Peerless Melons vs the Patriarchy

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair,
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, ...
Guess now who holds thee? '—Death,' I said. But there,
The silver answer rang ... Not Death, but Love.'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “I thought once how Theocritus had sung”

Shen Yuan’s friends—back when she’d still had friends who called her Shen Yuan—had used to tease her relentlessly about her whole “Proud Immortal Demon Way” thing. What kind of self-respecting fujoshi latched onto a text that was chock full of—which indeed existed solely for the purpose of churning out—oceans of particularly vapid het? The web novel’s pancake-flat ‘romantic arcs’ were among the worst examples of the abominable, insulting, misogynist comphet breed. Said friends would all grant Shen Yuan that Luo Binghe himself was a compelling character—or at least they were willing to concede as much after she argued them into the ground with copious evidence for upwards of an hour, if only to get her to stop. Yet even Shen Yuan had to admit that in the world of PIDW, Luo Binghe was a total unicorn. Sure he was clever, layered and insanely shippable—but who could you pair him with? 

Each and every wife was under-written in her own, unspecial way. The sheer volume of them made picking a favourite a thankless task for your serious shipper. And Shen Yuan was not some fucking amateur: she had not grown up on the internet and read half the notable web novels going only to be compelled by some ‘and then they held hands under the spreading canopy of cherry blossoms’ shojo type of bullshit. Especially not when it was tropey get-together sequence 756, rendered absolutely meaningless by dint of repetition. How many women had Luo Binghe ‘never felt this way before’ about by volume 9? At least as many.

So, what about pairing him with one of the people Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky actually had bothered to characterise?

Yue Qingyan was clearly still too hung up on his never-textually-specified (but-obvious-to-the-careful-reader) ex, and in a sufficiently interesting way that no one really wanted to fuck with that. For her part, said ex wasn’t some easy-come, easy-go wife-unit. A promising start! On top of that, Shen Qingqiu had an important, emotionally-loaded relationship with the protagonist. Even if Shen Qingqiu was an archetypal evil stepmother (with free magic sword accessory), she was also such a rich character that if people mentioned the wildly popular web novel in any serious critical context, they tended to talk about her. No one had foreseen that Airplane had such an unapologetic villainess in him, or that he (and thus she) would circumnavigate the cliches of harem drama as though doing so was easy. And yet despite this strong start, there was an insurmountable issue: Luo Binghe had tortured this engrossing personage to death in a narratively rewarding, well-deserved and startlingly unsexualised fashion. 

Naturally a few forum jockeys wanted to take the single truly intriguing female character a stallion novel had ever produced, drag her out of her pickle pot and throw her into Luo Binghe’s harem. They argued that you didn’t necessarily need limbs where she was going. (Which, hyper gross, thanks!) But by and large, PIDW ’s male fans liked their fap-fodder less complicated. If you were into Shen Qingqiu, you tended to be a girl, and into whatever the fuck was going on with her and Yue Qingyan (or to write the sort of well-intentioned, try-hard Finding Female Voices genfic where Shen Qingqiu contemplated bamboo and classism while enjoying soup or some shit). 

All of the above options reliably whitewashed Shen Jiu in a way Shen Yuan had never appreciated on either artistic or feminist grounds. Darkly-hinted-at uwu backstory aside, Shen Qingqiu had endured her own probably-awful experience and then turned around and child-abused Luo Binghe. It counted? People had sometimes (with annoying frequency, actually) told Shen Yuan that she was somewhat overprotective of the protagonist. Well someone in bildungsromancelandia had to be, and Airplane Shooting Towards the Top of the Charts via Whump sure wasn’t picking up the slack! 

Okay, but really, who else was there for Binghe? Calling Mobei Jun ‘characterised’ was something of a stretch: the man was a hot plot device/alternative transportation method. And like, fair enough, a lot of men did want to fuck their cars. But M4M: Man/Mazda was hardly going to launch a thousand shipfics. Luo Binghe/Liu Qingge might have been a thing, or /probably-not-the-Gongyi Xiao. But alas, by the time Luo Binghe was properly on the market both of these candidates were too dead for relationship development. Shen Yuan had read examples of about every pairing written for this inane series, provided that one party thereof was Luo Binghe (/Xin Mo had been an Experience). But for all that, she had never yet found anyone really worthy of her all-time fave.

All of which made the transmigrated artist formerly known as Shen Yuan, now DBA Shen Qingqiu, particularly glad that she’d just successfully shoved her disciple out of the blast radius of the bursting stomach of a Greater Lust Beetle. (‘Greater’, by the way, apparently meant ‘the size of a fucking full-grown Chow Chow’; she was going to have words with Airplane over this one.) In order to be a responsible guardian to the growing youth, Shen Qingqiu had repressed every improper thought she’d ever had about the man Luo Binghe would one day become. She could hardly remember the sort of shit Luo Binghe would eventually talk in bed! Not while sober, anyway! All Shen Qingqiu knew—all she cared about—was the precious boy in her charge. Her long-held high standards when it came to Luo Binghe’s narrative satisfaction had only been raised by the demands of her new role.

Thus Shen Qingqiu’s first reaction to seeing Luo Binghe tumble well out of range was a wave of relief. Now the vagaries of the plot, which she’d thus far striven to protect her poor unwitting white lotus disciple from, wouldn’t force Luo Binghe to give it up dubcon-style to some lacklustre passing Daoist nun (four lines of dialogue total in the whole, endless book, unless you counted things she and her sisters said in unison) (Shen Qingqiu did not count them). Shen Qingqiu would certainly try to protect a female disciple from such a fate—should her sweet Bunhe be entitled to less care due to sexist double standards? Absolutely not!

A moment too late, a second reaction hit Shen Qingqiu. It occurred to her that—for like, literally the fourth fucking time —she’d forgotten that she was significantly less invulnerable than the actual protagonist. (Why was she like this? ) In shoving Luo Binghe down, Shen Qingqiu had, of course, taken a face full of poisonous ichor herself. And that—was going to have some consequences. Like, imminent ones.

‘Ah,’ thought Shen Qingqiu. ‘ …fuck.’

Luo Binghe wielded a wet handkerchief far too vigorously, polishing Shen Qingqiu’s face like he was trying to get a stubborn rust spot off of his beloved Zheng Yang. It was probably exfoliating, but Shen Qingqiu had more important things to worry about right now than skincare. (Namely that having Yoko’d the beetle, John Venom was now her problem.) 

Luo Binghe asked whether his shizun was certain she was fine. On each of the previous four occasions he’d asked this in as many minutes, Shen Qingqiu had assured her disciple of the strength of her cultivation and of its attendant power to protect her against harm from minor inconveniences such as this. Now, Shen Qingqiu only arched an eyebrow at the young man. 

“Binghe,” she said, firmly. 

Like the good boy he was, Luo Binghe stopped fussing and snapped to attention. 

“Nothing would help me so much as a hot bath, a change of clothes and a good dinner.” 

Shen Qingqiu frowned in annoyance at having to reach up to pat Luo Binghe’s head. She was fairly tall in this body, but over the course of their years together Luo Binghe had—very rudely!—grown. He’d used to come up to her chest, but at twenty he was an inch or two taller than her. (Surely he must have finished? When did boys stop? )

Having been given a concrete job to do, Luo Binghe exhaled. He forced a smile, which became more genuine the longer he held it and the calmer he grew. He smoothed back his shizun’s slightly disordered hair, which he’d mussed while trying to frantically scrub the poisonous bile off her skin—too late, alas, to do more than mitigate the damage. Because of course Shen ‘Bullshitter’ Qingqiu had lied to Luo Binghe when she’d downplayed this: her high cultivation level had earned her a few hours’ leeway, at best.

“The inn, then,” Luo Binghe agreed, extending his hand so that Shen Qingqiu could use it as leverage. Shen Qingqiu set Xiu Ya hovering and neatly swung onto it. She gave Luo Binghe’s cheek a pat as she did so, for his little act of courtesy had enabled her to mount without having to gather up the hem of her robes. Luo Binghe was such a thoughtful young man—the ideal disciple. And still so ready to flush at the slightest praise, either verbal or physical! Yes, he really was a darling, pre-blackening. 

And that, Shen Qingqiu thought grimly, was how it was going to stay.

The stroke of wild luck that had enabled Shen Qingqiu to delay Luo Binghe’s sojourn in the Abyss by three years and counting had come in the form of a few bars of a song. Two years after transmigrating, Shen Qingqiu had swept into a regular meeting of the Peak Lords in a truly foul mood: fan unfurled, skirts and hair swinging out behind her, glare terrible and iridescent blue-green eyeliner on-point. Upon her arrival, Shang Qinghua had begun to hum something. Shen Qingqiu had darted a glance at him, and he’d shut up immediately. She, on the other hand, had sat through the whole meeting vibrating with tension and speculation, unable to attend to a word of it. When the other Peak Lords began to move towards the door, Shen Qingqiu commanded Shang Qinghua to wait. 

“The Queen of the Night Aria?” she sneered when they were alone together, snapping her fan shut.

“Uh,” Shang Qinghua tried. “I mean to be fair, you were really bringing some vibes—wait.”

Shen Qingqiu favoured her shidi with an unimpressed look while she waited for him to mentally boot up and log on.

“Another transmigrator,” Shang Qinghua enthused when his brain finished pin-wheeling. “A—a fan!” 

“Of “Proud Immortal Demon Way”?” Shen Qingqiu scoffed. Hardly. Luo Binghe, grudgingly. The text as a whole, fuck no.

“Yes! My baby! And a girl! You were originally a girl, right?”

Shen Qingqiu rolled her eyes. ‘Shen Qingqiu’s’ body was in fact so similar to her own starter-set that Shen Yuan basically looked like she’d used some kind of xianxia BeautyCam filter, and then her face had gotten stuck like that (okay, when she’d used a xianxia filter: sue her, she'd been a sucker for that shit). All that was missing were ambient sparkles. 

Shang Qinghua took her failure to deny this as a confirmation. 

“A fangirl! ” he squeed to himself. “Oh my god! You know, all my lives I’ve dreamed of having a fag hag of my very own! Someone to admire me as an artist, and sympathise with my dating troubles—which are severe, by the way—and—”

“And now you’re going to die without one, twice,” Shen Qingqiu interrupted him, shaking her head. “Wow, that is sad, Airplane. And to think I said you were incapable of generating well-earned pathos. Congratulations, you’ve really showed me!”

Finally cottoning on to the distinction between his fantasy and the hostile reality standing in front of him and clicking her nails on her fan guard, Shang Qinghua swallowed.

“Only one hate-reader brings such negative energy to the dancery,” he muttered to himself, his eyes widening. “Obsessed enough with the world-building to remember everything you’ve said in all these meetings—obsessed enough with Luo Binghe that everyone knows he’s Shen Qingqiu’s precious little dumpling, these days—

“I am not obsessed with Luo Binghe!” Shen Qingqiu insisted. “He’s not my dumpling!”

Shang Qinghua only nodded. “Yep. Definitely Peerless Melons. And may I say, while I’m not much of a judge of these things myself, they really are just massively impressive—”

The remainder of this sentence was lost to history. Shen Qingqiu smacked a piteously-shrieking Shang Qinghua with her fan as though she were playing a solo game of tetherball with his head. With every impact, she named another dropped plot thread. 

“Some men would pay very good money for this, you know!” Shang Qinghua sniffled and he scrambled back onto the conference table to get away from her, only to be pursued by his looming fan-domme femme fatale. “But it’s just wasted on me, Miss Cantaloupe! Please—”

When Shen Qingqiu had vented a portion of her considerable ire about being trapped in “potentially the worst book ever published on noted pit of voles Zhongdian Literature”, Shang Qinghua decided this was actually the perfect time to tell her that he wasn’t all that surprised by her ‘choice’ of hosts. Peerless Melons had always been his most annoyingly astute reader; she was going to figure it out eventually. And right now, her arm was already tired!

A good two months’ worth of instalments had been published before Luo Binghe arrived at Cang Qiong as a prospective disciple. During that early period, Melon-oma had stood out as one of the story’s initial, slight handful of readers. She’d been by far the most engaged of the bunch.

“The thing is,” Shang Qinghua offered from under the shield of his raised arm, “Shen Qingqiu sort of grew out of your comments. I had the plot skeleton from the start, but the character voice and the mannerisms really solidified after you started leaving feedback every chapter. I mean the character was male in the outline—like Ripley in Alien.” 

Shen Qingqiu stared at him, wide-eyed, as she rapidly arrived at the upshot of all this. 

“You had a version of me hurt Binghe? To what, punish me for Stanning? Wait, wait, you fictionally sawed off my legs?”

“Not in a creepy way! Not so as you noticed before now!” Shang Qinghua bleated. “The Peak Lord of Qing Jing was always going to be the villain, and it was really good for the narrative! Even you admitted it was some of my best work! And,” he sniffled, in a misplaced bid for sympathy, “you were very mean! You called me a hack, and I thought, ‘well, if it’s a ‘hack’ she wants—’”

Shen Qingqiu held up a hand. “By your own admission, you got me into this mess. On multiple levels, apparently! So now, you’re going to get me out of it. Airplane, why do the demons attack the Immortal Alliance Conference? I’ve asked before; you never had a good answer.”

Shang Qinghua sighed. “I guess because of the backstory. Which no one but you was interested in, FYI!”

Shen Qingqiu resumed her seat at the table, waving her hand—an unmistakable ’I’m waiting’. In prudent silence, Shang Qinghua congratulated himself. He really had nailed Peerless from turns of phrase, typed *gestures*, kaomoji choices and light social media stalking alone! This was genius characterisation, born of pure interpersonal annoyance: really Dickensian level stuff. Fly, Airplane: fly.

Shen Qingqiu cleared her throat impatiently. Shang Qinghua scrambled down from his self-satisfied happy place to answer her, hoping to avoid another quite literal (anti-) fan barrage.

It took long enough, but eventually Shang Qinghua explicated the story behind Luo Binghe’s parentage, the false accusations levelled against Tianlangjun and what his downfall had meant for demonic politics. Shang Qinghua got vague and hand-wavy at the last hurdle, and, as usual, his unpaid post-facto editor’s sharp questions gave some definition to his thoughts. (Hey, it wasn’t like Zhongdian paid for decent, deeply committed developmental editing! Airplane had never yet turned down a free lunch.)

“So I guess it must be people like Mobeijun’s uncle pushing for it,” he suggested to Shen Qingqiu. This had only just occurred to him, but it did make sense; Shang Qinghua had absolutely laid the ground work for it. It wasn’t just ‘demons doing evil demon shit’, because when PIDW worked, it didn’t quite work like that. “Traditionalists like him, looking to make names for themselves and assert control over the Heavenly Demonic throne. My King—” (there was no point in hiding it; Melon Milk already knew who Shang Qinghua was in service to) “—is looking out for opportunities to appease the old guard, or diminish their power. He wants to hold onto his own throne, and to avoid all-out war.” 

“Then an incredibly public, humiliating cultivator blood bath would serve a political purpose in a very unstable Demonic Realm,” Shen Qingqiu said, leaning back in her chair. She’d been resting her chin on steepled fingers, which she now flexed while thinking. “My System says I have to push Luo Binghe into the Endless Abyss when it opens. So what if it never opens? How can we give Mobeijun what he wants without getting a bunch of random disciples killed, betraying my personal disciple and signing our death warrants?”

Shang Qinghua blinked at her. “Oh my god. That could work? You’re—so smart? I like. Hate you?” Not enough to not use whatever she said in his next chapter and/or plan to cheat death, though: he didn’t hate himself.

Shen Qingqiu gave him a wry look. “I have a very particular set of skills.” 

And that, Shang Qinghua supposed, was the thing about a really good beta—they helped you see all the work you’d already done, and how you could show it off at its best.

“Do those skills extend to killing Linguangjun and blaming it on a competing traditionalist faction to cause infighting?” Shang Qinghua asked.

Shen Qingqiu blanched at the thought of setting out to assassinate a high-level demon, but considered the suggestion nonetheless. “With a lot of planning, maybe. Linguangjun is significantly above our pay grade. Still,” she furrowed her brow “isn’t firebombing Tianlangjun what got the cultivation world here in the first place?”

It was, unfortunately, a good thematic point. That was just the sort of logic about the consequences of politically overreaching yourself—interfering in foreign states without being deeply, personally invested and knowing precisely what you were doing—that would come back to bite you in a world running off the logic of a novel. Or, you know, in the real world. Did the two of them actually want to play CIA, more than the previous generation already had done?

Shang Qinghua worried his lower lip with his teeth. “What if we didn’t undertake the mission on our own initiative? What if my King were to ask us to get rid of a troublesome priest?” 

It would be too unfilial for Mobeijun to kill his uncle, however much he must want to. Demons, like humans, had their blood taboos: unless specifically provoked, Mobeijun could not act against the eldest living member of his own house. But Linguangjun’s sudden demise would certainly please Mobeijun. Proposing such a thing and then carrying it out would show the kind of loyalty that could keep Shang Qinghua from a destined death at Mobeijun’s hands. The favour would serve as a gesture of good will between Cang Qiong and the sovereign of the north which said sovereign wouldn’t forget. Besides, most demons expected cultivators to take this kind of action anyway. If the demonic nobility or common people ever found out that Linguangjun hadn’t been taken out by a rival traditionalist but instead by cultivators acting with Mobeijun’s blessing, this would probably increase Mobeijun’s prestige. The Northern Tribes would respect a gesture of strength that lay just within the bounds of permissibility. 

“You think you can get Mobeijun to sign off on it?” Shen Qingqiu asked.

“You know,” Shang Qinghua said, a bubble of hope rising against the oppressive constraints of their situation and the bad fates hanging over them, “I really think I could.”

It took weeks of furtive planning. In the end Shen Qingqiu decided to inform the sect leader of their designs, explaining something of the threat Linguangjun represented and reminding him of the necessity for absolute discretion on such a mission, to minimise the chance of immediate retaliation. She’d have liked to bring Liu Qingge with them in case her qi became blocked, and for his firepower, but subtlety was not in her shidi’s repertoire. It would be still more unwise for Zhangmen shixiong to directly associate himself with such un underhanded assault: two Peak Lords could just about plausibly distance themselves from Cang Qiong, but a sect leader never could—especially not one who’d already been pressed into service, despite his youth, and made a figurehead of during the Tianlangjun farrago, and was thus already recognisable to and keenly resented by the demonic nobility.

Shen Qingqiu also told Yue Qingyan that some years ago, after a quite accidental meeting, Mobeijun had come, now and then, to confide in their shidi. Shang Qinghua had used this association to secure intelligence regarding the brewing hostility between the races, and to propose this solution to the troubled northern king. That lord had approved of their present course. He had even granted Shang Qinghua some of his powerful transportation talismans, in case they needed to retreat in a hurry. 

Securing this approval had taken Shang Qinghua’s best hint-dropping, which had been met with Mobeijun’s surprise and taciturn gratitude, as well as a promise that he wouldn’t forget what he owed Shang Qinghua for being willing to undertake this for him. It then took Shen Qingqiu a solid ke to carefully prise a sixteen year old Luo Binghe—weeping unashamedly and begging to accompany her on her secret mission—off her waist. Burying, Shang Qinghua couldn’t help but notice, his adorable little tear-streaked face right in the Peerless Watermelons. As if Shang Qinghua didn’t know very well that he’d written BingGe as a consummate boob man! Only Shen Qingqiu’s sternest admonitions and gentlest promises to return safely had finally managed to appease the youth.

Luo Binghe had glared daggers at his shishu for calling Shen Qingqiu ‘Honeydew’, ‘Icy Wintermelon’ and the like in his hearing. Young as the boy was, his pitch-black looks made even Shen Qingqiu’s formidable annoyance seem comparatively unthreatening. And when Luo Binghe’s hackles rose, Shang Qinghua barely managed to restrain a low whistle. So this was it: the answer to all Luo Binghe’s mommy issues, tied up in a literal bow. (And Shang Qinghua was willing to bet good money that his shijie’s overly-devoted personal disciple had been the one to tie that thick band of prettily-embroidered green silk, and to arrange its artfully-trailing ribbons just so.) 

Shen Qingqiu always had adored the protagonist to bits. Here she was risking her life, at least in part to save her murderer-elect from his own particularly nasty growth arc. Never mind that Luo Binghe was actually destined to survive said arc, and to come out stronger for it. And given what Shang Qinghua had heard about Without a Cure, this wasn’t even Shen Qingqiu’s first rodeo! Judicious, clever, learned, compassionate and capable of returning BingGe’s driven focus with her own: fuck, everything about Airplane’s ancient frenemy was basically Luo Binghe-nip? Plus it’d be a blatant Jin Yong rip off, and the System’s novel-based logic would eat that ‘master/disciple relationships are sexy, yet forbidden!’ shit right up. Check out Xiaolongnü over here, with her ‘skin as white as snow, exceptional beauty and elegance, talent not to be underestimated and cold, indifferent appearance.’

Shen Jiu had come complete with a whole plot role and backstory, both of which Shang Qinghua had mapped out before he even wrote PIDW ’s first chapter. (So he’d named an extra after himself! So sue him! It was a common enough name!) New and improved Shen Qingqiu, on the other hand—god, Shang Qinghua was so mad he hadn’t thought of this? “Although there were 3,000 beauties in the inner palace, / he placed the love of 3,000 all on her alone.” This was classic shit! 

“Soooo,” Shang Qinghua tried as they flew towards the secluded glen where, during a hunting expedition, Mobeijun planned to lure his uncle away from his entourage. “It’s gotta be weird. Living with the protagonist. I mean. Especially given that he’s like, sixteen.” 

‘And that you have been obviously, rabidly in love with him since you can’t have been much older, which is actually less weird now than it was when we lived in Hong Kong and Beijing respectively,’ Shang Qinghua elected not to add.

Shen Qingqiu blinked her huge, clear eyes at him. “Oh, you mean because you wrote Binghe to grow up into the massive manslut prince of a world comprised of hot men for you and disposable women for the punters?”

“It did numbers,” Shang Qinghua answered with cheerful complacency. 

Shen Qingqiu graced Airplane with a rude gesture (which he cheerfully returned) and then continued. “A little, maybe. Binghe did offer to cook for me every day, ‘with variations’—even you must remember that line.” 

“Uh,” Shang Qinghua gave her a look. “And—did he?”

“Oh my god, his congee—” 

Shen Qingqiu launched into a half-hour ode to Luo Binghe’s cooking skills which made it abundantly, painfully clear that she had not actually noticed her disciple’s willingness to serve her up the rest of what that innuendo had originally implied.  

“And the harem? Thing?” Shang Qinghua made a final attempt. 

Shen Qingqiu pursed her lips. “I know he’s destined to have hundreds of unfulfilling relationships that mainly consist of shitty-sounding sex, where he hardly knows or cares about most of the women involved—none of whom really get him. I don’t love that for Binghe, but,” she sighed, “it’s the whole plot, such as it is.” She shook her head. “My poor white lotus. You know, only today told me he never wanted to leave my side!’” 

Shang Qinghua winced. The kid looked at Shen Qingqiu with all the naked, insatiable need for love that had driven original-flavour BingGe to bed women in their hundreds, so like, Shang Qinghua fucking bet he’d said that shit? Had Melon meimei really managed, through sheer force of either moral rectitude or obliviousness, to repress that she’d wanted to climb this character like a tree? ‘Gone for Luo Binghe’ had been the signal difference between Shen Melon and Shen Jiu! (That and, you know, the trauma.)

“What about you? ” he asked. 

“Well of course I’ll be a little downhearted when he leaves,” Shen Qingqiu said, her tone clipped. “No one cares for a child without growing attached to them. But Luo Binghe will be king of the world, and far too busy to think of his old teacher. And with any luck, I’ll still be alive to send him envelopes at New Years’. Well, maybe the once—before he becomes the most married person in the multiverse.” 

Shang Qinghua elected to just—leave that one there. You couldn’t tell someone something they didn’t want to know. No amount of unsubtle hints had ever seemed to get through to Her Melonosity in the forums; they weren’t going to sink in now, when she was repressing the shit out of knowing full well that her disciple would grow up to be a sex god. (At least by the numbers—Melonball kind of had a point about the whole ‘doesn’t seem to know or give a shit about the wives’ thing. (Well you try writing 300+ convincing romances on a deadline!))

The Peak Lords snuck up on and partly-immobilised Linguangjun with a dart coated in the distilled liquor of the Thousand-Heartbeats Flower. After a fierce skirmish in which she nearly lost a hand, Shen Qingqiu successfully stabbed the demon lord. Then, because she believed in visible corpses and no wiggle room, she sawed off Linguangjun's head with Xiu Ya. Zhangmen shixiong heartily congratulated his juniors upon their return. Mobeijun accepted Shang Qinghua’s report (and his uncle’s head) with considerable pleasure, clapping a hand on Shang Qinghua’s shoulder (which inadvertently sent the poor man to his knees). The traditionalist front fractured and began infighting; the immortal alliance conference came and went, as peaceful as could be. 

At the close of the event, disciples trickled through the portal gate. Catastrophe looked to have been pushed back—possibly even averted outright. The two transmigrators high-fived covertly. They shared a vague suspicion that the System would try again at the next conference, but they had five full years to work out what to do about that. If Luo Binghe was truly destined to fall, then at least he wouldn’t do so while yet a boy. At least he wouldn’t suffer at his guardian’s hands. 

Instead of vanishing, Luo Binghe returned in glory. He’d thrashed Gongyi Xiao’s strong score, and been acknowledged on the podium and in the gossip of his fellow cultivators as the pride of his mistress’s peak: the rising genius of his generation. Released from the presentation platform, Luo Binghe immediately ran to receive the only praise he deemed precious. He strutted and preened before his shizun like a courting bird, by turns bashful and brash, reverent and over-familiar. Shen Qingqiu couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about each cunning move her protege had executed, or more sympathetic about every little scratch he’d received. Behind the protagonist’s back, Shang Qinghua made gagging faces. Shen Qingqiu, who he was making them at, broke off her cooing to shoot her shidi an acidic glare. 

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe said petulantly, drawing her attention back to him. Fair enough, Shang Qinghua thought—this was the victory of Luo Binghe’s young life. Having exceeded everyone’s expectations, of course the protagonist was determined to present the honours to his mentor/crush like an offering: this was Luo ‘attachment issues’ Binghe, here! 

And just like that the ice queen melted, turning to her disciple and giving him her full regard. Her smile was luminescent with tenderness.

“Binghe,” she said, “I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

Someone came to offer the Lady of Qing Jing her winnings—the rich harvest of the bets she’d placed on her disciple. She turned them straight over to an astounded Luo Binghe, who tried to refuse the sudden glut of gold. Shen Qingqiu merely brushed off his demurrals.

“With this, even if your master should find herself unable protect you—even if you should somehow fall out with your sect—you need never again fear want,” she explained, clearly thinking of the sob-story background Shang Qinghua had saddled his protagonist with. A small fortune was, perhaps, a trivial thing to give the man who was due to own the very ground they stood on (and to bring almost everyone currently standing on it either into his pockets or to their deaths at his hands). But Luo Binghe, who couldn’t yet know all this world was destined to yield up to him, fell weeping into Shen Qingqiu’s arms. It was left to Shen Qingqiu to be embarrassed for them both—to shush her disciple, and to ask him what a boy who’d just won first place and come into money had to cry about! 

Shang Qinghua knew that he ought to take himself off, but he wouldn’t have had the makings of a popular author if he could ever bear to turn away from a train-wreck. Through sniffles, Luo Binghe tried to convey to his shizun that for his own part, everything he possessed was hers to take and use just as she pleased. The subtext was fairly blatant; the only sub thing about it was Luo Binghe himself.

Qi Qingqi, a fellow car-crash aficionado and Woman of Taste, if ever Shang Qinghua had written one, rolled her eyes and offered Shang Qinghua her bag of snacks. He shoved his hand in without looking away from the action. 

Shen Qingqiu had such high cultivation she never seemed able to catch so much as a clue. In response to this blatant come-on, she just started in with some shit about how Binghe might soon use this nest-egg to establish a household with some young lady here today. She gave the OG fuck-or-die recipient of Special Item: Luo Binghe’s Virginity a significant look. Luo Binghe’s eyes narrowed dangerously with icy annoyance, but after a moment and a deep breath he brightened again and started trying to wheedle information out of his mistress about the sort of dowry she considered appropriate for a marriage. When did she feel a young man ought to wed?

“You know,” Qi Qingqi commented to Shang Qinghua, “I’ve told her it’s weird for them to live together, because he wants to call her ‘mommy’ in bed. I’ve said it to her face. She told me I shouldn’t be unkind about his being an orphan, and that he’d feel rejected if she asked him to move because of some stupid unfounded suspicion.”

“Oh my god,” Shang Qinghua breathed. “Listen, I know you rode in with Shen Qingqiu, but if you come back with me you can bitch all about it.” Shang Qinghua craved his shimei’s fresh tea; he needed to pour his own. 

“And of course that,” Qi Qingqi said grimly, “will leave room in shijie’s carriage for poor, doubtlessly tired little—”

“Binghe,” they chorused together in their most nauseating ‘Shen Qingqiu’ voices.

After Shen Qingqiu’s qi deviation, Qi Qingqi found a lot more time for her shijie. She’d always respected Xiu Ya’s skill as a cultivator, but as a teacher, Shijie had drilled her students to perfection while taking less care with their upbringing than the mountain itself did. At least you knew where you stood with the peak. Falling rocks aside, it couldn’t be accused of harbouring a vicious capricious streak and ill-hidden resentment towards the people attached to it. 

Shortly after she recovered, Shen Qingqiu made a trip over to Xian Shu to observe Qi Qingqi’s arrangements there and to ask some technical questions regarding them. Instead of answering her, Qi Qingqi bluntly asked Shen Qingqiu why she suddenly cared. 

Shen Qingqiu merely gave an elegant shrug. 

“I haven’t done well enough by my disciples,” she said, frank and level. Self-critical, but practical in it. “Perhaps I’d my reasons for behaving as I did, but what’s past is past. Clinging onto resentment can feel just, or safe. Maybe it is, sometimes. But it’s indisputably tiring.” 

Shen Qingqiu stretched, easing the strain of the imposing guan she favoured where it must have lingered in the muscles of her neck and back. 

“Mu shidi believes I qi deviated out of sheer tension,” Shen Qingqiu admitted wryly, relaxing into her chair in a way Qi Qingqi could never remember her having done before. “But really, who was I straining myself for? It didn’t serve my charges, and it’s obviously done me no favours. I was hardly enjoying stewing in bitterness. Only an idiot keeps at something that doesn’t work. And I am not one.”

“No,” Qi Qingqi was forced to admit. No, Shen Qingqiu never had been that. A bitch, certainly—and she still was a bit of one, around the edges. But then so was Qi Qingqi, who, on the whole, appreciated the trait. 

Since that surprisingly open conversation, Qi Qingqi had gradually grown fonder of the other woman. Shen Qingqiu was by turns flustered and composed, somehow simultaneously more perceptive and more oblivious than anyone else Qi Qingqi knew. She always seemed to require a bit of looking out for. For someone who’d spent most of the years Qi Qingqi had known her seeming to look out for herself first and foremost, Shen Qingqiu could be startlingly bad at it. 

Qi Qingqi had come to believe that Shen Qingqiu had just been a terribly awkward teenager, quick to sneer at others before they could notice she didn’t fit in and do worse to her. The lord of Xian Shu hadn’t spent the last decade and a half superintending the training of adolescent girls not to recognise the signs of a brittle one putting up her defences. She’d never been a friend to Shen Qingqiu when they’d been first disciples together—when a girl very much at sea, and almost alone in the world, could probably have used one. At the time, Qi Qingqi had lacked the experience and maturity to guess at the nature of the issue; besides, Shen Qingqiu had never exactly been her problem to sort out. 

The girls they’d been were women, now. They better understood both themselves and the value of a comrade you knew—someone you could trust to have your back when it counted. There weren’t many female Peak Lords; there weren’t many leading female cultivators to speak of. Su Xiyan had been the brightest star of their generation, of any gender, and had one day simply vanished from the firmament. None of the reigning masters of the cultivation world had so much as blinked. If anything, they’d seemed almost relieved by the disappearance of such an anomaly. The Ladies of Cang Qiong would thus do well to stand together, because experience had shown Qi Qingqi that no one else could be absolutely relied upon to stand with them. 

Yet for all Qi Qingqi had come to want to protect Shen Qingqiu both from the hostile conditions they worked in (out of solidarity) and from the various social pratfalls attendant on her shijie’s own, special ‘being Shen Qingqiu’ness (out of sheer pity), Qi Qingqi had long ago resigned herself to whatever this Luo Binghe mess was. The dazzling breadth of what that spoiled brat got away with made Qi Qingqi grit her teeth just to think of it. Yes, Luo Binghe was undeniably talented—but really, the liberties Lord Shen let him take! 

The problem wasn’t the fact that Luo Binghe lived in the Peak Lady’s home as her personal disciple. That was standard fare. Every merchant in the Middle Kingdom kept household servants of all sexes. Cultivators enjoyed a greater degree of liberty than civilians, besides. Single-gender peaks like Xian Shu were rare, and after all, many people’s tastes inclined to members of their own sex (especially if they were much thrown together). It was the way Luo Binghe went about executing his role that rankled, and how content Shen Qingqiu seemed to let him play at being the lord of the manor (and even to encourage his behaviour!). The most indulged, praised, petted boy in the world seemed to practically live in Qi Qingqi’s imperious martial sister’s lap—when he wasn’t using his head disciple position as an excuse to cavort across the countryside on plum, prestigious missions, or to take a greater part in the running of Qing Jing than masters with decades of seniority on him. 

Certainly it would have been scandalous for Shen Qingqiu to cavort with one of her own disciples before said disciple had arrived at manhood. There’d been no whisper of that kind of impropriety. Cang Qiong in general and Qi Qingqi in particular would have looked hard upon such goings on—they weren’t Huan Hua, which was, despite its paid-for prestige, regularly the subject of insalubrious rumours. But for all the grousing about adult master-disciple relationships, they were roughly as common in the cultivation world as remarriage: a thing to be lightly tutted at rather than avoided outright. Cultivation masters often lived in remote areas, and to advanced age. They had esoteric interests and experiences. Obviously a two hundred year old and a three hundred year old who’d known one another for the best part of that (and were the world’s only experts researching golden beetle wing potions, or what have you) often looked at each other and thought, ‘well, why shouldn’t we?’ Taboos exercised limited power over sheer logistics.

If Shen Qingqiu’s boy made an outlandish display of his fealty, Shen Qingqiu herself helped not at all: if Luo Binghe so much as went out to the market to fetch a chicken, it was with her personal seal. If he suffered so much as a nasty splinter, the mistress of Qing Jing was marching her protege to Qian Cao personally. Now that Luo Binghe was of marriageable age, by several years—nearly eighteen, and looking ahead to his guan ceremony—a real scandal, and one with something like grounds, risked arising from the fact that Shen Qingqiu seemed to have no intention of regularising her situation by actually marrying her very publicly devoted follower. If Shen Qingqiu wanted to set a date for sometime after Luo Binghe’s guan presentation and zongshi ranking, then fine. But an engagement ought to be announced and a date set, and sooner rather than later. It was like Shen Qingqiu didn’t know that people would start writing highly insinuating ci poetry about this! And once it was being sung about in the taverns, there was no turning the congee back into grains of rice.

Some weeks before the Immortal Alliance Conference, Qi Qingqi paid her shijie a visit. She found her martial sister in her bamboo grove, walking towards her cottage. Liu Mingyan, who attended upon her mistress (and who somehow always contrived to be on hand to hear gossip, especially when it concerned romance), trailed behind them. That slender young woman was obscured from Shen Qingqiu’s sight by the thick clusters of reeds, and from that Lady’s qi-perception by her mistress’s closer and more strongly-developed aura. 

“I heard a rumour my shijie received a proposal,” Qi Qingqi said when she met Xiu Ya, eschewing more traditional greetings.

“Did you, now?” Shen Qingqiu snapped, flicking her fan open. “And what else did Shang ‘I swear I won’t say a word’ Qinghua manage to spill?”

“He only said that we ought not to ask you how the mission went for ‘personal reasons’,” Qi Qingqi clarified. “Obviously I guessed what those might be.” Qi Qingqi’s ‘thanks for confirming my suspicions yourself’ was silent, but hardly less audible for that.

Shen Qingqiu glared at her, letting the overgrown fern frond she was holding out of her own way slap back into Qi Qingqi’s face. That, Qi Qingqi thought as she batted leaves out of her mouth, was fair. 

“So the boy finally spoke up,” Qi Qingqi mused when she’d finished. 

Shen Qingqiu gave her an uncomprehending look. In turn, Qi Qingqi frowned at her. 

“Wait, was it Zhangmen shixiong? ” she asked, wondering what could have at last emboldened him. 

“Who? Yue Qingyuan? ” Shen Qingqiu stopped walking altogether and blinked at her. “No, that’s—very much in the past, and ought to stay there. As far as I’m concerned, it’s as though it happened to a different person. No, it was Liu Qingge making a spectacle of me. Though I’d hardly call him a boy, given that he’s certainly old enough to know better.”

Qi Qingqi’s mouth twisted, and she held up her hand to forestall indiscreet talk. “Mingyan,” she called. The girl hurried forward. Qi Qingqi would never have brought Mingyan along if she’d suspected that the little rumour-monger herself might wind up being so nearly concerned with today’s gossip. Qingge? Where the hell had that come from?

Seeing her shimei’s disciple, Shen Qingqiu blanched. “Apologies,” the Peak Lady said immediately. “I certainly don’t mean to speak about your brother behind his back—least of all before you.”

“Run home, if you like,” Qi Qingqi offered, not unkindly.

Liu Mingyan shook her head, then inclined it towards their host. “I have met men before, Shigu. My brother in particular. I’m well aware they can be thoughtless and precipitous. Again, my brother in particular. I could have told him not to launch straight into this, if he’d thought to ask me what I thought of our household gaining a new mistress. If you speak freely around me I’ll be grateful for it, and share what you’ve said no further.”

Qi Qingqi did believe her, there. She wouldn’t keep close company with the girl if Mingyan were a liability whose love of a good story extended to sharing it undisguisedly where it could do real harm. 

Shen Qingqiu exhaled, hesitated for a moment and then spoke. “I suppose I should warn you about some of this, anyways,” she admitted as they all started back towards the house, entering the clearing where her cottage sat. “A girl your age ought to hear it from someone,” she finished grimly as she reached the door. 

“Welcome back, Shizun,” Shen Qingqiu’s personal disciple called from the kitchen when his mistress entered. “A pot of tea for you and your guests?” He’d doubtless sensed her familiar qi signature drawing closer, in company with a muddle of less-recognisable powers.

“Yes, thanks. For two guests, if you would,” Shen Qingqiu called back. “Such a helpful child,” she muttered to herself as she led her visitors through to her study. 

Liu Mingyan had never before been invited inside the Lady of Qing Jing’s home. She looked about her at the tasteful arrangements and substantial personal library with some interest. Catching her gaze, Shen Qingqiu waved her hand as she sat (and, with the same gesture, invited her visitors to do the same). “Binghe keeps this place as neat as you see it; I’m far less natively organised.” 

“I try,” Luo Binghe said as he entered with a tea-tray, flashing his lord a smile of gratitude for her word of recognition. He knelt to set the carved wooden tray on his Shizun’s low table, giving her another fond look when she thanked him. 

“It’ll finish steeping in a moment,” Luo Binghe told his mistress. “It’s the Dragon Well, so—“

“Don’t over-brew it,” Shen Qingqiu sighed mournfully. She looked up at her personal disciple through her lashes, as if to plead with him. “It was once!”

“It wasn’t once, Shizun,” Luo Binghe politely begged to differ. “I only saw it happen once. You get distracted and forget all the time, and then you just make yourself choke it down.” 

“I’m not likely to with guests!” she answered back.

“Perhaps,” Luo Binghe admitted. “Now if only you’d extend yourself, our tea and my preparations that same courteous attention—”

“Get out,” Shen Qingqiu said sweetly, “and don’t come back without snacks.” 

“Sweet or savoury, Shizun?”

“Yes,” Shen Qingqiu replied, rapping Luo Binghe’s knee lightly with her fan guard to send him on his way. 

“Now as to shidi,” Shen Qingqiu began as her disciple rose and left, and she turned back to face the Xian Shu delegation. “I don’t want to mock a man’s earnest feelings. But in this case, I truly don’t even know that I would be! There we were, harrowing the Chengdu ghost district—and by the way, it seems the fire only started because some entitled young master wouldn’t hear his stable boy’s ‘no’. The child threw a lamp at his lord and ran, but his aim wasn’t up to much. The lamp hit the straw. Dry as it had been, and close as the houses were, the whole district caught. It’s wood there, from foundations to thatch, or at least it was. So while Zhangmen shixiong and Shidi dealt with the mob of burnt revenants, my disciples spoke to the survivors who knew anything. Binghe figured out that the stable was the centre of the haunting, and got back there in time to pull me out of the way of some particularly resentful fire-horses.”

Shen Qingqiu paused, pulled the tea-basket out of the large pot, tapped it to free the trapped drops and placed it on the saucer provided.

“There, I’ve remembered it. Happy, Binghe?” she raised her voice to ask, without looking up. 

“As only Shizun can make me,” came from the kitchen in reply. 

Shen Qingqiu rolled her eyes, a grin stealing its way across her mouth. “Cheek,” she muttered under her breath as she poured out four cups—evidently expecting her disciple back. 

Qi Qingqi took hers, giving another to Liu Mingyan. “Shidi and Shixiong nearly let you get trampled? They know we’re never supposed to be alone at the site of an active haunting.”

 Shen Qingqiu waved her hand. “It’s hardly their fault if I can’t take care of myself.”

“Well what were you thinking, then? This is why there are protocols,” Qi Qingqi snapped. “This is why you mind them!”

“Yes, mother. Anyway, it’s not like they were far off—the commotion drew them back, and then I had to use all the wood-ash to create a barrier wall between us and the child’s wretched shade.”

“The child was behind it?” Liu Mingyan asked, sounding more surprised than Qi Qingqi thought a girl her age had good cause to be. “Not his master?”

“You know what wild guilt can do to a spirit,” Qi Qingqi said in a chastening tone. “Whereas I expect the boy’s master thought himself blameless even in death. But Qingqiu, you wouldn’t try to distract me with a mission report to avoid discussing anything personal, would you?”

Shen Qingqiu glared at her. “I am getting to it, thank you. Anyway, the fire-horse the child was riding nearly managed to trample Liu Qingge before I got the barrier up. As it was, I ended up slicing the beast’s leg clean off—hoof poised right above Shidi’s heart. Severed, it only plopped down on his chest like a hot wrapped rice cake. Pure luck, but he thinks I’ve ‘saved his life’ again. So what does he do as soon as Zhangmen shixiong and I have talked the spirit down and gotten it to rest? Right then and there, Shidi says this is ‘yet another debt he owes me’. Starts in on his prospects, and how we’d be a suitable match.” 

“You did actually save his life,” Qi Qingqi pointed out, frustratingly pragmatic in the face of Shen Qingqiu’s fluster. It sounded as though the horse would have smashed right through Liu Qingge’s rib cage.

“It’s literally our job to save people’s lives,” Shen Qingqiu hissed like a disturbed goose. “Sects exist to combat supernatural peril!”

Qi Qingqi snorted. “That is a very generous way of looking at—what did you call it the other day? The Huan Hua Society for Rich Assholes Remaining Rich for Longer?”

“Not the point,” Shen Qingqiu snapped. “You don’t see everyone Mu Qingfan’s ever cured trying to make a move! Shimei, does this happen to you too?” 

“Well, very occasionally,” Qi Qingqi admitted. “In the heat of the moment. But I’ve only seen it from random villagers. People who aren’t used to peril are liable to say things they don’t mean at all, when they’re suddenly faced with it. It’s never been—“

“Someone you have to sit through a planning meeting with every fortnight,” Shen Qingqiu groaned. She leaned back, just as though she wanted to flop about on the floor like a koi that had unwisely jumped out of its bowl. She then evidently thought the better of this and instead frowned, straightening herself up with immense dignity. “And he did it right in front of my Binghe, too! The poor thing went so red I thought he’d qi deviate then and there! He doesn’t want to see his old teacher in that light!”

Liu Mingyan desperately tried to catch her own shizun’s eye (probably seeking to convey an ‘are you hearing this too, or am I losing my mind?’ sort of sentiment). Qi Qingqi steadfastly refused to meet her gaze. Liu Mingyan was a big girl: she could question reality on her own. Of course Qi Qingqi had heard the exact same strange bullshit; she had too much to deal with right now to help anyone else with their problems, thank you. 

Shen Qingqiu downed her tea, then set her empty cup on the table with an irate thump.

“Timing and poor choice of words aside, Liu shidi doesn’t even want me. Not really. You know all this, I expect,” Shen Qingqiu waved her closed fan at her shimei, “but perhaps Mingyan doesn’t yet. No woman can avoid being propositioned—too baldly to possibly miss, even if you’re really trying to!—by men she has a circumstance or two in common with, who’ve no idea how to go about these things. They like the idea of having a woman of their own: any woman would do. The ones who’ve tried it on with me haven’t really given thought to me specifically, beyond perhaps that I look presentable. And maybe they’ll say they’re doing something or other for me, making some grand gesture, even. But it’s often what they wanted to do anyway, or at least it’s very compatible with their own objectives.” 

Shen Qingqiu exhaled gustily, looking thoroughly exhausted by the subject. Liu Mingyan gave a thoughtful hum, as though she could well believe it.

“Shidi is an extremely capable cultivator,” Shen Qingqiu admitted. “And Shidi is, undoubtedly, an honourable man as far as these things go. No one can say a word against his reputation. No one can deny that he’s fine-looking, or that he comes from a respectable family. If he wants to marry someone seeking to establish herself, he’ll doubtless find he has his choice of brides. But I have a Peak of my own to run, with disciples to attend to. And I can count the number of actual conversations Liu shidi and I have had in the last three years on one hand.”

Qi Qingqi frowned at this, pouring more tea. “But doesn’t he clean your meridians every few months?”

Shen Qingqiu nodded. “And I have tried to make small talk! If nothing else because it’s awkward to sit in silence while a man clamps his hand around your arm like an ill-fitting bracer for a ke.”

Over her veil, Liu Mingyan’s eyes tightened up. She didn’t seem distraught—in fact she looked rather like she was cringing at her brother’s idea of courtship. 

“He’s always been a man of few words,” Qi Qingqi said.

“Not to be rude, but what’s that to me?” Shen Qingqiu asked rudely (but not unfairly). “Perhaps he’s only shy! But my guessing what the issue might be can no more help me arrive at ‘companionable banter’ than an alchemist can transmute lead into gold.”

“Without the use of a furnace,” Liu Mingyan pointed out. Shen Qingqiu waved her fan; yes, of course excepting cultivational furnaces.  

“So what does he expect we’d talk about if we were married?” she continued. ”How does he imagine we’d spend an evening together? How could a man ask me to marry him with no real notion of that? Thank heavens Binghe’s old enough and strong enough now to take over clearing my meridians or I’d qi deviate from embarrassment during the next maintenance session, and there would be an end to it.”

Shen Qingqiu had worked herself up to a good rant; Qi Qingqi thought she probably deserved it. If she’d heard that Shen Qingqiu had accepted such an offer, Qi Qingqi would have been parked in this cottage demanding an explanation inside a ke. Liu Qingge, of all people—when he’d shaken off his customary taciturnity to make such an obnoxious point of despising Shen Qingqiu as a girl! 

“You could grade junior-disciples’ papers together, like we do now,” Luo Binghe offered innocently, coming in to take his own tea cup off the table and setting down a divided bowl. Its respective chambers were filled with with warm candied and spiced nuts—the work of minutes, but skillfully done and neatly presented. 

Shen Qingqiu tried not to snort. Liu Qingge infamously believed that pedagogy was something that happened to other people.

“No, Shizun?” Luo Binghe said in a faux-disappointed tone, taking up the saucer holding the tea-strainer in his free hand to bear it back to the kitchen. “Maybe he likes chuanqi. Oh, he could read them for you like I do!” 

Qi Qingqi had not previously realised that obviously bright, blatantly jealous Luo Binghe had either come into the world with a propensity for being a massive bitch or had learned the trick of it from his beloved mistress. The idea of gruff, monosyllabic Liu Qingge really going in as the eponymous courtesan in “The Tale of Li Wa” was too much for Shen Qingqiu, who choked on one of the nuts she’d just popped into her mouth. 

Luo Binghe took his opportunity to pat her back, and then to offer her a shawl against the room’s (non-existent) chill. He was so bold as to drape it artfully around her shoulders himself. Luo Binghe further endeavoured not to notice the flat look his shigu was giving his antics. Qi Qingqi supposed that the young man’s feathers had been ruffled by Liu Qingge’s unexpected declaration, and that his possessiveness had spiked in response to this threat to his nest. Since she and Mingyan had come into the house, the disciple had hardly glanced at anyone but his own mistress.

“That’s not funny, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said with a frown after she’d poured herself another cup of tea. “Speak of your shishu with appropriate respect.”

“I endeavour to obey Shizun in all things,” Luo Binghe said, rising from his knees.

“Hm,” Shen Qingqiu considered. “You know, that’s not really a ‘yes, Shizun’, is it?”

“Yes, Shizun,” Luo Binghe said with a courteous nod as he left, knowing full well that his shizun had caught how what he was actually agreeing to had drifted. 

Qi Qingqi cleared her throat, drawing Shen Qingqiu’s gaze back from where it still lingered on her departing disciple. 

“Anyway, it’s not as though it’s a novel experience,” Shen Qingqiu said in a wry tone. “I’ve been the convenient, plausibly-obtainable girl in a room full of men often enough.” 

“I would hardly call you ‘convenient’,” Qi Qingqi said with a snort, taking a pull of the very good tea. “You’re certainly work.” 

They’d had such a row over joint-missions last year. Shen Qingqiu could be adaptable and pragmatic, but she was also an exacting perfectionist who apparently considered sub-optimal travel plans a blow struck against her very soul. The fact that her little henchman had supported her to the hilt, and started to talk about colour-coding the itinerary, had been a black mark against Luo Binghe in Qi Qingqi’s book. She swore on her sword that she’d never go on vacation with those two again.

“Thank you!” Shen Qingqiu said with an ironic toast of her cup. “At least I know me. I’m really not some font of motherly tenderness for all comers.” 

Qi Qingqi huffed at that one. “You can be stupidly soft, Shijie.”

“Even if that’s true—and I frankly don’t see it—I can also be unbearably critical!” Shen Qingqiu countered. “Qinghua says I’ve made him cry, more than once.” 

“‘Particular’, perhaps,” Luo Binghe corrected, returning with an annoyingly-artful platter of cut fruit and sitting down beside his mistress. (Hovering, if Qi Qingqi was going to be honest about it.) “But in all the years we’ve lived together, I’ve never once found you cruel. You can’t be pushed, but you can often be convinced. And you’re never unwilling to be pleased.” He smiled up at his lord as though she’d hung the moon. 

“Well,” Shen Qingqiu said, melting a bit, “of course you wouldn’t find it difficult—who could find fault with you, Binghe?”

(Qi Qingqi pulled a face; neither of them noticed.)

“Oh Shizun, it’s come loose again,” Luo Binghe said. A lock of his mistress’ hair had indeed slipped free. Luo Binghe raised his hand and tucked it back, sliding it firmly under the pin. 

“There,” he said in a low voice. 

After a stilted moment in which the two of them just looked at one another, Luo Binghe scrambled up, excused himself, grabbed his tea and a book from the shelf and slipped out of the study, heading towards his own room.

“That’s all there is to say on the subject, I suppose.” Shen Qingqiu finished, turning back to her shimei and giving her an elegant shrug. 

Qi Qingqi rolled her eyes. “This is why I run an all-female cultivation institution.” 

“Because your shidis regularly offer you marriage?” Shen Qingqiu deadpanned. “Shocking. But which? Surely not Qinghua—“

“Oh, the Lord of Ku Xing,” Qi Qingqi returned sarcastically. “He’s been after me for years—”

“The all male peak,” Shen Qingqiu nodded sagely. “I see it now, you could cross-breed.” 

Qi Qingqi threw a nut at her; Shen Qingqiu wordlessly dodged.

“Of course women generally prefer the company of other women anyway,” Shen Qingqiu mused after she’d straightened back up. “It’s only natural. You have your daring early experiences with your school friends and all that, and women are simply more attractive than men. Binghe’s an exception to the rule, naturally. I suppose he must be everyone’s exception; my white lotus is simply impossible not to like. He’s prettier even than most girls, for a start.”

Shen Qingqiu enjoyed another cup of tea, seeming to believe she hadn’t just said a series of unusual and uncomfortably illuminating things. Liu Mingyan and Qi Qingqi drained their own cups in unison, wishing they’d contained something much stronger. 

Qi Qingqi mostly dallied with women herself, but she didn’t have the time or the energy to explain to Shen Qingqiu that actually, this was not necessarily a universal interest. Besides, for all he’d left the room, Qi Qingqi suspected that her shijie’s personal disciple could well be listening in. Luo Binghe might only just have realised that he had a whole new, hitherto unsuspected genre of competition to take out by any means necessary. Revealing any hint that Qi Qingqi herself wouldn’t necessarily kick a No-Strings Shen Qingqiu out of bed seemed like a shortcut to the top of the frustrated young swain’s hit list.

“Oh!” Shen Qingqiu said, suddenly remembering something and rising. “Excuse me. I’ll only be a moment.” 

She crossed the hall to her disciple’s door and rapped on it with her fan guard. The angles of the rooms rendered her still half-visible to her guests. In a moment, Luo Binghe’s door opened. 

“You wanted to drill your arrays while the light was still good,” they heard her quietly remind the youth. “Don’t look at me like that, I can’t always come watch and evaluate you. It’s not as though you need the help!” Another moment elapsed, during which the young man murmured something low. “The sooner you go, the sooner you can hurry back,” Shen Qingqiu answered him, almost coaxing.

Luo Binghe emerged, and seemed to be waiting expectantly. Shen Qingqiu huffed, then patted his head. 

“Dinner is oxtail soup,” he said—cheerfully obedient, now that he’d gotten what he’d obviously wanted.

“Not Buddha Jumps Over the Wall?” she teased. “Can this really be Binghe? What’s become of my over-achiever disciple?”

“If Shizun wanted Buddha to jump, he would. But Shizun did tell me to spend less time in the kitchen, and more on myself.”

“Oh, and you always listen.”

“Yes, Shizun,” Luo Binghe agreed, his tone sweet. “I always listen. But in case I’m not back before your guests take their leave, you wanted to get to the library catalogue tonight.”

“Ah, that’s right. Thank you, Binghe. Whatever would I do without you?”

Another weird interval of silence elapsed, which was awkward for everyone not staring feelingly into the eyes of a forbidden beloved.

At last the young man left the house via the kitchen. Shen Qingqiu returned to her study to find Liu Mingyan avidly munching nuts as though they were melon seeds and Qi Qingqi stabbing a piece of actual melon (cut into a cute rosette) as though it had offended her. 

“It’s a piece of luck you dropped in, Mingyan,” Shen Qingqiu said, “because I’ve been meaning to have a word with you at some point.” 

“Oh, Shigu?” Liu Mingyan said, straightening politely and endeavouring to look like slightly less of a nut-munching gremlin. 

Shen Qingqiu nodded. “You see I don’t know quite how to say this, but—I’ve been thinking. As you and Binghe grow older—well. I know what a good girl you are. You two are perhaps the brightest, most talented disciples of your generation. If the two of you should develop something of a tendre, you ought never to let Binghe treat you with anything less than the respect you deserve. But you must also remember that however impressive and wonderful Binghe seems, he’s actually far more fragile than he lets on. He’s a very special young man.” Shen Qingqiu’s expression grew tender and wistful. “The two of would make a lovely couple.”

Shen Qingqiu looked embarrassed—almost painfully so—but determined to speak her mind. 

“I of course practise cultivational purity, myself. That isn’t for everyone, and that’s fine! But if you ever need to talk to anyone about these matters, I—” Shen Qingqiu cleared her throat. “Well. I’m here. I expect I always will be.” 

Shen Qingqiu probably imagined her tone was ‘level’ or even ‘cheerful’, rather than ‘tragically resigned to loss’.

“Um,” Liu Mingyan said, eloquently. “Thank you?” she managed.

Shen Qingqiu nodded, and again, probably did not think the key she played the gesture in was ‘sombre and mournful’. 

Qi Qingqi mercifully intervened and, with a massive effort and the aid of a great deal of practice, wrested the conversation onto an entirely non-Luo Binghe related topic. Of course Shen Qingqiu did tend to mention Luo Binghe every fifteen minutes or so, whatever the nominal subject under discussion. But as long as you pretended you hadn’t noticed, you really could have quite a good conversation with her! She was Qi Qingqi’s favourite martial sibling, despite—all this. The afternoon was simultaneously pleasant and excruciatingly awkward, but then that was generally Qi Qingqi’s experience of the Shen-Luo ménage. 

“Not a word,” Qi Qingqi hissed to Liu Mingyan as they left. Luo Binghe’s return for the evening—sweaty and tired, full of questions about array combat and ready to be fussed over—had rendered the place uninhabitable for decent company. He probably had to start brushing Shen Qingqiu’s hair for bed soon too, or something equally unmentionable.

Halfway home, though, Liu Mingyan stopped her shizun on the middle of the bridge between the peaks.

“All right,” Liu Mingyan said, seemingly out of nowhere, “but how can she have no idea?” 

“Listen,” Qi Qingqi erupted, “I don’t know. I do not know!” 

“It’s not like she’s stupid!” Liu Mingyan insisted. “Not about other things, anyway!” 

At least Luo Binghe hadn’t heard his mistress trying to give him away to his shijie. Qi Qingqi probably didn’t have to worry about her personal disciple ending up mysteriously banished to Tibet or something. 

“They’re not having sex, are they?” Qi Qingqi asked no one in particular, in a tone almost of forlorn hope. 

“Shizun,” Liu Mingyan said, giving her an unimpressed look. “Can’t you tell? That is unresolved sexual tension. He’d be so much smugger if it wasn’t—not vibrating with yearning whenever he hands her a fruit platter.”

“Shush,” Qi Qingqi said automatically, unprepared to countenance hearing words like ‘vibrating with yearning’ out loud, from a real human mouth. “Don’t gossip about your shigu,” she huffed, striding down the bridge as though she could put yards of land and whole sections of the afternoon behind her in the same movement. Qi Qingqi did want—no, did need to say more. But even though she'd no other ready confidantes, Qi Qingqi felt that Mingyan had already heard more than enough about her senior’s personal affairs.

Soon after, Liu Mingyan paid her brother an overdue visit. While he failed to take this golden opportunity to confide in his sister and solicit her advice, she nonetheless mentioned that perhaps her brother might want to try becoming better friends with his shijie, who he’d sometimes spoken of respectfully of late. There ought to be something the two of them could properly do together, or talk about. Whatever else happened regarding her brother’s declaration of interest, Liu Mingyan felt her suggestion was at least a fair beginning. 

When Luo Binghe and Ning Yingying next came to deliver some scrolls from Qing Jing library to her mistress, Liu Mingyan overheard part of the other disciples’ low conversation. In a rancidly bitchy tone, Luo Binghe quoted "Jin Ping Mei": ‘there is so little love between them, they are separated by peaks’. The allusion was hardly subtle, but then Luo Binghe probably didn’t feel he needed to be subtle at this point. Liu Mingyan's elder brother would truly need to build up some momentum if he hoped to break through a fortification like Shen Qingqiu’s personal disciple. 

If Liu Mingyan started reading the sort of steamy bodice rippers that featured forbidden relationships between masters and disciples (‘oh no, we mustn’t ’, but in the end they always did), that was her business. If she ended up penning quite a filthy one herself, that was her readers’ affair. She had done her duty for the Peaks and family harmony both.  

Qi Qingqi made time to have a very private, very bald-faced chat with Shen Qingqiu, alone. She used small words, and unambiguous hand gestures. She described Luo Binghe’s intentions towards her martial sister in no uncertain terms. She didn’t even bring up Shen Qingqiu’s sentiments towards Luo Binghe: that way lay a hissy fit, Qi Qingqi could just tell. This went nowhere, and only succeeded in making Shen Qingqiu high-handed and superior with her shimei for a fortnight. Qi Qingqi decided that if the situation didn’t improve on its own she’d try again in a few years, when the relevant member of this grossly codependent couple had matured somewhat. She did not refer to Luo Binghe. 

The minute she shut the door of her inn-room behind her, Shen Qingqiu whirled, slammed her back against it and slid down to the floor, whispering “System, you son of a fucking bitch!” 

This was such patented PIDW bullshit! Fuck Airplane and fuck transmigration. Never read web novels! Ho, do not do it! Stick to the five classics! The bloody Zuo Zhuan! Infinite Jest, if illiteracy is simply not an available option! Do anything but this!

The System clicked on, presumably to defend itself. Shen Qingqiu was not interested in hearing it. She waved the nuisance away before it could even tell her the twee name it had assigned this sub-plot. She had enough shit to deal with right now, and hardly needed to add a bad pun to the top of the teetering pile. 

“All right,” Shen Qingqiu muttered to herself. “No, this is—well, aha, no, it’s not fine! But I can deal with it. Yes! Yes. So! Sex.”

She shut her mouth and started to consider her options. She absolutely couldn’t make it back to the sect in time to throw herself on either Qi Qingqi’s mercy or Shang Qinghua’s somewhat-doubtful willingness to suck it up and accept what was clearly his responsibility. Even if Shen Qingqiu could have made it back, there was absolutely no question of involving either Yue Qingyan or Liu Qingge: either man was likely to read way too much into it.

Could a random local woman help a sister out? The sane, resolute non-Gorean in Shen Qingqiu said obviously, yes. But then this was PIDW: one white guy short of a Gor novel to begin with. How far did its shitty logic stretch? Did Shen Qingqiu want to literally fuck around and find out?

Fuck. She really was going to have to tart herself up and seduce some random male yak farmer in a terrible tavern in a terrible novel—assuming she could even manage to do that, with her absolutely static moves. This was god’s awesome and righteous punishment for ever having clicked into this cursed tag in the first place. Shen Qingqiu’s first time was going to be with some stranger, if she got lucky and survived: just a magical, unforgettable night with Old Huang the Yak Guy.  

“Ahhhhh,” Shen Qingqiu whimpered in a soft warble that wouldn’t disturb the neighbours. Unless you’d transmigrated into Planet Earth, screaming before heading downstairs to prowl amongst the drinkers was probably not the best way to attract a mate.  

With grim determination, Shen Qingqiu hiked herself up off the floor and lurched over to the room’s vanity. She fished out every qiankun pouch she was carrying and dumped their contents on top of the table, in no shape to care about how the items spilled over onto the floor. Somewhere in here, there should be—yes, right, okay, those kind-of-sheer, layerable summer robes. And here was a small jar of the red pigment Shen Qingqiu sometimes used to paint a huadian on her forehead. It wasn’t cinnabar, she’d checked. So that would do for lipstick. Shen Qingqiu started pulling at her ‘do not fuck with me’ guan and its supporting cast of pins, letting the heavy curtain of her hair spill down. Could she get away with wearing it loose? No, too weird. Low ponytail, then. That said ‘I could have sex in this’. Probably.

Her preparations made, Shen Qingqiu surveyed herself in the mirror. Was this look approachably slutty? Like. Maybe? 

Shen Qingqiu made an effort to clear the queasy expression off her face. 

“Hey,” she tried in a sultry voice, gagging a moment later at how totally crap that sounded. Maybe she could just explain the situation and hope to find a Good Samaritan. Because seriously, who would buy this? Even if she was giving it away for free! But then again, some guys would fuck just anyone, right? She only had to find one of them, and hope that cultivation staved off venereal disease.

Yaaaaay. 

She took a moment to scribble Luo Binghe a note in rouge on the vanity’s polished brass mirror. He was not going to be happy when he finally managed to return with every item on the ridiculous task-list she’d dumped on him—probably more because she’d disappeared, lightly poisoned and with a vague excuse, than because she’d sent him on a Devil Wears Prada level intern quest. (Because Luo Binghe was lovely like that.) She’d have to go back to whoever she found’s place so that Luo Binghe didn’t get frightened for her and over-protective, and then do something to make this deeply unpleasant Mandatory Quest even harder on them both. 

Steeling herself, Shen Qingqiu crept out the door. She got about four tip-toed steps beyond the threshold when Luo Binghe himself rattled up the stairs, almost at a run. He saw his mistress standing directly in front of him and came to a complete stop.

“Oh,” Shen Qingqiu said, swallowing a litany of curses. “You’re back!”

He couldn’t have, could he? And yet—yep, there it all was: three bags full of utter bullshit. He even had the out-of-season cabbage, because he was the fucking protagonist.

Luo Binghe adjusted his grip on the bags, shifting them into the crook of his right arm. His free hand tightened on the wooden stair rail. “I hurried,” he said in quiet, dangerous tone. 

He took a step forward; Shen Qingqiu found herself sliding back. She cleared her throat.

“Binghe,” she said, preparing to tell him to stand aside. 

But Luo Binghe took another step forward, and then another. He drew strangely close. His free hand slipped to the door handle behind Shen Qingqiu, tripping the latch. In three more steps she was back inside her rented room. Luo Binghe silently shut the door behind him with his hip.

“I hurried,” he repeated himself, setting his bags down on the floor against the wall and straightening up again, “because I was so worried about you, Shizun. But I see that I was a fool to be, when you look so very well.” 

Every word of that seemingly-pleasant sentence was oddly weighted, as though the two of them were playing conversational Jenga. 

“I see Shizun has experimented with earrings,” Luo Binghe remarked. “And is that one less layer? Bringing you down to just five. Highly irregular, for my shizun.” His scanning eyes sharpened, and he turned them on Shen Qingqiu's face without mercy. “You said you were fine. Clearly, you lied to me.” 

When Luo Binghe was angry, Shen Qingqiu found herself remembering that in another life, the young man before her had laid waste to a thousand armies and fucked the deliriously happy wives of their fallen generals in the aftermath. Luo Binghe was a darling most days, but when he was done he seemed to simmer with it: to shimmer around the edges with the intensity of his own feeling, and to tower over the world. Luo Binghe was furious now, and as befitted a protagonist, he was desperately compelling in his wrath. Her little sun burned too bright to look at straight on. 

Shen Qingqiu swallowed. “I—”

“And in your hour of need,” Luo Binghe continued before his master could, “it seems you’re more willing to seek help from a total stranger, who might do anything to you, than from me. That you’re more willing to lie with someone you don’t even know than with me, when for years I’ve been, in all but name—”

Luo Binghe stopped himself, closing his eyes for a moment. Shen Qingqiu reached out a hand towards him, feeling helpless. When Luo Binghe opened his eyes again and stared at it, she let it fall. 

“It’s just,” Luo Binghe said, “we share a home. Shizun, what don’t I help you in? Aren’t I your dearest friend? You’ve long been mine. Yet for all that, you’re going to— Shizun, I really thought—” 

Luo Binghe’s throat worked like he was trying not to cry. Instead, he gave a tight little laugh. It sounded like the noise an over-tightened qin string made in the moment before it broke.

“You weren’t even going to ask me?” he managed at last, sounding more distraught than she’d ever heard him. 

Luo Binghe’s sorrow was just as absorbing as his rage. He seemed swallowed up whole by his emotions; Shen Qingqiu couldn’t watch him come to the point of true weeping without feeling her own eyes grow aching-heavy. Two years ago now, after he’d won the Immortal Alliance Conference, an eighteen year old Luo Binghe had confessed everything he knew about his demonic heritage to his shizun. He’d showed her his blood-huadian, and when she’d given it an accepting kiss he’d fallen to the ground and sobbed into her skirts. Perhaps offering up such a maternal gesture had been too forward of her, but Shen Qingqiu had thought Luo Binghe could do with a touch of care. He’d been so brave, and so alone in this. 

At first it had been their secret. Eventually she’d carefully told Mu Qingfang, and then Yue Qingyan, a bare, reduced version of what Luo Binghe had confessed to her. If Cang Qiong accepted a mixed disciple who’d confessed the truth of his heritage of his own accord, then one day, they might have to accept a heavenly demon on the same terms. She’d make them tolerate Luo Binghe by degrees, by inches. If they baulked, they’d lose her too. She and Luo Binghe had bypassed the Abyss arc together: so long as Shen Qingqiu breathed, nothing awful was going to happen to her protagonist. But she had to keep breathing to ensure that this kept being true. 

Which made her present position especially difficult.

“We can’t,” Shen Qingqiu said, wondering an instant later why it sounded as though even she didn’t believe that. She raised her head and tried again—tried harder, this time. Yes, she wanted to live. Yes, she had to, for Luo Binghe’s sake as well as her own. But there really were other ways to ensure that. She’d been just about to put such a plan into action!

“There are so many reasons why even in an emergency, we ought not to do anything that could strain our relationship,” Shen Qingqiu said. “Do you need me to tell you them now? Binghe, I haven’t much time.”

Luo Binghe actually dropped to his knees before her. “How could a needful intimacy strain our relationship? Don’t let it be a stranger,” he begged her. “If your time is precious, please don’t waste it looking for someone else. Don’t die. Don’t leave me, Shizun, please don’t leave me.” Luo Binghe looked up at her. His eyes were wet—shining. “Whatever would I do without you?”

Shen Qingqiu opened her mouth, but found she could say nothing to that. She turned away, confused and fuming at her own discomposure—cloven down like a felled tree. 

“All right, Binghe,” she whispered, then cleared her throat. “All right,” she repeated, louder.

“Thank you, Shizun,” Luo Binghe said. She couldn’t see his face, and dared not turn her own to do it. She could hear his breath, though, and the way it caught in his throat. The simple fervour in his words. She could feel the thankful kiss he laid on the back of her hand.

“Oh, get up,” she snapped, snatching her hand back and waving it at him. Her clingy roundworm didn’t want his shizun to make an ass of herself downstairs? Fine. She was going to teach this stallion protagonist—who seemed to have made his 1000+ wives come buckets via missionary, sheer dick-acreage and what little Shang Qinghua knew about heterosexual sex alone—how to actually have mutually enjoyable sex with a woman. Yes, just as soon as Shen Qingqiu figured that out herself, she was absolutely going to impart the knowledge to Luo Binghe! This was a public service: someone had to do it. And by ‘it’, she meant her wonderful, frighteningly over-endowed little lamb. 

Resolved, Shen Qingqiu set her jaw. Don’t worry, Binghe: Shizun is here!

“We’ll consider it an instructive game,” she said stiffly, as though she was about to lay another of the anachronistic weiqi techniques she’d blatantly ripped off of Hikaru no Go on the young man. 

Luo Binghe visibly swallowed. “Your humble disciple will receive his mistress’s wisdom with infinite gratitude.”

“Don’t lay it on,” she huffed. 

Shen Qingqiu exhaled, curling her hands into fists and then releasing them. Looking straight ahead of her, she strode over to the bed, sitting down so emphatically that she almost bounced. She kicked off her slippers and leaned back, propping herself up on her elbows. 

Luo Binghe watched his shizun regard him. Her expression was determined. Her lips shone bright red in the commingled glow of lamps and night-pearls. Her hair, disordered now, pooled behind and around her, nearly-free. A promising flash of long white stockings shone against the dark covers. Her robes were unusually loose, and where they spread apart, the mounds of Shen Qingqiu's pale breasts were just visible.

“Well?” Shen Qingqiu snapped. Her faltering composure was betrayed by the flush creeping over her cheeks, but her voice held remarkably steady. Luo Binghe was absolutely certain that Chang’e herself was nothing like so lovely as his mistress. 

Wordlessly, he followed her onto the bed. He scrambled over his shizun, moving so quickly that he seemed to have been spring-loaded—that it seemed as if he'd been waiting to do exactly this for an age. 

“You’re not going to trim the lamps or anything?” Shen Qingqiu asked. Really she knew that she ought to have done it herself, when she’d headed out on her man-hunt. She’d been rattled, and had neglected it. But like this, they’d be—well, Luo Binghe would see everything, wouldn’t he? The room was bright as day! He might as well take her over her desk in their living room, panting into her papers!

Looking at Shen Qingqiu very intently, Luo Binghe shook his head. “Not unless Shizun truly wishes it,” he murmured, leaning in to nuzzle her cheek. The gesture was new, but so fond that it hardly felt forward. More like something that built on an established foundation. Luo Binghe was always clinging to her, so this was—this was just—

“Binghe,” she said, quietly.

“Yes?” His breath ghosted across Shen Qingqiu’s skin. She shivered.

“Just come here,” she said, drawing Luo Binghe up by the shoulders so that he rested directly above her, dark eyed. When had he gotten so tall, so big? He was still lithe and lovely, but there was a broadness to his shoulders. At twenty, Luo Binghe was a man now, and he looked it.

Shen Qingqiu swallowed. 

“Start like this,” she said, like someone who knew what she was doing. She shut her eyes, wet her lips and pulled Luo Binghe down towards her. She slid their mouths together gently. Did it twice more, growing bolder as she went. She’d made out before, even if she’d done nothing more than that and some petting. It had been a decade ago, with a female friend over a spun bottle, but she understood the concept.  

Luo Binghe licked across her lips like he didn’t understand it at all, but wanted to desperately. Was that just some moment of clumsiness, or had he really not learned how to do this from his little girlfriends? Shen Qingqiu felt a spike of annoyance at the thought. What good were they, then? Luo Binghe was always so quick to learn anything he was interested in—did he even like what he and those girls did together? If he didn’t, wouldn’t he make a graceful exit rather than slogging on out of some sense of obligation? Didn’t he know that he could leave, if he wasn’t enjoying himself? Hadn’t Shen Qingqiu taught him as much? Hadn’t she protected her Binghe better than that? 

She’d make up for it now, she decided. Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t just teach Luo Binghe to make love. To the best of her admittedly limited ability, she'd work to give him an evening to remember. 

Luo Binghe’s frame was tight with tension, like he was trying to hold himself still: to be good for her. It was enough to strain Shen Qingqiu’s heart.

“Relax,” she whispered into Luo Binghe’s mouth, running her hand down the length of his spine in a soothing stroke until it came to rest at the small of his back. 

Luo Binghe exhaled a punchy breath and seemed to drop into her arms. Her face hot with embarrassment, Shen Qingqiu slid her tongue between his lips. Luo Binghe gave a little whine and then tried doing the same thing to her, pushing his thick tongue into her mouth. It was almost hard to breathe around—huge and muscular, dexterously curling around her own. Shen Qingqiu wasn’t sure fully-human tongues moved quite like that. (But then, what did she know?) 

Luo Binghe’s hands came up to her shoulders. He held her carefully still while he shoved himself in, eager and demanding. Shen Qingqiu found herself heating at being forced to give way like this inside her own body—found herself wondering, without seeking to, what it’d be like to be fucked by that tongue. Who Luo Binghe had already given it to. (Why Luo Binghe kissed like it was new, when he must have held a score of women just like this by now.) She heard a slick, muffled moan, and was shocked to discover that she’d been the one to make it. 

Shen Qingqiu pulled back—causing Luo Binghe to give a brief whine of displeasure—and pulled the band out of her hair. Luo Binghe watched, rapt, as this last, flimsy barrier fell. Of course Shen Qingqiu had read that Luo Binghe liked sex a great deal, but she now discovered that it was one thing to know this about the book character ‘Luo Binghe’ and another to track the way her own dear bun’s eyes widened when she so much as let her hair down. Looking away to collect herself, Shen Qingqiu unbound the first catches of her robes. She’d dressed for this, and so rather than her usual array of defensive buttons and baffling sashes, her fingers met with forgiving, barely-there, teasing ties she could just tug free. It didn’t take a minute for her to loosen her robes, and to gasp as Luo Binghe’s hands immediately slid into the folds of the fabric and wrenched her robes wide open to bare her, to slide her arms free of their encumbrances—until she sat on top of pooled fabric, neat as a piece of jewellery in a presentation box. She was left in only her long, knee-high white stockings. These, Luo Binghe left where they were. 

Even as Shen Yuan, Shen Qingqiu had possessed the sort of breasts that had, from a very early age, made front-buttoning shirts a lost cause and jogs at the start of gym class a sexist act of aggression. Living in a body vaguely copied from her own social media profile pics had not lessened the problem; living in PIDW had in fact worsened said problem by about a cup size. 

Luo Binghe did not act as though he knew that Shen Qingqiu’s breasts were a source of frustration and an outright fashion tribulation. He cupped them like they’d never done anything wrong in their lives, and firmly wrapped his fingers around each like he was gunning for her sports bra’s job. His first instinct was to dig his fingers into the plush softness with the grasping acquisitiveness of a little boy. But a moment later he pulled back to delicately trace his fingers over the whole shape of them, around and around Shen Qingqiu’s fast-pebbling nipples. He glanced up at his shizun’s face, his expression almost shy, and held her gaze as he lowered his mouth to one. Seeming to ask, ‘is this all right?’

She petted his hair. “Gentle,” she said.

Luo Binghe nodded, flicking the firm tip of his tongue over a nipple very, very lightly. 

“Mm, that’s rather a lot of stimulation,” she murmured, tightening her hand in his hair. “I know it seems like it wouldn’t be, but it’s pointed. Try the—” Shen Qingqiu’s voice cut off as Luo Binghe swept the flat blade of his tongue over her nipple instead. 

“Like that?” he asked, drawing his head back to look at her. She nodded, sharply. 

“Like this?” he asked again, bringing up the hand not palming her right breast (the better to feed it to his own greedy mouth) to play with her other nipple. 

“Don’t pinch,” she cautioned. “Not yet, at least. Don’t do much to them yet. Not until I’m—ready.”

“So Shizun only wants me to be a little mean to them when she’s very aroused,” Luo Binghe mused, rolling a now-wet, licked-sensitive nipple under his thumb, ever so lightly.

“Binghe!” Shen Qingqiu gasped. “Don’t just—talk about it!”

Luo Binghe grinned, gorgeous in his happiness. “I won’t ‘just talk’, Shizun,” he promised, lowering his head before she could retort and suckling at her still-dry nipple. His other hand crept down to settle on Shen Qingqiu’s stomach possessively, and Shen Qingqiu felt it lurch under his touch. She was almost sick with desire—maybe this was what she got for keeping busy for so long, for letting the kettle boil dry. Luo Binghe had only to touch her, and she went up like tinder.

“What do you like?” Luo Binghe asked, letting her breast pop out of his mouth with an obscene sound. “Show me how to do it, Shizun. What do you like best?"

Shen Qingqiu flushed and glared at him.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe pleaded, “didn’t you say it was an instructive game?”

It wasn’t actually a bad starting point, or an unreasonable request. It was the kind of thing Luo Binghe ought to know about women. With a huff Shen Qingqiu slid her arm between the two of them, over her own hip. She shut her eyes so it’d be easier to pretend she wasn’t showing this to someone. Her fingers found the comforting burr of her own hair, close-cut, and then the smoothness of her cunt, which—well. Hopefully Luo Binghe wouldn’t realise that Shen Qingqiu wasn’t usually prone to soaking through the layers of robes she rested on. 

She curled her fingers and stroked the outside of her lips sedately, as though she was walking along the base of a wall. Then she traced along the very tips of them. She dipped her fingertips into the pooling liquor at the entrance of her cunt to get them a little wet, then dragged them up to the sensitive radius of her clitoris, giving the mound a slow, deliberate grind with the broader flats of her fingers. She jolted, shocked, when Luo Binghe’s own fingers took up the duty hers had abandoned—sliding teasingly up and down the base and edges of her folds.

“And then,” She Qingqiu managed in a quavering voice, giving her clit a light, bullying, illustrative flick with her nail. Luo Binghe made a thick noise in his throat. “But you don’t just jump to that sort of thing,” she said, opening her eyes. “I need a little time. But you may find—” Shen Qingqiu looked away again, evasive. “Every girl is different,” she murmured.

“I couldn’t care less about ‘every girl’ right now,” Luo Binghe said, using his unoccupied hand to turn his shizun’s chin back towards him. He tilted his head down to kiss her soundly and ran his fingers up to briefly displace hers over her clit, circling and circling just like Shizun had shown him.

“Ah,” Shen Qingqiu panted against him. “Ah, ah, Binghe—”

“Fuck,” Luo Binghe cursed. 

“Where did you learn that?” she whined, leaning into the big, hot hand cupping her cunt. 

“Shizun,” he crooned, and actually—yeah, he probably had. Finding out that she’d inadvertently taught Luo Binghe her anachronistic curses firmed Shen Qingqiu’s resolve to teach him something useful with all this. She’d give Luo Binghe all she knew: teach him all the private ways of handling her body that she’d won over the course of years, which she’d relearned in this new form and had never thought to give anyone. This was more personal than Shen Qingqiu had imagined sex would be—than anything she could ever have shown a stranger. 

“Like this,” she said, pushing Luo Binghe away and then coaxing him to recline against the wall, propped up comfortably on buckwheat pillows. When he looked well-situated, Shen Qingqiu kicked her robes to the floor and leaned back against Luo Binghe’s chest. His arms came up automatically to encircle Shen Qingqiu, and he dragged her flush against him. Shen Qingqiu looked up over her shoulder at his interested face. 

“You’ve comfortable?” she asked, fussing for a moment. “You can see all right?”

“Shizun,” he laughed, briefly hugging her from behind—his handsome face lit up with affection. He should always look like this in bed, Shen Qingqiu thought wistfully. Even if he’s playing at force, or engaged in some game, in his heart he should feel like this —fond of the person he’s with, and as certain as he can be that they care for him deeply. He should feel as safe as he seems to now, with me.

“So,” Shen Qingqiu said, determined to show Luo Binghe how a veteran user handled the equipment. “Try it like this.”

She slid a slender finger into herself, and after a moment, another. The movement was sudden and hard, and she winced as she absorbed the shock of it. “But maybe start slower,” she remembered to add, mindful that she was training Luo Binghe for other women, who might well have other preferences and be in other moods than the one she found herself in now. “It’s not just size, of course, it’s timing. It’s speed, rhythm, and how you curl. How hard you—”

Luo Binghe, who’d been drawing deep breaths like he was trying to memorise the smell of her hair, was now very distractingly sucking at Shen Qingqiu’s neck and playing with her breasts again. 

“Binghe, are you attending to me?” she asked sharply. 

Luo Binghe broke off from leaving a bruise on her throat and, without preamble, shoved a thick finger in beside her own. He fucked her with the steady, unyielding regularity of a metronome, relentless and unsympathetic. 

“Yes, Shizun,” he whispered. 

Shen Qingqiu faltered, pulling her own hand out and away. Luo Binghe took his opportunity to cram another finger into her, and to press an alarming erection against her back. 

“I doubt I’ve ever paid more attention to anything in my life,” he admitted. “I just couldn’t watch that and not touch you. You’re so wet for me, Shizun,” Luo Binghe gloated, as though she’d handed him a trophy. “I can feel you dripping through my robes.”

Shen Qingqiu shut her eyes against how shamefully seen she felt. 

“You’re so wet,” he murmured, “that I bet you want this, now.” He pushed a third finger into her. He’d wrapped his other arm around Shen Qingqiu’s torso, and even as he plunged into her he used the fingers of his free hand to pinch her nipple savagely. Shen Qingqiu’s gasp turned into a hard gulp. She wriggled in Luo Binghe's hold but he clung on, forcing her to stillness. He moved with the flow of her, bucking when she bucked so that they arced together, like a sinuous conjoined animal. Luo Binghe moved his fingers faster and brought his thumb up to circle and circle her clit, harder and harder. 

“Do you always like it like this, Shizun?” Luo Binghe asked, his voice hot and low. 

Shen Qingqiu shook her head against his still-clothed chest. 

“No? That makes sense. I bet sometimes you want spoiled,” he mused. “When you’re in that sweet, gentle mood you fall into when you’ve slept a little late, or I’ve mulled you some wine. I bet when you’re feeling soft like that you’d like to be toyed with slowly, for absolutely ages—just kissed to coming. Right, Shizun?”

Shen Qingqiu gasped at the thought of Luo Binghe in her bed on summer mornings and winter nights, playing with her until she was an incoherent mess. Plucking orgasms out of her in the same idle, skilful way he played a qin to amuse himself and keep his hands busy.

“But sometimes,” Luo Binghe said, “Shizun wants it from me like this.” His knuckles thumped against the lips of Shen Qingqiu’s cunt as he rocked his hand into her. Taking Shen Qingqiu’s right hand in his his free one, Luo Binghe interlaced their fingers—an affectionate counterpoint to how roughly he was fucking her. Against her ass, Shen Qingqiu could feel Luo Binghe’s stupidly-oversized cock bouncing eagerly. He must have slipped it free from his robes while she was showing him what to do.

“Do you sometimes like feeling it? How badly I want you?” Luo Binghe asked. He was panting like he’d run here; he seemed so affected by pleasuring her.

“Binghe,” she choked, “Binghe, please —”

“Anything,” he promised, not slowing down for a moment. “Anything, Shizun.”

Shen Qingqiu curled up ravishingly as she came, her spine rolling into a tense arc and her mouth dropping open. The motion pulled Shen Qingqiu away, but Luo Binghe snapped her back against him, letting Shen Qingqiu ride it out in his lap with the drooling head of his cock smearing its promise of what was to come against her skin. 

That’s how deep he’ll go, she thought with a delirious shudder, twitching at the notion that Luo Binghe was just measuring how she’d take him. Unable to speak, Shen Qingqiu dug her fingernails into Luo Binghe’s wrist to get him to stop moving—she’d squeezed and shivered around him in her coming, and he hadn’t let up for a moment. 

Withdrawing his hand slowly, with seeming reluctance, Luo Binghe spun Shen Qingqiu around in his lap so that they were face to face. His expression was so touching—the awe in it made Shen Qingqiu ache. Luo Binghe pushed his slick fingers into Shen Qingqiu’s mouth, as if he couldn’t stand to be entirely outside her for even a moment. 

“Did I do well?” he asked desperately, forcing her to suck the proof of it from his hands. “See how well I did, Shizun,” he purred, his wonder giving way to preening. He watched her dazed expression, rapt. “Let me do it again,” he begged shamelessly, seeming hungrier for having eaten. Seeming not to notice his own swollen cock, which must ache for release. “I could feel you constricting around me—Shizun, it’s so good? I’ve heard it said that women can keep going—that you can keep pleasing them for as long as they wish—” 

“Binghe!” she scolded, slapping away his cuntward-creeping hand. 

“Are you ready for me then, Shizun?” he asked, perking up still further and starting to shuck off his clothes, squirming out of them with a speed and dexterity Shen Qingqiu found impressive. All without dislodging her, too! If he’d had a tail, Shen Qingqiu bet that it would have been wagging. The cock he did have was certainly at pains to demonstrate its friendly interest in the proceedings.

“Give me a moment,” Shen Qingqiu growled. She huffily ducked her head against Luo Binghe’s now-bare shoulder, splaying her hand against his chest. He tucked her head under his chin.

Shen Qingqiu ran her thumb over Luo Binghe’s brown nipple, the very centre of which rose into a hard ball like a small marble. Huh. It really made you want to just bite it, didn’t it? 

She felt the very first pulse of what was probably the toxin: a moment’s flash of reeling lust that vanished in the next instant. Shen Qingqiu supposed the intensity would grow as her blood stream processed the stuff, and reflected for a moment that doing this with Luo Binghe probably had been the right decision, after all. Yes it was very good, but she also felt strangely secure. This could have been such an awful experience: a first time coupled with whatever this drug was going to do to her. Instead it was a surprisingly tender exchange between master and disciple. There’d be fall-out to navigate, of course, but despite her earlier panic, Shen Qingqiu couldn’t really imagine Luo Binghe being awful to her about this. (Her Binghe! Literally the best disciple possible!)

“Remember to cut off the qi flow before you come,” Shen Qingqiu advised Luo Binghe, like a responsible teacher. That handy cultivation technique prevented unwanted pregnancy like a (literal) charm: one couldn’t spark new life if the actual breath thereof was throttled. 

“Yes, Shizun,” Luo Binghe said from above Shen Qingqiu’s head with a trace of amusement. Shen Qingqiu supposed that it was, after all, a rather basic trick Luo Binghe had probably had occasion to employ before now. 

Shen Qingqiu frowned, beginning to trace his nipple with her fingernail. “I mean it, Binghe,” she said, giving the nipple a stern tap for emphasis. This wasn’t something to get blasé about. “Don’t think it can’t happen to you! You’d knock me up like that, and then where would you be? I know you—you’re annoyingly good at everything. It’d take you all of once to breed me like a prize bitch. And my robes all cinch at the waist,” she groaned, picturing it. “Everyone would only have to look at me to know what you’d done.”

Luo Binghe cleared his throat, and Shen Qingqiu watched it bob. When she tilted her head up to meet Luo Binghe’s gaze, she found it decidedly disturbed. 

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe rasped, “if you want me to be good for anything tonight, you have to stop talking like that.”

Ah. Shen Qingqiu did know that for the better part of the original novel, Luo Binghe had been horrified by the idea of bringing children into the world and spreading his tainted blood. Some men actively enjoyed that kind of thing, but in the whole of PIDW, Luo Binghe had never seemed anything but repulsed by the possibility. It was sure to be a boner-killer. Shen Qingqiu had hoped that her Luo Binghe, who’d experienced less rejection and trauma than the original version, wouldn’t be haunted by such fears, but unfortunately it seemed as though they were deep-set in him. If Luo Binghe thought of himself as an abomination, then Shen Qingqiu would have to counter that directly. (He always responded well to praise—perhaps because he stood in great need of it.) It was one thing if Luo Binghe simply didn’t want children, but he ought to make that choice because his happiness lay elsewhere rather than because he feared the prospect. Really, there wasn’t anything to fear—Shen Qingqiu had no time for ‘demon blood’ melodrama, and more importantly, she’d always thought her Binghe would make such a good father. 

Well, Shen Qingqiu supposed she’d done her bit for safety. They could talk through Luo Binghe’s apparent self-esteem crisis at some more appropriate time. Right now, she had a turned-off young man to re-arouse. 

Shen Qingqiu slid her hand down Luo Binghe’s chest, then curled it around the offensive weapon she’d read so much about. Well—around the top of it, at least: no thanks to Airplane, the process was something like trying to get her hand all the way around a one-litre bottle. Luo Binghe’s breath hitched, and Shen Qingqiu tsked.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I think you know,” Shen Qingqiu said, with a trace of amusement seeping into her tone.

“We don’t have to use it like that,” Luo Binghe breathed, watching his shizun’s fingers gently caress his straining length—watching her explore him with curiosity and manifest affection. Shen Qingqiu stroked him like a pet. “I’ll come from this and love it, Shizun,” Luo Binghe promised.

Shen Qingqiu tilted her head up at her disciple, favouring him with an indignant frown. And miss out on the heavenly pillar the one time it was on offer? You didn’t go to the foot of Mount Everest and not make the attempt! 

Looking at The Heavenly Pilar™ in the flesh, Shen Qingqiu found herself rather taken aback. She’d expected the size, of course, but—

“Actually it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she murmured, tracing a finger around the rim of his cock's shapely, firm and bulbous head. “I didn’t really know they could be. I thought only women could be pretty, in things like this. I ought to have known better, given that it’s you.” 

Luo Binghe felt as well-weighted as a sword. His cock didn’t look ‘angry’ in its arousal, as smut had suggested it might. The paleness of the column gave way to a heated flush. No one had told her that Luo Binghe would feel so warm. That she’d actually feel the blood moving through this tender, vulnerable part of him, and the changing pitch of his breath, vibrating through his chest under her palm, as she handled him. Shen Yuan had been promised a certain textural softness, ‘velvet around steel’ and all that. But no one had said that Luo Binghe’s sweet brown curls would be perfectly mirrored above the base of his cock, or that they would possess their own plush, woolly-sheep softness when stroked with the grain. The top of Luo Binghe’s cock glistened slickly in the lamp light. Shen Qingqiu swept her thumb through the clear, beading precome there and drew a circle on the tip of him, making the whole broad head of him shine.

“Shizun,” he whimpered at the gesture, though Shen Qingqiu was too absorbed to pay much attention. 

She could feel the play of Luo Binghe’s skin where it stretched with the weight of his arousal. The twitch of his hips when he pressed needily up into her hands. The lines and curves of her disciple’s cock were sinuous and elegant in an unabashedly obscene way, like the inherently-suggestive curves of art nouveau metalwork. 

“Just as gorgeous as the rest of you,” she murmured. “Like a cake too pretty to eat.” 

“Shizun likes it?” Luo Binghe asked, blatantly fishing for praise. Shen Qingqiu had half a mind to chastise him for such a display of smug self-satisfaction, when he must know he had an award-winning specimen here. But then she recalled how awkward Luo Binghe had initially been at kissing, and how chagrined he evidently still felt about his half-demonic body. Shen Qingqiu decided that her disciple might need a touch of praise, and that she could bear to offer up a touch of excruciating honesty, for him.

“Why shouldn’t I look at the fine young man I’ve raised?” she asked cooly.  “The way the purple veins swirl up the stem,” she said, tracing them as she spoke in an illustrative fashion, “the proportions—my Binghe is as finely-built as any piece of architecture. Your skin’s so smooth and rich it shines. The head flushes so dark. And look at these!” Shen Qingqiu curled her fingers around one of Luo Binghe’s similarly deep-brown testes, making him squirm. “I always thought they’d look stupid,” she confessed as she palmed one, “just unavoidably. But they don’t, do they? They’re darling—as sweet as a tied bow. ”   

Shen Qingqiu tilted her head to glance at Luo Binghe’s expression. He looked more embarrassed even than she felt, but also dopey with delight—struck stupid with happiness. 

“Am I Shizun’s favourite, then?” Luo Binghe pressed. “Shizun really finds me more pleasing than any man she’s seen?”

“Well, you’re the only man I’ve properly seen in this capacity,” she clarified automatically, pedantic by nature. “The only person, to such an extent as this.” 

Luo Binghe surged forward, grabbing Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder in his hand. “I’m Shizun’s first? ” he asked, his eyes wide and wild. “I know Shizun practises cultivational purity now, but before we met, she truly never gave herself to anyone else like this?“

Shit. Had she made it weird for him? Or maybe he’d like the ‘new car smell’ (gag). Either way, virginity was a rather embarrassing thing to have just admitted to. 

“I’ll be gentle,” Luo Binghe swore, his expression brimming over with earnestness—but it was such a harem anime line that Shen Qingqiu snorted good-naturedly. She rose and swung her leg over Luo Binghe so that she straddled him, settling her ass in his lap and tossing her hair over her shoulder. 

“Don’t patronise me, boy,” she said imperiously. Teasing, a little—playing at being Shizun. Trying on the mood.

“Never, sir,” Luo Binghe assured her, regarding Shen Qingqiu with dark eyes and a suitably respectful gaze. 

Shen Qingqiu nodded. Yes; good. She then drew a deep, here-we-go breath and braced her palms on Luo Binghe’s firm chest. She raised her hips, letting the head of Luo Binghe’s very erect cock brush along the lips of her cunt. When she had him where she wanted him, stiff and unmistakable, she caught him and, with the most tentative jab of her hips, began to ease down on her prize. Shen Qingqiu breathed harder when even this gentle, gravitational pressure began to stretch her, wider and wider, around the head of Luo Binghe’s cock, and then, as she bore down, around the whole of it. Luo Binghe’s big hands slid up to encircle Shen Qingqiu’s supple willow-waist, offering her support (and a touch of welcome comfort, besides). 

Shen Qingqiu swallowed and swallowed, like that might help—like she was going to gag Luo Binghe down rather than be filled up from below. She was confused even about this: her whole body was in tumult, processing a gaggle of mixed signals and loud, conflicting inputs. Luo Binghe was far too thick: a stretching, stinging intrusion. Yet he seemed to be gliding glibly into the wet, plush ease of her. It seemed as though it simply wouldn’t happen; it felt like exactly what she needed. It was so much work, to love him; it was impossible not to, and it was what she’d been built for. She eased down and down for what felt like hours. Her mouth fell open to suck in air, as if she could hardly breathe for the relentless push. Shen Qingqiu was almost glad of the faint but growing stirrings of the toxin in her, working through her like wine to make wanting what she wanted a little easier to bear.

All the while Luo Binghe’s fingertips caressed circles on her back and cooed gentle nonsense. “There, Shizun. That’s right, my love, let me in. You’re so glorious like this. You’re so brave for me. Shizun feels so good. Just a little more—just a very little more.”

It was worth it for the way that impossible fullness blossomed into a lax, absolute satiety that had Shen Qingqiu’s limbs dropping and her arms hanging loose, as though she had nothing to do in the world but rest here, pinned and supported on Luo Binghe’s warm, vast cock. It was worth it for the worshipful look on Luo Binghe’s face: the way his mouth trembled, as though he was struggling not to cry.

“Shziun, I’m so glad,” he said suddenly. “I’m so glad we’re here at last. That you’re finally letting me serve you like this.” His hands squeezed her waist, making Shen Qingqiu clench and tremble around his cock. In response Luo Binghe threw his head back, his eyes shuttering. 

“I’m going to come too soon,” he said, distraught. “Shizun, I don’t know if I can—” 

He cut himself off when Shen Qingqiu tentatively rocked forward and back, making the barest beginnings of room inside herself for him to fuck her properly. 

“Of course Shizun will help you,” Shen Qingqiu assured Luo Binghe, well-aware of his enviable canonical refractory period (and anxious that he shouldn’t feel bad about finishing quickly—after all, it was his first time!). “Come whenever you need to. Just let me ride you for a little while after, until I can too. All right, Binghe?”

“Please,” Luo Binghe blurted out, sliding his fingers down and digging them into Shen Qingqiu’s plush ass-cheek. “Please keep using me until you’ve finished, Master.” 

Luo Binghe bit his lip, as though to stop himself from saying more. Shen Qingqiu knew very well that Luo Binghe always talked a lot of nonsense during sex, but still being young, perhaps he himself didn’t yet. That insignificant gap in their knowledge made her feel so fond of Luo Binghe—of the helpless, brave romanticism of him, which nothing could really kill. 

As Luo Binghe had predicted, it didn’t take them five tentative bounces for him to spill up into his mistress (fumbling for and snapping off his qi flow just like he’d been told to). He thrashed beautifully under her, breathtaking when he came and so lush in the aftermath: his colour high, his curls disordered, his mouth still chasing oxygen with little pants. When, after giving him a moment, Shen Qingqiu raised and lowered herself once more, dribbles of Luo Binghe copious spend escaped her, sliding unctuously down her disciple’s cock. 

“That’s easier,” Shen Qingqiu muttered, grounding herself with details to keep the sensation manageable. “You’ve made it nice and slick.” 

Between Luo Binghe’s spend and the way she herself dripped for him, Shen Qingqiu reeled at seeing her own small, familiar cunt seem to gobble up this impossibly, comically large shaft. It didn’t hurt at all, anymore: Shen Qingqiu could move freely, pliant and eager for him. In not much longer Luo Binghe would probably be able to fuck her, slowly and gently. How long would it take after that before her sweet boy could rail her with the dedicated intensity she absolutely knew he was capable of?

Luo Binghe keened under her, and Shen Qingqiu paused her in sedate rocking. She’d been pushing herself up and down the whole length of her disciple, letting him go and then gathering him back in.

“Is it all right, Binghe?” she asked. “Too sensitive? I don’t want to bully you too much—”

“No!” Luo Binghe shook his head, desperate. “No, please don’t stop, I love it. I’m so tender, now. You clench so tight I think I’ll faint, and I want it so much.” Luo Binghe raised his hand to Shen Qingqiu’s cunt. He held her gaze as he caught her clitoris under a heavy thumb. 

“There,” he said. 

Shen Qingqiu, feeling her orgasm suddenly lurch close, stilled on Luo Binghe’s cock and curled down against his chest, crushing his hand between them as she pressed incoherently into his grip. 

“There, love, just like that,” Luo Binghe murmured. “Don’t let your toy soften—not while you still want to play with it. It’s my fault for being so useless I couldn’t stay hard for you. Just because I’m a green boy who still can’t handle how good my mistress’s cunt feels. I’ll do better next time, you’ll see. I’ll keep my shizun’s cock ready for her use.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu panted into his chest. “Where the fuck did you learn—nngh! Binghe, Binghe, Binghe!” (And yes, Luo Binghe had always run his mouth during sex in the book—presumably to make those scenes more fun for his reading audience—but it was nonetheless shocking to actually be the person he was talking about!)

Shen Qingqiu choked her way through an orgasm with Luo Binghe’s cock in her cunt, his thumb grinding her clit hard into her pelvis and his hand at the small of her back, clenching her against him. It felt like being caught in a vice.

Through her heaving gasps, Shen Qingqiu could hear Luo Binghe sighing happily. “And I thought that felt good around my hand!” he marvelled, trying to move his fingers again in an alarmingly purposive fashion.

With an effort Shen Qingqiu pushed herself up, smacked Luo Binghe’s chest and climbed straight off him, flopping down at his side. “I need a minute,” she managed, the burst of adrenaline that had enabled her escape from Luo Binghe’s insatiable attentions already draining away and the boneless haze attendant upon her orgasm catching up to her. Shen Qingqiu lay curled up against Luo Binghe’s side, blinking while he stroked her hair, for an indeterminate period. It took her some time to notice the elephant in the room: once more as hard as it had ever been, and positively gleaming with their combined efforts.

“Oh,” Shen Qingqiu said, feeling foolish and a touch selfish. “But you don’t need time, do you? Taking care of me left you as bad as ever. Poor thing: come here.” She clumsily pulled the boy over her, tugging and positioning Luo Binghe until she lay flat on her back and he sat astride her chest, balancing his weight on his knees. He really was such a good disciple—so obedient. She had only to indicate a wish, and Luo Binghe just went wherever she liked.

Between the afterglow and the rising influence of the Greater Lust Beetle’s toxins, Shen Qingqiu could feel herself growing less inhibited and more queerly ravenous by the minute: heavy-lidded and dazed. It occurred to her, in a distant sort of way, that perhaps they shouldn’t have begun at this before the plot device properly kicked in—that everything they’d done so far hadn’t actually happened under the full, realised influence of the spores, and thus had not precisely answered it. They’d rushed into this, awfully eager to begin administering what ought to have been treatment for a medical emergency. (Shen Qingqiu chose to blame Luo Binghe’s legendary libido for that.)

With Luo Binghe astride her, Shen Qingqiu used her arms to press her breasts together. Then, proprietary as if she owned it, Shen Qingqiu guided Luo Binghe’s cock between those white hills. She’d always thought Luo Binghe, whose close-POV passages always contained just paragraphs’ worth of descriptions of the breasts of whoever he was in bed with, could really have stood to hear the good word about this form of head. Here was her chance to introduce Luo Binghe to something he’d really like! Something that, evidently, none of his other little girlfriends would ever think to give him. (Probably because Shang Qinghua was too blazingly gay to bother to think about what one might actually do with breasts beyond ‘look at them, I guess?’)

“I can’t take all of you in my mouth,” Shen Qingqiu explained, grasping Luo Binghe’s hands and bringing them up to her breasts—giving him the general idea that he ought to move them, to roll them along his cock just as he liked. “Not with how long you are. But I can manage the tip, like this. And you seem to enjoy—”

Shen Qingqiu coughed. She wasn’t yet sufficiently far gone to be able to comfortably say ‘breasts’ out loud (to the protagonist!) in this context—even if Luo Binghe did look like she’d just given him a teetering pile of birthday presents. His adorable, glowing, ‘for me? ’ expression made Shen Qingqiu want to find more to offer him. Really it made her want to claw her heart out and present it to Luo Binghe, tied up fetchingly in spring-green ribbons.

“Shizun, I love them,” Luo Binghe moaned, tentatively thrusting his cock between the pressed-together, pale mounds as though he could barely believe he was allowed to do it. He squeezed his shizun’s breasts in hands, finding that they stayed plush and perfect no matter how he kneaded them—no matter how he cinched the nipples between his knuckles and tugged (and made his shizun wriggle and pant). The head of his cock popped out from between Shen Qingqiu’s thick breasts neatly and tapped at her lips; she obediently opened them to receive him on her tongue, licking at the slit and easing a thin rivulet of pre-come down into her mouth. 

“I’ve always loved them so much,” Luo Binghe confessed, watching her raptly. “Even when I was a boy, when you were tied up—” he swallowed. “I can hardly see an inch of your skin without craving you in my mouth, like I’m starving again. How could I look at this,” he tugged at his shizun’s red, raised nipple, “without needing to hold it between my teeth?” 

While Luo Binghe spoke, Shen Qingqiu stared up at him through half-lidded eyes. She lost herself in the way his hands pawed ceaselessly at her chest, in the weight of him on her tongue. She glanced down at the head of his cock and found that even though it had momentarily slipped free, a string of spit still connected it to her mouth. It bore a red-rouge imprint of her lipstick from where she’d struggled to cram more of it inside her. She tried to raise a hand to clean Luo Binghe up a little, to wipe away these proofs of what they were doing together, but he caught her wrist and held it down. 

“No, please,” he said. “It’s perfect just as it is. Touch me here, instead,” he suggested, guiding Shen Qingqiu’s hand down to stroke his thigh. He directed his own, now-free hand right back to one of Shen Qingqiu’s breasts, as though impatient of the interruption. Luo Binghe shuddered above his shizun, looking at the feast before him as though he couldn’t take it all in, couldn’t ever eat enough. 

“My wife is so good to me,” Luo Binghe said, his voice weighty and certain. 

Shen Qingqiu ignored the way her own breath caught at that. It was a sex thing: Luo Binghe was built to get married, and it never meant much even when he did just that. Even so, Shen Qingqiu felt a surge of smug pride when Luo Binghe came in her mouth, spilling over her lips, her cheeks, her breasts. When Emperor Luo bethought himself to demand this of some other woman, some real wife, it’d still be a gift Shen Qingqiu had given him. And taken all in all, not one of those girls would be as formative for Luo Binghe as his shizun had been. In a way, Luo Binghe would always belong most to her. 

“So good,” Luo Binghe repeated, wiping his seed off the sides of Shen Qingqiu's mouth with his fingers, drawing his body down hers and fucking the pearlescent liquid into her cunt with his hands. Kissing her come-splattered lips clean while he did it. “What else does my lord need?” he asked. 

Shen Qingqiu struggled to concentrate. “I can feel the toxin now. I suspect it’s worked into my blood stream.”

“You’re still in danger?” Luo Binghe asked sharply (which Shen Qingqiu found a little odd, because if she hadn’t been, there’d hardly have been a need for them to still be having sex!). 

“So it seems,” she managed. “I think you’re going to have to properly give it your all. Don’t hold back. Use your blood to harden up for me.“

No sooner had she said it than Luo Binghe was back on top of her, sliding inside once more—throbbing and ready.

“I didn’t even think of that,” he admitted. “Shizun’s wisdom is truly—”

She shoved him off, turned around, got on her hands and knees and surveyed Luo Binghe over her shoulder. 

“I need you deeper,” Shen Qingqiu explained, her expression resolute. “Come on, Binghe.”

“Yes, Shizun,” Luo Binghe said with fervour, putting his right hand over hers and curling their fingers together as he slid in to the hilt. 

If he began slowly, testing Shizun’s still-adjusting body, he escalated quickly and thoroughly, fucking her until the side of the box-bed they faced smacked against the wall, again and again. The toxin hit fast, and Shen Qingqiu felt as though she was falling. Dazed, she watched the bed frame splinter: watched a light hairline crack branch out from where the wood was gouging the plastered walls. With Luo Binghe fucking what was left of her senses out of her, Shen Qingqiu could hardly parse what she was seeing. She could feel Luo Binghe arching his back, could hear him breathing raggedly—he was working so hard for her, trying to give his mistress everything. Feeling cored like an apple, Shen Qingqiu started to moan, struggling even to respond if Luo Binghe addressed her. 

Hearing a thick, gulping sound, Shen Qingqiu glanced over her shoulder and found Luo Binghe in tears of tender ecstasy.

“To see you like this,” he tried to explain (not stopping for a moment, even in this state). “Enjoying me so much, and so openly—I never thought to dream of such an honour. Thank you, Shizun.” 

Poison surged through Shen Qingqiu, strange high waves of lust coming stronger and stronger. She came around her disciple and hardly registered an abatement of her need. Senselessly she begged Luo Binghe for more of what he was already giving her. Luo Binghe came himself, releasing into his master, and didn’t even falter. He relied on his blood to power through, remembering the qi trick every time. Thank god it had been him—who else could have done all this for her?

At some point Luo Binghe tested the qi in her wrists, and seemed to like what he found there.

“Ebbing,” he said with a contented hum, bending down to drop a kiss on the crown of her head. “Safe now, my love. Don’t worry, Shizun—if my wife likes to enjoy herself like this, then in future, she won’t need anything but me to bring her to this state,” Luo Binghe promised. “You must know that was my favourite of your robes we ruined so perfectly—I always pack it for you, in the hope you’ll wear it. You must know how I comb your hair at night for bed, just like this. Dressing like you did—it was for me, wasn’t it Shizun?”

Shen Qingqiu muzzily attempted to understand the question. Was it? Had it been? Had she wanted—without ever admitting it, had she always wanted— 

“Shizun’s wonderfully easy to fuck, now that she’d gotten accustomed to taking me,” Luo Binghe continued with hazy, saturated comfort. “But you were so tight for me at first—just me. That too, I never dared hope for. You’ll teach me to be a good husband to you, won’t you Shizun?”

“Uh huh,” Shen Qingqiu managed as Luo Binghe pulled out, flipped her over onto her back like she weighed nothing, crammed himself right back in and bent her legs back as far as they’d go—making Shen Qingqiu’s mouth drop open, making her scream his name.

“Is that still deep enough?” he asked pleasantly, slamming his hips against her ass in case it wasn’t. 

Drugged and mortified, a little delirious, Shen Qingqiu slapped a hand over her mouth. 

“I feel like such a slut,” she murmured against her own palm, horrified and luxuriant in it. “Like your fuck-doll,” she added, flushing with shame.

“Shizun’s everything to me,” Luo Binghe growled, taking a moment to rip her hand away from her mouth. “She can be that too, when she likes. Between us.”

By the end, Shen Qingqiu felt almost sick with how much spend she could feel sloshing around inside her. She glanced down, wondering whether she was only imagining the swell of her stomach. Knowing that with the way Luo Binghe was crowing in her ear (‘that’s right, Shizun, take your Binghe—everything I have to give’), she might well not be.

Shen Qingqiu didn’t remember passing out. She certainly didn’t remember apparently having received some kind of… towel-bath? The next thing Shen Qingqiu knew, she was waking up with Luo Binghe’s healing qi humming in her veins, feeling like a charged battery. The man himself still lay cradled in her bare arms. 

It didn’t take her long to discover that Luo Binghe was also awake, probably having stirred when she herself had. He regarded his shizun with deep contentment and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. He then sat up in bed and stretched, arching his strong back in a way Shen Qingqiu couldn’t help appreciating. 

Luo Binghe leaned over his shizun and kissed her. When he drew back, his hand drifted down to cup her sex. The gesture was nearly unerotic—possessive, and comfortable.

“What does my wife want for breakfast?” he asked, looking at her with a trace of odd, maiden shyness in his expression. As though the every-day question was charged, now, and made new. His wife.

Oh, thought Shen Qingqiu. Oh, fuck. 

Of course Luo Binghe’s faux-mediaeval mores had suggested this as the appropriate course of action. Shen Qingqiu wasn’t some random woman, she was an honoured cultivator Luo Binghe knew well and respected. What was worse, she’d let slip that before last night, she’d been ‘pure’.  Naturally her white lotus wanted to do right by his responsibilities. 

Now, how to disabuse the boy of his good intentions without hurting his pride?

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu began, gently removing Luo Binghe’s hand from her person and sitting up against what was left of the poor battered plaster wall and box bed frame, “you needn’t talk like that. There isn’t any need for you to ‘make good’.”

“I know there isn’t,” Luo Binghe said with a huff of a laugh. “This was hardly some chance encounter, all unlooked for. It’s just how we finally came to an understanding—to be engaged, if not yet married.”

Shen Qingqiu sputtered, too taken aback to be as sensitive as she wished to. “Binghe, we are not engaged!”

Luo Binghe regarded her, his eyes widening. He looked somewhat hurt, but as though he was trying to cover that up with a veil of assumed maturity. 

“If Shizun doesn’t wish to be married, per se,” he said very calmly, “then of course that’s something we can discuss as a couple. What’s important is that we’re together.”

“But we’re not together!” Shen Qingqiu said before she could stop herself, decidedly not enjoying the way Luo Binghe flinched upon hearing it. “It was a curse,” Shen Qingqiu insisted sensibly, gathering the blankets around her as firmly as she could. “If I’d gone to someone else for aid, you’d hardly expect me and some yak farmer to be united by indissoluble bonds of obligation. You’d throw a fit about it!”

“Because it wouldn’t be us,” Luo Binghe said, raising his voice. His eyes flashed. “Shizun, you know I can’t be calm about you! You know I’ve never felt this way about—”

“You stop right there,” Shen Qingqiu said, absolutely unyielding. No way in hell was she going to sit here and take an ‘I’ve never felt this way about anyone else before’ from Luo Binghe: the very line she could control-f and find him using to assure scores of other, stupider women that they were unique! Shen Qingqiu shut her eyes, exhaled, gathered herself and opened them again. 

“What did I tell you about pressing ladies, hm?” She gathered the covers around herself, to give at least the impression of decency. “If a woman doesn’t wish to speak to you about romantic matters, you must politely drop the subject.”

“Drop the subject? ” Luo Binghe repeated, sounding incredulous. “You’re really going to pretend that all there is to talk about is what we did last night, and that even that counted for nothing? Shizun, I love you. I would love nothing better than to marry you. I have given you my body as I’ve given you my soul, and there will never be another for me. If you’re going to break my heart, then don’t you think you owe me a little more honesty as to why you don’t even care to hear me declare myself?”

Well that’s not canon at all, Shen Qingqiu thought, a touch hysterically. 

Luo Binghe could endure any trial he’d decided to, but her disciple could also be astoundingly stubborn. Given Shen Qingqiu’s respect throughout his adolescence, Luo Binghe had grown into a young man who bucked at arbitrary authority. In order to live with a decision, he absolutely had to understand why it was being made. Even Shen Qingqiu, who flattered herself that Luo Binghe respected her in turn, only got away with vague high-handedness on unimportant matters—she was frankly amazed that he hadn’t thrown a bigger tantrum when she’d slipped away to assassinate Linguangjun.

Made uncomfortable by the declaration (however false she knew it to be), Shen Qingqiu pivoted. The stakes were higher than she’d believed. 

“Binghe,” she began, quite delicately, “in a few years, I’m certain you’ll have a score of wives. But I don’t want any part of that. No—I couldn’t bear it.”

“What?” Luo Binghe asked. He caught her hands. “Shizun, I don’t want anyone but you.”

Shen Qingqiu tried not to get angry at how easily that lie came to him. At the way he believed it, when he was saying it. She tried to stay calm and still in Luo Binghe’s hands. “Right now, you may truly think you feel a certain way about me. But you’re so young. You can’t yet know yourself. Wanting something doesn’t make it true.”

“Do you imagine I’ve been unfaithful to you?” Luo Binghe asked, sounding incredulous.

Shen Qingqiu frowned. “How could you have been? There was no fidelity to keep.” 

“There was,” Luo Binghe insisted, “and I’ve kept it gladly. I never needed to be asked. I came to you chaste; I’ve never so much as thought of another. What would be the point, when I belong to you?” 

That did give Shen Qingqiu pause. Unlikely as that sounded, she was fairly confident that Luo Binghe wouldn’t lie about it. She supposed he had been kept very busy as her personal disciple. She’d known that Luo Binghe would in all probability soon have to run a sect and an empire, and she’d trained him for his future as best she could. 

Of course if Luo Binghe really was inexperienced, that made it all the more understandable that he now felt bound to do the right thing as he saw it. He might well feel he’d been compromised, too—like an unwrapped good one could no longer return to the shop. And there too, perhaps in having done something so important with Shen Qingqiu, he’d imprinted on her to a degree. If she’d known him innocent, she’d never have let him run that kind of risk. It was different for her. She was older, she’d already died—she was living on borrowed time as it was.

A Luo Binghe who said all this and meant it would resent himself so much when his own predestined nature and the machinery of the plot inevitably made him think the better of it. She’d trained Luo Binghe to be a good wolf—the best! But she’d never once believed she could turn him into a house pet. 

And some selfish part of Shen Qingqiu whispered that as Luo Binghe’s shizun, she’d always be important to him; as his first wife, she’d be overshadowed by a thousand competitors for his regard. As a wife, her having once been Luo Binghe’s Shizun would become just her ‘colourful backstory’. That colour would fade quickly, and so would Shen Qingqiu—right into the background. She’d read and read and read this book. She ought to know the plot by now.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe began, “what vow can I make—”

Despite her best intentions, Shen Qingqiu scoffed in his face. “None that I’d credit, Binghe,” she said. “I know you mean everything you say. I do know! But you cannot make that kind of promise. I am not going to be humiliated like that! I’m not going to put stock in an impossibility and then be bitterly disappointed when I get what I’d deserve for having done it.” 

Luo Binghe looked away, his hands tightening on hers. “So,” he said, with a trace of a dry laugh caught in his throat, “I’ve somehow managed to conduct myself so poorly that the person I trust and respect most in the world doesn’t reciprocate those sentiments at all.”

“Binghe, that’s not true!” Shen Qingqiu insisted. “Of course you have my respect! No one is more competent than you!“

“Say you think me moral, then,” Luo Binghe challenged, turning back to face Shen Qingqiu and regarding her with a strange, unfamiliar coldness. “Say you think my word means something, Shizun. Say that you don’t think me an idiot—so lustful I simply can’t control myself, so stupid that I don’t know how to cherish a blessing when I find one.”

Shen Qingqiu hesitated, and Luo Binghe nodded like he had his answer. 

“Any well-made tool is useful,” Luo Binghe granted. “But if I were really impressive, you’d want me. Maybe I can make you come, but of course you can do that for yourself. I believe you like me, but a lord will sometimes dote on a foolish dog—oh. Is that it? Is it my blood you object to, Shizun? Do you even see me as a man?” Luo Binghe asked, dangerously polite. 

“I’ve never given you just cause to question it,” she answered. “Don’t be ridiculous. Who do you think I take seriously, if not you?”

“If it’s not my blood, then it’s just me as a person you find unworthy of your correction where I’ve erred, and beneath your contempt. But Shizun, don’t you see that that’s so much worse?”

Luo Binghe pressed forward, looming over Shen Qingqiu on the bed. All the betrayal Shen Qingqiu had arrogantly believed she’d circumnavigated by averting the Abyss plotline sat right there, in Luo Binghe’s intense, red-gleaming eyes.

“When exactly did I fail Shizun so utterly, and lower her opinion of me so severely, that she will not even give me a chance to prove my loyalty to her?”

“You aren’t the problem at all,” Shen Qingqiu said, sliding out from under Luo Binghe and standing up, dragging her blankets with her. Flustered, she went about gathering her clothing. When she spoke again, it was with forced calm. 

“Consider the implications, Binghe. I’m your master, and seven years older than you besides—”

“Are you, Shizun?” Luo Binghe asked, his measured tone nearly a threat in and of itself. “That’s very interesting. It’s not at all how many years older than me ‘Shen Qingqiu’ is supposed to be.”

Shen Qingqiu froze, standing there with her white stockings dangling from her hand. “I can’t discuss this,” she said after a moment. The System rang loud in her ears, and hovered, obnoxious, in her peripheral vision.

“Can’t,” Luo Binghe asked, “or won’t?”

“I can’t right now,” Shen Qingqiu snapped, busying herself at the vanity with finding a more presentable robe than last night’s thoroughly-sullied affair. 

“I’ll think on that,” Luo Binghe said, rising himself. He pulled on his rumpled robes and crossed the room to stand before his master. “And on the strange words my shizun uses when she can’t control her tongue. But when you ask me to control mine, and to speak no more of this, isn’t the problem really that you never want to discuss your own feelings?”

Discuss them? Whenever possible, Shen Qingqiu tried not to even feel them!

“You say that anything between us is impossible because of the power you hold over me, and the difference in our years,” Luo Binghe continued, catching Shen Qingqiu’s evasive eye and holding her gaze. “It’s true that you’ll always be my mistress; I’d have it no other way. You formed my character; that’s inescapably true. But when you are seven hundred and eighty one and I am seven hundred and seventy four, no one will remember our ages, let alone care about the minor difference in them. I’m twenty now, and it’s you who hold power over me—not your position, which I wouldn’t respect as I do in lesser hands. I have been in love with you for six years, Shizun. How many more must pass before you think me committed, and grown enough to know my own mind?”

“You could talk your way into heaven itself,” Shen Qingqiu said, finding her own voice hollow and flat. Once Luo Binghe really decided on a romantic objective, had he ever been talked out of it? Shen Qingqiu felt a growing terror that she’d find herself won over, just as a point of pride—who couldn’t Luo Binghe conquer? How many snooty tsundere princesses had obediently spread their legs for him after putting up a token fight? Even with all the benefit of her peculiar hindsight, if Luo Binghe pursued this, Shen Qingqiu didn’t fancy her odds.

“You’re always generous with me,” Luo Binghe admitted. “As though you can’t bear to deny me anything.” 

Yes, that was exactly the problem.

“But I don’t want your compliance, Shizun,” Luo Binghe continued. “I want you to love me as I love you, and to admit it. To be happy about what we are to one another. If you aren’t, then what does any of it signify?” A moment passed, in which case Luo Binghe tried to find some yielding softness in her expression. Failing to, he collected himself and continued. “So I’ll keep my silence on these matters for a year and a day,” he proposed, “to allow you time to think on them. If you’ll agree to that, then I’ve only two requests.”

The offer came to Shen Qingqiu like a raft in a flood. She hadn’t even yet thought to worry about her closest relationship being swept away by this rising tide. She didn’t believe Luo Binghe would try to revenge himself upon his shizun for her having refused to be caught up in his harem, or anything ridiculous. But even his simply resenting her would hurt terribly.

“Name them,” Shen Qingqiu said.

“First, that you treat me just as you usually would,” Luo Binghe said. “That nothing changes between us, and that I don’t lose your fond care.”

Shen Qingqiu waved a fanless hand, feeling somewhat naked without her signature accessory (and, of course, because she was still dressed only in blankets, clutched high under her arms). “I’ll try,” she agreed. “But I’m never going to stop caring about you, Binghe. I never could.”

Luo Binghe regarded Shen Qingqiu as though she’d just said something objectionable, rather than reiterating a truth she’d often tried to help her charge to believe in. Perhaps they couldn’t be together like Luo Binghe thought he wanted right now (probably because he didn’t have any other healthy models of relating to still-alive women: fuck this genre). But that didn’t mean Shen Qingqiu was going to cast her favourite disciple aside. He’d always be able to rely on his shizun.

After a moment, Luo Binghe nodded and continued. “Second, if you can, I’d like you to tell me the name your parents gave you.”

…damn. The protagonist really was no joke. How much had he managed to figure out? And could she tell him even that? 

Shen Qingqiu opened her mouth to try. Even if the System had her sit through a Punishment Protocol afterwards for her trouble, she had to at least attempt this, for Binghe’s sake. 

“Yuan,” she managed, the System mercifully keeping its silence. “Yuan, as in ‘wall’.” 

Her friends had often thrown in an ‘and how’ at this point, in tribute to Shen Yuan’s containment and layers of reserve. She’d tell you everything about a manga in passionate detail, but had famously forgotten to inform anyone that she was heading across the country for university. 

“Everyone always said it was fitting,” she added, a little lamely. They’d also said the Yuan for ‘complaint’ would have done just as well, but she chose not to tell Luo Binghe that part.

It wasn’t that she resented those comments, exactly. It was just that ‘Yuan’ was rather a dull, flat name. It was probably well-suited to a woman who’d always been ‘mature beyond her years’ but was now getting on in those, too: receding into the architecture without ever having done much with her life. A woman who hedged every bet and called it sensibleness, and who’d always found criticism easier than creation. Who now found teaching easier than taking action. Who’d reared up Luo Binghe just to give him away, without ever making an effort to keep him. Who’d rather never hold Luo Binghe at all than live with the knowledge that one day he’d inevitably rip himself out of her grasp, taking Shen Yuan’s walled-up heart with him. 

Maybe she was a coward, but Shen Qingqiu was unwilling to destroy herself just to offer Luo Binghe some scrap of momentary, forgettable contentment. She was not going to be a chapter in this man’s story. She’d spent too many years wondering why girls in books never checked under the bed to find the murderer hiding there to wind up being Luo Binghe’s first victim. If she never loved Luo Binghe like that, then Shen Yuan would never have to find out exactly how unequal to her own best judgement she really was. 

“And so it is,” Luo Binghe said, making Shen Qingqiu recall with a start that she’d called her own name appropriate. It stung a little, that he agreed. But before she could reconcile herself to already losing the importance she’d briefly enjoyed in his inexperienced eyes (apparently she’d been some kind of first love; who’d have thought?), Luo Binghe continued. “Without walls, you can have no shelter. They’re the most essential element of a home. And for years now, you’ve been mine.”

Fuck Luo Binghe. Fuck his glib words, and the easy way they prised Shen Qingqiu wide open. Did he think she enjoyed this? That Shen Qingqiu liked how their relationship was being strained by this—liked the way she had to hurt Luo Binghe just to keep herself together? 

“I thought,” she managed, clearing her throat to keep from sounding as though it was tight with unvoiced sobs, “you said we wouldn’t —”

“And so we won’t,” Luo Binghe replied softly. Probably because he could hear how upset she was—and wasn’t that humiliating? 

“Not a word, from here on out.” Shen Qingqiu’s picture-perfect disciple made his shizun a formal bow, redolent with respect. “I’ll go neaten myself, and settle with the inn-keeper.” He slipped out of the door, efficiently and quietly

Gracefully allowing her time for her own preparations, then; so considerate, her Binghe. Or rather, Shen Qingqiu thought, laughing to herself somewhat unpleasantly, everyone’s Luo Binghe but hers. Half the named women in the fucking world’s Luo Binghe: one three-thousandth of a husband to each of them.

The journey home was stiff and awkward. Luo Binghe made no mention of the visible bruise he had evidently sucked into Shen Qingqiu's neck at some point after she'd stopped being able to process what was happening to her. Several chapters which Shen Qingqiu was trying not to think about now had had a great deal to say about demonic claiming bites. Without properly understanding what he was doing—without even being enough of a realised demon for his canines to have descended, at this point in the story—instinct had driven Luo Binghe to try to mark his lover. One day he’d be able to control his fangs at will, and would hand out claiming bites like business cards. 

One day, Luo Binghe would do a lot of things with a great many people.

That night, Shen Qingqiu sobbed herself to sleep. She did it dead silently, so as not to have to endure the eviscerating awfulness of Luo Binghe’s coming in to check on her. It was an odd reaction, but not an entirely incomprehensible one. Probably Shen Qingqiu was mourning her missed chances, as much as anything. It was unlikely that she’d ever ever marry anyone, here. Maybe she’d have liked to belong to someone, someday. 

Really, she was just emotionally overwrought. She’d had a stressful mission—they both had. The sooner they could put it behind them, the better.

Initially, Shen Qingqiu fumbled the aftermath. If Luo Binghe, her disciple, actually thought himself in love with her, that indicated Shen Qingqiu’s behaviour might have inadvertently led him down this particular garden path. Perhaps she hadn’t been half so good at banishing the boy’s highly-sexualised destiny to the back of her mind while training him as she’d imagined. Propriety had better come late than never, and so Shen Qingqiu tried to subtly pull back—to behave more circumspectly, so as not to give Luo Binghe false expectations.

He called her on it within a day. 

Her tone a degree too stiff and formal, Shen Qingqiu said that she was thinking of eating in the dining hall that evening after giving lessons, for convenience’s sake, and that Luo Binghe ought to see to his own needs. Her hand rested on the front door of their cottage. After avoiding Luo Binghe all afternoon, she’d tried to toss the remark out in leaving—as though the threat were casual rather than a declaration of hostilities. For his part, Luo Binghe would far rather she’d slapped him across the face than refused his food.

“You promised me nothing would change,” Luo Binghe said quietly. “You said I wouldn’t lose you, Shizun.”

“What if I’ve hurt you?” Shen Qingqiu blurted, not knowing what she’d say, or even that speak, before she’d done it. She turned to face him, her expression harried. “What if, without knowing it, from a very young age I made you think that you had to offer me more of yourself than was proper to be safe?” 

Luo Binghe exhaled. “Shizun,” he said after a moment, weighing his words, “you’ve been in my nightmares. You know I wasn’t reared gently, and you can guess the kinds of things I’ve seen on the streets. You know I was a pretty child. Don’t you think I’ve been offered a stick of sugar-candy to do things I didn’t want to? Don’t you think I’d have known to resent even an echo of that pressure?” He shook his head, crossing the room to grab Shen Qingqiu’s shawl from where she’d left it hanging over a screen. “You never disgraced yourself. Since I was fourteen, I’ve never once been made to feel unsafe at your hands. Not in any way, Shizun.” 

“There are less direct forms of pressure,” Shen Qingqiu tried, thinking of high school teachers in the news for messing about with their students, of grooming: of every awful thing.

“I’m like you, in some ways,” Luo Binghe countered. “I can be swayed, if I choose, but seldom pushed to anything. Your care made me strong enough to know what I need to be happy, and secure enough to work to attain it. Have you ever known me to do anything I don’t want to? For anyone I don’t respect?”

He handed her the wrap she’d nearly left without. 

“You’ll be cold without it,” he said, with half a smile fighting its way onto his face. “And you’d be miserable eating canteen pap meant for little children.”

Every sect member of Shen Qingqiu’s generation had domestic kitchen arrangements. These ranged from private hearths to shared, semi-communal dinners in the adult dormitories they occupied apartments in. But before she’d started eating Luo Binghe’s cooking, Shen Qingqiu’s bland, ascetic fare had indeed hailed from the disciple’s dining halls. Perhaps the Original Goods had been paranoid about poison, and had wanted to make it tough to catch her out specifically. She’d been paranoid about everything else under the sun. 

Despite her best intentions Shen Qingqiu found herself laughing in response to Luo Binghe’s secret cattiness, just as though it were a normal day. 

“Treat me as you usually would,” Luo Binghe pressed. “It’s only what we agreed to.”

Her disciple's reassurances didn’t answer all Shen Qingqiu’s fears. Could Luo Binghe himself truly know the shape of the influence she’d had on him? Yes, he was intelligent, and more personally experienced with some ugly facets of life than Shen Yuan had ever had cause to be. But even if Luo Binghe were a grown man now (which Shen Qingqiu supposed she had to reluctantly concede he was), she would still be the woman who’d reared him throughout his adolescence. That would always mean something. 

Shen Qingqiu supposed there was no altering what had happened. Neither of them had acted with anything but good intentions, and neither of them had definitively crossed the lines of propriety during Luo Binghe’s youth. They were left, now, to try to treat one another well in the world as it stood. They didn’t and couldn’t live in some ideal approximation of life, where nothing was ever ugly or complicated.  

That evening, Shen Qingqiu and her disciple played word games with the component parts of characters. Such things were considered elegant parlour amusements among literati. She’d introduced Luo Binghe to them when he was young in a bid to improve his literacy. As Luo Binghe’s strength as a scholar had grown, the two of them had continued to challenge one another with more complicated puzzles. Luo Binghe had come to love competing, provided there wasn’t any prospect of either shame or awful risk hanging over him. He playfully pouted when he lost, but beyond that he never seemed to mind. 

Tonight Shen Qingqiu could feel Luo Binghe’s relief in simply being with her, without any strain in their habitual intimacy besides light, residual traces of awkwardness. A flush, here and there. Shen Qingqiu pulled up her sleeve to place a weiqi piece without disturbing the board and thus bared a white forearm; Luo Binghe hastily looked away. Luo Binghe grinned at her when he began to win their game, and Shen Qingqiu brought her fan up to her face that she might look less taken with him.

“How are your meridians?” Luo Binghe remembered to ask before they retired. It had been some weeks since he’d last tended to them, and when he’d checked the progress of the curse two nights previously he’d been focused on several other things besides her old injury.

“What is it?” he asked a moment later when Shen Qingqiu didn’t immediately answer. She looked almost perturbed.

“They’re fine,” Shen Qingqiu said. “In fact from now on, they’re always going to be,” she cleared her throat, “fine.”

With a frown, Luo Binghe took his shizun’s wrist and felt her pulse. With wide eyes, he looked back up at her. 

“It’s gone?" he asked, incredulous. “Was it some effect of the toxin? Fighting poison with poison?”

Shen Qingqiu winced. “Not—of the toxin, no.”

“Dual cultivation, then?” Luo Binghe demanded. 

Shen Qingqiu looked ever-more uncomfortable. “Not as such.”

“Shizun!” Luo Binghe said, exasperated. 

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said, looking flustered and sounding annoyed, “you know very well that a heavenly demon has certain unique abilities—”

“Me?” Luo Binghe asked, incredulous. “All it took was dual cultivation with me? Did you know?” He surveyed Shen Qingqiu, who chose not to respond. “Yes, it seems you did. Since I confessed what I was to you and you worked out what the huadian meant, at least. I was seventeen, then. And you were just never going to say a word about it, I suppose.” He huffed a laugh. “Shizun.”

Luo Binghe’s expression passed through a whole flip book’s worth of states. Annoyance with her, amusement, and a particular form of interest Shen Qingqiu recognised from the previous night. When he wasn’t concealing his feelings, Luo Binghe he really did have a dangerously expressive face. 

“I’m glad,” Luo Binghe said, with decision. “To have you safe, and to finally be able to heal the blow you took in saving me—I’m so glad, Shizun.”

He squeezed the hand that had been wounded for his sake, held it for a moment and then bid his master goodnight.

It was hard for Shen Qingqiu to hear such words with complete equanimity. For one thing, they were a testament to her precious disciple’s care for her. Even after their horrible argument the previous morning, Luo Binghe still earnestly wished her well. For another, the last time Luo Binghe had gazed at her adoringly and told her he was ‘so glad’, he’d been inside her.  

For Shen Qingqiu, the following weeks were simultaneously as comfortable as her life here had ever been and subtly unsettling. She and Luo Binghe had their established rhythms, and Shen Qingqiu found it almost impossible not to be at ease in his presence. Yet she was aware of him in new ways, now—of the adult shape his body had taken, and of the space he occupied in the house. Of the lilt in his voice when he addressed her, and of how very often they touched.

When Luo Binghe’s public guan ceremony finally came, he knelt before her in the presence of the better part of the sect. He accepted his honours and his hair-crown from his mistress’s hands while intently staring up into her eyes. Shen Qingqiu found herself keenly aware that the passion in his expression did not entirely stem from filial devotion. Shen Qingqiu had chosen an elegant courtesy name for her favoured disciple, but baring this formal presentation, Luo Binghe had asked her not to use it—not to think of him that way.

“Call me whatever you think best before others,” he said, “but I’ll always be your Binghe, Shizun.”

After the investiture, Luo Binghe rose smoothly to stand beside his mistress as her acknowledged personal disciple: a young master of the Peaks. He circulated around the celebration banquet in his honour, which he’d never gotten to enjoy in the original story. Shen Qingqiu watched him laugh with his sect-siblings. Occasionally he turned, making sure he knew where in the room his mistress stood, and favoured her with the proud grin of a young man who’d just come of age in style. She looked on him fondly: lithe and adult and here, safe from the Abyss’s torments. So handsome, in his best robes and shining new crown, that when he walked, people turned where they stood to watch him pass by. When he talked, people leaned to listen—to hear Luo Binghe speak. When they left his presence, people lingered to look on Luo Binghe for just a second longer. For all her own familiarity with the young man, Shen Qingqiu understood the impulse. Luo Binghe was so beautiful that sometimes glancing at him caught her unawares, and made her ache. 

When they parted that night, Shen Qingqiu nodded to acknowledge Luo Binghe as though he were a quite respectable peer. “Luo zongshi,” she teased.

“Honoured master,” Luo Binghe returned with a bow and a grin, as though he knew of Xiu Ya only by reputation. But for all they were joking with one another, Luo Binghe’s voice was pitched low. 

When Luo Binghe straightened, his eyes rested on his mistress with considerable weight. She could tell that he wanted to touch her, and that he was restraining himself. He’d said nothing inappropriate, of course—even the quality of his gaze was faultless. But Shen Qingqiu knew what he wanted all the same, and for an insane moment she thought, ‘if he asks me, perhaps I ought to let him. This is a sort of birthday, isn’t it? My Binghe should have anything he wants, if it’s his birthday.’ 

(And Shen Qingqiu was startled to find herself contemplating that some intriguing, talented ‘Luo zongshi’, whose history and destiny she did not know, could have asked things of her which she might have freely agree to give him.)

Eventually, the System figured out that Shen Qingqiu wasn’t just putting up a token resistance to being included in the Luo Binghe Harem Pokemon Collection (not even as the Pikachu), and so began to meddle. It took to referring to this period as the Year of Azure Orbs. It attempted to tell Shen Qingqiu things she’d no business knowing about the protagonist’s satisfaction levels. It introduced some brand-new Heartbreak Mechanic. When all this failed to shake its host into generic compliance, the System went on an outright warpath. That year, Shen Qingqiu tripped and fell into more wife plots than she had in the previous six combined. (And the less said about the shared dream incident, the better.) She and Luo Binghe couldn’t fight so much as a yao without some quirk of topography causing them to accidentally roll on top of one another mid-battle. 

The system claimed it wasn’t responsible for all of these incidents, but was Shen Qingqiu just supposed to believe that?

At one point, both cultivators were simultaneously disarmed in a fight. Their swords flew in opposite directions, and Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe were forced to catch and wield one another’s blades. Fighting with someone else’s spiritual weapon ought to have been incredibly difficult, if not impossible. But apparently, after years of combat at each other’s sides (or, according to the System, due to their ‘soul-level affinity! uwu!!’), Luo Binghe knew how to flow into the graceful forms Xiu Ya leant itself to, whereas Shen Qingqiu understood how to be sufficiently bold and unyielding to handle Zheng Yang. They didn’t bother trying to trade back until the battle was at an end. To his credit, Luo Binghe tried to conceal his irritating smugness—but only a little.

Shen Qingqiu remembered him drawing Xiu Ya on the demon who’d mortally injured her when She Hualing had attacked. He’d been all of fourteen at the time, and Xiu Ya had simply been near at hand. The sword had been re-written just for Shen Yuan’s ‘Qingqiu’ by a System-level intervention, and was as bonded to her as though she’d plucked it from Wan Jian herself. Even then, Xiu Ya had made itself ready and dangerous in Luo Binghe’s hands—had answered his call automatically, the two of them moving in unison in their mistress’s defence. When twenty year old Luo Binghe handed Xiu Ya back to his lord with a flourish, she snatched it from his palm with a closed-off expression and ill-grace.

Show off.

The nadir undoubtedly came when Luo Binghe filled his water-gourd at the Spring of Revelation. They were out hunting a rampaging Questing Beast, which was especially weird because not only had this thing not been in the book, Shen Qingqiu knew for a fucking fact that Airplane hadn’t even read Once and Future King. They’d discussed it in a comment once. She’d tried to make a point about Luo Binghe and White’s Arthur and Lancelot. Airplane had called her a nerd. Airplane had called her a nerd! An entire FandomWank post had been dedicated to her response, which had been likened to the US air-striking Nagasaki just to really show Russia that it could. Shen Yuan had never seen The Simpsons, but was now intimately familiar with some gif therefrom (about a clown beating a burglar?). Anyway.

“Right,” Shen Qingqiu said, eyeing a desiccated, unfortunately-unmistakable fewmet. (Sort of a question-mark shape: yes, really. ‘Riddle me piss’.) “The Beast was clearly here, but days ago. Maybe just before it attacked the first village. Binghe, thoughts?”

“Well,” Luo Binghe said, stoppering the water gourd he’d just taken a deep pull from, “I suppose right now I’m mostly thinking about nipple piercings and whether you’d ever let me, and if you did, whether I could string a delicate chain between the rings and just tug.” 

Luo Binghe’s eyes widened. Before she could think the better of it, Shen Qingqiu slapped him hard across the face. 

“Shizun, I am so sorry!” Luo Binghe said, reeling back and rubbing his cheek. “I have no idea why I said that? Except for the fact that I was thinking it. And about shoving my cock between your breasts when they're strung together, pulled tight. And now I’m thinking about circumstances where you might slap me like that again.”

Shen Qingqiu’s head swivelled towards the innocuous-looking pond. Oh no. She knew this pond. In due course, Luo Binghe was scheduled to fuck a nymph who’d just confessed her secret passion for him on that gently-mossed rock over there. No wonder the normally-docile Questing Beast had lost its literal shit (per the questionable fewmets) and run, screaming what were doubtless terrible truths (in Questeese), into a nearby village. Maybe it had been searching for a cure, or trying to get help. 

This, coincidentally, was the reason you didn’t bring Great Not-White Hunter Liu Qingge on this sort of mission, unless you were really sure that whatever you were after absolutely needed killing. They’d learned to have whole conversations in the years since the botched proposal, but the man had his limits, and ‘de-escalation’ was one of them. Liu Qingge had but one solution to problems, and it was not court arbitration. 

“Oh Binghe, I’m sorry,” Shen Qingqiu said, turning towards her disciple. “I know you didn’t mean to say it! It’s this water, it has certain properties—and that’s probably why the Beast—look, just don’t talk! Shizun will find a way to sort this out. All right?”

Luo Binghe nodded. He then moved his shut mouth as though it was full of marbles and he was learning to discuss the weather conditions prevalent on the Spanish plains. 

“It’s compelling me to,” Luo Binghe spat out after a minute.

“Do you want a gag?” Shen Qingqiu asked. 

“I don’t think I’d like it, even in play,” Luo Binghe admitted, looking horrified by his own words. “They remind me of how the other-you used to have Ming Fan shove a horse-bit in my mouth before a beating, because she thought screaming was unseemly and I carried on so much. I can’t breathe well with a gag in. I feel like I’ll panic, and maybe throw up, and then maybe I’d choke on it? God I don’t want to say this, because it sounds so disgusting and weak, and you’ll feel so awful, despite everything you’ve done for me since. And I’m almost certain that wasn’t even you! But it still terrifies me because she looked like you, and if you really hurt me then I feel like I must have deserved it.” 

“You never did,” Shen Qingqiu said fervently, feeling rather like Luo Binghe had predicted she would. “Binghe, why haven’t I ever told you I’m sorry that happened to you? I am, I'm so—”

“Please don’t be, Shizun. It’s the last thing I want. And I know—of course I know. Fuck. I should go somewhere you can’t hear me, so it’s less humiliating, but we’re never supposed to be alone on a mission. I can’t leave you alone when we’re tracking something I don’t know the strength of. And when I’m vulnerable, I’d always rather be with you,” Luo Binghe let slip. “I never like to part from you. I didn’t want to even when you took my proposal less seriously than you did Liu Qingge’s. I was so angry with you, and I hate being. Every day I try so hard not to tell you what I feel, not to say anything that will frighten you. I guess we’re lucky that I’ve had so much practice. Even now I’m trying to push the worst of it off my tongue—to babble so I don’t say anything worse, and to only want small, safe things. I hate this. Sometimes I hate myself, for wanting so many things that scare you.”

Luo Binghe looked furious with himself. Hot tears of rage stood in his eyes, and Shen Qingqiu couldn’t blame him for any of it. 

“I’m not afraid of you,” she promised, stepping forward to gather Luo Binghe in her arms and hugging him tightly. “I haven’t ever been afraid of you. It’s other things, Binghe. It’s always been more complicated than that.”

After a moment in which Luo Binghe evidently thought about nothing but the physical sensation of their holding one another, Shen Qingqiu pulled back.

“Now that we know the source of the problem, I think I have an idea as to the solution. I assumed the outbursts were random, but they probably aren’t. There are a few things the Beast could eat to cure this, and I think it’s trying to find them. It wanted charcoal, at the forge. That can neutralise some compounds in the stomach, but it must not have worked. It tried clear water at the mill, to flush its system clean. Then it ransacked the tea plantation, then the doctor’s establishment. I think it’s headed towards a bigger city now, looking for an apothecary—trying to find strong du. Your blood ought to work, as far as that goes. If we can convince it to swallow some, that could be the end of it. Your own system ought to clear in a few hours—I don’t know of any jincan stronger than a Heavenly Demon’s blood.”

“Shizun knows everything,” Luo Binghe said, smiling at her. “And even her ankles are attractive.” (The smile dropped off his face again, and he brought his knuckles to his mouth as though he were trying to choke himself with them.) 

Shen Qingqiu patted his head sympathetically. “Come on then, Binghe.”

As they travelled, Luo Binghe regaled his Shizun for a further ninety minutes about his plan to throw blood into the Beast’s mouth; how he didn’t get Li He’s poetry and thought he might be overrated (an obvious and fairly desperate attempt at distracting himself and keeping the conversation blandly civil); the time he’d found her ‘private appliance’ (his words) while cleaning when he was fifteen, swooned and had to go lie down; how he’d matured since and would be able to postpone any swooning in the event of such an interesting discovery (Shen Qingqiu didn’t actually think her dildo was that interesting, but to each his own); and how he hadn’t heard her laugh all day and missed it. 

“Do I make you as happy as you make me?” Luo Binghe wondered aloud as they boxed in their query. “What would that take? If you don’t love me, who could you love? How could I be him, or her—whoever it is that you could want, I mean. Whoever’s something like worthy of you. Shit.”

Shen Qingqiu flushed dark, pretending for Luo Binghe’s sake that she’d heard none of that. 

“I don’t want you to hear this, but I can’t stand you ignoring me either,” Luo Binghe admitted, gesturing to point out the beast’s fresh tracks. “Aren’t you starving for another night together? I know I’m gagging for you—but then you’re so much better than I am at setting it aside, when you want something. Or was I not good enough? I could do better. I could please you so well, if you just let me try. I already make you come harder than that stupid toy in your cabinet—I know I do, because you wept for me, and I’ve never once heard you screaming for it. Shizun, if this Beast weren’t dangerous and this mission weren’t urgent I would knock myself unconscious with a tree this instant.” 

“Don’t talk like that,” Shen Qingqiu said, spotting the Beast and nudging Luo Binghe to direct his attention to it.

“Oh thank fuck,” Luo Binghe exhaled. Shen Qingqiu did not know how to feel about today’s several proofs that Luo Binghe had managed to pick up all her own profanities. She wished she could just tell him that of course he made her happy. But it felt like a violation of his privacy to admit she’d attended to any of this.

Another day, Shen Qingqiu asked Luo Binghe whether he’d seen much of Liu Mingyan lately. He made an unusually sour face and returned her a shocking, bitchy joke about the girl naturally being one of his thousands of conquests. Shen Qingqiu was visibly upset for a shi. She ate her dinner and passed the evening almost in silence. 

Luo Binghe felt by turns confused, frustrated and outright insulted. Was his shizun truly convinced he spent his free hours loving and leaving some younger, less-grown-into-herself, budget copy of Shen Qingqiu? Was his beloved truly threatened by hordes of faceless, unseen Potential Women? They spent almost every hour together. When would he have had the time? What did he have to do to show his constancy? 

Again and again, Luo Binghe turned Shen Qingqiu's words over in his mind: there was no vow he could make her that she would believe. 

The seasons slipped away from them, until it was almost Luo Binghe’s birthday. He’d be twenty one: the age Shen Yuan had been when she’d died. Shen Qingqiu knew that the year and a day Luo Binghe had promised her was coming to a close, and that with it, some reckoning was drawing closer. Luo Binghe didn’t seem to be getting over all this. He wasn’t seeing much of anyone, from what Shen Qingqiu could tell when she steeled herself to ask after his affairs in an effort to promote them. 

For her own part, she hadn’t given a moment’s serious thought to taking Luo Binghe up on what he alone saw as a legitimate offer. She’d never really thought of herself as anyone’s potential wife, in a concrete sense. Taking care of Luo Binghe’s heart in that manner would be a vital, ponderous responsibility while it lasted—for as long as the young man cared for her. Then, when Luo Binghe eventually put her out of his mind, that would be it: the end of her own romantic life. What would she do, guest-star in the harem dramatics as a dull, sensible, motherly figure? Occasionally show up in the background to provide the cultivation factoid that would enable Luo Binghe to power through his next Wife Quest? No fucking thank you. The very idea cut her.

Shen Qingqiu guiltily considered sending Luo Binghe away somewhere to distract him. To give him time to think, away from her influence over him. She could send him right into the plot-arc-holding arms of one of the less awful wives, or straight to the door of some demon with a mid-level power-up montage out back on cinder blocks. It wasn’t only her who’d suffer for allowing things to go on as they were. Her core worries remained fundamentally unanswered; better to put an end to the long-running farce of Monogamous Househusband Luo Binghe than to let her own reasonable resistance be worn down regardless. Better to cauterise a wound than to let it fester. 

A full ke’s worth of combat elapsed before the demon lord who’d ambushed Shen Qingqiu in a tea shop (wielding an OP weapon Shen Qingqiu hadn’t expected to have to deal with for decades of narrative time) bothered to announce why exactly she was trying to kill the Lady of Qing Jing. Granted, Shen Qingqiu hadn’t asked. You typically didn’t have to! People were usually very keen to let you know what business they were here to kill you on! 

The scream of the unsheathed Lamenting Blade made Shen Qingqiu’s bones rattle and her teeth itch. The cry was pitched at a frequency most demons found mildly annoying, but which threatened to shatter human ear drums. The finely-developed senses of a cultivator were especially vulnerable to the vibrations. In the book, Luo Binghe’s dual nature had made him at once more susceptible to the weapon than its wielder had been and more able to withstand its onslaught than his human subordinates were. After finally defeating his opponent, Luo Binghe had claimed the intriguing blade as a spoil. Yet he’d never been able to use it without employing protective gear that undercut his own sense of balance in a fight. This was all very interesting, when the plot device in question wasn’t loudly careening towards Shen Qingqiu’s face.

Shen Qingqiu was in the process of dodging, and would have come through the parry all right. Minus, perhaps, a chunk of her hair—but really Shen Qingqiu thought she had more than enough of that to give (and hey, maybe she’d look cute with a hime cut?). But before she could get dubcon bangs, a familiar sword swung into her field of vision and forced the wailing weapon back. 

His teeth gritted against the pain of the noise, Luo Binghe pushed his opponent out of her striking position. (Said attacker had never even introduced herself: rude.)

“Get away from my shizun,” he growled, his eyes flashing in an undeniably demonic fashion. 

Shen Qingqiu had been wondering when Luo Binghe would turn up. They had been supposed to meet in this tea shop around now, but even if they hadn’t been, by nature Luo Binghe never missed out on a plot point. 

The demoness, well-heeled in very fine armour, surveyed the interloper. “Would you look at that? A little mongrel in service to a cultivator. Stand aside. You may be a traitor, but you needn’t die for your human master.”

Luo Binghe smiled at the demon lady’s ‘generosity’—all teeth. “Allow me to rephrase that. You’ve raised your hand against my wife, and so I am going to cut it off at the wrist. Is that simple enough for you?” 

Shen Qingqiu flushed at Luo Binghe’s casual use of the (incorrect!) term. But then it was an obvious rhetorical power-move, he was clearly agitated, and this really wasn’t the time to tell him off. The original Luo Binghe was forever rescuing this or that imperilled waifu—the line probably felt natural in his mouth.

Shen Qingqiu took advantage of the distraction Luo Binghe was creating for her to get out of the corner she’d been backed into and around the other side of her opponent. 

“Did you think you could assassinate Linguangjun and only die for it?” the demoness sneered, whirling to face Shen Qingqiu where the Peak Lord now stood. “That feeble fop Tianlangjun may have been without strong retainers, but not my lord. Your kind goes too far; a bitch like you needs made an example of.”

“You’ve certainly taken your time returning the compliment,” Luo Binghe said while he watched the demoness for an opening, using his words to strike precisely at the visible crack in the vassal-lord’s pride. She seemed to have waited until she came into possession of this truly superior weapon before she’d been willing to go up against a cultivator of Shen Qingqiu’s stature. 

The ice demon bared her teeth at Luo Binghe and hissed, finally treating him like another demon she was challenging—whose mate she was attempting to slaughter in front of him. She turned and rushed the younger half-demon, sending Luo Binghe evasively spinning around the tea house’s columns. Luo Binghe used a table for leverage as he turned, then tossed the whole affair at his opponent as he passed. He used this momentary obscuration of the demon's vision to jump behind the shop counter in search of something to plug his ears. There he found a kneeling Shen Qingqiu, already using her qi to warm and shape some candle wax. She was keeping her eye on the enemy’s position in the reflection on the blade of her sword. 

Crouching beside her, Luo Binghe took up a guard’s pose while his shizun worked. The demoness would very likely recover and be on them in mere moments. 

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu asked, her voice very level, “however did you recognise that name?”

Ah. ‘Linguangjun’.

Luo Binghe opened his mouth to lie to her, and Shen Qingqiu spoke again before he could trouble himself to do it. 

“And how did you know that some time had passed since Linguangjun’s death?” She asked, shaping a third earplug. “Do demonic court circulars reach your ears even at Qing Jing? And my, how strange, that you haven’t thought to ask whether your mistress actually had anything to do with the death of the Duke of the North.”

“Shizun, it seemed dangerous!” Luo Binghe snapped, rounding on his master. “And to go with no back up but Shang shishu? How could I fail to borrow a few of the talismans in his bag and follow you?”

“At sixteen,” Shen Qingqiu said in an ice-cold voice, looking up at him—her hands still melting and shaping the wax. “Against my reasonable and explicit orders, which were for your protection!“

“Well I had to hide rather far back to escape detection, and so I didn’t catch a great deal of your conversation,” Luo Binghe sniped. “Only enough to set me wondering about a great many interesting points. But when the thing was done, I did hear you tell Shang Qinghua that I’d be safe now. So whatever the reason you killed him, and whatever the reason you can’t tell me, I was hardly uninvolved to begin with, was I Shizun? ”

Shen Qingqiu lifted her wax in pinched fingers, looking at it intently. Luo Binghe’s expression softened, as though he too were being warmed and shaped by her. 

“Of course I did what I could to protect you,” he said, “even if I wasn’t strong enough to help you as I wanted to, then. We always want to protect one another. Whatever way you love me, we’re still family. Shizun, duck.”

Shen Qingqiu automatically threw herself to the ground, face up and sword in hand. She managed to wedge in an earplug while the screaming blade slammed down where she’d been sitting only a moment ago. Shen Qingqiu used her qi and a flick of her fingers to send two more earplugs rolling over to Luo Binghe.

The demoness said something muffled, and likely unimportant. Shen Qingqiu, rising to her feet fully-protected, caught the gist regardless. Their opponent hadn’t taken so long to locate them because she’d been that winded by Luo Binghe’s spontaneous redecoration. Mobeijun was a portal master, but the craft was known to many of his people—including, apparently, some of his uncle’s retainers. The demon lord standing against them had cut a hole right in the centre of the teashop. 

Shen Qingqiu had only to look through that gap in the world for a moment—had only to catch a glimpse of a blood-red sky and a vast, volcanic plain—before she reeled back, grabbing Luo Binghe’s forearm and clawing her nails into it. Sheer panic coursed through her. No. It had been almost four years! They’d come so far, she’d worked so fucking hard! She’d killed to avoid this!

And now Shen Qingqiu knew what the demoness had meant in promising her more than death as recompense for her crimes. Shen Qingqiu knew exactly what awaited her on the other side of that portal: every word of it. Honestly? She’d much rather just be stabbed. 

Everything that came next occurred in a strange near-silence that made Shen Qingqiu feel disembodied, that made everything around her feel unreal. But unimpeded by earplugs, the System pinged merrily inside Shen Qingqiu’s head: signalling the start of a countdown. 

Shen Qingqiu dragged a confused Luo Binghe towards the shop's door, only to find that in her alarm, she’d left herself unguarded. The Lamenting Blade swung out for her throat. Luo Binghe lunged at the demon lord, knocking her sword-arm away by bodily shoving her back towards her own portal. 

Later, Shen Qingqiu would remember the expression on Luo Binghe’s face: absolutely resolute in its decision.

The demon stabbed Luo Binghe instead. The blade pierced right through his unarmored torso. Impaled, Luo Binghe grit his teeth and hacked at the demon’s wrist, just as he’d promised. Zheng Yang slid through the demon's bone as neatly as if Luo Binghe had been using his cai dao on a lotus root. But even as the demon lord teetered at the precipice of her own portal, she reared up and bit Luo Binghe savagely. Her teeth pierced the fabric of his robe and dug down into the meat of his arm. The demoness might be falling, but she was intent on dragging her enemy down with her. 

Shen Qingqiu scrambled to Luo Binghe’s aid, but the make-shift ear plugs weren’t fool proof. The closer she got to the combatants, the more her inner ear folded in on itself. Her balance crumbled—her body fought her heart’s insistence that she needed to move forward, to get closer to her disciple. Glutting itself on Luo Binghe’s blood, the awful blade shrieked its victory. 

Pushing the demoness off of him and down into the Abyss, Luo Binghe turned. He was only just too late to catch his own balance. The sword in his gut made him stagger, weighing him down. Shen Qingqiu reached him, and for a delirious instant, she thought she’d done so in time. There was a firmness in the catch of the very tips of their fingers. But the sensation was illusory. Gravity and the sick suction of a closing portal ripped Luo Binghe away and shoved her back with reciprocal force. Shen Qingqiu saw Luo Binghe mouth ‘wait’, and then an innocuous tea shop slipped closed around him, like a curtain being drawn over a bed someone lay dead in. 

“Zero!” the System squealed.

Shen Qingqiu collapsed on the floor. She didn’t think to take her ear plugs out until the shop’s owner came back to ask who the hell had attacked her and what the hell had happened to his tea room. She thus missed all the wretched noises she must have made in the intervening period. She only realised the problem when she found herself muttering “what?” in response to the frantic movements of the shop keeper’s mouth. She only realised that she must have been making some fairly awful noises when she had to clean ugly, cosmetic-slimed tears off her face with the back of her hand. Which was probably for the best, all things considered. Shen Qingqiu had never liked to listen to herself think.

Mostly, Shen Qingqiu thought she was taking it well. 

Well-ish. 

As well as could reasonably be expected. 

For the most part, to all appearances, she was fine, probably. Her disciple was probably still alive because he was Luo Binghe, and the centre of more worlds than hers. The story had changed, here and there, but PIDW evidently clung tenaciously to its major plot points: it wasn’t just going to abandon its lead. 

Probably Shen Qingqiu would see him again, covered in glory. He was probably suffering, terribly, but it was probably for the sake of his character arc and ungodly stat glow-up. He was probably eating a corpse to survive right now, or fucking a sexy dragon to survive right now, and so Shen Qingqiu should probably do whatever it was that she herself was supposed to do to survive right now. (It was a piece of luck that she didn’t need to eat much, in this body. She’d grown too used to Luo Binghe’s god-tier cooking, and anything else tasted like that corpse probably did.)

That nameless demon lord had asked whether Shen Qingqiu thought she could do what she’d done and only die for it. And the demoness had been right: this was worse. Shen Qingqiu had thought she’d rather simply be run through than fall, and then Luo Binghe had suffered both fates at once. In some senses, this had all been Shen Qingqiu’s fault. The attack had been an act of revenge against her, and the blow that had doomed Luo Binghe had been struck off the back of her own, old horror of the Abyss, which had paralysed Shen Qingqiu at exactly the wrong moment. In trying to save Luo Binghe, she’d ensured his damnation. The dramatic irony of it all made Shen Qingqiu want to throw up. 

The tragedy and the still weeks that followed it wore down Shen Qingqiu's protective irony, which had failed to protect her at all, in the end. Shen Qingqiu had few jokes left in her arsenal, and they didn’t come to her as easily as once they had. Her layered nets of allusion and humour slackened and dropped away, and thus she realised that they had once amounted to a degree of distance between her and the world. Her thoughts were stark now, and far too close. Everything about Shen Qingqiu felt uncomfortably present, overly near. She wore white robes, forgetting the layered, jade-shaded shawls Luo Binghe had always urged her into. She waned, thinning as though she’d dissipate entirely: a ghoulish Chang’e. A part of her thought, ‘if Binghe’s starving down there, then I ought to do the same. As below, so above.’ And so Shen Qingqiu bones pressed flush against her skin, and her raw brain pounded against the cavity of her skull. Then, one morning in January, it was Luo Binghe’s twenty-first birthday. 

Fandom had assigned the protagonist his horoscope. Luo Binghe’s foster-mother had never known the facts of the matter, and so she’d tended to give the boy some small present in winter, whenever she managed to set aside a little money. Luo Binghe’s Birthday was a consensus Shen Yuan had argued for and helped create, and so she had offered up the day itself to Luo Binghe as something they could celebrate together with a measure of private amusement. Shang Qinghua at least remembered this much about his own novel and its fandom, and thus knew exactly which afternoon to knock on Shen Qingqiu’s door on with a jar of wine in hand. Shen Qingqiu had never told Airplane what had happened with her, Luo Binghe and the stupidly-oversized beetle, but she suspected Airplane might have guessed some of it. She’d told Qi Qingqi everything, but only after it was too late, and Luo Binghe lost. She’d been more afraid of her friends’ mockery than she’d wanted their council. That had nearly always been true of her.

Of course Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua didn’t discuss why he was here now, either: Peerless Melons and Airplane had spent years as close frenemies without ever revealing anything about their own lives beyond what Shang Qinghua could vengefully Baidu. Shang Qinghua was even good enough not to mention that the door of Luo Binghe’s room stood slightly ajar, and that the sheets of the bed you could only just see through that aperture had a rumpled, slept-in look. Airplane, of all people, must know that his protagonist would never have left his room untidy when heading out on a mission.

And because Airplane had been admirably circumspect, the blame for Shen Qingqiu’s mid-bottle, out of nowhere, cringe-ass crying jag lay entirely with her. Shang Qinghua appeared to have absolutely no idea what to do with all this. He reached out, patting her awkwardly. 

“Hey now, real feelings? From Peerless Melons, the Poster’s Poster? Is this the bitch that launched a thousand shipwars? Surely not! Come on, babe, calm down, drink some tea—”

“Is it my fault?” Shen Qingqiu whispered, grabbing Airplane’s hand. “Did the System do this to Binghe because I wouldn’t give the protagonist what he wanted? Really, it wasn’t a terrible thing to want. And I’d give anything, if I knew it could—”

“Hey,” Shang Qinghua said sternly, shaking her shoulder. “Hey, none of that. Do not let fairy-tale bargain Alexa hear you talking about ’giving anything’, you don’t know what the fuck it’ll do to you. Get it together, Melons! You bought BingGe time to grow up and the right to make his own decision when he fell. I’m a writer, you’re a—semi-professional hater, I guess. The point is, we both know those changes count for something. ‘Your fault’?” Airplane scoffed, pulling an incredulous face. “I’m not listening to this shit when I still have the new asshole you tore me for making poor Yingying Luo Binghe’s dream realm trauma-Sherpa!” 

They both remembered what Shen Yuan had said while the book was still being posted about how this sort of story used female characters’ feelings to make them set-pieces in the hero’s journey. “Wages Against Housework” and all that jazz. Shen Yuan had admitted even then that really this wasn’t Airplane’s doing so much as the picaresque genre working as intended. The Odyssey was built on this shit, and Journey to the West was powered by Pigsy’s lust almost as much as by Monkey’s rage. Literature as a whole was 90% women getting fucked over, and she was living in it. But then it wasn’t as if Hong Kong or Beijing had been markedly better in that regard.

After a moment of snivelling, Shen Qingqiu muttered, “but you transmigrated.”

“Babe,” Shang Qinghua said with a gusty exhale, pouring himself some sobering tea and urging Shen Qingqiu’s own cup towards her, “literally what?”

“So you couldn’t possibly still have the secondary asshole,” she sniffed. “All you’d have is a plot hole. As usual.”

Shang Qinghua nodded, immensely comforted by this feeble return to form. He didn’t do crying, he really didn’t do women, and he really, really, didn’t do women crying. Especially not Melonjie. Watching her Experience Sentiment was like watching Mobeijun join a boyband, or get really into pigeon-racing. Shang Qinghua simply could not handle this kind of cognitive dissonance. 

Shen Qingqiu’s thirtieth birthday came and went. She didn’t know whether Luo Binghe would be back in five years’ time, as per canon. It could take less, or more. She couldn’t know for certain that he’d ever be back. Questions of survival aside, he might be off adventuring. Sheer busyness could render him unable to drop his old friends so much as a line regarding his fortunes. He might even have simply forgotten to do it. After all, the original Luo Binghe had let Ning Yingying languish for years while believing him dead, and mourning him. 

And if Luo Binghe returned Xin Mo’s master, would he even still be her Luo Binghe? There were so many ways you could read the intertwined relationship between the sword and the man. Shen Qingqiu had never quite seen Xin Mo as a parasite preying on and thereby destroying the mind of its host, but she couldn’t be sure of that. And there too, any catastrophe could have befallen Luo Binghe in the Abyss. PIDW had never been averse to either time skips or rip-offs. Really, Luo Binghe might well sleep for a thousand years in Xin Mo’s cave. The narrative could just pick up when it liked, ATLA -style. (And hadn’t Xiaolongnü spent sixteen years separated from her lover?)

There was no question of going in after him. Even if Mobeijun helped her—even if Shen Qingqiu demanded that the King of the North repay the favour he owed her—the Abyssal Plain wasn’t called ‘Endless’ for nothing. It was a vast, shifting Escher nightmare of waste, cut off even from the Demonic Realms proper. Some cultivator sages said it was the impact crater caused by the very first Heavenly Demon’s fall from grace. Supposedly the poisoned power of a screaming, changing god had sloughed off her body as she became something new in the world, and terrible. The fallen goddess’s unspooled strength had rippled out in magic, like nuclear fallout. This ‘radiation’ was said to have spread far beyond the Abyss, making the demonic realms what they were: a land that bred demons which ranged from beasts to sentient beings, their shared, distinctive and unnatural qi a memory of their fell creator. The Abyss itself had lost cohesion, shattering into fragments that settled into a karst landscape of pocket dimensions and sliding patches of world and nothingness. As for what 'lived' there, you could really tell that Shang Qinghua had read Annihilation right before writing this part. About the only thing that could have survived the place unwarped, and even emerge from it, was a child of the dead goddess’s own blood—however far removed. 

Shen Qingqiu would be slaughtered before she found so much as a trace of her disciple, down there. And whatever he’d meant by it—even if he’d only been incoherently begging the heavens that had abandoned his ancestress to let him stay in the human realms he'd spent his entire life in—Luo Binghe had asked Shen Qingqiu to wait. Pointlessly sacrificing herself probably wasn’t what he’d had in mind. 

In the stretching years of Luo Binghe’s absence, Shen Qingqiu spent a great deal of her time undertaking missions. Long ones, arduous ones, trouble-shooting expeditions in forgotten corners of the world and errands the sect had put off for decades—Shen Qingqiu wasn’t picky, because she didn’t really care. She bitterly remembered the idle plans she’d once entertained of sending Luo Binghe away to cool his youthful ardour. Had she wanted ‘time to herself’? She’d gotten almost three years of it, now. She’d rather tired of the pleasure of her own company. 

Alone at night on one such excursion, an unaccountable sound from behind Shen Qingqiu had her drawing herself tall and spinning ‘round, her sword extended. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to make out what she was seeing in the frost-crusted, snowy winter glade she now traversed. Between the trees, something dark and small swirled like a reverse will-o'-the-wisp. Such phenomena weren’t unheard of, in a forest like this—a murky place, where cypress roots arced and curled around hidden, icy bogs. The leafless arms of the trees scraped together, like skeletons clapping. For all the branches lay bare, they seemed to hide things in the pockets of shadow produced by their obscure tangles. 

And this particular hidden thing was somehow especially disconcerting. It seemed to pulse. Shen Qingqiu took a step back as she watched it grow unmistakably larger. Larger still—an opening wound in the night, throbbing in midair. Then a human-looking hand pushed through the gap, and quite suddenly, a tumble of man forced its way entirely through the shadow. He landed on the ground across the clearing from Shen Qingqiu in a crumpled heap. It was only when that man stuck out a sword, plunging it into the ground and using that leverage to push his torso up off the dirt, that Shen Qingqiu gasped.

“Binghe,” she whispered. The merest breath of her voice had the man looking up, straight at her. The figure could have been some vision in her disciple’s shape—in a forest like this, anything could have crawled into Shen Qingqiu’s tired, heartsore and vulnerable mind and tried to give her what she wanted in order to get whatever it needed. But surely no pretender had Luo Binghe’s wide, glittering, old-blood-red eyes. Surely no one but the man himself would shape his mouth into a silent, disbelieving ‘Shizun’ when he saw her, as though the word were a prayer.

“I told the sword to bring me home,” Luo Binghe said, seemingly to himself, as he looked around him at a place that was decidedly not Qing Jing. “It must have seen into my mind and known that really, it ought to bring me wherever you were.” He laughed, sounding a little chagrined and a lot hysterical.

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu repeated helplessly, as though she was begging. She dropped her own sword and opened her arms in senseless entreaty. 

Luo Binghe scrambled upright and rushed towards her, slamming his shizun against the tree she’d been standing in front of. Her arms came up around Luo Binghe’s neck and her fingers threaded through his hair. Shen Qingqiu stared at him, wide-eyed, like she trying to see whether he was well. Like she couldn’t believe it was him, here. 

Luo Binghe was fever-hot. It had barely been three years—judging by his words, he’d only just managed to claim Xin Mo. Shen Qingqiu prised the sword’s queerly-burning hilt from his shaking fingers, her frown deepening at how wild and hitched his breathing was. He still wore Zheng Yang at his belt. Shen Qingqiu unbuckled that heavy affair and eased it too off of Luo Binghe’s quaking body. 

“You qi deviated at this part,” she muttered to herself. “Binghe, there’s far too much energy in your blood right now. You need to cycle it out or you’ll hurt yourself.”

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe crooned, high off the malign influence of the blade and the profound relief of escape. He rucked Shen Qingqiu’s ethereal white robes up her thighs with hasty hands. Greedily he shoved at her clothes, scrabbled at her skin. He wrapped his shizun’s legs around his waist and buried his face in her neck, keening when he saw the jade Guanyin pendant Shen Qingqiu had taken to wearing around her neck, under her robes, in Luo Binghe’s absence.

When Luo Binghe looked up again, his hand rose to cup Shen Qingqiu’s face. Shen Qingqiu swallowed. She looked into Luo Binghe’s dark eyes—at the vast, swollen pupils swiftly devouring his queer red irises. 

“Shh, Binghe,” she soothed him, at no loss as to what he wanted. Fully aware of the nature of the release Luo Binghe’s body, at least, understood that it had to obtain in order to survive this unscathed. 

“Shizun knows.” Shen Qingqiu brought her lips to her disciple’s and whispered “take what you need, Binghe” into his starving mouth.

Luo Binghe bit into the kiss, ripping away from his shizun’s lips only to seal his now-dropped fangs into her neck. He only grew harder against Shen Qingqiu when she shrieked. He then drew back, blinking at her, showing her a bloody mouth as though he expected praise for it. Shen Qingqiu raised her own quavering hand to stroke his cheek, and Luo Binghe nuzzled into it.

“That’s right,” Shen Qingqiu soothed him. “You did it just right, Binghe. You’ve marked me, I’m yours.”

Left a half-feral mess of demonic instincts by his qi deviation, Luo Binghe actually purred into her touch. He barely paused to wrench his growing erection out of his robes. The hand that had stroked Shen Qingqiu’s face dropped straight to her cunt. He tore the fabric of his shizun’s clothes out of the way so that he could get his fingers inside her, could get his mouth on her breasts. Shen Qingqiu hissed and twitched at the scrape of Luo Binghe’s teeth on her nipple, and moaned outright when his fingers sunk into her, exactly as she’d once shown him she liked. 

Once again, Shen Qingqiu found herself already ridiculously, comically wet for Luo Binghe. She didn’t really have time to feel the shame of it. No sooner had Luo Binghe ascertained her readiness than he’d pulled his fingers out of her and shoved his cock in in their stead, making Shen Qingqiu writhe on him. She surged under the onslaught and struggled to catch her breath. 

“If that fucking sword knew its business, it’d have brought me here when I told it to bring me home,” Luo Binghe crooned, seemingly talking to himself. “Right here,” he repeated, rocking centimetres deeper into Shen Qingqiu. Once, twice. His wild eyes swam, but he brought them to focus on Shen Qingqiu’s face. He ground a thumb into Shen Qingqiu’s clitoris and then slammed the whole of himself into her tight-stretched pussy far too fast, forcing his way into the heart of those clutching petals with bruising force. 

“Mine,” he hissed. “Say it,” he insisted, pulling back only to thrust in brutally once more. “Say it’s mine, Shizun.”

“I am,” Shen Qingqiu managed, dripping-slick but still scrambling to take him, still trying to brace against the shock of it. “All of me. Fuck, Binghe—‘m your shizun, every part of me’s yours. You’ll always have a home in me.”

Luo Binghe whimpered and gave her mound a tender caress, petting her as though her flesh was a delicate bird in his hand which he feared terribly to crush. The respite lasted for but a moment. Luo Binghe then hoisted Shen Qingqiu’s cock-pinned body further up the tree, bent his curly head and made a real effort to suck Shen Qingqiu’s soul out through her nipples. 

Shen Qingqiu initially tried to jam her hand into her mouth to muffle her startled cries. She soon found it jarred loose, dropping, her fingers clawing at the tree as she screamed. Luo Binghe only released Shen Qingqiu’s chest from his insatiable maw to shift the angle of his body in order to devote himself more thoroughly to fucking her, putting ‘his’ cunt to good use. 

Shen Qingqiu used her scrambling hand to grip onto the tree bark. While she still had any presence of mind to do it with, she remembered that the urgent need fuelling this bout of dual cultivation had to be answered. Luo Binghe’s life was at stake. 

Shen Jiu’s body had wood veins, and so Shen Qingqiu could feel the slumbering energy of a forest behind and beneath her. The roots of the tree supporting her tangled with those of the trees beside it, forming a great net under the earth. Shen Qingqiu pulled that steady, soothing energy into herself, and from there thrust it into Luo Binghe. She funnelled everything Xin Mo had done in unleashing the full power of the young man’s blood through her own body and bled the energy off into the forest, transformed by its passage through her body into something these plants could metabolise. The stable roots of the trees filtered any remaining toxicity, having been designed by nature to take what energy they could use and disperse what they couldn’t. 

Blearily, Shen Qingqiu looked up to see buds swelling and bursting into leaf above their heads, across the glen, all around them. The effect rippled out in waves of tender green tips, shocking pink blossoms, and then thick and shining leaves. Then all of these stages came at once, cascading, the phases of the forest’s life tipping into a glut of abundance. It was so beautiful that Shen Qingqiu—already overwhelmed by Luo Binghe’s body carving hers into some new form for its use and pleasure; by the unendurable, painful joy of her beloved’s return, and of his presence in her—almost couldn’t process it. No mortal trees raged so brightly—not against the winter, not ever. What could have been Luo Binghe’s death, and perhaps her own, too, thrived around them. 

And Shen Qingqiu thought that whatever else became of them, one night, they’d made this together. That was worth something. Really, what was worth more? 

Luo Binghe whimpered. Shen Qingqiu felt him beginning to come, as warm and seeming-endless as the qi the forest fed back to her. Luo Binghe looked up at her, so lost and so tender. Shen Qingqiu felt herself slip over her own edge with surprise, as though she’d missed some too-slender step. A jump, a lurch in her stomach, and for an instant she felt the impossible sensation of falling, just at the point where it blended into flight. 

“You’re back,” she wept then, too relieved to remember shame. “Binghe you’re here, you’ve come home.”

Luo Binghe surged up to kiss her, and Shen Qingqiu sucked his mouth clean of her own blood with a sense of transcendent victory. 

Spent at last, Luo Binghe collapsed against Shen Qingqiu. She rubbed circles on his heaving back as he gulped and gasped his way back to sanity. After some minutes he blinked at her, confused, then inclined his head to look up at the canopy of foliage above them—at the riot of out-of-season colour, glowing with bewitching, uncanny internal light in the darkness of the winter night. 

“Did you do this, Shizun?” Luo Binghe whispered, with quiet awe.

Shen Qingqiu, battered and exhausted and happy, made a weak effort at a laugh. 

“You did, Binghe.” It had been his power, after all. This out of the way place might well never be normal again: it stood a good chance of always bearing this imprint of Luo Binghe’s strength, and perhaps of Shen Qingqiu’s care for him, too. 

“We did, Shizun,” Luo Binghe said, sounding certain of it. 

She smoothed a dirty, matted lock of hair back over Luo Binghe’s blood-flecked ear. “As you like, silly boy.” Between Luo Binghe and the tree, Shen Qingqiu stretched her well-used body. “Can you walk, darling? Can you take us home?”

Luo Binghe glanced at Xin Mo on the ground and nodded. Gently, reluctantly, he slid out of Shen Qingqiu, setting her down on her wobbly legs. 

He gathered back Zheng Yang, then raised and extended Xin Mo. Shen Qingqiu laid her own hand over his, steadying him as he cut the portal. 

“Careful,” she said. “If you aren’t careful, this thing will eat you alive, Binghe.”

He nodded, to show he was listening. Once they stepped through the portal, into the main room of their bamboo cottage, Luo Binghe dropped both his swords and collapsed onto the mat. For the first time, Shen Qingqiu truly appreciated the state of him: half-unconscious, his hair matted, his whole body filthy with blood. Still beautiful, naturally, but only because logic and causality tended to let Luo ‘Cheatcode’ Binghe do whatever the hell he liked. 

Relying on her cultivation (and a sheet she could roll his body onto, and then pull), Shen Qingqiu conveyed Luo Binghe to the cottage’s running-spring bath. At nineteen, Luo Binghe had constructed the thing as a present for his shizun, who’d enthused to him on many occasions about the marvellous bathing arrangements of ‘other lands’. He’d shown huge appreciation for the results himself. 

Sparing a moment's nostalgia for the period when she could just carry Luo Binghe around without fuss, Shen Qingqiu manoeuvred the substantial man into the basin limb by limb, clothes and all. She unplugged the drain, then unstoppered the bamboo pipe the water ran through. At first the water sluicing off her disciple ran black with filth: earth, volcanic dust, and old, old remains of her disciple’s kills. Luo Binghe was absolutely encrusted; Shen Qingqiu scrubbed him clean with little winces of sympathy. 

Her Binghe hated dirt. For him, this must have been a fucking nightmare on top of a nightmare. Eventually Shen Qingqiu shrugged him out of his sopping, ruined clothes. She threw them anywhere, amazed at how the grotesquerie just seemed to keep coming. The water was only now starting to run merely cloudy.

Retrospectively, it was fairly gross that they’d had sex when Luo Binghe was in this state. (And in the middle of a forest, to boot!) But then Shen Qingqiu would do anything for Luo Binghe—she knew that. Which meant she just had to accept shit like this when it came, and to deal with it as it happened. 

At one point, Luo Binghe blearily opened his eyes. “I’m really home,” he whispered, looking around him. “And I’m in our shower!” he added, sounding so delighted he could cry.

Shen Qingqiu laughed at him despite herself. Luo Binghe smiled up at her, guileless as a babe. 

He slipped fully into unconsciousness soon after, leaving Shen Qingqiu to (after giving herself a much-needed rinse) drag Luo Binghe to and drop him in her own bed. It was too late to worry about being forward, and she was really, really tired. 

When she stirred in the morning, Shen Qingqiu bore witness to yet another miracle. By virtue of his injuries and exhaustion, for one of the first times she could recall, she had woken up before Luo Binghe! 

Shen Qingqiu rolled onto her elbow and considered the twenty four year old man (who had evidently fallen asleep holding his shizun like a body pillow and, even dead to the world, had to be gently prised off her). Luo Binghe. Her white lotus, her little sun: the man she even put up with Proud Immortal Demon Way for. 

If Luo Binghe still believed he loved her, Shen Qingqiu knew that in and of itself didn’t greatly change the chances of the plot circling around to imitate its original form. After all, she hadn’t managed to circumnavigate the Abyss plot in the end. The original Luo Binghe had made himself believe that he loved many women, for a while. Shen Qingqiu had never wanted to be That Kind of Female Character, and she still didn’t. But she’d dressed like she was going to a funeral for three years, now. She knew what it was to lose Luo Binghe, without ever having fully allowed herself to have him. 

If anyone was worth heartbreak, wasn’t Binghe? Wasn’t it too late to dodge a bullet already embedded in her chest? 

Shen Qingqiu knew exactly how funny she could be when she was snide, and precisely how good she was at being cynical. She knew how powerful she felt and appeared when nothing seemed able to touch her. Of course she knew: as Shen Yuan and Shen Qingqiu both, she’d calculated the effects of her own performance for years. But if Shen Qingqiu never found anything she could invest in, and trust, then none of that was actually worth anything. All her life she’d saved herself and put herself aside, for no one’s enjoyment—not even her own. She’d never really said ‘All right, yes. Let’s do this.’ to any work she believed in. She’d never fully given herself to anyone, and never fully taken them into herself in turn. Gender and marriage were currents you swam in, and they were what you and the people around you made of them. There was no such thing as a perfect world, but you did have to live somewhere—even if the world you wound up in was the terribly-written Proud Immortal Demon Way . 

So maybe one day, Luo Binghe really would start gathering a harem. Maybe one day, Luo Binghe would break her heart. But Shen Qingqiu had already broken it herself in his absence. She knew now, for certain, that she could not stand to live a life where Luo Binghe wasn’t at her side. Shen Qingqiu could feel the old, busy hum of her mind clicking back on, and yet the solidity and heavy decision of the last years lingered in her, too. Maybe, for all her performed maturity and years of seniority on Luo Binghe, Shen Qingqiu herself had also had some growing up to do. Perhaps that never really stopped, and never really ought to.

Luo Binghe eventually stirred, nuzzling in close to Shen Qingqiu even before he opened his eyes. 

“Don’t pull so far away,” he complained, gathering his shizun back to him. “It can’t be morning yet, can it?”

“Mm,” she said, swallowing a Romeo and Juliet joke Luo Binghe wouldn’t get. Pulling now-clean hair back from her disciple's wan cheek, which only time and good living would restore colour to. “Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu murmured, then paused for a moment. “Binghe,” she began again, in a stronger voice. “Would you ask me to marry you again?”

Luo Binghe opened his eyes and looked up at her. After a moment, he brought his thumb to his mouth. He extended a canine and pricked the pad of his finger. Blood welled up in a bright bead. Shen Qingqiu winced when he did the same to hers—not knowing what he was after, but allowing it nonetheless. 

Luo Binghe pressed their wounds together, and Shen Qingqiu could feel qi swirling between them.

“Shizun,” he said, “Shen Yuan, be my wife. Take me as your husband. Your only husband, forever. My only wife, until death and into any life to come. If my heart should ever violate this oath, I willingly surrender,” he tightened his hand around hers, binding them with unfamiliar magics, “my worldly possessions, my cultivation and my life.” 

He glanced up at her, as if for permission. 

Shen Qingqiu could feel something like a curse settling on them. Her mind raced, recognising and piecing together the plot arcs Luo Binghe was knitting together elements of. The vow to enter the Library of the Forgotten, Madam Meiyin’s succubi surrender-pact, Mobeijun’s fealty pledge—how had Luo Binghe done this, when had he learned it all?

“This could hurt you,” Shen Qingqiu said automatically, before she could think through anything else. “You can’t promise this!”

“I am going,” Luo Binghe said, unyielding, “to make a commitment to you that even this world can’t break.”

Shen Qingqiu had once told Luo Binghe that he couldn’t make any vow she’d trust. And awful, stubborn Luo ‘Challenge Accepted’ Binghe must have thought, ‘wanna bet?’ He must have researched vow-magic intensively in his last year on Qing Jing Peak, and then used every opportunity he’d met with in escaping the Abyss via the surrounding demonic realms to improve upon his work. As a piece of magic, it was a masterpiece. Yet before he’d had a chance to offer his mistress this iron-clad assurance—to put Shen Qingqiu’s rash dismissal to the test—Shen Qingqiu had told Luo Binghe that she’d have him on any terms, with no security but his word. She’d asked nothing of Luo Binghe but another, unvarnished proposal. In the end, she’d found she needed nothing but for Luo Binghe to ask once more, and mean it when he did. In a world where the System held ultimate power over them both, what Luo Binghe was offering up might be extremely dangerous for him. But it might well work, too. Luo Binghe was a man now, and this was his choice: this was the man Luo Binghe wanted to be.

Shen Qingqiu looked into those familiar, determined eyes, then nodded her consent. The magic caught and clasped like their fingers had at the lip of the Endless Abyss. This time, it held.

“I’m sorry,” Shen Qingqiu said, tightening her hand around Luo Binghe’s. “To think of you down there, alone, and my having been the cause of it, I—” She swallowed hard. 

“I didn't get myself stabbed and thrown into hell for you because of filial piety,” Luo Binghe admitted, bringing Shen Qingqiu’s hand to his mouth and kissing it. “Not even, entirely, for love. Perhaps I did it to protect myself—if anything irrevocable happened to you, I couldn’t survive it in a way that mattered. And if your death would entail mine anyway, then at least my heart ought to survive.” 

Luo Binghe exhaled, glancing away from her. “I was so stupid to think that I needed you to enjoy loving me. I want you to, but heaven knows I don’t need it, so long as you do love me.”

Shen Qingqiu could hear in that some trace of her own willingness to let any fate befall her, rather than do without Luo Binghe.  

“I’d gotten lazy, I think,” he confessed. “I’d grown too used to having you always in my sight. The truth is, I need you any way I can get you. Even if you didn’t love me, I’d still need you. That’s awful and ugly, but it’s true. I should have told you that before binding you to me. I should have made sure you understood the bargain you were entering into, in taking me. But I’m terribly selfish where you’re concerned, and I can only ask your forgiveness.”

Shen Qingqiu knew that she ought to find his hesitation wicked. But Luo Binghe’s sweet face made even dangerous words pool like honey in her stomach. That sweep of lust reminded Shen Qingqiu of an issue that had occurred to her only as she was falling asleep the night before. 

“I don’t think you cut off your qi, in the forest,” she said, after hesitating for a moment. “You were so beside yourself with the backlash. To put it bluntly, there’s a chance you’ve already—how shall I say this? 'Knocked me up'—what is that face?“

Luo Binghe rolled on top of Shen Qingqiu, his dazed expression pulling into something less ambiguous. 

“Shizun, how can you talk about my impregnating you and then be surprised when I react?” he asked, incredulous, pushing a thickening erection against her with a little squirm.

Shen Qingqiu gave her disciple a double-take. “But you hate that kind of thing! Luo Binghe absolutely never wants children.”

Luo Binghe raised an eyebrow at her. “One day we really have to talk about where you get some of these strongly-held notions regarding ‘Luo Binghe’. Your Binghe’s wanted to fuck children into you since he still was one himself. Your Binghe has his own strongly-held notions about our future children’s music lessons, and some even more strongly-held ones about seeing you that big, just ripe with it, full of me, all the time—nngh, Shizun—”

Shen Qingqiu settled into the odd knowledge that Luo Binghe, who was currently scrambling to get his cock into her, actually meant this. That he was a different man than the one she’d grown up reading about. Still himself, in so many ways, but also—

“You’ll be such a good mother,” Luo Binghe panted into the breasts he was squeezing together. “I’ve always wanted a family with you, babies that look just like my pretty wife. Fuck, and then breast milk, mm, Shizun—”

“You’ve always been the love of my life,” Shen Qingqiu blurted suddenly and awkwardly to the man who’d just managed to push inside her relaxed, still fucked-pliant body. Because Luo Binghe said terribly honest things without missing a beat, and really he did deserve to know her own embarrassing truths in exchange. “I never actually wanted to see you with anyone else, because even though it was ridiculous, I always thought you were mine. Just mine.”

Luo Binghe’s lightly startled expression resolved into something gleeful. “I know I am,” he said smugly, rolling into Shen Qingqiu gingerly. “I’ve always belonged to you.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek. “All you had to do was claim me and take me up. Now, how do we go about making sure we have a happy accident?”

Shen Qingqiu remained in an untouchable, superlatively good temper for about a fortnight. Qi Qingqiu called it the most singularly annoying and long-lasting post-coital haze she’d ever had the displeasure of bearing witness to. But after that span of untroubled days, Shen Qingqiu caught her newly-restored personal-disciple and fiancé making their dinner (unobjectionable) while singing the most popular (and thus her least favourite) of the tavern songs that had been composed about the two of them (highly objectionable!!). Honestly, Shen Qingqiu had no idea what in hell they’d ever done to give rise to such talk—couldn’t people find something more interesting to occupy themselves with?

Luo Binghe (who absolutely knew his shizun was standing behind him) washed the supper dishes while starting in, in his low, sweet singing voice, about some “fair master of Cang Qiong”. Who the fuck had told him about these things? They hadn’t been in circulation when he’d left!

“Why is your cheek so pale?” Luo Binghe sang to himself.

(God, not one of the humiliating droopy mourning ballads: the worst ones!)

“Could it be that you have cause—”

Shen Qingqiu came up behind Luo Binghe and jabbed him pointedly in the spine with her fan. 

“Shizun,” he complained piteously, “it’s not even one of the really bawdy ones! Be merciful!”

Luo Binghe was not in luck. Prior to this, Shen Qingqiu had not in fact been aware of the existence of ‘the really bawdy ones’. Luo Binghe thus spent the better part of the evening not lightly teasing his beloved, as he’d hoped, but explaining to his imminent-wife the logistical difficulty of ‘cancelling’ or ‘DMCA’ing (?) popular broadsheets. Shen Qingqiu took no solace in his efforts, and only muttered direly about Qi Qingqi’s having tried to warn her of the dangers of ci poetry. 

Luo Binghe might have exaggerated these challenges, slightly. If the rising Emperor of the Demonic Realms had really wanted talk shut down, then he might well have found a way. But when Shen Qingqiu was in a better mood, she actually appreciated the freedom of the press. So did Luo Binghe, especially when said press was freely discussing 1) his wife’s incredible beauty, talent and grace, and 2) the fact that said qualities were exclusively intimately enjoyed by her disciple/boy-toy Luo Binghe, who Shen Qingqiu, in her infinite mercy, deigned to tie up and ride within an inch of his life at least twice weekly. 

In actual fact they had not yet attempted the aforementioned position. Its appearance in a ballad Luo Binghe particularly favoured was merely an artistic liberty taken by someone with generalised notions about master-disciple relationships. But Luo Binghe had hopes that his wife would one day find such odes as inspiring as he himself did, and knew very well that there was almost nothing he wanted that Shen Qingqiu didn’t want fervently to give him. (He had ropes as well as hopes: he wasn’t going to miss out on an opportunity like that by being unprepared to meet it!)

Besides, that ci was set to “Bodhisattva Barbarian”! Who didn’t like “Bodhisattva Barbarian”? It, as Shizun herself said, ‘banged’.