The impact of Liu Qingge's death on Shen Qingqiu
I was just thinking — for the original, that event must have really been a wake-up incident. He was convinced that he hated him and wouldn't have cared if he died, but when he saw him in a state of qi deviation, he still tried to save him.
What if, after that, he wondered what it would have been like if Yue Qingyuan had actually died? You can notice that his attitude toward Yue Qingyuan during his youth is different from what he thinks when he meets Yue Qingyuan in the water prison. As a disciple, he fiercely denied any hint of closeness with Liu Qingge or Yue Qingyuan himself, but in the water prison, he openly wishes for Yue Qingyuan to survive at the cost of his own life and never to meet anyone like him again. Maybe Liu Qingge's death shook him that much?