Unbeknownst to the two of them, while on their date, every single one of Mobei's workers that they passed followed them, only semi-secretly. They hid behind lamp posts, walls, garbage cans, trees—really anything they could fit behind in the area. And while doing this, they just "coincidentally" happened to see everything. From beginning to end. Right from when they exited the restaurant to when they walked around parts of Mobei's territory. Meaning they were stalking—carefully watching everything they did.

So of course, once Mobei dropped Shang Qinghua back to his house, those who were watching them just had to run and tell everyone who wasn't able to witness it what happened. And because it's just common sense, it was unanimously agreed to thoroughly investigate him and everyone he's associated with. Just in case.

Since investigating people is also kinda their job (that they haven't seem to be doing much of), it didn't really take that long, less than a few days (one of the perks of their job and a skill that they probably shouldn't be using on a mere—supposedly—normal person).

But to their complete and utter surprise, Shang Qinghua was a totally ordinary person. Nothing about him was even remotely interesting. The only thing that made him slightly interesting was the fact that he had a pretty successful novel called Proud Immortal Demon Way. The name seemed incredibly strange to them though, since the contents were about a crybaby demon (who doesn't seem very proud) and his tsundere shizun. Honestly, the name has nothing to do with the actual plot, and the plot itself seemed to be quite personal to him. Who knows, maybe the characters are based off of actual people he knows. Other than that, he was just an ordinary bartender working at his roommate's brothers' bar.

Anyways, after compiling his entire, uninteresting life story, underling #1, the same one about to slice open his neck many moons ago, he decided he should give all of this information to his boss. He wouldn't stand for them (as underlings) to know more about their boss' innocent crush than he actually did. Hopefully this would also make up to the fact that he insulted him before.

———————————————

Precisely three days after their date, all of which Mobei has been staring intently at his phone, waiting for something, there was a polite and short knock at his door and for the first time in a long, long time, he was startled by it. He actually, literally, jumped in his seat, something completely out of character for him to do. He seemed to be so engrossed in staring at a blank screen that he completely zoned out of anything that wasn't his phone. In fact, he was so surprised that his phone practically fell out of his hands and he had to fumble to not drop it. Coughing a bit to hide his embarrassment from absolutely no one, he made sure that he resumed his "normal" look and not as startled as he was a few moments ago before saying a brisk "come in," to whoever was there.

Carrying a thin stack of paper, the guy who showed up at Cang Qiong that one time entered and gently placed it on his desk before bolting away at an incredible speed. Curious, Mobei browsed through the first page of it, eyes immediately landing on a picture of one Shang Qinghua, instantly making his realize it was about him.

His employees really did a whole background check on him—meaning they definitely saw them a few days ago and most likely, everyone knows by now.

Feeling an impending headache coming, he skipped through most of the information, not wanting to invade his privacy like this (mostly, he was just admiring all of the pictures added with the information). But on the last few pages, Mobei saw a familiar name. The same one that was on Shang Qinghua's shirt. Apparently, it wasn't just that his roommate enjoyed it, it turns out that Shang Qinghua himself wrote it. Much more interested than before, he closed all the other tabs on his laptop and went onto Zhongdian to search up said novel. As one of the first results, it was easy to find and much more popular than he first expected but ended up being much longer than he originally thought.

Preparing himself for a long night of reading—that will hopefully keep him away from staring at a blank screen, he pressed on the first of many, many chapters.

———————————————

It takes him three whole chapters before he realizes the entire novel's premise is based around Luo Binghe and Shen Yuan. It takes him two more to realise that Shen Yuan is not only a "fan" as Shang Qinghua had previously told him, but is someone who has very strong opinions on his writing, described using a variety of colourful words. It then takes him one more to realize Shen Yuan is, somehow, not aware of the fact that the novels' premise is about his relationship with Luo Binghe.

Twenty chapters later, he can confidently say (to himself) that he finds Proud Immortal Demon Way interesting. Now, although it is fairly popular and on more than a few top ten lists on Zhongdian, what really makes it so entertaining for him is that he can actually see everything happening in the novel happen in real life. All the cheesiness, misunderstandings, and crocodile tears in it are things he has seen before. But seeing them fictionalized and fifty times more bizarre than it would be in real life makes it all the better.

Early the next morning, give or take a few hours (Mobei hasn't really been paying attention to the time since he began reading) he gets to the first new character added in over fifty chapters; an ice demon who seems strangely familiar. The character has long, ink black hair, pale skin and a permanent frosty expression etched onto his face.

Mobei's current growing hypothesis is all of the characters are based off of real people Shang Qinghua knows and he thinks he has figured out who everyone is—everyone except the King of the Northern Desert. He seems extremely familiar yet he can't figure out who exactly the ice demon is and it may be slowly driving him insane. Shang Qinghua seemed to write about him in a much more intimate manner than all the other characters so he desperately wants to know who the fuck he is based off of then find out everything about him.

Thankfully, before he fully drove himself mad, his phone finally pinged.

Immediately disregarding everything else, he jumped towards it and saw the text he was waiting four days for.

Sorry to bother you so early in the morning
But I think some of your coworkers are at
my workplace again
They kinda keep staring at me for some
reason
Not sure what to do with them haha
You're probably asleep though
Nevermind

A very much not asleep him silently cursed at everyone working under him. How do they keep managing to make more and more problems for him...

My apologies for any inconvenience they
have caused you
Might I ask, how many of them are there?

His reply was instantaneous, the three dots barely appearing for more than a second.

Around fifty?
Maybe sixty?

Not so silently anymore, Mobei audibly cursed. Loudly. Half his men are there. For some fucking reason.

He facepalmed into his palm and let out the loudest, heaviest sigh he's ever let out.

———————————————

By the time he gets to the bar, Shang Qinghua seems to have been turned into an exhibit, with everyone (unsubtly) gawking at him. They seemed to be analyzing him or something, looking him up and down repeatedly and then being perplexed because they couldn't find anything.

Having had enough of it, Mobei opened the door, being much more violent and using much more force than necessary.

One sharp glare from him after being simultaneously noticed by everyone there had them sprinting towards any possible exit. He guesses they probably weren't expecting him to find out about their... "reconnaissance".

Although, they really didn't have to exit as aggressively as they did.

While most of them went through the back door (him standing in front of the main entrance was enough to scare them away from a three foot radius of him. Anyone who came close, as if by a barrier, immediately dipped once entering three feet of him, vanishing almost as quickly as they appeared), some decided that a door was too easy of a way to exit without getting close to him. As such, quite a few exited via breaking through a window, jumping down the fire escape and leaping off the roof, only to appear completely fine when landing.

Somehow, it took a whole fifteen seconds for the entire bar to be completely cleared, save for Shang Qinghua and himself.

Once empty, the bartender seemed to have the same look of shock he did whenever Mobei was around. Honestly, it is quite cute.

"Apologies for them," he said, "I'm not sure why they decided coming here was a good idea—I'll be sure to properly reprimand them when I get back."

(Off in the distance, a group in identical black suits shivered.)

"Don't worry about it! It's fine, not like they were doing any actual harm to me... except for watching me like a zoo animal." The last part obviously wasn't supposed to be said out loud, the deep red blush on his face proof. "Ah! Sorry, sorry! I did it again, didn't I? And here I thought I'd stopped saying my thoughts aloud."

Cute.

"As I said before, I find it nice." This seemed to calm Shang Qinghua down and once again, they eased into a comfortable silence. He brought him the same bottle he's bought every single time then removed his apron. From Mobei's experience, no one usually comes in this early (he probably shouldn't either, but who cares about drinking as the sun is rising. It's a problem for his future self to deal with) so it'd just be the two of them for at least a few more hours.

Shang Qinghua leaned on his elbows, resting his face into his palms and proceeded to talk for the next two hours—non-stop.

———————————————

If Shang Qinghua thought having all of Mobei's colleagues gawk at him was odd, seeing them in Cang Qiong right as his shift starts a few days later is downright strange. Especially since they seem fine with shoving twelve of them in a four seater booth like they're in a clown car. When he peeked into it a bit more, he could have sworn he saw another three people somehow crammed in there.

What he doesn't know is that once they were kicked out of the bar a few days ago, they decided to come up with an ingenious plan to see how exactly he managed to seduce their boss. The plan was to arrive before Mobei did and use their super stealth skills to have all of them hide out in one booth to seem less suspicious. Then, when Mobei finally arrives (they know the exact time he was going to be there—they planned everything down to the second), they'd pretend to do something else and eavesdrop on their conversation in hopes to hear some juicy gossip about their love life. After all this, they'd finally decide if this "Shang Qinghua"—if that even is his name—is worthy enough for Mobei. Currently, they collectively deem him just as boring as his file said he was.

Shang Qinghua, oblivious to this all, simply believes they're insane or he's insane and everyone else is somehow normal. Honestly, either of his theories work in his mind. He just doesn't understand why the hell he keeps running into all of Mobei's colleagues or why they're so fucking interested him for some reason.

But he doesn't need to think about that anymore. Because now begins his favourite part of the day.

As if on cue, the bell dinged once again and Mobei walked in. Excited, Shang Qinghua almost dropped the glass he was holding to meet him.

———————————————

As the underling's of Mobei Jun, they have seen all kinds of things with him, usually his intimidating blank face, sometimes seeing his even more intimidating angry face, but never this. Their boss looks so... so soft. And he's never soft. Ever. In that moment, they all collectively started looking up to Shang Qinghua, respecting him as the one who finally thawed out the iceberg that is their boss.

Sneakily, they managed to leave the bar without Mobei noticing them (he's far too interested in looking at Shang Qinghua's face to notice anything else).

With the sun setting in the background, a single tear fell down Underling #6's face, Underling #4 and #5 wiping their nose, all of their faces with a smile on it. Today is a good day for them.

———————————————

The next day is just as confusing as the one before, except this time, all the colleagues actually decided to talk to him.

"Thank you for turning our boss into a human!" Number 8 bowed.

"We deeply apologize for our previous behavior!" Number 2 followed suit.

"We, as a group have decided to gladly welcome you into the family as the main wife!" All of them said all at once.

Seemingly done with whatever they were saying, they left without saying a single word of explanation as to what the hell they just did was.

And obviously, Shang Qinghua was still flustered and extremely hung up on them calling him Mobei's wife. Shang Qinghua.exe may have stopped working for a while.

———————————————

By the time Mobei visited again, Shang Qinghua was prepared to give him a full interrogation.

Unfortunately, all his resolve crumbled upon seeing his perfect face.

Instead, he doesn't say anything about what happened and instead asks, completely out of the blue, that he wants to see Mobei's workplace. It'd be easier for him to figure out why all of his workers were so batshit crazy if he actually knew what exactly he did.

What he wasn't expecting was Mobei freezing up and blankly staring at him.

"I... don't think I can do that." His voice broke a bit, not expecting a question like that to come out of his mouth. "Why not!?" Shang Qinghua all but whined.

"It's too dangerous."

"Pleeeeease." This time, he used his secret weapon: puppy dog eyes.

Because of them, Mobei's resolved seemed to have weakened. Seeing it working, he upped its intensity and cupped his hands too, bringing their faces incredibly close. Just a few seconds later, Mobei finally gave in. "Fine. Just give me a second." And like that, he pulled out his phone and sent a few text messages.

"Alright, we can go now." He paused. "Just... don't be too shocked."

———————————————

Despite Mobei's previous request, when they arrived, Shang QInghua's jaw dropped to the floor. It was close to where they went for the date (saying the word still makes him giddy) but unlike before, there were now two long lines of people making a pathway for them. He even recognized a few of the people from his bar! The building itself also doesn't look like an actual office, not that he's ever really been to an office building—but they can't look like this! It seems more like a really large house or a hotel. Maybe Mobei is in the hotel business?

But even more unexpectedly, once they walked out of Mobei's extremely expensive car, they all did a complete ninety degree bow to both of them.

Somehow, even more unexpectedly than before, Mobei was instantly greeted very enthusiastically.

"WELCOME BACK BOSS MOBEI JUN."

Again, he was shocked. He's seen the name Mobei Jun before, just never really paid any attention to it. Now he's finding out that his... (what are they anyways?) person is actually Mobei Jun? The guy he saw on the news a few months ago? The one publicly known for being a major part of the underworld?!

Coming to all these realizations, Shang Qinghua, like anyone would do, fainted on the spot.