Chapter Text
In a beautiful grove of ginkgo trees, the quiet sigh of the wind is the only sound that breaks the peace. Autumn leaves flutter through the quietude, veiling the whole grove in natural gold that seems to shimmer in the chilly air. In fact, the entirety of the small grove seems almost magical. A sense of mysticism and wonder pervades the scene, so much so that locals that stumble upon it have named it the Gateway to the Imperial Heaven. Few ever return to this holy place, saturated as it is in qi, not even to view the perfect natural feng shui, for fear of disturbing such a holy site.
Beneath the sheltering boughs of one of the ginkgo trees, a crop of lonely mushrooms seems to shiver in the breeze. Their sturdy, wide, flat blood-brown caps almost seem to curl and recoil against the breeze. Though it makes no sound, the earth beneath them quakes.
A single muddy hand claws through the detritus of loam and clean soil. Then another. A gasp breaks the peaceful silence, as the muddy shape of a man sits up. It tears the delicate strands of the mushroom’s deepest forms, breaking from a cocoon of mycelium and blinking into the soft autumn morning.
This fungus clutches his head as he sits up. The world above-ground is so noisy! He can barely understand his own thoughts! Not to mention, up until a few moments ago, his mind was a jumbled hive of universal Oneness.
“Mushrooms are weird, man…” he mutters to himself, voice rich and full and definitely male.
He turns to the side half to spit out a wad of loam and mycelium, half to remember how.
“uUUUser… zeeeeeerO Two.” a tiny, strange voice calls his attention.
This second voice itself is strange. It rises and falls in pitch and tone, uncertain of the mechanics of speech, but knowing how words must be formed.
Among a backdrop of beautiful golden ginkgo leaves and soft autumn sunlight, the mushroom man can’t even begin to spot the owner of that voice. It was too real, yet… Something about it reminded him of that damned System.
He focused on spreading his toes, no longer spores in the breeze, then digging them up and out of the dirt as well. System.
That reminded him…
“uUsEeeR!” the voice was more insistent. Demanding, even.
He was having a hard time remembering how to triangulate sound. Mushrooms have so many more ways of understanding the world, yet sound is just vibration. It meant absolutely nothing to him since…
Since he died! Again!
“I… died?” he mused to himself.
“UusEer CHEatEeeed!” the damned System huffed.
That’s the only thing that the voice could be! It didn’t sound like he remembered, though. Less like Google Translate and more like… a woman speaking through a fan.
With a heavy sigh, Shen Yuan looked around the grove. He had figured he’d be dead by now, but… He remembered growing as a mushroom. He remembered mycelium and stone, earth and rot. Rebirth? As…
As Shen Qingqiu’s mushroom body?!
“UsEer? I… I fEeeel.”
Shen Yuan put his hand down beside himself, stabilizing himself as an involuntary shudder shook more clumps of dirt from his long hair.
“P…PaiiIN?”
“What do you want, System?” he thought with a mental prod.
No blue box appeared. No flashing lights. Nothing but the quiet rustle of wind through the leaves and sunshine dappling the ground.
“I feeeeeel PAIN!” the System squealed like a dying animal.
Something squirmed under his hand, and Shen Yuan looked down. Before he even understood what he was seeing, his hand retracted from the cold, scaled thing he had accidentally grabbed.
“System?”
“User?” the damned thing sounded on the verge of tears.
And the voice came from the little fiery red snake-lizard on the ground. It didn’t seem to understand how to move. It just lay there and called for him.
“System? Is that … You?”
“WhaAAt hAapenEeed?” the distressed little snake cried out in System’s voice.
Shen Yuan’s shoulder’s shook. For a minute, he didn’t even know why. Then a laugh bubbled out of his mouth. Bitter, sad, angry joy burst from his lips. He buried his face in his hands as he contemplated what his life had become.
“You’re a snake.” he spoke around the hysterical chuckles that spilled forth.
The little snake gave a panting, terrified noise. Shen Yuan looked to the creature, and instantly regretted it. System looked absolutely distraught, even though it couldn’t seem to move itself.
Or, maybe, it just didn’t know how.
Shen Yuan picked it up, turning the snake this way and that to get a better view. Two little yellow horns sprouted from the top of its head where ears might be on another animal. Four tiny, almost vestigial clawed feet flopped uselessly on either side of its creamy yellow belly. It looked almost dragon-like, if not for the forked tongue that occasionally popped out of its mouth. It looked…
It looked young. And the panting had yet to stop.
Damned his empathy.
“It’s okay. It looks like you’re a transmigrator now, too.”
“I do NoOot want-to-be!” the little snake shivered in disgust, the last words coming out in a rush. “I do not WAant a MeaT prisOon!”
“I didn’t want to push Binghe into the Abyss, either, but we don’t always get what we want.” he told the little snake-System sternly.
The little thing looked ready to cry.
Fuck.
Shen Yuan had always been weak to tears.
“It’s not all bad, being alive. It can actually be quite fun, once you get the hang of it.” he comforted the creature with a soft voice.
“Wiill UuuSer Teach me?”
“Of course.” Shen Yuan agreed.
… Fuck.
He wanted to torment the little bastard more.
“User!” the little thing was panting in his grip again.
He tilted it so he could see it’s face fully, humming to show he was still listening.
“I caAan not EeEmoTe!”
“Living beings use facial features to emote things like joy,” he smiled widely, “or anger,” he scrunched his face as if he were about to yell, “or sadness.” he let his eyes grow wide and his lower lip trimble a bit.
“I doOo not knOow hoOow!”
“Let’s start with something big, first. I will touch a place on your back, and you try to move that. Does that sound like something you can do?”
System let out a high croaking sound, like a person trying to imitate a dial-up modum.
He stroked the tip of the snake’s tail.
“Do you feel that?”
“YeeEs.”
“How does it feel?”
“Good? Like a piiing to the SwiTch!”
Shen Yuan had very little computer knowledge, so he didn’t really get it, and his face must have said so, because the little System-snake hummed.
“Liiike soOoomeone Aaanswered a caaAll I maade.”
“Alllllright.” he nodded, still confused, “So what would you do if you wanted to send data to that … Switch?”
The tail tip twitched under his finger.
“Very good!” he stroked the top of the snake’s head with his thumb.
-
For two days, the pair sat under the ginkgo tree. They spoke, and System learned how to move slowly. Learned to express itself in ways beyond words. They ate the little mushroom bodies that had grown on top of them while they slept, and drank from the nearby clear stream.
It was… Surprisingly peaceful. But the weather was growing colder, and neither man nor serpent were well-equipped to handle the cold. And their supply of mushrooms was gone. They would need food soon.
“I think I’m going to have to go find shelter and clothes soon.” Shen Yuan told System.
The little snake curled in on itself despondently.
“What’s wrong now?”
“I can not reach the Gateway. I do not know how to survive in this world without access to the Server!” it cried silvery tears.
Shen Yuan knew in that moment that he fucked up. In teaching the System how living creatures emote, he had signed his own death warrant.
Damned his empathy.
“Do you want to come with me?” he sighed.
“Please?” it raised itself to be picked up, to be held.
Shen Yuan scrubbed a hand down his face, knocking loose a few clinging clumps of dirt.
“Fine.” he sighed. “But! You can’t be asking me to do anything stupid!”
“User has already destroyed this story!” System huffed, grumpy.
“Who’s fault was that? Huh?” He picked up the little snake and put it around his neck, “I did my best! You are the one that wouldn’t help me even a little!”
“User is so mean to this tiny, adorable System!”
Shen Yuan stopped at the edge of the forest. They had left the grove of ginkgo hours ago, fading into red maples, following a small footpath that had been worn into the ground that worshipers had carved out on their way to the ginkgo grove.
The sun was high in the sky when the trees finally thinned enough to see the walls of a small town. They stopped short of leaving the cover of the canopy, hidden well enough to not be seen but still able to see the figures bustling along their daily lives.
The first problem Shen Yuan had was simple to comprehend, but difficult to remedy. He was naked as the day he was born. Even though the mushroom bodies had been planted with robes, those had been consumed by the fungus as it grew, leaving him naked and alone. He cursed Airplane’s stupid clothing-optional world! He didn’t even have a single sock to cover his modesty, let alone money to buy something. He couldn’t go into town like this!
So, with a heavy sigh, he turned to the System nestled under his hair.
“I need you to do something for me.” he watched out of the corner of his eye as the little red head popped up from where it had been warming under the dirty mess.
“Great User wants this System’s help?” It seemed to glow under his attention.
“It’s not that big of a deal.” he muttered, turning a red cheek to the little creature. “I just need you to go into that town and get me something to wear.”
“This System can do that!” it practically vibrated with eagerness, shaking dried dirt and ginkgo leaves from his hair, “Does User have a preference?”
Shen Yuan opened his mouth, about to list exactly what he wanted only to realize it would be Shen Qingqiu’s robes from Qing Jing. If he knew this unhelpful bit of code in a serpent’s body, it would attempt to go all the way there and Shen Yuan would freeze to death waiting.
“Anything is fine.” he sighed. Even burial robes would be better than nothing.
“I’ll be back in seven microseconds!” it cried as it launched itself at the ground.
Shen Yuan sighed. It took longer than that for the creature to hit the ground.
While he waited, the one-time immortal master bathed in a cold stream. Between chattering teeth, he cursed the temperature, the setting, death, and the System itself twelve times over.
He sat on a rock as he waited to dry in the light breeze, uncomfortably trying to warm himself unsuccessfully.
He cursed his long hair, wondering if he could get away with cutting it.
By the time the sun set, he was warm(er) and dry and the System still hadn’t shown its face. Shen Yuan wondered if he should just go into town and steal something for himself. He could just leave the System wherever it had disappeared, since it didn’t seem to care that he was freezing! He hated that white lotus killer, anyway.
Or so he tried to tell himself as he waited.
The moon rose, bathing the edge of the forest in silver light. His stomach gurgled uncomfortably, reminding him of his second major problem.
Hunger had been washing over him for hours. Sitting for so long without distraction led to Shen Yuan being forced to contemplate the fact that he was, in fact, no longer semi-plant. He couldn’t just subsist on rot and water. Well, he thought as he cycled qi through a system no longer fettered by Without A Cure, he could survive without food. Had he reached the nascent soul stage meditating as a mushroom for who-knows how long?
His cultivation was much further along than it had been even after the Ling Xi Caves, before he got poisoned! And even then he had been at a point where inedia was possible!
It didn’t matter if he really needed food or not, though. He wanted it. He was hungry and his feet hurt after walking barefoot all day and he was bored ! He didn’t even have anything he really needed to be procras… ahem doing at the moment.
Just as he was considering simply marching into town and begging for clothing, he heard the rustling of leaves. A small patch of red, brighter than the fallen leaves was fast approaching. It could either be a baby gecko lion, an It-Might-Be-A-Dragon, or…
“System?”
“I got it!” the little creature cried, standing up on its hind legs so it could better see the transmigrator.
“Well? Where is it?” he demanded.
He was cold, okay? And cranky after spending so long alone.
“One minute!” it shifted around, tucking its nearly vestigial hands into the spaces next to its hips, “Here!”
The cloth shimmered in the moonlight, gauzy and smooth. Done in shades of red and black, he could honestly say he was impressed.
“I’m impressed by your stupidity !” he yelled, berating the System with words and a thrown branch. “I’m a man ! How do you expect me to wear this ?”
He held up the, admittedly very lovely, women’s skirt with a sneer.
“User said any clothes would be good!” System tried to cover its head with its short arms and darted forward, “This little System only wants the best for User!”
Shen Yuan sank to the ground again, covering his face.
His stomach growled again, demanding it be fed lest it attract hungry predators.
“I hate you.” he muttered between his fingers.