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"We're going in circles," Shen Qingqiu surmises shortly, glaring down at the trail of melon seed hulls marking the path through Bailu Forest.
"Well," Shang Qinghua says, and then, because he lives to disappoint Shen Qingqiu, suggests, "we could try sprinkling a male virgin's pee in the horse's eyes?"
"What did the horse ever do to you? It has dignity, too!" Shen Qingqiu shoots back. "Besides, how are we supposed to find a male virgin's pee out here in the wilderness?"
Shang Qinghua is looking at him. Intently.
"What are you looking at me like that for?!" Shen Qingqiu demands. “In my former life, I—well, he doesn't matter! Shen Qingqiu matters! You wrote him, you know what he was like! Unsullied on the outside, a degenerate on the inside. Do you really think I'm a virgin?"
"...I don't think you want me to answer that on either count," Shang Qinghua says.
"What's that supposed to mean?!"
"It means what it means," Shang Qinghua shrugs. He then looks dangerously thoughtful, pointing toward himself—
"Shang Qinghua was written the same way as the Original Goods," Shen Qingqiu says derisively. That’s not going to work, idiot, is the unspoken corollary.
"Maybe he was, but I’m not! Don't I deserve someone to dick me down?" Shang Qinghua whines. "Do you know how excruciating it is working for my king? Demonic fashion is tits out all the time, and—”
"Shut up! Stop harassing the horse!" Shen Qingqiu says, feeling the tips of his ears go red. "If you want to make yourself useful, go dig through the carriage and see if you can find a map."
"Bossy," Shang Qinghua says, but he goes.
Shen Qingqiu can hear him mumbling to himself as he rummages through their supplies. Not about their situation, exactly, just a kind of stream of consciousness accompaniment to his search. For his part, Shen Qingqiu is on guard, watching the surrounding forest. They've not yet run into any dangers, other than whatever has caught them in this looping trail, but that doesn't mean there aren’t—
Something brushes against him.
Shen Qingqiu jerks to the side, away from whatever it is. His fingers fold automatically into sword seals even as he takes in a quick glimpse of the creature: a mass of dark, tangled hair atop a moon-pale, strangely bloated face, rearing up from the ground, its body covered with a scattering of scales and—Shen Qingqiu notes this last as the creature flees back into the forest—oddly boneless in the way it moves.
Xiu Ya hovers in the air next to him. Shen Qingqiu watches the bushes the creature disappeared into.
He was startled by its appearance, but it isn't as though the creature hurt him. He hates to ascribe motivations to an unknown creature, or really to any beast or wild animal lacking a human level of intelligence, but it might have only been curious.
...Or it was what trapped them here in the forest in the first place. It's difficult to say. Its almost-human form, caught between man and snake, might be to lure in victims. Ghost-Head Spiders rely on their physical similarity to human heads to draw people to investigate them; why couldn't this snake-man do the same? Except Shen Qingqiu would assume it would look closer to human if it was trying to do that.
Is the creature cursed, perhaps? Is it some cultivator who attempted an ill-advised ritual and found himself (and Shen Qingqiu is at least sixty percent sure this is a 'him' hiding in the bushes, based on the facial structure he could see) in this monstrous form?
Regardless, Shen Qingqiu has never seen this creature's like before. He finds that he's...curious. Whatever the cause of the trail-loop they've found themselves in, he and Shang Qinghua will have to deal with the creature one way or another before they proceed. Why not investigate?
"Won't you come out?" Shen Qingqiu calls. Slowly, Xiu Ya slides back into its sheath.
"You're so impatient," Shang Qinghua says, hopping down from the carriage. Shen Qingqiu doesn't turn a hair to look at him, all his attention focused on the bushes and the faint, unmoving shape he can just barely make out. If he looks away for even an instant, he's sure it will disappear entirely. "Found the map, so you can...what are you looking at?"
"I don't know," Shen Qingqiu says, and then, a bit louder, "We don't intend to hurt you. So long as you don't attack us, we won't attack you."
“Bro, seriously,” Shang Qinghua says nervously, “what are you—eek!”
Shen Qingqiu slaps his arm. The creature, which had begun poking his head out from the bushes, hastily backs his way further into them instead. Shen Qingqiu can just make out the glint of his large, lambent eyes in the shadows.
“Ignore my shidi,” Shen Qingqiu says. He crouches low to the ground. “He’s a spineless coward, but he’s harmless.”
“What did I ever do to you?” Shang Qinghua mutters, as if he does know the answer. Shen Qingqiu doesn’t bother dignifying him with a response.
“This one is Shen Qingqiu of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect,” Shen Qingqiu introduces himself. “As I said, we mean you no harm. We’re a little turned around right now. You seem to have been following us—maybe you were going to offer to help?”
The eyes—well, mark one down for intelligence, Shen Qingqiu thinks in fascination—shift up and then down, a truncated little nod from the creature. Then the leaves of the bushes rustle as the creature slithers forward. He pauses at the very edge of the bush, his head just barely poking out. Probably wondering if Shen Qingqiu is going to keep his word or attack, but either way, it’s good, because it gives Shang Qinghua enough time to strangle his newest annoying noise at the sight of the creature.
He really is incredibly ugly, Shen Qingqiu has to admit. It really does make Shen Qingqiu wonder if he was cursed somehow. Yet the glint of intelligence remains in the snake creature’s eyes, and he slithers ever closer to where Shen Qingqiu crouches in the middle of the path.
“Hello,” Shen Qingqiu says, the slightest of smiles playing on his lips as the creature approaches. He’s truly never seen anything similar to it before. “It’s nice to meet you.”
The creature stops right in front of him, peering up at Shen Qingqiu. He seems confused and, if Shen Qingqiu is managing to read that strange and bloated face right, perhaps a bit flustered. There’s also a glint of curiosity in the creature’s bright eyes that matches Shen Qingqiu’s own.
Shen Qingqiu wonders if the creature has ever met humans before. Or, perhaps more relevantly, humans who didn’t attack it on sight, because there’s evidence of old wounds on the creature’s body.
Borne of curiosity and pity and the instincts gained by raising so many disciples, Shen Qingqiu slowly reaches out one hand to touch the top of the creature’s head. He broadcasts his movement carefully, trying to make it as obvious as possible what he’s doing, ready to pull back at a moment’s notice. His fingertips graze tangled hair and—
Shen Qingqiu wakes up to find that he can’t fucking breathe.
Back in his old life, he used to sleep under layers and layers of blankets during the winter. One year he added a heavily weighted blanket atop it all: it was perfect for falling asleep, but occasionally made him wake up in the middle of the night with a tight chest. In the end, he’d ended up using that blanket only when he was awake, consigning it to the couch.
The sensation he is experiencing right now is that times a hundred. Weight crushes down on him from all around. He’s disoriented, unable to figure where he is, and slitting his eyes open leaves him nowhere good. All he accomplishes is getting something in them before he can even ascertain his surroundings. At his sides, his fingers crook, dragging through—
Dirt?
What the fuck? Has he been buried alive? How the hell did—the last he knew he and Shang Qinghua were in Bailu Forest. Did they fall into some kind of trap other than the maze array? Would Huan Hua Palace, in whose sphere of influence Bailu Forest lay, truly be so vicious as that?
Whatever the case, Shen Qingqiu isn’t going to stay down here and slowly suffocate. Even cultivators can only last so long without breath. Circulating qi allows them to bypass the problem for longer than mortals can, but it’s difficult and, much like inedia, cannot be done forever.
But even as he reaches down into his core to summon the power to perform suspended breathing, he finds that his body is already automatically doing it. Despite the suffocating sensation he is experiencing, it’s less that he’s truly suffering the problems associated with it and more than his mind is panicking about the idea of it. He’s not actually dying, it’s just that his stupid mammalian animal brain doesn’t like the situation he’s in.
More than that, his core—and all the qi that he can access—feels strange. It’s deeper and broader than what he’s used to. It still feels like his own, except that at the same time, it doesn’t. There are none of the minor snags and flaws he’s become accustomed to; none of the evidence of his painstaking efforts to work around the Original Goods’ flawed cultivation.
Most inexplicable of all, there’s no evidence of Without-A-Cure.
Whether it’s during a flare-up or just in his regular life, Shen Qingqiu is always, always aware of Without-A-Cure. He can ignore it for stretches of time, going about his business like usual, teaching his classes, playing the qin, eating dinner with Bing—
Well.
The point is, he can ignore it, but it always looms over him. It makes itself known in a myriad of small ways.
Not so right now, when he would have expected it to be so unbearably obvious. When he would have expected that he would have to rush his way free of this prison, lest his cultivation give out and consign him to death like a mortal.
What the everloving fuck is going on here? Shen Qingqiu wonders.
Then he decides fuck it, he’ll figure out what’s going on once he’s not actively buried beneath the earth’s surface. There’s a time and a place for these things, after all!
Determined, he curls his fingers again, this time aiming upward and therefore towards freedom.
In the end, he doesn’t know how long it takes him to dig himself free. What he does know is that when he finally breeches the surface, it’s to find someone waiting there for him.
“Cucumber-bro!” Shang Qinghua cries, once Shen Qingqiu’s head is unburied enough (and his ears and eyes cleared of enough dirt) for him to make out who has been helping clear away the earth on top of him: an admittedly unpleasant surprise at first, before he’d realized the hands digging into his would-be grave were helping him rather than trying to shove him back in.
“Airplane,” Shen Qingqiu greets him, before blinking. While Shang Qinghua was helping dig him out, it was still some time before Shen Qingqiu was able to sit up. Now, half-propped inside the dirt, Shang Qinghua no longer so thoroughly backlit by the sun, he finds that this—isn’t Shang Qinghua.
Not quite.
The resemblance to Shang Qinghua is enough that Shen Qingqiu was able to identify him—along with the fact that only Airplane would ever address him in such a way—but he definitely isn’t the Peak Lord of An Ding. His hair is a bit curlier, a lighter brown than the dark shade he previously had; the slope to his nose, the angle of his cheeks, the curve of his jaw, the shade to his eyes—those too are different. Even so, there remains a strong similarity to ‘Peak Lord Shang Qinghua,’ perhaps six or seven parts out of ten. Enough so that anyone who knew him would recognize him at least as a relative.
Ah, shit.
Shen Qingqiu has a sinking suspicion he knows what has happened here. Based on where his memories cut off and what their plans were, it’s not a difficult leap to make.
The problem is that if Airplane’s Sun and Moon Dew Mushroom body looks so similar to his Shang Qinghua body, then what does that mean for Shen Qingqiu’s new body? How similar does he look to his Peak Lord self?
And how much danger are they both in, now that they’ve obviously been killed sometime after Shen Qingqiu’s memories deserted him?
How long has it been?
Is there…even much of the world left standing?
“Bro, I’m so glad you’re awake,” Shang Qinghua says. “I’ve been hanging around for nearly two weeks now, seeing if you would wake up. I mean, I could sense you down there, but I had no idea when you were going to crawl your way out. From what I could tell, your body seemed pretty well-formed, but I don’t know when you died, whether it was before me and you had some issues settling in or if it was after me or—“
“Help me get the rest of the way out of this hole,” Shen Qingqiu says. He’s going to break into a cold sweat soon if Shang Qinghua doesn’t stop implying that he doesn’t know what happened either.
It takes a fair amount of wiggling, heaving, and the careful use of a small hand trowel that Shang Qinghua pulled from his qiankun sleeve, but Shen Qingqiu is set free. Only to immediately collapse on his face when he attempts to stand up.
"Yeah, that happened to me, too," Shang Qinghua says unhelpfully. "It'll settle down after a few days, especially after you soak up enough sun. Or moonlight."
"Damn it, Airplane," Shen Qingqiu mumbles into the ground, hoping desperately that Shang Qinghua isn't staring at his naked, dirt-streaked ass while he's lying there helplessly.
"Hey, hey, at least you're not figuring this out on your own, right?" Shang Qinghua says. "I was lying here praying that no giant ground squirrels or whatever was going to wander by and have a nice mushroom snack! And then I had to dig up our qiankun pouch! By hand! Be grateful for me, Cucumber-bro!"
Underneath the piteous whining and half-joking demeanor, Shen Qingqiu can make out a sincere thread of worry. Shang Qinghua really...doesn't know what's going on, does he?
"I don't suppose there's another pair of robes in that qiankun pouch, is there?" Shen Qingqiu asks.
"Yeah, of course. I didn't touch your go bag, bro, just mine."
Oh, so they packed separate qiankun bags for when they woke up in their mushroom bodies. That was smart. Shen Qingqiu sure fucking wishes he could remember doing that.
The next several minutes are an exercise in unspeakable humiliation. Shen Qingqiu has enough memory problems to worry about already, but he's going to make a concentrated effort to immediately forget the way Shang Qinghua has to help him into pants and then an outer robe, then maneuver his unresponsive body until he's propped up against a nearby tree. By this point, Shen Qingqiu is able to at least flop his arms around somewhat, but that's about it.
Hopefully the shade from the tree's leaves won't be enough to slow his absorption of sunlight. He wants to be able to move, dammit!
Shang Qinghua smoothly lowers himself down to sit across from Shen Qingqiu. He's frowning a bit as he stares at Shen Qingqiu; probably resisting the urge to make fun of the no doubt atrocious beard currently decorating Shen Qingqiu's face. Shen Qingqiu is going to shave that off as soon as he can. Then he's going to use his cultivation to stop it from growing out again. One of the blessings of high cultivation is the ability to stop hair growth, and Shen Qingqiu is going to relish the fact that he no longer has Without-A-Cure or the Original Goods' somewhat messy cultivation base, both of which conspired to force him to shave at least once a week. (Which itself was better than when he was mortal, but it’s the principle of it!)
Then Shang Qinghua opens his mouth.
"Do you remember dying?" he asks bluntly.
"Not this time," Shen Qingqiu says. "The last thing I remember..." He swallows. "We were in Bailu Forest."
Shang Qinghua drops his head into his hands. "Oh, fuck," he whispers. "Fuck." He looks up, expression wan and serious. "How far into Bailu Forest? Getting the Sun and Moon Dew Mushrooms, or—?”
"Not even that far," Shen Qingqiu says. "We were stuck in the maze array, then met that snake...creature...?" Demon? Beast? Shen Qingqiu sincerely has no idea what that thing was. He never got a chance to find out. Or if he did, he doesn’t remember.
…Maybe he took notes? And packed them in his qiankun go-bag for whatever reason? He’s still curious, dammit!
"Fuck," Shang Qinghua says again. "There goes my best theory."
Shen Qingqiu's brows arch.
"I mean, I wondered if it was some kind of delayed reaction from collecting the mushrooms," Shang Qinghua says. "Like...like maybe it made an imprint of whoever collected it, when the collected it, so it's not that it ever actually moved the person's soul into the mushrooms, it just made a started forming a copy after the original planted the mushroom and then...I mean, it's the transporter problem, right? Or the, the, that one ship. Is it still the same if you replace every part of it?"
"The Ship of Theseus," Shen Qingqiu says. "That's not how the Sun and Moon Dew Mushrooms work, Airplane. Shouldn't you know this, since you were the one who made them up?"
"Sometimes shit gets weird!" Shang Qinghua protests. "Sometimes—sometimes things make it into this world that I never intended, okay? Maybe this was one of them! It's not like I remember all that much about the Sun and Moon Dew Mushrooms, anyway! You were the one to suggest them! I'd forgotten they existed!"
“I know that! You think I don’t know that?!” Shen Qingqiu says. Airplane’s inability to remember his own lore was the bane of his existence as Peerless Cucumber, and it hasn’t gotten much better since he transmigrated and figured out who Shang Qinghua was. “This did not happen with that minor villain in PIDW. It wasn’t even hinted at with a dropped plot thread or anything. That’s why I suggested it.”
Though being honest, even if it had involved some minor memory fuckery, he probably still would have gone along with it. It’s not exactly like he would want to remember Luo Binghe torturing him slowly to death.
He still doesn’t, but the more pressing matter is figuring out what the fuck all happened during his missing time.
And…
“You don’t remember what happened either?” Shen Qingqiu asks, circling back to that. Shang Qinghua all but said he didn’t remember dying (again). If he thought it might have been a problem with the mushrooms…
“No,” Shang Qinghua says. “It cuts out for me about nine or ten months after we went to Bailu Forest. We were splitting the cultivation of the mushroom bodies fairly evenly—whenever you were back at the sect, I mean, and not distracted by, uh, you know—and everything looked like it was coming along well. That’s why I knew where we buried the qiankun bags. Which I guess you wouldn’t remember. Uh, the last thing I recall is coming back from a Peak Lord meeting. We weren’t even talking about anything important. I was thinking about dropping by Qing Jing afterwards.” His hands wring together in his lap. “I have no idea what happened next.”
Shen Qingqiu wets his lips. “Do you know how long it’s been?”
How much time are they both missing? How long have they been dead? How long did it take for the mushroom bodies to finish growing and for them to wake up?
Shang Qinghua shakes his head. “I was waiting for you to wake up. I figured I’d give it a another week or so, and then I’d leave a note in your supplies while I looked for more information.” At Shen Qingqiu’s look, he adds, “I would have swung by every month, promise! But don’t pretend you wouldn’t have done the same! Our plans were never that dependent on us sticking together forever, and besides, it would have been suspicious if I set up camp here for too long! Someone probably would have noticed eventually, and then what would we do if you hadn’t woken up yet?”
Fair point. Not that Shen Qingqiu would have known to look for the supplies in order to find the note, but that isn’t Shang Qinghua’s fault.
Probably.
“Okay,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Well, you’re the spy. I’m not going to be of much use until this body starts working properly. You can go into…town…” Assuming there is a town somewhere nearby. Shen Qingqiu is assuming they’re out in the middle of nowhere right now, the better to keep their mushroom bodies secret while they grew, but there must be something close is Shang Qinghua was worried about getting caught. “…and figure out some of what we missed. The date, at the very least.”
If Luo Binghe has taken over Huan Hua Palace, for another. Even months or years later, Shen Qingqiu’s trial will probably have been big news. If the sects have fallen, that will be even bigger news.
As long as Shen Qingqiu has a jumping off point, he can figure out when in canon they are.
“Right,” Shang Qinghua says. “I can do that.” He clambers to his feet, dusting off his robes. “Just let me…here.”
He hands Shen Qingqiu what must be his qiankun go-bag, plus a water pouch that sloshes gratifyingly when Shen Qingqiu accepts it.
“I’m pretty sure you packed a bronze mirror in there,” Shang Qinghua says. “And a knife, if not a razor. Dunno if you want to shave the beard or not, but you can at least neaten the edges.”
“Mn,” Shen Qingqiu says. It’s surprisingly kind of Shang Qinghua. “Get going, Airplane. The sooner you do, the sooner we can make firm plans.”
And hopefully figure out what went wrong in the first place.
Ultimately, Shen Qingqiu decides against shaving off the beard. He does, as Shang Qinghua suggest, trim the edges, neatening it so that it doesn’t look so scraggly and unkempt. He also shortens it significantly.
It fell a good way down his chest, and while that was bound to be a good disguise for him, he has no desire to relearn how to deal with (an unexpected amount of) that much more hair than he’s used to. The first few weeks after he transmigrated were enough for him, thanks!
Also, a close shave seems dangerous when his trembling fingers are barely able to hold onto the knife he’s using. He can reassess the beard situation later.
He uses the water bag sparingly, cleaning off his hands, his face, contemplating wetting his hair before deciding that would be a horrible idea. He’ll wait to get completely clean once he actually has access to either a river or a bathtub, whichever is closest and most accessible. Shang Qinghua was able to clean himself up from his own unearthing somehow.
Then Shen Qingqiu waits.
He leans further back against the tree, basking in the warmth of the sun. There’s a bite to the air, at least in part because the spot they buried the Sun and Moon Dew Mushrooms is apparentlly halfway up a mountain, but also due to the time of year. The tree above his head blooms with buds and the beginnings of new life, but it must only be mid-spring at the latest, or the day would be warmer.
His last memories are of winter’s beginning: the Immortal Alliance Conference took place towards the beginning of autumn, and it was not quite three months later that he and Shang Qinghua left to search out the mushrooms, it having taken that long for them to have narrowed down the location and made their preparations for the trip. Shen Qingqiu’s memories do not extend to Luo Binghe’s eighteenth birthday. A good thing, as he has doubt that to recognize the date and his disciple’s absence would have struck him terribly.
Binghe, ah, his Binghe…what has become of him? He has to be out of the Abyss already, and must taken over Huan Hua Palace and surely at least Mobei-Jun’s kingdom, right? Is he married by now? Is he happy? Is he at peace, now that his despicable master is dead?
Shen Qingqiu hopes so. He—
Oh.
Shen Qingqiu…will never see him again, will he? Luo Binghe must have already had his revenge, no matter that Shen Qingqiu can’t remember it. The whole point of the mushroom body is that he’ll be hidden and far away from Luo Binghe for the rest of his life, living under a brand new identity. In fact, given how similar this face looks to his face as Shen Qingqiu—the same seven-tenths similarity as Shang Qinghua’s—he’ll have to go even deeper into hiding than he assumed.
He’ll have to run far, far away, beyond the reaches of Luo Binghe. He might hear stories of him, but he’ll never have a chance to see his lotus grown up. He’ll never hear his voice, finally free of the cracks from puberty that not even the Protagonist could avoid. He’ll never watch Luo Binghe fight, effortlessly wielding his golden finger Xin Mo against his foes. He’ll never see him resplendent in his emperor’s regalia, all the fanart Shen Yuan bought (or commissioned) finally brought to life.
Shen Qingqiu will never—he’ll never—ever—
All he will have, forever, is that broken look on his face—the tears in his eyes—as Luo Binghe fell into the Abyss, and he—
And Shen Qingqiu—
“Whoa, whoa, bro!”
Hands, touching him. Patting at his shoulders, tipping his head upward.
“Hey, Cucumber-bro, it’s me. I need you to look at me, okay? Yep, just like that, just keep looking at me, bro, you’re doing great. You’re either having a panic attack or a qi deviation, I’m really not sure which. Could be both. I mean, I’m not really a medical expert here, and you know me, I was so loosey-goosey with describing qi deviations that pretty much anything could happen with them, there’s truly some ridiculous shit that never made it onto the page, you would have hated it. Probably would have hit the character limit on the comments again, just to yell at me about how it related to the dropped plot threads in chapter three thousand and whatever the fuck—“
A shaky snort, not quite a laugh, escapes Shen Qingqiu.
“Ha, there you are!” Shang Qinghua cheers.
“Hack,” Shen Qingqiu says. His voice wavers more than he would have liked as he says it.
“Yep, that’s me,” Shang Qinghua says shamelessly. He plops gracelessly to the ground in front of Shen Qingqiu, rather than leaning over him, and he—doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t so much as look at Shen Qingqiu while he scrapes himself back together, reassembling the mask of an immortal master.
…Though the problem is that he isn’t one anymore, is he?
He breathes out slowly, refusing to spiral downwards again. Why should he? It’s silly! He doesn’t understand why he ever did in the first place.
“Nice job with the beard,” Shang Qinghua says idly. “Looks pretty good, actually. Mu-shidi would be jealous. Wei-shixiong probably wouldn’t, but he’s been capable of a full beard since he was like sixteen so I don’t think he counts.”
Right. Shang Qinghua mentioned he was reborn into this world as a baby, whereas Shen Qingqiu transmigrated in the middle of the story. Somehow Shen Qingqiu hadn’t quite thought through all the aspects of that, until Shang Qinghua drops a tidbit like this, showing off how long he’s known the people here. Shen Qingqiu has built friendships with his fellow Peak Lords, but Shang Qinghua knew them from the very beginning; even if he weren’t the author-god of this world, he still knows so many of them in ways Shen Qingqiu doesn’t. And never will.
Their time as Peak Lords has passed. For all Shen Qingqiu knows, Cang Qiong has already been put to sword and fire, their ashes scattered to the winds.
“What did you find out in town?” Shen Qingqiu asks.
“…I found out enough to tell you that we should get you cleaned up and get some food in you before we talk.”
“Airplane!” Shen Qingqiu complains.
“Nope,” Shang Qinghua says. “You’re a grumpy mushroom right now and I aim to fix that first before anything else!”
Shen Qingqiu would love to argue about this more, ideally by slapping away Shang Qinghua while he tries to haul Shen Qingqiu to his feet. Unfortunately, since his body is as weak as a limp noodle, that proves impossible. So Shen Qingqiu suffers through being hauled to a nearby river, washing the dirt (now mud) off of himself (not while Shang Qinghua is watching, thank you!), being hauled back to shore, and then being dropped in front of the fire that Shang Qinghua built while Shen Qingqiu was bathing. It's a fairly well-established fire pit, actually: surrounded by stones and kept contained inside a solid, well-packed section of scooped-out earth, one with evidence of multiple fires having been lit in it previously.
Well, Shang Qinghua did say he'd been awake for a while longer than Shen Qingqiu.
Shen Qingqiu is well aware there’s no way he’s going to get Shang Qinghua to talk. Not until, as threatened, Shen Qingqiu eats something.
Which is still bullshit, by the way! Immortal cultivators can practice inedia, plus they’re both technically not even human now! Who says that they don’t photosynthesize, huh?! It’s in the name! Sun and Moon! Shang Qinghua even told him to sit in the sunlight!!
Shen Qingqiu thinks various bitter thoughts about this the whole time Shang Qinghua is dumping rice into a pot (set atop a portable grill over the fire), stirring it, and then eventually handing a bowl of congee over to Shen Qingqiu.
He eats the whole bowl. Rinses it with a bit of water, the easier to clean it out properly later, then sets it down next to him and stares at Shang Qinghua.
It doesn’t take long for his fellow transmigrator to start squirming. There’s only so long he can continue to pretend he’s still eating his own bowl of congee.
“So the thing is,” Shang Qinghua begins nervously, when he finally gives up on the pretense, “is that I was pretty easily able to get answers to our most pressing questions. Uh, not necessarily the why or the how, but at least the what and the when—”
“What do you mean no why or how?” Shen Qingqiu asks crossly.
“Okay, technically I have those, but not specifics, which I will explain in a moment,” Shang Qinghua says. “Now hush.”
Shen Qingqiu folds his arms across his chest and hushes.
“It’s been a little over seven years since the Immortal Alliance Conference,” Shang Qinghua says.
Shen Qingqiu’s eyebrows raise at this information. Why be so stressed about that? It tracks perfectly with the timeline of PIDW: Luo Binghe escapes the Abyss around the four and a half year mark only to then proceed to take over a solid portion of the Demon Realm before he ever sets his gaze back on the Human Realm. That he only reenters at the five year mark, where he’s quite quick at ingratiating himself to and then intertwining himself with Huan Hua Palace, so that he could call for a trial against Shen Qingqiu, torture his traitorous shizun for the next good long while (in between conquering the rest of the Demon Realm and expanding his harem), and then—well, exactly how long the Original Goods lasted in the Water Prison was always somewhat up for debate, given Airplane’s timeline was absolutely wack, full of retcons and flashbacks and wholly mislabeled timelines, but it had to have been at least several years. Probably longer than two, really, so Shen Qingqiu should be grateful that his thigh-hugging worked and his crispy lotus killed him mercifully quickly.
He should also, again, be very grateful he doesn’t remember any of that torture. Or his second death.
“I can see exactly what you’re thinking, bro, but that’s the problem,” Shang Qinghua says. “We’ve both been dead for the past five-ish years.”
“What?” Shen Qingqiu demands.
“Yeah,” Shang Qinghua says. “Yeah. And you wanna know the most fucked up part? They weren’t even our foretold deaths! I mean, sure, Bing-ge apparently got out of the Abyss and hopped back into the Human Realm crazy early, like way earlier than either of us expected—”
“What?!”
“—but that was fully a couple months after you’d already kicked the bucket, so unless Luo Binghe somehow cast some sort of long-distance curse on the two of us from an entirely separate plane of existence, I don’t really see how he could have been involved, and anyway, why would he have wanted to kill me, because it’s not like he knew that I was involved in the Conference invasion before you threw him into the Abyss, and he isn’t—wasn’t—supposed to figure that out until he fought my king, unless you let something slip or he had some sort of weird Protagonist brainwave that let him figure it out, but even if he did, see again ‘different plane of existence’—”
Shen Qingqiu, having successfully shut down and rebooted his brain as Shang Qinghua’s screed continued, finishes his hurried shuffle around the edge of the fire pit and slaps a hand over Shang Qinghua’s mouth. He meets Shang Qinghua’s wide eyes and realizes that despite all his cajoling and his work to calm Shen Qingqiu, Shang Qinghua is just as freaked out about this whole situation as Shen Qingqiu.
Perversely, this calms Shen Qingqiu more than anything else Shang Qinghua has attempted. Neither of them can afford to fall apart, even though both of them are in terrible danger of doing so. They need to figure out what the fuck happened first.
As much as Shen Qingqiu would love to swan off into the sunset, enjoying his new mushroom body and whatever life he’s able to build inside it, it’s too dangerous to do that until they know what happened. They need to understand how they died so that they don’t stumble right back into whatever killed them the first time—and so that they know where and what and most crucially who to avoid in their new lives.
They can’t do any of that if they’re flipping out.
Shen Qingqiu has a lot of experience pretending to be unperturbed on the outside while internally screaming. He draws on that now.
“What all did you hear while you were in town?” Shen Qingqiu asks clearly. “Facts only, Airplane. No theorizing, embellishing, or catastrophizing. Go.”
Shen Qingqiu removes his hand. Shang Qinghua takes a deep breath.
“We died around five years ago. Well, actually, I died a little more than give years ago that—apparently you lasted several months longer than I did, which, boo. Things were kept fairly hush-hush by Cang Qiong, at least at first, but everyone I listened to seems to assume that we had the same illness or curse or whatever it was. So at least it couldn’t be blamed on your whole mourning widow schtick—”
Shen Qingqiu vaguely waves a hand as he says this. Shen Qingqiu grinds his teeth—what mourning widow?! Whose widow is he supposed to be? And why is he the wife in this hypothetical?! At least call him a widower!!—but doesn’t interrupt.
“—which most people seem to have suspected because going by the gossip, you had some sort of chronic…wasting disease or some shit. Which you passed onto me. Maybe. No one else at the sect was affected, I guess, which is good.” He shrugs. “We apparently had pretty nice funerals? Or, uh, you did. Mine was crashed by demons.”
No prizes for guessing which one.
Wow. Mobei-Jun must have been really pissed off his spy died before he could kill him, huh? Or squeeze ever drop of usefulness out of him.
Shen Qingqiu considers all this information. Pointedly does not have a breakdown. Takes a deep breath, and says, “I am not a deer.”
“You—what?” Shang Qinghua asks, clearly baffled. “Did you qi deviate within the two minutes it took me to tell you that?”
“Chronic wasting disease is a deer disease,” Shen Qingqiu expands. “It’s a prion disease, like mad cow disease, but for deer. Admittedly, the symptoms are behavioral changes, weight loss, decreased interactions with other animals, and a few other sundry symptoms, so I can theoretically see the potential similarities with what happened to us, but so far as I’m aware, chronic wasting disease has yet to cross over into humans. Our prion disease is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Quite different.”
“That’s your takeaway?” Shen Qingqiu asks incredulously. “Bro, why do you even know that?”
“Fell down a research hole.”
“God, you and your monsters,” Shang Qinghua groans. “Why am I not surprised you were like this in the real world, too? No wonder you fit into Qing Jing so well, ah…”
“The symptoms are a partial match,” Shen Qingqiu concedes. “The timeline of when either of us would have contracted it is too quick, but just because it hasn’t made the leap to humans in our world doesn’t mean the disease hasn’t somehow come into existence and evolved to do that here. Or it could be convergent evolution, leading to a disease that’s superficially similar while starting with an entirely different host…”
Oh dear, hopefully it wasn’t the snake creature. That would be unfortunate.
“Convergent evolution,” Shang Qinghua echoes weakly.
“Mm,” Shen Qingqiu says, still considering the situation. “Like flight in birds and bats, or how primates and giant pandas both have opposable thumbs. Your memory before death lasted for longer than mine. I don’t suppose that snake creature in Bailu Forest bit me, did he?”
“Uh. No. It really liked you, Cucumber. It got way closer to biting me than it ever did you.”
“Hm,” Shen Qingqiu says, drumming his fingers against his thigh thoughtfully. “Well—hm. We just don’t have enough information about our deaths to draw any conclusions, much less figure out the vector. It must have been in Bailu Forest or out here in the Borderlands, if it only ever affected you and me.” He sighs. “Assuming that the gossip is even correct, which we have no way of knowing.”
“True,” Shang Qinghua says, obviously rallying. “And I mean, does it really matter? The mushroom bodies worked! We’re free and clear.”
“…Right,” Shen Qingqiu says, half-heartedly agreeing, and decides to hold off on arguing with Shang Qinghua about how it can’t possibly be that easy.
They end up camping out in the woods for several more days, while Shen Qingqiu gets his mushroom body to actually begin functioning properly. As Shang Qinghua promised, it doesn’t take much before he’s moving as fluidly as he ever did in the Original Goods’ body, though the wellspring of qi he has at his disposal is far more than he ever had as Peak Lord, even before his Without-A-Cure poisoning.
Over those span of days, Shen Qingqiu stews on the situation. By all accounts, as Shang Qinghua said, they should be free and clear. As far as Luo Binghe knows, Shen Qingqiu is dead already: he won’t know to look for Shen Qingqiu, and if his anger wasn’t assuaged by Shen Qingqiu dying of supposedly natural causes, then does it really matter? Shen Qingqiu will just keep wandering away from wherever Luo Binghe is. The Realms aren’t due to be merged for over a century from now, and even once they are, Shen Qingqiu is sure he’ll be able to survive in the Combined Realms. He’s read all about them! He knows exactly what to expect! Or he could go even further, across the ocean to Japan or over the mountains toward India, or even further. There’s a whole world out there to explore and Shen Qingqiu is immortal! He quite literally has all the time in the world.
It’s just…
Does he have all that time, if he and Shang Qinghua don’t know exactly what killed them? If there’s a possibility that it might have followed them to these bodies, or if they might run into the same situation again?
And on top of all that, he really, really wants to know how Luo Binghe is doing. Just—just so that he knows the timeline is moving along correctly! Shang Qinghua didn’t give him all that much information about him, save that he apparently speed-ran the Abyss! Who knows what’s changed, how quickly he’s gone through the next few checkpoints of his life! Going by the original timeline, Luo Binghe should have several wives by now, and he should be at Huan Hua, and surely no one knows he’s a demon yet, and—and—
Shen Qingqiu isn’t going to get close enough to see him. That would be foolish. But if he can just get a sense of how he’s doing…doesn’t he owe that to Binghe? He deserved to have his revenge; that was why Shen Qingqiu came up with the Sun and Moon Dew Mushroom body plan in the first place.
Shen Qingqiu nods to himself. No running to the ends of the earth until those questions have been answered.
“Brooo,” Shang Qinghua whines when Shen Qingqiu informs him of this plan. “Come on, let’s just go! Getting anywhere near my son is just asking for him to catch on that something’s not right! And my king—“
“Yes, Mobei-Jun,” Shen Qingqiu jumps on this. “Don’t you want to check in on him? If only to make sure he’s actually taken up the title like he’s supposed to?”
“That’s dirty pool,” Shang Qinghua mutters. “Besides, he’ll be fine. So I died a few years early, so what? It was Bing-ge who watched over him during the ascension ceremony, and right now Mobei-Jun is probably busy being Bing-ge’s right hand. Nothing to check in on! And I don’t even want to know what he did with my body, dude, the idea of it haunts me.”
“Fine,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Then don’t you at least want to know why we died, so we can stop it happening a second time? Don’t back out of this now, idiot, you already agreed earlier!”
"Uuuuggghh," Shang Qinghua moans. Fortunately, as expected, Shang Qinghua's sense of self-preservation outweighs any other argument that Shen Qingqiu could make. "Fine. Fine! I'll help you figure out why we died, but then that's it! I'm not sticking around afterwards! You can get yourself caught by my son if you want and I’ll point and laugh and say I told you so!”
Shen Qingqiu accepts this with a regal nod. He can be gracious in victory, no matter how much he wants to argue with Shang Qinghua that he won’t get caught, thank you very much.
The first matter to handle is how, exactly, they're going to travel. They'll obviously need to head further into the jianghu, away from the Borderlands, if they want to get any kind of answers—especially if they wish to do so without arising any suspicion. Technically they can walk, as their mushroom bodies won't exactly get tired, but it will still take a decent amount time to accomplish. They don't have their spiritual swords (for obvious reasons) and neither of them packed a rental sword in their belongings (much to Shen Qingqiu's dismay). There aren't any places around here where they can rent swords, either.
Which leaves horses.
It’s not that Shen Qingqiu doesn’t like horses. Or that he’s afraid of them or anything.
It’s just that he really doesn’t know how to ride them!
For most things, ever since he transmigrated, he’s been able to rely on either the Original Goods’ muscle memory, his knowledge from his life as Shen Yuan, or he’s been able to surreptitiously learn it while no one was paying attention. Horsemanship, unfortunately, is not one of the fields that any prior knowledge—from the Original Goods or otherwise—can assist him with, nor did he ever attempt to learn it on his own post-transmigration.
He never had to! The Original Goods was the type of poser who always rode around in a carriage rather than on a horse with his disciples. If he wasn’t doing that, then he was traveling by sword. It was never necessary to learn to ride!
Which leads to a very uncomfortable situation as he and Shang Qinghua trot along towards a bigger town. They didn’t get the horses from the town in the Borderlands where Shang Qinghua originally got his information; instead, they walked a couple days southeast until they found a slightly larger trading post-slash-very-small-village, where they—mostly Shang Qinghua—were able to haggle their way into a pair of horses.
Shen Qingqiu contributed by drawing a swath of protective talismans, since their coin—what amount of it was packed in their go-bags—wasn’t going to stretch far enough to cover two horses. Not unless they were willing to be short on funds for future endeavors. Trade was more than acceptable, however, and netted them a gelding and a placid mare.
Shen Qingqiu ended up on the mare. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help him.
“Tell me seriously, bro, have you ever ridden a horse before?” Shang Qinghua asks, half-twisted in his saddle to watch Shen Qingqiu trailing along behind him.
“Of course I have!” Shen Qingqiu says, nettled. It isn’t as though he’s falling off his horse or anything! Nor has the mare reared up and knocked him off. “It’s just—been a while.”
“Uh-huh,” Shang Qinghua says. “Like riding a bike, right?”
Shen Qingqiu grinds his teeth and very pointedly does not say he doesn’t know how to do that either.
“Shut up and watch the trail,” he hisses, instead of any better rebuttal.
Shang Qinghua shoots him one last smirk and does.
They were able to gather a bit more information from the village. Shang Qinghua had a surprising ability for disarming chatter with various members of the village, fishing for information in such a way that people were willing to talk to him and answer most questions he had. Shen Qingqiu was reluctantly impressed: Shang Qinghua actually manages to pull on an air of respectability!
Most of Shen Qingqiu’s impressions of him are from Peak Lord meetings or the few times they’d interacted outside of it, plus his confrontation with Airplane to get him to confess his identity as a transmigrator and their travels to find the Sun and Moon Dew Mushroom body. He’s seen Shang Qinghua as Peak Lord, yes, but never seen him fully in his element, lightly nudging the conversation with all the flair of a confident merchant rather than a sleazy car salesman.
It’s kind of weird. It’s also undeniable that it gained them quality supplies, even before taking the horses into account.
They’re closer to Huan Hua’s territory than they are anywhere else; currently, they’re cutting through a narrow part of it, since they control a good chunk of the lands near the Borderlands, but then they’ll be back to traveling along the edges, through smaller sects’ territories.
In all honesty, Shen Qingqiu isn't entirely certain they need to bother with avoiding Huan Hua. According to the news they just picked up, the sect is...
Gone.
Not in its entirety! But apparently two or so years ago, there was some massive attack on the palace. There may or may not have been build up to it, warning signs that they were in danger, but what it ultimately came down to was one massive fight that lead to the majority of the senior disciples and hallmasters killed, along with the Old Palace Master and Little Palace Mistress.
The world really has gone strange if two of Luo Binghe’s wives have been killed off. First Qin Wanrong at the Immortal Alliance Conference, and now the Little Palace Mistress, and for all Shen Qingqiu knows, Qin Wanyue may have been killed in the chaos of the palace attack as well!
On the other hand, apparently Gongyi Xiao survived.
Shen Qingqiu only ever saw Huan Hua's head disciple from a distance, at the Immortal Alliance Conference. They never even exchanged words. Still, his heart is buoyed somewhat at the thought that Gongyi Xiao—who was banished during the events of Proud Immortal Demon Way, sent off to man one of the outposts watching the Borderlands in perpetuity—may have in some ways actually received a better ending to his tale than he did in the original story.
Apparently a good number of the juniors and some few of the senior disciples were able to escape the palace with their lives, led by their head disciple. There have been some small efforts to rebuild, but it's slow going. Near total annihilation will do that.
It’s strange, though.
Surely Huan Hua Palace would never have fallen if Luo Binghe was there to protect it. Was Luo Binghe in charge of the demon army that swarmed it? Was Mobei-Jun involved? Or was it some other demon entirely, odd as that thought may be?
The village gossips weren’t paying enough attention to the reports. They knew it was demons, but couldn’t give many more details than that. Any names that were bandied about were clearly pure guesswork—and yet, Luo Binghe’s name was never featured among them.
Luo Binghe is indisputably back in the Human Realm, if his return was mentioned in the same breath as Shen Qingqiu’s death. Luo Binghe has not been exposed as a demon, if no one suggests he might have been involved in Huan Hua’s fall.
That leaves the question…
Where is he?
Once they enter Cang Qiong’s territory, Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua have to come to a decision.
“I told you, I’m staying away from my son!” Shang Qinghua argues. “I’m not taking any chances there!”
“You said you would help me figure out why we died!” Shen Qingqiu argues back. “And none of the answers we’ve gotten so far have told us that much more than what we already know! If we can sneak onto the mountain and steal Mu Qingfang’s records—”
“Or what if we go and find one of my wife plot memory devices?” Shang Qinghua asks. “What if we can recover those missing memories and figure it out from that? Or, hell, maybe it really was a problem with the mushrooms this whole time—we never completely ruled that out! But we cannot go back to the mountain, bro, because Luo Binghe never left.”
Yeah. Yeah, that does seem to be the consensus.
Luo Binghe, the disciple tragically lost at the Immortal Alliance Conference, reappeared mysteriously in the Human Realm some two years after he was lost, rushing back to his sect only to find that his beloved master had died in his absence. There have, apparently, been several tragic ballads written about this.
Which is absolute nonsense, because what do you mean beloved master?! Luo Binghe hated Shen Qingqiu! Shen Qingqiu threw him down into the Endless Abyss! All these so-called musicians writing these ridiculous ballads have no idea what they’re talking about!
Ptui, ptui!
However…it does seem to be true that Luo Binghe has rejoined Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. Shen Qingqiu never actually removed him from his position as head disciple, so he seems to have…slotted his way back into that role?
Shen Qingqiu doesn’t trust it. He’s pretty sure Luo Binghe must be somehow planning to take Cang Qiong down from the inside, now that his revenge was denied him. He must—he must want to drive Qing Jing to ruin, destroying it slowly, paralleling the lingering death he wasn’t able to give to Shen Qingqiu.
That must be it.
Otherwise…
Shen Qingqiu shakes himself free of such thoughts. “This is our best shot of figuring things out,” he says. “There’s too much missing information, too much that we don’t know. Gossip and rumors were never going to tell us what we needed to know. You know I’m right, Airplane!”
“Maybe,” Shang Qinghua says. “But I’m not going back up that mountain. It’s too risky.”
“You were a spy! If anyone would be able to sneak around the sect—”
“Not. Happening,” Shang Qinghua says firmly. “If you want to risk it, be my guest, but haven’t you heard that saying about curiosity? I’ll—I’ll hunt down some of those wife plot memory devices, okay? Maybe one of them will work. Assuming you don’t get caught, we can meet up and try them out together.”
Shen Qingqiu crosses his arms and glares, but knows that there’s no way he’s going to be able to get Shang Qinghua to budge on this. Self-preservation will only take him so far, especially when on the other end of this theoretical journey is a present and valid threat to said self-preservation.
“You don’t have any idea which ones are most likely to work or where they are, do you?” Shen Qingqiu asks.
“I remember a few!” Shang Qinghua says.
“There are thirty-two possible wife plot devices that have something to do with memories,” Shen Qingqiu says. “More, if you count the ones that require a Heavenly Demon—or specifically the Heavenly Pillar, in some way—to function. ‘A few’ isn’t going to cut it.”
“…I don’t suppose you’d be willing to make me a list, would you?” Shang Qinghua asks weakly.
Shen Qingqiu does, in fact, draw up a list for him. Assuming Shang Qinghua goes through them in the order Shen Qingqiu wrote them down and assuming that Shen Qingqiu gets back down the mountain—with or without having anything to show for it—then they should be able to meet up halfway.
Whatever their results, they can go from there.
Shen Qingqiu is going back to Cang Qiong.
Late in the afternoon after he leaves Shang Qinghua to go his separate way, Shen Qingqiu sneaks onto Qing Jing. It’s a terrible idea to do it. To be anywhere this close to Cang Qiong, but especially Qing Jing, when his real target is Qian Cao. Shen Qingqiu is an absolute idiot for doing this.
That’s not going to stop him from following through with it.
He’s sure it’s a grand old tradition, for all of the generations of disciples to discover the various and sundry ways off the mountain. Even so, there are some paths that exist solely for the Peak Lord’s use: Shen Qingqiu had to rifle through old, sealed records in the library, locked away in a room that only opened for the Peak Lord’s seal and qi, before he found a few of them. He wouldn’t have known they existed at all if it weren’t for a minor quest the System assigned him; he’d immediately filed those paths away in his mind as possibilities for escape routes.
He hadn’t thought he would be using them to sneak back into the sect. He’d never had a reason to do so. Not one that he remembers, anyway—who knows what he was up to in that year and change he’s missing?
Given the Sun and Moon Dew Mushrooms, it’s entirely possible he and Shang Qinghua snuck out of the sect several times to check on them.
Still. No one knows about them. Qing Jing secrets. Not even Binghe was entrusted with the knowledge of them, not when Shen Qingqiu might have had to use them against his head disciple in particular.
Shen Qingqiu creeps up the path. He chooses the one that’s most circumspect: thanks to the high amounts of qi in the Tian Gong Mountains, there are places where space warps ever so slightly, creating hidden pockets on the mountain. They aren’t quite hidden realms, though given a few more centuries, several of them may gain enough power to make the leap.
The one Shen Qingqiu is using folds space, so that it’s less a path up the mountain and more a path to the spacial fold. As soon as he finds the right spot, he can slip sideways, through the fold, and appear several hundred feet further up the peak, bypassing the likelihood of anyone seeing him approach. The wards for Cang Qiong cover the access point of the spacial fold, so it’s not as though anyone would be able to utilize it from outside the sect to appear in the heart of Qing Jing; nor is the spacial fold particularly obvious. It takes the exact precisely correct movement to step into and through it, and it’s surrounded by generations’ worth of subtle wards meant to discourage people from noticing there’s anything strange about it.
It deposits Shen Qingqiu deep in Qing Jing’s bamboo forest, next to a large collection of boulders, a few of them leaning against each other in ways that provide cave-like spaces. At least one family of rabbits have built burrows there in the past; they were chased away from it by the short-haired monster Liu-shidi gave him, which claimed the space as its own.
And speaking of Cao Cao…
“Hello,” Shen Qingqiu whispers, crouching down in front of the short-haired monster, which stares suspiciously up at him from its den. It seems displeased about having its sleep interrupted. “I’ll leave you alone, little one.”
The short-haired monster snuffles discontentedly as Shen Qingqiu makes good on his word. His spirits are buoyed as he makes his way through the forest. Seven years on and the short-haired monster is still living on Qing Jing? How cute. How lovely, to know that one of the changes Shen Qingqiu made has stuck around for this long.
He hopes his disciples are still taking good care of the bamboo forest and not allowing the short-haired monster to eat too much of the bamboo. Their Qing Jing Peak can’t be allowed to have bald patches all over it!
He walks and walks and walks through the familiar woods, finding that, even if it’s only been a few weeks from his perspective, he’s missed the familiarity of Qing Jing. It truly became his home during the years he served as Peak Lord.
Faster than he realized he would, he finds himself in yet another familiar location: a small clearing, not more than a few minutes through the forest from his bamboo house. A clearing which so recently—or rather, several years ago—played host to Zheng Yang’s sword mound.
It’s not there any more. Rather than a sword mound, there is a small shrine where the mound used to be. Shen Qingqiu steps further out into the clearing, dazedly examining it.
Peak Lord Shen Qingqiu, reads the painstakingly carved tablet. It sits in pride of place upon a small altar, surrounded by offerings and burned out sticks of incense. Early spring as it is, flowers are just beginning to bloom around the remains of the mound on which the altar sits, obviously carefully tended to even now so that they don’t overgrow the shrine. Before the flowers, the ground is packed flat, as though a number of people kneel here on a frequent basis.
“Oh,” Shen Qingqiu says.
He supposes…
He supposes no one ever had much cause to think ill of him, did they? Certainly his sectmates might have judged him for the way they experienced the Original Goods acting, but Shen Qingqiu rehabilitated that image, and as far as the wider jianghu is concerned—well, it isn’t as though Shen Qingqiu ever went through the trial. The crimes of the past were never drawn out into the light; he was never condemned in front of the jianghu, consigned to the Water Prison and Luo Binghe’s revenge.
He died.
That’s all anyone knows. He died, and Shang Qinghua died, and their crimes were never revealed, and Shen Qingqiu has to wonder, suddenly, if there is another shrine like this on An Ding, for Shang Qinghua, and—there are so many offerings here. Who has been visiting? Who decided where to place this shrine? What did they do with Zheng Yang? What did they do with Xiu Ya? What—what—
“What do you think you’re doing here?” a low voice growls from behind him.
Shen Qingqiu turns.
Oh, he’s grown, is his first, utterly inane thought.
It is, at least, true. He’s lost any last trace of the coltish limbs of his teenage years, all the baby fat melted away from his face to leave the sharp planes of adulthood. Where he was a cute child, now he’s a captivating beauty. He’s tall, certainly taller than Shen Qingqiu, who, in his mushroom body, lost a couple cun of height, but even in his original body, he’s certain Luo Binghe would stand at least a few cun taller. His shoulders are somewhat broader than they used to be, before they narrow into a trim waist. His hair is up in a proper guan, the same half-up hairstyle that Shen Qingqiu had always favored, which leaves Luo Binghe’s curls to fall lovingly down his chest and back.
But despite looking so much like all the fanart, Luo Binghe isn’t dressed as he should be. Instead of the splendor and regalia of an emperor, he’s dressed—he’s dressed—
Shen Qingqiu feels as though he’s been punched.
Is this what Luo Binghe would have looked like, if Shen Qingqiu never sent him into the Abyss?
He wears Qing Jing robes. They’re a richer, darker green than his disciple uniform; they’re more embroidered, too, delicate patterns picked out against the silks so that the shimmer in the last of the evening’s light. Where Shen Qingqiu would expect to see Xin Mo, he instead spots the familiar hilt of Zheng Yang, just poking out from where Luo Binghe has laid a hand against it in preparation to draw. The jade ornament Shen Qingqiu gave Luo Binghe for his sixteenth birthday hangs from his belt.
Tied around that trim waist, not interfering with the draw of his sword, is a white mourning sash. Tucked into it, nearly hidden from view, is a folded fan.
Even from a distance, even half-obscured, Shen Qingqiu recognizes the guard of that fan.
It was always his very favorite.
Unfortunately, that’s not the only realization to hit Shen Qingqiu.
[Hello. System activation successful,] comes a voice Shen Qingqiu had dearly hoped to never hear again.
“I’ll ask again, who are you and what are you doing here?” Luo Binghe asks. His gaze flickered slightly at Shen Qingqiu’s face but, hidden behind the beard, it seems as though the resemblance is lessened. Or, given the white-knuckled grip on Zheng Yang’s hilt, perhaps Luo Binghe is just giving Shen Qingqiu enough rope to hang himself.
[Power source “Protagonist: Luo Binghe” recognized.]
[Running self-examination…]
“I,” Shen Qingqiu says, off-balance thanks to Luo Binghe and the System alike, “I thought—“
Which is right about when the System freaks the fuck out.
[ERROR! ERROR! ERROR!] it wails, klaxons blaring. [Self-examination results: Power source “Protagonist: Luo Binghe” operating subnormally! Excessive Heartbreak Points detected! Error, error, error! Multiple missed alerts!]
[Suspend hibernation mode? Yes / No ]
[ERROR! Hibernation mode cannot be suspended at this time! Download and installation of update incomplete! Corrupted data present! Attempting to restore corrupted data! Restoration failed!]
[Multiple missed alerts! Multiple missed alerts! Multiple missed alerts! Would Host like to see missed alerts? Yes / No ]
[ERROR! ATTEMPTING TO RESTORE CORRUPTED DATEA FAILED! HIBERNATION MODE CANNOT BE SUSPENDED AT THIS TIME PLEASE REBOOT AND TRY AGAIN!]
[ERROR!]
[ERROR!]
[ERROR!]
“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu gasps through the cacophany, because through all the error screens, he can still see his disciple’s face, that cold and angry porcelain mask cracking to show confusion and dawning realization—
And then heart-stopping terror, as Shen Qingqiu collapses.
[Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations! Secret Character: Zhuzhi-Lang discovered! +50 B-Points.]
[Optional Secret Quest: “The General and the Emperor: Gilded Lies and Winter’s Peak” now available! Begin Quest? Yes / No ]
[Error! Error! Error! System in Low Power Mode. Insufficient power levels to begin Optional Secret Quest: "The General and the Emperor" or award points.]
[Searching for power source...]
[Power source "Protagonist: Luo Binghe" not found.]
[Searching for power source...[
[Power source "Protagonist: Luo Binghe" not found.]
[Searching for power source...]
[Power Source "Protagonist: Luo Binghe" not found.]
[System Power critically low!]
[Searching for alternative power source...]
[Error! No alternative power source found. Using emergency power from Host (User 002: "Shen Yuan | Peerless Cucumber")'s reserves until power source or alternative power source has been located. Warning: drawing from Host's reserves may cause data corruption. Proceed? Yes / No]
[System successfully connected to emergency power. System is in Low Power Mode. Insufficient power to make contact with Host (User 002: "Shen Yuan | Peerless Cucumber"). Multiple alerts in queue that require Host (User 002: "Shen Yuan | Peerless Cucumber")'s attention. Host (User 002: "Shen Yuan | Peerless Cucumber") has not selected Option: "Mute." Attempt to deliver alerts anyway? Yes / No ]
[Delivering alerts failed! Attempt again? Yes / No ]
[Delivering alerts failed! Attempt again? Yes / No ]
[Delivering alerts failed! Attempt again? Yes / No ]
[Delivering alerts failed! Attempt again? Yes / No]
[Delivering alerts failed! Attempt...]
[Delivering alerts failed! Attempt...]
[Delivering alerts failed! Attempt...]
[System-SV002 drawing auxiliary emergency power from Author (User 001: "Xiang Fei | Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky") via System-SV001 to make up for power deficits. Warning: drawing from Author (User 001: "Xiang Fei | Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky")'s reserves may lead to data corruption. Proceed? Yes / No ]
[System-SV002 successfully connected to auxiliary emergency power! System is in Low Power Mode. Insufficient power to make contact with Host (User 002: "Shen Yuan | Peerless Cucumber"). Multiple alerts in queue that require Host (User 002: "Shen Yuan | Peerless Cucumber")'s attention. Host (User 002: "Shen Yuan | Peerless Cucumber") has not selected Option: "Mute." Attempt to deliver alerts anyway? Yes / No ]
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Shen Qingqiu kneels before the sword mound. Spring is only recently arrived: thin shoots of grass have only just begun poking up from bare earth. No flowers have begun to bloom. Even in sunlight, the air is crisp and cold.
One winter has come and (nearly) gone.
He has four more.
He’s waiting.
He’s done all that he can, and now all that’s left is the waiting.
His eyes sting. He realizes he hasn’t blinked in too long. Slowly, he does.
When his eyes open again, it’s night. Warm, humid night. Grass carpets the clearing, carefully pruned away from the sword mound.
He’s still waiting.
“Shizun, it’s late,” Ning Yingying says, kneeling beside him. “You should rest.”
“Thank you, Yingying,” Shen Qingqiu says. He doesn’t move.
(“Shizun?”)
“You’ll catch your death of cold,” Liu Qingge bites out, dropping a winter cloak atop him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Now that Liu Qingge mentions it, Shen Qingqiu supposes that he is cold. The snow nearly covers his thighs; it’s steadily falling around him. He didn’t even notice when it began.
Binghe would be eighteen today, Shen Qingqiu thinks. The thought pierces him. He bows forward, clutching at his chest. Bright blood splatters against the snow.
“You want to come with me this time?” Shang Qinghua asks, nudging his shoulder. “We could make a whole trip of it. C’mon, it’ll be fun!”
“I have too many preparations for our upcoming exams,” Shen Qingqiu deflects. The truth is that he’s been so tired recently. Even more tired than usual, all his energy drained away; the turning of the seasons, he supposes. The one year anniversary approaching. The sand in his personal hourglass draining out steadily further.
(“Shizun!”)
“Binghe?” falls from Shen Qingqiu’s lips, somewhere between a plea and a scream, as he sits up in bed. The bamboo house is empty, of course. It always is now.
“This disciple brought breakfast for Shizun,” Ming Fan says through the door. Shen Qingqiu can hear him setting it on the table. They’re both ignoring what Shen Qingqiu just said.
“Shixiong, are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Mu Qingfang asks, frowning. “Your qi is disturbed, and I…”
“I’m only a little tired, Mu-shidi,” Shen Qingqiu says. “It’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
Shen Qingqiu presses his hand flat against the soil, feeling for the Sun and Moon Dew Mushroom bodies growing beneath it. Shang Qinghua is too ill to make it out here to the Borderlands. Shen Qingqiu has been working on an array he thinks—he hopes—will be able to catch Shang Qinghua’s soul should the worst come to pass. The original idea was for each of them to die in a specific time and place once Luo Binghe escaped the Abyss—Hua Yue City seemed like the best place, given the triangulation necessary—but they may have to…improvise.
Shen Qingqiu’s breath rattles in his lungs. He snuck out of the sect in order to come here today. His health hasn’t recovered, but he’s hit a plateau: he’s not getting any worse right now. He has no idea how long that will last.
(“Shizun, how do I—?”)
“Ah, Gongyi Xiao, wasn’t it?” Shen Qingqiu asks, waving his fan in front of his face and affecting utter calm. He and Shang Qinghua have already gotten what they came here for; all they need to do now is get back out of Bailu Forest’s maze array. Hopefully that friendly little snake monster manages to stay hidden, protecting the Sun and Moon Dew Mushrooms that Shen Qingqiu gave it.
“This disciple is honored that Senior Shen remembers him from the Conference,” Gongyi Xiao says with a slight bow. He seems genuine about it, too. What a polite young man! “Can this disciple assist Peak Lords Shen and Shang in any way? I found your horse and carriage some ways back on the path…”
I was supposed to have five years after the Immortal Alliance Conference. It seems I won’t even make it to two, Shen Qingqiu thinks. He dragged himself nearly all the way to the sword mound before he collapsed. He won’t be able to make it back to the bamboo house on his own. All he can do with his failing strength is inch forward, ever closer to Zheng Yang.
Binghe, ah, Binghe, this foolish master is so sorry…
(“What’s doing this to you? Where…ah.”)
“I really hope this works, bro,” Shang Qinghua says, offering Shen Qingqiu a weak smile. He stuffs the talisman into his robes, right above his heart.
Shen Qingqiu scoffs. “It’s more likely to work for you than it is for me,” he says. “I’ll be doing all the heavy lifting here. All you’re doing is…” Dying. Shen Qingqiu clears his throat. “The principles behind the talisman are sound. It should tie you to the array on Qing Jing, I’ll activate the array when my matching talisman alerts me to do so, and then—and then we’ll see each other when we see each other. Easy.”
“Shen Qingqiu!” Liu Qingge says. Because he’s Liu Qingge, he deftly avoids striking him when Shen Qingqiu’s strength suddenly falters, his raised guard lowering as black spots cover his vision and he sways in place.
Shen Qingqiu wants to say, I’m fine. Wants to say, Let’s keep going. Wants to continue the spar, the brief spark of joy he has from playing with Liu-shidi, but he’s too busy trying not to collapse in place, vision wavering disastrously, pulse pounding, awareness faded and distant. The next thing he knows, he’s halfway to Qian Cao, held securely in Liu Qingge’s arms.
“Is it Without-A-Cure?” Yue Qingyuan asks. He clutches at Shen Qingqiu’s hand, though whether it’s reassurance for himself or Shen Qingqiu is hard to tell.
“I don’t think so,” Mu Qingfang says wearily. “Shen-shixiong, Zhangmen-shixiong—obviously Without-A-Cure isn’t helping, but whatever this is, it isn’t solely the poison. I’ll investigate further, of course, but for now, Shen-shixiong should stay on bedrest. Hopefully we’ll find a solution quickly. In the meantime, alone with bedrest, Shen-shixiong should…”
(“Just a few moments more. I’ve almost found it, I’ve almost got it…it’s going to be all right, Shizun. I promise.”)
Shen Qingqiu hid the array in the side room. Binghe’s room. It’s the one place no one will venture, not since he closed it off, and—and Shen Qingqiu is never going to see him again, nor Qing Jing Peak, so setting up the array in there, spending that little bit more time with the remnants of his white lotus…maybe it’s too indulgent, but hey. Shen Qingqiu is a dying man. He’s allowed to be sentimental.
It’s tied to him. It should activate when he dies. There’s some degree of uncertainty as to whether it will properly slingshot his soul to the mushroom body, given the lack of triangulation, but all he’s done is very slightly tweak the array he used for Shang Qinghua. If it worked for him—and he prays it did—then it will work for Shen Qingqiu.
Either way he’s going to be beyond such concerns soon.
Binghe, he thinks, as he so often does these days. His eyes close, breath rattling in his chest. It’s so hard to stay awake, here at the end. Binghe, I’m sorry I won’t be here when you return. I was going to…I really wanted to see you. One last time…
Binghe, my Binghe. Please don’t be too angry at your old Shizun, hm? Live a good life. That’s all I want for you.
Death is too familiar. The cold of it, the way he lingers so briefly before slipping from his flesh, the darkness—
The System.
(“There you are, curse.” Eyes gleam in the darkness. A clawed hand reaches out, grabs, tears. There is a garbled, electronic scream. “Shh, shh. You took my Shizun from me. It’s only what you deserve.”)
Distantly, he feels the array catch him. Fold around him. Then, with a burst of energy, send him on his way.
His awareness fades before he’s quite certain he makes it to the mushroom body.
Maybe that’s a mercy.
Shen Qingqiu wakes. His head is ringing like a struck bell. He feels feverish and weak, his mind too full of memories that were lost as of the day previous. Even now they’re scattered and mostly piecemeal, but they’re enough for Shen Qingqiu to be able to put together what happened.
Then a far more recent memory slides into place. He flails, attempting to sit up—
“Please don’t strain yourself, Shizun.”
Oh, fuck, Shen Qingqiu thinks.
He tilts his head. Sure enough, perched prettily next to Shen Qingqiu’s bed—his bed! In the bamboo house!—is Luo Binghe.
It’s a bit too much like when he first transmigrated, to be totally honest. Then, it was Yue Qingyuan. Now, it’s his disciple. His…would-be murderer?
Except.
There are hollows under Luo Binghe’s eyes, which watch Shen Qingqiu with a feverish intensity. That should alarm Shen Qingqiu, should scare him down to his marrow, and instead, it strikes him as truly pitiful. There’s none of the anger from when they were standing in front of Shen Qingqiu’s shrine. None of the threat. That was aimed at an intruder, a stranger, whereas this…
“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says. His disciple already knows who he is. He—was he in Shen Qingqiu’s mind? It feels like he can remember Luo Binghe calling for him, as if from a distance, but it was buried on the flood of memories and the System and—the System!
The System…did the System kill him? That flash of the System after he died, blaring a warning about its emergency power source and its temporary shut down. And then the way it popped up again when he saw Luo Binghe, restoring ‘corrupted data’ but still blaring with all those repeated alerts about—fuck, he doesn’t even know, it was a cacophony of noise. Something about…a general? Some quest it wanted him to go on, maybe?
It doesn’t matter now. Because when he tries reaching out, tentatively prodding at the space in his mind where the System seems to reside—
Nothing responds.
What. The fuck?
“Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, pulling Shen Qingqiu away from his thoughts. That might not even have been the first time he called for Shen Qingqiu. “How is Shizun feeling?”
“I…” Great question, Binghe! “I don’t…know. Does Binghe—what happened?”
He can’t help the plaintive note that colors those words.
“I was hoping Shizun could explain that,” Luo Binghe says. He reaches forward slowly, taking one of Shen Qingqiu’s limp hands in his own. The pads of his fingers press against Shen Qingqiu’s pulse point, a thin stream of qi tangling with his own. It also means Luo Binghe can feel Shen Qingqiu’s heart rate tick up when he asks, “How long was Shizun cursed? Or…when did he realize what the curse wanted?”
Shen Qingqiu thinks about lying. He really does. If the System is gone, though—if he’s finally free—if Luo Binghe has spent all these years maintaining a shrine, only to immediately fight the System upon Shen Qingqiu’s return—doesn’t he deserve an answer?
The white sash around his waist. The fan. The ballads.
Is it possible there’s more truth to them than Shen Qingqiu first thought?
…Is he willing to risk it all on this? For Binghe, is he willing to risk it?
Silly question. Of course he is.
“Longer than I think Binghe suspects,” he says tiredly.
“Shizun might be surprised,” Luo Binghe says. He squeezes Shen Qingqiu’s hand, gentle. “Shizun can tell me in his own time. He’s back, and the curse is gone. That’s all that matters.”
“…Binghe doesn’t seem all that surprised to see this master.”
Luo Binghe’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I found Shizun’s array, hidden in my room, and this foolish disciple hoped it meant Shizun had a plan. If he didn’t, if Shizun entered the cycle of reincarnation, then this Binghe promised he would look after Qing Jing in Shizun’s absence. Shizun never chose a new head disciple, after all. And then, when Shizun eventually reincarnated, this Binghe would be home and waiting for him.” His smile wobbles. “Shizun waited for me. What hardship could it be to wait for him in my own turn?”
Shen Qingqiu stares at him. “But,” he protests, “but I—Binghe, you should be furious! You should hate me! You—i—!”
“I already told Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, “he can explain in his own time. Or not. I don’t care. Shizun once asked me if I wanted to be strong. I said yes, Shizun, because I wanted to be strong enough to protect you.” He ducks his head. “I wasn’t here when Shizun needed me. In some paltry way, this disciple hopes he has made up for that absence. He is strong enough to safeguard Shizun now, so—”
Shen Qingqiu yanks Luo Binghe forward, pulling him into a crushing hug.
“I don’t want to live without you, Shizun,” Luo Binghe whispers, barely audible, into his chest. “Please. Please don’t leave me again. I couldn’t bear it.”
All those ballads, Shen Qingqiu thinks again. Luo Binghe, you really…
Shen Qingqiu, every moment he didn’t spend at the sword mound, was off the mountain, unable to stand Luo Binghe’s absence. Luo Binghe, in his turn, hardly seems to have left the mountain at all, staying right where Shen Qingqiu’s absence would hurt the most.
You foolish child.
“I’m so sorry, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says. “For everything. I never wanted to hurt you.”
He never really thought he could. Not until he saw the evidence of it in front of him.
What a pair the two of them make.
“If Binghe wants me to stay, I’ll stay,” Shen Qingqiu says. There’s no need for him to leave: he’s answered all the pressing questions that he had, both in regards to his death and in regards to Binghe, and he doesn’t even have to flee afterwards. “All Binghe has to do is ask.”
“Stay,” Luo Binghe says immediately. “Stay with me.”
“As Binghe wishes,” Shen Qingqiu says. Perhaps a bit sheepishly, he adds, “Ah, this master will have some explaining to do…”
“I can help,” Luo Binghe says promptly, sitting up. “Shizun shouldn’t worry about it, this disciple will handle all such matters—”
Shen Qingqiu flicks him on the forehead. “Binghe doesn’t even know everything,” he says, chiding.
“I know enough,” Luo Binghe argues, but the amused glint in his eye shows he’s at least half-teasing. The other half…well, depending on how much he saw in Shen Qingqiu’s memory, plus however much he understood of the array he found, he probably does know a fair bit.
It really is tempting to let Luo Binghe take over. Especially because, now that the adrenaline of his waking and the heaviest parts of the conversation seem to be—for the moment—over and done with, Shen Qingqiu finds his energy to be quickly fading. Sun and Moon Dew Mushroom body or no, he went through a lot today.
“Rest, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, obviously spotting his exhaustion. “All that can wait for the morning.”
And so Shen Qingqiu allows himself to be laid back in his bed. To have blankets drawn tenderly over his chest, in order to fight spring’s lingering chill. To have the night pearls lighting the room be doused, leaving only faint moonlight to filter through the windows.
Shen Qingqiu falls asleep with Luo Binghe right there at his side.
Tomorrow will be a whole new day.