Chapter Text
Six Years Ago
Shen Qingqiu’s plan to escape the scum villain’s fate was a pretty good one, if he did say so himself.
True, it was a bit complicated. It would require patience, careful timing, and a willingness to actually die. Worse, it also necessitated Shang Qinghua’s assistance; Shen Qingqiu would be regrettably reliant on his fellow transmigrator’s help at multiple key junctures. But seeing no better options to prevent his dismemberment and death, he’d asked for Shang Qinghua’s aid, and together they had hashed out the details and set the plan in motion. There had been a few bumps in the road, but today they’d finally made a significant breakthrough.
“Well,” Shen Qingqiu said, withdrawing his hand from the dirt. “I think this one might actually be stable.”
He was muddy up to his elbows, his elegant green robes stained at the knees from kneeling on the ground. But he hardly noticed the mess—the plan was working! After months of trial and error, he had finally germinated a healthy Sun-Moon Dew Mushroom body. It was still very small—about the size of a six month old fetus—but his inspection suggested that it was properly formed and already beginning to generate spiritual qi.
Which meant: he might not become a human stick after all!
At his side, Shang Qinghua stared down at the unassuming patch of muddy ground in relief. “Thank fuck! I was starting to think you really had a black thumb, Cucumber-Bro.”
Shen Qingqiu leveled a perfunctory glare at him. “Is it my fault they’re so finicky and difficult to grow? I wasn’t the one who designed them.”
“Eh, you should just be glad I did design them,” Shang Qinghua replied with a shrug.
Shen Qingqiu huffed. “It’s not just that they’re difficult to grow,” he groused. “I still don’t see why the soul-transfer can’t also include my memories. It’s totally unscientific.”
“Psh. Is anything about this ‘scientific?’ Anyhow, we’ve got a fix for that,” Shang Qinghua said, waving his hand. “I’ve given it some thought, and I have a few ideas about how to steal the Chalice of Memory.”
Shen Qingqiu sighed.
This was one of the main reasons he was forced to rely on Shang Qinghua’s help: the memory loss. The Sun-Moon Dew Mushroom was capable of growing a human body—a perfect vessel for an untethered soul. However, the moment that soul took up residence in the new body, it would lose the majority of its memories. Shen Qingqiu was no neuroscientist, but he was pretty sure this was complete bullshit.
“And you’re certain the Chalice of Memory will work?” he asked.
“Like… 85% sure,” Shang Qinghua said. When Shen Qingqiu narrowed his eyes and raised his fan threateningly, Shang Qinghua ducked and squawked, “Okay okay! 99%! The Chalice is specifically designed to restore memories of past lives. That’s like… its whole deal. It’s gotta work!”
“It had better,” Shen Qingqiu said darkly. He did not want to escape death just to spend the rest of his days as an amnesiac.
“No seriously, it’s a solid plan,” Shang Qinghua reassured him. “In fact, it’s pretty impressive that you came up with it based on just a few throwaway lines. But uh, it is gonna be a lot of work. You’re… still completely certain that it’s necessary?”
“Of course it is,” Shen Qingqiu snapped. “I pushed Binghe into the Abyss, didn’t I?”
“Well… yeah. But you were pretty nice to him before that. Maybe he won’t be as angry as you think?”
Shen Qingqiu scoffed. “Yeah right. He’s going through literal hell right now because of me. He’ll definitely want revenge, and he’d be justified in taking it.” He stared down at the disturbed soil, suddenly feeling a lot less triumphant than he had a moment ago.
“Alright. Well, justified or not, I’m glad we have a plan,” Shang Qinghua said, clapping Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder sympathetically. “Now we just have to wait for this little cucumber to grow big and strong, and then go and collect the Chalice so we can return your memories when you wake up.”
Shen Qingqiu nodded, still feeling a bit hollow. “Hopefully everything will be ready in time.”
“I’m sure it will—these suckers grow quickly,” Shang Qinghua assured him. “And besides, we still have three years until Binghe gets out of the Abyss! That will be plenty of time.”
But in the end, of course, it wasn’t.
Now
Shang Qinghua crept silently across the icy chamber, cursing softly under his breath. The room’s shutters were tightly sealed, so he could barely make out his surroundings in the dim light. Not that there was much to see; Huan Hua Palace’s Central Pavilion was almost entirely empty, save for the massive curtained bed in its center. It was also as cold as a meat-locker, each of Shang Qinghua’s nervous breaths fogging the air in front of him.
As he scurried towards the bed, another booming crash echoed in the distance. Good—Luo Binghe and Liu Qingge were still at it, then. Hopefully that meant Luo Binghe would remain occupied at least a little bit longer.
On the bed’s platform, Shang Qinghua quickly scanned for any signs of arrays or talismans. He hoped there weren’t any, because he really didn’t have time to fuck around right now. It had already taken longer than he’d liked to finesse his way through Luo Binghe’s wards, taking painstaking care not to break them. The task hadn’t been easy, and might have been impossible for anyone not in possession of intimate knowledge of Luo Binghe’s mind.
Thankfully, however, his paranoid son didn’t seem to have left any additional wards around the body itself.
Shang Qinghua parted the curtains, staring down at it. Even in death, Shen Qingqiu somehow managed to look lofty, elegant, and otherworldly. Truly, a consummate poser! The corpse was dressed in fine silk inner robes, arranged neatly on its back with its hands folded over its stomach, its skin pale as milk. Its long, dark hair was surprisingly lustrous—was Luo Binghe oiling and brushing it every day? Ugh… best not to think about it.
Shang Qinghua knelt down. “Hey, Cucumber-Bro,” he whispered. “I’m sorry this has taken so long, man. I’ve been trying to wake you up, but something went wrong with your new body. Which is, uh… probably my fault. So I’m gonna try one last thing! And I… I really hope it works.”
He paused for a moment, but despite his lifelike appearance, Shen Qingqiu didn’t come back with a snarky retort.
Shang Qinghua sighed. Then he got to work, carefully rolling up the corpse’s sleeve. Removing a tiny needle from his pocket, he pricked the skin over a blue vein on the inner surface of its elbow. A dot of blood welled up, which he quickly captured in a small vial. It was much redder and more liquid than blood from a dead body ought to be—presumably a result of whatever freaky cultivation Luo Binghe had been doing to keep it preserved.
Slipping the vial into his pocket, Shang Qinghua rolled Shen Qingqiu’s sleeve back down and stepped back. He was taking a significant risk, disturbing the body like this. If Luo Binghe found out what he had done—any of it—he was probably a dead man. But he’d been careful; the wards still appeared undisturbed, and the needle was so small that the tiny nick in Shen Qingqiu’s skin was practically imperceptible. As for the blood mites that were no doubt swimming happily about in the small sample he had collected… well, Shang Qinghua knew better than anyone how those worked. Luo Binghe had to actively focus on them to sense their location, so as long as he had no reason to do so, he wouldn’t notice the absence of a few until it was too late.
Probably.
Cucumber-Bro, if this works, you had better be really fucking grateful, Shang Qinghua thought, slipping from the room.
By the time everything was ready, night was falling on the borderlands, the sinking sun little more than an orange smudge on the horizon. A sharp wind whipped across the barren hills, sending Shang Qinghua’s hair ribbon flapping into his face. He batted it out of the way impatiently, focused on stirring the contents of the glass beaker in his hand. The addition of Shen Qingqiu’s blood had turned the elixir within a deep ruby red, exactly as the manuscript said it ought to.
Please let this fucking work, he prayed, holding the beaker up to examine its contents critically.
It looked alright, as far as he could tell. Which meant that the only thing left to do was to pour it liberally over the patch of dirt in front of him, then cross his fingers and hope for the best.
As he raised his hand to do exactly that, however, he was interrupted by a dark voice.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Shang Qinghua shrieked and jerked violently in surprise, the precious elixir sloshing wildly in the beaker. Whipping around, he found himself face to face with the one person he had most wanted to avoid: Luo Binghe.
The protagonist looked absolutely furious. His eyes and zuiyin were both glowing a bloody red, Xin Mo clasped in a firm grip. Behind him, the flickering black rim of a portal was sealing itself closed. The wind picked up, blowing his long curls and black robes around him dramatically, because of course it did.
Shang Qinghua was so fucked.
Ah, System? A little help here? he asked.
[Apologies, this System cannot offer assistance with this confrontation! We wish you luck!]
Fucking typical. The System rarely had much of anything to say to him these days, almost as if it were merely biding its time, waiting for the actual plot to recommence.
Shang Qinghua swallowed heavily. “Lord Luo, I was just… ah…”
Luo Binghe’s eyes narrowed, focusing intently on the beaker in Shang Qinghua’s hand. He sheathed Xin Mo, which was reassuring… but then he strode forward, dark tendrils of demonic qi unfurling from his hand to coil around Shang Qinghua’s neck.
Shang Qinghua gurgled and flailed, scrabbling at the strands of energy that threatened to restrict his airflow.
“Shang-Shishu,” Luo Binghe said, the lilt in his voice making the title sound like an insult. “I would think very carefully about what you say next, if I were you. You stole Shizun’s blood. Why?”
“Aha,” Shang Qinghua wheezed. “My Lord noticed that?”
Luo Binghe’s lips twitched, a sudden spasm of his hand drawing the tendrils of qi around Shang Qinghua’s neck tighter. “This Lord spent years rebuilding Shizun’s meridians from scratch,” he said pleasantly. “In many ways, I know his body better than my own. So yes, I noticed. Now tell me what you’ve done.”
Shang Qinghua writhed, sucking in small sips of air. Fuck fuck fuck! Was Luo Binghe really so attuned to the inner workings of Shen Qingqiu’s corpse that he immediately noticed the absence of even a tiny drop of blood? …Apparently so.
Shang Qinghua scrabbled desperately for any explanation that wouldn’t get him killed on the spot, but nothing came to mind aside from the truth. Well… so be it then. He was a little sorry to rat out a fellow transmigrator, but when it came right down to it Shang Qinghua was simply not the self-sacrificing type—unlike some people he could mention.
Apparently he took too long to respond, because the strands of demonic qi tightened again, this time cutting off his airway entirely.
“Don’t even think about lying. My patience has worn very thin today,” Luo Binghe snarled. He let Shang Qinghua suffocate for a long, agonizing moment, staring dispassionately at his rapidly purpling face, before finally releasing the pressure.
Shang Qinghua gratefully sucked in a lungful of air, then immediately began spilling his guts. “I needed the blood for this potion!” he shouted, brandishing the beaker.
Luo Binghe took a menacing step closer. “And what is its purpose?”
“To wake him up!”
“Who?”
“Shen Qingqiu!” Shang Qinghua shouted, practically into Luo Binghe’s face.
Luo Binghe froze, his expression going eerily blank.
“...What?”
“He grew a new body,” Shang Qinghua hurried to explain, while he still had the air to do so. “It’s buried here, and it’s still alive. But something must have gone wrong because it won’t wake up. I found the recipe for this elixir in an ancient necromantic manuscript and I think it will wake him, but it required a drop of his blood—”
Abruptly, Luo Binghe released his hold on Shang Qinghua, who fell, coughing and spluttering, into the dirt.
Luo Binghe dropped down to one knee, a frantic look on his face as he pressed a hand down into the soil. As Shang Qinghua watched apprehensively, Luo Binghe closed his eyes, sending his qi down into the earth. A sudden pinch of his brows betrayed the moment that he sensed the mushroom body buried beneath them, peacefully hibernating. Then his eyes snapped open and he surged to his feet, grabbing Shang Qinghua and hauling him up by the front of his robes.
“Tell me everything.”