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Yue Qingyuan found the kitten on an unseasonably cold and rainy spring day. Alone and abandoned, drenched and shivering and much too skinny, still the kitten was possessed of an irrepressible will to live, which it expressed very loudly through the most piercing meows its little body could produce, directly under Yue Qingyuan's window.

The cries were so persistent, that even though Yue Qingyuan had, for once, not gone to bed at some ridiculous time in the early morning, there was no way he would sleep through the night with that clamor. And anyway, if the mother cat was going to return, as he had been assuring himself as he lay in bed trying to fall asleep, it certainly would have by now.

So Yue Qingyuan retrieved an umbrella and hastily threw on an outer robe to go out and find the source of the incessant meowing.

The kitten, when found, stopped meowing only to hiss at him. But its entire little body was shaking and unable to put up a fight as Yue Qingyuan scooped it up from the grass and brought it inside. The kitten continued its meowing through being manhandled so, but as a concession, it huddled into the heat of Yue Qingyuan's body as he held it cradled to his chest with one hand and carried his umbrella in the other.

Indoors, the kitten was rubbed down with a towel. Its fur was black, sticking out in unruly spikes as Yue Qingyuan dried it, but it didn't seem to appreciate the effort as it instantly began grooming itself, before Yue Qingyuan had even finished drying it.

At least the meowing had somewhat ceased for now, though perhaps the misery of being stuck in the rain wasn't the only reason for the kitten's loud complaints. It was terribly thin, and Yue Qingyuan knew for a fact it hadn't eaten in at least two shichen, because he'd heard it meowing continuously for at least that long.

Was it still meant to be drinking milk, Yue Qingyuan wondered? How big did kittens get before they were weaned? This one wasn't exactly a new-born. It had open eyes, and fit in his hand, and he knew kittens could be much smaller than that, but if it hadn't been eating properly, could its growth have been hindered?

Litters of kittens had gotten born all throughout spring, and would continue to arrive through summer. Like any place where humans congregated in large numbers, vermin inevitably followed in even greater proportion, and so Cang Qiong Mountain had its armies of mousers to deal with the problem.

But cats were so plentiful on the mountain, that who would really miss whether a single kitten lived or died? Yue Qingyuan knew there would be nobody else to help, so he took responsibility for this little creature and its loud complaints.

Having so taken responsibility for another life, Yue Qingyuan overcame his hesitance to bother other people, and called for the disciple on duty that night. As sect leader, he always had someone near at hand to answer summons, even for frivolous reasons.

"Could you fetch something from the kitchens for this little one?" Yue Qingyuan requested, gesturing to the kitten that was now trying to escape his hold and climb onto his shoulder instead. Its claws were tiny needles, and he could feel their prickling through the material of his robe.

The disciple did not question this strange request. He departed hastily, and returned with a small dish of broth with some small pieces of meat floating in it.

"The kitchen cats love this stuff when the cooks dole out leftovers," the disciple explained.

Yue Qingyuan thanked the disciple, and though he expected the boy to depart quickly after that, to his surprise, the disciple merely placed the dish on the ground and hovered nearby, neck craned as if waiting to see how the food was to be received. Yue Qingyuan let it pass.

The kitten sniffed at the broth with obvious dubiousness. Perhaps it did not entirely understand that it was food, because it did not start eating right away. It dipped a paw into the broth instead, swatting at it like it was something offensive. After that, however, the kitten licked it paw, and realizing it liked the taste, proceeded to lap at the liquid.

Yue Qingyuan let out a breath of relief he hadn't realized he was holding.

"They need to eat fairly often when they're young," the disciple said, eager to please. "Should we bring more food for it regularly?"

"As long as it's here, yes," Yue Qingyuan agreed.

The disciple opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again.

Had he assumed Yue Qingyuan would keep the kitten? But it was a cat. It would naturally slink off at some point to do whatever it willed, and Yue Qingyuan wasn't going to stop it if it did.

The kitten was far quieter when sated, dry and warm. Yue Qingyuan barely heard a meow out of it when it had no complaints, and the disciples of Qiong Ding were just as eager to serve the little creature as they were to serve the Sect Leader, if not more so.

On that very first day, Yue Qingyuan had left the kitten alone in his room, making sure it had food. By the time he was in his office and ensconced in paperwork, he'd nearly forgotten about it completely.

When he returned to his room, he was bemused to find a ripped up tassel in the middle of his floor, like a gutted mouse. He recalled the kitten a moment later, and found it sitting on the one rug in the room, after having triumphantly murdered a second tassel. Yue Qingyuan actually went around the room trying to figure out where the tassels were from, before finding out they were from a cushion.

Further investigation turned up a ripped corner of the bed spread, and a distinct smell of urine in a corner.

Yue Qingyuan realized that perhaps it was not pleasant for any creature to be stuck in a single room alone all day. He felt ill at ease to leave the kitten alone, knowing that even animals could suffer from loneliness and boredom, so after that day, he proceeded to take the kitten with him in his office.

In the beginning, he was still thinking this would be a temporary situation, and he needed only to keep an eye on the kitten until it grew up and was able to live on its own. Regardless, he still would have had the same amount of patience towards it.

It would be no bother at all, he decided, to take it with him and keep an eye on it as he worked. His study--which doubled as an office--was barely down the hall, and although he was loathe to keep the doors open, scooping along the kitten as he passed from room to room was no hardship.

Soon, Yue Qingyuan found a series of items gradually appearing around his manor house: some dishes tucked away in the corner of his room, a few boxes with clumpy sand that the kitten quickly understood were meant for relieving itself, some cushions here and there, placed strategically anywhere the disciples had noticed the kitten liked sleeping.

The kitten luxuriated in sleeping, in fact, liking to stretch out wherever it found a beam of sunshine. Though its fur was pitch black, when it laid itself out in the sun like that, the light brought out warm brown undertones in its coat.

When it was not sleeping--which was most of the day and all of the night--the kitten instead set out on exploring all its surroundings. The first few days, it was a bit unsteady on its feet. Unable to jump down from the bed where Yue Qingyuan had placed it, it instead paced up and down along the edge of the bed, looking down to the floor with a trembling, upright tail but hesitant about jumping down.

When Yue Qingyuan placed it on the ground, it proceeded to run around sniffing everything in sight. At one point, to Yue Qingyuan's alarm, it squeezed itself under a very low cabinet. The space was so narrow, that Yue Qingyuan was sure his hand was too big to fit under, but luckily his intervention was unneeded. The kitten crawl out soon after, a cobweb clinging to its side. Yue Qingyuan laughed, but resolved to let the disciples clean a bit more often, like they always insisted.

When he took it to the office, the kitten proceeded to explore this place as well. It poked around every corner, disappeared under furniture, and occasionally stuck its claws into things it shouldn't--Yue Qingyuan had had to rise from his desk at least twice to untangle it from some material before its meows grew too loud.

As brazen as the kitten was when it was just the two of them, however, Yue Qingyuan could tell when someone approached the door because the kitten would dash out of sight and hide itself under nearby furniture, or under the hems of Yue Qingyuan's robes. It was rather cute how shy the kitten was, even though it led to the occasional visitor to his office looking confused at some crumpled up scratch paper or small wicker ball that the kitten had been playing with and abandoned in the middle of the floor.

Qi Qingqi had, in fact, been the one to spot the ball and pick it up like it was some kind of testament to the Sect Leader losing his mind. The ball was made out of dry branches, and there was a little rock inside, such that it rattled when the kitten swatted it around. The An Ding disciple who'd brought a whole box of toys swore that this was what all the fancy cat ladies used for their own pampered specimens.

"Do they not tidy your office?" Qi Qingqi asked as she placed the ball flatly on the desk.

"They do an excellent job of it, in fact," Yue Qingqyuan said, because he would not let blame fall on his disciples when they did their best.

Qi Qingqi was visibly puzzled, but shook her head and went on to business. Since Shen Qingqiu's qi deviation almost two months ago, and his peculiar behavior since, a few of Qing Jing's extant duties had been picked up by Xian Shu instead. In exchange, some minor annoyances would be passed from Xian Shu to Qing Jing as well. Qi Qingqi neatly rid herself of a trip to Shuang Hu City this way.

After finishing the discussion, Qi Qingqi rose and gave a final puzzled look to that wicker ball, but departed quickly, perhaps wondering if Shen Qingqiu's condition was contagious in some way.

It was only after she'd been gone for a while that the kitten re-emerged, and Yue Qingyuan threw the ball on the floor. The kitten proceeded to attack it with great prejudice.

Shen Qingqiu returned from his mission in Shuang Hu City with a report of his success.

In truth, Yue Qingyuan could tell that his shidi was carefully editing his story of the events in question, but as all ended well, it didn't seem worth calling out. Shen Qingqiu still seemed a bit wary in the wake of his qi deviation and suspected memory loss, but paradoxically he was more relaxed than ever in Yue Qingyuan's company.

As he sat across from Yue Qingyuan, fan gently fluttering, Shen Qingqiu's eyes caught at something just off to the side.

"Zhangmen-Shixiong has a pet?" Shen Qingqiu asked, brightly amused for a second before he seemed to realize that this might be one of those things he ought to pretend to remember. "That is--"

"It's a new development," Yue Qingyuan said. It had perhaps only been ten days or so since he'd picked up the kitten, and he had gotten quite used to it. He would regret seeing it run off, but cats always went where they willed.

More surprising was that the kitten was poking its head out from behind one of the decorative screens, and even leaning closer towards Shen Qingqiu, its nose twitching as it sniffed the air.

When they'd both been very young, Xiao Jiu had never displayed anything more than a kind of contempt towards the strays that struggled for survival on the streets alongside them. Once, they had come across a pile of unattended kittens in an alley, soft bodies clustered together to keep warm in their mother's absence. Xiao Jiu had pointed them out only to say that being now abandoned, the kittens would surely die soon. It was not meant cruelly, but Xiao Jiu often said things like this as if to brace the both of them against the cruelty he expected from the world. Even his kindness had claws, for as long as Yue Qingyuan had known him.

Now, Shen Qingqiu regarded the kitten with a benign expression, eyes soft as they peered over his fan. His mask these days had no coldness to it, even when Shen Qingqiu appeared lofty and detached. Yue Qingyuan felt a curious mix of relief and anxiety at the sight.

"What is the cat's name?"

"I... haven't named it. I assume it would leave eventually."

Shen Qingqiu considered this, then nodded. "Zhangmen-Shixiong is wise. Giving a creature a name will only lead to you becoming attached. It will be all the harder to let it go then."

The kitten approached to sniff at the hem of Shen Qingqiu's robes. Over his fan, the corners of his eyes crinkled as if in smile.

Back then, the next time they had returned to beg at the mouth of that alley where they'd seen the pile of kittens, the mother cat was lurking about. The kittens were slightly more grown. The mother cat puffed herself up and hissed, but the kittens toddled close and allowed themselves to be petted. Xiao Jiu scowled fiercely at the animals, but when Yue Qi pretended not to be looking, he knelt down and patted one little black and white kitten. Afterwards, Xiao Jiu pretended he had done no such thing.

The kitten grew up from a cloud of black fluff into a gawky, bony creature wrapped in silky black fur. His eyes, which had started out a light blue, turned to vivid green.

As he grew up, he also grew bold. He no longer hid from visitors to Yue Qingyuan's office, or from the disciples who did chores around the Sect Leader's manor, instead perching himself on whatever surface was tall enough that he might look down upon the human interlopers. His playfulness dampened somewhat, but his personality emerged.

He enjoyed being petted, especially under the chin or the sides of his neck, but he only accepted being petted when he was in a mood for it. Otherwise, even if it was Yue Qingyuan crouching down trying to touch him, the cat would fluidly contort to evade any such touch.

No, when he was in an affectionate mood, he came to demand his tribute on his own, bumping his head or rubbing his side against whichever vassal was allowed to deliver the pets. Oftentimes, this meant he would climb into Yue Qingyuan's lap while he sat at his desk, or lie down on the desk itself, purring loudly.

At night, he claimed the space beside Yue Qingyuan on the bed, curling up against his side. In the mornings and evenings, when Yue Qingyuan meditated, the cat claimed his lap instead, and often purred as loudly as anything.

In the afternoons, the cat would stretch himself out on the windowsill, where the sun would gild his fur in warm tones. Most of the time, however, his fur was a solid, fathomless black, as soft as fine silk and beautiful in its shine. If he tucked himself in a dark corner or under furniture, often the only part that could be seen of him were his green eyes, like lanterns gleaming in the low light.

Since by autumn the cat had not departed, in spite of how many times he had the opportunity, Yue Qingyuan was encouraged by everyone to name it.

His disciples were especially insistent on this point, because they wanted a name to call out whenever they crouched down and tried to lure the cat closer so they could pet him. Bribes of food or toys never seemed to take them very far, and Yue Qingyuan was bemused by their attempts. There were plenty of friendlier cats on the mountain, and in fact the kitchens had three very fat and friendly tabbies who still ate kingly meals each day despite not having caught any mice in nearly a decade, just because they allowed themselves to be petted and cuddled as they slept on top on the rice bins.

"But none of those cats are yours, Shizun," the disciples had explained, before going back to crooning soft endearments to Yue Qingyuan's cat, who was perched on top of a cabinet and dispensing contemptuous glances while showing no sign of being tempted to approach.

Yue Qingyuan's martial siblings were more variable on the subject. Those who did not like cats thought he ought to do as he pleased, but those who did like cats harangued him for a name already.

Yue Qingyuan supposed it was time. The cat had not run off as expected. Though it got out plenty of times, this seemed to have been solely for the purpose of getting into scraps with other cats, and he returned each time and scratched at the door to be let in just in time for his evening lounge in Yue Qingyuan's lap as he meditated.

"You can't compare him with any cat on the mountain," Shen Qingqiu had said once, when he came to Yue Qingyuan's office to discuss the Immortal Alliance Conference. The cat had been sleeping, stretched out in its full adolescent length, right on the desk between them. "Look how glossy his fur is. You must take good care of him."

Yue Qingyuan would have demurred, because the disciples were the ones mostly feeding him and bringing new toys all the time. But at the same time, Yue Qingyuan also realized that he was the one the cat chose to be around most of the time. Even if it had learned to tolerate everyone traipsing through the office, it clearly did so because it liked to spend its time here with Yue Qingyuan.

Was he a handsome cat? Yue Qingyuan supposed so. His fur was just as black as Shen Qingqiu's hair, and his eyes were large and clear.

"The disciples have been calling him Xiaohei for some time now," Yue Qingyuan said. "If he'll answer to anything, it's probably to that."

"Well, let us make it official then!" Shen Qingqiu said. "By order of Zhangmen-Shixiong, the cat shall now be known as Xiaohei."

The cat didn't react to this momentous occasion, but Shen Qingqiu hummed as if he'd been ackwoledged, before nodding in approval.

"Do you hear that, Xiaohei? You have a name now," Shen Qingqiu informed the dozing cat.

Now Xiaohei cracked open an eye towards Shen Qingqiu, before its skinny body heaved in an audible huff that sounded, in its feline contempt, a lot like scoffing.

"Ah, truly a cat of cats," Shen Qingqiu declared with something akin to admiration.

Yue Qingyuan just smiled.

Another person who'd taken to Xiaohei more than expected was Shang Qinghua. The man had developed the habit of craning his neck quite obviously whenever he entered Yue Qingyuan's office, trying to spot Xiaohei. In fact, Shang Qinghua seemed more enthused about Yue Qingyuan's cat than Yue Qingyuan at times.

"Maybe I should get a pet too," Shang Qinghua opined as he watched Xiaohei plant himself on an unfurled scroll and refusing to move. The discussion on sect matters stalled, as the scroll had information they needed to reference, but neither man was willing to shoo the small cat away to get to it. "Ah, but knowing my luck is so bad, I wouldn't want to saddle some innocent animal with it. He's very clean, is he an indoor cat only?"

"He goes outside on occasion," Yue Qingyuan answered, as Xiaohei began grooming himself, but still did not move from atop the scroll. "I worry about him getting back inside, but leaving a door open all night isn't feasible."

"Cat flap is what you need," Shang Qinghua said, and then proceeded to explain the concept.

Yue Qingyuan was intrigued, and allowed disciples to come from An Ding and install a few of these cat flaps. They weren't flaps as such, but small holes had been sawed into several doors, and then a few small barrier arrays covered the holes with an illusion to make the door seem intact, and to bar anything less desirable from using the holes (cold draught, small animals, other cats). Xiaohei was gifted with a little collar with a token to ensure he would be the only cat who would pass through the array.

Xiaohei did not take to the collar kindly at first. Though he allowed Yue Qingyuan to put it on, Xiaohei then proceeded to shake his head, scratch it with his back paws, and also walk backwards comically as if he could slip off the collar that way.

Not wanting Xiaohei to be distressed, Yue Qingyuan considered taking it off, but after the first few hours, as Xiaohei grew accustomed to it, he seemed to forget he was wearing it. The collar was a strap of fine black leather, engraved with Xiaohei's name on the outside, and the magical inscription on the inside. In a pinch, it could even be used to locate Xiaohei, so Yue Qingyuan was relieved to see the cat come to terms with the collar.

"Isn't it nice to go anywhere you want?" Yue Qingyuan asked as he patted Xiaohei's head. The cat still seemed somewhat grumpy, even as he accepted his new lot. "You're the only cat on the mountain with a passage token. Like a little Peak Lord." Indeed, the small token that dangled from the collar was green jade, a shade that brought out the brightness of Xiaohei's eyes as well.

If this appeased Xiaohei, it was hard to tell. But he didn't make any further attempts to get the collar off.

The next time Shang Qinghua saw Xiaohei, his face lit up in delight.

"It works? Good, good. Come to think of it, next time we'll make the collar white. That way," Shang Qinghua said, pointing to the silver trim on Yue Qingyuan's black robes, "he'll look like a proper Qiong Ding cat, even wearing the uniform!" Then he cackled, obviously tickled by this statement, even though Yue Qingyuan had the feeling Shang Qinghua really wasn't joking.

Xiaohei liked the cat doors well enough. He was a creature of routine, so he still sat in Yue Qingyuan's lap during meditation, still followed him to the office each day, still curled up against Yue Qingyuan each night to sleep.

In fact, he was such a creature of routine, that Xiaohei would grow terribly offended when Yue Qingyuan did not follow the schedule precisely. If Yue Qingyuan needed to stay in his office late to work, Xiaohei would start meowing his complaints loudly. He was an otherwise quiet cat, so his rusty yowls plucked at Yue Qingyuan's nerves especially hard. As a cultivator, he could go without sleep for several nights in a row and not suffer for it, but it was not always a good habit to get into, so he had tried to sleep as frequently as possible, even if before Xiaohei, that meant only a few hours at a time.

Now, Xiaohei had added some nighttime wandering to his schedule. Long after Yue Qingyuan fell asleep, Xiaohei would head off into the night, doing whatever it was cats did, and only came back in time for morning meditation. He dragged in little muddy pawprints sometimes, or bits of dry leaves caught in his whiskers, by which Yue Qingyuan knew he'd been outside.

One morning, Yue Qingyuan woke to the mangled corpse of a small bird on the pillow next to his head.

It came across as a sinister gesture, especially with how Xiaohei watched him expectantly, narrowed green eyes intent on Yue Qingyuan to see his reaction. Yue Qingyuan felt bad for the little bird, so he picked it up and lightly scolded Xiaohei, and had the disciples on duty dispose of the dead animal.

Later, during the weekly meetings for tea that Shen Qingqiu now allowed, Yue Qingyuan told him about the unfortunate victim of Xiaohei's nightly hunt.

Since losing his memory, Shen Qingqiu had turned soft and warm. No longer on his guard every moment of the day, he was more willing to share a bit of himself and his interests. A passion for beasts emerged, and Yue Qingyuan wondered if it was something new, or something that Xiao Jiu might always have had, but suppressed in the constant struggle to survive, and then to excel.

"That's hardly the cat's fault, ah," Shen Qingqiu remarked about the incident. "That kind of thing is just in a cat's nature. Might as well scold a cultivator for being good at using a sword." Then, more conspiratorially, Shen Qingqiu added, "It brought prey to you because it respects you and wants your praise. Pet his head and tell him he did a good job next time."

Yue Qingyuan, amused by the mental image of the cat as some cultivator dragging monster corpses back to the sect after a mission, accepted this little correction. The next time Xiaohei brought a dead mouse to leave on Yue Qingyuan's pillow, he patted the cat's head and told him he did a good job. Xiaohei seemed satisfied with this praise as if it was his due.

Winter arrived, and with it the first snow fell in large, feathery snowflakes. Yue Qingyuan took a break from paperwork to watch Xiaohei in the courtyard try to capture snowflakes out of the air, rearing up on his hind legs and swatting as snow caught in his whiskers. The disciples cooed as well, clustered under the shelter of the eaves as they watched the cat play.

The next day, the snow was stacked high. Disciples had woken before dawn to shovel it and ring the courtyard with talismans that would keep the snow from building up again.

Xiaohei, however, did not seem as enthused by the snow once it was piled high and cold. He stepped out briefly and then returned inside.

He spent the next months curled up in Yue Qingyuan's lap, or pillowed against his side anywhere he went. At one point, he even figured out how to pull Yue Qingyuan's robe collar loose and climb inside the garment. Yue Qingyuan had to suppress his paroxysms of laughter as Xiaohei settled inside the first layer, and though he allowed the cat to sleep swaddled against Yue Qingyuan's chest that first time, he did not allow it to happen again.

A basket covered by a warm woolly blanket made its appearance in the office during the colder months. Fires and talismans could never truly get rid of a certain chill to the floors and walls, and it had to be felt worse by Xiaohei, who had still not grown to his full adult size. Yue Qingyuan remembered, from his childhood, how the smaller children always succumbed easiest to the cold.

Yue Qingyuan had never liked the cold that much either, but having a small, needful creature nestle into his body heat stirred something very old in him, and tugged at forgotten threads of memory. His winters used to be like this: long, numb months of clinging to each other for the slightest trace of heat. The knives of frost against his back, and the hot curl of Xiao Jiu's body clinging to him for survival.

And now?

Yue Qingyuan walked to Qing Jing Peak one morning to visit Shen Qingqiu, and discovered that the pathway up to the Bamboo Hut had been overtaken by a vicious snowball fight between the disciples. They shrieked and pelted one another with snow in disarray, except it seemed there was some order to the proceedings, because Shen Qingqiu was standing to the side like a referee.

Far from that shivering little street urchin, Shen Qingqiu was clad in a heavy green cloak, the stark whiteness of its fur collar emphasizing the tinge of pink to Shen Qingqiu's cheeks.

"Training exercise," Shen Qingqiu had explained of the snowball fight, embarrassed but stubbornly maintaining the pretence as he proceeded to correct a disciple's snowball-throwing technique.

Yue Qingyuan grinned and stood beside him, and though they were still maintaining a distance, he had never been this warmed by his presence as now, seeing Shen Qingqiu lighter than he had ever been, even as a child.

Shen Qingqiu requested to go into seclusion in the Lingxi caves, and Yue Qingyuan had no reason to refuse. If Shen Qingqiu had seemed unstable, or at risk of deviation, he could have gently deterred him, and unlike before, Shen Qingqiu might not have even bristled at the concern. But this new Shen Qingqiu was less assailed by heart demons, and though he would have more gracefully accepted others' concern, he was also far more stable in his cultivation.

Yue Qingyuan... truly did not understand why this made him feel some inexplicable sense of loss.

If Xiao Jiu was happier without memories, was that not a good thing? Was this newfound serenity not better? Did the other Peak Lords not find this a more desirable state of affairs?

And yet, Yue Qingyuan had always accepted the sharp parts of Xiao Jiu, and now felt bereft of them. He had grown up having so little of his own, that he grew to greedily hoard and hold onto the things that fell into his hands. So what if Xiao Jiu was sharp and unpleasant, scheming and mean? He had always been picky and jealous in his affections as well, and had chosen Yue Qi above anyone else to care about.

Yue Qi had never felt himself loved as much by anyone in his life as by Xiao Jiu. There had always been something unconditional in their ties to one another that Yue Qi had learned was rare in the world.

Even after he had stopped being a slave, and rose to power in this sect, he had never had anyone here who could look to the heart of him and accept him the same way. Who would know him the way his Xiao Jiu did.

Even Shen Qingqiu's hatred touched something deeper in Yue Qingyuan than anyone else's affection for him, and it was not as if he did not believe that affection was real. His fellow Peak Lords were not deceitful creatures by nature. Some, like Liu Qingge, could not deceive even if they made an honest effort at it.

But Shen Qingqiu was different. He felt more real to Yue Qingyuan than anyone else in the world, because he was the person Yue Qingyuan had always held closest to his heart, folded inside his ribcage like a second pulse.

So why mourn this change in him?

Yue Qingyuan had spent years worrying for Shen Qingqiu, for how he would fit in the sect. When they were little, Yue Qi had intimately known his Xiao Jiu's spiteful temperament and deceitful nature. In a single day, Xiao Jiu could cry beautifully while begging, then promptly turn on a fellow street urchin and fight them with vicious disregard for his well-being. He could lie and steal and attack from behind, and then turn right around and scold his Qi-ge for not taking good enough care of himself while gently patting his face.

When Shen Qingqiu had first joined the sect, Yue Qingyuan had spent much time chewed up by worries about how he would fit in. The tricks that had kept him alive on the streets would not serve him in a sect, yet even from afar, Yue Qingyuan would hear about Shen Qingqiu's spiteful words and violent clashes with other disciples.

Just as he did when they were children, Yue Qingyuan would worry about anyone who clashed with Shen Qingqiu, because he remembered Xiao Jiu's tendency towards avenging himself disproportionately. He went for the eyes, with little sharpened bits of metal, and Yue Qingyuan remembered the sudden slashes of blood when he would disentangle his little Xiao Jiu from a fight. He still recalled those incidents whenever Shen Qingqiu screamed he would kill Liu Qingge, because back then they were all but adults, and Yue Qingyuan thought Shen Qingqiu could truly go through with it if he set his mind to it. This was not little Xiao Jiu. Shen Qingqiu grown up had a cold capacity for murder that Yue Qingyuan had witnessed first hand when he struck down his own master.

Yue Qingyuan had especially felt that anxiety in the early years of their discipleship, when Shen Qingqiu relentlessly pushed him away and Yue Qingyuan could no longer even mediate between him and the others.

So now that Shen Qingqiu no longer acted like that, now that he spoke without spite, and smiled, and did not fight with his fellow Peak Lords like they were all street urchins--why did Yue Qingyuan feel bereft?

While Shen Qingqiu was in seclusion, Yue Qingyuan spent that winter in his own meditative state of mind, except instead of genuine meditation, he would simply sit and think.

Xiaohei would take this opportunity to sit on his lap, sometimes sleeping, but often enough kneading Yue Qingyuan's legs. Xiaohei's claws were little more than distant snags through all the layers of Yue Qingyuan's magically reinforced robes, and his fur was decadently silky to the touch. Patting Xiaohei from the top of his head and down his back was more soothing to Yue Qingyuan than meditation.

In the spring, demons attacked the sect, and Yue Qingyuan's schedule grew somewhat hectic as a response.

First were matters of security. Endless meetings with other Peak Lords, resulting in ink flowing like rivers as new security measures were put in place.

The second part was Shen Qingqiu's poisoning with Without a Cure, which had ratcheted up Yue Qingyuan's fears even more than the demon attack itself. The situation was well in hand, with Mu Qingfang creating a treatment plan and Shen Qingqiu maintaining high spirits throughout the ordeal, but Yue Qingyuan still could not shake the feeling that this was not something that should have happened at all in the first place.

The third was the strange shift in tension between Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu. There was, doubtless, still some kind of tension there, but the exact nature had seemed to change. Liu Qingge's venomous mistrust had moved into something like morbid fascination as he became aware of the full extent of Shen Qingqiu's change in personality. The fact that he so freely volunteered to clear Shen Qingqiu's meridians was... unexpected, given what Yue Qingyuan had witnessed of their previous interactions. But Yue Qingyuan knew enough of Liu Qingge's character to trust that this offer was made genuinely, and unlikely to hide malicious intentions.

Shen Qingqiu would have been the one more likely to refuse, but his radical new change in personality now also included a willingness to improve relations with his previously most despised shidi.

Yue Qingyuan wasn't complaining, but he was a bit bemused by the situation.

Whenever he and Shen Qingqiu had their weekly meetings over tea, Shen Qingqiu's complaints about Liu Qingge turned to questioning why the man was constantly leaving dead monster corpses on his doorstep.

"Ah, is this not like when Xiaohei began leaving dead animals on my pillow?" Yue Qingyuan asked mildly, and Shen Qingqiu glared at him over his fan.

"Liu Qingge is not a cat," Shen Qingqiu retorted, looking appalled. But then, after a moment, his expression turned thoughtful, like he was reconsidering his words. No doubt, he was also now noticing the similarity in behaviors.

"I am sure he means no ill by it," Yue Qingyuan replied diplomatically, and the conversation moved on from there.

Since spring began, Xiaohei had not brought any new kills. Instead, after the snows mostly melted, Xiaohei started slinking outside at night again, and given the amount of yowling on the mountain, it seemed he might have been engaged in regular cat activities. He sometimes returned at dawn with nicks and scratches, but no terrible injuries, and so Yue Qinyuan let him be. Xiaohei was still not a fully grown adult cat, so it was unlikely they'd be seeing a lot of little black kittens by summer, but he was terribly territorial for his age anyway.

By the time Xiaohei finally finished growing, Yue Qingyuan was deep into preparations for the Immortal Alliance Conference.

For cultivators, as long-lived as they were, time could sometimes feel like it was slipping away faster than they noticed. But Yue Qingyuan was still young enough that it surprised him when he looked up one night, and Xiaohei was full grown and glowering at him from where he sat on top of the desk.

Xiaohei had grown into a sleek cat, his face still sharp and pointy, his ears just a bit too large for him. But he had lost the kittenish awkwardness somewhere along the way, and he moved with the grace of a stalking tiger. His fur was black and glossy like polished obsidian, and his tail was maybe a little bit fluffier than one expected.

Xiaohei's pupils were blown wide in the too-dim light of a nightpearl, ringed with intense green that seemed to almost glow. He sat like a decorative statuette on the corner of Yue Qingyuan's desk, but his attention was entirely focused on Yue Qingyuan.

When Yue Qingyuan reached over to pet his head, Xiaohei's ears flattened against his skull, which only made him look more annoyed.

"Alright, we'll go to sleep now," Yue Qingyuan promised.

He put away the scroll he had no yet finished writing, tidied away his brush and inkstone, and when he rose up from his desk, joints popping as he stretched for the first time in long hours, Xiaohei jumped down and trotted over to the door. He did not pass through the cat door, but instead looked back to see that Yue Qingyuan was following.

Times like this, Yue Qingyuan found quiet amusement in Xiaohei's presence. He was like a little secretary. If he had opposable thumbs, he would no doubt tut and try to do Yue Qingyuan's paperwork better. As it were, the cat relegated himself to the task of having the air of a put-upon attendant observing his master's terrible habits of overworking.

When Yue Qingyuan finally changed to his night clothes and sat on the edge of his bed, he still did not go directly to sleep. He would not skip his evening meditation, especially when he had so much work to do; he had to maintain his cultivation if he wanted to continue keeping pace with everything, after all.

Xiaohei, as was his habit, draped himself over Yue Qingyuan's lap as he sat in the lotus position. Yue Qingyuan had long since stopped minding it, and in fact found it a soothing addition to his meditation regime. The little cat had a warm, vibrant presence that far outstripped his physical size. Like all living creatures, he had his own energy flowing through him, sometimes rippling to the rhythm of his purring. Even deep in meditation, Yue Qingyuan could still sense Xiaohei's presence sometimes, using it as a focus point.

So, it did not take Yue Qingyuan more than a moment to notice when Xiaohei's energy began, for a lack of a better word, moving. Not just the general flow expected of all creatures, but like qi being weakly but deliberately circulated, as if by a first-time disciple fumbling through their first exercises.

Yue Qingyuan's eyes fluttered open, and he observed this weak qi circulation in Xiaohei for a little while longer before it stopped. He even wondered if he had imagined it, because Xiaohei did not seem to be doing anything outwardly different: he lay curled up in the cradle of Yue Qingyuan's legs, eyes closed and the tip of his tail twitching minutely.

After a while, Yue Qingyuan went back to mediating, but not without a sense of distraction as he tried to pay attention and see if it would happen again.

For that particular evening, however, Xiaohei did nothing else unusual.

Could Yue Qingyuan have imagined it? Perhaps. Animals cultivating into spiritual beasts was not unprecedented, but it was vanishingly rare, the stuff of legends. Certainly not something any housecat, no matter how pampered, could do.

In the end, the oddity about Xiaohei slipped Yue Qingyuan's mind as the Immortal Alliance Conference drew near.

Yue Qingyuan had assumed that after the conference, things would at least calm down more, and he could regain some of that strange serenity he had sometimes managed to grasp ever since Shen Qingqiu's last qi deviation.

However, given how things turned out... he would have traded years of his own calm for Shen Qingqiu's peace of mind. He had never seen Shen Qingqiu as openly affected by anything as by Luo Binghe's death, and it left Yue Qingyuan at a loss. Certainly he knew Shen Qingqiu wasn't unfeeling, no matter what their other martial siblings thought. But ever since they had been young, he was more used to his Xiao Jiu hiding his sadness like an animal hid its wounds, desperate to conceal any vulnerability. When their San-jie was taken away, Xiao Jiu had sooner grown belligerent and angry than admit how deeply hurt he was by the loss.

Now, Yue Qingyuan did not know what to do about Shen Qingqiu turning into this quiet, mournful figure, shrouding himself in grief so publicly and apparently not even caring.

Yue Qingyuan had long since accepted that he did not know any of the words that would make Shen Qingqiu feel better, but he found himself still trying, each week when they had tea together.

He told Shen Qingqiu about Xiaohei circulating his qi during meditation--something the cat had done sporadically, but more and more often since it started happening--and Shen Qingqiu looked up with a spark of curiosity in his eyes.

"When cats like someone," Shen Qingqiu explained, "they sometimes imitate their behavior or show interest in the same things. Like when you see two cats sleeping in the exact same position, or when a cat jumps on your desk and sits on your paperwork. It's called mirroring. Xiaohei must have picked it up from you." A small smile tugged at the corner of Shen Qingqiu's lips.

"I didn't set out on teaching a cat cultivation," Yue Qingyuan said, not questioning from where Shen Qingqiu had all this knowledge about cats.

"Nonetheless," Shen Qingqiu replied, "Xiaohei must want to be closer to you."

The discussion continued lightly from there, touching on nothing painful, as Shen Qingqiu shared some other curiosities about cats and Yue Qingyuan shared some other amusing anecdotes about Xiaohei.

Xiaohei grew into a venerable tomcat over time, and if he did not rule Qiong Ding Peak with an iron fist, then he certainly battered every other male cat who tried to set foot near the sect leader's manor. He had lost the tip of an ear at some point, and occasionally had scratches over his head and body, but he had also grown from a skinny, sharp creature as he had been in his first two years of life, and had filled out into a more large and solid shape, with a bit of belly.

He was heavy enough that at night, when he climbed over Yue Qingyuan to curl up against the usual side of Yue Qingyuan's body, his weight made Yue Qingyuan wheeze as the air was squeezed from his lungs. It was actually a bit funny in Yue Qingyuan's opinion, though he could see how it wasn't necessarily dignified for a Sect Leader.

Xiaohei didn't seem apologetic about it, either, but Yue Qingyuan patted his head anyway, and occasionally spoke softly about his day before falling asleep. This was something he'd forgotten about himself, but when he'd been little, every time he was on the cusp of falling asleep, some occasional stray thought would bubble up and he would impulsively speak it out loud because it felt important in the moment. Usually, the recipient of these thoughts would be Xiao Jiu, who, cuddled up with him, would then reply with 'go to sleep, Qi-ge', and on occasion with bites if Qi-ge had too many of these little nuggets to share.

Xiaohei would listen attentively, eyes fixed on Yue Qingyuan and ears pricking in his direction, so Yue Qingyuan felt at ease saying any nonsense that passed through his head. Sometimes it was one or two sentences about something that happened in the sect that day, like 'today we had disciple selections again. Do you know they dig holes? I suppose it's a trial even a cat could pass, if you are ever interested.'

Other times, it was worried rambling about Shen Qingqiu.

"Do you know, I think I miss the old him," Yue Qingyuan spontaneously admitted one night, and realized it was true the moment the words left his mouth. More quietly, hoping to shake off the seriousness of that statement, he added, "He was a lot like a cat, too."

Xiaohei would sometimes leave his position where he was nestled on the bed, between Yue Qingyuan's ribcage and the crook of his arm, and jump onto Yue Qingyuan's chest, settling there and placing a paw over his mouth like he was trying to silence Yue Qingyuan. Far from taking it personally, this would make Yue Qingyuan huff in quiet laughter--keeping the heaving of his chest restrained, as to not dislodge Xiaohei--and he would stop the endless spiral of self-recrimination and go to sleep.

Before he fell asleep, Yue Qingyuan even thought he heard the words 'go to sleep, Qi-ge', as if summoned from his memories. It didn't sound like Xiao Jiu's voice, but the inflection was exactly the same.

Over time, Yue Qingyuan's concern for Shen Qingqiu eased a bit, especially when Shen Qingqiu decided to keep himself busy by going off on missions, but a different anxiety crept in at having him out of sight and away from the protection of the sect.

Still, what could he do? Shen Qingqiu was free to leave whenever he wished. And Yue Qingyuan stayed behind, with his mountain of paperwork, and a handsome black cat on his desk. And nearly three years passed before Shen Qingqiu had to be summoned back.

After Shen Qingqiu died, Yue Qingyuan...

He couldn't say for sure what he had done with himself after that. The world seemed to blur around the edges the same way it did the first time he had thought his Xiao Jiu lost. This was worse, somehow. There was a body, kept just out of reach by Luo Binghe. Some evidence, somewhere, of Shen Qingqiu's passing, real but unattainable.

But just like when he had been faced with the Qiu manor's burnt out husk, Yue Qingyuan put his head down and ignored anything that wasn't directly in front of him: responsibilities. Sect duties. If he focused on nothing but that, maybe the world would seem less empty for Shen Qingqiu's absence.

Xiaohei grew particularly clingy in this period, and from his spot on the desk, he had moved to curling up on Yue Qingyuan's lap, or next to his leg with his head against his thigh. When it grew late, past the time when disciples would tip-toe in his office and light up the nightpearls, Xiaohei would butt his head against Yue Qingyuan and even yowl as he insisted on going to bed.

As he lay in bed waiting to fall asleep, it occurred to Yue Qingyuan that Xiaohei was doing his best to take care of him, and the thought sat strangely with Yue Qingyuan. The first time he had gone through this all-consuming grief, he had not had anyone do him such kindness; he had been popular, and his fellow disciples had done their best to cheer him up when they sensed his mood to be unusually low, but they had had no insight into his loss, and Yue Qingyuan felt awkward to impose on them with his feelings. Did not know which words to use to even explain.

The last person who'd ever tried to take care of him had been Xiao Jiu. When they were both grieving the loss of their San-jie, Xiao Jiu took to chasing off the other children when they tried to approach Yue Qi. At the time, Yue Qi had tried to calm Xiao Jiu down and make him leave the children alone, but Xiao Jiu, with his jaw set, had glared in response. 'Can't they mind their own business for once? You have bigger problems than their skinned knees!'

Looking back, Yue Qi had not appreciated how Xiao Jiu would snap and bite to give him a reprieve and have time to sit in his own feelings, but now, as an adult, he thought perhaps Xiao Jiu had some intuitive grasp of his Qi-ge's character that had been lost over the course of their separation. Nobody had come to know him as well since then, except perhaps Xiaohei, who had the benefit of being an animal, incapable of judging or finding him lacking.

When he had finally been reunited with Xiao Jiu, the leaden grief which had filled him up seemed to shatter and turn into something lighter, but acidly-tinged with fear: the anxiety that Xiao Jiu could disappear again at any time, like smoke between his fingers. This was not helped by the distance Shen Qingqiu imposed on them as disciples.

Yue Qingyuan lived in terrible fear in those first years, that Shen Qingqiu would strain the sect's patience and either leave or be sent away, and so he had spent so much of it in a kind of apologetic fervor. Apologies to Shen Qingqiu most of all, but also apologies to anyone who came in conflict with him. He knew Xiao Jiu's temperament, and knew that even as Shen Qingqiu there was a part of him that was unbendingly proud, so he thought-- he thought it would make things easier if Yue Qingyuan was the one to smooth things over. It had not made things discernably easy, and in fact seemed to only incur Shen Qingqiu's anger, but Yue Qingyuan could not stop, as he was prodded on by all those sharp shards of fear constantly rattling inside him.

Things had seemed so fragile back then. Shen Qingqiu's presence had seemed so precarious.

So how had Yue Qingyuan lost him now, when his standing with the sect was better than ever, when his cultivation was more stable and his temperament had smoothed out to agreeable?

Xiao Jiu had been lost from the moment Shen Qingqiu opened his eyes after his final qi deviation, and a stranger looked out at Yue Qingyuan. And now, even Shen Qingqiu had been lost.

Nothing Yue Qingyuan did seemed to matter. Close or far away, he could never save Xiao Jiu. Shen Qingqiu. Either version of him.

Yue Qingyuan became aware of the burning in his veins, the furry head bumping against his face, the wetness down his cheeks.

"Ah," he mouthed to himself, "this is familiar."

And then he fell into a qi deviation. The last thing he heard was Xiaohei's yowling, in an unfamiliar urgent pitch.

Yue Qingyuan felt as if he had perfected the skill of being alone, in spite of how much he reviled the state.

He could sit his seclusion in the Lingxi caves without even thinking about how the hairs on the back of his head stood on end, and without even noticing how he was perpetually aware of the bloodied wall he had scratched at for an entire year when they would not let him go find Xiao Jiu.

He had simply gotten into the habit of persevering, until he knew how to do nothing else.

He was barely a week into seclusion, however, when he realized he was no longer alone. Certainly there might be others using the caves for their own cultivation, but none who would intrude on the Sect Leader, except--

He was startled out of his meditation and looked upon a pair of eyes regarding him calmly in the dark. The rest of Xiaohei blended into the shadows, but his eyes caught on the little light trickling from a narrow shaft in the ceiling, and reflected red in the darkness.

Yue Qingyuan extended a hand, amazed and somewhat worried. Animals did not come into the Lingxi caves. There was nothing to stop them, but the high concentration of qi was naturally uncomfortable to any creatures which did not cultivate: even regular humans would find the caves unnerving and subconsciously try to avoid them.

That Xiaohei made the decision to come inside anyway was a startling revelation. Yue Qingyuan had not thought to check how advanced the cat's cultivation had gotten because he was concerned with other things, but primarily because he did not think much would come from it. How many disciples did this mountain see, who could circulate their qi but never be capable of anything more advanced? So he thought it would be like that with Xiaohei.

But Xiaohei looked at ease as he walked up to Yue Qingyuan and rubbed himself against his knee, making the little 'mrr' sounds he usually did when he both allowed and demanded to be petted. Yue Qingyuan obliged, scratching him beneath his chin as he started purring.

Yet when Yue Qingyuan sent out an exploratory thread of qi through Xiaohei, trying to figure out the state of the cat's meridians, Xiaohei hissed and pulled back, his fur standing on end.

Yue Qingyuan quickly murmured apologies and promised not to try again, and Xiaohei made a haughty retreat to sit on top of a flat boulder at the other side of the room.

Yue Qingyuan went back to meditating, and eventually, after a while, he felt the comforting and familiar weight of Xiaohei in his lap.

Yue Qingyuan worried about Xiaohei showing up in the Lingxi caves every day. Surely a cat couldn't practice inedia, and there wasn't anything to hunt in the caves. But as Xiaohei disappeared regularly every day for hours at a time, Yue Qingyuan assumed that somewhere back at the Sect Leader's manor, the disciples were following the instructions to feed him in Yue Qingyuan's absence.

Yue Qingyuan also started to suspect that his seclusion was not quite fully secluded with his visitor dropping in every day, but he ignored that part. He was hardly at risk of a qi deviation anymore, and Xiaohei's company even improved his mood greatly.

The cat would join him for quiet meditation, but on occasion Xiaohei was not in the mood for such things, so he would revert to more cat-like behavior such as demanding to be petted, or in one case, bringing along a stray piece of string and insisting on Yue Qingyuan playing with him.

As Xiaohei had grown up, he'd become less playful, but on occasion he still became quite spirited, breaking out into runs or batting items off Yue Qingyuan's desk and across the floor.

Now, Yue Qingyuan wondered how long cats usually lived. Shen Qingqiu had mentioned it once, before-- Before. He's mentioned it. That well-cared-for cats could live as long as two decades. Xiaohei could well be at the halfway point of his life, and Yue Qingyuan felt... strange about it. Unsettled. Was two decades that long for a cultivator?

Yet, Shen Qingqiu had been dead and gone for five years, and that felt like an interminably long length of time.

Xiaohei had been in his life for longer, and yet that felt like such a short time. How strange.

Time passed. Yue Qingyuan was called out of seclusion, was reunited with Shen Qingqiu, had nearly died. Everything came to a head, and Shen Qingqiu's troubled life seemed to settle into something resembling happiness as he accepted his former disciple's feelings.

And then Yue Qingyuan returned to seclusion.

Not in the Lingxi caves anymore. But in one of the small, hidden healing houses that Qian Cao kept for patients in just his condition. It was a small house, with only a bedroom and an attached washroom, a small outdoor kitchen around the back, and a courtyard just large enough to fit a bench and a magnolia tree in the front.

Since he was not meant to be practicing inedia in his state, a disciple would come each morning and leave a basket of food for him on the path to the house: rice, vegetables, a little bit of fish or meat, all light fare appropriate for a convalescent. Talismans kept the food fresh through the day, even if not hot. Yue Qingyuan's only human contact was to be a healer coming over every third day. Even though solitude was necessary for a cultivator in healing, Yue Qingyuan was Sect Leader, and not so expandable that they would leave him completely unsupervised.

Because Xiaohei had also taken up in the same house--and Yue Qingyuan no longer questioned how the cat had found him, since apparently Xiaohei had the run of the mountain--the Qiong Ding disciples who brought Yue Qingyuan food also included some shredded meat and a bit of broth for Xiaohei as well.

Yue Qingyuan thought he'd feel lonely, especially when he was not meditating, but the hours of the morning and evening when he was awake and not cultivating to heal were actually strangely peaceful. It made him realize he had always felt loneliest when surrounded by people, but that was also when he was best at ignoring the feeling.

Following his confession to Shen Qingqiu, he felt strangely purged, as if some infection in his soul had been drained, easing some persistent throbbing pain, but leaving behind an empty ache which eased day by day.

He thought he would do much thinking while in seclusion, but his head mostly buzzed with surface thoughts as he sat on the bench in the narrow courtyard, or in front of a small murky pond down the path from the house. Xiaohei curled next to him, the sun coming gently through the leaves.

At night, he slept in the narrow bed, Xiaohei curled up next to him.

He would return to his duties soon, but for now, this felt like the entirety of all his existence, and exactly as much as Yue Qingyuan could bear. For someone who had always carried every burden without complaint, it was something resembling freedom.

And then, Yue Qingyuan woke up one morning to the feeling of being watched.

Seeing as it wasn't unusual for Xiaohei to perch on his pillow and peer into his face before he woke up in the morning, Yue Qingyuan was not at first alarmed. But as he emerged steadily from sleep and became more aware of his surroundings, he realized something wasn't quite right.

Did the bed... dip? Did his side feel unusually warm? Did... something move against him?

He flinched awake and looked up into a pair of green eyes.

Human eyes.

Yue Qingyuan did not jump out of bed or reach for his sword. Nothing so dramatic.

But he did look up at the stranger looking down at him in turn. The eyes were the same shade as Xiaohei. The faint scar crossing across the bridge of the man's nose looked exactly like the same that Xiaohei had following a more spirited fight with other cats. One of the man's ears was delicately pointed, but the tip of the other was missing, just like the missing point of one of Xiaohei's ears. And the long sweep of hair falling over the man's body, clothing him where otherwise he was naked, was the pitch black color of Xiaohei's fur.

Yue Qingyuan would have felt embarrassed if he did not put two and two together in this case.

What he was less certain about was what to do about it, and so for a few moments longer, he and Xiaohei stared at each other quietly, until Xiaohei gave a long blink.

"...Hello," Yue Qingyuan said, modulating his voice to something calm and friendly, like when Xiaohei had been a shy kitten and startled by loud voices.

Xiaohei's brows pulled into a frown, and he opened his mouth slowly as if he needed to figure out talking first, but in the end he replied,

"Hello," and then he leaned back, ears twitching like they would have flattened back against his skull had they been more mobile.

Yue Qingyuan moved slowly to sit up in bed, not wanting to startle Xiaohei, but Xiaohei was not so easily cowed, and merely moved to make room for Yue Qingyuan. Xiaohei's long hair, unbound but glossy and fine, slipped over one shoulder, revealing finely-sculpted collarbones. Yue Qingyuan averted his eyes.

"There is... a spare robe," he mumbled and went to get it.

Since he was in seclusion he wore simple grey robes, meant for a patient more than anything, and only had the one spare set. He thought he might have difficulty convincing Xiaohei to wear it, but it seemed Xiaohei was accepting of human habits while in human form, because he did not protest.

When Yue Qingyuan gathered Xiaohei's hair, he did have his hands swatted away, but Xiaohei's hair was waist-long, so it couldn't just be left unbound.

"Will you let me comb it?" Yue Qingyuan requested. "It will be like when I used to pet your fur."

Xiaohei bristled.

"Who says you used to pet my fur? You don't know who I am!" He harrumphed, and turned to look in another direction, but he looked more flustered than angry.

"Pardon, but you're Xiaohei, aren't you?"

Xiaohei gave him a sour look, like he was offended to be seen through so easily. He folded his arms and harrumphed again, but eventually allowed Yue Qingyuan to do as he pleased.

Yue Qingyuan had Xiaohei sit on the edge of the bed, and ran his comb through Xiaohei's hair. He went as gently as possible, from the ends of his hair moving upwards, making sure he didn't tug. But his hair was so fine that it untangled easily, so once Xiaohei showed little twitches of impatience, Yue Qingyuan moved the comb more swiftly.

He had nothing but a single long ribbon, which he used for his own hair, so he split that one in half with a concentrated cut of qi and tied Xiaohei's hair up in a simple ponytail.

Once done, Yue Qingyuan combed his own hair for the day. He had no mirror, but he watched Xiaohei as he swung his head side to side, getting a feel for his own hair. He had never been the kind of cat to chase his own tail, but out of some atavistic instinct, at some point, he did bat at his ponytail the way he would at a piece of string or a hanging tassel sometimes.

When he noticed Yue Qingyuan watching him, Xiaohei pulled back his lips in a silent hiss.

"Isn't Qi-ge done yet?" Xiaohei asked grumpily.

Yue Qingyuan froze, with his hair gathered in one hand and the comb halfway down its regular pass.

"Why did you call me that?" Yue Qingyuan asked, keeping his voice even.

Xiaohei looked at him, almost annoyed.

"Because Qi-ge is Qi-ge," Xiaohei replied, explaining nothing.

Yue Qingyuan put the comb aside and turned to look Xiaohei over carefully. Some strange apprehension rippled through his chest as he tried to reason this out.

"Where did you hear me called that?" he asked.

Xiaohei's gaze flitted to him and then away.

"It was just what I called you," Xiaohei muttered.

...When? When had Xiaohei ever called him that?

"What's your name then?" Yue Qingyuan persisted.

"Didn't you say it was Xiaohei?" came the cat's reply, with a quirk of his eyebrow that was unmistakeably familiar, and yet that Yue Qingyuan hadn't seen since--

Yue Qingyuan scoured his memory, suddenly trying to remember when he found Xiaohei. His memory of the cat was inextricably linked to the period following Shen Qingqiu's deviation and memory loss, and so he was certain that he had found the kitten right afterwards, but hadn't it actually been a few weeks later? Hadn't Xiaohei been just old enough that--

No. It couldn't possibly be--

But Shen Qingqiu was still alive! And his body was not possessed, because there was no possession that could elude every single type of testing devised by cultivator mind. Yet, he had woken up with parts missing, hadn't he?

Could it be that Shen Qingqiu's soul had suffered a split during that deviation? Half remained in his body, incomplete but just enough for the gaps to fill over in time with something new, and the other half dying, passing on to be reincarnated. The more Yue Qingyuan thought about it--

"Xiao Jiu?" he whispered, the question coming out tremulous.

Xiaohei eyed him silently for a too-long moment, but then shook his head.

Yue Qingyuan's heart nearly sank before Xiaohei continued, "I'm not him anymore."

"A-Jiu," Yue Qingyuan said again, stricken. The flutter in his chest turned into the tight clench of tears in his throat.

"Don't start crying!" Xiaohei snapped, but he sounded more embarrassed than genuinely angry. His hands fluttered uncertainly, like he wasn't sure if he should reach out to Yue Qingyuan or if that would make things worse.

Yue Qingyuan spared him the decision by pulling Xiaohei into his arms and squeezing as hard as he could without crushing him. Xiaohei still let out a wheeze of complaint, but instead of clawing or hissing, he just nuzzled into the crook of Yue Qingyuan's neck.

"Alright, alright, I'm here," Xiaohei said quickly, patting Yue Qingyuan's back.

"A-Jiu," Yue Qingyuan repeated as he took up combing his hair again.

"Mm."

"A-Jiu."

"Yes?"

"A-Jiu."

"Is your brain broken? Why do you keep calling me?"

Yue Qingyuan grinned, and A-Jiu huffed, haughtily exasperated with him. But this was the person Yue Qingyuan had missed most in life, and for so long that the lack of him had settled like a permanent lump in his chest. He was not exactly the same in all details, but it was all the parts of him that Yue Qingyuan mourned when Shen Qingqiu woke without his memories.

Save, perhaps, a lack of resentment; a lightness in his demeanor that belied his caustic tongue. Yue Qingyuan liked to believe that Xiaohei had had a happier life as a cat, even if a stranger one, and he wore that self-assuredness in a way that Shen Qingqiu had once been too brittle to do.

"Anyway, why don't you just call me Xiaohei?" A-Jiu asked.

"I can't call you that. That's your name as a cat."

"And? So? I am a cat."

"Not... really anymore, though," Yue Qingyuan coughed delicately.

A-Jiu looked down at himself with some dismay. Had he forgotten he'd cultivated a human form? Well, he shrugged now as he was reminded of it.

"If I'll always be A-Jiu, then I'll always be a cat, as well," A-Jiu replied definitively.

After tying his hair back, Yue Qingyuan proceeded through the rest of his morning routine, rinsing his mouth and washing his face and hands. He had tried to get A-Jiu to do the same, but when touching the water, he had hissed 'cold!' in a displeased tone. Yue Qingyuan barely managed to dab a damp cloth other A-Jiu's face, and realized that making him go to wash in a stream would be doubly the effort.

For now, he went to pick up the daily food basket, albeit slightly later than usual. The food was still warm, kept so by the stasis talismans.

At least there were two bowls in the house, so Yue Qingyuan split the provided breakfast in half. The shredded meat meant for Xiaohei wasn't something he would feed to a human, so he discounted it as he carefully portioned the provided congee, and then went on to add some of the fried vegetables meant for lunch to fill out the meal.

A-Jiu's nostrils flared as he observed the two bowls.

"Qi-ge needs to eat," he said, with a stubborn tilt to his chin.

"Qi-ge can practice inedia," Yue Qingyuan replied.

A-Jiu bristled. "So can I! Look! Feel!" He grabbed Yue Qingyuan's hand and pressed his fingers against his new human body's pulse point, in a complete reversal to how hesitant he was to reveal such things as a cat.

Yue Qingyuan felt, as instructed, and A-Jiu's pulse revealed strong meridians, a healthy flow of qi cycling through him. Though he had not advanced to core formation yet, he could equal any inner disciple in the sect for cultivation level. That he had mastered a human form so early was a bit of a surprise, but Yue Qingyuan supposed that unlike other animals, A-Jiu had the memory of being human to guide him, whereas most spiritual beasts would find that a bigger hurdle.

This still didn't mean anyone had to practice inedia at all.

"We'll both eat," Yue Qingyuan said, "and when the healer comes today, we'll tell them to bring more food from now on."

A-Jiu remained silent in reply, his eyelashes lowering as if in thought.

"So Qi-ge wants me to stay with him?" he asked, sounding vulnerable and challenging at the same time.

"Of course," Yue Qingyuan replied. Then, after some hesitation, "Do you want to leave? You're not forced to stay."

But any trace of softness disappeared as A-Jiu scowled at him. "Of course I'm staying! What question is that!"

"Alright, alright," Yue Qingyuan agreed readily.

Mu Qingfang himself was the one to come check on Yue Qingyuan that day. Yue Qingyuan explained to his fellow Peak Lord the circumstances of A-Jiu's presence: only about Xiaohei cultivating a human form, and eliding the details about recalling a previous life.

A-Jiu stayed silent and listened with a hawkish expression to Yue Qingyuan's explanation, and if he'd had a tail, it would no doubt have been thrashing back and forth aggressively, but when it became clear Mu Qingfang wouldn't be told of the reincarnation, he relaxed visibly. At least, it was visible to Yue Qingyuan, because A-Jiu still looked tense and distrustful towards Mu Qingfang.

Mu Qingfang, for his part, looked fascinated, and after checking Yue Qingyuan's condition--still stable, and improving--he requested permission to check A-Jiu as well.

Yue Qingyuan thought A-Jiu would refuse, but he simply offered his wrist with an upward tilt of his chin, and Mu Qingfang confirmed that A-Jiu was also in remarkably good health, and with a robust cultivation base.

After Mu Qingfang left, and they were alone again, standing under the arch of the courtyard entrance, Yue Qingyuan gave A-Jiu a sidelong glance.

"I wasn't sure if you wanted me to tell anyone about... everything," Yue Qingyuan remarked.

A-Jiu shook his head.

"No," he said. "It's better that you don't. Nobody liked Shen Qingqiu from before anyway."

Yue Qingyuan felt the words like a stab, though A-Jiu himself didn't even seem bitter about it. He said it like it was a natural fact, and not even something that bothered him.

Yue Qingyuan took A-Jiu's hand in his.

"I liked you," Yue Qingyuan said. "I always did."

A-Jiu looked down at their clasped hands. He turned his own so they would be palm-to-palm, and Yue Qingyuan noticed his finger pads had a smoother, slightly discovered texture, like the remnants of cat toes. It was an unexpectedly cute detail, so Yue Qingyuan felt affection twist inside him.

"It's fine if you didn't," A-Jiu said in the end. "I wouldn't have thought so when I was Shen Qingqiu, but that life feels a bit more separate from me now, so I don't feel the same way about things. You can stop tip-toeing around these subjects."

Yue Qingyuan nodded, not sure what to say.

"I liked you too. Back then, and also now," A-Jiu continued. "But I know I wasn't easy to like back then. Maybe when we were always together, it was easier to not think about it. But once you were far away and met other people... Once you had other options... I can't blame you if you thought about it and realized Xiao Jiu's presence would only make your life harder, and Xiao Jiu himself was a lot harder to put up with once you thought about it rationally."

"Never!" Yue Qingyuan nearly shouted, shaking A-Jiu's hand like he could shake some sense into him. "I never thought that! When did Xiao Jiu ever make my life harder? Wasn't it me who did that to him instead? Wasn't it my fault Xiao Jiu ended with the Qius? Wasn't I the one who failed to save you? It was always--" Yue Qingyuan felt the burn in his throat, the sob in his chest, neither quite managing to release into tears. But it burned, and burned, choking him up. "It was always me who-- I was the one who always failed--"

A-Jiu looked up at him, concerned. He reached up to Yue Qingyuan's face, and Yue Qingyuan thought it was to touch his cheek, but instead A-Jiu just flattened his whole palm right over Yue Qingyuan's face. This was less Xiao Jiu and more Xiaohei of a gesture, like when the cat would push a paw against Yue Qingyuan's face to stop him from talking or bringing his face too close.

"Ah, don't start crying!" A-Jiu commanded urgently.

Yue Qingyuan felt the sob bubble up as a hysterically-tinged laugh instead.

"It's fine, it's fine," A-Jiu insisted. "I forgive you everything you ever apologized for. I wouldn't have before, but I do now!"

Yue Qingyuan took A-Jiu's hand off his face and moved it just enough to kiss A-Jiu's palm. A-Jiu flinched, and pulled it away, his face flushing red all the way up to his ear tips.

"If you wouldn't have forgiven me before, then I wasn't sincere enough, and you shouldn't forgive me now," Yue Qingyuan said quietly.

"What sincerity?" A-Jiu scoffed. "You don't even know! I was ready to forgive you if you gave me just the slightest excuse, no matter how ridiculous. You could have said 'Xiao Jiu, sorry, when I tried to come, a cart upended on the road and I couldn't go around', and I would have eaten it up. Oh, of course, Qi-ge! Understandable, Qi-ge! You probably stopped to help them set the cart to rights, didn't you! How expected of Qi-ge! That's how pathetic I was."

But Yue Qingyuan was dumbstruck by this information.

Xiao Jiu had always said that excuses were useless, but hadn't Yue Qi also learned that lesson well? For a pair of defenseless slaves, being asked 'why' wasn't a request for information, it was a signal to begin kow-towing and apologizing in the hopes of lessening the punishment. When they returned from a day of begging and the masters asked 'why did you bring less money than yesterday?', there was no point saying something like 'it was raining today and there were fewer people out and about, and the rich always travel in their sedan chairs in bad weather, and don't stop for beggars'. They had seen the children who tried to justify themselves like this receive ten times the thrashing than they would have if they'd simply begged for forgiveness.

And hadn't Yue Qingyuan learned that lesson as a disciple as well? When his Shizun asked why he did such a thing, explaining the ache of his heart only got Yue Qingyuan secluded in the Lingxi caves, unable to return to the Qiu manor in time.

Perhaps it would have been different if, when Xiao Jiu asked why, he would have instead explained everything, detailed every obstacle and unfortunate turn of fate that hindered his return, but at that time, Yue Qingyuan had only been afraid that his Xiao Jiu would react ten times as badly to an excuse, and so he could only offer apologies. Hadn't he been punished anyway for it, with coldness and harsh words? At least he thought at the time that this was merely his due, that it was the lesser consequence he would have to suffer through until forgiven. And since Shen Qingqiu never left, Yue Qingyuan considered that to be as much forgiveness as he could be granted, and felt grateful for it.

But it disoriented him now to think that his Xiao Jiu was so soft for him that if he had only made excuses at the time, he would have been forgiven and the reunion would have been a warm one instead. He had yearned for this reunion too strongly at the time to think clearly.

"You were never pathetic," Yue Qingyuan said, pulling A-Jiu close. "I was the one who--"

"Don't start that again!"

Yue Qingyuan wisely fell quiet, but kept holding A-Jiu tucked against his chest.

He would explain. Just like he'd explained to Shen Qingqiu, he would explain to A-Jiu. But for now, he needed to hold on and know there was nothing that could take A-Jiu away.

Left to their own devices, Yue Qingyuan and A-Jiu enjoyed the remaining weeks of Yue Qingyuan's seclusion while they could. Yue Qingyuan had mostly given up on meditation, except for his regular evening one, but when Mu Qingfang or his head disciple came to check on his well-being, they reported he was coming along nicely anyway.

Yue Qingyuan concluded that it did him more good to be awake and aware of A-Jiu, because anything he looked at his companion, he would feel a kind of peace blanket his emotions that he had never experienced before.

A-Jiu didn't look much like Shen Qingqiu anymore. His features were rougher, rounder, his build was wider, his eyes were a bright green to Shen Qingqiu's fathomless black, and only his hair was the same glossy raven-feather shade as Shen Qingqiu. But his mannerisms, even with all the differences accumulated over a lifetime spent as a cat, were still somewhat more similar to Xiao Jiu than Shen Qingqiu's were now.

Yue Qingyuan still found him quite pleasing to look upon, so he did so at every opportunity. They slept tucked against one another on the narrow bed, and they ate together.

A-Jiu was getting more and more into the habits of being human. He still utterly despised cold water, so he would not wash with it. There was a small waterfall not far away from the house, little more than a stream dropping down over rocks, where Yue Qingyuan went every few days to wash under, but A-Jiu could not be convinced in any way to stand under the shower.

Instead, Yue Qingyuan would fill a bucket of water and heat it up with qi every day, so A-Jiu would wipe himself down with that. When they returned from seclusion, no doubt A-Jiu would prefer hot baths, and Yue Qingyuan was willing to carry the water for the baths himself every day of their lives, even if there weren't disciples to do such things for them.

Some black Qiong Ding robes had been brought for A-Jiu, as well as a few simple hair crowns. A-Jiu liked the robes, but didn't quite enjoy the hair crowns. Yue Qingyuan made sure he had ribbons instead.

One morning, when A-Jiu tied up his hair himself, Yue Qingyuan took a closer look and noticed that A-Jiu had used some kind of leather strap for his ponytail. It took a few moments to recognize it as Xiaohei's old collar.

"Wouldn't you prefer a ribbon?" Yue Qingyuan asked, but when he reached for the collar, A-Jiu slapped his hand away.

"No. What's wrong with what I have now?" A-Jiu grumbled.

"It's... a cat collar," Yue Qingyuan pointed out.

A-Jiu's head swung around and his nostrils flared as he pinned Yue Qingyuan with a glare. "So? Is there something wrong with being a cat?"

"Not at all," Yue Qingyuan replied. "But you're human now."

"I'm a cat that just looks like a human!" A-Jiu retorted.

Yue Qingyuan let the matter drop. It hardly did any harm, he supposed.

"And anyway," A-Jiu continued after a few minutes of boiling in silent anger, "it's mine. You gave it to me, so it belongs to me."

"Alright," Yue Qingyuan agreed mildly. "It's yours, it's yours."

Yue Qingyuan's progress towards healing being good enough, they paid closer attention to A-Jiu's cultivation instead.

Shen Qingqiu had been primarily a spiritual cultivator, but perhaps because he had started out as a cat, A-Jiu's potential lay more in physical cultivation. He knew sword forms in theory, but being new to human shape, had never practiced such things. Yue Qingyuan, therefore, decided to teach him Qiong Ding's sword forms. Elegant and restrained, they were not entirely dissimilar from Qing Jing's style, but they were more suited to a physical cultivator.

Instead of practice swords, Yue Qingyuan had found two appropriately sized sticks, which A-Jiu then fussily stripped of bark, revealing  smooth wood beneath. Yue Qingyuan would demonstrate, and A-Jiu would follow his motions, and so they would spend as much as two shichen sometimes practicing.

A-Jiu was a quicker learned than the Qiong Ding disciples that Yue Qingyuan on occasion provided lessons to--even as Sect Leader, he liked knowing how Qiong Ding's brightest progressed in their studies--but he became winded quicker since he was not used to such exertion yet. When he became sweaty and cranky, the practice stick shaking in his grip, Yue Qingyuan would tactfully divert him to some other activity, whether eating or washing or meditating.

That was, it had to be said, the sum total of their activities in seclusion, as they had few items in the house that didn't have purely practical use. A-Jiu, on occasion, seemed to suffer some amount of boredom, but he was also an attentive observer of his surroundings, so when he had nothing else to do, he would watch the birds with the kind of concentrated focus that had Yue Qingyuan expecting that A-Jiu would spring off to hunt them down. It never happened, but Yue Qingyuan could almost see the way A-Jiu's pupils dilated in anticipation.

They took walks together through the woods, following the tight path from the house, around the pond, over the footbridge crossing the stream and back again from the rock marking the house's boundary. When they meditated together, A-Jiu would no longer sit in Yue Qingyuan's lap, but would sit back to back with him, leaning against him so they felt the flow of qi under each other's skin.

If Yue Qingyuan was meant to heal, then he truly found such an existence healing.

Eventually, seclusion came to an end.

The return to the sect seemed to have come after the initial wave of gossip about Xiaohei cultivating a human form ended, but just in time to offer new grist for the rumor mill as everyone got their first look at him.

A-Jiu gripped the sleeve of Yue Qingyuan's sleeve jealously as they walked across the rainbow bridge towards Qiong Ding. The stares, he could have perhaps ignored, but people kept making excuses to stop Yue Qingyuan and ask questions while pretending they weren't staring at A-Jiu.

For his part, A-Jiu merely glared and refused to engage. People seemed to take this as some kind of endearing feline shyness instead of anti-sociality, however.

When they had finally made it back to Yue Qingyuan's manor on Qiong Ding, A-Jiu shook himself like he was shedding off his annoyance.

"Too many people?" Yue Qingyuan guessed.

"Everything sounds and looks different," A-Jiu replied. Then, added more quietly, "Too many people."

But however overwhelmed he might have been outside, A-Jiu walked the interior of the manor confidently. This was old territory for him, and he was familiar with every nook and cranny, but not from his current height, so he went around curiously, peering at everything, touching things that were once out of reach: he opened drawers and cabinet doors, inspected scrolls mounted on walls, touched door handles and little decorative things.

Yue Qingyuan followed from afar, watching him with loose affection curling in his chest, before he went to his office to handle whatever paperwork had stacked up in his absence.

As expected, the situation was dire. Though Mu Qingfang had not allowed him to work during his recuperation, and other Peak Lords had sorted the paperwork amongst themselves accordingly, there were still some things that were deemed only for the Sect Leader's eyes.

Yue Qingyuan put in a shichen of work before A-Jiu wandered in and sat down across his desk to watch him.

Aware that A-Jiu might be hungry, they broke off for a meal. After his next bout of work, A-Jiu quietly imposed on him for dinner. After another bout, A-Jiu made exaggerated yawns that he poorly hit behind his sleeve, so Yue Qingyuan knew it was time for bed.

It was not that Yue Qingyuan minded, but he was somewhat amused that A-Jiu remained as exacting about the household routines as he had been as a cat. He didn't yowl when it got too late, but now he had human hands he could use to pinch Yue Qingyuan's cheeks when it got too late, which elicited the same result.

When night came, Yue Qingyuan lent A-Jiu a set of his own sleeping robes. They were slightly too large for him, but A-Jiu didn't seem to mind, and reacted with indifference when Yue Qingyuan promised to get him a set of his own.

A-Jiu spent the first few weeks after seclusion mostly in Yue Qingyuan's office, so Yue Qingyuan had a second desk brought in for him, and provided all the brushes and paper that A-Jiu would want.

Though he had once mastered the scholarly arts, in this life, A-Jiu displayed less interest in such things. He despised reading and calligraphy. He enjoyed painting, and could lapse into a meditative trance with the brush in his hand, but the paintings he produced were not very typical, and very different from the elegantly simple masterpieces he had produced as Shen Qingqiu.

He would meticulously form shapes and lines, exacting about where each drop of ink or paint went, but there was a surreal quality to them, representing reality in a more tilted way. When he used color, it was in confusing ways. Yue Qingyuan watched A-Jiu spend a shichen layering paint over paint on the image of a single tree, in confused globs on red and green. When he was done, though the result was striking and unusual, A-Jiu merely frowned down at the painting, looking puzzled.

A-Jiu also liked music, but could not reliably play the qin any more than he could use the sword forms he had once mastered. When he strayed away from Yue Qingyuan's office, he liked sitting in on the more advanced disciples' music lessons. That was certainly one way to introduce himself to the peak, and the disciples reacted with giddy recognition. It was how Yue Qingyuan discovered that even when he'd been a cat, it had not been unusual to see Xiaohei perched somewhere watching outdoor lessons, and, when someone wasn't quick enough to shut a door, even inside the learning halls.

A-Jiu naturally did not go introduce himself to anyone, as he preferred to walk Qiong Ding Peak as if he was its rightful master and let everyone else merely look upon his majesty, as he had as a cat. But plenty of people wanted to meet A-Jiu these days.

The Peak Lords did not need to make excuses to come to Yue Qingyuan's office, because they all had work to catch him up on, but when they showed up, they poorly concealed their interest in A-Jiu--some more than others. When Wei Qingwei showed up and A-Jiu wasn't in the office, he had craned his neck around the room with visible disappointment on his face.

Shang Qinghua was more blasé about Qiong Ding's newest member, at least. He didn't even introduce himself, but greeted A-Jiu just like he did when he'd been a cat.

"...And good morning to your secretary, as well," Shang Qinghua said with a nod towards A-Jiu, before he delved into talk about supply routes.

A-Jiu had accepted the greeting as his due, and after Shang Qinghua left, he'd moved over to Yue Qingyuan's desk and peered over the paperwork with a thoughtful frown on his face.

"Leave all that for tomorrow," A-Jiu had ordered when Yue Qingyuan gathered up the reports that Shang Qinghua had left for him. "It's not urgent, and if you start on it now, you won't finish by dinner time."

Yue Qingyuan was thus amused to discover that A-Jiu was perfectly happy to play secretary, even if Shang Qinghua had merely joked.

Shen Qingqiu returned from an extended stay in the Demon Realm and reported to Qiong Ding eventually. There was a Peak Lord meeting taking place soon, so that was unavoidable.

For coming from such a place, Shen Qingqiu had a healthy glow of happiness about him that allayed some of Yue Qingyuan's concerns. He was even cheerful as they discussed some remaining matters of reconstructing and improving the defences of Cang Qiong Mountain.

Once the serious talks were over, Shen Qingqiu prodded Yue Qingyuan for gossip instead, with the breathless curiosity of an old woman at market. It seemed word of Xiaohei's ascension might have even reached the Demon Realm, if Yue Qingyuan wasn't sure that in fact, it was one of Shen Qingqiu's own gossipy disciples who passed the word along.

A-Jiu wasn't in the office at that moment, but his painting was left to dry on his little desk in the corner. One multicolored tree had been joined by others, into an overlapping forest of green, orange and red, like spring and autumn were manifesting simultaneously.

"How striking! You don't see many people attempting this style. It's quite a breath of fresh air," Shen Qingqiu opined over the painting. Scholars tended towards conservative tastes in painting, and so Yue Qingyuan was afraid someone with Shen Qingqiu's education would find the painting tacky and cluttered, but Shen Qingqiu nowadays was a patient and indulgent instructor by all rumors, so he said nothing to undercut A-Jiu's efforts.

A-Jiu, in fact, chose that moment to return to the office from wherever he had been--most likely training--and he stopped abruptly in his tracks, giving Shen Qingqiu a consternated look.

"Ah, you must be Xiaohei," Shen Qingqiu said, turning towards him with a warm smile. "Congratulations on your accomplishments! It's only once in five hundred years that a spiritual beast manages to cultivate a human form."

A-Jiu didn't quite preen in response, but he did look distinctly smug in that way that only Yue Qingyuan could discern.

It was strange seeing Shen Qingqiu and A-Jiu interact. Now that they were side by side, their differences stuck out more than their similarities, but if one knew to look for it, there was something of a kind in both of them, beneath their differing manners.

The two discussed A-Jiu's cultivation, and neatly segued to his art attempts. Yue Qingyuan watched them but did not entirely pay attention to their words until Shen Qingqiu threw him a curious look.

"A-Jiu, are you by chance colorblind?" Shen Qingqiu asked.

A-Jiu blinked, not quite understanding.

"What color is this?" Shen Qingqiu asked, pointing to a spot on the painted scroll.

"Green," A-Jiu replied, with a tone that appended 'you idiot' to the word.

"And this?"

"Darker green."

Yue Qingyuan could see the problem now, because Shen Qingqiu was pointing to a brilliant red across the crown of one tree.

"Xiaohei does not see the difference between those colors, then," Shen Qingqiu insisted.

A-Jiu began looking suspicious. "They're both green, they're just different shades."

"What if I said this one was red, though?" Shen Qingqiu asked, his tone somewhat appeasing.

This gave A-Jiu some pause, as he frowned at the paper. He remained silent for some time, but a flush began creeping up his neck in what was a clear sign of irritation.

"It's understandable, cats don't see the same colors as humans," Shen Qingqiu added quickly.

"Then I'll cultivate until I do!" A-Jiu snapped in return, rolling up the scroll with quick motions.

Shen Qingqiu did not argue, and in fact departed somewhat quickly after that.

"Do you regret you're not him anymore?" Yue Qingyuan would ask later, when the office was quiet again, with just the two of them.

"Why would I? I'm better than him," A-Jiu scoffed, with all the conviction of someone who believed 'Sect Leader's cat' outranked 'Peak Lord'.

Yue Qingyuan was endeared, but there was always this instinct in him to spoil his A-Jiu and give him anything he lacked.

"Do you say that because you don't like calligraphy anymore?" Yue Qingyuan teased.

A-Jiu made a dismissive sound, and looked down at his desk, where he was cleaning his brushes meticulously.

"I never liked calligraphy," A-Jiu said after a while. "It was just something I learned because otherwise Qiu Jianluo would beat me."

Yue Qingyuan felt a chill wash over his back. He had never been told--had never thought to question how Shen Qingqiu had secured his education before joining the sect. It should have occurred to him. While anonymous little Yue Qi managed to squeak by on learning the basics and faking everything else until he had a better grasp on it, Shen Qingqiu had been under heavy scrutiny since the moment he joined Qing Jing. Of course he had to have already known one or two things beforehand to so impress the Peak Lord.

It had just never occurred to Yue Qingyuan to ask what price Shen Qingqiu had paid for this knowledge, because he assumed it must have been something obtained after leaving the Qiu household. But of course Qiu Jianluo was not a generous master. That he deigned to teach a slave at all meant he must have had crushing expectations for him, that he would have had to rise and meet or otherwise perish in the attempt.

"I'm sorry," Yue Qingyuan said, even though he knew he had no right to the words anymore.

A-Jiu nodded in acknowledgment, but looked flustered.

"I don't like reading either!" he said, in tones of warning.

"We'll toss out all the books," Yue Qingyuan replied.

A-Jiu glared at the joke, but it only made a thin laugh thread through Yue Qingyuan's chest.

Everything. He would give everything possible to A-Jiu, now that he was capable of growing happy and safe. Even if that was accomplished through no effort of Yue Qingyuan's, even if he was too late now to make a difference, he would do anything possible for A-Jiu.

Not all the Peak Lords were equally as keyed into the gossip on the mountain.

When Liu Qingge returned from another monster slaying expedition, bursting into Yue Qingyuan's office with the predictable vigor of a War God, A-Jiu's presence seemed to take him by surprise.

"Who's this?" Liu Qingge demanded.

A-Jiu, sitting at his desk, peeled back his lips to reveal pointed canines, and hissed.

"That's Xiaohei, of course," Yue Qingyuan replied with a straight face.

Liu Qingge clearly thought he was being made fun of, because there was no way the Sect Leader had cracked his head and seriously believed that was Xiaohei.

"Xiaohei is a cat," Liu Qingge stated the obvious.

"Then we can definitively confirm that even a beast has better manners than you, because I am indeed a cat," A-Jiu muttered in reply.

Now Liu Qingge looked perplexed, because he was just beginning to grasp the concept.

"You see, Liu-shidi, Xiaohei cultivated a human form."

"Hah? Why?"

"What do you mean, why?" A-Jiu raised an eyebrow. "How else was I supposed to hold a sword?"

"Can you fight, then?" Liu Qingge demanded.

Seeing where this was going, Yue Qingyuan interjected: "He is only just learning, Liu-shidi. Perhaps after he has had some practice, we may arrange some sparring."

Appeased by this promise, Liu Qingge finally sat down to provide his report.

A-Jiu, even with a borrowed practice sword, was diligent about practicing everyday and improving his cultivation. There was only so long he could sit quietly in Yue Qingyuan's office before growing restless, and there was also only so much time Yue Qingyuan could take away from his work, so it was for the best that A-Jiu would go off and train on his own.

When Yue Qingyuan finished his work early one day and came to watch A-Jiu go through his sword forms, he ended up sitting out of sight and admiring the strength and poise in A-Jiu's motions. He had never gotten the opportunity to see such things when Shen Qingqiu first joined the sect, but this was a bit like what he used to imagine in his wild, unrestrained dreams when he first thought about saving Xiao Jiu and bringing him back to the sect.

The sun was just cresting the mountains, spilling golden sunset across the manor's outdoor training yard, and A-Jiu was painted golden in the light. It reminded Yue Qingyuan of nothing so much as when he would sleep in the sunlight as a cat, and his black fur would turn out shades of brown.

When A-Jiu finished his next sequence, he turned around towards Yue Qingyuan, eyes bright with exertion. He had a sheen of sweat on his forehead and a lovely red in his cheeks, and though he wasn't quite smiling, there was a general air of happiness about him.

"Come here and help me practice!" A-Jiu ordered, and Yue Qingyuan obliged, with a tilt of his head.

For the first time in a very long while, Yue Qingyuan did not look ahead and see his own immortality with trepidation. In one form or another, his Xiao Jiu would be by his side.