Luo Binghe is actually pretty lucky that Liu Mingyan shipped Bingqiu as hard as she did. Can you imagine what could have happened if she had wanted to make Liushen happen? Liu Qingge might have actually realized he had feelings. Liu Mingyan would have invented powerpoints just to walk her oblivious older brother through her plan to get him a husband. There would be a whole network of Cang Qiong fujoshis trying to engineer wife plots like the damn CIA. Forget the System, forget the old palace master, forget Xin Mo, Liu Mingyan would be the final boss for Binghe to get to Shen Qingqiu, and she would have had a whole Jedi council of his would-have-been wives. But because Binghe is Airplane’s favorite, instead he gets bad sex advice from her smut books.
SVSSS Au!
Shen Yuan works his ASS off to get the original ten thousand points to avoid throwing Binghe into the abyss. Only for it to be doubled (mentioned English book one, chapter 4 page 245, 4th paragraph) into the twenty thousand points??
So the system gives him a ‘canon divergent’ making it so that *he* doesn’t have to push Luo Binghe into the abyss!
But you know who drags him in instead? Luo Bingge. The system drags him in from his own world for 9999 points, leaving SY with one point, infected by without-a-cure, and too weak to fight him head on to save himself or his disciple.
But the system accidentally didn’t only bring Luo Bingge. It brought back both the Shen Qingqiu from PIDW and Shen Jiu from the current universe! The both of them barely have enough knowledge combined to make a good enough escape, and Shen Yuan is enough of a not idiot to drag them to a doctor so they don’t all die immediately!
And basically it’s SHENanigans, all three of them bickering over what to do. PIDW SQQ wants to protect his sect, the guilt having eaten him alive over the years and he’s willing to do anything to make sure his family stays alive (he’s thrilled that in this time line LQG is alive, arguing with SJ like a rabid dog whenever he complains), SJ on the other hand is like ‘Hey this is my fucking body, give it back’ and doesn’t care/gets what’s happening, basically zero emotional progression, SY wants to go and save LBH after getting stronger, worried about what’s going to happen to him in the hands of LBG, he read PIDW and wants to prevent the future, but in a lot less extreme ways.
Things happen include
-PIDW SQQ almost controlling the body on accident and breaking into tears at a peak lord meeting
-Original SJ freaking LQG out when he comes to see SY being like ‘he can’t see you right now, isn’t that a shame?’ (He went to go bicker with the system)
-all three of them fighting over the body like little toddlers
-PIDW SQQ and O!SJ saying to kill the little beast and SY being like “he’s my little meow meow tho :(“
-Strange brotherly bonds where PIDW SQQ and O!SJ fight over who should be older
-Airplane bullying x3
cleaned this one up 🔥
The Snape Family - 1970
I love thinking about how a Shen Yuan reveal would go from Luo Binghe's perspective, maybe even especially in cases where Binghe doesn't actually get to see Shen Yuan's world or understand it very well.
Imagine finding out that your husband is some kind of interdimensional alien spirit/angel who saw your fate and got so upset about it that he died. Then he came to your world, even though he didn't know that was possible, but since it was he immediately set about making your life less shitty and trying to change your fate. Except he couldn't change all of your fate because some kind of godlike being, the same one that brought him here, didn't want to let him. He's haunted by the fact that he couldn't figure out better ways to help you. He never expected any of his regard to be reciprocated, either, in fact he assumed you'd hate him. You never had to convince him to love you or respect you. He has always loved and respected you. There's basically nothing you can do to lose that love and respect either, because the first version of you that he even knew about was your edgelord comphet idiot mirror universe counterpart.
The bar has been at the earth's crust this entire time.
The fluffy parts of this reveal are obviously good, but I also think Luo Binghe deserves to know just how fully terrible his husband's judgment is. Also that Shizun has been dying for him since before they even met.
I think it'd be fun how often that would probably keep him awake at night, quietly trying not to have a crisis over the fact that his husband has made an honest to god habit of dying for him.
SVSSS fanfic that I will never write-
LBH post canon accidently goes back in time. How? I don’t know, it isn’t important. If I had to pick a stupid reason, then in PIDW had a storyline where LBH went back in time to a wife’s past to like… learn more about her? To help her in the trauma? IDK but what I do know is that Peerless Cucumber would have ranged for hours about Airplane adding in the concept of time travel and then doing nothing else’s with it.
And guess who the subject of the wife plot is now??? That’s right- SQQ. Except the wife plot took the body and not the soul, and now Binghe is back during SJ’s disciple days.
LBH somehow, as the main character, manages to convince the peak lords of the time that he’s of Qing Jing! He is, really! He really laid on the charm here.
Previous Sect leader: I don’t know if I believe you, but since you look like such a polite young man-
LBH gets escorted away to a room by the head disciple. And who is the head disciple of the sect leader peak??? It’s Yue Qi, sad and depressed and lifeless because LBH managed to find himself in the period of time where YQY thinks SJ is dead!
LBH: I want to meet my young Shizun. Shen Qingqiu- Shen Jiu I think now?
YQY: …. Xiao Jiu is dead?
LBH: Maybe in the future for like five years but not right now!! He’s my super awesome Shizun! …. Do you want to drop everything to go look for him?
YQY: Oh boy, do I!!!
So the two bounce from the sect with no warning, looking Shen Jiu. Luckily, now knowing that he is alive and didn’t die in the fire, it’s pretty easy to follow the line of gossip that follows WY and SJ. And of course, the entire time, LBH is praising his Shizun.
Now, he hasn’t said that he was married to his Shizun. He didn’t want to spoil that just yet! He’ll reveal that to his younger Shizun himself when they find him. But until then, he can still tell YQY how awesome his Shizun is, and how nice, and how close he was to SQH and LQG and even to YQY himself! (That last one was a bit of a fib, of course. SQQ was always a little uncomfortable around the sect leader. But YQY was eating all of this up, being so happy that his childhood friend was so happy and well liked, and well…. It was only a small fib)
They finally catches up with them, and quickly dealing with the other guy, YQY and SJ have a nice reunion, having both think the other was dead! And of course, it was incredibly clear that YQY had been looking for SJ this whole time, which does wonders for his abandonment issues. SJ may yell at YQY for leaving the sect so suddenly and risking everything just for him, but on the inside, he is bursting for joy, trust me.
LBH is not bursting for joy. Like, at all. He had been so excited to see his Shizun but young and now that he’s here…. Something inside of him and screaming that this wasn’t his Shizun.
He had no reason to believe that. This was very clearly SQQ at 14~. But of course, he’s the 200 IQ protagonist and figures it out quickly that his wonderful Shizun/husband took over his body when LBH was 14 and that this was his shitty Shizun that made his early years in the sect awful.
He’s fully ok with that. If his husband needs to possess another man to be with him, than who is LBH to judge? Only the best body for him! The problem is, of course, that he has spent the entire trip over ranting to YQY about how good of a teacher SQQ was to him, and now YQY is excitedly telling everything he said to SJ. LBH can’t just…. Back track now! That would be weird, and if they think that someone will possess SJ later, then what if his husband never shows up??
So he goes along with it. It isn’t hard- he doesn’t hate SJ, not like PIDW him would. He was only under him for three years~ and a lot of what happened to him was still being justified in his head. So it’s just… whatever, to him at that point. He confirms what YQY had been saying, spins a charismatic lie to the sect about why they left and how GREAT SJ will be as a disciple in the future, and then he leaves. Just, fades away in front of everyone.
And now this is SJ’s life. He thinks he’s a good Shizun in the future, even if he can’t stand kids. He think that he becomes friends with SQH and LQG, which is oddly hard to do?? LQG angrily wants to fight him every time he sees him, which is super annoying, and SJ is 88% sure that SQH is talking to demons but, you know. If another version of him managed to become their friend without future knowledge, then he has to do it now! He has a head start on the race here, no way is he losing it!
He does become friends with them, and is still incredibly close to YQY as they grow up. He’s still… him, but his major heart demons- the abandonment by his Qi-Ge and being unsafe even in the sect- aren’t there anymore. He even manages to be an ok Shizun to a young LBH, somehow. He’s pretty sure that he’s sucking at that, btw, because the little brat gets on his nerves when they are in the same room for more than five minutes, but he’s being mostly polite! He had to wonder what the other version of him did to get such a glowing review from the future version of his disciple, because it has to be more than this.
Ironically, because I think it’s funny, this is the timeline that our LBH finds himself back in. The time travel was always meant to be a stable one timeline kinda thing, so anything he changed in the past affected the future. I imagine in PIDW that LBG didn’t do much of anything but maybe comfort his future wife, for Airplane’s fear of making a confusing paradox for himself. But this Binghe? Oh no, he did so much!
Because he saved SJ some heart demons, and helped him make friends despite his trauma, he’s not as prone to Qi divinations! Which means that he didn’t have a fatal one when LBH was 14! Which means when LBH gets back to his time after all of that, he takes one look at his ‘Shizun’ and knows that this isn’t his husband. Which means that his husband never possessed SJ!
He’s horrified, and spends a whole day moping around the peak, trying to think of ways to fix this. He has just gotten himself worked up to go and do something drastic when NYY finds him.
NYY: There you are!! Shen-Shidi has been looking for you all day!
LBH: H-huh?
NYY: Why are you moping around, huh? Did you and Shen-Shidi have a fight? Don’t worry! He’s your husband, I know he’ll forgive you-!
LBH: WHAT.
And that’s how he learns that while he isn’t married to his Shizun in this timeline, he is married to his Shixiong, Shen Yuan! Shen Yuan, who got shoved in Willy nilly when the system realized that SJ wasn’t going to die when he was supposed to.
There’s probably some sequel where LBH has to fake that he has memories of what happened in this timeline, which I imagine is somewhat close to Svsss? The system was still running around, even if a major player has changed. And LBH would just be so bad at faking it in front of two people and two people only- SJ and SY.
SY: Binghe, don’t you remember our first date? :)
LBH: …It wasn’t the water prison!
SY: ….that statement is correct but also the wrong answer.
And
SJ: Beast, you’re not coming to this Immortal Convenance. Don’t you remember meber what happened last time?
LBH: …. You didn’t push me into the endless abyss?
SJ:… That statement is wrong and I was also going for the HHP tag alongs you obtained.
I still think one of the funniest experiences of my life was watching American Psycho with my sister and afterwards we both went "okay. Lets do something more lighthearted now" and put on the dubbed version of Howl's Moving Castle and we both lost our minds when we heard Howl start talking
SVSSS "no Abyss" fluff AU where Shen Qingqiu just keeps accidentally proposing to a full grown disciple Luo Binghe in ways that don't register to him, but do register to Binghe, but Binghe also knows that his Shizun is clueless and doesn't actually mean it, so he's trapped in a hell of constantly getting what he desires most and fighting the urge to take advantage of the situation in order to actually claim it.
For instance, it turns out that PIDW has a knock-off version of Valentine's Day thanks to one really ill-planned VIP chapter. Shen Qingqiu found that one so egregious even he mostly scrubbed it from his mental records, but the long and short of it is that in the PIDW chocolate exists, but it's a symbolic treat that is only meant to be given to someone you intend to marry.
Of course, Shen Qingqiu discovers chocolate in PIDW and IMMEDIATELY hands it over to Luo Binghe, because he wants to see how Binghe's magnificent cooking skills can utilize this ingredient. Also he wants bon bons and this seems like the only way he's gonna get any in this lifetime.
Naturally, Binghe does make delicious bon bons, all the while fighting down the urge to be like "you proposed so we're getting married now, no take backs!"
Shizun eats the chocolates and Binghe counts slowly backwards from ten and reminds himself that getting what he wants by way of trickery would ultimately deny him what he wants most, which is for Shen Qingqiu to choose him of his own volition.
And of course, this shit just keeps happening. Somehow Shen Qingqiu keeps "forgetting" (read: subconsciously repressing) the little details about various proposal customs in PIDW (of which there are A LOT thanks to all the wife acquisitions) and proposing to Binghe almost constantly. This part of the world has a special ritual proposal wine? Better give some to Binghe! This demonic cult requires one to present a specific monster kill to their intended? Shen Qingqiu just so happened to kill one such monster himself and now he's given it over to Binghe to claim the parts (Binghe's cultivation would make better use of them!) They're visiting a neighboring sect where couples traditionally tie their wrists together with a particular type of rope as a symbol of engagement? Somehow, someway, Shen Qingqiu is going to find a good reason to tie himself to Binghe with the betrothal rope.
Not only is this dance giving Luo Binghe intense mixed feelings, and causing him to lie awake at night trying to figure out if Shen Qingqiu somehow does actually know what he's doing, and wants Binghe to bamboozle him into a marriage (or is that just wishful thinking??), it also causes him ever-more stress whenever SQQ goes on a mission with anyone else.
Especially Liu Qingge.
What if he does the clueless not-proposing to Liu Qingge? What if Liu Qingge proves to be less strong-willed than Luo Binghe (absolutely possible) and "accepts"? What if he's stupid enough to not figure out that Shen Qingqiu is a clueless idiot, and thinks it's genuine?
Shizun might marry him just to avoid having an awkward conversation!
Anyway things come to a head when finally, for once, Luo Binghe is the one who does the accidental proposal. And this time Shen Qingqiu does notice, and he gets all flustered and scolds Binghe to "be more careful" and "not waste such gestures on this old master, or anyone Binghe doesn't want taking advantage!" and Luo Binghe, who has aged one thousand decades in the past few years, still nobly resists the urge to lay out all the times Shizun has made this exact same "mistake" towards him and instead just confesses. Shoots his shot. Now or never!
He almost immediately regrets it because he had a whole plan for how to slowly ease Shizun into the idea over the course of several years, and he's prepared to be rejected now that he's fucked that up. Because he knows his master is delicate about stuff like this. Why else would he be so atypically obtuse?
But, well. Shen Qingqiu always said that the most realistic thing about the harem was that no one in their right mind would turn down a marriage proposal from Luo Binghe.
So he just, uh, says yes?
Binghe's like, you mean this whole time all I had to do was be the one to ask?!
But also he's really too happy to give a shit about the particulars either. They will have a beautiful wedding! No take backs. If SQQ gets cold feet then Luo Binghe has a list and compiled evidence of fifty million marriage proposals from him, so now he definitely has to follow through!
SV AU where Luo Binghe answers Shen Qingqiu's "do you want power?" question differently, so Shen Qingqiu cannot mentally justify pushing him into the Abyss, and resolves to just let the System kill him instead. Even though he doesn't want to die, it's probably still better to just get yeeted out of his body than to be brutally dismembered after forcing his favorite disciple to suffer terribly.
However, the System picks up on this philosophical shift in the user, and begins to take counter-measures.
Without-a-Cure ratchets up exponentially. Around the same time, Luo Binghe discovers an ancient record in the libraries that claims some rare compound or other which can only be found in the Endless Abyss, is reputed to cure all poisons, even the most deadly spiritual kind.
When Shen Qingqiu is too weak to even attend the Immortal Alliance Conference, Luo Binghe initially plans to stay by his bedside. But then he overhears Shang Qinghua whispering about a mysterious plot with a being on the other side of a portal, about arranging a demonic invasion, and afterwards, his shishu mutters something about the Endless Abyss.
Luo Binghe returns to his unconscious master's bedside, and begs him to hold on for however long it will take, because Binghe will return with the cure.
By the time Shen Qingqiu's fever breaks, the Immortal Alliance has come and gone, and with it his poor disciple. What's worse, the whole cultivation world seems to have caught on to the fact that Luo Binghe is a demon! That wasn't supposed to come out yet! But without Shen Qingqiu to help shield him, his seal broke early and in front of more than a few witnesses. Cang Qiong has fallen under a lot of unflattering speculation for harboring such a "creature".
Shen Qingqiu supposes he should have known that there would be no escaping fate. And yet, even with the knowledge that Binghe will come back, and that this time he won't even harbor a grudge against his master for pushing him in, that -- in a sense -- Shen Yuan has been spared and this is probably the 'best case scenario', somehow it's not any easier to deal with. Especially not when he knows that his poor disciple doesn't even want the rewards that will follow after it, that he's suffering for nothing except the fickle mandates of some narrative destiny.
Also, he didn't figure out that Shang Qinghua is Airplane, so he has no fellow transmigrator to understand or help him vent. He's just alone in his knowledge, sickly, fretted over and grieving (not that he can admit the latter), while the sect whispers that the Xiu Ya sword is probably not long for this world now. If the poison doesn't kill him, perhaps his disgrace will. Cang Qiong's good name has been dragged through the mud, and Huan Hua Palace is looking to beat it down further. There are even some who claim that Luo Binghe must have been behind Sha Hualing's earlier invasion, and poisoned his own master because of it! Shen Qingqiu can't stand such talk, nor the pitying, condescending looks he receives whenever he tries to defend his disciple's character.
The writing is on the wall, however. If Shen Qingqiu won't die as a scum villain, the story seems to be planning to kill him off as the tragically deceased mentor.
Meanwhile Luo Binghe takes longer to get out of the Abyss this time. Not for lack of motivation, but because he needs to find his goddamn macguffin first! And then he has to protect it, and get both it and himself safely out of the Abyss! Which means he can't just rush through killing everything, he has to take his time to plan and prepare, even though he wants to rush through because every minute he spends in the Abyss is another minute where Shen Qingqiu could be dying.
When Binghe finally gets out, it's to find that the righteous sects, headed by Huan Hua Palace, are conducting a formal investigation into Cang Qiong Mountain, specifically into the allegations of consorting with demons and the corruption of the Qing Jing Peak Lord. He hurries to the palace to intervene, though by what means even he's not sure.
He arrives just as the Huan Hua Palace disciples are removing Shen Qingqiu's nearly-lifeless body from the water prison.
Just in time for the expected stirring final words of his old shizun, Shen Qingqiu thinks. Imagine his surprise when Luo Binghe force-feeds him a weird potion plus like a liter of blood. Binghe, this is not the dignified end that your shizun had planned!