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Welp. I was gonna post this 2 days ago, but that would've been April Fool's Day, and I didn't want people to think I was posting an April Fool's joke chapter. But then I got distracted by an unrelated problem yesterday, and ended up entirely forgetting. So.
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For the second day in a row, Shen Qingqiu's door opened to reveal someone other than Luo Binghe. This time, it flew open with such a resounding crash that the door was quite likely damaged in some way.
"A-Ah, Mistresses, I don't believe his highness would-"
"Silence!"
Neither figure was Ning Yingying or Sha Hualing.
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Instead, it was two of Luo Binghe's other wives:
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Liu Mingyan and Qiu Haitang.
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Well, wasn't this just wonderful?
Liu Mingyan shoved the demon servant who had been guarding the door away, and the pathetic little thing didn't even offer any further protest. And so, the two women stormed into the room fully.
Though Qiu Haitang's clenched hands were empty, Liu Mingyan held her sword, already drawn, and she pointed it at him just as soon as she saw where he was in the room. Within another few moments, the tip was pressing into the fabric over his chest, a threat he knew she would be willing to deliver on.
How quickly things could escalate. Not that he was complaining in this particular instance, though.
Shen Qingqiu didn't move, keeping the book he'd been reading in a light grip. His chest fluttered with the slightest hint of fear, but he squashed it. Perhaps Sha Hualing wouldn't help him die, but he knew Liu Mingyan would have no reservations- yet would also not draw it out. Her righteous anger would move her hand, but she had some honor, still. His death would hurt, and it would come, but she wouldn't torture him longer than it took for him to bleed out.
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This was the best scenario he could hope for at this point, wasn't it?
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"You!" she growled, her pretty voice made harsh with hatred. "I don't know why our husband has brought you back, but I swear to the heavens I'll throw you back into whatever hell he dragged you out of!"
Was her beautiful face twisted under that veil she always wore? Did it hide her uglier expressions in the same way his fans once hid his own? It didn't matter, he supposed. He kind of wished he could have his fan one last time, though.
"Any last words, you scum?"
He said nothing. After all, he didn't want her to think that killing him would be doing him a favor.
Qiu Haitang remained silent as well, silently seething with rageful tears. He was surprised that she was satisfied with allowing Liu Mingyan the killing blow, not even having a weapon to join in with. In fairness, his crime against her happened first, so shouldn't she be the one to take her revenge before her fellow wife?
Perhaps she was fine enough with just watching him die.
He waited another few seconds and then gave the women the nastiest sneer he could conjure.
And a sharp pain stabbed into his chest.
XXX
Luo Binghe found his wife to talk the next day after her unauthorized visit, having had a strangely (suspiciously) hard time pinning her down the previous evening as well as this morning. Now, though, he found her sitting in his office, waiting for him.
"Hualing," he greeted neutrally.
The woman beamed with a toothy smile.
"Husband!" she responded. "You said you would talk to Ling-er later, didn't you?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, and yet, I couldn't seem to find you."
"Well, I'm right here!"
Luo Binghe sighed and went to sit down. His wife crowded closer, practically crawling into his lap.
"So?" she pressed. "Why do you have your despicable Shizun in a room instead of a cell, looking whole and taken on walks through the garden, Husband?"
At least this wife didn't have much of a grudge against Shen Qingqiu anymore. He knew that, mostly, she was curious, and she wasn't scolding him for what he'd done. She just wanted to see if there was anything entertaining going on. Which meant that he could give her a succinct answer without her flying into a rage he'd need to placate with honeyed words and a more thorough explanation.
"I looked through his memories and found that he wasn't quite as guilty of his accused crimes as I originally thought. As such, I made the decision that his punishments so far were a sufficient price to pay, and he would remain a prisoner without being tortured," he explained. "But, I had already gone to a lot of effort to revive him. So, it would be a bit of a shame to just kill him again."
"Really?" Sha Hualing asked in disbelief. "But you hate him so much!"
"… That has fallen down to much more of a simmer now that I have additional information."
He didn't quite say that he didn't really hate Shen Qingqiu much at all anymore, but he was pretty sure she understood from his expression.
"Huh," she spoke, almost idly. "So, what exactly are you going to do with him now?"
Well, now that Shen Qingqiu himself wasn't exactly a secret anymore, his goal didn't need to be so secret either, did it? Especially if he eventually reached his goal and married-
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When exactly had the goal been altered from just owning him to marriage?!
"… I intend to seduce him," Luo Binghe admitted. "He's always had a pretty face, you know."
She blinked and tilted her head.
"I guess he does," she agreed. "You should let me join- imagine the look he'd have on his face while he watches what you do with me, knowing that you'll do the same to him~"
Luo Binghe did imagine it, and honestly, the sight made him want to agree. Even still, he wanted to keep Shen Qingqiu all to himself, so he wasn't so sure if he wanted to let someone else see his face at such a moment. Things were a little different with his wives- though he often had relations with multiple wives at once, his possessiveness over his wives was born of affection rather than hate. Somehow, even if he was now contemplating turning Shen Qingqiu into another one of his 'wives', that difference in the source of the feeling made it feel different somehow. His wives were no strangers to his darker sides, but Shen Qingqiu…
The man had suffered so much, directly at his hand. And even if that's not what he wanted anymore, he knew that any relationship they had would be somehow twisted by it. Though he craved soft affection from the older man, he knew it would never be the same as what he got from his wives. The particular affection he wanted felt unique in a way that made him not want to share.
"… Maybe," he ended up saying. "But why were you even in his room in the first place?"
"I was curious," she answered. "I thought you'd brought home a shy, new wife. Turns out I was right! Mostly, at least. I don't think you could describe that man as 'shy'."
"No, you wouldn't," he agreed.
Then, he made his tone grow more serious.
"Hualing," he then said. "I know you, and I know your penchant for causing trouble."
She smiled sweetly.
"So, while I couldn't find you, did you happen to tell anyone else about Shen Qingqiu's presence here?"
"Was I not supposed to?" she asked, a false mask of innocence falling over her face. "I thought that our Husband was going to say something about him, anyway, since he brought his Shizun into the garden."
"You did not think that," Luo Binghe rejected the lie easily. "Who did you tell?"
She shifted a little, sensing that she might have actually displeased her husband.
"Just a few of the other wives."
"Which ones?"
Then, suddenly, a demon servant crashed into the room.
"I'm terribly sorry for the intrusion, Your Highness!" the servant gasped, desperately hoping they wouldn't be killed on the spot for disrupting Luo Binghe's meeting with one of his wives.
Luo Binghe, though, knew that something was obviously and seriously wrong if his servant had chosen to barge in like this.
"What happened?"
"Mistresses Liu and Qiu entered the prisoner's room and stabbed him!"
For just a second, Luo Binghe froze as he felt the same way he did when Shen Qingqiu almost managed to slit his own throat. Then, he pushed Sha Hualing away from him and stood up.
"Is he still alive?"
"He… was when I left, my lord," the servant answered. "Someone else is fetching the doctor."
"And my wives?"
"They have been removed from the room and are being watched."
Luo Binghe nodded, and with ice filling his veins in a terrible way, he stormed out of the room.
XXX
Shen Qingqiu's chest hurt, both because of the wound and also because that fluttering had returned, escalating to a sharp vibration. He recognized the feeling now- his soul was threatening to shatter. It had been threatening to shatter, for months now.
He chuckled a little bit, his voice weak.
It seemed that, once he died, no one would be able to bring him back.
Liu Mingyan's blade had hit his heart, but he knew that it must not have punctured through the center, or he probably would have been dead already. She must have nicked it in the side. Was that accidental, or had she done so intentionally to make him feel the pain just a little longer? It didn't matter- there was already so much blood, and his soul wouldn't hold out much longer, either. It was really a race to see what killed him first at this point.
He smiled, just a little, as the commotion around him began to sound softer and softer.
Eventually, as his sight fully faded to black, he felt something soft press against his still-smiling lips.
And then he knew no more.
XXX
Luo Binghe got to the room before the doctor did, that stupid doctor he still hadn't gotten around to replacing, and took over from a servant who had been trying to staunch the blood coming out of his Shizun's chest. But there was just so much of it, and though he tried to press down, more blood came out of the wound with every beat of the man's heart.
Feeling desperate, especially as Shen Qingqiu's eyes closed, Luo Binghe bit his tongue and pressed his lips to the other man's, forcing him to drink more of his blood. He ordered the blood to try to stop the bleeding, and he hoped the larger volume of parasites would make the task easier.
"Shizun, don't you dare fucking die," Luo Binghe sobbed as he reached out with his qi, trying anything he could to get the blood to stop.
This made him realize that, not only was the man also a hair's-width distance away from a qi deviation, his soul was shaking wildly. It was breaking.
Shen Qingqiu was dying.
It was then that the doctor finally arrived, and in rage, he grabbed the demon and pulled him close to his face.
"Remove the binding cables and keep him alive," he ordered, voice darker than it had been in quite a while. "If he dies, you will know no end to your suffering, do you understand?!"
"Yes, Your Highness!" the doctor practically squeaked.
Luo Binghe dropped the man and pushed him toward his dying Shizun. The doctor began to work immediately, while a pair of servants started removing the binding cables. Right now, Shen Qingqiu wouldn't be able to use his cultivation, anyway, and Luo Binghe knew damn well that keeping them on was putting too much strain on the man's soul when it was in this state. And maybe, having some amount of qi available would help stop the bleeding. Maybe he could help keep himself alive.
Now, though, there was nothing left for him to do but watch, wait, and keep his blood parasites working on their current task.
He'd deal with his wives later.
XXX
Later ended up being two days from then, when Shen Qingqiu was finally stable enough for Luo Binghe to feel like he could leave him for five minutes without the man dying. Shen Qingqiu, however, was still in extremely critical condition. The bleeding had been slowed by magic, but it hadn't stopped completely, and his soul's state hadn't improved. The doctor had told him that he was going to have to cut open Shen Qingqiu's chest so he could repair the damage to his heart manually, but he'd also told him that his soul was so fragile at the moment that doing so might kill him. And so, Luo Binghe ordered him to do whatever he could to stabilize his soul and fix the damage because he was not letting Shen Qingqiu die again.
Really, he'd only decided to deal with his wives because watching Shen Qingqiu lay there like that, pale and unmoving, was filling him with a terrifying discomfort that made him want to avert his eyes. The difference in how he felt at seeing the man in such a pitiful state now compared to the time in the water prison was both stark and inconvenient. Luo Binghe really wished he cared about his Shizun a little less, because these relatively-new affections he held were making this situation a lot more agonizing.
And so, he'd gone to talk to his murderous wives to feel like he was doing something instead of sitting by the bed and watching his Shizun die.
Clearly, these wives were not happy to see him, though, as they started shouting immediately upon his arrival.
Well, he wasn't exactly happy to see them at the moment, either.
"How could you?! How could you bring that man back?!" Liu Mingyan screamed. "And not only back, but well enough that we found him reading?! Just sitting in a room like an idle young master instead of the garbage criminal he is?!"
"After all he's done?!" Qiu Haitang added. "To you, to us, to our families?! You promised us his head when you married us!"
Luo Binghe gave them just a minute to air their grievances before he put his hand up and used his parasites to force them into silence.
"Liu Mingyan. Qiu Haitang," he spoke, his voice even but with such an obvious undercurrent of danger that it was pointless. "I understand your grudges. I have my own. But let me start this conversation by saying that Shen Qingqiu is mine. He is mine to do whatever I wish to. If that is torture, so be it. If that is ending the torture, so be it. He belongs to me, and I don't have to justify what I do with him to either of you."
He had them move to sit down and settled himself in front of them.
"But, seeing as you two can't act reasonably, I will explain it so there won't be any further incidents like this. And there won't be," he threatened. "So, let's start with what's happening: I revived Shen Qingqiu. There was something I wanted from him, so I brought him back. Some time after he was revived, however, I decided to look into his memories, and what I found there changed my perspective on him a bit."
He wanted to hurt them, but he held himself back. They were still his wives, and they didn't know. To them, they had no reason to show Shen Qingqiu mercy. Just like him, not really all that long ago, in the grand scheme of things.
And so, he would show them.
"Let's begin with you, Liu Mingyan, since you seem so eager," he announced. "I saw Shen Qingqiu's memories of your brother's death. He entered the caves and heard Liu Qingge having a qi deviation. And as surprising as it is, he actually tried to help. But then he had a qi deviation, and his memories became fuzzy. And your brother ended up dead. Ultimately, this means that there is no one alive who actually knows whether your brother was killed or died from his qi deviation. Being fair, though, the circumstances do have some bearing on Shen Qingqiu's guilt, I would think."
He took a breath in, staring at his wives who couldn't even move their faces to emote in response to what he was saying. He kept them still.
"And Qiu Haitang. While it is possible that Shen Qingqiu really did murder Liu Qingge and we won't know for sure, I can guarantee that he did kill your brother along with the rest of the men from your estate," Luo Binghe told him. "However, I feel that you should know that your version of those events was painted by an incomplete picture, and I believed that version to be fact when it wasn't."
He paused again, just for effect, before continuing:
"Shen Jiu was a slave, never treated well, and this continued to be true once he entered the Qiu household. While he was there, Shen Jiu was beaten constantly, with the worst of it coming from your brother. You only believe your brother treated him kindly because he didn't let you see what he was really doing- he didn't want his sweet little sister to think badly of him. Shen Jiu clung to you because of that, but the actual reason you were engaged was so that your brother could keep you, because he was unnaturally obsessed with you. And so, he continued to abuse Shen Jiu while you were entirely unaware, until the day came when he stabbed your brother in self-defense and snapped, resulting in the events that unfolded."
He gave them each their own look to try to convey that he was telling the truth.
"And so, amongst other things, with these reasons being most relevant to you personally, that is why I have changed my mind. He served a sentence of years of torture and death already, and I think that is sufficient for his punishment," Luo Binghe concluded. "Understand?"
With that, he released his hold that kept them from speaking. Liu Mingyan immediately glared at him, while Qiu Haitang looked shocked.
"I don't believe you. He must have done something to alter his memories- he killed my brother in cold blood!"
"That-That can't be true… my brother was always so kind to him, and Xiao-Jiu never told me anything…"
He figured that these two would need more convincing than just his words. And though Shen Qingqiu would protest, Luo Binghe didn't care if he was able to keep them from doing something like this again.
"Very well, then. I'll just have to show you."
Luo Binghe then used the parasites to cut off their air supply until they passed out, at which point he entered their dreamscapes and showed them the relevant memories.
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By the time they woke up, Liu Mingyan was conflicted and Qiu Haitang was devastated.
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