SV Malevolent AU Where, Due To A System Error (Shen Jiu Not Actually Dying From The Qi Deviation? Mu

I came up with this three-way table to help me (and now you, if you want) to rate things out of 5 stars. I was thinking of books and films when I made it, but you can probably use it for other stuff.

The idea is that you rate the thing on how much stuff you loved and how much stuff you hated, and those things weight against each other. There's only one way to get 5 stars or 1 star, so those should end up as the rarest ratings, wtih 3 stars being the most common.

'Spicy' means that the thing inspires emotion, whether positive or negative, while 'bland' means it doesn't affect you much either way.

An example of a 3-star (spicy) - for me personally - would be the Twilight series, because there's plenty of garbage in there but also some things that are like crack to me. I can't think of an example of a 3 star (bland) because by nature they don't stick in the mind.

(This also assumes giving 0 stars isn't allowed. That'd throw it out of whack...)

Favorite underappteciated svsss dynamic of mine has to be original Luo Bingge and SQH. Specifically tho, the fact that the second they meet SQH is instantly clocking him as the original goods. No matter how good he is at acting the part of his SVSSS counterpart, he just can't get past the man who created him.

Personal favorite tell to think about is that Bingge refers to (his) SQH as some sort of title, like "advisor." So he meets SQH and the first thing out of his mouth is smthn along the lines of, "ah, the advisor :)" and just. INSTANT dread and oh fuck this is THE Luo Bingge on SQH's end

And thus proceeds the "oh god oh fuck act natural be NORMAL don't let him know you've caught on but also BITCH RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!!" struggle.

Luo Bingge realizing he's been found out and being genuinley curious and delighted at what gave him away, bc he even managed to trick SQQ for a while, so how could you tell so quickly...?

In general I just really like thinking ab the possible interactions between the traitorous rat (but now with visible anxiety issues) LB knows and the Original Demon Emperor(tm) and protag who SQH wrote into existence. Theres a lot of potential there and idk I just really love to see it. Just about every direction they can go in rings with some sort of fun

Anyways Im gonna be real, I'm p sure I've read a scene like this in a fic somewhere like. Over a year ago now. But I don't remember what or where, so. But disclaimer!! I am most likely accidentally stealing this from the depths of my own memories

transmigrator! luo binghe and system! shen yuan au:

shen yuan refuses to take binghe’s b-points away as punishment—instead, he turns off his voice box until binghe apologises, which happens the moment the “audio off” toggle appears.

binghe calls shen yuan ‘a-yuan’ when he’s being cheeky and ‘yuan-ge’ when he wants more b-points to enable his shopaholic tendencies. shen yuan tried to shut down the system shopping function once but binghe just refused to do anything in the story until he got it back up.

(“i’m on strike,” he said, and listened as his adorable companion ranted for hours at him about the importance of maintaining the narrative and avoiding landmines. it all concluded with shen yuan believing he’s won by teaching his host about responsibility and luo binghe agreeing while browsing the new additions to the store)

whenever they end up in a sci-fi setting shen yuan has to drag binghe away from the android shops/factories. “i don’t need a body. it wouldn’t work. binghe, be good, you have a multiuniverse to save.”

they don’t talk about the tentacle monster. shen yuan has wiped it from the mission logs. luo binghe gets a -5 b-points notification whenever he utters the word ‘slime’ regardless of context.

there’s more i’ve thought up for this but i’m considering actually writing it so i’ll stop here for now. i just wanted all of you to consider the possibility. ponder with me. meditate on it, for those of such inclinations.

Au where the whole concept is "I will love you in every life" (Shen Yuan) x "I will find you every time" (Shen Jiu). And it'd be a 5 + 1 things style fic with it being like the five times Shen Yuan found Shen Jiu and the one time Shen Jiu found him.

The first life is Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu meeting as children, but because they're street urchins and Shen Yuan has a weak constitution, he dies during a winter because he was so focused on making sure Shen Jiu ate enough. That's when their promise of always finding each other begins.

The second life Shen Yuan was reborn as a dog within the streets. He follows Shen Jiu and Yue Qi. Shen Jiu is convinced it's the reincarnation of Shen Yuan, so they try to keep it around. When Shen Jiu is captured, Shen Yuan tries to save him and attacks one of the men, but ends up getting killed by one of the men.

The third life it was as a cat within the Qiu mansion probably as Qiu Haitang's cat. He stays with Shen Jiu often. He was disposed off after he scratched Qiu Jianluo's eye out while protecting Shen Jiu.

The fourth life was as a demonic beast. He followed Wu Yanzi and Shen Jiu. He would keep Shen Jiu safe within the shadows. Eventually, Wu Yanzi finds out about him and slays the demonic beast to sell its parts. (Maybe he forces Shen Jiu to do it, and Shen Yuan let's him. Y'know if you want the angst)

The fifth life Shen Yuan was a spiritual fox on Qing Jing. This one is the longest lasting form. He manages to stay with Shen Jiu all the way until he becomes a peak lord. Let's say the way this one ends is with Shen Yuan imploding his core to save Shen Jiu from a threat.

Except this time Shen Jiu refuses to let go of Shen Yuan's soul. He manages to capture it and preserve it. He was forced to do nothing as Shen Yuan sacrificed himself for him, this time he wasn't going to allow it.

Shen Yuan continues following Shen Jiu as a little spirit flame. Legends of the Qing Jing Peak Lord being haunted by someone start to circulate. A few of his martial siblings begrudgingly offer to exorcise the spirit allegedly following him. He shoots down every offer.

Shen Jiu manages to get a sun moon dew mushroom seed and helps to transfer Shen Yuan's energy to cultivate the plant body. Once the body grows, Shen Jiu tethers Shen Yuan's soul to it, and he plays the waiting game once again.

After years of waiting, finally Shen Yuan claws out of the ground. And he looks just like Shen Jiu would imagine him looking if he had a chance to grow into adulthood. He embraces Shen Yuan and says that maybe finally Shen Yuan won't disappear again. And Shen Yuan tells him that even so they'll find each other again.

Eventually, Shen Yuan is actually clothed and Shen Jiu demands for him to stay on his peak. Shen Yuan says something sarcastic about how he already was, but Shen Jiu continues and says that this time as his husband.

Shen Yuan obviously goes through every emotion possible, before indulging Shen Jiu and agreeing.

More rumors circulate after Shen Qingqiu returns with a completely random man that he claims is his husband. Mostly about how most likely his off peak short trips were to visit this man. Well the kids don't mind, their Shizun has been a lot less irritable, and their new Shen-laoshi is actually pretty chill.

@perpetualgrey's comment on this post

Ok my first instinct was to laugh, but then I realised you might be onto something???

Shen Yuan is LITERALLY an impostor, who’s more far more kind and beloved by Binghe than the original. The Guanyin pendant is a counterfeit, but it carries the love of Binghe’s mother and is far more precious than any real jade could ever be.

The heartbreak Binghe’s mother felt after realising that the Guanyin pendant was fake and she’d been tricked was part of what lead to the gradual decline of her health.¹ In wanting to do something kind for Binghe, she felt that she’d failed, and this led to her demise. What is Shen Qingqiu’s entire story, but trying to be kind to Binghe, feeling inadequate at this, and dying? (More than once!!)

Guanyin is a Bodhisattva associated with mercy, kindness, compassion and unconditional love. She is a patron of mothers, and is called upon in times of fear, uncertainty, and despair. The Bodhisattva she originated from is seen as a saviour, through whose grace even those with the most negative karma can achieve salvation. Even when she is not worshipped as a goddess, she is revered as the principle of love, compassion and mercy.² From wikipedia, “The act, thought and feeling of compassion and love is viewed as Guanyin. A merciful, compassionate, loving individual is said to be Guanyin.”²

The original Luo Binghe appears never to have lost his pendant. Shen Qingqiu tells us: “It was the only bit of warmth in Luo Binghe’s dark world, always by his side, and even in the future when he was at his darkest, it could summon up his last dregs of humanity.”¹ He also states that “it was Luo Binghe’s biggest berserk button.”¹

Our Luo Binghe does not cling to the pendant when he’s at his darkest: he clings to the love he has for his shizun and to memories of his kindness, and later, to the lifeless body of Shen Qingqiu himself. His biggest berserk button isn’t when people insult the pendant or his mother, or try to take it away; it’s Shen Qingqiu: when people insult him or try to take him away.

From the start, Shen Qingqiu expresses truly unconditional love for Binghe. He spends three years showing endless compassion and kindness, actions which feel insignificant to him but are more than enough to completely change Binghe’s life. He holds no blame or resentment for the things he fears Binghe will do to him; though he doesn’t want to be tortured, he forgives Binghe for it nonetheless, before it has even happened. He sacrifices himself to save Binghe as his mind is eaten away at by Xin Mo, when he believes that Binghe just slaughtered a hundred Huan Hua Disciples, when Binghe’s reckless use of the sword is putting countless more lives at risk.³

Shen Qingqiu is a counterfeit that is more precious than the original could ever be. For Binghe, he personifies kindness, compassion and unconditional love. His regrets over his treatment of Binghe lead to his temporary demise. Binghe clings to him in his darkest moments, and he is that which Binghe protects most fiercely.

I always found the pendant’s role in the story to be almost lacking: it’s treated as such an important item to Binghe, yet in the end its return is almost anticlimactic. But perhaps this is because the role the pendant played in Bing-ge’s story has been overtaken by Shen Qingqiu. When he returns the pendant, Binghe is relieved and appreciative: but his joy seems to stem more from the fact that Shen Qingqiu held onto it and cherished him than from the pendant itself. The pendant doesn’t matter all that much to him anymore, at least not compared to how important it seems to have been in PIDW. Binghe doesn't need an object to symbolize love and kindness; he has a person to love, who loves him back.

In conclusion: Shizun was in fact the fake jade Guanyin pendant all along!

sources cited below :)

1. Seven Seas Volume 1, Chapter 1: Scum. Pages 40-41.

2. “Guanyin,” Wikipedia. There’s a lot more to her than what I mentioned here, she’s quite interesting.

3. Seven Seas Volume 2, Chapter 8: Death. Pages 154-156.

SV AU where Shen Yuan is fourteen when he transmigrates.

Nothing else is different. It just turns out that the hate-reader dunking on Airplane's shitty sex scenes and worshiping Luo Binghe like it was his life's calling, and clearly repressing the hell out of some queer inclinations was, in fact, a literal teenager. He still ends up in adult Shen Qingqiu's body as the Qing Jing Peak Lord scum villain who's doomed by the narrative.

In fact the plot goes more or less exactly the same. Nothing significant in the main story changes.

But Luo Binghe and Shang Qinghua both have A Time in a post-canon identity reveal scenario.

truth serum / system reveal au where shen qingqiu gets hit with an uncloaking spell that reveals the system in the reflection of his eyes every time it pops up.

during one of his missions, in the treasure hoard of some dragon-like creature, he finds a golden, oval shaped hand mirror, its gaudy style more victorian based than anything (airplane you hack!), that doesn't seem to do anything when he looks into it. but when he does, it reveals the system's screen in his eyes.

he doesn't notice this, of course, because he can't see it, and the system, surprisingly, stays quiet.

the peak lords think he's cursed.

maybe mu qingfang is the first to notice, during the mandatory post mission check-up, when shen qingqiu is scrolling through his most recently accumulated points and mu qingfang can see the strange vividly-blue lines reflected in his pupils. it's gone when shen qingqiu blinks, like it was nothing but a trick of the light.

it comes out when yue qingyuan is visiting and, just as he's done laying out the plans for a new mission, shen qingqiu's eyes glaze over and a bright blue box takes over the whole of his iris. shen qingqiu goes quiet; the thing in his eyes moves, shifts, pulses for a second, like static worms crawling all over his pupils. then he blinks, and it's gone, and shen qingqiu accepts the mission that yue qingyuan was almost sure he would decline.

maybe there is an intervention, when the peak lords corner shen qingqiu at qian cao peak and try to figure out what's wrong, subjecting him to all kinds of treatments and curse-finding spells that turn up empty, they can't find anything.

of course, the silencing threat is still very much up and running. at first shen qingqiu was kind of confused by the whole ordeal, but when the peak lords start describing a "strange blue box", he realizes, with sickening suddenty, that they're describing the system. and he can't say anything.

this only makes everything worse, because their fellow peak lord now keeps evading every question and acts like he doesn't understand. liu qingge points right at his face and asks, "that blue box, what is it?" and shen qingqiu laughs nervously and starts talking about how bright the weather is and surely it's the sky and nothing to worry about!

even worse, during the intervention the system thought it was a good idea to start talking to him, so now even the peak lords who hadn't seen it and who might have been persuaded by light tricks and reflections, get a first row view that no, that definitely isn't a trick of the light.

they try to do the whole thing of "are you in danger, blink twice" but shen qingqiu can't even do that because it's still a direct admittance!

maybe eventually he starts saying vague confirmations that don't actually confirm anything, like "this master hears what you're saying", or maybe he goes with a classic "this master can neither confirm nor deny that." but the system starts warning him for that too and eventually he stops saying anything, which worries the others more.

luckily mu qingfang catches on that every time they ask a direct question about the box or shen qingqiu says anything vaguely confirming, it appears. it doesn't appear when they ask about curses or demons, so it must not see that as a threat.

for a little extra angst: maybe the peak lords keep pressuring him for answers, and at some point shen qingqiu gets fed up and snaps out something like, "why don't you understand that i'm not allowed to answer that!" the system counts this as a direct admittance, threatening it's existence. so it punishes. shen qingqiu has a qi deviation so bad it lasts two weeks and takes two people every day to cleanse his meridians. the system doesn't appear in that time. it doesn't appear for a long while after that, either. the peak lords stop asking, mainly because shen qingqiu will instantly leave the room if they do. they don't stop searching for a cure, though.

shang qinghua returns from a business trip and catches on the second someone mentions a blue box and forced silencing.

ive been thinking a lot about how shen yuan and shang qinghua have this friendship, right, and once they relaxed a little it'd be obvious at least to those close to them that they have a lot of shared history. but after a while, itd become clear that a lot of that shared history is dirty jokes, and the locations and properties of aphrodisiac/fuck-or-die plants, and that the names they call each other are dick puns, and that shen qingqiu voraciously reads shanh qinghua's erotica even if he heaps criticism on it.

and im just imagining binghe or their disciples or whomever slowly developing a picture of those two having a really wild and misspent youth together before becoming peak lords.

Romantic bingqiu with queerplatonic liushen and eventual queerplatonic bingliushen, pretend relationship

---

When Binghe is in the abyss, Lqg gets into a bit of a conundrum.

Political peak lord reasons make him have to find a partner, as quickly as possible. Seeing his friend strangely upset about him, Sqq goes to reassure him that he could get any girl he wants and gets an awkward confession instead that Lqg, in fact, isn’t interested in anyone either romantically or sexually and probably never will be. Sqq, bro that he is, makes a suggestion. They’re going to pretend to be a couple so Lqg doesn’t have to get together with anyone that would have expectations. 

This goes surprisingly well. Lqg visits Sqq so often that he might as well live in the bamboo house too and no one doubts that they’re a couple. They get along well after a few initial hiccups and quickly grow very fond of each other until they’re inseparable. 

After almost two years of all that, Binghe returns from the abyss and, through the power of communication and Lqg’s bluntness, makes up with Sqq and returns to Qing Jing Peak as a disciple, miraculously recovered from death.

At this point, Binghe doesn’t feel entitled to his Shizun’s love, so when he finds out that Liushen are “together”, he quietly accepts it even though his heart breaks a little.

Several months pass that look somewhat like this: 

Lqg goes on hunts, brings Sqq back interesting things and is overall very content with his life. He also expects Sqq to eventually get together with the disciple he acted like a grieving widow about for so long. He’s secure enough in his relationship with Sqq to know that it won’t change that much, even when Bingqiu happens.

Sqq is ecstatic that Binghe is back and that he has somewhat forgiven him. He can’t stop touching him and making him spend time with Sqq and squeezing as much time and attention out of Binghe as he can while wondering why he still wants more. He’s also very confused as to why he keeps getting upset when Binghe talks too much to any girl or is out of his sight for more than two hours. Lastly, Binghe seems strangely down, but Sqq is sure it’s just the lingering trauma from the abyss. He also keeps the fact that his relationship with Lqg is purely queerplatonic a secret, partly because he barely even remembers these days that they’re pretending to be romantic and partly because he doesn’t want to betray Lqg’s trust.

Meanwhile, Binghe is devastated every time he sees Liushen being tender or comfortable with each other and more or less depressed the rest of the time. He looks at Sqq yearningly 16 hours a day and cries into his pillow every night. He hates Lqg with all of his soul, but can’t even find that much fault with him except that he doesn’t cook or clean for Sqq and that he doesn’t flatter and admire Sqq enough and that he isn’t jealous enough and does Sqq even feel loved??? 

He goes through a whole arc of cooking and cleaning for Sqq before he realises that it makes him too sad to do that when Sqq will never return his love. He also decimates three entire demon clans and the demon realm is weeping and desperately trying to find Binghe a bride so he’ll calm down.

It all comes to a head when Binghe decides he can’t take it anymore and packs his little rucksack to leave Qing Jing Peak. He only gets halfway down the mountain before Lqg catches him in the act and confronts him because: Is he going to abandon Sqq? Does he not love him after all??

Binghe tensely tells him that he doesn’t need to worry, Binghe isn’t going to try and steal him from Lqg. He was just about to leave.

Lqg replies that he better get his butt back up there and explains the situation to him.

Having his worldview rearranged, Binghe quietly goes back to the dorms and takes a few days to process the information. Lqg and Sqq are together but not romantically? Not even sexually? Binghe isn’t quite sure how someone can be with Sqq in a purely platonic way but he’s prepared to accept it. It takes him a while, but eventually, he reaches the conclusion that: if he has the chance to be with Sqq as long as he accepts that Lqg is going to be a part of their life too, he’s gonna take it.

Meanwhile, Lqg has told Sqq all of his confrontation with Binghe and Sqq is highkey panicking. What if Binghe hates him now for being gay for him? Probably gay. Admittedly, likely gay. What if he’s disgusted with him?? He wavers between going to talk to Binghe about it and avoiding him at all costs. 

In the end, it’s Binghe who confronts him and they have a long talk that ends with them snogging on the floor, Binghe crying, and two emotionally constipated love confessions.

It takes some time, but the three find a way to fit together. Bingqiu are unbearable the first while and Lqg goes on many, many hunts to not hear anything he doesn’t want to hear. But, eventually, Lqg returns to being a frequent visitor and even spends the night there now and then. Binghe grows… fond… of Lqg. He supposes. At least somewhat. Lqg thinks Binghe is a little strange, but he’s Lqg’s now, so that’s alright. Sqq can be a bit strange too. Bingqiu are still unbearable, but what can you do? In the end, they’re happy in their own way, all three of them.