Chapter Text
Liu Qingge needed to get out of here before he was convinced to do this.
He gained time by looking at the red liquid in his cup. It made him think of ink, ready to become a red munia in a spring painting.
That person would probably be scandalised at the comparison, likely something related to the spring imagery.
Liu Qingge himself felt very much as if he was in one of those poems, like one of the birds in spring, searching, yearning, but in the end, he had not gotten his red feathers in time, his poem was a tragedy. He was too late to show his feelings, just like he was too late to save…
Liu Qingge’s mouth filled with the taste of bitterness, so he took the cup in a punishing grip, steadying his hand despite how much it wanted to shake. He swallowed the tea in one gulp, and it scalded his tongue and burnt his throat. Still, he was able to taste the faint sweetness of the honey on the tip and the smoky bitterness of the red tea lingered in the back of his throat.
That person had always taken his tea like this, grumbling about the change in his taste buds (something related to growing up, probably?) and urging Liu Qingge to try it like this and like that, asking him to tell what his tongue said. Liu Qingge himself had never found tea to taste like anything interesting. Some tasted like grass to him, some were so sweet it left his teeth aching, some were so bitter they gave him headaches. Some made him sleepy, others irritable, most didn’t let him sleep; no matter which kind he was wheedled into tasting, none had ever been to his liking. That person would always wait for his predictable grimace and burst out laughing, sometimes even getting splashes on himself, and crying out in annoyance. It didn’t matter what kind of effect tea had on Liu Qingge, he would always come back and taste what he was given, as long as he could see that person laughing.
Now, there was nobody to tease him and laugh at him, but Liu Qingge still drank tea, struggling to feel just a little bit closer to him.
He hated tea as much as he loved it, but he couldn’t stop drinking it now.
Someone in front of him sighed, probably mourning the tea. Nobody laughed, nobody scolded him. Liu Qingge steadily breathed through his nose to calm his heart and cool his throat.
“Liu-shidi, the truth is we don’t have anyone else that has enough martial prowess and time for this mission. We will send Shang Qinghua for support, but we have to be careful, many cultivators have been found dead after trying to investigate.”
Liu Qingge didn’t look up. How he had hated when S- when that person had gone to brothels, and now here he was, being asked to go to one. And not just go to one, but several, to infiltrate the biggest district of pleasure and seek what others had failed to find.
“Zhangmen-shixiong, this shidi is not a woman,” he retorted, awkward.
He didn’t want to go. He wanted to keep hunting sentient Shui Nv Centipedes until they became extinct and couldn’t hurt anyone else. Zhangmen-shixiong had approved of this goal in the beginning but now he kept pestering Liu Qingge to go on different missions, to report to their (increasingly frequent) sect meetings. He was not the only one either, Mu Qingfang visited his house every time he came back, made him sleep, bandaged his wounds. Shang Qinghua himself approached more than before, squeaking and looking at him with indecision and sadness, usually starting a lot of phrases only to dismiss himself in the end. Yan-mei hugged him when she encountered him, not even caring about propriety anymore, she made him eat, scolded him for not visiting her.
He knew they were caring for him, after all, it had been almost two years, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave behind the hurt. The image of that person’s pale face, splashes of blood ruining his green and white robes, would not leave his mind. He had dreams of him, in his bamboo house, cheerfully staining his fingers and robes while he painted his own demise, red cinnabar bleeding out from the scroll, liquid dripping and increasing until he was swallowed by a river of it, while Liu Qingge looked on and screamed his name, unable to move. He slept and his dreams would be filled with green and red, with laughter but an emptiness so intense that he wanted to sleep forever and never sleep again.
He could not let go.
So he fought, and hunted, he slayed creatures of all kinds and tried to force himself to not bring anything back, but the bamboo house, empty as it was of human warmth, had been filled with remains of beasts and treasures.
He didn’t want to interrupt his hunt again, only to go to a place that would remind him how inadequate he had been.
He had seen that person laughing and smiling with him, with all of them - at least, he had started smiling after that terrible qi deviation. But Liu Qingge had also seen him disappearing into the night, cold and unapproachable; in those moments, he had seen as distant and discreet as the light of the pale moon. Liu Qingge had never managed to convince him to stop going entirely, and he was weak to that smile, most of the time teasing and joyful, but he only had to mention his visits to the mortal world and it would turn tired and sad.
Not even that favorite disciple of his had managed to dissuade him.
It was unfortunate that the brat was the only one who seemed to comprehend Liu Qingge’s feelings.
”Shidi,” Mu Qingfang said, Interrupting his train of thought. Right, he was here, hoping they wouldn’t make him go. “There is a way…safe, of course. This would allow shidi to temporarily become a woman, it will not be detectable like most disguises and it will not hinder your cultivation.”
’If it was so safe, why wouldn’t they do it themselves?’ A beloved voice scoffed in his mind.
Liu Qingge gritted his teeth and swallowed the accusation with no small amount of pain.
He was the sect’s last resource for these kinds of missions, usually they deemed him too impulsive for covert operations. If they were actually trying to convince him and sending not only one, but two peak lords with wildly different strengths, it was for a reason. Red Pavilions were not regarded as places with much importance, even if it was the main Red Light District in the capital; for the human royalty to ask help of different traveling cultivators, and then even from the big sects, it had to be an extremely powerful demon or creature, which was cunning enough to fool many people and hide it's presence, abducting women at the same time and not leaving behind a single sign of it’s interference.
“We are sorry to burden you like this shidi, if we still had…” Zhangmen-shixiong choked up in the middle of the sentence, and Liu Qingge’s heart grew even more heavy; they all mourned, in their own ways.
“If we still had our sect strategist…we may have come up with a better plan.”
Liu Qingge sighed heavily.
Mu Qingfang refilled Zhangmen-shixiong’s tea. Before Liu Qingge could take the teapot from him, he had refilled his own and Liu Qingge’s as well. He tried not to feel guilty - they were, after all, asking him for a favor.
Ah, but he was the shidi! Hadn’t he been hounded by… some of them time and time again, because of their seniority?
He raised his tea and completely burnt the passage from his lips to the base of his stomach this time.
His grimace didn’t make anyone laugh.
“This shidi understands and will do his best,” he said, despite his unwillingness. He had become a cultivator not just to kill monsters, he had done so to make the world safer, to continue on his family’s legacy.
And ultimately, he had become stronger to protect.
*
When Shang Qinghua arrived, carrying with him a bundle he later passed over to a bewildered Liu Qingge, Mu Qingfang was inspecting his meridians carefully to see that the transition had gone smoothly. Liu Qingge was now a slender and tall, young-looking woman with a red dot of cinnabar in the middle of her eyebrows that would change color according to how much time he had left in this body. His features had not changed much, and he had only lost a bit of height.
Shang Qinghua had made a completely unnecessary whistle that Liu Qingge only answered with a glare. He knew how his sister was chased around before she started wearing her veil (and even after), but he did not understand what the fuss about looks was. He had only considered one person beautiful, after all.
His previous clothes were not fitting well anymore, too tight on his chest and too loose on his waist, but the bundle that was handed to him contained a series of outfits that were a bit too high on his ankles for traditional women’s clothing.
When he pointed this out to his shixiongs, there was a mixed reaction. Yue Qingyuan smiled with his arms inside his sleeves, saying nothing; Mu Qingfang hummed and poured them all more tea (like Liu Qingge hadn’t already burnt his tongue beyond recognition with the first two cups) and Shang Qinghua shrugged.
”Aiya, sorry Liu-shidi! This shixiong didn’t think you would remain so tall!”
Liu Qingge resigned himself to it and sat, doing his best to concentrate on Shang Qinghua’s explanation of his plan and the needed information for this mission.
Everything in their plan sounded sensible, but they all knew that things never went as one expected.
Once Liu Qingge bowed to his shixiongs and departed to his peak, he silently packed everything he needed and left a note to his hall masters. Then, he flew all the way to Xian Shu to say goodbye. He would not be coming back for at least half a year.
That night, Liu Qingge departed alone. He would meet with his shixiong when he arrived at his destination. For now they couldn’t risk being seen going from Cang Qiong’s direction, so Liu Qingge would have to take several detours and go on foot the last part of the road.
Liu Qingge left Cang Qiong, and Ziteng Liu, a young widow left with nothing but her clothes to her name, started her journey to the Red Light district, where she hoped to find the answer to her problems.