trash.

For instance, in the brothels, Shen Jiu tells Yue Qingyuan to his face that he's there for the reasons everyone else has also assumed: that he's there to have sex, in the place that sells sex.

“If you don’t tell them and I don’t either, who’d know which sect we’re from?” Shen Qingqiu countered. “Cang Qiong Mountain is Cang Qiong Mountain. Tell me, which of Cang Qiong Mountain’s rules decrees that its disciples can’t visit this place? Cang Qiong Mountain isn’t a Buddhist monastery or Daoist temple. They might be able to control everything else, but they can’t stop me from looking for women! If Shixiong finds it shameful, he should watch that mouth of Liu Qingge’s.”

This isn't a situation where Yue Qingyuan was told a rumor and then immediately believed it. He found Shen Jiu in that brothel after learning that he'd badly beaten up a disciple who'd found him there, and walked in on the middle of him and Liu Qingge having a very public brawl about it. Yue Qingyuan is 'in a rare fit of anger' over it, shouting at him even, only cowing after Shen Qingqiu's speech about looking for women.

Even so, Yue Qingyuan does still ask him directly about why he's there:

“If you truly are doing well, why do you never spend the night on Qing Jing Peak?” Yue Qingyuan asked, following on his heels. Shen Qingqiu gave him a dark look. He knew that Yue Qingyuan must be thinking that he was being excluded by the rest of Qing Jing Peak. Yue Qingyuan’s guess wasn’t unreasonable, but he was genuinely wrong this time. 

Both the readers and Shen Jiu know that this isn't true. But Shen Jiu pointedly never corrects him, because the alternative is to admit he's there because he can't stand sleeping around men anymore, something he won't admit because it's embarrassing.

For Yue Qingyuan to know this though, he'd have to practically be a mind-reader. He has no idea that this is all a result of how Shen Jiu found comfort and safety with Qiu Haitang; all he has is what he's seen and Shen Jiu's own words.

As for killing Liu Qingge...

The thing Shen Qingqiu most often said to Liu Qingge was: “Liu Qingge, I’ll definitely kill you one day!” (...) As Shen Qingqiu had turned a deaf ear to his every plea, Yue Qingyuan found it difficult to speak further. After all, he couldn’t straight-up tell him something like: If you hadn’t used every means to ambush Liu Qingge after the meet in order to teach him a lesson, the two of you wouldn’t fly into a rage at the slightest contact now, nor would you loathe the mere sight of each other.

This was a reputation Shen Jiu built entirely by himself If someone goes around threatening to kill someone, if he is violently ambushing them repeatedly, and then suddenly that person dies violently when he's the only other person nearby... Literally what else is anyone supposed to think?

We don't know how much, if at all, Shen Jiu defended himself after this or just what sort of investigations went on in the sect -- but we know that he was still peak lord for 8 more years until Binghe returns, and Yue Qingyuan asks him bluntly in prison:

Suddenly, he asked, “Did you really kill Liu-shidi?” Shen Qingqiu didn’t want to look at his face at all while he answered. But he couldn’t help but lift his eyes, giving Yue Qingyuan’s expression a quick glance. He froze for a moment, then abruptly yanked his hand out of Yue Qingyuan’s grip and sat up. “You repeatedly said that you’d kill him one day,” said Yue Qingyuan. “But I never thought that you would actually do it.”

Nearly ten years, and he still doesn't seem to believe it! But that's also ten+ years of watching Shen Qingqiu attack his martial siblings, beat children, and now stands accused of even more murder and arson on top of it all.

It really feels like Yue Qingyuan is stuck, both in the story and within fandom. If he doesn't believe any of it, he's being naive and stupid, because Shen Jiu did do a lot of these things, but then he believes any of it, he's betraying his Xiao-Jiu. What is he supposed to do beyond asking Shen Jiu himself, who never gives him a direct answer either way, neither defending himself or admitting when he was in the wrong. And this all makes sense for someone like him: Shen Jiu fully believes that he's scum by now, that there's no defending himself as much as there's no reason why he shouldn't have acted the way he did.

But Yue Qingyuan apparently still wanted to hear it from him because like you said, he is used to Shen Qingqiu doing wrong and carries a ton of guilt, but he's also been holding out hope for decades that maybe if he was stubborn and patient enough, Shen Qingqiu's anger would dissipate the way it used to when they were kids. That's why I think Shen Jiu's line "There is no ‘if,’ no ‘in the beginning’—there was never any chance of redemption!" finally crushes him.

It's part of why Qijiu works so well as the mirror to Bingqiu. Binghe's chasing Shen Yuan around, wanting explanations and confused why he's being treated this way, before deciding he can't trust him anymore. Meanwhile, Shen Yuan's big moment is realizing that similarly believing there's no ‘if,’ no ‘in the beginning’, and no chance of redemption from sending Binghe to the Abyss has only ended up making things worse, because Binghe could only draw his own conclusions from Shen Yuan's silence.

Shen Yuan, Luo Binghe, and even Yue Qingyuan himself all learn the lesson about reaching out even when its deeply upsetting or shameful. Shen Jiu never does until it's too late.

You get to witness him talking himself into it in real time, going from, “look at him, that evil bitch, he's the worst person alive, so depraved, I have no compassion for such a heartless wretch," to, "well, I mean he’s never been ugly—but like how gross of AU me, like why would I jump into bed with—well, no okay I can see it. Yeah, okay I won’t lie, I definitely see the sex appeal. I’m just gonna…fake seduce him just to fuck with him a little bit. Yeah. That’ll show him. He’ll be so humiliated..." before immediately jumping to, "you know, I bet I could fuck him way better than AU me could.”

Typing this from Graphene now, in fact. But, both of those take the Android Open Source Project, without all the bloatware--and largely de-Google the whole thing. They give you much more control over privacy and what the apps you choose to install can do and access on your phone.

I know Graphene sandboxes everything, including the optionally installed Google Play Services which a lot of apps unfortunately require to run. (Lineage uses an alternative to Play Services instead.) So, you can install what would normally be unacceptably intrusive apps and just lock them away from pulling any funny shit with your data, or phoning home. Including the couple of Google things I do still keep around.

I also prefer running much more transparent, privacy-respecting open source apps where possible. Besides the transparency, I'd rather avoid the shitty tech corps entirely where I can. There are pretty good alternatives available for a lot of the usual suspects.

An alternative app store:

Reading Beldaruit's recount of Qifrey's past while as a reader you have more context than he does is brutal.

For one, Beldaruit was convinced that what Qifrey sought every time he went to the surface was clues to feed his "hatred" and "fixation". Then you read it from Qifrey's point of view and you learn that he was being tormented by the silverwood already and simply wanted to know what the fuck had happened to him that made him shiver at every kind gesture he received. Like, for Qifrey to simply want answers as to why his own body reacted badly at every opportunity he had to feel safe and protected, only for Beldaruit to mistake that as an obsession with revenge is heartbreaking.

He also says that Qifrey's friendship with Olruggio did not alleviate that desperation... when it was, in fact, that very friendship that made Qifrey all the more focused on finding out. It was because Qifrey wanted that friendship that he wanted answers. Not to mention that, according to Qifrey's retelling of those "sneak-outs"... they were probably the happiest memories of this part of his life.

Beldaruit saw him as a boy so blinded by hate that he could not appreciate his friendship. What truly was was a boy leaving a miserable place to have fun adventures with his friend, yearning to be able to enjoy those moments to the fullest.

To be clear, I do not condemn Beldaruit for not knowing nor Qifrey for not sharing the truth. It's part of the silverwood vicious cycle. Once he found out, Qifrey had no choice but to leave Beldaruit in the dark. But it is a little sad that through Qifrey's reluctant secrecy, Beldaruit has assumed the worst.

On the other side, there's also this.

Beldaruit claims that the only reason Qifrey didn't resort to using forbidden magic to continue his quest for revenge was because that would mean he would risk getting caught, which would lead to the Knights Moralis erasing the memories he'd built up so far. He's practically saying that Qifrey appreciated this new life too much to risk it - which is, admittedly, a very wholesome view.

And then you read it from Qifrey's point of view and you learn that Qifrey was perfectly willing to go through that again.

In a moment of desperation, he said that it didn't matter if he lost his memories again since they'd been wiped over and over before, what difference would one more time make? And at this point, Olruggio didn't call his bluff - because I do believe it was not a bluff. From a detached point of view, Olruggio erasing his own memories of only that day was much less of a drastic measure and a more long-term solution too than Qifrey forgetting everything all over again, but given the situation, logic was the last thing on Qifrey's mind. He could only think and act on his feelings, and what his feelings told him in that moment was "Your memories matter less than Olruggio's. You matter less than Olruggio." I'm not even touching on how terrified he must have been feeling at the prospect of carrying that burden alone.

So, yeah. In this second case, Beldaruit actually assumes something positive behind Qifrey's reason to preserve his memories. Instead, we learn that Qifrey continuing on that life while avoiding dealing with forbidden magic was purely in order to honour Olruggio's sacrifice. Not because he wanted it for himself, but because Olruggio wanted it for him.

I do believe that in the years that followed Qifrey did build an honest appreciation for his life (that's the conclusion of that later arc, after all), but while they were kids? He was probably holding on by his fingernails to not give everything up.

And again, I do not begrudge Beldaruit for not knowing; Qifrey had to put a wall between them, so even though it's clear Beldaruit cares for him, he could only work with what little he had about him. On one thing he assumed something worse than the truth, on the other something better. But even the first was out of worry. He was not judging Qifrey, he was merely worrying. When he tells Coco to become his apprentice, it's because he fears she will be the cause for Qifrey to "relapse" to his old habits, endangering both her and himself. He aspires to separate them because he wants to protect them both.