#the multiple stacked dimensions is a physics theory that makes my head hurt

[larothoughts]

stacked dimensions, ascension, and gods

this is a crazy conglomeration of ideas from various fics relating to moshang-sqh-is-god theories and how ascension works in other xianxia mediums. basically me with a svsss thought experiment: what if our world is pidw's equivalent to heaven?

heaven is just the dimension stacked above your own

we never see heavenly officials interfere with stuff like in tgcf, it really seems like once you ascend you never come back down again. people from modern china have omnipotent knowledge of events, things, creatures, etc. of thousands of worlds (books) they are interested in. like god existing in the 5th dimension, sy and sqh can see into pidw's past and future just by flipping pages in a book.

ascension very oversimplified is the idea of removing oneself from the reincarnation cycle. under this theory, achieving ascension as a cultivator simply means punching up and entering the reincarnation cycle of the dimension above your own.

the idea that worlds are stacked on top and around each other, ranked in ascending and descending order, is a confusing mess i first learned about in the manga magi. each resident of a world above is viewed as a god to the world below. i imagine this also makes each successive world more and more difficult to punch up through. it's hilarious to imagine that cultivation DOES exist in the modern world, it's just far more guarded/secretive and possibly related to religions preaching the concept of heaven (punching up a dimension) and hell (falling down a dimension.)

the average person does neither and simply reincarnates within their native dimension. while punching up a dimension is closely gatekept, what many people don't realize is that falling down is always an option. because the price of falling is often too high. it's like intentionally choosing to go to a less developed world without your sense of sight and with one hand tied behind your back. sure, heaven provides their version of handicap assistance (the system) but why would you cripple yourself in a world far more dangerous than your own? after your past self presumably worked so hard to ascend? for love???

a soul's connection to their previous dimensional incarnation

when sy and sqh died, i imagined they faced the heavenly emperor or big god equivalent (probably living a few dimensions above our own world), who gave them the choice to reincarnate or to throw themselves into a lower realm. maybe both were recent ascensions from the pidw universe. their premature deaths clearly showed lingering attachment to it: sqh couldn't help but write out the story, and sy couldn't help but fanatically read it.

(did sqh literally create pidw with his own two hands? how could that be possible if he's missing a past incarnation of himself?

i don't have all the answers, it's possibly a time paradox related to how time means nothing when every world is a book and you can flip to whatever page you want.)

long story short, both sj and sqh were missing something from their previous dimension, and really, it doesn't hurt to let them know they could go back if they really wanted to. so they do.

there is a price for going against the natural order, though. they have to sign away much of their free will to the system, which acts as a nanny failsafe that'll throw them back up a dimension if they violate too many lower realm rules (to avoid collapsing the dimension entirely. don't want those pesky 4th and 5th dimension anomalies corrupting everything!) they don't remember this agreement because no one remembers what happens between life and death-- but the fact that the systems can control them is proof their souls signed on the dotted line.

now sqh 'transmigrated' the correct way, by being reborn into the past self linked to his love (og shang qinghua, he probably ascended 2 or 3 lifetimes after that but this is the one with mobeijun). he got to keep all his godly knowledge minus the whole 'agreement with the big god' thing. his system was stricter with some of his actions because the entire point of him falling from heaven was to be with mobei-jun-- something he failed to achieve in his og sqh life. system doesn't care if current hamster man, who doesn't remember making this deal, wants to run away! system was tasked with making sure they got together!

now sy... sy really was a glitch in the universe. so of course his system was especially unreasonable/illogical/unfair. sy barely qualified to ascend in the first place, now this mess of a soul wants to descend???

why the systems are so damn mean

i'm not smart enough to completely make this make sense, but bear with me: sy is the end result of shen jiu killing himself by eating xuan su's shards. something something binding xuan su and yqy together meant yqy's soul was forever stuck in his sword, making reincarnation/ascension impossible. sj's flawed cultivation also damaged his soul, enough so that when he died via xuan su, the agony of his soul leaving his body was enough to draw out whatever was left of yqy in the shards and the two kind of... merged into one. the qijiu soul amalgamation was the one that rejoined the reincarnation cycle, and eventually was able to ascend. but his incomplete mess of a soul made his ascended body weak, leading to the whole 'sick sy destined to die' headcanon.

so wth does this have to do with sy's glitchy fall from heaven? why fall in love with lbh? it's because lbh is a glitch too. a descendant of pidw's oldest glitch... the creation of the heavenly demon.

the first heavenly demon was a modern person whose soul was forcibly chucked down a dimension for crimes against the universe. this is no longer the punishment protocol the big gods use because just look at how badly the heavenly demon thing worked out. they are the reason why modern systems have such strict don't-talk-about-us protocols in place, why dotted lines need to be signed, why systems lean more towards unreasonable and harsh rather than lenient.

because that first criminal whose soul was sent to hell (pidw) had a rudimentary system meant to keep watch and make sure they didn't take over the realm with their godly knowledge. a system he was able to overpower and turn into a weapon that literally breaks the rules of the world: xin mo. now the big gods in heaven really didn't want the pidw universe to collapse in on itself, so they did meddle a bit: whittled down the heavenly demon population to two or three, added an endless abyss as a pressure valve in case the edges of the world start to crack, took away the corrupted system xin mo and chucked it as far out of reach as possible. normal things. the end result native-fied the heavenly demon enough to integrate them back into the dimension, problem solved!

but that doesn't mean the heavenly demon line 100% fits into the pidw universe. they're still a little too op. and things get worse when lbh finds xin mo, reigniting the old heavenly demon vs. system fight wherein lbh wants to use the system to bend the world to his whims, and the system wants to eat lbh because that's ITS JOB. it's meant to destroy dimension-collapsing things and lbh is one hair away from collapsing everything.

the metaphysical sense of wrongness around lbh is what draws the attention of the qijiu soul amalgamation. lbh is an anomaly, a corrupted soul, one that seems to be as inexplicably drawn to punching back up to heaven (but failing) as qijiu's soul weakness inexplicably draws it to hell (but also failing, sick body notwithstanding.)

so when the qijiu soul amalgamation aka shen yuan finally dies, especially after he dies thinking about lbh, why not fuck it all and throw himself back down for love?

the logistics of yeeting a glitched soul into its components

so there are a lot of problems with sy's choice. one, shen yuan as shen yuan doesn't exist in a lifetime that'll let him fall in love with lbh. the first incarnation of the qijiu soul amalgamation reincarnated many years after lbh's reign was forcibly ended by the big gods in heaven deus ex nerfing him. two, trying to stuff him into either sj or yqy at birth (like with sqh) won't work. the souls won't recognize each other.

the yqy part of his soul came from a post-xuan-su binding soul, and the sj part of his soul came from a heart-broken-damaged-foundation shen jiu soul. so the big gods split the difference and chucked him into the first post-xuan-su era sj-is-qi-deviating-bc-of-qijiu-angst event... aka the start of svsss in sqq's body. cue svsss shenanigans, wherein everyone (eventually) gets their happily ever after.

final thoughts aka it's hard to be a qijiu shipper

the logical thing my smooth brain can't 100% work out is how this affects yqy's bound soul during the svsss era. sj's soul is long gone, having merged into sy and then returning through post-ascension 5th dimension time bullshit. but yqy is still alive during this period, and his poor soul must be so confused. despite sy clearly not being sj, he still inexplicably likes and wants to protect sy (who kind of is sj, in a roundabout way.) all i can think of sad qi-ge hours. poor man can't catch a break his entire life is a tragedy.

one solution to his soul problem could be his death. sj was only able to bond with it after the yqy's death because his soul in life was splintered between sword and body. maybe when yqy finally dies, xuan su's shards are returned to sy as cang qiong's second in command. the shards draw him in, and when he touches them, they absorb into his body... completely destroying the last remnants of the system clinging to him.

the system is tied to a contract made by his soul, and the bit of yqy's soul added to sy makes it different enough to shake that system loose. when he ascends a second time (likely with lbh by his side), his soul is no longer broken to the point of illness. it's sy's one last gift from dad.

(maybe when sy made that deal with the big god to be with lbh, each separate part of his soul made a deal too: sj, who died on xuan su, wishing for a universe where yqy lived a long life; and yqy, who died knowing sj was tortured, wishing for a universe where sj was safe from lbh. so technically all 3 of their wishes were granted by sy wifebeaming lbh lol)