Chapter Text
It’s not that Shen Qingqiu never expected to see Luo Bing-ge again.
It was a good plotline, Bing-ge versus Bing-mei. The original goods facing off against the domesticated protagonist, matching one another blow for blow with their mirrored strength. It certainly wasn’t anything Airplane could have come up with on his own, the hack.
Then again, maybe a cliché clone scene would be right up his alley.
Regardless, it was a notable plot point. And even years after completing the main storyline and not hearing from the System aside from an occasional “reboot” that would leave him feeling hungover, Shen Qingqiu certainly didn’t consider it out of the realm of possibility for old characters to resurface and stir up trouble.
So, no, it wasn’t that he had expected Luo Bing-ge to stay away.
It’s more so…
He never expected him to return with company.
The blackened protagonist had landed on the walking path ahead of them, kicking up dust and interrupting his and Luo Binghe’s stroll through the forests of Qing Jing peak. Luo Bing-ge appeared off balance where he stood, as if he had had to unexpectedly catch himself in his landing.
For a moment, there was nothing but frozen shock on everyone’s faces until Shen Qingqiu’s brain and survival instincts finally kicked into gear. He drew Xiu Ya, leveling it against the scene before him as he searched for a weapon on Luo Bing-ge. The other was not wielding Xin Mo, at least not openly.
Luo Bing-ge’s eyes darted between Shen Qingqiu and something over his shoulder as his arms slowly raised in a show of peace. Shen Qingqiu’s brow creased in confusion at the gesture but he held his blade steady.
“Shizun.”
Shen Qingqiu heard Luo Binghe’s strained voice beside him and at first believed he was saying his name as a warning, a call to beckon his husband behind him and away from the threat. But as the moment passed, Luo Binghe made no move to tug him back or step in front, and when Shen Qingqiu finally glanced back, he found his husband’s gaze was fixed on something else entirely.
Behind them on the path was another Shen Qingqiu, sprawled on the ground where he landed in a heap. His long dark hair was down and a mess of strays and he was dressed in only thin silk robes, but it was Shen Qingqiu nonetheless. The more shocking sight other than his appearance was that Xin Mo was clutched in his hands, held in a strangling grip.
“Hello again.” Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe’s attentions turned back to Luo Bing-ge who still held his hands pacifyingly in the air. The other tilted his head and gave what likely would have been a very charming smile under different circumstances. “We did not mean to intrude. Hand him over and we will be on our way.”
Shen Qingqiu looked back to his own doppelganger who had finally seemed to have gotten over the shock of his landing and was now staring at Luo Bing-ge with clear distress in his eyes. It was so jarring to see his own face, borrowed as it was but so familiar to him at this point, contorted into such a look of fear. But perhaps what was more gut wrenching was recognizing that this face filled with dread, this body covered in nothing but thin robes and grasping Xin Mo with such desperation, did not belong to another version of him.
If the Luo Binghe behind him was as close to the original goods as they could get, this pitiful thing before him was the scum villain himself.
It did not feel right for the original Shen Qingqiu to look so terrified, so desperate. The image of Shen Qingqiu he conjured in his mind as he had read PIDW was never so broken, even when facing his ultimate fate at the hands of the protagonist. Shen Qingqiu was an entity carved from cold stone, sharp and unyielding in both appearance and character. This thing before him…
What had made him like this?
“Binghe.” Shen Qingqiu didn’t look away from his double but he felt his husband look over to him at his call. “Cover us.”
He sprinted forward, away from Luo Bing-ge who he heard give a shout of frustration before the sounds of combat filled the air from Luo Binghe heeding his command. He bent down, dragging the other Shen Qingqiu up from the ground by his arm as he moved to avoid losing his momentum and advantage, and continued on down the path back towards the bamboo dwelling. Thankfully the other Shen Qingqiu did not appear to be too injured or stuck in any sort of immobile trance as he went along smoothly with only a stumble or two at the start as he gained his footing.
The two of them ran, the forest a green blur around them. Shen Qing-…Shen Yuan hoped they would not run into any disciples far out here. He did not want them close to the fight they had left behind them.
A flash of movement on the path ahead of them nearly confirmed his worries, until he realized the figure they were sprinting towards wasn’t dressed in the familiar whites and greens of Qing Jing peak disciple robes.
“Liu-shidi!”
Shen Yuan watched from afar as Liu Qingge’s somewhat relaxed posture shifted into a tense and ready stance as he caught sight of the two figures running towards him. Even from afar he could see the shock on the other’s face as he processed seeing two Shen Qingqiu’s approach.
“Shen-shixiong?” Liu Qingge called out, swiftly drawing Cheng Luan as he did. “What-”
“Go help Luo Binghe!” Shen Yuan tossed the order out over his shoulder as he and his companion swiftly caught up with and passed Liu Qingge on the path.
He did not wish to slow his pace, ignoring his martial brother’s sounds of confusion and the even more distant sounds of trees being felled. Hopefully the latter would entice Liu Qingge enough to follow the telltale sounds of a fight rather than run after the two of them for answers.
Shen Yuan’s lungs were burning by the time they reached the bamboo dwelling. He really needed to get back on a consistent training schedule. Traveling with his husband had deconditioned him more than he had liked to admit.
He swung his cargo through the entrance by his arm and let the momentum carry him in as well, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Shen Yuan questioned as he rifled through the stash of ready-made talismans he kept in his qiankun bag. He found the ones for fortifying barriers and slapped them haphazardly on the door. They’d likely do very little if Luo Bing-ge truly wanted to get in but at least it made him feel slightly less helpless.
He turned as his inquiry was met with more and more silence to see his double still sprawled on the floor where he threw him, Xin Mo clutched in both hands and pointed towards the door. “Please drop that.”
The Shen Qingqiu on the floor, Shen Jiu, slowly looked down at the weapon in his hands and, seemingly realizing what he held, quickly dropped the blade as if it burned him to touch.
“You…” Shen Jiu’s voice was hoarse, tinged with a similar breathlessness as he attempted to recover from their sprint. He looked up at Shen Yuan who very carefully extended a foot forward only to kick Xin Mo away to a corner of the room.
Shen Yuan looked back over at Shen Jiu, scanning the other for injuries. Aside from dirt, his robes did not appear to be discolored in any way that suggested a hidden wound. Shen Jiu was barefoot, though thankfully their sprint through the peak didn’t seem to have caused any damage to the skin.
His assessment revealed no immediate danger but he had no idea if there was something internal or unseen that needed to be dealt with. “Are you-”
“Who are you?”
Shen Yuan paused, his brow furrowing at the question. Shen Jiu’s gaze, previously unfocused and frantic, was now fixated on him and framed by an expression of guarded distrust.
Had he missed a visible head injury? How does this man not recognize his own face? Maybe he had suffered a qi deviation that affected his memories, but to forget your own face was simply…well, wasn’t there something like that? Some condition in the brain. He had seen it on a medical subreddit once, prosopag-something-or-other.
Shen Yuan shook his head, clearing away his derailed thoughts. He knelt on the ground, suddenly uncomfortable with how he towered over his guest on the floor.
“This lord is Shen Qing-”
“Do not lie to me.” Shen Jiu cut through Shen Yuan’s introduction and the latter felt his teeth click together as he swallowed the rest of his sentence. “You aren’t me.”
Shen Yuan blinked.
Okay, wrong again then.
But how the fuck did this guy figure that out so quickly???
“I…” Shen Yuan began and stopped. There really was no speaking his way out of this or arguing the contrary, not with how inexplicably sure Shen Jiu had sounded in his accusation. Shen Yuan instead let out a sigh. “It’s a long story.”
Shen Jiu’s eye twitched, signaling his dissatisfaction with the answer. “A long story-”
“One I don’t believe we currently have time for given what’s happening outside,” Shen Yuan pressed, hands raised in mock surrender as he hoped his suggestion that he would offer an explanation later would calm the man before him. “But I promise you that you’re safe here.”
Shen Jiu stared at him and Shen Yuan felt he was under intense scrutiny, that his assurance was being judged and tested in the other’s mind. Finally, Shen Jiu glanced away and drew his limbs in closer toward himself. Shen Yuan watched the other’s legs and arms move as it suddenly occurred to him that Shen Jiu should not have them.
“I’m not,” Shen Jiu argued, though there was no strength in his words. It left him more like a mourned truth.
“We have our own Luo Binghe here,” Shen Yuan countered. “They were a fairly even match for each other before.”
“They’ll stop fighting each other.” Shen Jiu’s gaze turned towards the door as if he were waiting for the two protagonists to walk through at any moment. He had been shifting and inching his way from his exposed position in the middle of the room and had managed to tuck himself into a corner made by the wall and a set of drawers. He leaned against these surfaces, evidently drained, and allowed them to keep him upright. “They will talk and then they will both come after me.”
“Talk about what?” Shen Yuan questioned with a tilt of his head but Shen Jiu responded only with silence as he kept his eyes fixed on the door.
Talk? Why would the two of them talk? Shen Yuan turned it around and around in his head, scraping away the cobwebs that had formed in his mind from the complacency of his extended honeymoon. He was supposed to be a scholar, damn it!
The only reason they would exchange words would be for Luo Bing-ge to call his husband useless for not having a harem. They did not like one another, any words exchanged would hardly lead to a truce or a common…
A common enemy.
“You’re worried they will speak about what you did to the Luo Binghe in your world?”
The words had hardly left Shen Yuan’s mouth when he desired to pull them back in. Shen Jiu’s previous look of distrust, which had been ebbing away ever so slowly as he remained unharmed in Shen Yuan’s company, returned in an evolved form. He was suspicious, he was deceived, he was proven right in his apprehension.
He was a cornered animal.
“Who are you?” Shen Jiu’s whispered request for information sounded wearier this time, less like a demand and more like a plea. He appeared desperate for any sort of explanation at this point, for something real and honest to cling to.
“I wasn’t lying when I said it was a long story,” Shen Yuan softly warned.
As if to accentuate their lack of time, a loud crash sounded from outside. The noise still came from far away, not just outside the door, but the fight had clearly moved closer than where it had first started. Shen Yuan watched as Shen Jiu’s body tensed, drawn tight as he gathered his limbs ever impossibly close to himself.
“Then shorten it,” He hissed.
Shen Yuan sighed again and squeezed his eyes shut, a headache already building behind them as he considered how to proceed.
Was he even allowed to tell someone about who he was? Luo Binghe knew now that he was from another world but that revelation had been forced by one of Airplane’s stupid wife plot devices.
The Mirror of Inner Truth had somehow been mixed in with his fellow transmigrator’s and Mobei Jun’s wedding gifts. In the original story, this mirror had only revealed some demoness’s disguise that she had been wearing around the protagonist, ashamed of her not-so-sexy inhuman features. In reality, the demon features weren’t all that bad, but sure the girl is self-conscious about some scales and some extra teeth and it meant they could have a cringey “you’re beautiful just the way you are” moment before the inevitable papapa.
Unfortunately, the effect the mirror had on him and Shang Qinghua was to temporarily make them look like how they did in their previous lives.
Which, of course, needed to be explained to their husbands.
The System hadn’t chimed in to prevent them from explaining back then. There was no threat of a punishment or requirement of spending points in exchange for the right to speak. Eventually the effects of the mirror wore off and they regained their stolen, but familiar, faces and their husbands moved forward with the knowledge of their transmigrator statuses.
“I’m from another world, like you,” Shen Yuan began slowly, priming himself for the System to cut in and stop him. No such disruption occurred so he pressed on. “I…I was not Shen Qingqiu in that world. I was someone called Shen Yuan. I died and was sent to this world and woke up in this body.”
“You took my body?” Shen Jiu had shifted his vigilant gaze from the door to Shen Yuan only to level him with a look of revulsion.
“Technically it’s the body of the Shen Qingqiu of this world,” Shen Yuan quickly corrected. “And I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.”
“And they just accepted this?” Shen Jiu waved a weak hand in the air, gesturing to something unseen. “The other peak lords, they just let you parade around in their martial brother’s body?”
“No one knew.”
“You act nothing like me.”
“I did in the beginning,” Shen Yuan murmured, unfortunately sounding more like a petulant child than he would like.
The two sat in silence for a few moments as Shen Jiu appeared to be processing the confession. He still looked repulsed by the idea that a version of himself, even from another world, had been taken over by a stranger. Shen Yuan did not blame him.
At one point the scum villain squeezed his eyes shut only for them to snap back open at the sound of another nearby crash. Shen Yuan glanced over to the door and wondered if he was best served in aiding the fight outside versus staying put and hopefully keeping their location more of a secret.
“It explains why the beast followed your order. You must have been a kind master to him.” Shen Yuan looked back over to Shen Jiu who was staring back at him, studying him. His voice had bent around the word kind like it was something he did not wish to touch. “And you have my memories, or rather the memories of the Shen Qingqiu who you inhabit? You knew about…”
It went unsaid but Shen Yuan understood the question. He had known about what Shen Qingqiu had done to Luo Binghe in his own world, of the cruel acts committed against a child in accordance with the original plot of the story. He knew the reason why he was being pursued.
“That part is more complicated,” Shen Yuan tried, not quite sure if an explanation of how he had such knowledge would be too much. However, Shen Jiu did not appear ready to give him a choice in withholding anymore information as his eyes narrowed in warning.
Shen Yuan took in a deep breath and let it out. His fingers twitched to fidget with something and as he searched his sleeves, he realized he must have dropped his fan at some point while running away with Shen Jiu.
Another crash from outside, slightly closer and accompanied by shouting made him flinch. He was surprised to see Shen Jiu did not flinch this time and was still staring at him, waiting for an answer.
“This world is a story where I come from,” He finally confessed. “You were a character in that story. That’s why I know.”
The System did not appear. It did not confront him with blaring warning sirens or a deduction of points. Shen Yuan felt a slight amount of tension leave him as he realized again how very nice it was to tell someone the truth of who he was and what he knew. When he and Shang Qinghua had been forced to explain it to their husbands, it had been terrifying but so very nice not to be the only ones possessing that information.
Shen Jiu only stared at him. There was no dramatic gasp or change in his features that would convey his shock if he even felt it. Shen Yuan wondered for a moment if Shen Jiu simply did not believe him.
“This isn’t the first time the beast has been here,” Shen Jiu surmised. Shen Yuan blinked, caught off guard by the sudden change in subject. “You said they were evenly matched before.”
“He and the Luo Binghe of this world switched places once before when our Xin Mo malfunctioned from damage,” Shen Yuan explained as he wondered why there was no reaction to the reveal that this world came from a story. He supposed no reaction was better than triggering a qi deviation from the shock. “At the start, I was unaware of the switch and treated your Luo Binghe as my own. When my Luo Binghe returned, they fought until your Luo Binghe cut himself a portal home and we have not seen him since.”
Shen Yuan watched as Shen Jiu tensed and sucked in a breath, as if suddenly remembering something.
“When you thought…” His voice wavered slightly. “When you treated him as your own, what did that entail?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you…treat the beast in this world?”
Shen Yuan’s brow furrowed as he wondered where this conversation was going. Shen Jiu had already said it before. He had correctly inferred that Shen Yuan must be a kind master to Luo Binghe for the latter to follow his orders so easily.
“Hmm…kindly?” Shen Yuan reminded him. He had been a good master, a great master once he had broken through the OOC feature. Shen Jiu’s glare turned challenging. This was clearly not the answer he had been looking for and so Shen Yuan expanded a bit further. “We are…familiar with one another.”
His chosen wording was needlessly innocuous, he knew that. Shen Jiu was clearly looking for a plain and straightforward answer and truthfully, Shen Yuan had come a long way from denying the relationship he has with Luo Binghe, but it wasn’t exactly casual conversation! How exactly was he supposed to explain to the original goods how he treats Luo Binghe without steam rising from his head? When a cultivator and a half-demon love each other very much-
“Be clear,” Shen Jiu ground out.
Shen Yuan sighed and cast his eyes away, knowing his answer would only turn the icy gaze directed his way even colder.
“We are married,” He softly clarified.
“Married…” The word left Shen Jiu’s mouth like a curse, edged with barely restrained disgust.
Shen Yuan met his eyes once more and saw the frustration and anger that once filled the original good’s expression was now mixing with something that looked almost like fear.
“Did you lay with him?” Shen Jiu questioned, his mouth twisting. “The beast from my world, did you share his bed while he was here?”
Despite understanding what he meant with his wording, Shen Yuan still paused. Technically, they shared a bed but, in his defense, he was very quick to kick Luo Bing-ge out of it.
Nothing happened!
He left that interaction with his innocence intact, thank you very much!
“N-not exactly-”
“You…” Shen Yuan watched as Shen Jiu ran a hand down his face, a look of devastation carving its way into his already drawn countenance. “You are the reason he changed.”
“Changed?”
“I was…resigned to my fate, to what my life had become,” Shen Jiu lamented, gaze growing distant as his fingers curled into the fabric of his robes. “It was torture. He tore me apart and put me back together more times than I can count, but it was predictable at least. But one day he came to me and instead of the taunts or the pain, he started…looking at me differently. Asking me strange things.” He looked back up, staring at Shen Yuan with something now well beyond disgust in his expression. “Something had given him reason to think that there could be affection between us.”
Shen Yuan’s felt his breath leave him.
“Oh.”
“He gave me my arms and legs back. Freed me from my prison,” Shen Jiu continued, pulling in those aforementioned limbs even closer as if their existence alone was a vulnerability. “It wasn’t really freedom. He just put me in a new prison, one filled with silks and gifts and a bed.” The last word was spit out with bitterness, with abhorrence. Shen Jiu looked ill as he gave his account. “I don’t recall exactly when he gave me back my tongue, but I’m sure he regretted doing so.”
Shen Yuan looked down, finally properly taking in the details of Shen Jiu’s appearance. Thin silk robes, not at all appropriate for any space outside of a private room. Bare feet, no shoes to protect him if he tried to flee. And his limbs, the limbs he should not have and of course who else could have given them back but the man who took them in the first place.
“Did he touch-”
Shen Yuan choked on the rest of his sentence when Shen Jiu sent him a warning look, sharp eyes burning with an unspoken threat as if he had offended him by ever acknowledging such a thing in the first place.
“He tried,” Shen Jiu softly replied after a moment, the start of a acrid smile turning up the corners of his lips. “He approached slowly, like I was some wounded animal he wished to tame.” Shen Jiu carefully extended one slender wrist, turning it in the beams of sunlight that came in through the nearby window. The wrist was unblemished but far too thin. “He would bring me food he had made or rare artifacts and jewels he had acquired in his conquests. He would try to hold conversations with me.” He snatched back his wrist and tucked it in close. “I never ate the food. I only ever gave him silence. He would try to touch me in small ways like brushing hair away from my face or sitting close to me, but I would always move away.” Shen Jiu scoffed, the smile gaining an edge of something lacking sanity. “For all he did to me before, for some reason he now wanted me willing and I never was. He would get close, but he never went further if I didn’t engage.”
The two sat in silence.
“So, he didn’t…”
“I could tell he has been losing patience.” Shen Jiu’s smile dropped, his weary expression returning. “I did not know how much longer he would care if I was willing or not.” He shifted, fussing and pulling at edges of the robes so they covered as much skin as possible. “So, one evening I…I let him closer than I usually would. It caught him off guard enough for me to take Xin Mo.”
Let him closer…
Shen Yuan knew better than to dig more into that.
“How did you know to come here?” He asked instead.
“I didn’t.” She Jiu shrugged. “I took the sword to use as a weapon, not for a portal. All I knew is I wanted to be anywhere else. When I swung, it sliced open a rift and we fell through.”
A firm series of knocks at the door had them both tensing and holding their breath. Shen Yuan slowly and quietly drew Xiu Ya, positioning himself between the door and Shen Jiu.
A beat passed.
“Shizun, this disciple was sent to report that the fight is over!”
Shen Yuan let out a breath as he heard Ming Fan’s voice from the other side. He quickly strode over and peeled away the talismans before opening the door to a very out-of-breath and red-faced disciple.
Well, at least he wasn’t the only out-of-shape one on the peak.
Then again, that just meant he also needed to do a better job of training his disciples.
“Did you involve yourself?” Shen Yuan questioned as he sheathed Xiu Ya, worried that if they did not manage to properly deal with Luo Bing-ge this time around, the blackened protagonist would return to finish off the original cannon-fodder that Luo Binghe had chosen to leave alone in this world.
“I tried, but Luo-shidi tossed me away,” Ming Fan grumbled, rolling his eyes. As Shen Yuan raised a skeptical brow, the disciple sighed. “And Liu-shishu ordered me to stay out of it.”
Shen Yuan let out a knowing hum. One could always rely on Ming Fan to abide by Liu Qingge’s wishes, regardless of how uninterested the latter was in the former.
Said disciple was doing a fine job of appearing uninterested in what lay just behind Shen Yuan, but he could see the boy’s eyes dart quickly back and forth to try and catch a glimpse.
“What of the intruder?” Shen Yuan asked, drawing Ming Fan’s attention away from Shen Jiu.
“Tied up with immortal binding cables and under close watch.”
“Those won’t hold him.” Came Shen Jiu’s warning from behind.
“Thank you, Ming Fan.” Shen Yuan ignored the warning, knowing Luo Binghe carried a modified set of cables that limited both spiritual and demonic energy. He hadn’t developed them for any sort of professional reason but they had at least proved themselves useful nonetheless. Ming Fan still stood at the door, despite his earlier phrase being a clear dismissal. “Is there more?”
“Luo-shidi requests Shizun’s presence,” Ming Fan passed along, his expression twisting, likely frustrated at having to play messenger for Luo Binghe.
Shen Yuan heard a noise behind him. Looking over his shoulder he realized it must have come from Shen Jiu, an involuntary hum of concern at the idea of being left alone.
“It’s alright,” He assured, turning towards Shen Jiu who did nothing more than glare at him. “Ming Fan will stand just outside and keep you safe. He is very capable.”
“This disciple is honored by Shizun’s praise!” Ming Fan declared cheerfully from the doorway.
Shen Yuan looked down at the sword at his waist and back at Shen Jiu. “Would you be able to wield Xiu Ya if I left it with you?”
“Foolish,” Shen Jiu sneered. “Leaving your weapon with a stranger.”
“It’s your blade as much as it is mine.”
Shen Jiu seemed to pause at that, regarding Shen Yuan differently than he had before. There was still distrust there but now it was being shared with something like curiosity.
“Why?” Shen Jiu demanded. “Why protect me like this? I’m as much an intruder as he is.”
Shen Yuan glanced back at Ming Fan who quickly averted his gaze to the floor as he maintained the bow he had been giving since answering the door.
“Well…” Shen Yuan looked back over at Shen Jiu and gave a shrug. “The other Luo Binghe has traveled to this world twice and both times he’s chosen violence over civility. So far, you’ve demonstrated significantly more restraint.” The corner of his mouth tilted into a smile at the same time Shen Jiu’s quirked up into the start its own. “Such consideration should at least be respected.”