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Chapter Text

He paces back and forth in his bedroom, unable to calm himself, unable to rest. Agitation shivers through him. Agitation and hunger.

His Shizun is dead. His Shizun has been dead for some time. His Shizun has been dead long enough for the soft parts to swell and bloat and slough away, leaving only a partial skeleton with a shred of dried skin or flesh here and there, and a ratty scraggle of brittle hair still sprouting from a mostly intact scalp.

No arms, no legs, just a skull, a neck, a spine, a ribcage, a pelvis— and inside, in the empty space inside the hollow of that ribcage, the shards of a broken sword.

He left the wreckage where he found it. Couldn’t bring himself to touch it. Couldn’t bring himself to deal with it. The Water Prison is Shen Qingqiu’s eternal tomb.

There is a sweet, warm smell stuck inside his nose. There is a sweeter taste lingering on his lips. There is heat soaked into his fingers. There is a weight rugging at his scalp in the form of a little braid. His qi roils, demonic and otherwise. Xin Mo whispers to him. Terrible things.

The urges he has tried to slake in the bodies of his wives but has left unsatisfied. He has withdrawn now, locked himself away in his rooms because he does not trust himself. He doesn’t know if it was the sword or if it was his own, dark, urges, but with the Little Palace Mistress beneath him he almost couldn’t stop himself from pulling out and pushing Xin Mo through her chest instead.

He stays away from Ning Yingying, from Liu Mingyan, from Sha Hualing, from all the wives or women he has ever felt a moment’s love towards. After the violent urges proved they wouldn’t abate he has even taken to ignoring the ones he doesn’t always even like.

This isn’t what he wanted.

Oh, he knew that, a little, the first time he ripped Shizun’s arm off and the man cried out and cried and bit his lip so blood dripped down over skin as pale as milk, but then looked up at him with those flat, contemptuous eyes. Unimpressed. Still unimpressed when he reattached it.

He knew it even more when he found the body and instead of feeling relief felt rage the likes he hadn’t since his wanderings in the Abyss.

It’s worse now, though, with the warmth, the softness, of that other Shizun lingering on his skin, the taste of him on his lips.

He had wanted to punish Shen Qingqiu, he had wanted to crawl underneath his skin, to crawl inside and eat away at all the good things in the other man until he felt as wretched and hurt as he did— and he had succeeded. He had seen it in the man’s eye when he Scattered the remains of Xuan Su on the ground before him— and yet he is still unsatisfied.

The hunger inside of him, the hunger he has felt ever since he was a child, is not sated. He thought it would be sated when he was filled with Shizun’s suffering—

Obviously he was wrong— what does it mean, though, to be wrong in this case?

He had wanted to break the man, but Shen Qingqiu had only broken at the end, and had proceeded to die as quickly as possible after, so of course there was no satisfaction to be found. Perhaps that’s all that is bothering him. Perhaps— but that other Shizun—

None of this would have happened if Shizun was capable of even a speck of human kindness. If the man wasn’t a monster, a sadist, a degenerate— Is that the issue? Was he waiting, all this time, to be pulled into Shizun’s arms and embraced and shown the slightest hint of kindness? Well, it’s happened now— except it wasn’t his Shizun. It was some other, strange, Shizun.

Too soft. Too sweet— and enamoured of that failure of a him as well. Strange and soft as well, and womanless— as if one man could make up for— he realises he has no idea how large his harem is now. At some point he lost count— A lot of women, certainly.

He must be good. Fucking him must be exquisite to justify it— and that’s a thought he doesn’t want to have. That’s a thought too much like the fevered imaginings of the young man he once was, collapsing over the cusp of puberty, and all, all, too aware that the monster that haunted his waking hours was also an almost incomparable beauty with long, slender limbs, a slender waist, large eyes, and an exquisite face that haunted his resting hours in an entirely different way.

He had never known if those dreams were his own, or if they were figments summoned by Meng Mo to torment him.

Shizun in those days was always a feast to the eyes, even if the danger of being caught staring was almost more than it was worth to look upon him. It’s been a long time since that was the case, though— at the end— at the end there wasn’t much to look at left. Limbs gone, one of those pretty eyes, the body wasted down to skin and bone, the hair dry and brittle and breaking off if it was touched.

That other Shizun, though—

It’s like getting a whiff of a favourite dish while walking the streets of a city, but knowing you’ll never be able eat it again.

He should have done things differently. Yes. Yes he should have. He should have captured Shizun and taken him as a concubine instead. True, he’s never had an unwilling woman, and even with all the things he’s done he would have said that was a limit he’d never cross, but Shizun isn’t a woman, and surely painting and powdering him and forcing him to endure his touch would have been a better way to break him, a better way to crawl underneath his skin, a way to look and touch his fill, while still hurting and humiliating and breaking— but not driving the man that final, fatal step.

He could have had his revenge. He could be still having his revenge. He could have had a satisfying revenge— and none of it has been, really, not killing Yue Qingyuan, or destroying Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, or driving Shizun to suicide— alright, maybe killing Ming Fan was an untainted pleasure— but the rest of it—

He sighs, blows out a disgusted breath, and collapses back onto the sheets of his empty bed. Somewhere in the back of his mind he feels a stirring, Meng Mo whispering what are you going to do about it then, stupid boy? But the parasite is wise enough not to go pressing the issue when he is feeling so damn unstable.

Xin Mo whispers too, urges blood and destruction, sex and death— and right now he can’t slip, can’t let his sword have its way, or else he will wreak destruction over everything that is left of this world. The price of power. Usually he wouldn’t admit it, but neither he nor the sword are ever fully in charge, the two of them careening through life like a driverless carriage going down a steep hill, never sure if the horse is pulling or fleeing the weight behind it.

The sword is capable of things even beyond what he has used it for, he knows it is, amongst those whispers is the temptation to take the blade not to the edges of reality, but to the edges of time itself. To go back. To try again. To do things differently— He is an emperor, Master of all realms, surely he should be master of his own impulses as well? Surely, if he has decided it’s all so dissatisfying, then he should use his sword for something else— something other than to go back to a time when his shizun was alive and seeing if taking satisfaction in the cold man’s unwilling flesh is enough to finally sate the hunger in him?

That other shizun still exists out there, the sweet, soft one that smells and tastes and feels so good— he could try again, he could— but that shizun doesn’t want him, and that shizun was so soft and sweet that the dark want that surges in him at the idea of taking by force twists into queasy distaste instead. He couldn’t hurt that shizun like that. That shizun has done nothing to him worthy of punishment.

His shizun, on the other hand—

Could he really do it?

Of course he could do it— but should he?

That doubt, he should cling to that doubt, but he’s already calling Xin Mo to hand, and even as he stands from his bed he slashes out and steps forward through the gash in reality the blade cuts. Best to try things out first. Just have a taste. Don’t do anything permanent. He can always change his mind later—

Wild, red eyes meet his. The other him, the younger him, lurching up from his seat behind the very same writing desk that sits pride of place in the study in a room the very mirror of this one. He doesn’t look too closely at what sits on the desk. The box— instead he strikes out— not to kill, no, just to knock out so he can keep the other out of the way while he sees if this altered course is worth it.

He has the element of surprise. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy— or maybe it’s the hunger in him, the hunger this younger him can’t be feeling the way he does. This younger him still has hope that hunger can be satiated. This younger him doesn’t have the scent and taste and heat of a version of shizun lingering in every sense.

When the younger him is unconscious, power and strength bound, and hidden away out of sight in one of his many, many, beautifully worked wardrobes, he finally approaches the box. The younger him left the lid off. The younger him was looking— he can remember it, glancing down at the contents gives him a strange double vision.

There, in a bed of red silk, plastered all over with preserving talismans he can recall removing when he finally sent the thing off to its final destination, are a pare of jade pale legs, bent at the knee to fold them up so they’d fit. Their tops are red-raw flesh, the joints exposed where he ripped them from their sockets. They don’t look dead though, they don’t look like meat, the talismans keeping them exactly as fresh as they were when they were still attached.

It was a game he played many times before this time. Rip something off, preserve it while he taunted and tortured shizun, then try and make the man beg for him to reattach it before getting frustrated when the man wouldn’t, but doing so anyway in the hope next time Shen Qingqiu would be something different. Something touchable.

He reaches out before he realises he’s going to, laying a hand on silky, still warm, skin. Over the course of his captivity shizun had lost weight, a lot of weight, and it wasn’t like the man has an excess of flesh to begin with, so the thigh beneath his palm is bony and sparse, with none of the slight fleshiness so delightful about that other shizun’s body— A quick gesture and the lid slams shut.

He picks up the box and heads out, ignoring wives and concubines and servants as he passes by. It’s almost like they’re not real. They seem like faded fragments instead of people. Even Ning Yingying, even Mingyan— the closest he has to an empress— he has no interest in lingering, talking, touching, fucking. He is set on his purpose, and once everyone realises where he’s headed they all seem to melt away like the figments it feels they are.

Down beneath the palace he goes, rehearsing in his head the entire time what he’ll say. Let me have what I want, and I won’t send these to Yue Qingyuan. Let me have what I want, and I won’t lure him to his death. Let me have what I want, and I won’t scatter the shards of Xuan Su on the ground before you. Let me have what I want. Let me have you.

Chapter Text

The pain is beyond pain. It’s beyond comprehension. He feels sluggish, and stupid, and cold, so very, very cold, and he doesn’t have the energy to move anymore, and when— if— the beast— not so little anymore— comes back he’s not sure he even has the strength for defiance.

He hangs from the cold metal rings that dig into his sparse flesh, cut into it, and bruise his bones, and wonders how he’s still alive. He doesn’t want to be. She shouldn’t be, with his cultivation locked away with immortal binding cables built into his chains his body should have given out long ago.

The beast’s blood must be keeping him going. Another thing to despise the demon for.

He tries not to think. He tries not to be aware of his state. Human waste and rotten blood and infected wounds— he knows that smell. What he must smell of. A smell from his childhood. A smell from the gutter. He stinks like a dying beggar, he knows it, even if he can’t smell it anymore, can’t smell anything, that sense burnt out by caustic water vapour.

It barely bothers him anymore. It bothered him at the start. It bothered him right up until the creature ripped off the first limb. It doesn’t matter that the creature reattached it later, because it happened again, and again, and again—

The pain is beyond pain.

There can be no recovery from this. This is the end of him. It must be.

Everything hurts, but he can’t allow himself to acknowledge that he has a body lower than his aching ribcage. It’s been a long time, days now, since his legs— and this is the longest the creature has gone without reattaching something he removed. He doesn’t like the implication. He hopes he dies soon. Surely his heart must give out in response to this much pain—

But his heart survived that visit from Qi-ge, full— as always— of those passive-aggressive accusations, spoken and unspoken. Whatever there was, once, between them died the day Liu Qingge did. If not died— then took its mortal wound. He just wishes he could remember what happened— If he killed the man, it was in the heat of the moment, it had to have been. Whatever he might have said he truly never wished Liu Qingge dead— but of course Qi-ge believes him so corrupted and dishonourable and monstrous he’d even slay his martial brother the moment the man was too weak to defend himself— and if his heart can survive Qi-ge thinking of him like that it can survive the agony of having his legs ripped off.

At first he doesn’t even realise he’s no longer alone. He’s been alone for so long now it’s a surprise, a disruption to his attempts to exist outside of his physical self. He tries to lift his hanging head to sneer at the beast— it has to be the beast— only five ever visit him, and if it was the Little Palace Mistress or Liu Qingge’s sister he’d be biting down screams right now as he was whipped or otherwise tormented, if it was Qiu Haitang she’d be telling him how worthless and ungrateful he is, and if it was Ning Yingying he would be able to hear her weeping. The only thing she ever does is stand and look at him and cry, never even speaking. The only one who comes here and says nothing at the start is Luo Binghe. He assumes because the creature is taking pleasure in gazing at the wreckage he’s become.

The creature has the nerve to clear his throat, to demand his attention. He almost wants to hiss if you want to be looked at so much maybe you should make sure your captives have the strength to lift their own head— but what’s the point? It’s not like doing so will make his captor feed him, or give him water, or let him properly rest and not just hang here. Not that he thinks he could rest. The pain is such he can only barely manage to drift into a light doze every now and then, before it wakes him to the screams he traps in his throat. Anyway, even if he wanted to speak he’s not sure he could. His tongue feels thick and uncooperative after being ripped out and reattached half a dozen times one afternoon when he dared to disagree with the beast’s interpretation of events.

There are footsteps then, the creature coming closer, and it’s all he can do to fight down the instinctive flinch. He won’t let the beast see his weaknesses. Men like that take pleasure in the fear they instil. He’s known men like that his entire life. Luo Binghe is nothing new, nothing special, Heavenly Demon or mere mortal, emperor or beggar, that kind of man is all the same.

A box is placed on the ground in front of him. It’s large, beautifully made, and obviously constructed out of high-quality wood. He feels confused, uncertain— whatever this is, can’t be good. It’s never good. In all likelihood this is some new instrument of torture being presented to him.

‘Does shizun know what this lowly disciple has placed inside this box?’ the creature asks in that sugar-mouthed tone, that play-pretend of goodness and obedience, that mockery of what their relationship would have been if the creature wasn’t a half demon and he was a blind, soft-hearted fool.

He doesn’t answer. He’s in no mood to humour the creature.

A noise of irritation and the demon kicks the box open, scuffing its immaculate surface.

Ah— reality lurches around him. For a moment nausea rises, but his stomach is long empty, and even if bile burns the back of his throat he swallows it down. He can’t let the creature see how much this is affecting him.

It’s grotesque.

Skinny, paper pale, twisted forms, capped with shredded red flesh, muscles, veins, no hint of yellow fat, his body starved down to an absence of it, and there, there— the rounded ends of his femurs. His femurs. His legs.

‘Do you want me to reattach them?’ the beast asks, trying too hard to sound conversational. ‘I’ve kept them nice and fresh for you.’

His first attempt to speak yields nothing but a croak. His mouth is dry, lips cracked to the point he feels a trickle of blood drip down his chin from just moving them, and things inside his mouth hurt. The beast broke a few teeth when ripping out his tongue that time, but he tries not to think about that, or be aware of them past the lightning streaks of pain they sometimes trigger. He swallows, spit thick, choking, and tries again. ‘Do you think I’m a fool, beast?’ The creature wants something from him, it’s obvious. It’s probably just to hear him beg— only for the demon not to oblige. Men like that enjoy such games.

Beg me not to hit you. Beg me not to hurt you. Beg me not to fuck you.

Hah. It’s all old. Luo Binghe has brought nothing new to the table of his suffering.

There is a pause, and for a moment he wishes he had the strength to look up, to glance into the beast’s face— but that moment passes. What does it matter?

Eventually the creature speaks again, ‘I was going to make you write a blood letter to Yue-Zhengmen. You and I both know I can hurt you enough to make you comply. I was going to send them to him as well, to prove how serious I am—’ It’s so conversational, as if he’s discussing the weather and not something cruel and barbaric.

‘—You mean to set a trap for him?’ he manages after an agonising moment of trying to get his mouth to work. ‘He won’t care. He’s washed his hands of me. He is not a fool; he won’t come for me.’ He had thought that the beast would be satisfied with Ming Fan’s death and his suffering and would leave the sect alone. Surely it was obvious how little any of them cared for him, how eager they were to condemn him? They are no friends of his. No allies. His own loyalty to them is born out of his own masochistic stupidity, that’s all.

He tries not to think of poor Ming Fan. The boy didn’t deserve that death. He was a good boy— It was not his head disciple’s fault that in the end he had poisoned Qing Jing peak the same as he has poisoned everything else he has ever touched. He never should have let Ming Fan involve himself in dealing with the little demon.

The creature laughs, ‘You say Yue-Zhengmen is not a fool, but hasn’t he always proved he is with the way he has sheltered you and enabled your misdeeds? Everyone knows he is fond of you. A little too fond— I have heard it said. I used to think it must be some kind of blackmail— but perhaps it was something baser— you really were rather lovely to look at, back then.’

He would spit blood at the beast’s insinuation— if it felt like he had any to spare. ‘Don’t be disgusting.’ Qi-ge is many things, but not that kind of monster. He knows what he is and the kinds of men he attracts. He in of himself is not desirable, there is just something about him which lures sadists. Qi-ge has never been a sadist. He would not— what he feels— the things he could never bear to face in the life before this one chained in a dungeon— all of it, the messiness of it, the longing and fear and disgust— If Qi-ge was a sadist he’d feel none of it.

‘He will come for you—’

‘I won’t write anything for you!’ he snaps, words hissed out, interrupting the beast even though he knows doing so will draw its ire.

There is a pause, a tiny one, the beast gathering his thoughts, adapting, and pretending not to have to, ‘He’ll come anyway, if I send him the contents of the box. I’ll take the preserving talismans off first, so your legs will start to rot and not even Mu Qingfang will be able to reattach them— not that he’d get a chance to, because Yue-Zhengmen will come for you and die in a rain of poisoned arrows, and when he is gone I will burn Cang Qiong Mountain Peak Sect to the ground.’

 The beast means it too, he can hear it in the creature’s voice. It’s like it’s already happened. Like the demon is looking back on some fond memory—

‘What do you want from me?’ he bites out. There must be something. The mention of reattaching his legs— The creature is trying to manipulate him in some way, he just can’t understand what the end goal is.

A little humming sound. Amused. Pleased. He is letting himself fall into the creature’s trap, isn’t he? Only what choice does he have? ‘So shizun is human after all,’ the beast muses, but then the creature’s tone shifts, darkens, unstable as the demon has been ever since he returned from the Abyss. ‘It’s far, far too later for what I want. I can’t have what I want—’ he can hear the other coming closer.

He braces himself, prepares for the pain— A hand moves into his field of view, and he can’t quite stop himself from shying away as it cups his face, strokes down his cheek. Broken teeth send lighting strikes of pain across his face at the touch. Part of him wants to sob, wants to cry out, wants it all to stop— but showing any sign of how much he hurts will just make the hurt worse.

Thankfully the beast stops touching him, moves back a step. ‘What could shizun possibly offer this lowly disciple to make him reconsider his plans?’

There, that must be the trap. The beast wants him to beg, to abase and humiliate himself, to offer anything he has left— and whatever he offers will be rejected, won’t it? It’s all about making him see he doesn’t have the power to change anything. It’s all about making him helpless— as if he doesn’t already know he is.

He should ignore it. He should not engage— but the problem is that Luo Binghe has found his one true weakness. He would be foolish to pretend to himself otherwise, even if he once would have. He is far too broken down now for pride. He would gladly die to preserve Qi-ge— Worse, he would gladly beg and crawl to save the man. His mind races, desperately trying to work out whether he has anything at all he can offer the beast to have him show mercy on the only man he has ever—

Obviously the creature doesn’t want to fuck him, because the demon would have by now, if he did. There is no way he could have stopped the beast. He’s often wondered why his ex-disciple never tried— whether or not Luo Binghe is remotely attracted to him— and he would guess the beast is not— assaulting him in that way would have caused pain and humiliation, which the other has proved he is very interested in causing him. Honestly he’s found it all a little— amusing is not the right word, but some relative of the emotion— because had the demon forced himself on him he very likely would have ended up crying and begging and lowering himself in all the ways it’s become clear Luo Binghe craves.

The problem is that the only thing he can think of is his body. He doesn’t have anything else. It’s all been taken from him— Once he was one of the most prestigious cultivators alive and now— and it’s hardly as if he can offer to teach the monster anything now, not when Luo Binghe now seems to be mainly relying on a demonic cultivation far advanced to anything Wu Yanzi ever taught him—

Oh. Oh no. No, there is something he can offer, isn’t there? Something rare and unique and that he’s not sure the boy could get from any other source. Something he had sworn to himself he would never give to anyone ever again.

The thought is enough to make him gather what strength he has to lift his head, just a little, and glance for a second at the beast, before his head drops once more.

Still the same. The issues obvious and glaring for anyone to see— though so often people seem to not be able to spot what he can.

The beast is either a pure of primarily Yang cultivator— the same, but stronger, than Wu Yanzi. Yang but out of balance within himself, made so very much worse by the raging combination of Yang and demonic qi coming from that monstrous sword.

Pure or primarily Yang cultivators like Luo Binghe or Wu Yanzi can have a steady, solid foundation— like Liu Qingge once had— the same with pure or primarily Yin cultivators like him— the problem for all of them is their faulty beginnings, not their nature. Well— the beast’s problems might not be that, as by the time he fell into the Endless Abyss his foundation had been righted and he was progressing steadily to become one of the best of his generation. No. The beast’s main problem seems to be that sword.

From the first moment he saw Luo Binghe returned from the Abyss he could tell the beast had damaged his cultivation somehow, and when he saw the sword he could tell what had happened, as well as getting a good impression of how it must be affecting the creature. It’s not necessarily a weakness of the boy himself, claiming Xin Mo would have naturally unbalanced any cultivator— with possibly the exception of a Pure Yin cultivator with a perfect foundation and impeccable cultivation, whose energies could have balanced it out.

A young, primarily Yang cultivator with a spotty cultivation history, who must have been— distressed when he claimed it— There was no change of a healthy bond with the thing. The way things are it’s more parasite than trusted companion, feeding on the creature’s darkness and unbalancing his cultivation further.

There is a good chance he could untangle things. There is a good chance he could balance out both beast and sword, as well as smooth their connection into something healthier. He has known that from the first moment he became aware of the problem. Known it and had no intention of doing anything about it, because he had no reason to care for the traitorous demon brat, and no desire to abase himself in the way that would be required.

Even if Luo Binghe had not betrayed them all at the immortal Alliance Conference, leading to the deaths of so many fellow disciples, even if their relationship had been what it could have been, teacher and promising disciple, he could not have been able to force himself to offer that service. He could not have forced himself to offer that service to anyone— except, perhaps, perhaps— perhaps he could have, to Qi-ge, but of course Qi-ge never would have needed it, or wanted such a thing from him even if it was required—  

Being used as a human cauldron is not a thing any respectable cultivator would be proud of. Being used as a human cauldron is not a thing any respectable cultivator would admit to. Being used as a human cauldron tends to be profoundly damaging to its victims’ cultivation, so much so that no respectable cultivator would ever imagine someone with that experience in their past could be one of their fellows. Being used as a human cauldron is not a thing every person it is done to even survives. Having been used as a human cauldron has been a source of shame for him ever since he slew Wu Yanzi.

Whatever the man might have said later on he is sure that all Wu Yanzi intended was to use him up and burn him out in the man’s pursuit to fix his own damaged cultivation. It’s just that there is something about him, some oddity, that means that not only can he survive being used as a human cauldron, but he even has some control over the flow of the other’s qi through his meridians, and the conscious ability to correct, to untangle, to heal, to improve, to strengthen beyond the usual directionless plundering of power usually involved in the process. It’s instinctual. Several times he had wanted to cause further damage, to injure Wu Yanzi’s cultivation, but in the moment he couldn’t make himself do it. In the moment he cannot stop himself becoming entirely preoccupied in helping the cultivation of the man using him.

It’s more like dual cultivation, he suspects, than what usually happens with a human cauldron— not that he knows, he’s never dual cultivated with anyone, nor does he want to. Or at least he thinks he doesn’t want to. But at the same time it’s not dual cultivation, because there is nothing two sided to it, nothing equal. He gets no benefit from it. All he’s left with is depleted qi reserves, ravaged meridians, and further damaged cultivation. Wu Yanzi, on the other hand, progressed in leaps and bounds, and was very near forming a proper golden core when that fateful encounter with Qi-ge happened.

Of course it might not work with Luo Binghe. It might have been some incidental thing in the combination of Wu Yanzi’s qi and his own— but he cannot risk thinking like that. He has to believe he has something he can offer to try and save Qi-ge.

A bitter smile flicks across his aching lips, cracking them again to let free a little more blood. ‘I can fix your relationship with your sword for you, that’s what I can offer— as long as you promise never to harm Yue Qingyuan.’ He would ask for mercy for Cang Qiong as well, but that may be pushing things too far, and if he can only have one he would rather the thing he cares most for in this world.

For a long, long moment the beast says nothing, and when he does speak, he sounds confused, as if he expected something different. ‘What do you mean?’ then a little laugh, ‘Are you offering to feed my sword, shizun? Xin Mo needs plenty of yin qi— I’m not sure you could provide.’

He doesn’t correct the beast’s misapprehension. It’s not like the creature needs to know he’s a pure yin cultivator. ‘I am offering—’ his confidence fails him for a moment, which almost makes him cringe. He should not let this creature see even a moment of weakness— ‘I am offering a service. I am offering a technique of nonstandard cultivation. I am offering to help you and your sword find balance with each other.’

‘Offering, offering— what exactly are you offering, shizun?’ it’s so mocking. He has always hated being mocked. Everything he has ever done to make someone stop has blown up in his face.

He sighs, wincing at the ache and burn in his lungs. ‘I am offering, little beast, something very like one-sided dual cultivation. You will get all the benefits. I will get nothing.’

‘Dual cultivation—’ mockery. More mockery. ‘Do you want to dual cultivate with me, shizun?’

‘Of course not!’ he snaps, anger giving him the strength to manage to raise his head to glare at the beast for a moment, seeing a blear of black and glowing red eyes. ‘You wanted to know what I could offer you to spare Qi— Yue-Zhengmen. This is all I have. The only thing I can think of!’

‘And you somehow think fucking your scrawny, legless ass is enough of an incentive to make me reconsider my vengeance?’ the beast laughs.

‘I think no such thing!’ he snarls, feeling the burn of humiliation at the thought. No. Of course not. He in of himself has nothing to offer, but— He forces himself to take a breath, to continue more calmly. ‘You are an emperor, Luo Binghe, you are the most powerful man alive. Surely you can see the risks to your power if you do not gain mastery of your sword?’

‘What makes you think I cannot do it without your help? I simply haven’t had the time to focus on the task, too much conquering to do, you see.’

Flatter him. Men like that like to be flattered. ‘I am not saying you cannot. I am simply offering my services to make the process easier and faster, that is all—’

‘And if I take you up on your offer— what makes you think it’ll be enough to spare Yue-Zhengmen’s life?’

‘He is not at fault for my actions!’ he snaps— not that he always feels at fault for everything the beast accuses him of, for everything the cultivation world believes him guilty of, but whatever the truth is Qi-ge is innocent.

‘Anyone who ever sheltered you, anyone who ever protected you, has a share of the guilt,’ the beast hisses— but then stops, and for a moment there is a silence he cannot interpret. ‘Alright, shizun. We will try your one-sided dual cultivation— and if it impresses me, if it does what you have said it will, then this disciple will spare Yue-Zhengmen and Cang Qiong Mountain Sect from their deserved share of my vengeance— but if not—’ the beast doesn’t need to elaborate. He can imagine well enough.

He wants to beg for assurances, he wants to make the beast swear on everything he holds dear, he wants to use cultivation to bind the man to the promise— but he can’t even bring the words to his lips. If the demon takes them as a challenge and a spur to deliberately be contrary— The beast is coming closer. A squeak escapes him before he bites it back.

No. Not like this. Even if Luo Binge is a sadist, surely the muck and filth would stop him from— He needs rest, he needs to be unbound, he needs at least some strength for this to work— ‘I will need access to my cultivation!’ he yelps.

A hum, a purring, contemplative noise. The beast is reaching down, into the box, ‘I’d better put these back first,’ the creature says, ‘And get you cleaned up. I’m not sure I fancy one-sided dual cultivating with something that looks and smells like a particularly fetid corpse.’

The impulse to thank the beast rises, but he bites it down, because what has he really got to be thankful for in this situation? Good thing, too because the next moment the creature is shoving one of his legs back into place, and when a scream breaks loose without his permission a wrist is shoved into his open mouth, slashed open and drooling blood, and as he chokes and splutters and screams the darkness he is surrounded with seems to swell until it swallows his consciousness.

Chapter Text

He wakes and does not know where he is. His heart skips a beat. He freezes, remains very, very still, as he tries to work out what horror awaits him now.

Last he remembers— Oh, he does not want to remember what he last remembers. What he last remembers is making an obscene offering to the beast in exchange for Qi-ge’s life, the beast accepting and then forcefully reattaching one of his legs. He must have fainted from the pain. Not surprising.

Instead of hanging in mid-air, suspended from that painful contraption, he is lying down somewhere soft. Cautiously, afraid of what he’ll see, he risks opening his eyes. The elaborately carved canopy of a beautifully made bed greets him. He blinks. What?

Very carefully he takes stock of his body. Things ache in a dull kind of way, but he is in less pain than he has been in since the day he was first brought to the Water Prison. His hips hurt the worst, and he is glad to be lying on his back, because he doesn’t know he could tolerate lying on either of them, but even then the pain in them is nothing compared to what it was last he remembers. His mouth no longer hurts, and a quick reconnoitre with his tongue tells him that his broken teeth seem to have been somehow fixed. Tentatively he wriggles the toes of his left foot, then his right— he has feet. A glance down his body. He has legs.

He has legs clad in the bottom half of a set of gauzy, red silk robes. That’s all he’s wearing. A set of translucent red silk robes. He can see through them. He can see every detail of his body through them.

Panic has him lurching upright, wincing at the ringing in his head even as he grabs for the covers and tries to cocoon himself in them, which is when he notices the demon kneeling on the floor staring at him. The urge to throw something at her is almost overwhelming— she must have seen his naked body through the robes— but he doesn’t have anything to throw, and as he stares back at her he soon realises she must be a servant, so guilt rises to replace the urge to do violence.

She doesn’t look like one of the beast’s wives or concubines. She is dressed neatly, in well-made but plain clothes, not bejewelled and draped in embroidered silks, and her face— She is not hideous, but she is very, very plain, not helped by the curly tusks erupting from between her lips, or the collection of scraggly looking short horns awkwardly bracketing her face. She looks to be a mix of various demon types to him, of which he can detect at first glance some kind of pig demon, some kind of sheep or goat demon, and something scaly. Knowing Luo Binghe’s tendencies he would bet it is only her lack of beauty that has preserved her from the man’s attentions.

One thing he does have to give them demon, instead of simply pestering and assaulting women and abandoning them, he has a reputation for inviting every woman he’s bedded into his harem— excessive and grotesque as it may be.

‘You are awake,’ she says, her voice delicate and oddly beautiful, almost songlike— and some kind of bird demon, possibly— ‘This one will inform the emperor.’ With that she gets to her feet without waiting for him to reply and walks over to the wall, which parts and lets her out, before closing behind her and leaving no sign of any opening.

The walls are red too. There is no furniture in the room aside from the bed. No door. No windows. The only light is coming from talismans stuck high on the walls, mimicking the light given off by oil lamps.

He sits there, trying not to fret. He is clean, he realises, which means someone has cleaned him— he reaches up and risks touching his hair— clean too, and oiled, but still feeling straw-like and brittle. He risks opening the cocoon of covers enough to peer down at his body— thin, still, all jutting bones and sparse flesh. So, he has been healed, washed, sort-of dressed, and brought into this room, but nothing else has been done for him, and he’d guess not much time has passed.

It all feels intrusive and violating— but then, with what he has promised Luo Binghe— his life is about to get more intrusive and violating, isn’t it?

If the beast still wants what he offered he will have to—

Now, time passed between the threats and his fear and waking up clean with his unconscious body having been interfered with, he is not sure he can do it. To start with he’s not sure he has the strength to do it. The Immortal Binding Cables are gone, and he can feel— something like his cultivation— but his qi reserves are terribly weak, his meridians feel ravaged even worse than usual, and he suspects it won’t take much to push him over into a qi deviation. Hah, that would serve the beast right. He can imagine the demon’s face if he qi deviates when the creature sticks his cock into—

He shudders, wincing away from the thought.

Can he do it? Forgetting his concerns about his weakness and damaged cultivation, will he be able to cope with what is required of him to go through with this?

The truth is that he doesn’t know. It has been so long— so long and he swore to himself never again. No man was ever going to touch him like that again.

He survived it though, in the past. He survived Qiu Jianluo. He survived Wu Yanzi— it’ll be just the same. Luo Binghe no more desires him than either of those men did. For Qiu Jianluo he was an outlet for sadism and a replacement for the sister the other was not yet corrupted enough to touch. For Wu Yanzi he was nothing but a means to assist the man’s cultivation— it is the same with Luo Binghe.

He just has to be a void. This just has to be a thing happening to his body, not a thing happening to him.

For now the best thing he can do is meditate. He needs to gather himself, as well as to gather whatever strength he can, for what will probably follow. It is hard, almost impossible— he has used meditation techniques to survive his time and tortures in the Water Prison, but somehow it was easier to slip into the right frame of mind while hanging suspended in agony. Near naked and clean and in this very big bed in this little room— his mind won’t settle. He is too aware of his own body.

It'll hurt— of course it’ll hurt, it’s always hurt— but hopefully Luo Binghe will be more like Wu Yanzi than Qiu Jianluo. The hurt was more perfunctory with him, less the purpose. He tries to remind himself that even with Qiu Jianluo at his worst the pain he experienced from that act was nothing compared to the pain Luo Binghe has caused with his tortures. It will be fine. He has survived worse. He just needs not to panic and cry and beg for mercy. He will not be getting any mercy, and the last thing he wants is for the beast to see his very real fear. The fear at the heart of him.

If it works— what will happen then? Presuming the demon keeps his word and leaves Qi-ge and the sect alone— What will happen to him? Will he be relegated back to the Water Prison and its torments, or will Luo Binghe simply kill him? It would be better for the beast to kill him— Of course the beast might want his services again. Wu Yanzi’s cultivation was hardly fixed after one round, and even when it was, in essence, the man kept getting stronger and stronger every time after. Will the beast end up keeping him here, not as concubine, not as a bed toy, but as some kind of cultivation aid? It could be worse, he supposes— as long as he can keep his detachment from his body, as long as it can be like it was with Wu Yanzi, and not like it was with Qiu Jianluo— except he cannot help but think he’d rather be dead.

He should have self-detonated when the beast emerged from Huan Hua Palace and started throwing around accusations— or at least, the moment he looked at his martial brothers and sisters and saw belief, saw the fact they were not going to say anything, not going to act to save him— then he should have self-detonated.

He could have fled, he could have fought, but in the wake of the accusations, in the wake of seeing that look on Qi-ge’s face, that belief that he really is as rotten as the beast accused him of being— something inside of him that had somehow kept clinging on for all those miserable years had finally broken. That something is still broken. He cannot make himself want to live. He cannot imagine stepping back into his old life even were the beast to release him after this. He wants to die— it’s just that for whatever reason the relief of death is being denied him.

Such pleasant thoughts to be dwelling on at the moment the wall splits open again and the beast steps inside, sword strapped to his hip. Incongruously the creature is carrying a tray, a pleasant, savoury scent wafting into the air alongside the smell of tea.

He watches, wary, as the beast approaches. Behind the man the wall seals up again, leaving him trapped with his fate.

The tray is presented to him with a flourish, ‘This disciple has prepared breakfast for shizun.’

Congee, he sees, white and delicate and topped with green onions. A pot of tea as well, smelling light and delicate and properly brewed. His stomach cramps at the sight. If there is gravel in that bowl it is well hidden, if the tea is brewed with warmed piss he can’t smell it. He glances from the food up to the man, reminding himself to be diplomatic, to be careful, to try not to anger, ‘It has been a very long time since I have eaten food. While I thank you for your consideration, this is too much for me right now. I will be sick if I eat so much.’ His stomach will cramp and he will be wracked with hot and cold chills— all in all not a state he wants to be in while playing human cauldron for the beast.

Something complicated crosses the beast’s face, and he sees the man’s hands shake a little, rattling the tray. ‘A mouthful or two— surely shizun can manage a mouthful or two of the congee this disciple was so generous as to make for him?’

It’s not a request. It’s clearly not a request.

If he was still strung up in the Water Prison he would take pleasure in being contrary— but he is not, and Qi-ge’s life is on the line, and now he is here, dressed like this, with all the terrible things Luo Binghe somehow never thought to inflict on him hanging in the air

 ‘A mouthful or two,’ he concedes, waiting for the tray to be played on the bed before him so he can reach for the spoon, only the moment the beast lets go of the tray the man snatches the thing up instead, scooping up a little congee and lifting it towards his face expectantly.

Is he really expected to submit to being fed? Obviously the answer is yes.

The beast looms over him, the spoon hovering just in front of his lips. Reluctantly he opens his mouth, expecting the congee to be poisoned, or full of crushed glass, or made with acid, or for the creature to ram the spoon deep into the soft parts of his throat to do damage, but Luo Binghe remains gentle, and the congee, when it is delicately deposited on his tongue, tastes amazing.

For a moment he doesn’t even want to swallow, closing his mouth around this first precious morsel, and letting the savoury taste soak into every corner of the mouth that has tasted nothing sweeter than demon’s blood in so, so long. ‘Is it good, shizun?’ the beast asks, some dark satisfaction glowing in red eyes. He nods as he swallows, giving the beast what he wants, and opens his mouth readily for the next spoonful.

All in all he accepts three whole spoonfuls from the beast, before raising a hand to stop the man when he attempts a forth. A frown breaks over that too handsome face. ‘Shizun is serious about rejecting the breakfast this disciple made for him.’

He can sense that dark energy in the air, the way a man like Luo Binghe feels when he’s on the cusp of some sudden and unexpected violence. He doesn’t want to have to deal with it right now. He has never liked playing sweet, pretending at being soft and seductive, a gentle creature whose sharp edges have all been ground away— and usually the very thought that someone might want that from him is enough to make him act the opposite— but right now he doesn’t feel he has a choice.

‘The congee is delicious,’ he says, and watches that frown disappear, a look of surprised wonder taking its place. With that expression on his face the beast looks little more than a boy— He’s reminded of what it was like at the end, before the Immortal Alliance Conference, when he had been foolish and complacent and almost fond of the boy— before his earlier fears had been proved true, and whatever stupid, useless emotion he had been developing for the boy had reverted back to that early fear and disgust. ‘I was not lying when I said I would be sick if I ate too much,’ he adds, dragging his mind back to the issue at hand. ‘I will have some more later, if you want me to. I just cannot manage it right now.’

‘Does shizun believe this disciple would deprive him of a freshly cooked meal later?’ the beast asks.

It feels like a trap. Considering it has been weeks, he thinks, since anything resembling food was offered to him— and he does not want to think of the things he has been made to drink— he doubts the beast wants an honest answer. Still doing his best to be sweet he replies, ‘I will be grateful for any proper meal you provide for me.’

It seems to be an acceptable answer, because something like a smile crosses the beast’s face. ‘This disciple will be glad to cook for shizun again later— Now, how about some tea?’

He glances at the pot and then the man and tells himself that if it’s bitter and overstewed and disgusting he will simply smile and compliment it. He has been made very well aware how much the beast did not appreciate having tea poured over his head in the past. How sensitive. How weak. Luo Binghe would not have lasted a month on the Qing Jing of his shizun’s day. How many times did he have tea poured over his own head? How many times did shizun take the skin off his back with the discipline whip? He may have no soft, affectionate feelings towards the man, but he is wise enough to be grateful for the opportunity to have escaped his past and made something of himself— until it all fell to nothingness.

‘Of course,’ he replies, watching as the beast pours him a cup. The liquid is light in colour, the scent delicate. He takes the cup from the beast and brings it to his lips— Ah— Well, finally the beast has learnt.

‘How does shizun find the tea?’ Is the beast looking for praise, criticism, or for an excuse to hurt him?

He takes another sip, unable to fully contain the petty urge to make the beast wait— ‘Very good,’ is what he says finally. Again that nets him a smile. The beast seems far too delighted in his praise. He doesn’t understand it.

Feeling uneasy he focuses his attention on drinking the tea. It is a small cup, delicate porcelain of the fine quality even the Qiu household would not even dream of owning. He is not sure he will be able to manage it all— but the heat soaks into cramping stomach and seems to help a little.

How much longer will this farce go on? How much longer before they must get down to business?

He hadn’t let himself think too closely about the particulars, but now it occurs to him— He glances up at the beast again, finds the creature watching him in fascination. He fights back a shudder, the urge to raise his shoulders and duck his head. ‘If—’ he begins, but his voice fails him. It takes him a moment to raise the courage to try again, and then he can’t bring himself to meet the demon’s eyes as he chokes out, ‘If you will need to bring a woman in here to help you prepare beforehand I—’ he swallows, prays to nothing, begs the universe that Luo Binghe really is more Wu Yanzi than Qiu Jianluo, ‘I would prefer you choose one I do not know.’ He does not think he could bear it were the beast to choose Ning Yingying.

For him, on a personal level, he thinks the worst accusation was the one levelled at him by her. That had fractured anything left of him. He still cringes away from the memory of her saying that he had been inappropriate with her, that he had lusted after her, that he had made her feel uncomfortable and unsafe— In short, that he had been to her a milder version of what Qiu Jianluo had once been to him.

It had tainted every good memory of his life at Qing Jing Peak. It had tainted every speck of pride he felt in himself, few though they were.

Ning Yingying was an orphan, with only a devoted aunt left in this world, but nowhere safe to live because her aunt’s husband would only take her in if he could take her as a concubine the moment he considered her old enough. After he had been hired to dispel the wrathful ghost of one of the awful man’s concubines from the household the aunt had begged him to take the girl with him, to keep her safe from the woman’s husband, which he had, and had soon grown fond of her. She was like a daughter to him— it sickens him to think she may have ever felt unsafe with him. That she was ever made aware of her body and its potential to bring another pleasure and her suffering by him. By anything he did.

For a while, when he was first brought to the Water Prison, he would dwell on it, would think back, try to work out what he did to hurt her like that. He still isn’t sure. He must have been too comfortable with her, too casual, too intimate— but it was never from lust, never from desire, only ever because he saw his role in her life as parent and not— not something like that.

No matter what has been said about him, no matter the rumours, has never desired a woman.

In all reality he is probably a cutsleeve. Would be, if he could bear the thought of a man touching him in that way. His few flickers of desire have always been awoken by men— though they have shortly after turned to nausea and fear at the thought he could want to be hurt in that way ever again— and yet here he is, having offered himself up to such treatment once more.

‘Why would I need a woman?’ the beast asks, looking honestly confused.

He carefully places the empty cup back on the tray, fidgeting for a moment, before forcing himself to answer, the words coming out sounding more hesitant and stilted than he wants them to. ‘What I offered you— the— the one-sided dual cultivation— it— it will only be possible if you are— are—’ he swallows, mouth feeling dry, the words not wanting to escape, ‘—If you are erect.’

Please be more like Wu Yanzi than Qiu Jianluo. Neither of the men were attracted to him, he was just what he could offer them. Wu Yanzi sometimes became aroused in a fight, or after a particularly nasty bit of violence, but the man took no particular sexual pleasure in hurting him. Oh, the man did hurt him, did beat him, did whip him, did cut him, did practice all manor of unsavoury demonic arts on him— but unlike Qiu Jianluo doing so didn’t arouse Wu Yanzi and turn the impulse to violence and cruelty sexual.

Sometimes he was made into a cauldron in the aftermath of a battle, but more often than not Wu Yanzi would drag him off to a brothel, where the man would hire a woman for a while, long enough for her to get the man worked up enough that he could perform. The best times, the kindest times, he was allowed to rest against the woman while Wu Yanzi made use of him. It was some sweetness, some comfort— as were the times when the man was done and he was left in the room in the brothel, a woman or girl hired to attend and take care of him when he was too weak to even move for days after, while his so-called master went off to enjoy himself elsewhere in the building.

The beast lets out a laugh, bitter and mocking. He draws back, can’t help himself, offended. ‘Oh, shizun—’ the creature says, ‘Trust that this disciple will have no trouble in that department.’

Perhaps that’s true. The creature seems quite capable of performing sexually in all sorts of undesirable situations. Still, in case what the man means is that he intends to arouse himself by torturing him— ‘If I am in too much pain, I will not be able to concentrate adequately to do what I need to do.’

‘Does shizun believe this disciple is incapable of pleasing his wives and concubines?’ the man smirks at him, something dark and strange and indecipherable in the man’s face. ‘I am no novice in the bedroom. I know what I’m doing.’

There are insinuations there he refuses to humour. It’s a mind game, that’s all. Of course the beast has no intention to treat him like one of the man’s many women, no more than he intends to act like one. Pleasure has never been any part of his experiences in this matter, and he hardly expects it, or wants it, now.

When he doesn’t answer the beast lets out a tiny laugh, then takes the tray from the bed and places it on the floor— Oh, is it going to happen now? He’s not ready. He’s not ready—

The beast comes closer, and it’s all he can do not to flinch, and— and— A hand, large and warm, cups the side of his face, tilts it up, and—

Lips. A mouth.

He’s never been kissed before—

He freezes, eyes wide, staring at the beast’s handsome face so close to his own as the man continues to press those lips to his own.

Unable to stop himself he sucks in a gasp of air, and as he does he feels a tongue flick against his open lips. No. No. Absolutely not.

All sense, all restraint, escapes him and he’s pushing the beast away before he can stop himself, hands coming up to cover his mouth. There has been some kind of misunderstanding. There has been some kind of misunderstanding. There has been some kind of—

The beast is staring at him, looking startled and young, but the edge of offence is starting to creep in— No. No. He does not want to be beaten for refusing to give master what he— What master?  This is just Luo Binghe. A monster but not his owner.

Forcing his hands away from his mouth he speaks, tone calm and measured, even as his heart races in his throat. ‘I am afraid I did not properly explain— I— I will need to concentrate for this to work, so— so I will simply lay here and do that while you— you do what is necessary to— to connect us. While it is something like dual cultivation it is not something like— like sex. Kissing is not required— nor is— nor is anything else of that nature.’

‘So, you intend to lie here like a dead fish while I plough you like a fallow field?’ the man snaps at him, looking oddly annoyed.

‘I intend to sort out the issues your sword is giving you with your cultivation. That is what we agreed upon.’ He hides a wince at how snippy he sounds.

The beast opens his mouth as if to protest— before deflating, looking petulant and dissatisfied, ‘I suppose you’re right. Clever shizun, making such an offering—’ the man blows out a breath, then looks at him, eyes cold and dispassionate. ‘You had better get undressed then, shizun. A dead fish has no need of silk robes— and when you’ve got them off you’d better lie back and spread your legs. We should get this over with.’

Luo Binghe is angry with him. He can tell. He can— He doesn’t want to be hurt. He is so sick of being hurt. He just needs to— he just needs to move. To do what the man wants— why is it so hard to move? He feels frozen. The beast might as well have ripped off all his limbs for how cooperative they are.

‘—Shizun?’ a voice. It sounds like it comes from a long, long way away. ‘Shizun?’

Chapter Text

Shizun is pale, so pale he might as well already be dead. His large, dark green eyes are staring at nothing. His narrow shoulders are shaking, just a little, a fine tremor quivering through the man’s whole body.

He doesn’t understand. He can’t panic, if he panics shizun will think him a stupid boy, will call him a stupid boy— is this some kind of test? He can feel Xin Mo’s energies swirling within the sword’s scabbard, feel whispers, impulses, the dark urge to strike out at shizun, to hurt, to pin the man down, to make the man stop making him feel like this.

No.

He needs to calm down. He needs to—

‘Shizun?’ no response. Again, no response, it’s like—

It’s like shizun is so frightened he’s entirely shut down, but that makes no sense, because nothing he has done to the man has ever induced this kind of a reaction, and such a reaction could only happen if shizun had something soft, something weak, something really, truly human at the heart of him— and—

And he does not want to think of wives and women and concubines who have reacted like this in the past, because shizun is the predator, shizun is the one who hurts girls in that way, shizun should not be acting like prey.

Perhaps he was simply being too rough? He was annoyed at the man’s insistence on simply lying there with his legs spread and doing nothing— He’s not sure he believes this one-sided dual- cultivation nonsense, the only technique he’s ever heard like that is using someone as a human cauldron, and there’s no way shizun would ever submit to being used as a human cauldron. As he sees it the man is just trying to offer his body while creating some elaborate lie to protect his dignity—

Of course the slightest chance that it isn’t a lie, that shizun actually does know a technique that will bring Xin Mo under his control, is enough to make him agree to the man’s ridiculous stipulations, even though the original plan had been to overwhelm shizun with pleasure. To make him cry and whine and beg for more. To destroy his dignity. To turn him into nothing more than a crawling beast desperate for his touch—

He doesn’t know what to do, because shizun is still staring into nothingness and not responding, and were the other a woman, and were this not what it is, he would give up for now, perhaps give up entirely, and not press his attentions— but they have a deal, and he cannot, cannot bear the thought of giving up this chance to have what he wants. To have shizun.  

Shizun is very beautiful.

He can’t help thinking it, even though this shizun also looks sickly, unhealthy, and too skinny. That too sweet shizun was beautiful too, but this shizun— in an odd way this shizun is even more so. The too sweet shizun had a sweetness to his face, a different kind of expression, that turned his beauty into something pretty and softer, eyes wider and more innocent, while this shizun’s face holds all the old haughty beauty he once so—

He reaches out, wants to touch just to reassure himself that the other is in fact here, is in fact flesh and blood and real and not just some mirage he’s using to hide from himself the reality that this man has been reduced to bones and scraps of skin and brittle hair. Shizun flinches. He jerks his hand back, flinching like he’s about to be struck, imagining the shizun that was, those impassive, cold eyes, that sharp tongue, those hands that only ever brought hurt— He lurches off the bed, heart in his throat.

‘I’ll be back later,’ he declares. ‘We can— we can do this— this then.’

He stumbles towards the hidden door, fleeing the man sitting huddled and shivering on the bed.

Nuo is standing in the hall outside, waiting further instruction. Even though she is his servant she has always made him feel a bit awkward and like he needs to apologize for himself— he thinks because he is not attracted to her, yet he cannot think of her as a mother-figure, and those two are the main ways he is used to feeling about women. Added to that is the fact she often seems unimpressed with him, though is not as haughty or as untouchably beautiful as shizun, so it leaves him feeling a little defensive— which then feels stupid when he remembers she’s his servant, a demonstrably loyal one at that, and that he pretty much scraped her out of the gutter when he took over his father’s palace.

She was the daughter of one of his father’s most loyal men, a high ranked boar demon who had died defending Tianlang-jun. Her mother, though, was neither a wife nor a concubine, but her father’s favourite whore, a demoness of very uncertain origin, notable for her exquisite voice. As Nuo’s father died without acknowledging her she had nowhere to go when her mother died, having neither the willingness nor the looks to take up her mother’s profession, and had ended up eking out a living in the dangerous lands around the palace until he’d shown up.

Of course his Nuo is back in his palace, married now to the wife this Nuo is only engaged to, and no doubt irritated with him for the fact he’s disappeared— Ah, thinking about it makes his head hurt.

Nuo is Nuo. She was the first one to come to mind when he realised he’d need a servant to help him deal with shizun.

She, and her wife Cui Guiying, are his servants. They serve in his quarters of the palace— in part because it seems a bad idea to allow two women solely attracted to women to serve in the harem with all his extraordinarily beautiful wives and concubines, but also because neither of them is attracted to him there’s no risk of anything happening that means he would have to add them to said harem. Nuo’s fiancée is quite a beautiful woman, unlike Nuo herself, but the one time he tried to flirt with her she politely declined and was very probably laughing at him behind her impeccable servant’s smile.

He is greedy, he knows it, greedy and possessive, so of course he chose a servant with no desire for men to help him with shizun.

After he had reattached the man’s legs and used his blood mites to heal as much damage as he could he had carried shizun out of the Water Prison and back up through the palace to his quarters. Huan Hua Palace at this point in time is increasingly becoming a mirror of his father’s palace— the thing that first gave him the idea to merge the realms.

It starts here, for convenience’s sake, to keep his harem always in the same realm as him, but then the idea spreads with the whispers of Xin Mo and his creeping dissatisfaction. The need he has to find a goal once punishing shizun proves unsatisfying. Once he realises the hunger won’t stop with the man’s death.

This room and the attached corridor are in an unused part of his own courtyard, used for storage originally, he suspects. He had not wanted to risk any of his harem coming across shizun, and they never enter his rooms— he always visits his wives and concubines, never has them visit him— and so this was the safest place to hide the man away.

Nuo isn’t saying anything. He can’t bring himself to speak. He should not have to explain himself to a servant— but it feels like he should.

She had cleaned shizun up, she had scrubbed the blood and filth from the man’s flesh, she had perfumed and oiled the man, dressed him— and, yes, he had helped her, because she is really quite short, and no matter how strong she is, the tall and slender form of Shen Qingqiu was always going to be an awkward burden for her to manage— but—

But he thinks he had caught her looking at him with censure in her usually placid gaze.

Perhaps that is just because she caught the way he was looking at shizun’s naked body. Really, truly, no matter how skinny and ill the man looks, he is still an undeniable beauty. A few weeks of proper meals and the man will regain that lithe grace of the shizun of his memories. He wonders if that other, pathetic, version of himself has been feeding up the other, oddly sweet, shizun, because that shizun was a little plumper, looking soft and healthy, while his shizun was always on the edge of too thin.

What is he thinking? Is he seriously going to stick around here, in his past, feeding up Shen Qingqiu for weeks? Of course not. Ridiculous. He just needs to give the man enough time to calm down and then he’ll go back in and do what needs to be done. Then he can—

Leave?

He hasn’t thought that far ahead. He can’t stay though— he has himself locked in one of his wardrobes. That’s not sustainable.

He glances at Nuo, sees her staring blankly at the wall— her small, strong hands had been so gentle on shizun’s body— he will not let himself wonder what she’s thinking. It’s not her job to think. It’s her job to serve.

‘I’ll be in my bedroom,’ he tells her, ‘Have a meal sent in—’ oh, ‘And retrieve the tray from the room. I will be back later. Let me know if he tries to escape or— or anything.’

‘This servant will do as the emperor orders,’ she says, and he may be imagining things, but she sounds even flatter than usual.

He makes himself walk away. It doesn’t matter what she thinks of him. It doesn’t matter what her wife— fiancée— thinks of him. It doesn’t matter what her wife’s family thinks of him— Cui Guiying comes from another boar demon family, famous for the way they use gold to ornament their tusks. They are some of the greatest dentists in the demon realm, and once he had realised exactly how much damage he had done to shizun’s teeth at some point— ripping out and reattaching the man’s tongue, he thinks— he had paid her father, Nuo’s future father-in-law, quite a lot of gold to fix them. They’re not a gossipy lot, he can’t imagine they’ll tell anyone else, but he also can’t help imagining them all whispering amongst themselves about him and his— tastes.

He is so far above them they are but specks he could grind to dust—

It’s a struggle to push down Xin Mo’s whisperings that he should just slaughter them all, that way his name and his deeds can never pass their lips. No.

No— No, he needs to focus on shizun. On fucking shizun—

Why did the man freeze up like that?

He stomps his way to his room, grateful to be able to shut the door behind him. He finds himself pacing then, agitated— it occurs to him that this actually isn’t his room. While on the surface it looks exactly the same as the one in his time, in truth a few pieces of furniture are different, things aren’t where he put them, and there are fewer trophies.

This isn’t his room. This isn’t his palace. That isn’t his shizun—

His shizun is dead.

—

But that is his shizun, just shizun from the past—

He wishes he had someone he could talk to about all of this. He was so confident— convince shizun to let him in, to let him fuck the man, then actually fuck the man, then it would all finally feel better. It would finally stop— but shizun panicked and then he panicked and now—

He feels like he’s going mad.

He just wishes he had someone to talk to. It’s been years— At first he thought, his wives, his women, but as time has passed a distance has built between him and then, and it feels like he can’t work out how to cross it. It feels like he doesn’t want to. He helps them with their problems, they feed Xin Mo, but he can’t talk to them. He can’t share his thoughts, his feelings— Not even with Mingyan. Not even with Ning Yingying. Mingyan is bitter and angry and Ning Yingying cries too easily and withdraws from him.

He doesn’t understand why. Didn’t he rescue her from shizun? She hadn’t wanted to admit what the man had been doing to her, but after Mingyan, Qiu Haitang, and the Little Palace Mistress had taken her aside and counselled her for a day she finally did. Shouldn’t she be happy about it? Shouldn’t he be her hero? It just feels like ever since then they’ve drifted further apart—

If only things were different. She was the one he felt closest to back then. The one he could share his worries with— He just wants someone to talk to.

Before he can think better of the idea he’s stalking across the room to a very specific wardrobe. He pulls open the door and peers in, gaze meeting a matching pair of red eyes scowling at him. The man, the version of him, is wrapped in Immortal Binding Cables and talismans that only a man with qi, both demonic and regular, as strong as him could bind him with. The other Xin Mo has also been bound, but removed, placed in a chest in another room.

It’s still risky. This is still some version of himself— and when has anyone ever been able to contain him for long.

Hah. He looks so angry, making muffled snarling sounds around the gag in his mouth.

‘I’m not an imposter,’ he tells himself, ‘So don’t go worrying some stranger has broken in to steal your women.’ This just gets the other him snarling more. ‘I’m you,’ he adds, then wonders why he’s bothering. ‘I got everything I wanted. All the women, all the power, conquest of both realms— It wasn’t enough. It’s never enough. Do you realise it, you stupid boy, you stupid little beast, it doesn’t matter what you do, it’ll never be enough? He died. I killed Yue Qingyuan and scattered the remains of Xuan Su in front of him and he swallowed them down and died, and that— that wasn’t enough. It’s never enough.’

The other him has stopped snarling and is staring at him now. ‘I’m you— I’m you when you get what you want. There’s this other world, other than this one, I found my way in there, and there shizun is sweet, and we— the version of us there, is weak and foolish, but has no women, instead has shizun, and the two of them are in love—’ he laughs, and it comes out hurt and bitter. ‘It turns out shizun is capable of love. Can you believe it?’

The other him is still staring at him. He feels words surge up his throat, but he swallows them down, doesn’t let himself acknowledge them even inside his own head. Instead he stares back at himself. Look at them, so tall and handsome, so powerful— yet so dissatisfied. So hungry.

He thinks about the way he felt earlier, the hope that if he could just fuck shizun— then remembers the way the man had frozen— the way he had fled in response.

Why? The man made the offer himself, surely that should have meant he was capable of following through? Except— ‘Do you think shizun is a virgin?’ the other him lets out a choked sound, eyes boggling, but he ignores himself. ‘Just because he knows of some alleged special technique, some one-sided dual-cultivation, that doesn’t mean he’s actually done it, does it? Of course— the women, everyone knows what a lecher he was, but other than a few rumours about Yue Qingyuan there were never any rumours about men, were there? So maybe he’s a virgin with men—’ and that shouldn’t feel as satisfying as it does. He’s never cared if his women were virgins. He’s never felt that triumph— his concern was always more that after they became his no one else would ever have them again— but he feels strangely satisfied at the thought of taking shizun’s virginity. ‘Maybe that’s why he froze up like that—’

It makes sense. He was annoyed. He was rushing things. He was, actually, somewhat rude— and poor, virginal shizun panicked in response. Ok. He can deal with that. He can manage that. He just needs to take things slower. He just needs to be gentler— It might even account for shizun’s missish insistence that there be no kissing, no pleasure.

So, take it slow, be more polite, be gentle—

A sound— the door opening— he slams the wardrobe shut on the wide-eyed and red-faced other him in time to face the servants carrying in his food. He will eat. He will meditate for a while. He will then return to shizun’s room to try again.

Chapter Text

It takes a long time before everything feels real enough that he remembers he can move. In that time the servant enters the room, clears away the tray, disappears, comes back, and then sinks to her knees to stare at him. It is her staring that eventually penetrates the icy fog in his mind. He hates being stared at. ‘What?’ he snaps at her.

‘Forgive this servant her impertinence,’ she says, her voice still beautiful, her tone perfectly calm and not at all obsequious, as she reaches into her sleeve and pulls out a qiankun pouch. A moment later she is withdrawing a folded mass of heavy red silk and offering it to him. ‘This servant felt this might aid your comfort. She hopes she has not overstepped.’

Hesitantly he reaches out and takes the cloth from her— oh, a robe. Thick, red silk, with bands of embroidery in gold around the ends of the sleeves, the hem, and down the open front— the thing is not dissimilar to one of the overrobes he might have worn once upon a time, when he was Shen Qingqiu, the peaklord of Qing Jing— except for the colour, and the fact he suspects this robe was made for a woman.

‘Will you get in trouble for giving this to me?’ he asks her.

‘This servant believes that the emperor will be pleased with the colour,’ she replies. Yes, he can see that the beast seems fond of red. It makes sense. It’s like the blood the creature has spilled from his veins.

‘What of the mistress it belonged to?’ he probes further. He does not want her beaten or whipped because of him. He has only just met her, and she serves Luo Binghe, but his feelings about the treatment of female servants haven’t changed.

‘It belonged to no mistress,’ she says. ‘The emperor has many such robes made in advance, lest he need to quickly conceal a maiden’s modesty, or perchance get married in a hurry. It will not be missed.’

Oh— ‘Thank you.’ He rubs a hand across the soft silk. Yes, he will feel better if he can wrap himself in this. He is far too aware of his body beneath the sheer red robes, even with the covers pulled up around him.

She seems to hesitate for a moment, before speaking again. ‘What this servant has to offer next may truly be an impertinence, but she prays you forgive her—’ he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. She seems cautious in a way that makes him sure he will not like what comes next. Still, he simply gestures for her to continue.

‘This servant is aware of what the emperor wishes from you. She— she has no opinion on the matter, nor does she have an opinion on whether or not it is clear that you will welcome no such attentions after what the emperor has done to you—’ oh, it’s abundantly clear she does have an opinion— but a servant is a servant. Servants with opinions do not always live long lives, and even if they do, they can quickly become particularly unhappy ones. He feels himself soften a little to her. Whether she will let herself admit it or not what she is saying suggests she does not approve of the beast’s conduct.

She clears her throat. ‘This servant’s mother was—’ she hesitates, then draws herself up, looks him square in the eye with something very like defiance. ‘This servant’s mother was a whore. When this one’s father died her mother lost both his protection and custom and was often forced to take customers she would have rejected if she could—’ he wonders where she is going with this. He feels cold. He feels sick.

She reaches into the qiankun pouch and withdraws a small jar, cradling it in her hands and looking down at it with a complicated expression. ‘This one’s mother was uncertain that her children would be able to escape the same fate, so she taught them what she could to make such situations easier. This jar contains a salve of this servant’s mother’s recipe. It has healing properties and promotes muscle relaxation. It is designed to reduce pain and to facilitate—’ her face twitches, the tiniest hint of disgust crossing her features ‘—penetration when the mind, and thus the body, do not wish to cooperate,’ her eyes flick from the jar back to his face, ‘This one offers it to you, along with the advice that you should consider using it to prepare yourself before the emperor comes back.’

Ice flows through his veins in place of blood. He can’t move. Imagine doing such a thing. How degraded. The idea is worse than the times he made himself the closest he could ever manage to flirtatious for Qiu Jianluo, in the hopes to turn the man’s sadism to simple lust. The idea is worse than all the ways he was passive and accommodating for Wu Yanzi.

‘The emperor is not as difficult as most men,’ she tells him, breaking the frozen silence between them. ‘This one is friends with several of the harem servants and can say with some confidence that he may be negligent, but he is not cruel to his women. This one is not telling you to spoil him, to praise him, to crawl for him, only reminding you that a man as powerful the emperor always gets what he wants. It is simply that it is sometimes better to give, instead of to be taken from.’ With that she places the jar on the floor by the bed and gets to her feet, ‘This servant will leave you now.’

When she is almost at the wall, where he thinks some door must be hidden, he finds his voice again. ‘Did you escape your mother’s fate?’ he is not sure why he asks it. It is really none of his business. He would hate such a question asked of him.

‘For the most part,’ she replies, and he can’t bring himself to ask further, afraid of what those words must mean for her, and unsure why he should care, except he has always been weak in the face of the suffering of women.

Instead, he asks, ‘Why are you helping me. Surely you know you risk his displeasure?’

‘A slave knows a slave,’ is all she says, disappearing from the room before he can ask what she means by that.

He sits on the bed for a long moment, fidgeting with the robe she gave him, and eying the little pot of salve out of the corner of his eye. Of course it could be poison, or acid, and this could all be some horrible game—

With a noise of annoyance he pushes off the covers and shrugs on the robe, edging over to the side of the bed so he can lean down and scoop up the jar. He looks at the thing, feels the weight of it in his hand— He can’t believe he is even considering— inside the salve is a soft, off-white, tinging a little green. He sniffs the contents— he may be no Mu Qingfang, but he suspects he is more knowledgeable about medicine than most cultivators. He has always preferred to treat whatever ailments and injuries he has received himself and avoided the pawing hands and probing questions of the Qian Cao Peak whenever possible.

It doesn’t smell dangerous. In fact it smells exactly like what the servant said it was— he can recognise several of the ingredients from scent alone. A lot of the more readily available medicinal plants, a few more expensive ones, some that are only located within the demon realm. He scoops out a little bit and pops it in his mouth. If it contains acid or something else unpleasant and he is going to be burnt alive or mortally injured he would rather start with somewhere that feels a little less vulnerable than that part of him he can usually barely bring himself to acknowledge.

The bitterness makes his face scrunch up, still he keeps it on his tongue, not swallowing, but waiting to see if something unpleasant happens. His lips and tongue tingle a little, and the tension he holds in his jaw eases up, but there’s no pain, no burning, nothing untoward. Eventually he concludes she was telling the truth about the salve.

What to do with that knowledge?

The thing is that she’s right. It is better to give than to be taken from— he has known that ever since he was a child in Qiu household, except even back then he was a bitter child. Every time he gave Qiu Jianluo what he wanted he hated himself for it, even if it meant he went to bed that night in less pain, with less injuries, than if he fought back or spat or swore. But Qiu Jianluo was Qiu Jianluo, the monster that still haunts his nightmares. Qiu Jianluo wanted his abasement— surely Luo Binghe simply wants his services to fix the man’s cultivation and his relationship with his sword?

It was always easier to give Wu Yanzi what he wanted than to give it to Qiu Jianluo— and in a way he could even think of that as being a bit like his relationship with his own shizun. His shizun never showed any of that kind of interest in him, but that doesn’t change the fact the man delighted in humiliating and hurting him, forcing him to earn his place on Qing Jing, and then earn his role as head disciple, and later successor. It had been unpleasant and humiliating and painful and he will never think fondly of the man, but at the same time it was always so much easier to play along, to do his best to be the person shizun wanted, to allow the man to change him, break him, remake him, than anything involving Qiu Jianluo— Why was that? Oh. Of course, so simple. The sacrifice was worth it.

Wu Yanzi didn’t particularly care about him enough to want to humiliate him, so letting the man have his way didn’t bruise his pride as well as his body the way it did with Qiu Jianluo, and even though shizun might have enjoyed obliterating his pride and breaking him to be the head disciple the man wanted, becoming that head disciple was worth the sacrifice. Abasing himself for Qiu Jianluo was never worth it. There was no end goal in mind. Not even survival seemed worth it when it meant day after day of being hurt like that with no end in sight.

The question becomes whether abasing himself for Luo Binghe is worth it in turn? If it is simply about the sword, about the man’s cultivation— then surely it has to be? If he makes himself ready before the beast comes back, then lies back with his legs spread the moment the creature enters the room, looking as passive and accommodating as he ever did for Wu Yanzi, surely it will all be over a lot sooner than if they have to talk about things again. Further, he has no idea if the beast even knows how to do the act with a man and not a woman, or even if the beast realises he will need in the very least something slick to ease the way, though preferably some kind of preparation—

He shudders, cold disgust crawling up his spine. Surely he would prefer to prepare himself, and not have to suffer the inexperienced pawing of his former disciple?

Yes. Yes. That is a fate he would prefer to avoid, and if he does wish to avoid it— he glances down at the little jar. Oh, he does not want to have to do this— but his life has been full of things he hasn’t wanted to do. His reluctance hasn’t changed things. His fighting the inevitable has often even made everything worse.

Trying to pretend he isn’t here, that it isn’t his body doing this, making these motions, he undoes the trousers of the gauzy underrobes and pulls them down. He kicks them off the side of the bed, then hesitates, dread rising— He can do this. He can do this.

First he wraps the robe the servant got him tighter around his body, then he grabs the covers and cocoons himself, until he is kneeling up where he can reach the part that needs reaching, but is covered from any outside glance from head to toe. Then— then he grabs the jar, slicks his fingers, and forces his mind to wander while he gets to work.

He has no idea how well-endowed the beast is, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, even though he can barely bring himself to touch that part of his body, let alone spend the time stretching it required. Still, teeth grit, courage screwed to the sticking place, he does what needs to be done.

When he is done he feels empty. Very carefully he places the little jar on the floor beside the bed and then he lays down, wrapping the covers around himself. He wishes he could curl up on his side, but his hips still hurt, so he remains on his back. He feels stupid. He feels like a child. He doesn’t know why. He wishes Qi-ge would come and rescue him— But Qi-ge won’t, and he’s doing this for Qi-ge, to save his life, and even if he wasn’t— Somewhere, along the line, Qi-ge realised his own superiority. He was only ever a reminder of a bad past. He was only ever a trigger for guilt. He was only ever something Qi-ge thought was dirty and wicked and wrong. Something for Qi-ge to apologize for.

Slowly, so very slowly, he pulls the covers away from his legs. The beast won’t need access to all of him, just the parts below his waist. He pulls the covers, the red silk robe, tighter around his torso, trying to ignore the cool air he feels touching everything down below, and spreads his legs, lying there like a landed fish, waiting for his newest master to come and make use of him.

Chapter Text

He almost drops the tray when he enters the room again and sees shizun. He does fumble it, spilling the bowl of freshly cooked congee, and almost knocking the teacup to the ground. He didn’t expect this.

Shen Qingqiu flinches, but otherwise remains perfectly still, lying back on the bed, upper body cocooned in the red silk of the covers, long, pale legs bare, spread, so he his eyes can eat up the long length of them and even catch a glimpse of the soft flesh there at the apex of the man’s thighs.

‘Shizun?!’ he squawks.

As he watches the man’s chest rises and falls with a deep breath, before that lovely head turns towards him. ‘I have prepared myself,’ are the nerve-wracking words that slip from between the man’s pink lips, ‘Leave the tray, Luo Binghe, and come here so I can fulfill my side of our bargain.’

It’s plain stated. It’s cold. It’s perfunctory. He has hundreds of women. He has made love thousands and thousands of times. He has been cooed at, beseeched, pleaded for, he has had breathy sighs of desire whispered in his ear, he has been petulantly ordered into service, he has been clawed at, whined for, had his name moaned, been compelled and tempted in every way he thought imaginable, yet somehow those coldly spoken words are more arousing than every soft-spoken entreaty for his touch he’s ever heard.

The tray is on the floor, the crockery rattling, and he is across the room before thought. He is standing over shizun, looking down at that beautiful face framed by black hair and red silk. The man looks up at him, impassive, then very, very deliberately, spreads those long legs just that little bit more.

He doesn’t think. Maybe he should think, but he can’t. He can’t think to ask how shizun prepared himself. What he did. He can’t even spare the time to get naked, focussing instead on getting his cock out, and then he’s climbing onto the bed, onto shizun, and he feels so young, so clumsy, as he paws at pale flesh. He somehow manages to get the man’s legs hiked up around his waist, pale thigh pressed to Xin Mo’s scabbard, and then to get his cock into place, and then— and then—

He makes a noise. An ugly, boyish grunt, as he slides into the warm, tight, slickness.

It’s almost more than he can bear. He almost comes right then and there. He gasps and shudders on top of shizun, staring down into the most beautiful face he’s ever seen, and trying not to think about the tightness around green eyes, the bitten lip. ‘Sorry,’ he gasps out, and then ‘Can I—?’ he’s not sure he’ll be able to stop if the man says no. If the man tells him to pull out and get off him.

A tiny nod, ‘Please.’ It’s not purred. It’s not spoken as an erotic plea. His body takes it as one anyway.

A couple of thrusts is all it takes, Xin Mo’s avaricious qi reaching through him and into the person beneath him, as always, his own following along, trapped in his sword’s wake, and he feels shizun’s qi rise to meet them— He grunts. Shudders. Grasping for his sword’s qi as they get a taste of the coolest, purest Yin qi he has ever sensed, and Xin Mo lunges for it. Reaching out to devour.

Oh. Oh no. He tries to hold his sword back, desperate, flailing, trying to get some control before the thing drains shizun dry.

Then that pure, cool Yin pounces, and he’s clinging to the man beneath him as shizun’s qi flows into his body and takes control.

The next few moments are strange and disorientating. He’s dual cultivated before, many times, but this is something very, very different. Pleasure, sweeter and more intense than he has ever felt with any of his women, batters his attention, while shizun’s pure, delicate qi flows through his meridians, taking control of his entire qi system, but not in a cruel way, in a way that feels soft and gentle and strangely healing, and then flowing from him and into his sword, and it should be terrifying, but instead he feels cradled and protected and safe. Safer than he’s felt since he was small and his mother was smiling down at him as she placed the Guanyin pendant around his neck.

Reality seems to pinch down around him as he gasps and flounders. The pleasure is so intense it verges on pain, the qi flowing through his meridians burns with healing fire, Xin Mo purrs, full and satiated and lulled into complacency, and his hips pump and pump and pump until— until— until—

Something snaps into place, or maybe back into place, like a joint that has been dislocated being popped back into its socket, but the sensation is larger, fuller, filling him, the all of him, up to the brim, and as it does the pleasure sweetens, mellows, even as it surges through him and overcomes.

The next thing he knows he’s collapsed onto shizun, mouthing helplessly at the side of the man’s neck as he shakes through the most intense aftershocks he’s ever experienced. He has no idea how he managed to worm his face beneath the covers, but somehow he must have managed it. Shizun’s skin tastes salty-sweet, with an almost floral edge. His hands are clenched in red silk. Shizun is still beneath him. The man’s legs no longer wrapped around him but flopped down by his sides.

He tries to pull back to look into the man’s face, but he feels weak and clumsy, and just manages to flop off shizun and then somehow fall off the bed, so he ends up lying on the floor gasping like a landed fish.

It takes longer than he’d like before his body feels like his own enough that he can do more than flail uncoordinatedly. When he has recovered some he sits up, then stands, fussing with his robes to cover himself when he becomes all too aware of his cock flopping around uncovered, unlike the rest of him.

He feels good. In fact he feels amazing—

He glances at shizun, feeling embarrassed that he’d thought that the man was just trying to preserve his dignity, and that he didn’t really know some secret technique. Obviously shizun does. This is the first time since he laid eyes on Xin Mo that the sword has truly felt still and settled, instead of clawing at the edges of his mind, projecting its hunger on him. Xin Mo now feels more like Zheng Yang once did. Xin Mo feels like his sword, instead of him feeling more like the sword’s tool.

Shizun is watching him, the man lying still and silent on the bed. It’s sudden and strange, this nauseating guilt, that surges through him.

‘Shizun?’ he says, reaching out. A tiny flinch, but shizun doesn’t move, and as he comes closer he realises that it’s not because shizun doesn’t want to. The man doesn’t seem able to. As if what happened between them burnt through all the man’s reserves and he doesn’t have the energy left. ‘I really wore you out,’ he muses, and wonders at the lack of satisfaction he feels.

On the bed in front of him the dignified Shen Qingqiu lies, limbs akimbo, that place between his thighs exposed to be stared at, and without the strength to even attempt to cover himself. Without thinking about it he leans down and carefully fusses with the covers until shizun is covered.

It all seems so stupid. He tortured this man. He beat him. He whipped him. He burnt him. He made him eat revolting things. He made him drink tea made with piss. He ripped off his limbs. He broke his teeth. He swore and condemned and criticised. He conspired to destroy this man’s life. He— he— No. No. Shizun was cruel to him. Shizun beat him. Shizun tried to destroy his cultivation. Shizun threw him down into the Abyss. Why does it all feel so much like an overreaction?

If he had simply killed the man, that would be understandable, or even if he had savagely beat him, but to keep him for years, hurting him in every way imaginable— it suddenly feels terribly childish. He waits for Xin Mo’s whispers to reassure him that anyone would react the way he did— but hears nothing. If anything all he hears in the crevices of his mind is Meng Mo somewhere, laughing.

Feeling shaky and disconcerted he looks around for something to do. It’s so hard to meet shizun’s eyes right now— ah, the tray. He walks over, picks it off the floor. Not all the congee spilled, and the tea is mostly still in the pot. He carries it back over to the bed and puts it down on the sheets, a little out of the way, before— ‘Can you sit up to eat?’ he asks shizun, before it occurs to him, ‘Do you even want to eat?’

For a moment the man just stares up at him with those green eyes, then a tiny nod, but no further movement, so he assumes it means that shizun wants to eat, not that the man is capable of sitting up to do so. He probably shouldn’t, but he leans down and scoops shizun up into his arms, all too aware of how slight the man is, and how much that is his fault. He gets onto the bed and arranges the man in his lap, leaning against his chest so he can support shizun to feed him.

Shizun is a dead weight in his arms, so weak he can’t even seem to move his arms or do anything to preserve his modesty when the covers open and reveal a slice of pale thigh. Before picking up the bowl of congee he readjusts things until shizun is properly covered up again.

He is afraid that shizun will reject being fed, but as he lifts the first spoonful of congee to the man’s lips they part and shizun allows him to deposit it on the man’s tongue. In silence they sit, and he feeds shizun two, three, four, five spoonfuls of congee, before the man makes a small protesting noise and refuses to open his mouth for the sixth. ‘Too much?’ he asks, remembering how shizun said he would be sick if he ate too much. Sick because he has neglected to even order the man fed kitchen scraps and filth for weeks now.

A tiny nod. He puts the bowl back on the tray. ‘Do you want some tea? I fear it may be overstewed by now—’ shizun nods again. He pours out a cup and holds it to the man’s mouth so shizun can drink a few sips, before those lips press closed again. He puts the cup back on the tray.

‘Do you regret it?’ he asks before he realises he’s going to. ‘Do you regret the things you did to me?’ He’s not sure why he’s asking. Shizun has never expressed regret before, never apologized—

For a long moment there is silence, then the man speaks, barely more than a whisper. If he didn’t have shizun resting against his chest he doesn’t know he’d even be able to hear it. ‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I want you to tell me the truth,’ he snaps, arms tightening around the man, before he forces himself to ease up his grip. ‘I won’t hurt you for it. I won’t punish you—’ he hopes he can keep that promise. He’s not sure he would have been able to, before, but with Xin Mo finally quietened maybe there’s a chance now.

After a moment the man speaks. ‘Sometimes I regret going to look at the prospective disciples that day.’

‘What do you mean?’ he demands.

‘What was I supposed to do?’ shizun replies, sounding a little annoyed, even if he’s still so weak he can barely whisper. ‘I look down and I see a demon. Would you rather I told everyone? Would you rather I attacked you? Would you rather I let Liu Qingge take you? He was an idiot. He didn’t know what you were. It would have been more dangerous to the sect— and when he found out he would have killed you—’ the man lets out a tiny scoffing noise while his thoughts whirl. ‘I suppose I regret my mercy as well. My weakness. Maybe I should have killed you then, instead of taking you on in the hope I could find out what you were after without prompting further conflict with your kind.’

‘You knew I was half heavenly demon?’ is all he can manage. His head feels like a vast echoing room, empty of everything but dust.

‘It’s always been obvious,’ shizun whispers after a moment. ‘I don’t know why no one else could see it. Maybe they were stupid. Maybe they were blind.’

‘You knew I was half heavenly demon and still accepted me as your disciple?’

‘As I said, I wanted to know what you wanted. I assumed you were up to no good— and I was proved right, in the end.’ He did not know a man could whisper so bitterly. He did not know—

He’s shaking. He doesn’t understand. He—

‘Is that why you tried to destroy my cultivation?’

‘I did not—’ shizun stops, tense in his arms, before the man sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly. ‘You will think whatever you want to think. I can’t convince you of anything different.’

‘You gave me that faulty manual!’

‘I did no such thing,’ shizun sounds offended, as he has every time he has made that accusation at the man. This time, though, he lets shizun speak, instead of speaking over him and refusing to listen. ‘I may not have given you a Qing Jing Peak cultivation manual, or even a Cang Qiong cultivation manual— but was I supposed to share our sect’s cultivation secrets with a demon? No, the manual I gave you may not have contained any secret techniques, or any advanced techniques, but it should have been enough for you to establish your cultivation— though, I suppose, I did fail to take into account the fact you were a physical cultivator, and a spiritual cultivation manual would have the potential to hold you back, but I was not attempting to destroy your cultivation.’

What? He doesn’t know what to say. He can’t think of anything to say. His thoughts whirl around and around in his head.

After a moment of his silence shizun starts speaking again, sounding irritated, ‘You always act as if I didn’t give you a manual more suited to your cultivation after Sha Hualing and her wretched lackies invaded and you helped fight them off.’

At least he has a reply to that, ‘Didn’t you make me fight that day to kill me?— and even if you did give me a new manual it still wasn’t the same kind of manual as you gave Ming Fan or Ning Yingying!’

‘Kill you?’ shizun scoffs, ‘I was on the verge of another qi deviation, the only other ones there were all weak disciples, and you, another demon. Who was I supposed to send against the demons? They weren’t just going to leave after two bouts. As to the manual— Ming Fan and Ning Yingying are— were— both spiritual cultivators. I did not commonly take physical cultivators into Qing Jing. I had to commandeer that manual from Bai Zhan Peak— even though they didn’t want to give it to me, because they all blamed me for Liu Qingge’s death.’

‘But you did kill him!’ he protests.

For a moment there is no reply. Shizun shifts, a tiny movement, in his arms, as if the man is attempting to sit up and escape his grasp, but it’s clear he doesn’t have the energy to. ‘Perhaps—’ shizun concedes, eventually, ‘Everyone certainly thinks I did, even if I have no memory of doing so.’

‘How can you have no—?’

Shizun interrupts him, ‘A qi deviation, in the Lingxi caves. I have always been prone to them.’

Oh— but he’s letting himself become distracted. Ultimately he doesn’t care about Liu Qingge, even if he’ll never let Mingyan become aware of that fact. ‘You were cruel to me. You punished me for nothing. You beat me. You whipped me. You encouraged the other disciples to bully me.’

‘I was no crueller to you than my own shizun was to me,’ the man defends himself— before sighing. ‘Though, perhaps I was crueller to you than I needed to be— and I never should have permitted Ming Fan and the others to— You were my problem, and mine alone. You were a demon, I knew you were up to something, I had hoped to drive you to revealing your plans so I could get ahead of them and protect the sect.’

‘What plans?’ he snaps, unable to stop himself form shaking shizun, just a little. ‘I was a child. I had no plans. I had come to the sect seeking sanctuary. Seeking a future. I didn’t even know I was half heavenly demon back then!’

For a moment shizun says nothing, just lies helpless in his grasp. He realises he’s holding the man’s shoulders so tightly he must be leaving bruises. He feels— but then shizun speaks. ‘You were very convincing back then. You convinced me, honestly even before your future wife invaded Qion Ding Peak, but after that I was certain you meant no harm—’ he tries not to think back, he tries not to remember that shizun had almost seemed to soften to him then, for a while, until—

‘How can you say that when you threw me into the Endless Abyss?’ of all the things, of all the experiences he’s had, that remains a torment upon torment.

A tiny, bitter laugh escapes the man trapped in his grasp. ‘Would you rather I had taken your head? Would you rather I had served you up to the tender mercies of the cultivation world who— let us not forget— had not that long before attacked and the heavenly demon Tianlang-jun?’ shizun sounds angry. Shizun sounds so angry the rage seems to give him enough strength to speak instead of whisper. ‘You had just revealed to me that my first suspicions of you had been right. You had just revealed to me that you had been playing a game with me all that time. You had somehow managed to smuggle high-level demons into the Immortal Alliance Conference. Your actions had killed unknown numbers of disciples— the future of the cultivation world— and not only was it was my fault for not doing something about you earlier, for not telling anyone, for not killing you as was my duty, but you were standing there, proudly proclaiming what you are for the whole world to see. Any moment we were going to have the most powerful members of the cultivation world descend down upon us, drawn by the beacon of your unshielded power—’ another laugh, equally bitter, ‘I was weak. I admit I was weak. I had grown fond— I should have killed you. I should have struck you down were you stood, but I couldn’t make myself, all I could do was get you out of my sight so I no longer had to look upon my mistakes—’

He can’t do this. He can’t do this.

He pushes shizun away, ignoring the way the may goes sprawling and then falls off the bed. He gets up, heading straight for the door, not even looking back, and once he’s out into the corridor he gives Nuo no instructions, just runs, runs back to his own room, shizun’s words echoing in his head. Shizun’s words haunting him.

Chapter Text

He does not cry, he does not whimper, even though his hips are agony, and he is sure his face is bruised from colliding with the floor. He lies there, a discarded lump, used by his master and wanted no more. He might as well be back at the Qiu mansion— No. No. He got to say his piece this time. He got to actually speak, to protest, to tell what he sees as the truth. That is something that Qiu Jianluo never would have permitted.

Mind you, it may turn out to be something Luo Binghe does not permit in the long run, if the man decides to return and punish him for it. Still he said it. He spoke in his own defence— he could almost laugh. Not that anything he said would be enough to exonerate him in the eyes of the cultivation world. Not that anything he said would be enough to free him from the beast’s custody.

Of course all Luo Binghe cared about when levelling accusation after accusation against him was what he did to the man himself. Not a mention of the Qius. Not a mention of Wu Yanzi. Not a mention of his alleged lechery and sexual abuse of his female disciples. Not a mention of any of it—

Just anger at the part of his conduct that was perhaps not admirable, but certainly less questionable in the eyes of their peers than the rest of the things he was accused of. In fact, for most of the beast’s allies in his downfall, the most questionable part of how he treated Luo Binghe as a disciple would be his mercy towards someone he knew was a half demon— that would have been enough to tar them both, condemn them both to an unhappy fate.

He tries to move. He can’t. He’s surprised he even had the strength to speak the way he did— but perhaps that was just the fire of outrage driving him. Now he’s exhausted even that and is trapped once more in the useless weight of an uncooperative body after having used his last resources playing cauldron for a man.

He just wants to shift his weight off his right hip— they were sore before, but after having his legs up around the little beast’s waist the pain was sharp and biting, and now he’s landed on one when he was thrown to the ground— he almost wishes someone would come in and rip his legs off again. Surely that would have to hurt less?

Footsteps— he didn’t mean it. He’d squirm away if he could— perhaps he’d not beg and plead, but maybe this time, maybe now he’s said what needed saying he could lower himself to asking nicely for master to please not hurt him too badly this time—

A soft tutting noise. Oh, that’s not the beast. ‘Please forgive this servant, but she will have to touch you now.’ With that small, strong hands are on him, gently lifting him from his undignified huddle on the floor until he is lying draped in her arms. He blinks up at her plain face. She is not a tall woman, in fact she is rather short, and not overtly muscular, yet she is holding him so easily.

Her attention is on the bed, and the mess they no doubt left behind. She sighs, then carries him away from it, and he wonders if she’s going to take him from the room, and fear spikes in him at the thought of being taken back down into Water Prison, but all she does is put him back on the floor, very carefully, on his back, before going over to strip down the bed.

When she’s done, the dirty bedding secreted away in a qiankun pouch, and replaced by equally beautiful red silk bedding from a different qiankun pouch— and she was ready for this, wasn’t she? Perhaps not for finding him discarded on the floor, but for having to deal with the mess left behind once Luo Binghe climbed off him— she turns back to him. ‘Do you wish to bathe before I change your clothes for clean ones?'

He would protest at her certainty that she will be taking such liberties with his body, but that might get between him and getting clean. She has already seen him naked. She knows what Luo Binghe has done to him. She is a servant, not some cruel little mistress, some member of the beast’s harem come to torture him. The only people he has ever trusted to care for him when he is helpless are women like her. He nods as much as he is able, then adds a quiet, croaky, ‘Yes, please’ and watches with some anticipation as she leaves the room again. He hopes she comes back with a bath— but even a wet washcloth would be paradise.  

He feels sticky and uncomfortable in that place he doesn’t want to think about, both from the salve and from Luo Binghe’s leavings. At least there wasn’t much pain, just some pinching discomfort, even though the beast was alarmingly big.

It all happened so quickly he barely got a glimpse at the man’s pillar before it was being prodded up into him. That was good. Certainly better than the hours of torment and threats that could occur before Qiu Jianluo finally did the deed. If Luo Binghe had chosen to taunt him with how ridiculously big the man’s pillar was beforehand he might have not managed to hold his nerve. He might have panicked, or fainted, or lost all composure— Though it turned out the sight was more fearsome than the experience. Though that may have been the salve— and possibly the fact that the creature seemed to make no attempt to intentionally hurt him during the ordeal.

It's bearable, having had to endure it. It was nowhere near as awful as any experience with Qiu Jianluo, and it was quicker and less painful than with Wu Yanzi— but also, alarmingly different than what had happened with that man.

With Wu Yanzi the other man’s rotten qi would surge through his meridians, leaving raw, painful damage behind, and tangling up his cultivation for weeks afterwards. It was difficult, unpleasant, to allow his qi into the man’s hungry meridians, even though he would feel compelled to do so. Wu Yanzi’s whole system felt tainted, damaged in a way that was almost contagious, and at times he would have to struggle for control of what was happening with a man who was obviously used to using human cauldrons and knew how to manipulate the exchange to take more than his victim could provide.

Now, as the man he has become, with the years of experience he has behind him, he can say that playing cauldron for Wu Yanzi felt a little like a prolonged, partially controlled, qi deviation. With Luo Binghe things were much, much different.

Yang though the man’s qi— and his sword’s qi— may be, and Yin though his system is, Luo Binghe’s qi didn’t hurt. In fact it felt almost good. It felt like something his system has been craving for all those years— and he doesn’t want to think that may be because of what Wu Yanzi did to him. That because some of his earliest experiences with cultivation involved managing, purifying, strengthening that man’s Yang qi, while he can only ever produce Yin qi, his system developed to accommodate something he will never be able to provide it himself— and in truth, exhausted though he is, he feels better than he ever did after Wu Yanzi. In fact his cultivation just feels better in general— which he resents. He resents bitterly— but doesn’t have the energy for real anger.

It would have been very, very easy to turn what they were doing into actual dual cultivation. With Wu Yanzi he never had a desire to share, nor a sense of how to do it, things always felt like they were entirely one-way and there was no way they could be any different, but with Luo Binghe he could instinctively feel what he would have to do to make what was happening between them an equal thing. In fact it was hard to stop himself a couple of times, a strange temptation filling him to take the experience from a one-sided service he was offering to a dual-sided experience to be shared.  He managed though, no matter what his instincts wanted— and not only because the beast had not agreed to dual cultivate, and may punish him for the audacity, but because he did not particularly want to dual cultivate with the beast, or the beast’s sword— who would have been part of the experience.

Xin Mo is a strong sword, strong in its own right, but then imbued with the energies of the Eternal Abyss. He now suspects it may have originally been a spiritual sword that somehow ended up discarded in that horrible place. It must never have had a master, as it is not broken, and accepted Lue Binghe easily enough— though he has heard that every now and then a particularly strong sword can reject a master and remain whole— still, after all those centuries of being suffused in that level of demonic qi. Xin Mo has been left a very hungry sword.

He did what he could to balance things out, and he thinks he managed to tip everything so that Luo Binghe is now the sword’s actual master, instead of the two fighting for control, but Xin Mo will always crave either blood or Yin energy, and if Luo Binghe starves it then it may start to thrash beneath the yoke he put on it— though considering how violent and lusty the beast is that shouldn’t be a problem.

He tries not to think about the fact that were the beast to keep him in this room, to keep using him as a cauldron, the creature would never again have the slightest problem with his sword. After earlier, after the things he said, he will be very, very surprised not to end up back in the Water Prison once the man has regained control of himself.

Eventually the servant comes back carrying a large wooden tub, which she places in the centre of the floor. The next few moments involve her fussing with qiankun pouches, withdrawing various bags and pots and jars, combs and cloths, and a set of clean, red silk robes that she leaves on the bed. Then she reaches into the tub and picks up a beautifully glazed ewer covered in a decoration of glazed talismans.

She pours a stream of steaming water from the jug into the tub, and as he watches the stream doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow, and he realises that the talismans decorating the jug give it the same properties as a qiankun pouch, the ability to store more within it than looks like it should be possible. Eventually the tub is filled just from the one pitcher, so she puts it aside, and then starts adding things to the water until a perfumed, healing scent is hanging heavy in the air.

It's so similar to the past, after Wu Yanzi, being cleaned and cared for in whatever brothel they had stopped at, by whatever woman the man had paid to perform the service. It is strange, it probably says unsavoury things about his character, but he has always looked back on those moments as some of the best of his life. Being touched gently, being cared for— A few times, once he and the women of The Warm Red Pavilion had built enough of a relationship for something like trust to exist there, he admits to having actually hired their services to comb his hair, or massage healing oil into his stiff shoulders or aching hands after a long day of writing or practicing his martial cultivation. Never anything sexual— but now, after Ning Yingying’s accusations he can’t help but look back and doubt himself, not his own intentions, of course, but what the women he hired thought about the matter. He believed they liked him as much as anyone has liked him, or at least didn’t find him objectionable, and hadn’t minded having to touch him to perform those innocent actions, but now he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he was just another cruel, greedy customer, asking too much of them.

Still, it’s far too easy to fall back into that kind of frame of mind when the servant comes to pick him up again, to strip him down and put him in the bath. If she were a man he would be doing his best to kick and scream and struggle, even if he wouldn’t be able to manage much, but he has always trusted women too easily, and while he feels shame, and even though he feels like he is something disgusting, and while he feels sorry for forcing her into this situation, he does not feel much more fear than his usual baseline amount.

He expects her to have to hold him up in the water, as he’s too weak to stop himself from drowning, but he finds that the angle of the sides of the tub let her rest him there without danger of him slipping under.

The heat soaks into him, easing the pain in his hips, and soothing the soreness down below, and the bruises the beast left on him at the end. He glances up at the servant as she fussed around, getting ready to wash him, ‘Why are you being so kind to me?’

She freezes, a tiny frown crossing her placid, servant’s blank face. ‘You remind this servant of her brother,’ she says eventually, but then the smallest rueful smile appears, ‘Not that this servant thinks you very like him.’

‘I don’t understand?’ how can he remind her of someone she thinks he is nothing like?

‘Please forgive this servant for her bluntness, but from her observations you do not have his placid nature. He was very sweet, very gentle, and would never dream of answering the questions of a man who was his better as you answered the emperor earlier.’

Of course. Some demons have very sensitive hearing, and she must have been standing around outside the room, waiting for Luo Binghe’s orders. He wonders if the beast realises this place is not soundproof. ‘You speak of your brother in the past tense,’ he observes.

‘This one assumes he is dead,’ she replies, matter of fact.

‘But you can’t be sure?’ he knows that terrible feeling. He had assumed the same about Qi-ge before he learnt—

‘Not long after our mother died, before this one escaped the brothel where we grew up, he was bought by a powerful demon. This one has not seen him since.’ She then quickly adds, as if to answer a question he never asked, gesturing to her face as if to explain why anyone would want to buy any sibling of a woman as plain as her, ‘We had different fathers. This one strongly takes after her own in appearance, while he was more a blend of our mother and his father— Our mother may not have been a peerless beauty, but she was quite pretty, and though this one never met the man, his father must have been rather beautiful. My brother had our mother’s fine white scales and delicate horns, and his father’s beautiful hair and golden eyes— his father was a golden pheasant demon, you see.’ She looks so sad. So very sad. Her careful servant’s expression collapsing down to grief. ‘You made me think of him because you reminded me that beautiful men sometimes suffer the same as women.’

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know whether he should wish her brother dead, because a dead brother is better than one that has abandoned you, or if he should try and reassure her that the man is alive but has simply stopped caring for her. Neither is a kind thought. Nor is the other option, that her brother is alive, wishes to find her, but is trapped and suffering from his owner’s cruelties, and so is incapable of doing so.

She does not seem to require a reply, so they fall back into silence as she helps him bathe, washing his body and his hair, then extracts him from the tub to dry him and rub him down with perfumed oils and bundle him into his clean robes and then into the bed. ‘This one will bring you some medicine,’ she tells him, ‘It will be best if you drink it and then try to rest. The palace has its dangers; you should try to regain your strength as soon as possible.’

He nods. At this point he trusts her as much as he can bring himself to and doesn’t believe she will try to poison him when she has already ignored so many chances to do away with him or harm him. She is right. The palace does have its dangers. Any place containing Luo Binghe must— For a moment he wants to ask her if she knows what the beast intends to do with him now, but the words don’t come to his lips. She won’t know, she’s just a servant. She has no more power over the beast than he does.

Chapter Text

‘Nuo! Nuo!’ he’s shouting as he storms into his room, but then he remembers he left her behind, and as far as she knows her orders are to look after shizun, so he shouts for her wife instead, ‘Cui Guiying!’

A moment later she appears, looking calm and unflustered in a way that makes him momentarily furious. He shakes the feeling off, it’s not her fault— ‘Go ask Ning Yingying for the names of every disciple whose cultivation shizun ruined!’ he orders.

She hesitates, just for a moment. She is not a harem servant and has nothing to do with his women usually— Usually he would be the one asking his wives such a question, but he can’t bear the thought of laying eyes on any of them right now. He doesn’t know what he’d say, what he’d do. ‘Go!’ he snaps, when the female boar demon still lingers. With that she flees, scurrying out of the room and hopefully off to question his wife for him.

Lies. It had to be lies. All of it had to be lies. He knows what shizun is, the kind of monster— just because he can’t remember the name of any other disciple whose cultivation the man ruined doesn’t mean it never happened. It just means they were discarded and forgotten the same way he was when he was pushed into the Abyss. Ning Yingying will know. Ning Yingying will have a whole long list of names and that will prove shizun is just a monster and that it was all lies.

He can’t settle. It’s not the same as when Xin Mo hungers, this is something else, but it’s no less agitating. It shivers through him, this mad energy— he paces, up and down the room he paces, desperate for Cui Guiying to return— what is taking so long?

Without thought he’s back in front of the wardrobe, the door open, the other him scowling up at him once more. He’s obviously been fidgeting about, trying to escape his bonds, because he’s now hunched up on the bottom of the wardrobe— no luck though.

‘Shizun is a monster,’ he tells himself. ‘Shizun has to be a monster. A sadist— He has to have been lying. How could he tell I was half heavenly demon? It’s unbelievable. There is no way he could see it on me even back then— he’s lying. He’s making excuses—’ though it’s not a very good excuse, is it?

It’s the kind of excuse that might work against his fellow cultivators, but not against him. It’s an excuse that relies on things being true that are clearly not true, that he knows are not true— ‘It makes sense, though—’ he breathes out, feeling sick at the idea. ‘Shizun knew I was half heavenly demon, shizun thought I was up to something dangerous to the sect, so he was cautious, didn’t give away any cultivation secrets at first— and when the demonic invasion of the Immortal Alliance Conference happened he assumed I had something to do with it, which is why he pushed me down into the Abyss—’

Except, he wasn’t up to anything. He didn’t know of his heritage. He had nothing to do with what happened at the Immortal Alliance Conference— But it would make sense for shizun to think otherwise. It’s not like the man could read his mind.

‘That doesn’t excuse the way he treated me!’ he argues with himself, though the self he is speaking to has no idea what he’s talking about. Saying it out loud feels better than just letting the words swirl through his head though.

Shizun did give him a new manual after Sha Hualing had been driven off— he lurches back from the wardrobe, looking around the room madly. Where is it? Where is it? In his time it’s been destroyed, he burnt it, along with the first training manual, sometime that feels like it was not that long ago, so he thinks that back in this time he still has it. He kept it the entire time he was in the Endless Abyss. It was in a qiankun pouch in his sleeve, along with the first training manual, because he never could easily get rid of anything shizun gave him— there. He sees the pouch lying discarded on a shelf next to some books.

In mere moments he has them both out of the pouch. He flicks through the first one he was given first, wincing at splodges of mud and blood from incidents with his fellow disciples. It’s— He remembers it as being more confusing, as making no sense, as being no help— but looking at it now— It’s a very basic manual, obviously directed towards spiritual cultivators, the sort of thing he has encountered and flicked through many times as a grown man out of vague curiosity about whether he might learn anything helpful. Looking at it now leaves him feeling small and deflated— because all of sudden the problem with it, the main problem with it, has become obvious to him.

This is not the sort of manual you give a small child. It’s the kind of manual appropriate for exactly what he was, a young disciple in a cultivation sect— only shizun had failed to take into account his spotty education up until that point. The characters he can read perfectly well now, as a man grown who has spent many years learning everything he could, he couldn’t manage as the child he was. He simply couldn’t read well enough.

The fact that it was written down by someone with unnecessarily fussy handwriting wouldn’t have helped. Perhaps if it was a copy done in shizun’s beautiful calligraphy he would have had a better chance at figuring out the more complicated symbols, but whoever wrote this down seems to have chosen to write everything in the most elaborate and cramped way possible.

So, the first manual appears to actually be a proper cultivation manual, though perhaps not a very good one— what about the second? He opens that and flicks through it— yes, just as he remembers, a cultivation manual focussing on physical cultivation. All the advice seems correct, all the techniques— he can remember not trusting the thing, though, because it was different to the manuals everyone else had, and by then he’d become convinced the first manual he was given was a fake one and assumed shizun had just swapped out one dud for another to try and allay suspicion after almost getting him killed fighting Tian Chui.

He would borrow Ning Yingying’s cultivation manual and work from it most of the time— with patchy success— as well as relying on the demonic cultivation he was learning from Meng Mo— but he did still learn some things from this manual, and they all worked, and caused him no issues.

He places both books down on the shelf next to the pouch they came from and staggers back to his captive audience. ‘Just because they’re both legitimate cultivation manuals doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying to destroy my cultivation,’ he tells himself. It sounds weak. ‘He was cruel, though— He beat me, he whipped me, he made me kneel for hours, he poured tea over my head—’

I was no crueller to you than my own shizun was to me—

The words echo through his head in shizun’s offended whisper. That has to be a lie— it has to be— because if it’s not then shizun was just continuing on the traditions of Qing Jing Peak, and he doesn’t know what to think about that. If it’s true then the way Qing Jing treats disciples is wrong, and shizun was wrong for following along instead of challenging the tradition, but it also means—

It means it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t about him.

He doesn’t know what he feels about that.

Of course shizun could have been lying. Shizun’s shizun could have treated him like a spoiled little master, and the man was only making up an excuse for his brutality— he can find out, though, can’t he?

One slice with Xin Mo— and if shizun was lying about his own shizun’s cruelty he can assume all the rest of it was lies as well. Just excuses. That— that shizun hadn’t become fond of him, only for it all to be ruined when whoever it was invaded the Immortal Alliance Conference.

He draws his sword, ignoring the way it makes the other him let out a muffled yelp and wriggle back into the corner of the wardrobe. Shizun with his shizun, he thinks to himself, focussing on what he wants to see, where he wants Xin Mo to take him. Shizun with his shizun. Show me if the man really was cruel.

A slash with the blade and he steps through into— into night. Qing Jing Peak. For a moment all he can do is look around, marvelling at this place he has long reduced to ashes.

Why is he standing in front of the woodshed?

There is light coming from beneath the door, and through the cracks in the boards. There is a sound— soft, the thump of something striking flesh, the soft sound of breath being pushed from lungs by something striking a ribcage.

His sword is still in his hand.

He reaches out, pushes open the door—

Shizun stands over him, bringing the discipline whip down on his unprotected back—

He blinks. Blinks again— the man with the whip in his hand whirls to face him— it’s not shizun. It’s not his shizun. His eyes track past the flawless face of the immortal cultivator to the small figure huddled at his feet.

Pale skin, long hair coming loose from a topknot and slithering across a long neck, the expanse of a delicate back bruised from the colour of the finest muttonfat jade to a gruesome purple, all over smeared in red, shredded and torn, striped across by ragged, bloody, lash marks.

He blinks.

The walls of the woodshed, the pile of wood in the corner, they are all splattered with blood.

That can’t be him. Shizun beat him. Shizun whipped him. Shizun bruised his back painfully, but the man never struck him hard enough to draw blood.

The huddled figure turns its head as if wondering why the whipping has stopped, and he sees the shape of a familiar profile, the hint of one green eye, before the figure flinches, ducks down, as more blood splatters across the room, painting everything within red.

He pulls Xin Mo from the chest of the man holding the whip, a laugh catching in his chest. What an esteemed cultivator, the man didn’t even draw his own sword in time to protect himself.

Shizun glances up at him again, eyes wide and frightened, before something resigned crosses the other’s face. A nod, just a small one, and then green eyes are staring up at him in defiance as shizun shouts, ‘A demon has invaded Qing Jing! Shizun has been slaughtered! We are under attack!’

He realises the boy in front of him expects to be killed now. He lowers Xin Mo. He has to leave, he may have been able to slay the old peaklord of Qing Jing, but facing the rest of the sect is more trouble than it’s worth at the moment.

Before he goes he decides he should check, ‘He was your shizun?’ The boy in front of him frowns but nods tentatively. ‘This was a regular occurrence?’ that earns him another tentative nod. He can’t help the way he scowls down at this younger shizun, even though it makes the boy flinch away from him. ‘He shouldn’t have done that.’

He turns to go. He can hear footsteps, yelling, shouting, panic. He slashes the air with his sword, but before he can step through shizun speaks, voice sounding tired and croaky, as if the boy has been biting down screams, ‘Shizun did not have to accept me into Qing Jing. Shizun did not have to make me his head disciple. If shizun had to break me in order to make me fit the mould, then that is what shizun had to do—’

‘You forgive him for abusing you?’ he can’t help lingering to ask.

‘He was far from my cruellest master,’ shizun replies, still defiant.

He would ask more, but the shouting is getting louder, so he steps through the slash in reality as the first disciple spills into the woodshed with their sword drawn.

What did shizun mean by that?

Chapter Text

Oh. This is his palace, not the palace of the younger him and the shizun that— He wasn’t thinking. He must have instinctively headed home.

What did shizun mean by that?

Far from the man’s cruellest master?

His hands are shaking. His mouth is full of the metallic taste of blood. He looks down— he’s covered in it. He should call for Nuo. He should order a bath. He should— he should go find shizun. Surely, the past must have changed, which means shizun must be around here somewhere.

Cruellest—

Shizun can’t have meant him. That shizun was a boy, it was years before he even showed up at Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. That means—

He is reminded of Qiu Haitang’s sad tale. Such a pretty woman, so wronged— so vicious. So angry with shizun.

Shizun who was her family’s slave, before he slaughtered them all. Shizun who was allegedly her fiancé before he betrayed her— all of a sudden he is conscious of the holes in that story. Even if Qiu— whatever his name was— was as devoted and as loving a brother as Haitang always said, and even if they were both sincerely fond of shizun, what kind of man engages his sister to a slave instead of trying to make her a more respectable match? A slave is a slave.

He may have former slaves in his harem, but they are women, and he rescued them all from precarious situations. A free woman of a respectable family marrying a slave still reliant on her family for support is a very different thing than an emperor taking former slaves into his harem.

Did shizun even want to marry her? Was shizun even given a choice?

Slaves are not known to have choices when their masters decide on something to do with them.

It shouldn’t matter. His grievances with shizun are his own— but Haitang’s words helped build his picture of the man. Haitang’s words helped condemn shizun into his keeping.

He glances at his sword, still in hand. Shizun at the Qiu compound, let me see how he was really treated.

Let me see if there was a good reason he slaughtered them all.

He steps through into night again. He’s in a hallway, nicely decorated, but nothing compared to his palace. There is no one around, but light coming from underneath the nearest door—

The woodshed. Last time he was delivered right outside the place where shizun was. Is shizun in that room?

He drifts closer on quiet feet, Xin Mo in hand. His sword feels content. Eased by what happened with shizun earlier, then given a nice meal of someone’s blood, even if what he’s up to is using up Xin Mo’s qi as well as his own. They still have plenty to spare.

There are sounds coming from within the room behind that door. He doesn’t want to hear those sounds. He doesn’t want to understand them.

He opens the door, steps inside—

The boy. The child. Looks up at him with reddening green eyes. There is a plea there. Save me.

The man— young, but still old enough for him to consider him a man— on top of the boy hasn’t noticed him yet. The man’s hands are around the boy’s throat. There is a smile on the man’s face, a look of sadistic glee.

The boy is naked.

The man is not, but his trousers are down, and his robes moved out of the way.

The boy’s legs are spread.

The man is between them.

The boy is covered with bruises, burns, and bites— everywhere but his face and hands. The places where people might see.

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

Four steps.

Xin Mo takes off the man’s head in one stroke.

The boy is covered with blood again.

Shizun.

The boy struggles out from underneath the man’s corpse, pushing and shoving at it, limbs flailing in panic. Green eyes are wide, terrified, all the boy’s attention on him, on his sword. ‘I won’t hurt you—’ he says. ‘Shi—’ but then this isn’t shizun, is it? This is a boy.

What is shizun’s name? The name he had before he became Shen Qingqiu?

‘Shen—?’ he starts, hoping the boy will fill in the rest.

The boy’s face lights up, suddenly full of hope. ‘Did Qi-ge send you to rescue me?’ he croaks, the sound bringing to mind the sight of hands wrapped around the poor thing’s throat. ‘He said he’d come but back, but it’s been so long.’

Qi-ge— he has no idea who Qi-ge is.

‘Yue Qi—?’ the boy tries after a moment, now sounding a little desperate.

Yue— Oh. Yue Qingyuan?

Is this why the sect leader was always so soft on shizun?

Did Yue Qingyuan promise to save shizun from the Qiu— and obviously failed to, because shizun killed Qiu Jianluo and burned this mansion to the ground, and nowhere in the tale was there any mention of Yue Qingyuan. In fact, after this shizun allegedly joined up with Wu Yanzi to terrorise the countryside.

Did Yue Qingyuan just abandon shizun to this fate?

To being hurt like this. To being tortured and—

The hope leaves the boy’s gaze to be replaced by fear. The boy is no longer looking up at him like a saviour, but like a threat instead. As he watches the boy huddles up into a ball, trying to hide as much if his naked body as possible, every movement revealing injury after injury—

He can’t keep this child shizun. He doesn’t want a child shizun. What use would he have for a child shizun?

‘I can take you to him,’ he decides, eventually. Cang Qiong is still probably the best place for shizun right now. The man is one of the greatest cultivators of his generation, after all— he’ll just make sure the boy doesn’t end up in Qing Jing and at the not-so-tender mercies of the man he killed before Qiu Jianluo.

‘To Qi-ge?’ the boys asks, that terrible, heart wrenching hope returning to his face.

Naked. The boy is naked.

He shrugs off his topmost overrobe, intending to give it to the boy to cover himself, but then he realises how covered with blood it is, and chooses the slightly less elaborate one beneath instead. It is snatched from his grasp, the boy wrapping it tightly around himself immediately, cocooning his body much like the older shizun had beneath the covers—

No wonder he didn’t want to be looked at. How could he even stand to offer his body like that? How could he even stand to go through with it?

The way shizun had frozen— The way he had covered his body— That tight, unhappy look on that beautiful face as he’d—

A virgin, he’d told himself that was shizun’s problem, that shizun had simply been untouched and afraid of the novelty of pleasure. It had never occurred to him that all shizun knew of that kind of touch was pain.

No—

No. He won’t think about any of that right now. Right now he will focus on getting this boy version of the man somewhere safe.

‘I will need to carry you,’ he tells the boy.

Green eyes immediately narrow, suspicion crossing that too-thin little face, ‘Why?’

‘I am going to carry you on my sword to Cang Qiong Mountain Sect,’ he replies.

‘Qi-ge actually got into a cultivating sect?’ the boy asks, wonder on his face. ‘Are you from the same sect?’

‘Yes,’ he answers with a nod, approaching the boy, approaching shizun, to pick him up. It’s easy to tell the lie. He wants the boy to trust him. Though maybe it’s more stretching the truth— at one point he was, will be, a member of the sect. What does it matter what he is right this moment?

Shizun reaches up for him as he leans down, and it’s so easy to scoop the boy up into his arms. Too thin. Shizun is always too thin. He fusses a little with the overrobe he leant the boy, making sure as much of shizun as possible is covered, before turning to the door.

He only makes it a couple of steps when a small form dressed like a doll, swathed in silks, with her hair up in sleeping ribbons, appears in the doorway. ‘A’Luo—?’ she calls, and for a moment he thinks she’s calling to him, but her eyes glide past him to the crumpled form of the man on the floor and then she screams.

Oh. It’s Haitang. His wife. This pretty doll of a girl is his future wife.

A’Luo— Ning Yingying’s voice echoes in his memories. A’Luo.

What shizun must have felt hearing him called by that name—

He glares down at Haitang.

At this moment he hates her.

He raises a hand to backhand her, not intending to kill, but just to shut her up as she descends further into the kind of hysterics that will soon summon the whole household, but shizun grabs his hand before he can, clinging on with both of the other’s small, thin ones. ‘Please don’t!’ the boy yelps, and then turns to the girl, ‘Mistress, run!’

‘Xiao Jiu?’ she squawks. ‘You’re being abducted! Guards! Guards!’

‘Of shut up, you stupid girl!’ he snaps at her, ‘He’s not being abducted, he’s being rescued from your monster of a brother.’ He listened to her. He believed her. He let her further taint his idea of shizun when her beloved brother had tortured and raped the poor man when he was only a child.

‘Please, master, can we just go,’ the boy begs, still clinging to his hand so he can’t hit the wailing girl.

‘I’m not your master!’ he snarls, which makes the by flinch and let go. Curling in on himself, green eyes as wide and wary as they were before.

Again he can hear the sound of running footsteps. Again he flees from bloodshed left behind when he slew a man who was hurting shizun. With Xin Mo he slices a hole in the wall instead of reality this time, mounting his sword a moment later and taking to the sky. Behind him he hears shouting, Haitang screaming, the sound of the whole town waking up.

Cang Qiong Mountain Sect is not far from here. He flies fast, almost recklessly fast, trying to ignore the way shizun trembles in his arms and refuses to cling to him. ‘You’ll be safe at the sect,’ he tries to reassure the boy, but then reconsiders— ‘As long as you don’t end up on Qing Jing Peak you’ll be safe. Qing Jing Peak’s shizun is another monster— but there are other peaks. You’ll be safe on one of the other peaks.’

It feels strange not to head to Qing Jing Peak with shizun, but he decides Qiong Ding is probably a better bet as that’s where Yue Qingyuan should be, and that is who he told shizun he was bringing him to.

He expects someone or something to attempt to stop him, but nothing happens, and all too soon he’s flying over the main peak of the sect, peering down into the darkness and wondering what he should do now, and where he’ll find the future sect leader.

As he’s hovering there he spots a figure climbing out of a building he thinks is the disciples’ dormitory. He’s staring at the figure as it creeps across the grounds towards the rainbow bridge joining the peak to Wan Jian Peak, wondering if he should be doing something about this, though if they’re up to no good it looks like they’re up to the kind of no good a disciple gets up to at night, based on the size of them and the uniform, when all of a sudden the boy in his arms jerks forward and shouts, ‘Qi-ge!’

Down below the figure stops, face tilting upwards, the moon shining down on the revealed features of a young Yue Qingyuan just as a stunned smile crossed the boy’s face and he shouts back, ‘Xiao Jiu!’

Fate, it must be fate.

He orders Xin Mo down, struggling to contain the squirming bundle of increasingly eager shizun, who seems determined to throw himself out of his arms and into those belonging to the boy below. The moment he lands shizun breaks free and flings himself at the young Yue Qingyuan. ‘Qi-ge!’ he hears, ‘Qi-ge! Qi-ge! Qi-ge, you’re still alive! I thought you were dead! Qi-ge, I thought you were dead!’

Yue Qingyuan starts frantically apologizing then, before dark eyes widen, taking in the bruised and barely dressed form of shizun, and the future sect leader’s frantic apologies turn to frantic demands to know what has happened to his Xiao Jiu— and it’s more than he can take, the way they cling to each other, the love he sees beaming out of shizun’s eyes, directed at a boy that must have failed him in his version of their history.

Xin Mo is back in his hand, he lashes out, not where he wants to, but at the fabric of reality. He knows where he’s headed next.

Wu Yanzi. After slaughtering the Qiu shizun fell in with Wu Yanzi and is alleged to have done terrible things by the man’s side. Let me see how true that rumour is.

Chapter Text

It must still be night. The hallway he’s found himself in this time is lit by oil lamps, revealing a slightly shabby place trying to pretend it’s more expensive than it is. The air is heavy with the smell of sweet incense and perfumes, trying, but not quite managing, to conceal the scent of sex.

He can hear laughter, music, moans, and from the room behind the door he’s found himself in front of a woman’s voice, ‘Please stop. Please stop, master cultivator— I think you’re killing him.’

Ok. Enough. He already knows what he’ll find. Or at least the shape of what he’ll find, if not the particulars.

The door slams open. He steps inside. The woman screams. The man’s head jerks around. The boy beneath the man lies so, so still.

The next moments are lost in a blur and when they’re done the whole room is painted red from floor to ceiling. There is silence, silence broken only by the plink of blood from the edge of Xin Mo’s satiated blade.

On the floor there is a wreckage that used to be a man but is now a pulp of blood and flesh and shards of bone. In front of him is a woman he suspects is a whore, naked, a young and equally naked shizun draped over her lap. The boy doesn’t move. The boy doesn’t seem to be able to move. His legs are still spread, still akimbo the same as they were when he climbed off the older version of this boy earlier.

The whore is trembling, her arms wrapped around the boy in her lap, but he sees something edging on defiance in her gaze, and as he watches she starts to edge backwards, dragging shizun’s unresponsive body back away from him. She’s trying to protect the boy, he realises.

‘That—’ he points at the mess on the floor in front of her ‘— was Wu Yanzi?’

She nods. A tiny movement. Her eyes on him. So wary. So frightened.

Shizun’s eyes are also on him. Green and exhausted and almost resigned. ‘Please don’t hurt her,’ the boy manages, a tiny whisper of sound.

So like before. So like after they were done.

A special technique. One-sided dual-cultivation— he could almost laugh, except he feels like crying. What special technique? He knows what he’s looking at right now, he knows what he has done himself. Unwitting though it may have been.

Wu Yanzi was using shizun as a human cauldron. He’s heard— surely the whole cultivation world has heard— that the old bastard used to do that to promising young cultivators he captured. Why did no one suspect he had done it to shizun as well?

Because shizun didn’t present as someone who had been used as a human cauldron. People who have been used as human cauldrons are not supposed to recover enough of their cultivation after to become one of the most powerful cultivators of their generation. It’s unheard of.

He has done many things that a righteous cultivator would condemn, but using someone as a human cauldron is not one of them. It was always a step too far. A limit he didn’t want to cross, no matter what Xin Mo might have felt about the matter— except it’s too late. He’s done it now. Without even realising it he’s become the kind of man who could do a thing like that.

It is so far from what he wanted from shizun. Even when he thought he wanted to hurt the man, he never thought like that. He wanted—

Intimacy. Even forced, what he wanted from shizun was to get closer—

Clever shizun, the man found the one way to join their bodies which would leave the greatest distance between them.

He should leave. He’s seen what he needed to see, learnt things he did not want to learn— but shizun is helpless. Shizun can’t even move— and there is no one to defend him if he leaves.

He’ll take the boy to Cang Qiong again.

When he leans down to pick up shizun the whore starts screaming and striking at him, in turns begging and ordering him to leave the boy alone. He tries to tell her he intends to take shizun somewhere safe, but she doesn’t seem to believe him.

The sound of a commotion building outside again, more shouts, men’s voices, footsteps, has him using his qi to knock her out so he can finally grab the boy. There is a garment discarded near them, embroidered prettily, though not particularly expertly, and now smeared in blood— though still cleaner than pretty much everything he is wearing at this point. It probably belonged to the whore, but she’s not conscious to object to him taking it to wrap around the delicate, dead-weight in his arms.

Shizun can’t even lift his head. The boy looks terrified, but also resigned, pink lips pressed together until they’re pale. He imagines he seems like just another monstrous man to the boy, abducting him for dubious purposes.

He carries the boy out of the room, then out of the brothel, ignoring the faces of workers and customers that peer at him from the rooms he passes, before darting back inside, pale and frightened by his gory appearance.  

He is intending to mount Xin Mo once he’s outside, but he hears people calling out Master Cultivators! Master Cultivators! Help us, please! and so he hesitates in case whoever it is comes from Cang Qiong and he can deliver shizun to them. The way the boy is looking at him is making him feel sick.

No matter who is turns out to be he can’t greet them with his demon blood obvious for all to see, so he takes a moment to concentrate and conceal it. Just in time, because the sound of running footsteps resolves into a young Liu Qingge, a young Mu Qingfang, and two older cultivators that are dressed like they are the peaklords of their respective peaks.

How to play this—? Ah.

He gives what he hopes is a reasonably placid smile and greets them with a level of deference he doesn’t feel. ‘This wandering cultivator greets the esteemed cultivators of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.’

They are looking at him with suspicion, all four of them, though he notes the eyes of Mu Qingfang and the older female cultivator that must be the peaklord of Qian Cao keep flickering to the bloody bundle of shizun in his arms. Thinking quickly he decides on a story. ‘This wandering cultivator has been hunting the rogue cultivator Wu Yanzi,’ he tells them, ‘He was set on this task after Wu Yanzi slaughtered a family by the name of Qiu and abducted one of their slaves, a boy with the promise to become a notable cultivator—’ he glances down to see shizun staring up at him with confusion at this version of a past that in the boy’s mind he really should not know.

He glances back at the others, then focuses on the woman he thinks is the peaklord of Qian Cao. Shizun’s pride would not thank him for this, but it will make a good distraction, and even if it didn’t the boy needs medical attention, and it will be best if they know what they are dealing with. ‘The boy has been rescued, but Wu Yanzi has been using him as a human cauldron. This lowly cultivator hopes that he might find refuge and treatment amongst the noble peaks of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.’

There is an almost identical noise of outrage from all four of them, and then they’re rushing over. The woman reaches for shizun, and even though part of him wants to snap and snarl and stop anyone else from ever touching the boy again, he forces himself to surrender his precious bundle.

The woman immediately transfers shizun into Liu Qingge’s eager hands, so she and Mu Qingfang can both start fussing over him, checking his meridians and making worried, tutting noises. The peaklord of Bai Zhan, he notices, keeps a hand on his sword and eyes on him.

He notices people from the brothel starting to accumulate around them. He is sure any moment now accusations will start flying. His position won’t be helped by the fact he is aware that he is thoroughly soaked in blood, old and new. He gives the peaklord of Bai Zhan an appeasing smile. ‘This lowly cultivator was so outraged by what he discovered the despicable Wu Yanzi doing to that poor boy that he rather lost control of himself.’

‘Why would anyone send someone to rescue a slave?’ the man asks, the picture of suspicion.

How little shizun’s life was worth as a child—

‘They didn’t,’ he replies, recklessly embroidering his flimsy story. ‘I was sent to avenge the death of the young master of the Qiu family—’ he still can’t remember what Haitang said her brother’s name was. A’Luo sticks in his mind, but it was longer than that. Something— Something Luo. It doesn’t matter. He can’t allow it to matter. He forces his mind on the issue at hand. ‘The slave’s wellbeing was of no concern to my employer— it is simply that as a righteous cultivator I could not help but be outraged by what I came upon.’

‘Hm,’ the man harrumphs. ‘It is truly a disgusting business, using a person as a cauldron. You said the boy was a promising cultivator— Well his cultivation will be ruined now. A pity.’

‘Oh, no,’ the female peaklord interjects, looking over at them with an expression of surprised wonder. ‘Not ruined— The boy has a level of promise rarely seen. With appropriate treatment he may even recover.’

That gets the Bai Zhan peaklord whirling to stare at her, his gaze shifting immediately to shizun, the gruff man suddenly looking intrigued.

With all Cang Qiong cultivators distracted, he takes the chance to slip away, sauntering off down the street, before breaking into a run. The moment he’s around the corner he draws Xin Mo again. One more thing to check. Liu Qingge. His death.

How much has shizun been misunderstood by all of them?

Chapter Text

A few steps into the Lingxi caves and he can already hear shouting and the sound of swords clashing. One of the voices is wordless, the violent bellow of a man in the process of doing some violence, the other is the angry, strident voice of shizun.

‘You’re having a Qi deviation you stupid brute of a man!’

There is a grunt and then a roar, and even with the years that have passed between the death of Liu Qingge and now, and the few times he actually saw the man fight, he still recognises the voice of the War God of Bai Zhan Peak in battle. It seems though grunting and roaring is all Liu Qingge is capable of. Again and again Shizun speaks and Liu Qingge makes a noise like a beast. He ignores the grunts and growls and roars and focusses on shizun’s voice as he makes his way towards them.

‘I am not your enemy!’

‘This is ridiculous! Why are you always like this?!’

‘I can’t even meditate in peace without you attacking me!’

‘I should kill you! It would serve you right if I killed you! Always bothering me!’

‘Hold still!’

‘If you kill me, I won’t be able to do anything for you!’

‘I hate you. I hate you so much!’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing! How am I supposed to know what I’m doing?! How does Mu Qingfang do this all the time?! How does this work?! The only way I know to share qi is— and I am not doing that with you, you disgusting man!’

‘Just hold still!’

‘Please hold still!’

‘Please stop this!’

‘Please!’

By now he feels more beast than man himself. He is covered in gore. He stinks like carrion. He stalks further into the caves sure, so sure, that in moments the cooling blood soaked into him will be warm again.

Shizun’s shizun.

Haitang’s brother.

Wu Yanzi.

Soon Liu Qingge will join the ranks of men he has killed for hurting shizun.

He’s not ready to face it yet, what it all means, but he can feel it bubbling away at the back of his mind. Even Meng Mo is quiet now, no longer laughing.

Xin Mo is simply pleased with everything that is happening.

This is all on him. He is the one directing the bloodshed.

As he bursts into the cave where they are fighting he sees blood on shizun’s face. He sees bruises coming up. He sees Liu Qingge has been reduced to a mindless, violent beast, intent on nothing more than killing the man trying to fight him off. Shizun, he notes, is fighting back, but not as savagely as he knows the man is capable of. Shizun is trying to save Liu Qingge.

Green eyes widen as shizun notices him. Even maddened and bloodthirsty Liu Qingge is aware enough of his opponent that he registers the change in expression and whirls around.

The man is panting like a bull. His robes are ripped, his body injured— though they look to be self-inflicted injuries to him. Wild eyes, the eyes of a barely cognisant animal, fix on him, a droplet of blood is flicked from Cheng Luan’s tip, and then the sword is lifted as its master flings himself at him, entirely forgetting shizun.

This is less than ideal after hours of burning through qi travelling through shizun’s terrible history. He is starting to tire a little, which would hardly be a problem if he wasn’t facing Bai Zhan’s War God.

The warrior he has become— there are few that would give him much challenge in a fight. Yue Qingyuan, yes, which is why he had circumvented that fight with his trap and his arrows. The other that springs first to mind is the man he is fighting right now. Of course, he has never believed that Liu Qingge could actually defeat him, but had the man lived he suspects the War God would have been able to give him more of a challenge than most warriors alive. Even maddened by a qi deviation Liu Qingge is a difficult opponent.

It is made more difficult by the fact the man has no concern whatsoever about shizun’s safety, sending sword glares wildly around the cave and swinging Cheng Luan around like it was a saber and not a sword, shizun being forced to block and duck to try and preserve his own safety.

It angers him.

How dare Liu Qingge endanger shizun?

They’re in close, blade to blade, teeth bared at each other, when all of a sudden he spots a flash of green coming in behind Liu Qingge. Two pale hands suddenly appear either side of the man’s neck, accompanied by a wild, barely controlled burst of that sweet Yin qi. He lurches backwards at the surge of want from Xin Mo just as Liu Qingge’s eyes roll back in his head and the man collapses like a marionette with its strings cut.

He and shizun stare at each other. The man is hunched forward, one hand cradling his ribs, the other plucking  Xiu Ya from the air with a wavering grip. Those dark green eyes are defiant, staring him down as if he is scum to be stomped beneath the man’s white boots. Shizun steps forward, over Liu Qingge’s fallen body, until he stands between him and the fallen man.

Oh. Shizun is trying to defend Liu Qingge from him.

‘He hurt you!’ he protests. ‘You should stand aside and let me kill him and thank me for it.’

‘I don’t know what game you’re playing, demon,’ shizun hisses, ‘But I will protect every member of my sect from you.’

‘I not here to hurt anyone!’ he snarls, ignoring his earlier intention to murder Liu Qingge. He’s not here to hurt shizun, that’s what is important.

‘Why should I believe the words of a demon?’ the man demands, and it’s disconcerting, it’s reminding him of the shizun that was at the height of his power. This shizun, he realises. This is shizun before the sect turned against him for “murdering” Liu Qingge. Cold, shizun was always so cold.

Those beautiful green eyes narrow. ‘Are you the little beast’s father? Has he let you into our sect?’

Little beast’s— Even though shizun knows he’s half heavenly demon does the man not realise he’s the son of Tianlang-jun? Though that hardly matters right this moment. He realises he could make everything worse for himself if he’s not careful. The last thing he wants is this shizun leaving here and going to punish him for his own actions. Future actions.

Drawing himself up, concealing the mess he feels he is behind the mask of the emperor, he laughs, trying not to cringe at how forced it sounds. ‘That stupid boy? Of course he is not the son of this noble lord. Does he even realise he is half heavenly demon? This lord would never lower himself to conspiring with a tainted half-breed— he has rejected his father’s people in favour of pathetic humans. To suggest this lord would work with a worm so pathetic his head would not even make a good trophy offends me greatly.’

‘Then why are you here?!’ shizun snarls. ‘Lord or not, I don’t care, I will not permit you to harm this sect!’

The man is wavering on his feet. Liu Qingge obviously did some damage before he interrupted, and now he’s guessing shizun burned through some of his qi reserves doing whatever it is he did that knocked the man out. Why shizun chose that course of action when it meant taking out the only one of the two of them strong enough to have the potential to win against him he doesn’t know. Perhaps— perhaps shizun decided that knocking the War God of Bai Zhan Peak out of a qi deviation was more important than letting said War God die throwing himself mindlessly on the sword of an interloping demon.

He finds himself almost angry at shizun for that. Have more value for your life, he wants to shout.

This shizun looks like he would slap him for the impertinence of raising his voice though. It’s odd— the thought fills him with this confusing tangle of dread and desire.

Feeling discombobulated, and resentful about it, he comes up with a lie he hopes will discombobulate this shizun a little as well, so he’ll feel a little less like the man has the advantage. ‘This lord had heard rumours of a peerless beauty amongst Cang Qiong Mountain Sect’s peaklords. This lord allowed curiosity to get the best of him, though I am pleased to say that my curiosity has been sated, and the beauty far outdoes the meagre whisperings I had heard.’

Green eyes narrow a little, before darting down to the still form of the unconscious Liu Qingge. Shizun shifts, moving forwards a little more, protective—

‘Not him,’ he snorts, unable to stop himself scoffing at the idea. True, Liu Qingge has a face as fine as Mingyin’s, but neither of them are a match for— ‘The peerless beauty I had heard of is the peaklord of Qing Jing Peak.’

For a moment shizun just freezes in place, the tiniest of frowns appearing between his brows, then— satisfyingly— the faintest pink blush starts to suffuse the man’s cheeks. Though it quickly becomes clear that might just be a bluish of outrage, because the man then snarls, ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Stupid man! How dare you say such a thing to me?! I don’t know what game you’re playing—’

‘No game!’ he interrupts, before he ends up facing a flow of invective just as bitchy and annoyed as what shizun was spitting at Liu Qingge when he entered the cave. ‘This lord has seen what he wanted to see, so can now leave.’

‘Leave?!’ the man snaps. ‘You think I will allow you to flee after attacking one of Cang Qiong’s peaklords?’

‘I attacked him because he was attacking you!’ It’s been many years now since he had to play nice with anyone. He used to be so good at the syrup-tongued manipulation, the kind that helped him get established at Huan Hua Palace after he escaped the Abyss— though perhaps the interest of the Old Palace Master had helped his case— it’s just that he’s long since lost patience in playing pretend. ‘Let us not fool ourselves shi— Shen Qingqiu— of the two of us I am far the stronger. You have no chance of stopping me from doing anything I want to do.’

Manipulating an all too eager cultivation world to turn against you. Locking you away for years. Torturing you in unspeakable ways. Ripping off your arms and legs. Ripping out your eye and tongue. Killing a man who betrayed you as a child. Letting you kill yourself because I was foolish enough to think you too broken to do anything once you stopped being fun to play with— and now, even using you as a human cauldron.

Shizun must see something in his gaze, because the man pales, and a look— an all too familiar look now, he realises, the look of shizun facing a stronger, violent man, and forcing himself to become resigned to his fate — comes across that beautiful face.

He might as well be shizun’s shizun.

He might as well be Haitang’s brother.

He might as well be Wu Yanzi.

He might as well be Liu Qingge—

Just another brute.

Just another beast.

He wants to escape that gaze. He wants to escape the things he’s done.

He sends a very bright, but harmless, sword glare at shizun from Xin Mo, all light with no force behind it, and while the man is distracted throwing himself out of the way he slashes with his sword, cutting a way back home.

Chapter Text

The beast doesn’t come back. He doses off into an uneasy sleep aided by the bowl of medicine the servant fetches for him, half expecting to wake up back in the Water Prison to the sensation of having a limb ripped off— but he’s still in the red coloured room when he wakes, alone, feeling a little stronger.

For the next few days the servant woman tends to him, feeding him, giving him medicine, helping him turn over in bed, bathing him, and helping him with any other necessities. Still, the beast does not return.

Her name is Nuo, he learns it partway through the first day. She lets him use it. She lets herself become a little less formal. She tells him she does not know where the emperor is.

Luo Binghe’s existence hangs heavy over both of them.

She is kind to him, kind in a way that makes him fear she is trying to cram him full of kindness before the beast does return and his life goes back to being something painful and humiliating, instead of calmer and more peaceful, more comfortable than he can remember it being in years. Decades, perhaps.

He has never much liked other people, and he finds being mostly alone, with the exception of moments of the company of a woman he quite likes, a far more relaxing existence than his life back on Qing Jing Peak. Of course he knows it can’t last— nothing good has ever lasted for him.

Even now his peace is a tainted, uncertain one. He is alright until he drifts into sleep, because sleep is when the nightmares come.

Qiu Jianluo mostly, though sometimes the beast and the Water Prison, and disconcertingly at times a blend of the two of them. He will be in the Qiu Mansion being hurt like that— but the one hurting him will be Luo Binghe instead of Qiu Jianluo. Or he’ll be in the Water Prison and the man taking the skin off his back with a whip will by Qiu Jianluo and not Luo Binghe.

Wu Yanzi doesn’t make an appearance.

Even before now the only nightmares he ever has specifically about that man are of the old bastard killing Qi-ge, or of the things he was forced to witness, or take part in at the monster’s hands, but even then Qi-ge is always there, watching and condemning him. Apparently he made good bait; large eyed and allegedly “pretty”, as well as too thin and sickly looking from being starved and beaten and used as a cauldron. Wu Yanzi told him he was good for luring in prey that either wanted to rescue him or hurt him worse.

In the past when his nightmares have turned to him being used as a cauldron his brain has always replaced Wu Yanzi with Qiu Jianluo, or, on occasion, Liu Qingge— or, worst, most wretchedly, with Qi-ge. Now he dreams of the beast on top of him. He dreams of being younger, weaker, and the beast’s qi burning like Wu Yanzi’s did.

The medicine Nuo gives him helps a little with the nightmares, but not enough to make him sleep easily for long.

At least he is recovering quickly, quicker than he expected after all that time being tortured and starved before being used as a cauldron. The good, nourishing food Nuo provides him in small portions many times a day helps, but, as galling and bitter as the thought is, so does the fact his cultivation seems to have improved from contact with the beast’s qi.

He has been at a bottleneck ever since that series of devastating qi deviations he had around Liu Qingge’s death. The first, worst of them, happened not long before whatever happened in the Lingxi caves, and the damage it did was what drove him to secluded cultivation within them, only for— Well, whatever it was that happened in that time he can’t remember, it triggered another qi deviation which then left his cultivation dangerously unstable.

Now he feels that if he just had the strength and the safety to meditate properly he could shatter his way through that bottleneck.

Even his emotional upheaval doesn’t seem to be throwing his cultivation off the way it usually does. His qi circulates calm and steady through meridians that feel orderly and untangled. He wonders how long it will last. He wonders what will happen when more of his strength returns. He wonders what will happen the next time something unpleasant comes for him— But it’s a useless kind of wondering, when he feels so much better in the moment.

He tries not to remember overhearing Mu Qingfang once commenting, sotto voce, to the head disciple of Qian Cao Peak that ‘They should just Dual Cultivate, it would sort them both out,’ one of the few times both he and Liu Qingge had ended up in the healing halls at the same time. At the time it had felt like some sort of attack, some way of discrediting him and all he’d worked for, or some insinuation about his past and the only thing men have ever thought he was good for— but now he’s trying not to contemplate the fact that Liu Qingge was a purely Yang cultivator, much like the beast, and how much better his own cultivation feels after playing cauldron for the demon.

For the longest time he lived with this niggling suspicion that Liu Qingge had died of a qi deviation, even though he had no proof and no concrete memories of the incident— if so, perhaps the man’s cultivation wasn’t as balanced as he’d believed. Perhaps Mu Qingfang’s comment had, in fact, not been exactly a criticism but a frustrated comment due to them both having issues with cultivation and the kind of opposing natures that could have balanced each other out through dual cultivation if everything went well.

The peaklord of Qian Cao had always warned him against dual cultivating with someone with a predominantly Yin nature— in a way he had found offensive at the time, sure it was some dig at his moral character caused by all the rumours about his lechery. Even when he had read warnings that cultivators with unbalanced Yin or Yang natures should not dual cultivate with someone with a matching nature he hadn’t ever thought Mu Qingfang could have been speaking from some sort of concern. It always seemed like it had to be a criticism.

When he first came to Cang Qiong Mountain Sect he had some hope of finding a place for himself in the world, but between his shizun’s demands and his own— he admits— lack of easy sociability, things had started out stilted between him and the rest of the sect, and only gotten worse over time.

All he knows is how to hold himself separate from people, or how to bite— how to sharpen his tongue and wield his words as weapons. It's so hard not to assume everything everyone says is double sided, full of barbs, full of criticism, and then so hard not to react accordingly.

He was afraid. The entire time he was at the sect he was afraid. Afraid his past would come back and catch him and he’d end up back where he started. Afraid that everyone in the sect with any power would decide it was what he deserved— that he deserved his past and deserved to be punished for it.

And, in the end, when the nightmares dogging his heels finally caught up, he had been proven right. They had condemned him to captivity and torture— and all the rest of it.

Those first, early rumours about him, that he thought he was better than everyone, that he’d somehow bought his place into the sect even though he was too old to ever really progress that far, that he was a spoiled young master with a bitter tongue and a lecherous mind— at some point over the years they had transformed into murderer, disloyal to the sect, abusive teacher, lecher who prayed on vulnerable women, and on and on and on— and even Qi-ge had believed it all.

He had given his all to the sect. He has sacrificed himself, let himself be remade, not defended himself from his shizun’s violence and humiliation, and sworn his full loyalty to a martial family that— Did not return the sentiment.

He had been right in his fears. He had been right in his worst interpretations of them. In fact it was worse than him just being right, because he’d assumed that on Qing Jing he had some allies amongst his disciples, but not even they had spoken for him after Ming Fan’s death. In the sect he had surrendered everything to, in the sect he had remade himself for, in the sect he had worked tirelessly to ensure the safety of— he truly had no friends, no allies, no comrades.

So maybe he was right when he assumed a little malice to Mu Qingfang’s words. Perhaps not the degree of malice he’d first feared, but a little sharp sting, even if the peaklord of the healer’s peak really had thought dual cultivation would help him and Liu Qingge.

The worst thing is that he can almost see the healer’s point. By day five, when boredom is gnawing on him, he finds he can climb from the bed whenever he wants to and go wandering around the small space of the red room. He does feel better than he should. He feels stronger than he should. If he ever gets the chance to properly cultivate again he really does suspect he will end up stronger than he ever thought possible— all because of the humiliating, degrading thing he did for the little beast.

He almost wants to try and escape to go punch Mu Qingfang in the face for making him think about unnecessary things all these years later.

Not that he can escape. Not that he has exactly tried— but he’s not sure enough of his current strength or the beast’s humour if he is caught, so a quiet fear holds him back from attempting it. Still, he has explored his current cell, seeing if he can locate a way out for when he is stronger. It’s a miserable fact that he can’t even find the door the beast and Nuo must be using, no matter how he has lingered by that wall or probed it with his qi.

Where would he go even if he did escape?

Somewhere else. That’s all he can think.

He’s not going to return to the sect, he’s not wanted there, and more than that he doesn’t want to set eyes on any of them again. Even that last visit from Qi-ge still inspires bitterness if he thinks about it. No. No if he ever gets out of here he will—

He could cultivate to immortality by himself, go into seclusion somewhere until he either ascended or died by qi deviation, or he could walk amongst the world as a wandering cultivator. Either choice may be alright— as long as he stays away from his old martial brothers and sisters.

Of course, if he really wanted to cultivate to immortality his best option would to be— He shudders, leaning his weight against one red wall and lifting a sleeve to shield his face as the horrible thought crosses his mind. Were he a different man— If there was something desirable about him that he could rely on to have his way— and if he was truly as degraded as everyone says he is— then he could play sweet, he could play seductive, he could coo and simper and wrap the beast around his little finger until the creature was all too eager to have him. In return for his abasement he could have access to the beast’s qi, and if he’s right he could use it to improve his cultivation and break through bottleneck after bottleneck until he became the cultivator he could have been if his early promise hadn’t been so utterly devastated.

The only thing is— he would rather die.

As he’s feeling disgusted with himself for even acknowledging the possibility the wall not far in front of him starts to split open. He quickly straightens up and moves away from the wall, trying to make it look as if he was walking around the room to exercise his legs the way Nuo has instructed him to do, and not as if he was contemplating an escape he wasn’t even really contemplating. His hips no longer hurt the excruciating way they did, but they do still hurt, and more than that they feel stiff and a little clumsy— and he’s not sure if it’s something mental, some awareness he holds that his legs were so recently ripped off, and so his body expects damage and is manifesting it from that expectation, or if there really is some lingering injury.

Nuo has suggested that she will request the attention of a physician for him when the beast returns from wherever he has run off to, but for now all he can really do is circulate his qi, exercise when he can, and enjoy the warm baths full of medicinal plants and extracts she brings him each day.

It’s too early for it to be today’s bath. While he knows Nuo is probably coming to bring him some food, he can’t help the anxiety that rises in him.

She has told him “the emperor” wishes to be alone, which he takes to mean the beast is in a sulk because of the things he said to the man, but today could be the day that changes and he finds himself dragged off to the Water Prison. The fear doesn’t last, as Nuo bustles into the room carrying a tray of food.

They acknowledge each other, then he goes to sit on the soft, cushioned seating mat she brought for him when he first proved capable of getting out of bed. Sitting on the hard floor makes his hips ache, as embarrassing as that is. It reminds him of being young, before he joined the sect and his improved cultivation healed the damage he’d been left with from a life full of privation and pain.

The food he’s given is still light. A little rice, a little meat, some vegetables, some tea, along with yet more bitter medicine. Nuo fusses over him, making sure he has enough in his bowl, before she flops down to sit across from him.

Over the days she’s become less formal and him more comfortable with her. She looks— exasperated? Amused? Rueful?

He tilts his head, an unspoken question. ‘There’s drama in the emperor’s harem again,’ she says. ‘I may not be a harem servant, but no one who lives in the palace can fully escape involvement, even when the emperor is not asking impossibilities of this one’s wife that end up stirring up the ant hill.’

Wife— Nuo has told him a little of the woman. Cui Guiyang, a pure-blooded boar demoness from a good family. ‘What did the emperor ask of her?’ he asks, not because he really cares to know about the beast’s relationship with his women— and to think he was condemned as a lecher— but because he is bored and he likes Nuo’s conversation.

For a moment Nuo doesn’t reply, but then she shakes her head and blows out a breezy laugh. ‘The emperor asked my wife to go ask one of his wives a question, instead of doing it himself, and instead of answering that question the wife became very thoughtful and then refused to answer that whole day, and then in the night that wife went and confronted several other wives, which led to an argument, which led to a fight, which has led to my wife being stuck hanging around in the harem most of the time since then while the emperor’s women shout at and attack each other and throw about accusations, waiting for that answer so she can go and try and find our currently shy and reclusive emperor to tell him.’

‘It sounds— difficult,’ he replies to that. An understatement, he would guess. Why the beast chose to make himself a harem is— Well, it’s not beyond him, is it, because it’s the kind of thing selfish, greedy men do. It just seems more trouble than it’s worth.

Certainly he would never want one, even if he was as lusty as he’s been accused of being. He cannot imagine why someone would choose a myriad of partners, little potential for real love and intimacy, and all that chaotic social nonsense over having just the one person to love and cherish. It would have been better for everyone, the little beast included, if the man had just stuck to Liu Mingyan— or even to Ning Yingying, who had always been so very fond of him.

This life isn’t what he wanted for the girl. To just be another wife, not even first wife, but just some other bauble in this gaudy jewellery chest of Luo Binghe’s— but then he lost the right to have an opinion about what she does with her life somewhere along the line, when he did whatever it was that destroyed her trust in him.

‘The harem is always difficult,’ Nuo replies with a small shrug, ‘But it is what the emperor wanted.’

— and powerful men get what they want.

He is nibbling his way through the bowl of food, the taste of medicine lingering on his tongue, wishing vaguely for something sweet to wash it down with, when the door suddenly starts to open again. They both freeze, a brief, frightened look exchanged between them, before Nuo straightens out of her slouch and her face blanks back into servile obedience. He worries his own is doing something similar.

Instead of the beast a woman scurries into the room. She’s a little taller than Nuo and reasonably pretty, with small, delicate tusks poking out of the corners of her mouth, capped in finely worked gold. Nuo relaxes out of servant’s blank, but then into worry at the look on the face of the woman who must be her wife.

Cui Guiyang, if he’s correct in his identification of her, looks at him, something unreadable in her face, before turning her attention to her wife. She grabs Nuo’s arm— not roughly but insistently— and drags her from the room. Nuo opens her mouth to object, but Cui Guiyang gives her a censoring look, and a moment later the two women are gone and the door sealed up and indetectable once more.

He sits very, very still for a long moment, contemplating what to do, sure that the door is about to reappear and the beast erupt inside to do him some violence. The food in his bowl goes cold. The tea in the pot as well. The door doesn’t appear. No one enters his prison.

Eventually he makes himself eat, knowing this may be the last time he has a chance to for a long, long time, and then he gets stiffly to his feet and goes back to walking around and around the room until finally exhaustion comes for him and he crawls back into the bed, wrapping himself tightly in red silk.

He dreams. They are not good dreams.

When he wakes the beast is standing over him, staring down at him.

He can’t help the flinch, the way he draws the covers tighter around himself. The beast does not look well. He looks pale and thin, with dark shadows under his eyes. There’s a mad heat to his gaze. For a split second he wonders if somehow the creature has managed to undo his hard work playing cauldron, or if it didn’t actually work at all, but the beast hasn’t brought the sword with him, so that suggests the beast is actually still in charge and not the sword.

He says nothing, just stays perfectly still, as if by doing so he’ll somehow avoid irritating the demon to the point of violence.

‘Shizun—’ the beast says, eventually, mouth forming the sound of the title as if it’s something strange, a fascinating novelty. ‘Shizun—’ he doesn’t say anything in turn. He doesn’t trust the beast right now. The man gives off too much promise of future violence. ‘Shizun— I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you about the things you said.’

Chapter Text

He ends up sitting upright on the bed, wrapped in the red silk covers, resting back against an assortment of the soft cushions that Nuo brought him for the purpose during those first days when he could barely even move. Nuo appears, briefly, carting a large, throne-like chair which she places next to the bed for the beast to sit on. The fact her face remains perfectly blank behind the creature’s back, and that she won’t even make eye contact with him, sets a queasy roil to his stomach.

The beast is still staring at him. He’s almost tempted to shout at the man to speak, but some self-preservative instinct keeps his mouth shut.

When the creature does speak the first words are not what he expected, ‘You look very beautiful in red.’

He doesn’t know what to say. Obviously the creature likes the colour, the whole room is red— is it a mind game? Is it meant to disarm him? Surely if the creature has any thoughts on how he looks in the colour he would have mentioned them before. Tiresome boy— man.

‘You wanted to talk about what I said?’ he says instead of acknowledging the creature’s words.

The beast shifts in his chair, looking uncomfortable. ‘Nuo—’ the man begins, but then shakes his head. Nuo, what? ‘I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know what to think. You— You knew I was half heavenly demon, even from the start?’

‘I said so, didn’t I?’ he replies, trying not to feel annoyed. He doesn’t want to have to go over everything endlessly. He has said his piece now, it doesn’t need to be dissected.

‘If what you said is true— then how did you know? Even I didn’t know,’ the creature replies.

‘How could you not have known?’ he snaps, then tries to temper his tone. The beast is going to play head games with him. The beast is going to lie to him. He can’t let it get to him or else he will react poorly and end up being hurt.

‘My powers were sealed!’ the beast snaps, lurching up in his seat, before forcing himself back down.

He finds himself cowering back, away from the man, and despising himself for his cowardice.

‘My powers were sealed,’ the beast repeats, calmer. ‘I did not discover the truth until much later.’

‘When is later?’ he asks his own question as he forces himself to sit back upright, meticulously straightening out the covers. The beast is lying.

‘After Sha Hualing’s invasion of Qiong Ding Peak,’ the beast bites out. ‘When I first came to the sect I had no idea who I was.’

‘Ah—’ he replies, with a nod. The beast is probably lying, but even if he’s not, even if he did— even if he did torment a— an innocent child— that doesn’t change what the beast did later. ‘So you learnt you were a demon and immediately reached out to your own kind to plot against the Immortal Alliance Conference. I see.’

‘I did no such thing!’ the beast snarls, lurching out of his seat again and this time looming over him. ‘I had nothing to do with that incident! That— from what I have learnt this last day— was the work of Shang Qinghua and Mobei Jun!’

‘Why?’ he snaps back, sitting forward and glaring up at the man trying to intimidate him. ‘Why would Shang Qinghua do such a thing? Why should I believe you?’

‘I have no idea!’ the creature snarls in return.

‘Then make them tell you!’

‘I can’t! Shang Qinghua is dead at Mobei-Jun’s hands and Mobei-Jun has left the palace to deal with unrest in his own territories.’

He blows out a sigh and forces himself to sit back against the cushions. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘How can you not believe me!’ the beast roars. ‘I am telling the truth!’

‘No one is obligated to believe you just because you’re telling the truth,’ he points out, bitterness spilling over, ‘People rarely believe me when I tell them the truth.’

The beast stops, blinks at him, before finally sinking back down into his chair. It is embarrassing how much relief he feels to no longer be loomed over. ‘Why don’t you believe me? What reason could I possibly have to lie to you?’

‘There are myriad reasons people lie,’ he replies. ‘In your case I imagine it’s because you need to make me out to be a monster to justify the things you’ve done to me.’ A bitter laugh slips out, ‘Foolish boy. Real power is doing what you want without needing to make an excuse.’

‘I—’ the beast hesitates, then shakes his head. ‘I’m not lying. I really didn’t know I was half heavenly demon until after Sha Hauling invaded the sect, and even when I did know I had nothing to do with what happened at the Immortal Alliance Conference— I was— I was just a child. You hurt me—’

‘What do you want me to say?’ he asks the beast. He tries to imagine that the creature isn’t lying, that the man really didn’t know what he was, that— that— but then he thinks of everything Luo Binghe has done since the Immortal Alliance Conference. Was this always the beast’s nature? Was it being pushed into the Abyss? Was it finding the sword? If Luo Binghe really was innocent and has become this cruel man because of being pushed into the Abyss and everything that came after— but Luo Binghe is an emperor, a man with a massive harem, a man who will shortly be the most powerful creature in both the mortal and demonic realms. So many men would slaughter their whole family for even a taste of the beast’s power.

For a long moment the beast says nothing, but then asks, ‘If I had not been half heavenly demon would you have treated me differently?’

‘I would not have taken you on as a disciple if you were not what you are,’ he replies, and sees the man wince.

‘Why not?’ the beast demands. ‘Have I not proved my talent as a cultivator? Why would you have rejected me?’

The truth is a bitter thing, so he tells only part of it, ‘You would have gone to Bai Zhan. Liu Qingge showed an interest in you, and you would have done well there— or if not Bai Zhan you would have ended up on one of the other peaks.’

‘Why not Qing Jing?’

Still avoiding telling the whole truth he answers, ‘You were obviously a physical cultivator. Qing Jing was a haven for spiritual cultivators, not physical ones. It was never going to be the peak that best suited you.’

‘What of your envy?’ the beast says, full of self-satisfaction, as if the creature thinks he has something on him. ‘Everyone knows you ruined the cultivation of every disciple you felt was too promising— perhaps that’s why you would have rejected me.’

‘I have ruined no one’s cultivation!’ he snarls in the creature’s face. It is not the worst of the allegations against him, far from it, but it is still one of the ones he most resents. He does not like children. He especially does not like boys. He has never enjoyed teaching— but he put his all into teaching his students for the betterment of the sect. He put his all into Cang Qiong Mountain Sect— and the tiny kernel of truth hardly helps his bitterness, because, yes, he has been envious, but he has done his best to not let it get in the way of his duty. All the years of anger about this topic come bubbling up, spilling loose like so many words have before, now that he has finally found himself talking about things he used to keep to himself.

‘You are right, though, I will give you that. You always had promise, a lot of promise, and you are also right that it would have made me reluctant to take you on as a disciple. Do you want me to be sorry about it? Do you want me to crawl because of it? My cultivation was irreparably damaged before I ever set foot on the peaks of our sect, and I was aware of it. I was also aware enough of myself to know that envying my disciples was not going to make me a good teacher. I may never have voluntarily taken on a disciple that was going to arouse such emotions in me, but I never stopped anyone else from taking them on either. How many times did I tell Qi-ge to take this or that disciple into Qiong Ding Peak, or suggest this or that disciple looked the kind of strong and stupid brute that would do well on Bai Zhan, or had the kind of mind for bureaucracy to suit An Ding, and on and on and on? I always had the wellbeing of the sect in mind.’

‘What about the disciples you drove from Qing Jing peak?’ the best demands, leaning forward in his chair. ‘Cui Guiying told me that Ning Yingying could not think of any disciple whose cultivation you did outright ruin, but that you had driven away some disciples!’

‘All spoilt young masters from fine families that had been dumped on me by Qi-ge— I mean Yue-Zhangmen!’ he snarls in return. ‘As if being forced to take on those brats was some honour. They bullied and belittled their martial brothers and sisters, bothered the female disciples, and would not heed me because they were used to being told they were innate geniuses and had nothing they needed to learn— and yet, while I may have driven them from Qing Jing, I did not drive them from the sect. As far as I know all of them found a place on one of the other peaks. Should I crawl and apologize for the fact I despise men like them?’

‘Hah!’ the beast laughs, totally without any humour. ‘As if Ming Fan and his cronies were not a bunch of bullies! I did not see you driving them away!’

‘Ming Fan was a good boy!’ he shouts, fury overtaking him. True, the boy had his flaws, and most of those flaws came out in Ming Fan’s dealings with the beast in front of him, but Ming Fan was also not like so many disgusting boys. He was not predatory. ‘I regret letting him involve himself with you! You cannot know how I regret it! He was always too eager to please— and from what I understand you reminded him of his eldest brother, the first son of his father’s first wife. Talented that young man is, but cruel and sadistic behind doors. It was my failing as a teacher that enabled him to take out his familial frustrations on you instead of dealing with you myself.’

‘Favouritism!’ the beast shouts back. ‘Blatant favouritism! Ming Fan was a nothing— yet you, in your insecurity, allowed him to be your head disciple. His cultivation was hardly worthy of such a title—’

‘I am aware that he was no genius,’ he snaps, ‘I was not looking for a successor, it was too early—but I still needed a head disciple. Ming Fan had a good memory, he was talented at administration, and his cultivation was steady and strong enough that he would one day be a dependable member of the cultivation world. He would not have been discarded, he would have found a place helping to run the Peak, but he was never going to succeed me— and he knew that. My successor was going to have to be someone with a talent that could benefit the sect.’

‘You’ve already said you didn’t let anyone with any actual talent into Qing Jing—’

‘I did not!’ he corrects. ‘I said I did not let in any boy in who would rouse my worst instincts as a teacher. Can you really claim that your fellow disciples were untalented? Even if you are so arrogant to think so, you were there, until you proved yourself to be the monster I first suspected you to be.’

‘Wh-what do you mean?’ the beast looks startled, all his aggression suddenly disappearing.

Riding high on the victory of unsettling the demon he enunciates, very, very clearly, ‘After you helped fight off Sha Hualing and her cronies I had begun to trust you. You are right in your arrogance; you are a highly talented cultivator. If you had not shown your true colours at the Immortal Alliance Conference I may have even chosen you to replace Ming Fan as my head disciple— how galling you must find it, to know how close you came to being in a position to do real damage to Cang Qiong Mountain Sect if only you had not been impatient, if only you had stayed your course and continued pretending to be the talented young cultivator you could have been.’

The beast is looming above him. The beast’s arm is held back, as if to strike. He presses his eyes closed and turns his head away— he always says too much. He can never hold his tongue.

The blow never comes. Eventually a thump— he dares to squint his eyes open. The beast has sunk down to the floor by his bedside. As he watches the creature reaches out, one large— so terrifyingly large— hand comes up, rests on top of where his ankle is hidden beneath the covers.

‘But you knew I was half heavenly demon?’ the creature says, voice sounding hollow.

‘That hardly would have mattered had you just been loyal,’ he replies, pulling his foot out of the man’s grasp.

The creature starts laughing, broken, bitter, humourless laughter, head thrown back so those long curls fall across the covers on the bed. ‘I really didn’t know what I was,’ the creature blurts out between those miserable chuckles, before the laughter falls silent as suddenly as it began, ‘I really didn’t know when I entered the sect. I really didn’t betray the sect. I really didn’t betray you— Did you really think I’d betrayed you? Is that really why you threw me into the Abyss?’

‘It is,’ he replies, watching the beast warily. The uncomfortable thought that maybe the creature isn’t lying is starting to niggle at him.

‘If you’d trusted me—’ the beast begins, then shakes his head, ‘If I’d proved myself to you, proved that I had nothing to do with it, somehow, but had still exposed what I was at the Immortal Alliance Conference, what would you have done?’

He takes a moment to think about it, before answering. ‘If I could have, I would have helped you hide what you were. If I could have, I would have helped you run. If your capture was inevitable, I would have spoken up in your defence and insisted Yue-Zhangmen do likewise.’ It is the simple truth. He had spent some time thinking what he would do if the brat’s nature was exposed to the rest of the cultivation world in that foolish time when he had been somewhat fond of the boy.

As if able to read his mind the beast then observes, ‘So you really were fond of me then?’

‘As galling as it is to admit now, after everything—’ he sighs, ‘Yes, I was fond of you. You had been so very brave when you faced Tian Chui. You had protected the sect, protected me when I felt on the verge of collapse into another qi deviation— one I was not sure I would have survived. At that moment I considered you one of my most valuable disciples—’

It takes a moment to realise that the beast is not laughing this time. Instead the creature is weeping, head hung low, face buried in his hands. He does not know what to say. He doesn’t know if he should say anything at all. He simply stays quiet and hopes that the demon’s mood doesn’t shift back to violence.

Eventually the beast speaks once more, head still low, those curls that would be charming growing from virtually any other head hanging down and concealing the creature’s handsome face. ‘Nuo— You said your shizun was cruel to you too, what did you mean by that?’

‘What do you think I mean?’ he snaps before he can soften his tone. This strange behaviour from the beast is unnerving.

Red eyes peak up at him through that curtain of dark hair, glaring resentfully, ‘Did he beat you? Did he whip you? Did he pour tea over you? Did he make you kneel for days and nights on end? Did he leave you to sleep in the woodshed? Did he call you names? Did he do all the things you did to me?’

‘He did,’ he bites out. ‘All of that, he did. He broke me and remade me into what he needed me to be in order to become his successor— and I hated him for it. You think it’s bad that I called you Little Beast? You think that was some sublime cruelty? You want to know what real cruelty is? It is being forced to smile and bow and simper and thank a man for the honour of bearing the name Qingqiu. You know nothing of the cruelty people are capable of, Little Beast.’

The beast draws himself up, staring down his nose at him, ‘I was a street child before I was rescued by my mother! We were so very poor! We were mistreated! She was mistreated! She died! My mother died! I ended up back on the streets— and I came to Cang Qiong to make her proud, only to be met by you and your— your—'

‘I was a street rat too,’ he argues back. ‘Only, unlike you, I was a slave! My mother— I have no idea who my mother was. I didn’t even have a name. I was a number—’ he lets out a bitter laugh ‘— And what does any of that justify? Did my sad, pathetic past bring a single tear of sympathy to anyone’s eye when I was being accused of every crime under the sun? Did it save me from being condemned to your oh-so-tender mercies?’

The beast says nothing, just looks at him, something unreadable in that red-tinted gaze, before asking, ‘Did your shizun really beat you?’

‘My shizun took the skin off my back with the discipline whip so often I lost count,’ there is an ugly kind of pride in being able to say it, in being able to tell someone the price he paid to become the peaklord of Qing Jing.

‘Didn’t you want vengeance on him for it?’

‘Often,’ It was all that kept him going, sometimes. ‘I thought about killing him in ways that would make even you blanche.’

‘Then why didn’t you?’

‘And give up the chance to become the peaklord of Qing Jing?’ he laughs, bitter, ‘I was a fool, I thought that it would be worth it, I thought that way I would have the power to be able to keep myself safe.’

Again the beast falls into silence. When the creature does speak it’s quiet, something unreadable in the tone. ‘Wh-why was being given the courtesy name Qingqiu worse than you calling me Little Beast?’

The thought of saying it out loud, speaking the words, giving voice to the pain and humiliation and the awareness that his own shizun must have known at least some part of his past and still chose to give him that name— He can’t do it. He glares at the creature that wants that from him, that wants to hurt him in yet another way he cannot bear. ‘That, Little Beast, is not something I owe you. You have taken enough from me. I will not answer you.’

‘Was it so terrible?’ the creature has the gall to ask.

Before the man can clarify what he means he snaps, ‘Be quiet, Little Beast!’

‘Was it really so terrible?’

‘Be quiet!’

‘Your reason has to have something to do with Haitang’s family—’

‘Quiet!’

‘Qiu Haitang. Shen Qingqiu— Haitang said—’

‘Shut up!’

‘Haitang said her family treasured you—’

‘SHUT UP!’

‘Haitang said her brother—’

‘QIU HAITANG WAS A SPOILT, FOOLISH CHILD! What did she know? She saw nothing! Her brother would never let her see anything! She should be glad I killed him! Who knows what he would have ended up doing as she got older!’ by the time he is done shouting he in hunched forward on the bed, hands clawed into the silk of the covers, shoulders up by his ears, rage and humiliation like fire in the heart of him, feeling so, so disgusted with himself for ever letting the words escape. It’s his own fault. He should not have let the beast bate him like that, going on as if it wasn’t the worst thing, the worst thing, to have happened to him in his whole miserable life.

Even the loss of his relationship with Qi-ge can ultimately be laid at Qiu Jianluo’s door. He could never stop resenting the man for leaving him there, to suffer like that, for never coming back for him even though he promised— and Qi-ge always refused to admit what they both knew, that he had moved on, had seen how much better he was than scummy, gutter trash Xiao Jiu— and— and though he may have been born with a sharp tongue and a bitter mind, he just became sharper and bitterer and could no longer even stand to be touched— and—

And the beast is getting to his feet and walking away from him, as if he is nothing, as if he doesn’t matter at all, as if he is once more a slave, begging on the streets to be ignored or struck— he wants to throw something at the creature. He wants to rant and rave and shout and cry— but he says nothing. He just sinks in on himself and says nothing.

Chapter Text

The beast disappears again for a few days. Nuo returns a while after the creature stomps off, cautious at first, but soon back to something like the self he was just getting to know. She seems relieved to find him still standing, not savaged and brutalised or perhaps even killed. Still, she seems tenser than she was before the beast’s last visit. Problems in the harem, she insists, but he’s not sure he fully believes her. No doubt the beast is acting like a brute and everyone, not just his women, is suffering because of it.

Life goes back to wandering around the room, to eating, to hot baths and bowls of medicine— and boredom. Ever growing boredom.

He feels uneasy. His cultivation still feels stronger than it did before playing cauldron for the beast, but all this time alone gives his heart demons time to gnaw away at his peace of mind. It doesn’t help that he thought he heard Ning Yingying one night, calling out Shizun?! Shizun?! A dream, he concluded, in the morning. His sleep seems to be getting ever more disturbed.

He feels sick thinking about Ning Yingying. He feels sick imagining her needing him and being unable to come and help her— and sick again at the thought she wouldn’t welcome his help even if he did somehow escape this place.

All he can do is try not to think about her at all.

All he can do is try not to think about anything.

He tries to meditate, with little success. He tries to calm his mind. He tries to calm his cultivation.

The last encounter with the beast has left him feeling unbalanced in a way that he does not want to let worry him.

His hips still hurt. Nuo still talks about getting him a physician. In a moment of weakness he asks her to find him a female one if the beast ever agrees to let one see him. She nods, and says she will, but never seems to be able to summon the courage to corner the beast about the matter.

In the end she summons one herself, without actually consulting her master. Their master, he supposes. The latest in a long line of masters.

One morning when she brings him his breakfast she also brings with her an older female boar demon. Her wife’s aunt, as she introduces the woman, Cui Ya.

The physician is short and stout, with a broad face as plain as Nuo’s for all they’re unrelated, and a blunt, matter-of-fact demeaner. She eyes him up and down as she stands before him, then sighs, and tells him to get undressed. He refuses, she insists, and everything briefly degenerates into the two of them trying to out-stubborn each other, until Nuo steps in and negotiates things so he is allowed to remain within a large, enveloping robe that can be lifted out of the way so Cui Ya can examine him while he can preserve as much modesty as possible.

By now he is used to being seen and handled by Nuo, but physicians make him anxious, and that anxiety spikes when he considers the parts of his body Cui Ya is going to be looking at. The pain in his hips spreads to every part of his body they are attached to, thigh, belly, back, and— rear.

He is standing in the middle of the room, wrapped in the robe, which is hiked up so the woman can probe and prod at his left hip to compare its state to his right hip, her broad, strong hands poking at where the aching muscle of his rump attaches to his painful upper thigh when the door appears in the wall and the beast steps inside.

Everyone who isn’t Cui Ya freezes in place. The beast’s eyes boggle. He flinches. Nuo goes perfectly blank. The physician keeps poking and prodding, tutting quietly to herself.

‘Wh-what is going on here?’ the beast eventually splutters, taking a step closer. The movement is enough to make him skitter backwards, away from the creature, evading Cui Ya’s grasp to scurry to the bed and grab the covers to wrap around himself to further conceal any hint of his bare flesh.

When he turns back he finds Nuo is standing between the beast and her wife’s aunt, her hands held up placatingly. ‘This lowly servant begs the emperor’s forgiveness,’ she is saying, ‘This one summoned a physician to tend to the emperor’s captive without the emperor’s permission.’

‘Physician?’ the beast snaps. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘His hips have been paining him, master,’ Nuo explains.

‘Hips—?’ the beast frowns, ‘Did he not—? I mean. He has been healed. Physician, explain.’

‘You did a reasonable job healing him,’ Cui Ya replies, staring the beast in the face with no evidence of any fear. Foolish woman— he can’t help admiring her. ‘Though I take it you removed the limbs and reattached them several times, is that correct?’

‘I did,’ the beast bites out, looking oddly reluctant.

Cui Ya nods. ‘His cultivation was bound at the time?’

‘It was—’

She physician nods again. ‘And with already damaged cultivation—’ she sighs, ‘His mind expects pain, because it has been trained to expect pain in all that time he did not have access to his cultivation to help himself bear it or heal the damage, so he is bracing himself, tensing his muscles all the time, as if by doing so he could prevent you from ripping off his legs again. This is causing pain and stiffness, as well as dysfunction in how his hip joints are functioning.’

‘What can be done?’ the beast demands, as if it is a given that he should be given medical treatment instead of having his legs ripped off again as a reminder of the futility of resisting whatever the creature wants.

The physician thinks for a moment, then dispassionately lists, ‘I will write up a prescription for medicine, acupuncture of course, there are stretches that will help, same with the hot baths that my niece’s wife has already been administering— were he a different patient I would say whole body massage using oil infused with healing herbs would be very helpful, but considering how badly he tenses up when touched I feel it may be counter-productive in his case— oh, and a course of Yang qi infusions may also be helpful— not dual cultivation, of course, unless he has a primarily Yang cultivation partner he trusts, No. Infusions— They should help him to continue untangling the mess whichever bastard used him as a cauldron as his cultivation was beginning to develop made of his meridians, which will overall improve his physical condition.’

‘Auntie!’ Nuo hisses, glaring at the woman, even as it feels like the room distorts around him. He feels himself stagger back a couple of steps. To say it out loud— to tell the beast—

He’s dying. He’s—

‘What is the point hiding it?’ he hears the physician say, as if from a very long way away, ‘The damage that has been done to that young man— And for him to be left to deal with it, without adequate treatment. You say he used to be Shen Qingqiu, one of the lords of that human cultivation sect up on those mountains? And they let him remain in this state? Humans. Ridiculous creatures. Whichever one of his ancestors first thought breeding with one of them was a good idea needed having some sense beaten into them.’

The stress of being touched and poked and prodded at, combines with the stress of everything that has happened recently, and the memory of having his legs ripped off and reattached and ripped off and reattached and ripped off and reattached and on and on, and twists its way down into the misery of his memories, all the things he does not want to acknowledge, the things he does not want the beast— his final tormentor, the last man to make that very same use of him— to know,  and his qi finally roils into the beginning of a long overdue qi deviation.

‘Shizun?’ he hears the beast, he can feel him, smell him, coming closer, but his mind and body feel disconnected, his senses blurred and strange. ‘He’s having a qi deviation!’

‘You, halfbreed, you’re pure Yang, aren’t you?’ he hears as someone gently lowers him to the floor.

‘Don’t address him like that, auntie, he’s the emperor!’

‘I don’t care if he’s my own father, reincarnated, if he wants to help this poor creature he will do what I say and—’

Everything goes black.

When he wakes he’s back in bed. He lies there for a long moment, just breathing, trying to get a sense of how badly he’s managed to damage himself this time. He feels— He feels good. He feels—

Every muscle tenses as he quickly takes stock. No pain, not there, and no sense that anyone has— He flexes his feet, moves his arms— and he is not exhausted, so he hasn’t been made into a cauldron while he was unconscious. The beast must have just— just given him qi—

‘Shizun—’ that voice makes him freeze. Very, very carefully he turns over, turns to face where it was coming from— the beast is there, sitting in that throne like chair again, staring at him again.

He can’t read that expression. The beast looks tormented— but that can’t be right.

‘Shizun— I tracked down servants from the Qiu mansion. I tracked down people who knew Wu Yanzi. I went to the Warm Red Pavilion and talked to the women there. I tracked down some old disciples of Qing Jing Peak and asked about your shizun. I tracked down some senior disciples of Bai Zhan Peak and asked about Liu Qingge. I— I talked to Ning Yingying—’

‘What are you saying?’ he spits out, a croak that makes him cringe at the weakness there.

‘Shizun— This disciple was wrong. This disciple has wronged you.’

How bitter he must be that he doesn’t feel any better to hear those words. How bitter he must be that it doesn’t even matter. Even having all the terrible things exposed— It sounds like the beast has gone and ferreted out everything he had left, everything he kept hidden. It should throw him into another qi deviation, but he can’t even bring himself to care. ‘What does it matter, Little Beast? It’s all done now.’

Again, the beast says nothing, and again when the beast finally speaks it’s yet more words he doesn’t want to hear. ‘The one-sided dual-cultivation ritual— it was— He made— It was to use you as a human cauldron, wasn’t it?’ stuttered and uncertain, where has the emperor gone? ‘Wu Yanzi did that to you? He was the one who taught you how to—?’

‘You really do desire my utter humiliation, don’t you?’ he sighs.

‘No! I—’

He interrupts the beast before the creature can spill more nonsense, ‘Yes, you are correct. You used me as a human cauldron. I learnt how it was done, and how to survive it, at Wu Yanzi’s hands. Are you happy now?’

Another irritating pause. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be happy again,’ is what the beast finally says.

‘That’s your problem, not mine,’ he replies, deciding he’s had enough of this. He turns his back to the creature, tugging the covers up high so they cover his ear, and trying to pretend he’s alone.

‘Shizun—’ the beast beseeches. ‘I don’t know what to do—’

He ignores the man.

Chapter Text

‘Nuo! Nuo!’ he bellows as he staggers into his bedroom. His bedroom. The bedroom of his palace in his time. He sheathes Xin Mo as he waits for her to arrive.

‘Yes, master?’ she asks, looking placid and unjudgmental, even though he’s red with blood from head to toe.

‘A bath,’ he orders, ‘And then shizun. I want you to bring him to me when I am clean and dressed.’

Something he has done must have changed their history. Shizun must be waiting for him. Shizun probably has his own quarters, his own courtyard. Perhaps now shizun is his empress and the sprawling mess that is his harem no longer exists.

Nuo hesitates. He sees something in her usually blank face. ‘The— Does the emperor wish for this servant to bring him the bones?’

Bones.

‘Bones?’ he manages.

‘They are still in the Water Prison, where you left them, master,’ she replies, and he thinks that’s judgement hidden beneath her servant’s blank. ‘Perhaps master has decided it is finally time to give them a decent burial—’

Oh.

Oh no—

Oh—

Oh—

When he found himself in that first strange other world, the one with the sweet shizun, nothing he did there changed anything in his own world when he went back home. It wasn’t his world. It couldn’t be his world. Why then would any of the worlds he has so recently visited be his worl either?

He thought— he thought he was stepping back into his own past, but he wasn’t, no, instead he was stepping into the pasts of other worlds. That is how he could rescue shizun from the man’s shizun, from Haitang’s brother, from Wu Yanzi, from Liu Qingge, and each time he stepped through the slash Xin Mo made he was stepping into an exact copy of his shizun’s past, without his changes changing anything.

Shizun is still dead.

His shizun is still dead.

The things he did still killed his shizun.

His shizun.

Fuck the bath. He needs to see it. Needs to prove to himself it’s real, that nothing he’s done has changed anything.

He got his vengeance.

His worthless, unrighteous, ultimately unwanted vengeance.

He got his vengeance and in doing so took the one thing he really wanted away from himself.

What he really wanted was shizun.

He laughs, a mad, broken laugh that makes Nuo take a tiny step away from him.

Maybe he was really punishing himself when he was torturing shizun. Punishing himself for not being good enough to make the man love him. Punishing himself by guaranteeing shizun would never be able to love him back.

The voice of the shizun he left behind in that mirror of their recent past echoes through his head.

I had grown fond—

Fond. Fond of him. Shizun was fond of him at one point.

Cold and reserved— but that makes sense, after a history like that— but fond.

If the incursion at the Immortal Alliance Conference hadn’t happened maybe that fondness could have built. Maybe— maybe he could have proved himself to shizun as he grew into a man and found some way to melt that icy heart.

Too late now.

Ignoring Nuo he turns and leaves, this time through the door and not a slash in reality made with Xin Mo. He stalks through the palace, ignoring the way the servants and courtiers, and even his women, flinch away from either the blood drenching him, or the grim look on his face. Behind him he hears Nuo trotting to keep up. She’s smart enough not to call out to him, not to try and reason with him.

He does not feel very reasonable right now.

He can’t even blame Xin Mo, his sword is still content and quiet, happy to let him lead.

Because shizun, a shizun, fixed things for him—

When he spots her she’s not even coming towards him, she’s not even asking anything from him, she’s just walking through the palace in a little clump of lesser, unambitious concubines who are huddling around her for the protection of her status. They notice him then, as he comes to a stop, glaring at her—

He glances back at Nuo, ‘Order someone to gather Qiu Haitang’s things and have her thrown from the palace,’ he orders, and then, ‘And Liu Mingyan’s. I want them both gone before I return from the Water Prison.’

Her eyes widen, ‘Master— this servant does not wish to overstep, but things are dangerous for women outside of the palace right now. If you are angry with either of those wives, would it not be better to banish them from your sight, but not your safety?’

Dangerous for women outside of the palace— Ah, yes. He has heard it was so, since the chaos of him merging the realms, and since he destroyed the cultivation sects. It’s led to quite a few additions to his harem.

He should feel something.

Maybe grief, maybe regret, but in truth he doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care about anything.

He doesn’t care about any of this.

He never cared about any of it—

All he ever cared about was shizun, but because he felt shizun hated him, would reject him, had hurt him, all that obsession twisted into wanting to hurt the man instead.

‘Give the order,’ he tells her, ‘Or else I will simply take their heads to be rid of them.’

Qiu Haitang, whose brother raped and tortured shizun. Liu Mingyan who blamed shizun for her brother’s death when it was the result of a Qi deviation that made him attack shizun.

He wants them gone.

For a moment he is tempted to add Ning Yingying— but he doesn’t know what happened there. There he didn’t investigate. He should— ‘And when they’re gone fetch Ning Yingying to my rooms. I have questions for her.’

‘— As the emperor commands.’

Nuo doesn’t sound happy with him, but he no longer cares about that either. She leaves his side to go deal with his wives as he walks on, ignoring the hopeful smile of a Qiu Haitang whose day he suspects is about to be thoroughly ruined. As he turns the corner he hears shouting start up behind him, but he doesn’t look back, intent on his course.

Shizun is where he left him, bones lying on the floor of the Water Prison, shards of Xuan Su still inside his ribcage.

This time he shrugs off his bloodied overrobe to wrap the man with. It feels fitting, all the blood spilled belonged to men who hurt shizun when he was alive. The incomplete skeleton comes apart as he lifts it from the floor, connective tissue mostly gone. In the end he is holding a bundle of bones that doesn’t remotely resemble that beautiful body.

Still, he cradles it to his chest as he finally, belatedly, carries shizun up and out of the damp, caustic earth, the contemptable, inadequate tomb of the most important person in his life. He stalks through his palace, feeling grim satisfaction at the way everyone he sees either drops into deep bows or outright flees from him.

He leaves the shards of the sword on the floor where they belong. Yue Qingyuan should have no claim on shizun now. Yue Qingyuan should have had no claim on shizun in life, if the man was so content to leave shizun at the mercy of Haitang’s brother— and, for so long, at the mercy of himself.

The next few days pass in a miserable haze.

Mingyan is furious, of course, as is Haitang, he imagines, but of the two only his first wife has the audacity to confront him about things. She screams, he glares, it devolves into a fight. He only holds back to the degree he doesn’t kill her, but he does incapacitate her, before declaring his orders should be carried out. He hears no more of her, or Haitang, so assumes Nuo has done as ordered.

Later he questions Ning Yingying, whose sweet, girlish face goes from cheerful to worried to grim to miserable. At first she is sure, so sure, that shizun was inappropriate with her, but when he pokes and prods and demands detail after detail, ignoring her tears, and her panic, and the way she withdraws from him and curls in on herself, he finds that accusation had no substance either.

Shizun was close to her. Shizun praised her. Shizun would pet her gently on the head. Shizun brushed her hair a few times or put it up in ribbons. Shizun would share a room with her if they were on missions together without any other female disciples, but always with a privacy screen between them. Shizun bought her little gifts. Shizun listened to her even if she was talking about nothing important.

Shizun never touched her inappropriately. Shizun never tried to kiss her. Shizun never said anything lewd or crude to her. Shizun never seems to have made any advances to her at all— and by the end of the conversation she seems to have realised it too.

By the end she’s crying about how tangled up in her thoughts Mingyan, Haitang, and the Little Palace Mistress had made her, the way they had taken all these sweet memories she had of shizun and convinced her they were tainted, made her reinterpret everything until she felt sick and dirty and disgusting and so, so angry with shizun. Shizun, who it turns out, had raised her like she was his own child. She then attacks him— screaming and swearing at him for hurting shizun, but she’s easy to overcome, and he can’t even bring himself to be angry with her for it.

He could throw her out of the palace as well, but decides not to, as it seems like she was manipulated, and even during the worst times in the Water Prison shizun never said anything cruel about her.

It’s shallow mercy, leaving her be, because it’s obvious her peace of mind has been ruined.

She wants nothing to do with him anymore, and he finds he wants nothing to do with her either, so he orders Nuo to set her up in her own little courtyard away from the harem, with her own household, and to take care of her, but to ensure he never has to lay eyes on her again.

Then, not wishing another repeat of Mingyan, he goes and throws the Little Palace Mistress out onto the streets himself.

It’s not enough. It fixes nothing.

He orders a coffin made of the finest muttonfat jade for shizun. Full sized, even though what’s left of the man will barely take up half of it. At some point shizun’s arms were destroyed, but he finds the man’s tongue and one beautiful, jade green eye in a jar on one of his shelves, both still covered in preserving talismans. He leaves them there for now, but when the coffin is done he will put them inside of it. Shizun’s legs went to Cang Qiong — he takes Xin Mo to the burnt wreckage of the sect to see if he can find them.

He finds the box, burnt, broken, in the wreckage of what must have been Yue Qingyuan’s house. Inside are the bones, the flesh long rotted away—

The world feels very empty. Very cold.

As he’s holding the remains of the box he feels killing intent. He looks up, there’s a band of high-level demons, humanoid ones. The one that looks to be their leader is dragging a woman by her hair. Pretty, he observes, vaguely aware that if things were as they used to be the day would be ending with her joining his harem. Same with the other girls some of the other demons have captured.

He sends her and her sisters on their way instead, with a pouch of coin, after taking his rage and frustration out on the demons who had captured them. The girls take the money, but they run as soon as they have, the looks they give him not sweet and tempting, grateful, but frightened.

When he returns to the palace he is met with another band of demons, these some of his high-ranked followers, and more violence. They feel as easy to dispatch as the last ones. He is stronger now. Since shizun fixed his cultivation he is much stronger.

He orders their bodies to be left where they fell, in case anyone else feels tempted to challenge him, and returns to his rooms. There Nuo tells him that Mobei-jun has left and returned to his own palace, with no intention of returning. That Mobei-jun has withdrawn his support. Things are falling apart— he still doesn’t care.

He doesn’t know how to care.

‘There is a plant this servant knows of—’ Nuo says, breaking him from his brooding over the singed box containing shizun’s legs. ‘It can grow him a new body, as long as you can find his soul.’

Chapter Text

It is unlikely he will be able to find shizun’s soul. It’s likely that shizun has drunk Meng Po’s soup and moved on to his next incarnation long before now. He is aware of this fact. Still, he doesn’t let himself dwell on it, instead focussing all his obsessive energies on what he has to do next. If he stops. If he thinks, If he slows down and hesitates, for even one moment, he feels like he’ll fall apart just as shizun’s skeleton did as he lifted it from the ground.

He starts work on the body before looking for shizun’s soul. He tells himself this is because the because the research he does after Nuo tells him of the plant informs him that the new body will take a while to ripen, and if he does find the man’s soul it will be best to have a body ready to transfer it to. It means time, energy, effort, all things other than facing what he’ll do if he can’t find shizun’s soul.

A body—

A body is something.

A body is some fragment of what he lost. What he destroyed.

Even if shizun’s soul is long gone an intact body will be a little more respectable to place inside what will be a truly exquisite coffin when it’s finished than what is left of the man it is being made to house. For so long shizun’s corpse was just left where it fell— and it was incomplete to start with.

If there’s a body, but no soul, maybe he will keep the coffin in his quarters, so he can look at the thing he lost through his foolishness. Would that be a pleasure or a torment?

A body is not the man. A body is not shizun.

A body may be all he ends up with.

The first thing he does is collect the Sun and Moon Dew Flower seed from a grotto in the Bailu forest. There is no one around, and it’s almost peaceful, but wandering the world shows him the damage he did when he merged the realms. There are a lot of skeletons littering the forest, most of whom belonged to humans who look to have been searching for some kind of refuge, all their worldly possessions scattered around them and ransacked, but some were obviously demons— the greatest collection of which surround the slowly decaying mass of what must have once been a large snake demon of some kind.

He doesn’t let himself wonder what happened. It doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters, not anymore.

Once he’s harvested the seeds he uses a drop of blood from shizun’s preserved tongue to begin the process, then plants the developing body in the secret garden he had Nuo prepare for him. She has been very good recently. Quiet, obedient— her eyes, when she looks at him, seem flat, empty of judgement, reflecting nothing but his own face.

What he sees staring back at him is haggard and hollow cheeked, hair a scraggle of tangled curls framing the crimson-eyed face of a gaunt demon. She made him bathe when he got back with the seeds, the bathwater ending up foul and filthy, needing to be changes five times before it finally remained clear. He wonders why she bothered. He wonders why he went along with her.

He feels like he deserves the filth.

That filth was the blood of those that once harmed shizun.

He should have worn it in penance for what he did himself.

While the body grows, he searches for shizun’s soul.

It’s gone.

It doesn’t take long before the dreadful certainty of this fact fills him. Still, he keeps searching— maybe it’s damaged. Maybe it fragmented when the man died, and he can find all the pieces and somehow stick them back together.

He starts looking for rare artifacts to detect souls. The world seems full of them. None of them are of any help. Still, he keeps searching.

Eventually he finds himself in lands belonging to a lord of the Eastern demonic realm who is supposed to be some expert on esoteric artifacts. The man has built himself a little palace with many guards and high walls— but lets him in when he swears all he is searching for is knowledge.

He stays with the lord for three days, discussing the topic and exploring the man’s library, in between being fed large meals of good food that he barely picks at, and walking around a small, but very lovely garden with the lord and his consort. He despises the lord for his consort. He despises the lord for having a beautiful young man to cling to the man’s arm and smile sweetly at him. He could almost kill the lord for having such sweetness, such a beauty, a rare and refined beauty, a rare and refined and devoted beaty—

The consort is of mixed demonic heritage, tall and slender, like shizun was, with a face a little bit like the man’s once was. Of course the consort is a demon, covered in fine white scales, with horns a little like Nuo’s— though he otherwise looks nothing like her— and an ancestry that is obviously mostly Golden Pheasant demon instead of plain mortal— and, anyway, shizun would hardly be shizun and act so sweet and temperate.

Were shizun to come back to him such a placid thing he would miss the man’s fire and bile. Funny, that.

Still, he cannot help his jealousy at the way the lord and his consort seem so happy together— it makes something deep in his chest ache— Even when he sees moments of unhappiness in the consort it still pangs when the lord is sweet and attentive, gentle and tender, cajoling the pretty pheasant demon out of the worst of his sorrows.

‘When I first saw him I was selfish,’ the lord confesses to him one night as they sit together in the man’s study, the consort sitting out in the garden where they can both watch him playing a sad song on his pipa beneath the light of the full moon. ‘I did not buy his sister when I bought him, even though he begged me to. A year or two later I had fallen in love with him and would do anything he asked, but when all he wanted was me to go and find her and bring her to him I could not. She was gone, and the madam at the brothel where I found him told me she had died.’

‘We cannot undo the mistakes we have made,’ he eventually tells the man. There is a moment between them then, an unspoken commiseration, an acknowledgment of the way the power to do what they like has brought out the bastard in them in the past, and now they have to live with the consequences.

On the third day he is in the library again when he comes across a mention of an artifact that once belonged to a lord of the Western demonic realm. It is called the Golden Orchid Weeping Soul Mirror and it is supposed to be able to show its master visions of themselves and their beloved, their lives and their souls, throughout all of time and space.

He ignores the warnings that looking into the mirror will bring great unhappiness. He also ignores the fact that it was buried with its master in the Holy Mausoleum a long time ago.

Been there, done that.

He never wanted to go back to the place, but at least this time he knows how to navigate at least part of it. Of course he’ll have to go deeper than ever before to get the mirror, but that’s ok, it gives him something to do. He needs things to do. He needs to keep going forwards, heading towards something—

The lord and his consort see him off as he heads to the Holy Mausoleum. He glances back at them, sees the consort hanging on to the lord’s arm as they watch him leave— He wants—

He just has to keep going. Onwards. Onwards.

The whole experience of retrieving the mirror is annoying, and dangerous, but he manages it and returns to the palace with the mirror wrapped in the disintegrating golden silk it was buried in.

He tells Nuo to make sure he is not interrupted and then locks himself in his rooms with the mirror and shizun’s remains— packaged up in the most beautiful wooden chest he could find while he waits for the coffin to be done.

Her heart is in his throat, his breath catches in his lungs, as he pulls fragments of gold silk away to reveal the thing within. It’s small— it’s smaller than he thought it would be, a silver disk the size of his palm. It’s also incredibly plain. There is no decoration on back or front, and the only way he can tell the difference between the two sides is that one has been polished to a mirror shine.

As he looks into it his reflection starts to blur, wavering and shifting, until what he sees looks like stormy clouds instead. Tell me who it is master— a whisper slides across his mind— tell me who you love.

‘Shizun,’ he replies out loud, then, to be more specific. ‘Shen Qingqiu, the Xiu Ya Sword, the ex peaklord of Qing Jing peak. Show me his soul. Let me find his soul.’

For a moment there is silence, no response, until Your beloved’s soul has moved on in this world. He cannot be found. Do you want me to show you another Shizun instead?

Gone. Shizun is gone.

Shizun has drunk Meng Po’s soup and forgotten him. Shizun has left him behind—

‘You can do that?’ he asks, ignoring the way his face tickles as the tears drip down.

I can show you every Shizun that ever could be, at every time Shizun ever could exist— the mirror whispers.

‘Can you show me shizuns I know? Can you show me my shizun, in the past?’

I can.

He almost asks to see his shizun at the end, that moment he wasn’t present for, because he’d stalked out all pleased with himself, leaving the shards of Xuan Su behind that shizun had eventually swallowed. He hadn’t been there for shizun’s death. That feels wrong, somehow— but some self-preservative instinct has him instead requesting, ‘Show me the shizun whose shizun I killed. Not then, show me him later. Show me him all grown up— at the age he was when I had imprisoned mine within the Water Prison.’ He hopes that shizun has escaped that wretched fate.

At once, master.

Chapter Text

The cloudy surface starts to clear.

A forest. Why is he seeing a forest? A forest and within that forest a little group of people, sitting around a fire. He peers into the small disk of the mirror— and then almost drops it.

Four men, one woman, all dressed in well-made travelling robes, no sign of any sect allegiance to any of them. They seem to be broken up into two couples and a single man.

In the centre of the group he sees himself, or a version of himself, dressed in dark red with black embroidery. On his lap, with his arms wrapped around the man’s slender waist, is shizun, dressed in black embroidered with jade green.

The man may be swatting at him with a folded fan, but he can tell it’s not serious from the way the other him is laughing— the same as one of the men, the older one, the tall, handsome, older one with long curly hair, who is laughing so hard he's almost falling off the log he's sitting on, all the while the woman with a face so very much like his own swats at that man with her hand. The final figure, a young, slender man with a pretty face a little similar to both his own and the older man’s, seems to be trying to get everyone to calm down.

He wishes he could hear what the man is saying. He wishes he could hear what everyone is saying, but all the mirror depicts is what can be seen.

As he watches that version of him catches shizun’s fan, then leans in to press a kiss to the man’s lips. He expects to see himself be slapped, but after a moment’s pause that shizun kisses back, just a little, before pulling away and swatting at the him again until he lets the man go.

The shizun climbs off his lap and sits down beside him instead, next to the woman he suspects is his birth mother, the two of them sharing an exasperated look and shaking their heads. The next moment the man he suspects is his father goes to scoop up his mother, only for both her and shizun to turn matching glares on him.

‘Enough!’ he snaps. ‘I don’t want to see any more.’

The mirror goes blank. Why is that shizun in some forest with his parents and whoever that other young man is? Why are his parents there at all? Why is Tianlang-jun free? Why is his mother alive? Why isn’t that shizun dressed like the peaklord of Qing Jing? In fact, why was that shizun dressed like a wealthy wandering cultivator and not a member of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect? Why was that shizun on the other him’s lap? Why did they kiss? What on earth—?

He shakes off his confusion. It’s not important, that is that shizun, not his own—

Though, now he thinks of it, this could be a way for him to check the fate of all the shizuns he rescued. ‘Show me the shizun I rescued from Qiu Haitang’s brother instead,’ he tells the mirror.

At once, master, it replies, the surface briefly returning to clouds once more.

Things are less confusing when the mirror clears this time. He sees shizun sitting at a table, working on a piece of calligraphy, much as the man would do back when he was a disciple of the sect. True, this shizun is dressed in the uniform of Qiong Ding and not Qing Jing, but he did tell the boy not to join the latter Peak.

The man is inside what looks to be a very nice house, clean and neat and decorated much the same as he remembers the bamboo house being decorated, though, he notices, the space seems larger, and the decorations a little more elaborate.

As shizun is working a man comes up behind him, tall and handsome, the very picture of power. Shizun glances up, a serene smile crossing his face, moments before the man takes a seat behind him, wrapping strong arms around shizun’s torso.

They lean in towards each other, a kiss— gentle, but passionate, is shared— and then Yue Qingyuan rests his handsome head on shizun’s shoulder to watch the man in his arms return to his calligraphy.

He almost throws the mirror across the room. Somehow he restrains himself, instead biting out the words, ‘Now show me the shizun I rescued from Wu Yanzi.’

At once, master.

The image of shizun, so content in the arms of Yue-Zhangmen, fades and the healing halls of Qian Cao takes its place. There he sees another shizun, this one dressed in a healer’s robes, bending over the bloodied, messy form of a man, stripped down to just his trousers and lying on one of the beds.

Liu Qingge he realises. The War God of Bai Zhan is watching shizun as the man tends to a nasty wound across his torso. He can see shizun’s mouth moving, a deep frown between well-formed brows, and even though he can’t hear what is being said he gets the impression shizun is haranguing Liu Qingge for doing whatever it was that caused the injury.

Oddly the War God looks almost fond, instead of angry or displeased, the way the man always used to do whenever the two of them interacted back when he was a disciple of Qing Jing Peak. Shizun seems to notice that the man is paying more attention to his face than his words, because he snaps his fingers rudely in front of Liu Qingge’s face.

As he watches the War God catches shizun’s hand in his, but instead of hurting the other, Liu Qingge brings those slender fingers to his lips so he can press a kiss to their back—

‘The shizun I rescued from that bastard Liu Qingge!’ he snarls in the face of the soft blush overcoming this shizun’s pretty cheeks.

The image thankfully resolves itself into something less displeasing this time. Qing Jing Peak, looking like Qing Jing Peak, with shizun dressed as shizun walking past a line of disciples practicing their sword forms. Behind the man he sees—

Yes. He sees himself, tall and handsome and well-grown, dressed in the robes of Qing Jing’s head disciple. The him there looks happy. Content and pleased with himself and pleased to be so near shizun— perhaps a little too pleased, because he catches the him there sneaking a few admiring glances at the slender form walking ahead of him.

Shizun doesn’t seem to notice. Which may be for the best.

He watches the two of them for a while, feeling a quiet contentment rise in his chest, tainted just a little by the poignant pain that this is something he never got to experience. He’s beginning to understand the warnings about the heartbreak the mirror causes. For someone without a sword capable of cutting doors through reality this could be torture.

All the things, good and bad, the mirror’s master could witness happening to their beloved, all without the power to stop it. They could see their beloved hurt, tortured, raped, killed— or in the arms of a rival, in love with a rival— and all they could do is watch.

It gets harder to watch what he is watching as time passes and the pang at the heart of him grows. Shizun seems to trust that other him, just as that other him seems to have put aside his grievances. No Xin Mo, he notes, so probably no visit to the Endless Abyss, just years and years of shizun’s fondness growing ever stronger—

The two of them are so obviously close that when Liu Qingge suddenly shows up a matching scowl crosses their faces. He decides he’s had enough of watching this shizun all together when he realises that Liu Qingge is trying his awkward best to be chivalrous towards a shizun that obviously wants nothing to do with him, all the while the other him looks like he’s about to challenge the War God to a dual.

What is the point in looking in this mirror? Shizun’s soul is gone. Soon he’ll have a body to bury, or to keep and admire, but that’s it.

‘Are there other worlds out there where shizun and I end up together and happy?’ he asks the mirror, not sure it can even answer the question.

Countless worlds, master— it replies.

That should be enough to make him happy, but it can’t take the bitter taste from his mouth. ‘What about Yue-Zhangmen? Are there other worlds where he ends up with shizun instead?’

Countless worlds, master— it replies again.

‘Liu Qingge?’ he snaps. ‘Does he ever end up with Liu Qingge?’

In countless worlds, master.

‘So he is not fated to be mine?’ it’s a bitter reflection of a want he’d never let himself acknowledge.

All things are fate, master. There is not one fate. You and he live and die in countless ways. There are worlds you both die as children. There are worlds you live long lives together. There are worlds he dies first. There are worlds you die first. There are worlds you die in each other’s arms. There are worlds you never meet at all. There are worlds in which neither of you are ever born—

‘What about the first world I encountered, the one with the weak, womanless me? Show me that shizun.’

At once, master.

He frowns. When the mirror clears all he sees is Yue-Zhangmen sitting at a table, leaning over some paperwork. He peers at the mirror closely, looking for shizun. Shizun has to be there or else the mirror would not be showing him this—

Oh. Oh no.

There, sitting next to Yue-Zhangmen, is the very faintest outline of person, a small, sad outline, leaning against his shoulder, radiating a kind of terrible sorrow and longing.

A ghost. That strange, sweet shizun has died.

‘Show me the me of that world!’ he demands. He must be destroyed. He was so protective—

What?

Another forest, another him, another shizun. The two of them are walking hand-in-hand with a casualness that makes them seem to be sight seers. As he watches the shizun there uses his fan to excitedly point at a demon the size of his thumb climbing up the nearest tree.

‘I don’t understand,’ he says. ‘Shizun is right there. This can’t be the same world as before.’

The individual you are indicating is not shizun, master. Shizun is Shen Jiu and that individual is not Shen Jiu. In the world which you are viewing Shen Jiu is dead but refuses to move on—

‘Then who is that?’ he demands, pointing at the little not-shizun.

The individual you are indicating is Shen Yuan, master. His soul is out of time and place but is inhabiting the body of shizun. This happens in countless worlds. In many of those worlds shizun comes to indicate Shen Yuan, but not in your world, master. In your world shizun will always indicate Shen Jiu.

‘If the shizun of that world died, show me his death!’ he orders, mind racing, whirling.

At once, master.

Night. The bamboo house. A slender figure collapsed on the floor, robes a mess around him, face red, breathing fretful and laboured. Time passes. The figure’s breathing comes slower, slower— the door opens, Ming Fan appears briefly, before running off in a hurry. More time passes. Ming Fan returns along with Mu Qingfang and Yue-Zhangmen.

Yue-Zhangmen rushes to scoop the figure up to deposit him on the bed— but the moment shizun is in the man’s arms his breath stutters and stops. It’s just for the blink of an eye, but in that blink of an eye shizun’s spirit falls out of his body and sprawls across the floor just before a different spirit— a young man with short hair, wearing odd clothes— seems to fall through the ceiling and land in shizun’s abandoned body. The body’s breathing resumes, stronger, more regular, by the time Yue-Zhangmen has placed it on the bed for Mu Qingfang to fuss over.

On the floor shizun’s spirit sits up, looking around wildly, before focusing on Yue-Zhangmen. He calls out to the sect leader— who doesn’t reply— and then again, again, looking every more frantic, ever more distressed. Eventually shizun’s ghost jumps to his feet and flings himself at the man, reaching for him, then trying to swat and strike him, that beautiful face a rictus of panic and despair.

‘Enough!’ he orders, relieved when the mirror shows clouds once more. ‘So—’ he laughs, bitter, ‘So that shizun wasn’t even shizun. He was some interloper— No wonder he was so strange. So sweet. No wonder that other me was so happy with him, so obviously beloved— I was a fool. There is no happy ending for shizun and I. There is no way he could ever love me. No way we could ever be happy together—’

Incorrect, master— The mirror interrupts him before he can really vent the rage and despair he feels. The betrayal. The disappointment. There are uncountable worlds in which master and shizun fall in love and are happy together.

‘Show me!’ he orders, hunching over the mirror as image after image is projected across its front. Embracing, kissing, going to bed together, or just holding hands, or walking side by side, or talking to each other, or shizun on his lap, or shizun enthroned as his empress beside him, shizun smiling, or shizun swatting at him, or shizun laughing, or shizun pretending to be haughty but obviously amused— sometimes they are dressed as members of Qing Jing, sometimes as members of other sects of Cang Qiong, sometimes as wandering cultivators, sometimes in silks, sometimes in threadbare rags, sometimes they’re naked so he cannot tell how they’d dress at all, sometimes they are in the bamboo house, or somewhere else he recognises from the sect, or in a forest, or in a town, or in his palace, or— faster and faster the images change, he and shizun, entangled with each other, obviously in love, obviously integral to each other’s very existence. ‘Stop!’

‘Stop—’ he breathes. He just breathes. Taking in everything he has learnt, thoughts whirling— ‘But the shizun whose body was taken over by that other man— Shen Yuan, didn’t you say?—That shizun, he was in love with Yue Qingyuan, wasn’t he?’

He was, master— the mirror replies.

‘Was my shizun, the one I imprisoned, the one I tortured, the one who died devouring the shards of Xuan Su— was he in love with Yue Qingyuan?’

He was, master— the mirror replies, though before he can fling it across the room it adds— And he was not. He loved Yue Qingyuan and he hated him at the same time.

No doubt because Yue Qingyuan failed to rescue him from Haitang’s brother— ‘Could he have loved me?’ he asks. ‘If I had done things differently, if I had not tortured him the way I did, if I did not bring about the death of Yue Qingyuan?’

A shizun with a history the same as the one from this world falls in love with a version of master who does not torture him or bring about the death of Yue Qingyuan in countless worlds, master.

‘So, it’s possible?’ he asks, just to check.

I can show you some of those worlds, master.

‘Do so,’ he orders, only to be confronted with another whirl of images, almost identical to the last lot, except more now involve Qing Jing uniforms. ‘Ok, that’s enough mirror. I need to think.’

As you wish, master.

Chapter Text

When he wakes again the beast has gone and he is all alone. He feels gutted, gored open. He hadn’t realised how vital it was to him that no one knew what Wu Yanzi had done to him. He’s heard so many things said over the years about people who have been used as human cauldrons. Oh, always with such pity, but also always with this patronising taint to the words or the tone, almost as if being used as a human cauldron takes away a little of the victim’s humanity as well as their cultivation.

He had never wanted to be thought of like that.

Now the beast knows— and not only know that, but knows he made himself into a cauldron for the creature’s use.

When Nuo comes in carrying a tray of food he ignores her. While it wasn’t her fault, she is the one who brought Cui Ya and her big mouth into the business. ‘I am sorry about auntie,’ she tries, standing over him and fidgeting, ‘She has no tact, but I didn’t think she would— She is a good physician. There aren’t that many female physicians— or at least not ones that I know that have any knowledge of how to treat humans as well as demons— Though—’ she trails off.

He remembers the older boar demoness’ comments, at the end, just before the darkness took him. In a way it makes sense. In a way it explains why he could tell what Luo Binghe was with just a glance. In a way it explains why he has always been able to spot demons easier than his fellow cultivators, no matter how cunning the creatures thought they were being in their disguises. ‘Does she know what type?’ he finally asks Nuo.

The servant hesitates for a moment, and when she does speak she trips a little over her words, as if she is worried how he’ll take them. ‘She said it was hard to tell for sure. You’re mostly human— she— she said a great-grandparent or a great-great-grandparent— humanoid, definitely, and most likely something powerful. It probably accounts for the oddities in your qi system. Ah— Apparently— Well, you’re pure Yin, as I imagine you know, but your meridians are nonetheless adapted to handle both Yang and demonic qi, something which is— unusual.’

‘Did she say anything else?’ he asks as he sits up. So, a drop of demon blood, just enough to make him unusual, but not enough to leave him with any useful power. Of course.

Nuo hesitates again, giving him a pained look. Sympathy he suspects, but he doesn’t want to have to deal with anyone’s sympathy right now, so he looks away from her before she speaks again. ‘She said that whoever it was that— hurt you— in that way, when you were young— they, he I assume— must have done some serious damage to his cultivation before you encountered him, as his qi was essentially caustic, and exposure to it has left you with something very like burns to your meridians—’

He interrupts her, ‘I am aware of the damage.’

‘Yes, I imagine you are—’ she sighs, ‘I do not know exactly what you remember of what happened, but— Because of your unusual qi system and the fact you produce pure Yin— but the damage was done by— corrupted— but otherwise pure Yang—’

‘Are you trying to tell me I need Yang qi to heal the damage? Because I have already worked that out.’

‘— Yes. Yes, I am— The— the emperor has volunteered to transfer you Yang qi so you can recover,’ he feels his face scrunch up at the idea. Usually he would try to hide such an expression. Once, what feels like long ago now, he would have a fan to conceal his face behind. Now he is degraded and brought low and sitting in front of the closest thing he has to a friend or ally in the world, a woman who has seen more of him than just an honest moue of distaste.

She continues, tentatively, ‘Whatever your objections, valid though they are, at the idea I— This lowly servant— would suggest that allowing him to do so for as long as he is in a humour to be so generous would be in your best interests— Or, to put it another way, take what you can while it’s on offer. This may be your best chance to heal yourself and to become stronger.’

She’s right. He hates that she’s right. ‘I won’t dual cultivate with him,’ he tells her, even though that is not what was suggested. He just feels the need to make sure someone hears him say the words. He has not fallen that low.

‘Of course not,’ she replies, quickly. ‘The emperor has been informed that he is not to cause you undue stress. He will be transferring his qi by a hand on your wrist, that is all.’

‘Informed, was he?’ By Cui Ya, he imagines, Nuo wouldn’t be so foolish, even if she does seem somewhat fond of him. ‘I can’t imagine he took it well—’

‘I would not dare to presume what the emperor feels about anything,’ she replies, with a tone that tells him the beast must have been less than impressed to be ordered around by a little boar demoness about a quarter of his size.

He decides he forgives Nuo for bringing Cui Ya. What happened really wasn’t her fault— it was the fault of his faulty cultivation, if anything. Perhaps even the fault of the fact he’d recovered to the point he had enough qi flowing through his meridians to actually do some damage when he became so unbalanced.

He accepts the tray when Nuo finally hands it to him, looking down at a bowl of fragrant white congee topped with delicate slivers of spring onion, a cup of bitter smelling medicine, and another pot of properly brewed tea. ‘Could I please have a bath after I’ve finished?’ he asks as he picks up the cup of medicine and forces himself to swallow all its bitterness down.

‘Of course,’ she replies as he picks up the spoon to try and wash the taste of medicine from his tongue with the taste of congee. ‘Auntie left a prescription for medicinal herbs and extracts to be added to your bath water.’

The congee is very good. In fact it tastes exactly like the congee the beast brought him when he first woke up out of the Water Prison, instead of like the still good, but less excellent, congee he has been eating recently. He is reminded of the beast saying that the creature himself was the one to make that congee— but he dismisses the thought. It must simply be a different cook. There is no way the beast is wasting his time cooking for prisoners.

He finishes the whole bowl, and drinks his tea, and hands the tray back over to Nuo so she can take it with her as she goes to prepare his bath for him. Sometimes he feels a little guilty, or a little strange, because she does feel almost a friend, but she is also a servant in this palace, just as he is a prisoner, and yet sometimes she seems almost like his servant—

It’s complicated. If he had to have a servant he’d rather have her than anyone else, but he also doesn’t want servants. He knows what a servant’s life is like and he doesn’t want to inflict the experience on anyone else— even if he’d never keep slaves and even if he’d never mistreat a servant the way he saw and experienced in the Qiu household.

He sees the beast again later, after his bath, when he’s dressed and sitting on his padded seating mat and feeling bored half out of his mind. The creature brings him a tray of food this time, followed closely by Nuo, carrying a low table. The food smells expensive, and when he sees it carefully laid out on the table the servant places in front of him he can see it’s just as fancy as it smells. Still light food, still delicate, but made with the finest ingredients.

The beast takes a seat across from him, staring with some unreadable expression, as he examines the dishes. ‘Are they not to shizun’s taste?’ the creature eventually asks, but there’s nothing arrogant, nothing mocking, there, just an odd kind of concern.

‘I was simply wondering why you were wasting your money on feeding this lowly prisoner,’ he replies. ‘But then— it is your money so I suppose you can do with it as you like.’

‘Feeding shizun every delicacy he may ever desire will never be a waste,’ the beast has the nerve to reply.

‘Hm—’ he murmurs, lifting the first bite of food to his lips.

‘Is it good, shizun?’ the creature seems so eager to hear his reply. He almost wants to shake his head and tell the beast his money must have been worthless, as it’s all disgusting— but in truth the food is delicious, truly delicious, and no matter how spiteful he may feel he doesn’t want to risk the man confiscating it from him.

‘It is,’ is what he replies, eventually.

‘This disciple is very glad,’ is the odd response to that. Odder still the creature just sits there and watches him for the entire meal, not demanding anything of him. No answers to questions, no justifications, no threats, no air of violence, just eyes on him, something unreadable still lurking in their red depths.

When he’s done the beast gestures for Nuo to take the dishes, but not the table, and the next thing he knows the beast is pulling a qin from a qiankun pouch and offering it to him. ‘This disciple thought shizun might miss music,’ the creature says as he’s examining the very, very fine instrument. ‘This disciple also thought shizun might miss painting, and calligraphy, and books,’ the creature then says, pulling item after item from the qiankun pouch, until the small floor space of the red room is full of expensive, well-made things.

He doesn’t know what to say. If he snaps or bites right now the beast might take them all away, then he’ll be trapped in here with nothing but his own mind for company most of the time— still, it feels like a trap.

Why has the beast brought all this?

‘Do you want to hear me play, is that it, Little Beast?’ he asks. It would be an odd request— but he is talented with the qin. He has worked very, very, very hard to build that talent, so there is no point in pretence of modesty about it.

‘This disciple would never make any demand on shizun,’ the creature responds, which almost makes him laugh. The fact that the man then adds, ‘Though he would, of course, be honoured to receive anything shizun chose to give him,’ just proves how insincere the idea is. Of course, the beast must want him to play— it is just that the man is playing some head game with him about it.

He lightly plucks the strings, feeling the awkwardness of what is probably years since the last time he touched a qin making his fingers a little clumsy, but he concentrates, reminds himself how good he has always been with this instrument, to the point even his shizun could rarely think of a criticism. He begins to play.

From song to song, old favourites, parts of old favourites, classic compositions, his own work— the joy, the pleasure of the music, fills him as the room fill with sound. He has missed this. He has missed this so much. Even in his worst moments the qin has always brought him some slight pleasure.

When he’s finally satisfied, when the urge to play just one more piece, just one more refrain, finally eases and he comes back to himself, he finds the beast sitting there with his head in his hands, weeping once more. He doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing, and eventually the creature gets to his feet and staggers out of the room, leaving all the gifts behind.

The following days are confusing. The beast doesn’t seem to be able to leave him alone when he’s not undergoing something that is supposed to be helping his hips. In between hot baths and sessions of acupuncture and frankly undignified stretches— all under Nuo’s supervision— the beast brings him his every meal and lingers afterwards for hours, until the servant shoes him off for another round of therapeutic indignities. He is glad of that. Too much of it all involves him baring sensitive parts of his body or being contorted into suggestive poses.

Each visit from the beast is accompanied by qiankun pouch after qiankun pouch of gifts, at first useful, but increasingly less so when the beast runs out of instruments and pigments and books and furniture to bring him and starts in on beautiful robes made of red silk and often embroidered in gold, and hair ornaments, and then the jewellery— until he has an obscenely large collection of totally unnecessary gold and pearls and jade and coral and kingfisher feathers. What is he supposed to do with all of it? The beast brings him a large, equally beautiful, jewellery box, inlaid with mother of pearl, so he puts it all in there, but— but— Is he supposed to wear it all? Does the beast want to see him wear it? The beast never demands he wear it.

He tries to decline it, but the beast just pushes it on him anyway, or leaves it in the room when he goes.

It’s a treasure trove of the kind of wealth he hasn’t dreamt of since he was a street rat that still believed anything might be possible, and it’s that child self that ultimately stops him from truly protesting the gifts, even though he should. Even though he has no real use for all the ornaments. Even though it will all eventually be taken from him when the beast finally turns on him again. Even though—

Even though he doesn’t know what it all means. Even though his heart feels caught in his chest. Even though the beast is being conscientious of him in a way no one has been since he and Qi-ge were slaves together.

Even when the beast does insist on transferring him Yang qi it’s not— not anything he feared it might be. He’s never been comfortable having his meridians probed, or having Mu Qingfang or any other healer transfer him qi, it always feels invasive and unpleasant— but his body seems to actually like the beast’s qi, and the transfer takes place with them sitting across from each other, him comfortably draped in layer after layer of gifted robes, the only place they touch being where the beast lays gentle fingers on his wrist.

The way the beast touches him— like something fragile and immensely precious— He doesn’t know what he feels about that either.

He tries not to think about what it all means. The day the beast tells him that Ning Yingying has left the palace and returned to the sect without even a hint of rage that his wife has run off he thinks to himself good for her and tries not to think too closely on it. The day the beast tells him he’s thrown Qiu Haitang, Liu Mingyan, and The Little Palace Mistress out of the palace he feels a little sorry for Haitang, and more than a little satisfied to hear what has happened to The Little Palace Mistress, but otherwise tries not to think too closely on it. The day the beast tells him he’s dismissed the whole harem, divorced his wives and sent away his concubines, he doesn’t know what to think, only that he should try not to think too closely on it.

Trying not to think too closely on it doesn’t prevent a suspicion beginning to bloom in the back of his mind. A ridiculous suspicion. The kind of suspicion he never would have thought possible.

He should try to escape before that suspicion is tested.

He should try to escape before he is forced to confront whatever it is he’s seeing in the beast’s eyes as the man delicately cradles his wrist and transfers over that bright, warm, healing qi.

He might even be strong enough now.

He has been meditating, he has been testing out a few techniques, he has been looking at that blank, red wall where he knows the door hides and has been contemplating sharpening every piece of paper the beast has been so foolish as to give him and using them to blast the entire wall out of existence— But still he doesn’t.

Where would he go? What would he do?

He refuses to return to the sect even if he could be sure he wouldn’t just be turned back over to the beast the moment he set foot on the peaks once more. Of course he could always go into hiding, spend the rest of his life hoping he was always one step ahead of Luo Binghe— but what a miserable life that would be. No rest. Always running— How long would it be before a qi deviation took him out?

At least with the way things are he knows where the beast is, at least with the way things are he’ll be able to see any violence as it comes, at least with the way things are he knows the master whose mercy he lives on.

Always, his entire life, he has been at some man’s mercy. The slavers. Qiu Jianluo. Wu Yanzi— and last of all Qi-ge. He had not wanted to think of it like that, but that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Look what happened when he finally wore out Qi-ge kindness.

He was handed over to be tortured by his latest master.

Luo Binghe is simpler than Qi-ge. Luo Binghe doesn’t hide his contempt behind meaningless apologies.

As long as that suspicion is not tested— If the beast does— Well, he is strong enough to do some damage at least. He could always self-detonate and try and take the beast out with him at the same time.

Chapter Text

It is strange. Or, at least, after the first panic and first insistence he should ignore it all wears off, he starts to notice something. Something he has never noticed before, never experienced before.

The beast is treating him as if he is something valuable.

Something precious.

Even the way the man looks at him— that terrifying intensity in those red, red eyes—

All his life he has been looked at with some degree of contempt by the men around him. It is only in its absence that he becomes aware of its past presence.

As a slave, as Qiu Jianluo’s slave, as Wu Yanzi’s slave, as the object of Qi-ge’s pity, as the object of Liu Qingge’s enmity, as the Little Beast’s teacher, and later, prisoner— even as the peaklord of Qing Jing peak. Men have always looked down on him. Men who have used his body, men into whose power he has fallen— even Qi-ge— even when they were children, when he looks back on it. Oh, Qi-ge was so very conscientious of him, so very attentive, but also always so very disappointed in the things he would do to try and keep them alive.

The way the Little Beast is looking at him recently—

The most terrifying thing is he finally understands something he has heard again and again from various whores over the years. There is a kind of power in being looked at like that. A dangerous kind of power— because that power relies on the man doing the looking remaining constant in whatever it is he’s feeling. The moment those feelings wane, so too does that power.

It’s not a power he’s ever wanted. It’s not a power he’s ever sought out.

Still, he can feel its presence when the Little Beast starts doing things like asking his opinion on this or that decision or piece of policy, or telling him of all the members of the creature’s court, or happily answering his questions, or seeking advice about this or that dismissed bride or concubine’s unhappy family.

Those red eyes are eager on his face. The man— the man almost boyish once more, eager and desperate to hear his words. It would be so easy to lead the Little Beast astray, to create problems in his court, to undermine him— yet he finds he has no wish to do it. It’s not even the fear of how the demon would react holding him back. No— no, what he fears is that the beast would stop listening to him all together.

He feels real when the beast listens to him. He feels like he exists. He feels like something more than just gutter trash Xiao Jiu.

One day— just after Nuo has helped him up after the most recent round of stretches, and he’s still straightening out his robes— the beast comes in with tray and food and a thoughtful look on his face. They end up seated across from each other, like usual, as he eats, like usual— but the beast doesn’t say anything. No small comments. No questions about how the treatment of his hips is progressing. No searching queries about how he likes the food. This continues on through eating, and through Nuo taking away the dishes, and through him extending his arm so the beast can take his wrist and start to feed him qi.

He should be frightened. He should be wary— but he knows the beast well enough by now that were the creature to suddenly turn violent it would be deeply unexpected. There isn’t that air of malice around the man, just something thoughtful.

The beast finally speaks as the man is feeding him qi. For a moment he is distracted, too lost in the shuddering warmth of the energy flowing between them, and the way his damaged meridians thrill at the feel of it, but eventually he blinks off the lassitude and the odd way that large hand cradling his wrist as if it is made of the finest filigree ivory makes him feel to contemplate the question. ‘Did you ever meet Su Xiyan?’

Something starts to niggle at his mind, his memory— ‘Of course,’ he replies, ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I don’t trust anyone who has told me about her,’ the beast replies, something— Is that grief? It’s something like grief on the man’s face. ‘I wanted to know what shizun knows.’

Why would the beast care about—? He frowns, leans forward, eyes roving that handsome face— The hair has always been so distracting, those natural curls, and the eyes— and the whatever sense he’s always had of the non-human nature of the man, then boy, in front of him— but if he looks solely at the features.

Ah.

Of course.

‘That would make your father Tianlang-jun, then?’ he asks. Of course. Of course. It makes sense— the age of the boy— the disappearance of Su Xiyan— What happened to the beast’s father—

‘I—’ red eyes look at him surprised, hesitant— ‘How did you know?’

‘You brought her up, and when you did—’ it’s so obvious, now. ‘You look like her, and the only Heavenly demon associated with her was him.’

‘So you did know her?’ The beast asks after a moment’s thought, and when he nods the creature adds, ‘What did you think of her?’

‘Whenever Huan Hua Palace and Cang Qiong worked together on anything she and I would inevitably end up assigned to work together—’ he begins.

‘You were friends?’ the beast asks, perking up.

He shakes his head, ‘I didn’t have friends, and I don’t think she did either. We’d end up working together because no one else wanted to work with either of us. I can’t say we got along—’ he almost laughs, but holds it in, in case the beast misunderstands. ‘We were too similar in some ways. Difficult, I have heard it said, though I think it would be fairer to her, and to me, to say exacting. Neither of us suffered fools gladly— I did respect her though. Whatever the Old Palace Master’s motivations in promoting her to Head Disciple, she more than deserved the role with her talent as a cultivator.’

The beast stops transferring him qi. He starts to pull his arm back, but before he can the creature has tangled their fingers together, is holding his hand, staring down at where they touch as if not really seeing it. ‘You were aware of the old creep’s obsession with her?’

‘It was obvious,’ he replies. ‘He was a disgusting old man. I slept a few nights in a brothel near the Palace once, when I had been sent to assist Huan Hua with a Night Hunt—’ he rushes to explain, in case the words prompt another round of accusations of lechery against him ‘—I didn’t want to sleep in the Palace itself, not after spending any time in the company of its master— not that he showed any signs of interest towards me—’ the thought makes him shudder, ‘I just found the way he was with every woman in the place, especially your mother, so very offputting I could not sleep in any place I knew he had open access to— Anyway, the point is— is— it is that the women working in the brothel had some unpleasant stories to tell—’ he makes himself quiet, realising the beast may not take the details very well.

‘What sort of stories?’ the beast asks.

‘Do you really want to know, Little Beast?’ he counters. ‘Obviously you know he was obsessed with your mother, and that he was an unpleasant man. The details can hardly matter.’

‘I want to know,’ the beast insists. ‘It’s so hard getting at the actual truth of any of it. My main source was the man himself, before I dealt with him— so you can imagine how flawed everything I know is.’

His face twists at the memory, at the thought of speaking the words out loud, at the fact he couldn’t do anything about any of it. The Old Palace Master had too much power, his own shizun wouldn’t listen to him even if he dared to bring it up, and Qi-ge hadn’t seemed to trust the word of the whores and had insisted if the Old Palace Master really was so degenerate that surely everyone would know and stop him. ‘He wanted young girls,’ he eventually says, ‘The youngest available— was willing to pay for even younger, girls still in training, or just starting their training— he would get them to dress up as disciples, would call them by your mother’s name, wanted to be referred to as if he was their father—’ the fine details, he decides, the beast doesn’t need to know, just that— ‘He was also cruel to them. As far as I know he never killed any of them, but he left them— injured, in a way. An injury of the soul.’

The beast’s fingers twitch where they’re tangled with his own. For a moment the creature says nothing, but then— ‘The way he told the story made my mother sound mercenary, cruel. That she had seduced my father under orders, abandoned him as was her duty, and tried to kill me in order to secure her freedom—’

‘If the Old Palace Master said it, I wouldn’t believe it,’ he says after a moment’s thought. ‘I don’t know what happened— I know what we were all told, and I know I didn’t believe it— back then I wondered if she’d had enough and tried to escape the old man’s clutches and he was trying to punish the whole world because of it, was desperately searching for some kind of scapegoat— but I also know that no one would listen to me when I said we shouldn’t get involved in Huan Hua Palace’s drama, especially as I kept insisting the Old Palace Master was an unworthy cultivator— and, honestly, I didn’t try that hard— It seemed futile and I had no real power— and I suppose I didn’t care enough. I wanted to believe she had run, had found her freedom—’ but Su Xiyan was never heard from again, which means what she most likely found was her death. He sighs, glancing to where his hand is still tangled with the beast’s, ‘I just don’t know enough to tell you what actually happened. The version of your mother I did know— If she seduced your father under orders— That I find hard to believe. She was gloriously cold and clinical, and about as fitting bait in a honeypot as I am— but if she did— perhaps she did it as much because she was looking for a way out as because it was her duty.’

‘—I wish I could ask her,’ the beast says after a moment’s silence, voice small, sad. ‘As far as I know my father is still sealed under Bailu mountain, but my mother— She died after giving birth to me. She wrapped me up and put me in a basket and set me off down the Luo river, and then died. The Old Palace Master said she drank poison to kill me, but then she put me in the basket, so I don’t know what to think—’

‘It sounds like she wanted to give you a chance to live,’ he says, feeling the bitter sting of grief at his own sad fate as a baby— but also, oddly, he feels sorry for the beast as well. ‘She could have drowned you. She could have left you to die of exposure. Instead she did what she could to try and make sure you could hold on long enough that hopefully someone kind would come along and rescue you—’ his words trail off. Oh. ‘Did someone? Did the woman you called your mother?’

The beast nods. ‘She was a poor washerwoman, but she was a good woman. She gave me everything she could, until—’

Until she died. Fuck. Ok. Ok. He believes the beast. Against his better judgement he believes the beast.

'Your father's people never came for you?’

The beast shakes his head. ‘I don’t know if Tianlang-jun even knows of my existence— Sometimes I think of going to Bailu Mountain and—’

He puts up a hand to interrupt the creature, ‘It may be better if you do not, or if you do decide to have anything to do with your father if you find a way to sound out his mental state first. Tianlang-jun was very, very powerful, Little Beast, if he is angry at the world, angry at your mother, angry at anything that reminds him of her— You have quite a lot of her looks— If he is not weakened by captivity you do not want to risk facing him at full power if he takes against you.’

‘Shizun— are you concerned for my wellbeing?’ the creature asks, and he could almost cope if the words were mocking, but instead they are full of wonder.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Little Beast,’ he snaps, pulling his hand back, feeling the flush rise to his cheeks.

The creature doesn’t say anything more, but when he risks glancing at the man he sees the demon looking smug and pleased with himself, like a cat that has swallowed its owner’s prized songbird.

It’s almost irritating to the point it stops him doing what he must do next— but not quite. Apologies really are meaningless, but still— ‘If I had known what you actually were, instead of what I feared you were—’ the beast sits up, staring at him with wide, hungry eyes, ‘What’s done is done, but if I could do it all again— I think you would have done very well in Bai Zhan, Little Beast, you would have given Liu Qingge a run for his money, possibly even eventually knocked him on his arrogant arse. I would have liked very much to see that.’

For a moment the beast looks disappointed, but then something seems to occur to him— ‘We would have interacted, if I was in Bai Zhan? You would have spoken to me? Could I have come to visit Qing Jing?’

He shrugs, ‘We would have been martial family. As long as you were not destructive, were not arrogant and unpleasant, of course I would have spoken to you, and of course you could have visited Qing Jing— as long as you didn’t go about tormenting my disciples and wrecking everything.’

A look of hazy stupidity comes over the beast’s face. For a moment the creature seems to be wholly looking inwards, at some pleasant daydream if the flushed cheeks and slightly wicked grin are anything to go by, before the man blinks and finally focusses on him again.

‘What Cui Ya said—’ the beast begins. He tenses, the closeness between them that he didn’t even notice building, suddenly feeling like it evaporates into thin air. He draws back, draws into himself, If the beast thinks he is simply going to discuss being used as a cauldron— but instead of that topic, the man continues with, ‘I have asked her, to be sure I wasn’t misunderstanding, and she has confirmed to me that you are part demon— Do you— Do you want me to make some enquiries to work out where you came from, and how you— how you ended up a slave?’

‘I—’ he doesn’t know what to say. To start with this isn’t the topic he thought the beast was bringing up, but also— It feels like he experiences a hundred emotions at once, before his usual pessimism rises to the top. ‘No. No, I don’t. Whatever happened— whoever my parents, my family, are— I ended up where I ended up. I think— I don’t think I will learn anything that makes up for everything that happened. I doubt there is any real tragedy, just— just weakness and foolishness and desperation. In some ways I think it will prove worse to know my parents chose to sell me to pay off their drinking debts, or their gambling debts, or their shopping debts— than to imagine every now and then it was something else. It won’t be anything else, though, anything noble or self-sacrificing or even— even a mother’s desperation to save her child, even if it means she has to say in where the child ends up. It’ll turn out to be something stupid and when I know for sure it’ll make me angry, so I’d rather not know—’

For a long moment the beast says nothing, looking in turns sad and thoughtful, before nodding, ‘I never want to do anything that hurts you again, shizun.’

That is not something he wants to deal with, not right now, so he just makes a humming noise, before glancing over at his qin, ‘Do you want me to play you something now, before you have to leave?'

'Oh, I don't have to leave for hours yet, shizun,’ the beast replies, ‘But if you want to play, then I am ever your most eager audience.’

Silly boy.

He gets up and walks over to the instrument, taking his seat to begin to play. The beast watches him the entire time, red eyes intense, focused on him, his body, his face, his fingers when he reaches for the strings.

Once more he becomes aware of that dangerous, ephemeral power.

Sitting beneath the gaze of one of the most powerful men alive—

Then comes the day the beast doesn’t show up at all.

Chapter Text

He goes to examine the development of the mushroom body. It’s almost ready, Nuo’s careful research and preparation having planted it into the perfect conditions for advanced ripening.

The two of them stand side-by-side and stare down at it. He’s grateful for all the things she has done for him recently, Nuo. He is aware that she is the one that’s really keeping everything together. He should say something— but no words come to his lips. It has been so long since he’s really had to say thankyou. How, also, could he thank her adequately for all of it?

What must she think of him?

Funny, he can hardly bring himself to are anymore.

It’s so hard to care about anything at all.

Everything feels so empty.

The inside of his head echoes with his own misery— even Meng Mo is quiet now. The dream demon made a comment about his intentions towards the plant body that he did not appreciate and then he proved to the man, his old teacher, his parasite, that he is now the stronger of the two. Meng Mo eventually broke free of the cruel illusions he trapped the demon in, but since then the creature has been pointedly ignoring him, as if such petulance would somehow make him care about the man’s feelings when he can’t really care about anything at all.

Sometimes he gets the mirror out and asks it to show him images of some version of him, happy with some version of shizun. Sometimes he thinks about cutting his way into those worlds and killing the him he finds there, taking their shizun. Sometimes he finds himself crying. Sometimes he finds himself so angry he wants to tear what’s left of this world to shreds. Soon, all too soon, the emptiness comes for him, though, and it’s all he can do to keep going onwards.

The body lying half covered in its bed of soil is the most beautiful thing he has seen in far, far too long now. Such a pity it’s empty. Such a pity it will always remain empty.

There is no soul to house in it. It will have to become an elaborate decoration for shizun’s coffin— it seems such a waste though. So lovely. So near the one thing he knows will drive away this gnawing hunger in him. So near— but not quite. So near— but never.

He could always find some other wandering soul and find a way to shove them into it, then force them to pretend to be shizun— but that feels grotesque, as does going to the world with the non-shizun and harvesting shizun’s ghost, though that was his first impulse.

In truth he’d go through with it, in truth he almost did go through with it, but he asked the mirror to show him that shizun again, and the ghost was doing his best to cling to Yue-Zhangmen while weeping silent, silvery tears down his beautiful face.

Even if he could convince that shizun to fall in love with him, he doesn’t know if he could forget how much that version of the man is obviously in love with Yue Qingyuan. Even the thought makes him feel resentful. He wants a shizun of his own, to be the one and only in the man’s heart.

As he is gazing down at the silent, still, shizun body, half buried in the dirt, a thought occurs to him.

He has learnt there are myriad shizuns out there— he just needs to find the right one. One from a world in which he, himself, was never born— because he doesn’t want himself as a rival— and in which no one else has a firm enough grasp on shizun’s heart they cannot be replaced.

If he finds a new shizun, one he will treat right, one he will not misunderstand, or mistreat, or hurt— then he doesn’t need this pretty bauble for the coffin. In a way it’s grotesque as well, to hide shizun’s real remains beneath this pretty forgery.

It’s as if he’s intending to pretend he didn’t do what he did.

A pretty lie— as if shizun’s arms were never ripped off and destroyed, as if shizun’s eye and tongue weren’t ripped out and kept in a jar on a shelf, as if shizun’s legs weren’t torn off and sent to the man shizun actually loved as the lure in a trap that would also eventually take that beloved life as well as Yue Zhangmen’s—

Yes. Pretending this beautiful thing is the real body of his beloved is foul. A disgusting, stupid, idea. A pretty fantasy in which he tries to avoid the consequences of his own misdeeds.

He needs to face things. He needs to— to—

He needs to move on, move forward, do things better and do things right, and he can only do better if he doesn’t hide from himself the terrible things he has done.

He has tortured and ultimately led to the death of the man he still loves.

True, he intends to go and find a different version of that same man, a version he can treat right— but that does not mean he can further disrespect the one he wronged when doing so. It would be better to bury just the remains of his shizun within the muttonfat coffin. It would be best, most fitting, to place the coffin in the Holy Mausoleum, where no one can interfere with it ever again.

He shouldn’t keep it.

It’s grotesque to keep it.

What would he do with it? Just look at it, or would he be tempted to take it out of the coffin and commit some new atrocity on it? When he has dared to reach out and brush the barest fingertip across the skin of it an electric frisson went up his spine. So smooth. So soft— but also cold, empty. Empty.

What use is the shell? It is not the shell he wants. It is the soul. It is shizun.

He really shouldn’t keep it if he follows that greatest temptation, to find a world without him, a world where he was never born, a world he never ruined, and to move there to pursue that world’s shizun, instead of bringing some version of the man into this mess. His power is fading, and will continue to do so unless he makes some dramatic show of it— something he is quite capable of, only he doesn’t care, knows if he does make himself act it will be hard to stop, not when there are so many out there he despises for either egging him on in his cruelties, or for being happy when he is so miserable— he could slaughter every last life left in this world and he doubts he would feel a moment’s guilt—  and there’s the harem, he doesn’t think shizun would like to be one amongst many. If he is to have a new shizun he should make the man his one and only— and then there is the mess he made when he merged the realms— not a pleasant, or a safe, place to bring his beloved.

So, the right thing to do would be to place shizun’s remains inside of the coffin when it is finished, then take it to the Holy Mausoleum where it will be safe. Safe and buried with the honour shizun deserves. By then he should have found an appropriate world to move on to— and if he doesn’t like his first choice, as long as he has the mirror and Xin Mo, he can try again and again until he finds a world that suits him.

He can’t go back to that world where he turned shizun into a cauldron. He can’t even bring himself to ask the mirror for a glimpse of it. The shame is too strong. He has asked the mirror if that shizun is safe and the mirror says yes, so that will have to do.

That shizun will never love him.

That shizun will never forgive him.

He hurt that shizun too badly— tortured and humiliated him, and then made him into a cauldron.

It is unforgivable.

No. No he needs a new shizun, a fresh shizun, a shizun he has never hurt or disappointed before.

But that still leaves the problem of the body—

He could—

Oh, he doesn’t want to, but he could—

If he— If he makes that choice, uses the body in that way, will it make up a little for what he did to his own shizun? If he makes that choice, will it be the kind of act of repentance that means he can actually move on, deserves to move on, instead of dwelling forever in misery and regret and the hunger in him he hopes he can finally sate when he secures the love of a shizun for himself?

It’s just that he’d have to do something he doesn’t want to do. It’s just that he’d have to hand a shizun over to a man he now realises has always been his rival—

It’s not exactly like he can leave the body in this world, though. Someone might find it and make some obscene use of it. Shizun is beautiful enough to be used as a decoration— and that’s the most wholesome idea he can come up with. The rest disgust him and rouse his possessive fury.

He could destroy it— but that would be too much like killing shizun with his own hands, and asking Nuo to do it— Well that’s just letting shizun die while he’s out of the room, again. Anyway, it would be a waste to destroy it, especially when he knows he could use it in such a way to make the existence of a version of shizun so much better.

He just really doesn’t like the idea. In fact he hates it— but it does feel like the right thing to do.

By the time the body is fully ripe he has had a box made, the right size and shape— not a coffin, though not that different from one— and has written the note he intends to stick to the top of it. It’s not much of a note. All it says is For Shen Jiu.

He dresses the body in red silks, puts long, silky hair up in a beautiful guan made of muttonfat jade, and lays it in the box on a bed of more red silk. He tries not to let his hands linger as he does. Nuo offered to do it for him— but it was all he could do not to shout at her and clasp the body to him, possessive of a thing he really cannot keep.

The body looks like it’s sleeping.

Shizun is very beautiful. He almost hesitates. Almost decides to keep the body for himself— but, no, why keep what is essentially a corpse when he could have a living, breathing, walking, talking version of the man instead?

He hesitates for a long while when the body is in the box, but eventually he forces himself to act.

A slash with Xin Mo and he’s back in the first world other than his own that he ever travelled to. Cang Qion Mountain Sect, but Qiong Ding Peak this time, right outside of the front door to Yue-Zhangmen’s house. He puts the box on the doorstep— It’s hard to let it go, to know he’s leaving it behind, to know who will soon be probably touching it, but still he makes himself straighten, makes himself knock on the door, then steps back through the slash left by his sword.

On the other side he peers into the mirror, watching as Yue-Zhangmen opens the door and peers down at the box with confusion. He sees shizun’s ghost creep around the man, frowning at the note he left pinned to the box’s top.

The sect leader picks up the box and brings it inside, the ghost fluttering around him the entire time, looking both impatient and worried. Yue-Zhangmen places the box on the floor and opens it, staggering back the moment he does. The man’s mouth is moving. He looks worried—

Shizun’s ghost looks more curious than concerned, sinking to his knees beside the box and leaning over the body to examine it, as he does the long strands of his ghostly hair brush the body’s face— his lovely eyes widen— he vanishes.

Moments later the body erupts out of the box and flings itself at Yue-Zhangmen. The man catches shizun, then flinches and ducks, as shizun immediately tries to slap him across the face.

The sect leader blanches, then looks deeply concerned, ducking his head in closer to shizun and saying something. Shizun stops trying to hit him and says something back— and that’s all he can bear to watch.

‘Mirror,’ he says, ‘Do things end happily for the shizun I just gave a body to?’

In countless worlds, master.

‘But what about in that world, specifically?’

They do, master.

‘He and Yue-Qingyuan end up together?’

They do, master.

‘They live long, happy lives, and then ascend together?’

They do, master. Do you wish me to show you, master?

‘No. No I do not,’ he doesn’t want to see Yue-Zhangmen touching that which should be his. Instead he turns his attention to finding a world with a shizun of his own, a shizun who has never met any version of him, a shizun intact, unharmed, but in need of a man to swoop in an save him from some peril, a shizun he can seduce and love and treasure and take care of for ever and ever and ever— so he can leave behind his mess and his regrets.

Chapter Text

‘The emperor is being challenged by a coalition of high-ranking demons,’ Nuo tells him many, many hours after he wakes, when the door finally appears and she steps through. She looks harried, a little worried, but not worried enough that it makes him worry. ‘So far, he has killed ten of them. Some have fled, some are not so wise.’

‘You believe he’ll win?’ he asks her. Honestly he also believes the beast will win, other than potentially Tianlang-jun he can’t imagine who would win against the creature, especially now he has mastership of his sword.

‘I do,’ she replies, ‘But in case he does not— if the worst eventuates, I have been authorised to evacuate you.’

‘Me?’ he frowns at her, ‘Why would the emperor care what happens to me?’

She gives him a flat look and doesn’t reply. Ah. So she shares his suspicion— not a comforting thought. A strange thought. A thought that brings to mind that dangerous power once more.

Briefly he considers making an attempt at overpowering her and trying to escape. He would probably succeed. It would probably be easy— His cultivation feels healthy, strong— But he still has nowhere to go.

It occurs to him that somewhere along the line he’s become comfortable in his current captivity. He’s like a songbird that’s forgotten how to fly— but then what did flying ever get him?

Freedom has only ever been an illusion. Even if he did escape and managed to keep out of the beast’s grasp, he’d find himself beneath the yoke of another master sooner or later. That’s the way the world works.

It’s an unpleasant, stressful day. He sits around, clad in layer after layer of fine red silk, and finds he cannot turn his attention to anything. The qin is unappealing, same with his brushes, his paints, his fine paper, his books.

Is he actually worried for the beast?

As galling as it is to admit, right now he would have to say the version of the beast he has known since his last qi deviation is probably the kindest master he has ever known. Has he finally broken? Has the child that once swore he would one day be free of slavery finally died in the heart of him?

He does not want to think about the fact he suspects his reactions to everything would be vastly different if Qi-ge hadn’t handed him over to the beast. If Qi-ge wasn’t so, so sure he had killed Liu Qingge, and had, on some level, decided he deserved to be punished for it.

Everyone always used to say Qi-ge let him get away with far, far too much— as if the man wasn’t equally, if not more, lenient on the War God of Bai Zhan and his persistent harassments. As if it was his fault the wretched man kept bothering him to the point he ended up reacting in some embarrassingly public way.

Didn’t Qi-ge know him? How many people has he threatened to kill over the years? More than he can count, certainly. Of that number the number he has actually killed is barely more than a handful. Qiu Jianluo. His men. Wu Yanzi. The rest of it was just noise, just him expressing his frustration— Surely Qi-ge should have known him well enough to tell the difference?

He’s reminded of what it was like when they were kids, slaves, street rats, and Qi-ge was constantly apologizing for him, for his very existence, whether he had done something wrong or not.

Even back then Qi-ge must have thought he was corrupted in some way, wrong, it was only in joining Cang Qiong the man found a way to clarify those thoughts.

It makes him feel resentful.

So resentful he stays here, in Luo Binghe’s custody, so he won’t have to risk coming face to face with Qi-ge again and being forced to face his broken heart and the bitter wreckage of the love he once felt.

The ugly truth is that if Qi-ge had ever wanted from him what he suspects the beast wants he might even have given way and let Qi-ge have it. He might have even wanted Qi-ge to have it. Once he had wanted to marry Qi-ge— Now—

Now he is waiting for his current master to finish slaughtering his enemies so his usual, comfortable, captivity can resume, with its unnecessary gifts, odd conversations, and intense staring.

He finds himself kneeling in front of the box full of jewellery, going through the myriad of items held within, fingers running over gold and jade and pearls. If he was a different man— but he is not. He is himself. He closes the box and starts to pace around the room through the narrow spaces left on the floor between the beast’s excess of gifts. Nuo watches him from her seat by the door. She looks like a guard. A guard set to protect him by their master.

He could have been a whore. Over the years he’s heard many comments about how suited to the business he’d be. The slavers had spoken of selling him to a brothel, before he’d angered Qiu Jianluo and ended up that monster’s property. He could have run away from Wu Yanzi, or even stabbed the man in his sleep, and found a place for himself in a brothel— It’s not a life he ever wanted. He had assumed all it would be filled with was men wanting to hurt him the way they always seemed to.

Why does he feel like a whore anyway? Or, if not a whore, then some rich man’s concubine?

Is that what he’s turned himself into?

He is worried for the beast.

He’s so weak—

After everything the man has done to him, how dare he find his feelings returning to something like what they’d been before the Immortal Alliance Conference. Fondness. Damn fondness.

He wishes his heart was as much ice as he’s been told it is.

He’s always been wilful. It turns out he can’t even control himself.

Perhaps it’s just the fact the man used him as a cauldron but hasn’t rubbed it in, hasn’t demanded it again, isn’t treating him like he is somehow less than human for it. In fact, the beast treats him better now than the man ever did before that incident.

The beast of the last few days treats him with something like respect.

It’s not just the absence of contempt. It is respect he has realised. He is not used to respect.

His disciples may have respected him, as had non-cultivators, but they were the only ones. Not even his martial brothers and sisters respected him. Not even Qi-ge— if Qi-ge had respected him the man would have told him the truth.

It’s a lie, it’s a head game, it’s something— The beast still wants something from him. He should not let his guard down. He—

All this time recently, the gifts, the conversations, those red eyes on him like he’s a real person and not—

The door appears. The beast steps through. Blood plinks quietly as it drips onto the floor from Xin Mo’s blade.

Something is wrong—

Moving jerkily the beast reaches down and grabs Nuo by the back of her robes, ignoring the way she squawks as he casually tosses her back out of the open door without looking at her, and shuts it behind her. ‘Shizun—’ the creature breathes out, staggering towards him. ‘Shizun.’

His mind races. He knows what he’s seeing, but it shouldn’t be possible. ‘What have you done, Little Beast?’ he demands, even though he knows he should soften his tone, coo and simper, ‘I fixed your relationship with your sword, I know I did, so how have you broken it again?’

‘I had to, shizun,’ the beast says. The man’s every muscle seems to be quivering. He’s red from head to toe, covered in blood, though it looks like very little of it is his own. ‘I had to unseal it. They came into my palace. They thought they could challenge me. They thought they could kill me and take you for their own—’

The latter part is probably Xin Mo driven paranoia speaking. He doubts any high-ranking demons are even aware that he is still alive, of they knew he ever existed in the first place. The rest of it— ‘Did you seal your sword after the ritual?’ he snaps. ‘Stupid boy! Starving Xin Mo will just make it harder to control.’

‘Shizun—’ the beast says, instead of acknowledging his words. ‘Shizun. Shizun. Shizun—’ the creature is reaching for him.

He darts out of the man’s way, ‘What do you think you’re doing? You expect me to play cauldron for you again?’ the worst thing is that he’s already resigned to it. Better to get it done. He does not want to have to go back to dealing with the beast if the beast is going to be as unreasonable as his sword can make him. Still— ‘You’re not touching me until you’ve had a bath!’

‘No, shizun. No, no, no, no, no, no, no—’ the beast bleats, still chasing him around the room. ‘This disciple can’t bear the thought of doing that to you. I’d rather die. I’d—’ the creature drops his sword, then drops to his knees, but still keeps reaching for him. ‘I’ll die before I hurt you again. I’ll kill myself. I’ll kill everyone before they hurt you. I’ll kill everyone anyway. I’ll kill them all. I’ll kill everyone who ever hurt you. I’ll rip them limb from limb and pull out their guts and make them crawl and beg for your forgiveness. I’ll— If he ever comes back I’ll pin him out in the throne room so you can see, so you can walk all over his agonised, suffering body. I’ll cut off his foul pillar as a sacrifice to you— I’ll sacrifice everything to you. I’ll sacrifice the entire world to you—’

Ok. The beast is— the beast is not in a good way. Xin Mo must be frustrated after so long sealed away.

‘If you kill everyone I will be very, very angry with you,’ he tells the beast, hoping the creature will see some sense. He can just see it— the beast goes on a murderous rampage in his name and who will get the blame? It won’t be the beast. It will be him.

‘This disciple can’t bear it if you’re angry with him,’ the beast pleads, falling down onto his hands and knees, before curling forward into a ball, ‘This disciple can’t bear it. This disciple can’t bear what he has done to you. This disciple— this disciple is in love with you.’

What?

Whatever he might have suspected, it wasn’t love. No one has ever loved him. No one has ever loved him.

‘Don’t speak nonsense!’ he tries to make it a command, but it comes out as a squeak instead.

‘Ever since I first saw you!’ the beast yelps, sitting back up, ‘Even back then. Even when you poured tea over me— The most beautiful person I’d ever seen. Obsessed with you, I was obsessed with you— all these years, obsessed. I wanted to matter to you. I wanted to matter more than anyone else to you. I wanted you to love me. I wanted you to be mine— just mine— and it twisted, it twisted up inside of me with every rejection and cruel word and every time you hurt me, until you threw me down into the Abyss and I found Xin Mo and went mad. But I was still obsessed. I still wanted you— still wanted you to love me, to be mine, but it was all so twisted up it became a driving urge to hurt, and I did, I hurt you, but it was never enough, and he was right, he was, and I hate him and I will fucking kill the bastard if I ever lay eyes on him again, but he was right, it was never going to be the answer. No. Not when I was in love with you this whole time and just didn’t realise it— I used to think about biting you. About sinking my teeth into your flesh. About eating you alive so you could never leave me— because I love you. Shizun, I love you.’

It’s all too much. He can’t even begin to pick the beast’s ramblings apart into something that makes sense. If the beast hadn’t been giving him so much Yang qi recently no doubt he’d be collapsing into a qi deviation again from the implications of some of it. Instead he shakes his head, ‘Little Beast, Xin Mo is acting on your mind. You are not thinking clearly. Summon Nuo back with a bath and some of her special ointment, we’ll get you cleaned up— because you are not touching me covered in gore. I refuse. I cannot stand the thought— and when you are cleaned up, we will do the ritual again and this time you will not seal your sword away after.’

‘I didn’t—’ the beast begins, but then shakes his head, rough and jerky so blood-soaked locks of curly hair dance around his face. ‘I don’t want to use you as a cauldron, shizun. I hate the thought of doing that. You mean too much to me. I don’t want to demean you like that.’

‘You have already done it, remember?’ he points out. The beast is being ridiculous.

‘You wouldn’t even believe me if I tried to explain,’ the man whines. ‘You never believe me. You always think the worst of me— Why, shizun, why? I love you so much. I would destroy everything for you!’

‘Why do you think I want you to destroy things for me?!’ he asks, exasperated. ‘Little Beast— Little Beast— Luo Binghe— Come on, enough of this. We’ve talked about things. I do believe you, remember? It’s all alright now— Let’s get you washed up so we can do what we have to do—’

He must have let down his defences, because the beast lunges forward and grabs the hem of his robes before he can escape, clinging to them and staring up at him with wide, mad, red eyes. ‘I don’t want to turn you into a cauldron, shizun. I want to make love to you. I want to melt you with pleasure until all you want is for me to continue touching you—’

As if such a thing could ever happen. ‘Luo Binghe, I am not telling you to turn me into a cauldron, I am telling you that I am offering myself to you in order to untangle your relationship with your sword. It is not the same thing. Please, respect my choices. Don’t treat me like a stupid child, or an object, incapable of deciding what I am willing to do with my own body.’

The beast stares up at him for a moment, trembling and blood stained, before the man nods. He nods back. They have an agreement. He then gestures to the wall where the door appears— the beast follows his gaze, then makes a tiny gesture and the door begins to open.

Nuo stumbles into the room, eyes wide, before she visibly forces herself back into servant’s blank. ‘A bath, Nuo, for the emperor—’ he requests, keeping a wary eye on the beast ‘—and a jar of your mother’s salve.’

Her eyes go from him to the beast to the beast’s hands still on his hem then back to him, before she nods, ‘Of course. At once.’

Chapter Text

It’s an awkward wait. The beast starts fidgeting with the length of red silk in his hands, tugging on his hem in an annoying way. He doesn’t tell the man to stop, though, because the action seems to be keeping the creature calm enough for now. He does not want the beast to get any more worked up.

When Nuo returns with the tub there is a moment where they all realise there’s not enough floor space for her to put it down with all of the beast’s gifts cluttering up the place. The beast staggers to his feet, which makes both him and Nuo skitter away from the man a few steps, but instead of doing something violent the beast just starts grabbing his gifts and carefully piling them up in the corner until there’s enough room for Nuo to put down the tub.

He catches her shooting him a worried look as she does, but her face blanks again the next moment as her gaze flicks over to the beast. Working quickly, efficiently, she fills the tub until it’s steaming, then unloads a collection of bath products, before her gaze flicks from the beast— standing there, quivering, that dark energy coming off him the entire time— over to him. ‘Th—this servant has brought the salve.’

‘Thank you, Nuo,’ he replies, holding out his hand.

She fetches a little pot from her sleeve and walks over to hand it to him, her gaze on the beast, the obvious threat in the room. As she deposits the thing on his palm her eyes meet his, and he sees an apology there, as well as an acknowledgment that even if she could do something to rescue him from this situation she wouldn’t, because no matter how fond she is of him, she fears the beast more.

He gives her a tiny nod, an acceptance. He knew already. He knew from the start. He can’t blame her; he knows what it’s like to fear your master.

‘This servant will leave now, unless something more is required of this one?’

‘No, Nuo, you can go—’ he tells her, and watches as she turns and leaves without another look back.

When the door closes behind her, he turns to the beast, ‘Get undressed, get in the tub, and get clean— I must prepare myself.’

‘Prepa— Shizun, what—?’ the creature looks dazed, deranged, like he is barely holding on. He refuses to let it unnerve him further.

‘Tub,’ he enunciates, pointing to the thing, ‘Get clean. I mean it, Little Beast.’

‘What does shizun mean by prepare?’ the creature asks, mind obviously too stuck on the thought to be easy to reason with.

Embarrassment must be staining his cheeks; his face feels flushed and hot. For a moment he wants to dodge the question, but what’s the point, after everything? As if he has any dignity left. Showing the beast the jar sitting on his palm he bites out, ‘I do not wish to be unduly hurt, Little Beast. Before I will allow you to have me I will be using this salve to— to— to relax and lubricate the area you are to—’ his courage runs out, that’s all he can say.

Though he does not seem to need to say more as the beast looks struck. Red eyes wide, then dark and heady— ‘But, shizun, would you not prefer this disciple to serve you in that way?’ The beast’s voice shakes a little. His whole body trembles. Even if the creature is trying to appear calm it is obvious that something is exciting him right now.

‘What I would prefer is for you to get clean so we can get started,’ he insists.

For a moment he beast just stands there, panting in heavy breaths, staring at him with hot, dark eyes. Be worries the beast is just going to lunge for him and try to have his way, like Qiu Jianluo the few times the man got too drunk for his usual cruelties. Instead the beast shakes his head, shakes himself like a dog shaking off water, and starts fumbling with the fastenings of his robes with trembling fingers.

Satisfied the creature is at least showing signs of obeying him he turns his attention to the issue at hand. He does not want the beast staring at him while he prepares himself. Ideally he would like to be all alone with no one else present and a barricaded door— but—

But he has his cultivation back. But he has paper, ink, and a canopy bed covered with an excess of covers of various types. True, the canopy bed has curtains, but they’re gauzy things of red silk instead of anything more concealing. He goes to the little writing desk that thankfully escaped having too much stacked on it and quickly draws himself a couple of talismans before turning to head over to the bed— The beast is standing naked by the tub, staring at him. His breath catches in his throat, eyes inexorably drawn to the alarming sight of the man’s disconcertingly large pillar standing tall and erect and almost as if it is staring at him as much as its owner.

‘Tub!’ he squawks, pointing at it. ‘Tub, now, Little Beast!’

The man blinks, as if he didn’t even realise he’d stopped what he was doing to leer. Moving jerkily the beast approaches the tub— ‘And wash yourself with more than just water!’ he tells the creature, who blinks again, before shakily leaning down and scooping up some of the bath products Nuo brought. The man steps into the tub while holding them, brain power obviously being occupied elsewhere.

At the bed he strips off the top, thickest blanket and uses the talismans to stick it to the frame of the bed’s canopy, so it covers the open side and conceals the inside of the bed from the sight of the beast in the bathtub. He shoots one last glance at the man before lifting the blanket enough to climb into the bed, calling back to the beast, ‘Don’t just sit in the water like a dumpling in soup, actually wash yourself!’

In the relative privacy of the bed he finds his courage suddenly abandons him. What is he doing? Why is he doing this? Didn’t he swear never to make himself a cauldron again? — and now this will be the second time he’s done it.

It’s necessary, though. He can’t have the beast rampaging around the world in the state he falls into under his sword’s influence. The man is already rambling about being in love with him and killing everyone for him and all sorts of nonsense.

‘Shizun—’ the beast says, the man’s voice a little muffled by the blanket between them. ‘Shizun— I’m doing what you want. I’m washing off the blood— I’ll always do what you want. I promise, shizun— I’ll be good to you from now on—’

He doesn’t have time to panic. He needs to do this and do this now.

Like last time he can’t bear the thought of actually being naked, so he strips off his trousers and the bottom half of his undderobes and pushes them down into a bottom corner of the bed, then wraps himself in the covers and— and he doesn’t think about what he’s doing doesn’t think about what he’s doing doesn’t think about what he’s doing, but he does it, and does it thoroughly, because he’s just been reminded of exactly how monstrous the beast’s pillar actually is.

Thankfully he’s finished before he hears the beast step out of the tub, hears the splatters of water hitting the floor as the creature doesn’t even seem to have mind to use one of the cloths Nuo bought to dry himself, and then hears the sound of footsteps coming closer.

He kneels there, on the bed, feeling slick and open and anxious and ashamed, and hears the sound of the beast’s panting breaths through the makeshift curtain between them. He can feel the intense heat of the man’s body. Feel his raging qi. Smell the scent of him—

‘Shizun—'

It takes a lot of effort to force himself to let go of the covers, but he does, though keeps the robes wrapped around himself as he reaches out and dismisses the talismans, making the blanket fall to the floor.

He expects the beast to pounce, like last time, but instead the man sinks down to sit on the bed across from him, looking at him reverently. ‘Shizun—’ the man breathes, reaching out but then hesitating, not even touching him. ‘Shizun.’

‘What are you waiting for, Little Beast?’ he asks, expecting to be thrown on his bad and had the moment the words slip free from his mouth.

The beast moves closer, tentatively. He can feel the fine tremors running through the man’s body, as if he is using all his might to hold himself back. ‘I don’t want to hurt you—’ the creature breathes out.

‘You won’t, I have prepared myself,’ he tells the man.

A wince crosses the beast’s face, but he doesn’t explain the expression. He decides that perhaps kneeling curled up, wrapped thoroughly in robes so he looks like a bright red boulder, is perhaps not acting as a particularly inspiring sight for the man, so he forces himself to uncurl, and then to lie back on the bed. It makes a queasy kind of roiling start in his belly, exposing himself in any way, as if asking to be hurt.

Again, the beast doesn’t pounce, just looks down at him with an unreadable expression, before tentatively laying a hand on his right calf. The beast strokes the bare skin there, gently, back and forth— ‘Shizun has beautiful legs,’ the man observes.

It almost makes him laugh. Perhaps that’s why the beast was so keen to rip them off and keep them in a box.

‘If we do this—’ the beast begins, as if there is the possibility of an if, ‘Will it hurt shizun’s hips?’

‘So considerate,’ he murmurs, somewhere between sarcasm and truth. It’s true that it did last time, but his hips are feeling much better now, still— he glances at the mound of cushions still taking up part of the bed, then gestures for one. The beast follows his gaze and fetches one, handing it to him with a puzzled look. ‘Like this,’ he murmurs as he shifts himself so he can push the cushion beneath his hips. He wriggles, determining if it will help, then gestures for another cushion.

The beast seems to catch on, but perhaps a little too enthusiastically, because soon he is cocooned in cushions, supporting every part of him in a pose that makes his cheeks try to heat further. His legs are spread, just a little, and even though the robes are covering things right now he is all too aware of how easy it would be for the beast to lift them.

The beast seems more intent on staring at him though, not leering, really, more like the kind of awe-struck look a starving street rat might give a merchant’s banquet. The man’s hand goes back to his leg, touching gently. ‘The things I want to do to shizun—’ the beast breathes out, making him tense, expecting pain and threats, but not to hear, ‘—I want to kiss every centimetre of your body, I want to worship you, I want to fill you full of so much pleasure you can no longer even think.’

‘Little Beast, this is not sex—’ he tries to remind the creature. ‘Remember what I said last time. I will need to be able to concentrate.’

‘This is not last time,’ the beast argues, ‘I am not— This is not the same. I don’t want this to be the same as last time. I don’t want you thinking of me the way you think of— last time.’

That barely makes sense. He has no idea what the beast is babbling about. He assumes the man has developed some weird guilt complex since the first time they did this, and is now trying to pretend he’s not the man who has done what he has already done. Tiresome.

‘Enough,’ he sighs, then forces himself to spread his legs a little more, feeling the way the cushions help to support him. ‘Come on, Little Beast, you will feel better when it’s done.’

Red eyes go even darker, and this time the beast does pounce. Instead of being smothered under the man’s heavy weight he finds large hands on his waist, that handsome head ducking down and nuzzling under his robes to press an urgent kiss to each of his hips, cold water dripping down from damp hair and soaking into the silk covering him. ‘Little Beast!’ he squawks.

‘I’ll never hurt you, shizun,’ the creature breathes against the skin of his flank, ‘I’ll never hurt you again. I’ll kill everyone who hurts you.’

‘Enough! Come on, Little Beast, you need to—’

The man interrupts him by pulling back and climbing onto him, carefully manoeuvring his legs until they’re wrapped around the man’s waist. ‘Tell me if you need me to stop,’ the man breathes out, before reaching down and—

That same, stretching, pinching pressure, and— he’s frightened. He doesn’t like this. He’s never liked this. He doesn’t want to be hurt again— his body gives way, the salve easing things so the beast slides right in. A shudder from the man on top of him, and then the beast is collapsing down, cupping his face in one hand, bracing himself on the bed with the other and—

And—

And—

Yang qi— he feels it— he feels Xin Mo’s qi too, racing through the beast and straight towards him— and he’s being rocked in place by the man’s thrusts— and he’s bracing himself, preparing himself to do what needs doing— and Yang qi— and Xin Mo— and— and his own qi reaching back and—

The beast’s qi flows into him, taking the sword’s qi with it, and it’s like a satisfying stretch, it’s like scratching an itch—

And then— then the beast thrusts at a certain angle, and something he has never experienced before happens. A shock of pleasure shudders through him, he gasps, head thrown back, as he loses his grip on something and the qi cycling through his system starts flowing back into the beast. He grasps for it, scrabbles for it, not sure what’s— but then it cycles back into him, as if the beast’s meridians were an extension of his own system, flowing between them, flowing into Xin Mo, flowing between them, flowing and flowing and flowing, all broken, out of kilter, displaced, dislocated things inside off of them being gently urged back into place—

Some tiny part of him is cognisant enough to realise that they’re dual-cultivating. An accident. He didn’t mean to— The rest of him gets swept up into a tide of pleasure.

It flows. It ebbs. It swells. It pushes and pulls him along. He’s making noise. He can feel his throat vibrating. He can’t really hear it, his senses overthrown by what it happening to him. He thinks he can almost hear the beast calling shizun, shizun, but he might be imagining it. He might be—

He—

What is—? Hotter, more intense, a different kind of qi originating from the beast and being swept up into the thing between them. Demonic— Oh— Oh— he squirms, pushing up, trying to take more. More of it. More of all of it.

He didn’t know anything could feel like this—

He—

He—

There is a mouth on his, he is being kissed, urgent, desperate— he finds himself kissing back. He finds his hands tangled in damp hair. He finds his legs curled hard around the beast’s waist to keep the man in place. He finds his whole body open and blooming, all of him, from flesh to meridians, embracing the demon rutting on top of him.

He wails into the beast’s mouth as the pleasure spirals down and—

And—

It takes a long, long time for anything to make sense again.

When he comes back to himself he is lying draped on top of the beast, head tucked under the man’s chin, arms wrapped around him to hold him in place. He blinks. He breathes. He hears the beast muttering vows of devotion against the crown of his head.

For a moment he just takes stock of everything. He wriggles his fingers, he wriggles his toes. He can still move. He hasn’t been drained— In fact he feels good. Strong. A little tired— but only the way he feels after exerting himself. His cultivation, too— he can already sense an improvement, thanks to—

The man. The heat underneath him. The arms wrapped around him.

Their qi still feels a little tangled, flowing easily between the two of them. He probes at what he feels for a moment, trying to see if it worked, if he managed to do what he set out to before he lost all control of himself— yes. He thinks so. He can feel the difference between the beast’s qi and the sword’s qi, and once more the beast feels to be in control, and the sword eased back into compliance.

That ascertained he forces himself to face what happened.

Dual cultivation—

The pleasure must have taken him so much by surprise he lost his grip on what was happening— a strange thought in of itself. Pleasure. He has never experienced such a thing.

He had heard it was possible— even when the receptive partner was being assaulted and did not want what was happening— one can learn all sorts of things in brothels when one actually listens to the whores— but he had never experienced it himself. Perhaps because Qiu Jianluo was so intent on causing pain and Wu Yanzi was so callous in his treatment of him— or perhaps there was something about him— even in the many years since then his body has always felt frozen. He has never wanted sex. He has never even fallen to the temptation to pleasure himself.

Part of him didn’t think he was even capable of— of that. Of reaching climax.

He did, didn’t he? He climaxed from dual cultivating with the beast.

He doesn’t know what to think of it all.

‘Shizun?’ the beast says.

Shizun. Shizun. Always shizun. ‘I am no longer your teacher,’ he reminds the man, trying to pretend to himself that his voice is steady and not shaky and weak. ‘Stop with the shuzun, shizun.’

‘What else can I call you?’ the man asks, arms tightening around him protectively. ‘I can’t call you that name. I won’t hurt you like that.’

‘It wouldn’t be right anyway,’ he muses, ‘I am no longer Shen Qingqiu. I am no longer the peaklord of Qing Jing— I suppose I am once more nothing but Shen Jiu.’

There is a pause. He can feel the beast’s muscles tensing a little— What is the creature thinking. ‘You—’ the beast clears his throat, ‘You don’t have to be just Shen Jiu.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asks, pushing himself up enough he can look down into the creature’s handsome face.

Looking like a little boy about to ask for some treat he knows he doesn’t deserve the creature begins with, ‘I told you, didn’t I, that I dismissed the harem? All my wives, all my concubines—’

‘You did—’ he replies, getting an idea of where this is going.

‘Of course, you’re not a woman, so you can’t exactly be my empress— But consort,’ the man says, words coming out rushed and eager and apologetic all at once, ‘I would like you to be my consort. I love you, shizun, I always have and I always will— and I want to marry you, and take care of you, and protect you, and give you things, and make sure no one can ever misunderstand you again.’

For a moment he just looks down at the beast, bewildered both by what the man is saying and by the turn his own thoughts are taking, ‘Would you want to dual-cultivate again?’ he asks.

‘Not if shizun doesn’t want to!’ the beast yelps, desperate to reassure him.

‘What if I want to?’ he asks. How strange— but it felt so good. He didn’t think it could feel that good. It felt so good he has trouble conceptualising it in the same thought as the things Qiu Jianluo and Wu Yanzi did to him.

‘Then we can dual-cultivate whenever shizun wants!’ of course the beast looks eager. Of course—

‘I’ll have a proper courtyard?’ he asks. ‘This little red room is hardly adequate quarters for an emperor’s consort.’

‘You can have any part of the palace you want!’ the beast surges up beneath him, until he is sitting straddling the man’s lap, strong arms still wrapped around him. ‘In fact you can have your own palace if you want one! Or any part of any of the realms! Or all of all the realms— Anything you want. I will give you everything.’

‘I want Nuo to run my household.’

‘You can have her,’ the beast promises. ‘Do you want her wife, too? If Nuo is looking after you I would prefer to keep Cui Guiyang, but if you want her, you can have her.’

He thinks for a moment— ‘Why not give them a courtyard of their own near ours. Nuo can run my household and Cui Guiying can run yours.’

‘Of course! Anything shizun wants!’ so eager to please.

‘If what I want is to be left alone for a while, will you give me that too?’ there is a hesitation then, before the man pulls back from him enough to meet his eyes.

‘Anything shizun wants. If shizun never wants to see me again, then you don’t have to—’

‘That is not what I’m saying,’ he counters, ‘Stupid Little Beast. You are too good at making me fond of you against my better judgement. I am just saying that sometimes all the company I want is my own and letting me be alone when I’m in that mood will be better for both of us.’

He doesn’t think the beast even heard anything past fond of you because those red eyes are wide and glossy, and a stupid, honest, childish smile has broken all over the man’s handsome face.

‘Shizun—’

Oh no, not another round of shizun, shizun. To head the beast off at the pass he rushes to say, ‘Yes, Little Beast, I will marry you.’

It’s not love, he’s not sure he’s capable of love, not since Qi-ge broke his heart— but he is fond of the beast in a way. Even if he wasn’t he might agree anyway. He has never been able to live free of a master, so why not the most powerful master alive? Why not live in a world where only that master is more powerful than him? The emperor’s consort, with the emperor’s ear, with the emperor all too eager to give him anything he wants. It might just be as close to safety as he’ll ever get— it certainly means he’ll never have to lay eyes on Qi-ge again, unless he wants to. Oh, he can act behind the scenes to keep the man safe, but he never has to find himself face to face with all those empty apologies and those censorious eyes, all while being kept comfortably and fussed over, his cultivation improving in leaps and bounds thanks to the beast’s qi.

It all sounds like a better ending than he ever could have hoped for.

Chapter Text

(????!Shen Jiu Epilogue)

Wandering through a forest searching for whatever has been disembowelling the young men of the nearby village, at twilight, in the rain, in late autumn is not the most comfortable experience, even for a high-level cultivator.

He is not actually cold, his level of cultivation prevents him from feeling the cold, but his mind keeps telling him he’s cold. It feels like he should be cold. Cold and angry.

He is not exiled. He is not abandoned. He has not been rejected—

He hasn’t even left, not really, not officially. He is just on a journey to improve his cultivation, that’s all.

So what if the journey lasts until he either ascends to immortality or dies of a qi deviation?

It’s the way Qi-ge looked at him, that’s the thing, the final straw. Even after Liu Qingge finally woke up and clarified what had actually happened— it was the absolute conviction that he had started it, that he had attacked the other man out of nowhere when all the poor, darling, perfect, special, flawless War God of Bai Zhan was trying to do was improve his cultivation. How dare he?

Not for one moment had Qi-ge even entertained the idea that he might have been meditating quietly by himself within the Lingxi caves, minding his own business, attempting to improve his own cultivation, when that brute had lost what little mind he had, fallen into a qi deviation, and immediately started trying to kill him.

Even after Liu Qingge’s shamefaced confession Qi-ge had tried to make out like he must have started it.

He hadn’t started it. In fact he’s rarely started things between them— finished them, yes, of course, was he just supposed to put up with being persecuted? But rarely started things. Still, Qi-ge looked at him like he was— like some animal, something lesser than the rest of them, the peaklord of Qing Jing only on the man’s sufferance.  

As if he did not earn his place with the skin off his back.

As if he did not have just as much right to walk the peaks as the rest of them. As Liu Qingge.

For months he had born the whisperings, the whole sect muttering to itself that his jealousy had finally taken over him and led him to attack their precious golden boy. For months he had endured Qi-ge’s honest and attentive attempts to talk to him about it. For months he had coped with the sensation that all he had worked towards, all he had sacrificed, was slipping through his fingers— and for months he had done it all knowing from hard, painful experience that no matter how hard he tried to tell the truth everyone would always insist on seeing the worst in him— it’s funny. It’s so funny— He had though at the time that when Liu Qingge woke up and explained everything he’d feel better.

He felt worse.

He doesn’t know why he felt worse, only that he did. Worse still when Liu Qingge started behaving strangely towards him— attentive and conciliatory, instead of aggressive and accusatory—

What does it matter of the man is sorry? If he hadn’t somehow worked out how to use his own qi to knock the man out of that qi deviation they probably would have both died— and even they didn’t— it’s entirely possible no one would have mourned him. Not even qi-ge, not really— been sorry for whatever that’s worth, but not mourned him for him— and if Liu Qingge had died instead of him— He had gotten a taste of what a life was like where everyone decided he’d killed that man. He doesn’t want to experience it again.

He doesn’t want to feel like he has to let Liu Qingge do whatever he likes to him, harass him, attack him, follow him around, or else risk being ostracised from the closest thing he thought he’d ever come to a home.

Not a home, not really, obviously now, in retrospect.

Right now he hates them, all of them, the entire sect with the exception of his disciples— that’s why he left. He can’t teach, not the way he is, his anger and resentment are making him spiteful and spite does not a good teacher make— and he doesn’t trust himself not to fall into a qi deviation out of sheer outrage and stress.

If he’d been just a little more unbalanced, if something had happened recently that had thrown off his cultivation, he’s sure he would have gone into a qi deviation in the caves and then— Now, now he feels like he’s in danger of qi deviation if he even thinks of having to look any member of his martial family in the face.

So, he left. He told Qi-ge he was going on a night hunt, went on that night hunt, sent a letter saying he’d heard about another nigh hunt nearby, sent a letter after completing that one, and on and on until his string of night hunts evolved into him straddling the precarious line between member of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect and wandering cultivator.

In a way he is happier in his current life than he’s ever been before. There is no one looking at him with disappointment all the time, no empty sorrys, no unpleasant martial family members to shun and disrespect him— in fact he is being treated well. Respectfully— even by the powerful, lustful, petty, stupid men of whichever village he wanders through.

He is working without pay, as he brought with him several qiankun pouches full of coins, so all he’s getting in recompense for his labour is whatever is on hand in the way of shelter and food. Music sometimes, and conversation with the women of the towns he travels through. He is focussing on small places, places that can’t pay for a cultivator from one of the major sects, or sometimes even any cultivator at all.

It’s funny, and maybe it’s just that he’s put himself in a position where he has all the power, but he finds he actually likes helping these people. The women, admittedly, more than the men— but not all the men are horrible. He has met some men he can actually honestly think of as good men in these little villages.

He wonders if the boys being gutted by whatever beast, spirit, or bandit that is roaming this forest were good boys. He supposes it doesn’t matter— their mothers and wives and sweethearts mourn them anyway.

A noise up ahead makes him freeze. A struggle, brief, the sound and sight of sword glares, then the gurgle of something being slaughtered. He edges closer— closer—

It is hard to see in the blue light of early evening— the only time the killer has been hunting— but as he steps into the clearing the figure within seems to glow from the sheer force of the demonic qi within him.

A man, tall, good looking, with a tangle of long dark curls hanging around a gaunt face. His eyes glow as red as the mark on his forehead, displaying for all the world to see his heavenly demonic heritage.

Those red eyes fix on him and something crosses that strangely starved looking visage. For a man dressed in such expensive robes, a man who holds himself as if he is used to wearing them, for such a man to look so thin and hungry is incongruous.

By the man’s— the demon’s— feet there is a wet pile of red and white, flesh and bones, hair, skin, organs— all of it so much unrecognisable pulp. If he could not sense demonic qi from it, and see large fangs and claws amongst it all, he might suspect it to be another young man instead of what he suspects is the demonic beast that was slaughtering them.

The demon’s mouth forms a word, a whisper of sound that doesn’t escape his lips, and staggers a couple of steps towards him. He calls Xiu Ya to his hand and points his sword at the man’s throat before the demon can get any closer. ‘Stay back,’ he orders, glad that his voice doesn’t shake.

This is going to go badly. The heavenly demon is powerful, insanely powerful if the demonic qi roiling in the air around him is anything to go by. He is alone. He has no allies, no friends, no backup—

Oh well, there are worse ways to die than on his own terms.

He flinches as the creature drops suddenly to his knees in front of him. ‘Shi-Shen Qingqiu—’ the man breathes with a reverence that sends a wary chill up his spine. ‘Shen Qingqiu—’

‘How do you know who I am?’ he demands. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘I would know you anywhere—’ the demon breathes, ‘I want to serve you. I want to worship you. I will never hurt you—’

This may be the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to him. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do.

He has no friends.

He has no allies.

There is no one coming to help.

There is no one to even realise something has happened to him.

The creature, the demon, the man stays kneeling in front of him, staring up at him with a mad kind of devotion.

His sword shakes as his hand trembles.

***

(Yue Qingyuan Epilogue)

He dresses in his best robes, he puts his hair up in his best guan— muttonfat jade, a rare present from Xiao Jiu— then dithers by his front door, hesitates, frets, before eventually walking outside so he can head off on Xuan Su’s sheathed blade.

He’s put this off too long. He hasn’t known how to deal with this situation. He knows he’s biased, knows what he wants, knows if he had his way he’d have Xiao Jiu at hand at all times— he knows if the secret, worst parts of him had their way he’d have more than just Xiao Jiu’s company, he’d have Xiao Jiu in his bed as well— all thoughts and feelings to make him wary, to make him second guess himself. He has a duty to the sect, not just the boy he found as a baby.

Not just the boy he let down. Not just the boy he couldn’t save— no matter how hard he tried. No matter what he sacrificed trying to push himself before he was ready.

Trying to balance being the leader of the sect and his feelings for Xiao Jiu has always been a near impossible task. He feels he has compromised too much of himself, his sense, his wisdom, the man he wants to be, in attempting it.

Back, before, back when those accusations were first thrown at Xiao Jiu by that ex-disciple, he had thought that he knew which way he had let the situation overbalance. He had assumed that Xiao Jiu was guilty— a lifetime of assuming Xiao Jiu was guilty, all leading back to them being children, and the terrible things the other boy would do or say in order to get more food or a better spot or vengeance on anyone who had hurt either of them and his own desperate scramble to try and make amends, to appease whoever Xiao Jiu had offended, before the other boy— or he, himself— could be hurt for it— and had assumed he had been too lenient on the other because of his shameful, unreturned feelings.

Now— Now he is faced with a more terrible thought. It seems possible, for the first time since all those terrible things were lain at Xiao Jiu’s door, since the first time since two of the most promising of Cang Qiong’s cultivators entered the Lingxi caves to cultivate and only one stepped out again— Now it seems possible that he had betrayed Xiao Jiu for the sect, and not the other way around.

The thought, the very idea, is almost paralysing in the horror it inspires in him.

Ever since the other ended up in Liu Binghe’s custody the urge to storm into Huan Hua Palace and rescue him has been almost overbearing. He hasn’t done it— Xiao Jiu seemed to accept his guilt, and it would be too dangerous for the sect, and it would unbalance the entire cultivation world, and then it turned out the disciple was half heavenly demon and the son of Tianlang-jun and he hadn’t wanted to provoke a war— but now all that sounds like excuses.

Now it all sounds like Qi-ge failing his Xiao Jiu again.

Now it all sounds like he was being a coward, too caught up in his own self-conscious duty to the sect to do the first duty he had ever sworn. Protect Xiao Jiu, no matter the cost.

When had he forgotten those words, whispered silently, vowed into the tangled, grimy hair of the little boy who would once only actually sleep if curled up in his arms?

Now—

It really started when Ning Yingying returned to the sect, heartbroken and furious. For a month she had remained in seclusion on Qing Jing peak, before she had come to see him. The story she had told him had been chilling. He hadn’t realised how much he had been relying on the idea that Xiao Jiu had grown into a lecherous man that preyed on his vulnerable female disciples to quell his own feelings about the man.

To hear that it wasn’t true, that Ning Yingying had been manipulated and misled— and when he had questioned the other female disciples of Qing Jing to have it confirmed— and then he had gone to ask the women who work in that brothel in the town at the base of the peaks— Xiao Jiu, it turns out, is no lecher. Xiao Jiu has never laid with, or laid a lustful hand on, any woman he has been able to discover in his urgent attempts to do so.

All nauseating, disconcerting, but made worse when instead of discarded and ill-treated lovers he discovered that the ex-disciple, the heavenly demon, the man, the beast, who has made himself an Emperor while the cultivation world has stood aside and done nothing but squirm in discomfort— that man, Xiao Jiu’s captor, has been asking those very same questions.

Ning Yingying said something about it seeming as if Luo Binghe is intending to take Xiao Jiu as his concubine, but he had discarded the words when he heard them. A girl whose mind can be so easily twisted on itself that she can be convinced her teacher has inappropriate attentions towards her on very scant evidence is not the kind of girl whose sense about these matters can be trusted.

Of course he has not left Xiao Jiu in the grasp of a man who wants to take, to use and abuse him, to lay hands on his beaty and defile that jade white flesh— He is not sure he could live with himself if that is the fate he abandoned his— his beloved to.  

He has already abandoned the man to a worse fate than poor Xiao Jiu ever deserved.

Not long after he had questioned the brothel workers he had been approached by a gaggle of senior members of Bai Zhan. They too had encountered Luo Binghe, they too had been questioned. They were uncertain about it, uncomfortable with the experience— and he believes they were feeling something in the way of guilt.

As well as reporting to him that they had actually answered the queries of a man half heavenly demon they had stuttered through a long overdue defence of Xiao Jiu in the matter of the death of Liu Qingge. All five of them seemed mortified to be saying the words, and discomforted by the nature of them, and had stuttered and spluttered and spoken over each other in a way that he thinks only members of Bai Zhan would dare do in front of their sect leader, but when they left his office they left him with one more thing to feel grief and uncertainty about.

While they couldn’t agree on what exactly they thought had happened in the Lingxi caves, to a man they believe that it must have been Liu Qingge who started things. There it had gotten confusing, as they had all tried to shout over each other, but the gist seemed to be that they all believe that Liu Qingge was the one instigating things between him and Xiao Jiu, that Xiao Jiu was vicious when riled— and riled easily— but that he had never done anything to any member of Bai Zhan unless they had done something to him first. Even if they didn’t seem to want to believe it, they seemed to all believe that if Xiao Jiu had actually killed Liu Qingge then Liu Qingge— their peaklord, one of Cang Qiong’s best cultivators, and a man they all admired— probably deserved it. Some of them— and this was the thing the others were the most eager to shout over— also believe that Liu Qingge was attracted to Xiao Jiu, but unable to reconcile that attraction within himself, so was taking it out on the man he desired.

That was hard to hear.

That was so hard to hear he can’t bear to think too closely on it.

It was harder still when a bit of careful questioning across the peaks informed him that it was a belief held by a not insignificant percentage of disciples— mainly those from Qing Jing, admittedly, but also a portion from every other peak— and it would be easier to dismiss if those disciples that believe it weren’t of that particular subset he thinks of in the privacy of his own head as sensible, cynical, and unromantic. The type that usually have some true sense of what is actually going on, even if they don’t always share it.

He had thought— he doesn’t want to think about why he had thought— but the truth is that he had thought that Xiao Jiu was guilty. There wasn’t a moment when the idea that Liu Qingge started it, or that Xiao Jiu might have simply been defending himself, had crossed his mind.

What kind of man is he that—

All thoughts to have later, once Xiao Jiu is home and safe once more.

He can— he can try to make amends. Can’t he?

He can’t afford to think about it now. He needs to focus on getting through what comes next.

Because if Xiao Jiu is innocent— or if not innocent, then to a degree justified— when it comes to the death of Liu Qingge, and if there was no abuse of the female disciples under his care, and if Luo Binghe is in fact half heavenly demon and so Xiao Jiu had no obligation not to mistreat him— Well, Cang Qiong Mountain Sect can no longer permit Xiao Jiu to remain in the water prison. He should be freed and returned to his sect.

Of course convincing the emperor of this fact is more easily said than done— but he will have to find a way to do it, and if Luo Binghe refuses to concede then— He does not let himself waver, even though he knows he may be going to his death. He may be forced to draw his sword— but that is the right thing to do.

He realises now that it has been a very long time since he did the right thing.

He touches down outside Huan Hua Palace and waits to be shown to the emperor. There are demons scattered amongst the mortal cultivators— obvious, out there for anyone to see, making no attempt to disguise themselves. What fools they all were, listening to that boy just because he wove some sob story and gave the cultivation world those sad eyes.

They are looking at him in a way he doesn’t understand, both demons and cultivators. It’s not hostility, not really— more anticipation, as if they are all awaiting some entertainment. Maybe they think he is here to challenge their emperor— well, they’re not wrong, not really.

Eventually a disciple shows him deeper into the palace, into a room which must be Luo Binghe’s office. The man himself, the demon, is waiting there within, sitting on a large, throne like chair behind a desk. ‘Yue Qingyuan,’ the man greets him, no title, barely any respect, just a wide, smug smile.

‘I am here to discuss Shen Qingqiu,’ he tells the man, ‘New evidence has emerged that proves his innocence—’

‘New, you say?’ the man muses. The way Luo Binghe is sitting in that chair is offensive. He’s sprawled back a little, slouched, legs spread in a lazy splay as if to draw attention to his crotch. The demon looks like a thug, looks like one of those nasty young men he remembers lurking on street corners and lurking in the shadows a lifetime ago, when he was a slave, a beggar on the streets.

‘You have no right to imprison him,’ he tells the man, fighting down a rare irritation. ‘He did not molest his disciples, there is no proof he murdered Liu Qingge, and however he treated you when you were his disciple— You are half heavenly demon. Whatever your personal feelings— surely you must see this changes things? A cultivator cannot be blamed for how he treats a demon.’

Luo Binghe laughs, a brief chuckle, more than a little mocking, ‘I am not holding him against his will.’

‘I do not believe you!’ he snaps. If Xiao Jiu was free he would have come home. The thought infuriates him. ‘I demand to see him! Right now, I demand to know he’s ok!’

‘He doesn’t want to see you,’ the demon replies.

‘You’re lying—’ he begins, only to be interrupted.

‘He never wants to see you, or anyone, from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect ever again—’

‘You’re lying,’ he repeats, a breath, a prayer—

‘I mean, I can understand why—’ Luo Binghe smirks at him, ‘Oh so eager, weren’t you? So eager to believe the worst of him? So eager to give him up to any punishment I could have devised—’

He finds his hand on Xuan Su’s hilt before thought, ‘If you’ve hurt him—’

The sound of door opening draws both their attention. It’s not the door he was shown through, but one behind Luo Binghe, leading to somewhere deeper in the palace.

A slender figure dressed in red steps through. Head to toe in silks and jewels, weighed down by the wealth draped across the tall, slim form— For a moment he doesn’t recognise the man gliding towards Luo Binghe. Not even when pink lips part to form the word husband. Not even when dark green eyes slide across his face and the placid beauty of the person in front of him doesn’t so much as crack—

Luo Binghe shifts, body language opening towards the slender figure as the beauty in red comes to a stop by his side, a delicate, slender hand resting on the heavenly demon’s shoulder. Those suddenly familiar green eyes bore into his own.

Husband.

Luo Binghe’s large, brutish hand comes up to cover Xiao Jiu’s on the man’s wide shoulder. The touch gentle, tender, but also incredibly proprietorial, as if he has every right to touch Xiao Jiu anyway he pleases.

‘Dearest husband, what does the esteemed sect leader of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect want?’ those beloved lips form the words with no familiarity, as if the two of them are strangers.

Strangers.

He has made himself a stranger to Xiao Jiu.

Xiao Jiu stares back at him, blank and cold, without even the overt hostility he now realises he may miss for the rest of his long, long life.