Chapter Text
“Let him go.” Liu Qingge’s voice trembled.
The Bai Zhan peak lord, ever the strongest, ever reliable, Shen Qingqiu’s beloved shidi…
His entire body shook, on the verge of tears. “Give my shixiong back—!” Liu Qingge aimlessly swung his sword. He stumbled forward and suddenly, the tug of exhaustion brought him down to his knees.
Still, he clutched his blade. Still, he screamed. “Get your filthy hands off him!”
How unfitting of him now though; that his roar amounted to nothing more than a desperate plea.
Soft thuds approached him, gravel crumbling at the soles of the demon’s feet. Luo Binghe—Demon lord Luo Binghe—he just looked down at Liu Qingge in pity and leveled him with a heavy sigh.
“Bai Zhan War God,” the young man said solemnly. He gently grabbed the hand of his shizun—the corpse in his arms—and extended it toward the peak lord who’d collapsed to the ground. “You are dying.”
“Be quiet!” Liu Qingge growled and thrust his sword to the demon, though albeit a predictable move; he trusted that it would land, that it would pierce str—
Luo Binghe simply caught it between his fingers. “Shizun wouldn’t want this.”
Liu Qingge’s grip faltered, but his eyes burned from those words.
“Since when did you care about what he wanted?“ The peak lord’s gaze landed heavy on Shen Qingqiu’s limp hand—on Lou Binghe’s grasp of it. “Since when did you ever deserve to touch him?!”
“Liu-shishu.” He said softly. The sincerity of it—the absurdity—struck Liu Qingge speechless. “I am my shizun’s disciple. I only want what is best for him.”
“You sleep with his corpse every night. Do not lecture me over the rights you don’t have!” Liu Qingge all but screamed. He clawed at the dirt where he lay, glared past his heavy eyelids stained with blood and swallowed down his cries. “Lou Binghe, it’s been five years. Put him to rest. Let him pass on! Hasn’t he suffered enough?!”
Without warning, a jolt of pain sizzled through him, his arms jerking as they gave out and he fell to his side. It jostled his broken ribs and nearly impaled the already damaged organs inside.
Even Luo Binghe pitied him. It was sickening. “Liu-shishu, I believe that shizun will come back. He may return to us still.” The demon lord stood up, cradling Shen Qingqiu in his arms. “Though you might not be there in time.”
The Bai Zhan peak lord’s chest spasmed at his every breath. And he hated it. He hated that Luo Binghe would’ve been right.
He despised the crushing pain in his heart, resented that even in death, Shen Qingqiu could never break free.
“You monster.” The tears flowed freely then, joining his own freshly-spilled blood. “You bastard— let him go.”
“Shizun doesn’t need to be released, he was no prisoner in the first place.” Luo Binghe pried Cheng Luan from Liu Qingge’s grasp and stabbed it into the ground before him. “May you rest well in the afterlife, shishu.”
Liu Qingge’s head then hit the ground, and his vision faded to black.
***
The endless darkness rang. Somehow.
It echoed through the space, and soft waves, small vibrations—they hummed from underneath his fingertips.
It reminded him of the bells they had in Bai Zhan, tolling endlessly to wake disciples up in preparation for their morning training.
Liu Qingge’s fingers curled, then went lax. He still didn’t budge.
Though after a moment, the rings came again. It was louder now, and the strength of the vibrations buzzed at him. It was unlike any wake-up call Liu Qingge’d ever had.
His eyes snapped open.
“8:00 am alarm.” A woman’s voice pierced his ears. The noises continued, “8:00 am alarm.”
Liu Qingge startled so hard he fell off his bed and hit the ground with a grunt. “Who’s there?!” He quickly sat up and yelled in the voice’s direction, but was met with empty space.
Was it a ghost? In his own home?
How foolish.
Liu Qingge huffed, then stood up. He brushed himself off and extended his arm, sending a wave of qi to call for Cheng Luan…
But there was nothing.
The peak lord’s brows furrowed and he tried again, even going so far as to call its name out loud. And he waited. Waited for that familiar weight to fall into his palms, for the grip of the sword that he used for so long.
He looked down. His hand was still empty.
“What in the..?” Liu Qingge grumbled. He put his hands together and closed his eyes, reaching into his golden core to find the problem.
And somehow, that also drew a blank.
Liu Qingge didn’t have a golden core, nor even any qi at all.
He snapped back to alertness and tried his best to calm the racing of his blood and the sudden thunder of his pumping chest. Liu Qingge nearly stumbled as he sat himself back down on the bed.
But in that moment, undistracted and purely occupied by only himself—by the lack of energy surrounding him; Liu Qingge finally noticed something he should have seen long ago.
This wasn’t even his house.
He was in a room painted purely in white, sparsely decorated with simple wooden furniture. There was a nightstand to his right, where a lamp was lit without fire and where strange black rectangle lay next to it.
He scanned the rest of the room to find that cold air was spewed out from a large device overhead, that the room was illuminated by a glowing orb attached to the ceiling, and that there were more black rectangular devices littered around. One was seated on a desk with the marking of a fruit, and the other seemed to be the one on the nightstand where the woman’s voice had come from earlier.
Where the hell was he?
Before he could even finish that thought, images flashed before his eyes, a sharp pain stabbed into his side and—
Liu Qingge slammed his fist into the bed, suddenly enraged.
Luo Binghe! That monster! He’d gotten away with Shen Qingqiu!
The peak lord scowled to himself. “I will not lose to him again. Never again.” He swore with shaking fists and shot up from where he sat.
Liu Qingge was about to storm back into Luo Binghe’s territory, but it struck him then—that he didn’t even know where he was.
Liu Qingge was surrounded by gadgets unfamiliar, by an environment of a new kind. And he didn’t even have a golden core, nor qi to use.
How was he ever to bring Shen Qingqiu back?