Chapter Text
“Hello, darling…” Shen Qingqiu murmured in a soft and almost cooing tone. “What are you doing here?”
Heart flooding with a melting warmth at the tone, Liu Qingge cracked open an eye and saw Shen Qingqiu staring down at him with something like wonder.
Confused, Liu Qingge looked around and realized… well, he was some sort of kitten-sized cloud-tiger-luan-dragon beast rather like he’d pictured in his head: a jumble of feathered and furred and scaled parts in white and blue and black, with a fluffy mane and feathery tufts that ended in a ghostly trail of cloud mist when he moved and — really — did his afterlife have to be quite so strange? Certainly most people had the luxury of a more predictable existence than this?
He had wings.
He felt gravity pulling him, the texture of silk against the pads of his little feet, the catch of his claw tips in fabric, the shift of individual hairs and feathers shifting as he breathed, whiskers registering Shen Qingqiu’s breath as air currents, the beat of something like a heart in his chest — a thousand things all at once. It was somewhat overwhelming.
Liu Qingge heaved a sigh, rolled his eyes, and considered flicking the tip of his long tail over his nose and going back to sleep to deal with whatever this was later.
The warm body underneath him flinched slightly, calling into attention that it was a body he was laying on. Then he almost rolled like an unsecured barrel on the deck of a ship as Shen Qingqiu took a deep, shaky breath and quietly asked, “…Liu Qingge?”
“En,” he agreed, not expecting it to come out as an actual word — only it did. Both he and Shen Qingqiu twitched with surprise to hear such a deep human voice come out of such a small four-legged creature.
“…what?” Shen Qingqiu asked, bewildered.
“Oh,” Liu Qingge said, blinking a little. “I talk.”
After a moment, Shen Qingqiu laughed quietly, his body relaxing, before he teasingly said, “Liu-Shidi… You need to stop scaring me by vanishing like that. I finally get to see and touch you in one of the more terrifying moments of my life and then you disappear. And when you come back again, you’re like this. How did this happen?”
“I… truly am not sure I can explain,” Liu Qingge replied weakly, forcing himself to sit up and look properly at the fairy. It was the most effortless sentence he’d managed since his death and it felt somewhat strange to hear his own voice at an almost normal volume and feel it rumbling within. Especially considering what shape he was currently wearing.
“We can save it, then,” the fairy allowed generously, sitting up in bed as a hand went to support Liu Qingge’s little body so he didn’t stumble again. “Speaking of unexpected… You weren’t the buff old geezer I imagined from the story and you weren’t the waifish pretty boy either. Instead, you’re… somewhere in-between.”
Liu Qingge stared at him a long moment, genuinely unsure of how to interpret that, but he felt himself bristling. Thankfully Shen Qingqiu noticed.
“Oh! No, I… Er…” The fairy paused and blushed before shyly tucking hair behind his ear. “You looked extremely cool, like a protagonist hero. It surprised me. You’re… …Ah.” There was a brief pause as Shen Qingqiu glanced away a moment. When he looked back, he reached out and brushed a thumb over Liu Qingge’s left cheek, affecting a more confident tone as he continued. “Your eyes are a darker purple than your sister’s. That’s how I knew for sure it was you — your eyes. Did you know the beauty mark under your eye is on this form too?”
Now it was Liu Qingge who would have been blushing, but thankfully he didn’t think cloud-tiger-luan-dragon beasts blushed. “I did not.”
The fairy’s expression turned bemused as he said, “You know, I think somewhere back home there is a school notebook with a drawing I made of a creature that looked very much like how you look right now. This makes you rather literally something out of my daydreams.”
Liu Qingge was quite certain he was the most offended looking thing weighing under three pounds that had ever walked the earth.
Shen Qingqiu looked nearly besotted.
“The only thing you could possibly do to make this the best dream I’ve ever had in my life is if you transformed into something big enough to ride around like a horse and we went on adventures together,” the fairy said with an almost breathless sincerity that kept Liu Qingge from immediately growling. “And if you could breathe fire or shoot laser beams from your eyes, that’d be really cool too.”
“I don’t know what a laser beam is,” Liu Qingge muttered in as dignified a sulk as he could manage before stretching out one of his forelegs to test the dexterity of his toes before he attempted to stalk off.
He was not successful, toppling almost immediately from Shen Qingqiu’s chest and onto the bed beside him in a flurry of feathers and fur as he scrambled to figure out how walking on four legs worked and how one operated wings (it was very disconcerting to effectively wake up with an extra set of limbs).
Shen Qingqiu made one of those wounded sounds people made around small animals when they’d done something revoltingly cute.
Liu Qingge realized he may have finally passed into the afterlife and arrived in his own personal hell.
***
Liu Qingge quickly learned several things about being a cloud-beast (a name he had insisted on after hearing Shen Qingqiu’s increasingly ludicrous suggestions).
Firstly — Being carried was the worst and most insulting thing in the world.
He would rather stagger awkwardly around and listen to Shen Qingqiu make those strange human-with-small-animal noises than be carried. It was frustrating that he couldn’t figure out how to float like a cloud as he had when he started becoming the cloud-beast, but maybe that would come with practice.
Like walking.
After he’d made several efforts to become airborne by hopping on the bed and flapping his wings like a fledgling bird, and then determinedly climbed up on a stack of pillows and plunged (rather than glided, as intended) off of them, Liu Qingge eyed the edge of the bed and planned a more ambitious third attempt. Rather than allowing Liu Qingge to leap off his bed to the floor to see if the greater height allowed him to manage to achieve flight, Shen Qingqiu (probably wisely) anticipated the inevitable result and saved him from breaking his neck. Instead, he scooped him up in his arms to carry him into the living area.
Liu Qingge had been horrified when he’d accidentally scratched the fairy in his instinctive panic to get away, but more worryingly, Shen Qingqiu didn’t seem to mind in the least, happily examining his bleeding wounds and estimating what sort of damage Liu Qingge could do if he were in an adult size and attacking intentionally.
The fairy seemed excited by this.
Concerning.
Secondly — Being cuddled while lounging was the best thing in the world.
At least next to the idea of being alive and in his own body while cuddling, perhaps.
(Not that he was imagining that.)
((Obviously he was very much imagining that and trying not to. Though maybe he wasn’t trying as hard as he’d like to say he was.))
Shen Qingqiu explained that when he’d been attacked at the cliff by the unknown assailant he’d been injured by whatever had been used to shove him over the edge. Dangling by his arm for several long minutes had made it worse. The pain had eased as soon as his qi blockage had cleared itself, but from the ginger way he still moved, Liu Qingge could tell there continued to be pain that was significant enough that he couldn’t completely hide it, so Liu Qingge claimed tiredness from his attempts to learn how to move in his cloud-beast form to get Shen Qingqiu to rest on the couch with him and read.
Being placed in Shen Qingqiu’s lap or settled on his chest so he could lay his head over the fairy’s heart as he dozed did not trigger his panic response as long as the periods of being lifted lasted only a few seconds. It was warm and relaxing, in fact.
This immediately lead to the next discovery:
Cloud-beasts could purr.
Shen Qingqiu’s delight in this knowledge was eclipsed only by Liu Qingge’s eternal mortification from the same. He flatly refused to cuddle for another ten minutes to avoid the risk that he could have a qi deviation out of sheer embarrassment. Then he held out for another ten because of the knowing smile on Shen Qingqiu’s lips and the soft amusement in his eyes as he watched him over the top of his book.
He’d had to learn how to purr as stealthily as possible because he’d soon learned the next thing:
Having Shen Qingqiu’s full and adoring attention was worth all of his suffering.
Liu Qingge knew this already, in the abstract.
His favorite days since becoming a ghost, after all, had always been those that included alone time with Shen Qingqiu where they could speak, or at least be in each other’s company, for hours without distraction. But it was a different thing entirely to have Shen Qingqiu stare into his eyes as he did it, as if Liu Qingge were the most precious thing he’d ever encountered in his entire life in either world.
Liu Qingge knew it was not the same feeling that he held for Shen Qingqiu, but this form gave him every excuse he needed to permit himself to stare back until his heart was too full and he had to go bite something.
Because, you see, that was the next thing he’d realized:
Cloud-beasts were destructive when overstimulated.
If he was happy, he wanted to bite. If he were frustrated, he wanted to bite. If he were tired, he wanted to bite. If Shen Qingqiu pet him for longer than a few seconds, he absolutely must bite.
It took several misjudged nips, one of which drew blood again, for Liu Qingge to refuse to let Shen Qingqiu touch him in anything like a pet, which seemed to disappoint the fairy far more than the shed blood did.
It disappointed Liu Qingge too, of course. Shen Qingqiu’s fingers were quick to discover how and where to pet to immediately turn his bones to jelly (not literally, he’d had to explain to an alarmed Shen Qingqiu when he’d explained — figurative jelly). But the moment that he re-solidified — which could come in an instant due to a slight variation in petting technique — he’d be far too overstimulated and it was tooth or claw or a clumsy attempt to bolt around the room until he’d vented the energy that flooded his body. But tooth and claw were his first instinct and he was painfully aware that even as tiny as he was he could do serious damage to the fairy if he got carried away.
Shen Qingqiu tried to argue that he loved “the zoomies” (whatever those were) and he trusted Liu Qingge to control himself.
But Liu Qingge didn’t trust himself. Not yet and perhaps not ever as a cloud-beast.
Liu Qingge informed him that he would not be changing his mind any time soon and to stop using The Sad Eyes on him and Shen Qingqiu retorted that he was being a big baby about a little blood and he was sure Liu Qingge lost more blood sparring with the children every day than he had being bitten. Liu Qingge in turn told him he hadn’t lost blood to ‘the children’ in years and then sulked under the couch until Shen Qingqiu relented and apologized, promising not to pet without permission.
There were more cuddles and then nap time because even though it was only just after breakfast (Liu Qingge had conveniently still been sulking underneath the furniture when Luo Binghe had arrived to tend to his master’s bandages and breakfast), Liu Qingge was already genuinely exhausted and Shen Qingqiu had barely slept at all the night before.
Though ghosts did not seem to require sleep, it seemed that little cloud-beasts certainly did. More sleep than he had needed while alive, in fact. It might have been the cat in the cloud-beast’s make up. (Or maybe it was just that he knew he was welcome to curl up with Shen Qingqiu as much as he liked, and he felt very little embarrassment about allowing himself to do so. What else could be expected from a tiny creature?)
And, really, when he woke up from the nap draped over Shen Qingqiu’s chest, purring with a near-silent, broken vibration that made his bones hum pleasantly, he made the most unsettling realization of them all:
Being a cloud-beast was seductive.
Not in the usual sense of the word, of course. But in the sense that he felt he could very easily slip into living like this and forget he’d ever had a human form. He could become Shen Qingqiu’s beloved animal companion, indulge in the adoring looks and bone-melting pets and heart-filling cuddles, and still keep the long, intimate conversations part from before. Maybe he’d even figure out how to become the ‘adult’ version of the cloud-beast, big enough to ride and go on adventures together, just as Shen Qingqiu had wished.
He could do that so easily.
***
When Shen Qingqiu put him in the bedroom at around dinner time when they expected Luo Binghe to arrive for the second daily visit, Liu Qingge was relieved for the opportunity to think without the distraction of the fairy’s presence.
In the time before the disciple arrived, he determinedly dragged around his things into a stack to make a makeshift staircase up to the bed. He always thought more clearly while doing physical tasks, and having a specific goal would help him towards learning what his cloud-beast body could and couldn’t do.
He reviewed what he knew about being a ghost, what he suspected was true, and what he feared, and then made plans for how he’d approach resolving these things.
Evidently, the form Liu Qingge took and the skills he could use depended on some combination of his energy level, whether or not his emotions were heightened, his self-control, how he saw himself, and perhaps the needs of Shen Qingqiu.
If he were able to master this malleability and learn to control his shape at will and embrace all of his skills, then that would be fine. If he let it control him, he would most likely be lost. He might even regress, becoming more ‘beast’ than ‘human’, or even ‘ghost’.
On reflection, this was really nothing new to him.
It was just a different form of cultivation. If a cultivator lost sight of who they were and let fear limit and control them, it ended in roughly the same way.
Liu Qingge had already reached lofty heights with one form of cultivation. Learning what he could do in ghostly form should not be much more difficult, even if he had to learn it all on his own. Bai Zhan encouraged its disciples towards self-study rather than relying on being instructed, so it wasn’t something that daunted him.
Ironically, perhaps, consulting with the Beastmaster might have been the most useful thing he could do. In the higher levels of the cultivation techniques the Nameless Peak used, they could undergo animal transformations. Perhaps after the person who attacked Shen Qingqiu was caught he could ask the fairy to borrow cultivation texts from the beast-tamers.
Liu Qingge already planned to involve Shen Qingqiu in helping him research and test his limits once he began to have an idea of what they currently were. It would be easier to research if they knew what to look for. But he wanted to have something impressive to show him first.
He nodded to himself as he looked up at his (in his eye) impressive collection of objects gathered at the foot of the bed. He’d finished just in time: Luo Binghe had just let himself into the house and was bustling about in the kitchen.
Liu Qingge climbed his makeshift staircase, settled himself behind a pile of pillows on the bed (where Luo Binghe had found them all, he had no idea — he’d only had one on his bed when he’d last left his room all those months ago and had no idea that he had ever possessed any others), and began immediately training.
He focused his attention on one of his feathers and tried to learn how to do something as simple (and as difficult) as changing its color.
***
On day two Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge had lost track of time and Liu Qingge had needed to dash underneath the table to hide when Luo Binghe arrived with lunch. As master and disciple talked of peak matters, Shen Qingqiu sneaked bits that could be easily delivered to him with the absent-minded stealth of someone who had probably once had a pet they did the same thing for. Even sharp-eyed Luo Binghe didn’t seem to notice his slight of hand.
Part of him wanted to scold the fairy for teaching his pets bad behaviors, but there was an equal sized portion of him that felt stupidly warm at the show of affection, both directed towards him and also for the pet or pets who had known Shen Qingqiu’s love in the past. Liu Qingge could not resist what his nose and his heart both told him to accept, so he submitted to being hand-fed by the fairy.
He did his best to show excellent table manners.
Liu Qingge quickly learned that not only could he eat food if he wished to, but if Luo Binghe made it for his shizun, the food was as good as anything prepared on Zui Xian Peak, even if it didn’t seem to have cultivation properties.
He was now curious not just to one day test the boy’s martial skills himself, but he would also enjoy seeing his shimei’s reaction to such culinary talent that had no relation to her peak’s training. He imagined her reaction would be similar to his own. (Though she tended to be more intense than he was when she felt challenged.)
In the face of a parade of perfectly prepared delicacies and Shen Qingqiu’s (too) generous offers of more, Liu Qingge ended up eating far more than a creature of his size probably should have. Full, he dozed off underneath one of Shen Qingqiu’s draping sleeves to the familiar sounds of their voices.
When he woke up after Luo Binghe returned to Qing Jing Peak, Shen Qingqiu relayed that Luo Binghe had pretended to be surprised to wake up and discover that Shen Qingqiu was not at home and left no note to explain his absence, so he’d informed the head disciple. When by afternoon there was no word and no sign of him, the boy had tagged along to Qiong Ding Peak with Ming Fan to report their master’s disappearance to the sect master.
Luo Binghe managed to stay behind after Ming Fan returned to the peak so he could deliver the letter Shen Qingqiu had written. He’d further successfully obtained Yue Qingyuan’s promise not to blow Shen Qingqiu’s cover. The peak master had agreed with Shen Qingqiu’s suggestion to have conflicting rumors of his disappearance be spread and see what happened before making the next move. For now, the official stance was for Qing Jing Peak to “Wait and see if your master turns up soon.”
Shang Qinghua was only let in on the secret insofar as being sent a letter reassuring him that he was alive, but the other fairy was to show whatever amount of concern he thought was appropriate and not let on he knew anything except for what he managed to overhear. He was also asked if he remembered anything from the prophecy about the original Shen Qingqiu being attacked, but Shang Qinghua had no immediate recollection about such an event and replied that he would have to consult the notes he’d written soon after arriving in this world to see if they jogged his memory.
While Shen Qingqiu selected a new book from the first stack Mingyan had prepared for him, perusing the summaries with increasingly dubious expressions on his face, Liu Qingge decided to meditate. He’d discovered no need to do so as a ghost before as he could not sense his meridians, only some sort of nebulous, ghostly core. But now he needed to understand his new form with all the awareness he’d had of his living body and that meant doing a thorough self-examination.
Not that he got far to start as he was happy to break off for a bit to give Shen Qingqiu attention once he’d selected a book, but throughout the day he spent a few minutes or hours at a time distinguishing what his ghostly core consisted of and where the ghostly qi flowed through what made ‘him’.
The rest of their time that day was otherwise nearly a repeat of the first, only with a nap in the afternoon rather than the morning and Liu Qingge was better at moving around and figuring out how to flap his wings without tangling himself up in them.
The stack of books Mingyan had recommended her shibo start with steadily moved from one pile to another.
***
Day three was the day Liu Qingge successfully turned a feather from white to blue.
First step completed, while Shen Qingqiu spent time with his disciple over breakfast, Liu Qingge quickly learned how to change his feathers to any color at all — with ‘his natural colors’ being the easiest, and vivid colors requiring more effort. Patterns quickly followed, with tiger-stripes and speckles being the easiest and everything else requiring intense concentration.
Shen Qingqiu came into the room without Liu Qingge noticing and laughed to see him looking (in the fairy’s words) like a child’s embroidered hat, with a snarling animal face and all sorts of colors and patterns thrown together to scare away bad luck.
“All you need now is a belled collar!” the fairy teased.
This would have provoked another majestic sulk if Shen Qingqiu hadn’t scooped him up for a quick cuddle and a kiss on the head before setting him on the bed and excitedly asking him to show how he’d done it.
Liu Qingge was happy to display his new skill, though when he was done he was quick to return his feathers to their usual monotone color schemes, much to Shen Qingqiu’s disappointment.
But Liu Qingge used this demonstration as a reason to explain what he was doing and enlisted the scholar’s help in researching more about ghosts and beast-tamer cultivation techniques. The fairy was clearly excited to help, agreeing with Liu Qingge’s speculations into how his ghostly powers worked and providing more insights into what he knew about ghosts and their abilities.
They scoured his house, unearthing not just useful books on cultivation and a previous Bai Zhan peak lord’s diary containing her experiences hunting down and defeating a wicked ghost king, but also another four of his sister’s novel collection.
Though Liu Qingge valiantly pretended he hadn’t even noticed the novels, it was clearly on Shen Qingqiu’s mind as he added them to his pile of unread books.
“Shidi…”
“…en?”
“Shidi, you have a lot of novels in your house.”
“…en.”
“I didn’t know you read novels…” the fairy said in a leading tone, setting up a cultivation manual (which seemed to have something to do with transformations) in a way that would make it easy for Liu Qingge to read on his own. Shen Qingqiu was intending on studying the master’s diary, which they’d agreed would be more easily handled by human hands.
Liu Qingge sighed. “Novels are my sister’s interest. She stores her favorites here for me to keep safe. I have read a few that she suggested to me. It is good to show interest in the things those you care about love.” After a moment, he quietly added, “We are all the family each other has.”
Shen Qingqiu stared at him so fiercely that Liu Qingge wondered if he’d said something wrong, but apparently cloud-beasts weren’t the only ones who got overstimulated. He was snatched up and given a hug, an almost aggressive nuzzle, and a kiss on the head before being set back down before his panic reflex could set in.
“You are a good brother, Liu Qingge.”
His fur and feathers ruffled and tail lashing, Liu Qingge just hummed a thoughtful response, recognizing that in that moment he had brushed against a realization that might help him understand his own powers. But as the idea did not reveal itself to him after a few moments, he instead turned his mind towards figuring out how to manipulate the pages of the book without damaging them.
He noticed that his clawed toes became more dexterous the more he needed them to be.
***
Luo Binghe and Mingyan came by before dinner with news about their investigation progress.
It was another close call towards him being discovered. Liu Qingge happened to have been in his bedroom looking for a spirit tool he remembered being gifted when they suddenly arrived. The door was open, but freezing in place and using his feathers to mimic the color and grain of the wooden floor helped him go undetected as the two teenagers passed by.
The longer he remained still and focused on being unseen, the more his memories of being invisible as a ghost surfaced. Minutes after their arrival, Liu Qingge could see no part of himself and decided to risk testing his success by slinking into the room while the other three spoke.
“We came to report our findings, Shizun,” Luo Binghe said after he’d served them all tea.
The mood between the two teenagers was companionable. Apparently working together had made them something close to friends, though Liu Qingge was willing to bet his sister’s new good feelings towards his master had made Luo Binghe more open to that than anything else. On his sister’s side, he suspected the sentiment was based on her eye towards Shen Qingqiu’s romantic prospects, and if Luo Binghe was her target, all the better reason to make friends with the boy.
He mentally prepared himself to do a good deal of apologizing in the future for his sister’s matchmaking aspirations.
“No one I suspected as possibly being the letter’s sender has approached me and no new letters have come,” Mingyan said. “However, we were able to eliminate two of my three suspects rather quickly. One of them said they had been training with their master for three days surrounding that night — and others on their peak confirmed their master had been gone those same days and they thought he must have been with him. So unless you believe another peak lord might be involved, we felt it was safe to rule him out.”
“No,” Shen Qingqiu replied. “A peak lord would have other, surer means than this. I know of none with a grudge either.”
Mingyan nodded, as if that was what she had expected. “The other seems to have become your fan after your… striking display during the Demonic Invasion,” she said, a quick flick of a smile in her eyes and an undertone of amusement in her voice. “They really just like to paint people they find interesting. It’s mostly harmless, they just… have concerning notions of privacy.”
Luo Binghe looked deeply offended on his shizun’s behalf, but nodded in support of Mingyan’s words. From Shen Qingqiu’s expression, he’d picked up that he would probably regret asking about the suspect’s paintings.
“We’ve been watching the third,” Luo Binghe said, picking up the topic. “She has no alibi for the night in question, saying she was meditating in her room. She has more experience with arrays than Liu-Shimei thought, which could be what was used instead of a scrying spell, and she seems to have a personal grudge with you…”
“You called her incompetent when she brought the wrong documents for her master to a peak lord meeting,” Mingyan helpfully explained.
Shen Qingqiu looked confused a moment before he wryly said, “That was not kind of this master to say.”
Mingyan seemed intrigued by his response, but left it there.
“We’ll continue to keep an eye on her as much as we can, Shizun. I’ve made it clear that I am searching for you on the mountain in my free time since I can’t leave without your or the sect master’s permission, so it is not so strange that people see me in strange places… if they see me.” Luo Binghe looked a little smug as if he were very certain no one had.
“Mmn. It may be time to ask Zhangmen-Shixiong if he thinks it’s an appropriate time for him to be concerned. He may have thoughts on how to proceed.”
“En, I will visit him tomorrow,” Luo Binghe volunteered.
By this time Liu Qingge had made his way to them. Not wanting to startle Shen Qingqiu, he stood near his knee, eyes just able to watch the teenagers over the edge of the table, but did not touch him. He was sure that he could not be seen or heard, but something about him must have caught the attention of the demon-blooded boy. He saw him perk and draw a deeper breath as he became very alert.
“Binghe?” Shen Qingqiu prompted gently, noticing the same thing Liu Qingge had.
It seemed like a good idea to let Shen Qingqiu in on his presence, so he nuzzled his face into the hand the fairy had left on his knee. Shen Qingqiu flinched and glanced down before carefully reaching out blindly to feel the familiar ears and mane, clearly identifying him by touch.
“There’s something… A strange power,” Luo Binghe murmured, turning his head this way and that and then narrowing his eyes as he focused in the generally correct area.
“Mmn,” Shen Qingqiu hummed, keeping his tone and body language relaxed. “Is it like a spirit beast?” Both teenagers looked surprised, so Shen Qingqiu smiled and continued, blithely misleading them. “One has been sniffing around the area lately. I think it sometimes likes to sleep under the house. If it concerns you, you can look for it on your way out, but don’t scare it. It seems benign.”
Luo Binghe looked a little confused and conflicted, but nodded with a faintly dubious expression on his face. He must not have been able to sense enough to contradict his shizun.
After dinner and some inquiries into how the two were doing with their studies — which, judging from the way her eyes smiled over her veil, Mingyan felt pleased to be included in — Shen Qingqiu sent the two off to their peaks. When they were gone and Liu Qingge had removed his invisibility, Shen Qingqiu scooped Liu Qingge up and touched their noses together.
“How do you feel about spending the rest of tonight learning how to feign being a spirit beast?”
It seemed like an increasingly good idea, so Liu Qingge agreed.