Chapter Text
Death was dark and warm and wet.
To Shen Yuan, the first thing made sense. He’d never been religious, and as much as he was a master at Not Thinking about unpleasant things, he’d had plenty of long nights in hospitals where wondering what came after would peak through the little gaps between attempts to distract himself.
Dark, he’d guessed. Quiet. A vast stretch of nothing. Like a dreamless sleep.
He’d never thought it would feel so... Cramped. Or that he’d be so aware of it.
In trying to move his body, he discovered he had one.
It felt bizarre. Too many limbs in weird places, but not enough strength to do more than a weak twitch. He wanted to stretch out, but couldn’t. It was as if he was curled into the fetal position under the weighted blankets he’d had to give up near the end, but somehow he’d twisted about in the night until he was cocooned completely.
Shen Yuan wanted to feel panic. He wanted to feel something other than a hazy confusion. But the Nothing faded back in.
[HELLO USER 0002!]
What followed next was the typical transmigration starter pack: an annoying robotic system that lit up words in his head, the basic premise of being dropped into the shitty book he’d died reading. Etc, etc. It would take up many paragraphs in most books, but was routine enough to someone familiar with transmigration stories that it could be summarized in a couple sentences.
Being shoved into the body of a non-human wasn’t a problem - hell, it was becoming expected in transmigration. And a dragon? That was objectively cool!
...BUT WHY A LITERAL FETUS!?
COULDN’T THE SYSTEM HAVE INSERTED HIM FURTHER ALONG? FUCK! YOUR! MOTHER!
It was very ‘I have no mouth, and must scream’. Though more like ‘I have a mouth, yet still can not scream, for I am a squishy half cooked noodle floating in a bubble of soup’. That was a lot less catchy of a phrase.
It was hard to mark the passage of time. Every now and then his egg would be turned gently so neither side got the lion’s share of warmth. He could hear voices sometimes. They were more interesting further off, speaking gossip about people Shen Yuan had never heard of. When they grew closer, they always became all business. Just boring ‘this egg is hardening well’, ‘adjust the warming talismans’, ‘the nest material needs replacing here’, blah blah.
Shen Yuan was stuck here - the least they could do would be to continue the conversation about their love sick shixiong’s romantic failures. It was clear the man should focus on his childhood friend, and not the woman from town, unlike what the voices argued.
However, he could only debate them in his mind, as days or weeks passed.
He spent most of his time sleeping. Thankfully. It was the whole fetus thing. Space grew tighter and tighter, and his body grew stronger.
The less said about claustrophobia, the better. There was no point in dwelling on it.
“It keeps trying to hatch early.” Grumbled a voice above him. Shen Yuan’s body ached, his delicate flesh bruised from bashing himself against the shell that was now reinforced with foreign qi.
“Isn’t that the one we’ve had problems with since it was laid?”
“The miracle egg that came back to life.”
“Always the rare ones. So finicky.”
“It took a century to get this egg. Shizun will have our heads if we lose it. Let's leave a hardening talisman on it for now.”
And so Shen Yuan had to give up and learn to live with his nose crammed up near his own end.
Sleep. Just sleep. Just keep sleeping.
UGH! He. Was. So. Bored.
Hearing the words ‘Qing Jing Peak’ was like being struck by lightning. Shen Yuan gave a little jerk, smacking his own face with his tail.
Qing Jing Peak? Qing Jing? As in, Proud Immortal Dragon Way?
No, no, no - wait?
Proud Immortal Dragon Way was a book that started as a xianxia with a western-styled dragon rider twist and ended as a trashy harem novel, where the only thing being ridden was the protagonist’s heavenly *beep*. Every. Damn. Chapter. It was such a waste!
Of course, of fucking course - he’d died right after finishing that horrible book! He couldn’t be blamed for not picking up on it sooner - he was just a fetus after all.
The person said ‘Qing Jing Peak’ like someone would say ‘acid shitting fire bear’. It was perfectly reasonable. As befitting for a tragic backstory, the peak that the darling little protagonist grew up on was practically a nest of vipers. And he wasn’t talking about any of the venomous-type dragons.
The classic bullying arc! A hierarchy of little shit shixiongs tormenting the poor white lotus every day that went up every rung of the ladder to the top: the big shit shizun! A cold, bitter, and cruel master whose own dragon could seemingly barely stand to be around him.
From what Shen Yuan could overhear, the eggs were to be transferred to Qing Jing peak this time for hatching - despite it not being proper, and that more than one peak was partaking in the hatching. That was another thing: Shen Qingqiu seemed to have some kind of blackmail over the sect leader, who was always bowing to his whims. Frustratingly, the book had never revealed what it was.
Still... Qing Jing peak... It gave Shen Yuan something to think about.
What else was he supposed to do, while playacting one-noodle soup?
The eggs being transferred to Qing Jing against protocol had happened at the start of the book. Little baby bunhe had been so very excited at the prospect of the hatching. The narration had mentioned just how small and alone he was in the world ever since his mother left, and how the hope of a chance at bonding was like a small candle being lit in his little world that had grown so dark and cold.
And then Shen Qingqiu had him locked in the woodshed on the morning of the hatching, sealing it with a talisman - snuffing out that tiny little light in Luo Binghe’s heart that never shone again.
IT WAS HEARTBREAKING!
IT WAS INFURIATING!
What kind of dragon rider novel didn’t give you the hatch-and-bond scene, ah?!
Sure, sure, it was ~subversive~ or whatever, that Binghe never truly bonded with a dragon - he only used them as stepping stools, temporary allies, and, in later chapters where it had dissolved into constant papapa: wives. By that point, if Airplane introduced a new dragon, you could guarantee it had the ‘one in ten thousand’ ability to transform into human shape - and that the human shape would be female with gigantic bouncing breasts described with multiple paragraphs.
Shen Yuan squirmed unhappily.
The point was: where was he in the timeline? Could it be possible that this would be the very hatching from the start of the book? And if so... Could he affect things?
...Could he keep the light in the little white lotus’s eyes?
And practically speaking, of course, cling to the protagonist’s thighs?
In fact, any other pathway just led to death! He really had no choice here, did he?
It had to be Binghe, or bust!
-----
The whole hatching thing was a lot harder than would be expected. It was also highly embarrassing that literal infants seemed to be figuring out the best method faster than he was. Shen Yuan could hear the sounds of activity all around, muffled through the layer of his infuriating shell.
Young human voices, some coaxing, some joyful. Various creels and cries and the chirping of little baby dragons as they stumbled around and found their lifelong partner.
One of the most iconic parts of a dragon rider book, and he was missing it! All because his shell was dummy thick. Did the disciples leave the hardening talisman on it too long!?
At first Shen Yuan tried kicking and scratching with his claws, but they got caught in the gelatinous membrane along his sides. Then, using his memory of biology and the existence of an ‘egg tooth’ in most oviparous animals, he began to slam his snout over and over again into the same spot.
If he weren’t already wet with...various fluids, his eyes would have watered from the sharp pain on his nose. It seemed he really didn’t have an egg tooth - stupid Airplane!
However, the jabbing with his narrow snout was still successful. The first crisp ‘crack’ resounded in the tight space, lifting his flagging energy. He focused in on that spot, and could feel it beginning to shift and give beneath his nose with each peck and shove.
Every part of his body ached with the strain of just slightly moving his head back and forth for a while. His muscles were developed, but soft and untested - each movement bringing an ache of newness.
He couldn’t say the quivering weakness and exhaustion every few bursts of effort were unfamiliar to him...
(Keyboard warriors and infants had more in common than Shen Yuan wanted to think about.)
The crack widened, and the thin membrane was punctured. Heart racing in excitement, Shen Yuan gave one final shove, pushing with his whole pretzeled body.
His tiny face broke free from the shell, and Shen Yuan sucked in fresh clean air as the sudden rush of light blinded eyes that had never yet seen such a thing.
“It actually hatched!”
“The imperial winged jade cross hatched!”
The hubbub was so much louder without the muffle of the shell, overwhelmingly so.
EVERYTHING was overwhelming. The sights slowly filtering in through the red-tinged glare, the sounds, the smells, the very feel of chill air on his skin: it all tangled together like he was simply a mess of exposed nerves lighting up.
Ugh, if only that extra-close plaintive creeling would stop - it was rattling his brain, as if the sound was coming from right beside his ears. Or. Right below his ears.
Shen Yuan clamped his mouth shut, sharp little teeth clicking together.
Ahem.
Anyway.
He blinked rapidly to clear the spots from his vision, and tried to turn his head, just to realize that the back of it seemed stuck in place. He squirmed again. This time he noticed a painful tugging sensation at the upper back portions on either side, as if he had wider parts stuck. Pausing to survey his body like one would test buttons in a video game tutorial, he twitched his muscles until he felt twinges in the corresponding locations.
Did he have extra long ears like a rabbit or something? But no, he was hearing clearly already... But what else could be attached to his head that he could move, ah??
System, system, you didn’t shove him into an infant that died from a deformity right??
Please don’t be an extra pair of legs on his head! Please don’t be an extra pair of legs!
With a burst of anxiety adrenaline, She Yuan yanked one side free. The momentum was so sudden and forceful that when the shell broke over there, the freed part of his body swung forward and smacked him straight in the face.
Guh. Blinking away egg goop, he moved the thing up and back to see - wet feathers, some still in sheaths and others not. Wait, did that mean--??
He pulled the other side free (without bitch slapping himself this time), and examined it to see the same thing.
Head wings?? Uhh, note to body - the head wasn’t where wings were supposed to go on dragons!
What was he?! Somebody’s angel OC?!
How did the muscle attachment even work? Experimentally, Shen Yuan flapped them and then flicked them back and forth. Proportion wise, they were massive, able to go all the way forward to cover up to his snout so he was peering over the edges like a coy courtesan peering over a fan - if said courtesan were a baby noodle that lacked all coordination and grace, and accidentally jabbed himself in the eye.
A shadow fell across him, bringing Shen Yuan’s attention abruptly back to the present.
...Why was he now...completely surrounded by people?
Suddenly feeling like the girl from the couch meme, he almost ducked back inside his egg to hide from the intense gazes coming from all around him.
The humans had a mix of uniforms from four different peaks, and their ages ranged from what looked like twelve to early twenties. The latter carried a shine of desperation in their eyes. Though there were rare exceptions, the malleable mind of a hatchling tended to impress to similarly malleable young minds. Also, from a training stand point, teachers also preferred to shape such a combination. Thus, those disciples were probably on their last chance.
Shen Yuan felt a little bad for them, but not so much that when one in Bai Zhan’s white robes bent down and reached for him directly, he didn’t squa--, make a sound of protest and rear back.
And then he was falling - the balance tipped back enough that the egg rolled over...and then over and over.
Who placed an egg so near an incline, ah?!
After a few seconds of dizzying spinning, it all ended with a ledge and a small drop that might as well have been a mini-cliff to Shen Yuan’s tiny form. Luckily, his shell absorbed all the impact - splatting and splintering underneath him, which led to his curled body finally bursting free.
If only his body got the memo! It jostled forward, mostly out of the cracked casing, yet it remained locked in a tight curl.
From the observers’ perspectives, he looked like a wet little knotted rope with huge watering eyes, staring plaintively upwards. It was enough to sway any heart!
His own perspective was like this: OW OW OW OWWW! FUCKING! OW!
Moving muscles that hadn’t been able to fully flex for months was like when you got too absorbed tearing into a piece of trash chapter in the comments while you were on the toilet, so when you tried to stand up, your legs were beyond asleep. The painful ‘pins and needles stabbing you while your veins were on fire’ kind.
It felt like that everywhere on his body... And there seemed to be so much body!
With a pathetic squirm, he looked down himself. The sunlight’s reflecting glare was harsh against his mostly-white color. Tangled as he was, Shen Yuan could see parts of both his tummy and his back at the same time: tail over end and twisted.
His stomach had wide white scales, which grew smaller and transitioned about halfways up his sides into what was either fuzzy fur or fluffy down feathers, growing thicker and longer closer to his spine. The area along his back was a different color entirely, a shade of pale green that contrasted against the white - the harsh divide broke up by smatterings of small fawn-like spots of green in the transitional areas. The fluff along his back was especially unruly looking, slicked up wildly with egg goop, and it contained multiple half broken pin feathers all the way down.
...
Shen Yuan looked at his paws.
They were at the ends of short and thin scaled legs, and looked like the cross between a yard bird and a bird of prey’s feet - three toes and a fourth thumb toe angled back. They ended with tiny little claws.
No signs of venomous spurs or impressive razor edges.
...
He looked at the end of his tail.
It ended in a, currently wet and sticky, bunch of fluff. No impressive scorpion sting, or spike, or club.
...
He twisted to bring his head into his paws, and felt along the top of his skull.
There was something different about his forehead, the texture there was raised and harder in a little circle, and at the top of his head he could feel some kind of horns sprouting - but they were tiny and blunt nubs.
...
Gritting his teeth to prevent any more embarrassing sounds coming out, Shen Yuan began the process of untangling his body from its tightly curled state.
If perhaps a tiny whimper or two made it through, well, he WAS an infant after all. He had a pass to act a little bit like a baby right after being born.
Once done, he looked down his body again. It was long and thin, like a proper dragon and unlike the western-styled ones Airplane threw in fast and heavy into the novel. His coloration really was just the simple green and white though - not very striking. The fawn spots looked especially juvenile.
...
Not visually striking, not venomous, not spiky, not sharp - HE WASN’T EDGY IN ANY WAY! What kind of Gary Stu would have such a delicate-looking dragon, ah?! How was he supposed to be fit for the future black-bellied protagonist?!
Ah, no matter, no matter. His design was reasonably appropriate for the innocent little angel that Luo Binghe would be at this age - IF this was even the right hatching. And with how often Luo Binghe jumped from temporary dragon bond to temporary bond, it wasn’t like the protagonist would keep him forever.
As long as he could improve his early life even a little, Shen Yuan would consider it a win, and he would retire with grace when the protagonist found partners more befitting.
Time to brush thoughts of the future away! The here and now was pressing!
First off - was this the correct timeline?
Shen Yuan was surrounded by humans again.
He peered up, and up, and up - into their faces.
Nope, nope, nope.
He slipped between a couple of them to find more people crowding. His neck ached from looking up so far!
No, not him. Not her. No, certainly not them. He gave people only the briefest glances before continuing on. His little legs trembled like those of a newborn fawn, sometimes causing him to sway one direction and then the other.
He ignored his own shaky coordination with grim determination.
There was something instinctual about scanning through the humans - his heart dismissing them before his head even caught up.
He felt a little bad when a child would freeze upon his approach, and then slump when he looked them in the face and then turned away his nose.
Ahhh - he wasn’t trying to crush anyone’s dreams! He was just looking for anyone he might recognize from the text!
There were many other dragons on the hatching ground, and Shen Yuan was affronted to see they were all at least three times his height. He himself was about the size and length of an adult’s arm, which seemed stupidly small? Was it part of being from an egg that had been destined to die?
It was hard not to stop and observe the babies.
There were so many shapes and colors! So many varieties!
But something inside his chest and stomach was starting to feel weird.
Almost like. A kind of panic.
He wasn’t an actual baby - he reminded himself. And then reminded himself a few more times as the feeling grew and grew inside, pressing up against his ribcage like fluttering birds trying to break free.
There were so many humans...
But where was his human? Where was his Binghe?
His heartbeat thudded in his head, muffling the rest of the world.
Sigh. The brain of an infant could be so unreasonable...
But what if this was years before Binghe even showed up? The rare dragons who didn’t bond weren’t treated particularly well if they survived, if they were even kept on the mountain at all. But if it wasn’t Binghe, then he really...
A flash of ribbons caught his eyes.
He turned his tiny head to see a young girl with two looped pigtails kneeling before a dragon that couldn’t have screamed more ‘girl’s toy coded’ if it had tried. It had large petal-like frill plates around its head to give it a flower look, and butterfly wings were currently wet and clumped at its back (Shen Yuan hoped someone would tell her soon to hang the dragon upside down until the wings stiffened and dried correctly).
He could recognize that ‘what do girls like - uhh, flowers and butterflies and pink?’ writing trope anywhere. She was a main character - and not only that: she was the main wife! Ning Ying Ying!
The rush of relief made Shen Yuan dizzy.
When Ning Ying Ying and the pink baby dragon both turned to look at him, Shen Yuan realized he might have let out a bit of a creel of excitement.
The pink dragonnet narrowed gem-bright green eyes at him, the petal-like frills rising to their maximum as she reared up and hissed like an angry cat. At this stage, freshly born, her proportions were nearly comical: her head so large and rounded compared to her long thin neck and smaller body that it furthered her overall appearance of a flower.
Yet when she bared all her fangs and snarled, wrapping her tail around Ning Ying Ying’s wrist and keeping herself between Shen Yuan and the girl, Shen Yuan’s body found itself tripping over his own tail, backing away on instinct.
A misunderstanding!
Someone come get this sassy child!
It was a misunderstanding! He doesn’t want your woman!
Shen Yuan remembered that sometimes - though very rare - multiple dragons would try to impress upon the same person. It was why established dragon riders weren’t allowed to attend hatching days - if an adult dragon felt a new bond form, it would almost always kill the second out of jealousy.
It was part of what stood blackened Binghe apart. He treated his dragons like he treated his harem: if they didn’t want to share, then there was the door.
But he hadn’t realized a fellow hatchling would be so paranoid that even a little looking was off the table.
He’d just wanted to see the character he’d read so much about. Just a peek. What was Ning Ying Ying’s dragon, some sort of possessive boyfriend that confronted others for glancing over?!
Hmph! Shen Yuan swung his head around, nose in the air. Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t had much experience yet with the whole ‘two large wings at either side of his head’ aspect. The unexpected increased inertia had him having to skitter to one side to prevent toppling over.
...
Ignoring that.
He glared, baleful, at the many people still lingering around him in a loose ring.
What were you all looking at, ah? Humans couldn’t even LIFT their heads for months after being born. He was doing as well as could be expected, okay?? Putting in a better effort than any of them would have been able to do.
Grumbling to himself, he waddled his way through the legs of a disciple who tried to stand in his path.
His own legs already ached, and the baby-soft scales of his feet stung from the hot sands of the nesting grounds.
In fact, the further he walked in this direction, the hotter, darker, and grittier the sands got.
What was this, a roasting pit?? Baby BBQ?
His walking was forced into a sort of high-stepped prance, like some sort of dressage horse.
He was starting to understand why there weren’t anywhere near as many people or babies in this direction, and the couple of hatchlings that were here bore the marks of Airplane’s less than subtle ‘fire type’ markers - bursts or oranges or red against the blackened ground.
But he’d already committed, and glancing back showed he still had a knot of hopefuls trailing him with painfully yearning expressions that would have set goosebumps down his flesh if this body was able to get them. As it was his feathers? Fur? Prickled up.
Put those puppy-eyes away! They had no power here!
Shen Yuan felt like a C-drama actor being mobbed by fans at an airport.
He picked up his pace, pumping his little legs as fast as his twingey muscles would allow.
When he was younger, Shen Yuan used to imagine being cool beasts. He’d always figured the transition to four legs would be easy, and that he would naturally be faster.
He hadn’t accounted he’d be in a form that was stretched so long. So much neck and tail and middle to balance on such little toothpicks. He could only be thankful that his legs were directly under his body, like those of a mammal, instead of to the sides like a reptile. If he’d had to do the weird wiggly swaying, it would have been even more embarrassing.
As it was, with his ‘forced to high step floor-is-lava prancing trot’, he was sure he looked ridiculous anyway.
Furthermore, it hurt.
Each time he landed, it jarred his delicate wrists and ankles. His lungs burned along with the soles of his feet. His new muscles ached.
There was also a sensation in his stomach.
It felt weird. Bad. Cold and dark, seeping up slowly through any crack it could find.
Like anxiety.
At the same time there was something swelling in his chest, making it tight, making his lungs hitch and strain to grow full.
Like panic.
Those two things, slightly different flavors of unpleasant feelings, met in the middle and mingled in his diaphragm.
He shook his head, trying to shake the weird feelings as well.
It wasn’t the time for freaking out just because he was a little sore and overwhelmed.
He wasn’t actually an infant - he was a nineteen year old man, after all. He’d had plenty of time stuck inside the shell to get all the freaking out over with, he should be done with it by now.
Was it the results of his physical baby-brain? Shen Yuan had noticed his thought patterns had shifted since arriving. Became blurred, more forgetful.
More prone to irrational emotion.
He’d hit one edge of the hatching ground.
The hatching area had been created long ago by disciples digging out a wide crater and filling it with sands that ranged from warm to very hot based on the amount of sunlight and a system of arrays.
Though it was continuously topped up with sand to replace any blown away over time, the crater-like formation meant there was a brimmed incline up and out around the perimeter.
It was nothing to a human. Just a short jump down or a scramble up.
But to a dragon around 30 centimeters tall?? Practically sheer cliffs.
Shen Yuan was annoyed to realize that his apprehension would leak out in the form of pitiful creeling sounds even when he kept his mouth firmly closed. In fact, trying to swallow them down just added a particularly pathetic whimper-like quality to them.
The baby!status debuff was such a hassle.
Ignoring his own sounds, Shen Yuan tackled the more important obstacle in his way.
The book had been clear: Binghe had not been allowed to attend the hatching. He’d been trapped in the woodshed, unable to even sneak out due to a talisman sealing the door.
Therefore, he was not here. Ergo: Shen Yuan would just have to bring the hatching to him!
He may not have spikes, or vivid coloring, or anything suitable to match the protagonist, but anything was better than nothing, ah? A beggar wouldn’t look a gifted horse in the mouth to check its teeth, right?
...
Though if... If it didn’t work out... If he and Binghe looked at each other and none of that dragon magic happened, it was fine. It was even probable! Almost certain in fact! Shen Yuan wasn’t deluded: how could he be ‘fated’ for the main character?? That was ridiculous - laughable even!
It would be fine because he would simply do as all Binghe’s future partner’s did. AH - THE TEMPORARY AGREEMENT PART. Not the, er, not the other stuff - even when he grew, who knew if he’d be one of those one in ten thousand able to take on human form.
Not that it would matter, of course. He was a man, and reasonably sure this new body he was in was also male (though unsure how to even go about checking).
And, of course, all the other multitude of reasons he was too busy to dwell on. He was much too busy to be thinking about any of this.
If he held his breath, would that annoying bleating-creeling stop?
Right. The wall of earth.
Looking left and right, he couldn’t see a less steep incline.
There was nothing for it.
He set himself to climbing.
...
It turned out that an eastern dragon’s body type was not particularly suited to scaling a cliff.
His tiny claws dug into the earth, his limbs shaking in hard jerks with the strain of holding the balance of the rest of his long ass body - with the extra unbalanced nature of his headwings, which flapped uselessly, stirring up loose dust to get into his eyes.
Every inch of his body ached - his new muscles screaming about being bullied so soon out of the shell. But the odd sense of panic-anxiety had grown in the interim time he’d been struggling and failing to climb; grown to the point his senses and thoughts had narrowed down.
Binghe.
He thought, as he strained with all his force, dragging himself one inch higher.
Binghe. Binghe. Waiting.
He was covered in dirt from his various tumbles. But each time he rolled down, he would shakily pull himself back onto his paws and start again.
At some point he’d gotten too exhausted to keep thinking: to try planning. He just followed what his body was driving him to do.
Without all the human thoughts clogging up his head, there were things he hadn’t noticed before.
A strong feeling guided him in this direction, like his nose was a compass piece wanting to point north.
The book had not included a map of the peak, but Shen Yuan just knew where he had to go.
If he had the brain power and attention to check, Shen Yuan would have noticed he’d gathered quite the crowd of onlookers.
It was incredibly rare for hatchlings not to imprint upon someone on the grounds. With the usual ratio being 20 humans for every one baby dragon, dragons had plenty of choices. Though, cynically Shen Yuan had pointed out in comments there was no way you could claim dragon partners were fated to be together when, in reality, dragons would just pick from whoever was around them when born.
He’d always wondered what the true criteria for picking would be, since it seemed like a slightly more selective chick-imprinting. Was it scent? The way someone looked? The way their qi felt?
Now, even having gone through it, Shen Yuan wouldn’t be able to say. No one else had ever been in the running.
But something inside was driving him forward. Pulling him along like his heart was attached to a thread someone was winding in.
“It’s still calling for a rider, so where is it going?” One person asked.
The little cries the baby was making were heart-breaking, but every time it was approached, the baby threw a tantrum and hissed and snapped at any who tried to coax it. It shrieked like it was dying when someone tried to helpfully lift it where it wanted to go, scaring the girl into dropping it.
Eventually the presiding hallmaster ordered everyone to keep their distance, for fear of causing a fatal qi deviation in the tiny thing.
“Is it going feral?” One person asked the hallmaster, after a bad tumble where the baby dragon spit out a rude sound, and started again.
The teacher sighed.
“Worse... I’ve only seen this a couple times in my eighty years, and it never ended well.”
“What’s going on with it?”
“The poor thing is fated.”
“Aren’t we all fated?”
“...A-ahem. Yes, of course. I meant to say, the poor thing is fated to someone who isn’t on the grounds. It will continue trying to find that person until it dies from exhaustion.”
There were multiple horrified sounds from the crowd of youngsters.
“Begging Shibo, is there nothing we can do?” Asked one.
“I’m grabbing it.” Said a Bai Zhan child.
“Can we trick it?” Asked one from Qing Jing.
“Stop! Don’t touch it! The more time that passes out of the shell, the more sensitive a hatchling becomes to qi deviations that can pull in any around it. I’ve sent word to this peak’s lord asking for instructions.”
He sighed again.
“Why did it have to be that one...”
The ground prickled against Shen Yuan’s belly as he dragged along, front claws sinking into the dirt as leverage to heave himself forward as his back legs and tail still dangled over the edge. After a minute more, his back feet finally scrambled up on top of the ‘cliff’, and Shen Yuan allowed himself to collapse fully.
He wheezed, mouth open and little tongue lolling like an exhausted dog - or maybe a piece of roadkill would be more accurate with the way he lay sprawled out limbs akimbo and head to the side.
It was hard to...think...
It hurt.
Of course his body hurt. His tender new muscles felt yanked beyond tight. His lungs burned. His paws stung. He ached in places that were hit the times he fell and rolled, as if bruises were forming under scales.
His body hurt, but it was more than that.
Some inner growing pain kept rolling in like a tide and mercilessly sweeping his rational thoughts away until his human-words were spluttering and having to be picked up piece by piece like flotsam and arranged slowly.
An aching, sharp, terrible loneliness.
Where? and Find and Please? kept floating to the surface, bubbles from the dark waves.
It was so hard to fit other thoughts around them, between the waves.
There was no need to make such embarrassing sounds - he knew... He’d known something - what was it?
That he had to keep going forward. His body fought against him, limbs shaking hard in exhaustion as he stood and went on. His throat clucked with muffled snuffling sounds, vague memories of hearing baby puppies making the same noises as they instinctively searched for their mother’s milk rising to the surface of his brain.
That thought - or rather the fringe of embarrassment that came from realizing he was making puppy-finding-boob sounds - snagged enough to pull him slightly out of his torpor.
He blinked, but didn’t have the excess energy to shake his head again in an attempt to clear it. It was enough effort just to keep walking.
Qing Jing was well maintained and manicured, but even well tamed, it posed difficulties to someone so small! He weaved between the bamboo, clambered over stones, and got his tail fur stuck on a branch. The distance felt so very far, and he probably hadn’t traveled much of a distance.
Honestly, he had no clue where the woodshed even was. And it wasn’t like he could just stop and ask - dragons had to practice their mind to mind speaking like humans practiced speech, and for the first chunk of their lives they could only ever hope to communicate with their bonded or another dragon. Plus, even if he could magically ask someone, would he get an honest answer from this pit of vipers?? Just from reading the book, Shen Yuan didn’t trust any of the Qing Jing peak shixiongs as far as he could throw them - and he currently weighed as much as a chicken egg, so his throwing distance was nil!
However, he really hoped he could find it soon.
He had a feeling like there was a ticking time bomb inside him, the count down over his head dropping as the blurriness of his thoughts rose.
Shen Yuan couldn’t remember why he had chosen this direction.
The...The heart of the cards...? Or something...?
He just felt like it might be right.
He broke out of the copse of bamboo and onto one of the main paths, which made traveling easier.
A sensation like something was pulling him forward grew stronger, piloting his body like the spores of fungus that controlled ants without their input. It was possibly all that was keeping him moving.
Suddenly, there was someone in front of him.
The magnetic feeling swelled. Shen Yuan raised his exhausted head.
There were green robes in front of him, many layered and sumptuous even from a glance. A fan was folded in one elegant pale hand.
Shen Yuan had just a second to take in the man’s face - the way his phoenix eyes widened and scowl melted into shock before the fan swept up and snapped open like a shield between the two.
But in that split second it was-
It was like-
It was indescribable.
Physically, it felt, probably, what being struck by lightning felt like. A sudden surge so powerful it overrode every nerve in his body, jerking him into a stiff arc like a startled cat as his brain whited out.
But at the same time, the rest of the storm swept inside his chest and brain and stomach, whipping around in a frenzy.
Mine? Safe? Together?Love? Accept? Together? Never apart, never apart!
The humanity in him fought against this, though he couldn’t remember why he was fighting so viciously. Struggling so hard against the typhoon.
He’d only felt similar to this once in his life before.
It could be said the Shen family men had a problem with avoiding difficult emotions, and with avoidance. Grandmother Shen used to call it a genetic failing in her dressing down lectures at New Years dinners.
No one knew better than Shen Yuan. The first time he’d gotten really sick, at around seven, when the news came out that he’d be spending the next year or so stuck inside hospital walls, it was as if his father and favorite brother had evaporated.
It felt like forever, the rushed voice calls, the assurances they’d see Shen Yuan next time. And then next time. And then next time.
Though they’d tried to keep it from him, everyone else had been so mad. How could they do this to Shen Yuan? How could they be so selfish?
But Shen Yuan had felt nothing but a deep, deep longing.
An aching loneliness of bonds that had been cut off. He was too exhausted from the treatments to feel anything else when he thought of them.
So when he’d cracked a bleary eye open one day to see his father and big brother in his hospital room, arms full of what seemed to be the entire contents of the gift shop - he’d only felt the indescribable sheer joy of a heart reaching out and being answered.
A heart reaching out and being answered.
The man’s fan lowered slowly, his stunned face a mirror of Shen Yuan’s own.
Shen Yuan felt something inside himself extend - stretch - brush against the man in front.
All at once it was like hitting a defensive wall of teeth and claws, but there was a tremor, a tremulous, tiny flash of uncertainty that felt a lot like hope. Shen Yuan zeroed in on it, sensing the gap in the armor, and then--
“Master Shen Qingqiu!! Quickly move away!”
Hearing the scum villain’s name was like being snagged by the ear and thrown through a wall.
All at once Shen Yuan woke, as if the heavy blanket of instincts was whipped away from his curled and sleeping form underneath.
WHAT WAS THAT?! WHAT HAD JUST HAPPENED??!
Shen Yuan recoiled from the man in front of him, looking up at him with wide horrified eyes.
THE SCUM VILLAIN HIMSELF?
And he had almost -- what?? Had their souls started to touch?
Nope, nope, no way. He was mistaken. It’d just been the product of Shen Yuan’s desperate baby brain starting to go a little crazy from lacking a bond. And even if there had been a very slight, maybe kind of gentle brushing, Shen Yuan wasn’t going to take responsibility!
Not only was the Qing Jing Peak lord a child abusing piece of shit personified, Shen Qingqiu already had a dragon! Not only that, his dragon didn’t even care when he was taken away later and tortured by Luo Binghe. He was the only one in the whole book who had a dragon that seemed to dislike him: didn’t that show how shitty of a rider he was?
No thanks, no thanks!
He had no interest in getting squished like a bug beneath another dragon’s teeth, or getting chained to a villain destined to become a human stick.
He’d just imagined the small lost look on Shen Qingqiu’s face. It had been a trick of the light. Because now it had morphed into a frightening snarl, as viscous as any beast Shen Yuan had ever seen.
“Get lost!” He snapped.
Shen Yuan didn’t care that it was aimed over his head at the hallmaster who’d interrupted them, he wasn’t waiting around to get targeted next! With a burst of adrenaline, he tore back into the bamboo forest.
He heard a cut off startled sound behind him, and a touch of something ephemeral again.
With a terrified yelp, Shen Yuan shut down the connection in the harshest way he could, radiating rejection - no sir, Shen Yuan wasn’t trying to force any bond! Please forgive the baby his mistake! It would never happen again!
He fled and fled until he broke free from the bamboo in a new area, tripped on a twig, and was sent rolling like a tiny log down the hill.
He lay there and panted, the world slurring and blurring with dizziness.
Though at the time he hadn’t put any rational thought into his fleeing, it seemed his body had automatically adjusted his general course. He could still feel a pulling sensation very close by (and was resolutely ignoring the one coming from behind!)
In a twist of narrative convenience that fit right in with the world being based on a novel, it seemed that the last tumble, where he rolled like a soda can down the hill and felt just as liable to spew, had brought him right to the edge of a shabby wooden building.
He struggled hard to focus his eyes on it.
He was so, so exhausted.
Every centimeter of his body (of which there weren’t many) throbbed red and green in agony. Fresh out of the egg, hatchlings weren’t made for endurance. Shen Yuan’s tender muscles rebelled, twitching and cramping hard enough to force his limbs to jerk, as if throwing tantrums of their own.
Stupid baby body! Stupid little legs!
But worse than the physical pain, was the returning haze of anxiety: a loneliness so sharp it felt like swallowing a morning star, the spikes stabbing his chest with each dragged breath in.
He was so close...
He couldn’t die now...
Wisps of scenes slid through the fog in Shen Yuan’s head.
Young Binghe shivering alone on the hard ground in the middle of winter as the walls of the woodshed shook with bitter wind. Little lotus Binghe getting strung up and whipped. The only reminder Binghe had of his mother being snatched and lost forever. Binghe eating raw eggs from bird nests and bamboo shoots from the ground for months just to survive, hovering on the edge of starvation as a ‘special training’. The little sheep being promised a chance at the hatching by Ming Fan, only to be laughed at and sealed into the woodshed on Shen Qingqiu’s orders the morning of...
Shen Yuan’s legs shook hard under him, but he managed to drag himself the rest of the way to the shed.
Brain foggy and filled with images of the protagonist suffering, he clawed weakly at the wood - leaving tiny scratches.
Someone nearby was making an awful racket of anxious cries - painfully heartrending and much too loud, echoing in Shen Yuan’s head.
“Hello? What’s going on? Why do I feel--? Hello, please, please, can you come to the door?” He heard.
Well, partially. Over the horrible cries that definitely had nothing to do with him. And if they maybe did have something to do with him, they were completely involuntary, and simply a product of the body he was in. Not that. Not that it did.
Body aching, he dragged himself slowly step by step, so tired he was dragging his tail end through the dirt, back legs refusing to even function, until he rounded the corner.
The bright shining glow of a talisman drew his attention upwards, and he looked in despair at the paper seal at a human’s chest height, well above anywhere he had a chance to ever reach.
Losing right at the finish line: was there a worse feeling? It was like whittling a boss’s health down for hours, getting it to a sliver, and then dying right before the final blow.
All that work, for nothing.
Would death be warm, dark, and wet a second time...?
“Shhh, shh, it’s okay! Please don’t cry! Are you hurt? Can I help?”
Said the voice.
It was very clear. And directly beside his ear.
Shen Yuan blinked, and then moved aside the head wing that had been blocking his peripheral vision.
He was met with the sight of a giant eye peering at him from the gap under the shed door.
Shen Yuan yelped, but the noise got cut off as something happened.
It was like before, with the scum villain, but a sudden strike, like being hit with a bat.
A sensation of falling and rising at once, of dreaming and waking at the same time. That one star-bright eye set in the inch of grubby face he could see was like a well he fell into, swallowed up and surrounded by emotions that were too intense for Shen Yuan to even know the terms for.
It wasn’t just his own.
He could feel bewilderment and wonder all around him, muffled as if through thin sackcloth. Shen Yuan settled for a moment, sinking just a bit deeper-- Gnawing, horrible loneliness. A hidden pain like a bone infection lingering, festering, rotting--
Shen Yuan yelped as he was shoved back to the surface, feeling fear and shame and desperation flashing like startled rabbits from the boy’s soul.
Shen Yuan heard himself croon. Tried to radiate reassurance. ‘Shhh. Shhh. Don’t be afraid.’ He didn’t know how much would come across, but hoped the general feeling would at least pass along.
On its own volition, Shen Yuan’s body scrambled forward and crammed itself into the gap between the door and the ground. He could only thank Airplane for writing Binghe’s earliest ‘room’ as whump-able as possible - if it wasn’t built so shittily, would there have been such an exploitable loophole?
This, of course, meant he shoved himself directly into Binghe’s face.
He meant to hold decorum - he was an adult inside, but his damnable baby brain and instincts had other ideas.
His body wiggled to and fro as he rubbed his head and snout all over the young teen - like the combination of the most excited dog and cat.
Some very distant voice in his head, labeled Peerless Cucumber, was raising its finger and saying something was wrong. Was THIS a partial bond?? He thought Binghe never let souls touch? Was THIS just little brushes? Was this how the bonding had always felt to those female dragons in the later chapters?
Typical Airplane to not describe it well enough to get across how strong it felt - how euphoria was shooting lightning through his veins, how it felt like part of himself he’d never been aware was missing was now whole. But he could understand why it was so easy for the dragons to sacrifice their own lives for the protagonist. Binghe felt like a sun, and Shen Yuan was now a flower who would turn its head to follow wherever his sun went.
Luo Binghe was crying. Big, fat, sparkling tears. He was holding his hands inches away from Shen Yuan’s squirming body, trembling, as if terrified that if he were to try and grab this in his hands, everything would disappear.
Shen Yuan’s heart ached.
Bleh. Even shoujo ghibli-esque tears were salty.
(He would think about the whole licking the OP protagonist’s face thing later - for now he was busy.)
“Me? This isn’t a mistake? You’ll really pick me?” Luo Binghe asked, voice raw and breaking down the middle.
This silly child! One day he would bring the three realms together and grind them under his heel, ruling with an iron fist, bedding countless beauties with a heavenly -- anyway. By then, he will have long since cast Shen Yuan aside for more suitable partners, but he would at least have these few early years.
Binghe’s soul trembled against fondness radiating from the little dragon, who stared up at him as if besotted already. Binghe hadn’t seen such eyes directed his way since the last time his mother tucked an errant lock of his hair behind his ear the final day he’d seen her breathing.
More tears rolled down his cheeks to be patiently lapped up by the tiny raspy tongue as the dragon clucked more like an old nursemaid than an infant.
“My name is Binghe.” He whispered. The dragon tilted its small head, taking on a look of intense concentration.
A tiny wisp of a thread - the smallest hint of a voice, entered Luo Binghe’s mind.
She...n...Yu..an...
The connection completed.
KOII’S CORNER
Background Lore & Worldbuildng Snippets
So what happens if two baby dragons are VERY determined to imprint to the same person, and can not be redirected or stopped? Well, good thing it rarely happens, because it is a tragedy! Being popular isn’t a good thing sometimes. The two babies will continue to in-effectively try to kill each other with their baby claws and teeth until the stress triggers a fatal qi deviation. And since baby dragons impress by casting their souls/spiritual energy out at others, this can drag others into it like little bombs - sending any other nearby baby and less fortified human into their own deviations.
Also, here is an extra baby SY freshly transmigrated art by Sini! LIL SQUISH PEA
