Chapter Text
In Luo Binghe's earliest memories, his greatest nightmare was Sect Master Yue.
Sometimes, when Ning Yingying was trying to reassure herself that she still knew her husband, she would reminisce with him about their days on Qing Jing. "Do you remember when those demons invaded," she'd say, "and Shen Qingqiu sent you out to fight one of the demons all by yourself?" (She'd excised the word "shizun" from her vocabulary after the trial, with a meticulousness that spoke louder than the word itself, and now referred to him as if he were a stranger.) "I was so scared that day," she'd say, as if she, too, was not sure what she’d really felt during those days when she believed Shen Qingqiu hung the stars in the sky and would never allow any harm to come to his favorite, and only female, disciple; and now Ning Yingying needed reassurance from Luo Binghe that she had indeed been scared.
Luo Binghe would coo and fuss over her and make her her favorite sweets that she only ate half of because she was still trying to lose the baby weight; he just liked that she liked the cooking and he liked to do something with his hands, and she liked to believe that his cooking had something to do with her. He liked to believe it, too.
Other days, when Liu Mingyan paid her (strictly timely, no sooner and no later than extremely regular) visits to her husband, Ning Yingying would ask her about those days at Cang Qiong within Luo Binghe’s earshot. “Weren't you scared, Shimei?" Ning Yingying would ask Liu Mingyan.
"No," Liu Mingyan said.
"How could you or I be scared with Liu-shimei there to set such a good example?" teased Luo Binghe, and Liu Mingyan's eyes curved with amusement. Approval. Liu Mingyan was not like Sha Hualing, who could be put in her place (and liked to be put in her place) with a vicious enough hand; Liu Mingyan could not be impressed by anything less than real substance, and Luo Binghe took great care to have always done something worthwhile recently, so as to keep her standards in check, and ensure that she had no good reason to leave him.
"Not even a little afraid?" Ning Yingying pouted, and Luo Binghe gave her his gentlest smile and patted her head.
It was for Ning Yingying's own good. Women always think they want to hear about their man's vulnerabilities until they do.
If Luo Binghe had to be rigorously honest with himself—which he strove to be on principle in the pursuit of complete mastery over his own dreamscapes and to render his psyche invulnerable to the many demons that could pry at the mind—he could admit that he had been afraid that he would die before he accomplished anything of worth, and that his mother would have spent the last years of her life raising a boy who could not repay her efforts. He’d been afraid of that all the time, back in those days, and it had nothing in particular to do with Sha Hualing’s invasion. It had everything to do with the jade Guanyin around his neck, which he’d lost and never found.
So self-deception made one weak, and so it was not in Luo Binghe’s interests to self-deceive; and so he was honest with himself in the privacy of his own minds if not his wives: his worst fears had nothing to do with disappointing his shizun because his shizun had been disappointed with him at least seven times a day, and it carried all the fear of a deep bruise stepped on for too long. Nor did he fear the woodshed, not really; the woodshed happened when he was a disappointment, and he was always a disappointment. Only people with something to lose had something to fear.
This was why, for Luo Binghe's entire adolescence, the only person he feared was Yue Qingyuan.
Every seven days, or sometimes even more frequently, Sect Master Yue would come to visit Shen Qingqiu. Luo Binghe was forbidden from being anywhere near Shen Qingqiu's bamboo house, and for the most part, he did exactly as Shen Qingqiu commanded and then some with a sort of hopeless fanatacism, since Ming Fan would inevitably tell Shen Qingqiu that Luo Binghe had disobeyed him regardless. But one day, Ning Yingying remarked idly, "A-Luo, I think they're talking about you."
So on that rare occasion, Luo Binghe disobeyed Shen Qingqiu on purpose. He crept up to the window of Shen Qingqiu's bamboo house. The window slats had privacy spells attached, but if the window was just barely cracked, the talisman would not seal; Ming Fan had broken it months ago and had not yet found a way to blame it on Luo Binghe, and so it had never been fixed.
This part, Luo Binghe hated to think about. He hated to think about it so much that he’d had more than one dreamscape ripple and warp in his hands, melt all over his fingers like sugar. “You must confront that which is within you lest it be used against you,” Meng Mo would warn him, night after night, until at last Luo Binghe gritted his teeth and clenched his fists and admitted to himself:
He had gone to that window in hopes of hearing that his shizun, who was so cold and punishing to him during the day, might be harboring a secret soft spot for him.
In Luo Binghe’s adolescent mind, Zhangmen-shibo came every week to listen to Shen Qingqiu confide those secret matters that Shen Qingqiu could not in public to his disciples, lest it undermine his own authority: That little beast is finally mastering the fundamentals, Shen Qingqiu would admit, somewhat grudgingly (even in Luo Binghe’s own imagination). But at last his true potential will come through. With enough practice, perhaps he’ll surpass even Ming Fan.
Ah, so that’s why Qingqiu-shidi is so strict with him, Yue Qingyuan would say. High standards for those disciples we have high hopes for.
And then from every day onwards, no matter how harshly Shen Qingqiu reprimanded him, Luo Binghe would be insulated with the warm glow that someone out there expected something of him, enough to punish him to greatness.
But what Luo Binghe heard instead was:
“Surely that boy has not misbehaved so much as to warrant such frequent punishment,” Sect Master Yue said, and Shen Qingqiu replied with the clip of a sword sliding into a sheath: “He’s underfoot.”
“…It must be difficult, to have to discipline one disciple so harshly.”
Maybe Shen Qingqiu could hear the critique: that Yue Qingyuan not only thought the punishment was harsh, but excessively so. Shen Qingqiu replied to an entirely different critique: “How difficult could it be? Am I unfit to keep up with the basic responsibilities of a Peak Lord?”
"I only mean to say that if Qingqiu-shidi prefers, and if the boy does not live up to Shidi’s standards," said Yue Qingyuan, "this shixiong can take the boy off your hands."
And in that moment, Luo Binghe realized that he did have something to lose.
If nothing else, Shen Qingqiu had chosen Luo Binghe at the Cang Qiong entrance test. His shizun, although he had hated him, had still chosen him. And it wasn't like Shen Qingqiu couldn't kick him back out of Cang Qiong—if Shen Qingqiu really wanted to, he could order Luo Binghe to leave whenever he liked.
Here was Yue Qingyuan, offering to take Luo Binghe away, if Shen Qingqiu no longer felt like choosing him.
From then on, every time Yue Qingyuan came to visit, Luo Binghe felt a cold pit of dread in his stomach that he would not experience even when up to his elbows in corpses, or waist-deep in the Demon Realm's blood-maggot pools, or trying not to puke back up the offal he'd been forced to eat in the Abyss. When Luo Binghe saw Yue Qingyuan on Qing Jing, even from a great distance, Luo Binghe would think: Shizun could get rid of me right now. Zhangmen-shibo could take me away from Shizun today. Shizun will finally give up on me.
And then Luo Binghe would think that all those times that Shizun had beat him, all those times Shizun had deprived him of food and locked him in the woodshed, it had all been because Shizun was trying to improve him, to grind out those horrible imperfections that only Shizun could still see in Luo Binghe, and that Luo Binghe had not been grateful enough that Shizun still bothered to beat him; that every day that Shizun punished him was another day that Shizun was giving him another chance to do better and improve himself; and that every single day before this one was a day that Shizun had chosen Luo Binghe all over again, just like Shizun had chosen him at the entrance test; and Luo Binghe swore that if only Yue Qingyuan did not take him away from Shizun now, Luo Binghe would be a hundred times more grateful to Shizun a dozen times every day for choosing this worthless and foolish and stupid disciple, if only, if only, if only Yue Qingyuan wouldn't save him now.
And Yue Qingyuan never did.
Yue Qingyuan came quite often, in those days, to inquire about how much Luo Binghe had been punished and how much Luo Binghe had deserved it and if Shen Qingqiu might reconsider this and if Yue Qingyuan could assist in any way. He almost always came the day after Luo Binghe had spent a night in the woodshed. He rarely spoke to Luo Binghe directly and he did not ever justify or explain his presence on Qing Jing and he would leave shortly after. But, for all this, he never did take Luo Binghe away from Qing Jing. The pit in Luo Binghe's stomach would not dissolve for days afterwards, until Luo Binghe could no longer tell if the knot of unease was fear of Yue Qingyuan taking him away, or fear of Yue Qingyuan leaving him there.