“I’ve always wondered, why do you call yourselves the Heavenly Squirrel Sword Sect?” Mu Ba inquired. The Young Mistress of the Heavenly Squirrel Sword Sect just screamed in return.

“I’ve asked a couple of lesser disciples before, but, strangely, they didn’t know. I figure the Young Mistress of the sect must know.”

Still, his reply was nothing save screaming, then BAM.

“Mu Ba, focus. I’m trying to show you the Noodle Shop Qi Strengthening Technique, by means of which one need never worry about damaging a noodle shop during one’s fight. Now, you take the cultivator, and then you-”

“AHHHHHHH! NO! PLEASE!”

“Shhhh. I’m trying to teach here. Now, we take the cultivator from the… uh… what sect did you say you were from again?”

“She’s from the Heavenly Squirrel Sword Sect, sir.”

“‘Heavenly Squirrel Sword Sect?’ Who came up with that nightmare of a name?”

“That was precisely my question!”

“Maybe we can get her to tell us after the lesson. Now, as I was saying, you take your cultivator, like so, and then slam them down on the table, like so.” And he slammed the Heavenly Squirrel Sword Young Mistress down on the table, producing a satisfying BONK. She began to curse. The table, on the other hand, remained totally unperturbed, a very model of Taoist stillness.

"Now, the key is to adjust the amount of qi in proportion to the amount of force being exerted upon it, which as you know is mass times acceleration… from this we derive what we call the 'Thud Rate.' Or, rather, the Simplified Thud Rate; the Complex Thud Rate involves further calculations involving the difference between radial and tangential acceleration, rotational velocity, torque, etcetera, but we won’t be using that just yet. Now, previously I swung the Heavenly Squirrel Sword Sect Member at such and such a speed, but were I to swing her at, say, this speed-"

SMACK

"Well, do you understand what I mean?"

"Say yes! Say yes!" The Heavenly Squirrel Sect member cried. The table said nothing, bearing the bludgeoning with true Stoic virtue.

Mu considered his options. "No, not quite yet. Could I have another demonstration?"

The Heavenly Squirrel Sect member began to sob.

"If you'll accept my pardons, sir Hong, I'm not sure we've been suitably scientific thus far. After all, you demonstrated what amount of qi is needed if my opponent has one mass and yet is being slung with different accelerations, but what if my opponent should have a different mass and acceleration from that as shown thus far? That, after all, would change the Thud Rate entirely."

Hong Yu considered this point. "You're right. Our data set is far too small. Fortunately, we have a second mass right here."

He dumped the Heavenly Squirrel Sword Sect member on the ground (conveniently demonstrating the Noodle Shop Qi Strengthening Technique, Floor Mode, Low Acceleration), then picked up her unfortunate combatant, the Young Master of the Glittering Pork Arbuscule Sect.

"Now, if your opponent has a different mass, the amount of qi is as follows…"

Yuan Shi sat quietly in the corner, absentmindedly blowing bubbles through his straw, and watched the proceedings. He’d tried to warn them, but they’d laughed him off - one of them had even intimated that he’d only lost because the Candied Lampwick Sect was weak. He simply shrugged. It was no longer his problem.

Hong swiftly finished showing what to do with one disparate mass, and then, apparently still dissatisfied with the size of his data set, picked up the Heavenly Squirrel Sect Young Mistress again so he could show what happened when your mass had (approximately) doubled.

The door banged open, Xian Xinyue striding confidently into the noodle shop. She pointed at Yuan. “Yuan Shi, today’s the day. I hope you’re prepared for-”

CRASH. A pair of yelps from the two cultivators, and nothing from the table, that paragon of Buddhist anatman. Hong picked up his involuntary volunteers, then paused in his demonstration as he looked at the thunderstruck Xian. She gulped, then swung her arms wide in an aerial embrace.

“- for our fourth date! I’ve been waiting all week for this.”

She moved with fluid grace across the room, settling herself right beside the very blank-looking Yuan and nuzzling close. He could feel the beads of sweat on her neck.

He knew why she was really here, of course. After Xian returned from the dead, she began collecting all sorts of powerful items and techniques to get revenge on Yuan, and by sheer good fortune an especially numinous relic was in the small city of Xiǎo Chéngshì.

She, however, had no clue why Yuan was here. Or in the last place she’d gone hunting - the Hooay, where he had conveniently arrived first and broiled the spirit plant she was looking for - or the place before that, far off in fairyland. Everywhere she went, there he was, one step ahead of her. This was implausible - he wasn’t a reincarnator, and even if he had been how could he predict where she’d be going?

***

Yuan betrayed Xian. She trusted him, her fiancé, and he betrayed her. It was nothing personal; it wasn’t even that vicious. Just sect business - a misleading note here, a dropped rumour there. Nothing major, but it was enough. It led to her death, indirectly.

And then she came back, and it was time for revenge.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

It was a beautiful, poignant novel, and Yuan’s favourite during his life. Not his current life, to be clear.

His past one.

The ending, with all its brutal violence, was his favourite moment. The climax, where she flayed Yuan alive with a rusty spoon… well, it was what he went to when the day grew dark and the wind whipped at his bones. It was cathartic.

It was a dark and stormy night, one with the suitable dreariness for a good cliche, and he was nearing the end of his journey. He had The Return of Xian Xinyue queued up on his phone, and was looking forward to reading it in the motel room.

And then a distracted, 30 year old businesswoman stepped out onto the rainy road, gazing bleary-eyed at her phone. He slammed on the brakes, but alas, the rain had obscured his view until the critical moment, and his truck hit her head on.

And then he blacked out, and woke up. And there he was - in the body of Yuan Shi, villain of The Return of Xian Xinyue.

It quickly became apparent that they had already reached the point of her reincarnation, and there was no going back. In her terrible fury, there would be no peace; all he could do was fight.

And so Yuan was using his knowledge of the novel to go from location to location, finding the macguffins before Xian could. It brought him no joy - he understood her pain, agreed with it even, and would have aided or comforted her if he could.

Unfortunately the one she wanted to kill was now him, and thus doing either would be immensely stupid. This cold realisation brought him no satisfaction, either - for even with all his efforts, and all the macguffins he was consuming, she was still a main character. She was growing faster than he ever could, and it was only a matter of time before the story finished its course.

But what was he doing here? Yuan couldn’t remember any noodle shop repairman in the novel.

Hong Yu, on the other hand, seemed entirely untroubled by his own non-existence - so long as the noodle shop still ran, in fact, it could be argued he wouldn’t even notice were he not there.

Yet not only was Hong there, he had been interrupting the plot of The Return of Xian Xinyue from the beginning. When Yuan had first awakened, it was to a feeling of intense agony and searing pain. He couldn’t speak, or move, or think.

This should not strike us as particularly surprising, since he entered Yuan’s body at the very moment that Hong shattered both Yuan’s arms. He had grabbed Yuan just under his shoulders and squeezed. (This was after Hong did that with the serviettes.)

Yuan had no clue what Hong said afterwards - something about respecting noodle shops. Yuan had no clue what he said in reply - probably incoherent screaming, but he must have said something because when Hong met him two weeks later he told him “I’ll be holding you to your oath.”

Yuan had been too terrified to admit he couldn’t recall the contents of his oath, but Hong must have seen this ignorance writ plain upon his face, for he then clarified that it was to damage no noodle shops, nor annoy the unawakened as they went about their business.

Yuan had been only too happy to comply with this oath, and in fact had become something of a missionary for it, preaching the ideology of Hongism wherever he went to whomever he met.

All this had made him a great source of merriment in the Candied Lampwick Sect, but Yuan didn’t mind - they thought his change of personality was due to fear, and though they mocked him it meant he had been left largely to his own devices.

If these had been the only times he’d met Hong that wouldn’t be too worthy of remark, for neither encounter had anything to do with the plot of The Return of Xian Xinyue. But Hong kept showing up, the parameters of the plot proving no objection to his existence.

First, there was the encounter at Xiǎo Chéngshì earlier. Xian was supposed to chase Yuan into the restaurant, then violently beat the crap out of him, only for his subordinates to show up and chase her away as she promised to fulfil her revenge.

But Yuan had had no subordinates - no one would speak to him ever since his humiliating defeat by Hong and subsequent personality change - and yet Xian had never laid a hand on him, because Hong had been there. In fact, Yuan had even had an opportunity to be nice to Xian - which changed nothing, because his body’s former owner had still killed her, but it had unsettled her slightly.

Then later Yuan was at the mouth of the Hooay, broiling the Numinous Dewdrop Spirit Herb to enhance his inner Yin energy. He’d paid for the use of a restaurant’s kitchen, and was in the middle adding the herb to a lovely fish dish when Xian burst through the door.

“Yuan you basta-” she started, and then the insult died in her throat as she saw who was sitting in the kitchen with Yuan.

“So that’s how you cook a fish. Fascinating,” Hong observed in his usual laconic tone, as he watched Yuan finish prepping his meal. Yuan nodded, grateful for the accidental protection of the noodle shop repairman.

“Then you add the herb, like so. Would you care for a bite too, miss Xian? We’re splitting it,” he said. Xian put one palm on her face, but what could she say?

So the three of them ate the fish together. Yuan was very proud of himself - it was one of his best cooking jobs, and he was delighted to see Xian flush as she tried the dish. (Hong, of course, remained imperturbable, although Yuan considered it a good sign that he asked for the recipe later.)

Weeks after the two cultivators were both in fairyland, hunting for the horn of the Shaggy Scraggy Stag. And by “they were both… hunting,” I mean Yuan was running with the horn under his arm, screaming at the top of his lungs, while Xian chased him waving her sword and shrieking curses, her fury equal to his terror.

Then ahead of them they saw a flying noodle shop, and a suspiciously familiar looking noodle shop repairman sweeping out the remnants of some cultivators as he talked to a gnome. Hong saw them and waved.

Immediately their death chase turned into a fun game of lover’s tag.

(They did not get the horn of the Shaggy Scraggy Stag, for the record. Hong was waving to tell them that the endangered species of deer could only breed by planting its horns, and therefore they weren’t allowed to use it as a cultivation ingredient. Months later, however, they would be gratified to learn that the gnomes had named the baby Shaggy Scraggy Stag Yuanxian in their honour.)

Xian quietly steamed as she recalled the same memories Yuan had. Every attempt to gain power over him had been stymied, and while part of it was Yuan’s inexplicably knowing where she was going, part of it was that blasted, totally innocuous noodle shop repairman.

She could see him watching her, innocently, as she shook in impotent rage.

***

“What a strange couple,” Mu observed, as Hong and he continued on their way. They had released the pair of captured cultivators - thanking them for their participation in the cause of science - and the couple in the corner had excused themselves shortly thereafter.

“Oh?” Hong said, “I rather like them.”

“Might I ask why?” Mu asked, careful not to make any undue remarks. He’d been training his listening skills after his… unfortunate encounter with Lil Frankie almost a month prior, practising by making sure to listen to, and understand, what people were saying.

“They're unique… a good reminder that people find comfort in noodle shops in different ways,” Hong observed, unaware that he was right for reasons he couldn't possibly know.