More Desert Duo Lesbians + A Revamp Of Previous Desert Duo Lesbians.

remember that you will die, but remember that I'll be waiting for you when it comes

Me: *makes a httyd books post*

The post: *gets 20-30 notes*

Me: Wow the whole fandom saw this one!!

Shen Yuan who glitches in his transmigration, but the original Shen Qingqiu still dies of a qi deviation.

So the System still needs someone with narrative relevance to throw Luo Binghe into the Abyss. In a fit of desperation, it contrives circumstances after Shen Qingqiu's death to move Luo Binghe to An Ding Peak (not that difficult), and then the System makes Shang Qinghua be Luo Binghe's new scum master who casts him down.

Airplane's thrilled, really. Cultivators aren't supposed to get ulcers but damned if he doesn't come close to one anyway. Between Shen Qingqiu and then just a while later Liu Qingge both dying from qi deviations, and Shang Qinghua looking like a stiff breeze could take him out any day now, poor Mu Qingfang is also just about at his wits' end.

But it's not all bad news! On An Ding Peak, Luo Binghe actually finds himself surrounded by the kinds of people who are accustomed to being bullied by the rest of the sect. So they're pretty sympathetic to him, and it's easier for someone with basic laboring skills to advance on that peak too. His chores don't decrease too much, but he actually gets rewarded for doing them well, and no one tries to kick him out of the dorms or anything. Shang Qinghua doesn't either go out of his way to bully or praise Luo Binghe, correctly reasoning that his best shot at not getting a gruesome death is to just be a more forgettable bad guy than an abusive dirtbag or a heart-wrenching betrayal. He doesn't sabotage Luo Binghe's cultivation (no point, and it would just farm resentment later) but he also doesn't go out of his way to help him improve (not gonna arm his inevitable maybe-probably-murderer with better weapons!), so Luo Binghe's situation sees an overall improvement but not the zero-to-hero treatment he'd have got with Shen Yuan either.

When Shang Qinghua shoves Luo Binghe into the Abyss (he just full on picks him up and tosses him like a sack of beans, better to rip it off quick like a bandage), LBH is upset, but he's not especially surprised or dismayed about Shang Qinghua's part in it. Later on he'll be kind of confused, because he just assumed that of course the righteous sect cultivator would abhor the demon, but it turns out Shang Qinghua has been working for a demon since before Luo Binghe even came to the sect? But then it still kind of makes sense because a Heavenly Demon would definitely pose a risk to Mobei Jun and to Mobei Jun's rule. Shang Qinghua, he supposes, is just really loyal to his specific demon.

Luo Binghe's subsequent revenge quest is also somewhat mitigated by the Abyss actually not being that bad.

The Abyss is not actually that bad thanks to the glitched out Shen Yuan having been camping there for several years now.

So when Shen Yuan's transmigration failed it failed because he "woke up" during the process, realized where the System intended to put him, was like no way in goddamn hell am I being that guy about it, and actually kind of won the ensuing tug-of-war. The System couldn't put him in Shen Qingqiu but Shen Yuan didn't want to go back to his dead body either, so he ended up stuck in the nearest available space for lost interdimensional beings. Which was the Endless Abyss.

Luckily Shen Yuan's quasi-transmigrated imparted an equivalent cultivation level as Shen Jiu's to him, and the glitch made him able to sense and manipulate certain extra-dimensional energies, so he manifested as this weird godlike being able to manipulate and control aspects of the Abyss. So he set about transforming Airplane's Torment Nexus into a viable ecosystem (the current version would not be anything approaching sustainable were it not for divine/narrative intervention, and is constantly on the verge of destabilizing into unlivable ruin that would only be fit for some particularly hardy microorganisms).

It's still like, a monster land full of demonic creatures and terrifying phenomenon, but with Shen Yuan's assistance it becomes something more like a demonic wildlife reserve than a dimensional horror plane. Though it is still a dimensional horror plane, and Shen Yuan is its chief dimensional horror. He treats it sort of like those dungeon building or wildlife park sims, figuring out how to keep everything in balance while still preserving all the interesting parts. A lot of the extreme survival issues of the Abyss are more of a result of it being environmentally unstable than a result of its actual denizens, and once he smooths out a lot of the messy dimensional edges and creates stable vents for the fluctuating energy run-off, the demonic inhabits start behaving less like horror movie monsters and more like animals. They're still wild and dangerous and prone to killing one another, but also more cautious, and able to access enough stable resources that they can even start to be picky about what they pursue.

Turns out that a lot of creatures in the Abyss actually don't like fighting and dying and being brutally injured on a regular basis, even if they can heal from it!

Shen Yuan has even discovered that some like chin scritches (he's not terribly worried about habituating them to people, given how rarely any people actually access the Abyss, but also because he's not really all that people-ish himself these days).

This means that one of Luo Binghe's first encounters with the horrible creatures of the Abyss, is in fact a pack of wolf-like monsters thoroughly avoiding an actual fight with him. In fact most of the denizens of the Abyss just avoid him. They can smell the Heavenly Demon energy rolling off of him, and given the current abundance of alternatives to dealing with that, virtually none of the monsters actually choose to challenge him. There are still a few that will go after anything that's bleeding, but that problem stops once Luo Binghe's physiology heals his wounds, which takes like... a couple hours, max.

Despite the stories he's heard, Luo Binghe is relieved to find that the Abyss is not quite so terrible as all that. Normal survival skills suffice for seeing him through much of it. He's able to hunt for food, scavenge for tools, and even finds potable water fairly easily. After a few weeks, he also comes across a ruin which seems to be inhabited.

The being inhabiting it is plainly a god, although he demurs and refutes such assertions whenever Binghe is too frank. He's a strange being, at turns looking like some queer approximation of a human, at other times blinking and winking in and out of existence, in patterns of strange lights and oddly geometrical fire. But he's surprisingly not hostile, letting Binghe rest in his residence, and even directing him towards points of interest. Accompanying him, too, though he seems to think that Binghe doesn't notice the odd almost spiderweb-like patterns that appear on things which he's influencing. The god calls himself The Peerless One, or at least that's what Luo Binghe infers from some writings on the ruin. The Peerless One offers instruction, seemingly without thinking about it, and gets flustered at being addressed by title, so Binghe also begins to refer to him as Shizun after a while.

Forget touch-starved Kim Dokja, I want touch adverse Kim Dokja.

Give me KDJ who flinches at physical contact since he never learned how to receive it positively.

Give me KDJ who has to remind himself not to brush the kids off when they come over to hug him.

Give me KDJ whose personal bubble is so huge and subconsciously apparent it may as well serve as another wall.

Give me KDJ who apologizes for shying away from friendly and platonic gestures, and is visibly uncomfortable trying to act 'normal' about physical touch.

Give me KDJ who hates himself for not liking hugs, or hand holding, or even shoulders touching sitting next to his loved ones because this part of him makes his companions apologize to him for the action of loving him. And he asks himself, 'why can't I even do this right'?

I love the use of the phrase 'some strange alchemy' as a descriptor for a process you don't understand.

'Through some strange alchemy(crochet) they turned a bundle of yarn into a stuffed giraffe'

'Through some strange alchemy(bad cooking) they turned a perfectly marinated steak into a charcoal briquet'

'Through some strange alchemy(good cooking) they turned a pile of slop into the fluffiest bread loaf I'd ever seen'

'Through some strange alchemy(bad reading comprehension) they took my polite statement and turned into a disgusting act against the poor'

and so on

on the topic of kim dokja canonically being an artist it would be so funny if he was actually quite famous because he's read more stuff than twsa but whenever he would post a yoo joonghyuk piece he always got comments like "oh is this your oc"

There's a giant dragon following me around.

I do not know his name. Though I have asked, several times. He is quite large, and very terrifying.

But I do not believe he means me harm.

There have been several times....

In the storm.

With the pirates.

That.... thing.... I don't know what it was, but he ate it.

I would have been scared once. Would have trembled in my boots with fear.

But I have grown since then.

(I have faced far worse then him)

It has been many years. Yet still he follows me.

I believe I know why he does it. Why he follows me.

Sometimes I wonder if he'll ever leave.

I think he will. With the rest. More and more are leaving these days. I will miss him. When my shadow disappears from the sea.

I do not want him to leave without a name.

I will call him Loyal. For that is what he is.

Toothless is jealous. But. He understands.

I fear he understands too much these days.

He is so young. So old. So small. So fierce.

They are the last two now.

Toothless and Loyal. Loyal and Toothless.

.

Last night Loyal disappeared.

My memoirs are almost finished.

Toothless is still here.

I do not want to live in a world without Toothless.

There's a tiny dragon who follows me around.