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"We're almost to the bottom floor of the temple," Shen Qingqiu said, as the party of Peak Lords (plus one Demon Lord) ducked one by one through the doorway. They found themselves on the landing of a stairwell leading down into the darkness, the winding stairway curving out of sight. "There may be one last trap, so stay alert."
It was unusual for so many Peak Lords to go on a quest at the same time -- let alone the Sect Leader -- but these were unusual circumstances. Cang Qiong had come under attack by a terrible necromancer, Yanling Daoren, and his army of virulent corpses. They had repelled the attack and defeated the sorcerer, but now an unnatural plague was sweeping through the ranks of Cang Qiong, withering away the life force of all who contracted it. High levels of cultivation were able to stave off the effects, but that left the youngest disciples the most vulnerable; even those that survived the scourge often had their cultivation permanently crippled by it.
Mu Qingfang had worked a miracle as always: he had devised the recipe for a cure within a single night, while the Peak Lords worked day and night to support their stricken disciples and ration out their life-forces. There was just one problem: there wasn't enough of the antidote to go around. Even if Mu Qingfang and all his disciples labored nonstop for seven days and seven nights, they would barely have one-tenth of the amount needed.
Yue Qingyuan had stared down the possibility of the decimation of Cang Qiong, helpless to divert the course of things, until Shen Qingqiu had spoken up. Clever, knowledgeable Shen Qingqiu, who had grown to take his role as the head of the Scholar's Peak so seriously, who had studiously memorized more bestiaries and tomes of artifacts than Yue Qingyuan ever knew had existed, had an idea.
At the heart of the Temple of Ten Thousand Reflections, beyond a gauntlet of traps and guardians, was a cache of cultivation artifacts that included the Ewer Bowl of Plenteous Pouring. According to legend, this artifact had the unique power of being able to reproduce any liquid poured into it it -- infinitely. If they had the Ewer, Shen Qingqiu proposed, then Mu Qingfang could create enough antidote for every cultivator and disciple in the twelve peaks.
A party left Cang Qiong immediately in search of the artifact, flying through the night by sword to get there. For a matter of such importance, Yue Qingyuan left the sect in the hands of Qi Qingqi and came on the expedition himself. He brought with him Liu Qingge as the best fighter among the Peak Lords; Shen Qingqiu as the most knowledgeable; and... also Shang Qinghua for some reason? Shen Qingqiu had insisted that he come along, and Yue Qingyuan had yielded to his wishes as always.
The other hanger-on of Shen-shidi's was a less welcome, but more useful addition; Luo Binghe had attached himself to their party as soon as he heard they were leaving the peaks. Yue Qingyuan had deeply mixed feelings about the young half-demon, which he mostly tried to keep to himself. Whatever had passed between them before, he was making Shen-shidi happy now.
"Who should be the first to descend?" Yue Qingyuan asked Shen Qingqiu as the last of their party gathered on the stairway landing. "Are we likely to be attacked? If so, Liu-shidi or myself should take point. Perhaps you could follow at the rear?"
Luo Binghe scoffed under his breath. "And if something attacks our party from behind; then what?" he said challengingly. It was a fair point, aside from the unnecessary aggression. "Go first if you want. I'll be guarding the rear."
"I just bet you will," Shang Qinghua muttered under his breath, then let out a muffled yelp, though Yue Qingyuan hadn't seen Shen-shidi move.
"I doubt the order of our party will matter much," Shen-shidi said, a thread of exasperation winding through his patient tone. "All of us should be on alert, all the same. Let's go."
Liu Qingge started off down the stairs without another word; Yue Qingyuan followed behind him. Next down the stairway was Shang Qinghua, leaving Shen-shidi and his husband to follow.
The stairs were wide, even, and clear of debris. As Yue Qingyuan took the third step down, however, the other shoe dropped.
The lights went out.
"Watch yourselves!" Liu Qingge's voice snapped from further down the well. "Who's there?"
"I can't see a thing!" Shang Qinghua's voice complained.
From further above, Luo Binghe's voice spoke. "Neither can I, and I should be able to. Shizun, this darkness isn't natural."
Shen Qingqiu's voice came through the dark, cool and collected as ever. "Stay calm, everyone," he said. "This is part of the dungeon's defenses. We have to keep going to get through it, but we should all hold on to one another so we don't get separated."
This prompted some shuffling in the darkness as everyone tried to find everyone else by feel. Yue Qingyuan moved carefully, trusting in his cultivator's honed blindsight to ensure he didn't run off the side of the stair. His hand, outstretched in the darkness, met another hand; he gripped firmly, and reaching behind him found another grip in turn.
"Everyone secured? Good," Shen Qingqiu's voice came again. "Try to get down to the second landing. I have a feeling that the darkness won't extend any farther than that."
Descending an unfamiliar stairway in the dark was a nerve-wracking experience, but it helped to have other people to hold onto for balance, or trust that they would catch him if he slipped off the edge. From the firm, almost painful grip of the hand in front, he was sure it was Liu-shidi's; from the cool, somewhat limp pressure of the hand behind, he thought it might be Shang-shidi's.
At last his feet found a level stretch of floor, and moved forward as far as he safely could so that the others could gather behind him. Sure enough, true to Shen Qingqiu's prediction, as soon as the final footstep met the platform the lights came back up.
The lights came up on a landing in the stairwell that branched off to a hallway of darkened rooms on the right, open space on the left. A landing that was much, much more crowded than expected; instead of five bodies, he found to his astonishment that their party had doubled -- no, more than tripled in size. At a quick glance there were now more than twenty people on the platform -- all of them copies of Shen Qingqiu, Shang Qinghua, Liu Qingge, Luo Binghe, and himself.
It was like being back at a convention, was Shen Qingqiu's first thought, in a messy crowd of cosplayers all pushing their way into the Proud Immortal Demon Way meetup. With about the same level of quality variation in the costume, too.
There were Luo Binghes in classic black and red, some with the green and white accents of Qing Jing Peak, and one that seemed to be pulled straight from the Endless Abyss. He saw his own familiar flowing robes on another body, then another that seemed to be torn and tattered as though made from cheap materials, and when he took a step back he bumped into what was almost a wall of green and white silk as yet a third Shen Qingqiu towered over him. He spotted three Shang Qinghuas and four Yue Qingyuans -- two tall, two short -- three regular Liu Qingges and one that seemed to be a woman cosplaying the War God? There were even a few plain-looking figures lingering around the edges in simple robes and updos, like regular mooks who couldn't be bothered to do more than half-ass their costumes! Shen Qingqiu almost expected to hear a countdown and see the flash of cameras as a hundred different con-goers tried to get the best angle for a group photo!
Except of course, that this wasn't a convention and these weren't costumes. This was very much real life, and real mortal peril too.
By Shen Qingqiu's count eight different people -- five Liu Qingges, two Luo Binghes and one Yue Qingyuan -- all went for their swords at the same time. A vision of the bloodshed that would ensue if they tried to have a swordfight on this narrow little platform flashed before his eyes, and he called out "Stop!" in the strongest voice his cultivation could support.
Somewhat to his surprise they did in fact stop, though all of the Liu Qingges maintained matching scowls, hands twitching towards multiple different Cheng Luans as their gazes narrowed in hard suspicion. "What is this?" demanded one Liu Qingge. "Demons!" said another, and "Trickery!" a third, while a fourth shouted, "Impostors!"
"Don't make any hasty moves!" Shen Qingqiu said, keeping one hand lightly on the wrist of the Liu Qingge closest to him. Which -- he thought this was the same one that he'd been following down the stairs, whose hand he had taken in the dark, but he couldn't be sure. Which was, of course, exactly the point and the problem. "I know what this is."
Even if he hadn't, a glance at his System would have filled in the obvious. The obnoxious blue HUD screen had popped up as soon as they'd entered the temple, and Shen Qingqiu had minimized [Optional Sidequest Started: The Temple of Ten Thousand Reflections!] with a swipe of annoyance. It was still there, hovering at the corner of his vision, and when he flicked a quick glance he saw it now displayed a glowing subheader: [Current Objective: Spot The Fakes! 0/20]
So, they were doing this, huh?
"You recognize this?" gulped one of the Shang Qinghuas. There were five of them, all trying to sidle into corners or otherwise get out of the line of sight, but this one looked correct to Shen Qingqiu. He turned towards the author-turned transmigrator.
"Yes, and I'm sure you will too with a little prompting," he said, glaring at Shang Qinghua. "We're dealing with doppelgangers."
A Liu Qingge -- not the one he had a grip on -- nodded shortly. "So, demons!" he proclaimed.
Another Shen Qingqiu -- that was weird! -- let out a condescending sigh. "They aren't actually demonic in nature. This is part of the temple's defenses," he said. "It's a trap that reads the minds of its victims and creates illusory doubles of them."
Huh! So did the fake copies have the same information they did? That... would be really cool! And a huge problem.
"They can't drain us like a succubus or a huli jing would, but they are still dangerous," Shen Qingqiu stressed. "They are intended to slow us down, cause confusion and wear down our defenses. If we let down our guard or turn our backs, they will attack. And if we try to go forward with one of them still in the party, they will likely sabotage us before we can retrieve the Ewer."
Shang Qinghua wore a look of slowly dawning enlightenment. "Ohhh, right," he said. "That."
Yes, that!
The doppelgangers arc had been a harem plotline -- Shen Qingqiu had usually skipped over those, but he'd doubled back to read this one since other commenters had indicated that Luo Binghe actually made an appearance. One of the less scrupulous wives, Fen Bian, had been messing around with dark magic to try to advance her position in the harem (or maybe to seduce Binghe? Honestly, her motives had been pretty unclear.) Predictably, the spell had gone wild and caught up three other wives in the process, creating enough magical duplicates to make a mini-harem of their own.
Since all of the copies were identical and insisted that they were the originals, it had been up to Luo Binghe to sort out the confusion. The protagonist had stepped easily into the role of master detective, sussing out minor details that anyone else would have overlooked, and expertly discerning the originals from the fakes in a masterful display of deductive logic!
It had, altogether, been a pretty cool chapter, or would have been if the story arc hadn't devolved at the end into Luo Binghe having sex with six of the duplicates all at once. There'd been something about Luo Binghe channeling the magic spell through himself, blah blah blah qi resonance, but Shen Qingqiu had stopped reading at that point. The usual Airplane drivel.
Ugh. Well, that was not going to be on the table this time!!
"But why are there so many, if there's only five of us?" Luo Binghe said, looking from one to another uncertainly.
"The doubles are drawn from our minds, from our perceptions and memories of our friends," Shen Qingqiu explained. "A separate illusion is created for each person's perception of another person. In order to defeat them, we need to figure out which ones are fake, and also whose perceptions they were made from. Each double contains a sizable amount of spiritual energy from the person they were drawn from. If the person dispels the double they created, the energy will return to them; otherwise it will be lost."
All of the Liu Qingges scowled in near-stereo. "That's such a pain!" one of them complained. "Let's just fight them."
One of the Luo Binghes lit up, tugging at the closest Shen Qingqiu's sleeve. "Shizun, that one is definitely one of the enemies, right?" he said eagerly. "We should destroy it!"
"Possibly, but that is also something the real Liu-shidi might say," that Shen Qingqiu replied. "We have to approach this carefully."
Shen Qingqiu reflected that in the original, Luo Binghe's OP protagonist IQ had been more than up to the challenge of telling the originals from the fakes. He had a suspicion that this time around, Luo Binghe was not actually the one best positioned to make that determination -- he wasn't exactly an unbiased observer when it came to most of the Peak Lords. This was most likely going to be up to himself and Shang Qinghua.
The real risk of the doppelganger plot, of course, was not just that the fakes themselves were dangerous; danger could always be overcome. The point was of course to sow doubts and outrages between the targets of the spell, drawing out people's deepest thoughts and their hidden grudges into light. That had been the final straw for Fen Bian, not just the casting of the spell itself -- seeing the cruel and distorted versions of her fellow wives had revealed the malicious person she was inside, and cast her from favor in the harem for good.
"Some of these fakes are pretty obvious, though," Shang Qinghua tsked as he shook his head. He gestured to another Shang Qinghua, lurking at the corner of the platform as though the shadows could hide him. "I mean, this one has hamster ears! Who the heck came up with that?!"
...Ahem! Shen Qingqiu cleared his throat, whipped out his fan, and said nothing.
One of the Yue Qingyuans spoke up, rescuing him from the awkward moment. "Perhaps instead of jumping into combat, we can restrain the fakes until we are confident enough to move forward."
"Good suggestion, Yue-shixiong," Shen Qingqiu said immediately. He cast around and his gaze settled on the round, bulging lip of the platform where two sets of stairs met. "Here, let's draw a containment array. We can start with the obvious ones, then reason down the rest."
Shen Qingqiu, two Yue Qingyuans, and one of the Shang Qinghuas joined in drawing the containment array, while the Luo Binghes and Liu Qingges mostly jostled elbows and bumped chests in the background. Shen Qingqiu surreptitiously checked the work afterwards to make sure that it hadn't been sabotaged by any doubles, but it was holding good, for now. Whichever one of these Yue Qingyuans was a fake, they seemed to be playing along.
Hamster Shang Qinghua was the first one to be bundled into the containment array. Alongside him went a copy of Shen Qingqiu who was the very image of the cool and elegant Xiu Ya Sword, aside from the minor detail of being eight feet tall and with shoulders to match. There was also a version of Luo Binghe with exaggerated, almost bestial demonic traits; eyes that glowed like red-hot coals, blackened claws in talon-like hands and smoke rising from his coarse and wild hair. That one fought like a tiger, hissing and baring needle-sharp teeth, until two other Luo Binghes and three Yue Qingyuans combined to push him across the line into the array, where he sulked.
Alongside those three distorted images went two mirror images who barely seemed to qualify as doubles at all; they were the size and shape of people but had blank faces and generic topknot hairstyles, distinguished from one another only by characters emblazoned on their chests: one that read 'LEADER,' and the other that read 'TRAITOR.'
With those five partitioned away, that still left a crowd on the platform; five originals and fifteen doubles. "This is not going to be easy," a Yue Qingyuan remarked, looking from one to another. "Until we can determine who's real and who's fake, we'll be unable to advance."
One of the Liu Qingges frowned and crossed his arms, looking over the crowd of remaining doubles. "We need to pick one person to be the judge," he announced. "Who can we trust?"
Obviously, the author! "Shang Qinghua," Shen Qingqiu said, at the exact same moment Luo Binghe, Shang Qinghua, and Yue Qingyuan all said, "Shen Qingqiu."
The cultivators all glared around the circle at each other, Shen Qingqiu doing his best to attempt telepathic communication via intense eye contact with what was hopefully the real Shang Qinghua. Really, dude? Really?? This is your story!
Shang Qinghua -- if that was really Shang Qinghua -- made a face back at him that might have been, As if I remember all the dumb details! That was your obsession, not mine!!
"Ahem," Shen Qingqiu cleared his throat again, when his best attempts at ball-tossing were soundly lobbed back at him. "Well, this master will do his best. At the very least we can start with all of my doubles, since they're so obviously out of place."
With some urging, and the occasional fan-swatting, the crowd of cultivators and copies sorted themselves out into groups. Once all of the Shen Qingqius were collected in one place, the oddities really began to jump out.
"That one, we determined is obviously not real," Shen Qingqiu said, with a wave of his hand towards the giant inside the circle. "Much too tall, and I don't have gray hair, either!" As if! Shen Qingqiu's cultivation level meant he had transmigrated into a body frozen in its twenties, never to sport a wrinkle or silver hair!
"Fate spins along as it should," the giant-Shen Qingqiu said tranquilly.
"This one also looks quite different from the rest; too small and the clothes are wrong." This was the one that Shen Qingqiu had noticed earlier as being dressed in cheaper cloth, an almost ragged version of his own Immortal Master outfit. Shen Qingqiu frowned at that double for a moment, who avoided his gaze and mostly looked at the ground. What was up with that, hah?
"And as for this one -- preposterous!" The third alternate Shen Qingqiu was the right size, and the clothes were right, but the face -- aie! No human being was this pretty, not even cultivators! Someone in this group had a ridiculously idealized view of 'Shen Qingqiu!' "Luo Binghe, was this you?"
"No, Shizun!" one Luo Binghe denied, while another shook his curly head vehemently.
Liu Qingge looked them over, frowning. "Why are you so sure that one's a fake?" he said. "Looks right to me."
Shen Qingqiu sputtered. "He's literally glowing!" There was a faint luminescence emanating from this particular Shen Qingqiu, like a strong light held behind a pearl; if he'd been there during the blackout period, they could have used him as a beacon.
"He's got roses floating behind his head," one of the Shang Qinghuas pointed out helpfully.
"And sparkles," Luo Binghe said in a dangerous tone.
"So?" Liu Qingge demanded.
"...We will take it that this one is yours, then," Shen Qingqiu said after a moment's awkward pause. Several of the Luo Binghes looked murderous; two of the Shang Qinghuas looked anywhere else, hands in their pockets and whistling faintly.
Once they were done ushering the glowing Shen Qingqiu into containment, Yue Qingyuan spoke up. "I concur with your judgment on these other doubles," he said, indicating the growing crowd of fake Shen Qingqius now corralled by the array. He turned towards the Shen Qingqiu who had spoken up on the doubles puzzle earlier, the condescending one. "But this person looks identical to you, Shen-shidi, and seems to have the same knowledge. We can't conclusively identify him as a fake."
Indeed, the two Shen Qingqius who now stood side-by-side were so alike -- without even the minor differences in clothing that some of the other near-twins exhibited -- that it was more like looking into a mirror than anything else. Or into a video feed, since it wasn't flipped left-to-right like a mirror view would be. Did his hair part really look like that from the front?! So weird! There really was no telling!
...At least until the Shen Qingqiu on the left opened his mouth and said: "Yeah, well, that's because you're a himbo who couldn't find your own prick in a dark room with the help of a flashlight."
Everyone else in the dungeon -- even the doubles contained in the array -- turned to stare at this declaration. Shen Qingqiu scowled in response to the looks, and tapped his fan against the back of his wrist in a meaningful way. "Come on, don't just stand around with your thumbs up your asses," he scolded. "If you aren't going to get to work, you might as well just kill yourselves now and save the world the oxygen."
"...Ahem!" The Shen Qingqiu on the right cleared his throat loudly, fanning himself rapidly, and said, "Yes, this one is definitely a fake."
Two of the Liu Qingges joined forces to bundle the foul-mouthed Shen Qingqiu into the array. "FUCK YOUR MOTHER!" he screamed as the circle closed behind him.
"Yeah, that one was probably mine," one of the remaining Shang Qinghuas said, a little muffled through the hand hiding his face.
He got a death glare from a Luo Binghe for that. "It's surprising that Shang-shishu would get Shizun's appearance so correct, and yet completely wrong on his personality," he said threateningly.
"That's because your Shang-shishu is a punk ass little bitch," the rude Shen Qingqiu said helpfully.
Shang Qinghua flipped him a rude gesture, then turned back towards the one remaining Shen Qingqiu. "Y'know, that's surprisingly satisfying," he confided.
"Don't get too cocky, Airplane," Shen Qingqiu chided him in low tones. "You're next."
With all of the fake Shen Qingqius contained in the array, the real one was left to breathe a sigh of relief. That just left... three of Shang Qinghua, four each of Yue Qingyuan and Luo Binghe, and all of the Liu Qingges. Great.
Shen Qingqiu looked over the remaining An Ding Peak Lords. The one with hamster features was obviously a clone; the generic-looking mook with the TRAITOR tag was probably another double of his. That left three. They all seemed the same in terms of height and feature, but one of the Shang Qinghuas was wearing a blue fur-trimmed cape that didn't match the An Ding uniform at all.
"That's Mobei-jun's cloak," one of the Luo Binghes volunteered, following Shen Qingqiu's gaze. "Shang-shishu usually wears it when he's staying at the Northern Palace."
Which meant this double had likely come from Luo Binghe's mind, if he had the clearest memory of Shang Qinghua in the North. "But he wasn't wearing it today," Shen Qingqiu said firmly, and that one went into the array with all the rest.
The last two Shang Qinghuas looked identical; Shen Qingqiu couldn't narrow it down any further with the information he had. He moved on.
Among the four Yue Qingyuans, two of them were taller and two were shorter. But which was the correct height? Shen Qingqiu recalled Yue Qingyuan being very tall, but he couldn't rely on memory alone.
"Yue-shixiong," he ventured, deciding on a test to draw out their reactions. "What do you think of Luo Binghe?"
The Yue Qingyuans exchanged glances, then looked back towards him. "He is our ally for now, but I make certain to keep an eye on him," said one of the shorter ones.
The other short one nodded. "I don't think I will ever be able to fully trust him," he said. "But he has demonstrated his willingness to work together, for your sake."
"Whatever makes you happy, Shen-shidi, I will accept," one of the taller Yue Qingyuans said.
The fourth Yue Qingyuan let out a menacing cackle. "That half-breed will be cast down, and Shen Qingqiu will be mine!" he declared.
A fistfight immediately broke out between that Yue Qinqyuan two of the Luo Binghes. "Okay, that one's definitely a fake then," Shen Qingqiu said, manfully resisting the urge to hide behind his fan. He redirected the gesture, pointing his fan at the other tall Yue Qingyuan, the one with a placid smile and a big-brother demeanor. "Which means this one must also be fake, since he is the same height as the fake. The real Yue Qingyuan has to be one of the shorter ones."
But beyond that, he couldn't find any way to distinguish between them; their answers had both been things that the real Yue Qingyuan would say, and their looks were once again identical.
Next, he looked to the crowd of Liu Qingges. Seeing them all side-by-side like this, there was definitely some variation. Three of them looked very similar, but two stood out; the unusually feminine one he had noticed in the first moment, and on the opposite end of the spectrum was a Liu Qingge whose face and build were ridiculously masculine. With bulging muscles and a heavy unibrow, he looked more like a caricature of a man than anything else. Perhaps that one was Shen Qingqiu's misconception? He hoped not. How embarrassing, really, to reveal that he thought of Liu Qingge as a paragon of manliness!
Shen Qingqiu singled out the brute-Qingge first, and once he was safely contained, the femme-Qingge. He thought it safer to pick them off one at a time; if all four fake Liu Qingges decided the jig was up and attacked at once, it really would turn into a brawl.
Fortunately that didn't happen, and then they were three. Three Liu Qingges who looked virtually identical, all with the same pretty features and scowl and beauty mark under his eye, wearing clothing with only the most minor of variations. Fuck, this was hard!
Surely the real Luo Binghe would be easy to determine? Shouldn't he know his own husband, after all? Shen Qingqiu turned to the four Luo Binghes with uncertain eyes.
More so than with the remaining Liu Qingges, with the Luo Binghes there were minor differences in clothing and accessories. Aside from the markedly-demonic Binghe there were two in red-and-black robes, and two with the white midcoats that marked him as an ancillary member of Qing Jing. Binghe did have a coat like that, he knew, but had he been wearing it when they left Cang Qiong yesterday? He was ashamed to admit that he couldn't remember.
They all looked like Luo Binghe, that was the problem, even if they didn't necessarily look exactly like the Luo Binghe he'd walked into this dungeon with.
"This one's wrong," he eventually decided, settling on one of the black-coated ones and flipping his fan towards him. This particular Binghe carried a long white tablet Shen Qingqiu didn't recognize, and his guan was much more elaborate and decked with badges of rank that Shen Qingqiu was sure he'd never seen before. He didn't look like Shen Qingqiu's husband; he looked like an emperor, and that just wasn't something his Binghe had ever had any interest in.
"You dare to challenge this Lord?" the Luo Binghe under discussion demanded, outraged, but the more he looked the more Shen Qingqiu was certain; the sword his hand flew towards was Xin Mo, not Zheng Yang, and Xin Mo was broken.
The crowd of remaining Liu Qingges took a little too much enthusiasm in shoving the emperor-Binghe into the array. Oh, well.
"This disciple had a thought," Luo Binghe spoke up loudly. "Each of us has a spiritual sword, attuned to our own personal qi. Could we not use that as proof of identity, or at least to narrow down some of the fakes? By channeling our spiritual energy through our swords?"
Shen Qingqiu thought about it. It wasn't a bad suggestion, but he wasn't sure it would work. An illusion could fake a display of channeling spiritual energy as easily as it could fake anything else. Before he could take the line of thought further, however, Yue Qingyuan was already reaching for his sword. "If doing so will help my martial brothers regain confidence in me, then it is what I must do," he said, and set his hand on the hilt.
"No, wait, don't!" screeched Shen Qingqiu -- and one of the Shang Qinghuas, both of them jolting forward at the same time to stop Yue Qingyuan.
Paused, and looked each other in the eye. Of everyone here only the real Shang Qinghua -- and perhaps Shen Qingqiu's fake, but that one had already been isolated -- would know exactly why Yue Qingyuan could not be allowed to draw his sword. Greatly daring, Shen Qingqiu mouthed Objective? With a grim nod, Shang Qinghua mouthed back, Fakes.
As one, they turned slowly back to the second Shang Qinghua, who hadn't moved and who looked greatly confused. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he said.
"He's a fake," Shen Qingqiu said with certainty, and the real Shang Qinghua nodded to back him up.
"If Shen-shidi is certain?" Yue Qingyuan looked doubtful, and Luo Binghe confused, but Liu Qingge didn't hesitate; the false Shang Qinghua yelped in protest as he was carried away to the circle.
Shen Qingqiu breathed a covert sigh of relief. At last, he knew which Shang Qinghua he could rely on. Progress! Of the twenty doubles, only five now remained -- one extra Yue Qingyuan, two extra Luo Binghes, and two extra Liu Qingges.
"Why bother with containment?" one of the three Liu Qingges demanded once the fake Shang Qinghua was deposited into the array. "We should just kill them."
"Shizun, he's trying to provoke us to fight among ourselves. He must be one of the doppelgangers!" one of the white-robed Luo Binghes was quick to say.
A Yue Qingyuan sighed. "Yes, except that that is something the real Liu-shidi would say."
"Hey," another Liu Qingge said with a huff, while a third merely shrugged; it was true, after all.
"We should avoid fighting as long as possible," Shen Qingqiu said firmly. "Remember, one purpose of the temple's defenses is to tire us out. There may still be other challenges ahead; I recall hearing that the final door into the treasure vault is guarded by a powerful shrine maiden."
The remaining black-robed Luo Binghe gave them all a sunny, confident smile. "Shizun needn't worry," he assured them. "If there's a beautiful maiden at the final gate, I'll work my charms on her and she'll swoon into my arms with no trouble at all!"
"Fake," Shang Qinghua, Liu Qingge, and Yue Qingyuan said all in chorus, then exchanged glances. Shen Qingqiu hmphed.
"That one's got to be yours, bro -- ah, I mean Shen-shixiong," Shang Qinghua said, barely remembering his manners in the mixed company. "Nobody else who knew Luo-shizhi would ever make that mistake."
"Shizun!" Luo Binghe's eyes filled with tears, and no matter how many times he pulled this trick, Shen Qingqiu couldn't stop himself from wincing in anticipation. "Is that really what you think of me?"
"That I'm some kind of womanizer?" the other Luo Binghe chimed in.
"That I would ever be unfaithful to you?" the first added.
Ah! Being double-teamed like this really was unfair!! "Of course I don't think that, Binghe, of course I wouldn't..." Shen Qingqiu trailed off, tongue-tied. His usual reassurances fell flat in the face of the inexorable logic of the spell; clearly there was a part of him that still believed that, or else the temple's magic wouldn't have been able to pick it from his mind.
Twice the usual amount of teary, accusing eyes were trained on him, and Shen Qingqiu was not equipped to deal with him. He flipped his fan open in front of his face, but even that seemed like inadequate cover. "Begging your pardon, this master is going to... go scout ahead."
"You shouldn't go alone," one of the Liu Qingges immediately objected, and another added, "What if you get jumped?"
I'm more likely to get jumped if I stay! Shen Qingqiu thought. "I won't go far. Just to explore this hallway and find the exit."
One of the Luo Binghes gave the Liu Qingges who had spoken up an ugly glare. "Maybe Liu-shishu just wants to get Shizun alone."
"What's that supposed to mean?" the third Liu Qingge demanded.
The other Luo Binghe said blandly, "That one of you might be a doppelganger who would attack him if given the chance. What else?"
Shang Qinghua raised a tentative hand. "I can go with Shen-shixiong if you think he might need backup?" he suggested.
"What good would you be as backup?" one of the Luo Binghes said. Shang Qinghua ducked his head and shrugged, as if to say Rude, but fair.
"This master is more than capable of taking care of himself, and would appreciate having Shang-shidi to watch his back," Shen Qingqiu said firmly. When Yue Qingyuan and Liu Qingge looked likely to object Shen Qingqiu quickly added, "The rest of you can stay to keep an eye on each other, and the doubles contained in the array. We will return shortly."
Shen Qingqiu set off down the hallway at a power walk, Shang Qinghua falling in flanking position behind him. The side passage consisted of a hallway that ended at a forbidding-looking gate, which was closed. On either side of the corridor were doors, offset to each other, which opened onto small chambers. The side doors were not locked and the side rooms, when he checked a few, were small, dusty, and empty. Whatever they had been used for once, they weren't in use now.
As soon as they were out of hearing range of the others Shen Qingqiu grabbed Shang Qinghua's sleeve and dragged him into a doorway to shake him like a Polaroid picture. "What are the doppelgangers doing here?" he hissed. "That was a harem plot! The Temple of Ten Thousand Reflections just had the guardian maiden that Luo Binghe seduced!"
"Uhhhh..." Shang Qinghua's teeth threatened to rattle, so Shen Qingqiu left off the shaking. "Okay, okay, I remember. This puzzle was originally meant to go in the Temple of Reflections -- you know, the Temple is all about mirrors, the treasures multiply things, the puzzle creates reflections too. It's thematic, you know?"
Shang Qinghua brightened as he warmed to his topic, waving his hands expressively. "It was supposed to be Bing-ge facing different fragments of his own soul, and having to recognize and deal with all these disparate elements of himself that he'd been repressing." He sighed. "But the readers were getting bored, the temple arc already had too many puzzles, there hadn't been any papapa in twenty chapters, so I cut the doppelgangers plot and put in a pretty girl for Bing-ge instead."
Shen Qingqiu wanted to bite through his fan. He would have loved to read that sequence, to see his favorite getting such in-depth character work. To read about all the parts of Binghe that he normally hid from the world, to see him turn that strength and intellect inwards instead of outwards, to see him gather the courage to triumph over the pain of self-reflection! All lost, and for what? Another generic waifu who had disappeared into the harem as soon as the arc was over, never to be mentioned again?! "You cowardly hack," was all he managed to get out through gritted teeth.
"Hurtful, bro," Shang Qinghua replied. "Anyway, what does it matter? We've got to deal with this now if we're going to get the cup thingy for Mu Qingfang."
"The Ewer Bowl of Plenteous Pouring, which you named so don't you dare get shy about it now," Shen Qingqiu said mercilessly, "is probably behind that last gate."
Without much else to do, they continued to the end of the hallway. The double doors took up the entire breadth and height of the passage. Each door had a ring set close to the middle, but the rings were flush with the stone and neither Shen Qingqiu nor Shang Qinghua could pull them free. An inscription running down the outside edges of each door read, in seal script that took a few minutes to decipher, "Only those tranquil of body and whole of mind may cast their shadow upon the Pool of Reflection's Heart."
Portentous, but not especially subtle, Shen Qingqiu thought. He had a feeling that no amount of effort or spiritual energy expended would make a dent until they'd met whatever bullshit criteria the Temple had for them.
He took a step back and called up his System interface. 'System, what are the requirements for proceeding to the next area?' he asked.
[Thanking host for asking! Host must complete the current sub-objective: Spot the Fakes! Current progress: 0/20.]
'Zero?!' Shen Qingqiu screeched mentally. 'We have at least dozen of the fakes stuck in that containment array! Even if some of our guesses are wrong, at least some of them have to count as spotted! Statistically speaking!'
[Guesses are not sufficient to count as credit towards the quest!] the System chirped. [To progress on this objective, the duplicate Peak Lords and duplicate Protagonists must be fully eliminated.]
Shen Qingqiu banished the System window in disgust. Typical System bullshit! The wording of the objective didn't say anything about 'eliminate,' it clearly said 'spot!' Ugh. "How's your quest progress?" he asked, in a forlorn hope that Shang Qinghua might have a different report.
"Big fat zero," Shang Qinghua said gloomily. "I think we're going to have to start killing these dudes, bro."
"Damn," Shen Qingqiu said.
A quick tour of the rest of the hallway showed no other branches or openings, so the two of them returned to the stairway landing. They walked in on some kind of fist-fight in progress -- one of the Luo Binghes had one of the Liu Qingges by the ponytail -- but they had separated and were on opposite sides of the platform by the time Shen Qingqiu walked up, so it really wasn't worth the effort to chastise anyone.
Shang Qinghua cleared his throat. "So, uh, yeah," he said. "That containment array is getting pretty crowded. We need to start clearing some space."
"We could just --" one of the Liu Qingges started to say.
"No," answered Shen Qingqiu, both Yue Qingyuans, and Shang Qinghua in weary unanimity. Liu Qingge huffed.
"Shizun said that the fakes have to be dispelled by the people whose minds they came out of," said one of the Luo Binghes. "How do we do that?"
"Oh, uh," said Shang Qinghua, and fumbled in a qiankun pouch at his waist for a moment. He came up with a double handful of talismans, a few of them spilling from his grip to float onto the platform. "Applying these should do it."
Shen Qingqiu took a stack of the talismans, and looked over the radicals for a moment. He nodded. Yeah, that'd do it.
"If they can only be dispelled by their originators, then won't that serve as proof that the person who dispels them is the real one?" Yue Qingyuan asked. "Could we use that as confirmation of identity?"
"No, unfortunately, because the doubles can also dispel one another," Shen Qingqiu answered. "In that case the spiritual energy will just go into the duplicate, then the next, until the last fake is finally dispelled. Similarly, we can't take a failure to dispel as proof of identity either, since the doppelganger could simply pretend to activate the talisman.
"Every fake we can eliminate will make the real ones stronger. We should start with the ones we know for certain. For instance --" he turned towards the two generic mooks, the 'LEADER' and 'TRAITOR' ones he strongly suspected were meant to represent Yue Qingyuan and Shang Qinghua respectively. "I'm pretty sure that these two duplicates belong to Liu-shidi."
He handed a couple of the talismans to the closest Liu Qingge. The War God -- or a close facsimile -- scowled again, but took them and stepped forward. He slapped a talisman onto one of the faceless figures, which dissolved into a shower of silver sparks, and then the second. "Hmph," he said.
[02/20 doubles spotted!] the System alert helpfully chirped. Yes! Finally.
Shen Qingqiu cleared his throat. "And that one as well, Liu-shidi?" He gestured towards the unnaturally-pretty Shen Qingqiu, still glowing and sparkling away. With visible reluctance, Liu Qingge dissolved that one as well -- and, without being prompted, the Abyssal Luo Binghe. Ah. Shen Qingqiu supposed he should have expected that.
"Well, we might as well take care of the rest of mine while we're here," Shen Qingqiu said. "Whose idea was this?" He pointed to the extra-tall, salt-and-pepper Shen Qingqiu -- honestly, this had been bugging him since minute 1!
Luo Binghe looked sheepish and slowly raised his hand. "Ah, that might be me," he admitted.
"Wh - Binghe?!" Shen Qingqiu was shocked! Wasn't Luo Binghe his husband? Shouldn't he know him better than anyone!?
"Shizun has always seemed larger than life to this disciple!" Luo Binghe defended himself.
"And the gray hair?" he demanded. This body was handsome and youthful, dammit! Don't tell him Luo Binghe had spotted some silver and not warned him!?
"Shizun has always seemed exceptionally wise and venerable to this disciple, as well!"
Shang Qinghua muffled a laugh. Shen Qingqiu pressed two fingers to the point between his eyes. "Fine," he sighed. "Just... get rid of it, okay?"
Luo Binghe stepped forward and accepted a talisman without further comment, and the giant Shen Qingqiu vanished in another shower of sparks.
"And this one?" Shen Qingqiu asked, indicating the raggedy-looking Shen Qingqiu. On closer inspection, especially side-by-side with a more accurate double, he looked more than ragged -- he looked underfed, as well, with dark shadows under his eyes, and stared at the ground rather than meeting anyone else's eye.
It was perhaps not entirely surprising when Yue Qingyuan stepped forward, avoiding Shen Qingqiu's gaze, and dispelled the shade without comment. A little upsetting, perhaps, but not surprising. Ah, Zhangmen-shixiong, the past never really leaves us, does it? Or at least, it hasn't left you.
"I guess that leaves this one for Shang-shidi, then," Shen Qingqiu said instead, turning to the foul-mouthed Shen Qingqiu who was the last one left.
Shang Qinghua slapped the talisman home with a little too much relish. Shen Qingqiu glared at him while the other-him disappeared into silver dust. You enjoyed that, didn't you Airplane? Shang Qinghua only shrugged at him.
[07/20 doubles spotted!]
With all of the fake Shen Qingqius disposed of, Shen Qingqiu felt confident enough to step forward with a stack of talismans to eliminate all the doppelgangers that had been dug up from his own psyche: the hamster Shang Qinghua, the tall and brotherly Yue Qingyuan, and the handsome, charming, ladykiller Luo Binghe. Last in line was the muscle-bro Liu Qingge; somewhat to his startlement, when he slapped the talisman on this last one, there was no effect. "Ah?" he said, startled. He pulled back, checked the paper in his hand. No, the talisman was good, but -- no effect? The System display stayed stuck on [10/20], the same as before.
One of the Luo Binghes sighed, stepped forward, and held out a hand for the talisman stack. "Let me, Shizun," he said; sure enough, when he applied the talisman, the brutish Liu Qingge vanished in a shower of sparks.
"Was that one not mine?" Shen Qingqiu said in confusion. "But I have always thought Liu-shidi was the pinnacle of manliness."
"Did you really, bro?" Shang Qinghua spoke up. "Because I seem to recall you blasted my ears with complaints about how you always thought Liu Qingge was, and I quote, 'much too pretty to be such a man's man.' "
"He said what?" one of the Liu Qingges outside the circle demanded, sounding shocked. Shen Qingqiu very pointedly avoided meeting his eyes as he pulled another talisman, applied it to the shoulder of the femme-looking Qingge, and got the expected shower of sparks.
Without being asked, Luo Binghe also dispatched the Shang Qinghua in the winter cloak and the remaining tall Yue Qingyuan -- the one who had spouted such stereotypical lines about Shen Qingqiu belonging to him. Harsh judgements from the Protagonist! Shen Qingqiu couldn't help but shiver.
[14/20 doubles spotted!]
Off to the side, one of the remaining Liu Qingges was attempting to shake down Shang Qinghua. "He said I was pretty?"
Luo Binghe was quick to point this out. "Isn't that proof that this one is a fake, Shizun?" he demanded.
Shang Qinghua let out a resigned sigh. "No, uh, unfortunately, that is -- "
"-- something the real Liu Qingge would say," all the Peak Lords finished wearily.
"It seems that we have plenty of dispelling talismans left," Yue Qingyuan said, looking through the stack. "Why don't we just have everyone take turns trying them on everyone? Sooner or later, we'd hit on the correct combination."
"Ahhhh, that's... not such a good idea," Shang Qinghua hedged.
"Why not?"
Shang Qinghua fidgeted uncomfortably. Shen Qingqiu sighed. "Because they're not dispelling talismans, as such. They 'dispel' the illusions by applying a strong burst of disrupting energy, which overloads their structural integrity. They most likely wouldn't kill any of us," Shen Qingqiu said hastily, to a ring of horrified faces. "But they absolutely would hurt us, and quite possibly knock us unconscious -- and if we guessed wrong, leave us to the mercy of any remaining doppelgangers."
Trust Shang Qinghua to have come up with a xianxia version of a taser. And to walk around with half a hundred of them in his pockets.
"Do you mean to say that I just... killed Shizun?" Luo Binghe said shakily. His face had gone green-pale.
Before Shen Qingqiu could reply, the other Luo Binghe whirled around, sprinted to the edge of the platform, and vomited off it. The rest of the party didn't have quite that extreme a reaction, but Yue Qingyuan was clearly violently upset. Shen Qingqiu sighed. He really had been hoping they could get through this without having to go into the messy details.
"So by 'dispelling' the doubles, you actually mean 'kill' them," Liu Qingge said. "That's what I've been saying. We could have just killed them straight off, and avoided all this fuss."
"Conservation of energy, shidi," Shen Qingqiu said firmly.
"And besides, there's still the possibility that we guessed wrong," Shang Qinghua added. "If the talisman hits one of us it'll hurt, but it's survivable. But if we go around killing indiscriminately, there's no take-backs."
"So what?" Liu Qingge said, crossing his arms with a snort. "I say we should all just fight. Whoever's strongest will come out on top."
Shen Qingqiu gave him an incredulous look. "Shidi, that could mean that some of us get hurt -- even killed," he said. After all, the doubles had all the skills of the originals! Even a fake Luo Binghe or Liu Qingge was dangerous!
"Who cares?" Liu Qingge said. "If anyone gets killed, that's on them for not being good enough. Better to go on to the objective with strong copies than weak deadwood."
"Shen-shidi said that improperly destroying the fakes could damage our spiritual energy," Yue Qingyuan said. He seemed mostly recovered from the earlier shock, but there was still a sense of violent upset barely contained by stoicism -- a warning sign to anyone listening.
But Liu Qingge pushed right past the warning. "Shen Qingqiu is a snake and a liar," he said. "If he says something, we should definitely do the opposite."
Everyone's attention zeroed in on Liu Qingge at once. The War God only glared back at them all. "What are you all looking so shocked about?" he said. "He led us into this trap in the first place. I knew from the start we shouldn't have trusted him."
"You --" Both of the Luo Binghes started forward, radiating murder. Before they could reach Liu Qingge, Yue Qingyuan was already there.
Liu Qingge moved into a stance, reaching towards Cheng Luan, but Yue Qingyuan moved with blinding speed -- his hand impacted Liu Qingge's shoulder, and Liu Qingge's strike bled into silver sparks as the doppelganger dissolved into nothingness.
[15/20 doubles spotted!]
"Yue-shixiong -- that was...?" Shen Qingqiu couldn't keep the shock from his voice. That Liu Qingge had come from Yue Qingyuan's mind? He had never thought that Yue Qingyuan had such a negative impression of their shidi! He'd never given any indication of it. Weren't the two of them friends? Hadn't they been disciples together?
Off to the side, though, Shang Qinghua grimaced and gave a subtle nod. Shen Qingqiu thought about demanding answers, thought about what sort of answer he might get, and thought better of it.
Without further comment Yue Qingyuan stepped to the containment array and banished the king-like Luo Binghe, then the last remaining duplicate of Shang Qinghua. The silver dust swirled inside the confined of the circle, then slowly settled. The containment array was empty; the last of the imposters were still among them.
"After everything, it seems that three remain," Shen Qingqiu said, looking slowly around the platform. "All of the doubles of myself and Shang-shidi have been eliminated. One of these Yue-shixiongs, one of these Binghes, and one Liu-shidi are not the real ones."
"Shizun, I'm the real one," both Luo Binghes protested simultaneously. "It's me! Your husband! Don't you know me?"
"This master is at a loss how to prove my true self any more so than I have already done," both Yue Qingyuans admitted in unison.
Both of the Liu Qingges nodded sharply at once. "You should stun both of us," one declared confidently. "Just to be sure," added the second.
"Shizun, what should we do?"
"Shen-shidi, what do you recommend?"
"Do it." "I'm ready."
Damn! Why was this so hard! Why were these final duplicates so perfect? Whose mind among them could have conjured...
Shen Qingqiu's thoughts screeched to a halt, then rewound to the start. He turned to look at Shang Qinghua, who blinked back at him.
Luo Binghe, Yue Qingyuan, Liu Qingge and himself -- each of them had produced four duplicates, one each of their companions, and each of them had dispelled four. The only exception was Shang Qinghua, who had only dispelled one -- the foul-mouthed double of Shen Qingqiu, who had looked so perfectly identical to the real thing that only his rudeness had revealed him.
Shit.
All of the remaining doubles were Shang Qinghua's. ...Shang Qinghua, the author, who knew each and every detail of these people because he had created them. Their appearance, their personality, their histories had all come from him in the first place. He had gotten only Shen Qingqiu wrong, because of all of them here only Shen Qingqiu was not his creation. Even then the double's appearance had been perfect; only the personality had differed. There was no detail they could use to identify the remaining doubles, because there was no detail about them that Shang Qinghua didn't know.
"Airplane, you shouldn't have come," he muttered to his fellow transmigrator aside.
Shang Qinghua looked at him for a moment in hurt, before his eyes widened as he followed the same train of thought that Shen Qingqiu had just run down. When it reached the same station, he winced. "Yeah, uh, probably not," he said. "What do we do now? Should we just tase all of them?"
"No," Shen Qingqiu denied after a moment's thought. "Best case scenario, we'd have three unconscious people -- we wouldn't be able to carry them all and it's not safe to leave them behind. Worst case, we'd guess wrong and we'd be fighting the doppelgangers three against two."
"Then what should we do?" Shang Qinghua asked.
What should they do? What could they do? Shen Qingqiu frowned deeply, tapping the guard of his fan against his palm as he turned the problem over. They might have no choice but to start guessing. But he didn't want to resort to that unless he absolutely had to, because the fucking System would probably make sure that things fell out in the most dramatic --
Wait. Wait!!
"The System knows," Shen Qingqiu whispered, an excited hiss.
"Knows what?" Shang Qinghua said.
"The System knows which ones are the fakes! It has to be able to track them, or else it couldn't keep score!" 'System,' he called up the obnoxious blue HUD, 'can I purchase some kind of hint?'
[Thank you for your interest in the System store! To answer your inquiry, no additional content or hint package is available for the optional sidequest 'Temple of Ten Thousand Reflections.' We appreciate your continued patronage.]
Useless! Shen Qingqiu dismissed the interface, but he still felt like he was on to something. The System had the answers, he knew it did. If only there was some way he could get it to disgorge them, some way to get it to react --
Ah.
"I have an idea," Shen Qingqiu announced, raising his voice. "Shang-shidi, come with me. Liu-shidi, you come as well."
Leaving rest of the party back on the platform with the now-empty containment array, Shen Qingqiu headed back to the hallway with all the side rooms. Picking one at random he ducked into the dusty little room and beckoned his companions after him.
"Airplane, get ready with that talisman," he said under his breath as Shang Qinghua followed him in.
Shang Qinghua gave him a doubtful look. "Are you sure about this, bro?" he murmured back.
"No, but I have to try." He raised his voice. "Liu-shidi, come in."
The Bai Zhan War God, or a close facsimile, came into the room and at Shen Qingqiu's gesture, shut the door behind him. Shen Qingqiu pulled out a silencing talisman -- he always carried a supply of those around now, for when Luo Binghe got in one of his moods when they were away from home -- and stuck it on the door.
Liu Qingge looked from one to the other, then focused on Shen Qingqiu. "You've got a solution?" he said, getting right to the point as usual.
"I think so," he said. "Liu-shidi, I have to tell you a secret."
"What? What secret?" Liu Qingge frowned. "I've known you for almost thirty years."
"You haven't, actually," Shen Qingqiu said. Now that it came to it, he found his heart beating faster. "Fourteen years ago, I had a qi deviation."
"Yes. I remember." Liu Qingge gave a short nod. "You changed."
"I changed more than you knew." Shen Qingqiu took a breath, and went for it. "Before that, I --"
Before he could get out another word, he was interrupted with a shrill warning buzz in his mind. [Warning! Warning! The existence of transmigration cannot be revealed to this world's natives!] the mechanical voice droned in his head. [Cease revelations immediately! Failure to comply will result in account termination!]
'All right, geez, I'll stop.' Shen Qingqiu thought. To Shang Qinghua, out loud, he said: "He's the real one. Get the other one in here."
Shang Qinghua was wincing, possibly at his own System notification blast, but he nodded. Patting the bewildered-looking Liu Qingge gingerly on the shoulder he ushered him outside, then came back a moment later with Liu Qingge again.
Shen Qingqiu was just going to have to rely on Shang Qinghua that he'd actually swapped them and hadn't just brought the same one again. As soon as the door was closed and the silence talisman re-affixed he jumped right into it: "Liu-shidi, I am not the original Shen Qingqiu you knew as a disciple. When I had my qi deviation fourteen years ago, Shen Jiu died and was replaced by a soul from a different world. Me. The encounter in the Lingxi caves was the first time we met."
"What?" Liu Qingge said, looking stunned.
Shen Qingqiu waited. No buzzing alarm or dire warning from the System sounded.
He nodded to Shang Qinghua over Liu Qingge's shoulder. "This one's the fake," he said.
"You --" Liu Qingge started to reach for Cheng Luan, but Shang Qinghua was slippery; he got behind Liu Qingge and slapped the dispelling talisman between his shoulders. The duplicate dissolved in a soundless shower of white sparks.
"That's brilliant, bro," Shang Qinghua said, sounding impressed. Shen Qingqiu couldn't help it, he preened a bit. His makeshift solution worked! The System triggered on the real characters, but not on the fakes!
[-10 point penalty deducted for misuse of System resources! 672 points remain!]
Shen Qingqiu winced. "Let's hope I don't have to do that four more times," he said. "All right, go get Yue Qingyuan."
"Why am I the usher here," Shang Qinghua complained, but he went.
Yue Qingyuan entered the room, and Shang Qinghua shut the door firmly behind him. Shen Qingqiu looked into the familiar face, the first one he'd ever seen when he woke up in this new body and life, and steeled his nerve enough to say. "Yue-shixiong, I need to tell you the truth."
"What truth?" Yue Qingyuan looked bewildered.
"That I am not your Xiao-Jiu, and I never was," Shen Qingqiu. When no System alarm buzzed at him, he went for full disclosure: "Shen Jiu died of that qi deviation fourteen years ago, and I took his place. I have been acting as Shen Qingqiu ever since then."
Still not a peep from the System. Shen Qingqiu turned to Shang Qinghua with a nod. "This one is also --"
Before he could finish, the Yue Qingyuan in front of him -- tears standing in his eyes and beginning to pour down his face -- drew his sword in a blaze of light and lunged at him.
Shen Qingqiu flinched back in startled reflex; the first devastating blow barely missed him, a few stray clipped hairs drifting down to the floor. "Whoa, hey!" yelled Shang Qinghua as Yue Qingyuan turned, tears flying off into space, and tried to run him through.
The space was cramped and the light from the fake Xuan Su was oppressing; Shen Qingqiu barely managed to dodge a second time, the blade slicing through his robes and barely scratching his skin before embedding itself in the wall behind him.
The door burst open -- had he not renewed the silencing talisman this time? Or had Shang Qinghua ripped it down? -- and the real Liu Qingge, as well as the real Yue Qingyuan, piled in. Liu Qingge took one look at the situation and bulldozed forward, body-slamming the fake Yue Qingyuan against the wall. Shen Qingqiu pressed himself into the corner, frozen in shock, as the two Peak Lords worked together to pin the thrashing, weeping doppelganger down so that Shang Qinghua could slap a dispelling talisman on him.
He'd been the right one. The fake Yue Qingyuan dissolved into an avalanche of silver sparks, and Yue Qingyuan and Liu Qingge stumbled a bit as the resistance collapsed.
Liu Qingge turned to him with a piercing expression. "Are you all right?" he asked.
Shen Qingqiu nodded, mouth still too dry to speak. He had been too surprised to be scared -- somehow, it had never occurred to him that Yue Qingyuan would attack him. Ever since his first moment in the world, he'd never felt anything other than utterly safe in Yue Qingyuan's presence. And yet, what had he expected? With a confession like that! If he was the fake he might have attacked, and if he'd been the real thing he might have attacked! Stupid! He hadn't even thought to draw Xiu Ya!
[-20 point penalty deducted for misuse of System resources! 652 points remain!]
Ugh. The penalty was getting worse each time. He had the points cushion to finish this, but it wasn't pleasant. "This master is well," he said. His voice wobbled, and he cleared his throat to strengthen it. "It's almost done. Just one more. Send one of the Binghes in, please, and let's finish this."
"Hmph." Liu Qingge turned and left the room without another word.
Yue Qingyuan lingered for a moment, placing a gentle hand on Shen Qingqiu's shoulder. "It was very clever of Qingqiu to bait that creature into attacking him," he said in a soft, reassuring voice. "Of course that made it obvious that he was a fake, since that is the one thing that I would never do."
Shen Qingqiu made himself smile. Reached up and touched Yue Qingyuan's comforting hand. Made himself say, "Of course."
Yue Qingyuan filed out. Shen Qingqiu took a moment to compose himself, taking deep breaths and trying to calm his heart rate. If that was how Yue Qingyuan -- or his identical double -- reacted, then what was Binghe likely to do? Shang Qinghua, lingering behind, kept shooting him sympathetic glances, but said nothing.
"Shizun?" Both of the Luo Binghes were lurking by the door, looking uncertain. Shen Qingqiu mentally flipped a coin, then pointed to the one on the left and beckoned him in.
"Binghe. Please come in," he said. He shut the door after him, and this time Shen Qingqiu made sure the silencing talisman was in place. He absolutely could not take the chance of the others overhearing this.
Ever the obedient white sheep, Luo Binghe came and stood in front of Shen Qingqiu, hands clasped behind him like he was still a disciple. Shen Qingqiu steeled his nerves, again, and blurted out, "I need to tell you something."
Luo Binghe cocked his head to the side, confused but listening. Shen Qingqiu forged on. "It's something I should have told you long ago, something that I never should have kept from you. I am not the same Shen Qingqiu who accepted you into the sect when you were a child. That Shen Qingqiu died years ago. Do you remember the qi deviation when you were fourteen?"
Luo Binghe nodded slowly. "I remember," he said.
"I -- the real me -- I was brought to this world at that time," Shen Qingqiu said. The purpose of this confession, to differentiate between the real and fake Luo Binghes, suddenly seemed a distant second to the chance to get to make this confession, to say the words that he had been unable to say for so many years. "I -- never wanted to hurt you the way he did.
"The force that brought me here -- I needed to do certain things, to fulfill certain requirements, in exchange for this life. That was the real reason I pushed you into the Abyss, Binghe. It was never you. Never anything you did, never anything you were." This -- this was the part that he wanted to say, that he wanted Binghe to hear, more than anything. "The real me -- not the master who cruelly abused a young child -- has always loved you, Binghe. I wish I had done things differently -- I would have given up my life all over again to make you happy."
Somewhere during this speech, Luo Binghe had begun to cry. Still a crybaby, Shen Qingqiu thought with affection, ignoring the stinging in his own eyes. "Shizun..." Luo Binghe dashed tears away from his cheeks. Then he smiled. "I am happy. I'm so happy. I would never want you to give up your life for me. I only ever wanted you to live, to stay by my side."
Oh. He... wasn't angry? Shen Qingqiu's own vision blurred. "Shizun!" Luo Binghe exclaimed, and then Luo Binghe was in his arms, burying his face in Shen Qingqiu's shoulder, his curly hair falling against Shen Qingqiu's face. "Shizun!"
"Silly child," Shen Qingqiu said, and softly blew a lock of hair away from his lips. He closed his eyes.
There was a sound like a snap, then the whooshing of air, and the body in Shen Qingqiu's arms dissolved. He kept his eyes closed, even while his embrace dwindled down to nothing; not until it was fully gone did he slowly open his eyes to see the shimmering silver powder dusting all along his front and covering his arms.
"Sorry." Shang Qinghua was hovering in front of him, looking nervous but determined. "Sorry, bro. I was waiting for you to confirm whether this was the fake or not, but you didn't say... but the System didn't alert, so I figured... You okay?"
"No."
"Ah... right." Shang Qinghua nodded, then nodded again. "Yeah, okay, fair. I'll... I'll just get the others, okay?"
Shang Qinghua left. Shen Qingqiu didn't watch him go. A bright blue screen popped up behind his eyes, and a cheerful little midi tune played inside his ears. [Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Important things must be said three times! Objective cleared: Spot the Fakes 20/20! You may now proceed to the next area of the dungeon. Please enjoy the loot and rewards of this exclusive bonus mission!]
'What, no point penalty this time?' Shen Qingqiu thought bitterly.
[User self-imposed penalty deemed sufficient.]
"Shen-shidi?" Yue Qingyuan was lingering by the entrance, the others arrayed behind him. "Are you well? It seems the door has unlocked, so we can proceed. Are you... well?"
"I will be," Shen Qingqiu called back. He kept his back to the door while he carefully cleaned his face, shook the ash off his sleeves and readjusted his robes. He would be.
When he emerged from the room he didn't look any of them in the eye. Not Yue Qingyuan, who would kill him if he knew; not Luo Binghe, who wouldn't. He wasn't sure which was worse.
Shang Qinghua's doubles were exact, in both body and personality. Shen Qingqiu had no doubt that the fake Luo Binghe reacted exactly the way the real one would. That if the truth were to be known, he would not become angry, would not reject Shen Qingqiu as an imposter; that he would accept him, the true him, with joy and with love.
And Shen Qingqiu would never, ever, ever be able to tell him.
The gate was indeed unlocked, opening to reveal a short flight of stairs that opened into a hall of softly-glowing treasures. They had passed the test; they had eliminated all of the fakes, the imposters among them.
All except one.
Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
--Tim Krieder, "I Know What You Think Of Me."
~end.