Chapter Text
Shen Qingqiu, formerly known as Shen Yuan in another life, walks placidly along the pathway to Qian Cao, his husband’s steady presence by his side.
This is the fifth day he has made this walk, and he hopes it will be the last.
For a little while, at least. He’s not unrealistic.
Binghe says nothing, his own face betraying little of his thoughts, and both pretend the stares they receive mean nothing to them.
“Shishu has been gone longer than usual,” Luo Binghe finally says, breaking the silence.
“Hm,” Shen Qingqiu agrees.
The Bai Zhan War God had crossed their path eight days before, seemingly in good health and with his regular grumpiness when confronted with Luo Binghe. The two of them had sniped their usual barbed comments while Shen Qingqiu watched, frustrated at their lack of civility even as he found some of their remarks hilarious.
He doesn’t know what the final straw was, which pointed taunt was one too many, but Liu Qingge had huffed something vile and then stormed off, not even sparing Shen Qingqiu a passing glance.
No one had heard from him since. While it was not unusual for his shidi to be absent for days at a time, usually when Shen Qingqiu stayed at Qing Jing, he made an attempt to be near. But after the third day, with no word and none of the Bai Zhan disciples knowing where their shizun had disappeared to, Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe had started to make the trek to Qian Cao every morning, in the off-chance Liu Qingge had done himself harm in his quest to… do something.
Shen Qingqiu just wasn’t certain what that something was.
Oh, he wasn’t as oblivious as others assumed. He knew he could be unaware at times, and that he had missed what, in hindsight, were glaringly obvious signs of Binghe’s crush on him. He was quite aware of Liu Qingge’s feelings for him now, though he had not realized they were more than friendly until after his marriage had been announced.
No one who was merely a good friend could look so gutted and shattered after learning of a happy union.
What to do about it, though, remained elusive.
He loved Binghe, utterly and devotedly. The thought of leaving his side, even for a man such as Liu Qingge, was inconceivable.
Ha, inconceivable. I do not think that word means what you think it means, the millennial inside of him whispered.
Because the thought of never seeing Liu Qingge again…
Of never watching his blush as he returned one of Shen Qingqiu’s forgotten fans, or the way his ears turned red when Shen Qingqiu teased him about it...
The thought of never feeling the aura of his comforting qi, of never seeing him snort in undignified laughter at one of Mu Qingfang’s terrible jokes…
That thought was just as inconceivable.
So Shen Qingqiu made his way with his husband at his side to Qian Cao, hoping and dreading for any news of his wayward shidi. Stuck like a snake eating its own tail, unable to move forward because he refused to go back to the way things were.
“Master Shen,” a disciple greeted as they crested the small hill which led to the main courtyard and Mu Qingfang’s office.
Shen Qingqiu nodded in greeting, ignoring the snub to his husband as the disciple scurried away without acknowledging him.
Lou Binghe had done many things over the years he was not proud of, and the consequences of those actions were still being felt. There would probably always be tension towards him when he visited Cang Qiong, and certain peaks in particular. But knowing the reason didn’t always make it easier to deal with.
Today, both men were too worried about Liu Qingge’s absence to pay the disciple any mind, and when Mu Qingfang greeted them a few minutes later, his expression alone let them know there was nothing new to report.
“Tea?” Mu Qingfang asked, beckoning both men towards his office.
“Thank you, Shidi,” Shen Qingqiu agreed, and stepped towards the simple doors that would lead to the little receiving room Mu Qingfang preferred to host guests in.
“Incoming!”
The call was faint, almost breathless, and echoed from further down the peak.
“Incoming!”
All three men turned towards the direction of the call, catching sight of a figure high in the air making its way towards them, wobbling precariously.
Shen Qingqiu would recognize that tiny silhouette anywhere, the high ponytail whipping about in the mountain air like its namesake.
“He’s coming in too fast,” Binghe warned, his voice steady but his hand clenched around Zheng Yang, his body tensing as though preparing to swoop up and steady that swaying figure.
Shen Qingqiu placed a hand on his arm, eyes never leaving the quickly approaching form.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, then rolled his eyes at Mu Qingfang’s incredulous look. “More wrong than normal!”
“The fact that he has a normal is worrying in its own right,” Mu Qingfang grumbled, even as he started barking out orders to his disciples.
The closer Liu Qingge came, the more it was obvious that something horrendous had happened. The normally tidy robes were covered in a black substance, an oily sheen seeming to permeate the material until only patches of grey could be seen beneath. His body was hunched over, as though in incredible pain, and the pale blur that was his face looked white as any revenant.
With just enough control to avoid any disciples in the vicinity, Liu Qingge crashed into the small section of moss most cultivators used as a landing pad when visiting Qian Cao.
The ground shuddered with the force, and a wheezing moan was forced from his pale, bleeding lips.
“Shidi!” Shen Qingqiu cried, Luo Binghe holding him steady the only thing preventing him from rushing forward.
“Shizun, we have to let Mu-Shishu help!” Binghe warned, his hands gentle despite their firm hold.
Indeed, the healer was already kneeling beside their fallen friend, ordering his disciples around like a general on the battlefield, removing the soiled outer robes without contaminating himself with an ease that would have been stunning to watch at any other time.
“Liu Qingge!” Mu Qingfang barked, his voice as furious as any had ever heard it, and slammed his palm against the other’s bared chest, the force of his qi glowing white where he touched. “You do not get to do this today!”
The qi pulsed once, twice, and then seemed to sink into Liu Qingge’s body. With a horrible gasping sound, the Bai Zhan War God went limp.
Immediately he was lifted and placed on a stretcher, then taken inside where healers were already prepared to lend their strength and skills where they could.
Silently, Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe watched the broken form of their friend, holding each other tight.
&&&
“A Heart Weaver Dream Spider,” Mu Qingfang spit as soon as he came out of the sickroom, his eyes red rimmed with exhaustion, his body shaking with fatigue.
It had been seven hours since Liu Qingge had plummeted from the sky, a fallen Icarus flown too close to the sun, wings lost. These were the first words any had heard of the cause.
Shen Qingqiu felt a shudder beside him and looked at Luo Binghe, his husband’s eyes widened in shock, his face pale.
It took a moment for him to remember the beast, as it had been in one of the earliest chapters of Proud Immortal Demon Way, when he had still held out hope for the novel and the many creative creatures which inhabited it.
Seeing the confused expression on his face, Mu Qingfang explained. “It spits a black, viscous venom onto its prey, forcing them into a coma-like state while it feasts on their minds. It eats memories, and any time the victim starts to become aware of the process, they are incapacitated by agony until it can dredge up another memory or dream. I don’t know how he managed to defeat it, but if he hadn’t killed it, he wouldn’t have made it back. The venom is psychically linked to the spider.”
Shen Qingqiu felt his hands grow cold at the sudden terror which seized him.
He remembered, now.
In the novel, Binghe had had to fight the spider to save wife number twenty-two from its clutches and had himself fallen victim. Without the Elder Dream Demon to guide him, he would have died, but with the added help, he was able to turn the nightmares and pain back on the spider until it had devoured itself.
“What is the cure?” he demanded, forcing his voice to remain calm despite his fear.
“We are researching it,” Mu Qingfang assured him gently.
It was the kindest way he had to say they didn’t know.
No.
No.
NO.
Liu Qingge was not going to die because Shelob and the Matrix decided to have a baby. He refused.
“Luo Binghe,” he said, tone sharp despite himself.
Binge snapped to attention.
“Stay here with your shishu. I will be back.”
And then he strode off towards An Ding peak without a backward glance.
&&&
It was nearing dusk when Shen Qingqiu strode into Shang Qinghua’s leisure house without so much as a knock on the door.
The disciple who had just delivered his master’s dinner stared at him, frozen in horror, watching as he made his way over to where Shang Qinghua sat, looking at him with wide eyes, a bowl of noodles steaming in front of him.
“Out,” Shen Qingqiu ordered, and the disciple scuttled to obey like their life depended on it.
Shen Qingqiu threw a silencing charm over the door, and then stormed his way over to Shang Qinghua and proceeded to slap him on the shoulder and head several times with his fan.
“Ow, bro, what the fuck?” Shang Qinghua gasped, squirming away from him with his bowl of noodles tucked securely in his hands. “Dude!” he protested from a safe distance away, wisps of hair starting to fall out of his bun, pale robes wrinkled.
“Heart. Weaver. Dream. Spider!” Shen Qing snarled and sat down in the seat Shang Qinghua had just vacated.
“What?” Shang Qinghua gasped, his face losing what little color it had, the bowl of noodles almost slipping out of his suddenly loose grasp, sloshing hot broth over his hands. “Ow, damnit! Bro, what did you say? A Heart Weaver? Where?” Shang Qinghua flailed as he attempted to save his dinner, splashing more of the hot broth onto his robes and nearly tripping over a stack of books.
“You stupid hack of an author!” Shen Qingqiu snapped, crossing his arms. “Liu Qingge decided to play He-Man and got himself spat on and now he’s unconscious at Qian Cao and Mu Qingfang doesn’t know what to do! So you have to tell me the cure!”
“OK,” Shang Qinghua said, suddenly stilling and taking a deep breath as he processed the information. He moved slowly back toward the table. “OK.”
He set the noodles down between them and sat next to Shen Qingqiu, face as serious as it had ever been.
“Tell me everything, from the start.”
Shen Qingqiu told him what he knew, feeling his face become stiffer and more blank as he fought to hold off the tears. He was a peak lord, he couldn’t cry!
“Bro,” Shang Qinghua whispered, sounding gutted and horrified.
It was a reaction all too common for him.
Things the author had only dreamed about to entertain others now had real world consequences. Plot sequences meant to titillate affected everything from the way society ran to the plants that grew in the fields. A whole world, created to humor the lowest denominator, now ruled their lives.
They sat there silently for several long minutes, neither one knowing what to say. Then Shang Qinghua moved and, very slowly, wrapped his arm around Shen Qingqiu, ignoring the way he stiffened.
“I have to consult The Book,” Shang Qinghua finally said, his voice coming out dry and rough. “But I’m pretty sure I had an alternate story line planned if the one I used didn’t flow right. Let me look.”
Shen Qingqiu allowed himself to relax into the clumsy embrace, leaning his head on his friend’s shoulder.
Perhaps, for just a few minutes, he could be Shen Yuan, millennial in need of a hug, and not a peak lord.
Shang Qinghua released him after a moment and patted his back awkwardly before standing and heading to his bedroom.
The Book, as they had dubbed it, was their collective knowledge of Proud Immortal Demon Way. Although neither had an eidetic memory, between the two of them, they had mostly managed to fill in the gaps, with Shang Qinghua providing the back stories that never made it into the final drafts and the alternate stories he had discarded.
The Book actually spanned three volumes, each several inches thick, and went in chronological order.
Shang Qinghua returned with the first volume, retrieved from its qiankun pouch hidden under a lose floorboard, and thumped it onto the table. The noodles, long gone cold and congealed, were pushed out of the way to make room, and the two scoured the pages.
“I’d found a nest of spiders under my bathroom sink and had nightmares for a month. The Dream Weaver came from that,” Shang Qinghua explained as he flipped the pages. “Trust me, bro, there are some things I regret writing more than others, and that is definitely one of them.”
Shen Qingqiu sighed, a faint grimace twisting his elegant features as he relented.
“It was a good story line,” he admitted. “Fun to read, not fun to live through.”
He politely ignored Shang Qinghua’s flinch.
After a moment, they muttered simultaneously, “Fuck the System.”
&&&
Less than an hour later they found the entry, a page detailing the wife plot, the monster, and the eventual heroic rescue. It also contained the additional information from the backup story.
“I’m telling you, one giant ball of spiders lands on your hand when you’re reaching for the toilet paper and you would sleep with a nightlight for the next six months, too!” Shang Qinghua snapped, covering his head as Shen Qingqiu hit him again with his fan at the complexity of the cure. “Why do you think I went with the dream story line? It was better and made more sense!”
“A night pearl, mixed with the Moon and Frost flower?” Shen Qingqiu demanded. “Mixed under the light of a Thousand Stars Lily on a full moon? You hack author!”
“Bro, it was supposed to be symbolic!” Shang Qinghua whined. “But it didn’t make sense in the end to keep the sprite asleep for a month, so I went with the original route and forced Binghe to ‘bring all hidden things into the light!’”
Shen Qingqiu slapped him a few more times, just for good measure, then settled back down with a huff, choosing to ignore the last comment.
He knew he was being ridiculous, but Airplane Shooting Toward the Sky was a good bro and understood his need for this small outlet of worry before he took the information back to Qian Cao and had to be all stoic again.
“Just have Binghe enter his dreams so he can guide him to whatever he needs to face to break the venom’s hold on him,” Shang Qinghua finally said, when Shen Qingqiu made no more moves to hit him.
Shen Qingqiu tilted his head in thought, narrowing his eyes.
“You know as well as I do that the last thing Liu Qingge will find comforting is Binghe’s presence,” he finally said. “Why would he trust him enough to do anything he says?”
“So go with him,” Shang Qinghua grumbled, closing The Book with a satisfying whoomph. “If there’s one person Liu Qingge would be happy to see, it would be you.”
He raised his arms defensively as Shen Qingqiu snapped his fan open.
“Dude, come on!” he said. “You know I’m right! If we go for the other cure, it will be over a month, and who knows what condition he’ll be in by then? You have to suck it up and just do it!”
Shen Qingqiu remained quiet as Shang Qinghua returned The Book to its hiding place, and he remained quiet after his return.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Shang Qinghua finally said softly, poking him in the shoulder to see if he could get a reaction. Shen Qingqiu ignored him. “Liu Qingge has always been an adrenaline junkie; it’s how he deals with his feelings. If he’s happy, he fights. If he’s pissed, he fights.”
“If he’s heartbroken, he fights,” Shen Qingqiu agreed, and the two of them fell silent.
“Look… Go with Binghe into his dreams and try to keep him from reliving anything too interesting. The Dream Weaver’s venom is specifically meant to bring certain memories to the front and suppress others, so you have to steer him towards whatever realization he needs to make and get him to… I don’t know… admit he loves you and you love him.”
Shen Qingqiu felt his cheeks heat in a furious blush, fan coming up to cover his lower face on instinct.
Shang Qinghua patted his shoulder again, this time earning a glare. He returned it with a dimpled smile, unphased.
“Bro, this is your chance to shoot your shot. Don’t mess it up,” he warned, shaking a finger at Shen Qingqiu’s flushed, scowling face. “Bring everything into the light.”
“I’m leaving,” Shen Qingqiu snapped, batting the finger away as he stood, straightening his robes. “Make sure you get your disciple to get you another dinner, you’ve lost weight again.”
He didn’t wait for a response but hurried out, not quite slamming the doors behind him.
Night had already fallen, and the moon hung low and heavy in the sky.
The flight back to Qian Cao was slow, with all the thoughts swirling around his head, but once he touched down, he had again assumed the lofty and austere mask of the Qing Jing Peak Lord.
He strode past any Qian Cao disciples without acknowledging their startled greetings and into Liu Qingge’s room, where he was met with expectant gazes. “There is a cure.”