Work Text:
Shen Yuan thinks of Shen Jiu far more often than he would ever care to admit.
He never did, not at first. In the beginning he was so consumed by his frantic need to survive the bizarre, half-baked world he found himself in that he had little reason to think of his predecessor. All he needed to know in those early years feigning Shen Qingqiu was that Shen Jiu had earned himself a gruesome death—an end that Shen Yuan was eager not to earn for himself.
Quite a bit of time has passed since those desperate days. Shen Yuan is Shen Qingqiu. He lets the idle seasons drift, secure in his role as the Lord of Qing Jing Peak, content as the beloved husband of Luo Binghe. Shen Yuan is safe, he is comfortable, he is cherished.
But where is Shen Jiu?
When the thought first occurred to him, Shen Yuan believed that perhaps he and Shen Jiu had traded places. That would make sense, right? Shen Yuan had awakened to the sight of gauzy curtains drifting on a perfumed breeze, and in the same moment Shen Jiu had woken only to see the pockmarked ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights of some provincial hospital wing. Shen Yuan knows it would have made for a cruel trade. The handsome body of a respected cultivator, polished by authority and ability, exchanged for that of an indolent and overindulged third son who had been carried to his death bed by some spoiled bean sprouts! Talk about a raw deal!
But when Shen Yuan considered the idea with more care, he knew it couldn’t be the truth. After all, Shen Jiu was a fictional character sprung from the shameless (and likely disturbed) mind of one Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, and Shen Yuan was real. For them to be able to trade places could only mean that Shen Yuan’s first life was also a fiction, and that was simply incomprehensible. That someone would spend actual time writing about some unmotivated nobody who whiled away his days (and his parents’ money) hate-reading abysmal web novels until he was laid low by a brutal case of food poisoning—the notion was beyond ridiculous! If it were the truth then Shen Yuan knew he would owe Airplane Bro a sincere apology for all of the times he had denounced him as an incompetent author with rotten ideas. Proud Immortal Demon Way was certainly an appalling piece of work, but even that trash was better than the sorry story of Shen Yuan’s actual life.
(Besides, the System had made it very clear in the beginning—Shen Yuan had died in his original world, and a decaying corpse is not a viable vessel for someone else’s soul.)
If they hadn’t traded places, perhaps Shen Jiu had been bumped to some other version of Proud Immortal Demon Way where he’d taken someone else’s place. The altercation between Bingmei and Bingge proved that other storylines existed out there somewhere, though why or where or by what possible laws of the universe eluded Shen Yuan entirely. It seemed like a reasonable idea, but what would happen to the person replaced by Shen Jiu? Would they in turn be transmigrated into yet another version of the novel, another character? What about the person they replaced? How many different versions of this stupid story could there possibly be?! When would it end?!
Shen Yuan had even toyed with the thought that perhaps—just maybe—he really was Shen Jiu all along.
Perhaps Shen Jiu’s mysterious illness had truly been so severe as to shatter and remake him completely—a qi deviation of the highest order. The fever had thoroughly destroyed his mind and along with it his personality, his memories, his entire sense of self. There was no Proud Immortal Demon Way, there was no other world. No one by the name of Shen Yuan had ever existed in any time or place. Shen Jiu had simply gone crazy—imagining himself to be another, hallucinating alien voices and peculiar visions, believing he had to curry favor with a bullied child (his own disciple, nonetheless!) to avoid the cruelest of deaths.
If Shen Yuan were the only one to transmigrate, paranoid madness might be a reasonable explanation, but he wasn’t alone! Airplane Bro was here, too. The man was living proof of their shared other world—a world where half-demon princes and immortal cultivators weren’t real, only overused tropes written into cheap web novels by authors who couldn’t bother to think of something original.
The only other possibility Shen Yuan could imagine was that Shen Jiu had never truly disappeared.
It isn’t a thought Shen Yuan cares to dwell on, that he might be sharing the person of Shen Qingqiu with his predecessor. He is careful to swiftly stifle the notion whenever it comes to him. Yet every now and then something alien stirs deep within him—something foreign, yet familiar. A churning mass of cultivated rage and revulsion that Shen Yuan knows cannot possibly belong to him.
They are feelings he has only read about.
The moods swell in him when he isn’t paying enough attention—when he’s exhausted, distracted, preoccupied with too many competing responsibilities to notice the something slowly coming to a boil beneath the surface. Suddenly Shen Yuan finds himself livid when Liu Qingge scoffs in conversation; fuming when he catches the gaze of Yue Qingyuan; his irritation nearly incandescent when Luo Binghe is particularly clingy. Shen Yuan knows he has no reason or right to feel such abrupt and overpowering indignation—he knows it isn’t him.
And if it isn’t Shen Yuan, then there’s only one other person it could possibly be.
At one point he tried broaching the possibility with Airplane Bro, but the man couldn’t seem to understand what Shen Yuan was trying to say. It makes sense, though. After all, Airplane Bro was reborn as the infant destined to become Shang Qinghua, the Lord of An Ding Peak. If the real Shang Qinghua still resided in some way within the body now occupied by Airplane Bro, how could the original goods have possibly developed a will and personality of his own? Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky is Shang Qinghua—they are one and the same.
Shen Jiu, on the other hand, had become his own man by the time Shen Yuan arrived in his body. Shen Jiu had his own memories, motivations, and vision for his future. Shen Yuan is merely an interloper in this other man’s life—this other man who is surely still alive, somewhere.
Somewhere far closer than Shen Yuan would like to think.
The tempers that overtake him on occasion frighten him in their viciousness and ferocity. Shen Yuan suppresses them as best as he can and relies on his fan when he cannot trust his own face. He is terrified that he’ll slip, that in the heat of Shen Jiu’s fury he’ll say something or do something that will devastate Luo Binghe or Yue Qingyuan, or perhaps enrage Liu Qingge. Shen Yuan repeatedly reminds himself that the wrath isn’t really him.
He is not Shen Jiu.
All the two men have in common is a body and the name of Shen Qingqiu.
(Well, that and forcing Luo Binghe into the Endless Abyss.)
Shen Yuan can’t think on it for long. He can’t risk probing the deepest reaches of his mind and core for fear of dredging up the vengeful, bitter, petty monster he believes to reside within. To do so would put those he’s grown to love once again at risk of Shen Jiu’s ire.
Yet Shen Yuan also can’t bring himself to begrudge the man his resentment. The Dream Demon had revealed to him what was left of the fragile memory of that miserable child slave, and Airplane Bro had filled in the rest of a tragic backstory that had never been published. Suffering, heartbreak, self-loathing—Shen Yuan believed Shen Jiu was justified in his bitterness, even if he wasn’t justified in who he took it out on.
So Shen Yuan does not investigate, does not seek to confirm his theory.
He does, however, wonder.
If he’s right, if Shen Jiu still resides somewhere in some way within the body now possessed by Shen Yuan, if Shen Qingqiu holds them both, then does Shen Jiu see as Shen Yuan does? Does he know Shen Yuan’s thoughts? Does he feel what Shen Yuan feels when Luo Binghe smiles freely at him with unbridled affection, when he presses their brows together?
Does Shen Jiu know that those loving hands were originally intended to tear him apart?
Shen Yuan doesn’t know. As the years pass he’s also become very good at convincing himself it doesn’t matter.
He can only hope that second spirit appreciates his body, hale and whole, and the added benefit of someone to cradle it tenderly through the nights.