Capturing My Demon King Costar

MY COSTAR IS MY PRIORITY

Yao Shen scrambles in midair to cling to any of the twisted roots that he crashes into on his way down.

He slams into a mass of twisted roots and gets all the air knocked out of him. The impact is painful, but at least he's no longer falling. Gingerly, he sits himself up on the roots and looks up at the edge of the plateau.

Seeing how far he has fallen is dizzying, but even more so is seeing how far away he still has to go to reach the ground.

With a long-suffering sigh, he pulls down the silver thread wrapped around his wrist, on the off chance that Xie Bian didn't notice his free-fall.

He waits for someone to come, perched precariously on the knotted roots.

After some time passes it becomes apparent that no one is coming.

Yao Shen looks up at the sheer rockface with a feeling of hopeless trepidation.

There are enough roots and twisted branches protruding through the rock that he could use them to climb up, but it's going to be a bitch to get up there.

Yao Shen really doubts he has the upper body strength for it.

He tries shouting for Tan Liansi and Xie Bian, but gets no reply.

Yao Shen puts it off as long as he can, but finally, he crawls towards the cliff, and as steadily as he can reaches for the next root over above him.

After testing its stability he hoists himself up, using the roots to his side as footholds.

Even that little effort leaves him breathless.

The distance to the top doesn't grow any shorter, so instead of feeling sorry for himself and his weak arms, Yao Shen rolls up his metaphorical sleeves and trudges on.

---

When Yao Shen is inches away from the edge of the cliff he nearly threw himself off of, something bright catches his eye.

A few centimetres away from his elbow, a tiny turquoise flower perches on the knot of a gnarly root.

Yao Shen is nearly delirious with exhaustion, but he's sure it's the turquoise nightshade. Using the last dregs of his strength he swings sideways to pick the flower and propel himself upwards.

He drags himself over a soft bed of flowers and collapses with a heaving sigh.

"I fucking hate this place," he says, voicing his frustrations towards the sky.

In reply, the whispering wind tousles his hair like a condescending hand.

Yao Shen tugs on the silver string again, in the hopes that now that he's up on the plains again, Xie Bian and Tan Liansi will be able to locate him.

Again, nothing happens.

It's possible they're gone and just left him behind, but the most likely possibility is that something happened to them.

He grips the thread twined around his wrists and starts the long process of following it back to its source.

---

After walking through the flowering fields for what feels like hours, the thread dives abruptly down towards the soil. In his effort to free it from whatever it got snagged on, Yao Shen's feet bump into a solid shape.

Inspecting it more closely, he comes face to face with Xie Bian, almost disappearing down into a bed of flowers, their tiny stems crawling all over him like ivies.

His eyes move frantically from side to side under his smooth eyelids. He's deep in sleep.

"You didn't decide to take a convenient nap, did you?" Yao Shen asks, looking down at Xie Bian's slumbering figure with a sigh.