Work Text:
Shen Yuan dies. Pretty ignobly. Then he wakes up to a murder scene.
Well. A murder cave.
He’s lying on some kind of stone…platform? Overlooking a pool of clear water. His position also gives him a good view of all the slashes over the cave walls, like someone had attacked it over and over. There’s copious dried blood staining those same walls.
Someone was definitely murdered here. No question.
The fact that Shen Yuan is in this cave probably isn’t a good thing.
Shen Yuan is pretty sure he died. Is he a ghost haunting this cave for some reason…? But no, he feels like he’s in a body. He has the same shaky, weak feeling as when a fever finally breaks, which probably doesn’t happen when you’re a ghost—
Agony lances through him as he tries to sit up.
He stops moving immediately. His whole nervous system feels like it’s been set on fire; he has no idea how he didn’t notice before he moved, but now it’s all he can feel, cresting waves of pain that slowly—way too slowly!—dull.
Shen Yuan lies there, panting.
Ghosts aren’t supposed to feel pain, right?
So if he’s not a ghost, what the hell is going on?
Exceedingly carefully, he tilts his head, trying to get a look at himself, to see if he’s tied up or anything. What he can tell from that slight shift is that he’s wearing some kind of robes—hanfu, maybe? His sleeves are spread out against the floor, and he can feel the scraping of something in his hair against the cave floor.
Dead, then alive, dressed in unfamiliar clothes, in an unfamiliar place…
Oh, fuck.
He’s read enough shitty webnovels to figure out what’s happening here.
Shen Yuan has transmigrated.
Okay. Okay. First thing’s first, getting out of this cave. Shortly thereafter, he needs to figure out who he is, and what story he’s in.
He can do that. He can totally do that!
…Probably. Assuming he doesn’t go into shock and die from the pain of…whatever this is. Which is a valid concern, because presumably the previous owner of this body died of this, leaving behind an empty shell for Shen Yuan to inhabit.
Haha. Shen Yuan is going to stop thinking about that immediately. “That” being the fact that he’s inhabiting somebody’s corpse in a random murder cave oh fuck—
Shen Yuan takes a deep breath. Holds it. Keeps holding it, until black spots are dancing in front of his eyes. Finally exhales, and takes stock of his body again.
The pain is ebbing. Slowly, very slowly, but he can move ever so slightly now.
It takes a while, and a lot of moving in increments, but eventually Shen Yuan is sitting up. Fortunately, the pool is right in front of him. He leans forward just enough to see himself—it would be absolutely humiliating to fall into the pool and drown less than an hour into his transmigration—and catches his breath.
He was right about something being in his hair. It’s an elaborate guan, holding his hair out of his face in a half-up style. His face is—uh, well, it’s covered in blood, but beneath that, it’s a good 30-40% like his original face, what the hell. It’s a more severe face than his original, though softened by the wide-eyed panic Shen Yuan is currently expressing. He’s wearing robes that are as elaborate as his guan, beautiful green and white layers.
Green and white…something about that…isn’t it familiar…?
He doesn’t have time to trace the thought. He’s abruptly aware that he’s not alone here in the cave. Shen Yuan can hear noises nearby, echoing from what must be another cavern.
It sounds like someone else in pain.
Shen Yuan woke up in a murder cave where his body’s previous inhabitant had died. Whoever is in the next cavern—are they the one who brought Shen Yuan here? Are they another victim?
Shakily, Shen Yuan climbs to his feet. He can peek into the other cavern and it will be fine. If it’s not something he can handle, he’ll run away. Hobble away. Hide and pray he doesn’t immediately die again. Whatever.
Leaning his weight against the cave wall, one hand running over those scarred, bloodstained grooves, Shen Yuan leaves the cavern he’d woken up in. He follows the noises through a winding corridor, until that opens up into a new cavern. He pokes his head around the corner, trying to gauge the situation.
There’s a man in the cavern. He’s facing away from Shen Yuan, garbed in white robes of a more martial cut than Shen Yuan’s own. He is…attacking the wall with a sword.
Shen Yuan stares.
The grooves on the wall of the murder cave—those must have been sword swings. Shen Yuan feels like an idiot for not realizing that sooner. The blood—well, he still hasn’t solved that, but the answer feels pretty self-evident. It must have been similar to what’s going on with this man.
Is he in a wuxia setting or a xianxia setting? If it’s xianxia, then Shen Yuan has a pretty good guess that this man is suffering from—
The man whirls and glares at him. His eyes are simultaneously crazed and absolutely blank; all madness, no consciousness.
—qi deviation.
Shen Yuan has miscalculated. He should have focused on finding his way out of the cave. He doesn’t know how to handle this!
It’s too late. The qi deviating man is charging him.
Shen Yuan is going to regret this immediately, but he ducks into the cavern. At least there’s more space to dodge here than in the corridor. Maybe that will help.
—Or not! This guy is fast! Shen Yuan is relying on the muscle memory of his body, but there’s only so much that can do for him when he’s in such rough shape and each step is its own torment. He’s barely managing to dodge the swings from the man’s sword.
“You’re qi-deviating!” Shen Yuan says. It’s doubtful that telling the man that will help, but Shen Yuan has to try. If he’s exceedingly fortunate, maybe he’ll manage to break through to the man.
No such luck. At the sound of his voice, the man swipes at him again. Shen Yuan barely ducks in time. He saves his head from being chopped off, but now he’s off balance. He manages to stand back up from his crouch, but his weight distribution is all off, and this time when he attacks, the man stabs directly through his shoulder.
“Fuck!” Shen Yuan yells, and lashes out. He shoves at the man. Energy inside of him flexes with the movement, bursting out of him as he connects with the man and sends him flying across the cavern. Unfortunately, the man refuses to let go of his grip on his sword, so it’s yanked brutally out of Shen Yuan’s shoulder as the man is tossed away from him.
Shen Yuan collapses to one knee. Oh fucking hell goddammit what kind of bullshit transmigration experience is this! He’s barely been here an hour!
He presses one hand against his bleeding shoulder. Grits his teeth against the shrieking pain, both from his new stab wound and his still-partially-on-fire nervous system, which feels significantly worse after that energy explosion from Shen Yuan.
It’s not really the man’s fault. He’s having a qi deviation. Logically, Shen Yuan knows that. Emotionally, he kind of wants to kick this guy in the nuts for being such a shithead. Fuck! Don’t attack innocent transmigrators!
It is pretty cool that he yeeted this guy across the cavern. With—oh. Oh, that must have been Shen Yuan’s qi! They must both be cultivators.
Which is and will be awesome, if Shen Yuan manages to survive this.
He looks up, checking the other side of the cavern to see if his new friend is going to be getting up any time soon. He fortunately seems to be stunned, which should mean that it’s Shen Yuan’s time to escape—
Except.
They’re both cultivators. The man is having a qi deviation. If Shen Yuan leaves him here…isn’t he going to die?
Shen Yuan doesn’t want his first real act in this new world to be leaving a man to die. He isn’t sure if he can do anything to help the man—he has no idea what he’s doing! He’s a NEET, not a trained cultivator!—but he has to try.
Shen Yuan staggers to his feet and over to the man. He kicks the sword out of the man’s hand before kneeling beside him.
Please don’t die, he thinks, and presses both hands onto the man’s chest.
He had thrown the man across the cavern with qi, so he knows what it feels like. Or at least what an overwhelming amount of it feels like. He surely doesn’t need to use that much if he’s trying to help this man.
Controlling qi is akin to the muscle memory he had used in the fight. There are patterns in it for him to follow. He reaches out to the man with a thin tendril of his own energy, trying to sense what the man’s is like. It feels—wrong. A step to the left of what it should be, if Shen Yuan is reading that right.
He nudges it back to where it’s supposed to be. Gently, oh so gently, because he doesn’t want to send it too far in the other direction, but also because using his own qi so slowly and carefully is burning Shen Yuan. He’s holding a lit flame to his own nervous system—or what’s probably his meridians—for every second that he shifts this man’s qi back into place.
Worst. Transmigration. Experience.
Shen Yuan doesn’t know how long it’s been before the man stirs beneath his hands. His eyes open, clarity once again returned to them. As soon as he catches sight of Shen Yuan, he scowls. It’s unfairly pretty. Shen Yuan wants to break his nose.
“You,” the man says.
“Me,” Shen Yuan agrees, annoyed. Save your grudges until after this transmigrator has finished saving your life, you ungrateful ass! Shen Yuan doesn’t know who you are!
“What are you doing?” the man demands, struggling slightly under him.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Shen Yuan asks. He realizes distantly that he’s begun trembling sometime in the past few moments, and he’s bracing more of his weight on the man than he meant to. There’s still something wrong with the man’s meridian system. He can’t stop yet.
“Shen Qingqiu!” the man says.
Shen Yuan freezes in place. He loses his delicate grasp on his qi.
Shen WHO?!
Liu Qingge comes back to himself flat on his back with someone’s hands on his chest and a flow of qi being fed into him. He blinks, blurry vision slowly resolving until he can see that it’s Shen Qingqiu above him.
“You,” he says.
“Me,” Shen Qingqiu says, as biting as ever. His lips are pressed thin and he doesn’t even bother to meet Liu Qingge’s gaze.
“What are you doing?” Liu Qingge demands. He tries to shift, but Shen Qingqiu is leaning what feels like half his body weight against Liu Qingge.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Shen Qingqiu says, as if that’s not why Liu Qingge asked. It’s Shen Qingqiu, so he must surely be up to something nefarious.
“Shen Qingqiu!” Liu Qingge says. He isn’t sure what he’s going to say after that, but Shen Qingqiu falters. His qi flow stutters. Then he turns to the side, safely away from Liu Qingge, and heaves up several mouthfuls of blood.
Shen Qingqiu turns back to Liu Qingge. He lifts one hand from Liu Qingge’s chest and uses his sleeve to wipe ineffectually at the remainder of the blood dripping down from his mouth. He smears it across his face more than he manages to clean any of it away.
…Actually. Shen Qingqiu is drenched in blood. Not just from his mouth. There’s a dried crust of it that dripped down from his nose, trails of it from his eyes, and several of the capillaries in his left eye burst, turning the sclera red. Not to mention that the silk at his shoulder is dyed with it, too, a starburst of red that’s still slowly spreading across the whites and greens of his Qing Jing robes.
The qi flow resumes.
“I,” Shen Qingqiu says, “am trying to save your stupid life.”
Liu Qingge glares at him. “Why would you do that?”
Shen Qingqiu bares bloodstained teeth at him. “Because I can’t yell at you if you’re already dead.”
“I don’t need your help,” Liu Qingge says. He knows it’s a lie as he says it. Shen Qingqiu’s qi is smoothing the edges of his own. Shen Qingqiu isn’t very good at it, but it’s undeniable what he’s doing.
“Next time I’ll be sure to let Shidi die of his own foolishness, if it means that much to you,” Shen Qingqiu snaps. His throat works, like he’s about to cough blood again, but he swallows it down. He’s still leaning too much of his weight on Liu Qingge, listing ever more heavily to one side, refusing to brace with his injured arm.
Liu Qingge watches him.
Finally, at the point that Liu Qingge is about to shove Shen Qingqiu off himself, his shixiong cuts the qi flow that’s been growing steadily weaker and thinner. He pulls his hands away from Liu Qingge, leaning back and breathing heavily while trying to look like he’s not.
Now that Shen Qingqiu’s not hovering directly over him, Liu Qingge can see Cheng Luan, to the side of and partially behind Shen Qingqiu. Shen Qingqiu follows his gaze. The blade has a splash of red on it. Liu Qingge has already put together the pieces of what happened; if he focuses, he can vaguely remember his attack. He can remember Shen Qingqiu’s scream.
He supposes, if nothing else, he owes it to Shen Qingqiu to help bandage his shoulder. If his shixiong will allow even that much, ha. Liu Qingge’s honor won’t let him turn away without offering, if nothing else.
“Shen Qingqiu,” he says.
Shen Qingqiu ignores him.
Liu Qingge grits his teeth. That—that—!
“Shen Qingqiu!” he grinds out.
Shen Qingqiu blinks. He focuses on Liu Qingge this time, instead of staring blankly in Cheng Luan’s direction. The blood all over his face still makes him look like a murder victim.
Or.
Or like someone else who’s had a qi deviation.
Shen Qingqiu is prone to them. Why else would he be bleeding from his apertures? Why would he have been so clumsy at dodging Liu Qingge’s blows? Even the qi he’d hit Liu Qingge with, the qi he’d healed Liu Qingge with—hadn’t its usage also seemed clumsy? Damaged?
“This shixiong will leave Liu-shidi to his cultivation,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Try not to nearly die again.”
Shen Qingqiu gets to his feet. He tries, at least. He sways dangerously and drops back down to his knees with a grunt of pain.
Liu Qingge glares at the cave ceiling for a long moment, then at Shen Qingqiu. Liu Qingge sits up. Gets to his feet. Circles around Shen Qingqiu to grab Cheng Luan and sheathe it at his side. Shen Qingqiu remains slumped in place, his breathing shallow in a way that has to be to disguise his pain.
Liu Qingge pays his debts.
He leans over and takes Shen Qingqiu by his good arm to help him to his feet. Of course, as soon as he’s there, Shen Qingqiu yanks his arm out of Liu Qingge’s grasp, because he’s a self-sabotaging fool. He nearly goes right back down to the ground, before Liu Qingge wraps that arm around Liu Qingge’s shoulder, and then Liu Qingge places his own arm around Shen Qingqiu’s waist.
Shen Qingqiu somehow has enough spare blood left in his body to flush.
“I can walk on my own!”
“No, you can’t,” Liu Qingge says.
“I got here!”
Yes, he did. But that was before Liu Qingge stabbed him, wasn’t it? And well before Shen Qingqiu donated his qi reservoirs to Liu Qingge, so Liu Qingge doesn’t bother to dignify it with a response. Even now, however much he protests, Shen Qingqiu is letting Liu Qingge take most of his weight.
Liu Qingge ignores Shen Qingqiu’s objections and starts walking his shixiong out of the caves.
One of Mu Qingfang’s disciples rushes into the room as Mu Qingfang finishes labelling and shelving the newest bottles of gingko leaf extract.
“Shizun!” she says, in the tone that means there is a Problem.
It was a nice day while it lasted, Mu Qingfang supposes.
“Yes?” he asks.
“It’s Shen-shibo and Liu-shibo!”
Oh, wonderful.
Mu Qingfang follows his disciple, but he likely could have found his way by following the dulcet sound of Shen Qingqiu’s voice. He steps outside and blinks at the sight.
Shen Qingqiu is slung over Liu Qingge’s shoulder like he’s a sack of rice, covered in blood and bawling out Liu Qingge for being a ham-fisted brute and a man with the delicacy of a particularly hard rock, interspersed with demands to put me down right now, Liu Qingge!
Liu Qingge ignores this entirely. Mu Qingfang is exhausted already.
“This way, Liu-shixiong,” is all Mu Qingfang says.
He leads the two of them into an exam room. Shen Qingqiu thankfully falls silent once he’s inside, though Mu Qingfang has no doubt he’s still silently fuming. Liu Qingge drops Shen Qingqiu on a cot and backs away from Shen Qingqiu before he can take a swipe at him.
“What happened?” Mu Qingfang asks, gathering bandages. He can’t tell if all the blood on Liu Qingge is from Shen Qingqiu or not, which is…worrying. The whole situation is worrying, because last Mu Qingfang knew, Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu were in seclusion. Surely they didn’t start a fight in the Lingxi Caves, did they?
“I stabbed Shen Qingqiu,” Liu Qingge says.
Oh, for the love of—
“I can see that,” Mu Qingfang says, stepping over to Shen Qingqiu and examining his shoulder. “Dare I ask why?”
“Had a qi deviation,” is the laconic answer.
“And your solution was to stab him?” Mu Qingfang is aghast. Shen Qingqiu’s deviations don’t tend to be violent ones, and at a quick glance at Shen Qingqiu, Mu Qingfang doesn’t doubt that this one was severe, but Liu Qingge should know better than to stab someone who’s deviating, or at the least be more than capable of subduing his shixiong non-violently.
“I had a deviation,” Liu Qingge clarifies. “And stabbed him. He couldn’t get out of the caves on his own.”
Mu Qingfang prays for patience. “Shen-shixiong?”
Shen Qingqiu still looks absolutely furious, but he nods.
“And your deviation was before, after, or during this?” Mu Qingfang asks, because despite the initial misunderstanding, it’s obvious that Shen Qingqiu has, in fact, had a qi deviation of his own.
“Before,” Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge answer at the same time. Shen Qingqiu huffs out an annoyed breath.
“Liu-shixiong,” Mu Qingfang says. “I’ll check you over in a moment. Please fill a basin with water and grab a towel for Shen-shixiong to clean his face.”
And step out of the room for a moment while I dress his shoulder.
Thankfully, Liu Qingge does as Mu Qingfang asks without protest. Mu Qingfang calls in one of his disciples for good measure, requesting a few additional items, before turning his attention back to Shen Qingqiu.
Mu Qingfang peels the layers of silk away from Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder. Some of the blood has already gone tacky and half-dry; it wants to stick to the wound. He’s as gentle as he can be, but Shen Qingqiu nonetheless goes stiff beneath his hands as he works.
“How is Shen-shixiong feeling?” Mu Qingfang asks, most of his attention on the wound. Cheng Luan went wholly through Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder, though it thankfully missed any arteries. Small mercies. This could have easily ended differently—which is why Mu Qingfang would dearly like information about this most recent of Shen Qingqiu’s qi deviations.
“Fine,” Shen Qingqiu blatantly lies to him.
Mu Qingfang is busy picking silk strands out of Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder, but he spares a moment to level Shen Qingqiu with a flat, disappointed look.
“…Fever-like symptoms,” Shen Qingqiu says, as though the information is being dragged out of him. Mu Qingfang doesn’t need to ask if Shen Qingqiu is in pain. That’s a rather self-evident answer.
Mu Qingfang studies Shen Qingqiu. Lets one hand drift to take his pulse. Shen Qingqiu keeps his expression as flat as usual, but the pain peeks out from the edges, along with a faint lassitude. The ‘fever-like symptoms’—that must be how his deviation had presented, and it lingers. Tracing Shen Qingqiu’s energies, they’re certainly still disturbed—and drained, from helping Liu Qingge through his own deviation, which can’t have helped Shen Qingqiu’s condition.
As always, Mu Qingfang is horrified and impressed by Shen Qingqiu’s pain tolerance.
Deviations hurt. Shen Qingqiu hadn’t had anyone to soothe his energies, and fevers can result in an increased sensitivity to pain. To then go up against Bai Zhan’s War God—
Mu Qingfang is going to prescribe Shen Qingqiu a long bedrest to recover from this. Whether Shen Qingqiu will obey him is up in the air, but Mu Qingfang will do his best to make his shixiong comply.
Mu Qingfang has finished cleaning and bandaging Shen Qingqiu’s wound before Liu Qingge makes it back into the exam room. Liu Qingge had obviously taken his own opportunity to clean up, though he didn’t have nearly as much to do as Shen Qingqiu does, and he was still wearing the same bloodied robes.
“Here,” he says, handing the basin off to Mu Qingfang.
Mu Qingfang takes it. Sets it on the table next to the medical cot, along with a the spare sleeping robes that his disciple had brought in. He slaps a heating talisman onto the teapot that his disciple had also brought in, then escorts Liu Qingge out of the room so Shen Qingqiu can get cleaned up and changed in peace.
Liu Qingge is a quick examination. Shen Qingqiu did well. Mu Qingfang does request that Liu Qingge spend the rest of the day and the night at Qian Cao, solely to make sure there are no complications.
“Shen Qingqiu did well, especially under the circumstances,” Mu Qingfang says aloud, so that Liu Qingge is aware of it. No doubt he already is, but it doesn’t hurt to drive the point home.
Liu Qingge looks away from him.
Mu Qingfang will let him stew on that.
He hands Liu Qingge off to his disciple to find a room for him, then heads back to Shen Qingqiu’s. He knocks on the door before entering. It’s not enough warning for Shen Qingqiu to fully straighten out of his slumped position against the wall the medical cot is set against.
Mu Qingfang doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he checks the teapot. The tea is sufficiently warm and steeped, so he pours a cup for Shen Qingqiu.
“It’s an analgesic,” he says as he hands it off.
Shen Qingqiu nods, sipping at it slowly. He’s barely keeping himself upright, the exhaustion, blood loss, and remains—return? Mu Qingfang will have to keep an eye on that—of the fever all pulling at him. As soon as the analgesic starts working and the pain begins to fade, he loses his fight to stay awake.
Mu Qingfang leaves the teapot with its warming talisman at Shen Qingqiu’s bedside table. Then he goes off to inform the sect leader.
Shen Yuan—Shen Qingqiu, he’s Shen Qingqiu now—wakes up and doesn’t even get a blissful moment of maybe it was all a dream.
No, he’s painfully—ha—aware of what has happened. Of the fact that he has transmigrated into that garbage webnovel <<Proud Immortal Demon Way>> as none other than the scum villain Shen Qingqiu. And that he nearly died in the first hour he spent in this world, which would have at least saved Luo Binghe from the effort of murdering him later.
And…that he’s already caused a canon divergence.
He saved Liu Qingge!
He didn’t even know that was what he was doing, and Shen Qingqiu had saved Liu Qingge!
That’s something, he supposes. It also clearly tells him where he is in the timeline. Unfortunately, he’s too late to be kind to Luo Binghe from the beginning. At least he has some time to potentially salvage the situation? If not, he can always throw Liu Qingge at the problem.
Liu Qingge…
That pretty boy brute! Shen Qingqiu had only had to pretend to act a little, once Liu Qingge had made sure Shen Qingqiu realized whose role he was inhabiting. Shen Qingqiu is cranky when he’s in pain, sue him, and Liu Qingge was so ungrateful. And then! Shen Qingqiu was making his way—with minor assistance—out of the caves just fine, yet Liu Qingge had the absolute gall to pick him up and carry him all the way to Qian Cao! Just because Shen Qingqiu had started to get the tiniest bit dizzy!
Shen Qingqiu still kind of wants to break his nose. Is this how the original goods felt the whole time?
Ugh. Not that he wants much in common with the original goods.
Besides, however annoying Liu Qingge was, that couldn’t justify murder. Original Goods, you were such a scum villain…
Shen Qingqiu lies there, half-awake, considering the situation he’s found himself in, slowly turning everything over in his mind. In the middle of that, a man’s voice asks from his bedside, “Shidi? Shidi, can you hear me?”
Shen Qingqiu opens his eyes. He’s still in the Qian Cao exam room where he’d fallen asleep. He’s going to be taking advantage of that teapot of painkilling tea Mu Qingfang had left him ASAP. Next to him is the man who’d been calling for him, a handsome and elegant figure who is looking at him with concern.
No need to guess who this is. Only one person in the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect could call him ‘shidi’. Only one person would look at Shen Qingqiu with such concern.
This is Yue Qingyuan.
“Shidi finally woke up,” Yue Qingyuan says. “Do you have any discomfort?”
Shen Qingqiu draws in a slow breath. He’s really transmigrated. He’s really taking on the role of Shen Qingqiu.
Everything goes from here.
Shen Qingqiu is going to to do the best goddamn job anyone has ever done at transmigration.
“Nothing too bad,” Shen Qingqiu says reservedly, like the liar he is.
Let the games begin.