Chapter Text
It starts, as most annoying and generally wholly avoidable events in Mu Qing’s life, with Feng Xin being a reckless idiot.
“Watch your left!” Mu Qing screams as the three-headed beast slashes its enormous black claws towards the reckless idiot's head and nearly manages to sink them into his throat. Feng Xin smiles (the asshole smiles) as he sidesteps the attack and swiftly springs several chi in the air—only to land atop one of the willow trees encircling the wetland.
In short order, he summons three spiritual arrows, nocks them into his massive bow, and shoots the demon straight through its trio of heads. It screeches an unholy sound, loud enough to shake the foundations of Mount Tonglu, before swaying and falling on its side in a manner very unbefitting of the lithe grace with which it had moved in life.
Mu Qing looks up at the willow tree, scowling. "Show off,” he mumbles as he puts his Zhanmadao away. Feng Xin's smile grows smugger as he jumps down and struts towards him. "Not sure why you look so pleased with yourself,” Mu Qing adds, crossing his arms. “It would’ve gotten your ass if I hadn't warned you.”
Feng Xin clicks his tongue, though the sparkle in his eyes betrays his good humor. “Were you scared?” he taunts, giving Mu Qing a once-over that makes the small hairs on his arms stand up at attention. He glares.
“Scared that you would die? No. Scared Dianxia would sic Crimson Pain in My Ass on me if you did die? Maybe.” He dusts off his obsidian black robes and fixes his collar before turning to leave. "Let's just go. The stench wafting off that thing is turning my stomach.”
Feng Xin tsks but makes to follow. "Such a delicate little flower you are, Mu Qing. Who would've thought that-”
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR!
A piercing shriek tears through the air before Feng Xin can finish whatever sarcastic quip he was about to throw Mu Qing's way. Both gods are quick to turn in the direction of the demon they'd assumed dead up until scant moments ago. Alas, there's no corpse to be found—only a very alive, very pissed three-headed demon running towards Feng Xin at supernatural speed, teeth bared and poised to attack. Eyes wide, Feng Xin prepares to draw Fengshen, but a second is all it takes for Mu Qing to realize he won't make it in time to summon and shoot the spiritual arrows.
He doesn't think.
Saber out, like a bolt from the blue, Mu Qing leaps in front of Feng Xin, pushes him out of the way, and cleaves the three heads clean off the beast's body. He slashes and slashes and slashes again for good measure, until there’s little left that can be classified as entity and is now firmly in the realm of pile of pulp.
Feng Xin, who had landed flat on his ass courtesy of Mu Qing's disproportionately strong shove, was rendered speechless for the whole ordeal's duration. He blinks as he returns to himself and runs towards Mu Qing, screaming bloody murder and swinging his arms like a blundering scarecrow spelled to life.
“You crazy asshole, I had him! What the fuck were you thinking, jumping in front of me?! Shit, are you okay? Here, let me see.” He makes to grab at Mu Qing's collar, now caked with thick blood from where the beast had managed to graze his neck, but Mu Qing bats his hands away.
“You're welcome. That's twice—in what, five minutes?—that I saved your reckless life,” he purses his lips, and this time he gives Feng Xin an unimpressed once over. “Aren't you supposed to be a martial god? Ugh.” The last bit escapes unwillingly, as he softly touches the wound, now stinking nearly as much as the would-be corpse sprawled at their feet.
Feng Xin furrows his brow and attempts to touch him again. This time, Mu Qing physically shoves him as he ignores the uptick in his heartbeat the minute Feng Xin comes closer. Feng Xin drops his hands in defeat, his expression one of profound exasperation.
“You're so fucking stubborn. Fine, I won't touch it. But let's go back, you need to have that looked over by one of the medical gods. I'll report to Dianxia.”
Mu Qing rolls his eyes at the insistence but doesn't argue further. Feng Xin doesn't need to know he has precisely zero intentions of letting any official's grubby paws get close to his neck, medical prowess be damned.
“Sure, but don’t tell Dianxia I’ve been hurt,” he warns. “Let's get out of here. I’d also rather not deal with whatever friends or family might come looking.” Earlier displays of selflessness that shall go wholly unexamined notwithstanding, and as every deity in the Heavens and demon in the Ghost Realm will attest, Mu Qing has a healthy sense of self-preservation. All else being equal, he usually prefers to stick to his quota of one near-death experience per decade.
He should've known, though. Missions with the reckless idiot can never just be simple.
Feng Xin is silent for a while as he touches two fingers to his temple, likely updating Xie Lian and his menace of a husband. But then he stares intently at Mu Qing. He stares for ten seconds (not that Mu Qing is counting), and he opens his mouth as if he's about to say something, then shuts it again. He makes no move to leave, and he keeps staring, and it's setting Mu Qing's teeth on edge.
“What?" he demands, fists clenched so hard his nails begin to tear at the pearly white skin of his palms. Feng Xin opens and closes his mouth again, and Mu Qing is about to fucking punch him, but then Feng Xin just…sighs.
"Thank you,” he finally says. It's a quiet but sincere whisper, no quiver to be found in his deep and achingly familiar voice—a voice Mu Qing would know in every lifetime, a sound he would recognize even if he were deaf and vibrations were all he had to go on. Mu Qing stares into his earnest (always so damn earnest) golden eyes, and maybe he loses himself for just a second, a sliver of a thing, before the tight leash he's kept on himself for hundreds of years pulls him back with enough force to snap his neck.
He rolls his eyes again. "Whatever,” he says, and turns to leave.
He's going to kill Feng Xin.
He's going back to that gods-forsaken wetland, bring the three-headed beast back to life (he'll drag Hua Cheng along and force him to glue the pile of gunk back together if he has to), and he's going to dump it into the palace of Nan Yang. He'll gladly stick around to watch it finish the job. Might even make a party out of it. Invite Pei Ming and his fourteen harems, let Quan Yizhen have a go at Feng Xin’s dumb face along with the blasted demon.
Mu Qing grunts as he fantasizes about increasingly creative ways of sealing Feng Xin's fate and once again changes the bandages on the wound that hasn't stopped bleeding for three days. Something's wrong, something's off, but aside from the unstoppable flow of blood pouring from his neck, he can't exactly pinpoint what.
And it's driving him insane.
Maybe he should heed Feng Xin's advice and go see one of the medical officials. His original plan (stay inside until his skin knitted itself back together and he didn't have to suffer the indignity of anyone else seeing him hurt and bleeding) was shot to hell. His deputies were getting antsy; Xie Lian kept pestering him, his voice coated in cloyingly sweet tones, and Feng Xin had taken it upon himself to loudly and rudely bang on the doors of his palace the day before.
Speaking of Feng Xin, Mu Qing can feel him now as he tries to contact him through his personal communication array.
He'd taken to doing that over the past two years, after Mount Tonglu. Just like he had taken to receiving Mu Qing's barbs with a roll of his eyes rather than even sharper words of his own or a closed fist aimed straight at his face. Just like he had taken to going on more missions together and having group dinners with Xie Lian and a lot of other small gestures that were Feng Xin's very unsubtle attempts at mending whatever semblance of a bridge had been burnt over the last 800 years.
“What do you want?” he sends through the array, trying to keep his voice from betraying the unease he can’t help but feel.
“What the fuck do you mean, what do I want?" Feng Xin shoots back, gracious and polite as ever, Heavens bless him. “You've been shut up in your palace since we got back. And don't try to feed me any shit about being busy with work. Tell me what the fuck is going on, or I'll stop being nice to your deputies and actually barge through your palace to drag you from your room.”
Mu Qing's hackles rise. “Move a single brick out of place, and I'll skin you alive and turn you into a new set of robes,” he hisses. “I'm fine. I'll go with you to Puqi shrine for dinner tomorrow. I just needed to rest after that fucking thing nearly divorced my head from my body.”
He can almost hear Feng Xin narrow his eyes in suspicion, but he'd never been one to let unease linger (too fucking earnest). The promise of dinner tomorrow is enough to assuage whatever concern Feng Xin might be nursing.
Concern. That's another thing Feng Xin has taken to showing more of. And it disconcerts Mu Qing, throws him off balance nearly as much as all the other things Feng Xin had taken to do in the name of a newer, more peaceful relationship (friendship? Partnership?) with Mu Qing.
It’s as alien as something that one hasn’t felt for centuries can be. But even though it is alien and odd and makes him feel fidgety and young again, Mu Qing can’t say it’s completely new.
He changes his soaked bandages again as he allows his weary mind to travel several centuries to the distant past.
The smell of blood and smoke is thick in the air, and his right arm is nearly numb.
The war with Yong’an drags on. Every day, he looks into Xie Lians’s eyes, and he seems a little less divine each time their gazes meet. He’s getting tired. They’re all getting tired.
Mu Qing has long since stopped keeping track of how many battles they have fought, of how many lives his saber has ruthlessly cut down. His body is littered with scars, large and small, that tell the tragic story of a nation at war. Of grief, of loss, of pain. He feels all three, all the time, but you wouldn’t know it from his expression, which hasn’t deviated from the perfectly stoic mask he’s learned to carve it into since he was a boy growing up in the slums where showing tears and pain guaranteed a beating at best and was tantamount to a death sentence at worst.
He cannot break. He cannot yield. He cannot let his god, his country, his mother down.
Mu Qing sits down on the floor of the abandoned shack where he, Feng Xin and Xie Lian often rest, far enough from the other soldiers to garner some privacy, but close enough to join them for meals and the occasional rallying speech—though the latter are becoming rarer by the day.
So here Mu Qing is, after another day, after another battle, wincing as he removes his armor and his inner layers to reveal an ugly cut diagonally slashing his upper arm. He’s moving at a glacial pace, first to fill a basin with water, and then to gather needle, thread, and rips of fabric. He grits his teeth with every movement, tries not to think about the thick rivulets of red dripping down onto the floor and the shredded nerves in the arm he relies on for battle.
For his cultivation. For much—if not all—of his self-worth. Whatever scraps of it might be buried within him still.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He’s halfway through trying to loop the thread through the needle for the third time when he hears footsteps. He tries to get up but is assaulted by a wave of dizziness so intense he nearly faints.
Feng Xin steps through the worn-out door, face caked with mud and gore, a haunted look in his features (one that has become a permanent fixture of the Xianle army). He registers Mu Qing immediately, and his eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets when they zero in on the hellish gash.
“What the fuck happened?!” he yells as he draws close, hands outstretched and bow roughly thrown to the opposite end of the room. Mu Qing attempts to step back, but a stronger, more violent spell of nausea rolls through him before he can get far.
“Nothing you need to concern your empty little head with,” he snarks. He half turns away in lieu of completely moving aside, yet his obvious unwillingness to be seen and bothered isn’t enough of a deterrent for the unrelenting dumbass in front of him.
Feng Xin grits his teeth, but reaches for the shoulder on the side where Mu Qing isn’t injured and, with a mighty show of force, pushes him down to a sitting position and kneels in front of him.
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why are you so fucking stubborn? Dianxia was worried sick when the battle was over and we couldn’t find you!” He keeps a hold on Mu Qing, but dips a piece of fabric in the water basin with his free hand. Slowly, though not gently (Feng Xin would never dare try and be gentle with Mu Qing, lest he bare his teeth and bite his neck off), he begins to clean the wound.
Mu Qing tries to pull away yet again, but only manages to make Feng Xin’s fingers move sideways and forcefully slide against the cut. Fuck. He has to bite his lip until he nearly draws blood to keep from howling at the pain.
“I didn’t ask for nor do I want your help,” he spits, halfway to panting.
A low growl escapes Feng Xin’s throat, and he grips Mu Qing’s forearm back towards his chest.
“I don’t give a shit what you want,” he replies as he dabs at the wound, no attempt at quelling his roughness this time. “You’re one of our best fighters; we can’t afford to have you injured. Besides, Dianxia would be pissed if he knew I found you knocking on death’s door and didn’t do something to keep you from slipping through.”
Something ugly claws at Mu Qing’s heart. “Of course,” he sneers, as he watches the blood paint the water in the basin a murky color. “We can’t have you displease Dianxia.”
Feng Xin lets out a long-suffering sigh, heavy with the burden of having to care for one who refuses to be even remotely cooperative. Like he's a tired mother and Mu Qing is a bratty, spoiled child.
“For fuck’s sake, do you have to be such an intractable asshole even when I’m trying to keep you from losing an arm?!” He throws the dirty scrap at the floor with too much force, probably wishing he could hurl it straight at Mu Qing’s face instead. He brings Mu Qing’s bicep, where the cut is the deepest, closer to his own face, and Mu Qing can feel Feng Xin’s breath touch his skin, slither into the open wound. He’s suddenly aware that he’s never felt Feng Xin so close to him, has never realized that even beneath the blood oozing from his arm and Feng Xin’s sweat and grime, he smells like the trunk of the cherry trees he used to climb when they were children tucked away in the safe embrace of a temple, and something within him stirs, uncomfortable and unfamiliar.
His heartbeat stutters for a second before it picks back up again at terrifying speed, and he’s so scared of his own body’s reaction he nearly kicks Feng Xin in the chest and screams at him to get the fuck away from him, but even he would find it difficult to justify such a disproportionate response. So he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and meditates. Calls upon years of training to serve and guide him through an uncharted battlefield he’s not quite sure how to navigate.
When he opens his eyes again, defiant black depths meet challenging golden hues in a crossing of swords without steel. There’s an unfathomable moment there, between one second and the next, where the world seems to tilt on its axis and threatens to send Mu Qing’s reality into upheaval. He’s a little struck dumb, a little breathless, searching Feng Xin’s eyes for something he knows he can’t possibly find. He almost leans forward, single-minded in his chase, but a deep, rough sound keeps him tethered to the only reality he will ever know—the one where he and Feng Xin only look at each other with disgust and disdain, but never something as tender as concern.
“They almost cut you to the bone.” It might be that he’s wrong and still slightly off-kilter, but Mu Qing could swear Feng Xin’s voice has softened by the slightest degree. “I need to stitch this up.”
Mu Qing opens his mouth to argue, but Feng Xin cuts him off. “Save it. Whatever it is you’re about to say about my sewing abilities, fucking save it. Your only useful hand is shaking so hard you won’t be able to do it yourself.” Mu Qing frowns as he looks down. He hadn’t noticed, but his left hand is indeed racked by shivers—maybe since the sword sliced through him, maybe since Feng Xin’s breath touched his skin and he was nearly sent tumbling over an unknown edge. He flexes his fist once, twice, but the shaking refuses to subside.
He has no choice but to accept his predicament. It doesn’t matter anyway, he reasons. Feng Xin has already seen him hurt and bleeding, unable to walk away, shaking and…weak. He grits his teeth as he thinks the word and clenches his shaking fist harder.
“Fine,” he manages to get out.
Feng Xin stitches his wound. It’s a long, drawn-out process. They both remain quiet the entire time, and though their silences are different, they are equally forceful. No one who might accidentally step into the room would dare call the resulting stillness peaceful.
Mu Qing’s ragged breaths fill the space between them every time the needle ruthlessly pierces his skin, and Feng Xin’s gaze, intent on his work, sometimes drifts up to rest at Mu Qing’s face when one of his exhales comes in a little rougher, and Mu Qing can almost feel the ghost of a touch on his cheek, his forehead, the tip of his nose. Feng Xin stitches his wound, and Mu Qing feels like he's being ripped apart instead of put back together.
When it’s over, Fen Xin cuts off the thread and gets up. Mu Qing doesn’t thank him (he can’t find his voice, but he knows Feng Xin will think it’s because he’s just that much of an unyielding piece of shit), and he walks away.
They never speak of that night of brittle truce again.
As he comes back to himself, Mu Qing absentmindedly touches the ten-inch scar that runs from his shoulder to the inside of his elbow. It would be a minute’s work and a drop of power’s worth of effort to remove it, but he could never bring himself to do so.
He’s lost count of the number of times Feng Xin has left savage bruises and vicious cuts littered throughout his body. Had Mu Qing not been a god, his skin would be a shrine to Feng Xin’s temper when pushed to the brink. After every destructive encounter (both to bones and buildings and deputies who were unlucky enough to be in the vicinity), Mu Qing would make sure to expeditiously heal each new scrape and fracture, snarling at anyone who dared come close and offer to help.
This scar, though. This scar is different. It’s a vestige of Feng Xin’s tolerance, of the only time in their lives when they had silently agreed to lay down their weapons in each other’s presence. A faint trace of what could have been, what their lives might have looked like in a world without war, without a banished god, without ugly jealousy and deep-seated self-loathing. A gentler existence, perhaps. Fewer tense moments across meeting tables and “General” spat rather than spoken, and a longing to feel the other’s presence, even if that presence came inevitably wrapped in brutality.
No, Mu Qing can’t bring himself to part with it. It’s the one insignificant weakness, steeped in boyish sentimentality, he allows himself.
Against all odds, Puqi shrine looks almost beautiful these days. It appears to take on new color each time Mu Qing visits—in the little lotus pond that now resides among the grass, in the rich cluster of offerings piled up inside, in the dark wood walls and silk-covered pillows.
As he knocks, Mu Qing silently rolls his eyes. Hua Cheng is nothing if not a painfully fastidious, abysmally eager, disgustingly obliging husband.
“Mu Qing!” The door opens, and Xie Lian is on him in a flurry of white robes, arms squeezing lightly and for no more than a few seconds. (Dianxia, Mu Qing knows, is very proud of himself for having slowly broken him in. Two years ago, a mere pat on the shoulders would have Mu Qing hissing like a stray cat and shoving everyone around him to get away. For him, non-violent touch had long held all the appeal a jug of water held to a man dying of thirst, but several lifetimes without it had made the slightest brush of another’s skin sear like a burn. These days, however, Mu Qing’s even able to half wrap an arm around Xie Lian’s waist—as long as the Great Red Gremlin isn’t in the room, glaring and silently plotting to skin him alive.)
“Dianxia,” he replies, sweeping his eyes across the shrine, landing on the big, hulking (beautiful, his traitor brain supplies) figure that’s faintly smiling at them.
“Finally!” Feng Xin exclaims, his impatient tone suggesting they’d been awaiting his arrival since Jun Wu’s ascension. Mu Qing rewards him with a healthy roll of eyes and sits down on the opposite side of the table, while Xie Lian crouches down beside him, pouring tea. Mu Qing narrows his eyes at the pot. Gods and Buddhas, he hopes it’s tea. Xie Lian has somehow managed to screw even that up, and he doesn’t want a repeat of last year’s impromptu post-mission tea party. Gods can, as he and Feng Xin were lucky enough to find out, throw up for five consecutive days. Nonstop.
“Tell me about your last mission, you two. Mu Qing, Feng Xin mentioned you were hurt. What happened? Are you feeling better? I can talk to San Lang if-”
“OW!” Feng Xin screams, clutching the shin Mu Qing just kicked under the table. “What the fuck?” He dramatically rubs at the spot and shoots Mu Qing wounded puppy eyes, which only earns him another kick, this one dangerously close to his balls.
“I’ll cut off Ju Yang next,” Mu Qing threatens. “Didn’t I tell you to keep quiet about the injury?”
Xie Lian raises his arms in a pleading motion and slaps on an equally pleading tone reminiscent of their youth. “Stop, stop. Mu Qing, I can see the wound. And we’ve been over this. I’m your friend, of course I want to know if you get hurt.”
Xie Lian is smiling softly at him, and Fen Xin is smirking like an idiot, and suddenly, there’s so much fondness in the room Mu Qing feels like he might choke on it. That simply won’t do.
Turning towards Feng Xin, he sniffs. “Tch. Did you also tell Dianxia I got hurt because you’re the most incompetent martial god in the Heavens? It’s a miracle your deputies haven't staged a coup yet, though if they’re all as capable as you, I can see why they’re dragging their feet.”
This time, Feng Xin rolls his eyes as he leans back and crosses his arms. “Oh fuck off, Sweeping Saber.”
“Hm. If only you were as prolific at slinging insults as you are at bequeathing sons,” Mu Qing shoots back, knowing full well that two years ago his fist would have been halfway down Feng Xin’s throat before he could even finish speaking.
Xie Lian laughs, and they’re back in familiar, relaxed, not-quite-so-tender territory. He promises he’ll see a medical god, and they waste the night away as if they’re seventeen again, but not quite, and Mu Qing pretends he doesn’t feel a twinge of melancholy at the thought.
“There’s something wrong with your core.” Yào Ān’s tone is dispassionate, borderline bored, as he speaks the words. Mu Qing’s head snaps to the side, an action he immediately regrets because, one, the wound being assessed by the single non-aggravating medical god in the Heavens hurts, and two, because he instantly knocks his head against said god’s forehead and that, too, fucking hurts.
He rubs at his temple and glares in Yào Ān’s direction, as if the impact, his still-painful wound, and, apparently, his faltering core are all his doing. “What does that mean?”
Yào Ān turns around, still wearing a profoundly indifferent expression as he waves his hand and vanishes Mu Qing’s blood from his blue robes. “The neck wound will heal completely in a couple of hours with the pill I gave you. But the beast’s claws only caused that—a hemorrhage. You have a curse eating away at your golden core. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s been festering for about two years now.”
Mu Qing frowns. Two years…Mount Tonglu. Jun Wu. His body instinctively recoils as memories of searing pain on his wrist, flames licking away at his skin, and blood being slowly drained from his body fight to come to the surface. Yào Ān is quick to make the connection, too.
“Your body went through immense trauma. Nearly burning to death was bad enough, but you were cursed with a shackle from Jun Wu.” He pauses again, stares intently at Mu Qing’s face. “Martial god or no, spiritual power or no, it’s hard to come back from it unscathed. I doubt any god could.”
“But Xie Lian…”, Mu Qing murmurs. He feels dread, cold and syrupy, begin to wrap around his heart and squeeze. He stands up so fast he nearly topples Yào Ān’s assortment of healing ointments from the table, but the god stops him with a light hand to the shoulder.
“Please calm yourself, Xuan Zhen. Dianxia survived centuries with his cursed shackles, did he not? I doubt Jun Wu infused them with the same pernicious intent as yours, given the circumstance of your punishment.” He continues to study Mu Qing closely and, seeing he’s not convinced, forges ahead. “Dianxia is also married to Hua Cheng and, if rumors are to be believed, they are rather prolific in their exchange of spiritual power. I don’t think anything could harm or drain him in such conditions.”
Mu Qing makes a disgusted face but doesn’t push further. He’s halfway to calming down again when the full meaning of Yào Ān’s earlier words comes crashing down. The healing god crosses his hands behind his back and begins pacing, the first and only sign he’s not quite as listless as he’d like to appear.
“The toll Jun Wu’s curse is taking on you is a heavy one. It’s been draining your spiritual power slowly, but it’s accelerating fast. It’s the reason you didn’t immediately heal from the beast’s attack. I believe you’ll find that an increasingly common occurrence.” He scratches his chin and seems to hesitate for a second before opening his mouth to continue. Mu Qing doesn’t give him a chance to.
“How do I stop it?” he asks.
Yào Ān ceases his pacing and frowns down at Mu Qing, where he’s still sitting. Mu Qing counts down from ten, and when Yào Ān doesn’t seem inclined to answer, he begins seriously debating the merits of summoning his Zhanmadao. But before he can feel the trickle of spiritual power in the tips of his fingers, the medical god responds. His frown deepens, and Mu Qing can't recall the last time he saw Yào Ān’s face betray this much unease. This much of anything, really.
“I’m not sure you can stop it.” He speaks slowly, as if reluctant to offer up more. Mu Qing’s eyes, burning with near-manic intensity, seem to urge him on. “Sick cores drain spiritual power at an alarming speed. Even if you had a ready donor willing to share every day, at this stage, it wouldn’t be enough—or effective—for either party…it would be like pouring water through a sieve.”
Mu Qing looks down at his hands. He summons a light trickle of spiritual power, watches that minuscule encapsulation of what he is and what he has to offer burn bright, simmer down, and disappear. His golden core is the source of his divinity. What he bled and scraped and crawled through poverty and despair for. It keeps his territory thriving, his deputies strong, his palace within the upper echelons of the Heavenly court.
A god without a golden core is no god at all.
He inhales sharply and drags his gaze, still a blazing storm of emotion, back to Yào Ān’s face.
“How long.” The not-quite-question makes it clear to the medical god that Mu Qing has caught on to the likely consequences of the curse gnawing at his core. There’s a slight droop to his shoulders as he answers.
“One more year, maybe, if you avoid another deathly encounter with a demon or a fistfight with General Nan Yang. As the curse drains your spiritual power, your physicality and healing abilities will likely begin resembling that of a human’s until-”
Mu Qing puts a hand up to stop him. He doesn’t need–he doesn’t want to, he can’t—hear it.
Yào Ān clears his throat. “General Xuan Zhen, nothing’s set in stone just yet. Allow me a few days to conduct in-depth research and visit an old acquaintance. Yours is far from the only case ever recorded, I assure you.”
Mu Qing stares at Yào Ān, but really, he’s just staring down the barrel of his cursed fate. He can tell the other god is beginning to worry; he knows he’s waiting for an answer, but Mu Qing seems to have forgotten how to work his throat muscles, how to dig out his voice from the depths of his chest to form words and offer up anything as trite as reassurance.
Yào Ān half extends a hand, but before it can make contact with Mu Qing’s shoulder again, he snaps back to the present moment. He gets up on surprisingly steady legs and gives a brisk bow.
“Thank you for your help, Yào Ān.” He turns to leave, but makes it less than five steps before stopping cold in his tracks. Without turning around, Mu Qing adds (fists clenched, jaw tensed).
“I trust I can rely on your discretion. Regarding my…condition.”
Yào Ān nods slightly, almost demurely, and bows in turn. “Of course, General Xuan Zhen. I promise to be in touch soon with whatever news I manage to gather.”
Finally, Mu Qing walks away. As he steps into the crowded streets of the Heavenly Capital, he tugs hard at his leash and schools his expression into the half-sneer everyone knows to expect from the General of the Southwest.