Chapter Text
“I’d ask if you thought something might have gone terribly wrong with my disciple if I didn’t already know he was literally invulnerable,” Shen Qingqiu said morosely as he sipped at his tea.
“I mean,” Shang Qinghua replied as he shifted in his seat, “I think ‘invulnerable’ might not be the right word. He can absolutely get hurt, and quite badly at that. I had this whole wife plot planned in my head that never made it to paper in any way where the blackened protagonist was going to almost die and get saved by a badass lady and then she had to nurse him back to health and fall in love along the way, but I scrapped it before it went anywhere because it obviously it didn’t fit into the stallion genre. It was too, like, soft? I mean, there was lots of violence, but the relationship was too soft, and the woman had too much agency. It was kind of nice to think about for that reason, but it wasn’t going to pay the bills, you know what I mean? So it might be more accurate to say he’s immortal, but anything short of that is fair game. After all, his whole blackening in the original book was basically the result of deep-seated insecurities and repeated traumas enforcing said insecurities that skewed his entire outlook on life and crippled his ability to form meaningful relationships - why are you looking at me like that? Hey!”
The scroll that went sailing at Shang Qinghua’s head was skillfully dodged, but the fan that bashed into his forehead afterward was not, likely because a tight grip on his hair prevented him from dodging at all. “I didn’t ask you for a literary analysis of Luo Binghe’s PTSD! I asked you to tell me he’s fine and it’s okay that he’s running late!” Shen Qingqiu yelled, punctuating each sentence with another smack of his fan that nearly cracked the bamboo frame before he let his… friend… go and sat back to pick his tea back up, now scowling into his cup.
Shang Qinghua pouted for a moment, rubbing at his forehead, before he finally sighed and relented. “I’m sure he’s fine and just running late because he wants to impress you,” he offered, and at least had the grace to sound like he meant it. “I just said he can’t die, and we already know he can’t die, so he’s running late because you told him to be careful so he’s being an unnecessary level of careful in order to impress you. He scares the shit out of the rest of us, but he’s literally your lapdog, so everything is fine even though it’s been six years already.”
“... Thank you,” Shen Qingqiu told his teacup, because he absolutely was not sulking.
Moments later a disciple all but fell through the door, panting so hard he couldn’t breathe. “Shizun! Peak Lord Shen! You’re needed at the gate, there’s… there’s someone here!” the disciple cried.
“Speak of the devil?” Shang Qinghua muttered hopefully as both Peak Lords rose from their seats to hurry outside.
At the top of the stairs leading up the mountain, an enormous crowd was gathered. Senior disciples held someone at sword point as they waited for their sect leader, who arrived just before Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua and pushed his way to the front to see what all the fuss was about, Peak Lords in his wake. The murmurs of the crowd did nothing to enlighten Shen Qingqiu to the situation, as no one around him seemed to know what was going on, either.
He found out soon enough, because when Yue Qingyan and the Peak Lords flanking him made it to the front of the crowd, they suddenly turned to look at Shen Qingqiu and parted in silent shock to make a path for him to approach. Approach he did, only to find his long lost wayward disciple smirking, one hand on his hip and posture casual as though he was not at the wrong end of dozens of swords at the moment. It reminded Shen Qingqiu so strongly of the meme of a cat looking smug with a knife in its face that he had to cover his face with his fan so he wouldn’t laugh.
“Binghe?” he murmured as he stepped into the circle of blades toward his disciple. “You came back?” Shen Qingqiu could scarcely remember the original plot of Proud Immortal Demon Way anymore (he had much more luck remembering the beasts and other actually interesting parts), but he certainly remembered the first time he lived these events and seeing Luo Binghe again at Jinlan City. The plague never happened this time, since he’d given Zhuzhi-Lang no reason to try that particular brand of “help” on this playthrough, and it was likely that Binghe’s late return had delayed the rest of the events from that time. Still, he was very certain that Binghe had not boldly walked up the mountain to announce his return in any version of events before.
The arrogant facade melted away when Luo Binghe laid eyes on Shen Qingqiu, a genuine smile gracing his face as he dropped into a perfect bow of respect. “Shizun,” he said, and his voice had deepened in the last six years, sounding much more like the husband Shen Qingqiu had been missing so desperately than he had as a seventeen-year-old white lotus. “This disciple has completed many trials and returned far more powerful than when he left.”
“Shidi?” someone said from behind him, and Shen Qingqiu turned to see Yue Qingyuan looking at him strangely. “Didn’t you say your disciple had died?”
“This lord said he fell into the Endless Abyss,” Shen Qingqiu reminded his sect leader, somewhat annoyed that his deliberately worded explanation had been ignored. “What conclusions the sect leader drew from that are not my business.” Dismissing the man from his attention, Shen Qingqiu stepped closer to his disciple and eventual husband and clasped his shoulder tightly, the most he dared to touch him in public and before the rest of the plot played out. “Binghe took a long time, but this master is relieved to see him.”
Luo Binghe’s smile grew wider. “This disciple wanted to come back sooner, but was determined to gain enough power to make Shizun proud,” he said. “This disciple has come from Huan Hua Palace to extend an invitation to the Peak Lords of Cang Qiong Mountain sect to join a ceremonial Night Hunt.” With this, he produced a gilded invitation from the folds of his robe to hand to Shen Qingqiu, who passed it behind him to Yue Qingyuan with barely a glance at the man.
“Luo Binghe has joined another sect?” Lui Qingge scoffed from behind him. “How little loyalty you have to your sect and your Shizun, forsaking him for Huan Hua Palace of all places!”
Luo Binghe’s eyes narrowed on his martial uncle, and Shen Qingqiu repressed the urge to roll his eyes. Really, shidi, he thought at Liu Qingge, you never have any sense of self-preservation. “This disciple has joined no other sect, nor accepted any master besides Shizun,” Luo Binghe stated, the demon mark on his forehead glowing a little brighter.
"Did you come merely as a glorified messenger, then?" Qi Qingqi called out, scowling.
"Only in part," Luo Binghe replied, not sparing her a glance as he gazed at Shen Qingqiu. "This disciple also came to see shizun again." Shen Qingqiu opened his fan with a crack and hid half his face with it, though he didn't quite break eye contact.
"Does Binghe have to go back, then?" he asked after a long moment of silence. "Or does he have time to share tea with this old teacher and tell him what he's been up to?"
Luo Binghe smiled again, and it didn't quite echo the bright and innocent smiles of his youth. No, it looked more like the hungry gazes of his husband, the ones that had once frightened him before he learned to recognize them as the burning devotion of a demon lord. "For shizun, this Binghe would do anything at all," he replied, intent deepening his voice even further.
Shen Qingqiu smiled behind his fan, regret and relief, joy and guilt, the loneliness of six years without his favorite disciple, without his husband, crinkling around his eyes. "I know," he murmured so only his someday-husband would hear, dropping the formal language just this once, just to see the way Luo Binghe's eyes widened in response.