Archive of Our Own

Shen Qingqiu didn't really expect for his day to go any differently from normal. He'd wake up, do his best to ignore the system, do his best to avoid breaking the OOC rules, and do his best to figure out some way around the system's rules so that the protagonist wouldn't eventually murder him.

After sleeping in as long as possible.

It had been a stressful couple of days, okay? He deserved to avoid the days as much as physically possible! Avoiding OOC was hard work!

Instead he woke up to a bright green light. After a few seconds he realized that it was still pitch dark out, but for the System which had decided to hover right in front of his face.

"Fuck off," he said, not even caring that it was OOC because really who was going to hear him. Shen Qingqiu tugged the covers up over his face.

The system started beeping.

"Fuck off," he insisted, covering his ears. "It is the middle of the night just tell me whatever it is instead of being the most annoying being to ever disgrace my presence which is an accomplishment considering other people I have encountered before you absolute annoying asshole!"

The beeping continued.

Shen Qingqiu pulled the covers back down and squinted at the bright light.

There was a weird error message on the screen.

Was this the system equivalent of a be-back-later sign?

Why did it have to beep?

What the fuck did it mean [Accept Transfer]? What was he transferring?

Was this a trap?

Shen Qingqiu considered that it might be, considered the likelihood of it continuing to beep forever, and reached out to press the accept button.

It swapped over to some sort of interface.

It was...it was a very fucking complicated interface.

By the time disciples showed up to wake him up and bring him breakfast they found an exhausted and disheveled shizun who was sitting in bed, glaring at seeming thin air, and who immediately sent them away.

When they showed up with his lunch to the same sight and the same reaction they started to get concerned.

One annoying meeting with Mu Qingfang later and Shen Qingqiu actually got dressed.

Even if there wasn't a system enforcing OOC, the world would!

Not harshly, though. Acting like a computer glued gremlin had just been filed away as a side effect of his recent qi deviation, so it was probably a safe assumption that any similar oddities would get the same explanation. There wasn't any detectable way for them to tell that he wasn't the original, so…

Well, now he could do what he wanted.

Because there was nothing to make him stay IC, or stick to the plot, or anything really!

And he had a fucking computer! A proper computer that he could summon up at a moment and, sure, it had basically zero access to anything important, but the stats page was functioning, he was pretty sure he could just scan whatever books he wanted to into the records function, and the notes function seemed to operate more like a spreadsheet so in theory he should be able to do some things like that.

The most immediately relevant piece of information was that the notifications from before the system transferred to him had mentioned attempting to transfer to another system assigned to this world. It hadn't worked, presumably because along with Shen Qingqiu's own headache and whatever backend the systems usually used to control the world, the secondary asshole had been cut off, but it meant there was another transmigrator.

One who was nearby.

The co-ordinates had been hell to figure out, it had taken him most of the morning, but by the time he had convinced Mu Qingfang that he wasn't even feeling odd he was fairly sure that he had narrowed them down to exactly where the transmigrator was.

An Ding peak was...weird.

Sort of?

Everyone looked especially stressed, and Shen Qingqiu was fairly sure they weren't supposed to look that way. Sure, they had to do all of the grunt work, but they were cultivators right?

Fine tuning of the coordinates led him right to Shang Qinghua.

Watching Shang Qinghua run into a wall and fall over, looking like he wanted to cry, probably would have clued him in even if he hadn't had the coordinates.

Shen Qingqiu stopped besides Shang Qinghua and looked down at him, considering asking him if he was okay. Instead Shen Qingqiu just grabbed him by the arm, ignored the incredibly OOC babbling and let the map in his interface guide him to the An Ding Peak Lord's office. Which also happened to be the An Ding Peak Lord's bedroom apparently but whatever, it was labeled as an office on the map.

He tossed Shang Qinghua into the room, crossed his arms, continued to ignore the babbling, and said, "how are you possibly getting away with being so OOC?"

The silence that descended was both sudden and welcome.

"You're a transmigrator?" Shang Qinghua said, baffled, then his face brightened. "Of course you are! That makes sense!"

Shen Qingqiu glared down at him, flicking his fan up to hide most of his indignant reaction behind. "What do you mean that makes sense? I haven't been OOC at all!"

Several emotions flitted over Shang Qinghua's face. Shen Qingqiu convinced himself that it was Shang Qinghua admitting that he was wrong because Shen Qingqiu hadn't been dealing with an asshole system for days just for everyone to already know he was OOC. He hadn't even had a chance to go OOC yet!

"I mean, um, because...because you're here! Shen Qingqiu never comes to An Ding!" Shang Qinghua answered in a rush.

Shen Qingqiu supposed that was fair.

It might also explain all the stressed out An Ding disciples.

"Whatever. We're both stuck in this shitty book. Did you read it?" he asked. Shang Qinghua got an odd look on his face and Shen Qingqiu rushed to clarify, "Or some of it. It's a billion word pile of worthless trash so obviously most people wouldn't read it all the way through and I would not recommend it but I need to know if you have any idea what you're in for. Especially with that role. I mostly focused on the lore after the plot went to shit but I think I can rebuild the timeline at least for the early chapters so that we can avert them."

"Are you--" Shang Qinghua picked himself off the ground.

"I did not read it for the stupid harem plots," Shen Qingqiu defended, guessing that was probably the reason for Shang Qinghua being so off.

"Of course not! I, uh, read some of it?" He looked weirdly guilty, scuffing his foot. "Anyways Mobei-jun is my favorite so I know that plotline a lot!"

That explained the guilt, maybe. Had he actually been enjoying playing spy?

Shen Qingqiu narrowed his eyes at the An Ding Peak Lord, then decided that it didn't matter. "Well you needed to avert the plot at some point anyways to stay alive so we may as well divert it before you doom the peak."

"Wouldn't--isn't it Shen Qingqiu that dooms the peak?" Still with the guilty look, probably because Shang Qinghua knew full well that it wasn't that simple.

Shen Qingqiu had no intention of letting him get away with the deflection. "Shang Qinghua sets it all in motion, and we've still got a few years so you can just make sure to not direct your boss towards the Immortal Alliance Conference."

Shang Qinghua pouted at him. "But...the systems won't let us? We can't just fix the plot! I know you haven't been here long but they really won't let you!"

"They're not here--" Shen Qingqiu cut himself off. "Did you not accept the transfer yet?"

He had not.

To be fair, Shang Qinghua seemed pretty convinced that it was a trap to force him to accept something he didn't want to and given how the systems behaved and the complete lack of information on the transfer screen, he couldn't be entirely blamed for being wary.

Shen Qingqiu left him to marvel at freedom and with instructions on how to turn the completely broken interface into a half working interface.

He'd add him to a chat function once he figured out how to make that. And then they could get to actual work making sure that they didn't have to do any actual dying.