Chapter Text
Shen Yuan opened his eyes to see an unfamiliar ceiling. He was lying in bed, albeit not a very comfortable one, but he could feel the blankets on his skin so he knew it was a bed. His body felt weak, so weak that at first he feared he had been paralyzed somehow. But he could move, just not very well and he couldn't lift his head. Only moments before he had been in that bizarre liminal space but that must have been a dream, right? Somehow must have found him before his heart stopped beating entirely and rushed him to the hospital. That would explain the uncomfortable bed and the strange ceiling. He was weak from whatever sudden cardiac event had struck him down but he would recover and frankly, he couldn't wait to log back in to the forums and tell everyone that Airplane's shitty novel had almost acquired a body count.
Despite his weakness, he managed to turn his head to the side and to his great surprise, there was someone next to him, a pretty teenager with dark eyes and long hair, a boy who couldn't have been more than thirteen. The boy was lying on his side, looking at him with a cold expression.
"Why aren't you dead?" the boy asked. "The doctor said you would die but you haven't stopped breathing yet. Go on. Die."
If Shen Yuan could have punched the kid, he would have. Of all the things to say to a man who had just survived a near-death experience, this had to be the worst. He opened his mouth to give the boy the scolding of his life but instead of words, a garbled mess of sounds tumbled out. His lips and tongue weren't working together properly. Thoughts of irreversible brain damage flashed through his head. How long had he spent without oxygen going to his brain? Would he spend the rest of his life lying in a hospital bed? On the one hand, plenty of time to read. On the other, everything else about that prospect. Shen Yuan reached out towards the boy in a desperate attempt to communicate and-
Hang on, those weren't his arms. They were stubby little things covered in plump rolls like a winter jacket, with hands that were just as small. He pulled his hands in close and stared at them, turning them around to get a better view. His skin was soft and unmarked by wrinkles. Even the old scar from where he'd cut his thumb with a kitchen knife was gone. He kicked his feet in the air and was met with the sight of similarly smooth, plump legs. This wasn't his body.
A noise straight out of a video game rang in his ears, the sort of ding meant to alert the player about vital information, and a glowing blue text box appeared over the boy's head. Shen Yuan was thankful that he could still read.
"Shen Jiu. The future Shen Qingqiu, Qing Jing Peak Lord and scum villain. The user's mother."
The word mother flickered, switching to father and then back to mother, finally settling on parent. Whatever this mysterious text box decided, it was wrong. Shen Yuan already had a mother and a father. Sure, they weren't all that close, but he did have them. Shen Qingqiu was a fictional character in a trashy porn webnovel and didn't have any children. He had to be dreaming. Maybe he was in a coma and this was a bizarre fantasy his dying brain had concocted to pacify him until the end. But it didn't feel like a dream. It felt like he was lying on a bed with rough blankets scratching his soft skin, a gentle night breeze wafting in from an unseen window, bringing with it birdsong and a faint floral scent. It felt real.
Another text box appeared, this time floating lazily in front of him, and a mechanical voice read out the words as they appeared. "User is in distress. This is a normal part of the transmigration process and should pass in three to five business days. Please stand by for-" And then the whole textbox flickered and died like the picture on an old TV, breaking up into lines of color and then nothing at all.
Transmigration? It seemed ridiculous but clearly it was true. He had transmigrated into the world of Proud Immortal Demon Way as an infant, specifically the son of the scum villain himself. The details didn't make sense though. Shen Jiu? Obviously Shen Qingqiu hadn't been the man's original name; all of the Peak Lords went by courtesy names using the character for their generation. But who was named after a number? Why was the spoiled young master Shen Qingqiu wearing the roughspun sleeping robes of a servant and keeping his child in what looked like a very plain bedroom, with only a bed and an end table and a chest for storage? And had the all-powerful transmigration System just died on him?
The whole situation was absurd. Only in fanfiction would Shen Qingqiu raise a child, the sort of fanfiction that his sister liked and Shen Yuan definitely never read himself. He couldn't imagine how this young Shen Qingqiu, this Shen Jiu, had ended up in such a mess. Clearly he had been doing some lechery like usual, a bit young to start but not unimaginable, and gotten some poor girl pregnant. But how had he gotten stuck with this child he didn't want? Had she died?
"I won't be sad when it happens," Shen Jiu said. "I don't want you, A-Yuan. Die and reincarnate as someone else."
At least he still had his name and from the sound of it, he wouldn't be in this body for very long. Since he couldn't lift his head, Shen Yuan guessed that he was at most a month or two old, still very much a newborn. Infants were very fragile at this age and he doubted that Shen Jiu would take good care of him. The scum villain had tried to kill Luo Binghe, an innocent orphan, multiple times, and there was no mention of him having a child in the novel so clearly this baby had died before anyone in the sect knew about it. If Shen Yuan could have stopped his heart right there and taken control of a different character, this body would already be cold. He didn't relish the idea of slowly starving to death, unable to do anything other than cry. Maybe Shen Jiu would be merciful and kill him quickly.
But Shen Jiu didn't kill him. He just stared at Shen Yuan with an unreadable expression. It might have been a trick of the faint candlelight that served as the room’s only light source but Shen Yuan thought he could see tears in the corners of his eyes.
--
Shen Yuan was hungry.
Judging by the weak sunlight streaming in from the window over the bed, it was early morning. Shen Jiu was asleep next to him. There was no proper crib in the room and Shen Yuan was cocooned in a scratchy blanket instead. Hardly safe infant sleeping as far as he knew, but he had the presence of mind not to accidentally strangle himself with the blanket unlike a real baby. But adult mind or not, he was hungry and there was only one way to get fed. He needed help.
It wasn't hard to make himself cry. His little body seemed to be on the verge of tears at all times. Shen Yuan was hardly a proud man. He would prostrate himself in front of his worst enemy to save his own life. So the idea of where the milk would actually come from wasn't a current concern for him. As long as he didn't slowly starve to death, he would accept almost anything.
Shen Jiu opened his eyes and looked at him blearily, then whined. "Shut up."
Shen Yuan wasn't going to take that for an answer and increased the volume. His new tiny body was desperate for nutrition. He wondered just how long it had been since Shen Jiu last fed his baby. Clearly the scum villain didn't care about his own child.
"Shut up! Just shut up!" Shen Jiu sat bolt upright, covering his ears with both hands. "I hate you!"
I hate you too, Shen Yuan thought and kicked his little feet wildly. What kind of parent starved their newborn? But to be fair, he should hardly expect any better from the man who would later try to kill Luo Binghe multiple times. Shen Jiu was hardly a subtle character.
Shen Jiu leapt out of bed and for a moment, Shen Yuan thought the boy was going to hit him. It wouldn't have been that usual, both for Shen Jiu and for a cultivation setting. Physical discipline was the norm here, even for very young children. But instead Shen Jiu ran for the door and into the hallway beyond, slamming the door behind him. A soft thud afterwards and the lack of footsteps told Shen Yuan that Shen Jiu was just on the other side, perhaps sitting on the floor with his back against the door.
It was certainly an extreme reaction to his own child crying. Shen Yuan had a younger sister with enough of an age gap between them to understand just how annoying infants were. He had been young when she was born but he still remembered the exhausted looks on his parents' faces every morning for that first year or so. Parenting wasn't easy. If it were easy, there would be too many babies in the world because people sure loved making them.
Shen Yuan tried crying even louder, hoping his shrill voice would carry through the heavy wooden door. It almost certainly did carry but there was seemingly no reaction from Shen Jiu, so Shen Yuan tried something no real infant would ever do. He stopped crying.
Silence reigned for nearly a full minute before the door creaked open slowly. Shen Jiu peered at him from around it, waiting to see if he would start crying again, but Shen Yuan held his tears. He was absolutely starving and it was what his body naturally wanted to do, but he had enough self control to stay quiet. The door opened fully and Shen Jiu walked back into the room, in a sort of awe. "You stopped crying."
No shit, Shen Yuan thought. For the grand strategist of Cang Qiong Sect, Shen Jiu hardly seemed very smart. But then he remembered the dark circles under his parents' eyes. This was probably not the first rude awakening Shen Jiu had experienced in the last month or two. Nobody was at their best when sleepless.
"Oh," Shen Jiu said. "You're hungry. That's what you want, right?"
Yes, that was what Shen Yuan wanted. His stomach felt like an empty pit. He wasn't sure how he would be fed though. Wuxia settings didn't normally have baby formula but with how poorly written Proud Immortal Demon Way was, he wouldn't put it past the illustrious master Airplane to write that the orphaned Luo Binghe had grown up drinking fortified synthetic breastmilk from a plastic nipple.
Shen Jiu untied the loose robe he was wearing and Shen Yuan realized why the System had been so unsure of Shen Jiu's role in the situation earlier. There were full breasts hanging from Shen Jiu's chest and below them, fading stretch marks ran down his stomach and disappeared under the cloth that still covered his lower half. This wasn't some contrived situation where Shen Jiu had knocked up a girl and somehow ended up with the baby himself, he had clearly been pregnant and given birth fairly recently. Sure, it didn't make much sense, but again, this was the world of a terrible novel that existed mostly to discover completely impractical sex positions previously unknown to science. If Shen Jiu needed to have a vagina for the plot, he could just have one, no explanation needed.
Sitting down on the bed, Shen Jiu picked him up a little awkwardly and held Shen Yuan to his chest. As embarrassing as the situation was, Shen Yuan gave in and let his instincts take over. Babies could only drink milk after all; attempting to eat something else wouldn't have gone well. He felt Shen Jiu shudder as he latched on and started drinking, and wondered if this was painful. The boy's breasts looked too big for his frail body and the milk came out slowly. It tasted very rich, a bit like drinking straight cream, and the flavor certainly wasn't unpleasant. Shen Yuan really hoped he wasn't developing any weird fetishes from this experience; it wasn't like he needed more of those.
The milk ran dry fairly quickly and Shen Jiu switched him to the other breast. "You're not so ugly when you're quiet. But if you look like him when you get older, I'll drown you in the garden pond."
Shen Yuan wondered who him meant. An ex-boyfriend perhaps? Someone must have gotten Shen Jiu pregnant and that someone wasn't in the picture anymore. For the first time, Shen Yuan felt a bit bad for the boy. Sure, Shen Jiu had just threatened his life, but being a single parent wasn't easy for anyone, especially at his age.
Pretty soon, Shen Yuan was mouthing at an empty nipple again. Shen Jiu pulled him away gently, surprisingly gently, and put him down on the bed. "That's all I have. Be grateful I can give you any milk at all."
There was still a hole in the pit of his tiny stomach but Shen Yuan knew that crying would only make Shen Jiu leave again so he stayed quiet. Instead, he did his best to look pitiful, wondering what would have happened if Shen Jiu had a real baby instead of an adult in a baby's body.
"Don't look at me like that," Shen Jiu said. "It's your own fault. You stole my meals for nine months." He stood and pulled off the loose sleeping robe completely as he started getting dressed for the day, and Shen Yuan could see exactly what he meant. Shen Jiu was thin, scarily thin, and the sight of his pubescent body reminded Shen Yuan just how young he was, which made him feel like a total creep. He reminded himself that this wasn't sexual at all, Shen Jiu was just getting dressed and of course he didn't think twice about being naked in front of the baby he had recently pushed out of this same naked body. Even so, Shen Yuan didn't let his eyes linger until Shen Jiu had covered his most intimate parts.
Before putting on proper inner robes, Shen Jiu tied a wide strip of fabric around his chest, wincing in pain as he tightened it as much as he dared, which wasn't very tight. "Stupid baby. I can't even look like a proper man now. Might as well start wearing dresses again." He was careful to leave his inner and outer robes loose as he dressed, which did a lot to disguise his breasts, but clearly not as much as he wanted since he kept pulling at the fabric and retied them both a few times. His daily clothes were as simple as his sleeping clothes, the sort of thing that wouldn't look out of place on a background extra in one of those dramas Shen Yuan's sister loved watching. Shen Jiu finished the outfit with a mei dai, an old fashioned sort of baby carrier, which he tied clumsily. It was little more than a piece of scrap cloth, not a fancy one like those Shen Yuan saw sometimes on the rare occasions he left his apartment, and he was worried it wouldn't support his weight, but Shen Jiu dressed him for the day in a simple tunic and confidently lifted him into the sling on his back.
"Time to work. You'd better not cry. If you do, Master Qiu will beat us both."