Chapter Text
Year One: Denial - Shang QingHua
Knowledge of Shen Qingqiu's passing reached Shang Qingqiu before it reached the rest of the sect. He knows the moment it happens, really. They never tell you that no matter how far away you run after setting an array, once it activates you'll always be able to feel the tug, the draw to that point miles away where hope lives.
When he feels that tug on his qi Shang Qinghua laughs–-a small, quiet huff. "Cucumber-bro, you crazy bastard. You really managed it."
Shang Qinghua has been in this world for longer than he lived in the modern one. He's seen his fair share of death. Growing up in a pre-industrial world, no matter how many people fly on swords and heal grievous wounds with only qi, there are three times as many people who succumb to illness and famine, or simply starvation. Not to mention all that he's seen as a cultivator or as Mobei-jun’s spy. So yes, Shang Qinghua is intimately familiar with death and all that it means.
Shang Qinghua’s familiarity with death, however, is irrelevant. Shen Qingqiu is not actually dead.
Well, okay, yes, he is dead but he's not going to stay dead. Sure, the plan they made was derailed completely when his son—Luo Binghe—came back from the Endless Abyss two years too early!!
(Seriously, how did he do that?) And maybe the Sun-Moon Dew mushroom body was woefully underdeveloped for a soul transplant, but the fertilizer fixed that! Sure, he almost rotted the whole thing but it's fine. Shen-bro still got to it in time.
Cucumber-bro is going to wake up.
Shang Qinghua is not going to be alone in this awful internet-less world for long. Sure, Cucumber bro is crass, and would rather eat a Golden-Agony Lemon than verbally admit they are friends, but Shang Qinghua knows that they are friends. Just like he knows how Cucumber-bro is going to dig his way out of the dirt bitching and moaning about whatever crime against storytelling he thinks Shang Qinghua committed this time.
Shang Qinghua believes this whole heartedly. He believes this when he feels that gentle tug on his qi telling him that the array activated, he believes this when he flies to the borderlands with a pair of clothes and a get-away bag containing everything Cucumber-bro will need for rogue cultivating.
He believes this when all that greets him is an undisturbed patch of dirt covered in glowing white mushrooms.
He continues desperately to believe this as the weeks tick by one after another with no sign that mushroom patch being anything other than a very sparkly mushroom patch.
As the weeks turn to months turn to years, Shang Qinghua believes that Shen Qingqiu will wake up.