Chapter Text
"What are you doing here?"
Yue Qingyuan was taken aback, especially with the aggressive way Shen Qingqiu opened the door. But given the confusing situation, perhaps it was an understandable question.
"Hm. I suppose they did warn me you'd react like this," Yue Qingyuan said, smiling ruefully.
Shen Qingqiu didn't quite soften, but the way he pressed his lips together made it seem like he was reconsidering his attitude. He stiffly moved aside from the doorway, tilting his head to gesture towards the interior.
"We do have to discuss this," Shen Qingqiu relented. "Come inside. Zhangmen-shixiong." He bit out the last two words more curtly than Yue Qingyuan was used to.
Yue Qingyuan seated himself at the table in Shen Qingqiu's receiving room, and Shen Qingqiu himself departed only briefly to fetch a tea set.
As he was alone, Yue Qingyuan looked around the room, curious to observe that he had no memory of it either, just as he had lost his memories of Shen Qingqiu. Perhaps he had never been in here before, but that seemed unlikely to him, considering the friendly rapport he liked to maintain with the other Peak Lords. Would his relationship with the second-ranked Peak Lord not fall along similar lines? Especially when the rest insisted he had some kind of favoritism towards Shen Qingqiu that he did not display towards anyone else in the sect.
Shen Qingqiu eventually returned with the tea set, but conversation did not pick up immediately. Instead, Yue Qingyuan watched Shen Qingqiu's measured, elegant gestures as he brewed and then poured the tea, carefully trying to glean what kind of man he might be. On the surface, there was a cold beauty for him, but surely Yue Qingyuan hadn't showed him favor for that alone. He was also a skilled man, and Yue Qingyuan appreciated such things, but again, he did not understand that as being a justification.
Yue Qingyuan took a polite sip of his tea, and then made an appreciative sound he almost didn't mean to.
Shen Qingqiu, his task finished, looked Yue Qingyuan over with sharp attention.
"Did Qiong Ding receive my request?" Shen Qingqiu asked.
"It was received," Yue Qingyuan answered.
The question could only refer to Shen Qingqiu's request for investigation. He had outlined in detail the information he wanted to collect: the people Yue Qingyuan had met (both from within and from outside the sect), the relics he had contact with, even any gifts received. It was a thorough plan for routes of possible investigation, and it came so swiftly, that Shen Qingqiu must have written it up the moment he returned to Qing Jing Peak.
The Peak Lord meeting, of course, was when Yue Qingyuan had noticed the symptoms of his curse. He had expressed puzzlement at Shen Qingqiu's presence, and it only took a few exchanges to make it clear to everyone in the room that he had no memory of Shen Qingqiu at all. The other Peak Lords, astounded, had continued to ask questions for a while, and had even taken him to Qian Cao to be looked over. That Yue Qingyuan recalled everything else but not Shen Qingqiu in specific was extraordinarily strange, to the point that (covertly, but not covertly enough) they had even tested him for possession.
Mu Qingfang had also tested Yue Qingyuan for every curse imaginable, under the concerned eyes of the other Peak Lords, but as they ran out of things to test, most dispersed to their own peaks to search through library and records for more obscure answers. Shen Qingqiu had absented himself from the group as quietly as he had absented himself from Yue Qingyuan's memories, but when Yue Qingyuan managed to finally return to Qiong Ding, a nervous disciple had presented the scroll to Yue Qingyuan, outlining Shen Qingqiu's request.
It was not that Yue Qingyuan didn't know there was something alarming in his condition, and that the source of it had to be found, but Shen Qingqiu himself was not necessarily above suspicion either. If he was responsible in some way for all of this, giving him full control of such an investigation would be the wrong move.
"An investigation is necessary, of course," Yue Qingyuan said, "but we need to consider the fact that you may have been the one targeted."
Shen Qingqiu's nostrils flared. Though his face was otherwise impassive, there was definitely something sour about his mood.
"You don't want to give me the authority to investigate," Shen Qingqiu surmised bluntly.
"As mentioned--"
"Why would I be the target? You are the sect leader."
"But you are the one who has made more enemies."
The silence that descended was frosty. Yue Qingyuan looked up from his tea, but far from merely being angry, Shen Qingqiu's expression was complicated.
"Is that not correct? I have been told so by multiple people," Yue Qingyuan said.
Shen Qingqiu did not deign to answer. He twitched his sleeves back and picked up his own tea cup, sipping from it with elegant gestures and a clear air of resentment.
"I suppose you will be handing this off to Qi Qingqi," Shen Qingqiu remarked eventually.
Yue Qingyuan was almost startled. "She would be my first choice, yes."
"Tell her to send word ahead when she's coming over to ask me questions. I am frequently busy."
Yue Qingyuan acquiesced, and they did not speak of much other than a few practicalities of the investigation during the tea visit.
When it came down to it, Yue Qingyuan didn't find Shen Qingqiu all that complicated to deal with.
To find out that an entire Peak Lord had simply been erased from his memory was perturbing to Yue Qingyuan, and to then learn from others about all the unsavory aspects of Shen Qingqiu's personality only added to his concern. But Yue Qingyuan was not so complacent that he could simply stand still and ignore the situation. He set out to learn anything he could of the man, whether good or ill.
From others, Yue Qingyuan had known to expect a sharp-tongued, temperamental person, self-indulgent in carnal vices, and used to running rough-shod over others because he was a favorite of the Sect Leader.
Naturally, Yue Qingyuan could not know what had possessed him to allow such behavior in the past, and would not tolerate it in the present, but he had realized, at some point, that his martial siblings had only been warning him about the extremes in Shen Qingqiu's behavior, and not about his everyday manner.
In matters that pertained to the sect, Shen Qingqiu performed his duties to the letter. Perhaps he exerted some privileges of seniority a bit heavy-handedly, but that could not be said to be untrue of other Peak Lords as well.
Yue Qingyuan ordered for past records regarding Qing Jing and its lord to be brought to him, and he went over them meticulously, but he discovered, somewhat strangely, that when it came to the official things, he actually did recall some matters perfectly. For example, perhaps he didn't remember that Shen Qingqiu was the one to apply for funds to go to the renovation of Qing Jing's library, but Yue Qingyuan recalled sanctioning the funds and sending the orders to An Ding.
What Yue Qingyuan did not recall at all was what he found in his own personal ledger: records going back years of astronomical expenses, almost the entirety of his own personal allowance going to the purchase of expensive gifts which he surmised had been for Shen Qingqiu. Rare tea, luxurious fabrics, potent pills, an array of assorted items such as calligraphy brushes, musical instruments or priceless scrolls. He looked over line after line of ludicrous sums spent on Shen Qingqiu, and was at least relieved that he had not dipped into the sect budget for such things.
He had never been a man with expensive needs, and the sect provided his necessities, which was just as well, considering the amount of money he spent on Shen Qingqiu.
Yue Qingyuan sat with the ledger for a while as the evening progressed and the darkness fell. In the light of a nightpearl, he stirred the thoughts that wouldn't quite settle.
Qi Qingqi had been set to the task of investigating the memory loss, and so she set out to do so. By her report, Shen Qingqiu had been prickly, but cooperative with the questioning. At Yue Qingyuan's advice, she had maintained the polite fiction that this might have been an attack on Shen Qingqiu as well. At Yue Qingyuan's request, however, she was also investigating the possibility that Shen Qingqiu might have been the author of this incident.
It was something that Yue Qingyuan pondered further when he'd been looking at the accounts in that ledger, perplexed by his past self. Had those gifts been of Yue Qingyuan's initiative, or Shen Qingqiu's request? Had the gifts been welcomed? He tried to recall if he had spotted any of them in the Bamboo Hut when he'd been there, but it wasn't as if he'd known to be looking.
So, Yue Qingyuan let Qi Qingqi go about her task, but he also wanted to ask his own questions.
The second time he showed up on Qing Jing, Shen Qingqiu was less hostile upfront, defaulting to a distant politeness as he invited Yue Qingyuan in for tea.
This time, feeling he had adjusted to the situation better, Yue Qingyuan decided he was prepared to broach the obvious subject.
"I think it would be best if I learned more about you, rather than wait for my memories to be restored," Yue Qingyuan said.
Shen Qingqiu's lips pressed together. He picked up a fan and snapped it open with an elegant gesture, warding himself behind the painted image of songbirds perched on blossomed branches.
"This one is certain Zhangmen-shixiong has learned plenty already," Shen Qingqiu replied.
"And yet," Yue Qingyuan persisted, "there are things only Shen-shidi would know."
"Unnecessary little trifles that a Sect Leader should not concern himself with, perhaps," Shen Qingqiu replied, fanning himself with almost too deliberate slowness.
"Naturally, Shen-shidi would indulge his Sect Leader even in trifles."
"Zhangmen-shixiong was poorly informed if he believes this."
"Ah, is that because, customarily, Shen-shidi is the one being indulged?"
The temperature seemed to drop as something flashed in Shen Qingqiu's eyes.
"If Zhangmen-shixiong knows everything already, them there is no point in asking."
"The purpose is that I want to know," Yue Qingyuan said, his tone firm and unequivocal.
Shen Qingqiu lapsed in a seething silence, but after a short time of stewing, he twitched his sleeve in a little 'go ahead' gesture, obviously reluctant.
"Is it true we knew each other before joining the sect?" Yue Qingyuan asked.
He thought it was a reasonable question. Yue Qingyuan had tried to figure out where Shen Qingqiu would fit if so, because Yue Qingyuan could recall his own life clearly, and didn't think he would have had the occasion to meet a young master or some scholarly scion in any of the places he frequented. Certainly he had known a great number of young children on the streets, but looking at Shen Qingqiu now, beautiful and elegant, impeccable in his poise and manner, neither could Yue Qingyuan picture him as one of the scraggly, dirty-faced urchins Yue Qingyuan had been surrounded by in his life before joining the sect.
Yue Qingyuan didn't have any prejudice against such cultivators who worked their way up from misery to straddle the highest peaks, not least of all because that would be profoundly hypocritical of him, but from his perspective, he knew how truly rare that was. He had managed to reach his own position only because his talent was so extraordinary and rare that the previous Sect Leader had seen fit to overlook his most glaring mistakes.
If Shen Qingqiu was a similar rare talent, Yue Qingyuan could see some previous Peak Lord taking a shine to him and similarly grooming him as successor. But everyone said of Shen Qingqiu that his cultivation had always been somewhat mediocre compared to his martial siblings. He had reached this position by compensating with talent in other areas, because being a Peak Lord involved more than mere martial prowess.
And Qing Jing was the kind of peak where one couldn't arrive illiterate and late to cultivation and simply hope to prosper.
Yue Qingyuan had asked fellow Peak Lords for information as far back as they could recall, but since none of them had been on particular good terms with Shen Qingqiu during their discipleship, the information was filtered through certain bad sentiments. The little reliable tidbits that Yue Qingyuan had gathered painted a frustratingly vague picture outside of the negative, which stood out all the more.
The only one who could fill in the picture was Shen Qingqiu, but Shen Qingqiu was, both by natural inclination and current circumstance, mostly uncooperative.
Yue Qingyuan hadn't wanted to be so blunt and direct in asking--he felt somewhat like a bully, cornering Shen Qingqiu into answering the question--but it was clear there was no other way Shen Qingqiu would tell him anything. In such bizarre circumstances, there was a need for answers regardless of sensitivities.
"If we knew each other before I joined the sect," Yue Qingyuan said, "then you're aware of the life I led back then--"
Shen Qingqiu's expression froze into his coldest mask yet. His fan movements turned tight and sharp.
"Yes, of course," Shen Qingqiu said. "I know exactly the gutter you crawled out of, because I came out of it too. But rest assured, you managed to slough off any traces of your last life, and me with it. You've risen high out of reach of my filth, so you need not worry about that."
Yue Qingyuan was taken aback by the harshness of Shen Qingqiu's words, and appalled by how the man spoke of himself.
"Shen-shidi," Yue Qingyuan said slowly, "you can't think I'd hold such unfair judgment towards you over your origins. I would never think you're lower just because of where you started in life."
"Spare me the heart-bleeding rhetoric. I know perfectly well what I am and what I've always been," Shen Qingqiu spat. "You have Qi Qingqi investigating me as a possible culprit, don't you? But did it occur to you that you might be the one responsible for this curse?"
Shen Qingqiu's lips peeled back in a sneer, his expression cruel like he was saying something hurtful to Yue Qingyuan, but Yue Qingyuan was only confused. Shen Qingqiu looked like the one actually hurt by those words.
"Why would I do that?" Yue Qingyuan asked, his voice measured to careful neutrality.
"Fool. Why wouldn't you? Look how much happier you are with no memory of me."
Yue Qingyuan blinked slowly. Was he happy? He didn't feel so. Looking inwards, he could find only barren expanses of lukewarm contentment, but no real peaks or valleys of stronger emotions. Except... he didn't know how unhappy he might have been before. He had no memory of that, and clearly Shen Qingqiu saw some difference in him.
"Why would you assume that forgetting you would make me happy?" Yue Qingyuan asked instead.
"Of course it would," Shen Qingqiu said with a bitter huff, something too dry to be a laugh and too raw to be sarcasm. "You only think otherwise because you forgot all the guilt you were carrying. Well, I never had any use for your guilt anyway! It was your own damn choice to carry it, and now it's gone! Enjoy your new life, free from your unsavory entanglements, Zhangmen-shixiong! Consider it my gift to you!"
He made a dismissive sweep with his fan, lips curled into a bitter smile that dripped self-loathing.
Yue Qingyuan suddenly felt all that missing guilt like a phantom limb, the echo of a memory of an old weight. He didn't understand what he had felt guilty over, but he thought this explained some things--almost too neatly.
The discussion with Shen Qingqiu did not proceed further that day. All Shen Qingqiu would say next was for Yue Qingyuan to leave, so he left.
It was not that Yue Qingyuan didn't fully believe Shen Qingqiu's words. He knew himself well enough to be aware that he could bear guilt poorly, even to the point of becoming annoying to the one most benefitting from that guilt. But Shen Qingqiu did not tell him why, and Yue Qingyuan wanted to know.
The truth was, ever since the curse, his mind often drifted to Shen Qingqiu as if falling into a well-worn groove. Whatever he had been thinking of previously, nowadays Yue Qingyuan had only a mystery he could turn over and over without managing to extract any answers from the exercise.
He suspected that he had no confidant who would have heard his thoughts on Shen Qingqiu, and so nobody to ask about what they really were, but surely there were people who would have observed him and Shen Qingqiu over the years. If nothing else, they'd all been in the monthly Peak Lord meetings together, had they not? Even if Yue Qingyuan could not remember.
He started with the sensible option first. Mu Qingfang was not given to gossip, but he had always quietly observed his martial siblings.
"Do you know what might have happened between myself and Shen Qingqiu in the past?" Yue Qingyuan asked, on one of his now-regular trips to Qian Cao Peak.
Mu Qingfang insisted on monitoring him, to make certain that Yue Qingyuan's memory did not further degenerate, and to test him for new curses. He was in the process of observing some kind of medicine as he was closely pouring it into water, so he did not look up.
"Neither shixiong were the kind inclined to talk about their shared past," Mu Qingfang replied. "If you'd like speculation, however, you can find that up and down the mountain, Zhangmen-shixiong."
Yes, yes, Yue Qingyuan was quite aware. The extent of people's speculation was all the more embarrassing to Yue Qingyuan the more he found out how shamelessly he favored Shen Qingqiu. But nobody gave him anything concrete to follow up on, and the broad scope of his personal inquiries was not yielding either.
"What about an informed guess from a frequent bystander?" Yue Qingyuan prompted.
Mu Qingfang's gaze flicked towards him, flat and knowing exactly Yue Qingyuan's distress, but unwilling to wade into the mess even by proxy.
"If this shidi can make an observation," Mu Qingfang said, and Yue Qingyuan leaned forward in interest, "it is often true that when we encounter people from our past, we default to behaving as we did in the time we knew them, even if we are different people now."
Yue Qingyuan took in this observation, general as it was, and added it to his considerations. If it was the most useful thing Mu Qingfang had to add, then Yue Qingyuan was going to take it graciously.
The next Peak Lord meeting came and all Peak Lords were assembled for once--even Liu Qingge, who had crashed back onto Cang Qiong a couple of weeks too late for the last one, and had been terrorizing his disciples in the meantime.
Yue Qingyuan guessed the full attendance was more for his benefit. True, they had not discussed everything they needed to last time, but it seemed they were curious to see if Yue Qingyuan was up to the task now. Yue Qingyuan was not daunted by this.
The meeting began with a list of general points they needed to discuss, and each Peak Lord added in their own item if they had something to discuss. Shang Qinghua always had something, just by sheer nature of his duty. A few other Peak Lords had their own predictable things they wanted to discuss: the Beast Peak was going to organize a much larger nighthunt soon and would take volunteers from other peaks, the Ascetic Peak would soon coordinate seclusion for a larger number of their members and so adjustments would need to be made. Shen Qingqiu put his own item on the agenda, surprisingly: the Immortal Alliance Conference coming up again in almost four years.
To Yue Qingyuan, it seemed a bit soon to discuss, but he allowed it because it was not unreasonable either. Four years was considered a tight timeline for advancing cultivation.
The meeting proceeded in what Yue Qingyuan knew was a fairly mundane manner. The Peak Lords fell into the expected patterns of behavior. Shen Qingqiu was the only unknown quantity to Yue Qingyuan, and so he paid closer attention to him than anyone.
At one point, as Shang Qinghua dithered with his stacks of paper, making some circuitous excuses, Shen Qingqiu snapped "Get on with it!", startling the An Ding Peak Lord and making him stutter his way back to a salient point.
"Shidi," Yue Qingyuan said in a disapproving undertone towards Shen Qingqiu, but even this seemed like such an ordinary course of events, that none of the other Peak Lords seemed surprised, and Shen Qingqiu seemed completely unrepentant.
The meeting proceeded through all items, finally winding out to the final point on the list.
"As Huan Hua Palace is hosting this year," Shen Qingqiu said, "we will need to make a better showing than them in the competition."
"Ah, Shen-shixiong, so harsh," Wei Qingwei muttered. "Isn't everyone going to do their best anyway?"
Though Wei Qingwei had made the remark idly, and not meant anything by it, Shen Qingqiu's head turned towards him, his gaze sharp and looking clearly incensed.
Yue Qingyuan hadn't been aware of any personal conflict between Shen Qingqiu and Wei Qingwei, and indeed Wei Qingwei did not look hostile, but at this point, Yue Qingyuan at least knew that Shen Qingqiu was a contentious man by nature, reacting to even perceived slights like he had been personally attacked.
"Huan Hua Palace will be looking for any opportunity to claw a better standing in the cultivation world," Shen Qingqiu said in tone of warning, "and since that is a position Cang Qiong occupies, it can only be at our expense. They are already beginning to set the stage to undercut us with rumors and slander."
"Is that not just you? None of the rest of us have such fears for our reputation," the Ku Xing Peak Lord rumbled, from where he was sitting and patting the length of his beard.
"True enough. I certainly know there is no dirt they could throw which could stick to me," another Peak Lord piped in.
Yue Qingyuan had been looking at Shen Qingqiu directly, and so he witnessed how the man bristled, a slow rolling motion up his body like every nerve lit up with aggression. At the same time, absolutely nothing in Shen Qingqiu's posture had changed, save for the fact that he snapped his fan open--a wide motion away from his body, distracting away from his own aggressive tension.
Suddenly, Yue Qingyuan could see it: the bone deep defensiveness of a cornered animal, the superimposed image of some dirty-faced child Shen Qingqiu might have been once, posturing in times of violence and preparing for a fight. He wasn't sure if he remembered it, exactly, because it was like recognizing something kindred in a complete stranger, but Yue Qingyuan didn't think he was mistaken about this.
None of the other Peak Lords seemed to perceive how deeply they struck, because they were not cruel by nature and so would not have attacked Shen Qingqiu if they thought they'd cause him genuine distress.
"What is Huan Hua Palace saying?" Yue Qingyuan jumped in.
The conversation stalled, thrown off of what might have been its usual track.
True enough, Yue Qingyuan wouldn't have bothered with rumor or slander usually. Some amount would always be generated, out of their control. But it would always wash off Cang Qiong's otherwise pristine reputation regardless.
But he was curious because he wanted to know more about Shen Qingqiu, even if he was going to ask things that would have been obvious to him when he had his memories.
The table plunged into a few awkward moments of silence, eyes averting awkwardly, and Shen Qingqiu's gaze pinning him with resentment.
Qi Qingqi was the one brave enough to speak up in the end.
"It's nothing new, just the usual stuff trotted out again," Qi Qingqi said. "Shen-shixiong has a reputation for lechery you might have forgotten about, Zhangmen-shixiong. It's the only weak point Huan Hua Palace has ever managed to find, so they grasp it desperately once in a while."
Shen Qingqiu's cold rage felt like it blanketed the room, and Yue Qingyuan stared as his mind whirred.
He was sure he'd heard mention of this before, that Shen Qingqiu's reputation was stained due to--actually, no, the Peak Lords had been very delicate and euphemistic about this aspect, and though other people hadn't hesitated about calling Shen Qingqiu a lech, Yue Qingyuan would not credit any information he did not receive from a trustworthy source.
So they had mostly talked around this, and hadn't told Yue Qingyuan outright if it was true or not. By the seething aura around Shen Qingqiu, there had to be some substance to it, but Yue Qingyuan's own private horror now pivoted around the realization that all the gifts he had showered upon Shen Qingqiu took on very disturbing connotations with this information.
He wouldn't take advantage of a martial brother like that, surely. Not a childhood friend, not a fellow Peak Lord, not even a stranger. Yue Qingyuan was sure he would never engage in such behavior. Except--what did he feel all that purported guilt over? What had he done so terrible in the past? Was the guilt related to--this? Had he been somehow responsible for Shen Qingqiu's unseemly reputation?
No. Yue Qingyuan cut off that bewildered spiral of thoughts in its tracks. It was a knee-jerk response in absence of information.
"Cang Qiong Mountain Sect's Peak Lords are all meant to rise and fall as one," Yue Qingyuan said. "You cannot leave one single martial sibling out on a limb. Perhaps you should consider any rumor against Shen Qingqiu as an attack on your own good name. I certainly will."
The Peak Lords gave Yue Qingyuan looks that varied from sheepish, to put-out, to bewildered, but they murmured some vague agreement nonetheless. Qi Qingqi raised her eyebrows, but didn't say anything more.
Shen Qingqiu, for his part, also looked disoriented, and whatever else he was looking to argue, it fizzled out as Yue Qingyuan took charge of the conversation and ordered the Peak Lords to assess their disciples and report how ready they would be for the Immortal Alliance Conference in their next monthly meeting.
After the meeting was done, Shen Qingqiu was the first to make his exit. Several Peak Lords left in a more sedate fashion, but others lingered.
Qi Qingqi was among the last to leave.
"What was that, then?" she asked. "You usually have Shen Qingqiu more firmly in line during the monthly meetings, if nowhere else. This time you practically told us to kiss his hems."
Yue Qingyuan did no such thing, but he could see how his behavior was coming under added scrutiny.
"I suspect I usually compensated for the preferential treatment he received otherwise," Yue Qingyuan said.
Qi Qingqi did not argue, which was as good as saying that was true.
"Now I have to compensate for bias in the other direction, I suppose," Yue Qingyuan shrugged.
"Just don't compensate so hard you hand him the whole sect, Zhangmen-shixiong."
"Understood. But, Qi-shimei," Yue Qingyuan's voice fell into a graver register, and Qi Qingqi leaned in, attentive, "those rumors about Shen Qingqiu. Do you suppose Huan Hua Palace is responsible?"
"It's not an outrageous assumption, but it's not like Shen Qingqiu lacks for enemies," she shrugged.
"Then, look into it. Consider it in relation to your other current investigation."
"You think whoever is spreading rumors has also cursed you in order to easier wrench Shen Qingqiu from your protection?"
"Perhaps," Yue Qingyuan said. "It's a curse with a very limited utility, isn't it? I'm not truly hindered as Sect Leader. So chase down anything that looks like someone is taking advantage of it. And another thing..."
"Zhangmen-shixiong?"
Yue Qingyuan was going to ask for something purely selfish.
Information gathering was vital for a sect of Cang Qiong Mountain's size, especially considering they would be entangled in the cultivation's world politics no matter what. Yue Qingyuan had long since accepted it, and learned to use all means at his disposal, within limits.
Yue Qingyuan was now in the position of needing information on one of his own Peak Lords, and that was in some ways harder and in some ways easier to gather.
Qi Qingqi's disciples were trained even from a young age to observe, memorize and report back, and they could meld into a crowd so well that even their own martial uncles wouldn't be able to spot them. So if Shen Qingqiu travelled down the mountain, Yue Qingyuan had arranged for a few to follow him and take note of his activities.
For keeping an eye on Shen Qingqiu within the sect, however, such methods were not necessarily ideal. Xian Shu disciples did not ordinarily go to Qing Jing Peak for anything less than a very good reason, but disciples could occasionally meet outside their peaks for events, competitions, joint missions and so on. And disciples talked--gossiped relentlessly, really--with very little provocation.
To keep eyes directly on Shen Qingqiu, Yue Qingyuan deployed a few of his own Qiong Ding disciples. If he was to instruct them on how to be subtle and observant, this was a good opportunity as ever. He had one of the hallmasters contrive a study project that would have a handful of Qiong Ding's brightest having to visit the Qing Jing library for some texts that were only available there. This worked particularly well with how propretary Shen Qingqiu was with the contents of Qing Jing's library.
Yue Qingyuan had not told any of the disciples what in particular to keep an eye on, instead saying he wanted an overview of Shen Qingqiu's routines, and any break in them as well. Both the Xian Shu and the Qiong Ding disciples were encouraged to socialize with Qing Jing's own, and mostly by collecting candid details revealed through these informal discussions, they could cobble together an overview of the situation.
Once the disciples got their ins with Qing Jing, Yue Qingyuan was well-rewarded with plenty of detailed (albeit sometimes rambling) reports.
Through the filter of young disciples' impressions, Shen Qingqiu was a harsh taskmaster, more so than the other Peak Lords. He demanded perfection and punished anyone who fell short of standards. Qing Jing's disciples were always sensitive to Shen Qingqiu's moods, because he tended to grow frightfully more stern when he was ill-disposed, but Shen Qingqiu also tended to vent his vitriol by singling out anyone he thought was especially deserving of it that week.
As of late, the one to draw the short straw was the youngest disciple on Qing Jing: a boy with no connections and no friends among his cohort. The other disciples treated this boy as a kind of sacrifice to Shen Qingqiu's blackest moods, blaming him for anything that went wrong so that they may escape punishment, and keeping him at the lowest rung of the social hierarchy. Shen Qingqiu, who had to know that the youngest disciple couldn't be responsible for every sin on the mountain, only proceeded to take any excuse given to punish him.
Yue Qingyuan spent a great deal of time looking over these reports of Shen Qingqiu's attitude only because of a second issue which had arisen.
A couple of weeks after Yue Qingyuan set people to watch Shen Qingqiu, a complaint came to Yue Qingyuan's desk, from two former Qing Jing disciples who'd been kicked out of the sect for subpar performance. This wasn't unusual, because Qing Jing had higher standards than other peaks, and in addition to cultivation, disciples had to master the four arts as well, almost in parallel. Inevitably, some disciple or other would crack under the pressure. Complaints were not that unusual, specifically from the Qing Jing wash-outs, who tended to come from noble families who were not used to their spawn being allowed to fail at anything.
But the fact that two complaints from years past were coordinated in such way, to come up now at the same time--was there some invisible hand behind it? Would rumors about Shen Qingqiu now spring up, questioning his competence as master of his peak?
Yue Qingyuan had no idea what he would have done before. Suppressed the petitions, perhaps, in another little gesture of coddling Shen Qingqiu?
Whether Shen Qingqiu was right or not in kicking out those two former disciples, Yue Qingyuan couldn't say. In many ways, a disciple's task was to rise to their master's demands, so Shen Qingqiu was entirely within his rights regardless of extenuating circumstances. But if there was some way of appeasing the petitioners with Shen Qingqiu's cooperation, Yue Qingyuan wanted to try and find it.
So, to Qing Jing he went.