Work Text:
Shi Qingxuan learned how to beg before he learned how to walk properly again.
His legs never fully recovered. One dragged when he moved; the other trembled when he stood too long. Some days the pain was dull, like an old ache he could ignore. Other days it flared sharp and bright, reminding him that his body, like his life, had been broken and stitched back together carelessly.
People in the mortal realm did not know who he had been.
They saw only a crippled man with wind-tangled hair and a laugh that came too easily, too loudly, at things that were not funny. They tossed him scraps, copper coins, the occasional insult. Some pitied him. Some mocked him.
Shi Qingxuan accepted it all with the same crooked smile.
He was alive. That was enough. And yet, on some nights, lying beneath the stars with his aching legs clutched tight and tears slipping freely down his face, he finds himself wishing—quietly, guiltily—that he could rest forever.
He no longer had divinity, no longer had a brother standing in front of him like an unyielding wall against the world. Shi Wudu was gone—destroyed in the sea by the one man Shi Qingxuan had once trusted without reservation. Heaven had fallen away from him shortly after, and perhaps that was mercy. He did not think he could have borne its endless whispers.
So he wandered.
Town to town. Road to road. Letting the wind decide where he slept, where he begged, where he drank cheap wine until his chest felt lighter.
He told himself he was content. He told himself freedom tasted better than power ever had.
Then, one evening, he stopped in front of a fortune-teller’s stall.
The stall was unimpressive—frayed cloth canopy, uneven table, faded talismans curling at the edges. The kind of thing most people passed without a second glance. Shi Qingxuan nearly did the same.
But the wind stilled.
Not stopped—stilled, as if holding its breath.
The fortune-teller looked up. Their eyes fixed on Shi Qingxuan with unsettling clarity, cutting past his rags, past his limp, past the laughter he wore like armor.
“You’ve lost something,” they said.
Shi Qingxuan snorted. “That’s a safe guess.”
The fortune-teller shook their head. “No. You’ve lost everything.”
That made him pause.
He lowered himself onto the stool opposite them, wincing faintly as he adjusted his bad leg. “Alright,” he said lightly. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
The fortune-teller studied him for a long moment before asking, “If you could return to the past—before all of it—would you?”
The question slipped past his defenses like a blade through silk.
Shi Qingxuan didn’t laugh this time.
His mind filled, unbidden, with an image of his brother—of Shi Wudu—upright, immaculate, infuriatingly alive. His brother’s voice echoing sharply in his ears, scolding, commanding, caring in the only way he knew how.
“Yes,” Shi Qingxuan said. The answer was immediate. Absolute.
“What would you give up?” the fortune-teller asked.
Shi Qingxuan smiled, and it was soft and devastatingly sincere. “Anything,” he said. “Everything. Anything. I don’t need Heaven. I don’t need power. I just want to see my brother again. I just want to hug him while he’s still breathing.”
The fortune-teller’s gaze sharpened. “Even if the price is something precious to you?”
Shi Qingxuan didn’t hesitate. “I’ve already lost what matters most.”
The wind surged.
The world folded inward.
And Shi Qingxuan vanished.
He awoke to brilliance.
Heaven’s brilliance.
Marble beneath his feet. Clouds curling like living things. His body felt light—whole. When he stood, there was no pain. No weakness. No tremor.
He stared at his hands, unscarred, steady.
Newly ascended.
Laughter tore from his chest, wild and disbelieving.
He ran—ran—through familiar halls, heart hammering as though it might escape him.
When he saw Shi Wudu, standing proud and sharp-eyed as ever, something inside Shi Qingxuan shattered completely.
He threw himself forward, wrapping his arms around his brother without regard for dignity or witnesses.
Shi Wudu stiffened. “Shi Qingxuan, have you lost your mind—?”
“I missed you,” Shi Qingxuan whispered, voice breaking.
Shi Wudu fell silent.
After a moment, his hand came down on Shi Qingxuan’s shoulder—firm, grounding, warm and alive.
Shi Qingxuan closed his eyes.
This was worth it.
Whatever it cost, this was worth it.
The absence crept in slowly.
At first, Shi Qingxuan told himself he was impatient. Fate took time. People crossed paths when they were meant to.
But Ming Yi never appeared.
No quiet figure lingering behind him. No dry remarks. No presence that stayed even when it shouldn’t have.
Shi Qingxuan waited. And waited, and waited.
Days. Years. Centuries.
Each time he heard of the Earth Master, his heart leapt—only to fall when it wasn’t him. Each time the sea stirred with strange unrest, he turned, breath caught, expecting black robes and cold eyes.
Nothing.
Waiting became agony.
But he did not stop.
When he finally encountered Xie Lian and Hua Cheng, the meeting felt wrong in a way he couldn’t explain—like stepping into a memory he wasn’t meant to have.
They looked at him with pity they tried and failed to hide.
On one of his visits to the Ghost Realm, he finally summoned the courage to ask the question that had been lingering at the tip of his tongue for so long.
Finally, Shi Qingxuan asked, voice trembling. “Uhm… Your Highness, Hua Chengzhu… might you know a man… a ghost… named He Xuan?”
Silence fell.
“There is no such person,” Xie Lian said gently.
Shi Qingxuan laughed, sharp and broken. “That’s impossible.”
“He existed once,” Hua Cheng said quietly. “But not here.”
And then they told him the truth.
He Xuan had been the one to bargain.
He Xuan had given up his immortality—his fate—his very existence.
So Shi Qingxuan could return.
So Shi Wudu could live.
So Shi Qingxuan would never become the crippled beggar wandering the mortal realm.
Shi Qingxuan collapsed to his knees.
The sound he made barely resembled a scream.
Later—much later—Shi Qingxuan would return to the mortal world anyway.
He would lose his divinity again.
He would lose his strength, his legs, his place in Heaven.
But this time, he would know. He would know that somewhere beyond time and memory, there had been a man who loved him enough to erase himself from existence.
Sometimes, when the wind brushed past him,
Shi Qingxuan would turn, smiling faintly, as if expecting someone to be there.
No one ever was.
And still—
He lived.