Chapter Text
Shen Yuan’s transition from death to life was quick and overwhelming.
One minute, he was choking to death on a mantou, cursing Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky for ever deciding to post the first words of the shitheap of a novel that was Proud Immortal Demon Way, and the next moment, he was flat on his back, eyes closed.
He was dizzy with the suddenness of it all. What?
Then, a man’s voice from beside him: “...Shidi? Shidi, can you hear me?”
Alright, he thought, and forced his eyes open. He took a moment to take in his surroundings, observing the white, gauzy bed hangings draping across his sight, the hard plane of the bed (and pillow! Ow!! His neck!!! Was that jade?!), the image of the young man clothed in formal xuanduan robes sitting next to him, and the heavy scent of herbal sachets in the air. He had always been an ardent reader of transmigration novels; he knew exactly what was going on.
He wasn’t going to waste these precious first minutes on anything like “where are the cameras?” or “is this a prank?”
No. He was going to act his heart out.
There was a paper fan next to his pillow. Perfect. He pulled himself upwards and sharply reached out for it. He snapped it open. Attempting to look as elegant as the room around him suggested he should be, he used it to waft a light draft of air towards his face—
And immediately broke any air of elegance he might have cultivated by sneezing, nose suddenly assaulted by a barrage of unfamiliar scents.
Was this a benefit of cultivation? The novels always said that cultivation improved the senses: that a near-ascended immortal’s hearing could be a hundred times better than any mortals, able to hear a whisper over half a dozen li; that their eyesight was so sharp and discerning that it could spot a single crooked piece of grass across an entire meadow. But this?
Of all the senses to improve, he might have expected his eyesight, his hearing, perhaps his sense of touch—but his sense of smell?
It was awful. The heavy scent of the herbal sachets above him hardly masked the cacophony of the rest of the room beating against his olfactory senses. There was a stale scent of sickness. Of unwashed sheets. A sharp scent of bamboo. Overbrewed, bitter tea. Burned incense. Salt, heavy on the tongue. It smelled like someone had set a candle shop on fire.
Shen Yuan crumpled under the weight of it all, covering his nose with one elegant hand, upper body collapsing forward. The young man next to him lunged forwards, grabbing onto his limp torso, attempting to help him up.
With the man came an even stronger deluge of scent. A warm petrichor. Sweet vanilla. Sandalwood. Ink. Woody smoke. A sharp cinnamon. Underneath it all, an alarming iron tang that coated the throat and choked out the breath.
The man was speaking. “—Shidi? Shidi? Are you alright? Do you need me to call for a doctor?”
“No—” Shen Yuan choked out. “—No, I’m… fine.” A deep breath (incense and ink and anxiety and sick). He pushed away the supportive hands of his shixiong(?) and pushed himself into a proper seated position. He tried to steady himself. “I… Where is this?”
The man obediently sat back in his chair, letting Shen Yuan sit up on his own. At the question, his brows furrowed just a bit. “Did you sleep yourself into a trance? This is your Qing Jing peak.”
Oh no.
He didn’t even have to act muddled. “And… why was I asleep for so long?”
“That’s what I came to ask you. You were in perfect health, so how did you suddenly come down with a high fever? Your… term is not set to come for a few months yet, if I’m not mistaken. I know that with the Immortal Alliance Conference fast approaching, you’ve been training your disciples and must be anxious to see the results. But with Cang Qiong Mountain being such a well-established and renowned sect, even if one of our own didn’t attend this time, no one would dare question us. Why concern yourself with empty words?
OH NO. His dizziness was beginning to fade, but with it came a terrifying clarity.
The man’s next sentence, single and earnest, confirmed the suspicion. “Qingqiu-shidi, are you listening to Shixiong?”
The realization settled heavy in his gut. Shen Yuan brought up the fan again, flicking it open to conceal his expression. He’d transmigrated into Proud Immortal Demon Way? That clusterfuck of a stallion novel?
It’d explain the overwhelming scents, at least.
Why, of the hundreds of stallion novels he’d read on Zhongdian over his lifetime, why did it have to be this one?
See, Proud Immortal Demon Way was unique in its genre. What other male power fantasy harem novel would dare to incorporate elements of omegaverse, those perplexing tropes usually relegated to the deepest depths of danmei circles, enmeshed in homoerotic fantasies aimed towards a very particular variety of little sister on the internet? It was part of what had caught Shen Yuan’s attention in the first place. The sociological and anthropological implications of such a dramatic difference in the presentation of human sexual expression were fascinating. And to apply them to such a unique setting? The possibilities were endless! How would such patterns play out in a heterosexual harem setting? How would having six different unique gender presentations impact societal structures? Impact daily life? Social custom and etiquette? How different would social interactions be if you could smell the emotions of the people around you? Going in, Shen Yuan had hundreds of questions.
The answer? Was that it HARDLY EVEN MATTERED AT ALL. Kunze heats served as fodder for wife plots or harem drama, but hardly seemed to impact the world around them. Non-Binghe qianyuan character’s ruts served as critical weaknesses to be exploited; Binghe’s own were excuses for gratuitous papapa scenes. The few zhongyongs around were as dry as cardboard and seemed to fade out of existence after any scene. And kunze men or qianyuan women? Hardly existed. Binghe’s harem only included women—and the majority were kunze women at that! To say nothing about the lack of any sign of kunze males, the one time it seemed like Binghe might actually court an qianyuan woman, Airplane would cast aside the entire plotline, saying she’d actually been an kunze hiding her own designation the entire time. What was the point of including such bold genre choices as omegaverse in a harem novel if Airplane wasn’t even brave enough to include qianyuan women in the harem?
It was an unbelievable disappointment. The wasted potential was HORRENDOUS.
And he’d transmigrated into the body of Shen Qingqiu, the scum villain of that particular trashfuck of a novel! The character with the worst plotline and the worst ending of them all! He was fated to become a tongueless human stick!
Ah, at least he had to admit that if there was any possible bright side to transmigrating into that particular character, it was that he was a notorious qianyuan. A notoriously scummy and perverted qianyuan, sure, but a qianyuan nonetheless. It’s only too bad that he wasn’t a zhongyong, of course, but it was still leagues above being a kunze.
The elder-brother type man next to him, who smelt of petrichor and woodsmoke and ink (which shouldn’t have mixed well but somehow did), must be Cang Qiong Mountain Sect’s current sect leader, Shen Qingqiu’s shixiong, the “Xuan Su Sword,” Yue Qingyuan. He would be a qianyuan too, if Shen Yuan remembered correctly.
Of course, that was part of the reason why he died! No male qianyuan could stand and survive when Luo Binghe was around!
But of course, he himself was now one of those pitiful qianyuans—and his fate was the worst of them all! His hand clenched around the handle of the fan concealing his face. It made an ominous cracking noise. He would do anything to prevent that fate!
He’d been silent for too long. The man next to him—Yue Qingyuan—leaned forward again. “Shidi? Are you able to hear me? Do I need to fetch Mu-shidi?”
Deliberately bringing the fan down to face his shixiong, Shen Yuan—Shen Qingqiu—spoke. “No, no. I’m well. Just… disoriented. A headache.” He paused, collecting himself. “Has it been long? Have I lost preparation time for the… conference?”
He was fishing. Which Immortal Alliance Conference was it? They were clearly already peak lords, so that gave him some idea of the timeline, but he had no idea how long they had been peak lords for. The conferences happened every four years. Would this be the one where he would throw Binghe into the Endless Abyss? Was he too late? Was Luo Binghe already a disciple?
Yue Qingyuan nodded. “A day. Nothing that cannot be made up for. The conference is still a while off.”
Unhelpful, but any more digging would be suspicious. He’d have to find out the timeline another way. He needed to think. He still felt dizzy. The air was thick with scents he had no idea how to decipher.
Shen Qingqiu closed his eyes. “Good.” He forced himself to say it. The atmosphere in the room felt suddenly a thousand times more oppressive and awkward. “I can handle everything on my own now. Shixiong is welcome to leave at any time.”
Although Yue Qingyuan actually sat up straighter in his seat, Shen Qingqiu had the impression that he’d internally actually gone a little limp, like a rejected dog. “If… that’s what Shidi wants. Your head disciple, Ming Fan, should be ready to bring you a meal. Would you like me to alert him?”
Shen Qingqiu brought up the fan again, gently fanning himself while intentionally looking at the wall behind Yue Qingyuan. He nodded, going for imperious (and hopefully not looking like a petulant toddler).
It seemed to work. His shixiong lingered for a moment more, as if expecting some sort of response or movement from him, but he didn’t act as if Shen Qingqiu’s lack of response was unusual. The sect leader excused himself, leaving him alone in the room.
He had a lot to think about.
He forced himself to wait a few minutes before he allowed himself to breathe freely.
Fuck. FUCK.
System? He tried to call out in his head. No response. He tried a bunch of other similar names and titles. There had to be some sort of system, right? It was a staple of the transmigration genre! He tried to speak outloud: “System?”
No response.
Okay. Okay. Maybe that would be a good thing! He was in a total sandbox! Nothing to stop him from going OOC!
But, also, nothing to give him hints about what going OOC might look like!!!!
There was an obvious solution. Something so obvious that it was a trope of the genre.
He’d have to pretend to have amnesia.
Of course, he would still have to be something like the old Shen Qingqiu. At least for a while. It wouldn’t make sense if Shen Qingqiu, the scum villain, would suddenly become a doting (read: desperately thigh-hugging) teacher, right?
So he’d be harsh. He’d be cruel—but not so cruel.
And then he’d have a redemption arc!
It was a flawless plan.
Except, of course, for the fact that he hadn’t implemented it right away. When he’d woken up, he’d been so disoriented by all the new scents in the room that he hadn’t been thinking clearly. He’d just played along with Yue Qingyuan.
But he could work with that.
The scum villain suddenly getting amnesia would be bizarre, right? It would make no narrative sense!
But if there was a bit of intrigue involved, perhaps it could work as a satisfying narrative arc.
Shen Qingqiu was the peak lord of the strategy peak. He was supposed to be brilliant (even if, in the actual text, his IQ had drained dramatically every time he came within 10 meters of the protagonist). Upon waking in a strange situation, someone as suspicious and quick-witted as Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t let the other party in the room, the stranger, know of their weakness. They’d sit, they’d learn, and then they’d fake it ‘till they made it.
It was plausible. It could even be narratively interesting—a mystery for the protagonist to solve! He just hoped he could pull it off.
He’d scarcely finished coming up with the barest bones of the plan when there came a knock on the door to his chambers.
Ming Fan, presumably. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and called the boy in.