#Anyway they just think all the anger went to SQH lmao

[torchstelechos]

Genuinely think that SQQ being a dick to SQH at any possible chance during peak meetings saved a lot of suspicious from the other peak lords. Him being one of those petty online friends but in real life makes all the peak lords just accept that the much nicer SQQ actually is SQQ because look at that! He called SQH a talentless hack of a man and hit him with his fan! It might be more expressive that SQQ was before but the spirit is still the same!! Of course SQH and SQQ both are besties 4ever in this instance but to others it doesnt look like that lmao

[tossawary]

Some random favorite lines (with commentary) of Chapter 22: “The World Moved” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” because I’m doing a re-read. Not a full list or full commentary.

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AN: I had no idea what to name this chapter at first. I try not to make my chapter titles spoiler-y. This one seemed to nicely invoke the idea of aftershocks, given the blow-ups with both Yue Qingyuan and Mobei-Jun. 

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 Shang Qinghua is standing in the gardens outside of Qian Cao Peak’s main healing halls, just outside the main healing halls. He has no idea how he got here. 

 This is fucked up for a number of reasons. 

 Shang Qinghua isn’t the sort of person who ends up in strange locations without remembering how he got there. Sometimes he ends up in strange locations without remembering  why  he went there, sure; sometimes he ends up in strange locations because a hectic day-in-day-out emergency took him on a slippery path with too many stops to keep straight, sure. But he’s not really a  “black out somewhere and wake up somewhere else”  kind of bro. He’s, at worst, a  “fall asleep in the sitting room and wake up fuzzily in the bedroom, ah, must have woken up at some point” kind of person. 

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AN: Someone asked me if there was any MBJ involvement in “wake up fuzzily in the bedroom” and... yeah, that’s kind of what I was going for. I have a great and terrible weakness for soft Moshang moments. 

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 “Yue-Shibo wishes to see you at once,” she says. 

 “Cool.” 

 “...Pardon?” 

 “Oh, ah, I mean, sure. I’ll be there,” Shang Qinghua says, clearing his throat, then clearing his throat again, and getting to his feet. Standing feels like a real accomplishment right now. “Where is he now?” 

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AN: Shang Qinghua is having a Time. He is having a Time right now. Everyone is lucky that Shang Qinghua didn’t just fall back entirely into curse words and slang. Shang Qinghua as a character to me gives off the vibe of someone who can essentially just say things like, “Oh, lmao, bro.” 

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 Shang Qinghua registers the sect leader’s orders to his underlings kind of distantly, caught up in staring at the unconscious other transmigrator. 

 【 CHARACTER PROFILE UPDATED: Shen Yuan.】

 He’s not alone anymore. 

 Holy shit, he really doesn’t know how to feel about this. 

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AN: Can you... imagine... spending like 40+ years on another planet, essentially, which has never heard of your world and is missing a great deal of features from your world and can’t be talked about at all... and then another person from your world shows up? No one else in this world can understand what you’re going through, mostly because you can’t talk about it to anyone else. 

Wild. 

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 “There wasn- there might not have  been  a later!” Shang Qinghua cries in frustration, knowing just how close they came to there not being a later. “What ‘perfect time’ is there for these kinds of things? It was never not going to hurt him or you! But living like this is worse! You had  nothing stopping you from saying anything you wanted! You have no one telling you how to live your life! Controlling what you can or can’t say! At any time, you could have decided you didn’t want to live this way anymore and that you didn’t want to cause the person you care about any more pain because you were too ashamed to admit your mistakes!” 

 Shang Qinghua has no idea how much sway the System has over people’s behaviors here, honestly, but he’s thinking not much if any! At least before it pulled another update on him! The System apparently couldn’t  make  Shen Qingqiu act like a total scum villain to the protagonist if the man decided he wanted to be more than that - and apparently he did! Just like the System couldn’t  make Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky behave like the original Shang Qinghua!

 It had to trick him into “putting the story back on track”! 

 What fucking excuse does Yue Qingyuan have for any of this? 

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AN: Shang Qinghua is aaaaangry. He didn’t want to get involved in any of this. He’s so envious of Yue Qingyuan’s comparative freedom here. Definitely one of those “I didn’t even KNOW how fucking angry I was about this” moments. 

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 “Oh, what are you going to do?” Shang Qinghua demands of the man. “Fire me?” 

 Yue Qingyuan is clearly super unimpressed by this comeback. 

 Shang Qinghua can’t totally believe he just said it. 

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AN: SVSSS Shang Qinghua didn’t get fired somehow. 

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 Shang Qinghua is so angry he can barely breathe with it. It comes out in the upending of a chair, the overturning of an end table, and then a dish shattering against a wall when the first two aren’t satisfying enough. It turns out that seeing the broken ceramic on the floor isn’t satisfying either! It doesn’t change anything! 

 Except now the dish is broken. It is so, so much easier to break something than to make anything and Shang Qinghua is ready to scream over it. 

 Millions of words! Years of his life! Years of  both lives! 

 Shang Qinghua collapses onto the nearest upright piece of furniture in his sitting room and puts his head in his hands again.  “Is the System finally getting rid of me?”  he thinks, feeling like he’s going to break into a million pieces next maybe. Might just throw himself against the wall next! See how it goes!  “Bro, is this it? Have you had enough of my bullshit? Enough of me changing the story? Are you replacing ME not because I’m too unstable to exist in this world too?” 

 They’re not good thoughts. 

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AN: This breakdown was SO overdue. 

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 “Shang Qinghua, I am not going to  hurt you,” the man grits out. 

 He doesn’t take another step forward, but the anger in the air sends Shang Qinghua another step backwards anyway! What a statement! What a promise! He laughs, unwillingly and unconvincingly. 

 “I know, my king, I know!” he lies. “It’s just- it’s- I’ve been having- well, you have before.” 

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AN: The key to Moshang in the Airplane Extras is the inevitable outburst and the fact that Airplane just straight-up leaves Mobei-Jun after everything and he’s not wrong to do it. They’re so messed up. I love them. 

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 “My king, I… I need to be alone right now,” Shang Qinghua says hoarsely. “Please go away.” 

 Mobei-Jun still doesn't move. 

 "Please," Shang Qinghua repeats. 

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AN: I can’t remember what chapter this was or who I said it to, but I said to someone at some point that the key to SQH’s heart is listening to him. 

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 “I made some pretty bad mistakes today,” Shang Qinghua confesses to her. 

 “That’s okay,” Luo Jiahui says easily. 

 “Oh?” 

 “We’ll fix them.” 

 “Ah, really? That’s a relief,” Shang Qinghua says. “I’m so glad I have you.” 

 His voice breaks on the last word. He can’t hide that. 

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AN: How much SQH means that last statement hurts in the best way. 

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 This is… this is manageable. It’s just two new missions and another transmigrator. And then maybe another mission after that. He can handle new and weird missions. He can handle this Peerless Cucumber kid. 

 This is still his world, isn’t it? Even if it’s not his story anymore, he lives here! 

 He changed everything once! He can change it again if he has to! If the System wants him dead, it’ll have to catch him first! And he can do a little grovelling to fix everything he messed up today all by himself. Dignity? What dignity? Pride? What pride? Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky sold those things in another life! Yue Qingyuan and Mobei-Jun will have no choice but to forgive him for everything he said under stress just to get him to shut the fuck up! 

 Everything is going to be fine. 

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AN: SQH is like: “Okay, I can do this! I can do this! Just got to keep moving! I can do this if I keep moving! If I stop moving, I die, so keep moving!” 

LJH and LQG: “Please go see a doctor for stress.”