Addy. 33. Air Bender. Loves to Read. Currently obsessed with: James Bond, Sailor Moon Crystal, Steven Universe, Jurassic World. Ginger the original G Raptor Squad
We made fun of Shen Yuan all this time for being overly interested in the flora and fauna of PIDW but turns out that out of the three Shen brothers he could be the more chill one about it because his two elder brothers left it all behind to go study in an antarctic research base and the deep mountains looking for a specific tree while he at least kept up with his responsibilities, first in his family's business and then on the peak as a teacher.
Seeing a lot of wild speculation with the new, revised, censored, Chinese complete collector's hardcover box set that was just released for The Scum Villain's Self Saving System now seemingly known as Legend of Cang Qiong Mountain, and the new 20,000 word extra, Return. (Some high quality official releases of the new art)
(This is different from the English Seven Seas box set hardcover release). Apparently early copies were available in some bookstores in China, but are seemingly sold out. I do not read Chinese, and do not have my hands on this copy of the book, but rather than randomly posting speculation, here's what I've been able to gather because people are just posting very random things at this point (this is spoilery for the new extra):
Translation Status
There is no current English translation of the Extra: people are sharing info from copies of the new Chinese release that they have, or gathering info from other Chinese fans posting about it on Weibo and Xiaohongshu/RedNote. This also involves folks debating what different things translate to/how to write it in English, and people jumping to conclusions based on how fans are interpreting bits of the text, so a lot of the speculation is just because people will write a tweet or something and tons of people jump on it and it's just a massive game of international telephone, everywhere.
I know people are speculating Return will be included in the Seven Seas hardcover release of SVSSS, but I haven't seen that confirmed anywhere, either. Their release of Thousand Autumns, for instance, included later extras because the Seven Seas English translation itself came out so late, and I don't think Seven Seas is changing all that much between its paperback and hardcover releases of books it already has out. It's entirely possible, but I don't know how likely it is, especially because we don't know how long ago Mo Xiang Tong Xiu wrote this and how long ago printing for the Seven Seas hardcover began. If printing already began for the latter - which it probably did - I doubt Return is in there (probably even less because of the printing and more because Seven Seas' license for this likely didn't include the extra). We already know how reticent they are to change things after not releasing a version of the revised Heaven Official's Blessing, especially with the hardcovers, or otherwise revising their translations of any of the books to fix errors other than seemingly minor ones. Adding a long extra that isn't in their paperback copies of the same book is a very large step beyond their previous behavior.
Title
The novel was renamed/given an extra name: 苍穹山记 “Legend of Cang Qiong Mountain”.
Revision and Censorship
Although this is a revised and censored release, similar to what happened with the revised and censored release of Heaven Official's Blessing, I have not seen any confirmation "all the romance" is removed. I think more people would post about that if so. If it's anything like what's happening with at least some danmei manhua, and what happened with that TGCF censored revision, probably the sex scenes were cut/trimmed/replaced with more chaste things to comply with local laws/out of fear of government pushback involving censorship of romance and porn in general, and queer relationships in particular leading to harassment, fines, and imprisonment of authors and artists.
Reverse Transmigration with Bingqiu and Moshang
jiuxiaoer on twitter has been sharing a lot of bits from the extra, including how Shen Yuan and Xiang Fei (Airplane's apparent real name) are able to return to their home version of Earth briefly (and continuously), and how Luo Binghe and Mobei-Jun, after some years (in the world of Proud Immortal Demon Way/whatever the modified book world is called), manage to follow them. Luo Binghe meets Shen Yuan's parents, and Shen Yuan did not die to transmigrate (and seemingly Xiang Fei did not, either, they were just comatose; time passes slower on Earth than in PIDW world). Luo Binghe knew that Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu were not the same person from when Luo Binghe was 14, not necessarily from the start of Shen Yuan's transmigration, and it doesn't seem like he knew it was specifically transmigration, it was more "this person has changed a lot very quickly, something's up" (this is from browsing around and seeing fans talk about what the section means). Shen Yuan has a habit of picking up strays, seemingly including people (his sister, Shen Tang, thinks Xiang Fei is one of them).
The Shen Jiu Thing
This is allegedly fake, or possibly just, again, people jumping to conclusions: allegedly the System was making deals with people to send people who hate themselves and the world to another world so folks can live in their stead in their bodies, and, according to at least one person, veilzun, who spoke with a user on RedNote, Shen Jiu talked with the system and made a deal (and had a satisfactory ending). There's a lot of debate about this, and I've seen no text screencaps or anything proving it (other than some RedNote screencaps from wangxianling investigating whether or not it's real, not screencaps of the text/translation), just lots of people jumping to conclusions, given the circumstances, and likely popular genre and fandom tropes of having Shen Jiu and other original body owners, a la Lout of Count's Family, etc., transmigrate somewhere else rather than die/be erased. Also allegedly, Shen Jiu (and the original Shang Qinghua) are not mentioned in the extra, so this may be speculation, might not be, nothing I'm finding on twitter, Blue Sky, tumblr, or reddit is showing me otherwise.
mpreg
mpreg is not necessarily canon now, people are just jumping to conclusions and spreading rumors after confusing the new extra, Return, with the already released extra, Return to Childhood, which is accessible in Volume 4 of the Seven Seas English translation, and involves Ning Yingying, Liu Qingge, and Ming Fan coming to the conclusion that age regressed Luo Binghe is Shen Qingqiu's child with Luo Binghe, including this section:
“Liu Qingge seemed to find it difficult to speak, so Ming Fan cried out in his place, “When did you have a son with him? He’s so big!”
Silence.
“Great Master” Liu! Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky didn’t write a green Jinjiang mpreg novel!” (Volume 4, Chapter 28: Return to Childhood)
It's no more or less canon than it already was/wasn't.
The Fate of the Donghua Adaptation
I saw one random reblog saying the donghua adaptation is cancelled or something, and after some digging, I have seen no one confirming this (might just be where I'm not seeing it, but I feel like more people would mention it if it was a thing). Although Mo Xiang Tong Xiu does include an afterward in this release, nothing I'm seeing about it mentions that, and nothing I'm seeing in relation to people talking about the donghua talk about it being cancelled. I think between this and folks still frustrated with people getting mad about the Seven Seas Mo Dao Zu Shi hardcover covers, people are just still frustrated we have no official SVSSS donghua news nearly five years on from when the last donghua episode of season 1 released on November 12, 2020 (outside an open-ended video from the motion capture director in 2023), and that's all getting mixed in. I don't trust to hope but personally I still think Tencent choosing to air the Lord of Mysteries donghua adaptation on platforms like Crunchyroll while letting Crunchyroll license Scumbag System for streaming is more of a sign that they're maybe not giving up on it rather than "SVSSS finally got something else but it's not the donghua". Might just be Tencent scooping up more money, especially from Bilibili's Heaven Official's Blessing and To Be Hero X money train, but who knows?
I will update this if anyone has any corrections. Please check the original post for updates if you see this in a reblog.
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