled with every last drop of adoration in her.

He came. He came harder than he ever had in his life.

He threw both arms over his face as his gasp turned into a sob, tears spilling free as his hips desperately jacked into her with exactly no leverage, and she yelped and started fussing over him again, so sweet he knew he really was going to die this time, and—

Well. He had his answer now.

If she'd given him a fraction of this before the world had turned him cold, he would have been hers, only hers, for good. There would have been no point in bothering with anyone else.

He let her pry his arms away from his wet face as he came down from the peak, and she kissed his slack mouth in a gesture that sent him instantly into a second crest right on the heels of the first, which he hadn't known his body was capable of.

When he recovered, she guided him through thrusting because he was too overwhelmed to remember how to keep a fucking rhythm, then finger-combed his hair as she showed him how to eat her out, then explored the tip of his cock with her mouth while jerking him off, and he was the one fucked into unconsciousness before the elixir even wore off—a first in their relationship.

When he drifted into consciousness again, he was cleaned up and tucked into his bedroll with Xiao Mao curled up beside him naked, reading one of her trashy novels with a frown of intense concentration.

He watched her as all the different bits of him floated back in from wherever they'd been, and then he said, "Xiao Mao."

She looked up. "Mao?"

He smiled, feeling made of syrup and sweetness. "I love you."

She choked on air, and he could feel her heart slam against her chest where she rested against him. She spluttered her way around an answer. "I'm—me too—I mean, I l-l-lo-..."

"Hm?" he prompted, smiling wider.

Her face looked like it could fry an egg, and he craved the heat against his lips. "I... l-love you. Too." Then she snapped her teeth at him adorably, embarrassed into anger. "But—it's. It's a secret. Don't tell anyone."

He was about to tell her that he didn't need to, because anyone who looked at her could see it anyway, but then she continued.

"Especially not fucking Airplane," she hissed, and then continued to rattle off odd words he supposed were names of people she knew from her seer powers, and had gotten herself into a truly ranting mood by the time he decided they should be kissing instead, and summarily cut her off.

"Oh," she breathed, and melted.

"Mm-hm," he agreed, and drew her back in to while away the next shichen or two in hazy bliss.