#but I'm personally very partial to qijiu. they just have so much tasty tasty tragedy to sink your teeth into

[tcfactory]

Since my brain has been full of SVSSS brainrot lately:

I want a fic where the transmigration mostly fails and Shen Jiu wakes up from his qi deviation as User002 with the goddamn System treating him like he is Shen Yuan. Trashy yellow book what??? No, he doesn't need stats on his fellow peak lords, if he is supposed to follow a plot then he wants to see the script! You wretched floating rectangle, how is he supposed to play along if he doesn't know the source material?!

The stress of having what feels like a very pushy curse or an insanely weird demon inflicted upon him makes him deviate from some minor plot points and he gets punished for being OOC a couple of times until the System takes pity on him and directs him to Airplane bro, with the very clear suggestion that if he can't remember the early arcs of the story - System understands, User! It's very long after all. UwU - he should go and discuss it with the author.

He basically kicks down Shang Qinghua's door in desperation for some clarity and maybe an explanation, right now before he works himself into a stress-induced qi deviation, Shang-shidi. Shang hamster looks at his miserable scum villain, takes a deep breath, brings out all of Shen Qingqiu's favorite snacks that nobody should know about, makes a pot of calming tea and tells him everything.

Shang Qinghua expects Shen Qingqiu to be angry, to rip into him for writing him into this wretched life. And Shen Jiu is angry, but not at Qinghua. His anxious, mousy little shidi who lives his entire life under the looming threat of a horrible, seemingly unchangeable future doesn't look like a god. Shang Qinghua, who does his best to run his peak well and look out for his disciples despite his admittance that in the story the original Qinghua did a shoddy job - he doesn't look like someone who would have put pen to paper and written a tragedy if he knew it would become someone's reality.

And how could Shen Jiu, who has seen people sell their bodies and their very dignity for a cup of stale water, judge someone for writing a very bad yellow book so he can eat? Please. Peak Lord Shen might have developed a very discerning taste in literature over the years, but you can't fill your stomach with artistic integrity, Shang-shidi. Shen Jiu understands.

So they sit and for that first evening, Shen Qingqiu listens to all the differences creeping into the story, Shang Qinghua's retelling of the drafts he abandoned due to peer pressure, the long rambling tangents of the research he's done, even if they never made it into the story. Qinghua is so caught up in having someone to talk to that he doesn't realize that Shen Qingqiu put everything that happened to Qi-ge together, somewhere between the musings about how a sword inspired by kintsugi would be so cool looking, shame that nobody ever sees the thing, and the griping about how much one of his patrons complained about Yue Qingyuan dying without ever drawing his sword.

Later, when the snacks are gone and the tea is replaced with something stronger, he tells Shen Qingqiu about the stories he really wanted to write. About how he shamefully sneaked his dream man into PIDW, just so he could have some small part to himself, and oh, Shen Qingqiu will have to remind him about demon courting practices when they are both sober again, because it sounds like that Mobei prince is down bad for him.

He leaves that night with a newfound determination. Shang Qinghua might be resigned to the whims of his System and the shackles of the Plot, but Shen Jiu didn't burn the Qiu manor down and break his chains to give up so easily. This is his world, his sect, his Qi-ge on the line, and he would sooner wrest control from the System and become custodian of the world himself than let something take away and ruin what is his. He is the strategist of Cang Qiong Sect, there is no situation he can't think a way out of and he has had enough of tragedies.

Before any of that, however, he needs to go and have a good yell at his Qi-ge, smack his stupid face and then curl up in his arms for a good night's sleep. It's long overdue.