Chapter Text
By the time Shen Jiu came to Cang Qiong, Qiong’s Ding’s Head Disciple had been in seclusion in the Ling Xi Caves for seven years.
Shen Jiu didn’t like to ascribe meaning to the number. Numbers were what little slave children did: They lived and died without note, leaving behind no mark on this world. And in the grand scheme of his life, he had lived for twenty-two years: twelve as a slave, five as Qiu Jianluo’s dog, and five as Wu Yanzi’s. Qiu Haitang had held Shen Jiu’s hand, or hugged him, or kissed him on the cheek nearly every day, which made for one thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-five times—not that he counted; under Wu Yanzi, Shen Jiu has killed somewhere between one hundred and seventy-three and one hundred and ninety-nine people.
Why should Shen Jiu be overly sentimental over some boy named Yue Qi? Did Shen Jiu cry over every flower that rotted when spring was over? Did Shen Jiu build gravestones for the half-eaten doll that Yue Qi had brought him once? Did Shen Jiu carry around the memories of the only tanghulu that Yue Qi had ever had enough money to buy for him, like that single memory was a corpse he could not find earth to bury it in?
Of course not. In the grand scheme of the world, Yue Qi and Shen Jiu were both just two very small insignificant drops in an ocean, and Shen Jiu was better than such foolish fantasies. He was too good, too clever, too fast for hope.
“Nobody’s allowed in the Ling Xi caves anymore,” said Qin Yun.
“Is that so?” said Shen Jiu, neutrally, giving nothing of his displeasure away, and focused on wringing out the water from the uniform he was washing. The Ling Xi Caves were Cang Qiong’s greatest natural reserve. The sect, according to legend, had been formed around it. “Not even Head Disciple Liu? I hear that he’s the greatest swordsman of his generation.”
“Not even him!” said Zheng Qian. “Apparently Qiong Ding’s Head Disciple’s seclusion has to be absolute. All the entrances are sealed. And it’s a cave system, so they had to seal off all four directions, even though nobody’s used any of them except the south gate for literally thousands of years.”
“They say there’s a ghost in there,” said Qin Yun. “You can hear it wailing and crying.”
“Don’t be stupid. It’s one of the most spiritually rich places in the entire world. How could it have a ghost?”
Shen Jiu, without expression, put a little more elbow into wringing dry the uniform in his hands.
It wasn’t about whether or not there was a ghost in there. It was about the fact that the crown jewel of Cang Qiong’s cultivation system had been blocked off for seven years, and even for a Head Disciple’s seclusion, the situation was unusual. Had the caves run dry of energy and the elders were just covering it up? Had the caves really been infected with evil spiritual energy so powerful that not even the current Sect Leader could cleanse it? In the end, what mattered was that the disciples were worried enough about it to start spreading rumors. When politics, dynasties, and powers began to shift, the common people could do nothing but gossip about which way the wind would blow.
“The Head Disciple is still in seclusion. Don’t doubt the Sect Leader’s words. There’s no ghost,” Zheng Qian was saying.
“Shixiong, should we take this back to the west courtyard to hang it up?” Shen Jiu asked innocently.
Qin Yun and Zheng Qian gave each other a look. Then both of them hurriedly dumped the last of their laundry into the basket and handed the entire thing off to Shen Jiu.
“I just remembered that we have some other documents that we have to review,” said Zheng Qian.
“Shipment requests,” said Qin Yun.
“The shipment requests that are on documents. The paper shipment requests.”
Shipment requests were usually written on bamboo slats. Shen Jiu didn’t correct them. “This humble disciple will do his best to hang up the laundry.”
“Work hard,” said Zheng Qian.
“Chin up,” said Qin Yun.
Shen Jiu thought about feeding their blood to a two-legged leech, which, once it acquired a taste for a single human, would spend the rest of the leech’s two-week-long lifespan crawling unceasingly across dry land to consume the rest of its target’s blood and lay its eggs in the host’s bloodstream. Then Shen Jiu went to go dump out the dirty water.
On An Ding, Shen Jiu realized that the trick was to always look like you were doing something. If you were standing idle at literally any moment of the day, someone would find you and rope you into their own frantic, endless list of tasks and errands, as if having two headless chickens running about was somehow better than one. Shen Jiu was quite happy to hang up this laundry, then, because now he very clearly had an Errand, and wherever he went, it was assumed that he was taking this bundle of uniforms someplace important. And so Shen Jiu walked straight to the west courtyard, through it, out the main gate of An Ding’s complex, out to the Rainbow Bridge, and across to the Ling Xi Caves.
Skulking around in the middle of the night was Wu Yanzi’s method. Shen Jiu, who considered himself to have a functioning brain, would much rather do his dirty work in broad daylight.
The Ling Xi Caves was on a secluded mountain face, little more than a hole in the side of the mountain, connected to the rest of the sect by a staircase that was little more than flagstones placed approximately where steps had worn divots in the road; somewhere along this road, Shen Jiu threw his laundry basket into the bushes for someone else to clean up. The entrance to the cave system was indeed blocked—firstly with a large stone, but also with some sort of barrier. Shen Jiu didn’t touch it, in case it set off some sort of alarm. It must be wonderful, Shen Jiu thought, to be so beloved by your shizun that you could spend seven consecutive years in the world’s most potent cultivation location in the world.
Here was Shen Jiu, who’s had to infiltrate Cang Qiong Sect as an outer disciple to An Ding, of all lowly and awful places, just for a mere drop of water from Cang Qiong mountain’s lofty Ling Xi caves.
According to legend, the Ling Xi caves had also formed a few natural pools of water somewhere deep in the caves systems, and these pools had soaked up the potent qi at the heart of the mountains for thousands of years. Legend had it that bathing or drinking with that water could fix even a rotten cultivation foundation. Shen Jiu was twenty two years old, and he was having minor to mid-level qi deviations every few months, and Shen Jiu and Wu Yanzi had made enemies of most of the medical cultivators in the jianghu and not a lot of friends. Now that Shen Jiu had killed Wu Yanzi, he’d made enemies out of their friends, too.
So here Shen Jiu was. Locked out of the Ling Xi caves, begging to be let in, as he always was. Trapped in slave debt, locked out of a good birth and good family; trapped in the Qiu manor, locked out of even normal indentured servitude; trapped with Wu Yanzi, locked out of the orthodox and righteous cultivation methods; trapped with this piece of shit demonic cultivation foundation, locked out of the high spiritual potential and talent that should have been his by birthright…
Better living was always somewhere else, and if Shen Jiu wanted what everyone else had, he’d have to claw and steal and lie his way in. Shen Jiu could spit blood.
He'd find some way to worm inside, as he always did, but the indignity of having to do so in the first place—
—and then he heard it.
The ghost.
No, it wasn’t a ghost. Ghosts were attention-seeking little brats, no better than a child throwing a tantrum and screaming, Look at me! Ghosts called to the living; even when they moaned and shrieked or cried, it was still a cry out for some place to put their pain. There was a certain neediness to a ghosts singleminded desire to inflict their burdens onto others; only when a ghost could make someone else suffer in its stead could it then pass on in peace. Shen Jiu hated ghosts. He hated their audacity to think their pain was the only pain that had ever been suffered, and then wail and sob and make it everyone else’s problem. If Shen Jiu threw a tantrum every time he suffered, he would never stop screaming.
This noise—it was difficult to even call it an expression of pain. It had no real rhythm or tune; it was not meant to be heard by an audience, as if that person had long ago given up on being heard or responded to. It was the unselfconscious, pointless noise of pain someone made when nobody would hear or care whether or not you clung to your pride and your silence or if you screamed and shouted yourself hoarse. If ghosts relieved their pain by transferring it to the living, this was a noise like the mountains settling, grinding down, creaking deep inside; the great rollings of the earth were not meant for anyone’s ears, and it was the human audience that was unnecessary, even unwelcome. Humans were an incidental speck lucky enough to see the earth move around them, but never for them.
For a stupid, unguarded moment, Shen Jiu hesitated.
Then he scoffed.
Who cared how piteous this creature sounded? This disciple—since it was surely the Qiong Ding Head Disciple in there—was practically the most blessed being on earth. Anyone else would kill to be in the Ling Xi caves. Shen Jiu almost had. He would still if that's what it took to save himself. And here was this Qiong Ding Head Disciple, moaning and groaning, like having exclusive access to the most esteemed cultivation spot in the world was somehow a burden.
He took out a talisman and tore it with his teeth. Then, with his presence cloaked, he stepped off the mountain path into the low pine trees.
"Aren't there supposed to be two of you?" asked an older man's voice, approaching up the mountain stairs.
“Yes, Zhangmen-shibo…” said the An Ding disciple, although his sentence trailed away like there was supposed to be more to it.
Shen Jiu restrained a high, mocking laugh. Some people could do with having a bit more fear in their lives—a bit more shame for their existence. If this disciple were a little more concerned with being perceived as a poor slave boy with a damaged foundation, this disciple wouldn’t be so carefree about stammering like a child and failing to finish basic sentences in front of the cultivation world’s most powerful man.
"It was Chen-shidi who was meant to be here," said the An Ding disciple. "Zhangmen-shibo, shall I go find him?"
The Sect Leader waved a hand. This could mean literally anything.
"Begging Shibo's forgiveness," the disciple mumbled, and bowed lowly and scurried back down the mountain path. The Sect Leader did not seem to notice.
From the way that Shen Jiu had always heard Cang Qiong described, each peak more or less handled its own affairs. Was it unusual to have an An Ding disciple standing guard instead of a Qiong Ding disciple? Was it because An Ding disciples were deemed grunt work, and therefore everyone conveniently forgot that An Ding disciples could also think for themselves and hear with their own two ears?
When Shen Jiu had seen the cultivation world's most influential men from afar, they were almost always accompanied by an entourage of disciples to wait on their every need. The Peak Lord of Qian Cao frequently dragged his own Head Disciple with him and would hand him his research notebook so carelessly that the Peak Lord would simply hold the book out into thin air and, without looking to see if the poor boy was anywhere nearby, drop the notebook with the full expectation that it would be caught. Imagine keeping around a whole human boy just to serve as your bookshelf. After Qiu Jianluo, Shen Jiu had found that young master Qiu had really been a small fish in the world's very large pond full of hideous men.
The Sect Leader of Cang Qiong—the Peak Lord of Qiong Ding—walked up the mountain road wearing more finery than the emperor himself, but curiously otherwise naked of any other disciples trailing at his feet. It was never a good sign when powerful men went places by themselves.
Shen Jiu weighed his chances. This was one of the most powerful men in the world, not just in terms of political or financial power but martial power as well. If this went wrong, Shen Jiu wouldn't be walking out of this alive. On the other hand, if Shen Jiu qi deviated to death because Wu Yanzi was such a piece of shit for a teacher, Shen Jiu really would never rest easy in his own grave.
Shen Jiu chewed furiously at his pride and his survival, his survival and his pride. Never were there ever any other options for gutter rats. Debase yourself and live ignominiously, or die with your dignity intact… It was like coming across a beggar on the street and having to debate to oneself: Give or not to give? Honorable charity or self-protection? But the reality was, only the rich and fortunate even had the option. More than money, more than pride, Shen Jiu craved having the option at all—to at least know that if he withheld charity from others, it wasn't because of a pathetic bid to survive, but his own free will and spite.
In the end, he, as he always had, made the choice to save himself. He'd have to find some other time when the Ling Xi Caves were opened, and at least opened by someone who wasn't the literal Sect Leader.
Silently, Shen Jiu slipped through the trees further down the stairs.
The Sect Leader stopped walking.
Shen Jiu froze.
For a long second, Shen Jiu cursed his own faulty cultivation. Being able to conceal one's presence was a basic skill; still, he had to use a talisman to help him, the equivalent of a cultivator's crutch; and even with the talisman, the Sect Leader still noticed him. Shen Jiu bit his lip and took another step.
The Sect Leader's hand came to rest on his sword.
Shen Jiu cursed the heaven and earth and everything in between a thousand and one times and then stepped out onto the path and surreptitiously peeled off the talisman.
"Zhangmen-shibo, apologies for my tardiness," Shen Jiu called out.
Shen Jiu had gotten far enough back down the stairs that it looked like he was indeed a late disciple climbing the mountain path up from below. From behind, with the Sect Leader standing on the stairs far above him, the Qiong Ding Peak Lord was a single streak of black robes dyed so richly that they did not reflect the sun. Silver embroidery detailed on his hems glittered like stars sunken deep in the empty sky.
The man turned to look over his shoulder. A single strong brow and an impassive eye. "This humble An Ding disciple was ashamed that he came late," said Shen Jiu, a bit faster, like with enough force he could make the man believe him.
"Hiding will not save you from your mistakes," said the Sect Leader.
Shen Jiu bowed, not quite as low as the other An Ding disciple. "This disciple apologizes, Zhangmen-shibo."
Shen Jiu didn't even have to lie about why he was late. Making up a reason would only be seen as making excuses for himself; and indeed, the Sect Leader could not seem less interested in any further explanation. "Report to Qiong Ding for punishment afterwards."
"Yes, Zhangmen-shibo," said Shen Jiu, neither excessively sycophantic nor overly apologetic—the same obedient voice that Wu Yanzi had always liked. The Sect Leader of Cang Qiong seemed to like it too.
"When the other one gets back, tell him that your responsibility is to stand here, at this perimeter—" the Sect Leader cast an eye at a small stone marker on the path, which had been engraved with a single sword mark horizontally "—and, if any disciple visits, it is your responsibility to turn them away. Do not approach the caves any further than this line under any circumstances."
If it was just guard duty, then the Sect Leader easily could have erected a barrier. On cue, the Sect Leader continued, "When your fellow An Ding disciple returns, tell him that if anything goes wrong, you must proceed directly to Qian Cao and find the Peak Lord there."
The natural follow-up question would be How do I know if something has gone wrong? But with these types of men, asking was a sign of incompetence. A disciple's only recourse was to figure it out for themselves, and whoever was the lucky disciple who could somehow manage to read their shizun's mind would be the one favored. Rich and powerful men had the privilege of demanding other people bend themselves into knots, guessing at unspoken expectations, and then punishing those who failed to meet this hidden criteria.
"Yes, Zhangmen-shibo," said Shen Jiu, and suppressed his sneer when the Sect Leader gave an almost approving nod.
Shen Jiu would really do quite well in this rotten sect. He already knew all the rules. Too bad that his cultivation potential had already been ruined twice over, and he was too old. What a fucking shame to have been born with the potential for a better life, to have had the willingness and desire to work hard and prove oneself with only blood and sweat if only someone would give you a chance, only to have it slip through your piece of shit fingers because this ugly, rotten world seemed to have nothing but misfortune for you in specific—
Shen Jiu took a deep breath. Held it.
The Ling Xi Caves. The water. His cultivation.
He breathed back out.
Fine. Guard duty. He could do that.
Shen Jiu had been standing guard since he was four years old. He rolled his shoulders as the boredom set in, because standing guard on Cang Qiong, the most illustrious sect in the world, apparently wasn’t any different from standing guard outside while Wu Yanzi’s ransacked some poor widow’s valuables, or from standing guard while Yue Qi counted that day’s earnings from begging. Nothing ever fucking changed except Shen Jiu, apparently, who, every time he stood guard, remembered the first time he’d ever done it, like a splinter under his skin that he couldn’t get rid of: a single day nearly two decades ago when he’d stood there with his back straight and his head held high all day long because Yue Qi had told Wu-ge that Shen Jiu would do it, that yes Yue Qi knew that Shen Jiu had just given another boy a black eye but Yue Qi promised that Xiao Jiu was good and clever and fast, and Xiao Jiu would definitely know when to sound the alarm; and so for the entire day Xiao Jiu had stood there trying to look good and clever and fast so that when Yue Qi came back from wherever he was, Yue Qi wouldn't have been wrong, would have even some small reason to say to someone else in a proud voice, See? He was just the right choice. Shen Jiu now no longer remembered what Yue Qi had been off doing. He only remembered standing outside while Wu Yanzi robbed a widow and her two children blind, feeling a little smug for having buried his last moral conscience so far underground that even robbing poor widows couldn’t phase him, feeling proud of himself for having finally covered himself in sharkskin all over, feeling embarrassed of how lame Xiao Jiu had been when he was four hoping someone else would be proud of him. And now Shen Jiu was here, feeling embarrassed of how smug he’d been when he’d been eighteen. Now, Shen Jiu was listening to Cang Qiong’s sect leader torture a disciple, and Shen Jiu really was bored. He was twenty-two years old, had just as broke as he’d been when he was four, and he was still standing fucking guard.
The caves entrance rolled open. Shen Jiu listened for that piteous moaning again, but nothing came. The An Ding disciples must be told to stand this far away because at this distance, whatever was happening in the cave wouldn't be audible.
With the cave now open, all he had to do was steal inside the cave while the Sect Leader wasn't looking. But then the question became: What would he do when the entrance was shut again? Surely the Sect Leader was going to close the entrance all over again. Wouldn't Shen Jiu be locked inside? Did Shen Jiu want to be locked in a cave with a raving lunatic?
Shen Jiu looked left, then right. Then he crept slowly up the mountain steps until the cave entrance came into view.
The massive boulder had been rolled to the side; around its edges, the sigils that kept it locked in place still glowed faintly now that it'd been unlocked. Neither shizun nor disciple were in sight.
They must be deeper inside the caves. There might be room for Shen Jiu to slip into the cave system unseen. Legend had it that the caves were an immense system that could house multiple cultivators in isolated seclusion, and that these cultivators could spend years never seeing each other. If Shen Jiu got locked in there, would he be able to avoid the madman? How long did the Sect Leader come to check on his Head Disciple? Every month? Every few months? Once a year? Could Shen Jiu run in, look around the cave, and then dart back out before the cave was closed again?
Shen Jiu tapped his foot. Weighed his chances. Calculated how fast he could run. Then, cautiously as a rat approaching the trap, Shen Jiu crept to the cave's mouth.
From there, Shen Jiu could see the Sect Leader bent over under the cave's low ceiling in the wide entrance cavern. "You'll disturb the other disciples if you keep making such noises," the Sect Leader told the cave dirt.
The piece of dirt said nothing. Shen Jiu could see it breathing. The qi in this cavern was frightening; it kept rippling like they were deep underwater, so viscously that Shen Jiu could see it with the naked eye. Was that the caves, or the Head Disciple?
The Sect Leader smoothed down something. At first, it looked like a stone, but it made the sound of human hair being stroked.
"You have to set a better example for your martial brothers, Qingyuan. It's not good for the future Sect Leader to show such weakness."
The piece of dirt said nothing.
Shen Jiu held his breath. The main entrance branched off into three different tunnels. If he went in, he would most certainly get lost. He'd have to rely on inedia and meditation to keep him alive until the next time the Sect Leader visited. Was his cultivation strong enough?
—No, Shen Jiu decided. He had to be smart. He was already in Cang Qiong. If he could learn information about how frequently the Sect Leader came to the caves, then he could come back better equipped. He could bring food if he had to—
"Yue Qi," said the Sect Leader. "Don't be stubborn."
For a long moment, Shen Jiu just stood there and calculated.
Hope was what Wu Yanzi used to scam people. He found what they wanted, what they secretly craved in some heart buried so deep that even they couldn't know, and he promised them that empty future. Shen Jiu, personally, had no problems with cauterizing himself of that weakness. Hope served no function to him but to make him someone else's mark.
So this disciple's name being "Yue Qi" was coincidence, Shen Jiu reminded himself. “Yue” was not an uncommon last name. “Qi” was more strange, but not impossible. There was surely some other person who'd been named Yue Qi, and had become a cultivator the way that Shen Jiu had asked Yue Qi to do, and come to Cang Qiong which was one of the sects that Shen Jiu had once told Yue Qi he wanted to try the entrance test for, and also—Shen Jiu and Yue Qi had been separated for a decade—the Qiong Ding disciple had been in cultivation for seven years—this "Yue Qingyuan" then must have arrived at Cang Qiong around the same time that Yue Qi would have, and been trapped in the Ling Xi Caves for about the same amount of time that Shen Jiu and Yue Qi had been separated from each other—
Okay.
If it was a coincidence, it was admittedly a highly implausible series of coincidences.
But if there was anyone in this world unlucky enough to believe that he'd found his long lost friend, only for it to turn out to be a completely different unrelated Yue Qi, this bad fortune would happen to Shen Jiu.
—And even if it was Yue Qi—which it wasn't—even if it was, Shen Jiu hadn't even liked that stupid boy that much. Yes! Really! Who gave a shit about him! Shen Jiu had lived an entire life since the last time he'd seen that boy; they weren't anything to each other anymore. Just someone that he used to know!
And—and even if Shen Jiu did care about some boy who'd once given Shen Jiu his only shirt to keep him warm, split every meal with him so Shen Jiu wouldn't go hungry, boiled Shen Jiu's water carefully every day so he wouldn't get sick, told him to stop picking on the other boys and forgave him when he did, told him that even if Shen Jiu's family had sold him off then Yue Qi would be his family, told Xiao Jiu that he'd done well when he had and told Xiao Jiu that he'd done well even when he hadn't and told Xiao Jiu that he'd done well when everyone else in this garbage world thought that Xiao Jiu was a dirty little nuisance at best—even if Shen Jiu did care about this boy, there was no guarantee that Yue Qi still cared about Shen Jiu, right, and Shen Jiu wasn't presumptuous enough to go about thinking that he was so important in other people's lives, or foolish enough to hope that someone else on this earth might have given a damn about him—
The cave dirt made some wretched noise too soft to hear.
"Again with the 'Xiao Jiu,'" the Sect Leader sighed. "I told you, that boy is long gone," and then something else Shen Jiu didn't hear because he was already running straight back down the mountain.
He nearly knocked the other An Ding disciple off the stone path. "Hey!" said the other disciple. "Who are—"
“Our Sect Leader has been gravely injured,” Shen Jiu barked.
The A Ding disciple’s face paled. “What? Where?! We have to help—“
Shen Jiu bodily shoved him back in the direction of the rest of the sect. “No! Zhangmen-shibo said to get help. Go! Run! Shout from the top of your lungs that the Sect Leader is in terrible danger!”
"I—wait—" The disciple looked confused and bewildered, which was exactly how Shen Jiu liked his marks. "Is he—"
"There's no time to waste! Every moment you spend here complaining is another moment where he might die!"
The stupid disciple nodded wildly, even though this boy was even older than Shen Jiu. “The Sect Leader is in terrible—!”
“Louder!” Shen Jiu snapped.
The disciple obeyed, nearly bellowing as he ran down the stairs: “The Sect Leader has been injured! Help! Help!”
The idiot had seen Shen Jiu wearing An Ding's uniform and hadn't even bothered to verify Shen Jiu's identity before running off like the town crier. Shen Jiu indulged in a sneer at his back, now that the boy couldn't see him.
In almost no time at all, the Sect Leader himself emerged from the cave entrance, a small and dark figure at the top of the staircase. In a single leap, he disappeared into the sky, presumably to hunt down that pesky disciple who’d diligently taken it upon himself to cause public panic and alarm during a time when the Sect Leader clearly did not want any attention upon his personal affairs.
The second he disappeared, Shen Jiu bolted for the cave entrance.
Idiot! he hissed through his bared teeth, already panting with the exertion, thinking murderously that he was the stupidest person on this planet, and if he had any sense he would get in that cave and take his knife out and kill Yue Qi himself. As if through Qiu Jianluo's woodshed door, there was a little hand that had wormed its way out of the filth and muck of Shen Jiu's shriveled heart; and Xiao Jiu's hand was still raw and delicate and would bleed if cut and still flinched away from mean children who called Xiao Jiu and beat the other boys viciously so he wouldn't cry and clutched at Yue Qi's sleeves like a desperate little leech; and now that hand, that Shen Jiu had thought he'd killed and buried, was reaching out for Yue Qi, still reaching for something that he couldn’t have; and if killing Yue Qi was what it took for Shen Jiu to kill Xiao Jiu once and for all, then that's what Shen Jiu was going to do. Because Shen Jiu wasn't an idiot. Because Shen Jiu wasn't the stupid child who'd jump in front of Qiu Jianluo's horse for Yue Qi twice in a row. Because Shen Jiu was too clever and too fast to be someone else's fool.
"Yue Qi!" Shen Jiu called, skidding into the caves, and immediately had to hold his nose over the stench. It stank of straight iron, like the cave walls were at least nine-tenths blood. The dirty creature on the ground made a pathetic attempt to move.
And the qi deviation—Shen Jiu could feel it, like a throat constricting around his skin. Seeing the waves was nothing compared to actually standing in the caves himself, where he could feel the massive thunder of constant qi upheaval rolling and thrumming. He locked his knees so he wouldn't fall.
“Xiao… Jiu,” the gravedirt said.
Shen Jiu stumbled and hit the ground and came to that patch of dirt on his knees. Stop it! he hissed at himself, stop looking for him, stop being stupid, and still he peeled away grime and scratched up his fingers like he had once, through the crack in the wall, just to see Yue Qi's single eye through the hole one more time.
In places, the blood and grime sat thick on the dirty man's face like a second skin. Like this, this man could be anyone, really. He was too old. He was too tall and broad. He had, on the rare patches of skin that Shen Jiu could see, the faint bumps of unshaven stubble.
Shen Jiu lit a paper talisman for light and bent over that muddy, caked-over face, trying to discern if this was Yue Qi or Yue Qingyuan.
That disgusting piece of earth cracked. Pale, red teeth shone through the dark, and then a single eye.
Almost instantly, the shuddering qi deviation relented. The air fell still again, a breath being held.
“You’re alive,” said the man.
“So I am,” said Shen Jiu. Coolly, just like he’d rehearsed it. His voice didn’t wobble at all.
“Xi—“ The man coughed. Dust came out between his lips. “…Xiao Jiu…”
“Yue Qingyuan,” Shen Jiu replied.
Even through the filth all over him, the man's face fell.
Silently, Shen Jiu knelt there, looking at him, giving nothing.
“…I know,” said Yue Qingyuan. There was so much dust in his lungs that he could barely pronounce the consonants. “I’m… sorry. I couldn’t… come back for you.”
After a moment, Shen Jiu reached out, cautiously, and placed one thumb over where the mud was thickest. It came away wet, a mixture of dirt and human sweat. The smell of fresh iron bloomed when it came away, and to Shen Jiu’s surprise, there was Yue Qi’s cheekbone underneath it all. There was the wide stretch of Yue Qi’s mouth, just longer and thicker. There was Yue Qi’s square jaw, just bigger and broader. Shen Jiu wiped at the hollows under Yue Qingyuan’s eyes, and there were Yue Qi’s thick eyelashes, the bottom row that Shen Jiu used to fall asleep looking at in lieu of the stars overhead; there was the shape of Yue Qi’s skull where Shen Jiu had once given him a black eye, right in the socket, and Shen Jiu couldn’t bring himself to apologize for weeks; there was that downward curve of the monolid, the gelatinous white and black of his Qi-ge’s soft, dark eyes that couldn’t cry.
Here came Yue Qi, back to Shen Jiu, as Yue Qingyuan’s grave dirt cracked and peeled away under Shen Jiu and Yue Qi’s adult face came up to meet him.
“Stupid Qi-ge,” Shen Jiu said quietly.
To his own horror, Shen Jiu’s voice came out hoarse, like the one who'd been buried alive and screaming for years was him.