Chapter Text
In the modern world, Shang Qinghua slumped back in his chair after a ten-hour fugue state, fingers sore from hammering away at his beloved Proud Immortal Demon Way outline. He rubbed his temples, stared at the swirling screensaver, and muttered under his breath:
“Wait... did I type Young Master Qiu or Young Master Liu?”
Across realms, reality hiccuped.
In a cosmic bid to conserve narrative effort, fate shrugged and made an executive decision: if a cruel noble household was needed to torment the young scum villain, why waste time creating a new set of characters? The Liu family—honorable, sword-wielding, emotionally well-adjusted—would do just fine.
---
Shen Jiu had been sold before. That wasn’t new.
What was new was the estate he arrived at this time: wide stone courtyards, mist-draped rooftops, carved talismans glowing faintly on lintels. The Liu family estate looked like something out of a fable. The man who bought him had kind eyes and the posture of someone who could kill with two fingers.
Liu Yanchuan, head of the Liu family. Righteous cultivator. War hero. Father.
“I’m sorry it came to this,” he said, not unkindly, as he handed off the silver. “You’ll be well-treated here, boy.”
Shen Jiu didn’t speak. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t bow.
The steward hesitated longer than he should have. The official records had arrived two days late, bearing more of a title than a name. "Young Master Liu,” it read. Purchased on behalf of the family, sealed by the merchant guild, stamped and verified.
But they hadn’t ordered a slave.
Lady Liu turned the parchment over twice, her brows slightly furrowed. “Why would we...”
No one had an answer. The registry bore their seal. The coin had left their treasury.
They were cultivators of standing. They didn’t traffic in children.
And yet, there he was. Pale. Silent. With a collar around his neck and a shadow behind his eyes.
“We’ll… make arrangements,” Liu Yanchuan said eventually, voice clipped. “There must have been a mistake.”
But the paperwork was perfect.
And once a contract like this was registered, it was near impossible to undo.
So the Liu family did the only thing they could: they placed Shen Jiu in a quiet servant’s courtyard, gave him food and robes and clean bedding, and carried on.
Not cruel.
Just confused.
---
Liu Minghan was ten.
He was everything a righteous cultivator’s son ought to be: upright, well-spoken, already sparring with elders and correcting formation scripts by hand. He had a good heart, a strong foundation, and a younger sister who adored him.
He should not have hated Shen Jiu.
And yet, from the first moment he laid eyes on him—he did.
Or rather, something inside him twisted.
The first time he tried to speak to Shen Jiu, he meant to offer a red bean bun. What came out was:
“You look like you’d steal it anyway.”
The second time, he tried to ask if Shen Jiu wanted warmer robes. Instead, he said:
“Don’t act like you’re cold. You’re used to worse, aren’t you?”
He slapped himself the third time it happened.
That night, he sat hunched over a desk in his room, quill scratching furiously.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t think it’s me. But I can’t stop.
He doesn’t deserve this.
I say things I don’t mean. I think things I never thought before.
He tucked the journal under a loose floorboard.
And the next day, when Shen Jiu was kneeling to mend a cracked garden tile, Liu Minghan sneered down at him and said:
“You’re not even good at being beneath me.”
Shen Jiu didn’t look up.
He never did.
Liu Minghan could not stand it all of a sudden. He leapt onto Shen Jiu, pulling him down into the dirt, punching and yelling insults.
---
The contrast should have been more glaring.
In Shang Qinghua’s original outline, the family that tormented Shen Jiu was made of cruel opportunists. Unfeeling. Power-hungry.
But the Liu family? They were scholars and warriors. They fasted during storm festivals and burned incense to honor wandering spirits. They rescued wounded birds.
Lady Liu once wept when Liu Haitang stepped on a beetle.
They were not villains. And yet here was Shen Jiu, bruised and bleeding under their roof.
Liu Minghan wasn’t a bully. But he played one every time Shen Jiu breathed too evenly.
Something was wrong.
Liu Haitang was the only constant.
“Jiu-gege,” she called him, climbing into his lap with sticky hands.
He stiffened.
“You’re like a cat,” she declared. “All ears and glaring.”
He said nothing, but let her stay. She tugged on his sleeve until he finished the last of the sweet plums she brought him.
Liu Minghan watched from across the hall. The ache in his chest felt like guilt. Or prophecy.
—-
Liu Minghan began to notice a pattern.
Whenever he had theory lessons in the eastern study hall, a silent figure lingered just outside—half-obscured behind the paper screens, pretending to dust the corridor or prune nonexistent plants. When sword drills were scheduled, someone had carefully rearranged the decorative potted palms near the training grounds. They were unusually large. And always conveniently placed.
At first, Liu Minghan thought he was imagining it. But then one afternoon, as Elder Bai droned on about spiritual vein harmonics, a faint sneeze echoed from the window ledge.
The elder frowned. “Did someone—?”
“No,” Liu Minghan said quickly. “Just the wind.”
He glanced sideways. The window had been left open on purpose. The breeze fluttered the pages of his notes—and carried the lesson out toward the garden, where a pair of green eyes peeked from between the azalea bushes.
It was Shen Jiu. Again.
He didn’t move. Just stared intently at the open book in Liu Minghan’s lap, like he could read from thirty feet away if he glared hard enough.
Liu Minghan looked down and subtly tilted the page, angling it toward the window.
The voice in his head scoffed: What are you doing? Kick him out. Spit on him. Make him crawl.
Instead, Liu Minghan said, louder than necessary: “Elder Bai, could we go over the third principle again? I didn’t quite catch the explanation.”
He seems better able to resist the compulsion when Shen Jiu is not in sight.
Behind the bushes, a pair of ears perked.
It became routine.
When theory lessons took place, Liu Minghan “forgot” to shut the windows. When sparring drills began, someone always “accidentally” moved the potted palms into better positions for concealment. A servant once complained the furniture was being rearranged without permission.
Liu Minghan feigned ignorance.
The voice in his head was always furious afterward. You’re wasting good narrative!
But Liu Minghan ignored it. Because when Shen Jiu slipped away after each lesson, silent as a shadow, Liu Minghan always saw a faint flush on his face—like someone who had understood something for the first time, and was furious to have enjoyed it.
Liu Minghan thought he looked pretty then, and that was usually when the compulsion took him in his grips and he was forced to chase down Shen Jiu. To throw some barbed comments or wave his fists threateningly.
But Liu Minghan never once let it slipped that Shen Jiu was trying to learn cultivation. He had a feeling his father would not approve.
(Of course, Liu Yancheng would not approve. Shen Jiu had no head, no tail and this was a sure path to a bad cultivation foundation.)
—
The voice was quietest when Shen Jiu wasn’t near. But it was never gone.
Liu Minghan lost sleep. His room filled with talisman scraps and ink-stained hands. He burned cleansing sigils. Whispered mantras. Practiced sword breathing until he nearly passed out.
He tried again.
And again.
He burned a cleansing talisman beneath his bed. He drew a basic mind-purification sigil on his forehead and recited the eight-fold breath cycle that his uncle used before sword meditation.
Still, that voice lingered—just out of reach. No longer shouting, but curled quiet in the back of his mind like a coiled snake, waiting.
Touch him.
Make him cry.
You’re the young master Liu. He’s yours.
He pressed his fists to his eyes. “Go away,” he muttered. “Go away. I’m not like that. I’m not like you.”
The silence afterward was worse than if it had answered.
After weeks of futile effort, he finally gave up and padded barefoot into his parents’ courtyard. The wind cut through his thin robe, but he didn’t feel cold. Just unclean.
He found his mother still awake in her solar, sorting cultivation reports and disciple recommendations under a flickering talisman lamp. She looked up, brows lifting slightly.
“Minghan.”
He stood in the doorway for a long moment. “Can I ask you something?”
She set her brush down. “Of course.”
“Can talismans… make people think things?” he asked slowly. “Things they don’t want? Or—make them feel wrong? Say things they never meant to say?”
Lady Liu’s expression didn’t change. But her posture sharpened.
“Who cursed you?” she said at once.
“I don’t know if it’s a curse,” he muttered, stepping inside. “But something’s wrong with me. It’s like… like someone else is in my head. Telling me to do things.”
“What kind of things?”
He hesitated. “Mean things. Ugly things. Sometimes…” He swallowed hard. “Sometimes it says I should hurt someone. Touch him. Like he belongs to me.”
Lady Liu was very still.
He stared at the floor. “It says awful things about the servant boy. The one who was… bought. Shen Jiu.”
“I know who he is.”
“I don’t want to listen,” Liu Minghan said. “But sometimes it’s like—I already said it before I knew I was going to. It’s not mine. But it uses me.”
Lady Liu stood, walked to a cabinet, and pulled out a shallow incense dish and a fresh spirit-cleansing charm. She handed both to him without comment.
“You tried anything yet?” she asked.
He nodded. “I tried a mind-purification array. And a water-binding talisman. And the cloud-breath cycle.”
“You overdid it,” she said, examining the smudge of ink on his sleeve. “That’s not the kind of problem you solve with a charm you copied crooked from memory. You look half-possessed.”
“Maybe I am,” he whispered.
Lady Liu exhaled through her nose. Not unkindly. “Don’t be dramatic. You’re ten.”
Liu Minghan winced. “But if I hurt someone—”
“You didn’t. Not really. I know the kind of hurt you can inflict on others if you want to.”
“But I wanted to.”
She gave him a long, unreadable look.
“No. You didn’t,” she said finally. “That’s the point. If you wanted to, you wouldn’t be here trying to scrape it out of your own head.”
Liu Minghan went quiet.
Lady Liu sat again and gestured for him to come forward. When he didn’t move, she reached out and tugged him gently by the wrist. Not tender. Just deliberate.
“Whatever this is,” she murmured, brushing his hair back with a dry hand, “it’s not yours. Some things stick to children, especially ones close to cultivation. You’re sensitive. Maybe too sensitive.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I can try,” she gestured to the charm in his hands. “But some things run deeper than talismans. If this is something… older, something written into the world—then it might not be just about you.”
He didn’t understand. But she wasn’t really explaining for his benefit anyway.
Lady Liu reached for a fresh talisman and drew a different pattern this time—slanted, irregular, something meant to reveal rather than remove.
“Sleep first. Then we’ll see what stays behind in the morning.”
“But—”
“You won’t solve it tonight, Minghan. And tomorrow, you’ll wake up still being yourself.”
He nodded slowly. Let her lead him back to bed.
When she left the room, she paused at the threshold and turned back. “If it gets worse,” she said, “you come to me.”
He hesitated. Then: “What if it tells me not to?”
“Then tell it to get in line behind your mother,” she said dryly. “I’ve killed worse things than voices.”
The talismans never revealed anything. The voice stayed.
So Liu Minghan broke into the archive and found Shen Jiu’s slave papers. Legal documentation. Proof of sale. A contract that claimed him like property.
He stared at them for a long time. His name was listed under "caretaker." That made something crawl under his skin.
He broke the protective seal, and stole them.
He didn’t burn them. He couldn’t.
He just... hid them.
Buried them behind the loose tile beneath the west wall of the stables. No one else would find them.
Except maybe Shen Jiu who was tasked to look after the horses.
Shen Jiu should not belong to anyone again.
---
Liu Minghan didn’t sleep again.
He watched the rain slide down his windowpane like something washing the world clean. But nothing washed clean—not guilt, not regret, not the low, crawling sickness that came with hearing himself speak in someone else’s voice.
He sat at his desk and rewrote the same line twelve times:
He deserves more than this.
Then he padded across the courtyard barefoot, boots in one hand, the other clutching a cloak and dried rations.
The stable door creaked open. Shen Jiu was there—as if expecting him—kneeling in the straw with a flat expression and eyes like green fire behind glass.
“You’re early,” he said.
“You knew I’d come?”
“You’ve been watching me like a trapped dog for two weeks. You weren’t very subtle.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
Shen Jiu stood. Liu Minghan handed him the bundle. He then retrieved Shen Jiu’s slave papers from where they were hidden behind loose bricks.
Shen Jiu watched him with wary eyes. His eyes widened when he saw the slave papers handed to him.
“Why?”
“They prove no one owns you.”
“I already knew that.”
“…Now the rest of the world will know too.”
A pause.
Then Shen Jiu took them.
He slung the pack over one shoulder and fastened the cloak with efficient fingers. The silence between them hung like frost.
Liu Minghan swallowed.
He could feel it again—that crawling pressure behind his eyes, a buzzing heat low in his spine. The same wrongness that had made him say all those horrible things. It pressed closer now, like a whisper curling around his ear.
“Grab him. Make him beg. You’re the young master Liu. He’s yours.”
The words didn’t feel like thoughts. They felt like orders. Like someone was holding a puppet string tied to his tongue.
Liu Minghan’s stomach turned.
He didn’t understand all the things the voice said—some were vague, others made his face heat with a shame he didn’t have a name for. But even at ten years old, he knew it was bad. That whatever it was pushing him to do, it was wrong. Violent. Cruel. Twisted.
And it wanted him to want it.
He stared at Shen Jiu, who was watching him like a storm cloud trapped in a boy’s skin. Pale and unblinking. A little too still.
“Say something cruel,” the voice urged. “Push him down. Let him remember what it means to be owned.”
Liu Minghan clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms.
“I don’t know why I was like that,” he said, voice low and miserable.
Shen Jiu’s tone was light, too light. “You seemed to enjoy it.”
“I didn’t. I hated it every time.”
“Then that makes it worse.”
He flinched. Didn’t deny it.
“Touch his hair,” the voice suggested, sweet and oily now. “Tell him he looks pretty when he cries. Or—better yet—don’t say anything at all.”
Liu Minghan almost retched.
“I said leave,” he croaked out suddenly, harsher than he meant. Not at Shen Jiu, but at the thing pressing against his thoughts. “Go—go now. The talisman seal will keep off low-level beasts. The outer cities aren’t safe, but you’ll make it through.”
He wanted to say more. Something kind, maybe. Something true. But the voice was coiling tighter now, like it wanted to punish him for disobeying.
So he bit down on his own tongue and stepped back. Hands shaking.
Shen Jiu turned slightly, just enough that the moonlight caught the edge of his profile.
“Fine.”
Then he was gone, his figure swallowed by night and forest and freedom.
The buzzing in Liu Minghan’s skull stopped.
For a moment, the air felt clean again.
Liu Minghan had never known fear before.
But now he was terrified of himself.
The next day, Liu Minghan confessed to everything. His mother was quiet. His father sighed like something ancient had lifted.
“We were never meant to have him,” Lady Liu murmured. “We just… did.”
Liu Minghan didn’t ask what she meant. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
---
Shen Jiu made it to the city outskirts. The gold barely touched as Shen Jiu kept it for emergencies.
He fought through alleys and scammed merchants and held a dagger to the throat of a man three times his size. He walked until his legs gave out and woke up at the bottom of Cang Qiong's winding steps up the mountain.
The mountain steps had felt endless.
Shen Jiu’s legs were shaking. His palms were scraped. His legs felt like they were about to give up.
So when someone seized him from behind, he spun fast—dagger out.
Only to stop, stunned.
“Xiao Jiu?” the boy said.
His face was cleaner. But the voice—low, kind, familiar—shattered something that had been clenched tight in Shen Jiu’s chest for too long.
“…Qi-ge?”
Yue Qi grinned and wrapped him in a hug so sudden and strong it nearly knocked them both down the stairs.
Shen Jiu froze. Then, slowly, very slowly, relaxed.
“You made it,” Shen Jiu said. It came out smaller than he meant.
Yue Qi didn’t let go. “You too. I thought—when I escaped the slave masters—I swore I’d come back for you.”
“I waited. A long time.”
“I’m sorry.” Yue Qi pulled back, cupping Shen Jiu’s face like something sacred. “But we’re here now. Both of us.”
Shen Jiu lowered his eyes. “I had help.”
“From who?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He hesitated. “I don’t want to owe them anything.”
Yue Qi gave him a look. “Then Qi-ge will owe them instead.”
Shen Jiu looked up. “That sounds worse.”
Yue Qi laughed. “I missed you.”
“…I missed you too.”
They climbed the rest of the mountain together.
Two half-starved, muddy boys. One with a dagger tucked in his sleeve, the other with conviction burning bright in his chest.
Cang Qiong Sect didn’t know what it was getting.
But it took them both anyway.
Yue Qi became a disciple of Qiong Ding Peak.
Shen Jiu—after a short minute—was claimed by Qing Jing.
The path split. But they were no longer alone.
Not slaves. Not strays.
Just disciples.