Chapter Text
There was still dirt under Shen Qingqiu’s fingernails when the System interrupted his vigil over Luo Binghe’s new sword mound, even though he’d finished building it days ago.
[ Congratulations! You have successfully completed the key quest, “The Legend Begins: Luo Binghe’s Fall and Rebirth.” Reward: Protagonist satisfaction points +10,000. ]
Shen Qingqiu swallowed. He’d done his duty: his precious white lotus would be blackened and grow into to his vengeful final form. Shen Qingqiu had stopped some of the early abuse… maybe the protagonist’s increased cultivation and better preparation would reduce his suffering in the Abyss? Shen Qingqiu could only hope. He’d avoided remembering the details of the Abyss arc as much as he could before the Conference, but now it was all he could think about.
The System kept talking.
[ However, due to extraordinary circumstances, a new point value has been activated: Luo Binghe’s heartbreak points. Due to an excessively high heartbreak level, Protagonist satisfaction points have been reset to zero. Please continue to work hard! ]
Heartbreak. Reset to zero. These words echoed in Shen Qingqiu’s mind. He’d tried to play by the System’s rules; he’d tried to do what he could to make Luo Binghe’s story better. It had all been for nothing. The look on Luo Binghe’s face as he fell… heartbroken was indeed the right word. In the end, had Shen Qingqiu really changed anything? The scrapes on his knuckles ached as Shen Qingqiu clenched his fists in his lap.
“Shizun?” Ming Fan called from inside the Bamboo House. “Shizun, this disciple is sorry for his delay, but what should be done with the ten thousand spirit stones that were delivered?”
Shen Qingqiu stared at him blankly, the number ‘ten thousand’ not registering as anything other than the points bait-and-switch—how could Ming Fan know about that?
Finally Shen Qingqiu’s brain stuttered into gear. Spirit stones, Ming Fan had said; not B-points or heartbreak points or any other made-up thing.
Were these spirit stones a System taunt? He hadn’t had earned enough points to avoid his scummiest character action, and these stones wouldn’t buy Luo Binghe’s swift and safe passage through the Abyss; it couldn’t undo what Shen Qingqiu had done. It was a fortune, but it couldn’t buy the one thing he really wanted.
“Shizun, have you forgotten?” Ming Fan asked carefully. “At the Immortal Alliance Conference, you bet five thousand…”
Shen Qingqiu suppressed a sound. Perhaps it would have been a bark of laughter. Whatever his intentions, a weird gurgle erupted from his throat.
It wasn’t System who’d made that winning bet!
The one who had orchestrated the salt in his wounds was actually Shen Qingqiu himself. He’d bet those stones, knowing that Luo Binghe would win the Conference, repressing as usual what else would happen to his disciple. And here was his reward! Shen Qingqiu had not only sacrificed his precious lotus, who trusted him, to save his own skin... but he’d pointlessly enriched himself to boot.
Perhaps Shen Qingqiu should buy new robes to wear for the occasion of Luo Binghe tearing off his limbs. Or he could use the windfall to purchase new instruments for the disciples to play, that Luo Binghe could burn when he razed Qing Jing Peak. This time, Shen Qingqiu managed to laugh.
All his foreknowledge had been for naught. He’d vowed when he transmigrated that he wouldn’t make the typical mistakes, but he had. The most important injustice of the novel remained intact. Maybe Luo Binghe was abused a little less, but how much could a warm bed and a proper textbook weigh against near-fatal betrayal and years of suffering in hell?
Shen Qingqiu had spent his time rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship was still going down and the System was determined to rub his nose in it.
Heartbreak points, Shen Qingqiu repeated to himself. The cold and scheming Bing-ge’s heart was too steely to break. Was it possible that by buttering up his little lamb and then throwing him to the wolves, he’d made a worse enemy than the original goods had? Could he have managed to make Shen Qingqiu a scummier villain than Airplane’s original goods?
Shen Qingqiu was giving himself acid reflux. He swallowed once, then again.
He was definitely going end up a human stick.
The System had set what seemed an impossible price on deviating from the Abyss plot, so Shen Qingqiu hadn’t paid it. He’d been happy and content, eating Luo Binghe’s food every day, watching the white lotus bloom, and playing around at being a Peak Lord, developing his favorite side characters as a hobby. But even a few weeks without his disciple had shown him what had made his second life something worth fighting for—and it was that specific thing, that one person, who he’d just sacrificed to save his own stupid skin.
Every night, he was tormented by memories of Jue Di gorge in his dreams. During the day, he missed Luo Binghe’s smiling face, his chirpy but thoughtful questions, and was disappointed by the Peak’s usual ascetic meals.
Whenever his mind wandered, it lingered over thoughts of his disciple, imagined the wounds he was taking in the Abyss. Gusts of wind in the bamboo sometimes sounded like hitching breaths, like those a young man might make while watching terrible wounds heal, feeling the strain of his body repairing itself.
When Luo Binghe returned, Shen Qingqiu’s punishment would be at hand. A long stretch of life as Peak Lord, waiting for his just desserts, stretched before him. What good would years of empty physical comfort be, when he was unable to forget the pain he’d inflicted, and must anticipate his own?
Right now, staggered by the one-two punch of points and stones, Shen Qingqiu felt desperate enough to make another bet—this time with his doomed and miserable life as collateral. Maybe he could salvage the situation. After all, it didn’t seem like he could make it any worse.
Playing by the rules, sticking to the story as best he could—that strategy had failed. Shen Qingqiu needed a new plan: something creative, outside the box. Wouldn’t it be nice if he had an expert on this world and its shortcuts, cheatcodes, and power-ups? Someone who had made a serious study, complete with analysis and criticism, of this world’s mechanics?
Such a person might be able to do something about the mess Shen Qingqiu was in.
“Bring the stones to me in a qiankun bag, and ready my traveling bags,” Shen Qingqiu commanded. “This master must leave within the hour.”
Ming Fan seemed startled by the firm tone of Shen Qingqiu’s voice after weeks of vacant silence, but Shen Qingqiu ignored his lackluster first disciple. A crazy idea was unfurling itself in his mind.
Shen Qingqiu grinned, perhaps hysterically. It wasn’t an expression this body was used to. Since his inadvertent bodysnatching, his face had only borne sedate half-smiles behind a fan. Actually, his cheeks ached a little. The muscles of his face were unused to working.
“Fuck it,” he said. Shen Qingqiu’s elegant and refined voice speaking the obscenity was jarring in the empty room. He laughed, a sound as crazy as he probably looked, and pulled a book off the shelf. After he found the passage he wanted, he began to dig up Luo Binghe’s shattered spirit sword.