"I was unclear. The—the man we both know here is not Shen Qingqiu, he is a different person entirely. It's only by happenstance that he came to share a face and an identity with the Shen Qingqiu I've known since childhood." Luo Binghe is anxious, even though this is an old story. Perhaps because he's been thinking about Shen Qingqiu all morning. He remembers deciding to tell Magnus about his mother, confident that after all this time, he could speak of her death calmly. He is not at all sure that he can speak of this calmly. He wills his voice not to shake.

"He was my cultivation master. He hated me—I still couldn't say why. But it was me he hated. He could be strict with the other students—unreasonably demanding—but with me..." He bites the inside of his lip hard enough to leave a sore, trying to think how to describe it. He's afraid he won't be able to, and it will come across like he was an entitled child who objected to standard discipline. No doubt those who hate him now would have no trouble believing that.

"He looked for excuses to hurt me. He used to have me tied up and whipped—I think starting when I was eleven or twelve? And he would frame it as—if my cultivation had been good enough, it shouldn't have hurt, or I should have been able to heal more quickly. Except he was sabotaging my cultivation. He gave me a false instructional manual meant to induce qi deviation—that is, to kill me. So the more I practiced—which I did feverishly, trying to please him—the worse shape I was in, and the more frequently I was punished. I wasn't even allowed to stay in the disciple dorms—I had to sleep in the woodshed, out in the cold."