I made a little ficlet about their dynamic in SY's POV under the cut ~ ✨ (nobody dies, everyone is well adjusted. Sort of. Binghe is a good kid)
People in Cang Qiong Mountain Sect brace themselves at the sound of our footsteps. It’s honestly rude. We haven’t even done anything—yet.
I say “we” because it’s always we.
Me and my brother, my ge, Shen Qingqiu.
Yes. That Shen Qingqiu. Peak Lord of Qing Jing, Lord of the pretty robes and prettier sneering, Professional bitch face with a tongue sharp enough to slice egos in half.
And me? Shen Yuan. Wandering cultivator, sometimes Hall Master ? (on Tuesdays), beast enthusiast (on Thursdays), and the reason why gege remembers to hydrate.
We’re what you call…a package deal. And for some inexplicable reason, despite years of training, cultivation, etiquette lectures, and embroidered sleeves—we are still street rats in spirit.
But street rats, nonetheless.
“Shizun, Shen Yuan-xiansheng is here again…”
“I know,” Qing Jing Peak’s head disciple says, his voice trembling slightly, “I felt a disturbance in the air.”
That’s me, by the way. The disturbance. But in Jiu-ge’s speak it means: ‘my favorite person in the world’. I arrived this morning with a bag full of his favorite sweets as an offering.
Anyway, the moment I step foot on Qing Jing Peak, a flock of junior disciples gather like hungry pigeons. Asking if I got anything for them. I did, and distributed the goods evenly. The little ones thanked me with a smile.
“Why do you do this,” comes a smooth, dry voice from above me, and there he is. My twin. My brother. My trauma-bonded enabler.
Shen Qingqiu, in all his immaculate, smugly-suffering glory, descending like an immortal crane who secretly wants to murder every single member of his own sect.
Aaand...the disciples scattered.
“You’re distracting them,” he informed me with graceful a flick of his fan, covering the lower half of his face. “Surely you aren't that incompetent to send word of your arrival ahead of time.”
“I missed you,” I say, and it’s not even a lie.
He gives me a long-suffering look, as if he isn’t ten seconds away from inviting me into the bamboo house for tea.
He huffed and turned, walking up the path to the bamboo house. He didn't need to tell me to follow.
We are both, you see, dramatic little bastards.
Here’s the thing about surviving childhood as orphans on the streets: you learn fast. How to lie. How to cheat. How to get back in ways that don’t always draw blood but do leave very long-lasting emotional scars.
Shen Jiu—sorry, Shen Qingqiu—leaned into elegance and severity like it could hold his soul together. I leaned into chaos and charm. But under the silk and the sect titles and our frankly excessive skincare routines, we are still those same boys who used to steal buns and bite anyone who looked at us funny.
It just hurts less when you're dressed in a small fortune’s worth of layered brocade.
Let me be clear: We may not always start fights.
The Luo Binghe Incident™ happens on a Wednesday.
Because that’s the day I’m technically not employed.
“Your disciple is a little…” I make a vague wiggly motion with my fingers. “Murder-curious.”
“He’s fine,” Qingqiu says, brushing imaginary dust off his sleeve.
“He’s a Qing Jing disciple,” he replies, with the tone of a parent whose child just broke a priceless vase and insists it was an experiment in gravity. “Curiosity is encouraged.”
“He asked me if there are any repercussions in pushing Ming Fan off the side of the mountain.”
“He’s surveying the highest drop in the peak as we speak.”
“…I will have a talk with him.”
“This is your fault,” I point out, sipping my osmanthus wine. “You told him emotional repression is what good cultivators do.”
We both burst out laughing.
It’s loud, obnoxious, and utterly improper for cultivators of our stature. A group of sect elders walk by and quickly divert their gaze, pretending they do not see the Shen twins losing their minds over emotionally-repressed murder disciples.
They say Cang Qiong is a place of discipline and refinement, a sanctuary of spiritual pursuit.
It is also a place where Shen Qingqiu once roasted another Peak Lord’s fashion sense so ruthlessly in open court that the man left cultivation altogether and became a monk because he insulted my intelligence.
And where I, Shen Yuan, once accidentally seduced the entire visiting delegation from Huan Hua Palace for fun and then accidentally stole some of their stuff because they questioned my brother's honor.
(And because I am petty.)
We don’t talk about feelings much, my brother and I. But we show up. We support each other’s schemes. We hold each other’s grudges like gold. He once broke into a noble household’s vault as a kid just because some lordling kicked me down. I once challenged an arrogant cultivator to a duel for laughing at his birth name.
(“Shen Jiu” is off-limits. Only I can call him that, and only when I’m feeling extremely clingy. Which is often.)
We are...unwell. But we are immaculate.
My brother walks with the poise of a man who has survived too much and now only tolerates beauty, discipline, and me. He drinks tea like it’s an art form. He punishes enemies by bankrupting their families and then sending them condolence letters on fancy paper.
Me? I flirt. I dance. I scheme. I gossip. But when gege lifts his fan and I draw my sword—we are terrifying.
But I promise, we are also kind. Qi-ge can vouch for us!
We just have…a very intense way of showing it.
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