Chapter 135 - Sometimes People Need Stress Relief! (Patreon)

We'll be back to the death games come morning, but I figured a glimpse at the weird time dilation happening and a fun break never hurt nobody! Also yes finals scare me what of it.

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Anxiety is a bitch.

As someone who has met some real, tried and true bitches in life, he’s pretty familiar with that fact. Hunger is a bitch. Pain is a bitch. Being afraid, now that’s a bitch.

But, conveniently, anxiety is a bitch Hao Nera has mastered. 

Fear is convenient, hunger, inevitable, and pain a good teacher, but some of life’s bitchiest aspects are just there to bitch, and anxiety is as bitchy as it gets. Luckily, Hao Nera knows the trick to it.

‘It is what it is.’.

Doesn’t mean you don’t work on stuff. In fact, at least to him, it encourages it. If you can’t control everything that’s gonna happen, if you can’t change what “it” is, you can still change what’s around it. Anxious about dying? Get some armor, or find a better hiding spot. Still anxious? Maybe get a mate to watch your back, or an extra shiv. Still anxious? Well, fuck it, you’re just gonna be anxious. Might as well do something else while you’re about it. When you only have so much energy, so much food, so much time to sleep, wasting any of the above on a world you can’t control is, in fact, a waste.

So it’s been a little bit frustrating watching Li Shu pace back and forth across the room and Qen Hou sulk in his corner all day.

Now, admittedly, he hadn’t actually met this Raika lady before a few weeks back, and she was a vision. She seemed… off, something that Qen Hou was pretty adamant to agree with, and it didn’t look like she’d even noticed him in the crowd when she rushed out into the stands like a ten-foot abomination from the fifth ring, but still. Striking. He can imagine the appeal, especially with what he saw of her in a more “normal” form up in the Imperial seats. 

But ever since the arena collapsed? Anxiety city in their little hotel.

He’s spent most of his time out and about in the city, and has managed on a few occasions to drag Li Shu along on the pretense of helping anyone injured in the collapse a while back, but Qen Hou especially has been on edge. He’s had to dip out of more than a few fights between the two that he couldn’t defuse about why they’d even gone to the arena, why they’d approached her, if it was their fault the beast showed up.

Hao Nera, frankly, thinks it’s a moot point. The divine beast could sense him hidden, and he’s very good at hiding, could cut through space itself, and smelled their friend on a weeks-old battlefield with a hundred other dead bodies on it. It would’ve found her eventually, and even he, unaugmented and as human as a cultivator gets, could smell the spiced, fragrant scent of iron and power in the blood that was splattered across the stands.

As for how “off” she was when they met her again… she’s been in Imperial custody what, half a year? More? Could fuck anybody up proper, that. Miracle she was still running around talking to people and not snorting paperwork and begging for orders. Bandit or not, regrets or not, he’s glad he at least never signed up with that fucking racket. Good for rich kids getting more goodies, snatching up the poor but interesting, and making roads, is the Empire. All the rest is bullshit and politics, which is to say the same thing.

But… well. It is what it is.

And he’s got a nice fucking thing going here. Be a shame if he didn’t do anything to keep it. Call it another victory for the outlaws of the third ring, keeping two pretty cultivators growing stronger and keeping him wrapped in blushing looks and safety instead of sucking down orders and shitting out politics.

The arena is half-rebuilt already, the shadow of it growing back over the city. They’re recreating it almost brick for brick, for Heavens forbid anything change in the hands of the Empire. The local Imperial Scion and the freshly-loaded merchant houses (who got paid reparations for dead families and lost profits) have been hard at work, and he can’t help but enjoy the minor formations on their hotel that block out most of the sound as he scales its exterior. Hao Nera climbs in through their window with two massive, overgrown roses, a big bottle of spiced wine, a bigger bottle of something the locals say is from the north that is definitely alcoholic, and a dazzling smile.

“Honorable cultivators!” he yells as he saunters his way over the window sill. “Welcome, one and all! We’ve had a wonderful, darling, delightful time here in the city, but, barring further announcements, I do think it may be time for a little fun.”

Li Shu is, exactly as he predicted, sitting at the table, polishing knives, and re-wrapping clean bandages, while Qen Hou sits off to one corner in a little “meditation room” that the hotel provides. He looks like an absolute loser all alone in there in Hao Nera’s opinion, but sometimes it’s nice to see a hot boy failing at things. Li Shu turns to look at him first, and then pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Nera I am not-”

“In the mood, yes, yes, I know! You never are, my dear! Your paramour, your one true patient, lies trapped below debris being combed by Imperial savants far eclipsing us in power and experience, so the only solution is to wallow in worry!”

He gives a little spin as he crosses the room before planting both bottles onto the table in front of her with a grin. 

“But that, honored healer, is why you have me.

“I’m no wallower! I’m an indulger, and I have indulged you in your sad girl energy long enough. Now, I have every intention of indulging you with fine wine, fine company, and fine access to that expansive bed you’ve so studiously enjoyed without the involvement of us boys.”

Li Shu blushes and blinks in surprise, and before she can protest, Hao Nera and Qen Hou are both moving. Hao Nera plucks out one of the massive roses, its petals overflowing from the rich soil in these parts, and bops her in the face with it, leaving her to sputter and hold it. Qen Hou, on the other hand, marches out of the cultivation chamber, a scowl on his face and blushing almost as hard-

And coming up short as Hao Nera holds the second rose between them, like a shield.

“As for you, pretty boy,” he purrs, “I am well and truly tired of you brooding through this house shirtless. If I have to see you walking about, sweaty, covered in magic fire, uncovered, one more time while we’re in this room alone together, I will absolutely put the sound muffling in this room to work to keep you quiet.”

He hears Li Shu choke behind him, but he’s far too busy indulging in watching Qen Hou’s face turn to six different shades of outraged red, flustered carmine, mortified crimson, and aroused scarlet.

Different strokes for different folks.

“Now!” he says, handing Qen Hou the flower, maintaining the initiative, spinning about again to pick up the bottles of spirits. “I am going to pour some cups full of alcoholic indulgence, and head on into that bedroom. Feel free to try a taste of them, and know that I will be disheartened but not discouraged if you chose to end your night’s relaxation there! I will, however, be additionally disappointed if I don’t get at least one of you fully relaxed tonight, so… please. Do feel free to follow me. Both you uptight idiots need it.”

True to his word, he pours out three glasses of wine… and three slightly smaller cups he found in the cupboards just right for something a shitload stronger. Then he pours a fourth of the smaller cups, and downs it in one. And he takes one of the three sets with him off to the bedroom, refusing to so much as look at the other two cultivators in the room.

He counts almost to sixty before he hears the clinking of glasses being picked up. 

He waits about twice that long before he hears footsteps come in the door.

And finds himself smiling pleasantly at who arrives.

Li Shu actually shoves Qen Hou into the room, and for all his talk of cultivation, he does almost spill his glass. Hao Nera is happy to see it’s the wine glass, and hopes the other has already disappeared.

He smiles as Li Shu, still blushing furiously, walks in right behind.

“Oh my!” he laughs. “Ganging up on me? How unfair. And here I thought you sect-type, pretty cultivators were all about honor. However shall I cope?”

Qen Hou, still blushing like a house on fire, says nothing, though he does give Hao Nera a look of annoyance at that, which sets him laughing.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, picking up his cup and swirling the wine about before taking a sip. “Honored healer? I think I find myself wounded. Perhaps you could come and examine me?”

He lays back on the bed, wine in hand, and sees what happens.

Seduction, see, is the art of giving people what they don’t know they want. It’s just like stealing; you want to know exactly where they’re expecting to look, and give them a nice surprise when they realize what was really going on. It’s how he’s made a living the last few years, and, while he can’t credit barmaids and village folk for the entirety of his training… the experience helps. It helps hand in hand with months and months of traveling with these two.

Li Shu rolls her eyes, and sighs… but also walks over to the bed. She takes a sip of her wine as she comes closer and as he lets himself relax against the sheets. She pretends to play along, pretends to get close and examine him… and he lets her know, without an ounce of pretense, what it’s like to kiss him.

He sits up, just enough to pull her to him, just enough to bring her close, and kisses her, soft, and slow. He takes his time. He makes sure that, every second that passes, she feels a sense of calm from him, a sense of ease. He blends into her perception of what she needs, what she doesn’t know she wants, and pulls her in close, onto the bed, so that she’s laying in softness atop him. He takes the wine cup from her hand, sets it on the nightstand, and pulls her in close, his hands working at every sore spot he finds down her spine, up her thigh…

And then, he sits up a bit. Puts her in his lap. Kisses down the side of her throat, and looks over her shoulder at Qen Hou.

He stands there awkwardly. Nervous. For someone almost six feet tall and strong enough, both visibly and as a cultivator, lift an ox, he looks like he’s entirely defenseless and entirely lost, not sure what to do. Not sure what he wants. Not sure what steps to take. Hesitating.

Damn. He’s going to fuck the nascent heart demons out of that boy.

Carefully, gently, he sets Li Shu to one side, still kissing her, still, kissing the side of her neck, back up to her jaw, to her lips… and pulls away.

She breathes, soft, and looks at him in mild confusion… and he gives her a wink.

He picks up his glass and sidles over towards Qen Hou, a big grin on his face… and then keeps walking closer, into the other man’s personal space, until Qen Hou steps back, once, twice… and bumps into the wall.

Funnily enough, Hao Nera is pretty sure that the shorter of the two of them could punch out the back of his ribs easy. A whole level of cultivation difference between them isn’t easily overcome. But as he snakes a hand around Qen Hou’s lower back, yanks him a bit closer, and kisses him, hard, one could be fooled into thinking it’s he who is the stronger one.

The kiss is hard, passionate, and jumps forward a bit as Hao Nera nibbles at Qen Hou’s lower lip and draws a little gasp from him. He takes a long, enjoyable drink of the wine glass in his hand, and then pushes forward again, drawing Qen Hou up by the waist towards him.

Qen Hou, honorable cultivator, all-around impressive warrior, vanquisher of beasts and constructs, wielder of the mysterious immortal Flame, whimpers in just the hottest way as he shares in the wine.

And yes. Hao Nera is incredibly proud of that pun.

Hooking him by the waistband of his pants, Hao Nera walks backwards, towards the bed, towards a blushing Li Shu, and puts his cup back down on the nightstand as he draws Qen Hou down with him to join the fun.

Everyone needs a little stress relief sometimes.

It’s honestly kind of cute how furiously they blush when the sun hits them the next morning and Maen stands there, black as night against blue sky, holding a bloodied sword and looking at them in outright befuddlement.