"Sims! Are you busy?" Shen Qingqiu's voice is bright and animated with excitement over the sending stone, a far cry from the subdued nervous he'd spoken to Jon when they first met or the clipped and accusing way he tossed words in his face soon afterwards -- but then, they've been on much more friendly terms for nearly a month now, and Shen Qingqiu himself is close to completing his ninth month on Marrow Island. It'd been a surprising little luxury, adapting to the local culture and the cultures of his acquaintances at his at his own pace, picking and choosing which of his own habits he'd keep and which he'd...oh, not discard, certainly not. But put up on a shelf for now.
(A few changes were necessary, in the end. For all his prickliness and pretensions Shen Yuan had always been haunted by a deep-seated need to be liked, and that didn't exactly go away when he became Shen Qingqiu.
If anything it got worse.)
"I found the most amazing thing at Calloway's," he's explaining now, grinning at his sending stone as though Jon can see his face. "You have to see it. Actually you should just come over. Whenever you're free."
When his sending stone chimed, he hadn't expected the voice that came through it, but it's certainly not unwelcome. He pulls the stone from where he keeps it in the breast pocket of his coat, listening with a keen interest. Sure, he's out on errands right now, but considering how completely and utterly thrilled he sounds--- God, how often is it that people call him with good, exciting news anymore?--- how could he deny that call to come have a look? He's barely even left the Bluffs; a small detour to Northwest Hollow to meet a friend is well worth the slight trek out of the way.
"You caught me at a good time, coincidentally. I'm in the neighborhood," Jon's attention skims over the roads, trying to wrack his mind for house numbers and directions. "If it's as incredible as you're letting on, I think the trip to the market can wait just a while more. Can I ask what it is, or am I going to have to wait to see?"
Shen Qingqiu scoffs cheerfully. "Of course I'm going to make you wait, Sims, what's the point of inviting you over and then spoiling the surprise over the phone? Are you on your way right now? I can put the kettle on." This is a phrase he's stolen wholesale from Jon and Martin, because he thinks it's funny. All three of them like tea, of course they do, but the whole thing British people make out of it is hysterically funny to him. After all, it was China's thing first.
Sure, maybe it's entirely in jest, and sure, Shen Qingqiu has hassled him about it before, but something about the simple comforts of tea with friends? It's a taste of light, casual familiarity that he missed so very much.
"Yes, that sounds lovely, and yes, I am, in fact, on my way," Jon snickers, looking so very amused, even if Shen Qingqiu can't see his face. "Give me... five, ten minutes at most? I may not even need that long, though. But I'll see you shortly."
It would only be entirely in jest if he wasn't really going to make tea! Which he is, of course, he even digs out some nice Darjeeling he traded for with the Limoncello. Being a good host is so important, after all.
He keeps an eye on the street from the window, and with a smirk manages to open his front door on Jon before he can knock. "Do come in," he says brightly. "I've been waiting to show someone who would get it all day."
Jon's hand, still lifted to knock, lingers in the air only as long as the surprise lingers on his face. He looks all the more amused for it, though, stepping inside as soon as the door's held for him. (And, admittedly, he lets his attention wander - after all, someone's living space does say a fair bit about them, doesn't it?)
"Well, by all means, don't leave me in suspense any longer than you've got to," he half-jokes, tossing a playful glance back Shen Qingqiu's way. "What did you find?"
Shen Qingqiu's home is eclectically furnished and decorated, a mix of second-hand pieces he inherited from the place's previous owners and purchases made from the town's rummage stores. It has the look of a man with very clear and distinct ideas about good taste, who nevertheless has never had to furnish his own space before in his life. He'd doing his best, and that's the best thing that can be said about it.
He leads Jon into the kitchen, where the kettle is starting to gently release a trail of steam into the air and, more notably, a sheathed sword lies on the table. "Alright," Shen Qingqiu says, vibrating ever so slightly with anticipation. "Go ahead and sit. I'll just --"
He picks up the sword. Its hilt is made from tooled silver, with a green tassel hanging from the pommel. The sheath, a local addition, is made of simple but high-quality leather. "All right," Shen Qingqiu begins. "So, obviously you're familiar with cursed artifacts. Objects that have been imbued with negative energies by some means or another. But this is a spiritual artifact, a weapon imbued with positive energies. Jonathan Sims, meet Xiu Ya. The Elegant Blade."
He unsheathes the sword part way, exposing six or so inches of its silvery-white blade. It shines with its own light, clear and distinct in the homely room. The energy it gives off is not friend, but it is beneficent, insofar as a wealthy dowager might be beneficent so long as one does not offend her or waste her time. It is clear and sharp, as well-balanced as an acrobat. It is, incontrovertibly, an item made for killing.
Shen Qingqiu is staring at Jon's face raptly, waiting for his reaction.
Jon doesn't hesitate to sit, and though he's skimmed over the rooms they passed through with interest, his eyes are on the sword the second they enter the room. It doesn't shock him that that's what Shen Qingqiu brought him here to see; from merely stepping in the room, Jon can tell that there's something to the weapon, though he can't quite place it.
The explanation clarifies that easily, and the exposure of the blade doubles down the point - no cursed artefacts here, but something so palpably powerful even still that it gives Jon pause.
Jon's brows shoot up with interest, and, almost cattishly, he sits up and leans forward, doing all that he can to get a better look at the weapon. He's never been someone who has an interest in weaponry, but the power behind this one is so tangible that it snares him instantly. He can barely decide where to begin asking questions; perhaps one is more important than others, in determining what sort of questions he can ask.
"Wow, this is..." He starts, but he can barely decide what word to settle on, but it's clear that he's quite impressed. "Is Xiu Ya--- sapient?"
Shen Qingqiu grins, pleased as anything by Jon's reaction. He'd been a little worried that he might try to touch the blade, which he can't imagine would go well for his friend with how much negative energy has infested his body and mind -- but Jon merely watches, wide-eyed and appropriately awed.
"Not in so many words," he says, sliding the sword back into its sheath and putting it down to prepare the tea. "It can't think like we do, it can't analyze things or make decisions any more complicated than whether to let someone wield it or not. I'm probably lucky in that respect," he notes with somewhat angry embarrassment, the same tone that always shows up whenever he talks about the System and the way it unceremoniously plopped him down into someone else's life. "If it were sapient I doubt it would have accepted me so easily when I became Shen Qingqiu. But it's...it's alive nonetheless, in the same way that a temple or library might come to life after being filled with concentrated thought and devotion. It has a soul."
His head hangs slightly as he admits, "It shattered when I broke my golden core...In a sense we died together. I never expected to see it again."
Jon listens attentively, and only when the sword is sheathed does he move to gingerly pick it up - though he barely lifts it off the table, simply turning it over to have a better look at it. Even from within the sheath, there's an unease that comes to lifting it--- but a different unease, than when he's handled the strange, cursed objects that wind up in Calloway's Curios. An energy that doesn't seep into his palms, sinking like a poison, but rather, it cuts, like a light spilling into a dark room.
He doesn't care for what that might say about him, as opposed to the sword. He sets it down softly once again.
"It's quite a stroke of luck that it came back to you, then," Jon notes, watching Shen Qingqiu prepare the tea. "It's--- I've never seen anything like it, personally. I mean, it's fine craftwork, I'm sure, but--- that's an incredibly tangible energy it's got. Such a thing could have been terribly dangerous in the wrong hands, I'm sure."
Which makes Jon all the more fortunate that Shen Qingqiu didn't have it during their first, less-than-pleasant run-in...
"I feel extremely fortunate," Shen Qingqiu agrees. "Even if Calloway did make me pay out the nose to get it back. Foolish man. It's not as if anyone else would have been able to wield it even if they cared to pay his price." Well, maybe a teenage Luo Binghe...he'd no trouble using Xiu Ya to cut Shen Qingqiu's bonds, that time they'd been kidnapped by a Skinner Demon. It must have recognized what a good little disciple he was, loyal despite the terrible way the original goods had treated him.
"The energy you're sensing is concentrated spiritual qi," he explains, setting Jon's cup of tea down in front of him and taking his own place at the table, cup in hand. "Collected in the bedrock of Cang Qiong Mountain by its own natural feng shui and the results of centuries' worth of righteous cultivators making it their home. On Wan Jian Peak they carefully study and manipulate that energy, winding it into ever tighter spirals until it coalesces into a form like that of solid metal. They refine it further until it takes on the shape of a sword, and from there a sect disciple or honored guest may pull the sword out of the mountainside and call it their own." He smiles over the rim of his cup. "It's one of our sect's most precious techniques, and it can't be replicated anywhere else in the world."
Jon holds his cup and nods along as he listens; it's a hell of a thing to imagine, really. It's strange to think that, just a few years ago, he might've ascribed something like this to metaphor stemming from some combination of long-standing tradition and religion. But here it is, undeniable and directly in front of him. (Even if it is in front of him, his mind still strains to process the creation of such an object. After all, the items of his own world, imbued with the evil that they were, seem to have either attached themselves to mundane items, or seemingly come into existence on their own. The ability to see such a thing happen actively, however...)
"To be honest, I'm shocked that Calloway could pull such a thing here, and that it's energy didn't--- reject that pull," Jon muses. "Maybe however he's finding these things is inherently neutral, though? I suppose it's not worth looking too hard at something so beneficial, though. It doesn't feel like it's been altered at all since you've last seen it, as well?"
"I'd be able to tell if anyone had tampered with it," Shen Qingqiu agrees. "We share a bond, Xiu Ya and I -- a part of my soul lives within the sword, and it within me. Although..." He grimaces, setting down his own tea cup. "It is a little odd to see it again in one piece. The last thing I remember before dying was Xiu Ya shattering in my hands, as I fell from that roof...a side effect of my own self-destruction. Did someone reforge it, I wonder? Or perhaps it too has enjoyed a resurrection."
He shrugs. "In any case, I have a theory about the items Calloways finds -- namely that they are somehow tied to us off-worlders. Of course he pulls in a lot of random junk, but have you noticed that many of the truly powerful objects have some personal ties to someone already living on the island? Certainly this is the first time a cultivator's sword has appeared in his shop -- Oh!"
He interrupts himself with a grin. "There was another thing I got from Calloway's...one minute while I go get it." He rushes out of the room, returning with a small...plasticy...item in hand oh god it's a Funko Pop. It's a fucking Funko Pop, and Shen Qingqiu brandishes it in Jon's face like it's an idol made of solid gold.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Silver Sword, a Plastic Figure
Date: 2024-09-29 12:10 pm (UTC)(A few changes were necessary, in the end. For all his prickliness and pretensions Shen Yuan had always been haunted by a deep-seated need to be liked, and that didn't exactly go away when he became Shen Qingqiu.
If anything it got worse.)
"I found the most amazing thing at Calloway's," he's explaining now, grinning at his sending stone as though Jon can see his face. "You have to see it. Actually you should just come over. Whenever you're free."
no subject
Date: 2024-10-09 12:04 am (UTC)"You caught me at a good time, coincidentally. I'm in the neighborhood," Jon's attention skims over the roads, trying to wrack his mind for house numbers and directions. "If it's as incredible as you're letting on, I think the trip to the market can wait just a while more. Can I ask what it is, or am I going to have to wait to see?"
no subject
Date: 2024-10-09 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-19 12:31 am (UTC)"Yes, that sounds lovely, and yes, I am, in fact, on my way," Jon snickers, looking so very amused, even if Shen Qingqiu can't see his face. "Give me... five, ten minutes at most? I may not even need that long, though. But I'll see you shortly."
no subject
Date: 2024-10-19 02:23 am (UTC)He keeps an eye on the street from the window, and with a smirk manages to open his front door on Jon before he can knock. "Do come in," he says brightly. "I've been waiting to show someone who would get it all day."
no subject
Date: 2024-11-02 02:56 pm (UTC)"Well, by all means, don't leave me in suspense any longer than you've got to," he half-jokes, tossing a playful glance back Shen Qingqiu's way. "What did you find?"
no subject
Date: 2024-11-02 11:19 pm (UTC)He leads Jon into the kitchen, where the kettle is starting to gently release a trail of steam into the air and, more notably, a sheathed sword lies on the table. "Alright," Shen Qingqiu says, vibrating ever so slightly with anticipation. "Go ahead and sit. I'll just --"
He picks up the sword. Its hilt is made from tooled silver, with a green tassel hanging from the pommel. The sheath, a local addition, is made of simple but high-quality leather. "All right," Shen Qingqiu begins. "So, obviously you're familiar with cursed artifacts. Objects that have been imbued with negative energies by some means or another. But this is a spiritual artifact, a weapon imbued with positive energies. Jonathan Sims, meet Xiu Ya. The Elegant Blade."
He unsheathes the sword part way, exposing six or so inches of its silvery-white blade. It shines with its own light, clear and distinct in the homely room. The energy it gives off is not friend, but it is beneficent, insofar as a wealthy dowager might be beneficent so long as one does not offend her or waste her time. It is clear and sharp, as well-balanced as an acrobat. It is, incontrovertibly, an item made for killing.
Shen Qingqiu is staring at Jon's face raptly, waiting for his reaction.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-06 01:04 am (UTC)The explanation clarifies that easily, and the exposure of the blade doubles down the point - no cursed artefacts here, but something so palpably powerful even still that it gives Jon pause.
Jon's brows shoot up with interest, and, almost cattishly, he sits up and leans forward, doing all that he can to get a better look at the weapon. He's never been someone who has an interest in weaponry, but the power behind this one is so tangible that it snares him instantly. He can barely decide where to begin asking questions; perhaps one is more important than others, in determining what sort of questions he can ask.
"Wow, this is..." He starts, but he can barely decide what word to settle on, but it's clear that he's quite impressed. "Is Xiu Ya--- sapient?"
no subject
Date: 2024-11-06 03:49 am (UTC)"Not in so many words," he says, sliding the sword back into its sheath and putting it down to prepare the tea. "It can't think like we do, it can't analyze things or make decisions any more complicated than whether to let someone wield it or not. I'm probably lucky in that respect," he notes with somewhat angry embarrassment, the same tone that always shows up whenever he talks about the System and the way it unceremoniously plopped him down into someone else's life. "If it were sapient I doubt it would have accepted me so easily when I became Shen Qingqiu. But it's...it's alive nonetheless, in the same way that a temple or library might come to life after being filled with concentrated thought and devotion. It has a soul."
His head hangs slightly as he admits, "It shattered when I broke my golden core...In a sense we died together. I never expected to see it again."
no subject
Date: 2024-11-11 06:11 pm (UTC)He doesn't care for what that might say about him, as opposed to the sword. He sets it down softly once again.
"It's quite a stroke of luck that it came back to you, then," Jon notes, watching Shen Qingqiu prepare the tea. "It's--- I've never seen anything like it, personally. I mean, it's fine craftwork, I'm sure, but--- that's an incredibly tangible energy it's got. Such a thing could have been terribly dangerous in the wrong hands, I'm sure."
Which makes Jon all the more fortunate that Shen Qingqiu didn't have it during their first, less-than-pleasant run-in...
no subject
Date: 2024-11-12 05:43 am (UTC)"The energy you're sensing is concentrated spiritual qi," he explains, setting Jon's cup of tea down in front of him and taking his own place at the table, cup in hand. "Collected in the bedrock of Cang Qiong Mountain by its own natural feng shui and the results of centuries' worth of righteous cultivators making it their home. On Wan Jian Peak they carefully study and manipulate that energy, winding it into ever tighter spirals until it coalesces into a form like that of solid metal. They refine it further until it takes on the shape of a sword, and from there a sect disciple or honored guest may pull the sword out of the mountainside and call it their own." He smiles over the rim of his cup. "It's one of our sect's most precious techniques, and it can't be replicated anywhere else in the world."
no subject
Date: 2024-11-27 01:23 am (UTC)"To be honest, I'm shocked that Calloway could pull such a thing here, and that it's energy didn't--- reject that pull," Jon muses. "Maybe however he's finding these things is inherently neutral, though? I suppose it's not worth looking too hard at something so beneficial, though. It doesn't feel like it's been altered at all since you've last seen it, as well?"
no subject
Date: 2024-11-30 09:36 am (UTC)He shrugs. "In any case, I have a theory about the items Calloways finds -- namely that they are somehow tied to us off-worlders. Of course he pulls in a lot of random junk, but have you noticed that many of the truly powerful objects have some personal ties to someone already living on the island? Certainly this is the first time a cultivator's sword has appeared in his shop -- Oh!"
He interrupts himself with a grin. "There was another thing I got from Calloway's...one minute while I go get it." He rushes out of the room, returning with a small...plasticy...item in hand oh god it's a Funko Pop. It's a fucking Funko Pop, and Shen Qingqiu brandishes it in Jon's face like it's an idol made of solid gold.
"Look!" he says gleefully. "It's Luo Binghe!"