An AU where Shen Yuan is reincarnated as Shen Qingqiu’s big brother, and ends up raising both him and Yue Qingyuan. I can’t decide whether or not this is a fix-it, where Shen yuan is able to give them a happy childhood, or to fridge him, and make this another part of their tragic back story.Â
Shen yuan gets transmigrated/reincarnated in PIDW, but he’s the son of random NPCs, who are clearly very poor. He doesn’t have a system, but he’s able to figure out that he’s in PIDW, because he hears his parents talk about the major cultivation sects not doing their jobs for people like them. He’s pretty indifferent to his new parents, to him, he already has parents, and doesn’t see these strangers as his family, and they don’t really help cause they’re borderline negligentful. They aren’t cruel, but outside of the bare necessities, they don’t interact with him or really acknowledge him.
Time passes, and their relationship doesn’t really improve, and Shen yuan has adjusted to his new life. He still doesn’t consider them his family, but he’s making plans on leaving as soon as he can, so he doesn’t care much. Then his new parents had another kid, Shen yuan doesn’t care, again he’s leaving so what does it matter? Then he gets annoyed, and a bit resentful of the unborn baby, because he has to pick up his mother’s work, now that her pregnancy is starting to limit her. When the baby is born, his parents start doing the same thing they did with him, only the new baby isn’t actually an already grown man trapped in the body of a newborn, so they quickly realize that this baby is a lot more work then Shen yuan was, but they don’t really know why, so they start getting really annoyed that this baby is causing them so much trouble.
Shen Yuan ends up being the one actually doing the childcare, when his parents start talking to really shady people, and become even more distant with the baby they’ve still refused to name, even after his 100 days, which they also refused to celebrate. One day, the baby's gone, Shen Yuan didn’t even realize, but he had gotten really attached to his little brother. He was reminded his meimei, and that he really missed being a big brother, and even though practically raising a kid was stressful, he started to love his brother. So he starts freaking out, and confronts his parents about him. It takes Shen Yuan screaming at them for them to tell him that they sold his brother, they were going too old, and the baby was too much trouble, and they needed the money.
Shen Yuan was pissed, he continued screaming at them, before he got all his stuff, and his hidden savings from selling important plants to cultivators and left to find his brother. He was able to get the slave trader’s name, and track them down in the nearby city. When he finds him, the slavers named him Shen ‘Jiu’, ‘nine’, Shen yuan gets really pissed off, but holds back his temper, when he fights to buy his brother.
 Babies are generally fairly cheap, since they’re so quick to die, and they require a lot more to care for them. Shen yuan is disgusted, but he’s relieved that he has a pretty big chance of actually being able to save his brother. When the slavers show him the babies, he finds Shen Jiu in the arms of this thin, malnourished boy. When he picks Shen jiu, hiding the fact that they’re related, because he’s scared that they’ll up the price to something he can’t afford, the boy looks so distressed and worried about the baby in his arms that on impulse Shen Yuan agrees to buy him too.  Â