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Having achieved everything you've ever wanted can leave you feeling a little empty. After you climb up to the peak, there's no way left to go but back down, is there? What comes after the finish line? Where do you step when there's no other feasible path left? This is the sort of thing that can drive a man to insanity, you see.
Only, Luo Binghe isn't entirely certain that he did achieve everything he wanted, that he has reached his peak. If you ask him why, he wouldn't be able to tell you. Paranoia, perhaps?
But it’s there. He knows it’s there. Something more.
Even after becoming the supreme ruler of the world, Binghe can't shake the feeling that he is still slaving away underneath somebody’s thumb. But whose, Binge muses, whose thumb could possibly be strong enough to lord over him ?
He wonders if gods exist.
Binghe looks up at the sky, and licks his lips.
******
If there is anything that can bring Binghe to the gods, it would be his space-traversing sword. Cheerfully bidding his waving wives goodbye, Binghe sets out to see what, exactly, his heaven-defying blade can do.
A half-powered blow tears apart space-time, and Binghe steps into the gaping wound between worlds.
******
Binghe does not immediately find a god, though if he were a bit more narcissistic he might say he did.
Binghe finds himself.
His counterpart is, understandably, furious at the intrusion into his dimension. It's entirely possible he thinks Binghe was coming to conquer another world, hence responding immediately with force rather than attempting any overture at conversation.
Binghe would absolutely do the same, so he isn't as angry as he can be. But a challenge is a challenge, no matter who it comes from, even if it comes from his other self.
Especially if it comes from his other self. Binghe has been missing a challenge for a while now.
The battle that ensues is one of the most thrilling in Binghe’s life .
******
The crater they made under the force of their exchanges was less of a crater and more of a loose collections of rock scattered upon ground so dense it was stronger than diamond. The skies around them warp and twitch, threads of space slowly being sewn back together by unseen dimensional forces.
Binghe doesn't actually know what a world breaking apart looks like first hand. He passes out soon after all three glorious days of battle ends, bloody and grinning and one arm gone at the elbow.
And sure, he’s down one limb. But his counterpart is down a whole body, and what is his pain in the face of that? Plus, Binghe has an unparalleled (his only contender is now dead) regenerative ability. The arm will grow back easily enough.
It does take a bit out of him, though. Namely, by putting him out for a day or two. Luckily, this world’s Sha Hualing was more than willing to fill in the details.
He wakes up to see her small, petite face two days later, and she gives him a roguish grin that is all her. “And sleeping beauty awakens.”
Binghe trails his eyes over her appreciatively, gently rubbing the hand she has placed in his with his thumb. “I'm not your Binghe, miss.”
“No,” she agrees. “You're stronger than him.”
“ Aren't I ,” he preens.
Hualing cards her other hand through his hair. “The others would have killed you, you know. They haven't realized that you're not their Binghe, but once they do they will kill you.”
He nods, playing along, but there's an undercurrent of pondering. Would they really? Binghe can be extremely charming when he wants to be, and getting away with murder was one of the easier things to seduce his way out of. He doesn't see why things would be different this time.
Binghe smiles instead. “And you? What are you planning to do?” He trails a warm hand up the arm she has given him, watching her skin form little goosebumps. She takes his hand and places it on her hip. His hand skims right down her curves.
“I,” she purrs, the little minx, “have always liked a strong man.”
And Binghe has always liked a bold woman. He brings her down for a deep, filthy kiss, and spends the rest of his venture into this world celebrating his victory.
******
Sha Hualing doesn't bother to see him off. She's instated herself as the supreme queen of her dimension, and quickly works to secure her new title through blood and guts. Well. They won't be hers splattered across the floor, at any rate.
In his home dimension, his own Sha Hualing marches up to him and pulls him in to sniff at his clothes. She growls possessively, the sound of it sparking a tendril of heat in his gut.
Hualing abruptly pushes him to arm length. “Husband,” she says, with a wicked smile. “I hope you have not forgotten the little old me back at home when gallivanting off to who knows where.” She pokes her sharp nails into the lines of his abs. Ouch.
“I have not!” Binghe protests. “It was just in the heat of the moment, and I had a victory to celebrate.”
This derails Hualing from her mission to maul his neck and substitute her doppelgangers scent with her own. “Oh?” Her most favorite thing is the tale of a blood-pounding battle, and Binghe takes great pleasure in regaling her.
He draws her attention to his left arm, where the sleeve looks like it’s been hacked through. Her eyes lights up at the look of his arm, pale and new and lined by a long scar. “I’m a very strong man,” he boasts jokingly.
She does not yet get the double meaning in his words, but once he finishes she will .
******
Binghe is hoping to meet another of his counterparts in the next world, but the powers that be give him something better.
Binghe steps out of the vortex and sees a familiar (if younger), deeply hated face, and nearly cries from laughter.
Shen Qingqiu’s younger self, sooty and limping, can’t run fast enough.
******
He looks down at the body at his feet. Baby Shifu’s lips are bloodless, he notes, from being so tightly pressed. That's when Binghe realizes that baby Shifu hadn't said a word to him — no, rather, hadn't made a sound — all the way until death.
What a defiance. Binghe can't suppress that trickle of admiration, but it's one that's light and on the edge of sadistic: that little bit of delight when a particularly dumb little critter somehow solves a simple problem. An amused oh? So you had it in you!
Binghe would praise his baby Shifu if he didn't feel so overwhelmingly cheated by that piece of shit. An old hatred makes itself known again, but without an outlet Binghe can only make promises to himself of next time.
Next time, Binghe wants to hear his shifu scream .
But for now, he returns.
******
It’s happened again. One of his lovers have been found dead. Wen Xuan, their resident genius doctor and third to the scene, diagnosed the cause to be poison and delivered through a needle.
The list of suspects is far too large, and surprisingly does not include Hualing. Hualing acts through force or nothing at all, and only uses poison as a greeting. Meanwhile, Gu Niang, the poor, dead girl, has made an array of enemies with her arrogant and self-entitled nature.
Binghe knows her faults, but he can’t stop picturing that adorable little wrinkle in her nose when his latest dish visually offends her sensibilities (she always comes around after the tasting though) or her cutely prideful smile when she finishes redecorating their abode (even if it was the maids doing all the work).
Niang likes to go out into the commoner’s markets (everyone was a commoner to Binghe’s party) and flaunt her wealth while mingling amongst strangers. She can also reliably be found in the halls of their palace, always wandering about.
Anyone could have slipped in the poison needle, but Binghe is still going to find out who, and from there, how much he is going to make them pray for death.
******
Feng Mian comes in right after he assigns to guards to the case. She has been weeping, and her beautiful ice blue eyes are rimmed with red. “She’s dead,” she cries, running to him when he opens his arms and buries her face into his chest. “Wh-why would someone do that? You have to, you have to stop this!”
Binghe lowers his eyes. “It was on me.” His chest is getting damp, fat droplets of tears rolling down. “Mian Mian,” he says soothingly. “Please know that if you ever want to leave—”
She recoils from him, looking up with wide eyes of prey. “Y-you want me to leave?”
“No! Never that.” Binghe shakes his head firmly. “I don’t want you in danger because of me,” whispers Binghe, tracing her cheekbones. “You may not believe me when I say I love you all, and you shouldn't, but I never wanted to see her hurt, and I never want to see you hurt.”
“No!” She cups his face, and he raises his hands to cover her cool, dainty fingers. She looks at him with tears in her eyes. “No, I believe you, Binghe, I always will.”
“But I'm hurting you,” he murmurs, bringing her hands over to press kisses onto them. He looks up at her with bright eyes, mouth covered by her fingers. “I rather you alive than with me, so if...this might be what’s best for you—"
“No!” Mian straightens up, and says, “I'd rather be with you than alive. As long as we're together…”
“Together,” he promises.
Her fine aristocratic features and chilly eyes (obscured by even icier lens) often fool people into thinking she's tough when in reality she's among the softest of his wives. So soft, in fact, that Hualing dismissed her as potential to be a threat the moment they met.
He pities her for the frailty of her mind, and the size of her heart. He pities himself for having to constantly serve as her steady rock and her stability. Mian is a plant grown used to crutches, and cannot support herself without them.
He loves her though, for bleeding care and worry everywhere, though she should be more worried about herself. He loves that she's trying her best to be more independent, for all that she inevitably fails. She's trying, and he knows that it's for him that she does it.
One day, she'll stop dragging him back and starting walking beside him, as a woman under her own power.
Binghe can wait.
******
The third world he visits, Binghe nearly crashes into Ming Fan. Now this was a surprise! He’s nearly forgotten completely about this old bully of his.
Ming Fan squints. “...Junior Brother Luo? But I thought—weren’t you just—?”
“He’s an interdimensional traveller,” says his counterpart, who flashes in before Ming Fan even finishes his sentence. Or sentence fragment, rather. “ I’ m Junior Brother Luo, Senior Brother.”
Binghe carefully releases his sword and pretends that he hadn’t been about to cut anyone down. “Hello, me of another world.”
“You’ve come rather far from home,” this world’s Luo Binghe says. “I would ask how you got here, but it has something to do with our swords, correct?”
Binghe laughs. “Nice to see I’m this clever no matter what world I’m in.”
“Urgh,” Ming Fan says, trying to look stern, but the twitch of his lips makes him look more like a jokester. “Now there’s two of you? Shifu’s going to throw a fit .”
His counterpart’s eyes light up. “Ming Fan, you have the best ideas.”
******
Shifu does throw a fit. Sort of. His sleeves go flying into the air with the force of his arm movement, and he makes a sound of extreme crankiness, but he still grudgingly lets them in when his counterpart asks with false sweetness.
They sit down, and Shifu brews them all cups of tea.
“How did this happen?” Binghe asked his counterpart, genuinely curious. “How did you and Shifu get to...here? I mean, Shifu was always, you know.”
“An asshole?” offers his counterpart. “Hah! Shizun still is one, if that's what you want to know.”
Shifu lifts up his cup and stays pointedly silent.
“I remember when you used to fling hot tea at me,” Binghe comments, to see if that'll make Shifu flinch. It doesn't.
His counterpart nods, “He did that to me too. Man, Shizun, I really hated you back then.”
“Hn.” is all Shifu offers as a reply.
Binghe says, “This doesn't really clarify anything.”
Binghe’s counterpart can't seem to keep the grin off his face. It's not a nice grin, which makes this entire conversation marginally more acceptable. “Actually, I think the turning point was the day I told you that I hated you and that you should go die, right, Shizun?”
Shifu raises an eyebrow and speaks when he had previously been content to remain silent. “You told me you hoped a demon would eat my brains. It was, I'm assuming, the best insult you could come up with.”
Binghe laughs, the sound of it free and easy to his own ears. “And Shifu didn't throw you off a cliff?” he says in wonder.
His counterpart shrugs. “Ah well. The punishments weren't any harsher than normal. Actually,” he muses, “I think they got lighter after I started talking back. Shizun?”
“They did,” the man agrees. But he offers no explanation, and his counterpart does not seem to expect any. Binghe’s fingers itch for a throat to wrap around.
“But speaking of cliffs!” his counterpart pipes up again, eyeing Binghe’s hands without much of an expression. “I still remember that immortal conference when Shizun and I were having this huge row, and we accidently went so close to the edge that I fell and dragged Shizun down with me!”
Shifu grumbles something unflattering underneath his breath, and sips his tea.
“He was so horrified we had to rely on each other to survive,” snickers his counterpart.
Binghe smiles, and lowers his eyes to look at the clear amber liquid in his cup.
What a disgusting farce.
*****
He finds the girl he's looking for sashaying through sect grounds (how'd they manage that?). She ignores him the first few times he tries to catch her attention.
“You love him, don’t you? But it’s like he doesn’t see you.” Binghe says, sympathetically. “I can help you get his love.”
Finally tempted, the lady stops walking and turns around, her bronze skin catching the light and glittering like gold. “Can you?”
“I’m another version of him,” he says as an answer. “I just need you to do me a favor.”
This world’s Sha Hualing looks him dead in the eye. “What do I need to do?”
Binghe smiles, “How good are you at making a distraction? One that lasts, say, thirty minutes maximum?”
******
Sha Hualing delivers, as he knew she would. She delivers so well, in fact, that Binghe slips into the teahouse pretty much unnoticed amidst the screams.
Shifu takes one look at Binghe’s cheery face and reaches for a fan. Binghe, rather miffed, doesn’t ask how he knew, because time is precious and he doesn’t think he can take on both his shifu and his counterpart at the same time. Instead, Binghe takes a consolation in that his face, not his counterpart’s, will be the last thing this Shen Qingqiu will ever see.
Shifu does scream this time, an authoritative “BING—!” before Binghe is forced to slit his throat. However satisfying it may be for his name, though it is not entirely his, to be the last on Shifu’s tongue, he doesn’t want the trouble that comes with his other self.
Distantly, an enraged roar tells him trouble is coming anyway.
Hah! As if.
(Binghe, in a fit of pique, drags his hand through congealing blood. At least this texture is still familiar.)
******
Binghe arches a brow. “What are you doing here, Sha Hualing?”
The girl blinks her wine red eyes at him. “A gamble,” she says, “that you will leave the way you arrived. I followed your qi trace here.”
Binghe smiles at her. “I guess your gamble paid off. You can let my counterpart know, but I'll be long gone by the time he gets here.” Unwilling to let himself be stalled, Binghe raises his space-destroying sword.
“Take me with you.”
This gives him pause. “Excuse me?”
She snorts, “You have made me an accomplice in the murder of his precious Shizun.” She puts two dainty hands on her hips. “Do you think I’m that stupid? Do you think I’ll live past the next day?”
“Then is this revenge?” Binghe can’t help but chuckle at the thought.
Sha Hualing’s eyes darken. “I wouldn’t get revenge when I know full well what I was getting into.”
His lips stiffen, laughter falling short. “Then why did you go along with me?”
“You promised me this act would bring me the love of Binghe,” she says, archly. “After what I’ve done for you, do you really deny any fondness for me?”
Binghe mulls this over, even though he knows time is running short. Any moment now, his counterpart would recognize the qi feint for what it was and double back for the real thing. “Well,” he says, finally, “I suppose I can’t.” He offers this world’s Sha Hualing a hand. “I don’t love you, however.”
“That’s fine,” Sha Hualing grips his hand and drags her body against him, her flesh soft and pliable. It’s a body Binghe is rather appreciative of, actually, and having two of them doesn’t sound like a bad deal. He can’t see her face from this angle, but he hears the finality in her voice. “All I need is the opportunity.”
With that, Luo Binghe brings down his sword and steps through voids to reach his home, a passenger in tow.
******
Surprisingly, the second Sha Hualing settles in almost effortlessly, albeit with a lot of fanfare. She’s decided to change her name to Hua’er, to make the transition easier. His wives can’t seem to decide who, his Sha Hualing or the other women, should be more resistant to adding another Sha to the group, and in the end they give it up as a foregone conclusion and lets Hua’er in.
Eventually, Hualing decides that yes, Hua’er is a threat, and thus actions need to be taken to put her in her place. Hua’er responds to the poison in her soup by playing nice and disregarding it entirely, though she gets downed when she drinks the alternative, a wine laced with a body-weakening potion.
It’s Hualing’s way of greeting every new member, nice and harmless. Not pure, because Hua’er takes the chance to get him to use her in all the best ways, but a visible knife is always better than a sheathed one when it comes to building camaraderie.
...Why does Binghe feel like he is missing something?
That’s, of course, when the thought occurs and he snaps his fingers with a grimace.
“Ming Fan!”
******
Binghe thinks going back for that world’s Ming Fan would defeat the entire purpose of leaving it, so he does the next best thing and goes to find Ning Yingying.
She's weeding when he finds her, and he easily secures an invite into her hospitality, which he takes her up on immediately. He whips them both up a light snack, but halfway through eating them they start to fool around, and the dining table is abandoned in favor of Yingying’s bed soon enough. There, he tickles her and she, squirming and giggling, tries to fend him off.
He blows a raspberry right underneath her belly button, and she shrieks in laughter. Trembling hands tried to steady themselves on his shoulder, and Binghe relishes in their gentleness and close his eyes to listen more intently to Yingying’s boyish giggle.
He loves her. It's a childish love, most definitely on her end but also partly on his, and he loves her. She's the only one of his women who is this unselfconscious, who knows the taste of harmless mischief, who playfully yields to him, and while it might be that she’s not strong enough to do otherwise, it’s still an act of choice and not circumstance.
Binghe kisses her navel and then moves lower to kiss something else.
Her youthful laughter tapers off into a decidedly more adult moan, and when Binghe asks if he should continue, he receives a frantic nod and slim thighs bracketing around his neck.
******
...dating Shen Qingqiu. The thought of it gives Binghe the chills, but here he is spying on his counterpart and his counterpart’s shifu are having a picnic and eating a meal that only a Binghe can cook.
And they’re flirting .
This world’s Binghe, he is displeased to note, seems to have regressed into some sort of ignoramus too besotted with his shifu to learn literally anything of use. His seduction technique sucks! It really, really sucks! Binghe is….Binghe is ashamed to call this man his counterpart.
He wants to put them both out of their misery.
Shifu covers his face with his fan and laughs—rather, chitters —and that is the last straw .
He draws his sword, and does this entire dimension a favor.
******
Binghe runs home, soaked in blood and retching, and tries to wash it off before any of his women see. He doesn’t manage it, because Hualing finds him. Of course she finds him, she has a sixth sense for blood of any kind.
When he refuses to give her a single detail on what has happened, she throws her hands up and takes out her frustration on his body.
It’s such a welcome distraction that Binghe nearly weeps.
He does, a little, when Hua’er’s finely honed instincts find them and she joins in.
Their mouths are wicked .
******
Waking up a bit more sane, Binghe takes a breather in his home dimension. Here, he finds that Hualing’s recent mood was pure death, and that Hua’er has taken over a solid third of Hualing’s demonic forces by virtue of being there when Hualing couldn’t be. The two might be related.
Binghe asks one of his guards to secure the premises in case of a civil war. Then he changes his mind and tells his guards to prevent the intervention of any righteous forces. Better to work with the things he can control.
When he leaves, the demon world is still roiling.
******
The last world has put the thought in his mind, and now Binghe can’t get it out. Now that the trauma of the whole thing has faded, the thought is at the forefront.
What, exactly, is Shifu like in bed?
Binghe sets out to find out.
******
He finds this world’s Shifu in the Qing Jing library (where else?). There’s no recognition in the man’s dark eyes, so this is probably a time before his counterpart enters the sect. Despite that, Shifu’s aura start cresting, rolling out in waves, and the Xiu Ya sword stabs into the space where Binghe had been an instant before.
Shifu agilely retracts his blade, and readies himself to strike again. It’s fine swordsmanship. Too bad Shifu never bothers to teach his students these things.
“Why aren’t you using your fan?” Binghe wonders out loud, and he has the pleasure of seeing Shifu stiffen all over. The question is rhetorical. A powerful, wide ranged fan would hardly behave nicely to valuable, paper scrolls.
“Who are you?” Shifu’s voice trembles, very subtly. It’s not in fear, but Shifu is already starting to look like prey. Binghe thinks he can see the appeal.
For that, Binghe also takes care not to damage the insides of the library. Well, not too much. Shifu is a little harder to disarm (heh) when Binghe doesn’t use his sword, so it takes a bit more effort.
******
It’s a worthwhile endeavor, if the result is what Binghe is currently enjoying. He’d always known that he had a taste for the bodies of men as well as women, but he typically preferred the latter and women were usually who came flocking towards him anyway. But he knows how to appreciate them both, is what he’s saying.
Shifu grunts around a mouthful of rope when Binghe’s fingers rub against the bundle of nerves, body going taut and twisting against the crimson rope. He’s also glaring fit to kill a man, but Binghe has never felt less threatened.
He pulls out his fingers and stops sucking hickeys into Shifu’s inner thigh, dolefully leaving behind Shifu’s fully exposed lower body and moving up. In his maneuvering, the leg he’d been holding down with his body weight comes free and tries to kick at him. Binghe raises an eyebrow. With that little momentum, immortal or not, what does Shifu expect it to do? Then it tries to knee him in the groin and Binghe reacts.
He sits on that leg now, and moves to open Shifu’s upper robe further. The goal this time is to make marks that’ll last and are at peak visibility, and it’s a tall order but Binghe works at it diligently. Shifu’s other leg jerks in his hand, muscular and silk.
From this angle, he can’t see Shifu’s fingers scrabbling against the wooden floor, though he can hear them.
His only regret is that he can’t get Shifu to blow him, not without his dick getting chomped off. Next time, perhaps.
******
Back home, he learns that war has not yet broken out, though tensions are steadily climbing. At this point, it’s reaching radioactive levels, meaning Binghe has to do something and off he goes to defuse the bomb. It’s a lot of screaming, but he gets it done.
On his way back to his bed, he spies Qin Wanyue and Wanrong soaking in the sauna. While on the topic of tensions, here is one.
“You two are looking very beautiful tonight,” he says. “May I join you?”
“Binghe!” Wanyue waves him in while Wanrong only smiles distantly. He strips and enters the pond, sinking down to be level with them.
Binghe lets his eyes fall close. “It’s a good night for relaxing, isn’t it?”
Gently, hands guide his head to rest against a bosom. Probably Wanyue’s. Next to them, he hears Wanrong say, “Quite.”
They go a time just basking in each other’s presence, before Wanyue clears her throat. The vibrations travel straight through their bodies. “Binghe, can you….can you maybe stay at home a little longer?”
“Wanyue, don’t.”
Binghe opens his eyes. “Is something the matter, Wanyue?”
Wanrong’s tone is warning. “Wanyue, don’t .”
Wanyue bites her lips and pushes on. “After the introduction of the second Miss Sha and the nearly explosive situation today, it’s hard to feel...I mean, it was just what happened with, you know, and the baby—”
“Just say the word,” says Wanrong icily. “ Miscarriage . I had a miscarriage.”
“Wanrong.” Binghe sits up and gently cups her cheek. “Please don’t take out my faults on your sister.” He waves off their protests, and nods. “Of course I’ll stay around longer. I’ll give you two anything you need.”
“Thank you, Binghe,” Wanyue whispers. Wanrong doesn’t say anything, but she rests her head on his collar bone.
******
He waits a full month, staring down Hualing and Hua’er until they reluctantly release the reigns of their forces. He makes it up to the both of them that night, and heads out the next morning.
He lands in an open field, and hides before a girl on a horse can spot him. She’s laughing, a little like how Ning Yingying laughs, boyish and carefree, and spurs her steed onwards. “Faster! Faster!”
Binghe stays concealed until she’s not even a speck on the horizon. He has no clue where he’s landed this time, nor can he feel his own qi traces. Either he hasn’t been born yet, or Binghe is currently stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Binghe catches traces of a familiar qi, and in the trail of the girl from before, no less, and orients in the direction she has gone.
Shifu was a nice enough lay, and Binghe currently had nothing else to do.
******
Binghe stands in front of a large household, servants bustling in and out of the compound. It’s a shed compared to his palace, of course, but the owners of this house were probably nobles of some kind.
What was Shifu doing in a noble’s house? Were the rumours of Shifu’s origins true after all? The sect master was always notoriously tight-lipped.
Binghe traces his signature to a small room in the basement, and finds the girl from before handing over rice cakes and chattering to Shifu’s much younger self. Shifu doesn’t say anything, but he does lean a little closer to the girl whenever she gets excited about whatever thing she’s talking about. As if he’s trying to absorb her happiness.
It feels like a private moment, and Binghe finds himself leaving them be. He doesn’t know what to do with the worn and fraying state of Shifu’s clothes, the whip marks on his arms, and the darkened bruise around his neck.
******
Binghe leaves the world soon after. He stays only long enough to see more things he doesn’t really want to see, and then he has to stop. He has to stop because this new knowledge is changing him somehow, changing his thoughts about a dead man that he should have left behind a long, long time ago.
He leaves because the look in Shifu’s eyes is startlingly similar to the ones he sees in his reflection.
******
“Binghe, I’m leaving.”
Binghe pauses and asks, “Permanently?”
Lan Chou says, “Possibly.” It means ‘most definitely’.
Lan Chou is a warrior princess and a tribal priestess, and a girl with that much importance is normally inaccessible to any man, king or not.
Naturally, her people did everything they could to protect her, but in doing so they ended up leaving her all alone. “I have nowhere left to go,” is what Chou said to him, dry-eyed but crumbling into a thousand pieces.
From then on, she’s been training. She’s always been well-muscled, as her tribe were gatherers with a side of conquering, but now she looks like a golden amazon.
Binghe wants to see what those muscles would look like contrasting against rope. He bought a long red one, one day, on a whim, on the off chance she'll let him tie her up, and he’s carried it around ever since. It had proven useful, but not on its intended recipient.
But Chou won't let herself be rendered weak, not even for him. She has memories of her people dying in fire, screaming at her to save herself, and she was weak so she did. She's been forcing herself to stand on her own ever since.
A girl like that, how could he have ever kept her?
Binghe lets her go, of course he does, but asks for one last night. Not even to make love, but to let him love her and feel the press of her firm body against his.
Chou looks at him solemnly, and shakes her head. She does give him a kiss though, and he'll take what he can get.
“I love you,” he says.
“I know." Her eyes crinkle from the force of her smile. “Visit me?”
He kisses her one more time. Then one more. “Of course.”
******
In the next world Binghe finds, he is a she. Luo Huabing, whose details line up perfectly with his in everything but what was between their legs.
Statistically speaking, there has to be one world at least where he is a female. It doesn’t make it any less fascinating to observe.
What’s even more fascinating is Shifu’s distaste for her, even if it is more muted than Shifu’s distaste for him .
Shifu watches her with wariness, right on the edge of but never exactly hostility. Even as a female, Luo Huabing strikes the man as something off. Binghe finds this interesting, and resolves to find out what it is about his female counterpart that Shifu is seeing and fearing.
******
Little Huabing is a celebrity among the boys. Her beauty is, after all, only rivalled by Xian Shu’s Liu Mingyan. Males of all ages swarm her and Ning Yingying, and Huabing welcomes all their attention with a subtle smile and a demure demeanor.
Yingying, and Binghe feels warm when he notes this, never feels envious of her best friend’s superiority. She doesn't attempt to overthrow her friend, nor does she try to take advantage of Huabing.
The other end of that relationship has Binghe feel slightly guilty. Huabing noticeably does not cherish her companion, using her as something like a personal cheerleader and a lapdog. She offers Yingying goodies from time to time, but Binghe knows himself and knows that that's just her way of getting rid of excess.
He thinks Shifu knows this too, because he frowns slightly whenever he catches their friendship on display.
******
“What are your intentions in observing my students?” Shifu growls the minute Binghe reveals himself. The man's hand grip his fan tightly, and another is already starting to fly through signs for sword flight.
Binghe is surprised that he's been exposed early, but is rather unwilling to give up the ruse. “You have eyes,” he says. “Why do you think I'm observing her?”
Binghe catches the moment when Shifu notes the resemblance between Binghe and his female counterpart. The man's eyebrows draw together, and clear eyes turn calculating.
“I don’t know how perverts think,” Shifu says without any inflection, not giving Binghe so much as an inch. Shifu doesn't loosen one bit, Binghe finds, and it's mildly irritating. To combat his displeasure, Binghe calls up images of that world when Shifu’s body had been forced to yield. It helps, but Binghe’s sudden appreciative eyes don't seem too welcome.
To prevent Shifu from getting an aneurysm (or worse, thinking that he could take on a man that has torn him from limb to limb once and would happily do it again), Binghe says, “I'm her brother. Or, at least, I think I am.” It's not a lie, and it mostly seems to confirm Shifu’s own convictions.
Shifu grunts. “Right now, you're just a trespasser." Binghe realizes that the man isn't forming the formational signs for sword flight after all, but rather, teleportation. “You can come through the proper channels like everyone else.” Shifu closes his fist and the ground beneath Binghe’s feet erupt into a brilliant flash.
Binghe lets himself be teleported three towns away, and laughs.
******
He goes in through the proper channels. The sect master welcomes him enthusiastically, but shadows him under the guise of showing the guest around. Binghe almost regrets killing his own Yue Qingyuan, this man is sneaky .
He meets Huabing in official capacity, and it’s a little of a mind trip, and feels like an utter joke. An iceberg and an ice skater walks into a bar. How can this end, but by the death of everyone involved?
Yue Qingyuan seems content to “catch up” with Shifu the minute he arrives, and Shifu bristles like a tom cat and snaps back short replies. Binghe only knows it’s a show put on for his benefit because it has to be. Shifu isn’t acting particularly out of character, except for the fact that the sect master was still around.
Binghe puts them both in the back of his mind, and smiles down at his counterpart. Little Huabing stares up at him with wide and blank eyes. “You’re really my brother?” she asks, maybe breathes. Her tone is entirely too fawning, and this is a discomfort Binghe is actually willing to admit.
He doesn’t let a single bit of it show when he grins back at her. “Ah, well. Even if I wasn’t I think we’re something close. I mean, have you seen us?”
Huabing smiles at him, shy and cheeks flushed. Nowhere can he see the resentment that must come from finding a family member who has abandoned you, but he knows it’s there.
It has to be.
They chat for a little while longer, before Binghe finally catches a glimpse of it when the conversation turns to his girlfriend (girlfriend s , but Huabing doesn’t need to know that). It’s anger, envy, bitterness in distilled form, and Binghe doesn’t want to see it now that he has, even if it is there and over so quickly, and so he says, “Actually, I have a secret to tell you.”
He kneels and gestures Huabing closer. He thinks he can see Shifu’s hands drift to his fan in his peripheral, but he pretends not to and whispers in Huabing’s ears. “Actually, I’m not really your brother. I’m you from another world.” His eyes flick down to the sword at his side, and her gaze follows. “This sword can cut through dimensions. In the future, you can use it to visit anyone you want. If you’ll still have me as a brother…” He hesitates. “Find this sword and visit me.”
He makes the mistake of looking up. What looks back at him is the face of loss. Huabing, eyes dull, somehow manages a smile and says thank you. Then she turns, and walks away.
Binghe feels like scum.
Shifu and the sect master converge on Huabing the second they noticed her distraught behavior. Binghe takes the opportunity to leave.
******
(Yue Qingyuan makes a sound of distress at the look on her face. “Huabing, child, what happened?”
She stays silent.
Then Shifu, cranky, bitter Shifu, actually kneels before her to get her to face him, though he doesn’t touch her, and says, “Was he not your brother?”
Huabing feels like she needs to explain herself to this man, who has never approved of her and somehow that’s important. She needs to put herself back together, needs to be perfect for Shifu, but all that comes out is a wavering, “He was just a lie.”
And he was. What terrific bullshit; her counterpart from another world comes over to pose as a brother. She had thought that he was a real person, an actual member of a family who maybe actually wants her, but it was just herself ! Herself! How’s that for pathetic!
She won’t cry. She won’t.
Shifu doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t want to see if his face is as indifferent as always. She’s wrecked it. Now he’ll hate her and—
There’s a hand in front of her face. She blinks at it, and follows its rise until it’s in front of her forehead. She doesn’t know what to do with it. The hand stays there though, right next to her hair, and hasn’t it been a long time since someone brushed her hair for her?
She misses her mom.
Her feet move without her permission, and Huabing presses her head against Shifu’s hand. His fingers greet her, five points of pressure that slowly begin to run through her hair.
Shifu stands up, and brings her up with him, and arm supporting her thighs and the hand has moved down to pat her back. “Come,” Shifu says, as if he’s not carrying her with him anyway. “I believe Ning Yingying is in the disciple’s abode.”
Huabing still feels a flash of jealousy at the sound of the other girl’s name from Shifu’s mouth, as well as a quiet exasperation at the way Yingying clings, but that’s quickly overshadowed by a wave of gratefulness because having someone with Yingying’s vitality and compassion would be wonderful right now.
Huabing is pressed to her shifu’s front, and she can see the sect master trailing awkwardly behind them. She rests her cheeks on her shifu’s shoulder, and looks at his profile.
It seems...gentle, almost.)
******
The guilt that romps about in Binghe’s gut has put him on a short fuse. It’s bewildering. He’s never been so thoroughly rejected by a girl, even if it was himself (if even she rejects herself, then...). And even more, he knows it was his fault, for starting a farce and going along with it, but what can he do with this knowledge?
What does this fix?
He is so high strung that Hualing and Hua’er’s attempts to subtly knife each other underneath the table ends up hitting his last nerve. He puts them both in time out, throwing them into the dungeons with strict orders not to let them out until 72 hours have passed. He then goes back and downs the soup for that dinner, and waits for his system to purge out the poison.
No little amount of stalling later, Binghe knows he has to go back.
He’s out again after staying in his home dimension for just one day.
******
He doesn’t find her world again, but he does find another world where Shifu and him are together. He contemplates killing his very male counterpart as a symbolic gesture.
This is when a portal opens right behind him, and a vengeful hand drags him through.
He comes face to face with a Binghe, and can’t process that for a minute.
Then a sword comes slicing down, and Binghe reacts, sputtering. “You—what?”
“You killed Shizun,” snarls the other him. “I have found you again, and now you will pay.” The next blow that comes is absolutely ferocious, and Binghe ducks it by a hair.
He honestly can’t believe this person managed to track him down through dimensions . What even. “You’re pretty dedicated,” he offers. “Can we talk this over like civilized persons?”
“You can talk to the edge of my blade !” is all he gets in reply.
Binghe squares up. He does have a version of himself to kill.
******
He hits the ground so hard he doesn’t think he can get back up.
His teeth are chattering, Binghe realizes. Then: he's scared. He's terrified . He's never been so soundly defeated and because they are both Binghe this isn't an enemy he can beat after getting up a few more times.
He can't win .
Spitting out blood, Binghe croaks, “I won’t give you back Hua’er.” She’s his. This Binghe never loved her the way she wanted to be, and now he’ll never get the chance to.
A raised eyebrow. “Who? Sha Hualing?” the victor realizes, then says calmly, “Keep her. I don't trust I won't kill her on a whim.”
Binghe is woozy, from the lack of blood and the lack of breath. “And me? Will you kill me?”
The third world’s Binghe pauses for a long time. “No.”
Binghe cannot comprehend the new lease on life he’s been given. Is it because he’s a Luo Binghe too?
His counterpart snorts. “Don’t overthink it. Shizun once said that when he first met me, he saw a bloodthirsty boy with a terrifyingly flawless mask. The two of us, we’ve spent the last hundred years trying to live more than a life of retaliation and learning how to not destroy the people close to us.” He pulls out the sword staked through the ground. “And you know what was the first lesson in that? ‘Learn to love yourself.’ Now I sure as hell can’t love a piece of shit like you, but letting you live won’t be too much of a hassle.”
He squats, and Binghe stares up at him wide eyed.
His counterpart smirks. “Your life has been spared because of Shizun. That’ll be enough punishment, don’t you think?”
And how .
Binghe, metaphoric tail between his legs, flees.
******
“Let's review our swordsmanship,” is the only thing Liu Mingyan says when she sees the look on his face. Binghe wonders what he looked like (uncertain? Afraid? Repentant?) But he doesn't want to ask in case...in case.
He gladly takes her up on the offer, and the way they move is almost a choreographed dance. Binghe lets himself stop thinking and lose his mind to the tedium of sparring with a partner of many years.
Later, they are sweating and grooming their swords, dusting off the blades and removing any droplets of blood.
“Have I ever been happy?” he blurts out.
Liu Mingyan’s hands pause in their brisk, methodical motions. “Is this a question you should be asking me ?”
“Probably not,” he admits. “But do you have an answer?”
“ I’ m happy with you,” she says simply. That’s all she says.
******
Binghe wants to know what happiness tastes like. The closest he’s seen on any of his counterparts is when they’re with Shifu, and so that’s what Binghe looks for.
He finds a Shen Qingqiu from before Cang Qiong, but long after the Qius, and takes advantage of his relative anonymity to talk to the twenty-something-year-old man.
Shifu throws him off the first time, ducking into an alley and disappearing when Binghe got too close.
The second time, Binghe goes bearing a book (it might or might not be stolen) as a gift. Or a bribe. This, if anything, makes Shifu even warier.
The third time, Binghe just sits down ten meters away and whines, “Why are you avoiding me?”
Shifu raises an eyebrow. “Why are you following me?”
“I have questions to ask.”
And cue eyeroll. “I have missions to complete.”
Binghe frowns. “For your master? You know he’s a demonic cultivator, right? Are you doing this under duress? Want me to kill him for you?”
“You speak of killing too easily,” says Shifu dryly. “And aren’t you a demonic cultivator too?”
“Oh.” Binghe looks away. “You can….you can tell that?”
Shifu shrugs. “I guessed. You have this aura.” A non-answer, but it rings some bells.
“What does it feel like?” Binghe asks, before he changes his mind. “No, don’t answer that. Can you tell me how to be happy?”
“The first question would be easier to answer,” Shifu says, the edges of his lips tugging down. “I’m hardly ‘ happy ’ myself.”
“I really can help you kill him. I can even dispose of the body.” It doesn’t feel like a betrayal to himself, to banter with Shifu like this. It doesn’t feel like much of anything.
“Hn.” Shifu says, noncommittally. “I’ll consider your offer.” They both know he won’t.
Binghe slumps into himself. “You really don’t have any answers?”
Silent, hesitant steps approach him. Shifu hasn’t let go of his caution, but he’s extending an olive branch. “I think it’s something you have to define yourself. When are you the most satisfied to let things carry their natural course?”
“ That ’s your definition?” Binghe asks incredulously. “That’s so...so passive! How can you say you’ve had happiness with low standards like that ?”
Shifu snorts at him. “Low standards. It’s harder to find than you think.” He tilts his head and his eyes unfocus, as if he was seeing something far, far into the past. And Binghe must be hallucinating, because he has this sudden image of two young boys, huddling together for warmth and one smiling at the other. It’s gone before he can articulate it.
Shifu says, “But I’ve been happy before. I know it for sure, now that I’ve lost it.”
Shifu says, “You’ll always know once you lose it.”
Binghe wonders what that smiling boy has to say about that. What Yue Qingyuan has to say about that.
******
It’s Fu Siyan, silk soft and girlish, who finally wakes him up. She was a nobleman’s daughter slash spymaster, ready to be wed to a prince when Binghe swooped into her life and her off her feet. Now she’s a face rarely seen among his halls, content to depart to her room and sew.
Binghe has a gorgeous, shimmering ribbon that she wove for him, and uses it to hold up his hair wherever he goes. When he goes to her, Siyan takes great pleasure in pulling the ribbon loose a centimeter at a time, red eyes darkened with ambiguous intent, until Binghe’s hair falls into a curtain around his face.
She kisses him, then, whispers secrets into his dark hair, and it’s a ritual but Binghe has no idea what it all means. He doesn’t know what she wants from him, and can only hope that she gets it.
“I never know what you’re thinking,” he sighs, pushing a lock of her white hair back behind her ears, and gently cups her face when he’s done. “Sometimes, it feels like you’re just going along with me, and I can’t seem to find the real you.”
Beautiful hands, the ones that can only be served by the finest piano, wrap around his hand and encase it. Siyan nuzzles his captive appendage, and asks, “Aren’t you the same?”
******
It finally dawns on him that this was never about him or Shifu at all. This was actually about Sha Hualing and the rest of his wives by virtue of it not really being about any of them.
All these women that he knows, and yet somehow he has missed —
“How did I never know how perfect you all were?” Binghe asks, flabbergasted.
The two Lady Shas snort. It's a strange sound to hear from such pretty girls. The rest of them, forming a loose half circle in front of Binghe, don't deign to even respond to his idiocy.
“You don't tend to see very much,” his Hualing, his first, says.
******
Binghe really doesn’t.
He’s always been reaching so far forward (this entire dimensional adventure being solid proof of that) that he keeps forgetting to see what’s right beside him. It says something about his character, that.
He’s not the kind of person for introspection, though maybe he should have been. He wasn’t able to catch his own flaws before they’ve blown up to such massive scales, and now he wonders how much of him is just that. Flaws.
He knows he has a tendency to overreact. He’s taken very disproportionate revenges in exchanges for slights that only felt big in the moment. He knows this is because he tends to bottle up his grievances, storing them up until he can pay them back all in one blow.
Maybe, he overreacted with Ming Fan. And with Shifu. And with the many other people he’s killed for displeasing him, starting with his old sect master and ending with his mother’s master.
...on second thought, no. That man fully deserved what was coming to him.
And now that Binghe allows himself to be questioned, he thinks that maybe he’s been a bit of a faker. He’s been adorning false faces of obedience for a while now, using them to conceal much darker and vicious thoughts.
The other him mentioned something about bloodthirst. And Binghe can admit that the other Shifu was right, bloodlust does sing loudly in his blood. He had thought it was due to the demonic aspect of it, but maybe...maybe it was all him. Him, and his inability to let go and desire to destroy everything to prove that he was in control.
Binghe, for once, looks out and assesses the state of his world. Between poverty, disease, and an overactive military, it is not a pretty one.
******
He starts making amends.
******
Binghe travels down to the afterlife to ask for forgiveness, and nearly gets shoved out the doors to purgatory.
Shifu sneers at him, “I won't forgive you for the way I died. Naturally, I won't ask you for your forgiveness either.”
Instead of snarling vitriol back (anger wouldn't do much if Shifu is already dead, and Binghe wasn't too interested in overturning the reincarnation system that supports his world, thank you very much), Binghe pauses and tries to be...accepting. Open. Ready to hear things he doesn’t want to hear.
And so they talk, himself fumbling and Shifu disbelieving, and during their conversation Binghe tries .
He pictures the stolen image he has of little Huabing cheerfully swinging her arms, fingers interlocked with that of Ning Yingying. He imagines the carefree life that Binghe must have had, when he had a ‘Shizun’, who understood him in all the ways that mattered. He finally lets himself remember little Shen Qingqiu, bruised and battered but still with a fire burning within.
He thinks about what could be.
“Is it too late for me to change?” Binghe wonders wistfully.
Shifu looks like he's about to break out in hives over the soppy dialogue Binghe suddenly throws his way. Binghe would laugh, but he feels almost the exact about the words that just came out of his mouth. Is he acting remorseful ? Ew, gross. He didn't know he was that far gone.
And this is the moment Binghe recognizes their changing dynamic for what it is, because Shifu, still shivering in disgust, actually gives him a response. “You're the proclaimed ruler of the world, aren't you.” Shifu’s eyes dart from Binghe to Binghe’s left in clear discomfort. Binghe wants to protest, because he is very much the king, thank you, but he's caught by the fact that however cunning and scheming Shifu is (was), Shen Qingqiu is a person whose darker emotions are extremely easy to read. “What do you have left now but time?”
Binghe hears this, and bares his teeth in a grin. Shifu manages to find his comfort zone, looks him straight on and doesn't so much as flinch despite what Binghe’s smile used to mean for him. And that's also how Shifu is: when the odds were against him, Shifu drapes on a spine of steel and doesn't back down.
“I guess you're right,” Binghe says. “I now have all the time in the world.” Binghe hesitates over this last part, but thinks, eh whatever, he can just kill any witnesses if this doesn't work out. And plus, Shifu probably doesn't want rumors to spread about this anymore than Binghe does. “Thanks, Shifu.” His gratitude sounds a little creaky, having gone disused for so long. Binghe quickly adds, “Wow, I didn't know you knew how to act like a teacher!”
Shifu growls, but lets Binghe have it.
Binghe doesn't know what to do next. Is this a resolution? Are all grudges now laid to rest? Are they suppose to restart as master and disciple, with him seeking out Shifu’s guidance and Shifu rewarding him whenever he does something right?
That's an extremely disconcerting and disgusting thought.
“Now that we've resolved all this,” Binghe begins, “what do you say we have a little fun? Get freaky? I've had some interesting experiences with your counterparts—"
“You fucking piece of—” Shifu’s eyes narrow and the man gnashes his teeth. “ROLL!”
Binghe, mentally patting himself on the back, takes the out.