Shen Yuan who, on a shitty walk through nature with his brothers, finds a sword. It's like, a black, rusty sword, but Shen Yuan is just like, hey!!! It's a sword!!! He keeps it.
And Shen Yuan accidentally acquires a Xin Mo.
He actually obviously doesn't know it's Xin Mo, at first. It's just a pretty silly sword. Xin Mo, of course, can't feed on spiritual energy and be vicious because, well, there's none of that in this world. However, Xin Mo can intrude into Shen Yuan's dreams.
Shen Yuan randomly dreams about the sword spirit telling him about the things can do. Shen Yuan thinks he won't fall asleep again after reading another PIDW update and ignores it.
Shen Yuan has that sword in his house, perhaps next to a sofa where he spends many hours. And Xin Mo, lacking spiritual energy, begins to feed on emotions. It feeds off of Shen Yuan's wild rage when he critiques novels, his frustration when he loses games, his visceral hate when Airplane screws up an update- from the constant and continuous almost repressed excitement of Shen Yuan.
And if Shen Yuan notices that the sword looks like, restoring itself? Well, it's not really that important, I mean... Of course Shen Yuan is going to ignore that until it bites him in the ass.
And it happens. Xin Mo appears again in his dreams; tells him about other worlds where he can have more power if he wields it, about fruits that he can use to obtain health and immortality... Shen Yuan already knows all that shit, he's up to date with PIDW and Xin Mo is the protagonist's golden finger and a vicious thing addicted to sex and blood.
However, the dream he had is insistent and Shen Yuan wakes up and says, well, fuck it... He takes up the sword -which has no rust at all, and in fact does look a bit like Xin Mo from some fanarts- and concentrates on thinking about PIDW. It's not like the sword is going to open a dimensional portal, true?
TRUE???
There is a dimensional portal open in the middle of his living room. Shen Yuan screams, the portal closes and he runs to hide the sword in the closet.
In his dreams, Xin Mo teases him. Isn't he curious about other worlds? Doesn't he want to see monsters beyond his understanding? Doesn't he want to explore the flora of a mystical world? Shen Yuan is too tempted. In the end, he says, fuck it. Buy xianxia tunics online, other glasses with more acceptable frames for the ancient era, gives in to the fact that he will be seen as an outcast because of his short hair and buys a straw hat with a veil, sends a message to his family group not to bother him because he will watch a marathon of One Piece from start to finish and if anyone comes to visit him he will force them to watch it with him- opens the portal and walks through.
It feels disgusting and horribly dizzy. On the other side, there is a forest.
Xin Mo pushes spiritual energy through him as soon as they arrive in that world. Tells him that he is going to need it.
The forest path leads to a village; there, it is clearly a xianxia environment and Shen Yuan is pleased that his robes fit. He trades some vintage-looking pieces of jewelry he bought secondhand for coins of that world and is ready to stay a few days while he finds some spirit fruits or something.
Xin Mo is still an annoying bitch, but Shen Yuan gets used to it. Get his spiritual fruits, start a book of pressed flowers, spend a week of simple and comfortable life missing the internet and sleeping in uncomfortable beds at inns until the spirit fruits do their work, and Shen Yuan wakes up with a strange feeling in his veins and no need to wear glasses.
Xin Mo uses that to his advantage; the stronger Shen Yuan is, the more can influence in him, and the more can feed with the favorite foods blood and sex. Shen Yuan opens a portal back to his room at the end of the week, he answers some overdue messages to prove that he is still alive, and sleeps for a whole day in his bed.
He buys more xianxia clothes online, takes a risk by getting hair extensions to dispense his straw hat, and decides to go back. Just because he wants to continue upgrading his health a bit more, and well, he can cultivate spiritual energy now, right?
It turns out to be difficult. It's difficult to get cultivation manuals and difficult to get instructions. He barely manages to do so in some awkward ways, but discovers that all the cultivation manuals are clearly in the emperor's libraries.
So, he decides that he will pay tribute to Emperor Luo Binghe. He will offer him precious things and his only condition to continue providing that is… to visit his library.
Precious things, of course, are many things that he knows do not exist in that world. Coffee beans, cocoa beans, chocolate in all its forms. He refuses to allow things like tobacco into the world, but he does allow modern spices, modern recipes!!, even cheap jewelry turns out to be a precious thing because, what the hell, of course the world of PIDW wouldn't have the slightest idea what plastic is.
Shen Yuan introduces himself as a prince-diplomatic envoy from another world. His mission is to obtain certain information from this world... and the gifts are a test of the loyalty of the world from which he comes. Shen Yuan hopes that the demon court will be so enthralled by the foolish things he has brought that they will swallow his tale.
Luo Binghe doesn't seem convinced, but agrees.
So Shen Yuan comes every two-three weeks, covers Xin Mo in talismans to conceal it, transforms it into a pocket dagger, and hides it in the inner pockets of the shorts he wears underneath of the xianxia robes. And he brings a lot of gifts with him. He gets a little silly; he buys old-looking glass jars and fills them with hundreds of packets of instant ramen seasoning, and others with the instant ramen noodles. Explains how they are used and distributes them as gifts around the court. Bring candy without its plastic wrappers, more chocolates, chocolate peanuts, chocolate almonds? Chocolate powder! Powdered sugar! Marzipan! He brings makeup and skincare for the wives, and soon they are all wearing the most beautiful and impossible colors.
His chests are full of food from a distant world, their journeys seem to be long to return each time. Shen Yuan continues to learn; he is always under the distant watchful eye of Luo Binghe, but he does not steal any scrolls. He reads, he studies, he learns. His cultivation really improves, his fragile health does too.
Xin Mo is still that insolent and persistent bitch. However, the more Shen Yuan's cultivation improves... that bitch really seems to make more sense to him. As if his words were deeper, as if they settled there. So much resentment, so much pain from so many years, Shen Yuan is an unstable and irascible chaos. His gifts falter, his mood does so more.
Luo Binghe knows something is going on. He knew that this strange "prince" was not normal, but why does he look so corrupted lately? Luo Binghe doesn't know anything about him, where he even comes from, but he's going to find out. Whatever the cost.