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“Activate the full defensive arrays,” Luo Binghe rasps. “We’re under attack by Cang Qiong Mountain sect. Don’t allow any of them to enter.”
The Huan Hua palace disciple gapes at him for a moment, but quickly snaps into a bow. “Yes, Luo-shixiong! Right away.”
He runs away before Luo Binghe can even fully process what’s been said to him, to respond I’m not your shixiong. I’m not part of this sect. I’m not your martial brother. I’m not yours.
Luo Binghe is covered in blood and he does not want to think about where it came from (from who), and he has never felt so weak or empty or awful in his entire life. He did not think that was possible. He had thought that he’d never be able to feel worse than he did that day, looking at his Shizun with cold eyes and a sword pushed into his chest, shoving him towards the Endless Abyss.
He had thought that was suffering. That was what unfixable felt like, what heartbreak felt like.
At least Shizun had still been alive then. Luo Binghe could claw his way out of hell and try to prove himself, to demand answers, get his Shizun to look at him with anything besides fear or hatred again. Now…
Now, Luo Binghe just spent several hours pouring over half of his qi into Shizun’s remains, like desperately bailing out a boat with a leak in the bottom. He had felt the qi bleeding out of him even as Luo Binghe pushed more and more into him. It hadn’t stopped. All he could do was pour so much into him that his flesh and tendons and skin brimmed with it, to the point that it could spend hours seeping out without fully emptying. Luo Binghe cannot let it completely empty. If he does then Shizun’s body-- it will--
Luo Binghe cannot let Shizun run out of qi. It’s as simple as that. He will have to go and refill him in just a few hours, and that’s all there is to it. He feels scraped raw and clean and empty now, but it’s fine. He’s strong. His strength will return to him, and then he’ll be able to help keep his Shizun together, and then… and then…
He’ll figure that out too. He’s just too tired to do it right now. He’d had to fight his way past all of those terrible cultivators trying to take Shizun away from him to let him rot, had to protect him with his own body as he fought off dozens of furious people with familiar faces. Acting like he was a monster.
But you are a monster.
Huan Hua palace’s defensive arrays awaken, a latticework of painstakingly crafted qi strings flickering to life across the night sky, woven in a dome around them. They quickly fade back out of view, but he can still feel them there, quietly humming. Something paranoid and alert relaxes inside of him at the sight, just slightly.
Shizun is tucked inside of Luo Binghe’s bed, eyes shut and face pale. Luo Binghe hadn’t known where else to put him.
He doesn’t know what to do.
He’s so tired.
“My boy,” a voice that’s gently weathered by age like an old map says. It sounds the way Luo Binghe imagines a grandfather ought to sound. “You’ve had a very long day.”
Luo Binghe only realizes that he’s closed his eyes when he opens them. How long has he been standing in place?
The Old Palace Master looks at him with an air of concern, as if Luo Binghe is a child that has hurt himself. Not a monster covered in his Shizun’s blood.
“I heard of everything that transpired,” he says, solemn sorrow cast in the wrinkled lines of his face. “No one should have to experience such a thing. Come here.”
He takes two steps away, half turning to see if Luo Binghe will follow him or not. For a moment, Luo Binghe doesn’t. He isn’t interested in manipulating the Old Palace Master right now, toeing the line of what to say and do to get what he wants, to see just how much he’s willing to indulge the man to continue to curry favor with him. All for the sake of securing his place in the Huan Hua Palace Sect, building his reputation, gaining power and political capital in his quest to become someone that Shizun might look at with--
--he won’t. Shizun will never look at him again, because he is-- because he--
--how did it all go so horribly wrong? How could Luo Binghe do so, so badly, that the man whose respect and admiration he was clawing for is now--
Luo Binghe follows the Old Palace Master. So he won’t just stand there and continue to think, and so that he won’t have to go to his bedroom and see…
He doesn't know where to go, what to do.
The Old Palace Master takes him to some familiar rooms. Not his study, which is golden and lavish in a way that Luo Binghe has always found unbearably tacky compared to the humble, understated elegance of the bamboo hut on Qing Jing peak, but something more intimate and private. He thinks it might be a part of the Old Palace Master’s personal living area, not a place that disciples would normally be taken. The sect leader has insisted on speaking with Luo Binghe in this place before, and he has always acquiesced. It’s a small concession that he doesn’t entirely see the point of, a harmless way to make the old man feel more comfortable and in control.
“Sit down,” the Old Palace Master says, gesturing to a low table with sitting cushions. Curling inlaid lines of gold crawl across the edges of the table, so detailed and ornate that it all just blurs into messy scribbles in Luo Binghe’s tired eyes. He stares at it dumbly for a moment, as if it is a script that he needs to focus his gaze to read.
A hand squeezes his shoulder, and Luo Binghe’s body whirls around before the threat even registers, his hand flying to Xin Mo’s pommel--
Luo Binghe, don’t be rash!
He lets go of Xin Mo as if scalded, his master’s voice ringing in his ears. His heart slams wildly in his ribcage, frantic. He had nearly drawn his sword. Xin Mo, the sword that only hours ago had made Shizun--
“... You are tense, Luo Binghe,” the Old Palace Master says. He had nearly let go of Luo Binghe’s shoulder when his hand flew to his hilt, but seeing him freeze in place, he stays. He smiles comfortingly, as if Luo Binghe had stayed his hand at the sight of his face. “Please, remove your sword and sit. You are safe here.”
Luo Binghe’s safety is the last thing on his mind, the last thing on earth that matters. He only has to stay alive and whole to make sure that no one can take Shizun away from him before he can figure out how to fix him.
Fix him. Yes, that’s what he must do. He must fix Shizun. Undo what had been done, make it go away, make it go back to the way it used to be.
(As if death is a broken cup that can be glued back together, a mess that can be washed clean away as if it were never there at all. Some broken things can never be mended. Doesn’t he know this better than anyone?)
No. No, he can do it. Luo Binghe is a heavenly demon, something terrifying and powerful enough to claw the impossible into reality. If anything can do the impossible, it’s him. Nothing else is acceptable.
The Old Palace Master is pushing him in the direction of the table, and Luo Binghe allows himself to be led. He removes Xin Mo from his person, dropping it to the floor like a dead thing. He never wants to pick it up again. He hates it.
He sits.
“Wait here,” the Old Palace Master says, before leaving the room.
Luo Binghe waits, purely because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself, where else to go.
He doesn’t know how long the Old Palace Master is gone, but he comes back. He carries a tray with a teapot and cups with him, already filled. Setting it down on the table, he picks one up and sets it down before Luo Binghe.
“Here,” he says kindly. “Drink.”
“No,” Luo Binghe says, too raw and empty to bother with faking civility or respect. “I’m not thirsty.”
“It will make you feel better,” the Old Palace Master insists. “There is medicine in it that will clear your mind. You’re in shock, Binghe.”
Calling him Binghe so familiarly… For a second, it makes him so furiously angry that he has to clench every one of his muscles to stay seated in place, to not lunge across the table and attack the man. There has only ever been one person who called him that, and that person is not here.
Then the moment passes, the fury slipping away from him like it’s been swept up in a swift river, dragged down by the undertow. A flash in the pan underneath the overwhelming shadow of his own choking grief and guilt. It had almost been a balm, for as long as it had lasted.
Luo Binghe drinks the tea. It tastes bitter, poorly steeped.
“Well done,” the Old Palace Master says, as if he has any right to praise Luo Binghe. As if it means anything to him at all.
How is he going to fix his Shizun? He doesn’t know. He knows what he has to do, but how? He can’t even begin to picture it. What he’s going to do next week, next day, the next hour.
Shizun had once said during a class that if they were faced with an overwhelming challenge that the first step should be to break it down into many doable tasks, small enough to be perfectly surmountable. You may not be able to walk ten miles, but you can always take the next step.
What is the next step?
Luo Binghe drinks more tea. It’s… something.
“I can’t imagine the heartbreak you must be going through,” the Old Palace Master says, breaking the silence. “You had a very complicated relationship with… that man, but no one could possibly deny that it was a deeply meaningful one. You have lost something important today - and at such a young age. You must feel so lost.”
He lets the words wash over him, trying not to take them in. He doesn’t want to listen. He just wants…
Luo Binghe had been so angry. So hurt, so desperate for something that he couldn’t even put into words, clawing for anything that might make the pain in his chest quiet. Messy and stupid, chaotic and uncontrolled. There had been nothing careful or calculated about it, all of those plans he’d stewed over for years melting away in an instant. The second he’d seen Shizun he’d forgotten it all. Shizun hadn’t reacted the way he’d supposed to, hadn’t played his part. It had all gone wrong.
Because Luo Binghe hadn’t understood him. He hadn’t understood anything.
“You need guidance. Someone to look after you.”
Shizun had built a sword mound for him, made out of the painstakingly mended shards of Zheng Yang. He had mourned Luo Binghe. Why hadn’t he ever just told Luo Binghe that? He’d asked! He’d asked if Shizun regretted throwing him away, waited for an answer that never came. That was all he needed, all he wanted. Why hadn’t Shizun let him know?
Was it because Luo Binghe had needed to ask at all?
“If you’re left to your own devices, you’ll make terrible mistakes… like placing your trust in the wrong person. Someone unworthy of you.”
It’s all so awful, it doesn’t entirely feel real. Too horrible to be something that’s actually happening, to be anything but the worst thing his mind can possibly come up with to terrorize him with. Like a nightmare, except it’s been a long time since Luo Binghe wasn’t perfectly in control of his nightmares. He’d never go so far as to punish himself with something like this.
“You never should have come to the Cang Qiong Mountain sect. That’s why all of these unfortunate things happened. If only you had started in Huan Hua Palace, where you belong, then this all could have been avoided.”
It’s not a nightmare, but it feels like one. His body feels numb and distant, like he’s watching himself from far away. He can feel his own heavy, painful heartbeat, can feel his lungs drawing in air, his clothes against his skin - but it’s like all of those sensations are happening to someone else. There’s a voice in the air and he doesn’t know whether it’s him or someone else speaking, and he can’t even begin to care about the answer. The words skim right across the surface of his mind, refusing to sink in.
Maybe he’s lost control of his dream powers? Maybe something slipped loose during his qi deviation, and everything after that has just been fake, not real, never happened. Luo Binghe has never wanted something to be true more badly than that.
“But you still ended up here, just as you were always meant to.” Through several layers of muffling gauze, a hand strokes his hair. “It was fate that brought you to this master, Binghe.”
Maybe if he just closes his eyes, he’ll wake up when he opens them again. Then the nightmare will be over, and Shizun will be well. He’ll still hate Luo Binghe, but that’s fine, it’s fine. It had felt like shards of glass in his heart before, but now he doesn’t care at all. Shizun can hate Luo Binghe as much as he wants, so long as he isn’t--
A thumb strokes across his cheek, wiping away something wet.
“Poor boy,” the voice says. “Your shizun will take care of you.”
Shizun.
Hands move him like he’s a doll to be positioned, pushing him to lie down. He remembers Shizun doing this for him once, pushing him sternly back into bed when he’d tried to perform his duties despite being feverish. Binghe is so stubborn. What will outsiders think, if they see Qing Jing’s disciples forced to work while ill? Rest.
All kindness and concern, wrapped up and hidden in strictness and indignation. Luo Binghe misses it so much that it hurts.
He tries to sit up, if only so he can feel Shizun push him back down. He can’t find the strength.
“Just rest now.” A hand cradles and lifts his skull, plucking away the ribbon halfheartedly keeping his hair out of his face, freeing it. “Be a good disciple and stay still…”
Luo Binghe has never wanted anything but to be a good disciple for Shizun. To be someone the man could be proud of, fond of. For Shizun to look at him and tell him exactly what he needs to do and say to make him happy, to love him. Luo Binghe keeps trying to figure it out himself, but he can’t-- he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know how to love people in a way that isn’t wrong. Won’t Shizun please just tell him what to do? He’ll do it, he swears. There’s nothing he won’t do.
He can stay still.
There’s a long moment of silence, of not being touched, absolute stillness - but in a way that seems drawn taut, like a held in breath. Then a hand touches his face, cupping his jaw. A thumb strokes over his cheek, tender and intimate.
“You really look… just like her,” the voice says, and Luo Binghe doesn’t understand. He feels so slow, so distant. Like he’s trapped at the bottom of a lake, looking up at the sunlight filtering through the surface far, far away from him. He can’t even begin to think of swimming up. “My beautiful Xiyan.”
Luo Binghe tries to open his eyes. It’s difficult.
“Shh, settle. Your Shizun has you now.”
For the first time, Luo Binghe thinks to speak. “Shi-- Shizun, I…”
He sounds drunk. The sibilants all slide into each other, the consonants drowning underneath them, his voice weak and faltering.
That’s wrong, he thinks distantly. He shouldn’t sound like that. Why does he sound like that?
“You never should have left me. See where it got you?”
The hand on his face slides down, fingers digging into the vulnerable meat of his throat. It gets harder to breathe.
“If only you’d listened to me, if only you had stayed… I would have kept you safe. Didn’t I always?”
There’s a noise - a wet, breathless sort of noise, like someone is gagging, or gasping. That’s me, he thinks, and then realizes that it is. That’s him making that noise. Why is Shizun--?
The hand slides further down, and the noise goes away. Air rushes back into his lungs.
“But now you’re back. Back with your Shizun, like you should always be. You won’t leave again--” That hand slides down onto Luo Binghe’s chest, slipping underneath the fold of his robe, pushing it open with the motion. “--I won’t let you, Xiyan.”
And Luo Binghe thinks: Shizun never touched me in this way.
And he thinks: This isn’t Shizun touching me.
And: They dare to call themselves my Shizun.
There’s a sense of someone curling up over him, caging him in, looming. That hand strokes, caressing--
Demonic qi erupts from the marrow of Luo Binghe’s bones, boiling through his blood before seething out of his skin in one great flash flood that feels like it should have left him burned to nothing. His eyes snap open, bright and red, his demon mark flaring as it appears. Above him, the Old Palace Master cries out in shock and pain, snatching his hand away as if scalded.
There is poison in his veins. Medicine, that’s what the Old Palace Master had called it. To clear his mind.
Luo Binghe’s demonic qi burns through the drugs in less than five seconds, reducing it all to nothing but a lingering, bitter aftertaste in his mouth. He stands up, and he does it with enough force that the Old Palace Master is flung aside, a table gets upended. Tea spills across the floor.
He stands there for a moment, his hands curled into tense claw shapes, panting raggedly for air, heart hammering in his chest, hair in his face, his robes disarrayed. Trembling.
The Old Palace Master gets back up on his feet, his wide eyes fixed on Luo Binghe. Moving like a dangerous animal is suddenly in the room with him, not turning his back on him for even a second.
Luo Binghe feels wild.
“... Binghe,” the Old Palace Master says, and he’s using a ‘dealing with a dangerous animal’ voice too. “You must calm--”
“You dare?”
“--down. I don’t know what you think happened, but you are mistaken. This master was only trying to assist his disciple--”
He is so transcendently furious that he laughs.
“You were having a qi deviation,” the Old Palace Master goes on, persistent and stubborn to make his case. “I had to drug you to calm you; I had to touch you to soothe your meridians. I was only helping you! If you thought anything else, then those were only hallucinations. You mustn’t let your-- your corrupted nature control you like this.”
The Old Palace Master’s gaze flicks to Luo Binghe’s demon mark on corrupted, before quickly darting away again, disgusted. As if it is an unsightly, glaring flaw on his face, the face that he had been so greedily happy to caress only moments ago.
Luo Binghe takes a deep breath. Another deep breath. Another.
Mistakenly, the Old Palace Master seems to take this as a sign that Luo Binghe is actually listening to him and trying to calm himself as instructed.
“We must find a way to better control your demonic side,” he says. “Don’t worry, my boy. I’ll be able to find someone to help seal it away again, so it can’t ever come back out. I forgive--”
Luo Binghe is done breathing. His hands are no longer shaking; he will be able to do this without losing his temper and just killing the old man immediately.
“Shut up,” he snaps, harsh and cutting enough that the man actually obeys - if only out of surprise. “I don’t care about the drugs or the fondling.”
He honestly doesn’t. Maybe he should, maybe deep down he does, but right now? His rage is like the ash clouds of a volcano; it completely blots out anything else.
“You called me your disciple,” Luo Binghe says, and he takes a step forward. The Old Palace Master takes a step back, seemingly on some deeply buried survival instinct. “You so familiarly call me Binghe.”
Another step. This time, the Old Palace Master forces himself to stand his ground, only flinching back ever so slightly. His mistake.
The old man opens his mouth to say something, to argue, defend himself. Luo Binghe lets another wave of demonic qi come boiling up out of him, burning all of the oxygen in the room. Or at least it must feel like it, enough to make the Old Palace Master choke on his words, paling.
Luo Binghe comes closer, until he’s standing right in front of him. He’s taller than the man, looking down on him with eyes that feel wide and crazed.
“You called yourself my Shizun,” he hisses. “This is unforgivable.”
“You don’t have any other Shizun now,” the Old Palace Master argues, stubborn even with fear in his eyes. Like Luo Binghe might be tricked into thinking that he’s subordinate to this man, so long as the Old Palace Master acts as if he is. “That man is dead--”
Luo Binghe is exhausted. He has fought his way past dozens of the strongest cultivators in the world today, all while protecting something precious in his arms. He had poured every drop of qi in his body that he could spare into that precious thing, desperately trying to hold it together. The only strength left in him is his demonic qi, too dirty and eroding to allow to touch his Shizun. It would only have further torn him apart.
There’s hardly any human left in him at all. It’s just Luo Binghe, the demon. Luo Binghe, the monster that crawled its way out of the Eternal Abyss, filthy and ugly and wretched. Luo Binghe, with all his hatred and heartbreak and anger clawing at the inside of his chest, wanting to tear its way up out of his throat to cut into anyone unfortunate enough to be standing close to him - whether they deserve it or not. Whether they love him or not. Whether they’re the kindest, most beautiful, important person in the world or not.
He is poisonous, corrupting, clutching. So starved for love that he will cling to any single offered drop of it, and then greedily demand more, more, more. He will hold that love so tight to his chest that he breaks its bones, suffocates it even as it desperately struggles for escape. He will kill it with the force of his own desperation.
This is why Shizun threw him away into the Abyss. He learned what Luo Binghe was, and he saw him for what he is. A Heavenly Demon must be nothing more than an Eternal Abyss made into a person. Dark and hollow and bottomless, greedy and sharp and dangerous, a yawning hunger that never stops.
There’s a crack as something hard and rigid abruptly yields beneath the strength of his grip, fracturing into two distinct, jagged pieces. The Old Palace Master screams, the sort of noise that people make when there’s so much pain and horror inside of them that there’s no more space left for anything else. He forms no words, because the thing that Luo Binghe just broke was his jawbone.
“Shut up,” Luo Binghe says coldly, letting go of the man’s face.
The Old Palace Master falls to the floor, immediately shoving himself away with a frantic speed. Luo Binghe follows him, implacable. The inside of his head feels very calm and still, no longer loud and tangled. This is a simple problem with a simple solution. He only needs to do what comes naturally to him. A demon's instincts.
Luo Binghe has been doing his best to control them for a long time, but… why continue? Shizun won’t hear about this. It’s fine.
The only person whose opinion truly matters isn’t here, so Luo Binghe thinks he’ll just be the monster he really is now. There’s no more point in pretending.
The Old Palace Master hits the wall, running out of space to back away from him. Trapped, cornered. Luo Binghe takes another step - and he kicks something. Something sharp and metal rasping against the floor. He looks down.
Xin Mo lies there, its blade dark and hungry. Unsheathed. A demon’s sword.
Luo binghe looks at it, and then he looks at the Old Palace Master’s cowering form.
He bends down and picks his sword back up. The blade sings with malicious anticipation inside of his head, delighted to be held by him once more. He tilts his head, and then looks consideringly down on the Old Palace Master.
“I… don’t need you any longer,” Luo Binghe realizes. His plan - he had so many plans. His careful and patient rise to prominence, power, respect. Proving himself, until finally he’d be good enough to be allowed back on the mountain. The Old Palace Master had his place in these plans, a pawn to fool, a means to an end. That’s all ruined now. It’s all pointless now.
The Old Palace Master tries to make words with his broken jaw, but instead just makes pathetic noises. Luo Binghe looks down on him as if he is an insect, apathetic and dispassionate.
“I suppose I can let you live,” he muses, even as Xin Mo makes his heart pulse with malice. “You might come in convenient someday. But you don’t need to be sect leader any longer. It’s not necessary. You’ll be going into seclusion, Master Chen. For your cultivation.”
He changes his grip on Xin Mo from something idle and loose to firm and practical. Like how he might hold a knife while dressing a beast, gutting a fish. Slaughtering an animal.
Luo Binghe feels his face smile, and it isn’t that pretty, charming expression he’s made to convince people to swallow his lies and manipulations. The Old Palace Master makes a broken noise of terror and tries to shove himself through the wall behind him. Xin Mo is overjoyed.
He is a Heavenly Demon. A filthy creature, his ancestors cast down from the heavens, so impure that even the kindest man in the world would throw him away. Even his love is poisonous, grasping, destructive. He is, above all other things, dangerous.
Maybe it’s about time that Luo Binghe accepted this. If he truly wants to bring his Shizun back, to move heaven and earth to get what he wants - the only thing that he wants - then he’s going to have to be a monster to do it, isn’t he? He’ll have to be willing to do anything. To crush anyone who dares to get in his way, to show no mercy.
“There is only one man in this world I will ever call Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, “and he isn’t here.”
There is no triumph in this statement, only raw wounded grief like an open wound. Despair and fury, hatred and sorrow. Luo Binghe’s heart is dead and broken, lying pale and cold in his bed. Now the world will have to learn just how terrible a heartless Heavenly Demon can truly be.
Xin Mo swings down like an executioner’s ax.