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valtieldevi · 3 months ago

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Bingyuan Soulmate au 4/?

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Life was brighter with Yuan-ge in it.

Luo Binghe woke up before dawn with a smile on his face, fading dreams of a tender touch and warm voice lingering on the edges of his awareness. Not even the cold dirt floor of the woodshed could diminish the light feeling that courses through his body. He writes to Yuan-ge before getting dressed for the day, pushing back his sleeves and dipping his brush into ink.

“Wishing Yuan-ge a happy day!” Binghe wrote carefully with a smile, filling the words with happiness.

He wishes he could talk to Yuan-ge more. Yuan-ge writes to him a couple of things during the day, but Binghe has to wait until night when he’s alone in the woodshed to have a conversation.

Binghe was surprised to feel the rasping scrape of Yuan-ge’s writing implement so quickly, especially when Yuan-ge seemed to wake up a couple of hours later than him.

“Good morning Bing-er.” Yuan-ge wrote beneath Binghe’s message before more was written.

“You told me you had trouble cultivating, I thought about it last night. The most important part of learning is cross referencing. Is there any way you could look at someone else’s manual?” Yuan-ge asked, his words were earnest but they held a faint sense of suspicion in them.

“Yuan-ge?” Binghe wrote, imparting it with his curiosity.

“Make sure your material is real. People could be trying to hurt Bing-er with fake material.” Yuan-ge wrote, full of worry and suspicion.

Binghe recoiled from the message, his eyes wide. A fake manual? Binghe had never even thought of his manual being fake. Why would they give him a fake manual?

‘Because they hate you.’ a part of him thought.

No.

Even if Binghe somehow disappointed Shizun and earned his ire, there’s no way a peerless immortal like Shizun would give his disciple a false manual. Binghe hadn’t been here long, but he knew that it was deadly to cultivate improperly. It was one of the first things they were told. To follow their manual carefully and faithfully because any deviation could result in damaging or even destroying your meridians.

Binghe fought back the urge to argue with Yuan-ge.

Yuan-ge wasn’t a cultivator, he didn’t know how serious his accusations were. He was looking at this from the view of a scholar. With scholars it’s important to check that the copy of what you are studying is genuine. If you aren’t careful you could learn false information.

Binghe would check just so that he could reassure Yuan-ge that nothing was wrong. Ning-shije would be happy to let him look over her manual when they hang out later today.

“This one will check.” Binghe wrote.

“Thank you, Bing-er. I hope I’m wrong.” Yuan-ge responded, his words full of relief and underlying anxiety.

Binghe felt warm inside. Yuan-ge was worried for his safety. Even if it wasn’t necessary, it had been years since Binghe had someone who cared like this. Just like how his A-Niang worried when he went out to beg for food. It’s a special kind of worry reserved solely for the safety of the one you love most.

It’s been so long since Binghe felt loved.

The streets were hostile and cold, and coming to Qing Jing Peak was not much different. People were still cruel or indifferent. Binghe still had to struggle and fight to keep his head above water. He still went hungry most days and still slept on the dirt ground.

But now he could read what Yuan-ge says, and that alone made coming here worth it.

Binghe finished getting ready with a smile, brushing his hair to pull it into a neat ponytail. He dusted off his uniform a final time before stepping out of the woodshed to get a head start on his chores.

The rest of the day passed by like usual. His Shixiong’s jeered at him and piled more work onto his plate, he attended the classes of the Hallmasters who let him inside, and he did his chores. In the afternoon, Ning Yingying came to find him to hang out, accompanying him as he did his chores.

Binghe decided to wait until he was done chopping wood to ask Ning Yingying his question. “Ning-shije, could this one look at your manual please? This one is having trouble understanding his own.” he asked, placing down the rusted and blunt axe.

Ning Yingying perked up, happy to be addressed after a sichen of one-sided chatter. “Of course A-Luo!” she chirped, bouncing over to him. She pulled her manual from her robes and offered it to him with a smile. “You can ask Shije for help wherever you got stuck.” she said.

Binghe gave her a grateful smile, “Thank you, Ning-shije.” he said. Binghe sat down and opened up the manual, flipping through the pages. With each page his smile grew stiffer and a heavy feeling brewed within his gut.

This…

Binghe forced himself to take in each page before flipping it, resisting the desperate urge to flip through it rapidly. The words and diagrams were completely different. Binghe had thought himself dumb to be unable to read or understand some parts of his manual. For finding the diagrams to be confusing and painful to execute.

Yuan-ge’s words flashed in his mind.

“People could be trying to hurt Bing-er with fake material.”

This…

Binghe’s manual is fake.

If Binghe kept trying to cultivate using his manual, he could have died.

His Shizun had handed him this manual with a sneer, telling him to learn it well. Binghe had dedicated himself to this manual, reading each word carefully with his growing literacy and following each diagram attentively.

At best he would have wasted his cultivation, ruining his meridians and his chance at cultivation. At worst he could have Qi deviated and died.

Binghe trembled, a mix of emotions brewing in him as he realized that his Shizun wanted him dead. He knew that he had offended his master to some extent, but Binghe always thought that if he worked hard enough he could change his Shizun’s mind. If he proved himself, maybe Shizun would call him by name rather than ‘Beast’.

Binghe’s smile felt brittle as he pasted it to his face. “Ning-shije, do you think this one could take notes from your manual tomorrow? It’s much easier for this lowly one to understand.” he asked.

Ning Yingying agreed easily with a smile, taking her manual back before returning to her earlier chatter with a bright grin. If Binghe told her that his manual was fake, she would undoubtedly go straight to Shizun about it. Ning Yingying means well, but her words have always gotten him into trouble. Binghe can’t let her know that anything is off.

So, he smiles back and talks with her, pushing aside the growing anguish and anger inside of him. Those feelings could wait until he was back in his woodshed and could talk to his Yuan-ge.

They part ways when it’s time for dinner, Ning Yingying towards the mess hall and Luo Binghe back to his woodshed. Normally at this time Binghe would work on his cultivation until dinner is over, then he would sneak some leftover scraps that the other disciples didn’t eat.

Today, he didn’t bother. Instead he rolled up his sleeve and dipped his brush into ink.

“You were right, Yuan-ge. It was fake.” Binghe wrote, furious tears burning at his eyes. All of the feelings he had been pushing aside in front of Ning Yingying rose to the surface. His body shook with the intensity of his helpless anger, bitterness, and pain.

It didn’t take long for Yuan-ge to respond.

“I’m so sorry, Bing-er. You deserve better.” Yuan-ge wrote, words soothing with their protective fury and gentle comfort.

Binghe choked on a sob, staring at the words with glassy eyes. When had anyone ever said that he didn’t deserve what was happening to him? The last person to say something like that was his A-Niang, who told him that he deserved more than she could provide. She urged him to become a cultivator, to find a better life for himself. Binghe stayed at Qing Jing Peak no matter what happened because he held onto her words.

Binghe knew they didn’t like him here. He knew they wanted him gone.

He thought that if he could just prove himself, maybe then he would be accepted.

His Shizun had been trying to kill him since the day he arrived. There was no way that Binghe would ever make himself worthy in the eyes of Shen Qingqiu. He would only ever be a wretched beast.

“Yuan-ge.” Binghe wrote, hardly able to see through his tears as he sobbed hard enough to shake his body. He wished desperately that his Yuan-ge was here with him. Yuan-ge would make everything better. Yuan-ge was the only person who truly cared about him.

Binghe couldn’t force himself to calm down enough to read the response that Yuan-ge wrote, but he desperately grasped at the message to feel what it said. Binghe gasped, soaking in the love and comfort that was imparted into Yuan-ge’s words. Binghe clutched at his forearm until the skin turned pale under the pressure, greedy to get as close to Yuan-ge as he could.

Binghe wishes he could crawl beneath his own skin to get even closer to Yuan-ge’s words. He wishes he could travel across their string of fate and see Yuan-ge’s face. He wishes that Yuan-ge was here to hold him and whisper in his own voice whatever words he wrote.

Binghe could feel Yuan-ge keep writing to him, slowly filling up his entire arm before he started writing on their legs as well. Yuan-ge kept up a steady stream of writing, every character filled with comfort and love. Binghe traces the words as they appeared, chasing after the path they took as they scrawled across his body.

He doesn’t know how long it took for his desperate sobbing to peter off into gasping hiccups and sniffling, but Yuan-ge didn’t stop his writing the entire time. Binghe could feel that Yuan-ge was writing the same few words over and over again on their legs, keeping his writing small and compact.

Binghe wiped away his tears and fought to steady his breathing, wanting to read Yuan-ge’s words. He started with his left arm.

“My Bing-er, I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

“We’ll figure this out, Bing-er, I’ll help you.”

“I’m so sorry Bing-er, you deserve better than this.”

“Bing-er deserves the world, I would give it to you if I could.”

“I’m here, Binghe.”

Yuan-ge had written. They threatened to send Binghe back into a heap of tears, but he held back so that he could look down at his legs.

Yuan-ge had only written one thing, repeating the same words countless times, enough to fill the space from his ankle up to his knee on both legs.

“Binghe is precious.”

Binghe couldn’t fight back the tears any longer. He wrote back to Yuan-ge through the blurry film of tears, his poor penmanship suffering even further from his unsteady hand.

“I wish Yuan-ge was here.” Binghe wrote, wishing with all his heart that it could come true. The woodshed was cold and alone, but his body was filled with words of unconditional love.

Binghe has never felt so alone, but at least he has Yuan-ge.

Even if the rest of the world wants to see him dead or suffering, Yuan-ge is there.

Yuan-ge is all Binghe needs.

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