Chapter Text
[Make sure the protagonist-halo is intact as the hero makes his way through the story]
A simple job, no? That was what Shen Jiu had thought as he was handed the mission. This wouldn’t differ from the other stories he’d antagonized before.
See, Shen Jiu had navigated through many different stories – each handed out by his system, and each completing at the cost of his death. Well, his characters death. The villain is a nuisance, captures the protagonist’s romantic interest, blah blah blah, the hero saves the heroine and kills the evil villain. And then repeat.
Each.
And every time.
No matter the character changes, the storyline. The outcome was always the same. This time would be the same.
This time though, he was wrong. Dear lord, was he wrong.
[Keep the hero on a straight line towards his goal and see that he accomplishes it, at all cost]
Sure. Shen Jiu could do that.
This story’s protagonist was Liu Qingge.
An orphan poor boy, scraping to survive the streets with his younger sister. A father who’d never returned from the army, and a mother who died of sickness and grief. Truly a heartwrencher. Even more so as the story continues on – the children get captured by a gang of human traffickers, to be sold for meat or pleasure Shen Jiu hadn’t bothered to learn – only to be rescued by the Peak Lord of Bai Zhan peak – not before the dear sister gets her head cut off.
Heart-gripping, truly, truly.
But Shen Jiu had been sent back this far into the storyline, as he stands before the alleyway of where he knows the children hide. What for?
His wondering is answered fast enough, as night befalls and a horse-carriage is driven down the alley. Human-trafficking is common enough, none is stupid to not recognize what such a carriage with a small wooden coffin centered onto it entails – but it matters not. The children are after all only street-rats, no one will bat an eye if they suddenly disappear.
And Shen Jiu won’t either. His mission is after all, only to lead the hero trough the story’s plotline. So he waits.
He listens intently as a fight breaks out between the goons and the children. And he waits.
Waits, and waits.
But this – doesn’t seem right?
The children act as feral cats, hissing and spitting, as they fight to stay alive and free. But by now, a certain Peak Lord should’ve appeared. Yet there is nothing. People close their doors and shut their blinds to ignore what they know is happening down the alley, but that is all there is. No powerful immortal comes flying on a sword to save these poor children.
Maybe the time of this plotline is a little off compared to the original?
But no – his hope diminishes as the little hero himself is grabbed by the tattered cloth on his back, and put in a harsh chokehold, until his face turns ghastly pale and blue, while his sister cries for mercy.
This… Isn’t at all according to the plot?
[The protagonist is in grave danger. Save his life to continue this mission]
The pop-up flashes in red as warning signs spam across his field of view.
“This isn’t canon-friendly,” he spits out, as he ascends from the ledge he’d perched on.
It’s ridiculously easy, really – the power that this body of his holds is overflowing – with a single swipe of his hand-fan, the goons are no more.
Red paints the ground of the alley, and like blossoming flowers they spread through the paper of his fan. Urgh. Shen Jiu barely holds back the grimace on his face at that.
With a mutter underneath his breath, the fan is gone from his hand again, and his pristine robes just as clean as they had been before the massacre – and then he turns his head, back towards where the little hero and his sister lay.
The children are surrounded by the gore, a clean circle around them keeping them from being stained. They lay there dazed, too shocked to be able to process the circumstances.
“Get up,” he commands with a flick of his sleeve. Rough and short, make yourself as unremarkable as possible. The protagonist has no use knowing the villain once helped him.
If only it hadn’t been for this sudden stupid, faulty plotline –
Yet the children still don’t make a move. Rather, they are looking quiet pale and still.
“Huh?” He taps his shoes at the shoulder of the tallest kid. It garners no reaction.
The kids are flat out-cold.
“…”
Between the mixture of shock and the haze of starvation – Liu Qingge remembers little of what had happened the night before. But what does pierce itself into a core memory in his head, is their unfamiliar savior clad in white. Like a white huaitang blossoming in the darkest depths of an abyss. Liu Qingge hadn’t been able to draw his eyes away – not until he’d passed out.
Maybe it was all a dream, he tells himself as he wakes up – in that same forsaken alley. He’s almost convinced it was all a dream, the ground swept clear of the blood and bodies that had littered.
He believes so – until that belief is wiped to naught.
Because, as he opens his eyes vision still blurry as he assesses the scene, he is confused to find his gaze landing on a figure of white as he turns his head.
His first thought is the same as yesterday: how the immortal before him doesn’t seem to fit in, the scenery a sore next to him. Clad in all-white as he were in mourning, except for the green belt-sash wrapped around his waist, and a green jade amulet to accompany, he stands feet away, rooted still. Ink colored hip-long hair is half tied up, fastened in a crown of white, and the sleeves of the robe flutter from where they hang low. This man looks every bit like an ascended grandmaster.
Liu Qingge can feel the strangers stare penetrating into him. His mouth feels dry.
He hears a huff – and then the master shifts from his spot, and moves to walk away.
Liu Qingge lunges. It’s stupid, how there’s not hesitation in his decision to do so, the man before him could kill him within a blink of the eye, he’d shown as much just hours before.
“Wait!” He scrambles to grip at the immortals long sleeve.
And as he does so, for the first time, he is close enough to see the masters face. Long, dark eyelashes flutter over piercing green eyes, as the man furrows his brow and sets his face into a grim frown.
Liu Qingge can’t stop the trickle of blood dribbling from his nose.
The frown turns even more disgusted at that, “Let go,” the material of the robe is sturdy enough to not tear as the immortal rips it out the child’s hands.
Yet the immortal seems to heed his words somewhat, for he turns back, though impatiently, to meet Liu Qingge head on. A plucked eyebrow rises as the man expectantly stares him down.
“Take me as your disciple.”
…
“?!”
System!! This is not at all according to the plot!
Yet the system doesn’t answer, only eerie silence greets the villain as he silently cries.