Thread by @bingjiuwus

#shenjiu, mortal SJ AU Part II:

"A-Yan, where's the laundry? It's dark already!"

"I'm doing it now, A'Niang!"

_For heaven's sake_, A-Yan thought with a roll of his eyes as he hurried out of the house and towards the fields where the family's clothes had been drying all day.

https://twitter.com/bingjiuwus/status/1595883268381241344

The old woman didn't have to nag just because he got distracted and came back late from collecting firewood! Maybe he'd gotten waylaid and snacked on some wild apples, but so what, there was hardly ever enough food to go around at the best of times. You had to eat when you could.

With a mutter under his breath he pulled off the clothes from the bamboo poles they'd been hanging on. A'Niang's clothes, A'Die's clothes, Da-ge's and Meimei's, check, check -

Except when he reached for the dark green robe he'd bought a month ago with his own savings, his hand grabbed only fistfuls of air.

"The hell...?" A-Yan looked around, baffled at where his robe could have gone. Was it a thief? If anyone had been around someone would have seen it, theirs was the only house around for li.

Unbelievable. Of all the clothes that could have gone missing, it just had to be his.

The robe had been made of good cloth too, thick and warm and waterproof. How many pheasants was he going to have to hunt to make up for it...?

A-Yan turned back to glare at the guilty spot on the bamboo pole, only to see what he hadn't a moment before - a tiny pouch dangling from the pole like it had always belonged there.

What in the world...? He untied the pouch and shook out its contents into his palm - and fell right onto his rump in shock.

It was a pristine silver ingot, worth a tael - no, ten taels! The only time A-Yan had seen silver ingots before was when Da-jie got married and her bride price was used to build an extension to the house...!

Could this be payment? he wondered hysterically. Had he been robbed by an immortal, perhaps? How else would this sudden bounty make sense? His robe was hardly worth two hundred wen, and yet...

And yet...

_Here's to the future bride price_, he thought with newfound cheer, and pocketed the ingot before picking up the laundry basket and heading back to the house, whistling all the time.

Seems like things were finally turning up A-Yan's way!

*

Shen Jiu walked.

It had been five days and nights since he had left Cang Qiong, making as much separation between him and his former sect daily before his legs shook from the exertion of the march and he was so hungry he had to stop to eat lest his stomach devour himself from the inside out.

Maintaining his broken body had always been a trial, but while he'd been a cultivator he had been able to overwhelm most of the injuries Qiu Jianluo and Wu Yanzi had left on him through his superior cultivation. He had had inedia, and his inadequate - but working - golden core.

Although his core burned small and weak compared to Liu Qingge or Yue Qingyuan, it had been his. He would have been guaranteed at least two, three centuries of immortality before his health failed him at last.

Now, he doubted he would survive the next three years on his own.

He had thought, naively, that as he'd advanced in his cultivation that he'd healed from the years of starvation and beating and heretic experimentation that had come before. Instead, it seemed all his cultivation had done was veil the damage for him.

Now his golden core was gone -

His shield was gone -

And SJ ached all over, and didn't know how long he'd be able to go on like this.

Looking at him now, no one would have ever been able to tell he had once been a majestic immortal; more a vagrant swordsman on his last legs.

Having foolishly left his vast stores of clothing behind in his cottage and disrobed himself in sheer self-loathing in front of the little beast, he had stolen a robe from some farmer's family and now it was his only real piece of clothing.

The long black hair he had taken care of as fastidiously as if it was his child was tied into a low knotted bun at the back of his neck, a plain wooden hairpin his only ornament.

As for Xiu Ya, SJ kept it in his qiankun pouch - the only one he had left, while carrying a walking stick in hand.

(He needed it.)

He had stayed all the nights at an inn so far, after trying the first night to camp in a forest and realising his bones couldn't handle it anymore.

He felt every mosquito bite itch into his bones, every pebble dig into his back and dirt seep into his fingernails. His eyes watered when he lit a small fire for warmth, coughing up a storm when he inhaled in some rotten snake.

Not to mention, he was so _cold_ nowadays.

This body of his had become as delicate as a princess', only without the pampering such a body deserved. Even as SJ had spent nights at inns after that first excruciating night, he knew it wouldn't last.

After he left CQ, he had visited the Red Warm Pavilion for the last time.

Dumped out what valuables he had left in his qiankun pouch to buy out his jiejies' freedom, for he wouldn't be able to keep them company anymore.

He had lingered just enough to see the madam give them their redemption papers from behind the embroidered screen in her office before leaving without saying a word.

He had maybe twenty or so taels left on him. After that -

Well. Xiao Ji had always made a very good beggar.

*

He must have passed out somewhere.

SJ groaned as consciousness came back to him in random bursts of memory and - and what had he been doing? Where had he been?

He was lying upon a bed, however stiff it was, so he must be inside. He heard muttering voices here and there and shuddered. He didn't know who they were - he had to -

He reached blindly for his qiankun pouch on his waist and found nothing on him. SJ snapped his eyes open at last and tried to scramble out of the bed in haste, only to collapse onto a hard mud floor and nearly break his face in the fall.

There was a little scream of fright. Then a voice: "Hua'er, call for the doctor!"

Hands reached for SJ's body, his face, and he lashed out in terror, hitting soft flesh.

"Easy!" the voice scolded him. "What's wrong with you! Hitting an old woman..."

SJ lifted his head up to see who said voice belonged to, and paled when he saw an aged woman in brown robes glaring back at him.

"Look at you," the woman sniffed as she got back on her feet, dusting off the front of her robes. "And here my husband said we should leave you on the path where we found you. Perhaps he was right!"

SJ had never been so ashamed of himself in his life.

"This master apologises for his disgraceful manners," he mumbled under his breath.

"What was that?" The woman hadn't heard him properly.

"This - I mean, I'm sorry, Madam," SJ said hoarsely. "Where am I?"

"Our home," the old woman said. "Get back into bed, you look horrible."

SJ reluctantly heaved himself back into the rickety bed, limbs straining all the while. "My - my things?" he asked helplessly, knowing how truly screwed he'd be if he lost Xiu Ya once and for all.

"Over here, don't worry." The woman's face softened at last, as she went over to a dresser and grabbed the qiankun pouch sitting on top of it, before throwing it lightly towards SJ.

"My daughter-in-law's washing your robe, don't worry," the woman said. "We didn't - well, I told her not to look inside your pouch."

SJ gripped onto the qiankun pouch tightly. "My thanks to your family," he said. "But I should be going now - "

"It's already evening," the old woman said. "And the nearest town is five miles away. Where do you think you'll go?"

SJ didn't know. That didn't mean he wanted to sleep among strangers either. He opened his mouth, only for the woman to hold up her hand and say,

"My granddaughter's the one who found you. I just sent her to get the doctor - if she comes back and finds you gone, what will she think? That you magically got better, or that you died and Nainai buried you instead?"

SJ's expression bulged.

"Just the night," the old woman said. "Then you'll be free to do go as you like."

"... alright," SJ said reluctantly.

*

The family that had found him lived in a small farming village surrounded otherwise by forest. SJ had been wandering aimlessly for perhaps a month now, down to the last of his funds and his body screaming with hunger when one afternoon it had given out at last, and he collapsed.

He would have died there on his own, he thought, if apparently the woman's - Nainai's - granddaughter Hua'er hadn't found him white-faced and drooling while coming back from the mountain picking berries.

The village doctor came to see SJ, with a small girl hovering behind him.

Only, SJ had no desire to be examined by a stranger and barred the door of the little room he was being kept in when he saw the man approach. He'd had enogh of Mu Qingfang's prodding and needles over the years...!

There were several hard knocks on the door, then some grumbling and the sound of footsteps.

Finally, Nainai spoke from the other side of the barred door: "He went back home. I brought dinner?"

She could be lying, perhaps, but everyone in the household were clearly mortals.

That didn't necessarily matter at the moment, for even a particularly eager ten-year-old could choke SJ out right now. But he grudgingly unbarred the door nonetheless, and creaked it open a sliver.

"No doctors," he said through the crack.

"... no doctors," Nainai repeated with a sigh. "Here."

She passed SJ a large bowl of watery congee mixed with greens and a poached yellow egg. "It's not much," she said. "But you won't die on it."

No, he wouldn't. Not to mention eggs were precious foodstuff wherever you went.

SJ ate his fill slowly and left the bowl outside his door, barring it once again when he had the strength.

Nevertheless, he stayed awake all night.

*

He couldn't keep running forever.

It wasn't merely that his body had given up in his month or so of careless wandering about the Mortal Realm; the weather itself was growing colder, wetter, and his boots breaking down from dirt and muck and filth.

When he stayed in an inn (when he could _afford_ to) and warmed himself by the hearth he could feel his breath rattle in his lungs and his body take ages to get warm again.

Not to mention the sequelae. The only time SJ felt warm nowadays was when he sank into a hot bath.

Perhaps, he thought, his time had all but come. In that case, he should at least find himself a beautiful gravesite, and settle down until he died there.

Indeed, that would be a fitting end for the man once known as Shen Qingqiu.

*

"We can't accept this," Nainai said.

It was the morning after, and SJ had only left the room once he'd been handed over his outer robe again, dressing himself as quickly as he could so he could thank the family and get out. He'd even put a silver tael on the kitchen table, only for Nainai to refuse him at once.

"Take it," SJ said. He didn't have time to haggle at the moment. "Then my debt is repaid."

"There's no such debt," Nainai said, the little girl Hua'er sucking on her thumb beside her. "Who would accept money for saving a life?"

She called this _saving_? "Fine," SJ snapped.

"Then give me the name of someone who's willing to sell land to me. I want a plot."

"You want to buy land?" The old woman said dubiously.

"A patch, a shack, it doesn't matter." He grimaced. "Just need to stay in one place for a while."

"... the land around here's all spoken for," Nainai said finally.

Fuck. Of course it was. Why did he even bother?

"But there's an old cottage in the forest," she added reluctantly after seeing his expression. "No one lives there anymore, but if you just need shelter, it's there. No one will fight you for it either."

"Where is it," SJ croaked.

"Just up the path through the village," she said. "Young man, at least stay for breakfast, my daughter-in-law made mantou - "

"Thank you," SJ said, and left.

(He didn't take the tael back with him either.)

*

It took him half a day to reach the cottage, but for once the weather was warm and breezy, and there was running spring water to drink. SJ's stomach growled with hunger, but there was nothing to do but shake it off and see if he had found decent shelter for the night.

It turned out he had. The cottage was a simple two-room thatched hut, the smaller room holding a somehow intact earthen stove and a water vat, the larger room thick with dust and a few pieces of old wooden furniture. A table, a chair, an empty luohan bed.

It was no abode for a self-respecting immortal, but SJ was neither anymore, and so - so it sufficed.

He dragged himself over to the dusty luohan bed - no mattress, just slats of aged bamboo - and laid down, curling up into a ball as tightly as he could manage.

It would have to do, he thought dimly as his eyelids sagged shut and he drifted off into an uneasy, exhausted sleep after the day's heavy march.

As his future gravesite, it would have to do.

END OF PART II

(For SJ's cottage, I'm thinking of the Du Fu Thatched Cottage as a reference, only much smaller, maybe only 1/3 the size, or maybe a slightly bigger version of Puqi Shrine. Either way, tough living for a semi-invalid 🥲

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:…

Although I do have a general idea for this AU, this is definitely one I'll kinda update only if I really feel like it, so don't hang on for updates too much. SJ is in a pretty dark spot at the moment, alas, and it won't get better for a while 😥)