Chapter Text
1.
Shen Qingqiu clutches the bleeding wound in his side. Thank you very much, Mobei-jun! “Luo Binghe,” he says gravely. “Tell me honestly, exactly how long have you been practicing demonic cultivation?” His voice is appropriately hoarse and solemn for the dire occasion.
Luo Binghe’s liquid black eyes search his desperately. “Shizun,” he says softly. “I can explain.”
“This is no time for excuses,” Shen Qingqiu says sharply. The system blares, flashing in his periphery, making his already throbbing head throb even harder. Binghe flinches back as if Shen Qingqiu had raised a hand to hit him, panic plainly visible on his young face, and Shen Qingqiu’s heart squeezes in pity. He softens his tone, just a touch. “How long? When did you start?”
Luo Binghe’s adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “Two years,” he confesses. Shen Qingqiu shuts his eyes for a moment, as if in shock; he can feel the prickle of Luo Binghe’s begging gaze on his face and knows he is giving him very little to work with. Luo Binghe only manages two heartbeats of silence before adding, “But Shizun, I--!”
“No buts,” Shen Qingqiu says heavily. “What’s done is done, and we must live with the consequences. If you have been building your demonic cultivation behind my back for so long, it cannot be sealed again. Luo Binghe, do you understand what you are? No wonder you were able to progress in such leaps and bounds, and to such an extent.”
Luo Binghe trembles before him. “Shizun,” he pleads. His voice is raw, and before Shen Qingqiu can open his mouth, he slides right down to his knees in the dirt. The shock is plain on his face -- that his beloved teacher would be so cold to him again, no doubt -- but his fear is too, and that’s what cracks Shen Qingqiu’s facade.
“Get up,” he says, and when he can’t stand the look of abject misery on Luo Binghe’s face for even a second longer, he finds himself crouching to guide Luo Binghe to his feet himself. “Silly child, get up , we have no time to waste. We cannot stay here; it may be possible to hide your mark temporarily, but now that your powers have been unsealed, any cultivator worth his salt will sense your demonic aura from half a li away. Haven’t you figured out by now that you’re no simple demon?” Almost without realizing what he’s doing, Shen Qingqiu reaches out to brush a thumb over Luo Binghe’s fresh demon mark. The red light makes it look hot, but Luo Binghe’s skin only feels flushed, not burning. He stands stock still, as if afraid that moving at all will make Shen Qingqiu pull away again. “The human world will view this huadian as a brand of sin, the mark of demons who fell from the heavens.”
Luo Binghe, thus pulled up, collapses forward into Shen Qingqiu’s arms, clinging with all his considerable strength. Shen Qingqiu’s injured side protests loudly. Muffled, Luo Binghe half-sobs into his chest, “But you said before that just as humans can be good or bad, demons can be too…”
Fuck, did he? “That is true,” he allows, trusting Luo Binghe’s memory over his own. “But there are not many people who see it that way.” He smooths a hand over Luo Binghe’s curls; Luo Binghe shudders in his arms. “Binghe will not be safe here in the human realm. Not until he is strong enough to defend himself from those who cannot see past their prejudices, at least. Even this master cannot reckon with the full force of the cultivation world, so we must go elsewhere.” Although, Shizun can’t protect you forever. Shen Qingqiu remembers those “hero’s journey” graphics and he’s quite sure the guardians and mentors can only go so far.
Luo Binghe peeks up at him, eyes rimmed nearly as red as his demon mark. “ We? Then…?” he ventures, still unwilling to let go. “Shizun won’t send me away from him?”
Slowly, almost involuntarily, his arms come up to embrace Luo Binghe in return. He’s already gone totally off-script here, what’s a little more adlibbing? He has fifteen seconds left before Luo Binghe must enter the Abyss. “I won’t,” he says quietly. “But you must be brave, Binghe. This will not be easy, but there is only one place for us to go. Shizun is sorry.” His voice cracks; this really was not the plan.
“Shizun…?” Binghe says, sounding lost.
The two of them are only a few paces away from the cliff. Even without access to his cultivation, Shen Qingqiu has a height advantage, and more importantly, he has surprise on his side. It is almost too easy to clutch Luo Binghe tighter in his arms, step forward, and --
Shen Qingqiu really hopes he doesn’t die when he hits the bottom. That would be so embarrassing. The last thing he hears before the whiplash knocks him unconscious is Luo Binghe screaming.
2.
Yup, that’s him, plummeting to his probable death. You’re probably wondering how Shen Qingqiu got himself into this situation. Well, nine months ago, the week after Luo Binghe’s seventeenth birthday, Shen Qingqiu had gone to Shang Qinghua’s humble abode to passive aggressively request a higher annual budget -- try to stiff the second-ranked peak in the sect, why don’t you -- and heard Shang Qinghua humming to himself.
It was a hot afternoon. If the windows hadn’t been open to let in the breeze, Shen Qingqiu might not have heard him at all. As it was, he paused. Shang Qinghua’s voice was as average as the rest of him, not excellent but not awful. The kind of voice that would be good for karaoke and not much else.
Now, why had Shen Qingqiu thought such a thing? Because the mumbled words that punctuated Shang Qinghua’s humming were something along the lines of: “...is killing me… must confess… still believe…” In. Motherfucking. English. Not very good motherfucking English, to be fair, but Shen Qingqiu had played enough Just Dance 3 at the behest of his sister in his previous life that he could never have mistaken that tune.
Unable to stop himself, Shen Qingqiu threw open the door with a bang. Shang Qinghua startled violently, and knocked about thirty pieces of parchment off his desk. “Shen-- Shen-shixiong!” He cowered behind his desk under the guise of frantically scooping his papers up. “Please don’t be angry with me, it’s policy that budget is calculated based on the number of disciples a peak has to accommodate, and you haven’t taken any new disciples since -- since--” Shen Qingqiu raised his fan threateningly and Shang Qinghua sputtered to a terrified halt.
Shen Qingqiu stared down at him gravely. “That song,” he said.
Shang Qinghua peered up at him. “Um,” he said. “It’s, uh, a new ballad…?”
“New?” Shen Qingqiu said in disgust. “Did you die in 1999?”
Shang Qinghua’s mouth dropped open, and the pages he had managed to gather fell from his hands. “Bro,” he said, wonderstruck. “You too? I thought you were acting weird after the qi deviation, but I didn’t realize -- this explains so much, Shen Qingqiu was so OOC--”
Shen Qingqiu hit him, baby, one more time. Thus, a beautiful, or at least a functional, alliance began.
3.
Liu Qingge is frustrated and tired as he stomps through the long grass. His disciples who entered the tournament have all been recovered alive, with various degrees of injury, which is honestly surprising considering none of them were giving particularly strong performances. His exhausted mind drifts to his shixiong’s advice; maybe Liu Qingge does need to get them off the peak more. It’s just that it’s extremely irritating to look after children when he’s off the mountain, because they either constantly ask to stop for food or pass out from hunger, and both options make Yue Qingyuan quite exasperated with him. At least on his peak, they can all scavenge from the kitchens.
The horizon is just beginning to lighten with dawn when his shijie swoops down on her sword. “Liu-shidi,” she calls, landing just ahead of him. Her rage and frustration at the situation are clear on her face for even Liu Qingge to understand them. “Mu-shidi is taking the injured disciples back to Cang Qiong for medical treatment. Nearly everyone has been found already.”
“Nearly?” he barks. “How many are still missing? Any dead?”
Qi Qingqi grimaces. “Two missing,” she says. “No bodies have been recovered, but…” She doesn’t have to finish the sentence. Liu Qingge has already seen the bodies that were bitten in half before being eaten by one creature or another; he assumes the bodies that were fully consumed already will be considerably harder to identify. If someone hasn’t been found yet, it doesn’t bode well.
Liu Qingge almost doesn’t ask which two. He barely knows his own disciples’ names, and certainly not those on other peaks. He’ll know them by the uniform. “I’ll keep looking,” he says grimly.
“Liu-shidi, wait,” Qi Qingqi says as he pushes past her. “The two who are missing… It’s not two disciples. Shen-shixiong hasn’t turned up yet either.”
Liu Qingge’s body jerks in surprise. Shen Qingqiu might be no challenge for him in battle, but he’s certainly a better fighter than any student. Not to mention, he probably knew all the monsters by name, so shouldn’t that have made it easier for him?
When he turns around, Qi Qingqi is watching him carefully. “I said it was stupid for him to--” Liu Qingge starts, infuriated, and then cuts himself off. He’s helped Shen Qingqiu with his illness enough times to know how weak he is during a flare up. How could he be so reckless as to come into the arena? “I’ll find him.”
“Please do,” Qi Qingqi says. “I’m going to slap him.”
Liu Qingge is glad they’re on the same page, and stalks off wordlessly, stewing. He would strangle Shen-shixiong with all of his strength, if he thought it wouldn’t kill him.
The sun rises over the mountains. Liu Qingge finds five more bodies, none of them Cang Qiong disciples. Huan Hua should really train their disciples better, if so many of them could be slaughtered like this. At least Bai Zhan disciples can defend themselves, they know that even on their own peak, an attack could come at any moment. Still, Liu Qingge begrudgingly does them the courtesy of sending up flares so that their own sect can come find them. The last thing they need is an army of teenage resentful ghosts.
Morning is well underway by the time Liu Qingge reaches the new edge of the arena. Though the Abyss no longer lies at the bottom, the canyon remains, easily a li deep, bracketed by sheer cliffs. Liu Qingge kicks a rock over the edge and listens as it bounces to the bottom. It takes a long time.
He’s about to turn back into the forest when something catches his eye. Only a few feet from the edge, there is something green. Slowly, Liu Qingge turns his head.
The fan lying in the dirt would mean nothing at all to him if he hadn’t returned this particular one to his shixiong twice already this year. Liu Qingge can hear nothing but the rushing in his ears as he goes down to one knee to examine it. The fan is strung on a snapped string, a few beads scattered around the gravel next to it, as if the owner had been standing right here before it was lost.
Liu Qingge is kneeling only three feet from the cliff. His chest feels tight. He picks the fan up, and it splays limply from his hand to reveal that familiar painting of bamboo on light green paper. This is one of his shixiong’s favorites.
Gravel crunches behind him. “Liu-shidi,” says Yue Qingyuan’s familiar voice. “You’ve been searching all night, you should rest.”
Liu Qingge doesn’t say anything. He isn’t sure what to say. He is not the kind of person who can lie to make someone feel better. If he were, he could say that Shen Qingqiu was very forgetful for someone who cared about his fans so much, always leaving them around. But Yue Qingyuan knows as well as he does that Shen Qingqiu leaves his fan on desks and in carriages, not lying abandoned on the ground beside a rift to the Endless Abyss.
Instead, he just turns to Yue Qingyuan to let him see what he’s holding. Liu Qingge is not very good with faces, but even he can’t miss the way Yue Qingyuan’s tired gaze shifts down and his expression changes. His lips part, his eyebrows draw together, and his shoulders do something too, pulling in as if to ready himself for a physical threat.
“You…” he says, and his deep, usually calm voice wavers. “Where did you find that?”
“Here,” Liu Qingge says heavily. A deep, yawning grief is pulling open in his chest. He doesn’t need to say anything more.