Chapter Text
[ERROR: CRITICAL DAMAGE RECEIVED. SLEEP MODE ACTIVATED]
“What?!” Yelped Shang Qinghua in the middle of a meeting with a merchant, letting the tea he had just sipped fall from his shaking hands. Shen Qingqiu and Lin Bingfa, Mu Qingfang head discipline, jumped at each side of Shang Qinghua at the sudden outburst and put their cups on the table with a sonorous click, while the merchant across them closed his mouth at the middle of their speech and his servants watched with horror the babbling mess An Ding peak lord had become. Shen Qingqiu and the other members of the sect looked at Shang Qinghua with variable grades of annoyance and disapprobation while the client paled at the increasing stream of word vomit. Shen Qingqiu caught the word “System” and asked who they were? Was it a local god Shang Qinghua adored?
Lin Bingfa and Shen Qingqiu straightened their backs when the word ‘demon’ was said. Sheng Qingqiu may or may not be the first to react after Shang Qinghua threw himself at the floor and began to cry like a baby, pleading forgiveness to something no one but himself could see. Shen Qingqiu closed his fan with more force than necessary and pulled Shang Qinghua from his tunic’s collar to force the pitiful peak lord to look at angry black eyes, as a blunt attempt to make the An Ding peak lord react and get out of his panicked state. A method he had used incontable times and had always worked to make his coward shidi behave. But unlike most of those times, on this occasion Shang Qinghua's eyes were unfocused and his body was heavy like a bag full of rocks, making Shen Qingqiu get angrier with each passing second. The peak lord was used to the fake faint spells of the An Ding Lord and didn't believe this time was real, as such Shen Qingqiu shook Shang Qinghua’s immobile body like a ragdoll but he didn't wake up as other times did.
“Shibo…” Exhaled Lin Bingfa behind Sheng Qingqiu. “Stop, he isn't...” She pleaded.
“- You!” Sheng Qingqiu snarled, turning his head towards the pale Marchant that shivered like a leaf under Shen Qingqiu's cold eyes. “What did you add to his tea?”
“I don't know…” the merchant tried to lie, but Shen Qingqiu let Shang Qinghua fall to the floor and draw his sword from his scabbard.
“I will not repeat to myself, what did you do to his tea?” Sheng Qingqiu snarled.
“Our teas, shibo”, Lin Bingfa said, after sniffing her cup. Sheng Qingqiu pressed the sword further towards the merchant, making the workers and servants nervous.
Sheng Qingqiu realized it was a miracle Mu Qingfang was busy and sended his head discipline and Shang Qinghua was the first to drink the tea between the three peaks’ representatives, otherwise the three peaks lords would be intoxicated by an unknown poison and lose consciousness. The only problem was, Sheng Qingqiu glanced towards Lin Bingfa checking on Shang Qinghua's meridians, that Lin Bingfa might not be able to save his martial sibling. She was two weeks ago appointed as head discipline and may not have the expertise needed to find the cure, for god's sake themselves have less than five years since they became peaklords.
“I don't know!”, cried the merchant, shivering and pale like a sheet of paper.
“Wrong answer!” Shen Qingqiu pierced the man's leg while the rest of the disciplines of his own peak drew their own swords to back their shizu. Some of the merchant's men were armed and had their weapons with them.
“Shibo! He is getting cold and I can't feel his heart beating…!” Lin Bingfa yelled, fuelling Sheng Qingqiu's anger further. Who would have guessed the Qing jing peaklord cared so much for the rat of An Ding?
“- I did it!” cried the merchant, after being pierced a fourth time in a quick succession of sword moves and his men were reduced by the sect disciplines. Later Sheng Qingqiu would be quietly thankful to Shang Qinghua for choosing his generation peers, who didn't approve Shang Qinghua as their peaklord, but knew one or two things about how to fight and reduce an opponent in an enclosed space.
“Obviously, who else!” Sheng Qingqiu snarled. He cut a finger from the man. “What have you done to him?”
“I don't know!”
“Try again”, Sheng Qingqiu cut another piece of the merchant.
“We don't know!” Cried a servant woman throwing herself at a cultivator's feet. Sheng Qingqiu turned his attention towards her.
“Keep going, you must know more”. He said, cutting another piece of the merchant.
“A Demon, an ice demon, came and told us we must add a flower to your tea if we want to keep living. My master only did what he needed to save us all and prevent the demon from slaughtering us. Please, don't kill him.” The servant cried, and other servants agreed with her, confirming and adding more details to the story. Sheng Qingqiu planned to take the merchant to Cang Qiong to further question him, but right now it was more important to identify the venom added to the tea.
“Do you have the flower? Show us to us” Sheng Qingqiu ordered and did as asked. It was unfortunate none of the Qian Cao’s disciplines recognized the flower, no even Lin Bingfa, and neither Sheng Qingqiu himself. But it was an emergency and if Sheng Qingqiu knew anything about the hideous they lived in, it was that god likes to punish them with sex, and so he forced himself in a apparently
dead Shang Qinghua. An big mistake.