Archive of Our Own

He wished that he could say that death was a surprise.

Actually, mostly he wished that it was less agonizing. But the pain of his distorted meridians was unmercifully prolonged, even as something tore what he thought of as ‘him’ away from his immortal body.

He had cultivated to the point of surviving his soul being separated from his flesh, but his soul surviving wasn’t the same thing as his soul returning. There was a burning green light, something like a pane of ice, and he raged against it, brought that twisted and painful energy to bear on it -

It flashed brighter. In a space he was prepared to think of as ‘below’ him, his body sat up, its expression uncharacteristically concerned.

Yue Qingyuan had been there, by his side, as he died. Naturally, he hadn’t noticed a thing. Greeting the stranger - the usurper – with desperate concern, and then growing hope and awe when he wasn’t summarily rejected.

It was a bitter feeling.

But it paled in comparison to the bitterness of what came next.

“Holy shit, aren’t you here early?”

He felt the urge to spit up blood, which was a real shame, because his useless body was busy smiling politely at Yue Qingyuan. He would have thought that that by itself was ample reason for it to gag reflexively, but Yue Qingyuan – compared to – compared to -

“Shang Qinghua.” he gritted out. “Hua-di. Shang-di.” That stupid, self-deprecating nickname that the rodent had used when he knew he was in trouble, false and ingratiating.

Not false. Not even wrong, apparently. Just misleading.

The abomination in front of him gave a cheerful little wave. “Clever, right? But I usually go by Airplane, or Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky. Being Shang Qinghua in this world was… not my finest moment. Mind you, being Airplane in the last one wasn’t much better, hahaha….”

“I had thought you were colluding with demons. I think I would have preferred you colluding with demons.”

“Hah, good news?” The divine being in front of him gave a nervous little laugh. “I definitely did. Like a lot. Well, but also, if you think about it, I wrote Tianlang-Jun under a mountain and gave cultivators lots of victories over small fry.. so much to keep track of! No matter what life it is, I end up overworked…I have to look after both sides! And the beasts! I’m not allowed to get them wrong, Cucumber would kill me! Hahaha, he wants the ecology of this world to make sense, like bro, I was spitballing most of it, thank god he’s still bouncing around down there and not up here, I have a little peace and quiet...”

“You. You set this world in motion. You are to blame for it all. I should kill you for the Immortal Alliance Conference alone.” He felt numb. Worse than numb – air he didn’t need was burning in lungs that weren’t corporeal, like a fish out of water. The conference was years away yet, the cycle had only just reset. But the knowledge that Shang Qinghua was in league with demons and had betrayed the Sect was there like a poison within him.

“I really had to! I wasn’t given a choice. Higher powers, you know? I did actually try to stop it! But it’s interesting that you know already? If you really stop and think about it, the fact that you remember the Immortal Alliance Conference? Do you remember it with or without the black moon rhinoceros python, I wonder?”

“With, naturally.” Shen Jiu snapped, then paled as that poisonous sensation redoubled. “No, I-”

His arms and legs were suddenly filled with agony, the qi deviation’s aftershocks rippling through him. His blood felt alive, stabbing through him like tiny needles. One of his eyes went dark. His mouth filled with blood. He – he had actually -

“Hey! Hey, Shen-shixiong! Shen Jiu! Look at me! It’s just residual memories, ok? It’s ok. You’re ok. If you aren’t ok, you really will become a vengeful ghost or something, ok?!”

He gasped, forced himself to calm the rage and hatred that had surged in him. “I- You-”

He looked at the man in front of him. Really looked at him. Forced himself to ignore the face and voice, which were as whiny and ingratiating as they had ever been. To look at something divine and find it so utterly flawed... he should really be laughing, not angry.

Shang-shidi had always had lighter hair and rounder features, hinting at something mixed in his background, he’d always worn faded blues and yellows, he’d always had some book or scroll to hand. Now… he was dressed in the fabric of the heavens, in a summer sky, clouds settled like fur around his shoulders. Now he had something alien at his fingertips, like fine green panes of crystal, where characters glowed and danced. The same green that had stopped him from returning to his flesh.

“The memories get tangled. I wrote so many versions of the story! I went around… more than once, I think, as a mortal. I loved it. I needed it to be right.” Airplane smiled, though the words came out too fast, his expression still a little nervous. “I don’t know exactly when I became this, either. Probably sometime after Cucumber started showing up and handing out happy endings like candy? I think I was satisfied, knowing that someone had wanted to know the real ending… anyway, you’ll probably be fine now? Maybe don’t poke the weird stuff in your head too much?”

“Different memories.” Shen Jiu snarled. “Tell me, Shang-di, will any of them be happy? Will any of them contain even one single good thing? What kind of world is this, that you love so much, if I am the result?”

Shang Qinghua shrugged. “Who knows? It sounds stupid, right? But it's really true. What I wrote, what got changed, what the readers wanted… System has gotten some really wild requests over the years, you know? The canon purists want the og, the fujoshis want every ship under the sun, Tianlang-Jun will not leave me alone about the weirdest orgies imaginable, there’s a reason that guy was kicked out of heaven, I’m telling you. Anyway, the answer is, of course you’ve been happy, of course you’ve been miserable, you’ve suffered more than anyone, you can rise higher than anyone.”

Shen Jiu snorted. “You know the state of my cultivation. Whatever natural talent I might have had was crippled long ago.”

“Oh, that. That’s entirely Cucumber’s problem, now. He’s the sort that doesn’t mind being in the top ten as long as ten people compete, he’s never cultivated a day in his life. Your body basically makes him a god by his standards. You’re fine! Clean slate! Least I can do for my scariest shixiong, right? Anything you want, no problem!”

“Even if I want to cast that interloper out of my body and return?”

“You… can. It probably won’t go great? Like… death-by-protagonist bad.” Shang Qinghua groaned, self-pity writ large on his face. The same face that seemed illuminated by sun and shadowed by dark winds. The contrast was jarring. “Funny, I was writing the guy to be an ultimate badass, but working for him really sucked… funny, right? I wrote you to be the absolute worst, but working with you was just.. having a bitchy coworker.”

“What else is there?” Shen Jiu spat. He wasn’t expecting a serious answer. Naturally, nothing good was in store for him.

“You could hang out in Xuan Su for a bit, swallow Yue Qingyuan’s soul until you’re finally connected in a way that can’t be broken? I could give you Cucumber’s old body, cultivate past his sickness, live a wealthy, comfortable life in that world, with a loving family. You could have really scorching hate-sex with Liu Qingge and – no, fuck, that’s one of Tianlang-Juns drafts mixed in again, he’s too fucking prolific. Or Liu Mingyan? They edit each other’s work so much these days I can’t even tell them apart except for the ships... But like if you wanted to I’d give you a fair chance at it, it would be pretty hot-”

“None of those sound remotely appealing.” Shen Jiu was pleased to hear the snap of ice in his tone. In the world that was rapidly fading away ‘beneath’ him, that tone would have had Shang Qinghua cowering away like a rat startled by a sudden bright light, scurrying for the shadows. Now… now it got him a smile that was more than a little smug.

“You could move on? There’s soup, so I’m told. If you don’t want the regret to weigh you down anymore, that’s fine. If you dare do it, go ahead.”

“Who said anything about regret?” he snapped back, instinctively curling away from the idea of leaving. Of forgetting. Letting go, it couldn’t be said to be about what he dared or didn’t dare. He was looking into the face of a rat who knew – knew! That he’d been abandoned and rejected all his life, offering to wipe it all away. As if he’d rather have peace than answers. Answers this so-called creator knew and had withheld-

Pointing out that he had his book upside down softly, eyes frantic, whispering that he should call for help if he ever saw -
-asking him not to panic, when his own nails had been gnawed down to the quick and he’d done nothing but squeak uselessly the entire time
-choosing to follow him instead of Liu Qingge, the shining War God, who qi deviated only years later.
Mixed memories, indeed. Liu Qingge really had died when he’d tried on his own. But that was different than when Shang Qinghua had gone along with them. Somehow. Like turning a carved gem and seeing a different reflection in the same surface.

“If I regret anything, it’s that something like you were pulling the strings all along. This world would be far better off without something like you shaping it.”

There was a sudden flare of white around him, something that finally, finally removed all the lingering pains. He felt suddenly lighter than he ever had.

He’d practiced inedia before, was long used to ignoring his body and demanding that it perform as if all were well. This… couldn’t be more different. It wasn’t a fight, it didn’t feel like any effort at all. It was as if sunlight was food and wind was water, it was like feeling completely sated, with power, with life, with qi. The light settled into an aura glowing around his head.

“Oh, shit!” Shang Qinghua laughed, disbelieving. “I guess that narrows down your choices a bunch, huh? You actually went ahead and ascended to spite me, what the fuck? Kind of classic, though, not gonna lie, I’m here for it. Nice and thematic for the scum villain to challenge this Great master directly.”

Shen Jiu snorted. “So what, I get a consolation prize? My body is given away like a prize, and I get to sit and watch the world burn from some distant Heaven?”

“Nah. I mean, if you want? But you ascended when you decided to change things. Go change them! This gege won’t fight his newest didi, you can do whatever you like. It’s not like I didn’t have regrets myself, you know!”

Shen Jiu stared. He was past a rage that felt quite literally transcendental, and into a sort of serene calm fury instead. So, it turned out the creator of the world was something like those sellers An Ding had blacklisted for painting spots onto pure white Sect horses to pass them off as normal nags, to improve their own breeding stock, or sent pigments that held rich color only for a few months before fading. Or sold ‘miracle cures’ that amounted to dead flowers long past having any spiritual benefits in dyed oils. A bad deal, followed up by excessive fawning and cringing. “How does it work.” he gritted out. It left a sour taste in his mouth, having to ask. But he’d be damned if he started over from the very beginning again. How many times would it happen? Learning demonic cultivation, failing, noble cultivation, only to be crippled, and now again, to have even his meager accomplishments mean so little..

“Eh? I don’t know either. Imagine whatever you want! I got the System – well, you can think of it as a spiritual tool? Kind of? Or fate? Saying ‘admin privilege’ doesn’t mean anything to you, right? Hahaha, it would be too weird if it did. I’m really serious, just do whatever.”

‘Whatever you want’ Really was the way this world worked, in the end. The powerful did whatever they wanted to the weak, the creator did whatever he wanted to make a good story. Shen Jiu had known that since he was born – this creator had heaped misery on him just to goad him into heaping misery on others, and now seemed happy that he had even more power…

But it did make it easy to get things done, if he didn’t need to know what to do. He just reached for the flow of power that he’d once painstakingly cultivated, and found it overflowing, spiritual energy flooding into him as soon as he expended even a drop. And if he let it go, let it take shape, instead of those green, crystal panes, he found something entirely different.

Where there had been an open sky, filled with sunlight and cold winds, all encompassing, now there was a mist, cool and quiet, and a road down towards the world. Bamboo waved in a faint breeze, stirring the clouds. It was impossible to tell how vast the distance was that the road covered, where it led or ended. But it was filled only with peaceful sounds – sleepy crickets, soft drops of water, rustling leaves. It felt… empty, to him. Safe. It was ridiculous to think that way - he was some kind of god,now With the power at his disposal, he could instantly end the life of any human and most demons who dared think of inconveniencing him.

He knew that the more he walked it the better he’d know it. It was his.

Even if that wasn’t the case, he didn’t want to be near Airplane, who was babbling about a shrine, about worshipers, about hearing prayers and how annoying it got.

He stepped onto the road, and followed it out of the heavens.

~*~

It took him to a shrine, first. It was an old, weathered thing, with a worn statue that nonetheless looked very much like he did now, some trick of the sculpting giving the eyes a cold edge he could only approve of. It was on the outskirts of a city he knew, and he found that while he could not do much about the dilapidated physical form of the building, he could, if he wished, fade into something like a dream state, which was malleable and could be altered to suit his tastes.

There weren’t any prayers to him by name, but there were prayers. Shang Qinghua had been right – they were annoying. They were also all… very specifically themed. Sometimes they weren’t even words, just yearning, fierce and angry and all too familiar. Desperation. Hatred. The need to deal back in kind what was received.

He was so familiar with the sensation that he almost didn’t notice how quickly it multiplied. And at first, the voices were close, petty and small, a wife who hated her husband, a husband who wanted a merchant dead for cheating, a slave, wishing to pay back every lash, a pipa player wishing rot on the organs of a man who wouldn’t leave her sisters alone.

He ignored many of them. He had no interest in petty disputes. He had no wish to be the easy way out for those who wouldn’t raise a single hand against their situation. But he did find the man who was assaulting the pipa player, and took some pleasure in doing all the things to him that he’d done when he was human anyway. The Sect had always wailed about his reputation, but… would the impostor in his skin protect the Warm Red Pavillion? There was no reason to stay his hand now, no Liu Qingge threatening to beat him up worse than he’d done to a man with no cultivation. As if men without cultivation could do nothing to women with no recourse… as if anyone in this world who wasn’t Shen Jiu couldn’t do anything they liked to those below them and still be allowed to play at righteousness.

There was incense in his shrine, after that, a few of the older jiejies came and went, and the Madam left a folding fan in the offering plate. Fewer of the slaves came, but once a plague struck at the slavers, but a few of them did. For a time, as hard as time was to quantify, Shen Jiu did little but rest, and occasionally hunt.

But the misty road opened, one day, leading away from the shrine. His first instinct was to curse and ignore it – if it was his, it should only open at his command. But it was willful, and when he studied it, a prayer stretched along with it.

Betrayal. Hate. Desperation. Rage. Fear. Tension like a pulled bowstring, digging into the fingers, about to release, either with a target or without one. A string like that was one moment away from snapping, taking an eye with it.

No one had ever walked the road before, but he could see a figure, a woman, walking with a grim set to her face.

His first instinct was to ignore her. Her clothes were ostentatious, with far too much gold, the medallion marking her as not only a cultivator, but a highly ranked member of Huan Hua. He had no use whatsoever for the spoiled children of noble men, who thought that any small hurt justified any reaction they liked. Someone like that would never need divine intervention – a wave of her hand and her disciples would fall all over themselves to see to her whims.

But she was alone, and her clothes, fine as they were, were worn thin and ragged, and she carried herself forward on ragged shoes and blistered feet with a cold, composed expression.

She was an anomaly. She was on his road.

So he walked it towards her, eyes just as cold as hers.

“What are you?” she rasped, the moment he emerged from the mists. The chill struck him – they were overlooking a river filled with sheets of ice, the trees were covered in snow, it was so cold that it burned. She might have had a flawless complexion, once, but now her face was red and cracked, and her qi was distorted enough to make her twitch. Still, she had a sword at her back, and her hand strayed to it as she stared at him. “Some wandering ghost? I won’t let you take my life.” she hissed.

“Even if I don’t, you’ll die anyway.” he shrugged. Some days he really didn’t see much difference between him and a ghost. He felt little but resentment, fed on… well, he wasn’t certain what, but it grew when he killed monsters wearing human faces and with each stick of incense that those lives won him.

“My life isn’t yours.” she drew the sword in earnest, and he felt the stab of pain in her as she did, the sickness, the wrongness.

“Tell me why you’re here.” he decided.

She stared at him. As she did, she coughed. Blood poured from her lips. “Not important.”

“If you ask for help, I might be persuaded to give it to you.” he shrugged.

“Kill the Huan Hua Palace Master, then.” her eyes blazed with sudden light, looking more alive than she had yet. “Drag him into the light and let it burn him, if there’s any justice in the world. There’s an ambush-”

Yes, he thought. Yes, that felt right. Drag the monsters out of the dark, destroy every terrible thing that Shang Qinghua had inflicted on this world. He reached out a hand to her, and she took it, her fingers clenching into his. His skin didn’t break or bruise, but it felt like it might have, once.

“You’re pregnant.” he realized. The awkward way she’d been holding herself and the heavy drape of her robes had hidden it well, but the qi that pulsed through her was more than a little touched with the demonic realms energy.

“Yes. I should have gone with Tianlang-Jun to the demon realms. Or taken his blood. But now it’s too late. I was betrayed.”

Bit by bit, as they walked along the road, the story emerged from her. She’d encountered the Demonic Emperor, been ordered to lure him out. Who would have guessed that she’d prefer the free-spirited wanderer to the unwholesome grasp of a greedy, grasping old man? She hadn’t guessed it herself, until the time had come where she’d decided it was only natural to find some beautiful, secluded spot, and ravish the Emperor. She’d guessed it then. So had her master, when she came home with a half demon child growing inside her. The soft, cool, damp air of the road mingled with the frigid air of a winter’s night, and her voice grew weaker as she told the inevitable outcome. The imprisonment. The poison. The monk she’d found as she fled, who had given her the reserves to get away, told her, in shock and bewilderment, that Tianlang-Jun had been sealed for killing her.

“I want him to pay.” she snarled.

But the road wavered, the scenery listing towards frozen cold, instead of misty bamboo stalks. She still held his sleeve, and they walked towards the bank of a river. That was as far as he could see.

“I think that’s not what you want.” he said, his tone a little sharp. It was what he wanted, what was just, what was reasonable. But she wasn’t walking the road in the direction of Huan Hua.

“It’s what I want.” she hissed.

“I think there’s a price for what you want, and I think it starts with abandoning false pretenses.” he mused. Honesty… the dead really had no room for illusions. The ones that did, that couldn’t accept reality, they became ghosts, curses on the world.

“I want to live.” she hissed. “I want my lover back. I want many things that I can’t have.”

“You can have one thing. At the expense of all the rest. What one thing would you choose?” Something compelled him to add, coldly – “If you choose wrong, even lying to yourself, you won’t get anything from it.”

She stared at him, anger in her gaze replaced by weariness. “I want my son to live and be healthy.”

She kept hold of his robe through the birth, staining them with her blood. The poison in her was not gentle. Yet, her cultivation was quite powerful, and she survived long enough to wrap her arm about the red, screaming child, studying the burning mark of sin on his forehead.

All his tangled memories agreed on just who that child would become. That mark was a familiar one. Her face was a familiar one. When he’d first seen her, he realized he hadn’t been seeing Su Xiyan, but her son, who looked a great deal like her – Luo Binghe. Found on the banks of the icy river Luo. His gaze remained cold and distant, and he was surprised to note that hers was similar. She didn’t whisper a name into that soft fuzz of black hair, she didn’t press a kiss to that little mark on his brow. All her focus was on the array that she drew over his entire body, the last dregs of her life and qi settling into him, forcing the mark away, until mortality settled down on the boy like a weight. Exposed to the cold as a mere human would feel it, he let out a scream of rage.

“I cannot give him a meal.” she said, quietly. “The poison in me is too strong. So you will have to ensure that he survives, at any cost. That is what I have chosen.”

He snorted. “Next time, choose vengeance instead. That little beast of yours will grow up feral and cause untold harm.”

“Why shouldn’t I wish for that?” she demanded, her voice fading as she carefully wrapped the boy in a white inner robe. She reached for her medallion, hesitated. Anything connected to Huan Hua would be returned to Huan Hua in due course. Anything gold that might pay for his keep would be readily identified as belonging to a cultivator. “There really is nothing I dare give him. Even a name won’t matter.”

Shen Jiu shook his head. “His name will be Luo Binghe.” It wasn't a consolation, it was just the way the world would be. He should have let her make the wrong choice – it wasn’t like she could have survived either way, and it might have actually changed a great deal in this world if her beastly son had died with her. He was too inexperienced, he’d actually managed to play into Shang Qinghua’s game. Apparently, fate wouldn’t be easy to change.

Her hand on his robe tightened for a moment, watching the tiny form drift away among the ice flows.

“Thank you.” she said, quietly. Her skin was very cold, he realized. Well, that was only to be expected.

“Don’t thank me. I changed nothing.”

“You were here. Don’t imagine that’s worthless. I would have been fine, dying alone, but knowing his name… it’s not meaningless.”

He’d been half afraid that the road would leave him stranded, or would lead him somewhere else. It was a relief to find it led him back through to warmer air, to the sweet scent of his own shrine, piled with fruit and sweet candy today. He didn’t have the kind of people who could afford to leave taels of gold or silver. He.. really wasn’t certain how to feel. Pity was probably impossible for someone like him, and his tangled memories of Luo Binghe suggested that he really would have been better off dead. Everyone would be better off dead. But there was something in him that still felt nourished. Satisfied.

This wouldn’t be the only soul who clutched after him. This wouldn’t be the only chance to change things. There were far worse things to do than pass the time waiting for his next chance with some tanghulu.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, when the spirit arrived at his shrine. It hadn’t taken it long to coalesce into a visible form, to be recognizably not an ‘it’ anymore. Su Xiyan had been more than powerful enough to keep her soul intact. He didn’t dispute that, but he was very willing to dispute her presence in his space. He’d given her more than most got! If she couldn’t rest in peace that was hardly his fault.

But she gave him a cool little smile and settled in more comfortably. “If I pass on, the Palace master will simply call my soul back, and I doubt I’d be permitted to escape again. Or if I reincarnated, without my memories, and he found me… I’m not particularly interested.” she said, her tones crisp. “Besides, you promised me my son would be cared for. I’ll feel best if I make sure I didn’t bargain poorly.”

“The beast - the boy will be fine. A terror and a blight upon the world, but hardly a problem that will concern him.”

“Hmm. He gets that from me.” she smiled. “His father was really foolish and gentle. I imagine I’l be quite proud to see it. WIll he level Huan Hua? Will he avenge me?”

“He’ll own it. No atrocity will be beyond him when he takes it over. He’ll destroy the cultivation world and merge the realms. THe Water Prison will never be empty again. You should have chosen vengeance.”

“It sounds like I’ll get it. If the Great Sects had left us alone, he would have been cherished. A leader capable of uniting us all. Tianlang-Jun’s power and my skill? THe child that could inherit both? We could have saved this world. We really…” she trailed off, the light in her eyes dimming. “I never thought even once about saving this world, before I met him. Those stupid dreams of his… it was really very… stupid of him.”

“People with more dreams than sense always end up in trouble in the end. You should have stayed away.” He snorted.

“Perhaps so.” She smiled. “But I don’t think I’m unsatisfied with the outcome, either.”

~*~

He wasn’t sure whether the Road actually was his or not. He’d started thinking of it as something.. named, something that deserved the emphasis in his mind, in the same way that Shang Qinghua had airily referred to his ‘System’ as if it were a living thing. But it didn’t… make much sense. Sometimes it was there, and he walked it, and found people. People with distant, cold eyes, bloody hands, smelling like smoke, who grasped his sleeves and stumbled after him, because anywhere was better. Those people, he knew. He understood. He could tolerate their touch, because they weren’t looking at him. They were looking away from whatever they were leaving behind.

But none of them… mattered. Or perhaps they did, in the sense that they made small changes – one less tyrant, one less abuser, one less spoiled master. He helped make certain of that much. But in this world, they were as plentiful as the stars. You couldn’t hope to make the world a better place by giving a few victims a knife and telling them to make certain they were free. It was more his own satisfaction that drove him, in those cases, an itch under his skin driving him to take a walk, to go and see, to fight back against the nature of things.

But sometimes…

The Road was there before him, leading off into drifting mists despite the heat of the summer night. If anything, the shade of the bamboo made the humidity and heat a little less, so it was easy and comfortable to follow the path. But it wasn’t him who had opened it.

Was it ever? When he wanted to hunt, it was there, but conversely, it always led to someone who wanted his help. Was it him or the Road who was deciding?

The thought was a new one, and he didn’t care for it. But the sensation didn’t ease, the Road had a destination, and he found -

A child. They couldn’t be more than nine or ten, all messy, auburn hair and rags, intelligent eyes and little else – a thin face, all skin and bones.

The curses weren’t very childish, though. The child spat venom as he walked, those bright eyes glaring back over his shoulder, the dirt and blood on his feet and hands still just a little too wet.

Familiar, and yet not familiar. He had just seen that face, filled with restless, nervous energy, laughing at nothing, anxious and somehow still self-aggrandizing. It had smiled, and admitted that things could have been better, could still get better.

He’d never met the child that had become Shang QInghua before he joined the Sect, and even then, only as a faceless An Ding drone, until that demon attack. In no lifetime could he ever remember that changing. Shang QInghua sold out to the demons, every single time. But this child, with his burning vitriol, and his ragged looks, was a world away from being anything a demon would notice, never mind find use in.

As the boy glanced up, his curses faded into a smile, practiced and perfect, and a neat bow that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a spoiled young lord entering court to beg his mother for sweets. At once performative and ingratiating.

“Is Daozhang an immortal master?” The boy who would be a Peak Lord asked.

Shen Jiu noticed the knife tucked into the belt, and chuckled. “Something like that. What were you saying, just now?”

There was a very convincing blush. “Apologies to the Immortal Master, this one hurt his foot on a rock and said more than he should have.”

“Really? Because it sounded very much like you were threatening to destroy a town’s livelihood.” Shen Jiu mused. “Cultivators do have keen senses, brat. Keep your temper to yourself if you don’t want to get caught in a bad lie.”

The smile took on a sharp edge. “Thanking Daozhang for his instruction… can Daozhang also explain why this path is covered in bamboo instead of pine, all of a sudden? This lowly one doesn’t want to be lost in the woods.”

“I suspect you already were.” Shen Jiu mused. “Is destroying them what you want? It seems like they didn’t treat you well.”

“I want power. Only when you have power can you do anything useful. But when I get it, I won’t forget them.” the boy spat. “The minute they found out I had spiritual roots they married me off to the first demonic cultivator stupid enough to actually pay up front instead of trying to scam them. The bitch who bought me gave them so much that her purse was empty when I left, so I still have to starve and walk the whole way…”

“The whole way to Cang Qiong?” Shen Jiu mused.

“They’d have sent me to Huan Hua to be a respectable cultivator if they could have paid the bribes. Even they know a cultivator would bring them more than a shitty marriage to a rogue. But Cang Qiong will take anyone who digs a shitty hole in the ground, and I have good roots.”

That much is wrong. Shen Jiu can feel them without a touch, slanted towards fire, mangled and stunted, like cooling coal coated in too much ash. A good foundation might be enough to give them a second chance, let them flare to life, but they’ll never be great, and An Ding isn’t going to give them the intense focus they’ll need. “They won’t get you very far.” He said, quietly.

“So? I’m smarter and sharper and faster than any of the other brats trying for it. A Sect means connections, political power. If I can’t rise to the top with my own strength, I can easily win over those who are strong. There’s plenty of ways to be powerful.”

“Power granted to you by others can be taken away by others.” Shen Jiu shook his head. “You don’t want that. It’s just another way of being bought and sold. In the end, relying on others is useless.”

“It’s a start. Unless you have some alternative. But then I’d just be relying on you.” The scorn in the boy’s eyes was palpable. “I told you, I’m smarter than that. If you aren’t going to give me what you have for free, then you either just want me to sell out to you first or you’re just here to laugh at me.”

“I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something I can grant. No one walks the Road who isn’t willing to take what they want for themself.” Shen Jiu shrugged. “I won’t choose for you - you can follow me and see what it gets you, or you can go on your way, and play your games until they get you killed.”

“Follow you where? Where is this? A secret realm?” Shang Qinghua was still looking around, looking for a way out. Noting the little differences in the spots where there should have been a sky, instead of warm light or a soft mist.

“It’s a way out, to those willing to take it.” Shen Jiu shrugged. “It’s a crossroads. I can be a guide, but ultimately, while you’re here, other people can’t do things for you. For most, having only themselves to rely on is already a steep price.”

“It’s all I’ve ever had.” Shang Qinghua shrugs, and grasps at his sleeve.

They walk in silence. Through the shifting bamboo, the path winds through Shang Qinghua’s lives - not many - and his endings - nearly all cold, desolate things, at the hands of a frigid demon lord.

In some, the demon lord longs for his little spy, his claws grasping after him, his eyes empty and cold and hollow when it ends. In others, they loathe each other, using each other only out of mutual necessity. In all of them, it doesn’t matter how they feel. One betrays, the other reacts.

Sometimes, it’s clear, Shang Qinghua thinks he won’t betray. Thinks he’s found a good deal, a useful fool, something a little genuine, even if it’s cynical. Someone else the world abandoned who needs an edge. They could be great together, why throw it away?

But inevitably Cang Qiong burns, Shang Qinghua’s power base in the human world is stripped away, and he either mourns or resents that. Maybe both. He hates being a decorative pawn, dependent on others, with only his body or his last few miserable secrets between him and uselessness. Luo Binghe resents him, a last gasp of a ruined Sect. Mobei-Jun cannot justify keeping him, or is furious in those times where he would have done so, gladly, only to find that bitter venom turned on him in some betrayal. Shang Qinghua can only survive by finding someone who needs him, who will deal with him. Once Mobei-Jun has all the power and Shang QInghua has almost none, he finds others who need him more, who will give him, for just a few years longer, some pretense at equality.

The reasons don’t matter much. The faces change. The exact flavor of rage and pain change. The ending does not.

Then, Shang Qinghua seems to decide: he's had enough. In the next gap in the path, the young version of him kills the demon lord and vanishes into obscurity, a weak cultivator eventually unable to stop himself from growing old. WIthout the demon's aid, Peak Lord, no, even a golden core is beyond him.

Almost immediately, the demon returns in the next gap, hale and well. Shen Jiu glances at Shang QInghua, who shrugs. “At least if I save him, I’ll manage to experience real power. I’ll have something.”

Shen Jiu shrugs. It doesn’t need to be pointed out that in that world, where Shang Qinghua was loyal to Cang Qiong and had next to nothing, the Endless Abyss failed to open. Binghe was revealed to the world young. Dealt with young. Luo Binghe might be the reason the world burns, and Shen Jiu might be the deciding weight upon the scales, but Shang Qinghua is, apparently, always going to be the catalyst.

He thinks he recalls this Shang Qinghua. He thinks this is not the nervous, grasping man who warned him about his reputation. This is not the man who reached out after him. But this man wants, and he hates, and his eyes are colder than those of the demon he will always serve.

“The world will burn.” Shen Jiu says, tasting the smoke in the back of his throat. His body is no longer a physical thing, but what is a spirit if not the shape of the memories of life? Shen Jiu’s strongest memory is always flavored with ash.

“Good.” This Shang Qinghua nods, his young voice clear and steady. “It can burn with me. That’s fine.” His fingers loosen their grip on Shen Jiu’s robes, and he smiles.

No one has ever just… let go before. Shen Jiu waits, with interest, to see whether or not the boy will dissolve into the mists around them when his fingers release their hold.
Instead there is a flicker of green, and another, identical boy, shivering and cursing just like the first.

“So hungry, what the hell, why is it so far away, couldn’t have spawned in a little closer? Ahhhh, what shit is this?…Wait, actually, what shit is this? Hahaha, good System, you can’t punish me if I’m obediently going, right?”

There was something in the air around him. Shen Jiu realized immediately that it was invisible to mortals, and even mostly to him, but whatever was contained in that moment of silence felt decidedly unhelpful.

“What side quest? What the hell, why- wait. HOW many points?”

Visibly, there was no real difference between the two boys. But the one who’d arrived first stood proud and tall, his wariness invisible except for a set to his eyes. The new one, the one Shen Jiu knew to be ‘Airplane’ immediately, curled in on himself, looking smaller and more worried than his counterpart. But his eyes were still sharp as he took in the new surroundings- the figures waiting for him.

“Oh, hell.” The boy whispered immediately. “I thought- I was the only one when I got here… twins? Is this a twins au thing?”

The green light flared red, and he winced “Goddammit..”

Shen Qingqiu hummed. The words were a little unfamiliar- the cadence was wrong. The boy sounded too other to really be convincing. It couldn’t have sat well with a fallen family, scrabbling desperately for a chance to restore their fortune. Whispers of madness, or demonic influence…

“What are you?” Shang Qinghua demanded.

“Err. Shang-going-to-be-Qinghua?” Airplane responded. “Fuck, I guess if I’m here what happens to you counts as a pothole? Can the shitty System dock me on plot holes it created if they weren’t originally present? Why is Shen Qingqiu here? What is this sidequest?”

“This is a chance to change things. To walk away from your fate.” Shen Jiu said, quietly. “The other you has found no satisfactory answers.” He added. “You still could, however.”

“What, the original goods? If he refused a deal, it’s because it wasn’t good enough.” Airplane shrugged. “He’s the Peak Lord of An Ding, after all.”

“Do you not want to be?” Shang Qinghua demanded.

“Fuck no, I’ll literally die. Do you know how much dying sucks?” Airplane made a bitter little sound, something that might have passed for a laugh. “You will.”

“It can still be changed.” Shen Jiu pointed out. “By either of you.”

“I wish it could. I wish I could just run off to nowhere and make soap and glass and write porn and get rich and live a good life far the hell away from any Sect at all.” Airplane sighed. “I wish I could never meet a single named character ever and forget all about the fact that this is Proud Immortal Demon Way. But I can’t.”

There was a pause. Shen Jiu spent it reaching out his awareness for the green… thing haunting Airplane. It was notably not bothering Shang Qinghua at all. One would not change, one could not change. But if he pushed, in this place, on this Road, he could see the shape of it, floating rectangles glowing with text, just like the thing at Shang-di’s fingertips.

His creation was the very thing controlling him. The history he’d set in motion had enough momentum to crush him. This Airplane was not in control of anything, yet.

“Even if it can kill you - which I doubt- It cannot do so here.” He decided.

“That’s where you’re wrong, bro. It can kill me. Anything can kill me. I’m literally like twelve right now.”

“You shouldn’t turn down a deal before you know what you can get.” Shang Qinghua pointed out. “You won’t last thirty minutes with that ice demon, never mind being a Peak Lord.”

“Yeah? I won’t last ten seconds if System decides to dock all my points before I can start cultivating! I literally don’t have a choice!” But Airplane looked… torn. “I guess if it’s a sidequest seeing it through can’t be bad?”

So Shen Jiu led him down the Road.

It twisted like a snake, as if it were trying to shake them loose, but Shen Jiu wouldn’t leave it, and it couldn’t leave him. The mists grew thicker and darker, until they were choking, and the shapes of the bamboo grew stranger, taller, denser, as if it were no longer a thick forest but something… else. The mist made it hard to see, but…

The very presence of Airplane on the road made it volatile, Shen Jiu realized. Like a thousand crossroads were trying to intersect in his mind, spiraling off into infinite scenarios. The straightforward walk between whatwas and what had been and what might be was suddenly a nexus for random ideas, stray thoughts, a restless feeling, like sparks under the skin.
Whatifwhatifwhatifwhatif?

The past was hot. Hotter than Shen Jiu had ever really been. Qing Jing had shade and breezes in plenty, curving walls and winding paths so that no matter where a breeze blew from, it would curl around the Peak. Here, the mist was a heavy shield from the sky, but the dense structures around them and the wide, flat pathway underfoot seemed to collect and radiate heat.

The past was cramped rooms that smelled faintly of mildew, a glowing screen that flickered with a dull glow, a box in the only window that spun lazily, stirring the hot air without relieving it at all. It was demanding numbers written in red by a soulless, even hand. It was family with unfamiliar faces, awkward laughs a moment too late, it was “ah, you’ve grown so much since I saw you last!”

The past was slow and grinding compromises.

The past was love that turned out to be conditional when a son loved classics more than finances, men more than women, and uneven smiles more than choosing a side.

(The past was also dark, shut up rooms, fine clothes but empty plates, sharp lecturers aimed at a boy who remembered the wrong things. That boy never let anyone touch his wrist or hold his hand- he knew what would be set in motion. In the end, it was set in motion anyway.)

The past was less chaotic than the restless, infinite future this boy would shape to escape himself, yes. But the boy would never escape himself, because no one ever did. All three men at the crossroads had learned that.

“You should have just been what they wanted.” Shang Qinghua scoffed.

“Bro, you were what they wanted.” Airplane sounded tired. “We’ve already established that I’m pretty shit at being you. Besides, it wouldn’t have mattered. It never fucking matters, ok? She thought she could baby trap a cheater into not cheating on her, he thought that with a son and his money she wouldn’t dare complain even if he did.”

“So? Give me eighteen years of support without a demon lurking over my shoulder and the tools I need to make my own way.” The Peak Lord of An Ding snorted. “By the time they’re ready to give up, they’ll need me more than I’ll need them.”

“Reverse transmigration, huh?” Airplane mused. “Err. I think you have to be dead to pull that off, though.”

“How fortunate,” Shen Jiu chuckled. “That none of us are strangers to death? Let us see what can be done.”

Shang Qinghua nodded. His smile was a cold thing, but it was determined. His grip tightened, and they stepped forward, and then he was gone, thrust past some barrier in the mists.

“Fuck.” Airplane breathed. “Yeah. I was certainly… in a place when I wrote him, huh?”

“Not when you killed him off?” Shen Jiu raised an eyebrow.

Airplane shrugged. “Like I was gonna let a better version of me score Mobei-Jun? Fuck that. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything left to offer the plot, such as it was…”

Shen Jiu shrugged. Unlike Shang Qinghua, he didn’t think that Airplane would do a bad job as Peak Lord. This twelve year old boy, casually treating lives like commodities, choosing what they would and would not be given, full of palpable anger and loneliness… he knew that Airplane would make quite a capable Peak Lord, and a capable spy. But perhaps that was hindsight speaking.

Airplane - now the only Shang Qinghua left in this world - grinned as the empty space around him lightened. “Shit, that helps. Not ‘get out of the plot’ helps, but not ‘get shoved back into my dead corpse after one fuckup’ helps.”

“You still wish to go to Cang Qiong?”

“It’s shitty, but it’s life.” Airplane sighed. “I can’t afford to rock the boat. But… hey, if the bit ever slips, I’ll try to do better by you.”

“And do what? Save me, from the fate you set in motion? Spare me.”

“I think… I think you’re gonna have to save yourself. I can’t do much. But maybe I can.. with the Sect Leader…”

“Shang Qinghua.” Shen Jiu’s voice was sweet. “If you ever dare speak with Yue Qingyuan beyond what absolutely cannot be avoided, I will ensure that your demon is spared the trouble of snapping your neck.”

“Ah. Oooooorrr I could just let you guys work things out on your own..” Airplane wilted.

There was no reason to be so defensive, perhaps. The Peak Lord of An Ding would naturally orbit the Sect Leader closely, trusted to manage the internal affairs of the Sect while Qiong Ding managed the external matters. But the very idea of this brat interfering any more - interfering with Qi- with the Sect Leader he’d betray without a second thought… no. Shen Qingqiu would end him.

Whatever Airplane saw in his eyes, he seemed cowed. Or at least, he leashed his anger better, far better than his counterpart had, far better than a child could. Shen Jiu had to assume he was angry - angry at being dead, angry at his terrible life, angry at being threatened - anyone who unleashed a beast like Luo Binghe had to be angry. But he still waved his hands as if in surrender, giving an ingratiating smile and a rushed little laugh. “Then… this shidi will just leave first?” he suggested. “If that’s possible?”

“Once you leave, you won’t find this space again.” Shen Jiu shrugged. “But don’t let me keep you.”

Airplane actually looked a little wistful. “It’s too bad, you know? But this world really might end if I don’t go… I’d definitely die, which would definitely end it as far as I’m concerned. But… I don’t suppose you could drop me off somewhere with food? Preferably cheap? Noodles would be good…”

“Goodbye, Shang-shidi.” Shen Jiu waved the boy off with a flick of his fan. He pretended not to see the boy wave back at him, or the green flicker in the air as he vanished into the mists on his own.

Perhaps he’d forget. Perhaps he’d shrug it off as a dream, or some delusion the System had forced onto him. Perhaps, eventually, he’d find a way to wiggle free of his fate, or make some small changes. Changes… like taking his villain’s side in a fight, like warning him of the impending future. Maybe changes like cutting him loose from the hellish cycle of the ‘plot’ he’d created and refused to let go of.

Shen Jiu had always imagined the gods as powerful. Beyond mortal concerns. He, personally, had never seen much point to prayer, given that the lofty lords of heaven had never deigned to answer those in need. He admittedly had never considered that they might be hungrier than himself, or angrier. What would be the point of a miserable, wretched god?
But then, he’d ascended, had he not?

Maybe a broken world needed broken gods.
The Road was empty. Shang Qinghua had passed back into his world, and was well on his way to meeting that ice cold demon. His desperation to change the world was no real match, it seemed, for his love of the world as it was, and neither fared well against his will to live. So there was no reason for him to be here, and no reason for Shen Jiu to wait for anything else.

So he went his own way home, and waited for the plot to catch up with them.

~*~

“Why is there a ghost fire in my temple?”
Su Xiyan shrugged. “He didn’t have time to call on you. Zhuzhi-lang killed him before he could be afraid, or angry. But he wanted to help, and he was my shidi.”

“You cannot be serious. This isn’t an orphanage for wayward souls.”

Su Xiyan smiled, in that calm, sharp way she had. “Is it not?”

“It is not.”

“Zhenjun can think what he likes, of course.”

“Please stop calling me that.”

“Even if I say “Immortal Shen,” isn’t it the same meaning? Maybe you were always meant to be a god.” Su Xiyan chuckled.

“No wonder the demon emperor liked you. Wordplay like that is unconscionable.” This was his space, and in his space, there was tea. Su Xiyan helped herself to a cup, nodding to the ghostly young man beside her.

Shen Jiu didn’t recall much about Gongyi Xiao, other than the fact that he had nearly dethroned Luo Binghe’s rank in the Immortal Alliance Conference. Still, there was a certain familiarity about his face. “Is he yours?”

“No. I never allowed that old man that much. He took a great deal from me, but Binghe is my only son.”

“You should have destroyed him.” He didn’t need to know more. He already knew more. Gongyi Xiao’sface told a story that was very familiar.

“Binghe seems to have that handled. He’s frustrated, and there’s a convenient monster right to hand.” Su Xiyan smiled. “I thought about haunting him, but.. this way, he’ll never have power over even the memory of my face.”

Shen Jiu sighed. “As long as it’s just this one.” He grumbled.

“Naturally.” She promised, as insincere as her son. “Also? Yes, Tianlang-Jun liked my wordplay. He thought I was clever. He was easily impressed.”

“Have you been to see him?” Shen Jiu asked. It was odd to him- what passed for love in this woman. Somehow she’d retained her ability to experience it deeply, despite everything, but the way she expressed it was so detached. He had no idea if she watched over the fiasco that was her son, or visited her lover.

“What is there to see, under that mountain?” She shrugged. “He sings ballads in the dark, when he forgets that he hates humans. He always remembers eventually, and stops singing. Why would I want to hear that?”

“The singing, or the silence?”

“Both are intolerable.” She assured him, and then she left him to finish his tea in peace.

~*~

The plot was a mess, not least because the imposter in his skin was as unlike him as it was possible to be.

Perhaps not in every way - he was an avid scholar with a sharp tongue and no patience for those who crossed him. Ultimately, however, he was a wealthy young master who tended towards an indolent life and doted on children. He had no comprehension of real hardship or hunger. That had rankled - the intruder had been so cavalier with his cultivation, with his health, with his decades of hard work.

But his Peak had done… acceptably, with Ming Fan finding his focus and Ning Yingying growing less attached to the beast. The imposter had either an ear for music or had inherited it from him, and his commentary on sub-par literature was incisive. But he was -
If there was a word other than infuriating, Shen Jiu didn’t know it. Apparently, however, nearly every other man who laid eyes on him found other words.
The road was filled with the scent of smoke, the weight of demonic miasma, and the overbearing, all too familiar presence of the qi of the War God of Cang Qiong. Alive and well, as it turned out. For a certain definition of well, at least.

He didn’t dwell on whether he could have saved him. He certainly wouldn’t have encouraged him in such a nonsensical fashion if he had. Liu Qingge had hated him, would always have hated him. This… nonsensical obsession… it could never have been for him.

Certainly not.

Probably.

Anyway, Shen Jiu had disliked him immensely, and it wouldn’t have mattered in the slightest if Liu Qingge had returned his fans, or given him beasts, or halted the worst of the raids, or let him come and go with Shang Qinghua with implicit trust instead of stalking after him in the evenings where his exhaustion was high and his temper was frayed.
And he was here, wounded, wary, wild eyed.

“Luo Binghe!” his voice echoed in the mists. “Enough with the dreams and trickery! Release Shen Qingqiu!”

Release would have been ideal, Shen Jiu thought. The real Shen Qingqiu, looking down on the battered War God, had actively turned and walked away from him, but Liu Qingge had returned.
Day. After. Day. After. Day.

He rebelled against the idea that spoiled, noble Liu Qingge knew anything about real rage and desperation. He had no reason to be here. This place was not for him, for anyone who didn’t know what need was.

The Road disagreed. It didn’t harm him, the way the System had harmed Shang Qinghua before it had been tamed, but it also returned to this battleground time and again.

The brute would have to make a choice, even if that was no choice. Shen Jiu’s mood was only minimally improved by the fact that Liu Qingge looked distinctly battered and confused by his presence. “It’s you.” He blinked.

“Unfortunately. Remaining quietly at rest seems quite impossible, lately. The noise is intolerable.”
Liu Qingge grunted. “Soon, you’ll be able to rest properly, Shixiong. I’ll bring you and Mu-Shidi both home, so don’t… don’t be resentful, ok?”

“You let the beast take Mu Qingfang?” His outrage went bone deep. No, he’d never trusted Mu Qingfang, an accomplished healer and prodigious cultivator in a world where sex was a shortcut to power for many. He’d never trusted those eyes not to take note of his brand, his scars, his pain. Not to offer sympathy and solutions, that would ultimately involve-

No, he’d never been able to like Mu Qingfang. But allowing him to be taken when he was, by whatever means, the best healer and the most rational voice in the Sect- to endanger them all this recklessly when the best means of recovery was out of his reach- Liu Qingge really wasn’t used to a world where he had to face any kind of consequences, was he?
“I’ll bring him home.” Liu Qingge insisted. “I’ll bring everyone home.”

Shen Jiu barked a laugh. It was a bitter sound even for him. The replacement was worth coming back for, every single day without fail. Of course he was.
But even he didn’t have Qi-ge here.

“If you could manage it, I wouldn’t be here.” He settled on. “It’s obvious that the beast is just using you to vent his madness. He would kill you if you were any kind of threat.”

“That’s not-“ but the brute in front of him was only dumb in certain, specific ways. His eyes narrowed. “It’s you.” He said, again, and oh, but what a difference inflection could make.

“You may rest assured, I very much prefer us separated as well. Should you ever succeed, the one you save will be the one you prefer. I prefer my peace and quiet.”

“That’s not - you’re twisting it! You always did. You- however you did it, possession or whatever, however you ran away, you need to come back too. You can’t just abandon-“

“I can.” He smiled. “I can and I have. You’re the one who can’t let go. That’s the shape of it, isn’t it? That’s what your idea of desperation is. Being left behind, being helpless, having your family stripped away from you. No wonder you hated me.”

“You hated me. I didn’t care either way until you started trouble.”

Shen Jiu snorted. “No? Isn’t that why you’ve come back every single day? To avoid becoming me? Scorned, useless, broken- that other Shen Qingqiu can’t remember what it cost, so you didn't have to feel that way around him.”

“He’s better than you.” Liu Qingge had always been blunt. But then he frowned. “Wait, that’s not - he’s nicer than you. Happier. Until that demon started causing trouble. I thought you were happier.”

“Liu-shidi was right the first time.” Shen Jiu scoffed. “But he isn’t here to help you. I, unfortunately, am.”

That got the War God’s attention. “What help? That demon is too much for you.”

“He’s too much for you, clearly. You have never had to fight from a position of desperation.” Shen Jiu snapped. “I know that beast.”

He knew what he’d raised, could see it more clearly than anyone. Another A-Luo, surrounded by fawning beauties and capable of miserable cruelty. A tyrant too powerful to stop.

Shen Jiu had won against that before. “Liu Qingge. You will take hold of my robe and follow me. You will listen to me for once in your life, you will go where this road takes you, and then you will never return here. You will leave me to rest and never breathe a word about my memory. Is that entirely clear? It’s simple enough, is it not?”

“If I do, you’ll come home?”

“What home was Cang Qiong to me?” Shen Jiu scoffed. “What family did I ever have there? If you do, I will show you how to win.”

“I’m not fighting only to win.” Liu Qingge snapped. “You always used dirty tricks just to win, this isn’t about your pride.”

Shen Jiu snarled. “Who said anything about pride? What do you think those unruly students of yours are learning on that mountain, if not to hunt and sabotage each other? They’re learning to fight for their lives, just as I did. That way of fighting comes from pure survival- the need to win at all costs. You’ve never once had that. Even now, the beast refuses to put you down. Fighting you gives his rage somewhere to go.” Shen Jiu shook his head. “He treats you like a young master who knows that he can always dispose of an unruly slave next time, when it stops being fun.”

“And you know what that looks like?” Liu Qingge demanded. “Did you dispose of people so easily?”

“It wasn’t easy. But eventually I did.” Shen Jiu smiled. “Eventually even someone as foolish as I was stopped waiting for a miracle and learned to fight to win.”

There was a long moment of silence between them, where he could see the thoughts rearranging themselves in Liu Qingge’s brain. Could see the shape of himself change in the others eyes. His carefully crafted image of nobility and class falling to pieces.

Liu Qingge wasn’t the sort of person who could apologize. He probably wasn’t the sort of person who could understand why he might suddenly feel as if there should be an apology. But he did take hold of Shen Jiu’s sleeve, very carefully, as if he was concerned that the blood and ash might dirty it.

“I won’t do anything… immoral.” He insisted. “Whatever you suggest, I won’t just-“

“Of course not.” Shen Jiu sighed. “Naturally, that falls to me. I should make you be the one to get your hands dirty. But at this point, if it gets you out of this place and gives me some quiet back-“

“You shouldn’t have to either.” Liu Qingge insisted. “Just… tell me what will work and I’ll make do.”

The road wanted to drag them through exactly what would work. Through the gaps in the leaves, the scent of ash and blood and the thick scent of Qiu Janluo’s preferred incense drifted, a woodsy, metallic, smoky scent. But he refused to go back even in a memory. Liu Qingge already knew more than he should, he didn’t need to see the final proof of it. All he had to do was pay the already formidable price of swallowing his pride, and Shen Jiu could be content. The Road would have to make do.

He ignored the things in the gaps, though he felt Liu Qingge’s steps falter.

“You-“ Liu Qingge started, more than once, his eyes darting where they shouldn’t, no doubt.

“I burned it all down.” Shen Jiu shrugged. “A tactic that might serve you well, here, incidentally.”

“Good.” Liu Qingge said, resolutely. “But that won’t help you, or Mu-shidi. Me doing it, I mean.”

“I’m not in much position to worry or care, and it would certainly keep the beast busy if you did. Even he would be slowed down by a knife to the back of his neck, if he wasn’t focused on you.”

Liu Qingge grunted. “He’s never focused on me. You’re the only one he thinks of.”

“That’s a weapon, then.”

“Only if I endanger you or can get to you.” Liu Qingge huffed.

“I assure you, whatever you do won’t cause me any trouble.” Shen Jiu snorted inelegantly. It wouldn’t even cause the imposter any real trouble, since he’d taken one look at what his beloved prodigy had become and jumped ship. The first sign of sense he’d shown, in Shen Jiu’s estimation.

There were no answers to be had in Liu Qingge’s past, it seemed- he’d loved his sister and she’d loved him, they’d both been bright and shining rising stars in their respective generations. The only separation they’d ever have to face was Liu Qingge ascending before she did. His qi deviation had been a mystery to Shen Jiu even at the time. His anger, his inability to let go, his persistence in making Shen Jiu the center of his attention, in making both of them miserable. None of it made sense to him.

“I should have let you take the beast.” He mused. “It might have kept you both busy.”

“Turns out he didn’t need to be taught how to fight.” Liu Qingge shrugged.

“He learned in the Endless Abyss.” Shen Jiu shrugged. “Hell is the only way to teach some people to let go of their delusions of humanity. Still, what I taught him made him far worse.”

“The qin?” Liu Qingge snorted.

“Hate. And, apparently, love. Demons don’t do either neatly.” He honestly thought this version, who knew more about love and betrayal, was worse than the one who had been raised by him. That was… something.

“You really… that other you..”

Shen Jiu sighed. “Love has never helped me much. It certainly isn’t helping him. Or you.”

“I don’t love- I don’t know. I thought I hated you. Then you started to smile. Maybe I hated what you were. What happened to you. Whatever made you hate me, and the Sect Leader, your family. It never made sense.”

“You hate most things that don’t make sense, Liu-shidi.” He sighed. “I am very much not here to weather your crisis over discovering complex emotions.”

“You are, though. Here, I mean.”

“Not happily.” Shen Jiu assured him. “There, that’s where the road ends.”

In the real world, there was a lot of property damage. A lot of chaos. Liu Qingge leaving the battlefield didn’t undo the carnage he left in his wake for anyone but Luo Binghe, who healed up easily. There were gaps in the defenses of Huan Hua’s proud arrays. Itsillusory mazes were twisted, leading demons in circles and gold-clad students exhausted.

“Use the illusions.” Liu Qingge said, flatly. “Sneaking and subterfuge.”

“They think you’re gone. If you can manage to be quiet and not cause a fuss, they’ll keep thinking it until you have Mu Qingfang back. He might even know how the beast is holding that body, or how to disrupt his work.”

Liu Qingge nodded. He didn’t question why the Road hadn’t just dropped him where Mu Qingfang was being held, he didn’t protest the cowardice of the feint, he didn’t do anything except stare back, for a moment, at the peaceful, drifting mists and bamboo of the road. The silence of it. The mists were pretending to be serene, now, as if they’d never parted on scenes of the fall of the Qiu Manor or the death of Wu Yanzi. As if they’d never framed the bloody ruin that he was at his core. It was possible to pretend, just now, that it was an idyllic scene. A serene immortal wandering on a picturesque road.
It was certainly no place for the boundlessly fortunate, energetic War God. At best, it taught its lessons and was gone again.

“You really won’t come back?” Liu Qingge asked.
“I really won’t. Liu-shidi doesn’t have to be troubled by me any further.”

That got a frown. “Then, what should I do? Light incense? Paper money?”

Shen Jiu snorted back something that was dangerously close to a genuine laugh. “I’m not a ghost, Liu-Shidi.”

“But you aren’t the other one, and you won’t come back anymore.”

“The price of my help is your silence, Liu-shidi. I don’t need anything else from you.”

“You did. None of us gave it to you. So, tell me now.”

Shen Jiu sighed. “There’s a shrine, of sorts, in the city at the base of Cang Qiong. Runaway slaves hide there. Women hiding from husbands who beat them. Murderers, most of them, pushed a little too far. If you can stand to be civil, you could leave something there.”

Liu Qingge took that in a surprisingly even stride, and walked away without another word or backwards glance.

It didn’t take long for rumors to reach the city that Immortal Master Mu had been rescued, however.
It didn’t take long for one of his old fans to be left at the shrine, either. Not one of the ones the imposter had ever cared for, he thought. Not one that anyone would notice was gone, just as they’d never noticed it when it started to gather dust in a stand instead of taking its turn in his hands.

But someone had noticed.

He wasn’t sure why that felt more important than Luo Binghe’s fury at being balked, or the fact that the idiot War God had apparently chosen to go right back to his daily fights. If the idiot wanted to punch out his feelings, or had the awareness to want Luo Binghe to have a way to punch out his feelings, that was his problem.

~*~

“Your husband appears to be alive and well. Free, even.” He commented, after the dust had settled.

“He’s being a child.” Su Xiyan groaned. “Not a candle. Not a prayer. No goodbyes. No, that idiot jumped directly to a cursed sword and the end of the world. He dragged our son into it.”

“I thought you wanted the boy to get revenge for you. Isn’t that why you stayed?”

“The old man lived and died his final months in agony. I’m avenged. But that idiot won’t let go of something foolish.” She sighed. “Really, he was so frivolous about everything, so why is he choosing now to be stubborn?”

“Doesn’t he think you betrayed him?”

She spread her hands. “Shouldn’t he have known that I never would?” She asked. “I’ll wait until he apologizes for doubting me, that bastard.” She paused, then chuckled. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

“Both of you are impossible, if that’s what you mean.” He grumbled. “You could just haunt him. Nothing is stopping you.”

She laughed. “I’m not ready to be rejected. He could probably easily banish a simple ghost- then who would watch over Binghe?”

“That other me, no doubt.” He groaned to think of it. That was no longer him, no longer his flesh. He had to cling to that knowledge, watching the brat.

“…the ‘you’ that used the sun-dew mushroom to survive a self detonation? I think I’ll continue to watch over him for myself, thank you.”
He had to concede the point.

~*~

The Road was getting stronger, he thought.
He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, or why. If the number of prayers was impotent, or the changes he made. He was rapidly becoming aware that no matter how much disorder his uprisings brought into the world, it paled in comparison to what the imposter was doing.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was the amount of chaos that fed the road. More chaos meant more hope for those who saw the ways potential change could save them. Maybe Tianlang-Jun being loose was enough to tip the scales. That had been a surprise, though, unfortunately, he only wished he could say it was out of character for the imposter. Not even the gods and all the laws of this world as maintained by the System could keep that brat in check.

But he would have thought that he’d have noticed if the Road could reach into the demon realms before. He would have thought that all the rage and raw emotion there would have dragged the Road there over and over again.

Other than Shang Qinghua, none of his other prayers had ever come from or led to anything but the human realms before. But this time, the plants that the bamboo gave way too were decidedly demonic, and particularly vicious as well.

He bypassed the limbless corpse on the ground without a second glance. Maybe Su Xiyan would be by later. Maybe she wouldn’t. Whichever suited her taste. Would she want to personally witness her freedom from her old master? Would she never want to see that face again, and relish the satisfaction of him dying alone?

He’d always needed to see. To know.

Either way, a dead man wasn’t what called him, and even if it was, he was prepared to ignore it till the end of time.

The living woman who had called him was arguably worse. Suddenly, he thought darkly, the Old Palace Master seemed easy to handle in comparison. Drag him onto the road, drop him in front of Tianlang-Jun, or Su Xiyan, or into the Endless Abyss- the Road existed to help people stand against tyrants, not enable them.

But Qiu Haitang had never been a tyrant. She’d always been weak and uniformed. She’d always completely failed to see unpleasant realities.

That had been stripped cleanly away from her in this place. The imposter hadn’t known enough to be kind, and the demon hadn’t cared to try.

So here she was. Weeping, and angry, and lost, fleeing blindly into the Holy Mausoleum and into his space as if she still owned it.

Or… not. She recoiled away from him like he was a poisonous snake. “Shen Jiu? Stay away, stay away from me, let me go! Shouldn’t you want to never see me again? If it’s true, you wouldn’t! But it’s lies, right? It was all lies?”

“Do you want to escape again?” He asked. “Does truth or lie matter? You’ve had your revenge, haven’t you?”

Her laughter was hysterical. “I had it. They locked you away and you died. And then - I told that boy, that demon, that I’d do anything to bring you back. You were supposed to suffer as I did, lose everything as I did, we were supposed to finally be equal! I wanted to stop hating you!”

“Is that so? The odds were truly against you, then.” He mused. “Come with me, then, I suppose. I’m hardly immune to my own laws, after all.”

She was desperate and afraid, and he had hurt her deeply. It was clear to him that the Road was hers. He wondered where it would lead, what it would ask of her.

“No.” She said, and the calm in her was striking after the earlier hysteria. “No, this is exactly what I wanted. We’re even, right? My family hurt you, I imprisoned you. You took everything from me. I took everything from you. You became a master, I ended up like this.. are we finally even now? Can we finally let go?”

“To what end?” He asked, evenly. She had reached for him, taken hold of his hand, but she wasn’t making any motion to actually move.

“I- what? I.. did you never.. why did you save me, if you didn’t care?”

There were traps in this place, dangerous and cruel, and none of them felt as deadly as the pain in her voice. Still, he turned and started to walk, pulling her along. She stumbled after him, blinking.
“Did we care? Either of us?” He finally asked. “He made sure you had no one. Even to me, weren’t you just a place to hide?”

“No, that’s-“ she faltered. The stone gave way to fog, the whispers of the dead fading seamlessly into the whispers of the leaves. “The plant tombs are dangerous.” She added, clinging a little closer as the bamboo grew closer around them.

“This is a different kind of tomb. It will take you somewhere, if you let it.”

Almost immediately, she brightened. “Anywhere? I want to go back. To when we were happy. We can undo all this! We can just run away together instead of any fires..”

“To when you were ignorant, you mean. Why would you leave wealth and power on the word of a slave?” He scoffed. He…didn’t think it was possible to go back across any one timeline. Though… his memories were…

He didn’t particularly want to go back. He didn’t think Haitang wanted to, either. She missed her peace and her naivety, her security. She missed the idea of them being happy.

She missed it so much that she’d cheerfully condemned him to hell in several lives, to balance some imaginary set of scales.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to marry you if I didn’t love you!” She wailed. “Of course if I’d known you were suffering I would have helped!”

She wouldn’t have. Shen Jiu knew that. She would have cried prettily, pleaded with her brother on his behalf, swallowed his assurances and horrified confusion whole, and gone on her way. Two or three days later, she’d be distracted by some pretty gift, and he would be ‘kicked by a horse’ and require ‘peace and quiet to recover’ so that Qiu Janluo didn’t have to clean him up between beatings for a while. She would have made it worse.

Ning Yingying was so very, very like her. He couldn’t pretend that he’d never cared at all, not when he’d adopted a child who would go on to make matters worse for her chosen stray…

Ah, it was easy to want to hold onto certain illusions. Easy to say he’d never cared for her at all. Easy to blame her. To ignore the repetition, the symbolism a heavy handed god had found so meaningful. Naturally, he’d never say anything else.
But she didn’t know they were illusions. And his desperation wasn’t greater than hers, with his long since a scar and her horror still fresh, but it couldn’t be ignored. It had shaped him. It had shaped this space.

So he imagined that he knew what she would find here, on her way out of an otherwise inescapable hell.

Still, it was something of a shock to see it- to hear it.

“-had already let him transmigrate into Shen Qingqiu’s shell, replacing him-“
In short, not only did he have to clean up the original Shen Qingqiu’s messes- the Shen Qingqiu with a veritable mob of enemies coming for his ass- he also had to stop other characters from creating even more messes.
The memories I showed her were not hers, but yours.
May I request that Senior show them to me?
You don’t remember?
Correct.
Some things are better left forgotten.
I earnestly request Seniors assistance.
You truly wish to see?

This categorically wasn’t Shen Qingqiu’s memory, but this face was indeed exactly like his.

This was Shen Qingqiu, yet it wasn’t Shen Qingqiu .
If he had to be obvious about it, it was Shen Jiu.
Then, another memory, from elsewhere, cutting across the haze of dreams and tangled memories.

“Though he is much changed from when I knew him, that face- I could never mistake that face even if it burned to ash!”

He’d thought there would be more pleasure in it. In pointing out that the imposter had loved the beast enough to chase him across lifetimes, that the beast had loved the imposter enough to find him wearing entirely a different face and body. That they’d known each other.

That Qiu Haitang had never known Shen Jiu like that.

That Qi-ge had not known Shen Jiu like that.

“Enough.” He said. “You understand, now.”
But the Road had not found its end just yet, wavering between worlds, as ‘she’ turned on him again and again, throwing herself at the beast with tears and simpering smiles, finding a life for herself as one of many wives, wealthy and secure once more. She’d been comfortable and therefore happy, seamlessly replacing one A-Luo with the next.

“Enough.” She agreed, watching herself through the mists. Her hand on his sleeve went lax.

“If you let go now, I won’t be able to guide you.”

“You never should have given me the chance, clearly. So why did you bother?“

“I didn’t hate you. If I hadn’t wanted someone else to save me, I might have-“ he stopped. He didn’t want to lie to her. Caring wasn’t the same as loving. She wanted him in the same way he’d wanted someone else- he wouldn’t insult her by pretending he could have given her that.

“No one saved you. But I at least was there.“ the whimper was gone from her voice. It had been replaced with weariness. Understanding. She wasn’t whining that he owed her affection- only coming to terms that he’d given her all he had to spare.

It wasn’t either of their fault that that meant none.
“I could never forget that you did. I couldn’t forgive it, either.” He agreed. It should have been someone else. How could he forgive her for not being Qi-ge?
“So, I think I’ll let go of you now, while I can still claim a little bit of your memory. Even if you never- if I never-“ she sighed. “I should apologize to that person, but I’m afraid I probably won’t see him again.”

“Probably not.” He agreed. “Are you certain? I could bring you nearly anywhere.“

“Where? There? Where I could play at saving you, from what I brought you to? Where I’d inevitably be tempted to live that life as she did? Do you think you’d be grateful? I’m weak enough to want that, you know?” She smiled. “It’s better if I just.. let go. If I die in such a place, it’ll be fighting demons, as a cultivator should. Leave me at least that much face.”

As a boy - and he had been a boy, no matter what the world had said- he’d left a girl sprawling by a burning manor without ever looking back.
As he was now, he watched her let go of his sleeve, and walk with her head held high into the mists, until not even he could see even her shadow.

~*~

“It’s not like you to light a candle.” Su Xiyan commented. She moved lightly, even for a ghost. He knew she was coming, here in his own temple, but she was usually quiet, and he usually ignored her.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you bringing home another stray.” He murmured, still watching the small flame. Did he owe Haitang the rites reserved for family? Perhaps not. But a place like this, reserved for the lost, had candles to spare.

“He’s family.” Su Xiyan shrugged. “I’m just taking care of him until his uncle lays him to rest properly. It wouldn’t do to have the ghost of a heavenly demon running around the place, now would it?”

“So instead he’s running around this place.”

“Well, a run down shrine stuffed with offerings from cultivators.. think of him as a guard dog, so the girls can still pray undisturbed. Besides, he owes Gongyi Xiao an apology.”

~*~

There was nowhere in the three realms that the Road could not reach. It was odd to think that the bestial demons could experience such things as fear and rage and desperation outside of their petty clashes- but if he let them, they’d haunt his road nonstop.

Not that he got much of a say, but demons were distrusting and violent brutes, and if they attacked him or refused to let him lead them, he could be rid of them quickly enough.

Mostly.

The northern borderlands were trapped in a perpetual blizzard, lately, the skies overcast and raining black shards of ice. It felt like every time the Road opened it was to the same rattle of winter winds and hail, to another mother desperate to keep her husband or child from freezing to death, another hunter desperately trying to track and kill whatever demon or beast was plaguing them now.

None of it was even close to the howling rage and want at the center of the storm. But it all had to be dealt with, and he was in a certain temper by the time the road opened- again- into the heart of a frozen wasteland.

He was tempted to turn entirely around when he saw what lay within the storm.

Shang Qinghua, may the heavens dethrone him swiftly, liked beautiful men. And beautiful women, and beautiful scenery for them to fuck in. He was eternally perverse, a fact that permeated every aspect of the world, from its flora and fauna to the casual use of dual cultivation as healing to the way demons dressed.

One could, with a certain amount of wearying experience, tell who was important to Shang Qinghua’s ‘story’ by gauging how beautiful they were. From the almost feminine beauty of Liu Qingge to the broad shouldered musculature of Yue Qingyuan, to the breathtaking grace of Liu Mingyan, and even the ethereal cold beauty that had haunted Shen Jiu all his life - all were at the whim of a mousy little man with ink stains on his fingers and perpetually messy hair.

All of which was to say that the demon lord at the heart of the blizzard looked very plot relevant - in that he was hardly wearing clothing on his upper body, beyond a cloak artfully thrown back by the wind, and that the chest it revealed was frankly so indicative of Shang-di’s personal taste that seeing it outside of a yellow book seemed moderately offensive on principle.

Which was strange, given that his only role in Shen Jiu’s memory was that of a petty assassin.

Apparently the powers that be in this world appreciated a beauty that was silent and subservient. This did nothing to improve Shen Jiu’s mood.

The mists dispersed the shards of ice that formed to wherever they sent useless things, and the quiet green of the bamboo settled themselves over the frozen wastes, establishing themselves in the face of the storm without ceremony.

The demons eyes narrowed.

Good, at least they felt the same way.

“You are not Immortal Master Shen.” He rumbled.
“Oh, but I am. Both immortal, and Master Shen.”
“Your cultivation is quite different.” The demon growled. “But if you are him, then you will know where Shang Qinghua is.”

“Isn’t he where he wishes to be?” In his experience, Shang Qinghua hadn’t really changed very much, between being a man and being a god. He’d lost a little of his cringing facade and let his arrogance show, which made him… slightly less annoying. But pinning him down and shaking answers out of him was equally difficult. No matter whether his excuse was paperwork in the arms of a harried looking An Ding disciple, a corpse in the arms of a frantic little demon, or a window opening in the array he called System with an urgent notification tone, he slid sideways away from anything that seemed unpleasant or stressful.

This blizzard probably qualified as unpleasant.

“He said he would stay. He swore his life to me. He is mine.”

Shen Jiu snorted. “Ah, yes, Shang Qinghua and his notoriously reliable oaths. Do you know what he swore to An Ding? To Cang Qiong?”

“He swore to me first.”

“Before his tea ceremony? Before he joined Cang Qiong?” Shen Jiu tsked. “Though, I grant you, he gave you longer than anyone else.”

“He gave me his life! He came back for me!”

“I’m not here to analyze the way he comes and goes.” Though… it was hardly a puzzle, was it? The way he hid himself away, the way he left but never quite cut his ties, the way he tolerated abuse and being ignored but ran at the first sign of kindness. The way he’d never written anyone in this world a happy ending. The way he’d thought that the truly cold and remorseless soul he’d replaced would do better in the place he’d come from than he had. The way he wrote lost children, again, and again, and again.

Shen Jiu had changed things, in this world. The imposter who had taken his place had changed things. Now, happy endings weren’t quite so impossible. But still, the god of this world refused to believe in them. ‘Oh, that’s Cucumber-bro. That’s the protagonist. That’s a special circumstance. That’s-‘

He should let the man rot in the misery he’d inflicted on everyone in this world.

But this demon…

The road had a strong sense of balance. It was weighted towards those who had no idea what relief looked like. The little beast in this world had never found it- he’d always had a goal. A way forward. Escape the Abyss. Become a noble cultivator. Revive his beloved. Win his beloved. No matter how deep his agony, he carved his own path forward at an unrelenting pace.

Similarly, his father had known despair, but had chosen not to acknowledge it. When something was too painful, he turned aside from it with a laugh, and found some other path to walk. It took both desperation and drive- it required qualities which Shen Jiu respected. He did not think that was accidental.

He was hardly required to enforce Shang Qinghua’s bad choices. Or protect him from them. Hadn’t he wanted, from the very start, to oppose that miserable little man? This cynicism and pessimism that had been part of this world from the very beginning- there was at least one creature that refused to acknowledge it, even though, in any other world, he might have been one of itsearliest victims.

A smile twisted his lips. It wouldn’t do not to answer the Road’s call, now would it?

“You’ll take me to him.” The demon decided.

“I will.” Shen Jiu nodded.

They walked.

Shen Jiu hadn’t known what to expect from their travels. Perhaps some glimpses of that other world again, some grand revelation of Shang Qinghua’s role in the demon lord's misery. Perhaps more twisting possibilities- he was all too aware that the ascended Shang-di had a consort.

But instead, the path led through the past- not one, but many.

There were many, many worlds in which Shang Qinghua died by this demon's hands. It was almost impossible to tell which Shang Qinghua it was- both watched the demon lord as they did no one else, tracking every movement, following after his every step. Both were too clever by half.

Sometimes there was hatred almost right from the start. Animosity over poor treatment, resentment of the uneven balance of power. The Shang Qinghua native to this world had been keenly addicted to the power only Mobei-Jun could offer- his love, when it manifested, was a symptom of that addiction as well. What wouldn’t he offer, to anyone who could raise him above the ashes he left in his wake? How could he not cling to Mobei-Jun? How could he not resent him in equal measure?

Airplane, on the other hand, started with the obsession. Poor treatment was not new to him, and he knew death was inevitable, but he chose. He always chose to spare his king, and lived with that choice as best he could. With his guilt, with his rage and pain, with understanding in his eyes when a beating went wrong or Binghe gave the final order. But as Mobei-Jun’s interest grew- as his suit grew more serious, the choice grew harder to live with, leaving Airplane’s heart full of curses.

It seemed that every time Mobei-Jun grew closer, Airplane drew farther away.

Yet, he never quite left.

No version of Shang Qinghua ever left. Always, always, always, they were at Mobei-Jun’s side until they were killed. The details differed, tearful smiles, cold eyes, frantic curses and pleading. But no matter the love or hate or obsession or betrayal, they always stayed as long as they could.

Except this time. Mobei-Jun and Shang Qinghua were a constant in every universe, a fundamental thing that Mobei-Jun knew like he knew how to draw breath.

“Is that why he ran?” Mobei-Jun’s expression was dark.

“Not likely. He never ran from it before.”

“Then why?”

“Maybe that is all he knows, and change is hard for him. Or maybe in this world he can’t bear for that to happen. I do not think he wants to hate you.”

“I would not-“

Shen Jiu scoffed. “Would not what? Would not raise a hand to him? Would not punish him if he failed you? Would not demand he betray his family for you? Do you think he wanted to kill children for you? Do you think he wanted to call the Abyss? Haven’t you asked far worse of him than a few beatings?”
Mobei-Jun snarled. “Huan Hua-“

“Was not the only Sect there! His disciples were there! They had to clean up the mess!” Shen Jiu snarled back, tempted as never before to rip his sleeve free of the demons grasp and let the mist swallow him. “He knew you would hurt him, and he still tried to help me. He did not want to betray us.”

“Wrong.” Mobei-Jun snarled back. “Your Sect threw him out of a cart while he clung to it and begged, without even a sword in his hands. I killed the ones who threw his life away and he stepped over their bodies without a backwards glance.”

Shen Jiu rolled his eyes. “It hardly matters who failed him more. He’s made his choices.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because my shidi makes terrible choices. I am tired of his nonsense.”

The ice demon nodded, but Shen Jiu thought there was a small smile hidden beneath that still expression as well.

He walked slowly, watching the scenes as they unfolded. Studying them carefully, rejecting them each with a decisive shake of his head. Learning their shapes and patterns. He was the first, in Shen Jiu’s memory, to linger. But then, he wasn’t being taught about himself.

Shen Jiu was prepared to walk until a destination presented itself. Long gone were the days when the Road was as short as a pathway to a nearby river, or even as short as between a mortal town and a lofty Sect. Shang Qinghua could be anywhere in any of the realms- if not hiding in the Heavens, out of reach of any normal demon, or in his own outlandish world, out of reach of anyone. But outside of those possibilities, the Road could reach him.

But in the end, there was no destination. Just a call, high and frantic with pain. Shen Jiu heard it resounding through Mobei-Jun.

“Here.” The demon said, with absolute certainty.
“So it would seem. I was hardly required at all.”
The demon gave a rippling shrug. “You showed me some useful things. In return, I will warn you- avoid Junshang wearing that face.”

“It is my face-“ Shen Jiu hissed, but the demon was already gone, apparently determined to face down his mistakes.

It was hard to imagine a person like that in this world. One who believed in a happy ending- one who faced his mistakes head on. Originally, his fate was entirely predictable- only raw power kept him alive, and his misguided faith left him entirely alone.
But the god of this world had been creating an idealized dream- what he wanted, not what he knew. He knew that even the best of intentions failed, that pain and disappointment was inevitable, that people were petty and cruel. He wanted loyalty, dedication, and hope for something better.
Didn’t they all?

~*~

Sometimes, still, the Road took him by surprise. It went more or less where his worshipers were, whether they knew it or not, and they walked it regardless of whether he welcomed them or not – regardless of whether they welcomed him. He knew that, and yet -

The man on the road was a far cry from the boy he had been. That boy had been foolish, had smiled far too often, had hated to cry and rarely did, even when it would have won them food. This man looked like he knew how to cry. He looked lost, desperate, hungry.

It was, frankly, a terrible look for him.

“Really? The lofty Sect Leader of Cang Qiong?” he demanded, and watched as Yue Qi raised his head to stare, his hand frozen in the act of reaching out. “Don’t take hold. This place isn’t for someone like you.”

“Shidi…” the words came out slowly. “What place is this?” But the hand didn’t lower. It trembled a little, but it never fell away.

Damn you, Yue Qingyuan. You don’t have to pretend anymore. You don’t have me dragging you down. How dare you come? How dare you be here?

If you are here, then-

“The ninth road is for the desperate, the hateful, the lost. The ones who will fight back. If you take hold of me, you’ll follow where I take you, and pay the price for it. Is Zhangmen-shixiong really going to leave his Sect? His martial family? His nobility? In how many lifetimes will I have to tell you this? It’s better if you don’t hold onto me. There’s nothing you could need this badly.”

That’s right. There really isn’t anything this person needs from you.

He watched Yue Qingyuan’s face fall, the light in those eyes dim. Watched as he wavered, looked back towards the Sect he’d left behind him in the mortal realm. “It was stupid of you to come, Qi-ge.”

“Shen...Jiu?” the words were a whisper. “But you – I -”

“If you say what you came for, the road will give it shape. I will answer you. And you will pay for it. I won’t be the one setting the price, either, but it’s usually something unbearable. Plenty of people leave empty handed, even though this was their heart’s desire.” Liu Qingge had, frustrated beyond measure at the concept of having to suffer anything to gain what he wanted. Qiu Haitang… well, she had paid, in the end. It should have been her brother, screaming like that, but even gods couldn’t have everything.

“And if I want to pay? To finally know what it would take to reach you? Shen-shidi called this worthless one noble, but that’s a lie. This useless Qi-ge is selfish. I… If Shen-shidi is happy, then why would I rather he hate me? Why would I rather he regain his memories? He jokes with Shang Qinghua about sharing a hometown, but I – I can’t. I can’t listen to it anymore. Whatever replaced what we share with what they share, whatever stripped the past away.. I’m the only one who can’t let go, in the end. Please come back and hate me again, if that’s all that’s left for us.”

“I can’t give you the power to fight what changed that Shen Qingqiu. Enjoy him – he’s much tamer than I am.” But the Road wouldn’t dissolve because he wanted it to, he couldn’t just step back into the mists and say that he’d given it a chance.

“I… don’t dislike him. But if I had the choice, I’d want you back. Are you… are you a ghost, or…?” a flicker of concern drifted into that face, once always smiling and impassive. As if he’d realized that a noble cultivator shouldn’t fling himself after shades of the past and promise recklessly to pay any price for a heart’s desire. A career politician really should have known that to start with.

“Try and banish me, if you like,” he offered. It wasn’t a serious test, not really.

“Why would I? If the price is my life, my cultivation, leaving the Sect, anything so trivial, why would I turn away from seeing you again? Things are peaceful, now. The ‘you’ who is there could lead. The demon realms won’t trouble him, nor will Huan Hua. He’s well loved and well protected. So, no matter what the price is, tell me how to be near you.”

The hand closed around his sleeve, a touch he had always allowed, even at his darkest. A hand that would never let him go.

Damn you, Qi-ge. No matter the lifetime, you never change.

He turned, and began to walk away, but the pressure on his sleeve refused to fade. As if there was any chance that Yue Qingyuan, of all people, would ever let go.

He knew where the Road was going. After all, it was a very familiar walk.

It led through the Lingxi caves, to start. Stones awash with blood, the lingering feeling of agony just below the skin, madness that stirred in the back of the mind, energy, pulsing, flowing, too much, too vibrant, too bright. For every life that these caves had saved, for every cultivator who had become closer to immortality, who had found understanding and purity of intent in this place, another had died or gone insane.

Liu Qingge, the strongest War God of them all, had died here. Shen Jiu, the most determined and dedicated – the most desperate, perhaps – had broken here. Many others had, as well, as evidenced by the desperate marks on the stone and the echoing screams that lingered where mortals could not hear.

He glanced back, and was grimly satisfied by how pale Yue Qingyuans face was.

“It will get worse than this place,” he said.
“Nothing is worse than this place.” Yue Qingyuan said, sounding calm enough.
“What a lovely, idealistic thing to think. Just because this life has spared you so much grief. You imagine what burdens you have to carry are unbearable.”

The voices echoed between them, entirely familiar, entirely alien.

“My apologies. I’ve frightened you.”

“Zhangmen-shixiong never enters the LingXi caves for secluded cultivation, no? Why must you fight me for a spot the moment I do!?”

“...Did someone duel to the death in here?”

“No. Duels are forbidden in the Ling Xi caves.”

“Then, did someone die here?”

Silence.

Then – “I’m here.”

“Whoever this was wanted very much to leave. They struggled a long time before dying.”

Silence, again, weighted with pressure, and burning qi that was wrong, somehow.

“This didn’t happen.” Yue Qingyuan’s voice was soft. “If it had, I would have-”
“You did not. Whatever it was you wished to say, you never did.”
“No – you went to cultivate, you saved Liu-shidi from his deviation, I never- I never went back into that place-”

“That was not me. You cannot say you want to see me, and hold onto the things the other has done. This is what it cost to stay near me, and I will not allow it to happen again.”

The path led from one grave to the next: the Water Prison, interminable, aching, cold. Yue Qingyuan had been allowed a chance to sneak in, to give him medicines, to give him lifesaving qi. That qi had twisted and burned in him, the hellish pains of the demon’s blood dancing through him at the prospect of anything granting him relief.

“-I’ve already considered it hundreds and thousands of times! There is no ‘if’, no ‘in the beginning’- there was never any chance of redemption!”

“If that’s true for you, then it must be true for me as well. If I failed you that badly… was there never any chance at any other outcome?”

“That’s what you’re here begging for, isn’t it? Anything better would be a miracle. Only the gods themselves could do better for us. And I’ve met them, Yue Qingyuan, and I’ll tell you now, they don’t care. They set this miserable fate in motion long ago, and didn’t even do us the courtesy of letting the truth be known. The only mercy to be found for those who hate this world is mine, and I used mine up long ago. They claim to love the world, but led it to utter ruin. I hate it with my very soul, but I’m the one they raised up to make it ‘better.’ That is the nature of the heavens. The greatest traitor in this world is the one who shaped it.”

“I see.” Yue Qingyuan whispered. “So, even though you hate me, this world, everything, you never turned away from us.”

“Look where it got us.” he snapped. “One grave after another.”

The road kept going, though as a mortal he’d never seen that final grave that awaited them. Obviously, he’d seen the end result, out of his last remaining eye, but never the way the arrows caught the light as they flew, never the peaceful smile of the man who’d never been very good at crying.

Never seen Xuan Su drawn, glowing with light and life, a true example of the sword and the wielder being ‘one’

Never seen the way Yue Qingyuan faltered before the arrows began to strike home, as the sword aura that burned the first wave back cost him more and more and more.

The Yue Qingyuan holding onto him even now looked nearly as shattered as the blade on the ground, watching Binghe gather them up with a mad light in his eyes and a playful smile on his lips.
“This is what our life together was, Yue Qingyuan. Do you really prefer it to what you have now? Would you really let me shatter everything you’ve built for this?”

“..If there’s no other way, then there’s no other way.”

“What?” Shen Jiu couldn’t contain the rage, the disbelief, it spiraled out of him, dispelling the places around them, returning the road to what it so often looked like to him – a simple road, through some wild place, bamboo whispering and shards of rock littering the sides of the path, and faint lantern light, always ahead, just around the corner, almost out of sight.

“I’m afraid Shen-shidi has always imagined me to be a better person than I am. The truth is, dying together would still be ‘together’, and as long as you’re there, maybe I can do better.”

Shen Jiu laughed. He couldn’t help it, the sound cracked out of him painfully. “Pathetic, that’s really too pathetic – all this time you weren’t trying to buy me off, you really were debasing yourself for me. But the simple truth is, you’ll never do better, because you’ll never give me the answer I need. A shame, because that’s the price of what you want – the truth, for once. That’s what changes this. Tell me why you never came back then, and I’ll take you where you want to go now and let you rot there. Or let me go, and go back home.”

Yue Qingyuan’s eyes were always dark, but when they went still, it really was hard to find any end to their depths at all. “The truth.. I told the wrong person, in the end…”

“Could you really not tell the difference?”

“I was hoping you were still.. able to hear it, somehow. If I managed to say it.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Then I’ve troubled Shen-shidi as he is now for no reason.” Yue Qingyuan closed his eyes, made a sound that might have been a laugh, if there had been any humor at all in it. “The truth is, it was wrong not to tell you. I always assumed that the gods would judge me for it. This is even more fitting.”

“So you know you were wrong. Yet, even in that entire life, you never spoke those words. Even in this life, you waited until it was too late.”

“Yes. I think, even if you give me back that life where you never left, I think.. I want to do better. I tell myself that I will. I’m always just about to tell you, always thinking it will spill out in the next breath, always feeling the jagged edges of it in my throat. I think I’ll fail again. I think I want to try, knowing that. Don’t you see? Once I tell you, it’s over. Either you’ll forgive me, and I’ll be the only one blaming myself, or you’ll hate me, and I’ll know for sure there was never any other option. I don’t know how to live with either.”

“Good. I’m tired of hating and forgiving you in equal measure. One or the other would be better. Pay with the truth, or get out of my sight. Mortals only ever come here once, so choose your hell with care.”

He hated that it wasn’t his choice. He wanted to grab him and shake him, push him off, send him back – even Shang-di had decided that the original fate was too pitiful, had taken him aside and told him, when they were both mortals, to stay calm, to call for help. As easy as it was to spit venom – always easy, for him – he wanted a better future. Everyone did, except for this man, who didn’t think he deserved it.

Maybe he was right, but it still made Shen Jiu seethe. If he was so desperate to be punished, then he should quietly accept the fate that was shaped for him, not end up here trying to fight for something worse. Was the man a masochist?

“In the caves,” Yue Qingyuan said, quietly. “That was also a grave. I think. I’ve never been sure. As you said, it’s… impossible, right? For someone to lose that much blood, struggle that hard, and survive? Even if they fought their hardest, for a long time, screamed until they couldn’t anymore… there’s really no way they survived. I… you told Qi-ge to be careful, he really should have listened. I tried my best, I really did… but I was never really the same person, after that, either. More sword than human, really, a union that every cultivator dreams of... I don’t know if I died. I only know that Qi-ge went in and Yue Qingyuan, the Xuan Su Sword, came out. No… maybe Qi-ge died before the caves were sealed, they way they had to unmake me, my meridians, my core.. am I the same person? If they remade everything, the bones, the ligaments, the tendons… Whatever was left did go back, but you were gone. Everything was ashes.” He closed his eyes, blinking away something that was uncharacteristic of him. It might have been a tear, but Qi-ge didn’t cry, so that was impossible. “In that other life, if you’d drawn my sword in the water prison, you’d have known. I really was that close to making you understand, I wanted to put my life in your hands, so you’d know I really would trust your words no matter what.”

“It was too late. By then, I’d already forgiven you. I didn’t want your life in my hands – I’d only ruin it.”

“You could do whatever you liked with it. You still could.” Yue Qingyuan hadn’t let go of him, but he turned, leaving Xuan Su open to be drawn. “If that truth is the key to what I want, as long as I can be near you, all I want is for you to be safe and happy.”

“Fine. Then, I’ll choose. That’s what I want, too.”

“Good.” Yue Qingyuan breathed. “That’s best.”

He’d walked the Road a hundred times already, and more. It was a peaceful place, except for the scenes that his petitioners dragged with them, the destinations required of them. For him, it was a sanctuary, more than the lofty peaks of Cang Qiong had ever been. But he’d never walked it like this before, either – it had always led to whoever needed it, and then away to wherever they would need to be. But it was his choice, this time, and he saw, with the eyes of the divine, all the ways it spiraled off into a million worlds. Shang-di claimed that the System could reach across worlds, and this was similar – really, he could go anywhere. They really could just run away together and never be found, and this world could settle into its twisted fate without them – he’d stolen the one worthwhile thing out of it already.

Could he be blamed if he did?

Well, Shang-di and the System would probably be able to find him, and then he’d have to listen to truly insufferable whining. And that interloper of his would really have to run the Sect, and he was an ignorant, idiot child. And as for leaving the world in the hands of that beast… or leaving Su Xiyan alone to maintain an empty temple till she either took it over entirely or faded away..

Wouldn’t it be more trouble than it was worth, to abandon all of it? He hated the entire world, and was only happy when people were unhappy… but there were certainly parts of it that he’d worked to improve.

So he chose… something a little closer to home, in the end.

The mists parted onto the smooth pathways of Qiong Ding, and they silently walked together up to the Sect Leader’s door. Only when Yue Qingyuan reached to open it, and draw him inside, did he shake his head.

“That’s not the Road. That’s a destination. You're on your own after that.”

“Did I not wish for us to stay close? If you can’t be here, then I’ll stay on the Road with you.”

“You can’t. Your desperation is already fading. You have the answers you wanted – you know I am safe and well. Mortals can’t walk the Road more than once, either. You’ll be fine. This is the world you know – the beast is tamed already, and things are peaceful enough. You have..” he sighed, feeling the shape of the unfamiliar words. Words that were unlike him to say aloud, but… Qi-ge had said some things that he never could before tonight already. “You have my permission to use that name for me, it won’t trouble me anymore. Just so you don’t mix me up with that child anymore.”

There was a smile, then, brighter than any he’d ever received, except for that day they’d met after the Immortal Alliance Conference. Qi-ge… he really was better at smiling than making any other expression, they couldn’t be any more different people. “Xiao-Jiu-”

“I take it back, it’s still annoying to hear you say it.” he grumbled.

“Your Qi-ge is sorry, Xiao-Jiu. I’ll only say it to you, never to anyone else.”

“Never say it.”

“Just a few more times. It’s been so long since I dared, and it makes me so happy.” Yue Qingyuan hesitated. “You really won’t come inside? There’s probably… a great deal to discuss. We really treated each other badly, I really… I was trying to protect you, but-”

“You can’t come to me, and you can’t stay with me. I expect you to move on already.” Shen Jiu snapped. “But… well… since you wanted me to decide, I’ll decide whenever I like. The Road is mine, after all. So I’ll wander by, on occasion, if you aren’t too pathetic about it.”

After all, maybe there was still.. something this person needed from someone like him. He’d always thought that if this person could believe in him, then he wasn’t entirely rotten to the core.

It was hard to argue with this person’s faith in him now, when it was enough to raise him up to a place where he could open worlds as he saw fit. It was hard to say he was rotten when he’d made the kindest possible choice.

It took Yue Qingyuan a few more moments to let go of his sleeve, and even longer till the Road carried him far enough away that he didn’t feel those dark eyes on his back.

That night, or what passed for it in the twilight space that he’d shaped around his temple, he found out that gods could feel incense burning for them, and learned that some prayers whispered in the back of his mind were a little bit soothing to hear.

He’d have to chastise the fool for being so reverent, next time.

~*~

The road could be infinite, and it could be everywhere. Still, Shen Jiu preferred to stay closer to home. The further out he wandered, the more the various memories refracted and blurred, without beginning or end. The him who had lived, and died, in so many ways, who had survived, who had become so unlike himself.

Who had become, perhaps, a little more like Xiao-Jiu.

He still grumbled a great deal, when the road opened in that particular way. He’d grumbled even as a child, when Qi-ge did something stupid and selfless and he’d tagged along, saying there was no choice. He’d never been a patient man, but he was starting to suspect he’d been kinder than he’d ever wanted to be. Why else would he put up with all of this?

The desperation felt quiet, now, low-grade but steady. It was only unique because the road had to reach to encompass it. Both very, very near and farther than he’d ever gone. Even Luo Binghe had not been so far away as this- to the Road, that reality was as close as the turn of a page.

He followed it, with a quiet sense of the inevitable.

He was waiting for himself along the path.
“There isn’t even a bench to rest on. Do you ever rest?” The imposter asked him.

“I do, but not here.” Shen Jiu shrugged.

“And where is here? Some secret realm? It’s not canon, is it?”

“It remains an absolute delight, hearing you treat the entire world and everyone in it as some persistent fiction.” Shen Jiu drawled.

“See, that makes it sound like you’ve been listening the whole time…” The imposter winced a little.

“Not the entire time. Entirely too often for either of our liking.” Shen Jiu knew his smile was a little cruel, but he felt that he deserved that much. “Enough to loathe you.”

The imposter bristled immediately. “Why? Because I did better than you would have?”

Shen Jiu nodded. Perhaps, before he had ascended, he would have scoffed, and lied. Now… now he had some answers, and it felt less important to hide himself away.

Qi-ge mourned him. Left him gifts. Mostly sweet fruits and incense. He had not been forgotten. He was free. “Yes. Building a palace from what I reduced to ashes. How could I not hate you?”

“I mean, I hated you too. You made everything so hard! So much worse for yourself!”

“That was the goal, yes. It was better if people didn’t have unrealistic expectations.” Shen Jiu shrugged. “For all it mattered. They didn’t care when I ruined things, or notice when you intervened to salvage them. They didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to the real me.”

“I-“ the interloper hesitated. “I… get why you felt that way, but…”

“Yes. You do. You did think to ask, eventually.”
“Er. I take it you don’t want a hug..?”

“No.”

“Right. You want me to kick Airplane in the teeth?”
“…You would do that anyway.”

“Yeah, fuck that guy. But I’ll do it extra for you? He hasn’t ascended yet, I can probably knock a tooth out.”

“You really are the sort of person who looks a god in the face and tries to kick them. That explains a lot about the last few years.”

“He’s a shitty god, ok? Using whump for sympathy points and then cutting it out anyway… I’ll beat him til he cries. …Ah, what does it explain, exactly?”

“‘The scum villain abuses his disciple and casts him into hell.’ Shen Jiu sighed. “There’s nothing in this world that isn’t a direct result of that truth. One could argue that changing that destroys the foundation of the world. Yet the very first choice you made was to avoid that outcome.”

“It didn’t destroy the world! It just.. changed the genre a little. And I guess it switched the hosting site. So… maybe altered it on a fundamental level a bit, but it’s not like it was a bad thing!”

“It wasn’t bad.” Shen Jiu nodded. Once, he would have preferred bad. Better bad than made good by someone else. Better his childhood friend died than forget him. Better a rivalry rife with hatred than clearing the air. “Yet, here you are.”

“Still not clear on where ‘here’ is?” The imposter looked around.

“The Ninth Road. It answers to rage, or loss, or grief. To the desperate. It’s… separate from the world Shang-di intended.”

“Why would I feel any of that? I got a happy ending. I worked hard for it!”

Shen Jiu hummed. “Well, I can’t send you away, but feel free to leave on your own?”

And the imposter hesitated, because of course he did. He wasn’t happy with Shen Jiu’s memories, with his skin, his life - ah, who would be? Even with a happy ending, he wasn’t content. Could such a thing be called desperation?

But there was something in that hesitation, something that did seem like a weight. Maybe the imposter wouldn’t kill over it, but he had died, more than once. Most people didn’t run that way.

The words weren’t a surprise when they came.

“I… I wish.. It’s just, I miss my name. I miss… I want Binghe to know. I can accept that I died, in that world, I knew it was coming sooner or later, but… I don’t want to be mistaken for you anymore. Why can’t I be Shen Yuan? I did everything right, a name shouldn’t be that much to ask.”

Naturally.

“You want your husband to know you weren’t the one who hurt him.” Shen Jiu nodded.

“I threw him into the Endless Abyss. I hurt him plenty.”

“As opposed to what, exactly? If Huan Hua had caught Tianlang-Jun’s heir after that disaster, they’d have taken him. The old bastard was drooling and delirious over Su Xiyan - he’d have happily blamed the beast for every sin in the cultivation world to keep him.”

Shen Yuan shuddered. “I mean, I know they would, now. But it hurt him terribly.”

Shen Jiu shrugged. “A demon is well equipped to handle hell. It was the better choice.”

“LIke you did it out of the kindness of your heart.” Shen Yuan snorted.

“I hoped he would die, if that’s what you mean. It would have been better for everyone. Death isn’t the worst fate someone with that face has ever suffered at Huan Hua’s hands.”

“Still. I’d rather talk to him about it. And you - I’ve tried, but Sect Leader really… holds onto your memory.

“That’s because Qi-ge is an idiot. But if it makes you feel any better, he knows. Telling him you and Shang Qinghua were from the same hometown wasn’t the most subtle way of saying it.”

“He knows? I would have thought he’d… have more to say.”

“Say what? He can’t say anything. Cang Qiong Peak Lords ascend together. If he decided that you weren’t ‘Qingqiu’ the seat would remain empty for an entire generation. Ming Fan would have no master to finish his studies, so the next Lord of Qing Jing would be weakened as well.” Shen Jiu shrugged. “The only thing he can do is pretend not to know to save a little face.”

“In public! In private… he’s taken good care of me. It would be nice to thank him. Let him mourn you. Hold a funeral, even if it’s secret. Surely…”

Shen Jiu rolled his eyes. “I ascended, you idiot, I didn’t die. There’s nothing to mourn.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

Shen Jiu rolled his eyes. But it wasn’t entirely bad to have someone worry so much about it, either. If there had been a funeral, Qi-ge would have handled it, but this brat no doubt thought himself the only one who could handle such a thing.

Shen Jiu wasn’t going to waste his time explaining all the ways that was foolish and pointless. Instead he offered an arm. Technically, he couldn’t demand that anyone come or go, but there weren’t any real consequences if he hinted strongly. And sure enough, Shen Yuan took his arm.

“So, where are we going?” Shen Yuan asked.

“You’re going to kick Shang-di in the teeth, and then I’ll make him change whatever thing his ‘System’ has that’s forcing you to sully my reputation with your antics.” Shen Jiu decided.

~*~

“I wondered whether this was where the Road was going.” Shen Jiu murmured.

Luo Binghe smiled at him. His expression was light and sweet, and it fooled neither of them.

“Did my old Shizun miss me? It is my old Shizun this time, isn’t it? Has this one not visited recently enough?”

“It is. I am Shen Jiu, not Shen Yuan.”

He saw, in those dark eyes, the moment hatred collided with curiosity. The beast hadn’t known there was a difference.

No, that was wrong. He had known, in the same way that Shen Jiu had known when Qiu Janluo entered a room, whether it was a bad day. From the sound of a footstep and a draw of breath. This beast was the emperor of the three realms, and he listened for such things.

He really had been a model student, learning these lessons. A student like that-

He hadn’t been wrong when he’d told Yue Qingyuan that his only failure with this boy was not killing him honestly from the start.

He hadn’t been wrong when he told Liu-Shidi that the boy hadn’t needed Bai Zhan, either.

He hated this boy, this beast, this man. He hated A-Luo.

He hated knowing that his road could be walked two ways. That every victim could seek a path forward here.

He hated not knowing which one, between the two of them, had opened the Road to this place.

This place was a borderland, the road winding between the green, proud peaks of Cang Qiong and the soft, barren hills still floating with ash that were also the peaks of Cang Qiong. Luo Binghe stood in the ashes, still, but fixed his ravenous gaze on the vibrant green.

“I want Shen Yuan.” Binghe said, as if it were a revelation and not, for example, something Shen Jiu had been unfortunately forced to be aware of for the last few decades. “This space is no dream- it can take me there.”

“It can’t.” Shen Jiu said, in tones that were more quiet than cold. “It doesn’t go where you want it to. I would have been quite content if it didn’t lead to you.”

“No? Do I not need him? Do I not deserve him? Should I not have had him from the start, like that other one did?”

“You had what the gods gave you.” Shen Jiu’s smile was bitter. “Isn’t that a trite thing to say? That this was your fate?”

“I did. As did my beloved Shizun.” Luo Binghe’s smile was so, so soft, so malicious. With a small start, Shen Jiu recalled the smile he’d worn when he murdered Qiu Janluo. “Shen Yuan had many of your memories. If he is not you, then he knows you better than even I. You never let me see them, no matter how I asked.. Shizun, wasn’t that wrong of you?”

Shen Jiu smiled. It wasn’t a very warm thing, but it happened. “Disciple Luo, walk with me.”

The shock on Luo Binghe’s face came and went in an instant, smoothing back out into that perfectly calculated smile. “Shizun should enjoy the experience.” He murmured quietly. “If this little space of his cannot bring me to where I wish to go, then I will have to make do with the Shizun I have right here.”

“Careful.” Shen Jiu smiled back. “The Road does not abide tyrants.”

“And yet, Shizun is somehow here.”

“Yes.” Shen Jiu nodded. “Somehow, you are here too. What was it, in the end? A wife that betrayed you? Finding your way into that world blocked? Realizing, as you stood over the ruins, that you were alone?”

“I will find my way back.” Luo Binghe snarled, which was certainly an answer.

“I don’t think you will. I don’t think the god of this world is ready to face you, yet. Maybe he never will be.” Shen Jiu shrugged. “You were permitted when it was useful, and now you aren’t. The world has already been saved, and you ruin everything you touch. Except me - you were far too late to ruin me.”

“I also get what I want, Shizun. You know that better than most.”

“Do you?” Shen Jiu mused, and started walking.

The ruins of Cang Qiong were a sight he’d never seen, but of course he knew his Peak. Even if the Road hadn’t had a clear destination, the path was one he knew by heart.

There was still something green here, buried in the ashes. It wasn’t a plant- those might never grow again. They certainly wouldn’t with no help, though outside the Underground Palace in the world that lay behind them, bamboo had begun to flourish. The imposter had taken note of where it had fallen, and gathered it up. No one in this world ever had.

It was a senseless thing to care about. Many children lost such things. Lost any chance at childhood. Mourning one among millions was pointless.

But it certainly didn’t belong here, on his peak.

The tyrant behind him was far too jaded to let a sound escape. But he was the same beast in every world, and Shen Jiu opted not to look at his eyes, in case there were some unsightly tears.

“I would have given you everything. Did you know that? For a single kind word, I would have done anything you asked.”

“I would certainly have disappointed you.” Shen Jiu chuckled. “Well, it’s a little late to find out now.” But he was certain that it was true. After all, if he had to give a name to what he’d hated most about the child, other than the talent and the love he’d been given, it was this - the recognition.

He would have done anything Qi-ge asked of him. Qi-ge had disappointed him. He certainly could never have done better than Qi-ge had.

But the Road still, sometimes, opened back onto that little shrine in the heart of Cang Qiong that had sprung up recently. So maybe they were doing a little better, now.

“Is it?” Luo Binghe mused. “If not that Shizun, then this one might still do - that doesn’t have to be a threat. I can be very kind.”

“Do you imagine I would ever sink so low?” Shen Jiu wondered. The Road extended on, far past the ruined peak, the mists curling and twisting until even he could not see the full extent of it. But Luo Binghe had the blood of the gods, even if it was long since corrupted. He could walk it. He wouldn’t even be the first.

“So low as to fuck a demon?” Binghe raised an eyebrow.

“So low as to be one among many. Wouldn’t I rather be hated than forgotten? Hasn’t that always been the case?”

Luo Binghe blinked, then laughed. “It’s true, isn’t it? I don’t remember the names of many of my wives, but I never forgot you. I’m sure I’m not alone. Yue Qingyuan, Qiu Haitang - everyone around you remembers you. This student might be a little jealous, it’s difficult to compete when that other Shizun has forgotten me already.”

Shen Jiu sighed. If only that were true! Unfortunately, that imposter was…

Really an entirely hopeless case.

He really, truly hoped they wouldn't have to wade through too much nonsense before Luo Binghe was satisfied.

It was a little different than the other walks had been, because much of what shaped the destination had never been said aloud. But the glowing screens that Shang Qinghua called “System” lit along the way, eagerly showing certain truths.

“Bing-ge deserves the ‘ge’ - he’s cool enough and darkened enough. I like him!”

‘-this godly man who was admired by Zhongdian readers everywhere - anyone who brought him up reverently uttered the same name- Bing-ge!’

This protagonist's halo of excellence was really too much- he almost couldn’t hold back!

Then again, if Shen Qingqiu were to land the killing blow himself… that was even more unthinkable

Surely, upon reading that opening, every single reader had had the same thought as Shen Yuan back then: That this would be the start of the male lead’s godly and unstoppable good fortune. They hardly imagined it was actually a crumb of sugar before a grand parade of three hundred stabs.

He was completely helpless to even wipe away his tears. His heart ached and throbbed to the point where he wished for death.

Luo Binghe sighed, reading them. “It’s not fair.” he said, almost conversationally. But no matter how light his tones, he was still here, was he not? You couldn’t really pretend, once you were on the Road. How much it hurt. How much anger you felt. How much hatred for the unfairness of the world. Here was honest, here was safe.

Here was where Shen Jiu resided. But he would have to share it for a little while, with those who understood why a space like this was needed.

With, perhaps, the student who had learned the most from him, if in all the wrong ways.

“If ‘he’ is what you need, then ‘he’ will be somewhere along this road for you.” Shen Jiu sighed.

“Then why does your road lead away from him? Why are you here instead?”

“Because you and I have a history that they do not, I think. Because I cannot remain here, where I need to be, without answering you.”

“Because if there are two of me, and you are not him, then there may be two of him. Because you can lead me to the him who was meant for me.” Luo Binghe said, softly.

“Unfortunately, I think that’s the most likely. His world is a long, long way from this one, but I was able to send someone there before.”

Luo Binghe nodded, watching the flickering screens. “And these?”

“The messengers of Shang-di. He knows you’re here.” Shen Jiu’s smile quirked. “You’ll be horrified to learn that Shang Qinghua is the vessel of the creator of the world, and that he’s mostly used that power and knowledge to fuck your subordinate.”

Luo Binghe stared at him, then at the glimmering screens. “Mobei-Jun fucks?”

“Unfortunately, I’m in a position to give a definitive yes.”

“That knowledge is a curse. You know that.”

“Making amends doesn’t mean I like you, little beast. Suffer as I have.”

“Surely, if it’s only Shang QInghua, no matter what’s inside of him, he could be killed.”

“We are immortal, Luo Binghe. He has been killed, many times. I have been killed, many times. Qi-ge. Shen Yuan. Liu QIngge. We live and die - and if we are lucky, we learn.”

Luo Binghe nodded, and looked back the way they’d come. At the ashy, barren heaps. At the glowing greens of a vibrant Cang Qiong. At the Road ahead, drenched in mist, leading a long way away. “Learn.” he murmured. “That… will this place always be here?”

“As long as I am using it. But you won’t be able to return.”

“And I must see it through to claim the wife at the end?” Luo Binghe’s voice had a strange, almost playful lilt.

“As is the way of the world.” Shen Jiu sighed.

“But that Shen Yuan… he didn’t like me. He wouldn’t kill me, but he preferred that softer, weaker, more useless me.”

“Haven’t you already seen it? He loved you first. For you, he tried to turn fate aside.”

“To erase me. To make me something I am not. To make me better.” Luo Binghe said. “This Lord should be the one deciding how much better I need to be.”

“So you won’t go? You wouldn’t be the first. Not everyone wants to face the cost of moving forward.”

“I’ll go, eventually. Xin Mo will take me there, now that I know who I’m looking for. But for now.. I’ll pay the cost my own way.”

“Do you think you will? Do you think you can?” Shen Jiu scoffed. “The cost is set in stone. Even if you find this place again, even with that sword, do you think that you can change?”

“Maybe not. But I should let a few wives go. I should plant a few growing things. I should.. Probably hold a few funerals. Some spirits could stand to be laid to rest, after so long.”

Qi-ge, Shen Jiu thought. Ming Fan.

It didn’t occur to him that he might be buried as well. Binghe was a greedy thing, holding his love and his hate very close. But those who had not truly wronged him, perhaps, just perhaps.

“Will you?” he asked, but his tone was less harsh as he did.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to not be angry. Xin Mo hates the idea of being any other way. I may wake up tomorrow and decide that listening to you, of all people, is madness, and decide to salt the ashes instead of planting anything at all.”

But his eyes were fixed on the guanyin in his hands. The nephrite was splotchy and stained, the carving long since worn smooth. But it was in his hands. And somewhere out there there was a Shen Yuan who did not know him yet, moved to tears over his cruel fate, who would happily choose him over and over again.

The most likely outcome was failure. After all, the beast had never had any good examples to learn from. Shen Jiu certainly had never gone back and buried any of the bodies in his past, even the ones who had been stupid youths with the bad luck to run into a pair of demonic cultivators.

But Heavenly Demons were thus because they defied the Heavens, and that was something Shen Jiu truly wanted to see.

So, he let Luo Binghe go.

~*~

His shrine was full. It was starting to overflow. Su Xiyan refused to act even a little apologetic.

“Please tell your husband that when you said I liked books, this is not what I meant.”

She only smiled, curled up among the stacks of yellow books. Beside her, two young men glanced at each other in mutual, horrible embarrassment, but they were nearly visible, now, instead of small flames. Somehow, Tianlang-Jun hadn’t quite gotten around to laying any bones to rest, but he had gotten around to spending all the wealth in all the palaces that this world’s Luo Binghe hadn’t bothered to open up. Since this shrine was full of Su Xiyan’s spirit, and also full of gossiping jiejies who came and went without paying the handsome young demon much mind, he’d simply started to fill it up with whatever caught his fancy.

Yue QIngyuan didn’t come often - he had his own shrine. But Liu QIngge came, and Shen Yuan, and, as rumors had inevitably spread in the gossip mill disguised as a righteous Sect in the mountains above, Ning Yingying and Ming Fan had both started to come.

Unfortunately, they weren’t the only ones.

“So you sicced Bingge onto Cucumber-bro in another world?” Shang-di laughed. “Shen-shixiong, that’s amazing. Get fucked, other-Cucumber! My son is going to split you in half. Imagine taking that dick without cultivating!”

“Go away.” Shen Jiu sighed.

“Harsh! I want a happy ending for my son, you know? I’ve gone soft in my old age.”

“You want him distracted and far away from you, you mean.” Shen Jiu scoffed. There was a stick of tanghulu in the offerings. Qi-ge hadn’t come here, which meant that he’d told someone about Shen Jiu’s sweet tooth.

If it was Shen Yuan, he might let the man go lightly. But if he’d told Liu Qingge…

He probably hadn’t told Liu Qingge. It was only the one stick. The brute would have brought more than any one person could eat, and then gotten huffy about it.

He’d just pretend it was Yingying. Neither Yingying nor Ming Fan had ever appeared before him in this world. Somehow, despite the odds, they’d ended up happy.

“Yeah, probably true. What about you, though? You’ve been running around all over the place! Aren’t you ever going to stop? You really aren’t hated, you know? Everything you wanted, it’s right here, right?”

Shen Jiu regarded his fan. It was nice, and, more importantly, it was durable. Maybe Shen Yuan was right about a few things, like how to correctly handle people from his alien world. He raised the fan, contemplatively. A light beating?

“It was a serious question! System has to compensate for the changes you make, you know? I just wanna know the extra work is worth it.”

“Oh, is it troublesome? This humble Shen apologizes, but there’s still quite a lot left to do. Perhaps if the Shang-di of this world had worked a little harder in the past, things wouldn’t be so difficult now.”

“Ten thousand words a day, shixiong! Imagine doing that with a brush and ink! You can’t, it’s impossible! And that was week days, I did more on weekends, I didn’t sleep and lived on noodles! I worked hard for this world to be born!”

“Then you’ll work hard to fix it properly.” Shen Jiu promised, a cold smile clear on his face. “You owe us that much.”

Shang Qinghua whined, but he seemed content to stay put, even as his System flared to life around him, no doubt informing him of the havoc some Luo Binghe was wreaking somewhere. To be fair, watching over that was hard work.

But Shen Jiu had never been all that concerned with fair. Even if things were.. Better balanced, now, than they had been.

He had told Luo Binghe that they would learn. He still didn’t know what they would learn, molding and shaping each other as they did. He doubted Shang Qinghua knew, either.

But the Road was a journey, and it had only just begun.