Archive of Our Own

When you take up the post—

It’s never an if; there is no one else.

:::

“There’s a plague in Jin Lan,” the boy on the stream bank warns them. “If you don’t want to die, then get out!”

And without even getting a glimpse of the kid’s spiritual energy, Liu Qingge knows. It’s just so like her—him—them, isn’t it?

“You’re looking for death!” the boy tells them fervently, waving his pointy little stick, though it’s no more intimidating than it was before. Liu Qingge finds himself oddly put-off by the sight, by the desperate shine in the child’s eyes. But you’ve come out, he almost says, why would you return again? It’s useless question; he knows why.

“What else can you do?” A bit glum, swaying quickly back into fiery, impulsive action as a distraction technique. It works well enough, wading right along into the thick of it. It’s too familiar, tugging on feelings Liu Qingge never thinks about.

The streets of Jin Lan are dark and cramped, despite the daylight and the lack of foot traffic. That’s more suspicious than anything—a trade center like this shouldn’t be so desolate, bustling life mocked by black cloth and shuffling footsteps. It makes Liu Qingge’s skin crawl like sleeping in a graveyard, feeling viscerally that this is not a place for him. He steps closer to his companions warily.

Shen Qingqiu is peering at Yang Yixuan with a speculative look on his face. Liu Qingge looks over the kid himself, curious. Nothing much jumps out to him that he hadn’t noticed on his initial overview; shabby clothes that were probably more cloth than dirt once, a reddish-brown headband of similar quality, wrappings around his wrists to keep his sleeves down, and well-made shoes, sturdy. He knows why his own attention is drawn by the boy, but he hadn’t thought Shen Qingqiu would be so interested.

“What are you looking at?” he asks bluntly. Sometimes, people even tell him upfront.

Shen Qingqiu turns his fearsome appraisal on Liu Qingge now, and Liu Qingge does not squirm. Occasionally, when the Qing Jing Lord looks at him at way, he wonders if Shen Qingqiu doesn’t see other people in the same way as the beasts he adores, just with a more consistent number of fingers, toes, and personal opinions. He can imagine his entry in the grand bestiary— “Quite plain in lifestyle. Aggressive and territorial. Lives in the mountains.” Not particularly interesting, but suited to purpose. That’s Liu Qingge.

Shen Qingqiu taps his fan against his lips as he speaks. Liu Qingge pretends he’s keeping an eye on the other side of the street through the space between each soft blow. “The way I see it, this child can exchange a few blows with you and has a pretty good temperament,” his shixiong says eventually, tipping his head towards the boy. “Both traits are hard to find. He’s a promising talent.”

A few blows?! Ridiculous. Never mind that Liu Qingge hadn’t let the child within spitting distance of his shixiong in the tunnel, and only begrudgingly has since. He can see the boy’s shoulders shift slightly as he marches before them, apparently bolstered by Shen Qingqiu’s overly generous assessment. His shixiong is still cruel sometimes, usually to unfortunate strangers who don’t know to expect it.

“What does that matter?” Liu Qingge asks with a snort. “I don’t take disciples. Too bothersome.” He doesn’t look to see if that dampens the kid’s spirits any. Liu Qingge is not interested.

He doesn’t take disciples. Bai Zhan doesn’t take disciples. Strangely enough, more than the peak of scholars or the peak of schemers, more, even, than the peaks of scientific specialists and medicine-mixers, Bai Zhan above all accepts applicants. To be a disciple of the defensive peak is to want to be there, and to want it badly. Shoe-sucking mud and a valley of slate shards badly. Seventy-six chi of sheer cliff face and a fraying rope badly. Burning sun and burning throat and your sword, kid, pick it up and defend yourself badly.

Bai Zhan peak is not prepared to pamper its disciples. It won’t be sending any letters home, placating parents and noble families over their child’s every “near-death incident.” The higher, cushier peaks can keep all that to themselves; becoming a Bai Zhan Peak disciple is a near-death incident.

If this Yang Yixuan wants it, he can come take it. Liu Qingge won’t encourage him any more than he does anyone else—what’s meant to be will be.

Shen Qingqiu, apparently, does not believe in the whims of fate. And Yang Yixuan does not believe in the art of reconnaissance.

“What are you doing?” the boy asks again, poking his head under Liu Qingge’s arm to eye the meager articles on sale at the market stall the Peak Lord has stopped in front of. There’s nearly no one about; Liu Qingge is intrigued by those still peddling their wares, though he supposes even in the midst of such a plague, mouths won’t feed themselves.

“I told you already,” he snaps at the kid, lifting his arm from the boy’s shoulders where it had ended up via Yang Yixuan’s puppyish propensity for inserting himself into Liu Qingge’s space.

Yang Yixuan’s face scrunches up in annoyance, as if he has the right to be the irritated one here! “What do you need the lay of the land for?” he whines. “I can show you anywhere you need to go!”

“And if there’s a fight?” Liu Qingge scoffs. “Do you intend to ride on my shoulders and direct me then, too?”

The quickest glance up at Liu Qingge and back to the table before them tells the Peak Lord that his new hanger-on is significantly less wise than he had previously assumed. Yang Yixuan, who clearly hadn’t meant to be caught—why assume the person you’re talking to isn’t looking at you?—flushes fully enough that it’s visible even with his face turned mostly away.

Liu Qingge scoffs again and spins quickly from the stall, turning his attention back to the street. He scans once more for anything standing out, only to be disappointed by the continued lack of action or deceit. It’s creepy, is what it is.

“Would you let me watch your fight?” And this is bothersome. Liu Qingge wonders if this is how his shizun felt. The teacher’s curse, he supposes.

“I’m not fighting anyone,” he snaps. It’s rapidly becoming something to be annoyed about.

“But if you do,” Yang Yixuan insists. “I could help!"

Abruptly, Liu Qingge grabs the child by the head and turns it this way and that, ignoring the kid’s futile struggles and shouting as he examines his skull. Not finding anything, he lets go with a frown. The force of Yang Yixuan’s flailing sends him tumbling to the ground, and he glares up at Liu Qingge from the dust.

“What did you do that for?!”

“Looking for the hole,” says Liu Qingge as he turns away. “Your brains must have got out somehow.”

“Hey! You—” Yang Yixuan shouts, scrambling to his feet and charging after Liu Qingge.

Liu Qingge doesn’t bother acknowledging him again until the boy skids around in front of him, coming to a panting stop directly in his path. Liu Qingge considers stepping on him. He raises an eyebrow instead, a silent can I help you? Because the boy clearly needs help. Some education in common sense, if nothing else.

“Fight me!” the child demands. Liu Qingge blinks at him, incredulous.

Alright, it’s not as if he wasn’t much the same in his youth. Running around challenging people who looked at him funny—and there were quite a lot of those, though Liu Qingge only realized later in life that it was more because of his face than some serious issue with him as a person, the obvious exception excepted. But, well, Liu Qingge—even in youth—had talent. And spending his time dueling anyone and everyone who wasn’t a coward left him with no shortage of skill, either.

Yang Yixuan has neither. Probably. Liu Qingge hasn’t seen him fight, but he has knocked the boy on his ass twice now without really trying. That doesn’t usually happen with talented and skilled people. Well, adults. To be fair, the kid is still just that. A kid. An audacious one, though.

“Why should I?” he asks, rather than doing the smart thing and walking away. No one has ever accused Liu Qingge of being too smart, and the boy has already proved willingness to follow.

“Your—the green lord said I could learn from you!” Yang Yixuan bursts out. “More than anyone else could teach me!”

The green lord—Shen Qingqiu, because who else? Most people don’t meddle with Liu Qingge, or at least do it subtly enough that he isn’t afflicted with noticing. Liu Qingge had been under the impression that Shen Qingqiu was smart enough to piece together “I don’t” and “take disciples,” though.

“I’m not a teacher,” Liu Qingge tells him. It’s a lie, but it’s easier than asking if the child is prepared to walk himself all the way to Cang Qiong Mountain Sect before his trial even begins. It isn’t close to Jin Lan, on foot.

“He said I should fight you,” Yang Yixuan says. He crosses his arms, and it doesn’t take Liu Qingge more than a moment to notice how their positions are mirrored all of a sudden, feet planted and faces mulish. He uncrosses his arms hurriedly, settling his right hand on Cheng Luan’s hilt.

Liu Qingge frowns. “He should know better than to go making more trouble for Mu-shixiong, he’s busy,” he says, mostly to himself. It has the added benefit of rankling the annoying child more.

“Hey!” Yang Yixuan cries after the few moments it takes him to realize he’s been insulted. Liu Qingge smirks a bit. It’s not often that he gets to be cleverer than people, even if the person in question at the moment is a child.

“I’m not going to fight you,” says Liu Qingge plainly, cutting to the chase quickly now, because he does have places to be and a false plague to be investigating and all. He leans forward slightly, making sure the boy is listening. He’s not sure if people he meets expect him to be cruel; he doesn’t try to be. Liu Qingge tries to be honest. “If you want to become my disciple…”

:::

There’s no rush to it.

All things in their due time, without respect to the time they are due.

:::

It’s not that Liu Qingge hadn’t expected Yang Yixuan to follow-up—in fact, he knew the kid absolutely would—it’s more that he’d forgotten. Been busy. Dealing with… things. Things that keep his head down in determination, his feet kicking up dust on the training grounds, his back hitting the unforgiving earth again, and again, and again.

When one of his hallmasters comes to tell him a new hopeful is taking on the entrance challenge, Liu Qingge considers the distraction welcome, if surprising. He considers doing more than a cursory wipe to get the sweat and grime off his skin, but a glance up at the grey and grumbling sky tells him it won’t matter soon enough anyway, so in the end he doesn’t bother.

What a time to begin the trial—it’s never a particularly enjoyable experience, unless one has a liking for terror and misery—the rain will make it worse. Though Liu Qingge supposes that many people hopeful to give themselves into Cang Qiong’s service don’t always have the luxury of choosing their schedule. The sect is egalitarian that way.

It’s been some time since he rode Cheng Luan without excessive speed and violent intent, or else limping home. Liu Qingge stretches his senses through the sword and smiles faintly; it’s welcoming. It doesn’t know how to be “happy to see him,” exactly, because it’s a sword, but it can certainly make its displeasure known should it wish to. It bolsters his inner warmth against the damp, chilly fog he breezes through on his way down the mountain.

The fog obscures the craggy shapes of the rocks and trees surrounding the entrance grounds, but it doesn’t completely hide the flashes of soggy color swaying here and there in the growing wind.

“What are they?”

Yang Yixuan hasn’t changed much from the last time Liu Qingge saw him in Jin Lan. He stands like a brittle shrub huddled against the elements, arms wrapped around himself where he leans against the free-standing stone archway that marks the beginning of the trial path. His hair is a bit longer now, shaggier. His sturdy boots have nearly worn through.

Liu Qingge stands opposite the boy, though he won’t duck under the archway again. “Warnings,” he says plainly. Signs of challenges failed, of students still striving, of those who never came back to reclaim what they left behind, one way or another.

Yang Yixuan eyes the strips of cloth dangling limply from nearby tree branches, and those tied on the rope looped many times around the top of the entrance arch. There are so many they’re nearly strangling it, but most are faded or browned by the sun and the elements so the end result looks more like some disemboweled ragdoll than anything.

It’s a tradition of a sort, though Liu Qingge doubts it’s ever really been explained out loud. What will you leave behind? he wonders silently. Yang Yixuan shivers where he stands. His clothes and hair are damp—it must have rained down in the valley, though they’d had only grey skies on the peaks.

The answer is obvious in the end. Yang Yixuan unties his headband—it was red, before, but now it’s a tired pinkish grey—and knots it to the end of another scrap, for lack of space on the original cord. Liu Qingge nods sharply and steps aside, gesturing to the path laid out before them. It begins with unbroken woodland, pitfalls and bluffs unmarked but assuredly present. Though the path is always clear from signs painted and carved on the rocks and trees, it wouldn’t be a trial if those doing the trying could just walk their way up to the peak.

Liu Qingge draws Cheng Luan once more. He is not a guide for the trial, in fact he’s an obstacle, but there’s little to do between now and then but arrange himself and wait.

“Lord—” Yang Yixuan starts as Liu Qingge steps onto his blade. Liu Qingge pauses and looks at the boy expectantly. “Will,” Yang Yixuan has a face prone to embarrassment, poor kid. Liu Qingge can visibly track the switch to anger instead, to try to hide everything lying beneath it. “Will you fight me, when I get there?”

If he really, actually did, a real fight rather than a test, Liu Qingge doubts it would be much of a match. Someday, but not yet.

“When you get there,” he says instead. He shouldn’t even say that much—if his shizun were still around, she would hit him upside the head. But that’s his job, now. He shouldn’t, really… “Hurry up, boy,” he says, and curses himself as he flies away.

The clouds open up overhead, and thunder rolls in the distance as rain begins to pour down.

Leaving Yang Yixuan to his task, Liu Qingge takes up a meditative pose atop the challenger’s cliff, Cheng Luan across his knees. Raindrops plink and roll off the blade in an inscrutable pattern. His shizun’s blade lies beside him, still sheathed and propped against a patch of soggy grass to keep some of the mud off. It will be a while, he suspects. Perhaps not so terribly long as those truly new to the trial, with untested wills, but still a while. Liu Qingge’s job is not to speculate; it is to sit.

Liu Qingge wonders if his shizun knew too, as her death climbed up the treacherous cliff face. If she felt it yet. He still has things to do.

He shakes the thought away with a huff, blowing his rain-soaked hair out of his face. This is why he always braids the other side back into his ponytail, though Mingyan is convinced that leaving a bit to flow freely makes him look “dashing,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.

(Mingyan… she was never a crier, but she’d cried when he told her. He didn’t want to, and maybe he shouldn’t have, but he tries to be honest. It’s for the best, really, that Yang Yixuan’s entire family is surely dead.)

Nightfall has come and gone by the time the boy makes it to the top of the cliff. The rain has worn itself out, calmed by now to a faint drizzle.

Yang Yixuan hauls himself over the cliff edge and flops onto the ground, panting up at the star-speckled sky. “That sucks,” he tells Liu Qingge, his head lolling to look at the Peak Lord.

“Stand up,” says Liu Qingge, coming to his own feet and picking up his shizun’s sword. He holds it out, still sheathed, because he will not disrespect it with an indolent toss into the dirt. The old, loyal thin deserves better than that. “Defend yourself.”

To his credit, Yang Yixuan doesn’t waste time. Despite his evident exhaustion, he rolls to his bloody feet with alacrity, scooping up the offered sword and settling into some approximation of a ready stance. Shen Qingqiu had unreasonably overstated the child’s ability to boost his confidence, but it says something that he’s here anyway.

Though it would be easier to disarm the boy than spitting, Liu Qingge doesn’t, not right away. He circles instead, Cheng Luan flashing out in testing pokes and prods. Yang Yixuan manages to bat some of them aside—leaving the rest of his body open as he does so—and “block” a few more. He’s still a child, Liu Qingge finds himself thinking. It’s hardly fair.

Cheng Luan is not a rapier; it’s not built for the quick, darting thrusts and careful contact-control of a thinner blade. Liu Qingge uses it that way anyway, catching Yang Yixuan’s sword with the tip of his own, looping the pair around each other with shivering sighs of the metal until he has the right angle to flick the boy’s blade out of the way and plant a solid kick to the chest.

To Yang Yixuan’s credit, he goes stumbling back but does not fall. He gets his sword up again, and Liu Qingge grows tired of playing.

Put simply, he beats Yang Yixuan into the dirt.

Bai Zhan disciples learn through intensive physical training and discipline, but the other challenges of the entrance trial are intended to test a candidate’s willpower. If they’ll push through. Liu Qingge’s test is the truest representation of life on Bai Zhan: how ready are you to lose?

It’s some time before Yang Yixuan starts really slowing down, and longer still before he stops getting up.

Eventually, when Liu Qingge flicks his sword out of his hand, the boy just stays where he stands, swaying faintly in place, slow blinks getting more muddy water into his eyes than they keep out. Liu Qingge puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes, just slightly. Yang Yixuan falls.

Liu Qingge picks up his Shizun’s sword gently, as if the thing will break in his hands. He carries it with the solemn dignity of a pall-bearer to the edge of the cliff. There, he drops the sword over the edge point-down. It’s purely willful imagination to think he feels it as it sinks into the rain-softened earth below, burying itself to the hilt beside its many ancient and corroded fellows. But he does.

It’s not often that a spiritual sword dies, but the dull thing will just keep waiting for a wielder who will never pick it up again if it’s not laid to rest. It can’t understand that the soul must move on; though it has hands once more, they belong to someone new. It’s cruel to leave it waiting.

Liu Qingge does not think choose me, choose me, choose me as he walks away. He does not whisper “stay down, stay down” under his breath and he does not drag his steps. He keeps his eyes forward, his hand on Cheng Luan’s hilt.

“Wait,” says Yang Yixuan, heaving in gasping breaths like he’s dying. “Come back—” he’s still on the ground, Liu Qingge can hear it. “I’m not done!”

Liu Qingge does not cry. He keeps breathing. He should be pleased for the boy, for the peaks, for Bai Zhan’s newest warrior.

“Come up when you’re ready,” he says, pointing to the stone stairs a ways away from the cliff edge. He doesn’t check to see if the child is even looking, just turns and takes the exit himself, marching back up to Bai Zhan Peak proper.

:::

Do not be afraid of it.

He isn’t, not specifically. Impending doom is one thing, putting his house in order is another entirely.

:::

Having a personal disciple is horrible, Liu Qingge decides within a month of accepting Yang Yixuan’s bid. He fails to understand why Shen Qingqiu was so devastated over the loss of his own, horrible beast that Luo Binghe (that bastard) is.

(Liu Qingge is fairly certain Yang Yixuan is not a half-demon in disguise, but he has Mu Qingfang check anyway. He ignores the look his shixiong gives him because he knows it’s the same damn look Shen-shixiong used to get after the Immortal Alliance Conference, and he has no need for pity.)

“Shizun!” Yang Yixuan hollers, bursting through Liu Qingge’s front door. “Fight me!”

Liu Qingge stares at underside of his thatched roof and considers praying for mercy. “No,” he says.

“Why not?!” Yang Yixuan demands, as if Liu Qingge isn’t lying there trying not to breathe too much so his shrieking ribs don’t accidentally puncture his lungs or some related disaster. He will not be going to Mu-shixiong again this week—the disappointment he’d gotten from the man yesterday had been quite enough for a while. “Did the beast beat you so badly?”

Yang Yixuan leans over Liu Qingge’s prone form on his bamboo mat, peering at him like a doctor himself, and Liu Qingge very nearly punches him. Instead, his hand when it snaps out captures one of the boy’s ears. Liu Qingge shakes him by it.

“Ow ow ow!” Yang Yixuan yelps, grabbing Liu Qingge’s wrist. “Let me go!”

“Stop bothering me,” Liu Qingge counters.

“You’re my teacher,” Yang Yixuan bites out, digging his fingernails into Liu Qingge’s palm. “I’m not bothering you, I’m making you do your job.”

“You’re a menace,” Liu Qingge snaps back. “There are other teachers on the peak!”

“Well you’re mine!” Yang Yixuan snarls as he finally frees his ear, jerking his head away. “What the hell are you doing, letting the damn beast learn more from you than I do?!”

Liu Qingge grimaces. He hadn’t noticed the mouth on the kid, though it’s probably only been growing left around Bai Zhan disciples in Liu Qingge’s absence.

Liu Qingge has perhaps let the boy run a bit too wild. Everyone—at least everyone on Bai Zhan—knows that the Peak Lord only ever accepts one, or very rarely two personal disciples. And whoever that kid is gets a fast-track to head discipleship, usually. When Liu Qingge became head disciple at fourteen, it was abnormally young among his fellow head disciples, but older than the average for those from his peak.

Knowing what they do, Bai Zhan Peak has been… “hospitable” would imply more warmth than is accurate. More… accepting.

Oh, they’ve still been running roughshod over him, but that’s just standard practice for the newest shidi or shimei. Outside of the typical beating up and being beaten in return, they’ve been almost nice to the kid. Inclusive, ish. Liu Qingge has been receiving reports from his hallmasters and teachers regarding Yang Yixuan’s lessons, and he’s seen the older disciples taking their new shidi with them to meals. They’re most certainly throwing him around, but not out of any personal feud. More because he’ll have to be the best sooner or later, so he needs practice. There’s no point in being jealous.

“Fine,” Liu Qingge grumbles eventually. “But not right now. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, like you said ‘tomorrow’ the day before yesterday, then ran off to fight the beast again?” Yang Yixuan asks impetuously. “Shizun did this last week, too!”

Liu Qingge does not owe him this answer, but it reminds him that he does owe. Because Liu Qingge is the Bai Zhan Peak Lord. He belongs to the sect, not to revenge or to some personal clemency, or closure. Liu Qingge closes his eyes briefly.

“Fine,” he repeats shortly. “I swear I will stay and teach you this week.”

Yang Yixuan narrows his eyes. “Fine,” he says slowly, as if he doesn’t believe his teacher. As if Liu Qingge would lie.

“You—” he starts to reprimand at the tone.

“Please get some rest, Shizun,” Yang Yixuan interrupts him. “This disciple will wait.”

Liu Qingge doesn’t trust the kid for a moment, but he’s tired and in pain, and doesn’t feel like doing much more than staring at the ceiling again. So that’s what he does, until the damn child returns with the Sect Leader.

“Zhangmen-shixiong!” Liu Qingge yelps, scrambling (somewhat gingerly) to sit up.

“Peace, shidi,” says Yue Qingyuan with his tired, always-mild smile. He gestures for Liu Qingge to settle again so he does, though he makes sure to glare suspiciously at his personal disciple behind the Sect Leader all the while. “Liu-shidi didn’t tell this shixiong that he’d appointed a head disciple.”

“I didn’t,” Liu Qingge tells him, glaring harder at Yang Yixuan.

Yue Qingyuan’s brows furrow for a heartbeat, then smooth out again. “Shidi has accepted a personal disciple,” he notes.

“He’s useless,” Liu Qingge snaps. “Not skilled yet. And bothersome.”

Yue Qingyuan, who is doubtless aware that Yang Yixuan has remained standing in the doorway behind him, raises his eyebrows.

“Only because you don’t teach me!” Yang Yixuan bursts out after a long moment of mutinous silence.

“Yang Yixuan!” Liu Qingge snaps.

“Fine!” Yang Yixuan says loudly. “Only because Shizun doesn’t teach me!”

That’s not what Liu Qingge meant at all!

“Liu-shidi?” Yue Qingyuan asks blandly, waiting for a refutation.

“I—” Liu Qingge starts, “you—”

“If Disciple Yang would please give this Sect Leader a moment with his shidi,” Yue Qingyuan cuts in peaceably. Yang Yixuan steps out, but not before Liu Qingge catches the boy sticking his tongue out at him. Liu Qingge fumes.

“Qingge.” Yue Qingyuan calls his attention back solemnly. Parts of his gentle cheer have melted away, revealing the tension around his eyes and in his shoulders, the sad downward curve of his lips.

“I’m sorry,” says Liu Qingge automatically. “I’ll beat him next time, I’ll—”

“Qingge,” Yue Qingyuan repeats. He sounds exhausted. Liu Qingge shuts his mouth. He knows other people don’t see this side of the Sect Leader, not even Shen Qingqiu when he was— Liu Qingge, though, cannot betray Yue Qingyuan’s vulnerabilities. He belongs to the sect, and to the Sect Leader by proxy. If he can’t restore the full cadre of Peak Lords, the least he can do is shut up when he’s told to. “The boy out there came to me with the complaint that you are not teaching him, despite taking him on as your personal disciple.”

Liu Qingge bites down on his automatic argument. He didn’t take anything, the boy himself chose to come. “He’s learning,” he says instead, a bit mulishly.

“This is not about Qingge’s teaching abilities,” says Yue Qingyuan. Liu Qingge can’t look at him. “Qingge spends his time away from the sect more often than not, correct?”

“Yes,” says Liu Qingge.

“And when he returns, is he fit to teach?” Yue Qingyuan continues. His voice is gentle, not reprimanding, and still Liu Qingge feels the weight of it like a mountain.

“No,” he says.

“Qingge,” Yue Qingyuan says again, and waits for Liu Qingge to look at him. “Qingge can fight Luo Binghe, or he can pass on his peak. This shixiong thinks he will be hard-pressed to manage both.”

“Why do I need to teach him?” Liu Qingge snaps. “He will be ready, we—”

“Shidi knows that’s not how it works,” says Yue Qingyuan flatly, like a rock dropped on Liu Qingge’s protests. “You claim he is unskilled, as yet. Your duty is to give him those skills, and align his body with his soul—he cannot do it on his own. Does Qingge intend to fail me in this?”

Liu Qingge’s mouth opens but nothing comes out. He’s certain he’s been stabbed, he just can’t see the knife yet. Yue Qingyuan had never accused him, never told him outright that it was his fault, though they all know that if Liu Qingge had been stronger, a better protector, none of it would have happened. Yue Qingyuan had been so kind, so understanding. Only when he turns his back does Liu Qingge appreciate the grace he’d been given.

Does Qingge intend to fail me in this, too? Liu Qingge intends nothing. Liu Qingge feels the way he imagines imploding does.

“But it has only been a few weeks,” says Yue Qingyuan with a certain air of lenience as he stands to leave. “I trust Qingge-shidi will be able to prove more progress in the coming months.”

Liu Qingge lays where he’s been left, slack jawed and absent of grace. It’s not as if he doesn’t give for the sect. It’s not as if his life is determined by anything else.

“Is it not enough that I throw myself at Luo Binghe for you?” Liu Qingge asks before his shixiong steps out. “Would you have me invite my death in here, too?”

Yue Qingyuan is silent, his hand on the door still without even the faintest twitch. “Is it for me?” he asks at last. Before Liu Qingge can do more than draw in a furious breath, he continues. “It is only by Qingge’s insistence that the boy is anything at all to him. This shixiong can hardly imagine telling yourself he’ll be the end of you is conducive to a healthy master-disciple relationship. Did you kill your own shizun, Liu Qingge?”

He did not, and they both know it. But that doesn’t mean her death had nothing to do with him.

:::

The proof of your ability stands before you.

Perhaps, but age and experience cannot be discounted. He feels too young, still.

:::

No one tells Liu Qingge he’s made a mistake. No one questions his decision. Maybe they ought to, for once.

“New head disciple,” he grunts at the rest of them after calling a peak-wide assembly. He drags Yang Yixuan out from behind himself and pushes him towards the other disciples. The poor kid looks like a house dog unexpectedly thrown amidst a pack of wolves, but they can work on that.

“Da-shixiong,” the rest of the menaces greet dutifully, as if Liu Qingge hasn’t heard them calling the boy “Da-shidi” whenever they can get away with it.

It is a bit ridiculous, given Yang Yixuan is only barely eleven years old and the next youngest disciple is aging out of her tweens. But eh, he’ll grow. Liu Qingge knows for a fact that there have been younger head disciples of Bai Zhan; he’s not worried about it.

Liu Qingge looks over the lot of his peak’s disciples, hallmasters, teachers, and extraneous staff. He sighs. “If Yang Yixuan dies before this master, I will be very angry with whoever let it happen,” he announces.

“Yes Shizun!” the disciples chorus, bowing in pleasing unison. They aren’t stupid, for all that their reputation as the meatheads of the sect isn’t entirely inaccurate.

“Good,” Liu Qingge says flatly. He grabs Yang Yixuan by the neck of his shirt and hauls the boy along after him as he walks away, dismissing the rest with his absence. “You have a lot to learn,” he says to the kid. “Time to get started.”

Yang Yixuan’s teachers and peers on Bai Zhan were thoughtful enough to beat the basics into the boy’s head, so they aren’t starting from nothing. Liu Qingge usually does his best educational work with more advanced students, but that doesn’t make the new challenge impossible.

(“A personal disciple of Qingge’s?” Liu Mingyan says over tea, eyebrows high, already impressed with the very idea. “The rest of your peak had better watch out, ge.”)

Liu Qingge stays on the peak more often to make himself available to his student. He formulates lessons, designs exercises, and instructs the boy’s shixiong and shijie to jump him at every opportunity. The fastest way to learn is to practice. (“Tag them,” he tells Yang Yixuan. “So I know what to be proud of.”) The more split lips and bruises appear around the peak, the more smug Liu Qingge gets.

The former head disciple—acting, interim, never truly declared and never expected to be—Ji Jue, requests that Liu Qingge demonstrate a particular flying kick for the juniors that he’d seen Yang Yixuan take out one of his shixiong with the other day. Though the provenance of the move is Liu Qingge, he tells Ji Jue to ask Yang Yixuan himself if he wants to see it again that badly.

See it, use it, teach it. Liu Qingge’s own shizun’s teaching style hasn’t failed him yet, not that he expected it to, particularly in Yang Yixuan’s case. Watch out before I get you with it, apply tastefully to your shijie’s as-yet unbruised face, show her how to do it in turn, because the peak rises and falls together. Especially when Liu Qingge feels like teaching them.

He feels amusingly like some water demon swimming leisurely through a school of bite-sized minnows as he stalks the training field. Bai Zhan’s disciples shift and scatter in their own little formations, keeping dulled training swords—due to the presence of their little Da-shidi—between themselves and him, as if it’ll do them any good.

Liu Qingge comes to a halt and turns on his heel, holding both hands to his sides, posture open if one ignores the blunted training sword in his own hand, the tip swirling languidly through the air by his ankle.

“Well?” he says.

With a shout, a section of disciples charges. Liu Qingge lifts his sword with a small smirk. He finds that he doesn’t really enjoy much these days, but this—this will be entertaining.

“Shizun!” Liu Qingge knocks another sword aside in the middle of the fray and there’s the kid, with a look on his face like he’s staring down the length of his blade at Luo Binghe (that bastard) himself. “Fight me!”

Liu Qingge grants his wish. He annihilates the boy, as expected. It does take him marginally longer than he’d thought it would, which he decides to be proud of. He ruffles the Yang Yixuan’s hair where the kid lies groaning on the ground, then marches off to make corrections to a few of the other disciples’ more egregious errors he’d witnessed in the melee. It’s a very successful exercise, all things considered.

Pleased with his progress on the home front, Liu Qingge heads off the mountain once more. He hasn’t succeeded yet, so he will keep trying.

It goes much the same as it has every time before, and Liu Qingge’s good mood is dashed with his body against the bone-breaking ground. Luo Binghe (that bastard) doesn’t bother sticking around even to taunt him. With one last glance at Liu Qingge’s crumpled form, the demon takes his wicked sword and flies off back to his gold-bedecked lair.

Liu Qingge lies there for a long while, not moving until it begins to rain. Mu-shixiong really will kill him if he comes home with broken ribs and a chest cold.

Liu Qingge is coughing wetly by the time he gets back to Cang Qiong. He contemplates semi-seriously going back to Bai Zhan to sleep it off before giving in and flying slowly in to Qian Cao’s large and clearly-marked landing area. He’s woken up unexpectedly in Qian Cao and bound to the sickbed enough in the past to have a good idea of what level of injury tends to tip Mu Qingfang over the edge.

“Peak Lord Liu!” a passing healer yelps. Someone shoves themself under his arm to prop him up, and someone else hollers for a bed to be readied. Liu Qingge is sure he’s probably fine… he lets them take care of him anyway.

When he comes to again, Ji Jue is sitting in the corner of the room. The disciple has his sleeves bound back as he scribbles away on a piece of paper. The pile of it on the chair next to him suggests someone has taken advantage of his temporarily stationary position to get some of Bai Zhan’s paperwork done. He looks up when Liu Qingge gives a ragged cough.

“Shizun,” he says, startled. Then, alarmingly, he immediately drops the work he was doing and comes to Liu Qingge’s bedside. “Shizun,” he says urgently. “The Sect Leader ordered—Da-shixiong has been removed from our peak. We think he’s on Xian Shu but—”

“Thanking Disciple Ji for alerting this healer of his patient’s waking,” Mu Qingfang interrupts as he steps into the room, giving both Liu Qingge and Ji Jue a singularly unimpressed look. “You may go.”

Liu Qingge is Ji Jue’s Peak Lord, but they’re not on his peak; Mu Qingfang is the highest authority here. Ji Jue bows and backs away, mouthing something unintelligible at Liu Qingge as he gathers up his paperwork and leaves. “Wishing Shizun a swift recovery,” he says at the door, then disappears through it.

“Mu-shixiong,” Liu Qingge starts, “where’s—”

“Liu-shidi,” Mu Qingfang cuts him off sharply.

Liu Qingge pauses briefly. Then, in an attempt to pre-empt Mu-shixiong’s medical umbrage, he offers: “Zhangmen-shixiong did not forbid this shidi from retrieval attempts. I was only—”

“So shidi will not defy his Sect Leader, but he is perfectly happy flaunting the instructions of his healer?”

Liu Qingge grimaces, but doesn’t have much to say to that.

“I will make them orders if I need to, shidi,” Mu-shixiong says, eerily calm. “But I want to know which part of do not fight him again struck you as a suggestion.”

Liu Qingge stays mutinously silent. He will not leave Shen Qingqiu’s body to the demon brat. It’s part of the sect, and Liu Qingge’s one job is to defend them, all of them. He has failed, yes, but he won’t know that he can’t succeed unless he keeps trying.

“I understand that I have not been as clear as I should have, then,” says Mu-shixiong, icy cold. “Liu-shidi will not be risking life and limb in the pursuit of Shen Qingqiu’s corpse or revenge against Luo Binghe again. As much as we would all like to bury him properly, this is not the way to achieve that end.”

“Then how?!” Liu Qingge snarls, sitting up despite his ribs’ complaints against the motion. “He’s—he was our shixiong! You—all of you, you want me to just leave him?!”

“Yes!” Mu Qingfang snaps back, one hand on Liu Qingge’s shoulder shoving him back down against his pillows. Liu Qingge doesn’t have the strength to fight it, so he settles for delivering his best glare instead. He doesn’t understand what they want from him. To keep himself safe, yes, but his position is not one that lends itself to personal safety! Why should he leave Shen-shixiong’s body to Luo Binghe (that bastard), when the very idea is so clearly tearing all of them apart?! Mu Qingfang was never this willful before Shen Qingqiu’s death; it’s changed them.

“Why,” Liu Qingge demands.

“Why?” Mu-shixiong smiles at him, but it’s not a nice smile. “Because I will personally wrap you in immortal-binding cables and pour Dreaming Trumpet Vine essence down your throat every four shichen for however long it is until you are needed in actual defense of the sect, shidi. This shixiong has had enough of allowing you to waste yourself, do you understand?”

Liu Qingge does. He is the sect’s sword, in the way that all Bai Zhan disciples are the sect’s swords, but also in a personal way. In a way that keeps him orbiting his martial siblings, their foes turned into his foes, their troubles staying on the end of his blade. Bai Zhan discipleship is necessarily voluntary, because becoming a sword implies wielding. His autonomy is not his own, not where it matters. His very soul is tethered to the mountain sect; his martial ability and the container it resides within are property of the sect.

As much as Liu Qingge despises the thought of giving up Shen Qingqiu’s body, Mu Qingfang does have jurisdiction over what he does.

“Fine,” he hisses. “Have it your way.”

“I’m sorry?” Mu-shixiong asks. His hand hasn’t left Liu Qingge’s shoulder; his grip tightens incrementally.

Liu Qingge’s lips twist, but it’s really not his decision to make. “Begging shixiong’s pardon,” he says, as levelly as he can. “This shidi was only agreeing to his terms.”

Mu Qingfang eyes him for a long moment. Liu Qingge feels his gaze as though it’s peeling back his skin, cataloguing every part of him, ensuring all is in order. Liu Qingge appreciates his shixiong for all the effort he puts into keeping his martial siblings hale and whole, but he doesn’t always enjoy the side-effect of being so known.

“I’m sure you were,” the healer says eventually, letting go. He straightens, and smooths down the front of his slightly rumpled apron. “This shixiong is glad we were able to come to an understanding.”

After such a confrontation Liu Qingge has no interest in speaking to Mu Qingfang any more for the next week or so, but he does need to confirm what Ji Jue had told him.

“Where is my head disciple?” he asks shortly.

Mu Qingfang has pulled a small note-taking pad out of his sleeve and is taking Liu Qingge’s pulse. “Shidi can inquire with Zhangmen-shixiong when he’s discharged,” he says mildly.

Liu Qingge does not want to talk to Yue Qingyuan at the moment, or potentially at any moment. He’s still deliberating on that point. “When is that?” he asks to be charitable before making a unilateral decision.

“When your cough lets up,” Mu Qingfang tells him.

Liu Qingge frowns. “I don’t have a cough anymore.”

Mu Qingfang places a hand over his sternum and with a short pulse of his spiritual energy, sends Liu Qingge into a fit of wet hacking. The sharp whining of his ribs brings tears to his eyes, but he still catches Mu-shixiong’s blurry moue of faux dismay. “Oh dear,” he says, “that sounds painful, shidi. I hope it goes away soon.”

:::

We are not the first to walk this road.

Sometimes he wonders what it’s like to be immortal.

:::

As soon as Liu Qingge extracts himself from Qian Cao’s clutches, he marches over to Xian Shu. He does not fly, because he doesn’t want to lose his sword—however temporarily—on account of medical probation, and he knows Mu-shixiong will do it.

“Qi Qingqi!” he bellows at the gates of the flowers’ paradise. “Come out!”

When no response is forthcoming from the tranquil gardens beyond the walls, Liu Qingge crosses his arms and settles in to wait. He won’t invade their space, but he won’t be leaving without his disciple, either. Poor kid, Liu Qingge thinks, stolen away in the night by masterful artists of espionage. They may seem like giggling, airy beauties by daylight, but Liu Mingyan has made sure to solidly disabuse her brother of the notion that that is the summation of their talents.

At the very least, this might be a good opportunity for Yang Yixuan to form a decent relationship with his shijie and fellow head disciple. He better not have fucked it up.

Liu Qingge waits a full shichen and a half before anyone comes for him. A few servants and disciples come and go, but they all studiously ignore him, and he ignores them right back. He knows Qi Qingqi knows he’s here; he’s not about to go badgering children with adults’ arguments.

He’s doing his best to meditate in the shade of a peach tree—not very effectively; the air is too sweet and he’s too restless—when a warm presence alights on the ground beside him. Liu Qingge cracks one eye open.

“Sorry I kept you waiting, ge, I had to finish up a class,” says Mingyan. Her smile is hidden underneath her veil, but Liu Qingge can hear it. He musters up a small one of his own in response, though it doesn’t feel quite right.

“Meimei,” he greets. “Where’s your teacher?”

Mingyan snorts in a distinctly inelegant way. “Shizun’s not coming out,” she tells him. Liu Qingge frowns, but before he can complain his sister continues. “She instructed this one to tell you that Yang Yixuan is here on Yue-shibo’s orders and that she’s not going to fight you about it.”

Liu Qingge presses his lips together in a flat, irritated line. His sister levels him with an equally flat look. “She said you two can wreck your own peak arguing about your health, and she’ll have nothing to do with it. Ge…”

“I’m fine,” Liu Qingge snaps, and immediately regrets it. “Sorry,” he says, hauling his annoyance back under control by the scruff of its neck. “I really am fine.”

“I believe you,” says Mingyan, in a tone that suggests the exact opposite.

Liu Qingge grimaces. There’s no one else within earshot, even for cultivators, so he feels safe enough talking about it. “He thinks I’m… giving up. On life. Because Yang Yixuan is here.”

Mingyan’s face twitches visibly, but he can’t pick out what expression it was trying to make with her veil on. “You aren’t, though.”

Liu Qingge frowns at her tone. “No. Is that a question?”

“Ge…” Mingyan says carefully.

“I’m fine!” says Liu Qingge, throwing his hands up as if he can forcibly brush off what everyone else seems to think of him. “He’s still just a kid—and a mostly useless one, at that. I have a lot of work to do training him, I’m certainly not trying to off and die when I’m not done yet!”

“And when he gets older?” Mingyan asks knowingly.

Liu Qingge is silent, feeling like something with claws is holding his tongue back in his throat. When Yang Yixuan gets older, well, he’ll be the next Bai Zhan Peak Lord, won’t he? It may take some time; Liu Qingge doubts his martial siblings are prepared to ascend just yet, in the wake of their recent loss and the current chaos at large in the Jianghu. They won’t want to pass on the mantle in such uncertain times.

“You know,” says Mingyan. Liu Qingge’s shoulders tense. He knows that tone. “Kang Zhaohui outlived his first head disciple by seventy years.”

“And died not five after accepting his second one,” Liu Qingge grits out.

Mingyan is undeterred. “Qiao Mingxia and her shizun lived concurrently for nearly twenty years—”

“Until they both died in a mudslide!” Liu Qingge snaps. A mudslide, of all things! No beast nor demon but fate itself with nature as its faithful executioner, delivering death to those who defy its rules. Bai Zhan had been effectively leaderless for three decades following their deaths as well—Liu Qingge’s bones ache when he thinks about it too hard.

Liu Qingge realizes that Mingyan’s hand has found his shoulder at the same time as he registers his clenched jaw and grinding teeth. Breathing deeply, he calms himself. It’s not Mingyan he’s upset with anyway. It’s hardly her fault.

Liu Qingge wishes his was a problem with a solution he could simply beat into submission. If he could take a sword to it, things would be infinitely easier to deal with. But he can’t—and won’t, for that matter—murder Yang Yixuan. That would serve no one; not his sect, nor himself, and certainly not the stupid kid!

He lets out a long breath, then draws one in, and again.

“I think it’s sweet of her,” says Mingyan eventually, her hand resting lightly on Liu Qingge’s shoulder, just a faint physical reminder that she’s there. He appreciates it. “Rushing through the reincarnation cycle to get back for you—I’m sure she didn’t mean to pass on so soon.”

Before you were ready, she doesn’t say. Liu Qingge frowns distantly. He was ready. He always is. It was a bit of a shock, sure, but there was no need to hurry on his account. “I didn’t need it,” he says.

Mingyan just looks at him. “Will you turn him away now, then?”

She knows he won’t. Can’t. And it’s not like Yang Yixuan is really so terrible. He has… promise, somewhere under all the bothersome annoyance of his being.

Liu Qingge caves. “How is he?” He’ll have to go see Yue Qingyuan about everything one way or another, but he won’t let the man pull him away from his sister. The Sect Leader can wait, and Yang Yixuan can too.

Mingyan giggles, covering her mouth with one hand politely even though the veil hides it anyway. “Spritely,” she says charitably, eyes smiling. “Though he’s made more friends among my shimei post-learning to communicate in a non-Bai Zhan manner.”

Liu Qingge snorts, though he’s too wrung out to muster much blustering offense. “Are you calling my kids brutes?”

“Never!” Mingyan laughs. “Though perhaps a bit under-developed in the more delicate arts.”

“Flower braiding?” Liu Qingge asks, amused.

“Try holding a conversation,” Mingyan corrects.

That does get a real laugh out of Liu Qingge; his sister always manages to. “We aren’t made for delicacy,” he tells her. “We’re—”

“Swords,” Mingyan finishes for him, leaning against his shoulder, eyes closed in the dappling of afternoon sun shining through the leaves above them. “I know.”

Liu Qingge doesn’t disturb his sister much further, sitting quietly with her for half a shichen more before she rouses herself to head to dinner. Liu Qingge bids her farewell with a tight embrace and secures her promise to sneak-attack Yang Yixuan at least once for him, then marches off himself to find the Sect Leader. Yue-shixiong is due for a piece of his shidi’s mind.

Helpfully, Yue Qingyuan doesn’t delay too much; despite the dinner hour, pounding a fist on his front door produces results almost immediately.

“Shidi,” he says, stepping aside to let Liu Qingge through. “Please come in.”

“My head disciple,” Liu Qingge begins before the door even closes.

“Ah,” says Yue Qingyuan, heading for the kitchen without looking to see if Liu Qingge follows. “So you’ve noticed.”

“Of course I noticed!” Liu Qingge snaps. “He’s not on my peak!” Not that he’s been back to his peak since returning to the sect.

“Shidi has been notably absent himself.” And of course he knows. Yue Qingyuan makes a point to know everything, though it’s rarely so infuriating to come up against.

“I was busy,” Liu Qingge defends. He always gets put on the back foot with the Sect Leader, and somehow he’s never learned to anticipate it.

Yue Qingyuan hums, arranging tea. “Does disregarding my advice or Mu-shidi’s take up more of Qingge’s time?”

Liu Qingge’s mouth drops open. “You—!”

“Hm,” says Yue Qingyuan. “I suppose that makes sense. This shixiong had thought he was reasonable but perhaps being clearer about his orders would have been more conducive to Shidi’s disobeying them. Thinking takes time.”

“Yue-shixiong!” Liu Qingge says. “I did what you told me to!”

Yue Qingyuan raises an eyebrow at him, adjusting the tea pot just so. “This shibo has yet to note significant improvement in his shizhi’s skills.”

Now that’s just a lie! As much as Liu Qingge gripes, Yang Yixuan has been improving. The fact that he can return his shixiong and shijie’s “affections” at all is very impressive for someone his age and size. Bai Zhan works quickly, if you have a will for it. “Shixiong hasn’t been looking, then,” says Liu Qingge in defense of his head disciple’s growth.

Yue Qingyuan pours tea into one of the cups, his focus on getting the precise amount he wants through the softly wafting steam. “Yang Yixuan was successfully abducted by another peak without making much of a ruckus in his own defense,” he points out.

“By Qingqi’s flowers—twice his age! And more!” Liu Qingge argues. “Shixiong can’t be suggesting it should have been easy for an eleven-year-old to evade capture by Cang Qiong’s own extraction specialists!”

“Of course not,” says Yue Qingyuan, pouring the other cup with equal care. “This shixiong is saying that your eleven-year-old should be better. And if he is not, yet, does he not live on Bai Zhan? Is it our defensive peak, then, who failed to prevent the removal of their own head disciple? Shidi as truly been lax in his security.”

Once more, Liu Qingge has to clamp his mouth shut on his rage and swallow it down, though he can’t entirely stop it bubbling up. “Are we the ones who draw up wards and talismans? We have never been the home front, Zhangmen-shixiong. If there is an outside threat on Bai Zhan it’s expected to be because everyone who lives there is already dead, and they aren’t the only ones!”

It was Yue Qingyuan who turned the peaks on each other, not Liu Qingge. His responsibility lies without.

“Where were you, then?” Yue Qingyuan asks. He holds out the cup of tea he’d poured for Liu Qingge like there’s nothing so difficult at all about keeping his hand steady.

Where was Liu Qingge when the threat was right under their noses? When Luo Binghe (that bastard) was scheming under Shen Qingqiu’s pampering hand, setting his sights on the devastation of his shizun? His demon blood cannot have come from within the fold, so where was Liu Qingge?

Liu Qingge is on the floor, curled up like a small child spooked by noises in the dark. He’s in those moments on top of the tallest building in Hua Yue city, watching Xia Ya fall to pieces before it hits the roof tiles. Blood is creeping up his throat, Cheng Luan thrumming jaggedly somewhere distant and inaccessible.

He’s standing in the Sect Leader’s kitchen, still, and Yue Qingyuan says, “He’s dead.”

Liu Qingge gasps in a breath. His back has hit the counter at some point, his head hanging as his gaze struggles to find purchase on the floor. He knows that, obviously, he knows, but—

“Qingge,” Yue Qingyuan puts a hand on his shoulder. Mingyan had done that too, like they think he needs comforting. Liu Qingge is fine. “Shen Qingqiu is dead. There is nothing more we can do.”

The Sect Leader has become a bit blurry in Liu Qingge’s vision when he looks up. “You loved him,” he says. Yue Qingyuan has always loved Shen Qingqiu more than anyone else. How can he be okay with this?!

Yue Qingyuan blinks just a bit too slowly. “We owe more to the living than to the dead,” he says quietly. Liu Qingge can’t believe him.

“What did you ever do for him?” he asks, equally quiet, deadened. “When he was alive?”

They fought, Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu, constantly. Up until recent years, Liu Qingge has often had the thought that the Sect Leader ought to be more careful about who he spends time alone with, lest he wind up not-so-mysteriously dead. Yue Qingyuan never appeared to dislike Shen Qingqiu, for all that the Qing Jing Peak Lord had spent the longest time utterly loathing him. That hate—it’s not something born in response to kindness and dedication.

“Not enough,” says Yue Qingyuan softly. He looks genuinely hurt. Liu Qingge didn’t mean to wound him, but he always does try to be honest. Yue Qingyuan’s expression firms after a moment as he collects himself. “This shixiong will not fail another shidi, Qingge. Do you understand that, or do I need to explain it differently?”

Liu Qingge stares. Better late than never, he supposes, but… His expression must speak for him; Yue-shixiong responds to it.

“Qingge does not have permission to die,” he says. “The Bai Zhan Peak Lord serves the sect. He obeys orders, does he not? This is an order.”

“It’s not—” Liu Qingge stutters. “It’s not my choice, shixiong.”

“No,” Yue Qingyuan agrees. He gives Liu Qingge’s shoulder a companionable squeeze. “It’s not a choice. Qingge will obey.”

That’s not fair to ask of him. Liu Qingge knows the fate he’s slated for. He has understood it since he was a youth, picking up his Shizun’s shizun’s sword. It’s not fair, but Liu Qingge never held that sort of expectation for his life. So maybe he’d hoped he’d have a bit more time, but that has never been for him to decide.

Liu Qingge shakes Yue Qingyuan’s hand off his shoulder and makes his own demand: “Give me back my head disciple, Zhangmen-shixiong.”

Yue Qingyuan takes the hint to remove himself from Liu Qingge’s space and backs up. He picks up his teacup, which he’d left on the counter at some point, and takes another sip. Then, meeting Liu Qingge’s eyes, he says, “No.”

:::

That is our gift—we will not be alone.

He’s not made to be a father; he barely makes a passable son. He suspects he’s fraying.

:::

“Will Da-shixiong be returning soon?” Ji Jue asks upon Liu Qingge’s return to Bai Zhan.

“Yes,” says Liu Qingge shortly. The boy will be fine on Xian Shu while Liu Qingge recovers enough to use his sword without being castigated by the sect’s healers. When he’s well, he will go there and retrieve Yang Yixuan.

Ji Jue looks relieved. “That’s good,” he says. “We—the peak will be glad to hear it.”

Liu Qingge waves him off and marches up to his own house to meditate. Yue Qingyuan wants to keep Liu Qingge from his head disciple to make raising the boy into a halfway decent peak lord more difficult, but that’s not really how it works. Yue Qingyuan has no say over the workings of fate, whether he likes it or not.

Yang Yixuan is a menace, that’s what. Not even a shichen back on Bai Zhan, and Liu Qingge keeps expecting the kid to burst through his door, waving a practice sword and shouting. Eventually, he rolls out of his meditative pose to his feet and heads back out the door.

Liu Qingge manages to stall himself with sitting on his porch and watching the training fields below for about an incense stick more before he gives up. It doesn’t feel right to leave his head disciple in Qi Qingqi’s clutches for too long. Sure, she won’t hurt him, but he might get the sense that he’s been abandoned. Yang Yixuan doesn’t have a particularly patient soul.

Less out of respect than desire to not be trapped on Qian Cao again, Liu Qingge walks to Xian Shu once more. The front gates are tightly shut, though whether it’s with intent to keep out, or keep in is unclear.

What is clear is the ruckus.

Yang Yixuan’s unmistakable—if you’ve been listening to it periodically for the past several months—battle-screeching floats over the high, protective walls of Xian Shu’s peak proper. Liu Qingge tilts his head.

“Never!” Yang Yixuan shrieks. A clash of metal on metal follows—swords? “Ach! Keep those away from me!”

Some giggling follows, and Yang Yixuan shrieks some more. “Back, back, demon-spawn! Arghh!”

Just leaping up onto the walls, while considered irredeemably rude, is child’s play for a cultivator of Liu Qingge’s level. But he has reason to believe his personal disciple is in some amount of trouble, so he’s allowed to be rude.

Standing on the small, decorative roof of the wall gives Liu Qingge a vantage to look over most of Xian Shu Peak’s common areas. Dorms off to one side are barely visible around the peak’s vegetation, with an open-air training hall closer to the main gates. Otherwise space is taken up by practice fields interwoven with garden paths and shrubbery. It’s a nice enough place, though the vine-covered decorative trellises providing shade here and there make it difficult to get a good grasp on the floor plan of certain areas. Luckily, Liu Qingge has been here before. It doesn’t hurt either that his disciple is on one of the open practice fields, keeping his training sword threateningly between himself and a group of Xian Shu’s flowers, who are brandishing… fabric?

None of the girls are Mingyan, though Liu Qingge picks out a few members of her posse in the group, three of whom are now circling around behind Yang Yixuan.

The boy doesn’t seem to be in actual danger, just flustered and outraged, so Liu Qingge feels comfortable taking his time about his retrieval. Pissing off Qi Qingqi is never a good idea anyway.

“Qingqi!” he bellows, hopping lightly down into the gardens and trotting through the semi-maze towards the group of disciples.

She arrives at the same time as he does from the other direction. The children have bunched up, most of the girls in one group and Yang Yixuan together with Mingyan’s friends in another. Liu Qingge spots one of the girls in the first group tucking the cloth bundle they’d been chasing after Yang Yixuan with into her sleeve.

“Qingge,” says Qi Qingge with a dangerous smile as she glides between the disciples to stand before him. “What exactly is shidi doing on this shijie’s peak?” Without permission, no less?

“What are your disciples doing to mine?” Liu Qingge counters. It’s obvious enough why he’s here, he’s not going to rehash it.

“Shizun!” Yang Yixuan pipes up, apparently just to say it. Liu Qingge raises an eyebrow at the boy, who he’s now noticing is considerably more disheveled than he typically is—which, to be sure, is quite disheveled.

The boy is appreciably quick about making his escape now that an opportunity has arisen, at least. His attempt to squirrel his way to Liu Qingge’s side is unsuccessful largely because his meager training is no match for his shijie’s skills and relative size, given the six or so years of difference between them. They catch him in a body lock quickly enough, then look back at their shizun with faces like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.

“Shizun,” Yang Yixuan manages, squirming. “They wanted— they were trying to make me wear a Xian Shu uniform!”

One of the girls in the larger group steps forward with a good approximation of a contrite expression, though Liu Qingge doubts her teacher believes it any more than he does. “It was a bad joke, shizun, since he’s been here for some time. Our apologies, these foolish disciples didn’t mean to cause such a commotion.”

“Shidi was greatly frightened by the prospect of wearing women’s clothes,” another girl puts in. “We thought Bai Zhan disciples weren’t supposed to be afraid of anything!”

“We wanted to help him!” adds a third girl. Schemers, the whole lot of them.

Now Liu Qingge and Qi Qingqi both turn expectant expressions on Yang Yixuan, who flushes bright red. “I don’t care whose clothes they are!” he declares hotly. “I won’t wear another peak’s uniform, you can’t make me!”

A… sweeter sentiment than Liu Qingge might have expected. The kid might want to get over that, however; sometimes a bit of disguise can be valuable. The option shouldn’t be discounted offhand.

Except, of course, that right now the girls are all lying to him, and Liu Qingge does not like liars. “Qingqi,” he says flatly. “If Zhangmen-shixiong put you up to this—”

“Qingyuan ‘put me up’ to nothing,” Qi Qingqi sniffs. “I don’t mind; my girls were helping.”

Helping by trying to disguise Yang Yixuan as one of their own to hide him when his master inevitably came looking? Liu Qingge can see the veil on the ground that one of the girls is trying to unobtrusively hide under her foot. As if he can’t identify every member of Mingyan’s veiled posse just based on body shape and movement, much less his own head disciple! (He cares about her, and they talk; of course he was willing to tutor her friends at her request.)

Liu Qingge doesn’t have time for this. He wants his head disciple back on his peak, bursting through his door and interrupting every small moment of peace and quiet with his horrible screeching. He’s not interested in negotiating, he came here for one thing.

“Give him back,” he says to Qi Qingqi.

“So you can abandon him again?” she asks, and Liu Qingge reels.

“Hey!” Yang Yixuan jumps to Liu Qingge’s defense as his heart stumbles. “He never abandoned me, he has to fight that beast to lay Shen-shibo to rest properly!”

The look Qi Qingqi gives the kid is pitying; the one she gives Liu Qingge is disappointed. “You haven’t even told him,” she says. As if she even knows!

“Told me what?” Yang Yixuan asks, looking back and forth between the two Peak Lords with a furrow in his brow.

“Qingqi,” Liu Qingge says haltingly. She takes pity on him and orders her disciples to clear the commons and leave them alone with a flick of her fan, taking Yang Yixuan along with them. She steps up to him sedately, gaze sweeping up and down his form for a moment before she meets his eyes, evidently unbothered by whatever she’s found.

“Qingge is confused,” she notes. “But is he wondering why I don’t want my head disciple’s beloved older brother to throw himself at things that can kill him, or why I’m concerned over my shidi’s apparent death wish?”

“Why,” Liu Qingge snaps. Asks, begs.

Qi Qingqi’s face pinches.

“Don’t tell me it’s for the ‘future of the sect’!” Liu Qingge adds. “The sect will be fine! I am not the first Bai Zhan Peak Lord to leave a child behind. He doesn’t need me to teach him anything at all, he just needs to remember.”

“Did you?” Qi Qingge demands, stepping closer to put herself right in his space, her folded fan tapping aggressively against her palm. “Does Qingge remember all of his past lives? Does he know some secret that we do not? Was it some past oath that demands his death, or is he just following the pattern? Is he too cowardly to break the cycle—or even try?”

Liu Qingge grits his teeth. “In another two generations,” he bites out, “when Bai Zhan needs a leader and there is no one—”

“We can always use a fresh perspective,” says Qi Qingqi.

“I won’t condemn another soul to this life— to this death!” Liu Qingge shouts. His hands flex uselessly at his sides, but gripping his sword’s hilt is not a good idea in another Peak Lord’s domain.

He didn’t want to take Yang Yixuan on to begin with. He wishes the kid had more opportunities, better options. He wishes they didn’t keep coming back, over and over and over again. If Liu Qingge could have chosen, he doesn’t know that he would have chosen this. He wishes he could give Yang Yixuan a choice.

Life as the Bai Zhan Peak Lord would not be ill-described as one long, extended pre-death. Liu Qingge doesn’t mind fighting. He loves it, actually—the rush, the thrill, the way his heartbeat forgets fear and sense and chooses passion, every time.

He’s less fond of being expendable. From the very first, his Shizun had made it clear they would be expected to lay down their lives for the sect. Not if, but when. He had accepted it then, because what else was he meant to do? The days of his youth, growing to know and respect his fellow head disciples, falling in love with the feeling of flight, imagining immortality—the way his Shizun said it had given him the false sense that he had time.

And then his Shizun died in the effort of sealing Tianlang-jun and his master’s generation began preparing for their ascension, and all of a sudden it was real to him. That when she said “there’s no rush,” she meant the sect’s needs will determine when you die. And “do not be afraid of it” was a kinder way of putting this is known; there are other things more worth wasting your fear on.

He worries that he is not a good teacher for the kid. Even his Shizun was less blunt than he, more understanding. She had years and years on him, but Liu Qingge isn’t sure he’ll get that experience. And even if he does, the kid is here already, isn’t he? What would the point be?

He worries, more quietly, that he’ll poison the child’s mind with his own sourness. Their lives are only phases of an age-old cycle, but what if he accelerates it with his cynicism? Yang Yixuan doesn’t deserve to be unhappy for the rest of his life. Perhaps he should tell the boy before he dies, too: don’t rush in, don’t spend your time fearing it…

But Liu Qingge doesn’t, himself. It’s not fear that weighs on him, it’s an old, simmering anger.

At times he fancies he can feel his own soul. Ancient and newly innocent with each incarnation, genderless, bloodthirsty, bound to one single purpose and hurtling ever towards that thrill. It wears him like an outer robe, even as the threads of him grow thin and begin to show what’s underneath.

“Why don’t you ask him if he feels condemned?” asks Qi Qingqi, too keen by far.

Liu Qingge stares over her head in silence, feeling defeated. “He doesn’t know.”

Qi Qingqi tucks her fan into her belt and reaches out to take his hands in hers with a knowing, sisterly look. “Then tell him.”

:::

Do you feel ready, now?

What did he take, that he must give so much back? He doesn’t remember.

:::

“Shizun!” Yang Yixuan cries upon being released by his shijie at the door of Qi Qingqi’s favorite tearoom. His voice rings with the relief of a lost child unexpectedly coming across an adult they know. Someone to reassure him, and solve the ills that plague him.

“Sit,” says Liu Qingge, nodding to the kneeling cushion opposite his own seat. He feels old, and still unprepared.

Yang Yixuan does so quickly and inelegantly, shifting awkwardly on his cushion, and the very sight of it is relaxing. Qingqi’s disciples haven’t entirely corrupted him with their manners yet.

“You—” Liu Qingge begins. “We—” He stops. He’s never been one for explaining things. Oftentimes he thinks he has a perfectly good grasp on something, but what comes out of his mouth is only half of what he means. It makes sense to him.

His Shizun never seemed to have such difficulties, and from her understanding of the situation, Liu Qingge has to assume her own teacher struggled less than he does as well. Being owners of the same soul does not always translate into the same skills. They are their own people, and that’s half the problem.

But surely he can start at the beginning, that can’t go too wrong.

“Qi Qingqi kidnapped you because the Sect Leader believes you are making me want to die.” Yang Yixuan’s face goes slack with horrified alarm. Fuck.

“I’m not,” Liu Qingge clarifies. “Trying to die. Or upset with you. It’s what he thinks. And it’s wrong.”

“Shi—Shizun!” Yang Yixuan yelps. “Why would he think that? I didn’t do anything!”

“True,” Liu Qingge inclines his head in agreement. But not actually being suicidal only makes this conversation marginally more simple. “It’s not your fault, anyway.”

“I don’t want you to die!” Yang Yixuan says fervently.

Liu Qingge frowns. “No,” he says blankly. “Why would you? You’re not ready to become a Peak Lord.”

Yang Yixuan opens his mouth, but Liu Qingge continues before the boy can speak. He feels suddenly that he must make his head disciple understand, like his own Shizun never did, what exactly he’s in for.

“You have my Shizun’s soul,” he says. “And the soul of her shizun’s shizun. When I die, my soul will go on to be your head disciple, and the next Bai Zhan Peak Lord after you. It’s a cycle.”

Yang Yixuan is quiet for once, clearly thinking deeply about this.

“It’s an ancient arrangement,” Liu Qingge adds. “Generations and generations of Peak Lords have come before us this way.” And they will after.

“So,” Yang Yixuan says slowly. “I am… Shizun’s shizun?”

Liu Qingge blinks. “No. You have the soul that inhabited her body, but that doesn’t make you the same person. You are…” he eyes the kid for a moment. Impatient would be accurate. Untested, too. “Very different.”

The boy visibly sets that aside for a moment, brow furrowing. “What would you have done if you never met me?” he asks. “If there was no plague in Jin Lan, my father— I wouldn’t have come to Cang Qiong.”

Liu Qingge shrugs. “You would have, eventually.”

That’s just how it goes. Where normal reincarnation for cultivators of a Peak Lord’s level retains much of their memory in the next life—or at least, evidence from past instances of dead non-Bai Zhan leaders of Cang Qiong suggests as much—something about the Bai Zhan cycle wipes them clean every time. Except for this: that they gravitate to the sect, to the mountains, like magnetism.

Liu Qingge is given to suspect it’s some old agreement made by the temporary owners of their souls long ago, bound into the fabric of them, so that they’ll always return. He doesn’t dislike his job. Service pleases him. His passion for the swing and stab of the blade, the thumping thrill of his blood in a fight, the rush of falling through the sky as the spirits of a hundred and more remembered swords… his inclinations were easily turned to the defense of the sect.

If he were not bound to his peak and his martial family, Liu Qingge is unsure of what he would have become. Sometimes he wonders if the never-ending cycle is penance for a past life of his, a sentence on his very soul for an ancient crime; perhaps he was a bloody warlord, or an attempted tyrant. He doesn’t remember.

“Because this disciple’s soul… is a Peak Lord’s soul,” Yang Yixuan says slowly.

Liu Qingge hums. “It is a soul that has belonged to many Peak Lords,” he says. “Right now it’s only the soul of a boy.”

“It used to be your teacher’s, though.” Yang Yixuan leans forward on his knees curiously, as if getting closed to Liu Qingge’s face will give him more answers. “That must be very strange for Shizun.”

“It’s not,” Liu Qingge dismisses uncomfortably. “Yang Yixuan is not like her at all.”

Yang Yixuan frowns, his mind churning visibly behind his expression. “So when Shizun dies, he won’t come back like himself, either?”

“It’s not coming back,” Liu Qingge corrects, getting a bit frustrated with their circular conversation. He’s not sure he’s doing a good job of explaining. “It’s reincarnation. Whoever I end up as won’t remember being me, just like I don’t remember being my teacher’s teacher. And I shouldn’t. That’s why—when I die, the current generation of Peak Lords will start planning their own ascension.”

“Why?” asks Yang Yixuan.

Liu Qingge grimaces. “That’s how it works. They don’t want to influence the Peak Lord after you too much—they know it’s the soul that was me, but they shouldn’t be trying to turn them into me. I have… biases, feuds, that should not remain with the sect beyond our deaths, unless they’re ongoing issues.”

Yang Yixuan shifts on his seat. “It’s possible to remember?”

“Possibly,” says Liu Qingge. It stands to reason that it is, absent of proof that it is not. “You will never do such a thing,” Liu Qingge orders, waiting until he receives a serious nod in response. Holding onto the past is especially dangerous on the off chance that a new Peak Lord might remember it.

After struggling for a moment, Liu Qingge decides on an example. “If Cang Qiong begins a war with Huan Hua Palace now, and I die in the course of it, then peace is secured through the efforts of your generation, would you want the Peak Lord after you to carry the resentment of being killed by a sect Cang Qiong is at peace with?”

“I guess not,” Yang Yixuan agrees. Liu Qingge hopes he understands. There is danger in knowing too much for one person.

“I’m sorry,” says Liu Qingge suddenly. Ask him if he feels condemned, Qingqi had told him. “Now that you know—I should have done more to keep you away.”

“Shizun, no!” Yang Yixuan cries heatedly. “I like being on Bai Zhan! My shijie and shixiong are great, and I’m glad to be a disciple of Cang Qiong!”

“But you’re going to die,” says Liu Qingge. He’d said much the same to his Shizun, when her calm explication began to edge on his nerves. Maybe it’s just a fundamental difference between the soul in him and the one in them—his must be more prone to disquiet.

He doesn’t like the thought, and he knows there isn’t a thing he can do about it. Sooner or later this kid will hand himself over to his fellow head disciples, and they will send him out, and he will die. The nature of Cang Qiong is that none of the peaks are quite strong enough on their own; only together can they form an unbreakable barrier against the world. Liu Qingge can’t be the first Peak Lord of Bai Zhan to wonder why it is always his role to give everything, and falter.

It's not as though he would hesitate for even a moment to lay down his life for one of his martial siblings, but this child…

“Says who?” Yang Yixuan fires back with a jaunty tilt to his brows.

Fate? Liu Qingge thinks incredulously. The long, long line of Peak Lords who’ve come before you? Perhaps this is how the other soul keeps itself sane, then. Pure, ridiculous confidence.

Liu Qingge remembers the kid standing on the riverbank in the tunnel into Jin Lan. “You’re looking for death!” he had warned them, as if he didn’t mean to walk right back into the plague-ridden city himself.

Yang Yixuan crosses his arms, chest puffed up with more arrogance than Liu Qingge thought he had taught the boy. “I will do my best to protect the sect,” he declares. “Maybe I’ll die, but we don’t know that. Maybe I’ll make it ascension!”

“Yang Yixuan, your cohort will not ascend with you,” Liu Qingge says, in case the kid missed when he mentioned it earlier. “You have to die before they begin planning their ascension.”

Yang Yixuan frowns, eyes narrowing. “Didn’t you say the Sect Leader made Qi-shibo take me away because he was afraid of you dying?”

That’s not what Liu Qingge said at all, actually. “The cycle is not meant to overlap much,” he explains. “Usually Bai Zhan Peak Lords pass on soon after choosing a head disciple. It’s—”

He’s not sure why, actually. Liu Qingge is not looking for death; he’s just expecting it. Bai Zhan Peak Lords don’t survive their personal disciples—that’s just how it’s always been. It might well be the disciples in question driving their poor teachers to madness, he thinks grumpily.

Yang Yixuan is unwilling to wait for Liu Qingge’s reasoning. “But that’s not fair!” he bursts out. “No one should benefit from Shizun’s death, they shouldn’t be waiting for it!”

Liu Qingge has never been under the impression that it was supposed to be. And besides, “That’s inaccurate.”

Most often, the death of the Bai Zhan Peak Lord corresponds with the defeat of a major threat to Cang Qiong or the Jianghu at large. They may not be enough on their own, but with the best efforts of the entire sect behind them, they can keep the death toll down—to one, in the best possible world. Threats like those are not the kind Cang Qiong’s leadership is willing to leave to the next generation, but neither are they willing to wait for another one to come along without a Bai Zhan Peak Lord ready to fight it. Hence the quick ascension to let the next one rise.

There is purpose in the turns of the cycle; it can be cruel, but not without intent.

Liu Qingge knows of at least one on-level threat in the Jianghu at the moment, for all that no one else seems inclined to do much about him.

“No one is hoping I’ll die before you get old enough to take my place,” he says. And if he does, he’ll take Luo Binghe (that bastard) down with him. In a perfect world Yang Yixuan would be an adult by the time Liu Qingge passes on, at the very least. But he knows it’s not a perfect world. And so he anticipates.

“But you’re planning to!” Yang Yixuan bursts out.

“I’m not,” Liu Qingge disagrees.

“You keep going out to fight that beast, and you always end up on Qian Cao!” Yang Yixuan accuses.

Liu Qingge hadn’t known the boy was paying that much attention. He scowls. “I won’t leave him to be your problem,” he says. If Peak Lords of Bai Zhan have one shared skill, it’s taking the enemy down with them. Yang Yixuan will never have to fight Luo Binghe (that bastard) if his shizun can help it.

“Shizun doesn’t have to leave anything!”

Ah, Liu Qingge realizes, the kid is afraid. “It’s alright,” he says, as soothing as he knows how to be, which is probably not actually very soothing. “You’ll be ready.”

“So you’ve given up?” Yang Yixuan asks, frustrated. Liu Qingge doesn’t know why; he’s not the one misunderstanding here.

Liu Qingge frowns. He doesn’t give up—ever.

“Well,” says Yang Yixuan, looking away with a pinched expression. “Go on then.”

Liu Qingge blinks. “What?”

Yang Yixuan crosses his arms. His expression is mutinous, but it keeps twitching. “I don’t need a Shizun anyway. I know how to fight already—and I have this old soul, don’t I? I’ll remember how to be a Peak Lord.”

“You’re not supposed to—what?” says Liu Qingge.

Abruptly, Yang Yixuan turns back to him, red-faced and glaring. “Go die!” he shouts. Liu Qingge just sits, stunned into silence. “I don’t need you!” Yang Yixuan snaps, his eyes glittering between rapid blinks. “If you want to die, then go do it! This—this disciple won’t wait on Shizun.”

Liu Qingge is sure he’s failed again, even though he knows he’d said what he meant. He’s confused, and even though he admittedly spends much of his time in confusion, he hates it. Liu Qingge is not meant to feel so dull. He stares across the table at Yang Yixuan, who is pointedly not looking at him, and can’t find anything to say.

For as long as he has been at Cang Qiong, Liu Qingge has seen his life as a mission. He lives within parameters, made finite by the expectation of an end goal; defend the sect. It makes him an invaluable weapon, being unmoved in the face of every possible death he has been set against.

For a short while before he was summoned to repel the demonic invasion, Liu Qingge had been devastated by his qi deviation, furious with himself. He was furious with Shen Qingqiu, too, for saving him. He remembers the thought like the sharp gleam of a knife: what use is a broken blade?

If not for the lack of a head disciple of his own to take up the mantle, Liu Qingge is sure that he would have forgone arial attacks then—crashed to the ground and taken out as many demons as he could with the shockwave before letting one of the last few get in a lucky blow. A sword that rings untrue is untrustworthy; you never know when the faults in the metal will finally give.

Liu Qingge has not expected to survive for a long time. He’s not sure what to do with everyone else assuming he will.

He’s not sure what to do with this child kneeling across from him, trying so desperately not to cry.

Perhaps if Liu Qingge’s entire family was dead, he would have been more attached to his own Shizun. Maybe she would have taught him not to mourn in advance. Liu Qingge doesn’t know how to make peace—he has spent his life as a god of war. If Luo Binghe (that bastard) were death itself…

He doesn’t know what Yang Yixuan thinks of when he says Shizun. Liu Qingge has only ever tried to be honest.

“I don’t want to die,” says Liu Qingge. It feels like walking out of Jin Lan. The false plague is little more than black-wrapped skeletons in the nooks and crannies of the street; the gates are open, the sowers are dead, and something is gone. Something has been lost.

“I don’t want to die,” Liu Qingge repeats, eyes on the wood grain of the table between them, tracing the swirling patterns, unable to find each one’s end. That has always been his issue, hasn’t it? Unhappy with his lot, discontented. He’s ready; he’s always been ready, but he remains covetous of his life.

Yang Yixuan peeks at him from the corner of his eye, wiping roughly at his nose with his sleeve. “Shizun…” he says, and it reminds Liu Qingge of Ge and Shidi and Qingge.

He got what he wanted, one way or another. Choose me, choose me, choose me.

“Don’t wait,” he says finally, and raises his head. “This teacher will stay.” I’m choosing me.

Over and over and over again, they spin through their cycle of existence. It might be punishment, or duty, or the love of the fight that traps them in this existence. But maybe it’s time. How long as he been called the War God of Bai Zhan? He can never stop fighting, or stop seeking the thrill that calls to his blood, but is it so wrong to want to win, for once? The race can only be so long; there is only so much of the world to run. Liu Qingge chooses life.

:::

Don’t be afraid.

Who’s scared, Shizun? Who is afraid?