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Chapter Text

It was late enough at night that everyone else had gone to bed. Shen Yuan, sixteen and suffering, was hunched over his math textbook, desperately attempting to beat some last minute formulas into his skull.

It was not going very well.

To be fair, that one was his own fault. A couple of months ago, he'd started reading a new stallion novel on Zhongdian, and it had taken over his entire life.

And it wasn’t even good!!

Proud Immortal Demon Way was trash of the highest order. It had a solid foundation: a super badass protagonist with a deeply tragic backstory, some really good monsters, and a worldbuilding that had actually started out pretty interesting. It was just that after the protagonist got powered up, the plot quickly drowned in paint-by-numbers wife plots and equally forgettable wives. It was a total waste of a good seed! Shen Yuan kept telling anyone who would listen in the comments and on the PIDW forums just how shitty the effort was, but of course most of the readers were happy to roll around in garbage.

Anyway, the upshot of it all was this: Shen Yuan, buried in notes at two in the morning. Half of the page he was currently working on was slowly devolving into doodles, too - a shrieking frost phoenix, a branch of flowering fanged heart lilies, Xin Mo with its dark, malicious energy floating off it like smoke, and, just at the edge of the paper, a single, staring eye, framed by an expressive eyebrow and thick, dark eyelashes.

Shen Yuan put his head in his hands, pressing up against his eyelids until he could see stars.

Ughhh.

(a comet burned ozone-blue across the sky above. a piece of it broke off and fell, wrong and warping, toward the ground below. velocity caught its edges and set it singing)

(somewhere else, there was an echo)

He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, sunlight was stabbing him in the face. He was lying down, too, which was weird, because he didn’t remember going to bed, and the room he was in was too noisy to be -

Cautiously, Shen Yuan opened his eyes.

Everything was wrong.

He was in bed, which wasn’t bad, all things considered.

The problem was the location of the bed - in a room filled with other beds, and all around him a number of girls and young women were rising, clothes rustling, mumbling sleepily to each other as they - changed into?? Their daily attire???

Shen Yuan pulled the covers up over his face.

Don’t! Be! A creep!!

But also, more importantly, what the fuck! Had he sleepwalked into some kind of all-girl dorm? Would they let him live once they noticed he was here??

He was about to freak out in a grander (but silent!) fashion when a shadow fell over him.

"Don't think you can sleep in just because you're Shizun's favourite, Ning-shimei," a sweetly poisonous voice called from above.

It was very clearly addressed to him, but -

Ning-shimei???????

This was the moment when he looked down and realized that he was no longer in his own body.

He was smaller, for one. And his hair was longer. His hands were pretty dainty? And, well. Something was missing. And in addition. There were. Just a little bit, there were. Rising up against the fabric of the sleep robe he was wearing. There was. Boob.

What?

"Ning-shimei," the voice repeated, "come on."

Numbly, Shen Yuan pushed back the covers and sat up. The other girl, whatever her name was, was wearing pale robes and an annoyed expression. She looked like she was in her late teens, maybe.

"Apologies, shijie," Shen Yuan said, because he could follow context clues. His voice was high and sweet. When he swallowed, his throat felt different.

It was tomorrow. He had a strong feeling there would be no math test.

-

So clearly he had transmigrated into some kind of xianxia setting.

The thing was, Shen Yuan knew everything there was to know about transmigration stories. Waking up with, uh, it wasn't even that weird for the genre! At least he hadn't turned into a slime or a vending machine or something stupid like that. And he knew how to act in a situation like this! Just act like everything is fine and don't make a scene until you can figure out who you are and what kind of world you're in.

So he got dressed as well as he could without looking at himself too much. Then he followed the other girl outside, and tried to act normal.

More disciples - at least, Shen Yuan assumed they were disciples - milled about outside. A group of boys were clumped together by the side of a larger building, running through a series of what looked like martial arts. Their movements were kind of unsteady, their balance a bit off, but it was undeniable - this had to be some kind of cultivation sect!

Shen Yuan stared at them, excitement flaring in his gut. He was going to get to do that too, right? If this wasn't an equal opportunity xianxia world, he was going to be so mad about it.

Now that he was thinking about it, wasn't there something familiar about their uniforms, too? That particular combination of cool green and white -

It looked like -

"Qing Jing Peak?"

"What was that, Ning-shimei?" a voice behind him said.

Shen Yuan spun around. The boy in front of him was tall, and his hair was pulled up in a high ponytail. His robes were more elaborate than the others - could this be Qing Jing Peak's first disciple and most eager bully, Ming Fan?

And if that was the case -

Was this - the body he was currently in, was it -

Was this Ning Yingying???

That meant Shen Yuan hadn't just transmigrated into some random girl.

No! She was one of Luo Binghe's future wives! In the future, she was going to have to marry him and try not to get taken out by harem drama!

What's more, she wasn't just any other wife - she was going to be Luo Binghe's first sweetheart, Qing Jing Peak disciple Ning Yingying!

Ah, wait, no, that didn't feel right.

He was Ning Yingying.

…

He supposed it was okay to keep thinking of himself as Shen Yuan, though, at least when it was just in his head.

"Ning-shimei?" Ming Fan said. Somehow it felt like he was hanging off Shen Yuan's arm even if he was standing a few steps away.

Fuck.

Shen Yuan made himself smile. "Yes, shixiong?"

Ming Fan turned pink. Shen Yuan quietly cursed himself - he'd forgotten, but Ming Fan would have a crush on Ning Yingying by this point, wouldn't he?

 "Are you busy later?" Ming Fan asked, oozing … well, not charm, exactly, but definitely something. "Some of us are going to the Tranquil Pond after lessons."

"Ah, apologies, shixiong," Shen Yuan bullshitted sadly. "Yingying needs to put in some extra practice on the guqin. You know how Shizun is…"

Ming Fan made a face, but didn't push it.

Ha! Having that scum villain for a shizun is good for that much, at least.

Although, if he was in Ning Yingying's body, and Shen Qingqiu was…

Shen Yuan fought back the rest of that thought with a shudder.

He didn't dwell on it. Instead, he followed Ming Fan to breakfast and smiled and nodded like he was listening when Ming Fan talked.

There were a lot of things to think about!

Primarily, Luo Binghe.

What would it be like to meet him? How would the little white lotus look?

Would he - if Shen Yuan was -

He would definitely marry Ning Yingying. That was just a law of the universe - if there was a pretty girl in Luo Binghe’s path, he would marry her. Them. And if Shen Yuan was Ning Yingying now, that meant Luo Binghe would definitely -

“Ning-shimei,” Ming Fan said, “are you sure you’re-?”

“Yes!” Shen Yuan said, loudly enough to startle him and also, to be honest, himself. Embarrassed, he took a few more bites from his bowl - some kind of leafy green vegetable he didn’t recognise, with a bitter-sweet flavour that was unlike anything he’d eaten back home. Was it PIDW local? He turned that thought over as he finished eating (what were the Cang Qiong supply lines like, anyway? Did they have contracts with local farms? What were the trade routes - ).

Then he followed Ming Fan to class, which turned out to be … music. Shen Yuan had never touched a guqin in his life, but apparently Ning-shimei had. As long as he didn't think about it too hard, the muscle memory seemed to work … not at a hundred percent, but enough to not make a fool out of himself.

That left plenty of time to think about other things, of course.

Anyway, if he was going to be one of Luo Binghe's wives (and what girl wouldn’t want to marry Luo Binghe!), he was going to do it the best he possibly could. He'd read all of Proud Immortal Demon Way and knew all the wife pitfalls, even if Airplane Shooting Toward the Sky didn't think of it that way.

If given the choice, he would maybe have gone with a different wife than Ning Yingying. The childhood friends/first love stuff was fine, but he wasn't really a bubbly person by nature.

And besides, the way she kept getting Luo Binghe in trouble was annoying.

Actually, now that he was standing here in her shoes, it was worse. The thought of adding to Binghe's problems when he already had so many of them made him feel sick.

None of that! He was just going to have to find a way to take the heat off him. Play it smarter.

The first thing to do … was to locate the protagonist. After the music lesson ended, Shen Yuan went off to look for him.

He found him by a small building that had to be - Shen Yuan swallowed a spark of outrage - the woodshed.

Luo Binghe was running through his forms. His hair looked soft and shiny in the sunlight, his eyes bright and intent, brow furrowed in concentration. It was a really striking image. Shen Yuan felt like he'd run headfirst into a brick wall.

"Binghe!" he called out. He hadn't meant to, but looking at a protagonist even half as incredible as Binghe, who wouldn't call out?

Binghe stopped mid-movement to look at him. Shen Yuan felt his face grow hot.

Ah … it was a little embarrassing after all, wasn't it?

"Ning-shijie," Binghe said, head bowed. So polite! And so shy!

"Don't let shijie interrupt," Shen Yuan said, mustering as much "sweet older sister" into his voice as he could. "I'm only curious to see how Binghe's practice has been coming along. Would Binghe mind showing me some cultivation forms?"

"Of course, shijie," Binghe said, flushing pink, and immediately started running through the motions. Adorable! It was almost too much!

Although … it quickly became clear that something was not quite right with Binghe's form. Shen Yuan frowned, considering. Binghe didn't look hurt, but who could say what kind of shape he'd be in under the robes. Ming Fan and his cronies might not be there yet, but Shen Qingqiu was definitely smart enough to know how to hit where it wouldn't be seen.

But it was also -

Something about the way he held himself. Shen Yuan hadn't even tried practicing his cultivation yet (he had so many moves to try out??), but it had to be the muscle memory again somehow, because looking at the way Binghe's arms were moving was -

Unsettling.

He had gotten a wrong manual, Shen Yuan remembered. Fuck.

"Stop," he said.

Binghe stopped, giving Shen Yuan an expectant look.

"Binghe, can you show me your cultivation manual?" Shen Yuan asked.

Binghe did.

Shen Yuan leafed through it. He couldn't tell how much of it was right or wrong, obviously. He'd barely been in this body for a day, and he didn't really have an understanding of any of this.

But that was fine. He didn't need to. It was enough to know that the book was a deliberate play at sabotage! Of course none of it was to be trusted!

"Ah, Binghe," he said, all innocent, wide-eyed younger sister energy. He may not have experience, but he'd seen meimei at her sweetest! He could switch it up, even if Binghe was his shidi! After all, it wouldn't be too long until…

Well, anyway!

"It looks like this manual has some misprints," he said. "Why don't you share with me? We can meet tomorrow after dinner and practice secretly."

Binghe blinked at him, his huge eyes shining. Shen Yuan felt as though his chest might burst at the sight, like that scene in Alien .

"Ning-shijie is sure?"

Of course he was sure! It was important for the protagonist to become strong! And anyway, who wouldn't want to spend more time with Luo fucking Binghe??

"Yeah," he said. He smiled cutely. "Yingying loves spending time with Binghe!"

Binghe gave him a long, searching look. Maybe he was worried that Ning Yingying would get him into trouble again.

It was definitely not going to happen!

"Don't worry," Shen Yuan said. He took Binghe's hands and squeezed them reassuringly. "Shijie knows a place where we won't be interrupted."

It was a hidden cave at the back of the mountain. In Proud Immortal Demon Way, Luo Binghe had come across it by accident, falling through some bushes in an attempt to hide from Ming Fan; later, he had used it in part to meet with Liu Mingyan after her brother's death. It was the perfect place to go to practice in secret, and if Binghe got access to it a bit earlier, well, what harm could it do? The kid definitely needed to be able to get away from the rest of the peak sometimes.

"Thanking shijie," Binghe said quietly. Shen Yuan squeezed his hands again and smiled reassuringly.

"Don't thank me," he said. "It’s what anyone would do.”

Well.

If that was true, this wouldn’t be necessary, would it?

Shen Yuan made a face.

“It’s what anyone should do,” he said.

Thankfully, Binghe didn’t argue.

-

Shen Yuan was dreaming, which he only knew because the symbols on the buttons of the microwave didn’t make sense. There were too many of them, and they got weirdly squiggly when he turned his head.

Okay, whatever. He pulled down a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water, or at least something that was sort of like water. It had an opalescent sheen to it, and the taste was weirdly like … cotton candy?

Anyway, it wasn’t bad.

He walked out in the living room, because he was back home again, and back in his own body. It all looked exactly like it had before he’d woken up in Proud Immortal Demon Way, from the flat screen TV to the white leather three-seater couch to the leafy plants in the window.

All of it, except -

“Ning Yingying??”

Ning Yingying was on his couch, wearing his vintage NGE t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her head swiveled toward him, and her eyes narrowed.

“Did you do this?” she asked.

“I - what?”

“Did you,” she repeated, gesturing furiously between the two of them, "do this?"

“The transmigration?” Shen Yuan asked, bewildered. “Obviously not??”

That wasn’t the formula, Ning-shimei!

“What do you mean, obviously?” Ning Yingying said. She made a face. “Your … bedroom” (here they both blushed) “is covered in paintings that show-”

“Okay.” Shen Yuan cut her off in an act of mercy to them both. “People can be fans of stuff! That doesn’t have to mean anything!”

“What do you mean, fans?” Ning Yingying asked, and then waved her hands again. “It doesn’t matter. You’re sure you didn’t do anything? And what’s all that stuff about?”

“I just woke up in your … world,” Shen Yuan said, feeling way too exposed. He wished he had something to hide behind. “And it’s a long story.”

“Shen Yuan,” Ning Yingying said, and wow, it was so weird hearing her say his name. “I woke up in your stupid body with its stupidly high centre of gravity and no core, and then I had to do calculations in your place. Tell me everything!”

Shen Yuan sat down next to her. Maybe this wasn't the kind of transmigration story where he got to stay. Maybe it was the kind of story where he was meant to set things on a different course and leave the real characters to do the rest.

He felt kind of heavy all of a sudden. It was a lot to put on a guy! He really couldn't mess this up, if that was the case. It was one thing when Binghe was just Luo Binghe the character (as if Luo Binghe could be just anything, even on the page!), but now that he'd met him for real…

He just couldn't let him down!

"Okay," he said. "You have to promise me that you'll do your best to help Binghe -"

"A-Luo?" Ning Yingying asked. "Why? Did something happen?"

"Would you like a glass of water?" Shen Yuan asked, a little desperately.

"I want you to answer my questions," Ning Yingying said. She was pouting a little.

Even with Shen Yuan's experience dealing with Meimei, it was devastating.

"I will," he said, already dreading it, "but it's a long answer, so please let me get you some water first."

"Fine," Ning Yingying said. "Isn't this a dream? Why would water help?"

It would make Shen Yuan feel better, that's what it would help! He said nothing, and went to get her a drink instead, thereby fulfilling the task of "making sure the guest has a drink" and "stealing some extra time to compose himself". Score!

Then he came back. He told her, as straightforwardly as he could, about Proud Immortal Demon Way and her role in it. He told her about Luo Binghe and how to best look out for him, just in case he woke up back in his old body.

Ning Yingying opened her mouth to speak.

Then he woke up.

Chapter Text

He opened his eyes to the ceiling of the Qing Jing dormitory.

-

“Maybe there is something I need to fix first,” he said, “and then we’ll switch back. It’s kind of like the movie Your Name?”

Ning Yingying’s nose scrunched up. It reminded him a bit of meimei, or maybe some kind of woodland animal. Like a squirrel.

They were in another dream, though the setting was still the same dream apartment as the other night. Ning Yingying was perched at the edge of the couch. She was in her disciple uniform, but it had three extra layers of robes.

“What makes you think this is something for you to fix?” she asked. Her voice had an edge to it. He would have called her out for being OOC, except -

Well, clearly this Ning Yingying had more personality than had ever made it into any paragraph ever penned by Airplane “the tight walls of her love cave” Shooting Towards the Sky.

Shen Yuan suppressed a shudder.

Actually, let’s leave that part of Airplane’s writing out of this.

“I don’t need help to suck at algebra,” he said.

“Well, I don’t need help to - to live my life!” Ning Yingying said. “It’s not like you’re a better cultivator than me!”

“So maybe you need to finish reading Proud Immortal Demon Way first, and then we can switch back,” Shen Yuan said reasonably.

It was Ning Yingying’s turn to shudder.

“I don’t understand how you can read that stuff,” she said. “It makes me feel …”

Her mouth twisted, and she didn’t say anything else.

Looking at her now, with her shoulders hunched up to her ears, he thought he could see the rest of the sentence anyway.

“The story is garbage,” he said, “but Binghe is worth it, I promise.”

“Mn,” said Ning Yingying.

“Anyway, we can make the story better together,” Shen Yuan said.

Ning Yingying was staring at her knees.

“I have some ideas about where to start,” Shen Yuan said, and then hesitated for a second before adding: “I mean, obviously it should be up to you in the end-”

“It’s better to talk it through beforehand, right?” Ning Yingying said, with a pale smile. “If you really will be doing this in my place.”

“Right,” Shen Yuan said.

“Besides,” Ning Yingying said, “Shizun always says it’s better not to act without gathering all available information.”

Shen Yuan wisely decided not to comment.

-

“It’s nothing like Your Name,” Ning Yingying said, stomping into the kitchen and forcibly manifesting a pot of tea. “And don’t touch my,” she paused, and then continued in a stage whisper, “bosom.”

“Uhhhh,” said Shen Yuan, putting the pizza slice he’d been eating back on the plate. Honestly, past the initial panic, he had barely had time to think about the body he was spending his days in. The muscle memory stopped working the second he thought about it too hard, so it was better to just kind of … float along.

Besides, there were so many other things to freak out about!

“Okay,” he said, because it seemed easier than getting into the everything else.

“Okay?” Ning Yingying said. Her eyes were still a little narrowed. This had to be pretty scary for her, huh?

“Actually,” Shen Yuan said, poking at the crust of his pizza, “we should probably lay down some ground rules. About body stuff.”

“Don’t do anything strange with my body,” Ning Yingying said.

“Don’t do anything strange with my body, either,” Shen Yuan said.

Ning Yingying nodded. She lifted her cup and took a long sip from it, still standing.

“As far as we know, this is a loan,” she said. “So let’s try to treat each other as well as we can.”

They shook on it.

-

Time passed, and kept passing.

Shen Yuan practiced his forms and the guqin and made several awful paintings until Ning Yingying could teach him the basics of colour and composition; Ning Yingying was terrifyingly proficient with photo filters and took up wushu and cried into her meticulously made political science flashcards.

Slowly, they taught each other how to pass.

-

They made a Pepe Silvia red string corkboard in their dream living room. It hung beside the television, and they spent a lot of time looking at it from the couch while hotly debating in circles about what to do next and how best to do it.

-

First things first, after all the other first things: They needed access to medicine.

“We do have access to the medicine stores,” Ning Yingying pointed out. “As long as you have a good reason, Shizun will allow it.”

She didn’t say it, but they both heard it: As long as it’s Ning Yingying, Shizun will allow it.

“Not if it’s to help Luo Binghe,” Shen Yuan said. (Ning Yingying winced.) “And stealing it won’t help in the long run, either - he’ll notice that things are missing and that Binghe is looking better, and all it will do is make things worse.”

“Well, what do you want to do,” Ning Yingying said, with the hint of an edge to her voice, “leave Qing Jing Peak for Qian Cao?”

“Obviously not,” Shen Yuan said. As if he’d leave Binghe to the wolves like that!

“Then what do you propose, Yuan-di?” Ning Yingying asked, sugar sweet.

“Yuan -” Shen Yuan gaped at her, outraged. “I’m older than you!”

“Only by two years,” Ning Yingying said. “And I’m in the older body most of the time at the moment.”

“Well, not right now!”

“Okay, Shen-shidi,” Ning Yingying said. “By the rules of our sect, hierarchy is established based on when a disciple joins the sect rather than their age in years, and as shidi might recall, he only joined Qing Jing just now.”

Such pedantry! Shen Yuan didn’t know whether to be proud or horrified.

In the end he settled on huffing, “Yuan-di is fine.”

It wasn’t as though his brothers didn’t already call him that, anyway. Not that he was starting to miss it or anything.

“ Anyway ,” he said, “do you think there’s any way Shen Qingqiu would let us take a couple of private lessons with Mu Qingfang? Or even just a Qian Cao disciple?”

“No,” Ning Yingying said firmly.

Then: “well…”

-

What followed was a subtle harassment campaign that would have made Meimei proud. It included subtle nudges and a lot of meaningful, pleading looks. The looks Shen Qingqiu sent him in return got flatter and flatter with every incident, but Shen Yuan was careful to sweeten it with his best Meimei mannerisms, his cutest Yingying gestures. He was always careful not to push it too hard - he knew what Ning Yingying’s shizun was capable of, after all.

(“He’s not like that,” Ning Yingying said, a little mutinously, when it came up during planning. “Not to me.”

“Maybe he’s just biding his time until he thinks he can get away with it,” Shen Yuan said.

“Absolutely not!” Ning Yingying slapped the coffee table with enough force that Shen Yuan startled. “The - the other stuff, fine, but this? Shizun would not do that!”)

Shen Qingqiu had, in fact, not done that. Yet. Shen Yuan wasn’t ready to relax around the guy for any time soon, but even with the constant hinting and wheedling, Shen Qingqiu had somehow neither snapped nor used Shen Yuan’s unsubtle wishes as an excuse to do anything sketchy. No inappropriate touching of any kind!

Instead, the unthinkable happened: Shen Qingqiu relented.

“Yingying will meet with Mu Qingfang once a month for instruction in the medical arts,” he said, with little preamble, after one of their (extremely nerve-wracking) one on one tutoring meetings. (As far as Shen Yuan could tell, Shen Qingqiu did this for next to no one else, which had definitely not helped his image in the PIDW forums.)

“Yes, shizun,” Shen Yuan said demurely, trying not to show the extent of the FUCK YEAH that was currently fighting to escape from his chest. “Thanking shizun.”

Shen Qingqiu pinned him with a look like a needle.

“In the future,” he said, tone unreadable, “Yingying may want to invest in some subtlety as well.”

Note taken! Fuck!

-

Lessons with Mu Qingfang were clear and precise. Ning Yingying got a Douyin account. Shen Yuan snuck Luo Binghe as many healing salves as he dared. For a while, they both got really into painting. They took it into their dreams sometimes, working side by side or in turns on the same canvas, getting silly and covered in paint.

Waking up with clean hands (and arms, and face, and robes) made him feel weirdly lonely.

Shen Yuan got really into braiding hair for the second time in his life. Ning Yingying saw Us and Them with some classmates she was slowly starting to call friends, and would barely talk about anything else for months. Shen Yuan made her keep him updated on the newest slate of animes, bothering her for details and fandom debates. They expanded the dream apartment with a DDR machine, a rack of Qing Jing practice swords, and a windowsill full of yellow bellflowers that chimed quietly whenever they aired out the place.

-

“I just don’t think Shizun did it,” Ning Yingying said, frowning at the Pepe Silvia wall.

“What?” Shen Yuan asked, looking up from the TV.

“Liu Qingge!” Ning Yingying said. “I’ve been thinking about it, but I just don’t understand why he would -”

“It’s right there on the page,” Shen Yuan pointed out sensibly. “He never denied it.”

Ning Yingying rolled her eyes at him. “But if you actually read what’s there, you’ll find that there’s no direct evidence, Yuan-di .”

Shen Yuan rolled his eyes right back at her. “Since when does Airplane have that kind of subtlety? Shen Qingqiu is the scum villain .”

“And I’m just a love interest?” Ning Yingying glared at him. “Shizun is a person.”

“Why are you defending him? He’s the worst , you know  what he’s been doing to Binghe!”

“A-Luo isn’t the only person who matters in the world!” Ning Yingying yelled, and stormed off into her room, slamming the door behind her.

When Shen Yuan went to check on her, she was gone, already woken up from their shared dream space.

-

She didn’t come out of the bedroom for the next three nights.

In the end, Shen Yuan cautiously went over to knock on her door.

“What,” Ning Yingying said, voice flat with anger.

“I’m sorry,” Shen Yuan said.

Ning Yingying opened the door a few centimetres, glaring up at him through the crack. “Are you?”

“I know you care about him,” Shen Yuan hedged. Then he continued, more sincerely: “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Well, you did,” Ning Yingying said.

“I don’t think Binghe is the only person from your world who matters,” Shen Yuan said. “But he’s the protagonist, so clearly -”

Ning Yingying began to close the door again.

“Hey, no, wait-”

“Then shut up about A-Luo for a second!” Ning Yingying glared at him. “This isn’t about him, this is about you, so -”

Shen Yuan steeled himself. He brought up every drop of EQ and emotional courage he possessed. Then he flung out the words like a smoke bomb in the middle of a boss fight: “I care about you! In a non-papapa way! You’re like a sister to me!”

Embarrassing!

Ning Yingying wasn’t glaring at him anymore, at least, but the look on her face was somewhere between expectant and “????”.

“So,” Shen Yuan said, face hot, “even if I personally think Shen Qingqiu is a rat bastard and a snake who should be - uh, even if I don’t like him, I still think we should look into the Liu Qingge thing. Because it’s,” (why was it so hard to say this out loud?) “important to you.”

Then Ning Yingying was hugging him very tightly.

“Thank you,” she said into his shoulder. He patted her back awkwardly.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “We’re not going to be able to get to either of them while they’re in the Lingxi Caves, so we’ll have to think of some way to get around it. Besides, if Shen Qingqiu really did kill Liu Qingge-”

“Thank you anyway,” Ning Yingying said.

“Okay, well,” Shen Yuan said awkwardly. “Do you want me to braid your hair?”

-

In the end, he didn’t even do anything directly to save Liu Qingge - he just snuck a bunch of healing salves and qi-stabilizing balms into a bag and then sweetly pestered Shen Qingqiu to bring them with him in his seclusion.

He played it up as a general sense of anxiety, which wasn’t hard; he had plenty of anxiety to go around, on account of the whole “potential future murder of Liu Qingge” thing. He told Shen Qingqiu he wanted Shizun to have them, so he could see for himself how the lessons with Mu Qingfang had paid off, and wasn’t that really only because of Shizun’s good judgment in the first place?

Shen Qingqiu’s face was unreadable.

But he took the bag with him.

-

Liu Qingge was retrieved from the caves a while later, heavily injured from a near-fatal qi deviation, but still alive.

Ning Yingying was insufferable about it.

That was fair. She had probably earned it.

-

Sha Hualing and her demons arrived eventually. Everything went just like it was supposed to, right down to the sneer on Shen Qingqiu’s face as he told Luo Binghe to fight Tian Chui.

Everything, except that Luo Binghe won his fight without getting damaged by the Without a Cure-coated spikes of Tian Chui’s armour or by his fuck-off giant hammer. It was close; several times, the spikes snagged on Luo Binghe’s robes, or the hammer narrowly missed shattering his shoulder or kneecaps or -

But he was never bloodied. He just always seemed to know when to shift away at the last minute, fluid like water in motion. It was closer to how Shen Yuan preferred to fight than the way Bingge’s fighting style was described later in PIDW.

It made sense! He hadn’t gone through the Endless Abyss arc yet. He would really level up later, obviously.

Still. Seeing him on the battlefield, sidestepping blow after blow until he could get in a winning one of his own, filled Shen Yuan with a strong sense of pride.

He really was impossible to look away from, huh?

The fight was called. Sha Hualing began to argue about the results, and Shen Qingqiu fired coolly back, probably torn between the twin hells of admitting that Binghe had done a good job and throwing shade on his own peak.

Luo Binghe stayed where he’d been at the end of the fight, waiting. His face was impassive.

So serious! Every female disciple of this sect would fall over themselves for the chance to melt that expression into something warmer.

As Shen Yuan thought it, Luo Binghe’s eyes found his in the crowd.

Without input from his brain, Shen Yuan gave him a double thumbs up.

Luo Binghe's mouth tipped up, just a little.

Shen Yuan thought he might fall over. Too powerful!

He glanced away, only to see that Tian Chui was pushing himself off the ground.

Was raising the hammer in his spike-covered arm.

Was swinging it down at full force towards Luo Binghe’s unprotected back.

Shen Yuan lunged. There was no thought behind this, either - just a long internal scream as he hit Luo Binghe in the side and rolled them both out of the way. Luo Binghe ended up bracketed between his arms, back flat against the sand.

Tian Chui’s hammer hit the ground behind them.

Luo Binghe stared up at Shen Yuan. His eyes were huge. Shen Yuan felt like he might fall into them and never find his way back out.

“You-” Luo Binghe said, voice hoarse. He swallowed.

“Yes,” Shen Yuan said. The adrenaline was draining out of him, leaving him feeling sick, on the edge of dizzy. He shot Luo Binghe a smirk. “You’re welcome.”

Luo Binghe was staring at Shen Yuan’s shoulder. Slowly, fingers shaking, he lifted his hand up to touch it. Shen Yuan could barely feel it.

Luo Binghe said: “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m - ?”

Luo Binghe pulled his hand back. His fingertips were wet with blood.

Oh fuck, Shen Yuan thought, Without A Cure.

Well, he thought, as Luo Binghe’s eyes began to fill with tears, at least if it was for you, it was worth -

Chapter Text

When he woke up, Mu Qingfang was holding his forearm. Shen Yuan could feel him circling qi through his system; it flowed sluggishly through his meridians.

Mu Qingfang was also frowning down at it like it had personally cursed out every one of his ancestors. That felt bad, somehow. Like, “what did my forearm ever do to you? ”.

Of course, (Shen Yuan remembered, with a strong and sudden full-body emotion that lived somewhere between “horror”, “embarrassment”, and “puking all over the floor”,) what it had done was be part of the dumbass who got Without A Cure by throwing himself in front of someone who was, in fact, completely immune to it.

Motherfuck!

Shen Yuan tried to cover his face with his hands, but Mu Qingfang wouldn’t let go, so he ended up just sort of awkwardly covering half of it.

“Welcome back,” Mu Qingfang said, in a voice so tellingly neutral Shen Yuan wanted to jump off the mountain in shame.

“Mu-shishu,” Shen Yuan murmured, trying to channel his most demure Ning Yingying impression. He desperately didn’t want to know more than he already did, but: “What happened?”

“Shen-shizhi was injured by Tian Chui,” Mu Qingfang said. “The spikes on his were covered in a rare poison known as Without A Cure. It is only due to the quick intervention of Shen-shixiong and Liu-shixiong that shizhi still lives.”

“I see,” Shen Yuan said, internally hitting the “skip dialogue” button. New information, please! “And now?”

“To put it plainly,” Mu Qingfang said, “Shizhi’s cultivation has been severely damaged, and is unlikely to ever completely recover. At this stage of your cultivation, it is a miracle that it wasn’t worse.”

He went on to explain that even beyond the damage that had already been done, the condition was chronic, and that Shen Yuan would need someone to regularly clear his meridians; that they could clog up at any time; that he would never be able to form a golden core.

Shen Yuan huddled in on himself and internally apologized to Ning Yingying. She had trusted him to keep her body well, and he’d promised he would, and now -

Puking all over the floor was looking like a better and better option.

“Now,” Mu Qingfang said, breaking through the static. “Shizhi has been unconscious for two months.”

Two months???

Mu Qingfang went on, like that wasn’t a huge, earth-shattering revelation: “Your shizun will be wanting to see you. I will send for him in a moment.”

Shen Yuan nodded wordlessly.

Mu Qingfang finished circulating qi and got up to leave.

“Is,” Shen Yuan said, and had to stop to swallow. His spit was thick in his mouth. “Is Luo Binghe-?”

“He is not my disciple,” Mu Qingfang said. “Perhaps this is a question better posed to your shizun?”

Shen Yuan stared at his hands. The nails looked better kept than he’d expected. “Yes, shishu.”

-

It didn’t take long for Shen Qingqiu to arrive. He entered the infirmary like a vengeful ghost, face white with barely repressed fury. He stopped by Shen Yuan’s bedside, hovering, and didn’t speak for a full minute. Somehow the silence balanced perfectly on the knife’s edge between “scary” and “awkward”.

“Shizun,” Shen Yuan eventually murmured in greeting.

“Yingying seems to have a death wish,” Shen Qingqiu said, in a deceptively sweet voice. “What possessed her to get in front of a vengeful demon?”

It wasn’t as if it had been a conscious choice!

Shen Yuan straightened his spine. He met Shen Qingqiu’s narrowed (terrifying!) eyes. “This disciple saw a person in danger of great injury, and provided assistance in getting them to safety.”

“That beast is hardly worth your health,” Shen Qingqiu snapped. “Mu-shidi told this master that the poison has destroyed a great deal of your cultivation. Yingying, I expect you to think -”

“What was there to think about! Getting him out of the way was all I could do!” Shen Yuan said hotly, before his brain could catch up with his mouth. He looked away. “... Apologies, shizun. This one is still recovering from the poison.”

Shen Qingqiu made a derisive sound, but all he said was: “This master will circulate Yingying’s qi once a week as treatment from here on out.”

Was this going to be what pushed him into teacher-student papapa???

“Yes, Shizun,” Shen Yuan said.

“Mu Qingfang will check on you every fortnight as well, to ensure that there are no further complications.”

“Yes, Shizun.”

“I expect you to respect your body’s recovery, to the extent that recovery is possible,” Shen Qingqiu said, “and to come to me immediately if your condition should worsen, once Mu Qingfang deems it acceptable that you return to Qing Jing Peak.”

“Yes, Shizun.”

“Good.” Shen Qingqiu paused. Then he said, on the edge of nonchalance, “If Yingying wishes to get between fighting beasts, she should do her best to improve her speed.”

It sounded suspiciously like well-meaning advice, coming from him.

“... Yes, Shizun,” Shen Yuan murmured, off-balance. Shen Qingqiu didn’t acknowledge it.

-

When he fell asleep, it wasn’t to the dream apartment, but to Luo Binghe’s dream realm. The ground was made up of a chaotic mess of almost-things and structures. It made a strange kind of sense until you actually looked at it, and then it became clear that it wasn’t bound to any kind of real life logic at all. Angles were off, material changed nature while you watched, the whole Escher nightmare package. The chaos stretched out as far as he could see, into the endless, pale horizon.

Was it time for Meng Mo already?

“Shijie,” Luo Binghe said behind him. Shen Yuan startled, reflexively glancing down at himself to find that - for once - he’d retained Ning Yingying’s form in a dream. Perhaps he looked like what Luo Binghe expected to see.

He turned around. Luo Binghe was staring at him with huge eyes.

“Binghe,” Shen Yuan said, smiling despite the circumstances. It felt so nice to say his name again. So what if Shen Yuan hadn’t been conscious for a while? He could still miss him, couldn’t he? Wasn’t time passing even if he hadn’t been awake for it? “It’s been a while.”

Luo Binghe’s ears went red, and his eyes filled with tears. He threw himself onto the ground in front of him. “This one apologises for getting Yingying injured.”

Seeing him like that - so pitiful! - made Shen Yuan want to pick him up and dust him off, or maybe walk into the ocean screaming. Instead, he knelt down and pushed Luo Binghe up by the shoulder.

“Enough of that,” he said gently. “Getting in the way was -” 100% my fuck-up “- my own decision.”

Luo Binghe looked up. His eyes were rimmed red with tears. “If you had died -”

“I didn’t.”

“But I overheard Mu-shishu and Shizun talk,” Luo Binghe said. “They said your cultivation -”

“Is fine,” Shen Yuan cut him off. Besides, Luo Binghe would make that little problem go away when they … got married, so - so it really didn’t matter, did it? Shen Yuan looked away, pretending to notice their surroundings for the first time. He said, in his sweetest questioning tone: “Where - where are we, anyway?”

Luo Binghe sniffled and stood up. He said: “I don’t know.”

They could stumble around until he figured it out - Binghe was smart! - but Shen Yuan desperately did not want to fall back on talking about his condition and the incident that had caused it anymore, so maybe it was better to cut things a little short.

Shen Yuan frowned at a few nearby dream structures, as though he recognised them from some kind of in-universe book, and not from the horseshit nexus that was Proud Immortal Demon Way . 

“This looks a bit like something I read about in a text in Mu-shishu’s library once,” he bullshitted thoughtfully. “I think we’re in your dream realm, Binghe.”

And wasn’t that depressing? Where some dreamers retreated to bamboo forests or quiet beaches or, perhaps, a shared dream apartment with high definition television and a red string corkboard, Luo Binghe’s dream realm was … this. Wreckage, desolate and abandoned, as far as you could bear to see in all directions.

“This -” Luo Binghe took an involuntary step backwards.

For a moment, he looked almost scared. Then he glanced quickly at Shen Yuan before schooling his face into something less affected. Shen Yuan watched him, the way his hands still shook, just a little.

You’d never even notice if you didn’t know to look.

“There was a reference to people getting pulled into their dream realms in Mu-shishu’s text,” Shen Yuan said, shoving the cavernous loneliness of Luo Binghe far into the back of his mind. No time for all that! Only exposition now! “Apparently there are demons who act like this - they pull you in, and then they trap you there with an illusory barrier.”

“How do we escape?” Luo Binghe asked, clearly happier to be presented with a problem that was more concrete than the endless desolation of their surroundings.

“You’ll have to destroy the core of the illusion,” Shen Yuan said. In a way you could think about it as enrichment, he thought but didn’t say. Like one of those pet puzzle feeders but for your protagonist.

Luo Binghe glanced around thoughtfully. Obviously, the landscape was no help, staying stubbornly the same. “Where can we find it?”

“I think we just have to start going,” Shen Yuan said. Then, to lighten the mood, he leaned into Ning Yingying’s most insistent form of aggressive cheerfulness, hooking his arm in Luo Binghe’s and pulling him along. “Let’s go!”

And what could Luo Binghe do but follow?

-

The city unfurled out of the fog like ink through a glass of milk.

Luo Binghe stopped walking. For a moment, it looked like he’d turned to stone.

“I recognise this place,” he murmured, like he was only partially aware that he’d said it out loud.

“Where are we?” Shen Yuan asked quietly. The moment felt weirdly precarious.

Luo Binghe hesitated. Then he said: “I used to live here.”

-

The streets were full of people, but their faces were all warped and featureless. Shen Yuan leaned a little closer to Luo Binghe as they walked, until their sides touched.

Meng Mo’s dream creations were just so creepy it made him want to tear his hair out, okay? Binghe probably needed some moral support too!

“Look at their faces,” Shen Yuan said. “Dream demons can make any object look real, but they really don’t have a handle on facial features. That’s how you can tell them apart from things that come from your own mind, which will be help-”

The words died in his mouth. His feet froze to the ground.

In front of them, a group of teens were beating the shit out of a much younger kid. His face was cut up and bruised.

Luo Binghe.

Shen Yuan forcefully looked away, turning his face to the real deal. That was better, except this Luo Binghe was clearly in the grasp of his heart demons already, clutching at his head and whimpering.

“It’s not real,” Shen Yuan said, reaching out to stroke his hair. “You’re not there anymore.”

Luo Binghe squeezed his eyes shut, tears leaking out at the corners. He nodded weakly, but Shen Yuan wasn’t sure how much of what Shen Yuan was saying he was actually getting.

One of the larger boys kicked Luo Binghe (the baby) in the stomach. The impact made him spit blood; a drop of it splattered on the real Luo Binghe’s cheek.

Then the world shifted, blurring and coming back together into a different shape, filling out in brush strokes.

They were in a small hut. Baby Binghe was talking to his mother.

Luo Binghe drew in a sharp breath.

The scene played out in front of them: Binghe, pleading with his mother for her to rest, asking if he could get her anything to eat, trying to help in the only way he could think of.

The real Binghe, after that other version of him had left, face shadowed in the dimming light of the room. Slowly, arms shaking, he reached out, grasping for something that was no longer there. Shen Yuan grabbed his hand.

“That’s not your mother,” he said. Binghe flinched, fingers cramping in his grip, but Shen Yuan made himself continue.

Be sweet, he thought. You’re his childhood friend. Be sweet like Ning Yingying would be.

“This is just a memory,” he said forcefully, immediately failing step one of the one step plan. “She wouldn’t want you to be stuck in it!”

Luo Binghe shuddered violently. He didn’t seem to have heard him. Blood was beading on his upper lip, dripping from his nose.

He drew in a sharp, agonized gasp, and

The memory changed again, violent like changing projector slides:

Luo Binghe, asking for food for his mother and being humiliated for it;

Luo Binghe, excluded and abused by the other disciples of Qing Jing Peak;

Losing the jade pendant his mother had given him in the confrontation with Ming Fan; being beaten and berated by Shizun and most of Qing Jing’s disciples; starving in punishment; licking his wounds; it went on and on and on . The more Shen Yuan tried to get through to him, the less he seemed to hear. His fists were clenched tight and trembling. His eyes glowed red under his eyelids, which matched the blood flowing from his nose in a deeply upsetting way.

Lost in the sauce, if the sauce was childhood trauma and all the helpless fear and loathing that had grown from it.

Cracking sounds came from his fingers, crushed against his palms. Spiritual power was gathering around him like a coming storm.

Just standing near him was dangerous.

“Don’t attack them,” Shen Yuan said sharply. “Hurting them will only hurt yourself. You have to -”

But before he could say work through it , Luo Binghe was lifting his right arm again. A powerful spiritual blast shot out of his palm, hurtling out toward the people in the memory, ready to obliterate them.

Shen Yuan threw himself in front of it.

There was no other option.

The blast hit him square in the chest.

It felt like getting hit by a truck.

He must have blacked out, because the next thing he knew, the illusions were gone and Luo Binghe was propping him up into a sitting position.

Shen Yuan wheezed awkwardly, struggling to draw oxygen back into his lungs. His face was wet with tears.

Embarrassing . He scrubbed his cheeks with the sleeves of his robe.

“Shijie,” Luo Binghe said, “why - why -?”

“I told you,” Shen Yuan said, from behind his sleeves. He was still a little breathless. “Anything you damage in here will only hurt yourself. It’s all part of you.”

For a moment, Luo Binghe didn’t say anything. Shen Yuan looked up to find him staring back down at him, eyes wide and wounded like some kind of startled woodland creature.

He swallowed heavily, and then said, so earnest it burned: “I would hurt myself a hundred times if it kept you from feeling pain.”

Mortifying!

Shen Yuan gently slapped Luo Binghe’s upper arm.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “This shijie can take care of herself.”

Luo Binghe shot him a look that heavily implied he was less than convinced by this.

“Binghe!” Shen Yuan yelped. “Who’s been tutoring you, ah?”

“With respect,” Luo Binghe said, disrespectfully, “it would be easier to believe it if shijie had not taken up a hobby as a human shield.”

“Well!” Shen Yuan said, flustered. His ribs still hurt. “Well! What was I supposed to do, let you get hurt?”

“ Yes ,” Luo Binghe said. There was a different kind of sharpness to him, suddenly. A sword that only knew how to bleed . “It’s not like I’m not used to it.”

“That’s -” Shen Yuan stopped himself, because the word he’d been thinking about saying was bullshit , which wasn’t very female love interest of him! Instead, he snapped: “Maybe you shouldn’t be.”

They stared at each other. There was an awkward tension in the air.

“It’s my fault,” Luo Binghe said.

So stubborn!

“It has nothing to do with you,” Shen Yuan said. “Demons like this are tricky, and it’s not like any of us have a lot of experience with them!”

Luo Binghe seemed to consider this.

“Maybe not,” he said finally. There was a determined glint in his eyes. He took one of Shen Yuan’s hands in his, and his skin was only a little bit clammy. “But I won’t let this happen again. I promise I’ll become strong enough to protect you.”

Oh.

“You don’t have to,” Shen Yuan told him. He put a hand on Luo Binghe’s cheek and refused to analyse it. “Even if you can’t become strong, I’ll stay with you. We can protect each other.”

“As charming as this display of affection is,” a voice said from behind them, dry as old leather, “it is time for a change of subject.”

Meng Mo!

Shen Yuan turned around with enough force that he nearly rolled out of Luo Binghe’s lap. Luo Binghe gave a small yelp of alarm.

“Impressive work, breaking through an illusion like this,” Meng Mo said. “Let us have a word in private.”

He snapped his wizened fingers, and

Shen Yuan slid sideways into a different dream realm, tripping over the welcome mat and falling flat on his face.

“ Fuck ,” he hissed. The rim of his glasses pushed hard against his cheek, but thankfully the glass hadn’t broken. It wouldn’t matter in the real world, but he wasn’t super into the idea of eye trauma even if it was only in dreams.

“SHEN YUAN!” Ning Yingying yelled.

The next thing he knew, she was kneeling over him, pushing him up off the floor. Her hair was a mess; she looked like she was on the edge of tears. She was wearing a size large Sasuke t-shirt and pajama pants.

He’d missed her.

“What happened? ” Ning Yingying asked.

Oh no.

“Tian Chui,” Shen Yuan said. This was going to be so embarrassing. “He went for Binghe when his back was turned. I deflected the blow.”

Ning Yingying stared at him. He took off his glasses and pretended intensely to inspect the lenses for any hairline cracks.

“... A-Luo has plot armor,” Ning Yingying said, very slowly. “He’s immune to almost any poison.”

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Shen Yuan said. “He still would have gotten hurt .”

“You could have died, ” Ning Yingying said. Her voice was shaking. “You promised you’d be careful with my body, didn’t you? What do you think would have happened to it if you’d died? What do you-”

“I didn’t think,” Shen Yuan said. There was a pit opening up in his stomach, but he bravely danced around it. He had reasons. They might not be top-of-the-shelf reasons, but they did happen to be pretty much true. “Things were happening so fast that I forgot. Someone was in danger, so I had to act. It’s what anyone would have done.”

Ning Yingying stood up abruptly.

“It is not what anyone would have done!” she said, glaring down at him. “You know that! It’s in the book! ”

“That doesn’t matter -”

“No?” Ning Yingying asked, and the look on her face made warning sirens go off in Shen Yuan’s head. “So you’d do the same for Ming Fan?”

Shen Yuan hesitated.

“ Well? ”

“Maybe,” he hedged. “Though I wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea.”

Ning Yingying made a rude gesture ( Yingying!!! Where did you learn that, aren’t you supposed to be a lady???) and stomped over to the kitchen. She slammed open one of the cupboards and pulled out a freshly made matcha latte. The side of the cup read SNARLBUCKS.

She took a long sip of it.

Then she said, in a voice that started calm and quickly lost its grip on it: “Get the wrong idea about what? ”

Shen Yuan shrugged uncomfortably. Maybe he should get up off the floor, but it felt like she might throw the cup at him if he did. “If I’m going to be one of Binghe’s wives -”

“You don’t have to be,” Ning Yingying muttered.

“What?”

“I said you don’t have to be.” She took another long sip. It didn’t seem to help, because she continued with the exact same intensity. “It’s not like we haven’t been changing the story around. Nothing is set in stone. No one has to marry him -”

“But he’s the protagonist,” Shen Yuan pointed out. “This is a stallion novel, so-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ning Yingying snapped. “We could be changing the genre around for all we know-”

“But he’d still be the protagonist,” Shen Yuan insisted. That much was impossible to deny, obviously. You just had to look at him and you couldn’t ; he had that upright air to him, and those clear, dark eyes -

“That doesn’t mean you have to marry him,” Ning Yingying said. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Shen Yuan muttered. “It’s clearly still necessary for the plot.”

Ning Yingying frowned at him. She took another sip of her drink. Then she said, calmly and with devastating precision: “It’s not necessary for the plot anymore, Yuan-di.”

Then she said: “You’re just in love with him.”

Shen Yuan opened his mouth, but no words came out.

The dream came apart like a rubber band snapping.

Chapter Text

Things were awkward between them for a while after that.

Shen Yuan mostly refused to examine it. Ning Yingying would sometimes look at him from across the room and puff out her cheeks like she was forcibly holding her words in, and he’d loudly change the unspoken subject: What’s your opinion on the latest, shittiest isekai anime? Is your homework going okay? How far can we manipulate the environment here, anyway?

(That last one had them create a cloud of butterflies that got so out of hand they’d had to herd them out of the window. Once they were out, they floated up against the bubblegum pink-and-purple sky until they disappeared back into nothing. It was actually really pretty.)

For some reason, Ning Yingying kept letting him do it.

-

Time passed, and kept passing.

-

The awkwardness went away eventually.

-

Of course, time passing meant that other things were coming closer.

-

For example: The Immortal Alliance Conference.

-

For example: The Abyss.

-

Shen Yuan was feeling pretty normal about it.

-

“Are you freaking out?” Ning Yingying asked. She had one eye on the corkboard and one on her ever-growing pile of history flashcards.

“This is serious!” Shen Yuan said, normally. He pinned another note to the board. “If we don’t get this right -”

“We will,” Ning Yingying said. “You will, and A-Luo will, too.”

“Of course Binghe will get things right,” Shen Yuan muttered. He fiddled with his pen, clicking the button restlessly until Ning Yingying started giving him the stink eye. Sigh! “He’s the protagonist. I just don’t want him to suffer any more than he has to.”

“Well, you’re the one who insists on not deviating from the narrative -”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m just saying, if we just make it so that he can’t participate in the conference in the first place -”

“What, do you want me to break his leg or something?”

“Obviously not.” Ning Yingying aggressively uncapped one of her colour-coded review pens and scribbled a note on one of her flashcards. “But there are definitely other ways than bodily harm.”

“Not if we don’t want him thrown out of Qing Jing Peak,” Shen Yuan said. “... Actually, even with the bodily harm you know Shen Qingqiu would just make him participate anyway.”

Ning Yingying winced.

“You’re not wrong,” she said reluctantly. The whole Shizun situation was kind of a sore spot for her. Privately, Shen Yuan thought it always would be. Some things expanded when they broke, jutting out at sharp, odd angles. You couldn’t just glue them cleanly back together.

Shen Yuan elected to not get into it. Ning Yingying would definitely not appreciate it.

Ning Yingying, who finally sighed and put the flashcards down.

“The plan we have isn’t perfect,” she said, “but it will help him as much as we can.”

“I know,” Shen Yuan said, and tried to believe it. Ning Yingying was giving him an uncomfortably searching look.

“Do you want to go over it with me again?” she asked, like they hadn’t gone over it several times every night for the past month or so. It wasn’t even a complicated plan. Really, it was barely a plan at all - so why was he fussing with it so much?

“No,” he said, and went over to sit next to her on the floor. “Let me quiz you on maths, I know you’ve been avoiding it.”

“ Yuan-di ,” Ning Yingying whined, suddenly brimming with the abject misery of having to study to learn things. “I’m not done going over the cards for that one yet, I can’t remember anything .”

“Whiny babies lose their jiejie privileges,” Shen Yuan said archly, channeling his best Shen Qingqiu. Ning Yingying yelled and hit him in the shoulder, which devolved into a proper sibling shove-and-slapfight that left them both breathless and laughing.

Then he quizzed her on maths.

Even if she wasn’t prepared, she still did really well.

-

So, anyway: The plan, as if it was anything but a grocery list.

It was simple and straightforward: Get Luo Binghe enough provisions and enough qiankun bags to carry them, so that he could make it as well as possible through the Abyss.

-

Every time Shen Yuan thought about him down there, scraping and bleeding his way through the horrors it had in store for him, he felt sick.

-

[...]

healing salve (as many pots as possible)

burn salve (10 pots)

yellow water breathing weed (pickled, 1 jar)

antifungal salve (3 pots)

pain-relieving salve (as many pots as possible)

bandages (as many rolls as possible)

needle and thread (1 set, medical grade)

(what even counts as medical grade here? does it even matter?)

incense of meditative awareness (might have to steal from qian cao stores?)

masks (3 just in case)

(harsh environment)

incandescent honey flower (1 jar, powdered)

(for the convent of the fire harpies, should skip the inferno gauntlet)

smoke pellets (3 tins)

(for strategic retreats)

lotion (6 pots)

(for feet!!! NOT sexual)

[...]

-

“Shijie has been quiet lately,” Luo Binghe said. They were taking a break from training, leaning against the trunk of the same tree. “Is there something wrong?”

“Hm?” Shen Yuan turned away from the single leaf he’d been blankly staring at. He’d gotten pretty far into the packing process, but some things were still giving him a bit of a hard time. It was difficult to get hold of some of the ingredients and items Luo Binghe could use to bypass certain obstacles (mostly women). Sure, Binghe could just seduce his way through them, but why not avoid wasting time if it was possible? And anyway, what if he ended up picking up some kind of weird Abyss STD? You really never knew what could happen!

“Shijie?”

Shen Yuan startled so badly he hit his head against the tree.

“Just lost in thought,” he said, wincing. “Don’t worry so much, Binghe, your shijie is fine.”

Luo Binghe was looking at him intensely. His eyes were like fields of stars.

He really was growing up well! Already he was more handsome than any other man on all of Cang Qiong.

As expected of the protagonist!

(He carefully didn’t think about anything Ning Yingying had ever said.)

Luo Binghe leaned a little closer, dropping his voice low and quiet. “Are you okay?”

His breath brushed against the side of Shen Yuan’s cheek when he spoke.

Shen Yuan felt it in his gut.

“Um,” he said, and then, “ah.”

Luo Binghe was looking more concerned by the moment. “Yingying?”

Shen Yuan sat up straight.

“I’m okay,” he said. “Just tired lately.”

“Is Shijie having bad dreams?”

“No,” Shen Yuan said. He gave Luo Binghe a rueful smile. “Maybe I just wish I could have gone to the conference with you.”

Shen Qingqiu had refused to let him participate the first time he’d asked, and he hadn’t budged since. It was probably the first time he hadn’t eventually relented in the few times Shen Yuan had gone to him to beg - there really was no pride to any of it, even if Shen Yuan had gotten better at the “subtlety” part - for something he wanted. It had been their plan A, of course. Instead, they were reduced to the qiankun pouches. To bribing Qian Cao disciples for medical supplies he couldn’t make himself and An Ding disciples for extra pairs of shoes and servants’ robes, and then bribing them all again to keep them from asking questions or talking about it.

“I wish we could have fought together,” Luo Binghe said wistfully. “I’d dedicate my kills to you, Shijie.”

Shen Yuan slapped his shoulder. “Binghe! Don’t give away your victories so easily!”

“I would, if the system would let me,” Luo Binghe said. “I’d give up anything as long as Shijie is with me.”

Shen Yuan laughed uncomfortably. He thought he might be having a stroke.

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” he said. It was a joke, but it struck him suddenly: at the IAC, Luo Binghe would meet Qin Wanyue. In the Abyss, he’d meet so many other women, too - and sure, they were mostly terrifying, but Bingge had still gone back to marry them, so - and then after that, well, there were just a lot of wives coming up, right? It wasn’t like he’d thought he’d get to keep Binghe to himself forever - what a joke, right? - and it wasn’t like he was really a jealous friend, but -

It just felt a bit strange. That was all.

“No, Shijie,” Luo Binghe said, so sincere it hurt to look at him. “I promise I won’t say anything like that to anyone else.”

“Alright,” Shen Yuan said, “if you say so.”

He looked at Luo Binghe, at his perfect, handsome face, and thought:

Maybe not now.

But you will.

You will.

-

[...]

shoes (3 pairs, yang x. won’t give more w/o explanation)

blankets (4)

fire starter (as many as can get away with)

cooking pot (1)

knives (3, for food prep)

(almost got caught)

collapsible tent (1)

(any way to get a backup?)

talisman papers (as many as can get away with)

pen, ink sticks, setup for grinding (as many ink sticks as can get away with)

(note: effect of charcoal sticks on talisman quality? research!)

[...]

-

The night before Luo Binghe left for the IAC, Shen Yuan snuck out to the woodshed to meet him. Luo Binghe opened the door to greet him, at first wary and then wide-eyed, turning red from the cold of the evening.

“Shijie,” he said, like he couldn’t quite believe Shen Yuan was there.

“Hey,” Shen Yuan said. They stood there awkwardly for a while, staring at each other in the dark.

But it was late, and it was getting later every moment they wasted.

“Can I come in?” Shen Yuan asked.

Luo Binghe turned bright red. So self-conscious!

“... yes,” he said finally, stepping away from the doorway. Shen Yuan followed him inside.

It was, unmistakably, the inside of a woodshed. Dry, chopped wood was stacked in neat piles against the walls, leaving a narrow path down the middle. Luo Binghe had moved some stacks near the back wall, creating a small, makeshift alcove. The space was lit by an illumination talisman, barely as strong as a child’s night light. The soft, warm glow made the space feel surprisingly cosy. A neat pile of blankets had been rolled out as a bed for sleeping on. Shen Yuan couldn’t see any of Luo Binghe’s personal effects, but maybe he liked to keep them out of the way.

Luo Binghe himself hovered by the edge of the alcove. In the low light, Shen Yuan couldn’t tell if he was still blushing.

Binghe, there really is nothing to be embarrassed about!

“Forgive this shijie for intruding,” Shen Yuan murmured. He gave Luo Binghe an apologetic smile. “I wanted to give you something before you leave.”

Luo Binghe blinked, once, twice, his long eyelashes sweeping against the soft pink of his cheeks. His mouth opened a little in surprise.

Sad! That was really - this boy really hadn’t received enough gifts in his life!

“Can we sit down?” Shen Yuan asked. Standing like this suddenly felt too awkward.

“Of course,” Luo Binghe said quietly. They curled up next to each other on the blankets, knees nearly touching.

“I really wanted to go with you tomorrow,” Shen Yuan began.

“I know, Shijie,” Luo Binghe said. “It’s Shizun’s mistake to underestimate you.”

He really did say the title like a curse. Shen Yuan had a sudden, violent flashback to calling for Shen Qingqiu’s castration in the comments of the chapter where he’d been pickled. He thought about Shen Qingqiu caving to his requests and teaching him how to ask better, even as he encouraged the disciples of Qing Jing to beat the shit out of Luo Binghe on the regular.

A small shudder squirmed its way up his back.

“Well!” he said. “Since your shijie can’t go with you, I got you this.”

He pulled the qiankun pouches from his sleeve. There were four of them, all tied together so they could be worn as a belt if necessary. He piled them carefully in the small space on the blankets between them.

For a long moment, Luo Binghe didn’t say anything, staring down at them.

It kind of made Shen Yuan nervous. Suddenly, he felt desperately envious of the stupid fans Shen Qingqiu was always wielding. Really, in a world where you couldn’t hide your face in your phone when things was awkward, he was starting to see the appeal.

Luo Binghe still hadn’t said anything.

“It’s not much,” Shen Yuan said, “but your shijie has heard that sometimes the conference lasts for longer than the allotted time, and Shizun was hinting that he might want to add a night hunt or two on the way back,” - a lie - “and the weather is so unstable lately, which means you may have problems on the road,” - also a lie - “so I wanted to make sure that even if something happens, Binghe will be okay.”

That part was true, obviously.

Obviously . Like there was room to worry about anything else in his brain right now.

“Don’t open them unless things go wrong,” he continued, like he was just joking. “Save it. If you come back and you haven’t used all of it - even if you haven’t used any of it - I’m sure we’ll be able to find a use for them here.” He took Luo Binghe’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “This is just to keep your shijie from worrying.”

Luo Binghe looked up. His eyes were a little wet.

“Shijie doesn’t have to worry,” he said, squeezing Shen Yuan’s hand in return. “This Binghe will come back to you.”

He said it with such drama!

Shen Yuan laughed a little, patting Luo Binghe’s shoulder with his free hand (he couldn’t just let go ). “With the kind of serious face you’re making, I guess I’ll have to believe you.”

“Good,” Luo Binghe said, with the first hint of humour he’d shown since Shen Yuan showed up. “I suppose we’ll just have to share the contents of these when I get back.”

Shen Yuan smiled at him. He felt like his guts had been thrown in a blender. “I look forward to it.”

Then he couldn’t stand to look at Binghe anymore, so sweet and so serious. He pulled him into an awkward hug instead, burying his face in Binghe’s hair. The force of it sent them tilting backwards into the blanket pile. Binghe’s arms went up around him, warm and solid.

“I don’t want to go back,” Shen Yuan murmured, after some time had passed. “Can I sleep with you?”

There was a loaded pause.

“Here,” Shen Yuan said quickly. “Can I sleep here. With you.”

“Yes,” Luo Binghe said, though he sounded a little breathless. “Of course, Shijie.”

Shen Yuan maneuvered them sideways, so he wouldn’t crush Luo Binghe’s lungs quite so badly.

“Thank you,” he said. “I just really don’t want to deal with sneaking back into the dorms right now.”

“Mn,” Luo Binghe said.

-

Time passed, and kept passing.

-

Luo Binghe fell asleep eventually.

-

Shen Yuan lay next to him, listening to the soft sounds of his breathing, until the sun came up.

Chapter Text

But really, things were fine.

Someone was knocking on wood.

For a moment, Shen Yuan couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep. Then he came back to himself and realised that he was still lying on his old bed. The ceiling still looked the same as it had before he’d transmigrated, and every night after that.

“Yuan-di,” Ning Yingying called from the other side of his bedroom door. “It’s been two weeks. If you don’t come out I’m going in there and kicking you in the shins.”

Shen Yuan felt like a marionette as he got up and met her in the doorway.

“I’m just being lazy,” he pointed out, very reasonably. “I thought dreams were a place where that was allowed?”

Ning Yingying’s mouth tightened into a thin, straight line. Then she said, “There’s popcorn. We’re watching Wu Xin.”

Before he could answer, Ning Yingying was pulling him out of into the living room.

-

They watched three episodes. When Shen Yuan woke up on Qing Jing, he could still feel the imprint of her feet against his thigh.

-

Really, everyone was making a fuss for no reason.

People kept whispering and shooting him worried looks when he passed them. Girls he had never really spoken to before kept coming up to ask him if he needed anything. Ming Fan would not stop pestering him, practically throwing food at him during meal times and giving him puppy dog looks he couldn’t quite pull off.

Shen Yuan supposed it was difficult to do a passable pleading look when your direct competition was Luo Binghe.

Slowly, he put down his chopsticks. The food on Qing Jing had always been bland, but lately it really had reached new levels of flavourlessness.

“Xiao-shimei should eat,” Ming Fan said, still looking at him with those horribly wide eyes. “She can’t rely on inedia just yet.”

Who asked you!

“Thanking Da-shixiong for his care,” Shen Yuan murmured, “though perhaps it would be better spent on someone who is not actively eating as he says it.”

Unfortunately, there were no starving orphans around; even under normal circumstances, the only Qing Jing disciple who fit that particular role was -

Well -

Shen Yuan choked down the rest of his food.

It really did taste like less than nothing.

-

For no particular reason, he’d taken up wandering around on the outskirts of Qing Jing lately. It was pretty peaceful, listening to nothing but the wind in the trees and whatever birds were around. Sometimes he’d even spot some cool PIDW animal. They were generally not aggressive, as anything that was a potential threat even to the youngest disciples knew to stay away due to the massive amounts of qi and also the threat of the Peak Lords. So they could probably have been cooler, but he still liked watching them. Sometimes he brought some paper with him to sketch them.

Usually he just walked.

He was kind of missing headphones and the ability to play music on them, but mostly it was pretty okay.

-

It was getting late. The sun had already dipped below the horizon, leaving the rest of the world to turn greyer by degrees as it fought to catch up. Shen Yuan got up from the rock he’d been meditating on, ass numb from sitting still for too long, and dusted himself off. Reluctantly, he began walking back to the Qing Jing dorms.

Then his foot hit something at the wrong angle, and he fell flat on his face.

Motherf-

It wasn’t a root or anything. There wasn’t enough light to see what it was, exactly, but it was smooth, half-swallowed by the ground like it had been there for a very long time.

Shen Yuan dug his fingers into the dirt around it and carefully worked it free.

It took a while. By the time he’d gotten it out, the moon was bright enough that he could see a little better.

It was some kind of carved object.

Shen Yuan’s heart was in his throat all of a sudden.

With hands that were completely steady, he removed the dirt from its crevices until the shape of it resolved into something more recognisable.

And

Well.

There was no way around it.

It was Luo Binghe’s fake jade guanyin.

You had to laugh, right?

It made sense, didn’t it? That he’d find it now, when there was no way of returning it for years and years and fucking years , and all that time Binghe was still stuck, with no-one to get him out but himself, and what could Shen Yuan do about any of it?

Nothing.

Obviously.

There was nothing, and wasn’t he just as useless as all those other wives he’d complained about in PIDW, when it came down to it? Good for nothing but material, and not even -

It was just -

You had to laugh. You had to laugh, every burst of sound like broken glass in your throat, breath hitching through your teeth in the dark.

-

He got up eventually.

He wiped his face.

He wrapped up the guanyin and hid it in his sleeve.

Then he went back to the dorm. He didn’t fall asleep.

-

Time passed, and kept passing.

-

For the most part, he hadn’t really been too bothered by Without A Cure. Sure, there had been a few times during a lesson or a practice fight when things just suddenly locked up, but someone was usually around to either fix it or run for someone who could.

Which was still pretty embarrassing!

But a big reason why it hadn’t been too bad was the regular treatments. His qi had been stunted enough that Ning Yingying might never become as strong of a cultivator as she was meant to, which he generally tried not to think too hard about because there wasn’t really anything he could do about it right now. Luckily Luo Binghe could fix that as soon as he got back from the Abyss.

… Anyway. Twice a week, he had appointments to get his qi circulated. Most of the time, Mu Qingfang was the person who dealt with it. Unfortunately, sometimes it was Shen Qingqiu.

Which was why Shen Yuan was sitting politely in the Peak Lord’s bamboo cottage, trying not to think about anything at all. Shen Qingqiu was holding his wrist, feeding him qi in a way that could almost be mistaken for gentle, if you’d never felt the real thing.

It was the first time since the IAC.

It was a good thing Shen Yuan didn’t have access to anything sharp right now, because it was hard not to think about stabbing him. He barely knew what to do with himself, with the prickly, swarming anger that had hit him the moment Shen Qingqiu met his eyes at the entrance of his bamboo hut. It felt like he was being eaten up from the inside out by ants. Like there were bees clustering in clumps around his intestines.

“This lord understands that Yingying hasn’t been eating properly lately,” Shen Qingqiu said, in an infuriatingly neutral tone.

Why do you care??

“Shizun shouldn’t believe everything Da-shixiong tells him,” Shen Yuan murmured, clinging to maidenly decorum for dear life. “As always, Yingying eats when she is hungry.”

“Hm.” It was just a small unit of sound, but Shen Qingqiu packed a whole year’s worth of doubt into it. Shen Yuan was going to vomit blood.

“How was the conference, Shizun?” he asked instead, and this time it was easy to keep his tone sweet.“Yingying was sad to miss out, but with the trouble…”

Shen Qingqiu’s hand stilled around Shen Yuan’s wrist, but he didn’t speak, leaving the sentence to die an undignified death. The silence hung around oppressively until he was done circulating Shen Yuan’s qi.

It really was unbearable.

“I just,” Shen Yuan burst out, about as pathetic as the world’s second wettest dog, but Shen Qingqiu apparently felt the need to make up for his earlier silence all of a sudden.

“I warned you about that … boy.” but he said it like a curse. “Don’t let him drag you down with him.”

Shen Yuan stared up at him. His face was pale and deathly serious. Shen Yuan wanted nothing more but to grab a handful of his hair, to yank it down around his throat and choke him with it.

“He’s gone, Shizun,” he said instead, small and gentle. “He can’t drag me anywhere.”

“How wonderful the world would be,” Shen Qingqiu said, “if a person being gone meant they stopped hurting you.”

There was a rare sincerity to his words. It wasn’t that Shen Qingqiu often lied to Ning Yingying - at least not as far as Shen Yuan was aware - but this felt -

True. Like he was showing Shen Yuan a fresh wound, or oversharing about his personal life.

It was uncomfortable, in the way accidentally spotting your teacher looking up cheap wine at the store on a Tuesday night was uncomfortable.

Shen Qingqiu was looking at him steadily.

Shen Yuan wished he’d stop reminding him that, for all his horrible flaws, he was still a person. He had more depth here than had ever made it onto the pages of Proud Immortal Demon Way.

“Yingying, this master would like it if his disciple would prepare some tea,” he said finally.

Shen Yuan nodded and went to do so. The whole time he felt like he was four different people, and all of them were watching his body from the outside, yelling.

But he heated the water. He accidentally scalded the leaves and had to start over. He poured Shen Qingqiu a cup, and then one for himself at Shen Qingqiu’s insistence.

“Men will always betray you, Yingying,” Shen Qingqiu murmured after a while. “You would do well to remember that.”

Shen Yuan stared into his cup, the way the light hit the liquid inside. He felt sick. “Even you, Shizun?”

Somehow the question startled a laugh out of Shen Qingqiu, short and bitter like the scalded tea leaves Shen Yuan had thrown out.

“If Yingying finds me guilty of betrayal,” he said, “she may punish me herself.”

-

Ning Yingying kept asking him to dothings for her. She’d burst into his bedroom and tell him to help her decide on where to place a new shelf, or to join him to watch some movie or show or anime she thought he’d get a kick out of; she’d badger him into quizzing her on her homework or trying some new horrible food trend she’d picked up on social media; she would lay down on top of him in bed with her full weight and complain about how bored she was until he snapped and they ended up rollerskating through the hallway or something equally stupid.

Or like tonight:

“Yuan-di,” she said, slumping down on the couch next to him, “would you braid my hair?”

Shen Yuan rolled his eyes at her. “You know you can just imagine yourself with whatever hairstyle you like here, right?”

“It’s not the same,” Ning Yingying said, “the braiding is a huge part of the whole -” she spread her palms out dramatically, “- process! And anyway, I can’t keep it too long in my own body and I really miss it.”

Then she gave him a pleading look that would put any dog to shame.

Fine!! Fine. Whatever. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do, anyway.

“Okay,” he said, “turn around, and I’ll do your hair.”

“Yay!” Ning Yingying turned around, back slotted in between Shen Yuan’s upturned knees. “Yuan-di, you know you’re my favorite brother.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shen Yuan groused. He gathered up her hair and began to comb it out.

It was really kind of soothing, once he’d gotten into the motions of it. Everything narrowed down to such a small window of focus where all that mattered was moving his hands and the brush right and not letting any strands of hair get tangled or pulled. Easy to get lost in it, to be nothing more than a pair of hands doing a task, to be nothing more or less than a brother helping a sister out. Easy to -

The apartment door slammed open.

Shen Yuan startled so hard he hit Ning Yingying in the side with the brush.

The hallway outside was nondescript like it always was, just a thing to add to the illusion that the apartment connected to a larger world outside.

But the person standing in the doorway was -

Was -

“Shijie?” Luo Binghe asked, voice cracking.

Shen Yuan disentangled himself from Ning Yingying and shakily got to his feet.

He couldn’t look away from him. Binghe was wearing his Qing Jing robes, though they were so torn and dirty, so smeared with blood and dirt and ashes, that it was hard to recognise them if you didn’t know what you were looking at. His face was dirty, too, and his hair was a mess. His hands were raw and cracking; his nails demon-sharp. The zuiyin on his forehead glowed faintly red, the colour sparking in his wide eyes.

But it was Binghe.

That was his Binghe.

END OF PART ONE

Chapter Text

Perhaps this was where it was always meant to end.

Shen Qingqiu, face white with anger, said nothing at all. As he stood there, bathed in the unnatural light of the rift, he looked like some long forgotten, vengeful deity.

His sword was out, bright like fresh leaves in spring.

Luo Binghe took a step back. It wasn’t on purpose.

He just felt, for the first time in a long time, like prey.

Like something not quite human. Something that could freely be ruined and discarded with no consequence.

Something only good for culling.

His heel came up against the edge of the hole in the world.

“Please,” he said. Every part of his body ached from the fight with the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python. His forehead was still bleeding. The blood kept getting in his eyes.

Shen Qingqiu began to move toward him.

“Please,” Luo Binghe said again. His teeth felt strange in his mouth, sharp against the edges of his tongue. Even to his own ears, he sounded pathetic. Too desperate to be trusted and too aware of what was coming - what must be coming - to not be desperate. He swallowed and tried again, sick with it, the words spilling out bright and jagged: “I’ll be good. I’ll be good, I promise, I-”

“I should have known,” Shen Qingqiu said, as though he was talking to himself, “that a beast such as Luo Binghe would turn out to be rotten all the way through.”

“No, I’m - this disciple is - Shizun, please -”

But Shen Qingqiu was raising his sword.

“No - don’t - I’ll be good I’ll be good I promise I promise I -”

In one smooth movement, Shen Qingqiu drove Xiu Ya right through Luo Binghe’s heart.

Luo Binghe scrabbled against the blade, hands stinging as the edge cut into them. Like pork, he thought. Like butter. Making scraps out of himself. And for what? The metal was too well-forged for him to find purchase against its singing edge. Everything was slick with blood.

Xiu Ya would not let go of him unless Shen Qingqiu made it.

Shen Qingqiu, who was watching him struggle, looking at him like he was a beast - like he was lower than a beast - like he was an insect.

Then he forced a burst of energy down the blade, pushing Luo Binghe off the sword and into the Abyss.

-

Shijie, I -

-

It was a long fall.

-

For a long time, he thought he was dead.

-

Then his body began to slowly knit itself back together, and he couldn’t doubt being alive anymore.

There was no space for anything but pain.

-

After some time, he came back into being.

-

He dragged himself up onto his hands and knees only to vomit bile and black blood all over the rock he’d been broken on. The sky above was churning with clouds the colour of acid. He was stuck on top of a cliff, its surface striated with some deep red mineral. As he watched, the blood he’d vomited dissolved into it, becoming part of the pattern.

He tensed, waiting for a more direct line of attack, but the stone stayed solid and unmoving everywhere his blood hadn’t touched. Slowly, that part dulled, too, turning the same red colour as the rest of the markings.

Still, he didn’t relax. He knew what this place was, after all - the Endless Abyss. Ning Yingying had told him enough nightmarish stories for the name to stick.

He wondered how long he’d been here.

It could have been hours.

It could have been days, or months, or years. Centuries. There was no way of knowing.

If he couldn’t find a way out of here, there would be no point of knowing, either. And he needed to find a way out.

He’d promised Ning Yingying he’d come back to her.

-

His robes were ruined from the fall and his own bodily fluids, sticking horribly and falling apart around him at the same time.

On inspection, though, his body was fine. Nothing was broken; not even the skin. His demonic heritage was strong enough to pull him back from the brink of death; despite Shen Qingqiu’s best efforts, his body would not let him die.

-

But his features stayed monstrous.

-

The qiankun bags were all miraculously still intact.

He hadn’t opened them during the Alliance - some part of him had wanted to save them, to show how strong he could be without them.

Besides, Shijie had asked him to wait, hadn’t she?

Now, shivering in the barren, moonless dark of the Abyss at night, he found himself pathetically grateful to have something that wasn’t soaked in pain or dread.

He was glad he’d held on to them.

It wasn’t as though opening them sooner would have made any difference. Up until the end, nothing had felt too difficult or painful to handle.

And then, of course, everything had.

Now he picked apart the strings of one of the qiankun bags with shaking hands. There was a note pinned to the inside lining.

He carefully unpinned it and pulled it out, smoothing out the parchment. It was covered in Ning Yingying’s cramped hanzi, the characters growing smaller and more tortured as she began to run out of space.

Luo Binghe stared down at them.

Binghe, it began, with no thought to any kind of formal address. Luo Binghe carefully folded the note back up, though his hands were shaking enough that he almost dropped it as he put it back in the bag.

He took a steady breath, and then another.

The sky opened up.

It began, stingingly, to rain.

-

No matter how far he walked, the Abyss stretched out endlessly around him. Every turn brought with it more starving, wretched beasts. The stony ground was too dry for much of anything to grow, except for the places where the beings that inhabited this place fought each other to death. Whatever blood was spilled, the ground took greedily; flowers sprouted where it hit, their bright white petals edged in pinks and reds that deepened and then faded into brittle, ashen grey.

They never lasted long. Only a few hours at most.

Luo Binghe thought Ning Yingying might think they were cool.

He thought about what her face might look like, if he described them to her. The way her eyes would light up. How she might try to hide her excitement, like she was embarrassed to be so alive with interest.

-

He hadn’t read her letter yet.

-

Everything here wanted to kill him. That seemed to be the law of this place.

His days narrowed down around it, until all he had space for was fighting and fleeing and clawing his way into safe spaces to steal a few precious moments to sleep or eat. The Abyss stripped him of everything else, cutting through all the way to the wretched, desperate bone of him.

But there was no way to go but on.

Surely there had to be a way out of here somewhere.

-

There were women in the Abyss, too.

He didn’t like to think about the things they asked of him.

-

He woke up cursing Shen Qingqiu and the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect and everyone on it (except the one);

He woke up filled with a rage so complete it didn’t connect to anything, running rampant through his body like a fever;

He woke up sobbing, bones burning in their almost-new, almost-human positions;

He woke up sobbing, choking on his mother’s name;

He woke up sobbing, reaching out for the wall of the woodshed;

He woke up sobbing, and Ning Yingying must have forgotten him by now;

He woke up sobbing -

-

Over and over again, he woke up and wished he hadn’t.

No matter what, his body wouldn’t let him die.

-

But at least he was warm in the clothes from Shijie’s supplies. At least there were weapons in there, and talismans, and a number of other useful things. Sometimes he even managed to find a safe enough place to cook a decent enough meal.

He kept Shijie’s letter folded in the Amulet of Serene Fire, which he had taken from the hoard of the Giant Sparkling Fire Lizard.

It was one of many animals he had encountered in the Abyss that Ning Yingying could talk for hours about, which had turned out to be invaluable. If he didn’t know better, he would think she had the power to see the future.

-

He still hadn’t been able to make himself read the note.

-

The Venomous Blue-Crested Cave Lion caught him by surprise.

He killed it, in the end, but not without injury. By the time the lion lay dead at his feet, it had torn a deep gash into his side, splitting him open from rib to hip. Every movement was agony; flowers bloomed around him as he stumbled away, hands clutching at the wound to keep himself together.

The Venomous Blue-Crested Cave Lion is known for the distinctive, cartilaginous crest-like structure that protects its neck from injury. In the quiet of his brain, the thought sounded like Shijie.

It was comforting.

Luo Binghe leaned his forehead against the cave wall. His vision was swimming. His hands were cold despite the awful gush of blood.

He wondered how much of it he had left in him, but it wasn’t as though it mattered. His body would not let him die; his fingers were too clumsy and weak with blood loss to patch himself back up together. All he could do was sit here, alone and vulnerable and shivering like he was five years old again, unable to outrun the older boys down the street. Unable to return home on time.

What would Shijie say, if she saw him like this?

He drew a shuddering breath and tried to imagine it.

She’d be kind. She’d look at her with deep concern, with her slender eyebrows drawn together, with her voice tight with concern -

He imagined tears in her eyes. Even now, it felt somehow forbidden.

He imagined her taking her taking his face in her hands, imagined her leaning in close, imagined her saying -

-

He was standing in a hallway.

The walls were white and perfectly smooth. The floor was made from grey, spotted rock that shone under a long strip of strangely shaped night pearls.

There was no blood anywhere.

Instead, there was a door.

“This is a dream,” he murmured.

If Meng Mo was around, he wasn’t adding anything to the conversation. Luo Binghe didn’t need him to know what this was; there was a far-away quality to the air, like his head had been stuffed with cotton.

There were no other doors than the one in front of him. Whatever had trapped him here wanted him to go inside.

Luo Binghe considered breaking out of the dream entirely, but at the moment, the waking world felt like the worse option. At least here there was something to do that wasn’t fighting or bleeding or not-quite-dying.

For now, at least.

If this being wanted to snare him closer, Luo Binghe could oblige.

-

Shijie.

His guard was up, but it collapsed the second he saw her, sitting on a strangely shaped couch with her knees pulled up. He couldn’t help himself; the word came out the way water broke through a dam.

If this was part of the trap, it was a good one. The worst kind.

If it was part of the trap, he would find the thing that put him here and kill it slowly.

But he couldn’t make himself break through the dream just yet.

Ning Yingying’s eyes were wide, her mouth a small o. She was wearing strangely made underclothes and nothing else.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then the boy sitting behind her broke the silence instead.

“Binghe?” he asked. Luo Binghe hadn’t noticed him until he spoke. Now that he was looking at him, all he could see was the way his knees bracketed Ning Yingying’s body, the way his knees were bare against the sides of her naked arms. His fingers in her hair.

“Who is this?” Luo Binghe asked, eyes narrowed.

The pause that followed felt strange.

“Did he trap you here?”

Stupid. It was unlikely that any of this was not a trap. Even Ning Yingying -

The boy stiffened. His hands were still in her hair.

“A-Luo,” Ning Yingying snapped. Luo Binghe couldn’t remember the last time she called him that.

“Shijie,” he hissed, unable to stop himself from playing into it. Whatever it was - the fantasy of being able to rescue someone else, maybe. The sweet relief of seeing her again. The sick relief of not being strung up alone on the torture rack. “This is some manner of dream trap - a dream demon must have caught us both somehow.”

The boy got up from the couch. Ning Yingying shot him a look as he went.

To his horror, Luo Binghe found that he could no longer read her expression.

“I’ll leave the two of you alone,” the boy said stiffly. A strand if his shoulder-length hair was slipping out from behind his ear. He glanced at Ning Yingying, lightning quick, and then drew a short, decisive breath. Turning to fully face Luo Binghe, he said: “I don’t know how you did it, but this isn’t a trap. You’re in Yingying’s dream. Doubting that it’s real is the only sensible thing to do, so of course you’re doubting it. But it’s safe here. If you give yourself a moment to breathe, you should be able to sense it.”

He spoke like a teacher, words measured and even and devoid of feeling, as though he was only reciting the plain truth.

Well. Almost like a teacher, Luo Binghe thought, with a twist of bitter humour. If nothing else, his voice lacked the teacherly undercurrent of barely disguised disgust.

Despite himself, Luo Binghe found himself a little less on edge.

The boy was watching his face intently. He did not seem to be aware that he was staring. Then, as suddenly as a whip cracking, he turned and disappeared into the back of the apartment.

Somewhere, a door opened and shut.

Ning Yingying stared after him, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. Her mouth was pink. Despite the tension in her posture, it looked soft.

Look at me, Luo Binghe thought. Please look at me.

“Who was that?” he asked instead. “Is he the thing that pulled us here?”

Ning Yingying didn’t answer the question.

“Sit down,” she said instead, getting up from the couch and gesturing at the space she’d just been taking up. “I’ll make you some tea.”

Then she left.

With only him, the space was more quiet than anywhere he had been since before the Immortal Alliance Conference. A fresh breeze was coming in through a half-open window, making the gauzy curtains flutter. There was a strange, square object standing on a table in front of the couch. On its front was a black glass rectangle. Luo Binghe didn’t know what to make of it.

There were many such things in the room. Nothing, from the layout and the materials to the furniture itself and the objects strewn around it, looked familiar. There was nothing to hold on to; everything felt ethereal and strange. Unreal.

And yet.

It could still be a trap, but when he closed his eyes, he could feel Ning Yingying’s presence all around him. He’d know that feeling anywhere. With how enmeshed it was with the rest of the dream, this had to be part of her dream realm.

Even without that, though, he realised with a start that he hadn’t doubted it since that boy told him.

Stupid.  

He collapsed shakily into the couch. It was still warm where Ning Yingying had sat; he curled a hand around the edge of the cushion and held on, trying to regulate his breathing.

It was pretty novel, being stupid without having his skin flayed open because of it.

Even if -

There was a clink of ceramic.

When he opened his eyes, there was a cup on the table in front of him, filled to the brim with tea that was still hot enough to be steaming. It was shaped like a yellow, ratlike creature. The handle was made up by its flat and jagged tail.

The tea was familiar, at least.

“Thanking Shijie,” he murmured.

“I would tell you to go take a shower,” Ning Yingying said. She set a glass of her own down. The contents were pale pink and topped with whipped cream. Luo Binghe was suddenly horribly aware of the way his clothes were stiff with dirt and old blood, but Ning Yingying was still talking, face fixed with another expression he couldn’t read, except for its intensity: “But it’s not as if you couldn’t just think your clothes clean if you wanted to. And it’s more important to tell you about … what this is.”

But she didn’t say anything. Her fingers tapped against the side of her glass.

“What’s wrong?” Luo Binghe asked.

Ning Yingying looked away. She blew out a forceful breath and flopped down onto the couch next to him. “It’s just complicated.”

“Shijie, if that person-”

“A-Luo,” she said, for the second time. Every time, she felt farther away. “Listen to me.”

He swallowed. “Yes, Shijie.”

She waited for him to take another sip of the tea. Then she said, like she already knew the answer: “A-Luo, have you ever heard about transmigration?”

Luo Binghe shook his head.

“I hadn’t either,” Ning Yingying said. “But Yuan-di is really into it. Not that he’d ever agree if you asked him.”

“Yuan-di?” 

Ning Yingying waved vaguely in the direction the boy had gone. “ Anyway , it’s a literary genre where someone ends up in someone else’s body in another universe and then they … okay, usually they end up with a harem or having a deep, forbidden romance or, like, engaging in a larger colonialist project of building up a power base and teaching the native population how to do basic farming or whatever?”

She was talking with her hands now, but not in the way she usually did. He couldn’t pin it down.

“What does a literary genre have to do with anything?” he asked.

“It was pretty helpful for contextualising things,” Ning Yingying said, “when we switched bodies.”

The mug cracked in his hands. Tea spilled out between his fingers, still steaming; it went everywhere. Ning Yingying yelped and shot up from the couch.

Luo Binghe’s hands were shaking. He was seeing it, now - this Yuan-di, taking Shijie’s body and using it for his own wicked needs when she was not able to stop him. This Yuan-di touching -

Ning Yingying came back again, shoving a handful of soft, textured paper at him.

“To wipe up the tea,” she said, and waited for him to do so.

Luo Binghe did the best he could.

He wasn’t really sure why he bothered. It wasn’t as if the stains mattered; this was the dream world. He didn’t even have to snap his fingers - if he wanted to, he could think them gone.

But he used the papers anyway, even as his blood was burning with the thought of that parasite in Ning Yingying’s body. How long had he been in there? Did it happen before the Conference? How could Luo Binghe not have known?

“Did he take advantage of you,” he bit out.

“You know,” Ning Yingying said instead of answering, “the whole violent possessiveness thing really isn't cute.”

It might have been kinder to stab him.

She must have seen it on his face, because she softened slightly.

“A-Luo,” she said, “Yuan-di and I have been dealing with this for a very long time.”

Luo Binghe had a sudden, awful suspicion. “How long?”

“A-Luo,” Ning Yingying said again, and he really wished she would stop calling him that, “how long has the Ning Yingying in the real world been calling you Binghe?”

“What,” he said. He wanted to vomit.

“If you loved me for me,” Ning Yingying said, “then you didn’t. That was all him.”

She took a long sip of her drink.

Luo Binghe watched her, the way her throat moved when she swallowed. He felt like he was being eaten by ants. Maybe that was the real world calling him back, but he didn’t wake up.

He stood instead, and walked - as quickly as he could without running - in the direction Ning Yingying’s Yuan-di had gone.

The hallway in the back of the apartment had three doors. One, its door open in a crack, was some kind of bathroom. The other two were shut, and identical except for the name plates.

Barely stopping to think about it, Luo Binghe opened the one that said Shen Yuan.

“Shijie,” he said.

But the room was empty.

-

It took time to find another safe place to sleep. When he finally did, he still couldn’t find his way back to the right dream. Maybe Shijie wasn’t asleep. Maybe Luo Binghe wasn’t strong enough. Whichever it was, the dreams he did have weren’t much better than the Abyss when he was awake. 

-

But he kept trying.

-

Some kind of giant, many-legged snake caught him off-guard as he tried to cross the River of Wretched Screams. It clamped its thousand needle-like teeth around his arm and wrenched right out of its socket. The muscle and skin and ligaments tore apart like paper. Luo Binghe killed the snake, one-armed and unsteady, and then vomited all over his robes.

He didn’t even know what it was . Ning Yingying would have known; if he asked, she would have been able to list all its strengths and weaknesses.

… The other Ning Yingying.

His foot caught on a gnarled root, and he fell. Something in his knee made a horrifying crunching sound, but it wasn’t so bad. His vision was greying out at the corners, soft like cotton. He could smell ozone. He could smell tea, and something sugary and sweet that he had never once seen in the real world.

-

He was back in the windowless hallway. Everything looked just the same as it had the last time he’d been here.

Without another thought, he opened the door.

In the apartment, Ning Yingying was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a stack of brightly coloured paper. And - 

One of the walls of the apartment was covered in paper notes and crisscrossed with red string. The boy - Shen Yuan - was standing in front of it, pen still raised.

He was staring wide-eyed at Luo Binghe.

Ning Yingying got up and left.

“Have fun,” she called from the hallway, and then disappeared into her room.

Probably. Luo Binghe was busy.

Shen Yuan swallowed. Behind him, the notes and string slid off the wall like coloured water.

“Luo Binghe,” he said, not quite meeting Luo Binghe’s eyes.

Luo Binghe thought: I put that there.

I made her - him - Shijie feel like -

“Shijie,” Luo Binghe said, and then burst into tears. He couldn’t help it; it felt like something inside him had burst. Like there had been a catastrophic accident - now, or at the Conference, or maybe at his birth - and now he was drowning in salty water.

“Whoa, hey,” Shijie said, “please don’t cry.”

But he was already reaching out and pulling Luo Binghe close, hugging him tightly.

They fit together differently like this, but they still fit . Shijie patted his hair like he always did. Luo Binghe buried his face in his shoulder and sobbed hard enough that he struggled to breathe, and all the while Shijie was murmuring reassurances and apologies into his ear.

Time turned strange.

Eventually, he ran out of tears.

“This one apologises,” he mumbled into Shijie’s shoulder. Part of him felt he should be prostrating himself on the ground, but then he would have to move, and he really did not want to.

“What, for crying?” Shijie asked. He sighed, absentmindedly stroking Luo Binghe’s hair. “Your Shijie doesn’t like to see Binghe upset, but who wouldn’t cry after all that?”

Luo Binghe sniffled.

“This wretched one misunderstood and rejected you,” he said.

“Okay, well,” Shijie said awkwardly, “anyone would, right? It’s not like this is a normal situation. You couldn’t have known.”

“I should have,” Luo Binghe insisted. He pulled away far enough to look Shijie in the eye, to let her see how earnest he was. “After everything -”

“Binghe,” Shijie said, cutting him off. His eyes darted away and then back again. “Why don’t you get a shower? And then I’ll get us some tea.”

Then he pulled Luo Binghe along into the kitchen.

-

Luo Binghe got a shower. Shijie had to explain how it worked first, and what the different bottled soaps were. The water was nice, even if it wasn’t real, but some awful, treacherous part of Luo Binghe couldn’t stop thinking about making Shijie stay with him. Making him help wash Luo Binghe’s hair, and … other things.

Shameful.

Afterwards, he dried himself with a towel so soft it may as well have been made from a cloud. As he tried to dry his hair, his eyes caught on the mirror over the strangely shaped sink.

He froze, caught off guard.

His reflection stared back, wide-eyed. It looked just like the person he had been before his cradle seal had broken. Just as human and untouched.

Good, he thought, crushing down the dread in the pit of his stomach. Better to keep Shijie from realizing just how much of a monster he really was.

-

They got tea. Shijie made it with the help of a self-heating metal kettle that did not need any minding but the push of a button. He made Luo Binghe get a pair of cups from the cupboard.

Then Shijie sat him down on the couch and draped a blanket over his shoulders. It was black and made from soft, thick wool. Luo Binghe worried the fabric between his fingers and nearly started crying again.

He drank some tea instead.

It was perfect.

“What’s your name?” he asked, even if he already knew. He couldn’t make himself look up from the cup.

“Oh,” Shijie said, like he’d forgotten that he hadn’t told Luo Binghe already. “It’s, um, Shen Yuan.”

“Shen Yuan,” Luo Binghe repeated, looking up at him.

“That’s me,” Shen Yuan said. His cheeks were pink.

He didn’t look like Luo Binghe’s Shijie until he moved, but when he did, it was impossible not to see it. A beloved spirit in an unfamiliar body - Luo Binghe could see it in the way Shen Yuan’s mouth moved when he talked, in the slight tilt of his head; the way his hands were always on the verge of moving, like birds before flight.

Luo Binghe wanted to crack his own ribcage open and make him live inside it.

“Are you eating well?” he asked. He didn’t know what he wanted the answer to be.

“That doesn’t matter,” Shen Yuan said, like Luo Binghe couldn’t see him subtly avoiding his eyes. “How is Binghe doing? Where - what did he encounter last?”

“It matters,” Luo Binghe told him.

Shen Yuan rolled his eyes. It was so familiar that Luo Binghe nearly started crying again.

“I’m eating just fine,” he said. “Not that anyone seems to believe me when I say it.”

There was a lot Luo Binghe could say to that, but they didn’t have time for half of it. Instead, he took Shen Yuan’s hands in his. They were dry and warm, but this wasn’t the real world - who knew what state Shen Yuan was in outside of these strange dreams, when they hid even Luo Binghe’s monstrosity so completely?

He tried not to think about it.

“I’ll cook for you,” he said. “When I find my way back to you, I’ll cook for you as much as you’ll let me.”

Shen Yuan laughed a little. “Don’t make promises so easily, Binghe, I might take you up on it.”

Then he sobered. His hands turned in Luo Binghe’s grip. For a moment, Luo Binghe thought he might pull away; instead, he wound his fingers through Luo Binghe’s and squeezed.

“Tell me what’s happening in the Abyss,” he said quietly. “Let me help you figure out what you need to do next.”

-

It took Luo Binghe another near-death monster encounter to figure it out: The closer he got to dying, the higher the chance of seeing Shijie again in his dreams. Maybe it brought him into a more sensitive dream state; maybe it pared down everything that was less important.

Luo Binghe didn’t know, and he didn’t care, either.

All that mattered was that it worked. If it got him back to Shijie and the warm, safe apartment, it was worth the pain.

Besides. No matter how injured he got, his body would not let him die.