Chapter Text
Maigu Ridge has stopped descending. The human and demon realms will remain separate. Distantly, Luo Binghe knows that this should make him happy.
Binghe is not sure if anything will make him happy ever again.
Xin Mo lies shattered on the ground around him. For the first time since he laid hands on the sword, Binghe’s mind feels clear. Free of its corrupting influence. He can think again, without Xin Mo whispering in his ear and worming into his mind. It is a relief, in many ways, and Binghe realizes distantly that he suddenly no longer feels a bone-deep ache that he had come to be used to. Xin Mo, it seemed, had been hurting him in more ways than he realized.
Yet another way Shizun has saved him, by shattering it.
There lies the heart of the problem.
Shen Qingqiu is dead in his arms. Again. Backlash from Xin Mo’s power, when Shen Qingqiu had already been weakened by—by letting Binghe—by stopping Binghe’s qi deviation, the only way he could think of at the time, by throwing himself at his disciple and hoping it worked.
Binghe wants to throw up, from guilt and disgust. He had practically killed Shen Qingqiu himself, this time, and there is a part of him that is so very tired of other people dying for him. His mother, his adoptive mother, and now Shizun—twice.
Binghe supposes he must be worth something if he is worth dying for, but why can he not be worth living for, too?
“Luo-shizhi,” Mu Qingfeng’s voice is gentle, and distantly, Binghe wonders when he became Mu Qingfang's shizhi again, “please, let me see Shen-shidi.”
“Shizun is,” Binghe’s voice cracks. His vision blurs. “Shizun is—“
He can’t bring himself to say it. He feels tears begin to fall, fat and wet, and he would be humiliated if he had the capacity to care about anything except that Shizun is dead in his arms, again.
Because Binghe knows, better than anyone, what it feels like to hold a Shen Qingqiu in his arms who is devoid of life. He did it for five years. He is doing it again now.
He’d thought, for a brief and beautiful moment on the ridge, that things might be okay. Shizun had said that he wanted Binghe, that he loved Binghe—but then Shizun had collapsed against him, and by the time Binghe dragged them out of the Luo River, Shizun was gone.
This isn’t fair. It isn’t right. Why does Binghe have to save the world for people who hate him, only to lose the one person he has ever wanted to save the world for? When a world without Shen Qingqiu is not, for Binghe, worth saving?
Why….why did he and Shizun suffer all of this, if there was nothing at the end but more pain? Why couldn’t they have their happy ending, like the couples in stories?
It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair, and Binghe hates it, and he wishes he could do it all over again—
[System initializing. User #003. Account: Luo Binghe. Role: Protagonist.]
The voice Binghe hears is—strange. It does not sound human, but neither does it sound demonic; it is dispassionate and a bit unnatural. Binghe’s eyes cut in the direction of the voice, and there is a a strange….light. It hovers in the air, words that he sees and reads but does not comprehend. System? User? Protagonist?
No one else seems to be reacting to this. Perhaps it is for Binghe’s eyes only.
[Would Protagonist like to write a better ending?]
Binghe jolts upright, clutching Shizun—Shizun’s body, already cold thanks to the river—close to his chest.
A better ending. Could…could he save Shizun?
[Yes/No]
YES, Binghe screams in his own mind, with all the force of his grief and his heartbreak.
[System thanks User for his cooperation! System will send Protagonist back to a pivotal moment in Protagonist’s story. System wishes Protagonist luck in changing Protagonist's fate!]
Distantly, Binghe wonders what moment this “System” will choose. Perhaps the moment Shizun throws him into the Endless Abyss. Perhaps Jin Lan City, and Binghe can try again, can skip all the nonsense and carry Shizun out of the Water Prison himself.
Binghe sort of hopes it’s before the Abyss. Clear of Xin Mo’s influence, Binghe never wants to hold that awful sword again. He hates how it makes him think and feel, how it clouds his mind and encourages his rage. It would be nice to be free of it.
Binghe hears Mu Qingfang shout, and then he feels himself begin to collapse, and then everything goes black.