Elf

Shen Jiu was up immediately. "What's -"

happening?, he started to ask before Wu Yanzi shushed him and dragged him into the woods.

Well apparently the remaining servants from Qiu Manor aren't about to show up and kill them both. Why were they traipsing through the woods though?

He was collecting himself to ask again when they arrived.

There's a massive shiny black box jutting out of the ground. It's easily as big as a house but Shen Jiu somehow knew instinctively that it wasn't a building at all.

Wu Yanzi lead him around to the back of the strange black box- where there was a jagged hole in the shiny black material.

"There's something in there," Wu Yanzi said. "I can sense it- go see what it is!"

Shen Jiu obeyed, he was too tired to argue. He crawled into the hole. It was a tight fit, too tight for Wu Yanzi, but Shen Jiu was able to pull himself through the weird black material. From the outside it had looked like lacquered wood but inside there wasn't a grain, more like it was a metal or stone...

There's a glow ahead- and suddenly Shen Jiu was spilling out onto the floor of a strange room.

The whole room was a soft glowing grey, like the sky before dawn. It's cold in the room and the only features besides the crack he fell out of are a bright blue panel on the opposite wall, and words above it in black that say 'You must earn your ending'.

He approached the panel and recognized words on the glowing panel.

[BREACH IN NARRATIVE CONGRUITY DETECTED] it said. Below that were two rectangles containing more words. One said RESTART and the other said EDIT.

Were they switches? He prodded the closes one to see if it was raised-

"Edit Mode Activated!" a cheerful woman's voice said. "Identifying User..."

"Bing! User Identified!

Name: Shen Jiu (Qingqiu)

Role: Minor Antagonist (Scum Villain)

Fate: Dies Alone.

What would you like to edit?"

Dies alone. Shen Jiu felt his eyes water and rubbed at them furiously. So what? Even if this voice was telling the truth what of it? He knew he was a vicious unlovable thing, of course he'd die alone. Who would want him?

"What would you like to edit?" the voice repeated.

"What can I change?" he asked.

"All access editing currently available as protagonist has yet to arrive."

He didn't know what some of that meant but he got the idea. He could change almost everything.

"I-" his voice cracked and he cleared his throat. "I want to be safe, and I want to be happy, and I want to be loved."

[RECALCULATING....] the screen said.

"Please note," the voice said. "Some plot points are unavoidable. Nothing can be guaranteed. You must earn your ending."

There was a musical chime.

"One route found!"

Shen Jiu reached out and pressed the rectangle that said USE.

A red box popped up. [ROUTE REQUIRES REWRITE OF PAST DATA- PROCEED?]

How would you rewrite the past? ...It didn't matter. He pressed YES.

The blue screen dimmed until it nearly matched the other walls, numbers appeared on the screen in bright blue, counting down.

"Initializing..." the woman said.

His own skin was glowing, he realized. The light was gradually getting brighter and brighter.

"Past Rewrite Beginning. This Will Hurt."

"Wha-"

The light ripped him in two.

He was beside himself watching his past living his past again, but different this time.

He and Qi-ge begged at a corner he and Qi-ge and didi begged at a corner. The two the three of them curled up together to sleep.

It all happened again with a twin who was always by his side. Who never left even when the worst happened.

Didi kicked Qiu Jianluo when he grabbed Shen Jiu and the older man put Didi in a headlock as he dragged them both over to the slavers.

It all happened to him them. He gripped didi's hand so tight his nails cut into his hand leaving little bleeding marks. Didi hid his face in Shen Jiu's hair so he didn't have to watch.

Qiu Jianluo knew Shen Jiu would fold easier if he hurt didi- but this time he was mad, so mad. He didn't stop kicking didi even when Shen Jiu begged. When he jumped the older man he threw Shen Jiu back into a wall and kept hitting didi.

The sword clattered to the ground beside him...

He woke up flat on his back in that strange gray room.

"Rewrite Complete! Narrative Integration Complete! Congruity Restored!"

Shen Jiu turned his head and met his twin brother's eyes.

"Shen Yuan," he said.

"Shen Jiu," his twin replied.

"You didn't exist before now."

Shen Yuan shook his head. "I did but I wasn't here. I still remember it. Being not here. Being here."

"Me too." Shen Jiu said. He reached out and took his twin's hand.

Shen Yuan squeezed his fingers. "Will everyone remember both?" he asked.

"No," Shen Jiu said. "I think just us. I think everyone else will just remember you always being here."

They sat up and Shen Yuan leaned against him. He still had two black eyes and other fading bruises from where Qiu Jianluo had attacked him the final time.

They pressed their forehead together for the first time, like that had nearly every day of their lives.

"I don't know how this fixes anything though," Shen Yuan frowned.

You must earn your ending, the wall said.

"I do," Shen Jiu said. He hugged Shen Yuan close. "You make me so happy."

Shen Yuan grinned at him. "Well good. I suppose we'll have to figure out the rest."

Shen Jiu nodded. "I think we need to kill Wu Yanzi."

And he does eventually find the entrance to their hidden city, wrought in the side of a mountain. He’s able to pass through the broken down gates, traveling the maze like passageways of the mountain to… a ghost city. Old enough that any wood structures have already crumpled to rot. At a central spot in the city, there’s what appears to be a cross between a smithy and a temple. When Luo Binghe enters, he’s immediately drawn to a sword sunken in a central display, radiating power. The aura is at least as strong as Xin Mo, but it’s calming. It calls to him the same way Zheng Yang once did, many years ago; safe and reassuring.

As he goes to draw it from its pedestal, the lines of an ancient array go taught, trapping him in a powerful web of qi. It wrenches his body, breaking his bones and melting his skin, his mind frozen in torment as he is shrunken down into a Nine Torments Hound— a type of yaogui dog that appears to be almost made of mildew and drowned. They’re not violent, only able to cause harm accidentally from the spores they shed, which can cause sickness in mortals and weak demons. They are universally shunned creatures.

At this point the narration shifts, implying that Luo Binghe’s mind was taken in the transformation. He leaves the abandoned city in search of food, and is immediately wounded terribly by a stronger demonic beast. Days later on the brink of death, a wild woman finds him, and actually takes doghe back to her home to nurse him back to health, despite the risk to her own wellbeing. She’s almost unrealistically kind, and doghe is completely devoted.

One day the same beast that attacked doghe comes back to ravage the woman’s homestead. Doghe tries to defend her, but the wild woman can’t stand to see her companion injured. She kills the beast at great personal expense, mortal wounds incidentally revealing her to be some kind of mushroom spirit. Someone that doghe wouldn’t have been able to harm. With her last bit of strength, she drags herself up to kiss doghe’s little forehead and call him a good boy, before dying. It turned out this was a princess and the frog type plot, and doghe turns back into human Binghe, watching the wild woman decompose in front of him, her mushroom biology rejecting his blood.

Meanwhile, about 5 years ago Shen Yuan woke up as a mushroom spirit in PIDW and he's just been hanging out, exploring the nearby ruins, stealing cool swords... Having vivid flashbacks to being a woman dying in Luo Binghe's arms... You know normal stuff.

We all know that lqg pretty much would fight a tree if it threatens him somehow and mixed with demon culture... He's living a playboy life he doesn't even know he does.

D!Sy on the other hand seems like some sort of saint who doesn't concern himself with something as trivial as flirting for the demons but in the human realm? That boy has a reputation worthy to compare to bingge. He's the living role model most flirty people strive to be

Human realm magazine: Demonic Lord of Rot Shen Yuan— known as a temptress to most cultivators for his indecent dress, lack of personal boundaries, and casual attitude about spending the night— allegedly betrothed to Bai Zhan’s War God, an ascetic in all but name?!

-Ice Demon can change their sex at will. (This one is technically canon, Airplane accidentally called Linguang Jun Mobei Jun's aunt more than once.)

-The high level cultivation technique that allows a pregnant cultivator to literally transplant their entire womb and baby into another person's body. (There's 3000 words of surprise pregnant Bingge on his old laptop somewhere...)

-Cang Qiong Mountain Sect has a mandatory sex ed class taught by Mu Qingfang.

-Rubiks Cubes as puzzle locks on ancient tombs (changed last minute to vague 'puzzle locks' in the story because Airplane knew Cucumber Bro would hate it.)

-Liu Mingyan can read minds, she's just super good at keeping a straight face.

-One of the unnamed Peak Lords is a transmigrator- they paid Airplane a ton of money to write them in to the story, but the transfer failed. Airplane cut them from PIDW, but they're here in SVSSS trying to keep their head down and come up with a back up plan for when LBH eventually goes crazy and kills everyone. (They never find out about SQH and SQQ).

-Liu Qingge can talk to horses. (There was this whole chapter about one of his old horses cultivating a sexy human lady form and running into Luo Binghe and...well you can guess.)

-The Liu sibling's father is a god. (This was written to explain Liu Mingyan's abilities but of course also applied to Liu Qingge retroactively.)

-High capacity flying devices made of things strapped to lots and lots of flying swords.

My Brain: So you don't want this twenty page outline of Shen Yuan as Mobei Jun's little brother?

May I present the best apple:

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

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