Chapter Text
So, what would you do if you got transmigrated into a shitty stallion novel as the villain destined to be pickled by the returning protagonist? What would you do knowing that the aforementioned protagonist afterwards would go and drag your sect leader into an obvious trap with your letter? And also burn the whole mountain because no one in that world did things the sane way?
You would probably try to avoid being the villain, right? Like, treat the sweet lamb protagonist in your care with kindness and humanity, right? Try not to push him into sketchy holes in the ground full of noxious fumes and eerie noises. You’d try to avoid the pickling and lots of death and pain to everyone you’d prefer to keep safe, yourself included.
Shen Yuan wished he could do that.
He’d been doing his best to do just that. No pushing. All the headpats. All the favouritism. In exchange no limbs lost, no mountains scorched, no martial family slaughtered. Everyone would have been peachy and dandy. Excellent plan, if one asked the master strategist of the Cang Qiong sect.
But noooo, the bastard of a blue bitch had to make him push his most favourite white lotus down the big bad hole. Years of headpats and actual good relationship down the drain. No matter how much tears, sweat and ink Shen Yuan had spilled over the years making lesson plans, teaching, guiding. No matter how many hours he’d dedicated to making his ducklings bond as martial siblings and grow as people, not brainless one dimension canon fodder. No matter what he'd planned to fix, the fucking bastard had forced his hand and he'd panicked and now all hope for some happy ending was gone.
His sect of annoying, well-meaning and often neurotic cases was on the collision trajectory with a fate like something from an American horror movie. Two words were just a cursed mindfucking sword swing away from merging, fuck if fauna and flora could adjust to that shift, because people living in both would definitely not do it easily. And last, but not least, Shen Yuan’s hide had an expiration date that was ticking down to a bunch of zeros. Zero legs. Zero hands. Zero pulse.
With all that in mind, was it any surprise that he ran? Just a bit? Like an itty bitty rabbit, not a peak lord, leaving behind a sword grave behind his house, a letter of explanation about a ‘long mission, don’t look for this master’ and a profound knowledge that whatever he did now wouldn’t matter in the end. Villains didn’t youtube or outsmart the protagonists and his little bun deserved his revenge on the vile master.
He ran just a bit, for that reason. A week or so flying on his sword before basically dropping from the sky like an immortal rock in need of a bit of rest. He fell into a big bush and tore his robes so he supposed it was good the system was down for now because it couldn’t take away his precious coolness points, however few he had.
Shen Qingqiu couldn't fight fate. He couldn't stay on his peak, wilting and waiting for his disciple, drowning in guilt. So he left, like the coward he was. Pretty in line with his character.
And this was his life for four years since the conference. Travelling from one end of the map to the other, helping civilians, ca
tching up with a certain brute in white who always started their reunions and meridian cleansing by handing him a somehow lost fan. He communicated with his sect via letters and random encounters with other wandering cultivators who hailed from the mountain, but did what he could to distance himself from there, as if by virtue of not living there for a while he could make the black lotus not destroy the place. One could only hope.
His hair almost went white when two years after the conference Airplane sent him a message that You Know Who was out and making big fucking waves in the North. And aparently some of Shen Yuan’s efforts hadn’t gone to a shitter because instead of going after his mother sect the protagonist went on a manhunt. For a specific man. Apparently getting his paws on his bastard of a master was higher on his ‘to do’ list than establishing himself in the second most influential sect or seeking vengeance on anyone else.
After that letter Shen Yuan didn’t sleep for a week.
For a year he was getting by with a certain elixir from a bunch of rare plants that made him appear and sound like a lady, but that got old really fast, with far too many men giving him unwanted attention. Half a year he spent in a spiritual pocket dimension where a blind hermit and his lovely daughter lived separated from the rest of the world. Sadly, the daughter was too pretty and there was non zero chance the protagonist could pop up in there any time to snatch her for his harem while also fixing her dad’s eyes and killing a monster that kept them unable to approach the part of the pocket dimension where the plant healing blindness grew. He spent a dreadful month as an accountant in an apothecary of a small town in the middle of nowhere, but a bunch of demons started to sniff a bit too incessantly around the place, plus it was really boring. The rest of the time Shen Yuan was constantly on the move.
And so it came to pass that his bad luck struck when he was sheltering from a rainstorm in a somewhat rundown temple by the side of the road. There was another poor sap with him, so he had a conversation partner, a cultivator who fell on bad times and augmented his earnings by some scrap collecting and busking. They swapped some night hunt stories, broke only slightly stale bread and drank rainwater from a pair of scavenged and only a bit chipped clay mugs.
When Shen Qingqiu woke up the next day he was most certainly not in a little temple, curled up on the dusty floor. Oh no. He was in a broom closet in the Jade Pavillion of the demonic Forbidden City, where lived harem members from 42 to 68.
He never learned what became of his companion,but if one wished to know one had only to witness a mid-autumn play created not long after this fateful night, speaking of a city lord finding a special noble someone asleep on an altar of his private shrine.