Chapter Text
Shen Jiu could feel the heat of the Qiu Estate against his back still.
In the end, the breaking of his chains had proven easy, in a way he hadn’t fully realized until it was done- with flames licking up the walls and a bloodied blade clutched trembling in one hand, and the cool fingers of his one respite in the other.
In truth, Shen Jiu had hoped that Qiu Haitang would have recovered. She was a young woman in otherwise good and steady health- with the money and status to afford a proper physician. Her brother, even as the sadist he was, doted on her. When the first few, small coughs persisted, he hunted down every trace of worthy medicine he could find.
Shen Jiu had spent hours by her bedside, slowly reading her stories as she smiled at him weakly. With time, their patterns shifted, and she was soon asking for him to braid her hair, rather than posing him like a doll she enjoyed decorating.
For the first time in ages, he even tried to pray to whatever god might be listening that she would become well again- his one and only bastion of light in that otherwise dark and horrible place he’d become trapped in.
He should have known better than to trust in the flimsy favor of Gods.
Qiu Haitang died the week before the lunar New Year, her breath and skin as still and cold as a true doll. Part of Shen Jiu mourned, as much as he might know how- but the far greater part of him was occupied trying to avoid a new danger- his Master no longer had a reason to pretend.
The morning her body was discovered, Shen Jiu was granted the knowledge that all his suffering unto that point truly had been child’s play. His Master used tools he had never dared to before- molded his body out of its natural shape until the force and the pressure and the ache and the screaming and the pain, Gods the PAIN, made him feel like surely, surely this would kill him.
However, maybe the Gods, or at least one, quiet one who found his cries to be pitiable enough, for at the apex, when he was sure he could endure no more, the Qiu Estate received a gentleman caller.
A cultivator, who smiled darkly and introduced himself with the surname Wu.
Shen Jiu had no idea what they discussed, or how it might have come to pass that anyone had heard the news of Haitang’s death at all, but Qiu Jianluo emerged from his office like a man half-drunken and crazed, yelling and shouting all manner of directions as he scurried towards the wing that had been shrouded in mourning.
In the midst of the chaos, Shen Jiu was tugged along, his hands tied together and half-thrown into the corner as the man made his preparations. He watched, confused at first as things took shape before him. Shen Jiu may not have been a cultivator, not yet, but even he could smell the stench of something rotten in the mutterings of his master.
And once the implements for what was obviously some kind of blood ritual were laid out and Qiu Jianluo began to shed his robes over his passed flesh and blood, Shen Jiu decided that he really couldn’t take it anymore.
Qiu Jianluo hadn’t even had time to really fight back, too consumed by his own inebriated lust over his sister’s body to notice Shen Jiu preparing to commit his first murder right behind him.
From there, well… he found it rather easier than expected to commit to the second… and the third… fourth… on and on until there was nothing left- no chains, no promises, and no masters.
Only him, and the corpse of girl who faced the fire with a blank gaze, as though the spoiled young mistress was realizing the inherent cruelty of the world at last.
Shen Jiu could feel the heat of the fire at his back… but he had his own problems to worry about now.
***
He wondered, as he walked through the li and li of woods and aimless farmlands, if he really would come across the bones of a young man who had left with a promise on his lips. If Yue Qi had died on his search for strength, how would Shen Jiu find him? Would he know him when he saw it?
After a week of stumbling and starving, moving with his only concern being to keep heading into the sunrise, he found bones. A long, straight thing with knobby bulbs on the end- maybe from a leg or an arm, sticking out of a burl of leaves under a bush. He had staggered, leaning against a fallen tree trunk as he heaved, and did his best to find his resolve.
He could practically see it before his eyes- his Qi-ge, so lost and cold and hungry, crawling under the bush when it was lush in the spring before last when they had parted, laid down for just a moment, just a rest over night maybe, where the world might not be so harsh, and never getting up again.
Surely he would have gone peacefully? But then, in the wild… peace was not the natural state.
Had he been gnawed on? Had all manner of forest foragers spilled forth, drawing the young, muscled meat from his bones, however meager it might have been? Had they ripped through his viscera, stolen his too-soft heart away, and carted away his brown hairs to make nests? If he looked at Qi-Ge’s skull, would there be maggots in his eyes and rats making nest between his forever-smiling teeth?
If there were, would he be angry at Shen Jiu if he forced them out so he could take his brother somewhere proper for his eternal rest?
In a heave of angry spite, Shen Jie resolved to not give a fuck about the animals, and crawled over to rustle through the wet, moldering debris. He grimaced, the slimy, stinking heap of leaves wafting the sickly-sweet scent of rot and decay through the area.
But in the end- Shen Jiu was left shaking once more.
The skull, where it lay hidden, still half attached to its spine, wasn’t human.
It wasn’t Qi-Ge.
Shen Jiu gagged once more, this time for entirely different reasons, and spent a great deal of time doing his best to not touch his person until he was able to thoroughly scrub himself in the next freezing stream he crossed.
***
His hand was smarting from where the wooden stick one of the vendors had been using to turn wares had struck against his fingers, prompting him to alternate between sticking the offended appendages in his mouth in an attempt to soothe the sting, and scarfing down the few, dirty scraps of food he had managed to swipe.
Stealing things had gotten so much harder once he hit his first minor growth spurt- he was too tall now to really get lost between the stalls coming and goings. But he refused to sit himself on some corner and cry again- he was too old now for that to lead to anything other than trouble.
If he had more time, he might try to find some random small work someone needed doing, but it was too often that such offers were either tricks that ended with being pummeled, or tricks where you returned for payment to find the benefactor long gone.
Shen Jiu didn’t have time for frivolous things like that. Yue Qi was out there somewhere, alone and probably being stupid.
“If he had a single piece of meat in his brain,” Shen Jiu thought to himself, “then he would have headed East- to Cang Qiong. I just have to get there.”
It was a well-known fact that of the prominent sects, the great Cang Qiong Mountain was the only one who allegedly held their students by measure of merit rather than politics or religion. Huan Hua Palace only took in the wealthy, Ti Yan Temple only those willing to be devout. Cang Qiong was different- every summer, they would allow anyone who was willing to attempt their entrance exams, no matter their creed, status, or faith. Granted, that still didn’t mean one would be accepted, but it was still more than most mortals had a chance at in their entire lives.
And if anyone could make it there, it would be Qi-Ge!
So Shen Jiu just had to keep going, his face headed day after day towards the sunrise. The stories said that once you reached the right place, there was no way you would be able to miss it. And he wouldn’t miss it. Not for the world.
Not for his Qi-Ge.
Shen Jiu shook out his bruised fingertips and slipped out into the crowds once again.
***
He was fairly sure he was dreaming.
Had he rolled over in the night and tumbled down the hillside? Maybe bashed his head in on too many rocks on the way down?
There was no way a town this tiny could be so… so…
Magnificent.
Shen Jiu, in the weeks since murder and fire changed his trajectories, had passed through and along the outskirts of many cities, be it on foot or in the back of any old fool’s rickety wagon in exchange for helping bale his straw or some other menial task.
(And if he had then stolen a donkey from a rude, drunken bastard’s stable and rode off in the middle of the night, well… that was over and done with.)
But this town (and based by size it truly could only be referred to as a town) was practically dripping with success! Businesses drooped with flags of fine silk, vendors hawked real actual jade medallions in the streets, and the people, even the shyest courtesan waving from the balcony of a brothel, were dressed at least well if not outright finely.
“Excuse me, Jie Jie,” Shen Jiu finally dared to ask, approaching one of the provocative girls on the street level who wore a dress of beautiful green and blue. “What town is this?”
“New around?” she tittered, her painted lips tilting in a sweet smile. “Didi is in Tong Town, welcome. Would Didi like to stay and hear about some of the… enjoyments our town has to offer?”
He coughed, “Ah, no, thank you. I have someone I need to find before anything else.”
“Ah,” the courtesan pouted, although she seemed to be teasing more than actually upset at the rejection. “So filial. You should hurry and find them so you can come have some fun!”
“Perhaps Jie Jie could lend a hand,” he answered, trying to put on a sweet, sincere air. “My friend is with Cang Qiong, could she point this one in the right direction?”
The young lady smiled, and for a moment Shen Jiu thought she looked rather like Qiu Haitang when she laughed, but shook the feeling off quickly.
“Didi!” she giggled. “You must not be very good at directions if you can’t find what’s right in front of your face!” She pointed down the street. “Follow the curve down the road, all the way to the gate hanging the many colored flags. If you get lost from there, then there really is no helping you!”
Shen Jiu offered a bow of thanks, but before he could truly rise, there was the faint, fast touch of lips to his temple and the courtesan swanned inside in a river of green and blue silks.
The road curved back and forth a great deal, cutting around the edge of the large outcropping that Tong Town had been settled under, but eventually he did come to a large arched gate, where twelve thin flags hung from the top post, each dancing with colorful patterns.
And beyond, past a dozen flights of what must be thousands and thousands of steps, like Heaven Itself had opened, was the sprawling, immortal den of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.
The grand image was somewhat disturbed by the ant-like line of people in neat brown and yellow uniforms, unloading a caravan of crates onto smaller carts and pullies, winding up one of the paths in a rather chaotic line.
“Just hold on, Qi-Ge,” Shen Jiu whispered as he headed for the group. “Xiao-Jiu is coming.”