Work Text:
Madam Yu meets the eyes of her ward, and says, “Whip him.”
“Stop!”
The voice comes from the entrance. A man in green robes and a fan strolls into the hall, powerful and arrogant. The sheer authority in his voice halted even her most loyal maidservants.
Wei Wuxian watches with wide eyes as the stranger fearlessly approaches Madam Yu. He wears such extravagant robes, twinkling jewelries in his hair, and a luxurious fan in hand. But even those pale in comparison to his phoenix eyes, cold and sharp. He’s followed by a man in black and red, exuding the effortless aura of a seasoned warrior unlike his more scholarly companion.
Madam Yu waits until they’re right in front of her. “Who are you?”
“A fleet of Wen sect members is waiting to lay siege on Lotus Pier. They will be here within the hour,” the man in green robes says. “Are you going to do something about it, Madam, or are you still going to roll over for a girl way below your station to please her master and wait for your home to fall?”
Madam Yu’s face does not shift an inch. This is not unusual. A burning Lotus Pier wouldn’t move her an inch before she’s done away with the culprits and their entrails are decorating the training ground. What’s unusual is the considering gleam in her eyes.
“You’re an immortal,” she says.
Jiang Cheng chokes somewhere in the room.
“I am,” the man says, hiding his face behind his fan. “Binghe, please subdue that miss over there.”
Wang Lingjiao goes down with a scream.
Wei Wuxian watches the man in black and red ensemble dust off his hands then turns to his companion with wide eyes screaming for praise.
The immortal ignores him. “Fortify your fortress, Madam. If they don’t hear from her within two hours, they will attack regardless.”
There’s something seriously fishy about this. First of all, what the fuck is an immortal doing in Lotus Pier? Second of all, since when did Madam Yu listen to anyone? Third, is anybody going to say anything about the thick miasma of resentment energy wafting off from one of them? No?
Nevertheless, the Wen did come, and Madam Yu managed to hold the fortress until Uncle Jiang came back.
As for the immortal and his companion, they disappeared after the fight, but Wei Wuxian has a guts feeling it won’t be the last time they’ll see them again.
*
Okay so, all things considered, he thinks he should be forgiven for putting a wrench in the plot so deep it’s not going to look like the original at all. Wei Wuxian will still end up with Lan Wangji even without all the deaths, right? Right.
When the system appeared asking him to choose, he chose this novel because he’d be considered so fucking OP. In their current world, immortals are abundant and you can meet one every time you turn a corner. In this world? The only immortal mentioned is so popular that people believe she can restore a damn golden core, apparently. Another reason is, well, he thought he could take it. It’s not like he spent an entire night finishing the novel and Wei Wuxian is his favorite character right after Binghe.
Unfortunately, because Shen Yuan is afflicted with the main character lover syndrome, combined with his unchecked need to intervene in situations where he’s seriously not needed, this is what happens.
This: Lotus Pier still standing, some people who should have died, lived, some people who should have lived (for plot purposes), died. Wen Zhuliu did manage to escape, but not without destroying Sect Leader Jiang’s golden core first.
Wei Wuxian better not be stupid enough to offer his core to Sec Leader Jiang this time! After everything Shen Qingqiu went through! If Jiang Fengmian knows what’s good for him, he will stay core-less forever.
Anyways, the plot had converged, and he will see this through because he did this to himself .
He’d planned to only watch. He did! But then -
“Whip him.”
NOOOOO!
Shen Qingqiu had bitten into his handkerchief, watching the scene behind a massive vase. Equal parts frustrated, fascinated, and horrified. His second most beloved protagonist was being shoved down to his knees! He’s read this part only once because it’s such bullshit. And it was happening right in front of him!
So he did only mean to be an observer, because this is supposed to be a honeymoon. But he knew this scene all too well to let it pass without doing something. So, of course, the only thing left to do was to walk into the room and try to out-girlboss the most girlboss girl in the entire series.
He’s not very confident, but it’s not like he had something to lose.
Madam Yu’s was so cold it could freeze the air around her. “Who are you?”
Shen Qingqiu met the eyes of this world’s most beloved protagonist, falls fucking in love because what the fuck look this precious child and swears he’s going to give him his happy ending, or die trying.
That’s the entire story.
So now he will commit to it, or his name is not Peerless Cucumber.
*
Apparently Wei Wuxian is that fucking stupid.
Wen Zhuliu, that fucking worm, managed to get to Jiang Cheng after all, when the boy was on his way to fetch his sister from wherever the fuck she is during this very stressful time. Unfortunately, Wei Wuxian was with him. Unfortunately, Shen Qingqiu was not with them.
He intercepted right before Wei Wuxian was thrown into the Burial Mounds. He grabs the boy and makes a run for it on his sword. Behind, he hears his husband cutting down Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu.
“Stupid, stupid boy! Reckless! Careless!” He scolds. “I ought to chain you to bed while I go cleansing this world so you don’t pull this kind of stupid shit!”
Wei Wuxian painfully opens his eyes and watches the immortal glow under the sun as they leave the toxic air of Burial Mounds, and thinks perhaps immortals do get a pass doing whatever they want because they’re so pretty.
*
“Shizun,” his husband sobs. “Why are you looking at him like that?”
Shen Qingqiu does not take his eyes off the unconscious Wei Wuxian in bed. “Like what?”
“Like you want him!”
Shen Qingqiu recoils to smack his husband on his stupid head. “What are you talking about?! That’s a child!”
“I was a child too - “
“Do not finish that sentence if you still want me as your husband.”
Luo Binghe clams up, though he’s still teary eyed.
If you ask Luo Binghe, he’d tell you this is the worst honeymoon they’ve ever been on. First of all, Shizun is not giving him nearly half the attention he usually gives Binghe. Second of all, Shizun spends most of his time in this world stalking a fifteen year old boy.
An overwhelming sort of fondness wells up at that. It reminds him of his younger years, of Shizun confessing that he’d watched Luo Binghe closely all those years. Binghe is very familiar with what’s happening to Shizun right now.
The last time Shizun did that to someone, however, he ended up marrying them. Wei Wuxian better put his hands where he can see them if he knows what’s good for him.
*
Shen Qingqiu is so pissed.
Evidently! The protagonist halo is out to make Wei Wuxian suffer no matter what! Because you can’t have a trauma free protagonist! It’s a staple for every webnovel now!
FUCK EVERYTHING!
Shen Qingqiu nearly got himself banned from this world when he tried to spam email the system complaining about this, but the system said it’s not under its jurisdiction, so there’s really nothing it can do except politely telling Shen Qingqiu to fuck off.
Useless! Everyone is useless!
”I can’t believe I have to do this on my own.”
“But, Shizun, you don’t have to do it.”
“Silence! I’m going to give Wei Wuxian his happy ending myself even if I have to wrangle his protagonist halo with my bare hands! Plot? What plot?!”
Luo Binghe stares at his husband in alarm. He knows his husband is a god of some sort in his own rights, even if he never said it outright, but he doesn’t think even his otherworldly husband will survive trying to fight against destiny.
“CANON CAN SUCK ON MY BIG TOE BECAUSE THESE ARE REAL PEOPLE WITH REAL FEELINGS!”
Binghe understands maybe none of that, but nevertheless, “Shizun, no!”
“What if I ‘Binghe no’ you?” Shen Qingqiu is merciless.
Luo Binghe wilts like a flower and sobs woefully into his sleeve.
His husband paces gently around the room, careful not to wake the sleeping Wei Wuxian.
“Binghe.”
He perks up, tears miraculously dried. “Yes, Shizun?”
“Do you remember Bingge?”
What an awful husband he has, mentioning that brute when he should be comforting Binghe. “…Yes.”
“Good. I need you to channel him. We’re going to do some cleaning.”
Luo Binghe pauses.
What in the world is a channel?
*
Their first stop is Lotus Pier.
Wei Wuxian hasn’t fully recovered, so he was immediately handed over to his sister to be taken care of once they arrived. Shen Qingqiu watches him go like he’s one and not fifteen.
“There was no Baoshan Sanren,” he tells Jiang Wanyin. The boy’s eyes widen.
“That golden core inside you belongs to Wei Wuxian. If you need proof, Suibian should be enough. Now excuse me, I have a sect to decimate.”
*
The Sunshot Campaign never began because the Wen Sect meets its end in one single night. They were never prepared for the ass-kicking Shen Qingqiu rained down upon them.
Binghe is so over this honeymoon, he sulkily thinks as he cuts down an entire row of people. He should get this over with, so they can go home. He’s so sick of pretending to be Bingge. He hates Bingge.
He holds back tears as he cuts down more of Wen Ruohan’s army. Do it for Shizun , he holds himself steadfast with this mantra. Do it for him.
More screaming.
As for Shen Qingqiu, well, as it turns out, Wen Ruohan isn’t that powerful. He's just like any other cultivator, if a bit vain. Perhaps the first clue should have been that he’s not even an immortal, and yet he was the boogeyman of the cultivation world before Wei Wuxian.
It was for the plot, Shen Qingqiu reminds himself. Well, screw the plot now. Shen Qingqiu has taken it hostage and he will bend this world just so people wouldn’t suffer unnecessarily, just like how he’d taken Wen Ruohan hostage.
“You know you’re not that bad, compared to Jin Guangshan.”
Wen Ruohan twitches, like he can hear Shen Qingqiu when he’s unconscious with broken ribs and missing several patches of hair.
“Now that’s a properly detestable man. Maybe I should pay him a visit too. Get rid of the bad weed early, if you know what I mean.”
Wen Ruohan breathes through his broken nose heavily. Shen Qingqiu thinks he’s trying to say yes.
*
If Shen Qingqiu had taken the time to sit down and mingle with the common people, he might have heard of his newfound reputation.
An immortal of justice, they whisper. He’s here to end the tyranny of the Wen Sect. Nobody ever saw Wen Ruohan again after Shen Qingqiu paid him a visit and his niece took over. Rumors are that Shen Qingqiu killed him and harvested his nearly immortal body to preserve his own immortality.
He might have been appalled by that, Binghe’s sensitive husband, so he does not tell him.
*
Jin Guangshan meets the wandering immortal the same day he lost his sect.
One would be correct to assume these two are directly related.
“Never,” the immortal says at the assembly, in front of every sect present, after he strolled in like he owns the place, sits down on Jin Guangshan’s seat on top of the dais, and demands for tea to be served to him. “In my long, long life, I've ever seen such blatant hypocrisy.”
Lan Qiren frowns. “Immortal Shen, please speak plainly.”
Shen Qingqiu is such a picture of effortless beauty that everyone is enraptured by every movement he does. Even such a simple gesture of waving his fan seems mesmerizing.
“Wen Ruohan was a murderer and a tyrant in the making, so I dealt with him. You have a rapist and an adulterer as the head of one of the big sects. And yet Gusu Lan turns a blind eye to preserve peace.” The last word was said with so much sarcasm, everyone felt that in their bones. Nie Huaisang is frantically fanning himself in anticipation of great gossip.“I do wonder, if your sect rules are convenient tools for you to control your disciples, rather than words to live by.”
Nie Huaisang fans himself faster. Lan Qiren is quickly turning purple. “That is - “
“How many young women have to suffer because of Jin Guangshan before someone thinks of them and puts an end to his crimes?” Shen Qingqiu asks the room at large.
“How many children shall grow fatherless, because of Jin Guangshan’s voracious appetite?”
Everyone starts looking uncomfortable. Good. Be uncomfortable.
Jin Guangshan arrives at the assembly only to be clapped in iron and has his spiritual energy sealed by his own son and heir before he can even say a word.
Deserved, Shen Qingqiu wipes a poetic tear away. He wishes Airplane was here to see it.
Now, with the relevant villains all either maimed or locked up, it’s time to turn his attention to the most important business.
He will see WangXian married in this lifetime, or he will make it everyone’s problem.