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Liu Qingge does not often indulge in personal grudges. It’s not for the lack of them, and it’s most definitely not because of a forgiving heart that held no bitterness when slights were made towards his person; when someone dared to turn their nose up at him, he will throw a glare their way. If they strike, he will return it tenfold with no mercy.
Though treat others how you’d like to be treated wasn’t exactly a lifestyle he practiced, he could give respect where it’s due. Bai Zhan Peak is not known for the kindness of its disciples who lost themselves in the thrill of the fight, and its master is certainly not known for his mild temper, but he did not make it a habit to start trouble and pick fights with the people he worked with.
That being said, punching Shen Qingqiu in the face the first time they properly met felt great. If he knew how to laugh out loud freely (the way the man had stumbled on those pristine clothes of his, always so pretentiously well-groomed to give the appearance of elegance hiding the venom beneath, and fell right into the dirty ground), he would’ve done so gladly.
Liu Qingge was simpleminded and straightforward, but those were qualities often mistaken for idiocy. He didn’t possess Yue Qingyuan’s talent for words, a weapon sharper than his blade when he sat across a table meeting with lords who sought to slice him open and tear out his weaknesses to be exploited. He didn’t known Qi Qingqi’s unwavering dignity, or Mu Qingfang’s bottomless diligence.
Directness was Liu Qingge’s strength; it was only natural that he and Shen Qingqiu would clash due to their stark difference in values. Though he could recognize his fellow peak lord’s technique, he couldn’t sympathize with his underhanded methods of winning battles with sneak attacks targeted to seep through the cracks of one’s armour and slash the soft flesh beneath. No, Liu Qingge would rather face the challenge head on until his sword could pierce through all the defences his opponent had. A fair match meant a fair victory, and a fair victory meant Liu Qingge won due to his own strength alone.
Shen Qingqiu’s face back then was something he’d never forget. The shock, the bewilderment, the unbridled fury; he had never been one to hide his disdain, fond of snapping his fan open near his lips and looking down upon others with a sneer, but he always kept a tight grip on his most unseemly emotions, those who could break the dam of his tightly sealed self-restraint and taint his proud image.
He had not fought a fair fight, and thus Liu Qingge reciprocated in kind with a fist to his face, forgoing his sword and finesse and it had felt more satisfying than holding Cheng Luan to his throat.
The years that followed that day were not any kinder, and the disdain between them only grew into overwhelming hatred. Even against common enemies, their eyes would meet across the battlefield and Shen Qingqiu would conveniently strike him when he aimed at someone else, and Liu Qingge, less furtively, would push him away when they got too close. Yue Qingyuan had long given up on talking them into a truce, and so long as Shen Qingqiu did not cross the tentative line of their aversion and their duty to their sect, Liu Qingge would be well keeping his distance and pretending the wicked man did not exist.
He’s always been sure Shen Qingqiu would take the first opportunity available to stab him in the back the way he never hid his wanting to do so when battle called for their feeble teamwork, so he’s—understandably, in his own humble opinion—very alert the moment his shixiong steps into the Ling Xi Cave.
Liu Mingyan had seen him last, the veil on her face doing little to hide the frown she bore when she had asked, knowing the answer and yet not its true implications, if he was well. He had gone to her one last time, feeling like a dead man walking to his funeral, but he had never denied himself to be a stubborn fool, and the way his insides twisted with the poisoning of his core did not stop him from thinking this is nothing can’t overcome. His sister poured him tea as he told her about going into seclusion and said nothing more.
She knew he’d always been a little unstable, a little too near the edge, ready to unhinge when his power became too much for his mind and body to handle…but she trusted him to tell her if things became bigger than himself, and he had broken that trust when he left her with a promise to come back as soon as he finished with no other explanations.
Liu Qingge does not want to die. Secluding himself in the labyrinths of the spirit caves had been the very last resort. He was much too proud to go to Mu Qingfang’s help, much too apprehensive to show his sister the severity of his condition, much too obstinate to admit he no longer had any control over himself when he had been sure it wouldn’t escalate to these heights. If he could not get through this episode, then…
He does not want to die, but the violent fluctuations of his spiritual energy and the heaving of his chest struggling to take one more breath told him he had little other choice.
But he had never been one to stand still and take a destiny he did not ask for, and with the rage and pain clouding his mind and tearing his body apart from the inside out, he sees Shen Qingqiu and thinks if he’s going down, he’s dragging this bastard to hell with him.
The first person he sees when he stumbles his way out of the forest is Ning Yingying, a student of Qing Jing Peak. He knows her name only because the disciples at his own peak often murmur her name to each other like lovelorn fools, swaying their swords in hopes to gain her attentions before he barks harsh commands at them.
She gasps when she sees him, only a tiny thing barely at the midst of her adolescence, easily impressed and easily scared—but she’s neither of those when she runs straight towards him. A more impressed disciple would have assumed he had returned from battle victorious as his reputation would assure and left him to his own devices. A more scared disciple would fear interfering with the affairs of a man often dubbed a god of war. She only looks concerned, if a little frazzled.
“Liu-shishu!” she cries, almost tripping on overgrown grass. “This disciple thought shishu was in seclusion, are you alright!? There’s…there’s so much blood!”
Indeed, he hadn’t exactly brought a change of clothes when he had gone into the Ling Xi Cave, but that’s inconsequential. He glares down at her, scrutinising, but she’s too frantic to squirm under the intensity of his eyes. The paleness of her face, the tears tracks down her cheeks, the tremble of her fingers…
Shen Qingqiu had left a while before him, and now his disciple appeared like she was being chased by a demon freed from hell. Something was amiss.
He ignores her question and asks, “What happened?”
It takes a moment for Ning Yingying’s words to leave her struggling throat, but she manages to sob, “Demons, demons at our mountain! They challenged us to duels, and Shizun, he…he—!”
So he wasn’t so far off. No more words are needed, and he simply turns to ride his sword. Behind him, he hears the girl make a high pitched noise of surprise and alarm.
“Liu-shishu!” she calls out, voice breaking from renewed tears, betraying the desperation she felt even as she fuzzed over him. “If you’re injured, you shouldn’t…”
He’s still injured, both inside and out, but the only reason he could move despite that was because Shen Qinqqiu had helped him. Whatever state his body was in, even now after spending days recovering from the backlash of his own power, it wouldn’t be enough to quell his sense of duty, even to the likes of that scum of a man.
He had to return the favour.
There’s something strange about Shen Qingqiu. He had noticed it then, of course, when the man had poured his spiritual energy into him, healing his body and mind. At the time, he had barely been conscious enough to recognize it as the help that it was, driven to act by feral instinct that felt danger upon every minute movement within the darkened hollow. Only when his ears regained their focus, eyes still fogged, did he hear Shen Qingqiu’s words.
People didn’t change so easily. People like Shen Qingqiu didn’t change at all. Their masks switched and bewitched, but they would never be taken off unless someone tore apart their face. To suggest forgetting their past discord, to propose a future where they’d go hand in hand—it was unthinkable!
And yet—
In the spirit caves, unable to fight the madness consuming him, Liu Qingge had thought about Liu Mingyan. Due to their difference in age, they had not grown very close from the start of her life. By the time she learned how to walk he had been out looking for places to leave home for, young and eager and reckless for the world to take him. Only after the death of their parents did they learn the true value of what was left of their little family, and, barely a man himself, Liu Qingge had sworn that he’d take care of his little sister until she, too, was ready to take on the world.
He’s never had a doubt that she would grow fine without him, that she would find the sword that called for her, that she’d make a name for herself that people would kneel to.
But she’s still so young, still a girl of just fifteen. Parentless and even now wondering why that had been the ending to their family. To the unjustly murder of their parents, Liu Qingge had lost himself to power in his grief, taking a sword and a soul hungry for the strength to never lose anyone again. Liu Mingyan surrendered herself to an abyss of carefully contained emotions, letting righteousness dictate her path with little care for how it suppressed her heart.
In what he thought to be his last moments, his biggest regret was that he had not been able to teach her anything more than how to wield a sword.
He grabs Shen Qingqiu’s bloodied poisoned hand and promises to them both, “What I owe you back in the spirit caves, I’ll return to you!”
What he doesn’t say is: thank you for letting me keep taking care of my sister.
Even if he saved Shen Qingqiu’s life, that was a debt that could never be repaid. Whatever strife had been between them, he would willingly put it all aside from now on.
Ning Yingying becomes a strange new addition to his life. Mu Qingfang orders him to stay in Cang Qiong Mountain until he’s fully recovered, and Yue Qingyuan more or less bans him from leaving his peak until his spiritual power is completely under control too. It shouldn’t be a long affair, not with Shen Qingqiu having helped him through the worst of it, and maybe that’s the incident that he needs to recover from the most.
The girl has been going out her way to bring him food first thing in the morning when she should have other duties to attend do, but she had assured the disciple in charge of looking over Liu Qingge’s state she always made sure to finish her Shizun’s early training before coming here. It’s not a short trip, and as she hums a quiet little song known only to her, he wonders why she bothers. They had no relation to one another; the first and only time they’ve interacted was that day the demons infiltrated into their sect, and even that had been a rushed affair.
“Your master,” Liu Qingge brusquely starts. “Does he know you’re here?”
Ning Yingying pauses her song, pouring his tea with as little grace as her small energetic hands would suggest, and happily chirps, “Shizun does! He wholeheartedly wishes for Liu-shishu’s swift recovery!”
He frowns; there’s too many things wrong with that sentence that he doesn’t dare digest, not with the rising goosebumps on his skin. “Does he send you?”
She shakes her head, almost forgetting to make sure the hot tea does not overflow when she looks up at him earnestly. He towers over her even as he sits, and he thinks she’s such a tiny thing, unfit to flutter about in the harsh mounts of Bai Zhan Peak where the hungry feasted on blood. Those curious eyes of hers fit well in Qing Jing Peak, a place that nurtures scholars who never stopped being intrigued by the world.
“This disciple thanks Liu-shishu very, very much for going to help Shizun and A-Luo,” she exclaims, the hand not holding the tea clenched tightly above her chest. “Even with your injuries, you rushed to them, and I didn’t try harder to stop you…”
Liu Qingge feels mildly irritated and more growingly confused, which is also an oddity in itself. His qi deviation must have left him more disoriented than he thought. Holding his chin high, huffing out an irate breath, he asks crossly, “And why would you try to stop me?”
What did this little girl know of him, of where he could go and where he couldn’t, of his limits and his freedom? Did she think him weak for seeing him struggling to stand on his own despite the rest of his days in seclusion helping his body stabilize? The glower in his gaze goes by unnoticed.
“Liu-shishu is very strong!” she keeps on as if she didn’t see anything odd with her logic. “But everybody, even the strong, need a little help sometime!”
Truly, her young age reflected in the naivety of her words laced with hope, a heart that believed in the goodness of people despite the wrongs they’ve done, and he bitterly thinks that perhaps she may not be so well-fit for Qing Jing Peak after all, where the love the scholars felt for the world turned into cynicism that learned not to look for love in it anymore.
He doesn’t respond, not when there’s the sound of quick footsteps approaching, and he turns his head with a scowl. He had thought he gave everyone orders to do five hundred laps and two hundred squats when they finished—
—but it’s not a disciple of his who rushes to see him, it’s Liu Mingyan, not a single hair out of place, yet her shoulders rise and fall with the shortness of breath of someone who dropped everything to run here.
It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since the demons’ infiltration, but he won’t admit he’s been avoiding her, however subtly he tried to do so. He had caught her gaze when the crying male disciple insisted on being the one to carry Shen Qingqiu to his bamboo house, the only reason he had succeeded because Liu Qingge had seen the confusion in his sister’s sharp eyes and the slowly-rising realization making her shoulders taut. He’d always been proud of her for being so observant, but at that moment it felt more like the final nail to his coffin.
“Liu-shijie?” Ning Yingying is the first to break the silence, oblivious to the sudden tense air. She tilts her head curiously at the siblings, lightly bouncing on her feet with unreleased restless energy.
“Thank you for looking after him,” Liu Mingyan addresses her politely, and from behind the veil that always covers her face, a grateful smile is visible in the faint curve of her eyes.
Ning Yingying seems a little in a daze, forced back into reality by the teapot almost slipping off her hands, and she jumps with a little yelp, quickly setting it down on the table for safety.
She squeaks, “It’s no problem, Liu-shijie!”
Liu Qingge frowns at them both in irritated confusion. From the Qing Jing Peak disciple’s lips escapes a nervous giggle, but she seems to regain her vibrancy.
“Then, see you tomorrow, Liu-shishu!” Ning Yingying grins. “See you around, shijie!”
Liu Mingyan nods at her. “Be well.”
With Ning Yingying hurrying away, the siblings fall into a rhythmic silence that often complements their weekly meetings, but there’s a certain strain to it now.
“Brother.” His sister’s voice has always been soft like drops of snow and just as cold, and they melt as soon as her only family is involved. She sounds apprehensive.
Liu Qingge is not a man who likes to stall, but if he takes a second longer than necessary to tilt his head back and drink what’s left of the tea like it was a shot of alcohol, well, it didn’t mean anything.
“Did you suffer a qi deviation?”
Bluntness was his blade, but she’s always had the terrible habit of adopting his worst traits when she wasn’t able to handle her own emotions, looking to her brother for a guidance that he could not provide. But even in the worst of her anger, in the pit of her bottomless grief, she wasn’t one to lash out like him, slashing everything in his path to hurt the way he did, and the most she cannot control are her hands clenching and unclenching.
“Shen-shibo went into seclusion soon after you did,” she says, and he can tell she had it all figured out already. “If he hadn’t, would you…”
“Mingyan.” With a low grunt of her name, he pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers. He doesn’t want to have this conversation, not now, and not ever, but he knows he shouldn’t avoid it any longer. She deserved to know.
“Brother,” her tone turns insistent, brows furrowed. Her posture remains straight and immutable, but her clenched fists shake on her lap. It’s a habit she’s had since she was a little girl; even as a well-behaved toddler that she had been, she was fond of curling her tiny hands into little fists and stomp her feet on the ground when she was upset. “Please tell me what happened.”
She truly is too young, still. But not young enough that he has to shield her from the world and treat her like a child who cannot understand its complexities, so he rubs his forehead and tells her everything, from the bursts of power he could not control in the middle of the battlefield, waking up from a two-hour sleep with hands that itched to kill every night, to the realization that it was a problem bigger than he could resolve. He tells her of the spirit caves and the weeks of painful seclusion battling his most difficult battle to date, and how Shen Qingqiu defied all Shen Qingqiu had been to save him.
Liu Mingyan shakes her head. Her hands still shake.
“You’re much too stubborn,” she laments in a low whisper. “Do you realize what would have happened if Shen-shibo hadn’t been there? If he hadn’t seen you?”
His mouth forms an unsightly scowl. Yes, of course he does. He had spent the rest of his seclusion in turmoil over having been saved from death by the man he despised the most, cursing himself for his own weakness and the debt he now owed. Getting help was admitting defeat, and there’s little else—Shen Qingqiu himself, perhaps—that he hated more than losing.
Liu Mingyan doesn’t cry—they both have always been terrible at it, so when she closes her eyes tightly, forgoing dignity to hunch her shoulders and exhale a shaky breath with the weight of what could have been, he pets her head gently.
A beat of silence.
“Ning-shimei,” his sister then says, too casual for the tense tone in her voice. “I’ve heard she stops by here often. I wish to formally thank her for her helping you.”
Liu Qingge’s brows raise.
“Tell your disciple to stop coming.”
“Good day to you too, shidi.” Shen Qingqiu barely pays mind to the brusquely entrance, doesn’t even turn around from where he was tidying up some papers around his table.
“She has no business there.” His arms cross. His shixiong gives him a muted, indulgent smile, as if he were appeasing a child in the midst of a tantrum.
“Many have tried to warn her against seeing an older man, but hers is a free soul.” Her master almost sounds preoccupied, and Liu Qingge thinks he hears him say something among the lines of, “Ah, that was terrible phrasing. It’s no good for a sister to spend so much time with a man who’s not the protagonist.”
Liu Qingge doesn’t understand, but he thinks back on Ning Yingying pouring his tea while glancing around in a manner she surely thought surreptitious, and somehow knows she doesn’t only come by to see him. He can’t quite pinpoint why, though, and his questions were often met with shy laughter he wouldn’t have expected from an upbeat girl like her.
Shen Qingqiu glances away in thought, humming. Whatever he’s thinking about saying next, Liu Qingge already knows he won’t like it.
“Is the presence of a young maiden near your private quarters bothering you, Liu-shidi?” he asks tentatively, a flash of something passing by his eyes.
Obviously. The flat stare Liu Qingge gives him makes Shen Qingqiu sigh.
“Yes, of course it bothers you, why else would you be sulking around here for?” he huffs, though he still looks as immaculate as ever. Even more tentatively, he asks, “Is it for a more specific reason, hm?”
A more specific reason?
“She doesn’t belong there.”
Shen Qingqiu sighs.
“Neither do you, and yet here you are,” he replies airily, absentmindedly fanning himself. “How about being a little more specific, shidi? Trust your shixiong about what really bothers you.”
Annoyed, Liu Qingge snaps, “Stop speaking in circles.”
“I suppose that, for the dense, one must bulldoze through it,” the other says cryptically. “Liu-shidi, are you unaccustomed to the company of a lady?”
The Bai Zhan Peak Lord is well-versed in the art of battle, and for all that he was talented with a sword he was terrible with anything else, like the heavens had granted him power in exchange of wits of the heart. Even he, though, was not so lost as to not understand what this man was implying, and his fists clench in anger. It’s not the question itself that brings him displeasure, it’s the echo of many other people before him, looking down on him for not expressing interest in the pleasures of women.
Shen Qingqiu hurries to say, “Be at ease, shidi! This old man wasn’t saying that’s a bad thing, per se… The fact that someone like you would be shy around women is actually…”
Liu Qingge snorts and pushes Shen Qingqiu down into his chair before he can finish speaking, wasting no more time in grabbing his hand to begin cleansing his meridians, always starting from the place the incurable poison had breached his body. A defeated sigh indicates the rough clue was taken, and Shen Qingqiu speaks of women no more.
This man, Liu Qingge thought, turning the hand over and seeing its already-healed skin, is definitely different. Saving him and a nameless disciple had been jarring enough, but where there had been an overlaying sense of superiority blanketing this person before, now there was only a fresh kind of peace, the first whiff of autumn morning air after a dry searing summer.
Against his will, Liu Qingge begins to relax. Shen Qingqiu’s skin is soft and smooth, and he doesn’t notice his fingers trailing down his wrist, away from the job he was supposed to be doing, but doesn’t pull away just yet.
Never once had he wondered what the skin of a woman would feel like against his, but he thinks that, if it was anything like Shen Qingqiu's, he could perhaps understand the obsession to an extent.
“Shizun,” a painfully saccharine voice behind him snaps him back to reality, and he retracts his hand. Distractedly, Shen Qingqiu looks away from the window he had been staring out of and his eyes seem to lighten up at whatever he sees by the door. Liu Qingge doesn’t need to guess it’s that clingy disciple of his.
“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu confirms cooly. “Did this master not give you a task to complete? I doubt it has been finished so soon.”
Though the voice sounds apologetic, Liu Qingge has learned to detect the special kind of vitriol craftily hidden behind the innocent smiles of people awaiting to stab him in the back as soon as he lowers his guard, and thus he does not buy the demure act for a second. “This disciple is terribly sorry, Shizun, but I took a little break to make some refreshments for Shizun and Liu-shishu since they seemed to be working very hard. I will get right back to my duty, so please accept these.”
Shen Qingqiu clears his throat softly, as though it wasn’t incredibly obvious that he just wanted to eat the sweets without being too openly shameless.
“How considerate of you,” he says offhandedly, “Liu-shidi has come a long way to help this old man. I’m sure he would like a bite.”
Rolling his eyes, Liu Qingge simply watches as the boy merrily bounces towards them, carefully laying the tray of treats and drinks between them. The position makes it hard for Liu Qingge’s hand to easily reach Shen Qingqiu’s again, and the man is none the wiser when he immediately picks up a sweet delicately between his index and thumb.
Liu Qingge glances at the disciple next to him and is unsurprised by the unmasked look of contempt he receives in return.
How amusing. He doesn’t know what kind of challenge he’s being presented, but he hated losing.
After the Immortal Alliance Conference, Shen Qingqiu isn’t the same. Liu Qingge never realised how often his serene presence calmed him until that very serenity in him was suddenly gone, and he doesn’t know how to make it better. For the first time since his unspoken promise to himself, he begins to realise there are some things he will not be able to protect him from, and it weighs on him more than it should. This heart should not lay heavy on his chest when Shen Qingqiu glances out the window with his mind off to a place Liu Qingge cannot reach.
He looks like he’s in mourning. Liu Qingge understood—no, perhaps not understood. He knew the Qing Jing Peak Lord favoured Luo Binghe, so his loss must have been quite the hit, but Liu Qingge is no stranger to losing peak disciples to battle. He led armies of cultivators into war and came back with numbers less than those he parted with; even as the head of a division that chose books over swords, Shen Qingqiu must have known to expect this at one point.
Liu Qingge’s job was to fight. His hands were made to destroy, not to fix, and he had risen to the position of the youngest Bai Zhan Peak Lord by killing his predecessor. It’s the law of their nature; Bai Zhan Peak didn’t have official disciples and their Peak Lord did not advice them like a proper teacher would. They built strength with their own judgement, sought to rise to the top by being the only disciple strong enough to defeat their current master in a battle to the death, to become the new master and wait for the next disciple to succeed them in death.
He doesn’t understand loss the way other people did. He takes loss like a challenge, had bore the death of his parents with a newfound sense of duty, turning his sorrow into fuel for his spiritual energy and coped by teaching his sister the ways of the sword so she would be prepared for anything the world that took their parents away from them threw at her.
It had hurt, back then, when he was still young enough to wonder how to provide for himself and his sister who still had years ahead of her to reach adolescence, but he barely remembers it now, having buried it deep beneath his thirst for violence as an outlet to the pent up aggression that had ultimately lead him to a qi deviation and an early death.
He doesn’t mind dying. He had killed the previous Bai Zhan Peak Lord for his position and he will be killed by the next, that’s a rule all disciples understood and lived by and one he had never once forgotten or feared. Many have challenged him and just as many have lost, and he won’t allow himself to die just yet, not when Liu Mingyan still waited for him for their monthly visits to the little bustling towns at the foot of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, but he knows his day would come one day. Liu Qingge may be strong, he may be confident and arrogant and backed up by abilities before unseen, but death came to all, even to immortals like them.
He knows this, so Luo Binghe’s death is of little consequence to him. Yet, its impact in his master is palpable and it feels like suffocating heartache, choking up any who’d turn to look at him and see the melancholy in his eyes.
Liu Qingge stops to wonder what it would be like if Shen Qingqiu had been the one to die back there instead, if he would find his apathy as easily as he did for anybody else’s passing. He tries to visualize a Cang Qiong Mountain without chuckles as soft as a cool morning breeze, without the warm glow of sunlight reflecting a tender golden color upon dark hair falling around the shoulders of a man who had made their sect into a home. His stomach lurches.
Unconsciously, he grips Shen Qingqiu’s hand harder. Their scheduled sessions of meridian cleansing often found them in the comfort of the Qing Jing Peak’s bamboo house, but even he can see the lively greens and earthy browns had become muddy dull colors since its master's frequent absences. Shen Qingqiu had just returned from one of such, the skin under his eyes darker under the firelight, almost stumbling with an exhaustion he himself probably didn’t know he felt, and Liu Qingge hadn’t hesitated to reach for his hand to forcefully lead him to bed.
He can almost feel the ghost of Luo Binghe glaring at him from behind and wonders if that’s but a fraction of what Shen Qingqiu feels like every day.
“Come now, shidi,” Shen Qingqiu says placatingly in that faraway voice of his. “Your shixiong can manage this much, at least. This old master is not so weakened as to require this much help.”
“If you want to walk around like that and split your head open then be my guest, but zhangmen-shixiong is waiting for my report,” Liu Qingge spits out. After a moment of hesitation, he recalls words he’s once heard, sound clumsy on his tongue despite the usual firmness of his voice, and says, “Even the strong need help.”
Shen Qingqiu’s eyebrows rise, lips slowly parting, agape. It’s terribly open expression for a man who often chooses to let impassivity mask his features, and it is also the first time in a while he’s felt here and not somewhere else entirely, his body and soul apart and in discord with one another. He’s looking at Liu Qingge, really looking at him and not past him into phantoms only he can see, and Liu Qingge’s breath stutters.
Then Shen Qingqiu laughs, a loud and clear sound, not the soft chuckle hidden behind his fan that he’s so accustomed to hearing in passing, his shoulders shaking like a dance to the melody of his laughter. Were Liu Qingge’s heart not hammering against his chest, he would have growled a warning in embarrassment. He settles for silently seething.
“Ying-er truly has been around you too much, you’re starting to sound just like her. It’s frankly quite jarring,” voice airy with the remnants of lung-deep laughter, his shixiong eyes him coyly, the width of his smile curving his eyes into vibrant crescent moons that don’t show any of their melancholy anymore. “Liu-juju, your gap moe is showing!”
Juju? Gap moe? “Are you delirious? What the hell are you saying?”
Shen Qingqiu keeps laughing, waving his hand like he would his fan. “Nothing, nothing at all. Pay no mind to this old man’s ramblings. Then, shall we go on with our schedule?”
He lets himself be led back to bed, the once poisoned-pierced hand shaking with the mirth of a hearty laugh. Liu Qingge begins pouring his spiritual energy into him, cleansing Shen Qingqiu’s meridians like it’s become their routine, and thinks that, though he understands the inevitability of death, he won’t allow it take this man away so easily. He won’t wonder what Cang Qiong Mountain would be without him, because it would never happen. Liu Qingge wouldn’t let it.
“Tell your disciple to—”
“Ah, Liu-shidi, have we not discussed this before?” Shen Qingqiu sighs like he’s an exasperated parent dealing with a stubborn child who would not let old matters go, but Liu Qingge disregards it to stride forward to where his fellow peak lord carefully considers which herbs to pack for his next trip. “Ying-er is a little airheaded, but she’s incapable of wishing harm upon anybody.”
“—stop looking at Mingyan like that.”
That catches Shen Qingqiu by surprise, and he tilts his head while tapping at the firm edge of his folded fan curiously. “Like what?”
“Like…” brows furrowed, Liu Qingge struggles to describe things he doesn’t understand himself, like the way Ning Yingying would simply smile and stare without saying a thing, strikingly different, softer than her wide grins, and why his sister would tug at her veil higher up the bridge of her nose, as if to hide something.
Like the way I’m afraid I look at you, but the thought is gone as quick as it had come.
He forcefully demands instead: “Come.”
Liu Qingge isn’t an overprotective older brother by any means, not to the extent of hovering over Liu Mingyan's every move and fending off potential suitors by challenging them to a battle to the death. He’s told Shen Qingqiu as much and had received a dubious glance in return.
Maybe he had a point. Maybe Liu Qingge shouldn’t try to defend himself when they’re both hiding behind a tree spying on his little sister.
It hadn’t been intentional, truly; he knew Liu Mingyan would stop by his peak today, which meant that an extra-energetic Ning Yingying would arrive soon after. He had only wanted to show Shen Qingqiu the way they interacted, but by the time they saw them, they knew they had intruded upon a scene that was not meant for a third pair of eyes.
The Qing Jing Peak Lord is the one to pull at Liu Qingge’s robes to stop him from marching straight into their little bubble, and they both huddle behind the largest tree available like criminals awaiting for their victims to leave home so they could ransack it.
They observe the girls with baited breath, feeling more like shameless gossipers by the second.
Shen Qingqiu looks a little pained. Liu Qingge can’t imagine why. He remembers some rumours spoken in secret by the older Bai Zhan Peak disciples. Have you seen the way Shen-shibo looks at Ning-shimei, they’d whisper. What a dirty old man, taking advantage of his position to look at his female disciple with those lecherous eyes.
Liu Qingge had believed it without a care because he knew Shen Qingqiu had been a scumbag of a man who knew no limits in his pursuits, but looking at him now, he’s not so sure it had ever been true. The only eyes he looks at Ning Yingying with are eyes of a doting father worried for her safety and proud of her achievements. Whatever had been of the past him, the Shen Qingqiu he knew today would not harbour inappropriate affections for her, and he’s not sure why he insists on defending him or why the thought of being wrong about that bothers him so much.
The girls talk softly among themselves, and Liu Qingge can see the soft smile in his little sister’s eyes. With their enhanced hearing, it’s impossible for the men not to listen in, but even without it there would be no mistaking the blush high up Ning Yingying’s cheeks and the adoration in the tender touch of Liu Mingyan’s hand as it reaches to hold hers.
They walk closer to their hiding place, Ning Yingying’s giggling becoming louder with her nearing steps, and Shen Qingqiu’s morose sigh almost gives them away.
“Shut up,” Liu Qingge growls lowly, pulling Shen Qingqiu back and accidentally pressing him against the tree trunk to hide.
They don’t have much of a height difference, but their position forces the Qing Jing Peak Lord to raise his head so he could look at his shidi’s eyes. He’s shadowed by Liu Qingge’s figure above him, blocking the sun from his face, the dancing wind rustling the spring leaves around them sweeping dark strands of long loose hair to brush against the younger man’s face. There’s a sudden urge to touch it and find out if it was as soft as it looked.
Liu Qingge means to wait for the girls to pass them by and let him go, but he can’t move. Doesn’t want to.
There’s an amused glint in Shen Qingqiu’s eyes that peer up at him from below long black lashes, shining brightly even in the shadows. “Not overprotective, hm? I believe those are the exact words that this teacher heard Liu-shidi say just now.”
Liu Qingge finds that he likes seeing him like this, stuck between a tree and his body, his forearms resting on each side of his head so he won’t lose his balance and fall right into his senior. Still, his chest presses flush against Shen Qingqiu’s, and he’s afraid that the sudden crescendo of his heartbeat could be felt through the layers of their clothes.
Unthinkingly, Liu Qingge tilts his head down and leans forward.
Shen Qingqiu immediately snaps his fan open between their faces. He looks just as surprised as Liu Qingge feels.
The other man clears his throat loudly, and Liu Qingge takes a confused step back, arms falling down to his sides with a strange itch in the middle of his palms and the tips of his fingers. He frowns down at himself and wonders about the moment that had passed much too quick.
“Well.” Brushing dirt and leaves off his clothes and schooling his expression into cool aloofness, Shen Qingqiu speaks again without the fear of being overheard. “There’s nothing teachers like us can do to break off young love.”
Liu Qingge turns to look at the disappearing figures of his sister and her friend, except—young love?
Shen Qingqiu fans his shidi’s face lazily. Liu Qingge bats it away like a particularly annoying mosquito.
“Wipe that expression off, shidi,” he scolds. “It’d be a shame for such a handsome face to be blemished by wrinkles. You’ll scare off sisters, ah.”
He considers him handsome? He frowns even harder, and Shen Qingqiu sighs.
“Surprisingly, he truly is the overprotective brother trope,” he mumbles to himself. Louder, he continues, “You have nothing to fear. However unexpected this…development is, I assure you Ying-er will take good care of your sister.”
It wasn’t that he doubted it; even he had to admit he wasn’t unaffected by Ning Yingying’s blinding smile. With the pass of time, at some point he could not name, he had begun to see her clumsiness as somewhat endearing. Less so when it involved spilling tea all over his robes, but his days of house arrest had gone by quickly thanks to her presence that brought light to the eternal clouds of Bai Zhan Peak. He’s sure she brought the same effect in his solemn sister, who kept a leash on her emotions and was clumsy at expressing them. Having someone who wore her heart on her sleeve and felt no shame in the compassion that drove her every action could teach Liu Mingyan to loosen up every now and then and be unafraid of act like a girl her age and not forge herself to be unbendable steel in the name of duty.
Ning Yingying is good for Mingyan, he thinks.
Just like Shen Qingqiu was good for him.
The thought comes as quickly as it comes unexpectedly, and he chases out its implications with a swing of his fist to the tree before him, shattering it in half.
Shen Qingqiu, who had been standing there but moments ago, pales into a deadly white.
“This person is deeply in love with you.”
Madam Meiyin doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Demons, succubi—they’re all deceitful creatures that knew no pride, chased after temporary pleasures without any semblance of dignity. They set traps that tempted those weak of heart, said the words they most wanted to hear, deceived them into comfort and vulnerability, then laughed as they killed them.
He hates every single one of them, and his sword takes out his anger and confusion and the strange heat rising to his cheeks and pooling inside his abdomen in the many demons that swiped their claws at them.
He doesn’t believe in feeble things like destiny; whatever path was set before him was a path that he could easily choose not to take. If he was forced to walk it, all he needed was Cheng Luan in his hand to take reigns of his own fate to thread it as he pleased. Him, Shen Qingqiu’s fated one—she had been looking for a weakness, he knows, to grasp in her claws and force him to lower his guard, but to suggest he was in love with him, and then twist her deceit and saying it wasn’t him who was destined to be Shen Qingqiu’s l…lo…lover—
His breath comes short and quick, and the only thing more uncomfortable than the way his clothes stuck to the sweat on his back was the damned heat pooling within him, hotter than the anger burning him from the inside out and more painful than his beating, beating heart.
Shen Qingqiu is watching him cautiously, thoughtfully tapping his fan against his chin, near closed coral lips that Liu Qingge suddenly can’t look away from. His racing heart won’t stop however much he wills it to.
Before he knows what’s happening, before he realises where he’s being led, Shen Qingqiu, true to the terrible man Liu Qingge had known him to be years back, kicks him into a pool.
The freezing water momentarily shocks the heat right out of him. It takes him more than a moment to remember where he was, vision filled by a clear transparent blue, a bed of red petals floating above him and obscuring the view on the other side. A distorted voice calls out his name from the surface, and the clouds fogging his mind dissipate in a second.
From inside the water, Liu Qingge grabs Shen Qingqiu’s ankle and pulls, and they fall back down together.
There’s petals stuck in Shen Qingqiu’s disheveled hair when he rises to pant for air, one falling on his lashes that he blinks right off, watching it cause a small ripple in the water once it fell. Dark strands drape themselves across his face, meticulous hairdo undone into a state of disarray never once linked to the Qing Jing Peak Lord before, eyes wide open in frozen surprise, droplets of water trailing down his cheek. Liu Qingge wants to trace the trail to his chin with his finger.
He’s beautiful like this, caught in a moment out of his control, floating between action and reaction. The poison in Liu Qingge’s body seems long gone, but his heartbeat won’t find peace.
Liu Qingge does what he does best: stops thinking and lets his instincts take over.
He feels his own hair, heavy with chilling water dripping back down into the pool, sticking uncomfortably close to the nape of his neck and yet it does little to cool his skin down. It tickles against his ears when he lowers his head, closer, and he barely notices a red petal clinging to the back of his hand when it reaches out to take Shen Qingqiu’s chin. He’s met with widened eyes, but his own don’t linger open enough to see what they reflect and lets himself close the gap between them.
He’s cold, Liu Qingge thinks, beneath the tip of his fingers and against his lips, and yet the fire inside him only flares brighter. He follows a gut feeling and tilts his head curiously, heart at his throat, feeling yet another rose petal slip off his head. The still waters around them waver with his movement, the echo of the wide bath chamber amplifying the bell-like sound of the single droplet that drips from the tip of Liu Qingge’s chin, but he barely hears it above the white noise reverberating inside his head.
He surrounds himself to a single feeling desperately clawing its way atop the adrenaline and the confusion, and he barely recognizes it as yearning. He breathes Shen Qingqiu in like a man stranded underwater, the floral scent of the bath pool subduing the already muted smell of a fresh bamboo forest, of hearth and home, but this close, it’s all he can take.
He wants more and yet does not know how to seek it, presses harder against his lips to see if he can find the answer to the question he cannot hear that has been swimming around his head for longer than he can trace back to.
When they part hesitatingly, half stuck in a standstill moment neither could quite break, Liu Qingge steals the gasp right off of Shen Qingqiu’s lips, and Shen Qingqiu steals the reason right out of Liu Qingge’s heart.
“S-shidi,” Shen Qingqiu stutters, face twisting from a furious red to a sickly white, then back to red once more. “Is the poison still in effect? I had thought for sure—”
The beat of his heart thumps harshly against his ribcage, pulsing in rhythm with the lightheadedness of his mind, but he knows none of those are symptoms of the poison. It’s the aftereffect of a kiss he finds an immeasurable longing for, the consequence of pushing his rationality aside to plunge head first into a feeling he can’t yet name.
Shen Qingqiu is pulling away quickly, though, and Liu Qingge is too lost in his own emotions to pull him back. When the Qing Jing Peak Lord crawls out of the pool with little of his usual elegance, Liu Qingge stays half submerged, and there’s a strange pang in his chest. He rubs the area, irritated at the way his heavy clothes still cling to his skin, and doesn’t understand why he kissed Shen Qingqiu, or why it hurt when he immediately assumed it had been the poison acting in his stead.
“This old man is afraid we’ll need a heavier antidote,” Shen Qingqiu mutters to himself, focused on wrangling the water out of his sleeves. He almost looks like he’s fretting about, unfocused in one thing alone, frantically looking for anything to retain his attention when everything else fails. “Come, come quick, let us go find Mu-shidi as soon as possible.”
Liu Qingge gets out of the pool and plucks a red petal out of Shen Qingqiu’s hair. He sees his shoulders still their movement, not having seen his approaching, and notices his Adam’s apple bobbing when he swallows heavily.
“You’re coming back?” Liu Qingge asks pointedly, glaring down at the other with a clear demand.
“Yes, yes. Your shixiong will feel terrible letting you run about in such conditions, but don’t say I didn’t warn you against coming to this place.” Shen Qingqiu quickly takes his wrist and begins pulling him outside in his hurry to find medicine for an illness Liu Qingge is more and more increasingly sure cannot be cured. Liu Qingge lets him anyway, and his eyes spot a red tint in the older man’s ears.
He rubs at his own chest again.
Liu Qingge lead him to his death.
He should have known the man was going to do something stupid like he always seemed to do when that disciple of his was involved, the one who turned his back on his sect and his master and tormented him with the ghosts hanging around his shoulders since that day three years back. He should have known, but he had still trusted Shen Qingqiu to know what he was doing, had still trusted himself to keep him safe if he didn’t.
He might not have been the one the man had forsaken his life for, but he had been the one to place the pieces in their place, and he won’t ever forget the feeling of Shen Qingqiu’s hands sliding off his waist to step down Cheng Luan and on top of the tallest building.
Shen Qingqiu dies and he takes Liu Qingge’s heart down the roof with him.
People stop thinking him a war god and start calling him a fool. Stop fighting for a dead man, they say. Why go so far for just a body? You cannot defeat Luo Binghe. You’re not strong enough to win.
They were right, maybe. He only knows none of that matters.
He barely sleeps and goes right back to Huan Hua Palace day after day, Cheng Luan clutched tight in his broken hand, but it’s no more painful than the persistent hollowness in his chest. Mu Qingfang had long since given up trying to stop him. Qi Qingqi criticizes him in her own kind of harsh concern, but he thinks Yue Qingyuan is the only one of the Peak Lords who can truly understand him, to know this ravenous hunger for vengeance surpassed that of duty. Only because of his sister and the young boy he had taken in as a disciple as per Shen Qingqiu’s suggestion did he draw his limits and allowed himself the time to regain his strength and try again.
The man known to be undefeated in every battle had become a man who could not win a single one anymore. A past Liu Qingge would feel indignation and flaming fury at his abilities being doubted so openly, unwilling to put up with the humiliation and storming his way into silencing any who believed him weak.
The him of today cares little for victory if it does not involve getting Shen Qingqiu back.
The years pass without him truly noticing, and he roams a worn path from his peak down to Luo Binghe’s lair like the sun had never risen since that day they both lost their tenderness. Liu Mingyan and Yang Yixuan grow older, but Liu Qingge feels like he’s stuck in a loop of that day that won’t stop repeating until Shen Qingqiu’s body was in peace back at their home in Cang Qiong Mountain, surrounded by a forest of fresh bamboo and flowers.
The demon bastard had gotten too close to severing his left arm with that cursed sword of his, and his dislocated right one had been in no better condition. Mu Qingfang did not tolerate his stubbornness today thanks to that, and it had taken Yue Qingyuan’s direct orders as a sect leader to force him to stay in bed while he recovered.
Liu Mingyan comes to visit. The medicinal herbs rubbed in his wounds and forced down his throat have coerced him into placid numbness, and from where he lays on his bed, his sister drags a chair to sit by his side without saying a word. He spots mellow green robes fluttering right outside his door, and his heart stops for a second before he recognises Ning Yingying’s telltale anxious bouncing from the sound of her small restless feet. She had probably wanted to stop by with her soon-to-be wife and check up on his brother like she used to when she was fourteen, but was stopped from entering to avoid aggravating his injuries. He thinks that fear is unfounded; Ning Yingying may have retained her lively spirit, but she had shed her scatterbrained self and bloomed into a thoughtful young woman with the years. Her late master would be proud, no doubt.
Liu Qingge turns to look at his sister again and her bright eyes are set firmly on him, looking at him like she’s never believed the word of mouth that spoke of him like a king who fell right off his glory, like he’s a god stripped of his divinity. She looks at him like they’re still young and she knew no one more invincible than her dearest big brother.
Liu Mingyan smiles gently and it feels like a lifted sentence, somehow.
“To keep fighting for the man you love is not a mistake.”
Her words play on repeat in the silence that follows, his throat drying and the numbness of the medicine dissipating with each thump of his heartbeat.
She reads the unspoken question and says, her hand merciful over his bandaged one, “Shen Qingqiu is the only person that has made you lose your hatred for defeat.”
All the pieces, at last, fall into place.
His good hand lays on top of hers then, and he roughly whispers one last promise to him.
“I’ll bring him back home.”
His tea had long since gone cold, and he barely notices a young waitress skirting around him to replace it with one warm as he focuses on the tea shop patrons around him speaking loudly amongst themselves.
Truly, what had become of him? Once an honoured Peak Lord, now forced to listen to mindless gossip of men about to go home after a long day of heavyweight labour. Had it not been enough for this wicked universe so derailed from the original novel to somehow make the beautiful main female lead harbour feelings for the cute little sister-like first wife of the protagonist? Must he be subjected to preposterous rumours of said protagonist having forbidden feelings for his dead shizun—the shizun that he himself had been in his previous life, no less!
“What about that man, the War God of Bai Zhan Peak? Word says he and that demon can’t go a day without crossing swords.”
Shen Qingqiu releases a small sigh of relief. At last, they had moved on from the outrageous hearsay clearly taken straight out of a badly written romance story that compensated its lazy plot with overdone drama. He feels it safe enough to take another sip.
“Master Liu Qingge fought a thousand, eight hundred and twenty six battles for Shen Qingqiu.”
What an oddly specific number! Shen Qingqiu chokes on his tea and frantically attempts to mute his undignified noises behind his sleeve. Even in a new body, he’s still much too accustomed to keeping appearances.
“Thousands?” he asks, dumfounded. In front of him, Yang Yixuan nods earnestly.
“Shizun did fight a thousand, eight hundred and twenty six battles for Elder Shen!” he affirms proudly.
Shen Qingqiu cries inside his heart. Again with that outrageously specific, incredibly high number! He glances over at the accused one’s little sister. She’d have a thing or two to say, wouldn’t she? She’s always been a righteous character, standing up for her values and defending the dignity of her then-dead brother in the original work.
Liu Mingyan’s eyes lower down to her empty cup, long dark lashes not fully obscuring their sadness. “One for each day without him.”
One for each day—how many years were those? Five? Surely, his surly shidi wouldn’t—
A sword-calloused, clumsily gentle hand taking his. An almost-kiss in the forest of Bai Zhan Peak. A kiss in the rose petal pool.
Shen Qingqiu buries his head in his hands and wails out loud.