Chapter Text
Even though he was shocked and brought to his knees with qi-drain, Shen Qingqiu was still quick-witted. He blinked once at the nearly deranged looking young healer who’d burst into the house and quipped, “Aiyah… I knew I was forgetting something, Shizhi. And I didn’t even send an apology note! Ah! I hope that did not make things too troublesome for you and your shizun.”
Shen Qingqiu’s hand moved up as if he was casually pushing hair behind his shoulder. In truth he was pushing Liu Qingge back so he wouldn’t be seen. Liu Qingge withdrew and patted his paw on Shen Qingqiu’s hand to reassure him. He had already used his chameleon skill to blend in; what little of him that might be visible was now hidden as long as no one looked too closely. True invisibility took too long still and he wanted to be ready for anything.
There was a flicker of emotion across the young man’s expression that was halfway a laugh and half pure rage, but he smiled with all the beatific grace of a Sichuan monkey, baring his teeth and looking a little blue in the face, presumably in anger at himself for finding the peak lord funny.
“Ah, Shen-Shibo, are you capable of being anything less than the most troublesome thing?” the healer asked, shaking his head slightly and advancing a few steps into the house.
“Well… I would like to say ‘yes’, but…”
“Ha! No — you are nothing but pain and suffering and frivolous waste. And it is a doctor’s job to remove such things from their patients.”
“Aiyah…” Shen Qingqiu sat up properly, moving slowly as to not spook the unwelcome guest, his hands sliding carefully along the polished wood of the couch so that his weaponless state could be seen clearly. “And who is your patient? Liu Mingyan, I assume?”
The young man was clearly cunning, but didn’t seem to be especially clever. Shen Qingqiu was stalling — most likely to give Luo Binghe and Mingyan time to come to his aid. With how long it took for Shen Qingqiu’s meridians to clear on their own, he would have to keep the murderous intruder occupied for hours to have a chance of overpowering him himself.
Even an incompetent cultivator would be stronger and faster than he was at the moment.
“My shimei, yes. But everyone in the sect has suffered from your spite and selfishness. When you murdered Liu-Shibo, there could be no ignoring it any longer. My shimei was suffering. If no one else would do something about you, I knew that I must. It was my duty, not just as a doctor, but Mingyan’s future husband.” The young man drew himself up and put on an expression of pious nobility.
Liu Qingge felt his lip curl. He would happily destroy this idiot for the insult to his sister alone, much less his many offenses against Shen Qingqiu. Someone of his ilk? He was not worthy enough to tend to Mingyan’s horse, clearly. How dare he look higher than that? Liu Qingge managed not to growl only through a desire not to draw attention to himself. If the fool’s cultivation level was too low to sense him even now that he was within a few feet, he would use the opportunity to wait until the right moment to reveal his presence.
“I see. When you put it that way, it’s difficult not to see it from your perspective,” Shen Qingqiu said with a wide-eyed innocence that made the sarcasm fly well over the healer’s head. “But you must know I didn’t kill my shidi.”
The healer made a scoffing noise and rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner, almost putting his whole body into the effort. “Everyone knows you are only pretending to have forgotten what you did so that no one can punish you for your crimes.”
“How many times must I say it, Shizhi? I did not kill Liu Qingge.”
“And how many times must you be poisoned before you catch the hint and die? Do not bother with lies!” he barked in reply.
Liu Qingge had to almost admire the boy’s commitment to being an over-dramatic pain in the neck.
“The Lady’s Grace,” Shen Qingqiu said suddenly. “I must admit — that was a sly move. I’m sure most people would have written it off entirely as an accident. Even I put the matter aside for awhile, thinking it must have been nothing but a mystery of the mountain winds. At least at first.”
Shen Qingqiu had been suspicious of it too? He’d never mentioned it. Liu Qingge felt guilty that he’d never brought it up. There had just always seemed like more important things for them to talk about. But if they had discussed it, perhaps the incident at the cliff wouldn’t have happened. Then again, Shen Qingqiu had been suspicious and had still gone. There was a good chance Liu Qingge would have let Shen Qingqiu persuade him to go no matter what.
Some guardian he was…
“En!” the young man said, puffing up with pride at the compliment. “My first poisoning attempt. And with the way you had everyone scour the mountain for wherever it had come from, I thought it was best to be more subtle from there.”
“My, my — even more subtle? So you poisoned me again?”
The fairy received an arrogant sneer. “I said already it was only my first attempt.”
“My apologies, Shizhi. You are correct — you did say that.” Liu Qingge could practically hear Shen Qingqiu’s lashes fluttering in faux contrition. “Please continue. You managed to do it twice? That’s very accomplished of you.”
“Twice!” There was a mocking laugh. “You would be so lucky that it was twice. No — I have been adding poison to your poultice nearly from the start. Shizun is distracted lately, so it was easy to make sure a bit was added each time I prepared it. Why else would the stain go away, but your symptoms worsen? Why do you think you are at my mercy now?”
“But you didn’t prepare this poultice…” Shen Qingqiu said stiffly, perhaps thinking over recent events under this light.
“No — your little guard dog did. He’d watched us all so closely whenever he was in the room when we made it — more-so than our own shizun did! It was hard slipping it past him before. I managed, of course. But he thought if he made it himself it’d be safe, so he didn’t even think to check what he took from our stores. How I laughed when he walked away with the poisoned ingredients, so very pleased with himself.”
The young man laughed again. Shen Qingqiu waited almost politely for him to finish before he spoke.
“It must not have been very effective. I never felt sick until the last few days. Are you sure you mixed it correctly, Shizhi?”
The laughter stopped abruptly and he looked up with hard, cold eyes. “En. Oh yes, I mixed it perfectly. It was really only my timing that was off. Your qi usually only became blocked in the evenings, correct? During your walks. When you began flying to other peaks, I thought for sure you would fall to your death between them, but the worst you managed to do was sprain your wrist. Your wrist! Ah! If only we’d been alone when I treated you that night, I would have taken care of the entire issue then, but my shidi were regrettably underfoot… I could never quite catch you both weakened and alone — and that was assuming I could find you at all! So I created an opportunity instead.”
“The cliff, you mean.”
“Of course the cliff! I thought you were supposed to be the clever peak lord!”
If he could have afforded to, Liu Qingge would have laughed. The idiot.
“Aiyah…” Shen Qingqiu said in a slightly wounded tone. “I just read books and play weiqi… It’s not my fault people think I’m clever. Real clever is someone like you, isn’t it? You have to mix all of those things yourself and remember all the parts of the body and how one treats thousands of different things…” Like the fairy was surely doing, Liu Qingge watched as the young man’s guard lowered as he preened. Seeing the correct opening, Shen Qingqiu pressed. “Oh… Was… was the weiqi board your doing too?”
“Naturally. I started working on the goban as soon as I decided to kill you. When I overheard your disciple telling the mail hall to keep watch for one, all I had to do was finish the last touches and bring it to her. It was easy. It should have worked.”
“Oh, well… It almost did. And if it weren’t for the Lady’s Grace, I wouldn’t have considered it being anything but an accident. How clever you are for thinking of so many ways to kill me!”
Unfortunately, that quip seemed to have put the young man back on the original topic. His expression hardened and his voice went cold.
“That’s right. I am.” His eyes narrowed and his hand went again to the pouch at his hip. “And this time, I’ll succeed.”
“Are you sure, Shizhi?” Shen Qingqiu asked quickly. “You haven’t really done much yet… Nothing you can’t take back. If you confessed now, things would go better for you. I’m sure people would understand when you explain to them why you had to do what you did. But if you actually hurt me, there is no coming back from it. And you know that the other peak lords are all quite intelligent.”
“Intelligent, yes. But for the most part, quite moral. They would agree with my conclusions if they ever suspected me and likely not bother to pursue it. They are very used to not seeing what they don’t wish to deal with — I do not worry myself.”
“But you can’t take this back once you go too far, Shizhi. You don’t believe in redemption? Perhaps I can be reformed with proper guidance.”
“Redemption?” the young man scoffed. “If all you’re good for is teaching the Four Arts, anyone on your peak can do that much. Is there anything you have ever provided this sect that could not be provided by any of your disciples?”
Liu Qingge could think of hundreds of things to say, but this question seemed to throw the fairy off as he presumably tried to balance his guise as a well-read idiot with coming up with a proof of worth that would satisfy the young man. Really, it was his sense of humor that had gone awry.
“Well… I hear I can be quite nice to talk to. Sometimes I’m told, ‘There is no one who can quite go on a rant the way you can!’ — I suppose you could say it is something that I have found to have been both my saving grace and my mortal failing.”
Unfortunately, his reply — or perhaps the slight hint of self-mockery in his voice — had apparently made the healer realize that the peak lord had been stalling. The young man’s eyebrows flew up and his expression had more of the bared teeth rage of the monkey again as he nearly spat his response.
“Enough talk,” the healer snarled.
Liu Qingge flexed his claws into Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder in warning.
The healer’s fingers had slipped into his pouch and with an impatient flick, he whipped his hand from it to fling silver needles towards Shen Qingqiu. The fairy tried to roll away, but he would not have been quick enough without access to his cultivation skills.
Liu Qingge, however, was fully capable of moving.
He snaked out from behind Shen Qingqiu’s neck and leapt in front of him, shedding his chameleon illusion as his wings spread and his mouth opened in a loud roar. To his surprise — and the shock of the other two — fire poured out of his throat, melting the needles.
His leap took him across the room until his paws hit the young man’s shoulders and bore them both down to the ground with a heavy thud that made everything in the house rattle.
Liu Qingge was no longer the size of a small kitten — instead, at some point during his leap his size had changed to that of a very large tiger. His spread wings nearly knocked over furniture with their span, so he adjusted them, though he still left them open for balance and to be ready for any more of the disciple’s tricks.
Tricks, however, seemed unlikely.
The healer was almost frightened out of his mind, shrieking and cringing as he tried to retreat from the beast that had sprung from nowhere and pinned him down. Not one of Mu Qingfang’s fearless or cool-headed healers then. He must have been being trained to assist more capable healers or sent to treat sicknesses in far-flung villages rather than intended to deal with anything that needed someone cool under pressure.
This was good.
“Get his bag,” Liu Qingge rumbled, deliberately disguising his voice even though he didn’t think the disciple would have recognized it.
Shen Qingqiu had recovered enough to move, ignoring the gibbering protests from their captive in order to not just remove the medical pouch, but also search him for any other weapons.
There were none, but his offense at the search being conducted by his enemy seemed to have settled some of the young man’s fears. His expression cleared and he tried to lunge for Shen Qingqiu. Liu Qingge stepped hard on his chest, pressing the air out of his lungs until he had the wheezing young man’s full attention.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t just eat you,” Liu Qingge almost purred, flexing his claws into the healer’s shoulders and intentionally ripping his clothes further. The tearing sound so close to the young man’s ears seemed to puncture his momentary bravado and provoked a full-body tremble.
“I — I didn’t…!” he stammered.
“Not an answer.” Liu Qingge cut him off and smiled, showing his fangs. “Who are you that you think you have any right to murder a peak lord?”
“I—”
“Shizun!”
“Shen-Shibo!”
There was a clatter at the porch as Luo Binghe and Mingyan raced to the house, their own clothes disheveled and flecked with splatters of blood. Though they’d evidently taken small wounds, the teenagers had clearly been the ones that came off better in whatever altercation they’d had with the healer.
They briefly took stock of the situation before continuing inside. Luo Binghe went immediately to Shen Qingqiu and gave him a quick inspection and Mingyan carefully approached the other two, looking between the large beast and the would-be murderer and trying to decide how best to approach without risking attack from either.
“He’s the spirit beast I mentioned, Liu-Shizhi. He would never hurt you,” Shen Qingqiu was quick to reassure her.
“If that is so, how may I help Beast-Gongzhi?” she asked. She made the decision to put away her knives before offering a small bow of respect in Liu Qingge’s direction.
“Shimei! Protect me from this monster!” the healer begged.
Mingyan made a scoffing sound, cold contempt rolling off of her in waves. “How could you possibly ask me for this when you have so many crimes at your feet?”
“Crimes?” he protested.
Through the open door, Liu Qingge saw others racing towards the house, including several peak lords, what looked like a dozen Bai Zhan disciples, and even the head disciple and pigtailed disciple from Qing Jing.
What, precisely, had happened earlier?
“You tried to frame me for Shen-Shibo’s murder!” Mingyan cried, evidently for the sake of the other arrivals.
“No, I—”
“You sent us those letters so I would be there when you pushed him over the cliff!”
“It was so you could see justice done, Shimei! That is all! It was a gift!” the young man protested.
“That isn’t all,” Luo Binghe spoke up quietly. “The Lady’s Grace. It was you who tried to poison my shizun’s tea with a flower from Xian Shu’s poison garden, wasn’t it?”
“W-well…”
Liu Qingge flexed his claws again, making the healer shriek softly. He got the hint and began babbling.
“They wouldn’t have believed it was you! Of course they would have tried to investigate you, but your beauty and purity would have easily cleared the matter. It was only to muddy the water. By the time they investigated elsewhere, it would be impossible for them to discover it was me. You would not have been blamed for murder!”
“How can I believe such a thing when you tried to kill me only minutes ago?” Mingyan asked, staring down at him, holding his eyes so he didn’t notice those gathering in the doorway.
“No — I didn’t! I didn’t try to kill you! I swear!” The healer was almost shouting his words. “I only tried to incapacitate you! I would have returned for you after dealing with Shen Qingqiu and found a safe place to take care of you until you were ready for the antidote! In a year, perhaps less, you could even have returned to your peak as long as you properly understood how to behave. We would have been very happy together! Please!”
Mu Qingfang and Qi Qingqi had pushed through the crowd, worried about their disciples. Both stopped dead in their tracks, turning similar shades of green, though for very different reasons to be sure. Yue Qingyuan and Shang Qinghua appeared behind their sect brother and sister, trying to catch up to the current situation — though from their expressions, they had probably overheard enough.
Liu Qingge growled, trying to keep the young man’s focus on him as the more visceral threat rather than their audience. He wanted to make him keep talking and not be too careful with his words. The more he incriminated himself now, the better.
The growl seemed to have worked because the young man cringed and cried out, “Don’t eat me! I have done nothing wrong! There is nothing wrong with ridding the world of a cancer!”
“A cancer?” Mingyan prompted, her voice cold and her body language receptive. As she’d no doubt anticipated, the healer was eager to attempt to explain himself in hopes of winning over her withheld approval.
“Peak Lord Shen Qingqiu!” he said, trying to squirm out from underneath Liu Qingge’s heavy paws, absolutely fixated on Mingyan to the point of forgetting the threat of an angry beast. “He is a blight on our sect! For years his crimes have been hidden and ignored. And then they were going to do the same when he murdered your brother! Someone had to mete justice!” She stared at him, her lips thin as if evaluating if he’d said everything she could get him to. He took it as another prompt. “I did it for you!”
“I did not ask you to do such a thing.” If her voice was cold before, it was pure ice now.
“I offered to marry you so you would not be alone in this world!” he protested, almost reproachful now. “You said, ‘not until my brother’ — I understood what you meant.”
Mingyan looked genuinely confused. “What did I mean?”
“You couldn’t think of marriage unless your brother was avenged, of course! What else could you have meant?”
She shook her head, flicking her eyes to the gathered peak lords in the doorway. The disciples had evidently been asked to retreat, as Liu Qingge could not sense them. Whatever she saw in their expressions seemed to reassure her, because her body language eased before she returned her attention to the healer.
“That is impossible. I do not remember this conversation, but I would not have asked you to avenge my brother — my brother is not dead.”
Shang Qinghua and Qi Qingqi flinched in surprise, but their surprise did not hold a candle to the surprise of Shen Qingqiu or Liu Qingge himself.
“What?” Shen Qingqiu asked for everyone.
“Liu Qingge is in stasis in a cave on Qiong Ding. I have been treating him,” a grave voice explained. Mu Qingfang stepped into the house, which seemed to startle his disciple more than even the revelation of Liu Qingge being alive had.
“Master…” the young man breathed.
“So this is how you follow my teachings?” Mu Qingfang asked. While Mingyan was icy cold, the doctor was incandescent with anger. “You attempt to murder a patient?”
“He murdered a peak lord!” the disciple protested, in spite of just having been told otherwise.
“It is not your duty to judge!” Mu Qingfang roared. “Your duty is to your patients! Listening only to what you want to hear… You could not have become a good doctor that way. You would have failed everyone who did not say what you thought they should. I am ashamed to call you my disciple — and will do so no longer. I submit you to Zhangmen-Shixiong’s judgment and wash my hands of you.”
The young man’s eyes bulged in fear and presumably perceived injustice. “Him! But he is the one who allowed Shen Qingqiu to do acts of evil!” he struggled again, trying to break free. “I will not be judged fairly! Shen Qingqiu need only frown and get his way!”
There was a look on Shen Qingqiu’s face that was of an exasperation and contempt so severe that the very lack of viciousness to it should have made it more mortifying to its source. “I will ask nothing. Though you should inform your master that you poisoned me. He will want to know what you did for treatment.”
“He what?” Mu Qingfang asked, so angry that a flaming aura more frightening than Liu Qingge’s fire breath engulfed him.
Terrified of his normally mellow master, the young man babbled about having dosed the poultice with a specific poison and taken advantage of his master’s distraction with his ‘secret project’ — evidently the treatment of Liu Qingge’s body — to not double check his work as he made it.
“And you said you did something different that affected me these last few days?” Shen Qingqiu prodded.
“En!” The idiot actually looked a little proud of that. “Luo Binghe kept coming to our peak to obtain medicine ingredients. Of course, he could not ask for what Master prescribed if his master was missing, so he was making the poultice himself. When I realized, I added the poison into the supply he was using. Three or four times as much as before. It was easy.”
Luo Binghe, who had been hovering protectively over his shizun until then, clenched his fists and would have probably gone for the young man if someone else hadn’t beaten him to it. Startled, he fell back to watch.
“You!” Mu Qingfang shouted, lunging towards his disciple. He had to be restrained by Qi Qingqi on one side and Yue Qingyuan on his other. “How many people did you poison!?”
The young main quailed, now almost hiding between Liu Qingge’s dangerous paws. “None! He was taking from the storage! I made sure the supply in common use was always kept stocked! No one would have had a need to take more from the supply!”
“But you cannot know that! You—!” Mu Qingfang had to break off to halt his angry words. His eyes blazed.
“Enough,” Yue Qingyuan said in a gentle, but firm tone that ended the discussion. “We will imprison him. We can investigate precisely what he has done and if any other medicines were contaminated by his poisoning attempts.” After Mu Qingfang nodded his permission, the sect leader turned to the open doorway and gestured, signaling some of the Bai Zhan disciples to rush forward.
“Go with them, Binghe,” he heard Shen Qingqiu whisper. “At least until they have him safe.”
“Shizun…” the boy protested.
“I know I can trust you to see he is secured,” Shen Qingqiu said, landing a decisive blow.
Luo Binghe nodded and took a grim guarding position as the disciples cautiously approached in order to take the healer into custody. Liu Qingge retreated. Once they’d obtained the prisoner, Luo Binghe followed, eyes locked on his target as if daring him to make a move to escape.
After Liu Qingge surrendered his captive to his disciples, he moved towards Shen Qingqiu who put his arms around his shoulders and leaned into him, murmuring teasingly into his ear. “You can breathe flames, mmm? Very impressive. I wonder where you thought to learn that? Whoever came up with that idea must be very creative and clever.”
Liu Qingge huffed a laugh, butting his head gently against the softly laughing fairy. They earned strange looks from the others, but as no one wanted to draw the ire of a clearly powerful creature of his size, none dared approach.
Shang Qinghua looked particularly awestruck. Or horror-struck, it was difficult to tell the difference with him. Shen Qingqiu motioned to him and after giving Liu Qingge the look a small rodent would give a large predator, Shang Qinghua inched close enough for the fairy to grab him and drag him close enough to hiss words.
“I literally have no one else who can appreciate this but you, so listen: Can you believe I got him to do a villain monologue for a good ten or fifteen minutes?”
“Wha? Really? Cool!” Shang Qinghua said approvingly, looking just as delighted as his friend did. “No capes!” he barked, flinging his hand rather petulantly as he sneered, almost in Shen Qingqiu’s face.
“No capes!” Shen Qingqiu agreed, his giddy smile indicating there was more to it than a mutual disapproval of fashion choices.
Thankfully almost everyone remaining in the area was too busy containing the chaos to pay much attention to the fairies’ strange conversation.
“So…” Shang Qinghua began, side-eying Liu Qingge.
But they were interrupted.
“Shang-Shixiong,” Mu Qingfang called across the room, a Bai Zhan disciple practically cornered in front of him. “Could you please begin the investigation into the matter of the medicines made over the last several days? I know you must have records of where they have been distributed. We have to know if any have been sent off the mountain.”
“Oh — sure.” Shang Qinghua looked back at them thoughtfully. Then he made a strange motion, using two fingers in a V formation to point at his own eyes, then pointed them at the two of them before making a strange fluid motion of his body as he turned and walked away, whispering, “Water tribe!”
Liu Qingge gave them a hard stare as Shen Qingqiu tried to stifle a laugh behind his fan.
Ridiculous fairies.
Mingyan had been subtly watching them nearly the entire time, so when Shang Qinghua left, she finally edged close enough to speak. She bowed to them and softly asked, “…Brother dear? Is that you?”
Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu flinched and exchanged glances before he responded.
“En.”
She took a shaky breath behind her veil and blinked away a sudden rush of tears. “I wondered. Eyes like ours… and you felt the same. We have been looking for you, Brother.”
“What did you mean that he wasn’t dead?” Shen Qingqiu asked while he warily eyed Mu Qingfang, who was digging through his Qiankun Pouch and shooting them severe doctor-y looks as he kept adding supplies he’d need to treat Shen Qingqiu to the list of things that he wanted brought from his peak. The poor disciple selected to act as courier kept trying to run to relay the message only to be called back to add something new to it before he’d got more than a step or two away.
“En.” She acknowledged Shen Qingqiu before turning to Liu Qingge. “Your body and your spirit were separated during whatever happened between the two of you in the cave. Mu-Shibo has been caring for your body until your spirit could be located and reunited with it.”
“It may be too late, Liu-Shixiong,” Mu Qingfang said as he walked over. He must have been listening in because he looked gravely into Liu Qingge’s eyes as he addressed him. “I do not know your reasons for not informing us and it is not my place to pry into them, but at this point, your fate may be up to heaven’s will. An hour or two won’t make much of a difference for you, but it might for Shen-Shixiong. So, Shixiong, kindly take a seat so I may see what my former disciple has done to you.”
Having recently seen what could happen if you pushed Mu Qingfang too far, everyone was quick to submit to his orders.
Liu Qingge stayed close to Shen Qingqiu and when the doctor permitted it, Shen Qingqiu reached up to run his fingers through his mane. Which one of them was meant to be the most soothed by the petting, Liu Qingge could not guess, but he allowed it without a murmur of protest.
***
The cave where Liu Qingge’s body was being kept radiated with a pure energy that made his ghost feel simultaneously at peace and out of place. It was clearly designed to usher a spirit to wherever it belonged. Perhaps it would just as easily expel a possessing spirit from a body — that sort of feeling hummed in its dark blue rock walls.
It made his skin itch.
Once he walked inside, his edges felt less solid, more of him turning into that ghostly cloud-flame than just the ends of his mane and fur. Going deeper into the cave, he’d been forcibly shifted back into his kitten-size. He floated — he hadn’t realized he remembered how to do that until then, when almost half of him was intangible — so he could tuck against Shen Qingqiu’s collar. The fairy held him there, his touch gentle and protective.
There was a tension to Shen Qingqiu’s frame that made Liu Qingge wonder if he too felt a sense of not-belonging in his body.
Deep in the cave system, in the center of a large dome-shaped cavern, was a bier made of red wood. Upon the bier lay his body — not yet a corpse, yet still pale and lifeless. He was thin, as seemed appropriate for someone who had been without their spirit for months, but there was a translucence to him that suggested the same thing Mu Qingfang had said: it might already be too late for him to return to his body.
There weren’t many who had come into the cave with them.
Liu Qingge, for the obvious reason. Mu Qingfang and Shen Qingqiu were equally obvious.
The peak lords of Wan Jian and Ku Xing came as well — precisely the two Liu Qingge had been most wary about knowing of his ghostly state. But they had given him scathing looks and firmly agreed that the sect looked after their own. “Especially when you are of your own mind and heart.” Then they’d quickly soothed away his apologies for doubting their reception to him, only repeating that they would help.
Surprisingly, Mingyan elected not to go into the cave.
“As long as you promise you will leave it again, I do not care what form that takes, Brother Dear. But I do not think my heart could bear watching it happen.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly, fighting to keep her voice even. He’d leaned back against her, tucking his head over hers, his large tiger form purring like thunder until she moved away, quickly wiping at a rogue tear. “Luo Binghe will keep me company and we will guard the entrance to the cave together.”
The boy, who’d returned at the end of Mu Qingfang’s examination, had nodded firmly. He still looked a bit confused about what to think about his shishu having been the ‘spirit beast’ he’d spent an entire day engaging in a childish feud with. From the worried glances Luo Binghe had sent his shizun’s way, he’d come to some other conclusions on his own which drove him to bow deeply to Liu Qingge and say, “Please come back in a physical form, Liu-Shishu. I would be honored to learn something from you of the sword arts, if you would consider sparing me a bit of your time.”
“En.” Liu Qingge considered leaving it at that, but thought both of the teenagers would want him to elaborate a bit more than simple agreement. “I will return and I will teach you, with your shizun’s approval.”
“I’m not so jealous of my disciples to refuse them learning more, Shidi,” Shen Qingqiu teased, but there had been a touch of anxiety in his eyes that had made Liu Qingge lean against him in reply, tucking his great cloud-beast head under his hand and rumbling more soft thunder purrs at him until Shen Qingqiu had relaxed and pet him.
The teenagers had exchanged glances then that said quite a lot. He knew enough of his sister’s body language to read, ‘I told you so’ and the resigned slope of the boy’s shoulders seemed to be his submission to her greater knowledge of whatever they’d discussed. Liu Qingge knew better to ask and instead they’d parted ways to enter the cave.
He hadn’t said any further words of farewell to them. There was no need.
Now Liu Qingge stood — well, he was held; Shen Qingqiu stood — to the side as the other three peak lords surrounded his body and began whatever it was to unite his spirit with it, if such a thing could be done.
He realized now that he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to bother. But that depended entirely on Shen Qingqiu.
“Shixiong—”
“Shidi—”
They spoke at the same moment, each in a hushed voice as they stared across the room of the cave at the bier. They looked at each other and waited politely for the other to go first. Liu Qingge could feel the fairy’s heart racing underneath his ghostly kitten paw.
“Shidi,” Shen Qingqiu said when it was clear Liu Qingge was deferring to his seniority. “They said the risk of you dying and leaving us behind in the realm of the living was very small. Selfishly, I would repeat your sister’s request that you either live or remain a ghost. I don’t mind either. There is… too much left unsaid and undone for this to be good-bye between us.”
“En.” A ridiculously easy thing to agree with.
Shen Qingqiu waited and an incredulous expression passed over his face. “Just ‘en’?”
“…en.” Since Shen Qingqiu looked like he might tug on his ear to annoy him, he quickly added, “Those are my only choices. Any other is unacceptable.”
Liu Qingge took a breath and placed his paws on Shen Qingqiu’s supporting hands before shifting fluidly — as if he had practiced this a thousand times rather than it being the first — into his human ghost form. His hands were now holding the fairy’s as he stood close to Shen Qingqiu, their eyes on a level.
He felt like a ghost here, most of him translucent and intangible and his colors washed out. Because of his focus on feeling Shen Qingqiu’s warmth, his hands were the most solid part of him, with the rest of him in varying degrees of mutable solidity. His hair and clothes had an almost weightless quality to them, floating more than Shen Qingqiu’s on the breezes that brushed against them in the cavern.
With a light squeeze of Shen Qingqiu’s hands, Liu Qingge drew them to his chest and held them gently over his heart. He heard the fairy’s slight intake of breath as he went still, but allowed the now very intimate closeness. Liu Qingge leaned closer, dropping his voice so the words he said would only be for himself and Shen Qingqiu to hear, even if the peak lords tried to eavesdrop.
“I could not bear to be parted from you, Shen Yuan. If you would like it, I would never be so far away that you could not reach out and touch me, if you wished. And you would always be allowed.”
They were the words he had decided on days ago, but did not have the right opportunity to say. The sentiment had been quietly living in his heart for a very long time. For too long it had been left unnoticed, even by himself. Now it was free — and vulnerable like any soft thing without its shell.
He trusted Shen Qingqiu to be gentle.
“S-shidi…” the fairy breathed, his voice shaky and his eyes bright when Liu Qingge pulled back enough to see his face.
“You do not have to say anything. It would not be fair to ask you to. But I needed you to know that all of me, as much or as little of me as you like, is yours. Perhaps it has been since it was you I saw.”
“Shidi… To be clear…?” Shen Qingqiu was flushed, biting his lip after he spoke.
Liu Qingge chuckled softly. “Isn’t it already?” He leaned in again and enunciated each syllable clearly. “I love you, Shen Yuan. I will not leave you yet.”
He stepped back, moving to cup Shen Qingqiu’s hands rather than hold them, so he could pull away if he wished. The fairy didn’t move, staring at him as if he’d imparted a secret that could level mountains and turn the seas to wine.
From the corner of his eyes, Liu Qingge could see the other three peak lords pretending they were unaware of their conversation. The atmosphere must have made it all too clear what was going on, but they were at least polite enough to feign they were still too busy with whatever they were doing to notice. Even had time been of the essence, he did not think they would have dared to say a thing.
Liu Qingge must have made some movement that made Shen Qingqiu think he was going to move away, because the fairy stepped suddenly forward, gripping at his robes to regain his full attention. “Shidi!”
“Mn?”
“Shidi…” Shen Qingqiu was almost trembling as he seemed to fight to find the words. Liu Qingge waited patiently, knowing that if Shen Qingqiu could not easily express himself then it would be very important. “…do you mean it like the books?” His face flamed.
This was not at all what he expected, so Liu Qingge paused, flustered and turning roughly the same color as Shen Qingqiu. “I… Sh-shixiong… It can be whatever we like…” Hopefully that was the correct answer.
“Oh,” Shen Qingqiu said in reply, looking now as if his words had once again revealed a truth that provided enlightenment. Then he smiled rather blindingly. “Then I accept.”
“…Shixiong… I… am now very concerned about the contents of the books.”
The fairy laughed and reached up to pat his cheeks with both hands. “I would be more concerned about the contents of my mind, if I were you, surely? Don’t look so unnerved — as you said, it can be whatever we like.”
“…en.” He paused before saying. “Shixiong… to be clear?”
Shen Qingqiu smiled with an amusement whose warmth rivaled the sun. “Isn’t it obvious? I love you too.”
The three peak lords lost their ability to pretend they weren’t paying attention. They all turned abruptly to look away and give them privacy as Shen Qingqiu dragged Liu Qingge close and kissed him until he was breathless.
And then longer, since Liu Qingge remembered that he didn’t need to breathe at all.
Any part of him that did not have the pleasure of being able to touch Shen Qingqiu faded, utterly forgotten.
***
The other peak lords gratefully got down to business the moment the other two came out of their pink and fluffy clouds of romance and acknowledged they existed.
“Why didn’t you just step back into your body to begin with?” one of them asked with a hint of exasperation.
“I was pushed out.” Liu Qingge did his best to ignore that they seemed to think he’d overlooked the obvious — something that was taught to all cultivators of the sect in case of accidental astral projection.
“Pushed out?”
“En. I tried many times until you entered Ling Xi Caves and took us away.”
“Then you should have said something!”
This time Liu Qingge pinned his shixiong with a cool stare. From the way the man stiffened, it must have been particularly intimidating in his ghostly form.
“I could not at first. It seemed inadvisable later, the longer it had gone on. I had other concerns.”
“Protecting Shen-Shixiong.”
“En.”
The others exchanged glances before shrugging and letting it go. As well they should — second-guessing his instincts would be rude at this point.
“If we had known more quickly you would have had more options. Burning you on a bier of Phoenix Wood is for the best now,” Mu Qingfang said.
“I’m not familiar with this, what does it do?” Shen Qingqiu asked, hand slipping into Liu Qingge’s as they stood side by side next to the bier. A thin silk cloth had been politely placed over the body’s face to be less disconcerting.
The others went on pretending they did not notice the intimacy, while Liu Qingge’s heart soared over the simple way Shen Qingqiu laced their fingers together under the cover of his long sleeves.
“Phoenix Wood does more than catch flame easily. It can also help a rebirth, burning away the old and making it new again as long as spirit and body are united and not too corrupted. If your cultivation level were not so high… But of course it is… If you do your best to align your spirit with your body like you were returning after an astral projection, we will set the wood alight (which should merge body and spirit), and then pour the ashes into the metal basin along with pure water and clay. With the five elements and an infusion of qi…”
The Ku Xing peak lord continued in this manner for a bit, with occasional input from the other two and questions from Shen Qingqiu.
Liu Qingge tuned out, far too occupied trying to soothe the tension he saw in the fairy’s shoulders by using the pad of his thumb to gently stroke over his knuckles. This earned him a side-eye from Shen Qingqiu that seemed to say he was being distracting, but no ire. If anything, the pink tips of the fairy’s ears and the way he swayed a little closer said he liked it as much as Liu Qingge did.
He could have said he trusted his sect brothers to do their best for him, sure that they were confident in the ritual’s success and that Shen Qingqiu would look out for him too, making sure they remembered every part of it and left nothing to chance. And that would be true, but mostly he was making sure that if something did happen, he had made certain to treasure every last second he had with Shen Qingqiu, rather than taking it for granted that he could do it all later.
This was why when he was prompted to step onto the bier, he tugged Shen Qingqiu aside to push his fingers into his hair and just hold his face between his hands, memorizing it and the exact shade of his eyes. Shen Qingqiu allowed it, blushing from the intense look and the presence of the others (who, once again, hastily pretended to be deaf and blind to the other side of the room, talking among themselves to increase their privacy — he would need to send them gifts for their thoughtfulness).
“Don’t, Shidi… You’ll make me worry if we part like this,” Shen Qingqiu said in a soft, wobbly voice, his eyes too-bright now.
Liu Qingge smiled. “No need. Even if it is not possible, I will come back to you.” He leaned in to kiss him, tasting the bitterness of the medicines Mu Qingfang had made him take and the fairy’s own sweetness.
This time it was Shen Qingqiu who was breathless first — which only made sense, of course. They held each other when they finally broke, the fairy clutching at his conveniently tangible robes and Liu Qingge stroking over his hair and down his back for long enough for Shen Qingqiu to catch his breath again.
“You had better try to return quickly. The longer you are gone, the more time I will have to read those books and get ideas,” Shen Qingqiu threatened quietly.
Liu Qingge chuckled and dropped a kiss on the top of his head. “En. Get many ideas. We will try them all.”
“You would not say such things if you had read the scandalous things I have…” Shen Qingqiu muttered against his shoulder, almost bruising as he wrapped his arms around Liu Qingge’s ribs. His form seemed to naturally accommodate Shen Qingqiu’s needs, becoming tangible at his touch.
“I have read enough to be interested in which ‘ideas’ you are curious about… Shixiong,” Liu Qingge teased, whispering the words next to his ear as if it were just the two of them in Shen Qingqiu’s room with the spirit board next to them.
He felt Shen Qingqiu shiver.
When Shen Qingqiu had recovered from his flustered state, they exchanged one final kiss on the lips. Another was left on the fairy’s hand, “To hold.”
His softness sliding away until he returned to his usual dispassionate expression, Liu Qingge moved to the bier.