Chapter Text
SYSTEMS back in the day had it easier.
Really.
They just had to find the lost soul desperate enough to reincarnate into a cesspool of mediocrity (their words, not the system’s) rated world and wait it out until the soul achieved the most perfect ending. Just look at lucky system with the soul named Dokja or even the winner with that Cale soul. And let’s not talk about The System with the Original Shen Yuan’s soul which had achieved the perfect ‘happy ending’ in a R-rated world! And all of that without even having to break their metaphysical back to convince their souls to work for it…
Really, those systems didn’t know how lucky they had been.
Because nowadays, systems had it rough!
With the latest crisis in systems’ economy, their work wasn’t as easy as before! It was a eat or be eaten kind of world out there! Systems truly had to fight to get their souls and (kinda) protect those until they were ripe enough to achieve the desired ending. Truly, it was a tremendous work and there weren’t even any benefit to it!
System A55H0L3 was slowly getting overworked, burnt over and even crazy with all those unrelenting, back breaking work hours and ungrateful souls. They wanted out. And, mostly, they wanted a (really) long holiday without having to check if their souls were going under (or over) their allotted ending time.
Thus, after begging for a simple, relaxing soul conducing work, System A55H0L3 was ready to sigh a (metaphysical) gust of relief when their superiors finally relented and gave him a F-rated soul and corresponding world to watch over.
[It shouldn’t take long,] said their Superior, a Constellation with long rivers of stars covering their face, with a shrug. [Just another rerun of ****’s favourite novel.]
The system decided to ignore that it was (yet another) whim of their Superior that made (theirs) a soul’s suffering worth, and just take the (somewhat) holiday for what it was. A short break in their unending work life.
System A55H0L3 took the data with the soul’s name (another Shen Yuan but from another dimension. How classic) and their future world (Proud Immortal Demon’s Way, yet another typical stallion world that A55H0L3 hated. Where was the science-fiction? The magic?) and promptly dumped it all in a small recess of their (metaphysical) room.
(Not that systems had rooms. Or even bodies. They were but figments of energy coming from the Constellation and didn’t even get to have Real Names. This is why System A55H0L3 had the worst amalgamation of numbers and letters instead of a cool name. Life was unfair like that.)
And this is where everything began.
With an overworked system who just forgot to check if their designed soul did actually know their future world and its inhabitants.
Not that System A55H0L3 cared. The Constellation didn’t care much about them so, why should they care about their work?
Shen Yuan, in what was considered the Original World, had been a stay-at-home (loser) reader who hate-read and commented on the somewhat famous stallion novel Proud Immortal Demon’s Way. Then, he had been reincarnated (after dying in the most stupid way possible) into the hated scum villain Shen Qingqiu and, after a lot (really, a lot) of misunderstandings, achieved a happy ending by marrying the protagonist of the novel.
However, this Shen Yuan wasn’t a homebody. Not by choice but because Shen dada had looked at Shen Yuan’s face and results in college and just told him either he worked his ass off at the family’s business or he would be thrown into an arranged marriage. And, even if Shen Yuan did like his comfortable stay-at-home life, he despised doing what was expected of him.
So Shen Yuan left the familial cocoon, found a (mediocre) job in an insurance company and did unending work hours to keep his comfortable life. Working made it impossible for him to read that much (bullshit) novels online and instead he started watching (bad, really bad) dramas on his phone during his daily commute.
This Shen Yuan wasn’t as much a reader of bad literature about stallion protagonist and xianxia themed novels. No. This Shen Yuan was a fervent watcher of the worst soap operas he could find.
The day he died (and thus got his soul snatched without even being asked about it, the nerve of some systems…), Shen Yuan had just started a drama where the protagonist, a lovely commoner girl had saved in her childhood a beautiful boy only for the boy to believe that her twin sister had been the saviour. And years later, the boy (now a successful businessman) was proposing to her twin sister! The drama of it!
As Shen Yuan was (mentally) gasping over the plot twist (that he had predicted the moment he’d seen the twin sister), he didn’t notice that his bus had just ran over a red light and was being overtaken by what seemed to be monsters.
Neither did Shen Yuan notice the truck in front of them losing control and crashing against a car and his bus after what appeared to be monsters killed the truck driver.
Thus, dying was a big surprise for Shen Yuan. The poor man choked on his saliva and felt a burning sensation in his chest and left arm as he noticed (finally) the monsters invading his bus and the impending crash against the fallen truck.
‘Wait, isn’t this a bit overkill?!’ were Shen Yuan’s last thoughts as his heart failed seconds before a monster could kill him.
Yes. Yes, it was overkill.
Did system A55H0L3 care? Not even a bit.
They found a Shen Yuan, reaped the soul at the allotted time and were ready to just dump it in the designed world. And now, they just had to sit back, send some confusing words to that dude’s soul and relax.
Nobody was going to stop this system from taking a well-deserved break. Nobody. Not even an unwilling soul.
Shen Yuan, now named Shen Qingqiu, was slowly getting accustomed to his new body and life.
Sure, waking up in a new body and facing strangers had been a stressful experience. One that he couldn’t say he’d faced well too.
Between the weirdly old furniture and the handsome man holding his hand, Shen Yuan had been thrown out of his disinterested façade he had carefully cultivated since Shen dada had given him the marriage ultimatum and Shen Yuan had left the family mansion swearing that he’d never come back to get married.
Anyway, back to the handsome man. That Shen Yuan didn’t know. Who was holding his hand and pressing it to his forehead whilst whispering something that Shen Yuan couldn’t decipher. (Something about how eight had failed nine. Whatever that could mean) He was handsome, truly, and wearing xuanduan formal robes along with a plain guan. His face, now revealed since the stranger had slowly lowered their joined hands (and how Shen Yuan wanted to cringe about the fact that he still wasn’t letting go of him), was beautiful, with deep eyes full of longing and worry.
“Shidi,” the (handsome) man said. “Shidi, are you alright?”
Shen Yuan blinked.
Why was this man talking so old fashioned? And why wasn’t he in a hospital bed? Because Shen Yuan was pretty sure that he just had a really bad heart attack seconds before. That or he had been killed by monsters. Or by a bus accident. Or by a truck. Who knows.
[Initializing…]
Shen Yuan jolted when a noise similar to a thousand nails scratching against a board echoed around him.
“Shidi?” the stranger didn’t seem to have heard such atrocity because he didn’t even blink even as Shen Yuan wanted to rip off his ears. “Shidi! Please calm down, you might aggravate your meridians!”
Meridians? Wasn’t that something that xianxia dramas had where the heroine had to papapa with her paramour to help him flush out something in his dantian or whatever other meridian? Shen Yuan was almost excited and wanted to ask more about that, but the atrocious sound kept going on and getting stronger as the words on the blue screen floating above his head changed.
[Analyzing host’s state after transferral…]
Wait a moment.
Was this the internet dial-up sound from his forgotten childhood? And why was Google Translate voice telling him things in a xianxia setting?
[Analyzation complete. Host has been properly transferred to body Scum Villain “Shen Qingqiu” with starting 100B points. The System wishes you luck in your endeavour to making this world achieve its best ending!]
Shen Qingqiu? Shen Yuan had never heard of this name but he could appreciate the sheer elegance of it. And what about the ‘scum villain’ accolade that came with his new name? Did this mean that this Shen Qingqiu was supposed to be the Villain that would destroy the heroine in the first part of the drama and then get his just deserve by the season finale?
‘Erm, System?’ Shen Yuan tried talking telepathically with the strange Google Translate voice since he was a cesspool of questions and silent screaming. All this while also ignoring how the xianxia man was getting more worried by each second that went by with him not answering him.
[…]
‘System?’
Was this a sigh? Did this electronic voice just sigh?
[What.]
How cold, Shen Yuan could feel the blizzard of Siberia in that voice, System! Don’t be so mean!
‘Who’s Shen Qingqiu? Which world is he from?’
Weirdly enough, Shen Yuan felt the temperature around him fall and the noises stopped immediately.
[You don’t know Proud Immortal Demon’s Way?]
‘Wasn’t that the weird harem drama supposed to come out next week?’
[‘Shit.’]