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When Emperor Luo Binghe chokes on poison, Qiu Haitang stands by and does nothing. 

First Wife Ning panics and runs toward him. Second Wife Sha giggles in delight as her nails elongate into claws. As she lunges at their shared husband, Third Wife Liu sighs and unsheathes her sword. 

The banquet hall descends into utter chaos in the span of seconds. No one notices how Fifth Wife Qiu slips away in the noise. 

It’s rare that Xin Mo isn’t on Luo Binghe’s person. It’s probably why Sha Hualing and Liu Mingyan decided that today was the day to attack him. 

Qiu Haitang hopes that they succeed. She might not know them that well, but she believes that they, too, deserve their happy ending. 

She won’t be around to see it, though. 

Xin Mo’s hilt is warm to the touch. The longer she holds it for, the more it heats up until it is like a hot coal in her hands. Qiu Haitang gives herself no more time to think and slashes in the air, focusing on her goal with everything that she has. 

Her meridians tremble, collapsing from her hands. The utter destruction of her spiritual veins crawls up her arms, racing for her golden core. 

It doesn’t matter. Qiu Haitang, gritting her teeth through the pain, falls straight through the portal she had sliced into the air. 

Her world dissolves into darkness. 

- 

When Qiu Haitang wakes, she is not Fifth Wife Qiu but instead the young mistress of the Qiu household of Shuangxie City. 

As she sits up from her silken sheets and looks out the window to crisp orange-yellow leaves trembling in the wind, Qiu Haitang feels herself come alive. The tree outside her window is solid and unshakeable when she pushes the glass up and reaches out to feel. Shen Jiu is alive and under her roof once more. 

She needs to see him. She’ll strangle him with her bare hands if she has to, no matter what A’Luo will say. 

Qiu Haitang doesn’t bother dressing before she slips out of her room. She can’t give Shen Jiu any time to prepare. She can’t bear to slide back into a rhythm that she hasn’t been part of for decades. 

Her footsteps are light and near silent as she walks along the hall. Oddly, she can’t actually recall where Shen Jiu slept at night, only that occasionally he would stay in her room before leaving to sleep. It doesn’t matter; she’s fine with searching the whole house. 

After a short walk to the servant’s quarters, Qiu Haitang finds herself confused when Shen Jiu is nowhere to be found. A tall servant stops her. 

“What are you looking for, young mistress?” 

Qiu Haitang hesitates. She doesn’t know this servant’s name, but he seems friendly enough. Of course he would be, though, all of the servants were personally selected by either her brother or father. “May I have breakfast?” 
 
 

The servant blinks. “Most certainly, young mistress. If this one may ask, why so early?” 

An idea sprouts in her head. “I’d like to bring some to A’Luo before he comes down!” 

The servant nods agreeably. “This one will let the cooks know.” 

He leaves, but returns soon with two plates. Both of them are piled up with food. Qiu Haitang takes them with a smile, but her stomach flips at the thought of eating. 

She leaves and traces the path that she’d taken to her brother’s room many times before, carefully balancing both plates in her hands. Maybe she’ll eat with her brother, the two of them had done that plenty of times before, and A’Luo had always indulged her on her whims. 

Qiu Haitang stops before the door to her brother’s room, steeling herself. It’s just been so long since she’s seen Shen Jiu, and she isn’t sure what she’ll do when she comes face-to-face with him again. 

She opens the door, because Tang’er was a coward, but Qiu Haitang has lived decades longer than her.

Shen Jiu is sitting at Qiu Jianluo's desk, his hand on the table. His gaze is on the floor, but it drags up when he hears the door open. When he sees Qiu Haitang, his eyes widen and then he's hurriedly tugging his sleeve over his arm, obscuring everything but the very tips of his fingers. What?

Qiu Jianluo is standing, looking through one of his shelves when he sees his sister enter. He sets down the small dagger he's holding fluidly, calmly. The flickering candle on the table illuminates his features, giving him a warm, homely air. "Tang'er! Did you come with breakfast?"

"Mn." Surprisingly, looking at her brother's face, Qiu Haitang cannot feel anything. He looks unfamiliar, but it has been decades since the last time she's seen him. The turn of the century is creeping up on her and much as it had given her grief, it had been hard for her to recall his features for years now.

Qiu Haitang moves closer, setting down the plate she'd been holding with a sharp clack. She probably should've been chattering more; Tang'er had been a very cheerful, bubbly child.

"Tang'er, are you feeling alright?" Qiu Jianluo asks, brow furrowing with worry.

"Oh, I just had a strange dream," she replies, somewhat absentminded. "I got married."

Qiu Jianluo's face twitches. He puts a hand on Shen Jiu's shoulder, squeezing the flesh below softly. "To Jiu'er?"

Qiu Haitang shakes her head. "No." She sweeps forward, taking the empty seat at Qiu Jianluo's desk and leaving her brother to stand. Picking up one of the pastries on the plate, she pops it into her mouth. It tastes alright. Would've been delicious to young Tang'er, but Luo Binghe's cooking, rare as it was to taste it, was leagues ahead.

"Is Tang'er sure she feels alright?" Qiu Jianluo asks, his tone kind and soft. "It's no trouble for this gege to call the physician."

"I'm fine." Qiu Haitang eyes Shen Jiu's arm. "Shen Jiu. Pull your sleeve up."

Shen Jiu gives a full-body flinch at that. Instead of asking him if he's alright, Qiu Haitang looks at Qiu Jianluo out of the corner of her eye.

He's glaring at Shen Jiu, a dark, hideous look twisting his features.

"Ah, young mistre-"

Suddenly overcome with impatience, Qiu Haitang foregoes years of etiquette training and reaches forward, too fast for Shen Jiu to stop, to rip the fabric from him arm.

Purple, green, and red mar Shen Jiu's pale skin.

Shen Jiu had always been a small child, petite and fragile even when compared to Qiu Haitang. Back then, Tang'er had puffed out her cheeks and complained that Shen Jiu needed to get more manly before he became her husband, though never seriously, of course. He was pretty too, with wide eyes and delicate facial features. He… always had bruises dotted all over his skin, as common as mosquito bites in the summer.

Tang'er was so, so blind.

"Tang'er," Qiu Jianluo begins, sounding almost panicky. He looks at Shen Jiu.

The shape of hand prints, large and bruising, are too obvious against Shen Jiu's arm. Qiu Haitang knows that if Qiu Jianluo were to place his hand upon the print, it would fit perfectly. There's no use denying it, but Shen Jiu tries anyway.

His eyes flicker to Qiu Jianluo. Now, he looks scared too. "Young mistress, this one tripped and one of the servants caught him."

Shen Jiu can't see it, but there's another hand print creeping down from the part of his arm that the sleeve still covers. It's not as if Qiu Haitang needed more evidence to know that he was lying, however.

"That isn't true. Those came from," Qiu Haitang points at Qiu Jianluo. "Him, didn't they?"

Shen Jiu shakes his head. "Young miss," he almost begs. "Please don't-"

Qiu Jianluo laughs. It's a sharp sound, so unlike his usual chuckle, the one that Qiu Haitang had dreamed of years after his death. Picnics along the river and dinners bathed in candlelight. All a lie.

There is something she realizes, now. The way he looks at her is the same as he does Shen Jiu.

One of Qiu Jianluo's large hands come down to rest on Shen Jiu's shoulder again. "It's about time Tang'er found out about such things, anyhow." There's a smirk on his face, too wide, stretching his features and warping them until Qiu Haitang can't tell who the man in front of her is anymore. He's handsome, but he's ugly. "Come closer, Tang'er. Didn't you always love to play at being adults with Jiu'er?"

His hand slips lower, into Shen Jiu's robes. The boy still sits in the chair, but his eyes are wide and horrified. There's something glassy about them, as if he's seconds away from… something.

Horribly, Qiu Haitang thinks that she knows how this must've gone in her previous life. Who knows when the final day was, maybe it was today, maybe it was a year from now. Whenever Shen Jiu finally snapped, Qiu Haitang hopes that it was painful for her brother.

Qiu Haitang steps closer. Both Shen Jiu and Qiu Jianluo's eyes are locked on her. That hand reaches into Shen Jiu's robes, undoing the ties rapidly, in a way that speaks of how used to the action he is.

See, there is a sword on Qiu Jianluo's wall. It's ornamental, and Qiu Haitang has wielded blades a hundred times more powerful as a mere hallmaster of her sect.

She can remember something important about this sword. It'd been buried in Qiu Jianluo's stomach once. It'd been buried beneath crumbling pillars and burning wood.

As Qiu Jianluo's smile grows predatory and satisfied, Qiu Haitang rips the sword off the wall. The rest of her memory for the day is lost in ashes and the smoke at the back of her throat.

- 

The next time Qiu Haitang wakes, it's in a forest. The branches and leaves sway overhead, to the tune of the breeze. There's grass around her head, as well as twigs and leaves in her hair. The smell of smoke still clings to her.

The first thing she does is check her spiritual base. It's not too bad; Qiu Haitang's had a few Qi deviations in her time, and her current state is still salvageable. She doesn't know how long she lies there for, but it's oddly peaceful.

She turns her head to the side as she hears footsteps approaching. Qiu Haitang eases herself up, worried that some wild beast might have found her. She'd woken up like this, safely outside of the destructive fire, in her previous life too. Shen Jiu…

Surprisingly, it is Shen Jiu himself who is approaching, a bucket of water propped up at his hip. "Young mistress, you're awake." He drops to his knees at her side, handing her the bucket.

"What happened?" she croaks out, and then winces at the sound of her own voice. She sounds hoarse, so unlike the elegant fifth wife of Emperor Luo.

Shen Jiu hesitates, clearly unsure of how to explain their circumstances to Qiu Haitang.

"Just tell me," she insists.

"Young mistress stabbed Qiu Jianluo," Shen Jiu says slowly. "When he fell, he knocked over the candle on his desk."

"The house burned down?"

Slowly, Shen Jiu nods.

Qiu Haitang sits down heavily, her legs shaky. She wonders if that was how it had gone in her first life too; had Qiu Jianluo always been the one to light the Qiu manor ablaze?

Not for the first time, she curses her idiotic past self. Tang'er was a brainless, spoiled little girl. The times that she had wished that she could be her again seem so far away now.

Her eyes fall on the water that Shen Jiu had fetched. Hm. He really didn't have to. She wouldn't have minded if he had disappeared right after rescuing her from the fire. It probably would have been fine if she'd been burnt along with the manor, honestly.

"Sorry, the bucket was the only thing I could find," Shen Jiu says. "It was near the well. All the cups are gone by now."

Qiu Haitang nods, picking up the bucket with slightly trembling arms. She drinks greedily, not quite minding when some spills and splashes down the front of her robes. Afterward, she sets it back down on the ground.

A few moments pass in silence before Shen Jiu speaks. "So, what should we do now?"

Qiu Haitang thinks of the future, of a lofty, cold master on a peak of swaying bamboo. Of the desire — of power or immortality, she doesn't quite know, nor care — that Shen Jiu has not gotten to express yet.

Shen Jiu hasn't yet realized that he's free of her now. More than ever before, despite what Tang'er had wanted, because they weren't equals before. He won't be able to say exactly what it is he wants, though; not so soon.

She… thinks that he can do better this time. If not now, then when?

"Let's go to Cang Qiong," she decides.