Work Text:
“So,” the disciple sitting next to Shen Jiu whispers to her friend, “What did you see last night?”
“Shijie! Not here,” her friend protests.
Shen Jiu usually doesn’t care for gossip, but he has to admit these girls have peaked his attention. Their low tones remind him of the jiejies at the Warm Red Pavillion.
“Shizun isn’t even watching right now! So just spill!”
Shen Jiu has to force himself to stay focused on the task at hand. They’re working on their calligraphy right now, a task that usually has his hand tensing at the memories it triggers. This kind of task requires all of Shen Jiu’s focus.
Still…
“Well, I did it like you said. I put the two mirrors across from each other and lit a candle,” she starts.
Her friend has no patience for this dithering. Neither does Shen Jiu, to be honest, “And?”
“I think I saw my soulmate!” the second girl exclaims, “He had these dark eyes and a tapered jaw. You know, I think it was Liu-shidi!”
The girl on Shen Jiu’s left shrieks and his hand jolts at the sound. He frowns down at the ruined paper. He’ll have to start all over.
“Ah, this shijie is sorry Shen-shidi!”
“It’s nothing,” he says and grabs another sheet of paper.
Who would want Liu Qingge as a soulmate? That absolute brute…
“I’m glad you didn’t see your coffin or anything, you know, I heard from this girl on Qiong Ding Peak…”
But Shen Jiu stops listening after that point. As he focuses on his calligraphy, he wonders if there’s any validity to what they were saying. It felt childish to believe, but it stuck in his mind until it’s time to stop.
At the end of class, his calligraphy reads,
Candle in the night
Wind against the walls
What calls at this time
Fate with no escape or
A fresh dawn
Later that night, Shen Jiu slinks into the woodshed. Most nights, he couldn’t bear to sleep in the dorms so he had made this his place of rest in the meanwhile. In his arms are the heavy bronze mirrors that he’d borrowed from the spiritual array supplies. They weren’t exactly being used after all.
(In his haste, he didn’t notice that they had special engravings along the rims.)
As thick as they are, they are able to stand upright without any interference on Shen Jiu’s part. He fetches his candle and lights it with a snap of qi. He feels a fool when he crouches down to hold the candle in between the mirrors. He watches as they stretch on and on, seemingly infinite in that mirror realm they hold.
He concentrates on the repeating image and wonders how those girls ever saw any sort of image besides the candle. Despite that, the image is almost meditative. Lost in trying to find his future in the candle stretching on, he misses when the rims of the mirrors begin to glow until it’s too late.
In a great blast of light, he’s nearly blinded and a great spiritual blast sends him flying onto his back.
After a fen or so, he comes to and peers at the mirrors. The candle has gone out but he lights the moon pearl he keeps on hand and peers at the mirrors.
Clearer than any mirror has ever been, he sees a face reflected back at him that is not his own. Though he almost mistakes it for such at first.
It’s uncanny how similar they look. They could be related, it’s so close. In the mirror is a youth of similar age. He has the same nose bridge and jawline. Even the curve of their lower eyelids are the same.
The biggest difference is how criminally short Shen Yuan’s hair was. Even as a slave and Wu Yanzi’s disciple, Shen Jiu always had the privilege of keeping his hair quite long. Despite wanting no connection to his ancestors, he understood the importance of it to society in general.
The boy in front of him has his cut in a sharp manner. The front bangs are longer than the rest which is almost shaved to the sides of his head. But it doesn’t look messy like most slaves or criminals’ hair; it’s strange but neat.
Despite this, he has a strange cream on his face. There’s a small drop of blood on his cheek and some sort of tool in hand. His head ducks down and he comes up with a clear face, the blood wells up once again but he doesn’t take mind of it.
“Whoa! Who are you?” the youth asks. Even though Shen Jiu can hear his voice, he’s vaguely aware that the sound is playing in his mind rather than coming out of the mirror. It’s a strange thing to realize.
The magic of the situation, though it caught him off guard, doesn’t lower his defenses, “You first,” he demands. The boy doesn’t shy away from his harsh tone.
“I’m Shen Yuan,” he says so casually with a smile. It reminds Shen Jiu of those two girls in class. Was this something Shen Jiu could really have? Was someone for him really in reach? “Are you some sort of magician?”
“This one is Shen Jiu,” he answers before lifting his chin a little bit, “A cultivator,” he says.
As he expected, Shen Yuan is impressed by his status, “I thought those were only in novels! How is it that you’re in my mirror right now?”
His mirror, Shen Jiu notes. Shen Yuan must be a young master of some sort to have such things readily at hand. That knowledge tugs at Shen Jiu in a bad way. How is Shen Yuan supposed to be his if he has a family, or a place that he belongs?
Yue Qi had been his once, before he had anything at all. Then once he gained all he wanted, he left Shen Jiu in that hell hole.
“It was a ritual of sorts – to show one their fate,” he answers, wondering what this young master will do with that sort of information.
“Fate?” Shen Yuan exclaims, “How’s that supposed to be? I’m not- I mean, also, I’m pretty sure we’re in completely different worlds!”
Shen Jiu’s brows furrow, “Explain.”
And Shen Yuan does. Though Shen Jiu cannot see anything of the items Shen Yuan holds up for demonstration through the mirror, his gesturing and explanations do a lot of heavy lifting, “Well, unless this is an isekai thing. I know I don’t have much time left but to be warned of it so early, what kind of story is this anyway?”
“Isekai?” the word sounds so foreign on his lips, “This Shen Jiu assures Shen Yuan, this is no story,” he says.
Shen Yuan seems a bit skeptical but nods, “I guess so. I’ve never read anything about a character named Shen Jiu. Anyway, if we’re ‘fated’,” he says with a strange gesture involving his fingers curling up by his face, “somehow, you don’t need to talk so formally. We can at least be friendly, right?”
Shen Jiu considers it. He thinks Shen Yuan might be right. Until he can figure out how to get Shen Yuan to his side, he should get to know his person.
In case Shen Jiu had any remaining doubts concerning the difference in worlds, Shen Yuan announces he has to go his morning class and says goodbye.
It isn’t until he’s gone and the light dies down does Shen Jiu consider he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to get back in contact with the man who is supposed to be his soulmate.
More than that, are they truly matched? Shen Yuan seems to not have a care in the world. Pampered and almost lackadaisical, those have always been Shen Jiu’s least favorite people. But he didn’t shy away when Shen Jiu snapped. He didn’t look down on his either. Instead, he was gentle and seemed interested in him.
The first thing he’d done, after he’d gotten over the shock, was to smile at him. Shen Jiu’s cheeks warmed at the memory.
Though he keeps the mirrors with him as often as he can bear, he doesn’t have the chance to meet Shen Yuan until a few years later.
His Shizun is about to ascend and this whole peak will be his by tomorrow. Still, he aches for something that’s his alone. The peak is shared by the sect, no matter how hard he’ll try to keep it for himself.
He sits at his desk, isolation pulling at his core. He worked so hard to get here. He even showed Yue Qi that he didn’t need anyone to pull himself out of his misery. He was one of the twelve most promising cultivators in their generation. That meant something.
Shen Jiu from all those years ago would spit on him if he knew that Shen Jiu wasn’t completely relishing in the power he had earned.
His hands were full. His prospects endless.
But he was alone.
And maybe he always would be. The mirrors had merely been a trick to lure him into this fugue state.
The promise of companionship had ruined him once again.
It’s in this spiraling of thoughts that the mirrors begin to shine once more. They’ve been placed on a table on the other side of the head disciple’s quarters. He jumps out of his seat and strides quickly over to the table.
The mirror displays Shen Yuan once more. He blinks at Shen Jiu like he can’t really believe he’s really there. The man puts a hand against the mirror, “Am I dreaming again?”
“Shen Yuan,” escapes before he can put a stop to it. The man looks different. He doesn’t seem to have physically aged as much as Shen Jiu has, but he looks worse for it. His cheekbones are slightly more pronounced and there are dark bags under his eyes.
Who let this happen to him? Had his family fallen out of luck? Was he no longer supported?
“You caught me at a bad time, it seems,” he says, letting a wet cough out before wiping his lips, “If you’re real that is.” Shen Jiu catches sight of a small smear of red by his lips. He was no Qian Cao disciple, but that usually wasn’t a good thing.
“Shen Yuan is… ill,” Shen Jiu puts together.
The man barks out a harsh laugh, “That’s one way to put it. Falling apart, dying, tearing at the seams, I have a few more choice words for it,” he says. He hadn’t had this bite to him all those years ago. Or maybe he had but it simply hadn’t come up.
Shen Jiu puts his hand against the mirror. The spiritual energy contained in it is impressive after the years he’s tried to get Shen Yuan’s image to reappear. If he could just share something with the other man. If they weren’t stuck in different universes.
He feels the energy leave his palm and get absorbed. But it certainly wasn’t by the mirror. The energy moves and circulates and flows back through his palm. It feels clear and smooth coming back in. He moves the qi through his body and it soothes his ever-painful meridians.
“Did- did you just do that?” is the last thing he expects to hear.
“You felt it? I did mention I’m a cultivator, didn’t I?”
They remove their hands from the material and Shen Yuan looks down as though he’d been blessed. Despite the condition of his body and his currently poor looks, Shen Yuan brightens up at that, “I guess I have no choice but to believe you,” he says, “Where have you been the past few months anyway?”
Few months? Did time not pass the same either? Is that why Shen Yuan was so hard to get in contact with?
“The mirror just turned on just now. Useless thing, staying off for all this time,” he gripes.
Shen Yuan gives him a familiar smile and turns his head to the side, “If you couldn’t get it to turn on, then is it possible it’s something I did?” he asked.
“Yes, with all of the cultivation power you surely have,” Shen Jiu deadpans.
Shen Yuan doesn’t take offense at this. Instead, he seems to take it as a challenge, “We’ll see who gets the mirror to work next time.”
Those words are just a reminder, however, that this conversation, like all others, will come to an end. “I suppose we will.”
“Do you have school starting soon again?” he asks, recalling the reason their talk ended the last time.
“In case you didn’t notice, I’m not exactly fit to go to school,” Shen Yuan shoots back, “But yeah, I can talk a little longer. What kind of things are happening in cultivator world?”
And when Shen Jiu finds that he can speak to Shen Yuan without judgement, he wonders what kind of gift this was from the mirror. If he and Shen Yuan were never to meet, would he encounter the man’s reincarnation? Or was this to be his coffin? A pit where he would never emerge from whole again.
“Can we try that energy thing again?” Shen Yuan asks, leaning in closer to the mirror. His hand is pressed up against the mirror and Shen Jiu places his hand against the bronze. It’s cold against his skin but he tries to imagine the warmth of Shen Yuan against him, the feeling of his skin, how their fingers might interlock. But he can feel nothing at all.
As an orphan, as a slave, as a disciple with a ruined cultivation base, he craved so much all the time. He was greedy and clawed at the world around him – trying to make purchase on whatever power he could get. It was the only way he could protect himself.
But looking at Shen Yuan like this, he yearns for something else.
He thinks he’s starting to know what that is.
He watches as Shen Yuan rants and rants about the book he’s been reading. He seems to like it, or at least likes tearing it apart. Shen Yuan had taken to keeping a small handheld mirror (the idea of which is astonishing to Shen Jiu) and bringing it around the house so they can talk for longer periods of time.
The two of them have taken to doing tasks while “on the phone” as Shen Yuan refers to their communications.
Shen Yuan isn’t working on any certain task right now, though. Instead, he’s lying on his side in bed, his hair smushed into a comfy looking feather pillow as he rambles on and on about this ‘Luo Binghe’ character.
It’s quite the sight.
On his end, Shen Jiu has been laboring over the curriculums left behind by his Shizun. He’s trying to create his own as the youngest disciples left behind by the past generation are ready to graduate and they will be opening up the sect to new disciples. Surprisingly enough, Shen Yuan seems to have interest in education and children – holding the compassion that Shen Jiu lacks.
Over the last years, they’ve become regular companions. Though Shen Jiu dreads how much busier he will become when the new disciples enter.
In the end, it had been Shen Yuan who had figured out how to turn on the mirror arrays. It took a drop of his blood on the mirror. However, it would only work if the mirror was sufficiently charged with Shen Jiu’s energy. And while it worked for any mirror in Shen Yuan’s dimension, Shen Jiu could only see him on the two original mirrors. One, he kept locked away in the side room of his bamboo house for safekeeping.
“And is this ‘Luo Binghe’ more interesting than me?” he finds himself asking, interrupting Shen Yuan in the middle of his sentence.
Shen Yuan looks a little shocked by this question, “Well, he’s just a character,” Shen Yuan starts, “and you’re my best friend.”
As if on instinct, the two of them put their hands together on the mirror and Shen Jiu begins to circulate his energy. It’s a comforting feeling – something he never got from his peers as a disciple. Loathe as he was to have anyone touch him in such a way.
Somehow, maybe through the similar features or the physical distance, Shen Yuan feels safe. He still doesn’t understand why the mirrors linked them together in this way. But he doesn’t think he could ever bear to let go.
In a sect where his martial brothers and sisters despise him. Shen Yuan is the only one who sees him without bias. The only one who listens to him.
For once, he has someone on his side. There are no promises attached but he’s certain the man won’t ever leave him.
“Shen Yuan,” he says when the man’s eyes flutter closed. His eyes don’t open but he hums to let Shen Jiu know he’s listening.
Sharing energy like this always relaxes him, “I won’t let you go,” he says, gauging his friend’s reaction. He hums in accordance and keeps his eyes shut, “I know.”
When the cultivator pulls his hand away from the mirror, his eyes train on Shen Yuan’s palm. There’s a storm inside his chest as he lifts the mirror up – watching to see if Shen Yuan’s eyes will open. He can’t share this vulnerability just yet.
It’ll be his last secret.
He presses his lips against the cool bronze and pulls away with a hum, “And you?” he asks.
“I wouldn’t give up Jiu-er for the whole world,” Shen Yuan promises. His words are like a balm on Shen Jiu’s soul. One day, he will tell the other man his feelings.
But for now, this connection would be enough. He watches Shen Yuan fade to sleep before continuing to edit the curriculum. When the connection sputters out and his image disappears, Shen Jiu knows that he’ll see him again.
Their last call over the mirror happens at the dead of night a few years later. Shen Jiu is up late grading papers when he hears a scream. He hadn’t even noticed the mirror start glowing, but when he hears the noise, he runs over to it to check.
He can’t quite see what’s going on, but he hears a woman’s voice, “San-ge, please, wake up!” the voice cries, sobs pouring into Shen Jiu’s head. It’s the first time he’s ever heard someone else through the mirror.
Even worse is that there’s a large splatter of blood reflected on his side but no other image.
Though he doesn’t hear any other voices, the woman starts talking, “Yes, hello? Please come, my brother, he’s not breathing at all! We’re at the Willow Heights, apartment 1127, I don’t know how long he’s been like this,” she’s uncontrollable and all Shen Jiu can do is listen.
She starts to speak again but the connection sputters out and Shen Jiu is left alone in his bamboo house, alone in the world, and there’s not even a soul he can talk to about it. Absently, he can feel his qi starting to pick up and become violent, but he can’t reason with himself to get it under control.
It whips through his meridians, tearing up his spiritual veins, and it hurts. His heart feels like it’s tearing itself apart – fiber by fiber as his qi rises and starts to manifest outside of him – opening up his skin and rending his flesh apart.
Someone bursts into the bamboo house and his knees collapse on the ground beneath him.
After that, it all turns dark.
When Shen Yuan opens his eyes, he reaches for the body beside him. The two of them almost appear to be mirror images of each other: Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu. That’s how it always felt.
Shen Jiu, or as he had learned five years ago, Shen Qingqiu, had seemed like this mystical guardian when they first met. With his long hair and his glowing, pale skin, Shen Yuan had looked into the mirror and thought he was looking at an angel.
Turns out, it had been too soon for him to die and instead he had been face-to-face with fate itself. What sort of fate they were meant to be was still unanswered, but he knew their connection better than anything in the world.
After he… ended up in this world, he thought he knew what to expect. He was to be the scum villain and carry out the story – or change it best he could. With nothing controlling his actions, he went about doing what he thought needed to be done that first day.
His first move was trying to put Luo Binghe into the dorms, only to find out he wasn’t even on Qing Jing Peak. His second was to find a mirror to connect to Shen Jiu, but that was when he found out the most devastating news.
He had ended up as Shen Jiu. The mirrors he found were exactly as his friend had explained. It could only mean that his friend was gone.
After that, he hadn’t been up to doing much at all. It felt like his chest was hollowed out inside. He went to classes when the hall-master’s confronted him, but didn’t think he was doing such a good job.
It was almost funny. He was finally able to do the job he’d wanted for so long, finally free of an ill body, but he felt like he’d sunk to the lowest moment of his life.
A month later, he decided he could actually take matters into his own hands. If Shen Jiu wasn’t here next to him, he’d simply have to bring him back. Shen Yuan was keeping the body alive, so maybe if he simply ‘vacated the premises’ Shen Jiu could return.
He had hope that Shen Jiu’s soul was still lingering around.
Now, five years since he’d ‘awoken’ from his qi deviation, the two bodies – one created from the Sun-Moon Dew Mushroom – were atop the array he’d completed three years into his transmigration.
He holds onto the wrist of Shen Jiu’s original body and tries to calm himself down and feel for a pulse.
There’s nothing.
He crawls on top of the body until he’s straddling it – all shame thrown to the wind – and puts both of his hands on Shen Jiu’s chest, pushing his qi into Shen Jiu’s meridians. Trying, hoping that something would respond.
Just a twitch of an eyelid or some qi pushing against his, that’s all he asks for. Is it really too much?
But the body stays still and unmoving.
Shen Yuan’s plan had failed, as carefully thought and artfully constructed as it was. And he never even got to tell Shen Jiu that he-
For the first time since he ended up in this world, he begins to cry. His face, a mixture of Shen Jiu’s and his own, twists away from its immortal beauty into something more like crumpled paper.
Would he really never get to see Shen Jiu again? Weren’t they supposed to be fate?
Or was Shen Yuan always supposed to be the coffin awaiting for his friend?
He collapses once more to the floor next to Shen Jiu’s body and lifts the hand – unresponsive and growing cold. Had his efforts truly been wasted? After all Shen Jiu had done for him in life, Shen Yuan couldn’t return the favor.
His eyes fall shut and he brings the hand to his chest. It’s as smooth and perfect as any other immortals, but Shen Yuan has lived in his life, he knows the effort he put into his cultivation and training. He can feel where the scars used to be. He can imagine how the calluses felt.
Shen Yuan thinks back to when he was still in his original world. Sometimes, after sharing energy, he would shut his eyes and wait.
Shen Jiu never knew – always claimed that he could feel no warmth or sensation through the mirror. But that wasn’t the case for Shen Yuan.
He still remembers the feeling of Shen Jiu’s lips pressing against the palm of his hand – the simplest flutter of warmth.
Curling onto his side, he uncurls the fingers while they’re still mobile and returns the favor. He presses one last promise into the palm of his soulmates hand and wishes…
If only they could have had one last goodbye. If only Shen Yuan had known he would lose him. He never would have pushed his feelings down.
He feels the sun on his back as the first dawn of the new year rises. Now that he was no longer Shen Qingqiu, he would have to leave soon. The other peak lords would have questions that he simply couldn’t answer.
Then… a twitch.
The hand he’s holding grabs onto him and Shen Yuan opens his eyes to a new morning. Shen Jiu is in front of him, awake, and staring, “Shen Yuan,” he starts, “A-Yuan,” he tests, “You came back for me.”
His eyes, still raw from crying just minutes ago, start to water once more, “I told you I couldn’t give you up, didn’t I?”
Shen Jiu pulls on his hand until they are shoulder to shoulder, still lying on the floor, “Does that mean, this body you’ve created, is just for me? That you are mine until the end?”
“Jiu-er!” he says, scandalized by the language he’s using, “I- You-“
And when he can’t seem to string together anything coherent, Shen Jiu takes it into his own hands to shut him up. Shen Jiu’s lips press against him and they’re warm and soft and more than Shen Yuan could have ever hoped for.
All those lonely nights in the bamboo house, slaving over the array or the body in his backyard. The pretending he’d had to do to keep his position on the peak. The agony he’d shoved down so he could focus on his friend.
This one kiss made it all worth it.
It would be difficult to explain the situation to the peak, but now they would truly have the rest of their lives together.