#'okay shizun I went and conquered the world like you said now can I come home and be shizun's wife?'

[sunderwight]

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.

[cleverstudentcheesecake]

Theory regarding the "System"

So I want all of you to listen really carefully.

I posted about my theory of Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan being the same person just from different timelines on Tumblr. One of the user @6gmrnv3hin reblogged my post with their theory that the System is actually Bing-ge.

Okay, now hold on and let me clarify it.

It's a theory relating to time paradox and the multiverse of the SVSSS and PIDW universes.

Their theory is that after Bing-ge left the SVSSS universe, he went onto search for his own kind Shizun. He found the soul of Shen Jiu in Shen Yuan in a different timeline. So Bing-ge split his soul into 2 parts. One part become the superior entity "System" and the other part became our beloved Bing-mei creating the new timeline of SVSSS.

Now here comes the missing puzzle piece which I was finally able to piece out from all these.

Some people theorise that Airplane actually got visions of the PIDW world and hence wrote the story.

This could be the part of the paradox where Airplane wrote the story because the PIDW universe actually existed and the PIDW universe existed because Airplane wrote about it.

It could be the "System"(Bing-ge) orchestrated everything to give himself a happy ending. He planned the transmigration of Shen Jiu's soul in the form of Shen Yuan that has not yet been corrupted by trauma in the modern universe into the SVSSS universe.

As another of the user @optimisticmosquito said that the "System" did not let Shen Yuan transmigrate into the novel as a child because there was a high chance he would have got tainted by all the trauma and turn out to be like Shen Jiu. Hence, he transmigrated into the body of adult, well-acomplished Shen Qingqui. As the spoilt second generation rich kid, Shen Yuan never had to go through the struggles that Shen Jiu of the original timeline went through. This lead Shen Yuan to be much kinder and a much better teacher. Shen Yuan is everything Shen Jiu could never have been due to all the trauma shackling him.

The "System" (Bing-ge) compelled Shen Yuan to fix the mistakes of the PIDW universe and prevent the current SVSSS universe from getting destroyed by the hands of Binghe (Yes, I consider the PIDW universe to be a destroyed universe because of all the mess). This way both Shen Jiu and Bing-ge ended up atoning for the sins they committed in the original timeline.

This would clarify some of the doubts regarding why Bing-ge never returned to disturb the life of Bingqui when he had not 1 but 2 reality cutting swords. Sir was busy creating a completely different timeline.

This would further clarify why the "System" was hell bent on Bingmei finding Xin Mo because Bingge in future would require 2 reality cutting swords to create a new timeline.

It would also clarify the reason why the "System" was so pushy with the "small scenario pushers" and was so closely influenced by Binghe's moods. It did not even interfere when Xin Mo was broken and taken by Bing-ge.

This is because Binghe no longer required Xin Mo. In the SVSSS universe he finally has all the happiness he ever wanted. He no longer felt the need to conquer the 3 realms just to feel a tiny bit of satisfaction with his life. He no longer needed series of blood baths and hundreds of wives to feel validated. He discovered the truth about his birth parents and his father is still alive. The Can Qiong Sect is still intact and the human and demon realms haven't been merged. Even Mobei Jun is no longer alone and miserable in the SVSSS universe.

Bing-ge finally was successful in attaining his happiness in the form of Bing-mei and the "System".

The paradox is that the SVSSS universe existed because Bingge by mistake stumbled upon the SVSSS universe where he found about his kind Shizun and the kind Shizun exists in the SVSSS universe because Bing-ge of the future split himself into 2 and went onto create the SVSSS universe as the "System".

I hope I was able to clarify my thoughts and theories.

You can go check out my Tumblr post here: