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Shen Qingqiu wakes to the warm rays of dawn and his husband’s radiant smile.

“Good morning, husband,” Luo Binghe says, eyes twinkling. He lays his head on Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder where they both lie in their bed—an easy and familiar gesture. “Shall I make us breakfast?”

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu whispers. He hesitates before tucking a stray strand of hair behind his husband’s ear.

He still can’t quite meet Binghe’s eyes, after last night…!

Binghe himself seems fairly unbothered. He presses a kiss to Shen Qingqiu’s fingers smoothly, with zero hesitation. “I should make us something hearty,” Binghe continues. “So we can start off our honeymoon on the right foot.”

Isn’t it a little late for that? “Anything’s fine,” Shen Qingqiu says blearily. “Anything you make is good.” And you know it, you shameless thing!

Binghe pouts a little. “Today’s the first day, Shizun,” he says. “It needs to be special.”

“… First?”

“The first day of our honeymoon?” Binghe asks slowly, as if to humour his half-asleep husband through his slow return to the waking world.

Only—there’s no need for that now.

Shen Qingqiu sits up in bed, rapidly sobering up, as Binghe’s words finally sink in. He looks sharply at his husband, who, taken off guard by this change in demeanour, shrinks back a little at the sudden intensity. He observes Binghe’s eyes, confused, yet very, very much lucid.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says. “The first day of our honeymoon was yesterday.”

---

Somehow, Luo Binghe’s memory is missing an entire day.

With more questioning, it becomes clear that Binghe’s lack of recollection of the day before isn’t from some temporary morning stupor. Because Binghe isn’t just mixing up dates here; he’s completely forgotten the events of the previous day. Twenty four hours of his life, gone as if it never happened.

It also becomes apparent that whatever this amnesia is, it’s not going away so easily. Shen Qingqiu examines his husband’s body, usually so impervious to any fault, and can’t find anything out of the ordinary—not a single clue that might shed light on how to solve this problem. Shen Qingqiu considers consulting Mu Qingfang, but he’s got a feeling that the solution lies elsewhere. Call it a hunch.

Binghe, who by this point has a good radar for his husband’s feelings and an unabashed desire to be spoiled, sits obediently through all of Shen Qingqiu’s fussing.

“So I really lost a whole day, Shizun?” he asks.

Shen Qingqiu winces. “I’m sorry, Binghe,” he says. “If only this teacher could tell you how or why.”

To have crept into their lives so abruptly yet quietly, and also leave no other physical symptom in Binghe’s body like a poison would, this amnesia could really only have originated from a curse. The question is, who would do such a thing, and why? It’s true that Luo Binghe, Demon Emperor and scourge of the cultivation world, has made a lot of enemies in his time, but anyone capable of casting this kind of curse unnoticed—and who had the opportunity to do it—could have done far, far worse by this point. Why create such an opportunity, and then squander it?

Shen Qingqiu threads the awareness of his spiritual senses through his husband’s meridians one more time for good measure. Having a better idea of what to look for, he manages to feel out the edges of the curse in Binghe’s body, though the form of it is difficult to grasp, like an eel slipping through his fingers. He does manage to discern some details, however. There’s a recurring quality to the curse, as though it reactivates at regular intervals. There’s a limited, fixed scope to the memories it steals away. And lastly, there’s some condition built in to this curse that, if fulfilled, will allow the curse to be dispelled, though Shen Qingqiu cannot possibly guess what that might be, even with all his fake-it-till-you-make-it Peak Lord experience!

Something nags at his brain about this whole setup.

Out-of-nowhere amnesia that strikes strangely predictably, at a predetermined time—sometime in the middle of the night, judging by Binghe’s current state. An odd lack of negative consequences following the protagonist’s sudden vulnerability. And a tantalisingly close solution to the curse, just out of reach.

It’s almost as if someone has reached into their lives and inserted an artificial conflict that’s sure to have a dumb resolution just to watch Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu squirm and suffer for a little bit.

Shen Qingqiu stops in his tracks.

Is this…

… a wifeplot?

“Are you going to keep examining me, Shizun?” Binghe says, voice breathy. “I really don’t mind.”

---

“Stop hitting me,” Shang Qinghua says.

Shen Qingqiu stows his abused fan. “This has your slimy hack author fingerprints all over it,” he accuses. “What is this storyline supposed to be, anyway?”

“You don’t know, bro?” Shang Qinghua snarks. “I thought you were my most dedicted expert reade—alright, alright, don’t take that thing out again, I get it.” He sighs. “It’s the wifeplot from chapter three thousand-and-something. There’s this artefact—a ring—”

“Of course there’s an artefact.”

“—that grants heartfelt wishes, and Luo Binghe’s supposed to have received it as some royal demonic court gift or whatever. Only, there’s a catch—upon making the wish, you have to have a way to survive the curse that follows.”

“The amnesia,” Shen Qingqiu says dully.

“Right. I think you’ve figured it out, basically? You’ll forget everything every night at midnight, but on the bright side, once the wish is fulfilled, the amnesia goes away too.”

“How is this a wish-granting artefact?” Shen Qingqiu says, aghast. “There’s no upside to wishing! Only this masochistic time-loop curse!”

Shang Qinghua shrugs. “Narrative predestination? I don’t know. I didn’t think about it too hard.”

Shen Qingqiu gives him a flat stare.

“You’re getting on my case for this?” Shang Qinghua protests. “Bro! You didn’t even read this arc!”

They need to move on before Shen Qingqiu throttles this shameless rat of an author. “Continue,” Shen Qingqiu allows grudgingly.

Shang Qinghua taps his chin in recollection. “The amnesia thing is like 50 First Dates, if you’ve seen that movie, only there’s an actual cure for the forgetting.”

“That was a terrible movie.”

“So you did see it! Anyway, Bing-ge in the original story saw right through the curse on the wish-granting ring, lost interest in it, and left it somewhere in his palace where a humble but beautiful serving girl who’s known nothing but misfortune in her life picks it up, and, well…”

A ring. Really, there’s a limit to how basic you can get with romantic imagery—and it’s anachronistic, to boot!

Wait.

Shen Qingqiu glares. “Are you saying my Binghe couldn’t see through the curse?”

“I am most definitely not saying that,” Shang Qinghua says. “Because nothing good would come of me stating or implying that in any way, shape or form.”

“… So what happened next?”

“Well, she was a pitiful kind of character. All she wished for was a single truly happy day in her life. So afterwards Bing-ge meets her and it’s an excuse for having a new date every day while he tries to figure her out. You know.” Shang Qinghua leans back in his chair, his explanation finished.

“You tried to write a romcom plot into a stallion novel?” Shen Qingqiu asks sceptically.

Shang Qinghua winces. “Yeah, didn’t go over too well. Anyway, you really don’t remember any of this?”

Shen Qingqiu wracks his brain thinking, but nothing comes up. “Did you include any interesting monsters in it?”

“No.”

“… That would do it,” Shen Qingqiu says.

“You’re a predictable guy when it comes to some things, huh,” Shang Qinghua says.

“Like you’re any different. Did the storyline end with a lot of gratuitous papapa?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

Shen Qingqiu rubs his temple while he reflexively curses Shang Qinghua under his breath.

“I mean, maybe it’ll all be resolved by tomorrow…?” Shang Qinghua says at his expression. He mimes something obscene with his hands. “You do know how to make Bing-ge happy, right?”

“Of course I do, that’s not the point,” Shen Qingqiu snaps, even though it actually kind of is. “But if this is a wifeplot, it doesn’t make sense. Why is Binghe the victim instead of me?"

“You’re calling yourself the wife?”

The fan descends.

“Bro!”

“Don’t dodge the question!”

“I wasn’t, I—” Shang Qinghua breaks off into a sigh. “Shen-shixiong. Peerless Cucumber. Buddy. My dude. You love literary analysis. You never shut up about it in your comments.”

Shen Qingqiu folds his arms. “And?”

“Have you never thought about it?” Shang Qinghua asks, almost pointedly. “Whatever we’re living, this isn’t Proud Immortal Demon Way anymore. It’s a whole different story now.”

Shen Qingqiu shifts around the soreness in his lower body. “I’m aware the genre changed,” he says stiffly.

“Congrats, but I’m not talking about that. We’re transmigrators.”

“Obviously.”

“So that makes this a transmigration story. Right?”

“I suppose you could say so,” Shen Qingqiu says, turning up his nose, “if you wanted to disregard the entire existence of the fourth wall.”

“Good enough, I guess. So. If this is a transmigration story, who do you think the real protagonist is?” Shang Qinghua leans in closer. His voice descends to a pointed whisper. “And following from that, who do you think the real love interest is…?”

Shen Qingqiu frowns. “What the hell are you going on about?”

“Alright, forget it, man,” Shang Qinghua says. He slaps Shen Qingqiu on the shoulder in a way that could signify either pity or solidarity. “Good luck with things.”

---

Okay! Okay. Maybe this curse doesn’t have to be a bad thing. If the cure boils down to giving Luo Binghe a single happy day, that should be perfectly manageable. Right?

Well, Shen Qingqiu’s so good at making his husband happy! In fact, Shen Qingqiu’s the master and valedictorian and CEO of making his husband happy! Besides, they’re on their honeymoon. You’re supposed to be happy on a honeymoon! So really, this curse isn’t actually interfering in their lives or making them do anything they weren’t already going to do!

Shen Qingqiu explains this to Binghe after their spontaneous papapa session, and Binghe nods readily along to his rundown of the situation with a blissed-out look on his face.

“You are listening, right?” Shen Qingqiu prompts.

“This disciple is list’ning dutifully t’Shizun’s instruction,” Binghe says, slurring the syllables together. He promptly undercuts his own words by launching into a sloppy wet kiss which Shen Qingqiu has no choice but to receive.

Really, this child! Still so glued to Shen Qingqiu, as if he hadn’t jumped Shen Qingqiu (again) right after he returned from talking to Shang Qinghua!

“I’m serious, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says after they finally break apart for air. He brushes a stray lock of hair gingerly out of Binghe’s eyes, and presses a kiss on Binghe’s brow. “I want you to know that everything’s well in hand, and it’ll all be over soon.”

Binghe doesn’t answer, only nuzzling further into the crook of Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder.

“… Binghe?” Shen Qingqiu says.

His husband’s shoulders are trembling.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says again, faintly alarmed.

Binghe looks back up at him, eyes glittering with unshed tears.

“Shizun,” he says. “I’m not anxious.”

“Then—”

“I just never imagined…” Binghe pauses takes a moment to wipe the corners of his eyes. “You remember when I proposed to you, Shizun.”

Shen Qingqiu’s eyes soften tenderly. “How could I not?”

“I said back then that I never imagined that anyone would want to marry themselves to me,” Binghe continues. He waves a hand at their positions, limbs and blankets all intertwined. “I couldn’t imagine something like this either. To be able to entrust myself so completely to another, body and soul both…”

As if on cue, Shen Qingqiu flushes. Flirting, even at a time like this! “You—”

“Please don’t misunderstand. I’m as serious as you are, Shizun,” Binghe says. He plants a light kiss under Shen Qingqiu’s jaw, right in that spot that never fails to make him shiver. It tickles. It ignites. He wants to squirm away, but at the same time, he wants to get even closer. “What I want you to know is that I trust you completely in this. I am in your hands—as I always have been.”

Binghe draws back just far enough for Shen Qingqiu to see the unadulterated love in his eyes. It’s damn near overwhelming. It’s so intense it feels like it can’t be real. In truth, Shen Qingqiu had also never been able to imagine anyone looking at him like this. Binghe isn’t the only one here giddy with love, okay?! For the record!

“How could my husband ever fail me?” Binghe continues, with complete sincerity. “I could never imagine such a thing.”

Shen Qingqiu feels his heart settle into steel.

“Then this husband will have to do his best not to disappoint,” Shen Qingqiu says.

He pushes his husband down onto their bed again, straddling him with an easy confidence he knows Binghe goes wild for.

“Oh?” Binghe whispers. “What might Shizun have in mind for us?”

---

Papapa!

Lots of papapa!

So much papapa they could be a two-man standing ovation for a Hatsune Miku one-day-only anniversary tour!

After they clean up, Shen Qingqiu stares up at the ceiling from their bed, letting a happy exhaustion take him. It’s his turn to slur his words. “You’re happy now, right?” he asks, only half-complaining.

“And if I said I wasn't?” Binghe asks from his side.

Shen Qingqiu lightly swats at his husband's forehead. “Don’t joke about that.”

“Sorry, Shizun,” Binghe says unseriously. He looks thoughtfully at the portion of the ceiling that once had a hole blown through it. “But there really is something I’d like to do now, if Shizun is willing.”

Shen Qingqiu surreptiously rubs at his ass. “What is it?”

Binghe catches the gesture. “Nothing like that, Shizun. At least not right now,” he says. “But the sun is just about setting by this point, and the skies are clear. What say you we go out and watch the stars?”

At this, Shen Qingqiu smiles warmly. That’s all? That's nothing! “Of course,” he replies, fond.

“And because Shizun is so exhausted from our activities,” Binghe continues innocently, “he should be taking it easy.”

Shen Qingqiu’s danger senses begin tingling. “As you say…”

“And so it naturally follows”—and Binghe is outright beaming now—“that Shizun shouldn’t need to do something as base as walk on his own two feet. In his condition.”

‘Condition’? What, of being forcibly assigned the role of pillow princess?? “This master wonders how, then, Binghe expects me to get around?”

Binghe claps his hands in determination. “Shizun must surely allow this disciple to carry him in his arms the whole way through.”

Shen Qingqiu’s smile freezes instantly. “Binghe!!”

“But Shizuuun,” Binghe says, dragging the syllable out.

“There are many people out and about still! The night is still young!” Shen Qingqiu near-yells.

Getting assigned pillow princess wasn’t enough, so now he has to be princess-carried in front of all his disciples? What’s with this logic?? Shen Qingqiu would rather die!!

Binghe puts on his best pleading look. Oh no. “This disciple can’t bear to think of his master experiencing even an iota of suffering on our honeymoon…”

“You mean to parade me around like a prize,” Shen Qingqiu says flatly.

“I wouldn’t dare,” Binghe says demurely. “But it’s true. Shizun is a prize, and everyone should know it.”

“You—!”

Binghe looks at him with glistening eyes. Are they actually physically watering up? How the fuck does he do that on command?? It can’t somehow be OP Heavenly Demon blood powers again, right?? Directing his blood to fuel his tear glands or some shit? … Hey, wait a minute, is that actually how—

“It would make me really happy, Shizun,” Binghe says with emphasis, kicked-puppy look at full power.

Fuck!

This protagonist absolutely knows what he’s doing!

Alright. Well. It’s not like he was ever going to win this, curse or no curse. Shen Qingqiu lights a candle for his last shred of dignity as a Peak Lord, if any such thing yet remained.

In no time at all, they’re dressed and ready to go. And once they’re at the door, Binghe expectantly holds an arm out in invitation, looking for all the world like the happiest demon Pomeranian to ever exist.

So Shen Qingqiu allows himself to be swept up into Binghe’s arms like some two-bit maiden. Oh, the sacrifices he makes for his disciple! The indignities he suffers through!

“Shizun,” Binghe says as they step out, “you’re smiling so brightly.”

“Am I?” Shen Qingqiu says. He harrumphs. “You must be seeing things.”

“As you say, Shizun.”

---

So of course the first person they run into on their romantic evening walk is Ming Fan.

Shen Qingqiu freezes up at the sight of his ex-NPC-fodder disciple—now an upright young man—who in turn watches his teacher with what could be disgust, horror and/or secondhand embarrassment. He buries his face into Binghe’s pecs so he doesn’t have to figure out which it is, and avoids thinking about the fact that it probably makes things look even worse.

“Ming Fan,” Binghe says. The vibration of the words in his chest brings a warmth to Shen Qingqiu’s face. “What brings you here?”

“I—I was bringing up—”

Silence.

“Well?”

“You know,” Ming Fan croaks. “I don’t remember. I must have taken the wrong path.”

The sound of light footsteps comes up to interrupt the standoff.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” a new, higher voice says. Ning Yingying has entered the fray, then. “Both of you! A Luo, we were only delivering supplies, as usual. Da-shixiong, don’t you think you could be happy for Shizun? Just for a day?”

Don’t invoke your shizun’s name, Ning Yingying! He’s currently trying to not exist!!

“Luo Binghe’s already this shameless,” Ming Fan says, “and you want to encourage him further? He’s already won!”

“It’s not about winning or losing,” Ning Yingying insists. Shen Qingqiu doesn’t have to look to understand that neither Luo Binghe nor Ming Fan agree with this statement.

“Look at him!” Ming Fan says. “Just because he… he…!”

“Do continue,” Binghe says. “I’m sure Shizun at least taught you to finish your sentences.”

“Just because you married him doesn’t mean you get to forget all propriety!”

There’s another pause.

“I… married…?” Binghe says.

“Did you forget?” Ming Fan says incredulously. “The whole sect was going wild over the news yesterday. Or did you just want to make me say it out loud to gloat?”

Oh, right. Binghe wouldn’t remember that. “I announced our marriage publicly yesterday,” Shen Qingqiu whispers to him. “Everyone knows officially now—you’re mine, and I’m yours.”

Binghe trembles at this. Hey, don’t drop your shizun now! The only thing more embarrassing than being princess-carried is being princess-carried badly and then getting dropped on the ground!!

… Really, Shen Qingqiu is just roasting for the sake of it again. It still startles him, the way only a few words from him can make or break his husband’s spirit. Who gave Shen Qingqiu the right, huh?! That’s the protagonist of the world, right there! It doesn’t make sense! It doesn’t make sense at all!

But Shen Qingqiu can’t say he hates it.

“We’re all very happy for you both,” Ning Yingying chirps.

“I don’t know about that,” Ming Fan huffs. But even his tone is more teasing than actually acerbic at this point. “How can we entrust Shizun to someone with memory this poor?”

“Alright, that’s enough now,” Shen Qingqiu says, not ungently, turning to Ming Fan and Ning Yingying bravely. He clears his throat in a vain attempt to protect whatever remains of his thin face. “Ming Fan, Yingying, thank you for bringing up the usual supplies to the bamboo house. Binghe and I will be on our way.”

Ming Fan bows in response, and so does Ning Yingying, though not before giving Binghe an anachronistic thumbs-up when she thinks Shen Qingqiu isn’t looking. It’s not very xianxia of her, but what the hell. He’s not sorry he taught his disciples that.

After those two leave, however, Binghe remains rooted to the spot.

“Binghe?” Shen Qinqgiu prompts cautiously.

He hears the muffled sound of a sniffle.

“Crying again?” Shen Qingqiu asks. He wipes a tear away from Binghe’s face with his sleeve. “Are you an endless fount? What is it? Don’t go ruining that beautiful face of yours.”

“Shizun called me beautiful,” Binghe cries.

“You already know you’re beautiful,” Shen Qingqiu points out.

“But Shizun saying it out loud is different. It’s…” He sniffles again. Ah, this child. “Shizun told everyone we’re married.”

It was long overdue, to be quite honest. “Yes, I did.”

“Shizun… Shizun is proud to be my husband.”

Shen Qingqiu buries his face in those pecs again in lieu of a real answer, but who can blame him? They’re right there!

“Alright,” Binghe says. He half-laughs, interrupting a sound in his throat that might otherwise have turned into a sob. “Let’s keep going.”

They proceed uphill, walking towards the summit of the peak.

The bamboo thickets of Qing Jing Peak thin out the higher up they go, which also leaves them more at the mercy of the cool evening wind—another fantastic excuse for Shen Qingqiu to snuggle further into Binghe’s broad shoulders while simply enjoying the steady one-two rhythm of Binghe carrying him up, step by step. And with fewer trees in the way, their view of the skies opens up until all they can see is a heavenly canvas of sunset colours stretching from horizon to horizon, stars and sun working in harmony to give Shen Qingqiu one of the most romantic nights he’s ever had.

There’s no missions to clear, no enemies to be vanquished, no duties yet unfulfilled. In this moment, all there is is Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe. Nothing more, nothing less.

“You can set me down now, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu whispers.

Binghe obeys dutifully.

They sit in peaceful companionship upon the bare grass, and enjoy the time passing slowly in blissful silence as they slowly watch the skies grow dark. The orange light fades. The galaxies take over. Shen Qingqiu has never particularly been into stargazing, but he wonders for a moment if this world has all the same constellations as—as the ones he grew up with. He’s never looked up for long enough in any world to know them by heart. He never had the time, or there was always something else, or…

Out of the blue, it strikes Shen Qingqiu like lightning that he would rather enjoy sitting here and looking up at the skies with Luo Binghe forever.

“We should have a pavilion built here,” Shen Qingqiu says suddenly.

“Shizun?”

“Nothing big,” Shen Qingqiu continues. “A roof, a table for tea, and two seats. Nothing more.” He looks at his husband. “That’s all we’ll need.”

He squeezes Binghe’s hand, larger than his own, and Binghe’s breath hitches.

“Just for us?” Binghe asks, his voice small.

“Just for us,” Shen Qingqiu confirms.

Binghe’s hand squeezes back.

When night at last falls in its entirety and the moon hangs brightly overhead, the two of them make their way back down—via princess carry again, of course—and they trade light banter as they descend. They run into more Qing Jing disciples, and this time Shen Qingqiu finds that it’s easier to face them, and they in turn extend him the grace of pretending that he isn’t completely embarrassing himself as their shizun. Probably Ning Yingying informed them all in advance, to stave off the worst of the shock. It’s likely that by now even the stair-sweepers of the sect know of Shen Qingqiu’s and Luo Binghe’s combined shamelessness.

Ah, well. They’ve had far worse said about them. And Shen Qingqiu is happy to find out that he really doesn’t care all that much, right now—not when the person who matters most to him is right here.

He soaks in the feeling, heady and embarrassing and warm, and allows Binghe to take them both back to the bamboo house.

When they finally settle into bed once more to sleep, Shen Qingqiu reaches a hand out to cup his husband’s cheek. Binghe startles at the touch, but then relaxes into it. His eyes are full of love. His smile is full of peace.

The happiest day of Luo Binghe’s life, huh. Maybe this could be it.

“Goodnight,” Shen Qingqiu whispers.

“Goodnight,” Luo Binghe echoes.

For this beautiful instant in time, Shen Qingqiu forgets to worry about anything at all. He watches Binghe drift off, and he allows himself to unwind, too. He falls into unconsciousness soon after, guided by a giddy, hazy anticipation of the week to come.

I love you, Shen Qingqiu thinks, on repeat. I love you, I love you—

---

Shen Qingqiu wakes to the warm rays of dawn and his husband’s radiant smile.

“Good morning, husband,” Luo Binghe says, eyes twinkling. He lays his head on Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder where they both lie in their bed—an easy and familiar gesture. “Shall I make us breakfast?”

“Please do,” Shen Qingqiu returns groggily. An anxiety enters his heart as he stirs to full wakefulness.

Isn’t something… off?

Luo Binghe himself seems fairly unbothered. He presses a kiss to Shen Qingqiu’s fingers smoothly, with zero hesitation. “I should make us something hearty,” Binghe continues. “So we can start off our honeymoon on the right foot.”

Shen Qingqiu sits up fully.

“Binghe,” he says. “You don’t remember?”

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu begins slowly, “what do you remember of yesterday?”

His husband’s cheeks colour with excitement. “Well—Shizun said we’d have the whole week to ourselves. A ‘real and proper’ honeymoon. Right?”

Shen Qingqiu sits stock still.

Binghe… remains cursed?

There’s no way, right? They’d had such a good day yesterday—

Or had they?

Sure, it wasn’t perfect perfect, but it had been lovely. Really lovely. They hadn’t had any untoward interruptions, beyond the initial discovery of the curse. They’d, ahem, gotten pretty good with each other in bed. And outside of that, the two of them had had the perfect evening together.

Or so Shen Qingqiu had assumed when he went to bed last night.

Had Binghe felt differently?

No, no, Shen Qingqiu thinks, mentally slapping himself, it’s too early to despair. This is a wifeplot, so maybe by some weird law of the universe, it might be literally impossible to resolve on the first attempt. That’s how these things work, right? It wouldn’t be narratively satisfying if the plot ended in Chapter 1!

But this reasoning rings hollow. After all, Shen Qingqiu hasn’t thought of the happenings of this world in the terms of a novel for a long time. This Luo Binghe isn’t just a character who things happen to for no reason. So the fact that the curse remains must mean that—

A brush of fingers on his cheek startles Shen Qingqiu out of his spiralling.

“Will Shizun enlighten me about what he’s thinking?” Binghe asks.

Oh, Binghe. “It’s a bit of a long story,” Shen Qingqiu begins. “But you see, there’s this curse that you’re under…”

He tries to explain things as plainly and calmly as possible, stuffing the urge to panic deep down where the sun doesn’t shine. Star student Luo Binghe grasps his explanation swiftly and clearly, of course, and reassures him once again that he’s entrusting his self to his beloved.

Romantic, but that’s also a lot of pressure!! Especially given—

“We didn’t succeed yesterday,” Shen Qingqiu admits.

“That’s alright,” Binghe says. “Shizun, you must be under a lot of pressure, having to figure this out on your own. So you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself.”

Right. The more Shen Qingqiu is stressed out, the more likely that Binghe will pick up on it, and the less likely Binghe is to have a happy day. Damn catch-22 situation.

“Let’s forget about yesterday,” Binghe continues gently, “and enjoy today.”

He punctuates the entreaty with a kiss to the back of Shen Qingqiu’s hand, which does have the intended effect of forcing a reset on Shen Qingqiu’s frazzled mind.

So of course Shen Qingqiu has to listen to his dear husband’s plea!

How best to enjoy the day, though?

Shen Qingqiu hates to admit it, but maybe Qing Jing Peak, with all that had happened in the past, just has too much baggage for his disciple to really unwind. Well, no need to unpack all that right now! Maybe what Binghe needs for a perfectly happy day is some distance away from here. Isn’t that what people want out of honeymoons anyway?

Where would make for a refreshing date?

“Does Shizun have a place in mind?” Binghe asks.

---

They decide on Jiangdong City, located just on the edge of reasonable swordflight distance—a major port city that had, in recent years, become something of a cultural centre as well. Shen Qingqiu had lately taken to perusing its bookstores on the way back from sect missions, and had come across flyers all around town a while back announcing some inaugural street festival that seemed promising. And, well, now’s the perfect time, right?

Descending from the skies just outside the main city gates, Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe stylishly arrive to a city bustling with life.

Really, the streets are downright gorgeous. Banners and streamers line the shopfronts, temporary stalls call out to passersby to take a look at their wares, and tons of carefree festivalgoers swarm the scene. Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe dive in to the crowds, and for today they get to be just another anonymous pair in the crowd taking in the sights, their robes of teal and crimson blending into the myriad colours all around. Peak Lord? Demon Emperor? Who cares? None of that matters right now.

Some things still do matter, though.

“I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t just adjust the name on the banner,” Shen Qingqiu says. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Binghe looks up at the largest, most prominent sign waving over the entrance to the shopping district. “The one saying Jiangdong City Night Market?”

The sun shines down on them, bright and strong. “It’s obviously not night right now,” Shen Qingqiu points out.

“No, it is not,” Binghe echoes, lips twitching in amusement.

“And most of the time the market is open, it won’t be night.” He checked the schedule on the flyers, he knows what he’s talking about!! “It’s open at least twice as long in the daytime as it is at nighttime. So really, they should be calling it Jiangdong City Day Market.”

“This cannot be allowed to stand,” Binghe agrees.

“Someone should write a letter! To the organisers—”

“Esteemed sirs, might any of my goods catch your eyes?” interrupts the shopkeeper whose stall they’ve been standing in front for a few minutes now.

Shen Qingqiu picks up a knickknack and twirls it in his hands absentmindedly. “Lexical accuracy is important,” he continues to Binghe, with all the literary authority of the name of the Qing Jing Peak Lord, and all the conviction of the PIDW forums’ #1 ranked Expert Poster. “You lose that and what would we be left with in this society? All would collapse!”

“Of course, Shizun,” Binghe says deferently, neatly not mentioning his own undisputed reign as the biggest threat to society of the past decade.

Shen Qinqgiu ruffles his hair affectionately for good measure.

“Sirs, if you are not planning to buy anything, might I request that you step aside…” says the stall owner, mildly irate.

Binghe glares.

“Sirs,” the stall owner says weakly.

“Go easy on him, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says with all the energy of a pet owner used to saying down, boy! “I’ll just get this, then,” he says of whatever happens to be in his hand, by way of apology.

Instead of reaching for their coin purse, Binghe squints at what he’s holding for a moment.

“You do have our money, right?” Shen Qingqiu prompts.

“Right here, Shizun,” Binghe says. For some reason, he seems to be restraining laughter. “It’s just that I was a little surprised.”

Shen Qingqiu looks properly at what he’s holding in his hands.

“It’s an ordinary fan,” he says, frowning.

“Flip it over, if you would, Shizun.”

A painting of teal and red greets him on the other side, of two abstract figures coarsely intertwined in—

Is this Resentment of Chunshan merch????

“Have you got any more?” Binghe asks.

Shen Qingqiu thwacks him on the head with the fan in question.

“You break it, you buy it,” the stall owner warns him, emboldened by the 180 degree turn in Binghe’s attitude. “And why yes, of course! I have more where that came from, so if you would just step right over to this corner, sir—”

Forget what Shen Qingqiu said earlier, society’s already in shambles! This isn’t a day market or a night market, it’s fucking Comiket!!!

---

He’s still seething about the matter when they stop at the next point of interest.

“Shizuuun,” Binghe pleads in his usual way. He shamelessly adjusts the newly-bought armful of Resentment of Chunshan paraphernalia he’s carrying as he does so, even as he makes himself look bullied with a sad twinge of his sculpted brows. “Forgive your humble disciple, I truly couldn’t help myself…“

“Don’t you dare think your teary little act is going to save you from this,” Shen Qingqiu says.

Binghe flutters his glistening eyelashes. “It won’t?”

Not answering that! “And why are you carrying your purchases around like that, anyway?” Shen Qingqiu demands. “You have a qiankun pouch. I have a qiankun pouch. There’s no reason for you to be walking around encumbered like this.”

“But Shizun, what if I told you I dreamed as a child that I could walk around a market like this with my special person, free to spend on whatever I wished?” Binghe says, wiping a tear out of one eye.

The supreme acting and manipulation talents that had toppled all the realms in the original timeline, now brought fully to bear solely on Shen Qingqiu—it’s not fair! Shen Qingqiu waves a hand helplessly at Binghe’s haul. “You just want to show off all that… depraved…!”

Binghe wipes away another tear, this time using a newly bought embroidered red-and-green handkerchief to do so. Heavens, Shen Qingqiu hadn’t even seen him slip that into the shopping cart. At least this world didn’t have Taobao!

“What’s wrong with that, Shizun?” Binghe asks. “Showing off our love, depicted in so many shapes and forms—nothing could bring me greater joy.”

Shen Qingqiu feels his face burning up.

“What nonsense,” he mutters. “I never taught you that in my literature lessons.”

Binghe beams. “You know what else would bring me joy, Shizun?”

“What,” Shen Qingqiu says flatly.

His disciple points at a stall selling street food in their vicinity. “If we might share some tangyuan together?”

Well, they are at a night market. Day market. Whatever.

The pair queue up together for a bowl. As they do, Binghe puts an arm around his husband, pulling him close. Closer than decorum would strictly dictate, in public, but Shen Qingqiu doesn’t protest. Not today.

Binghe leans in, dipping his face close to Shen Qingqiu’s ear in such a way that he could plausibly be trying to make his words heard over a bustling crowd. But Shen Qingqiu knows that there’s no deeper reason to this act other than the simple desire for stolen intimacy.

Because that’s what Binghe’s used to, right? Making a small space for himself—for his fragile heart—in the middle of an uncaring world. Asking for Shen Qingqiu’s hand in marriage, and then being so primed for rejection that he immediately backs out as if even that was too much to ask for. This world might be designed to give Luo Binghe everything other people desire—be it riches, or power—but when it comes to what Binghe himself actually wants, fate has really been shamefully stingy.

“Shizun seems distracted,” Binghe murmurs.

Shen Qingqiu reaches an arm up and around to pat his disciple’s head. “I was only thinking,” he says, “that you deserve to be a little spoiled today, after all.”

“So we can shop around for more Resentment of Chunshan goods? After we eat?”

Shen Qingqiu flushes again. Reminder to self, they’re here for Binghe’s happiness! “You… do you really want that so badly? Even after buying all that just now?”

Who knew his Bingmei had a little materialistic side to him, after all! Why, like this, he almost reminds Shen Qingqiu of his sister, and her con doujin hauls—

Binghe laughs. The sound, in Shen Qingqiu’s ear, rings much like a clear bell, cutting through his thoughts. “No, Shizun,” Binghe says finally. “But we’ve arrived at the front of the line. Allow this disciple to make our order.”

Shen Qingqiu allows himself to space out a little while Binghe goes up to the counter, and not a minute later, Binghe returns with a bowl of tangyuan for them to share.

However, as they walk to a makeshift table nearby—

“You only brought one spoon with you,” Shen Qingqiu points out.

“Ah, yes,” Binghe confirms. “They only had one spoon left, Shizun. Can you believe it?”

“One,” Shen Qingqiu says flatly.

“Yes. So unfortunate. How could they be so unprepared?”

Shen Qingqiu turns to stare at where the stall owner is literally, at that moment, handing out another two bowls to the next customer, each with their own spoon.

“… This is just like how you only got us one cup for our getaway cottage, isn’t it,” Shen Qingqiu says.

Actually, that isn’t quite accurate. What had happened was that Shen Qingqiu had told Binghe to purchase two cups, and Binghe had seen fit to ‘accidentally’ break one on the way back from the store.

“Given this unforeseeable tragedy,” Binghe continues, ignoring Shen Qingqiu’s words, “Shizun shall have to spoonfeed me.”

“Spoonfeed.”

“Shizun may feed himself first, of course,” Binghe grants graciously. “But as this disciple is hungry, and his arms so tired…”

“You have a qiankun pouch,” Shen Qingqiu hisses again. “Your cultivation is unparalleled—look, wipe that smug look off your face—”

He obliges anyway, as they both knew he would, all the while trying not to think about the crowd all around them. Thankfully, immortals get away with a lot of weird shit in this world, and it seems like that extends to no one bothering them directly about PDA, though Shen Qingqiu is quite sure that the next installment of Resentment of Chunshan is somehow going to have a tangyuan scene nonetheless. Oh God, is this going to start another trend? Like with the Song of Bingqiu wine? Best not to think too hard about it!!

The sticky, chewy, sweet treat warms him on the way down, a pleasant contrast to the crisply cool air.

“I like your version much better,” Shen Qingqiu says to his husband.

In the distance, the tangyuan stall owner gives him the stink eye.

Binghe preens at the praise, artfully tossing his hair over his shoulder. “Would that I could cook for Shizun anywhere,” he says. “If you would like more when we get back… Really, I could make you anything you desire, if you only said the word.”

Ah, this hopeless husband of his. “Today’s supposed to be about what you want,” Shen Qingqiu reminds him.

“But my husband is already spoiling me so well, and in front of everyone, to boot,” Binghe says. He puts a light touch on Shen Qingqiu’s hand, still holding a full spoon. “How could I ask for anything more?”

So Shen Qingqiu has no choice but to shut Binghe up with the next spoonful.

Despite the PDA-ness of it all—or maybe because of it—the bowl empties quickly enough as they exchange turns to eat. … Binghe’s clearly thoroughly enjoying his embarrassment, damn it. Well, Shen Qingqiu’ll show him! This husband of his, acting so suave like he’ll never lose the upper hand!!

Possessed by a sudden impishness, Shen Qingqiu slowly, deliberately, touches his lips to the spoon for another mouthful. He lets it linger there for a moment, savouring the sweet taste on his tongue, and idly observes that one final rice ball remains in the soup.

Binghe’s gaze is hooked on his lips, like game to bait.

With a loud clatter, Shen Qingqiu allows the spoon to drop from his hands and onto the floor. Some heads turn at the commotion, but somehow he isn’t bothered this time.

“Oh, dear,” Shen Qingqiu says, in a completely level tone. “It looks like I can’t spoonfeed you any more, can I? But it wouldn’t do to waste food… What to do?”

“… Shizun?”

Shen Qingqiu dips his bare hand into the bowl and fishes out the final rice ball. His fingers drip with syrupy liquid.

Binghe blinks.

“Come closer,” Shen Qingqiu orders.

Binghe nears. Not even the sound of breathing escapes him.

“Good boy,” Shen Qingqiu murmurs.

His husband’s lips part in anticipation.

Shen Qingqiu lifts up the rice ball, all sticky yet slippery—

—and neatly places it in his own mouth.

Ha! Who’s red in the face now??

Shen Qingqiu sucks the remnants of the syrup off of his fingers to clean them off. Ah, tangyuan really is the perfect cool weather treat! Though really, Binghe’s would be better, after all. More subtle in flavour. A little more complex, a little less overpoweringly sweet.

Shen Qingqiu looks at his disciple, whose mouth is hanging open like a fool. “Serves you right,” Shen Qingqiu says.

“Sh—Shizun!”

“If you’d just gotten a second spoon, like you should’ve to begin with—”

---

They eat, and they shop, and they eat some more in this so-called ‘night’ market—blissfully losing all sense of time in this true capitalist’s samsara. Binghe continues to insist on carrying everything in hand, which makes for a ridiculous sight but also a frankly impressive one, at least up until the pile Binghe is carrying literally begins to obstruct his eyesight and Shen Qingqiu starts getting approached by random passersby without his husband’s harsh glares to ward them off.

With his own view no longer obstructed by Binghe’s bicep-laden arms—by which he means everything Binghe is carrying in them, of course—a stall that isn’t selling food or trinkets (or complete & utter sellout RPF trash) finally catches Shen Qingqiu’s gaze.

A row of odd, colourful, and rather bizarre boxes are lined up in a row. Each boast a transparent enclosure containing a large pile of little trinkets, and topping every machine is a bizarre but familiar contraption featuring a large three-pronged claw, connected in a complicated fashion to a set of levers and buttons. Next to these machines, a pair of attendants who look like they’re cultivators from a minor sect take turns ushering customers into their space.

The materials used to make these contraptions are different from what Shen Qingqiu is familiar with—there’s wood in place of metal, and what feels like enchantments in place of electrical logic circuits, but the end form is undeniable!

Are these—claw machines??

One of the cultivators manning the booth spots the master-disciple pair, and, mistaking Shen Qingqiu’s blank shock for polite interest, swiftly makes his way over.

“Fellow immortal masters,” the attendant greets, his words entirely incongruous with the fact that he’s peddling something that shouldn’t exist in this fantasy world, right in front of Shen Qingqiu’s xianxia salad. “Would you have an interest in playing a few rounds at our stall, on what our humble sect has to offer? You see”—he says, in a sleazy, salesman-like tone that really shouldn’t be coming from a guy with a shaved head and Buddhist robes—“at our sect, we believe that the wonders of cultivation should be shared with the common people. Why should that not extend to humble entertainments? And so, we’ve invented these toyboxes, that we’ve been calling—”

“—Crane games,” Shen Qingqiu finishes for him in a strangled voice.

A mountain of toys lies within each machine, beanbags and tops and shuttlecocks in various colours taunting all passersby from behind the talisman-activated cubic barrier acting as a see-through enclosure. … Honestly, it’s utterly ingenious work—and it’s being put to use for this??

“Yes,” the attendant says cheerfully. “That’s the name we decided on in the end, after much meditation over the matter. Respected immortal master, how did you know?”

How does he know?? He used to live in a metropolitan city dotted with these evils popping up in every other available lot in town, how could he see them before his eyes and not know?! Back then, he couldn’t walk two streets without hearing the obnoxious BGM on repeat! Never mind the amount of tokens he’d exchanged and spent on those scamming outfits!

Anyway, of the various names he knows for these accursed things—crane games, UFO catchers, claw machines—isn’t ‘crane games’ obviously the most xianxia-sounding one?

While Shen Qingqiu’s head continues to spin, Binghe dutifully reads over the signage detailing the cash-to-token exchange rate for the copper play tokens accepted by the crane game machines.

“Are you interested, Shizun?” he asks.

“Interested?” Shen Qingqiu scoffs, as he continues staring. “What part of me looks like I’m interested?”

Without further delay, Binghe slips the attendant some cash and receives a veritable handful of copper tokens in return.

These crane machines aren’t the first ‘anachronistic’ thing that Shen Qingqiu has seen in this world. Far from it, in fact, because Airplane is a lazy hack who doesn’t even bother trying to even pretend he does any historical research, nor does he worry about setting the right mood for the setting. Why else would the Immortal Alliance Conference have had live TV broadcasting screens?! Not to mention the rental sword economy, clearly a shadow of modern capitalism!

But that’s stuff that managed to make it into the text of Proud Immortal Demon Way itself. Considering all the time he spent reading that damn book, Shen Qingqiu’s sure that crane games never made it into its pages! Where had they come from? Shang Qinghua’s discarded drafts, alongside characters like Tianlang-jun? If so, why these elements in particular? Had the System seen fit to pick things out of the cutting room floor based on what would annoy Shen Qingqiu the most personally? … That would check out!

Binghe interrupts his train of thought with the cold press of copper against his palm. “Shall we play a few rounds, Shizun?”

So they do.

He lets Binghe go first, naturally.

Binghe manoeuvres the claw perfectly, of course, but to no avail; they both watch powerlessly as the claw fails to hold on to its prize. The second through seventh attempts are about as fruitful. Sometimes the toy in the claw falls immediately, and sometimes it holds on for a few tantalising seconds—ah, the highs and lows of normalised all-ages gambling-adjacent activities!

Binghe puts on his best wronged expression and turns to Shen Qingqiu. “You’re laughing at me, Shizun,” he says.

“I am doing no such thing,” Shen Qingqiu says from behind his fan, where he most certainly is. “Have you tried moving the lever, but more carefully? Maybe rub the token for a bit of luck before you put it in the machine?”

Binghe looks at him suspiciously—but he starts doing exactly as Shen Qingqiu says. (A truly touching level of obedience!) His disciple rubs the token uncertainly with his thumb and forefinger, all the while not breaking his stare. Have some faith, Binghe! When has this master ever lied to you? … Besides that one time, and that other time, and—

The next attempt sees the toy cling on until the very edge of the entrance to the prize chute before falling back into the main pile with an anticlimactic fwump.

A moment of silence.

“You can’t let doubt enter your heart,” Shen Qingqiu admonishes. “The token knows.”

“Perhaps it is Shizun’s turn to try,” Binghe says through gritted teeth.

“Oh, no,” Shen Qingqiu demurs. “I couldn’t. In fact, I’m certain I couldn’t. However, Binghe, you most definitely have it in you.”

Binghe turns to him suspiciously. “Shizun, you know something.”

“I can only hazard a guess.”

Binghe keeps staring pitifully, and, like clockwork, his eyes begin to get a shine to them.

“Oh, all right,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I’m sure that Binghe has, by now, deduced somewhat how this machine appears to work, correct? How the claw activates—the qi that runs through its mechanical arm?”

Honestly, the arrays carved into the machinery are really very elaborate! If they weren’t getting so fleeced by this stupid box Shen Qingqiu would have paid the cultivators quite the compliment on their make.

“I can feel the qi flow, Shizun,” Binghe says. “And the way it powers the claw’s grip. But it’s nowhere near enough to make a firm hold on the prizes. It’s weaker than Liu-shishu’s grasp on civilised behaviour.”

Um, wow, he’s glad Liu-shidi isn’t here to pick a fight over this. “So add more qi yourself,” Shen Qingqiu says. “You’re a cultivator, aren’t you?”

“Tried,” Binghe answers gloomily. “But too much qi and—it seems like it triggers another mechanism to force the claw to let go. I don’t think I could get rid of it without damaging the crane game as a whole.” He lights up with anticipatory glee. “Shizun, are you saying I can—”

“Refrain from idle destruction, please.”

Binghe slumps back down.

Shen Qingqiu sighs. “This machine was designed for humans, by humans,” he says. “The creators themselves are cultivators—I’m not surprised that they put measures in place to detect and ward against such qi manipulation. However…” Shen Qingqiu fans himself as his voice drops to a dramatic whisper. “They probably never planned on catering to nonhumans, did they? How do you think this will fare against your demonic qi?”

Binghe brightens once more.

Naturally, it’s not long before Binghe nets this first win of the evening. As expected of Shen Qingqiu’s finest student! Binghe presents his prize to his husband with a smug, dashing look on his face. It’s just like the expression he wore when he brought Shen Qingqiu a rare living specimen of the endangered Scantily-clad Mole Rat.

Shen Qingqiu pinches Binghe’s cheek.

“Wh’t is it, Sh’zun,” Binghe says.

Oh, he’s too cute. “Just the one, Binghe?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “Hmph. Is that how much you think this master is worth?”

Binghe wins a few more times in quick succession, and now it’s Shen Qingqiu’s turn to have his arms filled full of ridiculous things. They’ve gotten themselves a little audience through all this—mostly starry-eyed kids eager to figure out Binghe’s winning secrets. Tough luck, brats! Maybe if you get reborn as half-Heavenly Demons in your next life!

“I suppose this will do,” Shen Qingqiu says. “For now.”

“For his inadequacy, this disciple promises to make it up to you tonight,” Binghe whispers in return, his hot breath tickling Shen Qingqiu’s ear. Binghe, you…! Right in front of everyone?!

A number of very loud coughs break the moment.

Turns out it’s the stall attendant from before. “Dear customers,” he says, a little too loudly. “May I remind you that this is not a ‘night’ establishment.”

Out of sheer spite, Shen Qingqiu’s earlier embarrassment evaporates. “We are in a ‘night’ market,” he points out.

“That ‘night’ has nothing to do with this ‘night’! … Esteemed customers,” adds the attendant belatedly.

“You must forgive the confusion,” Shen Qingqiu says. He looks around at the final rays of daylight still streaking the sky gold. “If the ‘night’ in night market has nothing to do with the time of day, perhaps you should consider changing the name?”

“We’re not the organisers, sirs.”

“Write a letter to them,” Binghe adds unsympathetically.

“That’s not—” The attendant breaks off, flustered. “This is a family establishment,” he tries again.

“If it makes you feel better, I can call him Shifu instead,” Binghe says. He waggles his eyebrows. “I don’t mind showing you just how filial I can be.”

Binghe’s concept of filial piety would probably make this universe’s Confucius roll in his grave. “Please don’t say it like that,” Shen Qingqiu mutters. He turns back to the attendant. “Look, we have every right to be here. We’ve done nothing untoward.”

The attendant looks accusingly at the pile of prizes in Shen Qingqiu’s hands, but before he can say another word, his fellow attendant steps in, having spotted the brewing conflict from the other end of the stall. Like him, she’s dressed in matching modest sect robes, only she has a folded fan tucked into her waist. “What might be the problem here?” Attendant Two asks.

“I don’t know. What is the problem?” Binghe says dryly. “My husband and I were enjoying ourselves well enough when your fellow here saw fit to interrupt our evening.”

“I’m sure we can sort out whatever misunderstanding has occurred here,” Attendant Two says smoothly. She peers at Shen Qingqiu a little more closely. “Actually, you seem familiar. If I may… Aren’t you of Cang Qiong…?”

“I am Shen Qingqiu of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect’s Qing Jing Peak, yes,” Shen Qingqiu allows.

“Oh!” Attendant Two says, with a leap of recognition in her voice. She pauses. Turns to Binghe. “And you must be…”

All of a sudden, Attendant Two’s gaze abruptly crashes to the ground.

Is she… shaking?

“What’s wrong with you,” hisses Attendant One.

“Show some respect,” Attendant Two hisses right back. She actually kicks him in the shin, which is quite the commitment to the customer service bit. “That’s—” She coughs and straightens up as she plasters a smile back onto her face. “A-anyway! We’re very sorry to be interrupting your night!”

Attendant Two can’t meet either of their eyes, for some reason. Either she’s intimidated by Luo Binghe’s reputation as Demon Emperor, or she’s fallen for his peerless looks. Really, it’s annoying how often this happens when they’re just trying to be low-key, but what can Shen Qingqiu do when the world’s literally made to revolve around his man? There’s a nonzero possibility this woman would have been his wife in PIDW! … Actually, was she, in fact…?

“Shizun, look at me, not other people,” Binghe says, sulking.

Ah, what does it matter? He’s the only one Binghe wants now! “It’s quite alright,” Shen Qingqiu says graciously to Attendant Two. “We have been playing for a while, after all—” And shamelessly winning quite a bit of loot while they were at it!

So Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe allow the next waiting guests their own turn at getting scammed fair and square by the crane games. It’s late, anyway. It’s about time for them to start flying home.

As they prepare to leave, Attendant Two calls out to them one last time.

“Wait,” she shouts breathlessly in Luo Binghe’s direction, face flushed. Is she shooting her shot? Well, too bad! Binghe’s taken! And exclusively, too!!

Still, Shen Qingqiu supposes he can watch her try and get turned down for her trouble. They stop at the boundary of the crane game stall as she catches up to them.

“I—” Attendant Two begins. “Well, um.”

Binghe raises an eyebrow. “What is it?”

With trembling hands, Attendant Two withdraws the fan from her waist and holds it out in Binghe’s direction. She’s shaking so badly, Shen Qingqiu can’t even make out the design on it. It just looks like a blur of red and teal.

“Willyousignyournameonthisforme,” she says in a rush.

“Sign?”

From out of nowhere, Attendant Two presents a brush. “Oh, it’s this trend that popular actors and such have been doing recently, on fan works depicting their image,” she babbles. “It would mean the world to me if you would…”

Attendant Two hands the brush and fan to Binghe, who swiftly does as she asks. Shen Qingqiu tries to peek closer at the fan itself, but it leaves Binghe’s hands before he can get a good look at it.

Red and teal? Fan works depicting whose image, exactly…?

Attendant Two bows and rambles grateful words of thanks before running off.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says slowly. “Don’t tell me…”

“I think we should get going, Shizun,” Binghe says, with a winning smile. “Wouldn’t want to reach home too late, after all.”

“What was on that fan?”

“Don’t worry about it, Shizun.”

“Luo Binghe—”

---

Shen Qingqiu’s husband, does, in fact, more than ‘make it up’ to him that night.

Not that Binghe had anything to make up for, of course, but why should Shen Qingqiu ever do anything other than accept his husband’s enthusiasm? However outsized it may be!

When they’re done, the quiet of the night catches up to Shen Qingqiu.

He’s never been one to sit still, really, despite what all his scholar cosplaying might suggest. Call it ADHD, or modern-day brainrot, or whatever, but Shen Qingqiu is a man who likes to be occupied. And…

There’s no clock around, but Shen Qingqiu can almost hear something in his head, ticking down to midnight.

“Shizun?” Binghe says sleepily.

Shen Qingqiu presses a kiss to his forehead. “Go to sleep, Binghe.”

“Shizun should follow his own advice,” Binghe admonishes lightly. “There’s nothing more to be done today.”

“Right,” Shen Qingqiu says. “But…”

“I had a very good time today, husband,” Binghe continues. “I was—I am!—very happy with you. Walking around, doing those ordinary things… I couldn’t imagine a better day.”

“Oh, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says.

His husband leans in for a deep kiss.

When they break apart, Shen Qingqiu feels some tension leave his shoulders.

“You’re right, Binghe,” he says quietly. “Let’s go to sleep.”

Binghe nods, and the two off them eventually drift off—

And in no time at all, Shen Qingqiu wakes to the warm rays of dawn and his husband’s radiant smile.

“Good morning, husband,” Luo Binghe says, eyes twinkling. He lays his head on Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder where they both lie in their bed—an easy and familiar gesture. “Shall I make us breakfast?”

Shen Qingqiu’s stomach drops like a stone at the too-familiar words.

“Binghe,” he says. “You don’t remember?”

Again?

He’s failed again?

Shen Qingqiu stares at his husband for a good long while.

“Shizun?” Binghe says finally.

“Yesterday. Everything that happened—you don’t remember…?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

Binghe frowns. “If Shizun could elaborate?”

They go over the whole sordid state of affairs all over again. This being Shen Qingqiu’s third attempt at explaning the curse, he’s become somewhat used to going over the matter, needing only to append a brief account of their day yesterday.

He doesn’t want to be used to going over the matter. They’d both enjoyed their little festival date, right? So why—

“Shizun,” Binghe prompts.

Right. Don’t stress, don’t stress, it’ll only make things worse—who is he kidding! As if telling himself not to stress is going to do anything other than make Shen Qingqiu more stressed!!

“It’s alright,” Shen Qingqiu says, more to convince himself than anything. “I’ll… try again today. To give you a perfect day. I have to—I—”

Each word comes out more rushed, every syllable closer to the next. Shen Qingqiu doesn’t realise he’s come to sit up rigidly straight until Binghe pulls him back down onto the bed with a swift tug on his upper arm.

The world turns sideways as Shen Qingqiu is forcibly realigned.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says, surprised.

Binghe only looks at him, his gaze unflinching yet pleading. “This is our honeymoon, Shizun,” his husband reminds him. “An experience for two people.”

Shen Qingqiu swallows. “Yes.”

“Yet Shizun insists on taking everything on himself.” Binghe lays a finger lightly on Shen Qingqiu’s chest; not quite accusing, but with a hefty weight to it nonetheless. “This husband of yours may not be at his best, but surely I’m still fit to stand by your side. Aren’t we facing this trial together?”

“… I…”

“Please,” Binghe says softly. “Don’t leave me behind.”

“… Binghe.” Shen Qingqiu laughs nervously. “That’s not what I—”

“Please.”

Beneath the strength in Binghe’s eyes lies a startling vulnerability that gives Shen Qingqiu pause.

“Alright,” Shen Qingqiu says softly. “Alright.”

He reaches out for Binghe’s hand, and squeezes. It’s warm, and firm, and steady, like an anchor in unsteady seas. When did Binghe get so reliable? Really, which one of them is supposed to be the teacher?

That thought gives him an idea.

“How would you like to switch roles for the day?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “You’ll be the teacher, and I’ll be your student.”

Binghe blinks.

Silence.

“I’m… sorry?” Binghe says.

One more time, from the top! “How, would you—” Shen Qingqiu points with emphasis “—like to be the teacher—” he mimes vaguely like he’s waving a brush about “—just for the day?” He waves his arms in a broad, overarching gesture.

“Uh,” Binghe says eloquently.

“And I—” Shen Qingqiu points at himself, exaggeratedly “—will play your student.” He claps his hands to punctuate the statement.

“Ah, well, Shizun,” Binghe says, sounding strained. “I think I understood all those words individually.”

“And yet your comprehension is lacking as a whole?”

“Give me—time to think.”

So Shen Qingqiu does.

“What could I even teach you?” Binghe asks, finally.

“How are you selling yourself short?” Shen Qingqiu asks incredulously. “There’s so much you could teach me! Besides, I ran out of things to teach you years ago and you continue to call me Shizun just fine.” Even when I ask you not to!

“But Shizun, I still can’t…”

“Cooking,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I’d like you to teach me how to cook.”

Binghe doesn’t answer.

“Really, is that so hard to imagine?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “What do you think? Shizun.”

Binghe jumps.

Shen Qingqiu massages his bruised nose. “If you could refrain from smacking me in the face with sudden movements, Binghe.”

“Sorry, Shizun,” Binghe says. “I was—surprised.”

“Clearly.”

“I couldn’t possibly,” Binghe continues, nearly whimpering. “It would be disrespectful.”

That matters to him now?? Heavens, if only he’d bothered to be a bit more respectful during his corpse-robbing phase! “Calm down,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I’m not sure what you’ve cooked up in that head of yours, but it’s bound to be a lot less exciting than you think. Simply put, I want us to make something together, and you can teach me along the way.”

Another long pause.

“What…” Binghe licks his dry lips. “What would Shizun like to make?”

“Soup dumplings,” Shen Qingqiu declares. “I’ve been craving your version of it.’”

“Shizun, I can make that for you any time.”

“But I don’t want you to be doing all the work,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I thought: well, this master is less than capable in the kitchen—”

“Shizun is capable in anything,” Binghe says automatically.

Shen Qingqiu absentmindedly pats his head. “But if you taught me to, then maybe even this master could make something edible. And we’d get to spend time together while we do.”

Binghe considers. Shen Qingqiu can almost see the gears turning in his mind.

“I humbly await your instruction,” Shen Qingqiu says, almost casual. “Shizun.”

---

So first—ingredients.

“Apologies to Shizun,” Binghe says, “but I haven’t kept our pantry well-stocked as of late.”

“Qingqiu,” Shen Qingqiu corrects, almost absentmindedly.

Binghe coughs, loud and hacking. “S-Shizun?”

“If we’re going to swap roles for the day,” Shen Qingqiu explains patiently, “you should be calling me Qingqiu, shouldn’t you?”

“B-but… Shizun is Shizun…”

What is he, a snot-nosed kindergartener who thinks his mother’s name is ‘mama’?? “You’re still calling me that?” Shen Qingqiu says. “It should be me saying that, Shizun.”

Binghe jumps a little. “Sh-Shi—”

“Try again.”

“Qing…”

Almost there! “Go on,” Shen Qingqiu says encouragingly.

“… Qingqiu.”

“Well done,” Shen Qingqiu praises. Wait. Isn’t he becoming the teacher again, like this?? “I mean. Ahem. This Qingqiu awaits your instruction.”

Binghe lets out a small whimper.

“We won’t get anywhere today if you keep being like this over every little thing,” Shen Qingqiu says.

“Apologies, Sh—Qingqiu,” Binghe corrects himself. To his credit, he straightens himself out. “There’s a number of things we’ll need…”

It turns out that there’s more that goes into making soup dumplings from scratch than Shen Qingqiu has ever consciously thought about.

The ingredients seem easy enough, at first glance. They still have the all-important king of seasonings, soy sauce, in stock—can’t live without that!—and some pork leftovers in storage (thank you, fridge-replacement cooling talismans), but not only do they need more pork, they’re missing flour, scallions, ginger, and a few other spices Shen Qingqiu can’t remember the names of.

“I thought we already had flour,” Shen Qingqiu says. “And ginger.”

“It’s not the right kind of flour, Shizun,” Binghe says patiently.

“Qingqiu.”

“It’s not the right kind of flour, Sh-Qingqiu.” Binghe sifts a hand through the flour in question, allowing it to slip through his fingers. “You see how the texture is wrong? This kind of flour won’t give us the delicate wrappings we want.”

Shen Qingqiu looks at the perfectly adequate-looking flour. “I… see.”

“Does Shizun doubt this one?”

“Try again.”

“Does Qingqiu doubt this teacher?”

They both pause for several seconds to process this statement.

“You’re doing very well, Shizun,” Shen Qingqiu says, patting Binghe on the head.

“Thank you,” Binghe says, nearly in tears. “We’ll need ginger as well.”

“What’s wrong with the ginger we have now?”

“Like I said, it’s not fresh enough—”

It doesn’t end there, because there’s preparations to be made in advance. The pork trotters and such apparently take hours to boil down into a stock, which in turn needs to be cooled down to make this jelly-like thing called aspic—

“Why do we need aspic?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “Where do we use it?”

“It’s the soup,” Binghe explains.

Shen Qingqiu looks at him blankly.

“The soup that goes in the soup dumplings,” Binghe says. “The solid aspic pieces melt with heat, so it becomes liquid again after we put them in the dough wrappings.”

“Right,” Shen Qingqiu says, too quickly. “I knew that.”

“Shizun, did you think you wrapped the dumplings with hot soup already inside?”

“… I told you to call me Qingqiu—”

So that’s going to be cooking while they go out shopping. Efficiency!

They leave the broth to thicken on the stove, and prepare to fly down to the town at the base of the mountain range for some shopping.

As they’re about to head out, Binghe stops him. “Shizun,” Binghe says.

“Don’t you mean Qingqiu?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask about.” Binghe bites his lip. “Do you want us to keep this up while we’re down there?”

“Of course,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I did say we’d do it for the day, so why should it matter whether we’re at home or—”

He stops abruptly.

It matters! It matters a whole fucking lot, actually!!

Calling his disciple Shizun in public?? And not just in some random dump out in the sticks, but right in the population centre literally at the foot of Cang Qiong!? Is Shen Qingqiu trying to speedrun his way into complete social suicide?!? At this rate, the sect might really just nuke the entirety of Qing Jing off the map out of embarrassment! Behold, the all-new Cang Qiong Peaks, now one short of a full dozen, which is coincidentally exactly how Shen Qingqiu would describe his own defective brain right now!!

“Allow me to reconsider,” Shen Qingqiu says, strangled.

Binghe pauses thoughtfully. “There might be a solution to this, Sh-Qingqiu. What if you disguised yourself?”

“Like with a fake beard again?” Shen Qingqiu considers. “I suppose, maybe…”

“Not like that,” Binghe says. “I fear that wouldn’t go far enough. With all due respect, it’s not a very extensive disguise.”

Shen Qingqiu grimaces. “Then…”

“Have no fear, Qingqiu,” Binghe says, suspiciously confidently. “This master has a solution.”

Oh, he’s really leaning into the role! Good for him, but, uh. Shen Qingqiu is getting a weird feeling about this. “What is it?”

Binghe swiftly pulls something out of the qiankun pouch sewed into his sleeve.

It’s a set of red robes made out of beautiful silk, with extensive embroidery running down the length of the fabric. Actually, looking closer, it’s more than that—there’s beautiful beads and even jewels worked into the embroidery as well. Even by the standards of the Demon Emperor’s impressive wardrobe, these robes are a real sight to behold.

But!

There’s just one tiny problem.

These are women’s clothes!!!

Shen Qingqiu lets out a very manly scream. “Why did you just have that on you?!”

“This master thinks it’s prudent to always be prepared,” Binghe says, imperiously. “And not a soul will suspect Qingqiu like this.”

… He’s right! But!!!

“This isn’t going to make me look like your disciple,” Shen Qingqiu points out. “If I wear something this elaborate, all I’m going to look like is your young bride!”

Binghe looks like he’s starting to ascend to a different plane.

“You stop that right this instant,” Shen Qingqiu snaps. “Let’s focus on our current problem, Shizun.”

Binghe deflates gloomily. “So Shizu—Qingqiu won’t put this on?”

“Of course n—”

His disciple lets out the tiniest of sniffles.

…

Focus, Shen Qingqiu tells himself. He’s supposed to be making Luo Binghe happy! If it’s for the sake of curing the curse, why shouldn’t he go through a little inconvenience?! Is Shen Qingqiu so selfish he’d let his husband perish forever just because he’s afraid of, well, a teeny tiny bit of crossdressing?

“W-well, I can still try dressing up,” Shen Qingqiu mumbles. “Maybe. Just not in that. It has to be plausible, you understand. There’s no point if it isn’t…”

At his capitulation, Binghe looks hopeful. “I have other options, Qingqiu.”

Without further delay, he whips out several more sets of robes, and soon enough, before Shen Qingqiu lies a veritable flood of ready-to-go, colour coordinated outfits.

“‘Options’,” Shen Qingqiu says flatly. Well, he has to give his disciple some credit—Binghe could easily make it as a fashion consultant if this whole Demon Emperor thing stopped working out. “Should I ask why you have an entire women’s wardrobe up your literal sleeve? Any other man would be wondering if you had a secret harem.”

“These have always been for you, Shizun!” Binghe cries, with shining eyes. “Only you, and none other!”

Aww. That’s really quite romanti—wait, no, the hell it is!!!

Shen Qingqiu ends up picking out a modest ensemble of pale robes incorporating a multitude of pastel purple shades. Plus, they even come with an accompanying graceful veil, to hide his identity further. It’s definitely made of luxurious materials—there’s no hiding this quality, not up close—and it’s tailored perfectly to him, to boot. Ridiculous! But hey, at least it’s not that bright red, ostentatious little number with the jewelled sleeves, right? These are basically monk robes in comparison! No big deal, really!

And, well, these robes do flatter him, in a strange way. He looks—proper. Respectable. This is the kind of thing a woman at Luo Binghe’s side should be wearing! It’s just good roleplay, right? Maybe—just for today—he can even get used to the idea…?

Shen Qingqiu turns to Binghe, who’s looking at him with a shameless, unbridled joy, radiating an aura of smugness that can only come from someone whose plans have all fallen into place.

Hm.

Binghe hadn’t ever expected him to agree to the red dress, had he?

“‘Leave your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across’,” Binghe quotes. “Or a silk one, at any rate.”

“You think yourself very clever, do you?”

“I have an excellent teacher.”

With that… taken care of… it’s Binghe’s turn to disguise himself. This amounts to an austere set of robes in colours he doesn’t usually wear, combined with a clever little feature-obfuscating talisman hidden in the collar of his robes that’ll make his face unfamiliar to any casual observer.

“How come you get to dress so simply?” Shen Qingqiu grumbles.

“Shiz—Qingqiu, forgive this master for not putting together his own set of women’s clothing. I was focused on building a collection for you first,” Binghe says. “Of course, I will be thoroughly prepared with my own dress the next time we do this.”

There’s a lot of questions raised here that Shen Qingqiu doesn’t want the answers to. “There’s not going to be a next time.”

“Of course not, Shizun,” Binghe lies.

There’s one last problem—Shen Qingqiu can just call his husband Shizun, but Binghe calling him Qingqiu is going to expose him instantly.

“A fake name?” Binghe asks. “We could use that moniker you went by last time. What was it? Peerless Chrysanthemum?”

“Please don’t.”

They settle on Shi for the family name—since Binghe seems physically incapable of not saying ‘Shizun’ by accident—and Chunli for the given name.

“You thought of that rather quickly, Shizun,” Binghe says. His eyes narrow suspiciously. “Did you once know a woman named that?”

“It’s just a name from an old legend,” Shen Qingqiu says. “About a filial young lady who excelled in taichi and fought for her personal justice. A street fighter, they called her.”

“I’ve never heard of such a legend, Shizun.”

Yeah, because Capcom would sue. “There’s much you don’t know of in this world, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu concludes wisely.

---

They finally begin to make their way down the mountain. On foot, too, because both Xiu Ya and Zheng Yang would be instant giveaways, and Shen Qingqiu isn’t about to waste all the time they’d spent getting changed just so they can sword-Uber away a hike that’s really not all that bad.

And once they arrive at the wet market, Binghe weaves through the crowded streets expertly, like a man on a mission. All Shen Qingqiu has to do is follow in his wake. It’s not as hard to get used to women’s clothing as he feared—in some ways, he actually has more freedom—although he does find himself constantly adjusting his veil anxiously. Are people staring? Or is it just him?

“People stare at you all the time, Shi—Chunli,” Binghe says gloomily.

“Staring at a well-dressed immortal of some repute isn’t that unusual,” Shen Qingqiu points out. “But why would they stare at me now? It makes no sense. You should have prepared a humbler outfit for me! …Shizun.”

Binghe looks at him, exasperated. “My disciple tests my patience with her dire lack of understanding.”

“Hey!”

Their arrival at the butcher forestalls any further argument. Binghe quickly switches into hunting mode, picking between various slabs of meat using some kind of criteria Shen Qingqiu cannot begin to fathom. Did Heavenly Demons happen to have a supernaturally good sense of smell, or something?

“You look at the colour of the meat, for one,” Binghe says by way of explanation, pointing between the cut he settled on and another he had almost immediately rejected with an expression of utmost disgust. “You want the right shade of pink.”

Shen Qingqiu stares very carefully. Obtaining no insight whatsoever, he begins wondering if he should ask Mu Qingfang to test him for colourblindness. “I see.”

“And the firmness of it, too,” Binghe continues. “You have to make sure it’s just right.”

“… What does ‘just right’ mean, Shizun?”

“Just right means just right.”

Aah, so it’s like that, huh? Shen Qingqiu understands everything now!!

With Binghe in charge, obtaining the scallions, ginger and spices goes similarly smoothly, although despite Binghe’s best educational efforts, Shen Qingqiu continues to not understand how his disciple is discerning the quality of the items they buy. So sue him! It’s all just plant matter when it comes down to it!!

All that’s left is the flour.

It turns out Binghe’s usual favourite spot is fresh out of the flour he wants, so master-and-disciple pair—disciple-and-master pair?—is off to hunt from store to store in search of the Holy Grain. Unfortunately, this isn’t as swift a process as Shen Qingqiu would like. Past the third store, Shen Qingqiu starts getting distracted—which in his opinion he really can’t be blamed for—and when he dares suggest buying some pre-made dumpling wrappers, Binghe damn near hisses at him. So by the time Binghe finds what he needs, Shen Qingqiu has completely mentally checked out.

Really, maybe this whole disguise thing is overblown. Shen Qingqiu hasn’t even had to say a word to anyone other than his husband—how ridiculous, putting on this whole getup, and even coming up with a fake name, just for a bit of shopping. But at least he hasn’t been discovered, so that’s one over the mushroom body!

Leaving Binghe to haggle with the grocer, Shen Qingqiu allows himself to drift to to a nearby bookstore. He wanders the shelves, idly running his fingers down spines of books, when his hand knocks into another customer’s doing the exact same thing in the popular fiction section.

“Apologies,” Shen Qingqiu says in a graceful falsetto. Hey, if he’s going to roleplay, he’s going to commit!! “I didn’t see you there.”

“I was at fault as well,” speaks a vaguely familiar voice.

A veiled woman in lilac purple robes stands before him.

With a beauty apparent from the little that’s visible of her covered face, and a grace unspoiled by the mortal world: there could only be one name to match this figure! The only person Shen Qingqiu had once considered worthy to stand by Luo Binghe’s side—

“Liu Mingyan?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

“You know of me?” Liu Mingyan says, with surprise.

Fuck!! He’s supposed to be some no-name female cultivator right now, not the Qing Jing Peak Lord! “Your reputation precedes you, is all,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I hadn’t anticipated meeting the famed head disciple of Cang Qiong’s Xian Shu Peak.”

Liu Mingyan bows gracefully. “Forgive me, but you have me at an advantage…?”

“Oh, I’m hardly anyone worthy of note,” Shen Qingqiu blabbers. He bows his head modestly to really play up the ‘demure’ angle. “Just a… fan, of sorts.”

“Ah, a fan,” Liu Mingyan says more confidently, like she’s settling into a well-rehearsed interaction. Of course! It only makes sense that the #1 female character of PIDW has her rightful share of in-universe admirers! “I am deeply grateful for your support.”

Not sure what she’s thanking Shen Qingqiu for so genuinely, but hey, he’ll take it. “Do you come to this bookstore often?” Shen Qingqiu asks, by way of small talk.

“On occasion,” Liu Mingyan says. “I like to keep up with the literature, you see. I try not to be too influenced by the words of others, but at the same time, no one lives on an island. It’s good to keep a pulse on what appeals to people’s hearts.”

Spoken like a true immortal: detached enough to allow the world to pass by, but still healthily rooted upon this earth. Of course Liu Mingyan would be such a well-developed character!

An old curiosity awakens in Shen Qingqiu’s ex-fanboy soul, and he can’t help but begin his next words in a conspiratorial whisper. “And what appeals to your heart?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “Forgive my boldness, but surely one such as yourself must have her own thoughts on the subject of romance.”

Young women are supposed to be obsessed with the topic of love, right? Shen Qingqiu used to wonder about what Liu Mingyan must have felt of her romance with Luo Binghe in the PIDW world. They’d ended up together only after a long, bittersweet journey of bloody revenge, which was certainly not the ideal romance every young, innocent girl must long for in her youth. Without the tragedy of her brother’s untimely death to throw a dark shadow on her life, this Liu Mingyan would surely be free to dream of and live out a lighter, gentler story for herself—

“I like it rough,” Liu Mingyan says.

Shen Qingqiu coughs his ex-fanboy soul out in a most unladylike manner.

“Please, take it easy,” Liu Mingyan says, concerned. “Do you need to sit down?”

“Pardon,” Shen Qingqiu gasps. “I’m quite alright. I admit, I was a little surprised at your frankness on the matter.”

“Is it so surprising that I might have extreme tastes?” Liu Mingyan’s voice actually turns a little teasing. Liu Mingyan? Teasing? Shen Qingqiu’s brain is about to break! “If you’re familiar with my work, you must already know this. Might you not be used to hearing such things spoken of out loud?”

Her work? What kinds of assignments are Xian Shu disciples taking on these days??

“Violence, passion, desperation, crossing into the taboo—all such wonderful fun,” Liu Mingyan continues, matter-of-factly, as if she’s crossing these shocking things off an ordinary list. She looks at what’s visible of Shen Qingqiu’s very red face, and her eyes crinkle in amusement. “Enough about me, perhaps. What speaks to you, when it comes to love?”

“Me?” Shen Qingqiu says. “I…”

“No need to be shy,” Liu Mingyan encourages. “After all, this is just between us girls.”

“Uh…” Shen Qingqiu mumbles. “Well, I like whatever my partner likes…”

“That’s not what I’m talking about here,” Liu Mingyan says. “And, well—I was originally talking about matters of fantasy, but now I’m curious about your reality.”

From behind her veil, Liu Mingyan gives him a meaningful look.

This conversation is getting very confusing. Abort, abort!! “It doesn’t matter,” Shen Qingqiu says. “As long as my partner is happy.”

“I’m asking what you like,” Liu Mingyan says gently.

What the fuck is she talking about??

“Your words echo those of so many women I have heard before,” Liu Mingyan continues, suddenly all-too-sincere. She takes Shen Qingqiu’s hands in her own. “For your own sake, I hope you’re not stifling your own desires for the sake of another.”

“… I don’t unders—”

“Shi—Chunli!”

A loud, commanding voice rings out, interrupting Shen Qingqiu and Liu Mingyan’s off-the-rails conversation.

Luo Binghe stands in the entrance of the bookstore, looking for all the world like a great black bear, except the mundanity of the various groceries in his arms downgrades him back to teddy bear. Maybe the kind with angry thick cartoon eyebrows, but still.

“Shizun,” Shen Qingqiu greets. “You’re finished with the shopping.”

“That I am,” Binghe growls. “And what might you be doing here?”

Instinctively, Shen Qingqiu makes to withdraw his hands from Liu Mingyan’s, but it seems like she has an iron grip. Liu Mingyan, you might be one of the most accomplished cultivators of your generation, but can you not read the room?!

“We were having a pleasant conversation,” Liu Mingyan says coolly.

Why is the atmosphere in here so bad all of a sudden? “There’s been a misunderstanding,” Shen Qingqiu says. He tugs his hands away from Liu Mingyan’s, gently but firmly. “Shizun, if you’re done, then let’s head back.”

Binghe still looks like he wants to argue about something.

“What do you possibly think could have happened?” Shen Qingqiu says flatly. “Between two women in a semi-public space.”

“You’d be surprised,” Liu Mingyan says under her breath, almost inaudibly.

“You’d be surprised,” Luo Binghe says at the same time, very clearly.

Forgetting their roleplay for a moment, Shen Qingqiu cuffs his disciple upside the head out of habit.

As they gather up to leave, Liu Mingyan stares at him thoughtfully.

“Something wrong?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

“You two are just an unusual master-disciple pair, that’s all,” Liu Mingyan says. “Almost as if…”

Shen Qingqiu frowns. “As if?”

“… No,” Liu Mingyan says with finality. “It’s nothing. Miss Shi, I treasure our chance meeting today. Dare I say, I hope you remember me fondly as well.”

Can she stop saying things that Binghe is going to get the wrong idea about?? “Farewell,” Shen Qingqiu says simply.

Liu Mingyan waves goodbye as they go, her eyes never leaving them the entire time.

---

They return to a nicely reduced broth on the stove.

Following Binghe’s instructions, Shen Qingqiu proceeds to lay out their various ingredients on the kitchen counter while Binghe deals with the broth.

Shen Qingqiu soon realises there’s a problem. “Shizun, won’t the broth take a while to congeal into a jelly?”

“Oh, yes,” Binghe says. “That’s why the pot is going to go into my time-compressing pocket dimension jar.”

“Your what?”

“My time-compressing pocket dimension jar,” Binghe repeats, like he’s speaking to the slowest kid in class. “One hour out here is twenty-four inside. The aspic will be ready to go in no time, from our perspective.”

“And you just have this? … Shizun?”

“It’s nice for cooking. Too small to use for anything else, though.”

‘Nice’ isn’t the word Shen Qingqiu would use for a physics-defying Doraemon-tier tool, but alright!

… Then again, in hindsight, the existence of this jar explains a great deal about how PIDW Luo Binghe was able to prepare any ridiculous number of fermented dishes and stews on very short notice. ‘Every day with variations’ indeed!!

Next step: making the dough. Binghe measures out the right amounts of flour and water needed on Shen Qingqiu’s behalf, and leaves him the job of literally just adding water. Simple, right?

Wrong!

Binghe points at the two containers of water he’s set out—one boiling hot, one cold. Now that he’s well into the cooking flow, he’s adopted the teacher persona 100%. “Mix in the hot water first,” Binghe says briskly. “Then stir vigorously.”

Shen Qingqiu stirs.

“Harder,” Binghe says.

Shen Qingqiu stirs harder.

“Harder,” Binghe says again, sternly. “Put some muscle into it.”

Why is it so much less sexy when Binghe says it??

After a few minutes of this pounding, the results eventually pass Luo Binghe’s inscrutable muster, so it’s time for the cold water to enter; then, the stirring begins again in earnest. By the end of it, Shen Qingqiu’s wrists are more sore than they’ve ever been, but there’s no chance to rest, not when they’ve got to knead the dough next.

Binghe joins his hands to the mix for this step, only withdrawing on occasion to add a tiny bit more flour to his own tastes. Things fall to a peaceful quiet as they squeeze and stretch the dough in a steady rhythm.

His husband has a cute frown on. He always looks like this when he’s cooking, and it’s Shen Qingqiu’s private privilege to be able to see it. … He could probably stand to be a little bit more grateful for what his husband does for him every day with zero complaint.

“Qingqiu,” Binghe says. “The dough’s ready.”

They set aside the dough while they get to the rest of the ingredients.

As befitting his temporary place as student, Shen Qingqiu learns plenty of things while they prepare the dumpling fillings. As it turns out, there’s a wrong way to hold a knife (“Qingqiu, you’ll take your finger out, like that. Curl your knuckles, like so…”), a wrong way to measure out spices (“Qingqiu, that amount of salt would kill a child“), and a wrong way to dice up the now-ready aspic (“Qingqiu, this piece is five times the size of this other piece”). He’s not irritated! He’s not irritated at all! But if Shen Qingqiu has to get schooled on one more thing today he might just lose it!!

“Why don’t you prepare some rice on the side while I finish up over here,” Binghe suggests. “I feel like having some today.”

Shen Qingqiu dutifully opens up a rice sack and scoops some grain out. “Poured out the rice, Shizun,” he says. “What next?”

“What do you mean what next?” Binghe says absentmindedly while his hands expertly portion out the fillings. “Cook the rice.”

“You’re not going to teach me, Shizun?”

“Rice?” Binghe says, amused. “What would I have to teach you?”

“Well, as this disciple of yours is ignorant…”

Binghe laughs lightly. “Hmmm. Well, if you need my instruction that badly… But Qingqiu, my hands are a little occupied. I can’t exactly come over right now to, ah, help you out.”

“You don’t have to come here personally,” Shen Qingqiu points out. “Shizun only needs to tell me what to do.”

“Is that so? If Qingqiu insists…” Binghe says. He hums, in playful consideration. “You can start by dropping your pants.”

Shen Qingqiu drops the rice pot instead.

“Shizun?!” Binghe yelps.

“How does taking off my pants help me cook rice?” Shen Qingqiu asks, aghast. “Be serious!”

“You were really asking me how to cook rice?”

“What else would I have been asking?!”

“I-I thought Shizun was asking for a ‘lesson’!” Binghe turns a bright tomato red. “Who on earth doesn’t actually know how to cook rice?!”

Fuck, he can’t say anything to that! Microwave meal-raised loser millennial Shen Qingqiu, complete embarrassment to a thousand generations of his ancestors!! “I know you wash it first,” Shen Qingqiu says defensively, picking the fallen rice pot back up. “And, uh… there’s the knuckle thing… for how much water you add… and…”

“Shizun really doesn’t know how to make rice,” Binghe says. He looks faint. He looks like his world is crashing down on him.

Look, it’s been a while! How many lives has Shen Qingqiu gone through between now and the last time he even touched a rice cooker?? “Just tell me how to do it,” Shen Qingqiu snaps.

So Binghe does. They measure out the water and get the pot boiling, and then Binghe makes to return to his end of the kitchen.

There’s just one last thing. “Shizun?” Shen Qingqiu asks in a small voice.

“Yes?”

“… How do you know when it’s done?”

“What do you mean you don’t know—”

Finally, they get to assembling the dumplings. This involves portioning out the dough into small pieces suitable for rolling out into thin circles, and then placing the filling portions that Binghe’s prepared into each circle for wrapping.

Shen Qingqiu does his best, but it’s obvious his efforts can’t compare to Binghe’s perfect 18-fold dumplings, especially once they load them up onto the bamboo steamers and the dumplings lie side-by-side with each other.

“Qingqiu,” Binghe says gently. “I think you did a great job.”

“You’re just saying that to be nice.”

“Are you sulking?”

Shen Qingqiu is most certainly not!

“Shizun,” Binghe says, laughing.

“Ah, what happened to the roleplay?” Shen Qingqiu sighs. “This is where you’re supposed to discipline me. Chastise me for my incompetence, and all that! Or maybe pull me aside for private instruction. Be creative!”

“I can’t help it, Shizun,” Binghe says. He’s still smiling like a damn fool. “Maybe this is why you’re the teacher, and I’m the student.”

Shen Qingqiu pats him on the head for his trouble.

“Let’s eat,” he says simply.

And so they do.

---

A peaceful quiet comes as night falls, but Shen Qingqiu’s mind remains in turmoil.

Binghe falls asleep first, this time.

His face is the very picture of contentment. There’s no wrinkle between his brows, no lines of worry to mar his beauty. Binghe had affirmed that he was happy today, too. There’s no real reason to doubt his words. And even if he had a reason to lie about that—at this point in their relationship, Shen Qingqiu surely knows his husband well enough to tell.

Right?

The same way he should know what makes his husband happy?

Before Binghe had fallen asleep, he had looked at Shen Qingqiu with the utmost faith. He even offered to put Shen Qingqiu to sleep, with the help of his Heavenly Demon blood, but…

In the end, Shen Qingqiu hadn’t taken him up on the offer.

It wasn’t like he really needed it. He should stop worrying, go to sleep and…

And it would be okay in the morning.

Third time’s the charm, right?

He has to believe that.

If not—

…

It isn’t worth thinking about.

The large meal they had sits uncomfortably in his stomach.

Shen Qingqiu turns on his side, his back to his husband. He forces his own eyes shut, and uses the meditation techniques familiar to him as a cultivator of Cang Qiong to slow his heart rate down. It helps that he’s tired, too. If he leans into the exhaustion, it’s almost like natural sleepiness.

It takes longer than he wants it to, but soon enough, unconsciousness claims Shen Qingqiu—

And he wakes to the warm rays of dawn and his husband’s radiant smile.

“Good morning, husband,” Luo Binghe says, eyes twinkling. He lays his head on Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder where they both lie in their bed—a far too familiar gesture. “Shall I make us breakfast?”

…

It can’t be.

“Shizun?” Binghe asks. “Is something wrong?”

For some reason, Shen Qingqiu’s mouth is horribly dry.

Binghe’s starting to look worried. “Shizun?”

“Water,” Shen Qingqiu croaks. “Could you bring me some water?”

Binghe’s expression remains strained as Shen Qingqiu downs the glass his disciple brings him.

“Is Shizun really feeling alright?” Binghe says.

Shen Qingqiu swallows the last of the water. “Of course,” he says. “It was only a bit of dryness.” He shapes his face into a smile. “Please don’t worry, Binghe.”

“… If you say so, Shizun.” Binghe tucks a loose lock of hair over Shen Qingqiu’s ear. “I know today is supposed to be special, but if you’re feeling under the weather, we can take it slow.”

“You worry too much,” Shen Qingqiu says. “You know your shizun is an accomplished cultivator. What could possibly ail me?”

Binghe looks unconvinced. “I know, but…”

“Put it out of your mind.” Shen Qingqiu plants a light kiss on his husband’s lips. “How about we think instead of what we’d like to do for the day?”

Slowly, though hesitantly, Binghe comes to nod.

“After all,” Shen Qingqiu says, “it’s the first day of our honeymoon. Let’s make sure to enjoy it.”

---

They leave the decision of what to do for the day to later while Binghe prepares breakfast.

When Binghe emerges from the kitchen, he has in hand a platter that’s elaborate even by his standards.

“I wanted to make it special, Shizun,” Binghe says. “Apologies for the wait—I went a little overboard. We had more ingredients in stock than I expected.”

Apologies for what! Making a delicious feast without asking his husband to lift a finger?? “Shall we dig in?”

They eat in a peaceful silence until a knock comes at the door of their cottage.

“Tianlang-jun?” Shen Qingqiu greets in shock.

The man in question rudely sidesteps around him to enter the house before Shen Qingqiu can think to throw him out.

“You’re very much not welcome here,” Binghe says.

“Now hold on,” Tianlang-jun says. “I come bearing a gift for the happy couple.”

“How did you even make it onto Qing Jing Peak?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

“Aren’t either of you interested in what I—”

“Get out,” Binghe says.

Tianlang-jun slams some book into Binghe’s face anyway. “I’m visiting Cang Qiong Mountain Sect with Master Wu Chen,” he says to Shen Qingqiu on the side. “Perfectly legitimately, Peak Lord Shen. I only wished to congratulate you both with a gift.”

“That doesn’t mean you can come in here,” Shen Qingqiu snaps. “You’re bothering Binghe.”

“I think you’ll find he’s not very bothered at all, to be quite honest,” Tianlang-jun says.

“How can he not be—”

The sharp sound of a page flip interrupts Shen Qingqiu’s incensed words.

“Are you reading that?” Shen Qingqiu demands.

“Hold on, Shizun,” Binghe says. “There’s material of interest in here.”

“What do you mean, ‘material of interest’?”

He spots the title of the book: Excerpts from the Principles of Love: Annotated for Heavenly Demons.

Wait. Principles of Love? Isn’t that just the translated name of—

“The Kama Sutra?!?” Shen Qingqiu screeches.

“Oh, you're already familiar with it, Peak Lord Shen?” Tianlang-jun asks. “What a surprise. I had thought this quite obscure, but the Qing Jing Peak Lord is truly well-read beyond measure!”

The Kama Sutra? Obscure?? “Hasn’t everyone heard of this?”

“Peak Lord Shen must run in different circles from I.” Tianlang-jun covers his mouth like a scandalised middle-aged woman, but his eyes dance with the amusement of a five-year-old. “How truly distinguished!”

Is there any getting through to this man?!?!?

“Why give us this?” Binghe asks, finally looking up from the book.

“Did you not hear what I said earlier?” asks Tianlang-jun. “It’s to congratulate you both on officially tying the knot. You know, if things had been a little different, I’d ask if your shizun had any char siew cooking in the oven, so to speak—”

“How did you know?” Binghe interrupts.

“What, that you’re woefully uneducated when it comes to fun uses of Heavenly Demon blood gu?”

“That we’re married.”

Shit.

Binghe wouldn’t know. That Shen Qingqiu had made that announcement—

“O son of mine, I’ve been travelling around, not living under a rock,” Tianlang-jun says flatly. “How fast do you think news spreads in the jianghu? Do you think I wouldn’t have heard of—”

“Of course an old gossip like you would’ve jumped on any two-bit rumour out there,” Shen Qingqiu says.

“Two-bit rumour?” Tianlang-jun says in theatrical affront. “I’ll have you know my sources are the finest—”

Shen Qingqiu drags him out by the ear.

He can’t use a simple silencing talisman—too obvious. Instead, Shen Qingqiu whips out something to amplify the natural ambient noise of the peaks, combines that with another talisman to muffle sounds, activates both as soon as the front door falls shut, and continues pulling Tianlang-jun away from the cottage even after that.

“You have to help me,” Shen Qingqiu says.

Tianlang-jun rubs his abused ear. “You have a strange way of asking for help, Peak Lord Shen.”

“Binghe’s—” Shen Qingqiu bites his lip. “He’s under a curse. An amnesia curse. He…”

“… doesn’t know he’s cursed, does he?” Tianlang-jun finishes for him.

Shen Qingqiu grimaces in lieu of an answer.

“How much has he lost?” Tianlang-jun asks.

“A few days. He doesn’t know I made that announcement about our marriage to the sect.”

Tianlang-jun whistles.

“This is no laughing matter,” Shen Qingqiu says severely.

“So it seems,” Tianlang-jun says. “So what’s the situation?”

Shen Qingqiu fills him in. The words come out tumbling and ungraceful, but they get the message across: what the curse is, how it’s affected Luo Binghe, and what the cure is.

“Look,” Shen Qingqiu sighs. “I really hate to ask for your help.”

“That much I figured,” Tianlang-jun says. He crosses his arms. “But I don’t understand what you want me to do about it. Or why you think I would help.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Tianlang-jun looks at him lazily. “Demons don’t have any regard for emotional pleas, Peak Lord Shen.”

“You said once that Su Xiyan was cold. And that you admired her for it.”

“And?”

“I’ve thought a lot about why a man who adored human culture and trusted so openly would say such a thing. Weren’t you fascinated with humans because you thought us different from demons? Fictions though they may have been, didn’t our stories of love and affection appeal to you?” Shen Qingqiu’s voice quickens in tempo. “You expect me to believe that what led you to fall for Su Xiyan was the quality you associate with the demons you were so bored of?”

A man who genuinely admired Su Xiyan’s coldness, who truly thought as heartlessly as the average demon would, wouldn’t have lashed out in such a pointlessly childish way—that was the conclusion Shen Qingqiu had come to, long after the events of Maigu Ridge had settled down. In some ways, Tianlang-jun’s heart seemed just as fragile and young as Luo Binghe’s.

… Damn chuunibyou.

He presses on. “I don’t really believe you think like other demons, culturally. I think you’re sentimental. I think you have a soft spot for stories where lovers get their happy endings. I think you do think about the last thing on this earth tying you to Su Xiyan, that you once rejected because you thought she spurned you. I think you’re so much of a hopeless romantic that you can’t let go, even as you won’t admit it out loud.”

“What’s your point, Peak Lord Shen?”

“I think you do care for him. In your own messed up way.”

Tianlang-jun smiles, but it doesn’t reach his tired eyes.

“Well?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “Am I wrong?”

“Peak Lord Shen, you really do enjoy wildly conjecturing about your enemies’ character, don’t you?”

“We’re not enemies now, I hope.”

“No, it seems not,” Tianlang-jun says. “But we should be. You are so strangely forgiving, even by the standards of your race.”

“You care for him,” Shen Qingqiu repeats.

“Do you think saying it again will make it true?”

“But you do.”

“Peak Lord Shen—”

Tianlang-jun breaks off.

“Oh, Peak Lord Shen. Do you know what I think?” Tianlang-jun says, leaning in closer. “I think you care for him so much you can’t imagine that anyone else might not.” He laughs darkly, without any trace of humour at all. “My son must be so lucky.”

“If you don’t care for him, what are you still doing here?” Shen Qingqiu says. “Why did you even come here in the first place? Get off my peak. Go back to your soul-searching pilgrimage. Walk to the ends of the earth for all I care.”

Tianlang-jun doesn’t move.

“Or,” Shen Qingqiu says tiredly, “you can help me, like Su Xiyan would have wanted you to.”

The air around Tianlang-jun sharpens dangerously. For a moment, Shen Qingqiu wonders whether he’s finally overstepped.

“I wondered when you’d play that card, Peak Lord Shen,” Tianlang-jun says.

“I’m not trying to dig up old wounds for nothing,” Shen Qingqiu says. “But you knew her better than you thought you did. Your faith in her was well-founded.”

“For all the good that it did. What did it matter, in the end?”

“Isn’t that faith why Luo Binghe came into being in the first place?” Shen Qingqiu says quietly. “You can imagine it matters a lot to me.”

Tianlang-jun sighs.

“So what are you going to do?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

“What do you want me to do?” Tianlang-jun says. “If what you say is right, you’re the one who’s best equipped to lift this curse, anyway.”

… He’s not wrong.

How pitiful Luo Binghe must be, that Shen Qingqiu is the only one he has by his side.

“Or have you given up already?” Tianlang-jun says. “I take back what I said earlier, then. My son may not be so lucky after all.”

“I’d just like—a backup plan,” Shen Qingqiu says. “If you know of any other way to lift this curse—if there’s a better way, or just in case something befalls me…”

Shang Qinghua hadn’t known of another cure, but this world had been fleshed out with details even he hadn’t been privy to. If there was something, anything, out there, that simply hadn’t been mentioned in Proud Immortal Demon Way—

But Tianlang-jun’s next words send Shen Qingqiu’s hopes crashing down.

“I know of nothing,” Tianlang-jun says simply.

“You can’t think of anything at all? Or are you still refusing to help?”

“Don’t push it, Peak Lord Shen,” Tianlang-jun says. But his gaze isn’t without sympathy. “I really can’t do anything. This is all in your hands.”

Shen Qingqiu’s stomach turns.

“Here’s some advice, if nothing else,” continues Tianlang-jun. “I’ll even throw your own words back at you. You know your love better than you think you do.”

That’s a statement that the last three days directly disprove! “What kind of advice is that?”

“Don’t lose hope, Peak Lord Shen,” Tianlang-jun says. “Isn’t that what your human stories all preach?”

This…

This useless otaku NEET of a father-in-law!!

The cottage’s front door creaks open.

“Shizun?” calls out Binghe.

“I’m right here, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Did you need something?”

“You were out there for a while, Shizun,” Binghe says. He glares in his father’s direction. “I wondered if something had happened.”

“I’m not about to elope with him, if that’s what you’re asking,” Tianlang-jun says. “Although Peak Lord Shen seems rather confident in speaking for your dearly departed mother. Perhaps maternal feelings are awakening in him, after all? Are you sure there isn’t any happy news you two would like to share with me?”

“Can you be serious for once?” Shen Qingqiu snaps.

“You’ll never get to know how good a mother Shizun can be,” Binghe says, backing him up. … Wait, Binghe, that’s not—

Tianlang-jun laughs, whole and hearty.

“I think you two will be just fine,” he says, as he waves goodbye.

If only Shen Qingqiu could say the same.

---

With Tianlang-jun gone, Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe return to their meal, but Shen Qingqiu finds that his heart isn’t quite in it.

He pokes dispassionately at his food.

“Something wrong, Shizun?” Binghe asks.

“Oh—no, it’s nothing.” Shen Qingqiu quickly takes a bite. “I was just coming up short of ideas on what to do today, and found myself distracted. Maybe we should have planned in advance… Did you have anything in mind?”

Binghe chews while he thinks. “Should we go to a festival?”

Shen Qingqiu hunches down a little lower. “I’m sorry, Binghe, but I don’t feel like crowds today.”

“Alright,” Binghe says. “What about we stay at home and relax?”

“… I’d like to get away from here. Just for a change of pace.” Shen Qingqiu brushes a loose strand of hair out of his face. “Sorry, Binghe. I don’t mean to be rejecting your ideas left and right, especially after I asked you to think of something in the first place.”

“We’ll come up with something, Shizun,” Binghe says. The silent clinking of cutlery rings in the small dining room as they both fall silent.

It’s not long before Binghe cleans off his plate.

“What if we visit somewhere we’ve been before?” Binghe says finally.

“You have a place in mind?”

“The Holy Mausoleum.”

Shen Qingqiu sprays a mouthful of food all over Luo Binghe’s face.

“I was joking, Shizun,” Binghe says, once he’s wiped himself down.

“Rein it in,” Shen Qingqiu says flatly. “Next thing I know, you’re going to suggest we go to the Huan Hua Water Prison instead.”

“Well, it is where we had our first date…”

Even after all this time, Shen Qingqiu doesn’t dare ask if his disciple is trolling him. “Where do you actually want to go?” he asks instead.

“I’m not sure,” Binghe admits. “It’s just that I feel like I’m in a nostalgic mood, today.”

“Well, if you want to reminisce…” Shen Qingqiu mentally runs through the list of places they’ve been to together.

He pauses.

“Shizun?” Binghe asks.

The awkward realisation that Shen Qingqiu’s only now having is that basically none of the places they’ve travelled to together contain memories that he’s particularly nostalgic for. Shuang Hu City? 0 stars out of 5! Jue Di Gorge? Goodbye, White Lotus Luo Binghe! Jinlan? Huayue? If he thinks any more about those two cities, Shen Qingqiu might just blow himself up on the spot—again! Maigu Ridge? Say no more! In fact, say less! Un-say everything!!

“It occurs to me, Shen Qingqiu says slowly, “that our journeys outside the sect have been full of misfortune.”

“Surely it isn’t all bad, Shizun,” Binghe says. “Remember that one time, with the Skinner Demon—”

“Stop.”

So Binghe does.

“But where would be a good place to reminisce…?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

---

They end up at the Luo River.

“Here we are, Shizun,” Binghe says happily.

Um, sure, they’ve both been here before, and they don’t have any bad memories associated with this place—but that’s only because they were both out cold at the time!! What’s there to reminisce about that??

… Well, even if Shen Qingqiu doesn’t have any ties to this place, Luo Binghe has plenty, so that’s enough.

Speaking of things Luo Binghe has plenty of—

“Are you going to keep carrying our food like that?” Shen Qingqiu asks, of the piles of neatly packaged food in his disciple’s arms. “All the way until we find somewhere to sit for our picnic?”

“Of course, Shizun. Where else would they go?”

“I still don’t understand what you have against putting food in qiankun pouches,” Shen Qingqiu grumbles.

“I’ve told you, it’s not good for the food,” Binghe replies.

Sometimes, Binghe sounds like a middle-aged boomer distrustful of plastic food containers! What’s a bit of extradimensional radiation between immortals, especially compared to the miracle of large-capacity bags-of-holding? “There can’t possibly be a difference.”

“There is!”

Binghe laughs goodnaturedly at the look of doubt on Shen Qingqiu’s face.

“Fine,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Give some of that to me to carry.”

“Really, you don’t have to, Shizun—”

“I’m cold,” Shen Qingqiu complains. “I need something warm to hold. Are you going to let your shizun freeze to death in this weather?”

Binghe wraps his free arm around Shen Qingqiu and draws him close.

“You’re going to make me trip, clinging like that,” Shen Qingqiu says, squeezing his disciple’s hand.

“You’ll just have to bear it, Shizun.”

They continue walking by the riverside for a while.

This close to spring, some of the trees down here have started to bloom early, and the breeze sends the occasional flower petal across their path, making for a picturesque scene. It’s still too cold for most people to want to be out—cultivators who can control their body temperature excepted, of course—so they get the gorgeous scenery all to themselves, too.

Eventually, they come across a particularly picturesque tree, and the two of them set up a lovely picnic spread beneath its generous shade. Or, to be more accurate, Binghe sets up a picnic spread, and Shen Qingqiu shamelessly lazes around on the side.

Then comes a lovely time spent slowly supping on the veritable spread Binghe has laid out on the mat. They eat, they enjoy the breeze, there’s nothing to disturb them—

By all accounts, it’s a perfect time. But…

Shen Qingqiu finds his attention drifting to the river reeds, swaying in the wind. They’re scattered all over the shallows, their heads arcing downwards with their heavy leaves, unconcerned with affairs above.

They’re just about sturdy enough to catch drifting baskets, and not much else.

“Something wrong, Shizun?” Binghe asks.

“Oh, nothing,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Just thought something lucky might come floating down the river.”

Binghe snorts. “You won’t find anything valuable floating along in a place like this, Shizun.”

“You never know,” Shen Qingqiu says lightly. “I hear babies come in baskets around these parts.”

The Luo River had faithfully carried Binghe to safety, after all.

Shen Qingqiu spends a few moments looking at the currents before he realises Binghe’s frozen up next to him, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the cold weather. “… Binghe?”

“Shizun… wants a baby?”

Shen Qingqiu chokes.

“I did not say that.”

“You did not not say it.”

“Well, yes—no—look, Binghe, I’m not trying to suggest anything in particular, here,” Shen Qingqiu says helplessly. Binghe, that statement was about your backstory, not your potential postcanon bonus content!

“Shizun was looking awfully thoughtful at the last round of disciple selections, too,” Binghe says, a little accusingly.

Is Binghe jealous of—Fuck! Who’s Shen Qingqiu kidding! He absolutely is!! Binghe, can you go back to being nasty about your Liu-shishu instead?? “First of all, I’m not in a rush to do anything big right now,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Besides, I thought you might be interested.”

“Me?”

“One day,” Shen Qingqiu says hastily.

“What gave you that impression?”

“Well a few days ago, you—”

Shen Qingqiu clams up.

Shit! That conversation isn’t even in Binghe’s memory banks right now!

Binghe looks at him suspiciously.

“… I might have gotten the wrong impression,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Binghe, just to be clear, I’m never going to pressure you into… children… or anything like that.”

Dear God, he’s said the c-word proper. Shen Qingqiu’s too young for this! He hasn’t even learnt how to make porridge yet!

“And what about new disciples?” Binghe asks.

“Binghe, please tell me you’re not going to view everyone I ever meet from here on out as potential rivals for my attention. Or affection. Or both.”

In lieu of a reply, Binghe adopts a sullen expression.

“… I would like you to know that, no matter what, you’re my first priority,” Shen Qingqiu reemphasises.

Sometimes this husband of his is stickier than superglue!

Finally somewhat appeased, Luo Binghe makes a small nod.

“Besides, we’re immortals,” Shen Qingqiu sighs. “We have time to think about these things—there’s no rush. It’s not like a baby is actually going to walk right into our lives without warning right this moment.”

Just then, the river reeds rustle in the corner of his eyes.

With a foreboding feeling, Shen Qingqiu turns to see—

An innocent rattan basket, having drifted into a corner of the riverbank right next to where they’re sitting.

…

Someone’s lost their spare basket, or something! Right? Things like that happen all the time! It’s probably nothing to worry about!

But a high pitched cry comes from the basket, so piercing as to be impossible to ignore.

It’s very suspiciously infant-like, too.

“You were saying, Shizun?” Binghe says darkly.

---

Oh thank god. It’s just a cat.

To be exact: it’s a Double-gilled Otter-Feline juvenile. Basically Airplane had invented a species of cats that liked water, slapped a new name on them, and so the world of PIDW had gained a new domestic pet species.

This one has a ratty little collar on it, to go with its little green eyes and its white fur that’s sticking out all over the place. But even as naturally amphibious as this otter-cat kitten might be, it isn’t meant to be out floating in a frigid river like this. Certainly not on its own—not this young.

Shen Qingqiu gingerly picks the kitten up and tucks it close to his chest. It looks more like a wet pom-pom than a real animal, even as Shen Qingqiu does his best to warm it up by circulating qi, but with his persistent efforts, the kitten eventually lets out a weak meow. Cultivator techniques were handy like that.

“There we go,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Now where on earth did you come from?”

He reaches towards the kitten to pet it with his free hand, but it bats him away with a hiss.

“How rude,” Binghe scolds.

“Binghe, it’s just a little otter-cat,” Shen Qingqiu says. “It’s probably all scared. I’m sure it just wants some love.”

Binghe sniffs. “I could do with some love.”

Shen Qingqiu sighs and brings his husband close for a little kiss.

It’s a little awkward, with the kitten between them. It gets even more awkward when the kitten leaps out of Shen Qingqiu’s embrace and into Luo Binghe’s, where it promptly tunnels its way into Binghe’s robes and situates itself comfortably in his pecs.

Shen Qingqiu gives the otter-cat the stink eye. Well, I’m glad you’re all lively now, you husband-stealing mink!!

“Should we go find out where it came from, Shizun?” Binghe asks.

There’s only one human settlement upstream within reasonable distance, so that narrows things down—a sleepy fishing village with more boats than books. And if there’s one place to find information, in a town like this, it’s going to be the village’s singular teahouse!

Naturally, the arrival of two finely dressed immortals at said teahouse causes a bit of a stir.

“Honoured guests,” the proprietor says to them, surreptiously and futilely trying to straighten out the wrinkles in his robes as he speaks. Behind his back, various fishermen make no effort to hide their gawking. “I-It’s a surprise to have those as distinguished as yourselves in these parts.”

Shen Qingqiu waves the formalities away and orders them some tea.

Seeing an opportunity, the youngest of the fishermen at the neighbouring table slides in to start a conversation without any preamble, in classic small town fashion.

“Are you two cultivators?” he asks, drawing his chair up by Shen Qingqiu.

Binghe bristles at the proximity, but Shen Qingqiu puts a hand on his shoulder. Down, boy! “Yes,” he says simply. “We’re of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.”

“Hey, dumbass,” a second fisherman calls, to the first guy. “You can’t just ask them like that.”

“What, am I wrong?” he replies, looking put out. “You were dying to know too!”

“This is why we don’t bring you to the big city,” says a third man, laughing. “Can’t you tell from the swords?”

“Those sheathed pieces of metal? What am I supposed to be looking at? I’d sooner believe it if they showed us a talisman or two!”

Wow, Shen Qingqiu thinks privately. Wei Qingwei would have a real fit if he heard this about Xiu Ya and Zheng Yang, top-class products of Wan Jian Peak!

“Forgive my uncultured friend,” Guy #2 says, as #3 smacks #1 on the back of his head. “Actually, forget him too, as they say. Why’re you guys here?”

“You’re just as much of a hick, asking that straight up,” scolds #3.

Shen Qingqiu laughs politely. “Perhaps you gentlemen might be able to help, actually. You see, there’s this otter-cat…”

He explains the situation, then shows off the basket they’d fished out of the river, and then he finishes by coaxing the kitten out of Binghe’s robes. The proprietor returns with the tea as he talks, and takes a seat to listen as well. If their little otter-cat problem is enough to be entertainment, this really must be a peaceful town. “I imagine my tale must be a lot less exciting than you anticipated,” Shen Qingqiu says, to his humble audience, as Binghe entertains the kitten.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” fisherman #2 agrees shamelessly. “Here I thought something exciting was finally going to happen in this damn place.”

“Hear, hear,” adds #1.

“You sure you aren’t secretly here to investigate some ghosts?” the proprietor asks. “I hear the Chens have been having problems with their shed, recently. Noises in the night and all that!”

“That was just some rats,” #3 says, snorting. “But that reminds me, there was that incident last week—some say there was screaming coming from inside the well…”

“No, no, that was the Huangs’ third son falling in—he’s a little simple, you know—but have you heard about—”

They go on in this vein for a bit. Unable to get a word in edgewise, Shen Qingqiu feels exactly like a millennial at a family reunion forced to field tech support questions from aunties and uncles who think every new UI update is the result of nefarious hackers. But Shen Qingqiu isn’t here to fix your local viruses! He’s here for intel!

“Might any of you have a clue as to who owns this basket?” Shen Qingqiu interrupts. “Or this kitten?”

A silence falls.

#1 strokes his chin. “The Lis?”

“From down the road? They had pets?” someone else asks.

“No, the Lis who live over by the main street—”

“That can’t be, all they have is that dog too dumb to play fetch—”

Through the process of elimination and crowdsourced village wisdom, Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe eventually get pointed to a little shack on the outskirts of town. But before they can get on their way, the teahouse proprietor stops them for a private word.

“Sirs, if I might ask one favour…” he begins.

“Sorry, but we don’t have free lucky talismans to give away,” Binghe says.

The proprietor waves his hands impatiently. “No, no—I meant to ask: could you check in on that house, when you visit?”

“Check in?”

“About the widower who lives there, with her son…” The proprietor clears his throat. “The thing is, no one has seen that boy in a while. She says he’s sick, but, well…”

“I’ll keep an eye out for the child,” Shen Qingqiu promises.

The proprietor looks relieved. “That’s… that’s good. Then, I wish you both the best on your journey.” He pauses, and lets a silence of polite length pass before asking one last thing. “You really don’t have any free talismans, though?”

---

They finally head for the shack on the edge of town.

This whole time, the kitten hasn't stopped purring.

“It must really like you,” Shen Qingqiu says, as they walk.

“That's not necessarily true, Shizun,” Binghe says. “It could be self-soothing out of stress.”

Shen Qingqiu looks at where the damn mink is nuzzling into his husband's neck. “How could it not be happy, like that?” he asks incredulously.

Binghe laughs. “Are you jealous of a kitten, husband?”

That’s Shen Qingqiu’s spot! “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “Anyway, we should return it to where it belongs, as soon as we can.”

“Of course, Shizun.”

The shack is just by the river. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that it’s on the verge of being swallowed by it, with how low its bamboo foundations lie with respect to the water level. Shen Qingqiu has to wonder how it hasn’t already been washed away.

There’s a faint sound of crying coming from inside.

He knocks on the door.

Silence.

When it opens, a woman with the beginnings of white in her hair greets Shen Qingqiu. At first, her gaze flickers nervously between him and Binghe, but she lets out a gasp when the otter-cat kitten peeks out from Binghe’s robes.

“Mimi!” she exclaims.

“Is this your pet, ma’am?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

The woman nods fervently. “Yes, thank the heavens, I’d thought it lost for good! We’d set the basket out on the riverbank, but then this great wave came, and…” She gestures helplessly. “It all happened so quickly. I’m glad the basket didn’t overturn, at least.”

The woman reaches out with shaking hands, and Binghe starts to manoeuvre the kitten out of its hiding spot—

But instead of leaping into her embrace, the kitten clings ever tighter to Binghe’s robes.

“Mimi,” the woman says, scolding.

The kitten hisses.

“Is this really your pet?” Shen Qingqiu asks dubiously. Had they ended up at the wrong house? But the woman’s reaction and relief had seemed genuine enough.

“It’s just a nervous little thing,” the woman says. “It’ll calm down soon enough, as soon as it’s back with me.”

Binghe eyes her more than a little suspiciously.

“If you would hand Mimi over,” the woman continues.

“Sorry, but I don’t think—”

“Mimi!”

A new, high-pitched voice cuts through the air, revealing itself to belong to a boy of slight build. He leaps out from deeper in the house, but stops himself shy of running ahead of his mother, as if struck.

Mimi—guess that really is the kitten’s name—leaps wholeheartedly into the boy’s arms regardless. But there’s something else to catch Shen Qingqiu’s attention—something that’s escaped his notice until now. And judging by Binghe’s sharp intake of breath, he’s noticed it too.

The boy has scales on his skin.

Gleaming, and silver, and patchy, but there’s no mistaking them for what they really are. It’s not something that can be dismissed as a skin rash—not up close.

So that’s it.

The boy’s a half-demon.

Somehow, beating the general odds for half-demon children, he’d survived the treacherous early childhood period, and grown old enough to start manifesting nonhuman traits—to the terror of his unprepared mother. It can’t help that the child’s father isn’t around.

So this is the truth behind the boy’s ‘illness’.

“Sirs,” the woman begins, fear colouring her voice.

To her great credit, it doesn’t seem like this woman’s afraid of her son. Rather, it’s obvious that she’s afraid for him. She tries to push her son behind her, as he holds Mimi close to himself, a confused look on his face, but if the goal is to hide his nature, it’s a futile act.

It’s good that it also happens to be an unnecessary one.

“It’s alright,” Shen Qingqiu says, gently.

Neither mother nor son moves an inch. Even the kitten quiets.

“It’s alright,” Shen Qingqiu repeats. “We’re not here to harm you. Either of you.”

With some more coaxing, hope cautiously enters the widow’s eyes.

“You really won’t tell anyone?” she asks. “But you’re cultivators.”

“You may take Shizun at his word,” Binghe says.

“But—”

Without further warning, Binghe lets his mark of sin show.

The demonic aura that exudes from him is obvious to everyone in the room.

“Do you believe me now?” Binghe asks.

The woman remains stiff, but her son peeks cautiously from behind her. Slowly, he reaches out a hand and pulls at Luo Binghe’s robes, the kitten watching carefully from his shoulder as he does so.

Had Mimi been drawn to Binghe because he was demonic, like its true owner?

“You’re like me?” the boy asks.

“Yes,” Binghe answers patiently.

“Mama said I had to hide. Because there wasn’t anyone like me out there.”

“She’s right,” Binghe says plainly.

Shen Qingqiu’s heart twists.

“We might never have met, if not for your Mimi,” Binghe continues. “Even so, I don’t think you’ll encounter any other half-demons out there. I know I haven’t.”

The kid hunches down on himself.

Binghe takes some talisman paper out of his sleeve. Using his fangs to open up a quick cut on his thumb, he quickly scrawls out something in blood. “Take this,” Binghe says, putting a finished talisman in the boy’s hands. “Put that under your pillow every night. It’ll make it easier to keep yourself in check, for now.”

In a way, the boy’s fortunate. His lineage isn’t so overwhelmingly powerful like that of the Heavenly Demons, so a simple talisman is all it takes to restore his life to normalcy.

The boy gingerly takes it in hand. “For now?”

Binghe nods. “The talisman is only a temporary measure,” he says. “You have to master yourself.”

“Why?”

The question catches Binghe off-guard. “Why…?”

“Why do I have to ma… master myself?” the kid asks.

“So that you can look human.”

“Why do I have to look human?”

The humans in the room start looking terribly pained, but Binghe’s own face remains impassive.

The otter-cat kitten yawns.

“… If you want to continue living among humans,” Binghe says slowly, “you have to learn how to look human. You need to play by human rules. There’s no way around that.”

“Is that what you do, mister?”

A very long pause follows. “Yes.”

“That doesn’t sound very fun.” The kid pokes at his own scales, and winces a bit when he accidentally scratches one off. Shen Qingqiu’s hand twitches with the urge to stop him, but he’s beaten to the punch by the boy’s mother, who steps closer to swat at the offending hand with concerned admonishment.

“It’s worth it,” Binghe says. “For the people you love.”

“But—”

“Do you love your mother?” Binghe says, harshly.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu chides.

“He needs to understand how serious this is, Shizun,” Binghe says. “Please don’t interfere.”

“I do,” the boy says, fidgeting with the edge of his clothes. “I love my mama.”

“Then you will do this for her. Understand?”

Finally cowed, the boy nods, and only then does the tension leave Binghe’s shoulders.

The conversation takes a less dramatic turn after that. With Binghe’s help, Shen Qingqiu explains what he knows of half-demon children to the boy’s mother, gives her a letter of introduction to Cang Qiong should she ever need to make contact, and leaves her some final words to chew on.

“When he reaches ten or so years of age,” Shen Qingqiu says, “he should come visit Qing Jing Peak.”

He can feel Binghe’s eyes on him.

“You’ll take him in?” the woman asks.

“It is likely that he has potential, if he’s lived well to this age,” Shen Qingqiu continues. “Human and demonic both. I can raise him, when the time comes.”

“That is,” Binghe adds, “if that’s what he decides for himself.”

It’s Shen Qingqiu’s turn to have his gaze flicker in his disciple’s direction.

Is he imagining this tension in the air?

“Naturally,” he says.

---

After they say their farewells to the mother-and-son-and-otter-cat trio, Shen Qingqiu turns to his husband and stops in place while they’re ostensibly on their way back home.

Something about what Binghe said bothers him, but he can’t quite pinpoint why, and any attempt to articulate it reminds him of the time he’d gotten anaesthetic at the dentist: the feeling of a dull tongue, accompanied by a vague pain.

Had Binghe really been that uncomfortable with the idea of Shen Qingqiu taking on a new disciple? Not one that could be left to his own devices, either, but a child that would need extra care and attention?

“Shizun?” Binghe prompts.

“Did you not want me to take that child as a personal disciple, after all?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

Binghe blinks. “I… No, Shizun, I had no quarrel with your offer.” He puts an arm on Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder. “Shizun, why do you ask?”

“You really aren’t bothered?”

Binghe exhales.

“I’ll admit, I had a knee-jerk reaction to the thought of you taking in someone new into Qing Jing Peak,” he says. “But, seeing that child…”

He trails off.

“He—” Binghe continues, haltingly. “I just thought I’d never see another—like me.”

Shen Qingqiu pulls him into a hug.

“I almost couldn’t believe it. The way they were living in harmony, in this corner of the world…” Binghe trembles in his arms. “Suddenly, everything I was feeling before seemed foolish. If Shizun wishes to take him in, then so be it. It’d probably be best for him, too. It’s just…”

“… So you are bothered, after all?”

Binghe shakes his head from where he’s still wrapped in Shen Qingqiu’s embrace.

“No, Shizun,” Binghe says. “I—I just… I didn’t want him to leave her.”

… Oh, Binghe—

“He was happy, Shizun,” Binghe says simply. “They were happy.”

Shen Qingqiu hugs him ever tighter.

The rest of the way home is a blur after that. Binghe’s words circle around in Shen Qingqiu’s head in an endless loop. Even the frigid wind of swordflight whipping around their faces can’t do anything to calm his mind.

His husband had spoken of happiness. A simple happiness, really, the simplest of them all! The happiness of having one person, just one person in the entire world, never doubt you. Never ever throw you away, no matter what, not even once.

The happiness that Shen Qingqiu had not been able to give him.

Binghe had spoken with such thick emotion it was a miracle the universe hadn’t followed accordingly in his stride. Where was the dramatic rain? The howling winds, the splitting skies? A moment this weighty, delivered with a mere whimper? Isn’t that proof that the world is broken? System!

But there’s no answer. There’s no one for Shen Qingqiu to yell at but himself.

An uneasy tension builds in Shen Qingqiu’s heart.

What has Shen Qingqiu been doing, these past few days?

Had he really—and so naively!—thought these few trivial dates would be what cured a curse that could render the man at the centre of the world this powerless?

Is that how little he’d thought of Luo Binghe’s happiness?

Shen Qingqiu almost doesn’t notice when they make it back to Cang Qiong. They get home to the bamboo house, Shen Qingqiu hangs up his coat, he puts away his things, and he gets ready for bed—but he drifts through the motions almost mindlessly, even as his husband starts to throw him increasingly concerned looks.

And then, when the two of them are about to retire for the night, Shen Qingqiu finds he can’t hold himself back for a second longer.

“Are you happy?” Shen Qingqiu blurts out.

In the next instant, he covers his mouth as if to catch the words that have escaped, but it’s too late. There’s no spiritual techniques that can do such a thing.

“Shizun…?” Binghe turns towards him. “What’s bringing this on?”

“Are you happy,” Shen Qingqiu says, more statement than question. An exhaustion seizes him. Today, he means to continue, did you enjoy our date today, but what comes out instead is— “Are you happy. With me.”

“Shizun,” Binghe says, alarmed.

Shen Qingqiu grabs him. “Please. Just tell me.”

“Shizun, I’m happy, I really am,” Binghe says, rushing to reassure him. “Why would you think that I—”

“I’m scared,” Shen Qingqiu confesses. “I thought I knew how to make you happy, and—I fear I’m wrong.”

“Shizun. Husband,” Binghe says more firmly. “I’m happy. Please believe me. I couldn’t imagine myself any happier.”

Shen Qingqiu’s fingers tremble where they’re gripping Binghe’s robes.

“Husband, please,” Binghe says desperately. “I don’t know what else to tell you. What’s wrong? Why are you asking these things?”

But he can’t say. After all, if Binghe knowing hadn’t helped, the last three days—

“Husband!” Binghe cries again.

Shen Qingqiu looks up at his husband’s face. “It’s nothing,” he says. It comes out duller than he’d like, but there’s no helping it. “I… Consider it an outburst of exhaustion. I don’t mean to worry you.”

There’s a long pause.

“Shizun, you don’t believe me?” Binghe asks.

“No, Binghe, it’s nothing like that—”

“Then you don’t trust me with your worries?”

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says, frustrated. “It’s nothing.”

“Or perhaps Shizun considers me incompetent. Incapable of helping him with his burdens.”

“I told you, it’s not like that!”

“Then what?” Binghe’s voice breaks on the last syllable.

But there’s nothing Shen Qingqiu can say.

“… I’ll just say it one more time, Shizun,” Binghe says. “I did treasure our time together today.” He sighs. “Perhaps Shizun should rest for the night. I have some cleaning to do before I join you.”

Shen Qingqiu watches him go.

So it is that Shen Qingqiu enters their bed first, today. He lies on his back, staring at the ceiling, hardly noticing as the muffled sounds of Binghe tidying up their space emanate from outside their bedroom. Shen Qingqiu whiles away time like this, simply waiting for Binghe to join him…

… Only to sit up ramrod straight as a shocked outcry from Binghe pierces through the silence.

Within seconds, Shen Qingqiu’s at his husband’s side. “What happened?”

Binghe stands in the middle of a messy scene, belongings strewn all over the place, and in the middle of it all—

The cursed ring that had started all of this, lying innocently within an opened box.

“Binghe. What is that doing out here?” Shen Qingqiu asks. He looks around, not understanding. “Weren’t you cleaning up?”

“Shizun,” Binghe says quietly. “Do you know what this is?”

Shen Qingqiu’s silence is enough of an answer.

“I see,” Binghe says. “Then I was right. I’m under the ring’s curse.”

No. His disciple, too smart for his own good. “Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says, panic rising in his heart. “I just—I thought it better if you didn’t know—”

“I thought we agreed to be open with each other,” Binghe says. “But… no. I can’t blame you. It seems that I was the one who…”

Binghe lets his gaze fall to the floor.

“I’ve made Shizun miserable,” he continues. “By my own hands.”

Shen Qingqiu doesn’t understand fully, but he needs to stop this, or the whole day will have been for naught! “No, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says desperately. “This is on me. I’ll do better, don’t be sad—”

“Shizun,” Binghe interrupts suddenly. “You need to tell me everything.”

“What?”

“The day before the curse first activated. What happened?”

The question catches Shen Qingqiu entirely off-guard, coming out of left field as it is. “We just spent the day together on Cang Qiong,” he recounts. “Everyone was hounding us about our marriage—a hassle, true, but not an unwelcome one. We went here and there… Binghe, how is this relevant?”

“Is that all?” Binghe asks, with a frightening intensity. “What else happened?”

“Nothing,” Shen Qingqiu says, grasping at his own memory. “I mean… alright. There was one thing. We didn’t end up sleeping together because I… uh, couldn’t muster up the mood.”

Binghe stares. “That’s it?”

Hey, ED is no laughing matter!! “Well…”

“That can’t be it,” Binghe insists. “Shizun, we don’t have much time. It’s almost midnight.”

“I can’t recall every detail off-hand,” Shen Qingqiu says. “What are you looking for? What’s relevant?”

“Were you upset that day, Shizun?” Binghe asks urgently.

The core issue at hand is Luo Binghe’s happiness! Not Shen Qingqiu’s! “What does that have to do with anything?!”

“It‘s the most important thing of all!” Binghe yells.

Shen Qingqiu swallows.

“Shizun,” Binghe says, a sob breaking through the syllables. “Please. Just tell me.”

“Binghe.” Why is getting words out so hard, why, why— “I…”

Luo Binghe listens with rapt attention. His eyes light up, not with tears, but with hope—

But in the next instant, they shutter, like a candle blown out in a storm.

Shen Qingqiu’s husband collapses into his arms, unconscious, as midnight strikes true.

“Binghe!”

Shen Qingqiu’s mind blanks.

His husband lies unconscious in his arms, dead to the world—but Shen Qingqiu at least retains enough presence of mind to check for breathing. Which is there. Binghe’s… fine, mostly. He’s just sleeping.

Right. This was another aspect of the curse. How could he forget? Binghe’s fine. It’s just that their progress reset to 0. He’s dealt with that four times now. … It’s fine.

Shen Qingqiu carries his husband back to bed. Tucked into their blankets, Binghe looks so peaceful. There’s only one thing left for Shen Qingqiu to do now: slip under the sheets himself and wait for the morning—for his husband’s innocent, guileless smile to greet him with the rays of dawn once more.

…

… Who the fuck is he kidding?

There’s no way he can do that! Just wake up and pretend nothing’s happened, again?! He’ll cough blood! Enough of it to put his Without-A-Cure days to shame!!

Shen Qingqiu grinds his teeth.

“Meng Mo,” he says out loud, “it’s time for your debut.”

Without any more delay, Shen Qingqiu forces himself into unconsciousness.

---

“Do you think I exist at your convenience?” Meng Mo says. “You only ever call on me when you have some problem with the boy.”

Why does he sound like a disgruntled father-in-law? “Greetings, Senior Meng Mo,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I take it you know what’s going on.”

Meng Mo harrumphs. “And?”

“Aren’t you going to help out your host?”

“Serves him right, picking someone as clueless as you for a partner,” Meng Mo says, cross. “You’re asking this elder for help? I’m still a demon! Doesn’t that mean anything these days?”

Not in this genre. “Well, what are you planning to do?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “Not help him?”

Meng Mo snorts. “I would like to help you, if only because hearing that brat’s whining about you is going to be infinitely worse if he never gets new material.”

“Then—”

“But this is between you and him,” Meng Mo cuts in. “Figure it out for yourself.”

Why are all the older men in Binghe’s life so fucking useless??

“Besides,” Meng Mo continues, his voice dropping to a serious register. “That brat wouldn’t want me to help.”

This is only a dream, and Shen Qingqiu’s form only a representation, but the feeling of his chest getting tight is as real as it can ever be.

“This elder will take you to his dreamscape,” Meng Mo continues. “But no more than that. Talk to him yourself!”

Saying this, Meng Mo ‘kicks’ him unceremoniously, and Shen Qingqiu’s world turns on its head. It’s hard to perceive anything—colours and shapes fly by, devoid of rhyme or reason, before eventually form returns to the world and order once again rules the dreamscape.

Before his eyes, everything resolves into a familiar sea of gentle green.

Shen Qingqiu knows this place. How could he not? It’s the bamboo house, recreated in all its humble glory.

Luo Binghe awaits him in bed, a sleeping beauty if Shen Qingqiu ever saw one.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu calls.

Unlike in the real world, his husband stirs easily. Gently, he comes up to a sitting position.

“Shizun,” Binghe calls back, still dazed. “This is… a dream?”

Shen Qingqiu pulls him into a tight embrace.

“Shizun, I’m here,” Binghe says. “I’m not going anywhere. … Shizun, don’t cry.”

Shen Qingqiu wipes down his face clumsily. “Who’s crying?!”

“Alright, no one’s crying,” Binghe says. “What’s wrong? Weren’t we going to begin our honeymoon in the morning?”

“You keep forgetting,” Shen Qingqiu accuses.

“… Shizun?”

“You’re cursed, Binghe.”

So Shen Qingqiu explains everything once more. What else is there to say?

“We just passed midnight,” Shen Qingqiu says, miserably. “I watched the curse take you again. Binghe, I… I don’t know what to do. I thought I could make you happy. I thought I could be strong for you. I seem to be wrong on both accounts.”

“Shizun, that’s not true…!”

“Then why are you still so afflicted? Why is this useless teacher of yours unable to help you?”

They both fall quiet.

“Shizun,” Binghe starts. “I have a suggestion. No—a request.”

Shen Qingqiu draws back, red-eyed, to look at his beloved properly. “What is it?”

“Live for yourself,” Binghe says. “Forget me if you have to. Just for today.”

It takes a second for what his husband is saying to really sink in. “Binghe!”

“You can’t bear to see me continue under this curse,” Binghe continues. “But I’m not suffering. As much as it is a curse, it’s a blessing. I won’t even remember this day. And even if I did, I could hardly begrudge you for it.”

“But—”

“Don’t you know it hurts me to watch you like this, too?”

Binghe places a warm hand on Shen Qingqiu’s cheek.

“Take a rest for today, Shizun,” Binghe says. “That’s all I ask.”

---

As anyone who’s ever tried to escape insomnia with sheer willpower knows, trying to relax when one is stressed is a bit of an oxymoron. Or a lot. It’s impossible to force yourself into a state of relaxation—that’s obvious. What’s less obvious is what to do about it.

But Shen Qingqiu can give it the ol’ college try. First: eliminate what not to do.

“I don’t want to wake up,” Shen Qingqiu says.

Facing the rays of dawn right now—there’s nothing Shen Qingqiu could want less.

“We can remain dreaming, Shizun,” Binghe says. “Is there anything you’d like to see? I can make it happen.”

Good question. They’ve done quite a bit in the human realm, over the past few days, and Shen Qingqiu doesn’t quite feel like revisiting any of it. And as for any exotic beasts in the Demon Realm—he’d rather see the real thing in person.

… That isn’t quite true. The real problem is that he just doesn’t feel like doing anything right now.

“Anything you’re shy to ask for usually?” Binghe whispers. He smiles mischievously. “I won’t remember, after all. Shizun doesn’t need to hold back.”

“Opportunistic,” Shen Qingqiu scolds.

“Only for your sake, Shizun.”

Like a cognitohazard, the thought of the Heavenly Demon edition of the Kama Sutra trespasses across Shen Qingqiu’s mind.

“Thought of something?” Binghe asks.

“No.”

“Really? You looked like you just did.”

That happened against his will, and therefore doesn’t count! “You can ask me again when you’re back to normal, Binghe.”

“Alright, alright,” Binghe says. “But then what, Shizun? Really, we can do anything in this realm.”

Anything, huh.

The thing is: there’s nothing in this dream realm that Shen Qingqiu can think of right now that he wouldn’t be able to see in the waking world.

It’s not like there’s that much barred from Shen Qingqiu in the first place, in this fantastical world with cultivation and flying swords, where he exists in a position of fame and riches and power with the world’s most powerful, beautiful man by his side. If Shen Qingqiu wants to go anywhere, he can go there. If he wants anything—if they don’t already have it—Binghe will fall over backwards getting it for him. Plants that let you escape death, beasts with golden blood and jewelled horns, waterfalls that flowed backwards—as much as a hack writer Airplane was, he had created one amazing world, and living in it was something of a miracle, even if Shen Qingqiu would never admit it to his face.

It’s the kind of world Shen Qingqiu would have once only been able to experience from the other side of a screen, perhaps. Killing time somewhere, not needing to provide for himself, or be useful to anyone—that was how Shen Yuan had once spent his days, glued constantly to his phone, idle and disconnected from the world. He’d immersed himself in Proud Immortal Demon Way, allowing himself to be swept up in the dopamine of notifications and updates. The only one who’d listened to him ramble back then about landmines or forum trolls or Luo Binghe was his sister, and he’d had to bribe her with bubble tea for the privilege.

It doesn’t matter. He has everything now. He’d thought so even way back when he’d first transmigrated, right? ‘Jackpot.’

“Shizun, what’s that you’re holding?” asks Binghe.

Shen Qingqiu blinks.

In his right hand lies a very familiar slab of black glass and metal.

It—can’t be.

“How is this here?” Shen Qingqiu asks, hoarsely.

Binghe leans closer to peer at it. Shen Qingqiu almost wants to draw it away, hide it from him, but—

There’s no System chime. No story integrity warning, no nothing.

His hand remains frozen where it is, weighed down by black glass.

“What is this, Shizun?” Binghe says. “You’re dwelling on it so strongly, it manifested in this dream realm.”

“This shouldn’t be possible,” Shen Qingqiu says. “This shouldn’t exist here. How…?”

How hasn’t the System shut everything down? Shen Qingqiu’s—no, Shen Yuan’s world had always been siloed, completely, from everything here. No dreams or memory manipulation had ever crossed that invisible boundary. Even Hong Jing, famed sword of exorcism, had failed to call out the transmigration—not just once, but thrice! Nothing originating in this universe could expose him as having being anyone other than Shen Jiu.

Until now.

“System…?” Shen Qingqiu calls haltingly.

No answer. Except—

“‘System’?” Binghe echoes. “Is that what this is called?”

Shen Qingqiu jumps out of bed.

The black glass in his hand—the smartphone—falls to the floor, and its screen cracks right across.

Binghe heard him.

Binghe had heard, and responded, and the world hadn’t fallen apart.

“System?” Shen Qingqiu asks, once again.

Still nothing.

“Shizun, are you alright?” Binghe asks.

Shen Qingqiu swings around to look at his husband. Binghe’s brows are knitted together in concern, but he’s otherwise simply looking calmly—directly—at Shen Qingqiu. Every indication is that the dream realm is stable. The world—it hasn’t fallen apart.

The dream world.

Right.

Maybe that’s why.

Not only are they in a dream world, but Binghe isn’t going to remember a thing about this day once midnight hits. It’s like that terrible trope in stories, right? ‘It was all a dream’, doubled up? Hack writing. Nothing new, for this world. If the protagonist can’t remember what happens, did it ever really happen? Many a writing crime had been erased with this very logic!

So it doesn’t matter that the fabric of the universe just had a gaping rectangular hole blasted into it. Not even a little bit. Not within the boundaries of this space that doesn’t even exist.

Shen Qingqiu picks up Shen Yuan’s cracked phone.

“Binghe,” he says. “Let me take you to a place you’ve never been.”

---

At his teacher’s behest, Binghe starts to draw out the contents of Shen Qingqiu’s mind to manifest in the dream realm.

Dream though this may be, the work involved is very real. Not that Shen Qingqiu’s an expert on dream manipulation, but he’s read enough of Luo Binghe’s struggles to master it that he has some idea of the difficulties involved in creating a scene based on someone else’s mind. Compounding things is the fact that the scene Shen Qingqiu is dreaming of contains things that simply don’t translate to Proud Immortal Demon Way. How is anyone supposed to explain the power grid? Or the Internet? How could one begin to construct a facsimile twenty-first world with an incomplete understanding of its underpinnings…?

But Shen Qingqiu’s sure that Luo Binghe can do it.

As with all that is difficult, things proceed one step at a time.

“Think of a river,” Shen Qingqiu begins simply.

Maybe it’s because they spent all day by the Luo River yesterday, but the first solid image Shen Qingqiu can conjure of his own long-lost hometown is the river running through its centre. And it’s best to begin at a common point anyway, right? Luo Binghe’s story began and ended at a river—it’s only natural to start this foray into another world from such a place.

Luo Binghe pulls at the imagery in Shen Qingqiu’s mind, and slowly their surroundings begin to take shape. First, there’s only the sound of a mere trickle, but soon, it deepens into a great rumbling, and Shen Qingqiu opens his eyes to a sight he never thought he’d see again.

It’s not a particularly grand sight. It’s the most ordinary of concrete canals, flanked on either side by rows of cold, white LED lamps, and metal fences, without any decorative flair, just functional enough to keep people from falling in.

Plain. That’s all Shen Qingqiu can describe it as.

“What is this place, Shizun?” Binghe asks. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in any of the realms.”

The way the canal’s filled up, it’s like it just rained. “It’s an everyday canal,” Shen Qingqiu says. “One of many of its kind. Not even large enough to call a river, really.”

Binghe waits patiently for him to continue.

“You brought out the lights well,” Shen Qingqiu says, admiring his disciple’s dream work. “The texture of the walking paths, too. True to life.” Maybe those brutalism-whatever architects had a point. Shen Qingqiu had never seen raw concrete this interesting.

“True to life?” Binghe repeats. “Did Shizun once, perhaps, walk these…?”

“Let’s move on,” Shen Qingqiu says.

A path must lead somewhere, and it follows that even a path as dull as this one must have its own destination—even if Shen Qingqiu no longer remembers the way.

They come across an entrance in the ground, lined with rows of pristine, well-lit stairs.

The subway.

Binghe marvels silently at the white tiles and illuminated walls as Shen Qingqiu leads the way, but there’s one fault in the rendering, so to speak: the text in the signs flickers between random words, like glitching in an old game.

“Sorry about the signage,” Binghe says. “I couldn’t make it quite right.”

“That’s not your fault, Binghe.” After all, it’s Shen Qingqiu’s half-faded recollections that he’s drawing from. “We should still be able to get to where we need to go.”

Navigating the underground maze, they soon arrive at the ticket gates.

For the first time in this world, Shen Qingqiu’s feet come to a stop.

“What is it?” Binghe asks.

“This is… a toll gate, of sorts,” Shen Qingqiu explains. “And we need to pay.”

Binghe conjures up some coins, but Shen Qingqiu raises a hand to stop him. Instead, he deftly whips out the phone in his sleeve and swipes it where it needs to go, and the ticket gate opens accordingly.

For a brief moment, he glimpses the phone’s wallpaper as its screen lights up.

Shen Qingqiu motions Binghe across the gate, and repeats the process with himself.

“What did we pay, Shizun?” Binghe asks.

God knows. Shen Qingqiu had never paid attention to things like his fare balance or his bank account in his past life. One meaningless number went down by a little bit, becoming another meaningless number—that was how detached he was from things like this. He’d been that carefree. His life couldn’t have been more different from Binghe’s if he’d tried. “It’s not important, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says. “On we go.”

They board the train.

It’s a little like that one scene from Spirited Away, honestly. There’s shades of people all around them; not with enough form to have visible features, but enough to crowd their space. For some reason, Binghe shrinks himself down into his seat.

“What are you looking all embarrassed for?” Shen Qingqiu asks his wayward disciple. “Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly become nervous of people.”

“But Shizun,” Binghe says, pouting. “I couldn’t even make faces for them. This is embarrassing.”

Binghe, no one cares that much about NPC rendering! “In a painting, omission of detail is often a critical part of not overwhelming the viewer, is it not?” Shen Qingqiu points out.

“Shizun, choosing to leave something out versus not being able to depict it in the first place are very different.”

Shen Qingqiu sighs. “You know, I used to be bad at painting.”

Binghe looks at him doubtfully.

“Really,” Shen Qingqiu laughs. “You have too much faith in your teacher. Doesn’t everyone start somewhere?”

“That may be so, but…” Binghe shakes his head lightly. “I’ve never seen a poor work by your hand, Shizun. So it’s hard to imagine.”

“Well, it’s true.” The shadows outside the train car shift rapidly—straight lines and block shadows that don’t resolve to anything, no matter how hard Shen Qingqiu focuses. “I was terrible at it. After all, I’d never really spent time learning how to paint.”

“And then Shizun practiced?”

If only he could claim such a thing.

“Shizun?” Binghe says.

“One day, I woke up good at it,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I woke up, and I realised I had the skills to draw anything I wanted, if I chose to do so.”

He’d painted many a scene over his time here. Paintings of peaks, towns, homes, rivers—all of them demonstrations for his students, or commodities to be traded for coin and reputation, in line with his role as Qing Jing Peak Lord, master of the four arts. He might have been a poser, but he’d taken care to play that role to perfection.

Such a lie was its own artistry.

“But there are things I never managed to put to paper,” Shen Qingqiu continues. He looks around at the people around them. Had suits always had that many buttons to them? Did belts really have that many holes, bags that many zippers? The memories are so faded he’s afraid to even look—to see how much is gone for good. Not unlike food rotting, unseen, in a fridge. “You’ve surpassed me, Binghe.”

Binghe squeezes his hand tight, like he’s afraid Shen Qingqiu will go off somewhere.

The train draws to a halt.

“We’ve arrived,” Shen Qingqiu says simply.

They exit the train, the station, and the underground in quick succession, emerging into the light.

It’s a considerably more glitzy scene that greets them now, all glass and steel instead of merely humble concrete. The street lights glow so bright they can’t see any stars, and the pavements gleam with unnecessary polish.

Without a doubt, this is the city centre Shen Qingqiu used to know like the back of his hand.

He points to a round structure sitting in the middle of all the superstructures like a jewel—a ring, spinning about its centre, supported by inhumanly regular spokes. Each branch ended in a hanging carriage, suspended by a connection that seems all to thin to Shen Qingqiu’s eyes, as unaccustomed to modern building materials as they have become.

A ferris wheel. The eye of the city—and indeed, Shen Qingqiu has never felt more seen.

“I always kind of wanted to go on there,” Shen Qingqiu confesses. “Just to see what was so good about it, you know.”

“You didn’t have to chance to, Shizun?”

“No. Well—” Shen Qingqiu hesitates. “I… didn’t have anyone to go with.”

Something as stupid and cheesy as a ferris wheel, who the hell could he have asked such that it wouldn’t be total social suicide??

He looks away, but he just knows Binghe is grinning behind his back. “Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu warns.

“Yes, Shizun?”

Shen Qingqiu flushes. “Don’t make fun of me.”

Binghe takes him right on the lips, gentle and sweet. “Wouldn’t dream of it, husband.”

---

The ferris wheel is a lot bigger up close.

Even so, it’s not that tall. Both Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe regularly fly heights greater than it, or even the surrounding skyscrapers, all the time. And it’s slow, and it doesn’t even take you anywhere new, and there’s nothing to do in it but sit, and it never feels worth it for the price—

“What was the cost, Shizun?” Binghe asks.

Shen Qingqiu puts away the cracked phone again. “It’s just a manner of speech, Binghe. Don’t worry about it.”

They enter a carriage.

It’s nothing like the horse-drawn carriage in which Shen Qingqiu once slipped a secret smile to his disciple. This is all smooth glass and metal curves on the outside, and minimalist upholstery on the inside.

Binghe doesn’t hide his fascination at the modern materials as he steps on. He throws a glance back at Shen Qingqiu in naked curiosity every few minutes, but refrains from actually asking anything, like a child too nervous to ask for candy.

“What are you holding back for?” Shen Qingqiu sighs. “Ask away.”

His dear husband tactfully does not mention that he’s been doing just that this whole time to no avail. “What is all this, Shizun?”

And so the floodgates burst loose.

It starts with concrete. Then electricity, then light pollution, then the ubiquity of night lighting, feeling safe walking alone at night, women’s issues & rights—Shen Qingqiu u-turns from his half-baked explanations of the topic before the ghosts of every woman he’s ever met jump him—back to pollution (the normal kind), the state of the environment, urbanisation, construction, then concrete once more. What a terrible, roundabout lecture! If only he had a proper curriculum for Twenty-First Century 101!

“Is this… pollution why this world feels…” Luo Binghe stops, struggling for words.

“Stagnant?”

Binghe gives a hesitant nod.

Shen Qingqiu looks out the window, at the lights passing them by, so very small.

“I don’t know if I would describe it as such,” Shen Qingqiu says. “But compared to the vibrant world you know, bursting with life—I suppose you could say so.”

“So, the pollution…”

“That’s not why,” Shen Qingqiu says. “This world has never had the ambient qi you’re familiar with. No talismans, arrays—no cultivation at all.” No swordflight. No immortality.

Luo Binghe’s brow wrinkles in confusion. Well, that’s to be expected. It’s like telling someone gravity doesn’t exist.

“You still have questions,” Shen Qingqiu observes.

“… Yes,” Binghe says. “But…”

Shen Qingqiu sighs. “You haven’t really been asking what you really want to ask.”

Binghe freezes up.

Which of them is more scared right now, Shen Qingqiu wonders.

“I can’t blame you,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I’ve always run away. I’ve never been good at answering you properly.”

“No, Shizun…”

All this talk about how this strange world works, and yet Binghe hasn’t stepped within ten miles of anything remotely personal to Shen Qingqiu. He isn’t blind. He just… doesn’t know where to start.

Opposite his husband, Shen Qingqiu curls in on himself. “I haven’t been talking about what I really want to talk about, either.”

Binghe waits patiently—or in fear. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell.

“I never thought I’d get a chance like this.” Shen Qingqiu examines his suddenly very interesting palms. “It’s cruel to know this is only possible because you’ll simply forget it all when dawn arrives.”

“If…” Binghe hesitates. “If Shizun would rather not…”

“No,” Shen Qingqiu finds himself saying. “I can’t stop now. For better or worse.”

Their carriage marches on, rising up to the peak of the ferris wheel.

“You asked me yesterday what had me so upset,” Shen Qingqiu says. “About the first day of our honeymoon. You were so strangely insistent on knowing.”

He looks up, and grabs his husband’s warm hands like they’re a lifeline. But Shen Qingqiu doesn’t dare to look at Binghe’s face right now.

“I’ll answer everything I can,” Shen Qingqiu says. He exhales in, and then out, from deep inside his core. “But we need to start from the beginning.”

So Shen Qingqiu does the most natural thing, in this storybook world—

He begins to tell a story.

---

The true first day of their honeymoon started with Binghe’s wonderful breakfast.

Shen Qingqiu slept in, ate with his husband, and then ‘slept in’ a little more, with Binghe—the benefits of both cultivation and Heavenly Demon blood gu-aided healing. Things only started going off the rails when Shen Qingqiu offhandedly mentioned his upcoming week-long break to some Peak Lords who’d decided to crash for morning tea, uninvited.

“You just got back from what, a month in the Demon Realm?” Qi Qingqi said. “What are we? A hotel? Should we start calling you the Qing Jing Peak Guest?”

“Qi-shimei,” Shen Qingqiu sighed. “What happened to respect for peak seniority?”

“Did that disciple of yours put you up to this?”

Hah? Can’t Shen Qingqiu make one damn decision for himself?? He’s a strong, independent—man! Who don’t need no man! “If you must know,” Shen Qingqiu said, “it was my suggestion.”

Everyone looked at him doubtfully.

“I don’t appreciate your collective lack of faith in your shixiong,” Shen Qingqiu said. “Look, I’m not even necessarily leaving the Peaks. I’d just like to be uninterrupted. I’d appreciate some peace for once! And privacy! This means—” he glared “—no gate vandalism from your disciples, Liu-shidi!”

Liu Qingge snorted.

“You’re not going anywhere at all?” said another Peak Lord. Not what Shen Qingqiu said, but okay! “Then what’s the problem with us dropping by?”

Wow, this was exactly like trying to justify turning off a work phone to your toxic boss. “Maybe none of you realise this,” Shen Qingqiu said haughtily, since you’re all single dogs! he added internally, “but us married people want to spend exclusive time together once in a while. Even Binghe’s taking a break from his duties as ruler of the Demon Realm for this.”

That’s right! Even his overachiever husband understood the concept of work-life balance!!

Shen Qingqiu opened his fan triumphantly, only to realise…

… this extended silence really was a bit much, wasn’t it?

“You’re married?” yelled everyone, collectively.

Um, wasn’t this reaction a bit much? Come on, it’s only a marriage! Old news, to boot! It wasn’t like he’d died again!

Shen Qingqiu glanced back to where Luo Binghe stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, a tray of snacks in hand. … Alright, maybe he could have been a bit more graceful about breaking the news. In hindsight, he should probably have asked Binghe first. Shen Qingqiu thought of Binghe as his husband in such a matter-of-course way by this point that he really failed to consider the impact an announcement might have had on his glass-hearted partner.

“You married him?” Liu Qingge demanded.

Was that any way to talk about the most beautiful man in the world?? Rude!

Luo Binghe mentally recovered in record time out of spite. “Who else, shishu?” he said, laying the sarcasm on thick. … With that tone of voice, Shen Qingqiu was going to have to double check Liu Qingge’s snacks for poison.

“How long?” Qi Qingqi said, getting straight to the interrogation.

Oh god. “It’s been… a year…?”

“A year, two weeks and a day,” Luo Binghe recited automatically.

A collective gasp ensued.

“I can’t believe you kept this from us,” Qi Qingqi said hotly. “What next? Do you have a child on the way that you care to mention?”

“Don’t stare at me specifically when you say such nonsense,” Shen Qingqiu said, aghast. “Do you even know how these things work?” Sex-ed in this universe! Honestly!!

“He has a point,” Mu Qingfang said, unexpectedly piping up.

Thank you, Mu-shidi!

“With certain methods, it’s easier for demons to carry,” Mu Qingfang continued.

A second great silence fell upon the room, and Binghe’s eyes started getting suspiciously starry. Alarm bells started ringing in Shen Qingqiu’s head.

No thank you, Mu-shidi!!

The interrogation continued from there, though thankfully on more merciful topics. Where had they done it? Who attended? Did they still have their wedding robes?

Shen Qingqiu stared at Liu Mingyan, who had up until then stayed quiet by the front door as Qi Qingqiu’s head disciple, and who had broken her silence with an odd desperation, just to join in with that last question. Had she been that much of a traditional romantic, after all? Was she thinking of her own future wedding?

“What kind of veil did you wear, shibo?” Liu Mingyan asked breathlessly.

“Why would I have worn one?!” Shen Qingqiu snapped.

Liu Mingyan reeled back in shock.

Okay. Maybe his tone was a little harsh there? Liu Mingyan did wear a veil 24/7, after all. She was probably just some kind of veil otaku.

“I still don’t know how you just kept it a secret for a whole year,” Qi Qingqi sighed. “Zhangmen-shixiong, too. I knew his poker face was good, but this good? I’d have thought he would have wanted to make a sect-wide celebration out of this.”

Ah.

…

Qi Qingqi turned to stare at him.

Hm.

“Uh,” Shen Qingqiu said, eloquently.

“Shen Qingqiu,” Qi Qingqi said disbelievingly. A vein just under her eye twitched violently. “You didn’t…?”

“Didn’t what?” Liu Qingge asked blankly.

“You didn’t tell him either?!”

So it was that Yue Qingyuan was summoned to the bamboo house, arriving once everyone else had left. Evacuated, rather.

“Qingqiu,” Yue Qingyuan said, with way too much gravitas.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck. “Zhangmen-shixiong,” Shen Qingqiu said stiffly. “Would you like some tea?”

It turned out he did, or at least that was what Shen Qingqiu had to assume when Yue Qingyuan shook his head in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a nod.

“Ahem,” Shen Qingqiu said, once Binghe had served out tea and snacks once more. “Zhangmen-shixiong. I’d—we’d—like to, ah. Formally announce our marriage. To you.”

Yue Qingyuan stared at him for a moment too long. “Congratulations. It’s been a year, I hear…?”

“A year, two weeks and a day,” Luo Binghe recited automatically.

“That,” Shen Qingqiu said.

“I…” Yue Qingyuan began.

Zhangmen-shixiong, you…?

“I’m happy for you,” Yue Qingyuan finished.

Great! Well-wishes received! We don’t need to prolong this!!

Shen Qingqiu stood up, and then—

“I’m happy you have someone to share your life with,” Yue Qingyuan said, apparently not quite done. “Truly. I mean it.”

“Shixiong,” Shen Qingqiu sighed. “You’re too sincere for your own good.”

Yue Qingyuan only smiled.

“I must excuse myself,” he said. “You mentioned you didn’t want to be interrupted, for the following week?”

Shen Qingqiu nodded simply.

“That can be arranged,” Yue Qingyuan concluded. Now, he too stood up, and made his way outside. Shen Qingqiu made to bid him goodbye, but he lingered outside the front door as if he wasn’t quite done, much like a movie’s gratuitous post-credits teaser.

… Despite roasting Yue Qingyuan internally, Shen Qingqiu had no shortage of sympathy for the man.

“Shixiong, I’m still here,” Shen Qingqiu said. “I’m not going far away.”

Behind him, Binghe laid a comforting hand on Shen Qingqiu’s back.

Yue Qingyuan’s eyes twinkled. “You’re right. And yet…” He paused again. “Qingqiu. I’ll see you when I see you.”

---

Share his life, huh.

That was all well and good, but Luo Binghe was rather keen on sharing something more specific, at the moment.

“Finally have you all to myself, Shizun,” he purred.

Shen Qingqiu looked up from where Luo Binghe was straddling him on their bed. “So you do,” he said. He adjusted his robes to let in a little more air, watching Binghe’s eyes track his movement. “Your husband—” said with emphasis! “—apologises for the delay.”

Binghe smiled, amused. “Does it really bother you that much, Shizun?” he asked. “Shizun has always been Shizun to me.”

This brat.

Shen Qingqiu grabbed his husband’s collar, and in a swift, elegant movement, flipped their positions right around. It was Binghe’s head on their pillows now; Binghe’s back, arched beneath his partner’s body; Binghe, looking up in sheer adoration.

“There’s a proper manner for every context,” Shen Qingqiu said. He let go of Binghe’s collar, and moved his hand down to where the chest was exposed. This disobedient pair of pecs, always bursting out of their restraints with the slightest movement! “Haven’t I taught you that?”

“You’ve taught me a great many things, Shizun,” Binghe said.

“Clearly I failed to teach you not to talk back to me,” Shen Qingqiu scolded, before he dove down for a kiss. “Husband,” he prodded, once they broke apart. “Say it with me.”

“Hus…”

But Binghe trailed off.

Shen Qingqiu grew impatient. “Well?”

Binghe only grinned. “What was I saying? Shizun should remind me.”

In their next kiss, Shen Qingqiu made sure to bite.

“A-ah, I get it, I get it,” Binghe said. “Husband! Husband.”

Good!

“Forgive your dull-witted student, my husband,” Binghe breathed. “Perhaps you should punish me.”

Never mind! This M didn’t intend to drop his teacher/student fetish, did he!!

It had to be said, Shen Qingqiu still didn’t really understand much of, ahem, BDSM. Sure, he might have glimpsed a doujin or two on the topic, in his sister’s collection, but was that kind of thing really enjoyable? And even if it was, why was Luo Binghe the M? Something had really gone wrong in the universe!

“Why are you so obsessed with that, anyway?” Shen Qingqiu grumbled. “I only want to love you—to spoil you.”

“Love takes many forms, husband,” Binghe said. “I understand that now.”

Something about that phrasing gave Shen Qingqiu pause.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said slowly. “What do you mean?”

“Husband, don’t you know?” Binghe said. “I’ll take anything from you.”

“By anything, you mean…”

“Hit me, Husband,” Binghe said. “Punish me, string me up, whip me—”

Shen Qingqiu choked on thin air. “You—!”

“Shizun, what wouldn’t I let you do to me?” Binghe laughed, giddy and untethered. “This body can handle anything you could possibly want to unleash on it. Rope burn, bruising, even broken bones—there’s nothing that won’t heal by dawn. Shizun, you really needn’t fear.”

Binghe threaded one hand through Shen Qingqiu’s hair, and cupped his cheek with the other, but suddenly all Shen Qingqiu could feel was the scar tissue on Binghe’s palm scraping the skin of his face.

But Binghe wasn’t done.

“I’ll really take anything,” he said. “As long as it’s by your hands, and your hands alone—”

Shen Qingqiu flinched right out of his husband’s embrace.

Surprised, Binghe froze.

It wasn’t like this M behaviour was new, but…

If he thought about where it came from—really allowed himself to dwell on it—there could only be one name to blame for this development.

“Husband?” Binghe said uncertainly.

Shen Qingqiu retreated, falling back into a seated position. Cautiously, Binghe sat up as well.

“You want me to go so far as to string you up?” Shen Qingqiu whispered. “To beat you? Binghe, who do you think I am?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?

“… Shizun…?”

In the distant past, there had only been one answer.

Shen Jiu.

The ghost who wasn’t a ghost. The ghost whose behaviour haunted ‘Shen Qingqiu’ to this day. Whose atrocious actions in the past were apparently now being recontextualised by Shen Yuan’s own, resulting in a hot mess of a teacher figure for one Luo Binghe! How much did Luo Binghe excuse from the past? For how long had Shen Qingqiu avoided giving any proper explanation, allowing him to draw his own conclusions? The childhood abuse, all the starving and harassment and unjust punishments—

In the original timeline, Shen Qingqiu had never had any ‘change of heart’. Luo Binghe had rightly seen through his former teacher’s rotten character, and exacted his own justice…

But this Luo Binghe didn’t have anyone to go after.

Shen Qingqiu once thought, naively, that Binghe’s trauma would slowly fade as long as he treated this child right. But it seemed like it had simply buried itself deeply in Binghe’s heart, an emotional landmine made a thousand times worse with the Abyss—the ultimate blackening, no Shen Jiu needed! Well done, Shen Qingqiu! You’ve lived up to your name!

Because of Shen Qingqiu’s kindness—because of Shen Qingqiu’s silence—the way Luo Binghe was now, he was thoroughly uninclined to blame Shen Qingqiu for what he had gone through in his life, even if he had every right to.

So what were they left with?

Had this unholy amalgamation of Shen Jiu, Shen Yuan, and the System’s imperatives unwittingly led Luo Binghe to think he deserved all his childhood pain? Had ‘Shen Qingqiu’ led him to welcome that trauma? Even embrace it?

The feeling of scar tissue against his cheek, belonging only to this Luo Binghe—

Hah.

It really was no laughing matter.

“Shizun?” Binghe asked again. “Please, talk to me.”

A sudden, violent urge to set everything straight seized Shen Qingqiu. No, he cried inside, this role I’m playing, that’s not me, that’s not the man you married, and you never deserved any of that, not for a single second—

But how could he claim such a thing? Such a bald-faced claim would directly contradict the role he was bound to, as ‘Shen Qingqiu’. After all, this was still a story. Within the four walls of this world’s stage, what could Shen Qingqiu say?

Now, if it was just a matter of soothing Binghe’s heart, he didn’t have to go so far as that. All Shen Qingqiu had to do was to play his role to completion. Pretend that with the qi deviation everyone on Cang Qiong had assumed he’d suffered, Shen Qingqiu had gained a new perspective on past cruelty, and wished to now make amends.

All he had to do was acknowledge those cruel actions by ‘Shen Qingqiu’ as his own—and then apologise.

Simple.

That would give his husband closure. Right?

A simple sorry. It should have been so easy. Even little kids could do it! And Shen Qingqiu was a grown-ass man!

But the words remained stillborn on his tongue.

Because—

Selfish as it was, Shen Qingqiu didn’t want to apologise for actions not his own, nor the actions he’d never wanted to take in the first place. Who would want to sign off their name on sadism and pointless cruelty and know that they’d have to own it for the rest of their life? Bad enough that Yue Qingyuan and Qiu Haitang made their assumptions, but his Binghe?

Forever?

He didn’t. He couldn’t. It wasn’t fair, he…

Shen Qingqiu looked at his husband’s happiness, weighed it against his own discomfort, and despised himself utterly for failing to pick the former.

“Shizun,” Binghe said, the desperation all raw in his voice. “Please just tell me what’s wrong.”

---

“And then I didn’t say anything,” Shen Qingqiu says hollowly. “I didn’t even admit I was bothered.”

The ferris wheel continues to turn.

The thing is, thus far, Shen Qingqiu’s been a pretty shitty storyteller. He’s recounted all of the factual events of the day, sure. He's been perfectly accurate about who they met, what they talked about, how they spent their time…

But he hasn’t mentioned any of his inner thoughts to Luo Binghe: his ruminations, his deliberations, his reflections on the original goods, let alone the System. He’s cut them out clumsily, obviously, like a CIA document mutilated with black bars, leaving behind only the unexplained emotional overreactions of one confusing-as-fuck love interest. The Redacted-to-Hell Abridged Version of One Scum Villain's Day. Who'd buy that?

Shen Yuan wouldn't!

Shen Yuan would print out a copy just to feed it to a herd of diarrhoeal cows, take their shit, and then fling it all at the author's house!!

Shen Yuan—

Is this Shen Yuan with us in the room right now? Shen Qingqiu thinks hysterically.

Maybe there's more than one dead man in Shen Qingqiu’s life.

“You can tell me now,” Binghe volunteers.

“You’ll forget,” Shen Qingqiu says.

“You can tell me again.”

“I don't know if that's true—”

“Then it doesn't matter if you tell me now or not,” Binghe says firmly. “But you want to say it, don't you? Shizun regrets not saying anything so much he is holding on to me like a drowning man.”

Right. Their joined hands.

Shen Qingqiu eases up his grip. “… Sorry.”

“I can bear much more than that, Shizun—”

“You shouldn't have to!”

Silence falls sharp, like broken glass. Neither of them says anything for a moment.

“I want to,” Binghe admits.

Their linked arms shake. Is it him? Is it Binghe? Does it matter?

“Is that wrong?” Binghe asks. He looks terribly lost. “Is that so bad? I don't know, Shizun.”

“I…”

The words stuck in his throat tumble around in place, scraping up his flesh as they do.

“I think I should explain,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I—You’re right. I do want to explain. I just don't know how.”

He swallows.

“When I think back,” Shen Qingqiu says haltingly, “there’s no shortage of terrible things that happened to you.”

“Shizun…”

“Let me continue,” Shen Qingqiu says. He draws back; where Binghe’s hands held his, a lonely cold now burns.

Binghe slowly nods.

“None of what was done to you as a child was ever right,” Shen Qingqiu says quietly. “And it went on for how long? The beatings, the abuse.”

Stress leaks into his voice; cracking it, distorting it.

“Did you think it was discipline? Training?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “Did you think you had finally earned my favour, when it ceased? You never asked for an apology. Or an explanation. I didn’t want to dwell on it. I was terrified to think about it. What did you think of me? What did you think of yourself?”

“… Shizun, if I may,” Binghe says.

Shen Qingqiu waves a hand, allowing the interruption.

“If you’re talking about when you… changed. From that day you gave me medicine…” Binghe hesitates. “At some point, I started thinking of this you as a different person. I’m the one who’s closest to you, after all. I had the most opportunities to get to know you, out of anyone. So Shizun need not ruin himself worrying.” 

“That’s not the only way you were wronged,” Shen Qingqiu says dully. “It was this me that threw you into the Endless Abyss, after all.”

Silence.

It feels like his emotions have trampled all the way though his heart, flattening everything in their wake.

“You don’t have an explanation for that, do you?” Shen Qingqiu says cruelly. “You were smart enough to understand that what I said at the edge of the Abyss was pure bullshit. You begged so hard for a real explanation. And then I died, and I came back, and when the dust settled, you had stopped asking.”

He might as well have stabbed Binghe in the heart another time, saying this.

“… But Shizun won’t abandon me ever again,” Binghe says. “This, at least, I understand.”

“And that’s enough for you?”

Binghe hesitates.

Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders sag in resignation. “Well.”

“You’re being unfair, Shizun,” Binghe argues, trembling. “You make it sound like what we have isn’t worth everything.”

“It is everything,” Shen Qingqiu says. “What we have together is the most precious thing to me that I could ever imagine.”

“Then—”

“But I can’t shake the feeling that our happiness is based on lies,” Shen Qingqiu says. “That one day I’ll wake up, and see corpses crawl their way out from the broken foundation of our life, and… and—”

“Shizun—”

“And I’ll find out that you’ve chained yourself to unhappiness,” Shen Qingqiu finishes. “Through me.”

He looks his husband dead in the eye.

“Shizun,” Binghe says, desperately. “I know no other happiness than when I am with you.”

Shen Qingqiu sighs. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

The thought of Binghe swallowing the ill-treatment given him by Shen Qingqiu, convincing himself he deserved it, not being able to imagine anything better… It’s too much. It’s been bothering him, ever since that fateful conversation on the first day of their honeymoon.

But even before that, the injustice of what Binghe had gone through at his hands had always bothered Shen Qingqiu. It was just that—he kept telling himself they’d earned their happy ending, that showing Binghe all the love he deserved now, making up for lost time, was enough, that that would make it okay…

Deep down, Shen Qingqiu hadn’t been able to truly make himself believe any of it. Just like how he couldn’t wholeheartedly believe the Abyss was needed to make ‘Luo Binghe’ into the character he was meant to be.

Hadn’t everything with Yue Qingyuan taught him that words mattered, however delayed?

“I wanted to settle things,” Shen Qingqiu says. “In my own way.”

“Shizun, what are you saying…?”

“Everything that happened to you—it never really sat right with me.” Shen Qingqiu spins the phone over and over in his hand. Where the cracked glass touches his fingers, it scrapes the surface of the skin. “I thought… I thought I should apologise. Make things right.”

The young man that Shen Qingqiu had once been had read Proud Immortal Demon Way for a twisted kind of catharsis. Every debt was repaid, every wrong righted—even if it was in a sick, juvenile way, at least it was addressed. And Shen Qingqiu knows what they have now is better; he’d never argue that the original Luo Binghe was a happier man than the Binghe with him right now. But that doesn’t change the fact that his Binghe had never received a single sorry for his troubles. Nor even the ghost of an explanation.

Now that it had come to this—if the past few days had shown that Binghe really was truly that unhappy, deep down—Shen Qingqiu should give one to him. Right?

But—

“Do you know,” Shen Qingqiu says slowly, “why I haven’t already apologised?”

Five days ago, Shen Qingqiu had run.

Five days ago, Shen Qingqiu had crushed his husband’s heart, leaving Luo Binghe to make a single, innocent wish for happiness, not knowing the dire consequences it would invite.

He won’t run. Not anymore.

Shen Qingqiu takes a deep breath.

“Binghe,” he says. “It’s time for me to explain why.”

Once more, Shen Qingqiu launches into the beginning of a story.

He tells of one dead man, who lived a life of misery; who, unable to rise above it, went on to inflict that same misery in turn to those he had power over, until the day a humble fever took him. He tells of another dead man, who lived an existence devoid of both struggle and purpose, who was gifted—or cursed with—a second chance at life, at the whims of a higher power. Put like that, the explanation goes faster than Shen Qingqiu expected.

A life for a life. But if two wrongs didn’t make a right, what did two dead men make?

“A higher power, Shizun?” Binghe asks uneasily.

“How else could I have replaced him so thoroughly?” Shen Qingqiu points out. “Xiu Ya responds to me without question. No array, no talisman, not even Hong Jing could reveal me to be an imposter.” He sighs. “There was… a certain trajectory of fate laid out for this world. I knew of it only in part.”

Binghe goes silent.

Knowing him, he’s already starting to put things together.

“I once spoke to you of fate,” Shen Qingqiu says, voice drawn down to a hoarse whisper. “In Huayue City.”

Right before he’d self-detonated.

Shen Qingqiu doesn’t want to bring it up. But he has no choice.

“I wasn’t just saying it to be cruel,” Shen Qingqiu continues. “‘Fate’… I meant it quite literally. There were certain events unchangeably written in this world’s destiny—events that I could not fight. Bound to this life, I had my hand forced. And, unable to break myself free, I clung to my role, because I didn’t know any other way to exist. I spoke words I did not mean, on the precipice of the jaws of hell.”

Unable to meet Binghe’s eyes, Shen Qingqiu casts his gaze out the window.

It seems like they’ve finally reached the apex of the wheel.

“You understand what I mean, don’t you?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

In the corner of his eye, Binghe starts shaking violently.

“I never wanted to throw you down into the Endless Abyss,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I was forced to. By the same higher power that brought me here.”

Binghe lets out a great sob.

The sound echoes in Shen Qingqiu’s ears, but Shen Qingqiu can’t even comfort his husband. He hasn’t the words. Nor the right to.

The ferris wheel continues turning.

Shen Qingqiu’s own vision begins to blur.

“I’m not telling you this now to dig up past wounds for no reason,” Shen Qingqiu says. “It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? This worthless explanation of mine—I’ve neatly shrugged off all responsibility for everything terrible that’s ever happened to you, and somehow I expect you to simply accept this?”

Somewhere inside him, Shen Yuan starts crying out about how stupid this story is.

Luo Binghe, brought to misery at this hands of his despicable teacher? Scum who can’t even take proper responsbility for his own actions, and tries to escape his due karma by blaming some hitherto unmentioned extranarrative force?

Bullshit!

Who wrote this! Who allowed—

Who is Luo Binghe supposed to blame, if not Shen Qingqiu?

Luo Binghe’s tears fall hot upon his own arms. “Shizun, I…”

“I’m sorry, Binghe. I must continue.”

Shen Qingqiu doesn’t dare dwell on what Luo Binghe must be thinking at this point. They’ve come this far; he needs to say his piece to the end.

“I convinced myself that we could be happy just the way we are,” Shen Qingqiu continues. “That we’d be able to create new memories, and in so doing, slowly bid farewell to the past. But a rotten foundation begets rotten results. We can’t continue like this forever.”

Binghe slides into the beginnings of panic.

“Shizun, don’t leave me,” he begs. “Anything. I’ll take anything—”

“I won’t go,” Shen Qingqiu promises. “I won’t leave. But Binghe, I need you to answer me one thing.”

Binghe swallows. “What is it, Shizun?”

“I need you to tell me if I should play my role to the very end,” Shen Qingqiu says solemnly. “I need to know if this is what will make you happy.”

“… What do you mean?”

His disciple sounds so, so scared.

“If you’ve been suffering under this curse for five days straight, despite all our efforts—I can only concede that you’re deeply unhappy, and that no superficially happy day out will cure you,” Shen Qingqiu says. He cradles Binghe’s hand where it sits against his cheek. “If the matters of the past must be settled, I’ll… I’ll do it. I’ll gather my convictions, and give you a proper apology for every last thing you have ever suffered at this ‘Shen Qingqiu’s’ hands, upon tomorrow’s daybreak, once you’ve lost all memory of today.”

It takes Binghe a second to fully process what he’s saying.

“You mean to bury your truth? Forever?”

Not trusting his voice, Shen Qingqiu nods.

“But Shizun, you didn’t want to!” Binghe’s eyes grow wild in panic. He flings an arm out, as if to forestall fate itself. “The very idea pains you—!”

“And your shizun was being selfish,” Shen Qingqiu cuts in, suddenly harsh. But just as quickly, he falters, suddenly losing all his bluster. “Your shizun—isn’t brave enough to do this on his own. I ask for your blessing, for this final lie.”

He’s a coward, through and through, for pushing this final responsibility on his husband. But Shen Qingqiu needs to know this will work.

How can he go on, otherwise?

“So this is what Shizun was struggling with that day?” Binghe says finally, in an odd tone. “The dilemma that pained you so much that it nearly tore you apart, but that you could not so much as share with me?”

“… You shouldn’t exaggerate,” Shen Qingqiu says.

“I really am not, Shizun.”

“Binghe—”

His husband wrenches his hands back to his head all of a sudden. He grabs his temples in a sudden frenzy, as if possessed.

“So that’s it,” Binghe says faintly.

Yes.

That’s it. That’s everything.

Shen Qingqiu reaches out weakly—

But at that moment, a deep rumbling reverberates throughout the sky.

Black jagged streaks follow soon after, like inverse lightning, and Shen Qingqiu finds himself with a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach as he watches the heavens tear themselves apart.

After all, this is a dreamscape created by Luo Binghe. At his skill level, no detail makes it in by accident, and nothing happens without his permitting it. It just doesn’t happen! Unless—

Unless something’s wrong with him.

Binghe’s hunched over. He must be in incredible pain.

In a flash, Shen Qingqiu’s at his husband’s side.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu calls urgently. “Binghe!”

He shakes his disciple gently, but Binghe can’t even look at him properly, let alone answer.

“Binghe, what’s wrong?!”

With immense effort, Binghe wrenches himself up to return his husband’s worried gaze. His eyes are unfocused; his breathing is unsteady. It’s been an awfully long time since Shen Qingqiu has seen Binghe in this sorry a state, dreamscape or no.

“Shizun,” Binghe says finally. “I think something’s happening with my curse.”

“What’s wrong? What exactly—What—”

Could the curse be wrecking this dreamscape? Was there some interaction between the curse and dream arts that he’d overlooked, that Shen Qingqiu should have expected?

Had entering Luo Binghe’s dream been a mistake to begin with?

Shen Qingqiu forces himself to slow down. “Tell me how to help you.”

Binghe’s lips flutter open in futility, trying and failing to shape out words, but—

Without warning, their carriage drops into freefall.

On instinct, Shen Qingqiu lunges close to hold Binghe tight as the world twists around them. The metal frame of the carriage screams inhumanly as forces tear it apart. The glass windows shatter, throwing shrapnel at them both. No matter. Shen Qingqiu can shield his husband just fine with his own body.

But if they don’t wake up soon…

“S’rry, Shizun,” Binghe mumbles. “I’m losing control of this dream world.”

“What does that mean?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “Wait. If something happens to us in here, what’ll happen to us in real life…?”

Artificial dreamscapes weren’t like normal dreams, and waking up abnormally could have all sorts of terrible consequences. Usually with Binghe at the helm, it was never anything to worry about. But now?

“We can’t let that happen,” Binghe says, strained. “But in my current state, I can no longer lead us out.”

“Then—”

“But you can help, Shizun,” Binghe says. “Call for Meng Mo on my behalf. He’ll get us awake safely.”

“Meng Mo!” Shen Qingqiu yells immediately.

There’s no answer, except for the world continuing to shake itself apart.

“Senior Meng Mo!” Shen Qingqiu yells, more desperately. “Can you hear me?”

Nothing!

Where’s that old fart when you need him!!

“Not like that, Shizun,” Binghe says. “You need to reach outside the dream. The basics of dreamweaving lie within the manipulation of concepts. You need to find a way to imagine yourself calling out over an unimaginable distance.”

Um, that last sentence is a direct contradiction of itself! Imagine the unimaginable? How?? Who taught Luo Binghe this vague, Yoda-style of instruction? … Fuck, it can only be poser teacher Shen Qingqiu himself!!

Binghe slumps down, weaker than ever.

Shit!

Calling for someone who isn’t there, who’s unimaginably far away—how’re you supposed to do that?

Calling out, calling into the void, calling—

Wait.

That’s it.

That’s literally it.

Calling.

He can just call Meng Mo. On the phone.

… It’s so stupid it has to work. Right?

Shen Qingqiu is either the biggest idiot in this world, or its biggest genius. He can’t tell, at this point.

A small mercy: what he needs is right up his sleeve.

Shen Qingqiu takes out his phone.

Binghe smiles weakly at him. “Have you thought of something, husband?”

He has.

Shen Qingqiu unlocks his phone, and opens up the dial pad.

… And then he’s stuck. Again.

How’s he supposed to call Meng Mo? It’s not like he has that geriatric old nag on speed dial!!

“Shizun?” Binghe asks.

Shen Qingqiu looks at his disciple, shamefaced. “I… thought I had a good idea. But I’m stuck.”

“Dreams are more flexible than you think,” Binghe says. “If you believe you can do what you want to do—if you can make yourself perceive that possibility—you can make it happen.”

That’s easy for Binghe to say while the dreamscape rages around them, but Shen Qingqiu’s a boringly realistic guy!! He knows he’s anal about plausibility and details! That’s why no one had cared about his posts on the PIDW forums!!

He wracks his brain. There has to be something.

Desperate, Shen Qingqiu tries putting in a bunch of random numbers and hitting call, but the line doesn’t connect. … Well, of course it doesn’t! He can’t make himself believe random dialling will work, that’s just too dumb!

What next? He dials various emergency numbers, one after another, but none of them lead anyway near Meng Mo—only further inside the world of the dream, with NPCs answering uselessly.

Out of ideas, Shen Qingqiu stares so long at his phone the thing auto-locks itself.

Besides him, Binghe reaches out with a trembling hand. Curiously, he touches the phone that Shen Qingqiu is staring at so viciously, triggering the display to light up again.

Two faces stare back at him from the old selfie that’s set as his phone’s wallpaper—one cheeky, one surprised: a girl and a young man, greatly resembling each other. Neither figure of this unreachable past hold any answers for him now.

But Binghe’s brief reflection in the display gives Shen Qingqiu the faintest spark of an idea.

How do you get the number of someone you don’t know?

You ask someone who knows them.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says, with new determination. “I need you to do something for me.”

He opens up the phone again, navigating rapidly back to the dial pad, and swiftly hands it to Binghe.

“Punch in some numbers,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Touch the surface, like I was doing. Think of Meng Mo while you do that.”

His disciple obeys as best as he can, in his state.

Shen Qingqiu gingerly takes the phone back.

Outside, the sky is nearly fully black—an unnatural, chaotic void.

Shen Qingqiu hits ‘call’.

A ringing tone sounds.

For several, nerve-biting seconds, it continues to sound.

Then—

“What is it now?” answers a grumpy, ancient, familiar voice.

“Senior Meng Mo,” Shen Qingqiu says, in deep relief. “We’d like to wake up now.”

---

Once more, Shen Qingqiu wakes to the warm rays of dawn and his husband’s radiant smile.

Something feels—different.

Is he imagining it? Are the dregs of their dream still addling Shen Qingqiu’s sorry brain? Or does Binghe’s expression look a little more…

It doesn’t feel like the light, anticipatory joy he’d seen every morning over the past week. It feels more like Binghe has something to say.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu starts. “That is—I…”

“I remember, Shizun,” Binghe says. “Everything.”

Shen Qingqiu blinks. “What?”

“I remember,” Binghe repeats. “Everything from the first day of our honeymoon, to the dream we just both woke from. Today’s the morning of the sixth day, and the curse has finally been broken.”

Broken?

That—makes no sense.

Hadn’t Luo Binghe wished for a day of true happiness? What about what just happened had been happy?? Maybe it had been… cathartic, in some sense, the way venting about long-buried feelings tended to be, but Shen Qingqiu could hardly call that happy.

They’d dug up some very old, painful parts of the past.

Hang on.

Luo Binghe remembers everything?

As in, remembers every fourth-wall breaking secret about secretly 21st century modern-day man Shen Qingqiu née Yuan, everything?

“You remember concrete?” Shen Qingqiu asks faintly.

“Yes, Shizun,” answers Binghe dutifully.

“The subway?”

“Yes, Shizun.”

“Electricity? Light pollution? And—”

“Urbanisation, construction, and the state of the environment. Yes, Shizun.”

The spirit of the educator returns to Shen Qingqiu. “You missed women’s rights.”

Binghe pouts. “You said you’d come back to that another time, Shizun.”

Oh, right. So he had.

Oh.

Shen Qingqiu sits up so rapidly his neck and spine make an audible snap.

The tiny part of his mind that hasn’t just been shattered to pieces reaches out—

System?

…

……

Nothing.

System…?

“Shizun said that in the dream, too,” Binghe observes.

Had he said that out loud?

“We… are truly awake, right?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “We’re no longer in any dream realm? Binghe?”

“Undeniably.”

Coming from the dream master himself… There’s no reason to doubt his words. This is reality.

This is reality, Binghe has his memory back for good, and—as unbelievable as it might seem—the System hasn’t reacted to a single thing. There hasn’t been a peep of an OOC Warning, or a punishment protocol, or B-points this or satisfaction-points that.

It’s like it’s just not there.

How’s that possible?

The System, the closest thing to what he understood to be whatever entity created this storybook world—the very same entity that’s literally haunted his every action as Shen Qingqiu—is just… gone?

It can’t be real. It—

…

Just like that?

A squeezing sensation startles him, and Shen Qingqiu comes to realise that Binghe has pulled him into a tight hug.

In turn, he combs his fingers through his husband’s thick locks, and the familiar scent of the hair oil he’d gifted Binghe wafts gently through the air.

“I don’t want to wake up,” Shen Qingqiu mumbles. “If this is a dream.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re married to a master of the dream arts, isn’t it?” Binghe strokes his back gently. “I’ll be with you no matter what, Shizun. So don’t worry about such things.”

Shen Qingqiu laughs, despite himself.

“When did you get so smooth?” he accuses, as he pulls away. “I’m here having a crisis, and you won’t stop your sweet-talking.”

“Will Shizun tell me what his crisis is about?”

Shen Qingqiu pauses.

There’s nothing stopping him now, is there?

So why does his tongue feel like it’s still made of lead?

“If Shizun isn’t ready,” Binghe continues, “then perhaps you will allow this disciple to confess something, first.”

The serious spirit that Shen Qingqiu had seen in his husband’s eyes when he first woke up now makes its timely return.

“… Alright,” Shen Qingqiu says, grateful for the reprieve. “Shizun will listen.”

They move to the dining table, where Binghe prepares some tea, where they both take their seats in a familiar ritual.

With the tea set out before them both, Binghe finds himself free to fidget.

“Shizun, you already understand the nature of the curse I was under. You know that I made a wish on a cursed ring, and started suffering memory loss every night, as a result.” Binghe swirls his cup lightly, watching the liquid circle around its vessel. “Shizun only got two things wrong. Firstly—I knew the consequences of wishing upon that ring when I did so. I saw through it the minute it came into my hands.”

“You knew?” Shen Qingqiu says, shocked. “All along, you knew what that ring did?”

“Yes, Shizun.”

Just like it had happened in PIDW. Shen Qingqiu had only assumed differently because, if Binghe had known, then— “Why on earth would you make your wish?”

Binghe closes his eyes. “Allow me to continue first, before I explain that.”

He looks so much like a child waiting for punishment that Shen Qingqiu’s heart can’t help but soften. “Alright,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Then… what was the second thing I got wrong?”

“Shizun assumed that I wished for a single day of true happiness.” Binghe shakes his head. “That’s not it. If that were the case, the curse would have been resolved many times over by now. Shizun, you’ve made me a happier man than I ever dared to dream.”

“Then, what did you…?”

“On the first day of our honeymoon, after we’d just had that conversation about punishment…” Binghe recalls. “Where you wouldn’t explain what bothered you. Shizun, I…”

He swallows.

“I only wanted you to tell me what bothered you,” Binghe finishes.

Shen Qingqiu waits for him to continue—

But Binghe doesn’t.

“… That’s it?” Shen Qingqiu says. “That was your real wish?”

“Shizun seems to consider his problems to be a lot less important than I do,” Binghe says dryly.

Shen Qingqiu stands up abruptly. “You cursed yourself for that? Binghe—”

“I was wrong!”

The way Binghe is breathing suddenly—all jagged and sharp—it’s as if he’s inhaling acrid smoke instead of fresh air.

“I was wrong, Shizun,” Binghe says miserably. “It wasn’t a decision I made with a clear heart. I—I didn’t want to cause you as much pain as I did. Please, believe me.”

“But still, why would you have used such a method?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “I could have failed you. You could have been lost to me, forever—”

“I didn’t know what else to do!” Binghe protests, in a near-yell. “It didn’t seem like you’d ever tell me of your own free will. Would you have?”

Well—

“Why hurt yourself so readily?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

“I thought… it would be better that way.” Binghe looks away. “Shizun, I’m your husband. That you wouldn’t rely on me… I feared—”

Binghe chokes up.

“I’ve feared for a long time that Shizun stays with me because you feel obligated to,” Binghe says quietly.

“Binghe, I married you!” Does—does this child think Shen Qingqiu shacked up with him for tax benefits or something, what—

“And I you,” Binghe says. “But—Shizun, I couldn’t get rid of that fear. Not completely. When you wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, I… I felt useless. I wondered if I could truly call myself your partner, if you couldn’t rely on me, even when you seemed to be falling right apart. But… Shizun, when I’ve asked you things in the past, you…”

Shen Qingqiu sits back down.

He doesn’t need Binghe to finish that sentence. He’d effectively built up a whole playbook for dodging difficult questions, with techniques like changing the topic, brushing it off, or, as a last resort, simple dead silence… No wonder Binghe had given up on trying to do things normally.

“Shizun was always afraid, when I asked tough questions. Demons are good at sniffing out fear, don’t you know?” Binghe laughs darkly. “I had assumed—it was fear of me.”

“Binghe—!”

“It wouldn’t have been unreasonable, Shizun,” Binghe says quietly. “Everyone thinks you’re insane for staying by my twisted side.”

“It’s this world that’s twisted,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Not you.”

Binghe smiles wanly.

“In any case,” he continues, without addressing Shen Qingqiu’s point. “I sought to remove that fear.”

Remove? “By putting yourself utterly at my mercy?” Shen Qingqiu whispers. “By risking your complete ruin?”

“I trusted you, Shizun,” Binghe says.

“You shouldn’t have,” Shen Qingqiu says harshly. “What if I never fulfilled your wish? You didn’t even tell me what you’d done, I might never have figured it out—”

“You would have, Shizun.”

“Let’s agree to disagree on that, for now,” Shen Qingqiu says flatly. “What if I had never opened up to you?”

A long pause.

“Then I would have deserved my own ruin, Shizun,” Binghe says finally.

The words take a moment to sink in.

Shen Qingqiu stands up abruptly for the second time. “Don’t you ever say that about yourself, ever again.”

Binghe’s smiling again, but more genuinely. Unshed tears pool in the corners of his eyes.

… Really, this M.

“What am I going to do with you?” sighs Shen Qingqiu, settling back down.

“I didn’t really need you to tell me the details, Shizun,” Binghe says, elaborating. “I… wanted you to acknowledge that there was anything wrong at all, but no matter how I approached it, you wouldn’t drop your facade. And yesterday, on the fifth day of this honeymoon…”

Binghe pauses.

“You were already so stressed that day, weren’t you? Thinking you had failed to make me happy, at least three days in a row,” he says. “You gave up on telling me about the curse at at all. I grew so frustrated that day when you pretended nothing was wrong that I made the exact same mistake.”

“You were going to make the same wish,” Shen Qingqiu realises, with a weight in the pit of his stomach. “A wish for me to rely on you. You even dug out the ring. Only—you found out you’d already used it. That you were already cursed.”

Binghe nods simply.

“Knowing now that all along, Shizun was doing all that for what he thought was my happiness…” Binghe trails off. “I vastly underestimated the burdens Shizun was carrying. I really could never have imagined it. So like I said, Shizun—I was wrong.”

Letting Binghe’s words stew in the air, Shen Qingqiu stares for a while at the last of the wisps of steam rising from his cup.

“You don’t have to tell me more, if you don’t want to,” Binghe says. “After what I did, I—I understand if—”

“You believe me?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

Binghe gives a small nod.

“About being forced to send you into the Abyss?”

“It explains a great deal, Shizun.” Binghe closes his eyes for a moment to steady himself. “That the teacher I loved never disdained my blood… that my trust in you wasn’t unfounded… For me to know now that your actions weren’t the real you—in one sense, it’s a great relief.”

“It’s a shit excuse!”

“Answer me this, Shizun.” Binghe leans in close. “What would have happened if you refused to obey that higher power of yours?”

Shen Qingqiu shuts up.

“I can make a number of humble guesses, none of them pleasant,” Binghe says.

You don’t need to! Smartass grade-A student!!

Binghe nods to himself, as if in confirmation.

“So…” He lets the word out with a whisper, the lonely syllable echoing, stagnant, between them. “It really wasn’t you, after all. Not for a single moment.”

Oh, Binghe. Don’t you know already?

But some things have to be said out loud, over and over. And Shen Qingqiu’s happy to do that, for as many times as Binghe needs him to.

“I never thought of you as anything except my dearest student,” Shen Qingqiu vows solemnly. “Human, demon—it has never mattered to me.”

Tears start streaming down Binghe’s cheeks, uncontrollably.

“Hey, now,” Shen Qingqiu says, alarmed. “Isn’t that a good thing? Binghe, don’t cry.”

“Shizun, I…”

It’s not the easy tears Binghe loves to turn on and off like an open faucet. It’s ugly, and painful to look at, and thoroughly embarrassing.

It’s Luo Binghe. Nothing more, nothing less.

“I am relieved,” Binghe says. “But I also—How can I dare to be relieved, when it means Shizun suffered an even greater injustice than I ever realised? The things you endured, and at my very hands, when I thought Shizun had chosen to cast me down—”

Shen Qingqiu grabs his husband by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Binghe,” he says. “I caused you a lot of pain, at the edge of the Abyss.”

He’s crying too, now. Two men, crying into each other uncontrollably… Doesn’t this seem familiar? If Shen Qingqiu had a nickel—

“But you never wanted to, Shizun!” Binghe protests, in a rough, abused voice. “Your hand was forced!”

“I had more freedom than you think,” Shen Qingqiu says, pained. “I—I just had to get you down there. I could have asked you, instead. Nicely. Or—”

“Does Shizun really think that would have worked?”

“You…” Shen Qingqiu’s lower lip trembles. “You would have listened to me.”

That pure-hearted white lotus. What wouldn’t he have done, if Shen Qingqiu had only asked?

Binghe’s eyes are red and raw.

“I would,” he agrees. “But Shizun, do you really think you could have made such a cold request? Do you think you could have looked me in the eye, and told me to condemn myself to hell, and not faltered partway through?”

A lump forms in Shen Qingqiu’s throat.

“You love me, Shizun,” Binghe says, like he’s announcing a tragedy. “Too much.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Shen Qingqiu scolds. “I love you—you love me—how are we making this sound so miserable?”

Binghe laughs. Even broken, it’s an encouraging sound.

“Listen, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I… think we can both agree that we’re both only human, and that we’ve both made some very human mistakes.”

“My lineage makes that statement literally untrue for me, Shizun.”

“Who taught you to be so pedantic? No, don’t answer that—you know it’s a figure of speech.” Shen Qingqiu sighs. “I tried. And I fucked up. And you tried your best, but the world was… unkind to you. And so we’ve hurt each other deeply.”

“Shizun is being rather less charitable to himself, here.”

“I’m trying, okay?” Shen Qingqiu takes a deep breath. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. But please, let me continue.”

“… I’m sorry, Shizun,” Binghe says softly.

“That’s alright, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says. “About whether I’d have been able to ask you to fall into the Abyss—I don’t know. At first I thought I would have, but… I’ll never really know. Not for certain.”

He gathers the strength to push forward with his words.

“The question haunts me,” Shen Qingqiu admits. “I know I can’t change anything, but I can’t help but return to it. But, you know, Binghe… We can look back endlessly, and guess about these things, but I think we both did the best we could at the time.”

Shen Qingqiu reaches out to his husband, and intertwines their fingers together. He squeezes—a habit of comfort.

“That has to be enough,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Because that’s all we’ll ever get.”

He looks up at Binghe, the strongest, most fragile person he knows.

“I don’t want either of us to keep torturing ourselves over old mistakes,” Shen Qingqiu says. No more rehashing the plot, thank you very much! Living through it once was enough! “Binghe, promise me this. You stop me from beating myself up over the past, and I’ll step in if you start to do the same.”

“Shizun,” Binghe says, voice thoroughly wrecked.

Shen Qingqiu pulls him into a hug.

They don’t let go of each other for what feels like forever.

“Binghe, aren’t you a little too old for this?” Shen Qingqiu says gently, when the duration of the hug has moved long past ‘touching’ and onto ‘embarrassing’. “Come on now.”

“Shizun is the one who isn’t letting go,” Binghe says, voice muffled.

Binghe, can’t you save your teacher some face?? “Hush,” Shen Qingqiu says. He plants a kiss on Binghe’s forehead, and draws back. “We’re alright now, aren’t we? Straighten yourself out.”

And so Binghe does.

“There is one more thing I’d like to ask you, though, Shizun,” he says, pursing his lips.

“What is it?”

“… Are you safe now?”

What? “What are you talking about?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “I’m not the one who just escaped a near-weeklong curse.”

“I’m asking if you’re safe from this greater power that coerced your actions,” Binghe clarifies. “The one you’ve feared this whole time, more than anything. This… ‘System’, if I’ve guessed correctly. An executor of fate, ensuring that things happen as ordained.”

He’d even pieced things together that far!

…

Is Shen Qingqiu safe? From the System?

How strange. Shen Qingqiu had never consciously thought of himself as being ‘in danger’ from the System specifically. Of the spectre of Proud Immortal Demon Way’s Luo Binghe, sure. Of the original goods’ fate, absolutely. Of dipping below 0 points, well, that went without saying. But thinking about the System as an entity in its own right—why hadn’t he been more scared of it?

He’d definitely come to despise its stupid insincere achievements, and had thought of it as something akin to malware, but…

Being afraid of the System itself? Even after the story had concluded, and the most the System had left in store for him was that stupid interview by way of Shang Qinghua?

…

He had been afraid, hadn’t he? And he’d continued to be afraid.

Even if Shen Qingqiu didn’t think of himself as living under fear, he’d let the threat of punishment protocols shape his actions. He’d tortured himself with guilt over a role he had been literally bound to play, and then he continued to be so terrified that he never even consciously considered the possibility that he was now free from it. From all of that.

But now…

“Shizun?” Binghe asks worriedly.

“I think that if I were still in danger…” Shen Qingqiu pauses. “You wouldn’t even be able to ask me that question.”

Binghe only looks more alarmed.

“No, don’t panic,” Shen Qingqiu says. “The fact is, you can ask me now, and I can answer in turn. So… I think, if I dare say so myself… it must be gone for good.”

The words leave him clumsily, like birds escaping a newly open cage.

“Are you sure?” Binghe asks.

“Yes,” Shen Qingqiu says. He gains more certainty with the saying of it, like it’s a magic incantation, all on its own. “Yes. I… It’s over.”

Like a dam bursting, its reservoirs emptied in one sweep, something collapses inside Shen Qingqiu magnificently and irreversibly.

“It’s over,” Shen Qingqiu says again, like a fool, smiling through his tears. “It’s all over.”

---

It takes quite a bit more than that for Binghe to finally believe him on that, but eventually, Shen Qingqiu manages to get through to him, although he can’t rule out the possibility that Binghe is going to start looking into any and all ancient texts about heavenly powers as soon as Shen Qingqiu turns his back. (With any luck, he’ll at least let Shen Qingqiu steal a look at his notes. No sense missing out on professionally-compiled worldbuilding lore from the world’s best research assistant.)

Levity aside, Shen Qingqiu knows that even if the System is gone for good, there’s plenty of other matters he still needs to take care of with his husband.

Firstly, there’s that whole thing where Binghe is waaaaay too much of an M. Is this really okay? Putting aside Binghe being a protagonist and the rightful top of the world and all that, is this even a healthy state to be in??

Binghe disagrees that it’s a problem.

“Maybe even I myself can’t say how I ended up this way, Shizun, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” Binghe says.

How is it not a bad thing?? “What good reason could you have for wanting to be hurt?”

“Is suffering really suffering if it’s for love?” Binghe intones dramatically.

“Yes,” Shen Qingqiu says flatly.

“Then, Shizun,” Binghe says, dropping the theatrics, “you’re never again allowed to downplay your own pain.”

“And when have I ever done that?”

Binghe mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like Without-A-Cure.

“It wasn’t a big deal—”

His husband glares.

“Alright, alright,” Shen Qingqiu concedes. “I’ll… try. But that’s not a situation I put myself in on purpose. Wanting to be hurt, on the other hand…”

Binghe pauses. “Actually, Shizun, I thought you might understand.”

”What?”

“On the fourth day of our honeymoon, when we switched being teacher and student for the day…” Binghe touches a finger to his lip, in exaggerated recollection. “Didn’t Shizun say I should punish him for being bad at cooking?”

He did not say that—

…

Actually…

Shen Qingqiu breaks out in a cold sweat.

“Maybe Shizun is the one who wants to be punished,” Binghe continues, far too boldly. “You had suggestions, too. What was it? Disciplinary action? Private instruction? You seem to have considered the matter thoroughly, Qingqiu.”

Can Binghe lose his memory again, real quick??

“Now, you don’t really mean that, Shizun.”

Topic shelved!! (For now!)

Secondly—no easy way to put it—there’s the elephant in the room by the name of Shen Yuan.

Their dream conversation on the ferris wheel aside, there’s a whole lifetime of his that Shen Qingqiu hasn’t really told Binghe about—that he didn’t think he could ever tell his husband about, and now that the possibility is on the table… it’s suddenly all too daunting. Is ‘Shen Yuan’ just a past phase of his life? Or is he—was(?) he—a dead man in his own right?

Oh god, this is getting real existential, isn’t it?

“Shizun doesn’t have to tell me everything,” Binghe reassures him. “It’s enough to know that you’re no longer hiding your problems from me.”

“I…” Shen Qingqiu sighs. “I do want to tell you. But I don’t know if I can, right now.”

“Your husband will wait as long as you need.”

And Shen Qingqiu does need that time.

In a way—as weird as the idea may sound—Shen Qingqiu feels like he might need to mourn himself. Come to terms with things. Figure out what it means to be a man twice dead. Or is it thrice? Did that one right before the Holy Mausoleum really even count?

“Yes,” Binghe says flatly.

Sorry, Binghe! There’s no manual for this kind of thing!!

But it’s not about the number of deaths, not really. It’s more about the parts of his life that he needs to put to rest properly, and the parts of it he’d like to take out into the light. Like that wallpaper on his phone with him and his sister—she’d snuck that selfie with him by surprise on the way back from Comiket, back when he’d gone to accompany her because their parents didn’t want her to go overseas alone.

It occurs to Shen Qingqiu that he’d really like to tell Binghe about her, some day. Thinking about it, they’d both been good at needling him into things. … They had similarly unfortunate tastes in reading material, also!

Telling Binghe about these things isn’t something that needs to be scary anymore. Instead—it’s a joy he can share, in his own time. Shen Qingqiu can think about things that way now.

And as for the mourning—

Who in this world is better at handling matters of the dead than cultivators?

And Binghe, who’s vowed to be by his side, is Qing Jing’s—no, the entire human world’s—most talented cultivator. What need does Shen Qingqiu have to fear anything that lies ahead?

Thinking this, Shen Qingqiu impulsively gives his beloved a little kiss on the cheek.

“The other side, too, Shizun,” Binghe says. He bats his eyes completely unnecessarily. “Or it won’t be balanced. Please?”

Naturally, Shen Qingqiu obliges.

Lastly, there’s the matter of the cursed ring itself.

“I think we should destroy it properly, Shizun,” Binghe suggests.

He’s not wrong. Even with the ring having used up its power, there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t magically recover its cursing function someday. Evil artefacts just tended to work like that.

… But isn’t there something weird about destroying a symbol of love at the end of a wifeplot?

“Does Shizun… not want to?” Binghe asks.

“… No, let’s destroy it,” Shen Qingqiu decides. “No sense keeping it around.”

Oh well.

Who cares about what a ring might or might not symbolise, when Binghe’s love is the most powerful force in the universe?

Binghe nods happily.

“It seems like a surprisingly hardy item, Shizun,” Binghe says. “It might take a trip to the Demon Realm to properly handle it. There’s a volcano I know of whose fires are said to be able to return even the most indestructible items to dust.”

Uh, had Airplane ripped off Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings at some point? “Let’s make a trip of it,” Shen Qingqiu decides. “I don’t think what we just had can really be considered a proper honeymoon. What say you we clear our schedules for another week or so?”

“As you wish, husband,” Binghe says dutifully.

“Then after that, we still need to build that pavilion,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Up on the highest point of this Peak. You remember?”

“Of course.”

“But let’s forget about all that for now,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I think I need a good rest day or two before I want to consider any interdimensional travel.”

Binghe casually leans to one side, letting his robes slip ever-so-slightly open. The gifted copy of the Kama Sutra: Heavenly Demon annotated edition lies innocently behind him on the bedside table. “Any idea how you want to spend that time?”

The boundless rays of dawn spill across their bodies, bridging them together with an intangible warmth.

Shen Qingqiu smiles.

“I’ve had enough deciding to last me a lifetime,” he declares. “I think I’ll leave that up to you.”