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The disciples of Bai Zhan probably wouldn’t describe themselves as gossips, but it doesn’t take long after Liu Qingge returns from the Immortal Alliance Conference for the news to reach his peers: their head disciple is in love.
The fact that the object of his affections is another boy is unremarkable and largely ignored. Bai Zhan has a long and storied history of legendary warriors who swore off marriage in favor of chasing a rival around or going on quests with their sworn brothers. Everybody’s a cutsleeve and nobody cares.
What is remarkable is that the boy in question was accepted into Qing Jing Peak the moment he arrived at the mountain. That’s already a mark against their head disciple’s dignity, but to make matters worse, it hasn’t turned him off at all. Liu Qingge pushed somebody into the pond for questioning the guy’s origins! The koi in there are halfway to cultivating into dragon form! They bite!
More importantly, it’s a total betrayal of the rivalry between their peaks!!
Three different disciples try to challenge him over this, but Liu Qingge doesn’t even notice. Their complaints get lost in the sea of other challenges initiated for more common reasons, such as:
- trying to usurp his position
- testing their skills
- argument over the chore rotation
- happened to be using the training grounds at the same time
- bored
There’s nothing else they can really do about it, at least for the first month. Shen Jiu spends most of that time on Qian Cao, sorting out some sort of fault in his cultivation. That isn’t a thread of gossip anyone on Bai Zhan really cares about, with the unfortunate exception of Liu Qingge.
There’s no glory in picking a fight with someone in their sick bed, regardless of how they ended up there. Once Shen Jiu is back on his own peak, however, all bets are off.
Planning a raid on Qing Jing is rarely more complicated than somebody raising the suggestion during lunch, but they have to be a little bit more careful this time. There’s no shame in losing a spar with their head disciple, but it is pretty embarrassing when he skips the sword entirely and just shoves you into the nearest body of water.
So, they wait until Liu Qingge is off-peak for a night hunt. It doesn’t take long; he takes the first one that’s available, even though it’s significantly less dangerous than his usual hunts. Nobody really thinks much of that, because Liu Qingge is one of those disciples who gets restless if he goes too long without killing something.
It takes about a shichen of battle for them to realize this plan has failed entirely. The Qing Jing disciples they’re fighting are the same stuck-up assholes as usual; Shen Jiu isn’t there!
Because he’s on a night hunt. With Liu Qingge.
This is even more serious than they thought.
ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧
All things considered, Shen Yuan thinks his first night hunt went very well! Liu Qingge had kindly offered to take him out for his first try, like an older brother sitting in the passenger seat for your driving lessons. Liu Qingge is younger than him, but the vibe was there! Especially because they rode on a sword together the whole way there and back.
The problem they’d been called to solve was a large, squirming leathery structure blocking a river. To Shen Yuan’s delight, it turned out to be an egg sack full of Wooly Whale Caterpillars! They grow up to be generic fantasy ‘whales with wings’, but their larval form is actually pretty interesting. They look sort of like a worm on a string if it was also a baby seal, and they only eat birds, to absorb their joy of flight.
Shen Yuan had made a case for the poor little things, because they’re really quite harmless. Liu Qingge was surprisingly accommodating! Rather than culling the lot, they’d moved most of the brood to a pond far from human civilization. The only casualties were three chickens from the village and one caterpillar that wiggled out of Liu Qingge’s arms mid-flight.
They’d returned with payment from the village and the remains of the slightly splattered caterpillar. Shen Yuan is in high spirits, glad that there’s at least some enjoyment to be had in this world. Qing Jing has a lovely library, but it also has enough petty academic posturing and rich young master bullshit to make him pull his hair out. Going out on an adventure with Liu Qingge was fun.
When they make it back to the mountain, Shen Yuan decides to follow Liu Qingge all the way back to Bai Zhan. He wants to see the post-mission debrief! And also maybe make sure Liu Qingge was exaggerating about the disciples hunting their own meals. He hadn’t been clear on if that was on the peak or just on night hunts.
They’re walking past a tranquil koi pond when the other disciples find them.
Bai Zhan disciples seem to either operate alone or in whole packs, and this is definitely one of the packs. They size Shen Yuan up in a way that is strikingly reminiscent of middle school bullies. He’s aware Shen Jiu has a resting bitch face, don’t look at him like that!
(Unbeknownst to Shen Yuan, it is not Shen Jiu’s expression the boys are examining. Instead, they are taking in the hints of delicacy in his wrists and cheekbones. The contrast between his bright, interested eyes and the dark circles underneath them. That he’d been smiling openly at Liu Qingge with no malice whatsoever when they arrived, leaning in close and mirroring his body language. The way he’s way too fucking pretty, and just fragile enough to protect.)
“This is Shen Jiu?”
The disciple who spoke has a squeaky, prepubescent sort of voice, and is barely visible between his taller companions. Liu Qingge makes an irritable noise on the verge of an outright growl.
“Do none of you have anything better to do than gossip?” Liu Qingge snaps.
“Ah, they’re probably just curious,” Shen Yuan says, putting a calming hand on his friend’s shoulder. “My peakmates weren’t sure what to make of our friendship at first either.”
Okay, they actually told Shen Yuan it was obvious he wasn’t lying about having brain damage because there’s no other reason he’d want to spend time with a Bai Zhan brute. And by “at first”, he means “the day before yesterday”. Not important!
The Bai Zhan pack are now staring at Shen Yuan’s hand on Liu Qingge’s shoulder. The longer it stays there, the more intent they seem to get. Nobody is speaking, and Liu Qingge is slowly turning red.
“Ah, Liu-shidi?”
Somebody in the middle of the pack snickers.
“Ah, Liu-shidi?” the other disciple imitates Shen Yuan’s voice and bats his eyelashes at Liu Qingge. Shen Yuan can feel Liu Qingge tense up under his hand just before he lurches forward.
“That’s it! Everyone’s going in the pond!”
Shen Yuan barely has time to process the threat before Liu Qingge has, indeed, thrown the offending disciple into the koi pond.
The rest of them don’t make it far. Shen Yuan watches them shout and struggle against the fish to get back onto dry land, his face politely tucked away behind a fan. It’s hard not to smile, and it would be unseemly to appear like he’s gloating!
Still, he can’t help it! How nice to have a friend who doesn’t tolerate bullying!