It's So Wild To Me That You Absolutely Cannot Force A Hyperfixation To Happen. Like You'll Watch The

AU where there's no system (or a decidedly less restrictive one) and Shen Yuan transmigrates into an OC rogue cultivator before the start of the novel, and decides he's gonna steal the protagonist before Luo Binghe even gets to Cang Qiong.

The logic is sound -- he'll keep Luo Binghe from experiencing neglect and abuse at Shen Qingqiu's hands, raise him away from the pressure of the sects and the likelihood that anyone else might find out about his heritage and try to harm him over it, keep him fully away from the Immortal Alliance Conference, and then Luo Binghe's course will change trajectory because he'll have no reason to want revenge against the world and no access to Xin Mo. Shen Yuan will be able to spare Luo Binghe some suffering and possibly survive in a world less subject to the harrowing whims of a half-mad tyrannical overlord. Win-win!

However, the tricky bit is that he's not sure exactly how far ahead of the novel he is, and also Airplane didn't specify where Luo Binghe grew up. This means that Luo Binghe could be any age younger than twelve and in any number of places along or near to the Luo river.

Shen Yuan decides he's going to approach this by pretending he is looking for the long-lost son of his sister, traveling through the likeliest areas, asking after abandoned children who might fit the protagonist's description. It's a long shot, he knows, and he's mostly relying on the existence of Narrative Destiny. But eventually he is directed by several people towards a particular city, which is not as close to the river as he'd have expected Luo Binghe to grow up, but then again he only knows that was where baby Binghe was found, not where the washerwoman who took him in ultimately lived.

It becomes clear to him, though, that he's been sent to the wrong target. But also why he's been sent astray is apparent in nearly the same breath, because among the slave children living in this area is a little boy who could be his much younger clone.

Seriously, this kid looks just like him! Or, well, close enough. He looks a lot like Shen Yuan's actual nieces and nephews from his past life. It's uncanny.

Also, because of his search, the slave kids get wind of what he's looking for (his long-lost nephew) pretty quick. The boy with the obvious resemblance to him greets Shen Yuan's own assessment with wary cynicism, but he's just a little boy. So it's not difficult to notice the way he's also practically vibrating with hopefulness, half-hiding behind a protective older kid and looking at Shen Yuan with big dark eyes like he expects to be rescued or destroyed with whatever he has to say next.

Shen Yuan has a big problem now. He just knows that if he says something like "actually no this boy is too old to be my nephew" or whatever other excuse, no one will believe him, and also this poor kid is going to be permanently scarred by it. He's going to think Shen Yuan is lying just so that he can reject him. On top of that, he's not in a good situation here. None of these children are even remotely well cared-for.

Shen Yuan's rogue cultivator self isn't rich on the level of being like a wealthy sect leader or anything, but he's made some money since transmigrating by doing random cultivator jobs and quests along the way here. He uses it all to purchase two little slave boys (Do Not Separate), then takes another job and uses that coin to acquire a somewhat rundown manor which used to belong to the local gentry. The Qiu family (rings some bells but that's not exactly an uncommon name) kept it up for a while in case a branch family sprung up in need of a residence, but they've been in decline and the place is downright decrepit, so they had been looking to sell it instead. It's too big for a wandering bachelor like SY to ever need on his own account, but that's sort of the idea. He makes more money taking on cultivator work, at first taking his boys along with him for lack of any alternative. Nerve-wrackingly dangerous! Eventually he hires workers to start restoring the manor, particularly setting up a yard to be a school area, and then starts taking on any freelance jobs he can get in order to steadily buy out the contracts on all the other kids. He gets it nice enough to house and care for as many orphans as he can acquire.

Not because he's a big old softie though!

His story of looking for his nephew is a bust now, since he's apparently "found" the kid. So he's got to change tactics! If he can't find baby Binghe and the washerwoman, the next best approach is to create an opportunity for them to come to him. So once he's got his new household established, he starts offering free lessons to all the local kids. Not just the ones he's taken in, but also any who come by and want to learn some things. It's a tempting setup for anyone who wants their child to get education but can't afford a tutor, and Luo Binghe's mother had been entirely the sort of person who would have packed up and left her situation if there had been an opportunity for it.

On that note, SY also starts hiring single mothers to help look after his new gaggle of children and do the work he doesn't know how to do in these times, like keeping house, laundry, cooking, actually raising kids, etc.

His "little school" is not universally popular. A few groups try and ruin him, because the poverty in the region provides a basis of business for them. The ringleaders of the human traffickers in the area don't want their trade to dry up, even if it means selling all of their merchandise for this round, so when they find out that their underlings let Shen Yuan buy off all the kids they try and intimidate him into returning them (it doesn't go well for them). The Qiu family also isn't thrilled after it becomes clear what he's doing, and get him investigated by the local authorities (read: use their bribed officials and local goons to try and interfere.)

When that doesn't work either the sects get involved, because the Qiu go crying to Huan Hua Palace that Shen Yuan is sketchy and is trying to establish his own sect. So Shen Yuan talks his way around the matter, and frankly the Qiu are small fish even if they're the biggest ones in the local pond, so HHP doesn't care to pursue things much further. (Read: SY could mop the floor with the disciples they sent to investigate him, and it's not worth it to piss off someone this mysterious and powerful just to bully some impoverished children.)

Shen Yuan is appalled by all this bullshit though. Trust the world of PIDW to make it so hard just for a guy to teach some poor kids how to read and do math!

It makes him dig in his heels about it, because he is at heart a stubborn bastard. The fires that once fueled a thousand angry screeds on zhongdian literature site is now aimed at the local magistrate. One of the women he's hired on has some dirt on the Qiu family, which leads SY to dig up some more until he eventually has enough to turn the tables on them. Local officials won't investigate because they've all been bought, but that in and of itself is of some interest to their superiors closer to the palace, and so SY arranges an investigation of his own that goes way further than he thought? Turns out there are some ugly skeletons in the Qiu closets, and the imperial investigator comes down on them hard.

Well, he can't say they didn't have it coming? Though he does feel bad for the children in the family, especially the oldest son, who gets hauled off to jail along with his father. At least the girl is sent to live with relatives. Maybe he should have done more to shield the minors in the situation...?

His kids tell him not to worry about it, though, that apparently young master Qiu was known to run people down in the streets and beat his servants and do other cartoonishly awful things. SY's not sure how much of it is true and how much of it is his little flock of fluffy sheep trying to ease his conscience, though they do all seem to take a lot of vindictive delight in the whole affair. Especially Nephew, who clings to his sleeves and loudly declares that the investigator should have publicly flogged the discredited nobles so that everyone could go watch, and then begs him for sweets as if that wasn't a creepy thing to hear come out of an eight-year-old's mouth. SY just sighs and tells him he can have something good when he finishes his calligraphy practice.

Of course, it's not exactly easy running what is basically an orphanage-slash-school (and maybe a budding sect...?), especially when pretty much all of the kids have been traumatized and faced stuff like rampant dehumanization, food insecurity, abuse, and neglect. Hiring single mothers soon becomes not only a plan to try and lure in Luo Binghe's mom, but an absolute godsend of an idea because SY has no clue WHAT he would do on his own about the discipline issues or emotional breakdowns or acting out that some of the kids get up to once it registers that they're in a safe enough place to unpack their baggage.

Apart from Nephew, SY's favorite kid is the one who came with him, the oldest of the flock of former slave children. He's the big brother of the group, the one who tries his best to look after the others and to not make any trouble himself. But even poor Little Yue is still just a kid who has been through too much, and he also eventually starts having some meltdowns and struggles with processing everything that has happened to him as a vulnerable child in an unkind world.

SY really didn't mean to start a trauma center for mistreated children!

Though, that's still not necessarily a bad thing for Luo Binghe to one day come across, provided he ever actually shows up...

Eventually, Shen Yuan does figure out that he must be ahead even of Luo Binghe's birth, though he still doesn't put together that he's interfered in the scum villain's backstory. Probably something even more amusingly obscure, like the creation year of some random artifact Luo Binghe used in some wife plot or other, tips him off and he mentally throws his hands up in the air. He's got to wait DECADES? Maybe he ought to try and find Luo Binghe's biological parents and just follow them around at this point!

Not that he can, now, though, because he has to make sure no negative IQ villains (who will probably just be cannon fodder for a subplot one day) decide to send goons to literally burn down his orphanage. Also if he's gone for too long his kids get upset. Probably because no one else is as weak to their puppy dog eyes and pleas for treats and toys as he is.

At least it gives him time to shore up his position, and train Nephew and Little Yue more extensively in cultivation. Despite his initial assurances to HHP that he was but a humble orphan wrangler who was only incidentally a cultivator, Shen Yuan does also teach the other kids some basic cultivation exercises. There are a few reasons for that.

One is just the principle of the thing. No, these kids don't all have the potential to become great immortals or anything, but they can still learn some of it and it's good for their health if they do. The only trouble is if they try and push too hard or attempt things beyond their range, and that's a risk with everyone who cultivates. Or even just exercises!

Another reason is that it helps stave off the jealousy that some of the kids have towards those with more cultivation potential. Teaching a lot of the basics all around makes it into just another topic at school. Some kids might not be as good at it as others, but those kids might also be better at math, or memorization, or board games, and while cultivation can open more doors to people as adults, for the children this is generally enough to satisfy their sense of fairness. Or at least reduce outbursts and fights.

Finally, the impression that any of SY's kids might be a cultivator also makes wicked people more reluctant to try and abduct or interfere with them. Cultivators are revered and nearly mythological figures in the public consciousness. It isn't difficult to see why, if even a rogue cultivator NPC like SY* can mop the floor with most random muggers (*Shen Yuan is not a normal rogue cultivator). Not many people want to risk bringing SY's ire down on them, but of those who might chance it if he wasn't around to immediately react, even fewer want to risk that the kids themselves could kick their asses.

Not knowing that only two of the orphans probably could in fact mop the floor with them helps keep all the rest safer, and is more believable when all of them can conduct themselves enough like disciples to fool anyone who doesn't know what to really look for.

Developments that surprise Shen Yuan but wouldn't surprise anyone else who is paying attention:

People start leaving unwanted babies and younger children on his doorstep. Not all the time, but more than once has he had to frantically find wet nurses and worry that he's changed things enough that some fishermen might just randomly drop the protagonist outside his gate, and he wouldn't even know because Binghe would be a literal infant??

Nephew (SJ) and Little Yue (Yue Qi -- only Shen Yuan calls him "Little", especially when he gets taller than SY by the time he's sixteen) are prodigies who get really good at cultivation, really fast, and between that and Shen Yuan's OP skills they completely warp Shen Yuan's ideas for what normal cultivation potential looks like. This would probably cause more problems if he wasn't teaching all the kids how to cultivate anyway, but means his students actually do kinda run the usual range of skills for a small sect.

SJ and YQ swiftly reach the point where they need more advanced equipment than just SY's teaching can provide, if they're going to keep building their skills. Gaining access to certain tools, aids, and materials (like spiritual swords) is a real hurdle though, and usually is for rogue cultivators (one of the major disadvantages of no sect affiliation.) Shen Yuan is hesitant to use stuff from the plot, since it's For Binghe, but he eventually caves and starts going after some things that he doesn't think the future protagonist will miss much. He also ends up buying stuff from HHP, since they're willing to sell things like spiritual tools and weapons if the price is right, whereas most other sects like Cang Qiong reserve them for members only.

They get an invitation to the Immortal Alliance Conference. Not the one where the Abyss opens up, obviously, the one where (originally) Shen Jiu reunited with Yue Qi and killed Wu Yanzi. Shen Yuan debates on going but the boys really want to, and things have calmed down enough that no one's trying to burn down the school whenever he leaves these days, so eventually he figures it'll be interesting to see some of the Cang Qiong characters and should be safe enough if he keeps his disciples close.

They don't run into young Yue Qingyuan or Shen Qingqiu on the trip, but Wu Yanzi does show up and get killed, and SY only hears about it and assumes they just missed all that action. (WYZ just got caught by some senior cultivators who recognized him and killed him to avenge some disciples he murdered.) Nephew and Little Yue do meet young Liu Qingge, Shang Qinghua, Mu Qingfang, and Su Xiyan though! Which gives Shen Yuan the opportunity to tell them all (mostly Su Xiyan) that if they're ever in trouble near his school, they can come to him for help. Hint hint.

This open invitation ends up being accepted broadly by a lot of traveling cultivators after the conference, who from then on treat Shen Yuan's school like a free motel whenever they're passing through. Plenty aren't even people SY met, but it seems his statement was taken as a general one to fellow righteous cultivators all around! Luckily, this has some advantages. Shen Yuan has no qualms running off anyone who tries to take unfair advantage of him or especially his kids or staff, and no shame in conscripting anyone who is decent enough to help teach his students, even if it's nothing to do with cultivating, and somehow word gets around and people start bringing school supplies, medicine, food, or other useful things along with them as gifts to help repay the hospitality. Young Liu Qingge comes by a lot on his way to and from various quests, or even seems to just turn up randomly sometimes (he comes to challenge YQ and SJ to fights), and SY's just like "I guess this is happening now" and teaches him to recognize the early signs of qi deviation and advises strongly against meditating in caves.

At one point a young Shang Qinghua turns up in one of the spare rooms, very obviously hiding an ice demon. Shen Yuan again is just like "I guess this is happening now" and shelters them until Mobei Jun has recovered, and sends a message to Cang Qiong that one of their An Ding caravans was attacked and their disciple is recovering under his roof but isn't well enough to travel yet. Much less stressful situation for Airplane (who is desperately trying to figure out what he did to manifest SJ's benevolent uncle from somewhere???)

Su Xiyan seems like the only person they met at the Immortal Alliance Conference who doesn't turn up at their door in a state of emergency at some point.

A few years later, there is a big scandal involving her and the demon emperor. Su Xiyan disappears, Huan Hua Palace accuses Tianlang Jun of plotting against the righteous sects, and Shen Yuan is even invited to the meeting where they try and rally everyone to go kill Binghe's dad. Naturally, he declines to participate in the witch hunt, but the major sects agree to it. By luck (or narrative fortune) Shen Yuan comes across Zhuzhi Lang on his trip back home, and mentions the ambush and his distaste for it (not knowing who ZZL is). ZZL warns Tianlang Jun and the confrontation goes very differently, especially since there's no Yue Qingyuan wielding Xuan Su.

It doesn't go well for the sects involved. Huan Hua Palace gets decimated. The Old Palace Master gets killed. Shen Yuan is like uhhhh that's... whoops? Didn't Luo Binghe need that in the future?? Fuck.

But the sect isn't wiped out completely, they just take a massive beating. Some of their younger disciples end up leaving and turning up on Shen Yuan's doorstep, for some reason. The manor house is becoming too small to account for all of these foundlings! They have to expand. Though the expansions would be a stretch to term a "palace" they end up occupying a much larger chunk of territory, and even investing in farmland and some storehouses to help support the sect. That's still not really a sect, of course. Even if a lot of the business that would have normally gone to Huan Hua Palace starts coming to them instead. Once HHP is back on its feet the stream will probably dry out. Probably?

Zhuzhi Lang starts hanging around. He's actually looking for Su Xiyan or their baby, dead or alive and per Tianlang Jun's instructions, but he uses Shen Yuan's school as base camp for his kind of hopeless efforts to find any traces of them, while also looking for ways to try and repay Shen Yuan. All the kids are just like "oh great, another weird man has fallen in love with Shizun -- someone go run interference" about it.

Some years later, an older woman and her young son turn up. Shen Yuan's off on a quest at the time, so SJ receives them. As is standard procedure he gives the woman a job and places the boy in classes, after giving him the aptitude tests. The kid is cute and precocious, so SJ uses him to distract YQ while he himself sneaks out to go join LQG on a monster hunt (and claim the valuable parts of the beast's remains for himself), and neither SY nor ZZL notice anything until SY's going over the paperwork for stuff he missed while he was gone. Since he procrastinated, it takes him like a week to find out that Luo Binghe is finally under his roof. He's going over the admission form right when SJ arrives with The New Adorable Child to try and distract SY enough that SY will let him go on a solo hunt -- as far as being distracted goes, it is way more effective than even SJ anticipated.

Then he has to figure out how to let ZZL know, so that ZZL can let Tianlang Jun know, so that Luo Binghe will have more family than just his mom and more resources than just a shabby little not-sect! But even once he figures it out and sets up the dramatic reveal, TLJ is just like "great! so can he just stay with you? he's probably fine there" which... irritates SY.

SJ fully conscripts Luo Binghe as a minion in his many cons. He never lost his street kid conman tactics, although he now uses them less as a ruthless survival tool or weapon and more to just get things to go his own way. LBH has the face and disposition of a little angel, which SJ no longer can pull off as a full grown adult, so he fills a gap. LBH also knows full well what's going, especially since a lot of SJ's tactics involve throwing LBH at SY like a smoke bomb.

Luo Binghe inevitably still develops a big fat crush on SY, so this is fine by him. Especially when he gets older, he starts bringing SY tea and making him breakfast and running his errands until even SJ is like "wait a minute, this little brat's stealing my job!" and by then it's too late. Luo Binghe is SY's personal assistant, the disciple at conman puppydog eyes has surpassed the master! While SJ was busy being like "I'm going to trick this idiot into doing my chores" LBH was going "I'm going to trick this idiot into giving me his job".

SY takes too long to officially name his school so everyone calls it the Shen Sect, much to his embarrassment.

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.

xin mo did not become the demonic op sword of all three realms for this!!! for @kawouwu who asked for binggeyuan sillies! thank you for your donation to svsss' gotcha 4 gaza!

Concept: Wei Wuxian and Hua Cheng as Luo Binghe's younger biological brothers, but it's like, a lot younger.

Like centuries on. TLJ's recovered from his mountain-flattening to the point where he has roughly the strength and capabilities of a decent human cultivator. The world has changed. The boundaries between the realms have gotten stronger, and the potency of demon blood based powers in the human realms have accordingly weakened. Lots of cultivators have ascended, and the current ranks of them are not nearly as impressive as they used to be. Luo Binghe and his husband have withdrawn into the demon realm to try and keep the peace and maintain stability, but TLJ doesn't feel such an obligation and prefers the human realms even when his power is a lot weaker there, so as the boundaries grow thicker, he just sort of sticks around on that side of the divide.

Eventually he takes on the persona of a wandering cultivator, observing the changes that various human sects and societies undergo. As true immortals become much more rare and the cultivation methods and philosophies change, TLJ starts taking on different personas every few hundred years, just to avoid becoming too conspicuous. He observes with interest as the various cultivation sects shift from meritocratic to dynastic inheritance, as the old sects either ascend too far from humanity or else fall into obscurity, while the new ones that take their place provide ample fodder for his soapy RPF stories and gossip mill. The boundaries between worlds become so thick that only beings of extreme strength can pass through, with the most prominent "demonic" forces in the human realms becoming resentful spirits and ghosts, although even so sometimes an item or creature still manages to chance upon a weak spot and cross over.

Beasts and cursed items that would once have been mere trifles for cultivators to deal with instead become major sources of conflict and nigh-indestructible foes. TLJ feels at times like he's watching insects wrestle with the consequences of someone carelessly discarding a piece of garbage in their path, fascinated by the lengths they must go to in order to deal with it, but then he too has his limits these days on how much he can even help (if he chooses to do so, which he doesn't always).

At one point he decides that he'd like to try living life more from the perspective of some of these barely-above-mortal level cultivators. Like choosing to play a game with extra handicaps on, just for the challenge of it. He takes on the identity of a new young cultivator, recently bereft of a master and looking to join one of the great sects, and takes on the name of Wei Changze. Striking up a friendship with the young master of the Jiang sect isn't difficult, and playing the role of servant and subordinate is pretty entertaining.

TLJ is not expecting to encounter one of Su Xiyan's reincarnations in the midst of all of this, but that's life for you.

The new Xiyan, Cangse Sanren, is a lot sweeter than the cold and cutting sugar daddy of days gone by. But she's still quite ruthless when she wants to be, and extremely talented, and she still falls into TLJ's orbit even when she has much more practical options at hand. How can he not fall in love all over again? Even when he thought she orchestrated his betrayal, he never fell completely out of love. He might be a jillion years old by now, but at heart he still wants his Xiyan to pamper and spoil him, and to return the favor as much as he possibly can.

TLJ's no saint. He's as greedy as any Heavenly Demon, especially when it comes to love. So he doesn't refrain from stealing his new Xiyan, Cangse, away from all rival suitors when the opportunity presents itself. When she gets pregnant, he becomes nervous about history somehow repeating itself. He sort of wishes she hadn't. But she's excited, and he never really got to experience this with her the first time. He's greedy for any and all experiences with her, in the end.

The baby is cute. TLJ likes him. This new son also takes after his mother, which is good too. He's not much like Zhuzhi Lang except for being a bit simplistic (because he's a baby) but TLJ feels a stirring in his heart strings not unlike the sentiments he once held for his poor doomed nephew, a stirring that grows in time to become genuine affection.

Intriguingly, this son of his doesn't show many signs of his heavenly demon heritage. It isn't potent enough to require a cradle seal. There are hints of it, here and there, but only to one who knows how to look for the signs of true demon blood. Which actually isn't all that surprising in the end, hybrids can turn out any number of ways. Still, TLJ feels confident that by the time he starts walking and talking, little A'Ying could survive on his own.

Humans tend to raise their children longer for that, though, and Cangse is very attached to their son. So TLJ is like, oh well, no need to cut the apron strings even if this third wheel stuff is dragging on a bit (Wei Ying is four). He's maybe even actively enjoying parenting! He's pretty sure he's improving at it as well, like he always makes sure his son has enough money to buy food before they leave him alone for a few weeks, even though the boy is big enough to hunt small game. Spoils him, really.

But of course, then tragedy strikes again. Despite being stronger than most stuff, TLJ is not nearly as powerful as he used to be, and he sometimes sucks at guesstimating the actual differential between him and some of the malicious ghosts out there. His attempt to satisfy Cange's ambitions and take on the Burial Mounds go disastrously, with Cangse once again dying on him, and TLJ ending up trapped in the resentful mire of the Burial Mounds, body nearly destroyed (again).

So he spends several years locked in a depression fugue state and also very slowly regenerating his destroyed parts, lost in memories and grief, eating a lot of dead humans (never his cuisine of choice, but he isn't rich on options) when one day some rancid little upstart throws down a corpse that isn't a corpse, and is also very familiar.

Why, it's Wei Ying! And he's basically a man now! TLJ's not sure exactly how much time has passed, but given how badly humans age these days, it's probably less than a century. Wei Ying is injured and having a rough time of it, it looks like his human cultivation has gone badly somehow, but he still has enough potency to his heavenly demon blood that he'd need to be dismembered and probably eaten before death would really stick. He's not entirely lucid, though, and the malicious ghosts in the Burial Mounds aren't helping.

TLJ figures, well, he is a father after all, and Cangse was so attached to their little dumpling. He'll help out! Just until the kid gets his legs back under him again. So as Wei Ying scrabbles in the dirt and writhes in torment against the dark energy of hostile ghosts, he also gets to hallucinate his father's half-rotted visage talking him through the basics of some demonic cultivation techniques that ought to help him crawl back out of this pit.

It's a good day when Wei Ying manages it. TLJ wishes him all the best, he truly does, and then he goes back to wallowing. For like five minutes (to him). Then somehow his clingy second son returns to the region, if not to his specific pit, and brings with him a gaggle of humans in varying states of distress and poor health. TLJ finds that the neighborhood has become noisy, but at least this noise involves some interesting news and gossip, and Wei Ying appears to be mastering some kind of hybrid ghost/demon cultivation technique that is pretty fascinating. Trust Cangse's son to be so creative! And he farms, too! Badly, but. Well. TLJ certainly can't throw stones, he's never once gotten the hang of gardening himself either. The only thing he's good at growing is parts of his own body, haha!

He's actually pretty upset when the human cultivators turn up and his son ends up getting torn apart and devoured by the backlash of his own innovations. TLJ briefly considers tearing himself out of his shallow not-grave to kill everyone involved, but that does sound like a lot of effort, and in his experience revenge just never works right anyway. So after a while he just crawls his way out more sedately, saves his energy and uses it to cross back over to the demon realm for a while.

He revisits his eldest son, and is like hmm this is how you decorate a palace? No no it's fine I guess. Where's Mobei Jun's little hamster man, has he written anything new lately? By which I mean in the past thousand or so years. Oh he has! Great! Also you had a younger brother for a while there. Yeah no he's dead now. But he did exist, I actually liked him, very creative boy. Shame about the angry mob.

To which Luo Binghe's response is basically some flavor of "I don't care" whereas Shen Qingqiu is genuinely distressed that Binghe had a brother and didn't even get to meet him.

TLJ hangs out for a while, reads through all of Airplane's latest works, recovers his strength, does some "bonding" side quests with Binghe courtesy of his son-in-law's meddling (doesn't really work), and then eventually decides to go back and see what's going on in the human realm again. He can't help it, he's just not really into demon culture that much, there are only so many years he can spend lounging around the place before he starts feeling itchy and recollecting every agonizing hour of youthful displeasure and boredom that defined his life as a prince.

Getting back to the human realm is even more difficult by the time he leaves again, though. The Heavens are being annoying about it. There are tiers of Heaven, of course, and lately the lowest tier (closest to earth) has been taking a fairly hard stance about keeping the realms apart. Probably because all those gods are still weak enough that even TLJ's failson could just smash them to pieces if so inclined, and the higher tiers have been consumed with their own celestial matters, so most of these junior gods haven't had much guidance and are convinced they are responsible for the order of the universe.

Imagine being less than a thousand years old, coming from the era where most cultivators don't even ascend anymore, and thinking you're hot shit just because you moved up a single rank in divinity. Whippernappers, all of them. TLJ would scold them but that sounds too much like hard work, and anyway they don't even know that he can listen in on their noisy little communication arrays and settle back with some popcorn to watch their dramas unfold. It's like his own personal television channel.

Though he doesn't let himself think directly about it too much, he is also on the lookout for another reincarnation of Xiyan. Things ending in tragedy twice can only make it more likely that they should go well the third time, right? Or, even if not... the tragedy might be tolerable, so long as there's a reprieve of togetherness beforehand again.

Alas, TLJ is not in luck for quite some time. In a moment of weakness he even settles for the pursuit of a spirited young commoner with a just-similar-enough kind of temperament to soothe the ache, before making him feel all the more unsatisfied in the aftermath. It's not that he imagines himself keeping faithful to a woman who has been dead (again) for ages and may or may not be reborn one day, it's more the feeling that having something near to the right thing is, in its way, even more unsatisfying than nothing.

Anyway, the young lady eventually tracks him down with news that she's pregnant, which TLJ supposes could plausibly be a result of their tryst. He gives her some money and tells her to contact him if the baby is weird, which does end up being the case (red eyes, clear demonic tendencies) so he provides some more compensation, at least until the kid is big enough to survive on his own. Then he just sort of peaces out to keep looking for Xiyan-Cangse Mark III, good luck to Third Son, it's not like this world is especially dangerous to a heavenly demon with blood that potent anyway.

Or rather, it shouldn't be, but plot twist: Third Son didn't get the regenerative abilities in the hybrid lottery. He dies on a battlefield. TLJ doesn't even hear about it, though he does eventually assume that the kid must have died because he's not hearing anything about a red-eyed conqueror or such after a few decades and that's unusual for Heavenly Demons. He's not too bothered in this instance, however, because he didn't let himself get attached this time. Smart of him. That whole Wei Ying business was just awful, he still thinks about it occasionally and he'd really rather move on.

Eventually a new ghost city crops up. TLJ doesn't think he'll find any version of Xiyan there, but he goes to check out the night life. Lo and behold, he finds himself spying a familiar face at the new gambling den, too. He's never heard of a Heavenly Demon becoming a ghost, but again, hybrids can be weird like that, and ghosts have filled a lot of the ecological niches left behind by the absence of demons. Ghost King, huh? Turns out Third Son is conquering his way across these piddly little realms. Good for him! Good for him. TLJ opts not to interfere. After all, he's not needed, the kid doesn't owe him anything, and he's mostly just in the city to collect gossip and enjoy the market. They get some interesting books.

He does cheer for this "Hua Cheng" when the kid beats a whole bunch of junior gods into the dirt. This must be the appeal of children's sports teams. The divine communication arrays start buzzing about this calamity, as the youths call it, and TLJ decides he's once again doing pretty good at this fatherhood business. Two interesting sons out of three isn't half bad!

The show gets even more entertaining when it turns out that Third Son has been carrying a candle for a particular disgraced god (Heavenly Demon romantic hyperfixation strikes again) and said god ascends once more, and this time there's all sorts of intrigue and plot twists in the heavenly court. It's so good that TLJ even goes to the effort of placing a call to the demon realms and magically livestreaming some of it to his son-in-law, who was so disappointed to miss seeing Wei Ying in action.

Unfortunately, the event he manages to livestream also features Hua Cheng dying. Whoops?

Well, it's a fittingly dramatic end to the story, even if his eldest son is pissed at him for upsetting his son-in-law with such things. His intentions were good!

As it happens, too, his divine livestreaming was a little more strongly broadcast than intended (well, he had to get it through the realms, that's not easy these days) and someone picked it up on the other side of the celestial divide as well. Specifically, one of the higher tiers of heaven. Which is how TLJ finds out that Wei Ying had actually come back from his first death, in a new body (smart kid!) and then subsequently hooked up with one of those Lan boys and ascended to godhood together.

After reuniting, Hua Cheng also proves resilient to the whole dying business, and so TLJ decides to make things up to Shen Qingqiu by organizing a family reunion.

His efforts initially garner interest from Wei Ying, coldness from Lan Wangji, glacial indifference from Hua Cheng, and some very cautious encouragement from Xie Lian (his sons all have impeccable taste in men), before the reunion finally happens and the gates of hell spring wide to bring forth the ultimate evil (Luo Binghe) and his better half, armed with some delicious banquet dishes and gifts for Shen Qingqiu's new brothers-in-law.

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

Advertising peaked at the Discovery channel “Boom de Yada” commercials

There should be a fic in which multiple different Binghes meet each other and they have all married Shen Yuan. Except Shen Yuan transmigrated into someone different in each and every one of their universes.

There would be the one in which he transmigrated into Shen Qingqiu, of course, but there would also be one in which he transmigrated into Yue Qingyuan and another where he transmigrated into Sha Hualing and so on. There should even be one in which he transmigrated into some random guy literally none of the other Binghes have heard of before.

The Binghes keep talking about the same person, except they're calling that person different things so none of them realise at first. And then they do and it's like "oh, we all married the same person, except that person has a different name and body".

And like obviously Shen Yuan would be slightly different depending on who he transmigrated into. Because of different circumstances and such. So occasionally a Binghe mentions something his transmigrated Shen Yuan did or said that would not and does not apply to any of the other transmigrated Shen Yuans.

Bonus if Bingge is there too, as the one Binghe there who has married many but none of them are a version of Shen Yuan.

@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.

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.

Shen brothers but make it as embarrassing for Shen Yuan as possible

AU where Airplane becomes more financially secure at some point and so starts to write extras where he details things like Shen Jiu’s background and motivations, along with how the majority of accusations against him were false. This makes Shen Yuan so angry at how things went down in canon that he enters a rage fugue state and writes a self-insert fanfiction where he’s Shen Jiu’s younger brother and Luo Binghe’s best friend and manages to soften Shen Jiu’s outlook and therefore give Luo Binghe a nice disciplehood.

And then it becomes one of those fanfics that’s so popular people write fanfic in the world of the fanfic rather than canon, and Shen Yuan/Luo Binghe becomes a hugely popular pairing.

Shen Yuan gets big mad about it because ‘LUO BINGHE ISN’T GAY >:{’, so he writes a bunch of angry comments on the fics. (there’s some fics where Shen Yuan is a woman and those are suspiciously void of Cucumber hate)

And Airplane finds this so incandescently funny that he writes a new extra legitimizing Shen Yuan into canon and detailing his death at the hands of the Qiu family. Even more motivation for Shen Jiu to hate everything! *jazz hands*

Long story short, when Shen Yuan transmigrates he does it into his own Mary Sue OC. I think it’s what he deserves.

(also please picture his face when he finds out Binghe is in love with him. Like, the fangirls were RIGHT?? he’d never recover)