Chapter Text
It took Luo Binghe almost a century to find the Veiled Soul-Seer.
Much of that time was wasted by not actually knowing he was trying to find the Veiled Soul-Seer. Luo Binghe was simply looking for something, anything, that would bring back Shizun.
His advisors were no help.
"You could always try resurrection," one of his generals suggested, sweating as she tried, and failed, not to irritate him. "There are a lot of artifacts that can restore a body and soul, no matter how extensive the decomposition. If you want, I could draw up a list...?"
It was a doomed undertaking, and he knew it. The Shizun Luo Binghe was looking for had never existed in this world. He wanted the nice one—the one that had held him and combed his hair and loved him without being told to, and without wanting anything in return. The one that should have returned with him to this world, but had instead chosen to stay with the inferior version of Luo Binghe for some incomprehensible reason.
Still, he gave the resurrection route a shot. Each attempt predictably ended in either increasingly hostile versions of this world’s Shizun, or unspeakable monstrosities bearing Shizun’s appearance (often only distinguishable from his actual Shizun by the civil manner in which they’d treat him before trying to kill him). One particularly bad resurrection attempt had memorably led to his palace being overrun by the undead corpses of every animal the kitchens had ever slaughtered. Even the fish had come back, flopping their way doggedly through the halls and generally making a mess of the carpets. It had taken ages to clean up.
Shen Qingqiu—recently resurrected again, and still pissed about it—had mocked Luo Binghe about that one for weeks. When Luo Binghe had finally snapped and drawn his sword, his former teacher only laughed bitterly.
"See you again soon," he’d said, before his head hit the ground and rolled into a corner.
Traveling back to the universe with the kind Shizun was also impossible. Xin Mo had partially broken when he’d been hurled back to his own world by the pathetic, soft version of himself. There were other ways to travel between realities, of course—many demonic rituals and ancient artifacts existed with similar purposes. Luo Binghe tried them all, and in all of them Shen Qingqiu was…well, Shen Qingqiu.
"You were almost polite to me in that one," Luo Binghe said as he stepped back through a dimensional mirror that was propped up against one of the prison’s walls. "You called me by my name and didn’t try to stab me for an entire sichen."
"Sounds like true love," said Shen Qingqiu. His soul had been returned this time by the mercy of an eternal life-giving tree spirit, and his new body had been grown from some kind of plant that had made him inconveniently powerful. Luo Binghe would probably have to kill him again before the week was out, but for the moment he was secured to a chair by a massive coil of immortal binding chains.
"I didn’t kill him this time," Luo Binghe said.
Shen Qingqiu was visibly unimpressed.
"You should be grateful," Luo Binghe said. "I was merciful."
"Mercy would be killing me. Permanently. Or letting me go free now that I finally have a body with half-decent cultivation."
Luo Binghe shook his head. He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, fingers snagging on the remnants of a half-disintegrated braid.
"If I handed you a comb," he mused, "what would you do?"
"I’d gouge out your eyes with it, little beast."
Shen Qingqiu died a little slower, that time.
It rankled that it was Shen Qingqiu who helped him think of the ultimate solution.
"Why do you keep looking for me? You don’t want me!" Shen Qingqiu snarled, his voice furious but adorably high pitched. His nursemaid, who’d been assigned to him when the Well of Immortal Life had reincarnated him as a baby, patted him gently in an attempt to burp him. He gave her a vicious kick, but his baby feet were as ineffectual as they were chubby.
"Well, not this version of you," said Luo Binghe. He eyed his former Shizun’s little wrinkly red face with distaste.
He’d hoped that when Shen Qingqiu was reborn as a child, he’d be a blank slate. It had seemed possible that something in his Shizun’s past had soured him, and that a safe, happy childhood might be all that was needed to change him into the kind Shizun from the other world. And perhaps that idea had merit, but it hadn’t mattered in the end. Shen Qingqiu had been reborn with his mind and memories intact.
His verbal abuse was even worse now that it was coming from a baby’s mouth—partly because newborn babies were unpleasantly shrill, and partly because Luo Binghe couldn’t bring himself to kill an infant. Or at least, he couldn’t bring himself to be caught killing an infant, and by now too many people knew about the situation for him to quietly make it go away.
"There’s no version of me that would be as nice to you as that fraud you met in the other world," said Shen Qingqiu. "I have always hated you, and I always will—not because there’s something wrong with me, but because there’s something wrong with you."
"Maybe you will always see something in me that you hate," Luo Binghe admitted. "Maybe it isn’t you that I’m looking for."
If not Shen Qingqiu, though, then who? Who had been wearing Shen Qingqiu’s face?
The ancient demon who ran the Imperial Library was able to give him information about spirits strong enough to possess an immortal cultivator, but knowing that it was possible didn’t give Luo Binghe any clues as to who he was looking for or how to find them.
"I can’t help you find this mysterious soul, but I know of someone who can," the Librarian said. "In my childhood, many millennia ago, there were tales of a Seer who could look into any soul and grant its deepest desire. If what you want most is to find this person—"
"It is," said Luo Binghe.
"—then the Seer can reunite them with you. There is, of course, substantial risk involved."
"And that is…?"
"That your greatest wish may not be what you think."
"I know my own heart," said Luo Binghe shortly.
The prospect of a quest to find this Seer didn’t concern him. Luo Binghe had been on hundreds of mythical, death-defying, soul revealing quests before. He’d solved the most complex puzzles and defeated the fiercest monsters and won the hearts of the most beautiful women. The world’s greatest feats were easy—verging on boring—for him.
A part of him almost hoped that this one would be a challenge, just to break up the monotony of it all.
"No luck?" said a seven year old Shen Qingqiu, laughing, when Luo Binghe returned empty handed from his search of the Unmarked Tombs.
"You do know the Seer is just a children’s tale, right?" said a teenaged Shen Qingqiu ten years later when Luo Binghe returned cold and soggy after searching the bottom of the Mystic Sea.
"I’d say you should just give up, but it is entertaining watching you fail so spectacularly, and so often," said a fully grown Shen Qingqiu, smirking at Luo Binghe’s clothes, which were shredded after an unsuccessful search of the Needle-Heart Forest.
Luo Binghe had only seen Shen Qingqiu a handful of times in between his expeditions to find the Seer, but it seemed like time and distance had not softened his former teacher’s heart.
"I didn’t kill you earlier because you were a child. You no longer have that protection," Luo Binghe warned him.
"But killing me would make Ning Yingying sad. We’ve grown quite close during your frequent absences," said Shen Qingqiu, leering.
Luo Binghe knew this, of course. His wife had already shared how happy she was to have gotten the chance to spend time reconnecting with her beloved teacher, not just as a pupil, but as a sort of surrogate family. She’d grown attached, but not in the sexual way Shen Qingqiu seemed to be hinting at, and not to such a degree that she wouldn’t survive his death.
Taking liberties with one of Luo Binghe’s wives was an odd thing to pretend to have done, unless…
"Do you want to die?" he asked. It wasn’t a hypothetical question, and Shen Qingqiu didn’t take it as such.
"It’d be preferable to watching you ruin this world," said Shen Qingqiu.
Luo Binghe paused, and considered the man in front of him. Shen Qingqiu had tried to run away more than once during the years that he'd been given increased freedom as a "child"—but Luo Binghe's blood parasites had always alerted him to his former teacher's wandering, and Shen Qingqiu had been immediately found and re-captured each time.
Twice, Luo Binghe's blood parasites had tied him to life despite self inflicted wounds on his body, or poison in his veins. Shen Qingqiu hadn't tried to escape that way in so many years that Luo Binghe had half-thought he'd outgrown it, but perhaps he'd just come to realize that there truly was no escape.
After all, even if he was successful, Luo Binghe would just bring him back.
"Then help me," Luo Binghe said. "When I find the Seer, I’ll kill you. Permanently, this time."
"How can I refuse such a generous offer?" said Shen Qingqiu, his voice thick with sarcasm, but he started accompanying Luo Binghe on his trips after that.
Their first hint was in a book from Cang Qiong. It was Shen Qingqiu who’d suggested searching what remained of the peaks’ libraries, though he’d been quiet and grim for months after he’d seen the state Luo Binghe had left them in.
The books they found there led them to a hollow mountain filled with monsters who guarded a key, which unlocked a door to a labyrinth full of riddles and secrets. The secrets pointed towards yet another dangerous quest, followed by another, and honestly Luo Binghe might have called it exciting, even fun, if he’d had different company.
He could picture what it’d be like with the other world’s Shizun. The man would be there to comb his hair in the mornings, and warm his bed at nights, and after a difficult battle he’d probably have words of comfort instead of the merciless critique Luo Binghe was currently receiving.
"—and your footwork was terrible," said Shen Qingqiu, cleaning off his blade where the porcupine-backed panther’s blood had stained it a deep black.
"I won, didn’t I?" said Luo Binghe.
"Through brute force. Your form was atrocious."
"If only I’d had someone to teach me when I was younger," said Luo Binghe flatly, and Shen Qingqiu sneered at him.
"Still using me as an excuse for your failures? You’re the most powerful man—well, half-man—in the world. I’m sure great swordsmen are tripping over themselves to kneel at your feet. Why not hire one of them to teach you?"
"Because I’m the most powerful man in the world. What’s the point?"
Shen Qingqiu might have prodded at him longer, but the panther had been guarding a chest, and inside the chest was a map, and for once the map didn’t lead to another clue.
The Soul Seer’s location was marked: a distant beach along the Infinite Ocean. Their long, miserable journey was finally at an end, and Shizun—his real Shizun, the one he deserved—was within reach.
The Infinite Ocean was a vast place with a cold, clear sky and an endless, rocky coastline that stretched uninterrupted for as far as the eye could see. The ocean was calm—eerily so—and there were no sounds, not even bird calls, to break the monotonous hiss of the waves.
Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu flew along it for two extraordinarily boring weeks before they spotted the Seer.
She was a blot of darkness on the landscape, with ripples of black gauze and veils that trailed behind her. As they flew closer, Luo Binghe could see that the gauze covered her entire form—only her thin, elderly hands showed through the folds.
Luo Binghe landed his sword, and with a wave of his hand used his blood parasites to clamp Shen Qingqiu’s jaws closed.
"Can’t have you wishing for my death," Luo Binghe said in response to the outraged grunt from behind him.
If the Seer was surprised or happy to see other living beings, she didn’t show it. Her steps didn’t slow until Luo Binghe landed in front of her, blocking her path.
"Greetings, venerable Seer. I’ve come to have my soul’s desire granted," Luo Binghe said. He gave the Seer a respectful nod of his head, not because he owed it to her (as the Emperor, he didn’t), but because it didn’t pay to insult the being who had the power to deliver Shizun to him.
"And what is it that you wish for?" she said. Her voice was frail, barely more than a whisper, almost blending into the noise of the waves.
"I want my Shizun back—the kind one, not the one traveling with me. You should be able to see who I mean when you look into my soul."
The Seer tilted her head to one side, sending ripples through the veils that fluttered around her. "I can see your soul, and I can see the Shizun you speak of."
A knot that Luo Binghe hadn’t been aware of loosened in his chest at her words. This was it. This quest had been more tedious than most, but it was nearly at an end, and then he’d get what he wanted.
He always did.
"Bring him to me," Luo Binghe said. He had prepared for this moment. He knew what to do next. He took her frail hands in his, just as the texts he’d read had instructed, then commanded, "Grant my soul’s desire."
The Seer sighed, and it sounded like the wind brushing over the sand.
"Always so certain, and always so wrong," she said. A shift in the breeze blew her long train of gauze towards Luo Binghe, enveloping him in a cloud of flickering black.
Luo Binghe tried to pull back, but it was as if the hands he’d grabbed had turned to stone.
"You tell me to bring him to you," the Seer said, as the black around Luo Binghe deepened. "But that’s not what you want. No one ever asks for what they want. I wonder why that is?"
"That is what I want!" Luo Binghe said. No sound came out, though, or if it did, he couldn’t hear it over the rising wind.
"I can see a future where you bring him to this plane, and trap him here, and watch him grow to hate you for separating him from his world and his love. Your soul does not desire that."
"He’d be happy here," Luo Binghe shouted soundlessly. He’d make sure of it. He had the entire world at his command—there was nothing his Shizun would want that he couldn’t deliver.
Except for him. The other, pathetic version of himself, who’d whimpered and wept and been weak and had still gotten all the love that Luo Binghe had never been shown, even though Luo Binghe had deserved it, had earned it.
But Shizun would see how superior this world’s Luo Binghe was after he’d spent time here. Luo Binghe knew it.
"No," said the Seer. "What you want—what you really want—is a chance to have what that other Luo Binghe had. And that chance is what you’ll get."
The howling of the wind stopped abruptly, replaced by the pounding of his own pulse in his ears. The darkness didn’t lift entirely, but gaps began to appear in it—gaps that looked a lot like sunlight shining through wooden slats.
Luo Binghe lifted his head and looked around the old, familiar woodshed. His hands were still immobilized, though not by the Seer. Instead they were tied together with rope and strung above him, and his back ached from a recent whipping.
The rope should have been easy to break. It wasn’t enchanted, and it wasn’t made of immortal binding cables (not that those would hold him anymore). But struggling got him nowhere, and when he looked up at his hands, they were smaller than they should have been. His arms were also too thin, the muscles he’d built up over years of training conspicuously missing.
His demonic powers were sealed.
His core was weak and undeveloped.
He was a child again.
It had been over three hundred years since Luo Binghe had cried, and he wasn't about to start now. He did bellow in rage, though, and if his yells sounded more like wails of despair, then it was surely his newly-young vocal chords that were to blame.
Across the peak, Shen Yuan awoke to the sound of a System dying. Pixelated warning signs flashed and glitched in front of him in a cascade of errors.
This wasn’t the Shen Yuan who’d sparked Luo Binghe’s interest and married his counterpart. This Shen Yuan was freshly dead and waking up to the experience of transmigration for the first time. Like all Shen Yuans, however, he was familiar enough with the genre to know when things weren’t going right.
"What do you mean, you’re shutting down?’" Shen Yuan asked. "Are you seriously not going to explain anything? What kind of System are you?"
The System beeped and a garbled voice spoke once before going silent and dark.
Shen Yuan stared in shock at the blank air where the System's screen had been. "Cross-dimensional contamination? What’s ‘cross-dimensional contamination?' Hello?!"
Across the world, in a different dimension, a couple hundred years in the future, Shen Qingqiu stared at the empty spot next to the Seer where Luo Binghe had been moments before.
"You did it," he said. The blood parasites that had been immobilizing his mouth had vanished the same instant Luo Binghe had. He rubbed his jaw, and wished he felt something other than weariness. Maybe joy, or triumph, or relief—any of those would be appropriate, surely, for the defeat of the evil demon emperor. "You really killed him. After all these years…"
"He’s not dead."
Shen Qingqiu sighed. "Can I wish him dead, then?"
The Seer looked at him for a moment, then extended her hands towards him.
"You want him dead, but more than death, you wish for life," she said.
"Wrong. I don’t have anything to live for."
"But you wish you did."
In the end, he took her hands. What did he have to lose?