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Whether it can be attributed to the bloated weight of Luo Binghe’s marital bliss, or Shen Qingqiu’s skill at deception, the fact is that Shen Qingqiu manages to live in his palace for three consecutive days without Luo Binghe noticing.

The thought makes his stomach lurch in a truly unpleasant way. Not everyone took to the Empress’s reforms with as much joy as they ought to have. Of course they did not. A stranglehold on government is never something anyone wishes to relinquish with ease. But his A-Yuan is biting and mean, ruthless when he wants to be. Watching him navigate the political waters was truly a thing of beauty, like watching a swan in its natural habitat. Luo Binghe is not ashamed to say it made his desire stir, watching his Empress demolish those that stood in his way, cutting them down with tongue and wit. And then, deliciously, A-Yuan would soften for him every night, the hard lines of his mouth and the flintiness of his eyes melting into something affectionate and kind. Only for him. Only for Luo Binghe. 

Sure, he can be an absolute bitch, complaining about everything and anything, but that too, is endearing, the way A-Yuan is prone to relentless exaggeration, but balks at any sort of agreement, hastily assuring Luo Binghe that it truly isn’t that bad, they weren’t that rude. (They are always, however, that incompetent.) 

For a brief moment, Luo Binghe had a thought that A-Yuan was asserting his independence, assuring himself that he didn’t need the heavy hammer weight of his husband to come crashing down. An uglier, more sickly thought was that A-Yuan did not trust Luo Binghe to act in moderation, that he was seeking to protect those that had wronged him. 

The idea sat wrong in Luo Binghe’s stomach until he had the truly amusing opportunity to witness an interaction between A-Yuan and his bizarre simpering little friend. 

Shang Hua came from a decent merchant family and had scored well enough, but not spectacularly, on the exams. His personality was interesting, wavering all over between cowering and simpering and snarking and disparaging, but ultimately Luo Binghe was well-familiar with his kind— simpering in the face of power and bitter about it in private. 

That Shen Yuan gets along with him is something that tugs a smile onto Luo Binghe’s face— it’s like watching a punching bag trying to take revenge by swinging back at the user. Shen Yuan tried to interact with Shang Hua like he did with Luo Binghe— offering no quarter to foolishness, biting whip comments that expected one in reply. 

“A-Hua,” Shen Yuan said, holding a sheaf of papers in one hand, tapping his fingers along the back, “why are you so predisposed to lurid descriptions of women’s breasts? Have you even had sex? Or worse, have you had it and some poor soul is—”

Shang Hua had apparently reached his limit, teeth gritted, he spat: “how does literary criticism manage to reach even to what I do in bed, huh!?! Is that an actual critique, or are you looking to just insult me?!”

Shen Yuan blushed. With the expression on his face, one might mistake it for an indignant, furious blush of one whose power is absolutely absolute. 

But Luo Binghe could tell it was actually embarrassment staining his cheeks. 

“I—“ Shen Yuan started, and Luo Binghe watched his spoiled young master stumble through an apology-not-apology. Absolutely hilarious. Shen Yuan had barely had to make a sincere apology in his life. He fumbled his way through it, blushing and spluttering, and at the end, his obnoxious friend looked at him and said: “Bro, either insult people intentionally or pretend you did. That was painful for the both of us.”

Luo Binghe had to excuse himself so he wouldn't reveal himself with huge guffaws of laughter. His life with Shen Yuan has made him more gloriously happy than he ever even thought possible. 

But it is not without drawbacks. 

Luo Binghe could readily agree that he is arrogant; but it’s hardly undeserved. But rarely is he incautious. It is simply not in his nature. 

In the third year of their marriage, A-Yuan was attacked with a sword whose merest slice would be liable to seal the user’s soul within it, turning the souls it collected into a power source that even the weakest cultivator could use to devastating results, a treasure Luo Binghe himself is painfully aware he had gifted a wife many years ago, one of the stubborn hangers-on he had had to clear from the rear palace before A-Yuan could be properly installed. He had naturally been very generous in her dismissal, aware both that her prospects had become rather dim and that Shen Yuan might not look upon him favorably if he discovered Luo Binghe awarded years of service with callousness. 

Nothing came of the attack. Shen Yuan had naturally trained with weapons from a young age, taught by the finest masters, and had cultivated for years on his own before he had begun to rigorously do so with his Emperor. The attacker was naught but a disgruntled aristocrat, armed largely with anger and pride and no sort of skill. To have considered him a danger would have been a gross overstatement of his skills. A-Yuan barely considered it an event. It did not seem to impinge on his consciousness in any meaningful way. 

But. 

The nature of the sword was that one did not need to be skilled to be horrific, consigning a soul to endless torment, a not-death unable to enter the cycle of reincarnation, but unable to truly live, until it was no more. 

Taken from Luo Binghe for the rest of eternity. 

Fear and rage lanced through Luo Binghe in a tidal wave, one inseparable from the other, each feeding and creating a stronger emotion like a tiger eating its own tail until he was wrecked with it.

He had not felt this way for many, many years, not since the sick realization that a master that had never cared for him hated him truly, would consign him to the depths of hell, and did so, leaving a weakened child to stagger weaponless in the most dangerous place in the world. 

Luo Binghe had restrained himself for many years, particularly the past twenty, and they foolishly considered him toothless instead of slumbering. For all that Luo Binghe was aware that the attacker was but one man, he was also aware that foolhardy acts by men that had before been moderate were not the products of individuals fermenting in their own thoughts, but large bubbling pots of insurrection, egging each other on to extreme heights, becoming heroes in their own minds. 

The lives of humans are short, and they had forgotten, but they learned to remember. 

Luo Binghe had fretted, concerned in turns that he was being too much for his Empress, for all that Shen Yuan had claimed he was well-aware of Luo Binghe’s reputation, to hear it and to bear witness are two entirely separate events; but also that he wasn’t doing enough, that any sort of measured response (no matter how barely measured it was) would not be adequate protection, would not root the problem out at its source, would not convey to to the world that Luo Binghe would rip away at its foundation if Shen Yuan was not there to stop him from doing so.  

He wanted to keep Shen Yuan locked away, held dearly in the palace where the world couldn’t hurt him. He wouldn’t lie to himself, it would be a cage, yes, but it would be the finest cage he could make it. It would be so splendid that Shen Yuan himself would never care, content to be in his arms and his arms alone for the rest of eternity. 

He had accepted Luo Binghe, had he not? Had accepted the position of being Luo Binghe’s for the rest of his life with grace and magnanimity, never truly straying to another, never even seeming to seriously consider it, only mentioning it with the waspish childishness of the sheltered and angry. 

Would he not equally accept his new life, as he had taken to his old?

Perhaps he might. But.

Luo Binghe lies in bed, his husband curled around him in a casually possessive, intimate way that Luo Binghe had found irritating in others but is infinitely adorable in A-Yuan, resting his hand on the delicate knobs of his husband’s spine. Shen Yuan hasn’t felt so delicate in his arms since he was small, since he was a mere child. But now, Luo Binghe can’t help but feel how delicate human bones are. It would take nothing, barely any pressure at all, for Luo Binghe to crush the spine under his hand and change the course of Shen Yuan’s life. 

But he does not want to be that sort of man. 

He is. Oh, assuredly he is. To keep what’s his his, he’d do anything, anything at all. 

But he remembers a much younger Shen Yuan saying, with confidence: “You’d never hurt me.” He wants that to be true. He wants the man who completes him to be right. 

So he contents himself with the destruction of the aristocracy as it stands. His methods are varied, but far-reaching, ranging from the collapse of merchant empires leaving certain families destitute to outright public executions. Shen Yuan, with his straight-forward sort of brusqueness, helps, using his knowledge to soothe the power vacuum in its wake. 

Six years into their marriage, the realm is once again stable, running marginally more on a meritocracy (flawed, of course) than it had previously. Shen Yuan appears largely content with his progress in ‘reforms,’ falling instead to managing the Empire, as he has no rear palace to occupy his time. Every once in a while, he’ll get some sort of bee in his bonnet, a problem that must be resolved, but none yet as sweeping as a reformation of the entire bureaucracy. 

Luo Binghe wonders, sometimes, if the goal he worked for through his youth coming to such a tragic and violent conclusion regardless of the effort he put in changed something in Shen Yuan. He had spent all this time building guanxi and test scores to say: I am one of you, and they had not seen him as one of them. They had seen him as an enemy. Luo Binghe is sure it has, but Shen Yuan has also put those same skills to the restructuring of the bureaucracy, and now it is much better running and efficient than it had been. Shen Yuan has a lot of free time now. 

And that’s when Luo Binghe’s problems start. 

Merely, in passing, the mention of children. Of the necessity of heirs to the Empire, of course you’re immortal, Binghe, but perhaps…? 

“Ah, my Empress is so attuned to the needs of the Empire,” Luo Binghe says, dry. “How well I’ve chosen. Maybe one day he may also have time to consider the needs of his husband.”

Shen Yuan frowns at him. “My husband expressed great interest in filling me with his get before, has he suddenly—” Shen Yuan gets a flinty look in his eye, his lips thinning. His posture goes stiff, trying for the bearing he wears in court, a regal, untouchable air.  It’s moderately effective, but rather ruined by the loose hair pooling about his sleep-robe clad shoulders. “Ah, I understand. Forget I mentioned it.”

Luo Binghe frowns, sure he doesn’t understand at all. 

“Ah, my darling precious,” Luo Binghe says, the endearments falling from his tongue, and to his horror, he finds he means them. “I’ve only had you for a mere six years.” Shen Yuan cocks an eyebrow at him. Only six years? It says. Even if Luo Binghe had had Shen Yuan for the full twenty-six years of his life, it wouldn’t be enough. It never will be enough. “Can’t I enjoy you, all to myself, for a few more?” 

As if to pronounce how much he would like to enjoy him, Luo Binghe slides onto his beloved’s couch, settling himself next to where Shen Yuan’s legs are sprawled. He begins to slide his hands up the pale skin, under the fabric. “You see, I’m terribly selfish.”

For the moment, Shen Yuan seems assuaged. Once again, they are marching in step. Or so Luo Binghe thinks. 

Shen Yuan, however, is persistent. In the tenth year of their marriage, he slides onto Luo Binghe’s lap in a mimicry of what he had done at fifteen. The shape of it is the same, the yearning drive for something only Luo Binghe can provide, the heavy weight of not knowing exactly what he’s asking for falling on Luo Binghe’s shoulders. But in all other regards, it is different. For the last ten years, Shen Yuan has shared the bed of a man whose conquests are a thing of legend, the breadth and range of his exploits incredible. In his deeply misguided quest to keep Luo Binghe interested, Shen Yuan has turned himself into something of a seductress, a weapon he uses with knife-point precision. 

Luo Binghe had been amused and exasperated in turns. Did Shen Yuan not think that hundreds had tried the same tricks before him? Did he think Luo Binghe would not have the control to stand up to his demands? Did he think that Luo Binghe’s desire was predicated somehow in the sly drop-dip of a robe off a shoulder, and was not equally stirred when Shen Yuan was dressed in his royal regalia? When Shen Yuan wore the simple (well, not elaborate) clothes when he was moving about their private chambers?

“I always want my husband,” Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan when the man drips in what Luo Binghe supposes Shen Yuan thinks of as courtesan garb. Shen Yuan has only seen courtesans from afar, and read about them in Liu Mingyan’s horrible novels. 

Shen Yuan very clearly suppresses an eye roll. “Yes,” Shen Yuan says patiently, as if the man in front of him, with as many conquests as there are stars in the sky, is going to require an explanation of kink. “But isn’t it fun to try something new?”

Luo Binghe introduces Shen Yuan to the whole breadth and wonder of “trying something new,” some that Shen Yuan has not encountered even in the scandalous depths of Liu Mingyan’s novels. He greets each one with a sort of demurring simpering. 

“Well,” he’ll say, coy, “if my husband insists.” 

As if each suggestion Luo Binghe makes doesn’t have him coming his brains out. As if each suggestion isn’t tailored by lifetimes of experience and a deep knowledge of Shen Yuan himself. As if Shen Yuan’s eyes don’t dance with a mix of excitement and curiosity. 

“My husband is so good to me,” Luo Binghe coos with an equally simpering smile. They fool no one, not even themselves. It’s a game they play. 

But Shen Yuan’s voyages into seduction are not without result. Luo Binghe’s desire is constant, thrumming under his skin near the surface. It reminds him of when Xin Mo held him more in its thrall, when he was more of a slave to his baser desires, but this is markedly different in that the target is not diffuse, but narrow, and easily sated by a great number of things. 

Shen Yuan’s “seduction” techniques were initially greeted by a thrum of amusement to accompany the desire. Truly, A-Yuan, a candle-lit fuck? And to not use the candles, well, what a pity—

Truth be told, they still are amusing. Can a man who has in actuality taken many a score of war-brides be thrilled with the theater of one, with a man who is assured in his belief that the man he is entrusting himself to will never truly cause him harm?

Shockingly, yes, but not as much as Shen Yuan seems to get out of it, the illusion of danger overlaying the safety net. A-Yuan seems to truly delight in the edifice of danger, likes to corner Luo Binghe after particularly trying days at court when Luo Binghe’s temper has flared and snapped and be fucked right on his throne. 

Shen Yuan adores when Luo Binghe is rough (though, not as rough as he could be), and will loll on Luo Binghe’s lap afterwards like a particularly pleased cat. It’s very soothing for Luo Binghe’s nerves. 

No, the true danger of Shen Yuan’s efforts at seduction lies in how A-Yuan has him trained like some sort of dog. Before, the shy drop of a robe off the shoulder was but the precursor to whatever A-Yuan was going to attempt, a warning that Luo Binghe better tuck away whatever laughter was bubbling at his throat as his dick rose in tandem. Now all it takes is A-Yuan looking at him with a certain heavy-eyed look for the edges of his control to fray and snap, for his dick to stir. 

A-Yuan crawls into his lap, not clumsily, clad in Luo Binghe’s own robe and not a stitch else, loose hair pooling around his shoulders. His thighs bracket Luo Binghe’s, the robe splitting so that only the tie at Shen Yuan’s waist provides him any sort of modesty. 

“Husband,” A-Yuan says, when Luo Binghe’s hands settle at his waist. A-Yuan’s own hand settles on Luo Binghe’s shoulder, while the other twirls a flower that Luo Binghe knows on sight. “This lowly one asks of you a great favor.”

Luo Binghe’s heart thuds in his chest, even as his hands tighten on A-Yuan’s waist and his face remains impassive. On most things, they are completely in step, an implicit understanding present between them. He doesn’t understand why A-Yuan isn’t understanding him in this. A mere ten years? It’s nothing. It’s everything. But it’s a mere drop in Luo Binghe’s long, expansive life. Is he no longer satisfied with Luo Binghe? Luo Binghe’s love hasn’t cooled a single degree, he doesn’t think it ever will. But his wives, one by one, when the passion had died, had offered him a child. 

“This one strives to deliver to his dearest anything his heart may desire,” Luo Binghe responds. The flower spins in Shen Yuan’s long fingers. It’s not poison, but it might as well be. “However,” Luo Binghe continues, hand sliding down and up to cup the bare skin of A-Yuan’s ass, fingers moving to prod his entrance, “this one also asks for his beloved’s patience.”

Luo Binghe is unsurprised to find A-Yuan’s entrance already slick, but works his fingers in anyway. His own fingers are a good deal thicker than Shen Yuan’s dainty ones, and Shen Yuan shivers. 

“My patience?” Shen Yuan gasps. “Have I not been patient enough? We’ve been married ten years already!”

“And can I not have you all to myself for a few more yet?” Luo Binghe says, making sure a note pleading does not enter his voice. He twists his fingers savagely. “What is ten years to my three hundred? To the rest of our eternal lives?”

“You’ll still have me after our child is born,” Shen Yuan says, drumming his fingers on Luo Binghe’s shoulder. “And, Binghe, I am the third son! I am thirty years old!”

“I know that our marriage has been a good percentage of your life but—“

“Binghe!” Shen Yuan says, exasperated. “My parents are not cultivators! They’re getting old. And while I know that, that they won’t see all of my children, I would like for them to at least know the first!”

Luo Binghe’s fingers stop moving in Shen Yuan. A-Yuan stares at him defiantly, that stubborn set to his mouth that Luo Binghe doesn’t call a pout only out of courtesy. But this is important to him, Luo Binghe can tell. 

If Luo Binghe’s own mother were alive, it’d be important to him too, to show the woman that had loved and raised him her first grandchild, the product of his love. 

“Alright,” Luo Binghe says, closing his eyes. He leans forward to rest his head on A-Yuan’s chest. “Let me. Let me have another five years.”

A-Yuan’s fingers card through his hair, a soothing motion. For a horrible moment, Luo Binghe thinks he will say no. “Alright,” he agrees, quiet. 

A-Yuan is kind to him, lets him have him his full five years, when Luo Binghe is fully aware that A-Yuan could have bullied him into far fewer. 

But when the day comes, A-Yuan is prepared. 

“What’s all this?” Luo Binghe says, rubbing the sheets between his fingers. His are, naturally, the finest and softest money can buy. These are…weird. Silky, but not actually. There are flower petals on the bed. There are candles (again with the candles!) and a soft scent and Luo Binghe pops the vial of lube on the nightstand and, of course, it smells floral. Who needs it to smell floral?

“It’s an occasion,” Shen Yuan says. “It should be memorable.”

“You think I can’t make it memorable?” Luo Binghe says, cocking an eyebrow. “But you think jasmine lube can?”

“If you’re sure you can show the lube who’s boss, then you’re more than welcome,” Shen Yuan says with that lazy smirk that never fails to make Luo Binghe wild.

About halfway into the fourth round, Luo Binghe realizes that the whole ‘make it memorable’ was simply a ruse to incite him past his reservations and nerves. Ah, Luo Binghe thinks with fondness, how sweet. He snaps his hips harder to show that he appreciates it. 

But. He did promise his dear Shen Yuan it would be memorable. 

“Do you think it took?” Luo Binghe asks conversationally. 

Shen Yuan is sprawled out on the bed, limbs and hair all sort of akimbo, on the very edge of unconsciousness. Luo Binghe reaches out a hand to brush a shoulder and A-Yuan flinches in over-stimulated sensitivity. 

“Ughn.”

“Darling,” Luo Binghe says with faux-dismay, looking at Shen Yuan’s very abused entrance, “I’m leaking out, should I give you more?”

Shen Yuan cracks a bleary eye at him. “How the fuck can you have more?” 

Luo Binghe understands the confusion. Shen Yuan has come dry the past five times and needed assistance from his blood even before that. 

“I just want to be sure I’m giving my husband what he wants,” Luo Binghe coos. He leans to loom over A-Yuan, but doesn’t touch. “It’s so very important to me that you’re happy.”

It’s a jest-not-jest, but A-Yuan is already asleep. Luo Binghe scoops him up, carefully washing him before placing him on sheets that aren’t something straight out of a cheap brothel and absolutely covered in spend. 

He thinks he manages Shen Yuan’s pregnancy with grace and decency. He’s a doting husband, all through the morning sickness, and Mistress Shen’s interesting facial expressions and frosty politeness, and Shen Yuan’s odd cravings and incredibly varied interest in sex. 

But— Luo Binghe was entirely aware that his husband was pregnant, had not only gone to extensive effort to ensure he could be but also spent an entire day making sure that he was, and felt burgeoning qi tickle against his own and watched his husband’s stomach swell. 

But—as a tiny limb kicks out against his hand, the full weight of it comes crashing down. This child is ours, Luo Binghe thinks, as Shen Yuan looks at him with an infinitely tender sort of fondness. This expression can’t be faked, because Luo Binghe is aware that A-Yuan doesn’t know he makes it, assured to himself that he is impassively cool as ever. 

His heart quickens, his old fears bubbling to the surface. Is he even capable of loving this child? Shen Yuan was foretold to him, his perfect match, and it is only natural that Luo Binghe should love he who makes him whole. But a child is different. A child, whether a gift or a curse, is an intrusion. Will he come to resent them, because he loves Shen Yuan and cannot bear his attention straying, even to his own offspring?

Is he irreparably damaged, like his very first Shizun, unable to let go of his past, unable to move forward, cruel because that’s the only way he knows to be?

He begins to think horrible things. He begins to think, as a half-breed, a thing no one had let him forget but Shen Yuan, isn’t it possible that his children wouldn’t survive to breathe on their own? He’s clearly not as infertile as a mule, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t complications. That something can’t go wrong… that no one would suspect, if something were to happen. 

He finds himself once again laying in bed, A-Yuan’s head pillowed on his chest, using Luo Binghe as some sort of pillow. There’s some sort of propriety about the Empress having his own chambers. It’s simply not done for the Emperor to live in those same chambers, spending night after night curled around each other. There’s pomp and ceremony and the Emperor visiting his Empress only when he’s showing favor—

“Fine,” Shen Yuan snapped. “Then live up to it. Twelve hour notice before any and all sex. I want a sign. You can wear it around your neck, if you want, for convenience.”

So Luo Binghe gracefully acquiesced to sleeping in the same bed every night and it’s honestly… quite nice. He remembers, even though it was decades ago now, an exasperated Shen Qingqiu saying, “ are you acting like this because I wouldn’t agree to sleep in the same bed?” 

At the time, he thought it ludicrous. The very sentence struck him dumb. But now, he can see why his other self craved it. He’s beginning to understand a lot of things about his lesser mirror image, even as he tries to put him firmly out of his mind. Tries to put the Shen Qingqiu that belongs to his weaker image out of his mind. 

Perhaps that’s why it takes so long for him to realize that Shen Qingqiu is actually in his home, that the fleeting glimpses of him are not his imagination, that the way that one scholar turns his hand is not  just like Shen Qingqiu, but Shen Qingqiu himself.

He invites the scholar to a private tea room. It’s not one Shen Yuan frequents, though it had been decorated with him in mind. 

The scholar advances into the room, face tranquil, no trace of anxiety, even though by all rights a private meeting with the Emperor should be a cause for much anxiety. Luo Binghe remembers that, earlier this morning, he saw this very scholar scribing Shen Yuan’s… something. Possibly some sort of treatise, but Shen Yuan stopped the moment Luo Binghe walked into the room. Even though Shen Yuan was more than happy to take advantage of Luo Binghe’s grace due to his condition, he seemed to hate being witnessed needing any sort of assistance. 

“Ah, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, sprawling in his seat in a jab at propriety. “Don’t you know you are always welcome in my home? There’s no need for skulking around.” Luo Binghe cocks his head. “But I suppose feeling safe is another matter in its entirety. Does Shizun not feel safe in this disciple’s home?” His lip curls. “Does your husband know you’re here, visiting a past flame?”

The man in front of him heaves a gusty sigh. He reaches down to grasp at his neck-line, and his face comes off in one tug. 

Shen Qingqiu stands before him, and then seats himself at the low table, gracefully folding himself. There is a pot of tea on the table, and two cups, but Shen Qingqiu makes no move to serve it.

“And your husband?” Shen Qingqiu says dryly. “Would your Empress approve?”

“My Empress can be temperamental,” Luo Binghe says tactfully, “but surely would make an exception for an old friend.” 

“Is that what we are?” Shen Qingqiu says wryly. “It took you longer than I expected to recognize me,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Distracted these days, Binghe?” He sounds amused, a little jabbing tease. 

“Maybe I’ve forgotten about you,” Luo Binghe lies. “Who has the time for an old washed up hag when I have my young, fresh child bride?” A joke-not-joke. He looks up coyly through lowered lashes, putting his best come-hither smirk on. “But I’m sure I could make the time.”

Shen Qingqiu seems amused, and makes a motion to grab at a fan that isn’t there. Luo Binghe takes the initiative to pick up the tea pot and serve the tea, the least he could do for his old master, no?

“I suppose I should be offering you congratulations,” Shen Qingqiu says, holding his tea cup. He does not drink from it. “Welcoming your first child soon. Quite the milestone.”

“You should,” Luo Binghe says. He also holds his tea cup but does not drink. “But you are not.”

Shen Qingqiu hums. “How does Binghe feel about his impending fatherhood?”

Luo Binghe laughs, a deeply bitter sound. “Ah, is this the part where you grill me about how I will treat my own child? How I expect to raise them? If I plan to use them for nefarious purposes? Grind their bones into potions?”

“No,” Shen Qingqiu says simply. “This is the part where I ask the man who has been married three-hundred times without producing an heir, who has been repulsed by the very idea of offspring, who I know has struggled with the idea he would not love his child enough, that he might be as cruel as Shen Jiu, how he feels about becoming a father.”

Luo Binghe stares at him. He thinks about denying it. But there’s the small ugly part of him that wants the man in front of him to soothe his worries, to comb through his hair and say it’ll be alright, to give assurances to things he can’t voice to Shen Yuan. Well. Not his Shen Yuan. “How do you claim to know me, Shizun?”

Shen Qingqiu waves a hand. “It’s not important.”

“No, I really think it is,” Luo Binghe retorts, “very important to know how a man comes to know things that I’ve only confessed to one person and one person alone, who apparently shares the same soul as this person and whose first instinct was that I might have snatched this same person from a different dimension, as if he’s very comfortable with switching realities,” Luo Binghe makes a gesture with one hand. “It seems altogether like there might just simply be one person across dimensions.”

“Ah,” Shen Qingqiu says. “No, that’s not it at all.” He looks at the tea like he might take a drink, but doesn’t. “But, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I really did come to see how you were faring.”

“Aw, how sweet,” Luo Binghe coos. “After all the nice things you said to me last time I saw you? After you held a sword to my neck? Just like old times!”

“All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy ,” Shen Qingqiu snaps. “I had to be sure.” Then he blinks, looking down at the tea cup. Then he rolls his eyes. “Of course the tea was a decoy,” he says, “it’s in the incense.”

“It’s in the incense,” Luo Binghe agrees, finally taking a sip of his tea. It tastes like jasmine, is extremely high quality, and could absolutely be mistaken for Hundred Petals Thousand Truths tea, an extremely potent flower that not only reveals the truth, but makes the consumer want to tell it. 

He put a little bit of Wive’s Assurance in the incense. Not as potent, but not nothing either. Unfortunately, it means he also is somewhat compelled slightly closer to the truth than he would like, but his blood protects him from most of it and his centuries of slipping one meaning into another give him an edge. Grumpily, Shen Qingqiu sips his cup before holding it out and inspecting the tea. “I suppose it might have been a lot to hope for you to not,” Shen Qingqiu says.

Luo Binghe hums his assent. It would have been, for Luo Binghe to choose when he met this man and not expect him to try and have some advantage, however small. 

“Shizun does not seem surprised that my husband is favoring me with children,” Luo Binghe remarks dryly. 

Shen Qingqiu makes a very inelegant snort into his tea. “Why would it surprise me?” he says, “last time we had met, I had already had two of Binghe’s children. I can’t imagine any version of myself refusing you anything.”

“How many children do you have now?” Luo Binghe says conversationally.

“Eight,” Shen Qingqiu says. 

Luo Binghe takes a moment to imagine the man in front of him, rounded with his child. It’s a very pleasing thought, he can see how his other self would be motivated to do so eight times, even if it fractured the attention he received each time it was done. And, ah, how scandalous, to make such a good little wife out of one’s own Shizun. To do it eight times over. To do it in the face of the sect leader.

“A great brood,” Luo Binghe remarks. He casts not-quite-joking salacious eyes over Shen Qingqiu’s body. “And it doesn’t show at all.” 

“I didn’t tell you that to make leering jokes,” Shen Qingqiu says, waving a hand about. Luo Binghe suddenly discovers why he always carries a fan—he’d never pass as Shen Jiu waving his hands about like he is now. “I told you because it means you can be an excellent father, if you choose to be. Enough so to convince me to have seven more babies.”

“Your…” Luo Binghe catches himself automatically at Shen Qingqiu’s dark look, hates that he does, and continues on with his planned insult, “lesser version is not much like me.”

“Yes and no,” Shen Qingqiu says. “More similar than I think you would like.” His lips quirk is a self-deprecating smile. “More different than I expected.” 

“Thank you, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, “very helpful. ‘A man not unlike you but not very much like you has been adequate.’”

Shen Qingqiu rolls his eyes. “Mock me if you like. I think you’ll be a good father.” Shen Qingqiu gives him a sly look. “And isn’t that what you wanted to hear? From someone who truly knows of your exploits and your origins?”

It is. 

“And what makes you say that?” Luo Binghe says, making sure it’s snide and self-deprecating. He wants reassurance but isn’t allowed to ask for it. Shen Qingqiu sees right through him, giving him an amused look, just as Luo Binghe thought he would, but answers anyway. 

“You care deeply,” Shen Qingqiu says, “about those you have chosen to. When you love, you love recklessly and without abandon, occasionally to your own detriment. You show care overtly, very recognizably.” Shen Qingqiu shakes his head. “How can you doubt that you will love this child, when you already do ?”

Ah. He doesn’t understand him at all. Luo Binghe shakes his head. “I—“

Shen Qingqiu gives him a sharp look. “Have you, in the past one hundred years, cared one whit about disappointing someone you didn’t love? And don’t give me some line about ‘doing it for Shen Yuan.’ I know you. If you were doing it for Shen Yuan, you wouldn’t be tied up in knots, because you’d be able to give a perfectly exacting performance of loving the child, whether you did or not.”

Shen Qingqiu gentles his voice. “It’s alright to be fearful. But do not let it get the best of you. I know you—you’re decisive, and it kills you that you aren’t in this situation because you think it’s a skill you lack but want deeply. But Binghe, it’s not. You are capable. ” 

It’s exactly what he wanted to hear, wearing the face of the one he unknowingly most wanted to hear it from. And yet it is still not enough, a little voice crying what could he possibly know of you and he can’t see inside you. 

“ Ah, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says. “This is so terribly different from last time. Are you sure you don’t want to threaten my unborn child to be sure I love them? It might be more effective.”

Shen Qingqiu rolls his eyes, and for some reason, scoots around the table to sit next to Luo Binghe. It’s almost undignified, except for the air of grace Shen Qingqiu holds, like he wouldn’t be caught dead doing something ungraceful, and therefore, everything he does is so. Once there, Shen Qingqiu tugs on the shoulder of his robes and guides him down until Luo Binghe’s head rests on his lap. Long, nimble fingers work out his hair ornament until it tumbles loose across a folded lap. Clever hands finger-comb his hair, paying particular attention to his scalp and running across spots that make Luo Binghe hum. 

Shen Yuan, as a child he raised, cannot be a mother to him— the idea is ludicrous. A man (a boy, as much as Luo Binghe tries not to think it) so many years younger than him cannot claim to be more experienced, cannot offer him safety. The same acts mean different things. If Shen Qingqiu were to shield him from a sword strike, to put his body between Luo Binghe and harm, it would be the duty and care of a teacher to his disciple. It would be unfortunate, a sacrifice, but it would not be repulsive.

But Shen Yuan in that same place— no matter how doting a husband Luo Binghe would be, it would have a sour edge. A lamb raised for slaughter. A child raised and brainwashed to love him. They would not say so to his face, of course, but Luo Binghe is well-aware that it is what they would think. 

It’s a craven yearning in him— no matter how much he may try, Shen Yuan cannot offer a bandage to that particular wound. 

“Ah, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu chides, “it’s okay to accept comfort. You don’t need to posture.”

The soothing rhythm makes Luo Binghe want to pounce, the impulse so strong he can barely contain it. Who can stop him? Shen Qingqiu chose to come alone, into his strong hold, unarmed. The Luo Binghe he has on a leash can’t possibly be close enough to reach him in time. Years ago, Shen Qingqiu allowed him to kiss him, running his hands all over his body. He wants to do it again. But more than that, he wants the man running his hands through his hair to want him. He wants the man to slyly drop a hand down to his collar, to run his hand down the skin of his chest, to fiddle with the fastenings on his clothes. He wants the full knowledge that this man could have a different Luo Binghe and still wants him. Luo Binghe would render anyone that dared touch Shen Yuan into a stick—slowly, so slowly—then toss them into the sprawling depths of the Endless Abyss. He’d spit fire, a rage unseen in all his years, he’d flay their flesh from their skin, he’d pluck out their eyes and send gu worms crawling through their flesh. 

He once asked Shen Yuan who he’d cuckold him with, when little A-Yuan tried to goad him into ending his childhood early. From that end, the thought of his little wife trotting over to some wolf-handed village idiot was to irritate him for weeks, even though he was certain A-Yuan would never carry through. 

But from the other end, it’s exciting, vows ruptured and promises broken all for him . Because Shen Qingqiu would want him so badly he wouldn’t be able to help it. That a small drop of him was enough to entice. 

There’s a sudden light smack to the side of his head. It doesn’t hurt, not really, and it calls to mind an affectionate strike of a fan many decades ago and Shen Yuan’s useless shoving when he’s faking upset. 

“Stop that,” Shen Qingqiu chides. 

“Stop what, Shizun?” Luo Binghe asks innocently. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

“I know you,” Shen Qingqiu grosses. “You had that look in your eye. Planning something perverted.”

“ Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, mock offended. “I would never! With my teacher? How scandalous! I’m a married man! Are you attempting to suggest that I have no honor?”

“Oh,” Shen Qingqiu says, pouting. “I thought you might be interested in a threesome, if you could convince Shen Yuan to—“

Luo Binghe’s brain goes entirely offline. Shen Qingqiu? AND Shen Yuan? Both? Both! TWO! He’s had threesomes, sure, but Shen Qingqiu underneath him, Shen Yuan pressed to his back, stroking down his chest is a new bright sort of appeal. Or maybe Shen Yuan perched on his chest, cock in Luo Binghe’s mouth as Shen Qingqiu rides Luo Binghe’s dick—

He becomes aware of Shen Qingqiu laughing, a bright pealing sound full of mirth. It’s nothing like the derisive, mean sound his dead Shizun would make. It’s infectious, and makes his heart flutter.

It doesn’t nearly make up for the fact that it’s at his expense. 

“Shizun, it is very cruel and dangerous to tease me if you have no intention of following through,” Luo Binghe says cooly, sitting up. “You never know what I might take as an invitation.” He punctuates this with a predatory grin and hooded eyes, leaning far too close into Shen Qingqiu’s space. He teases the blood resting in Shen Qingqiu to prickle under his skin, to bring a flush to his cheeks, to stir his stomach. He stops at stirring Shen Qingqiu’s actual loins—it’s far more flattering if he does that himself. 

Shen Qingqiu huffs and rolls his eyes, apparently not feeling very threatened at all. He doesn’t even lean back, breathing the same air as Luo Binghe with ease. He doesn’t flinch when Luo Binghe places a hand, large and suggestive, on his thigh. Doesn’t move at all. 

“Do you think my devotion to A-Yuan will stop me?” Luo Binghe wonders aloud. 

Shen Qingqiu tilts his head. “No.”

“Then is it because Shizun also wants me,” Luo Binghe says, his hand wandering. “But does not want the guilt of having to explain himself to his lesser version?”

Shen Qingqiu opens his mouth to say something derisive—A-Yuan’s bitchy expression superimposed on Shen Jiu’s bitchy face— but nothing comes out. Shen Qingqiu swallows, tries again, but nothing comes out. His face goes stormy, and he turns it to the side. 

A slow smile blooms across Luo Binghe’s face. He doesn’t need a mirror to know it’s smug and self-satisfied, predatory. 

Unable to keep Luo Binghe at bay with derision, Shen Qingqiu begins to bat at his hands. The force behind them is considerable, much more than he was able to put behind them all those years ago. Then again, he had not been fucking a son of the heavens for forty years last time he hit Luo Binghe, but Luo Binghe remains unfazed. 

“ Shizun,” Luo Binghe purrs. He uses his blood in Shen Qingqiu’s body, halting the way his cultivation purges the truth incense from his body, magnifying that already there. Did Shen Qingqiu think he’d leave any plan to chance? It was in the tea and the incense. Out of the two of them, Luo Binghe is the one with all his cards on the table. It is Shen Qingqiu who fears his secrets. “Do you want this disciple?”

“I would never—“ Shen Qingqiu chokes on his words again, and Luo Binghe wonders what word it was. Betray? Hurt? He saw in Shen Qingqiu’s memories that even this kinder version would consign him to hell. Fuck him? He would, and gladly. 

“I don’t want to hurt Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu manages at last. 

“Hurt me?” Luo Binghe says, teeth bared in a smile. “Or hurt him?”

“Both!” Shen Qingqiu cries, and he grits his teeth like it was ripped out of him. It was. “How can I be expected to choose between my husband and my first love?”

“Shizun?” Luo Binghe says. Shen Qingqiu makes to run, and he’s fast but Luo Binghe has heard something he’s been longing to hear and he’s not going to let this man go. With a speed born of desperation, Luo Binghe moves. 

He pins Shen Qingqiu to the floor, a wrist in each hand. Shen Qingqiu, underneath him, looks amazingly bullied, eyes bright with irritation, or maybe anger, long black locks spilled across the floor like dark ink. He fights, but Luo Binghe would be damned if he lets go now. His pathetic other self has long since given up seeking answers from this man, learning that he would rather die than give them. But Luo Binghe is not the same. There are many ways to bring a man back from the dead, and Luo Binghe will use them all if need be. 

“Shizun, what does that mean?” Luo Binghe demands. “How was I your first love?”

Shen Qingqiu struggles, trying to trap the answer behind his teeth. Luo Binghe has thought over putting any sort of truth anything anywhere near his Shizun. He has questions, sure, but even his renewed efforts to cross to that realm were unsuccessful. Shizun must come to him. And his chances of coming back are far more slim if Luo Binghe does something he finds objectionable. 

There is, of course, the idea of trapping Shizun once he is here. But A-Yuan would be so cross and it would put A-Yuan directly into the warpath of… well, himself. A man who Luo Binghe was well-aware could be ruthless. On balance, the idea isn’t wholly worth it. 

But watching Shen Qingqiu squirm beneath him, an answer gritted behind his teeth, he knows he made the right choice. “Your life…” he says, teeth clenched. He breathes in and tries. “I…died for a chance to give you a better life,” he says, eyes going red with the strain of trying to hold it back. “Your…you were just…I…didn’t know it wasn’t you. I didn’t know it was a different Luo Binghe! How could I have known!”

Shen Qingqiu’s jaw starts to work, and Luo Binghe snaps a hand down to his jaw, prying it apart to release the bloody tongue. Shen Qingqiu’s free arm gets as high as his shoulder before Luo Binghe locks his muscles. He heals Shen Qingqiu’s tongue, knitting back the muscle. 

“You know,” he says, “ you only get one tongue. I would be more careful with it. It’s not going to grow back.”

Shen Qingqiu glares up at him. 

“Isn’t it even a little cathartic?” Luo Binghe asks, his wide grin wild on his face but his voice cat-cream smooth, “to finally tell me what you’ve done for me? To have your sacrifice be acknowledged?” He dips down low. “Because I’m honored, Shizun, truly.”

Shen Qingqiu shivers. “What was your name?” Luo Binghe wonders. 

“I am Shen Qingqiu,” his Shizun says stubbornly. 

“Oh, come now,” Luo Binghe says. “Even Shen Jiu wasn’t always Shen Qingqiu, it was bestowed. Who were you before that?”

“It doesn’t matter, ” Shen Qingqiu spits. “It’s who I am now.” 

“Ah, very pragmatic,” Luo Binghe says. Shen Qingqiu means it truthfully. It is the exact sort of pragmatism he’s come to expect from Shen Yuan— one that hides emotions he’s likely not aware of. “But I will hazard a guess. I have outlived all of my contemporaries—“ he ignores Shen Qingqiu’s pointed expression “—and have had the opportunity to see them reincarnate. The curious thing is, their names seem quite liable to stick. So, Shen Yuan, was it truly that you wished to congratulate me on the birth of my first child that brought you here today? Because you seem quite confident that I love the child.”

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if it was because Shen Qingqiu was jealous like Luo Binghe was jealous? A lesser version of yourself, made docile and fangless by the one you love. The irony of Shen Qingqiu’s confession is not lost on Luo Binghe. The man who loved him, who wanted to change his fate, goes into his past to do so, inadvertently causing Luo Binghe to see him and seek out happiness. He succeeded by failing. 

How funny they are, seeing the loves of their lives and raising them up to people who can love them best, morphed to the shape of themselves both intentionally and not. 

But what Shen Qingqiu blurts next takes him by surprise. 

“Do you think that all souls exist across all universes?” Shen Qingqiu near shouts, like it was trapped in his chest. He looks livid. 

Ah. “Has another baby A-Yuan been born?” Luo Binghe asks. He ignores the implications of the question. As far as he can tell, Shen Qingqiu’s Luo Binghe is much younger than himself. It is quite possible that Luo Binghe missed his soulmate one cycle, several cycles, not even knowing to look for him, all while a Shen Yuan lived through the terrible years of his conquest and the chaos he wrecked unthinkingly on the land. 

Shen Qingqiu looks stricken, and that’s answer enough. Luo Binghe climbs off of Shen Qingqiu, settling himself once again neatly on his feet. But Shen Qingqiu doesn’t bolt for the door. He sits up slowly, but doesn’t fold himself into something proper, instead sprawling. He brings a hand to his face, hiding in it. 

“Ah, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says. “What a conundrum you have in front of you.”

It’s only a conundrum for someone like Shen Yuan. It’s only a conundrum for this Shen Yuan, as he’s pretty sure his A-Yuan would murder anyone who he thought might have a fraction of Luo Binghe’s attention. Would kill Shen Qingqiu even, if he had a chance. 

But he also grew in the shadow of Luo Binghe, who would have killed anyone who thought they could look at A-Yuan with any sort of covetousness. He has been indelibly shaped and sculpted by Luo Binghe and is littered with his fingerprints. 

This Shen Yuan, he thinks, has the same possessive streak, but it has not been nurtured. He was convinced the man he loved was going to marry three-hundred others to pursue happiness, how could he? How could he know that Luo Binghe would delight in a husband with a possessive streak when he had mocked all of his three-hundred wives that had tried the same? A husband to three hundred is husband to no one. There is a certain power in being the one that cares the least, and Luo Binghe lorded in that power three hundred times over. How could he know Luo Binghe would consume his Shizun if he could, that he’d love nothing more than to curl up in the space in-between Shen Yuan’s bones, be the ribcage to his thumping heart, if only Shen Yuan would let him. 

What is Shen Qingqiu supposed to do when Luo Binghe’s destined soulmate arrives in his world? Hope that they never chance upon one another? Hope that Luo Binghe will not be enamored with him as he is with Shen Qingqiu? Chances are that Shen Yuan will live and die in obscurity, but if Shen Qingqiu has already recognized him…

Luo Binghe is not stupid. He’s aware his universe has a Shen Yuan, born here, raised here. Shen Qingqiu, by his own admission, is a transplant to somewhere else from somewhere else. Evidence seems to point that each universe is bequeathed exactly one Shen Yuan soul— he is likely not from Luo Binghe’s own world if another Shen Yuan appeared. It makes it all the more mysterious that he claims to have known Luo Binghe—loved him even, but Luo Binghe thinks that he might have that answer in time. He thinks that if he plays his cards right, in this moment, this is not the last he will see of his Shizun. 

His Shizun has come to him for absolution, for a secret he cannot hope to share. 

It’s delightful. 

Maybe, the lesser Luo Binghe could accept his Shizun taking over his bastard of a Shizun’s body to give him a better life. Perhaps he already suspects. But the reason? Could he accept that the man he loved had the intent of saving someone who turned out to be a whole different man? Without meeting the original version of himself, Shen Qingqiu might have hand-waved it, but his weaker version has seen him. Has known they’ve met. Any sort of further revelation will result in lesser Luo Binghe connecting the dots—he’s already sure his own appearance in the world answered many questions. 

And then what would happen? Maybe he would suspect that his actual soulmate lives in the world. Perhaps he already does know his own soulmate lives in his world, just finds greater contentment with the man he’s already chosen. Perhaps he knows of the marital discord it would sow. Perhaps, when he was in Luo Binghe’s world, he looked with horror on Luo Binghe’s harem and swore to be nothing like his warped reflection. 

Undoubtedly, if his lesser reflection knows of Luo Binghe’s Shen Yuan, then he would know why Luo Binghe has chosen him. Perhaps that throws a wrench in the lesser Luo Binghe’s thoughts— if there’s a Shen Yuan there, where did his own come from? Does he presume his Shizun to be a seer of sorts?

Shen Qingqiu’s conundrum stems from his possessiveness and his secretiveness. He can’t begin to fathom how his Luo Binghe’s mind works because he doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to give confirmation. He can’t bear the thought of sharing Luo Binghe— doesn’t want to even give Luo Binghe the option to stray, the thought that there could be someone else in the world just as suited having the added benefit of never having betrayed him. 

Luo Binghe understands. He might even feel a flash of burgeoning empathy— but he still smarts from the dangled offer of sex as a joke, like he’s some sort of horny hangdog that can be jerked around. 

“Did you weep when you possessed the body of Shen Qingqiu?” Luo Binghe asks. “Did you mourn him? Did you inquire after his soul and light incense?”

Shen Qingqiu gives him a flat look. “Should I have? I had the feeling your relationship was rather…strained.”

“If you can be so selfish as to kill a man, and not even think of where you’ve condemned his soul, then you can be so selfish as to not tell Luo Binghe of his actual soulmate’s arrival in the world,” Luo Binghe says. “You might even be so cold-hearted as to kill them.”

Shen Qingqiu gives him an icy look. 

“I don’t even see the issue,” Luo Binghe leers. “If he doesn’t know you’re a Shen Yuan— then he has no reason to suspect. Even if he does, what are the odds of you being the same soul? Would that be something he would consider?” 

Shen Qingqiu is silent, and Luo Binghe is sure it means that Shen Qingqiu thinks his husband has adequate reason to suspect. He decides to misunderstand. 

“Have his eyes been wandering? You should stick with me, Shizun. You’ll always know where you stand.” Shen Qingqiu looks queasy, the look of a man that’s waiting for his husband to go collect his three hundred other spouses and has just learned from a carbon-copy whose soul he believed had turned monogamous that temptation is never far. “I could make it good for you,” Luo Binghe says, “much better than whatever sub-par cock you’re taking now.”

“Interesting that you think you could make the same cock I’ve been taking for fifty years now more interesting than the man who’s made it his personal mission to see me come my brains out everyday,” Shen Qingqiu says, as if he thinks it’s some sort of joke to lighten the mood and not an extremely serious offer. 

“That sounds like a challenge, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says with the lilting tone of someone who is returning a joke, but he means it seriously. It does sound like a challenge— one he is more than equal to the task of meeting. He knows of sex over the course of marriages becoming boring, routine, even if the initial spark was due to a shared love of kink. 

The little palace mistress was one such affair, willing to go even farther than what made Sha Hualing pale and discomfited, but that too staled. He was unsurprised to discover that she was having an affair— cuckolded by a minister in his own court. He was a little surprised at the audacity of it all— did they think he would not know? Did they think he would not punish? 

He bided his time, letting months pass between his discovery, to lull them back into a sense of safety. The revenge brewing at the back of his mind was brutal. Luo Binghe was the one allowed to seek sex and satisfaction elsewhere, while none of his wives were. Those were the rules of their deal, and if his wives didn’t like it, they simply should not have married him in the first place. Once, he had stood in front of his amassed harem, not yet at the full number it would swell to, and announced that if they did not like the terms of the arrangement, they were free to leave. 

It was the only time he announced such a thing, because he did not want them to leave. He married them for a reason, and they were his now, whether they liked it or not. He only said such a thing because he was sure they would not and because the illusion of choice was a powerful thing. Once they committed to this life— made a final choice— they would not choose again. 

He was right. None of them had left that day. All stayed, but after the peak of his harem numbers, they began to dwindle. 

In the end, he didn’t punish the little palace mistress simply because she didn’t live long enough for him to do so. She perished in a brawl that started, by all accounts, with her cock-sure superior attitude needling a group of demons while searching for a flower in the tall, nearly vertical mountains. 

Luo Binghe laughed at the news. Ah, a safe way out. To die before being punished by her husband— getting an aphrodisiac no less! He enacted his planned revenge on the minister, but it didn’t have the same taste as correcting a betrayal. Sure, he had touched what was not his, but she was the one that betrayed her vows. And now she was beyond him. 

Ning Yingying asked to leave, once. In a wavering, tired, tremulous voice, she said: “A-Luo, I just don’t know you anymore.” 

“I’m the same as I always have been,” Luo Binghe assured her, and this was true and not true, and they both knew it. He was no longer the cringing, beaten dog of Qing Jing Peak, but what he had become now had always lived inside him, had peered over the edges of his eyelids. He had grown into himself and grown out of himself, all at the same time. 

Ning Yingying smiled sadly, and Luo Binghe wasn’t able to read it. He didn’t know if she agreed, or was letting disagreement pass in silence. 

“I will supply you with an estate, of course, and enough to get by,” Luo Binghe said, breaking the silence. It was decided, and there was nowhere to go but forward. There was a worrying gnaw of resentment in his heart, one that was becoming larger and uglier with each passing moment. He didn’t love Ning Yingying, never had, but believed once that he could have. He had believed that she would be able to fix whatever was wrong with him, that craving ache that never left. She hadn’t. Whatever passion they had had simmered down to a friendly affability. 

He knew then and knows now that she couldn’t be a solution. But resentment simmered all the same, angry and raw and red, that she was no longer trying. It didn’t matter that they had been married for over a hundred years. It didn’t matter that she was no longer in his thoughts, hadn’t set eyes on her for over a year before this meeting. 

She gave up on him, and though she was his, he didn’t think he could stand seeing her in the hallways of his home. She had to go away. 

It was different because she had known him for many, many years and was giving up on him. It was different because she had known him for many, many years and she deserved better than what he could offer. He pictured her, chasing a small toddler around a garden, a clean and bright house in the background. She was smiling and laughing, her hair up in the twin buns she had favored as a girl. 

But, he realized, the Ning Yingying chasing a toddler in his mind bore scant resemblance to the woman in front of him. The Ning Yingying in his mind was a ghost of a girl that used to be, and he realized that he didn’t know her either, anymore. When was the last time they had talked, really talked, instead of a meaninglessly conversedabout this or that trifle and quickly turned to sex, because that was the only thing they could connect on?

“That’s very sweet of you, A-Luo,” Ning Yingying said, and gave him a smile. It was small, and didn’t show teeth, nothing like the smiles she had given him when they had been children.

Looking back, he wonders if he gave the right answer, that maybe being gently let go was not the answer she was looking for, that she was looking to be held tightly to his bosom, some indication that he cared besides an impersonal estate on the edge of a pleasant forest. 

He thinks of it when Shen Yuan is reading a book, laughing his way through. It’s one of the lurid books Luo Binghe has brought him. Luo Binghe hasn’t read it himself, only checked with someone he trusted to ensure it was what he was looking for. Sometimes, he reads one of Liu Mingyan’s books to amuse himself, but he can’t justify such a thing when he is busy as he is.

Shen Yuan is smirking at the book, particularly at the passage at the end. “The author says that it’s based on a true story,” Shen Yuan says mockingly. “Imagine that, rumors recast as truth!”

“That is the way of things,” Luo Binghe says, amused and indulgent. Shen Yuan is young still and very sheltered. His imaginings about the worst of people are just that— imaginings. He can’t conceive of how cruel and stupid and petty people actually are and can be— he believes it all to be the exaggerations of his novels. He believes, still, that most people run on logic and not emotions. And even when Shen Yuan is given to fits of emotional irrationality, it is explained to himself in the most logical of terms. 

Shen Yuan gives him a beleaguered look. “Do you really think women kill themselves because their husbands abandon them?”

Luo Binghe cocks an eyebrow. “Do you not?”

Shen Yuan scoffs. “No. Especially not when they get to go live in a large, luxurious house funded with his money still. In Beidou no less! Why not just go get a new man? Live a full life, show him up that way.”

“Is that what you would do?” Luo Binghe asks. 

“Of course not,” Shen Yuan says, with confidence. “You’ll never abandon me.” 

Shen Yuan is right, and Luo Binghe carries the conversation on, but something about it nags at him. He follows his nagging thoughts all the way to a town now called Beidou, where a stately house sits in disrepair. It is filled with gardens so rotted it is impossible to tell what the plants might have been. The structure looks one stiff breeze away from collapsing, exuding an empty desolate air of sadness that Luo Binghe has come to associate with hauntings. It has clearly been abandoned for a very long time, but Luo Binghe remembers what it looked like when he had it constructed to the specifications Ning Yingying had once shared with him when she was but a girl, waving her hands as if to encompass the gardens she one day wished to build. 

He changes his face and clothes and heads into town. He pretends to be a man looking to buy the property to make his wife happy. 

“She simply adores the old style,” he assures the old woman with a sardonic grin. But she’s shaking her head. 

“It’s a cursed place,” she tells him. “No good for a wife, no good for raising children.”

“Why?” Luo Binghe says, curious. “Did something happen?”

It has been…perhaps a hundred years since he last saw Ning Yingying. He can’t place an exact time, but he should have made a greater effort to find it out before he left— records of the expenditure are probably somewhere, and he has a whole army of scholars to find it for him. When he reached one-hundred and fifty, he found that while his memory remained functional, and he rarely jumbled sequences of events, the exact timing of events had begun to cloud. Places started to become blurry, faces started to fade. He realized, with a jolt, that the already fuzzy memory he had of his mother was even more so. In his mind, she was little more than a specter— a vague shape of a woman. He couldn’t even recall what color her eyes had been, or the shape of her face. 

But, he thinks that even this old woman would have been a small child when Ning Yingying left his house, perhaps not even born yet. She shakes her head. 

“When I was a girl,” she starts, and Luo Binghe feels a flash of annoyance that he doesn’t let show  and masks under his more pervasive curiosity, “there lived a beautiful woman there. A cultivator, I think. Back then, she seemed to know all sorts of tricks. Was incredibly learned, she used to do lessons for us children!” The woman smiles fondly, and Luo Binghe nods. It sounds like Ning Yingying. “I was a child then, but even then I knew something couldn’t be right. A beautiful woman, single yet terribly rich?” She shakes her head. “Everyone was curious, and finally, someone found the answer.” She leans in, as if trying to impart a terrible secret to Luo Binghe. “She used to be a wife of the Emperor,” she whispers. 

Luo Binghe keeps his face blank, and when she doesn’t get the reaction she wants, she scoffs. “Pah! It wasn’t like it is now,” she says, “with the Emperor dismissing women left and right. You’re too young to remember, but back then, once a woman went into the harem, she never came back out.” 

This, strictly speaking, was not entirely true. There were some, war prizes and those that Luo Binghe had simply wanted, who were not allowed to leave. Some could and chose not to, but he had strict safeguards in place. It seemed, for a while, that every week one or two of his wives would be kidnapped in some new and nefarious way, and he’d have to play carriage boy and go pick them up. Enough was enough! He instituted safety measures, and his wives, finding the freedoms they were allotted not much of a freedom at all at that level, simply not worth the effort of going out. 

But he concedes the point and nods, “I did hear that.”

The old woman nods in satisfaction. “Then we all wondered: what had happened that the Emperor would let go of this wife when he famously did not let go of any at all?” 

And now Luo Binghe can see the shape of the story, laid out in front of his eyes like an unfurling carpet. Ning Yingying, looking for a fresh start. Maybe she considered her marriage to Luo Binghe a mistake— the Ning Yingying in the other world held no sort of affection for him— maybe she did not. But either way she was looking to distance herself, to find her new place in the world. 

But she could not. 

“They found her,” the old woman says, solemn, but with a great perverse relish, “dangling from a white silk scarf. Like in the books.”

In that moment, Luo Binghe hates like he hasn’t hated in a long time.

“Does she have a grave?” Luo Binghe asks. “I’d like to pay my respects.” 

The old woman clucks her tongue and shakes her head. “Still set on that house after all that?” But in the end, she tells him anyway. An auspicious spot was found near a small pond. The villagers, afraid of risking the wrath of the Emperor for not showing proper respect to a wife, even a disgraced one, meticulously maintained the marker. 

Luo Binghe looks at it, hands clasped behind his back. The ‘Ning’ character is correct, but the reduplicated ‘Ying’s are not, an extra kou added to change the meaning to the sound of sobbing. He wonders if it was intentional. He wonders if Ning Yingying’s body is truly buried here. He wonders if there’s a body at all. 

Suicide, he thinks, is not her style. But he’s not sure. Ning Yingying did occasionally surprise him. He’s done worse than desecrate graves, and it would be nothing to verify that the bones are indeed hers. 

But. 

It doesn’t matter, in the end. Shen Yuan is his future, and while the past informs the present, it does not have to make his future. If it’s Ning Yingying’s body in the dirt, killed by his apathy, or if she used this death to springboard into a new life free of him, it doesn’t matter. She’s equally dead to him either way. 

A part of him wants to know, a part of him doesn’t want to know. There would have been a time when he wouldn’t have hesitated to dig into the earth in front of him, bringing pure white bones back into the light of day. It wouldn’t have mattered if he did anything with the information or not. Knowledge was power, and anything he wanted to know, he would. 

But he thinks of Shen Yuan. He’s a child, and will be so for many, many years, but Luo Binghe already yearns for and dreads him coming into himself as an adult. For knowing the world and Luo Binghe himself through the eyes of an adult. For Shen Yuan, he has buried his past, and to unearth it now would be counterintuitive. 

He leaves the grave untouched but that night, takes refuge in Shen Yuan’s dreams. Shen Yuan, like usual, intuits that he is unsettled, and settles into soothing chatter about everything and nothing, about his idyllic childhood and adolescence. He’s not full-grown yet, and though a part of Luo Binghe hungers for when he is, he just as much fears it. 

For now, this bright, shining child loves him—loves him in that uncomplicated way of children, though it is beginning to morph into something else now. When he is an adult, would he love him still? Is he destined to end like Luo Binghe’s other childhood love? Would the love twist and warp into resentment? Would the walls that sheltered him during childhood become the cage he hates? 

Luo Binghe looks at Shen Qingqiu, seated on his floor, and comes to a realization. He and Shen Qingqiu have more in common than either of their mirrors. Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu are more similar than Shen Qingqiu is to Shen Yuan, or Luo Binghe to his lesser reflection. 

“We could be great together,” Luo Binghe wheedles, and he means it. He raised Shen Yuan, molding the soft curves of him around Luo Binghe’s sharp edges, filed carefully down so they would sting less. 

But he and Shen Qingqiu would be different. They’d click their sharp edges together like puzzle pieces, neither having to soften for the other. 

“You already have a Shen Yuan,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Don’t be greedy.” 

“You and Shen Yuan…are not very similar,” Luo Binghe tells him. Shen Qingqiu looks surprised, eyebrows arching, but then he laughs. 

“Of course we’re different,” Shen Qingqiu says. “How could we possibly be the same?”

He shakes his head. Then freezes. “Ah, but you and my Luo Binghe are not the same either, are you?” He says this in a quiet whisper of a voice, like he’s talking to himself. Like he’s come to some sort of revelation. 

“Don’t tell me,” Luo Binghe says drily, “that you had such an emotional conundrum that you crossed universes to seek my advice, only to come to the conclusion that you should, what, tell him everything?”

Shen Qingqiu’s face does that weird thing where it goes icy and haughty, in a move he recognizes from Shen Yuan. He’s embarrassed, and doesn’t want a soul to know it. 

“I don’t think you should tell him everything,” Luo Binghe says with complete honesty. “Shizun, how many years have you been living this lie? It’s too late.” How many years have they been married now? Now the secrets have a life of their own. Now they’ve been working off a false narrative for too long. Now the deception has seeped in Shen Qingqiu's very bones. How long can you live a role and remain separate from the expectations of it?

“Better late than never,” Shen Qingqiu retorts, and Luo Binghe shakes his head. He can see that Shen Qingqiu has his mind set and cannot be swayed. A part of him cheers him on— soon he will be running back into Luo Binghe’s arms, burned and singed. How else could this end? The love of your life’s big secret that he had come to you to save another man, revealed only because he doesn’t want you to abandon him for your true soulmate. 

Maybe that other Luo Binghe would forgive him. He has forgiven the unforgivable already— Shen Qingqiu pushing him into the Endless Abyss. And truth be told, the Luo Binghe of right here would like an answer to why he did that as well. He claims to love him and to know his past and future but shoved him down anyway. 

He suspects an answer, knowing what he knows. His journey in the Endless Abyss had been the beginning to his meteoric rise to power. It was that event that demarcated the two chapters of his life. (Three now, with the advent of Shen Yuan.) 

Shen Qingqiu jumps to his feet. “I should let you return to your husband,” he says. “He would not be impressed to find us together. And I have my own to return to. ”

“Who says I’m going to let you go?” Luo Binghe says, cocking an eyebrow. 

“It wouldn’t be very polite of you,” Shen Qingqiu admonishes. “I travel all the way here to assure my favorite disciple, and what do I get in return? Getting locked up in the basement?”

“But it would be a very nice basement,” Luo Binghe wheedles, even as he thinks about what Shen Qingqiu said. Interestingly, he does feel reassured. He does feel like he could love his child. 

He hates that he does. He’s glad that he does. 

Shen Qingqiu leans down, giving him one solid kiss on his forehead, where his demon mark is, and then, with a crackle of energy, he’s gone. 

No wonder that bastard felt safe, he could leave at any time! Luo Binghe considers that, turning it over. He could have left at any time, and yet he stayed. 

Shen Qingqiu’s kiss on his head feeling more like a brand than his demon mark, he goes in search of his husband. 

He finds Shen Yuan lounging on a couch with a small scroll in his hands, frowning at it in concentration. Shen Yuan beckons Luo Binghe over when he sees him. 

“One of your very loyal subjects gave me this,” Shen Yuan says. Luo Binghe glances over it. The handwriting is not familiar, or at least not overly so. The Shizun who raised Luo Binghe had exactly perfect handwriting, so perfect that each character could have been a woodblock. This softer Shizun’s handwriting is still neat, still elegant, but has a sort of sloppiness that makes it flow, makes it all the more graceful. “They truly must be concerned for the good of the Empire.”

It’s a list. It’s a list of complications of a male carrying a pregnancy and how to circumvent them. It’s a list of complications for part-demon, part-human babies and how they might grow with their dual heritage on full display, and tips for common problems. 

Shen Yuan taps one half-way down the list. “I hadn’t even considered that demon genes might make our children grow teeth before they’re ready to wean,” he says. “Sounds incredibly painful. Should probably warn the wet nurse.” 

Luo Binghe blinks. He…hadn’t expected a wet nurse, even though he knows many women of the human aristocracy employ one. It’s not…he would…

They’ve fallen out of step again. It still lurches his stomach. 

“I would prefer if you nursed the child,” he says. 

Shen Yuan glances at him, an incredulous expression on his face. But when he catches sight of Luo Binghe’s, it smoothes. 

“Ah,” he says. “I can see it’s important to you. I will…consider it.”

At the bottom of the scroll is a diagram, for some sort of bottle with a fake nipple on the top. Underneath it is a description of how to create it, and Luo Binghe is certain that the idea of a wet nurse never even occurred to Shen Qingqiu. 

Weeks later, Luo Binghe is consulting Shen Qingqiu’s scroll, frantic as Shen Yuan begins the laborious process of pushing a new life out of his body. It takes hours. Nearly a full day. Shen Qingqiu’s scroll assures him that this is normal, but that doesn’t calm the panicking part of Luo Binghe that has become keenly aware that labor is not a process without risks. That Shen Yuan could die making a new life. In the middle of making a list of all the ways to reanimate a corpse, starting with the coffin in the Holy Mausoleum, working through archaic rituals and primordial beings, and weighing them against time and result, it is over. His daughter is here. 

Shen Yuan lays, absolutely exhausted, on the bed. Luo Binghe uses one hand to funnel him qi as the other arm cradles his newborn baby daughter. 

She looks squished, and wrinkled, but her eyes are already open and bright in a way Luo Binghe knows, even without experience, that human babies are not. Shen Qingqiu’s scroll explained this, too. And when her baby demonic qi flares, seeking an answer, he calms it with his own, just as the scroll said to do. 

Like when he held an infant Shen Yuan, all those years ago, it takes many minutes before he’s able to set her down, even when he tells himself he ought. The fragile, warm weight of her is soothing, and it feels like she fits perfectly into the crook of his arm. 

He waits for the resentment to hit, watching Shen Yuan suckle her at his bosom. He waits for it to hit when Shen Yuan proudly shows her to his parents, who are immediately enamored with her in a way they never were of Luo Binghe. He waits for it to hit in the middle of the night, when he’s carefully feeding his daughter from the strange be-nippled bottle Shen Qingqiu had sketched out for him.

But it doesn’t come. Instead, he feels a quiet thrill. She is his. She is Shen Yuan’s. She is both of them together, a tangible fragment of their relationship. She is everything he likes about himself and everything he loves personified.

He also waits for Shen Qingqiu to show up at his door, offering congratulations and gifts. He wants to cradle his daughter in front of Shen Qingqiu, letting the love pour off of him, tell Shen Qingqiu that he was right, that Luo Binghe isn’t irreparably broken without ever saying a word, and see the soft tenderness in Shen Qingqiu’s eyes. Maybe even pride. 

But he doesn’t come. Luo Binghe builds his life with his daughter and husband, and most days, Shen Qingqiu doesn’t cross his mind. But some days he does. Some days, Luo Binghe thinks about the revelation he had, that the broken jagged edges of each other could click so seamlessly well. He thinks that even as he smoothes himself down for his daughter and his husband, wondering if he’s becoming the person he wants to be, or is expected to be, or if there’s even a difference. He thinks about the things he hides, even now, from Shen Yuan, who thinks he knows him but can’t possibly know him and love him. He thinks about being Shen Qingqiu’s first love, dying in service of Luo Binghe not once, not twice, but three times. Does Shen Yuan’s love reach that far for him? He doesn’t know, doesn’t want to find out at the same time that he desperately does. 

The years stretch, and he doesn’t see Shen Qingqiu again. He makes discreet, probing inquiries into crossing to that other dimension but comes back as empty-handed as he had all those years ago. He wonders if it’s because something has happened to Shen Qingqiu or if he doesn’t want to come back. Or that Shen Qingqiu’s revelation tipped something in his alternate self, and Shen Qingqiu is not allowed to come back. That it was fine when Luo Binghe was nefarious and up to no good, but something else entirely when Luo Binghe was someone Shen Qingqiu cared about. 

Luo Binghe lives his life, and he is happy. Happier than he’s ever been. Shen Yuan is his soulmate, loves him deeply, entertains him endlessly. In him, Luo Binghe finds refuge. 

But sometimes, in the deep dark pit of himself, he wonders if he could be happier.