Chapter Text
Shen Qingqiu woke to silence so complete it felt manufactured.
His eyes slid open and he was in his own bed.
That alone made his fingers twitch.
He sat up slowly, scanning the room and noticed the curtains hung straight, incense burning evenly, no overturned furniture, no ink soaked walls and no broken porcelain.
Too perfect.
On the low table by his bedside sat a folded strip of paper.
Shen Qingqiu stared at it for a full breath before lifting it, unfolding it with two fingers like it might explode.
‘Don’t freak out. Breathe.
I handled morning peak duties for today and tomorrow.
Rest or sleep in today.
—Shen Yuan’
...
A trap.
Absolutely a trap.
He crushed the paper between his fingers and rose, the silk of his robes whispering as he moved... not hurried, not frantic, but coiled. Every sense sharpened until the floorboards beneath his bare feet felt like threat and promise in equal measure.
Although, he was warming up to that 'A-Yuan', he still didn't trust that same idiot to take over his job.
He stepped outside his lodgings and grimaced as Qing Jing Peak basked in clean morning light.
Sunlight filtered through the bamboo canopy in pale ribbons, catching drifting pollen like slow falling gold dust. Disciples moved through their morning drills in neat formations, the sound of wooden swords striking rhythmically through the air.
All of it was normal.
That was the problem.
Shen Qingqiu walked along the stone path with measured steps, his sleeves perfectly balanced, his posture flawless. Wherever his shadow fell, disciples stiffened just slightly, backs straightening, movements becoming hesitant, eyes snapping forward with fear trained deeply into their bones.
He stopped beside the training grounds.
A junior disciple stumbled mid form, nearly dropping their weapon.
Shen Qingqiu said nothing.
He crouched, picked up a fallen wooden sword, and balanced it across two fingers.
Then he flicked it.
The sword snapped cleanly in half and the crack echoed.
“Posture,” he said mildly. His voice did not rise. It did not need to.
The disciples straightened so fast it looked painful. He handed the broken sword back to the stunned boy and continued walking, the hem of his robes untouched by dust, expression calm, heart still pacing in slow, hunting spirals.
If this was a trick, he would pull on Shen Yuan's hair until something bled.
Farther down the path, bamboo creaked softly in the wind.
Everything looked peaceful!!!
He stepped off the path and walked straight into the bamboo grove, letting the stalks close behind him, letting the sounds of the peak dull until the only thing left was the hush of leaves and the quiet thud of his own heartbeat. He allowed himself to return to his home and exhaled.
“Fine,” he murmured, to the air, to the heavens, to whatever thought it could command him.
“I will ‘rest.’”
And if something decided to spring its trap...
He smiled faintly.
Let it try.
Shen Qingqiu lay still for a long while after reading the note once more.
Rest.
The handwriting was beginning to look far too familiar, and the implication alone made his skin crawl.
Rest!
In a world that had proven itself capable of tossing souls like dice and rewriting reality while he slept?
Ridiculous!!
He folded the paper with slow, deliberate movements, sliding it beneath his pillow as though hiding a blade, and rose from the bed with the brittle, coiled tension of a man expecting assassination from every shadow. His body ached faintly and the phantom pain coursing through his legs still lingered.
Sooo….
This… was he doing it right?
Is he… meant to sleep..?
…
Welp! He tried. He truly did.
He sat up then threw himself at the low table, poured himself tea, drank it in slow, measured sips, and stared at the bamboo walls until he could count every thin crack in the wood.
But the silence pressed in on him.
The stillness felt wrong.
There were no swapped souls. No strange memories. No sudden embarrassment…
Only quiet.
Only peace.
...
His foot tapped against the floor, once, twice, too many times. He placed the cup down before it could crack in his grip and rose, pacing the room with soundless steps. Outside, Qing Jing Peak was deceptively calm; birdsong, breeze through leaves, a distant murmur of disciples training.
Normal.
Which meant—
The door to his house slid open.
And in stumbled a rat; Shen Qingqiu’s hand had already twitched towards his fan.
“Shixiongggg!~” Shang Qinghua shuffled in like he owned the place, arms full of scrolls and snacks, completely relaxed, completely unafraid, and completely assuming he was talking to the wrong soul, “I figured you’d be bored so I came to—ah—check on you? Make sure you didn’t, uh… emotionally spiral again? Haha… ha…”
Shen Qingqiu grinned tightly.
Actually grinned.
“Ah, Shixiong! I knew it was you,” Shang Qinghua said, stepping further in and kicking the door shut behind him with a heel. “You left your wards sloppy. I thought, wow, that’s not the OG goods. That’s the other guy.”
Shen Qingqiu’s eye twitched, yet he neither confirmed nor denied.
Shang Qinghua, mistaking this silence for permission, cheerfully continued walking further into the room, setting his scrolls down like he owned the place.
“So, listen, I was thinking… if you’re still in this body today, does that mean you’re alternating, or is it like a soul rental situation? Because I read this novel once where—”
Shen Qingqiu slowly turned at that.
“…Explain,” he said softly.
Shang Qinghua blinked. “Explain wha—”
“How,” Shen Qingqiu said, stepping closer, voice low and dangerous, “do you know.”
Shang Qinghua laughed weakly, “Know…? I mean… we’re from the same hometown? We talked… yesterday? We—”
Shen Qingqiu grabbed him by the front of his robes and slammed him against the wall, not hard enough to shatter bone, but more than enough to rattle his soul.
“How do you know about the switches.”
Silence.
Pure, terrified silence.
Shang Qinghua’s face drained of colour so fast he looked like he might pass away on the spot, “…Ah?”
“Answer me,” Shen Qingqiu repeated, smiling thinly, the kind of smile that belonged on death certificates, “Before I demonstrate how badly I can ruin your limbs with nothing but my bare hands.”
A beat.
Two.
Shang Qinghua squinted at him then slowly leaned back, “…Oh. Oh no. That’s not the other guy,” He laughed weakly, “Haha… you’re… you’re the real one.”
Shen Qingqiu’s voice dipped, cold and sharp. “Congratulations. You have eyes.”
“Yeah, I, uh… like my eyes, thank you very much— please don’t gouge them out…” Shang Qinghua awkwardly scooped up his scrolls, holding them against his chest like a shield. “I’ll… just… leave you to your, uh, peaceful relaxing day then… don’t stab me later…” He backed towards the door, “…You look… rested?”
That was it.
The cup shattered in Shen Qingqiu’s hand and a sharp burst of energy shot forwards.
The door slammed shut before Shang Qinghua could flee, effectively trapping him, “Ack-! I’m sorry!! Imsorryimsorryimsoooorrryyy—!”
Shen Qingqiu stood again, tea dripping from his ruined cup onto the floor, breath slow, shoulders tight, eyes dark.
Rest, the note had said.
He stared at Shang Qinghua with thinly veiled hostility.
A trap.
Obviously.
No one in the heavens ever told Shen Qingqiu to ‘rest’ unless they planned to stab him in the spine afterwards. He stormed towards the creature and threw Shang Qinghua to the floor. In one smooth motion, bound him with rope that he kept hidden for emergencies (and mental breakdowns), wrapping it tightly enough to immobilise, but not maim.
“You will talk,” Shen Qingqiu said calmly, kneeling in front of him. “Or I will make you regret every single lifetime you have lived.”
Shang Qinghua began to cry immediately, “I didn’t mean to expose it! I thought you were him! You were acting soft and weird and looked all peaceful, I thought it was safe—”
“S A F E?” Shen Qingqiu echoed, incredulous.
He grabbed the front of Shang Qinghua’s robe again and shook him once, just once, hard enough to rattle teeth but not draw blood. It was more rage than harm, a violent outlet for weeks of tension snapping all at once.
Shang Qinghua let out a noise that was somewhere between a sob and a hiccup and promptly passed out.
Shen Qingqiu stared at his unconscious form for a long moment, “…I didn’t even start…”
Then he dragged him to the window, opened it and dumped him unceremoniously into a bush below.
(It would cushion the fall. Probably.)
He turned away, adjusted his sleeves, smoothed his hair, and sighed. The note was still on his desk yet he didn’t look at it again.
For a long moment, the only sound in the bamboo house was the faint whistle of wind through the leaves and the slow, measured beat of his own breath as he stared at a wilted plant sitting uselessly by the window.
…the window in which its curtains had been touched…
..Hm.
The stupid plant had been a gift.
From *ew* Qi-ge.
Yue Qingyuan, in one of his common, awkward bouts of sentiment, had left it on Shen Qingqiu’s desk with the quiet, hopeful air of someone offering a stray cat a silk cushion and praying it wouldn’t be clawed to death.
Shen Qingqiu had never liked it.
Never watered it.
Never acknowledged it beyond occasionally considering whether throwing it out would cause an annoying emotional discussion.
But now… he stepped closer.
Slowly, he gathered spiritual energy at his fingertips, letting it hum faintly under his skin as he hovered his hand just above the brittle leaves. He closed his eyes, extended his spiritual sense, and let it brush gently over the dirt, the stem, the air around it.
Cold.
Wrong.
It wasn’t him.
It wasn’t even residue from his own recent deviations or temper flares. There were two energies that felt… thin. Foreign. Either weakly masked or deliberately left faint enough that someone thought it would go unnoticed.
Someone had touched it.
Someone had stood here.
Inside his room.
His fingers tightened and the air shifted.
Somewhere, far too quietly, the curtain gave the barest whisper as it settled back into place, fabric barely brushing the bamboo wall. Shen Qingqiu snapped the curtain fully aside with a sharp, irritated motion, eyes scanning the window, the bamboo outside, the familiar arrangement of his peak.
Empty.
Naturally.
Whoever had entered was long gone.
But the fact remained.
Someone had crossed his threshold.
Touched his things.
Left their filth in the air of his private space.
His lips curled, the expression so cold and tight it didn’t quite qualify as a smile.
He turned back to the dead plant, staring down at it like he might snap its stem with two fingers.
“…So,” he murmured to the empty room, tone smooth and dangerous, “Someone had a little tour, hm?”
The note on his table suddenly felt lighter somehow.
A trap, indeed.
He swept his sleeves back into place, let the plant wilt alone in the corner, and stepped towards the door with purpose sharpening his spine.
If someone thought they could use his peak like a playground…
They would learn.
Very quickly.
That Qing Jing did not forgive trespassers.
...
Who was he kidding? He knew the smell of that beast.