Chapter Text
The sword is not easy to find.
It rests in a cavern buried at the center of a labyrinth guarded by the most powerful, starving Abyssal beasts. Every step is a fight to the death, a desperate struggle for life. The labyrinth is protected by traps and poisons, making each inch forward a new risk to life and wellbeing. If Luo Binghe had not been a Heavenly Demon, he would have died a hundred times over.
He should have died a hundred times over. He did die a hundred times over. But his body knits itself together again and again, and Luo Binghe bites down on his arm until blood fills his mouth and throat and he chokes on his screams. He doesn’t care about the next monster that he will attract as his lungs reform, his guts regrow, and blood and sinew and muscle knits itself back together.
Over.
And over.
And over again.
Half-rotten corpses litter the dais and the surrounding stone atop which the sword rests, half-propped on a pedestal as if only hastily dropped down upon it, careless, despite the grandeur of the hidden temple. Carvings litter the walls, the stone is smoothed and tiled—unlike the rest of the labyrinth—and the pedestal at the top of the dias is clearly an altar meant for worship.
Demonic energy radiates from it, stronger than anything that Luo Binghe has ever felt before in his life.
Luo Binghe gasps for breath as he stumbles forward on bare feet, his shoes long since burned away. He used to wrap rags around them, back when he still cared about trying to protect his skin. But no matter how many times he shreds his arms, his legs, his organs from his insides—it all comes back, healed as new, his blood mites knitting himself back together. He has learned a trick or two, down here.
Hopefully it will be enough for him to take hold of this sword.
He was well cautioned by the demoness who had told him of it, sharing rumors in exchange for his help exterminating a monster that had been encroaching on her territory. Luo Binghe had been running low on meat, so he had agreed. In return, she had told him of the countless demonic cultivators driven insane by Xin Mo’s power, of the way that it preyed on the users’ minds until the sword consumed them, utterly mad with bloodlust. She had also told him of its ability to cleave between worlds, the possibility that Luo Binghe could go home.
He had to have that sword, no matter the cost.
His shredded feet are chilled on the cold stone, the labyrinth deep enough underground to escape the burning, constant heat of the Abyss. Luo Binghe struggles up the few steps to the altar, his limbs shaking with exertion.
As he draws closer, he can feel the tugging on his senses, Xin Mo already aware of his approach. It begins to dig its tendrils in before he even lays his hands on it, soft, indistinct whispers in his mind. Luo Binghe shakes his head, trying to dispel them, but only almost falls over with the sudden wave of dizziness that crashes over him.
He should rest. He’s not strong enough to take on this sword, which has cultivated for centuries and ripped apart the minds of the most powerful cultivators and swordsmen in history.
But none of them have been a Heavenly Demon. Xin Mo hasn’t faced Luo Binghe yet—and Luo Binghe will win any battle, if it means getting back home.
He is so desperate that he can taste copper in his mouth, and before he can stop himself, he reaches forward and puts his hand on the hilt of the demon sword.
It is agony.
The whispering in his mind turns into a howl. The sword screams in his ears, whiting out any other sound in the room. His vision goes blurry, and there’s a sharp pain in his shoulder that he doesn’t realize at first is the sensation of his body hitting the floor, writhing in pain. The inside of his skull is battered with the swirling force of Xin Mo’s bloodlust, a thirst for blood, to rip and tear and consume and dig our claws in and scoop out the guts of our enemies, to gorge ourselves to bursting on viscera and the soft, sweet meat of a beating heart, to press ourselves to pretty flesh and find our pleasure in a warm body, to fuck and fight and feast—
Luo Binghe’s eyes fly open, staring at nothing, as he arches on the cold marble floor, body growing rigid as Xin Mo rips apart his consciousness like paper, his lips parted in a soundless scream.
It hurts, Luo Binghe thinks. Shizun, help me. It hurts.
The sword takes this from him too, drinking in his fear and pain as it grows ever stronger. Luo Binghe can feel the tendrils of the sword’s energy burrowing through his spiritual veins, beginning to consume him. He feels as if he’s being set on fire from the inside out. He fights it desperately, his consciousness withdrawing into itself, curling up into a kernel that he can protect, lashing out against every venture by Xin Mo into this smallest part of himself.
And yet it continues to consume him, eroding away the core of his consciousness. Luo Binghe can feel his body beginning to unravel, the demonic energy tearing him apart from the very foundations.
No, he despairs, blood in his mouth and vision flickering. No, no, no–
Shizun!
Luo Binghe’s own demonic energy roils in his veins, burning out with the invasion of Xin Mo, but he can’t allow it to happen. The sword has already eaten through most of him, but he tightens insubstantial fingers around the sword and pushes back, sending his energy streaming into the sword in return.
The sword fights him, but Luo Binghe pushes harder. If Xin Mo takes him over, he will take Xin Mo in return, the both of them intertwined until they cannot be told apart, their bodies and energies melding into each other. Luo Binghe can feel himself dissolving into the sword, consciousness and all. His memories drown in the rush of centuries of war and savagery and sex led by Xin Mo. All that remains is his one, final impulse.
When all is said and done, they tear through reality, just as Luo Binghe had intended. Their new form pours through the ragged space between realms that they have created, their mind turbulent, any single desire slipping through their thoughts like sand through fingers.
Until finally, finally, their mind sharpens upon one insistent, constant desire. Shizun, they think. We are coming for you.
The teahouse is shockingly crowded, filled with all kinds of people. Transients simply making their way through town, merchants recently arrived and there to conduct trade, older uncles whiling their days away with gossip and good tea, young couples enjoying a nice moment to themselves—all of these people and more fill the tables. A young lady bustles between the lively tables, ensuring that the tea stays flowing and snacks are provided to the waiting customers. Chatter suffuses the room, countless conversations overlapping each other and fading into a low-level murmur.
Shen Qingqiu sits in the corner of the room at a table on his own, his fingers idly caressing the rim of his teacup. He’d drunk the first cup to be polite, though the second one remains mostly untouched. He’d been forced to compensate the owner of the teahouse for his filled seat, given he mostly abstained from food these days. The young woman had made a show of refusing his extra payment, but had taken it with a look of mild relief in the end—Shen Qingqiu supposed the owner of the establishment had sent her to force him to purchase something or leave when he’d made no signs of finishing his tea or ordering anything else.
Fortunately, he had been left on his own from that moment on. The lively buzz of voices would be indistinct to a regular mortal’s ear, but his own superior hearing allows him to focus on conversations as they stick out to him, his senses prickling as he listens for news of anything particularly out of place.
“—and all of his chickens have been disappearing,” one older man says to his companion across from him, voice full of gossip. Shen Qingqiu tilts his head—was this what he was looking for?
His partner makes a bah sound. “It’s just foxes,” he says, voice gravelly from age. “He’ll find that he has a hole in his coop somewhere.”
“Well, he’s been blaming his deceased wife for the disappearances,” the first man says conspiratorially.
The other man laughs outright, the sound carrying over the general chatter. “She was a nag, not a malicious, evil spirit,” he responds. “Old Wang is just overly paranoid and growing senile in his age.”
Ah, just the normal gossip of villagers, Shen Qingqiu realizes, not what he’s listening for. Yue Qingyuan had received a missive from one of the richer tenants of the city begging for help three days previous about the loss of his precious daughter. The missive itself had been frantically written and poor in explanation; Shen Qingqiu had offered to investigate the matter personally.
It was normally the type of matter that would be passed on to a disciple that was relatively inexperienced; something to help them to begin to explore the trials of the mortal world more fully. But Shen Qingqiu had been so cooped up on Cang Qiong lately, and he was itching to escape the peaks. Luckily, the mission was low enough in stakes for even Yue Qingyuan to agree that he would be fine to venture out on his own, and the added request from Shang Qinghua to pick up some relatively niche herb refills recently submitted by Qian Cao meant that he had been permitted to take the mission.
Just as Shen Qingqiu is about to turn his attention away from the old men’s conversation—a bunch of gossiping hens, pardon the pun, not what he’s looking for—a third voice chimes in. This one is much younger and more enthusiastic, loud enough to be clear even amidst the buzz of conversation.
“Those chickens might be mundane disappearances, but there have been many going missing around here that are much more mysterious,” he says, clearly bait in order to gossip about what he knows.
Bait aside, missing people were far more likely to be related to the petition that Shen Qingqiu had received. While they’d only been informed about the daughter, it was very common for richer merchants and upper-class heads of households to only care about the trials of their own families. He wouldn’t be surprised if this town had been plagued by misfortunes beyond the one cry for assistance that Cang Qiong had received—it was simply that most cries for help weren’t rich enough to reach the greater cultivation sects.
“That Xia girl just ran off with that young lord who came through town last week,” the old man with the gruffer voice insists.
Shen Qingqiu begins to sip his tea again as he listens, if only to avoid the risk of getting caught searching for the source of the conversation with his eyes. It’s gone cold, which makes him wince a little before he sets the cup back down.
The younger voice cuts back in. “She and all of the other pretty young women who have disappeared recently? Don’t you think that the merchants and visitors that have been visiting lately have been leaving town more and more quickly? Like maybe…something more sinister is happening?”
The first old man huffs. “You seem to be very knowledgeable about all of this,” he says, disdain dripping from his voice. “You young people know everything, don’t you?”
“Not at all, uncle, this one has simply been paying attention. The man who had been canoodling with the Xia girl left the morning after she disappeared—and she wasn’t with him. I saw it with my own eyes!” The young man is insistent, and Shen Qingqiu finds that he almost believes him.
He’s distracted from the gossip when the young woman who had been Shen Qingqiu’s server appears at his side. “I noticed you were drinking your tea again,” she says quietly, exchanging Shen Qingqiu’s old, cold teapot for a new one, the charm on the pretty woven bracelet around her wrist clinking against the porcelain as she switches the pots.
Shen Qingqiu smiles thankfully at her and pours himself a new, warmer cup. The quality of the tea is still lacking, but it is much better warm than it is cold. He continues to nurse it, determined not to let the sweet server’s hard work go to waste. It was only polite.
“Surely there haven’t been that many disappearances,” one of the old men is saying.
“There have,” the gossip insists, voice shining with excitement. Aren’t you too eager about these missing people, young man? “Most of them have been people just coming through town, so their disappearances are simply written off as untimely departures, but I heard one poor soul drinking away his troubles on the street. Obviously, I couldn’t leave a man to cry with such sorrow on his own, so I joined him to ask if I could help him to bear his worries.”
Or to get more gossip, Shen Qingqiu thinks wryly.
“He told me that he and his sweetheart had arranged to meet that evening, and instead of seeing her at their meeting place near the seamstresses, he watched her stroll into the forest as if possessed. Naturally, he followed her—but by the time he was wandering through the trees, she had completely disappeared,” the man continues, his voice full of intrigue.
“Maybe he scared her off,” the gruffer old man says, guffawing. “Young men don’t know how to properly treat a lady these days.”
“He hasn’t seen her since,” the young man insists, sounding a bit frustrated. Clearly, these wizened old men aren’t giving him the awed reactions that he was hoping for!
Shen Qingqiu finishes his cup as the conversation dissolves into an argument about whether or not the young ladies are simply running away from unwanted suitors or not. In the meantime, he categorizes the information that he has learned. All of those who have disappeared have been women, though not all have been from the town itself. This particular city saw a lot of transients, being situated along one of the major trade routes running parallel to the Heng river. The choice of target suggests a certain level of intelligence in the perpetrators—so likely not a simple demonic beast.
Shen Qingqiu grits his teeth. That makes things more complicated. The single reported disappearance had originally been attributed to being a very intermittent attacker, or a mistaken attack by a demonic beast of some kind. Whatever is intelligent enough to pick such specific targets is likely more powerful than a simple creature.
Just as Shen Qingqiu is losing himself in his thoughts, he feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle. As a cultivator, Shen Qingqiu has incredibly acute senses—meaning that he usually becomes immediately aware when someone is paying him a little bit too much attention.
He finishes the cup of tea in front of him, setting it carefully back down on the rough wood tabletop with a dull click. The tearoom is crowded and lively, and any number of people could be focusing on the lone cultivator in the corner. But the sensation doesn’t go away; even after several minutes, he can still feel the intense sensation of eyes on him, his skin beginning to crawl with it.
Finally, he can’t stand it anymore. He rises from his seat, looking out over the crowd.
Almost everyone is sat in groups of two or more, and the few who are on their own seem caught up in their own thoughts or a book. Shen Qingqiu sees no eyes on him.
But his skin still crawls with it.
The sensation chases him out of the tearoom, the feeling of being watched lingering until he has exited into the blessedly cool evening, a sharp contrast from the heady warmth of the many bodies packed into a small room.
An hour of wandering leads Shen Qingqiu to the edge of the forest bordering the town.
He hadn’t really meant to come here; really, he should gather more information before he goes investigating properly! He should at the very least present himself to the Xia family that had requested Cang Qiong’s presence—except making nice with rich families was always boring and tedious, and whenever he’s on his own he doesn’t have Ming Fan to handle all of the worst of the formal interactions for him.
As much as Ming Fan’s cultivation is a little lacking and his martial skills are average, he really is quite good with politics and handling those interactions that Shen Qingqiu avoids at all costs.
Ultimately, Shen Qingqiu would much rather go poking around the forest than introducing himself to a family with a missing daughter that is more than likely long gone! It was never fun to tell a distraught father that a demon tore the flesh from his daughter’s bones while she suffered—if Shen Qingqiu could ignore it for as long as possible, he most certainly would.
He has no idea where exactly the young woman disappeared into the forest, but he had passed by the seamstresses shop that gossip had mentioned very recently—so this must be close to the area of disappearance, right?
The forest is dark and imposing, trees that have been growing for hundreds of years twisting up, copious underbrush and greenery dissuading any curious souls from going poking around. The canopy is thick, meaning that even walking a few feet in throws the curious interloper into shadowed darkness. The lighting is worsened by the fact that sunset is growing near, the bright blue sky beginning to deepen. Along the horizon, Shen Qingqiu can see the blood red and orange of sunset begin to creep across the sky, the sun causing the trees’ shadows to lengthen.
He won’t have very much time before he’ll have to turn back, but Shen Qingqiu can’t resist the urge to at least take a small look around. He takes a step into the forest, the cool evening shifting into a less comfortable chill as he enters the shadows, where the sun’s rays don’t touch. His footsteps crackle as he walks, sticks snapping and leaves crunching under his boots as he treks through thick underbrush, thankful for his long robes to prevent getting scratched while simultaneously cursing how much he snags on everything.
The branches are wild and twisting as he walks, darkness deepening with every step. Shen Qingqiu feels a chill pass through him as he looks around.
It’s very, very quiet.
Shouldn’t there be some sort of sound? The chirping of cicadas, the call of birds? He hears nothing but the sound of his own breathing as he comes to a stop, listening intently.
There is not so much as a rustle.
Shen Qingqiu quests out carefully with his qi. If the young woman disappeared anywhere near here, he should be able to sense it if it was through magical means—though that only matters if he’s in the correct spot. The forest is large and sprawling, and she could have disappeared anywhere.
This ominous silence, though…
Movement in the corner of his eye. Shen Qingqiu whirls, pulling his qi back in to swirl through his spiritual veins, ready to be repurposed into whatever blast he may need to protect himself.
Stupid, he thinks intently. Any use of qi is as good as setting up a beacon, proclaiming that a cultivator is there and investigating! Even worse, it was practically putting a tracking tag on himself, so anyone watching for someone investigating would be drawn directly to his location. If he’s unlucky, he could have just put himself in a lot of danger.
And when has Shen Qingqiu ever been lucky?
The air is still and silent while Shen Qingqiu focuses on the shifting shadows of the leaves, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever had been moving in the underbrush. The already weak light in the depths of the forest is only getting darker with the close of the day drawing so near, twilight beginning to creep in. There’s something off about the view, though Shen Qingqiu can’t quite put his finger on it, making him feel unduly paranoid.
There’s no reason for him to be targeted like Xia-guniang was, he comforts himself with very little conviction. He’s not a pretty girl, right?
The wavering shadows cast by the forest canopy seem to almost swirl, creeping closer.
No, Shen Qingqiu realizes as the detail that had been so off finally strikes him. There’s no breeze; none of the leaves are moving at all. The shadows are swirling in his direction—the’re moving on their own.
Shen Qingqiu turns abruptly around and begins to walk towards the exit of the forest. No thank you!
If he walks quickly and casually enough, maybe whatever is causing the creeping shadows will just let him go. Maybe he can trick whatever it is for long enough to reach the edge of the forest and escape.
Unfortunately for Shen Qingqiu’s nerves, shadows are silent. As he walks, he has no idea if it is following him—if they are continuing to lengthen after him, to stretch, to reach out for him. He has no way to know how close they are coming except for the growing chill, the shivers breaking out along his spine, the creeping sensation that something is behind him.
Rule number one of being followed is never to look behind, never to check how far away the monster is.
But isn’t that just hiding from the knowledge that it might be right there?
Fuck, Shen Qingqiu thinks, and then again more emphatically, fuck all of this!
He turns around.
Somehow, it’s even worse that there’s nothing, just the silent expanse of trees and the ever-darkening forest. Dread builds in him. Surely the moving shadows weren’t just his imagination. Maybe he just managed to actually trick them into leaving him alone? He turns decisively back around on his heel—assumed safety or not, Shen Qingqiu absolutely isn’t going to mess around with any of this anymore until he has more information.
He might regularly find himself in the position of a trussed-up maiden, but he isn’t about to throw himself into danger on purpose.
He sets back out for the edge of the forest, but he doesn’t make it two anxious steps before something wraps around his ankle and yanks.
Shen Qingqiu hits the ground hard, the combination of his momentum and the sharp pull sending him plummeting downwards with a cry. The air is pushed harshly from his lungs, leaving him winded. His ankle is cold—ice cold where the thing touches him, even through layers of fabric. Sticks and leaves dig into his fabric and hair as it begins to drag him by the ankle, pulling him deeper into the forest.
Shen Qingqiu struggles frantically, kicking his foot, but the grip around him is like iron. Bark scrapes past his arm as he’s dragged over the upturned root of a tree, his robes catching in everything, tearing.
Finally he remembers that he’s a cultivator, and he fights to curl downwards towards his ankle, firing a blast of qi towards whatever is holding him.
For just a moment, the thing is illuminated in the bright surge of energy. Shen Qingqiu sees a flash of dark snarls, twisting curls of smoke and tendrils creeping along the forest floor, too black and substantial to be mere shadows. And then his blast makes contact, and a shrill screech fills the air as the tendril clamped around his ankle finally loosens his grip. The thing retreats in the face of the wave of qi, shadows and coils drawing back into the depths of the forest.
In moments, Shen Qingqiu is alone, his hair and robes mussed beyond all saving, his heart pounding. Whatever that was, it wasn’t something Shen Qingqiu recognized. He has no idea what it could have been.
He pushes himself up from the dirt, his body aching and stinging in turns. No matter what it was, it would be best to be gone from here by the time it thought to come back and check on him again.
One encounter with the horrible creature is plenty for one day, Shen Qingqiu thinks bitterly.