Chapter Text
Nowadays, Luo Binghe always gets what he wants. Anything he wishes for, he always finds a way to have it fall into his hands, sooner or later.
Usually, it’s sooner. Unless some people decide to be difficult and then it’s later. But even then it’s not much of a challenge; Luo Binghe is always the victor.
Beautiful women, jewels, relics, palaces, Luo Binghe wins them like flowers at a parade. His is a harem of three thousand beauties. His is a palace sprawling. His is gold and jade and silk until nobody will ever remember that he was once a starving rat that flinched at any upraised hand, a cowering victim in a woodshed, a blood-splattered morsel in an endless abyss—
But it doesn’t matter now. Luo Binghe has redeemed himself from those sins. Whatever that has made him lesser has been long excised from him, burned away, or surely by now he would have been made to suffer ignominious defeat.
And Luo Binghe does not lose. He never does, not anymore.
Women reach for him now, mouths begging, eyes pleading, hands grasping and Luo Binghe always allows them their liberties. He gives them what they desire and they thank him on their knees for it. Then he marries them and makes them his, now and forever, and in return they never really cause enough trouble to be enough of a nuisance that he tires of them.
The people bow in his presence, humans and demons alike. He has made them bow, forced the curve in their once-proud spines, the half-human half-demon all-nothing thing that nobody had ever wanted—now the supreme emperor of the united realms. It must be a hard thing for those lords and ladies to swallow, but emperors don’t need to care about those sorts of things, not when they have enough power to overturn the Heavens. And when he wearies of politics, of forcing the once-proud to kowtow before him, there’s always a new beast to slay, a new enemy to eviscerate, right on cue.
And when it’s neither beauties nor conquest that can relieve his ennui, there is always, always, Shizun.
Shizun! The Xiu Ya sword of Qing Jing, of Cang Qiong! So elegant and refined, virtuous and educated. Cultivating among bamboo, long fingers on the guqin and sweeping broad strokes with his calligraphy.
Ah, Shizun. So beautiful a facade for so ugly a heart. Luo Binghe had hated the dissonance, more than anything. It had become much clearer at the trial, when it was revealed that Shizun was simply a hateful creature who’d tried dressing himself in flowery airs.
Put like that, all of this really was well-deserved punishment.
“Shizun,” he croons when he enters that dark cell, because it has become customary. Part of the little dance that they share. Luo Binghe goes to Shizun, and Shizun doesn’t look back.
Never looks back. Even in his dreams Luo Binghe can’t fathom of such a thing.
Well. Except for that one dream. A dream so unrealistic he’d nearly forgotten all about it. Shizun had looked at him then. In those few moments, he’d been all Shizun could have seen.
Reality had been so much more disappointing. Luo Binghe had torn out one of Shizun’s eyes for it.
He keeps it in a jar now. All nice and preserved in case Shizun wants it back someday. When he earns it back.
Not that it would be anytime soon. Shizun’s head hangs down, his remaining eye glaring at the floor, not even twitching up as Luo Binghe as he draws nearer, nearer.
Shizun’s face, once renowned for its gentle aristocratic grace, is obscured by the lank, greasy hair, but that’s nothing to worry about. Cleanliness is a state of mind, after all. Isn’t that what Shizun always used to say?
Unworthiness always outs, while virtue remains unsullied.
“Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, softly. “This disciple is a little hurt. Won’t Shizun cast a glance at his most faithful?”
Shizun doesn’t make a sound, is too proud to make a sound, but Luo Binghe knows that his Shizun is cursing him in his heart.
He knows Shizun so very well, after all.
Luo Binghe, the filial disciple that he is, gently brushes back Shizun’s hair. Tucks it behind the little curve of his ear. If his claws catch and nick a little blood, then that’s Shizun’s fault for having such delicate skin.
A lifetime ago, Shizun would have struck him down and flayed him alive for daring to take such liberties. Would have made him bleed for even daring to think of such indecency. He might have even turned Luo Binghe out to die, a three-thousand chi drop into hell.
Now, now, Luo Binghe can do what he wants. What he wills. The bone of Shizun’s cheek catches the light and Luo Binghe is struck by the sudden desire to make Shizun bleed a little. Not too much. Just enough to make him cry and really make his cheeks shine.
It really is a pity though; Shizun never cries. Never screams. No matter what Luo Binghe does, no matter what he says, it’s like water sliding off stone. Nothing really touches Shizun, not even as his all too mortal body fails him.
Oh, except for that one dream. That Shizun had really been so soft, like water. He’d called out to Luo Binghe by name.
Luo Binghe’s really half-convinced that it was a dream he’d subconsciously made up somehow, despite his mastery of Meng Mo’s techniques.
Because.
None of Shizun’s dreams are open to Luo Binghe. He has tried. Drugs don’t work. Neither does pain nor exhaustion. Even in Shizun’s deepest dreams or most terrifying nightmares he is still guarded against Luo Binghe.
It’s infuriating.
Luo Binghe wants to turn Shizun inside out. Wants to drag his guts out, glistening with yellow fat and pink muscle, out into the light so Luo Binghe can finally see past the human skin Shizun puts on to the rest of the world. Wants to break his bones and spread out the marrow, pinning Shizun up like a butterfly, a sight for him and him alone.
Shizun is so ungrateful. Won’t Shizun look at his beast?
“Especially,” Luo Binghe continues, “When this disciple has brought him a gift.”
And he has. Doesn’t Shizun want to know if there are any at Cang Qiong that would fight for him? Doesn’t Shizun want to know the depth of devotion he inspires?
Luo Binghe is still Shizun’s prize pupil, but he is magnanimous enough to allow a competition for second place.
Or perhaps not. He’s a jealous beast after all.
Shizun still does not look at him, his gaze long and faraway, his face as like carved from stone.
So unlike that dream.
And Luo Binghe’s mood shifts, from indulgent to annoyed.
He leans in closer to Shizun, pressing his fingers against Shizun’s cheek, cupping his hand around Shizun’s head, forcing it up with a gentle, inexorable, pull.
Drawing close to Shizun, face to face, Luo Binghe speaks lightly with a gentleman’s air. “It seems that Shizun would rather not receive this disciple’s heartfelt efforts. This disciple is a little disappointed, especially after I’ve gone through so much effort for Shizun.”
He’d even let Shizun write the letter himself, back when Shizun still had use of his arms.
He brushes a thumb over Shizun’s cheekbone, grown sharper still in Luo Binghe’s care. He tightens his grip. Enough to make it hurt. Enough to make other, lesser, men scream.
Shizun doesn’t cry out, nor make any sort of sound. He never allows Luo Binghe the liberty of hearing him anymore. He had gone silent long before Luo Binghe lost all patience and had torn out Shizun’s tongue.
Shizun still doesn’t look at him.
Shizun never looks at him.
And then it’s an open-handed slap that sends Shizun swinging.
Shizun simply hangs there, letting the momentum spin itself out, limp like a doll, until he is just as still as before, as if Luo Binghe hadn't had any effect. As if Luo Binghe is just a passing breeze.
Silence in the cell reigns again, apart from the sound of water and Luo Binghe’s breathing.
And the creaking of Shizun’s chains.
“It seems,” he says, finally, “That Shizun would rather not look at this disciple.”
That’s fine. It would have been too easy anyway. Luo Binghe will simply have to make it so.
“What will Shizun do, this disciple wonders,” he murmurs, “When this disciple is all that remains?”
He knows that Shizun has heard him. There is still no movement. Not even the passing of breath.
The only thing that remains is the quickly reddening mark, high on Shizun’s cheekbone, vivid against the jade white of his skin.
Before Luo Binghe can do something ill-advised, like bite down, he leaves in a swirl of dark robes. He tries his best to not feel like he’s retreating. Like it means something that he’s the one backing down, instead of going further and punishing Shizun like he deserves.
Because he has the right to. If he isn’t worthy, then nobody is.
Usually, seeing Shizun in all his glory tends to settle something in Luo Binghe, but not today.
His blood is rushing, his heart thumping without restraint, and all Luo Binghe wants to do is throw himself into somebody, drown himself in smooth jade skin and tender flesh and the sweet smell of perfume, just so he can shake himself into something resembling the Demon Lord everybody else talks about.
The first wife he comes across, a Wang-something-or-other, he sweeps along to his bedchambers, all sensual low undertones and smiles angled just perfectly in the low light so that no woman can resist him. It doesn’t take much to pull her into the dance. He just has to say the right words, crinkle his eyes in the right way, let her take the lead just enough that she knows she wants it, and away he goes. Down, down, down, to where Xin Mo screams out for blood, sex, violence, and Luo Binghe lets it feed.
It’s only afterwards, Xin Mo sated and his dear wife half-asleep, that Luo Binghe thinks of Shizun again, inanely. It’s almost a compulsion now, that every so often he compares notes: Luo Binghe above, Shizun below.
Shizun, he thinks. Did you ever expect—
Expect what? That the boy he cast into the Abyss would survive, and claw his way back piece by bloody piece? That the boy he once whipped into submission and left to huddle in a woodshed would become Emperor?
That the boy, who once only ever wanted to be a disciple, would have the temerity to keep his Shizun in his dungeons? Kept in the dark, a little black cell, so that nobody would ever reach him. Kept, for his little disciple and him alone.
Bah. Shizun had never expected anything of Luo Binghe except for his death. The rest of the time, he only ever looked at Luo Binghe when he punished him. Only when Shizun brought the discipline whip down did he ever pay attention to that pathetic little boy that practically bled sentiment.
It was a lesson, probably. Luo Binghe certainly learned something from it.
Had he really been so obvious? So disgustingly transparent? To be fair, if some mewling thing had crawled up to him, asking with such weakness, he’d probably whip it himself out of sheer reflexive, instinctive, rejection.
Luo Binghe has grown far beyond that pitiful, wretched, self. He’s the Emperor now. Everything under the heavens is his—he need only wish for it. Everybody wants him or wants something from him, it’s nearly the same thing, and he only needs to let himself be tugged along, no longer that desperate greedy thing from the gutter.
Luo Binghe is the most powerful person in the Three Realms. He is the husband of three thousand beauties, all of them there because they want him. Surely anybody, everybody, would find this a satisfying existence. Surely, surely.
Then, as he looks towards the moon, round and full in that starless sky, why does he feel so, so—
Luo Binghe’s head snaps up and out of his thoughts as the wards are breached. An intruder. An enemy to tear apart and let Xin Mo sink its teeth into. Someone to make bleed.
He shushes his wife with a dashing smile, leaves her with the confidence that her lord husband will return shortly, and slashes his way through with Xin Mo.
And there, he finds himself.
Wild haired, curly and untamed. Eyes wide, expression fecklessly open with surprise. Luo Binghe grits his teeth. Couldn’t this imposter have at least had the sense to portray him with the respect afforded a Demon Lord?
Then the imposter remembers himself, sword brows drawing low, eyes narrowing, the Heavenly Demon huadian flaring a bloody red. Finally he is the accurate image of what a demon should be, but Luo Binghe won’t forget the insult.
“Shizun,” the imposter says, inanely. What about Shizun?
Surely this thing isn’t trying to take Shizun, is he?
Away from Luo Binghe?
The imposter is at a disadvantage, Xin Mo in pieces at his feet—useless thing—but Luo Binghe is not inclined to mercy. The other one knows it too, shifting low. And then, nearly at the same time as if they’d read the other’s mind, Luo Binghe and the imposter leap at each other.
Using the paired move and countermove, Luo Binghe arcing above to crash down below, the imposter in turn swirling to dodge, the lantern lights glinting off of his blade, Luo Binghe thinks that, the insulting caricature aside, this is perhaps one of the more thrilling fights in his life.
He can see it almost instantly, how the pair of them are nearly matched in power. The imposter knows his forms, using them with deadly precision.
Of course, Luo Binghe will win anyway, but it’s far more exciting in the meantime to think that the imposter is nearly his match. He’d have to be, to make it so far into his inner palace without setting off the many wards Luo Binghe has layered about his flower garden.
A clever twist of Xin Mo, a sudden lunge, and Luo Binghe draws first blood, slashing open the imposter’s chest.
Ugh. The imposter isn’t even a good impression of him. Suddenly, Luo Binghe has the irrational compulsion to explain to the imposter, at length, about the regenerative capabilities of Heavenly Demons. He’d never be so irresponsible to leave as so much as a hint of a scar.
Nothing ever touches him. That’s the point.
Luo Binghe swings around, the imposter not having flinched in the slightest from the blow he’d been dealt and moving in, but he’s a hair too slow and there’s a glancing shard of pain singing down his spine. He shoulders through it, well used to that sort of thing.
The imposter tries to use that moment of weakness to strike out at him again for a double blow, but Luo Binghe has fought through worse. He punches out and the imposter’s head snaps back, nose broken.
Having gained a bit of breathing room, Luo Binghe reorients himself for the kill. But the wound doesn’t heal quite so quickly as it should. The imposter’s eyes are that peculiar bloody red that his wives write poems about. And there’s something, something in the air that thrums—
He cuts through the air with Xin Mo, lashing out, and the other one barely manages to dodge it, shimming purple gashes of space trailing through the blade’s wake. If he had even been a moment slower, he’d be dead. Or at least so heavily injured that Luo Binghe would have been able to end the fight at his leisure. Xin Mo is not a merciful thing after all.
Peculiarly, the other one jerks at Xin Mo’s aura, fingers twitching and arm tensing as if recalling muscle memory. He wants it—Luo Binghe can read it in his face.
That easy power: yang rushing through veins, the taste of blood on the tongue. That awful certainty of victory, now, everlasting.
“You really are a ‘Luo Binghe’, aren’t you?” he murmurs. Bloodthirsty, blood-hungry; a slave to beastly desires.
The strange mirror image of Luo Binghe jerks at his tone. He knows that he knows what Luo Binghe really means.
Luo Binghe barks out a laugh.
Weak.
The force by which the younger, more artless, “Luo Binghe” swings his fists against him nearly has him stumbling with the strength of it. For a moment, his own Xin Mo’s distinctive, hungry, aura responds and the other “Luo Binghe” stumbles, suddenly hamstrung.
His expression twists, no longer wholly focused, his mouth pressing and flattening, and for a singular moment he’s no longer looking at Luo Binghe.
Distracted. A fatal mistake, but one Luo Binghe will magnanimously pardon him for.
Luo Binghe smiles. In everything, he’s always the victor.
Usually, he’d just kill the impetuous intruder, but something about killing himself doesn’t sit quite right with him. Not when it is a genuine article and not merely a shapeshifter.
With one smooth movement, he kicks “Luo Binghe” through Xin Mo’s portal and is done with it. He doesn’t particularly care where Xin Mo leads that other one and isn’t particularly concerned about any aftermath.
Luo Binghe has gone through his trials and come out all the stronger for them; this weaker version just wouldn’t ever compare without all that suffering.
If anything, Luo Binghe’s just teaching him a lesson. Perhaps this time he’ll learn to keep Xin Mo in one piece.
Luo Binghe turns to leave, to fulfil his promise to his dear Ah Xian, who’s still waiting for him in her chambers, but then he stumbles.
Urk. He’s still bleeding. He tries to stand, properly, and the blinding pain that forces its way down his spine nearly downs him. He tries to shuffle forwards, just barely, and a previously unknown gash in his knee threatens to collapse him.
He tightens his grip so tightly around Xin Mo’s pommel it nearly overrides everything else. Then slowly, deliberately, because he’s bleeding and the one thing that would certainly ruin him is a qi deviation, he slides Xin Mo back into its sheath.
The sudden loss of raging yang almost sends him to his knees. Every laceration and bruise makes itself known with screaming impatience and although Luo Binghe heals quick, it’s not quick enough.
He needs to go. Somewhere safe—his chambers—where no one would dare find him. Somewhere where he can put himself back together and smooth over everything like he always does. Then, when he wakes up in the morning, a Luo Binghe like that thing will have never existed.
He makes it there with sheer force of will alone, straightening out bones and smoothing over skin along the way. He does it properly, without any of those scars, because Luo Binghe is actually skilled at this.
Then, he stumbles into his room and—
“Luo Binghe?”
Shizun.
Shizun, hale and whole, in Qing Jing green and white silk, guan pinned high and smooth black hair sweeping low, long pale fingers reaching towards him and touching him on his arms, on his back.
Pressure. Contact.
Absently, he almost regrets pulling off Shizun’s arms. If only he had known it could’ve felt like this.
Luo Binghe wants to lift his head, so very slightly upwards, where Shizun has left his throat so very open, and close his jaws on it. Shake him, to see what falls out of that head of his, because Shizun never strikes first.
Luo Binghe’s always the one having to drag him out, over and over again.
This must be a trick. Shizun must have thought of some clever thing, taken advantage of Luo Binghe in his weakness, and is trying some hopeless, meaningless, scheme to save himself. Just like how a drowning man can’t help but gasp down water.
There is never a Shizun that would ever want a Luo Binghe. This one makes a fair attempt at it, having his voice go all soft and concerned, the way that his wives sometimes try to ape when they want his favour.
This one still has his tongue and is clearly making good use of it. The spark of cleverness in his eyes isn't going to waste.
He doesn’t want it. Whatever plot Shizun is trying to hatch, Luo Binghe isn’t in the mood for it.
And then Shizun flattens a palm against his back and his spiritual energy is soft and warm and soothing. He almost leans back against it. He almost forgets himself.
Then Luo Binghe is left ever so slightly adrift when Shizun pulls back and tenses up all over again.
Fine. Clearly, this Shizun was better at playing pretend than his own. Luo Binghe could play along, let Shizun guide the act to wherever he wanted to go.
Luo Binghe would turn the tables on him in the end, when he found whatever Shizun was looking for, when Shizun had acted himself neatly into the palm of his hand.
And then Shizun would be his. Anything else wouldn’t matter.
Shizun carries him on Xiu Ya, cradling him all the way. Gently, gently. His sleeves billow in the rushing wind like ribbons. His hair blown into inky strands like a night full of stars. Luo Binghe can smell the bamboo of Qing Jing. It tastes like blood and dust.
What was it that Liu-shishu said? Of course Cang Qiong is not his home, never his refuge. It never was.
But when Shizun dreams, it is a beautiful dream. In it, Luo Binghe gets all that he’s ever wanted.
Luo Binghe almost doesn’t want to wake up.
But, almost reluctantly, he turns gently on that soft, soft bed, careful not to wake Shizun. What a wonderful web Shizun weaves, of sunlit days and unrestrained smiles, a gentle touch and refined laughter. Of eyes, like stars, upturned in happiness, just by looking.
Just by looking at Luo Binghe.
Shizun, he thinks, hands ever so close to that glossy hair, the upturned curve of that lip, the shh-shh of quiet breath, ah, Shizun. Doesn’t Shizun know that some dreams only make you hunger more?