Archive of Our Own

The thing about the recruitment ceremonies was that they were really boring.

Liu Qingge went--of course he did--but whether or not a disciple came to Bai Zhan had nothing to do with how well they dug a hole. It all came down to their abilities in the moment when they were attempting to reach Bai Zhan. All the digging did was force them to go through the trials while already exhausted.

When he was a disciple he'd been excused from this particular ceremony in favor of the more important role of setting up those trials, but as Peak Lord he had to actually show up and sit there and attempt to ignore Shen Qingqiu. Which was, frankly, impossible when they were there for hours watching a bunch of children dig in the dirt. Was he supposed to sit there like a statue and not say anything just because someone else couldn't manage to behave even if Liu Qingge wasn't even talking to that someone?

He arrived exactly on time, ready to pretend like Qing Jing didn't exist.

Shen Qingqiu wasn't there.

Shen Qingqiu wasn't there, and, more significantly, Yue Qingyuan wasn't looking for him.

Was Shen Qingqiu skipping? Liu Qingge was annoyed on principal. He was there, and he didn't have a reason other than tradition! Shen Qingqiu was actually supposed to pay attention. Most of the Qing Jing disciples were handpicked, unless Shen Qingqiu had decided for some reason to change up centuries of tradition.

Not that Liu Qingge would be surprised if Shen Qingqiu had done that.

Liu Qingge put it out of his mind, resolving to just enjoy whatever amount of the ceremony he got to have without annoyance. It wasn't his problem, and there was no chance of Yue Qingyuan so much as frowning about it in Shen Qingqiu's direction. It was best not to let changes on a peak that didn't affect him bother him.

Instead, as soon as he stepped into the pavilion, Shang Qinghua sat bolt upright, looking at Liu Qingge in something like mild panic.

"What?" Liu Qingge asked.

"Ah it's--probably nothing? Shen-shixiong isn't here so I guess it doesn't--I mean, uh."

"Just spit it out," Liu Qingge said, annoyed. What did he have to do with Shen Qingqiu being here or not?

"Well--we got reports of a fairly large demonic creature in the Yi Mangroves? No identification yet, but it's big and has teeth and was sapping the natural qi so--so--so I sent word on? But I guess some of your disciples might have gone to deal with it. Or told Shen Qingqiu and he went to deal with it?"

"Shen Qingqiu left for Ju Hua City yesterday," Yue Qingyuan interjected without explanation for why Shen Qingqiu had taken off for a random city right before their recruitment ceremony.

"Ah." Shang Qinghua fidgeted. He looked...not very surprised by that, actually. Or maybe his general nervousness was overriding his ability to express any other emotions.

"I'll go check it out," Liu Qingge said. "Most likely one of my disciples will come find me when they realize an An Ding disciple is waiting with something worth dealing with. I may as well go now. The disciples can manage the trials on their own."

If Shen Qingqiu could skip to go to some city on a lark, then surely Liu Qingge could get away with skipping to deal with something actually important.

Qi Qingqi rolled her eyes at him, but Yue Qingyuan nodded, and that was enough permission for Liu Qingge to take off. Ceremony successfully avoided, and since Ju Hua was on the other side of a mountain range from the Yi Mangroves, the chances of running into Shen Qingqiu were all but none. If Liu Qingge was lucky, he could avoid the asshole for months.

There was indeed an An Ding disciple waiting with a file, standing still in front of Liu Qingge's "office" (he never used it, so it was just a room with a desk where the disciples left files on things Liu Qingge would want to follow up on). The Bai Zhan disciples were understandably ignoring her. Usually anything An Ding wanted could wait. The trials could not.

Unfortunately for them, this was a lesson in learning to verify what the tasks were before they set the priority.

The Bai Zhan stopped ignoring the An Ding disciple when they realized that Liu Qingge was paying attention to her, but by that point it was a bit too late to stay out of trouble for it.

If they conducted the trials well, he might let them off easy.

As it was, he took the folder from the wide eyed An Ding girl who had been standing there for who knew how long, dismissed her, flipped through it enough to verify the location, and took off.

Most likely it wasn't something that was worth dealing with himself, but his choices were to go deal with it himself or to go sit in a pavilion watching children dig in the dirt. If it was easy to deal with, then he could just continue on to find something else worth fighting.

It turned out to actually be something both dangerous and that Liu Qingge hadn't encountered before. It was a qi eater, which was always dangerous, and had enough teeth that he would have thought it came straight from the Abyss except for the lack of signs of a breakthrough and the completely isolated nature of the area. It was a good fight, though, good enough that he dragged the carcass back for his disciples to identify despite its size.

Several hours after he returned, one of them came to let him know that the demonic beast wasn't anywhere in their bestiaries. Liu Qingge told them to ask Qing Jing for help and took off again.

There was no way that he was staying around for Shen Qingqiu to show up and act like a useless know it all while his disciples did all of the work. It wouldn't even look like avoidance, since Liu Qingge had the plausible excuse of a possible abyssal beast. How often did they run into something strange and new that wasn't from the Endless Abyss?

So off he went to check for that. He was halfway there when it occurred to him that he probably should have checked for new disciples first. Surely at least one of the little dirt digging children would have completed the trials?

….

They would be getting an accurate view of their peak lord, at least.

It took a few days, but Liu Qingge eventually managed to find the most likely spot where an abyssal creature (if it was that) could have come through. The biggest argument against it was that he wasn't sure how it could have gotten through with so little effect unless someone had somehow carefully baited the creature out and then slammed the rift closed behind it. Was someone trying to keep a giant monster as a pet?

Maybe someone hated that part of the swamp in particular. It happened. Demonic cultivators were really weird sometimes.

He was planning to dump the problem on Shen Qingqiu--it was more of an investigative issue at this point--but by the time he got back Qing Jing still hadn't shown up to do their job.

Liu Qingge considered the situation, decided that he'd give it a day, and went off to see if there were any new disciples he had to welcome and then toss into training instead.

The next day Qi Qingqi showed up, looking amused. "You two miscreants skipping the ceremony threw everything into chaos. One of the strongest disciples ended up on An Ding."

Liu Qingge raised an eyebrow. "Shang Qinghua claimed him and nobody said anything?"

"No! He didn't claim anyone. The kid just showed up there. I thought he must have failed your trials but apparently he never even went."

"He might have family ties." Liu Qingge shrugged. A kid who was drawn to An Ding wouldn't have been a good fit for the brawlers and chaos of Bai Zhan. Most of the An Ding disciples kept their heads down and scurried anytime they were forced onto Bai Zhan as it was, and a lot of those weren't ones who had any other options. "If Zhangmen disapproved he would have claimed the kid himself."

"The kid didn't even try the Qiong Ding trials. Not even an attempt. Just straight to An Ding. Shang Qinghua apologized about it at the meeting you and Shen Qingqiu missed."

Liu Qingge rolled his eyes. "He still went to a Peak. Maybe the kid really likes...what does Shang Qinghua call them? His grids. His paperwork...organizing things? My disciples said they had to stuff their ears with cotton because some of the An Ding disciples wouldn't stop telling them about it."

"Maybe." Qi Qingqi waved a finger at him. "Stop ruining my amusement!"

"Then go gossip to someone who is amused by it!"

"I already did. You're the only new target."

"Gossip about it with Shen Qingqiu."

"He'd take it as an insult and decide that Shang Qinghua is his new enemy who was just waiting for him to be absent to strike and steal the good disciples. I'm fairly certain Shang Qinghua would die of fright, and then who would do the paperwork grid things?"

Liu Qingge eyed her. "I thought Shen Qingqiu was off getting a book? He could have delayed that."

She threw up her hands. "Apparently it was important? Zhangmen-shixiong made it sound that way. He isn't even back yet."

"Well, that explains why no one has shown up to identify a demonic beast for me."

"If you stopped letting your disciples beat up the Qing Jing disciples, that would be less of a problem for you."

"If they focused on their martial skills and became stronger, then it wouldn't be a problem for anyone." Liu Qingge pushed to his feet. "I'm going to go fetch some of them. Just because Shen Qingqiu is off on a lark doesn't mean that they can get out of the work they need to be doing."

"You're terrible," Qi Qingqi said fondly, following him.

They didn't end up semi-kidnapping Qing Jing's head disciple. Instead, when they got to Shen Qingqiu's house a small girl with her hair in buns was hovering outside the door.

She burst into tears as soon as she saw them. "Shizun's missing!"

"He's out on a mission," Liu Qingge said, annoyed and intending to ask after their head disciple.

The girl interrupted him, because apparently manners weren't taught on Qing Jing, "He was supposed to be gone only two days but it's been several!"

"Do you know what he was looking for," Qi Qingqi asked calmly.

The girl shook her head, which meant that they had to go ask after the head disciple for slightly less petty reasons.

Liu Qingge sternly told the boy to send someone to Bai Zhan to identify that monster anyways.

Transmigrating was supposed to be somewhat guided, wasn't it? Getting tossed into a body with a brief message of [The author has taken control of the plot. If you want to fix things, then fix things!] followed by echoing silence wasn't what he would call guided! Which author? Airplane, surely, if Shen Yuan's last thoughts were anything to go by, but then where was he being put? Why was the author taking control not a normal thing? Did it mean the plot of the novel was wrong? Was he being tossed into harem land expected to stem the endless tide of wives? That was just not going to happen as a male side character in Proud Immortal Demon Way. Trying to stem the flow of wives for even one wife was how you became canon fodder.

Waking up didn't help. One moment he was still able to think. The next he managed to peek open his eyes, and immediately after that it was like he shattered into a lot of shards that all hurt at once all of which were thinking different things.

The only coherent thought that all the shards of him could agree on was "Fuck this!" which was not fixing the situation!

A moment later--or an eternity, he wasn't sure--a thread of something other was grabbing all of the shards of him and yanking them back into one nice picture.

Someone was also holding him.

Was someone supposed to be holding him?

He attempted to get out some sort of coherent sentence, but the one thing he'd been able to think was still echoing around his head and instead all he could get out was a strangled, "Let the fuck go of me!"

Whoever was holding him promptly dropped him.

"Liu Qingge!" someone else scolded.

"He said to let go."

"He's just coming out of a qi deviation, you can't take him seriously."

"He sounded pretty back to normal to me."

Shen Yuan managed to get his eyes open, rubbing at them with an arm that felt as heavy as iron in an attempt to clear his vision, and tried and failed to actually push himself up.

"Here," a woman said, holding a flower in front of him as she reached around his back and helped him sit up. "Eat this."

Shen Yuan considered the dangers of eating things from strange people who had just dropped him on the floor, considered how his head was currently feeling, and decided that the worst that could happen was he died again.

It would, at least, be a very Xianxia way to die.

The flower didn't kill him, it didn't even feel like eating a flower, actually. It cleared his head enough that he could look up--straight into the face of the prettiest man he had ever seen.

Seriously, what the fuck.

Shen Yuan blinked at the prettiest man he had ever seen--literally it was like he was straight out of some overly artful book. Maybe he wasn't in Proud Immortal Demon Way after all? He was pretty sure there was only one pretty man in those books and this definitely was not the protagonist.

The man raised an eyebrow and glanced over at the woman. "I think he's still deviating."

"Stop being an asshole."

Shen Yuan made a disgruntled noise of agreement, trying to get to his feet.

"Stop trying to get up," the pretty man said, holding onto his arm and effortlessly keeping him sitting down. It didn't even look like he was trying.

"Let go of me," Shen Yuan protested. He needed to get some distance and figure out when and where he was. They didn't seem to surprised by him telling them to fuck off, but it was possible that was whatever had him in the dirt giving him some leeway. Leeway which he would be rapidly losing right now.

"Stop antagonizing him," the woman told the man. "You're just making it worse."

Technically the man did absolutely nothing other than inspire Shen Yuan to attempt to move to keep in character with...well it had to be someone.

It suddenly hit him, like a truck, that the woman had called the pretty asshole guy Liu Qingge. On its own that could be a coincidence, but a quick glance was all he needed to verify what sword it was and a glance down at his own, very green, clothes were enough to make him suddenly realize what the worst case scenario was here.

Maybe this wasn't Proud Immortal Demon Way. Maybe this was--

"It's not my fault that Shen Qingqiu acts this way," Liu Qingge groused. "Were you expecting anything different?"

Fuck.

It took several minutes from waking Shen Qingqiu up to getting him to respond, and when he did it seemed...odd.

Liu Qingge couldn't really put his finger on it, because some things fit entirely.

"We should get you to Qian Cao," Qi Qingqi said.

"I'm fine!" Shen Qingqiu insisted, hiding behind a fan. "It wasn't much of a qi deviation."

It sounded a lot like him. Everything from the stupidity to the stubbornness to the lack of appreciation that they had come to find him at all.

Except he wasn't responding right in other ways.

"Where's that book that you came to get?" Qi Qingqi asked. She sounded innocent enough but Liu Qingge could tell from her stance that the same possibilities were running through her mind. Something was off.

Shen Qingqiu glanced around, caught himself, started to shrug, stopped that, then checked his spatial storage. "I have it," he said, without actually pulling anything from the spatial storage.

Qi Qingqi glanced at Liu Qingge, "You get Shen-shixiong to Qian Cao. I'm going to look around."

He looked back at Shen Qingqiu in time to catch a hint of panic before a fan was hiding it again.

Liu Qingge couldn't decide if the man was possessed or had lost his memory. Surely he would have been able to sense a demon...but surely Shen Qingqiu would be protesting stridently against Liu Qingge carrying him back. He didn't look happy about it, but he wasn't protesting.

None of it made sense, so he'd just drag Shen Qingqiu back with him and let someone else deal with it.

Dropping Shen Qingqiu off on Qian Cao was fairly easy despite his grumbling.

He pulled Mu Qingfang aside to warn him just in case.

"You pulled him out of the deviation?" Mu Qingfang asked, eyes narrowing as he went over what Liu Qingge had told him. "Then it's not a demon. We can ask Wei Qingwei to check--"

"I'll go get him then."

Mu Qingfang snorted. "Sure, do that. I don't think it's a demon, but Wei Qingwei should check Xiu Ya to make sure it wasn't affected by the deviation. Shen Qingqiu was deviating for days; amnesia would be a normal consequence. If we're lucky it'll be temporary."

"Is that lucky? I'd think it'd be luckier the other way around."

Mu Qingfang shot him a sharp look but didn't disagree.

Qi Qingqi was waiting in Liu Qingge's "office" when he got back and tossed a book down on his desk. "We can verify with Zhangmen, but I'm fairly certain this is the book he went to retrieve," she said without preamble. "He did not have it in his pouch like he said. Is he possessed or amnesiac?"

"Amnesiac." Liu Qingge frowned at the book, which had a weirdly familiar feel that took him a moment to identify. "That thing's aura feels like the monster I killed."

"Monster?"

"Abyssal beast. The one I skipped the recruitment ceremony to kill."

Qi Qingqi frowned, flipped through the book, and then set it back down. "Normally I would say we should ask Shen Qingqiu but...well…"

"Not an option until we know what state he's in," Liu Qingge agreed. "He didn't try to do anything nasty at all the whole flight back so it may be awhile until he's back to normal."

Qi Qingqi laughed. "Or he's forgotten why he hates you. Do you think he'll be nice to Shixiong now?"

"One can only hope." Liu Qingge rolled his eyes, then tapped on the book. "One of us should read this."

They ended up making some of the Xuan Shu girls read the book. Liu Mingyan was not happy with him, because it was a very dense and difficult to read sort of old book, but that was a disciple's lot.

"It's all about summoning demons from the Abyss and--and I know it's important!" Liu Mingyan said, leaning seriously over the desk that he had woefully been stuck sitting at several times in the last week. "I know! But, Brother, I do not want to be reading about summoning demons from the Endless Abyss when we should be going through celebrations to welcome our newest shimei onto the peak! We are not your Bai Zhan boys, we celebrate!"

"I know." He shrugged. "But sometimes there's someone summoning abyssal beasts, and you have to do work when you don't want to."

"Don't lecture me." She whined. "Why aren't you making your disciples do it?"

"I am."

She blinked at him. "I was joking, are you really?"

"Yes?"

"You didn't ask--"

"I'm not asking Qing Jing. They know the situation." They were also dealing with an amnesiac peak lord so, really, best to just avoid it.

Shen Qingqiu had spent several days trying not to panic while he waited for someone to decide that he was an imposter and...well he wasn't sure what they could do with a transmigrator, but considering that possession wasn't unheard of in this setting there was the off chance that they could do something.

Nothing happened. His disciples seemed rather shaken up--apparently he'd been gone for almost a week, so on his return he was met with a sobbing Ning Yingying--but they didn't seem to be questioning who he was.

And, importantly, Luo Binghe was not amongst the disciples at all.

He had checked the woodshed just in case. Ming Fan had found him there, an odd look on the head disciple's face, but Shen Qingqiu had covered for himself by pointing out how ill placed and ugly the woodshed was.

He knew it wouldn't solve anything, technically, to remove the building.

Shen Qingqiu still felt smug the next time he walked by and the woodshed was entirely missing, the wood presumably moved elsewhere. If he had the ages right, then the point at which he'd have to deal with Luo Binghe would be soon, probably.

Not having a system had been terrifying at first, especially when dealing with two other peak lords, neither of whom liked him...but the dislike had probably worked in his favor. If they had been good friends, surely they would have been more suspicious?

Once past that, though, the lack of a system was starting to seem like more of a boon. Mu Qingfang had been outright friendly after an initially cool introduction, and each time a visitor had shown up a disciple would run in to tell their peak lord who was coming, which gave Shen Qingqiu time to remember everything he could about them and actually act like a normal person. It was way easier to deal with people when he knew who they were and didn't have to play a guessing game or try to recognize their swords.

He wasn't sure if he managed to be quite as much of an asshole as he should be, but if he was going to change that, now was apparently the best time for it.

And, importantly, between "qi deviating" into a slightly nicer personality and there being no prior treatment of Luo Binghe for anyone to think his behavior was odd based off of, he could probably stick one to the systems who'd abandoned him by ruining the plot even more and having a nice, normal, boring, plotless cultivation life.

He tapped his fan at his other hand as he stared at the spot where the woodshed used to be. It was kind of an eyesore.

Maybe he could grow something over it?

Shen Qingqiu tried to connect with the qi around him, feeling...something that he could do? Connected to plants? He sent it towards the empty spot.

A shower of leaves thudded into the ground like knives.

That was not what he meant to do.

Step one, he decided, was to read through every book in Shen Qingqiu's house in the hopes one of them was a cultivation manual.

There were cultivation manuals in Shen Qingqiu's house.

They were not beginner manuals, because of course the original Shen Qingqiu would never debase himself by admitting that he needed to review the basics from time to time, and it made the whole thing incredibly confusing. It didn't help that cultivation manuals weren't exactly step by step instructions. There was a lot of poetry and talk about spleens and other things that he needed to understand and center himself in. It sounded like a great thing when reading about cultivation--of course it would be complicated and opaque to the average reader!--but it was infuriating as said average reader with a full peak lord's level of power that he could use without understanding. Was he going to have to trial and error everything he was already "able" to do?

He left a giant rent in the ground and barely avoided being found by a few disciples who were out to cut wood before deciding that he would have to find another way to practice.

Maybe a mission?

Probably a mission!

At least if he exploded himself horribly then it would be just him and the bad guys or demons or ghosts or whatever and not stray children!

He waited a day, then frowned at Ming Fan when the boy brought in reports. "Have there been any sightings of demonic creatures lately?" Going all bully at some demon frog or something wasn't his favourite way of leveling up, but he needed an excuse.

Ming Fang's head bobbed. "Liu-shishu has been tracking the abyssal beast!" he said proudly, with the air of someone who had been listening to things just hoping for a chance to show off how much he knew. He started saying something else, then stopped suddenly.

"Out with it," Shen Qingqiu said.

"Well, they're having Xuan Shu do the research?" Ming Fan said nervously.

"What sort of research?"

By the time Ming Fan was done explaining, Shen Qingqiu had something of an idea what was going on. It was somewhat of a relief, to realize that even if he was currently pants at actually doing things, the meta knowledge was still very relevant. He wasn't going to have to somehow catch up on everything Shen Qingqiu was supposed to know when he was already a walking Proud Immortal Demon Way wiki.

The weird thing was that this event wasn't supposed to happen until much further into the web novel? Hundreds of years, in fact. Someone thousands of years ago had marked demons so that they could be summoned specifically from the Endless Abyss without tearing things open in such a way that let all manner of smaller demonic creatures through as well. The book itself had been locked well away and forgotten until a future wife who wasn't even born yet had come across it and seen it as the solution to her problems. It had, naturally, created even larger, toothier problems, which the protagonist had then dealt with before dealing with her personal problems as well.

It was a neat concept which had been wasted on a dumb plot and then forgotten entirely.

"Do you have any details about the abyssal beast that Liu Qingge fought?" he asked.

"We...we did a sketch and took notes but we delivered them to Liu-shishu," Ming Fan said awkwardly. "He should give them back when they're done. I could go ask for them if Shizun likes!"

"No need. I'll go myself."

Ming Fan looked stricken.

Shen Qingqiu ignored the expression in favor of getting up and grabbing a fan as a bullshit shield as he walked out the door. He needed the practice and--well--he also needed to smooth things over with Liu Qingge! This dealt with both issues at the same time!

He wasn't particularly expecting any surprises.

He should have been. When he stepped into the main hall of Liu Qingge's peak, there were a few other peak lords there. Namely Qi Qingqi, Wei Qingwei, and Shang Qinghua

Shen Qingqiu was more concerned with the fluffy haired little disciple that was hovering beside Shang Qinghua, holding a giant stack of papers while dressed in what was clearly An Ding colors.

Shen Qingqiu's eyes flew up to Shang Qinghua.

Shang Qinghua literally jumped as Shen Qingqiu looked at him, and then rushed to leave. "I'll let you know if we find anything else that might be useful! Bye!" he squeaked out, then he herded his disciples--including the protagonist--out the door. He most definitely herded faster while passing Shen Qingqiu.

….

That was strange.

Wasn't Shang Qinghua supposed to really obviously faking his nervousness? That seemed pretty sincere….Whatever. The protagonist was here! The protagonist was carrying papers! Or maybe that had just been a disciple who looked exactly like the protagonist. Identifying small children based off of fanart was hard!

Maybe what the System meant by the author changing things was that this was Airplane's crackfic world where Shang Qinghua was actually a nice person and Luo Binghe was doomed to spend the rest of his days carrying boxes.

Shen Qingqiu would panic about potential sect-wide consequences when and or if the protagonist went into the Endless Abyss and put it out of his mind until then. Even in the worst case, if he kept his distance, there would be no reason for him to be human sticked! Lots of random NPCs survived when the sect was destroyed in the novel!

"That's what happens when both of you skip ceremonies," Qi Qingqi told him, waving after Shang Qinghua and not even pretending that she hadn't noticed who Shen Qingqiu's attention had been on.

"I didn't skip it, I was detained," he answered breezily. "Anyways, I think it's actually for the best. The child clearly liked...carrying things."

And cooking, and cleaning, and being anal about organization and--actually the protagonist had a lot of minor traits that would work well on An Ding even if all of his best traits would be entirely wasted!

Qi Qingqi snorted out a laugh. "If you say so."

"Did you need anything?" Liu Qingge asked, clearly annoyed that Shen Qingqiu was here at all.

...Shen Qingqiu definitely needed to work on that relationship. He didn't want to--Liu Qingge seemed about as unpleasant as he was pretty--but unfortunately it was necessary for avoiding whatever fight had resulted in the original Shen Qingqiu killing off his shidi. Just saying he wouldn't do that was easy when he didn't know what caused it. What if it was an actual fight? Shen Qingqiu didn't want to kill Liu Qingge or to die!

So forced friendliness it was!

This was a good start!

"I wanted to see about the sketches of that abyssal beast. If it had a certain mark, then I might know what it is." He waved his fan, acting like it was just a small thing. "I might have an idea where an old manual that's related could be hidden."

He had checked his spatial storage just in case--them asking him about a book after he woke up had seemed significant--and the book about the abyssal summons definitely hadn't been there, nor did he remember any book nearby on the ground after he first awoke, so he felt fairly secure in assuming that they had been asking about some totally different book. Which meant that this one had probably been recently stolen by some demonic cultivator and step one of "discovering" that was to go to where it should be.

It made sense that the situations weren't connected. What were the odds that Shen Qingqiu would have a book that related to this anyways? Ming Fan had said that this abyssal beast summoning had all happened in the Yi Mangroves--Shen Qingqiu hadn't been anywhere near there when he woke up!

The other peak lords glancing at each other put a bit of question to that assumption, but Shen Qingqiu resolved to fake it until he made it and hid behind his fan, raising an eyebrow at them as though they were the ones being odd.

"Could you describe the book, shixiong?" Wei Qingwei finally asked.

About halfway through the description, they pulled it out.

"Where did you find that?" Shen Qingqiu asked.

"Ju Hua city." Qi Qingqi said, still looking at him sharply.

That...well that was near where Shen Qingqiu had been found, but not where it was supposed to be. He'd already dug this hole, and he'd just have to roll with it. "Someone has had it before you then. It wasn't hidden anywhere near there."

"Was it near the Yi Mangroves?" Liu Qingge asked sharply.

"No, not there either. It was sealed in a cave in wild land not far from the western edge of Tian Ti territory. I could point out the basic area on a map, but finding the actual cave would take some doing since I only have descriptions. But the monster sounds like it might be related." He waved his fan, hoping he wasn't accidentally incriminating himself. "The sketches?"

There was some shuffling of papers--everyone was bizarrely unorganized considering they were doing an investigation--and finally the sketches were passed over.

Shen Qingqiu focused on a half visible marking in one of the images and pointed at it. "I'm going to need to talk with my disciples about proper thorough documentation. Do you remember if that was symmetrical?"

Liu Qingge squinted at the spot where Shen Qingqiu was pointing. "Yes."

"Then it's related. Someone must have unbound the book, summoned that, and, hm, I guess gotten to Ju Hua in time to be intercepted?"

He really should have checked up more on the book to give himself a cover story before he dove into all of this. Did Shen Qingqiu summon the thing? He didn't know! Did the other peak lords suspect that he did? Probably!

"We need to find whoever had this book before Shen Qingqiu," Liu Qingge decided, frowning at the notes that they had been taking before Shen Qingqiu had swanned back out of the building with promises of bringing more books.

"You don't think he was involved?" Wei Qingwei asked.

Qi Qingqi shook her head, clearly on the same page as Liu Qingge. "He was here at Cang Qiong when it was summoned, left all of a sudden when someone sent him a letter about the book, and would have had his deviation less than a day later. Either he gave it to someone else to use--which I would doubt very much--or he tried to contain it, stupidly without backup, and was attacked."

"Mm." Liu Qingge frowned at it, not sure what to make of the information he had. "They left the book behind, though."

"Do you think that's relevant?"

"It must be. The left the book, near Shen Qingqiu but not directly in sight, and left him qi deviating."

"Do we even know that anyone else was there? We only found him because we could sense him. A poorer cultivator may have lost track of him before he fell off of Xiu Ya."

"It had to have been deliberate. They had days to find him and would have been able to follow him." Liu Qingge pressed his hands against the desk, frustrated. "His memory was wiped. He isn't even horrible to Yue-shixiong anymore. It's like he doesn't remember any of us."

Wei Qingwei tapped at his sword, frustrated. "Qingfang-shixiong said it looked like the deviation caused his memory loss."

"They could have been trying to kill him," Liu Qingge pointed out. "It's easier to kill a Peak Lord with a qi deviation than directly, and people in the middle of qi deviations are dangerous, so someone cowardly enough to kill that way would surely wait out of sight until the deed was done."

"And they could have copied the book before Shen Qingqiu took it. And--there was that letter. They could have copied it and then deliberately let him take it to frame him." Qi Qingqi walked around the table, glancing at some of the other reports. "Kill Shen Qingqiu, blame him for the summoned demon thinking that nobody would notice soon enough--" Qi Qingqi pulled out the initial report of the abyssal beast. "That has to be it! They summoned it not long before our ceremony, then sent Shen Qingqiu a note luring him out! The demon was fairly remote--no one even saw it before they reported it--and if those fishermen hadn't gone farther than normal, we wouldn't have had the report until weeks later instead of getting the report at a time when we knew Shen Qingqiu was on the peaks. If Shen Qingqiu had died quickly to his qi deviation, then we wouldn't have sensed him as we flew and would have gone to Ju Hua to search for him. He would have been found dead days or weeks later with a book for summoning abyssal beasts after the actual summoner had finished whatever they were summoning them for!"

"They were trading on his reputation," Wei Qingwei mused. "Smart, if it had worked. As it is, it may have been a fatal flaw."

"It would make a lot more sense for them to try to frame anyone but a peak lord, reputation or no." Liu Qingge was fairly sure that all of his martial siblings read too many mystery books, because this sounded like a plot right out of some story Liu Mingyan would have rambled about to him. "But it's worth following up on."

Offering to go get other books had been mostly a defensive tactic. Shen Qingqiu had too much information flying at him, too many questions that his wiki knowledge was barely up to answering, and he felt like he had already made a misstep somehow with the whole mess around that book.

But the only way forward was to move ahead, so he sent the Qing Jing disciples scurrying to get what he needed while he organized things in his head. He knew this plot--he had that advantage--but he also didn't want to incriminate himself! The original Shen Qingqiu's shitty reputation was making things difficult!

Before he managed to even pick out what books he wanted to take back to Bai Zhan, Liu Qingge suddenly showed up.

"We're going out to reinvestigate the mangroves," the War God said casually. "You might notice something I didn't."

That was...a good sign? Did Shen Qingqiu want to go camping in a swamp? No. Did he want to make nice with Liu Qingge in the interests of neither of them dying later? Absolutely! And this was a situation where he could rely on wiki knowledge for the mental side and his recent qi deviation for any ability mishaps. There wouldn't be a better joint mission!

Unless Liu Qingge thought that Shen Qingqiu was to blame for all of them but…well at least he was certain that Liu Qingge wasn't the type to kill him in the swamps and hide his body there, if that was what was going on. Shen Qingqiu would just have to be as unsuspicious as possible until then!

"That's about a day out. Do you have what we need to camp in the mangroves?" Shen Qingqiu asked, trying to think of what supplies were normally brought by fancy cultivators on missions.

Probably a treehouse or something? He was fairly sure Shen Qingqiu had one of those. He hadn't seen it in the house, but he distinctly remembered a scene from the protagonist's childhood where the peak lord had left his disciples camping down on the ground with one too few tents while he lorded it up in his fancy magical treehouse. It had been made of jade, he was pretty sure.

"It's only a quarter day away, and I have all the things we need to go." Liu Qingge said.

Shen Qingqiu narrowed his eyes, then turned to the nearest disciple. "Go pack me a treehouse and some basic supplies for a couple days. And some waterproofing charms."

The disciple looked a little bit panicked but did indeed scurry off.

Shen Qingqiu tried to pass the time waiting for her to get back by asking questions about the situation Liu Qingge had already dealt with. It was topical! And needed! And not something that Shen Qingqiu would already know! Liu Qingge seemed unamused, insisting that they could talk about that on the very long flight there, but that wasn't Shen Qingqiu's problem. Leaving without somewhere to sleep was his problem!

Also he was, if he was honest with himself, trying to delay a bit because he had never flown on his sword and honestly had no idea if it would work.

The disciple finally came running back, looking flushed and proud of herself as she presented him with a spatial storage pouch. Shen Qingqiu gave her a quick pat on the head. "Thank you. Go take a rest."

"If we want to get there before sundown we need to leave," Liu Qingge said, jumping onto his sword with ease.

"You're the one who came to invite me on no notice," Shen Qingqiu complained, drawing Xiu Ya. He took a moment to admire the blade, which thankfully was behaving like he really was Shen Qingqiu and not rejecting him.

Liu Qingge was giving him an odd look, so he swallowed his worries and jumped onto the sword.

It was surprisingly easy! His body remembered what to do, which was a relief since otherwise faking all of this would have been entirely impossible.

About an hour later, they ran out of things to talk about, and Shen Qingqiu was forced to face the realization that even if his body knew how to fly and he was weirdly unbothered by the height despite standing on a thin sword thousands of feet into the air, he really didn't like it.

There was a lot of wind! And he had a lot of hair! It was heavy and uncomfortable! Sure, his hair blowing like this probably looked epic, but next time he was going to wear it in a bun! And even with his hair taken care of, that wouldn't solve the issues of spending hours standing on a sword in the same position while wind whipped into his face.

If a bug hit him he was going to turn around and go home.

"Next time we're taking a carriage!" he called out, annoyed.

"That would take days," Liu Qingge responded. "Why are you complaining so much?"

"Why aren't you complaining?"

"Because I'm an adult?"

Shen Qingqiu supposed he didn't really have a proper comeback to that so he just settled for making faces at Liu Qingge's back. He hoped the man's ponytail blowing about like that was giving him a headache.

By the time they finally reached the mangrove, Liu Qingge was more convinced than ever that being annoying had to be a core part of Shen Qingqiu's being. Surely one man could only complain so much? And yet there it was, a full grown immortal Peak Lord standing on his spirit sword and complaining about how he wished he was sitting in a carriage. It would serve him right if Xiu Ya spun and dumped him off one of these days.

It was also a little bit reassuring, in a way. All of the complaints were--they were more than Shen Qingqiu had ever said before but they felt very much like what Shen Qingqiu must have been thinking every other time they'd been out on a mission that hadn't involved riding in a cart or carriage. Shen Qingqiu had always clearly hated long distance flying. And asking for a treehouse of all things was exactly what Liu Qingge would expect of the man as well.

It didn't bode well for the rest of the investigation, but it did make Liu Qingge glad that he had insisted Shen Qingqiu come along. He hadn't meant for it to be a test, but an accidental one passed wasn't a bad thing.

At least Shen Qingqiu was more tolerable without his memories.

The complaining was almost cute when it wasn't surrounded by bitterness and threats.

Liu Qingge very quickly shoved that thought from his mind, focusing in on the mangroves as they dipped down to right above the trees.

"This is the farthest out it got?" Shen Qingqiu asked. The physical leaves had mostly recovered from being withered by the qi devourer, but Liu Qinnge could sense where the qi was still recovering. Clearly Shen Qingqiu could, too--another good sign.

"As far as I could tell. It's worse farther in."

Shen Qingqiu nodded, speeding ahead like he hadn't spent the last two hours complaining about how much he wanted to stop flying.

It was incredibly strange what Shen Qingqiu did and didn't remember. He talked about a plant that he should have known they were both very familiar with as though it was his first time seeing it, but he also could identify things that Liu Qingge knew Shen Qingqiu hadn't known as a disciple and must have learned since becoming a peak lord.

It almost seemed like he had the information but not the situations sometimes.

Qi deviations were infuriatingly weird. Liu Qingge didn't exactly like Shen Qingqiu and would be lying if he said that he didn't much prefer the chatty and friendly version, but there was a bit of a horror to it, too.

Unless Shen Qingqiu had actually been like this once, and the amnesia had just tossed him back into that mindset?

That was...possible.

...He'd have to ask the sect leader if he wanted to know, because he already knew that asking Shen Qingqiu was not going to lead to any useful answers.

Shen Qingqiu couldn't tell how convincing he actually was in all of this. In theory, very. He knew what this abyssal demon was, he knew what it could do, and having that meta knowledge and memory of what observations had led to that knowledge meant that he could now make those observations and look knowledgeable.

The problem lay in other things. Things like suddenly realizing as he rummaged through the pack his disciple had given him and identified what had to be the treehouse that he had no idea how to activate it. Did he throw it at a tree? Imbue it with qi? It just looked like a bundle of flower petals. If he didn't have some sort of instinct that the bundle was meant to expand, he would not suspect it of being the treehouse.

It definitely wasn't the jade one he remembered from the novel.

He waited for the knowledge to tell him a bit more, sort of to seep in what moves he should do and hope that he didn't explode the thing instead. He got nothing more than a mild sense of recognition. Apparently the original flavor hadn't been fond of treehouses. Shen Qingqiu didn't get it, because who would opt to stay in an inn if you could stay in a cool magical treehouse instead? But he didn't really get a lot of the fancy and expensive things he'd found in his bamboo house, so this was probably yet another one of them (no one needed that many jade tea sets).

After a bit of time standing on his sword deliberating, he held it out for Liu Qingge. "Here, you put this up, I'm going to start writing down what we observed today."

Liu Qingge gave him an odd look, flew close enough to take the bundle of flower petals, and transferred the odd look to that. "What is this?"

"A treehouse." Shen Qingqiu said, confidence buoyed that it looked odd to Liu Qingge as well. He didn't bother to say more, just sped towards a mangrove tree and hopped onto a branch, sitting down and pulling out some charcoal and paper. He had said he would write notes, so he would! "Unless you'd rather take the task of note taking instead of setting up camp?"

"We don't actually need to sleep," Liu Qingge pointed out.

"I am going to sleep, and you are going to set up the treehouse," Shen Qingqiu insisted. Technically cultivators shouldn't require light to investigate, especially since they were doing so much of it by sensing, but he was tired and he had no idea how to magically alleviate that. Considering that everyone ate and slept in this setting, he was pretty sure it was a reasonable ask.

Almost as if to confirm the thought, Liu Qingge rolled his eyes and flew off, presumably to set up the treehouse.

By the time Liu Qingge got back, Shen Qingqiu had figured out through trial and error how to make himself a little floating light out of qi and was almost done with his note taking. He also hadn't been eaten by an alligator, which he had nervously realized was a possibility when he had seen something bumpy swimming in the distance. Alligators in his old world were supposed to be fairly docile and skittish, but Shen Qingqiu was pretty sure that Airplane didn't know shit about animals other than "make them scary" or "make them food" so he had moved to a higher branch just in case.

Liu Qingge gave the light an odd look but didn't comment on it. "I had to go a bit to get the flower to attach to something. Did Mu Qingfang tell you to sleep in that?"

"No?"

"Does he know you're going to?"

"Liu Qingge is there something wrong with my treehouse?"

Liu Qingge shrugged. "It's imbued with qi."

"Obviously?"

"Not--" Liu Qingge sighed. "Just come look."

When they got to the treehouse it was...it was a giant flower more than a house, actually, opening sideways in the crook of a tree with petals covering overhead and a bed suspended within the flower where all the polleny bits would be with an actual flower.

It was also absolutely filled with qi.

"It feels fine?" he offered. It also looked comfortable, and he was exhausted. "That's not an evil sort of qi."

"It's a sort of qi that would absolutely mess with your qi."

"That's not always a bad thing."

"You just qi deviated. Where did you get this?"

Shen Qingqiu shrugged. "One of my disciples pulled it out of storage when I asked for a treehouse."

"You aren't sleeping in there," Liu Qingge said.

Shen Qingqiu started to protest, but before he could even get it out the other peak lord had pulled the treehouse from the tree and back into its little bundle of petals, which he shoved into his pack.

"At least give it back," Shen Qingqiu complained.

"No. You'll just have to meditate in a tree like a normal person."

Shen Qingqiu pouted, eyes flicking to another bumpy shape floating through the water.

Liu Qingge, the horrible thing that he was, actually laughed. "Those can't climb trees and wouldn't eat humans even if they could."

"I could fall into the water because you're trying to make me sleep in a tree even though I was perfectly prepared by bringing a treehouse."

"If you meditated, you wouldn't risk falling," Liu Qingge pointed out.

"If you slept more, maybe you wouldn't be so picky," Shen Qingqiu snapped, glaring at him.

"I'm picky? Fine, then sleep. I don't care what you do, but you aren't doing it in that treehouse."

"You aren't my mother. Give me my treehouse back!"

Liu Qingge floated closer and pushed Shen Qingqiu, nearly knocking him off balance.

"Are you five?" Shen Qingqiu snapped.

"Just go sit in the tree and sleep so we can start searching again," Liu Qingge complained, pushing him again. "I'll stop you from falling into the water and getting eaten by entirely normal animals."

Shen Qingqiu was fairly sure he had finally fallen asleep leaning against a very uncomfortable tree limb, but he woke up on an entirely different tree limb leaning against what was definitely not a tree limb.

That was definitely someone's chest. And he was definitely looking at Liu Qingge's robes? And that was definitely Liu Qingge's hand coming up to steady Shen Qingqiu's shoulder as he moved a bit and when he looked up it was to meet eyes with a very awake Liu Qingge.

How long had he been sleeping on him?

"Did I fall out of the tree?" he demanded, scooting back along the tree limb away from the other peak lord and grabbing his hand to hide behind. He was just going to pretend the flush on his face was outrage--which it was!

Liu Qingge made several disgruntled sounds before settling on, "You didn't even wake up! You wouldn't have these issues if you meditated instead!"

The more time he spent with Shen Qingqiu, the more worried Liu Qingge got.

These sort of memory gaps had to be dangerous. Liu Qingge would never pretend to be an expert in these sorts of things, but Shen Qingqiu had always been prone to qi deviations, and that had been when he presumably was a master at his art. Now? It was sheer luck that he hadn't died horribly from something he'd tried to do. Liu Qingge had watched him do something really risky at least three times on their trip, all while clearly thinking it was normal.

If this had been happening with any of his other martial siblings, Liu Qingge would have had a serious talk with them about the issue and convinced them to go speak with one of their peak's elders to retrain what they had forgotten. But this wasn't someone else. This was Shen Qingqiu, and if he suggested something like that to Shen Qingqiu, it seemed incredibly liable to go…badly.

Maybe he would go to the Qing Jing elders himself and get them to talk to their peak lord. Most of them stayed in seclusion and the rest tended to travel a lot--those who might have normally stayed connected to day to day life on the peaks had been driven to seclusion or travelling by Shen Qingqiu's original horrible personality--but they'd have more of an idea of what to do and how to do it.

They were certainly going to be better at it than Liu Qingge could be.

The problem was that actually contacting them would be…complicated. Unless he got Shen Qingqiu's permission, he couldn't interrupt those in seclusion, and finding the locations of those who were wandering would, again, require asking Shen Qingqiu. Or Yue Qingyuan, but at that point he would essentially be asking Yue Qingyuan to deal with the entire issue. As much as Liu Qingge admired his shixiong, he knew where the man's weaknesses were and "telling Shen Qingqiu to do anything but what he wanted to do" was a line he seemed unable to cross.

"I may need to consult some of your peak's elders," he said to Shen Qingqiu once there was a lull in the second iteration of complaining about how much he disliked flying.

"Go ahead?" Shen Qingqiu said, sounding almost flippant. That…wasn't out of character.

"Do you know where your closest wanderers are?" Liu Qingge persisted. Most of them were probably at their family homes rather than truly wandering, so it should be easy for Shen Qingqiu to--

"Not off the top of my head," Shen Qingqiu said.

Liu Qingge couldn't quite figure out how to respond to that. He hadn't meant to set that as a trap, especially since knowing that Shen Qingqiu had forgotten so much was the reason for asking the question in the first place, but that didn't stop the answer from being alarming. Of course they wouldn't know where every wanderer was, but even Liu Qingge knew where most of Bai Zhan's elders were despite almost all of them being either very rarely involved in the peak or off on their own adventuring.

Maybe it would be best to contact his own elders first. They might at least know which of Qing Jing's elders would be the best to approach.

"Remind me to check as soon as we get back if it's urgent," Shen Qingqiu continued. "I'm still a bit off from the qi deviation, so I was thinking that I'll spend some time down in the caves."

Liu Qingge looked at Shen Qingqiu carefully. "It can wait. If you're still feeling the effects of the qi deviation, you should look to that first."

"Well, I'm getting a bath first. I'm not going to spend months in the caves smelling of swamp water. I'll tell Ming Fan to get you a list."

Almost as soon as Liu Qingge got himself cleaned up, Shen Qingqiu's head disciple was there with a list and an enthusiastic expression.

"Shizun sent his apologies for not coming himself," the boy said, clearly lying. "He sent me with directions to a few of our elders who are nearby?"

Liu Qingge took the list, considered it for a moment, then immediately went to one of Bai Zhan's elders who was over at Zui Xian pretending not to be in residence instead.

"Oh, don't go to any of them, that'll be a disaster," the elder said immediately. "Why can't Qing Jing ever give good directions?"

"Shen Qingqiu lost his memories," Liu Qingge pointed out, feeling a bit odd that he was even a little bit inclined to defend him.

"Yes, yes, but the rest of them didn't and should know better." The elder sent a burst of qi into the paper, dissolving it into ash. "Head to Hou Luli. She didn't have a good relationship with Shen Qingqiu, but she's level headed and able to put that aside. Make sure to warn her about his personality ahead of time so she doesn't laugh in his face."

Liu Qingge raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't sound like 'able to put things aside.'"

The elder waved a hand at him. "She is, she is. She just thinks he's a petulant brat, and the chance is…well it's a chance. She'll like him like this. She's been in a secret realm. I'll draw you a map. It might not be open, but it's worth checking every so often until it does. It opens often enough that you'll be able to find her before Shen Qingqiu is out of seclusion for sure."

Before he left, Liu Qingge took the treehouse to Mu Qingfang.

"Where did you get this?" Mu Qingfang asked, examining the treehouse. He hadn't hestiated before flinging it up into a tree and didn't seem to be worried, just intrigued. There was a gaggle of equally unworried disciples gathering at a respectable distance and peering at them as they worked.

"Is it safe then?"

"Of course it's safe. It's a room from the Flower Palace."

Liu Qingge waited for more explanation, but none seemed to be coming. "The what?"

"The--it's a secret realm," Mu Qingfang explained. "The Flower Palace. It's a giant stalk with rooms like this, all filled with healing qi. There are myths about the spirit that controls the realm gifting rooms to people, but I've never seen one--even the secret realm itself rarely opens."

"So is it safe to sleep in?"

"I wouldn't unless you were injured or needed to meditate, but I don't think it could do any harm, exactly."

"Would it be safe for Shen Qingqiu?"

"Yes." Mu Qingfang looked at him slyly, something almost like a smirk there and gone from his face in an instant. "If you were thinking of giving it to him as a gift, it would be a good one."

"I--Why would I give gifts to Shen Qingqiu? I took it from him while we were out investigating."

"You what?"

Liu Qingge explained, trying to ignore the stormy expression that took over Mu Qingfang's face.

"Why did you let him leave so soon? He doesn't--he's barely recovered from his deviation," Mu Qingfang scolded. "I don't think it's even safe for him to rely on inedia right now. You're lucky he didn't fall from his sword on the way back!"

"I let him sleep, just not in the flower room!" Liu Qingge defended. "He slept in a tree. He slept hard enough that he didn't even wake up when he fell out of it!" It had been incredibly startling to wake up to a sound only to see Shen Qingqiu slipping out of the tree. The animals wouldn't have been a threat, but drowning suddenly had seemed like one. He'd kept hold of Shen Qingqiu for the rest of the night just in case, visions of having to explain to Yue Qingyuan that he had dragged Shen Qingqiu out on a mission and let him drown flashing through his head.

Mu Qingfang made an indignant sound, crossing his arms.

"I caught him!"

"I would hope so!" Mu Qingfang pulled the flower room down from the tree, tossing it at him with a disapproving look. "Next time let him sleep in there."

Shen Qingqiu wasn't sure what exactly had prompted Mu Qingfang to visit, all in a fuss, but he seemed fairly annoyed, and Shen Qingqiu didn't really want to worsen that, so he just took the tea he was told to.

"Make sure not to overdo it," Mu Qingfang scolded.

"I have no intention of doing so," Shen Qingqiu said, sipping his tea to hide most of his face. "I was thinking that it would be a good idea to spend some time down in the caves, cultivating."

The healer crossed his arms, tapping the fingers of one hand for a moment before uncrossing them and reaching out a hand. "Let me see your meridians."

Shen Qingqiu held his arm out obediently.

Several moments later, Mu Qingfang dropped his arm with a sigh. "You should be fine to meditate. Don't try anything new, just focus on rebuilding. I'll send a disciple in to check on you."

Liu Qingge had planned on distracting himself by contacting Hou Luli, but the secret realm was closed when he reached it. After a few moments of consideration he left one of the subtle signs Bai Zhan often left for each other when they wanted someone to come home, gambling that if this Qing Jing elder interacted with Bai Zhan elders enough, she would recognize it, and set off to do something else.

After all, Shen Qingqiu's problems weren't his only concern, and he'd gotten a report with rumors of a monster in the area that sounded abyssal.

The fight seemed to go entirely normally, easily even, until about an hour later. He had the demonic creature slung over his shoulder for the disciples to examine. It was large, but that wasn't anything that had ever bothered him before.

It definitely wasn't anything that should suddenly send his qi surging.

Trying to center and stabilize made it worse, made the blood start pounding in his ears, and he suddenly realized that he was rapidly spiraling into a deviation.

He dropped the demonic creature, trying to focus, trying to figure out why his qi was suddenly going out of control. It wasn't logical for it to happen like that, and he didn't have an explanation!

He needed to get back to Cang Qiong. To get to the caves and let them help him center.

Liu Qingge reached the caves before he remembered who else was in the cave system, moments before losing himself entirely.

He woke up feeling exhausted and sore, with a hand pressed against his chest inelegantly forcing stable qi through his meridians. Once he got his eyes open, it was to Shen Qingqiu's face. The other man's eyes were wide and worried.

At least, they were until he saw that Liu Qingge was awake. He almost immediately hid the worried expression with a shaky grin. "Turnabout is fair play, hm. How are you feeling?"

"Fine." Liu Qingge grunted out, not trying to get up. "What happened?"

"You qi deviated," Shen Qingqiu said, while Liu Qingge resisted the urge to interject with how that part was obvious. "I may have bruised you a little bit taking you down. Sorry about that."

He absolutely did not look sorry. He looked a little thrilled about it if anything. A few weeks ago that would have infuriated Liu Qingge, but now he felt a weird surge of fondness.

He was just going to blame that on the deviation as well.

"Better than if I killed you in a deviation," Liu Qinnge answered. As he stabilized, he was becoming more and more aware of Shen Qingqiu's hand on his chest. Specifically more aware of the fact that he wanted it to stay there rather than having an impulse to shove it away. Which paradoxically made him want to shove it away anyways.

He pushed it from his mind to join the other thoughts he wasn't thinking about.

"I most certainly do not want to die," Shen Qingqiu quipped. "Stop squirming."

"I wasn't squirming."

"You really were."

Liu Qingge held himself more still, rolling his eyes because that was far easier to concentrate on than the touch or Shen Qingqiu's qi or the new revelation that Shen Qingqiu's instinct while seeing Liu Qingge in the midst of a deviation was to throw himself into it to save him.

It seemed nothing like the person Liu Qingge was so used to expecting backstabbing from, and yet here it was.

Shen Qingqiu wandered away to an adjacent cave once Liu Qingge was stable, and he thought that was it.

Instead, Shen Qingqiu seemed incapable of actually focusing on his own cultivation and kept showing up to chat instead.

"You do realize that seclusion is supposed to mean seclusion," Liu Qingge pointed out, when he roused himself from meditation to once again find Shen Qingqiu sitting in a half trance nearby, posture terrible.

The other man took a moment to blink out of the trance, looking disoriented for a second before immediately bouncing back to what was now his normal. "It's my seclusion that you've invaded. I'll be as secluded or not as I want! It's not like I'm just coming over to chat."

Liu Qingge raised an eyebrow.

Shen Qingqiu flicked his fan up to cover his face, flushing slightly and glaring at him. "I'm not! I had a thought."

"Just the one?"

"Do you have to be like this? I had a thought about your qi deviation. You said you were about an hour from your fight?"

"More or less?"

"And when I deviated I was about an hour away from Ju Hua City." Shen Qingqiu tapped his fan against the raised stone platform. "It seems odd. Either of us should have been able to sense and explain something causing a qi deviation. I don't remember how mine came on, but you said that yours was quick. You found me, didn't you? Would you say it was probably the same?"

Liu Qinnge thought back. It had looked as though Shen Qingqiu had crashed down suddenly, out of control. It was possible that he had tried to get back to Cang Qiong like Liu Qingge had, but if he made a few assumptions about Shen Qingqiu's stability, then it was equally easy to assume that it had hit him much worse. The Qing Jing peak lord had a worse foundation and a propensity towards deviating, where Liu Qingge hadn't had a deviation in years.

"About the same," he agreed. "Different situations, though."

"It would be easy for this person to summon a demon and send word to Bai Zhan for someone to take it out."

"So you think…"

"I think that, maybe, possibly, there might be someone targeting peak lords with something that causes qi deviations. These summons might be more of a symptom than the actual goal."

"That's vague."

"Well I don't have much information! I need to examine that book. Do you remember everything about the abyssal beast you were fighting?"

"Yes."

"So it wasn't targeting my memory deliberately, then. Me not being able to…remember specifics about my deviation is probably a coincidence." Shen Qingqiu was hiding behind his fan, and it took Liu Qingge a moment to realize that he was probably trying to gloss over the fact that he had forgotten a lot more than just the specifics of his deviation. Shen Qingqiu probably thought he had the rest of them fooled if the man's usual antics were any clue.

Liu Qingge considered the chance that it might have been memory targetting and he was better able to resist it, considered how much he wanted to have a stupid argument with Shen Qingqiu at this point, and avoided the subject entirely. "There was definitely demonic energy about the book and the abyssal creature, and not just abyssal energy. We should see what matches."

"Yes!" Shen Qingqiu said, bounding to his feet.

"We don't need to leave immediately. Are you even properly centered yet?"

"I'm getting there. The demon will be eaten and rotted by the time we get there if we wait much longer. It might be already!"

"It has preservation charms on it. That should keep it fresh and ward any pests away as well," Liu Qingge said. "They won't last forever, but they'll last for long enough. Even if they don't, the area should take on the energy."

Shen Qingqiu made a face, got up, reconsidered, and sat back down. "Fine. You're comparing the energy if it's rotten, though." He stood back up again with a huff. "I'm going to go focus on my cultivation instead of your mystery."

Liu Qingge just shook his head, wondering when it had become his mystery.

The most frustrating part about needing to clear his mind before he could figure out a mystery, was that the mystery was far more interesting.

It took Shen Qingqiu a couple months, during which time he occasionally gave up and went to inflict his own inability to focus on Liu Qingge as well. It was only fair! Liu Qingge was the one who had interrupted in the first place so it was just that he should be the target for whatever little realization it was that had startled Shen Qingqiu out of meditation this time.

And that was absolutely the only reason that he wandered into the other man's cave. That's it. They had a shared interest, and he wasn't going in for any other reason!

If the first time he managed to make Liu Qingge genuinely laugh left him feeling warm despite the ice of the caves, well, that didn't mean anything!

That abyssal creature was almost definitely going to be eaten by the time they got there, and if it wasn't, he was going to blame Airplane's overly convenient dumb plot points. It was dropped in a forest. Preservation charms wouldn't usually stop other hungry beasts from making a meal. Whether or not it did in this case probably depended a lot on if this was a wife plot triggering early or something that was actually meant to be a mystery or something entirely removed from Airplane.

He remembered fairly clearly that Airplane had started and then completely abandoned a plot about Liu Mingyan finding out that the qi deviation which had led to her brother's death had been caused deliberately by an enemy of their family--but it was hard to tell if that plot was still on the rails or not. Shen Qingqiu being targeted most certainly hadn't been involved, nor the abyssal creatures from this entirely separate plot.

The hardest part was figuring out how to tell Liu Qingge these things. Shen Qingqiu wasn't about to fake a vision, and he couldn't just walk in and go, "So I remembered a wiki entry!"

It also made it hard to focus on recovery the more he thought about it. If it was the same plot, then this was a loose end that he had wanted to see tied up! Dropped into his lap! And the worst part of that--the looming risk of killing Liu Qingge in accordance with what the original had done--was well in the past now. It had been over before he had even had time to truly focus on or worry about it. He'd known it was coming but he hadn't known it was coming.

The whole tangle of everything made it tempting to rush things, but he resisted.

Finally, after weeks and weeks, he pushed up from the platform to go bother Liu Qingge for the upteenth time and felt…different.

He was more stable. More energized. He wasn't sure exactly what it was, but it was far and beyond better than he had felt before.

Liu Qingge glanced up when he entered the half open chamber, tilting his head consideringly. "Your foundation is better."

"Of course it is, we've been here for months." Shen Qingqiu bounced on his heels a little bit, marvelling at how he could suddenly feel the flow of energy in the rocks. He'd need to come back again, when things were a bit calmer and they didn't have evidence being potentially eaten in the woods. "I'm ready to leave. Are you?"

Liu Qingge nodded, pushing to his feet.

Shen Qingqiu hadn't considered the timeline when he went into the caves, so the disciples rushing anxiously up to them for help were a shock and a worry.

"Stay here. I'll take care of it." Liu Qingge ordered, before launching himself into the sky.

Shen Qingqiu huffed and followed. He wasn't going to stay behind like he was useless!

He did, indeed, end up being mostly useless. The demons fled when they saw Liu Qingge coming, and those that didn't flee fast enough were kicked down the mountain. It was the most anticlimactic version of this scene possible, and that was before Shen Qingqiu looked around and realized that the protagonist wasn't even here. There were a few disciples in An Ding robes, but none of them with that telltale fluffy hair.

No wonder the systems had been so annoyed. This was apparently the boring "what if the protagonist wasted all of his potential carrying boxes" AU. It made sense for it to exist, but…what a boring story to read.

His heart bled for the lost potential even as he rejoiced at the idea of living in a version of this world where he never had to worry about vengeful heavenly demons or being human sticked or merging dimensions.

Dealing with the aftermath of a demonic invasion took long enough that Shen Qingqiu apparently got bored and wandered back off to his peak, but it didn't take too long for Liu Qingge to get things sorted and handed over to the people who actually needed to deal with reinforcing the shields and repairing the wards and bridges.

It had been tempting to blame Shen Qingqiu's nonchalance on jealousy…but Liu Qingge decided to give the benefit of the doubt. He was pretty sure that, somehow, Shen Qingqiu had actually been bored by a demonic invasion that had gotten all the way to Qiong Ding and only been stopped by incredibly good timing. As though because Liu Qingge had scared them off, it wasn't a very serious situation.

Shang Qinghua seemed more focused on Shen Qingqiu than the invasion aftermath as well, for some reason, but Liu Qingge just brushed it off as the other cultivator being nervous about the presence of demons on the peak and took a moment to steal Qi Qingqi away instead of trying to figure out why the An Ding peak lord was so focused on their shixiong.

"Are you sure that you don't want alone time with Shen Qingqiu again, instead?" Qi Qingqi teased after he asked her to come along to investigate.

"No. Why would I?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You seem to be enjoying his company more lately."

"He isn't totally horrible anymore, for all he was bothering me the whole time we were in the caves. If he's right about the deviations, then it's best to have someone along who hasn't been affected."

"Bothering is a word for it, I guess." She chuckled. "Alright. I'll come. He'll just have to take a break from 'bothering' you."

Liu Qingge gave her an odd look, then decided that it really wasn't worth following up on whatever she might mean. Why were all of his martial siblings so odd?

Shen Qingqiu seemed weirdly annoyed when they found the abyssal creature still safely preserved, just like Liu Qingge had said it would be.

He was always weirdly annoyed about something, though, so why should this be the exception?

"There's a couple threads of energy that match," Qi Qingqi mused, while they compared the book and the abyssal creature. There were so many little variations in the demonic qi that if he hadn't known to look for the remnants of a fading spell, he wouldn't have ever spotted it. But once they looked and compared, it was easy enough to find.

"I think I may have an idea of where to look next," Shen Qingqiu said. There was an oddly calculating look in his eyes.

"You remembered something?" Qi Qingqi asked.

Shen Qingqiu looked up, startled, and then looked annoyed. "No I--I have a hunch! It's worth checking while we're out here."

Liu Qingge traded a glance with Qi Qingqi, who shrugged.

Shen Qingqiu had definitely remembered something.

Liu Qingge knew that he should be happy about that but found that he really wasn't. He actually liked Shen Qingqiu now.

But he couldn't focus on that selfish thought, especially not when they were going from an expected investigation right into the unknown.

Even without Shen Qingqiu's hunch, the proliferation of abyssal creatures in the valley he led them to would have been enough of a tip off.

"Metagaming wins again," Shen Qingqiu said, sounding satisfied.

"What?" Liu Qingge asked.

"My hunch was right." Shen Qingqiu waved off their questioning looks. "We're going to need to come back to clear this out later."

"I'll bring Bai Zhan for some hunting practice. For now, let's see if the master of this place is home."

It felt a little bit odd, falling in to follow Shen Qingqiu's lead, especially it seemed less like he was remembering being here and more like he had remembered reading something, but once Qi Qingqi spotted the array that was keeping the abyssal creatures away from the path that made it a little easier for everyone.

Liu Qingge didn't really get what the point of summoning something that couldn't even be controlled was, especially if this was the summoner's home. Maybe it was a temporary base for summoning practice? That would make more sense.

The only warning they got that a fight was about to start was one of those tags ripping away from a tree. Seconds later a massive abyssal demon was folding out of space, trees breaking around it.

"Oh, good," Shen Qingqiu said. "The summoner is home!"

"This isn't good, Shen Qingqiu!" Qi Qingqi snapped, drawing her sword and launching at the thing.

"That's the biggest one he can summon!" Shen Qingqiu yelled, jumping up into a tree. "If we can take care of that--" He paused and winced slightly as the thing swung at Qi Qingqi. "--if we can take care of that, then the rest will be easy!"

Echoing roars in the valley put question to that.

"Just fight. If you feel your qi destabilizing, come find me," Liu Qingge said. It was tempting to tell Shen Qingqiu to stay with him and behind him and not fight at all--but he knew better than to even attempt to mention that. They'd just come out of months of meditation in the caves. Surely it would be fine?

It was not fine. Fifteen smaller abyssal demons and one colossal one later, and Liu Qingge realized that not only had they not spotted the summoner yet, but he now couldn't see Shen Qingqiu.

He took off after a thread of qi, leaving Qi Qingqi to deal with the last few smaller demons.

It didn't take him long to spot Shen Qingqiu in the distance, clearly pursuing something. For a moment Liu Qingge was relieved, and then Shen Qingqiu stopped, turned, and something was thrown at him.

And Shen Qingqiu, the idiot, caught it.

He went down almost immediately, completely unable to block the lance of dark energy that was sent slamming into him, sending Shen Qingqiu flying back into a tree.

Liu Qingge ignored the enemy and went for Shen Qingqiu. He caught him before he hit the ground, channeling qi desperately into him.

He glanced up just long enough to see a blur of purple going for what had to be the summoner. Qi Qingqi could take care of it. Liu Qingge had to--he didn't normally carry much healing supplies, and it was all geared for him, what did he have that he could--

The treehouse.

He tore it from his storage and tossed it up into a tree, dragging Shen Qingqiu up into it with him. It was filled with healing qi, which didn't do much for Shen Qingqiu's qi deviation but did start stripping away the dark qi from the lance. If Liu Qingge could calm the deviation….

Before long Qi Qingqi returned, a little bloody and very pissed. She tossed herself at the other side of the bed, grabbing Shen Qingqiu's other wrist.

It seemed like an eternity until Shen Qingqiu stopped thrashing. They both stared as his breath evened out, only looking away once they confirmed that his qi was stable.

"Really?" Qi Qingqi said, letting go of Shen Qingqiu's wrist and moving to sit more properly on the suspended bed. She glanced around at the flower room and raised both eyebrows. "Of all the healing tools, you pull out a bed?"

"It's the strongest I had. It's from a secret realm"

"That you just happened to have? In your storage? For camping with Shen Qingqiu?"

"Yes," Liu Qingge said, deciding that he was going to ignore any other implications. It was annoying enough to deal with those in his own head. He wasn't going to discuss it aloud. "I assume the summoner is dead?"

"Very," she said smugly. "He tried to blame Shang Qinghua, of all people."

Liu Qingge snorted out a laugh. Who would believe that?

When Shen Qingqiu woke up he was worried that he had transmigrated again. It was that same sort of sickly tumultuous feeling.

It was really annoying.

There was someone holding his hand.

He eventually got his eyes open and was once again met with Liu Qingge's absurdly beautiful face leaning over him.

"Are you feeling better?" Liu Qingge asked.

"Mn," Shen Qingqiu attempted to reply, not quite getting any words out.

Liu Qingge pulled a flask out of his storage, then wrapped an arm around Shen Qingqiu's waist and pulled him to sit more upright.

Shen Qingqiu focused on the water that he was being offered, and not the other Peak Lord's arm. He was just--Liu Qingge was just helping!

The water was also helping.

Shen Qingqiu cleared his throat, looking around. "Is this my treehouse?"

"I forgot to give it back."

"I can't believe you stole my treehouse."

"Mu Qingfang said it was a healing tool."

"I can't believe you stole my healing treehouse after making me sleep in a tree." Shen Qingqiu let himself lean against the other man, figuring that it was Liu Qingge's own fault that they were in this position.

"I was going to give it back," Liu Qingge protested. He ran a hand comfortingly down Shen Qingqiu's arm.

Shen Qingqiu decided to ignore both how intimate that felt and how much he liked it, which was hard, when he could feel his face flaming and the only place to hide it was--fuck it. He turned and hid his face in Liu Qingge's chest, choosing to continue to ignore absolutely everything that he knew he was signaling with that and also to ignore that Liu Qingge didn't seem to mind!

Was it possible to ignore something so much that it came right around and became hyperfixation?

"Qi Qingqi went back to get some backup after we warded this area off." Liu Qingge told him, apparently taking pity on Shen Qingqiu's state by not mentioning all of the everything in the air.

And then Liu Qingge kissed his hair which was really the opposite!

Shen Qingqiu hid his face even more, hitting a hand onto Liu Qingge's other arm as though that would make him feel less embarrassed.

It occurred to him, very belatedly, that he may have turned himself into the love interest in this wierd AU.

…He wasn't mad about it.