#zhongdian

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

Prayer flags overlooking Zhongdian, Summer 2009, photo by me @gwenllian-in-the-abbey So this old town was officially renamed Shangri-La in order to promote tourism, but I always knew it as Zhongdian. It's in the foothills of the Himalayas, in the ethnically Tibetan northwestern part of Yunnan province. These flags are near a gigantic prayer wheel that requires multiple people to spin.

[tinynerdycthulu]

i feel like the most reverse transmigration binggeyuan fic imply or outright state that sqh also hasnt transmigrated, which is such a missed opportunity. lets say you're binghe and you suddenly transport to a foreign world. you meet a man that looks remarkably like your evil shizun...but isnt...blah blah blah

obviously you fall in love but then you venture into his bedroom and you see a conspiracy theory wall littered with red string, hastily scribbled addresses, zhongdian usernames, and at the very center, a picture of someone (who is in your opinion so freaking ugly, shizun -- oops, shen yuan, he doesnt like that -- could do some much better) so you take a closer look and you see a snippet of extremely bad porn. about yourself.

the drama. the chaos. shen yuan absolutely refusing to justify why he hired a p.i to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his favorite porn author. the horrifying familiarity of the porn...isn't it just like something that the mobei-jun once showed him that he claimed his husband wrote???

[i-cant-cast-that-yet]

Y'know, I read a lot of Jiuyuan--or really just anything Shen Jiu in general, and Id like to pitch this idea to the class:

Disciple Shen Jiu who fuckin haaates men, right? Shen Jiu who goes to brothels to sleep bc he just can't around the other boys knowing full well how shit his reputation is bc of it but Fuck You he's gonna do what he has to to get some fucking rest on this shit ass peak of pretentious rich-kids who wouldn't know the tip of their sword from the hilt unless it was jammed in their throats--

Disciple Shen Jiu who's seen just about every flavor of man in the streets both from his nights with his jiejie's and from his time with the Qiu and the slavers, and loathes them with a passion and is, shamefully in his mind, afraid of them.

Standoffish, rude, holier than thou, venom spitting queen with a cruel streak a thinly veiled mile wide, Shen Jiu. A scum villain in the making.

Enter Disciple Shen Yuan.

Shen Yuan, in all his millennial transmigrator glory. Hikkikomori ass lame ass chokes on a meatbun and fucking croaks after reading a porn harem web novel for the fucking plot (cough-lbh-cough) Shen Yuan.

This rando ass dude with Shen Jiu's family name--no they aren't related stop asking, Shen Yuan why do you look grossed out do you wanna fight??--

Shen Yuan who doesn't get close to any of his shijie's, bc "Oh they're all gonna be in Bingge's harem at some point, I don't wanna steal the protagonists wives!!"

Shen Yuan, a shut-in nerd in his early to mid 20s, who also shirks any of his shixiong's attention for other reasons. He's not big on sports in the first place, and as cool as swords are they're fucking heavy!!! Where's the training montage skip button, system!?!? All this (ugh) comraderie...he just wants to stay in the library and pretend the scrolls are as interesting as zhongdian was, okay?

Shen Jiu, who sees these avoidant traits in a boy with his name and a face that looks like his and assumes Shen Yuan has the same traumas as him.

He hates men, Shen Yuan included for both the happenstance of his birth and also because he's an idiot, but now he's seeing more of him reflected in this dude and it itches.

Maybe he bullies Shen Yuan like he does Binghe. Maybe Shen Yuan, who isn't actually a teenager in his own head like lbh was and fucking hates the scum villain (he called for castration in one life and he'll do it again!! This life gave him cultivation and a sword, he'll get creative if he has to) fights back.

Puts all that time in the forums to good use and verbally eviscerates the guy. Hits on several sore topics all at once and if it wasn't for the very public scene being caused Shen Jiu might have killed this upstart instead of just throwing a punch and jumping him like he currently is.

And listen. Fighting between peaks is typical. The Qing Jing peak lord of the time could care less if Shen Jiu fights the Liu kid from Bai Zhan--there's history between the peaks as it is. But the two Shens beefing so publically?? That's bad for Qing Jing's image.

Shen Jiu might be hated, but Shen Yuan is adored by several key figures across the sect and this Shizun can't tell if the brat did it on purpose or not but it's troublesome either way. Shen Jiu is here on Zhangmen-shixiong's head disciples request, so she can't get rid of either of them.

So she strategizes. It's like her whole thing.

Qing Jing peak lord-jie sticks the Shen's in the xianxia equivalent of the get along shirt. She makes them go on missions together, do chores together, etc. They'll either snap and kill one another or become friends. She wins either way.

It's bad at first. Blood is drawn, fans are thrown and broken over heads. They're too alike and too different and Shen Jiu sees himself in this kid but also every rich boy who wastes their own potential and privilege that they can't realize they were blessed with and he haaates it. Shen Yuan is pissed bc this ass is cruel and awful but so fucking sympathetic once he's spent enough time around the guy to put some pieces together. Bro loves a problematic blorbo and Binghe was a lot of things in pidw, but the product of Shen Jiu's projection is chief among them and Shen Yuan is getting a whole lot of it right now and it puts a lot into perspective.

...................

This is getting away from me now. It's late. Maybe I'll pick this up later.

[slow-reader-reads-books]

Lesbingyuan au where it’s the normal set up of post extras Bingge dimension traveling into another universe to find his own Shen Yuan. Except the world he arrives in (and is stuck in, can’t opt out of this gender journey) is a slightly genderbent one.

(hidden under a read more bc this turned basically into a wonkily grammatically tensed mini-fic)

Our darling Peerless Cucumber is a 20 something self-proclaimed straight girl with untapped soft butch potential, and is currently recovering from the harrowing trauma of the sunk cost fallacy. She’s spent a lot of time spending money on, reading, and participating in the online fandom of Proud Immortal Demon Way, and she’s currently also dealing with the fact that all her hard work in making herself heard to Great Master Airplane was seemingly for nothing. You see, Shen Yuan had the brilliant idea to create an account that appeared to be a perfectly demographically targeted straight male fan of YY novels who could critique Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky as his fellow but also his better and be listened to and receive great accolades from all frequenters of Zhongdian Literature and be validated for her hate of his writing.

“Airplane’s stupid pen name is a dick joke, I guess I gotta make mine one too… Just to, you know, seem legit and like we have common ground.”

What this charade accomplished was very little, but Peerless Cucumber did become very infamous for three things. One, his nitpicking (“It’s hardly nitpicking if it harms the integrity of the whole story1!!”). Two: his Luo Binghe fanboying (“As a protagonist he’s clearly just a cut above the rest when it comes to soul and wit, the story just rarely ever shows it off”). And three: his skipping of the steamy scenes (“I highly doubt this near identical scenario that also happened twenty chapters back but with a different wife of the week with this exact same cliffside flower giving off the same aphrodisiac mist to Bingge and new wife below will now suddenly be of any plot consequence for the next arc. It didn’t last time either, SKIP!”).

His fervent online activity garnered him the reputation of being an Airplane anti-fan, but also the assumed personality of a submissive simp who hates the easily dominated women that populate Luo Bingge’s harem. 

“lol thats why he must like mingyan so much. she never let bingge push her down. cucumber-bro must want a girlfriend who’ll chain him up and whip him! hes a pervert just like the rest of us, just a worse type kek.” 

Shen Yuan, when looking at such reply comments, gets shiver-inducing flashbacks to when her meimei left her BL comics out for everyone and the Buddha to see. She accidentally witnessed frightening scenes of thin, long-limbed men pushing each other down, tying each other to beds and cracking whips on skin until they shed blood, tears and semen, the shou begging for the gong to stop and the gong never listening. 

Shen Yuan tries to put such things out of her mind if only to preserve in amber the precious, innocent image of her meimei she knows to be true, but also secondarily to focus on the insulted male pride she’s supposed to be feeling after being accused of being a wussy submissive deviant in bed. That sort of accusation requires an in-depth 10,000 character response in order to remain in character as a straight male YY novel connoisseur.

Shen Yuan, as Peerless Cucumber but also as her true self, was undoubtedly straight. Staying in character, Peerless Cucumber made sure to extol the beauty of characters like Liu Mingyan— “She’s an intelligent and cold beauty and is written with a clear and vivid personality! A true equal for our Bingge on the battlefield and in matters of the heart!” As well as occasionally Ning Yingying— “She’s not the boring choice, you all just don’t know the special value a loyal shijie character brings, even if she does lose 99% of her personality to that one singular trait…”

But don’t get it twisted! This is a part of her performance! In real life, logged off and touching grass and breathing fresh outdoor air, she’s your run-of-the-mill average girl who is just a part of the pack. 

Her goals in life are simply not ambitious, is all. If there was a competition with ten available spots to win, she’d have no qualms placing tenth and simply feel honored to have participated. If there are ten girls and nine of them bag a good boyfriend, Shen Yuan doesn’t mind being the tenth who gets unlucky. She’s just kind to her meimeis and jiejies like that! As if she’d take that away from them! They'd probably been wanted those boyfriends for a long time! 

Shen Yuan is hardly a sore loser, and she knows the great importance of girl code and female friendship.

So, Shen Yuan being the normal average and totally straight and cisgender girl that she is decides to wallow in her Airplane-induced misery by going to a con, donning her homemade Mobei-jun cosplay. She worked hours of her life learning how to sew just for this project to the point her family thought she was finally thinking about settling down and learning wifely skills. 

Unfortunately for her ignorant family she’s actually just investing in a really elaborate excuse to cross dress. Well, it’s not really crossdressing, it’s just cosplay! Cosplay is totally different and not about taking on the gender of a character, but their larger identity! She didn’t want to explain this to them, and internally felt afraid and hesitant about it, as if they’d view her as weird for wanting to do this, so she didn’t bother to try at all.

So, Shen Yuan in her 160 centimeter/5 foot 3 inch glory decked out in dark blues and blacks, fur lining the shoulders of her outfit for style points, and wearing a long white wig styled mostly loose but with a few thin braids, chances upon a particularly striking Luo Binghe cosplayer. Not just any Luo Binghe cosplayer, but the best one! He’s tall, must be over 180cm/6 foot but also svelte and willowy in surprising ways. His hair is long and flows down his back from a ponytail ornamented at the base with a thin metal guan. Parts of his cosplay seem very benign, but others seem meticulously crafted and exquisite in quality, especially that sword at his hip! Just looking at it intimidated her, yikes! Job well done, cosplayer!

This Luo Binghe also had the most beautiful and delicately boned face she’d ever seen, eyes dark and deep and highly reflective like that of a lake on a dark and starry night. The cosplayer’s voice was also deeply melodic and enchanting.

This cosplayer… is also a woman! Shen Yuan nodded to herself internally, yes that must be it! No man looks like this in reality, this is a fellow female sufferer of Proud Immortal Demon Way impersonating a fictional man for similar psychological reasons as her. A surge of female loyalty spawns in Shen Yuan’s chest, and she doesn't even bother resisting the urge to walk over and strike up a conversation with this Luo Binghe.

She spat out her name in quick order and immediately started on the topic of female character writing in the novel. The Luo Binghe cosplayer was looking at her quietly and with a heavy amount of gravity, ink-brush eyebrows sitting elegantly low above her eyes in attentive focus. What a good listener this lady is, Shen Yuan thought. She can’t remember when someone last listened to her this closely. She hypocritically chooses to not pay attention to that train of thought any further. “In a world like Proud Immortal Demon Way,” Shen Yuan began with slight smarm, “who would choose to be a woman? I certainly wouldn’t if I wanted to see the interesting parts of the world that drew me into the story in the first place. A male protagonist can explore it freely, but the female characters are all locked away in either the marriage bedroom or the highly isolated harem palaces. Great Master Airplane clearly didn’t eat enough walnuts as a child, he must have some sort of brain deficiency when it comes to writing proper characters— ” 

The tall Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly spoke up. “Choose?” “Hm? Yeah, I mean, in a world like that, there’s basically no choice, yeah? Gotta serve the narrative and readers and all. But the real world doesn’t have a narrative, we only have ourselves and each other to guide us. So we just do what we want, figure it out as we go. Like us two! We wanted to dress up as these male characters from this asinine story and attend this con and we figured out how to do it! We’re kindred spirits, you and I, we’re zhiyin!” “So when you leave this con, you will also choose to take this manner of dress off and wear something else?” “Obviously. Though, my go-to outfit is just a big t-shirt and sweatpants, or athletic shorts. This kind of thing is the extent of me dressing up.” Shen Yuan didn’t notice, but the Luo Binghe cosplayer’s eyes mildly glazed over in irritated confusion at the unfamiliar terms. Nor did she notice the slight expression of planning that developed in that gaze, as if they were imagining a future shopping expedition to find an outfit Shen Yuan would want to dress up in that wasn’t a facsimile of Luo Binghe’s right hand man.

“I… also want to leave this con and wear something else.” “The busyness getting to you, huh jiejie? You must have gotten here a lot earlier than I did, you poor thing. I guess this is it, it was nice talking to you—” “I don’t have any other clothes with me, and am unable to go back home. Can you help this poor one, jiejie?” “Jiejie—” Shen Yuan coughed. “Am I… wait you can’t go back home? Did your ride ditch you or something, aiyah what a scummy thing to do! I do have extra clothes on me, though I don’t think they’ll fit you. But let’s go find out. I guess if I have to take care of you like this, it does make me feel like a jiejie. Your height made me assume you were older than me, haha.”

Shen Yuan laughed, and the Luo Binghe cosplayer rapidly relaxed and took on an easy smile. “An innocent mistake. Jiejie must often be assumed to be younger than her actual age.” Shen Yuan hummed absent-mindedly. “Eh, not really. I’m only 22, and I think I look it. It’s you who looks like a jade immortal, uh, meimei.” She stuttered when she realized she hadn’t yet caught the other cosplayer’s name, and for some reason it felt weird to just call her Luo Binghe without her also LARPing along as Mobei-jun. Shen Yuan by this point had taken the tall meimei’s hand, it pale and slender much like the rest of her, and had been pulling her along towards the public bathroom to make use of her backpack’s change of clothes, walking along the wall to avoid foot traffic. However, the moment she had finished her sentence and called the other one meimei, the Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly slammed her free hand on the wall and yanked hard on the one Shen Yuan was holding, pulling her in close to herself, caging her in from behind. Shen Yuan squeaked and found herself crowded against the wall. Her back was encased in a warm and dark heat and she could see above her that jade-white hand curled tightly in on itself, heel practically grinding against the wall. It looked like it was trembling slightly. An earth-shatteringly tight grip squeezed the fingers of her still held hand to the point of hurting slightly. Shen Yuan winced at the sensation.

Shen Yuan heard sharp, heavy breathing above her. Not knowing what to do nor quite what was going on, she squeezed back the hand that was keeping hers hostage and leaned back slightly. Comfort is what she’s doing this for, right? Feels like the reason she’s doing it. 

Shen Yuan felt the other cosplayer jolt behind her. After a tense beat, a forehead slowly dropped onto her shoulder. Shen Yuan was wearing fur along the top half of her outfit as a part of her Mobei-jun cosplay, but nonetheless she could feel the vague contour of the other’s nose through it, burrowing deeper into its warmth. Shen Yuan now felt awkward for only bothering with faux-fur for her cosplay. But with that face resting upon her shoulder and an odd sense of vulnerability wafting off of her, a sharp sense of broad awareness filled Shen Yuan's mind mysteriously. Her mind filled up with sensory information on the one behind her, naturally taking note of every detail with ease.

“Meimei…” the Luo Binghe cosplayer trailed off, muffled slightly by Shen Yuan’s cosplay, but also seemingly by her own emotions being stuck in her throat. “Can I really be jiejie’s meimei?” Shen Yuan didn’t really know what to do or how to respond, so she simply continued to lean her weight back onto the other. She then pulled on the elbow that led to the hand positioned above her until it was brought down far enough for her to grab properly. Shen Yuan took both hands in hers and placed them in front of her in a comfortable position. They were slightly cold, so she rubbed at them with her thumbs.

The Luo Binghe cosplayer picked her head up and looked down at the sight with watery eyes and a warbling lip. Both of her hands were cradled in that grip, gently held in front of the shorter’s stomach in a tender and intimate fashion. Their arms were bent parallel and their front and back slotted together in a way that, to the taller one, felt predestined.

“Can you, what kind of question is that, of course you can. But, I’d like to have your name too, if you don’t mind? Only calling you meimei sounds like I’m calling out to my real little sister.” Shen Yuan laughed and looked up over her shoulder nonchalantly. 

Somewhere in the distance, she can hear people giggling and snapping pictures of the two. She felt a twinge of embarrassment. Of course this moment looks compromising from the outside, they’re cosplaying Luo Binghe and Mobei-jun!

Shen Yuan was suddenly working very hard to maintain a cool poker face in front of her very tall and newly minted meimei.

Bringing up her real little sister and then suddenly being thrust into this type of self-aware of cringe violently and nonconsensually summoned forth invented images of a dog blooded BL scenario that wouldn’t be out of place in her real meimei’s leisure literature.

Fellow con goers, please have mercy on us two women and don't be thinking of what I'm thinking! We’re merely having a pure hearted, early friendship bonding moment! Skinship is very much common and normal between people like us, disregard the kabedon! Totally normal female friendship is blossoming here, get your homoerotic dog blood tropes out of our personal lives!

“This one is called… Qiu Bingbing.” Her voice hitched and quavered with some sort of ineffable, delicate emotion. “Bingbing, ah? Written with the same character as Binghe, meaning ice? And Qiu, is that with the character meaning the autumn season or the character meaning a grave mound?”

Qiu Bingbing hummed and nodded lethargically to the first question and spoke up for the second, hesitating slightly. “Qiu as in autumn.” “What a pretty name, “autumn ice”. You fit the bill of Luo Binghe perfectly, but with a name like that it’s nearly a pity to go by something else. You’re a miraculous find in a place like this, Bing-mei.” Shen Yuan complimented with abandon, eager to make her new friend feel good, and turned around. Still holding one hand, she impulsively took the chance Qiu Bingbing’s still bowed head offered and patted it softly.

She did that for a while, not paying attention to anything else. A euphoric smile opened on Qiu Bingbing’s lips. She was lost in the moment too. 

The rest of the world fell away. As long as Luo Binghe, no, as long as Qiu Bingbing can worm her way into every crevice of Shen Yuan, she’ll be fine. He before was always grasping at any semblance of peace and security only for it to slip through his grasp like sand, but she’s found it. She’ll nestle in and hibernate inside Shen Yuan’s veins and she’ll never let go. She will never.

“Let’s go get you those clothes. Good thing I like them oversized, they should be mildly presentable on you, even if they aren’t anything girly.”

“I can live without anything girly, anything of yours will do.”

“That’s good to hear, let’s go then.”

[lait-rose]

Before his “eyes” a bright blue box materialized from nothing. The Google-translate-like voice echoed all around the empty space.

Now, make no mistake, as a veteran of Zhongdian; Shen Yuan knew exactly what was happening to him. Transmigration: the dream of nerds all around the world. However, with this revelation came the dread of the unknown. The question that could make or break him.

‘What novel am I in?’

[Responding to User 002’s inquiry: User is in the male power fantasy Proud Immortal Demon Way.]

‘Ah. So I'm dead.’

[mikkeneko]

BingYuan idea that I absolutely will not write: Luo Bingge's pov through PIDW, except that at random intervals when shitty things are happening to him he will suddenly hear a disembodied voice in his head ranting angrily about how this is all bullshit and it's so unfair and he doesn't deserve any of this to happen to him, how he is good and he deserves the WORLD, and later on always defending his questionable decisions to some unknown auditor, and it's only in the post-BingSwap special that he does some exploring past the boundaries of the world. and eventually comes to realize that what he's been hearing throughout his life has been the angry Zhongdian forum posts of one Peerless Cucumber

[lintwriting]

I’ve been reading a lot of bingqiu ghost aus recently and usually they have Binghe as the ghost because Binghe really works so well as a ghost.

You can do the ancient cultivator ghost set up (here's another) with a modern SY

you can give him the spooky-ness with ghost powers to make sure we don’t clip off Binghe’s incredibly unhinged demonic nature like people clip off the beautiful wings of a bird.

and make him into a sexy incubus type of ghost like the stallion he is.

And ghosts often serve as a wonderful metaphor for the way trauma traps you in the past or warps your personality, which works really well Binghe’s brand of always being steps away from snapping, the number of steps being inversely proportion to how many steps away Shizun is XD

But idk I’m kind of craving ghost SY. And he’s not like a movie idea ghost, where the ghosts are bombastic set-pieces like Binghe.

I mean like a made-for-TV ghost. He’s like an episode of the week type of ghost.

Underwhelming-side-plot character type of ghost,

some type of Ghost Stories type beat,

where the “unfinished business” is something as stupid as “wanting to eat a meatbun for the last time”

(And like, the episode’s resolving twist is that it turns out this is his dying wish... bc he died eating one …And eating it jogged his memories of his death, so now he can finally move on…

lol the ratings on that one would be show cancelling levels of bad lol)

Or like, maybe he died before he could find out the ending of his most hated web novel. So now his unfinished business is finishing the web novel.

Except it KEEPS updating every day, so he just keeps getting dragged out of the afterlife, wandering the earth in a fit of pique, because of course Airplane keeps beating his dead horse of a novel like he’s competing with SpongeBob or The Simpsons for deadest horse.

And here comes Binghe, Psychic Extraordinaire, a famous TV celebrity from his show where he solves unfinished business like it’s nobody’s business (that’s his catchphrase lol).

And he thinks he solves SY easy by just pulling up his laptop up to Zhongdian, like BOOM easy case, another one for his perfect record, complete with a beautiful scene of Shen Yuan sailing off into the sunset.

Only for SY to show up the next day, like “yeah yeah sorry about your perfect record, mister Psychic, but you can’t blame me for this! Blame that shitty author!!

And in this case, instead of ghosts being a metaphor for trauma, they're a metaphor for when a shitty show keeps getting renewed past its prime.

[belovedstill]

NOT a Time Loop (Definitely a Time Loop) (ao3) svsss, platonic cumplane | T | 7.2k, pre-canon, canon divergence, set in modern world, time loop, airplane & cucumber bro, trope-specific repeated major character death (more, including warnings and spoilers, on ao3)

When Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky decided this morning to end his writing career, he didn't expect he'd be responsible for the death of his harshest of readers, nor that he'd unintentionally cause something that's definitely not a time loop. Hahaha, everything is alright, thank you very much! ...But what's the deal with Peerless Cucumber?

a while ago, I wrote a tiny 'different POV' part for this fic which you can find here 😊

Full fic on ao3 & under the cut

It begins like so:

A stranger at the table next to his orders the blandest meal the diner has to offer.

Shang Qinghua opens his laptop. He presses the ‘Post’ button on the drafted work, logs off, and shuts the lid of the laptop with his heart both heavy and light with tentative relief. Some other patron’s phone gives a loud ping. He sips his coffee, too tense to even register the taste. He gets up, leaves a tip too small to be considerate but big enough to leave a dent in his savings, and leaves the diner. On his way out, he hears an enraged shout, quickly doused by the diner’s staff.

Whatever, it’s not his job to care about patrons causing a ruckus.

He goes home, buries himself in his bed, and sleeps undisturbed for the rest of the day.

It begins like so:

Shang Qinghua opens his eyes at the diner table. In front of him, there’s a laptop with his final post on Zhongdian still in draft form. He blinks at the screen. Looks around. Sees the same decor and the same patrons and the same tired staff.

Wow, déjà vu, he thinks, takes a sip of his too-bitter coffee, and clicks ‘Post’.

A stranger at the next table receives the blandest meal the diner has to offer, but accepts it only with a half-hearted hum, staring at his phone instead. The phone chimes.

Shang Qinghua sighs to himself, logs off his account, closes his laptop, and sips the rest of his coffee, too tense to truly appreciate the moment. He leaves a tip too small to be considerable but big enough to leave a dent in his savings and walks out of the place. On his way out, he hears an enraged shout, quickly doused by the staff.

…That’s weird—but it’s not his job to care about patrons causing a ruckus.

He goes home, thinks how strange it is that he still feels as if it’s all happened before, and buries himself in his bed. He sleeps uncomfortably through the rest of the day.

It begins like so:

Shang Qinghua opens his eyes at the diner table… again? He looks around.

The diner is still relatively busy for the post-breakfast crowd. Some of the few patrons look perky enough for it to still be before noon, and the staff still looks tired and already resigned for the fast-approaching lunch hour. Shang Qinghua's laptop is still open on his draft of the final author’s note on Proud Immortal Demon Way, his coffee still looks too black and too bitter, and—after taking a sip—still tastes that way, too.

Is double déjà vu possible? He's definitely experiencing it right this moment, so it must be a thing. Sometimes, real life is stranger than fiction, that's for sure.

“Your low-fat, no-sugar, no-nuts, no-berries, dairy-free porridge,” a waitress announces at the table nearby. The young man sitting there acknowledges her with a hum without looking away from his phone.

Shang Qinghua waits to check if his phone will ping this time, too, but it stays silent.

He breathes a sigh of relief. Damn, he almost thought it was a time loop sort of situation!

He snorts at himself, shakes his head (no more Internet for him for a while!), and with a heaviness in his heart—and lightness, at the same time—he posts his final chapter, logs off, and closes his laptop.

The stranger’s phone pings with a notification. Shang Qinghua freezes on the spot.

Heart beating faster in his chest, he throws the tip money onto the table, grabs his laptop and bag, and flees from the diner.

He doesn’t go home. No, no, no, this is not a time loop! If it were, he would go home right now, but look! He’s not going home. He's not trapped and he has free will, he can go to—oh, I don’t know, the arcade looks fun!

Only he doesn’t have money to spend there and the staff will ask him to leave if he’s just hanging out.

So, the shopping mall, maybe?

Again, no money!

The park. The park! As long as it’s anywhere but home, things should be okay and non-time loopy at all.

The park is pretty much abandoned at this time of the day, what with it being school and work hours. Shang Qinghua would know; he graduated university just last year—(wait. No. It's been two, three years by this point, hasn’t it?)—with a literary degree that earned him nothing and only swallowed the money he didn’t have in the first place.

The job market is a cutthroat place, anyway. He’s never had any illusions that he would find a well-paying job within that short of a timeframe after graduation. Besides, so far, he only has a Bachelor diploma, and everybody and their mother knows that nowadays Bachelor holds next-to-no distinction whatsoever. So what that he’s graduated? Countless other Chinese kids have. So what that he has creative ideas and is ready to work in whatever position imaginable? Countless others do! The sweet nepotism position which was supposed to be his is all but non-existent now, what with his father conveniently forgetting that his first failed marriage actually brought him a son.

…Anyway. It’s a perfect place to be at this time of the day! There are no beds in sight, just benches, so Shang Qinghua sits down on one and doesn’t panic.

He’s not in a time loop. Hahaha. Just because some things are similar to his dream (within a dream within a dream…?), it doesn’t mean anything. Dreams can be wild, and he has been very stressed recently!

Stress dreams, that’s it. What he needs to do is have a good night's sleep! Probably drop the caffeine. And probably meditate before bedtime. And not think about the Proud Immortal Demon Way readers being absolutely pissed at him, and his only source of income being jeopardized because he can’t stand himself writing mindless filth anymore.

Sue him! He’s never intended Proud Immortal Demon Way to get so big, okay! It’s a social commentary on the unrealistic expectations of masculinity and its effects on men’s mental health, and he started it as a joke besides! It was just supposed to open some eyes, provoke conversations, maybe pay for his food, maybe his living expenses if people took a liking to it! Instead, it got him through the final year of uni when he was convinced he would have to drop out, and has paid the god-awful rent for his god-awful apartment ever since then.

…So, in the end, it has never been that mindless, has it now! He mindfully observes what makes people's brains tick, mindfully calculates what will open their bank accounts, and mindfully writes what they want to read! He's an entrepreneur, a businessman! He's basically Shakespeare!

…

He needs to let go. As convenient as Proud Immortal Demon Way is, Shang Qinghua really doesn’t feel that good writing it anymore. People who love it, love it for all the wrong reasons. People who hate it only hit the nail on his coffin on why he has to stop.

Yes, Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky knows that specific work sucks! That has always been the point! It’s supposed to be a trash novel! You don’t point at an obvious mess and say ‘this is a mess’ unless you’re his mother, so honestly, everybody could spare their judgments.

…Even though the judgmental readers have always been the ones he likes the most.

He really doesn’t want to read their comments under the final update. It can’t even count for a chapter: it’s just two sentences. The author’s endnote is longer than that.

But it had to be done. It had to, even if he knows what he’ll find in the comment section. ‘Wasting his potential’—hell, he knows! He knows that, Peerless Cucumber, thank you very much, now go choke on a—

An ambulance siren pulls him out of his definitely-not-panicked state. He was just lost in thoughts, that’s all, it happens to the best of us! A cold shiver runs down his spine as the shrill noise zooms past his hearing range. It turns off relatively nearby.

Man, is somebody dying? A heart attack, maybe. It's so early in the day, too, poor guy. Or girl. Do girls get heart attacks the way guys do? Probably. He should look it up, it’d probably make for a good plot for a new wife for Bingge to—

—ah, no, wait. No more Proud Immortal Demon Way. No more Luo Binghe. That’s gonna take some time getting used to, doesn’t it?

Shang Qinghua lets out a heavy sigh, turns it into a growl, and stands up. He’s made his point: he’s stayed in the park long enough and nothing‘s happened! He can go home now and not go to sleep immediately—just to make sure he does things differently than in his dream.

As he waits for the pedestrian lights outside the park to turn green, the same ambulance sounds its alarm and zooms past him. The speed of it smacks his hair into his eyes.

At home, he downs a strong cup of coffee, even more bitter than the one at the diner, and does not go to sleep. Depression naps can wait! He has the entire afternoon ahead of him, he can find something to do! There's a new donghua everybody has been talking about, or, if he wants something international, he can always reach for that one ice-skating anime from several years ago. He’s never really got around to watching it, has he? Last he checked, there was a movie coming out, or something.

He boots his laptop up, connects it to the charger, and waits.

The screen loads up on the posted final PIDW chapter. The two sentences of the ending and three entire paragraphs of the endnote stare back at him. The comment count is already at 3333, and he's actively blocking the view stat from his mind.

Ctrl + W and it's not a problem anymore.

On the screen, in the opening scene of the anime, the main character is having a full-blown panic attack.

Shang Qinghua’s face black-lines and he shuts the episode off.

…Maybe taking a nap now wouldn't be that bad, actually? He’s already spent his day differently by staying up so much longer. He deserves a break!

Yes. Yes, he's already proven this is not a time loop. It's going to be fine.

It is not fine, he thinks the moment he opens his eyes and sees the unposted draft of the final chapter of Proud Immortal Demon Way staring mockingly back at him.

Fuck!!!

This is not a time loop. This is not a time loop. This is not a time loop!

He closes his eyes. Nope! He's not seeing anything!

“Your low-fat, no-sugar, no-nuts, no-berries, dairy-free porridge.”

“Mhm.”

Shang Qinghua wants to cry.

More changes, he decides. He doesn't touch the coffee. Doesn't look around as he shuts his laptop without posting the final update. Doesn't leave a tip. Doesn't pass “GO”, doesn't collect ¥200, goes directly out the door without turning back.

So, the park didn't work. He withdraws a couple of bills from his account he kept saved away for his upcoming rent and spends it all on arcade games. Ambulance sirens mix in with game sounds well enough that he almost doesn't notice them.

Almost.

He blinks open and blanks at the sight of the unposted draft of his final update.

So it wasn't the update, huh? He considered that for a moment, back at the arcade, between slaying pixelated aliens. If anything, it seems the repeat started even faster without him posting.

Not that it’s a time loop. But the terminology can very well be the same. Hey, language evolves! Words are used in new contexts all the time! For all intents and purposes, this might still be just a very weird, layered dream.

Shang Qinghua looks at the final chapter of his work and deflates.

“I can't even quit you in peace, can I?”

“Your low-fat, no-sugar, no-nuts, no-berries, dairy-free porridge.”

“Mhm.”

Shang Qinghua sighs.

He opens the editor of the chapter, erases the two lines, and instead writes:

Something has come up, sorry. Next chapter postponed till next week.

Clicks 'Post'.

The phone in the stranger’s hand pings.

This time, Shang Qinghua doesn't leave. Thinking about it, he’s never truly relaxed after posting, has he? That final chapter was supposed to be a load off, but it just caused the never-ending trouble. Now that it’s pushed back in time, he can sit back and enjoy his too-bitter coffee in peace.

…The coffee doesn't have to be so bitter, actually. He reaches for the sugar packets available in the napkin holder and drops the contents of two of them into his drink.

Creamer, too! If he has to be trapped in this time loo—no, dream—then he might as well not hate his drink. The sugar and cheap creamer are free, anyway, and, if he’s right, the money he spent in each of his previous dreams should be back in his bank account.

He checks and breathes in relief. Not a dent! Even the amount spent at the arcade is back, and he did go wild with that one.

The stranger at the other table starts muttering to himself and furiously typing at his phone; the diner is quiet enough Shang Qinghua can vaguely hear him even from his own seat.

If the ping isn’t a coincidence, then is he a reader? Wow, real people in real life are actually subscribed to Proud Immortal Demon Way, huh? The ‘ping me!’ option is only available to VIP readers, too.

Shang Qinghua watches as the guy types and types and types, and wonders. The guy sure doesn't fit the image of a PIDW fan in his mind. The gender fits, but he looks too Rich, even if Neglected (he just has a ‘rich’ face, okay!), and Holier Than Thou than he expects his readers to be. Shang Qinghua knows he’s written filth! It's what’s been paying his bills, okay! If the dude is paying for the chapters then he must know what he's got into! No need to judge, bro, you would only be judging yourself.

…Unless he's a closeted pervert; closeted perverts dipping their toes in his filth are always welcome. Make yourself at home!

The guy is still typing, so furiously his face has turned red with rage.

Wow, sorry for postponing the chapter, dude. Airplane promises it'll be posted when he actually writes something substantial! He can't post the ending he wanted to avoid all this time/dream issue! And, from what he remembers—if he's correct—then weren't you enraged by the ending, too? Seriously, there's no way to please readers these days…

The guy’s face really is getting redder… and tighter… and—swollen? His muttering is more distorted now through his suddenly much smaller mouth.

And he doesn't stop typing.

Shang Qinghua stares, blinks hard, and stares again.

The guy's fingers slow down until he forcefully jabs at his phone screen.

…Well. Don't judge him that much.

Shang Qinghua opens his laptop back up and clicks on the comments, then scrolls through hundreds of individual short comments of confused emojis, keysmashes, and question marks to find the essay the stranger has just left him.

Oh, he finds it.

Stranger no longer.

At the top of the body of words, very much longer than his chapter—not that it's difficult to achieve that, considering—is the guy's pseudonym.

Peerless Cucumber.

…

No way.

No way!!!

An indescribable emotion fills Shang Qinghua's chest, both excitement and frustration, and who knows what else. The guy! The legend! His worst nightmare and the best thing that's happened to his writing! His nemesis and motivation, all in one!

“—call an ambulance!”

Eh?

When he lowers the lid of his laptop, several things become clear.

The guy’s—Peerless Cucumber’s—face is swollen beyond recognition. The neck of his hoodie painfully digs into his skin, his fingers are too thick and stiff to hold his phone, which clatters onto the table, and he's doing something that can't reasonably be called breathing. Wheezing, maybe—if that, even.

A waitress calls an ambulance. Another is trying to make Peerless Cucumber lie down. The staff hurriedly ushers the gawking patrons out of the diner. Shang Qinghua clutches his laptop to his chest as he's outright pushed out the door.

He loiters nearby, still in shock, until the ambulance siren sounds in the distance and gets louder and louder.

The ambulance pulls up. Paramedics run out and into the diner. Minutes pass, then something vaguely person-shaped is carried out on stretches and rushed into the ambulance. The sirens wail back to life. Red-and-blue lights blind him. The vehicle drives off with a screech of tires.

Shang Qinghua stares at nothing in particular.

Fuck. Has he just—given Peerless Cucumber a heart attack…?

The diner door is pushed open again, the waitress looks as shaken as he himself feels. From the inside, he hears disgruntled voices of the other staff members.

Somebody says, “I hope it doesn’t make the news.”

He turns on his heel and leaves.

Goes home.

Can’t sleep.

He blinks.

He’s back at the diner. In front of him sits his laptop with the last chapter of Proud Immortal Demon Way ready to be posted. Above the screen, at a nearby table, sits a stranger.

—not a stranger. Peerless Cucumber.

Shang Qinghua’s struck by the chilling thought that Peerless Cucumber has just died.

But no—he’s right there, alive, staring at his phone. Like he’s waiting.

Shang Qinghua doesn’t want him to wait.

He suddenly wishes he'd never posted his work online.

The waitress brings over the blandest meal the diner has to offer and announces it in the same voice that has just worried about the diner's media presence. Peerless Cucumber accepts it with barely a hum, without even looking at her, as if he knows. But no, he can't know—he has reacted the same way every single time.

His phone doesn't ping and Shang Qinghua knows perfectly well it won't until he clicks ‘Post’.

If he posts the chapter, Peerless Cucumber will die of rage.

If he doesn't, Peerless Cucumber will die of rage.

If he postpones, Peerless Cucumber will die of rage.

…

Just chill out, bro! Has nobody ever told you this much anger is bad for you? Shang Qinghua can't be responsible for your death! Who told you to get so invested, ah! Not him!

There really is no good ending here. Shang Qinghua has heard the ambulance sirens nearly every time the events of this day repeated and he knows, instinctively, that it’s Cucumber-bro every time. But what can he do? He's just a guy trying to end his online writing career in peace. There have been stories about fans refusing to let their idols step out of the spotlight, but this is really… too much!

Peerless Cucumber is tapping impatiently on his bowl; it's full three minutes past Shang Qinghua’s update schedule.

Damn. Okay. That's not a good sign, his anger levels are rising already. Shang Qinghua hasn't felt this responsible for the emotional state of another person since he moved out of his mother's house!

Okay. Think, think, think. Posting this chapter didn't work, as did posting nothing or postponing.

Maybe posting something more substantial…?

By the time he gathers his thoughts and clicks ‘Edit Work’, the waitress approaches Peerless Cucumber’s table.

“Are you alright, sir?”

Shang Qinghua looks up.

Cucumber-bro looks angry again. Angry enough his breathing comes out in wheezes.

The waitress yells about an ambulance. Cucumber-bro stares at his phone in frustration, fingers tapping and tapping.

What now? He hasn't even written a full sentence yet! That can't have angered him that much?

Waiting just ten minutes past the normal posting schedule is not that bad, either, come on! Learn some patience…

…Well. A heart attack does not know patience and soon Shang Qinghua is pushed out the diner’s door once again. He spends the little time he has before the next repeat brainstorming the continuation of PIDW.

He blinks and opens his eyes back in the diner. Grabs the laptop in front of him. Clicks ‘Edit Work’ and starts hammering at the keys like his life depends on it.

Well, not his life. Peerless Cucumber’s.

And maybe his, a little bit. He's getting really tired of repeating the same morning over and over again.

If he knew he would get stuck in a moment of his day, he would have chosen a better place! This diner has really shit coffee; it’s never worked on him, but at least it’s cheap.

The laptop is old, with a keyboard that hasn't been properly cleaned in… ever. The keys are loud.

Somebody's eyes bore holes in his forehead.

Don't judge him! He’s doing it for everybody involved!

A bland order is delivered.

“Thanks.”

Shang Qinghua’s fingers freeze and he stares at Peerless Cucumber above the screen.

The waitress nods and leaves, and Cucumber-bro goes back to staring at his phone as if he hasn't just talked!

If this has changed, then maybe…?

Slowly, his fingers stutter back over the keyboard and he types, and hammers, and writes more of Luo Binghe just for Cucumber-bro not to die. And when he gets to an okay stopping point, even though it's by far the shortest chapter of his life, he clicks ‘Post’ without a second of hesitation.

Peerless Cucumber’s phone pings.

Well, that’s maybe 10 minutes past the planned update, but Cucumber-bro not dying out of enraged impatience is a success!

Shang Qinghua watches with a bated breath as the guy taps on his phone. Waits for the app to load. Taps on the new chapter.

Starts reading.

And… uh.

He reads scarily fast, doesn't he…

Shang Qinghua remembers all the pages-long comments posted within minutes of new updates.

Maybe a spur-of-the-moment chapter pulled out of his ass isn't long enough to prolong—

“What.”

—he couldn't have already finished it?! That was 2k words at least!

“The fuck.

“Is this.”

He's not even using question marks this time, or speaking in the same paragraph…

Shang Qinghua gulps as he watches Peerless Cucumber swallow through the spoonful of his porridge and touch his phone screen with a shaking finger.

Damn. He really looks pissed.

Shang Qinghua dares a look at the chapter he's just released. Strangely, the comment section is void even of the “first!!!” crowd.

Peerless Cucumber is typing. His face is growing red. It swells with barely held-in anger.

In the top right corner of his screen, a new notification pops up.

As Cucumber-bro takes a moment to breathe through whatever crisis he's experiencing, Shang Qinghua clicks on the notification. It leads him straight into the comment section. There's only one, from yours truly.

You lazy ass, it says. It's the most illegible thing in the world and I'm not even talking about the plot.

Harsh!

Another comment.

It’s always been obvious you have no standards, but that’s a new low even for you.

And another.

You didn’t even fix typos before posting!

Wow, he's never spam-commented before.

Shang Qinghua looks at the chapter he's just posted, for the first time.

It's, uh… Cucumber-bro might not be… wrong…?

But it's not like he had time to do anything better? You don't write 2k words in 15 minutes without any sacrifices!

“Are you alright, sir?”

Oh no.

Shang Qinghua blinks at the unposted last chapter of Proud Immortal Demon Way and salutes in his heart to the 2k words he's just lost—or never written—or whatever. Those have never existed now. Well, they did not work at tiding Peerless Cucumber over, anyway, so it’s not that big of a loss.

He's not writing like a madman for the guy ever again, though. No gratitude whatsoever, only criticism! No “thank you for trying to save my life, bro”, no “that was an impressive writing speed!”, nor “how are you doing mentally after seeing me die again and again?”. No care at all. Not that Shang Qinghua isn't used to that already, don't actually mind him.

Still, it would be nice to just…

…Talk.

Huh.

Cucumber-bro’s blandest meal arrives. Shang Qinghua gets up. Walks over. Clears his throat.

Cucumber-bro looks at him, a spoon in his mouth.

Okay, maybe just looming over somebody as they eat isn’t the most socially adept thing to do. He came over to say something! He can do that.

“Hi.”

He receives a look as bland as the porridge Cucumber-bro’s swallowing. “Do I know you?”

He talks! Shang Qinghua has never thought hearing somebody talk to him in such a “then perish!” tone would bring tears to his eyes, but there it is! And they’re tears of gratitude, too!

He opens his mouth and promptly remembers that talking to people usually requires the forethinking of conversation topics. He's quite literally drawing a blank.

He stares at Peerless Cucumber and Peerless Cucumber stares back at him. In silence. Why has he approached him, again…?

“You need to chill or you'll die,” he blurts, very helpfully.

Cucumber-bro’s face becomes even scarier than the first time Shang Qinghua watched him write his comment in real time. “Excuse me?”

A chance to back down! Sucks that his mouth has a mind of its own!

“You'll die,” he says, enunciating each word, “unless you calm down. Stop raging so much, it's totally unhealthy—”

“Is that a threat.” Peerless Cucumber’s dropping the question marks again. From the previous rounds, it's not really a good sign.

“Not a threat! Just trying to help, bro!”

Is he allowed to talk about the time loop? This is not a transmigration type of thing where he has a system dealing out punishments, right? It would have made itself known by now…

Okay. He's got nothing to lose.

He drops to the seat in front of Cucumber-bro and ignores the stinky look he receives as a result.

“Look. You know time loops, right? You must, you've read my work, after all. That part where Luo Binghe goes through the same day one hundred times to learn all there is to please the Western Princess so when the time comes he woos her the very first time she meets him and they get married the very next day?” Peerless Cucumber’s staring at him, blankly. His eye might be twitching. “That's what's happening here. You don't know, but this day has happened like five times already and you rage yourself dead every single time, bro, that's not healthy for you.”

“Your work,” Cucumber-bro repeats, and Shang Qinghua starts to doubt the guy’s sanity. That's what he's taking away from this? “You write Proud Immortal—”

—and then he stops himself mid-sentence. For some reason. As if he’s realised he has as good as confirmed that he knows what Airplane is talking about.

Shang Qinghua grins. “Yeah! And you’re a connoisseur of fine arts, I see!”

Cucumber-bro presses his lips into a thin line and mumbles, “...I don't know what you mean.”

Tsundere! He’s definitely a tsundere!

“Aw, there's no need to be shy! Many people read Proud Immortal Demon Way.” Shang Qinghua crosses his arms on the table and leans closer. “Besides, I know you're Peerless Cucumber, there's no need to be ashamed. I mean! You tear me a new one under every single chapter. No wonder you croaked that way, too.”

Peerless Cucumber continues glowering at him. “You're insane.”

“Takes one to know one. And it's nice to meet you, too.” He sighs and leans back in his seat. It… really is working out quite well, isn’t it? Better than he imagined! Who would have thought all it’d take to make himself feel better was just getting up and talking to people! ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ and all that! “Never expected to meet a fan out in the wild.”

Cucumber-bro is rapidly growing red. “I am not your fan.”

Shang Qinghua raises his hands in surrender. “Sure, sure! Definitely not a fan!” He watches with worry as Cucumber-bro’s face changes colours. “Calm down, breathe. I wasn't kidding when I said you raged yourself to death.”

Maybe saying that isn't the smartest thing, actually. Peerless Cucumber looks startled, like he's considering believing him. His face looks like it's swelling already.

“Water!” Shang Qinghua calls, and, in panic, grabs his coffee from his own table. That's the only drink he ordered, okay? “Drink!”

“I can't have dairy—” Peerless Cucumber starts to say, but Shang Qinghua is already pressing the mug to his very thin and unnaturally stretched lips. He watches as he is forced to swallow the remaining gulps of coffee and withdraws. “Idiot! You want to kill me?!”

Quite the opposite, quite the opposite! He spent money on that coffee, bro, better appreciate it!

But Cucumber-bro’s redness and swelling don't go down. He continues to rattle at Shang Qinghua until a waitress approaches and asks them to calm down. And that's when Peerless Cucumber stops breathing completely. He just glares at the cup Shang Qinghua fed him coffee out of, mouths at him something that could be ‘you've killed me’, then drops right across the table.

The ambulance doesn't make it in time. One second, Shang Qinghua closes his eyes on Cucumber-bro’s unrecognisably quiet, frozen, swollen face and, in the next, opens them to Cucumber-bro sitting at a nearby table, staring at his phone. Waiting.

The final chapter of Proud Immortal Demon Way is ready to be posted.

Shang Qinghua lets out a shaky sigh. Runs his hand down his face. Takes a gulp of his coffee.

He gets up and tries again.

And again.

And again.

He tries everything. Everything! He tells Peerless Cucumber the whole truth at least three more times. One time, the ambulance is called for him, with how “confused” he is. You try being responsible for somebody else's life and fail to save them no matter what you do! It leaves a mark, okay!

That specific time, he strips down to his underwear and claims to know the future. He has a good reason, okay, and it totally makes sense in the moment!

“Would a deranged person do this?” he asks and, as Cucumber-bro stares at him as if he is the ridiculous one and yells out a ‘Yes!’, the diner staff calls the ambulance.

So maybe they have a point at that time. Admittedly, Shang Qinghua might have been going a little bit insane by that point, after watching Cucumber-bro puke his guts out and choke on it to death before the time looped again.

He's tried approaching Cucumber-bro. Talking to him. Explaining. Manipulating. Writing a different Proud Immortal Demon Way chapter; posting it several paragraphs at a time as he writes it. Then posting just a personal note to Peerless Cucumber himself.

He has watched him dying as he fumes with frustration, grits teeth with anger, or chokes on his food.

One time, he outright begs him not to die. He’s exhausted and resigned by that point. Cucumber-bro just looks at him like he's grown three heads. Startled. Suspicious. Vulnerable.

“How do you…?”

Despite the mistrust, Shang Qinghua likes that version of him the most.

He dies that time, too.

It doesn't work. It never works. Cucumber-bro rages himself out of breath again and again and again and again. There really is no point here! Shang Qinghua is not his protagonist, he doesn't have a golden halo nor a wisdom stat of +100, nor access to blood parasites able to control and regulate and heal. He's not a Heavenly Demon lord, he's not a medic, he's not a scholar—he just writes about them. Hell, he doesn't even remember how to administer first aid!

What is with this time loop? Why is Peerless Cucumber so important the universe can't carry on without him? People die everyday, what's so special about him? If anything, he already looks like he's going to hit it sooner than later. Shang Qinghua’s on a self-prescribed Sad, Single, and Unemployed diet and even he doesn't look that bad. If all the food Cucumber-bro ever eats is as bland as the porridge he’s ordered before the start of the loop, then it's no wonder he's so thin. No wonder he’s so salty online, too; gotta substitute somehow.

He doesn’t even notice that the time has looped again and he’s got up from his table until he’s colliding with somebody.

The waitress yelps.

A bowl she’s just carried on a tray falls to the floor and shatters into pieces.

The blandest porridge splatters around on the impact.

Peerless Cucumber’s attention is off his phone and on the shattered bowl.

“My food…”

For a moment, everybody is quiet. Then, the waitress huffs a sigh.

“I’ll bring you a new bowl right away, sir,” she says as she fishes out a rag out of her apron and starts scooping the mess onto her tray. “Please, be careful where you step.”

That last line is pointed at Shang Qinghua. He laughs nervously and—carefully, really carefully—steps closer to Peerless Cucumber’s table and sits down. Cucumber-bro frowns at him.

Shang Qinghua braces himself for another death session preceded by biting words.

And he's not disappointed! As the waitress returns and finishes the clean-up of the mess, Peerless Cucumber spits insults about his work at him, rants about plot holes and continuity errors, about one-dimensional characters and the potential, the potential! His face remains pale and normal-shaped but for a healthy flush on the rims of his ears.

Things seem to be… going well? Cucumber-bro is not choking on his anger, and when the staff asks him to be quieter, please, he calms enough to just glare at him and tell him to piss off if he's not serious about writing the novel properly.

Shang Qinghua breathes in relief. That sounds like a permission!

“Okay,” he agrees, “I'll stop writing it right away. I was meaning to drop it, anyway!”

Cucumber-bro’s eye twitches.

Uh-oh.

When the waitress from earlier approaches their table a full scathing tirade later, she sets a packed to-go container in front of them.

“I'll have to ask you both to leave,” she demands. “You're disturbing the other patrons.”

Shang Qinghua looks around and, surely enough, the heads of the three other patrons blur with how fast they look away, pretending they were not paying attention.

Cucumber-bro grumbles as he pulls his jacket on and grabs his things. Shang Qinghua hurries to his table and haphazardly pushes his laptop into his bag.

Surprisingly, when he runs out the door to follow after Cucumber-bro, the guy is waiting for him outside, tapping his foot like a wife waiting for her workaholic husband who’s late to their anniversary dinner.

He hasn't stayed back for the company, however. He glares at Shang Qinghua and says just one sentence.

“Don't you dare stop writing.”

And then he turns on his heel and leaves.

Shang Qinghua could cry.

Peerless Cucumber has lived!

He should celebrate. People usually go out to celebrate, don't they? Yeah! Prime going out time!

Half an hour later, he's freshly showered and on his way out, with his hand on the handle of his apartment entrance door, when he realises—

He doesn't quite know what exactly people do when they “go out”.

Fortunately for him, he doesn't need to figure it out, because between one blink and the next one, he's back in the diner, his laptop open in front of him, Cucumber-bro staring at his phone at the next table over.

A waitress brings over the blandest meal ever.

Shang Qinghua does cry, then.

And then squawks when the glass entrance door swings open and shatters on impact against the wall.

In the entryway to the diner, against the backdrop of the hectic city landscape of rushing cars and gawking, hurrying pedestrians, there stands an extraordinarily tall man clad in well-fitting red-and-black high-quality xianxia robes, a black menacing sword billowed in black flames and ashen smoke held in his hand.

On his forehead, there gleams a blood-red heavenly demon zuiyin.

Looking at him, Shang Qinghua hears the screams and wailing of countless tortured souls punished out of revenge, even though everybody in the diner is frozen in silent shock. You could hear a pin drop!

Luo Binghe struts in like he owns the place despite it very much not being part of his own dimension; it's not like anybody would ever dare free him of that conviction, anyway. He walks past Shang Qinghua's table, throws him a glance—and an honest to god nod, he swears, unless he really blinked and dreamed up the entire interaction—and approaches the waitress who stares at him in half awe and half trepidation.

He raises one hand, gives her a charming smile that doesn't meet his eyes (so scary!) and, in a single move, blasts the bowl she's holding into shards.

…Well, at least it wasn't Shang Qinghua who made the mess this time!

“My food,” Cucumber-bro mumbles in a barely heard objection, and that makes Luo Binghe's face darken. He squares his back even more, truly intimidating, opens his mouth, and in a tone that will forever haunt Shang Qinghua in his nightmares says:

“He asked for no nuts.”

And then Shang Qinghua watches with his own two teary and tired eyes how Luo Binghe pulls out a neatly wrapped bowl and turns to Peerless Cucumber.

The same Peerless Cucumber who has flamed under every single chapter of Proud Immortal Demon Way as the unofficial president of the unofficial Binghe Protection Squad, who is staring at the very same Luo Binghe as if it's the last thing he's going to see in his damn life.

Knowing what he knows, Shang Qinghua can't really blame him for it.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe addresses Cucumber-bro (!?) and, using both hands, reverently sets the bowl on the table in front of him. “This disciple has brought you your midday meal. Pray Shizun forgives his tardiness; he's encountered an unexpected obstacle on the way.”

What, thinks Shang Qinghua.

“...What?” echoes Cucumber-bro.

“W—what,” stammers the waitress. “Wait, y—you can’t bring your own food—”

Luo Binghe shoots her a dark look; her mouth immediately slams shut and she scutters back into the kitchens.

Shang Qinghua curses inwardly and collects his things. When he makes his way to Peerless Cucumber’s table, Luo Binghe is already sitting in a chair across from him, and looking at him as if it’s Peerless Cucumber who is miraculously defying the rules of the universe and breaking the wall between reality and fiction.

“Uh—excuse me, sorry, pardon—” The glare Luo Binghe shoots him isn’t nearly as scary as the one he sent the waitress earlier, so Shang Qinghua pushes on. “The staff will probably call the police, so we’d better go.”

Peerless Cucumber looks up at him as if it’s Shang Qinghua whose approach is out of the realm of real-world possibilities. “Who are you?”

And isn't that the question of the hour?

Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky.

A god, apparently.

Somebody who’s watched you die over fifty times.

Your friend, and the guy you hate, and the person who’s lived to keep you alive.

He answers instead, “I don’t even know anymore.”

Cucumber-bro stares at him like he’s just told him Proud Immortal Demon Way is based on a true story. At this point, Shang Qinghua isn't sure the main idea didn't come to him in a prophetic dream.

“Shang-shishu,” Luo Binghe says. All attention is immediately on him. “You’ve done well assisting Shizun. Your efforts have been noted and will be duly rewarded.”

Huh?

…Wait.

“Who do you think this guy is?” Shang Qinghua asks, pointing his thumb at Peerless Cucumber.

Luo Binghe’s eyes narrow into dangerous slits. “Just as this lord will reward Shang Qinghua’s assistance, he will punish any disrespect shown to Shen Qingqiu.”

Shang Qinghua laughs nervously.

Luo Binghe turns back to Cucumber-bro. “Shizun should eat,” he says in a tone much warmer, with eyes so much kinder—Shang Qinghua is getting a whiplash. “He needn’t worry; no meal from this Binghe will ever harm him.”

Cucumber-bro puts his phone down and reaches for the spoon Luo Binghe’s holding out to him.

Well, Shang Qinghua has tried, but he’s not staying here to wait for the police to arrive! He's heard enough sirens to traumatise him for a lifetime!

“Don’t die again?” he asks Cucumber-bro who only gives him a blank, confused stare.

Luo Binghe answers in his stead. “He won’t.”

And that’s really as good as he’s going to get, isn’t it?

With one final nod, Shang Qinghua adjusts the shoulder strap of his laptop bag and makes his way to the exit. Behind him, Peerless Cucumber and Luo Binghe talk.

“That’s really good!”

“I knew Shizun would like it. Eat more.”

“Are you a cosplayer?”

“I don’t know what that is. I’m Luo Binghe.”

“Really into it, are you? Either way, you look so cool. Where did you get this costume? Such good quality.”

“Thanking Shizun. These robes, I’ve had them—”

The rest of their conversation is left behind the remains of the diner door.

Shang Qinghua doesn’t go home right away. He spends an hour in the park, then another at the arcade, then walks by the diner and peeks in through the window.

Cucumber-bro and Luo Binghe are gone.

There have been no ambulance sirens.

Hours pass. The sun sets and the night blankets the city like a beast creeping closer and closer to its prey. Shang Qinghua stares out the window of his crappy apartment as he stands in complete darkness for the first time in around two months.

He lies down on his uncomfortable bed. Turns and twists for hours before sleep finally overtakes him.

And when he opens his eyes, it’s to the paint peeling off his greying ceiling, and to the weak rays of sunshine filtering through the blinds, and to the buzzing of a fly fighting a losing fight against the window.

His eyes sting.

It’s finally over.

He stays in bed into the late afternoon. Just in case.

It’s only when the day has turned into the evening again that he dares a step from out of his blanket and he almost trips on his laptop, haphazardly abandoned in the middle of the room.

He plugs it in to charge and turns it on. Types in his password. Listens to the worryingly heavy hum of the built-in fans.

—and is immediately jumpscared by the unposted draft of the final words of PIDW lighting up on the screen. He almost slams the laptop lid shut.

Almost. His hand is already grabbing at the screen when a pulsing red dot in the top right corner catches his attention.

A new notification.

He clicks on it and stares.

New direct message from: @Peerless Cucumber

16h ago Who the fuck are you and where the hell is the new chapter?

.

..

…

GIVE HIM A BREAK!!!

[zykamiliah]

so let's get one thing straight. airplane's original outline had no plans to make the original shen qingqiu luo binghe's soulmate. that is false.

in fact, in his original outline, Bing-ge hadn’t even had a romance plotline; he had been doomed to fade away, alone and unaging forever. airplane extra part 4

but the conversation that's confusing and can initially make you think he could be saying that bingqiu was part of his original outline is the last conversation he has with sqq in the novel's finale.

"Compared to writing the kind of stallion guy who’s everywhere on Zhongdian, it’s better to portray a male lead like the current Bing-ge, whose life is full of mishaps, whose personality is a bit more complex and full of contradictions and conflicts—that kind of weirdo. That’s more in line with my writing philosophy."

here he's talking about what kind of protagonist he would have liked to write about- basically a flawed character full of complexity like the current binghe. here he's telling sqq that he much prefers this version of binghe than the stallion protagonist that didn't have much substance.

now that part that gets misinterpreted the most is the following part. sqq asks sqh if his writing philosophy is about writing gays (bc ofc that's the part he's fixating on lol) and after sqh goes on about how pure literature favores gays, he says this

“Cucumber-bro,” he said, impassioned, “if the System hadn’t selected you, a loyal and die-hard reader, I’m afraid the plot would never have been distorted to this extent, right back to the outline I discarded. I wasn’t able to withstand the loneliness in real life and caved to financial pressure, so I chose to finish Proud Immortal Demon Way in accordance with others’ tastes. However, thanks to you, everything that I wanted to write has already played out before me. Cucumber-bro!” He clapped Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder solemnly, filled with deep emotion. “You are the chosen one, and my career is at last wiped clear of regrets!”

so, what are the things that were discarded in favor of writing pidw according to the fanbase's tastes? well that would be all the hidden backstories, characters and subplots that sqq unearthed: qijiu's backstory, sj's character complexity, tlj and zzl, the opm being the actual villain, lbh being a complete weirdo-- sqh doesn't say this, but since bingge is kind of his own self-insert, it's obvious that he's a repressed gay in the same way that sqh is. and since bingge was his self-insert, his original idea was for lbh to end up alone, with neither a harem or a fated person.

[the-night-gods-moon]

I love the idea that Luo Binghe and Shang Qinghua are like two repelling poles of a magnet. They would be so similar because before Luo Binghe was the wish fulfillment escapist power fantasy of any Zhongdian troll, he was the wish fulfillment escapist power fantasy of Shang Qinghua. Luo Binghe is all the worst of Shang Qinghua gilded with all the means for vengeance that Shang Qinghua never had— not in his first life and not even really in the second one.

Luo Binghe is beautiful where Shang Qinghua is described as “rat-like”. Luo Binghe rises from his awful circumstances; Shang Qinghua died alone in the glare of a comment section of the novel he cared nothing for by the time it finished. Luo Binghe is charismatic, and even if some anti-fans would claim that none of his hundreds of wives actually love him, well at least he has their attention. The little we actually know about Shang Qinghua leads us to believe he never got much of that.

I think both of them would recognize this about the other, like how sometimes you meet someone and everything about them seems so familiar in all the worst ways. Self hatred can make any amount of similarity a cause for dislike, and that is definitely one of the traits that they share.

(I was reading this post by @sunderwight and it seemed like bad etiquette to drop something like this in the comments so I just made my own post)

[violetdisasterzone]

guys I'm having a thought. before resorting to writing trash het porn for a living, shang qinghua had written (or at least, attempted) other, less audience-pandering works, right. but this led me to wondering, did he change his user at some point? or was he always airplane shooting towards the sky? was this man fr attempting to start a legitimate career as a respectable zhongdian author as user beatingmymeat69

[thegoldenavenger]

one moment he's listening to peter talk about zhongdian over comms as cap gamely tries to keep up with the new lingo, and the next he's waking up in a lush landscape you cant find even in central park.

armed with his latest update to the extremis build, a suddenly temperamental jarvis, and some clothes he shamelessly stole, tony stark is well on his way to disrupting the jianghu and meeting some enthusiastic sword fanboys

[CONGRATULATIONS CONGRATULATIONS CONGRATULATIONS, Sir and Happy Birthday.]

It turns out, magic is indistinguishable from any sufficiently advanced technology.

[bytedykes]

also so fucking obsessed with the way sqq speaks. he wouldve done numbers on tumblr. like he already did numbers on zhongdian but he definitely would have done numbers on tumblr too

[viagginterstellari]

Cute girl spinning a prayer wheel - Zhongdian Temple, 2019

[udaberriwrites]

Annie, I need to know about Ten Headcanons! Please and thankyou!

Thank you for the ask!

Oh, that one is fun! I discussed it with (aka screamed at) @mikaharuka about it, after she dragged me into the black hole that is Scum Villain's Self Saving System. The full title is:

Ten alternate headcanons in PIDW fandom (and the last one will surprise you!)

And the fic is exactly what it says on the tin: a blog post "written" by a fan of the original stallion novel story before our hapless protagonist isekai'd himself into the plot, discussing fan theories which are... perhaps not entirely what the original writer (Airplane, you hack!) intended, such as:

Luo Binghe's soulmate isn’t in his harem… because it’s Mobei-jun!!!

The greatest anti-fan in Zhongdian Literature… or extra story content???

(It is exactly as obnoxious and over the top as it sounds xD)

[lianhua-jun]

Since I finally have time, I'm gonna do my promised live blog through SVSSS, the official English translation! The first part that I wanted to talk about is on page 15:

Having read many of Zhongdian's transmigration novels, Shen Yuan had long ago resolved that, if he one day woke up to find himself lying in a strange place, the first words out of his mouth before he understood what was happening definitely wouldn't be a carefree giggle and, "Are you filming a movie? The props look real—your crew's really giving it their all!" I.e., the words of a person slow-wittedly trying to find their footing.

I genuinely have to wonder about Shen Yuan here. Like, what is this dude's mental state to plan for something like that? My good brother, what even is your life?

Page 12 says:

"Dumbfuck author, dumbfuck novel!" With his dying breath, Shen Yuan spat this final curse.

Who could've imagined that an upstanding young man like him—who had properly purchased the website's VIP currency and read the novel's official version—would find himself persevering before his untimely death to finish a novel so stallion, so money-grubbing and overly padded, that it left him speechless with rage? How could he not curse?

He's so angry here; it's actually kinda funny. He proceeds to rant for around a page and a half, which doesn't fit very well with his whole "I'm an upstanding guy, me cursing is weird" statements. He is mercilessly mocking everything from Airplane's username and writing level to the world building and character writing! Although I do love the part where he goes, "What happened to all those women? Actually, never mind, let's skip that." It's only page 13, and he's already being weird about the harem.

My point being, this is actually a brilliant setup for the unreliable narrator! We're primed to believe the protagonist, but we get his subtly contradictory behavior from go. I'm not saying he's a bad person or anything, of course, just that I want to study his brain. He's actually quite fascinating to me!

By the way, if you don't want to see my posts while I live blog books, the tag I'll be using for that is "#lian reads", so you can just block that.