Chapter Text
His morning commute to the university getting interrupted isn’t anything special; in a city this size, with this many moving people and vehicles, things went wrong all the time. Shen Yuan would just shrug, look back down at his phone, and keep walking. Hell, there’d been an accident at this particular intersection just two weeks ago that had forced a ten-minute detour a block over.
The universe must’ve been feeling particularly sadistic today.
He’s standing in the middle of the crowd, waiting for the pedestrian signals to turn green, but just as the tide of people begins to move forward, it stops, sending Shen Yuan bumping into the person ahead of him. He looks up, pocketing his phone, and is reaching up to pull an earbud out when the crowd’s nervous energy crests into outright panic.
There’s a yell from the intersection, sharp and commanding, and the crowd in front of him parts to reveal a man who looks like he just walked off the set of a period drama, with pure white robes and an elaborate hairstyle and a gleaming sword in hand, strikingly beautiful against the mundane backdrop of traffic and streetlights -- and apparently mad as hell. Shen Yuan’s about to join the crowd in getting out of the fantasy character’s way when the man’s eyes lock on him with what he’s pretty sure is murderous intent, considering how his body locks up in instinctive terror.
“What did you do?” the man bellows, stalking towards him with weapon raised.
Shen Yuan is a second away from confessing to anything to get that wicked-looking sword pointed in any other direction when a loud honk makes his heart leap into his throat. The man spares the offending car a thunderous look before he abruptly drops his sword.
Well, he lets go, but it doesn’t drop. It floats. It floats, and lowers in a bob that lets the man step onto it confidently like this is a thing he does every day, and then his piercing eyes are back on Shen Yuan as the sword swoops toward him. He’s suddenly weightless.
He hears the crowd scream, hears himself scream, then things go dark.
--
Shen Yuan comes to when his knees hit concrete, though his full weight is still supported by the grip on his backpack. The straps are digging into his shoulders, but he knows that’s not the only reason his hands are numb and tingling.
He’s-- he’d been--
The grip lets go, and Shen Yuan has to resist the urge to curl up on ground, to go full fetal, and hope the person who’d just flown him away decides to leave him alone. ‘Sorry, kidnapped the wrong guy! Bye!’
Instead, he stays on his knees and stares at his hands until the stars clear from the edges of his vision, then hazards a glance over his shoulder. The man’s still there, robes fluttering in the wind and looking completely pissed off.
“Talk,” he snaps.
It takes a few tries for Shen Yuan to find his voice. “A-About what?”
Jaw clenched, the man crosses his arms. “Shen. Qing. Qiu.”
Shen Yuan drags in another lungful of air, eyes darting around. The name sounds familiar, same family name as him? But--
“Holy shit,” he says, taking in the scenery. A dusty concrete square, wire fencing around the edges, a bright red door in the corner with ‘rooftop access’ painted on in cheery white characters. There are skyscrapers towering above them, but street noises are just a low buzz he barely hears over the sound of his music still cheerfully playing in one ear and his heart pounding in the other. “Are we on a building? Did you fl-- fly us up here? Oh my god.” A sharp inhale prompts a coughing fit, but it’s almost nice to focus on the familiar pain of the flu rattling in his chest than on the frankly ridiculous situation he’s in. “Oh my god,” he wheezes again for good measure.
With three stiff strides the man is in front of him. Shen Yuan stares at the boots taking up most of his field of vision and tries to not pass out again. “Stop stalling,” the man bites out.
“I don’t know who that is!” He looks up and the flash of fury he sees sends another bolt of panic shooting down his spine.
“You-- Stop playing your games! Tell me what you did!”
“Wait, you think I’m--? I’m not him! I’m not Shen Qingqiu!” He hastily pulls the medical mask off his face and holds his hands out in front of him. He’s trying for placating, but with his runny nose and sweaty palms the effect is probably closer to ‘pathetic’. “Please, I don’t know!”
Confusion traces a furrow between the man’s eyebrows, but his eyes are still stormy as they sweep Shen Yuan up and down, then lock on his face once more. “Who are you?” he says, his tone slightly less sharp.
Progress! That’s progress, right? Shen Yuan tamps down on the flutter of relief --he’s not out of the woods yet-- and says, “Shen Yuan.”
“Yuan?” the man repeats, incredulous. “But you...” He trails off, reaching towards Shen Yuan (who doesn’t flinch, thank you!). His hand stops a foot away, vaguely pointed at Shen Yuan’s chest, and his brow furrows even more. “You don’t have a spiritual core.”
He shakes his head even before the words truly sink in, then stops. A spiritual core? Like in xianxia stories? With cultivation and immortality and flying swords oh my god this isn’t happening.
“What happened?” he asks this living, breathing fantasy character.
The man’s jaw clenches again, and a series of emotions flits across his features before he settles on what seems to be his current default: anger. “I don’t know.”
--
They take a time-out of sorts, turning away to get their emotions back under control.
Shen Yuan takes his phone out and finally turns his music off, trying to calm his racing thoughts. His hands have finally stopped shaking, he notices as he focuses on wrapping his earphones around his train pass, but his heart still feels like it’s trying to jackrabbit out of his ribcage in a mix of fear and excitement.
He’s read transmigration stories before, of course; people being transported to fantasy lands, or the reverse, but for it to happen to him--!
That helps settle him a little, in a weird way. He’s familiar with the sort of confusion characters experience when suddenly thrust into a new world. Well, second-hand familiar. Close enough. He’s been reading stories about old-timey characters suddenly finding themselves in the modern world since he was a kid, so he knows some of the things he might get asked.
The man may not know what had happened to him, and had mistaken him for somebody else, but surely there’s something they can figure out! And then Shen Yuan could send him on his merry way, and go back to not being dragged onto buildings!
At least having been demonstrably sick all week means that his prof might accept him not showing up to class today, because he doesn’t really want to explain getting kidnapped by a transmigrator.
He turns back around to see the man sitting cross-legged on the ground, back straight, hands in loose fists on his thighs, and sword laid out beside him. His eyes open as if he feels Shen Yuan’s gaze on him, and Shen Yuan suddenly finds himself thankful for the medical mask hiding the heat in his cheeks.
The man really is drop-dead gorgeous. Objectively. Objectively! Especially now that he isn’t trying to murder Shen Yuan with the sheer force of his gaze, it’s objectively evident that he’s ridiculously beautiful, with delicate features, flawless skin, and heart-shaped lips that might look dainty if they weren’t pressed into such a stern line. His dark, intense gaze is slightly offset by the length of the eyelashes and the beauty mark below the corner of his left eye.
Regal! Princely! A classic pretty-boy protagonist appearance!
Shen Yuan sits a few feet away and bobs his head in an unconscious bow as those eyes track his every move. “So, uh, let’s try again?”
The man raises an elegant eyebrow.
Okay, him first. “I’m Shen Yuan. I’m a PhD stu... I study ancient Chinese literature at the local university. Nice to meet you.”
When he comes up from his bow, the man still hasn’t moved, and Shen Yuan isn’t sure he’s going to get an answer. Finally, though, the man huffs. “Liu Qingge.”
Better than nothing! And it’s an appropriately poetic name for a fantasy hero! Liu Qingge, hunting the dastardly Shen Qingqiu.
...wait.
Wait!
It’s like a lightbulb goes off in his head. “Wait, you’re...” He trails off, fumbling for his phone. Zhongdian’s page for Proud Immortal Demon Way being in his ‘frequently visited’ tab would annoy him if it wasn’t exactly what he wanted.
Liu Qingge watches him with that confused furrow in his brow again. “‘Wait’ what? What is that?”
“This? A phone. Smartphone.” He frowns as he scrolls furiously, but in the end his memory starts piecing things together before he finds the right chapter. “Liu Qingge, lord of... Bai Zhan Peak, right?”
Liu Qingge stiffens, one hand drifting towards his sheathed sword. “You said you didn’t know.”
Shen Yuan flaps his his arms at him, phone thrust forward with Shen Qingqiu’s name smack-dab in the centre of the screen. His heart hadn’t exactly stopped pounding earlier, but it’s picked up the pace once more. “No no, listen, you’re-- I don’t know you, but I read the book!”
Liu Qingge looks sceptical, but gingerly takes the phone. “Book?”
“Proud Immortal Demon Way. It’s a stal--,” nope, not explaining that right now, “a novel about Luo Binghe--”
He cuts off as Liu Qingge flinches, that incandescent anger in his eyes again. “That half-demon beast?”
This is... not good! They’d barely calmed down and already the air is thick with tension again!!
“Listen, listen! It’s like a revenge story! He’s abused his entire childhood, right? So we -- the readers just want to see him get his revenge. It’s just dumb wish fulfillment!”
Liu Qingge slams the phone down onto his thigh, making Shen Yuan flinch. “‘Dumb wish fulfillment’? Cang Qiong has been under siege for five years! We’ve lost over half our disciples to his demons! And you’re siding with him?”
“Wait, that’s... that’s not right. You died when Binghe was a teen, you’re--” It feels like an icy hand grips his vocal chords, sending a chill tide through his entire body.
Right. Liu Qingge had died. He couldn’t have seen Cang Qiong come under attack, known Binghe was descended from demons, known Binghe to be anything other than Shen Qingqiu’s poor, abused disciple. But this anger, this raw, desperate anguish-- it feels real, and scary.
Liu Qingge is terrifyingly still for a moment before he says, in a tight whisper, “What did you say?”
It’s a challenge to get his voice past the giant lump of panic and sympathy in his throat. God, telling someone they’re supposed to be dead is on the list of worst things he’s ever done. “Y-You died, like, so early you’re barely mentioned in the book. Shen Qingqiu murdered you during your qi deviation.”
Finally, Liu Qingge’s gaze drops to the concrete between them, then to the phone still in his clenched hand, with Shen Qingqiu’s name highlighted in blue. “No, he didn’t. He saved my life.”