Shen Yuan continues to write: Has erased conversations with me at least three times, probably more. Likely behind Magnus stabbing. His mind is working overtime, trying to connect things up before he forgets again, but he still has frustratingly little information. "You were in the closet with me. What happened in there?"

"Neutralizing?" This makes Shen Yuan stop writing and take a protective step in front of Binghe. "As if you even could--"

Shen Yuan returns her look with a poisonous one of his own. It's a low fucking blow—one she knows will get under Binghe's skin. He remembers how upset with himself Binghe had been after that confrontation; the look he'd given Shen Yuan when Shen Yuan had found him pressing Galahad against the wall by his throat, claws pricking his skin enough to draw blood. He remembers how small Galahad had looked, struggling against Binghe with all of his god-given might; the nauseous hurt and horror that had rushed through him—rushes through him now, again, as if brand new. The sickening, defeated feeling of not being enough—not meaning enough—for Binghe to stop himself from meeting hurt with hurt, even when he'd promised. He swallows, hard. "That wasn't his fault," he says, with very little of his usual righteous anger. "Galahad attacked first."

Shen Yuan turns to stare at him. "Binghe," he says, confusion making his tone sharper than he means it, "I was there. I saw you."

The crack of the gunshot, incongruously, makes Shen Yuan pull himself together. He's too late to stop Binghe drawing Xin Mo, but he wouldn't have, anyway, and he definitely won't now—Binghe is fast, impossibly fast, he knows this, but he's never seen a gun before, and Aornis is still so goddamn calm; even when her first bullet spangs! off Binghe's blade Shen Yuan sees her aim again, and above them—

The rope holding the chandelier hanging above the table snaps, and it starts to fall. Shen Yuan flings out a hand to stop it, to redirect, to send it smashing into Aornis instead, and—nothing happens. Binghe dodges, and the chandelier crashes down into the center of the table, sending shards of glass spinning in all directions, sparks fizzling into the food Binghe had spent so long preparing.

He has a momentary, insane notion that somehow Aornis has made him forget how to cultivate, that he no longer knows the instinctual ways to call up qi that he'd never even had to learn in the first place, that were inherent to this body, but when he concentrates his awareness on said body he finds an all-too-familiar sluggishness, his meridians blocked, Without-a-Cure eating away at the edges of his core with a thousand hungry little mouths.

He steadies himself against a wall, wiping idly at his cheek where a shard of glass had cut him, and the cut hadn't healed. What the fuck. He knows this is possible—sleeping with Binghe isn't necessarily a one-and-done type of cure, sometimes a particular beauty is particularly badly poisoned and needs regular injections, as it were, of tenderly administered dual cultivation to rid it from her system entirely, especially if she's popular with the male readership. But it had been six fucking months, and for this to happen now—what kind of insane coincidence, what cursed fucking luck—