Work Text:
Yue Qingyuan must face many unpleasant tasks, as sect leader of the world’s foremost cultivation sect. Bitter territory negotiations with other sects, and the yearly trial of renewing trade agreements with the towns flanking the Cang Qiong mountain range, and the endless, thankless minutiae of Peak bureaucracy. And somehow, bringing his once-brother to task when it comes to the discipline of his own Peak remains the thing that Yue Qingyuan dreads attempting to do most of all.
Mu Qingfang had summoned for Yue Qingyuan a week ago, his usual easy manner replaced with a tired grimness, and Yue Qingyuan had understood at once what the matter was. The finer details—conduct, inciting incident, names—all paled to the glaring outcome: that the Peak Lord of Qing Jing had once again seen fit to discipline one of his students to the point of requiring Qian Cao’s services. Yue Qingyuan had given himself a week and a day after the summoning before inviting himself to Qing Jing—a day to ascertain the child’s condition, and a week to hopefully dissociate any ire from the fact of Yue Qingyuan’s visit with its cause enough that it may not fall upon the child once again.
When Yue Qingyuan arrives at the Bamboo House, Shen Qingqiu greets him at the door with exquisite grace which is belied only by the white of his sharp knuckles. “Shidi,” Yue Qingyuan says with a smile, attempting graciousness rather than anything approaching censure or, heavens forbid, disappointment.
“Yue-shixiong,” Shen Qingqiu returns, magnificently frigid. Yue Qingyuan withholds his sigh. “Tea has been readied; this shidi will serve.” But when they head into Shen Qingqiu’s receiving room, he instructs a pale-faced disciple to pour for them, then sends them out without fanfare. The disciple bows to them both far too deeply and scurries out with a distinct air of relief.
Yue Qingyuan has, if not a silver tongue, then a steel one. He is not inflexible, but he rarely bends, and he certainly never breaks. That is, unless it’s upon the unassailable shores of Shen Qingqiu’s contempt. He turns worse than mealy-mouthed in the face of the man’s silence, and he witters on until he finally runs dry of pleasantries to have rebuffed. When Yue Qingyuan at last broaches the subject of that poor injured child, with somewhat less delicacy than he usually flatters himself as possessing, he in return receives the dubious honor of watching Shen Qingqiu’s reserve fall like frost shedding at a fingertip’s merest provocation.
Shen Qingqiu’s words start off gelid, and indeed they remain so; but his manner grows more and more spirited, more and more infuriated, until he’s nearly spitting while rebutting a comparison no one had made. “Qing Jing may be the peak of the Four Arts, not quite so vaunted as Qiong Ding’s prodigal little emissaries, but there are some standards we must maintain, Yue-zhangmen. Am I to allow wilful cretins and talentless half-wits to run amok in my classes?”
Yue Qingyuan, who has done his best to remain cordial and conciliatory through this torrent, attempts to draw breath to interrupt, but Shen Qingqiu barrels on, borne on by his own mounting fury. “The boy will learn, or he will prove he is unworthy of being on my Peak. Either way, won’t the matter be resolved on his merit alone? My judgement is practically incidental to his utter lack of skill, is it not?”
One of Shen Qingqiu’s flaws is that his bitterness makes him myopic. Disciples who graduate Qing Jing’s exacting curriculum are sought after both by cultivators and by mortal villages as artists, as writers, as teachers. A student struggling in Qing Jing’s notoriously rigorous calligraphy classes may still be lǐ ahead of a graduate from a commoner school, in terms of ability. Were Yue Qingyuan a better sect leader, a better man, he would say as much.
Instead, for a moment, Yue Qingyuan feels like his mouth is full of gravel, like his teeth have shaken loose to rattle in his useless, too-full mouth. For a moment, Yue Qingyuan is all howling void, all buried boy. For a moment, Yue Qingyuan is nothing and nobody at all.
Yue Qingyuan will never remember much from what happened just before he was interred in Ling Xi, but there are some things that are impossible to forget. He remembers the shearing, all-consuming agony of Xuan Su attempting to reave every drop of qi in his veins. He remembers the dull, hopeless despair of knowing he was to die in fine robes with a sword in his hands while his brother starved in a rich man’s house. And he remembers his shizun’s cool, evaluating look at his writhing and wretched form as she said, He will overcome this, or else he will die. It will be either on his shoulders or on his head—either way, won’t it be up to him?
Who is Yue Qingyuan, to tell Shen Qingqiu what children deserve? What man would not revile him for the impunity? What god would not strike him down for the audacity? Who is Yue Qingyuan, really, to teach Shen Qingqiu any kind of lesson at all?
“Qingqiu-shidi,” says Yue Qingyuan finally. His voice sounds, even to him, like a beast staggering from the mouth of a snare—not yet dead, but walking in the direction of its grave nevertheless. Shen Jiu’s glare intensifies. “Some temperance, please, if you cannot exercise leniency.” Truly, it is a wonder that people call Yue Qingyuan righteous. Most days, his heart is so much fruit pulp rotting away in his ribcage.
The expression that Shen Qingqiu gives him would wither a bloom on the vine. “Many thanks to Yue-zhangmen,” he says, “for his sage and significant counsel. His instruction will be duly taken into account. Surely there are matters even more in need of Zhangmen-shixiong’s grace and wisdom than the affairs of this humble shidi?”
Sometimes the proof that neither of them will ever truly escape their wretched beginnings is in how Shen Qingqiu has never shaken the need for his every shot to be aimed to kill, and in how Yue Qingyuan has made the act of fleeing to lick his wounds into a fine art. “Qingqiu-shidi honors this shixiong with his words,” Yue Qingyuan says, with all the false, meaningless perfume of the rot in his chest. “Please do take my own into consideration, then. May your and your disciples’ studies bear fruit.”
Shen Qingqiu sneers once more, a poisonous gash in his face that makes even his fine features quite ugly. “Thanking Yue-zhangmen once again for his time,” he says, so acidly that Yue Qingyuan feels the floral aftertaste of his perfectly-brewed tea curdle on his tongue. “Does my honored sect leader need help seeing himself to the door?”
“No,” Yue Qingyuan says, rising as he does. His smile is a painted-on crescent, waning. “This shixiong can see himself out.”