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The last thing Shen Jiu remembered was a sweltering pressure from inside his chest and his spiritual veins writing under his skin. He felt a similar heat as he regained consciousness now, only instead of his own golden core cooking him from within, the burning was pressing down all around him, constricting his arms and legs, and binding any breath in his chest. 

It was as though Cang Qiong Mountain itself had swallowed him whole to stop his deviation. Shen Jiu only hesitated a moment before struggling to move his arms from his side, channeling his qi through his fingertips as he did so. The relief he felt as his qi dislodged what he could now feel as dirt under his hands lightened his chest considerably, despite the need for breath, and he poured more energy into the earth around him. As his qi spread, the ground around him gave way, and the heat receded as well. 

Had he truly been buried alive like some form of demon???? 

He pushed his arms in the direction he hoped was upward, throwing caution to the wind at his spiritual veins. If I don’t get out of this myself, I will die regardless of any deviation.  

The soil gave way to allow two knuckles wiggle room above the ground, as evidenced by the wave of heated air that hit his fingertips. He grit his teeth in satisfaction, focusing his qi in that direction, grateful his instincts had proven correct. He was about to send a qi blast when sudden;y there was another hand digging into the ground next to where his fingers were undovered. Startled and still in dire need of air, Shen Jiu sent a spiritual blast through his arms, sending the remainder of the earth holding him in place and whoever was trying to grab at him flying back. 

Shen Jiu’s lungs filled with air which he greedily heaved in. The night sky above was shrouded with smoke and embers as he caught his breath. He growled to himself as he sat up, holding a sleeve over his mouth to ward off as much smoke as possible. “Why did it always have to be fire? ”

As he crawled his way out of the hole he had been buried in, he took stock of the state of his body, which… oddly enough felt the best it ever had despite being sealed like Tianlang Jun. His qi felt overflowing and his core hummed with power, despite how much he had channeled to free himself. Around him, a blazing forest fire roared, and he instinctively covered himself in a layer of qi to prevent himself from burning. What he wouldn’t have given to have this ability in the Qiu house. 

“Cucumber-bro?” Came the voice of his would-be savior. Shen Jiu turned his head and locked eyes with his Shixiong, the little rodent Shang Qinghua of An Ding. 

Shen Jiu grit his teeth. “Vegetables aren’t going to help you now. Get me out of here .” 

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“FIRE!” Shang Qinghua yelled, slapping a fire talisman onto the mass of snarled, vine-choked roots like he was slapping a band-aid on a mortal wound and praying for the best.

CRACK-BOOM!

The talisman detonated with the enthusiasm of a string of oversized firecrackers. Flames burst out, charring the twisted vines and sending up thick puffs of smoke. Shang Qinghua shielded his face, coughing as the roots blackened and shriveled—success!

...Or not. The fire leapt from one root to the next with alarming speed.

"Ah. AH SHIT!" Shang Qinghua stumbled back, flailing. "I forgot to prepare water!!"

He darted a glance at the nearby pond. "Can I make it there and back before Cucumber Bro turns into roasted cucumber?!"

FWOOSH! BWAHM!

A sudden qi-blast exploded beside him, extinguishing a chunk of the fire mid-spread. The heat and force slapped his hand painfully.

"Ow!" he yelped, clutching his fingers. "Cucumber Bro!? Why'd you qi blast me??"

Half-buried in the dirt, Shen Qingqiu’s plant-body had burst free with all the grace of a vengeful radish. Fire? Why did it always have to be fire?

His glare alone made the remaining flames recoil.

"Get. Me. Out."

Shang Qinghua's hands shot up in surrender. Oh shit. "Okay, okay! Jeez!"

The face may be different, but that temper sure is familiar.

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Shang Qinghua stared at the smoldering vines and mounds of displaced dirt as a fine tremor ran through him. The smoke stung his eyes and throat as he swallowed a cough. He'd come to get Cucumber-bro out of the ground. It had been five years already! Five years! Shang Qinghua really couldn't take it. Not for the first time, he cursed ever writing this stupid novel. If he had written the novel he wanted, even if he starved, maybe none of this would have happened.

Of course, when he went to find Cucumber-bro's body, he instead found a Cucumber-bro shaped hole instead. He'd cursed his luck. There went his chances of begg— Ah, laying out the facts logically about why his bro should come back and take care of his disciple. Shang Qinghua's life had been a mess! A Mess! It really wasn't fair.

He'd thought perhaps, he could find some trace of where that man had gone, but there had been all these weird vines in the way, feeding off the qi. Easy enough to burn out of the way. Well, easy enough until the dirt started moving. Shang Qinghua flinched back when a leaf popped from the earth, then fell over completely as a dirty head emerged right afterwards. Two pale arms spiked out of the dirt, sending clumps of debris and roots flying in every direction. Fingers clawed into the ground, then a figure wrenched itself from the earth, jerking forward on strangely bent limbs. Shang Qinghua whimpered, shuffling backwards as he tried to clamber back to his feet.

The figure continued to drag its way forward, its long dark hair spilling over the ground in tangled strands. He was going to die! he was really going to die! He'd seen this movie! He knew how it ended! He was going to die!

And for what? This life was terrible. The worst.

"What the fuck! What the fuck!" Shang Qinghua cried. "Why me?" The leaf on the figure's head twitched. Then the head lifted and Shang Qinghua stared into Cucumber-bro's too-pretty face. He froze.

But— But— The hole—

Shen Qingqiu narrowed his eyes, lips pulling down. The leaf on his head twitched again. Shang Qinghua watched as a thin trail of smoke climbed from his bare narrow shoulder. Shen Qingqiu sneered down as it caught fire. He breathed in, then a blast of qi rushed through the vines around them, billowing Shang Qinghua's hair and stinging his eyes. When Shang Qinghua looked around, the fire was out.

He looked up at Shen Qingqiu and flinched back at the icy coldness in his stare.

"You." Shen Qingqiu cocked a brow over his derisive frown. "How dare you wake me up."

"Ah," Shen Qingqiu winced. "Sorry?"

With sinking heart he resigned himself to his fate. This wasn't his Cucumber-bro.

…

In a town not so far away, another Shen Qingqiu stared into a mirror as he affixed the last beard hair in place. Perfect! No one would recognize him now.

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The borderlands are dull, foggy and grey as they usually are. The effect is mostly depressing, though right now, with jagged fingernails pushing out of the dirt, it feels a bit more horror-movie-esque than Shang Qinghua is generally comfortable with. He hadn’t known what to expect when the monitoring talisman that he had placed so many years ago alerts him to disturbances in the area where Shen Qingqiu’s mushroom body had been buried–but it certainly wasn’t this. 

When Shen Qingqiu hadn’t emerged from the ground after his qi detonation, Shang Qinghua had assumed that he had made a grievous error in handling the fertilizer. It had been the best he’d been able to do at the time, but it hadn’t been enough. Cucumber-bro had never come back, and Shang Qinghua assumed that the body had failed and his fellow transmigrator had perished in the transit.

Now that he is in front of the planting site and watching dirt move, he realizes that that…may not have been the case. 

But Shen Qingqiu had been in the ground for five years longer than expected, and the thing that emerges is definitely not Cucumber-bro anymore.

His skin is white as paper, tinged with grey–if he has blood suspended in his veins, there is no way that it is circulating anymore. He still has long, black hair, but the tangled rat’s nest is interwoven with vines and leaves, and Shang Qinghua is horrified to realize that both the hair and the plant matter are growing from his scalp. The thing that crawls out of the ground has glowing green eyes that search the area with a piercing gaze–when they land on Shang Qinghua, he feels a shiver run down his spine.

The body pulls itself the rest of the way from the dirt, and it is almost like it uproots itself; vines and branches curl around his body and search out the ground around him, moving like living tendrils. A ray of sun pierces the fog for a moment, lighting on the body’s shoulder, and the pale flesh immediately starts smouldering. The creature hisses, shying away from the light, before he affixes his gaze back on Shang Qinghua. Shang Qinghua freezes, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights, and there is an explosion of movement as the living vines propel the creature forward to launch himself towards Shang Qinghua, an inhuman screech emerging from its throat.

Shang Qinghua backpedals and hits the ground hard as the plant creature flings itself over him, raining dirt over his face, and its creeping vines and long, pale fingers drag itself away. It moves with inhuman speed, crawling towards where Shang Qinghua knows is the nearest gap between the human and demon realms. 

Oh fuck, Shang Qinghua thinks, heart pounding. Fuck.

That was not Shen Qingqiu. That was not his Cucumber-bro anymore. And if Luo Binghe ever finds out about what happened here, there will be hell to pay. 

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Shang Qinghua was walking through a barren place, a familiar place. 

Oh no. 

Shang Qinghua had a moment to remember where he was before the memory faded, and without processing the action, he took a talisman from his pocket, one that seemed to burn with the words that showed his failure, and came out and summoned his deepest regret. 

From the dry ground came a hand; it was pale and looked lifeless. However, it belonged to a man that, though he had once lived, had never lived in that body that it was now using to force itself from the ground. 

Moments later, a face came through the cracked earth, and then the rest of the body broke through the surface. It was mangled. It was grotesque. And the face was full of pure anger as it walked, no, dragged itself towards Shang Qinghua. 

The creature was Shen Qingqiu. Well, in a sense. It was the body that the transmigrator that resided in Shen Qingqiu’s body was supposed to have made his home. And yet, Shang Qinghua failed to grow it properly and Shen Yuan’s soul never successfully revived in the body. And now Shen Qingqiu had been dead, truly dead, for years. With no way back to the world of the living. After two lifetimes of so much planning, Cucumber Bro was not able to return to this world. And it was Shang Qinghua's fault. 

“I'm sorry”, Shang Qinghua squawked at the approaching figure. “I'm so sorry I wanted to save you. I really tried, but the body, it didn't work, it didn't.” The plant body. The zombie body, filled with anger to the point where it made its eyes glow as it continued to approach.

“If I could fix this, I would. I would do anything, please, just please. I wanted you to live. I did what I could. But you're the one that knew the novel better than I did. Tell me how I can fix this. Tell me I will do anything. But my knowledge isn't enough to save you. I need you!” Shang Qinghua put his hands on his head and kneeled as though in prayer as he shut his eyes and the figure continued to approach.

“I can’t do this alone.” Shang Qinghua cried out but as the sound vanished into nothingness, silence fell around him. There wasn’t even the sound of the wind. Shang Qinghua opened his eyes to see that the body was gone. The only sign that Shen Qingqiu, or to be more exact, the failed plant body, had been there was the marks that had been left in the ground that went right up to where Shang Qinghua was now kneeling. 

Peerless Cucumber could have killed him; well, he could have killed him if this was real. It was at that moment that Shang Qinghua remembered this was a dream. A nightmare. The nightmare that had been haunting him ever since he realized that his friend was never coming back.

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They never talk. It is Qunghua himself who imagines the whispers. 

‘It's all your fault,’ Binghe does not say, kneeling amidst the tall grass of a familiar forest. So small, insignificant amidst the ancient trees. Almost blending in with his green robes and his incredible stillness. And yet Qinghua's eyes are drawn inexorably to his skin. 

He can't look away. He can't turn. He can't move. He can't even whisper a response 

And if he could, Qinghua isn't sure what he'd say. 

‘It's all your fault,’ Mingyuan does say. Her stance is relaxed. Her face is behind a veil. There isn't anything for Qinghua to grasp at but her presence in the halls that he could never bring himself to call him. 

There is no blame but there is sadness.

He can't do anything.

Qunghua didn't know. Qinghua couldn't have known.

‘It's all your fault,’ Shen Qingqiu (one of them; both?) hides behind a fan with one sharp move. Qinghua wants to scream that this is unfair, but he doesn't know how true it would be.

He chokes on his own tongue, trying to get anything out.

‘It's all your fault,’ Mobei-Jun does not need to say. He only needs to reach out. Or let Qinghua perish by himself in this empty cold desert. Qinghua would not move. Mobei-jun would be right.

 If he ever said it. If.

He flinches anyway.

‘It's all your fault,’ Zhuzhi-lang does not speak. He just watches Qinghua fumble all over himself. A performance for an audience of one, frantic, tired, empty. Just like the barren land around them.

He can finally move. Respond. Speak.

But it does not matter, because the only one Qinghua ever tries to convince is himself.

…

And that is a predictably futile effort.

The dreams always return for him. 

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Whilst Liu Qingge recovered from his nocturnal ordeal in bed at Bai Zhan Peak, another warrior of similar delicate features was having a similar encounter of her own.

“No, no no! I won’t! I won’t wear them!”

Sha Hualing squirmed in the grass, weakly kicking her legs out. All around, there were gawking disciples and demons alike—and clutching at her ankle in victory was the most beautiful of all—Liu Mingyan! Right now, though, she was more demonic than even Sha Hualing, her hand like a vice grip.

“You’ve lost, Sha Hualing. And now you must submit to whatever I demand!” Sha Hualing knew the rules, but tears sprung to her eyes unbidden all the same. She was a fierce demon, and even being defeated by such a strong and ravishing maiden didn’t change the fact that she absolutely did not want this.

“But, but—I hate it! No way!”

The boot in Liu Mingyan’s other hand thrust forward deftly, and slid onto Sha Hualing’s foot like a glove.

Ew! Shoes!

She shrieked, and in her shock the other one went on in much the same way.

Sha Hualing was thoroughly defeated, with her feet now decked out in a pair of fine leather —her body shuddering just to think the words… foot coverings—lost all the fight she had left. The proud warrior fell back limblessly as she saw her life—and her feet—flashing before her eyes. Was this the end? Would she now be forever bound to footwear? Or, heavens forbid, socks?! Just as she thought the end was nigh and that perhaps there were to be socks added to the scene, she abruptly woke up covered in a cold sweat.

The tangle of sheets flew off her bed as she shredded them, then quickly shot forwards grabbing at her ankles desperately.

Phew! Still bare and unrestrained, not a scrap of that damnable leather in sight.

Still, she spent the rest of the night warily watching for that swaying lilac veil at the window… Awaiting the next move of that bewitching shoe devil, Liu Mingyan.

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It wasn't the first time Liu Mingyan had run across Sha Hualing, unexplained and unexpectedly, during some mission or outing or other. It was, however, the first time that the demon girl didn't seem to have been there on purpose at all, considering the surprise on her face.

Something about the unguarded expression made Liu Mingyan's blood boil in her veins and the qi in her meridians speed up as it looped through her body going faster and faster until– she was pinning Sha Hualing down, holding the demon's shoulders to the ground and watching the way her pupils shook even as she wouldn't look away. Couldn't, maybe, with the threat Liu Mingyan was making herself.

Sha Hualing yelped loudly, in a way that sounded halfway between the growl of a small dog and the shreik of a surprised bird, and she quickly pushed herself up onto her forearms and elbows, face close up and snarling against Liu Mingyan's fluttering veil. And then… there wasn't any movement between them anymore. The whole world held its breath, and so did Liu Mingyan and the demon under her.

"So… uh," Liu Mingyan said eventually, voice exploding from her in a rush, unsure how to explain any of it. "Fancy seeing you here?"

Sha Hualing shook underneath Liu Mingyan's hands, so she pulled them away, so… so aware of the way her hands dragged down thin fabric and hot skin, all the way to the ends of the demon's toes, the thick fabric of her boots rough under her fingertips.

"What?! No!" Sha Hualing snarl-yelped again, still shivering under Liu Mingyan, even though she'd backed off quite a bit.

Hazy-headed and her thoughts not working quite right, slow and unfocused, Liu Mingyan just tilted her head and waited until the demon girl showed her eyes again – having since shadowed them as she looked away.

"Oh, not fancy to see you here then." Liu Mingyan said slowly, the words obvious up until they fell from her lips like dense bricks.

Sha Hualing pushed Liu Mingyan off suddenly and lept to her feet, face as bright red as her ribbons and the excuse of clothes she draped herself in, eyes wide and sharp. She pointed at Liu Mingyan, who pushed herself up from the ground where she'd been sprawled and looked up at Sha Hualing with a slow blink.

The demon girl stuttered something incomprehensible, took one last look at Liu Mingyan, and sprinted away.

It took a few minutes for the thoughts to flow back into Liu Mingyan's head, but when they did she couldn't help but curse, "What the fuck was that?"

Luckily there was no one around to see how red her own face was under the veil, nor hear her vulgar mutters.

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