Chapter Text
Part 1
Shen Yuan was bored. Utterly and absolutely bored. Without Binghe, his day to day life had become a drag. A boring drag. Boring enough for Shen Yuan to go and finish all the paperwork that had been overflowing on his desk. Boring enough, even, to try and meditate even though it was a damn waste of time without a step-by-step cultivation manual or the system to back him up!
“System,” Shen Yuan said, throwing another sunflower seed in the air before narrowly catching it with his mouth. He crunched on it for a moment, calling out again when the System had yet to appear, “Hey System, can you hear me? I’ve got a question for you!”
The System flickered alive. [ Host called? ♡(>ᴗ•)/ ]
“It’s been bothering me a while, honestly, and since … well, since Binghe is in the Abyss, and things have been really busy, of course, but during the last mission I was on with Liu-Shidi, the Succubus one, you know the one I’m talking of, right?” he fumbled with the sunflower seeds, “Well — It just had me wondering … where did the original goods… you know, go?”
The System blinked for a moment, stuck on the same message as before. Shen Yuan nearly thought it, dare he say, stunned? He didn’t think that his question was that unexpected. Surely the System knew that he would wonder eventually.
[ System does not understand the question, Host. ]
“You don’t understand? How can you not — I mean, where did the original goods, Shen Jiu, the original Scum Villain, go? His soul, or whatever,” A thought occurred to him — one he had contemplated before but always sought to ignore, “you haven’t put him in my body, right? Like swapping bodied?! Is he, well, dead? Or did you send him somewhere else?”
[ System does not understand the question. ]
Shen Yuan rolled in his bed in frustration. How hard could this be to understand? The Scum Villain!! Where was the Scum Villain! What happened to him!
“The previous host of this body! I’m asking where he went!”
[ The host of the body ‘ The Scum Villain; Shen Qingqiu, Shen Jiu’ has not changed. Minor character adjustments were added to enhance plot-advancement, plot-changes as well as protagonist satisfaction. ]
“Not … not changed? What does that mean ‘not changed’. I was put in here. I died, and then you put me in the Scum Villain’s body!”
[ Incorrect. ]
“Incorrect?! What do you mean Incorrect?” Shen Yuan untangled himself from his blanket, climbing onto his feet just so he could glare at the System’s interface at eye level. The system ignored his shaking (shaking with anger!) finger. [ Host’s statement is incorrect. Host is a previous reincarnation of the soul tied to ‘The Scum Villain’. System simply wiped faulty data and opened System access to Host’s data for playability purposes. ]
For a moment, Shen Yuan was quiet, staring at the System’s message in disbelief, “You’re lying.”
[ The System does not lie. ]
Then, as if to taunt him, it flickered a Kaomoji right after, [ (￣ヘ￣) ]
Shen Yuan swallowed, “But — but, I don’t remember anything.”
[ Memory files of original incarnation ‘The Scum Villain, Shen Qingqiu, Shen Jiu’ have been revoked due to undue distress during System upstart. The System judged the original load file to be damaged, and thus sealed it to guarantee Protagonist satisfaction ♡(>ᴗ•) ]
After a moment of silence, and with no reaction from him, the System sent another message.
[ Would Host like to view this bodies original memory file? ]
Shen Yuan’s mind raced, clammy with sweat at the thoughts swirling through him.
“No, hold on. System — I read PIDW. How could I have read PIDW and then supposedly be a previous reincarnation of Shen Qingqiu himself. If — PIDW isn’t even the same world! And — and, this is like ancient china! How can I be a previous incarnation of the scum villain — it doesn’t make sense!”
[ Host misunderstands. Souls are not bound by time or place. Once released, they may be reborn in any of the worlds or times. Time is not linear. For further information, please purchase Platinum VIP upgrade to access VIP Information. ]
Shen Yuan’s head spun. He put the purchasing option of a Platinum Upgrade aside, because he clearly didn’t have enough B-points for such a thing, otherwise the System would likely never have offered, and focused on the important parts for now. “So — someone, might have lived in PIDW and then died and then wrote PIDW … and then I read it? And died and became Shen Qingqiu? But, but — I’m still me, I didn’t really die, my soul is still me. And I’m here! So then the Scum Villain couldn’t have been me because I’m still alive, so I couldn’t have reincarnated — right?”
[ Host is incorrect. Host’s current Identifier state is User Peerless Cucumber, Shen Yuan, who died at age 21, cause: food poisoning in combination with a failing respiratory system. Upon death, ‘Shen Yuan’ was reborn as a new identity and wiped of previous memories and identifiers. Upon Host’s failure to achieve maximal plot satisfaction, System determined that a wipe of faulty Identifier data was necessary, thus wiping faulty data of ‘The Scum Villain, Shen Qingqiu, Shen Jiu’ until it reached usable data in the form of Identifier ‘Peerless Cucumber, Shen Yuan’. ]
What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.
[ Host has achieved the required System level to regain access to faulty data sets or request recycling of identifier ‘The Scum Villain, Shen Qingqiu, Shen Jiu’. Would Host like to view Identifier ‘The Scum Villain, Shen Qingqiu, Shen Jiu’’s faulty data? ]
Shen Qingqiu. The Scum villain, had been him. A version of him with the same soul. The thought was sickening, but not as much as the System simply deciding to wipe that entire existence to swap it with something more useful to it’s goals — which were, what, exactly? Shen Yuan had never paid much mind to it, more concerned with staying alive and hugging the protagonists golden thigh. He had assumed upon the first encounter with the System that it was made entirely for the Protagonist and PIDW’s improvement as a novel. But PIDW — the world of PIDW, wasn’t a novel, if he understood the System correctly. Airplane had simply written a novel based on an earlier reincarnation.
The System was dangerous, beyond anything he had assumed before. But all of that irrelevant right now. Because the System was allowing him access to the supposed ‘faulty data’ that made up the Scum Villain. That was a can of worms Shen Yuan would love to go without, but wasn’t it better to know more, rather than less? What if there was something vital he couldn’t remember because of the System’s actions? He needed to know. If he really had been the Scum Villain at some point, he wanted to know. Needed to know.
“Show me.”
The blackness comes suddenly, swallowing him all in one, memories flushing into him and drowning him until the breath stuttered in his lungs.
Cold, freezing, small hands hugging him. A promise, pain, pain, pain — hands on him, holding him down, agony — the choking taste of ash in the back of his throat, clogging it until his stomach turned, bile and Qiu Jianluo’s sick favors spilling onto ash tained floor. Fire, then freezing water, the stench of cheap alcohol running over bruised fingers. Hands in his hair, on his skin — burying under, deeper, gnawing at his meridians, sipping from them as though the marrow from bone. Pain, pain, pain — Qi-ge, where are you?
Shen yuan cannot breathe. Cannot tell where he ends and Shen Jiu starts, cannot remember how to make his body function — cannot breathe. The crawling hands rub along his thighs, nails slipping under his skin as though live bugs were burying into him. Then a violent flash, the sound of a blaring alarm. Ash choking him, fire gnawing at his skin. Light swarmed his vision, blinding him.
The System blared in his ears. Jerking him from terror into panic. He gasped for air, hands clawing into silk sheets. The hands fade away. The bugs stop feasting at him. Shen Jiu’s skin was crawling, but the hands were gone.
The System blinked at him, flashing every second between red, then blue, then red again, impossibly close to him until he could barely make out what it was saying. [ Aborting memory recall due to undue distress. Repackaging faulty data, sealing access. ] Then a crinkling noise, like the slow crushing of a tin can. The System went silent, and the flashing stopped.
Bit by bit, the spots in his vision fade. His heart hammering behind his ribcage, so quick that he is nauseous with it, as though it was beating right on top of his stomach.
Shen Qingqiu felt sick, dirty. Nauseous down to his very bones, his skin crawling, and his fingers itching to claw it off himself. It was as though he could taste ash in the back of his throat. Like wooden splinters are stuck under his nails. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart.
It was only after he forced himself to sit up that he realized something had gone very wrong.
The robes that had been perfectly sized on him only minutes earlier, now pooled around his body as if he had shrunken twenty years into the past.
“What the fuck,” Shen Yuan said, “what the fuck. System! System, what the fuck?!”
[ The System apologizes for undue distress caused during file unpackaging. ]
“No! No, System — look at me! You turned me into a midget!”
The System ignored him, placidly blinking for a few beats before fading away, not returning no matter how much he cursed or poked at the air where it had been. A cursory look into the mirror told him that the situation was much worse than he had originally thought. He hadn’t just shrunk, no. He had turned into a bloody damn kid! A preteen of all things! Who was going to take him seriously like this?!
Like a switch had flipped in his mind, he was swallowed by a sudden sense of calm. Why worry? Couldn’t he just hide away in his bamboo hut? There were stores upon stores of rations and medicines hidden beneath the floor and in the walls, he wouldn’t have to show himself to anyone for weeks. Or maybe, if he really, had to, he could send Airplane a message (that rat), but who knew how useful he was going to be. And honestly, If he just left his finished work outside of the door then he could just work the issue out himself and return to his adult body without anyone ever having seen him! Not like anyone really needed him to appear in person for anything! He really wasn’t that involved with any important business!
The System, inconvenient, mayhem causing parasite that it was, beeped to life with a mission quest alert.
[ MISSION: Attend the Peak Lord meeting. ]
Shen Yuan glared at the holographic being. Fan-fucking-tastic. As if his day wasn’t bad enough already. If it hadn’t proven itself to be entirely untouchable, he would have gone for a quick gutting of the System right about now.
As though it had read his thoughts (not an impossibility, no matter how frustrating the possibility was), the System’s screen darkened, color bleeding into purple and the beaping becoming more insistent.
He cursed the System under his breath for good measure, waving a dismissive hand at the being as he stepped around it. “I got it, I got it, don’t get you panties in a twist, System.”
A problem presented itself as he was getting ready.
All of his robes were large, too large, no matter how much he tried to wrap them or tie them, they still slid down his scrawny shoulders as though he was some type of wanton plaything. He threw the robe down, heel coming down on it for good measure, before turning to his disciples room. There should be another set or two of Binghe’s old robes, and at least those wouldn’t be quite as big as his own. He chewed on his lip for a minute, half-convinced that he should just try to find a better way to fasten his own robes, before caving to the horror of having to leave his peak half exposed.
He toed his way into the room, peeking into it as though there was anyone to scold him for it. The robes were folded away neatly in the closet, still just the way that Binghe had left them. He swallowed, eyes stinging with the dust that had gathered since he had last cleaned his disciple’s room.
He tugged one robe free and hightailed it out, lest the System start blaring at him for being late.
The robe fit, in the end. More or less. Though it must have been untouched for too long, for wearing it send his skin crawling again, itching as though something had buried right under it, and for a moment his stomach churned with bile and the unbidden thought of him, voluntarily wearing another mans robes brands into him before he breathed through it and pushed it aside.
As for the over-robe, he managed to find a slightly smaller one in the back of his closet that likely hadn’t seen the light of day for a decade or two. The size small enough that he — the original goods, he corrected himself stubbornly — had probably worn it during his tenure as the succeeding disciple. The robe was over-sized and ill-fitting on his current pint-sized body, but what was he to do? Better to wear it and be recognized as Shen Qingqiu, than to wear Binghe’s and be confused as a disciple! The thought alone made him want to hide away somewhere in dread.
Shen Yuan snatched his favorite fan from the table as well as Xiu Ya from her stand, before bracing himself with a few deep breaths.
********
Sneaking off his own peak was sickeningly easy. He would have to talk to someone about security, lest vermin had an equally easy road in and out of his peak. Xiu Ya, thankfully, flew him as loyally as she always had. The sword singing under him, Qi curling around his soul like the fur of a kitten rubbing against skin. The comfort of it was nearly enough to make him relax, even in the face of what he would have to suffer through in the meeting.
Luckily — or perhaps less so, as he couldn’t even attempt to hide away — he arrived just in the nick of time, all of his fellow Peak Lords already assembled.
They were all staring at him. He hated being stared at.
The snarl left his mouth before he could think to stop it, “What?”
The Cup in Liu Qingge’s hand was crushed with an audible CRUNCH, leaving the scalding tea dripping down his fingers.
His martial siblings were blatantly staring, undisturbed by his snarl or by the tea dripping onto Liu Qingge’s (meagre) reports. Mu Qingfang was half raised from his seat by the time Shen Qingqiu glared at him, and Qi Qingqi’s gasp had only been half smothered behind her hand.
The door was thrown open behind him.
“Sorry! Sorry — forgot where I put my notes, nearly thought I had lost them, haha — oh, …?! Shen-Shixiong?” Shang Qinghua dropped the the folder in his arms alongside his clearly recently used inkstone. Ink splattered on the floor and across his notes, smearing them, but Shang Qinghua paid them no mind, work forgotten as he gaped unattractively at Shen Yuan.
“You — cucu— cough, er, Shen-Shixiong, are you … okay?”
“I believe that is something we would all like to know.” Mu Qingfang had taken Shen Yuan’s moment of inattention as an invitation to sneak his way out of his seat and around the table, hands already raised as though he expected him to simply let him check his meridians without any arguments. Shang Qinghua kept spluttering behind him.
Thoroughly fed up and tired, Shen Qingqiu ignored them.
Upon reaching his seat near the front of the room, Shen Qingqiu turned to make eye contact with the sect leader.
“Zhangmen-Shixiong.” He snapped his fan closed, feeling overwhelmingly irritated.
Yue Qingyuan rose from his seat abruptly, knocking over the low table in the process. The pale expression he wore made it look as though he had suffered a great shock. He reached out a trembling hand, inhaling sharply.
“…Xiao Jiu?” Yue Qingyuan’s hand froze half a coin’s width away from his face, dropping after a moment.
Which Shen Qingqiu both loathed and was thankful for. Loathed because why WOULDN'T Qi-ge touch him? Was he too dirty — to tainted, too — anyways, Shen Yuan shook the feeling off. It was fine if the sect leader didn’t want to touch him. More than fine. Great even. He really didn’t want to be touched. The dusty robes were still making his skin itch.
“Mu-Shidi, could you …?” The Sect leader prompted. At Shen Qingqiu’s hardly hidden scowl, those dumb brown eyes turned wide and pleading, the same way they had been back when they had both been filthy and muddy, catching fish to sate their hunger in the dry summer heat.
He sniffed, flipping open his fan, lifting his other to the hovering healer, “fine.”
Fingers were pressed to his wrist. Large, brutish, fingers, he thought, and the feeling of them made him want to gag, so he fanned himself harder.
“A Qi deviation, a rather severe one at that,” Mu Qingfang said after a moment, “though I am not sure what could have caused it.”
“Without a cure?” Qi Qingqi prompted.
“Unlikely,” the healer said, finally releasing Shen Yuan’s hand. He promptly shook his sleeve over it, wanting to rub it raw but refusing to do so in full view of the Peak Lord’s peering at him as though he was an interesting bug to take apart.
“I remembered some things,” Shen Yuan said noncommittally, when they said nothing.
“How could mere memories create a Qi-deviation that strong?” Wei Qingwei piped up.
“Memories, especially traumatic ones, may have such an effect. Does Shen-Shixiong know what has caused these memories to surface?” Mu Qingfang prompted.
Shen Yuan squirmed a bit, raising his fan to avert his eyes and accidentally catching Liu Qingge’s for a moment, who, in his usual fashion, seemed to get the wrong idea.
“The succubus cave.” The Bai Zhan Peak Lord declared.
Shen Yuan wanted to tell him off for brining up something irrelevant but somehow the topic reminded him of …— a fine tremble went through his hands, something not unnoticed by the eagle-eyed Mu Qingfang and a concerned Yue Qingyuan. “Xiao Jiu — “
“Don’t call me that,” Shen Yuan bit out, feeling sick. “Don’t.”
Yue Qingyuan looked heartbroken, but Shen Yuan couldn’t help the Sect leader any more than he could stop the cold sweat and nausea that had taken hold of him.
“No.” Shen Yuan said, finally, when nobody else seemed to be in a hurry to break the silence. “Not the succubus cave mission. Not — not exactly, I — ” he broke off, unsure about what to say.
“Could Shixiong elaborate? This Mu Qingfang’s treatment would be many times more effective if he knew what caused such a deviation.”
Shen Yuan was shaking his head before he consciously took note of it. The action was so childish — hair flying everywhere, nearly hitting the healer in the face — that it took him by surprise.
“This Master is fine.” Shen Yuan said. “Mu-Shidi should not concern himself.” Really, what Shen Yuan needed was some time alone to get a grip on the memories that made his skin crawl and then some extra time to beat the System into a pulp.
“Now if that was all, then I will take my leave.” He flapped his sleeve, raised his nose high and left the other Peak Lords behind.