Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

In the spring of the year that Shen Jiu became Head Disciple of Qing Jing Peak, his youngest brother was born sluggish and cold to the touch in the back room of a poorhouse.

Rain beat the thatch roof in waves and darkened the interior to murky shadow outside the bare illumination of a few coals, but they could still tell there was something wrong with the babe as soon as they saw him.

His parents might have considered keeping him if he had come out normal, but his mother had been too young when she had her first child and was approaching too old then, so his odds would never have been good even if nothing else had been afoot.

As things stood, he was too small and pale, with huge solemn eyes that stared too long and crying that sounded wrong for an infant- too aware, too heartbroken, as though he had been touched by a sad ghost in the womb.

That those watchful eyes were a blue far too bright to be natural only sealed the deal. Unwilling to raise a child either cursed or too weak to survive, his parents sold him to a brokerage at their earliest opportunity. Even a few wen was better than nothing, compared to a total loss.

And Shen Yuan was lucky in that the broker wasn’t so heartless that he’d dump even a sickly babe outside to die… or so stupid that he couldn’t find an opportunity to profit from a cheap baby.

In his experience, women who had given birth before could be induced to lactate, given exposure to a baby and enough stimulation from nursing, and wetnurses were valuable. Since they were almost always bought to nurse and then care for the children of merchants and nobles, it was generally a good deal for the women, too.

If the boy survived to saleable age, there was every chance he would grow into that pale complexion. And while bright blue eyes might scan as a curse to an uneducated commoner, the man had been in this business long enough to know how many people would shell out for a rarity.

Since Yun Ming had the opportunity and the whim, looking down at the wide-eyed, anxious-looking baby in his arms, he had asked for the boy’s name. It was obvious that his parents hadn’t bothered to come up with one before-- likely, even, that the ‘Yuan’ the woman muttered was the one for ‘wall’, a word chosen at random while looking around the brokerage-- but it was still a name. Not a bad one either, by his reckoning. A wall was a fine thing to have between you and your enemies, or in the cold of winter.

He had dumped enough wen in the woman’s greedy palms to buy her a few decent hens and an old rooster, if she were smart enough to invest in something like that. If she wasn’t, it was hardly his problem.

Shen Yuan disappeared through the doors of the brokerage, and hardly stepped foot outside again until he left with Mu Qingfang nine years later.

Chapter Text

Despite his birth parents’ opinion of him, it’s far from a struggle to convince the women that pass through Yun Ming’s hands to look after him. Whether or not they’re already lactating (pregnant or new mothers or recently bereaved), cuddling such a quiet and well-behaved baby and seeing if they can get a good opportunity out of the poor, hungry thing is a popular enough prospect that the brokerage obtains a reputation for producing fine wetnurses. Even after he’s weaned, Yun Ming buys a baby or two every year to keep it going. For better or worse, there’s never any shortage of eligible women falling into his hands.

Everything about Shen Yuan is bizarre, but it’s hard to call it bad, exactly. Easy to see why his parents had thought he was cursed, though. Yun Ming has his doubts too occasionally.

He sleeps through the night almost from the first, staying awake far longer than an infant should at a stretch and watching everything with owlish eyes as blue as a summer sky. He’s physically frail, with skin that bruises easily and clumsy reflexes, but he rarely gets sick. He also cries rarely, but when he does, he cries like his little heart is breaking, soft and hurt. Even Yun Ming can’t help but rock him through a few of those episodes, wondering what the hell a baby has to cry about that way.

Weaning him, according to the women he asks, is much easier than normal. So is teaching him to take care of his own waste, almost as soon as the boy has grown enough to physically accomplish it.

The kid’s quiet for so long as a baby that Yun Ming starts to worry he might be slow; it would account for being so easy to handle, and that’s not uncommon for stunted babies. He does seem to understand what everyone says, though, so it’s not too big a concern. Even if he never learns to talk, there’s got to be somebody out there who wants a mute servant, so long as they can follow orders.

That concern disappears around the time Shen Yuan is four years old, and then Yun Ming wonders (affectionately, mostly) if the boy will ever shut up again.

Yun Ming might have gone into it looking primarily for a profit with a bonus smidgen of good karma on the table, but he comes out of it so helplessly fond of the little freak that he kind of hopes Shen Yuan never outgrows his bizarre mannerisms and lack of common sense. It would give Yun Ming an excuse to keep him longer. The child is indulged enough that potential buyers have confused him for a scruffy apprentice or personal servant more than once, and he’s been sorely tempted to make them right. Maybe if the kid doesn’t get bought in the next few years...

And then, when Shen Yuan is nine years old, he gets a batch of slaves in from the borderlands, and everything goes to shit.

Occasionally, looking back on it all years later, Yun Ming breaks out in a sweat thinking of how much of his later fortune had come down to indulging the boy’s little whims.

Shen Yuan actually wasn’t aware as a baby, for all that he looked like it, but some habits don’t leave a reincarnated soul, it seems. He’s always been too nosy for his own good.

There’s nobody left now besides Yun Ming who knew him as a baby, but Yun Ming says he used to listen to everyone’s conversations with wide eyes and a little gasp half-formed on his lips, like a gossipy meimei. A lot like the way he does now, actually! (That’s usually the part where Yun Ming flicks his nose and sends him to go do his chores instead of asking questions he’s asked before.)

(It’s not his fault! What if Yun Ming’s answer changes! What if he remembers something new!)

Life’s not too bad. He understands that he was sold because his parents didn’t want him, and that he’s probably going to be sold again. And it would be a lie to say he never cries about that in the middle of the night.

But he also understands that Yun Ming kept him even though he probably wouldn’t turn out to be a good investment, and that lots and lots of women fed him to keep him alive. He understands that whenever he cried as a baby, somebody picked him up for a while or at least covered him with another blanket. And he understands that if he can possibly help it, Yun Ming won’t sell him to a pervert, or somebody likely to beat him for no reason.

It’s just that… they both know he might not have the choice someday. And that haunts him, a little bit.

It had become both easier and harder to bear when memories of his past life began to return to him around six, strange and heart-poundingly wonderful.

His dreams are filled with many-tiered towers of glass and steel that pierce the clouds, wonderful artifacts capable of breathing life into art, and the wisdom of myriad times and places. They’re also broken up by terrifying nightmares, made worse because he can never remember them clearly enough to understand what he’s supposed to be afraid of.

For a long time, he’s not sure the memories are memories and not just really great dreams. They feel more important than regular dreams-- it’s not like he doesn’t have those too-- but he has no way to be sure they even really mean anything at all.

Sometimes, though, he has… well, calling them ‘prophetic dreams’ feels a little pompous, but if he’s being honest, that’s kind of what they are? Not really about anything important (wars and kings and cultivators and all that stuff) but sometimes he’s been able to find things that people have lost, or to tip Yun Ming off about a bad deal.

He’s also aware that some people think he’s cursed. It’s not like everyone is nice to him; plenty of people aren’t. In fact, most people outside the brokerage seem to find him offputting, hence the lack of buyers for him over the years. Only the oddballs and tragic figures that walk in as merchandise seem to really appreciate him, if only because as a tragic oddball himself, he offers them no judgement. (He assumes that’s why, anyway.)

If he is cursed it doesn’t seem to be the kind of curse that’s unlucky for other people. More like some nasty little ghost or spirit played a prank on him and caused him to give his luck away to others. He can reliably be counted on to spare somebody else from a puddle by stepping in it first, or to spare his fellows the discomfort of food poisoning by finding the one bad bun in a bunch. The older he gets, the more pronounced it grows, along with the frequency and usefulness of his ‘big dreams.’

And as his dreams intensify and then do begin to cover information of importance, information he can understand how to use, he finds himself suddenly able to give people advice. Good advice, even if he doesn’t totally understand all the details, or how the people in his past life learned some of these secrets. He has to assume he came from a culture of powerfully advanced scholars and cultivators.

The little ‘prophecies’ have also gotten a little grander over time, but along the lines of ‘a house will burn down tomorrow’ or ‘dogs are going to steal someone’s sheep.’ He’s still been able to find ways to tip people off about that, though, so he feels pretty good about it!

“It’s going to be really hot tomorrow,” a seven-year-old Shen Yuan had told Yun Ming one day without preamble, pouring himself like a loose collection of kitten-gangly limbs onto the cushioned stool the man pretended he didn’t keep next to his desk for Shen Yuan.

“Uh huh.” Yun Ming hadn’t looked at him, thumbing through one of his account books with a demoralized expression on his face.

“Maybe so hot that something will catch on fire,” he stressed carefully and without particular attention to sounding normal. “Maybe somebody who has money. I bet they’d be really, really grateful if somebody warned them or something.”

His only parentThe broker had slowly stopped flipping pages, and given him a Look. Slowly, he asked, “If Shen Yuan was guessing, what does he think would catch on fire?”

“The kitchen for the tofu workshop downtown,” he had answered immediately.

Yun Ming had found some way to turn that prediction into a drunk bet with the tofu workshop’s manager that night: “You’re wrong, you’re certainly wrong, my friend! Fires can happen, even now. Though it rains often in the sixth month, and the ground is still damp just an inch down, other things can dry out much faster, I tell you! Don’t believe me? I bet you five taels that something catches fire at your place tomorrow! You boil things all day long, it’s just bound to happen. I won’t go anywhere near you, and you can check for yourself if anything’s been tampered with. If I’m wrong or try to cheat you, I’ll pay you back double the bet! If you lie or try to cheat me, you do the same!”

Delighted to have a bit of entertainment without opening up their wallets, the other business owners in the main hall of Ting Xing House that night had egged them on and Shopkeeper Jin had laughingly agreed, thinking he’d splash a little water around the kitchen tomorrow and make some easy money. Shen Yuan had been right in the end anyway.

(That had truly been a bit of a gamble on Yun Ming’s part. Shen Yuan wasn’t always right about those little guesses of his up to that point, but he almost always was after.)

He’d walked away with a tidy handful of silver taels, and the tofu workshop had gotten away with nothing worse than a ruined stove and a mess to clean up; a good deal for everybody, all things considered. That wasn’t enough to bail him out of his deficit at the time, but it was enough to fund another investment that did.

He had spoiled the brat rotten for it and bought him a little pocket botanical for two taels. How the kid learned how to read, he’ll never know, but then again, Shen Yuan has spent his whole life grilling everybody who’s come through like a little exam proctor, especially if there’s any chance they know anything about plants and monsters. It wouldn’t surprise him if he stole his literacy one character at a time over the years.

By now, Yun Ming’s decided the kid probably has one of those double-edged blessings people get from being born at special times or under certain stars or however all that nonsense happens. He can tell the kid’s going to make somebody outrageously rich and powerful someday, if his double-sided luck doesn’t get either he or his benefactor killed.

While he likes the kid, maybe even loves him a little, that’s not a burden he’s prepared to accept. Whether being valuable to others is also a form of luck is up for debate, in his opinion. Yun Ming’s in the business of seeing what the desires of others make of you. It’s rarely good, even if he tries to be decent about which customers he deals with.

Shen Yuan sleeps on a cot piled high with enough threadbare blankets to be cozy, with a low shelf and box of belongings and a ‘privacy screen’ to partition him off from the rest of the room, even if it is just a mended cloth stretched between some lashed-together broom handles. For a long time, only he had that privilege, until the first time a former bed-slave had ended up in Yun Ming’s hands and Shen Yuan had all but thrown his blankets at the man and demanded that Ru Yu have a safe space, too.

(Ru Yu couldn’t bear to let Yun Ming get close to her, so Shen Yuan helped her make the curtains instead. They ended up putting her space next to his, and she had wriggled onto his narrow cot with him once or twice so he could pet her hair and remind her about where they were until she fell asleep, even though she was older than him. Not old enough for that to have been okay, even if she was willing. He didn’t mind comforting her. His elders had done that for him when he cried as a little boy, he was pretty sure, and if he really was remembering his past life, wouldn’t that kind of make him her elder, too? Sort of?)

(He just hates it when people cry. He hates it. But he hates it even more when people try to hide it and make themselves cry all alone. How sad is that? Shouldn’t everybody have a shoulder to cry on? Even if it’s just some scrawny slave kid, that has to be better than nothing.)

He’s also almost always the only one with books in-house, though every once in a while some country doctor or scholar or other educated person falls low enough to sell themselves to the brokerage they've kept a few tomes to increase their own sale value. If nothing else, owning a book or two immediately reassures most buyers that they were once a person of learning and status.

There’s no doctor kicking around when the last wagon he’s there to receive comes in, carrying six exhausted-looking people from the border. The man selling them is obviously a rough sort, and Yun Ming purses his lips when dealing with him, but if they aren’t sold here…

He buys them all, and regrets it a day later when they start getting sick. Two days after that, when it starts spreading even with them in a separate room, he really regrets it. He can’t afford to hire a doctor for everyone here, not even a barefoot doctor.

“Yun Ming,” Shen Yuan says at his side, tugging at the hem of his sleeve.

He looks down to find that the boy has tied a cloth over his nose and mouth, secured with strips stitched to the corners and fastened behind the ears, and frowns. “What are you wearing that for?”

“Slows diseases down,” the boy claims, frowning back at him like a serious little mirror. It makes his frown ease a bit for reasons he carefully doesn’t examine. “Most of them try to come in through the nose and mouth. If you get, um, body fluids in your eyes or mouth or an open wound, that can make you sick, too. It depends what kind it is. But if it’s the kind that spreads from the mouth, and the sickness can’t get in or out as easy, it takes longer to spread.”

The broker isn’t totally sure Shen Yuan knows what he’s talking about, but the boy has spent his whole life hanging on the words of every expert ever to pass through their doors as either merchandise or customer. Even if he’s just misremembering some vague advice from a doctor, it has to be better than nothing. It’s a sound idea, too. Who doesn’t know that diseases spread fastest when people are coughing and sneezing? But he’s never seen a face covering quite like that, intended to keep a disease from leaving a host so it can’t enter somebody else, and stop a disease from entering the apertures of a healthy person.

He nods slowly. “Tell the girls who aren’t sick to wash up some of the old linens and make enough.”

The boy comes to attention like a spaniel while trying to pretend he’s not quivering with that weird excitement he always seems to channel when he shares things he definitely shouldn’t know. “We should make two or three times as many as there are people and wash the dirty ones every day. Even if we don’t use soap or anything, boiling them in water would help a lot. When they get dirty, the disease builds up and the mask gets useless, because there’s… uh, it’s contaminated all over, so it just turns into another way to spread it.”

“En. Anything else?”

“… will Yun Ming tell me what symptoms they have?”

Standing behind him here at the door of the room they’ve been quarantined in is as close as he’s let the boy get since one of the new slaves complained about feeling under the weather that first day. He’s had sick people come through before, and most of the time, sticking them in a room with clean water and hot soup to sleep it off handles the issue. As long as nobody spends too long around the sick person, it doesn’t spread. Even better if they’re fit enough to keep themselves washed up and exchange their own tray at the door. These people aren’t.

“Started with a sour stomach, then the runs or vomiting and coughing till they do,” he grunts, being frank with him. The brat asked; either he can handle it, or he’ll run off when he decides it’s too much. “Hoped it might be bad food. Can’t keep much of anything down, even water; food’s worse. Can’t sleep for longer than a shichen, and that’s with nightmares, every last one of ‘em. They could walk yesterday, but most of ‘em are too tired now. Thought about it a little and had them pair up and check each other for bites. They all have some kind of weird sting, with a rash like the ripple on a pond.”

He means a series of rings, Shen Yuan thinks. Like a bulls-eye. “Is their hair turning white?”

Yun Ming looks at him for a long time-- long enough that Shen Yuan starts to sweat and fidget a little, not sure what he’s going to say if the man asks him how he knows.

He doesn’t. “Yeah.” And then: “Shen Yuan likes to talk to doctors.”

Shen Yuan nods slowly. Yeah, he does. They’re usually nice, and doctors in this world almost always know all kinds of fun and wonderful things about plants and animals, what with how many of them seem to be poisonous or venomous. (Those are different, he remembers. It really upsets him when people don’t know that, for some reason.) The doctors in his last life were also really nice. He thinks he might have been… sick, in that life. He thinks he doesn’t want to remember that right now.

“Last year, we got that barefoot doctor in from Yanzhou, out near the border. You talked to him for a long time.”

Oh. Oh! Yun Ming is giving him an out!!

“Yeah! Yes, I did. That’s right. He told me all about the bugs out there. I don’t… let me think… was it the Weeping White Maiden Fly or… no, that’s right! Um, I think they… oh, yuck…” He has to take a second.

“I think they got bitten by a type of demon fly. The fly isn’t actually the problem, it’s the disease that lives in the fly. When they bite an animal to drink their blood, the disease gets inside. Then it rides in the veins until it gets to the stomach. Even though they’re coughing, I think that’s because it keeps making them throw up, not because it’s hiding in their lungs.”

Yun Ming nods, and Shen Yuan licks his lips under his mask.

“But it’s a demon fly, right? So it’s also a demon disease. It’s really supposed to make demons and demon animals sick, but it can make humans sick, too, and it’s worse for us because our bodies don’t know how to fight it. We’re not good for the disease, either, we don’t have the right energy. The disease wants to make as much of itself as it can and spread as much as it can to get back to the right kind of host, so it starts, um… it starts eating them up. From the inside. If they aren’t cured, all their hair will turn white, and they’ll starve to death from the disease taking everything and making them sick all the time. It might even damage their spirits and make them come back as ghosts.”

He watches Yun Ming suck in a slow breath, bouncing anxiously on his heels and barely waiting for the expected question a few moments later. “Did he mention—”

“The cure is Fragrant Honeydrop Meadow Mushrooms. I drew a picture! I don’t think they get sold at a regular market, but maybe they do! I’ve never been to a market,” he sighs leadingly, eyeing Yun Ming at an angle he hopes looks suitably pitiable. Yun Ming doesn’t take the bait, as usual. Damn it! “He said they grow in almost every forest in the Middle Kingdom. I’ll go get the picture so somebody can find some.”

When he comes back with it, the broker has called his few hired servants over. Two of them are kids that came in who he ended up keeping. Shen Yuan isn’t jealous. It doesn’t hurt his feelings at all that he’s been here the longest, and he’s the most helpful, and Yun Ming doesn’t want to keep him forever anyways. It doesn’t.

He thrusts the picture out for him without saying anything, shoulders hunched and head lowered so nobody can see his face. Yun Ming’s hand comes down to pet over his hair. If he lets himself enjoy it for a moment before running away and hiding in his ‘room’ for a while, that’s nobody’s business but his. Later, he writes a note to add a little realgar wine and salt to the water when they boil the masks and linens.

Another four days later, one of Yun Ming’s servants returns to the edge of town and hires a runner to tell them they’ve found the mushrooms, and there are a lot of them. That’s good, because the disease has long-since torn through the brokerage and begun to spread outside despite their best efforts.

Both Yun Ming and Shen Yuan are also sick, now, but Shen Yuan is faring better than most against expectations.

“It’s probably also hiding in the wastewater and stuff,” Shen Yuan decides unhappily. “I think demon diseases might be especially bad about that, actually, hiding in dirty stuff?”

“If it can survive in the waste, will the cure matter? Will we get sick again after taking it, and need more?” Yun Ming asks.

He thinks about it. “You can make a lot of medicine from the mushrooms, and take it over time. But I think the waste shouldn’t be where people are, either. If it were collected up again in jars or big baskets with sand and gravel and dumped outside town, that might be better. Especially if it’s somewhere with lots of sunlight to kill the disease and dry it all out.”

“Does sunlight kill the disease?” Yun Ming is surprised to realize that not only is he curious, he expects the nine-year-old in front of him to know and feels a frisson of unease for a moment. Then he remembers that Shen Yuan’s forehead has a great big bruise on it right now because the little dummy walked into a door while glaring at him yesterday. Whatever the kid’s damage is, he’s still just a kid. The kid he raised.

“Enough of it can, but you’d have to cut somebody open to cure them that way, and that would cause other problems.” The little twit grins at him, and Yun Ming flicks his nose, causing him to yelp indignantly.

That hurt! Rotten old bastard. See if he keeps helping.

He keeps helping.

“Ow… After they get back with the mushrooms, I think you should talk to the city about it. Tell them you had that barefoot doctor in last year, and he had a bite like this he had you get the mushrooms for. You can sell them some of the cure to distribute in case in spreads more.”

“The city already contacted Cang Qiong Mountain Sect when it spread outside the brokerage. What will we tell the cultivators if they come?”

Cang Qiong! Cultivators! Shen Yuan almost swoons with excitement. Is he a fan-boy? Of course he is! What boy isn’t, in this world or any other? He distinctly recalls that even in his last life, there were many, many works of art devoted to appreciating their badassery. (He’s almost ten now. He can say badass. And damn. He knows other bad words, but Yun Ming throws stuff at him if he says them where the man can hear.)

(The motherfucker.)

His brow ticks in a frown as his mind turns back. Cang Qiong…?

He shakes himself a moment later. Maybe he dreamed about them before and just doesn’t remember it. He hopes it wasn’t one of the nightmares.

Chapter Text

“Mao Yu City is ten days into an outbreak of Silent White Widow?”

It’s a struggle to keep his voice even. Based on the unopened, yet incredibly urgent missives in Mu Qingfang’s hands, the villagers had realized more or less immediately that something was wrong and taken steps to try to contain it.

But Mu Qingfang had occasion to respond to an outbreak with his teacher, once, before he had been Qingfang. Du Anyun had chosen him to accompany the team deliberately, almost certainly because of his flaws rather than his strengths.

He had still been young and inexperienced, and too conceited to have become a truly good doctor if nothing changed, he would readily admit now. A little too heartless. The well-bred son in him had never quite been able to help but judge commoners in the back of his mind for the way disease tore through them, the way they seemed to create so many of their own problems.

Was it so hard to dump waste far away? To properly wash the linens, even just once a week? To make sure their water was clean before using it? Could they not see the way keeping their livestock so close was unclean, the way wearing the same unwashed garments day-in and day-out caused their rashes and made disease spread easily?

It turned out that it was and they could, thank you very much. Few people were ever filthy of their own volition. That well-meaning but ignorant young master, used to having many others around to pick up the slack and grease the wheels for him, did not yet understand how much work simply staying alive required of most people, let alone doing things “properly” on top. If a servant spent all day on her knees scrubbing linens for the wealthy, was it any wonder she had no energy left for her own family at the end of the day? And as he learned on that trip, in ways that still haunted his dreams sometimes, some diseases simply didn’t care. They spread through means no ordinary person could be expected to understand or respond to, even if they had the tools, and they usually did not.

Silent White Widow was one such malady, a deadly disease ordinarily found only in the Demonic Realm or the borderlands where the flies that carried the disease lived. Infection of humans was largely either accidental or incidental, but when it did happen, it could wipe out entire cities inside of a week.

Not only would any bodily contact with a sick person spread the disease, so would cleaning up after them or even just breathing the same air. Anything a sick person touched would stay contagious for hours, even under direct sunlight, and ordinary cleansing agents couldn’t dispel it until the contagion’s store of demonic energy ran out. The bitter, terrible irony was that the cure was so readily available and easily prepared.

Fragrant Honeydrop Meadow Mushrooms could be found easily in almost any temperate forest in the Middle Kingdom, occasionally within the forest itself but-- as the name implied-- usually forming large clusters in forest meadows. Though sweet-smelling and pleasing to the eye, they actually didn’t taste very good, so people largely left them alone.

If Mao Yu City was ten days into an uncontrolled outbreak, it was likely that Mao Yu City didn’t exist anymore.

He must be failing to fully keep his thoughts off his face right now, he thinks, because the disciple kneeling in front of him jolts like she’s been pricked with a needle and hurriedly speaks up.

“They are still alive. They are definitely still alive, Mu-shishu! Our scouts ran to verify immediately while we sought you out!” An Ding’s Shi Yao assures him with a pinched face and cracking voice. “Send this one at once, I beg. If movement is still visible in the town, there is still hope that I can take responsibility. It is entirely this one’s fault…!”

“The missives were lost?”

“The missives were shuffled in with a great deal of routine mail,” she all but weeps, “due to… that is, this is usually the time of year when Mao Yu City sends its regards and negotiates for supplies. It was assumed that the missives were regarding an ordinary desire to restock usual medicines--”

“Shizhi can start making amends immediately,” he interrupts, not unkindly. An Ding disciples are trained to snap back from shock and bounce like tree gum, for better or worse. Given the prospect of work to do, she’s already getting her stuttering breath under control and wiping her face. “Send the scouts who reported on the town’s condition to me and tell my Head Disciple to summon the masters to convene before the hour of the dog. They should come prepared to recommend either themselves or a senior disciple to respond the emergency in Mao Yu City. Head Disciple Xiao should report to me immediately after.”

At this stage, even a half-shichen more to prepare and depart will undoubtedly cost lives, but failing to properly prepare would cost more.

Shi Yao is up and running to deliver his instructions almost before he’s done speaking, and Mu Qingfang takes a moment to collect himself. But only a moment.

By the time Yue Qingyuan and Feng Qinghui arrive, Mu Qingfang has met with his disciples and taken reports from the scouts. Although the village gates are shut and activity is low, not only does it appear that people are still alive, business is proceeding more or less as normal.

“One-third of the market stalls appeared to be open and operating, with people going door-to-door making deliveries of things or carrying things away. We could not tell from this distance what was being exchanged, though.” The enchanted lenses used to remotely observe towns and villages in Cang Qiong’s proverbial shadow were powerful, but they could only discern so much.

Spyglasses had been one of the masterstroke inventions brought back to the sect by Shang Qinghua ten years ago. According to those who knew him at the time, the man had made himself unbearable for months begging to be allowed to go on an extended trading mission, getting shriller and more theatrical by the day in his apparent burning desire to travel. The Peak Lord of An Ding at the time had finally snapped and chased him with a broom, supposedly, asking why in the world he had joined a sect just to run away from it. The next day, he had been given truly miserable spending purse and shoved out the door with instructions not to return until he had something worthy of a courtesy name to show.

He had. The spyglasses were just one example. Apparently, he had felt inclined to be very, very certain of being accepted back.

“Or whether the residents are still humans,” Feng Qinghui remarks darkly.

Yes, that’s also a concern. The Peak Lord of Mo Shu would know better than most.

If the disease was reported accurately, there shouldn’t be anyone left alive, unless some rogue cultivator happened to know the cure and happened to tell them. Stranger things have come to pass, but it strikes none of them as likely enough to bet on. On the other hand, if the remaining ‘residents’ were actually demons or wicked cultivators, things might start to make a great deal of sense. It would be quite easy to wipe out a population of humans with a demonic disease and then harvest the bodies (the people going door-to-door?) for ingredients in demonic cultivation.

Then again too, they might have reported their own symptoms inaccurately. And though Mu Qingfang isn’t personally aware of any diseases that mimic Silent White Widow, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

The possibility of demonic infiltrators means that Bai Zhan will need to send a response along with those from Qian Cao and Mo Shu…

A warm, broad hand on his shoulder brings him out of his musing, and he finds Yue Qingyuan peering at his face with more actual feeling than the man ordinarily allows himself to show.

“Be careful,” he says. He seems to struggle over more for a moment, but all that comes out in the end is: “I cannot send Liu-shidi with you, but watchers will be assigned. Do not hesitate to send up flares.”

“We will proceed with all possible care, Zhangmen-shixiong.”

As it turns out, the lot of them could have stumbled in Mao Yu City drunk and barefoot and still suffered no casualties.

A large group of uniformed cultivators traveling at speed on their swords is eye-catching under any circumstance, and the local magistrate’s servants are already waiting to receive them when they land at the southern gate.

“Master cultivators…!”

Mu Qingfang steps off his sword to listen to them, but a raised hand keeps everyone else ready to take off at a moment’s notice. A subtle pulse of qi confirms that both of the breathless manservants speaking to him are human, with no trace of demonic contamination. If demons were actively moving around town, or if they were still incubating the disease, it would have been otherwise. Which begs the question as to why these two visibly were sick, and now are not.

He pretends he can’t feel the Bai Zhan disciples wilt behind him at his hidden gesture, but makes a mental note to bring it up with their master later. Expressing disappointment that thousands of civilians weren’t murdered and replaced by demons for want of a fight is unfitting behavior.

“-- Everyone has been cured?” the Peak Lord finds himself asking, other concerns popped like bubbles in the face of such an extraordinary claim. “How can that be possible?”

“Master cultivator, as far as the town’s physicians can tell, the malady has been cured in everyone who has not already died, and only twelve people died.” For some reason, that exact number touches his spine with a finger of frost, but the sensation is there and gone within a moment. Thereafter, his overwhelming reaction is numb shock. Twelve? Only twelve?

“A boy owned by the local brokerage apparently knew the cure, and gave it to his master, who shared it with the rest of the city. But we would greatly appreciate it if the learned masters would consent to verify, and of course, we are prepared to offer what lodging and food we may if the esteemed ones find it necessary to stay overnight.”

Mu Qingfang blinks hard and gathers himself. “Of course.”

That’s not what he wants to say. What he wants to say is, Who? How, again? A slave? A child slave? Where did he learn? How did he recognize the disease? How did you manage to keep it from killing everyone long enough to adminster the cure? What are you wearing on your face?

A shichen later, he’s confirmed along with the masters that accompanied him and the few local physicians that the disease really is completely gone. He’s also confirmed that everyone in town is wearing those fabric masks like form-fitting veils, that they’ve been continuously brewing and administering the cure on an interval since the broker’s servants returned with the materials three days ago, that the city long-sinced organized laborers to collect and remove contaminated waste, and that all of this was done at the direction of a nine-year-old boy who’s been living in the same slave brokerage since he was born.

Now that boy is squirming in front of him on a stool, and Mu Qingfang is starting to wonder if the surprises will ever stop coming.

He had never actually been sure he believed the rumors about Shen Qingqiu frequenting brothels.

Mu Qingfang takes a very slow breath and lets it out.

“You said your name is Shen Yuan?”

Chapter Text

Unaware that this is last time they’ll sit together this way for over a year, Shen Yuan hefts another sack of masks up onto the table and then drops himself onto the floor beside his stool, using the cushion as a pillow with his coltish legs stretched out in front of him.

“Are those the last ones?”

“Ru Yu said she thinks she can get another half-bag full out of the old curtains if she folds them in half.”

Yun Ming had ended up keeping Ru Yu too, in the end, but Shen Yuan can’t muster any jealousy about it. That’s different. She’s a girl, and you have to take care of girls, especially when they get hurt like that.

Maybe he’d be jealous if there was anywhere else for her to go, but there’s not; probably nobody else would bother to help her feel safe, and he can’t stand the thought of his jie Ru Yu scared and crying somewhere else. Yun Ming lives above the brokerage, and now she has one of the side-rooms, which is better for her.

“Are these useful for anything else?” Yun Ming asks, considering the fabric mask in his hand as he rotates it slowly, his forefingers and thumbs slipping through the loops. There’s an open ledger beside him, tallying up their his gains over the last few days.

Though many people had made their own fabric masks, the brokerage had managed to sell several hundred as well. Combined with the reward offered by the city for services rendered (not only knowledge of the cure and the masks, but the method to neutralize the dangerous waste and cleanse surfaces and clothing of the disease), the sudden wealth in his hands is a little frightening.

That doesn’t mean he’s not thinking about making more, though.

“Um...” Shen Yuan settles in to think about it, playing with the ends of his hair.

He remembers having much shorter hair in his last life, only barely down to his chin, but he’s pretty sure he wasn’t a criminal. They had things to chill the air inside of buildings, and he remembers that whenever they broke, he would get sick from heat. Sometimes, even if they were working, he suddenly felt really hot and sick for no reason. Maybe he had short hair because he got hot so much? He doesn’t really want to cut his hair in this life, though. It looks cool, especially with the tips all silver and white now.

His eyes start to wander in a familiar way, and the broker sighs.

“Other ways to use these,” Yun Ming reiterates patiently, showing him the mask. “Are they good for other diseases, too?” He watches Shen Yuan register his question a few seconds later and swallows a laugh scoff.

“Oh! Yeah, actually! Not just diseases, even. Anything you don’t want to get inside a person’s nose and mouth. You know how some people have really sensitive noses and get sick or sneeze around flowers and stuff? The masks can help with that, too. Or people working with lots of dust, like carpenters and miners, probably.”

He sits up, warming to his subject while Yun Ming takes casual notes. “You could even sew it to be like a flat pouch and then fill the inside with stuff? Plants good for getting rid of poisons and diseases, maybe?”

“Any ideas on which ones?” Yun Ming nudges, watching him get up to start pacing in a tight circle in front of his desk with restlessly gesturing hands. “Something around Mao Yu City would be good.”

“Burgeoning Red-Hearted Trumpet Weed,” the boy blurts, and then blushes. Yun Ming carefully tips his brush away from the paper and levels him with a pointed look that pins his feet to the floor while he slowly turns red like a kettle left too long in the fire.

“It’s a-- a s-springtime medicine if you breathe in the dust or eat the flowers,” he stammers, “but the stalks and roots are really, really good at purifying stuff! People don’t bother to try collecting or growing them because of the-- the extra effects.” He’s pacing again now, albeit no less red.

“That seems like exactly the kind of thing people would try to grow on purpose.”

Shen Yuan shoots him an agonized look. Why would he say something like that? Now Shen Yuan has to correct him, which means they have to keep talking about it. Gross! “No, because it’s not really very good for that compared to other plants that are better and easier, like P-pink Frilled Cat’s Purse.” He’s going to catch on fire.

Yun Ming’s eyes track to the doorway of the room, linger there, and then return to Shen Yuan after a moment. “Learn that from your botanical?”

“Um. No. I just-- know about it. A-anyway! If you put on a mask so the dust doesn’t do anything to you, you could harvest it and sell the, uh, the parts you don’t need to… people. Who want them. And then with the stalks and roots you have left, those can be pounded together and mushed up into a cake and dried. After it dries, it gets soft like matted wool and catches poisons and things that try to pass through it. If you tucked those inside the layers of a mask, they’d be even better at filtering out anything bad. Then it’d be even easier to get more ingredients, or maybe even farm it, if somebody wanted to do that on purpose for the filters,” Shen Yuan stresses.

“What kind of soil does it grow best in?” a voice that isn’t Yun Ming’s asks from the doorway.

“Oh, that’s easy, all the Trumpet Weeds like dirt that’s been all mixed up with clay and sand. I think it’s called loam? There’s lots of it around here.”

“What if one only had poor soil at hand?”

“Umm… I guess you’d want to use something like… oh, wait! It doesn’t even have to be a plant!” Shen Yuan forgets the subject of his embarrassment in favor of the subject of bugs. “You could grow food for insects with the bad soil, and use the bugs for what you need. Greater Minor Burrowing Greevils can eat almost any kind of dead plant, and the hard plate on their face makes poison harmless. That’s why they can dig face-first through their food! That means they don’t need legs, they can use their energy for growing bigger instead. ‘Greater Minor’ is kind of a stupid name, but it’s supposed to be because they’re the bigger type of small-greevil; there’s giant ones that kept their legs and turned into carnivores instead.”

Eyes bright with enthusiasm, he continues, “You could grind up the face plate and soak a cotton pad in the... stuff, and then feed the meat to pigs or something. Or maybe people could eat them? I don’t actually know if they’re edible. They can eat anything, so maybe they’re poisonous, too? Or maybe they’re only poisonous if they just ate something bad?” He’s pacing again, winding around in circles while he talks.

“How would you do it?” Yun Ming asks.

“Huh?”

“How would you make the cotton pads?”

“You’d have to, like, scrape the meat off the faceplates without damaging them too much… bug meat isn’t very tough after they’re dead, so I don’t think that part would be too hard? And then grind them up in a mortar… You could fill the mortar straight up with water and mix it to make the parts you need…” He frowns, apparently struggling to express himself as he seems to physically grope for the words amidst his restless gesturing. “When you mix something into water, everything inside spreads out evenly. You want the good parts of the face plate to spread out in the water, so you can soak the cotton in it and make it resist poison, too.”

There. That should be pretty clear, right?

Yun Ming is quiet for a minute, tapping his finger against his desk while he thinks about what Shen Yuan told him, but that’s normal.

The situation becomes distinctly less normal when he says, “What do you think, Master Cultivator?”

“What should any elder have to say about a promising young talent? I’m told they call you Boss Ming in town, especially in recent years. Could it be that Boss Ming’s fortune is down to more than his own acumen?” Mu Qingfang smiles at him, a hint of amusement in his voice softening the accusation to friendly banter.

Shen Yuan whips around to gape at the cultivator standing behind him and squawks with distinctly less dignity than he always hoped he’d have when meeting one someday. “Great Master…?!”

“Naturally, Peak Lord Mu is right,” Yun Ming says in that polished-smooth tone of voice he only gets when he’s talking business to other grown-ups, the one that makes Shen Yuan think he was probably a scholar or something once. No way, what is Shen Yuan supposed to pay attention to?! He practically never gets to be around to see that! But there’s a cultivator here, too; throw him a rope, he’s drowning…! “Come sit down and stop flapping in the learned master’s face, boy.”

Right. Yeah. Of course. Sure. Wait, isn’t it rude to sit down in front of somebody like this?!

(A real immortal! A Peak Lord! That’s practically like a prince for cultivators, isn’t it?)

His hesitation doesn’t prevent Yun Ming from rising to lay a hand like a brick on his shoulder and propelling him over to be sat.

After a moment of his own hesitation, Yun Ming dumps a trinket in his hands to occupy him; in this case, a ring puzzle.

Shen Yuan looks down at it, distracted, and Mu Qingfang chuckles helplessly.

(He’s always wanted some of these!)

“He’s always been like that?”

“Since he was old enough to be like anything,” Yun Ming agrees, and a brief silence settles over the room, interrupted only by the clinking of Shen Yuan fiddling with the puzzle.

Despite his apparent (staggering and exuberant) base of knowledge about nature, he’s apparently still an ordinary little boy in other ways. That puzzle is giving him a bit of trouble. It’s reassuring, frankly.

“I’d like to speak to-- Boss Ming about something,” the Peak Lord says, glancing quickly between them.

“Sure. Kid, you stay here. There’s more puzzles on my desk if you figure that one out.” They were always going to be for him, anyway.

“Huh? Is the cultivator leaving already?” Oh no! That sucks! Why’d he let himself get distracted like this?! He didn’t even actually greet him!

“Not at all,” Mu Qingfang assures him with maybe the best Doctor Smile that Shen Yuan has ever seen, mild and reassuring. It kind of makes him think of… what was it called… anodyne? “In fact, I hope the young talent will consider speaking with me, too.”

So Shen Yuan nods, starstruck, and watches them leave.

The two men don’t speak immediately; Yun Ming leads him upstairs to the other most private room in the place, that being his own. What he carefully does not do is examine the maelstrom suddenly raging inside him. His sleeping area like Shen Yuan’s is partitioned off from the rest of the room by a pair of screens, and he leads the cultivator to sit at the low table near the door. Shen Yuan left a bunch of his junk shoved underneath the last time he was in here, and his throat suddenly tightens.

“Forgive me the lack of ready hospitality,” he says, expecting the doctor to wave him off and gratified when he does.

“Boss Ming need not trouble himself. In fact, if you would consider overlooking a certain lack of manners on my part in exchange, it would be most generous.”

“Ask.” Yun Ming smiles; it doesn’t feel like a happy expression.

“The magistrate’s men tell me he’s a slave, sold here immediately after birth and never purchased by anyone.” Mu Qingfang watches him for signs of rejection and doesn’t know how to feel about seeing none. “You don’t let him leave the brokerage alone, or go to the market even with company, but you don’t lock him up, either.”

“… En.”

“Forgive me, but I’m also told he’s literate-- educated-- and that he owns books. They aren’t brand new, but you have robes fixed for him twice a year. He has proper boots, ribbons and hair sticks. People often mistake him for your son or your apprentice. Yet you have made no move to formalize things in that direction, either.”

“En.” Yun Ming has to clear his throat, and the Peak Lord politely pretends not to notice.

He sighs. “Boss Ming, I will be blunt: until walking into that room, I had a very different impression of the type of man I would be meeting. I came prepared to flatter if possible, open my wallet if desired, and threaten if necessary-- and I expected it to be necessary. But I think I understand now what I am seeing here. This is what you always hoped for, isn’t it?”

Mu Qingfang could study the arts for a thousand years and never fully capture the expression on the broker’s face, full of as much desire as dread.

This is an infected wound, a part of him notes. Roughly nine years old, if he had to guess, but no older than that. If the man had been a cultivator, this would have long-ago become a heart demon; but if the man had been a cultivator, there never would have been a problem to begin with.

While the Peak Lord of Qian Cao would still readily describe himself as someone in need of further growth, he’s known what to do with infected wounds since he was just a boy studying in his father’s clinic.

You lance them if needed, clean them out, and bandage them to heal.

“I am sorry to say that Cang Qiong doesn’t accept slaves,” he remarks blandly, wincing inside at the way that makes the broker’s expression go hollow and rain-chill, taking a soft breath before be adds: “However, accepting either an orphan or the son of a merchant would be very possible.”

Yun Ming feels both scooped hollow and too full at once, confronted with the agony of having to make the choice with no more room to run away.

“Qian Cao is not like some of the other Peaks; though it is not typical, a number of our disciples are without family outside the sect. An orphan would not be singled out for harassment. On the other hand, if you’ll forgive me for offering my own opinion, a family to write to and exchange parcels with can be a very precious resource for a disciple, especially one struggling against great expectations. Regardless, it seems to me that Boss Ming already knows what he wants; he only needs to actually take the step.”

Yun Ming’s breath leaves him in a wet shudder, and Mu Qingfang gives him a few moments.

“He’ll hate me,” is what he finally says, an absurdly, agonizingly unvarnished concern to voice to a stranger standing his bedroom about his own… about… “I waited too long. He’ll think I only want him now that he’s going to be a cultivator, someone important.”

They never actually discussed Mu Qingfang’s purpose for being here, but they don’t need to.

“He might be upset,” the doctor allows gently. “But you already seem to understand why, so you need only explain.”

“… tonight.” Yun Ming sighs. “It’s… I won’t make the choice. It should be his. If he wants a-- a f-family badly enough to accept a cowardly bastard like me, then I’ll… talk to the magistrate about updating my family register. And if he doesn’t, then I’ll manumit him instead. And then…”

“And then he can come to Qian Cao with me tomorrow.”

And so, a quarter-shichen later, Mu Qingfang finally has the chance to return downstairs, sit down across from the boy, finally see his face, and reel for a moment as he introduces himself.

“You said your name is Shen Yuan?”

“Uh huh.” Shen Yuan has solved the first puzzle, but he’s still stuck on the second one. He is not, however, going to let himself be distracted again. He’s like, never going to have this chance again! “Master Cultivator, is the disease really gone? Everyone is safe now?”

“Yes, everyone is safe now.” Mu Qingfang can’t help but feel another lick of the same affection he had felt when watching the boy enthusiastically share his ideas. “This Mu was told that it was Shen Yuan who saved everyone.”

Oh, woah, woah, that’s too-- “That’s too much, daozhang, I didn’t even go get the mushrooms myself! Or brew the medicine. Or even sew the masks. Does it count if I just told people about it?”

“It does,” he informs him solemnly, and Shen Yuan blinks. “Many other people would have demanded a ransom, or sold the cure for profit. I am told that while you, and the brokerage, did indeed sell the ingredients to produce the cure, you charged the city a fair price on the condition that it be given to everyone for free. You also told the local doctors how to prepare it, advised them on collecting and removing the nightsoil to prevent re-infection, and came up with those masks.”

“I didn’t really… um…” This is so uncool. Does he seriously have to fess up to the very first cultivator he meets what a fake he is?

He only knows this stuff because of his dreams and his past life. He didn’t like, earn it, or work for it. Maybe the past him did, but can the Shen Yuan of this life lay claim to that? He doesn’t think so. That would make him a thief. It’s one thing to lie as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, or to steal if you have to, but you shouldn’t do that stuff just to get praise.

The daozhang is waiting patiently for him to finish what he was trying to say, and he sighs. Guess I have to.

“Daozhang,” he says reluctantly, “I don’t think I should get credit for that.”

“Why is that?” Mu Qingfang raises his eyebrows politely, but he doesn’t look mad. For Mu Qingfang’s part, he would have been more surprised if the boy wasn’t crippled by a mountain of self-doubt.

“Because I learned a bunch of that stuff in my dreams.” Shen Yuan flushes with either shame or self-consciousness and the doctor hums.

It’s surprisingly easy to suppress any other reaction to that, if only because his perspective has been given enough rapid adjustments today to blunt the shock of any further ones.

“What kind of dreams? Do you know?”

“… I think I might be dreaming about my past life,” Shen Yuan says cautiously, and relaxes a little when the cultivator doesn’t seem to think he’s lying or making it up. He hasn’t really talked to anybody about it; he’s too scared that they would react that way, and then what would he do? It’s not like he can go anywhere. “Or, I guess remembering it and dreaming about it. A lot of times, I’ll think about something, and then it’s kind of like I get reminded about what I knew before? But I also dream about my memories from that life.”

“Did you study medicine in your past life?”

“Nuh uh. But I really liked reading about all kinds of plants and animals and monsters. I think… I was sick. A sickly young master. I-I didn’t-- live all that long, probably.” He squirms a little. “I couldn’t go outside very much, but my family bought me books and art from all over the world, about all kinds of places. My favorite dreams are the ones about reading the books, because it’s almost like getting to read them for real. Trying to remember too much on purpose while I’m awake makes me feel kind of sick and dizzy, though, and one time I actually fainted, so I try not to do that unless I have to.”

Mu Qinfang nods, letting the boy offer as much as he feels comfortable offering. “So, since it was your past self who owned and read these books first, you don’t feel you’ve earned the knowledge.”

“… Yeah, basically.” Shen Yuan rolls the heel of one foot against the floor anxiously, hands fiddling with each other.

“Did Shen Yuan know he is not the only person in the world to remember his past lives, or to have remarkable dreams?”

The boy perks up a little. Like, yeah, he had figured that on some level. Obviously he’s not some kind of special case. But he’s never actually heard about anybody else, either.

“Do you know any?” he blurts, and feels instant embarrassment over how pathetic it comes out sounding.

“This Mu does not personally know of any within his own sect, but that does not mean there are none. Huan Hua Palace is said to have such a disciple, as is Zhao Hua. And two senior disciples of Huan Hua are said to have the gift of premonition.” He notes the way Shen Yuan sits up straighter and lets the wave of faint shock pass over him ahead of the boy admitting it. “Some believe that a great deal of Huan Hua Palace’s rise to glory stems from their contributions.”

“… I can do that too,” Shen Yuan admits in a hoarse whisper, and Mu Qingfang nods.

So that’s why this Yun Ming couldn’t make the decision. A broker constantly riding the knife’s edge of solvent couldn’t possibly protect a child like this, nor have much good idea of what to do with him. If the broker adopted him, it would close the door to anyone else taking him and limit the heights he could reach within the secular world forever. But if he were sold, who could tell how his new purchaser might treat him, or abuse those gifts? So the man had simply refused to make any decision at all, until a solution walked in through the front door.

“Shen Yuan, this one will be direct. Your gifts are not unique, but they are precious, nevertheless. Even more precious is the demeanor that led you to use those gifts to help others, rather than to better your own situation or achieve personal glory. You are diligent and thoughtful, with both passion for the natural world and compassion for others. This one believes you have the potential to become truly great one day, if given the opportunity to grow.”

“What are you saying?” Shen Yuan feels himself ask, more breath than voice, eyes wide.

“Come back to Cang Qiong Mountain Sect with me, and become a disciple of my Qian Cao Peak. Yun Ming is prepared to speak to you properly about your future tonight, and see you off with me tomorrow if you say yes.” He reaches out a hand when he sees the boy sway on his stool, and a moment later, Shen Yuan leans against it woozily.

“… You really want me?” he asks, fighting to keep his voice from hiccuping in the middle. “You really want to take me to your mountain with you and…”

Shen Yuan never finishes that sentence, but Mu Qingfang squeezes his upper arm gently. “I really do,” he says directly. “Shen Yuan, you belong in a sect. You belong at Cang Qiong. Let this one help you achieve your potential. It would be a crime to deprive the world of the man you will be someday by leaving you here.”

“I get to grow up this time,” Shen Yuan realizes suddenly, voice punched out. The doctor squeezes his arm again.

No, no, no, I can cry about it later! Later! he thinks when that fills his mouth and nose with the sour feeling of oncoming tears and his vision grows misty. “Yes,” he says instead with as much grown-up determination as he can muster, which mostly makes him sound mushy and sulky. Bleh.

But the Peak Lord just smiles at him, another really good smile. “This one is glad to hear it. There are still things that must be done before tomorrow, but I will return at the hour of the pig to collect you.”

Shen Yuan barely remembers the experience of getting up and seeing the Peak Lord out with Yun Ming, who meets him at the stairs. Yun Ming looks pretty shaken up, too. Maybe he was shocked to hear that Shen Yuan finally has a buyer?

Maybe he’ll even miss Shen Yuan. Being missed just because Yun Ming got used to him is better than nothing.

Even if it’s not what he always wanted, and he guesses now he’ll never have that. Maybe it’s okay. Maybe… he can have other things he wants instead.

They stand in silence for a minute after Peak Lord Mu leaves.

“Kid,” Yun Ming finally says. “Come upstairs. Let’s talk.”

Chapter Text

They talk.

Shen Yuan cries for what feels like hours but probably isn’t. Yun Ming has a bruise on his foot the next day from Shen Yuan stomping on it.

After they talk and cry and fight and hug, he goes outside and splashes his face with water from the outdoor basin and sighs, then finds a good place to stargaze for a while as the sun dips low and the sky rolls out its shining tapestry.

He’s unaware when watchers creep close enough in the dark to see him with cultivation-enhanced eyes, and just as unaware when they creep away again, then quietly leave Mao Yu City.

The next morning, Mu Qingfang comes to collect Shen Yuan in the company of just a few senior disciples, the rest sent home in waves the previous night partly to deliver reports back to Cang Qiong but mostly to limit the number of tongues liable to start wagging about Shen Yuan before he can confirm anything.

It wouldn’t do for Shen-shixiong to hear that… well. Mu Qingfang can imagine the kinds of things certain members of their sect would have to say about a child resembling Shen-shixiong growing up alone in a slave brokerage, with or without proof.

(As he crosses the weedy yard of the brokerage, disciples from Bai Zhan are already talking back at Cang Qiong. Who says the trip to Mao Yu was a waste just because there was no fighting? With just one little detour, they received valuable ammunition in the war against Qing Jing Peak.)

“Peak Lord Mu.” The boy is fresh-scrubbed and wearing a decent set of plain robes with a few cloth sacks at his feet, and drops into a nervous bow. “May I introduce my yangjie, Ru Yu, to you? I don’t think you met her yesterday.”

No, he didn’t, but he is one of the very few men occasionally suffered to enter Xian Shu Peak, and he has some idea of why he hasn’t seen her until now when he glances at her tightly-controlled eyes and body language. That she is standing here at all to greet multiple powerful, unfamiliar men on her adopted brother’s behalf underlines the bond they must share, though.

“This Mu would be honored.” He makes a subtle gesture behind his back, and the disciples with him don’t follow when he approaches.

For Ru Yu’s part, she’s neither blind nor foolish. Yun Ming is standing right there, and so is her didi. She’s quite sure that Yuan-er would try to bite his new master before letting him lay his hands on her. And she knows Peak Lord Mu by reputation, the finest doctor in the jianghu and a righteous man besides.

Still.

(Her owner had been a “righteous man,” too.)

No one comments on the way her hands tremble as she brings them together to return his greeting, but Shen Yuan insinuates himself in front of her afterwards to pull her arms around him to be held, like a cat shoving itself under someone’s hands. The look on his face challenges anybody to call him on this thoroughly spoiled behavior, considering he’s about to leave. Nobody does that, either, and she chuckles helplessly, hugging him tighter.

“Didi must be good for his new sect and diligent for his teacher, or yangfu and yangjie will have to scold him,” she tells him seriously, a hand stroking over his pulled-back hair. “Work hard so you can visit next year and show me how you can do magic now. Jiejie will be waiting.”

“Make all yangfu’s apprentices jealous.” That’s whispered just for him, and Shen Yuan squirms with delight. His jie really understands him, even if she doesn’t talk much.

(It makes missing his siblings from his last life hurt a little less.)

Yun Ming grunts and nods, but his ability to verbalize without embarrassing himself is at an all-time low.

Shen Yuan already got his hugs from Yun Ming yesterday and this morning, and knows the man is too thin-faced to do more than clasp him by the shoulders when they go to leave, but that’s enough.

If Yun Ming will try, then Shen Yuan will, too.

“You write,” is all he says when he walks Shen Yuan to the gate of the brokerage, both command and plea, and Shen Yuan tries to nod manfully so nobody notices how wet and scrunched his face is looking.

And then big, calloused hands are guiding him up to stand on the flat of a real spirit sword, and the world falls away below them.

Bai Zhan are warriors, not strategists. But they are not the only Peak with a grudge against Shen Qingqiu and, by extension, his Qing Jing. Shifu isn’t here, but they don’t need him to fight their battles; their whole purpose in this is to fight for him against that cowardly lech hiding in his bamboo groves.

They can’t make proper use of this information, but others can.

A delegation of girls from Bai Zhan Peak sets off for Xian Shu just as Shen Yuan gets to see his former home from above for the first time.

The thatch really is as jade green as the grassland.

Though flying is exhilarating, Shen Yuan didn’t get a wink of sleep last night, and starts to nod off halfway there. Mu Qingfang already has a big warm arm wrapped around him for safety, and his trailing sleeve covers him like a blanket. The contrast against the cold mountain air… can he be blamed for feeling cozy?

By the time they land at Qian Cao, he’s been picked up to nap in the Peak Lord’s arms.

(“That is so very interesting, my dear sisters,” Xian Shu’s current Head Disciple all but purrs, the teapot now half empty. “Thank you ever so much for entrusting we of Xian Shu with this. Liu Mingyan, fetch your jiejies for me-- I have a little task for them. You don’t need to hide this one from Shizun; I’m sure she’ll approve.”)

I don’t usually get to have them this young, Mu Qingfang reflects, resettling the warm bundle propped up against his shoulder. In just a year or two, Shen Yuan will shoot up like bamboo, but at this age, he can still be cradled in one arm. Nine years is only just barely old enough to enter the sect as a disciple. Much younger, and he would have need to live in one of the sect’s creches for a year, at which point he would be up for grabs to anybody.

He’s privately a little amused by the uncharacteristic flicker of possessiveness that makes him feel. Perhaps he would have found his own ways around that little rule, as some of his martial siblings have over the years.

Mu Qingfang briefly considers waking Shen Yuan so he can walk by himself, then decides this is probably the most inconspicuous way to get him inside without others seeing his face. Shen Yuan grumbles and hugs closer to the Peak Lord when he steps off his sword, and the man pats his back and resettles him again.

“You can sleep a little longer yet,” he murmurs. “This one will wake you when we’re there.”

“Mmnnkay.” Shen Yuan buries his face against his robes, and he can’t help but chuckle. Lucky little thing, aren’t you? Making things easy for me.

As he’s carrying Shen Yuan into his office to settle on the luohan and wait for Head Disciple Xiao, a group of girls from Xian Shu sets off for Qing Jing at a clip, only slowing down once they approach the Peak itself.

“She’s usually hanging around that kid he snatched from Liu-shishu, right?” one of them hums, peering through the trees with her sisters.

“If Liu-shishu hadn’t wanted him, that Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t have bothered. You only ever see him chopping wood and getting beaten up by his seniors; just send him to Bai Zhan at that point.”

“Shimei should speak more charitably of our shidimei at Bai Zhan, we’re only here thanks to their efforts.”

“Shijie is right, of course. Ah, look!”

Ning Yingying huffs as she strolls along the beaten path to the bamboo clearing A-Luo usually practices in, hands tucked under her crossed arms.

For the last twelve days (she counted) Shizun has been all hot and cold, even towards her sometimes. Yingying knows he's always sorry, even though he doesn't say so, because he's always extra nice to her later. She just wishes she knew what was wrong! Shizun has always been working so hard for their Peak, but he never used to seem so tired, and Yingying can’t help at all...

She hasn’t been able to do much about A-Luo's troubles, either. She sighs and kicks absently at a pebble, watching it skitter over the bare dirt and stop against a dark boot.

When she looks up, it’s to the sight of a bunch of her older shimei from Xian Shu smiling at her. She smiles back automatically. There aren’t no girls on Qing Jing, but there are no girls anywhere close to her age, just grown ladies over twenty who have been crowned and moved into adult quarters. That’s nothing to be jealous of-- she has the whole girls’ dormitory to herself-- but she’s lonely. So it’s always nice when her shimei from Xian Shu visit.

“Xiao-Shijie~” Ji Mingyue greets her with a teasing bow, and Ning Yingying giggles at the silly nickname.

“Da-Shimei!” She skips over to join the Head Disciple of Xian Shu and her martial sisters, throwing herself into the older girl’s arms to be spun around.

“Aah, shijie, it’s good to see you. Was something troubling you? You looked worried when we came up.”

Ning Yingying pouts. “Ji-shimei, Shizun is so troubled these days, but he won’t tell this Yingying anything! What do you do when your Shizun is sad?”

“Xiao-shijie doesn’t know?” Ji Mingyue bites back a smile to frown down at her little shijie. If there’s any part of this plan she doesn’t feel so great about, it’s using Yingying to attack her own Shizun. It’s all for a good cause-- finally exposing that lech will help their shijie, too, in the end-- but it still doesn’t feel good. “You must not have heard!”

“Heard what?” she demands immediately, catching the smell of a secret she wasn’t clued into and puffing out her cheeks. “Ji-shimei knows what’s wrong with Shizun?”

“Well, this shimei can’t claim to know what your Shizun is so troubled about. But did you hear about the disease in Mao Yu City?”

“Yingying’s shixiongs said people got sick because of demons, so Mu-shishu had to take his healers and go save them. Bai Zhan and Mo Shu went too, in case the demons were still sneaking around or anybody turned into a ghost.” It’s not a totally inaccurate account of things, but Ji Mingyue notes (not for the first time) how badly informed she is about such matters. In this case, it’s useful to them.

“Well, it turns out everybody was okay! Can you believe it?”

“So there wasn’t a disease after all?” Ning Yingying frowns.

“No, there was, but the shixiongdi who went with them said just this morning that the disease was already all better by the time they arrived! And you know what? It was Shen-shibo’s son who saved everyone!” A swift hand over Ning Yingying’s mouth stops her excited shout from alerting everyone nearby. “Shijie can’t yell, or everyone will know, and then you’ll have to wait your turn to meet him when he officially joins the sect.”

Ji Mingyue slows pulls her hand away from Ning Yingying’s frantic nodding, and the girl shout-whispers, “Shizun has a son coming to join the sect?! How come this Yingying never heard!”

“I don’t know, shijie. I would have thought your Shizun would mention having a son outside the sect… But maybe it’s because he’s not coming to Qing Jing. Anyone would be upset about their child being taken by another master, right? I guess your Shizun didn’t even get a chance,” Ji Mingyue sighs.

“That can’t be right. Who would dare?!”

“It seems he landed on Qian Cao just a short while ago.”

“They- they already have lots of doctors,” Ning Yingying decides immediately, her frown stormy in a way that portends a tantrum. “They can’t take Shizun’s own son from him! Ji-shimei, shimeis from Xian Shu, this Yingying is sorry, but she has to go right now!”

Whatever they have to say to that, she doesn’t hear it. For that matter, she doesn’t question why they would tell her such a thing, nor how the news traveled so fast when Cang Qiong only just found out about the plague yesterday morning to begin with. The thought of her Shizun having a child and of them both being wronged is too immense for her to consider anything else. Her Shizun is the most beautiful, amazing person in the world. How can she let him face this alone? Her feet patter all the way up the stone steps to the Bamboo House, and she barely bothers to knock before pulling the door open and scampering inside.

Her incipient shout is caught in her throat when Shen Qingqiu’s voice immediately snaps, “Ning Yingying. This master is more than certain you have been taught better manners than that. Return outside at once and enter properly.”

“But Shizun--!”

“Yingying.” The use of her given name alone, said in such a sour tone of voice, makes her bite her lip and bow, then back outside and shut the door. Unfair, unfair, unfair…! How is she supposed to slow down with such big feelings shaking her apart from inside?! She takes a trembling breath and raps on the door, and is certain her meanie-face Shizun makes her wait an extra few seconds before answering.

“You may enter.”

“Shizun!” She salutes and shuts the door behind her, squirming. Please!

Shen Qingqiu levels her with a look for several moments, but finally sighs. “What does Ning Yingying have to say to this master that is so important it could not wait?”

“Shizun!” she shouts again, ignoring his wince in her haste to get it out before he changes his mind. “This Yingying didn’t understand Shizun’s troubles, but now I do! Please let me support you in getting your son back!”

Shen Qingqiu pauses in the middle of raising a hand to his temple to gaze at her like a deeply unimpressed cat. “This master’s what? Where did Yingying hear such a thing?”

“Shizun doesn’t have to protect this foolish Yingying from the truth any longer,” she bravely tells him, coming closer to kneel and shuffle to sit across from her stricken master. “Shizun has borne the loss of his son so bravely, but he isn’t alone! This Yingying is sure that all her shixiongdi will support him, too. The Sect Leader will have to listen and make Qian Cao give Shizun’s son back so he can attend Qing Jing!”

He continues to stare at her silently, and Ning Yingying patiently gives him time. Her nainai always used to say you have to give boys time to think about their feelings, or they’ll get all worked up and then they’re just useless. Shizun could never be useless, but he is a boy, so she should still be patient.

“Ning Yingying,” he finally says, and she perks up. “This master will-- be back.”

And then he gets up, and sweeps out the door without another word.

Good. Shizun must be going to tell Qian Cao they have to give Xiao-Shizun back right away.

Yingying will just tidy up here, and go wait at the Rainbow Bridge for them to return when Shizun is successful!

Chapter Text

Shen Qingqiu allows the door to shut behind him with a neat clack and then lingers there briefly, hands clenched into fists beneath his sleeves, letting the blunt ends of his nails dig into his palms. He rolls his fingers just to dig them in deeper and feels his upper lip curl to expose his teeth like the monster he secretly is.

So. Some upstart has weaseled his way into Cang Qiong outside the ordinary selection trials by claiming to be his-- his bastard child, and the first he hears of it is from Ning Yingying? If matters have reached her ears already, there is no way this nonsense isn’t being tittered about in every corner of the Tian Gong mountains and beyond.

He feels his stomach roil and sicken with fear, and forces it to become anger instead. Anger can be used. Anger is a weapon.

A moment later, he stalks to the top of the stone steps and emits a pulse of qi fit to raise the hair of anyone standing nearby, then waits with mounting impatience for Ming Fang to hare his way up to him.

Ming Fan stops hard and swivels on his heel in the middle of chasing down the Beast, heart in his throat.

The last time his master summoned him this way, he wasn’t quick enough. Many people were caught in the crossfire, and they all knew to blame him afterwards, too. It doesn’t matter that he’s not officially Head Disciple, and isn’t likely to be for years yet; they all know who the job will be going to, and that means he might as well live up to the responsibility now.

He owes Shizun anything and everything he demands, regardless. If Shizun hadn’t found a way to flout the rules and take him into Cang Qiong early, he would be dead in a ditch, taken out of the competition between his brothers before he could grow up to become a problem. Shizun can beat him all he wants, as long as he keeps him.

He still flinches for a split-second as he rounds the curve of the stairs and sees the look on his master’s face, as black and fathomless as the sea.

“Reporting to Shizun!” He bows immediately, if only to escape that expression, fighting down a rising wave of anxious nausea.

“Ming Fan.” Shen Qingqiu all but purrs his name, his voice a low and deadly murmur. “Your shimei just paid this master a visit. Do you know what she said?”

“N-no, Shizun.” He can hear the muted ‘fwip’ of every fold in Shen Qingqiu’s fan as he slowly pushes it closed and begins tapping it against the opposite palm.

“She claims that this master’s son is entering Cang Qiong as we speak. That this individual has been claimed by Qian Cao, rather than Qing Jing Peak, and that this is surely the source of this master’s-- poor temper,” he snarls sweetly, abruptly directly in front of Ming Fan. “It is her sincere wish that her shixiongdi join her in supporting this master to retrieve this son.”

He feels a liquid shudder of dread crawl down his spine, and doesn’t look up even when Shen Qingqiu’s fan comes up under his chin to force him to rise.

“If I do not know everything there is to learn about this lying wretch by the time I depart in a shichen to obliterate him, I will whip you to death’s door myself and then put you on a fast carriage to Jiangnan with a letter detailing your expulsion from the sect.”

Shen Qingqiu doesn’t bother to ask for confirmation; Ming Fan gives it anyway, and only the harsh hand that shoves his shoulder to get him going keeps his knees from failing him on the spot.

Yingying will need to be occupied, Shen Qingqiu reflects as the boy flees in terror, feeling another stab of pain behind his eyes and refusing to dignify it with a wince outside his own home. She will undoubtedly cause trouble if allowed to tag along. He feels his lip try to curl again imagining what such a stranger might have gotten up to, had he met Ning Yingying first. He has no idea how old this boy is supposed to be, but in his experience, age alone is not evidence of innocence.

Regardless. Shen Qingqiu is no stranger to the charms of women, but the boy can’t be his. That variety of base lust is disgusting, undignified, and beneath even him-- he is a monster, not an animal. Not a beast. Just a wretch, a liar and a killer.

He can’t tolerate such a weakness in himself, yet another avenue by which to attack him and tear down his reputation. It is bad enough to frequent brothels to begin with, and to have it known by his martial siblings. Yet they can prove nothing save that he visits, for there is no evidence to the contrary, and the whores refuse to badmouth a client who doesn’t grub at them like a pig.

He takes several deep breaths, and returns inside to ask Ning Yingying to prepare tea while he withdraws a slim tome from a compartment beneath his bed and begins to plan.

(“Shizun! Aren’t you going to Qian Cao?” “Your Ming-shixiong is gathering some information for me.” And that’s all it takes to satisfy her that matters are in hand. He shakes his head and does nothing to disabuse her of that notion.)

If he is going to war, he ought to be prepared.

Ming Fan makes it to the bottom of the steps before he has to dart off to the side and vomit underneath a bush, fingers clawing at the soft dirt and mucus clogging his nose as he gags.

Shizun wouldn’t.

… He might. He probably wouldn’t, because replacing Ming Fan would be very annoying. But someone claiming to be Shizun’s bastard son… That really is an emergency, the type of thing that could seriously hurt Shizun’s standing in the sect. Ming Fan narrows his eyes suddenly.

If I don’t know, then nobody on Qing Jing’s heard yet, and Ning-shimei isn’t allowed to leave by herself. How did she hear? Who told her?

He spits to clear his mouth and rises, one hand coming up to wipe his face with eyes burning above the curve of his wrist. They’re going to pay. Pay for threatening his Shizun, and pay for threatening him.

“Someone come now!” He snarls as soon as his boots touch the main courtyard, inwardly pleased with how like Shizun he manages to sound through his burned throat. If his shixiondi are so eager to saddle him with the consequences due to the Head Disciple, they can start jumping to obey him like he’s got the title, too.

Shen Yuan is currently having the best bath he thinks he’s ever had, in this life or the last one. It helps that there’s a nice jiejie washing his hair and he got to pick his own smell for his hair oil!

“Outside the standard curriculum, disciples of Qian Cao are encouraged to cultivate a particular area of interest and aid in its advancement,” Xiao Yunqi had told him just a short while ago, showing him all the bottles of oils and scents on the shelves of the bathhouse. “These are samples of therapeutic scents compounded by other disciples during their studies. Some were made by our disciples to share with everyone, and others were gifts from our siblings on Wu Xing or Zui Xian.”

(Shen Yuan hadn’t been sure what to call the amused-frustrated feeling the name ‘Wu Xing’ had prompted in him. That was the name of an elemental practice in his last life, so it should have made perfect sense for a peak studying alchemy and the elements to be called that here, but for some reason it made him want to shout ‘lazy name!’)

While he was helped up onto a broad stool in order to reach the bottles, Xiao Yunqi had continued, “Qian Cao is closest with Zui Xian, but our three peaks are all considered especially close, for we share many areas of interest. It is not unheard of for disciples to transfer between our peaks as they come to better understand their calling, though that is not a matter to take lightly. Since these are presents for everyone to share, you mustn’t waste them, but you are also welcome to use them. If you remain on Qian Cao, you can use them all the time, of course.” That was a bit of very naked enticement even he could spot, but he didn’t call her on it.

So he had been allowed to sniff all the little bottles on the shelf until he felt dizzy with it, and finally chosen a sort of bright, grassy smell that reminded him of fresh-cut plants.

Now he’s having wonderful soft suds rinsed from his hair while he considers that remark a little more. If she’s trying to tempt him to stay, does that mean he has other options?

(Not that he’s really, seriously thinking about saying ‘Thank you for the bath and the shot at immortality, I’ll just be taking those and going next door now.’ Shen Yuan already knows he’s not a saint, but he’s not a backstabber, either. And... well... )

“Da-shijie, I have the robes you requested. I’ll just leave them here,” a younger girl’s voice says from the door, but the voice is there and gone before he has time to get embarrassed about the idea of a stranger walking in.

“After your bath, I’ll show you what order to wear your robes in and take you to see Shizun. Do you want anything done with the ends of your hair, Shen-didi?”

“I like it. You don’t think it’s unlucky, do you?” he suddenly wonders, picking up a lock of his hair to look at the whitened ends.

“Hmm. White isn’t exactly an auspicious color on its own, but I don’t think it would cause any harm. It is also a symbol of purity; cultivators often wear white, as you know. In the first place, your hair is like that now because you thwarted and survived a deadly disease. If anything, perhaps keeping that symbol of victory is lucky?”

Shen Yuan tips his head back to gape at her in awe. “Xiao-shijie, you make it sound so cool. I just thought it looked nice.”

“Jiejie,” she corrects automatically. “You haven’t had your tea ceremony yet. Depending on your final choice when you see Shizun, I will be your shimei, shijie, or da-shijie very soon. Now, what does ‘cool’ mean? Is that a turn of phrase from your hometown?”

He’s busy being blown away for a moment by the thought of calling the grown lady washing his hair ‘shimei.’ “Um. I don’t remember where I picked it up,” he lies. It’s not like anybody can prove he didn’t learn it from some random person to come through the brokerage. It’s fine! “It means, like… exciting, I guess? Something you admire or want to be like, too. Like a tiger or a dragon, or a cultivator. Jiejie, how could you be my shimei, you’re almost ready for your guan and I’m not even ten yet!”

“I think I understand now. And that’s because the peaks also have seniority between them. Qian Cao is ranked fifth, but Shizun will explain more about that soon. If you were to choose and be accepted by a higher-ranked peak, I would become your shimei.”

Wow.

Shen Yuan kind of feels like he knows some of this, the more he reflects on it. While Xiao Junqi helps him out of the bath and hands him a towel to dry himself with, he considers what he knows about Cang Qiong, or is pretty sure he knows.

They’re the biggest sect in the world, or at least the Middle Kingdom. They’re supposed to be over a thousand years old. The mountain range they call home, the Tian Gong, has twelve major peaks, and each peak has its own Peak Lord and area of study.

Of the Peak Lords… he knows Mu Qingfang, Wei Qingwei, Shen Qingqiu, and Yue Qingyuan by name. All of them are popular subjects of gossip: the finest doctor, best swordsmith, most accomplished scholar, and most powerful cultivator in the jianghu. Oh, and Liu Qingge, the one they call the War God! What boy his age didn’t look up to him? The Qing generation rose the year after he was born, and he’s pretty sure he’s heard rumors they don’t get along as well as the last generation did.

As for what he thinks he might recall from dreams… Well.

He’s not sure yet whether his last life was on another continent or not, but he’s positive they knew about the Middle Kingdom, because he remembers reading about it. Thinking about Cang Qiong also gives him that funny feeling he gets sometimes, like he should know more but the memories are still just barely out of reach. Plus, the name ‘Middle Kingdom’ implies there must be other places, too, or else why bother with the ‘middle’? But that still doesn’t really explain the sense of deja vu he’s experiencing. Cang Qiong itself is a thousand years old, but he shouldn’t feel like he recognizes the names of people who didn’t come into their power until after he was born.

What if I reincarnated in the past? he suddenly wonders, and then he doesn’t have time to keep wondering about it, because Xiao Yunqi is toweling his hair dry and he has to focus on not melting.

She smiles at him, this little stray leaning into her hands. Shizun must keep him, unless it turns out he really is related to Shen Qingqiu, she supposes… then again, it is possible Shen-shibo won’t want to take him, for any number of reasons, in which case he should certainly be theirs. She’s barely had a chance to hear about what happened in Mao Yu City, and already she’s eager to put this boy in front of proper tools and see what he does.

“All right. Do you want help dressing, or do you only want to be shown? I noticed you were wearing two layers when you arrived, and our uniforms have four for disciples your age. I needed help, too, when I first arrived,” she assures him.

“Please help, jiejie,” he says timidly, and she wants to tuck him under her arm like a little baby bird.

“All right. Let’s have you put on your pants while jiejie gets your upper layers sorted. They go like this…”

Mu Qingfang calls for Xiao Yunqi to enter, and only long years of practice keep him from exclaiming when Shen Yuan peeks in around her. She seems to know what he’s thinking, because she flicks her eyes at him and inclines her head in a very small nod as she ushers the boy in.

“Th-this Shen Yuan greets, um… M-master Mu?” the boy stammers awkwardly, apparently not sure how he’s supposed to behave and flustered about it.

It makes the feeling that he’s looking at his martial sibling sans about twenty years of age much less jarring. There is no way they are not related. They are going to have to talk about that, probably quite immediately.

“Shen Yuan need not feel so nervous. Please, come sit. Disciple Xiao is dismissed to attend to other matters, but should assign a junior disciple to wait outside.” She nods, salutes, and departs with a single pat to the boy’s shoulder, which he notes does seem to help the boy relax.

Shen Yuan comes to kneel across from him at the table. He has his hands clasped in front of him, obviously fiddling with each other under his sleeves, and Mu Qingfang suddenly wonders how many of Shen Qingqiu’s habits are a familial tic. He can easily imagine his thin-faced, temperamental shixiong teaching himself to use a fan in order to cover up for such a flaw in his gentleman’s demeanor.

(He’s perfectly aware that many of the rumors about Shen Qingqiu appear to be untrue… but not all of them, unfortunately.)

(He was rarely around Shen-shixiong when they were still disciples themselves, but they did have occasion to work together, and they now see one another regularly during Peak Lord meetings. While fourteen years is not a long time for cultivators, it is ample time to have made observations and drawn some tentative conclusions. The rumors of lechery are either wholly unfounded or wildly overblown. The rumors about his wealthy background even moreso. The viciousness… is a more complicated subject. But to pry any deeper into his sibling’s personal affairs would have been unsuitable barring some emergency, so that is the limit of his conclusions.)

He blinks himself out of his momentary reverie and smiles at the boy anxiously fidgeting across from him.

“Though some traditions reign supreme across all twelve peaks, the broader content and nature of the acceptance ceremony is left to the discretion of each Peak Lord. This Mu’s own master had little patience for such things by the time he was accepted into the sect; my ceremony consisted of little more than taking the dictated oath, pouring the tea, and accepting my dormitory assignment,” he chuckles. “Though my master did write the oath himself.”

Oh, that’s actually really interesting, Shen Yuan thinks for some reason. Of course it’s interesting!!

Seeing Shen Yuan untense a little, Mu Qingfang continues, “As for me, although it is unorthodox…”

He withdraws a scroll from his sleeve and delicately unties the blue ribbon fastening it, then spreads it out in front of Shen Yuan, pinning each corner with an engraved weight intended just for this.

Shen Yuan looks at the list of peaks in front of him, eyes wide. He really does get to choose, then?

“Others have made it known they think it quite absurd to bring back promising healers and then give them the chance to escape my proverbial clutches, but this Mu meant it when he said it would be a crime to deprive the world of the man you will be someday. What type of man you will be is not for me to determine, however. It is a choice only you can make. If medicine is not the appropriate calling for your gifts, perhaps alchemy will be. Or brewing. Or natural cultivation.”

“… Do you want me to stay?” Shen Yuan finds himself asking in a small voice.

“Yes. To be honest, this Mu has never wanted so much to pretend he did not invent this tradition.” Mu Qingfang smiles at him, relieved to see Shen Yuan loosen up again. “But it would be unfair not to give you the same choice.”

Shen Yuan is quiet for a minute, not looking at the list but gazing at his lap. Finally, he says, “I’m going to read the list, because I want to know about all the peaks. And I really, really hope I can at least visit the other peaks and see what they’re doing, because it sounds really cool. But… Master Mu is the one who found me and decided I was worth a shot. You carried me a-all the way back here in your a-arms…” That part does make him flush a little with embarrassment. He’s getting too big for that! His voice fails him again while he tries to figure out what he’s trying to say, hands coming out of his sleeves to gesture helplessly.

“I like… no, I love plants and beasts and poisons. I bet I would like alchemy and everything, like you mentioned. But I… when everyone started to get sick, and they were all really scared, and I knew how to help, and it worked and then everyone got better… when you t-told me that mattered, that it helped that I k-knew all that, that I w-wasn’t just being…” Do not cry in front of your new master, you were JUST thinking about how big you are and big boys don’t cry for no reason.

Mu Qingfang watches him work through this important moment for himself, not interrupting, but a large hand settles on the table in front of Shen Yuan, palm up.

A much smaller hand settles in the palm of it like a frightened bird and is held by calloused fingers.

“… I want to stay on Qian Cao Peak, Master Mu. Please accept me as your disciple.”

“Shen Yuan,” he says, squeezing the tiny hand held in his, “nothing would please me more. There is just one more thing we need to discuss.”

Shen Qingqiu moves through the main courtyard of Qian Cao like a highly localized storm, disciples scattering before his stalking footsteps in a flurry, too furious and terrified to properly appreciate the way their fluttering sleeves and choked whispering reduce them all to so many dead leaves blown apart in his wake.

His thoughts are similarly scattered. Like: A slave. A slave. They found that boy in a fucking slave house, and he is claiming to be related to me. Or: They took his word for it without even speaking to me. And: So, even Mu Qingfang has secrets, does he? as his fingers play over the note in his sleeve.

But when he forces his way past the little twit apparently standing ‘guard’ outside and lets himself into his so-called shidi’s office only to see the startled boy at the table look up at him with his own face, he has only one thought for just a moment:

The bitch really did it twice.

Chapter Text

The door falls shut with a bang behind Shen Qingqiu while he stands there wordlessly.

Well, this is not how I hoped this would happen.

As the room becomes silent, Mu Qingfang takes the opportunity to delicately remove the teapot from Shen Yuan’s frozen hands and place it back on the warmer. Shen Qingqiu’s piercing qing-colored eyes track the motion, then return to the boy’s face.

A few birds chirp outside.

Shen Yuan stares at a face just like his with caught breath. Oh, Master Mu meant it. We really do look alike. Is this Shen Qingqiu?

“Shen-shixiong,” he breaks the silence, and watches Shen Qingqiu’s eyes flick to him. When he doesn’t say anything, Mu Qingfang continues, “May this shidi ask what Shen-shixiong was told before arriving here?”

The closed fan in Shen Qingqiu’s hand creaks.

“Oh, this master believes his shidi knows very well what rumors are already spreading throughout the sect, as does this one,” he indicates venomously with the clenched fan, face a mask of calm rage.

That sudden gesture seems to be enough to prod Shen Yuan out of his paralysis, and he gapes. “What?”

“The claims by which you secured entry to the sect, boy,” Shen Qingqiu snaps. “The lies you told, slanderous lies that allowed you undeserved admission outside of the--”

“Shen Yuan has made no claims, Shen-shixiong.” Mu Qingfang’s choice to interrupt is a calculated risk, and he’s rewarded when his senior martial brother turns his enmity towards him instead of the shocked child sitting beside him. “If you would allow Shen Yuan to step outside, this shidi will gladly explain everything.”

“Why does he need to leave?” the other man demands. “So he doesn’t fail to corroborate your story?”

“No, this shidi simply—”

“Ah, then shidi simply wants to remove witnesses to whatever blackmail game he thinks he is playing here. And involving a child, too. What would our martial siblings say? Is Mu-shidi not supposed to be among the most virtuous of us? What--”

Shen Yuan has been gazing at him like a small animal that’s been kicked, wide-eyed and hapless. But there’s a furrow growing between his eyes, too. Getting deeper by the moment as bewilderment turns into frustrated affront, and finally he cries out.

“Wh-- why do you think that? I-I don’t-- if Shif-- I mean, Mas-- ugh!” He wants to howl. What is he supposed to call anybody when he hasn’t finished pouring the tea yet!

Shen Qingqiu is just watching him now, staring like a snake, and that really makes him angry for some reason.

“If nobody minds if I stay, I’ll stay! I’ll tell you all about whatever you want!” He starts to sit up on his knees, hands gripping the edge of the table while he leans forward over it, unaware that he’s beginning to yell. “I don’t know what you’re supposed to be so mad about, but if it’s that we might be brothers—”

“Brothers?” Shen Qingqiu scoffs with narrowed eyes. “And what does a dirty little slave believe he has in common with me?”

“Shitty parents!” Shen Yuan answers with instant earnestness. Mu Qingfang’s hand yanks lightly on the back of his robe in rebuke, pulling him back into a sitting position.

Shen Qingqiu ruthlessly crushes the unwanted flicker of amusement that causes. “Unfilial filth. If you are meant to be the sibling of a Peak Lord then mind your tongue.”

“Unfilial to who?” Shen Yuan grumbles, but subsides under the hand that settles on top of his head. He knows that move; Yun Ming likes to pull it, too. Fine.

“Shen-shixiong, this shidi did not realize until well after deciding to take Shen Yuan that he bore such a resemblance to you. He is the one responsible for resolving the outbreak in Mao Yu City.”

Shen Qingqiu pauses hard. That…

“You expect this master to believe…”

“That a nine-year-old child raised in a brokerage knew both the symptoms and cure of a demonic disease well enough to resolve the emergency with only twelve casualties? Of course, this shidi does not. I also did not believe it until shown evidence. Naturally, Shen-shixiong would never be any more careless with information than this Mu.”

Shen Qingqiu narrows his eyes, the fan flicked open in one dramatic movement to wave slowly. “Mu-shidi claims to be careful with information despite the present situation?”

“This Mu supposes it was too much to trust senior disciples to obey a Peak Lord’s orders to return immediately rather than sneaking around in the dark to find something to gossip about.” It’s uncommonly chiding, for him, even failing to name names. Shen Qingqiu wasn’t sure the man had any spine at all towards disciples. Mu Qingfang raises his eyebrows, and Shen Qingqiu scoffs again.

“Bai Zhan,” he concludes after only a moment, and, well. Mu Qingfang can only fight on so many fronts, and he would be forced to admit that he is not feeling especially inclined to defend them when he’s already planning to speak with Liu-shidi himself about their conduct. “Very well. Boy, you are going to have to remake that tea anyway. Pour for me.”

Shen Yuan watches him approach to kneel at the opposite side of the table, and only now has the opportunity to appreciate that his older brother(?) is beautiful. Why’s somebody like that got such a bad attitude?! Shen Yuan wishes he could look like that, a white jade crane making the plain wood floor of Mu Qingfang’s office into a ballroom with his gliding steps. His robes don’t even rustle as he sweeps them aside with a hand to sit.

“Is that… all right?” he asks Mu Qingfang, receiving a dirty look for it from the other Peak Lord. What! He wants to make sure he’s not, like, going to accidentally pledge himself to wrong master or something!

“The tea should indeed be freshly prepared for the ceremony. Since it seems our tea pouring has been postponed for the moment, it would be a shame to waste the pot.”

“How charitable of you,” Shen Qingqiu remarks from the other side of the table, sounding so nonplussed that it makes Shen Yuan smile, thereby immediately earning his ire again. “Is Shen Yuan going to sit around smirking at his betters, or is he going to display manners befitting a prospective cultivator and pour for me?”

He bites his lip and shuffles over to pour for him.

Shen Qingqiu takes in his appearance while he’s close and bent with distraction, ignoring his martial sibling for the moment. The boy’s hair has obviously been recently washed and oiled, and it was also obviously cared for reasonably well prior to that point. He knows from experience that a single bath, or even a handful of baths, aren’t enough to immediately repair the damage of long neglect. The tips are white; he brings his folded fan up to catch the end of his ponytail, holding it up to peer at with lidded eyes.

“The disease?” he asks, and the child just nods, apparently cowed back into behaving for the moment. He flicks the ponytail away with a bare motion. Pathetic.

Eyes far brighter than his own, distinctly blue. Fair skin, cared for decently but with callouses and a few minor scars, all accidental-looking. Something suddenly occurs to him, and as soon as the boy is done pouring and the teapot has been set back down, he shoves him forward slightly with a hand on the back of his shoulder and pulls down the neck of his robe.

Shen Yuan yelps, flailing slightly. “What are you--?”

“Quiet.” Then: “You don’t have a brand.”

“No…? Yun Ming didn’t give me one. He says it’s fu-- it’s wr-wrong to… people end up slaves for all kinds of reasons,” he rephrases, struggling to get his yangfu’s words right to someone a thousand times more elegant than both of them while held in such an awkward position. “People even sell themselves sometimes so they can survive. That doesn’t make them evil, it makes them poor. And people leave slavery, too. He can’t stop somebody if they brand someone they buy from him, but he won’t do it.”

“How nice.” Oh, the fucking disgust he feels, listening to this boy talk up his owner, framing him as some benevolent soul rather than a peddler of flesh. The hate. “What a good little slave you are, so grateful for—”

“I’m not a slave and even if I was it wouldn’t be polite to keep harping on it like that!” Shen Yuan spins around and snaps, only to recoil at his own audacity just ahead of Shen Qingqiu grabbing his jaw and gripping to gaze down at him in disdain.

“That’s enough,” Mu Qingfang says from the other side of the table with uncommon sharpness, and Shen Qingqiu looks at his martial sibling like a bird of prey, ignoring the child struggling to escape his grasp. “Shen-shixiong, Shen Yuan is indeed not a slave. He was adopted shortly before his entry to the sect.”

“Of course,” he mutters, letting go of the child and withdrawing a silk kerchief from his sleeve to wipe his hands with pointedly. Some hurried sham by local nobility reluctant to let a surprise cash cow trot away without a bell attached, no doubt. “Fine. There are other matters to discuss. If shidi has no further objections?”

As if Shen Qingqiu hasn’t been the one arguing at every step…?! Shen Yuan sighs shakily, heart hammering as he retreats to sit beside Mu Qingfang instead. He wasn’t gripped hard enough to really hurt, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t scary.

“Please,” Shen Yuan’s will-be Shifu says peaceably, sliding his cup over to Shen Yuan.

Oh, yes. He can do that.

Mu Qingfang watches him pour the tea long enough to be sure he’s calming down a little.

Shen Qingqiu withdraws a stack of talismans from his sleeve and sends them forth with a flick and a spark of qi to adhere to the door, walls and ceiling, and Shen Yuan almost spills the tea a second time. Holy shit! He wants to see that again! How do the talismans know what to stick to?! Why don’t they ever miss?

But they still don’t start talking right away after that, neither drinking their tea nor looking elsewhere. Shen Yuan replaces the teapot and fidgets, glancing between the adults and their silent chess game, unable to understand why they’re just looking at each other that way or what’s being communicated.

Finally, Shen Qingqiu says, “You have blood tests. Fetch one.”

Mu Qingfang hums and rises to move to one of the cabinets on the wall, shuffling through a few stacked possessions before coming away with a lacquered box engraved with a blooming peach tree. “Yes, it’s probably best to get that cleared up immediately.”

Shen Yuan watches him bring back the little box and carefully remove the lid to withdraw a beautiful polished board bearing the brass relief of another peach tree. Roots, trunk, branches, leaves, fruit and blossoms are all depicted at the same time, with a pair of depressions at the bottom to each side of the trunk. Into these, two translucent cups are placed. In the upper-left and -right corners are two more small reliefs, one a pale and pockmarked moon in silver, the other a golden sun. Key points of the design are embedded with glimmering little gems.

“It’s a blood test?” he asks, peering at it.

“It is. Shen Yuan already understands how they work?” Mu Qingfang asks mildly, not exactly expecting a yes, but not certain he expects a ‘no,’ either.

The boy hesitates, then shakes his head. “Not like this one.”

“Of course not,” Shen Qingqiu remarks acidly. Who is this boy to stroll in and start pretending to be an expert in front of a pair of learned immortals? “Cang Qiong is-- ostensibly-- a place of learning and accomplishment. Did you look at all the pretty gems and realize we must not be planning to drip our blood together like illiterate peasants to see if it sticks?”

Shen Yuan stares at him, and Shen Qingqiu stares back. Then, pointedly ignoring his provocation, the boy takes a very deep breath and turns to Mu Qingfang instead.

“You aren’t planning to mix the blood because that’s worthless,” he starts. “Or, not worthless maybe, but it doesn’t prove anything about whether you’re related. Blood can only mix safely with blood with the same traits, if it’s mixed with any other type the body acts like it’s being attacked by the foreign blood and scabs over on the inside. That stops the pulse, and the person dies. Many people believe that since we talk about blood ties, it must be the blood that stays the same among relatives. But things like eye color, hair quality, and height vary between relatives. It stands to reason that traits that can’t be seen so easily, like the quality of a person’s blood, would also vary. So you can have total strangers whose blood mixes by coincidence, and direct siblings whose blood clumps.”

Mu Qingfang nods, aware that Shen Qingqiu is having trouble controlling his reaction across from them. “Shen Yuan is right, of course, though he seems to have some thoughts on the subject this Mu would like to discuss another time.”

That makes Shen Yuan perk up a little. Sneaking a glance at Shen Qingqiu, he adds, “Am I right that these tests could be performed with anything, like hair or skin? Blood is used because it’s easier and less likely to be compromised, and can’t be faked?”

The wood of Shen Qingqiu’s fan creaks in his hand.

“Right again.” He’s got to find time to sit down with him after this is all cleared up. Ordinarily, finding out what a new disciple already knows is a task for the hallmasters, but this is a case he’d rather tackle personally. “Since Shen Yuan understands, we’ll perform the test immediately, unless there are any further concerns?”

Well, Shen Yuan certainly isn’t the one who’s been stomping his feet and making trouble this whole time. He nods, holding his hand out for Mu Qingfang when he picks up one of the hollow needles from the box. Lalala, he’s not looking, he’s busy admiring the windows and the wall scrolls and my goodness how many shelves and books there are, can he get his hands on those some time soon.

He shudders slightly as he feels the needle slide into his hand and linger there, but he only has to endure the slick-nasty feeling of escaping blood briefly before it’s withdrawn. A moment later, a thumb veiled with qi literally smooths the wound away like a magic trick.

“Wow,” he murmurs, turning his hand over as if he’ll find the pinprick on the other side.

Shen Qingqiu has to fight not to sneer at him as he performs the same procedure on himself. Stupid brat.

He doesn’t know what he wants the answer to be and that terrifies him. If he could find the feeling and kill it, he would. Why couldn’t he have been the one to find the boy? If he had been able to control the narrative from the start… but no. Now he has to negotiate the truth with a bunch of fucking children, with witnesses in private curtailing his freedom to shape the facts on top.

Shen Yuan sits up on his knees again as he realizes Mu Qingfang is about to activate the embedded array, watching the tree with his heart in his throat.

Do I have family? Even if it’s a fancy asshole like him? Another family? Do I actually get more than one? The world doesn’t have to work so hard to compensate this Shen Yuan for his troubles this time around, but he certainly won’t say no!

As the array shudders to life, gems beneath the translucent glass cups their blood was poured into begin to glow. Shen Yuan watches with fascination as the light colors them from within via refraction, leaving his own cup a delicate blue, while the other is light green. Similar color briefly flashes through each gem on the relief, an aurora of little lights, before two peaches next to each other begin to glow in tandem and remain lit.

“Congratulations,” Mu Qingfang says, unsurprised. “You are full blood siblings, born of the same branch and leaves.”

Shen Qingqiu purses his lips at the slate. A sibling, then. He can work with that. It's better than nothing.

She really did it twice.

Yue Qingyuan looks up at the knock on his door and faintly registers that, judging by the position of the sun outside, he’s been working for around three shichen already. He delicately places his brush aside and sits back to massage his hand while he calls out: “Enter.”

One of his junior disciples lets himself in and glances around to ensure they have no company before scurrying across the room to speak with him. A master is not supposed to have favorites, but Zhao Zhongren is one of his. He’s also one of the disciples detailed to keep tabs on gossip within the sect, since his youthful appearance and guileless face earn him an easy welcome to any given cluster of young cultivators, not to mention his status as one of Yue Qingyuan’s personal disciples.

“Shizun,” he salutes first, but Yue Qingyuan can tell he’s here on business.

“What does Disciple Zhao need?”

“There may be trouble,” he starts, which immediately informs Yue Qingyuan that there is trouble, just involving people he’s not allowed to point fingers at.

“Mao Yu City? We received Mu Qingfang’s report with the disciples who returned last night. Has something else gone wrong?”

“No, Shizun. Everyone returned safely, and the emergency in Mao Yu City has been declared over. But, ah, Mu-shishu brought back a prospective disciple.”

“Would that be the one said to have aided in eliminating the disease?” His brow furrows. Why should that be an issue?

“… It seems that certain sensitive details were omitted in the report sent back last night. Unless this disciple is mistaken, that should have been done to prevent the gossip that is spreading now. However, it seems that a number of disciples disobeyed orders to return immediately, and took the liberty of snooping around before returning… they happened to catch sight of this prospective disciple, and…”

“They are spreading rumors about a former slave-child out of jealousy?” he determines, looking faintly tired as he reaches for his teacup.

Zhao Zhongren bites his lip and decides to simply come out with it: “They are claiming the boy is Shen-shishu’s bastard child, sired in a brothel and sold into slavery to hide the shame.”

By the time the teacup hits the floor, Yue Qingyuan’s black robes are already disappearing through the door.

Chapter Text

The air burns in his lungs, despite having long-since achieved a level of cultivation that makes ordinary running effortless.

He has to stop. He knows he has to stop. Xiao-Jiu will not want him there, will not want him to see the child he so carefully hid away, will not want him to see his shame. His shidi has always had such a terribly thin face.

A son, a son, a son. Why didn’t he tell me?

Why would he have told me?

Yue Qingyuan thought until a few moments ago that he had long-since come to terms with the extent of his failures towards his dearest person. Never had he anticipated that in failing his Xiao-Jiu, he would also be failing his child someday.

I should have stopped him from visiting brothels. If not that, I should have… I should have…!

If he had known about the child, even if Shen Qingqiu never wanted to see the boy again, he could have purchased the mother’s freedom. Provided money and shelter. Proper nursemaids and tutors. A steward to watch over him. In a little courtyard in the Tian Gong foothills, perhaps… No, that would have been too close, but if he were any further away, visiting would be--

It doesn’t matter, another part of him furiously accuses. Here, there or anywhere, would you have any more right to that child’s attention than his?

Would lacking any such right have stopped him from trying anyway? It never has before.

He retains enough sense to control his pace once he’s outside, at least; his shidi would be so terribly upset with him if he allowed his conduct to fan the flames higher.

Is that not what you are doing by going at all? Do you think our sect-mates are blind? Shen Qingqiu’s voice seems to hiss in his ear.

His steps falter.

For a moment.

… If he is swift, he can surely be there before Xiao-Jiu to steal a glimpse and then go away to begin handling the rumors.

“Acceptable,” Shen Qingqiu declares as his fan snaps shut with a ‘crack’, looking very much like a cat after successfully killing the master’s prized songbird, full of mean satisfaction.

Finally, Shen Yuan wants to whine and doesn’t, because that will certainly set his stupid new ge off again. They’ve spent this whole time doing basically nothing but haggle over their public story.

He gets it, okay? Shen Yuan might not know his whole history, but the man is a Peak Lord. It must be deeply shameful to know your parents went and started selling kids after you got famous, let alone all the conclusions others will draw because of it.

And yet, for some reason, he still can’t help but feel upset with him. Not just about the bad attitude, either. It’s deeper, more personal; from a dream, maybe? But he wants to like him, too! It kind of sucks.

Shen Qingqiu is prickly, paranoid, oversensitive and accusatory, but so were a lot of people he met growing up. It’s an attitude you learn to recognize, even if it’s dressed in silk, but he’s not about to ask where it came from. He’d like his head to stay attached long enough to learn how to cultivate.

“It’s a good story,” Shen Yuan agrees. “After you left home to become a disciple, our family fell on hard times, but they couldn’t bear the thought of bothering you in your studies. They resolved to let most of the family’s servants go, but that meant there was no one around to raise the alarm when I was snatched! By the time you heard, you were already Head Disciple and couldn’t easily leave to investigate for many months… and then our parents went missing, determined to search for me, and haven’t been seen since. From that time, you continued the search alone, and it was only luck that Master Mu found me. Since I helped cure the disease in Mao Yu City, and so nobody accuses zhangxiong of playing favorites on Qing Jing, it’s been decided that I’m going to study on Qian Cao.”

The actual details are admittedly light, but both Shen Qingqiu and Mu Qingfang know very well how eagerly people will fill in the gaps: the younger brother, cruelly abducted just months before the elder brother achieved status. The elder brother, in terrible temper and off on constant night-hunts for years, slipping in and out of brothels and speaking with seedy characters, desperately chasing strength and rejecting relationships with others.

What else could he have been doing but attempting alone and in-vain to find his family? Why else should such an elegant man be so cold and sharp, if not because of such a thing? How noble! How filial! How tragic!

Shen Qingqiu could do without the platitudes, but it’s the best excuse they have, and it neatly resolves a few of his own problems. Telling someone they are wrong about a salacious rumor only fuels it; such fires only die out when the bystanders flock to a bigger, more spectacular fire. Given such a fine bed of kindling to work with, this one ought to become an inferno shortly.

If his sect-mates take their assumptions (however useful) as permission to pity him, they will swiftly learn not to. Even so, this boy has turned out to be… something of a stroke of luck. Certainly, this is much better than nothing.

“You will also take tea with this master each week.” It would be suspicious if he did not, and if this boy is going to continue being useful to him, he is going to need to be directed. “Starting the day after tomorrow.”

Mu Qingfang nods. “This shidi is pleased to have reached an agreement that satisfies everyone.”

He personally feels not a lick of shame to be assisting in such a lie; in the first place, what the two of them tell others about their family history is a personal choice. Furthermore, this arrangement keeps Shen Yuan on Qian Cao, which is precisely what the two of them want. Last, the fact that the rumors were able to spread at all is, technically, his fault. Therefore: “Please, allow this shidi to see Shen-shixiong out—”

The door slams open again for the second time that morning, and Shen Qingqiu-- back to the door-- stiffens like a cat with a trod-on tail, expression momentarily incensed before all emotion is smoothly wiped away.

Before the man panting in the doorway can even say anything (though he draws a breath to), Shen Qingqiu says, “Zhangmen-shixiong should come in and close the door before he instigates a problem he is not capable of solving,” voice as smooth and cold as ice with just the slightest bit of emphasis.

Holy shit, Shen Yuan thinks, a little dazed. That’s the Sect Leader of Cang Qiong? Does he seriously let my ge treat him like that?! I know he’s the second-in-command, but isn’t that a bit…?

The fan opens again with a noise like a whipcrack as soon as the Sect Leader straightens up and starts to fully enter, with timing Shen Yuan is positive was designed to make him flinch-- which the man does. Shen Yuan very carefully turns his head to take in how Mu Qingfang is reacting to this and swiftly decides to follow his lead in pretending this is normal. Maybe it is, for all he knows! What it definitely isn’t is Shen Yuan’s problem. He doesn’t even know where he’s sleeping yet, he can do without worrying about whatever is up with the grown-ups on other Peaks.

“Welcome, Zhangmen-shixiong. Please forgive this shidi for not rising to greet you,” the doctor remarks when he has the opportunity, and Yue Qingyuan waves his concern off with a gesture.

Once the door is shut again and the privacy talismans have re-activated, Shen Qingqiu slowly flutters the fan without turning.

Shen Yuan is treated to the experience of being stared at again for several long moments by Yue Qingyuan, who has a weirdly hurt-hopeful look on his face. It kind of reminds Shen Yuan of the big shaggy stray near the brokerage, who used to follow people around with his ears ruffled and tail wagging low and sad.

Regardless of whatever that’s about, he could do without the staring. Have the people on Cang Qiong never seen relatives before? Is it so fascinating to see someone who looks like another person you know?

“Xiao-Jiu, is this—” Yue Qingyuan starts

“Zhangmen-shixiong appears to be in a rush. This master’s business happens to be concluded, so allow him to get out of your way,” he remarks with damning mildness, rising in a smooth motion that barely ruffles his robes.

“Xiao—”

The fan shuts again with the force of a cobra strike, and the world’s most powerful cultivator flinches again minutely before a bland, sickly smile asserts itself on his face.

“Qingqiu will leave first.” Shen Yuan’s older brother moves to sweep out of the room, never once looking at his shixiong's face.

“…” Yue Qingyuan's slightly raised hand never becomes a full gesture, and the other man blows past him like a gust of wind, the door clattering shut neatly behind him.

“Um,” Shen Yuan says into the resulting protracted silence, which apparently startles Yue Qingyuan out of his melancholy reverie.

“Ah, forgive me. This shixiong… was just thinking he would check on Mu-shidi and his new disciple.”

Shen Yuan’s not-yet-Shifu politely does not point out how obvious that excuse is. “As it happens, we have not yet had the opportunity to finish the tea pouring ceremony, so he is not yet my disciple.”

Yue Qingyuan pauses. Ah.

“Then please allow this shixiong to excuse himself. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you find yourself in need of resources.”

And then they’re finally alone in the room again.

Shen Yuan feels a shaky huff escape himself.

That was… weird.

Mu Qingfang sighs, too. “… well, now. Shall we try again?”

When Shen Qingqiu returns to Qing Jing Peak, his ill temper has been (nearly) entirely banished. Ming Fan tries not to stare in bewilderment as his Shizun strolls by both un-bloody and calm, pausing only to tell him: “Matters have been resolved. Back to work, Ming Fan.”

Chapter Text

He recites the oath again (and still chokes up over the words, damn it), pours his new teacher tea, accepts some words of praise and then-- after Mu Qingfang checks his wrist and takes a careful look at his expression-- is sent off to eat and settle in.

Outside, Head Disciple Xiao is waiting in the hall again, with a boy of maybe thirteen or fourteen he doesn’t recognize in front of her. They aren’t exactly having a… stand off… ? But they are definitely at cross-purposes. She’s barring his way any further into the hallway while he stands close enough to visually imply that her decision is a wise one, because if she moves, so will he. She looks so unimpressed, and he looks so unfalteringly sunny about it, that Shen Yuan laughs without meaning to.

“Ah, Shen Yuan, there you are.” She looks over her shoulder when the door opens, and the boy immediately tries to capitalize on her momentary distraction, but she smoothly moves to stay in front of him without turning back.

Like Mu Qingfang had, Xiao Yunqi takes a long look at his face as he walks over and then reaches for his wrist. He feels the weird-wonderful sensation of qi threading through him for a moment (real magic!) and then she lets go and pats his shoulder. “Are you my shidi now?”

“Yes, Xiao-shijie.” He grins. “This one is staying on Qian Cao.”

“Good. Let us get you something to eat, then.” The boy on the other side of her elbow looks like he’s dying of anticipation to talk to him, and it’s pretty funny even if he’d really rather just go eat and sleep now, please.

“Shifu said to see if da-shijie was in the hall again and ask her to speak to him for a moment.”

“…” Xiao Yunqi turns her head to gaze at a suddenly perfectly-behaved Qiong Ding disciple, abruptly a more proper distance away with his arms folded behind his back. “Zhao-shixiong will neither attempt to enter areas he is not welcome within, nor attempt to lure Shen Yuan away to speak alone.”

“Xiao-shimei, this shixiong of yours is very hurt! Ask anyone in the sect; am I such a scoundrel?” He bats his eyes at her like an idiot until she snorts, hand flashing out to bop him on the head harmlessly. “Ah! So cruel, so cruel. I am being bullied by my martial juniors. Shen-shidi, please tell me you are not as vicious as your da-shijie already! She hasn’t taught you her ways just yet, right?”

“Disrespectful brat,” she mutters, ignoring the much-younger teen now to slip into Mu Qingfang’s office. “Shen-shidi, I will be right back. Please do not follow your shixiong anywhere or take his nonsense seriously.”

As soon as she leaves, the other boy approaches to introduce himself enthusiastically. “Shen-shidi, this shixiong is Zhao Zhongren, junior disciple of Qiong Ding. Can I ask you something?”

“Am I right that Zhao-shixiong is going to do it anyway even if I say no?” Shen Yuan asks wryly.

“Not if it really bothers you.” Zhao Zhongren has the grace to look a little sheepish. “Shidi, people already know you look just like Shen-shishu, and everyone is going to be going mad with curiosity. Wouldn’t it be better to just tell the truth once and let a loud-mouth like me spread it properly?”

“Ha! Is that what you’re after? Sure you just don’t want to hear the story first?” He chuckles behind a hanging sleeve, broad in contrast to his thin wrists rather than due to the cut. Even so, Zhao Zhongren is momentarily startled by a preview of Shen Yuan when he’s earned the trailing sleeves and flowing robes of an older disciple.

“This Zhao solemnly swears he is here to use his bad habits for good purpose!” he declares, thumping his chest with a fist.

“Hahaha… Fine. You’re probably right, shixiong, that it’s better to just tell people… though I think Head Disciple Xiao is also going expain when she introduces me. I’ll just tell you anyway: I am Shen Qingqiu’s younger brother, but I was abducted as a baby, and my kidnappers sold me. It’s either fate or blind luck that my zhangxiong’s martial brother stumbled across me and recognized me.”

“People were thinking you were his son…”

Shen Yuan shakes his head. “Shifu used a tool to perform a test with blood. We are siblings from the same parents. Even I don’t know all the details, but zhangxiong says our family took it very hard when I disappeared. I was born so late, I’m sure they never expected to have another son. Apparently, our parents are also missing after disappearing to search for me.” He’s bullshitting a little, but whatever; it’s nothing that contradicts their story. As for what his real birth parents feel or don’t feel about him, he’s long-since decided he doesn’t care.

“Wow.” Zhao Zhongren looks a little blown away as he digests that information. “That explains… Hmm. Thank you, shidi. I will stay to see what Head Disciple Xiao says, but I won’t trouble you any further. You seem tired! Allow this shixiong to bring you a stool, rather than taking you to sit, since your da-shijie seems certain I am here to steal you myself.”

“Should you be doing that as my senior…?”

“Maybe not, but Qian Cao is busy at the best of times, and I would not like to bother your shixiong over such a small matter.” So saying, the older boy disappears briefly around the hallway corner, returning with a three-legged stool for him. They wait together for perhaps a ke, and then Xiao Yunqi returns to collect them both and herd them towards the cafeteria.

He’s tired enough not to pay very much attention to the brief spiel she gives the disciples in the dining hall, especially since she shields him from further questioning by declaring that he’s exhausted after helping to quell the outbreak in Mao Yu City and traveling so far to join them. That information, plus the juicy backstory they were just handed, is enough to keep the other disciples busy talking to each other rather than him for today, and he gets to eat in peace.

The rest of the day feels like it passes in a blur, but Shen Yuan thinks he can be forgiven. Now, he’s tucked into bed in his new room. It’s shared with other disciples, but they have privacy screens between their beds and separate work desks with shelves and tools to use in their studies.

He spent most of the afternoon after eating just having equipment registered in his name and issued to him for when his studies begin. Even if he won’t actually be brewing medicines for years, probably, they seem to want him to become familiar with the process of handling and using the tools early.

Yesterday, he was still a slave, wondering if anybody would ever want to keep him or if he’d ever have a real future. He’d never met anybody more important than a fallen doctor or traveling merchant, and wasn’t even sure he’d ever leave Mao Yu City.

As of today, he’s the student of an immortal master, living on his mountain, with two families he can lay claim to and a much better understanding of what kind of man his adoptive father is, even if it doesn’t mean all the hurt is gone. Isn’t it enough that he wants to try? It’s certainly better than nothing, which is what he would have gotten if he walked away forever. Who can understand the hurt he feels better than the one who accidentally gave it to him, and now wants to heal him?

Shen Yuan falls asleep thinking about writing to his yangfu, and resolves to find time tomorrow between being shown around the Peak and familiarized with his peers and hallmasters.

The last two days just might be the most peaceful Luo Binghe has had since coming to Qing Jing Peak.

He’s still unworthy; still clumsy and illiterate; still sleeping on the dirt floor of the woodshed, eating whatever he can find in the forest, and being excluded from lessons. His manual still makes no sense, and his uniform is still torn and dirty. When he bathes, he still has to do it in a pond or creek.

But his shixiong also aren’t chasing him down in their spare time to discipline him, because they’re (apparently) busy figuring out how to punish someone else. If Luo Binghe didn’t know it was someone from another Peak, he might be more scared for them, but even he can’t see how Ming Fan could possibly get away with beating another master’s student, no matter what they did to deserve it. Whatever is going on, it’s certainly beyond his full understanding, regardless.

He settles for just feeling ‘all right’ about it, after some consideration. It would surely be wrong to feel glad that someone else is facing potential difficulties, but it should be acceptable to feel relieved about having some space to pratice peacefully for once. Even Ning-shijie is busy, roped into whatever Ming Fan is up to.

Like the last two days, Luo Binghe has taken his manual to the tiny bamboo clearing he found early on, eager for the opportunity to play catch-up uninterrupted. He was even able to eavesdrop on overhear some of the lessons yesterday, and now recognizes more of the characters inside.

He carefully pulls the broad, flat stump used for chopping wood in this area onto its side and rolls it closer to another stand of suitable trees, then shoves it over to settle flat again and retrieves the ax. That done, he moves the pile of flat, clean rocks he had stacked to hold his manual in the old spot, sets it up again on the page he intends to study, and then goes to cut down the first sapling. He can’t afford to completely shirk his chores, even without his shixiong looming over him, but he can’t bear to waste more time, either.

Not fully literate anyway, most of what Luo Binghe is doing involves searching for the few words he does know and examining the illustrations so he can attempt to copy them.

He breaks the tree into sections and then splits the sections into kindling one at a time, peering at the manual in between and occasionally turning pages until he reaches a passage he almost manages to grasp and stops to hunch over the book, dirty fingers hovering above the page as he follows the characters to keep from sullying the precious object. He’s so involved with trying to puzzle it out that he doesn’t notice when he’s joined.

“That’s a fake,” someone says from just over his shoulder.

Luo Binghe yelps, snatching his manual up and hurriedly backing away from the other boy with the object clutched protectively to his chest. “Sh-shixiong?” automatically comes out of his mouth, but--

But that’s definitely not a shixiong, and the other boy is laughing at him. It sounds surprisingly nice. “Shidi, actually. You’re definitely older than me, and I only just joined the sect a few days ago! Plus, I’m from Qian Cao, so I’d be your shidi regardless.”

“… Um, are you okay?” he adds, when Luo Binghe doesn’t say anything. He looks faintly annoyed, but not really mad. “Nevermind, you don’t have to say anything, shixiong. My face, right?”

Mutely, Luo Binghe nods, and his Shizun’s tiny doppleganger laughs again.

He’s visibly younger than Luo Binghe, but not much smaller. While Luo Binghe is stunted, this boy looks well-fed and impeccably groomed, save for a few locks of fly-away hair. His soft skin is pale as milk, as though he’s rarely been out in the sun, and his eyes are a blue so pure and shocking it takes his breath away. As blue as the Heavens, he thinks out of nowhere, and feels himself flush in embarrasment over his own state, dirty and in tattered robes, with unkempt hair like a wild animal’s mane. A dirty little beast.

“This one is Shen Yuan,” says the boy in Qian Cao blue, and Luo Binghe jolts, but before he can bow or apologize-- he’s not sure which he was going to do first, really-- Shen Yuan holds a hand up to stop him. “Oh, please don’t. People keep assuming I’m Shen Qingqiu’s son or heir or something, but I’m not; I’m just his little brother, and I don’t even study on Qing Jing, so I’m an ordinary disciple. Uh, shixiong,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, among the laziest attempts Luo Binghe has ever seen someone make to correct their manners.

It startles out a laugh of Luo Binghe’s own, and he spares thanks for the fact that Ming Fan isn’t here to see him disrespecting their Shizun’s brother, even on accident. “Th-this one apologizes,” he hurriedly offers, though it just makes Shen Yuan look confused. Is he not angry to be laughed at? “Then… this Luo Binghe welcomes Shen-shidi to Qing Jing Peak…?”

“Thank you,” he hums with obvious satisfaction, and then frowns, his head tipping. “Luo Binghe…?”

He feels a sinking feeling in his stomach. Nobody who already knows his name ever knows it for a good reason. Why should they?

“Good name,” is what he says instead, and Luo Binghe almost gapes. “I like your hair, it looks really soft. Say, you should know where your Shizun’s house is, right? Could you point me the right way? He’s expecting me for tea, or I’d stay longer to chat.”

Shen Yuan smiles at him like a sunrise, and Luo Binghe wonders if this is what his Shizun looks like when he’s happy, too. He wouldn’t know.

He’s never managed to please him.

“If Shen-shidi follows the paved path there to the main courtyard, he will see a set of stone stairs leading upwards into the bamboo forest,” he explains in a daze, pointing. “Ah, should this one…?”

“Nono, it’s okay!” Luo Binghe blinks at the unfamiliar word. “Aah, I mean it’s all right. Luo-shixiong looks busy. This shidi can find it himself. If you think you’ll still be here later, I’ll drop by and say hello when I leave!”

As suddenly as he arrived, Shen Yuan departs, and Luo Binghe is left behind to chop wood and ruminate, only realizing long after he’s gone that he never asked Shen Yuan what he meant by ‘that’s a fake.’

Chapter Text

Luo Binghe, Luo Binghe…

That name is definitely familiar, even if he can’t quite put his finger on why yet. It makes him feel nice, though, as much as his brother’s makes him feel frustrated. He looked like a cute, friendly kid.

(It’s not weird to think he’s cute. He was almost ready for his guan when he died! That counts. What gege doesn’t like a cute kid?)

At this time of day, there’s pretty much nobody around, save for a few much older disciples walking around with scrolls in their hands or instruments filling their arms. He can distantly hear someone lecturing, so he assumes the disciples closer to his age are in class.

Shouldn’t he have been in class, then? Shen Yuan’s eyes slowly narrow while he thinks about it, arms automatically folding inside his loose sleeves to drum his fingers across his elbows. Luo Binghe was dirty and bruised, with a tattered uniform and uncombed, frizzy hair held back by a scrap of cloth. He could maybe see a Bai Zhan disciple walking around that way, but wasn’t that sort of appearance out of place on Qing Jing?

The few disciples present to see his walk to the Bamboo House feel they must have been given a glimpse of what their Shizun was like as a boy, watching him briskly stroll to the stairs with his hands in his sleeves and an expression of cold consideration on his face. They’re more than mature enough to want to stay far away from the rumors surrounding this boy until the dust settles, though, and merely move on with their business as he passes by.

Ge, have you been up to something? Just what kind of person are you, really?

“Shizuuun…!”

“This master believes Yingying already has a shidi, one she requested and received, is that not so?” Shen Qingqiu replies sternly, not looking up from the table in front of him.

“Shizun, that’s different! Besides, A-Luo is only two years younger than this Yingying. Shen-shidi is so little still!”

Shen Qingqiu feels something inside him winch tight and swallows the much-more-poisonous statement lurking behind his lips to instead say, “If Yingying wishes to be rid of her shidi, she need only say so.” It would be his sincere pleasure to banish the little beast. “Regardless, my Qing Jing is not a place for little children.”

“But he’s Shizun’s own family! You searched for him for so long… It isn’t fair for Qian Cao to snatch him from you!”

“Ning Yingying, enough. This master is quite content with the arrangement.” When that seems likely to prompt more whining, he sighs: “Our parents are still unaccounted for. This master is busy enough with that matter without adding in raising his own brother. Now, leave the matter.”

Her eyes gleam, and he suppresses a grimace. “This Yingying understands, Shizun! She will do everything she can to support you!”

“Mh. Then she should make tea.”

“Shizun?”

“Shen Yuan will be here soon to meet with this master. Yingying may greet him before returning to class.”

Her shout of excitement is louder than he would like, but he can’t begrudge the smile on her face.

Shen Yuan thinks he’s put some things together by the time he arrives at the Bamboo House’s front door, and he doesn’t much like them, though they don’t really shock him either. He still raises his hand to knock, and is nearly blown off his feet by the girl who throws the door open and all but leaps at him.

“Um…?!” he cries, as Ning Yingying grabs his shoulders and yelps with delight.

“Hi! Are you Shen-shidi? You must be! You really do look just like a little Shizun!” The loops in her hair bounce as she circles around him, apparently keen on getting a look from all angles while he freezes in bewilderment. “So cute, Shen-shidi! Can I call you Xiao-Shizun? Are you sure you don’t want to study on Qing Jing? Ooh, what if we got you little robes just like Shizun’s--”

“Disciple Ning, go to class,” his brother’s voice snaps from inside, and she pouts. It doesn’t seem to keep her down for long, by which Shen Yuan means ‘no time at all.’

“Yes, Shizun! Yingying will go be good!” She bounces away with all the energy of a favored child who’s never been ‘in trouble’ longer than a shichen or so, so confident that Shizun will forget her misbehavior that she sees no need to recall it, either.

Shen Yuan is still at a loss for words after she leaves. He had felt a little embarrassed in hindsight about the way he met Luo Binghe, but now he feels that was actually fine, probably. His poor scruffy shixiong almost certainly has ample practice at being buffeted around by capricious winds, with a shijie like that. He resolves to try being a little more normal when he meets the boy next anyway.

“Is Shen Yuan going to come inside, or does he intend to take tea from the doorway?”

“Ah! Um, sorry, zhangxiong.” He hurriedly scuttles in and shuts the door behind him, then waits a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer interior.

Shen Qingqiu takes the opportunity to watch him without being watched in turn, the boy blinking rapidly and swaying just a little.

“Are your eyes sensitive to light?” the Peak Lord asks without preamble as soon as he starts walking to join him at the table.

“… I don’t know,” Shen Yuan admits. “I haven’t compared to others? It does seem like it takes me longer to switch between dark and light, maybe?”

“Mh. Sit.” Shen Qingqiu points to the seat opposite him, and suppresses a sigh of irritation when the boy hesitates. “What is it?”

“… Can I move the cushion there?” he asks, pointing to the side adjacent to him, and Shen Qingqiu pauses.

Yingying or (at one time) the little beast would have brazenly requested to sit directly next to him. In fact, Ming Fan did in the past, too. But Shen Yuan appears content to be within arm’s reach without actually entering his space or positioning himself to see what his brother is writing. Almost reluctantly, he nods, and the boy smiles at him as he moves the cushion and then settles down.

“Thank you.” What Shen Yuan knows and the Peak Lord doesn’t is that the people in his last life had worked out all kinds of tricks for getting people to relax with you; sitting beside or at least perpendicular to them instead of across from them is just one. “Should I pour for you, gege?”

“Don’t be a suck-up,” Shen Qingqiu warns him with a ‘tsk’, the crude turn of phrase startling a very sincere ‘ha!’ out of Shen Yuan before the boy covers his mouth. “Surprised? You should not be, after that fiasco the other day.” The one that very nearly revealed his sordid origins. “It’s certainly Shen Yuan’s fault that Mu Qingfang knows so much of the truth.”

Shen Yuan’s mouth twitches, but he manages to avoid responding to that obvious provocation directly. “It’s only tea. Maybe I just want to show off the only skill I have?”

“Tea pouring?” Shen Qingqiu waits for his brother to nod. “This master watched you spill tea twice in front of an audience of two.”

“Yeah? What a shame,” Shen Yuan laughs, half-irritated. “I’m not even ten, and two master cultivators threw the door open suddenly. I practically never left the brokerage my whole life and spent most of that day in the sky at that point. It’s more impressive that I didn’t spill the whole pot, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.” He had listened to the boy’s frustrated monologue with his half-unfolded fan covering his mouth, considering him with lidded eyes, and only now lowers it to consider his teacup. After a moment, he pushes it over to be filled, and Shen Yuan huffs. “Pour for yourself, too.”

Well, that’s not an apology, but Shen Yuan’s got the feeling it’s as close as he’s going to get. “Qing Jing Peak is really beautiful,” he comments while he fills their cups, because it’s true and you can’t go wrong complimenting a prideful person’s things.

Shen Qingqiu casts a baleful eye over him-- he just told the boy not to be a suck-up-- but merely hums when the child already seems to be moving on.

“So, did you have stuff you wanted to ask me, zhangxiong?”

“Many things.” But he still doesn’t speak immediately.

“Did they… ever return?” Shen Qingqiu’s face is a porcelain mask, cold and distant while he sips his tea, as if it doesn’t matter to him. Shen Yuan wouldn’t poke holes in that facade even if he could.

“No. They sold me when I was less than a month old for a handful of copper wen and never came back,” Shen Yuan answers softly.

They both sit with that thought for a long few moments.

“Are there others?” is next, the answer to which is:

“I don’t know. Not in Mao Yu City.”

“Would the broker have records?”

“Yun Ming? Yeah, probably. He kept lots of records about all kinds of things. I think he had some kind of goal, but he never told me what. Are you going to look into where they went?”

“… Perhaps.” There’s an expression of distaste on his pretty face, now. “Yun Ming, Yun Ming. This came up last time, too. You certainly seem fond of your owner, for someone who so loudly declaims being a slave.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say to that. Yes? Zhangxiong, did you invite me over to pick on me, or did you invite me over to drink tea and talk about our rotten parents?”

Shen Qingqiu scowls. “Are you really nine?”

“Yes?”

“… You aren’t stunted.”

“No. I was born small, but I grew up okay.”

“You’re also literate. Educated, even if you haven’t been properly trained.”

“Yeah. Yun Ming didn’t have me taught, but he bought me books and let me talk to whoever.”

“Your… broker. The man who owned you.”

“My yangfu.”

Shen Qingqiu feels something spasm and puts his cup down so sharply it nearly shatters, tea sloshing out over his hand and the table. “Shut up.”

Shen Yuan does, if only because the odd look on his brother’s face is truly frightening right now. He doesn’t even sip his own tea, frozen like a mouse hiding underneath a cat’s belly.

The Peak Lord of Qing Jing sucks in shaking breaths and reminds himself that he can’t jeopardize his own standing and everything he’s managed to wrest from the world’s cold, selfish claws. It’s a very near thing, with the qi roiling in his veins. For several long, fraught moments, he’s not sure whether it’s Shen Yuan he wants to destroy, or the man his stupid younger sibling seems to be idolizing. The balance fluctuates wildly, and only slowly settles to one side.

“Should this one go?” the boy’s voice asks so softly it’s almost not even audible, and Shen Qingqiu shakes his head minutely.

At length, as the risk of qi deviation ebbs and exhaustion sweeps in to take the place of fury-terror-jealousy-hate, he rasps, “Your broker adopted you.”

Shen Yuan nods, afraid to set him off again by speaking up about it.

Oh. I am going to kill him for you, Shen Jiu suddenly thinks, nauseous with it. You little moron, you think he loves you, don’t you? You are going to give that man everything. You’ll let him take and take--

“… We should discuss our response to certain questions.” He cannot think about it right now.

“Okay. Gege, do you want to think about it while I poke around the kitchen…?”

Shen Qingqiu doesn’t bother to address the second attempt to switch from ‘zhangxiong’ to ‘gege.’ They’re in private, anyway, and he could use the time to himself, if the boy is volunteering to give it. “Go ahead.”

And so they spend the next half-shichen taking tea and scribbling ideas together, then burning the papers before they part ways.

Shen Yuan must say, it’s actually pretty fun to scheme with Shen Qingqiu. Even more fun to share concepts about manipulation from his last life with someone who can truly appreciate them.

“The polite term was ‘social engineering,’ but that’s kind of what it was, it’s just that when people say ‘manipulate’ it makes it sound way worse. But sometimes there are good reasons to manipulate people! If you need people to do what you say but you can’t just force them to, then you need to make them think they want to do what you want. That way they keep doing it even when you’re not there, too.”

Shen Qingqiu had needed a moment to get over the revelation that Shen Yuan remembers his past life, but ultimately put that thought aside to address later, too, in favor of siezing more immediate benefits. Such as his new younger brother’s astonishing and delightful arsensal of tricks. Not that he believes for a moment that Shen Yuan is sharing all of them.

He realized almost immediately once the subject came up that Shen Yuan’s little ‘gege, can we sit together~?’ trick was exactly that, but elects to let it slide. It’s equally obvious that the boy isn’t nearly as mature as he thinks he is, even if he is more mature than the average boy his age. He’s not terribly concerned about a clumsy nine-year-old finessing him.

(Maybe he should be.)

“… Ge, can I ask a question?” Shen Yuan ventures while getting ready to depart.

“Don’t do that. Ask or do not.”

“… I met a boy on my way here.” Shen Qingqiu can feel himself stiffening before words even leave Shen Yuan’s mouth. “His name is Luo Binghe, and it seems like he was pretty roughed up?”

“Qing Jing disciples are expected to fend for themselves.”

Shen Yuan stares, taken aback by the harsh way his brother proclaimed that.

Wow, okay, that tells me some stuff. Then… Don’t charge straight at a problem, go around the back or side...

“Um. Okay. I was just confused because that’s not how Qian Cao does it.”

That does seem to put his hackles down a little. “… Qian Cao is softhearted. It cannot be helped; you are healers.”

Shen Yuan nods. Sure, whatever. He’s getting some pretty strong signals from the part of him that feels most in-tune with his last self, and he listens to them. Why he should have known in that life about people not yet born is still a mystery, but it’s clear: his brother has it out for this kid for some reason. That’s probably where his feelings about both of them came from, if he had to guess. “Then, ge, would it be all right if I—”

Help him out? Give him my food? Slip him money? Play around with him? Shen Qingqiu finishes darkly for him, the corner of his lip already raising in a sneer, but:

“-- practice on him, since things are like this?”

Shen Yuan thinks he could make good money bottling and selling the noise that prompts from Shen Qingqiu.

“You want to use the little beast as your training dummy?” he asks, staring at the child in front of him with a difficult-to-name expression on his face, something shocked and wounded and glad at the same time.

“Huh?! I just mean that if he’s going to keep getting kicked around and messing up or whatever, I should basically always have somebody to practice healing on, right?”

Shen Qingqiu’s lips twitch. “… Didi.”

“What? I don’t want him to get beaten up extra or anything, just… you know. You’re a Peak Lord. Do you have time to be bothering his stupid shixiong to lay off? Are you supposed to give him special treatment? I’m not saying so.” He flushes in embarrassment and more than a little shame, telling the lie that he doesn’t mind somebody being bullied. But what bully or bully-enabler seriously ever listens to, ‘um, that hurts, please stop.’ Duh, it hurts! Isn’t that why they’re doing it?! “I just want to do the things I want to do. Is that not all right?”

“… It is.” Shen Qingqiu has his fan over his mouth again. “Shen Yuan may do as he sees fit, for the time being.”

Chapter Text

As Shen Yuan had hoped, Luo Binghe is still in the clearing when he wanders back over. Still chopping wood, still reading that mixed-up book.

He just knows that thing has something wrong with it. The thought that it was fake somehow had popped into his mind as soon as he glanced at the text, though he obviously doesn’t know what about it is wrong or how he knows that.

It makes sense that you can’t remember your whole last life at once-- that would be overwhelming, I’m sure this is just Heaven’s way of making it easier-- but I really wish it wasn’t all so vague… Maybe when I’m older it will get clearer.

He doesn't raise his voice, because he doesn't want to attract attention, but when he's a short ways away, he calls out, "Shixiong, over here." And then watches, first with confusion and then amusement, as Binghe fails to react.

"Shixiong," he tries again.

And then, a little closer, "Shiiiixiong..."

"Luo-shixiong!"

Only when his actual name enters the equation does the older boy jump and whip around to stare, heart rising to his throat in trepidation.

Shizun’s brother is standing there, perfectly unruffled in his soft blues and whites, and Luo Binghe feels himself relax a little. These two days of peace have truly destroyed his awareness; he’s become too easy to sneak up on. If it had been someone else… He shakes himself out of his thoughts.

"Shen-shidi?" He peers at him anxiously. "Did you need... That is, can this lowly one help you?" He's the youngest disciple on Qing Jing, and never leaves the peak. Being called shixiong is unfamiliar.

(But he can't say he dislikes it.)

“This one did say he’d come back to see you if you were still here, shixiong. Are you still cutting wood?”

Luo Binghe nods, and Shen Yuan slowly casts his gaze across the clearing to the small mountain of assorted logs and kindling, then back to him.

“Does Qing Jing Peak… use a lot of wood?”

“It is… training. This lowly one is still… this lowly one’s foundation is still unsuitable.”

“Hm.” He doesn’t sound convinced. “This one also couldn’t help but notice shixiong is looking a little thin and tattered also? And your hair, it’s so… No offense,” Shen Yuan hurriedly adds, which makes Luo Binghe lean back on one heel as though he’s been literally taken aback.

“This lowly one couldn’t possibly take offense…”

"And that too! Lowly?" Shen Yuan wrinkles his nose, and Luo Binghe's gaze falls to the ground like a lead weight, feeling desperately small as the tiny scraps of good feeling he’s collected up today tumble between his fingers one word at a time. "How is my shixiong lowly? You're not only my senior, you welcomed me just earlier and showed me my way. Why would I think poorly of you?"

Ah. So he also... Luo Binghe must not be managing to keep his face as neutral and respectful as he should, seeing the tense way Shen Yuan is looking at him, but some part of him had hoped Shizun's brother wouldn't... Well.

There's no point finishing that thought.

He mustn't think ungratefully about his Shizun.

He's lucky to be here at all.

"Because this one is dirty and stupid," he begins, a well-worn litany battered into him over two years, hands clenching slowly around the front of his threadbare uniform. "This one is an orphan, and illiterate, with no skills and no m-manners, and should be g-grateful just to--"

"Luo Binghe!" The other boy whisper-shouts, hands covering his mouth like a stricken maiden. He both looks and sounds horrified, and Luo Binghe is abruptly wrong-footed again. Is this not the answer he wants? "I'm sorry, I didn't mean-- I wasn't trying to get you to talk bad about yourself...! But of course it would sound like... I'm really sorry, Binghe. I was trying to set you up to accept praise…"

Binghe...?

Something inside him is pulled tight and released with a resounding twang.

"Praise? Me?" He asks, all but physically winded.

Shen Yuan lowers his hands from his own face, but not very far as he slowly steps forward into Binghe's space. Luo Binghe watches him come with a pounding heart and dazed eyes, and the feeling is only compounded when his shidi reaches out and... gently lays his hand on his head.

He doesn't grab or pull. He just... Touches him. His hand moves just a little, like he's patting him, though Binghe (ashamedly) can't feel it well because of the tangles.

"Yes. I knew I was right," Shen Yuan says softly, stroking his shixiong's poor ruined hair. I just know it would be gorgeous if it were clean. Dark and rich to the touch, like layers of black silk. Does Binghe even know how pretty he should be? Probably not, since Shen Yuan has no idea how he knows.

Luo Binghe is leaning into his hand like a puppy, broken-hearted expression and all, and Shen Yuan feels his heart clench. It's just too sad. It’s too sad! He seems like such a nice boy, so cute and earnest, willing to work hard even when his seniors and master are mistreating him…

He retracts his hand much sooner than Luo Binghe would like, but doesn't move away, and Binghe blinks hard a few times. "Shidi was r-right...?"

"Right about you." Shen Yuan is quiet for a few moments while Luo Binghe grows anxious again, unable to help but try to imagine what he means and equally unable to imagine anything good. What about him?

"Luo Binghe, did you know? My zhangxiong just gave me permission to put you to good use." The older boy twitches, gazing at Shen Yuan in uneasy... fascination? Trepidation?

"As a student of Qian Cao, this one is going to need someone to practice healing on, after all! So I suppose that means you'll be getting medicine regularly, whether you like it or not. Even if you’re attached to your bruises and battle scars, I won’t have any mercy; you’ll have to accept it. I won't take any complaining about the bitterness, either!"

Luo Binghe's eyes only grow wider as Shen Yuan speaks, heart stuttering. Is he...?

"Or any interruptions. While you're with me, obviously your shixiong will just have to wait until I'm done if they want to... 'practice.'"

His eyes flick over Luo Binghe's bruises, pointedly, and he hears his shixiong suck in a breath.

Shen Yuan had thought a little about it on his way over, and this is probably the best way to do it.

A softhearted little ex-slave trying to baby his shunned and disliked senior is bound to be challenged at every turn by said senior's tormentors. But nobody would bat at eye at him acting more like his brother when he throws his weight around: domineering, demanding and possessive. And isn't he a Peak Lord's brother, supposedly a noble by birth? He didn’t leave the brokerage much, but he saw plenty of young masters across the course of his life. He should be able to forge a path in their footsteps that fools others without being too terrible.

"And you're too scrawny! How can I tell whether a medicine is too strong or your body is too weak when you're like that? I'll need help with things sometimes, too, I can't have you keeling over on me; all that woodchopping, you must be stronger than I am. I suppose you'll need to eat more, even if it means eating on my Peak. And you can't walk around the medical peak tracking dirt and whatever, either, so I'll be forced to insist Binghe use our baths when he comes."

"Sh-shixiong-- mustn't c-cry and carry on," he adds, because Luo Binghe is crying now, all voiceless gasps and stuttering breaths. He’s clutching something tight under the chest of his robe. "This shidi swears not to... Not to bully him too much, so be obedient, okay?" The stupid weather is making his face feel all hot and sweaty.

At length, Luo Binghe manages to get himself under enough control to rasp, "Thanking Shizun's brother for the opportunity to be useful. Th-this one... This Luo Binghe swears to listen and obey well."

"See that you do," Shen Yuan sniffs. "I can't bring you over yet because I don't have any reason to. Okay? But in a week or so, I should."

Luo Binghe nods eagerly, pouting a little with the effort not to cry and sore-eyed from it. It makes Shen Yuan want to pat his cheeks and stroke his hair like a poor little animal.

“This shidi should go. Shifu is probably expecting me now. Ah, but, Binghe…” Luo Binghe’s heart jumps again to hear his given name. “I think there is something wrong with your manual. Perhaps… Well, no, obviously he should wait to keep trying the exercises until this shidi can properly read it to him next week. When shixiong’s cultivation is stronger, he can repay me by bringing me ingredients.”

He wants to help me cultivate? and He wants to keep knowing me that long? both explode into his mind like fireworks, the type used in rituals to drive away wicked spirits and bad fortune.

Luo Binghe is spared any further blows to his conception of the world when Shen Yuan finally pats his hair again and leaves, but it takes him a long time to shake himself out of his thoughts and leave to deliver the wood.

Ji Mingyue, head disciple of Xian Shu. Yong Xingchen and Yong Linhao, head disciples of Bai Zhan.

His underlings can handle their underlings, but Ming Fan is going to have to deal with those three directly.

It would be easier if they weren’t all years older than him, and it would be a lot easier if one weren’t out of reach on the inviolable Xian Shu Peak, and the other two weren’t always together.

He spreads the papers in front of him out with an appraising eye. As far as he and his shidimei had been able to determine, the sequence of events was roughly thus:

That rotten little liar, who has caused Shizun so much trouble, was involved in whatever happened in Mao Yu City. After Shizun caught wind of it, he was forced to retract his story about being Shizun’s bastard son, but now he’s spreading rumors that he’s Shizun’s brother instead. A slave!!

The Bai Zhan disciples undoubtedly made contact with this boy before returning, and he probably hadn’t even needed to pay the brutes to get them to believe whatever he said; slandering Shen Qingqiu would have been payment enough. They entered into an alliance with Xian Shu, no doubt to hide.

“How convenient for them,” he scoffs. “Hiding behind a bunch of women, knowing we can’t intrude on their peak and catch them out. Probably hoping we wouldn’t even learn they were involved. For a peak that brags endlessly about its bravery and righteousness, Bai Zhan are truly cowards!”

“Da-shixiong, we’re ready any time. Just say the word. We won’t let them shame our Qing Jing like this!”

Ming Fan would personally like to ask where this attitude was just a week ago when most of his shidimei were still content to dump the responsibility of Head Disciple on him without including the respect. They barely even respected his status as First Disciple! But he has it now, so he’ll content himself with pointing all those sharp ungrateful teeth in the proper direction.

“Good. Make no moves against Head Disciple Ji or the Yong brothers yet. For now, pin down the ones spreading the rumors and try to figure out who started it.” Whether that boy bribed anybody or not, disciples of their own sect taking an outsider’s word for truth and slandering one of their own Peak Lords is unacceptable.

Shen Yuan fairly skips back across the Rainbow Bridge to Qian Cao, feeling very pleased with himself, a kitten drunk on a whole crock of cream.

Too smug! he cautions himself. You’re going to end up acting like a dumb little kid and ruining it if you’re not careful! You haven’t even started, don’t be so sure you’ve gotten away with it yet!

“Disciple Shen is in a good mood,” one of the masters observes as he passes the stone lions ostensibly guarding the end of the bridge (but actually housing part of the arrays and components necessary to anchor the thing).

“Greetings to Master Tong,” he replies with enthusiasm. She’s one of his favorites, and he’s still riding high. “Tea with my zhangxiong was good.” It’s even true!

“This one is pleased to hear it, and is certain Peak Lord Mu would be, too.” She raises her eyebrows at him leadingly, and he smiles back helplessly.

“Master Tong can just tell me to go where I should be, this one wouldn’t take offense.” He’s still getting used to formal language and almost always accidentally slips up and uses the casual ‘I,’ especially when speaking quickly, but it also seems like nobody expects a nine-year-old with his upbringing would get it right immediately, at least on Qian Cao. “Thanking Master Tong, this Shen will go set Shifu’s mind at ease right away.”

A gentle hand on his shoulder stops him as he tries to pass her, and she considers him thoughtfully.

“Master Tong…?”

“Disciple Shen is not in trouble,” she assures him mildly. “This one was just curious… You were accepted as Peak Lord Mu’s personal disciple, and receive his direct attention, but you call him ‘shifu’ and not ‘shizun’ as most in your position would do. Is there some reason?”

“Ah…” Well, this is somewhat embarrassing, but he really doesn’t think Master Tong would make fun of him. She teaches the introductory classes on plants and poisons, is patient and considerate, and has a dry sense of humor that really tickles his inner heckler.

(And isn’t that a funny thought, that in his past life he was apparently known for his sharp tongue? Maybe it makes sense that he’s related to Shen Qingqiu.)

“This one… was only recently formally adopted, but misses his yangfu very much, and doesn’t yet know if he will really write to me or accept my letters…”

Tong Caoyin softens. “Your shizun is also your martial father, but this one understands. Go along, then. Your Shifu will be expecting you.”

Chapter Text

“This shijie will help,” Xiao Yunqi tells him later. They’re sitting in the small receiving area attached to her quarters, eating a small selection of sweets together following the evening meal. “But you should not tell anyone else, and we must not actually break any rules.” Not if they can avoid it, unless they have very, very good reason.

Shifu had pressed the candies into Shen Yuan’s hands before dismissing him for the rest of the afternoon following their brief meeting, advising him to rope the head disciple into his plan. ‘Your shijie has both a powerful sense of justice and a sweet tooth she will not admit to,’ he had confided in Shen Yuan. Well, he knew what to do with that.

“I wasn’t planning to, don’t worry.” He pauses. “Though… do you think Zhao Zhongren would be a good choice if we did include someone else?” The older boy had been friendly and personable, if a little immature.

“Zhao-shixiong would be a terrible choice, and you must never tell him anything you do not want getting back to Shen Qingqiu. He tells the Sect Leader everything he hears, and Sect Leader Yue is bound to tell Shen-shibo anything he hears in turn.”

Shen Yuan thinks back to his brief glimpse of Yue Qingyuan while stuffing a piece of honeycomb candy in his mouth and nods. “It seems like my zhangxiong, uh, picks on the Sect Leader…?”

“We do not pretend to understand it,” she tells him solemnly, a hand patting his shoulder firmly, and he makes another note not to look into whatever the hell is going on there.

“O-kay. Does shijie think it will work, then?”

“Mmmh… it will come down to the timing, in many ways. You do not yet know anyone but myself very well, and any personality changes since you arrived the other day can be explained away as a product of adjusting to a new environment. The bigger challenge will be explaining where you got the gall,” she chuckles. “Shidi was raised as a slave, and everyone knows that now.”

“Why let them assume that means I’m meek and uneducated?” he counters. “They don’t know my yangfu or what kind of place he was running. Aren’t the skilled artisans kept by a lot of noble houses also slaves on paper? Aren’t there warrior slaves? Doctors and scholars, too. Anybody can end up in that situation, even people with education and status.”

“Were you educated? Is that why shidi can read already?”

“I wasn’t… not educated,” he tries to deflect. “He never hired tutors or anything, but he also couldn’t afford to. All that money went to things like clothes and food and fixing the brokerage and stuff, and then keeping a few people and paying them wages later on.”

“Not himself?” she asks thoughtfully. “Brokers are usually quite wealthy, you know.”

Shen Yuan tries to think about it honestly, but: “No. Yangfu has lots of flaws, but being greedy isn’t one. I don’t know where all the money went, but I think a lot of it went back into the brokerage.” Things were always getting a little better there, year by year. Shen Yuan had always wished he’d quit, though; he didn’t think Yun Ming even liked it. He never looked happy when he was buying people, and he looked even more unhappy when selling them.

It’s not something he likes to think about.

Slavery wasn’t a practice in his first homeland, he knows. Or if it was, it was seen as such a low-down, dirty way to treat others, it wasn’t practiced openly or legally.

He knows it’s normal here. He knows that. It’s not even always… horrible, exactly. When it’s done ‘properly’, the way Yun Ming tries to do it, it’s more like… selling time. Years of it, maybe, but you’re not supposed to be buying a person, you’re buying their time, the right to dictate where they work, and for whose benefit. Lots of people even sold themselves, when they had no other way to find work and became desperate, and families frequently sold weak or unwanted children to keep the rest alive.

It’s just that… in practice, both now and before he was born, many of those contracts happened to stipulate “for life.” Not only the contracts of prisoners and criminals, but also many illiterate peasants were tricked into signing the rest of their lives away for paltry sums, when they only intended to sell their labor for a matter of years.

Worse, those contracts often gave their new masters the right to take that money right back, effectively generating free chattel slaves. Any number of other cruel and unfair conditions might be snuck in, too. And even though slaves were supposed to have certain protections on paper, Shen Yuan was also aware that practically nobody-- even (sometimes especially) cultivators-- ever bothered to enforce that. Why would they?

In the first place, this was a land where even free people could lose their lives over anything or nothing, at the drop of a pin. The strong trampled the weak, regardless of station. Every hierarchy had losers, a broad foundation of prostrated backs to climb upon, and nowhere was free of hierarchy.

Not to mention the number of slavers eager to ignore the law and catch whoever wasn’t strong or rich enough to get away. And once caught and branded, who would believe the word of a ‘slave’ with no backing and no allies? Not only was weakness in itself was contemptible to many people, ‘slavers broke into my family’s home and made off with me’ was a believable story in the first place because that sort of thing simply happened sometimes.

(He doesn’t like to think about that, either.)

“Well, this shijie has faith Shen-shidi will forge a path that suits him. Shijie knows he wants to help his new friend, and will only ask he try not to get into too much trouble, please.”

He nods, but he’s already thinking about other things now.

That night, hunched at his desk with a shielded candle, he writes home.

His roommates, Lan Tianmeng and Cang Tianling, are playing a game of weiqi across the room. The two of them had apparently been fast friends for two years already, being eleven and ten respectively.

‘I met A-Ling in while we were both in the sect creche; I still remember how excited he was when we were learning to write, and he realized we shared a character in our names,’ Lan-shixiong had told him warmly the night they met. ‘We hope you’ll adjust comfortably. Tell your shixiong if you need help, hm? It must be hard to miss home.’

“A-Ling, do you think you’re sneaky? I saw you try to nudge that piece.”

“Tsk! Shixiong is so mistrustful…”

He smiles a little. Even though the home he grew up with is far away now, this still reminds him of it in the good ways.

‘It turns out I have an older brother, the Peak Lord Shen Qingqiu,’ he writes. ‘Can you believe it? I’m related to the Xiu Ya Sword! Apparently, I was wrongfully sold, and it’s just my good fortune to have ended up with family in the end. As for our parents, they went missing after I was lost to them.’

He knows very well that this letter is likely to be read by somebody before getting to his yangfu, who doesn’t know about their cover story yet, so he can’t openly explain. But Yun Ming’s not stupid, and he knows for a fact the man can ‘yes, and’ better than most. He’ll figure it out, or if he doesn’t, he just won’t say anything until he does.

Shen Yuan is also careful not to put down anything strictly classifiable as a lie in writing; from a certain point of view, everything he just said is true, all right!

‘Speaking of my brother, yangfu should take care. I don’t know him well enough to say what he would or wouldn’t do, but he looked bad when he heard about you. He might come accuse you of something, or try to shake you down for information about the people who sold me to you. He’s been looking for our parents for a long time now, and probably hopes you have a lead.’

‘Classes are good but I haven’t been to very many yet, they’re still deciding what to do with me I think. I put in some drawings for you and yangjie and some coins.’

That’s basically the kind of thing that goes in a letter, right? What he’s doing, who he’s met, presents for family. He’s never written an actual letter before, he doesn’t think, even in his last life; who would he write to? Communication was easy and instant in that other land, so much that most of it was very casual, and he’s never left home before in this life.

Well, whatever. It’s my letter home. If I want to write it like this, it’s nobody’s business but mine and Yun Ming’s.

He includes a few more doodles at the bottom, sandwiching in haphazard postscripts as he feels like it, adds in a meandering list of the peaks on one side, looks down at the absolute mess he’s produced… and smiles.

He’ll definitely know it’s from me, huh?

Luo Binghe thinks a lot about Shen Yuan after he leaves, each day dragging by slowly. His shixiong remain too busy to bother with him, but he notices a number of them walking around with bruises or limps and so makes himself scarce, not wishing to test their patience after suffering both injury and failure.

Sitting together after the noonday meal by another mountain of chopped wood, four days after Shen Yuan’s visit to Qing Jing, Ning Yingying does finally tell him: “It’s those bullies from Bai Zhan! Da-shixiong won’t tell me what, but they did something to Shizun. Maybe it’s about his little brother? No, it must be,” she decides confidently. “Our shixiong won’t talk about him, so it’s got to be related. I bet they’re fighting for his honor! They must have said something about him being kidnapped. Those brutes!”

Luo Binghe is somewhat more skeptical, but he nods. That seems plausible. Everyone on Qing Jing loves and fears their elegant and commanding Shizun, so it stands to reason that they would extend respect to his relatives on Cang Qiong as well.

Shizun comes to look at him sometimes, from a distance, but doesn’t actually say anything, only watches Binghe work through his chores.

He doesn’t dare do less just because his shixiong aren’t ordering him to do them anymore. His mother often told him that the best way to display diligence and integrity is to do what you’re supposed to be doing, when you’re supposed to be doing it, even if nobody is watching.

So he continues to chop mountains of wood, to haul fresh water around the peak, to sweep the courtyards and paths, to scrub the bath-house and haul refuse. And Shizun watches him like a lingering spirit, qing-colored eyes narrowed above his fan.

One day shy of a week since Shen Yuan left with assurances he would invite him to Qian Cao, Shen Qingqiu finally corners him on his way back to the woodshed.

“This master’s younger brother,” he intones, his unhurried steps backing Luo Binghe into a tree trunk as he tries to maintain proper distance. “Has he spoken to you?”

“Y-yes, Shizun.”

Shen Qingqiu’s fan flutters slowly, and he deliberately allows the resulting silence to linger. Only when the little beast begins to squirm does he snap his fan shut, watching him flinch.

He narrows his eyes, mouth thinning into a displeased line. “And?”

It takes Luo Binghe a shamefully long moment to understand what his Shizun wants, and then he hurries to answer, cupping his shaking fists. “Answering Sh-shizun, D-disciple Shen Yuan said… he said Shizun gave him permission to use this one as he s-sees fit in his studies…?”

His lingering doubt makes it into a question, and he forces down another flinch at the cold glint in Shen Qingqiu’s eye.

When the silence stretches out again, he fumbles, “Th-this disciple… agreed? This lowly one is glad to be… that is…”

“How you feel about it is of no consequence. Your agreement should also be a given.”

There’s no appropriate response to that except to bow lower and raise his cupped hands higher.

“You will obey him utterly, unless his directions contradict those of myself or another Peak Lord. With this master’s orders ranked highest. Luo Binghe,” he almost snarls, “is only present on Cang Qiong thanks to the good graces of this master and his shijie. This is a weighty privilege, one you have yet to earn. Even so, you may prove of use to this master’s brother. You will divulge nothing you learn about him or this master, nothing at all, to anyone, or this master will see you reunited with your family. Do you understand?”

Luo Binghe bows even lower. His mouth won’t work.

He abruptly finds himself upright, with his Shizun’s hand around his neck and his piercing eyes boring into Luo Binghe’s own like cold stars. “Do. You. Understand?” he asks again, stressing every word with his thumb pressed threateningly against the underside of Luo Binghe’s jaw, positioned to crush his windpipe.

“Yes, Shizun,” he wheezes, legs shaking so hard that hand is nearly holding him up, painful and strong. “Y-yes, Shizun, this lowly one understands…!”

He’s released at once, and collapses into the leaf litter with a whimper, hands rushing to his throat as if to assure himself that he’s all right.

“Luo Binghe may have his chance,” his Shizun says coldly, with obvious distaste. “One. Chance.” It makes Luo Binghe want to crawl in a hole and hide, ashamed and unable to understand what he’s done wrong and then ashamed all over again because of that.

And then Shizun is gone, as suddenly as he came, and Luo Binghe doesn’t have the mind for anything but crawling into the shed and curling up in the far corner.

Chapter Text

Shen Yuan hums as he strolls towards the Rainbow Bridge, a letter of permission tucked into his sleeve.

He’s had a week now to settle into his public persona, plucking traits from here or there to combine, testing things on his fellow disciples and then running them past his Shifu and da-shijie, too. It’s actually pretty fun!

It’s also given him a minor reputation on Qian Cao already for being capricous, and he sees no reason not to take advantage of that. Why shouldn’t a child raised out of polite company be a little unrestrained, ‘naiive’ and audacious, especially coming into some power and status suddenly?

When he woke up that morning, he had been planning to see his ge for tea first, then pick up Luo Binghe on the way back-- but then a messenger had arrived to tell him that Shen Qingqiu was going to be out for a few days, and would summon him for their tea time upon returning.

“Ah, okay,” he had said, surprised to find himself a little disappointed, and not noticing the older disciple mouthing the word after him. “You’re not from Qing Jing, though…? I mean, are you? Shixiong…?”

“Shixiong,” the other boy had confirmed with a little smile. “From An Ding. This disciple just happened to be there to deliver other things, and was asked to make this delivery as well.”

“Oh!” An Ding… A sense of malaise had settled over him while considering the name, but even now, he’s still not sure what for. “Well, thank you. This shidi was told An Ding does most of the manual labor around here. That should be the reason the rest of us can focus on other things, so good work.”

(What he hadn’t seen was the way the An Ding disciple had looked at him while he was walking away, or the way he had hurried back to his own peak with a thoughtful expression on his face.)

To his surprise, Head Disciple Xiao is already waiting near the bridge, and nods at him. “Is Shen-shidi on his way to get his friend?”

“Yes, da-shijie. Will you be available to help…?”

“For a shichen or so. Go ahead and bring him over. Shidi mentioned he will need a bath and clean robes to borrow, so this shijie will meet you at the bathhouse. It’s no trouble to loan him a spare set of work robes while he’s here, and let him wash his things to dry while he’s with you.”

Luo Binghe is startled awake by the sound of someone knocking on the rickety door of the woodshed, and a single panicked glance at the light coming in through the gaps tells him it’s substantially later in the day than it should be. Had he slept through all his morning chores?

If it were Shizun or any of his shixiong coming to fetch him, they wouldn’t be bothering to knock, so he thinks it must be Ning Yingying until Shen Yuan’s soft voice calls, “Binghe…? Are you in there?”

His previous hesitance disappears in a flash, and he scrambles to the door before he can think better of it. Let alone his usual dishevelment, his hair is unbound and he’s not wearing his boots or outer robe, and he cringes as the door swings open, too late to stop himself.

Shen Yuan blinks up at him, head tipping a little as his blue eyes look him over, and then the younger boy is choking back a laugh behind his sleeves. “Ah,” he manages with a poorly-hidden grin and pink cheeks, “I guess this shidi woke Binghe up?”

“I,” Luo Binghe stammers, “Um. This… this lowly one has never… what time…?”

“Never slept in?” Shen Yuan raises his eyebrows. “Can something like this count? The hour of the dragon isn’t even over yet. What’s it matter?” he declares breezily. “But if Binghe is worried he’s lazy, that’s fine; this shidi has lots of work for him, so he should hurry up and dress.” His eyes squint at him, pleased and eager.

Luo Binghe salutes hurriedly and darts back inside to properly dress, fighting down a blush at the same time while he’s got the privacy. He feels… clumsy. Dirty. Unworthy.

And nervous, if he’s being honest. He has his suspicions as to what Shen Yuan is doing, but it’s all confused and tangled up with his feelings about his Shizun and Qing Jing Peak in general, and most of those thoughts aren’t safe to entertain.

The disappointed look on his mother’s face if he were to be unfilial towards his sect and master… It doesn’t bear thinking about.

But he also remembers Shen Yuan fighting not to cry too while comforting Binghe’s embarassing and childish display from last time, so whatever is going on… If he can do something for Shen Yuan, who seems to care so much about Luo Binghe for some inexplicable reason, he will. Whether that’s serving as his medical dummy, or just indulging his shidi’s whims. He doesn’t even have to feel guilty about it, he tells himself; Shizun ordered him to do so.

(That doesn’t necessarily make it easier to ignore the persistent feeling that anything he enjoys must be wrong, somehow.)

He comes back out once he’s done the best he can with his appearance, and doesn’t know how to feel about the sort of knowing pity in the younger boy’s eyes. But Shen Yuan doesn’t say anything, instead simply offering him a slip of paper from his sleeve.

“This is the letter of permission I was given to take you off Qing Jing. I figure you should hold onto it.” After all, no matter which direction Shen Yuan happened to be going, all he would have do was say he was coming to visit his gege or going back home. “I won’t be happy if your shixiong try to flout my gege’s orders, so if they try to keep you from coming some time or other, you can hit them with the one enemy even a righteous cultivator can’t slay.”

“What’s that?” Binghe asks before he can think better of it-- indeed, acting with such dangerous unrestraint seems to happen with alarming frequency in Shen Yuan’s company, despite how briefly they’ve known each other. Maybe because the boy keeps failing to punish him for it.

It’s a little intoxicating.

“Paperwork,” Shen Yuan smirks.

His silly joke manages to make Binghe giggle, even if it is half-startled. Shen Yuan will take it! That’s a win!

“All right, if shixiong is ready to go, then let’s go.” He pauses almost as soon as he turns around, though. “Do you think you’ll be missed? From classes and such? Should we tell someone, or make plans for you to return?” The look he gives Luo Binghe is very careful, as if he’s watching for something.

Luo Binghe has a notion of what, so he just answers honestly. “No, Shen-shidi. This one doesn’t think the masters will miss him today.”

The masters, in fact, wouldn’t miss him any day, and lately his shixiong haven’t, either. But if he gets in trouble… well, for once, he has something, doesn’t he? Shen Yuan just gave him a written excuse, direct permission from a Peak Lord they can’t ignore. A part of him feels a little giddy, half-hoping someone questions him on his way home just so he can present it. He knows it’s not the kind of feeling a good boy should have, though, so he tries not to indulge it too deeply.

But he does indulge it. Just a little.

“I see… Well, don’t forget your manual, then, this shidi said he would take a look at it.”

Luo Binghe hadn’t forgotten, but he’s still surprised to see Shen Yuan remind him. “This one remembered. Thanking Shen-shidi for his consideration,” he says, a little bashfully, and Shen Yuan smiles.

“Very good.”

They trail along together towards Qian Cao, Luo Binghe trembling with nervous energy and folding his arms behind himself in an effort to remain composed. He’s been near the Rainbow Bridge a few times, but only long enough to do some menial task or other, and never with time enough to enjoy the experience.

He wasn’t sure what he expected it to feel like in his idle daydreams before, but the sensation of warm, solid light bearing up beneath his feet like thick glass assuredly outstrips all his prior fantasies.

“Shen-shidi, is it really…” he starts to ask, and then clams up.

Shen Yuan blinks at him. “What?”

“… Is it really a rainbow, like the ones in the sky?” he asks, face burning with embarrassment. Saying it out loud, it feels so childish.

“Well, yes,” Shen Yuan confirms, to Luo Binghe’s bewilderment. “Sort of. Rainbows are made of light passing through something that splits it into the range of colors, like water or crystal. After it rains, the air and sky are still filled with droplets of water, but the clouds have cleared enough for the sun to show itself. I’m not actually sure why the sunlight forms a curve, exactly… I think all the scattered droplets might be twisting the light? Maybe since the droplets are curved, the light comes out curved as well? Maybe Shifu knows.”

He gestures as he speaks, apparently unaware of it, hands moving as if to illustrate the concepts he’s trying to describe: a curved hand moving in an arc for a rainbow, the digits of one hand splayed to demonstrate the radiance of the sun, delicate fingers plucking at the air as if to pick out hovering droplets of water.

“I asked about it and was told the Rainbow Bridge uses bespelled crystals to make the separated light solid enough to walk on, and anchor the ends to each peak. So, real rainbows use sunlight and water, and the Bridge uses crystals and Yang qi filtered from the sky above Cang Qiong, but they’re using the same property. Isn’t that cool?”

Shen Yuan’s voice grows increasingly enthusiastic as he speaks, turning to Luo Binghe with eyes narrowed in pleasure. It makes the older boy feel warm and a little overwhelmed, like standing too close to a hearthfire.

He doesn’t know what that particular word means (to be honest, Luo Binghe doesn’t know a lot of the words his peers on Cang Qiong use) but he gathers that it’s something good, so he agrees, “Very ‘cool’. Thanking Shen-shidi for telling me so much about it.”

Shen Yuan shoots him a glance he’s startled to realize he recognizes-- the look of is this a trick? Will this hurt in a moment?-- and smiles wider when Luo Binghe doesn’t take it back, waving a hand. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing. Shixiong has been living on Qing Jing, but he hasn’t benefited from their library yet? Well, how lucky for you that this shidi intends to go often. My shixiongjie already have to drag me out of the Qian Cao library with a team of horses each night, and if I don’t look out, they’ll teach the disciples who come after me to do it, too.”

“Can you imagine the cruelty, Binghe? All my life, only able to get ahold of just a few books, and suddenly they tell me I’m allowed in the Middle Kingdom’s finest libraries, but then they make me leave at night? You can’t take a thirsty man to the lakeshore and then tell him not to drink, it’s-- it’s unrighteous! The library’s rugs and cushions are good enough for our Mao-jie and Mao-mei, but not this Shen?” If his shixiong and shijie have found him asleep with the library cats more than once already, isn’t that just evidence there’s no problem with him staying there? They don’t mind sharing!

He keeps up his diatribe until Binghe is biting his lip and turning red to keep from laughing out loud.

I like making him laugh. He seems like he doesn’t have anything to laugh about at home.

Finally taking mercy, he adds, “Anyway, if you don’t have time to read the books yourself, this shidi will just tell you all about them. As long as you’re helping me out, I’m obviously obligated to help you a little, too.”

Watching his shidi try to posture like an older and more mature boy, one hand on his hip and the other patting his chest, Luo Binghe is treated to the mental image of a puff-breasted little bird, strutting in half-grown plumage-- or maybe something more like a juvenile crane, stumbling as it races after its more graceful seniors and attempts to mirror their movements.

He knows the smile on his face must be totally undignified, the type of dumb toothy grin that would have his shixiong rushing to humble him back on Qing Jing.

But he’s not on Qing Jing right now; he’s just passed between the stone lions guarding the entrance to Qian Cao.

Shen Yuan reaches for his sleeve to tug him along, and Luo Binghe lets him. He’s already inclined to think that if Shen Yuan is the one leading him, he’d gladly walk straight into hell.

Chapter Text

Only a short time later, Luo Binghe reflects that he needn’t have steeled himself. This is most certainly not hell. If it is, it must be a hell that Lady Guanyin has already visited and cleansed.

“Where are we?” he asks, somewhat dazed.

They’re standing in a broad, squat building of thick stone brick.

At the far end, a huge shallow pool of steaming-hot water stretches from one wall to the other, with a pair of stone frogs (in the same style as the lions that guard the Rainbow Bridge, he distantly notes) refreshing the supply. One produces an endless, gentle waterfall of bathwater from its cheekily-upturned mouth, while another draws it in from the other side, creating a barely-perceptible current from one end of the pool to the other.

The floor also appears to be stone, lain over with a thin layer of bamboo matting that allows liquid to pass through while keeping feet off the cold slabs.

Wooden bathing tubs in screened cubbies line the right-hand wall, while the left is occupied by a narrow trench of unheated water running from one side to the other, this time through the mouths of stone carp. Shelves near the door hold an enormous assortment of bottles in every shape and size, some unlabeled while others bear labels with every sort of handwriting imaginable.

The shutters are cracked to allow fresh air in through a tight lattice of willow withes.

Outside, he can hear distant voices and laughter, the sounds of an animated discussion, disciples rushing to their duties. But the voices aren’t angry or disdainful, even when they seem harried, and this place seems to muffle them, like nothing out there is allowed to reach in here uninvited.

The air is humid and sweet-smelling, like freshly-washed clothing drying on a fair day, and he suddenly thinks he might cry.

Shen Yuan, looking at the subtle but intense play of emotions on his face, hurries to assure him. “No-- no need to be upset, shixiong! This shidi definitely mentioned it last time, right? You, uh…”

“Luo-shixiong needs a bath,” Xiao Yunqi’s voice says from behind them, not unkindly. It still makes Luo Binghe jump, and he spins around.

The naked fear on his face in that moment isn’t missed by either of them, and Shen Yuan sucks in a quiet breath. He thinks he’s about to get in trouble.

“Yes,” Shen Yuan agrees with just a little too much force, and winces. Great, now it sounds like you’re calling him dirty or something. “I mean, yes. Shixiong spends all day doing chores on Qing Jing, struggling to build up his foundation, and ends up with no time to look after himself. It’s too much! Look at his poor hair! And all his injuries from… training, with shixiong so much more advanced than he is. He needs some care. If he can’t do it himself, someone learning to provide care should. Right?”

Luo Binghe doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything, though he fails to hold back a hiccup and his eyes grow wet against his will.

Shen Yuan catches a glimpse and pouts so hard that for a moment it looks like he might join Luo Binghe in sniffling. For some reason, that fills his chest with a startlingly intense curl of happiness.

For shame, sneers a voice that sounds a great deal like Shizun the young master he once served with his mother. Do you only know how to bite the hand that feeds? Does it please you to displease him?

He hiccups again, and then feels big, warm hands on his head, confident but gentle, and everything else stops mattering for a little bit.

Xiao Yunqi clicks her tongue, hands digging all the way down through Luo Binghe’s tangled and frizzy hair to the scalp. He leans into her hands like a puppy, all but shivering. “Shen-shidi, go get a basin from the entrance.”

Watching her gently work her hands through Luo Binghe’s ruined and matted locks, Shen Yuan suddenly has a powerful mental image of his shijie as the type of young lady from his last life to spend her free time volunteering to care for stray dogs and cats, maybe standing stoicly in one of those broadcast images encouraging charity while clutching a shaggy dog to her chest. It makes him smile despite his concern.

Shen Yuan returns with a broad, shallow basin and an armful of drying cloths, all soft and white.

(They don’t use bleach-- he had checked-- but their process yields essentially the same results, with a somewhat less overwhelming smell.)

“Does da-shijie want me to get the spare robes, also? And a comb?”

“H-head Disciple Xiao does not need to trouble herself,” Luo Binghe still gamely attempts to protest, despite the way he’s practically melting in her hands. “This… this one is… men and women shouldn’t…”

“What men?” she clucks, drawing her hands out to cup his cheeks with her relatively clean palms. When he flinches, she softens her voice, tipping his face back to encourage him to look at her. “It’s not bad that Luo-shixiong is thinking about these things already-- much better than some of his older shixiongdi, who spend more time bothering young ladies and visiting brothels than bettering themselves.” His lips wobble, and she strokes the tears off his cheeks with her thumbs while he clutches her wrists like a lifeline.

(In actuality, only a few tears have slipped out, but he feels like he’s been crying like a little child almost since he got here.)

“But he is not yet old enough to forgo care from his seniors in favor of future propriety. Though you are my shixiong, I am still your elder, and you are still only a boy. It is in no way improper for a child to receive care from his older sister, but if it makes Luo-shixiong feel better, we keep bathing garments for disciples and patients who prefer greater modesty.” He chokes down a wounded little noise and nods.

A soft hand touches Luo Binghe’s arm, and he looks up blearily to see a worried Shen Yuan holding out a plain white garment for him.

“Here. Da-shijie can step out or go behind a screen while I help you rinse off and change. Then she can come help with your hair.” It’s not a question, but he waits until Luo Binghe nods and accepts the garment anyway.

Luo Binghe slips behind one of the partitions to fumble his way out of his tattered robes and into it, the upper portion merely covering the front of the chest while the bottom wraps around the hips as well. To Shen Yuan’s eyes, it looks something like a modern apron, though it’s obviously cut differently, and made of different material.

Shen Yuan takes off his outer layers, boots and socks, and then-- to Binghe’s surprise-- smacks himself in the forehead. “I totally forgot to have you pick the smell for your hair oil…! I guess we can do it after da-shijie shows me how to help with your hair…”

So Binghe is herded into one of the bathing cubbies by Qian Cao’s most junior disciple and his shijie to have basins of hot water poured over him.

A part of him wants to protest the waste; it’s true that he would dirty a tub immediately, but to see all that hot water running away through the floor mats…

About a ke later, sitting up to his chest in hot water while Xiao Yunqi shows Shen Yuan how to wash his hair, he no longer has it in him to care about much of anything.

Xiao Yunqi watches him start to nod off in the warmth and smiles, but nudges her shidi. “You mustn’t let him sleep in the bath. Does Shen-shidi think he’s got things from here?”

“Yes! Thanking da-shijie for her help. This Shen will tell her all about it later, when she’s got time.”

Satisfied, she leaves the boys to their own devices, and Shen Yuan sets about painstakingly detangling those glorious locks.

“Who said huh?” Shang Qinghua blinks up from the report in front of him.

“Shen-shibo’s younger brother, the one Mu-shishu brought back after the plague--” Shang Qinghua keeps staring at him, eyes going wider and wider, and Rong Wen sighs, already beginning to roll up his sleeves. “I see. How long has Shizun been in here doing paperwork, exactly?”

“Ahh… Rong Wen, this Shizun of yours, you know he gets really busy—” the man tries to deflect.

A cup of tea’s time later, Shang Qinghua is-- unwillingly-- outside, sitting in a lovely gazebo with a cup of tea while one of his loyal Head Disciples catches him up on what he missed.

Which was so, so fucking much? Apparently?

“Shizun should enjoy the sun more at this time of year,” Rong Wen says serenely while Shang Qinghua shivers his way through a few rapid anxiety attacks in the aftermath, tugging a wool shawl up over his shoulders.

“Shizun would have more time to enjoy the sun if his martial siblings weren’t trying to kill him with paperwork. Rong Wen, you’re so hard on this old Shizun of yours, can’t you put any of that energy towards heckling them? Huh?”

“Shizun is not yet thirty, and encourages filial harmony between the Peaks.”

“You’re a terrible disciple.”

Rong Wen’s smile only widens.

“Okay, so why bring him up? You already thought I knew about him, right?”

“Because according to Gu-shidi, this morning he said ‘okay’ and then thanked An Ding for doing the manual labor for the rest of the Peaks.”

'Okay'. Well.

“I did tell you to tell me about that kind of thing,” he half-wheezes. “Didn’t I?”

“Shizun did. Does Shizun think Shen-shidi is the type of person he’s been looking for?”

“… I don’t know yet. Rong Wen, your Shizun is asking you not to spread this around. Make sure everyone else knows not to talk about it, too. Same procedures as our trade routes ‘up North’, all right?”

“Yes, Shizun.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

He doesn’t have an answer for that.

“… and that’s how it works. Like rivers and lakes; if your spirit veins are the rivers, then your meridians are like lakes where the qi gathers before moving on. The energy circles around and around, and you pull it inward, not out, and not back and forth.”

Luo Binghe sits back on his heels and gazes up at the sky, digesting this information.

Shen Yuan is sitting on a padded stool that’s been pulled up close, in the shade of a parasol one of his roommates had pushed into Luo Binghe’s hands with a cluck upon meeting him.

“You’re the shixiong from Qing Jing that volunteered to come help Shen-shidi?” he had asked, and then continued at his confused nod: “Good! Make sure he uses this, won’t you? For someone who seems to like helping others so much, we’ve already figured out he doesn’t pay a lick of attention to himself. If he won’t put on lotion to protect himself from the sun—”

“I’m not a maiden, I don’t care about freckles or tanning, and it feels so gross--”

“-- then Luo-shixiong must be the one to keep him from burning his whole face red because he did not want to come in from the garden or stand in the shade.”

Luo Binghe’s mouth had opened in a little ‘o’ of realization, and he had nodded then, understanding his purpose better. That understanding has only grown over the course of the day.

Shizun must have known that his tender-hearted younger brother would take pity on him, and seen an opportunity to have someone take care of him in return… his shixiong are, perhaps, not the best suited to this task in temperament, and perhaps Shizun had been swayed by his dedication to his duties despite recent events. He’s also the most free of all Qing Jing’s disciples to go attend to him, since he doesn’t attend classes and has no responsibilities outside of chores.

“Oh! Shixiong’s hair is finally dry? Let me comb it for him. He should be shown how to brush it properly and put it in a tail.”

“Let’s go inside?” Luo Binghe suggests, if only for the sake of greater propriety, finally standing to hang the laundry he was wringing out while listening.

He’s clean and fresh now, with washed hair that feels almost airy and robes he’s not ashamed of, even if they are just plain grey work robes. His other robes have been darned and aggressively scrubbed, and are now ready to dry in the midday sun. At his side, Shen Yuan bounces to his feet, propping the parasol up on his shoulder and holding Binghe’s (definitely false) manual in the crook of his other arm.

“It’s too bad Binghe’s manual is a dud, but this shidi thought it might be, so he collected others. It’s no matter to allow Binghe to borrow them. Of course, they belong to this Shen Yuan in the end, so if anyone were to do something like throw them in a puddle or rip up the pages, they would be in a lot of trouble.” Shen Yuan smirks up at him like a pleased little cat.

Luo Binghe reaches over to adjust the way the parasol sits, keeping it from catching on his shidi’s ponytail, then fixes the collar of his robe wordlessly, so full of gratitude and affection he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.

Shen Yuan prattles on happily about all the little favors he’s done or plans to do for Binghe, all the amusing and devious traps he’s set for the Qing Jing shixiong he’s clearly put himself at odds with, and Luo Binghe heaves a sigh of contentment.

Over his heart, the false jade guanyin feels hot, and he sends up another prayer to her:

'Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for letting me meet him.'

Chapter Text

The brats have been staring at him for nearly half a ke now, neither making any motion to chase him away nor approaching to welcome him where he stands in the open gate of the brokerage yard.

“That’s Yuan-er’s lord brother,” the oldest-looking of them insists in a whisper. “Don’t you remember he went to go be a cultivator and they found out he’s from them and all? They look just the same, see.”

“Makes sense,” another one murmurs. “You figure that’s why he is how he is, ‘cause he was a secret noble the whole time?”

“Must be…”

(Shen Qingqiu snorts, too quietly for them to hear behind his spread fan. Brats are truly all the same.)

Their protracted gossiping has given him ample time to look around, not that he didn’t perform any reconnaissance ahead of time. But a bird’s-eye view provides a different sort of information from the things he’s learning here, like:

That man isn’t here, because if he were, he would surely have come out already, either eager to toady up to a wealthy cultivator or else intent on discovering why so many of his slaves are standing around wasting his time.

(Not their own time, of course, because a slave has nothing at all to themselves.)

The property is much larger than he expected, though it’s not exactly prime real estate, being situated closer to the edge of town, and not very far from the slums.

They also seem to produce at least some of their own needs; he can see that a portion of the land inside the walls has been converted into a very large garden, and a flock of chickens peck at the pebble-strewn ground nearby.

Abruptly, a half-grown girl steps out from behind the children, clutching a broom as she looks around.

“What are you lot all doing out—” she begins, taking in the boys standing around in a cluster near the entrance. Then she spots him and flinches back the way some of the whores do when he moves too quickly, face as pale and round as the moon with momentary fear, and Shen Qingqiu feels another hot rush of hatred so powerful it threatens to crack his facade to pieces.

He sells bed slaves?

If not that, then battered girls destined for such a life, beholden to some sadistic pig with just enough money to buy out the town’s morals--

His feet are carrying him forward before he consciously directs them to, though at least they maintain the proper poise, slow and purposeful. The boys, he notes, immediately bristle and bunch up around her.

Approval and disgust war within him. They could not stop him, even if they tried, and he doubts they would; the pretense is pointless, nothing but a gallant lie.

A motion flicks his fan shut, exposing his face to full view again. The girl seems to recognize him swiftly, and her wariness shifts in nature.

“This Ru Yu greets Shen Qingqiu, Peak Lord of Qing Jing. He has come far. Unfortunately, our yangfu is not here, and the brokerage is closed,” she offers over cupped hands, watching his reaction cautiously. One of the boys draws an audible breath, clearly prepared for trouble. If they’ve served the sorts of cultivator who would openly purchase slaves, he can imagine why.

He adopted her, too. Why? His lips purse. Ugly as it is, if the pig just wanted a dainty young wife or concubine, no one would have batted an eye at him putting her in that position. Most would have called her lucky, in fact. Going to the trouble of adopting her as family…

Shen Qingqiu allows his eyes to drift to a nearby patch of wildflowers while he thinks.

(If Shang Qinghua had been there, this move would have had him enthusiastically declaring, “Classic! An absolutely classic poser move from the king of all posers! You have to think, but you can’t just space out and risk looking like a mere human? Easy, just turn towards something suitable for poetry and stare into the middle distance. Now you can consider dinner in peace while everyone nods to themselves about what mysteries you’re pondering.”)

He had been prepared to force his way in and wait until that man returned, but the girl complicates things.

Ru Yu watches the cultivator in front of her tap his folded fan into the opposite palm, slowly and softly enough that it’s clear he’s simply thinking, not threatening them with his impatience. It gives her a chance to get her shaking under control, and she takes a deep breath.

He has been seen here publicly. We are legally related through Yuan-er. His sect surely knows he is here. She lets the breath back out again and clasps her own hands inside her sleeves.

“But… If Peak Lord Shen would not be offended by the lack of finer hospitality, this yangjie to his didi would offer him a cup of tea in the receiving room, before he goes. Yangfu’s apprentices can chaperone.”

Beside her, the two oldest boys-- who cannot be any older than Ming Fan-- puff up in an effort to look grown. The pathetic lie inherent in the gesture still disgusts him, but there are worse uses for bravado than comforting a frightened girl-child, he supposes.

“Exchanging a few words here is enough for today,” he declines. “This master had some questions about Shen Yuan, which he appears startlingly incapable of answering in a straightforward manner.”

As expected, sharing that vapid but relatable tidbit forms a crack in their defenses; everyone who knew Shen Yuan (which appears to be all of these children) relaxes a little, and a few of them chuckle.

It actually works. An unaccustomed sense of smug, vicarious satisfaction he’s never felt before makes itself apparent in him, like a tiger settling down in the middle of a room to lick its paws, confident no one is capable of ejecting it.

What a useful sibling he’s acquired, despite everything that comes along with that.

Ru Yu levels him with a somewhat more knowing look, but she also nods. “There is a sitting area just here, in the garden. This one would be happy to answer Peak Lord Shen’s questions about our didi.”

‘Our’ again. Shen Qingqiu abruptly realizes that, in a sense, he’s also gained a sister, now-- if only through Shen Yuan. The thought makes his heart spasm; he’s not sure whether the sensation is pain or pleasure, but it seems likely to be both, as it so frequently seems to be these days.

He closes his eyes briefly to banish the feeling, and though he doesn’t smile at her when he opens them again, his face thaws, just the smallest bit. “This master would be appreciative.”

When Xiao Yunqi knocks on Shen Yuan’s door after dinner, his roommates let her in with smiles and fingers held to their lips.

The boys are asleep on Shen Yuan’s bed, curled up like a pair of puppies with their foreheads touching. She doesn’t wake them immediately, taking in the play of light and shadow across their sleep-lax faces and how much less tense Luo Binghe looks when he’s not awake.

Xiao Yunqi is ashamed to admit she was unaware one of her martial siblings was being neglected to this extent. Though she had started the day (privately) a little skeptical of Shen Yuan’s urgency-- confident the situation was blown out of proportion by her shidi’s youthful passion-- she now shares his concern.

If Shen-shidi had not come, would any of us have ever noticed? If we had, would any of us have been clever enough to find this way to help you? Poor child. Her eyes drift to Shen Yuan, in the process of snuggling closer to his friend, and her lips quirk. Lucky child, she amends.

What a pleasure it is to indulge Shen Yuan, who has already wormed his way into the hearts of half Qian Cao; and how lucky they all are, Luo-shixiong especially, that all he seems to want to do is help others and study. Shizun was right to bring him back. It’s only a shame they didn’t find him sooner.

She wakes them gently, chuckling over Shen Yuan’s flustered efforts to find some excuse (“We weren’t sleeping! We were just… um…”) when he really doesn’t need to, given their youth and what an eventful day it’s been for them both.

“Da-shijie will walk Luo-shixiong back to Qing Jing, if Shen-shidi would like to wash up and prepare for his evening lesson with Shizun.” Shen Yuan nods blearily and fumbles his way over to the room’s wash stand.

The boys part like burrs, all but clinging to one another until the very last second, and she smiles indulgently, but Shen Yuan finally departs for Mu Qingfang’s office and the two of them are left behind.

On the walk back across the Rainbow Bridge, with Luo Binghe trotting along beside her carrying a bag of things in his arms, his heart pounding and thoughts wild, she tells him, “Shen-shidi has been given a day each week without regular lessons to pursue his own projects, or assignments from our Shizun, and will bring Luo-shixiong over to help. Did Luo-shixiong have a good day today on our Qian Cao?”

“Yes.” It comes out choked-sounding, too full of feelings, and he clears his throat with embarrassment. “This one… yes. A very good day. This sh-shixiong looks forward to next week, when he can do more for Shen-shidi.” Today had quite transparently mostly involved Luo Binghe being spoiled rotten, and he’s privately a little afraid of what Shizun will say.

But only a little, because Shen Yuan had sat him down in his room while Lan-shidi and Cang-shidi were gone, and explained exactly what his intentions were, and how to act if Shizun cornered him. The fact that he was actually a lifelong slave, raised in a brokerage, and only learned he had a family when he came to Cang Qiong. How furious Shizun was about the gossipy accusations that Shen-shidi was his son, and that Shizun had sold him.

He’d also described his own feelings: How upset he was that Binghe was being neglected and then harshly judged for the results. How angry he was at Shizun for letting it happen just because he probably endured such treatment as a disciple. How bitterly he felt towards Luo Binghe’s shixiong for beating him down instead of lifting him up, the way Shen Yuan’s did for him. And how, despite all that, Shen Yuan couldn’t openly help him without turning most of Qing Jing against them both.

“It’s not that they’re our enemies,” he had stressed anxiously, for some reason. Luo Binghe had blinked; of course they weren’t enemies, no matter how badly they made him feel sometimes. “But the fear of losing face can make people stubborn, and that can make it hard to change someone’s mind.”

Then he had explained something about what kinds of things make people feel confronted, and how to persuade them instead. It had been a lot to take in, and Shen Yuan had made it clear that Shizun knew the same tactics, but not all the same tactics, and not exactly what Shen Yuan was doing here.

Which was, put simply, tricking all of Qing Jing Peak into thinking Shen-shidi was an audacious and naiive brat having fun treating his shixiong like a favorite servant.

“If I tried to fight them head-on, they’d dig their heels in and fight back, and I’d lose. But if they don’t even know it’s a fight-- if they think they’re just ignoring or indulging their Shizun’s spoiled baby brother-- we should be able to get away with a lot more. We might even be able to change their opinion, or at least your Shizun’s opinion. I hate to treat Binghe like a servant, even for pretend, but...”

I would be his servant, he had thought, though he hadn’t said it out loud, since the notion seemed to bother his new friend. Even with Shen Yuan’s help, how far can he really get as a cultivator? He still has so little to show, and in only a handful of months, Luo Binghe will have been at Cang Qiong for three years. Shen Yuan speaks so casually of damaging his own reputation for Luo Binghe, of lying to his own older brother for him. If it turns out I’m unsuitable for cultivation, perhaps Shizun will let me remain in the sect as his brother’s servant…

“This one is sure he will be of great help to Shen-shidi,” Xiao Yunqi assures him, startling him out of his reverie. Her warm hand settles on his shoulder, and he has to swallow around the lump in his throat.

Before today, he had never imagined finding a warm welcome anywhere on Cang Qiong. Even if it’s just because they already cherish Shen Yuan, and are grateful to have someone looking after their clumsy, wonderfully strange shidi, so many people had greeted him warmly today. He’s full, and clean, in robes he was finally able to wash and repair. Nothing hurts. He’s full of enthusiasm for tomorrow, eager to tackle his chores and work on meditating properly for once in the afternoon. His eyes wander again, full of stars.

Beside him, Xiao Yunqi makes soft noise. “One of your shixiong?”

Ming Fan’s silhouette looms ahead of them at the end of the bridge.

His small smile stiffens and falls off his face like a scab.

Chapter Text

Ming Fan flicks his eyes swiftly between the Beast and Qian Cao’s Head Disciple.

Though Qing Jing refuses to officially appoint even one Head Disciple, as Shen Qingqiu’s First Disciple, the associated duties fall to him anyway, and he’s had occasion to meet Xiao Yunqi in that unofficial capacity.

The sun is going down and they’re still a short distance away, but Ming Fan’s cultivation is advanced enough to pick out the differences in his appearance from here, as well as the way Xiao Yunqi is looking at him while they approach, cool and assessing.

So that’s why I couldn’t track him down today. That little traitor went crying to the shijies on Qian Cao.

He forces his mouth into a polite smile. If he does not get out ahead of this Shizun will skin him right after he finishes with the Beast, if only for his incompetence. Shizun values his dignity and status the most, as someone in his position should; he can’t allow scum like this to leave a black mark on his name over nothing.

Luo Binghe struggles not to trudge and make a fool of himself in front of Xiao-shimei, looking anywhere but at Ming Fan as he clutches the bag in his arms closer.

“Shidi! We’ve been looking for you all day. Why didn’t you tell the masters you wouldn’t be coming to lessons? This da-shixiong was very worried!” Ming Fan bullshits the moment they come close enough.

He realizes within the first moment, though, that he can’t look at the Beast while doing it; his voice comes out too strange, uneven and biting. He’s not used to speaking to him in any other way.

Luo Binghe stares at him with a feeling of intense dread, torn between believing him (wouldn’t it be wonderful if he were missed for once?) and resenting the obvious lie. “Shixiong…”

“How strange to hear you say so, Ming-shixiong. Luo-shixiong received advance permission from both your Shizun and mine before being invited to Qian Cao today. Why would the masters not have been informed?” she asks mildly, walking two steps closer than is strictly polite to look down at him.

(If either Shen Yuan or Shang Qinghua had been there to see that look, they would have cried out in their hearts for Xiao Yunqi to try on some narrow-framed glasses. Unflappable librarians everywhere, eat your hearts out!)

Ming Fan’s smile freezes on his face, stiff and unnatural.

“No matter,” she continues calmly. “A mere clerical error, this Xiao is sure. If their hearts are ill at ease to be missing a student they expected to see, as Head Disciple, of course I must go inform them of his whereabouts today. In fact, I happen to have a copy of the permission here in my sleeve. Why don’t we go together, shixiong? We might as well clear up at the same time that he will be turning regularly.”

Luo Binghe sneaks a glance at Ming Fan’s face and feels a curl of mean-spirited satisfaction to see him caught out for once, and he truthfully doesn’t feel that bad about it; Ming Fan himself is the one who clearly wanted to make trouble. If he finds himself caught up in the situation he just created, and experiences a taste of his own medicine… well, Luo Binghe won’t shed many tears.

“Luo-shixiong should go attend to the rest of his tasks while his da-shixiong and I settle this. Remember your Shizun’s instructions.” Xiao Yunqi has a young adult’s taste for mischief, which is to say, ‘have fun but don’t take it too far.’ Causing trouble is only fun when you’re not the one who has to clean up after the result. Even so, she admires the expression on Ming Fan’s face as he attempts to figure out when Luo Binghe started warranting their shizun’s personal attention, let alone privileges and special work.

In fact, the instructions she’s referring to are just Shen-shibo’s order to do whatever Shen Yuan asks, which means Luo Binghe’s only task now is to put his things away carefully and get some more rest. She has no intention of enlightening Ming Fan, though. Let him keep wondering. If he’s not clever or reliable enough to ask, he can sit with the wrong answer.

(After all, why would she ever expect the Scholar’s Peak to punish inquiry? Aren’t they there to learn in the first place, like any disciple?)

“This shixiong would hate to trouble Xiao-shimei,” Ming Fan tries, once his tongue is working again. “She can entrust the permission to me, of course I will make sure it goes where it should.”

“After one misunderstanding between our Peaks already, it would be better to take care of the matter directly. This Xiao’s Shizun was very pleased by Shen-shibo’s agreement, if it were rescinded so soon due to such a small matter, it would be more trouble than it’s worth.” She pats his shoulder lightly, already striding past him.

Luo Binghe drifts after her like a duckling coasting in its parents’ wake, then runs off before Ming Fan has the chance to scold him, though he knows he’ll pay for it later.

Ming Fang watches him go with a clenched jaw and shaking hands, then turns to march stiffly after Xiao Yunqi.

Shen Qingqiu can see the table he had tea at earlier from his position on the roof.

(It had been nice.)

(He wants to burn this place down.)

Yun Ming unlatches the gate and enters the darkened yard, and a few moments later Shen Qingqiu leans over to watch him pass below the eaves like a bird of prey.

In the next heartbeat, Yun Ming feels a presence nearly flush with his back and the burning cold edge of a knife held up against his throat. His foot pauses mid-step, then lowers back down slowly; his eyes flutter and close for a moment before opening again, and his jaw clenches. But he says nothing.

Shen Qingqiu despises how composed he is.

You could kill him right here. No one would miss such scum. But--

He thinks of Shen Yuan excitedly blabbering about writing home, and the little girl asleep inside expecting her father to return, and grits his teeth nearly hard enough to crack.

Why? Why does even an animal like this have a loving family? Why are they so loyal to him despite all the harm he’s done, all the ways he’s wronged them? Why do they want to forgive him?

Why isn’t such grace ever extended to him?

“If you’re going to kill me, you should hurry up and do it,” Yun Ming rasps in front of him. “I won’t let you take him.”

Blood trickles down his neck. Shen Qingqiu had pressed the knife in hard enough to cut skin when he opened his mouth, but stays his hand short of slitting his throat or puncturing the veins.

“And who is it that you think I am?” he asks, voice a deadly-soft murmur in the dark.

“Why would I tell you? Shopping for allies so you can steal a child? The gentleman will have to look elsewhere; we don’t sell that here.” Yun Ming’s voice is just as quiet, but rough with disdain.

Shen Qingqiu’s throat constricts in a tight, bitter laugh.

Neither of them recollect very well what happens in the next few moments, too full of pique to act sensibly. Yun Ming isn’t a cultivator, but he’s not far past his prime, with the stamina and endurance to match. Shen Qingqiu also isn’t so far gone that he’s using serious force, but when he gets Yun Ming up against the courtyard wall behind the house, the man’s been thoroughly battered. One eye is already swelling shut, and he has several deep cuts on his hands and arms. Shen Qingqiu’s few bruises are already healing.

“No, you don’t, do you?” Shen Qingqiu tosses the knife aside with apparent carelessness, more to remove the temptation of gutting him than anything else. “You simply sell the children directly. Much more efficient.”

Yun Ming’s expression does something strange as he gazes up at him. The moon is behind cloud cover tonight, but he can just make out the cold glittering of the man’s eyes and the distinct contour of his cheekbones below them.

Shen Yuan’s brother is here, then.

In hindsight, it was obvious that Shen Yuan had always approached him with a son’s love and sincerity, and it was he himself who had failed to either set boundaries or reciprocate properly. Everything Yun Ming struggles with now is only the result of his own choices, years spent digging himself deeper and deeper into a pit of shame, running away from doing right out of cowardice. No matter how terrible he felt, some part of him cried out that it was even more shameful to acknowledge it and change.

Which was why Shen Yuan had stomped on his foot the night before he left and told him (in tears) to grow a fucking backbone.

So you need money and feel sorry for their situation; does taking them in and finding them work require buying and selling them?! Other people do it, so you have to do it that way, too?! Regardless, it’s already done! So if you want to fix it, you have to fix it! If you break my arm, pay for my treatment and take care of the things I can’t do while it heals. If you borrow my ox and accidentally kill it, buy and train a new young ox for me! I don’t want your guilt and I don’t want your suffering, either. I want you to fix it!

Yun Ming owes me a loving father and a home to return to, he had sobbed, clutching Yun Ming’s robes and petulantly throwing himself down in the man’s lap in a silent demand to be held. Do you dare deny me? Am I wrong, and Yun Ming is really that kind of heartless bastard?

“Peak Lord Shen is right. I’ve wronged many children, including my own.” What else can he say? Does starting to regret it after finding a son of his own-- a son he was too afraid to claim until it was almost too late-- suddenly make him a good person? Do his efforts to undo the damage make the original crime irrelevant?

I don’t know, Shen Yuan’s voice echoes in his ear. Yun Ming had asked something similar, after that, while they were both sitting on the floor sniffling. I think it just means the world sucks a little less. Isn’t that good enough?

“If you’re here to kill me or exact vengeance on behalf of your family, anyone would say that’s only good and right. I thought you were someone else, and refused to answer your question; but you’re his own brother, and he wouldn’t have written back about you the way he did if you were no good.”

Shen Qingqiu feels a sort of wretched pleasure, too full and too empty at the same time. Of course his stupid, naiive little brother would think him wonderful and put nonsense about him in his letters. “And?”

“Strangers started sniffing around town almost as soon as he left,” Yun Ming continues. “I thought they were rogues hoping to find a disciple, or seniors from some smaller sect or other. And some of ‘em were.”

“But from what I can tell, about half of them have ties back to Huan Hua Palace, and for the last week, they’ve been trying to break into my office and threaten the locals for information. Those bastards want your brother and the way they’re going about it is anything but upright, so even if you hate me to death and want to kill me, I can still only turn to you to protect him.”

Shen Qingqiu’s face spasms for a split instant before darkening into a dour mask. A hand wrenches the back gate open, and he grabs Yun Ming by the arm.

“You are going to tell me everything you know.”

Chapter Text

When Lan Tianmeng and Cang Tianling return to their room a few days after Shen Yuan’s missed meeting with his brother, they find their newest shidi sitting in bed crying messily over an armful of books and letters. He looks up at them, snuffles wetly, and dissolves into more blubbering before even getting out a “hello.” Lan Tianmeng’s eyebrows shoot up, and he nudges Cang Tianling, who snaps out of his momentary shock in response.

“What happened?” A-Ling cries, skittering across the wooden floor to half-crouch by Shen Yuan’s bed in concern. “Shidi, did someone bully you? Did people write you mean notes? Just tell us who did it, your Meng-shixiong will go grab them by the ear for you! A note’s enough proof! Shizun absolutely doesn’t tolerate bullying!”

Between the two of them, Tianling has always been the words, while backing those words up usually falls to Tianmeng. He doesn’t mind, though; that’s probably why they fit so well together.

Shen Yuan hiccups and shakes his head, still sniffling, though he’d choked out a giggle at the thought of his eleven-year-old shixiong getting anybody by the ear. He tips the contents of his arms out onto the bed so they can see everything more clearly. Hesitantly, Cang Tianling picks one letter up, then another, glancing at the first few lines. Lan Tianmeng wanders over to look at the books.

“The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine and the Canon of Mo Zi? These don’t look like the library editions, though.” Lan Tianmeng carefully picks up the Yellow Emperor’s Classic to look at it. It’s an old copy, possibly not even the compilation used by Qian Cao, and when he flips it open, he makes a surprised noise.

It’s indeed not their Peak’s favored translation and format, but it’s also been heavily annotated by some doctor or cultivator of the past. He’s not much older than either A-Ling or A-Yuan, but he’s far enough along in his preliminary studies to recognize the value of the notes inside already, and he smiles. “A gift like this is a pretty good reason to cry. Who gave it to you, shidi?”

“Your family?” Cang Tianling guesses, holding up the letters from his sister and the other children.

“M-my fa-hamily,” he agrees, grinning stupidly through his tears.

Before, he had been worried about getting any replies at all; now he’s wondering how he’ll keep up with upwards of a dozen every time. Those brats back in Mao Yu can have someone else scribe for them, but poor Shen Yuan’s fingers are going to fall off! Based on Ru Yu’s letter, it’s sounding like Yun Ming decided to stop selling kids entirely after he left, no matter how good the offer seems, so Shen Yuan’s got more sort-of-siblings than he knows what to do with. “Th-they didn’t forget me.”

“Whoever could?” Cang Tianling laughs.

Ming Fan feels like he’s going out of his mind.

He somehow managed to scrape through the “discussion” with Qing Jing’s hallmasters, no thanks to Xiao Yunqi. Even so, cleaning up after that debacle has cost him. Nothing was said out loud, either in front of Qian Cao’s Head Disciple or in private, but the masters had shared a knowing look and unanimously failed to contradict Ming Fan’s lies. Xiao Yunqi had been content to let the lie stand and drop the matter without apparent follow-up; the masters had not. Invoices started appearing the next day for long-denied budgetary requests, along with the unspoken expectation that he had better find a way to get them approved, the sooner the better.

Which he hypothetically could, if he didn’t care about what his master would do to him the moment his overreach was noticed.

Now would be the time, if he wanted to try such a stupid thing. Shizun has been missing for a week now, after all, which is-- not normal, but not unprecedented, either. Except…

“And your shizun didn’t say when he would be returning?” The Sect Leader asks him again, while Ming Fan grips his own forearms behind his back.

“No, Yue-shibo. This disciple will naturally alert Qiong Ding the moment he returns. Until then, this disciple is handling lesser matters with the assistance of the hallmasters and seniors of shizun’s generation.”

“Are there many documents waiting for his personal attention?” he asks next, somewhat… wistfully?

Ming Fan suppresses a shudder. Like a phantom, he feels the memory of his shizun looming behind him, gripping his shoulder with a hand made of cold steel. He’s been warned harshly and extensively about forbidding entry to the Bamboo House when shizun isn’t present, and his shibo sounds like he’s fishing for an excuse to go in.

“No, Yue-shibo, only some personal correspondence,” he lies. For some reason, that worsens the air of wistfulness about his martial uncle. In fact, there is a modest stack of documents on his desk, only some of which are clearly letters. He couldn’t begin to guess at the nature of the rest, though, and has no desire to find out what his shizun would do to him if he returned to discover that either Ming Fan or Yue Qingyuan had gone through his things.

“Very well,” the Sect Leader agrees peaceably, if unhappily. “Then please take care, Ming-shizhi. If you require assistance with anything during your master’s absence, you need only reach out.”

“Thanking Yue-shibo for his consideration.”

Ming Fan watches him go with a twitching eyelid, thinking of all the paperwork piling up without his master’s authorization or input, all the rumors he’s still chasing down even now, the increased raids from Bai Zhan and sabotage from Xian Shu, the invoices waiting for him…

It’s time to blow off some steam. He’s let the Beast have his way long enough.

Shen Qingqiu did, in fact, make a single stop back on Qing Jing during his absence. About four days in, actually.

Luo Binghe knows, because he had woken up with the man standing above him in the near-darkness, in bloody black robes and clutching a glowing talisman. Not that he had recognized him, at first.

His scream had caught in his throat as he pressed himself back against the far wall of the shed, already scrabbling for something to use as a weapon. Anything, anything, he had thought, and anything had turned out to be a sharp-edged rock, whipped at the stranger’s face, a narrow log following right after.

A few moments later, an entirely different sort of terror had seized him as he watched the man raise a hand to touch the bleeding cut and bruise on his forehead and then look at the blood coating his elegant fingers with an unreadable expression.

“Sh-shizun,” he had barely managed to exhale, shaking too hard to get an apology out. Because that was indisputably his own shizun, the Lord of Qing Jing Peak, wearing simple black robes utterly at odds with his ordinary attire, already stained liberally with blood all across the chest and sleeves.

His vision swam, gorge rising unbidden, a flood of unbearable fear welling up inside like a black tide intent on drowning him. “Sh-sh-shizun—”

“You put qi into those,” Shen Qingqiu had remarked, almost mildly, rubbing the drying, tacky blood between his fingers. “Enough to hurt me.”

And then a blur-- nausea, pain, hands holding his struggling body down against the dirt floor, his shizun’s cold qi rushing through his burning spirit veins like the tidal wave of spring meltwater that arrives to scour the nearly-empty river beds each spring.

Oh. I was deviating?

Luo Binghe had come back to himself to the sight of his shizun gazing down at him with thoughtful neutrality.

“… Shizun. This unworthy disciple… begs forgiveness…”

“No,” Shen Qingqiu murmured, voice so low it was nearly a purr, except for the lack of any and all pleasure in it. Soft, contemplative. “This master doesn’t forgive you. Little beast, you’ve attacked your master and caused him injury. Are you prepared to atone?”

“… Yes.” Luo Binghe had closed his eyes, if only to slow down the tears starting to drip out, too weak to keep from crying entirely. Again.

“Good. Luo Binghe, you will suffer no stranger to approach Shen Yuan, no matter what their business is, until this master returns. No matter who they are, or where they come from. This master doesn’t care if it’s the Palace Master of Huan Hua or the Emperor himself-- if they try, you will turn them away, and if they persist, you will attack them as you just attacked this master. You will die before you allow Shen Yuan to fall into the wrong hands. Swear it.”

… That was all?

“This disciple swears. This disciple would swear even if shizun didn’t command it,” he had whispered, completely honestly.

Shen Qingqiu had brushed a lock of hair away from his face, expression twisted and impossible to fully interpret in the dim light, painful and angry and hurt and something else, and then disappeared nearly as swiftly as he’d come.

If Luo Binghe hadn’t woken up with a letter shoved into the sleeve of his robes the next day, he would have thought it some strange nightmare. And now…

“Done!” Shen Yuan dusts his hands off and turns the drawing slate towards their martial siblings.

They’re all sitting outside in the courtyard of the Lavendar dormitory, both boys and girls scattered around on an eclectic assortment of stools, rocks, cushions and blankets. Although female disciples are allowed in the courtyard areas of the boys’ dormitories and vice-versa, entering each other’s rooms isn’t, so they had hauled the blackboard outside a while ago when Shen Yuan’s friends from Zhou Chi came calling.

The ‘blackboard’ was something Shen Yuan worked out not long into his discipleship-- a large flat plane of slate rock, cut very thin and polished silky-smooth, then set into a wooden frame, with delicate little arrays cut into the back to keep the brittle stone from shattering easily. It was too large for Shen Yuan to carry comfortably in his arms, but light enough to be placed on the swiveling book stands produced by An Ding’s Research and Development division, who had grabbed the concept with both hands and taken off running. The project has long since spiraled out of Shen Yuan’s hands, but he was allowed to keep the prototype.

Apparently, it had come up during one of his sessions with Mu Qingfang; Shen Yuan had been lamenting the inability to quickly draw or write, and wished for something he called a ‘whiteboard.’ The whiteboard, it turned out, wasn’t possible to achieve with Shen Yuan’s level of technical understanding, but he had been able to figure out how to make a ‘blackboard,’ the less complex forebear from his previous life.

It was remarkably useful for communicating information quickly, and some of the Qian Cao hallmasters had already begun testing the larger and more sophisticated versions during classes.

“It’s cute!” one of the shijies sitting nearby cries, pulling Luo Binghe from his ruminating. About half a dozen of them are eagerly adding the new beast to their hand-made bestiaries already.

The creature Shen Yuan has sketched on the blackboard this time looks something like a huli jing pup, a foxlike animal with a fairly short snout, guileless eyes and a curling, fluffy mane on top of its head like a horse. The round, puppyish paws have been shaded in, giving it socks like a dog, and it has six curling tails that fan out behind it in a way that puts him in mind of peacocks.

“It’s a Liuwei! I know, ‘six tails’ isn’t really an original name, but I didn’t name it, I swear! They’re born with just one white tail, but if they’re well cared for, it splits over time into six and starts to curl like that. They have a sweet disposition, though they’re a little vain, and I read that they make good pets for the sick and elderly because they love to bask on people’s laps like a living hot-water bottle, but they aren’t too heavy. Their internal flame can be controlled pretty easily, their fur is especially soft, and they have less fighting spirit than some other Elemental Beasts, so they’re also popular pets for people who don’t intend to battle seriously. Even more ambitious tamers often keep them, though, because Liuwei who live long enough or absorb enough Fire-aspect energy from special artifacts or locations have the potential to become Jiuwei.”

He turns the slate back towards himself, and uses the cloth Binghe hands him to erase the old image while he starts on another, still chattering. “Jiuwei are much more powerful than Liuwei, but they’re also much more intelligent and prideful, so they’re harder to handle for amateurs; it doesn’t happen often, but some people rush their Beast through its growth without either teaching it properly or forging a true bond, and I bet we can all predict how that tends to turn out.” Luo Binghe nudges a cup of water into Shen Yuan’s hand when he pauses to wipe them and select a new piece of chalk to draw with, and watches him drink with satisfaction.

“Thank you,” Shen Yuan tells him with absentminded fondness, and Luo Binghe soaks it up like rain.

He’s been staying on Qian Cao for the last three days, and has never been happier in his life. The only thing that could possibly make it more perfect is if his mother was here to share it with him. He wishes she had survived just a few more years; somehow, he just knows that if he so much as mentioned her, Shen Yuan would find a way to get the sect to hire her, perhaps as a creche minder. She would have liked that.

“A very young Jiuwei is probably at least as intelligent as a child, while a very old one is likely to be much smarter than the average human, and can develop Mind-aspect powers in addition to their inherent Flame-aspect abilities. Some reports claim that Jiuwei who gain the Mind aspect are capable of human speech through telepathy, which doesn’t surprise me. Isn’t that only scientific? Wild Jiuwei are very rare, because the conditions necessary for a Liuwei to absorb enough energy safely are unlikely outside of partnership with humans, but that also means that wild Jiuwei are likely to be exceptionally powerful due to the number of trials they had to endure alone.”

“Does that one have a third form?” one of the boys asks. “Like the Penhuolong?”

(Something inside Shen Yuan feels quite smug; somehow, he just knew his shixiongdi would love Penhuolong.)

“No, but a population of Liuwei became stranded in a tropical land with many Water-aspect beasts, and were driven to seek refuge in the mountaintops, where they had an advantage against the native Ice-aspect beasts. Over time, they slowly shed their Fire-aspect and took on the Ice aspect, gaining a different form and name. The locals revere them as benevolent snow spirits, and the Ice-aspect Jiuwei is known to come to stranded mountain travelers and guide them back down to the lower slopes.”

“Shen-shixiong should have joined our Zhou Chi,” one of them sighs. “It’s so unfair that we can only meet once a week. Shixiong is certain these creatures can’t be found here? I want a Baihaishi so much…”

“Pretty sure,” Shen Yuan says, “but I think there’s actually a spirit beast a lot like it somewhere here in the Middle Kingdom. If shimei wants, next time I visit my brother on Qing Jing, I’ll ask to use the library and see if I can find it.”

“Aah, shixiong, I couldn’t possibly impose—”

Luo Binghe tunes out the chatter of their martial siblings for a while in favor of admiring Shen Yuan, but the sound of their voices forms a warm, comfortable backdrop like summer rain.

And deep down, a traitorous, terrible part of Luo Binghe wishes Shen Qingqiu would never come back.