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the bingyuan server had a new year's gift exchange, so here's some mushroom body shen qingqiu for @runecel!

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Decided to draw how I imagined SQQ and LBH look like in Honored Eternal Path of Demise by @masiethewriter. You should definitely check it out if you enjoy horror and video game mechanics!

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bingqiu color study

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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.

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It's adorable that despite his constant attempts to run away, Shen Qingqiu is terrible at staying away. He's like an escaped house cat who shows up back on the front step the next day and is shocked to find himself promptly trapped back indoors.

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I think SVSSS would be so much funnier if Shen Yuan can hear soundtracks. just.

He walks in a room and hear the ambient music suddenly turning ominous, immediately grabs Liu Qingge and turns around while thinking "Nope, nu-uh, not this way! Go back that way— WHERE DID THE DOOR GO?"

Just talking with Luo Binghe and maybe looking at him a little to long when he suddenly hears romantic music and being so confused because where even is Luo Binghe's future wive(s)? Why is there romantic music??

In a mystery mission and trying to find out who the suspect of [x] crime is only to hear subtle liet motifs pertaining to one character throughout the day so he only needs to bullshit evidence, but then he overthinks it and go "wait, if I were in a movie this obvious use of telling lief motif could just be a red herring and they might not be the perpetrator..."

Shen Yuan having a quick reaction time only because he can hear battle music or strange sudden tense silences even before something happens because obviously that means a jumpscare is coming

Talking to Yue Qingyuan and having those sad nostalgic dead wife music suddenly playing LMFAOOO

Grieving music after he pushed down Luo Binghe into the abyss and he's still in denial about being sad because of course he is

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pixie!shen yuan au where he transmigrates into a cute little forest pixie, with pretty gossamer wings that sparkle like stars, a voice that tinkles like tiny silver bells, and long dark hair that he braids while wearing flowers as sunhats!!

he lives in a hollow tree on cang qiong, enjoying the rivers and groves and rocky cliff faces. his little house is filled with all kinds of trinkets, a lot of which he's stolen found from the sect, like buttons and beads and scraps of silk, needles as swords and fancy tea leaves from pots left out by kitchen windows. he quite likes his little life, the only downside is that he can't really read books this way, because even though he sneaks into the libraries at night and his wings are a source of light, most books are way too heavy and he's worried his (faint but present) spiritual energy will be detected.

he watches the disciples train on different peaks, soaking in all the new lore and details that airplane put way too little time and energy into. he's there before the plot, so binghe hasn't arrived yet and he can take his sweet time making a plan to ensure binghe won't destroy the mountain.

one day, though, the rare time he ventures out into qing jing peak, he gets distracted by an open window to the bamboo house. he knows it's stupid, but this might be the only chance he has to take a look inside the villain's lair, it's something he needs to know if he wants to help binghe in the future, and so he goes inside and takes a look around—

and promply gets trapped inside a mason jar.

oops.

shen qingqiu's face looks at him from the other side of the glass, still menacingly beautiful even with the slight distortion. worst-case scenarios flash through his head; crushed into pixie jam, experimentation, harvested for parts, stalled out like a fancy ornament on the shelf... but it's none of that.

"sneaking around my peak, entering my home, naughty little thing," shen qingqiu huffs, "were you not taught manners?"

he leaves the jar on the desk for a bit, chiding shen yuan but then—opens the jar? and lets him out? he tells shen yuan not to sneak into his house anymore and then just... continues with his paperwork. shen qingqiu's cruelty is limited to humans, it seems, and not animals or tiny fairies.

so of course shen yuan comes back.

he doesn't want to push it and risk shen qingqiu crushing him like a fly, but he enjoys hanging around the house and watching the qing jing disciples train and play music. ning yingying is already there, so it can't be much longer before binghe arrives. shen qingqiu is surprisingly kind to her compared to the other disciples, who he regularly drives to tears. the man notices him and tries to shoo him off, but ofc it doesn't work. after some time shen qingqiu keeps casually looking around to find him and shen yuan is proud to be getting on the man's nerves.

at some point liu qingge comes by, stomping hard enough to make the leaves shen yuan uses as a hammock shake. since it's the bai zhan war god shen yuan is excited to see him (liu qingge is often on missions, and shen yuan avoids bai zhan out of a healthy precaution of aggressive teens with swords), so he comes closer. the two peak lords hold the stupidest argument known to man that shen yuan only half listens to, fascinated by the sword liu qingge carries. but then liu qingge suddenly jerks his arm and shen yuan spooks, shooting up.

liu qingge sees something flying at his face and reacts like anyone would—he swats at it. hard.

when shen yuan hits the ground he can feel his wings get crushed under him; for a few seconds he's terrified liu qingge will stomp on him and scrambles to get away, only to get grabbed and scooped up into the air. he wildly kicks his legs and hits his tiny little fists on the hands that hold him, little voice jingling like crazy, but then shen qingqiu raises his voice and snarls at liu qingge.

"you idiot! watch where you wave those big paws of yours, brute! look what you did, you could have killed him!!"

then shen qingqiu turns around and goes into his bamboo house, kicking the door shut. he takes shen yuan to his bedroom, putting him on a soft handkerchief as he looks over his little wings and mutters vicious things to himself about "slaughter-happy idiots". shen yuan is too stunned to respond and just sits there as the scum villain fusses over him. his wings aren't really hurt, just a little squished, it's fine! shen qingqiu then lectures him for being reckless and coming so close to a brute like liu qingge.

after that they sort of become... friendly? shen yuan sets out to be the most mischievous little pixie he can be, but somehow it only works in his favor; he steals little things from shen qingqiu's home (not that he can carry much more than a button or brush), flutters in circles around the man's head, dips his little boots in ink and then walks on paperwork, etc. but shen qingqiu doesn't seem bothered by any of it. if anything, he leaves trinkets for shen yuan to take, offers his hand as a perch to sit on, and makes a tiny brush for shen yuan to use instead.

shen qingqiu gains a little friend and life gets a little calmer on qing jing peak. when binghe comes, shen yuan manages to distract shen qingqiu enough that the tea dumping never happens, and binghe is shooed off after the ceremony. binghe still isn't treated right and still has to sleep in the woodshed, but shen yuan secretly helps him and acts like a little night light in the dark, so binghe gets quite attached.

meanwhile liu qingge is regretful of having slammed a pixie out of midair and must prove his honor, thus begins the habit of dropping off gifts at shen qingqiu's doorstep (also because his sister freaked out a little, apparently hurting fairies is bad luck and he might have cursed himself for eternity? anyway).

this display causes yue qingyuan to show up too with the biggest wettest puppy eyes because he heard xiao jiu has a new friend who now lives in his house? shen qingqiu kicks them all out.

this has already gone on so long so the last thing i want to add is shen yuan eventually manages to cultivate a human form, and with a little effort he can even keep his wings! and of course this makes it worse, because that sweet little pixie is now a beautiful man who wife beams everyone in a three mile radius and doesn't even notice it.

shen qingqiu and luo binghe unexpectedly bond over beating suitors away.

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My own Shizun

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found him hiding in my procreate files........

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“This isn't going to work. If I attempt something as volatile as cultivation with no guidance, my insides will become mush.” he mutters before addressing his mental companion. “System, this is ridiculous. This looks like a toddlers' first time using construction paper and glue. Shouldn’t I have some form of muscle memory…”

Going quiet, he places a hand over his mouth in thought. The System’s window is still open to that 100 B-Point cultivation manual, silently taunting him. Shen Yuan, however, pays it no mind. The gears in his brain turn as he remembers one very important detail.

“System, how do I go into an Inner Dream World?”

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Looking back to then, it feels so different.

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much needed lesbingqiu

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memes to make me feel better

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okay. it's time to open up Mindomo and be normal for once as I reread something.

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MWAH!