Chapter Text
Liu Qingge knows flowers.
Not well. He doesn’t know where they grow, when they bloom, or what they mean.
But he knows safe flowers and poisonous flowers. He knows not to eat the red berries surrounded by clumps of small white flowers. He knows to avoid touching the tall stalks covered with pink bell-shaped blooms.
So the morning that Liu Qingge coughs up a delicate white petal tipped with pink, he’s not worried.
He knows it’s a lotus flower.
He knows who the lotus plant growing in his lungs is for.
He only wonders why it took so long to take root.
The following day, Liu Qingge coughs up a long purple petal and a partially crushed blue-black berry.
He stares at the deadly nightshade in his palm and realizes, oh.
This is why.
—
Hua tu zheng is not ordinarily fatal for cultivators. Especially not those of Liu Qingge’s caliber.
Cultivators can live with hua tu zheng for years. Golden cores can repair bodies faster than the disease’s flowers eat away at flesh.
Non-cultivators aren’t so lucky. Accounts of hua tu zheng are oft-told cautionary tales; as a child, even Liu Qingge was told to confess love earlier rather than later, lest it festers into deadly blossoms. But there are always those who refuse to heed warnings, whether due to arrogance, indifference, or something in between.
Mortal sufferers either choose to undergo surgery or have it forced upon them by their friends and family. Liu Qingge understands it’s a relatively simple procedure, provided the disease doesn’t progress too far. But removing the plant erases memories, and Liu Qingge isn’t willing to let his go.
Of course, for cultivators and non-cultivators alike, hua tu zheng is all but guaranteed to be fatal if one confesses to a truly unrequited love. Upon any sign of rejection, the plant will grow uncontrollably, bursting from the person’s chest, causing near instantaneous and intensely painful death.
Liu Qingge wonders if the pair of plants burrowing into his flesh will eventually cause more problems than a single one. Particularly because one of them is deadly nightshade. One ingested berry would be enough to kill a child.
He can only imagine one person who would manifest as the toxic blossom in his lungs. The person who caused Liu Qingge enough physical pain to end hundreds of mortal lives. The person who proved the existence of Liu Qingge’s heart by breaking it.
So how is it that Liu Qingge is in love with Luo Binghe?
The answer comes easily. Shen Qingqiu. Of course.
Shen Qingqiu wanted his husband and his martial brother to be friends.
Shen Qingqiu sang Luo Binghe’s praises every time Liu Qingge came by Qing Jing Peak. Shen Qingqiu encouraged Liu Qingge and Luo Binghe to spar “for fun,” cheering them both from the sidelines. Shen Qingqiu told Luo Binghe to make enough food for Liu Qingge and watched with hopeful eyes as Liu Qingge ate Luo Binghe’s cooking, which far surpassed all other fare that ever touched Liu Qingge’s tongue.
And which Liu Qingge will never taste again.
It was bad enough that Liu Qingge could not dispel his feelings after Shen Qingqiu’s marriage. To develop new feelings for a happily married man? The husband of the man Liu Qingge also still loves?
Shameful.
Liu Qingge will not show his face to either of them, not while these blossoms still threaten to burst from his throat.
He has heard of immortal cultivators who waited out the disease. If the subject of one’s affection is avoided for long enough, feelings are bound to fade. Surely, if Liu Qingge stays away for long enough, someday, he will stop loving two men who will never love him back.
A laughable idea.
Shen Qingqiu had been dead for five years.
If Liu Qingge’s love had not died with Shen Qingqiu, there is nowhere in this world Liu Qingge can go to kill it. Unless Liu Qingge is willing to die alongside it.
And of course, Liu Qingge isn’t.
Who else will remember the five years Luo Binghe lost himself?