Chapter Text
In the end, it was exactly as Liu Mingjin had said. Yue Qi’s master was furious at him. He had to grovel and plead to stay.
Shen Jiu was not allowed to go into the hall with them and so waited outside with the twerp, whom he had learned was from the Bai Zhan part of the sect. When Yue Qi came out, he only said that Shen Jiu would be allowed to stay and get married, provided that he began cultivating at once and proved capable before Yue Qi’s eighteenth birthday in the summer. The sect leader would not allow such a promising disciple to marry a non-cultivator, so if he failed by then he would have to leave the mountain.
It seemed that Liu Mingjin’s misidentification and Yue Qi’s lie had given them a chance to succeed. But…
“She’s letting me cultivate?” Shen Jiu asked, astonished.
Liu Mingjin shrugged.
Yue Qi nodded. “That’s how Shizun is,” he sighed. “I was hoping it would be something like this, but now that she’s made it a requirement…”
Shen Jiu’s neck prickled. “You don’t think I can do it?” He held up his hand, summoning his little flame of energy. “I learned this much on my own! I can meet whatever goal that woman has set without fail!”
Liu Mingjin looked interested. “If you want to spar, let me know.”
“Ah, not yet,” Yue Qi broke in, pushing them gently away from each other with a worried look on his face. When he saw Shen Jiu’s angry look, he patted him on the shoulder. “Xiao Qing, let’s go find the home Shizun has allocated for us. Don’t you want to see what it looks like? It should have a bathing area, and we can do laundry, too—”
That was enough to lure Shen Jiu away from putting a fist in Liu Mingjin’s prissy face. He had a reputation to keep up now, after all. A woman wouldn’t jump into a fight like that, even if she really, really wanted to!
Four months later, Yue Qi received his new sword, Xian He. He was tempted to reach for something above his station, but thoughts of how lucky he was to even have what he did kept him at the proper level. As he exited the cave, Wei Qingwei congratulated him, pounding him on the back with glee. Shen Jiu watched from the side, pleased and more than a little envious.
Five months after that, they bowed to heaven, two tablets with fake names, and each other in a small wedding attended by a few of Yue Qi’s friends and his master. As they drank their wine, Shen Jiu was satisfied in the knowledge that they had secured their places at Cang Qiong twice over, because against her will, the sect leader had pronounced Shen Jiu’s progress acceptable. He was well on his way to becoming a true cultivator.
Shortly afterward, the sect leader announced that Yue Qi would become Yue Qingyuan. In private, this newly-promoted person complained to his wife, “But I don’t want to do all that work…” His wife slapped him with a fan and said that he’d have help.
Some three years later, Tianlang-jun attacked the mortal realm, and Yue Qingyuan was conscripted to help his master aid Huan Hua Palace. He returned alone.
Less than a year after that, the Jin generation ascended and left the Qing generation in charge of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. Yue Qingyuan was twenty-two, and his wife nineteen. Next to the mature Mu Qingfang and white-haired Zhao Qingling, they looked almost too fresh.
And yet Yue Qingyuan had helped defeat the demon emperor, and his wife had held everything down in his absence. Shang Qinghua was perhaps too free with his words when he let slip to others that she, not her husband, had taken charge and worked with Qing Jing to stabilize the sect after Zhangmen-shibo had been killed.
After the ascension, newer generations of disciples grew accustomed to the sight of the sect leader’s elegant, imperious wife by his side. This person wore beautiful, impeccable robes and often covered her face with a fan. To tell the truth, Cang Qiong was under her sway as much as it was Yue Qingyuan’s, and the bonds she forged with Qi Qingqi and Tong Qingren were no less important than those he made with Wei Qingwei and Jin Qingdao. Yue-furen was said to be a skilled cultivator and sometimes ventured out with her husband on night hunts.
If asked, Liu Qingge would shrug and say that Shen Qing dressed in men’s robes for convenience when out in the wild, and that was all there was to it.
Given her name, position, and bearing, Yue-furen was sometimes compared to a peak lord in her own right. Someone somewhere had once joked that Yue Qingyuan was married to a Shen Qingjiu, written with the character for ‘assist.’ It caught on, and by the time it was finally said to her face, people were already too accustomed to using it.
The sect leader only smiled in bemusement and let it pass any time he heard it, anyway, saying that it wasn’t a bad thing. After a period of years, it seemed like that really was his wife’s courtesy name. In fact, who was to say that it hadn’t been so from the beginning of their marriage? Wasn't it true that Yue-zhangmen sometimes could be heard calling his wife A-Jiu?
Shen Qingjiu did speak sharply to people sometimes and had the odd habit of visiting women in the towns below the mountain, even going so far as to listen to music at brothels. But she was an accomplished qin player and also was known for protecting others of her sex, so it wasn’t that hard to explain. Qi Qingqi saw nothing wrong with it, for one, and her behavior set the example for the rest of her peak.
It was also plain to see that Yue Qingyuan had the utmost respect for his wife, responding to her needs and directives before she had to speak them aloud. So even when rumors came swirling, set into motion by unscrupulous characters, they were easy enough to bat aside.
And never, not once, did anyone connect the first and only wife of Yue Qingyuan, an important cultivator in her own right, to a scrappy, bony little slave boy who had escaped his master many years earlier in the neighboring province.
Qiu Jianluo and Qiu Haitang lived out the rest of their lives wondering where Xiao Jiu had gone, and Xiao Jiu did his level best to forget, as thoroughly as possible, every evil that house had contained.
It helped that Yue Qingyuan kept his word on every count. He never became the kind of man that terrified Shen Jiu, which was good because Shen Jiu very much did not want to have to kill him. He felt safe with Yue Qingyuan—safe to live, safe to learn. Eventually, safe to care.
When Lanlan’s little Yingying turned ten, Shen Jiu brought her to Qiong Ding.
“I’m adding another disciple to your roster,” he told his husband.
Yue Qingyuan only looked at him with knowing eyes. “Mine? Don’t you mean yours?”
And that was that.