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Frankly, as distressing as the whole situation was, Luo Binghe expected to find Mu Qingfang, and then his Shizun would get the proper treatment and everything would be fine (or, as fine as things were now). He thought that all he had to do was get Shen Qingqiu to a doctor, and he'd be awake again in no time.

He was wrong.

Despite Mu Qingfang clearing his meridians and coaxing his throat to swallow various teas and medicines, Shen Qingqiu still wasn't waking up. After a few days with no change, Mu Qingfang had been forced to break the news:

Shen Qingqiu was in a coma.

He didn't know when the man would wake up, or even more distressing, if he even would. The extended period of having his qi so unsettled had taken its toll, and this deviation was probably the worst he'd experienced yet.

Luo Binghe, as anyone would expect, was devastated. He'd gone on a minor rampage through the bamboo forest and sobbed his heart out before he'd been calm enough to join the others in thinking of ways to get him to wake up again. Mu Qingfang had summoned Yue Qingyuan, Shang Qinghua, and Liu Qingge to the bamboo house so they could all put their heads together. Yue Qingyuan was giving Shen Qingqiu sad, guilty looks while Liu Qingge silently fumed at the situation. Mu Qingfang was mixing another brew that he hoped would help, and Shang Qinghua appeared to be deep in thought. Luo Binghe fell more than he sat on the floor to join them, uncaring of the way he almost knocked into Liu Qingge on his way down.

Shen Qingqiu was laid out on his bed, his chest rising and falling gently, as if he were only asleep. The blood had been cleaned from his face, and Luo Binghe had changed him into fresh robes before Mu Qingfang gave him the bad news. He looked serene, more than he had in a while. If only he was just sleeping. But there were still dark bags beneath his eyes and a hollow look in his cheeks that served as reminders of his recent distress, reminders that his sleep was involuntary.

"I am going to continue treating the qi deviation, but I am unsure if that alone will be sufficient," Mu Qingfang spoke eventually. "If we don't think of something else, I can't guarantee that Shen-shixiong will…"

Luo Binghe's heart clenched at the repeated statement of Mu Qingfang's uselessness. He was a doctor, wasn't he?! Why wasn't his treatment working?!

"So, what, he's gonna die?" Liu Qingge growled.

"Not necessarily, but it's a possibility," the Qian Cao Peak Lord replied. "His health is quite poor."

He could feel his heart being torn to pieces.

He couldn't lose his Shizun again.

He wasn't going to let that happen.

Never. Again.

"He won't die," Luo Binghe hissed. "He won't."

"Saying it won't change a fucking thing," Liu Qingge spat back, masking his grief with rage.

"I won't fucking let him! He's not leaving me again!"

"Either calm down or go fight outside," Mu Qingfang scolded. "Because you're not going to fight in here."

Luo Binghe shot another glare toward Liu Qingge, who returned the expression with one of his own, but the two ultimately decided to just be civil. Neither one wanted to leave Shen Qingqiu's side at the moment.

There was a long stretch of uncomfortable silence in which the demon lord just spent a long time staring at his husband's face again.

It was eventually broken by Yue Qingyuan.

"I wish he would have been more open. We may have been able to do something if he would have spoken to someone."

Of course, Luo Binghe thought the same, but agreeing wouldn't change that Shen Qingqiu hadn't spoken to them, even when he was advised that bottling his emotions and thoughts up was making it worse.

"… Maybe he will…," Shang Qinghua finally said something, though he seemed to be muttering more to himself than to the group.

"What are you saying?" Liu Qingge chided. "Speak up."

Shang Qinghua looked surprised that they'd heard him, but he quickly got over it and began to speak to them directly.

"It's just… Well, he isn't waking up, but he's married to a half-demon who can enter people's dreams. Maybe he wasn't willing to speak to us before, but now that it's gotten to this point, he might be willing to do so within his dreams," Shang Qinghua explained. "If Luo Binghe enters his dreamscape, he might be able to fix some of the damage from the inside."

"If that would work, wouldn't they have already tried that?" Liu Qingge huffed.

Luo Binghe frowned.

"Shizun wouldn't let me before," he admitted. "But…"

It had already reached this point, and there seemed to not be much else they could do. Surely, it would be an invasion of his husband's privacy and go against the man's wishes. But wasn't that better than letting him die? His husband didn't want to die- he was afraid of it- so wouldn't it be alright if they were to do this to save his life? Couldn't the invasion be forgiven?

"In this circumstance, I think it may be excusable," Luo Binghe finished. "I don't think Shizun would prefer dying."

Yue Qingyuan looked uncomfortable with the idea of invading Shen Qingqiu's memories through his dreamscape, but he didn't disagree with it. Liu Qingge and Mu Qingfang seemed to agree with rather little hesitation.

"Before you do that, though…," Shang Qinghua paused. "You need to understand that you may see things that you don't understand or recognize. And… you might come to a few realizations as you see things from his perspective. And you also might… be a bit upset about what you find…"

Luo Binghe raised an eyebrow. What did Shang Qinghua know for him to be giving this warning? Yue Qingyuan looked uncomfortable again, so he guessed that the sect leader might have some idea as well.

But, it was perhaps best to not pursue answers at this time, considering that it seemed he would soon be receiving them.

XXX

Once it was decided, the others left to a different room so that Luo Binghe could fall asleep and enter his Shizun's dreamscape. After all, who could sleep with Liu Qingge staring at them?

Luo Binghe looked down at his sleeping husband and leaned down to kiss him gently. Pulling back, he brushed a strand of hair back into place.

"I'm sorry, Shizun. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think I had to," he apologized, hoping the slumbering man wouldn't be too mad when he woke up. "I love you."

He laid down beside him on the bed and a few minutes later, he found himself standing within his husband's dreamscape. Already, he could understand part of Shang Qinghua's warning. The area surrounding him was disordered and confusing, clearly a combination of more than one location. Bamboo poked out from between crumbled remains of strange, unfamiliar structures. The sky was filled with smoke, but he could see no fires for it to have come from. Blurry figures ghosted past him, and while some appeared to be similar enough to people he would meet on the street, others looked entirely alien, their attire strange and not at all like anything he'd seen someone wear before.

He didn't know what exactly he was looking at, but it was a dreamscape, and one that he'd already known had caused confusion for his husband, so he wasn't exactly shocked.

Luo Binghe walked forward and found that a door was suddenly in front of him. He pushed it open gently and stepped inside, finding himself within a more familiar setting: the bamboo house, though it was a little blurry. The memory appeared to be recent, as Shen Qingqiu looked every bit as ill as he had appeared lately.

He came closer, and the scene became more focused. Now, he could see that he (or, a memory version of himself) was also present, appearing to be asleep. Shen Qingqiu was stroking his hair affectionately, and knowing that his Shizun did that as he slept normally would have given him at least a spark of joy, except he could now see that his husband was crying. The tears were silent ones, just rolling down his cheeks without fanfare, but Luo Binghe wished they had never been there at all.

"You really ended up with quite a useless husband, haven't you, Binghe?" Shen Qingqiu's soft voice came out in a whisper. "You didn't really sign up for this…"

Luo Binghe frowned.

"That's not true. I'll love you no matter what! I'm not going to stop loving you because you're sick!" he protested.

The memory couldn't hear him, being purely a memory and clearly not containing any of his Shizun's consciousness, and he couldn't change the words already spoken. He made a note to remind his husband of what being married entailed at a later date, though.

He walked forward and opened another door, this time being met with another domestic scene, though this one was much older. It was just him and Luo Binghe eating breakfast together, what was probably a few years ago. This memory was much happier, with his Shizun hiding small smiles behind his fan and Luo Binghe stealing kisses on the man's cheek. His heart ached at the sight, wishing he could see his husband look happy like that again.

Part of him felt tempted to stay and watch a little longer, but he was here for a reason, and he wanted his husband to feel happy like this in the present waking world as well, not just in his memories.

And so, he moved on.

He went through a string of small, inconsequential memories, some good and some bad, and none of them being anything he was able to do anything with. But then he came up to a door that took him some effort to push open. He was still able to do it, but it clearly contrasted with the ease he'd entered the previous memories.

Again, he found himself in Shen Qingqiu's bedroom in the bamboo house, watching him groggily sitting up while Yue Qingyuan sat at his bedside.

"I… where is this?"

Yue Qingyuan looked surprised at the question.

"Did you sleep yourself into a trance? This is your Qing Jing Peak."

"Why… Why was I asleep for so long?"

The two of them continued to speak for a few more minutes, and it appeared that Shen Qingqiu was just a little too confused for waking up from a nap. When was this?

Suddenly, Luo Binghe caught onto one of the man's thoughts:

'Fuck, of all characters, I'm Shen Qingqiu. Out of everyone?!'

That was the only sentence he heard, and it left him wondering what else his husband was thinking. Of course he was Shen Qingqiu. Did his Shizun have amnesia at some point? And what did he mean by 'characters'?

He watched the two of them continue to talk, and Luo Binghe was surprised to hear his own name, considering he'd started to think that this might have been a memory from before they'd met.

"Where is Luo Binghe?"

To this, Yue Qingyuan told him that he was in the woodshed, which gave a pretty clear indication of the time frame for this memory. More shocking than that, however, was that Shen Qingqiu looked horrified. He would expect the current Shizun to react that way, but at this time, he was pretty certain that his Shizun had hated him, or something close to it. Or at least that Luo Binghe hadn't proven himself yet. But he was the one who put him in the woodshed in the first place, so why would he be so upset that he was in there? Had he forgotten somehow?

Some time later, Shen Qingqiu called for him to be brought, and Luo Binghe watched his younger self appear. His Shizun gave him medicine, and that cemented the exact date of this memory in his mind.

This was the first time Shen Qingqiu was kind to him.

Of course, Luo Binghe remembered this day well. For a few years, it gave him hope that he'd finally pleased his teacher, as well as encouraged his at-the-time-unrequited (and at this exact time, not yet existing) crush. Then, it spent a few years relegated to the 'revenge-fueling memories' spot of his mind before it went right back to being a memory that Luo Binghe kept close to his heart.

The question about his age, as well as the accompanying half-apology, stuck out to him. Shen Qingqiu was putting up a good front, but without the veneer of anxiety Luo Binghe had been experiencing during the actual event, there was clearly something off about him.

He seemed a little confused.

Had something in one of his nightmares confused him, just like they did now? Was this something that happened before, when Luo Binghe wasn't close enough to his Shizun to know about it? Was that why Yue Qingyuan seemed to know something?

Eventually, the memory ended, and Luo Binghe went to the next one, which seemed almost intentional in the way it gave him an answer.

This one was rather bland and uneventful.

Because all it was was Shen Qingqiu staring into a mirror, his eyes unfocused and gaze distant. Luo Binghe immediately recognized that this was one of his husband's detachment episodes, and he got a sense that it wasn't recent, either. He heard a ruckus coming from outside, recognizing the voices.

"A-Luo! Come look!" came the voice of a younger Ning Yingying.

Shen Qingqiu seemed to hear the sound, but he didn't move until much later.

This had to be when Luo Binghe was still in the Cang Qiong sect, before he entered the Endless Abyss. Which meant… this had definitely been going on much longer than he thought. No wonder it had become so bad, if his Shizun had been spending so many years like this without treatment!

Though he had clearly been oblivious to his surroundings before, this memory suddenly looked up and stared right at him. Luo Binghe's heart jolted.

"Binghe?" Shen Qingqiu questioned.

"Yes, I'm here," he answered, sitting down in front of him. "Is something wrong, Shizun?"

Shen Qingqiu took out a fan.

"I'm fine. There's no need for you to worry."

But Luo Binghe didn't want to leave it at that- after all, the entire point of this was to get Shen Qingqiu to release some of his distress so he could heal and wake up.

"You can tell this disciple anything, Shizun," Luo Binghe told him. "I'll listen to anything you want to tell me!"

As he said this, however, the spark of recognition in Shen Qingqiu's eyes faded, and the memory saw him no more. It was only a memory again. Was his Shizun really hiding away even here?

With nothing else he could do, Luo Binghe moved on.

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Only one chapter left!

Also, just to clarify for no particular reason other than I want it to be clear:

It might seem weird that Shen Yuan kinda has Shen Jiu's memories, BUT my reasoning for that is that Meng Mo wouldn't have been able to show SY ANYTHING if those memories weren't still floating around in SQQ's brain somewhere, so… That's my reasoning in case y'all were thinking it made no sense.

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