TBOE

So um.. designs for a floating concept of an au i like to call: the demonic cultivators stravaganza...

Rambles below cause it's too big...

there's a little event on twitter where the prompt is to give xue yang flowers for his birthday, and i thought that was really sweet but i'm also a little rascal (and so are they)

The first thing that would happen would be that SY would declare that since MQF is not doomed by the plot/is only an NPC, he therefore doesn't have to make any changes and indeed shouldn't get involved with matters of import at all since he's only a minor background character. He can just kick back and relax in his new xianxia life, and get a front row seat to Luo Binghe's rise to power and conquest.

That would last approximately two days.

If we're still assuming that SY was a NEET or (even worse) a business major in his first life, then he would have no relevant medical expertise whatsoever. While I do think having a vague understanding of human anatomy and modern sanitary practices would help him, in the same way having a vague understanding of modern education helped him as SQQ, that is really not a substitute for the level of expertise Mu Qingfang is supposed to have. The first time he gets confronted with a severely wounded patient he doesn't know how to save, he goes into a panic and has to beg the System for a skill patch/easy mode/universal cheat elixir to pull them through.

After this, he starts to take his position as Medical Peak Lord more seriously and goes into a major skill grind/level up montage. He emerges from it with enough of an understanding of the applicable medical theory, plus whatever he knows from the modern world, plus what he remembers about flora and fauna and bullshit magical elixirs from the novel, plus his own problem solving skills, that he can at least get by as Mu Qingfang without putting patients in danger.

(Honestly he probably could stop there, but will he? No! Mu Qingfang is not just a decent doctor, he is the best doctor! Never mind that MQF was only brought up in the book in order to show himself useless against the power of Luo Binghe's miracle blood slash healing D. No, he absolutely must be The Best Doctor In The World or else he will not get a good grade in transmigrating, a thing both possible to achieve and normal to want.)

At any rate, SY eventually emerges from a study-fueled haze after a period of months or years to realize that Oh Shit, He's Invested Now. How is he supposed to live up to his self-assigned achievement not letting any of his patients die if Luo Binghe razes the mountain?! He's got to intervene now.

Fortunately, SY knows exactly what he needs to do. He's gotten to know Cang Qiong enough to know that it's pretty decent, actually, it's really not the corrupt institution that justified burning it down in the book, it's full of ordinary people just doing their best. There's really just one little tweak that needs to be made, one little alteration, one minor edit is all that stands in the way of Luo Binghe having a happy life and career as a Cang Qiong cultivator.

He just needs to kill Shen Qingqiu.

No, the problem is going to be opportunity. Shen Qingqiu doesn't come to Qian Cao for medical treatment for his qi deviations. Shen Qingqiu doesn't come to Qian Cao for medical treatment for anything. He's a reclusive, antisocial jerk with paranoid tendencies which only coincidentally in this case happen to be warranted, but either way: Presents a problem for our newly determined Mu Qing-yuan.

So he starts on the campaign to win Shen Qingqiu's trust. Teach him to rely on others sometimes, to come to him when he needs help. Small things at first, with the intent of building up that trust over time. Peeling back the spiky carapace of the prickliest Peak Lord of their generation is tedious, often aggravating work, but Mu Qingyuan is patient and determined. He can make house calls, if Shen Qingqiu doesn't want to leave his Peak. He can mix medicines for headaches and nightmares and insomnia. He can talk for hours about this or that book that one of them borrowed from the other.

Slowly, bit by bit, he begins to form something approaching a friendship with Shen Qingqiu. All to plan.

The only problem is -- he begins to form something approaching a friendship with Shen Qingqiu.

And the more he gets to know the bastard, the more fond he's starting to become.

In a funny, exasperating, adopting-a-feral-tomcat sort of way, he's coming to like Shen Qingqiu.

At this point, a sensible person would abandon the murder-Shen-Qingqiu plan entirely. But reader, we are not talking about a sensible man.

Mu Qingyuan is still determined to kill Shen Qingqiu. He still thinks it's the best way to not only protect Luo Binghe from Shen Qingqiu, but to protect Shen Qingqiu (and Cang Qiong) from Luo Binghe. Shen Qingqiu's death is a hard-coded part of the narrative, after all! An inescapable part of the world! It's just that now he's determined to find a way to kill him before all the abuse and torture and tragedy stuff happens, and bring him back to life afterwards once the plot is safely past. Simple!

SY will continue to blithely wifebeam everyone his peer group regardless of status, and

SY will have zero awareness either that he is doing so, or that any of said peers have anything more than a friendly platonic regard for him.

It takes a Luo Binghe level of blatancy and persistence to get past this guy's shields, and none of the Qing Generation have anything like that kind of shamelessness. So there's that. On Mu Qingyuan's part I think in this setup the wifebeam comes in because Mu Qingyuan has managed to replicate most of MQF's expertise, but has not managed the accompanying level of professional medical distance or coolness, so he's just Florence Nightengale'ing over everybody's sensibilities.

I couldn't decide at first whether it was better for Shen Qingqiu to fall in love with Mu Qingyuan or to (correctly) think he's trying to kill him, so I eventually decided on both in succession. SQQ actually twigs fairly early on to Mu Qingyuan's homicidal intent! He's quite sensitive to this type of vibes! But he doesn't tell anyone else because he can't prove anything (and he's not sure it's not his own paranoia.) And as time goes on and Mu Qingyuan continues to be nothing but friendly and helpful, Shen Qingqiu becomes less and less sure of his true intentions. I think in this setup SQQ sort of takes over Liu Qingge's role -- initially being the only one to suspect that something is not quite right with the newly transmigrated peak lord, only to over time fall under his sway and let his guard down.

If SQQ is falling in love with Mu Qingyuan, one might think that Yue Qingyuan would become jealous. Not so, if you're familiar with my particular headcanons about QiJiu they're coming into play again here. Yue Qingyuan is just so grateful for Shen Qingqiu to have another advocate, that someone other than himself is actually trying to help SQQ and that SQQ is letting them, that Mu Qingyuan immediately becomes his second favorite peak lord, and he will empower Mu Qingyuan for anything that doesn't involve blatantly crossing SQQ. So Mu Qingyuan gets all the budget and authorization he wants for extrajudicial night hunts searching for "cures."

Liu Qingge mostly gets dragged into Mu Qingyuan's orbit because he is the primary guy that Mu Qingyuan taps as bodyguard-slash-transport when he wants to go on missions to search out a rare beast or plant or enchanted item that Mu Qingyuan thinks will help him on his kill-SQQ scheme. (MQF in canon is more of a fetch-quest-giver, but Mu Qingyuan is a hands-on control freak kinda guy, so he goes himself.) Liu Qingge in this setup is I think kind of in Mobei-jun's role towards Shang Qinghua: he absolutely thinks they're courting and also thinks Mu Qingyuan is aware that they're courting and is just being coy about it. He is not.

Shang Qinghua has not noticed that anything has changed. Well, he has noticed a few discrepancies and gone 'huh' about them, but he's not doing anything about it.

All of this goes on for years and years (at least eight, maybe up to ten) in the liminal time period after the Qing generation moves up but before Luo Binghe arrives, until finally the disciple selection day arrives. Mu Qingyuan freaks out and panics because the canon is happening and he hasn't managed to kill Shen Qingqiu yet, and when SQQ demands Luo Binghe for his peak, Mu Qingyuan hastily inserts himself into the conversation.

MQY: Shen-shixiong, I highly recommend against taking this particular pupil onto your peak. His birth chart is uhhhh something something fire dragon and yours is IDK if you touch him your meridians will definitely explode.

SQQ: Stay out of this, nobody asked you, it's not like I care about your opinion! >:((

YQY: *also inserting himself into the conversation* Shen-shidi, if Mu-shidi has a concern about your health I think we should definitely listen to him. You can get other disciples!

SQQ, who didn't really want Luo Binghe in the first place: Oh very well. Take the brat and make yet another brute out of him, see if I care.

MQY: ....(Holy shit. Was that. Was that really all it took? All those years running around trying to game the system and that was all I had to do??)

And so Luo Binghe goes to Bai Zhan peak, but only for now, because you can bet your booties that Mu Qingyuan will not be able to keep his distance from THE BABY PROTAGONIST! OMG!!! for long, and will spend enough time hanging around BZ peak or whisking Luo Binghe off to Qian Cao to treat his training injuries that he is not going to stay off Luo Binghe's radar for long.