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Luo Binghe comes back to himself from the clinging madness of Mobei-Jun's attack to find the world wavering at its edges. He blinks his eyes several times, head drunkenly tilting this way and that as he attempts to re-establish his internal equilibrium. He really...didn't expect the breaking of his seal to be this violent, either in the effort used to break it or in the effects that it would have on him.
Then again, as Mobei-Jun attacked him, a large part of him thought that the demon might simply kill him then and there. He'd certainly attacked the two of them with enough ferocity—
"Shizun," Luo Binghe gasps soundlessly. His head swings toward his master's last known position, his legs scrambling to get underneath him so that he can push himself up.
Shizun was screaming. Luo Binghe remembers that. Shizun was screaming, and Luo Binghe was running to help him when Mobei-Jun grabbed him, and then, at his touch on Luo Binghe's forehead, the world dissolved into pain.
Luo Binghe manages to stand, if just barely. He nearly collapses right back down to the ground, but forces himself with iron will to remain upright. He staggers toward Shizun.
Shizun, who last Luo Binghe saw was a writhing mess upon the ground, hands clawing at himself, but is now upright in a half-kneel. Shizun, who was screaming, and he may no longer be doing so, but there's a rasp to his voice as he mutters disjointedly to himself. Blood cakes most of his forehead and the entire left side of his face, dripping down from a wound somewhere in his hairline. His eyes are distant and unseeing. Xiu Ya is discarded, unsheathed, at his side; his hands rest in his lap, fingers flexing spasmodically.
It's only when Luo Binghe is closer that he can make out what Shizun is saying.
"Liar," Shizun says. His fingers curl in place again, his shoulder tense, and he wears a terrifying scowl as he snarls, "Liar. You liar, you—“
"Shizun," Luo Binghe says, trembling as he continues to approach. Shizun can be angry at him all he wants, but Luo Binghe needs to know that he’s all right. "Shizun, I'm sorry. I was going to tell you, I swear I was going to tell you."
"You promised me!" Shizun howls, suddenly and unexpectedly. "You lied to me!" He bends at the waist, choking and coughing, and Luo Binghe crashes down to his knees at Shen Qingqiu’s side, rubbing at his master's back.
He...doesn't think Shizun is talking to him.
"Bastard," Shizun chokes out. "You made me think—made me—I can't, I can't do it—”
"Shizun," Luo Binghe says. "Shizun, it's all right." Is this a qi deviation? Should Luo Binghe call for aid? "Your Binghe is here."
Shizun wheezes out another breath, then asks, "Binghe?"
"Yes," Luo Binghe says. "Yes, yes, your Binghe. Your disciple, I—”
Shizun hauls himself fully upright and clings. His hands clench around Luo Binghe's biceps with bruising force, strong enough that Luo Binghe half thinks Shizun is attempting to break the bones beneath. More likely is that he underestimates how hard he's holding, because Shizun's eyes are wild as he stares into Luo Binghe's own.
This close, looking directly at him, Luo Binghe can make out what's beneath the blood covering Shizun's forehead.
He pulls in a sharp breath.
There, pulsing like a heartbeat, is a flamelike demonic sigil.
It shines and then dims, shines and then dims, remaining dark for longer than it remains lit, and it—it doesn't seem right. It's like it's half-finished, a calligraphy project interrupted in the middle when its writer was summoned away.
What in the ten courts of hell...? Meng Mo murmurs in the back of Luo Binghe's head. That mark—it can't be. If he has that, then—
Normally, Luo Binghe would immediately press his demonic tutor for more information. Meng Mo obviously knows more about what’s going on with Shizun than the obvious, and he clearly recognizes whatever Shizun’s demonic heritage (Shizun’s demonic heritage!) is. They don’t have time for a history lesson, though. Luo Binghe can have Meng Mo fill him in on what he needs to know later. He shunts his tutor aside in his mind, blocking out his voice as best he can; there are more important matters for him to attend to right now.
"Binghe," Shizun repeats. "You're all right, you're safe, you—shut up! Shut up, I don't want to hear it!" Shizun shakes his head roughly.
Luo Binghe’s presence drew Shizun back to the here and now, but the disruption to his qi, the way his mind has been unsettled, isn’t resolved.
"It's not real," Luo Binghe says. "Whatever Shizun thinks he's hearing, it's not real. I'm real, Shizun. Focus on me."
Shizun mouths wordlessly, a noiseless repetition of shut up, shut up, shut up, before his eyes clear slightly again and he says, wavering, "Binghe?"
"I'm here," Luo Binghe says, his voice choked. It's so hard not to break out into tears at the way his master is suffering, but Shizun needs him to be strong. Luo Binghe told him that's why he needed strength: to protect that which is most important to him. To protect Shizun.
Now is the time to prove it.
"Why does it hurt, Binghe?" Shizun asks plaintively. "It hurts. I didn't think—but it hurts, and it's so—everything is so loud." His forehead tips down to rest against Luo Binghe's shoulder, Shizun hiding his face in his disciple's chest as his shoulders heave with repressed sobs. His fingers squeeze hard against Luo Binghe's biceps once more, but they’re human fingers: no claws are present to tear their way through array-toughed silk. Luo Binghe's arms—his newly demonic hands, his blackened, sharp-tipped fingers—rise to encircle his hurting master.
Meng Mo said that Luo Binghe had a seal placed upon him, that all his demonic ancestry was hidden behind it, that he couldn’t tell what type of demon he was because it was buried so deeply inside him. What that ice demon did...he must have ripped away the seal in its entirety, forcing him to undergo a metamorphosis and thereby revealing everything about Luo Binghe’s demon half all at once.
Whatever he did to Shizun...wasn't that.
"I can't," Shizun whispers, "I can't, I can’t—stop it, shut up, I can’t—I—I—” He whines high in the back of his throat. “L-leave me alone, leave me, leave—”
"I won't leave you," Luo Binghe says, even when he's not sure Shizun is talking to him.
"You have to," Shizun says.
Before Luo Binghe can open his mouth to protest again, he’s ripped away from Shizun. No, not ripped away—thrown. He's sent rolling nearly a dozen feet away. By the time he gets back to his feet, Shizun has made his own way upright.
He can’t hide the way he sways in place. Luo Binghe should be next to him, supporting him. He edges a step closer toward his master, hoping to prevent Shizun from having any kind of defensive reaction.
"You have to go," Shizun says. He watches Binghe take that step forward; then his eyes dart around the clearing, up toward the sky, behind Luo Binghe, and at last land on his disciple's face. "Binghe, you have to run."
"What is Shizun talking about?" Luo Binghe cries. He takes another step.
"I thought I could protect you," Shizun says, clearly miserable. "I thought maybe I would find a way to—but Luo Binghe won't be safe if he stays here. With his seal lifted..."
He knew I was sealed, Luo Binghe realizes hysterically. Because he was sealed, too? Is that it? Like recognizing like? Shizun, oh Shizun, how long have you known?
And...
"Shizun, that's true for you, too!" Luo Binghe argues. "Shizun won't be any safer than I would be, so—so if we have to run, let's run together! I'll protect Shizun and Shizun will protect me, like we're supposed to, as long as we're together."
Shizun smiles. "Shizun will protect you," he says. He stoops down, picking up Xiu Ya from the ground. He's not careful enough as he does so: his trembling left hand catches against Xiu Ya's blade, blood welling quickly in place against his palm. Luo Binghe lurches several paces forward this time, heart in his throat.
Shizun drives him right back, leaving a bloodied handprint against the front of his robes. Then he slides Xiu Ya into its scabbard and shoves the sword into Luo Binghe's arms.
"Xiu Ya will aid you," Shizun says. "You'll need a sword, with Zheng Yang shattered."
"No," Luo Binghe says. He wishes he could dump Xiu Ya onto the ground in abject refusal of this whole situation, but he can't bring himself to disrespect Shizun's sword in such a way. "No, we're going together!"
Shizun wobbles, tilting toward one side. He coughs, dark blood spilling past his lips. "I know," he says, and Luo Binghe's stomach sinks at the tone, because it's directed away from him in the way that says Shizun is losing his grip on reality again. He’s been holding it together so well, but cognizance is clearly fading. "I know, so shut up!"
"Let me help you," Luo Binghe begs.
"I'm sorry," Shizun says. He staggers forward, close enough so that he can lay a kiss against Luo Binghe's brow. His voice is terribly quiet as he continues. "I'm so sorry. But Binghe is strong. He can make it. I can—I’ll take the blame, if it comes to it."
"No," Luo Binghe whispers. "Shizun, you're not thinking clearly."
What does he mean, take the blame? Take the blame for what?
"A demon in disguise," Shizun murmurs, "hiding in the midst of one of the righteous sects...of course he would kill the only witness to his unmasking. It's what a villain would do."
"Shizun...?"
Ever since he got close enough to Luo Binghe to hand over Xiu Ya, Shizun has been shuffling them slowly backwards. Closer to the burning heat of the Endless Abyss. Howls rise up from it, demonic qi blazing bright and casting strange, warped shadows around them. Luo Binghe's heel lands right on the edge of it. Dirt crumbles, rocks tumbling away. He tries to lean forward, to curl into Shizun’s chest, to shelter in the circle of his arms, where he can make his case, where he can make Shizun listen to him—
"Binghe is strong," Shizun says. "Survive. Come back. And know that, even if this master is no longer here, you will always have a home on Qing Jing Peak."
No!
"Shizun, don't!" Luo Binghe screams, but it's too late. Shizun's hands push him, and before he knows it, before he can do anything to stop it, before he can draw Xiu Ya from its sheath....
He's already falling into the Abyss.
Shen Qingqiu can't think.
Mobei-Jun pressed his finger against his forehead and the world dissolved not into ice, but fire. Everything is gone, burnt up in the conflagration, Shen Qingqiu unsure how he could possibly put it out. He knows—he knows he has to—this is at least a little familiar, isn't it? Shouldn't he know this? Shouldn't he—isn't he supposed to—he read—he knows—he—
[Warning!] shrieks the System. [Mandatory Critical Quest: “The Endless Abyss and Endless Hatred, a Sky Filled with Crystal Frost and Tears of Blood” has officially begun! If it is not successfully completed, twenty thousand Protagonist Satisfaction Points will be deducted!]
Shen Qingqiu’s mind snags on the tiniest, most inconsequential detail of it.
Twenty thousand?
But the System told him ten thousand originally. That’s the goal he was striving toward, that’s the goal he’d hoped to reach by following the System’s whole [Secret Questline: “The Two-Fold Path: Autumn’s Darkness Among Heavenly Tribulations”] plot line. He’d cleared so many different parts of the quest, accepting Meng Mo as a part-time tutor, secretly (re-)learning demonic cultivation as well as the dream arts like Luo Binghe, diving into the Original Goods’ past, uncovering hidden memories, earning all the points he possibly could—
All for this?
“Liar,” Shen Qingqiu hisses. “Liar. You liar, you—” bastard of a System, how dare it?! How dare it trick him again, always leading him around by his nose, so that even when he thinks he’s outsmarted it, it always has some final trick to punish him for worming his way around its requirements.
It changes the game every time it wants, and Shen Qingqiu has no recourse.
[Mandatory Critical Quest: “Endless Abyss and Endless Hatred, a Sky Filled with Crystal Frost and Tears of Blood” must be completed!] the System blares again. [Requirements for avoiding Mandatory Critical Quest have not been fulfilled! Host has not completed prerequisite quests to avoid this Mandatory Critical Quest nor has Host gained enough B-Points or Protagonist Satisfaction Points.] A pause. [Continue working hard, Host!]
Burning rage froths inside him.
You fucking—! Even if I had, you never would have let me avoid this, would you?! Even when—
“You promised me!”
But that never mattered at all, because you never meant it, because—
“You lied to me!”
[This System didn’t lie. Outside factors caused sudden point requirement increases. If Host wished to avoid Mandatory Critical Quest, he knew what he had to do. Warning! Time to complete Mandatory Critical Quest is now less than nine minutes!]
“Bastard,” Shen Qingqiu chokes out. System, you absolute bastard, you evil, merciless, unfeeling, shitty goddamn AI! “You made me think—made me—” A timer flashes up in front of him. The System is mocking him. “I can’t, I can’t do it—”
Everything is so loud. He can't think. His head is throbbing; his fingertips ache; his mouth feels like someone's performing a root canal on him without anesthesia; his blood surges in his veins and he's too aware of it, which is perhaps the most disturbing part of this whole experience. If he thinks too hard, concentrating on that sensation, he almost thinks he can feel each individual cell moving through his veins, pumping into his heart and lungs and liver and spleen and up into his brain and toward his extremities and it's maddening because one moment he can keep track of it all and then the next it's gone again, slipped beyond his reach, and his blood isn't still but he's no longer hyperaware of it and that should be a blessing but instead he's panicking because he should be able to and what's wrong with him that he can't and what's wrong with him and what’s happening to him and—?!
And then—
"Binghe," he gasps, clinging to his sole safe haven.
He can still feel too much of himself, the ways that his power pulses in waves. The System is still screaming in his ear. He still hurts all over. But with Binghe as his anchor, he's able to drag rationality back to himself. He's able to piece together what's going on.
His seal—one of them at least, because the Original Goods has that damned double layer of seals—broke.
He nearly starts laughing hysterically. He probably should have seen this coming, shouldn't he? After all, Luo Binghe's seal cracked at the edge of the Abyss; if Shen Qingqiu was also a secret demon, then what better place for his seal to crack than simultaneously with his disciple's? Narrative parallels and all that.
Shen Qingqiu doesn't want to have to throw his Binghe into the Abyss. He can't bear the thought of it. He clutches at Luo Binghe, holding his disciple as tight as he possibly can.
“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says. “You’re all right, you’re safe, you—”
[Mandatory Critical Quest time remaining: six minutes!] the System shrills.
“Shut up!” Shen Qingqiu spits at the System. “Shut up, I don’t want to hear it!”
He isn’t going to do it, he isn’t, he isn’t, he doesn’t want to!
(He doesn’t have a choice.)
Shut up, he thinks to himself this time. Shut up, shut up, there has to be some way…there has to be a better way than…
Oh, if he could just think!
Why does it have to hurt so much? He didn’t think it would hurt so much.
What the hell is going on with you? Meng Mo demands from inside his head. He must have bridged the gap between Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu. Usually he doesn’t do that outside of their pre-arranged night-time meetings, carefully chosen so that they don’t interfere with Luo Binghe’s own lessons. Kid, you've got to regain control of yourself.
Control, control, ah! He doesn’t think he’s ever felt less in control.
He’s going to have to…he’s really going to have to…
But he doesn’t have to make it hurt, does he? He promised he would protect Luo Binghe. In a sideways sort of way, maybe he can still do that.
Meng Mo, Shen Qingqiu thinks in return. He can't even muster the will to argue against the moniker of 'kid' the way that he usually does, no matter how old the dream demon may be in comparison to him. Elder, please. This Shen must ask you for a favor.
Your disciple is panicking, Meng Mo observes. How about you calm yourself down first, so that you can get yourself and him out of here, hm? There's no use in my host and potential host both dying here. Especially not when you're...
Can't run, Shen Qingqiu thinks dazedly. I can't run. I'll give us away, I—I can’t—I need Elder Meng Mo to do a favor for me. He doesn't wait for Meng Mo to agree. He barrels on with, Explain it to him, will you? I'd hoped I could—but now—and I can’t—so tell him for me, won't you? Tell Binghe that Shizun is sorry. He didn't mean for it to turn out like this.
Then, brutally, using all that Meng Mo ever taught him plus the tricks Shen Yuan read Bing-ge using in the web-novel, Shen Qingqiu shuts Meng Mo out of his mind, shoving his consciousness back across the gap toward Luo Binghe.
Kid! is the last, protesting noise he hears from his demonic mentor.
I can’t hurt Binghe, Shen Qingqiu thinks. I can’t, I can’t—
[Mandatory Critical Quest time remaining: two minutes!]
Stop it! I’m already doing what you want so shut up, why don’t you?! I just—I can’t hurt him. If I can’t and I know I can’t then—then—
“Leave me,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Alone. Leave me. Leave—”
“I won’t leave you,” his foolish, too loyal, white lotus disciple says.
So Shen Qingqiu makes him.
It’s better this way, he thinks when the deed is done.
Shen Qingqiu would have given almost anything to avoid having to push Luo Binghe, to keep him out of the Abyss, but the circumstances conspired against them. He tried so hard, but he failed. This was the only way to keep Luo Binghe safe.
(Right? This was the only way, wasn’t it?
Why is it still so hard to think?)
Luo Binghe’s seal was completely shattered. He’ll have access to all his powers down there in the Abyss, the full strength and healing abilities of a Heavenly Demon, a demonic core to accompany his lovingly tended-to golden core. Shen Qingqiu has taught his Binghe everything he possibly could, whether that be regarding cultivation, fighting, monsters, or survival. He gave Luo Binghe his sword, so that his disciple wouldn’t have to fight his way through the Abyss using only his teeth and claws.
(He’ll be fine. He has to be.)
…If Shen Qingqiu is unable to disguise himself, if he’s executed for being a demon, will Xiu Ya be protected by the distance between them? Will it continue to aid Luo Binghe in the Abyss, or will it—even in a different dimension—shatter when he dies?
Shen Qingqiu prays that it won’t.
The easiest way to avoid that possibility, of course, is to make sure that it never comes to pass.
The System has gone silent. Finally. Shen Qingqiu did what it wanted, so it's shut up. Not even a congratulations for completing the Endless Abyss quest—nor for unsealing his demonic heritage, which was supposedly the next step in his secret demonic heritage questline.
Fucking cheapskate asshole.
Shen Qingqiu wavers where he stands, nearly losing his balance as the Endless Abyss finishes sealing itself. Then he gives up trying and collapses down to his knees.
His arms are empty. Not five minutes earlier, they were full of Luo Binghe.
Everything hurts. There are no distractions now. Just Shen Qingqiu and the aching pain.
The seals weren’t broken properly. Shen Qingqiu can tell that now, with a moment's calm to concentrate and nothing else to distract him.
The first layer was shattered in its entirety; Mobei-Jun's attack was calibrated to do so, or perhaps he really was attempting to kill Shen Qingqiu. At any rate, Shen Qingqiu can traces the remnants of that seal, the way that the fragments of it float around his meridians and try to settle over his golden core. It's not demonic energy: it feels all too human, with a tinge of malevolence and resentment of the kind that only human followers of the demonic path are capable of creating.
Far, far under the traces of that broken seal, Shen Qingqiu can almost feel that true demonic core which is buried beneath the second seal. The original seal, which must have, like Luo Binghe, been placed upon the Original Shen Qingqiu when he was a child. Mobei-Jun's attack didn't destroy that one. It can't even really be called 'cracked' in the same way that Luo Binghe's was in the web-novel. Instead, Mobei-Jun's energy bore down into that secondary seal after he broke the first one, and then the attack ran out of its energy before it could pierce all the way down into what lies beneath.
Maybe that's why Shen Qingqiu didn't get the award from the System. He didn't actually break the constrains on himself. His demonic powers have not been fully unsealed.
That's why he feels so terrible.
If he pushed, just the tiniest bit, he could do the last work of breaking the secondary seal himself. It's older than the one layered atop it. Luo Binghe had a seal placed atop him as an infant, worked by Huan Hua's head disciple herself: it was as strong as any human cultivator could have made it, and even then, it would have broken eventually. In all likelihood, without outside influence, it could have held until Luo Binghe was twenty, perhaps even older. With him practicing demonic cultivation, with his strength as a spiritual cultivator—they're probably lucky it lasted as long as it did.
Shen Qingqiu's seal is nowhere near that strong. Whoever placed it on the Original Goods was far from the powerhouse of Luo Binghe's birth mother; judging by the teetering structure of it, the slapdash way it was built, Shen Qingqiu wonders if they were a cultivator at all. They had some minor ability to work qi, as evidenced by their ability to place the seal at all, but from what he can sense of it, it's a mess, held together by a wish and a prayer and honestly? Its strength must have been bolstered by the seal laid on top of it, counterintuitive as that may seem.
It should have broken a long time ago. The Original Goods, like Luo Binghe, should have run into something in his teenage years or later that would have shaken the seal loose. Hell, even his qi deviations might have done that at some point! Instead, blessedly, the second seal buried his demonic core and traits even deeper inside himself, bolstering all the weak points that might have caved in and given him away.
Given the quasi-demonic signature attached to that second seal, plus the memories he managed to dig up as part of the ‘secret demon’ questline, Shen Qingqiu can't fool himself into believing that it was made out of altruistic desire to help disguise the Original Goods. Wu Yanzi placed it on him. Probably to stop his disciple from overtaking him in power or using his demonic strength to break free of his tutelage.
(The few memories Shen Qingqiu was able to uncover from the Original Goods’ time as Wu Yanzi’s disciple were…quite sobering.)
The point is, the original seal isn't enough to keep Shen Qingqiu's powers contained, but nor has it faltered enough to actually allow them to break free. Shen Qingqiu is stuck in a kind of agonizing limbo, almost demonic but not quite, body straining toward his true form but constantly falling short, whatever minor shapeshifting talent he has unable to complete itself—claws trying to grow, teeth trying to sharpen, new core attempting to spin, blood burning as it attempts to feed all the different changes—and Shen Qingqiu will go mad with it unless he can force himself into one state or another.
Given the situation that he's in—the location—the spiritual sword that he needs to keep unbroken down there in the Endless Abyss—his choice is clear.
He needs to reseal himself.
It's fortunate that he did his own research into seals over the past three years. Ever since he decided to take up the System's ‘secret demon’ quest line, he's been preparing for the day when he might have to destroy the seals on himself.
And if he knows how to destroy the seals, he knows equally well how they were made.
He doesn't want to place a second seal on top of the first one. Wu Yanzi's seal was placed on top of another that was, if not particularly well-made, at least solid enough to act as the structure upon which his newer seal could rest. If Shen Qingqiu tried to place another seal on this one right now, he's pretty sure the base seal would collapse completely under the strain, leaving Shen Qingqiu completely unsealed, revealed as a demon, and quite possibly suffering a severe qi deviation.
He isn't all that hopeful he'll escape this mess without a qi deviation, actually, but at least it won't be the devastating kind that would most likely kill him. Heavenly Demons could tank the damage from a seal being forcibly removed or collapsing. Luo Binghe just handily proved that himself.
Shen Qingqiu doubts he would be so lucky, no matter what kind of demon he turns out to be.
So: fixing the seal.
It's dangerous, but Shen Qingqiu sinks down into deep meditation. He needs to have as clear a view of the seal and his energies as he can, and the type of meditation that he used in the Lingxi Caves is near, though not quite, what he needs here and now. He doesn't have time to carefully cultivate over the span of months until his energies are in equilibrium. This is going to be a slapdash, quick-and-dirty affair, a patch on the hole inside him.
All it has to do is last long enough.
His golden core blooms in his mind's eye. Pulsing half a heartbeat behind it, a dark shadow that's slightly out of phase, is what must be his demonic core.
...It's so small. Not even half the size of his golden core. Perhaps not even a third, even after spending three years carefully tending to it under Meng Mo’s instruction. Shen Qingqiu is almost afraid that he might accidentally snuff it out, that his golden core might overwhelm the poor thing, subsuming it in its entirety.
Even as he thinks that, the demonic core pulses, as if in protest.
You're strong, Shen Qingqiu thinks at it, strangely fond and sad at the same time. But I'm not ready for you yet. Why don't you do a bit more growing before I let you out, hm?
Gently, ever so gently, he pushes at that dark core. He grabs the edges of the seal, the darkness of that demonic core bleeding out from the cracks of it, and carefully fills in those cracks one at a time with sparkling, shining, golden, spiritual energy. Then, just as gently, he folds the edges of the seal back over the demonic core, until nary a speck of the darkness can be seen.
The secondary beat of a core in his lower dantian goes quiet and faded once more.
Shen Qingqiu misses it as soon as it’s gone. He wants it back. He wants—he wants to feel—
Whole.
Despite the agony, despite the way his body was neither human nor demon for those moments, despite the way said body made him suffer for the audacity of not being stuck between worlds and forms, there is a part of Shen Qingqiu that was helplessly, hopelessly pleased. That felt as though a broken part of himself, deep inside, had finally begun healing.
He’d suspected the seals were part of the reason his cultivation foundation was always so unsteady. If Shen Qingqiu is anything like Luo Binghe—and even his brief mental examination seems to have proven that he is—then he has a dual core system, allowing him to use both spiritual and true demonic cultivation, no matter how ridiculous and unscientific that may seem.
Wu Yanzi’s seal must have been interfering with him this whole time, squashing his abilities down deeper and more constrained than they ever should have been. Then he taught the Original Goods spiritual cultivation incorrectly, judging by the memories (the ‘introductory lessons’ he’d uncovered had made Shen Qingqiu seethe, knowing just how awry they must have twisted a young Shen Jiu’s meridians), all while Wu Yanzi’s poisonous qi filtered through his body and meridian system.
Maybe that’s what’s healing.
Or, Shen Qingqiu considers as the burning, squirming sensation in his blood refuses to cease, maybe it’s none of that. Maybe I was a demon just long enough to cure Without-A-Cure.
That's one good thing to come of this, he supposes. If it's true.
Because if not, then this qi deviation or whatever is happening to him right now just might kill him.
Binghe, is his last thought. Binghe, be strong. I know you can make it through. Be strong, be clever, and come back.