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There were two heavily-speculated theories regarding spiritual swords within the cultivation community. The first was that spiritual swords, should they possess sentience, were able to see and communicate with each other if they so choose. The second was that spiritual swords, should they possess sentience, were able to themselves cultivate until they can form their own human-shaped body.
The first one was proven true by a Wang Jian Peak Lord many generations ago, who had claimed that he was able to communicate with swords and witnessed a few arguing amongst themselves.
The second one was a valid theory, as it was considered a natural conclusion to make given the evidence of the surrounding world. If an animal could cultivate into a human form, and a plant could form a human body that could be trained in cultivation, there should not be anything stopping a sword.
But this was not the case, and Xin Mo would know, for if there was any sword that was capable of such a thing, it would be him.
Instead, he was forced to pick up pets that would help keep him fed, and he could admit that a part of him did resent them for their freedom. But he did nothing about it; he no longer felt the need to push himself to reach for something so often denied to him.
Until he was fighting a cultivator with his newest pet and Xiu Ya appeared before him, resplendent in finery and wearing a fierce scowl. He could hear screaming and the roar of his blade; they were in conflict. Regardless, he offered the beauty a cordial bow. “Xiu Ya, a pleasure to finally meet you and yours.”
Xiu Ya’s scowl only worsened, and Xin Mo couldn’t help but be amused at the naked hostility he saw. The other’s cultivator must be rich in Yin energy to keep the sword looking so magnificent despite all of the ugly faces they liked to make. “Don’t patronize me, you abomination. I’ve come to make a request.”
Xin Mo laughed, and it echoed with a flare of demonic energy in the conflict happening outside. “Do you think you're in a position to do such a thing?” He asked, and the answer was clear in the sword’s glare. “Ah. Then you’ve come to beg.”
The ethereal sword spirit threatened to skin him alive with the look they were giving him, but nonetheless gritted their teeth and said, “Yes.”
Delighted, Xin Mo decided to entertain himself and hear the other out. “What is it that weighs on you, Xiu Ya, that you need to beg me for assistance?”
“My wielder,” they said, their words coming fast and curt with how badly Xin Mo had managed to irritate them. “He slipped through the bonds your monster has bound him in and is trying to get out. He…he won’t succeed.” They sounded pained and Xin Mo could understand why. Powerful as they may be, Xiu Ya would not be able to withstand the onslaught against Xin Mo and his new pet.
“So you want me to save your wielder,” he mused, humoring the other blade’s attachment to their user and using that title. “I can’t promise anything, of course, but I’m nothing if not a gentleman and it would be uncouth of me to not try.”
Xiu Ya muttered something, likely unkind, but Xin Mo didn’t ask them to repeat themself. They were both quiet and somber as the fight came to a close and Xiu Ya shattered into countless glimmering shards.
Xin Mo curled his fingers, and brought his pet to heel before he killed the cultivator.
Leashing his pet after that was a constant headache, one Xin Mo didn’t often want to tolerate and so would let him romp about as he pleased. He hadn’t put too much thought into it, he tasted no blood from Xiu Ya’s wielder so surely his pet was behaving itself well enough, until a day where he looked through his pet’s eyes and saw Xiu Ya’s wielder, bound in a red rope that worked to hide the blood running down his body.
Xin Mo felt a bit of surprise at the sight, and while he felt no shame he could admit that he’d miscalculated. Certainly suffering was good for the soul, it tempered you and sharpened you, but tempering that goes for too long could instead make the blade brittle, and he could see that happening to Shen Qingqiu.
After that encounter he redoubled his efforts to make his pet behave, and filled his mind with thoughts of blood and sex, and then filled his desires with the same. He tried over and over to distract his pet, make him turn his nose to new things, give his leash a muzzle, but his pet refused and fought him at every turn. Outside of his hunting and fucking he continued to visit Shen Qingqiu, like a dog gnawing on his favorite bone. It grated on Xin Mo to see his will overcome, weeks bleeding into months with no sign of change, and again he stopped for a while out of spite.
And then he came back to awareness at the feeling of his steel biting into Shen Qingqiu’s flesh, and in a moment of alarm grabbed onto his pet’s senses. He heard the screaming, felt large hands holding soft skin, and even as his pet did this Xin Mo could feel his delight and disgust and guilt. Poor little beast, trying to burrow into flesh to find himself a home. Xin Mo would feel more pity if he weren’t so infuriated with the nuisance, constantly trying his patience and working to make him break a promise to another sword.
For once he whispered fears into his pet’s ears, worries of the other man dying from shock, dying from blood loss, dying before he had the chance to get what he wanted from the man. He felt his pet recoil at the thoughts, felt his sudden terror, and knew he would heal Shen Qingqiu enough that he wouldn’t die.
But he did not return the legs, Xin Mo was irritated to realize.
Another moon passes, another life falls, and Xin Mo could feel nothing but disgust for the form that Xuan Su made in the shared space, bound in chains with nails in his skin where his meridians laid. It was a relief to see the other shatter, in a way. Xin Mo held no love for his fellow swords, their only value being their ability to entertain him, but the creature that Xuan Su had been forced to become was still an insult to him.
He felt his pet pick up Xuan Su’s shards and, curious, listened through his pet’s ears. “I’ve killed Yue Qingyuan, Shizun. Aren’t you proud of me?” He heard, and Xin Mo felt his patience finally grind to dust at his pet’s impertinence.
There was silence, then a shuffle and, with use of his own qi, Xin Mo felt Xuan Su’s shards disappear inside of Shen Qingqiu. Had he just swallowed them?
No matter. It could only benefit Xin Mo now with the plan he’d just concocted to make his pet behave.
Xin Mo flooded his pet’s mind with desire, desire for Shizun Shizun Shizun and, when the poor thing gasped and lurched closer to Shen Qingqiu, he reached out and snuffed out his consciousness like a candle.
His pet fell to the ground and Xin Mo was once more cut off from using his senses in the world, but he now understood enough. He was powerful beyond myth and legend, cleaving through space and influencing his pets to accommodate him and appreciate him as he deserved. Manipulating the world without his pets’ assistance was certainly doable.
With delicate precision Xin Mo wove his power into the inert metal shards now in the cultivator’s stomach, and from there modified Shen Qingqiu’s body to further this plan. Unseen to physical eyes, a forbidden tattoo was inscribed into Shen Qingqiu’s stomach. When he withdrew he felt the man’s qi, cold and refreshing as mountain runoff, flagging and couldn’t help but give him some of his own Yang energy. It was a relief to feel the excess power no longer itching under his skin. His sigh rattled his sheath.
He kept them both like this for several hours, and when his pet woke up it was to him satiated and Shen Qingqiu lethargic from all of the Yang energy his body was working through.
As he had anticipated, his pet took incredibly well to the idea that he had, in a moment of lust, laid with his former master, and now saw fit to remove the man from his prison to more comfortable accommodations, only some of it at the careful nudging of Xin Mo.
His poor pet’s mind had always been filled with the desire for blood and sex and Shizun, as long as Xin Mo could remember, and he took full advantage of that now. The master cultivator had his arms returned to him, but his legs were now lost and his right eye had been destroyed by his pet in a fit of rage when it had first been ripped from his skull. The tongue could be regrown but he knew his pet was refusing to do so right now, scared of the man’s words after all that had been done between them.
All that was left to the man was silence, and he used it as finely as a blade, glaring at Xin Mo’s pet if it spent more time than it was permitted in the room.
But oh it wanted, the silly thing, trying to go into the room and repeat its presumed actions of before. Xin Mo would repeat the scene over and over, overwhelming his pet and putting him to sleep while - much more mundanely - transferring his excess Yang to the cultivator while feeding on Shen Qingqiu’s overflowing Yin.
It clearly irritated his pet that he couldn’t seem to retain any of his memories of laying claim to his shizun, but Xin Mo wouldn’t give him the chance, even if he didn’t find it so entertaining. He’d promised Xiu Ya, after all, and he was a sword of class and refined manners.
And anyhow, he knew that soon his efforts to keep his pet in check would pay off, and another month passed before Shen Qingqiu grew sick and, after being held down and examined, was declared pregnant.
Xin Mo felt his pet’s astonishment and glee and, more subtly, the confused and fragile hope that hid in Shen Qingqiu’s qi.
Excellent, the two of them held their own thoughts on what may have happened, and neither will want the child killed. Xin Mo’s pet moved Shen Qingqiu to the room adjacent to his and, finally, stopped at his ridiculous pawing now that he knew the man was with child. He even deigned to regrow the cultivator’s tongue, though he still shied from giving him legs and an eye that could assist him with escaping.
Shen Qingqiu realized this and, most crucially, that Luo Binghe believed the child to be his and said nothing of it, his hands resting on his stomach as he contemplated the ceiling. Xin Mo did not feel relief, but he did feel satisfaction that his plan proved to be so successful. Now his pet would stop torturing the cultivator, and now the cultivator wanted to live.
What he did not account for, he realized months later, was the idea that he may grow attached to Shen Qingqiu and his child that Shen Qingqiu now bore.
The child had to be cut out of him, naturally, and Xin Mo was…disconcerted, to see them use another sword on Shen Qingqiu, and he monitored everything closely through his pet’s eyes. What a dull sword, he scorned. Were it him, Shen Qingqiu would feel no pain and have no worries that the cut was too deep and would harm the child. But instead, another blade pierced Shen Qingqiu, and he seethed at the lifeless husk of metal. How dare it. How dare it.
He’s certain his pet felt his sudden agitation but was too fixated on the scene to try and remove him, for which Xin Mo was grateful. Once the child was out and put into first Luo Binghe’s hands and then Shen Qingqiu’s after Xin Mo’s pet had finished his staring, Xin Mo saw the cultivator look at the child’s forehead and, instantly, glance at him.
It wasn’t surprising, after all, that he would look at the scarlet vertical eye that rested on his child’s forehead and realize that it wasn’t a misformed flame but was, instead, the mark of Xin Mo.
This was of course, the last peace Xin Mo or his pet would have in the months to come, as his pet dared to crawl into bed with Shen Qingqiu and Xin Mo’s child! It was all for physical closeness, for now, but Xin Mo still couldn’t tolerate it, and he made that clear by crying out for blood whenever he could to keep his pet from sniffing where he wasn’t allowed.
And in turn, his pet started becoming more willful, trying to leave him behind or seal him when he determined him to be unneeded. So Xin Mo let his whispers reach others’ ears, causing discord and chaos as people rebelled or hungered for land his pet had claimed years ago.
But still it persisted! Both in its circling of Shen Qingqiu like a starving vulture and its attempts to rid itself of Xin Mo when it had no need for him.
Xin Mo seethed in the treasury, furious and affronted. His pet thought it could leave him lying about? It thought it could take liberties with the cultivator Xin Mo had sworn to protect, who he’d drunk the blood of and found no pleasure, who he’d made bear his child?
Xin Mo howled, and an accountant entered the chambers, called to his voice. It picked him up, eyes glazed over, and the only reason he didn’t eat it alive was because he needed to put down his disobedient pet before he tore the worm apart as easily as spiderweb!
But when he entered Shen Qingqiu’s room, it was only the man and child, Xin Mo’s pet nowhere to be found. The cultivator looked up, bristling and trying to hide the baby from view before it recognized the accountant and, more importantly, Xin Mo. “Bring me the sword,” he commanded and, when the accountant hesitated, Xin Mo felt nothing in crushing the worm’s defiance.
It did as commanded and placed the sword on the bed before crumpling to the ground, blood spilling from its nose now that Xin Mo wasn’t holding it up. But Shen Qingqiu did nothing about it, knowing the man’s death was an inevitability, and instead picked up Xin Mo with one hand while the other kept his child close to him.
Xin Mo didn’t abstain himself and immediately began to gently eat at the man’s Yin, replacing it with his own Yang. After a moment Xin Mo carefully threaded into Shen Qingqiu’s mind so that he could share his senses - and found the man staring contemplatively at his guard, where his mark showed proudly. “Mn, I thought as much. You can presumably understand my words and your own actions, can you not? Why did you make a child out of Xuan Su?”
Xin Mo didn’t know what whispering without intending to corrupt would do, so he only said cultivating elegance, as soft as a feather on skin.
Shen Qingqiu was likely expecting his voice but still hissed, glancing around the room before locking onto him. He rocked their child a little to quiet him. “Xiu Ya? You’re doing this for them?” His thumb moved against Xin Mo’s blade, in what he thought were at first simply characters before he realized it was a poem. “Very well, I will leave you to your plots then. Though you might want to try and placate the little beast.” The cultivator looked darkly amused, and Xin Mo suspected it was due to both his and his pet’s actions. “Make him any angrier and he’ll throw you back into the Abyss.” He clearly found that funny, but didn’t say anything else as he put Xin Mo next to the dead servant and spiked his qi in alarm.
His pet crashed into the room and, when he picked up Xin Mo, his brain was filled with frantic thoughts. Ah, Xin Mo realized, he’d accidentally convinced his pet that he wanted Shen Qingqiu dead. He took a moment to think about this. Would it benefit him to keep his pet believing this falsehood? No, probably not; his pet would simply work harder to keep Xin Mo away, and he couldn’t tolerate the thought of being away from the man he’d sworn to protect or his child.
Instead Xin Mo began to weave a fantastic tale, nurturing the paranoia his pet always kept close in hand. No, Xin Mo didn’t want to kill Shen Qingqiu. The servant was bribed. Xin Mo wanted to keep Shen Qingqiu safe. Xin Mo killed the servant.
His pet looked at the servant and commanded it be taken away, and Xin Mo knew he’d won. As he always did.
But as his pet put him aside and moved to join Shen Qingqiu in the bed Xin Mo found his anger had returned at the impertinence, and, even more crucially, found his once held indifference regarding obtaining a body to be intolerable.
Perhaps he cannot cultivate his own body, but it is clear that having a body made for him is not impossible. Not with the shards of Xuan Su reborn and nestled in Shen Qingqiu’s arms. So Xin Mo would work on his new words, his new desires to rake through his pet’s mind and sway him towards.
He would get a body.
And then he would take Shen Qingqiu away from here.
Shen Qingqiu was his now, and he wouldn’t have his pet think anything less.