#he doesn't go insane from xin mo after finding it

[10thmusemoon]

Title for the ask game!

"Good Graces"

lmao prim why does this feel like I'm seeing beyonce at the grocery store??? i love your fics!

okay hm content warning for angst, major character death, bad end

Shenbros that grow up alongside YQY and that somehow makes everything worse.

YQY still makes the unforgivable mistake of saving Shi Wu, Shen Jiu still steps in, but now he has Shen Yuan attached to him too. The two get taken into the Qiu household, QJL still develops an obsession with torturing Shen Jiu but now uses Shen Yuan as collateral.. If he doesn't behave, if he isn't perfect, well then, QJL will just see how his little brother does instead. Throughout this all, the two grow even closer, SJ doesn't let the resentment fester because SY is the only thing he still has, the only thing that keeps his sane. SY bandages his wounds in the night, holds him close, brings him into QHT's circle of safety with clever words whenever possible. He is the only good thing in the world now that Qi-ge is gone. They just need to wait for him to come back, and things will be fine.

And surprisingly, he does! This universe smiles down on SJ for once and shows him mercy. YQY looks like a prince standing behind his shizun, regal in his fine robes, and handsome in the way that well fed nobles can be. SJ tries to focus on the negotiations, but his eyes keep drawing back him yqy's face, awe and hunger at war. It's because of this that he misses the way SY goes stiff, head swiveling between the cultivators in silently growing horror.

The negotiations are easier than SJ ever thought they would be, his and SY's lives are traded from one hand to another like any dirty coin. The only difference being now they are indentured servants, their contracts having an actual time limit, the conditions of which only require them to be CQMS disciples until YQY becomes the new peak lord.

Which is...fine. More than fine, even! SJ is convinced that if he really wanted to, he could convince YQY to runaway with them afterwards. When he tells this to SY he's shocked by his insistent refusal.

"No, we have to stay at CQMS. No matter what."

Whatever.

For 15 solid years, SJ's life is good. He stakes his claim on YQY as soon as he realizes there are people interested in him, shamelessly making himself at home by his side. SJ excels at QJP, determined to be the one YQY can rely on. If SY insists on staying at CQMS, then SY will just have to make it theirs.

(years down the line is experiences gleeful joy at seeing people's face twist when it's revealed he's yqy's spouse.)

SY in all of this, is living in crisis mode! His brother is the scum villain and is going to get qi-ge killed! Why the FUCK did Airplane never mention any of this!!??? No matter how badly he wants to fuck off to the beast peak, he doesn't! He stays firmly on QJP, taking on all the duties that deal with the new disciples to keep them as far as fuck as he can from Shen Jiu's clutches!! When YQY and SJ finally ascend as peak lords, naturally he continues handling any responsibilities of SJ's that deal with one-on-one contact with kids. And honestly? That's the ideal! SY's cultivation has never been as strong as SJ's, he's not the one meant to be the protagonists' narrative foil after all! He can coast by on teaching the fundamentals!

In SJ's eyes, SY continues to be his filial younger brother, taking on the burden of the tasks SJ hates. He spoils him, when possible, in the way only SY and YQY ever seem to understand. They are the only two good things that have been and always will be his. He doesn't need anyone else.

And then NYY arrives, and no one is more surprised than he is that he looks forward to teaching her the guqin, delights in how quickly she picks up the erhu. He doesn't understand why SY looms nervously whenever she's near, is irritated when he starts to suspect why. It's their first huge blow up.

And then the boy arrives.

He can't explain why this particular disciple is so repulsive. Why the dirt seems to stick to him, no matter how clean he is. Filthy fingerprints on grasping hands. Wretched thing has a certain look in his eye, a hunger SJ knows will be ruinous, insatiable. Just the way he trails after SY is enough to make him spit! And SY has always been a soft-hearted idiot, falling for the urchin's sob story! Just as obsessed! If they don't nip it in the bud now, they'll be rumors about them. The kind of things that pull righteous cultivators down from the heavens!

YQY listens to all of this indulgently, combing oil through SJ's hair and kissing his temple. As always, no matter how hard SJ tries to hold on, yqy always manages to pull him from his mood.

"What's wrong with having a favorite?" "It's not the same and you know it!" "He's just a child, if you let Liu-shidi back on QJP, it won't even be an issue."

Lots of grumbling about toads wanting swan's flesh. They both know the root of the issue is just that SJ can't let anything that's his slip out of his grasps. His love is all consuming, kept close to his chest in the fear that it will be stolen away.

LQG is not allowed on QJP, instead, SJ starts to teach more. Tries to test LBH relentlessly, waiting for him to fail so he can prove a point. This makes things worse between the brothers, more and more arguments come up until they resort to childhood tactics of wrestling across the floor of the Bamboo house and ripping out hair. SY breaks a hair pin he knows YQY gave him, SJ tears one of SY's manuscripts on abyssal fauna in half. The fallout is ugly enough that Binghe and NYY run all the way to QDP, breaking past the sect leader's chief of staff about the impending death of YQY's husband and/or brother in law.

Kneeling in front of an amused yqy, bruised and with bald spots, both brothers Shen explain their case, each threatening YQY not to show favoritism to the other. The proposed solution is to have LBH spend some time on Qiong Ding Peak, at least until he's qualified to go on night hunts on his own. SJ is fully convinced he's won, is ready to smugly denounce any comments about Qi-ge's blatant favoritism.

Neither expect SY's eyes go wide, for him to lean forward until he's crawling to yqy's side in excitement. Luo Binghe's praises fall from his mouth like honey. SY's running to his room for a brush and paper, outlining lesson plans and tasks LBH can take on to learn about all the good CQMS does for the realm. To SJ's revulsion, SY badgers YQY until he promises to include one on one lessons. QDP already has a head disciple, there's no harm in it, right?

In Shen Yuan's eyes, a light from the heaven's has shined down on him. Invisible to all, the system flashes an exclamation point above yqy's head, offering an alternative option to saving the sect.

[MISSION OBJECTIVE: SHIBOS GOOD GRACES]

[DO YOU WISH TO ACCEPT? Y/N ?]

It's perfect! No matter how much SQQ hates LBH, the combined forces of SY and YQY will stand united against him! The sect will be saved and SY will never see his white lotus darken! Maybe, and he's nearly salivating at this point, LBH might even consider staying at the sect and becoming the next QJP lord! It will take, of course, years to soften up SJ to that point. But really, when has he ever said no to SY when it truly mattered? He just needs to suck up and live in Shen Jiu's pocket for a little, it's fine! This will be easier than the time he accidentaly came back with several short haired monsters after a mission with LQG and needed a place to keep them! And now they farm them for brushes!

SY sleeps soundly for the first night in years, comforted in the knowledge that LBH's work ethic and stubborn tendencies will surely endear himself to YQY eventually. And then, one day, he knows with certainty, that if he's not there to protect LBH, YQY surely will.

The Immortal Alliance Conference is as disastrous as it was always going to be. There is a countdown floating ahead of Shen Yuan that only he can see. Sweat is pouring down his face as he fights his way after demons he once dreamed about. SY lost track of his brother ages ago, the two separating to different crisis points to save as many disciples as possible. At the three minute mark, bright blue laughing kaomoji offer their congratulations, informing him that the inmun requirements for SHIBOS GOOD GRACES have been met.

SY nearly collapses with relief, his steps slowing down a fraction, just enough to catch his breath. Fuck teaching the fundamentals to scholars nerds did not help him retain cardio! The times is in it's final seconds when he makes it into a clearing, eyes blinking rapidly in disbelief when he passes Xiu Ya embedded into the forehead of a Black Moon Rhinoceros Python's skull. Then, just further ahead, Shen Yuan's heart falls nearly out of his chest.

There are tears streaming down Luo Binghe's face as he tips backward off the cliff. The huadian beneath his messy hair shines a bright red, the soft glow reflecting off Yue Qingyuan's black pauldron. The sect leader, his da-ge, is slumped against Luo Binghe, arms in a tight embrace, an unfamiliar sword piercing him in the back as the two tumble towards an abyssal rift.

The wail of a dying beast pierces through SY's stupor, SJ stands with a blackened hand outstretched, only steps away from following the only man he's ever loved. Shen Yuan moves faster than he ever has before, half blinded by notifications he's never seen before. Something about heartbreak points, swords, and narrative foils. He doesn't care! He doesn't care! SJ is writhing in his hold screaming like a madman, over his shoulder Luo Binghe is getting smaller and smaller, Yue Qingyuan's robes fluttering around them like broken wings. Screams echo through the clearing long after the rifts have closed.

"I'M SORRY I'M SO--"

"QI-GE YOU BASTARD! YOU PROMISED YOU WOULDN'T LEAV-"

-

Five years later, Luo Binghe returns to Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, notably missing the great Xin Mo sword. The protagonist kowtows in the bamboo house, forehead touching the floor and arms extended out to present a mahogany box of bones and a long sword with a plain scabbard before an alter. Shen Yuan kneels next to him, chest shaking with labored breaths, he follows suit with is forehead pressed to the floor. From his peripheral, he can see the way Binghe's shoulders have started to shake, a puddle of tears collecting just beneath his face. A tally of points starts to flash above the boy, Shen Yuan closes his eyes, another useless apology passes through his mind.

"Gege was right, Qi-ge came home."

[fairsweetlonging]

hear me out, svsss extras au where, some part after canon, when the original luo binghe shows up, shen qingqiu does go with him (whether forcefully or willingly) to the other world. of course, bingge being bingge he immediately starts planning a wedding and trying to take shen qingqiu to bed, but his spouse-to-be isn't having it. he has this thing called self-respect, you know!

so, shen qingqiu, trying to buy himself time, tells bingge he'll need to be properly courted first. after all, how can you marry a guy you just met? (frozen ref). bingge, though reluctantly, agrees.

and generally in my head it's a bit of a feel-good fic, in a way? at least before the angst begins. shen qingqiu is sweet and kind to bingge but strict and aloof enough to not be a different person entirely, and when shen qingqiu (teasingly) tells him to perform the qing jing sword drills, bingge blooms under the praise he's given when he performs them flawlessly, and there is something very calming about walking into shen qingqiu's suite and finding him curled up on the cushioned window sill with a blanket, a cup of tea and a book he's helplessly engrossed in.

in this au shen jiu is still alive, locked in the dungeons of the demon realm castle. with the new shen qingqiu here he's been severely neglected, mainly because bingge hates to taint his new image of 'the kind shizun' with his hateful despicable old shizun, clearly this is how it was always meant to be, and shen jiu can rot for all he cares. at first shen qingqiu (yuan) thinks shen jiu must be long dead and gone, but then he overhears two guard demons bickering about "food for the prisoner", and he gets curious.

it's a scene à la 'belle and the beast' where shen qingqiu goes to the forbidden wing dungeon, finding shen qingqiu chained up, bones broken, cultivation crippled. one of his arms is gone, and shen qingqiu doesn't want to look too long at the rotten remains in the corner of the cell. shen jiu is barely conscious at this point, but shen qingqiu spends a little time with him anyway.

when he has dinner with bingge later that night, he asks after shen jiu, saying he wants to see him. binghe gets a little paranoid, worried about them teaming up against him or that this shen qingqiu will think he's a monster too. but shen qingqiu knows to spin it in such a way that it basically amounts to "wouldn't it be great to have two nice shizuns?" (shen yuan knows how important closure can be). and. yeah. bingge does like the idea of two nice shizuns.

so then shen qingqiu gets to take care of shen jiu (who does have to remain in the dungeons for now), and if bingge hadn't seen it with his own eyes he wouldn't have believed shen jiu took to shen qingqiu so quickly, being the pitiful pile of broken bones, starvation and torture trauma that he is, but, clearly, the way he allows shen qingqiu to touch him, stroke his hair, how his face falls, just slightly, when shen qingqiu has to leave, he's getting attached. something in bingge's xin-mo influenced mind delights in the idea of something else he can take away from his old shizun (shen yuan won't let him).

there's a bunch of endings to this, whether shen qingqiu and bingge find love and get married, or maybe binghe comes to save his shizun and they take shen jiu back to their world, or shen qingqiu acts like a catalist between original binghe and original shen qingqiu for them to be together, or idk maybe everyone goes to the other (svsss) world and they become some insane quartet, take your pick!

[rarepears]

#this is amazing but please consider: they can all be partially right#they arrived into the world at the same time but they didn't have to come from the same time as well#so what if PIDW gets massively big and mainstream after Airplane's death with like a million different spinoff stuff#because let's be honest if he had to write this much to get by w/ a relatively popular webnovel then his contract was garbage#and he signed off all the rights to it so they could do whatever after his death#so all these different properties are set in vaguely the same universe and usually the same continuity but they were not the same genre#YQY sometimes caught episodes of this long running palace drama on tv about LBH's harem#he only saw like one episode in every five or so and could never follow the story but he liked the vibes#LQG very vaguely remembers playing this cultivator video game about some really talented and really pretty noble kid#going off to join a cultivator sect against his parents wishes and eventually becoming a fabled master and fighting a heavenly demon#it was about one of LBH's sons and the heavenly demon was TLJ who went completely insane under the mountain by the time a cult let him out#but he always played it at like 3 am to destress after exams while chugging energy drinks so he doesn't remember the details anymore#besides he's been out of college for years now and the game wasn't as good as people made it out to be ofc he doesn't remember the details#the combat was fun! being and actual war god is even more fun though!#MBJ crowdfunded a dating sim in the PIDW universe that was all about a demon prince finding the perfect spouse bc the demons looked cool#but he transmigrated before it actually released so he never actually got to be immersed the in universe#WQW used to 3d print and make so many props for pidw cosplays he could recognize xin mo from like ten miles away on a foggy evening#bc that fucking sword was the most popular item and it was such a bitch to make#also yeah LBH thinks he's in a fanfic. he doesn't really remember which one because let's be honest#sometimes you read so many similar stories that are all to your taste that the details become blurry#but he knows these tropes and he knows how they should end so he's going to try and stay in character#it will all be worth it when he gets to marry SQQ :)#also on the note of otom!mbj it would be really funny if he got like those small indicators that sometimes happen when a chara likes you#noting overt just a few colorful little hearts or something that pop up when sqh is thinking positively of him#he doesn't have an indicator for negative reactions. only positive ones#which leads to really fucking mixed messages bc sqh is really weird about his blorbo. can be scared to death and still think horny thoughts @tcfactory

Meanwhile Liu Mingyan is using the PIDW equivalent of harry potter and the cursed child spin off as her reference and she's real desperate to get Ning Yingying out of Luo Binghe's way and direct the future demon emperor onto the danmei path.

Otome!Mobei Jun can detect emotional fluctuations due to his power over the cold and ice. He can feel when someone's face gets warmer (embarrassed, flushed, etc.) but he's can't tell the exact reaction... which leads to interesting misunderstandings!

[More in #svsss au where every single character are all actually transmigrators AU]

what about a svsss au where every single character are all actually transmigrators?

In other words, SVSSS is a dungeons and dragon game.

[rarepears]

When in doubt, blame Beru. Beru read too many face slapping novels that he has full confidence that Shen Jiu has some sort of secret trump move to get out of the trial with no problem. He's got popcorn stashed on him and he's ready to watch the chaos be unleased.

Wait, I should back up. The shadow summons of course first consulted with the lady on how to proceed.

Beru: We shall kill all your accusers! Shen Jiu: ...no Beru. Beru: We can- Shen Jiu, thinking mentally of how anything he does will create negative consequences for Cang Qiong: No, don't do anything. And don't you dare tell Sung Jinwoo. Beru: Yes Milady!

The shadow summons don't dare disobey their liege's wife.

Well, for the most part.

With the trial starting, Beru's excitement couldn't be contained and Sung Jinwoo felt the sudden burst of happiness from the ant.

"What's going on?" He sends a mental poke. He's too curious to not ask.

The answer he gets back is simple. "See for yourself!" A flurry of similar replies is sent back by the other shadow soldiers hidden in Shen Jiu's shadows.

So... Sung Jinwoo pops over. With the kids because it sounded really fun too. The kids shouldn't miss out on the fun stuff, especially if it involves his usually very prim and proper husband having fun... And then Sung Jinwoo sees his little husband on trial with a bunch of random people accusing him of the most insane things.

To say that he's not pleased is an understatement.

---

Also when there's no wifeplot happening, Luo Binghe's protagonist halo is on standby. Since there pretty much always is a wife plot, he's usually protected by his halo. But now? There is no wifeplot.

Add in a Xin Mo that he's still struggling to control and Sung Jinwoo has a very easy time beating everyone up and taking his poor husband back to pamper after suffering from this Very Traumatic Event (or so Sung Jinwoo considers it to be.)

Don't forget Beru fumbling in the middle of everything! He's issuing challenges for Luo Binghe to complete, he's finding other suitors that may be considered good candidates for Shen Yuan's hand. He's never happier playing matchmaker!

Let's be real. No matter how much Shen Yuan wants to run off into the sunset with Luo Binghe, he can't. Not with the 24/7 shadow soldier monitoring service always keeping an eye on his every move. The shadow summons can easily cart him back home at the drop of a dime. They stalk and cluck at Luo Binghe's every embarrassing incident and Beru happily gossips over every single thing he hears from the other shadow soldiers to Shen Jiu.

Beru probably even goes to tell Shen Yuan that he can get him a better Luo Binghe from another dimension, so don't worry your pretty little head if this Luo Binghe doesn't work out. :)

[More in #sung jinwoo x shen jiu]

In the au in which sj marries sjw do they have children since that would solidify sj’s position as the legal wife? What about what the system thinks of all this? Does the plot change or does lbh still get thrown into the abyss? No revenge for him though because sjws god beats the protagonist halo

Shen Jiu: I want a child. Sung Jinwoo: Okay, let's get down to business. Shen Jiu: *pregnant within the hour*

(Sung Jinwoo is just efficient Like That.)

Shen Jiu has all these schemes to keep his husband close including having Sung Jinwoo's children. Sung Jinwoo has No Thoughts in his brain - he just hears that Shen Jiu wants to have kids and it's just an automatic "what my wife wants, what he shall get". Plus Jinah was super cute as a kid and he would love that have a mini-Jinah running around again.

If Shen Jiu wants another kid, Sung Jinwoo is more than happy to please. The shadow summons do make very helpful nannies.

Why would the system care though? There's no Shen Yuan in this AU; this is PIDW and plot divergence already occurred with Sung Jinwoo's presence.

Oh! Imagine Shen Jiu was pregnant when Luo Binghe was accepted into the sect. All his bullying and mistreatment of Luo Binghe was really amplified by his pregnancy hormones.

Luo Binghe, although already full of hatred towards his shizun by the time of the trial, is still grasping for reasons and plausible explanations of why he was targeted - for what did he do to warrant such treatment? And let's be real: Luo Binghe still doesn't understand woman and how they work. The moment he learns that "shizun was pregnant and more short tempered than usual", he happily leaps at the excuse.

[More in #sung jinwoo x shen jiu]