manyspoon

Latest Posts by manyspoon

So we know that the White Star split the Dominating Aura and left a portion in the Forest of Darkness, right?

So imagine if the voice inside the Dominating Aura is NOT Choi Jung Gun (or some other ancestor) but rather the White Star's younger teenage self (before he becomes a Dragon Slayer/goes crazy), like Jour Thames is in the Rings of Life.

Dude has no idea what sort of maniac he becomes, is just a little shit constantly mouthing off against the other ancient powers in Cale's mind & keeps dissing/shitting on the White Star whenever they fight because he has no idea it's him. You know, cuz of the whole reincarnation thing.

Like I know the logistics here are a bit wonky (since I assume only Dragon Slayers inherit the Sword of Disasters and Dominating Aura once they inherit the title) but bear with me, it's such a funny scenario.

Barrow (lets call him that for now) would just be cheering Cale on the entire fight, thirsting for blood and suggesting pranks to play on the White Star. The funniest scene could be him rolling his eyes (metaphorically, since he's ghost) and shitting on the White Star for being melodramatic with terrible fashion sense. Masks? In this day and age?

Imagine him being horrified when he finds out what he's become, especially since he's firsthand interacted with Raon and the rest (courtesy of haunting Cale).

You know what would be even more hilarious? Imagine him just providing Cale some VERY intimate, embarrassing and awkward details that Cale brings up during battle just for shits and giggles to throw off the White Star.

Cale & the White Star fighting: Barrow, internally: Did you know I used to pee in bed every night until I was eleven? Cale, with a shit-eating grin to the White Star: So how did it feel to have such poor bladder control growing up? Eleven? Tsk, tsk. White Star, half-offended, half-terrified because this is just reinforcing his hare-brained theory about how the Gods sent Cale to kill him because how else would he know this: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? Barrow, the little shit: During training, I once farted so loud the instructor called me ‘Thundercheeks’ for a month. Cale, visibly pausing mid-battle and incredulous: "Thundercheeks?!" The White Star, screaming in horror: Shut up shut up shut up!!!!

Every time Cale opens his mouth, Sayeru and Dorph lose a bit more respect for their master. Conversely, Raon thinks Cale is possessed (he is). Also White Star, babe, no Cale is not a reincarnator. Your archnemesis is literally you.

Just tinier, more gremlin, spiteful and hormonal. You know, a teenager.

Edit: more scenarios because this is funny:

Barrow, rubbing his imaginary hands: See that slight twitch in his shoulder? He’s about to dodge left. Cale: “Oh? So I aim right?” Barrow: “No. Compliment his hair. He'll blush. // Barrow: “Mention the mole. He hates the mole.” Cale: “What mole?” Barrow: “Inner thigh, left side. He’s irrationally sensitive about it.” Cale (literally yeeting a thunderbolt at him): “Still trying to hide the mole?” White Star screaming: “WHAT THE FUCK.”

//

to write on the wall

arise, hero / get up, yoo joonghyuk!

Props to PAN4-nim for staying very on brand and making all the TCF manhwa covers just dad Cale. Like it's just Cale and his kids guys. That's all there is to it. It's their world, us and all the other characters are just living in it. Just Dad Cale and his 3 children✨️👌😭💕

Throw money with mama

Watch two crazy punks with mama

Get praised by mama

Scam with mama

Pose with mama

Snuggle with mama

i love alberu and raon's dynamic so much,,

i think it's about time i release those into the wild

SV AU where shortly after the whole debacle with Tianlang Jun happens, Shen Jiu, Yue Qingyuan, and Original Flavor Shang Qinghua get stuck in a Situation and unexpectedly sex pollen'd or something similar, with an end result that SJ and OG!SQH both get knocked up by YQY.

SJ opts not to abort because of his complex feelings, and OG!SQH opts not to do it because he's never ever going to get anything this good to hold ransom against the sect leader again, now is he? A short while ago he was barely on YQY's radar, now he might get the man to marry him (not while SJ's still breathing).

This begins a silent war between SJ and OG!SQH as they both turn all of their scum villain credentials to the task of sabotaging each other. SJ stops YQY from marrying SQH, SQH tries to poison SJ, SJ tricks Bai Zhan disciples into destroying a bunch of stuff An Ding has to replace, SQH spreads rumors that SJ was already knocked up and orchestrated the whole situation in order to baby trap the sect leader, etc etc. YQY keeps trying to ask SJ to marry him and SJ keeps flatly turning him down, SQH has to scramble to spin this development as a good thing to Mobei Jun even though it obviously presents some complications to his non-existent "loyalties", and the rest of the sect can only watch the chaos unfold.

And then finally the kids are born. Both boys. Lots of congratulations to the sect leader on his healthy sons (plenty of which is thinly-veiled insults from other sects)! YQY acknowledges both of the babies, to no one's surprise but to some aggravation.

The babies, of course, are freshly-transmigrated Shen Yuan and Airplane. Neither of whom is pleased with being the random ass baby of a minor villain who is slated for death! (At least it's better than being the villain who is slated for death?)

Poor Airplane. While YQY makes an effort to split his time as evenly as possible between his sons and never buys one a gift without also getting something for the other, it's really obvious that he has a favorite, and who that favorite is. Shen Yuan is like a mini Shen Qingqiu. Airplane is like a mini Shang Qinghua. Once again, Airplane's the unwanted spare in the family.

Or he would be, except that Original Shang Qinghua gets very attached to his own baby. Yes, it surprises him, too! He'd been planning to foist the kid off onto some wet nurse and then treat him like an extra personal disciple once he was old enough to do things, but one look at the little baby features reflecting himself back and suddenly Original Shang Qinghua's heart grows three sizes. The thing where new parents see their babies and it totally reorients their worldview? Shang Qinghua has that.

It's the opposite situation with Shen Qingqiu, who looks at his own tiny reflection and increasingly can't stand to be around him. The more Shen Yuan grows and the clearer the resemblance becomes, the more intolerable Shen Qingqiu finds the sight of him.

Anyway despite being "brothers", Airplane and Shen Yuan don't actually spend much time together until they're a bit older. But finally one day YQY is looking after both of them (SJ has gone into closed cultivation, and SQH doesn't want his son to be left out in the cold while YQY bonds with the other kid), and they interact enough to figure out that they're both transmigrators.

And then who they are, as transmigrators.

YQY feels a headache coming on as he has to stop preschooler SY from smacking the shit out of preschooler Airplane.

Despite this inauspicious start, however, Airplane and SY become good bros from then on. As a transmigration baby, it's very valuable to have someone you can actually talk to! Who will take you seriously and not think you're weird! Also, they gotta coordinate their efforts to keep their evil villain dads from getting them all killed (now or in the not-too-distant future)!

Baby SY and Airplane come up with a brilliant Plan to Not Die:

Step One: get Yue Qingyuan to recruit Luo Binghe to his peak instead of Shen Qingqiu

Step Two: take turns overseeing Luo Binghe's education so that he has a nice time and never gets kicked into any abysses or awakens any demon powers or develops any vendettas against them or their parents

Step Three: live awesome lives as cultivators in a fantasy/adventure world!

Since there's no system there's no reason to think they can't change the plot. After all, there was definitely nothing like them in the original story either, not even in Airplane's notes! But there's a major issue, which is that neither of them is completely sure when Luo Binghe is going to show up.

Ning Yingying joins Qing Jing as a disciple of Shen Qingqiu's at an age way younger than most (she's actually a brothel kid he took in as a favor to a madam he owed a favor to), and Airplane was never totally clear on Luo Binghe's age relative to his peers anyway since the seniority in terms of reference had to do with when they joined the sect, not how old they were. So they can only ballpark it. Luo Binghe will show up when he's the ideal age to cultivate, and he's somewhere around the same age as Ming Fan and Ning Yingying. Ish. Shang Qinghua knows that in the original, Ning Yingying asked Shen Qingqiu for a shidi. But now she has Shen Yuan to be her "little brother" on Qing Jing Peak, so she might not even do that.

That should make things easier, but it also makes working out what they need to do (if anything) more complicated. SY and Airplane try and attend all the recruitment trials, but SQH doesn't ever bother to go to those in person most times and doesn't like to let Airplane go anywhere off the peak unless he's with him, and SY has the reverse problem, where SQQ never takes him with him anywhere if he can help it and wouldn't bring him to a selection trial if he was also going to be there.

They work around it by having SY get really clingy to Yue Qingyuan so he can follow him to any such events, even the ones Airplane misses because he's cloistered with Helicopter Parent SQH.

SQQ and SQH have a renewed bout of hissing-and-spitting rivalry over the fact that SY is bonding even more with YQY, but SQH doesn't want to relinquish any more of his bonding time with Airplane to the sect leader to try and combat it, so SQH is approaching the situation by accusing SQQ of being a terrible parent in hopes SQQ will at least try to prove him wrong (SQQ doesn't -- he never really defends himself from any accusations, after all).

In fact, it backfires because when SY and Airplane are finally old enough to complete their own (most symbolic) initiation trials (a bit younger than the ideal age, but that's normal for the children of sect members) Shen Qingqiu doesn't take Shen Yuan on to his own peak. As if to confirm SQH's accusation rather than diminish him, he just stares coldly at his own son and makes no move to accept him as a disciple.

Poor SY's left standing there while the politics play out, because no one else is sure if they should, regardless of his potential as a cultivator. SQH has already accepted Airplane as a personal disciple, so now YQY's favoritism looks even more blatant if he takes one son onto Qiong Ding but not the other. But SQQ looks like he's fully prepared to let no one take Shen Yuan on rather than do it himself, and then what?

Finally, YQY somewhat awkwardly announces that the matter of SY's acceptance into the peak was already decided previously, and shuts the whole ceremony down. To salvage the situation (and prevent too many rumors of SY being untalented or unwanted outside of nepotism, which would cause him a lot of trouble in life) YQY has sets it up like he and SQQ previously discussed it and agreed to send SY to study under another sect, as an important diplomatic gesture.

SQQ is mad about this. But SQQ is mad about everything, including the thing he himself did earlier that day, when he just stood there and watched SY flounder while taking vicious and bitter satisfaction in the voice in his head insisting that no one would want him, because no one wanted SJ either, and other such brain goblins that tend to plague him.

But done is done so SY gets shipped off to Huan Hua Palace. Which he has mixed feelings about, because on the one hand, HHP is largely spared Luo Binghe's wrath, so if the plot does play out, at least he'll (maybe) be fine. But now he has virtually no chance of preventing that, and also his relationship with SJ is complicated but his relationship with YQY is mostly just good, and he doesn't want either of them to die horribly. Plus now he can only write letters to Airplane, which SQH is definitely going to read beforehand, so everything either has to be superficial or in code.

Plus, everyone in HHP seems to either hate him or want to suck up to him. Or both. It's a little bit too much like his last life, with his wealthy family and all the people who'd try to get to them through him, either to hurt them or to get something out of them.

Meanwhile Airplane is freaking out. Like yeah sure his dad's really pleased, SQH is over the moon to have the rival kid out of the way and plenty of excuses and opportunities to have YQY pay attention to and spend time with Airplane instead, to maybe supplant SY as the favorite son.

And YQY does spend the time with him, and puts in an effort, but also he has the air of someone who is stepping barefoot onto broken glass but is being very stoic and brave about it every time someone mentions Shen Yuan. Airplane is like "oh my god dude he's basically at boarding school, not dead" but also "same though" because he's sweating bullets over having to potentially deal with this impending Luo Binghe catastrophe solo. Also his best friend and the only person who truly understands his situation is gone.

Sure enough, Airplane misses the trials where Luo Binghe turns up. Ning Yingying, deeply aggrieved at having SY sent away, begs SQQ for a new shidi to make up for it. Liu Qingge, pissed off at the whole situation, provokes SQQ over LBH again, and SQQ demands LBH for his peak so that he can take out even more of his issues on him. Because now "A-Luo" is arriving in the wake of SY's absence, basically taking the position that would have been his.

Airplane: oh shit

Shen Yuan, responding to Airplane's letter: do NOT let my stupid asshole dad antagonize the protagonist into chopping off his arms and legs one day!!!

Airplane: oh yeah sure bro, no problem, I'll just jog over to his peak and tell him to be nicer???

Shen Yuan: get Father to intervene

Airplane: sure! why didn't I think of that! because Father is so good at telling your dad not to do stuff!

Shen Yuan: ...we're fucked

Airplane: yeah

Anyway, Airplane's got even more problems to worry about, because SQH's relationship with Mobei Jun has been deteriorating. Like it was never good to begin with, and Mobei Jun doesn't usually even turn up in person, instead sending demon servants to collect information and deliver thinly-veiled threats. Airplane wouldn't even know about it except that he already knew about it, and knew what to look for, but reading between the lines he can tell that things are not good.

He doesn't want SQH to get killed by MBJ, okay? Yes granted he originally made him for that, just a throwaway traitor guy who was supposed to be killed off by a much cooler character, no further thought required, but now that throwaway traitor guy is his dad. His dad who loves him, like none of the family Airplane had in his past life ever did.

So Airplane decides, well, MBJ is his favorite character he's ever created, but that was then. This is now. Now, Mobei Jun's gotta die.

He plans it out. It'll be quick, clean, almost painless even. Sneak into the northern palace by following one of MBJ's messengers. Lace MBJ's food with a potent sleeping tonic that even worked on Luo Binghe in PIDW, that can be made with ingredients pilfered from Qian Cao's stores. Bash his head in while he's unconscious. He won't even feel it, Luo Binghe will be down a powerful ally (that might mean he needs to spend a lot more time consolidating control of the northern demon kingdom, if he still goes down his fated path) and Airplane can go home and pretend he just sneaked out to do some dumb adolescent shit when SQH inevitably freaks out about him disappearing for that long.

Airplane gets as far as the "bash his head in" part of his plan, but he can't do it.

Unfortunately, the sleeping poison doesn't last for as long on MBJ as it did on LBH either. MBJ wakes up before Airplane can fully abandon ship, and captures him. He quickly figures out Airplane's from An Ding Peak, and thinks SQH has sent an unusually tiny assassin, but Airplane frantically averts that disaster by more or less telling him the truth: SQH didn't send him, he's SQH's son, he's worried his father is going to get killed and he came to try and kill MBJ first.

MBJ is like "then why didn't you?" and Airplane basically describes the scene from How to Train Your Dragon, where Hiccup can't bring himself to kill Toothless, which is just bizarre enough that MBJ finds it too confounding to just kill him outright.

So MBJ decides, okay, if you want to make this up to me, then you serve me too. Just like your dad. Swear fealty to me and if you serve me well enough, I'll spare your father even if he displeases me. It's kind of bullshit because MBJ is fully expecting to still probably kill them both eventually, but he's just kind of curious about this weird kid now. Wants to see where this goes, maybe.

Airplane goes back home to get grounded by SQH and to frantically try and come up with ways that a junior disciple with even fewer connections than SQH could "make himself valuable" enough to stave off MBJ's ruthlessness. Lucky he's the author, and he's pen pals with a guy who has an even better memory of the nonsense he wrote than he does. He starts putting together his own informant packets to slip in with SQH's, containing information that will be directly useful to MBJ, to help him solve his current problems and also keep him distracted routing out his uncle's spies and chasing down fabulous treasures that will help consolidate his own position.

He doesn't fret about explaining how he knows this stuff. This is too important! SQH's life is on the line! Airplane will tell everyone he's a mystical seer if he has to, okay?!

Meanwhile over at HHP, Shen Yuan is digging up intrigues of his own. Namely, backstory on Luo Binghe's mother! Well if he's going to be stuck here, he might as well, right? There was so little info about her in the book, and SY struggles to believe that Luo Binghe's own mother wouldn't want him (struggles to believe anyone wouldn't, always has), and the more he looks into the matter of Su Xiyan the sketchier the Old Palace Master gets, and the more dirty laundry he starts to uncover.

He'd initially entertained an idea of making the Old Palace Master aware of Luo Binghe's existence early, to maybe get him poached for HHP and away from SQQ, and had only struggled with how to explain him knowing it. But now he's not so sure that would be safe for LBH either. Which could backfire on him, of course! That's the important part. Mister Self-Preservation, that's Shen Yuan to a T alright.

Instead, he writes Airplane (in "their special bro code", which is very bad English) and Airplane writes back like oh yeah, in my drafts HHP is totally evil, here's what actually happened.

SY wishes he could long-distance throttle someone.

Instead he writes another letter, this time to YQY, and sends it away from HHP (to reduce the odds of someone intercepting it). The letter details all the dirt he's dug up on the Old Palace Master and the incident with Tianlang Jun.

Instead of being like "my god, that rotten palace master set us up to fight against an innocent demon!" though, YQY is just really worried as to why his ten-year-old son is spying on the sect he's supposed to be learning from. SY ought to be starting his basic cultivation exercises, making friends, and playing, why is he skulking around trying to implicate HHP in a scandal? YQY goes to SQQ like "did you ask him to do this?" and SQQ does not take that well, but then is like "did it never occur to you that maybe he's trying to impress you? that maybe he thinks if he can prove his loyalty to you enough, by giving you a bunch of dirt on a rival sect you shipped him off to, maybe you'll bring him back and make him a Qiong Ding disciple after all?"

SQQ is just waiting for YQY to call him on his bullshit, to point out that SQQ rejected their son first with his own stunt, to finally push back and do something to defend SY even if he wouldn't do the same for SJ. But YQY doesn't, because he's still blaming himself for everything anyway, so instead he goes back to his peak and agonizes about if there's a way for him to bring SY home at this stage without inciting a major diplomatic incident (there isn't, not yet anyway). Eventually he settles for writing SY a letter assuring him that YQY is very proud of him and that he's going to be a great cultivator and he should focus on that and not on, uh, very adult-oriented political intrigues?

SY reads this letter like "well that's nice but ultimately useless" and decides to just keep on quietly accumulating evidence. Also Gongyi Xiao has turned up which is good because SY needs a friend. Especially a friend who will eventually get clearance to all the parts of HHP he's politely barred from, since everyone in HHP is pretty sure he's a spy (he is, kind of, but it's still rude...)

Luckily, every two years HHP disciples get an opportunity to visit their homes and spend time with their families. Not every disciple takes this opportunity, but most of them bought their place into the sect anyway, so a lot of them do because their wealthy families want to maintain those connections. SY doesn't even have to ask, YQY goes and collects him in person (HHP trying to figure out why he'd want to go there in person the whole while, if it's an insult or a compliment or if he's angling for something), and then takes SY to Qing Jing Peak, trying to assure him the whole time that SJ also desperately missed him.

SY's not holding his breath on that, but at least it gets him in the vicinity of Luo Binghe. He has some vague ideas of using that (maybe gasping and going "oh my, that young man looks just like the drawings of former head disciple Su!" even though he's never seen a portrait of her, if he had they probably wouldn't have been that lifelike or accurate, and he doesn't even know for sure that LBH resembles his mother) but mostly he just wants to see the almighty protagonist in the flesh.

Young LBH lives up to expectations, but the situation isn't heartening. Shen Qingqiu has clearly not been treating him well. Luckily, YQY tries to leave SY with SJ so they can patch things up, and SJ almost immediately resumes being wherever SY is not, so Shen Yuan uses his magic SJ-repelling charms to shield LBH while he's on Qing Jing Peak. He also uses his son-of-the-sect-leader clout to convince Ming Fan that LBH should be let back into the dorms, conscripts Ning Yingying into getting the peak's servants (kitchen staff, cleaners, etc) sympathetic to LBH so they'll sneak him food even if he misses meals, and covertly replaces LBH's fake cultivation manual with a real one. But they're small measures at most, and he knows that there won't be much he can do to help or even maintain them once he's back at HHP.

SY @ Airplane: you gotta help Binghe more it's important that he's not miserable!

Airplane @ SY: I fixed up the woodshed real nice! I don't know what else you expect me to do when a whole entire peak lord is dead set against him and he lives on another mountain?? can't you convince your dad to be less shitty??

SY: if I had that kind of influence on him I would have already used it by now

Airplane: fair enough. btw mobei jun is blackmailing me, do you have an info on HHP movements that I can give to him to keep him off my dad's back?

The light bulb lights up, of course, when Airplane and SY realize that they do in fact know someone who would give a shit about the Huan Hua Palace Master's treachery against the old demon emperor, and the existence of Tianlang Jun's heir.

Arranging for MBJ to awaken Luo Binghe's demon blood early and take him away to the demon realms might not fix everything, but it's beginning to look like the least-bad of all the bad options they've got. SY and Airplane discuss it and decide to wait until after Sha Hualing's invasion. It means subjecting him to a bit more bullying on Qing Jing, but Luo Binghe should be strong enough by then that awakening his demon heritage won't kill him, especially if his cultivation training improves compared to canon, and he'll have met the dream demon and begun to gain unique skills of his own by then. Which is important in case it backfires, as SY adamantly insists. They don't want to make things worse! In the meanwhile, Airplane will slowly feed MBJ the evidence of the Old Palace Master's misdeeds that SY has accumulated, and SY will try and figure out a way to discourage SQQ from using LBH as his own personal punching bag as much as possible.

SY tries being like, hey dad, you know that incredibly awful thing you did to me where you left me out to dry during my initiation ceremony? Well there's something I want you to do to make it up to me. And SJ is like, I have no idea what you're referring to, your father sent you off to rich kid boarding school, you have no problems in life you ungrateful brat. So SY's like, haha yeah, anyway, stop beating children. And SJ's like, how dare you, that is the least reasonable request one person has ever made of another.

Unfortunately SY doesn't think of a better approach before his vacation family visit is over, but he at least is clever enough not to mention LBH by name, because that would almost certainly make things worse for him instead of better. He opts not to heavily hint at LBH's heritage to YQY either, because he doesn't trust YQY not to interpret that as "a demon has infiltrated my sect" rather than "I should stop my shidi from abusing the probable heir to the demon empire" and again, it might make more problems for LBH than it solves.

He could, at this point, probably just get LBH killed. Which would protect everyone from the plotline. But he doesn't think the world is liable to let its protagonist go and he doesn't want LBH to actually get hurt. Such a plan could backfire terribly if it didn't work, too.

Oh that pesky risk of backfires. If it weren't for those, SY would definitely be more ruthless. For sure. He's the mean one, not like nice, laid back Airplane (who already planned and attempted an assassination.)

The best path forward in this universe is definitely either avoiding the protagonist entirely (not an option now) or else hugging his thighs tight.

Thigh-hugging it is!

Shen Yuan starts writing letters to Luo Binghe when he's back at HHP, telling LBH it's for the pleasure of having another person to write letters to. To help cover his ass, he also writes Ning Yingying and Ming Fan more often too. In his letters to LBH he makes sure to include cultivation tips, some light blackmail on Ming Fan, and information on secluded and secret places on the peak where a disciple in need of some peace and quiet might go to avoid other people.

Time passes. Airplane feeds MBJ the right information for it to get back to Sha Hualing when YQY leaves the peaks, and Sha Hualing launches her invasion. It goes more or less like in PIDW. LBH alludes to a highly edited version of events in a letter to Shen Yuan, which downplays SQQ's awfulness, but Airplane sends him the unvarnished version -- poor Airplane was genuinely worried for a minute that SJ would make him fight the third match instead of LBH, but either being blood related to YQY or concern over what SQH would do to him if he tried it or the greater cosmic villain mandate that he persecute the protagonist won out over that impulse. He threw LBH onto the sacrificial altar instead.

Now, from Luo Binghe's perspective, Shen Yuan's niceness is just a further condemnation of Shen Qingqiu's tyranny. The rumors in Cang Qiong are basically: YQY fathered two sons on two other peak lords in an incident that is not to be discussed, but speculation on it ranges from pretty much the truth to a torrid three way affair to YQY trying to turn the entire sect into his personal harem. Airplane is beloved by Shang Qinghua and is cloistered away on An Ding Peak like a beautiful maiden whose mother fears for her virtue. Shen Yuan, however, is shunned and neglected by Shen Qingqiu, who has never forgiven Yue Qingyuan for cheating on him with Shang Qinghua. But Shen Yuan is the sect leader's favorite son, because he is the more talented. On QJP, they only whisper it, but on other peaks it's common gossip that Yue Qingyuan sent Shen Yuan away so that his other father wouldn't ruin his potential out of spite.

LBH, hearing this about the subject of his burgeoning crush, is like, oh okay so Shizun's just a horrible person then? That explains a lot actually. Whew, glad it's not me who is the problem!

So when SY comes back for his second visit home, he's pleasantly relieved to find that LBH is less badly treated and less fucked up about SQQ hating his guts than he'd been in PIDW. He's still not got it easy by any stretch, and the relationship between him and the other disciples is tense at best, but he's only sleeping in the woodshed sometimes and his cultivation is progressing despite the obstacles.

Still, time for MBJ to step in, before they run the risk of the Immortal Alliance Conference and Endless Abyss happening.

Airplane thinks they should arrange things so that Luo Binghe gets outed as a demon, so that he can't easily come back to the righteous sects and set up any retribution against Cang Qiong. Shen Yuan thinks that's a bad idea since it means Luo Binghe would suffer has fewer subtler outlets for vengeance if he goes after it, and that more violent methods like outright warfare would still inevitably swing in his favor. They agree to set it up in secret, then, and take Luo Binghe out on a quest together where MBJ will "attack" them, unlock LBH's demon blood, and whisk him away to go learn about the other half of his abilities.

Best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Luo Binghe manages to escape instead of being captured by MBJ, carting SY off (abandoning Airplane, poor Airplane) and protesting that he's not an evil demon. SY has to improvise, and so ends up telling LBH that he already knew or at least suspected, and explaining about Su Xiyan and TLJ -- pulling out his bullshit "I saw a portrait of SXY in HHP and you look just like her" explanation for this apparent act of divination, and explaining the rest as part of his own investigation into the Old Palace Master, as a concerned disciple of HHP.

Luo Binghe figures out that SY and Airplane setup the encounter with Mobei Jun, and they both beg his forgiveness and tell him it was the only thing they could come up with to get him some training on his demonic cultivation and get him away from the righteous sects, who might, y'know, kill him for the whole demon thing.

LBH is touched that SY doesn't care about his being a demon beyond the threat it poses to him. And Airplane's cool too, he supposes. But he's also a little suspicious and wary of it though. What if they're lying? To be fair, they kind of are, but not about their indifference to LBH's demonic heritage. So Airplane points out that him even knowing MBJ at all could be used against him if LBH wants leverage, and SY is his loyal bro who wouldn't want him to get into trouble either. LBH decides to accept their explanations at face value.

However, he doesn't go with MBJ. He has the dream demon to tutor him in his demonic abilities, and he's heard scary things about the demon kingdoms and doesn't want to go there. In all fairness, Mobei Jun doesn't give the impression that he'd be a kinder teacher than Shen Qingqiu either. MBJ is also thoroughly unhelpful because if LBH wants to look a gift horse in the mouth, that's fine. He thinks LBH should take his very generous offer, but he's not going to hold his hand through it either, and is perfectly willing to abandon him to whatever other fate he chooses to pursue.

SY and Airplane can't talk LBH out of it without either making it sound like they think SQQ is an evil serial killer or that they actually want to drive LBH out of the sect, undermining their insistence that they don't hate demons, so the whole thing's mostly a wash and they have to go back to Cang Qiong with him.

Before SY finishes his latest family visit, he goes to SQQ again and is like, okay. I know you have issues. I know we don't talk about it because neither of us likes to talk about it. Honestly, I would also love to leave your skeletons in the closet and politely pretend they don't exist, but you keep taking your shit out on innocent bystanders and it's not good. And SQQ is like, I don't want to have this conversation (although part of me actually does) so I'm going to accuse you of being unfilial for even bringing it up. So SY is like, stop beating kids. And SJ is like, oh so I guess that makes me the bad guy does it? I'm the bad guy who abuses children? It's that what you're saying? That I mistreated you? I never laid a hand on you! And SY is like, I'm not talking about me, and SJ is like oh of course you're not, you're such a little saint, only concerned with others and never with the bullshit you get put through, only a selfish fiend like your old man would care about his own mistreatment, and SY is like if I had a toxic argument bingo card it would almost be full by now, why are you like this?

Which means they still don't get anywhere trying the "genuine conversation about SJ's problems" route. But SY was prepared for total failure this time, so he deploys his backup, which is bribery.

If SQQ promises to stop mistreating his disciples, even if he really doesn't like them, even if he thinks he has every right to harm them, then SY will go back to HHP and not return to Qing Jing Peak again unless SQQ specifically asks him to. SQQ can finally be rid of seeing SY's face ever again, if he wants. All he has to do is make this promise and keep it (SY will know if he doesn't.)

Surprisingly, this almost doesn't work either. SJ gets very upset and accuses Shen Yuan of wanting to never see him again, to which SY is like, what? You avoided me my whole childhood. Did you think I didn't notice? Which just makes SJ more agitated, but finally SJ does what he usually does, which is double-down on whatever he sees as the worst option. So SY hates him and never wants to see him again? Fine. SJ will agree to his little bargain, his pretending at saintly motives in insisting that his evil father not harm other children as the price for this supposed self-sacrifice, and give Shen Yuan the excuse he obviously desires to stay away from him. But he won't let him have it unless SY admits that he hates SQQ.

Shen Yuan means to do it. To claim that he hates his dad. His actual feelings are way more complex and surprisingly little hatred comes into it, but he can lie, can't he? To try and save their lives? If it's him saying he hates Shen Qingqiu or Shen Qingqiu getting turned into a human stick, that's a no-brainer, isn't it? Kids say dumb stuff when they're upset all the time anyway. SY doesn't even need to try to seem upset, he already is! He could probably even manage a few tears of frustration at this point if he stopped holding back!

And yet.

The words won't come.

"I'm worried that one day you're going to hurt someone who really won't forgive you. Someone who will demand you be paid back for every injury you've inflicted against them," he finds himself admitting instead.

SQQ doesn't seem to know what to say to that. SY doesn't know how to follow it up either. So he just leaves, defeated, with no bargain struck and no other ideas yet about how to get SQQ to stop being a massive shithead. He hasn't completely given up, though!

It's not that he thinks there's a better person in SJ, deep down. But he thinks SJ is aware of his own unfairness, and for some reason has just resigned himself to being "the bad guy". So he actually doesn't have to convince SJ that what he's doing is wrong, he just has to get SJ to realize that he can be better than that, if he wants to. There are glimmers of hope and SY sees enough of the hurt too that he can't completely write SJ off.

On Airplane's end of things, meanwhile, MBJ has definitely determined that either SQH knows way more than he's let on and has been holding enough back that a child makes for a better informant, or else Airplane is some kind of mystical seer. Given those options, Airplane opts to be like "definitely I am a mystical seer", and MBJ decides that's worth more than a dozen sketchy Cang Qiong spies and he should just kidnap him and cut ties with SQH.

Airplane talks him out of it. He's like, if you take me to your frozen demon palace that's still half full of murderous demon nobles who like your uncle better, I will definitely die. I am a squishy fourteen-year-old human who is still working on basic core formation, there are so many things that can kill me. As soon as you take your eyes off of me I will die like a misbegotten pet store fish put into the wrong kind of water. Then you will probably have to defend against YQY seeking retribution, if only for the principle of the thing, and he's actually super tough. He beat TLJ, after all, he will almost definitely kill you. I'm psychic so I know these things.

And MBJ is like, not totally convinced, but also doesn't know enough about squishy fourteen-year-old humans to refute it. So fine. Airplane can stay with his dad, for now, but one day MBJ is going to carry him off.

This is wonderful! Great! Not terrifying at all!

Things are going well.

To make matters even better, the Immortal Alliance Conference keeps looming closer, with all its potential for disaster. SY gets involved with organizing a lot of it on the HHP and is like, hey you know what would be fun? If we changed the venue completely! But HHP has been setting this up since before SY was a disciple, and moving it to be held in some other location is not easy and SY can't come up with a compelling enough reason for it anyway, so that suggestion is ignored. So then SY is like, well at least I don't have to personally attend, but HHP is letting basically all their younger disciples participate, anyone who volunteers, and some of those kids are NOT skilled enough even for the normal level of the competition. So SY has to go and try and keep the little ones from getting killed.

He and Airplane are both just turned 16 when the Immortal Alliance Conference inevitably arrives.

YQY places the exact same bet on each of his sons breaking top five in the rankings. SQH bets a lot on Airplane winning (An Ding Peak has been doing very well these past years, and has gone from being overlooked and maligned to functionally being the second most influential peak in the sect), and the SJ decides he's going to place a matching bet on SY winning, which YQY agrees to cover, which makes SQH grind his teeth.

So the passive-aggressive digs and bitching are in fine form when the contest starts.

Initially the disciples strike out on their own, except for SY, who rounds up the weakest and least talented HHP kids and has them all dragging along with him, halving his glory from any opponents they do encounter and slowing down his progress across the field. SQH at first is like "how... noble your son is, Shen-shixiong, to tolerate such dead weight hanging from his coattails" all false honey and implied insult for his poor strategy, but then SJ is like "he gets it from the sect leader" and that shuts him up.

And anyway, Airplane eventually circles back to rejoin SY and then sticks with him, so Shen Yuan's problems are shared. Luo Binghe does too, which gives Gongyi Xiao an edge in taking the lead, at least until some HHP disciples ignore SY's admonishments to avoid the water and they get attacked by a monster of far too high a level for the competition. Then of course the spirit eagles start dying, and it becomes apparent that something has gone really wrong.

SY and Airplane of course already knew something like this would happen, and have been preparing talismans for more than a year in advance. Rather than traveling to a place with natural defenses, they set up where they are, only moving further inland to erect a barrier and then start fending off anything that attacks them. Luckily Luo Binghe decided to stick with them, so they don't have to go find him. Gongyi Xiao and Liu Mingyan catch up them with in short order too, bringing another flock of weaker disciples along, most of whom can at least help fortify the barrier.

SQH gets to them first, but there are other disciples in the gorge in far more danger and their condition is stable, so they are left for the time being while everyone goes to rescue those in worse shape and to try and create a safe opening and guard it against letting any monsters escape (YQY and LQG's job). SY and Airplane are just beginning to think they might get out of this without SQQ even turning up, when the black moon python rhino shows up and breaks through their barrier.

Then it's chaos. Even with a lot of planning, SY and Airplane are both still sixteen-year-old disciples with only a few years of active cultivating under their belts. Luo Binghe and Gongyi Xiao are older, but not more experienced, and only Luo Binghe has nigh-godly natural talents under his belt (and most of those can't be used without revealing his demonic heritage).

The broken barrier lets other monsters through, and the disciples begin fighting for their lives. Somehow SY and Airplane get separated, and Airplane almost gets eviscerated by ghost head spiders until Mobei Jun shows up and carries him off instead. SY nearly gets trampled by the python rhino, but Luo Binghe intercedes, using his demonic abilities to fend the beast off.

Which is when Shen Qingqiu reaches their group.

TBC

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.

More Demon Saint Shen Yuan.

Shen Yuan resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he endured more of his older sister's griping about the loss at Cang Qiong.

Give him a break, okay? He couldn't win that match! The stupid, worthless System that he had transmigrated with had perked up for the first time in literal years to start badgering him about how Luo Binghe had to win or else it would deduct enough points to guarantee him a one-way ticket back to being a corpse. He had tried to tell her that it wasn't his fault, but he supposed that from the outside, it probably did look a lot like he'd deliberately sabotaged her.

Oh well. That kind of thing really wasn't unexpected between demon siblings.

Actually, the two of them got along unusually well considering that they were expected to be trying to kill one another for their inheritance. Sha Hualing had never been Shen Yuan's favorite wife when he first read the novel 'Proud Immortal Demon Way', which was the setting for the world he had transmigrated into. She was just too mean and vicious and interwoven with all the stupid harem intrigue plots that he liked least about the story. But she was still a prominent character, a popular and even iconic one, and it had been exciting in a way to realize that he had transmigrated into a demon NPC.

Though, being a man in the world of a stallion novel was a dangerous proposition unless one was the stallion in question. Shen Yuan's only hope lay in that he was the male relative of a main wife, someone who could at least expect not to become the direct target of the protagonist's ire as long as he didn't make the mistake of becoming said wife's 'evil' relative. Given that, Shen Yuan had always gone to great lengths to make it clear to his older sister that he didn't want to inherit their father's lands or titles, that he was much too lazy and more interested in things like the arts and writing, and was additionally more interested in playing with frivolous things from the human realms than in conquering anybody.

For some reason, this led to many demons in their father's court to refer to in the same breath as the old Junshang, Tianlang-Jun. Luo Binghe's mysterious father. But at least Sha Hualing saw him more as a lackey than a threat, and only sometimes got suspicious of him or tried to sabotage his own doings.

In light of recent events, Shen Yuan knew to expect her to retaliate somehow. She had already mangled his hair piece, which was an emblem of his rank. Father would probably punish him for letting it be destroyed, though he wouldn't punish her for destroying it. Those were the kinds of standards that he had for such things. However, he knew she wasn't seriously rejecting him, because she'd still deigned to smack him around.

As counter-intuitive as it was to the human part of his brain, the smacking around stuff meant he was still accepted as 'didi' and hadn't moved to being a serious threat in Hualing's eyes. If he'd really fucked up, she would have begun ignoring him or else outright trying to kill him. Demons healed from injuries ridiculously fast, especially demons from the more powerful lineages. Shen Yuan's broken arm had all but completely fixed itself by the time they got back to the southern realms, and his sister's smacks barely even registered as painful when they'd landed. He supposed this explained why demons were generally more violent towards their loved ones. For them a few stab wounds or some broken ribs were little more than love taps.

He struggled to return that kind of affection, but he made a point to smack Sha Hualing's arm when she left an opening. She huffed at him, but she also (finally!) settled down after that.

"At least I saved us some shred of dignity by winning my match," she grumbled. “Even if I was the only fucking one!”

Their father's lackeys, the soldiers she'd hand-picked for her scheme, all but fell over themselves agreeing that of course the young Saint had been incredible, powerful, strong, amazing, blah blah blah. Shen Yuan wandered off to let them puff up her ego, escaping to his own rooms to go lick his wounds in peace.

It wasn't as if he didn't have any pride. That match had been legitimately harrowing! Figuring out how to let Luo Binghe win without just tossing aside his spear and forfeiting on the spot wasn't easy! The System had told him that wouldn't work, though, and even he could concede that it would have made no sense. He'd wanted to throttle Hualing when she'd suddenly decided to pick him for the third match.

Though... as he finally settled behind the door to his rooms and sealed it behind him, Shen Yuan could admit that it had been kind of cool.

He'd finally met the protagonist!

He did a little jump for joy.

Luo Binghe shone with the glory of a thousand suns! His aura was almost too much to handle. Not only that, but he was somehow too pretty for words. Still young, of course, but a promising figure on the cusp of his manhood, with beautiful features and a compelling aura of potential. Small wonder that the ladies would soon start falling all over themselves to win his favor. It had taken a lot of effort on Shen Yuan's part not to try and whisk him away from his scum master and the abuses of his disciple days.

Luo Binghe, come live in the demonic realms right now! There are still plenty of things that will try to kill you, but at least they're honest about it?

That was, of course, an absolutely ridiculous proposal, so he'd had to bite his tongue and ended up saying too many other things instead.

To think that poor kid was going to end up in the Endless Abyss in the near future! It really was unfair. Sure he was forged in the fires of that trial, but seeing him in person, anyone would seethe at the injustice of it.

Or worry about the results. After all, as soon as that kid got out of the Abyss, his next stop was the demonic realms. Specifically, conquering them. Shen Yuan wasn't exactly attached to his demon father, but he didn't look forward to the kind upheaval his death would cause either. But that would be how things would go. First Luo Binghe would subdue the North and win Mobei-Jun's allegiance. Then he'd turn his gaze out towards the rest of the realms, and form an alliance with Sha Hualing. Their father would die, Hualing would inherit, and through her Luo Binghe would take control of enough of the minor kingdoms and fiefdoms to be named Junshang. Only after that would he return to the human world and start ingratiating himself to Huan Hua Palace. Who knew how Shen Yuan would fit into that plot? Hopefully he could scrape by as an unremarkable side character, without also getting dragged into too many of his sister's schemes. His best bet was to remain her loyal subordinate, and yet, that put him in the position of having to back her up even when she was concocting frankly terrible schemes.

He would have to be careful not to cross the line from being the ally of one wife to the enemy of others too, considering that most of Hualing's targets were Binghe's other wives. Hualing would never be punished. But her disposable, adjacent male relative?

Shen Yuan shook his head. He wouldn't say his life as a demon prince had been easy so far, but it was probably going to be a cakewalk compared to what was coming next!

"So how did the glorious invasion go?"

The sudden intrusion of a familiar voice into his musings was startling, but Shen Yuan suppressed his reaction and did not show it. Instead he just sighed in exasperation.

How this development had occurred was still unclear to him. Granted, the novel hadn't gone into much detail at all about what state the Elder Dream Demon was in before he met Luo Binghe, but obviously he was incorporeal, and in some contact with the Sha clan of demons in order for Sha Hualing to set him onto Luo Binghe after his surprise victory.

Shen Yuan had known to be somewhat on the lookout for him, but in his defense he had been born into this new life as an infant. He had a lot on his plate! Relearning how to do absolutely everything, plus navigating the weird social norms of demon society, and trying to figure out how to be a 'good' brother despite his father basically throwing him and all of his siblings into a fighting pit and encouraging them to thin the herd. He'd had a lot more older brothers and sisters than just Hualing back then, and hadn’t done his welfare a lot of favors by throwing himself between his plot-relevant sister and all the bigger, meaner siblings who were out for her blood. But somehow he had managed to survive, despite being perfectly unwilling to murder baby demons. Well, to be fair most of them had only really died during the adolescent trials that started at age ten, which he tried desperately not to remember or think about at all.

It had only been a couple of years ago that he had to start worrying about the plot itself, and it was around that time too when he'd followed Hualing into sneaking into one of the fortress vaults, and picked up a weird looking statue. The statue drew his attention because such crafts were pretty rare in the demonic realms, and most commonly stolen from humans.

But this one didn't look like any of the usual human designs. In fact, it looked distinctly evil in nature. Shen Yuan couldn't have even said what it was supposed to be a sculpture of. It was a little larger than his palm and very abstract, depicting swooping whorls and eyes, grasping, clawed hands, and the implication of entwined figures. It reminded him more of modern horror art from the world he'd left behind than an ancient artifact, but a lot of 'demonic culture' items were pretty much ripped straight from anime and Hollywood aesthetics. Shout out to the hack author for his stunning originality.

The sculpture had begun to glow, and then it had spoken. And then Shen Yuan found out that he'd accidentally picked up Meng Mo's tomb.

Or anchor. Coffin. Totem? Whatever one wanted to call it. The sculpture was currently helping keep what was left of the dream demon somewhat connected to this world after losing his body, though it had been running low of energy to sustain him. The System had chimed in to let him know that he needed to ensure it didn't run out, and Shen Yuan had dutifully tried to foist the object onto his sister, but it hadn't worked. Hualing must have taken it herself in the original story. If he'd been smarter, Shen Yuan would have thought to pretend he desperately wanted the object. That would have had her stealing it from him in no time. But instead he tried to give it away, and she'd been instantly suspicious and refused to touch it.

Which left him saddled with the annoying old geezer.

Usually Shen Yuan kept him in his study, not the main room, but ever since he began feeding more energy into the statue, Meng Mo had gained a supernatural ability to move it around. He liked to spy on people even outside of dreams, and seemed particularly fond of turning up on Shen Yuan's desks and tables and demanding tributes or respect or attention. Like an ill-behaved cat that was also a cursed tchotchke.

"Why aren't you in your spot?" he groused.

The statue glowed faintly as the dream demon chuckled. Parts of it shifted around so that one of the eye-shaped pieces seemed to stare at him.

"It went that well, huh? What a shame, I thought that sister of yours might have a chance if none of the peak lords were around."

"One of the peak lords showed up," Shen Yuan admitted.

"Hm, I'm surprised you're not dead in that case."

"It was only one."

The System chose that moment to chime in, sounding fainter and looking a bit more flimsy than it had when he had been in Luo Binghe's presence, when it had opted to start yelling at him over point deductions. He wondered if it worked less well when the protagonist wasn't around. Yet another good reason to try and avoid the plot, he supposed. Though the System's intervention in his life had been minimal so far, almost all of it involved threatening him with death unless he cooperated, and saddling him with troublesome things like Meng Mo.

Plot Point: Luo Binghe's Demon Tutor is a necessary component of the narrative. Please ensure the Elder Dream Demon encounters Luo Binghe and accepts him as a student. Warning: failure to comply will result in loss of B points.

See? Like that!

At least this presented an opportunity to get rid of a certain freeloader, and get Luo Binghe the teacher he desperately needed in the same stroke.

"Say, Elder, do you know of any cases where a demon had their potential sealed, and pretended to live as a human?" he asked, suddenly very interested in the prospect of getting this plot going. Meng Mo wasn't really so bad, he supposed, but he'd be happier to send him off to help Luo Binghe and wouldn't weep for the number of inkwells no longer passive-aggressively knocked off his writing desk. Or the hassle of having to find stuff to feed the old bastard.

"That's a strange thing to ask," Meng Mo replied. Shen Yuan could hear the frown in his voice, but also an underlying note of intrigue.

"When the peak lord showed up at the invasion, Da'jie proposed a series of duels to resolve the issue without us all getting slaughtered. I fought a young disciple, but his power was strange. He fought more like a demon youth than the other humans did," he explained.

"Hm," Meng Mo replied. The statue twisted around in his perception, shifting in minute, eerie ways that Shen Yuan had never been able to concretely pin down. He couldn't have said which pieces went from one place to another. "Sealing demonic power happens, but if that was the case, such a person would be too weak and devoid of talent to ever be taken in by human cultivators. Humans can't just train any one of them up to potential. Most of them don't even have an ounce of ability to cultivate, which is why they're so weak. It's only a few who can ever be on the level of demonkind."

Shen Yuan rolled his eyes. Yes, yes, demon superiority, blah blah blah. It was a complicated social issue in its way, since demons, despite being overall stronger, struggled as communities. It might have been different if demons could live in the human realm, which was a lot less harsh, but there were enough human cultivators to ensure that they were always beaten back or hunted down any time they tried. Demon culture had a lot to say about the superiority of living in a region full of big hostile beasts and plants that would either fuck you or eat you or both, but given half the chance, most would probably love to live where the fortress walls didn't have to be meters thick or buried underground. The only downside would be potentially eating their way through the whole ecosystem and then accidentally starving as a result. But then again, it wasn’t as if humans didn’t routinely do that sort of thing too.

"Well what if he had some potential anyway?" he suggested.

"Ha! For that kind of thing to work, your little disciple would have to be a rare kind of halfbreed," Meng Mo mused. "Nearly impossible. I've lived a long time and even I only ever heard tales of such things."

"Nearly impossible?" Shen Yuan pressed.

"Extremely unlikely. Especially if he’s part human. Even strictly among different kinds of demons, most hybrids that survive infancy just strongly favor one parent or the other. Or else they turn out ugly freaks. Was this kid an ugly freak?"

"No!" Shen Yuan insisted. "He was beautiful!"

There was an awkward pause.

"...So your interest in this human disciple, it's...?"

For some reason he felt a little flustered.

"He just seemed weird, alright? I thought you might know. But if Elder doesn't-"

"Hold on, hold on, when did I say I didn't know? You're the one making snap judgments here, all this elder has to go off is some brat's description of another brat! If I saw him, I'd be able to tell you!"

Shen Yuan resisted the urge to pump his fist in victory.

"Okay then, you should go tonight," he agreed.

"What? Go where?"

"Into his dreams, obviously. How else are you going to assess him?"

The statue flickered a bit.

"Now wait just a minute, it takes a lot of energy to do that kind of thing," the old demon protested. "I'm not going into some brat's dreams on the whims of your say-so, just because he's got a pretty face..."

"What's his face got to do with anything?!"

"Kids these days, thinking they can just boss their elders around, there's no respect-"

"Are you telling me that the great and mighty Master Dream Demon, who terrorized generations of demons so badly that the mere mention of his name was considered a curse, doesn't have the strength to go spy on a simple human disciple? Even after all the tributes I've given? How pathetic. I guess I'll just throw this old rock out into the trash," Shen Yuan goaded, moving towards the table that Meng Mo had situated himself on.

"Mouthy fucking brat! You wouldn't dare!" the dream demon protested.

"What good are you to me if you're so weak?" Shen Yuan reasoned, well-acquainted with demonic cultural attitudes on this point. Such a shitty eat-or-be-eaten kind of a world. Didn't the author know these tropes were unenlightened and problematic these days?

"Weak, who's weak? Of course I can do it! But it's been so long since you gave me any energy at all, why waste it?"

"I fed you before I left!"

"And I spent that energy well, entertaining your mother in her dreams!"

Shen Yuan made a rude gesture at the sculpture, but the old demon just cackled. The jab didn't really land anyway. Shen Yuan didn't mind his mother in this lifetime, but she wasn't terribly maternal. Mostly she treated him like an investment which she expected to see pay dividends someday, and was disappointed in his lack of ambition or willingness to murder his older sister. But she was one of the lord's favored concubines, not his main wife, and also not interested in being killed by the main wife, who was Hualing's mother. So she was pretty diplomatic and circumspect about her disappointment in him, and focused most of her attention on keeping his father's favor. If she really was fooling around with Meng Mo on the side, he just didn't want to know.

"I'm dumping you in the trash," he insisted again.

"Alright, alright, calm down! I'll spy on this pretty boy of yours for you. But after that, you better bring me something good! Dream Jade or dragon scales!"

Shen Yuan made a show of disagreeing, mostly because those kinds of offerings, though rich in energy that could sustain the dream demon, were pretty expensive and hard to come by. No one would agree to that sort of deal easily. But of course, Meng Mo would not be able to collect once he latched on to Luo Binghe and started using his energy to sustain himself, so in the end he agreed and let Meng Mo gloat (as much as a disembodied voice and a weird sculpture could) before shoving him in a desk drawer as retribution.

"Disrespectful little ingrate!" the dream demon shouted after him.

Figuring that his rooms would be too noisy for a while, Shen Yuan headed out again and made his way to the eastern courtyard, where his youngest siblings could be found.

They were the children of less favored concubines. He felt badly for them, but there also wasn't much he could do without challenging his father directly, and if he did that he would have a hell of a mess on his hands even if he managed to actually beat him. Which wasn't likely, at least not at his current level. Even though he was smarter than the average child thanks to his memories, he was only thirteen years old. He still wasn't even as big as Hualing, who was quite petite, and despite his potential he wasn't the kind of thirteen-year-old that could beat up opponents more than twice his size. Not unless they were pretty weak. His father was built like an ox, in the standard fictional paradox of the big ugly man whose daughter was still somehow dainty and fair, and had crushed lesser demons to death with his bare hands.

In other words, his father wasn't a pushover and there was a reason he was acknowledged as one of the most powerful rulers around.

But in the meanwhile, Shen Yuan at least tried to make sure his younger siblings hadn't yet been completely poisoned by the might-makes-right nature of demon society. They were pretty cute in fact, despite that they all seemed to love biting him. And biting anything else that got within biting range.

"Da'ge! Da'ge!" the little voices chirped as soon as he finished passing through the tunnel that led to the above-ground courtyard. Over in this part of the fortress the weather was less kind, and dust storms had passed over the walls, making everything taste like ash and grit. He covered half of his face with his high collar, but let himself be mobbed by little demons.

"Did Da'ge bring snacks?"

"Treats? Treats for Meimei?"

"Did Da-jie get killed by mad cultivators?"

"Can we eat her bones?"

"Don't be stupid! Da'ge will have eaten her bones first! Right after her heart!"

"Wouldn't Ge save us a little of her bones? Just the bones! I'm sure he would!"

Shen Yuan sighed. Well, maybe he was deluding himself if he thought they weren't already vicious little fiends. He reached into the storage pocket of one of his sleeves, and pulled some live lizards and frogs out. With a mental apology to the poor creatures, he let them go. His younger siblings cheered like he'd poured out a bag of candy, and immediately set about catching them and trying to shove them into their mouths.

Back when he was such an age, Shen Yuan had worried his mother by refusing to eat anything that was still alive.

"Da'jie didn't get killed," he explained. "She's perfectly alright, so no one can eat any of her bones or her organs at all."

A chorus of disappointed groans greeted this announcement. mitigated only by the crunching of lizards between tiny, sharp teeth.

Honestly, Shen Yuan had no idea why they were so struck on the notion of Hualing dying. Did he seem like the kind of guy who ought to be in charge of a demon fortress? Not that he expected a bunch of feral demon babies to understand the burdens of leadership, but still. According to most demon standards they should have been bigger fans of Hualing. Then again, maybe she got these conversations in reverse whenever she happened to visit?

He wouldn't put it past his little siblings to play all the angles. Demon kids just grew up that way. Whoever was the strongest in the room, that was who you sucked up to unless you were the strongest in the room!

Shen Yuan watched as they caught the last of their slippery prey, and broke up a few fights over the legs, before he let himself be used as a jungle gym. The feral buns clambered over him and tugged at his sleeves and his spirit ribbons, chewing on his hair and biting at his ankles. He swung them up and tossed them into the air, and roughhoused with them for a while. Honestly even with demon instincts he didn't care much for hurting them, but if he didn't leave at least a few tiny bruises they got upset and confused, so it was a balancing act. And it did sort of satisfy something in his instincts to make playful growling noises and put on a big fake display of pain any time one of them jumped on him.

Sometimes not-so-fake after all; those little elbows were pointy, and the milk teeth were sharp.

Eventually their mothers came back from their hunts, bringing whatever spoils they could collect from the windswept wilds beyond the fortress. Sometimes low-ranking concubines and slaves tried to run, but the terrain outside was difficult to navigate and they almost always got brought back by one of his father's servants, so usually it was only the newcomers who made the attempt. And of course, sometimes they didn't make it back for other reasons. Shen Yuan lingered just long enough to be sure they'd caught something and that everyone had returned in one piece, then he pried his little siblings off and made his way back out again, not eager to intrude on the fullness of meal time. It wasn't pretty.

He'd tried not to make a lot of uncomfortable things that went on in the fortress his business. It was just asking for trouble. But it was easier said than done, when one spent their life being raised in such a place, and came to it with sensibilities forged by a different society.

Shen Yuan was the type of person who could easily settle in if he was reasonably safe and distracted, even if the circumstances weren't ideal. That was how he had managed most of his first life. But that approach depended on a certain minimum of comfort, a decent place to hunker down and hide from the problems of the world. The demon realms offered few such places, and those that existed were temporary in nature. A person couldn't become too comfortable or complacent or else they'd soon become dead. And as to distractions, well, books were not really all that popular among demons. He owned more than anyone else around, and the collection had taken a lot longer to build than it took to read.

So he found other things to keep him from dwelling on some of the ugly realities vying for his attention. But that meant getting involved, like it or not.

He probably shouldn't have gone along with Hualing on her invasion, even though she'd ordered him to. It was courting trouble to even look upon the protagonist. And yet, he couldn't resist.

Shaking such thoughts away, Shen Yuan pursued his next distraction. He headed for the fortress stables.

Demons mostly did not ride, and what they rode was not any normal type of horse. But his father kept a grand carriage for making processions. Until recently, that carriage had been pulled by decently strong slaves, who were themselves not treated much better than beasts of burden. Shen Yuan was no moral paragon but he found the situation intolerable, so over the past several years he had painstakingly trained some of the Dark Sea Hippo Oxen that ranged in the marshes to the southeast, and then convinced his father to give the slaves to Hualing and use the trained oxen to pull his grand carriage instead. The beasts looked a lot more impressive, and his sister was content to have big demons move her furniture and look cool whenever they flanked her on her diplomatic trips. Such trips were increasingly frequent, supposedly to secure her a good match.

Not that his sister actually put any sincere effort into that goal. Shen Yuan had no worries about Hualing being married off, and wouldn't have worried even if she'd shown the slightest interest in the prospect. She just went along with it because it let her take vacations away from their father.

The downside to this arrangement, however, was that the Dark Sea Hippo Oxen only ever really seemed to listen to Shen Yuan. He'd tried to instruct some of the servants in their care, but it was slow going. He wasn't sure if it was just the nature of the servants he'd been assigned or if all demons struggled with the concept of domesticated livestock, or if they just didn't want the job and knew he wouldn't have them executed for failing, but the end result was that he'd mostly put them in charge of cleaning the stalls and did everything else himself. Luckily the big beasts were pretty self-sufficient, as long as there was a comfortable place to sleep and food to eat they came back to the stables, and if they didn't then Shen Yuan needed to only go out with a bell and some treats and eventually they'd come back to him.

The Hippo Oxen had broad backs that could easily carry ten of him. Shen Yuan opened the gate from the stables to let them out, checking first that the dust storm had indeed passed over them, and then hopped up on the biggest to ride out. The two stable servants scattered as if they feared being trampled, even though there was plenty of room.

He sprawled like he was on a comfortable couch as the herd set out, watching the oxen to make certain none were limping or showing signs of discomfort. They'd all been stuck in a thicket of carnivorous dragon plants when he'd first found them, struggling and miserable as they slowly suffocated in the relentless vines. It had taken some doing to get them out, but they'd each made a good recovery, and being demonic beasts they were especially durable. The only real worry was if someone in the fortress tried to poison them or something, but so far no one had dared to.

The air tasted dry and the wind carried grit over to them. After a while Shen Yuan drew one of his war fans and waved it, channeling a thread of demonic qi into the motion. The gust cleared the air ahead of them. Senior Hippo Ox grunted in approval, while a couple of the younger ones made the earth shake as they hopped happily up and down and uncovered a big patch of mud.

That was his cue to get down!

He slid off of Senior Hippo Ox's back and moved away, letting the big beasts go splash around in the fresh mud pit and forage among the vibrant plants at the bank. When he was satisfied that nothing really dangerous was around, he took a seat on a nearby patch of earth and pulled some drawing tools and paper from his storage sleeve.

He mixed some crude ink (his own recipe), and then he sketched the oxen. It was his millionth attempt, and he'd definitely been no artist before his rebirth, but he thought he was getting better. He'd abandoned trying to make realistic looking renderings and instead focused on stylized versions, letting the kinds of strokes he could make with a simple brush and limited pigments dictate the form of his illustrations. After a while a Soul Biting Blister Beetle wandered onto a nearby rock and began doing one of its territorial dances.

Since Shen Yuan was still sat a safe distance from its venomous spittle attack, he switched subjects and started drawing the beetle instead.

He stayed out until he lost the good light. Another storm was threatening on the horizon. He didn't even need to call the oxen, as they'd also had their fill of the mud pit. This time he walked, of course, not interested in getting himself covered in mud as well. When they got back to the stables he left the oxen be; in the morning the mud would be dry and flaking and easier to clean off, and as he'd learned, they preferred it that way.

He was out of daylight by then, and with a deep internal sigh he headed back to the inner corridors of the fortress to try and escape to his room.

The main banquet hall was lit, sconces bright against the dark walls of the inner chambers, with smokeless fires burning blue, purple, orange, and black. Demons allegedly didn't really make a lot of artistic craft items in the way that humans did, and yet, they did still make a lot of art. Fires and lights were common displays, as were manifestations of qi. Jade was hard to come by, and wood was mostly reserved for structural uses, but bone carvings and chimes were common. Since demons healed quickly, piercings and tattoos didn't last as long as on humans, but that just meant they were constantly being refreshed or redesigned. Textile work in the demonic realms was often ludicrously difficult, due to a lack of supplies and stable supply chains, which meant that clothing was made to last as long as possible and imbued with as much protection as possible.

But, clothing was uh... pretty scarce. Especially in these warmer climates.

Shen Yuan averted his gaze from the nude demons settled in the banquet hall, and the ones who were nearly nude, the vast expanse of skin that he'd never entirely gotten used to. Men and women alike, no less! Hualing was no exception, lounging topless at the main table while she regaled some of their father's people with accounts of her singular victory at Cang Qiong. Next to her, a pair of her lackeys were busily doing one another's tattoos; baring their teeth and laughing through the pain.

"Didi!" she called, and he cursed that she'd caught sight of him. "Come join us!"

"No thanks!" he called back.

"Get over here!"

There was enough snap in her tone to know that she meant it. Kissing his hopes and dreams of a quiet evening goodbye, Shen Yuan reluctantly turned and headed into the hall.

At least their father wasn't there. Small mercies. He wouldn't be back from his latest campaign for a while yet, according to Hualing's own projections. She would know better than him, given that she was the favorite and held their father's ear, for all that she seemed to loathe every minute spent in his company.

Why couldn't she loathe every minute spent in Shen Yuan's company?

Oh right. Because he didn't want her future husband to kill him.

Hualing nodded approvingly as he navigated the minefield of the banquet hall and settled onto a cushion that was, with some shoving, cleared next to his sister. She plonked an empty bowl beside him, and he dutifully filled it with wine for her. Demon wines mostly tasted like either blood or vinegar, but their father had particular tastes for fruit wines from the human realm, so Shen Yuan poured some for himself as well. It wouldn't get him drunk the way that a demon wine would, but that was better off anyway. And it almost tasted nice.

"I was just telling everyone about my fight," Hualing said, as if her voice hadn't carried well beyond the banquet hall.

"You did well," he assured her, even though he honestly thought her match was idiotic. She did win it, though, somehow. Everyone agreed on that point anyway, even the other side, so it had to be true.

"Of course, of course!" Hualing agreed, thumping a fist over one of her breasts. "I'm the greatest of our generation! But what the hell was with your fight? Everyone's talking about it, even more than mine! It's a bigger mystery how you lost than how I won."

She sounded displeased with that. Of course she is, he thought. She wants them all praising her, not wondering about her weird brother's weird behavior.

That thought brought a nostalgic feeling, almost. His old meimei and Sha Hualing were like night and day, but he'd also used to overshadow his sister's accomplishments with bad news in that life. Not that he meant to do it, in either case.

He sighed, and accepted that he wasn't going to keep dodging her questions forever. He probably wasn't even supposed to. She should be getting interested in Luo Binghe around now, shouldn't she? Well she'd laid eyes on him so of course that would be the case. As long as he kept the attention there, it would only further the inevitable bond between the protagonist and his future wife.

"Didn't you notice? That disciple was really strong," he said.

Sha Hualing made a face at him. It wasn't a dreamy, 'oh yes he was' sort of face at all.

"You had him beat in the first few minutes."

"He wasn't really fighting in the first few minutes."

"But since when do you care about fighting? You've never been eager to see someone's 'potential' before! Not even mine!"

Hualing pouted, as if recollecting their own past matches. Shen Yuan would rather forget those. They were so unpleasant. He couldn't win, but he also couldn't lose so badly that his own sister killed him. It was like walking a tightrope covered in ice on a dark winter night. He was glad they were past the age where their father would throw them into a pit together and demand they prove that they were worth feeding and housing by ripping into one another until he was satisfied.

"I was just curious," he settled for saying. "Something about him was unlike the other humans."

"Unlike them how?" Hualing narrowed her eyes. But she looked like she was considering it.

"If I could easily say what it was, I wouldn't have tested it by challenging him," he bullshitted, quite reasonably.

"Hmm."

"I was right, though. He did beat me. He had a lot of power. That piece of shit master of his just didn't teach him anything about using it."

For some reason that comment made Hualing grin at him.

"You thought the Xiu Ya sword was a piece of shit?" she latched upon, amused. "I think that one's ranked second in the Cang Qiong hierarchy, isn't he one of their strongest?"

"Not necessarily. His peak has the second most authority, but the Bai Zhan War God is surely stronger," he said. Then he hesitated. Liu Qingge would be dead now, wouldn't he? Murdered by Shen Qingqiu. What a waste...

Sha Hualing shrugged.

"He still must be tough, though. Surely they only make the strongest ones successors? How else would they hold onto their power?"

"Lots of ways. Money, family connections, vital skills that the others can't replicate... but he did seem pretty strong, even if he had to use underhanded tactics."

"That's because the demon race is always superior! Even the strongest humans can't win otherwise!" Sha Hualing announced, and cheers went up.

Shen Yuan finished his wine.

"Good talk, I'll be going now," he tried, but Hualing rolled her eyes and yanked him down into the seat again before he could go, and forced him to endure more 'celebrating'.

The sky was fully dark by the time Shen Yuan managed to escape. Despite his having lost his match, he luckily didn't get dragged too hard by the others at the banquet. Maybe because only Hualing had won, or maybe because it was kind of a dull sport to try and make him feel bad over things that he didn't care about. He ended up drinking most of the fruit wine and nodding along to his sister's boasting before finally fleeing back to his room, and by then he was tired enough that he only stripped and fell into his bed, and was soon unconscious.

"Hmph. Took you long enough!"

Shen Yuan blinked himself to awareness, and found that he was standing back at the pavilion on Qiong Ding Peak. Or rather, that this was what the dream around him looked like at the moment. He knew the signs quite well, after looking after Meng Mo for this long. Contrary to his sleeping state, Shen Yuan was back to wearing the same outfit he'd worn during the invasion, complete with his weapons and all.

Near to him stood a projection of the dream demon; Meng Mo had the look of an esteemed elder, well-dressed and meticulously groomed, in a fashion that hadn't been seen in the demon realms since before the last big war with the human realms. He stroked narrow fingers through his white beard.

Shen Yuan made a face.

"What? Why am I here?" he protested. "I thought you were going to investigate Luo Binghe?"

"Is that his name?" Meng Mo groused. "You didn't give me much to work with!"

"I didn't think the Esteemed Elder Dream Demon needed much," Shen Yuan countered, irritated enough to let his distaste show. Just why was he being involved?! He didn't want the protagonist associating him with an awful nightmare! Shoo!

"I don't," Meng Mo snapped. "Insolent brat. You'd think you'd show a little more appreciation for the lengths I'm willing to go through at your say-so. If I'm going to delve into this random human's mind, I need to know what I'm looking for. I'm not going to waste energy all night just rooting around when there's probably nothing to find!"

Shen Yuan wanted to protest. Wasn't that what the dream demon had done in the novel? Why were the rules different if Shen Yuan asked him to do something instead of Sha Hualing? You shitty old bastard, this poor transmigrator is doing you a favor! Don't you realize that the protagonist is your last hope of living as anything other than some random decor item? That he's going to be your greatest student that you can pass all your teachings onto? A host with enough power that he can sustain your existence indefinitely?

"Just do it yourself," he protested.

Meng Mo glared.

"If it's not worth your time, why should it be worth mine? Useless."

The dream started to dissipate. Shen Yuan raised a hand.

"Okay, wait, stop. It's definitely worth the time," he declared. At the older demon's skeptical expression, he snapped. "Why are you being so difficult? Haven't I taken care of you all this while? And when have I ever led you astray? What an ingrate, do you want to spend the rest of your existence depending on me to keep you around? At this rate I'm going to get tired of you and let you rot in a cupboard 'till all your energy runs out!"

"You wouldn't dare!"

"Your statue is ugly!"

"It is art! High art! Like the kind not seen in this world for centuries!"

"It’s trash."

"You-!"

Meng Mo paused. For a moment Shen Yuan thought that he'd legitimately run out of comebacks, and was a bit concerned. He'd never seen that happen before. But when he opened his mouth, the elder raised a hand and stopped him. His dark eyes narrowed. Then the dream around them began to change, shifting like something out of Inception or a high-end video game. The Qiong Ding pavilion disappeared, stone by stone, to be replaced with the structures and buildings of a rundown city street. Not a modern street, thankfully, not something like the kind from Shen Yuan's past life, but one that would be perfectly at home in Proud Immortal Demon Way.

"Found him," Meng Mo murmured.

So he had been looking. Maybe he genuinely did struggle to pinpoint Luo Binghe this time, for some reason, and brought in Shen Yuan's memories of the invasion to help. He felt a bit chagrined at that. True, Meng Mo didn't seem to need much to try and stalk a victim, but he probably hadn't given as much detailed information as the Sha Hualing of the novel had when he tried to put him onto the protagonist. After all, Sha Hualing would have been gushing like a lovestruck girl, not calmly and objectively explaining the situation the way Shen Yuan had done.

A moment later, Meng Mo's appearance shifted to resemble one of the faceless NPCs that populated most dreams. This was a common trick of his for observing things without drawing notice -- just blend into the background like some other less-formed part of the dream.

Shen Yuan followed the direction of his gaze. Sure enough, he found himself looking at Luo Binghe. Ning Yingying was beside him, holding on to his arm.

Their gazes met.

The protagonist's eyes widened in recognition.

Then the dream faded away as Meng Mo unceremoniously booted Shen Yuan out of it. He wasn't sure if he felt more relieved or disappointed, though of course that was foolish. Like he said, it wasn't as if he wanted the protagonist to associate him with a nightmare!

But even with that mere glimpse, perhaps the damage had already been done?

Dear Meng Mo, haven't I done you a bunch of favors by now? Please go easy on that kid, don't give him such a harrowing trial that he blames me for all of this later on!

Wizard worm just emerged from a wizarding hole! Lucky you!!!✨🪱🪄🍀

Au where Shen Yuan gets transmigrated but it’s still his body just with a cultivation base which would be fine except he’s now living in a male power fantasy novel where all the men are six feet tall at minimum and the women are all supermodel shaped because Airplane wrote them and his perfectly average 5’6” ass suddenly has to look up at literally everyone.

And of course like this wasn’t humiliating enough the System seems to be putting him through every wife plot it can imagine only the Protagonist is too young so it is shoves another character into his place to “help”

Which is how Shen Yuan, seconds after leaving the inter dimensional hub world where the System so gleefully informed him that he was dead and it was his job to fix the plot of the webnovel he literally died mad about, finds himself falling from a portal that formed hundreds of feet in the air only to be caught by a rather alarmed looking Liu Qingge who just happened to be going on a hunt and came to investigate.

Disciple Shen Yuan during the Qing generation. SY is on Qing Jing and is loved and well liked by (most) of his peers, even the ones off-peak! He only has two problems: 1: Him and Shen Jiu are at each other's throats constantly. It's like worse than a rivalry. People are convinced they legit want to kill each other. While expected from SJ, people are always surprised it's equally instigated and fought by SY. He's normally one of the sweetest people on his whole Peak!

2: SY, even while trying his hardest from his FIRST puberty to stop it, has a TERRIBLE ugly duckling phase. Poor kid has ALL the problems a teenager would feel embarrassed about except like tenfold. He got beat with the ugly stick till it broke. This is something that SJ picks at constantly, too, to try and make him self conscious. (SY is more upset that SJ doesn't even have breakouts, that prick.)

The Ascension of the current gen of Peak Lords is coming up in a few years and their Shizun is trying to pick a successor. It's between SJ and SY. SJ proves his tactical mind and engineers a plot to ensure that SY will be off Peak for at least five years; that way he won't be an obstacle! His plan works and SY has to leave the mountain to chase some maguffin. SJ is made SQQ and everything is peachy keen! He won! Fuck you, SY, you ugly cunt! The five-ish years pass. SY comes back. SJ is there to greet him and subtly mock him. Except. When SY flies in on his sword.

He's hot.

SY is like the hottest man that SJ has ever seen in his life and CQM is FILLED with unnaturally attractive men. SY looks better than a damn succubus. If SJ had less decorum and control he thinks he would explode right where he stood just by looking at him. SY's face, his lips, how his robes cling to his body, even the sloppy tousle of his hair. SJ instantly knows two things:

1: SJ has GOT to get this man under him like ASAP. From the looks of some of the people around him (other Peak Lords, Disciples, rubbernecking strangers) they are all having the exact same thought. That CAN NOT be allowed to happen.

2: SY, from the look he gives to SJ and how he's somehow rude about being polite to him, still absolutely fucking hates him. Which is- SJ doesn't wanna think too deeply about why that makes SY hotter to him for some reason. Some stones are better left unturned.

When Luo Binghe comes to the Sect, SJ is too busy fighting off rival suitors, trying to court SY, and (most importantly) trying to get SY to even LIKE him to start with. So LBH never gets the shitty Shizun experience.

TY for coming to my TED talk.

maybe this is just me idk

shuake verneider

this came to me in class

Inspired by that one person who said kdj is the only one who went to college and has a degree

"why are they all cale" he's main character in tcf and in my heart, okay💔💔

sources under the cut!

picture sources: lout of the count's family manhwa (duh) (chapters are in the ALT)

textpost sources:

okay done :thumbsup: source

blood "loss"? source

the urge to set things on fire source (afa i could tell!)

in trouble source

'you wouldn't pirate a-' source

you're so resilient! source

Cale Henituse is the funniest bastard to have as an MC, he's a unreliable narrator and everyone sees it. He wants to slack off and says world peace needed first before that.

Hates cats yet adopts two and plans to make a third king, scams people constantly, the most skewed perception of how to be a trashy man. Says he isn't a good person, does things that help people constantly, justifies it saying cause he didn't have pure motives for doing it it's not a good deed so he's still a bad person. Adopts a dragon even though he said he didn't want it near him cause he'd be in the middle of crazy situations, said by the guy who puts himself in situations constantly all the time. "I don't care about this old man assassin and want him to leave as soon as possible' several chapters later when said assassin comes back hurt and dying "What the fuck i'm going to blow up an island the bastards behind this are on" Yeah he blows up an island, says 'well the ships can just sail a bit further so it can go no biggie.' Said explosion is several times bigger then it should be, cause of his chronic inability to communicate with anyone ever. Stop saying shit exclusively in your head dumbass! He coughs up blood constantly from rebound his powers cause, fails to understand why anyone is upset by this sight when he's 'fine'. Has a healing power, fails to disclose that too to anyone. "I'm weak." Says this fucking idiot, while blasting his charisma aura that makes you feel like your going to die at people who have no idea it's a buff and take it seriously. While using a giant fuck off shield to block bombs. While blasting people with a thunderbolt that can blow up a forest. He's so stupid /aff I want to bite him like a chew toy and shake some sense but we all know he'll never get any.

Rating korean webnovels' protagonists' reaction to meeting another version of themselves for the first time

Kim Roksu: 10/10, very polite and helpful, worked to save his other self's world while also being thoughtful not to mess up his life and personal connections Kim Dokja: 0/10 tried to stab himself Han Yoojin: 0/10 tried to stab himself

Alberu when Cale told him yet another batshit insane plan but it's beneficial for the kingdom:

my duty is to spread prereg hjyj agenda o7

bonus: hyj felt guilty for lashing out on shj (who, by the way, is all for it)

fanfic writers are so fucking awesome man. they write novel length fics that are sometimes even better than some published bestselling books written by professional writers. like fanfic writers are professional writers to me and they gift us their masterpieces for free. they give us something we can look forward to after a long day. something from which we can seek comfort when life is hard. something that can be our own little getaway. in a world of capitalism, despite everything, they give us all of these for free. like holy fuck. shout out to every fanfic writer. I wish all fanfic writers a very ‘I love you with all my heart and soul. I thank you from the bottom of my heart’

Rok Soo's ability isn't Instant AU

Instead of being able to, very briefly and painfully, fuck with time; he got an ability based on all the absolute bullshit that's happened to him.

From the childhood, to his friends dying in front of him. All the shitty rumors that sprouted up, all the shit luck, all of it. Just, all of it.

So instead of Instant, he got Lament.

Lament is a scream capable of leveling buildings, at the cost of absolutely shredding Rok Soo's throat.

As a result of that power, Rok Soo doesn't talk often, and when he does his voice is hoarse and pained. He also refuses to speak at full volume, because while he's got a handle on his power, he's paranoid that he'll slip up.

So when he transfers over to the body of Cale, people notice.

The Young Master went to bed his usual talkative self, but when he woke up?

Barely a word, and when he did speak, a whisper.

Cale barely speaks a word to Ron beyond the single syllable required. Barely bothers to acknowledge Deruth. Relies on hand-speak and notes to talk to merchants.

Deruth is going crazy trying to figure out what the hell happened to his son, Ron is very close behind him because what the hell got past him? He's Ron Fucking Molan.

Then Cale comes home with a bedraggled punk that smells like the trash the killed Ron's family, and Ron has to listen in astonishment as he says more to this jackass than he's said to Ron in a week.

Basically; Cale's power of Lament is so strong and painful that everything Cale is paranoid of letting it slip, that he's selectively mute. This causes many misunderstandings, in true Cale fashion.

Grian and scars new videos reminded me of something...

i gave your perfectionist character a timeloop ability i hope you wont mind

PERSONA BRAINROT YIPPEE

girlboss yoo sangah is such a terrifying concept to me. do not get me wrong yoo sangah is a very powerful and capable and independent woman in ways that can appear to overlap with the girlboss archetype. but then its ignored where these traits come from!!

yoo sangah has had to be very self sufficient and 'powerful' her whole life because the alternative has always been catastrophic. for example becoming a house wife like her parents want vs girlbossing at a job where she gets harrassed and treated like shit, or dying in the apocalypse vs being useful to kimcom at the cost of her health (<- not necessarily actual dichotomies but the ones she believes in). and thus she ends up self-reliant in a way that leads to her having to endure a lot!! whether it's her trying to shrug off han myungoh's sexist comments or take on the weight of probability for kimcom. and we see that maybe these dichotomies she seems to live in are not so helpful, and maybe the idea that she does not need to be the #girlboss handling everything would be beneficial.

because she's just a person!! she's not uniquely capable or intelligent or even kind - not to a higher extent than any other woman in your workplace, at least. not beyond the realm of belief. which is the point! girlboss yoo sangah is almost kim dokja's vision of her - a perfect version who never falters where others would, who can reign in the boys and keep everything on track with a flick of a wrist and a smile - and theres a reason that version of her gets explicitly deconstructed

a character without flaws isnt a character worth thinking about, which is why to strip yoo sangah of her flaws is to strip her of anything interesting. the heroine can and will falter, she will be petty and weak and tired, and yoo sangah is devoted to showing us that. so i wish there was more content that explored that side of her