It really is tragic, when you think about the Luo Binghe in the dream vs. the Luo Binghe in present reality. Although on the outside he really has become the terrifying demon lord, someone who is able to reduce a person like Sha Hualing to a fearful mess on the spot, inside he’s still the same. The same as that child crying after his teacher poured hot tea on him, the same as the teenager clinging to the only person that showed him kindness since his mother died.
Shen Qingqiu sighed and deliberated for a bit before he comforted him softly, “It’s fine if you lost it. I don’t blame you.”
Luo Binghe stared blankly at him. “… but right now, that’s all I have left.”
Shen Qingqiu was indeed running away from Luo Binghe all this time. But the one he was running away from was just a figment of his imagination based on the novel he read. In reality, the “white lotus” LBH hasn’t even gone anywhere. It’s exactly because he’s still just as innocent and immature that he ended up being thrown into the darkest pits of despair, clinging like a child would onto the only thing that gave him comfort.
Of course, it can’t be forgotten that Shen Qingqiu is an unreliable narrator so we’ll just have to see what he ends up doing, since his thoughts are very much a big mess. But overall I can’t help but feel extremely bad for Binghe who has no other method of coping other than childishly punishing himself in his own dreamscape, and apologizing to a teacher that he thinks is a figment of his own imagination.