Chapter Text
According to his memory, he had taken suddenly ill. A qi deviation, apparently. He remembered struggling to rise for the morning, and then--nothing. Black nothingness, deeper than sleep.
He had no concept of how long that comatose darkness had lasted. There was no existence of time in such a space, so according to his feelings, it had been only for a fraction of an instant before he started to resurface again--thrust into a fever-brained state, broken and confused, only the vaguest awareness that something was wrong with him.
Then that beast messing with his mind. Cracking into his dreams and dragging things to light, putting them on display. Things he had not offered, and things he had not asked to see. As if it made any difference to him, what had happened in the past. As if it mattered now. Ancient history should stay dead. He refused it. He refused the visions from that half-conscious, hazy state.
And then being shocked out of it suddenly, to find himself in the process of tearing apart some stranger. And then seeing himself--what could not be himself--what was he--
And then a while longer of nothing. He’d flickered in and out, for a time, struggling to retain his grip on consciousness. He was not sure exactly how long that took; he knew only that after a time, he’d came awake and stayed that way, and that was when he finally learned how his world had been torn apart.
It had to be told to him, for he had no memory of all his time absent. Though it was his body that had been hauled through misfortunes and terrors, it left no echo in his mind, for he’d been--somewhere else, locked away. Details were murky. The full story was left only for those who had been present. But he got the important parts. He understood what mattered in this mess.
He’d been gone for years. An impostor had worn his skin, played at being him--badly, and yet no one cared?--and took over his life, used it up, then threw it away. Leaving him to rot in the Abyss, and now he came back to--to this. To being a beast. A monster. A disgusting, freakish thing that could hardly stand the light of the sun--it blinded him, was too hot on his skin, felt dry and stinging and harsh and hostile.
And Yue Qingyuan had dared to try and speak to him after all of that. Shen Qingqiu had nearly lost his mind.
"Xiao Jiu”--
“Don’t. Gods, if ever you--just--just don’t,” he hissed. His voice was raw and cracked and alien. His jaw moved wrongly. His hands moved wrongly. Everything was wrong, he had to move as little as possible, curled into the tightest ball he could manage beneath a thin blanket so he wouldn’t be seen like this. His spine was bent over on itself like a coiled snake. His limbs were--everywhere. Like an insect. All horrible legs and arms and claws and fangs. “Just--leave.”
“I--I am sorry, I should have--”
“Yes,” he snapped, and his temper boiled inside him, “you should have. But you didn’t. I was gone for years and you just didn’t notice.” He peeled himself out of hiding and straightened. Unfolding. He had yet to really look at himself properly but he was certain he was a horror to behold. His old friend certainly flinched badly enough to convince him.
“Xiao--”
“Leave. Get out. Get out!” His voice rose into a shriek. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand him. Everything was wrong and everything was ruined--everything he’d achieved, everything he’d gathered, everything he’d done with himself, his entire life--all destroyed in an instant, and Qi-ge had just--just--gone on as if nothing was happening, as if Shen Jiu wasn’t gone with no answer, as if the impostor was anything like him at all, because it didn’t matter, did it--
--no, of course it didn’t matter, everyone liked this other Shen Qingqiu more, of course they did, he was pleasant, he was approachable, he was a darling, he didn’t snap or curse or fight dirty or resent others, who would want old Shen Jiu back, why even come back at all--
He smelled blood. Blinked, and came back to himself, and saw the jagged lines he’d ripped across Yue Qingyuan’s face--barely missed catching an eye--and his claws were glistening with it, shining red, and the smell in the air, the smell of it. Yue Qingyuan staggered back but did not make a sound, just looked tragic, looked pathetic--
He’d been left alone, after that. Tiniest blessings, he’d been left to struggle with his current existence in isolation. Thinking forward, thinking of anything beyond the next day--next hour--next minute--was an icy agony, as even the slightest twitch, the slightest pull of a muscle told him how wrong everything was, how violated, how his body had been--had been--
Taken
--and he was just supposed to--go on like this--
Oh, he’d been told about the mushroom. Growing a new body, it would be done in several years. Just endure it until then, and everything could go back to normal. Everything could be as if he hadn’t been replaced and no one cared. That his impostor was welcomed back into Cang Qiong as if he was guilty of absolutely nothing, as if he hadn’t deceived the whole lot of them and stolen his way into a Peak Lord position, used everything of Shen Qingqiu’s for himself without concern, ruined his life. Left him as this thing. As if just making him look human again--not even be human, no, a fucking mushroom, just one that looked human--would fix any of that. Would make everything that had been done to him okay.
He’d been torn apart and put together with all the pieces wrong. He’d been cast out of his rightful place, the place he had earned only by the most desperate clinging and clawing and blood and sweat, and it had simply been accepted by all his peers. He didn’t even know if he’d get it back. Nothing had been said to him, on if he was still to be considered the Peak Lord of Qing Jing. Or if the impostor just got to keep that title, even as a non-cultivator, simply because he was liked.
No, it could not be fixed. This could not be simply repaired, back to life as usual. He had been violated in so many ways, and all his fellow Peak Lords were traitors when it came down to it. So happy to immediately embrace a replacement. All so in love with the man who stole his skin.
And the body he found himself in now. So easy for Yue Qingyuan to insist it will only be a few years, and then it will be fine. As if he had any idea what this was like, inside. Everything was loud. Everything was bright. And in the pit of himself there was a gnawing--a deep, wretched feeling that demanded. Some kind of hunger that he couldn’t quantify, something this horrible monster needed but he was not sure what. Human blood, Yue Qingyuan’s blood, had smelled--interesting, had a spark, but it was not that. It was nothing so simple as blood.
Something created by the Abyss. Next to nothing was known about Abyssal beings, save that they were monsters against nature, abominations, disordered things that were beyond demon, each one its own unique horror from the few times they had been recorded. Sickening to find himself like this. A twisted nightmare. A beast. A freak. And Yue Qingyuan daring to look at him and saying just a few years--just a few years of this, of this existence, of this thing he was shackled inside of, had become, because of that bodysnatcher--
He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand them. Any of them. His fellow Peak Lords. His sect. Any of the--the--the humans, he was not one now, he was--he was--
In the dark of night, Shen Qingqiu fled. It was startlingly easy, almost frighteningly so, to simply shroud himself in layers of heavy fabrics--nothing fit, now, no robes on Cang Qiong Mountain were designed for someone more than seven foot tall, he was better off tearing apart curtains and bedding, and why not, why bother with propriety or grace or--or--or--
And he slipped down the mountain in the night. He knew his sword was still about there somewhere, but the thought of taking Xiu Ya in hands that could fold triple around the hilt turned his stomach. Would the weapon even react to him now? It had never cared much for the righteousness of its master--it was a blade of relatively low moral standards, caring more about the skill and poise of its wielder than any particular behavior, which suited him just fine--but he was no longer human.
He did not want to think about his cultivation. He was--changed, inside, in ways that he did not exactly have words for. He did not feel... weaker. He did not want to approach the thought that it was improved from when he had been the master of his own body. He would not allow for the idea that someone else might have done better with himself than he--
His body moved very quickly through the night. Out of sight, when he pushed himself--when he did his best to flatten out his thoughts, not think about what it meant that he was a monster, and simply use the set of tools before him--use what he had, so that he could gain more, grab with both hands and hold on tight--what was his was his, and he had never cared what others thought, so he would not--
He would not succumb to how wronged he had been--
He would find his way as he always had, and whatever else happened, he was not defeated--
He raced through the night forests like a wraith, let his movements come without conscious thought to use the horror of his body to its fullest. He descended the side of the mountain practically in a state of flight, blanking his mind and letting his limbs move as they would, let it all burn away into a sense of motion that took him away, away, away--
Qing Jing was his, and abandoning what was his was ferociously painful, but he refused to let himself feel it, locked himself down to an icy veneer of fuck them all-- They were lucky he didn’t burn it all down in his wake, they deserved it, the den of vipers, the nest of traitors--
He avoided all human habitation. It would only raise cries of demon, monster, beast if he was seen--no matter how he covered himself, it was painfully obvious that his shape was other, there was no disguising it. He didn’t need anything from them anyway. He needed distance, and time to come to terms with--
And he needed--the something that burned under his ribs, that he still did not know. It was a slow and steady pulse and he had no concept for what it would be. No memories of what had happened to this body, to his body, what had been done to him while he was insensate, away, unaware, used up and violated and--
Daybreak drove him to hiding. Out in the wild nowhere, as far from humans as he could get on one night’s travel, he did not know what to do with himself when the rising sun turned painfully bright--huddling in the shade of a forest, curled under the ragged pile of fabric he’d clawed together to try and hide his hideous outline. He had no idea what he was doing, where he was going. A vague drive that it would be best to--to be away from all his former sectmates and their carelessness, their callousness, and Yue Qingyuan’s idiocy and lack of understanding--
When night fell he moved again. He avoided any signs of humans that he came near, skirted wide around villages, and pushed himself as far as he could get before the sun’s next rise drove him to hide in shade once more. And again, and again, he did his best to think of nothing, just to put distance between himself and everything that had gone wrong, with the vaguest sense that he was approaching some sort of--destination.
When he found himself in the border lands, it was somehow not a surprise. In the washed-out light of the near-full moon, he looked over the fuzzy edges to the Demon Realm, the indistinct space where territory was disputed. Barren and dry and largely inhospitable. It felt inevitable. The land of the beasts lay not far beyond, out of sight in the darkness. Where else would he go?
A land of monsters. Did it not make sense? He refused to examine it too strongly, the bitter toxin in his emotions, the desire to destroy himself under the weight of realization. He would not succumb to such things. He was a beast, a monster, an abomination, but he was not, would not accept himself as, a failure. If all he had and was and had ever dreamed to attained was wrenched from his hands, he would find what he needed somewhere else.
If he was a beast, so be it. If he was a monster, so be it. He would--
A group of demons over the next rise. He caught the feel of them first, something about their presence before hearing or scent or vision could catch up. A familiar--something that pricked his middle, made a tiny flare of adrenaline kick to light in his chest. His hands clenched, his spine tensed. They came into view, a little rag-tag bunch with mis-matched equipment, some little squabblers of no importance to anyone. They were moving with purpose, heading towards the human side of the border lands, probably intent to raid or harass some minor village.
He let them move close, waited as they slowed to a stop once they spotted him standing silent on the open plain. Hesitant, because they had never seen anything like him before. No one had, of course--he was like nothing else, now. A monster even to monsters.
“Hey, you!” one of the demons finally bellowed out, raising a heavy cudgel, pointing it at him in open threat. “The hell you doin’?!”
Shen Qingqiu did not respond. He let the seconds unspool around them, waiting. The demons shuffled a bit, made nervous by his strangeness, glancing at one another. Then the cudgel-bearer, acting as leader, took a challenging step forward.
“Well? You wanna go?!” he shouted. Shen Qingqiu did not respond. The demons were unnerved, on edge, and responded in the only way they understood--
A charge, taking his silence as an offense.
It took only seconds. When the leader took a wide, arcing swing at him, he leapt over it as though he weighed nothing at all. Layers of ragged cloth fluttered out all around him as he came back down on, one swipe downward with claws sharper than any blade these mongrels carried--
Sank through neck and collar and gouged halfway down the demon’s sternum, sent him staggering back in a fount of blood, collapsing dead to the ground before he had time to yell. The others raced forward as their leader collapsed, and Shen Qingqiu whipped out sideways, scythe-curve of claws raking across faces and throats in a looping twist that threw the lot of them back howling and clutching at eyes and necks.
They did not have time to run. One after another, Shen Qingqiu ripped through the pitiful things, no challenge at all in such minor foes. He hardly even realized for a second that all were dead, standing amidst a spray of blood, staring down at the bodies that he’d scattered across the parched ground.
He felt unsatisfied. The destructive desires of an Abyssal creature were barely even touched by such an easy slaughter. He felt only a vague sense of disgust at the corpses he left behind as he strode onwards toward the demonic lands, pushed ahead by some feeling, some urge, that he was slowly beginning to define the shape of.
Shen Qingqiu would not be held back or held down. He had never let anything stop him, no matter the blows that life rained down upon him throughout his years. If he had to turn everything he was, everything he knew, on its head--he would. He would find some path to what he wanted, what he needed, no matter what shape it took.
Maybe it was appropriate. Maybe it was fitting. If he was to be a monster, he would be a terror.