Chapter Text
She remembers when she was little, and her big brother had been the light of her life.
She remembers the warmth of his hugs, the deep rumble of his laughter. How he would put pins in her braided hair and stroke down her silks. My little Tang-er, he would say. My beautiful little sister. I will always be by your side.
The slave boy Brother brought back had eyes the colour of bamboo. He was thin and dirty, a dark scowl fixed to his face, but even that couldn’t hide his prettiness. He had elegant brows and lovely eyes. Black hair cascaded down his shoulders where his tie had come loose. Combined with the solemn expression, it gave him a tragic kind of air that made you want to pinch his cheeks and pat his head. No doubt the aunties would dote on him, if given the chance.
He was found on the streets begging for food, she had been told. He looked – and smelled – like he had been pulled out of a gutter. In her life, she had never set foot outside of the manor, and Brother detested outsiders. Although she loved her home and never lacked anything here, the little burst of something new, like a fresh spring leaf unfurling through pristine snow, filled her with inexplicable joy.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
Xiao Jiu – Little Nine – was the reply.
She can’t quite remember when he started sleeping in her bed. Xiao Jiu slept poorly. There were always dark circles under his eyes, his skin an unhealthy parlour.
When she asked an Auntie about it, she received a sad shake of the head.
“Poor boy. The things he’s been through…”
Auntie was not very clear on what exactly Xiao Jiu had been through, but by then Brother had taught her about the perils of the outside world – streets filled with beggars and thieves, swindlers and scammers at every corner, who sometimes stole away children for their nefarious purposes. It was too dangerous for a little girl like her to venture out the walls of the manor, that was why she was kept safe inside. She imagined life must have been hard for a boy growing up on the streets.
Xiao Jiu was distrustful and snappish. He didn’t get along with the other servants. He almost strangled one of his co-workers when they disturbed him in his sleep.
Feral, they said. Untameable.
And she saw it. He was a cat – wild and bristling, claws constantly out, words so vulgar that at one point Auntie moved over to cover the ears of her charge. Yet if she was patient, if she was persistent, then very slowly he would stop hissing. Something softer would appear in his eyes, something less shielded in his expression. He’d become quiet and shy. It was adorable.
Xiao Jiu never relaxed around people, but if it was just the two of them in her room, his guard would drop. Occasionally, he would stifle a yawn.
So one day, she said: “If you want to sleep here, you can.”
And that, was how it began.
Apparently, there was a kind of horror in the notion of a boy sleeping in her room that she didn’t quite understand. Auntie shook her head extensively. Father raged at Auntie until he was white-faced, then raged more at Brother. Brother grabbed Xiao Jiu by the wrist and almost dragged him away, before she had clutched at his sleeves and begged him to stop. She’d cried, insisted it had been her idea, that Xiao Jiu had been very good, he hadn’t done anything at all, and eventually, Auntie had sighed.
“He’s still little. I’m sure he didn’t have any ill intent.”
It was Brother who finally pacified Father, seething under his jagged fury but coming out triumphant. Brother had always been her advocate in this world that was too big for her, cocooning her in his protective embrace. Anything she wanted, Brother would get for her. As long as Brother was nearby, she felt cared for.
It was Brother who stayed up late into the evening to teach Xiao Jiu his letters, who dressed him in better clothes and taught him how to stand upright, chin up, eyes forward. Slowly, Xiao Jiu looked less like a feral animal and more like a proper boy. Guests stopped doing doubletakes when they saw him with her.
It was Brother who moved Xiao Jiu out of the servant’s accommodation, into a side room near his own quarters. Who didn’t complain when Xiao Jiu slipped to her room to play with her, the only one who didn’t shake his head disapprovingly when he found Xiao Jiu in her bed.
“How old are you?” Brother would say, ruffling Xiao Jiu’s hair with an amused smile.
“Don’t tease,” she would snap back. “Xiao Jiu has nightmares. You’re too big and scary, Brother.”
Brother laughed at that, and Xiao Jiu would look firmly at the floor, eyes solemn and brooding, a touch of colour on his cheeks. Indignant, ashamed… but he would still come crawling under her covers, night after night.
Under the pale moonlight, she would clutch the shivering bundle to her bosom, sooth away the shuddering breaths with a hummed lullaby. She knew how to make the tenseness in his shoulders fall away, how to chase away the nightmares and let him sleep peacefully. Like a shared secret between them, a little world where there was just the two of them… these quiet nights pressed against each other made her feel warm and fuzzy inside.
This must be what love feels like, she had thought at the time.
One day, Brother took them out to see the blossoming plum trees. The sky was azure, the spring air was warm. The branches above them provided cool shade from the sun. She brought a box full of mooncakes and passed one to Xiao Jiu. He blushed, cheeks matching the pink flower petals dancing around him. The air was filled with sweet and floral notes.
In that moment, she was content in a way she had never felt before, like her insides were doused in warm honey. She felt invincible. She felt wonderful. She felt like the whole world was at her fingertips.
“Me, Brother, and Xiao Jiu. The three of us, we can be together forever. Nothing will ever come between us.”
Brother’s smile had been stunning. Like sunlight. Boundless and joyful. Back then, the future had been infinite and bursting with happiness, the years stretched out in front of them like the lazy windings of a river. She’d marry Xiao Jiu, and that way she would never have to leave like her sisters had done, one by one in their little red sedans, never to return… instead, she could spend a lifetime with the people she loved, in the home that she belonged to.
And she’d forgotten, hidden by the warm buzz of the moment, the little tug of unease in her chest. It was the grim line of Xiao Jiu’s lips, the hardness in his eyes, as if horrified at the prospect of their eternal happiness. Later, she would often think… if only she had realised then. If only she had realised then, she could have saved herself so much pain.
It was a month later that Shen Jiu murdered her family and set her house on fire.
---o0o---
Grief is a kaleidoscope of colours that splatters her days with muted rainbows.
At times she is filled with such raging fury that she smashes the objects around her.
Other times she can do nothing but curl into a ball and sob so hard that it becomes painful.
More often, she finds herself slipping away, staring blankly at a wall or ceiling as time runs between the gaping cracks in her mind, unable to muster the energy to do anything. Sometimes, she can remember Brother’s laugh with perfect clarity, see every line of his face as if he were right there in front of her. Then other times, she can barely remember her life before the fire, as if she had awoken that terrible night as a new person.
She is taken in by a kindly neighbour. After a week, a relative comes to pick her up.
She’s not sure if she expected to be treated as family by these strangers, but in any case, her hopes are shattered on the first day. They chuck her in the servants’ quarters and forget about her.
For the first time, she learns the pain of scrubbing clothes until her fingers are bloody with blisters, the ache of sleeping in the cold with only thin layers. Her appetite is gone, so the lack of food doesn’t quite bother her, but she is constantly sluggish. Her limbs are heavy. She is always cold.
Her work is slow. She tires easily.
Spoilt, they say. Useless.
When a maid trips her on the way back from collecting water and laughs at her, she knows indignation for the first time. It's a sharp feeling, intense against the surrounding dullness, like the ice-cold of the water dripping down her front.
Why?
The question is her constant companion.
Why?
In the torturous quiet of the night, she recounts every last memory she had in painful detail. The mangled body of her brother, covered in gruesome stab wounds. The splatter of blood against Shen Jiu’s cheeks, his knuckles pale around the hilt of a sword.
Why?
They had been arguing, she recalls. Shen Jiu had been upset, saying he wanted to go and cultivate with some man he met on the street… Wu Yanzi – a scam artist, Brother had informed her. Shen Jiu was a little gullible like that. Shen Jiu had been grouchier than usual, brooding about it for hours… but how could that possibly be enough to make Shen Jiu turn on his family like that? The family that had raised him, loved him, cared for him like their own. The twist of betrayal burns in her stomach.
Why?
“I want to become a cultivator,” she says. Those around her shake their head pitifully.
“You should find a good man to marry,” they say. “That way, you can be happy.”
But Qiu Haitang does not want to be happy. Qiu Haitang wants justice.
Once the decision is made, it is easy to make her own way. Qiu Haitang has always known she is pretty – Brother told her often enough. In the safety of her own home, it had never occurred to her how strongly it influenced how people acted towards her. All she had to do was bat her eyelashes a few times and she’ll have protection and information, even free meals and accommodation. It turns out to be a double-sided weapon when a man tries to force himself on her in the middle of the night. He was the first person she had ever killed. The memory haunts her years afterwards.
The teacher she finds is a nameless wondering cultivator who sighs as she begs her to take her as a disciple.
“You’re too old.”
“I don’t care,” she spits.
The cultivator sighs again but does not shoo her away.
Making herself part of the cultivation world is by far her best decision. She hears plenty about Wu Yanzi, and the more she hears, the more disgusted she becomes. A murderer, a thief, a rapist. One who now has an adolescent boy as his disciple.
At first it confuses her why Xiao Jiu would run off with such a horrible person, but slowly the pieces click together in her fraught mind.
Hadn’t he always been rude and ungrateful? Didn’t Brother say that he was trouble? The other servants hated him, family members had been bemused at why they kept a rat in their midst.
And she had thought… only she could see past his feisty exterior, that for all his sharp thorns, deep down he had been a better person. She had believed in him, trusted in him, argued for him, again and again, where it had been abundantly clear to everyone else that Shen Jiu was just a nasty piece of work.
How had she been so blind?
How could she have let such a snake into her bed?
It sickens her. Disgusts her, that her kindness had been taken advantage like so. She hates him. She hates herself for ever seeing anything in him. She wishes she could have thrown him back to the gutter where he belonged, where he couldn’t have hurt her family. Couldn’t have hurt her.
The guilt and grief is dulled by loathing. Hate becomes her best friend on lonely nights. She sits in it, simmers in it, feels it cursing through her. It becomes her focus, a rock to cling to in her turbulent days. Picking open her wounds, reminding herself of the smell of ash and blood, she finds the strength to live each day.
Her cultivation is poor. Not only did she start too late, she has no natural talent. It is of no consequence – it isn’t like she is trying to be a renowned member of a great sect. When she knows just enough to defend herself and make a living, she says her farewells to her teacher.
The days are not easy. She sells herself in ways she would have thought unimaginably disgusting in her youth. She swallows her pride, lets her shame stoke her anger. She focuses on survival. On gathering the scraps of gossip and rumours that lead her closer to her goal. Within the circles of rogue cultivators, she becomes known for trading with information – there isn’t a single wondering cultivator or village practitioner she doesn’t know the name of.
The years pass.
Five years. Ten years. Twenty years.
There is no sign of Wu Yanzi, or of Shen Jiu. The last that anyone has heard of them is that they were prowling around near the venue of the Immortal Alliance Conference, planning to rob participants on the inside. After that… it was as if they had disappeared, plucked out of this realm and tossed away into the nether. In her darkest moments, Qiu Haitang contemplates the possibility that they are both dead – killed quietly in an accident with their bodies left rotten and forgotten in some insignificant hole. That she has been chasing a ghost for decades.
She persists. Refuses to believe retribution would be so easy.
As her beauty fades, it becomes increasingly harder to find kindness from strangers. She becomes accustomed to being turned away, spat on and gossiped about behind her back.
Perhaps they were right – she should have given up on this hopeless endeavour while she was still young enough to find someone to love her. It only adds to her fury.
Look at what you’ve done to me, Shen Jiu, she thinks. Look at what you’ve made me endure.
She continues. Afraid, that if she stops hating, she truly will have nothing left to live for.
Luo Binghe is a man young enough to be her son.
Tall and breathtakingly handsome, wearing the rich golden robes of Huan Hua Palace which highlight his impressive physique. His smile is brilliant, his brows strong. He holds himself with a kind of swaggering confidence that makes tavern girls swoon. In fact, tavern girls are swooning behind Qiu Haitang, their excited whispers filling the air.
To her surprise, Luo Binghe approaches her. Qiu Haitang makes an obvious show of moving her sword on the table. She is a cultivator. She doesn’t want trouble.
“Can I help you, Young Master Luo?”
“You know me?” he asks, feigning polite surprise.
“Huan Hua Palace must not treat its disciples very well, if its Head Disciple is so modest.”
Luo Binghe laughs. It is a bright, clear laugh, youthful and strong. He indicates to the drink which Qiu Haitang swirls.
“May I join you?”
It has been a long while since a man has entertained her like this. It is almost amusing, the innocent eagerness with which he flirts… and yes, he is most definitely flirting – smooth with his compliments, teasing with his jokes, laughing freely. If Qiu Haitang was twenty years younger than she is, she would have fallen head over heel for him. At present… she feels a warm kind of nostalgia.
She doesn’t know when they opened their second jar of wine. Or their third. When they got a room together, another jar of wine tucked under arm. She feels drunk and delirious. Indulging on a sweet treat that will be swept away with the cold morning winds.
He listens to her.
Calm and patient as she spills years of her woes in one night.
He does not sneer at her. Does not judge her or scold her. Does not shake his head with disappointment at the stupid decisions of her youth, or view her with the kind of pity one would a dying animal on the roadside. He sits and says nothing, just lets her talk, and she feels so lightheaded she might cry.
When she finally does cry, he holds her in his arms.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says gently.
She gives a few more heaving sobs before pulling herself away. She wipes away the tears from her cheeks with an angry swipe of her sleeve.
“I’ll kill him. I’ll find him and kill him, if it’s the last thing I do.”
There is a beat of silence from Luo Binghe, which is odd from a man who has not once stumbled on his words since he had started talking to her.
“I think… we share a goal.”
As Qiu Haitang looks up, Luo Binghe’s eyes are like smouldering coals, burning with a fire which is overwhelming at this distance. His red lips curl slightly, a veneer of poise hiding unbridled fury.
“Do you know a man named Shen Qingqiu?”
A Peak Lord.
Xiao Jiu, the slave boy they fished out of the streets has somehow crawled his way to becoming Shen Qingqiu, Peak Lord of Qing Jing, of the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.
It is ridiculous. It is laughable.
It is infuriating.
Oh how well the man has done for himself, while Qiu Haitang had struggled tooth and nail for each meal, sleeping in stables and sheds with her robes stained in mud. How comfortable he has made himself, sitting amidst the clouds of the scholarly peak, washing away the blood of Qiu Haitang’s family from his name and reputation.
Moreover, Shen Qingqiu is notorious. Rude, lazy, and has a terrible habit of visiting brothels. They say he murdered his martial brother out of spite. Remembering what had happened to her family, Qiu Haitang has no trouble believing it to be true.
The story that Luo Binghe accounts is harrowing. To think a man capable of almost beating a twelve-year-old to death, of standing aside and watching while a child was relentlessly bullied by his peers. Qiu Haitang has seen many monsters in her life as a wondering cultivator, but at least they were not respected. They didn’t hold positions of authority. They were not trusted with raising the next generation of disciples.
“I revered him once,” Luo Binghe whispers, voice soft and broken. “I wanted nothing more than for him to praise me.”
The pained look in his eyes twists the shards of an old wound in Qiu Haitang’s heart. He is so young, she thinks, only just out of childhood. It fills her with fury to think he has been hurt so unjustly. She hugs him to her chest, smooths down his hair, like her own brother had done for her, once upon a time.
“I loved him once,” she whispers. It is fact she has never spoken, not to anyone, since the fire. Like a dam broken, she feels her eyes flooding with tears.
How easily Xiao Jiu had fooled them, with his meek behaviour, his feigned subservience. It is almost gratifying, seeing his true colours come to light like this. It makes it easier to hate.
When Luo Binghe speaks again, his voice is deep and steady, with an iron core of conviction that feels like thunder bearing down on her.
“The kind of person who pretends to be a righteous cultivator while beating innocent children is the worst kind of scum. But I have to be thankful to him – he has taught me that if I want something, I need to be strong enough to obtain it.”
Luo Binghe takes her hands into his own. His eyes seem to glow faintly in the dark. He is half her age, Qiu Haitang vaguely remembers, but supported by those strong shoulders, falling into the deep depths of his gaze, it seems hard to believe.
“Miss Qiu… I will definitely bring justice to your family.”
Qiu Haitang has never loved a man more in her life.
Under Luo Binghe care, things are strangely easy. Shen Qingqiu is arrested. His trial is a fast affair. Murder of the Qiu family. Assisting the wanted criminal Wu Yanzi. Murder of his martial brother Liu Qingge. Abuse of his disciples… along with a dozen other personal faults, highly improper conduct in his position as Peak Lord. He is found guilty on all accounts and imprisoned at Huan Hua Palace. The shocking scandal rips a hole in the great Cang Qiong Mountain Sect’s reputation. Even the morally untouchable Yue Qingyuan is regarded with a little contempt, having shielded a viper under his wing for so long.
The next scandal dislodges the Old Palace Master from his lofty position. Trust in the Four Great Sects is irreversible broken. By the time Luo Binghe reveals himself as a Heavenly Demon, Saintly Ruler of the Demon Realm, there is no true power left to oppose him.
Free of his pretences, Luo Binghe builds himself a paradise, then fills it with women.
Qiu Haiting is neither surprised nor disappointed that she is not alone in Luo Binghe’s affections. Her own mother had been one of five wives. Even in her youth, when she was the favoured young lady of a wealthy family, being a principal wife of a good household had been a realistic hope but not a guarantee. As a rogue cultivator with no family background, and well past her prime…
She should be grateful to be the lowliest concubine of such a powerful man. Instead, he treats her as one of his most favoured wives. It is more than she could ever have wished for.
It is fortunate that Luo Binghe is not one for propriety, nor modest with his affections. They call him shameless. Disgusting. Monstrous. Because he loves women who are kind to him, rather than those whose families throw money at him.
“I don’t care if your father is a criminal, or you grew up on a farm,” he says to them. “I love you and that’s enough.”
When Qiu Haitang was little, Auntie read her stories of brave heroes in shining armour, vanquishing evil with their great power. He’d save a beautiful maiden in distress, and they would be happily married for ever after.
As an adult, she would have scoffed at the notion of a shining prince sweeping into her life to solve all of her problems… until it happened.
It should have been a dream.
The happily ever after she had desperately been waiting for.
…
…
…
It feels oddly unsatisfying.
---o0o---