Chapter Text
In a forgotten, crumbling cell in a forgotten, crumbling dungeon, far below the bustling courtyards of a grand palace, there lay a certain forgotten, crumbling prisoner.
The stench of blood and filth hung thick in the cell’s damp air. Water droplets made their way through the cracks in the ceiling in one of the corners, falling with an incessant, rhythmic drip. One could, if they wished, count the seconds by that dripping— not that the cell’s resident cared to do so anymore.
Along one of the cell’s walls, there was an elegantly-carved chair that had sat vacant now for countless days. The entirety of the floor was dark, glistening black. If it weren’t for the overpowering coppery stench, one might think it was made of smooth tiles as black as night, but on closer examination, it was clear that the color came from a layer of old, long-dried blood which covered the cell’s floor, stopped only by its four walls and threshold.
Hanging from the ceiling in the center of the cell were an assortment of filthy iron shackles of various sizes, all left open and unused. Beneath those, on the blood-tiled floor, lay the cell’s occupant.
On first glance, it would certainly seem that the man formerly known as Shen Qingqiu had been long dead. His long, dark hair was matted and tangled and stiff with dried blood, and the only thing that offered any coverage to his body, aside from a few shreds of fabric that still stubbornly clung to his ghostly-pale skin. He lay motionless, not seeming even to breathe.
Well, aside from breathing, there wasn’t much he could do in terms of movement, considering that his four limbs had already been torn off. His one remaining eye hung slightly open, unblinking, while the other was no more than an empty, blood-caked socket.
His face was turned toward the door, as though he were watching, waiting for it to open once again, but his eye had long since clouded over— he could hardly see more than the length of one of his torn-off arms in front of him. On the ground in front of him, practically having become one with the blood-floor, lay a pile of sword-shards, glinting in the faint light that came from beneath the door.
Yes, by all rights, Shen Qingqiu should be dead right now. He should have been dead a thousand times over— with his cultivation decimated and his body torn to shreds, without having anything to eat or drink in so long that he couldn’t even recall what it felt like.
But death was not something so easily earned for someone like Shen Qingqiu, and the blood of the Tian Mo lineage was a potent life-preserver.
He didn’t know how long it had been since the first time that that monster Luo Binghe had forced his mouth open and poured his blood down his former teacher’s throat, but it had happened so many more times since then— even though the beast’s blood could burrow itself deeply into his body and could never fully be removed, it would still need to be replenished from time to time. After all, it had been drained out along with Shen Qingqiu’s own blood from the countless wounds that were being constantly inflicted upon his body, over and over again until he could hardly tell at any given moment what was intact and what was injured. He could do nothing more than drown in an endless sea of agony, unable to escape the crimson-tinted haze that surrounded him.
By this point, that foreign blood circulating through Shen Qingqiu’s battered, neglected organs was the only thing keeping his body from shutting down completely. Luo Binghe had never bothered treating his injuries— he had only forcibly kept him alive until Shen Qingqiu’s body had repaired itself enough for the torment to begin anew.
Luo Binghe hadn’t cared how alive he was— just so long as he was alive and conscious enough to feel pain, that would be good enough. There were plenty of ways for him to keep those two conditions satisfied while at the same time letting Shen Qingqiu bleed endlessly without care.
Of course, there came a day when Shen Qingqiu’s senses no longer registered pain.
Before that day, Luo Binghe had taken great delight in his torment, relishing in every last scream that he wrung out of the man’s irreparably-damaged throat. Once Shen Qingqiu stopped screaming, though, Luo Binghe had begun to lose interest. His visits were less and less frequent— or, at least, it seemed that way to Shen Qingqiu— and replenishment of the supply of blood mites within the prisoner’s body happened less and less often.
Each time Luo Binghe left him alone, Shen Qingqiu had hoped that he would finally forget to come back, finally let him die.
And each time, just when he thought that the end had finally come, that heavy door would creak open once more, and he would be beaten senseless with the enthusiasm of someone embracing a lover they had not seen in many years, and then the warm trickle of Luo Binghe’s blood would run down his throat again. Though his tongue had by now been torn out along with his sense of taste, he could still remember the acrid sweetness of that blood, like wine left out in the sun for days on end while flies descended upon its surface to die a slow death in a drunken stupor.
Shen Qingqiu should have known better than to think that Luo Binghe would ever just let him die. After all, the endless torment of his former teacher was one of his favored pastimes, second only to the expansion of his ever-growing harem of women— something the Mojie-Shengjun would brag about from time to time, in those moments while he waited for his captive to catch his breath before wrenching even more screams from his ragged throat.
Of course, Luo Binghe was also a capricious man, and when his favored pastime stopped giving him the most desirable results, he inevitably began to lose interest. It entertained him for a time to simply watch Shen Qingqiu trembling helplessly on the ground, limp and broken after one of his infamous torture sessions. But that was nothing compared to his former screams and howls of agony. This lack of response, naturally, angered the mojie-shengjun, and Shen Qingqiu’s body had been subjected to further beatings and torments which left most of his remaining bones broken and hardly a single place on his body intact as punishment, and as a last attempt to strike terror into him. When he hadn’t responded as Luo Binghe had hoped, though, he’d been cast harshly to the ground as the half-demon stormed out of the cell in rage.
By the time that Shen Qingqiu had regained consciousness after that, he was still on the floor, and Luo Binghe was long gone. He hadn’t returned ever since.
Shen Qingqiu had no idea how long it had been since then, and, quite truthfully, he didn’t care anymore.
Why should he care?
What was there to care about?
Everything had already happened the way that it had happened— the only thing left was for Shen Qingqiu to continue suffering until he eventually died.
There was no escape, and there was certainly no going back, so Shen Qingqiu didn’t even need to consider things like that.
He watched the door until he couldn’t see it anymore, and then he watched the place where the door had been. He listened to the sound of dripping water, which had once driven him mad with thirst but eventually became his only way to count the passage of time, until the sound faded away and he could no longer hear it, then the memory of it echoed through his mind until that, too had faded. Though he had long lost the ability to process pain, he could still register the scent of blood and rot from the cell he lay in and from the slow deterioration of the cage of flesh that still stubbornly trapped his spirit, until his senses finally grew deadened to that as well.
The time wore by, and he could feel the heavenly demon blood begin to move more sluggishly through his body. Bit by bit, it became less and less effective at keeping him alive.
Still, Luo Binghe did not come.
Shen Qingqiu didn’t know what had happened. Had he been forgotten about? Had the beast simply decided to let him die after all? It was, of course, too much to hope for that Luo Binghe had run into some problem that had left him dead and rotting in a pit somewhere. Though Shen Qingqiu would have once enjoyed passing the time by imagining such things, the thought no longer held the same charm to him.
He had wished for Luo Binghe to die for far too long without ever tasting satisfaction.
Now, he couldn’t taste anything at all.
The only death he wanted anymore was his own. No vengeance, just an end.
Once before, he would have wondered what that monster had gotten up to that diverted his attention so sharply away from his favorite prisoner— how much of the world outside of this dungeon, if any, still remained intact?— but Shen Qingqiu no longer cared about that world. He would have told himself that he had never cared, but for awhile, he was at least interested to learn of what happened outside, however terrible it may be. From the moment that those cruelly-glistening shards had clattered to the ground before him, though, all of those cares had faded away. The cultivation world could burn to ash, or it could rise up again and flourish like new springtime— either way, Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t see it, and didn’t care to see it. There was nothing more left in this world for him, anyway.
Not that there had been much to begin with.
Fate had always been set against Shen Qingqiu. He had fought endlessly against it, first hoping that if he just held out long enough that things would take a turn, then eventually holding out in spite of it— and now, with the endless current of his spite and hatred all but washed away by an even more endless river of blood and agony, he merely hoped to be released from it all.
For so long now, his pleas had gone unanswered as ever.
Now, for once in this life’s miserable final act that had followed after a destitute first and lackluster second, fate finally seemed to have finally taken some pity on him.
Luo Binghe never came back.
Slowly, slowly, Shen Qingqiu felt his body shutting down. Bit by bit, darkness pressed around him. It wasn’t peaceful— that would be too merciful for something like him— but the inevitability of the end still brought some slight sense of relief. As the last of Luo Binghe’s accursed blood mites went still within his tattered veins, even the faint, shallow breaths that had been entering and exiting long-collapsed lungs ceased to flow, and all became still and silent.
Shen Qingqiu didn’t know if he had been abandoned or forgotten, or if Luo Binghe had decided, at long last, to finally carry out his execution.
Shen Qingqiu didn’t care.
By now, many years must have passed since Shen Qingqiu had first been sentenced to die and dragged away to this forsaken underground vault, never again to see the light of day. He had already attempted once before to complete the task that the beast seemed so reluctant to finish. When he still had one arm left, and the sword-shards that lay before him had still contained the faint essence of a familiar spirit and had not yet been caked in blood, Shen Qingqiu had reached out grasped one of the largest of the shards, unable even to feel the pain as it cut into his palm.
Until now, he had not yet entirely given up on living— now, there was no reason to hold out any longer.
Shen Qingqiu’s plan had fallen apart before he could complete it, though. Luo Binghe had decided to pay a visit at the exact moment he had raised the shard and drawn it across his throat. The mojie-shengjun entered the cell to find his favorite plaything slumped on the ground with blood running in vermilion rivers from where he had sliced his own throat, his last remaining limb having given out as soon as the deed was done. Of course, it had taken only a crook of the demon’s finger to stop the flow of blood from the wound, and another twist of his hand to seal it closed.
That day, Shen Qingqiu lost his remaining arm.
As though losing all four limbs hadn’t been enough, he had been suspended from the ceiling by a metal ring around his waist. Through the haze of pain, he could hear Luo Binghe telling him in a falsely-concerned tone that now he could look at those shards from a safe distance, where he wouldn’t be able to ‘accidentally’ hurt himself.
Truthfully, that beast had only wanted the chance to bat him around like a fish on a string as he swung from side to side, unable even to attempt to steady himself or prevent himself from crashing into the walls.
Shen Qingqiu had no idea how much time had passed since then, but it seemed that now, since he had been left discarded on the floor, the beast had finally lost interest.
The blood mites had gone quiet inside of his body. Luo Binghe was tired of watching him, tired of keeping him alive. Perhaps the entertainment was no longer enough to pay off the effort. Good, then— this time, Shen Qingqiu might actually be able to succeed.
There was no strength left within his broken, tormented body even to breathe, but he nonetheless managed to lift his chin and stretch out his neck. That single movement drained what little dregs of strength remained within him, but it was enough.
He felt something sharp prick his lips.
By now, Shen Qingqiu’s skin was as thin as paper and twice as fragile. As soon as his lips touched the edge of one of the metal shards, they were cut open, and a few fresh drops of dark-colored blood sluggishly trickled out, gleaming fresh and bright atop the old stains.
Even if Luo Binghe had decided to let him die, Shen Qingqiu still had one last bit of defiance left within him. He would not let that bastard deal the final blow, nor would he simply lie here quietly while waiting for his consciousness to fade away.
His lips parted around the sharp edges of a shard, and with the few teeth that hadn’t yet been knocked out of his jaw, he pulled it up from the stone floor, free of the dried blood that adhered it there.
The razor-sharp piece of sword-steel scraped along the roof of his mouth, cutting through his cheek as he moved it to the back of his throat. His limited remaining vision turned white, then red, then black as it went down, tearing his throat to shreds, severing veins and arteries like it was cutting through air. More blood than he knew he still had ran down into his stomach and out of his mouth, stars flashing in his mind’s eye. The muscles in his throat spasmed as he swallowed.
He felt something sting the corners of his remaining eye as he reflexively gasped for breath, only to choke on his own blood over and over again.
After all these years, it seemed that in this moment, he was still able to shed a single tear.
Goodbye, Yue Qingyuan. Goodbye, Yue Qi.
Shen Qingqiu’s vision clouded over for the last time, a dark haze enveloping him like the smoke that rose from the Endless Abyss. As he drowned in his own blood, he shut his remaining eye, feeling the chill that rose up from the blood-paved floor reaching into the core of his very soul.
If you and I ever return to this world, may our paths never cross.
The inky blackness folded him into its cold embrace, and Shen Qingqiu let himself be wrapped up willingly. Then, there was nothingness.
“Shidi?”
That voice was soft and gentle, with a faintly timid edge to it. It was quiet, and yet it filtered in through the dreamlike haze engulfing his consciousness. Carefully, as if on instinct, he moved toward it, wading through the ink-black mire that surrounded him.
It was so familiar, and yet…
“Shidi, can you hear me?”
An undercurrent of concern ran beneath the question, punctuated with anticipation. He knew that voice, of course he did, but there was something wrong about it.
Something… something didn’t add up.
It sounded as though he were beneath the surface of a deep pool, listening to that voice speaking from far above him, muffled and distorted by the pool’s ripples. He swam toward the sound, pushing against the mire’s resistance, and it became clearer the closer to the surface he got. At last, he broke through.
He took a breath of clear, clean, and fresh air, laden with the soothing scents of incense and medicinal herbs, and let his eyelids flutter open.
Morning sunlight streamed into the room through a sheer paper-screened window. Furnishings that were simple yet fine and elegant adorned the chamber, with a great, stunningly hand-painted folding fan mounted on one wall. A soft white muslin canopy hung about the bed, its curtains draping down around the sides like a gently-drifting waterfall. The scene was familiar but distant, in just the same way it felt to hear that voice.
Carefully, Shen Qingqiu turned his head, in one direction, then in the other to get his bearings. He tried to recall how he got here, what had happened to him— hadn’t he been dead? If so, how had he gotten here? — and then he froze.
His eyes— eyes, plural, though he hardly even had the wherewithal to register that fact right now— which had been only opened enough to glance through his lashes, went wide when his gaze fell upon that face.
Strong brows and chiseled jawline, soft cheeks with a faint flush of pink, deep, dark eyes glimmering with worry, sleek black hair partially held up in an elegant silver shufa guan, with the rest of it cascading over strong, broad shoulders covered in dusk-colored xuanduan robes of the finest silk.
A handsome, gentle face.
A face that Shen Qingqiu never expected to see again.
With growing incredulity, as if in a dream, he opened his mouth to speak a long-unspoken name with a long-absent tongue.
“Yue… Qi…”
Glossary:
Terms:
Tiān Mó - 天魔 - heavenly demon
Mójiè-Shèngjūn - 魔界圣君 - sage-ruler of the demon world
shùfā guān - 束发冠 - a small crown or hairpiece designed to hold the topknot in place
xuánduān - 玄端 - formal attire for laypeople, everyday attire for nobles, typically black or dark blue with a hint of color (usually red)