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Xue Meng wakes up feeling like nothing so much as ground dumpling filling.
“What happened,” he says, groggily, lifting a hand to his head as he sits up. Does his voice sound weird? Is the room supposed to spin this much? He feels like he can taste the color teal.
“I told you not to touch the ancient weapon, Sect Leader Xue!” a terrified-sounding voice is saying. When Xue Meng’s two eyes (is that how many eyes people have? two?) have finally focused on the speaker, it turns out to be a minor cultivator, who’s currently hovering over Xue Meng as though he thinks he should help him sit up but would rather cut out his own lungs than touch such an illustrious sect leader.
“Stop leaning over me,” Xue Meng says, annoyed, scrubbing at his face. The weird undulations of color in his vision are fading, but his voice still sounds strange. He glares a little at the man, who’s now scooted back an unnecessary three body lengths from him.
That’s right- he remembers this cultivator. He’d come to Sisheng Peak to ask for their help; had insisted on speaking to the sect leader only; had brought evidence of a rogue magical weapon that none but the renowned sect head Xue Ziming himself could handle!
And, in his eventual hard-won private conversation with an increasingly less skeptical Xue Meng, he had revealed that the cultivator mastering the spiritual weapon… could grant additional strength not only to himself, but to the others with him at the time of his mastery! Thus the need for Xue Meng to go with him alone, so as not to divide the richness of the spiritual energy between too many parties; Xue Meng could take the greatest share, and the lesser cultivator, whose name Xue Meng had already forgotten, would be satisfied with the scraps.
Or such was the plan. Now, Xue Meng is wondering at his willingness to go along with this obvious COWARD who can’t even MANAGE TO PROTECT A SECT HEAD who’s doing him a favor!!
He tries to say as much to the man, but only gets to “wondering” before he stops, to clear his throat.
He fixes the man with a glare.
“You said this was an ancestral object passed down through your family, right?” he says. His voice still sounds strange.
He clears his throat once again. “What are the potential… side effects?”
“Uh,” the man says, starting to sweat. “Yes, it, um- it definitely belonged to my family, yes. I, uh- the knowledge that I got may have been- secondhand? Not entirely complete?”
Xue Meng is starting to feel well enough that the idea of getting to his feet and slicing this man in half with Longcheng doesn’t seem that distant. The cultivator must be able to read some of that in his expression, because he immediately slams his head into the ground and starts begging for mercy, blatant brown-nosing compliments mixed in with his pleas.
Xue Meng’s temper is rising as he listens to the descriptions of his wisdom, his skill, his graceful appearance- okay, all of those ones are true, but does this fool have to make them sound like that?!- until one phrase throws him completely off track.
He gets to his feet and strides over to the man, seizing him by the shoulder and causing him to jump.
“What did you say?” he says, voice strangled.
“That you make a beautiful woman, my lord, that none would even think to compare with your level of beauty, that of all side effects, at least this one has the benefit of blessing the world with your scintillating presence-”
Xue Meng releases the man’s shoulder and steps back. His head whips around the room, before he fumbles at his waist and draws Longcheng to use as a mirror.
…
The cultivator makes it out alive, 45 minutes of yelling and throwing things later, but barely.
---------------------
“No,” Xue Meng says, firmly.
“But you must,” the- doddering, decrepit, totally foolish!- elder says meaningfully. “How long will Sect Leader Xue be able to keep this secret from the entirety of Sisheng Peak? He must consult more knowledgeable resources before the information gets out.”
“Nonsense!” Xue Meng snaps, once more. His stupid voice is still too high! Also why do they make robes so rough? He swears there wasn’t this much chafing on his nipples when they didn’t stick out so far! “Our resources are certainly sufficient! You dare to insult our Sisheng Peak?!”
“Go speak to Sect Leader Jiang,” the elder says, unmoved. “Sisheng Peak will provide whatever resources are needed.”
Hah! Xue Meng would rather die than go speak to that… that despicable lowlife! So what if he’s stuck in this body, hiding his identity for a few days? He can handle that!
----------------------
“What a beauty,” a smooth voice comes, making the hair on the back of Xue Meng’s neck rise up. “Where have you come from, delicate flower? Are you new to Sisheng Peak?”
Xue Meng turns around, too angry to speak, to see- as expected, Mei Hanxue the younger.
Poaching disciples! Off Xue Meng’s peak, no less!
“No makeup?” Mei Hanxue says, somehow immediately, shockingly close. His thumb brushes over Xue Meng’s lip and Xue Meng almost has an infarction. “But such a beauty hardly needs any adornment. You must be one of the most beautiful women here; no, certainly the most beautiful, by far. What’s your name, pretty one?”
Xue Meng is in no way mollified by Mei Hanxue’s accurate summation of his beauty- he’s still popping mad, mad enough to slap Mei Hanxue’s hand away from his face.
“Don’t touch me!” he says, and by the time he gets back to his office, his hands have almost stopped shaking from- from anger! Anger and… and shock, that Mei Hanxue would be so disrespectful!
Well… it’s not really a shock. But to speak to him like that?!
“I still won’t go see Jiang Yechen,” he mutters to himself. His lip is tingling where Mei Hanxue touched it.
…
Tingling with ANGER!!!
----------------------
“Well,” Jiang Xi says, staring at Xue Meng cooly. “This is… interesting.”
“I don’t want to be here,” Xue Meng says, glaring. “Give me the cure so that I can go.”
“I certainly cannot give you the cure,” Jiang Xi says, sounding offended. Hey… what reason does he have to be offended?! Xue Meng is the one who’s missing his dick!
Jiang Xi continues, taking a long drag of his pipe. “The cure is dual cultivation. You must balance the excess of Yin energy in your body,” he says, gesturing to Xue Meng’s abdomen with his closed fan, “by having a partner infuse you with Yang energy,” and he gestures… slightly lower… on Xue Meng’s abdomen.
Xue Meng stares, mouth open.
“Does more need to be explained?” Jiang Xi asks, stupid face right on the edge of a sneer.
“I don’t need any explanations from you!” Xue Meng says, jumping to his feet. “My father already explained to me about these sorts of things!”
“About curing medical curses?” Jiang Xi asks, cold face raising one haughty eyebrow.
“Y...yes!” Xue Meng blusters. Obviously! About medical curses! Because that’s all this is! “I’ve had enough, I’m leaving!”
“Don’t forget to allow them to release their essence inside of you,” Jiang Xi says clinically after him, and goosebumps break across Xue Meng’s spine as he slams the door on his way out.
-------------------------
“Ah, you’re still here,” that superficially charming, annoying voice comes from behind Xue Meng, raising his hackles.
“You!” Xue Meng says, spinning around. “Shouldn’t a righteous cultivator know how to keep his hands to himself?!”
“No need to be so shy,” Mei Hanxue says, laughing; and just like last time, he’s already in Xue Meng’s space before he even realizes it, raising a hand to play with a lock of his hair. He runs it between his fingers and thumb, then raises it to his lips and drops a kiss against it, with what is surely a-
A wink.
Xue Meng. Has. Had it.
He sees red.
The sounds of spiritual energy clashing echo throughout Sisheng Peak, drawing various onlookers. Xue Meng has foregone carrying Longcheng so as to hide his identity, but it’s only half an hour in that he realizes that his identity might well be given away to someone who knows his techniques well, just through the movements of his attacks.
He realizes this, because as he throws himself into a full-force attempt to stab Mei Hanxue through like the rotten fruit ready to burst that he is, he sees his eyes widen. He sees his lips part. He sees him start to mouth what sounds like… the first part of…
Xue Meng’s name…
But after that his lips are obscured, because in the surprise of having his identity discovered, Xue Meng forgot to pull his attack and stabbed him quite cleanly through the abdomen.
Mei Hanxue pukes blood all over Xue Meng’s immaculate robes.
Well… they’re not his Sect Leader robes anyway.
…
Worth it.
------------------------------
Xue Meng definitely doesn’t feel any bit sorry for stabbing that bastard where it hurts, and the fact that he’s sitting with him in the infirmary, being talked into revealing things that would best be left unrevealed, is completely unrelated.
“Yes it can be cured,” he says.
...
“No I don’t have the cure yet,” he says.
…
“NO YOU CAN’T HELP!” he yelps, jumping to his feet.
…
Why… did Mei Hanxue’s eyes dip down to his chest level when he jumped…?
“I will stab you again,” he says, frostily.
“Is the cure perhaps…” Mei Hanxue says, lifting his eyes to Xue Meng’s face, trailing off.
“No!” Xue Meng says immediately. Why does his face feel hot?! “It’s definitely not that!”
“I didn’t even say anything,” Mei Hanxue says, offering his best (worst) winning smile. “What could Sect Leader Xue be thinking of?”
“Dual cultivation isn’t a valid technique to cure anything!” Xue Meng blurts out, before Mei Hanxue is even finished speaking.
Mei Hanxue’s eyebrows rise.
And keep rising.
“You, uh,” he says, voice sounding a little weird. “You need… to…?”
“You lie here and bleed to death,” Xue Meng says, and turns to slam his way out of the room.
---------------------------
Two weeks later, he spots Mei Hanxue outside late at night.
Xue Meng, it can be said, has had less luck than he anticipated in obtaining the... cure.
Forget women that meet his standards, there’s not a single man on the face of the planet that’s even vaguely close to them!
How can a beauty such as himself so calmly and reasonably walk up to men with the proposition of dual cultivating and be so terribly let down so many times? He knows that he has a few guidelines, but still…! His list is hardly exhaustive!
‘Are you a virgin,’ of course, has to be the first question. Someone who wouldn’t save themself for such an important occasion obviously doesn’t have any standards!
‘Penis size,’ of course, is a completely reasonable question to ask. Not that it matters, but if Xue Meng is going to be dual cultivating with a partner… they had better be up to standard.
‘Are you infected,’ of course, another completely reasonable question. He’s trying to improve his health here, not be afflicted with some new problem!
Why is it that after only these three questions- without even asking some of the more pressing ones, such as what sorts of noises they’re inclined to make during sexual intercourse, their standards for types of bedding and laundry habits, or if they’ve ever had untoward thoughts about their shizuns- he’s already been rejected out of hand?!
These people have no idea what opportunity they’re passing on!
All of this, Xue Meng has manage to convey, though in slightly less sober form, to the Mei Hanxue standing in front of him.
“...You’re drunk,” Mei Hanxue says, instead of responding to his very correct rant, pursing his lips.
“I know you’ll do it,” Xue Meng says, pointing at him. He is not drunk- he barely had a few cups of wine. “You don’t meet any of my standards, though.”
Mei Hanxue stares at him coolly. Xue Meng snorts.
“Well,” Xue Meng says, looking down at the jar by his side. “I’m going to have to be a lot more drunk for this.”
He raises the jar to his lips before passing it to Mei Hanxue, who takes it.
-----------------------
Xue Meng wakes up in bed next to an unconscious Mei Hanxue, who is still fully clothed. As is Xue Meng.
Xue Meng, who is DEFINITELY SOBER, and not a little bit pissed off that they fell asleep without doing what he came here to do, rolls Mei Hanxue onto his back so that he can start undoing his robes.
“What are you doing,” Mei Hanxue’s voice comes, startled and rough with sleep.
“It’s called dual cultivation,” Xue Meng says primly, “and with me like this, it will boost your cultivation too.”
“I don’t need that,” Mei Hanxue says, rudely full of himself, and Xue Meng glares at where he assumes his head is, in the darkness.
“Shut up,” he says, and Mei Hanxue makes some more annoyed noises, but starts helping him undo his clothing.
As he gets Mei Hanxue’s inner robe undone, Xue Meng finds himself making a startled noise as he’s suddenly rolled under Mei Hanxue.
“Why are you on top?” he says, annoyed, pushing at him.
“Do you know how to get on top?” Mei Hanxue asks, also annoyed.
Xue Meng glares into the darkness, and doesn’t say anything else, just yanks at his own belt until his robes fall apart. He and Mei Hanxue push their pants down at the same time, and then it’s suddenly… awkward.
“...What next,” Xue Meng says, lips pursed.
Mei Hanxue makes a hard to decipher noise, and then suddenly his hands are running roughly- and somewhat... dispassionately- along Xue Meng’s body.
“Hey!” Xue Meng snaps, slapping at his hands. “Watch it! Who said you could touch?”
“Just hold still,” Mei Hanxue says huffily. His hands find Xue Meng’s breasts- awkward, very awkward- his collarbones, his hips, his thighs; then, after groping around for a bit, shoulders his legs open with what Xue Meng very generously refrains from calling an ungraceful shove.
“You’re just going to…” Xue Meng trails off, voice slightly disbelieving. Is this how he always does it? Just sticks it in? It doesn’t seem very… appealing… hey Xue Meng hasn’t actually checked all that carefully, uh, down there, maybe he should make sure everything will fit together before trying to-
“Whoa whoa whoa!” he yelps, trying to snap his legs closed at the first brush of something against himself. “It won’t fit, it won’t fit!”
“Well then what do you want me to do?!” Mei Hanxue snaps, backing away.
“I don’t know, do something!” Xue Meng says complainingly, and with a pained noise, Mei Hanxue is suddenly…
Suddenly… uh... kissing… him…?
It turns out that kissing is…
Is…
Bad, actually.
“That’s disgusting,” Xue Meng says when their lips part, and Mei Hanxue makes an irritated noise and does it again.
It continues to be disgusting for the next few minutes, but on the plus side, something about Mei Hanxue’s warm body on top of him seems to be making the problem between his legs feel less problematic. Like it might be willing to… get with the procedure. The medical procedure. That they’re doing for medical reasons.
Xue Meng is definitely not still drunk.
“Okay, okay,” he says into Mei Hanxue’s lips. “It’s fine, you can-”
He makes a small noise that definitely doesn’t sound like “eep” as Mei Hanxue lines up and pushes himself in.
…
Okay, that feels fucking weird! Is it supposed to feel like that? Why does it feel like it’s pushing organs out of the way that shouldn’t be pushed out of the way?
Xue Meng wriggles a bit, to try to get… it… situated inside himself, and Mei Hanxue grunts, hips jerking slightly.
Xue Meng frowns. What was that? Why does he have to jerk around like that? His organs don’t want to be prodded!
“Hold still,” Mei Hanxue says, tight against his shoulder.
“What? Why?” Xue Meng says, irritated all over again.
“Just hold still,” Mei Hanxue says, and after a moment, Xue Meng’s mood improves suddenly.
He smiles, in the dark, where Mei Hanxue can’t see him. Not that he’d care if he could! Annoying Mei Hanxue, always so conceited. But look at him now!
“Is it possible,” Xue Meng says, smugly, “that the renowned Mei Hanxue is having trouble controlling himself?” He moves, slightly, to test his hypothesis. Mei Hanxue inhales sharply against his neck.
“That’s really all it takes?” Xue Meng says, wiggling again, trying not to sound curious. “Wow, I thought you would last longer than this. Is it always like this for you?”
“No,” Mei Hanxue grits out, into his neck.
“Oh? Am I just better than the other ones?” Xue Meng says, puffing his chest up slightly. “Am I the best you’ve ever been with?”
“Yes,” Mei Hanxue says, voice tight, and a sudden rush of... heat... goes through Xue Meng.
Uh.
Suddenly, the way his organs are getting pushed around is, uh… not as weird. Or, it’s still weird, but he’s not exactly, objecting. To the weirdness.
“Um,” he says, out loud. He’s stopped wiggling, but now Mei Hanxue is slowly drawing out of what is suddenly a very interested… problem… and pushing back in. It feels decidedly different than before. It’s kind of… good?
…
Captivating? Enthralling?
…
W… wet…?
“Um,” Xue Meng says once more, squirming again, and this time the way that Mei Hanxue’s hips stutter forward into him makes him shudder and clench in response.
That, suddenly, feels really good, and it’s not long before the jerky movements of their hips together have blended into a frankly embarrassing cascade of wet, squelchy noises that Xue Meng can’t even bring himself to object to, because he doesn’t want it to stop. Not yet, anyway. It feels like there’s something very important, something just out of reach, that he needs to get to before the gross squelching noises can stop- just, just a bit longer- or deeper, or- or-
“Do it harder!” he demands, in a manner totally befitting a sober person and a dignified sect leader, and he kicks a heel into Mei Hanxue’s back to punctuate his sentence. Mei Hanxue’s whole body shudders, and he shifts his weight up, grabbing Xue Meng’s thighs and starting to do it from a new angle. Somehow, that drives the thing inside Xue Meng against a place that feels not only like it’s not messing up the alignment of his internal organs, but like it’s actually- really- quite-
Xue Meng might be saying something, he can’t really hear himself, but the pressure that’s building up inside him suddenly gets five times as strong, and the way that Mei Hanxue is hammering into him is almost- almost- almost enough to- to-
It happens like this.
Xue Meng’s thighs clench, tight enough that he might be bruising himself against Mei Hanxue’s hipbones.
Mei Hanxue gasps out a noise that should be annoying, but for some reason provokes almost the exact same one from Xue Meng.
There’s suddenly something… wet… in between them. Uh, not that there’s any space in between them. There’s something wet… well. In a location.
For some reason, that sets Xue Meng’s weird body parts off. Definitely his body parts, because no piece of him is at all paying any mind to that, except for these weird, cursed body parts. Which are controlling his voice, as it starts making repeated noises that are rising in pitch. And the rest of his body, as it sweats and arches up and clings to Mei Hanxue’s surprisingly strong back, that’s equally sweaty under his hands, which is totally disgusting. Totally, absolutely disgusting, except for how it makes it easy for his hands to slide along the muscular lines of his spine, and his shoulder blades, and dig into the dip of his hips as he- as he- holy shit he’s-
Xue Meng jerks up as he comes, and slams his head into Mei Hanxue’s so hard that he sees stars and tastes blood.
It doesn’t stop his weird body parts from completely soaking the bed, as he ruins the sheets with a loud, excruciatingly uncensored moan.
-------------------------
“I wanted to say, uh, you know,” Xue Meng says to Mei Hanxue, who is looking his returned body up and down with a great deal of interest. “Thanks for. A few nights ago.”
“For what?” Mei Hanxue says, eyes lingering on his chest. Yes, there are no longer any breasts there; he was there when they got rid of them, hello?
Xue Meng glares. ‘For what,’ indeed. Like he’ll be tricked into saying it.
“You didn’t have to sneak out in the morning, is all I was going to say,” he says, turning away and crossing his arms.
Mei Hanxue is suddenly in front of him, grabbing both his elbows. Xue Meng jerks back, face flaming.
“Hey, no touching!” he says. Let a man dual cultivate with you for medical purposes once, and he feels entitled to grab?! Ridiculous!
“When you, ah, got the cure,” Mei Hanxue says, eyeing Xue Meng’s body again, this time with a look of doubt on his face. “Was there- was it, uh-”
Xue Meng looks at him, then smirks.
“You said I was the best you’d ever had,” he says, gloatingly, and Mei Hanxue goes pale.
“I have to speak to my brother,” he says, releasing Xue Meng and stepping back. Without another word, he disappears in a flutter of wind that stirs up a few leaves from the ground.
Xue Meng looks in the direction he disappeared to, frowning.
What a weirdo.
Well… at least he got his body back. And at least no one knows but the two of them.
------------------------------
Xue Meng looks up from the letter from Gu Yue Ye, bored of trying to decipher the characters. It appears to be a list of… medical conditions that people with certain body parts can suffer from? He wrinkles it with his fingers, on the verge of crumpling it up; then smooths it out again. Drums his fingers on the paper.
...Then rips it into tiny pieces with his hands.
He doesn’t need medical advice from Gu Yue Ye! He cured his own condition, all on his own, and there were zero side effects or embarrassing outcomes, which is more than can be said for Jiang Xi when he tried to stop the living scroll that time!
“Sect Leader Xue,” a disciple calls from the door of his study. “Two cultivators here to see you.”
Feeling confident, Xue Meng waves a hand flippantly at her. “What, haven’t you been trained enough to remember to announce their names? Send them in, send them in!”
The disciple bows and makes her way out; what was that expression on her face? Well, it doesn’t matter to Xue Meng, he’s riding high on his success, that his… his… that the UNRELATED CULTIVATOR who runs Gu Yue Ye had no part in! Haha!
As soon as the cultivators step through the door, though, Xue Meng knows why the disciple neglected to mention their names.
Mei Hanxue the younger saunters in, which Mei Hanxue the older fixes him with a cool look and closes the door, meaningfully, behind them.
Great.
“What do you want?” Xue Meng says, scowling. The younger brother may have done him a favor recently, but that doesn’t mean that-
“You stabbed me,” the younger Mei Hanxue says, “and you forgot about it?!”
…
Now that he thinks about it, maybe it was a little weird that he hadn’t been careful with his stomach during… during…
“So?” Xue Meng says, and the younger Mei Hanxue just points at his brother, indignantly.
Uh…
UH…...
----------------
“Wait,” Xue Meng trails off. “You said I was the best you’d had. I thought you were a…?”
“Yes. You were also the worst I’d had,” Mei Hanxue says dryly, and Xue Meng feels his vision go red.
This time, he doesn’t stab a Mei Hanxue; but good lord does he try.
-----------------------------
Meanwhile…
----------------------------
“Don’t worry, I’ll be very careful,” Mo Ran says, wrapping the item up in cloth.
“And you’ll put in a good word for me to Sect Leader Xue?” the cultivator asks, wringing his hands.
“If you like,” Mo Ran says, efficiently putting the sealed weapon in his sleeve. “What did you say would cause the side effects?”
“Just touching it,” the cultivator says, looking at Mo Ran’s sleeve forlornly. “Mo Zongshi doesn’t want to try to cultivate the weapon here?”
“No, I’ll be using it for something else,” Mo Ran says. “Thank you for your help, I’ll be sure to put in a good word the next time I see the sect leader.”
“Okay,” the cultivator says, and dejectedly watches the tall, black-clad cultivator fly away.
For some reason, Mo Zongshi looks like he’s in a… very good mood.