#i have a favored flavor of jiuyuan and you can TELL

[pr0cyon-lotor]

Au where Shen Yuan is a dragon with a giant cavern full of books and plays. It's enchanted and stuff so the cavern moves and shifts so it brings you to a section of the library with what you need/want. He occasionally lets people enter to read his books, but you aren't allowed to take them out no matter what. You are sometimes allowed to copy the information on your own scroll or book, but you need permission first.

He gets visited by Wu Yanzi and a young Shen Jiu. Wu Yanzi is looking for demonic cultivation manuals because Shen Yuan has almost one of each manual, encyclopedia, etc ever written.

He pays no mind since he doesn't really care if malicious people come in or not. He does passively keep an ear out just in case.

Wu Yanzi finds a cultivation manual that has everything he needed and could be sold for a lot of money since it was extremely rare and in pristine condition. He tries to sneak it into his bag, and the dragon just eats him. No warning. No heads up. No trumpets or fanfare. No foreboding messages to return the book. Just chomp.

Shen Jiu is taken aback because did his teacher just get eaten? JUST LIKE THAT?!

The dragon nudges the stolen book back into the shelf and looks at Shen Jiu. Shen Jiu is convinced he's going to die there. Except he doesn't get eaten or harmed. He gets gingerly picked up by the back of his robes and taken to the spiritual cultivation section of the library.

Shen Jiu gets plopped onto the floor and the dragon nudges a few beginner and cleansing cultivation manual to fall from the shelf for him and then promptly crawls back to its den.

Shen Jiu, who is instilled with the undescribable urge to scream "what the FUCK?!", instead sits down and starts reading and practicing because honest to god are you going to disobey a dragon that absolutely towers over you?

So when he's satisfied with his cultivation progress, he finally gets ready to leave. The dragon comes back only to put the books away from the shelves that were too far up for Shen Jiu to reach.

Shen Jiu thanks the dragon, which only gets him a huff in response, and because he hates to be in someone's debt (even if that someone is a dragon hundred of years his senior) he says he'll return with books to fill more shelves. He leaves soon after.

He manages to get the Qing Jing Peak Lord's attention during the Immortal Alliance Conference, which was his intention. He gets in a little late but his cultivation is practically caught up. He easily ranks up to head disciple.

During his time in Cang Qiong Shen Jiu jots down everything he learns. He writes down music he composes, discoveries he makes, talisman and array designs he creates, even poems he has written. His Shizun insists that he adds them to the Qing Jing library, and he does but he leaves polished copies of his work and excludes the very important parts.

Eventually when he's peak lord, he goes on an expedition by himself with the scrolls and books he's filled through the years. He finds the dragon's cavern and finally meets it after so long. He presents his life's work to the dragon, practically bearing his heart to it.

The dragon looks at him curiously and transforms into a human form. Shen Jiu watches as the dragon takes the bag from his hands and pulls out the first book, which had all the songs he made for the jiejies in the Warm Red Pavilion to preform.

The dragon say down and invited Shen Jiu to join him. He does and the dragon continues to go through everything while asking him questions about something he wrote or created. Sometimes they get off task and start talking about something else and both appreciate being able to talk to someone that understands classics or is good at debating.

By the time Shen Yuan finally finishes with everything Shen Jiu gave him, they have surprisingly clicked very well. Shen Yuan tells him he's going to make a section in his library for all his works, so he can bring more if he wished because Shen Yuan thought he was a genius that was just starting to shine.

Shen Jiu agrees to continue giving Shen Yuan his work if only to have an excuse to return. And that's how it became tradition that every once in a while the Qing Jing Peak Lord will go off the mountain with a stack of books for days on end and return to none of them.

Sometimes he would even have a strange man come to his peak. If the man visited, that meant Shen Qingqiu was going to be in a good mood, so obviously the kids always told him to stay or come back soon.

And also just as obviously, this is incredibly suspicious to the other peak lords. Cue Liu Qingge and Qi Qingqi pestering Shen Qingqiu and demanding to know what is the meaning of this. Also cue Shen Yuan misunderstanding and getting jealous and then realizing he has feelings for Shen Jiu (after a solid month(s) of denial).

So the next course of action is to keep Shen Jiu from Liu Qingge and Qi Qingqi because they're threats to Shen Yuan's time alone with Shen Jiu. Also he doesn't trust how Shen Jiu covers his face with his fan when they talk to him. Shen Jiu also covers his face when they both talk, so obviously that must mean something and he doesn't like it.

Isn't dragon jealousy great?

Eventually the peak lords find out about Shen Yuan and it was definitely a whole ordeal. Shen Yuan maybe threatened to burn Cang Qiong to the ground at some point, but the threat didn't go through so did it really happen?

Shen Jiu definitely knows about Shen Yuan's feelings for him and is absolutely fucking smug about it. Like who wouldn't want a highly intelligent dragon with a library that is any scholar's wet dream that INSTANTLY becomes a begging puppy when he wants your attention.

As far as Shen Jiu is concerned, he's winning at life.