Archive of Our Own

1. The fake Guanyin pendant.

Luo Binghe saw the pendant first.

It happened during what she thought was the worst time of the year. She said so on their way to the market, but Mother only shook her head in response.

Binghe promptly asked her why, even though she already knew why.

Mother thought it was the best time of the year because it was when she’d found Binghe.

Sure enough …

“Winter is when I found Binghe,” Mother said, easily, as if it was obvious, as if anyone would consider Binghe a thing to treasure time by.

This was an old topic, one that made for daily conversation, all endless variations on the same theme. The familiar words still warmed Binghe right down to her toes.

“But it’s so cold,” she argued, even still, not wanting to lose the argument just yet.

Also, it really was chilly: even the short trip to the market, so close to the river, had them being buffeted by unforgiving winds, snapping and biting at their ankles like a gang of street dogs with canines as white as snow and as cold as ice.

“No, the cold is why it’s the best,” Mother replied, since it was her turn to protest Binghe’s complaints, “because Binghe doesn’t mind so much when I do this!”

Saying this, she suddenly bent down with a startling swiftness, letting go of Binghe’s hand to deliberately and gently pinch Binghe’s cheeks.

Binghe immediately squawked out an indignant protest, but as her poor squished face was finally left alone, Mother laughing all the while, she realised that Mother was … not wrong.

Her face wasn’t smarting at the press of Mother’s hands (although it never did, regardless of the season, because Mother’s hands were always gentle); it had just become pleasantly warm with a flush, instead.

Truly, Mother was wise!

Mother only laughed again when she told her so and picked Binghe’s hand back up in her more weathered one, holding it securely.

Together, the two of them continued towards the market, hand in hand.

This day marked the fourth year that Luo Binghe’s mother had allowed Luo Binghe to live with her. Because Binghe didn’t know her birthday, this was the date Mother had suggested for a celebration instead.

Now, at the age of eight, as at the ages of seven, six, five and four, all Luo Binghe wanted was to stay with Mother forever. She’d already learnt many of the tricky steps to the daily dance that Mother has to do at work to make ends meet at the end of every day. In the process, Binghe has learnt even more about their overwhelming need for coin.

But now Luo Binghe was finally eight. Mother thought it was the perfect age not just to help with the garments but also to decide what they should buy at the market and what they shouldn’t. So, once they reached the market, Mother asked her what she thought about the fish.

“It’s Binghe’s birthday, after all,” Mother said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

Binghe gave the question all the thoughtful consideration it deserved, brow furrowing with all the seriousness of a military general deciding where to next send a particular battalion.

The man at the stall in front of them didn’t bother hiding his grin at the eight-year-old girl’s determined expression. But neither the woman nor the girl paid him much attention. Fish was a more serious matter than even fishermen could understand.

The other option would be, Binghe knew, pork. The thing about fish was that it was cheaper than pork in this part of the world. Of course it was, they lived next to a river! (Because of her name, Binghe privately thought of it as her river.) But, all the same, it was her birthday, and pork was tastier.

At least, Luo Binghe, who now knew what a diet that heavily featured salted fish tasted like, thought so.

Still—and she stopped at the memories—salted fish was still better than rotten meat. Before Mother, even rotten meat was better than nothing at all.

(Binghe will find out, later, that rotten meat is considered a delicacy for most inhabitants of the demon world, a specialty reserved mostly for the richest courts in the realm, even those of heavenly demons. But no such dish will ever be allowed on the tables in her palace.)

So Binghe solemnly pointed at the fish that looked the best, in answer to Mother’s question. She had a few moments to wonder what about the fish made it seem so much better compared to all the others before Mother thanked her, equally solemnly, and they bought the fish from the smiling fisherman.

(Binghe will only realise, later, in the midst of briskly chopping up a fish to cook for Shizun, who has given her the sideroom to live in as well as a more recent personal lecture on the senses that cultivators can hone during the stages of golden core formation, that Mother likely started this ritual at the market because Binghe always had a cultivator’s knack for discerning unspoiled meat from the spoiled.)

On their way back home, Luo Binghe saw the jade pendant.

Hanging around the outskirts of the market was a man with a thin rug laid out on the ground. Various trinkets glittered on the rug, with small, rainbow-hued shadows, startlingly bright under the wintry-white sheen of the sky. Not immune to the shining spread of colours, she tugged on Mother’s sleeve, gesturing at the ornaments. “Mother!” she breathed. “Look!”

Indulgently, Mother let them have a closer glance.

Thinking about it later, the lies that the man spouted seemed so obvious. How could the man claim any of his goods to be real without even a proper stall? Why wasn’t he inside the marketplace proper? Wouldn’t he have been robbed instantly if any of his baubles had been real, laid out for all to see as they had been? Why had Mother believed him? Why had Binghe even cared enough about trinkets like that, things that didn’t matter, to make her look in the first place?

At the time, though, both Binghe and her mother were spellbound: the man was a good storyteller.

He showed them how to hold all his pieces of jewellery, from hair pins to anklets, to catch the light; he explained how small things could be worn to great effect. He looked at the mother and child before him and spoke reverently of the gods, of Guanyin, of the child-bringing maiden, of the goddess who could be trusted to protect children everywhere.

Then, Mother spent most of her purse on a piece of what was not jade.

It didn’t happen on the day itself. Mother never carried that much coin on her, not even to the market; Mother never had that much coin on her, and especially not right after a trip to the market.

Instead, she’d asked the man if he would be staying in their town long. The two grown-ups talked while Binghe sat down on the rug and picked one ornament up after the other to examine them carefully.

Although the jade pendant hadn’t held her interest for too long, she remembered turning it over in her hands, fascinated by how the carvings made a face of the goddess emerge from the jade, intrigued by the thought of doing her own carving, to shape a piece of jade and call it her own—except, of course, if Binghe could give Guanyin a face, it would be her mother’s. Eventually, the conversation happening above her head ended, and Binghe walked home with her mother and forgot about the jade pendant altogether until the first day of the new year.

On that day, Binghe woke up feeling a little feverish.

It was only a little bit! But Mother promptly panicked, convinced that her having forgotten to put any coin under their shared pillow at the eve of the new year meant that the demon Sui had cursed Binghe overnight.

It was a miserable day: the awful family Mother worked for demanded that she come into work, so she eventually, reluctantly, left for work after a worried admonishment for Binghe to stay put and rest.

Binghe managed to not start crying about that after Mother left, feeling like a miserable failure and sobbing up a storm at the thought that Mother had to go to work, even though it was the new year, without her!

Mother returned home later than usual because of the extra work, so late that it was almost the second day, so late that Binghe was close to crying again—but with the pendant. Both of them had ended up crying, in the end, but mostly out of relief and incredulous joy.

Neither Luo Binghe nor her mother realised that the pendant wasn’t real jade until autumn.

It made it all the more humiliating. The moment of truth arrived because of a travelling merchant who passed through their town every so often, staying a little while with the family for whom Mother worked. He traded in jewellery; his manners were terrible. He always gave his clothes to Mother to wash with an odd grimace; Mother told Binghe that it was his version of a smile.

The grimace deepened when, on the last day of his coming over to pick up his clothes, his eyes flicked over at the jade pendant hanging from Binghe’s neck. Mother asked him about it, and Binghe obediently handed it to him when he asked to look at it.

She remembered it clearly: how he raised it for a look against the sunlight. How the grimace turned into a frown.

Manners or not, he was observant enough to notice Mother’s flinch when he told them precisely what they didn’t want to hear.

“For this kind of thing, there is no better god,” he told them, haltingly, at which Mother had managed a tremulous smile, her shaking fingers closing over the pendant. It was a craftsman’s line of thought, to look at fake goods and think of the goddess of mercy.

Both of them were stricken silent for the rest of the day.

The walk home was unbearable.

It was all Luo Binghe’s fault. She should have chosen the pork. Then Mother wouldn’t have felt—

Mother had always been able to read her thoughts from her face. Before her thoughts could stew over it any further, Mother sat her on their bed and grasped her hands, gently threading apart her knotted fingers like she was trying to undo all of Binghe’s misery.

“Mama—,” Binghe burst out, because it was that or burst into tears.

She burst into tears anyway when Mother kissed her open palms and placed the pendant back in her right hand, pressing her hand closed again.

“Aiya,” Mother said, wiping at her face. “What’s all this for? Jade or not, what does it matter?” she continued, although Binghe could still hear (and would never forget) the tremor in her voice. “Guanyin is Guanyin, and prayer is prayer, whatever it’s made of. Even if the pendant is fake, my prayer isn’t, and the goddess knows it. You should keep my prayer with you always, so Guanyin can protect you when I can’t.” On seeing her daughter’s stricken expression at her words, she hastily amended them. “If I can’t! If, child, if,” she said, promptly dragging Binghe closer and tickling her until she shrieked with laughter, tears forgotten.

From then until Mother’s death and even after, to Binghe’s acceptance into Cang Qiong Sect, the pendant hung around her neck like a promise, at once the lightest and heaviest thing Binghe owned. When she lost it, tossed aside at the hands of Ming Fan’s unwanted attention and Ning Yingying’s confused jealousy, Luo Binghe lost the last things of her mother: the prayer she had made, the hope she had held, and the love she had left for her daughter.

2. A green yingluo.

The day after Shen Qingqiu had Luo Binghe move into the room at the side of the bamboo house, she entered her own bedroom after breakfast, fished out every knickknack and ornament that she thought was a pendant or necklace or neck-adjacent in some way, shape or form, spread them out on the desk and sat back in thoughtful contemplation of her now super-sparkly desk.

… Proud Immortal Demon Way had been, on the face of it, a reverse harem novel. The main lead, Luo Binghe, was, of course, a complete ripoff from a basic Cinderella story—the comparison was just too easy; everyone and their mother had made it.

A kind guardian who passed away? Check! You could even make the number of benevolent guardians two, if you argued for both her biological and adoptive mother! Did she encounter evil stepsisters or shijies? Check! Was she placed under the care of an evil stepmother, sorry, an evil shizun? Check! Did she toil away in the ashes for no reward for most of her early life, full of tormented hope? Check, check, check!

Blatant sob-story material aside, Shen Qingqiu herself had nothing against that kind of initial setup. After all, that kind of thing was what made the Happily Ever After ending work, and Best Girl + Hot Guy was always a winning combination, right? Right!

Wrong! At least, apparently in the eyes of the Great God Airplane!

Luo Binghe, of all protagonists, had definitely earned her HEA and, more importantly, the best love interest in the novel, Mobei-jun, but, of course, that hack, Airplane, couldn’t be relied on to deliver even that basic logic!

Before it all went sideways, Luo Binghe had been a fascinating character. There was a reason Shen Yuan had stuck with her for chapters that ran up to the triple digits, back when Airplane’s writing had held promise.

In the beginning, the protagonist’s story was informed not by the love(s) of her life but the women in her life. The reason her mother had so wanted her to join Cang Qiong Sect was because three of the peak lords there were women, one of them, of course, being the notorious Shen Qingqiu … what an exquisite bucket of cold water it had been, for Luo Binghe and Shen Yuan both, to find out that the shizun Binghe had so carefully pinned her hopes and dreams on was the primary antagonist of her story!

The arc with Ning Yingying had been a particularly good distillation of the same: once Luo Binghe had arrived at Qing Jing Peak, she’d been overjoyed to find a shijie equally excited to meet her new shimei.

It had been a bittersweet read, a would-be friendship that immediately started fracturing under the strain of Shen Qingqiu’s hatred for Luo Binghe and, later, Ming Fan’s love for her. (Of course, as the first character to fall in love with Luo Binghe and an ordinary, fickle teenage boy, the poor boy was fated to yearn from afar; he’d never had a chance.)

Shen Yuan had avidly devoured the scenes where the girls tried to navigate a friendship that their shared and admired shizun so thoroughly disapproved of, only for Ning Yingying to give up soon after Ming Fan started ignoring her in favour of Luo Binghe. Her insecurity had doomed her from the moment she had tossed Luo Binghe’s treasured pendant away in a fit of petty jealousy.

All Luo Binghe had wanted was a mentor and a friend. She found neither.

So, of course, she’d started kicking ass and taking names instead! The Endless Abyss had only helped her sheer badassery. There had been monsters. The objectively superior love interest, Mobei-jun, had made his appearance. The revenge arc had shaped up rather thoroughly, with Qiu Haitang playing a role not only as a fellow victim of Shen Qingqiu’s but also as a new and improved mentor, a gentle yet righteous foil for the protagonist’s first teacher.

Shen Yuan, thoroughly approving of this line of action, had cheered on the protagonist’s transformation to her final form: Bing-jie!

… The cheering had, admittedly, been before she’d read the rest of the novel. And then died while cursing Airplane for having the nerve to toss Luo Binghe to the most boring love interest possible in a cast of thousands. And then transmigrated into the novel as the scum who had thrown the protagonist into a monster-infested hell.

Thanks for nothing, System!

Until very recently, cussing out the System had been about the extent of Shen Qingqiu’s ability to do anything about the storyline, but she’d finally broken out of that stupid OOC lock after the whole Skinner business.

In other words, Operation: Fairy Godmother was now a go!

Luo Binghe had successfully been moved into the barely furnished sideroom. Shen Qingqiu’s excellent breakfast and her full stomach could happily testify to it.

Anyone would have thought the room a palace from how vehemently Luo Binghe shook her head when Shen Qingqiu asked her if she needed anything else after breakfast, but then, it probably did seem like a palace. An actual bed was definitely a step up from the woodshed.

Ashes: averted!

… Sort of.

… It was a work in progress.

Anyway, that was why Shen Qingqiu had unearthed all of the original goods’ jewellery!

Shen Qingqiu squinted at the mess of ornaments on the desk, trying to figure out which one seemed like the most protagonist-worthy.

Honestly, at first glance, all of them looked either incredibly gaudy and flowery or incredibly elegant and flowery. Some of the older pieces were startlingly tacky to the point that Shen Qingqiu was almost sure that her predecessor never bought them for herself. But who would be giving the original goods gifts, and why would she have kept them?

Of the jewellery that wasn’t a total loss … well … the problem was, while elegant fit the bill, flowery wasn’t really the protagonist’s deal! Badass was the name of the game. The description of Xin Mo’s design alone—

A knock on the bedroom door interrupted her train of thought. “Shizun?” Binghe said.

Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao would appear!

“Enter,” Shen Qingqiu said, and the door opened cautiously to show an adorable protagonist, who had yet to take off anyone’s limbs, peering hesitantly into the room. “Oh, leave those on my desk and then come back,” Shen Qingqiu added, seeing a threatening stack of paperwork moving closer towards her and instinctively wanting it gone.

Binghe obeyed with alacrity, which was a relief. Shen Qingqiu did not need an audience when she started doing the sect duties that she still didn’t fully understand and couldn’t foist off on the protagonist.

It was hard not to smile at how ridiculously ridiculously starry-eyed Binghe looked when she re-entered the bedroom, sneaking glances here and there, as if she was in some fascinating treasury rather than the boring old room of the world’s worst scum villainess.

“Shizun?” she asked again.

“Look at these,” Shen Qingqiu said, gesturing at the medley of trinkets on her desk.

The sunlight falling through the window helpfully picked this moment to fall on the desk, creating little rainbows in the air above it. Luo Binghe’s eyes widened when she turned to look at the necklaces and pendants, as instructed.

Shen Qingqiu had just opened her mouth to ask Luo Binghe which one she’d like to wear, when—

“It would be this disciple’s honour to help Shizun with her attire!” Luo Binghe said, stammering a little in her excitement.

Huh?

Wait, no, you were supposed to pick something for yourself—

Shen Qingqiu mentally winced a little at that train of thought, raising her fan to hide her face.

This really was too embarrassing! Binghe has all but silently confirmed that despite all the jewellery she’d unearthed … none of it really was good enough for the protagonist. Her dark eyes shone, as if with starlight, as she looked at the table laden with gemstones, which paled before her.

It was too mortifying to even think about explaining her actual intentions; the mismatch of the jewellery was painfully obvious now that Binghe was standing right in front of it. Shen Qingqiu really should have known better!

Who else in this world had faithfully memorised all the descriptions of Xin Mo and how it adorned the protagonist’s throat?

Truly, none of the jewellery she had was suitable for purpose.

“Binghe doesn’t have to,” she temporised, desperately trying to think of a way to undo this entire situation.

She hadn’t asked Binghe here to get her to do something for herself. That was the opposite of what Operation: Fairy Godmother was all about! No one had warned her about these kinds of pitfalls. No wonder the OG fairy godmother had set a time limit on her services; the art of fairy godmothering was far more arduous than anticipated!

“This disciple would love to!” Binghe said, moving closer to the desk, closer to the window, where the morning rays were falling through into the room. “Please, Shizun?” she added, surrounded by sunlight.

“Only if Binghe wishes to,” Shen Qingqiu said, caving instantly.

The ensuing discussion was … adorable. There was no other word for it. Shen Qingqiu pointed to a necklace at random and asked for Luo Binghe’s opinion on it. Luo Binghe hesitantly offered one and brightened when Shen Qingqiu agreed with her; from then, the conversation was ceaseless, with Binghe peppering her with questions.

Shen Qingqiu, who had, after all, spent years shamelessly benefitting from her er-jie’s obsession with the hanfu movement without exerting any effort whatsoever to participate in it herself (what was the point of having an older sister if you didn’t get to steal all her things, anyway?), happily answered them all.

Operation: Fairy Godmother wasn’t completely hopeless! This was a great start! Girl talk!

The necklace Binghe ultimately chose was a warm green-and-gold yingluo, a long line of sunny yellow looping around to make a wide circle that held the thing together.

Honey-hued leaves of bright copper, idly dotted with pale green beads of glass, curled around the centrepiece, a solid rectangular slab of deep emerald jade, which gave way to an intricately carved underpinning made of pure gold.

Two curls of rectangular, creamy yellow beads framed the centrepiece, one at each side. Hooked into the gaps wherever possible were strings of beads in all shades of green—pale mint, shadowed fern, vibrant bamboo, deep pine and more—which cascaded downwards, alternating with some simple, straight, yet long golden lines: elaborate, elegant, and entirely suited to the Qing Jing Peak Lord’s station.

The protagonist’s eye was too reliable!

“That’s a good choice, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said, warmly.

“This disciple can help Shizun put it on!” Luo Binghe said, with a smile as bright as the morning star. Shen Qingqiu thought this over for a moment and then mentally shrugged, outwardly leaving it to a nod.

What was the harm? This necklace was just a necklace, not a glorious excuse for gratuitous papapa—ahem, plot.

At her nod, Binghe picked up the necklace reverently. Shen Qingqiu obligingly tilted her head to let her to settle it around her neck—or, rather, loop it around it; the circle was very wide, and the centrepiece actually rested a little below Shen Qingqiu’s collarbones, with the beaded lines falling down to her chest.

But Shen Qingqiu was distracted by how Binghe’s hands trembled as she placed the necklace in its proper position.

At that pitiful sight, she was hit with a sudden pang of sympathy.

It couldn’t be easy for the protagonist, being so close, still, to the source of her earlier abuse; what was a small invasion incident and one dream to three years of Origin Story Hell? That kind of thing had to leave a mark ….

Few days after the mission with the skinner demon, Shen Qingqiu had been given a report from the hallmasters about the decisions on various forms of torture, sorry, ‘discipline’, for various forms of teenage antics, sorry, ‘infractions’, for the disciples.

She’d almost had an aneurysm then and there. Barbaric, that kind of thing … really was too barbaric! She’d crossed it all out and revised all the punishments to copying out texts for the antics that sounded like normal things children did all the time (which was most of them) and to doing a number of laps for the rest.

Qing Jing Peak was, after all, Nerd Central, and the best torture for a bunch of nerds was always extra PE. Ask her how she knew!

In fact, Binghe’s hands were shaking so badly that the strings had started tangling; the more flustered Binghe was, the more she apologised, the more she fumbled, and the more dire the situation became.

Shen Qingqiu hastily placed her hands over the ones now flailing with the necklace and the collar of her ruqun to stop their trembling before the girl could accidentally yank the beads off.

“S-shizun?!” Binghe squeaked out, going bright red.

“Binghe,” she said, firmly. “Calm down.”

The poor girl’s breathing seemed to speed up, if anything, but she still nodded obediently, her palms stilling on her chest, the tips of her fingers resting atop her collarbone.

Shen Qingqiu belatedly realised she was holding her disciple’s hands down far too tightly and hastily pulled off, suddenly realising the reason for Binghe’s shortness of breath as she took her own hands back—who wouldn’t panic, having their poor hands grabbed and practically crushed by her bony fingers?

“This master pressed too far,” she said, apologetically patting Binghe’s head before moving her fingers down to gently unravel two strings from when they had wound themselves tightly around each other, beads clacking together in protest as she made to separate them. “I will take care of the arrangement. You ought to—,”

“No!” Binghe burst out, then, “I, I, forgive this unworthy disciple for interrupting Shizun, but, please, let this one fix it!”

“Binghe—,”

“This disciple can do it, Shizun! Please let me prove myself!”

Binghe took a deep breath, as if she was steeling herself to face a Forked-Tongued Sabre-Toothed Hyena (instead of a regular Sabre-Toothed Hyena, which wasn’t venomous).

Shen Qingqiu gave her a dubious look.

The protagonist met her look with wide, pleading eyes that could melt ice.

Shen Qingqiu sighed.

“Thank you, Shizun!” Binghe said, immediately recognising her victory for what it was.

“Be careful,” she said, resigned. “Don’t rush.”

“Yes, Shizun!”

This time, Binghe’s hands determinedly did not shake as she carefully undid the tangled strings of green beads and unwound them so they fell properly atop Shen Qingqiu’s robes before curling a finger around first one, then the other golden loop at the edges of the necklace to pull them out and smoothen the lines of beads so that both rested perfectly evenly.

Shen Qingqiu carefully avoided smiling down at the expression of intent concentration on Binghe’s face.

This early, close-up show of perfectionism from the protagonist, who (because of her evil shizun) had yet to reach her true height and so had to tilt her head up to peer at Shen Qingqiu’s neck … was just too cute!

Once Binghe had judged the arrangement complete, she looked up bashfully. “This disciple is done, Shizun,” she said.

Shen Qingqiu glanced at the mirror and nodded approvingly. “Not bad,” she said.

Luo Binghe brightened for no apparent reason. “Thank you, Shizun!” she said, before hesitating a moment. “This disciple could help again tomorrow, if Shizun wishes it?”

What?

You aren’t actually a maid!

Wait, did she think she had to?

Shen Qingqiu studied the small and adorably earnest face before her.

She didn’t look like someone who was being forced to pick jewellery for her teacher against her will … was the protagonist malfunctioning? Or was this just a natural sweetness that Bing-jie had learnt to cull in the Abyss?

… It couldn’t hurt to agree to the protagonist’s cute whims while they lasted, could it?

“If it would please Binghe,” she said, agreeably bemused, then, remembering the time, added, “and if Binghe attends all her classes.”

Once Luo Binghe had run off to do whatever classes that obedient disciples attended during the middle of the day, Shen Qingqiu poked the ring of gold at her neck with one finger.

System, she thought. Is the fake Guanyin pendant still in my inventory?

[Key Item: Fake Jade Guanyin ✕ 1.]

The answer was more than a little perfunctory.

Shen Qingqiu had asked this question before, earlier in the morning, before deciding to dig out all her necklaces.

Well, that hadn’t worked.

Maybe she could buy Binghe something else, something that was more suited for her, something that would make up for the loss of the key item she really couldn’t afford to return yet … ?

… This script really was too heartless.

She worried at the beads hanging from the necklace with a hand for a brief moment before giving it up for a lost cause.

… Best to think about it later.

3.1. Xin Mo.

Luo Binghe first saw Xin Mo in the middle of a graveyard of ghost trees.

The ghost trees were violently white, due to not only the colour of their bark but also the bones on which the trees feasted and grew around—and thus gave the Skeleton Forest its name.

The trees were, also, upside down: their branches crawled on the ground and burrowed even further below their trunks; for their part, the trunks tumbled down aimlessly beneath the aerial roots that propagated them, which tangled and twined overhead in an ornate system to drag down further food for the forest.

The roots almost obscured all the traces of the sky. If it even was a sky.

By now, it had been … some time … since the Abyss had welcomed her into its arms, but Binghe still remembered falling. In light of that remembrance, on some days, the sky, or whatever passed for it here, felt more like a ceiling, as if she was a fly trapped under an upturned bowl.

Most days, though, the sky felt like the cliff in her memories. The solid earth beneath her feet. Then the crumbling earth beneath her feet. The cliff had first felt like ground, before it had felt like air.

Above the towering, descending trees, in the brief windows shaped by the stark ivory of the strings that formed the root system of the Skeleton Forest, the sky was green, which was its most frequent hue. Currently, the shade was an acid green so gracelessly lurid that it hurt to look at, much less think of as ‘green’.

Sometimes Binghe wondered if the Endless Abyss existed solely to taunt her. If she didn’t have other, better associations with the colour … nevertheless, it was what it was, and she had better things to do with her time.

Green and white above, green and white below: at the centre of it all, Xin Mo shone.

And Luo Binghe hesitated, remembering half-heard rumours.

Changed your mind about that trinket? Meng Mo whispered, at the back of her mind. Careful. I might think you wise.

The dream demoness was, as ever, cautiously cruel; she couldn’t afford to be anything else, not when her survival rested on Binghe’s continued courtesy in not casting her out to become a vessel-less shade in a land almost entirely lacking in viable hosts.

I thought that trinket was my way out, Binghe thought back, in return, unmoving from her position.

Xin Mo caught her eye again. It was hung on the narrowest part of a ghost tree that stood in the centre of the forest, curiously circled by its fellows: held up as the necklace was at the edge of the tree’s trunk, right above where the tree undid itself into skinnier branches in all directions over the mossy floor, Xin Mo looked almost deliberately framed, the trunk serving as the jade-white throat on which it rested.

The necklace itself was made up of an intricate arrangement, almost as if mimicking an array—no, not almost but definitely an array, Binghe realised, with a start of surprise—of chains. Small garnet beads fell from each horizontal line, like drops of blood.

The chains themselves were made of a metal that (according to Meng Mo) could be mined and found only in the demonic realm. Of all the metals she was familiar with, Binghe found it closest to iron: the metal was pitch black in colour; unlike iron, however, the metallic links looked exquisitely delicate and somewhat reflective, with an eye-catching sheen that captured all the available light around it.

Given the skeleton-pale bark of the trees around them and on which the necklace lay, the dark chains had long since found themselves with an ideal source from which to steal light.

The contrast of black against white was almost blinding.

Yet, not being completely blinding, Xin Mo remained … captivating, and for more than just its chains: at its centre was a large gemstone, shaped like an actual heart, so gloriously red that it almost seemed to pulse with every blink. Two slim, elegant, silver swords pierced the stone from both sides, meeting midway and connecting again to the glossy dark chains.

That should tell you everything you need to know about Xin Mo, Meng Mo observed, seeing through Binghe’s eyes. Its make is almost as bloody as you are now, girl.

True, yet by all accounts (several hundred years worth of them, according to Meng Mo, although Binghe had managed to hunt down a few other sources to confirm the dream demoness’ claims), Xin Mo had been, in order of veracity, definitely made as a tragic gift in the middle of a bloody war, apparently observed to be something of a lucky charm in the years after, and, possibly, as rumour had it, a spiritual treasure.

Initially made by a smith as a gift that had then been rejected by its intended recipient, Xin Mo had since been strung on the throats (and tusks, horns, and so on) of numerous individuals in slow succession: each name more noteworthy than the next.

Ordinarily, this would be the point in a story where Binghe (and, surely, any reasonable observer, especially one with laughter-creased eyes above a carelessly held fan that did nothing to hide the amused quirk to its owner’s mouth) would deduce that the necklace was cursed to bring doom upon its wearers and leave the thing well enough alone.

But there were no such rumours, or rather, the whispers held that the coveted necklace was a gift rather than a curse, precisely because all the last of the legendary names lived prosperous lives.

It helped that their deaths had no discernable pattern: one disappeared in the dead of night and was presumed to have ascended, another died, admittedly young but peacefully, in her sleep, one was killed honourably in the midst of a final battle, another was found, at rest, in his favourite garden, yet another was lost at sea … the list went on and on.

The only thing some of the stories seemed to have in common was a possible premonition of death. Not only was that debatable (the last one, Zheng He, a renowned mariner, spoke of no such foreknowledge, and Luo Binghe suspected that Xin Mo had drifted through the ocean before finding its way into the Abyss, and had thus avoided being coveted), but so was whether such a premonition counted, in itself, as a blessing or a curse.

Shizun would have enjoyed arguing over that question … or might have, if Binghe had really understood her as well as her disciple ought to have. If Binghe had ever been right about anything about Shizun.

The rumours about Xin Mo were, as far these things went, not much when compared against other abysmal experiences. Still, Binghe wasn’t particularly given to recklessness—or even jewellery, not for herself, not anymore.

She blinked, suddenly seeing a jade pendant where there should have been a ruby.

The roots overhead rustled in a brief breeze. The skylight of roots created by the wind shifted and closed; the dream of green disappeared … and Xin Mo looked as it always had.

The problem was that it was more than just a piece of jewellery.

You wouldn’t think it of a necklace, but the thing was said to serve as a channel: work qi through it, and you could work miracles.

… which means that Xin Mo was, also, a way out of the Endless Abyss.

One of them, and, most likely, the most expensive one … and the easiest, Meng Mo amended, hastily, at the flicker of irritation Binghe let her feel at this rare show of indecision.

(Binghe forbore from letting on that the irritation was, in fact, because the dream demoness’s uncertainty mirrored her own. There was no way to know.)

The risk on one side, the reasons on the other …

The wind blew again through the forest, reminding her once more of the sky over her head, hidden by roots, the moss beneath her feet, dappled with bones. Green and white above. Green and white below.

Graceless as the graveyard was in comparison to the serene calm of Qing Jing Peak’s bamboo forest, it still reminded Binghe of how badly she wanted to see Shizun again.

Luo Binghe reached out with a hand and touched the necklace.

For a moment, it felt as if the forest floor was rising up against her, with a dark surge of black smoke rising up from the necklace, although even her eyes refused to admit the fact. Binghe immediately let her qi rise up in response, the mark on her forehead likely flaring bright red—

—and the vertigo vanished.

The feeling had likely been the forest, feeding off on the necklace in kind and reluctant to surrender its treasure. The forest could have some sort of sentience, Binghe thought, given its … diet. The cleverer creatures of the Abyss had often backed away in a very similar manner upon realising the two-faced nature of her qi.

Her hand was still resting on the necklace.

There was a time when Binghe had the luxury of heeding caution: had the luxury of time itself. Even then, Binghe had never been prone to wasting time.

Shizun had even praised this about her once, before, saying that decisiveness was a rare quality in a disciple.

It was because of Shizun that her reasons burnt within her now.

It took the work of mere seconds before Xin Mo rested on her throat. Wrapped skin-tight around her neck as it was, it rose with every breath she took and fell with every breath she let out.

Would Shizun like the necklace? she wondered, suddenly.

Shizun had allowed Binghe to dress her for three years, once the fever had made her forget her austerity.

It had started slowly, with a necklace, but it hadn’t ended there.

Soon, it was Binghe who chose almost all the robes (save for the innermost) that draped over that slender form, who carefully found the hair ornaments to match, who made sure that any one thing that her teacher felt like wearing, whether she had wanted something weighing down on her ears, her wrists, her neck, best matched all the rest of her.

Binghe had looked down the elegant line of her throat and those small and delicate curves that would fit in her palms so easily—often with her nose pressed to her chest, for that winter had thawed her teacher in more ways than one—and Binghe had curled her fingers into fists and wanted.

Shizun had always been beautiful, a cold beauty, but in those three years, she had been radiant, warm with affection and the proof of Binghe’s adoration.

However long it had been in the Abyss, it had been too long since Shizun had worn what Binghe had wanted her to wear.

Binghe put a hand to the centre of the necklace, concentrating on her qi.

There was only one way to find out how it would look on Shizun’s throat, after all.

Her collarbones glittered briefly as she passed qi to Xin Mo, before its heart absorbed the light, leaving the hollows of her throat cast into sudden shade.

As she turned towards the slice in the air next to her that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, crackling with energy, the brightly lit shadows lingered, shimmering across her skin, red and black and red again.

3.2. Xin Mo (cont.).

In the few days since Shen Qingqiu had heard that low, melodious and utterly terrifying voice say, “It’s no trouble,” she’d faced nothing but trouble.

On the first day itself, Luo Binghe cheerfully cut her own hand open with the Xiu Ya sword before shoving that bloodied hand into Shen Qingqiu’s mouth, Xin Mo shining on her throat the entire time.

On the second day, Qiu Haitang magically appeared to decry the terrible deeds of her would-be sister-in-law: Qiu Jianluo’s fiancée and killer. There was the trek to the Water Prison, which was miserable but probably better than a war between the two sects. … Honestly, the less said about the second day, the better!

On the third day, nothing really happened apart from a daydream in which it quickly became obvious that Luo Binghe had no control over Xin Mo.

That was actually the only thing that had become obvious! Neither of their actual questions had been answered, not with the unhelpful System as their chaperone. So the two of them exchanged extremely useless words.

As far as plot went, it was very contrived.

Shen Qingqiu had earned a few points for literary and philosophical depth while refusing to explain why she’d pushed her dearest disciple, well, ex-disciple, now, into the Endless Abyss. Similarly, Luo Binghe had been extremely firm about not letting Shen Qingqiu go anywhere while refusing to explain why she’d joined Huan Hua Sect as an actual disciple.

At least in the dream she’d been able to walk away!

Shen Qingqiu’s depression at waking up to the immortal binding cables had been mollified slightly by a letter from Shang Qinghua that Gongyi Xiao slipped to her in his brief visit.

Once Gongyi Xiao had left, Shen Qingqiu re-evaluated her situation, and then reconsidered.

According to Shang Qinghua, everything was progressing as planned, so it was just a matter of patience. Aside from the creepy pool of corrosive acid all around her, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, even the Lingxi Caves themselves had had a bit of blood here and there! In the end, one stone platform was more or less the same as another.

Sitting cross-legged and meditating while waiting for some time to pass was something she had some practice with now, so she closed her eyes and did just that.

… It wasn’t much later that she was woken up with a rude spray of freezing water to the face.

Blinking rapidly to get rid of the ice-cold water in her eyes, Shen Qingqiu barely bit back an exasperated sigh at the sight in front of her.

Standing in front of her was the Little Palace Mistress—in retrospect, one of the earlier signs of how terrible the plot of Proud Immortal Demon Way was going to become.

Pretty much every single reader had correctly predicted her character arc for what it was going to be. What else could the heiress-to-be of Huan Hua Sect be except yet another obstacle for the next addition to Bing-jie’s ever-expanding harem, the refreshingly honest and handsome (a rare combination) Gongyi Xiao?

With that whip of hers, who could blame the readers for predicting catfights?

Of course there were catfights!

Trying to stay in the good graces of Huan Hua Palace as a rogue cultivator while having no intention of becoming an actual disciple, Bing-jie had studiously kept her head down, but alas, that curly head of hair and courteous composure had (of course) only served to better attract the admiring gaze of the good Gongyi Xiao.

Luckily (bafflingly), the Old Palace Master also took a shine to Luo Binghe over his own daughter—the power of the protagonist’s halo!—and after receiving a stern talking-to from her adored father, the Little Palace Mistress reluctantly surrendered to the fate of play-acting the part of Bing-jie’s most grudging supporter.

To save his daughter some face, however, the Old Palace Master asked Bing-jie and Gongyi Xiao to lengthen the courting period a little longer than normal. Bing-jie, whose regard for the sect leader of Huan Hua Palace had actually been rather sweet to read, readily agreed to this request, quietly satisfied with the extra time granted for her latest paramour to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t her only paramour and that she was not just a half-demon but the heavenly demon.

(This would prove to be the start of an awful pattern: Airplane-bro always dragged out the ‘reveals’ with the human MLs for at least ten chapters, yet again proving Shen Yuan’s point about how Mobei-jun was the only love interest worth Bing-jie’s time!)

The problem was, when one avenue of anger had to forcefully close, another had to open. It really was very natural, in addition to being very useful for the black lotus heroine! In the book and, apparently, here as well, the Little Palace Mistress became her glorified minion, humiliating, first and foremost, the scum villainess and then countless others on her behalf while Bing-jie herself sat back proudly and piously, her own hands clean of sin and shame.

Who could accuse the protagonist of anything, when the Little Palace Mistress was so obviously a sadist?

To Bing-jie’s credit, she had exercised a relatively just guiding hand, only ever aiming the nuclear missile that was the Little Palace Mistress at the deserving.

Although it was a little difficult to admire that aim right now, with how the Little Palace Mistress was going on and on about how badly the Qing Jing Peak Lord had abused her position to mistreat her shijie.

Shen Qingqiu longed to express her agreement with this like-minded sister aloud—it was truly a pity that the Little Palace Mistress had never been a Zhongdian user—but dodging that whip of hers took up most of her focus.

Fortunately, the whipping stopped soon. Unfortunately, this was because the real whip-mistress arrived on the scene.

Bing-jie looked every inch the part: black-and-red robes hung impressively from her muscled frame, except where they gave way to reveal a generous hint of the renowned Heavenly Tits—the userbase of Zhongdian Literature was as creative as it was mature, but, since Shen Qingqiu had actually seen the protagonist on that staircase days ago, she had to admit it: it was difficult to argue with the name, especially when the light of Xin Mo—which adorned her throat, glowing a forbidden red—cast inviting shadows along her cleavage.

There was, however, a notable difference between the original protagonist and the one she’d raised: starting from the center of Luo Binghe’s chest and across her left breast was a ragged scar.

The Xiu Ya Sword had given her that scar.

It should have healed.

Shen Qingqiu didn’t know why she hadn’t healed it.

There was no time to keep dwelling on it. Shen Qingqiu watched, astonished, as Luo Binghe exchanged cold words with the Little Palace Mistress—really, was this any way for a boss to treat a glorified minion?! Bing-jie, don’t you know how important employee benefits are?—but didn’t have time to think over it before the girl ran off like a frightened rabbit and Luo Binghe turned back around to face her erstwhile shizun, reaching out one hand towards her.

Unconsciously, Shen Qingqiu leaned away.

Luo Binghe’s hand froze, hovering mid-air between them.

Still, it didn’t stay there for long. Never let it be said that the protagonist was slow to respond!

“Does Shizun think this disciple is so filthy so as to be untouchable?” Luo Binghe said, softly. “This disciple will have to disappoint Shizun yet again.”

In one smooth back-and-forth motion, what with Binghe letting her hand fall on her shoulder and Shen Qingqiu moving her upper body backward to escape her grasp, her robe, caught in the middle and already whipped into tatters, fell apart a little.

A lot.

There was a stunned pause in which both women, momentarily speechless, stared at Shen Qingqiu’s bared chest.

Shen Qingqiu tried to cover herself up with her hands, briefly forgetting about the immortal binding cables in her mortification; this struggling proved, ultimately, useless, and her face burnt an even brighter red yet in the cold air of the prison.

Binghe’s gaze stayed fixed on her throughout all this.

The little white bun she’d known had had some sense of shame—the poor girl had blushed to her ears during the Skinner debacle, embarrassed for her shifu—but not Bing-jie!

Bing-jie was probably all too happy to see her horrible teacher humiliated.

At least they were all girls here. Small mercies!

“I found something for Shizun,” Bing-jie said, instead of, you know, looking away, and pressed a hand to her throat. “This disciple must apologise, for making Shizun’s gift secondhand, but it couldn’t be trusted with anyone else.”

Shen Qingqiu’s brain broke. It had no other option, faced with the sight of Xin Mo—Xin Mo!!!—falling away from the protagonist’s neck.

What?!

Luo Binghe stepped forwards again, necklace dangling in hand.

In what kind of a script did the protagonist hand over her golden finger?!

Frightened out of her mind, Shen Qingqiu leaned backwards.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe said, mildly. “There’s no point in being like this. If I wanted to do anything to you, I wouldn’t need to touch you at all.”

You think I don’t know that?!

Shen Qingqiu had no time to say that before Luo Binghe continued, sedately listing off several extremely vital organs that Shen Qingqiu was not comfortable with losing just yet: “Spleen, kidney, liver, lungs.”

Binghe stepped forward just as Shen Qingqiu had to bend over from the pain coursing through her. Although the book had mentioned this use of heavenly demon blood, it had not mentioned its similarity to period cramps!

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the protagonist said, while hurting her. Shen Qingqiu took a brief moment to be surprised at the lack of notifications from the System—surely her suffering had earned the protagonist some coolness points?—before freezing like a terrified rabbit when Bing-jie’s hand made it to her neck.

Terror turned into total bafflement when she felt cool metal around her throat.

That … hadn’t been a distraction?

It really hadn’t been. She stayed, frozen, as Luo Binghe conscientiously clasped Xin Mo around her neck, thumbing over the beads—and, incidentally, her throat; Shen Qingqiu couldn’t help but swallow at the contrast of the heavy chill of the choker and the warm press of her thumb—to straighten them out before draping a robe over Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders and stepping backwards. The blood parasites calmed down.

… when nothing else happened, she looked up.

Luo Binghe was looking at her. Her outer robe was gone: glancing down at herself, Shen Qingqiu realised just whose robe she was wearing.

… it … this … she should probably shrug off the robe and return it, at least (there was nothing she could do about the necklace), but, well, the alternative was flashing the protagonist again, and, well, twice was enough of that, in Shen Qingqiu’s opinion and probably in Luo Binghe’s too!

She kept the robe on.

For a moment, only the sound of the corrosive lake’s waves lapping at the stone it surrounded could be heard.

Luo Binghe was still looking at her.

Shen Qingqiu had to fight not to look away from that steady gaze, as fixed as the morning star. Her eyes glittered a deep red, burning coals in the dark of the prison.

“Shizun,” she said, into the silence, her voice sing-song and heartless. “Shizun, don’t you like it? I got it for you.”

Like Xin Mo?

Xin Mo was like a double-edged sword! Although the protagonist’s golden finger let the protagonist work miracles, it (of course) came at a cost.

A choker in truth as well as in appearance, it ruthlessly strangled the will to live of those who wore it around their throat.

Heavenly demons couldn’t die, however, and its effect on Bing-jie—the constant and ceaseless wave of suicidal ideation that had crept through the countless chapters after the Endless Abyss arc and long after the death of the scum villainess—had been particularly chilling.

… right up until Bing-jie had figured out that an influx of yang energy (gag) would offset the yin excess caused by Xin Mo.

Then, well, things had gone pretty much exactly how many readers had expected them to go, although Shen Yuan had held out (futile) hope. Her heart bled for the unfortunate Mobei-jun, shunted aside for the mere fact of his demonic nature. To think that this was one of the plot points of Proud Immortal Demon Way that Shen Yuan had initially approved of!

So: like Xin Mo?

Dear protagonist, the only one who could ever wear Xin Mo and like it was you!

The thing was slow-acting poison for everyone else—and even for you, before you figured out how to control it with papapa!

“It suits Shizun,” Luo Binghe said, stepping closer again. “I knew it would.”

Shen Qingqiu said nothing.

Luo Binghe touched the necklace again.

“Shizun,” she said, again, and there was something oddly plaintive in her voice. “Do you like it?”

At Shen Qingqiu’s continued silence, Luo Binghe’s expression did something bitter. It made something in Shen Qingqiu’s heart twist, as she slowly withdrew her hand away.

“I almost forgot,” she said, quietly. “Shizun surely hates anything tainted by the touch of demons.”

Then … then Shen Qingqiu had to freeze again, startled, as the protagonist buried her face into her chest, just like she used to before the Immortal Alliance Conference. That little sheep had a habit of running to her, endlessly calling for her “Shizun” on the way.

But Bing-jie was a totally different type of beast, so it made no sense for her to do that now!

What kind of act was this?

“Shizun,” she said, into her skin. Shen Qingqiu fought not to tremble at the feeling of her voice. “Shizun, why don’t you answer me? I’ve done everything, I gave you everything and then I took away everything and I don’t know what else to do if you won’t answer me. Why won’t you answer me?”

Oh, to tell her everything!

“As matters stand, I have nothing much to say,” she said, entirely honestly. “As expected, it is difficult to disobey destiny.”

“Destiny!” Luo Binghe said, looking up at her, expression transforming into a snarl. She looked wild, half-feral, untamed; Shen Qingqiu could see the half-demon that must have cowed the Endless Abyss into submission in only three years. “What’s destiny?”

Shen Qingqiu faltered as she spoke. The pain lancing through that scornful, beautiful voice … she hadn’t thought it better to be cruel than to be kind, but it seemed that she had only made things worse for the protagonist. This sort of bitterness, acting so resentfully, casting Xin Mo aside …

… it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been planning on something like this anyway. This worked out for the best. She had originally intended to wait until the time of the trial to meet up with Shang Qinghua and figure things out from there.

Thanks to Xin Mo, there was a way out of the immortal binding cables. It would be quicker, too, for the Sun and Moon Dew Flower Seed business.

“—thinking about why Shizun would treat me like this, why you wouldn’t even give me a chance to explain or beg for mercy—you want me to acknowledge that this is the destiny that the heavens assigned me?” Luo Binghe said, and smiled. “I thought it over for so long, and I finally understand now.”

In Luo Binghe’s smile, there was a hint of savagery.

Shen Qingqiu had to look away, just for a moment, from that blazing face.

“None of that is important, it’s enough if I do what I want to do. Destiny doesn’t exist at all, or if it does, then it’s something that should be trampled underneath my feet!”

Maybe she could teach Binghe something worthwhile for once, for when her story continued on without her.

“Don’t let this suppress your heart,” she said, bringing a hand to the necklace. And self-destructed.

4. The fake Guanyin pendant (again).

It felt like drowning, an excess of yin energy.

Luo Binghe was struggling to keep her head overwater; a great river was flooding through her in relentless waves, and before she could catch her breath, the next wave arrived. It hurt. It seemed as if Shizun was there and yet not, like a dream, in front of her but, at the same time, leaving with the others, and that hurt more.

The dream made soothing sounds amid the flood. It was tempting to believe it and to breathe out. Luo Binghe could not afford to believe it. She was drowning.

Until she wasn’t, and something—Shizun?—was giving her the breath she needed, making the flood recede; she chased after it with her lips, using her teeth when she had to, desperately seeking more air from the dream-like thing that was keeping her from suffocating—she wanted it to be Shizun—she didn’t want it to be Shizun—like this, she hadn’t wanted it to be anyone other than Shizun—but, like this, she wanted it to be anyone other than Shizun—it was so difficult to think through the deluge of red settling over her mind.

The only thing that kept it at bay was the thing breathing into her, who should-but-shouldn’t-have-been Shizun.

The dream vanished from her mouth, at one point, and she would have drowned then and there but for the fact that it moved down, until it was stealing from the river’s source.

The waves of pain became waves of pleasure, but it wasn’t enough; she could feel demonic energy being siphoned over in exchange for spiritual energy, but it wasn’t enough; she was standing, but it wasn’t enough. She was still drowning.

The soothing sounds stopped when she moved, but she moved, ignoring the protests that took their place, because it wasn’t enough, until she was kneeling, closer to the ground, and the dream-like thing even closer yet.

The current, whose name was Luo Binghe, bore down.

When the person called Luo Binghe came to, she blinked at the cave wall, and then started.

Someone was choking for breath underneath her.

Luo Binghe hastily scrambled off, looked back, and froze.

Shizun’s mouth was bruised red and bitten bloody, her face wet and smeared, her eyes red-rimmed and teary. She was lying flat on the ground. If it wasn’t for the tears still slipping from her eyes, she would have made for an excellent imitation of a corpse. Binghe knew—hated knowing—how that looked.

“Shizun?” Luo Binghe said, her voice half a whisper as she knelt beside her.

Hearing her, Shizun tried to respond, her lips parting; instead, she gasped for breath instead. So hoarse was her voice that this gasp was closer to a sob.

“Shizun … I—what did I do?”

Blood spilled from Shizun’s mouth instead of words when she tried again to reply; tears immediately spilled from Luo Binghe’s eyes, as if summoned. In truth, they had been; it was simply that only Shizun could summon them.

“Don’t cry,” Shizun rasped, eventually, as Binghe curled around her uselessly.

It was just like Shizun, to speak then to comfort her first despite the blood dripping from her lips and despite everything that Luo Binghe had done to her—but, gradually and all too slowly, Luo Binghe came to her senses and pulled Shen Qingqiu’s undershirt together, straightening it out before draping her own outer robe over Shizun’s body, hopelessly trying to make up for something that couldn’t be made up for.

Her hand brushed against red string and fake jade as she drew the sleeves up Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders.

At her pause, Shizun seemed to remember that the pendant was there. She caught her hands and gestured at Luo Binghe to lower her head.

“I thought—I thought it was long gone,” Binghe stammered, as the face of Guanyin disappeared from her line of sight and then appeared, briefly upside down, as Shizun lowered it over her head. “I thought I had lost it forever.”

Before she spoke, Shen Qingqiu’s hands paused over her neck, where she had helped her put her mother’s pendant on again.

It was, Binghe thought, where her hands belonged.

5. A string of prayer beads.

Shen Qingqiu hadn’t worn a necklace in around a year or so. Maybe a little longer.

There was nothing more comforting to Luo Binghe now than the sight of her bare throat, apparently, or so Shen Qingqiu had to assume, given how much she liked to gnaw on it.

She had to revise this assumption when Binghe brought home a rather simple string of prayer beads for Shen Qingqiu from her last grocery hunt.

In fact, the situation was a bit dire: Binghe had started buying more vegetables to sneak into their meals. Shen Qingqiu had tried, several times, to deter her from this recent quest to no avail.

So much for the good old days of oil and seasonings and not much else besides meat and flour—now, their house in the middle of nowhere boasted not only a long new necklace but also an extremely nutritious pantry.

Scratch that, it could double as a greenhouse for all the leafy greens it sheltered!

At this thought, Shen Qingqiu aimed a scowl at the general direction of the kitchen, where Binghe was undoubtedly committing vegetable crimes.

Of course, the protagonist’s food was always delicious, no matter what went into it. Even cabbage became mouth-wateringly good, somehow, as if it had always, impossibly, belonged all along to every dish that was set before Shen Qingqiu, but there was the principle of the thing to think about!

… and, also, sulking about it a little had the added bonus of Binghe conocoting something extra delicious to make up for it. She’d figured out chicken nuggets a few weeks ago. Shen Qingqiu had never been prouder of her.

If only Binghe could've brought home something food-related! Shen Qingqiu could never complain about that!

But, no. It was a necklace. Fortunately (and somewhat surprisingly), it was a plain thing, one of those loops of light brown prayer beads that always had 108 beads for some reason.

Shen Qingqiu was, obviously, wearing it now because what else could you do when the someone you lived with who cleaned everything you owned and made all the food you ate bought you gifts?

Peer pressure was really a dangerous thing.

“Shizun,” Binghe said, at the doorway, where she’d returned from the kitchen and was now staring fixedly at—hey! Shen Qingqiu’s eyes were up here!—but then …

“Shizun, I missed you,” Binghe said, breathlessly.

Before Shen Qingqiu could make fun of her for missing her while she was right there (it wasn’t as if she'd gone anywhere while Binghe was in the kitchen!) the protagonist moved, quickly, far too quickly, so that her curly head was resting against Shen Qingqiu’s breast, her nose nudging against some of the beads there.

Oh.

Shen Qingqiu suddenly felt like the most awful human being alive for having associated Binghe with that kind of staring.

Her poor protagonist had jewellery-related trauma; of course she was staring at the necklace that she’d bravely bought for Shen Qingqiu to wear!

Her hands automatically rose, from the force of habit, to settle around the shoulders of her glass-hearted disciple.

It didn’t seem comfortable, and Binghe was going to get the imprint of a bead or two stamped on her face at this rate, but, to be honest, Binghe definitely knew all that already; this was, after all, an old, familiar pose.

If this child still wanted to hang off her old teacher’s hip, then—Shen Qingqiu squeezed her shoulders, as if to wordlessly remind Binghe of her presence.

“I … I really missed you,” Luo Binghe continued, voice a little muffled because of how closely her face was pressed to Shen Qingqiu’s chest.

“It’s been less than a shichen,” she said, unable to help herself, but made no other move to move Binghe.

At that, the woman made a happy noise that found its way, arrow-like, to Shen Qingqiu’s heart while pressing closer, her cute nose inadvertently burrowing into the space that Shen Qingqiu—after determinedly tucking in her set of robes—happily called ‘cleavage’ while only feeling a little bit guilty about the lie.

It had to be more natural than a push-up bra, didn’t it, if you were just wearing robes? … Right?

Several minutes passed like this (she might have missed Binghe as well, but that was nobody’s business) before Shen Qingqiu reluctantly came to terms with the fact that Binghe was far too much of a similar height with her to be leaning on her like this, all slouched and uncomfortable.

She opened her mouth to gently tell the protagonist to straighten up or something—a posture like this couldn’t be good for anyone’s back!—but then yelped as the hands on her waist started moving, lingering on the lines of her body and pulling at her clothes, claws reappearing just a little to pull the layers apart and aside. Binghe’s head turned slightly during this to press wet kisses to the curve of her breast.

Resolutely ignoring the thrill that was now running down her spine, Shen Qingqiu managed to gather herself together to complain as her second-last robe slid down to join the others in a tattered puddle on the floor.

“Binghe, slow down, you’re ruining these robes—,”

Here, Shen Qingqiu made a fatal error by looking down mid-sentence, only to catch the sight of big eyes and a jutting lip—no! Absolutely not!

But it was too late: she’d already seen Luo Binghe’s hangdog expression, even as one clawed hand brushed at the naked skin of her waist.

“But, Shizun, this disciple’s hands are cold,” Binghe said, tearfully, her open mouth smearing against her skin, nonsensical and ridiculous given everything both of them knew about cultivation and physiology. That was the only reason Shen Qingqiu gasped slightly at the sound—disapproval, obviously—especially as one of Binghe’s hands slowly squeezed and groped its way over the curve of her now bare backside, palmed down between her thighs and found its favourite place. “And Shizun is always so warm here,” the outrageous girl continued, that awful, affecting pout widening into a wickedly pleased curve as she teasingly thumbed at her clit, “and already getting so wet for me…”

Two clever fingers slipped inside her easily; then, Luo Binghe crooked her fingers and pulled Shen Qingqiu even closer to her.

Her mouth fell open from the shamelessness of the move. “Binghe!” she hissed, held as she was against the woman, who only made a pleased noise at their proximity before letting her other hand, which had contentedly been pressing its handful of her waist, trail up first the left thigh and then the right, pulling at her until the two of them were flush up against each other.

In the end, Shen Qingqiu was more or less leaning on and straddling the other woman while standing. The shift in position made the next thrust of Binghe’s fingers even deeper, as deep as possible with how closely they were pressed together.

It was at this point that Binghe decided to spread her fingers as far apart as the two could go; her thumb ceased circling around her clit and just rested against it a little too firmly, a constant shock of unending feeling. Shen Qingqiu squirmed, held—

“So open,” Binghe said, her tone far more awed than should have been allowed.

Shen Qingqiu’s face had to be on fire; it had to be. There was no need for Binghe to say anything like that! What kind of person stated the obvious so plainly!

Tragically, Binghe did not spontaneously develop telepathy and spare her from further torment. Instead, she kissed the closest skin available to her, which was Shen Qingqiu’s neck; she licked at the beads there before kissing a soft and wet and hungry trail up the column of Shen Qingqiu’s throat.

Unrelatedly, Shen Qingqiu shivered.

“Shizun is so welcoming,” Luo Binghe said, a third finger moving in circles around her inner thighs to gather the wetness collecting there, “preparing herself so well for this unworthy disciple.”

Who’s preparing who here, Shen Qingqiu wanted to know, but before she could ask, she had to bite down on her lip to prevent an undignified noise from slipping out as a third, newly damp finger found its demanding way inside her.

“Binghe, the bed,” she tried, as a last resort. At least keep the scenery consistent! Why keep both of them standing up? This was bound to get uncomfortable for someone.

Binghe hummed but, instead of agreeing and moving them like she’d been asked to, moved a hungry mouth downwards and rudely licked at a nipple.

Shen Qingqiu gasped, arching involuntarily to escape the sudden sensation.

Binghe, who’d crouched a little, keeping their torsos a little apart to keep her hands—and mouth—where she wanted, had evidently anticipated this; while the three fingers in her steadily continued their relentless, ruthless movements, the hand that had been resting firmly at the small of her back slid downwards to keep her balanced, following the arc of her body, pushing her chest upwards and further towards Binghe, who immediately latched onto her breast.

Shen Qingqiu couldn’t even complain about Luo Binghe’s awful posture and how much easier this all would have been in a bed—everything was suddenly too warm, too wet, too overwhelming. “Binghe,” she sobbed out, clenching down hard around the fingers in her, flushing at the wetness running down her legs.

Binghe hummed again in response, before gently taking her nipple between her teeth and pressing down ever so lightly. Shen Qingqiu shuddered, and the hand that had moved to hold her close kneaded the curve of her behind in a crude motion, possessive and perfectly in time with the fingers still fucking her.

Once Shen Qingqiu’s legs started shaking, Binghe simply lifted her up—her fingers kept inside her—and moved them to the bed.

“I told yo—,” Shen Qingqiu began, briefly distracted from her impending orgasm by the triumph of having been proven right, then, “mmh!” as Binghe firmly pressed their mouths—and chests—together. The weight of Binghe above her, the brush of her soft, heavy curves and her pebbled nipples, was enough to make her gasp; the kissing didn’t help.

“This foolish disciple failed to heed Shizun’s advice,” the entirely unapologetic and utterly depraved woman atop her said, after kissing her and having judged her sufficiently breathless. “Let this one apologise.”

Then she moved her mouth downwards to where her fingers were. Shen Qingqiu hastily closed her thighs together in ashamed anticipation at the tingling feeling of her tongue there.

Luo Binghe only smiled, and took her fingers out, and then pushed her thighs apart again, spread wider this time.

As if to bring the thought to life, she then licked one long, hot, shocking stripe up from her cunt to her clit; her thighs immediately started trembling, held in Binghe’s hands. Binghe kissed the inside of one thigh and smiled up at her. “Shizun,” she breathed.

“Hm?” Shen Qingqiu managed, voice strangled.

“How should this disciple apologise properly?”

Never mind, she was going to strangle Luo Binghe.

Shen Qingqiu covered her hot face with her hands. “Binghe,” she said, an admonishment and a plea at once.

“Begging for Shizun’s instruction,” her two-faced disciple said.

Shen Qingqiu pulled her hands down to glare at her.

Nothing happened.

(Well, no: Luo Binghe’s expression went dreamier and her hips ground down into the bed, but Shen Qingqiu refused to count any of that.)

Of course, if the protagonist didn’t want to budge, she couldn’t be budged! If the protagonist wanted to torture you by breathing wetly between your thighs and making you talk about things that shouldn’t be talked about, she would!

It was, Shen Qingqiu has to admit, grudgingly, a very fine interrogation ploy.

Still, never let it be said that she would give up so easily! She had some standards left, thank you very much.

In this courageous spirit, Shen Qingqiu managed to say all of two words—“Luo Binghe!”—very sternly, before her voice failed her entirely.

What was she supposed to say? What could she even say? ‘Since when have you needed instruction’ wouldn’t work because it was a total lie. Binghe definitely needed the instruction. Still, the truth was far too mortifying to be said!

But then Binghe looked up at her with wide eyes and wet eyelashes, and her heart took an instant hit.

“Just some instruction, Shizun?” her heartless disciple said, somehow managing to sound teary without sniffling.

Shen Qingqiu bit her lip again, stifling a cry from spilling out—Binghe’s fingers were still moving inside her, and it was making it difficult to think. Shen Qingqiu had to consciously keep from twisting with the insistent curl of her fingers.

This was unfair. Talking wasn’t part of the deal.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Binghe to stop talking, so she could just … get on with it and pretend none of this ever happened. That counted as an instruction, doesn’t it? Binghe would laugh and agree with that. Binghe wouldn’t mind.

But … if she said that to Binghe … Shen Qingqiu would. Mind, that was.

… there was no harm in … not talking, but … hands were fine, weren’t they? Binghe herself had taken a hold of her hands that first (second) time in the bamboo house, placed them atop her curly head, and weepily begged Shen Qingqiu to help her.

Shen Qingqiu had caved immediately, of course. It hadn’t … really … worked so well that time, when Binghe had determinedly enacted a reversal of their first time but had still been overly fond of biting places on Shen Qingqiu that should never be bitten and Shen Qingqiu had been too full of guilty love to really do anything more than keep her hands in Binghe’s head, but since then …

There had been moments, here and there, when her hands had led to Binghe at her best, full of sloppy enthusiasm turning skilled and in need of gentle but insistent direction that only Shen Qingqiu could provide. Not that Shen Qingqiu would have ever said that aloud! It was more than a little demeaning. Binghe didn’t really want to hear anything like that about anything like this, even if she was asking for it.

Shen Qingqiu bravely wove her hands into Binghe’s wavy hair, worrying her bottom lip the entire time. “F–follow my hands,” she stammered out, eventually.

She barely had the time to even register any shame before—

“Shizun!” the ridiculous woman, who had been waiting patiently for her, said, and then face-planted into the vicinity of her clit before Shen Qingqiu could do anything with her hands.

Shen Qingqiu had to laugh aloud at that. It only led to another delighted “Shizun!”

That cry was aimed almost directly into her cunt, though, so instead of laughing, Shen Qingqiu gasped aloud, then started tugging, and then began trembling, before falling apart entirely.

Through it all, Luo Binghe’s mouth stayed on her, going where she moved it, pliable and insistent and liable to whimpering at particularly sharp tugs on her hair.

Binghe moved only when Shen Qingqiu pulled her away, lightning still running down her spine, her smile wide and hungry and totally free of tears. Shen Qingqiu fully intended to complain about it once the pleasant tremors stopped.

In the meantime, she graciously let Binghe come back up and brush her hair away from her face, combing her hands through it to sort out the tangles that had crept in, before gently repositioning her and herself so that the two of them were curled up against each other on their sides.

“Let me take off the beads, Shizun,” Binghe said, in between the sticky kisses she was raining down on her cheek, her ear, her neck and essentially everywhere she could reach. She had a habit of doing that; she had done it even at Maigu Ridge. It was sweet. Binghe was sweet. “They’ll tangle with your hair.”

“Hm? Oh. Alright,” Shen Qingqiu said, agreeable as only cunnilingus made her, and tilted her head the one inch she had to so that Binghe could gather her hair aside and pull the string of beads up and over her head.

Once done, Shen Qingqiu immediately let her head flop back onto the pillow, wondering what Luo Binghe would do now, apart from propping her chin on her shoulder.

She squirmed a little at the feeling of Binghe’s heavenly—ahem, her chest against her back, but said nothing about it. She didn’t have to; Binghe had a way of cajoling and pleading and eventually drawing her head there by the end of a night. Shen Qingqiu usually fell asleep with her mouth at Binghe’s breast, lips parted around dark brown areola. Binghe said it was very comfortable for her.

The request for the beads was a strangely new initiative, actually. Binghe only usually remembered to worry about clothes and jewellery and hair-related knicknacks after Shen Qingqiu herself started complaining about them or after Binghe had completely wrung her—

Her eyes flew wide open, thoughts derailing entirely as she felt the beads on her skin again at a far more unexpected place.

“What—,”

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe said, her hand once again in its favourite place, rolling the string of beads down her still-slick folds—electricity didn’t exist in this world, why were the beads making it feel like it did? Shen Qingqiu despaired—before letting a bead rest against where she was most open. “This necklace … it really suits you.”

Alarm bells blaring in her head at those dangerous words, she turned her head slightly to meet Luo Binghe’s glance and then follow it downwards, to where her eyes, like stars, were focused intently on the necklace that she was holding intently against Shen Qingqiu’s skin, her fingers turning over the one bead until the small thing was entirely drenched, its light brown hue turning darker with the wetness of—

Shen Qingqiu hastily looked back ahead.

“Stop calling me that,” she remembered to say, weakly and belatedly, all out of other options with how she was being touched and looked at and the sparks of oversensitivity that were travelling up from Binghe’s thumb to and through her entire body.

Binghe had, at some point, nudged one leg between hers to keep them apart again so that Shen Qingqiu couldn’t even close her thighs properly; she had one hand—there—and the other now moved up Shen Qingqiu’s body until its thumb pushed down on her bruised bottom lip, digging into the line of her closed mouth. Humiliated and desperately aroused, Shen Qingqiu closed her eyes and parted her lips.

“As my wife wishes,” Binghe said, voice low and pleased in her ear, and let her fingers creep into Shen Qingqiu’s mouth and onto her tongue for her to suck on at the same time that she started to push the beads into her cunt, one by one.