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tossawary · 4 years

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Chapter 24: “Seeing is Believing” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” random favorite lines and commentary. Not a full list or full commentary, but longer commentary than usual to talk about quest construction.

AN: This was... a weird chapter to write. When I started outlining, I had... the conversation with Shen Qingqiu planned... the conversation with Shen Yuan planned... the fact that SQH, SY, LQG, and LFL was the quest party... and the fact that they get the Eye at the end of it. That was everything.

The entire rest of this chapter came together FRIDAY LAST WEEK.

Huan Hua Palace wasn’t going to be there. The Weeper didn’t exist. The Eye or its previous owner wasn’t at all connected to the Garden Master. The Shadow Cave Wolf Spiders didn’t exist. The murder plant didn’t exist. The mysterious monster showing up at the end wasn’t originally planned either.

I mean, I had a lot of pre-existing plot threads to tie in and weave with, but ohhh boy! Picture someone lying facedown on a floor like, “I forgot to plan the contents of the super important quest...”

I was originally going to have the Eye quest a lot simpler, but given the weight “Death of the Author” had when I finally reached this part of the story, that wasn’t really going to do! It had to be bigger than that! It needed oomph! This also felt like a good opportunity to really establish the new SQH-SY dynamic. To explore SY fumbling to find a place in this world without strict character role, especially in relation to settled and well-supported SQH.

“One attempts to remain dignified,” Shen Qingqiu agrees. “As there is little point in kicking and screaming about how such ignobility isn’t fair.”

“Ha! Is there ever?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely not cute when I do it,” Shang Qinghua jokes.

Shen Qingqiu’s lips actually twitch at that.

Success?!

AN: I wasn’t going into this fic with the intention of writing any Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu almost friendship! But it started developing and it seemed a shame not to explore Shang Qinghua developing a real relationship with Shen Qingqiu (though not a particularly close one) when the man is suppose to be the scum villain (and the readers know that the man might get replaced by Shen Yuan).

I can see myself writing more Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu content in the future. Someone dropped a particularly nice prompt for them in my inbox that I’m looking forward to exploring at some point.

(I mean, not to say that Shang Qinghua has a type, but Shang Qinghua has a type and it’s handsome, deadly, intimidating, frosty men with a villainous character design and trust/abandonment and communication issues. I could make it work.)

“Ah, well, two ‘ideal’ situations come to mind: severing the personal relationship for good… or, ah, talking about how to do better and trying that. You don’t have to forget or even forgive if you don’t want to! But, ah… there’s got to be a difference between totally swallowing your anger and cutting ties forever, right?” Shang Qinghua says awkwardly. “If there’s… ever going to be anything good afterwards…”

Shen Qingqiu stares at him for a sweat-inducing length of time.

“Ah, fuck,” Shang Qinghua thinks.

“Sorry,” he says. “Ahhh, I’m just… thinking about something someone told me… in… in regards to some of my own problems. Never mind! Never mind!”

AN: Luo Jiahui really is out here making Moshang and Qijiu get their fucking act together just by setting a better example.

“Shizun, my apologies for the interruption, but I came to ask Shizun if he would be willing to join our music lesson today? The disciples have missed his playing and are eager to present their improvements.”

“...Very well, unless anyone here would disagree…?” Shen Qingqiu looks directly at the Qian Cao Peak cultivator, as though daring her to object and die.

“It’s an excellent suggestion!” the Qian Cao Peak cultivator says quickly.

The young woman smiles. “And perhaps Shizun could sit in on the calligraphy lesson afterwards? In order to offer his opinion on my progress as a teacher?”

“Fishing for compliments is unbecoming,” Shen Qingqiu says dryly.

“Wait, what?” Shang Qinghua thinks.

AN: So, this has all been happening in the background, but Shen Qingqiu accepted this House of Rejuvenation woman onto his Peak about... 6-ish years ago now? This is kind of meant to parallel Shang Qinghua’s once-secret relationship with Luo Jiahui.

Shang Qinghua was out here trying to be a better person and Shen Qingqiu noticed; now Shen Qingqiu has his own positive (platonic) relationship with a nameless background character who was meant to die for plot reasons. What a thing, huh? If the story was saved because Shang Qinghua started a domino effect of saving random people who went on to change things?

After all, as Shang Qinghua said to the kid, besides Peerless Cucumber’s apparent talent for cultivation, he knows that his fellow transmigrator has three very important skills that will serve him well on An Ding Peak! 1) An encyclopedia knowledge for even seemingly pointless bullshit (which is kind of flattering, honestly). 2) The willingness to fight total strangers over seemingly pointless bullshit. And 3) a sharp enough tongue to win.

Peerless Cucumber didn’t find these points as funny as Shang Qinghua did.

AN: Shen Yuan was always going to end up on An Ding Peak. I thought about sending him to Qing Jing or Qian Cao or Qiong Ding... or any other Peak... but that would take him too far away from Shang Qinghua to really explore their relationship and to move him around conveniently in the story. And SY sticking to An Ding seemed to best illustrate the fact that SY is lost and doesn’t know what to do except cling to SQH.

“It’s not much, sure, but it’s yours,” Shang Qinghua says finally. “You’ll be joining the talisman classes soon, so don’t try anything from a book and then need to request some home repairs.”

Peerless Cucumber nods and puts his stack of manuals down on the table.

“How’s your tutorial mission going?”

“Fine,” the kid says shortly. “Have you found anything for the other one yet?”

“Ah, not yet.”

AN: “Are you winning, son?” meme energy here.

Ah, now Shang Qinghua recognizes his fellow transmigrator’s expression! That’s the same stunned expression one of his Huan Hua not-disciples, Yu Chaonan, made upon meeting the Bai Zhan Peak War God for the first time. Shang Qinghua assumes that Peerless Cucumber was expecting a man who looked more like a musclebound giant and less like a pop idol (if one with amazingly muscular arms), which is a super common and never-not-funny misconception people have about Liu Qingge.

“Brother of one of the most beautiful women in this world, bro,” Shang Qinghua reminds his fellow transmigrator, amused. Aha! Now Peerless Cucumber’s vehement disinterest in the harem stuff is making even more sense than before!

Shang Qinghua’s assumption gets 100% confirmed when it comes time for Peerless Cucumber to fly with Liu Qingge for the next leg of the journey. The other transmigrator is so embarrassed and awkward about it that Shang Qinghua’s super direct brother-in-law asks if the young man is alright.

AN: This was so fun to write. Shang Qinghua really can use the Liu siblings to gauge people’s sexual/romantic orientation.

The map (or rather, the copy Shang Qinghua made of the delicate original map) takes them to a green and grey landscape of leafy trees crawling over a wide network of tall cliffs and deep gorges. Gurgling rivers cut through twisting rock formations. Shang Qinghua can’t see any of these rivers on the map. Or these deathly drop ravines. From the outside, the whole thing looks like a natural maze (holy shit, there could be so many monsters and death-traps in there!), and Shang Qinghua would know those golden robes flying low over the hanging trees anywhere.

“Huan Hua,” Liu Qingge mutters.

“Do you think they’re looking for what we’re looking for?” Luo Fanli asks.

“That’s usually how it goes,” Peerless Cucumber says, before Shang Qinghua can.

AN: I came up with the skeleton idea first. Then I was like... “I should give it three eyes.” And then I was like... “But who IS this dead author? A god? A spirit? What grander implications am I spinning here?”

And THEN I remembered that I had some ambiguous powerful being force the Garden Master into exile due to a flood. This was because, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the immortal man Gilgamesh meets in the abyss is the survivor of a great flood. So I was like, “Reduce! Re-use! Recycle! There’s my skeleton!”

So I wanted to relate the skeleton to water because of the flood angle. Water as a symbol of cleansing/reincarnation is a big thing throughout many cultures. I can’t remember exactly how the crying aspect came up, but I knew there was going to be water in the temple now, so at some point my brain like was, “Bro, this skeleton should totally be crying because mythology vibes.”

So I built the surrounding land off the idea that there was water flowing from or around this temple. At this point, I had decided that Huan Hua Palace should also be looking for this artifact, so I had to come up with a way to hide the temple, yet have a way for SQH’s party to track it down.

The damage to the doors is worse: someone once upon a time collapsed a part of the cliff face around the entrance, essentially leaving only the top fourth of the utterly smashed stone doors visible. It’s a wall now and has been for ages. It looks like it would take days to dig through the rubble. Someone has even super helpfully carved, “These doors will never open again,” just above the wreck.

“Guess we’ll have to go in as intruders rather than guests!” Luo Fanli says.

“What would be welcoming us inside a lost temple exactly?” Shang Qinghua asks vaguely, inwardly cursing the fact that explosive mining techniques will definitely attract the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators’ attention and also probably collapse the whole cliff on them.

“We only have to clear a passage for us, not the whole door,” Peerless Cucumber says optimistically. “Is there a special technique for this kind of thing?”

“Aha, not really.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we just keep following the water?” Luo Fanli says.

“...How so?” Shang Qinghua asks.

“Some of those waterfalls could be passages inside,” Liu Qingge explains, because he and the little sister-in-law apparently share the same brain. He’s already eyeing the waterfall wearing down the giant statue on the left.

AN: Temples in quests need to have traps and obstacles and monsters! Well, not ALL of the did, but this one did. I based the obstacles they faced as much as I could around the whole “Death of the Author” theme, while using this whole quest to explore Shen Yuan, Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua, Shang Qinghua and Liu Qingge and Luo Fanli, and so on.

The idea here with the door is that the “author” is not going to let them inside the temple to take the interpretation of the narrative (the Eye) for themselves. The story is over (the temple is closed for business)! The author is dead! If they want to get inside, they have to break inside or slip inside as intruders.

This also creates a convenient obstacle to hold up the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators so that our party can be nearly caught later! And shows off Shang Qinghua, Liu Qingge, and Luo Fanli’s twisty lines of thinking.

Luo Fanli is holding the light and Shang Qinghua passes the other transmigrator to her, while accepting Liu Qingge’s hand for help getting out of the water.

“Ahhh, that was fun,” Shang Qinghua mutters.

Then he notices that Liu Qingge has the Cheng Luan sword out and ready. Shang Qinghua looks through the surrounding darkness, but all he can see are columns and water. For a moment, he thinks he sees something, a prowling shadow at the other end of the cavernous room, but he wipes the water out of his eyes and it’s gone.

AN: The water in Shang Qinghua’s eyes briefly lets him see a flash of the invisible monsters who show up later! It helps up the tension.

Another low growl rips through the darkness and Peerless Cucumber shuffles a little closer to Shang Qinghua. Because that sounded really fucking close and yet Shang Qinghua still can’t see the thing that’s making that sound.

He doesn’t see Liu Qingge lunge at him either. He only feels his brother-in-law shove him into Peerless Cucumber, knocking them into the water, out of the way of something that howls when Liu Qingge slashes at it with his sword. Shang Qinghua rolls off Peerless Cucumber and looks up just in time to see dark blood splatter across the watery floor. Liu Qingge pursues the attacker with a second slash, but only seems to meet thin air this time.

“It’s invisible!” Luo Fanli cries. “Fuck!”

“Behind you!” Liu Qingge snaps, and spins to slash at the thin air beside him. Dark droplets of blood hit the water again and something hisses at him.

Luo Fanli whirls and slashes, searching for an opponent.

“They’re reflected in the water!” Liu Qingge yells at her, standing guard over Shang Qinghua as he gets to his feet again. “Listen for their footsteps and vocalizations! Feel the demonic energy and air displacement!”

AN: I got this from a list of Dungeons and Dragons puzzles. The idea is that there’s some puzzle that must be solved, but the truth of the room can only be seen in the reflection of the nearby water (or mirror or whatever).

Which felt fitting for a “Death of the Author” quest! Whatever an author’s intentions, the story is what they actually wrote, so the audience interprets a text without the context of the author’s insight. The truth (of the story) is in the reflection (audience interpretation)! It felt like a fun idea.

It also allows Shen Yuan to actually contribute to the quest via monster lore and bring up his impaired vision problem. And to confront Shen Yuan with the reality of this world. And to show off Luo Fanli’s fighting skills. And to show off LIU QINGGE’S legendary fighting skills, instincts as a warrior who fights many dangerous beasts, and the fact that he’s clever and observant!

Liu Qingge is good at what he does! And this is what he does!

Someone has… angrily… or desperately… carved a lopsided message into the wall.

“‘If I go blind, so does the world,’” Peerless Cucumber reads.

“...That’s probably not good,” Shang Qinghua says.

“Nooo…” Fanli agrees.

The messages continue as they climb, carved into the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Most of it is illegible. Some of it is just nonsense. Some of it looks like the same kind of historical records carved into the broken tablets. Some of it looks like someone attacked the walls after reading what was written there. There are deep gouges in the walls and cracked marks that would match a giant’s hands.

“‘The water cleans the lies,’” Peerless Cucumber reads. “‘I am the only one who can see.’ ‘Lies everywhere, lies everywhere, lies everywhere.’ ‘The water cleans the evil.’ ‘I do not have enough tears.’ ‘Everything is nothing now. Everything in vain.’”

“You really don’t need to read them!” Shang Qinghua tells the kid. “It’s fine. It's totally fine.”

AN: This is mostly here to up the tension, but it’s also here to try and give insight into this being and relate them more to the “Death of the Author” and the “Seeing is Believing” themes.

I also saw the phrase “If I go blind, so does the world” while I was browsing a list of riddles for D&D campaigns and I was like, “THAT’S SICK, I’M USING THAT.” Really brings the “an eye for an eye” and vengeance vibes. (The riddle was longer than that one phrase, but the answer was “the sun”.)

The top of the temple reveals one massive room that looks like someone was alternatively scratching their insanity into the walls and tearing chunks out of the interior design with their bare hands. Overtop of the rubble is that eerie overgrowth. There’s a fine layer of water over the floor. At the center of it all is an incredibly enormous desk, cracked in half, with a robed skeleton sitting behind it, slumped over the top. It’s a little too large to be an ordinary human.

Plus, its skull is a little too long, probably to accommodate the third eye socket in the forehead. There’s something gleaming softly yellow in the third eye socket.

“Is… there water dripping from its eyes?” Luo Fanli whispers.

“It looks like it…” Peerless Cucumber whispers back. “Like it's crying…?”

“Still…? Is it dead or not?”

“Holy shit,” Shang Qinghua thinks, slightly nauseated. “System, bro, the worst bro I’ve ever known, tell me that we have not been swimming in a three-eyed skeleton’s magical undead tears or something this whole time.”

The shitty, no-good System stays unsurprisingly silent.

AN: Okay, so the idea here is that this being was someone who recorded history and shared their knowledge freely. This being had the ability to discern the truth of a person - they were extremely perceptive. (The Weeper is either female or doesn’t have a gender, by the way.)

The Weeper met the Garden Master at some point. The Garden Master was an asshole, a liar, arrogant, etc.. The Weeper and the Garden Master clashed badly, until the Weeper sent the cleansing flood that nearly destroyed the sect and the Garden Master essentially had to flee to a personal abyss.

The Garden Master sent the plant as a final “fuck you” to the Weeper. The plant caused the Weeper to slowly go mad. The smashed tablets and destroyed temple are the Weeper’s work. The Weeper (not in a great state of mind) had the temple closed themselves once they realized they and their work had been corrupted. This was a “you destroy my (embellished) reputation, I destroy yours (and your entire life)” plot by the Garden Master.

The idea behind the tears is the whole “water is cleansing” thing. The Weeper tried to clean away the madness using their magical water-related abilities... and it actually worked for a long time. But eventually the madness began to overpower the effects of the magical water. The Weeper’s tears are from frustration and helplessness at losing control.

The water inside the temple combats the plant’s physical effects. Also stabbing the root killed the plant and essentially broke its mental/spiritual powers.

Unfortunately, to get the fuck out of here, they have to go back through the temple. But hey! That’s still a lot better than an extended hike through an underground, haunted desert in darkness! The battle with the now-dead plant caused its growth to writhe around the temple. The vines need to be hacked through sometimes as they travel down through the rooms of broken shelves and shattered tablets.

“So much history lost…” Peerless Cucumber murmurs.

“He still thinks of himself as a reader - an observer, a visitor, separate from the flow of fate.”

AN: This is... absolutely based on the Heart from the Dishonored franchise. But this sort of item didn’t originate with Dishonored and I need it! It’s a surprise/mystery tool that will help us later!

The Eye isn’t exactly a mind-reading object. I mean, it kind of is, but it works in a very specific way that I’m looking forward to getting into.

From there, their path back out of the natural maze is even more careful and stressful than before, now that the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators are actively looking for them rather than the temple. It’s slow-going and stressful and silent, except for when the Weeper’s Eye presses too close against his chest.

“He is afraid that if he starts screaming, he will never stop,” it tells him, when he’s looking at a pale-faced Peerless Cucumber, as they fly over a particularly deathly-looking drop.

“Oh, me too, bro!” Shang Qinghua thinks. “Seriously! Tell me something I don’t know!”

AN: Having Shang Qinghua be totally unimpressed by an object like this was very funny to me. He’s the author! He’s a transmigrator! He knows these people well! He already has insight into their situations.

Shang Qinghua groans, but supposes that Peerless Cucumber would have at least been disguising Liu Qingge from the back. “You tell them that you were tracking thieves who stole something from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect,” he says quickly. “Rule of embarrassment! Admitting something that makes us look bad to a rival makes it sound true. Don’t tell them what was stolen and act really offended if they try to poke into Cang Qiong business. I’ll come back as soon as I get these two out!”

Liu Qingge nods and launches forward into the fight.

“We’re just leaving him?” Peerless Cucumber says, as they do exactly that.

“I’ll get changed and come back ‘looking for him for urgent sect business’ as soon as I’ve dropped you two off in the last town,” Shang Qinghua says. “I’m really good at acting stressed and confused, and at desperately needing an unstoppable wandering Liu Qingge back at Cang Qiong Mountain Sect immediately. Now let’s go! Let’s go! Mission isn’t over yet!”

AN: Shang Qinghua is, at heart, a liar. I love him.

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