Chapter Text
This was setting a record for the least amount of sunlight and fresh air that Shen Qingqiu had ever gotten.
He’d always thought of himself as someone who excelled at being alone. But it turned out that the experience of being alone in one’s bedroom, with the entire world at one’s fingertips for any number of pointless forum arguments, and with one’s loving family in the same house expecting to at least share dinner together, was very different to being alone in a cave.
It was a very nice cave, though, as far as caves went! Shen Qingqiu hadn’t had any real experience with cave systems in his past life, but he was sure that the Ling Xi Caves of Qiong Ding Peak blew all other underground areas away in this theoretical competition. The Ling Xi Caves appeared to be formed partially out of strange white and green stone, almost jade-like, almost cloud-like. Patches of the otherworldly stone appeared to flow in the darkness, lighting the way down into a beautiful and mysterious realm.
The Ling Xi Caves were also labyrinthine, but their paths were apparently fairly well marked. It turned out that when people actually lived every day in the poorly written world of Proud Immortal Demon Way, they did sensible things like install some directional signage, carved into very tasteful marble slabs and occasionally accompanied by some... subjectively creepy statues.
Standing alone, clearly brought down from above, or else carved into the walls themselves, were statues of animals and demons and figures who appear to be former peak lords. Some of them were also obviously much older than others. A statue of a monkey riding a horse, the monkey in Buddhist robes at face height with Shen Qingqiu, looked like it was polished just yesterday. Then there was a knee-high statue of a peak lord, plump and grinning, probably intended to be a master of An Ding Peak, with a large stalagmite growing up through his face.
The statues seemed to be acting as... signage? Decoration? Like a house might have a themed "Blue Room" or a palace might have a "Magnolia Pavilion," the Ling Xi Caves had a cave with an enormous tiger statue that had too many teeth, like a temple to some demonic god. And then another room full of tiny, cheerful, disturbingly voluptuous dancing girls.
Did Airplane always intend these interior decorating details even if these things weren't included? Or did the Transmigration System fill out the world out of sheer boredom?
Either way, there was no way Shen Qingqiu would be able to focus with the round, smiling faces of former peak lords constantly peering down at him from the ceiling, like nosy gods leaning out of the heavens. He'd thought that that particular cave was fine until looking up!
More to Shen Qingqiu's tastes, the Ling Xi Caves were also full of natural beauty, strange and otherworldly, fit for a wonder of the world or a computer desktop background. There was an underground river, with a long path but no suitable place for training beside it, and the ceiling above was covered in some kind of glow worms. Shen Qingqiu didn't trust that he wouldn't get dripped on in some way or another if he stayed, but it was very pretty. The twin rivers appeared to flow on forever into the dark depths of the cave system.
There was another room with some apparently still pools of water, vibrantly blue, a little oasis surrounded by lush, green trees and grass. The plants weren't just alive in this place that sunlight had never touched. They were flowering, twisting wildly over the rock, like they didn't even know that they were underground.
This particularly lovely cave was apparently full of bats and therefore a fair amount of bat shit, otherwise Shen Qingqiu might have stayed there. How were they even getting in? Shen Qingqiu made a mental note to make a probing comment to Yue Qingyuan about the state of the Ling Xi Caves later...Was it all supposed to be like this...? Perhaps they ought to get An Ding Peak down here for a clean-up?
Getting quite tired of walking down a thousand twists and turns, Shen Qingqiu emerged into a new strange and beautiful part of this world. The white and green stones had come together to create more wonders, more abstract art pieces large and small, and some natural stone beds at a variety of convenient heights. At the centre of the cave was a pool of clear water that reflected this underground world like a mirror. When Shen Qingqiu dipped his hand in, the pool was cool but not frigid like the glowing underground river had been.
Unfortunately, the refreshing beauty was somewhat marred by the fact that it looked like someone had been murdered here once upon a time. Countless sword gouges and flare gashes had been carved into the walls, which also had some suspiciously blackened stains... some of which were vaguely in the shape of handprints, especially by the cave entrance.
Someone had obviously not treated this public facility as the honour that it was supposed to be! However, Shen Qingqiu found himself a little grateful to the vandal, because this also meant that all of the tacky statues in this lovely space had been viciously destroyed, reduced to tiny stone chips and ugly chunks of rock, with only a little finger or ear remaining. You couldn't even tell what the creatures had been or who the supervising peak lords were supposed to have been!
Ultimately, Shen Qingqiu was very satisfied with the space and settled in to stay. He sat down on one of the stone beds and pulled several enchanted pouches from his sleeve, then opened the one he'd filled with over a dozen cultivation manuals from the Bamboo House on Qing Jing Peak.
His initial plan had been to simply memorize one of them, maybe two of them, and then practise those techniques to perfection. But... well... It turned out that cultivation techniques were extremely complicated processes. Certainly much more complicated than Airplane had ever made the confused process sound, always mixing up the different stages of his own core formation lore! Was this more of the System's creative editorializing?
He'd hoped that being away from all other characters, away from the System's chirping admonishments for trying to express a personality that wasn't trash, would allow him to focus better. He'd hoped that the rich spiritual energy of Ling Xi Caves would impress upon him some inspiration and greater understanding. And it was helping, he was sure of it.
Nevertheless, Shen Qingqiu still felt like he was trying to cram desperately to become a doctor, a lawyer, and an engineer all at once. And the final exam was going to decide whether he lived or died. There were so many diagrams and equations. There were so many rules. There was a lot of philosophy. Medicine. History. Lore. Warnings. Also, a rather shocking but amusing number of unsubtle insults towards the supposedly lesser cultivation techniques and opinions of their peers and rivals.
Some of the people writing these cultivation manuals were also simply not very good writers, it had to be said. Unclear! Unhelpful! Unsympathetic towards the innocent layperson who was trying to do what was probably twenty-plus years of catchup as soon as possible.
Of course, Shen Qingqiu read all of these manuals from cover to cover anyway, multiple times, and he could almost feel his mind being forced to expand under such an onslaught of information. Which wasn't really a pleasant feeling, honestly. Shen Qingqiu found himself standing up quite a lot to stroll around the room, to go through martial drills, to sit by the clear pool and dip his feet in the water, just to give himself time to process all of this learning.
Weren't breaks an important part of studying properly? How was he supposed to focus when he couldn't even tell what time of day it was down here?
"Well, the sheer richness of spiritual energy here is probably a more than sufficient counterbalance," Shen Qingqiu reasoned aloud, studying his pale complexion in the mirror pool for unhealthiness. "If trees have somehow grown and thrived down here without any sunlight whatsoever, then it's probably fine. It's fine."
And also, Shen Qingqiu was a cultivator now. Even if these caves hadn't been so invigorating, then whatever extraordinary changes to one's body allowed for inedia, the ability to forgo food and subsist purely off of one's sufficiently powerful core, probably included allowing a person to go without any vitamin D for long periods of time as well.
"That's just scientific," Shen Qingqiu murmured. "Right...?"
The Qian Cao Peak Lord, Mu Qingfang, hadn't been pleased to hear that Shen Qingqiu intended on cultivating in the Ling Xi Caves, after the apparent spell of poor health that has actually been a cover for transmigration. In Mu Qingfang's expert opinion, inedia was an "unnecessary strain on the body at this point in time." So, Shen Qingqiu had been forced to bring along a supply of medicine and food as well, just in case. So, again, everything was more than fine.
It was just that... like the absence of sunlight... the irregularity of meals was a little disorienting. It was strange to become hungry less frequently than he probably should have. It was... lonely to eat those emergency meals here... in perfect silence.
When his mind felt like it was overflowing, the information spilling back out of his head uselessly, Shen Qingqiu took breaks to build a schedule out of formless time. For example: he occasionally went back to stroll along the glowworm river or the underground oasis full of stinky bats.
He also ran through many sword forms and other martial drills without any spiritual energy involved, which was really just more cultivating, another very important task albeit not the most essential lesson.
He also made sure to recite some of the most crucial facts that he knew about Proud Immortal Demon Way, carefully revising the much greater schedule by which he was now meant to live his life. This engaging activity frequently descended into cursing Airplane for dropped storylines, red herrings, and missed potential.
When Shen Qingqiu had exhausted himself, he lay on the stone beds beside the mirror pool, and told himself that his transmigration situation could have been much worse. He could have been one of those poor suckers who were reborn into the body of an infant, unable to move and shitting himself multiple times a day. He could have been pushed by this uncompromising System through the gruelling motions of this spoiled scum villain's life from the beginning.
He was making excellent progress, really, when he looked back on his efforts. It was important to be a well-rounded individual. Why shouldn’t he spend some of his time practising the dignified mannerisms of a peak lord in the mirror pool? Appearances were everything! While the System had claimed that he was out of the woods in regards to OOC actions after that disastrous Skinner Demon mission, Shen Qingqiu just didn’t think he could trust the word of a stingy supervisor which had dinged him for accidentally smiling at the protagonist.
Anyway, how was he supposed to spent all of his time diligently focused on cultivation when the Transmigration System hadn’t truly provided him with a proper tutorial? While Shen Qingqiu was grateful to be alive... Throwing him at a murderous boss with little warning, then randomly switching the difficult settings around? That just wasn’t a good lesson plan at all.
It also didn’t help that, as Shen Qingqiu leafed through the cultivation manuals full of their urgent warnings and strict rules, he kept being reminded how easy it would be to die down here if something went wrong with his cultivation. Shen Qingqiu was a rank amateur trying to cram his way into being a peak lord. If these cultivation manuals were worth the paper they were written on, then it was apparently pretty easy for him to cause some kind of blockage in his own spiritual pathways, some deep crack in his own foundation, or some twisted growth that would strangle his progress.
Since no one was around to see, Shen Qingqiu often let his head fall forward into his heads, so that he could groan deeply enough to fill the cave. “I don’t know what I’m doooooing...”
And since no one was around to see his shame, no one was around to help if Shen Qingqiu somehow sent himself into a qi deviation down here. No one was here to help if Shen Qingqiu accidentally choked on a melon seed either. If he somehow managed to trip on bat shit and smashed his head against the rock, then fell into a pool and drowned due to a stupid, completely avoidable mistake, then no one would even know for... months, maybe.
If anything went wrong, Shen Qingqiu would die quietly, alone, and in the dark. No one would mourn the early loss of a scum villain, probably. No one here would be able to let his family know what had really happened to him, because to them, he was already dead-!
Shen Qingqiu took a deep breath that carried him all the way back onto his feet. “I am going to go look at the room with the aquatic salamanders again,” he announced to no one in particular.
He’d quickly discovered that he was actually sharing his own cave with no small amount of spiders, particularly eyeless huntsman spiders, some of which were nearly the length of a finger. The spiders obviously only had an appetite for insects and small lizards, and weren’t inclined to be aggressive, not counting the obvious warning displays when he’d wandered too close to a nesting area over in the far corner, so Shen Qingqiu didn’t see why they couldn’t co-exist.
The mirror pool also had snails, which were delightful. Throughout the rest of the cave system, Shen Qingqiu had also discovered plenty of millipedes, moths, crickets, and other insects, and the aforementioned small lizards.
But his favourite discovery so far by far were the larger, natural pools that contained all sorts of cave fish and crustaceans. Shen Qingqiu been admiring a particularly translucent shrimp when it had been snatched up by a creature that he’d initially mistaken for a snake. Aquatic salamanders! The Ling Xi Caves were full of them! They looked like little dragons, undulating vigorously through the water, touching down with their tiny limbs, flaring out their little frilled manes and crowns!
These pools brimming with life were a little off the beaten path, unfortunately, with very little space and without any smooth stone beds. But until his body started to protest the craning poses and rough surfaces, Shen Qingqiu could watch these true inhabitants of the world of Proud Immortal Demon Way and feel at one with nature. In this way, these breaks were very good for his inner peace.
So long as he just didn’t think too much about the documentaries that he’d watched about troglofauna, with his little sister curled up against his side, usually fast asleep before the end every time. So long as he didn’t think about explaining the difference between troglobites and troglophiles to his older brothers, while his parents watched with amusement. Would anyone in this entire world even know what a trogloxene even was? Would it be OOC for him to ask anyone about that...?
No, Shen Qingqiu simply watched the aquatic salamanders stalk their prey with admirable adeptness and dedication. And then he went back to his cultivation, because not dying here alone in the dark, or at the hands of some stereotypical, tutorial villain, was very important to him personally.
Unfortunately, as soon as Shen Qingqiu sat down to finally focus on this particular element of cultivation that had been eluding him for some time, he heard a strange sound. No... he felt a strange ripple of spiritual energy, like a soft gust of wind through the Ling Xi Caves, soon followed by another, then another, in a pattern almost like the distant beating of a drum.
How was anyone supposed to focus on their meditation with that kind of racket?! It was as if the heavens, or some adjacent System, really didn’t want him to try to honestly farm B-Points!
“Can you not?!” Shen Qingqiu groaned, putting his face into his hands again.
It was difficult to describe what even the ordinary state of the rich spiritual energy in the Ling Xi Caves was like. There was a peculiar thickness to the air, not dissimilar to a wall of humidity on an insufferably hot summer’s day, except... a pleasant version of that? And there was a particular taste to the air as well, not dissimilar to the smell of happy plants after bountiful rainfall.
And the spiritual energy of the Ling Xi Caves didn’t stay still either. It was far from stagnant: flowing from one room to the next, down long passages, and between the tiniest cracks in the walls, like water and like wind and like something entirely new. It was perhaps Shen Qingqiu’s best method of keeping track of time. The memory of daylight was carried down into the cave system this way. The whisper of what a sky full of stars looked like. The welcome for the raindrops that had, at the end of a long and twisting road, found their way down into the deep.
So, when someone was apparently being particularly noisy in their cultivation efforts, Shen Qingqiu couldn’t help but notice! Thankfully, just when he was considering doing something about it, the drumbeat of spiritual energy finally stopped abruptly. Well... good! Great!
Shen Qingqiu had wondered many times if he was truly the only person who'd asked for and received permission to enter seclusion. The Ling Xi Caves were gigantic, so there was plenty of room for neighbours who weren't spiders and snails and fish. He'd thought a lot about how he would explain his little walkabouts if he happened to run into anyone.
Finally, he'd found a neighbour! And in the true spirit of neighbours, this person was doing the spiritual equivalent of using heavy machinery without notice and at inconvenient hours. Rude.
Shen Qingqiu settled back into his meditation, determined to get something done around here, and within a few minutes, he sensed the winds of energy stirring again. He jumped when it culminated in the equivalent of a loud BANG! His heart felt like a startled cat, flipping over in the air, bristling afterwards, caught in an indignity that would have become a vital video online.
Pause... BANG! Pause. BANG! Pause. BANG! Was this rude neighbour hitting the cave walls with a hammer?! BANG!
This critical juncture thoroughly interrupted, Shen Qingqiu lay back on the stone beds and stared up at the ceiling. He smacked his fist gently against the rock in time with the noisy bursts. "I! Only! Wanted! To! Cultivate! In! Peace!"
Something had to be done about this. Since Shen Qingqiu was the Qing Jing Peak Lord, the leader of the second-highest peak, the most senior person in the sect after Sect Leader Yue Qingyuan himself, he had the authority to march over there and tell whoever it was to shut the fuck up.
However, a few steps towards the exit, the sheer strength of the next burst made him pause. The blows seemed to be getting... angrier. It wasn't like the Skinner Demon, it didn't have the same unnatural-feeling, demonic quality to the energy, it didn't have the same focused, killing intent, but... the air still shivered with violence... and this rude neighbour was unmistakably much, much stronger than a tutorial villain.
Shen Qingqiu had gone to "supervise" (with intent to copy) many training sessions on Qing Jing Peak. Lessons for the junior disciples. Demonstrations by the teachers. Friendly duels between the resident masters. His rude neighbour put all those dedicated cultivators to shame.
Yue Qingyuan wasn't here to back up Shen Qingqiu's righteous authority. If this overpowered person decided to crush this cramming transmigrator like an insect, Shen Qingqiu would be helpless to stop them! And what if it wasn't a fellow Cang Qiong cultivator? It didn't feel demonic, but what if someone else hostile had managed to sneak inside the Ling Xi Caves, alongside the bats? What if this was the System's unsolicited and unhelpful idea of a tutorial mission redo?
Shen Qingqiu could die down here. Frankly, if he encountered a scum villain such as Shen Qingqiu in a dark cave system like this, with no one watching, he would have been pretty tempted to get a few good whacks in too!
So, going to investigate was dangerous... but so was not investigating. Was it better to be the person who invested strange noises, or the character who said, "I'm sure it's nothing," and then was rightfully eaten by a monster about two minutes later? Shen Qingqiu had a sword! It was surely more dignified to go out on one's guard than just sitting pretty and stupid.
BANG!
Shen Qingqiu shuddered and got determinedly to his feet. Nope, that was too annoying to bear! And he really, really didn't want to go to the effort of finding another decent cave down here.
With the Xiu Ya Sword firmly in hand, albeit sheathed for now, Shen Qingqiu marched off to find his rude neighbour. It was easy to navigate the various twists and turns, to follow the waves of spiritual energy to their source, though it did feel a little like walking against the sea coming into shore.
At the end of his path was another large chamber, perhaps even wider and much taller than his own base of operations, a great bowl of stone with a thin waterfall splattering down over the rocks at one end, disappearing into small, dark cracks. The walls here had also taken many bearings over the years, although Shen Qingqiu didn't see any of the blackened stains or handprints that made his own space look like a murder scene. This reminded him more of an old quarry.
There was quite a lot of bright moss and mushrooms growing in reach of the waterfall's spray. And some small, springy bushes of tiny, white flowers. This cave was surely home to a lot of happy insects and snails as well.
Anyway! There was a lot of space here for a martially inclined cultivator to practise their skills... which was the situation Shen Qingqiu was unsurprised to find his rude neighbour engaged in. A man in the colours of Bai Zhan Peak was at the other end of the chamber, summoning spiritual energy in the long pauses, then pushing it out again in powerful sword flares. BANG! As bright and as beautiful as fireworks! And shockingly controlled too, as the rude warrior neighbour somehow retained enough of a grip on the fiery spiritual lash to rein it back in before it could strike the walls.
Shen Qingqiu had crammed just enough on cultivation to analyze this attack...! And immediately conclude that it probably could have turned the Skinner Demon to dust in one OP hit. Whatever the fuck it was.
Pause... BANG!
Yes, Shen Qingqiu was sorely tempted to bang his head around the rough walls of the cave. Why did it have to be someone from Bai Zhan Peak?!
As someone who wished to assess a situation properly, and as a fan desperate for a look at how the System had done this or that detail, Shen Qingqiu had gone on a little tour of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. He had swiftly concluded that a lot of people either greatly admired the Qing Jing Peak Lord or had a real inkling of the original scum villain's trash personality. The warriors of Bai Zhan Peak seemed to fit themselves firmly in the latter camp.
Which had been really disappointing, not matter how understandable it was! Shen Qingqiu had been genuinely eager to see and to appreciate the cool skills of the sect's resident badasses. But the world-class swordmasters had shooed him onwards quite disrespectfully.
It was here that Shen Qingqiu noticed some crucial details of the flaring sword, the steady conductor of the waves. Silver light ran down from the hilt's engraved incantations, highlighting the beautiful phoenix ornamentations.
Though its original owner has never appeared in-person on the pages of Proud Immortal Demon Way, this legendary sword had appeared many times! And in the possession of Shen Qingqiu's favourite wife character, the peerlessly elegant and sophisticated Liu Mingyan, as a precious keepsake once belonging to her tragically lost elder brother... Liu Qingge, the Bai Zhan Peak Lord, the personification of masculine badassery.
Though Shen Qingqiu had been disappointed earlier not to catch a glimpse of this world-class swordmaster, this Victor of countless battles, this undefeated legend...! He had been more than a little relieved as well, honestly.
Because there was perhaps no one in Cang Qiong Mountain Sect who hated Shen Qingqiu more than Liu Qingge. As disciples, they had been vicious rivals. Shen Qingqiu had despised Liu Qingge's natural talent and righteousness, while Liu Qingge had loathed Shen Qingqiu's bitter jealousy and underhanded behaviour. And in the story, this unseen rivalry had culminated in Shen Qingqiu backstabbing his own shidi. Murder.
Fuck! Of all people, it had to be this guy?! All of Shen Qingqiu's righteous plans to tell his rude neighbour to knock if off evaporated in an instant. All he wanted now was to flee for his life.
It was too late. Shen Qingqiu had wandered too far into the cave and his presence had already been detected. The Bai Zhan Peak warrior swung around to face the intruder, with silver light still dripping off of the end of the Cheng Luan Sword, still steaming away into the air like the dying sparks of a fire.
And here, well, it would have been unbearably humiliating to flee now.
Also, Shen Qingqiu was somewhat arrested by the revelation of Liu Qingge's appearance... It was all he could do not to declare aloud, "What a beautiful man!"
Because truly, for a moment, Shen Qingqiu wasn't certain that this wasn't supposed to be Liu Mingyan herself dressed up in a handsome prince type of cosplay. This person had exceedingly fine features: a strong nose, a noble jaw, long eyelashes, smooth skin flushed slightly pink with exertion, and a beauty mark at the corner of his grey eyes. Inky black hair was falling indecently loose from his high ponytail.
He could feel all his headcanons cracking under these critical hits! Shouldn't such a hot-blooded, dashing warrior have been a sharp and manly man? Powerful and magnificent?! A war god, right?!?! In another world, the young readers who had revered Bai Zhan Peak and its strong leader were surely feeling great pain without knowing why, as their fantasies bucked against the destructive truth. Liu Qingge had the face of a peerlessly handsome woman, a beauty who could start wars, and a rather slender body as well. He was fairly tall, but he didn't have the accompanying broad, fat build of a weightlifter or a wrestler.
As Liu Qingge straightened properly and walked over, Shen Qingqiu could see muscles shifting beneath his clothes, at least! He wasn't some hulking giant, but perhaps underneath, Liu Qingge had the impressive build of a gymnast or a martial artist, or an acrobat or a dancer, which would be something.
Although that dynamic musculature still couldn't counterbalance the face of a charming young master who arranged flowers and plucked farewell willow branches... Even when Liu Qingge was scowling at Shen Qingqiu very fiercely! Poor guy. This misfortune of spiritually antithetical character design had to be the result of his close relation to Liu Mingyan, that first-class beauty worthy of only the protagonist. Science gone wrong.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Liu Qingge demanded. He wiped at his glowing, rosy brow with his own sleeve and then flipped his hair out of the way.
It was truly no wonder that Airplane had offed this high-quality character so early! Such an exceptional rival to the protagonist couldn't be allowed.
"Cultivating," Shen Qingqiu managed to reply. "With permission, of course."
Liu Qingge's eyes narrowed and his jaw visibly clenched. "What are you doing here? In this cave? Go find another one because I'm not leaving!"
Shen Qingqiu tsked. "I have my own chamber for seclusion, Shidi, I just came to see what all the noise was about... and to say hello to my neighbour."
Of course, Liu Qingge didn't believe such a demure statement. Someone of Shen Qingqiu's general scumminess could only ever be up to something! Liu Qingge turned the Cheng Luan Sword over his hand, which made his arm flex in an interesting fashion beneath his clothes.
"Liu-Shidi, to tell you the truth, your shixiong has had some recent encounters that has given him a lot to think about here in seclusion. We haven't seen eye to eye in the past... and it has filled me with such deep shame and regret," Shen Qingqiu bullshitted quickly.
Liu Qingge's eyes narrowed again, before he said, "Bullshit."
Shen Qingqiu sighed with open frustration. This scum villain had truly given him such a bad foundation to work with here! This transmigration experience was like starting a video game at Level -50.
"Our tumultuous brotherhood has been bad for sect harmony and it's making our good Zhangmen-Shixiong's life much harder, when there are important matters for Cang Qiong Mountain Sect coming up like the next Immortal Alliance Conference," Shen Qingqiu tried again.
"Since when do you care about making Yue Qingyuan's life easier?"
"I've been having some personal revelations," Shen Qingqiu repeated firmly. "Anyway, from now on, how about we leave our disagreements behind us and move forward, hand in hand, as a pair of model sect siblings? Full of the affection and goodwill due to fellow sect members? How do you feel about this, Shidi?"
Liu Qingge looked more suspicious and disbelieving than ever. Finally, he said with open revulsion, "Go away. Whatever this is, I don't want any of it."
Well, that was permission to flee! Goal achieved or whatever! Shen Qingqiu nodded in understanding, because after such a long and vicious rivalry, who wouldn't suspect that this was a backstabbing plot? One couldn't honestly expect to start farming B-Points from a former enemy right away. Shen Qingqiu was lucky not to be dodging the Cheng Luan Sword.
"Well, please try to keep the noise level down if at all possible, Shidi," Shen Qingqiu said smoothly. "And feel free to come say hello when you're taking a break, since we're so close to each other."
Liu Qingge snorted derisively. That kind of sounded like it had hurt.
As soon as Shen Qingqiu had walked out of Liu Qingge's cave chamber, he felt the spiritual currents shift again in a familiar inhale. The BANG that followed was perhaps the loudest and most disruptive burst of spiritual energy yet. It also felt distinctly, hatefully pointed.
Shen Qingqiu sighed heavily. "I'm going to go look at the salamanders again," he decided, because there was no chance of focusing with this racket going on.