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The An generation had been Lords of Cang Qiong for over three centuries, few people remembered what came before them. Few people remember what happened to Lord An Ding since a boy, the head disciple of seventeen years old, took his place before the entire Qing generation.
It is said that three past Lord An Ding lords had committed suicide.
Why should the fourth be an exception?
Mu Qingfang doesn't remember the events well when Shu Shibo suddenly disappears and his shizun looks more tired than usual. Back then, he was not yet the head disciple, and he didn't know his shizun as well as he did now. And he would have been afraid to see the depth of the emotions that met him echoing back.
“Don't believe what your shizun will say”, his shizun utters as Shang-shixiong came to get the documents and also quickly disappeared; the shizun escorted the head disciple An Ding (lord without a title, as he had heard from older ones here and there), ”mine consisted of lies I chose to believe. Shang-shizhi lies even more”, his shizun shakes his head, looking both amazed and very tired; for all his age of three and a half centuries, ”keep an eye on him. Otherwise, you might regret with your compassionate heart”.
Years pass, his generation becomes lords, and he keeps an eye on Shang Qinghua; the latter doesn't twirl as nimbly or as coolly as any snake, but Mu Qingfang is stubborn.
Decades pass, and the grip itself loosens; Shang-shixiong doesn't run away from treatment if it's needed, including both tinctures and aphrodisiac poisoning. He looks tired but energetic; he doesn't look like a depressed man or someone who can barely get out of bed.
Forty-four years have passed since his shizun said the forgotten words to him, and An Ding's chief disciple enters his office with a lifeless face and a dead voice.
For some reason, Mu Qingfang knows what he will hear even if he doesn't want to.
Yue Qingyuan had come to the sect a year before his shizun had drowned in his grief; it seemed that Lord An Ding had taken his mentor's soul with him, and left without saying goodbye. Back then, Yue Qi had not yet been introduced to his shishu in yellow, but he remembered the harsh defiant tone with which the man had spoken to their sect leader, and a venom of such depth that one could be poisoned just by being near him.
Shu Anli remembered him as someone who was not satisfied with anything and expected anything from his shizun, but not what they had. Yue Qi had no idea what it was between them, but clearly something personal and sad. There was something incredibly ironic that Yue Qingyuan himself had brought such a relationship in their generation, but in regards to Lord Qing Jing.
Even though young Yue Qi read the history of the sect as a future leader, a lot of things just slipped between his youthful mind as barely necessary or entertaining. It was history, and he had never been curious about it as he should have been. This one had always favored Xiao Jiu.
That's probably why Yue Qingyuan didn't look closely at Shang Qinghua, always whining and asking them all to do something, without a drop of pride and conceit that he remembered from Shu-shishu. He also knows that Shang Qinghua can be a dangerous man, then leave business partners in tears and debt, and malcontents disappearing faster than the sect leader even knows about them. But also Shang Qinghua, until recently, was the hardest person to analyze. Sometimes this man spoke words that only he seemed to know, wrote characters with missing lines or unlike anything at all, and his figures? Something obscure and unique.
Only Shen Qingqiu seemed to be able to get into Shang Qinghua's mind, and that was after deflecting qi after fifteen years of their acquaintance.
Yue Qingyuan wondered, did Shen-shidi know?
Would he have told him if there was something wrong?
Yue Qingyuan holds the note carefully, trying not to accidentally crumple it, with lines and letters that he doesn't know and barely recognizes — it seems to him that only Shen Qingqiu can read it.
Between getting the note from zhangmen-shixiong and his husband approaching him with a grim face after dealing with the sudden rampage in the North — two days pass.
Two hard days where he could barely believe what he'd heard, and where the System was the most useless piece of screen in the universe.
“Shizun”, Binghe took his hands, looking gently into his eyes, "Shang-shishu was found hanged in his vacation home", that's what his student, the son of the man he's talking about, says, and Shen Qingqiu needs a minute.
Or maybe two or three or ten.
Shen Qingqiu, Shen Yuan breathes through his nose and exhales through his mouth.
He is trying to comprehend it. His mind is amazingly empty when it doesn t need to be, and the System just shrugged at his questions. Shang Qinghua hung himself. The Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky hanged himself.
His friend hanged himself.
Not to his credit be it said... he laughed. Sounds like this potboiler decided to follow that insulting hater's suggestion.
At first he's in denial.
Then he gets angry. It's easy to be angry at Airplane almost as the point of his entire second life. His husband is here, Luo Binghe listens to him carefully, then hugs him as the tears come.
The Incomparable Cucumber bargains with himself; it could be anything, knowing Airplane, it could be his backup plan with the mushroom bodies he didn't tell him about, it could even be a setup and it's murder! He could even have faked his own death so he wouldn't have to work!
Acceptance is slow, dragging, that he forces himself to show up at the sect only two days later. Zhangmen-shixiong hands him a note, saying that none of them can read it. Cucumber prepares himself for the worst.
He opens the paper, reads the gaunt English letters, folds it back up, and tears it.
“AH, YOU FUCKING SCOLLING BASTARD!!!” shouts Shen Yuan into the sky, wishing that creature divine could hear him.
“Sorry, bro, the System offered me back to the first world with tons of money and no day job. I'm tired of dealing with this. And yeah, good luck with An Ding, my kids have a temper and Liu-shidi is still breathing through your fault. Have fun with my son, bye-bye, smoochy-smoochy.
Love and hate everyone, Great Master Airplane.”
Shen Yuan would kill him in another life.