Chapter Text
Luo "Bingge" crossed through the portal and left that chaotic scene behind because he felt like he was going to vomit. The veins in his neck were bulging and his head emitted a loud buzzing. It felt like his heart beat in his ears like an incessant hammer, without giving a truce. For the first time in a long time his hands shook, and he wanted to tear off particularly that hand he extended to this Shen Qingqiu, asking him to leave with him.
The look of incredulity and the manner in which the two conducted themselves, as if that were something that would never happen, provoked a reaction of revulsion in Luo Binghe. He was the original. He went through much more suffering than that copy, cheap and deviated. Why? Why was he still suffering?
He did not know the reason, but he was still not prepared to go away and abandon that. Recalculating the route in a very skillful manner, he merely molded a copy of Xin Mo with his spiritual power, took the true one while the two licked their wounds, and acted in the stupidest way possible. Asking Shen Qingqiu to go with him was not in his plans.
A little wounded by the battle against himself, he rested on a tree while putting some bones back into place.
The truth was that, if he had not made that version of Shen Qingqiu dream of the past, he would not believe the direction that story had taken. Worse still, he knew the truth. Upon analyzing that person in a minutely detailed way, he perceived that he was not just an alternative version of Shen Qingqiu, he was another person, receiving commands from something much larger. Luo Binghe managed to touch such a perception, but to dare to deepen it could awaken some reaction in Shen Qingqiu that would ruin his disguise. Whatever.
To be honest, Luo Binghe was bored. He had completed his vengeance, collected more than three digits of lovers, and, after all, had his ending.
But why did he feel this way? Always insatiable. Always lingering around that destroyed bamboo peak. Always unsatisfied. What? What? What was missing?
Clack! He put his collarbone back into place with rage. In this process, he did not sketch any reaction. Was that impostor being cared for by that scum? Probably.
"Tsk," he let out while licking a drop of blood from the corner of his lip. His wounds would not last long. If Binghe returned to his reality, he knew exactly what would be waiting. But this? This that happened here and now? This was interesting. This made him feel with a little bit of life.
He wanted to enjoy much more of that Shen Qingqiu. If necessary, he would amuse himself and kill him later. But for that, it would be difficult to discard the other.
"What to do…," he whispered in a low voice with a bloodthirsty gleam in his eyes.
Luo Binghe sat in the meditation position while curing his wounds and thinking of some alternative. Xin Mo demonstrated signs of life. It was as if several voices united in a single chorus in a desperate way, each of them trying to rip the nerves of his brain: "Devour him, devour him.."
Luo Binghe furrowed his brow. He must keep the demonic sword under control again.
He ransacked the memory of that scum villain, Shen Qingqiu, and saw everything he had lived with his pathetic copy. And then he perceived two things.
The first was that his beginning and that of that Luo Binghe had been equal. Only one change happened: Shen Qingqiu spent a time sick. This had not happened in his history, the beatings had never stopped. After that, the behavior of Shen Qingqiu altered.
The second thing he perceived was that Shen Qingqiu got strange from time to time. Luo Bingge got very good at reading his expressions in the course of those long infernal years. It was not his expression of coldness or arrogance, but as if he had disappeared. As if he were resolving matters inside his own head in a very slow way. It was there that Luo Bingge perceived something wrong. The soul of Shen Qingqiu was a mess.
Deep into the night, he emanated a cold air. Binghe looked paler than normal and his eyes, even closed, moved behind his eyelids as if he were dreaming. His demonic energy flowed more constant and there was a light purple aura in the particles of the air around him. The trunk of the tree where he leaned had begun to darken and wither, sucked by the proximity of that ancient power.
After a long time, he opened both eyes all at once. With the moonlight reflected in them, a red and purple gleam seemed to have run through his iris, and he smiled. In the distance, a wolf howled.
The power around him receded, gathering itself like a beast that obeys the owner.
He had a plan.