Chapter Text
Pale green silk puddled at Shen Yuan’s knees as he slid a small lacquered box from his sleeve, set it on the stone floor of the out of the way corridor in the southern wing of Huan Hua Palace, and began pulling his specialized lock-picking tools out of it. Though his tension was high, he couldn’t help the building bubbles of glee that kept tugging the corners of his mouth upward as he worked.
Tonight was the culmination of decades of work.
Shen Yuan was practically vibrating with excitement, because he knew — just knew! — that all the hours poured into his research and studying was going to pay off. For real this time. Eventually gods got the feel for it in their bones, even when foresight wasn’t part of their divine domains — and his bones were humming with anticipation.
With practiced efficiency, Shen Yuan pressed bricks in the correct sequence and pulled his fingers back to avoid the stab of a poisoned spike, flicking it down to reveal a keyhole. Working quickly, he took the gold-tipped tools and started picking the lock. It would have been easier if he had the key, but he’d made it this far so many times over the years while trying to replicate the magical properties of the key that it honestly wasn’t slowing him down that much. In minutes, he heard the click of the final pin, and then — for the first time — heard the almost musical mechanical sounds of gears turning behind the thick layers of this deceptively plain brick wall. The false wall slid aside, revealing a beautiful golden door marked with Huan Hua Sect’s seal.
This was it.
It had taken Shen Yuan nearly thirty years of studying historical records, official reports, and hunting down the personal writings of locals to dig out every scrap of legend, every rumor, and the few nuggets of actual verifiable facts so that he could sift truth from fairy tales. Another ten years of establishing the identities of several mortal personae — his magic-made clones — that might possibly be welcome in the Golden City and then invited to Huan Hua Palace itself in order to use its archives for their research. (While he concurrently studied Huan Hua Sect’s cultivation techniques according to the publicly available information and whatever he could learn from spying, in case he needed to disguise himself as one of their own.) An additional five years when he discovered Huan Hua Sect’s formidable maze arrays by running headlong into one and needed to learn their secrets so that he could crack any puzzle they set him to in his pursuit of his goal.
And now, finally, he had discovered the hidden entrance to the Courtyard of the Golden Garden, where a legendary beauty was said to sleep, protected by the Huan Hua Sect honor guard. For the last three centuries, this beauty had been awaiting the man who was tied to the other end of the red string around her finger, the man the story says would be able to free her from her eternal dreaming and break the curse that separated them through time.
Of course, haha, Shen Yuan didn’t think he was that person!
As a child, his parents had taken him to multiple fortune tellers who all agreed that he would never take a woman as a wife. Once he’d ascended, some goddess or another of marriage had actually hunted him down at a party to drunkenly inform him that she would never allow it and ordered him to give the idea up. (He hadn’t even asked, ah! How cruel!)
So of course foolish ideas like this weren’t his motivation. Shen Yuan was guided by the pure heart of any lover of stories, combined with the fortunate means to actually uncover the truth behind the legends. It was just curiosity! Curiosity! He was just going to steal a peek at the figure of the fairy tale that had caught his attention all those years ago, confirm she existed (Er-ge might scoff, but she definitely did. The records were clear on this!), and ensure that Huan Hua Sect’s honor guard was adequately performing its duties. While the pass to Huan Hua Palace’s famous libraries remained valid (the young, bright-eyed scholar clone had really lucked out!) he’d make use of the access during the day, and at night he’d sketch the Courtyard of the Golden Garden, the dreaming beauty, and anything interesting he found there. Even his picky er-ge appreciated when his mission reports included sketches. Plus it meant he could really rub it in his brother’s face that he was wrong — ha!
Then Shen Yuan could move on to whatever his next hyperfixation dictated would monopolize his time.
With the sobering thought that he was now at the end of a hunt that had amounted to nearly half a century of his free time, Shen Yuan pulled the small square of Whisper Spider Silk from his kit and ran it over the door pull, just to verify there was no hidden trap waiting for him. Poison would stain the cloth until it was absorbed, and magic would make it glow. Two gods who had a divine domain of thievery had recommended Whisper Spider Silk cloths highly, and as the coffers afforded to the younger brother of the God of the Four Scholarly Arts were deep, Shen Yuan had unhesitatingly added it to his kit. (It had already saved him from several nasty tricks in Huan Hua Palace alone. He should have gloves made out of it. Could Whisper Spiders be bred? He’d always loved monsters in fiction, so maybe he could make that his next project?)
The door came up clean on every test he ran, so Shen Yuan neatly packed away his kit, stored it in his sleeve pouch, and straightened his clothes.
In the moment between putting his thieves kit away and taking the pull to the golden door, Shen Yuan’s enthusiasm had returned with a vengeance. His quest might be over, but he had nearly a week before his clone’s pass to Huan Hua’s archives expired. Even if the legend of the dreaming beauty paled in the light of reality, there were thousands of texts in the archives that were available nowhere else on heaven, earth, or within the demon realms — he would not be bored! But in the meantime, whatever he learned here, it would be something that was known to only a handful of people for the last several hundred years. Even other — greater — gods could not make that claim!
Lips curved and eyes eager, Shen Yuan pushed the door open and stepped into the Courtyard of the Golden Garden.
And instantly froze in place, horrified past belief.
There was no alcove protecting a stunning ci-xi gate bed with gorgeous carvings nor a luohan couch made of fine wood and mother of pearl inlay, piled high with fine silks and ropes of rare blossoming vines the way he’d imagined.
There was no beautiful woman dreaming away the days until her true love found her.
There was no garden — no flowers; not even a single leaf or carved representation of a plant in sight.
There was only a small, stark courtyard made of dark rusted iron, entombing the area in a way that to Shen Yuan felt nauseatingly like a shipping container used as a murder box in some edgy movie. The size and shape of the space was even similar. It did not help that in the center of the supposed courtyard a man dressed in white training robes braced himself on his knees, his arms pulled apart at shoulder-height, with heavy gold chains attached to manacles clamped around his wrists, above his elbows, his ankles, and his neck, dragging his head down so that his unbound hair fell around him like a coal black curtain and draped on the iron floor below. The chains stretched across the claustrophobic space of the courtyard like golden spiderwebs, hooked into recesses in the walls, and apparently controlled by the levers in each of the far corners.
The man was utterly still, hardly even appearing to breathe.
It was so bizarre and unsettling that natural instinct took over and sent Shen Yuan stumbling forward a few steps to get a closer look to see if he could help. He was almost startled when that movement roused the man, having foolishly assumed he was asleep (or, more likely, unconscious).
That should have halted Shen Yuan in place to reassess and ensure he wasn’t walking into a dangerous situation (he and his er-ge might be immortal scholars, but had both agreed it was foolish not to pick up every trick they could to keep themselves alive — gods or not), but instead it made him lengthen his stride. A foreboding feeling was settling in his stomach as he heard even his light footsteps echo oddly in the horrible space and a strange sensation tugged beneath his skin, making him feel a little shaky.
The man in white lifted his head slowly before angling his face to slant an unreadable look at Shen Yuan.
“An outsider…” the man said with a voice that sounded as rusty from disuse as the iron courtyard. “It has been decades since—” He broke off suddenly, his chin jerking up and his eyes narrowing.
Two thoughts occurred to Shen Yuan back to back — like a left fist slamming into his gut, followed immediately by the right (but harder).
First, that the courtyard at least held a beauty worthy of legends as advertised. The man was stunning. (Phoenix eyes that gleamed purple even in the gloomy starlight that filtered down from the open skylight high above, an almost flirtatious beauty mark below his left eye that invited you close and brows like sharp blades warning you to stand away, a perfectly portioned face that was beautiful in all of the ways a man could be both beautiful and strong, and a down-turned mouth that tantalized the thought of what it would look like with a smile instead. It was a dangerous sort of face that lured with contradictory messages — the sort of face that fully deserved the phrase ‘calamitous beauty’ applied — especially with the way the man’s eyes threatened to enact that calamity himself.)
The second thought was that he recognized that face.
Shen Yuan saw it nearly every day when he crossed the rainbow bridge to and from the serene peak that held his brother’s Qing Jing Palace and passed the next bridge on his way towards the Heavenly City of Cang Qiong. That bridge lead to the peak neighboring his brother’s — and the bridge was guarded by a statue of its missing master.
“Oh fuck, you’re the Bai Zhan War God,” Shen Yuan blurted out.
“Shen Qingqiu,” the man — the god — hissed with deep loathing at almost the same moment.
Shen Yuan startled. No one mistook him for his brother. It was almost impossible to do so — his brother cultivated the image of a flawless immortal scholar. Shen Yuan… did not. In his opinion, even if they were dressed the same way, they wouldn’t look all that similar!
But… ah. Okay. He was wearing green scholars robes, which admittedly did resemble the fresh bamboo green that was his brother’s signature color. And in his excitement in finding the golden door to the hidden courtyard, he must have dropped his guise as the little visiting scholar and revealed his own face. Unless it was part of their divine domains, even most gods did not have perfect memories. Considering it had been more than three hundred years since the Bai Zhan War God had gone missing, it could possibly be considered remarkable that he even mistook him for Shen Qingqiu. And, to be fair, Shen Yuan and the War God had never met. Shen Yuan hadn’t even been born as a mortal at the time the god had disappeared… The mistake was more reasonable under this light.
“No. That’s my er-ge,” Shen Yuan corrected the god distractedly.
The enormity of suddenly understanding that Huan Hua Palace had somehow imprisoned a martial god for over three hundred years suddenly crashed into him. Divinity had bled here. Knowing martial gods, and the divine domains of this martial god in particular — divinity had probably bled a lot. Shen Yuan could have told you in his first life that was a bad idea. With a total of over two hundred years under his belt, the majority spent as an actual god himself, he could start listing the ways by name, and in prioritized order of danger.
After a few moments, Shen Yuan registered that the other god was growling something at him and he flapped a hand in his direction. “Don’t distract me.”
“Don’t… what?”
Unable to help himself, Shen Yuan turned his eyes away from the golden chains he was staring at to see the god (Liu Qingge — that’s right, he was called Liu Qingge) was visibly confused. How could even the expression of being utterly dumbfounded still be that attractive? And with three hundred years in captivity, clearly having had his divinity suppressed and probably even harvested… this was almost certainly the guy’s actual face. Like, the one he was born with. Before ascending.
This was a hate crime against normal people, ah!
Shen Yuan stabbed a finger accusingly in the guy’s direction. “Don’t look at me. I need to think.”
There was a stretch of silence where Shen Yuan actually managed to evaluate the chains (the collar around the god’s neck was connected to the hook attached to the iron floor and to the manacles on his ankles; the manacles on his wrists to opposite walls; his ankles to each other, his neck, and short chains to the floor; and his elbows to hooks high on the wall behind him — the combination of restraints forcing him into a kneeling position that gave him almost no freedom of movement), but he was highly aware of Liu Qingge ignoring his order and staring at him the entire time.
“…What, exactly, are you thinking about?” Liu Qingge finally asked, his tone flat but still somehow conveying his frustration.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want to stay chained up here?” Shen Yuan snapped, unable to help but spin on his heel to glare at the god. (It wasn’t because he almost couldn’t look away. It wasn’t. He’d seen plenty of pretty people before, okay? Gods and mortals. Male and female and the gloriously ambiguous. After you got used to being surrounded by nice faces, it was no big deal to see another. But, it’s just… This was the Bai Zhan War God. And the legendary beauty was 100% real, albeit the circumstances were different. Who wouldn’t stare? Anyone who says different is a liar!)
“…No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Mercifully, Liu Qingge held whatever snarky reply he obviously had between his gritted teeth and didn’t make any movements that would draw attention to himself.
Shen Yuan looked around the iron courtyard again, quickly calculating the time. He’d left the little scholar’s room an hour after dinner and began winding his way through Huan Hua’s maze arrays, keeping his counter-measures subtle. Undetectable. By ten, he’d forced the array to accept him as an authorized person and hid in an alcove until the ‘random’ patrol cleared the hall outside. There should be roughly thirty minutes they could use towards evaluation, discussion, planning, and then be ready to enact those plans.
“We’re lucky it’s almost midnight,” he muttered to himself.
“Why?”
Shen Yuan turned and gave the other god the smile that his siblings in his first life (the modern life, that is) had termed his ‘gremlin smile’. His er-ge in this life (the godly life — which would probably technically be his third life, considering there was a mortal life in-between) more long-windedly called it his ‘distressing expression that always preceded his worst and most dangerous decisions’, which wasn’t fair since most of them actually paid off in the end and half of them didn’t even involve bloodshed!
“My divine powers are always stronger in the dark, and are at their apex at midnight,” Shen Yuan said smugly.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Liu Qingge’s body straightened with surprise. “You’re a god.”
By now Shen Yuan wasn’t even tempted to look. He was carefully probing around the chains with his magic, hoping he wouldn’t set anything off. “Of course — what else would I be?”
“Your brother’s attendant.”
This was a reasonable assumption, but Shen Yuan flicked his fingers dismissively at him anyway. “I ascended. We’ll trade stories later — hush. Tell me what you know about these god-binding chains of yours.”
Liu Qingge gave him a deeply unimpressed stare at the contradicting orders. It was a look powerful enough that Shen Yuan wondered if it might be one his minor domains. ‘Minor god of disapproval’ would look pretty good on a resume.
“…You are certainly related to Shen Qingqiu. You are just as infuriating,” Liu Qingge stated firmly, like it was a curse.
Shen Yuan smirked and moved to crouch in front of the other god, arms crossed over his knees, so that they were nearly nose to nose. “Don’t sell me short, gege. I embody little brother energy. Who I am or am not related to has nothing to do with it. Now — do you have useful information or not?”
Liu Qingge looked as if he might punch him in the face if he ever had the opportunity, but shared what he knew regardless. With centuries of time to learn and adapt to the changes made in the measures taken to imprison him, Liu Qingge could have been brick dumb and kept his eyes closed and still had a few tidbits worth the time it took to listen to. Thankfully, the god was far more intelligent and observant than Shen Qingqiu had complained about whenever the topic came up, so there was actually a lot of useful info to take on-board.
They used the first ten minutes wisely, running through the various security measures and how to operate the levers without either alerting Huan Hua that someone was in the iron courtyard, or causing Liu Qingge harm in the attempts to free him.
Loath as he was to give any credit to the man — for this was all at the orders of Huan Hua’s leader, the Old Palace Master, who had originally found and subdued Liu Qingge, and then fed himself on enough stolen divine blood to begin his dark path towards becoming a god himself, faking the succession of son after murdered son — but he’d been cunning. Cunning, and extremely lucky.
The Old Palace Master had managed to effectively imprison Liu Qingge using his own divine energy.
Spilling Liu Qingge’s blood on the chains had transmuted them into semi-divine artefacts that could actually hold Liu Qingge… at least for awhile. Repeatedly imbibing on divinity and managing to control a god eventually awoke divine domains of metal (gold specifically, thus the golden chains) and divine suppression in Old Palace Master, enabling him to create a sort of near-death spiral where the longer he restrained Liu Qingge, the stronger he became at doing so. And as the God of Perseverance, Liu Qingge needed to have his divine energy maintained carefully lest he break free by recovering at a faster rate than Old Palace Master could drain it from him without actually killing him.
“Why do they risk the skylight?” Shen Yuan asked.
Not only could Liu Qingge hypothetically escape that way if he managed to break free of the chains, but there were many gods who might possibly notice the god’s presence with him being in the open. And that was without the possibility of mundane mortal spies or thieves stumbling across the courtyard.
“I have a minor divine domain with the natural world…” Liu Qingge answered rather flatly.
They were working on the second ten minutes until midnight by slowly loosening the chains that held Liu Qingge’s arms in basically the classic T-pose. Releasing him carefully should hopefully minimize any damage, and they wanted to preserve Shen Yuan’s spiritual energy in case it became necessary to use it for their defense. They’d already lowered the chains that were attached to the cuffs at his elbows, and now it was his right arm, which had to be done more carefully.
“Oh?” Shen Yuan could already start to grasp the implications of that reply, but if Liu Qingge was focusing on his answer, then he wasn’t focusing on the pain.
“The skylight stays open from an hour after sunset until an hour before dawn, as long as Old Palace Master doesn’t belay the standing order because he’s punishing or trying to weaken me,” Liu Qingge explained, wincing as his shoulder gave an audible crack. Shen Yuan winced with sympathy, pausing until Liu Qingge made a jerky nod of his head to continue. The chains began to hiss as they were now low enough to droop on the iron flooring. “Sometimes, if he takes too much from me, he has mind-controlled slaves bring in potted plants.”
The other god’s expression alone was enough to say that it offended him that it actually helped.
“That’s good to know, at least,” Shen Yuan said cautiously. “I’d like to say that I can get you out of the palace tonight, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a promise I can make. I’m only a minor god, and this divine suppression domain Old Palace Master developed is effectively baked into the iron. It’s probably soaked into the palace itself and radiates out to the Golden City too, considering the spiritual communication arrays haven’t worked here in over two hundred years.” Suddenly struck by a thought, Shen Yuan rocked back on his heels a little. “Huh… A lot of things either don’t work or are a lot more difficult to do in the Golden City, come to think of it… We will most likely need to thread this needle carefully.”
“Mn,” Liu Qingge responded, clearly having come to the same conclusion already.
“Not to worry, not to worry, ah…” Shen Yuan said as he swiftly made his way to the other side of the iron courtyard to the lever that would release Liu Qingge’s other arm. “I have a shrine and a particularly faithful worshiper here in Huan Hua Palace. I can call on his devotion and protect you until you can recover.”
“You know him?” The tone of the question seemed to express reluctance, though it could have just sounded that way from the discomfort as Liu Qingge’s arm was released.
“Well, we’ve never spoken, but he’s one of my favorites. He is devout, particularly sincere and good-hearted, and his work ethic is commendable. He tries so hard to become better at his duties and learning all of the skills he needs as the head disciple of Huan Hua Sect, but his efforts are rarely properly appreciated. It’s enough to break a god’s heart, ah…”
Rubbing at his shoulder, Liu Qingge squinted at him. “Who are you again?”
Shen Yuan was offended for a split second. “Oh, right. I didn’t properly introduce myself. I am Shen Yuan, the God of Nightly Toil.” At receiving a blank expression from Liu Qingge, he made a face and added, “Officially I’m the patron god of those who stay up late studying, though over time it’s… expanded to encompass bookworms and night owls in general. I am very versatile that way,” he said with an easy grin, moving towards the next lever.
“You… give luck to hard workers…?”
“So they say.”
“You don’t?”
“I mean, of course I do what I can. Not just luck — I try to do whatever needs doing at the time, according to the circumstances. But as a chronic procrastinator myself, they don’t have to necessarily be hard workers, you know? If they beg me with an open heart and open hands, what else can I do but answer, ah…”
Liu Qingge gave him another squint. “…you’re a vulture, feeding on whatever you find.”
“Rude. Rude, and Greater gods should not say such things about minor gods. Don’t make that stick to me — I have a good reputation, you know! Er-ge is very careful with it and he will bury you if you try to spoil my carefully cultivated image. He has an uphill battle dealing with it as it is, when he’s got this—” He made a waving motion towards himself to encompass his… everything. “—to deal with.”
For a moment there was the slightest suggestion that the corners of Liu Qingge’s lips might have turned upwards. But it could also have been a repressed grimace.
Ehh…
Shen Yuan glanced upward towards the pinpricks of starlight above. “We’re getting into the last minutes until midnight, gege. Last chance to say something about the plans before we set things into motion.”
“Are you sure you know how to use a sword?”
The frankly disbelieving expression that Liu Qingge passed over him would have been more offensive if not for the fact that Liu Qingge was a martial god that — at least when Liu Qingge had last been assessed — ranked only after Yue Qingyuan himself, and the Emperor of Heaven didn’t have any especially close contenders recently. Well… there was the current Demon Emperor, supposedly, but no one had verified that, so who really knew if it was true.
“I do. I’m actually pretty good with a sword. Unlike er-ge, it doesn’t embarrass me to get proper training from the martial gods willing to teach me, because I’m not a god with an image of perfection to maintain. I’m never likely to switch my designation from a ‘scholar god’ to a ‘martial god’ but I can at least pass as a disciple from a good cultivation sect. And because I’m the god of cramming, I get a really good training boost if they train me at night, which is when they’re more often available — so I learn fast!”
He made finger guns and clicked his tongue, and then realized belatedly that (1) even after over two centuries he had still not kicked the stupid habit that tried to make his awkwardness seem cool, and (2) he wasn’t with one of the gods and their attendants he’d trained into understanding what it meant — Liu Qingge had been locked away for even longer than he’d been alive and so the deep fried WTF expression on his face was 100% justified.
“…”
“Right—” Shen Yuan began awkwardly.
“I don’t know what that means,” Liu Qingge said with deadpan earnestness.
“Yeah, I got that. Let’s just move on because it’d take too much time to explain. The answer to your previous question is: Yes, I can use a sword, gege. I will absolutely be capable of chopping through these chains, and we’ll see how many of these collars and cuffs I can get through before my midnight power boost is no longer enough to overpower Old Palace Master’s divine suppression power. So let’s decide the order of priority here. I’m thinking neck, ankles, wrists, elbows. You?”
Liu Qingge stared at him a moment before a ghost of a smirk crossed his mouth and made itself a home glittering in his eyes. “Agreed.”
Well.
…Just.
Just ‘well’.
That was a thing. That happened.
Excuse him for the gears in his brain grinding, okay? Shen Yuan spent something like two centuries near-daily giving a fist bump to a statue with a ‘Jiayou!’ or other appropriately well-wishing phrase and evaluating other statues based on how much they resembled the one he gave fist-bumps to at the bridge. He wasn’t used to any expression from the Bai Zhan War God other than blankness or a slight scowl! Hell, he wasn’t even prepared for seeing the guy wearing anything less than his full godly regalia, hair in is signature high ponytail. He had so far been successful in politely ignoring the plain (slightly disheveled) training robes and unbound hair, ah!
Shen Yuan’s little crisis where his mind tried to turn itself inside out was interrupted by Liu Qingge speaking.
“It’s—”
But Shen Yuan didn’t need the warning. He knew.
“Midnight,” he said, finishing the thought and snapping suddenly into motion. Shen Yuan drew on his divine power and pulled Xiu Ya from the aether, the spirit sword materializing like a white moonbeam in his hand.
He got to work.
***
Every time Liu Qingge felt like he more or less had a read on Shen Yuan, the younger god said or did something that flipped his perception on him — almost like it was being done intentionally to keep him off-balance.
In the end, the only thing Liu Qingge could do was decide that Shen Yuan was the sort of person you couldn’t look away from, because if you turned your back for even a moment, something would happen. If you were lucky, it was the sort of ‘something’ you regretted having missed, but from the way Shen Yuan talked about Shen Qingqiu, Liu Qingge had the sneaking suspicion that it was more often something that would give you ulcers for not having stopped before it got out of hand. It must drive that control freak Shen Qingqiu halfway insane.
At least this time, the surprise Shen Yuan gave Liu Qingge was a good one.
When it reached the cusp of midnight, the other god made an array and summoned a spirit sword. Once the gleaming white sword was in his hand, he became a whirlwind of action.
Green eyes trained themselves on him, their expression both sharp and serene — his focus absolute and his spirit calm and confident. Without more than a trickle of access to his divine energy, Liu Qingge’s eyes actually had trouble following some of the other god’s movements as Shen Yuan worked, his footwork making him almost dance in a circle around Liu Qingge as the blade cut through chain after chain as easily as if they were spiderwebs until only the manacles themselves remained.
The hinges on the collar around his neck went next, the act over and done with before Liu Qingge could tense at having the near-stranger’s weapon swing so close. The pieces of the collar clanked and clattered to the iron flooring, the cuts clean and precise. He hadn’t even felt anything but the collar giving way under its own weight.
Liu Qingge was genuinely impressed. If this was an indication of Shen Yuan’s martial potential, he’d been vastly underselling himself in his earlier assurances that he was able to ‘pass’ as a mortal cultivator.
He itched to see what the other god could actually do in a fight.
Realizing that there were no longer sounds of movement, Liu Qingge turned his head to look behind him. There he saw Shen Yuan on one knee, his forehead resting on his tense wrists and both hands tightly gripping the hilt of his sword. The white light of the blade was sputtering as it sank another inch into the iron flooring as he watched, having ripped an ugly gouge into the metal plating after it'd clearly skidded off the surface of the manacle attached to one of Liu Qingge’s ankles. The manacle didn’t have a scratch on it, even though from the way the edges of the still slightly smoking tear in the iron floor had melted, Shen Yuan had put a great deal of power into the attempt. From the defeat that bowed the younger god’s shoulders, it had probably not been his first attempt to attack the cuff.
“Hey,” Liu Qingge said gruffly, trying to get Shen Yuan’s attention. There was a sort of flinch from the other god, but no response. Liu Qingge tried again, gentling his voice. “Hey. It’s fine. I told you this would happen.”
After a few of Liu Qingge’s attempts to break free — and getting pretty far with his escapes several of those times — Old Palace Master had cursed the manacles so that only one of them could be removed a day. Even if Liu Qingge managed to snap the chains and leave the courtyard sometime between Old Palace Master’s visits to check on him, the cursed manacles would still severely suppress Liu Qingge’s powers for at least a week, making recapture within the abilities of normal human guards, much less immortal cultivators.
Shen Yuan heaved a sigh before dismissing his spirit sword, catching himself on his hands and letting his head hang a moment before he lifted it again and looked over at Liu Qingge, sweat beading on his skin and a hint of exhaustion dulling his eyes. “I know. I just thought I could take advantage of the midnight boost. The old bastard isn’t especially clever with his magic, he just has brute force on his side. I hoped I was stronger.”
“Mn. But you got this one off,” Liu Qingge reminded him, gesturing to his own now-bare throat. “It was the worst one. Made it harder to even think.”
That made Shen Yuan wrinkle his nose a little and purse his lips with an angry sort of sympathy. “Right — silver linings. One down and six to go.” Perhaps taking heart from being forced to re-frame their progress, Shen Yuan pushed himself off his hands and knees to fall into a sprawling sit, groaning theatrically as he used the back of his wrist to wipe the sweat away from his skin. Somehow the action felt almost cheerful even if he launched into a complaint directly after. “Ah, man… That was way more difficult than I anticipated, gege. I could have climbed a mountain with the effort it took to draw Xiu Ya, and then blown the mountain up with less power than I used trying to destroy that cuff.”
“Mn,” Liu Qingge agreed with a nod. “Impressive.”
Shen Yuan glanced over at him, appearing startled, and then flushed a little at the praise, averting his eyes shyly. “Thanks. We should go, if you think you can stand?”
Liu Qingge only hesitated for a moment before moving to get his feet underneath him. His mortal background as a cultivator was extremely useful here. He wouldn’t have been able to do this otherwise.
It was a slow, painful process to move after so long, but as usual, he ignored the pain in favor of understanding what it was signaling to him and using that information to compensate. Between his long history of standing and moving when the need was louder than his body’s protests, and Shen Yuan’s unasked for (but surprisingly appreciated) assistance, they were able to remind his limbs of their proper functions and he was able to support most of his own weight. Walking was harder, but each step was easier after he managed the first.
By the time they reached the door, he could feel a fierce smile on his lips, satisfaction rolling through him. Six of the seven cursed manacles remained, but his divinity was already rising within in response to his determination to regain control over his body. The more he pushed through the pain and the decades of stiffness, the stronger he grew.
That was what it meant to be the God of Perseverance.
***
Huan Hua Palace was, in itself, as large as most cities in this part of the world. Making their way from a lesser corridor in the southern wing towards the far end of the eastern wing where Shen Yuan’s clone’s room was located seemed like it might take hours at their cautious pace.
This task was made thrice as difficult because they discovered that the maze array had been specifically designed to lose Liu Qingge within it. It took them nearly walking into the arms of a patrol of cultivators dressed in gold and white before Shen Yuan picked up on it. They quickly hid within a small storage room while the young god tried to convince the array that Liu Qingge was actually a Huan Hua disciple and permitted free access to the palace halls.
Liu Qingge used this opportunity to rest.
Bemused, he watched Shen Yuan grow increasingly frustrated with the array. Like this, his lips pressed tightly together and his eyes sharp and narrow, it was easy once again to see the resemblance between Shen Yuan and Shen Qingqiu. Though Liu Qingge felt that his initial confusion at seeing the younger god had been understandable, Shen Yuan had quickly grown distinct in his mind simply by merit of his behavior being so different from Shen Qingqiu’s. While Shen Qingqiu cultivated the air of cool perfection and icy anger, Shen Yuan was far more expressive. Warmer. It felt impossible not to at least consider following his rescuer’s lead.
“What more do you want from me?” Shen Yuan finally demanded out loud, gesturing furiously with both hands towards Liu Qingge. “Huan Hua Sect members wear gold and white. He is wearing gold and white! Look at it, you can see as plainly as I do that this is true! Is his cultivation level not also enough to convince you — ah!”
Well, Liu Qingge was indeed wearing white, and the manacles were gold but… He squinted at Shen Yuan, who seemed to catch the look and give him a double-take.
“What?”
“Are you… literally arguing with the array about its parameters?” he asked dubiously.
Shen Yuan looked sheepish for a moment, but gave him a wry, rather lopsided smile and a shrug. “Sure. You’d be surprised how often it works.”
Liu Qingge hummed thoughtfully before saying, “Point out the flower stamps in the gold.” He held out a wrist to indicate the markings on the shackle. “Only Old Palace Master’s mark looks like this one. Perhaps you can convince the array I should have the same access.”
An expression of delight bloomed over Shen Yuan’s face before he gave him a wild, surprisingly charming grin. Liu Qingge liked it. It was a smile with all of the sharp teeth and deviousness of a fox.
“Oh…” Shen Yuan breathed, reaching out to almost reverently cup his hands around the cuff without touching it. “He shouldn’t have done that. Someone like me can do such things with this. Gege, can you imagine the expression on his face if he ever realizes I’m able to hide you from him using his own arrays because he was such an arrogant monster he decided to stamp you with his mark like you were his property? It’s poetic. I think I might cry.”
“Mn. Commission a song about it later. Work on outwitting him now,” he said with a bland voice and expression. But inside he was laughing.
Shen Yuan’s own expression only grew more excited. “Oh. I’ll do better than that. The moment you’re safely home again I’ll visit every poet, musician, playwright, and author that’s ever lit a stick of incense for me and whisper this story to them in their dreams. Then I’ll reward all of the artists who actually publish something. If an entire generation doesn’t laugh at this idiot for the rest of their lives, it won’t be because I didn’t give the world the opportunity.”
“No wonder you admire diligence so much. You are easily distracted,” he teased.
Liu Qingge’s voice was still so flat, but Shen Yuan seemed to hear the joking tone anyway. His green eyes flashed up at Liu Qingge as he gave him a cat’s smile. A second later there was a sensation in the back of his mind as if someone released a rope he hadn’t even realized had been tied around it, much less that it was trying to tug him in a certain direction.
“There,” Shen Yuan said smugly. “I couldn’t convince the array that you were Old Palace Master — I guess you aren’t foul enough to qualify, well-done you! — but it seems to agree that you must be a member of the sect in high standing. You’re allowed anywhere in the palace. I don’t recommend taking advantage of that yet, but if we have the time to cause trouble before we leave, we should ruthlessly abuse this privilege.”
“En.”
Their eyes met again, and in that moment it felt as though their intentions were in perfect harmony. By the time they were through here in the Golden City, he was certain that they would make Old Palace Master feel the weight of three hundred years worth of regret for his actions before they crushed him utterly.
If there was anyone he could have wished had been there instead to discover him and break him free, Liu Qingge could not remember them now by either name or face. Instead, his only thought was that the universe had chosen his rescuer well.