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1.
Shen Qingqiu hates Without-A-Cure, and he hates the looks that are going to be on his sect siblings’ faces when he comes crawling back to the mountain, and most of all, he hates Airplane’s shitty fucking worldbuilding. Papapa plants everywhere, poisons only cured by hopping on the Protagonist’s dick, unending suffering for all the people (Binghe) who deserve it least (still Binghe)—it makes Shen Qingqiu want to scream!
Though that could also be the way he’s currently dropping out of the sky.
Fortunately(?), he hits several trees on the way down. He lands with a bone-jarring thud, but he doesn’t think he’s actually broken anything.
Less fortunately, all the wind has been knocked out of him. Being a cultivator capable of holding his breath for upwards of ten minutes doesn’t matter against the atavistic part of his brain screaming at him in a panic that he’s dying. He flails in place, now doubly glad no one is here to see this, eventually managing to get himself onto his side. Just in time, too, because when air comes rushing back into his lungs he ends up coughing and wheezing frantically for a while before regaining equilibrium.
Shen Qingqiu lays there for a bit, half-curled on his side, eyes closed. There’s still a bit of a rasp to his breathing, but that will solve itself in time. He sweeps his body carefully, mentally checking everything, flexing muscles here and there. Good: his first thought upon crash-landing was correct. He doesn’t seem to have broken anything. He’ll have a plethora of bruises, and he thinks he might have rather severely sprained one of his ankles, and actually on considering it he may have hit his head, and he’s in the middle of a Without-A-Cure flare-up—but it could have all been so much worse.
Shen Qingqiu exhales shakily and opens his eyes.
Ah, he thinks. Fuck. I jinxed myself.
When he hit the ground, he rolled himself right into the middle of a meadow chock full of flowers. Unfamiliar ones at that, whose three petals shade from pale blue at the tips, down toward pink in the middle, with blinding white stamen poking out from the center…and he’s been lying here, breathing in its pollen, for who knows how long.
Shen Qingqiu scrambles to his feet, takes one awkward step, and crumples immediately back to the ground, sending another puff of pollen and flower petals up into the air. His ankle feels like it’s on fire. With how painful it is, he takes back his initial assessment: it may be broken after all.
Whether it is or not doesn’t matter. Shen Qingqiu’s most pressing concern is getting out of this damn meadow! It’s too late to keep from having dosed himself with pollen, but at the very least he can get himself out of the flower’s sphere of influence before it starts affecting him and he’s left (presumably) helpless. He’s really not eager to figure out what this flower does.
Please don’t be a fuck-or-die aphrodisiac, he pleads to the universe at large. Please be something that won’t kill me and I can handle by myself. He’s in the middle of nowhere with a busted ankle and no accessible qi. If he needs a partner to beat this, he’ll die. Do you hear that, System? You can’t let your scum villain die like that, right?! So please, please let this be something I can handle—
[This System is currently in Low Power Mode due to the separation from Power Source: Luo Binghe. Please address any questions to our AI Interface or reconnect with Power Source: Luo Binghe. Thanking Host for his understanding!]
Shen Qingqiu doesn’t waste his breath screaming in frustration. He continues to half-crawl, half-hop his way out of the meadow, on his hands and good leg, his bad ankle held awkwardly up in the air behind him. He can worry about treating his injuries (and potentially cutting his poor swollen foot out of its boot) later.
Just a bit further, Shen Qingqiu chants mentally. His arms are trembling, his heart beating far too quickly for this level of exertion, sweat beginning to collect and soak through his layers, leaving them clinging uncomfortably to him. Just a bit further, just a bit further…
Agony hooks him under the navel. His arms give way beneath him. He lands face-down in the flowers, sending another puff of pollen up his nose and into his mouth, and Shen Qingqiu can’t even worry about that thanks to the way his guts are ripping themselves apart.
He starts screaming at some point. He doesn’t stop until he thankfully passes out.
Shen Qingqiu wakes up, which is a pleasant surprise. When he’d lost consciousness, he’d figured that was it, that the flower fell more on the “die” side of Airplane’s typical fuck-or-die plants, with a side flavor of “in agonizing pain” just to keep things interesting. Instead he finds himself in much the same position as when he'd passed out, though it's past midday and fully into evening now.
He feels much better than he did right before he passed out. Whatever the effects of the flower were, the pain seems to have faded while he was unconscious. Mostly, anyway—he's sure some of the aches are leftover from his fall, but not all of them can be explained away in such a manner. His chest is tender, his hips and thighs ache in a bone-deep way, and he can't tell if the sensation around and beneath his stomach is pain or just nausea.
He's not dead. He's not indescribably horny. Both of those are wins in his book. He can go home and forget that any of this ever—
"Fuck!" Shen Qingqiu hisses. He twitched his feet in preparation to move and apparently his busted ankle did not appreciate his efforts. It only seems to have gotten worse since Shen Qingqiu passed out. He isn't sure how he's going to get back to Cang Qiong like this.
Then Shen Qingqiu belatedly registers what his ears just heard.
That's not what my voice sounds like.
He sits up, ignoring the protesting of his ankle. He stares downward at the—uh, the chest region. And it. Protrudes. More than it should, leaving a gentle curve in the front of Shen Qingqiu's Qing Jing robes—which, thank goodness, those are still the same robes that he was wearing earlier, he didn't die and transmigrate into someone else who happened to have landed in a very similar patch of flowers. Then he remembers the hook of pain in his guts and tentatively places one hand in his lap, feeling through the layers of fabric, and...
Yeah. His dick is definitely gone.
Oh my god, Shen Qingqiu thinks, and, I'm going to kill you, Airplane.
2.
Qi Qingqi can't say she expects to be called to Qian Cao. Especially not when the helpful disciple carrying the message for her shizun tells her that it's not regarding any of Qi Qingqi's own disciples, but one of her martial siblings.
Shen Qingqiu, to be precise.
Qi Qingqi has rather come around to her shixiong in the past several years, so it’s no hardship for her to agree to come and visit him on Qian Cao. If anything, she's surprised that it's her Shen Qingqiu is calling upon, rather than Liu Qingge, Yue Qingyuan, or even one of his own doted-upon disciples. She knows he was out on one of his little excursions recently—maybe he ran into a matter of interest for her along the way, and couldn't wait until the next time they were going to cross paths to tell her about it.
...Or he's been confined to Qian Cao and doesn't think whatever he found can wait long enough for him to heal and go find Qi Qingqi on his own.
Or, Qi Qingqi reflects bemusedly as she enters the exam room the disciple leads her toward, it could be none of those.
Shen Qingqiu and Mu Qingfang are both in the room, Shen Qingqiu sitting on the bed, one leg stretched out while Mu Qingfang hovers over it, muttering dire imprecations. Qi Qingqi is pretty sure that’s just to distract himself while they wait for Qi Qingqi to arrive: the ankle, peaking out of the hem of Shen Qingqiu’s patient robes, seems to be professionally wrapped and tended to. That’s not why Qi Qingqi has been called here.
“Qi-shimei,” Shen Qingqiu greets her. His voice isn’t that much higher than normal, but enough so that there’s a noticeable difference. She’s pretty sure Shen Qingqiu isn’t even trying to lower it back down to his normal register.
“Shen-shixiong,” Qi Qingqi says. “What—”
“Shijie,” Shen Qingqiu corrects.
Qi Qingqi blinks. “Pardon?”
“Shijie, not shixiong.”
“Apologies, Shijie,” Qi Qingqi says. Then, because she’s had many such similar discussions before, “Do you want to be called shijie or do you think you have to?”
Shen Qingqiu frowns. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”
This, too, is familiar ground. “You don’t have to be a woman just because of the way your body is shaped. You can be a man with a flower or a woman with a pillar.” Or both, or neither, or moving in between the two, but they can start here. “There are girls on my Xian Shu peak who have pillars. Doesn’t make them any less my girls.”
There’s also several young men scattered over the peaks who originally started on Xian Shu. Qi Qingqi was sad to see them go, but male disciples aren’t allowed to study on Xian Shu. They seem happy on their new peaks. Qi Qingqi still checks on in them from time to time, and no few of them have remained close to their former peak mates.
…Actually, she’s pretty sure at least one set of them are courting, but she’s pretending to stay out of that. Liu Mingyan fills her in on the important gossip.
“Oh,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Well. That’s—nice for them? But I’m a woman?” The sentence tilts upwards at the end, almost a question. Even so, it’s a firm response.
Huh. Isn’t that interesting?
“Were you a woman before you were hit by—whatever you were hit by?” Qi Qingqi asks, unable to help her curiosity.
Shen Qingqiu looks steadily more bewildered. And flustered. “No, I was a man.” Obviously, hangs in the air, unspoken but loud. “Look, that’s not what matters, I—Mu-shidi says that I’m going to be like this for the next year. This master had hoped Qi-shimei might forbear to teach her how to live as a woman, as this is unfamiliar ground.”
“It’s true,” Mu Qingfang says. “The length of the effects, I mean. Shen-shijie fell into a rather large patch of Heart’s Revelation Trillium.”
Oh, Qi Qingqi knows that one. Quite well, in fact. Its nectar is one of the main components in the most common elixir used to change one’s gender. It’s a regulated elixir, for all that its effects are milder—both in speed of effect and, crucially, pain—than the pollen of its flower, but there are still side effects one has to be aware of before and while using it. Qi Qingqi has spent plenty of time in negotiation with Qian Cao for her disciples who need it.
Mu Qingfang is significantly more willing to work with her regarding such matters than the previous would-be Peak Lord of Qian Cao. She’s so glad he ended up becoming Peak Lord instead. (And that she’d spent as much time as she did leveraging her position, the rumor mill, and Shang Qinghua’s surprising willingness to lead a prank war against the previous head disciple.)
“This is why,” Mu Qingfang continues, “Shen-shijie is supposed to take her medicine on time, have Liu Qingge clear her meridians, and be exceedingly careful when flying on Xiu Ya. Especially when alone.”
Shen Qingqiu frowns, very faintly, her gaze skating away. On anyone else, Qi Qingqi would almost call it a pout.
“The effects, as Shen-shijie mentioned, will last for at least the next year before wearing off on their own. I absolutely do not recommend attempting to dose yourself with any other sort of pollen, fruit, elixir, curse, or any other item or location that Shen-shijie or anyone else might think of or research, in some kind of futile attempt to reverse the effects of the Heart’s Revelation Trillium,” Mu Qingfang says, all in one breath. “If Shen-shijie is experiencing any sort of distress, whether mental, physical, or emotional, this shidi entreats her to please visit Qian Cao for help before making any decisions that can’t be taken back. We have resources to assist you or will be able to point you in directions of those who can.”
Ah, yes, the standard Qian Cao spiel. Qi Qingqi has been on the receiving end of it only once. She had an unpleasant month back during her second or third year in the sect, due to a similar situation to Shen Qingqiu’s, albeit involving a different plant. Qi Qingqi made good use of Qian Cao’s resources back then, and was unspeakably grateful when her body went back to the way she liked it.
If Shen Qingqiu doesn’t want to make use of Qian Cao, maybe Qi Qingqi can fill in for them. At the very least, Shen Qingqiu seems to trust her with this much of her new life.
“Is her ankle healed enough to get to Xian Shu?” Qi Qingqi asks Mu Qingfang.
“I would prefer she stays off it for at least another week. Two if possible,” Mu Qingfang says. “Her Without-A-Cure flare-up delayed the healing until she could get back here, but now that her qi is flowing again, it should heal quickly, despite the grade two sprain. Short walks only, Shen-shijie, as much as possible, and use your crutches.”
“Yes, Mu-shidi,” Shen Qingqiu says.
“If that’s the case,” Qi Qingqi says cheerfully, and scoops Shen Qingqiu up into her arms.
“Qi-shimei!” Shen Qingqiu squawks indignantly, though that doesn’t stop her from looping her arms around Qi Qingqi’s neck, the better to anchor herself. It has the side benefit of squishing her breasts ever so slightly against Qi Qingqi’s own.
…She never really understood Yue Qingyuan or Liu Qingge’s (or even that poor dead disciple of Shen Qingqiu’s) attraction to the Qing Jing Peak Lord, but she thinks she’s coming around to it now.
“I’m still in patient’s robes!” Shen Qingqiu protests, cheeks tinting pink. Qi Qingqi wants to bite them. Gently. “At least give me a moment to change! And you heard Mu Qingfang, I can still walk, you don’t have to carry me!”
“He said you can take short walks on crutches, and that it’s better for you not to,” Qi Qingqi says breezily. “You’ll be changing soon enough anyway. We’re very nearly of a height, so you should be able to fit into some of my robes while we work on getting you replacements…” Though she thinks Shen Qingqiu’s breasts are larger than hers, so they may have to adjust the fit of them. Qi Qingqi doesn’t envy her shijie the back pain she’s going to have to get used to—some women have all the bad luck.
With a spark of amusement in his eyes, Mu Qingfang hands off a (undoubtedly neatly packed) satchel, a qiankun pouch that must hold the aforementioned crutches and Xiu Ya, and a list of care instructions. Qi Qingqi accepts them gracefully—as much as she can while juggling her not-protesting-nearly-enough shijie—and then swans off toward Xian Shu, Shen Qingqiu blushing prettily in her hold the whole way.
An unfamiliar, if admittedly pretty, woman accosting Shang Qinghua in his own house upon his return from one of his most recent fetch-quests for Mobei-Jun was not on his to-do list. Nor even his possibilities list, though it probably should have been: you can’t make a plan for how to deal with something if you’ve never considered it might happen.
“I’m going to kill you,” the woman hisses.
“Ah, I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” Shang Qinghua says lightly.
His mind is racing even as one hand drops to his sword, his other sneakily toward one of the talismans he habitually carries up his sleeve. He doesn’t sense any demonic qi from the woman, but that isn’t a guarantee that she isn’t a member of some demonic faction that’s just surprisingly good at concealing their qi. He’s made a lot of enemies in his time in Mobei-Jun’s service—most but not all of whom are also Mobei-Jun’s enemies—and he could easily see one of them coming after him in the hopes of crippling Mobei-Jun’s defenses, spy network, and/or supply lines.
Then again, he can’t deny that this could be a purely human woman who’s attempting to assassinate him. Whether because she found out about his connection to Mobei-Jun—or worse, the connection Shang Qinghua has to the Immortal Alliance Conference invasion—or because she wants to disrupt supply lines for Cang Qiong, or because she has a grudge against Cang Qiong in general and chose him as a theoretically weaker target from among the Peak Lords, or because she bears some kind of personal grudge against him.
He has to say, though, she doesn’t seem to be a particularly good assassin. She’s too dolled up for that, and who announces that they’re here to kill you before actually attempting it? It’s unprofessional! Doomed for failure! The sort of thing—
The sort of thing that Cucumber-bro hisses at him all the time, whenever he runs up against some new, rediscovered, or remembered facet of Proud Immortal Demon Way he wants to complain about.
Shang Qinghua looks past the make-up and the intricate hairstyle and the cut and embellishment of the robes (and what those robes are putting on flattering display, damn), and sees…
“Cucumber-bro?” he asks incredulously. "What happened to you?"
"What do you think?!" Shen Qingqiu demands. "I fell into one of your stupid, inconveniently located wife-plot flower patches! Thanks to one of your other wife plots!"
Translation: Without-A-Cure fucked his bro over again. Or…his sis?
"Oops," Shang Qinghua says and, at the flaring of Shen Qingqiu's nostrils, "Or, uh, condolences?" Wait, that sounds bad. Shen Qingqiu seems to agree, going by the narrowing of those black-lined eyes. "I mean, congratulations? Fuck, I really don't know what you want from me." He finally lets go of his sword, shuffling further into his leisure house and closing the door behind himself. The privacy seals engage once he does, a precaution he's always glad to have when his king stops by unexpectedly. "Do you want some wine? I think I need wine."
"Idiot," Shen Qingqiu says, but then, fast on the heels of that, comes a grudging, "Yeah."
It's a surprisingly quiet time drinking with Shen Qingqiu. Usually they get into a bit once alcohol has greased the wheels, but on this particular occasion, they're both caught up in their own thoughts. Shang Qinghua was honestly expecting Shen Qingqiu to start yelling at him immediately, but no. Nothing.
"You look nice," Shang Qinghua says, several cups in. This particular wine isn't quite Zui Xian grade, so his cultivation is keeping him from being any more than kinda buzzed, starting to lean towards tipsy.
"Qi-shimei helped," Shen Qingqiu says, setting down empty cup number three. There's some lipstick left behind on the rim, a bold red which matches the fancy floral huadian painted on Shen Qingqiu’s forehead. "Trapped me on Xian Shu for two and a half weeks while my ankle healed and gave me a crash course on everything I might need to know. She finally let me go today.”
Clearly not without one last hurrah! Qi Qingqi must have been having fun.
"Huh," Shang Qinghua says. "So is this...permanent, or...?"
"Only for a year, we think," Shen Qingqiu says with a shrug. "According to Mu-shidi, I shouldn't attempt to do anything other than let the pollen run its course."
"Sorry, bro," Shang Qinghua says.
"Sis," Shen Qingqiu corrects a bit snottily—and a bit like this is something she's already said a lot. Shang Qinghua isn't going to touch on any of that, but makes a mental note. Shen Qingqiu refills her cup, taking a big swig of wine. "If this had happened a few years from now..."
"Oh, damn," Shang Qinghua says admiringly, immediately catching on to where Shen Qingqiu is going with this. "You wouldn't even need the mushroom body!" He pauses, because one year from now puts them several months over the three year mark, so the timing doesn’t work for that, but, "Do you think it's too late to try to nudge your mushroom body towards a female one? Talk about the ultimate disguise."
"Mm," Shen Qingqiu hums, considering. She swirls the cup in her hand, watching the wine slosh about. “Maybe. But even if this had happened later, the disguise never would have worked with this body. How long did it take for you to see through it?"
"Not long," Shang Qinghua admits. "It was the make-up that threw me off the most”—well, that and the breasts—“but after that, it was pretty easy to recognize who you were."
"That's what I thought," Shen Qingqiu says. She sets down her cup. Draws fabric from her sleeve. Affixes it over her face, until she's wearing the same sort of veil that Liu Mingyan does. "What about now?"
Shang Qinghua tilts his head to the side. He tries to take a step back, imagining that this is the woman he'd come across in his leisure house. If he didn't already know...
"It could work," he says after a long moment. She would have to be very careful, making sure she never removed the veil, along with flattening all identifying habits or tics from her behavior, but it could work. For a while, at least. "...You're not planning on running away, are you? I think it's too late at this point for that to be a viable plan, even if you kept dosing yourself with, uh, whatever you landed in. I mean, half the mountain has to know by now, right? It wouldn't take long for Luo Binghe to figure out he's looking for a woman instead."
Plus there's Without-A-Cure to think about. Shen Qingqiu won't be able to get by without having someone to clear her meridians at least once a month, if not more, and if you knew to look for someone utilizing those services—and Luo Binghe most certainly did—then it wouldn't take long to track Shen Qingqiu down.
Much better to rely on the mushroom body plan. That, at least, should actually work.
Shen Qingqiu waves a hand, brushing this (well-founded, genuinely important) interjection aside. "That's not what I'm after. I know I won't be able to escape Binghe like this. I'm trying to figure out my disguise for night hunts."
"Wait, why do you need a disguise for night hunts?"
"So I don't have to go through this same song and dance every single time I interact with anyone off the mountain who's ever heard of me," Shen Qingqiu snaps. "So that I don't have to explain or convince people that I am who I say I am. Especially since I'll be back in my other body in a year, and then I would have to go through the whole thing again! It was bad enough on Xian Shu; I shudder to think how the rest of the mountain would take it if I started openly walking around like this! I plan on having Yue Qingyuan tell everyone I've gone into seclusion; that should keep anyone outside the sect from wondering where 'Shen Qingqiu' has gone off to. But while I’m ‘in seclusion,’ I can't have people wondering if 'Shen Qingqiu' has a sister or, gods forbid, a daughter who's roaming around the jianghu. Can you imagine what they would start saying about me? No doubt they would find some way to twist it during my trial, whether they find out the truth later or not. I’m not dealing with that.”
“That makes sense,” Shang Qinghua says, who tends to doubt that this plan will be quite as easy to pull off as Shen Qingqiu thinks it will be, but he isn’t going to harsh his shijie’s vibe. Let that happen naturally. Or not, as the case may be! She’s clearly put a lot of thought into this. Shang Qinghua doubts he could change her mind even if he tried. “With the veil…yeah, it just might work.”
“Good,” Shen Qingqiu says, self-satisfied. “Now I just have to convince Zhangmen-shixiong.”
“Oh, he’s off the mountain right now,” Shang Qinghua says. “I bet you could slip right out. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right? And you know he’ll cover for you.”
“True,” Shen Qingqiu says. “And the fewer people who actually see me on the mountain, the fewer mouths there are to gossip…” Patently untrue, especially given Shen Qingqiu just spent two weeks on Xian Shu, but whatever soothes her worries. “Mm, I’ll need funds—Qi-shimei helped to commission new outfits for me, but those are for a Peak Lord, not a rogue cultivator, so I’ll need to get ones that match my disguise…at least I’ll be practicing inedia, so I won’t have to worry about learning to keep my face disguised while eating, I truly don’t know how Liu Mingyan does it…ah, but if Liu Qingge is going to keep clearing my meridians, we’ll have to figure out some way for him to meet up with me every so often…”
Shang Qinghua nudges Cucumber-sis’ wine cup closer to her, picks up his own, and settles in to listen to his fellow transmigrator’s impromptu planning session.
3.
“Huang-jie?” Jiang Zhongyi calls softly. Probably not for the first time.
Shen Qingqiu looks up, staring across the fire at her companion. Her mind feels slow and dull, the same way it gets when Ning Yingying comes to fetch her from the sword mound at the end of a long day.
How strange. She thought she was better at keeping it together while out of the sect. Then again, she almost always traveled alone before. Jiang Zhongyi is a recent addition to her routine.
“Apologies, Jiang Zhongyi,” Shen Qingqiu says. “This old lady was lost in thought.”
Always before, Jiang Zhongyi has allowed this to pass. Tonight, she asks, “What was Huang-jie thinking about?”
Shen Qingqiu doesn’t know what compels her to speak. Maybe it’s familiarity, the way Jiang Zhongyi has slotted her way into Shen Qingqiu’s life so easily, as though she’s a piece that Shen Qingqiu has been missing. Maybe it’s how her wavy hair tumbles down her back, barely held in place by several delicate and lovely lotus pins, which stand out like stars against the rich black of her hair and highlight the gentle brown of her eyes. Maybe it’s the fact that Jiang Zhongyi is talking to Huang Furong,1 the veiled rogue cultivator who will only exist until the turn of the year, at which point the Heart’s Revelation Trillium will wear off and Shen Qingqiu will be back in her original body.
Shen Qingqiu—Huang Furong—says, “Home.”
“…Will Huang-jie being heading back so soon, then?”
No. What’s the point? Whether she’s halfway across the jianghu or walking the grounds of Qing Jing, Shen Qingqiu can’t ever go home. Not to her original world, and not to the days when Luo Binghe was the one cooking her meals and keeping her company rather than a maiden she’s only known for weeks.
“No,” Shen Qingqiu says aloud. And, mostly to herself, “I wish…”
I could, catches in her throat. So does I weren’t such a coward and I could see him one last time and I had taken the System’s punishment at the Abyss.
But in this world, there’s no use for regrets and endless thoughts of if only I had. Besides, Shen Qingqiu will see Luo Binghe again. Luo Binghe is the one who will kill her (no, him) several years from now.
(Shen Qingqiu will never see that white lotus child again. She killed that child herself.)
Shen Qingqiu’s eyes catch once more on the pins in Jiang Zhongyi’s hair. She speaks no further that night.
“What of Jiang Zhongyi?” Shen Qingqiu asks when they’ve set up camp the next night.
The location they’re heading towards is fairly far out in the wilderness; even flying most of the day, they still have another half-day’s travel before they reach their destination. The rift that allowed the Abyssal White-Eyed Butcher Drake through to the Human Realm is long since sealed, but the villagers closest to it were able to point in the direction it went. It’s too dangerous to allow it to remain in the Human Realm, so Shen Qingqiu and Jiang Zhongyi will have to kill it.
“Beg pardon?” Jiang Zhongyi asks, looking up from where she stirs at her cooking pot. No matter how many times Shen Qingqiu gently refuses her food, Jiang Zhongyi persists in offering it to her.
“Where is home for Jiang Zhongyi?” Shen Qingqiu asks. Over the weeks since Jiang Zhongyi came into her life and began traveling with her, Jiang Zhongyi has often deflected her questions or otherwise focused on Shen Qingqiu. Shen Qingqiu finds she’s curious about her companion—and, selfishly, she wants to head off any more questions about herself in advance.
There is a long silence. Longer than is required from the question. Given her name, Shen Qingqiu has spent this whole time assuming Jiang Zhongyi was a member of one of the family sects, though possibly one who married out or otherwise decided to roam the jianghu rather than remaining in Yunmeng. Was she wrong about that…?
Jiang Zhongyi finally opens her mouth. She wets her lips, looking the most hesitant Shen Qingqiu has ever seen her.
“My home isn’t a place. It’s with a certain person,” Jiang Zhongyi says. “Wherever he is, that’s where this one is happiest.”
“Oh,” Shen Qingqiu says. How romantic! A young woman in the first blush of love, declaring that wherever her beloved is, is home to—
“But,” Shen Qingqiu says, in dawning realization, “Jiang Zhongyi, don’t you miss him? Traveling all over like you do—wouldn’t it be best to travel together, instead of with this old lady?”
Jiang Zhongyi offers Shen Qingqiu a truly heartbreaking smile. “That would be the best,” she says. “The most wonderful possibility I could imagine. Unfortunately…”
Please don’t say he’s dead, please don’t say he’s dead! Shen Qingqiu thinks. Jiang Zhongyi deserves so much better than that. She’s so caring, so considerate to civilians and Shen Qingqiu alike, an absolutely darling creature, a powerful cultivator, and—though Shen Qingqiu has never done any more than smell her meals across the campfire—an excellent cook. To have such a tragedy in her backstory would simply be unfair!
Though it would fall well in line with this world’s shitty backstories, clearing the way for a devastating beauty of a young woman like Jiang Zhongyi to later fall in love with Luo Binghe. Assuming, of course, that she survives that long. Shen Qingqiu doesn’t recognize her from Proud Immortal Demon Way, not even as a name dropped by a bereaved sister or cousin, and—well, hopefully that means she was a character in Airplane’s rough drafts. One who never made it into the final work.
More loss to the readership, to have missed out on Jiang Zhongyi! She could have been an excellent wife for Luo Binghe!
(So why does Shen Qingqiu’s chest hurt at that thought, even more than the possibility of Jiang Zhongyi’s tragic backstory?)
"We argued," Jiang Zhongyi says, drawing Shen Qingqiu from her thoughts. "He found out...I was going to confess to him, but before I could, it was exposed to him in the worst light possible. We argued. I...this one has stayed away from the sect in the time since. Sometimes I hope that if I went back, we could talk again, and I could somehow get him to understand.” She shakes her head. “Other times, I think that maybe he's better off without me, with all those other suitors vying for—”
"That can't be true," Shen Qingqiu objects sharply, cutting off this line of nonsense. "Oh, that fool of a man! Who could ever reject someone like you? Jiang Zhongyi, this old lady has only known you for such a short time, but you're an intelligent, compassionate, lovely, and brave young woman. Anyone who couldn't look past the circumstances of your—your forced confession doesn't deserve you!"
Who would ever reject a love confession from this woman in the first place?! Unless there was some sort of confounding factor, like the man being engaged or otherwise somehow an inappropriate match for Jiang Zhongyi, or vice versa. Even then, Shen Qingqiu is astounded by the foolishness of some people.
At least he isn't dead. As long as Jiang Zhongyi's love interest isn't dead, there's some hope that this could work out, isn't there?
"It means a lot that Huang-jie would say that," Jiang Zhongyi says, her lashes dipping, though not quickly enough for Shen Qingqiu to miss the faint shimmer of what might be tears. "I've been alone for a long time now, but Huang-jie has been the greatest comfort of my travels."
If that isn't a damning indictment of the jianghu, her sect, and the struggles that Jiang Zhongyi has been going through...
"Ai, come here," Shen Qingqiu mutters, standing so that she can walk around the fire, sit back down, and pull Jiang Zhongyi into her arms. The other woman is just short enough that, with a bit of repositioning, Shen Qingqiu is able to tuck Jiang Zhongyi’s head under her chin, rubbing soothingly at her back as Jiang Zhongyi's shoulders shake. Jiang Zhongyi's arms come up, clutching at Shen Qingqiu's back, fingers digging in tightly.
"How old are you to be crying like this?" Shen Qingqiu chides softly. "Over a man, no less. He's not worth it."
"He is," Jiang Zhongyi sniffles, somehow endeavoring to burrow even further into Shen Qingqiu's arms. "He's the best and kindest man this—this Zhongyi has ever known. I just want him to take me back."
Shen Qingqiu has never been in a real relationship. As Shen Yuan, he traded a few kisses with girls, but what girlfriends he had back then didn't last long. As Shen Qingqiu and then Huang Furong, she certainly hasn't gotten involved with anyone, mostly (in the case of the former) because of the dangers of Luo Binghe finding out he was dating one of his future wives or (for the latter) because she would be lying about who she was the whole time.
She mostly managed to foist off any adolescent drama related to burgeoning relationships off onto some of the more sympathetic hallmasters or, if all else failed, particularly sympathetic senior disciples. She learned how to handle homesickness and academic frustration and bullying and the small, petty jealousies of teenagers everywhere, but this specific kind of interpersonal drama is where she always drew the line.
So here and now, the sensation of a young person curled in her arms is familiar, but the topic of conversation is not. Shen Qingqiu is left adrift, unsure of how to handle this, wary of stepping wrong and causing further distress to Jiang Zhongyi.
She keeps rubbing at Jiang Zhongyi’s back. Eventually, when the crying has died down some, she says, “If he doesn’t hear you out—if he refuses to allow you to explain yourself—if you do everything in your power to clear up this misunderstanding—” Which surely can’t be as bad as Jiang Zhongyi is making it out to be! “—and he still treats you so poorly, then I say again: he doesn’t deserve you.” She presses a kiss to the top of Jiang Zhongyi’s head. “If it doesn’t work out with him, then come back to your Huang-jie, hm? This old lady isn’t sure she’s terribly entertaining company, but she’ll do what she can.”
Shen Qingqiu won’t be Huang Furong for that much longer—nor will she be free and alive for much longer than the next few years—but she can offer this paltry comfort to Jiang Zhongyi. And if Jiang Zhongyi can’t or doesn’t want to go back to her sect, depending on how her talk with her love interest goes, then perhaps Shen Qingqiu can offer this sweet young maiden a place in Cang Qiong.
Maybe she’ll even be able to convince Luo Binghe to end his revenge with Shen Qingqiu’s death, and allow Jiang Zhongyi to keep that offered spot on the mountain forever.
Ah, she can only hope.
“Huang-jie means it?” asks Jiang Zhongyi in a watery voice, not raising her face from Shen Qingqiu’s breast.
“I do,” Shen Qingqiu promises.
“Jiejie, I really…” Jiang Zhongyi trails off.
“I hope it works out for you,” Shen Qingqiu says, when it seems that Jiang Zhongyi isn’t going to continue. “If it doesn’t, then at least Jiang Zhongyi tried her best.”
“Yes,” Jiang Zhongyi says. Shen Qingqiu can’t quite figure out what emotion is shading her voice. “My very best. This one wouldn’t offer anything less when it comes to—him. Thanking Huang-jie.”
“Of course,” Shen Qingqiu says, and doesn’t say anything about it when Jiang Zhongyi stays the next quarter-shichen nestled in the circle of her arms.
4.
Luo Binghe’s original plan was to infiltrate Huan Hua Palace. He had it all thought out: he would place himself, purposefully injured, in the path of some of the disciples from Huan Hua. They would invite him back to their sect to recover and (either unprompted or thanks to careful maneuvering from Luo Binghe) offer to take him in as a guest disciple. From there, Luo Binghe would build his reputation as a righteous cultivator, one that Shizun wouldn’t be able to look at and see only a demon. And once he proved himself to Shizun, once he had the opportunity to ask Shizun why, he would be able to go home.
(Or not.
But at least he would know.)
It was a good plan. It lasts right up until Mobei-Jun lets slip what his spy told him: Shen Qingqiu is ‘in seclusion’ but in actuality wandering the jianghu in disguise, because Luo Binghe’s Shizun has terrible luck with poisons and managed to land in a truly staggering amount of Heart’s Revelation Trillium, such that she (and it is she, Luo Binghe confirms later, having threatened more information from his martial uncle) will be stuck in her new body for at least a year.
Shizun, how?
Luo Binghe immediately scraps his plans. They were only good so long as Shizun was safely under the protection of Cang Qiong. With Shizun roaming about like this, there’s too much that could go wrong—either with Luo Binghe’s plans or with Shizun’s personal safety.
Shizun is an eminently capable cultivator, one who taught Luo Binghe everything he knows, but not immune to danger. As this incident so clearly shows. Luo Binghe couldn’t bear it if anything happened to Shizun.
He’s not going to let Shizun run around all on her own. He can prove himself at her side rather than from a distance.
The problem with this is, well…Shizun has notions about propriety that Luo Binghe remembers both fondly and with bemused embarrassment. However much he tried to stay out of personal relationships on his peak, he was at the same time very concerned about making sure his female disciples had appropriate chaperones. And drilling into his male disciples’ heads the appropriate conduct he expected of them around female cultivators and unattached young women in general.
…Which means that Luo Binghe can’t shadow Shizun as himself, for obvious reasons, but nor can he disguise himself as a young man who might tag along at Shizun’s side. His thin-faced Shizun, while oblivious to the designs the men around him had upon his virtue, would surely refuse an unknown man as her traveling companion.
Luo Binghe fortunately has the exact artifact he needs for the situation: a pendant he’d discovered near immediately upon exiting the Abyss, while fighting his way through the Demon Realm. Luo Binghe is capable of a certain level of shapeshifting by merit of being a Heavenly Demon, but not to the extent that he would need to accompany Shizun for days or weeks at a time. The pendant neatly makes up for that gap.
He shapes his new body carefully. Perfectly human features, every demonic trait tucked away; hair as inky black as Shizun’s with only a hint of Luo Binghe’s curl to it; warm brown eyes; height just barely under that of his own when he was seventeen, back when Shizun loved him best; a curve to his smile that his mother had always had; the shape of his eyes and nose stolen from Ning Yingying; the slender length of his fingers stolen (again) from his master; the curve of his chest an echo of Liu Mingyan; the ratio of shoulders to hip, the muscle cording his arms and thighs, he keeps from his own body, if softened ever so slightly for a woman’s frame.
He stares at himself in a mirror carefully, judging his efforts, tweaking them slightly here and there, until he deems them sufficient. Xin Mo is layered in disguise and sealing talismans, the better to obscure the fact that it’s such an obviously demonic blade, and then Luo Binghe calls it good.
Jiang Zhongyi2 is born. A member of one of the smaller family sects that lived beyond the borders of the Four Great Sects, their name will lend verisimilitude to Luo Binghe’s fake background and credentials; it has the side benefit of connecting him to something that’s close to his name, which will hopefully aid in remembering to answer to it. He’s also aware, from Shizun’s assignments and assessments for his disciples, regarding the various powers in the jianghu, that the Jiang sect symbol is a lotus.
Shizun gave Luo Binghe a lotus belt ornament carved of white jade for his sixteenth birthday. It was left behind on Qing Jing Peak when Luo Binghe headed off to the Immortal Alliance Conference, but in its place, he now substitutes several hairpins carved in that same shape. Clues for Shizun to notice if she wishes; small details that allow Luo Binghe to feel closer to his true self and the reasons why he’s doing this, even if he must do it as someone else.
It’s a good plan, this new one. Luo Binghe can prove his righteousness right there at Shizun’s side. In disguise, yes, but the more he thinks about it, the more pleased he is by it. How could he ever be sure that joining Huan Hua would have worked? How would Shizun ever believe it, if she couldn’t see it from up close? And how else would she ever let Luo Binghe close again? How else would Luo Binghe be able to protect her? How would Shizun stay safe?
So you see, Luo Binghe didn’t have a choice.
“Huang-jie,” Luo Binghe says, getting up to his knees. He presses a hand against his chest, trying to hold the scraps of his robe against his chest, both to disguise the way his wounds are healing too quickly for a human and as a sop against his maiden self’s modesty. Ah, he really should have dodged that attack, but he was so busy covering for Shizun… “Are you okay?”
He expects Shizun to scold him. To pet him prettily, flustered over his exposed chest, concerned over his injuries and the way Luo Binghe makes light of them in favor of asking after Shizun. That’s what he’s come to expect of her. That’s how Shizun always acted back then.
Instead, when he looks up, Shizun is staring at him in shock, her eyes gone wide—for Shizun—over the veil she wears.
“Huang-jie?” Luo Binghe asks again. This time, he hears his voice. It’s not the ever-so-faintly doubled tone he’s gotten used to over the past few weeks, where he—as a demon and the one wearing the pendant—can just barely hear his true voice beneath Jiang Zhongyi’s.
He isn’t speaking in Jiang Zhongyi’s voice right now. It’s his voice.
He looks down. His chest is flat beneath the scraps of robe, the fit no longer quite right with his body gone back to his original form. When he shifts on his knees, he has to adjust for the way his center of gravity has moved back to where it was his whole life, and without doing anything so uncouth as physically checking, he can tell he’s gone back to having a pillar instead of a flower.
He looks down at his chest again. The pendant, which he has worn faithfully the past several weeks, isn’t there. He looks frantically around, finally spotting it lying several yards away. From a distance, he can see that it’s cracked down the middle: even if Shizun hadn’t already seen his disguise fail, there’s no way he could put the pendant back on now.
“Luo Binghe,” Shizun says. Her voice wavers slightly. One foot edges back, as if to prepare herself for flight. “You—this whole time?”
“Yes,” Luo Binghe admits. He lowers his hand; there’s no point trying to hide the way he’s healing. Shizun’s already seen.
Shizun knows.
“It was all a lie?” Shizun asks.
“No!” Luo Binghe says. He jerks halfway up to his feet with the strength of his protest, and watches as Shizun flinches away from him.
See? Xin Mo whispers, its insidious voice slipping through the sealing talismans plastered all along its length. She’ll never accept you for who you are. She only loves the lies you tell her. That’s all she’s ever done.
Shut up! Luo Binghe thinks at the sword.
“What, then?” Shizun asks. She doesn’t move any closer to Luo Binghe, but neither does she flee. That gives Luo Binghe the only hope he can hold onto against Xin Mo. “What was the purpose of…all this? Why did you—why—just why?”
“Can’t I miss you?” Luo Binghe asks wretchedly. “Am I such a horrible monster that Shizun thinks I have no fond memories of her? Even if I am a calamity upon this world, can I not wish to return to my home?”
Shizun regrets what happened at the Abyss. Luo Binghe is almost sure of it. He can see it in the way she’s so distracted, always looking far away; in the way she refuses any of the food Luo Binghe makes; in the way she brightens so occasionally at the sight of some beast, only to fall back into the depths of despair when that distraction loses its luster; in the few dreams Luo Binghe crept his way into, when he thought he could get away with invading Shizun’s dream realm, which spoke of a malaise too strong to be anything other than the worst kind of grief and longing; in the way that what he can see of her face is sallow, with smudges of darkness beneath her eyes that should never appear on an immortal cultivator, her hair acceptable at a glance but clearly no longer so lovingly cared for as when Luo Binghe pampered his shizun every time his master's thin face allowed him to indulge his disciple's whims.
“If I had returned to you straight away, if I had come to you and asked, would you let me return to Qing Jing? Would you let me return to my proper place at your side?” Luo Binghe continues. “You’re the one who sent me away, Shizun! I never wished to leave you! And I—and I—”
Foolishly, he can feel the burn of tears. It was one thing to cry in Shizun’s arms as Jiang Zhongyi, when he was playacting a distressed stranger. It’s another to cry in front of Shizun now, when he knows this is likely his last chance to prove himself to Shizun. If he fails here, he may never have another opportunity.
What anger he held towards Shizun has been steadily washed away by the weeks in her presence, the weeks seeing how she has suffered in his absence. Yes, he still wants to know why, but he would give even that up in a heartbeat so long as she let him come home.
He—
He really—
“You are Jiang Zhongyi, aren’t you?” Shizun murmurs. She steps closer, then closer still, until she lowers herself to kneel there in the dirt in front of Luo Binghe. Her hands raise slowly, hesitantly, and then she’s cupping Luo Binghe’s face in her cool fingers. “And…you were my Binghe the whole time. Telling this foolish master what she was too deaf to hear, if in a rather misleading manner.”
“Shizun,” Luo Binghe says pitifully. He blinks several times to clear his eyes; a few stray tears slide down, disappearing quickly as Shizun rubs soothingly at his cheeks with the pads of her thumbs.
“How many times have I told you?” she chides, ever so gently. “Crying like this, at your age? Over your old master, no less.” She looks away, shoulders hunching up, and says, “But for my part in causing your pain…Binghe, I’m sorry. I can never make up for what I did. For how cruel I was back then.”
Luo Binghe lets out a shuddering sigh. More than watching Shizun and seeing the regret, this is what he wanted. It’s not an explanation, not yet, maybe not ever—but Shizun hasn’t sent him away again.
And if she wants to make up for the Immortal Alliance Conference…
“Let me come home,” Luo Binghe says.
“Back to Qing Jing?” Shizun asks.
“That would be nice,” Luo Binghe says. “But I told Shizun once already: to me, home isn’t a place. It’s with a certain person.”
Shizun blinks several times. Luo Binghe definitely isn’t imagining the way Shizun’s gaze dips briefly down at the rip in the front of his robes, eyeing his exposed chest, before her eyes dart back up. He also isn’t imagining the pinkness of her ears. He only wishes he could see if that blush extended to her cheeks as well. He wants to see and learn every part of Shizun’s new body, if she’ll let him.
“If that’s what Binghe wants,” Shizun says.
“It is.”
“Then…wherever this master goes, Binghe should come along with her. And wherever Binghe goes, this master will follow.”
“Shizun,” Luo Binghe breathes.
And in light of that declaration, he really can’t be blamed for the way he closes the distance between them, hastily removes Shizun’s veil, and kisses his master the way that he’s wished to for years.
(Though for years after, Shizun maintains that he really should not have led with so many teeth.)