Chapter Text
Shen Jiu surveyed the gathered prospective disciples dispassionately, hiding a reflexive sneer behind his fan. He needed one this year because, well, Shen-shifu liked children, as much as he would never admit it, and he always visited the mountain more and stayed longer when Shen Jiu had a few young ones running around underfoot. Liu Qingge glared at him suspiciously, and he nodded serenely in return.
Ah, Liu-shidi. His oldest and most reliable ally. Shen Jiu had long since given up on his goal of getting himself kicked out of the sect, but Liu Qingge had never stopped trying, and he had to appreciate dependability if nothing else.
The crop this year was disappointing, to say the least. A bunch of dirty, sweaty little gremlins, some of them dealing poorly with manual labor in the face of their entitlement and preconceptions about what joining a prestigious sect meant, some of them dealing poorly with misplaced enthusiasm that led them to expend all their energy early and it really just sinking in now that they would be digging a hole for hours in the sun, all of them undisciplined and messy complications that he wanted nowhere near his carefully curated peak.
Except. Well. That was interesting.
That was a full-on Savage attached to the scrappiest, dirtiest, smallest one of them all, who was nonetheless concentrating on his hole with steadfast determination bordering on pathetic. Now that would be a worthy addition to his peak.
He pursed his lips and then whistled, a brief Inquiry. Her eyes shot up and met his, and her mouth tried to form words to reply, first seemingly incredulous then more and more desperate, but death stole the voice from her throat and returned it as notes on the wind.
Still, he could get the gist, first a you can see me?, then a take my son and protect him and I will, then, as his face remained impassive, a if you— if you betray us and hurt him—
He raised an eyebrow at her, and she shut up. Then in long, practiced strides, that made it seem as if he was gliding more than walking, he moved towards the boy. A human, he would have let stew in the uncertainty; as much as Shen-shifu had taught him kindness was a weapon to be wielded, Shen-shifu had also taught him not to change himself, and he was a petty vindictive bitch at heart. However, he was also not a fucking idiot at heart, certainly not enough to provoke a Savage and then drag it back up his peak.
Am helping, will protect, he whistled. We can talk more after disciple ceremony. If you do not trust me, trust that I walk the ghost path.
She seemed at the very least calmer when he stopped in front of the boy. The boy looked up at him, all big eyes and fluffy hair, and faltered for a moment as the most disgusting hope bloomed in his expression and then he looked back down and kept digging, now clearly carefully restraining himself to remain at the same pace.
Acceptable, he could work with that.
"Well?" he said. "Get up." He met eyes with the Savage again. "This master claims you for Qing Jing Peak."
⪻❆⪼
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【 Welcome to the System! This System operates in line with the design concept “YOU CAN YOU UP, NO CAN NO BB”; we hope to provide you with the best possible experience. It is our sincere wish that during your time, you can fulfill your desires and, in accordance with your wish, transform a stupid work into a magnificent, high-quality, first-rate classic. We hope you enjoy. 】
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A surge of energy rushed through him and everything hurt and then the glowing blue screen sparked out and annoying Google Translate voice cut off, leaving him in a body with a pounding headache and he rolled over dry heaved and then tried to push his glasses up his nose but he wasn't wearing any but he could still see and there was a curtain of hair over his shoulder that he had to shove back because there were unidentified liquids all over the ground mixing with his bile and another wave of nausea rolled over him.
Not his body. He remembered dying. An undeniable System, before it had bugged out.
Okay. Okay, he could handle this. Transmigration. Demonic cultivator. Named…
Fuck, he hadn't actually caught what he was supposed to be named.
That was fine! Totally fine! If he was a demonic cultivator he probably shouldn't be going by his actual name, well, his actual, like, character name, he could probably just be 'Shen Yuan' here and it would be totally fine and—
And then his brain caught up with him. Demonic Cultivator. There was only one piece of media he was familiar with that was about demonic cultivators— well, one particular demonic cultivator, the xianxia drama that his little sister had dragged him into watching that he'd ignored to read Proud Immortal Demon Way on his phone until she'd caught him and he'd had to grovel for mercy for months and she only forgave him after he learned to play the whole soundtrack for her on the guqin and the dizi (thanking his parents for forcing him to take lessons in traditional instruments as a child because who knows what his penance would have been otherwise), and then when she wasn't satisfied with that, helping her make talismans and spirit flags for cosplays she and her friends were doing and…
He pushed himself onto shaky hands and knees and looked around to notice that he was in a giant demonic array of blood. Quite possible his— or the original goods'— own blood, given how weak he felt and that there was no one else alive or dead in his vicinity.
Wasn't… wasn't that the opening of the show?
He had to get the hell out of here.
He scrambled to his feet, and with only the clothes on his back, he ran.
⪻❆⪼
After about three days of mad running and hiding in the wilderness (getting so lost that it would, in fact, take him three weeks to manage to find any sort of signs of civilization again), he stumbled across a still enough pool to look at himself and... he looked like himself, except the sort of 'unreasonably more pretty' that one got when they had a xianxia filter on. No glasses— probably he had no need of them anymore— and long, beautiful hair that went below his waist. He also hadn't failed to notice that it had been three days and he hadn't gotten truly hungry yet, only irritable.
And he looked like himself.
If he remembered his sister's rants correctly, that meant he was in the show canon, not the novels? If he even was in The Untamed, or any story that he might personally recognize. Although banking on transmigration genre tropes, he could expect to recognize it.
System? he tried.
No answer.
Okay, okay, he could do this. He'd read enough shitty transmigration stories, he'd promised himself he wouldn't be an idiot. There was an easy test for whether or not he was in The Untamed.
He whistled Inquiry, or a bastardized version of it at least.
For a long long minute, nothing happened, and he was almost convinced he was mistaken, and then—
Notes whistled on the wind back.
⪻❆⪼
Six months later, he was in fact sure that he had transmigrated into The Untamed. It had taken him all of said six months, but he'd managed to get Lan musical cultivation and ghost cultivation working. Which meant he had a choice to make.
He had been quite lucky. Most transmigration stories, he well knew, the transmigrator was stuck with an uncompromising System and/or in the role of the villain. Whatever demonic ritual the previous original goods had been attempting must have shorted out his System, leaving him free to make his own choices. If he had been summoned in the place of the protagonist— well, that basically made him the protagonist, didn't it?
From what he remembered of The Untamed, this was a mixed blessing. As the protagonist, he would be extremely powerful, and he was guaranteed a happy ending. On the other hand, he was in for, as his sister would put it, quite a lot of 'whump' before he got there, he was almost certain he had made it far enough into the storyline that the entire cultivation world would try to kill him on sight, or even on suspicion of sight, and his happy ending was with a male love interest.
He had quite a lot of time to consider the last one, given that he had run off quickly enough to avoid whatever plot hook he'd been supposed to fall into, and he felt it was fairly safe to say he'd avoided getting drawn into the main storyline for the time being. The concept of being destined to be some man's husband made him extremely uncomfortable. At first, he thought it was because he was straight, but as he considered it more deeply, he realized the it wasn't that he was straight, (which he definitely was), it was just that it was too sad. Lan Whoever-He-Was had mourned his soulmate's death for years. It seemed so cruel to give him false hope that the love of his life might be back, and then just… not actually be the love of his life. He didn't even remember the guy's name! He couldn't even remember what his own name was supposed to be! But the fact that he could do demonic cultivation and remembered all the songs and talismans some of which the protagonist had definitely invented would immediately mark him as the protagonist, whether or not he was irrevocably different as a person. Which meant he only had to avoid all of the major towns and cities and well-known territory of the major sects on a map that he wasn't familiar with while also avoiding making too much of a name for himself as a rogue cultivator and also plot hooks that he wouldn't recognize with characters that he wouldn't recognize all who might immediately recognize him—
Uuurgh. He wished that he'd transmigrated into Proud Immortal Demon Way. Why couldn't he have transmigrated into Proud Immortal Demon Way?!??? He would have known the characters! Every single point in the timeline and exact location that every single major event took place at and where he could watch it from! The flora and fauna! The artifacts and miracle cures and local legends and weird panaceas and everything that he'd need to build himself a nice fun life while appreciating the best protagonist ever safely from afar and instead—
But that was always the point with transmigration stories, wasn't it? You didn't get put in the easy role. You got put in some sort of fitting roll, and he'd been a total ass to his little sister about her most important interest when she'd tried to share it with him, it was totally within genre conventions that he would end up in her favorite story instead of his.
At least he already had the whole demonic and musical cultivation thing down. He definitely wouldn't be caught off guard by anything, and as long as he avoided big population centers, he could probably avoid the plot at least for a while. And he could figure the rest out from there!
⪻❆⪼
Two years passed.
Everything had been going perfectly fine, all according to plan, all better than he could have planned for, except, well… it was getting boring, it was all going so perfectly according to plan.
He lived either in the woods, or traveling from small town to small town. He took night hunts when he stumbled across them, but oftentimes spent months in the wilderness, wandering wherever his whims brought him, cataloguing the flora and fauna. They were… depressingly identical to Proud Immortal Demon Way. The first time, he was willing to write it off as a coincidence; by the fifth, he'd had to admit that he'd done his little sister so dirty, ignoring The Untamed and waving his hand about liking Proud Immortal Demon Way for the monsters and worldbuilding when the Great Master Airplane had apparently ripped that off entirely from what Shen Yuan was quickly coming to understand had been a superior work!
He'd always still think fondly of Binghe, but it was time, perhaps, to let PIDW go and immerse himself in the world he had actually found himself in; and so he did.
The most fun aspect was certainly developing his cultivation. The demonic side of things was easy after he'd gotten over the initial hurtle. This meant that ironically enough, it was actual proper cultivation that he had to all but invent from scratch, given that he had inherited a golden core from the original goods and he wanted to use it! He'd read enough crappy webnovels that he figured that he could keep trying things and eventually something would be right, and, well, it was. In a further great twist of irony, cultivation came most naturally when he treated it like demonic cultivation: rather than forcing anything anywhere it didn't want to go, to find the natural paths of energy and follow them, untangle what was tangled, nudge things in the right direction, but mostly let the qi itself do the cultivating. His golden core went from a weak, pathetic thing ready to sputter out and die to something that actually sustained itself, small and steady and glowing, in his chest and lower dantian. As he slowly unknotted resentful energy from his spirit veins and let the qi flow as it willed naturally, they too grew from the tangled shriveled things that they were when he got them to a proper robust network.
He kept managing to avoid the plot, and settled into his surprisingly peaceful life as a rogue cultivator. He kept the company of ghosts more than humans, leaned in to his knowledge of Proud Immortal Demon Way to start mapping some of the more interesting biomes, and wandered back to civilization whenever he was bored or needed to buy something like new robes that he couldn't make for himself. He managed to collect quite a nice little nest egg, both from payments that villagers had pressed into his hands after night hunts that he hadn't really had anything to spend on, and one particular cave that he'd stumbled across whose entrance had an exact puzzle that he'd recognized from Proud Immortal Demon Way and he'd been curious too see how far the plagiarism stretched and before he knew it he'd disarmed a hallway of traps, successfully navigated a false maze, avoided a nest of vampiric bat-monkeys, and found himself in front of more gold than he could shove into his qiankun pouch and priceless artifacts to boot.
He'd splurged on a beautifully carved black dizi, a plain but functional guqin with strings that could be spiritually charged, and a larger nicer qiankun pouch, in case he ever decided to go back to the cave and grab the rest of the gold. He was starting to think that might be never; he had yet to get through enough of his surprise wealth to be able to shove anything back into his first pouch, even spare change, which meant that it wasn't worth the effort backtracking when he had new places to explore!
He did sometimes miss the amenities of bigger cities— quality street food being sold in enough quantity that the whole street would smell like oil and spices, and the chance to take a bath, as luxuriating in hot water would never replace the quite efficient setup he'd rigged of talismans to keep himself and his robes clean in the wilderness, or even just standing in a crowded market street, enjoying the hustle and bustle of so many people, reminding himself that living humans existed too.
It was on one such day that he was enjoying the hustle and bustle too much, as he'd accidentally hustled in front of someone who was bustling while trying to dodge a very rude some-or-other young master riding a horse down what was clearly a pedestrian street, and being both physically larger than that someone and a cultivator, he merely swayed in place while the someone went sprawling on the ground.
He turned to try to help them up, only to realize that said someone was small enough for him to bowl over because they were still a child! Now he actually felt bad! They were sprawled extremely artfully, long dark hair falling over their shoulder and veiling their face, exactly the sort of pose suited for the opening shot of a big scene, which was cold water straight down Shen Yuan's spine. But he wasn't about to run away from a child he'd just knocked down without making sure they were alright!
The child pushed himself up while Shen Yuan was having his small blip of an existential crisis crossed with a moral dilemma. "Watch where you're—" he spat, and then he took a closer look at Shen Yuan, and did a double take. Shen Yuan also did a double take, albeit a lot more subtly. "What the hell? Who are you?"
The unspoken 'are we related' was heard just as clearly.
There had… there had been all sorts of people secretly related to each other, hadn't there been? That one character that his sister hated a bunch had bastard children right and left that kept popping up that someone else was secretly a half-sibling at the most dramatic moments, which meant statistically… probably?
And he'd been doing so well at avoiding the plot! Ah, well, at least things might get more interesting. "This rogue cultivator is called Shen Yuan," he said, because his name had worked perfectly well for him as a fake name so far, and he didn't need to be immediately revealed before he decided what he wanted to do about it.
Not anymore. The child paled. "This one is Shen Jiu." He peered closer at him. "We are related."
"That would be quite the coincidence! Well, regardless, you and I are not related," Shen Yuan said. "You might be related to this body? I'm not sure what it was called before I got here. I've only been here a few seasons, and I didn't have any blood relatives left in this world before."
"What does that mean?" Shen Jiu demanded. "Stop speaking nonsense and take responsibility!"
"I, Shen Yuan, died, and this isn't my body!" Shen Yuan said. "The 'original goods', who was a demonic cultivator, sacrificed his own body and soul to summon my spirit into it in order to… force me to… honestly, I'm not sure. He messed up the ritual, leaving me with a body without the standard associated curse? And he didn't even think to leave me any sort of list with his requests! I'd assume murder, given my reputation, but I never even learned his name, so it's a bit hard to follow up on that. I've been wandering around as a rogue cultivator ever since! It is certainly possible you are related to this body, I'd just have no way of knowing. I don't think it's old enough to be a father? But I wouldn't be surprised if it had siblings."
"That's the worst excuse this one has ever heard, Yuan-gege," Shen Jiu said, and then kind of shuddered.
Shen Yuan was going to cut that line of thinking off right there. "Ah, probably not Yuan-gege. This one did not make a very good big brother, not in the end." If he had, he'd be able to answer the question of whether or not they were related, for one.
And then it struck him: there had definitely been a bunch of adorable kids running around for, like, half the show. Who all totally loved the protagonist by the end if the way his sister squealed about found family was anything to go off of. He'd always thought children were adorable, when he'd had enough energy to handle them; he remembered back when his sister and her friends had been small enough that they'd followed him around like a bunch of ducklings, listening to him ramble about whatever he thought was interesting and looking at him like he hung the moon.
He could have an adorable kid, right here and now, to ramble to about cultivation stuff and tutor or whatever, and all he had to do was take responsibility.
"This one could be Shen-shifu, though, if you have any interest in learning cultivation."
Shen Jiu's eyes snapped back up to his. "Are you serious?"
"Yes."
They narrowed. "What's the catch?"
Openness and honesty was extremely important with someone that he might be living with for the foreseeable future.
"Uh… I tend to stick to smaller towns, and spend lots of time in the wilderness?" Shen Yuan said. "This one is a demonic cultivator, and cannot have any of the larger sects catching wind of him."
"I thought you said the 'original goods' was a demonic cultivator," Shen Jiu said.
Shen Yuan beamed at him. What a smart child! Demonstrating very good listening skills already! "No, the original goods was a bad demonic cultivator," Shen Yuan said. "I should know, I invented it! And apparently no one's had an original thought in the field since! Anyways, it'll make my life a lot more complicated, and yours, too, if you decide to come along, and if any of the major sects catch wind that I'm around. So if you come with me I'd ask that you keep the whole 'this rogue cultivator is secretly a demonic cultivator' thing under wraps, and if you ever need to go to a bigger city or interact with sect cultivators you'd have to do it on your own."
"And in return Shen-shifu will teach me demonic cultivation?"
"Well, I'll start you out on normal cultivation?" Shen Yuan said. "You don't have to do demonic cultivation just because I do demonic cultivation, I am perfectly capable of teaching you spiritual cultivation too! I don't really know any sword forms or have a sword, but I dare say I can teach you Lan musical cultivation better than most Lans could. And talisman theory! I'm very good at talismans. You'd probably be better off stabilizing your spiritual foundations before you tried anything serious with resentful energy."
Shen Jiu looked a bit confused; Shen Yuan supposed this was a bit of a strange haggling session. Time to cut it off.
"Do you have anything you need to fetch? Or guardians or relatives that you need to tell? Or are we just.... leaving now?" Shen Yuan said. "I didn't plan to be in a town this big very long, and would prefer to be long gone before nightfall."
"You're a criminal? On the run already?" Shen Jiu said.
"It's complicated," Shen Yuan said. "Again, I'm only guessing, but I think this body isn't on the run, and it would probably be better to keep it that way. I'm fairly recognizable."
The kid glared at him, and then looked off, to the side and down, clenching his hands into fists and then releasing them several times over, as he very clearly considered Shen Yuan's offer. On someone all but a baby— there was no way the kid was older than fourteen or fifteen, and if so he was unconscionably small for his age— it was almost unbearably cute. The kid was absolutely agonizing over it, but Shen Yuan wasn't particularly worried; he had the Plot going for him for once.
"You promise you won't go back on your words? You're taking me, no matter what?" Shen Jiu pushed.
"I've said what I've said," Shen Yuan said. "Shen Jiu is my disciple for as long as he wishes."
"Even if I'm a slave?" Shen Jiu said.
Shen Yuan went very, very still. "There's still slavery here?"
"What do you mean, 'there's still slavery here'?" Shen Jiu said. "There's always been slavery here."
There's always been slavery here.
Shen Yuan was sure that there had been a plot point where the protagonist had gotten in a lot of trouble because he had busted out a bunch of innocent people from some sort of slave labor camp sort of thing. He'd thought it had already happened, but it wasn't like he'd remembered the plot well enough to know that!
Had he inadvertently condemned a bunch of innocent people to years of slavery because in avoiding the plot so well, he'd avoided the plot point where he'd been supposed to save them?
Okay. Okay. Dangerous train of thought to go down, he couldn't change the past, but he was here now. There was an adorable child that was definitely meant to be his, and all he had to do was carefully and without revealing himself get the adorable child out of the whole slavery situation and then they'd be right back on track without getting stuck in the plot. He had plenty of money, no one ever said he had to reveal himself, he could just throw money at this problem and then he and the kid would walk away scot-free. He'd been a second generation rich kid his entire last life, he knew how to throw money at a problem and make it go away.
"Well, not anymore," he said airily, refusing to let any of his feelings about any of this show on his face. "Let's take care of that, hm? Then we can be on our way!"
⪻❆⪼
They— well, Shen Yuan— took care of it. Although he may have gone a bit overboard.
It wasn't his fault! He was still reeling about the whole slavery thing, and then Shen Jiu's master was horrible and slimy and condescending and wouldn't listen to any sort of reason, so Shen Yuan had done it, he'd pulled out the big guns: he'd finally delivered a line, that, mind you, he was very proud of for thinking up on the spot! "You're bargaining with the Yiling Patriarch right now, you are lucky you are not bargaining for your own life."
It was really hard, trying to play a character he had no idea how to characterize, and be a badass at the same time! But it had sounded very cool! Almost as cool as it had sounded in his head!
And Qiu Jianluo had just looked at him blankly! And had gone, "Am I supposed to care?" After such a big and dramatic character reveal, that Shen Yuan had been sitting on for years!
So he summoned a bunch of zombies and ghosts who burned the manor down and brutally murdered Qiu Jianluo (and possibly some other people, but given how Shen Jiu had been eyeing them on the way in he couldn't bring himself to feel that guilty— he'd really have to remember to regulate his emotions when practicing demonic cultivation, he hadn't quite realized that the undead he was working with could get so vicious), and then run off into the night with his brand new stolen child that may or may not be related to his stolen body before Lan— Lan— before the cultivation world could notice the extremely obvious signs of his specific brand of demonic cultivation and track him down and try to either murder him or, worse, marry him.
But it was fine! For his opening reveal and first time acting as the protagonist, it hadn't been that bad at all!
⪻❆⪼
The first weeks that he stayed with the Yiling Patriarch, Shen Jiu was convinced he was going to die.
The idea of walking up to the— to this grandmaster of demonic cultivation and demanding that he take responsibility for anything was— was laughable.
The Yiling Patriarch clearly didn't want or need a slave. He didn't tell Shen Jiu to carry any of his things, to arrange for any of their housing, the few days they braved towns, to fetch their meals or clean their rooms or set up or take down their campsites. He had a talisman set to go off to remind him to feed Shen Jiu— he didn't need to eat, himself, and half the time either chose to skip it or forgot.
He didn't look at Shen Jiu with any sort of covetous gaze either. He'd made no move to touch Shen Jiu besides one time that he'd been particularly delighted by some spices Shen Jiu had managed to find and proceeded to add to the otherwise tasteless watery congee they'd both been suffering through that morning, and only then had he patted Shen Jiu's head with such gentleness that Shen Jiu hadn't even had time to flinch away, and then had to sit with the strange warm feeling that it'd brought him all night.
(He wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed that so far, it seemed to have been a one-time incident.)
He was perfectly pleasant to live with. He chatted during their meals and while they were walking, seemingly completely unbothered by the fact that it was a bit one-sided. He stared at hand-drawn chicken-scratch notes before deciding the direction that they'd go each morning with a very smug sort of finality, and always managed to lead them exactly where he'd intended by the evening.
("I have a terrible sense of direction," he confided with Shen Jiu one morning, "but it doesn't matter because I know the ghosts here, they're always so nice when I get turned around."
As if that was to be a comfort.)
Shen Jiu's best guess was either the Yiling Patriarch was saving him or even training him to be some sort of human sacrifice— maybe there was a demonic ritual that needed a cultivator?— because otherwise, he had been legitimately accepted as disciple of so far as he could tell the inventor of a lost branch of demonic ghost cultivation on a whim, because he hadn't been watching where he was going when he was late running an errand.
The whole time, Shen Jiu was aware of just how helpless he was. The kind of cultivation that the Yiling Patriarch did: talismans that the man worked on every night, frowning, sometimes casting— Shen Jiu's best guess was that they were meant to obscure their tracks, make sure they weren't being followed, but it was impossible to tell given that the man seemed to invent new talismans for fun; the little papermen that he sent out constantly to scout; the ghosts he casually whistled up all the time to chat with them and the one time that there were signs of a granite roc-bear in the area and he politely asked two of them to take care of it while continuing his conversation with the third and while behind them they ripped the beast apart with no effort— there would be no escaping from the Yiling Patriarch, not if the Yiling Patriarch didn't want him to escape.
It did not need to be said that there would also be no fighting back against the Yiling Patriarch, not given what had been done to Qiu Manor with no preparation, no particular effort, as simply a secondary solution that the Yiling Patriarch had shrugged and moved on to when buying Shen Jiu outright hadn't worked. Shen Jiu was convinced that if the entire cultivation world banded together to attempt to take the Yiling Patriarch down, they may not even succeed, that thousands would die in a nightmare that would be whispered about for generations.
So Shen Jiu kept his pride, and held his tongue, and watched.
The single moment that his real feelings seemed to come through occurred two weeks in, when the Yiling Patriarch was sure enough of their escape (or perhaps tired enough of camping) that he steered them to a small town, and then with a wink at Shen Jiu, checked the into a brothel. "It's easier to hide from righteous cultivators in a brothel," he whispered.
It put him on guard, even though he knew that a far better place to do a demonic ritual would have been in the middle of nowhere, where there was no one around to hear him scream. Not that he doubted the Yiling Patriarch would have unimpeachable silencing talismans, if it came to that.
"Why don't we start with what you know?" the Yiling Patriarch said. "If you want to meditate, this teacher can observe the flow of your qi, and see what stage your spiritual development is in! After all, that's the first thing to do when teaching, right? Get a sense for where your student is! If you just give me your wrist—" and he reached for Shen Jiu's wrist, and Shen Jiu, stupidly, stupidly flinched.
"Ah," the Yiling Patriarch said, "I'll be— um—" and then left the room.
Ah, Shen Jiu thought, and tried to prepare himself for whatever horror awaited the mask of it all being ripped off. At least at Qiu manor, horrifying as it was, most of them died quickly. (Although he hadn't quite taken into consideration what it might mean to be killed by a necromancer, the possibility that death might not be an escape—)
And then the Yiling Patriarch rushed back into the room, whipped two guqins out of his sleeve, and set them up. "That's the other nice thing about being in a brothel! They have instruments we can borrow! Lan musical cultivation is a good place to start, because there are concrete skills you can concentrate on in addition to the mental and spiritual ones, so it's easier to make progress, even if you're stuck in one area. Do you have any experience playing at all, or—"
The evening devolved into a music lesson, instead of being brutally murdered.
Shen Jiu was convinced that he was going to die, but he hadn't died yet, and being here waiting to die at the hands of an ancient ghost with unknown intentions possessing a body that may or may not be related to him was at least a lot more pleasant than waiting at Qiu Manor to fall off that knife's edge and break for good.
"I know a bit," Shen Jiu volunteered. "I'm not useless. I know my sums, and most common characters. And I can circulate qi, I think. So you don't have to teach me the basics, show me musical cultivation, not just how to pluck strings."
After all, just because he was going to die, didn't mean he couldn't learn.
⪻❆⪼
So Shen Yuan had had a kid for like, two weeks, and he was already ready to kill everyone in this story and then himself if anything happened to him. Also, he was pretty sure he was going to get a good grade in Stealing A Child (both from slavery and if he had anything to say about it, The Plot), something that was both reasonable to want and possible to achieve!
Some credit should probably go to said kid, who had seemed to be quite the spitfire when he'd accosted him in the street! Just the right amount of backbone to drag along on who-knows-what kind of adventures! The kid had then spent the whole first week being surprisingly well behaved, which honestly Shen Yuan wasn't really paying attention because the whole "summon a zombie ghost army to burn an estate to the ground and murder half the residents"… had maybe been a plot point? He was pretty sure that happened at the beginning of the show. It might have involved acquiring a child? Or children? It definitely involved either getting caught or nearly getting caught and then Plot Happening, so Shen Yuan really wasn't focusing on his brand new kid as he got the both of them as far away from any possible plot that might possibly try to happen.
After he succeeded in doing that, he paid a bit more attention to his Brand New Shiny Kid, mostly, he'd promised to teach the kid cultivation!
His first attempt nearly went very wrong; he'd started thinking of the kid as maybe-probably-his-half-brother and had forgotten that possibly between being a stranger and also his dramatic opening act as the protagonist, the kid might be more 'a bit scared of him' than 'naturally well-behaved'. Luckily he pivoted very smoothly to Lan musical cultivation, and it turned out the kid was a natural at both music and cultivation!
It was really interesting to try to teach cultivation to someone else! So many things that he'd just kind of shrugged and gone 'whatever works' and then moved on, when actually being asked why something was done one way or what would happen if it was done a different way, forced him to totally re-evaluate. Demonic cultivation, Lan musical cultivation, or talisman theory he usually had the answer to on-hand, but plain old spiritual cultivation that everyone else in the world could do? Sorry, Shen Jiu, this teacher of yours didn't develop a comprehensive theory of spiritual qi and golden core formation! Luckily, his brand new shiny kid did not seem to realize that "let's try it and find out" was him dodging questions left and right and not an extremely advanced teaching technique.
(Although, Shen Yuan was pretty sure his brand new shiny kid actually preferred getting told to try and find out, once he'd figured out after the first few times that Shen Yuan wasn't punishing him or making fun of him. As much as Shen Yuan could be oblivious, he was aware that his brand new shiny kid probably had a deeply traumatic backstory. Both because everyone in The Untamed had deeply traumatic backstories, but also, he did rescue the kid from slavery. There was a degree to which grasping and clawing knowledge from nothing all by yourself made it yours. The kid deserved something that was his, that no one could take away from him.)
On the topic of demonic cultivation, they quickly incorporated it into their studies, once it became evident that Shen Jiu had most of the foundations of spiritual cultivation, and that control of resentful energy would probably help him quite a lot. His spirit veins in some places were tangled or withered, and the foundations of his core— which were quite promising!— were also unstable. Luckily, Shen Yuan had been dumped in a body where poorly done demonic cultivation had withered his spirit veins and weakened his foundations, so it wasn't like he was making it all up from scratch helping Shen Jiu get a handle on what in the kid's case was almost certainly aftereffects of The Traumatic Backstory. After a month and a half, Shen Jiu finally got frustrated enough with trying to even out a tangle with some carefully applied resentful energy that he let Shen Yuan feel his spirit veins, help him circulate his spiritual energy.
Shen Yuan liked to think that was the turning point. Shen Jiu let him coach him through actual cultivation after that, meditation and golden core formation and all that. They worked together on it hand-in-hand with demonic cultivation, Shen Jiu slowly using his growing mastery over resentful energy to lay his own proper spiritual foundation. He also didn't appear to mind when Shen Yuan gave in to the overwhelming urge to pat him on the head.
Taking responsibility for a brand new shiny kid had been the best idea of Shen Yuan's life.
⪻❆⪼
Two months in to his travels with the Yiling Patriarch, and Shen Jiu was no longer totally convinced that he was going to die.
It was still the most likely possibility, but the thing was, Shen Jiu was still just as helpless against it as he had been the moment that he'd caught the Yiling Patriarch's interest, and it wasn't like that was going to change, so it seemed useless to waste energy caring about it.
Helplessness that all-encompassing was honestly a bit of a relief. Oh, Shen Jiu would fight to the bitter end, if it so came to it, rather than surrender his dignity. But the knowledge that there was no escape of such a great and nearly incomprehensible power— it meant that none of it was Shen Jiu's fault, not the way that it had been his fault when he'd not made enough money on the streets, or killed Qiu Juanluo's horse, or failed to escape with Qi-ge.
In the meanwhile… he was better fed than he'd ever been in his life. He was better clothed than he'd ever been in his life. He slept either with a roof over his head, or a series of talismans ensuring that he wasn't exposed to the elements. The Yiling Patriarch's spiritual lessons were actually good. Once he figured out there was no malice when the Yiling Patriarch went, "hm, why don't we try and find out?", he actually started looking forward to it. As a child, being forced to learn by trying and finding out had resulted in him hurting himself more often than not, but had also resulted in enough of a spiritual foundation that he could survive those starving winters, and all those beatings. Here, now, under the Yiling Patriarch— not a single 'let's try and find out!' ever hurt him. The Yiling Patriarch's total mastery of spiritual and resentful energy and careful supervision meant that experimentation was actually safe.
He tried asking more and more ridiculous questions, to see how far he could push it.
The Yiling Patriarch, if anything, seemed delighted.
After a month and a half he gave in, and let the Yiling Patriarch examine his spirit veins. It went… perfectly well. The Yiling Patriarch's qi was cool and refreshing, and he pointed out the snag and slowly talked Shen Jiu through untangling it, helping Shen Jiu when he couldn't quite manage a tricky step himself.
Shen Jiu was left to confront the fact that whether or not he was being prepared for slaughter, he was being taught. Really, truly taught. And not just spiritual cultivation— the moment that it became obvious that demonic cultivation was going to help him, the Yiling Patriarch also began teaching him demonic cultivation. He would teach Shen Jiu anything that Shen Jiu was interested in, really: the flora and fauna, talismans, musical cultivation, anything.
He was being forced to confront the fact that he might actually just be… the Yiling Patriarch's disciple.
(Or, at the very least, considering that he apparently qualified for head pats again, the Yiling Patriarch's pet.)
⪻❆⪼
The thing with being the Yiling Patriarch's personal disciple was, well.
The vast majority of the time, the Yiling Patriarch was kind, and infinitely patient: when teaching Shen Jiu cultivation; when interacting with villagers who were telling them about local hauntings and monsters; when he was thanking an innkeeper or madame for their rooms and food no matter how bad the food was; to the beggars and street rats be it listening to their stories and helping them because he cared when the monsters targeted them or even just giving them a coin and a kind smile; when he was speaking to ghosts, especially new and scared ones. He refused payment for most of the night hunts they took, and if he accepted it, it was never in coin, just in a warm meal or roof for the night. Oh, he could be acerbic to merchants who tried to swindle them (but only if the merchants were clearly well-off; four separate times Shen Jiu had seen him be ungrudgingly swindled by someone poor and desperate), or to guards or magistrates who weren't performing their duties. It wasn't just a rich-or-poor thing, though: Shen Jiu came to realize that anyone that the Yiling Patriarch saw as incompetent, as someone who ought to be held to standards, those were the people who faced his ire.
And quite a mild ire it was: a scolding that inevitably caused them to hang their heads in shame, but never physical harm. Never what the Yiling Patriarch was fully capable of. Shen Jiu never forgot what he had done at Qiu manor.
(He tried not to read into the fact that the Yiling Patriarch had never been cruel to him. After all, the Yiling Patriarch was never cruel to children, and if that was what it took to keep that man's protection and good graces, Shen Jiu would embrace his status as a child for as many years as he could.)
It occurred to Shen Jiu sometimes, that when he was younger, trying to claw his way off the streets, out of slavery, that he thought he'd known what freedom meant: clawing his way not just out of the mud but all the way to the top, becoming so rich and powerful and strong that no one could ever hurt him or drag him back down again or that he would ever want for anything. Having the nicest robes and most beautiful belongings and the best food and a beautiful estate that was also a fortress that no one could touch him in. Being a cultivator with a golden core and having a sect that he could at control to shield himself with. Being the sort of lord that no one could ever reach and then— maybe then— he would feel safe.
The Yiling Patriarch was comfortable in nice— but primarily sturdy and functional— travel clothes. The Yiling Patriarch most often camped outside, but would stay at smaller inns or brothels rather than the fanciest place in town despite definitely being able to afford it and as far as Shen Jiu could tell in all their time together didn't even have a home to return to. The Yiling Patriarch didn't have any fine jewels or silks or jade hairpins; he had nice brushes that he liked, and a supply of good ink and fine paper, and a very nice dizi, because he used them. The closest thing he had to 'servants' or 'underlings' under his command was Shen Jiu, whom he was infinitely indulgent to, and whatever ghosts happened to be tagging along with them, who tended to be more than happy to help. He didn't gather influence, he took night hunts that interested him, and otherwise wandered around letting the whims of fate dictate his day-to-day life.
He had a seemingly infinite supply of wealth in one of his qiankun pouches, but he didn't use any of it.
He had the power to tear towns, cities, maybe even the entire human realm apart, and he never demanded any form of respect more than the sort of respect that he expected others to have for their fellow human beings, or perhaps to a rogue cultivator who was offering to help.
In the face of that, the idea of being some untouchable lord seemed brittle and stupid. Power wasn't having power over people, it was the ability to do what you want. What the Yiling Patriarch wanted to do was wander around and investigate whatever caught his interest, and he was more powerful than any sect leader out there.
Still, it haunted him, until one day it burst out: "Why are you so nice to people?"
The Yiling Patriarch eyed him contemplatively. "Why do I get the sense that you're judging me?"
Possibly because Shen Jiu was judging him, for having just 'accidentally' overpaid for a couple of mantou for the two of them without bothering to haggle at all besides politely asking for directions that he didn't need, because they'd spoken that morning to the ghost of the woman's child who had died two winters ago about how worried she was this winter that her remaining living siblings wouldn't have enough food or coal to keep warm.
"They'll take advantage of you!"
"Me?" the Yiling Patriarch said. "The grandmother selling street food at a little market stall is going to take advantage of little old me in any sort of way that could possibly matter? Clearly I've been underestimating grandma!"
"You know what I mean!" Shen Jiu said. "Why do you put up with them? Why should a peasant with a sob story matter at all to 'little old you'?"
"Hmm." The Yiling Patriarch gazed off in the distance, like he'd never actually considered the question before. "I suppose it's because, all of those people, eventually, they're going to die."
Of all the possible answers he could have been given, that was the one Shen Jiu least expected, not from this mentor that he thought he'd come to know. "So it is pity?!?" he hissed.
"Oh, no, no, sorry, that's not what I meant," the Yiling Patriarch said. "It's just— the ghost path of cultivation, it relies on summoning and empowering spirits and fierce corpses to do what we want them to do. We can control the dead but at greater cost; we are at our most powerful when we are directing them to do something they actively want to do, but second to that, when they are willing or at least eager to help. Anyone we interact with is likely to one day be dead. If they resent us, that's just… a waste of a resource, you know? I suppose it doesn't really matter when you're as powerful as I am now, but it's a bad habit to set yourself up for a much harder challenge in the future just for some momentary satisfaction in the present. At this point it's become a habit. Be kind to the living, and it's easier to use them when they're dead."
Shen Jiu stared at him.
"Ah, um, I mean. I. Listen, it's just efficient!"
"Is that why you're nice to me?" Shen Jiu said.
"I'm nice to you because you're my kid!" the Yiling Patriarch said, and then flushed. "I took responsibility and everything! Also, I have to live with you! If I were mean to you, who would I have to talk to for all our long trips in the wilderness! And what if you decided to spit in my food or put bugs in my bedroll when I wasn't looking? There are all sorts of things that you can do to make someone's life miserable when you're living with them! Second lesson of the day: be kind or at least tolerable to the people that you're spending extended periods of time with, because you have to deal with them for extended periods of time!"
The fact that the Yiling Patriarch thought that he, Shen Jiu, had the power to make his life miserable—
(The fact that the Yiling Patriarch had just implied that he wouldn't kill Shen Jiu or even banish him if Shen Jiu decided to spit in his food or leave bugs in his bedroll—)
"Thanking shifu for the lesson," Shen Jiu said.
⪻❆⪼
The thing with being the Yiling Patriarch's personal disciple was, well.
It made Shen Jiu want to do anything, anything, not to disappoint him.
So here he was, grimacing, as he tried to avoid looking too derisively at the idiot fishermen that he was trying to get evidence of potential water ghouls from or figure out if there was an entirely different problem plaguing this town given that he and Shen-shifu had dealt with the water ghouls on the way in but some of the things that the merchants had said about the roads at night weren't totally adding up if the problem was only water ghouls, who only seemed interested in introducing their daughters to the handsome rich rogue cultivator instead.
"Ah, Shen Jiu!" Shen-shifu said, swooping in after a particularly frustrating re-direct from whether or not there were any abnormalities in the recent catches to how good their daughters were at preparing fish. "I've finished with the merchants, how are you doing here?"
Normally, this would be when Shen Jiu would tear these idiots apart for wasting their time. Instead, Shen Jiu forced himself to try to smile. "They've been very helpful," he grit out, and pointed out the few details he'd managed to get that he thought might be useful. Shen-shifu latched on to them, and steered the conversation, somehow immediately getting all of the elucidation that had escaped Shen Jiu.
It was only later on, when they were walking back to their room at the local inn, that Shen-shifu reached into his sleeve.
"You were trying to be nice to them, weren't you?" he said. "Your face looked like you were in genuine pain."
Shen Jiu determinedly looked at the ground; he knew Shen-shifu well enough to know that Shen-shifu didn't mean to be cruel, but he also wasn't particularly in the mood for his failure to become a teaching moment.
"Here, I have something for you," Shen-shifu said, and Shen Jiu looked up.
Shen-shifu was holding a fan. Shen-shifu handed him the fan.
"For hiding your face, if you ever want to sneer at them," Shen-shifu said.
"Are you giving up on me?" Shen Jiu asked, before he could stop himself.
Shen-shifu snatched the fan back, and whacked him over the head with it. "Of course this master isn't giving up on you! Lesson three: it doesn't matter if you are nice! I wouldn't ask my favorite apprentice in the world to change! Stay mean! This teacher likes you just the way you are! Work with what you have to figure out what's most useful for you! The next time we're in a town that has a brothel, we'll go and ask the jiejies to teach you how to do makeup. You can look mysterious and aloof, while really sneering at everyone from behind a fan!"
The fan was the best this town had to offer, which was to say: cheaply made, painted with care.
"We'll get you a nicer one, the next time we're somewhere with a half-good market," Shen-shifu said. "Or better yet, I can get you some supplies, and teach you how to make them. The theory of painting fans shouldn't be that different from painting talismans? Besides, it's one of the Four Arts, I'd be remiss if I didn't teach you painting."
Shen Jiu knew, in that moment, that he would collect many fans in his life. He knew, in that moment, that no matter how fine the paper, how perfect the carving, how exquisite the painting, that none would ever be as precious to him as the one he held right now.
⪻❆⪼
The thing with being Shen-shifu's personal disciple was, well.
Shen-shifu was a mess, objectively. He had terrible money management skills. Now that Shen Jiu didn't need to eat, he almost never remembered to on his own, unless they were passing through a town and some street food smelled particularly good. He really did get lost constantly. His travel plans were nonexistent; or, at least, followed the principal of just following whatever caught Shen-shifu's interest until they inevitably ran into another interesting thing.
Oh, whenever it was important, Shen-shifu would come through. Not even just in an emergency situation, though the man handled those no matter how sticky or complicated they seemed to become with cheerful aplomb. It wasn't even that Shen-shifu couldn't handle more long-term or complicated projects; after all, taking on a child, and teaching that child four different types of cultivation was not the sort of project that would succeed if it was a mere whim; it required follow-through. Shen-shifu didn't lack that.
No, Shen-shifu was perfectly happy to wear comfortable, practical robes, even if he clearly preferred softer fabrics. He would gladly sleep on the ground, even though he clearly preferred sleeping on proper mattresses with soft pillows, enough so that Shen Jiu wasn't sure he'd ever caught Shen-shifu actually sleeping somewhere he'd deemed uncomfortable, only settling himself into a lotus position and meditating. Shen Jiu caught him looking at nice things, in the markets sometimes, or at books. "Why don't you buy them?" he'd asked, once. "We have the money!" and "But then we'd have to carry it, I don't have anywhere to put it, A'Jiu," was what he'd gotten in response.
Shen-shifu loved people: he when they were in towns, he loved going to markets to just take in the presence around them, he loved staying in brothels to spread around some of his extra coin, get some mediocre tea, and catch up on the gossip. He loved Shen Jiu, if only because Shen Jiu was one of the few things keeping him from being fundamentally alone, and he wouldn't acknowledge any of it. He'd claim he was perfectly happy with the way things were; that things were 'better off this way'.
Fuck that.
Shen Jiu would drag Shen-shifu to a happiness that Shen-shifu didn't even know he wanted. He was the Yiling Patriarch's personal disciple. One day he would have power, if not on the level of the Yiling Patriarch, then at least greater than any normal spiritual cultivator out there. More than that, he had his mind: he could scheme, infiltrate, do whatever it took to bring the cultivation world to its knees, manipulate them all so that he could have them right where he wanted them, under his heel, whether they knew it or not. So that Shen-shifu didn't feel forced to stay in this ridiculous, self-imposed exile anymore. So that Shen-shifu could go off on a night hunt and then get distracted and spend four months tracking the migration patterns of gold-bellied tree frogs and have a warm, soft bed, good food, and people who cared to listen about all the new things he'd learned about gold-bellied rock frogs but more than that cared that he was back: a home to return to, instead of a sub-par inn room and greasy street food and a bunch of strangers who didn't care about him beyond the coin they could take or the thankless tasks they could make him do, and then rinse and repeat, over and over and over.
After all, Shen-shifu had dragged him out of the dirt. It was only fair to return his kindness.
⪻❆⪼
It had been nearly two years that Shen Jiu had been with his shifu that he overheard some merchants talking about the upcoming Immortal Alliance Conference as he was running errands in one of the bigger towns that Shen-shifu avoided, and the thought stuck with him all day.
Shen-shifu did always say that it was necessary to be at peace with oneself if one wanted to call on the dead; that to channel the residual resentful energy and emotions of others and not have it stick, a demonic cultivator needed to know themselves, to never to lie to themselves.
Shen Jiu knew that a part of him would never be at peace until he knew what happened to Qi-ge. And it was a long shot, but, well— they'd both sworn to try to become cultivators. If there was anywhere to even begin to look for Qi-ge, or, more likely, Qi-ge's ghost, it would be at a gathering of cultivators like that. After all, Qi-ge was smart. If he'd managed to return to the manor, alive or dead, and had found it in the state Shen-shifu had left out in— well, he'd be in the exact same position as Shen Jiu: with nowhere to even start looking for his brother, except, perhaps, a gathering where all the current cultivation sect disciples and whatever rogue cultivators coughed up the entry fees would be showing up to.
"I want to go to the Immortal Alliance Conference," he announced that night at their campfire, not one to beat around the bush once he'd made up his mind. "It should be about a week of travel each way, if I leave from here and meet up with you again south, near the Heng river. I'll sneak in, so you don't have to worry about entrance fees."
Shen-shifu examined his face carefully, and then gave a nod. "Alright. It sounds like you've thought this through. Let me know if you need anything, but you are well far enough in your cultivation to be able to survive two weeks on your own, and you have my communication array key if you need me."
It was... that easy?
"Aren't you going to ask me why?" Shen Jiu demanded.
Shen-shifu wiped away pretend tears from each eye. "But my dearest little grasshopper is all grown up. Children must spread their wings and leave the nest to fly." Then, more seriously: "Do you want me to ask why?"
Shen Jiu hesitated, for long enough that Shen-shifu took it as an answer. "Why do you need to go to the Immortal Alliance Conference?"
"It's where I'm most likely to find my brother," Shen Jiu said. "Or more likely, my brother's ghost."
"Ah, brothers," Shen-shifu said. "I'm pretty sure my brother killed me," and then something that sounded like, "canonically."
Shen-shifu said strange things sometimes. Shen Jiu had long since learned to ignore him.
"You're scared of your brother?" he said.
"Oh, no, not at all," Shen Yuan said. "It was an...exceptional set of circumstances. It's my zhiji that I don't want to find out that I'm still alive."
"Is he also trying to kill you?"
"I thought so, for a while, but no, I think he just wants to take me back to his sect and... cleanse me of the influence of demonic cultivation? I'm not totally sure, things got a bit... fuzzy, towards the end. I know that he cared deeply about me, and that he mourned me for many years. It would just be too cruel, to let him know that I'm back when I'm not the same person he remembers. Besides, it's horribly inconvenient to have someone constantly hunting you down trying to drag you back to their sect to 'save' you! Take it from this master, Shen Jiu, you should avoid that situation at all costs!"
Shen Jiu clenched his hands into fists. "Don't you think it's not your right? To make that decision for him?"
He regretted it the moment that Shen-shifu's expression became impossibly distant, and he was ready to drop it, to make his excuses and turn and go, when Shen-shifu said, "Oh, A'Jiu, I don't even remember his name."
Shen Jiu fled quite quickly after that.
At least even if he'd lost everything— even if he and Qi-ge had never had anything to begin with— he still remembered Qi-ge's name.
⪻❆⪼
"Now that I know you're alive, I'll never stop searching for you! I'll never leave you behind! So come back with me to Cang Qiong Sect!", Qi-ge entreated with a passion that could have been heartwarming or inspiring if it were not the single most annoying thing in the world right now.
Shen-shifu, Shen Jiu decided, was always right. Always. He would never question his wise and venerable master again.
To rewind:
The Immortal Alliance Conference had been depressingly easy to sneak into. Oh, they'd set up wards at the edges of the arena, but it was child's play to push through them and re-seal them behind him. Shen-shifu set up wards worlds more complicated around their inn rooms, and nearly a year ago had deemed Shen Jiu good enough at talismans to work out bypasses for breaking through the wards himself, rather than giving him a key.
(Well, Shen-shifu had pressed an emergency key into his hands first. "It's just a game. Good training, but a game, so if it ever stops being fun for you, you can use the special key." And then he winked. "But the key will inform me that you're using it. So embarrassing for you! So try not to."
Shen Jiu had never used the key, not once.)
Shen Jiu wasn't nearly as good as Shen-shifu at controlling papermen, but there were a handful of ghosts— a jiejie from a brothel whose murder they solved, and two street rats who'd died one winter and still hadn't noticed they were dead and Shen-shifu said to let them notice in their own time but in the meanwhile they would run him errands so eagerly for a sliver of vital energy— who had agreed to come with to help. He sent the jiejie out scouting the larger arena, as he could actually trust her to follow more complicated commands, and directed the kids to circle around him and give him a head's up if any monsters or other disciples got too close to him.
He found a good lookout point up near the top of a gorge, and then settled down to wait. It was the third day of the conference already— he had arrived on the second day, but had paused to cast a net over the arena in an attempt to detect ghosts, and draw any friendly ghosts to him. It had come up completely blank, hence him canvassing the grounds in person. It was a long shot, but in many ways, the preferable answer: after all, Qi-ge wouldn't show up as a ghost if he was still alive.
Someone walked up to the water, and Shen Jiu froze.
Qi-ge had been fifteen when he'd last seen him: tall, but awkward and gangly, having not fully grown in to his own limbs, and underfed to boot. The disciple that was walking towards the river was no longer at that awkward height, had filled out, moved with a confidence and strength that was antithetical to all of the years of mistreatment that Shen Jiu and Yue Qi had gone through, and for a single, horrible moment, Shen Jiu wasn't sure if he'd recognize Qi-ge at all.
The disciple turned as to better face Shen Jiu's vantage spot, and Shen Jiu knew that face.
He whistled twice, and the two street-rat ghosts returned to him. Then he shouted "Hey!", and threw himself over the cliff. The ghosts took the small streams of resentful energy he was feeding them, and caught him and supported him on the way down, altogether letting him land gently.
It was a trick that Shen-shifu had taught him: while one could use spiritual energy to greatly improve acrobatics, it was often simpler and could lead to more impressive results to have a ghost or three step in and assist. Furthermore, if one was in a situation in which spiritual energy might be detected, resentful energy was a different beast altogether. Shen Jiu wasn't totally sure how the Immortal Alliance Conference was being observed, but he had noticed spirit eagles on the way in, which tended to be drawn to outpourings of spiritual power to observe.
Here, now, face to face with the disciple, it was definitely Qi-ge, and his clothes were of extremely fine make, embroidered along the edges. Certainly the mark of an inner disciple, possibly that of a head disciple? For the first time, Shen Jiu seethed at the fact that Shen-shifu insisted on avoiding all the sects so religiously, because he couldn't guess beyond that where Qi-ge had ended up. Presumably not Zhao Hua Monastery, as he did not particularly look like a Buddhist priest, or Huan Hua Palace, given he wasn't covered in gold, but beyond that Shen Jiu had no guess.
"Xiao Jiu!" Qi-ge exclaimed. A huge smile broke across his face.
Shen Jiu, now settled, on instinct more than anything took in the resentful energy around him. It was one of Shen-shifu's rules: after using resentful energy, it was always necessary to check and see if you had disturbed something that you hadn't intended. Even for something as small and inconsequential as using spirits to help you jump down from a height.
What followed slammed into Shen Jiu's spiritual senses: a roiling mass of— guilt or grief or anger or something of the rotting sort, it wasn't as if human emotions corresponded one to one with the 'flavor' of resentful energy, but whatever it was it was bad— threaded in and riddled throughout Qi-ge's foundations and core, and formed a twisted, braided rope between his core and his spiritual sword.
Shen Jiu reeled. "What the fuck happened to you?"
The smile disappeared off of Qi-ge's face.
"I'm waiting," Shen Jiu said.
Qi-ge said nothing. Stupid, stupid idiot, he'd always used to hide his injuries when he was younger, and it was even more stupid now—
Unless the spirit eagles could also transmit sound, not just visuals, and Qi-ge was keeping his affliction a secret from the rest of the cultivation world.
"Sorry," Qi-ge finally said, so quietly that Shen Jiu could barely hear him. "It's Qi-ge who let you down."
"Do I look particularly let down to you?" Shen Jiu snapped.
His clothes weren't as fine as Yue Qi's, but they were clean, sturdy, and practical, embroidered with talismans and various designs of spirit flags alike, as Shen-shifu had encouraged him to experiment with active and passive personal enhancements a few months back. Shen-shifu had given him a jade dizi after he'd proven mastery on the bamboo one, with the note that on the first new moon of the year, if a specific melody was played, it would presumably have the ability to make a juvenile Thousand-Year Jade Lily bloom, provided the story he remembered about it was accurate. He'd casually handed over such a treasure as if it was merely the most convenient thing he had on-hand, to move Shen Jiu up to a superior instrument. The jade dizi was hanging from his waist, as was a fine fan of practical solid make that he had painted with a talisman for wind-control.
He was no longer bruised, or underfed: he, too, had grown into himself, safely under Shen-shifu's guidance.
"I thought you'd died," Qi-ge said.
"Clearly, you thought wrong," Shen Jiu said. "Like I've always told you, you should've left the thinking to me."
"Come back with me," Qi-ge said. "To Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. You— if you join Qing Jing Peak, Xiao Jiu can do the thinking for me forever."
Shen Jiu, who was, in fact, capable of doing basic math, could fill out the rest of Yue Qi's story: if Qi-ge wanted him at the head of the second highest peak, and the strategist of the sect, that meant that:
"You've become Qiong Ding Peak's Head Disciple? Not bad."
Qi-ge, unfortunately, took that as encouragement. "The Qing Jing Peak Lord would love you! No one has ever been as sharp as Shen Jiu. You could—"
"I already have a Shizun," Shen Jiu said, even though Shen-shifu had never demanded the title. "I'm not interested in another, inferior one. I just wanted to see if you were alive or dead, and my question has been answered."
"Xiao Jiu.." Qi-ge said. "Surely whomever you're learning from surely can't offer more opportunity than such a renowned sect as Cang Qiong. You don't even have a spiritual sword!"
Shen Jiu's hand flitted down to his dizi. "You don't need a spiritual sword if you're doing demonic cultivation. You and I, righteous cultivator, are natural enemies. So leave me alone!"
Qi-ge's eyes widened. "Your Shizun is a demonic cultivator?" He took a deep breath in and out, and closed his eyes, and Shen Jiu could see rapid movement beneath his eyelids. When he opened them again, they almost seemed mad with fear. "Xiao Jiu, you're not safe. We need to inform the sect leaders, and hunt—"
"That would be useless," Shen Jiu blurted out. "He's dead already, I killed him. It's just me, I'm alone." Qi-ge's expression was still panicked enough that Shen Jiu was forced to tack on: "If you make a fuss you'd have to reveal me, and then I'd be as dead as he is."
Yue Qi tried to reach for Shen Jiu's hands, and Shen Jiu ripped them away. "Please, Xiao Jiu. There's still a chance for you, then! I can sense your spiritual energy is strong. The disciples of Qian Cao Peak can help you fix your core—"
"You think I need to be fixed?" Shen Jiu snarled.
"Everyone knows that demonic cultivation—"
"Does everyone know how to do demonic cultivation?" Shen Jiu said. "Then how should they know?"
"Why are you fighting me?" Yue Qi said. "This is everything we ever wanted. We can be cultivators together! Just come back to Cang Qiong Sect with me, and everything will be alright!"
(It was at about this moment that Shen Jiu resolved to never question Shen-shifu's wisdom again. This was, in fact, horribly inconvenient, and in hindsight exactly the sort of situation that he should have avoided at all costs.)
"Is there anything I can say to make you leave me alone?"
"No! Now that I know you're alive, I'll never stop searching for you! I'll never leave you behind! So come back with me to Cang Qiong Sect!" As if sensing his hesitation, crafty for perhaps the first time in his life, Yue Qi said, "If you truly have nothing and no one to return to, then you have no reason to turn me down."
"Maybe I just want to be anywhere but with you," Shen Jiu said, but he knew that he'd lost.
He could feel the beautiful, ephemeral freedom that he'd thought would always be his as Shen-shifu's personal disciple slipping from his grasp.
But this time, he resolved, he was going to make that everyone else's problem too.
