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Liu Qingge didn’t know what Shang Qinghua was ever doing when he made his requests. The strange little rodent man never had any problem reminding him of the life debt he owed. If Liu Qingge had known he’d be fielding tasks Shang Qinghua found too inconvenient to bother with, he’d have rather died of a qi deviation in the caves. 

“Stay here, Shishu.” Shang Qinghua looks towards the fight happening in the center of the room. That Qing Jing disciple is holding his own in a pleasantly surprising turn of events. The shorter man nods, just once, and then turns his glare on Liu Qingge. “I mean it! Stay here, and if anything happens, just keep an eye on the disciples. Shen Qingqiu has been in a mood and I worry about what he’ll do if Luo Binghe wins this fight.”

An absurd idea. Didn’t every peak lord want their disciples to show off? Just as he opens his mouth to say so, Shang Qinghua’s eyes do that watery, wide thing they do when he’s about to recall how Liu Qingge almost died in the Lingxi caves, if he hadn’t shown up to save the day. Liu Qingge bites back his irritation, hand falling to rest on Cheng Luan. “Fine. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Good!” Shang Qinghua’s smile brightens, his eyes squinting into genuinely happy crescents. He’s almost sweet looking, like this. Then, as if realizing he’s being too honest, his eyes go wide again, mouth dropping. “I mean! Ah! Thanks! Thank you!”

Liu Qingge misses the end of the fight. All he knows is Luo Binghe stands triumphant, chest heaving and lips ghostly white. The poor boy–he looks to his Shizun, only to see Shen Qingqiu glaring in some other direction with that forsaken fan fluttering over his face. Liu Qingge would never claim to be a good teacher, but he at least knew to acknowledge his disciples. 

He doesn’t know much about the scrawny curly-haired boy. Shen Qingqiu seems to hate him particularly. The boy is always doing chores well past everyone else, always struggling to study by himself. Liu Qingge can go days or weeks without even seeing him in the mess hall. Whenever that happens, Luo Binghe always reappears, dirtier and thinner than before. Yet, he’s always smiling. Of course, Liu Qingge wouldn’t notice any of this if Shang Qinghua hadn’t pointed to him a week after he’d left the caves–miraculously saved by a stumbling, panicked Shang Qinghua–and said Watch him, keep him safe. 

When Liu Qingge had asked him why, Shang Qinghua had said with every appearance of seriousness, “He’s my son. I gotta watch out for him.” 

It had not taken much poking around to find out that Luo Binghe was not, in fact, Shang Qinghua’s son. But if the man was determined to lie and hide, Liu Qingge wasn’t going to try to force him into the open. 

Sometime in all of this contemplating, Luo Binghe disappears. Liu Qingge’s eyes swing from where he last saw him to scan the room, but all of his distinctive features are strangely absent. Where did he–?

The back of the conference draws his attention. A shout–several shouts, at least a dozen blood curdling screams–something is wrong. Liu Qingge scans the room once more, but Luo Binghe doesn’t reappear and Shang Qinghua has disappeared into whatever oily shadow he usually hides in.

Cheng Luan sings when he pulls it from his sheath. His blade is as bored and eager for a fight as he is, but all of this panic makes his stomach turn. There are kids here. The youngest of them are barely in their teens. He’s never been attached to children, but when one of them falls to their knees gurgling blood in front of him, he can’t stand around waiting any more. 

“Shang Qinghua!” He shouts into the crowd. “Come out you little rodent!”

The man had definitely known something was going to happen. He’d been too insistent. His boots slide on wet stone and he’s shocked by the red already puddling below. Demons. Demons are descending from the overhead beams, crawling up from the back of the crowds. Cheng Luan slices through one with ease, severing a headful of dark, stringy hair from burly shoulders. The monster’s tusks and fangs make his snarl almost comical, but Liu Qingge kicks the expression away. 

He’s just relieved another demon of both arms when a familiar dark head passes through his periphery. The disciple he’d been charged with is running, but not from the demons. A flurry of green robes chases him, his master’s eyes bright with fury even in the midst of all the chaos. Liu Qingge pays for his distraction with claws swiped across his chest. His robes split, a sharp sting following the bright scent of blood in the air. The demon who gave him the wound falls seconds later. Liu Qingge doesn’t spare him a glance.

Ah, and there’s Shang Qinghua, hand clutching some ice demon’s robes, that same stupid pleading look on his face he’s always using. “Shang Qinghua!” 

The shout does not draw Shang Qinghua’s attention. It doesn’t matter now. The room splits open, the ground shakes, the earth pulls apart beneath his feet. He finds Shen Qingqiu first, his mouth twisted in the same vicious snarl as the demons surrounding them. The wind is too strong, he can’t hear what’s being said. A smudge of red flickers on Luo Binghe’s forehead–blood? 

He’s still trying to figure it out, pushing his way through the storm that is all this chaos, all this broken ground, when Shen Qingqiu’s arm darts out, striking like a snake. Luo Binghe stumbles, eyes wide, that spot flaring like a spark, and then he–

Cheng Luan is fast. Liu Qingge doesn’t look back, doesn’t hesitate. Luo Binghe’s body falls fast, into heat and fire and blinding red, but Liu Qingge is faster . He knows he is, knows he can catch up before Luo Binghe’s body falls too far to save.

And then the earth closes over top of them. Liu Qingge’s arm closes around the boy’s chest. Blood stains his already bloodstained robes, new and hot and slick. He holds on harder, lands with a thud in cracked, dry dirt.  Luo Binghe doesn’t respond even as they tumble over each other. They roll for several feet until Liu Qingge manages to get a leg underneath him to stop their trajectory. Their weight carries them another foot, and then they’re left there, gasping in molten air, burning their lungs. 

Liu Qingge stares at the foreign sky. What did Shen Qingqiu do?

##

The disciple isn’t willing to talk and Liu Qingge isn’t willing to make him. He’s not some nurse mother. What is obvious is obvious and what isn’t is up to Luo Binghe to explain. For example: the demon mark is obvious. A mark like that only appears on powerful demons. Liu Qingge had fought his fair share of them. He knows what the mark means. Why the mark is on Luo Binghe’s forehead when it wasn’t before is less obvious. Whether Luo Binghe knew about his lineage is far, far from obvious. The boy hasn’t as much as looked at Liu Qingge since their fall. The wound on his chest is steadily bleeding, one long slash instead of Liu Qingge’s three ragged claw marks. 

Liu Qingge recalls the few times he’d seen the boy. Starving, burned, bloody and bruised. And now, here, they’re in darkness and biting cold. The morning would bring boiling heat and unrelenting brightness. Rest and comfort reside somewhere far enough away that Liu Qingge can’t track his way back to it. The clouds are thick and black and boiling, letting neither stars nor moon through their cover to track their direction. 

Even the plants are unfamiliar. A vine hangs from a branch overhead, dripping blue-green moss over their heads. A pair of yellowed, slit eyes watch them from the upper branches. A whoop sounds out from far away and the yellow eyes grow wider.

“Do you have your sword?” He asks. Some demons have greater night vision. Maybe if Luo Binghe goes to scout overhead, he’ll see more than Liu Qingge. And while he’s gone, Liu Qingge could draw out whatever is watching them.

“Snapped,” he responds, tone dead and defeated. 

Liu Qingge’s nostril flares, frustration biting at his patience. His wound still aches–whatever that demon had on its claws is slowing the healing significantly and the cuts haven’t even begun to close. “So, you’re unarmed?”

Luo Binghe frowns, his dull eyes flickering red and back again. “I guess?”

“Do you always speak so flippantly?”

Black eyes go wide, wide enough to see the whites, and Liu Qingge almost regrets his snappish rebuke. He doesn’t like crying , much less when he’s the cause of it. Before he can tell the boy not to cry, however, a tremulous smile breaks through the grime on Luo Binghe’s face. 

“No, shishu. Apologies.” Luo Binghe, for the first time since all of this began, starts to look around. “Where are we?”

Liu Qingge has some ideas. The demon realm is wild and harsh, but not quite like this. Even on the border the towns blend from human to demon. This area is neither border nor demonic realm, but it's certainly not the human realm, either. He’d read about places like this–a space that exists only between places, liminal and cruel to humans. A demoness who was courting him (unsuccessfully, but she did try) had once offered to bring him to such a place, since he enjoyed killing strange and novel monsters. He’d ignored her and left that tavern more than a little perturbed. 

Instead of answering, he tries to go through the list of things they should do. “We need cover. A shelter, some way to start a fire.”

Luo Binghe’s stomach grumbles, loudly, in the dark. Liu Qingge doesn’t acknowledge it, but does mentally add food to his list. He hadn’t considered it, having practiced cultivation so long. The boy clings, and now that he appears to have been shaken somewhat from his stupor, he practically vibrates with nervous energy. Good. He can train while Liu Qingge takes care of whatever that is up there. Hopefully whatever monster is tracking them is alone and hasn’t alerted anything else yet. 

“I saw you fight. How many sword forms do you know?”

Luo Binghe’s mouth drops open, his eyes wide. “I–”

“Pick up a stick. Practice them. We’ll find you a sword somewhere, I’m sure.” Liu Qingge glances behind them. The same yellow eyes stare from a shadow beneath a stone. Is the creature changing shape? “You’ll have to learn how to defend yourself, fast.”

Luo Binghe does not move to pick up a stick. His face screws into an almost petulant expression and Liu Qingge is certain the boy is about to argue. He ends it before it can start with a harsh glare, pointing to the nearest stick he can spot on the ground.

The yellow eyed creature creeps nearer. Its presence prickles up Liu Qingge’s neck, instincts blaring at him to move . He holds his position, hand on his sword, until he can see Luo Binghe pick up the stick and enter his first stance.

Cheng Luan is fast but this creature is faster . It darts, brushing against Liu Qingge’s side. Just the pressure of it bruises the skin over his ribs. He doesn’t acknowledge it–Luo Binghe is doing his sword forms, moving between stances seamlessly, but he’s also watching Liu Qingge with interest. If it looks like he’s having any trouble, the stupid eager disciple will try to help. He couldn’t fight some unknown monster and keep Luo Binghe from hurting himself, so this will have to do.

He closes his eyes, searching out the signature of the beast with his qi. The trees are alive with creatures–small ones and large ones, dangerous and benign. Liu Qingge searches for the one his body recognizes, allows the bruise to linger and reach until the wound connects with its giver. Cheng Luan doesn’t move fast this time–she moves deliberately, purposeful in her placement, anticipating the next move of the monster bouncing like a rubber play toy off the creaking branches and stony ground.

His blade slices through the creature’s mouth before it can clamp its teeth onto his shoulder. Spit dribbles hot and burning over his robes, but his skin is spared. He flings the blood and saliva from his blade, sheathing it with a final click. Luo Binghe had slowed in his forms, but not stopped. He hurries now to catch up to where he should have been.

“Don’t do it like that,” Liu Qingge slides his robe down, cutting away the ruined fabric. Keeping the sleeve won’t do any good–the acidic spit is already working its way down towards his inner robe. “If you’re not going to do it right, you may as well not do it at all. Start over.”

“Will this master instruct me?” Luo Binghe moves again, but this time his moves are a little sloppier, a little less fluid. Is he… is he doing it badly on purpose?

“Do it correctly.” Liu Qingge scowls. “Like you were doing before.”
Luo Binghe’s cheeks burn red, his shoulders jumping. “I–I didn’t know. I learned these on my own.”

“Didn’t you have your Shizun?” Liu Qingge recalls the vicious way Shen Qingqiu had looked at his disciple most of the time. “Didn’t he bother teaching you anything?”

“Uh,” Luo Binghe’s cheeks flush darker. “This disciple was difficult to teach. Shizun was right to punish him.”

“Stop talking like that.” Liu Qingge scowls, deeper and more viciously. “If you can’t say anything useful, don’t talk.”

Luo Binghe nods, slowly, as if trying to decide if he actually does have anything useful to say. “Will this master instruct me?”

Liu Qingge glowers and huffs and grumbles. He gets into position. He instructs. Luo Binghe is quite good. His movements are quick and sharp. When he’s focusing, he would be a hard fight for any of Liu Qingge’s top disciples. With a little more time to hone his skills, Liu Qingge wouldn’t mind going against him himself. As it is now, he can’t risk going all out. When Luo Binghe’s chin drips with sweat, when his movements are choppy and clumsy with exhaustion, Liu Qingge holds out a hand to stop him. 

“Time to rest.” Liu Qingge glances up at the stormy sky and pitch black trees around them. “I’ll make a fire. It’s not like we don’t stick out enough already.”

Their smell would give them away before anything else. As soon as they come across water Liu Qingge can test to ensure it’s safe, they’ll need to bathe to wash their scent away. He breaks the dry dead twigs from the trees around them, drops it into a pile with Luo Binghe’s shoddy practice sword, and strikes a stone against Cheng Luan until it sparks. It takes him no more than two minutes, but when the fire finally blares to life, Luo Binghe is already asleep. 

He is impossibly young looking here. Dark curls tangle around his neck, over his shoulders. Dark lashes cast shadows over rounded cheeks. Liu Qingge remembers, briefly, seeing him right before Shen Qingqiu had accepted him to Qing Jing. They’d briefly exchanged glances in the crowd of dozens of hopeful disciples. Liu Qingge, as usual, hadn’t selected anyone. He had considered, however, selecting Luo Binghe. Something about the clarity of his eyes when they’d met his, the unflinching certainty with which he’d watched the events unfolding before him, had looked right for Bai Zhan Peak. Undoubtedly, this brief consideration on his part was somehow sensed by Shen Qingqiu and whatever blackened shriveled thing he called a soul inside him had snapped in affront at Liu Qingge’s audacity to want anything. 

Of course, look at them now. Shen Qingqiu would probably preen with pride that Liu Qingge is scrounging up his discarded scraps right before Liu Qingge broke his jaw. Then he might break a few of his ribs, just for good measure. Or maybe none of that is his place. Maybe Luo Binghe should be the one to do that. Whenever they get back, of course.

He stares up at the sky and wills the clouds to part, even briefly, so he can figure out what direction they should be travelling in. When no movement is forthcoming, Liu Qingge kneels with his sword in his lap and meditates. If nothing else, he can try to heal these blasted cuts.

##

Two weeks in and the cuts have still not fully healed and Liu Qingge is starting to doubt it's only because of the poison. Something about this place drags his cultivation down, makes his qi sluggish and unresponsive. The longer he stays, the harder it is to call his qi to his sword, to his hands. 

“Shishu?” Luo Binghe has found another stick. The whoosh whoosh as it cuts through the air has grown familiar by now, as the boy practices day and night in this hellish place. 

“Mm.” He closes his eyes again, tries to move his qi through his meridians, to tug it into action. The wounds are scabby and itchy and scarring, which he doesn’t mind so much, but they’re also painful. The skin around the claw marks is red and slightly puffy, though the inflammation doesn’t yet seem to have become an infection. His qi isn’t completely useless, then. Not yet.

“What do you know of demonic plants?” Liu Qingge breathes in deeply. His ear tilts towards the trees around them. Three more of those yellow eyed monsters had snuck up on them in the last two nights. They may be approaching a nest of some kind. “Anything good?”

“Uh,” Luo Binghe taps his lips with his knuckle. Liu Qingge doesn’t need to see him to know he’s doing it. He does it whenever he’s thinking deeply. “Shishu, I think I remember reading something about a flower. A lotus? We’d have to find some fresh water.” 

“What kind of lotus?” Leaves shift above them. A massive amount of leaves. They’ve found the nest for sure. Or well, the nest has found them. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s supposed to be pretty rare. I think it was called… Thousand leaves?” The soft taptaptap of Luo Binghe’s knuckle stops. “Thousand leaves fresh snow lotus. But it’s supposed to be really rare. Like, one in a million chances of finding it. It repels demonic energy and boosts spiritual energy. Master Shang Qinghua told me about it and kept telling me not to do anything I didn’t want to do. I… don’t know why. He kept saying weird things like that.”

“Have you ever seen one?” In the past several years, Shang Qinghua had become more and more reliable about one thing and one thing only: rare, impossible plants no one has ever heard of except him. If he says it’s out there and useful, it must be out there and useful. Liu Qingge wouldn’t trust Shang Qinghua as far as Shang Qinghua could throw him, but he does believe him. It’s a difficult distinction to figure out, but not impossible.

“No. He drew a picture. You know,” Luo Binghe grins, bright even in the dull orange glow of the abyss’s oppressive atmosphere. “You’d think the leaves thing was wrong, but it really is so many leaves. I thought for sure he meant petals.”

Liu Qingge laughs, which proves to be a mistake. Luo Binghe stares at him for two whole minutes like he’s grown three heads. “What?”

“N-nothing.” Luo Binghe clears his throat and then, inexplicably, starts swinging his stick around again. He’s not even sticking to any one sword form or practice set, just violently beating the air like it's personally offended him.

Liu Qingge knows the nest won’t attack until night. They never do. The creatures must be nocturnal. Or at least nocturnally oriented. He waits until Luo Binghe has finished one sword form and is about to start another. “What about a sedative? Something to slow or knock out a demon? Did Shang Qinghua ever mention anything like that?”

Liu Qingge knew of some. He’d studied his fair share of demonic plants when preparing for hunts. However, none of the plants or creatures he’d known about had appeared so far. Every step they took brought them to something new. Liu Qingge’s fingers itch to hold a pencil and a sketchpad, to mark down what these creatures look like, how he thinks he could kill them. And then, after testing his theories–whether he was right, how difficult was it, what did they do ? Unfortunately he hadn’t exactly been prepared to throw himself into a glorified hell-ditch. 

“Shishu?”

“Mm.”

“I think he said something about. A fruit?” Luo Binghe points with the tip of his stick towards a shrub at the base of the tree those weird monsters are huddled in. “He said it could be used to dull the senses , but I think… he said only to use it in emergencies?”

Liu Qingge tries to consider how many monsters may be in that nest above them. “Right. Gather as many as you can. Be careful not to get any of their juices on your skin.”

“Right, Shishu!” Luo Binghe must have some idea what he plans to do with them, because he looks up, chewing his lips as he considers how to do what Liu Qingge asked. In the end he strips off his filthy outer robe and shakes the berries from the shrub into the center. A few handfuls pile together, deep red and dark purple, some of them bursting just from the jostling of Luo Binghe picking up the robe. “Is this enough?”

“Should be.” Liu Qingge hasn’t been idle. He’s pulled up several of the less mature shrubs, piling them into a sloppy, leaning heap. Stones line the edges of the campfire. Before he lights it in his usual manner, he cuts four squares from the cleanest parts of his upper inner robes. Luo Binghe’s face glows in the off-color atmosphere, cheeks dark, but he accepts two of the squares with quick, steady hands. 

“Put these around your face. Keep it tight. Breathe as little as possible, and always avoid the smoke.” Liu Qingge determines the direction of the wind and tugs Luo Binghe to the right, marking an x where Luo Binghe should place the pile of berries. He places it several long steps from the fire, leaving Luo Binghe with Cheng Luan. He shouldn’t need the sword to kill the ones who fall. Luo Binghe will be in a more vulnerable position. 

He starts the fire with two rocks this time, keeping his makeshift mask tied over his nose and mouth. The fire sputters and snaps when it finally starts. The fresh, new wood doesn’t want to burn as easily, smoking and curling like he hoped it would. The berries may be the only part, but he’s hoping for luck to be on his side. 

The first thump feels like victory. The monster is dazed, lying face down with its claws loose at its side. A long tail twitches, its tip dipped in wine red. Yellow lines a wide-blown pupil. Liu Qingge kills it with a flash of spiritual energy and then another thump sounds off nearby. He can see a few stumbling forward, running off into the trees. Luo Binghe will get any who come to try the berries. 

The process takes ages. Longer than fighting outright would have taken. Killing them this way is far less satisfying and Liu Qingge finds himself wishing he’d come up with something less boring . As if to answer his wish, a beast who is wider and heavier and stronger darts out from the trees. Like most monster species, the leader seems to be smarter than the others. It dodges through the smoke. Wide fangs flash in a hiss.

The Leader pays no attention to Liu Qingge. Despite the five monsters dead in a pile at his feet, the Leader is drawn away, where a silver flash cuts through the humid, smoky haze of midday. Liu Qingge has just enough time to bat away the arms of one last stumbling creature before he bounces over and through the smoke and the fire pit, landing less than gracefully in the outer circle of Luo Binghe’s battle. 

Bat tles , he notes. Luo Binghe crouches with Cheng Luan carefully leveled at the face of the Leader. Two half-lucid creatures stand on either side of them, swaying on their long, slender pink feet. The Leader’s white head turns, clockwise then counter clockwise, as it studies its opponent. Liu Qingge takes the drunken distractedness of the one closest to him as an advantage and disposes of him quickly. Best to even the odds as much as possible.

Luo Binghe, without moving his eyes from the Leader, smiles. “Thanks, Shishu. Let me kill this one. You’re injured.”

“Tch.” Liu Qingge’s fought much worse with far graver injuries than these. Still, if Luo Binghe wants to prove himself, then Liu Qingge doesn’t see the harm in letting him. If he needs help, Liu Qingge will step in. 

The white-faced monkey creature looms, puffing up to twice its size. Fangs click as it tastes the air. It seems uncertain what to think of Luo Binghe. Or maybe it’s Cheng Luan. One long arm stretches across the empty space. The movement is slow, but somehow, its fingers almost close over Luo Binghe’s wrist before he can react. Cheng Luan strikes down–bounces off the white fur over the creature’s face–and then swoops in a silver arc against the creature’s bony shoulder. Luo Binghe is able to hold the blade steady, but Liu Qingge can see it resist.

“Don’t worry, Shishu.” Luo Binghe’s voice is even, his posture unbothered. He swings again at the white fur. 

The monkey creature doesn’t dodge, expecting the same immunity it had before. Cheng Luan slices through one cheek and the opposing eye. The elegant move earns him a shriek and hiss, the monkey creature no longer standing still and observing. The previous slow motion of its arm is replaced with lightning fast grabs. 

The creature isn’t trying to fight–it’s trying to steal . Luo Binghe guards Cheng Luan easily, bouncing attacks from the resistant hide. The damage he’s doing is nearly imperceptible, but a hundred cuts is a lot of blood loss no matter how shallow. Liu Qingge doesn’t think Luo Binghe has quite made it to a hundred before the creature sways heavily. Luo Binghe strikes again. 

The cuts are getting deeper now as Luo Binghe minds where he’s already struck, where the armored fur and skin of the monkey is weaker. More blood flows faster and the monkey stumbles forward. 

The Leader shrieks and the second monkey–some sentinel from the same nest, no doubt–lurches forward. Liu Qingge tackles it before it can take so much as a step forward. The fight is quick and unsatisfying, even without his sword. He looks back to see Luo Binghe landing hits on the Leader’s white head with purpose. The same place it had bled before, over and over again. The shrieks become more desperate. Once a flailing hand manages to catch on to Cheng Luan and the burn of spiritual energy against the creature’s bare fingers is bright and hot, searing through Liu Qingge’s eyes. Half of the cuts on the creature’s arm heal and the next sound from its bulbous, teeth riddled mouth is a sigh. Luo Binghe yanks the blade back and the Leader loses half of its fingers.

Despite its reprieve, the Leader is dead in three more strikes to the white of its fur. Streaks of black-red blood stain the pristine white. Luo Binghe watches the thing for a moment, assessing, before something flickers in his eyes and he turns back to Liu Qingge with a smile. 

“Did this disciple do well?” He flicks the blood from Cheng Luan, holding the blade out in a respectful bow. “I defeated the… the… what was that?”

Liu Qingge looks at the white faced monkey with its red dipped tail, covered in black fur and sword marks. “I don’t know. It isn’t in any manuals.”
Luo Binghe’s eyes light up. They're dark and deep, but right now they shine even in all this drudgery. “So, something new?”

“Yes.” Liu Qingge considers, running through the patient and methodical way Luo Binghe defeated the Leader. The strategy was a good one. Luo Binghe’s understood his opponent’s goal and used it to his advantage. Instead of uselessly defending himself, he lured the creature to the blade itself. “And yes.”

Luo Binghe’s brows pull together, an over-acted show of confusion, before he realizes what Liu Qingge’s second yes is answering. By the look on his face, he’ll be insufferable through the rest of the night. 

“Will Shishu sleep this time?” Luo Binghe cuts the firewood today, breaking off large branches and sticks to build a more lasting fire far from the poisonous one they’d burned before. They’ve camped earlier tonight, and after much testing and prodding (Liu Qingge tried some first), they’ve determined the meat in the rest of the body not connected to the mouth is not corrosive or toxic. 

Luo Binghe watches Liu Qingge skin and dismantle the beast for an hour before beginning on the second one. Within two hours they’ve got several well-cut strips of meat that smell, frankly, awful. Apex predator is not Liu Qingge’s preferred dining, but after two weeks with no supplies, neither of them are picky. Liu Qingge would probably fight a horde of Red Crested Wasp Eaters with no sword to find fresh water with fish. At least those were easy to catch and filling. 

“Shishu,” Luo Binghe says, once their meat is roasting over the fire. Liu Qingge had made double sure none of the shrubs from earlier had found their way in, and Luo Binghe had left the pile of berries for other creatures to find and eat and stumble around on. “Shishu, will you sleep this time? This disciple is concerned.”

“Hm?” Liu Qingge watches the fire flicker. None of the sounds of the beasts following them are present tonight. Their show with the nest must have been enough. “Don’t worry. It’s fine.”

Luo Binghe’s lips thin in that way they do when he’s pointedly not arguing but very much disagrees. Liu Qingge has gotten quite used to this look. It usually only appears when Luo Binghe wants to do something and Liu Qingge isn’t letting him. Usually, to Liu Qingge’s annoyance and amusement, the something Luo Binghe wants to do is some sort of cartaking. 

“Liu-shishu needs rest.” Luo Binghe’s lip twitches–a first since they started this. “He’s only human.”

Liu Qingge looks away from the fire, watching Luo Binghe directly now. “Oh? And what does Luo Binghe think of that?”

Luo Binghe jumps, nearly dropping the bit of roasting monkey leader leg into the hot coals. “What?”

“What does Luo Binghe think of his Liu-shishu being only human?” Liu Qingge allows just a hint of irritation through. Lesser disciples and even some grown men had been known to cower at the tone. “Does he think it makes him weak?”

“N-no?” Luo Binghe frowns. 

“Does this disciple think being half demon makes him stronger than his shishu?” Liu Qingge leans closer, eyeing the subtle glow of Luo Binghe’s demon mark. “Does this disciple think Liu-shishu will not protect him because he’s part demon?”

Luo Binghe’s breathing stops. Liu Qingge counts the seconds it takes for him to start again. Impressively, it takes almost fifteen seconds for Luo Binghe to realize he’s stopped breathing and force himself to start again. 

“You know.”

Liu Qingge pauses, confused for a moment before he realizes Luo Binghe wouldn’t have seen his own forehead since the Immortal Alliance Conference. He snorts, tapping at his own forehead where Luo Binghe’s demon mark is. “On your forehead. I have killed demons with marks like that.”

Luo Binghe’s mouth drops open.

“I’ve also drank with them. Met them in taverns. Sold them monster parts and demonic artifacts that were useless to the cultivation sects.” Liu Qingge shrugs. “It happens. It’s just a symbol. A mark like that no more or less determines your fate than this does. Don’t be stupid about it.”

He passes a thumb over his beauty mark. For some reason the gesture makes Luo Binghe gasp, as if the words are too much. The speech is only meant to get Luo Binghe to stop fussing about all scared and moody. For some reason, instead, the boy starts to cry.

Liu Qingge doesn’t know how to deal with crying. He decides to clean Cheng Luan instead. The masks they wore earlier make for perfect polishing rags and he is going to have Cheng Luan looking prettier than she has in a week. Gods, he hopes Luo Binghe stops crying before he’s done. 

He’s in the middle of cleaning, single-mindedly focused on that and decidedly not on anything else in the immediate vicinity of the campfire, when a featherlight touch against his back makes him jolt. He doesn’t have a chance to turn around.

“Sorry, shishu,” the voice is soft, gentle and sweet as he drowns under a tide of sudden exhaustion. “You really do need to rest.”

He doesn’t dream, he thinks. Or if he does, he dreams nonsensically of putting Luo Binghe through his training, back on Bai Zhan. Luo Binghe is dressed in his colors, sword clutched in hand, and whenever he completes a sword form and Liu Qingge corrects him with the rest, Luo Binghe’s smile is blindingly bright. The sight burns in his chest, too warm, too not real . Yet, no matter how much he knows that, Shen Qingqiu and his sneering, angry commentary never finds its way against Luo Binghe in the not-quite-a-dream. 

He wakes to his chest suddenly feeling cleaner. His wounds are dressed. Not that they need it–they’re practically healed. 

“Luo Binghe.” 

“Yes, shishu?” 

“Did you drug me?”

“No, shishu.” Yet, guilt flashes inexplicably across Luo Binghe’s boyish face. 

“Explain.”

“Shishu was injured. Last night, during the fight–this disciple saw you run across the smoke? Maybe shishu inhaled more than he thought.”

No. Liu Qingge doesn’t feel the way he would feel if he’d inhaled a suppressant as powerful as the one he’d drugged those monsters with yesterday. He feels… rested. Alert. His muscles feel stronger. Even his qi is behaving more normally. He feels. Healed. Not poisoned. He scowls, assessing each muscle individually to see if he can determine any sign of tampering. Nothing. 

Liu Qingge spends the rest of the day scowling and Luo Binghe spends the exact same amount of time growing more and more distraught. 

“Shishu?” Luo Binghe pulls a cloth wrapped bundle from the makeshift bag he’d made from his inner robes. If either man is shy about their exposed torsos, neither bothers to acknowledge it. “I saved this, since shishu fell asleep so quickly. After eating some, this disciple experienced no ill affects.”
The meat is as bad as he feared it would be. An acrid taste accompanies each bite. The gamey, slight ammonia taste of predator settles thick like an oil in his stomach. He manages to eat half of what Luo Binghe offers him. The rest gets tucked back into the pack, Luo Binghe pouting all the while.

“What?” Liu Qingge snaps, after the fifth time Luo Binghe looks down at his back with that forlorn look. “Do you need to do more forms?”

Luo Binghe shrugs the bag off his shoulder and picks up yet another stick. They’ll have to find him some kind of sword soon. Even a temporary one will do. He needs the weight of steel, the drag of pushing his spiritual power through the blade. 

Liu Qingge finds another stick, similar in size and weight to Luo Binghe’s. He’s going to blame this decision on extreme boredom and nothing else. He goes through a few exercises to get used to the weight and fragility of his makeshift weapon. Luo Binghe watches from the corner of his eye, not pausing his own work. 

“Let’s spar.” He steps in front of Luo Binghe, strengthening the stick in his hand with a touch of spiritual power. It won’t do much, but may allow the stick not to break right away. He watches as Luo Binghe does the same. 

Luo Binghe moves into his stance but doesn’t strike. Liu Qingge can already see patterns developing. Methodical, strategic. Qing Jing Peak did teach him something then. There’s none of the Bai Zhan brashness in the calculating gleam of his eyes. Liu Qingge lunges, feinting a hit to his right shoulder, dropping at the last second to an exposed hip. Luo Binghe blocks effortlessly, moving only in defense as he studies Liu Qingge’s form. They repeat different versions of this a few times, each of them testing the other in their own way. 

Luo Binghe’s defense is beyond acceptable. Liu Qingge doesn’t know when he found the time to fight against someone, but only experience could layer Luo Binghe’s understanding this way. He anticipates moves Liu Qingge broadcasts as well as the ones he keeps hidden. Luo Binghe’s few responding attacks are powerful and sure, dangerous if they were to ever land. But they don’t. His talent is undeniable, but Liu Qingge gives him another year or so of refining before Luo Binghe is able to put up an equal fight. Considering how little the boy was trained before now, the prospect is exciting. No one has learned so quickly since Liu Qingge tore his way through his drills and masters when he was younger.

They practice until their faux swords break, splintering beneath their hands as each of them puts a little too much power in their next hit. Even Liu Qingge is sweating, though Luo Binghe looks like he may be a puddle any minute now. His face is red, all the way down to his chest. When Liu Qingge holds up his hand to end the fight and nods in approval, the poor boy falls boneless to his knees. 

“You’re improving quickly.” Liu Qingge holds out a hand, helps Luo Binghe to his feet. Another of those blinding smiles and Liu Qingge is reminded of his not-quite-a-dream. The whole thing was so sharp, so realistic, it takes him a moment to separate the unrealness of it from actual memory. 

“Thank you, shishu.” Luo Binghe hops, rocking back on his heels before settling back down. “This disciple will continue to practice.”

“When we get back, I expect you’ll need to find another sword.” He can feel it–whatever they find here won’t be suitable for long. “If your previous one can’t be reforged, that is.”

“I don’t want it.” Luo Binghe shrugs. Liu Qingge notices scars, faded into near nothing, crossing over his shoulders. The skin pinches and puckers, every so slightly in that way scars always do, with each shift of his arms. “It doesn’t fit any more anyway. Besides, Shizun would never let me have it again. He said I was a–”

Liu Qingge waits for him to finish, but Luo Binghe only scowls. What exactly had been happening on Qing Jing Peak? How had no one noticed? “Whatever Shen Qingqui says can be rightfully ignored at least sixty percent of the time. More, if he doesn’t like you.”

Luo Binghe jolts, face torn between affronted and relieved. “Shen Qingqiu said my blood is sinful. That’s why he…”

“He did what he did because he’s an asshole.” Liu Qingge crosses his arms, barring any argument. “Don’t think too deeply on it. Take what helps you and discard the rest.”

Luo Binghe’s eyes go wide, his lip chewed between his teeth as he absorbs Liu Qingge’s advice. Whatever he decides to do with it, he does so in silence. 

“When we get back,” Liu Qingge rests his hand on Cheng Luan. For some reason his pulse is quickening, like nerves before a fight. “If you wanted to appeal to the sect leader to allow you to study under a different master, I’d… accept. You wouldn’t be the first disciple to transfer upon finding your skills lie elsewhere.”

Luo Binghe’s shoulders go stiff. Maybe this conversation is too much. Maybe Liu Qingge has made too many assumptions. He can’t imagine why Luo Binghe would be loyal to his Shizun, but regardless he does seem to want the man’s approval. Even still, looking at those scars, remembering the states Luo Binghe has been in before, he can’t regret the offer. He became a peak lord much younger than anyone else. His determination had come from similar scars, from his own doubt and powerlessness. He couldn’t easily sit back and not offer a path out.

“Shishu would have me back?” Luo Binghe’s voice trembles. “On the peak? On his peak?”

“Did I not just say so?” Liu Qingge snaps, but at least half of his frustration is the confusion. Why does Luo Binghe see fit to repeat things Liu Qingge finds so clear? “Did you think every peak lord was like your Shizun?”

“Yes,” the answer is quick, bitter. 

They walk in silence for a while longer. Before, the air between them had felt easy, amiable. Now, Liu Qingge can’t determine if Luo Binghe is elated or furious. He’s not going to ask. It’s up to Luo Binghe to speak clearly–he can’t expect others to guess his thoughts. Liu Qingge lets him stew and tries once more to figure out the way out of this abyss.

The scenery changes, gradually. The rocky ground gets stickier, wetter, clumping together like clay on their boots. Liu Qingge pays closer attention to the vegetation around them, keeps his ears open for a stream or a river or any sort of water that would be safe to bathe in. The alternating heat and cold makes his body disgusting in different ways. Dirt and blood tangle in his hair, long past the point of finger combing. Even his clothes are filthy. 

It takes three days to find the trickling creek, following a trail of moss and softening earth. The creek is too shallow for much. They make a meal out of a dozen frogs Luo Binghe catches with a sharpened stick. It takes another day and a half of following the inconsistent flow of water to find the river it feeds into. Liu Qingge resists the urge to jump in. So far very few things in this new place have been the same as the world overhead. Even the sky never looked the same–no sunrise or sunset, no stars or moon, just different shades of clouds in an unbreakable blanket stretching from horizon to horizon.

When first a leaf does not disintegrate or otherwise come to harm, Liu Qingge finds a flower. When nothing happens to the petals then, he risks dipping a part of his ruined robes into the flowing current. When still nothing happens, he finally lowers his hand into the cool water, allowing it to run over his fingers and wash off layers of dust and grime he hadn’t allowed himself to think about.

“Luo Binghe.” He keeps his tone commanding. For some reason Luo Binghe doesn’t argue when he uses this tone specifically, though he does seem to be embarrassed each time. “Clean up. We stink like the human world and honestly probably just stink in general.”

“Yes, shishu!” Luo Binghe’s usual timbre is an octave higher, his hands fidgeting with his pants. 

Liu Qingge nods, ignoring the strange behavior, and strips with efficiency. He makes a makeshift line to hang his clothes into the water, anchoring them to the surface so he doesn’t lose them, and sinks. He keeps his eyes closed until he can no longer feel chunks of dirt floating off of him. 

To his surprise when he breaks the surface again, Luo Binghe is standing completely still on the shore, one leg out of his pants, eyes glued to the ground. Liu Qingge watches for several seconds as Luo Binghe swallows, clenches his fists on the ties of his pants, lowers his leg. Lifts it again. At no point does the boy ever look up. 

“Luo Binghe?” Is he broken? Did something bite him in the few seconds Liu Qingge was in the water?

“Ah!” The shout is half breathless, more a huff than a scream, but it’s still concerning . “Sorry, shishu, I’ll be–I’ll be…”

Seeming unable to finish that thought, Luo Binghe shucks off the rest of his clothes and runs further down the river. He does not, it seems, have any desire to leave his clothes in the river like Liu Qingge did. Which is fine–Liu Qingge will make him do it later. He’s not willing to travel around with the added danger of teenage boy stench mixed with monster blood and dirt. 

It takes longer than Liu Qingge would like to get everything out from his hair. The small pins he’d been using to keep it held back will need a real scrubbing later, but that will have to be for after they get home. Cool water runs over his sore, overheated muscles as his mind wanders, reassessing their travelling so far for any hint for how to get out of here. Ahead there are less trees, less vines. He can see the increasing signs of grasslands and open sky ahead of them. It’s dangerous, being that open. Something is going to swoop down from nowhere and peck at their heads. It seems almost inevitable, at this point, that they’ll be fighting off various monsters and beasts until they find their way out. 

What would have happened if he hadn’t tried to catch Luo Binghe? Would he just be fighting here until he died? He’d handled the Leader well enough, but without Liu Qingge that would have been a three on one fight. With no sword. 

Shen Qingqiu almost killed a disciple. Without bothering to run his decision past the other peak lords, without trying to see if there was something else to be done.

Liu Qingge had watched Luo Binghe closely since all of this started. Whatever his demon blood means, it doesn’t seem to make him much different from the other disciples. Liu Qingge observes a small silver fish nibbling at his leg hairs and tries to imagine what will happen when they leave this place.

Yue Qingyuan is usually fair. He became sect leader for a reason. However, Shen Qingqiu seemed to be a weak spot for him. To allow Luo Binghe back into the sect, even under a different Shizun, would be the same as admitting Shen Qingqiu had overstepped. Not to mention, bringing Luo Binghe back to Cang Qiong Mountains, bringing him to Bai Zhan Peak, would mean bringing Shen Qingqiu’s entire teaching method under scrutiny. In order to justify the change, Liu Qingge would need to prove that Shen Qingqiu had been negligent. It wouldn’t be hard to prove, he’s certain. Would Yue Qingyuan even allow the question?

Liu Qingge knew Cang Qiong Mountain Sect as a place of safety. He had believed in it and its values since he first set foot in the mountain peaks. Being so uncertain now left him a little unmoored.

“Shishu?” 

Luo Binghe looks like a wet poodle. His hair hangs in tangles over his eyes and shoulders, his mouth tugged down in a pouty frown. Liu Qingge does not laugh. Externally.

“What?” He’s soaked for long enough. He’s cleaner than he’s been in weeks. If he plans on being dressed before nightfall, he needs to start a fire. Leaving the river is a shame–the air already feels heavy with humidity and heat. 

“My hair, shishu. It’s going to be all frizzy.”

Liu Qingge stumbles over his surprise. “You’re worried about your hair?” 

Luo Binghe reddens, briefly, before coming to his own defense. “Yes! You have straight, perfect hair. When my hair gets washed wrong it tangles up all stupid and tugs at my scalp and hurts, shishu.”
Liu Qingge considers that Luo Binghe thinks he has perfect hair with an amused chuckle. “Fine. I don’t have a comb, but I can try to help. Just hurry up.”

Luo Binghe sinks deeper into the water, until only his eyes peek over. Despite Liu Qingge’s demands for him to hurry and get out of the water , it’s nearly dark before Luo Binghe emerges. Liu Qingge has already caved and set to washing the boy’s clothes on his own, setting them on the line when he removes his own robes to dry. Luo Binghe had watched him without any protest. 

They were out of the horrid monkey meat, so Liu Qingge sets about making a net from the more flexible vines. It won’t be perfect and won’t last long, but it’s better than starving.

An hour later they have two medium sized fish over a fire. Liu Qingge puts some thought into staying by the river until they can come up with a plan. Luo Binghe watches him, knees tucked up under his chin, ass sat on a flat rock he’d meticulously cleaned as soon as he’d come out from the water. 

“Why did Shishu try to save me?”

“Tch.” Liu Qingge is slowly figuring out that Luo Binghe, despite being a disciple and supposedly having martial siblings and the support of the whole sect, seems shocked every time Liu Qingge protects, helps, or teaches him. What exactly had he been doing all these years? “You’re part of Cang Qiong Sect. You didn’t deserve to be cast away like that.”

Luo Binghe watches the fire. His hair really is tangled, a mess across his forehead and cheeks, puffed up like a cloud in the humidity. “No one else tried to save me. Even Shang Qinghua didn’t, and he’s the only one who ever tried talking to me.”

Liu Qingge remembers Shang Qinghua clinging to that demon’s thighs, tears already tracking down his face. “Shang Qinghua is an odd one. He was busy when you were taken. I’m sure he would have tried something . He–”

He’s the one who told me to watch you . For some reason, Liu Qingge hesitates on the words. He’s never been one to grasp all the nuance of conversations and emotions and why saying the most upfront thing isn’t always received well. It’s what he prefers–just tell him what’s expected so he can do it. Or choose not to, if that’s the case. Talking around what people want only frustrates him. But him trying to save Luo Binghe clearly means something to him. If he tells him it was on Shang Qinghua’s request, what will he think? 

Though, to be perfectly honest, it’s not like Liu Qingge is changing anything not telling him that. Shang Qinghua may have told Liu Qingge to keep an eye on Luo Binghe, but he never asked him to dive into the abyss after him. 

“Shishu?”

“Do you trust Shang Qinghua?” Liu Qingge shamelessly changes the subject. 

“I don’t know.” Luo Binghe frowns, his tension finally easing as he relaxes into the conversation. “I’ve caught him doing weird things a lot. He called me his son once, but he was pretty out of it then.”

“Out of it how?” He’d also called Luo Binghe his son to Liu Qingge, but he’d been quite lucid then.

“I think he was poisoned.” Luo Binghe frowns. “He was crying a lot and really cold.”

“Oh.” Liu Qingge shakes his head. “He’s odd. Don’t trust him. But… he doesn’t usually lie.”

“Hm.” Luo Binghe doesn’t question how that works. They sit in silence, but this time the quiet is comfortable. Easy. Liu Qingge congratulates himself on not fucking up a whole conversation. 

“Thank you, Shishu.” 

“For what?” 

Luo Binghe doesn’t answer. He’s trying, and failing, to pull his fingers through his hair. The curls look far more difficult to tame than any beast. 

“Come on, stop doing that.” Liu Qingge scowls, crossing their camp, plucking up his fully dry outer robe as he moves. There are still stains, but it's clean enough. “Put this on.” 

Luo Binghe holds the robe in his hand like the fabric may burn him. He doesn’t put it on until Liu Qingge sits behind him, tackling the mess on top of his head like he does all problems–with force. 

“Ow!” Luo Binghe yelps, shoving the robe over his shoulders and tying it tight. “Shishu, that hurts!”

Liu Qingge tugs again, with less force this time, but Binghe makes another, quieter distressed sound at that and he’s a bit at a loss. “What should I do?”

Luo Binghe heaves a shaky sigh. “Let’s divide the work–I’ll take this half, you take that one.”

Liu Qingge tackles the right half of Luo Binghe’s hair with as much gentleness as he can muster. Once he separates them into manageable, thin sections, it goes much more smoothly. There’s a rhythm to it, pulling apart the drying, soft ringlets. He separates from the bottom first, careful not to yank as he works his way up, smoothing down the hair at the scalp. When he finishes, the hair is just as fluffy, but Luo Binghe just wraps it tight and ties it back with a strip from his robe he’d torn. 

Liu Qingge sleeps again, as inexplicably exhausted as the last time. The calming coolness of the breeze of the water, the gentle heat radiating from the ashes of the fire, it's the most comfortable night he’s had since they started this unwilling journey. He can’t even pretend to be surprised. 

What does surprise him is Luo Binghe, laid beside him on the ground, close enough to touch. The boy is asleep, the same peace loosening his features as the first day they’d made camp. His demon mark is dull, more a scar than an ember resting over his brow. 

He allows the boy to rest. The sky in this realm doesn’t shift–it’s dark and then it's light, both of them happening all at once when the time comes. He may have been sleeping for one hour or several. He won’t know until the light hits. Either way, he skewers a few fish, scales and guts them, tossing the guts back into the water. He pokes and prods at the dead embers of the fire until everything warms enough to knock the rawness of the filets he hangs over the heat. Once they move on, meals will consist of monsters again. May as well fill their bellies while they have the chance.

He meditates. His qi is slowing, again. Not as quickly as last time, and for some reason sleep seems to have improved the same as last time. But not as much. He is a formidable fighter, qi or not, but he can’t pretend he’ll be able to carry on forever in this place riddled with danger without his cultivation. They need to find their way out of here. 

Luo Binghe wakes up, scrunches his nose at the plain fish, and eats in silence. They rest by the river for several days before Liu Qingge insists they have to go. 

##

They carry on for months. They kill monsters Liu Qingge has never seen or heard of before. A swooping, oversized bird creature from the sky does attack them in the plains. It takes a week to defeat the thing, their attacks limited to when it dips low enough for Cheng Luan to land a hit. A snake with scales that clack against each other whenever it moves like glass, dropping shards that sliced through skin easily finds them next. Next was a hard shelled beast four times the size of a man, strong enough that Liu Qingge’s full strength could only barely keep it stationary for Cheng Luan to slice through its neck. The hair stank like mud, but the meat had been velvety, practically green with the creature’s herbivorous diet. A shame–some things are simply too territorial to let them pass safely.

Luo Binghe sometimes recites the beasts they encounter back to Liu Qingge. When asked why, he only says he doesn’t want Liu Qingge to forget them. Liu-shishu obviously likes them.

Sometimes, Liu Qingge catches Luo Binghe watching him, brow furrowed, mouth pulled down in a contemplative frown. He pretends not to notice, just like he pretends not to notice that Luo Binghe has grown more comfortable just doing his caretaking instead of asking. The quick baths they take when they come across fresh water, the days they spend lingering there, are always full of quick, easy conversation. The nights after, where Liu Qingge helps him smooth down his hair, fingers getting used to working through the twists and knots, are always comfortably quiet. Somehow, despite Luo Binghe’s diligence in other areas, his robes and pants are always still wet from washing and he ends up borrowing Liu Qingge’s robe again. 

It’s close. Warm. Easy in a place where everything else was hard. Liu Qingge wonders more than once what would have happened if Luo Binghe had come to Bai Zhan Peak instead. He’d be head disciple by now, Liu Qingge thinks. Of course, maybe not. Liu Qingge would not have taken on his training so directly. He would have checked up on Luo Binghe’s progress, like he did all the others. Would Luo Binghe have excelled as quickly under Liu Qingge’s sporadic attention?

Probably. Neither of them would know. 

Ruins lie ahead. Luo Binghe seems unusually excited about finding them. He doesn’t say anything, but even when Liu Qingge’s steps try to encourage caution, walking around the perimeter, Luo Binghe steps into the fallen rocks and rooms. The eagerness throws Liu Qingge, makes him nervous. Luo Binghe acts like he knows this place. Like he’s been expecting it, looking forward to it. 

They camp in a square of rubble, stone floor cool beneath their feet in the night. A threadbare, silt hardened rug raises off the floor of what once was an entryway. Luo Binghe takes some time, closing his eyes and imagining the building that used to stand here. 

“Why bother?” The emptiness turns Liu Qingge’s stomach. Who could have lived in this place? Demons? What destroyed everything so thoroughly? “We won’t be able to figure out what happened to them. Everything is too degraded.”

Whoever lived here, whatever killed them, was so long ago. The only sign they’d lived here at all is some rocks and a ruined rug. 

“Hm.” Luo Binghe holds his hands up at the corner, bracing them where two walls would have been. “This would have been an entryway. They placed the flowers here, on a delicate table. And here,” he slides down the “wall” on the right, motioning a little up from center. “Here is where they put their painting of their dog. They named him Maximus and taught him to fetch.” 

“Nonsense.” Liu Qingge could picture it, though. A warm entryway, showing off the parts of their life the owners cherished. “What are you doing?”

“Imagining, Shishu. Don’t you ever imagine things?” The teasing tone to his voice isn’t entirely appropriate, but Liu Qingge has found himself letting it slide more and more. It feels ridiculous to admonish him for such things when they’re stuck with only monsters and themselves for company. 

“My sister tells me I have no imagination.” He frowns. “I think we just have different ideas about entertainment.” 

“Liu Mingyan is always imagining things.” Luo Binghe’s smile goes soft in a way that piques Liu Qingge’s interest. Had his sister previously befriended the boy? “I’ve read her stories. She writes really well.”

Liu Qingge has also read her stories. Only once, and he’d decided it was better if he didn’t know what kinds of things his sister imagined in her spare time. Luo Binghe had read those? And he looked like that about it?! “And you… enjoyed her stories?”

“Yes.” Luo Binghe shrugs. “She’s a much better writer than the twins. I once delivered a whole box of those books from Shang Qinghua to Qi Qingqi’s office once. Your sister has fans everywhere.”

Liu Qingge can’t decide if he’s more disturbed that this disciple is speaking to him so plainly about those stories, or the fact that many of his peers were reading his sister’s books. “Go back to your imagining. That was better.”

Luo Binghe laughs, and does go back to his imagining. He steps over something only he can see, reaching down and patting an imaginary head. Dog, then. Liu Qingge watches, curious even if he can’t follow along fully. 

“This is where they would open their door. Greet newcomers and old friends.” He turns, standing on the line that separates this pile of rubble from the next. He hums, looking around before his eyes fall on Liu Qingge. “They’d like you. You’d come in and drop off a monster right here on the rug. You’d go with them back to their living area and they’d invite you to drink with them.”

“Why am I part of this now?”

“They’d have you sketch out the creature and ask you questions.” Luo Binghe’s fathomless black eyes stare into his, the story strangely riveting. “How did it attack? Where was it found? How long did it take to beat it?”

“Hm. Prudent questions.” 

“Then, when all the wine is gone and the stories have quieted, they will see you out and wish you a safe journey.” He smiles, walking forward, brushing his hand against Liu Qingge’s shoulder as he passes to the exact opposite side. Another gap in the stone work acts as his next doorway. “They’ll watch you leave from here and wave as you depart on Cheng Luan. Maximus will try to chase you, of course, but he’s firmly grounded and so he only barks as you go.” 

Luo Binghe stands in the make believe doorway for several minutes. He stares up at the sky, his brow crinkling just slightly. 

“You didn’t imagine yourself in the story.” Liu Qingge realizes, finally, what is odd about all of this. “It was your little imagination game, but you weren’t in it.”

Luo Binghe turns, his smile wide and open. “Would Liu Qingge want me there? Maybe I went on the hunt with you and spent ten minutes playing with Maximus before I followed you in.”

Liu Qingge frowns. That wasn’t what he meant. Liu Qingge shouldn’t be the one he imagined at all. And if he was, why would he bring Luo Binghe? Unless… “Sometimes head disciples do go on hunts. That’s a position you’d have to earn, of course. I don’t see why you couldn’t.”

He doesn’t bring up that he’d already had the thought that Luo Binghe would likely be his head disciple, if he’d been brought onto Bai Zhan Peak. He has the unshakable feeling the admission would make Luo Binghe’s head swell to twice its current size. 

“Right.” Luo Binghe’s expression is too warm, his eyes too bright when they turn back to Liu Qingge. It lights his blood on fire, spreads an itching through his veins that makes him want to fight something. “Would shishu like to add anything else?”

“I-” Had he been doing that? Adding to Luo Binghe’s story? Since when did he do such pointless things? “No, that’s enough of that. Let’s try to rest.”

Liu Qingge stares at the fire long after Luo Binghe’s soft snores break the nightly silence. He tries to imagine a time when this place was alive, when the stone formed a room, when the rug was soft and new. He imagines a dog, curled by a fireplace, wet nose nuzzling against his size. He imagines a world alive in this dead place. Maybe he can understand why Luo Binghe would need to do this, to imagine these things. 

It helps, he realizes, to imagine something besides all of this nothing everywhere.

He dreams, but not of dogs or mysterious owners of stone houses. He dreams of hunts, of monster blood and split apart pieces and parchments full of notes. He dreams of wine shared between friends, dark eyes watching him across the table. Maybe there is something to the idea of a head disciple after all. 

##

The ruins take longer to navigate than originally expected. A stone monster finds them shortly after the first night. The shape is of a man, no eyes, no face. Liu Qingge’s qi dwindles at inopportune points, leaving him with at least two broken ribs when he fails to block the creature’s punch. He imagines this is what it would feel like if a building broke itself apart just to beat him into the ground. 

Cheng Luan’s light flickers in the fight. Liu Qingge springs off an intact wall, ignoring the way it crumbles beneath his feet as he pins his sword in the creature’s torso, wedging it in the space of its navel, prying apart joints of its stone body. There are no vital points. When they leave the first day, the stone creature’s bottom half is limping after him. Its top half drags itself with far less success.

Luo Binghe insists on resting for a week after that. Liu Qingge tries to continue, but Luo Binghe simply starts building a fire and sits when Liu Qingge goes to move them along. Despite Liu Qingge’s commands, insistence, and final well thought out arguments, the boy refuses to move. 

“You’re just being stubborn.” Liu Qingge throws a rock into the fire, scattering embers through the empty space. “We should be trying to get through here. All the open air leaves us too exposed.”

“I’ll keep us safe, Shishu.” Luo Binghe pats his hand as if this is meant to be comforting. 

“You don’t even have a sword.” 

“We are working on that. I suspect I’ll have one soon.”

“But you don’t have one now. ” 

“Hm.” Luo Binghe nods, agreeing even as he does not stand up. “This is true.”

“It’s just a couple of broken ribs.”

Luo Binghe squints, his hand full of monster meat. The tips of his fingers are red as he carefully wraps the thigh meat in leaves and water soaked fabric, laying them directly in the fire. He’d been experimenting with new ways to cook while they were stuck here, often with mixed results. Steaming fish like this worked well, but Liu Qingge hadn’t seen him do this with red meat before. A bundle of root vegetables are tied by their green tops, hanging over the fire to roast. 

“Ok, Shishu. Rest for one night and I will be up bright and early in the morning.” 

He knows when to accept he’s been beaten, even if he can’t remember a time when it's ever happened before. 

“Fine.” Liu Qingge hates that he couldn’t have just dragged the boy by his scruff, but with his qi in the state it's in he can’t risk it and he can’t just leave Luo Binghe here while he tries to figure out the problem. The abyss doesn’t allow for seclusion . “What did you do to that?”

“I found these and they remind me of some herbs that grow in the lower mountain villages. They smelled the same, too.” Luo Binghe tugs a few more of the leaves from his robes. “I tried one two days ago and nothing happened, so they must not be toxic.”

Liu Qingge scowls. “You can’t just try random things you find on the ground.”

“It was fine.” Luo Binghe smiles. “This disciple appreciates his shishu being so concerned for his health. After all, shishu does try each of the monsters before he allows this disciple to eat a single bite.”

Liu Qingge hasn’t yet figured out how to get Luo Binghe to understand he’s supposed to do that. He’s supposed to be the one to take on risks. That’s the point of their titles. Sometimes he wants to grab Luo Binghe by the shoulders and shake him until he understands. He may try, if not for the fact he can already picture Luo Binghe’s smug little smile at his frustration. 

And infuriatingly, the meat tastes amazing. Luo Binghe reserves half of it for breakfast, splits the rest between them, and then goes about methodically eating through his own serving with a smile on his face.

“You don’t have to look so pleased.” 

“Shishu is just grumpy because he’s in pain.” Luo Binghe hums, closing his eyes as he chews. “I think I’ve gotten used to eating monsters by now. Do you think you’ll have a hard time adjusting back to normal food?”

“No.” Liu Qingge has spent several months at a time with only his kills to eat in the past.

It had been a while, but he used to have to do it quite often before Liu Mingyan got her own position in her sect and he no longer needed to split his income between their households. Generally, however, he doesn’t care much about food. He’s eaten plenty of meals worse than the monsters he kills from the kitchens on Bai Zhan. Apparently when one is known as the War God, chefs aren’t worried about impressing any taste buds trained on rations. Not that he could blame them. He’s never on his peak for very long. 

Luo Binghe looks at him with what Liu Qingge can only describe as pity. With a sigh he turns back to his root vegetables. “This disciple misses salt.” 

“Mm.” Liu Qingge remembers salt. Gods, salt makes everything so much better. “Me too.”

They finish their meal in silence. 

“Show me, shishu.” Luo Binghe points to the place the stone man had hit him earlier. When Liu Qingge ignores him, he taps his knuckles against his lips, nods once, and tackles Liu Qingge to the floor.

They grapple. Liu Qingge loses embarrassingly fast. In his defense, he can’t hurt Luo Binghe, a handicap which Luo Binghe does not appear to have. He was taken by surprise. Luo Binghe, in a very clear use of his knowledge of Liu Qingge’s current weak spots, digs his nails into Liu Qingge’s broken ribs and presses until Liu Qingge is almost certain he’s going to black out. 

“See.” Luo Binghe pins him down, breathing heavy. “You can’t go on like this, Shishu. You’ll be hurt.”

“Tch.” 

“Let me see,” Luo Binghe’s voice softens, his nails no longer digging into Liu Qingge’s bruises as he smooths the rumbled robes beneath his palm. “Please, shishu?”

Too late, Liu Qingge realizes he’s becoming pitifully easy to manipulate. “Fine. Get it over with.”

The wound looks worse than he expected. Beneath the faded claw marks from months ago is a motley of bruises, split skin, purple and red marks that make Luo Binghe gasp. Liu Qingge doesn’t know if it would make him less or more worried if he told the boy this isn’t the worst he’s ever looked. Not even in the top three, he thinks. Mu Qingfang can never be made aware of Luo Binghe’s stupid face, he realizes. The doctor would be insufferable with such a weapon.

“It’s not that bad. Stop looking like that.”

“Shishu is blinded, too?” Luo Binghe snaps. He catches himself, mouth hanging open briefly before he pulls the robes back over to cover Liu Qingge’s chest. “This disciple will keep his promise.”

Liu Qingge doesn’t sleep easily that night. Yet, when he finally drifts off, he finds himself entangled in dreams, deep in the Cang Qiong Peaks. He’s home with Liu Mingyan and she reads him stories of romances she’s made up, deep and undying loves, and he tries not to die over tea. 

When he wakes the sky is bright again. Luo Binghe is just returning, exhaustion clear in the smudge of black beneath his eyes. 

“Shishu slept so long.” Luo Binghe limps through their camp, landing heavily on the ground beside Liu Qingge. “This disciple grew worried. But, would shishu accept a gift?”

“A gift?”

“For his spiritual energy.” 

The flower does in fact have a lot of leaves. A very normal number of petals, however. “Where did you find this? You said it was extremely rare.”

“I thought I heard some fresh water nearby. It was in one of those old buildings, in a fountain. I could only find one.” Luo Binghe holds it out. “Eat it.” 

“What?”

“It helps with spiritual energy. It repels demonic energy. This place is full of demonic energy and its killing you, shishu. Eat it.”

“It’s not killing me.”

“You never would have been hit by the stone man before.” Luo Binghe’s hand hovers between them. “Your qi is flickering out. How long before it sets off another deviation?”

Liu Qingge grimaces. “Shang Qinghua told you?”

“Mm.” The lotus leaves are sharp, spiky when Luo Binghe pushes it into his hand. “He did. This disciple is not willing to watch his shishu sacrifice himself.”

“I’m not sacrificing myself. Don’t be absurd.”

“Then Liu-shishu is just reckless?” Luo Binghe leans closer, still holding on to Liu Qingge’s hand, pinning the flower between them. It’s a strangely intimate moment. Heat stains his cheeks, his ears. 

“Disrespectful.” 

“Mm.” Luo Binghe doesn’t argue, only presses the petals against Liu Qingge’s lips. “If that is what this disciple must be, then so be it. Eat the flower.”

Liu Qingge tears more than bites the flower. It breaks, too big to fit comfortably between his teeth, but he chews, glaring the entire time under Luo Binghe’s scrutiny. It takes three large bites to get through the entire thing, but he manages it without any further embarrassment. He finishes the final bite and shoves Luo Binghe back. “I was not sacrificing myself. That is something done with intention. What was I supposed to do? Let you–”

“Yes.” Luo Binghe interrupts, his face scrunched in a petulant pout. “Yes, let me do anything . You haven’t let me fight since that monkey monster. Why?”

“I’m not going to let you get hurt.” Liu Qingge frowns. “You are a disciple, unarmed and dealing with. Everything. I can take the fights, so let me.” 

“If I had a sword, would you let me fight?”

Liu Qingge shrugs. “Of course. Your training proves you capable.”

His mouth tastes like soap, bitter and floral. The flower churns in his stomach, an unsettled anxiety beginning to beat at his chest. He couldn’t deny the damned thing matched the description he’d read before. Luo Binghe had no reason to lie to him, and Shang Qinghua had no reason to lie to Luo Binghe. And yet, the longer their conversation continues, the longer Liu Qingge’s skin burns unbearably hot. 

“Does shishu mean it when he says he’ll take this one on as a disciple when we get out from here?”
“I’ll try.” Liu Qingge draws his shoulders in, tightens his arms around his waist. His skin is too tight. “You–something’s wrong.”

Luo Binghe stops talking, eyes wide. After a moment he speaks in a rush, words speeding until they run together. “Shishu, I made double extra sure. It matches the description exactly. Even down to where I found it! Ithadthebarrierand …”

Panic, fresh and powerful, freezes on Luo Binghe’s face. Liu Qingge realizes the problem the very second he reaches out to smooth the look away. It’s not an instinct he would have indulged before, not unless…

“It’s fine,” he keeps his voice even, with effort. “It’s not a problem.” 

“What?” 

“The flower just requires a little extra ingredients to work,” Liu Qingge steadies himself. “Give me your hand.”

“Why?” Luo Binghe, usually so quick to grab and hug and wrestle and touch, clenches his fist on his robe. “Did… What did I do?”

“It’s fine. We need to…” Liu Qingge shakes his head, tries to find a better way to phrase it. “Look, it’s not as bad as it sounds. We need to dual cultivate, but–”

“Shishu!” Luo Binghe’s eyes grow wider, his shoulders jumping up to his ears. “I-we can’t!!”

Liu Qingge sighs, keeps his hand held out. His ears burn. His neck burns. His shoulders and chest. He’s pretty sure he’s blushing all the way to his toes. “I would never expect you to. We can just. Hold hands. It doesn’t have to be that. ”

Luo Binghe mouths something to himself that looks suspiciously like what I want to , before he carefully connects their fingertips, twining their fingers together. It’s not exactly what Liu Qingge meant, but the touch is like cool water on parched earth. He closes his eyes, forces his blood to calm down. 

“Do you have demon qi?” 

“Yes.” 

“Don’t use it. Do you know how to separate them?”

“I’ve never tried.” Luo Binghe’s dark eyes trace the line between their palms, his cheeks dusted with pink. “Will it hurt you?”

Liu Qingge nods. His qi swells, from a trickling breeze to a mounting storm, and he can feel the need for it to move . “Yes.”

“Then I can keep them separate.” Luo Binghe sounds sure, even if his fingers tremble against the back of Liu Qingge’s knuckles. 

The first press of his qi through their palms makes Luo Binghe gasp. The power is clean, sharp, sweet and icy like the snow at the top of the highest peaks. There’s so much of it, a tide that Luo Binghe can barely match. He steels himself against the thrum of it, allows the vibration of it to move through him like a stunted strike with a sword. The pain is only a brief flash, and then Luo Binghe pushes back. He holds his demonic qi tight in his chest, and answers with the spiritual power he’s built up as a disciple. 

Liu Qingge’s face relaxes, sweat rolling in short rivulets over the edge of his jaw. His bruising grip loosens as the two streams of qi become parallel streams and then an enclosed loop, a river that feeds itself and circles back to each source. Luo Binghe’s qi is starkly different from his own–layered, warm, sweet. His fingertips tingle with it. The lotus, greedy and uncontrolled thing that it is, wants more. He can feel it, pushing him to lean in, to smell the spiced, autumn scent of Luo Binghe’s skin, to bury his hands in his hair and press down all that unruly curl. But he doesn’t need that. And Luo Binghe trusts him.

Liu Qingge has no intention of letting some flower best him when all of this hell hadn’t managed it.

Luo Binghe, for his part, does not speak at all. He watches their hands, pink cheeks and tense shoulders, the entire time. Liu Qingge studies him for signs of discomfort until his eyes grow heavy, the itchy feeling in his skin slowly receding. This method isn’t as fast as what people usually do for dual cultivation, but it works well enough. And now, Liu Qingge just feels exhausted.

“Luo Binghe,” his mind is slow, his wrist sore from where he’s held it stiff and upright for so long. His thumb rubs along Luo Binghe’s knuckle absently as the ebb and flow of qi starts to thin. “ This is fine. It works fine. Don’t ever let someone try to convince you that you’re required to do something you don’t want to do.” 

“Yes, shishu.” Luo Binghe’s voice is quiet. His dark eyes track the motion of Liu Qingge’s thumb. “If shishu is tired, he should sleep. This disciple will keep watch for trouble.”

Liu Qingge would argue–should argue–but Luo Binghe’s hand in his tightens once more and he slips under a wave of dreams. 

##

The lotus works, for the most part. His qi stops flagging, and for a few days they even have peace from the relentless gaze of the monsters in this realm. It’s a nice, relaxing few days. They cover a lot of ground. Two months later and the peace no longer holds, but they’d had it and that was nice. And at least Liu Qingge’s qi seems to have fully recovered.

They’ve been here for a year, Liu Qingge says one day. He keeps track of these things via an internal clock he trained himself over the course of months and months of being in caves, or at a stormy sea, or in the far north or far south, when the sun would disappear. He’s never had to depend on it this long but the likelihood is that he’s underestimating, not over. Still. A year in this abyss and no closer to getting out. 

“I’m not worried, Shishu.” Luo Binghe shrugs, scanning the horizon. 

He does that a lot lately, as if searching for something specific. Liu Qingge doesn’t like it. Something about the way Luo Binghe anticipates their upcoming travels makes Liu Qingge extra wary. How can he be anticipating anything? Nothing Liu Qingge has revealed anything familiar. The trees and the plants are only ever mostly similar to ones from back home. The monsters are nothing at all like the ones Liu Qingge’s fought in the past. He gave up on tracking their position with the sky ages ago. 

“I didn’t say we should worry.” Liu Qingge frowns. “We need to find a way out of here. There has to be some way.” 

The ruins they’d started in months ago were a city. They’d made their way through those with no sign of people or demons, just more and more monsters. When they’d left that, they’d followed an empty road all the way to the next broken down, dirt covered city.

Now they explore furniture and rooms of once standing homes. Luo Binghe finds a dresser full of chewed up robes and, dismantling one, manages to use a quill from a porcupine beast to sew up a couple of sets of passable outfits for each of them. The easy drape shows off the width of his shoulders and the cut and defined muscles that months of surviving off rationed out protein and barely any water will bring. Liu Qingge doesn’t expect the change, but smiles anyway. The Luo Binghe before him now hardly looks like the one who’d cowered before his Shizun a year ago.

“You know, shishu,” Luo Binghe drags a long nail over the fine carving on the feet of the dresser he’d picked through earlier that day. “There are no skeletons in the rooms.”

Liu Qingge had realized early that whatever happened to the people or demons who lived here before, they hadn’t died here. Or if they had, they died in such a way as to leave no trace of their existence. “Mm.”

“Does Shishu think they all left?”

Liu Qingge looks around at the nearly standing house they’ve found. There’s no roof, in any part of it, but the walls are all at least halfway to his waist. “Doubtful. It’s too many people. To move that many, so thoroughly, would take a lot of power or a lot of planning.”

“Maybe they had a lot of power and a lot of planning.” Luo Binghe taps his knuckle against his bottom lip. After a while he sighs. “We really can’t know.”

“We shouldn’t make assumptions, either way.” Liu Qingge closes his eyes, tries to empty his thoughts. He doesn’t try for long before he huffs and gives up. His mind is too cluttered for thoughts. Luo Binghe’s increasing odd behaviors keep replaying in his mind, a loop that spikes anxiety through his chest. 

They come across the building right as he’s getting ready for camp. It’s still far off, barely visible in the mess that splays out before them. The hills and valleys of the towns seem to all lead up to this one intact temple. 

“We should go look at it.” It’s the first outright insistence Luo Binghe has made about their travel. His eyes connect to the black wood of the temple, the gold filigree and red clay shingles. The temple radiates danger, a flicker of demonic qi licking the sky like a weak flame. The oppressive aura drips down into the grass, a black stain that bleeds from the paint. 

Liu Qingge questions, not for the first time, if Luo Binghe was born with any survival instincts at all. “You think there’s a sword?”

“I think there is more likely a sword in there than anywhere we’ve passed so far, shishu.” Luo Binghe does not help set up camp like usual. He stares, instead, unwavering, at the temple. “I think I can feel the blade in there.”

His demon mark glows, a subtle color in the already warm tinted atmosphere. A faint ring of red turns the usual depths of his eyes into pools of fire. Liu Qingge shifts beneath the absence in his gaze. For the first time since all of this started he is faced with discomfort at Luo Binghe’s lineage. Something about the way Luo Binghe looks, it's as if he’s here and not. Gone despite the ease with which Liu Qingge could reach out and touch him. 

“We’ll go in the morning.” Liu Qingge remembers the ease with which Luo Binghe had snuck away to search for the lotus. Liu Qingge’s qi hasn’t fluctuated wildly since, but could he trust himself to sleep if Luo Binghe is really so determined to enter the temple tonight? 

“If you say so, shishu.” Luo Binghe turns, eyes dragging before they finally leave the temple. A sudden grin, blindingly wide, curves his eyes into crescents and that red light disappears as if it never existed. “Tomorrow it is then. You’re just scared I’ll get a sword and won’t need you any more.”

“Tch.” Liu Qingge scowls, which only causes Luo Binghe to smile wider. “As if you’d abandon me even if you could.”

“You’re right.” Luo Binghe shakes his head. “Without this disciple, shishu would have starved to death already.”

“You!” Liu Qingge knocks his shoulder against Luo Binghe’s, rewarded with his admonishing tone with a laugh. 

“I’m not wrong, though. What would you be eating? Half cooked monster meat?”

Yes. “No.”

“Shishu is a bad liar.”

“A good thing to struggle with.” 

Luo Binghe laughs again and the sound is so fond . Liu Qingge has to look away. Rocks skitter across the stone as Luo Binghe moves around, kicking and shuffling around the empty floor. Liu Qingge studies the boundaries of broken bricks. The night feels too close, the darkness laying over everything like a blanket in a way he hasn’t noticed in months. He hates the taste of it, the pressure of the coming day. He didn’t even have anything to fight. The monsters that had plagued them the entire journey have disappeared from here, as if they too can feel the heaviness in the air. 

“Do that thing.” Liu Qingge follows a jagged line of broken brick. A torn cloth, bleached by heat and harsh weather, flops over the middle of it. “Where you make up stuff and pretend like it happened.”

“You mean my stories?” Luo Binghe stops moving and Liu Qingge finally looks at him. Luo Binghe has pulled out another of the quills he’d kept from the porcupine beast. He’s stripped down to his inner robe. Thread weaves in and out of a patch of thin fabrics over the knee, with another already pinned at the thigh. 

“It’s too quiet. I can’t even feel anything watching us.” Liu Qingge shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”

Luo Binghe presses his lips thin, eyes flicking up to where the temple waits ahead of them. After he finishes with the knee of his pants, he begins on the next patch, already chewing his lip as he tries to think.

Liu Qingge watches, waiting to see if Luo Binghe will decide to ignore him. The request is arbitrary. He doesn’t even know why he asked–he just wanted to hear Luo Binghe say something . The morning looms over them like a bladed pendulum. His shoulders tense, the silence dragging on, only broken by the slide of the makeshift needle through fabric. 

Just when Liu Qingge decides to ignore that he’d spoken at all, Luo Binghe gives a decisive hum. 

“We would rebuild this wall first.” He pats at the broken stone behind him. “I bet the stone was sourced somewhere local. Or if we can’t find more stone, we could use some of the wood from the trees we passed in the beginning. It would take a while, walking back and forth, but we have nothing but time.”

This story is different from any of Luo Binghe’s imagining before. There’s no fake family or friends Liu Qingge’s talking with. No fake scenario where Liu Qingge and Luo Binghe are just visiting. Liu Qingge’s neck grows warm, his fists scrunching his robe. 

“Eventually, with enough effort and gathering, I think I’d try to make a garden. I saw a place–it looked like a city center.” Luo Binghe glances back at Liu Qingge, expression softening. “I would grow root vegetables and herbs and all sorts of things for our meals.”

“Ridiculous. What would I be doing, just standing around?”

“Of course not.” Luo Binghe’s arm stretches out, brushing against the ground. “Shishu would be furnishing the house of course. Monster skins to sleep under, wool harvested, something carved to sit on. Liu Qingge is skilled with his hands and his sword. He’d never be idle while someone else did all the work.”

The wistful turn to the conversation isn’t what Liu Qingge intended, either. Not for the first time, he curses his inadequate conversational skills. His chest aches, all that pressure seeping in through cracks he had never noticed. It sounds nice , he finds himself thinking. Restful. 

“We’d build this wall next,” Luo Binghe leans closer to points behind Liu Qingge. “No windows, no doors. We’d cover the whole thing, top to bottom, in diagrams of what we’d hunted, unravelling how they work and move. In fact, this would be an office of sorts. We’d dissect and disassemble monsters, parting out what we could use, studying what we couldn’t.” Luo Binghe hums, moving to the opposite side of the boundaries of the room. His unpatched robe rests forgotten and folded where he’d been sitting. “A table, thick and sturdy, right here. I’d have to build something lighter for the tools.”

“I thought I was building things?” Liu Qingge rests his head on his hand, elbow propped on his knee. “Now you’re stealing my jobs, too?”

“Mm. You build the table. I’ll build the cart for the tools. We’ll probably have to scavenge the tools from what we can find around the towns.” Luo Binghe waves for Liu Qingge to join him where he stands at the end of their imaginary table. “Come, shishu, stand beside me while we observe the white faced monkey. I wonder if his tail has any special properties? I wonder if his fur could be used to make something useful?”

“It was resistant to spiritual weapons. If we could refine it, we could try to make a cloak out of it.” Liu Qingge tries to see what Luo Binghe pretends to see. He can’t, not without closing his eyes. 

“We would try that then.” Luo Binghe nods, decisive over this daydream he’s concocted. “We’d try again, after a while, to leave. Once we conquered this place. Once we didn’t fear getting stuck. Imagine all the things we could show them if we explored all of this?”

Liu Qingge looks down at the empty floor. No table, no monkey monster, no garden outside. “Show who? By the time we finished, Cang Qiong Sect wouldn’t even remember us.”

Luo Binghe flinches, his hands dropping to his sides. “Would that be so bad?”

“Is it really so appealing?”

Luo Binghe turns, closer than Liu Qingge realized, brushing his hand over Liu Qingge’s shoulder. “I would be content to never return, Shishu. I spent more time in a cramped woodshed than I ever spent on the training fields or studying. The mountains never belonged to me.”

They don’t speak any more of monsters or gardens or hunting. They don’t speak at all. Liu Qingge doesn’t sleep. The hunch of Luo Binghe’s shoulders, the way he closes in on himself, he can tell Luo Binghe doesn’t either. The silence stretches between them, a new chasm and Liu Qingge can’t find where it started or how to stop it. Cheng Luan’s blade, sharp and quick and skilled as ever, is useless here. 

The next morning, Luo Binghe is the first to lead them down the hill towards the temple. Unnoticed in yesterday’s darkness is a road. The trek to the temple is the easiest they’ve had on this journey so far. The looming building, the long shadow cast without a sun, a battle building in Liu Qingge’s bones, approaches with no way for Liu Qingge to prepare. He doesn’t even know what he’s preparing for–it’s just a temple, probably empty, probably filled with dust and stale air. But he holds Cheng Luan’s hilt in a white knuckle grip, ready to pull her from her scabbard at barest provocation. 

“You said you’d trust this disciple to fight for himself if he had a sword?” Luo Binghe stands at the door, hands resting on the golden ring to pull it open. 

“Of course. You’ve given me no reason to doubt you.” Liu Qingge considers the last time they’d managed one of their spar sessions. Luo Binghe had held his own until the end. They hadn’t even broken the sticks they’d used. “We could even spar afterwards. No holding back.”

“I’m looking forward to it, shishu.” Luo Binghe pulls the door open. 

The screaming almost knocks Liu Qingge back. The owner of the voice is indiscernible. It may be one, or hundreds–Liu Qingge can’t tell over ringing in his ears, the impossible physical force of the sound. Luo Binghe crumples in front of him. Crawls into the only room behind the door. 

Liu Qingge’s vision blurs. His pulse won’t slow down, a pain building beneath his ribs that breaks through his teeth with deep red blood. “Luo Binghe!”

“Sorry, Sishu.” Luo Binghe pushes himself to his feet. Liu Qingge can’t see him, can’t see through the black wall he can’t push himself to cross. “Your disciple found a sword.”

The screaming stops as abruptly as it started. Liu Qingge forces himself to calm, forces his ears to work again after their attack. “Luo Binghe!”

Through the pain still vibrating through his skull, Liu Qingge thinks he can hear other sounds. Familiar sounds, far away, as if almost from a dream. 

“Would Shishu come here? This disciple needs help.”

His steps are unsteady as he stumbles his way into the temple. He doesn’t know what to expect. A trap? A beast? What he doesn’t expect is Luo Binghe standing in the center of the room holding a black sword, tainted red as if blood was forged into the very steel of the blade. He looks different–bigger, taller, wider. Liu Qingge can see black dipped claws, the demon mark bright where it lights Luo Binghe’s features. His eyes are red, no longer brimming with the dark depths Liu Qingge has grown familiar with. 

“Luo Binghe?” His throat is dry, scratchy. “You–”

“It’s me, shishu. Does Liu-shishu still trust his disciple?”

“Tch.” Liu Qingge moves more quickly, taking a few sidesteps to avoid the unusual blade. “A sword doesn’t make me afraid of you, Luo Binghe.”

“Good,” The word breaks when it leaves Luo Binghe’s mouth, but the grip that pulls Liu Qingge to him doesn’t hesitate. “Thank you, Liu Qingge.”

The kiss is brief, more a soft press of lips to his that ends before Liu Qingge even has a chance to understand it happened. In the second of Luo Binghe’s lips on his, Liu Qingge has several thoughts. Soft. Warm. Why? And then, when Luo Binghe pulls back, red-ringed eyes tracing over his face, Liu Qingge remembers himself. Inappropriate!  

It’s the last thought he has before he’s being shoved back. Back through nothing–the stone he expects to knock the breath from him never hits. He falls, and falls, and lands on top of someone . 

“Liu Qingge?!”

His head bangs into Shang Qinghua’s shoulder, the body beneath him full of bones and angles that bruise immediately upon impact. He waits for the sound of another body falling behind him, for any proof that Luo Binghe followed. 

“Liu Qingge! How’d you get here? Where’s Luo Binghe?”

His hand closes over whatever it sits on, until he can hear the bones between his fingers creak. “You are going to tell me everything you know, Shang Qinghua. And then we’re going back for him.”

The rodent man’s face scrunches, his eyes darting towards the ceiling. They’re in his rooms. Liu Qingge’s almost certain he fell on Shang Qinghua, who fell on his desk, which now lay scattered beneath them. “I’m afraid you can’t, Liu-shidi. He’s got Xin Mo now. Only he can get himself out of there.”

And for three years, no matter how Liu Qingge tries, he learns nothing else of what has happened to Luo Binghe.