AU concept: Luo bingge, who knows about that other binghe's shen (yuan) qingqiu, but has no clue how shen jiu BECAME that, regresses back to his days in cang qiong. There, he has to wrangle his own oversexed habits, his new fixation on nice!shizun, and the reality that he's definitely dealing with shen jiu
I have read many iterations of this basic concept and I am a sucker for it every time. so much fun for so many reasons and the massive gap between Luo Bingge's understanding (or lack thereof) of the situation and what is actually going on, combined with Luo Bingge's supreme confidence in himself as Protagonist who is supposed to be able to make anything happen (not going to let one little soul-crushing defeat change that conviction, no sir), combined with Shen Jiu's...everything...is, well.
crunch crunch.
so anyway! I have seen versions of this where Luo Bingge time travels on purpose, but I think this is more fun if it just happens. bam, my dude, welcome back to your hellish childhood! but hey, Bingge figures, at least this time he knows what is coming and can play the system and maybe figure out how to get himself his very own nice!Shizun. if the other him did it before then there has to be a way for the (better) him to also do it. anything I can do I can also do better, or something.
on the other hand: yeah. there's also now a fully grown man with fully grown mental issues existing in the body of a child, and this is a bit of a problem. a limiting factor, for one thing, in what he's actually capable of - he might be aware of the fact that he is a very special boy but he's still a boy. and yeah. there's the whole "got used to being able to have any beauty he (thought he) wanted" and that is now not the case. Ning Yingying likes him! but she also currently likes him sort of like a baby brother and five minutes ago she was his wife, so.
and then there's Shizun. who is very definitely not nice!Shizun. very definitely the same mean!Shizun that Bingge remembers from the first time around doing this. recapitulating childhood trauma for a second time for fun and profit, Bingge! but he can Rise From Adversity and Make It Work, surely. he Will have his very own nice!Shizun! he decrees it so.
part of what's going on here is, also: I don't think Luo Bingge really thinks of most people around him as, like, real people, and I say that with all the lack of judgment I can possibly have. I think Bingge has gotten used to living in the world Airplane built that revolves entirely around him to the point where everyone around him warps accordingly. that "protagonist energy" thing except the world you live in constantly reifies that you are, in fact, the protagonist. so therefore it is natural! that he can and will get what he wants, it's just a matter of figuring out how. since he was very young, Bingge has never met a foe he couldn't defeat or a woman who wouldn't fall into bed with him. hardships aren't an inevitability but a thing to be overcome.
or, well, they'd better be that because otherwise maybe his terrible childhood starts to look not like a period of adversity he had to endure to become strong but just meaningless suffering.
meanwhile I feel like Shen Jiu, professional paranoid, has little alarm bells pinging every time he looks at baby Bingge (who is probably often looking at him), going SOMETHING! IS! WRONG! and this is not going to help his generalized baseline loathing of this kid. HOWEVER, it might make him more cautious and warier - less I am going to crush you like a bug and more you are a dangerous possibly poisonous insect whose precise nature needs to be identified. this is not going to make him nicer, exactly, but it does mean he's less focused on aforementioned crushing and more on the identification part.
also possibly motivated to just like. get Bingge the hell out of his peak and make him someone else's problem entirely, but the plot's not going to let him get away with that.
and meanwhile meanwhile, baby Bingge tromping around in Shen Jiu's dreams trying to do his own little dissection/vivisection because if he can pin down what makes his mean Shizun mean then maybe he can change the inputs and fix it. this is not going to go well. for anyone.
feels like eventually we end up at the Endless Abyss and Bingge does just straight up drag Shen Jiu in with him.
honest to god I have no idea how I would resolve this one or play the scenario out but it would be a wild ride along the way! I think the two most interesting things in play for me here (other than the inherent crunch crunch of everything about bingjiu always) is the aspect I mentioned above where Bingge has effectively dehumanized everyone else around him and the one where Shen Jiu does see people as human but believes in the fundamental rottenness of humanity as a whole. and how that interacts with, like. questions of agency and trauma and the vortex of violence. idk. there's a reason I just think about bingjiu all the time and haven't written it.
