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Shen Yuan could not be said to be a villainfucker. He didn't like villains in the way villainfuckers did. He liked them the way normal people did, by coming up with increasingly elaborate revenge fantasies to enact on their soon-to-be-corpses.
Luo Binghe was the exception.
The main character of Proud Immortal Cultivator Way was pretty meh as far as protagonists went. Shen Jiu was just as shallow and petty as every other cultivation power fantasy hero—hardly worth writing home about. He started small and got powerful, yipee. Welcome to every cultivation progression story on Zhongdian Literature.
But Luo Binghe.
Luo Binghe was why Shen Yuan kept reading.
He was powerful, he was cool, and there were so many hints of fascinating depth to him that Shen Yuan had never wanted to look away. There was exactly one thing in PICW that Airplane had never fumbled, and that was Luo Binghe.
He'd started out as Shen Jiu's shizun, a powerful immortal cultivator with an impeccable reputation and a strange grudge against the hero. The origin of this grudge was revealed at the end of the first act of the story, when Shen Jiu pushed his master into the Endless Abyss—he was half-heavenly demon, the rarest demonic race there was and allegedly one of the most evil, and Shen Jiu's clan had been instrumental in wiping out the rest of his kind.
And yet, their relationship stretched beyond that. He was a hybrid of one of the evillest races in existence, yet he nursed Shen Jiu through qi deviation after qi deviation on the protagonist's way to the top. He hated Shen Jiu for everything he represented, but carefully guided him to strength and power. He'd nearly died for Shen Jiu once—not explicitly, but if you read between the lines in that one fight during the first demon invasion, there was no in-universe reason for him to have taken that Without a Cure poisoning unless it was for Shen Jiu. Sure, it may have just been one of Airplane's attempts at foreshadowing the demonic reveal, seeing as he healed from it within the week, but Luo Binghe hadn't hated Shen Jiu, despite everything.
And then he'd been cast into the Endless Abyss after a (frankly pretty terrible) villain exposition, and Shen Yuan had kept reading out of boredom, when none of the other stories he wanted to read had updated—and then it turned out that Luo Binghe hadn't died, that he'd ventured through the abyss and come out the other side a conqueror, taking the throne that was rightfully his and amassing a harem of great size, and Shen Yuan had been on that like white on rice.
The story had continued, incredible when Luo Binghe was on the page and spectacularly mediocre when he wasn't, and Shen Yuan had read until the very end, where Luo Binghe, invincible demon emperor, ultimate villain extraordinaire, the only worthwhile part of this novel aside from the worldbuilding—Luo Binghe had died offscreen. To some random assassin Shen Jiu had met and sent that chapter.
The apoplexy that sent Shen Yuan into killed him.
Literally.
And then he woke up as one Shen Jiu.
Specifically, he woke up in Shen Jiu's bed in the side room of the bamboo house, the most beautiful man in existence feeding a gentle flow of energy into his chest via large, warm hand on his clavicle.
"Shen Jiu..." the man said when he saw that Shen Yuan was awake. Black eyes shone like stars, exotic-for-xianxia loosely curled black hair settled around his broad shoulders, inhumanly handsome face resting in a calm almost-smile right above a hint of exposed collarbones. "Good. This master was worried you wouldn't pull through. My disciple has pushed too hard, too early once again. How many times have this master told you? Patience is key. No core was formed in a day."
Faced with his favoritest ever fictional character in the flesh, touching him quite tenderly, Shen Yuan did the reasonable thing: he squeaked an agreement and passed out again.
It was a shock just how quickly Luo Binghe thawed on Shen Jiu when Shen Jiu suddenly started trusting him and listening to him and, well, caring about him.
The sudden switch from standoffish feral cat to devoted filial disciple had him checking Shen Jiu for possession multiple times, but he accepted him faster than Shen Jiu had thought was possible.
With Shen Jiu actually listening to him, his cultivation grew in leaps and bounds. The qi deviations were a thing of the past, exchanged for the Zheng Yang Sword's gentle shoulder squeezes and quiet pride.
More and more, Shen Jiu was pissed off at the lot his favorite character had been cast. If anyone should have been the protagonist, it should have been Luo Binghe, dammit! He was so much cooler, his story was way more interesting, and his power was incredible.
He was gentle and kind. He was vengeful and protective. He was crazy smart. He had that raw animal appeal from his demonic side and that cultured, genteel appeal from his human side and was, frankly, way better looking than Shen Jiu could ever dream of being.
But no. Instead, Shen Jiu was the protagonist, and he was going to have to cast his beloved master into the Endless Abyss, thanks to his shitty, shitty System.
Ugh.
Would any of the goodwill between them right now even matter, once the truth came out? Were they doomed to follow the same patterns as the original? When Shizun left—when Shen Jiu threw him into the abyss, would they have any of this left?
With nothing to focus on except his cultivation, these thoughts chased him to sleep on more than one occasion.
The protagonist, of course, had nothing to fear, not even from his ultimate foe. Not traditionally, anyway.
But he'd gotten so used to seeing Shizun's face every morning. And the years between the Immortal Alliance Conference and discovering the Emperor of the Demonic Realm were such a slog that Shen Jiu had never managed to make himself read it a second time, skimming chapters upon chapters of boring cultivation practice and occasional cool monsters.
He had to push Shizun, or the System would kill him. He had to... He had to...
And he might have managed to, if only Shizun had stuck with the script.
But he didn't say, in a flat, hateful snarl, Well? Aren't you going to do it? Finish what your pure and righteous clan started, kill the last heavenly demon and cleanse this world for good? Or did this master raise you too pathetic to even raise a hand against him?
Instead, he rushed to Shen Jiu's side, heartbreak in his eyes as he cupped Shen Jiu's wan cheek, the symbol of his divine sin blazing on his forehead and demonic qi wafting off of him so thick it burned Shen Jiu's lungs. "A-Jiu..."
"Shizun...?" Shen Jiu choked out. Maybe he had made a mistake, not being colder. Being called out to with such clear affection and desperation would have killed a stronger man, and Shen Jiu had never been particularly strong in either life.
Shizun laughed roughly, like he might have cried if he were anyone else. His eyes, blood red and oddly beautiful, searched Shen Jiu's face. "I never wanted you to find out like this. I... I am half-heavenly demon. Human by my mother and demon by my father. I am the last one alive who is truly intolerable to the heavens. Your clan made sure of it."
The informal language and pain clear in every word were making Shen Jiu's head spin. Hey, OP villain, could you look a little less soulful while pleading with this poor protagonist? Thank you!!
"If you're half-demon, why were you a peak lord?" Shen Jiu asked numbly. It was something he'd always wished the original goods had asked, and one of the answers he'd held out to the end hoping for.
Shizun glanced to the side, his full, beautiful mouth twisting in disgust. "I thought that maybe if I proved myself a righteous cultivator in truth, I would be able to outrun my blood in the end. As you can see, it didn't work." He nearly spat the last few words.
Ahhh Shen Jiu couldn't do it!! He really couldn't do it!! He couldn't break Shizun's heart and spend the next several years without him!! He'd go insane, dammit!!
"Are you going to finish the job?" Shizun asked, somewhat sardonically. Guilt wafted off of him nearly as thick at the qi. "Take up your clan's birthright and eliminate this demon's line once and for all?"
Shen Jiu smiled up at his beloved shizun—who was so strong and so scared and... and who cared for Shen Jiu so much, and always had, even when he shouldn't—and said, "Ah, Shizun is too hard on himself, as always. There, there. Your disciple is hardly as unfilial as all that. How can you call him A-Jiu so sweetly and then ask if he's going to kill you? Obviously this disciple will not."
Shizun's shoulders dropped, bemusement taking over the pain. "Your shizun, a righteous peak lord, is the last heavenly demon. The worst kind of demon there is."
Shen Jiu offered Shizun a small smile. "It's okay. I knew about Shizun's lineage long ago." Then, while Shizun's face went slack with shock, he looked at the abyssal rift. "We need to leave before the others get here, though, or things will turn out badly."
By which he meant, the System will kill me, though there were surrounding circumstances that wouldn't work out too well either.
"A-ah," said Shizun, stunned as he so rarely was, and Shen Jiu regretted they were too busy for him to enjoy it.
Impulse had him ducking out of his master's hold and walking up to the edge of the rift. "Hey, Shizun." He glanced at his master, who had some strangely sticky tendencies when he wasn't being all peerless and immortal. "If this lowly disciple jumped—"
"A-Jiu, don't you dare."
"—would Shizun follow him?" He smiled at the immortal and took a small step back, just to feel the breeze pushing against his heel.
"You idiot," the man hissed, striding forward with urgency that increased with every step, then lurched as Shen Jiu let his second foot join the first at the edge of hell. "A-Jiu—"
"But Shizun, I want to see the monsters!" He held out his hand and apologized to the OP villain a thousand times over in his heart for teasing an undignified expression like this out of him, but knowing his panic was all for Shen Jiu made Shen Jiu feel all warm and giddy inside, even under these circumstances. Slowly, slowly enough that he'd be able to blast himself back to the surface if this didn't work, he let himself tip backwards.
Just like he'd hoped, Shizun lurched forward to grab his hand and tried to pull him back from the edge.
He used the man's momentum to pull him close, overbalancing them and sending them both plummeting into the rift.
"A-Jiu!!" Shizun shouted hoarsely, dragging claws over Shen Jiu's heart, clutching Shen Jiu close and desperately twisting them so that Shen Jiu would be protected by his body when they hit the ground.
"Begging Shizun's forgiveness," Shen Jiu said to the man's collarbone and let himself relax into his bruising grip and big, warm, powerful body. "This lowly disciple is selfish, and didn't want to be without you."
Shizun held him tighter with a growl that clearly spelled out the lecture Shen Jiu would catch at the soonest available opportunity, and Shen Jiu idly wondered how hard he would have to work to prove he could be a decent advisor to the soon-to-be emperor.
He shamelessly snuggled closer and grinned, already looking forward to seeing all those cool abyssal creatures in the flesh. This plot development was so much better than PICW had ever dreamed of being. Take that, Airplane!