There was a famous tale of a Calamity and a God's exchanged fate. A tale like that was what inspired Shang Qinghua to write. He wrote many high literary stuffs early on in his writing career but nothing gained traction. He was a child of divorced and negligent parents. He was drowning in debt and had tuition fees to pay for his Business degree. He took up several part-time jobs but they weren't enough. So, he put his writing skill to work and started writing a trashy stallion novel with a whole lot of fan service. In order to earn consistently, he had to pump out 10000 words daily and in the process lost his passion for writing. He was always overworked and exhausted from his part-time jobs and studies.
He was never a sound sleeper and used to frequently dream of a person with a scathing tongue but tender touches and loving head-pats. The person's face used to be always covered by a fan and the person sometimes referred to him as 'didi'.
There was this another person who he dreamt frequently about. The person had pin straight hair and was always dressed in black. He had a sense that both these people were someone really close to him.
However, after waking up he used to feel a strong sense of betrayal from both of those people.
Unable to figure out the answer to the dream, he created a character very similar to the person with the fan. The character turned out to be the Scum Villain of his stallion novel. He had a love-hate relationship with this character. He had originally created a heart-wrenching backstory for the character and even planned for a redemption arc in his orginal draft but unfortunately he ended up losing that orginal draft. In the new one he chose to cut short on more character driven plots as it bored the readers, thus the character ended up as a reduced one-dimensional villain.
He also ended up basing another character on the other person that frequently appeared in his dreams. This person in his dream always wore black, acted distant but time to time Qinghua could feel the caring glances and loving touches from the person. Yet, when he woke up from those kinds of dreams he used to feel suffocated by an unknown pain. Coincidentally, the character Qinghua created based on this mysterious person ended up as the spitting image of Qinghua's ideal type.
As the writer himself, he used to still find himself fan-boying over this character who was also a powerful ice-demon. The ice-demon was stoic, powerful, brave and everything Qinghua imagined he himself could never be. Being greedy, Qinghua ended up adding his self-insert in the story who was also the ice-demons lackey and spy.
But, mysterious painful feelings convinced Qinghua that he was not deserving of being close to the ice-demon, so he ended up making his self-insert betray the ice-demon. He even went ahead and made the ice-demon kill his self-insert off-screen.
After transmigrating into the PIDW world, Qinghua was so busy surviving he almost forgot about these details. Moreover, he also stopped having those strange dreams in this world.
As he lay comfortably on his King's chest in their private chamber in the Northern Palace, Qinghua suddenly bursts out, "My King, do you think we have met before?... Like in another lifetime, in another world?"
Mobei Jun silently looks at him with a confused stare.
"Oh, nevermind... My mind was just wandering..." Qinghua huffed.
Mobei Jun did not respond as he just hugged Qinghua tighter and then softly whispered, "Sleep".
When Mobei Jun heard his Qinghua's soft snores, he placed him beside him and nuzzled his face in the crook of Qinghua's neck. As he played with Qinghua's soft curls, he gingerly muttered, "Two lifetimes, Shi Qingxuan...it took two lifetimes for us to be finally together... I lost you once and was foolishly going to lose you again..."