“Spit it out,” said Mobei Jun impatiently. “It’s just—the only, um, method of reversing this curse that I know of would be very unpleasant for you! Extremely unpleasant! You’d probably want to avoid it at all costs! So I think the best course of action would be for me to do a little more additional research to see if I can find another way that would be less, um, personally distasteful for you, my King. That is, of course, assuming that being trapped in this lowly servant’s body isn’t already too distasteful to bear?” “Tell me what your ‘method’ entails and I will make a decision,” said Mobei Jun. aka, Mobei Jun touches an object that curses he and Shang Qinghua to swap bodies.

Mobei-Jun’s search for Shang Qinghua had taken him to many strange places. He had quickly exhausted all more familiar locations. He had come to this last strange place not because Shang Qinghua was a strange man who knew many strange things (though he was), but because… because… it was becoming evident that if he did not seek out strange methods, he would never find Shang Qinghua if he did not wish to be found. It was becoming evident that Shang Qinghua did not wish to be found. In which Mobei-Jun becomes an accidental time-traveler and gets a second shot at his life with Shang Qinghua.