Thread by @bingjiuwus

#shenjiu, mortal SJ Part V:

Liu Qingge gasped back to life with a hacking cough and the worst headache of his life.

https://twitter.com/bingjiuwus/status/1639823810529734658

His heart hammered a thousand beats in his chest, every muscle in his body screaming for mercy as he tried to get up - fell - tried to get up again, and see where he was.

He was... he was... his vision finally refocused, and he looked around the empty, ruined cave in disbelief.

Right. He had been in the Lingxi Caves. He had been... meditating? Training with Cheng Luan? He had been doing _something_, and then...

Trying to remember anything but the vaguest sense of pain and tribulation was enough to send his thoughts spiraling and LQG clutch his temples until the pain went away.

Whatever had happened to him here, his body didn't want to remember.

Fine.

It could have only been a qi deviation that caused the mess in the cave. _His_ qi deviation. LQG had reallly... lost his head and smashed up Cang Qiong's most precious spiritual resource.

If he'd been an ounce less careful in his rampaging madness, he could have caved the entire cave system in.

Or killed someone, he thought with a shudder.

Cheng Luan lay sprawled on the cave floor more than a dozen feet away and out of its protective sheath. LQG hobbled towards it, taking in slow careful breaths as he did.

God, but he really felt like shit. What the hell had he done to himself? Even his robes were half in tatters.

Not to mention how his stomach ached with the memory of a wound already healed over. Had he, in his idiocy, even stabbed himself?

Honestly, how the fuck was he even alive?

Only... only him conquering his breakthrough must have saved him from killing himself with his own sword, LQG realised, and came to a halt.

And closed his eyes, and looked within himself.

From the day he was born his mother opined dryly that her newborn son had all the world's yang and not a drop of yin contained in his tiny body. With time, everyone else learned to agree with her.

The newest scion of the noble Liu clan would one day become a physical cultivator like none else - just look at his potent his yang qi was, how easily he channelled it into strength and ferocity like others would close their hands into fists.

It was a gift one could only be born with. A god-given talent, as it were.

Everyone else had always praised his skill, his superior physical strength, but his mother, a spiritual cultivator herself, had remained ambivalent.

"Ah, Jin'er," she told him once, when he came back from a family hunt after wrestling a grown aurochs to the ground - at the age of ten. "If only you had a little yin in you. Perhaps that would make you less reckless..."

If only he'd had a little yin in him, perhaps he'd be a little calmer, a little more sensible, a little less likely to hurt himself in a rush.

If only...

In all his life LQG had only experienced the cool river of yin energy flood his meridians via transfusion; from his mother, his teachers, Qian Cao. Always, it had belonged to someone else, and his spirit veins greedily sucked up the sweetness while it briefly lasted.

Until now.

LQG channelled qi into his meridians, and _both_ yang and yin flowed inside him in equal measure. Pure, fluid, _harmonious_.

Everything was in alignment. Everything was _perfect_. And his golden core...

Denser than the heart of a star, and twice as brilliant. LQG had leapt over multiple stages and breakthroughs and become a Nascent Soul cultivator overnight. Even Zhangmen-shixiong...

He put that dangerous thought aside for now.

As LQG finally picked up Cheng Luan though, he wondered why the bloodied hand print on the hilt looked nothing like his.

*

"Liu-shishu! Liu-shishu! Help us, please! We're under attack!"

The first people to greet LQG as he left the Lingxi Caves after months of seclusion were a group of panicked children in black - Qiong Ding disciples, and still too young to carry more than training swords by the look of them.

LQG's mind had been in a strange daze as he'd traversed out of the caves as he contemplated why and _how_ yin qi flowed inside his spirit veins as if it had always belonged to him. Despite the surreal, confusing experience, for once his heart was calm.

He didn't feel like running off to chase down the nearest legendary beast. He didn't feel restless, he didn't feel impatient, he didn't feel like grinding Shen Qingqiu's face into the dirt, he didn't...

Shen Qingqiu. For once, the reminder of his wastrel of a shixiong didn't make bile rise to the back of LQG's throat. Strange.

(Though perhaps it would be amusing to see the man's reaction when he discovered LQG had become a Nascent Soul cultivator and he remained in Mid Core Formation, as he had for the past decade. Maybe he'd get so angry they'd have to rename Qing Jing into Tong Hong Peak. Ha.

What a sight that would be. Shen Qingiu's red cheeks huffing and puffing as he stalked away with his fan clutched to splinters in his thin white hand...)

Huh.

The urgency of the Qiong Ding brats brought LQG back to reality and clarity. He was no longer in the caves, to meditate whole months and years away if he preferred.

"Right," LQG said, and straightened up. God, but he felt so _alive._ "Show me where those bastards are."

*

The demon girl in red's bravado lasted all of three seconds before LQG descended upon her and her army of demonic beasts like an avenging martial god.

It was easy. It was just _so_ easy. LQG didn't even have to unsheathe Cheng Luan to end the Sha brat's cowardly attempt at invading Cang Qiong while most of the Peak Lords were absent or in seclusion.

He just had to lift his hand, and the thousands of sword beams that materialised out from the cloudless blue sky and shot down their targets with brilliant, bloodless effort did all the work for him.

Her army dead in their tracks before her, Sha Hualing could only submit to LQG's mercy or face the same astonishing fate as they just had.

It was, in every sense, a flawless victory. And yet as the hordes of Cang Qiong disciples cheered for LQG's success over the wicked demon, he wondered why it felt so... cheap.

Like he hadn't earned his victory at all.

Like it wasn't really his.

*

The strangeness followed LQG for the rest of the day. Even as he ferried injured brat after brat to Qian Cao on Cheng Luan until the Rainbow Bridge was hastily fixed, even as Zhangmen-shixiong rushed back and said, "Liu-shidi, are you alright?", LQG didn't know what to say.

He... _was_ alright, wasn't he?

He was perfectly fine, even. No one had even managed to land a scratch on him.

Next to him, Mu Qingfang coughed. "Shixiong, you look like you've been mauled by a beast."

LQG looked down at his tattered robes and blinked. "Oh." He hadn't changed yet. "No, that wasn't from the girl. She didn't hurt me."

"So more than a dozen teenagers have breathlessly recounted for me," MQF said dryly. "Surely you didn't go into your seclusion looking like that, did you, shixiong?"

LQG snorted, crossing his arms. "Of course not. I just... had some trouble with my meditation. I'm fine now."

"So he keeps saying," MQF said. "Yet the fool won't even let me check his meridians. One would think you were Shen-shixiong, honestly."

LQG noticed Yue Qingyuan's smile grow tight at the mention of SQQ. For once he understood the Qing Jing Peak Lord's relcatrinance at having his wrist constantly pawed at and examined for flaws within his spirit veins.

Whose business was it but his own _what_ condition his meridians were in to begin with?

"Liu-shidi," YQY said. "You just came out of seclusion and had to use your newly improved cultivation immediately. I'm sure it couldn't have been easy for you."

_Actually, it was frighteningly easy,_ LQG thought but didn't say. For some reason he didn't think Zhangmen-shixiong would appreciate the comment.

"Won't you let Mu-shidi check your veins, just to be sure?"

... there was no way getting out of this, was there. LQG held up his wrist, resigned, and just as MQF put fingers on his pulse and began to channel his own soft qi into him, said, "Before you say anything, I have no fucking idea how it happened either."

MQF almost fell out of his chair in astonishment when, for the first time since he'd become LQG's doctor he felt gentle yin qi respond to his spiritual probing, and not just yang. "_Apparently_," he gasped. "How...?"

LQG shrugged. Again, he had no goddamn idea.

"What is it?" YQY looked concerned. "Mu-shidi, is there damage?"

"The _opposite_," MQF said, flabbergasted. "Liu-shixiong's veins are _perfect._ Better than they've ever been. Not to mention - " His voice cracked in astonishment as it rose. "I guess you really are a prodigy found once only every ten thousand years."

Was he? LQG thought as MQF did his best to explain what the fuck was going on with LQG's cultivation without completely losing his mind.

Or had he just been given a strange boon he'd never asked for in the first place?

*

A memory haunted him.

It was one no part of him could put to sight, but as LQG lay in his own bed in Bai Zhan for the first time in months, unable to sleep, he tried to piece it together without his head threatening to split apart.

What had happened in the Lingxi Caves, really? Had he just qi deviated and attacked himself before breaking through into Nascent Soul and becoming whole again?

Could it... really have been so simple as that?

Qi deviations were rare for LQG, but not so impossible that merely having one would send his psyche into a frothing self-protection via amnesia so his mind wouldn't fall apart.

Again, he was reminded of SQQ. Suffering a qi deviation once in a while wasn't shameful. Refusing to learn his lesson and trying to cram through breakthrough after breakthrough when he had all the time in the world to pace himself _was_.

How many times had the man set his own progress back because he just couldn't wait?

(Once, when they'd been disciples LQG had walloped SQQ in a fight, and left him on the ground gasping. Later, he'd found out via the Qian Cao grape vine that SQQ had suffered a qi deviation after the fight, and had to spend a month in recovery.

LQG's own disquieting role in setting the qi deviation off had caused him to write home for advice, for once, and make him decide to leave SQQ alone the next time the man tried to wind up into a fight. It just wasn't worth it.

... that was, until his shidi came limping back to Bai Zhan black and blue one night, and told LQG with blood dripping down his swollen jaw just how it had happened, and who had done it to him.)

SQQ. Why did LQG keep thinking about him? The two of them hadn't snapped at each other in months, not since LQG went into seclusion and SQQ continued ruling his peak like a petty tyrant, and...

Had SQQ been on Cang Qiong when the demons invaded?

LQG jolted up in bed and thought about it. SQQ might be a pissant and trust his martial siblings as far as he could throw them, but he wouldn't have allowed any demon to disrespect the sect either.

He would have seen the chaos coming from Qiong Ding. He would have flown over on Xiu Ya and defended the sect and its disciples alongside LQG.

Perhaps they'd have even fought side by side...

But if he hadn't been on Qing Jing... and LQG _knew_ he hadn't left Cang Qiong since his brats had a scare in Shuanghu City, then...

Then where _was_ he?

*

Stupid. So fucking stupid.

There was no reason for the Bai Zhan Peak Lord to stand in front of the entrance of the Lingxi Caves in nothing but his inner robes and his hair roughly tied back, but LQG had been unable to stay still anymore.

For some strange sickly reason he had a feeling it wasn't a coincidence he kept thinking about SQQ, even though the man had nothing to do with him.

The blurry memory in the caves. The shattered walls, the violence as if there had been a brutal fight within. Cheng Luan cast aside, with a bloodied hand print too small to be his.

And the yin energy that now flowed inside LQG, pure and sweet and cool as mountain spring water.

SQQ was a yin cultivator. Within his meridians flowed only pure yin, like LQG's flowed only pure yang.

Right...?

He just had to make sure -

"Liu-shidi?"

LQG whipped around in a shock with Cheng Luan out, only to stare wide-eyed at an equally astonished YQY, holding a night pearl for light and still dressed in full regalia.

"... shidi," YQY said in a careful voice. "One of the lookouts thought they saw someone approach the caves, and no one has been given permission recently. Your seclusion just ended. I wouldn't recommend going back inside so quickly - "

"Besides me," LQG burst out. "_Have_ you given anyone permission to go inside the caves lately?"

"... just one," YQY said after a strange pause. "Qingqiu-shidi, a few weeks ago. Why are you asking?"

Fucking hell. "I - I think I have some of his qi inside me," LQG said, hysteria rising to the back of his throat like bile. "I just want to make sure he's still there - "

The night pearl in YQY's hand shattered.

All around him, glowing white powder scattered and coated YQY's black robes in a thousand tiny stars.

"His _qi_...?" he whispered. "What do you mean by that, Liu-shidi...?"

LQG ran a shaking hand through his hair, feeling like he was going mad. "I don't _know_. There's this block in my mind of when I was in the caves. I had a qi deviation and attacked myself - or I thought I did? But it just doesn't make sense. Did I fight myself or someone else?

Did my body heal itself or did someone else do it for me? And is..." His voice sagged in a slow, simmering realisation. "Is this yin energy even _mine_ ... or did it belong to someone else first?"

Had it belonged to _SQQ_ first?

"Give me your wrist," YQY whispered.

It was not a question. Zhangmen-shixiong stared at LQG with haunted black eyes and a body that spoke of nothing but stillness.

LQG had seen that posture once, when he'd been in the forest on his own as a disciple. He'd thought he had been hunting a tiger, when the tiger had always been hunting him.)

LQG lifted his wrist, and YQY took it in silence.

A heartbeat. Zhangmen-shixiong probing his meridians took only a heartbeat.

Then an expression of utter horror and despair as LQG had never seen before crossed his shixiong's face, and without a word of explanation the man turned heel and _ran_ into the Lingxi Caves.

And knowing what he knew now, LQG could only follow, and pray neither of them were too late.

*

LQG saw now what he hadn't seen before.

Blood, so much blood. He'd thought it only his own, then, but of course it couldn't have been.

Tattered pieces of cloth here and there. The dried blood and filth had disguised most of the identifying details, but even so, as LQG held the remains of a torn sleeve in his hand, he recognised the embroidery on the cuff, the familiar bamboo pattern.

A robe belonging to Qing Jing's Peak Lord, and no one else.

In the heart of the ruined cave that had been LQG's abode during his seclusion, YQY stood still and unmoving, save for one hand that flexed and unflexed automatically, as if he had lost his senses.

Perhaps he had. His affection for SQQ had always been incomprehensible and one-sided, but it had been real.

"Zhangmen-shixiong," LQG said with a sick feeling in his stomach. "We should - "

A hand closed around his bare throat and slammed him back first into the wall.

"Liu-shidi," YQY said tonelessly as LQG gasped for air against his enormous hand as it tried to crush his throat. "Tell me why I should believe you didn't kill Qingqiu-shidi in this very cave."

LQG scrabbled against his forearms. "... never... kill..." he wheezed, turning red. "... never..."

"You said it yourself," YQY said. "You can hardly remember what happened here. You fell into a qi deviation. You can't be blamed for what might or might not have happened as a result. Even if..." His voice wavered. "Even if someone else was in the way."

LQG dug his nails into YQY's arms, gouging bloody wounds into them in desperation. "... never... still my shixiong..."

"You hated each other," YQY said in madness. "Qingqiu always said he would kill you one day. Even so. Even so - " He began to laugh a little. "You couldn't have even left a body for me to bury? You couldn't even - "

"THAT'S BECAUSE I DIDN'T KILL HIM!"

LQG smashed his head against YQY's in a rage, praying he did real brain damage to him; the man let go of him in shock and let him fall to the ground. LQG heaved in fresh air and scrabbled up to his feet, charging forward to knock YQY off his feet and send him sprawling.

Fury and betrayal wound him up as he grabbed his own Sect Leader by the back of the neck and smashed his face into the ground while keeping the rest of him pinned down.

"I MAY HAVE... HATED SHEN QINGQIU... BUT I NEVER WANTED TO KILL HIM... EVER!"

Rage overwhelmed him, rage and fury and betrayal. As if he would have ever... ever...! To think YQY thought he was a murderer just like that, a backstabber in defense of fucking SQQ of all people when it was the other way around -

When -

When...

SQQ, who was missing.

SQQ, whose pure yin qi flowed in LQG's meridians this very moment.

SQQ, whose shredded robes lay in pieces all around in the cave, caked in his blood, and SQQ, whose trembling hand had clenched around Cheng Luan just before he threw it away...

All the blood and fury drained from LQG in a heartbeat, and he let go, and collapsed, and wept.

Had he... really killed SQQ?

*

"I'm sorry."

YQY spoke in a hoarse rasp next to LQG. Despite the fact that they'd nearly tried to murder each other just now, he seemed to have finally come to his senses and now awkwardly patted LQG on the back, even with his swollen face and blood dripping down his nose.

He looked like shit.

LQG looked like shit too. Felt worse.

"Zhangmen-shixiong," he croaked. "I'll take responsibility. I'll pay his family restitution. I'll - remove myself from the sect and cut my hair. And then - then - "

He would slit his throat with Cheng Luan, and beg his shixiong for forgiveness in the afterlife, and pray he found him before SQQ took Meng Po's soup and never looked back at LQG again.

"You won't do anything," YQY said. "Not until we find Qingqiu-shidi. I'm... I apologise for accusing you like that. I lost my senses."

"I tried to bash your head in," LQG muttered.

"It's fine. I tried to kill you first." YQY smiled wanly. "Now come on, shidi. Let's get out of here and put our heads together - without trying to break each other's skulls this time."

And hobbled and pathetic though they both were, they helped each other out of the Lingxi Caves.

*

"Ming-shizhi, when was the last time you saw your shizun?"

Ming Fan stood rigid with his hands at his sides as he stammered, "Three - three weeks ago, Zhangmen-shibo! Shizun gave me instructions on how to organise classes while he was gone!"

"Very good. Your shizun must hold you in high regard then." YQY smiled at him and MF basked in the compliment, though it was obvious he was too dumb to figure out why Zhangmen-shibo was _really_ on Qing Jing Peak and asking about Shizun's whereabouts when he should already know.

In fact, no one seemed to notice that _anything_ was wrong.

Luo Binghe knew.

He hadn't gathered with the other disciples, though he was currently listening in from his place within a tree, when YQY showed up with a strange bruise under his eye and even more questions than usual about Shizun.

How had he been doing lately, was he eating well, what had he said to them about their lessons, had they seen him since he'd gone into seclusion...

He was fishing for answers among Qing Jing's clueless cohort, and all of them were too starstruck in his presence to understand what LBH already knew:

Shizun had left Cang Qiong behind, and he wasn't coming back.

The memory of his teacher left a strange, hollow ache in LBH's heart, a sore muscle he nevertheless couldn't help but reflame. Shizun had always hated him. Shizun had been cruel to him and him alone on purpose. He'd even admitted it...

Even so.

Even so...

Even so, he had given LBH three qiankun pouches bulging with riches beyond even an Emperor's fantasies, and told him to go and live well.

Even so, he had said LBH would never have to worry about what he would do to him again.

Even so, he had looked so small and broken as he left Cang Qiong, and LBH behind.

Even so...

*

"Actually," Ming Fan said "I thought Shizun might have come out of seclusion a couple of nights ago. Sui-shijie said she saw someone who looked like him leave the Caves. But he would have come back to Qing Jing by now, then. Maybe she just confused him and Liu-shishu?"

"Maybe," YQY said after a pause. "Can you elaborate, though, exactly what Disciple Sui said to you?"

LBH slid down from his tree and turned heel to walk away. MF didn't know anything, just second-hand gossip -

He slammed face-first into a hard chest and gasped in shock.

"Watch it - " LBH snapped as he rubbed his nose, furious, only to fall silent when he looked up into the cool and unimpressed eyes of his martial uncle.

"... begging Liu-shishu's pardon," LBH muttered, making a half-hearted salute.

LQG jerked his thumb over at the crowd nearby. "Why are you not with them?"

LBH didn't say anything. It was obvious enough why.

His uniform was ragged and worn out compared to everyone else's clean white robes, his hair barely held together in its ribbon, and he didn't even carry a training sword on him like a self-respecting disciple not old enough to get his own spiritual sword at Wan Jian.

Looking at him, you wouldn't even be able to guess he currently held on his person a fortune grand enough to buy a small empire.

(Oh Shizun, Shizun, Shizun...)

"This disciple wouldn't be able to help," LBH said in a stiff voice when it was obvious LQG wouldn't let him leave without saying something.

"You think we need your help?" LQG said incredulously, and LBH shook his head while biting the inside of his cheek.

"No, shishu," he mumbled.

"Petulant," LQG said. "Just like your teacher."

For a moment, red-hot rage flashed in LBH's mind and he wanted nothing more than to rip out LQG's tongue so he would _never_ say something like that again.

... then the anger passed, and he wondered why he even cared.

(But of course he knew why. Why bother playing dumb with his own heart?)

"... look." LQG crossed his arms, looking as uncomfortable with the conversation as LBH felt. "You're not an idiot. You know why we're here. When was the last time you saw your shizun, talked to him?"

LBH could tell him the truth.

_Two nights ago. Shizun was a mess, practically falling apart. He looked like he'd gone through a heavenly tribulation. He was going to leave Cang Qiong. He told me to leave too.

And he cried. I didn't know Shizun could cry like that. I didn't know anyone could._

The last time LBH had cried, it had been after Shizun had dumped a cup of lukewarm tea over his head and walked away, apathetic to how he had broken a young boy's heart.

So you see, LBH had all the reason in the world to be honest, and give YQY and LQG what they wanted, and let them know what they needed to hear.

But a voice echoed in his head, bitter and wounded and broken: _Not a word of this. Tell anyone about tonight and I'll kill you._

And also: _Please._

"The last time I saw Shizun was three weeks ago, just like everyone else," LBH said, and smiled. "Sorry I can't help, Liu-shishu."

"Yeah, that figures," the man said, and stalked off with a roll of his eyes.

Only after the man had rejoined his shixiong and the pair left Qing Jing Peak did LBH unfurl his fingers and examine the cuts he had dug into his own palms with bloodless curiosity.

_Shizun_, he thought. _If I had left Cang Qiong right after you, would you have let me follow after you? Or would you have cast me out and shunned me like the little beast you always say I am?_

For as long as he'd been a disciple on Qing Jing Peak he'd been certain the answer was the latter. Now he wasn't so sure.

And strangely enough, that of all things was what gave LBH a small measure of hope after he'd thought all was lost, after his mother's Guanyin had been stolen from him and he never found it again no matter how hard he searched and wherever he looked.

_Shizun, if I looked for you, would I be able to find you?_

END OF PART V

(ok the creative juices are still flowing + I wanted to do something for 2000 follows so here you go 😅 the Cang Qiong side is an emotional thriller drama, isn't it? Meanwhile, SJ is contemplating how to further decorate the house 😂

Also, I didn't expect Bingbing to play much of a role yet but he showed up and he's way more hardcore than I expected at his little age 💀 what does the kid think he can do for SJ right now though, he's 15!! 🤣)

PS it could not be more obvious that I know nothing about cultivation or xianxia stuff, please take the nonsense I wrote there about yin/yang qi in stride 😅

Also, tonghong ("通紅") means "very red / red through and through / to blush (deep red)" according to mdbg.net, so LQG saying Qing Jing should be renamed Tong Hong Peak is him trying to be witty, dear god 🤣