Chapter Text
To be honest, Chen Qingxu barely noticed Shen-shixiong’s curiously flat smell. She supposed it was mainly that when she got to interact with him, it always was for the Peak Lords’ regular meetings and there, she was a mite too busy trying to not choke on Liu Qingge’s overpowering stink.
Seriously, how could a young master from such a reputable clan as the Liu bloodline be so ill-mannered and forget the elementary courtesy of bathing ? Yes, Liu-shidi was qianyuan and qianyuans were hopelessly brutish and unable to follow the precepts of cleanliness and basic social interactions for most of them, but still.
He couldn’t even claim his lack of politeness was caused by his clan dropping him at Cang Qiong Mountain immediately after he reached puberty and as such not teaching him how to behave – Zhangmen-shixiong was qianyuan, Qi-shimei was qianyuan, Wei-shixiong was qianyuan and none of these three was attempting to embody the stereotype with such conviction. Zhangmen-shixiong actually could pass for a zhongyong, such was his restraint and self-control !
Well, unless Shen-shixiong was concerned. Then Yue Qingyuan became a wretched knothead – for utterly mystifying reasons.
Maybe it was linked to the scent. Their fellow Peak Lords tended to frown and not-so-discreetly snarl when Shen-shixiong was present, and it wasn’t entirely due to his acerbic commentary. They did it even when he firmly kept his mouth shut.
Now that she needed to spend time with him in close proximity, Chen Qingxu was suspecting his scent was at fault. Such a colourless, emotionless smell – nothing to indicate what Shen-shixiong was actually thinking. Uncanny, that was the word : the Alchemist almost felt like she was facing a lifesized doll that was frighteningly close to perfectly mimic a person yet couldn’t manage to bridge the gap.
So fascinating . Well, not so much for the majority of people, they would be quite repulsed and freaked, but who cared about them when interesting phenomenas were happening right under your nose ! And she hadn’t noticed before taking off on a monster-part-gathering expedition with him ! Oh, the shame.
Still, she firmly bit her tongue, knowing this bird would fly away if spooked. This was the observation part of the experiment, when she needed to carefully examine her sample and test subject before starting to intervene and manipulate it.
Shen-shixiong seemed content with her behaviour. Which was good, since it gave her higher chances to get closer from him in the future – and complete her study. Why would his scent be so strange ? Some hormonal defect ? A spiritual impairment ? Oh, she couldn’t wait to learn…
But in the meantime, there were monster parts to gather. Usually, the Peak Lord would send a Disciple that had displeased her on the errand, or would ask An Ding Peak to find and buy the necessary ingredients on the market. On very rare occasions, she needed for one of her martial siblings to go and bring her the materials back.
One of these occasions had seen her here, stranded far away from her lab and work station, because she absolutely needed tiger-spotted horned newt’s skin and venom sacks, and she couldn’t trust anyone else to not damage the fragile materials or confuse the creatures with something completely different such as marbled long-eared salamander and then her current project that saw her in collaboration with the Zui Xian Peak Lord would be set back for several months and that would be unacceptable.
So she went by herself to find the bleeding creatures, and Shen Qingqiu went as her guide because he quite unexpectedly was a walking, breathing compendium about any kind of critter you could think of, and probably several you wouldn’t have dared to dream on your own. Also, Zhangmen-shixiong had insisted, telling the Qing Jing Peak Lord that he really needed to try and be more sociable.
Sociable, as if it was some sought-after quality. Chen Qingxu would have personally been happy as a clam to entirely seclude herself in her Peak and only interact with minions giving her the latest treatises in alchemical discoveries and all the instruments and ingredients for her to work without being distracted, but she just wasn’t allowed. Feh !
She didn’t need a bond with her martial siblings to be happy. She didn’t have the inkling of a bond with Shen-shixiong and she didn’t care a whit about changing this situation. She just cared about slaughtering as many newts as her qiankun pouch could safely contain and fly back to her lab, while Shen-shixiong pointed her to their lakeside warrens and helped with the slaughter.
Such a messy venture, it was. The newts wouldn’t let themselves quietly be culled, how rude, and threw gobs of poisonous saliva and blasts of muddy water at the cultivators, some outright charging and trying to impale the humans on their horns. Fortunately, water monsters tended to be extremely sensitive to heat and cold, so Chen Qingxu only had to release a flurry of talismans that caused a scorching heatwave and a blistering refrigeration effect on impact for the beasts to fall by clusters.
Shen Qingqiu insisted she couldn’t pick any young or female specimens, or it would risk the depleting of the colony in a possibly permanent way. Chen Qingxu conceded the point before telling him to help her put her chosen specimens in stasis and stuff them into the qiankun pouch.
He sneered at her, not surprisingly since Shen-shixiong was a fussy and tedious sort that would rather die than allow himself to appear less than perfectly put together and manipulating slimy and muddy creatures certainly wasn’t conducive to a clean, immaculate image. She blinked at the scholarly Peak Lord and threw the pouch at him.
If he had time enough to be petty and whine over his chores, he had time to do said chores.
He folded and wrapped the newts she pointed at him. It had to be healthy, fat ones – they had the biggest venom sacks and the thicker skins, so would yield more toxins.
She was busy examinating a splendidly antlered male, pondering if it was worthy to be selected as her seventeenth specimen, when she heard Shen-shixiong swearing. It was a rather colourful swear involving a morally-dubious and awfully unfilial mating encounter in decidedly unhygienic terms, and Chen Qingxu almost dropped her cargo to applaud.
One newt apparently wasn’t as knocked out as it should have been and had succeeded in biting Shen-shixiong’s hand. The man’s armlet fortunately was strong enough to prevent the creature’s teeth from biting his hand off – the prospect of reattaching a limb on the field never was an appealing one, and Chen Qingxu was rather more comfortable with drugs than first-aid surgery.
« Has Shen-shixiong been poisoned ? » she asked after he had beaten the newt into unconsciousness with his fan.
He was frowning, looking at the yellowish slime dripping from his fingers. His scent wouldn’t express any kind of fear or confusion or even anger.
« This one shall survive » he merely said.
The Alchemist wrinkled her nose. Well, it was his body and life on the line, and if he wanted to ruin his meridians even more, she wouldn’t waste her breath on the endeavour of dissuading him. She wasn’t there to rescue him from his own stupidity.
« If Shen-shixiong says so » she demurred, and that was it.