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If Shen Qingqiu had transmigrated into a book that actually gave any thought to foreshadowing or logic he would have paid a lot of attention to what Yue Qingyuan said after he woke up. In a book like Proud Immortal Demon Way? The intro exposition was far less concerning than future plans with the protagonist and generally rehabilitating the horrible character he had been inflicted with. Why couldn't he be some normal canon fodder instead? Almost anyone else would have been better!

Since he was preoccupied with the important things, instead of listening when Yue Qingyuan said something about checking the supply lines for some tea that may or may not have been related to Shen Qingqiu's qi deviation he interrupted and sent him away.

The System gave him a very sarcastic sounding point for staying in character, which he accepted with grace. If the System wanted him to sit through the useless exposition, it should have picked a better book, a better character, and a more patient transmigrator.

Two days later the universe's most annoyingly cheerful [You Died!] screen greeted him and he had just enough time to go "What the fuck?" before Shen Qingqiu was waking up back in that conversation.

For lack of anyone else to blame, he glared at Yue Qingyuan.

The sect leader, bizarrely, brightened at the angry expression. It didn't last, especially when Shen Qingqiu immediately tried to angrily climb out of bed, but it was there for a moment. "Shidi, don't push yourself," Yue Qingyuan cautioned.

"What happened?" Shen Qingqiu demanded. As soon as Yue Qingyuan was out of here he was going to be asking that question in a much more relevant setting also known as directly to the fucking asshole System that hadn't warned him about whatever was going on here. Did he just reset? What sort of shitty transmigration functioned as a roguelike!

"Shidi had a qi deviation." Yue Qingyuan moved to stand by the bed, sort of hovering there as though he could herd Shen Qingqui to sit back down with sheer presence alone. It was remarkably useless, especially when he moved out of the way the moment Shen Qingqiu tried to duck around him.

He did feel a bit lightheaded, but not enough that he wasn't immediately...doing something. He was angry, he wanted something to be angry at!

His eyes lit on a desk that was all set out with the paperwork the original had been working on before his qi deviation. Shen Qingqiu was familiar with it, because step one of transmigrating was reading a lot to learn information to avoid making stupid mistakes. Not that it had mattered, since everyone in this setting was very credulous when faced with Shen Qingqiu's new and improved slightly less horrible personality.

Except for whatever had killed him.

Normally, or at least he assumed normally based on the two days he had gotten to establish a normal, there would be tea set out at his desk. It wasn't really surprising that there wasn't any there now, they would have cleaned it up, not let it sit out for days for no reason, but it reminded him….

"That wasn't a normal qi deviation," he said, turning around to face Yue Qingyuan. With luck, that would trigger the exposition he had ignored the first time.

It did.

Who the fuck would poison Shen Qingqiu's tea?

Or rather who of the many people who would want to could manage to poison a shipment of tea leaves that were marked for Shen Qingqiu only in such a way that nobody noticed at any point of accepting it into Cang Qiong, inspecting it, shipping it to Qing Jing, merging it with Shen Qingqiu's tea stores on Qing Jing, making the tea, and importantly not be noticed by the peak lord who was drinking it?

By the fifth time he died, without ever seeing an aggressor, he swore off tea entirely almost immediately after waking up. Yue Qingyuan apologized a lot and promised to fix it, but Shen Qingqiu knew that wasn't going to happen.

"This is so stupid!" he complained to the System, the moment he was alone. "What sort of peak lord dies of poisoned tea!"

[The original Shen Qingqiu had a very suspicious nature, only the most subtle of poisons would make it past him!]

"This wasn't in the book!"

Unless the original had been dodging poison for the entirety of the start of the webnovel. Shen Qingqiu felt like that would have come up. He had made Ming Fan sweep every single step from the entrance to the bamboo house in punishment for letting the poisoned tea through and he knew that realistically there was no way Ming Fan could have detected what he himself couldn't detect. There was no way that the original wouldn't have given out a whole pile of spiteful punishments.

[This System needed a realistic trigger for a large qi deviation in order to place host.]

"This System is full of shit! Qi deviations were already an established issue!"

[Placing a transmigrator after a normal event lacks gravitas! It's poor plotting. This System would never!]

Shen Qingqiu kicked at a chair. "I have enough problems without randomly being poisoned a few days in!"

[Host should think of it as a murder mystery to aid in the development of a fuller plot and a more fleshed out worldstate! The time loop will aid host in his investigation!] the System didn't sound even a little bit sorry.

Swearing off of tea earned him a persistent headache and an extra week.

Eating from only the general stores earned him a few extra days longer in the next loop before either he was killed by some sort of contact poison or the whole peak was wiped out, he was too dead to know which. By the tenth loop he had learned nothing and had a temper to rival the original's. His aura was angry enough that while only the An Ding disciples actually ducked when they felt him coming, it was clear that everyone else wanted to. One of the loops he had even forgotten to rescue the protagonist from the woodshed for a whole day!

"This isn't fair!" he complained at the System. "I can't solve a murder mystery if I'm the victim!"

[This System will provide an easy mode if host survives long enough,] the System said, snippily. [However this System is certain that host could solve it on his own! All the clues are available.]

"There isn't even a crime scene!"

[Host is aware of the cause of death and can investigate further based on that.]

"How many points do I have? I want to buy a hint!"

[Host may not buy hints. All of the information is available to lead host to the poisoner.]

By the thirteenth loop, Shen Qingqiu had a plan.

"I want to go into closed cultivation in the Lingxi Caves," he told Yue Qingyuan, about five minutes after waking up when he would normally be making poison avoidance plans.

Everything avoidance was a bit drastic, but now that he had a goal--live long enough to unlock easy mode--it seemed like the best way forward.

[Host is lazy and uncreative,] the System said sulkily. [This System created a perfect murder mystery start and host just wants to unlock easy mode.]

If Shen Qingqiu wanted a mystery he would have been reading mystery books! Instead he was reading shitty harem novels!

He focused in on Yue Qingyuan, who was looking the most hesitant he ever had in response to a request of Shen Qingqiu's.

Two days of inedia later, much to the annoyance of a Mu Qingfang who probably thought that he was being accused of poisoning after how insistent Shen Qingqiu was to avoid any food or potions or anything and much to the trepidation of a Yue Qingyuan who probably had reasonable reservations that Shen Qingqiu really didn't give a shit about, Shen Qingqiu was allowed into the caves.

He lasted a few cold weirdly relaxing weeks before he was interrupted, but at least someone else was having the qi deviation this time.

"Did Liu Qingge get poisoned because I was in the caves?" he asked, after everything was settled.

After weeks and weeks of dying to an unknown poisoner, he was really smug about fighting Bai Zhan's war god and winning. Even under these conditions! And with healing as the goal rather than killing! It was still an achievement and he was going to hold that close. If the System had given him a more stab based murder mystery he would have clearly been fine!

[No. Liu Qingge's qi deviation was unrelated.]

"How come he gets to have a non-poisoned qi deviation and I had to have an extra special reason?"

[Liu Qingge's deviation wasn't newly created for the transmigration plot.]

"I know! The point stands."

[It does not,] the System said, and then grumpily flashed "Out right now!" screen in his face as though that would win it the conversation.

"Oh fuck off," Shen Qingqiu said, grumpily settling back down on the platform he'd been meditating on before Liu Qingge had so rudely interrupted.

He was tempted, for a moment, to go check on the other peak lord.

Probably best to not, though, Liu Qingge had seemed to be furious even while Shen Qingqiu was extending the olive branch.

Shen Qingqiu supposed that he should probably add Liu Qingge to his list of suspects, actually. The other peak lord would have more motive than half of the people on the list, some of which were huge reaches and some of which had actually been involved in taking Shen Qingqiu down.

It just really didn't seem like Liu Qingge's sort of strategy. It would be pretty hypocritical, if he was trying to poison someone that he mainly didn't like for trying to stab him in the back, wouldn't it?

He tugged the list out of the manual he had it tucked under, scowled at it, and then added Liu Mingyan and Bai Zhan disciples to the list. That seemed more likely, for any Liu Qingge related suspects.

Eventually he had to actually leave the caves, but at least when he did he left with confidence. His qi was more settled, he had a better idea of what he was doing between all the meditation and months of freedom to read and think...maybe that was the easy mode after all!

About an hour later he was dead.

He sent Yue Qingyuan away without listening to any of the intro exposition, told all of his disciples that the next person who stepped foot in the Bamboo House was going to regret it and settled in for a sulk.

Then he called Ming Fan back because someone needed to go fetch the protagonist out of the woodshed and replace his manual and Shen Qingqiu was too busy closing himself off from the world to deal with it. It wasn't like it would matter if he was going to die soon and loop again anyways!

He would stay here for awhile, then go into the caves in time to solve the Liu Qingge issue and stay there even longer, and eventually the stupid easy mode would have to unlock! All he had to do was wait it out!

Three days later, in the middle of the night, he woke up to someone banging on his door.

That was new at least.

Shen Qingqiu grabbed Xiu Ya and edged into the main room in time for the rude person to yell, "Come out, Shen Qingqiu!"

...Shen Qingqiu mentally added Liu Qingge back onto the suspects list. Maybe. This was pretty direct and not poisony at all.

"I'm not taking visitors! Go away!"

The knocking stopped, and then the door burst in.

"Rude," Shen Qingqiu said. He decided, all at once, that he was just going to go with what appeared to be a murder attempt. That was fine, would get him out of what was apparently the very overt assassination route (Did this mean Liu Qingge had been the assassin before, or was this a new line? Had easy mode changed the method?) and would also preserve his 1:0 track record of beating Liu Qingge at fights. It didn't count if he didn't fight back!

He would have said that there was also way less chance of Liu Qingge murdering someone who wasn't willing to fight him, but since Liu Qingge was breaking into a house in the middle of the night to start shit, that suddenly didn't seem so guaranteed.

"Why was my sister on your suspects list?" Liu Qingge demanded angrily.

"What?"

Liu Qingge stalked into the room. His sword was sheathed, and he barely glanced at Xiu Ya as he came within what was technically stabbing range.

Not an assassination attempt?

"My sister was on your list of 'Suspects'! Yue Qingyuan had her detained! Because you had her on your list!"

"A lot of people were on my list basically anyone who might have--" Shen Qingqiu stopped abruptly. "I haven't even made the list this loop yet."

"Liu Mingyan would not try to murder a peak lord!"

Shen Qingqiu had several hundred chapters of evidence to the contrary, including a lot of sneaky scheming, but he couldn't really say that and technically her motivation for that hadn't happened since Liu Qingge hadn't died yet, so he just shrugged.

"Take this seriously!"

"Are you looping too?" Shen Qingqiu asked, distracted by the logistics.

"Obviously."

"How did I die this time?" He hadn't even made it back to Qing Jing. He'd assumed that he'd died from jumping between Luo Binghe and that demon's poisoned armor, but if Yue Qingyuan was detaining cultivators then there had to be more to it.

"Something about the combination of the demon poison and the poison you were already recovering from. The poison you accused Liu Mingyan of inflicting on you!"

"There were a lot of names on that list. Including all of your disciples as a group."

"Only the people directly named were detained. The rest are--were under investigation." Liu Qingge glared at him. "Liu Mingyan would never."

She absolutely would, if given the right reasons, but Shen Qingqiu didn't say that.

Liu Qingge seemed to read it in his face anyways, his eyes narrowing as he got right up close to him, as though saying something in closer proximity would be more convincing. Instead all it was, was more distracting.

Shen Qingqiu resisted the urge to make a face at him. Breaking down his door, getting into his personal space, where were the manners? Maybe people let Liu Qingge get away with these sorts of things because he was so unreasonably pretty for a fighter.

"Okay, fine, she didn't do it," Shen Qingqiu said. "I only even added her after that whole fight in the caves reminded me that you existed and that she maybe had a motive. It's way more likely to be one of your Bai Zhan disciples."

"It's not them either."

"You've got a lot of nots, and not a lot of answers," Shen Qingqiu complained.

"Just don't put her on your list again!"

"I haven't even made a list yet!"

"Then don't!"

"I--" Shen Qingqiu stopped, suddenly realizing. "If you don't want her on the list, then you can help me figure out who it actually is."

Liu Qingge stepped back, giving him a baffled look. "Zhangmen is helping, he said so."

"He's useless." Shen Qingqiu waved his hand, ignoring Liu Qingge's outraged look. "You looped after I died, right? After you all had time to very rudely raid my storage and go through my notes and read the suspect list and detain people on the suspect list--that doesn't happen quickly. That means that you'll have time to investigate the crime scene after I die and help me figure out exactly what killed me this time."

"How many times have you died?" Liu Qingge asked, confused.

"Over a dozen, it's very annoying."

Shen Qingqiu's murder mystery solving plans had mostly involved trying to survive the poisoning for long enough to narrow it down and letting Liu Qingge investigate after his death and then bring that knowledge into the next loop. Of course that assumed that Liu Qingge would keep looping...but it wasn't like Shen Qingqiu would be out anything if he didn't and he was up at least a little bit of information.

Liu Qingge's murder mystery solving plans were different.

Liu Qingge's murder mystery solving plans involved active investigation.

The System had started popping up encouraging quotes, until Shen Qingqiu figured out how to turn that feature off, so at least someone was happy about this.

"Why do I have to come with you," Shen Qingqiu complained.

"Because you are the one dying?" Liu Qingge asked. "Why didn't you already investigate the supply line?"

"Yue Qingyuan is doing that."

"You said he was useless."

"Because he didn't find anything!" Shen Qingqiu scowled at the piles of boxes in the warehouse. "Anyone could get into here."

The An Ding disciple that had shown them to the warehouse where all the goods were initially delivered had run off as soon as he'd let them into the building, saying something about fetching his Shishu.

"You said it wasn't just food," Liu Qingge said, thinking aloud like a proper murder mystery solver. The System was probably ecstatic. "That means it may have never been food, it has to be something you got delivered recently, maybe something that only activated after it opened. Since it's not the same object each time, it might be something that's shielded until you open it and they're sending several."

"It's poison, we know it's poison," Shen Qingqiu pointed out.

"Contact poison." Liu Qingge barely managed to avoid sounding condescending. Shen Qingqiu would have declared him the worst mystery partner, but he was taking to the mystery very enthusiastically so at most he was the meanest mystery partner.

Shen Qingqiu eyed the list of things that were destined for Qing Jing. None of them said specifically which were meant for him and which were meant for the rest of the peak, which meant if someone did add contact poison to any of them they'd need to be someone who was involved in the entire process.

Liu Qingge glanced over his shoulder. "I'm assuming the fans, figurines, and sweets are for you." He did not manage to keep the condescension out of his voice this time.

"The figurines are for one of the elders and the sweets are gifts from a family of a disciple," he snarked back. "Not so easy when you can't rely on assumptions, is it? The fans, some but not all of the books, and one of the fabric shipments are for me."

"I was a third right."

"No one else has died, so that means you need to be entirely right, not just a third." Shen Qingqiu narrowed his eyes at the warehouse. "We need to find out which disciples were involved in the ordering process and how much the ones delivering know."

"I, ah, can help with that?" A nervous voice said from behind them.

They both spun around to find Shang Qinghua hovering in the doorway, having somehow managed to edge halfway inside unnoticed by the two other peak lords. He froze as they both looked at him.

"Is there a reason why shixiong needs to know?" The An Ding peak lord looked exceptionally confused. Though, given the way his eyes kept dodging between Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge, it was hard to say if he was more confused about what they wanted or about why they were both asking.

"One of your disciples might be poisoning me."

"Stop just accusing people of things!" Liu Qingge scolded.

Shen Qingqiu mentally added Shang Qinghua to the list. The list that Shang Qinghua had already been on. He just looked too unsurprised about the poisoning and not nearly indignant enough about the accusation. Before he'd only been on the list because...well because he was Shang Qinghua and the book had made it clear he was a backstabbing asshole, that was why.

"Well, if shixiong and shidi would come for tea we could...talk it over?" Shang Qinghua suggested nervously.

Tea with Shang Qinghua was amazingly useless.

Or at least it would have been if Shen Qingqiu hadn't died again not even an hour after leaving the An Ding peak lord's house.

This time when he looped, he felt almost smug. It was Shang Qinghua, or an An Ding disciple. It had to be. Now all he had to do was wait for Liu Qingge to get back to do most of the work for him and this could all be solved!

A few days later, right on schedule, Liu Qingge showed up. He dragged Shang Qinghua, who clearly had been pulled right out of bed, into the house, and tossed him onto the floor.

"Shixiong what's going on? Liu Qingge won't tell me!" Shang Qinghua wailed, looking like he was five seconds from bursting into tears. "I didn't do anything!"

"We're time looping because I keep dying and you just killed me at tea."

"I didn't!"

"Then one of your disciples did."

"Do you remember who poured the tea?"

"We had it narrowed down to three disciples before I looped," Liu Qingge said, eyeing Shang Qinghua darkly in a way that indicated the actual suspects were three disciples or the other peak lord.

"Catch us up then." Shen Qingqiu said happily, settling at his table. "I'd offer tea but given the situation that seems inappropriate."

They didn't manage to figure out which disciple it was before he died again.

It did, from what Liu Qingge got from that investigation, narrow it down to either Shang Qinghua or one of the disciples. Which meant that if it happened again then it was Shang Qinghua. Since the An Ding peak lord wasn't looping, all they had to do was come up with a reason to detain the disciple and isolate the shipments they'd been involved in, and wait.

When Shen Qingqiu woke up, back in time and being fussed at by Yue Qingyuan, he immediately told the sect leader that it was Shang Qinghua. He was a little bit disgruntled by how obvious it was. Of course the man who would betray the whole peak would murder a fellow peak lord for ignoring him!

He felt a bit bad about not waiting for Liu Qingge when technically the Bai Zhan peak lord was the one who had done all of the legwork, but he could get his credit when the whole mess actually went to trial. At least it was over.

Two days later Shen Qingqiu pulled a fan down from the wall, idly planning to use it with his fancy peak lord robes since there were apparently many meetings in his future, and it was over in a very different sense.

The next loop he didn't accuse Shang Qinghua immediately. Instead went to the caves. He didn't ask permission so much as inform Yue Qingyuan that he was going.

Liu Qingge had been doing the heavy work. so he could do the accusation work too! Shen Qingqiu was tired of dying!

When Liu Qingge didn't show up after three days, Shen Qingqiu assumed he was right.

He did show up after four, looking annoyed. "Come on."

"No I'm staying here, you can deal with Shang Qinghua. I had a fan explode in my face."

"It didn't explode, it was cursed and gave you a qi deviation."

Shen Qingqiu's eyes narrowed. "So now that we've solved the poison issue there's a whole new thing? Why does this world want me dead!"

"Don't be so dramatic. Come on, we need to figure this out."

"Did you at least accuse Shang Qinghua yet?"

"It wasn't Shang Qinghua doing the poisoning, it was a disciple. This is something different."

"Well then I'm staying here." Shen Qingqiu settled back onto the platform he'd been meditating on. "You know where the cursed objects are, you figure it out."

"They're keyed to your qi. Nobody else will be able to find them."

"By exploding them in my face?"

Liu Qingge gave him an exasperated look. "We can sort through it safely, we just need you to do it. I already dragged out your elders to figure out who might have cursed it."

The most bizarre spring cleaning ever, complete with Liu Qingge and a bunch of elders judging him for hoarding choices that he hadn't technically even made, ensued.

It mostly involved him walking close to things while the rest of them judged if the qi was reacting at all or if there was suddenly a qi signature that hadn't been there before. It was very tedious, especially since plenty of the objects might have been reacting for non cursed reasons.

He was mid argument about that, with a fan that he was certain he had used before in another loop with no issue, when he decided to just prove it by picking it up.

The qi burst took him more by surprise than it would have if he hadn't been mid argument about how much he was certain that it wouldn't do that. Enough that he didn't really even register that Liu Qingge had grabbed him as it burst, clutching him close and spinning around to let the bulk of the qi burst bounce off of Cheng Luan's scabbard.

He stood frozen for a moment, awkwardly listening to Liu Qingge's heartbeat while trying to figure out how he heck that fan could possibly be cursed and also why Liu Qingge had grabbed him. It wasn't like dying would be permanent.

"Perhaps," one of the elders said delicately. "It would be safer to assume that this has been building up for a while and just close the whole house until we find the culprit."

Shen Qingqiu pushed himself free of Liu Qingge's hold. It was weirdly hard, like Liu Qingge was worried Shen Qingqiu would touch something and die immediately.

Which, really, wasn't that bad of a plan.

"It might be faster if I just use the loop to trigger everything. Unravelling curses hidden that well would take a lot of time."

Absolutely no one else liked that idea.

Instead they decided, collectively, that everything he used was being quarantined. Clothes, fans, books, everything. He was going to have to borrow fans and clothes from one elder (with the unsaid implication that if those killed him, Liu Qingge would know who was at fault) while the rest split up all of his hoard of things and carefully unwound any hidden enchantments to try to identify a qi signature. It was going to take forever. The only thing of his own that he was able to keep with him was Xiu Ya.

And that wasn't even the worst part of it.

"If you loop again they'll have to start over." Liu Qingge said for the fiftieth time, sounding oddly calm about things. Almost happy.

Which he should not have been, since he was all but dragging Shen Qingqiu to stay at Bai Zhan.

"Your disciples were on my suspect list," Shen Qingqiu sulked.

"Do you really think that Bai Zhan disciples managed to repeatedly sneak into your house and put incredibly intricate curses on all of your things? Poisoning almost made sense, in that if any were cowardly enough to use those tactics they'd be capable of it. This wasn't done by a disciple."

"Once we solve this, it's just going to be some other thing killing me off."

"It's always been both, you just didn't have the perspective to see it."

Shen Qingqiu was a hundred percent certain that the System had said it was just poison, but the traitorous program had been refusing to 'give hints' and wouldn't even let him look at the transcript to call it out with.

"You'll be safe here," Liu Qingge said, giving Shen Qingqiu a look that he could only interpret as reassuring.

"I'd be safer in the caves," he complained. "I could have gone to the caves, in my own clothes, and been fine."

Technically there was nothing wrong with the clothes, and if he really thought about it, it wasn't that different than him having transmigrated into a new body and using Shen Qingqiu's clothes. It felt different, though. They were a different style, probably owing to the elder he borrowed them from having not bothered with the outside world at all for many centuries. The fan was pretty, at least.

"The fan you tried to pick up was safe, in another loop. Whoever did it may have been trying to take advantage of the situation where you were being poisoned. Now they're at risk of being found out."

"Killing me will just make that happen faster."

"That's not for sure. Especially since they know a time loop is going on. The new attacks could be taking that into account."

Shen Qingqiu followed him into what appeared to be the other peak lord's office. There were somehow both more and less books than he would have expected. And a desk! Apparently writing did happen here. "In that case, it might be best to just reset the loop and explain things to them without exposing the loop."

Liu Qingge swung around and frowned at him. "The only way to do that is by dying."

Shen Qingqiu waved his borrowed fan. "It's not a huge deal, I just loop right back around."

"No. You'll be safe here. You can just wait it out." This time it sounded less like a reassurance and more like a threat.

Shen Qingqiu paused, considered that maybe constantly dealing with his dead body meant each loop was slightly more of a big deal for the other peak lord--if slightly hypocritical considering it was the War God talking--and relented. "Well if I'm stuck here then so are you."

Liu Qingge gave him a slightly confused look. "I wasn't planning on leaving."

It took him about a week to admit that maybe, just maybe, Bai Zhan was safer than expected.

It was also rapidly becoming less sturdy than expected since they weren't allowing An Ding in to repair things. And less tasty since everyone was on the rations that had already been on the peak and Bai Zhan didn't seem to stock up on more than the basics. The disciples seemed to be really enthusiastic about this weird siege practice rather than disgruntled like Shen Qingqiu absolutely would have been if he was one of the disciples in question.

He didn't mention it. Yet. If they started getting fussy he might say it just to trick them into deciding it wasn't actually an issue.

"They might end up protecting the borders less if doing so well at it just means they're getting beaten up all the time," he said idly, having invaded Liu Qingge's main room. He wasn't actually sure that was true, but he was running out of topics to use as a pretext for bothering Liu Qingge.

"No they won't," Liu Qingge said.

He spent the next month reveling in not dying for such a long time, bothering Liu Qingge, and ignoring any strange feelings he had about bothering Liu Qingge.

Liu Qingge didn't seem to mind and it wasn't like he had much else to do, so why would it be weird? They even managed to peacefully exist in the same room, Shen Qingqiu reading through whatever non-manual books he could find and Liu Qingge catching up on what appeared to be several years worth of mission reports.

If they sometimes had awkward eye contact, it was just because Liu Qingge wasn't used to guests.

The elders finally traced it back to one of Shen Qingqiu's contemporaries. Which, in retrospect, probably wasn't a surprise. The original had driven off most of the Qing Jing cultivators around his age in the book, so probably it had been dealt with quietly or was some planned plotline that was dropped in favor of Protagonist plotlines.

The disciples had mostly put all of his things back, except for those that still needed to be uncursed. He had about five minutes to enjoy being back in his own, somewhat emptier, house.

Then reality shifted and he passed out.

He did not wake up in front of Yue Qingyuan. Instead he woke up, tied up and striped down to his trousers, in the middle of a stone dais surrounded by ridiculously dense forest.

Something felt off with the qi around him.

It was less pressing than the Qing Jing elder standing in front of him, frowning disapprovingly. The same elder that he'd borrowed his clothes from, which probably explained the striping.

"I was going to return your robes as soon as the disciples washed them," Shen Qingqiu complained. "Isn't this a bit of a dramatic way to get them back?"

"You don't even know who I am, do you?" The elder snapped. "You've driven your martial siblings to violence, don't respect your elders, aren't respected by your martial nieces and nephews--"

"Don't randomly kidnap people to rant at them?" If knowing he was in a time loop made him reckless, well, that was his problem. Shen Qingqiu much preferred waking up to Yue Qingyuan's awkward concern to waking up to a lecture about things that he, technically, did not do!

The elder's eyes narrowed. "You're an arrogant child who needs time to consider how your actions impact others. Qing Jing will be better off without you. Nothing can die in this realm, so you won't be able to escape to the past, and none can leave who don't already know the entrance. Once I leave, there will be no way to track you here, and frankly I doubt there will be anyone who will care to try. If you've learned your lesson by the time I've returned, I may let you leave."

Shen Qingqiu barely had time to process that before Liu Qingge was falling straight out of the sky.

The fight was short and violent and ended with the elder fleeing. Shen Qingqiu half expected Liu Qingge to chase him, but instead the other peak lord immediately spun towards Shen Qingqiu, moving to him in a flash and immediately starting to pull the ropes away from him.

Shen Qingqiu was suddenly very conscious of the fact that he was half naked.

Liu Qingge didn't seem to be. Almost as soon as he got the ropes fully untied, before Shen Qingqiu could even try to get to his feet, he grabbed Shen Qingqiu's face and leaned in close.

For a moment Shen Qingqiu couldn't hear what Liu Qingge was saying, because--it was too close wasn't it? This was too much!

"Are you even listening to me?" Liu Qingge snapped. "Are you poisoned again?" He halfway picked Shen Qingqiu up, ignoring Shen Qingqiu's attempts to stand on his own feet in favor of checking his meridians.

"I'm fine I was just--I was distracted."

Liu Qingge gave him a sharp look, stilling for long enough that Shen Qingqiu was able to squirm out of his hold and step away. Shen Qingqiu shook off the rest of the ropes as he did so and awkwardly crossed his arms like that would cover up the fact that he was very undressed.

"If you couldn't even hear me then something else was clearly distracting you. This is the third way you've almost died, how many more?" Liu Qingge reached for his temple, still talking, and Shen Qingqiu stopped listening again in favor of pivoting away.

"Let me check to see what's wrong!" Liu Qingge said, frustrated.

"Don't get in my face unless you're going to kiss me. You can talk from over there!" Shen Qingqiu regretted the sarcasm as soon as he said it. Partially because it was retrospectively a very stupid thing to say and partially because Liu Qingge suddenly had a very odd look on his face which probably meant that he had managed to offend the person he was depending on to help him with--

Liu Qingge stepped closer, leaning in to kiss him. It was light and gentle and brief enough that if Shen Qingqiu had been an outsider he might have said it didn't count--but--as the person being kissed he was very certain that it counted and also really wanted an outer robe to hide in!

This wasn't an outcome he'd been considering at all, much less one that he'd expected today!

"Will you listen now?"

"No? You can't just kiss me and then expect me to listen. I'm too distracted by you just kissing me!"

Liu Qingge made an embarrassed sound. "Fine, we'll talk when we get back to Bai Zhan. You need to stop nearly getting killed."

"You definitely cannot kiss me and then take me to your home half dressed and expect me to listen."

Shen Qingqiu wasn't sure exactly what argument he was trying to have, but from the way Liu Qingge's ears turned entirely red, he was winning it. Not necessarily surviving it, depending on what new danger was waiting for him back at the sect, but winning it.