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Honestly, things could have gone much worse for Shen Yuan in terms of transmigration. He’d lucked out.
Sure, he might have ended up in the body of one of Luo Binghe’s wives, but he’d arrived in the story post-end credits. The plot was safely wrapped up, he didn’t have a system, and the harem was bloated enough that he blended in seamlessly.
Wife 571 was unremarkable, unmemorable, and married purely to shoe-horn wife 572’s rags-to-riches-maid-to-concubine story that happened in the same 6k chapter. Again, incredibly fortunate for Shen Yuan—the only canon character details he has to detail are this body’s very female anatomy and family name Xue.
The lack of details in the source material made his new body a virtual blank slate. When he looks in the mirror, he sees his own features staring back at him. Softer. Rounder, but still his. He sees his old body—the one that was born sickly and died on the first spoiled piece of food that passed his lips—in the slant of his eyes.
Shen Yuan looks like his sister.
So he can’t hate it. Any of it.
Xue Yuan—who might have always been named that, no one can fact-check it; she was never named in the book, that’s for sure—was knee deep in some kind of harem assassination scheme. Which is the last place Shen Yuan wants to be.
He’s here to fade into the background and enjoy the luxuries afforded to the emperor's household, not start blood feuds.
The women of the rear palace are ruthless. It’s convenient, don’t get him wrong, that the original goods didn’t have a single friend, or anyone she seemed to talk to regularly, but that’s only because everyone is constantly trying to murder their way up the Luo Bingge ladder.
Since he’s woken, he’s been met with no fewer than six separate poisoning attempts and one very hard shove into the koi pond.
The demonic elephant eating piranha-koi pond.
Why that’s in the middle of their courtyard feels like lazy writing.
Even if the fish are really cool to watch. They have this fun behavior where they’re completely entranced by shiny reflective metals, to the point where it overrides their never-ending hunger and allows for a quick jump back to land.
There aren't any official rules that say Shen Yuan has to stay confined to the rear palace. Most of the other wives, concubines, and assorted political spouses don’t, in fact. There’s a constant stream of them coming and going. On night hunts, outings, and visits back to their homes.
They don’t usually find their way into the main palace, though.
Unfortunate, given that the library there has the largest physical collection of yellow books Shen Yuan has ever seen outside of the internet. Bestiaries take up the second largest section, and maybe when he works his way through the extensive collection of trashy romance, he’ll work his way through them.
He’s content to spend his days reading in the sunny patch by the window. Sometimes, when he’s paying more attention to watching, he can catch a glimpse of curly hair or a flash of dark silk rounding the corner. Despite how statistically improbable it is, his husband never steps foot on the grounds of the rear palace, and he has never seen him, which is just as relieving as it is disappointing. Shen Yuan would like to see his favorite character at least once. He needs to know who the closest Fancast is.
Liu Mingyan has always been Shen Yuan’s favorite wife. He liked Ning Yingying; she was impossible not to, but between the two of them, Liu Mingyan always felt like the better fit for the position of first wife.
Shen Yuan sees her constantly. She was the head disciple of Xian Shu, and she uses her skills as if she still holds the position. Liu Mingyan is constantly in the yard training. Running the other women through drills and sword forms, delegating work between the still semi-active cultivators.
She also spends a lot of time in the library, mostly reading—Shen Yuan understands why there's so much BL in the collection—sometimes writing.
So naturally, this is when he gets his first true look at Luo Binghe. Who's gotten Liu Mingyan pushed up in a barely secluded part of the library? Her face is flushed, the veil barely hanging on.
Shen Yuan freezes. Torn between wanting to run and give them their privacy to do whatever and not being able to look away.
Luo Binghe is just as impressive as he always imagined him to be, with thick curls cascading down his back and an imposing posture. Shen Yuan has to remind himself that it’s only natural he’d find him beautiful; he is in the body of a woman after all, and there isn’t a girl alive who could resist the protagonist's charms.
He drops the stack of books he was carrying, and has a brief moment of mortification when both Liu Mingyan and Luo Binghe’s eyes snap to him.
“That was a first addition,” Liu Mingyan says, delicate mouth puckering in a frown.
Shen Yuan really fucked things up now. He’s still a little iffy on what they all can and can’t get away with, so he’s not entirely certain Liu Mingyan couldn’t have him killed for the offense.
His instinct to flee is strong, but he squishes it down in favor of dropping to his knees to scramble for the pages that—fuck, fell right out of the thin Xianxian binding. “Please, forgive this one’s offense! I didn’t—”
“I’ll buy you another,” Luo Binge cuts him off. And even though he isn’t talking to him, Shen Yuan can’t help the shudder that runs through him. It’s not fair. No one should have a voice that sounds like that.
Liu Mingyan exhales, clearly collecting herself. Shen Yuan does her the courtesy of looking away while she straightens her robes back into place. It’s the least he can do after ruining the mood between them. “You always say that.”
How often are the books sacrificed to the protagonist’s desires around here? No. Nope. Shen Yuan is not going there.
He stays on the ground, because that feels like the correct, safe choice. Liu Mingyan looks at him funny, but she doesn’t say anything as she leaves. He expects the same treatment from Luo Binghe. Xue Yuan wasn't an interesting character. She hadn’t even had an on-page sex scene in her chapter and was never directly brought up outside of it.
“Xue…” He says, trailing off. His eyes are feverishly intense while he searches for his given name.
Shen Yuan feels like a lamb, brought to slaughter under a starving wolf. And this Luo Binghe, for all that he is just as brilliantly dazzling as he always imagined him to be, is also gaunt, unraveling like an open mawed beast. Shen Yuan doesn’t know where the desperation is coming from; the protagonist was supposed to be happy at the end of the novel. That was the point of all 6000 chapters.
“Yuan,” He finishes for him. Cutting his eyes away and downing a respectful depth. “This humble one greets Junshang.”
So much for surviving as an unnamed background character.
There’s a pause. Maybe it’s the narrative conventions of Airplane's writing, but Shen Yuan feels like there are always emotionally heavy pauses happening. He can see the appeal, and his soul, which is trying to hard launch its escape from his body, can’t even register the way he’s being assessed.
“Stand,” Luo Binge commands, after what feels like a century.
Shen Yuan complies, trying to keep his eyes safely fixated on neutral territory, like Luo Binghe’s collarbone.
“Xue Yuan,” Luo Binghe says, tasting the words on his tongue and finding fault in them. His frown is scary. Shen Yuan has the immediate desire to turn it upside down. “I don’t recall you.”
He’s wife is five-hundred-something, his whole narrative point is to be a forgettable side character, serving to push forward yet another reader-insert into papapa. He can’t say that, though, so he settles on, “I keep to the rear palace.”
“And yet,” Luo Binghe hums. He walks a tight circle around Shen Yuan. Up close, he can see the gaps in his clothing, the spaces where muscle has wasted away, and a fraying braid, unravelling behind his ear. The details feel out of place with the mental image he’s curated of the protagonist. “I find you in the main Library.”
“I wasn’t aware of any restriction.”
His answer is ignored in favor of another loop.
“Are you afraid of me?” The words are spoken softly. Almost whispered.
Shen Yuan is half tempted to lie. But decides after a second of indecision and a loud sniff in his direction that it would be suicidal. “Terrified.”
There’s no way the protagonist's ridiculous senses wouldn’t smell the anxiety pouring out of him in waves. Nothing good ever happened to anyone who lied to Luo Binghe.
“Good.” His husband laughs. His clawed hand reaches out, tilting Shen Yuan’s chin up until their eyes meet. Luo Binghe’s eyes widen slightly, his gaze searingly manic as he searches Shen Yuan’s face for something he doesn’t find. The spell is broken just as quickly as it started, and he’s left with the small pinpricks of blood where Luo Binghe dug in too tightly. Embarrassingly, his knees feel weak. An unfortunate side effect of this body’s lack of resistance to an example of peak male prowess. “Fear is honest.”
Unfortunately, for Shen Yuan’s ambitions, gossip spreads like wildfire in the harem and everyone and their second servant has heard about his little meeting in the library before dinner.
The original Xue Yuan had been heavily involved in a poisoning ring before she died. Shen Yuan had found the evidence of it in the false bottom of her jewelry box—inside had been tiny bottles and bits of powder wrapped in scraps of fabric. He also hadn’t wasted a second before burning it all, an action he greatly regrets now that the full force of the rear palace's advancement maneuverings is focused on him.
He’d crossed an unwritten rule by sharing such an intimate moment—if it could be called that—with their husband and was heavily paying the price for it. He’s been promoted, courtesy of the rumor mill, from harmless background character to library seductress. The new title comes with a demotion from ignored to actively targeted.
The poison attempts, which had always felt more like a formality than anything else, doubled. Someone swaps his usual tea for something cloyingly sweet. Someone else changes out the eel served for dinner with jellyfish. And he gets his first active assassin set to his bedroom in the middle of the night.
To harm any member of the emperor's household is to harm the emperor. He’s thankful that the guards are quick to answer his screams, and that it’s a common enough occurrence that no one feels the need to inform Luo Binghe directly. His account goes in a book already stuffed full of similar reports and closed with the death of the man being listed as 'appropriate punishment’.
Shen Yuan hasn’t figured out how to weaponize the koi yet. He’s semi-confident he can; his spoon training is going surprisingly well, but in the meantime, his best defense is to fade into as much obscurity as he’s physically able. He stops going to the library.
He also stops eating anything that he doesn’t prepare himself.
It’s a good thing the fish are immune to poison. And that he has just enough cultivation to manage off inedia and tea.
He gets his summons to the library after a handful of weeks have gone by, and his hope of escaping the harem intrigue is all but extinguished. The other women are really dead set on…well… seeing him dead.
Nothing he does is enough to forgive him of the sin of reaching above his station and exchanging a handful of words with the man he married. Sue him, he didn't think it was that special, he’s just happy he survived. Did none of these women remember the fact that Luo Binghe went on a world-ending rampage? Because the look on his face made Shen Yuan viscerally aware of that little factoid.
“You vanished,” Luo Binghe says, conversationally.
The summons hadn’t been signed. So, really, it was just wishful thinking that it would have been anyone other than the protagonist who wanted to see him. He’d been hoping for Liu Mingyan. But a quick look around as he comes to stand in the center of the room tells him it’s just the two of them.
….
Great.
Just what the rumor mill needs. More ammunition.
Shen Yuan bows, deep. He’s learned these last few weeks how fast things can be misconstrued, so he’s careful that there's nothing familiar or coquettish in his posture. “I didn’t know my absence would cause offense.”
He didn’t think his absence would be noticed.
“Come here,” Luo Binghe says. Doesn’t look at him. Instead, he makes his way over to one of the velvet couches in the center of the room. There is a fire going a small distance away, and Shen Yuan chooses to focus on that fact and not the way Luo Binghe drapes his body on the furniture. After a minute of him staring too long at the crackling flames—which dance a combination of blue and purple from the demonic wood burning—and not moving, Luo Binghe sighs, patting the space he’s left open by his chest. “Sit.”
Shen Yuan’s heart does a funny woman thing in his chest as he sits. He knows it’s a woman thing, because his old heart would never have had the audacity to flutter around. Most of the time, he doesn’t think it’s all that different, his new body vs his old one. His chest is pretty flat, and he can usually just not look—ignore the situation between his legs. And the rest doesn’t matter. Of course, then he spends a few minutes around the protagonist and is harshly reminded that he’s no longer a he, because a he wouldn’t have these kinds of reactions.
But that’s okay, too. Shen Yuan is Xue Yuan here, and as a woman, it’s only natural.
He gives himself a firm nod and sits as close to the edge of the couch as he can. Luo Binghe huffs a laugh and pulls him back firmly against his chest.
“You’re to read to me,” He says. From this close, Shen Yuan can feel his breath tickle the back of his neck, chasing a shiver down his spine.
A book is pushed into his hand. Shen Yuan recognizes the title immediately. It’s a purple prose-filled monstrosity of a romance novel/power fantasy. Cursed with the same lack of depth all Airplanes books were. He’d skimmed it, before putting it back and deciding that he would not fall into the trap of his least favorite author when it shouldn’t exist in this universe to begin with.
“Out loud?”
His face is not thick enough. Spare him, please!
Luo Binghe knows it too, because his eyes crinkle into perfect crescents. “Of course.”
“Junshang,” Shen Yuan clears his throat. How can he delicately explain that erotica wasn’t supposed to be narrated? “This text…it’s not particularly—”
“Read,” Luo Binghe repeats, and this time there's an edge to his words. Shen Yuan can feel the coil of them the same way he can feel the tension in the body behind him.
This is a test. Shen Yuan’s not sure what kind exactly. But it’s one all the same, and he can’t afford to fail. So he clears his throat and starts reading. The beginning isn’t that bad, and it’s not that strange. At least forty percent of Audible has to be erotica, right?
He can just skim over the racier parts. Nothing says he has to add in authentic sound effects or moan with the characters. What is with everyone moaning every two minutes? Sex can’t require that much dialogue to keep the plot going. Also, a character can talk two times in a row; the author doesn’t have to use fill-ins to artificially trade off between the two povs.
Luo Binghe stifles a laugh behind him. Shen Yuan has the mortifying realization that he’s been rambling out loud in between paragraphs, “Please don’t stop on my account.”
The atmosphere developing between them is weird. Shen Yuan wouldn’t call it relaxed. Luo Binghe hasn’t untensed an inch, and he’s still half convinced he’ll stutter a line and ruin everything, but it’s nice? Almost. It’s familiar at least, and fun. In the same vein as his internet rants used to be.
Shen Yuan is dismissed with little fanfare.
He’s permitted to leave and barely acknowledged when he does.
Three corridors later, his legs remember that they know how to shake and turn to jelly. He presses himself back against the cold stone leting the full weight of what he’s just escaped crash over him.
That was totally ooc
Shen Yuan considers himself somewhat of an expert on Luo Binghe. More than half the people in the comments of Proud Immortal Demon Way would even agree with him. He knows without a shred of doubt in his heart that this version of the protagonist is nothing like the Stallion hero at the end of the series.
He’s too hollow.
A servant comes to his room with congee two days later. It’s still steaming. Which is more suspicious than the fact that someone’s brought him food when he hasn’t requested any. Sometimes, if a girl goes too long away from the dining room, someone will take notice and send something.
More often, it’s a thinly veiled, extremely bold poisoning attempt by whoever the servants are indentured to. Shen Yuan has no personal servants of his own, and no one who would notice him not eating.
He leaves the food out and settles for his tea. He’s almost perfected not making it painfully bitter.
When he sleeps, he dreams of the porridge, though.
“Won’t you indulge this husband?” Luo Binghe asks the second time he’s summoned.
Shen Yuan nearly trips over the threshold.
That’s not a normal greeting.
That’s not a safe greeting.
Luo Binghe is seated on the same velvet couch as before. His robes are gaping obscenely around his chest, and his hair artfully disheveled. Shen Yuan has pointedly not put any thought into his marital duties. Luo Binghe never took an unwilling girl to bed with him, but Shen Yuan can’t say no. Right? That would be way too suspicious. No woman in this world can escape his magnetism.
Oh god, is he going to have to sleep with the protagonist to protect his cover?
He’s not gay, and neither is Luo Binghe…so…how is that going to work out? Well, he supposes since he’s a girl now that it’s fine. He has female anatomy, so it’s actually just heterosexual sex.
Yeah.
Okay.
He can manage.
Shen Yuan is so heterosexual.
He’s not sure if he’s supposed to initiate it. What he’s supposed to do. Luckily, Luo Binghe sees the panic on his face and makes the first move, patting the empty space in front of his chest. Like last time, Shen Yuan makes his way over. Like last time, he sits on the edge, his butt barely making contact with the furniture.
Luo Binghe huffs a laugh, pulling him closer in the same breath. “So cold.”
“Forgive me, I don’t—”
His words are cut off by a book dropping into his lap. The relief that escapes him is palpable. He can manage to get through another raunchy book if it means he can escape with his life and chrysanthemum intake.
He glances down.
It’s not erotic this time. It’s a medical text.
Behind him, Luo Binghe rests his chin lightly against his shoulder,
Shen Yuan can feel the command more than he can hear it over the blood rushing through his ears. “Read.”
Cautiously, Shen Yuan flips it open to the first page. In delicate script, the words ‘Effects of Long-Term Inedia and Spiritual Depletion’. He goes, incredibly still and starts reading. There’s nothing for him to ramble over or pick apart in the text. He doesn’t know enough about cultivation to determine if this is all true. He trips over his words more. His tongue gets stuck around nitpicky paragraphs, even though nothing is particularly technical.
He makes it through the first two chapters before Luo Binghe interrupts his lecture on deteriorating bone density. “You thought I wouldn’t notice.”
It isn’t spoken as a question.
The book choice is excellent at conveying exactly how much surveillance he’s been under.
“I didn’t want to trouble Junshang,” Shen Yuan says. The arms around his waist are painfully tight before letting go completely.
Luo Binghe reaches beside him. Grabbing a small Qiankun pouch. Shen Yuan’s brain starts running through the worst-case scenarios before the smell of fried pork makes his stomach growl. Loudly.
The span between his beginning spiral and Luo Binghe's loosening the strings had to be less than ten seconds in length. To Shen Yuan’s poor heart, it felt like an hour. At this rate, with the amount of unchecked anxiety he has, he’ll be lucky to make it to thirty without a heart attack. It’s a good thing women are less likely to have congestive heart failure.
“I prepared these myself,” Luo Binghe says, pushing the bao into his hands.
He watches Shen Yuan with a look that borders between speculative and possessive. It almost feels like he expects Shen Yuan to reject the offering, and is genuinely surprised when he doesn’t hesitate to shove one in his mouth.
Maybe Shen Yuan should have checked for poison first. Afterall, Luo Binghe’s all but admitted to staking him. Killing him the way all the actual wives have been failing at would be fitting. He just can’t be bothered to care about the potential consequences.
He died on a bao once already. If the protagonist wants him dead, he doesn’t stand a chance anyway. At least he can say it was Luo Binghe’s legendary cooking this time.
The bao’s worth it too. The flavors are perfectly balanced and covered in the softest dough he’s ever tasted. The richness tickles his mouth. It’s been too long since he’s had solid food; he can feel the way the food flutters down his throat. The more he eats, the more warmth blooms around his body, setting off little butterflies in his stomach.
“That was delicious,” He pats the fluffy head of curls next to him without thinking. “Thank you, Binghe.”
And is promptly shoved to the floor.
It happens in the space from one moment to the next. He barely registers making contact with the cold wood before there are footsteps by his head. When he looks up, Luo Binghe is gone, and Shen Yuan is left feeling nauseous.
He must have eaten too fast.
Maybe it was too much at once. Or too heavy after months of only tea.
His stomach hurts. His whole body hurts. His skin is crawling.
Maybe it’s guilt. He’s not sure what he did. Whatever it was, he hurt Binghe. He’ll have to apologize the next time he sees him.
“Junshang,” Shen Yuan says, carefully pitching his voice to be soft and unintrusive. Luo Binghe hasn’t called on him again. Which at first, didn’t set off any alarm bells—they’d only seen each other twice and statistically with as many wives per capita there was and how many duties their shared husband had—a long period of sense was to be expected. But then, after four months and a handful of almost all meetings happened, it became painfully clear that Shen Yuan was being avoided. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You haven’t.” He’s not looking at him. “Not yet.”
Great. Love that for him.
“I feel I may have overstepped.” Shen Yuan tries. He hates the way his voice wobbles.
He wants them to be okay. He wants what was starting. HIs life hasn’t been bad. Somehow, the other women have gotten the hint that he’s not just going to drop dead, and instead of that making him more of a target, they’ve moved on to attainable goals. His days are easy. Filled with leisure.
They’re lonely.
Shen Yuan hadn’t realized how isolated he was until he had Luo Binghe and lost him. Funny the way you can get used to something you barely had.
“Why won't you look at me?” Luo Binghe asks. There's a good three feet between them, and even though Shen Yuan went out of his way to find this man. Had run after the first flash of black fabric he saw and yelled out to him when he thought he wouldn’t be able to catch up. He hasn’t looked up at his face once.
“It felt…unwise,” Shen Yuan says, choosing his words carefully. He lifts his gaze, which had been securely fastened on his feet.
In front of him, Luo Binghe looks like he’s physically coming undone. He’s shuddering with the waves of his qi rolling off him in tangible rivets. Somehow, Shen Yuan has found the exact worst thing he could have said.
“You never look at me,” Luo Binghe laughs. The sound comes out closer to a sob. “I don’t understand you at all.”
Shen Yuan’s brain blue-screens.
“You don’t make requests. You don’t scheme. You don’t petition for my hand or vie for my attention. You—”
“I don’t want anything from you.” Shen Yuan whispers. The effect they cause feels like he screamed them.
Luo Binghe stares at him, chest heaving in heartbreakingly shuttering gulps of air. Shen Yuan has the terrifying realization that he might have miscalculated…catastropically. Because Binghe lets out a howl and drops to his knees. It’s an ugly, broken sound that scrapes its way out of his chest before dissolving into frame-wrecking sobs.
He does a sort of rocking motion. Shen Yuan is genuinely afraid he’s going to Qi deviate. He has no clue how long Luo Binghe’s been suppressing these heart demons, but they’ve grown into dangerous territory.
If anyone asks, he’ll cite the fear of Luo Binghe losing it and tearing a rift in the fabric of reality for the absolutely brain-dead-suicidal decision of wrapping his arms around him. He pulls his head down to his chest. Binghe doesn’t fight it. He just cries harder, grasping at fistfuls of his robe and tearing the fabric.
Luo Binghe’s money bought the pretty outfit to begin with, and if Shen Yuan lives through this encounter, he’s sure his money will get him something just as nice to replace it.
“You keep acting like him.” Luo Binghe’s crying too hard to be understandable, but Shen Yuan can just make out the pitiful little voice he’s using. “I keep thinking you are, but you aren’t. You can’t be him.”
Shen Yuan’s arms tighten instinctively.
Luo Binghe is roughly around his age. His life’s been harder. Emotionally, he acts much younger, and Shen Yuan aches for the little white sheep who never got the chance to grow.
“I’m not,” He agrees. He starts running his fingers through the mess of curls in front of him. Doing his best to work out the stray tangles he comes across. His fingers snag around the remains of the braid he’s seen on that first visit. It’s nearly non-existent now. Just a small clump of hair doing its best to hold onto the polished bead at the end.
His sister used to have him do her hair on school mornings back when their parents would work, and Shen Yuan would be too frail to do in-person lessons. He’s gotten his practice in. He’d go so far as to say he’s even good at braiding.
He pulls the bead off the end. Valiantly not acknowledging the murder radiating off the body on top of him, and works his way through a three-strand plait identical to the remains of the one Luo Binghe had to begin with.
He tucks it gently back behind his ear. Shen Yuan can’t begin to guess at why it was imported. None of Luo Binghe’s wives were described to be especially skilled at doing hair, and Airplane had never bothered to write a scene where anyone got dressed.
The bead isn’t even made of gold. It’s nice, sure. As nice as a common bamboo bead can be.
Luo Binghe goes very still.
The look on his face is fragile. His voice is raw. “You fixed it.”
Hope is a terrible thing. Luo Binghe is full of it.
Shen Yuan can’t bring himself to stomp it out, though. He should. Luo Binghe said so himself; there's no way Shen Yuan can be this mysterious character-defining person. Logically, he should quell whatever is taking root inside Luo Binghe’s mind this instant.
They’re both bound to be bitterly disappointed when Shen Yuan fails to meet whatever standards the ghost haunting the narrative has created.
He doesn’t have the resolve.
“I wanted to make you happy.”