SVSSS AU where everything is the same except that the seal on Luo Binghe's demon side missed some stuff which forces baby Binghe to make some realizations.
NYY: A-Luo are you ok? You keep rubbing your fingers together weird.
LBH: I'm fine. I just broke one of my retractable claws and those always itch while they're regrowing.
NYY: Retractable claws?
LBH: *suddenly realizing he's never heard another human talk about their retractable claws* Hahaha! I am Joking!
-----
LBH: Ok, so Mama was right about me needing to hide my pointed ears and sharp teeth, no one else at the sect has them. I wonder where I got them from?
#SY will be ok he's just really going through it at the moment#SQQ: I only care about you because I've been assigned to#SY: Yeah sure#meanwhile YQY is remembering what joy and happiness are
Street kid Luo Binghe makes the mistake of letting some weirdo get a hold of him and finds himself locked up in a windowless room somewhere.
The only bright spot in this shit situation is that there's another boy in there with him. Shen Yuan is clearly in considerably worse shape than Luo Binghe and he says he's been here for a very long time. But he's so kind to Binghe and deliberately draws their captor's attention to himself (and away from Binghe) whenever he can.
He also, after Binghe's been there about a month, steals their captor's keys, unlocks the restraints they're both in, and then shoves Binghe out the boarded up window he's been prying open when he had time.
Shen Yuan is too big to fit through the window, he says. They both know that's not true but they can also both hear that their captor is coming-he must have noticed the keys were missing- and Shen Yuan intends to stall him while Binghe gets away.
Binghe promises to come back with help and SY just smiles and nods and shoos him away.
He runs as fast as he can, and once he's far enough away from the house he escaped from he starts asking for help- but no one is listening to him. And he knows if he goes to the local guard he'll probably be handed back over as a runaway slave... And then he sees two men who both seen almost to shine in the dirty city streets... they must be cultivators, they must. If anyone can help him now it will be them. So Luo Binghe throws himself at the taller of the two men and starts begging for help.
Shen Qingqiu is absolutely positive this kid is trying to lure them into an ambush, but Yue Qingyuan- who invited himself along on SQQ's mission without asking him- doesn't think so.
YQY goes with LBH, and SQQ follows, complaining that this is a trick the whole way- up until they discover that yes actually the local nobleman does have a secret room he's been imprisoning children in and there is indeed an almost beaten to death SY in there.
YQY sends SQQ off with SY- gotta get that kid medical attention ASAP- while he and LBH stay behind to Politely Ask Some Questions.
When YQY and LBH arrive back at the sect SY is still in the medical ward but isn't dying and is even awake! LBH is relieved and refuses to leave him again.
YQY fills SQQ in that not only were both boys not slaves, SY was actually the son of the nobleman's first wife she had as the result of an affair. He disappeared from the household around the time the first wife died and all the servants assumed their Lord had sold the boy or killed him outright.
But now that the nobleman has died a sudden and painful and extremely mysterious death it looks like SY has inherited the estate. YQY will have someone from An Ding go sort out the details since SY can't.
SQQ watches YQY smile at the little urchins they've rescued and talk in a way that obviously means he intends them to stay and says, internally 'Fuck no Qi-ge you don't get to replace me with a Shen you actually did manage to save. Absolutely not!'
Out loud the conversation goes:
SQQ: I want the older boy.
YQY: What?
SQQ: You intend for them to stay right? I want the older boy for Qing Jing Peak, you can keep the little one if you want.
YQY, pleased and assuming SQQ and SY must have bonded while he and LBH were away: Of course.
SQQ and SY have not bonded, and once they get back to QJ Peak things are tense. SQQ is low-key kinda jealous of SY and also reminded much too much of himself by the boy. Except he was never as naive and stupid as this kid is! Why is he so nice? How?? And the little shit isn't even afraid of him!
SY, deeply sarcastic: Oh nooo. I'm going to be beaten? Such a thing has never happened to me before! *Coughs because his throat is permanently messed up from being nearly strangled to death*
SQQ, aware that if he hits the kid now he loses: You're not allowed in the library for a week.
SY: What!
SQQ: The next words out of your mouth better be "yes Shizun, sorry Shizun" or it'll be two weeks.
SY: ...yes Shizun, sorry Shizun.
Meanwhile LBH and YQY are having a magical adventure in becoming a found family and are bonding over their obsessions with their respective Shens. They absolutely come visit QJ Peak at least twice a week much to SQQ's displeasure and SY's delight.
Dragons in The Journey to the West are forces of good but also invite demons - such as the Bull Demon King - to their underwater parties.
Cang Qiong Mountain Sect is a very important place and the fact that their peak lords have a tradition of ascending as one means that they are effectively a baby-god-producing factory and thus the peak lords and their heirs would get invited to parties because of diplomacy.
Mobei-Jun genuinely thinks he has been courting Airplane for a long time.
What I'm saying is Airplane is damned lucky to have never gotten caught at a party when he - according to CQMS - wasn't supposed to be there.
Of course, just because Yue Qingyuan, Shen Qingqiu, and Shang Qinghua come from the peaks most likely to go to parties diplomatically doesn't mean those are the only peak lords/peak heirs invited to parties...
(Strictly speaking Prince is Wangzi 王子, not just Wang 王 which is king, but Wang is - if I understand correctly - an acceptable term when you've got an emperor or ruling parent outranking you. Let me know if I've got that wrong, and my apologies if so.)m
Look, it's not Qingge's fault he got involved in this. He was just innocently hunting some demons who were causing havoc and followed one of them in. He didn't even know it was a party.
#Several generations of previous anding lords foaming at the mouth thinking of all the Good Trade they'll get when head disciple shang scores#Cheer us sqh maybe you can spin this to look non-traitorous#(meanwhile mbj was already planning the wedding) <- prev tags
The thing about Airplane when he runs into people he knows at parties he's supposedly not at/supposed to be at, is that he never makes things easier for himself:
4. He and his buddies used to get Airplane to clean their rooms and cook them food. Airplane is very bitter about this but I headcanon that they didn't expect him to agree and/or airplane is really good at cooking and they couldn't reveal it was meant to be a tease because then he'd stop making them dinner
5. Airplane planned to write porn about him post canon
Maid cleaning a massive chateau surely belonging to the richest people you’ve ever seen, and as she’s walking from room to room you notice that every single portrait is of her
On one hand, I don't think that Shen Yuan's plan to "fake" his own death is actually a bad escape idea generally. He is missing additional insight into the head of a person (Luo Binghe) who now has very good reason to hate him forever and (in another life) famously likes to take gruesome revenge on anyone who has ever wronged him. Only way to get away from that kind of grudge, it seems.
On the other hand, the death that actually gets executed ends up being SO wildly dramatic and mind-bogglingly mysterious and unintentionally gut-wrenching that it's... laughable. A lot of this is not really Shen Yuan's fault, imo, as a lot of wild cards were coming up and his escape window was closely rapidly, so he seized it while he could. But the sheer MESS left behind... Incredible.
So, I'm currently imagining a scenario where Shen Yuan chooses and somehow manages to frame someone specific for his "fake" death. There needs to be some little story, right? Shen Yuan picks some truly loathsome demonic villain to blame like he's planning protagonist enrichment: Binghe can take some nice revenge on these losers for them "stealing" his original revenge from him.
Airplane: "Holy shit, I don't know if I hate anyone this much to do this to them, bro. Wow. Okay. This'll be... uh, fun? Haha, what the fuck..."
Even better if Shen Yuan's scheme basically destroys Shen Qingqiu's body so that no one can do any weird necromancy shit. SUCCESS: Shen Yuan wakes up in the plant body a few years later. (Maybe the System is back; maybe it's mysteriously vanished.) He's expecting Luo Binghe to be more or less back on the path to becoming Demon Emperor of the world now that that strange Huan Hua Palace subterfuge isn't necessary... except... uh...
Well, it turns out that Luo Binghe and Cang Qiong Mountain Sect teamed up to curbstomp the poor villains that Shen Yuan threw into traffic here, and known Heavenly Demon Luo Binghe is just... hanging out on Qing Jing Peak again. There's a- ahem... obviously highly fictionalized song claiming that Luo Binghe basically had a breakdown cursing the evils of demons in front of Liu Qingge... and apparently they were both so mad at Shen Yuan's targets that they forgot to be mad at each other? And somewhere in there, the other peak lords got involved, and Wei Qingwei and Mu Qingfang did NOT like that cursed sword, and thankfully Yue Qingyuan was there to help wrestle a distraught Luo Binghe down at the end there.
Airplane: "Yeah, bro, I really don't fucking know. My protagonist is maybe getting something like therapy now...? Yue Qingyuan and Liu Qingge still look like they're chugging vinegar sometimes, but they're maybe trying to 'respect your memory' or some shit. Huan Hua Palace is sooo mad. Do you know how much shit we're getting from the other sects constantly for having a demon disciple? You broke them, bro. You broke my fucking story. Luo Binghe is teaching a junior painting class later and then going out for drinks with his old classmates afterwards... If he's going to burn the sect down at some point, then he's being really fucking weird about it."
And Shen Yuan is, of course, horrified that he has apparently caused the protagonist to lose his groove. Were his deathbed words of wisdom too much? Luo Binghe is acting like some... normal guy trying painfully but earnestly to get over something? He has a pet dog. He's bringing snacks to weekly games night with other senior disciples. He's acting like a widower instead of collecting wives. It's incredibly pathetic compared to the ruthless go-getter main character of PIDW.
Shen Yuan, watching Luo Binghe try to achieve mental stability and healthy outlets: "Wow, it's worse than I thought. He's not himself at all! Should I do something to fix this?"
Airplane, who's kind of pissed that his story is in ruins but also lives here now and knows the way that PIDW was supposed to end: "Uh, maybe? Wow, I guess you could, if you really want... The broken System might like that, but... Quick question: bro, do you for real hate this kid?"
Corrupt generation before Qing choosing absolute trashfires for their head disciples/heirs with the plan being that they always get killed off or reprimanded with removal of rank and oops once again not all twelve peak lords are ready to ascend guess they have to stay another few decades. whoops.
Only the Qing generation are proving to be an immoveable trashfire that keeps escaping their cunning plans.
What do you mean the cursed-sword-cave-lockup gambit didn't work? Who let that kid claim a backup sword? What do you mean Wu Yanzi's brat is actually behaving himself?? Qingge came back? Alive? Are you sure? Have you tried the Chimeras again? What do you mean you sent the little coward into the Northern Desert for a solo mission and he came back alive? No one comes back alive!
Yzma Voice: Qi deviating‽ He's supposed to be dead!
~~✈️🥒Back on my cumplane brainworms! But I bring a twist :] transmigrated into two specific demons ahe
"Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky," are not the words Luo Feixiang— A.K.A. the aforementioned Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky— expects to hear coming from Mobei-jun's mouth at all.
It takes 5 seconds for him to make the realization.
"Proud Immortal Demon Way," he eventually replies.
The way Mobei-jun's(?) shoulders slump down alleviates any lingering doubts.
"Lucky you, transmigrating into the great and powerful stallion protagonist, hm?" His face seems to fall a bit. "Though, I guess it isn't so great to experience being a Qing Jing disciple, is it?"
Luo Feixiang rubs the back of his head, sheepishly. "Well, you see... I was dropped into the story at the start of the Endless Abyss Arc"— the other transmigrator makes a solemn face and Luo Feixiang backtracks—"I had the protagonist halo, it's okay! I got out of there all fine, as you can see by the fact I'm meeting you here. In the Demon Realm."
"I suppose that's so. It still must've been hard for you, as it must've been for Luo Binghe himself. Even if he is the protagonist, he still felt pain, didn't he?"
Luo Feixiang doesn't expect that. Not at all. Not from the average reader of Proud Immortal Demon Way.
Perhaps he was being presumptuous, but there were few who willingly read the story for any deeper analysis, or consideration for what Luo Binghe is feeling. Because Luo Binghe wasn't supposed to be someone a reader would care about as a person. Luo Binghe was the vessel for the reader, to satiate a sense of wish fulfillment for one's self.
Apparently, transmigrator wearing Mobei-jun's (very pretty, holy shit, it's better than he could've ever imagined with words alone) face agrees. He seems to take Luo Feixiang's silence as indicative of something else.
"Proud Immortal Demon Way is a shitty novel filled with shameless papapa and fruitless, violent vengeance in place of genuine plot," The Mobei-jun transmigrator starts. He takes Luo Feixiang's taken-aback expression as a sign to continue. "But Luo Binghe was a character with a backstory, whose future was fueled by his need for vengeance against a world that offered him nothing but a little love that would only be ripped away. When you remove the aspect of him being a reader-insert, and he becomes a real person, the feelings he does have aren't just one-off sentences to skip over."
Distantly, Luo Feixiang feels something pricking at his heart, but also... Hah... Maybe it's because the Mobei-jun transmigrator had somehow convinced him to put Xin Mo in a closed off corner that a strange sort of clarity comes to him from those words.
(Luo Feixiang would never admit it, but Luo Binghe... He was a self-insert of sorts. The way the other transmigrator spoke about Luo Binghe with such care...)
Luo Feixiang finally finds his voice. "Yeah, I guess so."
It's not much, but c'mon! Let Luo Feixiang process this a bit! He's been in the Abyss for 5 years right after dying in his own apartment, and the plot has been fucked over by something (Someone, actually. He now knows it's because, alongside himself as Luo Binghe now, Mobei-jun wasn't the same Mobei-jun. It was very likely he had a System too, if his passive observations were correct) and left some parts unrecognizable! He died at 27 and was brought into his own book and had to go through rapid-fire demon puberty alongside the whole abyss thing!
The Mobei-jun transmigrator gives a tentative hum of acknowledgement.
Awkward silence engulfs them again.
"I saw him, once," he suddenly says. "Luo Binghe, before you transmigrated. The Immortal Alliance Conference."
Ah. For all Luo Feixiang's shitty memory of the 6666 chapters he'd written of Proud Immortal Demon Way, he'd never forget the titular plot points that kickstarted the whole thing.
"How was he?"
"Amazing, obviously," he says with a smile that comes to his face so easily— it kind of takes Luo Feixiang's breath away, not an expression he'd thought he'd see if Mobei-jun were real. Unfortunately it doesn't last. The Mobei-jun transmigrator sighs. "I tried my best to alleviate it. To prevent the deaths at the conference, to not make myself an enemy, to hide Luo Binghe's demon mark from his Shizun..."
Luo Feixiang finishes for him. "... But, you have a transmigration system too. And it wants you to follow the important plot points."
The Mobei-jun transmigrator's eyes shift to the side, as if reading something Luo Feixiang can't see. If that wasn't confirmation enough, he turns back to Luo Feixiang and answers.
"Yes."
"I... I see." A question soon pops up in his mind. "How long have you been here?"
His expression changes so quickly, it almost startles him.
The Mobei-jun transmigrator laughs. "Ah, I got here when Mobei-jun was a kid. Apparently, a lot of things happened in his backstory! Which, well, explains a lot!"
Ah, fuck. That.
Luo Feixiang can't help but wince. He wrote pages and pages of lore for Mobei-jun on the side. Words that never made it to publication. Words that really fleshed out why he became... Well, Mobei-jun.
Words that built up what a real person now had to go through.
Speaking of which, he hasn't stopped talking the whole time Luo Feixiang was having this realization.
He, at the very least, seems pretty impassioned as he goes on about his feelings towards the hidden backstory.
It's as if he's been holding in these feelings for years (which, honestly, he most definitely had. God, that was something to think about. It was already a lot when going through this transmigration thing himself, but to think he dragged some random reader into this world, even if indirectly, he couldn't help but feel bad. Truly, it was easier when he saw everyone else as just NPCs. Just characters. It took him a while to even let himself see this as his reality. It probably would've taken a lot longer if Mobei-jun's weird behavior hadn't brought him to where they are now.)
"And that Shang Qinghua guy? Don't underestimate him. Airplane didn't put a lot of this in canon, and it really would've been useful if a transmigration scenario to know this shit"— he stops himself and shakes his head— "Whatever. Not like Airplane would've known at least. I'll give that hack something. Anyways, that Peak Lord... for someone that's just cannon-fodder to die on the sidelines, he's scary honestly. Holy shit, the amount of disciples he was going to be willing to let die during the conference! Something's wrong with that man."
Luo Feixiang chuckles, a bit of pride coming over him. "Of course. I wrote him that way! The kind of scary that isn't so obvious. He was originally going to—"
Wait.
The immediate silence that follows his comment tells him that there's no taking that sentence back.
His fellow transmigrator is starting to look a lot like the intimidating PIDW original goods with the cold (haha) look he sends his way.
Luo Feixiang could pull out some bullshit of being a fanfic writer that just really -REALLY- loved Shang Qinghua to the point of treating him like an original character... Except, he doesn't do that.
Instead, he remains quiet. And hopes.
"Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky," the Mobei-jun transmigrator says again— and oh boy! Gone is the quiet hopefulness in his voice! Gone is the careful way he spoke his godforsaken pen name into existence! (And, hey! Is it getting colder in here? Uh oh!)
It's said as a confirmation and warning at the same time.
He's about to say something further, but he suddenly turns his head to the side to glare at the air (God, is that what Luo Feixiang looks like when he's talking to the System? He has to be more careful once he's around more character— around more people).
The Mobei-jun transmigrator eventually faces him again and crosses his arms.
"You're lucky you have the Protagonist Halo and Luo Binghe's face, you goddamn hack of author."
Luo Feixiang's about to say 'Well, funnily enough, I do look a lot like Luo Binghe in real—'
But he realizes something.
The phrase 'Hack Author..." His strong feelings on Luo Binghe's happiness... The detailed rants and blatantly insulting PIDW in front of another reader...
"Holy shit, you're Peerless Cucumber!"
A dark blush makes its way to the other transmigrator's— who is absolutely Peerless Cucumber oh my gosh— face and even to the tips of his ears. That's a sight. Dear lord.
"Y-YOU RECOGNIZE ME?"
With a burst of protagonist-level courage, he stands at full height and brings himself up close to Peerless Cucumber, faces way too close.
"Of course," he says simply, now wearing a playful smirk. "How would I not recognize that man who left paragraphs and paragraphs breaking down my story and being oh-so-infatuated with"—he points to himself—"the protagonist that he pretty much paid my bills for me."
If Sha Hualing walks in, witnessing the peerless Mobei-jun acting like a hissy cat to a Luo Binghe that keeps flicking back and forth between over-confident asshole and fearing for his life—
Well, she doesn't say anything. Who knows? Maybe they'll fuck about it later, and she isn't a vouyer, yeah?
Bonus fluff:
(Some time in the future...)
"You know... look exactly like I imagined him, but like... better. It definitely helps that you're actually not so bad to be around too. Mobei-jun with Peerless Cucumber's personality... no a bad combo"
Peerless Cucumber, Shen Yuan as he recently learned, huffs. "Save the flirting for the harem."
"The harem you know I'm not building."
"Shut it."
"Hey! I'm just saying."
"Ugh, whatever... also what do you mean? He literally looks like—" He pauses and waves his hand over his face as if that helps with his question. "Me! This is literally the face I had when I was back living in Beijing and rotting away in my apartment. Except now, I'm like, what? 25 centimeters taller and have huge tits— Why are you looking at me like that?"
Bonus Bonus:
"Would it help if said I'd likely still find you attractive as a sentient cucumber?"
"FUCK OFF! Stop using your protagonist powers on me!"
"It's not the protagonist powers, A-Yuan! You just like me!"
In real life he bitched about novels. In a novel he bitched about the system. Free of the system for good, where will he bitch? Airplane probably isn't enough, the system was barely enough and it had a tight reign on his ooc.
imagine you are a fourteen year old kissass and the teacher you are sucking up to tells you to bully the shit out of the new kid, and you say sir yes sir. fast forward a couple years and suddenly your teacher decides he thinks that loser new kid is the actually the shit and he starts spoiling the hell out of him. now you and your least favorite classmate are locked in a fierce battle to see Who Can Be The Biggest Teacher's Pet and for some fucking reason the little dickhead is winning. he won't shut up about how the teacher who told you to kick his ass a few years ago is definitely going to marry him as soon as he's legal. unfortunately(?) before this happens, he dies(?) and now your teacher is depressed and you have bigger problems than worrying about losing the Favorite Student competition even though your competitor is dead. except he's not dead and now he's back and stupidly hot and also he has lost his fucking mind because your teacher killed himself in his arms, and now you have to run a mountain because your teacher is dead. except he's not dead either and now your former favorite punching bag is threatening to blow this whole place up because he wants to be loved, and you're wondering if maybe that bullying in your adolescence had longterm psychological effects. fast forward again and you are still in charge of a mountain about half the time because your teacher is too busy fucking the kid he told you to bully 15+ years ago
I don't really have a punchline to this, ming fan's life is so fucking weird
My Svsss Au, where transmigrated SY is the inner disciple of Qiong Ding Peak. After being saved from the demonic cultivator, he was brought to the Sect by Yue Qingyuan when SQQ was in seclusion. He has some resemblance to SQQ and that's why he receives a little(not) more affection from Sect Leader. When SQQ came back, he was obviously not pleased with YQY taking in a replacement for him. Meanwhile, for YQY, it is more like adopting their shared kid.
I imagine their dynamic here would be something like this post.
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