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Chapter Text

It was an ordinary day. Pleasant enough. Not an ideal day, because business meetings were never precisely enjoyable and not all of his martial siblings liked him enough to be entirely resigned to his life choices, but good. Binghe had made extra effort with breakfast and been cheerful and so clingy he’d trailed along to the Peak Lord meeting and stood quietly out of the way against the wall, as though this would make him unnoticeable.

Of course Binghe knew it wouldn’t. Between his protagonist traits and his threat level that was laughable. He was only technically allowed on parts of the mountain, even; just because everyone had decided to ignore him rather than make a scene didn’t mean anyone was going to forget he was there.

If there’d been anything on the quarterly agenda Shen Qingqiu especially needed to argue for he’d assume his demon lord husband was joining him to make a show of vaguely violent moral support, but Cang Qiong’s peaks had fairly little reason to argue amongst themselves under normal circumstances, and what few reasons existed—matters of budget and supply, and occasionally Bai Zhan disciples breaking things—rarely troubled Shen Qingqiu, high-ranking as he was and with the Sect Leader, head of logistics, and War God as his three closest allies in the sect.

He was smiling from behind his fan, for plausible deniability, at Yue Qingyuan for sorting out some friction between two Lords further down the table with a diplomacy that verged on dryness—he knew the man had a sense of humor although it very rarely surfaced—and Binghe didn’t even seem to be resenting it very much, when the warm golden air of the meeting room cracked open, and let in the cold blue light of another place.

It was near one end of the table, not far from Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder, and he was the second to his feet, after Liu Qingge who outright leapt up. Everyone watched the thing warily. And it did seem to be a thing, rather than a crack, after that first instant.

Unfolding out of the air, in a way that looked somehow extremely different from someone coming through a portal or teleporting, was a blue…blob. It was a misty, round shape, a sort of upright oblong that got denser and more opaque toward the center, and the longer it spun into position as if approaching without moving, as if winding itself in from elsewhere, and hovered about half a meter from the floor. When Shen Qingqiu stood, the top of the thing came to about the level of his shoulders, which made it fractionally less menacing than if it had loomed over him.

But only fractionally, because even though he had his hand hovering near Xiu Ya he had an awful feeling this was not something he would be able to fight.

Something about the way light hit it—or didn’t—reminded him of the System’s text boxes. Though the rest of the Peak Lords seemed equally able to see it, as did Binghe, who had drawn the reforged Zheng Yang but inexplicably not yet interposed himself between Shen Qingqiu and the mysterious incursion.

Not that Shen Qingqiu really wanted his husband being embarrassingly smothering all the time, but since he was it was very noteworthy when that behavior failed to eventuate.

System? He prodded again, as he had three times in the last several seconds. Not even the most obnoxiously useless shutdown message resulted. He wished Shang Qinghua had made it to the meeting on time for once. The natives of this world might be seeing something entirely different than he was! He could use a second opinion here!

The blob finished rotating into place in a way that wasn’t quite compatible with geometry as Shen Qingqiu understood it, and cleared a throat it didn’t seem to have.

“Greetings,” it said, somehow clearly addressing him in particular more than the room as a whole despite its total lack of features other than blueness and translucency. “I’m here on behalf of the Hyper-Celestial Peace and Order Enforcement Bureau. Crime scene secure, proceeding to interviews. Beginning with Subject One: You are Shen Qingqiu, formerly Shen Yuan, also known as Peerless Cucumber?”

That stupid dick joke handle, Shen Qingqiu reflected distantly, as the reverberations of this question stilled the room and turned Yue Qingyuan particularly to stone, was apparently going to follow him for the rest of eternity. “I am,” he said, after failing to think of any way that denying it could possibly help him.

The System went on failing to respond.

“Good, good. Let me see.” The blob manifested arms out of its sides like blue comet-tails, reached into its own center mass, and extracted a misty blue oblong tablet shape, which it proceeded to look through as though it was a clipboard covered in papers. “You’ve inhabited that physical instantiation for almost sixteen local years, correct?”

Shen Qingqiu’s ability to breathe momentarily left him. Of all the ways for this truth to come to light, he’d never imagined it like this. He could see his fellow Peak Lords and Luo Binghe counting backwards in their minds. It had only been about five years since the last two times he’d been put into this body, the first of which everyone knew about.

Sixteen years…sixteen years was how long it had been since he first came here, but if you didn’t know that and recognize the figure at once, you would have to ask such questions as, do those five years of being dead count? Or should we be looking twenty-one years ago?

Shen Qingqiu’s hand tightened on his fan. “That’s a complicated question, actually. Why do you ask?”

He’d remembered now why refusing to answer the first question might have been a good idea: he didn’t only have the people of this world to worry about. It had been a long time, and he’d never been the type to get in trouble with the law, but he did know from his first life that you should never give the police anything they might be able to use against you, if you could possibly avoid it.

“Just confirming our reports. What makes it complicated?”

Shen Qingqiu sighed. “I was dead for five years. So I’ve strictly speaking only inhabited this physical instantiation for eleven years in total.” Was that all? It seemed like more, somehow. He’d lived more than twice that in his first life, but this one seemed longer, somehow. Perhaps because it had been so much more full.

…he would miss everyone, if this was the end for him as Shen Qingqiu. He would miss them terribly.

Assuming he got the chance.

He looked down his nose at the police blob, channeling every scrap of Shen Qingqiu’s arrogance. “What do you intend to do about it?”

“Ah, I see,” said the blob cop. “Five years, yes. The question was too vague, thank you for your cooperation. It’s done,” it continued, addressing Shen Qingqiu’s remarks apparently in the order they’d been said. “We raided their headquarters this morning, this visit is merely a matter of procedure. So you can confirm that sixteen relative years ago you arrived in this reference frame?”

“…yes.”

“And you were threatened with death and other forms of violence to control your actions within the sphere of your detainment.”

Shen Qingqiu snapped his fan open in a too-revealing gesture that let him hide part of his face. Mortifying.

Threatened with death and violence had at the time felt like perfectly reasonable motives for the various crimes he’d committed against the witnesses to this interrogation, considering he’d had no means of resistance or escape, but stated in this way now, they sounded cheap and pathetic. Like nothing he should not have been willing to endure.

“This,” he began, only to feel that calling himself by any of the usual things and especially Shen Qingqiu would be in questionable taste at the moment. “One preferred remaining here over any available alternative.”

The System’s Punishment Protocol was a fairly effective deterrent, as well.

And, well. He supposed if he was being exposed in front of his husband and martial siblings for what he was, they might as well find out in the bargain that he was a coward. What did it matter.

“Can you describe to me any occasion when your captors issued or substantiated a threat for the sake of coercion.”

He did still have his limits! “No,” Shen Qingqiu replied flatly. “Is it important? What am I being charged with, exactly?”

The Hyper-Celestial Enforcer looked up at him eyelessly over its rectangle of mist-papers, in a way that made Shen Qingqiu feel it had in fact trained several eyes on his person, and might have manifested more to stare better. “Why, nothing, Mr. Shen.”

He hadn’t been called Mr. Shen since…he’d almost never been called Mr. Shen. Even in his first life it hadn’t come up much. It wasn’t as though he’d had business dealings, unless you counted receiving food deliveries.

There was nothing rude about being called Mister, unless of course you’d become accustomed to being called things like ‘Immortal Master’ and ‘shixiong’ in its place. Well. He hadn’t earned any of those titles himself in the end, had he. Not even ‘shizun’ which he’d lived up to better than the original, in his opinion. Easy come, easy go.

(One of his titles, he’d earned. He’d bled and died for. It was his alone, not an inheritance. He wanted to keep it.)

“You’re considered the victim of a crime,” the police blob told him, very earnestly. “Not a perpetrator. Removing and containing you here outside the normal cycle without your express permission is a form of kidnapping.”

Shen Qingqiu had his fan over his lower face and an eyebrow delicately quirked, all mild skepticism, but he could hear a faint note of wildness threaded into his voice under the imperturbable façade when he replied, “I didn’t think you could kidnap the dead.”

Binghe looked horrified. Actually Binghe had looked horrified for a while, but the idea of Shen Qingqiu having been dead at least one more time than he’d known about seemed to have added to it, which was comforting in a guilty sort of way. He still cared.

The blob replied, “Well, some might argue that, but by my lights and Imperial Law while the uninhabited body may be considered property, souls remain persons throughout all phase-states. We’ve dealt with this group before, Mr. Shen. Fanatics. They idolize the perpetuation of narrative. That is why they choose their targets according to metrics like ‘died cursing a particular book;’ they believe that level of passion constitutes consent. Legally it does not.” It consulted its notional papers again. “Where is the other victim, I was given to understand he should be here.”

“He’s late.” Shen Qingqiu snapped his fan shut. “I’m sure he’ll be along shortly. May I ask your business in coming here, officer, other than to disrupt our regularly scheduled meeting?”

So far it hadn’t seemed to have any particular reason to stage this revelation here, as opposed to in his bamboo house later in the day, or even really to have noticed the consequences of having done so. The silence of the Peak Lords and Binghe was becoming eerie.

The blob looked up at him in a way that managed to convey furrowing brows despite the absence of any facial features. “A routine part of the investigation as we shut down their operations in this sector. Their own records make the case open and shut, although for propriety’s sake it would be best to have your testimonies.”

“Does this shutdown happen to include restoring kidnapped assets to where they were stolen from?” Hopefully in his case that will just mean ‘directly into the cycle of reincarnation’ without a detour into his sixteen-years-abandoned corpse, as the System kept threatening.

(Not that he wanted to stop existing as the person he was right now, to properly die, but there were worse fates. Hopefully, he would get to say goodbye.)

The blob paged through its documentation absently, as though wholly oblivious to the importance of this question. “Shouldn’t think so. When we catch these things early we can straighten them out like that, but if we pull you out now that’s just more paperwork. It was technically a natural death, after all, even if the culprits facilitated it, so the previous Shen Qingqiu isn’t currently available to resume operation.”

Shen Qingqiu turned his head only barely enough to take in the extra degree of whiteness that had overtaken Yue Qingyuan’s face. The awfulness of that part of the situation somewhat offset the relief that he was apparently neither going to be summarily executed, nor forced to watch as the blob police shut down the world of Proud Immortal Demon Way for being somehow unauthorized.

Good riddance to the original goods!

For Yue Qingyuan’s sake though and because it seemed like useful knowledge he said, “May I ask why not?”

“Standard pathing, they cut him loose, like that would get them off a murder 1 charge. He’ll be turning twelve soon. His parents seem to be planning a party.

“We could arrange visitation,” it said dubiously, not looking up from what must be the original goods’ file, “but it’s not what I’d call advisable. Restoring to a previous state can be very disruptive to child development, even if it’s temporary, especially in cases like this where there are significant stressors attached to the previous iteration.”

Shen Qingqiu looked more obviously at Yue Qingyuan, who was realistically the only person who would care about visitation access to the original Shen Qingqiu, and found his face streaming with tears. Faintly, he shook his head in answer to Shen Qingqiu’s silent question. Of course he wouldn’t want to risk harming his Xiao Jiu for selfish reasons like wanting to be close to him or say a proper goodbye; he hadn’t even been willing to explain his own failure, which would actually have helped.

“Never mind, then,” Shen Qingqiu told the amorphous police being. “Officer…?”

“Zhang,” it said, leafing away from Shen Jiu’s data.

“Officer Zhang,” a much more normal name than he’d expected, “if that’s all you need from me for the moment, if I could briefly—”

That was as far as he got before the door opened and Shang Qinghua rushed in exclaiming, “Sorry I’m late, while I was away my disciples needed to dig out the spare abacuses and wound up burying last quarter’s—huh?”

Huh was a fair enough reaction to the sight of all the Peak Lords on their feet and Zhang the Cosmic Cop hovering near the head of the table. “Shang-shidi,” Shen Qingqiu greeted him with a note of bright stiffness that would have done the most secretly homicidal housewife proud, “this is Officer Zhang, he’s here about our kidnapping.”

Shang Qinghua juggled his overbalancing stack of scrolls arm to arm for a second and then let them all drop with a great huff of air. “Serious?” He scoffed. “Cops are the same all over, huh? Coming in now, after we got everything sorted out. Just typical. What’s the damage?”

“Other than this drama?” Shen Qingqiu asked, feeling this was quite bad enough. He shrugged. “I think the System may be under arrest.”

Shang Qinghua brightened. “Well, that’s something. Is the System going to jail?” he asked Zhang, hopeful and somewhat vicious.

“The organization’s leadership will probably be put to death,” Zhang answered absently. “With a proper scrub to keep them from remembering any of the tricks they used to set this up, and close monitoring until we’re sure there will be no reversion and they’re fully reformed. The operatives you had direct contact with will likely only be imprisoned in a concept-space not unlike this one, although less, ah, colorful, under similar terms to those of your illegal detainment, though almost certainly more tedious. I’m afraid they’re likely to receive better treatment than they offered you, as intentional torture and humiliation are against Imperial detention policy, but they will be permitted very little liberty.”

“Well, that’s something,” said Shang Qinghua again, at the same time Shen Qingqiu replied severely,

“Don’t exaggerate the situation just to magnify the charges, or whatever you’re doing. We’re fine,” he added this last rather forcefully, because Yue Qingyuan had finally stopped crying but Binghe had started, and he wished more than anything to be able to rush over and soothe his poor lotus. But the conversation that would take was not one he could afford to have in front of all these witnesses, or attempt before fully resolving the situation with Zhang and making certain there would be no unfortunate fallout of this world coming under new management.

Shang Qinghua, much less upset, bent down to pick his scrolls up again, grumbling, “And why are you saying ‘colorful’ in such a judgmental tone, I worked hard on this concept-space.” He finished straightening to find rather more attention from the room at large focused on him that he’d expected, and winced. “Can we pretend I didn’t say that?”

Shen Qingqiu itched to hit him with his fan, but he was regrettably out of range. “That’s the part you care about?”

“It’s the part that might make things weird! I already have no face around here, and I’m kind of looking forward to being able to explain to my king—oh,” he said, finally noticing Binghe, against the wall, weeping blankly, reduced far more to a part of the backdrop than was normally possible. Either something about Zhang’s presence canceled out things like protagonist halos in favor of an effect that made its conversations the center of all attention, or the arrest and arraignment of the System had demoted Luo Binghe permanently from his throne.

That wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, at this point. The main plot was over and the overall situation was stable enough he could probably do without his main-character-specific advantages, since he’d still be seriously OP, and maybe they’d stop getting besieged by wife plots. The frozen, stricken expression was far more concerning.

“Yes,” Shen Qingqiu mocked his fellow transmigrator. “Oh.”

Shang Qinghua had no close attachments in Cang Qiong other than Shen Qingqiu himself. Probably he had avoided making them, over the much longer period of time he’d lived there, because it would have complicated his inevitable, System-mandated betrayal. Shen Qingqiu had not been so careful. And now all those attachments were revealed as based on lies.

And he would throw them all aside in an instant if it could mend things with Binghe, and restore the happiness they’d had this morning.

The blue blob again cleared a throat it didn’t have. “Could I please speak to the two of you alone,” said Officer Zhang.

Considering they had very little left in the way of secrets and hadn’t been exiled from the Sect yet, even by Yue Qingyuan who would be perfectly justified in banning Shen Qingqiu from his presence for the rest of eternity, there seemed little reason to agree.

“I decline,” said Shen Qingqiu. It was bizarrely heartening to see Liu Qingge relax the barest fraction. Still wanting to protect him, even in the face of this! Liu-shidi I don’t deserve your care.

“This is a matter of professional discretion.”

“A virtue I think you are excessively delayed in attempting to exercise. No.”

Zhang conveyed frustration somehow, despite the continued lack of any features capable of expression. “Sir the fact that both of you are on intimate terms with the parties formally tagged as your designated murderers necessitates certain procedures—”

“No need,” he cut it off, as though he could make Binghe have unheard the words. His husband looked worse than Yue Qingyuan. Shen Qingqiu should have agreed to speak to the officer privately. Discretion his ass. He tapped the tip of his fan firmly against his palm. “Binghe is not a threat to me.” No matter what these revelations did to their relationship. Even if Luo Binghe never wanted to speak to him again. He did not believe that he would ever again constitute a danger. Not to him.

The police blob contrived to be pitying. “He already killed you once.”

His pulse thundered in his ears. “That. Was my decision.”

“Arrived at under duress,” said Zhang. “As part of the process of arriving at the ending designated by your kidnappers.”

“It was my. Decision.”

“Coercion—”

“As Shang-shidi said, both of us had very satisfactorily made the best of the situation before you arrived with your idea of help.”

“Be that as it may, it’s my professional duty to investigate this matter. No fewer than sixty-five percent of direct System interventions on record in this case were to guarantee your vulnerability to the party in question, including instances of coerced nudity and contrived mortal peril. That is well over the allowable threshold to leave unaddressed.”

Shen Qingqiu found he was too enraged to speak. He opened his mouth and only a small sound of sheer humiliated outrage emerged. He couldn’t remember what, if anything, he’d even been trying to say.

“If you’re not willing to speak to me in private, could the concerned party please vacate the premises,” said Zhang, and all at once everyone seemed able to notice Luo Binghe again, and he stumbled away from where he’d been standing, as though released from a purely mental paralysis.

For a second it looked like he was going to fling himself at Zhang and try to rip its misty body apart, but then all the fight drained out of him, and Binghe shot Shen Qingqiu a look of purest agony, flung Zheng Yang to the ground, and fled the room, his normally silken movements reduced to near lurching. Shang Qinghua leapt out of his way rather than wait to see if Binghe would bother to avoid crashing into him, which it didn’t seem he would have.

Shen Qingqiu rounded on Zhang again, still furious and now supplied with words again. “How dare you—”

“This will do,” said Zhang. “Do you certify that all witnesses present are trusted parties authorized to witness your personal deposition?”

“What?” He glanced with a jerk of his head over the room full of Peak Lords. “Yes, I suppose so. I can’t think of anything else I could possibly have left to hide.” Not that he hadn’t thought that before in this conversation. But he’d rather have them all present than be alone with Zhang at this point, no matter how much face it cost him. They all knew now that he wasn’t really one of them. At least let them know he did not mean to lie to them any further. “You get three questions and then I’m going after my husband.”

“Hm,” said Zhang. “Have either of the two of you ever felt under direct personal threat from the local parties Mobei Jun and Luo Binghe respectively?”

“What a stupid question,” Shen Qingqiu snapped. The System’s seized records would prove any denial a lie, and he could not afford to have his testimony on the subject thrown out. Suppose this Hyper-Celestial Peace and Order organization was in the business of issuing restraining orders, and removing people from what they deemed unsuitable home environments. “Of course we have. The System had me counting down the days until Binghe was scheduled to rip my limbs off for years. That’s not Binghe’s responsibility.”

“And I don’t see how my king’s adolescent communication problems are really your business,” chimed in Shang Qinghua, playing support much more strongly than usual. For once they had exactly the same goals.

“Hm,” said Officer Zhang, making an ostentatious note on its rectangle. “And what did your kidnappers threaten in cases where you did not comply with their demands?”

Hadn’t they been over this? His lips thinned. “Most often simply being returned where they found me.”

“To your dead body,” said the blob, too canny to phrase it as a question and use one up.

“Me too,” said Shang Qinghua. “It could get creative sometimes, but by the time I got to An Ding it mostly didn’t need to bother anymore. I just didn’t want to die.”

Shen Qingqiu looked at his bro with distaste. You’re making me look bad by association, Airplane! But he couldn’t actually argue that that sentiment hadn’t motivated most of his own outrageous behavior, up until he’d decided there were worse things after all. And he didn’t have time or face to waste on trying.

Zhang continued to featurelessly embody the essence of a short, stout, utterly implacable policeman. It hummed in thought again, weighing out its final question and studying its papers. Shen Qingqiu nearly declared time up and left. But just because it hadn’t turned the threat of its Bureau’s power on him yet didn’t mean it wouldn’t, if he became too uncooperative a witness. “Would you consider the alterations made to this narrative as a result of your presence to be a net improvement?”

“Mine personally?” asked Shang Qinghua. “I mean, the System let me change practically nothing, and not that I’ve ever been big on second drafts but that wasn’t the most fun.”

“Yours personally, and then the System and its proxies generally.”

Shang Qinghua sighed. “I’m not sure I can say I helped much,” he said. “Even by the end. But yeah, if that matters I guess this version is better. I like how many more people are alive, such as me. Unless that will lighten the System’s sentence in which case it all sucks and my ideas were pure genius that should have been respected forever.”

“As if,” Shen Qingqiu grumbled.

“You also approve of the new storyline?”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Shen Qingqiu said, having borne much of the brunt of the System’s idea of appropriate narrative deviations. “There was a great deal of…outrageous plot contrivance I take issue with, even if a lot of careless plot holes were filled in.” He sighed. “Obviously though it’s an improved outcome. Cang Qiong still stands, we’re both alive. And…Binghe seemed happier, like this.” His jaw tightened. “That’s three questions, four even, we’re done here.”

“The investigation is ongoing,” Zhang warned him.

Shen Qingqiu began to head down the meeting hall toward the door. “I’m going.”

Shen Qingqiu out.

“I’m up for a one-on-one interview,” Shang Qinghua said cheerfully, coming to the rescue properly for once. “I have a lot of questions, too, Officer Zhang.”

“Very well. Mr. Shen, we will speak again later.”

Shen Qingqiu waved that vaguely threatening statement off, coming up on the exit. Paused. Turned to survey the assembled Peak Lords still filling the room. Several had sat down again. Mu Qingfang at least seemed positively enlightened by these developments. Qi Qingqi’s face was set in unreadable lines probably of anger, focused with all her great personal intensity on him.

He swallowed, and closed his fan, and sank into a deep bow. “This one apologizes to these masters for the deception,” he said, picking up Zheng Yang while he was bent over. Without allowing a reply or looking again at Yue Qingyuan’s face, he rose and strode after his husband.

Chapter Text

Binghe was nowhere to be seen outside the hall, but without a sword he couldn’t have gotten far.

Unless he’d resorted to calling on Mobei Jun for pickup, but it wasn’t like him to ask for help when he was that upset, especially from anyone besides Shen Qingqiu.

Shen Qingqiu leapt onto Xiu Ya, slid Zheng Yang into the thereby emptied sheath to get it out of the way, and made a quick circle to check for Binghe heading down the path that led to the foot of the mountain. Having not seen him, he landed at the Qiong Ding end of the rainbow bridge.

“Have you seen Luo Binghe?” he asked the small knot of disciples sitting nearby, ostensibly analyzing poetry together but he suspected from their postures mostly eating nuts and chatting while enjoying the fine weather. Which he would have turned a blind eye toward even on a better day, and even if they were his students to scold; at the moment he couldn’t feel even vague fondness about it, let alone disapproval. Binghe was distinctive. They would know if they’d seen him.

The tallest of them pointed along the bridge. “Yes, shishu, he seemed to be in a hurry.”

“Thank you shizhi,” Shen Qingqiu said, feeling odder about the form of address than he had in a long time, but his entitlement to Shen Qingqiu’s rank hadn’t been challenged so far. He took off again, this time for Qing Jing Peak. Even on foot, Binghe in a hurry could cover a lot of ground.

Luo Binghe at thirty was far more stable than Luo Binghe at twenty-five had been, but even with years of healing behind him, something like this…Shen Qingqiu was very worried.

He found his husband in the bamboo house, the door left carelessly open behind him, standing in the middle of the main room with a desperate, yearning air.

Shen Qingqiu caught his breath, not sure in what way Binghe was managing to look so much like he was saying goodbye to a room but certain that was what he was witnessing. “Binghe.”

His husband gasped and whirled to face Shen Qingqiu, where he stood in the doorway, like he’d really been abstracted enough not to sense him coming. The look of startled dismay on his face was visible only for a moment, before Binghe flung himself to the well-scoured floorboards in a full prostration that had been excessive from his fourteen-year-old self and was positively ludicrous from the adult Junshang he’d become, sticky husband or not. “Shi—Lord Shen!” he exclaimed, which was a strange and awful way to be addressed by that voice.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu began, bewildered.

“This,” Binghe had to stop to catch his breath, he was weeping, a full, wretched, hitching cry and not the beautiful lotus tears he so easily turned on to get his way. “This unworthy one will absent himself from your sight!”

“Don’t you dare.” The words were out without a thought, not very in-character but that hardly mattered anymore. Shen Qingqiu pulled the door shut behind him and sank to one knee, setting his sword aside to pry at his husband’s shoulder. “Get up from there, Binghe, let me look at you. What is this about leaving me, ah?”

The suggestion that Binghe was ending their marriage filled him with cold needles of horror, and he might have accepted it as his just deserts and allowed it in despair had Binghe not been behaving with such utter, bewildering self-abasement. This wasn’t the reaction of a man turning his back on a dishonest spouse.

Binghe cringed against the ground, almost as though he was afraid Shen Qingqiu would revert to Original form and strike him, even though he had more assurance than ever before that would not happen because they weren’t even the same man, and even though there was no way for Shen Qingqiu to be a threat to him at this point in his development. “Begging Master Shen’s forgiveness,” he mumbled, though it was unclear whether he meant for not obeying the injunction to rise or for whatever he considered his primary transgression to be.

“Luo Binghe!” Shen Qingqiu snapped. “Cease this immediately. This situation is difficult enough without your refusing to speak to me.”

Silence reigned briefly, only broken by a hiccupping breath from the floor. “Master Shen wants this lowly one to speak?”

“I married you, Binghe. What part of that suggests I want to do without your face and voice, hm? But stop calling yourself like that, it’s disturbing.”

This only made Binghe cry harder, for some reason, but he did sit up, gushing like a fountain. Shen Qingqiu badly wanted this to be a deception of some kind, one of Binghe’s many crafty, lying faces, but he never managed this kind of indignity when he was pretending. He’d be self-effacing, but elegant or cute about it, every time. This was messy and disgraceful. The bits of hair that were behaving especially wildly did not look to advantage. The one sticking to his cheek looked really silly.

Even like this he managed to be beautiful, his great dark eyes like smooth pools viewed at nighttime, a portrait of tragedy.

Shen Qingqiu couldn’t quite see why. He hadn’t died again, after all, and Binghe didn’t seem to feel betrayed, exactly. This was all very upsetting, surely, and Binghe was a crier, but it still seemed excessive.

He had hoped, a little, that if the truth ever came out Binghe would be gratified to learn Shen Qingqiu really had been placed in the world to love him. It was the kind of thing Binghe liked to believe. At least, though, Binghe didn’t hate him for this, at least not yet. And, knowing Binghe, if this hadn’t killed his feelings dead in the first instant, it probably wouldn’t affect them at all.

So it would be alright, in the end, Shen Qingqiu was sure of it. They would sort this out just like everything else. He just had to get his husband to calm down.

“There,” was all he said, and set his fan on the floor by his knee to free his other hand, to lean over and brush the hem of his sleeve over Binghe’s wet cheek and, incidentally, unstick the stupid-looking wild clump of hair. Like this, him kneeling upright while Binghe sat collapsed on his heels, it was like their old height difference was back, like Binghe really was fourteen again and they were starting over. “That’s better.”

Binghe buried his face in his own sleeves. Hm. Two steps forward, one step back. “You don’t have to be so kind to me,” he said, brokenly.

Shen Qingqiu sighed. “I choose to, then,” he said, even though there was nothing special about his reaction to his husband having a self-recriminating breakdown. Anyone would respond about the same. “It was the first thing I ever chose in this world, as a matter of fact, and I don’t wish to stop.”

Ah. It was oddly liberating, to be able to say that. To know the System was gone (in prison, which apparently consisted of being forcibly transmigrated somewhere boring) and couldn’t punish him for breaking script. He refused to feel any gratitude toward the celestial police for the service, though. Not when they were the cause of the tears as well.

Really, so thoughtless.

“Shizun,” Binghe sobbed, and then cringed in on himself. “Master Shen,” he corrected himself miserably.

“Here, what’s this, you can still call me Shizun if you want to,” Shen Qingqiu said, very relieved. Ignoring that he’d been trying to persuade this protagonist to stop calling him that so much for years, especially in bed. “I did teach you for a few years there, ah? I think I helped you learn a few things.”

Binghe dissolved into tears again.

If Shen Qingqiu had been even slightly less worried, he would have been extremely impatient. “Tell me what part of this has you so devastated, won’t you, Binghe?” he asked. “Husband?” he added, because Binghe hadn’t continued in his threats of leaving him so it was probably safe to presume for now they were still married.

But Luo Binghe cringed from the title he had worn so proudly, and Shen Qingqiu’s heart almost stopped in his chest. Was this really the end, then.

“Why?” he asked softly, and his own devastation filled the air of their little house to join Binghe’s. Why don’t you want me anymore?

The black silk sleeves came down, and Luo Binghe looked at him, properly, as though Shen Qingqiu’s own sorrow had been the key to unlock the cage of Binghe’s, where none of his reassurances had worked. “Shizun,” Binghe said miserably. “I don’t deserve—” His hands were closed so tightly Shen Qingqiu could hear the knuckles creaking.

When Binghe didn’t finish that sentence Shen Qingqiu reached for his right hand, with some idea of soothing the fingers open before Binghe hurt himself, even though his healing ability would take care of it in seconds even if he did.

Luo Binghe, in what normally would be a moment of incredible OOC behavior, pulled the hand out of reach.

“You won’t touch me?” Shen Qingqiu asked, trying to control the sinking feeling in his chest. He’d thought, certainly, in the meeting room, that Binghe might not want to speak to him again, that this revelation could destroy their marriage, but he’d expected something more—straightforward. Conventional. An I can’t trust you talk. Anger, maybe. Embarrassment at having been so totally misled. Not this.

He’d always known he wasn’t worthy of Binghe’s totally unreasonable, unrealistic regard, but he’d learned to ignore it. Had told himself, all the same, that he was prepared for Binghe to someday recognize that fact and move on.

“How can I?” replied Binghe, and Shen Qingqiu sat and breathed through that.

Prepared? Who was prepared?

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu began, because as tempting as it was to accept that as a final blow and walk away to lick his wounds he couldn’t leave it at that.

For Binghe’s sake, they had to straighten it out a little more. Say a few of the things that had gone unsaid before they, possibly, never saw each other again. He’d learned what trying to separate with a misunderstanding could lead to! He felt something hot run down his cheek, rapidly turning cold.

“Oh,” said Binghe, stricken, following the tear with his eyes, and for a moment his hand rose as if to brush at it, though it fell very short. “Oh no. Shizun, please don’t cry.”

Now you know how this old man usually feels, you irresponsible protagonist! “This…teacher,” Shen Qingqiu said carefully, “wishes merely to understand what part of his past has made him so revolting to Luo Binghe. Just that I am not really Shen Qingqiu?”

“Shizun, no,” said Binghe with real horror. “What do I care for that? The name Shen Qingqiu—if it is not yours, it’s worthless; say the word and I will never speak it again.”

A cheap promise from someone who has always called me ‘Shizun’ all the time anyway!

“I’m rather attached to it now, actually,” said Shen Qingqiu, who very much was, although he admitted the irony considering how much digital ink he’d once spilled on ill-wishing it. Perhaps that was his problem, he’d cursed himself. “Very well. What, then?”

“Shizun could never be revolting,” Luo Binghe said, still not answering the question but both talking and being reassuring so Shen Qingqiu did not particularly care to demand rapid response. “I—it’s me. There’s nothing wrong with Shizun at all. I’m what’s the matter. How could I…” he trailed off, gazing down at his hands on his knees as though they were vassals who had betrayed him.

There was the anger. He'd known it had to be in there somewhere.

Shen Qingqiu wished he had not set down his fan. “Binghe is the same as he was this morning,” he pointed out, thinking of the Binghe who had woken with him in this little house, proud and laughing, with impudent wandering hands, stealing kisses.

So not the same at all, but not different in a way that should have caused this changed attitude. “So clearly this one must be the problem.”

Binghe shook his head. “There is nothing wrong with Shizun,” he insisted, fiercely. “But you should not have to make the best of it.”

It took Shen Qingqiu a moment to recognize his own words, spoken back with such dismay and loathing. He hadn’t meant it that way at all! “Not of Binghe,” he said.

“Of being trapped here,” Binghe choked. “Imprisoned.”

“Melodrama,” Shen Qingqiu dismissed. “Legalisms. This master has lived a very comfortable life since entering this world. With some exceptions,” he allowed, since the five years of death and a certain period of time on each side of them could hardly be considered comfortable living.

“But Shizun was threatened,” said Binghe, almost without the murderous rage Shen Qingqiu was accustomed to seeing attached to threats against him these days.

The fact that the System was both beyond his practical reach and already punished seemed like it shouldn’t be enough to entirely blunt this protagonist’s desire to wreak vengeance, but maybe he really was growing past that. That would be nice.

“Having no alternative but death is hardly the same level of imposition when one was already dead to begin with,” Shen Qingqiu dismissed. “Nobody else can leave this world without dying either, ah! It would hardly have made a good threat if I wanted to leave. Really, this one took that threat more seriously than it deserved. Binghe, it’s nothing. You shouldn’t be concerned about it.”

“That’s what Shizun always says.” Mutinous. Almost normal.

“Binghe tends to be overly concerned.”

Binghe’s expression clearly said he disagreed.

Shen Qingqiu picked up his fan again and opened it, for something to do. “What can I say to convince you?” he asked. “All that was finished years ago. I am quite well, except for that rude entity interrupting our meeting to expose my private affairs so carelessly.”

“It isn’t finished,” Binghe objected. “How could it be, when everything between us…nothing is the way I thought,” he said, disconsolate and bitter.

Shen Qingqiu only flinched inwardly. He closed his fan again. So after all, it was that he had always been a lie. “This one apologizes again for the false pretenses. Anything Binghe wishes to put an end to may of course be considered dissolved.”

Binghe looked at him like he’d spouted nonsense. “Shizun still thinks I don’t want him,” he marveled. “That’s not it at all, I’ve told you!”

“And I’ve said that if the truth about me undoes it then there seems no other explanation.” He could stand up here, take advantage of this stuck place in the conversation to give them both breathing room, escape from this awful pressure to keep exposing himself, make Binghe move to somewhere a little more comfortable to talk, maybe make some tea.

If he could only count on Binghe not to leave without explaining, without giving him this other reason that supposedly existed for why—

Maybe it was just selfishness, holding him back. Driving him to suddenly be the clingy party, and refuse to accept Binghe’s rejection without understanding it. But, ah, he had been selfish so long, what was one day more.

Shen Qingqiu settled back onto his heels in a proper, more comfortable sitting position instead, bringing his face about even with Binghe’s in his collapsed posture, and laid the closed fan across his knees. “If Binghe does not…object to this master,” he said, “then what between us has been…” Transformed, upended, ended?

Binghe looked at the floor between them and swallowed.

“The…” His hands worked, like he was grasping at something invisible. “Shizun. Of course it makes a difference, knowing—how we really came to be together.”

Shen Qingqiu sighed. “This master knows it does. He always knew. But is it so very terrible?”

That got Binghe’s eyes on him, wide and shocked. “Of course it is!”

Really, would it kill this protagonist to be consistent? One minute he was insisting he didn’t care about the lies, the next he said ‘of course!’ Shen Qingqiu picked his fan up, tapping it against the palm of his opposite hand. “This master does not understand. Does Binghe mind my deceptions, or does he not?”

“Not Shizun’s,” said Binghe. “That’s clear enough—you were as honest with me as you could be.” He sniffed. “You—you let this one think you’d done things you hadn’t, because.” Ah, put that together, had he? Shen Qingqiu always had hoped that would count in his favor, if it ever came out. Even with all the new lies to forgive, at least there was that. “But them,” Binghe said, mouth full of something more poison than vinegar. “The kidnappers. They—”

Again he was becoming too distraught to speak.

“What, Binghe?” Shen Qingqiu asked it as gently as he could.

“They…threatened you. Forced you into things.”

“This master is glad Binghe is offended on his behalf,” Shen Qingqiu said slowly, though of course without the reveal disrupting things between them he would have taken that much for granted. “But is not sure how the System’s, hm, behavior reflects on…us.”

Make it make sense, Binghe! Why should the stupid fucking Google Translate cultists having hurt this master mean you want to leave me, hm? Am I too pathetic for a mighty protagonist like you, after all? You never seemed to mind seeing me weak before!

Binghe looked again like someone he loved had died, except too angry for it to have been a tragic accident and not angry enough for there to be a murderer to hunt down. His eyes grew entreating, his maiden’s heart cast underfoot, though there was nothing for him to plead for but understanding and Shen Qingqiu was trying his hardest to understand! Have mercy on this old master. “Because that’s what they wanted. They gave you to me.”

Shen Qingqiu swallowed. That stung. It wasn’t unreasonable from this proud stallion protagonist, wanting something less for knowing it had been designed to please him rather than being, as he’d thought, a conquest made on his own terms, but it was impossible not to take it personally. Binghe had won him over directly! Did that not matter? He’d expected the truth to devalue him of course, but not quite in this way. “Binghe chooses a peculiar moment to be contrary. Surely it was not such a poor gift?”

Like the scratchy sweater your aunt bought for your birthday. Of course this love-obsessed maiden’s heart would shudder from the disappointment, he’d known that all along. Even so!

“No! You were given to me!” Binghe burst out, horrified by it somehow. Revolted. Sick with it. His voice broke. “They—you didn’t deny any of it, shizun, what that smudge said. They took you, and wrapped you up so prettily, and shoved you into my arms over and over until you stopped running.”

A new sob cracked from him, his shoulders bowing forward again as if under a great weight. “And I thought—I thought….” His face crumpled with weeping, lips folding back for a moment in a child’s snarl-shaped wail, finally not quite beautiful although still much lovelier to look at than that expression should allow. Ah, Binghe.

“Didn’t I say I made my own decision?” Shen Qingqiu asked, tapping his fan against his thigh. “I certainly said that. Binghe, what are you doing believing that smudge-cop over me, hm?”

Binghe hiccupped. “You didn’t deny it,” he repeated. “They brought you here to marry me. You were chosen for me, you—”

“It’s not as though that’s an unusual way to receive a wife, is it?” Shen Qingqiu grumbled, defensive and hating it. That would be an outrageous remark to make in his old world, even his antisocial stallion-novel-reading self would have known better, but he had naturalized into this life very well, see! No reason for anyone to remove him.

Binghe was staring at him with his lips parted in horror. “No!” he exclaimed. “Shizun you were stolen by criminals!”

“And it would have made so much difference if you’d sent my father a bride-price first?” He clicked his tongue in dismissal.

Luo Binghe was wretched. “Shizun they kidnapped you and threatened you and forced you to stay with me. That’s not even how a lord receives a concubine, that’s how he receives a slave.” He covered his face again, shoulders shaking.

Shen Qingqiu didn’t honestly see how there was very much difference, when there wasn’t a harem to have status within, though he knew that was probably his modern perspective speaking. Certainly his mother would never have stood for having had her husband chosen for her. His little sister hadn’t even tolerated inquiries into who she might be dating. And anyway, none of their personal circumstances and how they compared to various harem rankings were relevant, because he had married Binghe because he wanted to, regardless of whether the System had been the most horrific matchmaker anyone could be forced to work with.

“And I thought,” Binghe wept, before Shen Qingqiu could think of anything relevant or coherent, let alone helpful, to say, “I imagined we were a love match, I. Shizun.”

“Binghe,” he said, because in another instant of this embarrassment he was going to cry too, and he could not begin to find the words for of course we were a love match Binghe, of course I love you, of course you’re still allowed to love me.

Binghe grew fierce. “I know I’ve always pushed you for more, demanded—I know I spent so long trying to force it—I know I don’t listen well when Shizun tries to tell me no because you don’t always mean it or I think I can persuade you otherwise—but if I’d known—”

What would Binghe have really done differently? For knowing? All that was just Binghe, surely, his sticky, needy, former stallion protagonist. This arrogant, horny, op brat. “Binghe is Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said firmly.

He wanted to reach out, but couldn’t stand to have his touch rejected again, so after a moment he used the end of his fan to tip Binghe’s chin up to meet his eyes. “This master would like to be listened to more about certain things, but Binghe is also correct that his thin face sometimes leads him to say things he does not mean.

“It is an ordinary difficulty in a marriage,” he said, with more confidence than his knowledge base actually warranted, but that was a commonplace in this life. “This husband is happy to continue to work on communication between us, hm?”

Especially now that he had fewer lies to maintain.

Binghe’s eyes welled up again. Surely he must be running out of tears to cry with—dehydration was one of the few things his blood, naturally enough, couldn’t actually cure, although it could do a very great deal to prevent him suffering symptoms other than discomfort. And Binghe was entirely too good at ignoring discomfort. As soon as Shen Qingqiu could get up and move away without risking his husband making a break for it, he would get Binghe some water.

Shen Qingqiu took the fan away and Binghe ducked into a nod. “Yes,” he said softly, and a massive weight left Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders. “If Shizun wishes, of course. We will…work on it.”

“So everything is fine?”

Binghe’s face went mushy and unhappy again. “Shizun…” Clearly, it wasn’t.

“What’s the matter, Binghe.”

“I still…even if Shizun wishes to forgive it, this one trespassed against you terribly, misunderstanding.”

As if he didn’t make a terrible nuisance of himself even when he did understand what was wanted!

“Haven’t we already forgiven such things between us?”

Binghe shook his head, as though the intervention of the System made the troubles in their past somehow worse. Rather than more forgivable, considering everything had been a setup and consequently a little less either of their faults.

“‘Torture and humiliation,’” he quoted, bitterly.

“What have I said about listening to—”

“Shizun didn’t say it wasn’t true! He just said something about exaggerating.”

“It was exaggerating.”

“Hm.” Binghe didn’t believe him. Rude. “Looking back, I can see…”

Shen Qingqiu looked away, his fan flipping up to hide behind. “Binghe knew how often this master has been made a fool of.”

“It was different when I thought those things just happened! Or that shizun chose to let them happen. But if they were—organized. To hurt, to punish, to force—if these wrongs were aimed at wounding or, or demeaning that makes a difference, Shizun. You must know it does.” Shen Qingqiu was not sure he felt it did. “And I…so often I was the instrument of this punishment, this wearing-down.

"And some things I thought Shizun did not mind in the end…really, he just knew there was nothing to be done, isn’t that it?”

Shen Qingqiu clenched his jaw. Luo Binghe was too clever by half, when he bothered! He supposed that had happened, sometimes. It was one of their…miscommunications, that was all. It wouldn’t even come up again! The System was gone. It didn’t matter anymore.

“So how can I touch you again with these hands?” Binghe asked, gripping one at the base with the other and giving it that you-have-failed-me glare again. “These hands that insulted Shizun, that were used as a weapon against Shizun.”

If you’re going to start turning on parts of your body for hurting me surely the one to start with is your dick, Shen Qingqiu definitely did not say, because Binghe would probably take it entirely seriously. And he hardly needed to add that concern when he was already trying to figure out how to make sure Binghe didn’t rip his own hands off as punishment.

They could grow back, of course, that was the power of the OP Heavenly Demon blood (also a body part that had harmed Shen Qingqiu) but Binghe didn’t need the pain and Shen Qingqiu didn’t need the nightmares. Ripping his dick off wasn’t better!

“Surely this master was used against Binghe quite as much,” he said.

Binghe stared at him as though he was speaking English.

“The Abyss, Binghe,” he prompted, which was only the most obvious case.

Once you knew what the people behind the System really wanted, that they had set the protagonist up to love him and be betrayed, so many things about the new Shen Qingqiu became clearly intended to torment Luo Binghe. Perhaps even worse than the original ever had. Almost certainly much worse.

The only reason this ending was better for Binghe, even considering being free of Xin Mo, was that this Shen Qingqiu was able to make up for the hurt. He would hate to be unable to make Binghe happy, anymore. Stupid cops.

Understanding dawned on his husband slowly, for it being such an obvious matter. “Oh—oh. That was…the reason Shizun…” Binghe was looking sticky again, and like he would be crying half-happily over this revelation, for a change, if he hadn’t already cried so much.

Had he really not realized? Had he thought—what? That Shen Qingqiu knew what ending they were destined for and tried to preemptively widow himself in disgust or terror? That he’d done that because he wanted to? Outrageous. Truly, this love-obsessed man had such a low opinion of his old teacher in some moments.

Binghe, hopefully: “The kidnappers were—they made you do it?”

Shen Qingqiu looked aside. “They threatened me,” he acknowledged. “This master was still responsible. But yes, that was one of the times the System was most forceful with me.”

“What for?” It was the first proper, reasonable question about all this Binghe had managed to ask yet, as though this was just a part of life and not the end of the world. Good. “Why did they—want that?”

“You were supposed to go into the Abyss so you could get Xin Mo and master your demonic cultivation,” Shen Qingqiu said. “To make sure you stayed ‘cool’ enough in spite of my coddling.”

And to set up the big dramatic end-of-the-world stakes for the narrative climax, he guessed. Xin Mo had turned out to be a problem for Binghe to overcome, more than a useful power-up. The golden finger was supposed to be the only good thing about falling into the Abyss! But actually it was all bad. Zhang was right about one thing, just being transmigrated and not bullied at all was too good for the System.

Shen Qingqiu’s mouth twisted. “And I suppose the reason they wanted me to do it was to ensure we had enough tragedy and drama to make a good story. I hadn’t really thought about it,” he admitted. About ‘why’ and the System’s motives. He never thought enough about why anyone did anything, that had become obvious.

Everyone just acted according to their nature, this was true, but sometimes it was valuable to look into the underlying logic! As it turned out! Sometimes people’s natures had complications you didn’t know about!

“They said it was simply something that wasn’t allowed to be changed, and I had to do it because it was what Shen Qingqiu did.” Shen Qingqiu closed his eyes. “I did wish to spare you, Binghe,” he said. “But—I chose to live, instead. To keep this life that was stolen from the first Shen Qingqiu and given to me. That is why you can’t possibly owe me anything, do you understand? I betrayed you when you had done nothing to deserve it, ever, when you were under my care, and…”

“Shizun,” Binghe said, and Shen Qingqiu raised his eyes to find that if not for his self-imposed ban on touching, the protagonist would certainly have thrown himself at his old teacher by now and probably kissed him silly. “Shizun mustn’t regret that anymore,” he said firmly. “Of course it was the right decision. There should be no question that I would suffer to preserve Shizun’s life. I wouldn’t have suffered any less if you had fallen dead! And there would have been nothing then left to hope for.

“And you would have asked this disciple, if you had been permitted? Wouldn’t you? You…you tried to,” Binghe realized. “You asked…about what I would be willing to suffer for power. That was why, wasn’t it?”

Shen Qingqiu stared at his lap, hand tight around his fan. That cowardly question of his. That pathetic salve to his conscience. “Yes.”

“And I agreed, even if I didn’t understand. And now I do,” and there was a tremulousness to Binghe’s smile on those words, when Shen Qingqiu looked up.

Because Luo Binghe had resolved himself to live with that mystery forever and Shen Qingqiu honestly had no idea how, but it clearly made a difference to have it resolved. (For the sake of this part of the result, Shen Qingqiu might bring himself to forgive Officer Zhang somewhat.) “I understand now why Shizun pushed me down. It’s alright.”

“Binghe,” he said helplessly. “I broke your heart.”

Those Heartbreak Points he’d dismissed with irritation at the time. If only he’d been able to see past his expectations and the System and realize he was wrong about what things were inevitable.

“And then I was cruel to you!” Binghe replied, tears standing out in his eyes again. He sniffled. “I was so cruel and Shizun was so scared, because these were the hands of his murderer.” And he closed his fingers around his right wrist again, as though in strangulation.

“Binghe, stop that. It wasn’t me you were supposed to kill, anyway, it was the original Shen Qingqiu.”

Binghe’s sorrowful eyes were far too direct. “But I did kill you.”

Shen Qingqiu opened his fan. “Binghe was not in his right mind at the time.” And it wasn’t his hands at fault. “Besides, this master chose to channel the energy in that manner, which is what did the real damage, and the System allowed me to survive it. We have put that behind us. Surely the knowledge that the situation was engineered to place us both in that circumstance relieves Binghe’s mind somewhat?”

It ought to. His own inability to blame Binghe for the various problems between them had, he thought, rested in part on knowing the System was to blame, as well as his own sense of responsibility for how things had turned out with all his foolish mistakes and selfish decisions.

“Shizun was always looking at me and seeing the person who was meant to kill him,” Binghe said, and the detached despair in it was settled and calm and somehow more alarming than the desperate weeping, if still not quite as bad as the initial attempts at divorce. “All along, wasn’t it? From the first day you came.” Tears started again, smooth and silent. “I know exactly when it was. That day you gave me medicine, wasn’t it? You tried so hard to act like nothing had changed, but you were different. Shizun.”

Shen Qingqiu sighed. “The System required me to complete some minor tasks before I was permitted to act out of character,” he admitted. “I’m sorry, Binghe.”

“But you knew, didn’t you?” Binghe ignored the apology so completely he didn’t even dismiss it. “From that first day. That I—that these hands—” He looked down at them again, traitors. Shen Qingqiu supposed blaming his hands rather than his whole self was preferable, as long as he didn’t really rip them off.

“Well, I hoped you wouldn’t,” he said slowly. “That at least I could persuade you to do it cleanly, when the time came.” He regretted that as soon as he’d said it, watching Binghe shrink again under the words. “And I did conspire with Shang-shidi while you were gone in hopes of getting out of the trap the System had put me in, as you know; that was why I had the plant body available to remove myself to. I did take measures.” He closed his eyes regretfully. “I’m sorry, Binghe. This master has been terribly selfish.”

“Selfish!” exclaimed Binghe, oddly bitter. “Shizun was so afraid. Even of that lowly disciple in those early days.”

“No, Binghe. Not then.” He hadn’t been afraid. He’d gone months at a time without remembering, and one day, after you’ve betrayed him, he will kill you.

“And when I came to you later—” Binghe’s face twisted. “No wonder Shizun ran.”

“It was my misunderstanding.”

Binghe shook his head. “It was never anything to do with being a Heavenly Demon at all,” he said. “It was me. You were afraid of me because I was Luo Binghe, the man who was going to kill you.”

Shen Qingqiu sighed. It was true, after all. He only wished his husband wasn’t taking it so hard. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “Any of it.”

Binghe very clearly disagreed. “And in the end,” he said miserably. “Of course my love was more welcome than my hate. Of course one will submit to the marriage, when the alternative was death.”

“Binghe!” Shen Qingqiu exclaimed, both hurt and offended. And alarmed. He couldn’t let Binghe go down this path again. “That is not what happened at all. The System engineered our situation to be as dramatic as possible, but I was never coerced into caring for you. I married you because—you asked. There was no other reason.”

His reward for this impossible degree of self-exposure was that Binghe’s expression twisted again, and now to self-hatred was joined something weirdly like derision. It wasn’t the face he’d worn as his mind broke at Maigu Ridge, but it was too much like it. “Can this be believed?” he asked. “After all that time waiting for this one to rip your limbs off?”

“Binghe!” he scolded again, his stomach dropping away. “You were listening?” Of course he was. Of course he had stood and listened outside the door. Shen Qingqiu would never have spoken of it so freely with Luo Binghe in the room, as Zhang had well known, even if its idea of the reason was infuriating.

Of course it was after hearing that from Shen Qingqiu he had fled across Cang Qiong. He must really have been moving quickly!

“He said torture,” Binghe said, his eyes far away. “‘Torture and humiliation’ being inflicted on shizun, to control shizun, and me always chasing after you. This one, pursuing a man in a trap—thinking you were free and I was the only one suffering—”

“Binghe.”

“I thought I regretted it enough but—” Binghe wrenched his own chin up as if against a great weight but at least he was looking at Shen Qingqiu now. “Please, Shizun. Punish me, something.”

So now they were to the heart of it. Shen Qingqiu sighed, and touched his Binghe’s cheek, and this time Binghe didn’t flinch. “What good could that do?” he asked. He looked, hoping for any evidence this incurable M was just asking for perverted reasons again, but it wasn’t there. Although because he was like that, it would be hard to find a good punishment even if Shen Qingqiu wanted to! “Punishing, blaming ourselves—how has that ever helped?”

“I’m worse than I thought, Shizun,” Binghe pleaded. “I—already thought I was as awful as I knew how to live with.”

“After all this time?” Shen Qingqiu murmured, taking that lovely tearstained face between his hands. And here he’d thought Binghe’s well-developed sense of pride had, with the help of his affection, done a lot to beat that self-hatred down, these past years!

But five years of having him had, perhaps, made less impression than five years of mourning him.

“I chose to be together with Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said, smoothing a tearstain away with the end of his thumb. Maybe he had been manipulated into it, but he hadn’t been forced. His feelings were his own.

It was easier than usual, with his privacy and dignity already in shreds, to add, “I want to be with Binghe.”

“This Luo Binghe…wishes to believe that.” The pressure of Binghe’s gaze as he searched his eyes would usually have been overwhelming, but after all his refusal to look him in the face it was nearly a relief.

“What reason would this master have to lie?” If he had wanted in any way to be separated from Binghe—well, actually come to think of it with his identity as Shen Qingqiu ruined, he might be in an uncomfortable position if he was also divorced. It wasn’t as though he owned any property, personally. He hadn’t even considered that.

Ah, he could make it work, one way or another. No one was taking his sword away and he didn’t even need to eat or sleep, he’d certainly get by.

Although if Binghe left him it might be hard to find the motivation to bother.

Regardless! Binghe had offered him an out, just now, repeatedly and with passion; if he had wanted to he could have taken it.

Binghe’s expression was once again all that was tragic, but while it was calmer this time that wasn’t an improvement; he was almost starting to display resignation! How unlike Luo Binghe. Maybe this was one of his better pretenses, after all. “Because Shizun is kind.”

“I’m really not a very good person, Binghe.”

“Shizun never thinks as well of himself as he deserves.”

If that was true, which it wasn’t, it was only because he was compensating for his own arrogance. “Binghe might be describing himself.”

Binghe didn’t compensate for his ego with this kind of thing, though, he just…combined them somehow, and was both things at once. It would never not be confusing.

Binghe pulled his face out of Shen Qingqiu’s hands, eyes fallen to the floor again.

“Binghe isn’t bad,” Shen Qingqiu told him. “The System wanted specific things and pushed us in directions, but it’s gone now. We don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

Binghe bit his lip, and then sighed, and pulled his shoulders back a little, settling into the shape of the respectable adult he actually was, when he wasn’t being absurd and adorable or a petty brat. Which was admittedly a lot of the time.

“That other Luo Binghe,” he said.

“…ah.”

“He was the person you saw when you looked at me, for so long, wasn’t he?”

Shen Qingqiu looked away. Yes. It was Bingge he’d been running from, when Luo Binghe first came after him during the matter of the sowers. The Luo Binghe he’d thought he’d brought into existence here, by following the plot. The Luo Binghe he’d thought was inevitable. They were very similar. But they weren’t the same.

“How did you meet him?” Binghe asked, and he was wearing a lie now, sweetness plastered on over seething jealousy, and Shen Qingqiu almost snorted at it.

“Very briefly, and only after you and I had known each other a long time,” he corrected. “The System…” he pressed his lips together. “Used him to punish me, for disobedience.” There was no way around admitting it, and maybe it would make Binghe feel better, ha? To know that he was hardly the only tool it had had, and that when it wanted to be especially vicious it had had to turn to some other Binghe because he wouldn’t do it! Not to Shen Qingqiu! Not on purpose!

Binghe was frowning, his brow knitted. Working through things. It was alarming! Shen Qingqiu was in the habit of not being figured out! There would be very little mystique left to hide behind, by the end of this, ah. But also it was a relief, to see Binghe thinking and not reacting. He was much less likely to do anything crazy, if he’d made it to this point. “You didn’t know him? First?”

“I knew…of him.”

A shift. The frown was focused right on him, now. “What that Shang Qinghua said about working hard on this space,” Binghe said.

Shen Qingqiu turned his fan in his hand, searching for the right way to explain. “This world was…modeled after a story he wrote, in our old lives,” he said, rather than claim they were literally in a book. They clearly weren’t—the plot had changed—and the place was real. It was real! Shen Qingqiu didn’t know what Zhang meant by ‘concept-space’ exactly but even it hadn’t treated this world like it didn’t exist, or like Shen Jiu’s soul wasn’t exactly as real as Shen Yuan’s.

He’d done enough damage expecting this world to conform to the limitations of the novel. Treating people as only the spaces inside the outlines they filled in Airplane’s shitty prose. And the last thing he wanted was to give Binghe an existential crisis about whether he even existed, or how his behavior might be influenced by genre tagging, or something like that, when he was already so fragile.

“I disliked his plot. I sent him many angry letters about it. But I liked the main character,” he added, raising his eyes to his husband. “Very much.”

For an instant jealousy flashed again, hilariously, across Binghe’s face, then smoothed mostly away. “This story was…”

“About Binghe, yes.” Shen Qingqiu nodded. “It followed him through his life as it would have been had he not received this counterfeit Shen Qingqiu as a teacher.”

“Shizun shouldn’t be called a counterfeit! He is superior in every way to that person.”

It’s nice you think so. Shen Qingqiu sighed a little, and smiled. “Binghe knows that sometimes counterfeit goods are the most valuable, if they have sentimental value.” That struck home. Binghe’s eyes welled up again, though they didn’t quite spill. “But this master is not the original.”

“I’m glad he’s dead. Shizun’s life is worth ten of his.”

He couldn’t begrudge Binghe the sentiment, especially as gentle as it was compared to limb-rending fury, but still Shen Quingqiu sighed again. “Thank you, but don’t be too unreasonable. Behavior you could forgive me for is still worth a death sentence, coming from him?”

Double standards are one thing but that’s clearly excessive! If it was wrong to do, it was wrong, however you feel about the person who did it.

Of course, he supposed a reformed villain who made up for things a bit had to be scored differently from one who just dropped dead and ceased to be a problem. But in this world Shen Jiu hadn’t gotten around to causing Binghe the same level of problems at all! He deserved a lot of misery for being such a horrible teacher, and Shen Qingqiu certainly wouldn’t trade any part of what he had away for Shen Jiu’s stupid benefit. (Except Yue Qingyuan’s friendship, which he didn’t have anymore anyway, but that was for the Sect Leader’s benefit, not the stupid Original Goods’!)

But a couple years of bullying seemed a little unbalanced to die about, which was why the System was getting a murder charge for it.

Luo Binghe gave him that nonsense-speaking look again, more judgmental this time. “If he were here, you wouldn’t be.”

Well. That logic was impeccable! Shen Qingqiu ducked behind his fan, somehow more moved by this than by the far more dramatic declarations of being willing to suffer for his sake.

An insecurity in Binghe again. “Shizun doesn’t think it’s better this way?”

“No, I do.” Even without having had to answer Zhang, he could have said that without hesitating. That was what he was here to do as a transmigrator, wasn’t it? Fix that terrible book. Fill the plotholes and salvage the good character concepts, and…the System was built by a cult that worshiped narrative, Zhang said. Had they seen something of themselves in him, or just an amusing pawn? Who could say.

Zhang might know, or at least have more information, but Shen Qingqiu had no desire to ask.

He’d changed the story, and even if he could never be entirely sure what had been him and what had been the genre-shifting character arc his kidnappers had in retrospect been angling toward the whole time…he knew what he cared about. He couldn’t say he disliked it, this ending. “I’m happy I could…be here for Binghe, even if….” He bowed his head. “I caused Binghe so much pain. I never imagined I would have the power to hurt you worse than he ever did.”

“Shizun…”

His biggest mistake, after the way he’d handled the cultivation conference subplot: “I should have known it would hurt Binghe more, to be betrayed by someone who had come to treat him kindly.”

All he’d been thinking about, at Jue Di Gorge, was his own life, his own survival, his own enjoyment of spoiling and raising up that adorable little white lotus of a protagonist. He’d loved the early parts of Airplane’s book, in spite of all the awkward prose and overused clichés. He’d loved Binghe, as he was then, small and wretched and pure of heart, knowing his fate was to become blackened and mighty and bestride the whole of his fictional world.

He’d expected that arc to feel like it meant something, at the time. He’d kept reading so many chapters, enjoying some things and hating others and waiting for the book to deliver on its promises.

Binghe sighed. “Shizun…mustn’t apologize for kindness, hm? This Luo Binghe would not trade those days for ten worlds. Whatever came later. Being chosen by Shizun…even if it was only because you knew I would be an important person one day…”

Oh, there was pain there again, brittle and deep and redoubling itself as he watched, and only a little bit played up for his benefit, and Shen Qingqiu raised his eyes hastily to meet the protagonist’s iconic great dark pools of sorrow, a description utilized no fewer than ninety-seven times over the course of Proud Immortal Demon Way. (Airplane really had had Binghe suffer quite frequently, in between all the triumphant victories and papapa. Shen Qingqiu supposed misery was the only way to keep up a semblance of dramatic tension when your character was that OP.)

“Binghe, no. It was never just that.”

So much of it had been, of course. Knowing the inevitability of his power, clinging to his peerless thighs preemptively in the desperate desire to live, or at any rate die without prolonged torture. But never just that. Luo Binghe had been precious to him before Shen Qingqiu had needed anything from him, before he’d been real, and only grown more precious afterward, and he would conceal and magnify parts of his own past feelings as much as necessary to convince his husband not to doubt him. Binghe deserved to be able to believe in his love.

Ah. No wonder. Shen Qingqiu understood now. No wonder he had wept and wept so terribly.

He really had believed, leaving that interrupted meeting, that none of it had ever been real.

“Binghe,” he said, steeling himself for yet more embarrassment. “You…to this master, have always seemed admirable.”

He’d told him he liked him even in the book, didn’t he? Even if that had been Bingge, in the end, and they weren’t the same person anymore at all.

Binghe frowned at him. “Even when I’m—selfish, and demanding, and childish, and dishonest, and impatient, and—”

Who knew this protagonist knew his own flaws so well? “Yes, yes, Binghe. All those times. And when you are powerful and decisive, and sweet and considerate, hm?” Shen Qingqiu was blushing to death; his fan wasn’t hiding all of it. “I have always thought Binghe was very cool.”

“Of course I think the same thing about Shizun!” Binghe replied, with his brightest smile.

Shen Qingqiu rolled his eyes, waving this away with his fan. “Of course Binghe now knows I am a very ordinary person from my homeland who has just been getting by in this world, all this while.”

Binghe nodded slowly, in a way that didn’t seem like it was exactly agreeing. “Is that why Shizun read the entire library when I was fifteen?”

Of course Binghe had noticed, he’d been living in the same house, tidying around Shen Qingqiu and his projects, and fussing! Shen Qingqiu had even had him fetch and carry a lot of the books as he worked through them, he shouldn’t have underestimated the protagonist. His mistake had been that he hadn’t expected Binghe to be paying him much attention.

Shen Qingqiu refused to be embarrassed about this! Compared to the other embarrassments, this was nothing! “I needed to have all the information available,” he said thinly.

Binghe’s smile was too warm. “Shizun has been working very hard this whole time.”

“Not nearly as hard as Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said firmly, because while Luo Binghe’s ridiculous OPness and effective lack of a skill ceiling was a gift from a stupid author, he’d still had to build the level up himself, through hardship and toil. He hadn’t just been dropped into a body that had already accomplished all kinds of development! Shen Qingqiu had even been dead for five years, technically a very restful status, while Binghe was still working, although mostly he’d been working at being a huge mess.

“Binghe is very cool,” Shen Qingqiu repeated. “And anyone who has ever told Binghe to think less of himself than that…” Ah. This was something else he could say now, when before it would only have provoked unanswerable questions.

Shen Qingqiu settled himself more firmly where he knelt and drew his posture up a little more perfect, and waited for Binghe to meet his eyes. “I don’t believe it’s ever acceptable to beat a child, and deny him good things, and sabotage his future, and single him out for unfair treatment, like that Shen Qingqiu did to you.”

He’d hinted toward the idea before. But he had not been able to say this, because it would be natural to ask what had changed his mind, and it wasn’t as if he could say it was that he literally had an entirely different one. “Binghe never deserved it. There isn’t any good enough reason. Those first years you spent on this mountain—it should never have been like that.”

Shen Qingqiu drew in a breath, and let it out with a soft note like a sigh. “So if Binghe has been trying, all this time, to justify how this master he values treated him in that manner…he can stop. He ought to stop. That was not…this Shen Qingqiu. It will never make sense, coming from me.”

Binghe stared at him. “Oh,” he said, after a time, his voice small enough it could almost belong to that white lotus disciple Shen Qingqiu first met.

Shen Qingqiu nodded to himself. Very good! He’d said something it was important to say!

“I…hated that former Shen Qingqiu very much,” he added, thinking of limb-ripping and the angry comments he’d left Airplane, a long time ago. “For the way he treated Binghe and for the sort of person he was at all times. I was happy to read about Binghe killing him, because he deserved to suffer.”

He tapped his fan against his knee, picking his way through his own thoughts aloud. “But I've learned more about him, since arriving here, and I’m sorry for him now. His life was very unfortunate. Like Binghe, he suffered very much and carried anger from it with him…and unlike Binghe, he was not able to forgive the person who had failed him when they were reunited, even though that person deserved it more than this master does. That was the worst. That made him…worse.

“I pity that Shen Jiu, that Shen Qingqiu whose place I took. But I do not forgive him. Not for the hurt he did to Binghe. Not any more than I can forgive myself. But I forgive Binghe. Always. For every mistake. Now and in the future. Do you understand?”

Luo Binghe nodded tearfully. Shen Qingqiu lowered his fan to one side until the tip touched the floor, extending his wrist as far as it could go, and raised his other hand. “Might this master hold his husband?”

Binghe rocketed into his chest hard enough to shake his bones and clung, every bit that same sticky grasping disciple, and wept some more. Shen Qingqiu put both arms carefully around him, and patted him between the shoulder blades. Ran his fingers through that glossy tumble of hair. “There there.”

No one had ever accused him of being especially good at comforting.

How badly this whole mess really had shaken his precious lotus could be proven all over again by how, after several minutes of this, Binghe hadn’t tried to slip a hand inside his robes or over the curve of his ass, or turned the nuzzling at his chest from emotionally needy to amorous, or even dropped a kiss into the exposed base of his throat. He just kept holding on, as the tears slowly ran down.

“You love me?” Binghe asked at last in a crushed little voice. “Really?” He'd never asked before, not outright like this, not in years of marriage, knowing how hard the words would be for Shen Qingqiu to drag out from behind his thin face. Respecting a boundary that really had no good reason to exist.

Accepting in this only what was offered, when he was so demanding in other ways.

Even after the conversation they had just been through, something in Shen Qingqiu cringed from the exposure of it, but he had just promised to work on their communication.

“Yes, Binghe,” he promised softly. “Very much.”

Chapter Text

The next morning, just as they were finishing breakfast and resolutely pretending the outside world did not exist, it interrupted with a knock at the door. “Hey,” the knocker said, courteously letting them know who they’d be opening the door to, and Binghe cast Shen Qingqiu a peevish, hopeful expression, Can’t we just ignore him?

But Shen Qingqiu had to talk to him sooner or later, and all things considered he preferred sooner, and really of all his (fake) martial siblings Liu Qingge was by far his preference to go first. He was a friend, and incapable of setting complicated verbal traps, and the fact that he hadn’t yet broken down the door and attacked anyone suggested he probably meant well, in some sense. And it would be nice to have whatever was going to happen between them over with.

The conversation with Binghe had been less awful than it could have been! Only slightly like crawling over broken glass! In comparison how much could Liu Qingge embarrass him?

He got up and answered the door.

“Hey,” Liu Qingge said again, managing to project awkwardness with his entire body so loudly even Shen Qingqiu noticed.

“Come in—shidi,” he said, waiting to see if there was any objection to that form of address, and there wasn’t, and Liu Qingge did come in. “Have a seat,” Shen Qingqiu invited, settling himself back at the table where Binghe was very aggressively clearing away the breakfast things. “Tea?”

“No,” Liu Qingge said, settling himself on the side of the table furthest from Binghe, which seemed to annoy Binghe even more.

“Thank you, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said, for something to say and in hopes of soothing him a little.

Binghe mustered a smile for him. It was almost convincing. “I’ll make Shizun a fresh pot of tea while I’m in the kitchen,” he said, pointedly.

Then he did indeed carry the dishes away into the next room, leaving Shen Qingqiu alone with someone other than Binghe for the first time since Zhang had made its graceless entrance into this world.

“Did shidi come to discuss anything in particular?” he asked, once Liu Qingge had frowned at the wall long enough Binghe would be back any second, despite how fussy he was about the tea.

“Yes,” Liu Qingge said, and still didn’t say anything.

Was this shixiong supposed to guess??

“Yesterday,” Liu Qingge finally said, but then Binghe came back in with the pot of tea and only one cup, and he shut up.

“Binghe doesn’t want more tea?” Shen Qingqiu inquired.

“Not just now, Shizun,” Binghe said, pouring carefully.

How fast do you expect me to drink a whole pot of tea? Ridiculous husband, that tea will go to waste.

Feeling rather foolish about being the only one, he still drank the tea, which was of course perfect, and let Binghe pour him another cup before sighing. Sitting here in silence like this was a waste of time and all their nerves. “Liu-shidi,” he said, more confident this time. “Why don’t we go for a walk? My Peak is very pleasant, and the disciples rarely visit the paths through this part of the bamboo.”

Partly because they weren’t supposed to, on the grounds that the Peak Lord required peace and quiet. Partly out of some kind of superstition. And finally because of an unofficial enforcement policy he unfortunately knew that Ming Fan and Ning Yingying had organized to protect any more fragile young ears from overhearing him and Binghe.

“Binghe should stay here,” he added firmly, tapping his husband’s hand with his fan. “There’s the washing-up to do, isn’t there? No listening in this time.”

Binghe ducked his head, chastened but not repentant. Well, Shen Qingqiu had tried.

They set off down a narrow decorative path that was, as far as Shen Qingqiu had been able to figure out, entirely self-maintaining, and soon enough were out of hearing range of the bamboo house. It was a very pleasant morning—rather late to have been finishing breakfast, but he and Binghe had both been feeling a bit self-indulgent—and the sun was slanting pale gold between the bamboo stems and scattering on the leaves of the undergrowth.

“You were promised he’d kill you?” Liu Qingge asked, just when Shen Qingqiu had started to think the entire visit might really pass without any conversation, Binghe or no.

He flicked his eyes up to his shidi’s profile. The question had to be rhetorical, even coming from Liu Qingge who didn’t like unnecessary words—he’d been right there to hear the System had me counting down the days until Binghe ripped my limbs off as well as designated murderer.

Liu Qingge prompted,

“That was why you were so focused on him all along?”

Shen Qingqiu frowned, casting his attention out amongst the bamboo, watching the edge of a leaf catch the light in a way that altered and spread as his own movement changed the angle. “I suppose in a way that is how it started,” he allowed.

His insight into his own feelings had been proven not particularly deep, but he supposed when he thought about it, as much as he’d liked Luo Binghe the protagonist and as immediately fond as he’d grown of the real small bun Binghe, certainly the amount of his focus the young protagonist had soaked up from the first had been magnified a great deal by his urgent desire not to be turned into a human stick.

“But please don’t say it in Binghe’s hearing, I had a job to do talking him down from feeling he doesn’t deserve to come near me because of the System’s nonsense.”

“Hm,” Liu Qingge agreed. Then, having brushed past a thin branch extending into the edge of the path in a soft rush of leaves over heavy silk, he observed, “He doesn’t.”

Shen Qingqiu glared, but not heatedly. “And I don’t deserve all these second chances. And Shen Jiu didn’t deserve the hand he was dealt, or to die peacefully in his sleep. And you didn’t deserve to die in those caves, back then.”

Liu Qingge’s expression had gone odd again. “Was that,” he asked, “the first time we met?”

Shen Qingqiu nodded. “He would have tried to help you, too,” he confided, feeling it mattered suddenly. That Liu Qingge know that, about the Shen Qingqiu he had hated, now that he knew it wasn’t the same person as the Shen Qingqiu he’d forgiven. It was only fair that he know. “But he wasn’t prepared, and messed it up. And he was too proud to admit it, even when they dragged it up at the Huan Hua trial years later and accused him of taking the opportunity to murder you. I believed it, when I read about it. But he did try." This wasn't the kind of thing Airplane was likely to be wrong about, even if he'd left all this backstory out of the book. "He never really wanted you dead.”

Shen Qingqiu sighed. “And I…didn’t grow up here, with all of you. I know you weren’t friends with the other Shen Qingqiu, but I’ve still presumed on your long acquaintance. If Liu Qingge is angry with me it’s very natural.”

He didn’t think saving his life could possibly have been the whole of what turned their relationship around, but since he didn’t know the history before his arrival in any detail, he couldn’t really be sure.

“And I understand—”

“No,” Liu Qingge interrupted.

“No?”

“I’m not mad. You were stuck. It’s annoying, but it doesn’t make you any more annoying than before.”

Shen Qingqiu laughed. “Thank you. Probably.”

Liu Qingge looked away. “Hm.” They walked a little further. “You knew he wasn’t dead,” Liu Qingge said. They weren’t in sight of where the sword-mound used to be, but it wasn’t far either. He’d spent so much time here, during that time.

When everyone else had thought Binghe had died.

Shen Qingqiu sighed. “I knew,” he admitted. “And I—thought I knew what to expect when he came back. As we discussed earlier.”

Why was it Liu Qingge asking these questions? What about—where he came from? The System? If Liu Qingge could go and fight it, in spite of its having been arrested? Something normal!

But he guessed fighting for his body those five years had kind of given Liu-shidi a personal interest in what Shen Qingqiu had been thinking when he killed himself, that time.

“You thought he was going to kill you,” Liu Qingge said again, like it needed repeating.

“Yes.” Shen Qingqiu opened his fan for a moment just so he could wave it in annoyance, as though he could make the concept dissipate. “I was very misled! I did not adapt gracefully! Why is this the only part of yesterday’s revelations anyone is interested in?”

Lui Qingge made a disgruntled noise in his throat. “But you still—self-destructed for him,” he said. “Why?”

Was this really the moment for that question? Really, Liu-shidi? After ten years, you were asking this? Admittedly asking in the first five years wouldn’t have done any good—and, hm, he probably had asked then hadn’t he—but….

“I did have an escape route prepared,” Shen Qingqiu said at last. “I knew I might recover, eventually. And that death was a much kinder one than the one I’d been preparing for, so it seemed like a mercy.” He sighed. “But also I wanted to help Binghe. It was my fault he was like that. I wanted to make things right, before I left.”

An outraged throat sound. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, seeming really outraged. “Those kidnappers, how dare they say such things to you. I should find out where they’ve been executed to and execute them again.”

Shen Qingqiu doubted they’d all been executed yet, that would be shockingly efficient bureaucracy, but point to Liu-shidi for making sense of Zhang’s description of what was going to happen to the System. “Don’t, Zhang would probably have to arrest you,” he said. “But anyway, the System didn’t say it was my fault. It was.”

“Can’t have been.”

“It was.”

Arguing for his own guilt was ridiculous, but letting Liu Qingge judge his motives for self-destructing on these grounds was also absurd.

“No.”

“I pushed him into the Endless Abyss.”

Liu Qingge stopped dead, and Shen Qingqiu felt his stomach swoop. He’d never confessed it before, even more than he’d never spoken of it with Binghe—partly because, well, you didn’t confess to such things if you wanted to go on living comfortably, but also of course because the rational next question was ‘why?’ and he’d never have been able to answer.

Liu Qingge stared down the slight difference in their heights. “What.”

Shen Qingqiu covered his face with his fan. “Why did you think I thought he wanted to kill me?”

“Didn’t think about it. You believe weird things sometimes.”

“Hey!” Shen Qingqiu closed his fan so he could use it to smack his shidi on the shoulder.

Liu Qingge turned his face away, but it didn’t hide that he’d laughed.

Shen Qingqiu turned them back around toward the bamboo house. If this wasn’t the halfway point of their conversation, he was going to insist it would be. He wasn’t up for much more of this today. All other martial siblings please form an orderly queue, your inquiries will be handled on a one-per-day basis.

“It was because the System said I had to,” he volunteered.

“Of course.”

They walked a little longer.

“That person…said he killed you.”

“I’m not talking about it.”

“Did he mean that time when you self-destructed.”

Shen Qingqiu shrugged. Almost certainly not. It didn’t matter.

Lui Qingge said, “Why didn’t you kill him.”

Shen Qingqiu stopped walking so he could turn and stare at his shidi properly. “Excuse me?”

“When you first got here. He was weak. It would have been easy.”

Kill the protagonist? As if that was possible! This world was so oriented around Binghe that Shen Qingqiu could use ‘pointing danger at the disciple’ as a cheap hack to get out of trouble!

“I doubt the System would have let me try,” he said, frankly. Even more so looking back, knowing now what genre he was being pushed toward even then! “But also, how dare shidi suggest such a thing.”

He didn’t hit Liu Qingge with his fan again; this was too serious for that. “Kill a child to protect myself? I really would be the scum villain then. I was the adult, it was my responsibility to try to solve the problem and not deserve to be killed, and I wasn’t even very good at that. Really, I’m fortunate he decided I was worth forgiving.” Even if some of the other decisions attached to that one had been problematic!

He tilted his head, glaring like he could make the War God look back at him, with enough intensity. “Is that who Liu Qingge thinks this master is? Someone who would murder the helpless because of something I expected to happen?”

He knew he wasn’t a very good person, and he’d lost the right to seriously pretend to any deep righteousness when he went along with the System in consigning Binghe to those years of suffering and when he chose those foolish, awful words to send Binghe down with, not even considering he was talking to a real person whose feelings could be affected by them. But really! He’d never been someone who would sink that low! Not for a moment even once!

Liu Qingge heaved a deep sigh. Deep like the roots of trees. It took a very long time. “No,” he admitted when it was over. “No, of course you never would. You really were stuck, huh.”

“Not as stuck as I thought I was.” Shen Qingqiu shook his head. “Even if I was going to send Binghe into the Abyss to get Xin Mo and come back changed, just to save myself—I didn’t have to do it the same way the original did. I could have…softened the blow. But I mismanaged that whole episode and…so much of what happened later was my fault, because of that.” He started to walk again. “Does shidi understand better, now?”

Liu Qingge came after him with only a brief delay, long impatient steps closing the distance quickly. “Yes,” he said once he’d drawn even again. “I understand.”

When they got back to the bamboo house Binghe was dutifully sweeping the front walk of fallen leaves, like someone who maybe seriously hadn’t crept after his husband and shishu to spy on their conversation, and he looked up with the bright welcoming smile that Shen Qingqiu didn’t get to see often enough, since he went out while Binghe stayed at home so rarely.

If Binghe could smile at him like that with someone else present, especially seeing him with Liu Qingge, then he thought everything would probably work itself out.

Zhang appeared in the bamboo house before they had finished eating lunch, rudeness apparently woven into the very fabric of its being, which Shen Qingqiu said aloud before remembering he really did need to avoid pissing off the officer in charge of his case. Zhang had as much as said it could kill Shen Qingqiu for the price of doing a little extra paperwork.

It was better than dealing with the System, but still, but still….

The newness and self-righteousness of it had him fuming, he supposed. That was all. He could cope.

He invited Zhang to share what was left of lunch. It declined, which was disappointing; Shen Qingqiu really wanted to see it eat. Possibly it couldn’t actually interact with normal matter like that, though. The System had never seemed able to just do things to him physically, after all, it had worked in directing people’s behavior and…situation pushing…and, when it got especially overt, popping his consciousness into dream dimensions where things would proceed to happen.

Zhang’s refusal hadn’t been impatient, at least.

“Then please wait patiently a few minutes,” Shen Qingqiu said experimentally, and made a show of finishing his lunch even though he’d lost his appetite.

He made a point of leaning over to kiss Binghe before shooing him off with the dishes and leftovers. Binghe went even more unwilling than he had been over Liu Qingge, but once he was gone (though probably not out of earshot; the dishes were clinking rather more quietly than usual) Shen Qingqiu closed his fan and tapped it on the table, as though he could count on direct eye contact having any effect on something without eyes. “Are you going to want to send my husband away again for this interview?”

“For at least a certain part of it. It’s necessary for the suspect party to be out of ambit for such an investigation, of course.”

“I’ve told you it’s not necessary.”

“Domestic victims can be expected to say that, to avoid retaliation.  This makes it necessary to ignore your opinion on the subject.”

Just like the System, really, forcing him into things because of their idea of what he should want or do or be. His consent on the subject of whether he was consenting to his entire life was irrelevant because he could not be relied upon as a witness.

But this was, technically, really for his benefit—even if Zhang clearly didn’t care, the regulations it was upholding had been written with some form of good intent, even if it wasn’t necessary—and with a view to ensuring that his words were his own. So, ultimately, at least they were ignoring him in the name of listening to him?

“I suppose it is the normal procedure,” he allowed, because it was on cop shows when the subject came up, and Zhang seemed to be a fairly normal cop. All things considered. “Very well. Where shall we start?”

With silencing talismans, apparently. Once there was no chance that Binghe in the next room could possibly hear them, Zhang launched into its interrogation. Shen Qingqiu was forced to relive some of his worst experiences in terrible detail—either the System’s notes or Shang Qinghua’s interview yesterday had provided it with the context to ask very precise questions that were hard to evade—and subjected to a cross-examination of his current bedroom habits. Any time he tried to shut down a line of inquiry flat, Zhang intimated that a failure to answer honestly was incriminating and would be held against Binghe.

It was altogether much more brutal than the cursory set of questions the day before, and Shen Qingqiu was bitterly grateful it was wholly private.

“Very well,” Zhang said at last, after nearly a shichen of this, when Shen Qingqiu had drunk all the tea in the pot and talked himself hoarse again and was about to go break the silencing talismans and ask Binghe for some water. It tapped its misty blue clipboard, and vanished it back inside its body. Its comet-tail arms faded out, making it dramatically less humanoid but not really any more disconcerting. “That seems to cover everything. Your partner will be subject to some continued oversight, but none of his crimes are in our jurisdiction and he does not seem to present a clear and present danger to you.”

Oversight! Shen Qingqiu’s knuckles ached and he was fairly certain he’d broken the spines of the fan in his hand. “Your bureau will be watching Binghe?”

“We will conduct occasional check-ins as follow-through on the investigation.”

“Will Officer Zhang be visiting our home again?”

“Unless there is some major development, we should engage in passive observation only.”

“I see.” Shen Qingqiu didn’t suppose there was any way to ask them to not do that. “Is it possible for me to be informed whenever such observations commence?”

Zhang regarded him blandly. “That could compromise the information.”

This was supposed to be for his own benefit.

Shen Qingqiu relaxed his jaw and said pleasantly, in his cooperative victim voice that he’d had a great deal of practice perfecting over the last two hours, “Of course, Officer. It’s only that after so long under the power of the System this one feels anxious at the thought of still being potentially under observation at all times.”

“Hm.” Zhang took the tablet thing out of its center mass again and made a note. “We don’t wish to imperil your recovery. I’ll make an inquiry. On that note, the Bureau employs highly trained counseling staff to help in the aftermath of experiences like yours. You are welcome to take advantage of these services to better process your trauma.”

“Ah.” Talk to another thing like Zhang about his difficulties? “No, thank you,” he said, with a fairly desperate courtesy.

That sounded like it was guaranteed to make his life hell, actually! Even if the blob therapist didn’t think it had the right to high-handedly rearrange his life on a whim!

“If you’re sure. There’s no shame in taking care of your spiritual health.”

“I meditate regularly, thank you.” A thought struck him. “I don’t suppose any of your therapists on staff are from my former world?” He wouldn’t have to put himself through this again, necessarily, just have someone other than Airplane to talk to about that life without having to explain.

…though really, he could explain things from his last life to anybody now if he wanted, which made such a thing seem less important.

“Mm. No.”

“Then no.”

“Is there anything else we can do for you, Mr. Shen?”

Do for him! Hah. Still, it was an improvement, he couldn’t say it wasn’t an improvement. Instead of being constantly watched by a judgmental and sometimes demanding presence that might dispense reward or punishment at any time without warning for any reason, he would only be intermittently watched by a presence that was only concerned with him being adequately treated and might only interfere arbitrarily in his marriage, and he might even know when it was happening!

Shen Qingqiu tapped his damaged fan against his palm. “Do you know anything else about the previous Shen Qingqiu’s reincarnation?” He didn’t care for himself, but after that conversation with Liu Qingge he had decided that asking was the least he could do. “You said his parents were celebrating his birthday. Is he well cared-for? Does he have other family?”

Zhang leafed through its not-papers again. “He’s the…second of three children. Healthy and doing well in school.”

“None of the kinds of concerns you have about me?”

“Normal reincarnation conditions don’t fall within our jurisdiction, Mr. Shen,” Zhang said, with a patience too bland to be withering. “And you aren’t entitled to that information.”

Again with only the most useless kinds of regard for privacy! “I’m asking on behalf of his—next of kin,” Shen Qingqiu said, prepared to argue to the ground that Yue Qi and Shen Jiu had very definitely been adopted brothers in the most formal sense and if not, then Yue Qingyuan as Sect Leader had the most right to Shen Qingqiu’s information. “After yesterday I know he’ll be concerned.”

Zhang seemed to consider. “Tertiary murder case 4-3-27-a presents no current cause for concern.”

The delivery was bland, but intonation made it a reply—the former Shen Jiu was fine—rather than a refusal. “Thank you, Officer,” Shen Qingqiu said, recognizing this was the best he was going to get. “I have no further questions.”

“Have a nice day,” said Zhang, and twisted itself out of existence in a process even more spatially disorienting than the one by which it arrived. The crack in the universe sealed itself, taking the fierce blue light with it, and Shen Qingqiu’s house was just as it had been.

He sat still for about ten seconds before rising, crossing to the door that led to the little kitchen built onto the back of the house, breaking the silence seal over it, and throwing it open.

Luo Binghe could definitely have caught his balance when the door he was pressed against opened, but didn’t bother. Falling into Shen Qingqiu’s arms remained, as ever, a highly efficient way of getting a hug.

The queue of martial siblings Shen Qingqiu had predicted manifested in a parade of invitations and visits—mostly invitations, because in response to the first he agreeably dropped by Wan Jian Peak to be gawked at without bringing Binghe along, and if they came to visit at Qing Jing they couldn’t avoid him.

It turned out that the interrupted meeting hadn’t broken up after he stormed out, which it would have been nice to be informed of, Liu-shidi, worst source of information. Yue Qingyuan had been a wreck, or so he inferred by reckoning together half a dozen pieces of commentary, but held everyone long enough to have at least a brief discussion of what Cang Qiong Mountain’s response was going to be.

Opinions were varied, apparently, but everyone had agreed that since Zhang, the only available higher authority, said this Shen Qingqiu counted as Shen Qingqiu, and there was no alternate candidate, and it had been this long, he was allowed to keep the identity.

This didn’t mean they weren’t poking and reevaluating him in the most infuriating way. Weird questions, too, not just the obvious ones about motive and loyalty but things like ‘how this celestial bureau worked’ (why would he know? not that he was going to admit it) and ‘what had been the biggest adjustment entering this world.’

That last one was actually fun to answer, Wei Qingwei was a reasonable amount interested in his description of the conveniences of the internet and how much harder it was to locate a specific piece of information when you always had to physically get your hands on a particular book.

People also kept asking about his real name. This one was real enough! Do you think we’re close enough you need something else to call this master? I have known you for eleven years and this is our third one-on-one conversation, shidi! If you didn’t catch what the cop called me that’s on you, and if you did it’s still none of your business!

On the fourth day after the System’s arrest, he went to lunch at the agricultural Peak with two martial siblings and wound up fighting a duel for both his and Binghe’s honor, after a series of encroaching insinuations (based on Zhang’s various indiscretions and also Chunshan) left him absolutely no choice.

Soundly defeating an alcoholic wasn’t a great glory, but at least it established he hadn’t been somehow entirely faking it as a Peak Lord. People became a little more polite after that. Also he brought Binghe along on his next visit. Take that.

The disciples at the various Peaks stared enough that they’d clearly heard something, even though Yue Qingyuan had declared Zhang’s intrusion, and everything revealed by it, Peak Lord business only.

This Sect leaked like a sieve. You didn’t even need spies, ah. Some Peak Lords would tell their head disciples everything, even Peak Lord Only tier information, reasoning that they were well on their way to reaching the office anyway, and the disciples would then disseminate what they considered the non-sensitive parts of this as rumor—

“What’s the gossip saying,” he demanded of Shang Qinghua at the end of a week. Normally he’d have gone off with Binghe again by this time, to reassure the sticky man that insisting on attending quarterly meetings didn’t mean his devotion to the Sect was threatening to eclipse their marriage or whatever fool idea, but obviously he couldn’t leave while the chips were still falling.

He’d gotten more respectful bows than usual on his way in through An Ding, and pointedly addressed as Shen-shibo twice as often as there was actually call for. What was this? Did Shang Qinghua actually have enough influence with his own disciples to be plotting something?

Shen Qingqiu had given up the idea that the System was directly Shang Qinghua’s fault and mostly discarded him as its accomplice after seeing him very noticeably omit that business about his original outline in the name of getting the System a longer prison sentence, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t suspicious of him.

“All kinds of things,” Shang Qinghua replied absently, hunched over the table he used as a desk, for the extra space to stack things on. “I don’t see why you care. There’s debate between a couple of Peak Lords over whether my coming in already planning to infiltrate or you getting made Peak Lord without going through the actual ceremonies is more illegitimating, so some of the disciples have picked up that we’re being given trouble about our loyalties again and they have different opinions about it. There’s a rumor you’re some kind of celestial prince who got trapped in Cang Qiong by evil sorcerers, I think?”

Shen Qingqiu sighed and sat down at Shang Qinghua’s table, stealing one of his peanuts. “Well, at least there’s a positive one,” he said. These people lived in a melodramatic novel and they still felt the need to embroider things to be more exciting than they really were! “Do you get to be a prince?”

“Are you kidding bro, the best I get is I betrayed the other sorcerers.”

“Well, that’s a nice dramatic backstory,” Shen Qingqiu nodded. “You should be proud.”

He dropped in on Mu Qingfang without waiting to be asked. Partly because he liked him, and partly because he’d learned that the man was not particularly careful about medical confidentiality (not that that existed in this world thank you Airplane) if he had to track you down.

Better to just drop by. Like he could just assume he was welcome. Just two martial brothers, having a normal visit.

He brought a medical text he’d borrowed and forgotten to return since last year as pretext.

Mu Qingfang was at work in his rare herb garden and received him there, sending the book off to his Peak’s library with the disciple who’d seen Shen Qingqiu in. He smiled and stood up to greet him, which Shen Qingqiu had been rather ridiculously worried he wouldn’t, then knelt back by the Shimmering Day Orchid he’d been tending.

Shen Qingqiu had brought him his first specimen, after stumbling over a patch during a night hunt he took while Binghe was in the Abyss. The petals, properly prepared, were very useful in stabilizing qi deviations, if they were caught early enough, and in various preparations relating to maintaining spiritual energy circulation.

If the medical specialist been weeding a bed Shen Qingqiu might have offered to help—he could do that much! Just show him what to leave alone!—but this was clearly something more delicate, probing the soil gently with his fingertips, testing the moisture levels or feeding qi into the roots or something like that. Instead, he just settled down to sit properly on the clean-swept stones of the garden path, and waited for his shidi to have a free moment.

“So,” Mu Qingfang finally said, taking his hand out of the orchids and turning to face him. “Sixteen years.”

“Yes.”

“That qi deviation,” the doctor said. Raised his eyebrows, which were fairly bushy and altogether the most dramatic part of his blandly pleasant high-status-supporting-character face. “You were…surprisingly convincing.”

“It was a real qi deviation,” Shen Qingqiu said. “He died of it.” He snapped his fan open, a little taken aback by his own bluntness. “And then I was there.”

“And we all took it for amnesia.” Mu Qingfang shook his head. “I feel humbled as a diagnostician.”

“You diagnosed me?” Shen Qingqiu smiled behind his fan, amused. “You never said.”

“It seemed to trouble you when we drew your attention to the differences.”

“I think I thought I was more convincing than I was.” Not that he hadn’t noticed they kept side-eyeing him and checking him for possession, especially after he broke the OOC lock, but still. If they’d been noticing mistakes the whole time and politely not mentioning them he must have thought he’d gotten away with lots of things he hadn’t. Bad data! He’d probably compounded his errors by thinking he hadn’t made them. How embarrassing.

But it had worked out. He’d probably have been much jumpier back then, if he’d been alerted to every slip-up, which would only have made it worse.

“I can’t help noticing shixiong mentioned he’d died before arriving here.”

Shen Qingqiu sighed. That had probably been a tactical blunder. One of many.

“Might I inquire into that original cause of death?”

As a doctor, Shen Qingqiu supposed Mu Qingfang had better reason for curiosity than anyone else, who would merely be prying. Not that it was relevant to his current health! This was a different body!

“…accidental poisoning,” he admitted, face averted. “My own carelessness.” Let it sound like he’d left volatile materials lying around and gotten them in his food, or an open wound, or even like he’d provoked a venomous creature stupidly. He didn’t have to admit he’d eaten rotten meat. He had some face left!

“Hmm,” said Mu Qingfang, sounding very much like this did not surprise him at all.

Shen Qingqiu snapped his fan closed in irritation. “Not all my deaths are my own doing.”

“Name one.”

Technically he could foist Maigu Ridge off on Binghe, but he wouldn’t. Especially not after having made such a point to Zhang about having made his own decision there. And also by the time they’d gotten a look at him he’d been healthy enough, just unconscious.

“…well, if we count being ripped out of that plant body. I was only very indirectly responsible for that.” He’d drawn himself to Zhuzhi-lang’s attention with ill-considered generosity, and made himself handy bait for Binghe to Tianlang-jun, which had led to that situation, but he hadn’t intended to get even so mildly killed, that time.

Mu-shidi was mocking him with his bushy eyebrows. Shen Qingqiu huffed, and opened his fan again so he could wave it lazily. Without A Cure had been his fault, after all. “Sorry to be such an inconvenience to the doctor.”

“At least I have only had to personally pronounce shixiong dead the once. No repetitions, if you please!”

“Doing my best not to further trouble shidi,” Shen Qingqiu agreed, and hid another smile.

Luo Binghe smiled that welcome-home smile again when he got back from Qian Cao, kneeling over the laundry, which he’d started doing at the house at some point, as though allowing his and Shen Qingqiu’s clothing and bedding to go to the main laundry facilities for the Peak was beneath their dignity in some way.

Shen Qingqiu was gazing at Luo Binghe with his sleeves tied up, thinking vaguely about how his husband approached this chore differently from the cooking or even the cleaning, and how this had to have something to do with his mother, whom they’d never really talked about, when he saw Binghe’s smile turn sly in that way that indicated he was embarking upon a Scheme of some kind.

“Is Binghe right in thinking,” he said knowingly, lifting a green silk robe out of the water. “That this is Shizun’s color?”

Shen Qingqiu blinked, and considered the robe. It was wet, and so a darker color than it would be normally, but he recognized it as being dyed a particularly deep and rich jade green that he supposed he did tend to particularly favor when dressing, from the fairly limited range his wardrobe tended to offer.

He smiled a little. He didn’t think he’d been asked his favorite color since sometime in secondary school back in his old world! It had always been an annoying question, then; he’d never enjoyed being pressured to select a ‘favorite’ anything. But it was nostalgic now, enough that he tipped his fan over his face. “Binghe isn’t wrong, I suppose,” he allowed.

Binghe looked smug. Ah, so it was a clothes-shopping scheme he was hatching, was it? Shen Qingqiu supposed having bothered to ask if he was right in his inference was a manifestation of that agreement to communicate better.

“This husband will make sure Shizun can wear it always, then,” he said, and Shen Qingqiu rolled his eyes.

“I don’t need to wear the same thing always,” he said, although Binghe’s own wardrobe when he wasn’t affecting Qing Jing whites was always the same red and black hues, carefully selected to coordinate and to flatter him, so obviously he was serious about color-coding. “Some variety is part of the entertainment value of clothes, foolish Binghe.”

The shining delight in Binghe’s smile at this suggested he’d just inadvertently invited a massive excess of gift-giving, but he supposed there were worse things.

Tearing up over it did seem a bit excessive, though.

Qi Qingqi did not extend an invitation to Shen Qingqiu. Nor did she visit him at Qing Jing, as was her usual habit. She invited Shang Qinghua.

Shen Qingqiu came anyway, having been passionately begged. “Please, bro, I need backup, I can’t go up against her on my own.”

“Are you going to fight or drink tea?” He was tired of going out on visits! Binghe was sulking about how many meals he’d eaten on other Peaks, even though he faithfully reported that none of the cooking was as good as his husband’s. This transmigrator had never been forced to spend this much time socializing in either of his lives.

“It’s Qi Qingqi, bro! She’ll take me apart with just her voice. Safety in numbers!”

Shen Qingqiu rolled his eyes because Airplane was stupidly weak to people he’d designed. Did he think Qi Qingqi was especially threatening because she was one of the only named women who hadn’t been destined for the harem? He did rank her, technically, not that An Ding’s official rank ever seemed to count for much. Shen Qingqiu had been dealing with enough martial siblings already lately without taking on Shang Qinghua’s battles!

But he was going to have to talk to her eventually. Maybe Shang Qinghua could be a human shield.

“I’m coming,” he said, “but only to keep eyes on you to make sure you remember that if you breathe a word, ever, about all the shitty porn you wrote about Binghe that I had to at least skim to follow the story, I will first make sure Qi Qingqi understands all about how you wrote the harem, and if she leaves anything I will then skin you alive. You may have no dignity but I try.”

“It looks kind of exhausting bro, not gonna lie.”

“I have some hope that with the System not around to push me into them I’ll be able to avoid your shitty contrived wife plots and start to rebuild.”

“…you think the System was doing that?”

“I have hope.”

Chapter Text

Qi Qingqi accepted the plus-one guest very easily and with an almost predatory courtesy.

“Shang-shixiong, Shen-shixiong,” she greeted, her smile close-mouthed but still somehow toothy.

She would fit right in with some of Binghe’s more civilized courtiers, she really would. Shen Qingqiu rapidly reassessed how much use having Shang Qinghua as lightning rod was going to be, but at least she might go easy on him for having come by voluntarily instead of needing to be hunted down, just like Mu Qingfang.

They’d been invited to the hospitality lodge at the foot of Xian Shu Peak, a large building filled with very pleasant rooms designed to get around some of the social inconveniences of avoiding allowing male guests on the Peak itself, when the cultivation world and thus most of the Xian Shu members’ circle of acquaintance was more than three-quarters male.

Qi Qingqi had received them at the door to the nicest room in the building, and led them in to find the table laid with a lovely tea set and exquisite-looking plate of snacks. Shen Qingqiu raised an eyebrow from behind a preemptively deployed fan when they entered the room, at the four disciples seated on the far side of that table.

“This master was under the impression shimei intended to discuss matters that have been declared closed except to Peak Lords. Is there some other business?”

Probably Shang Qinghua’s business to ask, since he’d actually been invited, but you couldn’t count on him to do that kind of thing!

…which was why he’d wanted Shen Qingqiu along, probably.

Qi Qingqi smiled. “Well, you see my Mingyan was waiting just outside the meeting hall, as the Head Disciples often do, so that we won’t need to recount the events for their benefit afterward.”

Shen Qingqiu did know that; he’d suspected part of the reason they didn’t kick Binghe out of the meeting was because then he’d go and wait outside and they didn’t like him alone with their favorite disciples these days, which was ridiculous. The only head disciple he bothered disliking was Ming Fan.

“And so she overheard most of that meeting, but had already departed by the time Sect Leader announced the subject sealed. By the time I informed her, she had already discussed matters with some of her closest friends, and so unavoidably these disciples of mine are aware of shixiongs’ particular situation.”

Oho, no wonder she’d only wanted Shang Qinghua but wasn’t about to kick up a fuss over him coming too.

Shen Qingqiu fluttered his fan. “Ah, is Sect Leader aware of this?”

Qi Qingqi’s smile was impeccable. Her disciples sat very quietly, especially Liu Mingyan. “Not yet, although of course I don’t mean to keep it from him indefinitely.”

“Of course.” Shen Qingqiu smiled back. “This shixiong is sure Sect Leader will be less worried by the news if some time has passed without further indiscretion.” A week ago, she might have hoped to trade on the special treatment he got from Yue Qingyuan, but surely they all knew that would now be a thing of the past. She merely wanted his silence.

“Ma Li, get a second cushion for your shibo,” Qi Qingqi directed. They’d arranged the room so Shang Qinghua would be alone on his side of the table, with a single cushion to kneel on, and Shen Qingqiu generously sank onto the one nearer Qi Qingqi’s chosen seat at the ‘head’ of the oblong table once the youngest disciple in the room had fetched another.

He set his fan in front of him, and then regretted not having it open when Qi Qingqi pulled a jar of high-end rice wine from under the table, unstoppered it, and filled a teacup each for the three Peak Lords present. It was much too early to be drinking! And Shen Qingqiu tried not to, as a rule, although he supposed with fewer secrets to keep he could afford to metaphorically let his hair down more often.

Also she could have set out more correct cups? And—

“Really, shimei,” he objected mildly, as she lifted the lovely enameled teapot and poured steaming cups of tea for each of her four disciples in order of seniority, ignoring him. Little Ma Li, entirely unsurprised not to be the one pouring, had fetched herself a replacement teacup without being instructed. It wasn’t from the same set.

“The other Shen Qingqiu used to be a stickler for doing things properly, too,” Qi Qingqi said, setting the teapot down beside the wine jar. She glanced down into her teacup of wine, blandly. “He had lovely manners, but he was too careful of them—it’s a tell, to people who know what to look for. People raised to elegance take it for granted, even the fussy ones, and he was too pragmatic about fighting to ever pass for a simple priss. He was always worried about letting something slip.”

That had…probably done a lot to help Shen Qingqiu slip into his place, hadn’t it? If Shen Jiu had never stopped thinking of himself as an impostor to begin with, why would his replacement knowing it stand out?

Qi Qingqi picked up her wine and drank, a little too deeply for elegance though her movements were perfect, and then inspected the cup in her hand again. “I was the only one of us who really liked him at all, I think,” she said, very carelessly.

Shen Qingqiu knew he’d made a small grimace. “Surely—”

“Oh, Sect Leader cared for him, of course, but that’s a different thing altogether.” Shen Qingqiu supposed it was. “He was a spiteful, vicious person,” she reflected, with an odd nostalgia. “He didn’t like anyone and didn’t want any of us to like him. But I rather did. I felt we understood each other.” She tilted her head, considering him. “I’ve never understood you. I should have suspected.”

“Well, now you have the explanation for me,” Shen Qingqiu said, perhaps a little dryly. “I’m sure shimei will find me a very simple cypher from here on out.”

Qi Qingqi laughed at him.

“Drink,” she said, demonstrating with another deep sip, as though he didn’t know how. “Be polite.”

Shen Qingqiu made a delicate scornful sound of his own, but lifted his brimful wine without spilling and took a careful sip, gazing vaguely past Liu Mingyan where she was seated across the table from him, tipping her teacup up under her veil. He still did wonder exactly what she looked like under there. Probably a lot like Liu-shidi. But presumably not exactly like.

He tried the snacks. Like most beautiful food, they didn’t taste as good as they looked, but they were alright. Shen Qingqiu was sure people who weren’t spoiled by Luo Binghe’s cooking would appreciate them more than he did.

Qi Qingqi made bland small talk about the weather long enough for everyone to get more than halfway through their cups, topped everyone up, and then got, if you were looking closely, serious. There was a reason she’d issued that invitation, after all, surely.

“Now, shixiong,” she addressed herself to Shang Qinghua, “What was that remark you made about working hard on this…concept space?”

Shang Qinghua laughed uncomfortably. “Didn’t I say we should forget it?”

“Oh but I couldn’t possibly.”

Which was very fair, so when Shang Qinghua looked to him hopefully Shen Qingqiu didn’t step in to help him out. Stupid author, you dug your own grave! Every part of this is on you!

He did say, “It’s not very easy to explain, so perhaps shimei could ask specific questions?”

She nodded, finding this reasonable. “Shixiong had some role in designing—this region?”

Shang Qinghua nodded a little too quickly, wine cupped in both hands. “Mm, I did mostly focus the detail work around the area of Cang Qiong.” Interesting, he was going for downplaying his own importance. But then that was just like him, wasn’t it. He only got expansive when he didn’t think there might be consequences.

“And how does that work?” Qi Qingqi’s expression was politely curious, as though this was an ordinary question about cultivation technique. All the disciples, Shen Qingqiu noted, were holding their breaths. “Were your designs imposed on the landscape, or…?”

“Ah. Hm.” Airplane took a deep drink from his wine. “Well, you see in a sense this was all done before the world existed. Er, time doesn’t work the same way outside of a universe, you see—consider myself and Shen-shixiong here, we died in our previous lives only months apart and he actually went first, but I got here thirty-some years before he did.”

Shen Qingqiu cast Airplane an unfriendly sidelong look for so blatantly dragging him in as a shield, but sipped politely at his wine—which was very pleasant and smooth, as it happened, Qi Qingqi had put in the effort—and made an agreeable noise, to affirm this account.

“So what I did,” continued Shang Qinghua, gaining a little confidence as everyone other than Shen Qingqiu looked at him in interest but no one threatened to hit him, “was I drew up certain, er, blueprints for things like Cang Qiong Sect, back in that world, with no expectation they were going to be enacted as anything real.”

“So how is it that they were?” Still that same polite interest. Qi-shimei, when she bothered, was good.

“Well, it’s all very technical and I’m not by any means an expert,” Shang Qinghua said, and then launched into what must be the result of those ‘few questions’ he’d had for Zhang in their private interview, laden with just enough mysterious jargon that Qi Qingqi’s expression of furious determination to understand only gave way to actual understanding every ten seconds or so.

Shen Qingqiu couldn’t tell if Shang Qinghua was doing it on purpose. He wasn’t exactly naturally devious, Shen Qingqiu didn’t think, or he’d be better at it, but he’d had a lot of practice in this lifetime at avoiding uncomfortable questions and coming up with answers people wanted to hear.

Shen Qingqiu himself was following the speech a bit better, having much more context and experience with this kind of technical language. Apparently no one actually knew how books became worlds, or at least they weren’t telling low-level officials like Zhang. It just happened.

“Not everything that could be is apportioned a working concept-space,” Shang Qinghua expanded, after explaining this very unclearly at some length. “It seems to be very arbitrary. People will attribute it to popularity or quality, but there are always so many exceptions to any schema it breaks down in practice. The System cultists who brought us in here didn’t think my book was good enough to deserve really existing—and honestly I wouldn’t have written it the way I did if I’d expected it would. I wouldn’t even have written it as a serious drama, I’d have put everyone to much less trouble. Honestly!”

Qi Qingqi nodded to show she believed him.

“But while the System people aren’t the only group that believes in interfering in the internal causality of concept spaces for specific results, their ideas have gotten increasingly bizarre and their methods more extreme the longer they’ve been outlawed, according to Officer Zhang. Don’t mind if I do,” he added, when Qi Qingqi refilled his cup.

Qi Qingqi was clearly getting exactly what she wanted, but Shen Qingqiu couldn’t really think of a reason to refuse to let her. It was interesting! He’d never thought too hard about these things because he suspected he wouldn’t like the answers, and that he’d like living with the unanswerable questions lurking in his mind even less, but having some concrete facts fall into his lap was rather nice. These things just happened, hm? How annoying. But all the same, at least the System hadn’t created the world, after all. Only artificially split it off from the Proud Immortal Demon Way timeline, if Shen Qingqiu was following correctly.

That made sense. The System had always exerted the minimum amount of actual force to get what it wanted; of course those people couldn’t easily create whole worlds. They hadn’t just been going for a minimalist intervention style out of some warped artistic integrity.

Or maybe it had been that, too. Selling him the deluxe scenario pusher when he was being a complete idiot, and then letting him deploy it in the middle of the climax while taking forever to load the Guanyin pendant—it was cheap plot manipulation tactics, honestly, but it did make him be the one deciding things, technically, which strengthened the story, which was what they cared about, for some reason.

“And I understand this is the book Shen-shixiong died cursing?” Qi Qingqi inquired, turning to him and making him jolt hard out of his abstraction. Ah, right.

Shen Qingqiu could get away with denying it; he was pretty sure Zhang had only insinuated that, rather than stating it outright. But it would be lying, and he’d lied enough, surely. And what could possibly be the point? He sighed and picked up his once again full cup. He was going to need to drink to get through this.

“Caught that, did you?” He wasn’t going to admit to the food poisoning thing again if he could avoid it.

Liu Mingyan asked, of Proud Immortal Demon Way whose stupid title they had so far managed to avoid sharing: “What was wrong with it?”

And he supposed between being something of a writer herself (no he was never letting it go) and being part of this world she had reason to want to know, but he still took a large sip of wine and put the cup down with sour emphasis. “What wasn’t.”

“Please don’t get him started,” Shang Qinghua said to Liu Mingyan, as if it wasn’t too late.

Shen Qingqiu gave him a look. “Excuse me?”

“The amount of critique you sent me, every chapter, bro! I’d been living in this world for that many years before we met again and I still remembered you, sorry if you’re not aware of the epic scale of your roasts.”

The modern slang was probably as impenetrable to Qi Qingqi and her disciples as the celestial jargon, which meant it was protective in a way, so Shen Qingqiu didn’t scold Shang Qinghua to speak more formally in company.

He ignored him, instead. “The world design was often very clever,” he allowed, to Liu Mingyan, to be contrary and because the ethics of insulting the universe people lived in to their faces when they couldn’t compare it to any others and reach an independent conclusion seemed murky, and besides it was technically true, “but the book itself was terrible, full of repetition and abandoned concepts leading nowhere. He wrote new material very quickly—”

“Daily!” Shang Qinghua interjected. “I updated daily! For years! No one appreciates how hard I work!”

“—which I would have appreciated more if it hadn’t come at such an extreme cost in quality.”

“You paid to read all those updates, bro! You paid for them!”

“The cast was enormous because he couldn’t seem to think of anything to do with most characters once he’d introduced them—”

“Hey,” Shang Qinghua interjected, a little more sincerely offended but unable to muster any serious counterargument.

“—and the book continued long after it had run out of any inherent narrative tension apart from the many open questions left by the many abandoned plot threads—”

“Because I kept writing it as long as people would give me money,” said Shang Qinghua.

Yes, he understood he’d been complicit in the bad writing decisions that had been made! He’d come to understand that!

“And ultimately it concluded on a meaningless note, with none of the interesting subplots resolved and the main character’s arc trailing off into grandiose nothingness. It was nearly a parody of the genre by the end, you know,” he said, rounding on Shang Qinghua, realizing he had found a new criticism after all this time.

“It’s not like it was a respectable genre to begin with, bro,” said Shang Qinghua, and Shen Qingqiu snorted. Just because a thing wasn’t considered important was no reason not to do it properly if you were going to do it at all; the lord of An Ding Peak of all people must know this!

“And he was entirely unreasonable in his narrative use of women,” Shen Qingqiu informed Qi Qingqi, vengefully.

“Bro.”

“I think I see why Shen-shixiong was targeted by those kidnappers,” Qi Qingqi observed.

Shen Qingqiu didn’t think she was wrong but he gave her a deeply aggrieved look anyway.

“I don’t mean to suggest that you deserved what was done to you or brought it on yourself, of course,” she said, unusually conciliatory, and topped up both their cups.

Shen Qingqiu unbent a little. “Shimei can say it if she likes,” he said, taking a sip. “It’s probably true. And it’s not as though I mind being here.” Even if the circumstances of his arrival and situation at first had some issues.

Qi Qingqi gave a polite murmur of denial to the first, and Liu Mingyan leaned in a little over the table in reply to the second. “So, shibo,” she said to both of them equally, “could you satisfy this shizhi’s curiosity and tell us about a difficult aspect of becoming part of this world?”

Shen Qingqiu gestured vaguely with his fan to demur.

“It can be something quite small,” insisted Ma Li, a perfect doll of a child who looked all of eleven but was supposedly sixteen. “Just a sense of contrast!”

“My hair,” volunteered Shang Qinghua, vaguely gloomy. “All these years and sometimes having to keep it combed and oiled is still so much trouble. It takes so much time! And sometimes it threatens to come down in the middle of something important! Bad enough having to get into fights in the first place, without having hair in my eyes while I deal with that. If it wouldn’t shock everyone I’d have chopped it all off so many times.”

The women did indeed all look reasonably shocked; Shang Qinghua had hit on a very pertinent cultural difference. Interested eyes from elegant Peak Lord to doll-faced disciple turned toward Shen Qingqiu to see if he agreed.

He sighed. His annoyance with his hair was considerably less, but then he had gotten nicer hair than Shang Qinghua had, hadn’t had to grow it out himself, and had Binghe delighted to help him look after it. “It can be troublesome,” he admitted, coming to the support of a brother transmigrator. “I settled into this body fairly easily, but the hair took the longest to learn to compensate for.”

“Probably because it’s not hooked into the nervous system,” said Shang Qinghua. He picked up a lock of his own and shook it, like this was a necessary demonstration. “You can’t feel your hair.”

“What’s a nervous system?” asked Ma Li, getting bolder by the minute.

“It’s, ah—” Oh that was nice, he could answer without worrying about raising suspicion through having unsourceable knowledge. “The network that carries sensation through the human body.”

It was fortunate Shen Qingqiu had been borrowing medical books from Mu-shidi, so he knew nerves did exist in this world, even though mostly only the really large ones branching off the spinal column were known to xianxia medical science, and it wasn’t like they knew how they worked. Airplane had had them know what brain damage was but only vaguely, in a sort of confused gesture toward historical accuracy.

“One of the main body systems targeted by acupuncture, it runs parallel to the qi and blood circulations. Its filaments aren’t actually invisible, but they’re mostly too small to see with the naked eye.”

Shen Qingqiu got to deliver a learned-sounding lecture that consisted mostly of high school biology facts and context from his local reading for several minutes before anyone began to seem even slightly bored, which was a feat only occasionally achieved even with his own disciples. Apparently being revealed as from another world made you temporarily interesting! He supposed he’d enjoy the benefits while they lasted, to make up for the vast increase in annoying personal questions and so forth.

He was in a good enough mood that he tolerated several more prying questions, after this. It was very clear he’d wound up being a human shield for Shang Qinghua rather than the reverse, but as long as the cute disciples were asking silly questions, Qi Qingqi wasn’t.

“What color were you?” blurted Ma Li, who had clearly been added to the party for her willingness to pry and ability to get away with it by being tiny and adorable. Truly the Ning Yingying of Xian Shu Peak.

Shen Qingqiu gave her the kind of look such a ridiculous question deserved. What color? Did she feel the need to build up a detailed physical image of the short-haired person he’d been before he died? “Roughly the color I am now, as it happens,” he said, as dryly as possible. “A few shades darker.” Shen Qingqiu really did have good skin, the Skinner demon hadn’t been wrong.

All the disciples seemed to find that unreasonably interesting. Was Liu Mingyan planning to write some kind of Chunshan sequel? Or prequel, about his body-swapping origins? Surely not, Qi Qingqi surely had some control over her Head Disciple, and Yue Qingyuan wasn’t so disrespected as Sect Leader that his strict instructions about secrecy would be that thoroughly ignored, right?

Right?

He narrowed his eyes at his minor local nemesis, poised and lovely and unreadable under her veil.  “Shizhi understands that spreading a fictionalized account of this situation does not at all count as keeping it secret?” Liu Mingyan remained serene, but there was just enough squirming from her two juniors to suggest he’d hit close to the mark.

Shen Qingqiu shook his head in disapproval and drank more wine out of his teacup. “Really, this master shouldn’t have indulged you disciples. Xian Shu Peak cannot be said to be noted for its discretion.”

“Now here you are talking of gossiping women,” Qi Qingqi said scornfully, sipping her own cup. “Your predecessor never descended to that, at least.”

“How is it gender prejudice when I’m facing the specific people who’ve made a plaything of my reputation?” Shen Qingqiu scoffed and finished his drink in one swallow. “The original would already have wreaked vengeance, I assure you.” In fact he’d probably have declared war on Xian Shu Peak if they’d subjected him to something like the Chunshan-derived RPF novels, let alone if it turned out they were responsible for the song itself. It would be an ongoing battle.

…Binghe aside, Qing Jing Peak under Shen Jiu would not make nearly as good a showing in such a battle as his Qing Jing Peak, where there was less time spent in study but a great deal more seemed to get learned, especially when it came to practical matters. Hah. He pushed his cup across the table. “The least you owe me is another drink, shimei.”

Qi Qingqi made a face with quirked lips and eyebrows that might have been conceding a point though it was certainly also laughing at him, and filled his cup. She filled Shang Qinghua’s, too, though it hadn’t been empty. That finished off the second jar. She pulled out a third.

Shen Qingqiu decided she had a qiankun pouch full of liquor under the table; there had to be a limit to how many jars she could fit under there otherwise without getting in the way of people’s knees.

“Anyway,” he said to Liu Mingyan in his most austere manner, “learn from your Shang-shibo’s bad example. Be more responsible with your writing.”

“Brooooo,” Airplane complained. He was a good three drinks ahead of Shen Qingqiu, and showing it.

“What, can you deny we’re all living with your irresponsible choices? You outed yourself, bro. If the ladies of Xian Shu want to join me in shaming you for being responsible for things like the Burning Emperor Fern—”

“Bro!” Airplane protested, and alright, listing weird sex plants that were his fault wasn’t exactly protecting him from Qi Qingqi. “I included cures for—almost everything I came up with, too!”

And over half of them were papapa, idiot. And a lot of things could only be cured with the kind of resources you got as late-plot Luo Binghe. Did that count? Was that useful to the average person? At least those types of threats weren’t often lying around where it was common to be affected by them, though.

“That’s not guaranteed with poisons normally, you know! The chances of long-term complications from things is lower than it usually would be in this kind of world, too, you know?”

“That’s also bad writing,” Shen Qingqiu snorted, because it was. He emptied his cup. “Fine. I’ll stop throwing you under the bus. But Liu-shizhi should learn,” he repeated, pointedly, raising an eyebrow at her, and for the first time ever that he’d seen she actually seemed abashed. Huh. She looked even more like her brother when she did that.

So far he and Airplane had agreed without talking about it not to tell anyone from this world that Shang Qinghua had invented them, personally. If they could avoid it. The discussion of ‘story’ and ‘worldbuilding’ definitely implied it, but he for one wouldn’t want to think of himself as the invention of someone like Shang Qinghua.

So he did his best to steer the conversation away from that sort of thing again, before he could give any of his cute, awful martial nieces or the redoubtable Qi Qingqi an existential crisis about being bit characters in bad porn, and finished off the snacks and kept drinking wine. He almost never reached the bottom of his cup because Qi Qingqi was so assiduous about refilling it, and after a while he could tell he’d had too much, but it was enough too much that he had trouble worrying about it, either.

Hadn’t he thought he could afford to let his hair down more, now?

He did, a bit, cautiously and greased by the wine. Eventually he let it down far enough to slip and call Shang Qinghua ‘Airplane-bro’ in front of other people, because that was the name that went with needling him about failed poetic allusions in his narration, and of course the ladies were all over that.

“Is that your real name?” piped up that adorable menace, Ma Li. “‘Airplane?’”

“Uh,” said Shang Qinghua, looking harassed.

“It was his pen name,” Shen Qingqiu supplied, since this one was his fault. He didn’t have to supply the full thing, let alone the—allusion. Even if he wanted to rat his bro out that way, that would deprive him of deniability on his handle being a bad dirty joke. Dignity! He retained some! “It refers to—a sort of flying vessel we had in that world.”

“You had flying boats?” inquired Qi Qingqi, sounding genuinely curious.

“Well, that is.” He ran his finger over the rim of his cup, considering. “I wouldn’t call them boats, most of them would sink if you put them down in water.”

“My cousin’s plane once had to do an emergency water landing on the way back from Argentina,” said Shang Qinghua, which was the most personal information he had ever shared in the years they’d now known each other.

Shen Qingqiu frowned. “Why was your cousin in Argentina?”

“What’s wrong with Argentina?”

“What have they got in Argentina that’s worth going overseas for?”

“I don’t know, summer in January? Mountains?”

“New Zealand has both of those.”

“Well she went to Argentina. Anyway, they evacuated the plane with little boats. But she said it didn’t sink.” Shang Qinghua nodded, as if this was an important point proven, and emptied his wine.

“Anyway,” Shen Qingqiu told Qi Qingqi, as she filled everyone’s cups again. “Airplanes aren’t very interesting, they’re just a mode of travel. No one flies on swords where we come from, or even has swords. It’s really a very boring place, all regulations and industry.”

“That explains a bit,” Qi Qingqi smiled into her cup, which Shen Qingqiu found quite funny.

“Bro, shimei thinks we’re boring,” he reported, elbowing Shang Qinghua.

“I like being boring,” Shang Qinghua sighed into his cup. “Really, no more excitement for me, thank you. I have far too much to do to be interesting. Too busy. Only paperwork now.”

They had probably drunk more than they should have. Which had certainly been Qi Qingqi’s plot! Fiendish shimei.

Liu Mingyan had seemed at least slightly subdued since his final round of criticism for her authorial exploits, possibly contemplating how she would cope with her weird porn coming to life and trying to kill her, and shepherded her shimei out quietly when Qi Qingqi dismissed them, with an injunction to observe strictest secrecy, for real this time, regarding the day’s discussion.

Shen Qingqiu expected another round of the third degree once the children were gone, perhaps touching on topics not fit for young ears, but Qi Qingqi seemed content to drink and chat, just as if nothing unusual had happened. It seemed he was forgiven! He certainly had no intention of questioning it.

“Reincarnation…” she murmured after a while, staring into the depths of her empty cup. Shen Qingqiu leaned over to pour for her until it was a full one, in hopes of lifting the suddenly solemn atmosphere. “It’s more peculiar than we think, hm?”

“Well, the System meddled with us,” Shen Qingqiu said. “I don’t think being forced to live through the problems you made up is a normal punishment for stupid authors, if you’re worried about Liu Mingyan.”

Qi Qingqi snorted, and slugged back half of what he’d poured while Shang Qinghua protested vaguely in the background about which problems were his fault and whether he was being punished, though his objection to ‘stupid’ amounted to ‘maybe you’re stupid’ and therefore didn’t even count as argument. “I wasn’t, thank you. I’ll endeavor to continue in that happy state.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, turned them on Shang Qinghua, and turned them back. “This old woman now knows why you two make no sense, but that has not in fact solidified into understanding.” Her tone suggested this was their fault, somehow.

Shen Qingqiu wasn’t sure what he could say to that. “Keep trying?” he offered. It might be egotistical to assume they were worth the trouble, but she was the one who was stating it as a problem.

Shang Qinghua lifted one fist in an encouraging ‘you can do it’ sort of gesture, and slopped wine very nearly onto Shen Qingqiu’s sleeve. Shen Qingqiu glared while Qi Qingqi gave another snort.

“Apparently I will have the time,” she acknowledged.

“Shimei has all the time in the world,” Shen Qingqiu agreed. It was really nice being immortal. And, the people here couldn’t fully appreciate it, but having Luo Binghe onside meant that no matter what ludicrous xianxia threats decided to happen, he was confident they’d be okay. Everyone was going to survive, in this version. He was sure of it. And to the degree that he wasn’t sure, he was determined.

Take that, stupid cops and shitty System!

“Time…” Shang Qinghua mused into his cup. “Have you ever noticed how it will fly by in huge chunks and then slow way down sometimes when a lot’s happening?”

Shen Qingqiu blinked at him. “Yes?” He frowned. “You had better not be suggesting that time dilates dramatically in this world just because you used to abuse timeskips.”

“Nuh-uh!” Airplane immediately denied.

Shen Qingqiu sipped wine menacingly at him.

“I’m not saying that! I’m just saying—sometimes I wonder.”

“Well. Having not been here as long. I promise time always did that. It’s a cognitive distortion.” Shen Qingqiu was going to wonder about this forever now, fuck you Airplane you shitty existentially dangerous friend. Unless he was drunk enough he forgot this conversation ever happened. With that in mind, he polished off the rest of the cup.

“What do you regret most?” Qi Qingqi was asking Airplane. “About this world?”

Shang Qinghua stared at her, drunkenly. “Making Mobei-jun bad at communicating.”

She scoffed. “Selfish!”

“Too many tragic backstories…demons have so much political drama, can’t they stop no one is reading this, let me rest…demons have stupid big—” Shen Qingqiu slapped a hand over Shang Qinghua’s mouth.

“You complain too much,” he snapped, though based on Qi Qingqi’s snickering he hadn’t accomplished anything. “Don’t encourage him,” Shen Qingqiu told her.

She poured him more wine. “But it’s so enlightening.”

Spitefully, Shen Qingqiu knocked back his whole cup. A waste of good wine, of course, but it wasn’t like he’d ever been a serious aficionado of good alcohols in any life. He held the cup out to Qi Qingqi. “You win.”

The cup was filled again. Qi Qingqi was magnanimous in victory.

When they finished that jar, which took long enough for Shang Qinghua to temporarily run out of complaints, Qi Qingqi held up the next, hand on the sealed stopper. “Another?”

Shen Qingqiu shook his head. There were no windows in the room, but it had been a few hours since they arrived. “It’s nearly dinnertime.” With careful concentration, he stood up smoothly and did not wobble. “I must be getting home.”

Shang Qinghua snickered into his cup. “So whipped.”

Shen Qingqiu smacked his shoulder. “You expect me to let Binghe’s cooking go to waste?” And more importantly if he skipped a meal he’d promised to attend, Binghe would be sad. “I always hated when he was sad.” Shen Qingqiu glowered at the top of Airplane’s head. “You used to make him sad a lot. And never about anything interesting.”

“I never actually went for sad after the Abyss arc, sad isn’t badass…but anyway! He has something interesting to be sad about now, right?”

“I am not something interesting.” Shen Qingqiu drove the end of his fan down into the back of Shang Qinghua’s neck so hard that it sent him toppling forward, wine spilling into his lap with a shout. The subsequent whimpering and cringing was just theatrics. “I hate you,” Shen Qingqiu said.

“Hate you too,” Airplane mumbled into the floor.

Shen Qingqiu carefully made a polite bow to Qi Qingqi, who was drunk enough not to even slightly hide that she was laughing at them. “Thanking shimei for her hospitality,” he said, with plenty of irony.

“Thanking shixiong for his time,” she replied, covering a smirk delicately with one hand.

Binghe was initially upset to have him come home drunk, especially because he really shouldn’t have been flying in this state, but he’d gotten here safely and Binghe was quickly distracted by Shen Qingqiu’s drunken enthusiasm at being reunited.

Ming Fan was the only one of his disciples who seemed to particularly care about Shen Qingqiu’s newly revealed backstory, judging by the pattern of looks and whispers, and since he was technically Head Disciple it seemed unfair not to give him the full details, now that Qi Qingqi had let him know the other head disciples, lingering outside the hall, had overheard the original event anyway.

After going over it backward and forward so many times, Shen Qingqiu was able to do a clear and dispassionate rundown in very few words; Ming Fan had clearly already heard most of it, but who knew what wild rumors he’d heard as well. It was best to hear this kind of thing directly from the source, at least when it concerned you personally.

The disciple’s round face was very remote, as Shen Qingqiu finished his summary. He found himself reflecting on how surprisingly fond he’d gotten of someone he’d always seen as an embarrassing canon fodder bully.

“If Ming Fan prefers not to regard this master as his teacher any longer, that is very much his right,” Shen Qingqiu added, when there was no immediate response to his life story. He tried to make sure his voice was calm but not cool. It was the original goods that had accepted Ming Fan, made him Head Disciple, and so on. He was one of only a few people with good reason to miss him.

Ming Fan snorted, faintly, and shook his head. “And would that bring the other teacher back? No.”

Ming Fan wasn’t a boy anymore—you could barely call him a ‘young man’ though Shen Qingqiu still thought of him that way. He was in his thirties, and unlike Luo Binghe he looked it. His looks weren’t fine enough or his cultivation strong enough to prevent that, but honestly it suited him, anyway. Ming Fan would look dignified with grey hair, when the time came. Shen Qingqiu was so glad he was still alive.

“You’ve taught me,” Ming Fan said, staring at the floor, and for all he’d refused to disown Shen Qingqiu there was a new distance in the way he spoke, as well. “You have taught me. It’s been….” He raised his eyes. “I’m glad to understand, shifu.”

Shen Qingqiu hummed, and found himself smiling with a hint of apology, which wasn’t an expression that had had much place on his face in any lifetime. “I must have confused you terribly,” he agreed. Ming Fan had, after all, been caught at ground zero of Shen Qingqiu’s reversal of opinion about Luo Binghe.

Ming Fan nodded, abstractly. “Very much.” He was clearly thinking over the days following the change—what he’d done, how Shen Qingqiu had responded. “You had to pretend, but only enough to—go unchallenged.”

He hadn’t managed even that, considering how many times they’d checked him for possession. “Mm.”

Ming Fan’s hands tightened on his knees. “Why did you keep me in my position?”

The question was obviously important to Ming Fan, so Shen Qingqiu quashed the immediate impulse to say ‘why not?’ and thought about it instead. His final answer wasn’t very different, though. “I don’t see why I should have removed you,” he said instead.

His general policy was, don’t fix what works, and while Ming Fan hadn’t worked ideally in his role, being a dumb bully, Shen Qingqiu had approached that more in a spirit of improving his cannon fodder character than in terms of replacing him. The System had prodded him that way, but it wouldn’t have occurred to him to do differently, anyway.

It wouldn’t help anything to suggest he hadn’t cared enough about the position of Head Disciple to worry very much about who filled it, although that was sort of true. Ming Fan looked dissatisfied. “Does Ming Fan think he should have been replaced?” Shen Qingqiu asked, electing to make this a teaching moment.

Ming Fan huffed, cringed slightly at his own bad manners, and said into the floor, “Luo Binghe…”

“Was never in the running,” Shen Qingqiu said firmly. “Regardless of wanting to save our lives from your original teacher’s poor judgment, and of my own eventual partiality, the role of Head Disciple had to belong to someone who could be loyal to Qing Jing Peak. First and foremost,” he added, because while Binghe couldn’t be described that way now, he’d been loyal to the Sect as a youth.

Something cleared in Ming Fan’s face. Had he really just wanted to know he had something going for him? Even just that much? Shen Qingqiu liked to think he was better at positive reinforcement than the original goods had been, but…. “Hm,” he said, tapping his fan into his palm. “Does Ming Fan remember what reason his first teacher gave, for treating Luo Binghe badly?”

Some color rose into the Head Disciple’s face, and his hands folded shut. He shook his head.

“Did he ever say a reason?”

“I don’t…think so?” Ming Fan was not the sort of person who, by nature, concerned himself much with reasons.

She Qingqiu nodded. “But he didn’t need to. Because he was your teacher, and you trusted his judgment.” He flicked with his closed fan, like he was flinging a small object aside. “Ming Fan is loyal and dependable. These are important traits to cultivate.”

“Yes, shifu.”

“It is also important to be thoughtful and deliberate, when you can, because the world conspires to make it challenging.”

Ming Fan made a strange face. “Yes, shifu.” Then, “Does it really?”

“Unfortunately so. More for some of us than others,” and okay, that was grumbling, let’s not get any more undignified. “The first Shen Qingqiu resented Luo Binghe for personal reasons. Using his disciples’ trust in him to pursue a grudge against a child was an abuse of his position, and unfair to you. This master—”

He paused. He didn’t think he’d done an especially good job as Peak Lord, even when he’d been alive and giving the job most of his attention, but he had tried. “Hopes he has set a slightly better example.”

There was one more set of people he really had to deal with on the subject, but hadn’t yet: the adults of Qing Jing Peak.

The ones of Shen Qingqiu’s generation and above, that was, since so many of his own disciples were also well grown by now. Well, strictly speaking everyone on the Peak was his disciple, which had probably been an awkward transition for original goods, or at least for everyone who knew the original goods.

Shen Qingqiu had avoided them and been avoided in return for as long as he’d been in this world. They communicated largely via paperwork and curriculum updates. He’d never questioned it. They weren’t named characters, after all—actually Airplane had seemed to generally forget there was an older generation besides the Peak Lords except when he needed to fill out a scene with fighters—and Shen Qingqiu had found that he could get along fairly well ignoring anyone who’d been a background character in the original novel unless they insisted otherwise, like a student needing advice.

Though Zhuzhi-lang had shown him what an error that assumption could be.

Liu Qingge certainly didn’t speak to his former peers on Bai Zhan, but then practically speaking he didn’t run Bai Zhan at all. Even less than Shen Qingqiu bothered to run Qing Jing nowadays.

He wasn't going to start a conversation now either, if he didn't have to. And he didn't.

Three of the hall masters who handled most of the day-to-day teaching approached him, on his way to listen to the younger kids attempt poetry and give constructive criticism without making anyone cry, the day after he talked to Ming Fan, which probably wasn’t a coincidence. Taking some initiative, Ming Fan!

“You really aren’t him,” said Chiu Anyun, instrument foundation primary, who wore her hair in a severe folded style and had incredibly long fingers that were very useful in her discipline. “Shen Jiu.” These people, of course, had known the original under that name—so had the other Peak Lords, but his classmates had probably seen him every day.

They’d somehow arranged for the area where they intercepted him to be empty. Usually this path was fairly crowded at this time of day, but while there were disciples in sight they were all mysteriously out of range of the conversation. Shen Qingqiu was only about fifteen percent expecting this to be some kind of ill-considered ambush. He’d beaten up a fellow Peak Lord last week and Binghe was on the mountain currently; they had to know this wouldn’t go well for them even if all the instructors pitched in.

“Mm,” acknowledged Shen Qingqiu.

“I feel like we should have known,” said Yong Lindao, calligraphy. He was a good calligraphy instructor but slightly prone to getting ink on himself, especially his hands. He looked up at Shen Qingqiu from his below-average height, lips pressed together thoughtfully, exactly as if he was judging stroke weight and subtle angles in a finished piece. “I suppose that’s why you spoke to us even less.”

“The Sect Leader was already having me tested for possession twice a week,” Shen Qingqiu agreed, which made Yong Lindao snort.

“And they didn’t catch you,” said Kuan Lengmu, talisman theory, sounding puzzled by it.

“Because I’m not possessed. Or a possessing spirit. It’s, hm, sort of a bastardization of the reincarnation cycle, really.” He flicked his fan. This was surreal. He was just…talking to everyone about it now, apparently. “I’ve made the best of it, I like to think.”

“So did you—” Chiu Anyun stumbled. “Did you know anything when you got here? Everyone thought it was amnesia but you still seemed like you could do the job.”

“I knew some things.” Shen Qingqiu tried not to be offended. “I did have to learn how the admin system here worked, but I had handled paperwork before.” Mostly on the scale of university applications, but still. He raised an eyebrow. “If the original had grudges against any of you, I don’t know about it and don’t care.”

Yong Lindao’s face had a hint of a smirk tucked into one cheek. “So,” he said, “when you didn’t react when Au-shimei referenced the chicken barrel incident, it wasn’t that you’d just forgotten about it. That didn’t even happen to you.”

Yet another test he’d apparently failed and gotten away with through presumed amnesia! Apparently he’d been the only person on Cang Qiong who didn’t know the Qing Jing Peak Lord had lost his memory!

“It did not,” he said. “So please. Tell me all about it.”

Finally Yue Qingyuan, thirteen days after Zhang’s interruption of the quarterly meeting, invited him to tea.

“Shizun doesn’t have to go,” Binghe said immediately, seeing Shen Qingqiu staring at the written invitation, far more formal than the Sect Leader would have bothered with a few weeks ago. More formal than made any sense in someone summoning his subordinate at all. He’d spoken to all the other Peak Lords already. He’d been half hoping this would never come.

“No,” Shen Qingqiu replied, setting it down on his desk and letting his fingers drag along the edge of the paper as he drew them away. “I could reject it. But I owe him.”

“Sect Leader—”

Shen Qingqiu spoke over whatever uncharitable thing Binghe had been trying to say. “He has treated me with kindness for all these years for the sake of someone I was only pretending to be. I accepted that, knowing I wasn’t entitled to it. I owe him my consideration in return.”

Binghe paused, studying Shen Qingqiu’s face carefully. “Ah,” he said at last. “He was the person, wasn’t he?”

“Hm?”

“That Shen Jiu’s…like shizun. The person you said he couldn’t forgive.”

Shen Qingqiu ducked behind his fan and nodded. This protagonist! Never forgetting a stray remark!

Binghe sighed. “Alright. This disciple agrees that that is important. Shizun should go talk to him.”

Shen Qingqiu eyed him sidelong. He appreciated his husband being more reasonable and generous, but that was a suspicious absence of vinegar!

“He should properly understand that his person isn’t here anymore,” said Binghe, very prim and doing a very poor job of trying not to sound smug.

He should have known. This possessive rascal of a husband!

“I’m so sorry,” Shen Qingqiu said, when the silence got to be too much.

It wouldn’t have been too much for him at all, before, but now the open knowledge of his guilt, his impostor status in this person’s life, pricked at him, and he didn’t have the face or the serenity to sit here, quietly, drinking tea with the head of Cang Qiong.

Yue Qingyuan had had his teacup to his lips when the words landed between them, and he finished taking the sip and set the cup down, delicately, with the perfect manners of the lord he was. Left his fingertips against it. “It seems shidi had very little choice in the matter,” he said. Seemed to be contemplating the pattern painted on the side of his cup. Bamboo. Spring green.

Shen Qingqiu fought and mastered the urge to open his fan. “You don’t have to call me that,” he said, feeling wretched, sounding almost entirely poised.

Yue Qingyuan breathed in, and breathed out. A perfectly composed look, except that he was bothering to maintain it. He said, “Shidi owed Cang Qiong nothing.”

“I—what?”

“There was a sense of betrayal, after the events several years ago. Not me, for I knew already that Shen Qingqiu owed me nothing, but among the Peak Lords, when Shen Qingqiu chose not to trust us, to walk away, to place Luo Binghe at the same value as the whole Sect or more…even after…again and again.”

He’d…realized that, but he hadn’t quite seen it in those terms before—never imagined Cang Qiong would feel as betrayed by his choosing Binghe as Binghe once had over his ‘choosing’ the Sect. The levels of need weren’t even close to the same! But then, neither was the level of distress about it. Of course he’d known they were annoyed! But.

“Ah,” he said, abashed, and drank some tea.

“But shidi owed us nothing. We were your prison.” Yue Qingyuan’s attention on that painted bamboo was truly something fearsome. “Dangerous strangers on every side, whose discovery you had to fear. You had not chosen to join us, you had given us no promises and received no teaching. But you fought for the Sect. You worried for us. You raised our children and protected Peak Lords and put yourself in harm’s way in our name, many times. You let yourself be drawn out, in the end, by a threat to us.”

“That’s not something noteworthy!” Never mind that the threat had been Luo Binghe and entirely his fault, and thus certainly something he owed them to deal with; the rest of it wasn’t special either. “I was—living here, benefiting from your trust I had not earned, taking advantage of…this whole life that wasn’t mine, with disciples left in my care. Of course I did my best. Such as it was. That’s nothing. Please don’t make anything of it.”

How mortifying. It was all he could do not to hide his whole face.

Yue Qingyuan nodded fractionally, and raised his eyes from the tabletop. “That’s why,” he said softly.

If Shen Qingqiu had not had the benefit of his inherited peerless immortal mask, he would have made a pathetically confused noise.

“Why shidi is still shidi, and Peak Lord of Qing Jing, even though he did not grow with us or receive the rank in the usual way. He had no choice about coming, no choice about lying…but where he was free to choose, he chose duty.” Yue Qingyuan’s face bent in a shadow of that familiar easy, older-brotherly smile. “And if in the end…well. It’s easier to understand, knowing what kind of choice it was.”

Shen Qingqiu ducked his head and cupped his tea in both hands, feeling as horribly exposed as he had during the worst of the conversation with Binghe, even though he wasn’t sure he understood what conclusions Yue Qingyuan had come to about him.

The important thing was that Yue Qingyuan seemed to find his record as transmigrator somehow respectable enough to forgive him for that most terrible of crimes: being while also not being Shen Qingqiu.

He’d be turning twelve soon. The original goods, in a new life, apparently graced with doting parents. Two siblings. School. Shen Qingqiu still wondered what the four years’ shortfall was about, though he hadn’t bothered to ask. Was it the instability of time outside of life? Was the non-transmigration death bureaucracy a little slow, but only a little? Queuing for four years seemed inane in a way waiting a hundred didn’t.

Or had Shen Jiu done a few life cycles as an earwig or something first. Hah.

(This was why he hadn’t asked; if Yue Qingyuan asked now he wouldn’t know anything of the kind, and had no obligation to share speculation.)

He wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up, when he had so little to report. Would Yue Qingyuan be happy to know Shen Jiu was in school, in his next lifetime? To know he had an older brother or sister by blood, now, who didn’t have to protect him from starving or being kidnapped and enslaved, and might not fail him?

Maybe. But maybe not.

He would tell him the little bit more he knew, but only if Yue Qingyuan brought it up first.

They drank tea. The wind troubled the elegant trees of Qiong Ding. Shen Qingqiu took the teapot and refilled both cups, and Yue Qingyuan didn’t stop him.

“You knew what would happen without you,” said the Sect Leader quietly.

Shen Qingqiu took a careful breath. Now they came to it. “Yes.”

“If shidi had not come,” Yue Qingyuan said into his tea, “and taken this life…Luo Binghe would have torn Shen Qingqiu limb from limb?”

“Yes.”

“And destroyed Cang Qiong?”

He shouldn’t have mentioned the Sect being destroyed where they could hear, damn. All Binghe’s progress on being accepted here, gone. “Yes,” he admitted.

“Why?”

It was…a ridiculous question, fully as ridiculous as any of Zhang’s or the Xian Shu shizhis’. Shen Qingqiu tilted his cup away from his face and fixed a stare over the rim of it on his Sect Leader, who was looking right at him now. “You know why.”

Yue Qingyuan’s flinch was only a pained closing of the eyes. “I do,” he admitted.

“Shen Qingqiu tormented Luo Binghe,” said Shen Qingqiu, now long accustomed to holding that duality of identities in his head and not given pause by it. “If I hadn’t come it would have gone on another three years, until he pushed him into the Endless Abyss and left him for dead. Nearly six years and—nobody did anything.”

His Sect Leader didn’t reply. He was drawn-in, now, uncommunicative in his silence beyond a tired line of pain that was his closed eyes. Annoying. If this was what Shen Jiu used to see when he went off on him, no wonder they rarely got more than five sentences into a conversation!

Shen Qingqiu put his tea down. “I am glad this Sect still stands,” he said. “I am happy you’re alive. But Zhangmen-shixiong…I am remembering now that I never thought Binghe’s vengeance without merit.”

That did make him open his eyes. “Surely—does shidi really think every member of this Sect deserved to die for that?”

“No,” said Shen Qingqiu. And they hadn’t, anyway—only those who fought had died. Some had gone into the harem, or defected in some other way. Some had fled. Some had simply—not been home. It had been the sect as symbol that Luo Binghe had been obliterating; he hadn’t bothered to mop up the remnants. “But that’s not how vengeance is apportioned, Zhangmen-shixiong. Did you think Shen Qingqiu had the right?” he asked. “To batter and degrade a loyal and hardworking child? Because Binghe belonged to him?”

He wouldn’t have pressed, wouldn’t have asked, hadn’t meant to tread over any sorer ground than he did merely by living behind this face. He was very fond of Yue Qingyuan, and unlike the original goods had never been the kind to hold onto grudges. But the man had asked. Had asked why, when there could never have been any doubt.

Had, now, sucked in a breath of pure pain.

Shen Qingqiu laid a hand over his fan on the table, pointed and firm. “Did they have a right?” he asked. “To treat Shen Jiu in that manner?”

Yue Qingyuan blinked, and tears rolled down both his cheeks, fat and bright. “No,” he whispered. “No, of course not.”

“To which?”

“Both. Of course, both, that was never—I only thought that I didn’t have the right to stop him.”

Shen Qingqiu sighed. If he were a different person—if he were more like the original goods without the scum villain traits, maybe—he would keep pushing, keep drawing out admissions, dig down to the bottom and fix his Sect Leader. Tell him what he already knew, you had the duty. No one else could.

But that wasn’t him. “If you know why your brother put that whole place to sword and fire, you know why Binghe would have killed you. Let it go. It never happened. It wouldn’t have happened the same way here, even when he did bring his army. He isn’t the same. None of it is the same, even when it looks similar. That took me a long time to understand, but please…accept it.”

Yue Qingyuan sat still, too lost in thought even to breathe, which was a necessity even for a powerful cultivator, until Shen Qingqiu was equal amounts concerned he would refuse to accept that this Binghe was not that one, and that he would pass out on the spot. But at last he drew a long, slow breath in, and opened his eyes, and said, “Very well. I have.”

His eyes unfocused, for a moment, onto the wall behind Shen Qingqiu. “This one should apologize,” he reflected. “To Luo Binghe, for that time.”

“I don’t know if it will mean much to him,” Shen Qingqiu said, because if Binghe had disregarded the whole of Cang Qiong Sect outside his husband’s person as largely irrelevant to his present life before, how much more now that he knew that, in some ways, Shen Qingqiu was even less a cultivator of Cang Qiong than he was himself? If he had wanted to cast off the memory of those first years and their formative influence when he still thought they were part of the relationship between them, how much less would he care about them now that he knew that that had been behavior from a person whose life weighed less than a single grain of rice to him?

But Shen Qingqiu had been wrong about what mattered to Binghe before, and anyway Binghe did deserve it. It would be good for him. Maybe he would dislike Yue Qingyuan a little less afterward, maybe hold less resentment toward Cang Qiong as a whole, which could only make Shen Qingqiu’s life easier. “But I think it sounds like a good idea.”

He thought the scars Shen Jiu had left on both these people were probably still deep, and not in some ways something he was in a position to do anything about. Maybe they’d both feel better for cleaning some of it out between them.

“Thank you,” Yue Qingyuan said, apparently for Shen Qingqiu’s approval of his apologizing to his husband. Which was foolish but he wasn’t going to criticize.

“If there’s anything I can do for shixiong,” he said instead.

Yue Qingyuan pursed his lips. “You’re safe now?”

It was such an unexpected question, asked so oddly, that Shen Qingqiu flustered for a moment. “Yes, of course,” he said, drinking tea to try to cover the moment. “The System has been thoroughly dismantled. Even if the group reforms they’ll almost certainly move on to new projects, Officer Zhang has assured me. Anything further that befalls this shidi will be entirely internal to this world, no different from anyone else.”

“And Luo Binghe?”

“The Peace Bureau has, upon review of the circumstances, decided not to trouble him.”

Yue Qingyuan sighed. “I meant—after the events of five years ago, of course there was concern.” Earlier, he’d said there was a sense of betrayal. But not from him. “But your choices were yours to make, even if no one entirely understood.”

“Yes,” said Shen Qingqiu, a little pointedly.

“But now we do know, a little better…” He paused to choose words, and Shen Qingqiu managed not to snap at him. “We were wrong, back then, about which choices were being made freely and which were not,” the Sect Leader said at last. “It changes very little, and yet at the same time…”

It was none of their business, except it was a little, in that Binghe had made it everyone’s business by doing things like taking the mountain hostage and almost destroying the world.

And also Yue Qingyuan was technically responsible for both of them, and had been a magnificently good sport about it, even if up until now it had been for Shen Jiu’s sake.

Shen Qingqiu thought maybe Yue Qingyuan wanted him to explain his relationship with Luo Binghe, why it was the way it was, but if so he was out of luck. Shen Qingqiu couldn’t adequately explain it to himself, though it felt a bit more straightforward now than it had, perhaps.

“You’re safe?” Yue Qingyuan asked again.

“Binghe is not a threat to me,” Shen Qingqiu repeated what he’d said when Zhang first raised the concept. “He…” Shen Qingqiu considered. “Binghe does not wish to be his worst self,” he said, finally. “He is working diligently. I trust him.”

Yue Qingyuan did seem to find this reassuring. “Very well,” he said, in the manner of someone indefinitely shelving if not entirely closing a topic. This time he refilled their cups, and Shen Qingqiu didn’t stop him, either.

That was the end of the pot, but it came out still steaming, due to clever use of heating arrays laid into the spout.

“Is Sect Leader’s mind at ease?” Shen Qingqiu asked, extremely done with difficult discussion topics but also not wanting this whole morass to extend indefinitely into the future. Let today be the end of it, please and thank you.

He got a soft hum in reply. “This shixiong seems to recall that officer addressing shidi by his birth name,” Yue Qingyuan said, meeting his eyes with a hint again of that familiar older-brotherly warmth, and if no less pain than before at least the right one, the right grief. “But I don’t seem to have memorized it.”

It was by far the least important thing Zhang had said, except for its function in informing Sect Leader that he was not Shen Jiu, so Shen Qingqiu hardly blamed him. He also thought, considering the importance of that revelation to him personally, Yue Qingyuan might be telling a gracious lie, but if so that was his business.

He glanced down into his own tea again. Looked up, and met his Sect Leader’s eyes. “Yuan,” he said firmly. “This one’s personal name was once Shen Yuan.”

Yue Qingyuan’s smile warmed, a hint of simple amusement at the shared syllables, maybe. “Yuan-shidi,” he said. “I hope I might call you that from now on, privately.”

Shen Qingqiu was, quite honestly, horrifically uncomfortable with being called by his old name. It belonged to an old life, and sent the abandoned and current selves grinding against one another unpleasantly. But it was unthinkable to deny Yue Qingyuan this. Now that it was possible for him to ask for it.

“Of course,” he said, lowering his head.

“Still Qingqiu in public, of course,” said his Sect Leader, and. Well. It wasn’t how they did things, where he came from. But he didn’t live there anymore. Courtesy name Shen Qingqiu and Shen Yuan for occasional intimate use…yes. He could work with that, actually. He could adjust.

“Of course.”

Yue Qingyuan mused, softly: “He never liked it, anyway.”

Shen Qingqiu let out a breath. “No,” he agreed. “He wouldn’t, would he.” He picked up the cup painted with bamboo in autumn colors, and drank the cooling, bitter tea.