Chapter Text
Truly, the other head disciples were all idiots.
Shen Jiu walked purposefully through the crowded marketplace, using just enough Qi to keep a nice bubble of personal space around him. The other head disciples had run off in various directions, the Bai Zhan brute to the woods and the An Ding mouse of a man to ‘reserve inn space ahahah!’ as soon as they’d arrived.
Leaving Shen Jiu in town alone to gather information on the reported attacks.
He already had been given his new name, and as soon as they finished this ridiculous mission, they would be named official Peak Lords. Though technically still Shen Jiu, he now could introduce himself as Shen Qingqiu, Peak Lord of Qing Jing Peak. Burying Shen Jiu seemed all too easy, but the new name still burned.
Of course, he still had a specter of his past haunting him. The character of Qiu now hung permanently on his own sense of self.
It was fine. He could overcome that just as easily as he had overcome every other obstacle life had thrown at him. With fire and violence if necessary, or, preferably, with words and threats. Now to just get through this ridiculous group mission.
It would have been easier to handle this entirely by himself, but no , this was a ‘trust and cooperation-building exercise to ensure harmony among the next generation of Peak Lords’, according to Shen Jiu’s shizun.
Nonsense.
Shen Jiu needed nothing, and he certainly didn’t need these other head disciples meddling in his work.
He fluttered his fan lazily in front of his face as he walked towards the office of the Zhuhou that had contacted Cang Qiong for help. Better that the other two weren’t here; they’d certainly just embarrass the entire sect.
A tiny figure, a child, sat silently on the edge of a street, a cracked bowl in front of them to collect money. Dark hair hung in tangled mats, dirt and grime covering almost every inch of skin. Tucked in on themself, the child looked even smaller.
A child of nothing but skin and bones.
Shen Jiu glanced around, not a single other beggar in sight. Strange for a town this large.
“Child, where is your family?” Shen Jiu asked, stopping in front of the cracked, green bowl.
“Gone,” a very soft voice answered.
The child didn’t look up at him, staying tucked into a small ball shape.
“And where are the others on the streets?”
“Gone too,” the child said.
“Gone where?” Shen Jiu asked.
The child shifted a little and lifted his head enough to peer at Shen Jiu. Tired, green eyes stared up at him, confused and worried. Obviously not used to anyone pausing to speak with him.
Shen Jiu gently dropped two gold coins into the bowl, careful to not further damage the poor item. “Gone where?” he repeated.
“The Opal got them,” the child said.
“The Opal?” he questioned.
Perhaps the child meant someone wearing an opal necklace or some other piece of jewelry. There was certainly no chance that a demonic beast like The Opal would be in a human settlement like this. Opals consumed human life energy, moving from victim to victim with little time between attacks.
Someone had only contacted them about two missing children in two months. Surely if more people had vanished, then their missive would have included that information. Besides, Opals were rare beasts that no street orphan would have heard of. They were only included in the most exhaustive of bestiaries like the kinds housed in the locked archives of Qing Jing Peak.
“What do you mean by the opal?” Shen Jiu asked.
The child just curled back up and Shen Jiu sighed softly. Street urchins were difficult to get information from, but likely had the most complete idea of what actually was happening. Shen Jiu knew how easy it was to be treated like dirt when you had nothing.
Shen Jiu glanced around the deserted street before he knelt down and placed a small piece of his travel jerky into the bowl. He knew firsthand that too much food after starving rarely ended well.
“I will return with more,” he promised and stood back up, dusting off his robes.
The child glanced at him again before grabbing the jerky, then curling protectively around the food. The hungry, desperate look in this small soul’s eyes was too familiar. Even decades later, Shen Jiu still felt the feral, starved street child screaming inside of him.
With practice eased, he kept his face perfectly blank as he noted the child's location near the market stalls, and returned his walk toward the richer areas of town. It wouldn’t do to miss the meeting with the town official who had called for their aid, even if Shen Jiu hated visiting these rich, old men, especially alone.
As he walked, the houses grew larger and the guard presence increased, but still, no other beggars appeared anywhere.
Strange. Had they cleared out the ‘riffraff’ ahead of the arrival of Cang Qiong? Towns had done that sort of thing to make a good impression on the cultivators coming to help them. Shen Jiu wouldn’t put it past this wealthy city to chase out their most desperate citizens to show a flawless facade.
Hypocrites. Scum.
He drew himself up to his full height, took a deep breath, and tightened his grip on the elegant fan his shizun had gifted him when he’d been announced as her successor.
As he neared the gates of the grandest building in town, the scent of ash drifted past. Shen Jiu paused, glancing around for a source. Ash on its own was not unusual, cooking fires, trash burnings, and countless other things could be the cause, but the scent of ash could be associated with demonic Qi.
No signs of fires in the immediate area, no smoke, and no apparent source.
The town had been smart to call for aid if demonic energy was running loose in the streets. He wouldn’t jump to conclusions, but everything about this hunt put him on edge.
Shen Jiu flipped his sleeve and ensured his robes lay smoothly before he walked past the manor entrance.
His sword gave away his status as a cultivator immediately, and in less than a ke’s length of time, Shen Jiu sat sipping mediocre tea as the bureaucrat in charge of this town offered the usual sweet talk of praise for the sect.
Useless.
“Tell me about the problem at hand. Night is only a short time away,” Shen Jiu cut off the idiotic man’s useless blathering, placing his cup down on the nearby table.
“Our young ones are vanishing,” the man said. “Two months ago, the teenage son of our town’s most promising young scholar vanished, never to be seen again. And at the start of this month, the daughter of our esteemed scribe disappeared!”
“Young ones do sometimes leave of their own choice,” Shen Jiu stated blandly.
“Perhaps the scholar’s son,” the man said thoughtfully. “But not this young girl. She is 7 and enjoys helping her mother with the housekeeping. Her parents say she fears the dark, and never would have gone outside at night,” the man declared.
“Why do you suspect a demonic component to this?” Shen Jiu asked.
“Who but a demon could harm a child?”
Shen Jiu was well aware of all the things that could befall children in this world, of the non-demonic dangers lurking behind every gilded door.
“And you say only two have vanished?” he asked the man.
“Only two of note.”
Shen Jiu froze, eyes narrowing. “What does that mean?”
With a wave of a hand covered in jewelry, the bureaucrat said, “If some of the street garbage vanished, then why would that be a problem?”
Shen Jiu instantly thought back to the too-quiet streets he’d just walked through. Only one orphan child, no other begging on the streets or running odd jobs in ragged clothing. Where had all of those children gone? The last time he’d been to this town several years ago, orphan children filled the streets.
He studied the man in his silken robes, who clearly had never known a day of hunger and cold in his life. Shen Jiu knew exactly who the trash here was. His fingers twitched against his fan. Just the smallest blast of Qi and this monster wearing enough gold and jewels to feed a family for years would drop dead.
“Daozhang?” the man called, and Shen Jiu realized he missed whatever nonsense the man had just spoken.
“I will look into the matter,” he said as he stood.
If he stayed here a moment longer, he would kill this man.
“You will? Ah, thank you, thank you Daozhang! I heard of the benevolence of the Can Qiong Mountain Sect, but to see it with my own eyes, you have my unending gratitude.” The man stood to bow.
Shen Jiu hid his face behind his fan to block the sneer pulling at his mouth. He needed out of the gaudy elegance of this mansion. These elegant, rich rooms reminded him far too much of the Qiu’s home to feel comfortable in them a moment longer.
The man directed Shen Jiu to the east side of town to speak with the most recent missing child’s family. Shen Jiu bowed his head, ignored that information, and immediately set out toward where he met the begging child. Nearly rushing down the hauntingly quiet streets, he turned to the corner where the boy had been.
A shard of green pottery laid on the ground with no boy in sight.
He stared at the fragment of the child’s begging bowl as if it could tell him anything. All it told him was that Shen Jiu was no better than that useless Qi-ge. Promising to come back and help, but not showing up when it mattered.
Even though he would soon be the true Peak Lord of Qing Jing, some part of him would always struggle to do anything right.
Forcing his face to stay impassive, he knelt down to collect the broken piece of clay. At least he could bury it in lieu of the body of the street child he’d failed. But then he caught a glimmer of green further down the alley.
Moving towards that shard, he found another and another. A trail of broken clay and tiny drops of blood.
The child had left a trail!
Shen Jiu darted along the trail, not as the head disciple and future Peak Lord, but the street orphan ready to tear apart anything that tried to stop him. He would find that child, he could save at least one child.
He had to save at least one child.
Following narrow alleyways and hardly used roads, the trail led out of the town. The shards got smaller and smaller, but Shen Jiu’s sharp eyes still spotted every fleck of green on the ground. He followed it into the forests surrounding the town’s outskirts.
The overwhelming scent of ash hit him.
He staggered for a moment before using his Qi to clear the surrounding air. A heavy demonic presence lingered here. If that idiot future War God missed this big of a sign, he truly was a useless oaf. Then again, who knew if this section of forest was where his fellow head disciple had gone? Forests surrounded this town on all sides, no shortage of places to hide.
But that didn’t matter. Shen Jiu didn’t need help and didn’t have time to wait. He wouldn’t send out his emergency flares either. If he set one off, whatever had grabbed the child would immediately know someone had followed it.
Shen Jiu moved stealthily through the trees. The shards vanished amongst the wooded floor, but now that the scent of ash saturated the air, Shen Jiu could just follow the demonic energy.
Heavier and heavier, the demonic energy pressed down on him. Shen Jiu nearly staggered under the weight of it until it slammed down across the air like a monsoon breaking. Whatever the creature was doing, it’d reached the peak of activity.
Shen Jiu rushed ahead. There, just past a thicket of vines, had to be the source. He carefully eased a vine to the side, peering past the natural barrier.
Shimmering opalescent skin and a humanoid build, the creature, an Opal, Shen Jiu realized with horror, stood in the center of an array. Its four long needle-like fingers dug into the head of the boy. Its crystal-like body flickered through a rainbow of colors as he absorbed the child’s life force.
The boy’s eyes were closed, but Shen Jiu saw him struggling, still alive. Tiny hands gripped the last piece of the ceramic bowl and cut uselessly at the monster. But the boy’s skin had gone ashen and worse, the dark hair that had once covered the boy’s face paled to a silver-white.
Opals only lived by draining the life of humans, leaving behind a pure white, colorless husk of a corpse. It preferred hunting children because that gave them the most energy, literally feeding on the potential of a future never realized.
Shen Jiu waited not a second longer. Xiu Ya in hand, he struck out, slashing at the appendages draining the boy’s life. The needle-like fingers splintered into pieces and the boy dropped limply to the ground.
Now that the element of surprise was gone, the Opal dodged his next attack as Shen Jiu forced the demon away from the boy. The array on the ground flickered with rainbow colors. Well, time to pull out the stops before this Opal got the chance to teleport away.
He threw Xiu Ya into the air, letting it glimmer above them as his fingers made a quick gesture. Xiu Ya multiplied, turning into dozens of blades pointing down at the Opal. With a sharp downward gesture, the swords thundered down on the monster.
The demon shattered like a glass vase hitting the ground.
He knew every shard was valuable for its beauty and its Qi-channeling abilities, not to mention its healing properties. But right now, Shen Jiu didn’t care.
Scrambling to the pale child, Shen Jiu gathered the boy into his arms and brushed the remaining pieces of Opal shards from the boy’s head. He took the boy’s pale, thin wrist and hoped for a miracle.
A heartbeat.
He channeled Qi into the boy, focusing on the meridians. The drain had left the child’s spiritual veins mangled, twisted like a mandarin left to dry in the sun. He could sense old wounds too, things that never healed right from a life on the streets. Old scars that Shen Jiu recognized from his own past.
But the child lived.
Now that the adrenaline faded, he pushed the hair from the boy’s face and stared into… what could have been a reflection.
The child looked just like him from years ago in a life on the streets. The long, thin nose, the arched brows and fox eyes, though all his hair now glinted like snow, even his eyelashes and eyebrows changed from their original dark color.
Energy twisted in the boy’s weak body and shook Shen Jiu from his staring. The child’s energy spiraled, unbalanced after Shen Jiu introduced his Qi.
This was why he didn’t work as a healer!
He pulled the firework pouch from his robe and grabbed the green and gold-labeled launcher. With a burst of Qi, he sent it flying into the air where it exploded in the call sign for Qian Cao Peak to respond. Hopefully, Mu Shiying would be close enough to assist. This case needed the best healer, and the future peak lord would be just that.
For now though…
The child’s Yin energy plummeted and Shen Jiu cursed under his breath before he pulled a dagger from his boot and slashed across his palm. He let the blood pool as he released the boy’s wrist and gently pried his mouth open and let the blood fall past the pale lips. A dirty but efficient way to give Yin energy, and one Shen Jiu only knew from his time in demonic cultivation.
Weakly, the boy drank as Shen Jiu used his Qi to force the blood to keep flowing while also focusing his senses. The moment a flicker of new energy entered the area, Shen Jiu pulled his hand away, wiping the blood on the ground.
And then another Qi signature showed, and another. Wonderful ! Everyone was responding despite the fact that Shen Jiu had used a Qian Cao Peak summon.
Liu Mingyu arrived with an explosion of trees, sword up and at the ready.
“Ah, wait, wait, wait! That was a call for medical aid, there could be injuries if you just- Annnnd you exploded the trees!” followed the worried voice of the An Ding head disciple, Shang Kexi.
“There is an injured child, you brute!” Shen Jiu hissed.
He used his Qi to deflect the flying pieces of trees from himself and the small boy in his lap.
“What did you do?” Liu Mingyu demanded.
Shen Jiu took a sharp breath. “I saved the missing child, and dealt with an Opal, while you were out destroying trees.”
“You-”
Before the argument could explode any further, the tall, tired figure of Mu Shiying flew in at top speed. Landing gracefully, the Qian Cao Peak head disciple moved instantly to the small boy.
“What happened?” he asked Shen Jiu, calm and sensible.
“Opal attack. His life force drained,” Shen Jiu said. “I barely got to him in time.”
Mu Shiying nodded as he looked around at all the shards of crystal on the ground before taking the boy’s wrist and frowning. “He’s dangerously imbalanced in his energies. I need to take him to Qian Cao Peak for treatment immediately.”
“I can take him. I’m the fastest,” Liu Mingyu said.
Shen Jiu glared, his hand reaching for the boy before he froze. What was he doing? This child, he had no claim or connection to him, except…
He looked at the child again before gathering the small, so dangerously small, child into his arms. Children weren’t supposed to be this tiny, were they? How old could this boy be, after all? 4? 5? Regardless, with the child in his arms, Shen Jiu felt every vertebra along the spine, every piece of bone and muscle in this starving child.
Shen Jiu glanced towards the town and briefly considered burning the fancy manors to the ground. Letting this happen in front of their eyes… how many children just like this little one had vanished with no one caring? How many had fed that creature and died in pain and misery, and no one cared enough to look or even report it?
“I’ll take him,” Shen Jiu stated firmly.
He looked at the two useless idiots, forcing himself to stay impassive, and cold. If no one can tell you’re upset, no one could use it against him.
With a perfectly flat voice and blank expression, Shen Jiu instructed. “Tell the town that we solved the problem. The missing child they reported is likely dead. Look around the area for the corpses. Opals tend to keep the bodies in caves to avoid detection. Collect all the shards, none left behind.”
Liu Mingyu took a step towards him. “You don’t get to tell me-”
“We need to go now or this child is going to die,” Mu Shiying said.
Shen Jiu didn’t say another word as he stepped onto his sword and rushed for Qian Cao Peak with Mu Shiying right behind him.
The entire flight he held tight to the child, whispering softly. “Live. You have to live. Do you hear me? Live. Please. I promise you will never starve again. Just please, stay alive.”