Archive of Our Own

Shen Yuan opened his eyes and stared up at an unfamiliar sky. It was blue, a deep blue, so blue that it almost didn't seem real. He was a city boy and aside from the occasional trip to the countryside, which he thoroughly hated, he had spent his whole life under a blanket of urban smog. But this sky was pure blue, a color that no longer existed in the industrialized world.

He was lying on his back in the grass. That wasn't right. The last thing he remembered, he was sitting at his computer at home, cursing the terrible ending of Proud Immortal Demon Way. But he was outside now, clearly far away from his apartment and the city surrounding it. Shen Yuan tried to focus. He had just sat down for some dinner, a generous word for what he had grabbed from the corner store that afternoon, and pulled up his favorite terrible webnovel to read the final chapter. The ending was somehow even worse than he had expected and then...

And then he died. It was an odd thing to think about. People weren't supposed to think about their own deaths. By that point, it should be far too late for thoughts of any kind. But he knew that he had died, that his heart had given out suddenly and everything had gone dark. He hoped that his family would take it alright. They had never been very close and maybe that was a good thing now. Maybe it would spare them some grief.

Shen Yuan couldn't let himself think about them now though. He needed to figure out exactly where he was and what was going on and to focus on something other than the image of his body being found by a neighbor once it started to smell. Despite being a spoiled rich kid, Shen Yuan had always considered himself rather practical. He didn't like to dwell on the theoretical and the esoteric was even worse. As he lay there, he tried to take in everything around him. He was outside in the middle of the day, the Sun high in the impossibly blue sky. There were birds chirping and leaves rustling and he was surrounded by the scents of nature, of rich earthy soil and fresh green grass. It certainly seemed idyllic enough to be Heaven, although Shen Yuan had never been a religious man and wasn't sure if he qualified for an eternal reward.

And there was a teenage boy standing over him, staring at him nervously.

"A-Yuan? Are you alright?" The boy was wearing clothes straight out of a historical drama, a shirt that folded across his chest and loose pants, his dark hair worn long and tied back in a sensible ponytail. It wasn't anything fancy, but Shen Yuan noticed the conspicuous lack of labels and modern elements. This wasn't some trendy outfit that called back to tradition, it was an exact replica.

Shen Yuan sat up, rubbing his head. There was a dull ache behind his temples. As he looked around, he realized that he was surrounded by teenagers, mostly boys with a handful of girls, all dressed in the same historical clothes, holding what looked like wooden swords. They were spread out across a wide, bamboo-ringed clearing and all of them were staring at him as if he had interrupted something. "Wh-what... what happened?"

The first boy knelt to help him up. "I accidentally hit you while we were sparring. I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to." A pair of wooden swords lay discarded nearby, presumably the ones they had been using. Shen Yuan was surprised to discover that he wasn't any taller than the boy, despite being firmly past puberty only minutes ago.

An adult man strode over to them and took Shen Yuan by the arm. He was dressed far more elaborately than the kids, wearing a flowing robe embroidered with a crane motif and a hair crown, looking for all the world like a particularly dedicated cosplayer. "Sit down and watch for the rest of class. You can catch up on your sparring later."

As the man led him over to the edge of the grass, Shen Yuan was struck by just how uneven the stitches in his embroidered robe were. It didn't look bad, in fact it was very beautiful, but it looked a lot more raw and natural than clothes he was used to seeing. He realized that the robe was entirely hand-sewn, no sign of the machined precision found even in modern historical costumes. Clothes like this must be worth a fortune.

Shen Yuan did as he was told, if only because he had no idea what else to do, and settled in the grass, watching as the kids got back to work. They were using the wooden swords to train, taking turns sparring with each other and getting their form corrected by the lone adult. The boy who had stood over him earlier kept glancing back to look at him, as if he were checking that Shen Yuan was still there.

"Shen Jiu. Disciple of Qing Jing Peak. Future immortal master Shen Qingqiu, the Xiu Ya Sword."

The voice startled him, ringing loudly on the inside of his skull. It was completely flat and sounded slightly robotic, although sounded wasn't quite the right word. The voice seemed to come from all around him at once, as if it weren't actually present in the world and therefore didn’t require a source. Right on cue, an accompanying textbox appeared next to the boy's head, listing out what the voice said as if real life had somehow gained subtitles. It was the sort of semi-transparent blue that always seemed to come with future technology in sci-fi movies.

This wasn't Heaven. It wasn't some liminal space where he waited for reincarnation or an idyllic afterlife or anything like that. He had transmigrated. He had transmigrated into Proud Immortal Demon Way of all things, the most worthless, goonerslop, wasted potential of a webnovel he'd ever had the misfortune to read, the webnovel he had cursed with his literal dying breath. There was no mistaking Qing Jing Peak or Shen Qingqiu. Shen Yuan knew exactly where he was and he wasn't happy about it.

"What the fuck?!" he hissed, keeping his voice low, sure that this thing, this System, could hear him no matter how softly he spoke.

"Congratulations!" The System chirped happily, suddenly gaining the ability to express emotion at the most frustrating moment possible. "You have been granted a second chance at life and the opportunity to explore a beloved story you praised as... checking files... idiotic drivel. Please make the most of it."

Shen Yuan knew how this thing worked. He had read far too many transmigration stories to be caught unawares. "Aren't you supposed to give me a mission or something?"

"We apologize. There has been a mistake and certain features are currently unavailable. Please try again in..." The voice switched to full robot for a moment. "Twenty-seven years."

Twenty-seven years?! He hadn't even lived twenty-seven years in his first life! "I can't wait that long!"

"We apologize," the System repeated. "There has been a mistake."

If it had had a body, Shen Yuan would have thrown something at it. Instead, he was forced to settle with shooting a very nasty look at nothing in particular as he considered the situation. "Hang on, you said that boy is the future Shen Qingqiu? That means Luo Binghe hasn't even been born yet. This is before the story actually starts, right?"

"Correct! User's intelligence has been noted. When connecting to the intended account, an error occurred and the user was temporally displaced." The System was careful to deflect blame off itself, which only made Shen Yuan want to blame it more. "The user has been placed in a backup account. Please forgive the inconvenience."

"Backup account? Just who am I?" Shen Yuan looked down at his body as if weren't dressed exactly the same as the other disciples.

The System flashed another glowing blue textbox. "This account did not come with a name, so we have taken the initiative to substitute the user's own. Shen Yuan, twin brother of Shen Jiu. Currently a disciple of Qing Jing Peak."

His heart sank like a rock. So much for a second chance at life. Only a super fan, or a super hater like Shen Yuan, would even remember that Shen Qingqiu had a twin. The character was only mentioned in a few sentences out of hundreds of thousands, merely another black mark on Shen Qingqiu's record, too minor to even be given a name. And there was a very good reason for that. He had died long before the story started. His cause of death was never stated directly in the text, but Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky was hardly a subtle author. The heavy-handed subtext made it obvious that Shen Qingqiu's ill-fated twin was a victim of his scum brother's ambition. The two of them had been in competition for Head Disciple when the boy died a mysterious and violent death, clearing the way for Shen Qingqiu to climb the ranks and eventually become Peak Lord.

It was truly garbage writing. Why would readers need yet another reason to hate the incredibly hateable Shen Qingqiu? The character was designed to be a cartoon villain, from his abuse of the poor innocent protagonist to the murder of Liu Qingge in cold blood. He didn't need to also murder his own brother, especially not as a throwaway line in his pathetic excuse for a backstory. As much as Airplane loved to drone on and on about this magical flower or the upbringing of that future wife, he hadn't given one of his central characters more than a few sentences to explain why he was so ridiculously evil. Maybe if Shen Qingqiu had massive tits Airplane would have bothered to actually name his close relatives.

But Shen Qingqiu was not Shen Qingqiu yet. He was Shen Jiu, a scrawny teenager almost a full head shorter than the others, who kept looking over to check on his brother after what was supposedly an accidental bad hit. The boy didn't look like a scum villain. He had a pretty face and his body was slender verging on frail, the disciple uniform hanging loosely off his narrow shoulders with the belt wrapped around his waist twice. The adult man, their shizun Shen Yuan supposed, walked along the line of disciples and gave Shen Jiu a light thwack with a bamboo fan for not paying attention. That prompted Shen Jiu to focus, but after a few minutes he was back to looking at Shen Yuan.

A dark thought crossed Shen Yuan's mind. Had Shen Jiu just attempted to kill him? The backstory, if you could really call it that, gave no details about how the murder actually occurred, only that it was assumed to be a tragic accident by the twins' shizun. Maybe Shen Jiu had intentionally hit him while they were sparring and now was looking to see if he had even done any serious damage. Blows to the head could be fatal if the attacker struck the right place and Shen Yuan's head was still echoing with a dull ache. That seemed like a very mundane way to kill someone in a webnovel written like a terrible soap opera, but to be fair, Airplane hadn't actually written this part. Maybe the characters had a bit more freedom to act like normal people when they were off camera, so to speak.

If the System wasn't going to give him a mission, Shen Yuan would set one of his own. Survive no matter what it takes.

--

The rest of the day was exhausting. Shen Yuan had never been athletic and wasn't used to this much physical activity in one afternoon. This body was in better shape than his old one, a bit embarrassing considering he was now an undersized teenager, but the level of muscle soreness was still unpleasant. He was allowed to sit out for the rest of sparring practice, but after an hour or so his shizun told him to get up and practice sword forms with the others. By the evening, every part of his body ached and all he wanted to do was collapse into bed.

Shen Jiu seemed determined to stick to him like glue. The twins were obviously very close and people frequently spoke to them as if they were a single person. Shen-shidi and Shen-shixiong referred to either of them interchangeably and it didn't seem to matter which one responded; there was an understanding that if one of them knew something, the other would know as well. Shen Yuan's actual siblings were spread out in age, his two brothers out of the house by his teens and his sister had just recently entered high school a year after he'd graduated, and he hadn't been particularly close with any of them, so it felt bizarre to suddenly be half of the collective Disciples Shen.

And even stranger, it was clear that Shen Jiu was the lesser partner in the relationship. Shen Yuan had expected him to be cold and domineering and he was that way with other people, but he was completely different with his brother. The way he spoke to Shen Yuan was bratty, almost cute. He had his wants and his opinions, but he often waited for Shen Yuan to make the final choice. The dining hall had offered a choice between soup or meat buns that evening and Shen Jiu had waited patiently at a table for Shen Yuan to take two servings from the chef and put a bowl of soup in front of him. Shen Yuan had half expected this to be some kind of test but either he had picked correctly by pure luck or his new brother was completely fine with his dinner being chosen for him. It was hardly very Shen Qingqiu.

Shen Yuan had spent the whole day looking forward to bed, both because of his physical exhaustion and because it offered a chance to be alone. Well, more or less alone. The sleeping arrangements weren't individual. Disciples were grouped together by gender and age, and housed in a couple of barracks with about ten of them sharing a single large room. Each person got their own bed and a small amount of space around it including a trunk for personal belongings, separated from the others by a thin bamboo screen between beds and nothing else. There was almost no privacy. Shen Yuan stripped off his training robes and put on fresh inner robes as quickly as he could, deeply aware that he was an adult man surrounded by teenagers in various stages of undress, although to be fair, he had only just turned twenty. But if he was uncomfortable, Shen Jiu looked ready to crawl out of his skin. He changed quickly as well, shoved between the bamboo screen and his bed as tightly as he could, then stared at the wall until the rustle of cloth was over and the other boys had settled into their beds.

The twins slept at the far end of the barracks, their two beds across from each other with both of them getting a corner. Someone, presumably them, had pushed both beds fully into the corners of the room, separating them from the others as much as possible. Shen Yuan was thankful for the tiny amount of privacy. He lay down and closed his eyes as one of the Hall Masters extinguished the candles and cast the room into darkness. But before he could relax, he felt his blanket shift and someone climbed into bed next to him, lying against his chest. It was Shen Jiu of course, his body tense and trembling slightly.

"Does your head still hurt?" Shen Jiu's voice was so soft only the two of them could hear, his head tucked under Shen Yuan's chin. He was wrapped around Shen Yuan like a monkey, clinging to him with all four limbs.

"Not anymore," Shen Yuan answered. His head had stopped hurting hours ago but Shen Jiu hadn't accepted the answer then either.

"I can't lose you."

It was small and sad and pathetic. Out of reflex more than anything else, Shen Yuan put his arms around Shen Jiu, like how someone would shelter a lost kitten from the cold even though it was a mangy flea-bitten little wretch. His hand brushed a patch of broken skin at the base of Shen Jiu's neck, a twisted mess of scar tissue in a roughly circular shape. "You won't lose me."

"I know," Shen Jiu said. "If anyone tried to take you away from me, I would make sure they died slowly. I would fill them with burning qi until their blood boiled and they died screaming. All for you, A-Yuan."

A chill ran down Shen Yuan's spine. He had taken Shen Jiu's brother away. It hadn't been his choice but it had happened regardless. The brother that Shen Jiu knew had been at best sent to another world and more likely killed. Shen Yuan was a stranger wearing that boy's skin.

"Go to sleep," Shen Yuan said, doing his very best to sound normal.

Shen Jiu nuzzled closer and seemed to obey, his breathing slowing down as he slipped into sleep. Shen Yuan lay awake for a while longer, holding Shen Jiu and listening to his own heartbeat. It sounded like someone was beating a drumroll in his chest. Was he able to kill another human being? Did Shen Jiu even count as a human being? Shen Yuan ran through a mental list of transmigration novels he had read, trying to figure out if the world the lead appeared in was real or some kind of fictional construct in those stories. It had always been an unresolved tension, a loose end pulled taut until it started to fray. A few more ambitious authors had attempted to solve it, adding in details about parallel universes and the power of the human imagination, but it had always felt like a handwave for why the hero wasn't a more elaborate sort of NEET with a fake anime girlfriend. Most of the novels just let sleeping dogs lie and never even tried to tackle the metaphysical implications of transmigration, assuming that readers would ignore the flimsy worldbuilding. But Shen Yuan no longer had that luxury.

He tried to look at things objectively. If he didn't kill Shen Jiu, he would be killed by him eventually. It was a grim prospect and he didn't relish what it would do to his sanity but it may be necessary, especially if Shen Jiu figured out the truth somehow, and it was better done sooner than later. The longer he let Shen Jiu live, the stronger his cultivation would become. Shitty personality aside, Shen Qingqiu was an immortal master who specialized in strategy and dirty tricks. Shen Yuan doubted he could outwit such an overpowered character as a background NPC. Meanwhile, Shen Jiu was a needy, vulnerable, and physically frail teenager who didn't even have a spiritual sword yet.

Hey System, Shen Yuan thought, concentrating as hard as he could on the message. What happens if I kill a character in this world?

The System answered instantly and unhelpfully, its voice silently echoing in his head. "People die when they are killed."

Shen Yuan rolled his eyes even though it was far too dark for anyone to see. But it's not as bad as a murder in real life, right? They're just fictional characters and it would basically be a mercy killing, considering what Luo Binghe will do to Shen Qingqiu later. So it's not that bad, right?

"We apologize. Due to low power, certain features are currently unavailable. This System cannot contemplate the nature of the universe at this time. Please check back later."

In other words, he was on his own. Shen Yuan sighed. He couldn't make this choice yet, not while Shen Jiu was a warm weight snuggled in his arms, sleeping peacefully. It really wasn't fair that the boy was so cute.

It took Shen Yuan a long time to fall asleep that night and when he finally did, he dreamed of home.

--

The next morning brought more of the same. Shen Yuan woke to find Shen Jiu back in his own bed, presumably so the other boys wouldn't figure out they shared, although he doubted that was very effective. Surely everyone could tell they were abnormally close. There was training before breakfast and then lessons afterwards. To his surprise, Shen Yuan found himself going to class alone. Shen Jiu mentioned something about meeting him for lunch and slipped away after breakfast, leaving Shen Yuan to follow the pack of other disciples to a lovely spot by a babbling brook where their shizun was waiting for them.

The man, surnamed Zhang although it hardly mattered, was thoroughly a background NPC. He was white-haired with a long beard and held himself in a very refined manner, as befit the Qing Jing Peak Lord, but had a forgettable face and a similar teaching style. The lesson that day was a technique that gathered heat in water and turned it to steam instantly, which Shen Yuan thought was rather useless but proved so simple that he couldn't really complain.

While he may have been in a tough situation regarding long term survival, Shen Yuan did have one thing to appreciate: his cultivation. It was clear that the original twin had been a talented cultivator and Shen Yuan was able to keep up with the other disciples easily despite his lack of experience. He completed the lesson with time to spare, impressing his shizun enough that he was given a bit of free time before lunch as a reward. The praise felt rather hollow though, since he had stolen this cultivation rather than earned it properly, but Shen Yuan had never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. So he spent the rest of the morning wandering around his new home.

Qing Jing Peak was heavily wooded for the most part, with the majority of the buildings grouped in one place. The barracks, dining hall, and other important facilities were all together, centered around a large stone courtyard that served as a gathering point and hub for socializing, a bit like the central lawn that many universities had. A path led from the courtyard up a small hill and weaved through the bamboo, leading to the little cottage where Shizun Zhang lived. There were a couple of gardens scattered around the Peak, one for the kitchen and one for quiet contemplation and one with tables set up for landscape painting, and a hall for music practice, set apart from the other buildings so the noise didn't bother people while they tried to sleep. It was a picturesque place and all one would have to do to, for example, strangle one's twin brother without anyone else seeing, would be to walk into the dense bamboo forest that grew on all sides and look for a convenient ditch.

The thought was weighing heavily on Shen Yuan's mind. He didn't want to do it. Shen Jiu may be a fictional character in a shitty webnovel who would grow up to be a scum villain but he seemed very real and very vulnerable all the same. He had done the same thing at breakfast, waited for Shen Yuan to bring him his meal, to care for him. Even if he reminded himself that this would save his own life, it didn't feel good to think about.

He was wandering around the kitchen garden, lost in that discomfort, when he heard a voice. It was a boy talking loudly, clearly confident that there was no one else around to hear. "Aren't you supposed to be in your lesson? Oh right, you can't cultivate properly and need special treatment."

Shen Yuan hadn't been bullied in school. He had been too rich and too distant to attract that sort of attention, far more focused on books than what other people thought of him. But he had seen other kids being bullied and this was exactly what it sounded like. He followed the sound of the boy's voice around the back of the kitchen and flattened himself against the wall, peering around the corner to get a look. Hopefully the sound of the ornamental fountain next to him would mask his breathing.

A pair of the younger Hall Masters were standing in the middle of the path that led between the barracks and a classroom building. They were still boys more or less, just barely out of their teens and roughly the same age Shen Yuan had been only a few days ago, although he liked to think he was more of an adult than them. The two were blocking someone who Shen Yuan couldn't see from his perspective.

"Leave me alone." The voice was sharp and dangerous and unmistakably Shen Jiu.

"Why?" the other Hall Master asked. "Your brother isn't here to stop us."

"I don't need him to protect me. Get out of my way." This was a Shen Jiu that Shen Yuan had only caught glimpses of so far. He could be hostile to others, especially to other boys, and had spent part of breakfast giving another disciple a nasty look for the crime of sitting near them. And then there was the threat last night...

"I don't think I will." The first Hall Master was tall and powerfully built while his friend was short, although not shorter than the twins. "You were at Qian Cao, weren't you? They can't fix what’s wrong with you. Nobody can. You don't belong here, Shen Jiu. You and your brother are just gutter trash."

The shorter boy looked to his friend. "What should we do with him?"

"Same as last time," the taller boy answered. "He's so good at it."

Suddenly, he toppled forward with a shout, barely catching himself with his hands before his head hit the stone path. Shen Jiu had dived for his legs, using surprise to make up for his lack of strength. He leapt to his feet and tried to run, but it was two against one. The shorter boy had him caught, one hand twisted in Shen Jiu's ponytail, pulling it painfully tight.

The taller boy got up slowly and looked at his bloody hands. The rough stone had scraped off a good amount of skin from his palms. He wiped the blood on his robes and turned his anger on Shen Jiu. "You little rat!" His friend yanked on Shen Jiu's hair, forcing him down onto his knees, presumably trying to make him kowtow in front of his bullies.

Shen Yuan waited to see what Shen Jiu would do next. But the answer was nothing. As soon as his knees hit the ground, Shen Jiu stopped resisting. The Hall Masters didn't seem surprised by this behavior at all. The taller boy leaned down and cupped Shen Jiu's chin, forcing him to look up. "You know the rules. If you bite, I'll knock your teeth out."

Shen Jiu said nothing in response, merely stared up at the older boys, his body completely still. It was like someone had flipped a switch and turned off his brain.

Shen Yuan had seen enough. He wasn't about to watch his brother kowtow to a pair of bullies, even if Shen Jiu was a future scum villain and also wasn't really his brother. Without giving himself a chance to think, he dipped a cupped hand into the fountain next to him and dashed out of his hiding place. The Hall Masters looked up in surprise and Shen Yuan swung his hand out of the fountain and towards their faces in a single fluid movement, flinging an arc of qi-infused water directly at them. But before it could splash them, the water boiled midair and the boys were instead hit with a jet of scalding steam. They screamed, an understandable reaction, clutching their faces with their hands. For some reason, the taller boy's robes flapped open, his belt hanging loose. But before Shen Yuan could think about that too much, the pair turned and ran.

In the daze afterwards, Shen Yuan was startled by a tinny chime that sounded exactly like a cheap MIDI. "Congratulations!" the System chirped. "Good deeds deserve rewards! You have received one (1) coupon for the user shop!"

"There's a shop?" Shen Yuan whispered to himself.

"We apologize," the System said. "Due to low power, the user shop is currently unavailable. Please check back later."

Great. Shen Yuan decided to ignore his very helpful coupon and knelt next to Shen Jiu. "Are you okay, A-Jiu?"

For a moment, Shen Jiu didn't seem to know he was there. Then he blinked a few times and nodded. "I'm fine." Shen Yuan helped him up with both hands. Shen Jiu was shaking badly and unsteady on his feet, probably just adrenaline, and he leaned against his brother for support. "Aren't you supposed to be in the morning lesson?"

"I finished early and shizun let me leave," Shen Yuan said. It felt so natural to hold Shen Jiu like this, sheltered in his arms. But then, all of a sudden, it stopped feeling natural at all.

Shen Jiu kissed him. Not a familial peck on the cheek, a proper kiss between lovers. It lasted a few seconds and Shen Yuan felt like the world was frozen around them as his mind reeled from the act.

It wasn't Shen Yuan's first kiss, of course. He had never had a serious relationship before but that was because he hadn't found the right woman yet. His experience consisted of a few girlfriends who only lasted about a month combined, but they had kissed and gone a bit further than that, albeit not much further. But he had never been kissed like this before, never had someone surrender themselves to him completely. A few tentative kisses that had never felt quite right couldn't hope to match up to this. For a moment, Shen Yuan forgot entirely that they were supposed to be brothers and kissed Shen Jiu back.

But reality came roaring back all at once. Shen Jiu was a man and even worse than that, his twin brother. They weren't technically related in a sense, even though the blood connection presumably still remained, but Shen Jiu didn't know that. In his mind, Shen Yuan was the same person he had been raised with since birth, the identical twin he had shared a womb with. Two people couldn't get any more related than this. But Shen Jiu looked at him through half-lidded eyes, his cheeks a faint pink. "Thank you."

Shen Yuan wanted to kiss him again. He wasn't gay and he certainly wasn't incestuous, but he wanted it all the same. The only thing that stopped him was his pure shock at the whole situation. This had clearly happened before. There was no way Shen Jiu had chosen this exact moment to make the first move. The twins were far closer than they should be and had been since before Shen Yuan entered the picture. And if he was going to keep up his disguise, he had to play along.

Somehow, it didn't seem like much of a burden.

--

Shen Yuan had always disliked transmigration novels. He tried to avoid them, but often a good premise or interesting worldbuilding was hidden behind the dreaded transmigration plot and he simply had no other choice than to read them. There were a few different problems he had with the trope. First of all, he considered it lazy writing. Readers were supposed to be able to put themselves in the main character's shoes and throwing a modern person into a fantasy world was a shortcut to that goal. This way, the author didn't have to consider how someone from a completely different world would think and could have other characters explain everything to the lead without their ignorance seeming unrealistic. Second, it removed a lot of interesting opportunities for relationships with other characters. The lead was always an outsider, not someone's brother or ex-lover or old friend. Third and most of all, he hadn't thought it was realistic how quickly and smoothly the main character adapted to living in a fantasy world. But it turned out to not be so unrealistic after all.

The human mind was nothing if not adaptable. Shen Yuan still missed his family and the modern world but as the weeks passed, he found himself thinking within the world of Proud Immortal Demon Way more and more. He reached for a fan instead of the air conditioner and looked for answers to questions in the Peak's library instead of online. It helped that being a disciple kept him very busy. His days were filled with morning cultivation lessons and afternoon sword training and plenty of extra work in between. Some of his prior knowledge was useful, like the guqin lessons his mother had forced him to attend as a child. Other knowledge was actively detrimental, like his distinctly modern penmanship that his shizun considered unreadable scribbles. It all evened out to make him an above-average disciple with excellent natural potential. And as he worked, Shen Jiu was by his side.

People always talked about twins sharing a special bond, especially identical twins, and Shen Yuan finally understood what they meant. Shen Jiu was like having a useful shadow. When he struggled in a subject, Shen Jiu was there to help him work through it. When he needed to practice weiqi or sparring, Shen Jiu was his partner. When he simply wanted someone to talk to, Shen Jiu was willing to listen.

And that was how things went for a while. Weeks passed and Shen Yuan was absorbed in his studies and in his new brother. The strange intimacy resurfaced a few times but never went much further than a kiss. Shen Jiu seemed hesitant to initiate and Shen Yuan was comfortable keeping it that way. He thought about actually sleeping together and then thought about why he had thought about that, but never reached satisfying answers to either of those questions. The future was uncertain, but it wasn't an unpleasant uncertainty.

Such was the state of things one lazy afternoon, the two of them in a remote corner of a garden meant for solemn contemplation. They were both 'reading' books but it looked more like them reclining in the grass, Shen Jiu resting his head on Shen Yuan's chest, positioned a little dangerously between his legs. Places like this were supposed to bring inner peace and in Shen Yuan's opinion, this one was working wonderfully. Although he couldn't chalk that up to the garden entirely.

"Who do you think will be Head Disciple?" Shen Jiu asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

Shen Yuan's mind buzzed. That didn't sound good. "I don't know. Do you have any guesses?"

Shen Jiu shrugged, leaning back so Shen Yuan could run his fingers through his hair. "Shizun has to pick someone soon. The other Peak Lords have their Head Disciples chosen already and if he ascends without choosing a successor, it'll be a mess."

It was common knowledge on Qing Jing that the Peak Lord had waited this long because of the Shen twins, since they had joined the sect late and showed great potential. He wanted to see how their cultivation progressed and choose between them. Unnecessary drama in Shen Yuan's opinion.

"Do you think it'll be you?" Shen Yuan asked, cautiously probing the conversation from the edges.

"Maybe." Shen Jiu didn't sound too committed to the idea. "I guess it doesn't really matter which of us gets it. And with my health the way it is..." Over their time together, Shen Yuan had gathered that Shen Jiu was in generally poor health for a reason he never stated. Clearly it was something both twins were very familiar with and felt no need to discuss. He didn't remember Shen Qingqiu's health being bad in the original webnovel but also it was exactly the sort of thing Airplane wouldn't have bothered with, a detail that might humanize his scum villain. Shen Yuan hummed and pet Shen Jiu idly. Airplane didn't deserve such a cute character.

This conversation wasn't going anywhere and Shen Yuan decided to be direct about things. "Would you be upset if I got it?"

"Upset? No, of course not." Shen Jiu hesitated before continuing. "Well, maybe a little." Being a little upset hardly sounded like a reason to murder his brother though.

The more time he spent in this world, the less sense it made despite Shen Yuan's attempts to rationalize things. It was only reasonable that a book couldn't cover every little detail about a world, even a ridiculously bloated book like Proud Immortal Demon Way. The narrative was focused around Luo Binghe and the time period he was currently in only existed as brief mentions and implications. But around his brother, Shen Jiu seemed miles away from the aloof and cruel Shen Qingqiu.

Silence hung in the air for a moment before Shen Jiu changed the subject. "I'm stuck. Shizun wants me to try this technique and I just can't get it right." He pointed to a page of his book, a cultivation manual that Shen Yuan had never seen before. "Pure Heart Cleansing Breath. He says it should help."

Shen Yuan skimmed the page. The description was brief and he still struggled a bit with the archaic characters used in this world, although the grammar and vocabulary was thoroughly modern. Typical Airplane, butchering his own language. Despite his difficulty, he gathered the gist of things. This was a technique meant to clear cultivation blocks, a rather advanced one considering how complex the instructions were. The more spiritual techniques tended towards the esoteric, which only made sense. Swinging a sword was straightforward enough, but controlling the internal flow of qi was a lot more indirect. There weren't muscles that could be contracted; it was largely a matter of manipulating unconscious reflexes. So it wasn't a surprise that Shen Jiu was having trouble with this technique.

"If he asks me about it again, I'm going to throw the book at his head." Shen Jiu scowled. No matter how cute he was, there was certainly a side of him that Shen Yuan could see curdling into a sour scum villain. When he was assigned to supervise younger disciples, he had little patience and was absolutely merciless when they made mistakes. But as hard as he was on others, he was twice as hard on himself. Failure seemed to eat him away from the inside.

Shen Yuan put down his own book, a treatise on weiqi techniques and how they related to the nature of the universe or whatever, and took a closer look at the technique's instructions. In typical wuxia fashion, it wasn't a simple numbered list. Rather, it was a meandering few paragraphs bursting with metaphor and never quite getting to the point. What he wouldn't give for a cultivation wiki.

Shen Jiu pointed at one of the last sentences. "It's supposed to be easier with help. Can you monitor my qi flow while I try?"

This was something Shen Yuan had been avoiding. He had inherited the cultivation of his body's original inhabitant but he was a bit paranoid that there were still signs something was different. So far, he had been successful dodging Shizun Zhang when he tried to check his qi flow and turned Shen Jiu down when he asked for dual cultivation, apparently something the twins were doing for some reason. He was about to say no again when part of the description caught his eye.

Pure Heart Cleansing Breath is able to banish heart demons from contamination.

This was an old technique that didn't appear in mainstream cultivation manuals, likely because it was somewhat niche. Contamination was an interesting word to use. In what sense was Shen Jiu contaminated? Was he poisoned? Or was it more metaphorical? Shen Yuan had always been the obsessive sort. It was hard for him to drop something once it had wormed its way into his brain. In a sense, it had been his downfall. If he hadn't been so fixated on Proud Immortal Demon Way, the shitty ending wouldn't have killed him through sheer anger. And now he couldn't stop thinking about the secret Shen Jiu held, the visits he took to Qian Cao Peak alone and the failures of his otherwise impressive cultivation. Maybe it wouldn't be such a risk to help out. It would just be observing Shen Jiu's qi, not his own. He just had to be careful about it.

"Alright," Shen Yuan said, putting his thumb on the pulse point on Shen Jiu's wrist. "Go ahead."

Shen Jiu closed his eyes and took a deep breath and Shen Yuan could suddenly feel everything in his brother's body all at once. It was completely overwhelming. He was stunned for a moment and then focused as hard as he could on Shen Jiu's meridians, trying to drown out the noise of everything else and follow the qi flowing back and forth rhythmically.

Except it wasn't that rhythmic. Shen Jiu's meridians weren't the smooth channels they were supposed to be, like manmade canals positioned deliberately to optimize flow and kept perfectly clean. They were twisted and uneven like a natural river, clogged with debris and overflowing its banks at some points, drifting along in wide shallows and roaring over rapids. And as the flow approached Shen Jiu's heart, the qi ran into thick barriers, barely able to push through with a considerable amount of effort. It was all so broken and painful and dangerously fragile.

Shen Yuan allowed himself to help, letting his qi flow into Shen Jiu and ease some of the burden. He started with a trickle but Shen Jiu's meridians were like quicksand and he found himself sinking deeper and deeper, still unable to touch the bottom. But he had to keep trying. Cultivation like this wasn't sustainable, especially with how hard Shen Jiu pushed himself. This was a qi deviation waiting to happen. Shen Yuan gave in more and more and before he realized it, their qi was joined completely, Shen Jiu's qi flowing through his meridians as well.

Shen Jiu's eyes shot open. "A-Yuan-" His gentle deep breaths became shallow. "A-Yuan, you're- No. No, you're not-" His qi was racing now, even in the places where the meridians were most fragile, his body feverish and trembling. "You're not my brother!"

Shen Yuan let go and in the instant he broke contact, he felt it all collapse. Shen Jiu's fragile cultivation couldn't handle shock like this, not when he was already in the middle of a difficult technique meant to rewire his meridians, and the boy went limp in his arms, barely breathing.

And then he wasn't breathing.

This was it, the moment he had been waiting for. In a few minutes, Shen Jiu would be dead. It would be a tragic accident, just one of the hazards of cultivation, and nobody would question it considering the state of his meridians. Nobody would blame Shen Yuan. They were in a remote part of the Peak and by the time he could find help, it would already be too late. It wasn't his fault that in the panic of the moment, he couldn't stabilize Shen Jiu's qi and get him breathing again. All he had to do was nothing and his life would be spared. He would wait until Luo Binghe arrived and spoil the kid rotten and save the sect from its destined destruction, save the whole world from the rule of a cruel tyrant. And all it cost was one life.

Shen Jiu wasn't even real. He was just a two-dimensional character in a shitty webnovel and his only purpose was to make the protagonist's miserable life even more miserable. But he didn't seem that way, not anymore. He was so many more things than just a scum villain. He was a good painter and excellent at calligraphy. His guqin playing was less impressive but that was because he didn't hear very well with one ear and refused to tell their shizun out of stubborn pride. He loved sweet things and could be bribed with candy to do basically any task. Sometimes he cried at night and Shen Yuan didn't know why and if Shen Jiu died right now, he would never know why.

Shen Yuan grabbed Shen Jiu's wrist again and forced qi into his body. He didn't know more than basic healing techniques but he did know how to manipulate objects. Many of the meridians were completely burned out at the moment but there were still enough for Shen Yuan to send qi all around Shen Jiu's body and force it to move like a puppet, his lungs pushed and pulled until air filled them and his heart squeezed to a steady beat. It was an ugly, brutish solution and blood seeped out from the corners of Shen Jiu's mouth, but he was breathing.

The System let out a cheery ding and said something, but Shen Yuan couldn't understand it over his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. "Shut up!" he hissed and for once, the thing seemed to obey.

He had never learned CPR, but he was familiar with the basic idea from movies. It was supposed to jumpstart the person breathing again, right? But when he stopped forcing Shen Jiu's lungs to expand and contract, they didn't move on their own. He hoped that he wasn't too late already. Whatever the case, this wasn't sustainable for very long. He was already starting to lose focus. With the last of his strength, he gathered Shen Jiu up in his arms and ran for help.

--

Surrounded by soothing incense and the soft noise of a babbling brook just outside the window, in perhaps the most calming place on all of Cang Qiong Mountain, Shen Yuan had never felt more stressed before in his life.

He was sitting by Shen Jiu's bedside trying not to think about how he had just damned himself and failing. Shen Jiu had figured out the truth. He knew that Shen Yuan wasn't his real brother and had probably guessed that this body's original soul was likely no longer with the living. Shen Yuan was fucked, well and truly fucked. It had been a mistake to save Shen Jiu's life and once the boy woke up, the consequences of his actions would finally catch up to him. To be fair, they weren't actually his actions. He hadn't asked to die suddenly and transmigrate into the world of his least favorite webnovel, and especially not to replace the scum villain's doomed twin brother. But he didn't expect Shen Jiu to really appreciate the nuance.

For now at least, he was safe. Shen Jiu was completely unconscious and therefore harmless. After he picked Shen Jiu up and ran, the rest had been a bit of a blur. The next thing he knew, he was on Qian Cao Peak and doctors were surrounding Shen Jiu's limp body. He vaguely remembered being praised for saving his brother's life and reassuring words about how everything would be fine now, but he had no idea who had said them. After that, he was pretty sure he had fainted.

Shen Yuan sighed and leaned back in the chair. He was exhausted. The makeshift CPR he had done to save Shen Jiu had overtaxed his meridians and his body ached like never before. There was a pounding headache behind his eyes, a rhythmic throbbing that didn't go away no matter how much he tried to relax. His ears were ringing and...

It wasn’t his ears that were ringing. Shen Yuan closed his eyes and tried his best to focus and the source of the headache faded into view. There was a soft, repetitive beep echoing in his skull, like a phone call that had been left on hold for too long. In this pre-industrial society, only one thing could be making that sound.

"What do you want, System?" Shen Yuan kept his voice low, although he didn't have much chance of waking Shen Jiu even if he yelled.

"There is one unread notification. Would you like to turn off silent mode?"

The incessant beeping was hardly very silent. "Yeah, turn it off."

A glowing blue window popped into existence in front of his face, displaying a pixelated animation of fireworks. "Congratulations! User has completed the hidden quest Mercy for the Merciless! Claim the quest reward?" A flashing button appeared below the repeating animation.

Shen Yuan groaned and covered his eyes, blindly poking at the button before it could make his headache even worse.

The System played a brief fanfare that could only be described as bitcrunched. "A special offer from the user shop is available!"

"Wait a minute," Shen Yuan said, opening his eyes to take a look. "Didn't you say the user shop was unavailable?" The window now displayed an online storefront, stocked with a bizarre assortment of items with prices listed in a currency called 'B-points'. He didn't even know points were available. But he did have a coupon.

"We apologize. Due to low power-"

"Stop, stop! I'll buy something." Shen Yuan couldn't afford to throw away any advantages right now. He scrolled through the items on display. They didn't seem to be listed in any particular order, ranging from talismans to weapons to items of clothing. All of them looked both badass and completely useless in his current predicament. Sure, poison-tipped throwing knives were cool, but what would he do with them? The special offer in question seemed to be the fact that all items were half off at the moment, although that didn't matter to Shen Yuan since he didn't have any B-points. The real value here was that the special offer had allowed him to enter the shop through a sort of back door.

He wasn't making any progress browsing and the shop seemed to scroll infinitely, so he decided to ask directly. "Is there anything that will make Shen Jiu forget that I'm not really his brother?"

The window switched to a listing for a bottle of medicine. The heading said 'Draught of Simple Love' and some of the characters were strangely familiar, although Shen Yuan couldn't place where he had seen Jian Ai before. There was a long description next to the photo and he skimmed it. Something about providing ignorance and calm, which sounded promising. "Okay. I want to use my coupon on that."

The bottle was suddenly on the bedside table like it had always been there. "Please enjoy your purchase!" the System trilled. With that, the window disappeared and Shen Yuan was left alone. The System was really rather unnerving if he thought about it too much, so he decided not to do that.

Shen Yuan picked up the bottle and turned it over in his hands. It was fairly large and seemed to contain a good amount of liquid, with a paper tag attached to the neck suggesting one drop daily as a reasonable dose for an adult. He could only hope it would actually work.

His thoughts were interrupted by the door sliding open. Shen Yuan hid the bottle in his sleeve and looked up to find Mu Qingfang in the doorway, carrying a tray with a bowl of medicine on it. He put the tray down on the table and nodded politely to Shen Yuan. "How are you feeling, Shen-shidi?"

"I'm just tired, no real damage." Shen Yuan smiled at him. Of course he knew Mu Qingfang as the future Qian Cao Peak Lord, but he was currently just Qian Cao Head Disciple, roughly the same age as the twins and already settled nicely into his role as the sect's resident doctor. It was an NPC role through and through, and Shen Yuan couldn't help but feel a bit bad for him. Mu Qingfang never got to participate in the action and his fate in the webnovel was being unceremoniously slaughtered along with the rest of the sect. At least other characters got to have some cool fight scenes first.

Mu Qingfang smiled back. "Good. You saved your brother's life, I would hate to see you suffer for it." He knelt next to Shen Jiu and checked his pulse. "That was a very serious qi deviation. Has he had one before?"

Shen Yuan shook his head and quickly covered his bases just in case it wasn't true. "Not that I've seen. But he might have had one without me knowing."

"I find it hard to believe that either of you could keep secrets from the other." It sounded a bit accusatory but Mu Qingfang's smile never left his face. "He should wake up soon, but I'm afraid his training will have to be put on hold while he recovers."

"How long will it take?" Shen Yuan asked.

"Hard to say. It certainly won't be fast." Mu Qingfang thought for a moment. "It really depends on the state of his mind. This is both a physical and spiritual healing after all. Even if his body recovers, his cultivation will remain dangerously unstable until he can confront his heart demons."

A tinny chime went off in Shen Yuan's already aching head. "Hidden quest Twin Sparks in a House of Matchsticks discovered! Please be aware that this hidden quest includes content that is not suitable for all audiences. This system is not responsible for any phobias, anxiety, depression, Post Traumatic-"

Shut up shut up SHUT UP! Shen Yuan thought. The voice went silent and he was mercifully spared from the beeping as well.

Mu Qingfang stood and gestured at the bowl of medicine. "When he wakes up, have him drink that." He headed for the door, clearly too busy with his tasks to stay for much longer.

Shen Yuan waited for Mu Qingfang to leave the room to take the bottle out of his sleeve. He took out the ceramic stopper and peered inside. The liquid was colorless with an oily sheen and a faint flowery scent. It felt wrong to adulterate medicine but Shen Yuan didn't have much of a choice. He carefully poured a single drop of the substance into the bowl, where it was instantly lost in the medicine's dark color. All he could do now was wait for Shen Jiu to wake up.

--

Shen Yuan didn't consider himself a bad person. He supposed that bad people all felt that way though, that nobody could really consider themselves bad and remain sane. The human mind simply couldn't take it. Even truly evil people thought they were doing good in the world, or at least that morality didn't really matter and self-interest was the only possible goal, in which case they could be neither good nor bad. Regardless, he didn't consider himself a bad person, but maybe he was wrong.

It was poison. The System had tricked him into poisoning a vulnerable teenager. Shen Jiu had woken up with no memory of the truth, but only because his mind was too fuzzy to remember much of anything. Once he had recovered from the initial shock of the qi deviation, his body reached a stable sort of weakness and simply stayed there, too weak to do much of anything and too overwhelmed by how terrible he felt to remember what had happened to cause this. Mu Qingfang said that this wasn't unusual after such a severe qi deviation, that some people never fully recovered, and that it would likely get better with time. It didn't.

But Shen Yuan didn't dare stop giving him the poison. He was in too deep already. If Shen Jiu remembered the truth, he was as good as dead. So the cruel charade continued, Shen Yuan playing the devoted brother and keeping Shen Jiu so terribly sick. And the worst part was, he didn't fully hate it.

With Shen Jiu in such poor health, Shizun Zhang allowed them to move into a private cottage sometimes used by wandering cultivators while they visited the sect. It was small, little more than a single room with a bed, a chest of drawers, and a desk, but it was safe from prying eyes and gave Shen Jiu a chance to sleep undisturbed for most of the day. Somehow, being sick made him easier to deal with. Maybe it was all the care he got from Shen Yuan or simply the fact that he didn't have to interact with other people on a daily basis but whatever the reason, he no longer seemed angry and all that precious ambition was gone from his eyes. All Shen Jiu wanted now was physical touch. He spent his waking hours snuggled in blankets on his brother's lap and they openly shared a bed now that no one was there to see. And then there were the kisses.

Ever since the incident with the Hall Masters, there had been brief stolen kisses between them, but now Shen Jiu was desperate to be kissed at all times and Shen Yuan couldn't help but indulge him. He still wasn't gay of course, this was simply to atone for poisoning Shen Jiu by giving him what he wanted. The fact that it felt good was merely incidental. But no matter how many times he kissed Shen Jiu, it didn't fix the underlying problem. This was cruel. It seemed like a more or less stable situation, but it still felt bad and Shen Yuan wasn't a bad person, or at least he liked to think he wasn't. He needed a more long term solution to the problem that was Shen Jiu.

Shen Yuan spent the next few weeks focused on his cultivation. If there was anything that could fix things, it was likely that. This was a cultivation novel after all, it only made sense that cultivation would be the answer. And without Shen Jiu by his side at all times, he felt strangely lonely and occupying his mind with training and studying filled that loneliness. So for once in his life, he actually tried in his classes and took on extra work in his free time. Too bad it wasn't paying off and the elusive cultivation technique that would wipe away inconvenient memories remained out of his grasp.

One quiet evening, after training had finished for the day, Shen Yuan was in their little cottage taking notes on an ancient cultivation text, Shen Jiu curled up on his lap. The two of them were the same size so it was a little awkward, but Shen Jiu did his best to make himself as small as possible, clinging to Shen Yuan while he sat at the modest desk, the book open on the table in front of him. Shen Yuan was deep in thought when he heard a soft voice.

"I'm sorry I'm so sick. Is that why you don't want me anymore?"

Shen Yuan put down his brush and hugged Shen Jiu. "Of course I still want you." This was a worrying new trend that had started cropping up lately. Somehow Shen Jiu's rock bottom self esteem had gone lower.

"You don't." Shen Jiu's grip on him was weak but insistent, like he was afraid someone would tear Shen Yuan away from him. And in a sense, someone had. "You don't sleep with me anymore."

"We sleep together every night." There was only one bed in the cottage.

"You know what I mean," Shen Jiu said. Shen Yuan did know, or rather could guess. He had wondered for a while now how far the twins' relationship went and it seemed the answer was all the way. Even if few other details were true, the scum villain really was a lecher.

Shen Yuan gave up entirely on the idea of studying and started running his fingers through Shen Jiu's loose hair. There was no point in him dressing up these days, so Shen Jiu stayed in his inner robes and left his hair down. He didn't even bother wearing shoes. "You're too sick for that." It was a good excuse, he thought. Better to delay sex than outright reject Shen Jiu in his current fragile state. Of course Shen Yuan would reject him eventually. Of course he would.

"It didn't used to matter. I was sick a lot before and we still did it, even when I couldn't stay awake the whole time. But now I'm so disgusting that you don't want me."

Culture shock was less of a sudden assault and more of a slow and steady siege, full of little moments where holes in the walls opened up and the truth that Shen Yuan wasn't in the modern world anymore peeked through before he could hastily cover them over with flimsy distractions. What Shen Jiu was describing sounded less than consensual. Now that he thought about it, there were quite a few moments like that in Proud Immortal Demon Way, story beats that were fine in fiction and would be grounds for possible legal action in real life. In fiction, the author could simply say that both characters secretly wanted it and it would be so. But the world Shen Yuan had woken up in was seeming less and less fictional by the day, and he could no longer deny that Shen Jiu was a real person with feelings and desires and the ability to consent.

It would have been so much easier if Shen Jiu weren't real. Shen Yuan could simply kill him and move on. But he was real, or at least was real to Shen Yuan, and that meant it wasn't so simple.

"You're not disgusting," Shen Yuan said. "I just don't want to hurt you."

"It doesn't hurt when you do it. Not very much." Shen Jiu's face was hidden against his brother's chest but Shen Yuan didn't need to see his expression to know that he was utterly miserable. "You always make it better."

Shen Yuan was trying to put together the right words to turn down Shen Jiu without really turning him down when a familiar chime went off in his head. It had been weeks since the System had last spoken to him and he was beginning to think it had finally gone offline thanks to that low power it kept complaining about. But a translucent blue window appeared in front of him, offering him a choice that was simultaneously spoken aloud in his thoughts.

"The user has encountered the entrance to a hidden cutscene. Would the user like to experience the hidden cutscene and complete stage one of the hidden quest Twin Sparks in a House of Matchsticks?"

He wasn't sure what the System meant by a cutscene but it sounded like this would give him some answers about the twins' past. Maybe it could even tell him a way to help Shen Jiu without getting himself killed. And hey, what was the worst that could happen in a cutscene? It was basically just a movie. He had nothing to lose here.

Shen Yuan pressed the option for yes and his vision went dark just as the System launched into a long safety warning. Hopefully it wasn't about anything important.

--

The first thing he knew was pain. And not just simple pain like he felt after training; this was multiple layers of pain at once, old aches mixing with new, his whole body screaming at him to stop moving. The worst of it was between his legs, a completely unfamiliar sort of pain that extended deep inside his body and made him think about internal bleeding and other similarly horrible things. But he couldn't dwell on it for long. The pain made it hard to think.

Shen Yuan stopped and shook his head to clear it, taking the opportunity to get a look at his surroundings. Or rather, that was what he intended to do. His body kept walking despite his protests. Even his head refused to obey. He wasn't in control of his own body anymore. But this wasn't his own body, he reminded himself. He had stolen it and presumably the original occupant was in control at the moment, which was more than a bit terrifying. Weren't cutscenes supposed to be an opportunity to put down the controller and relax?

"A-Yuan, it hurts..."

The voice came from beside him and Shen Yuan felt a touch nauseous as his head turned like a de-synced VR game, his view changing against his will. There was a person next to him, a child who looked around 12 or 13, small for his age and very familiar. It was Shen Jiu, one hand in Shen Yuan's and the other holding his torn robes together. They were in what looked like a darkened corridor, lit only by a candle that Shen Yuan was holding. The walls looked ornate in the dim light.

"Shut up," Shen Yuan heard his own voice say. "I know it hurts but we have to get to bed. Do you want to get in trouble?"

Shen Jiu didn't answer. He was limping badly as they walked down the corridor and all Shen Yuan wanted to do was stop and let both of them rest. But his body continued walking until they reached a plain-looking door, the same as the others on either side. It wasn't locked and it opened into the smallest bedroom Shen Yuan had ever seen, really more of a closet. There was a single threadbare bed and a high window on the back wall that let in a stream of soft moonlight.

Shen Yuan closed the door behind them and put the candle on the windowsill. The brief view he got outside showed a well-kept garden surrounded by buildings on all sides, the courtyard of a classic manor house. Based on their clothes and bedroom, they were likely servants. Maybe they had just gotten a beating for disobedience.

When he turned around, Shen Jiu was sitting on the bed, staring at his hands. His robes were hanging open and Shen Yuan could catch a glimpse of angry purple bruises and what looked worryingly like dried blood. Before he could fully take stock of the situation though, Shen Yuan crossed the room in a couple of steps and cupped Shen Jiu's chin, lifting his head to kiss him deeply.

Shen Jiu whimpered into the kiss but didn't pull away. He had tears in his eyes when they parted. "A-Yuan, not tonight. Master was so rough with me. I'm still bleeding down there."

"Hush," Shen Yuan's voice said. "I'll make it better. I always make it better."

"I don't want-" He was silenced with another kiss.

Shen Yuan, the real Shen Yuan, was screaming at the original flavor to stop. If this was meant to be a movie, it was a horror movie. He watched as his body pushed Shen Jiu down on the bed and climbed on top of him, kissing him until Shen Jiu had to gasp for breath. A chill ran down his metaphorical spine as he realized that his dick was getting hard and no amount of thinking about baseball or similarly unsexy topics would make it stop.

"You don't want me? Do you prefer when our master does it?" Shen Yuan was trying as hard as he could to force his mouth shut even though he knew that he had no control over it. "We both need this, A-Jiu. I need this."

Shen Jiu looked distraught, all resistance gone at the slightest suggestion. He was well trained. "I'm sorry. I'll be good. Please make it better."

In his head, Shen Yuan stopped right there. He dressed Shen Jiu and held him and told him over and over again that he shouldn't be pressured into sex, that he was safe and it meant something when he said no. Then he woke up from this nightmare and had a long conversation with the current Shen Jiu about his real brother and Shen Jiu listened when Shen Yuan said things were better this way and admitted that he had always hated his brother for what happened on nights like this, that his dependence was just an act to protect himself. But none of that was true. Shen Yuan watched helplessly as his body touched and stroked and thrust, as the trembling boy underneath him bit his lip until it bled to keep from screaming and looked at his brother with such deep love in his eyes. And when Shen Yuan came back to the present, Shen Jiu would still be the same, feeling worthless because he hadn't been fucked while he was too sick to say yes. The dependence was real, the love was real, and it would take more than a few words to fix him.

Shen Yuan's body finished inside Shen Jiu, his seed mixing with the seed of the man who had abused them both. Shen Jiu came soon after, his dick pressed between them, and they collapsed into a heap on the bed, panting for breath. After a moment, Shen Jiu started sobbing.

"What's wrong?" asked his twin.

"I wish I were dead," said Shen Jiu.

And with that, the world went dark again and the nothingness was comforting.

--

"A-Yuan?"

Shen Yuan blinked in the dying sunlight and Shen Jiu's face faded into view, now his proper age and pale from illness. He felt like he had just run a marathon and for the first time since he had initially arrived in this world, his body felt fully alien. It disgusted him. He wanted to claw off his face, to completely obliterate all traces of the boy who had hurt Shen Jiu and taught him that it was love.

"A-Yuan, are you alright?" Shen Jiu frowned, looking worried. "You're not allowed to get sick too. I can't take care of you."

"I'm fine," Shen Yuan said, hearing his voice echo in his head louder than before. It wasn't his voice and it wasn't his head. His body was dead and buried and he was wrapped in the skin of a beast.

"Good." Shen Jiu relaxed again, tucking his head under his brother's chin. The feeling was eerily familiar to the way he had just been holding Shen Jiu in bed. "I wish you still wanted me."

A million things whirled through Shen Yuan's mind at once. Shen Jiu needed a therapist, he needed to be far away from the brother who had hurt him, and all he had was Shen Yuan, a worthless NEET who spent all his time reading webnovels. He might make things so much worse. But on the other hand, he had to try.

"I do want you," Shen Yuan said carefully. "But I want to take better care of you since you're sick. So we have to change some things." He couldn't let Shen Jiu feel unloved. If that happened it would all collapse. Shen Jiu was too dependent to break up with. Similarly, he couldn't stop poisoning Shen Jiu and let him remember the truth, that would be the same as breaking up but with the added detail of his brother's death. They were trapped between a rock and a hard place, only able to slowly wriggle free inch by inch.

Shen Jiu tilted his head to the side. It didn't help that he was so damn cute. "What sort of things?"

Shit! He hadn't actually thought that part through yet. "Uh..." He couldn't just say consent, Shen Jiu probably wouldn't understand what that meant fully. "We need to... I mean... I only want to sleep together when you want it."

"I want it whenever A-Yuan wants it," Shen Jiu said.

"No, that's not what I mean. You have to actually want it." This was clearly going to be a process and based on how Shen Jiu's eyelids were drooping, he was already losing the limited amount of focus he had. "How about an example. A-Jiu, may I kiss you?" Kisses were basically Shen Jiu's favorite thing, so this would get his attention.

Shen Jiu looked confused. "You don't have to ask. Just kiss me."

"I want to ask anyway. May I kiss you?" This felt very basic but Shen Yuan reminded himself that Shen Jiu wasn't exactly thinking clearly anymore since he was, you know, being poisoned.

Shen Jiu nodded and waited for the kiss.

Well, Shen Yuan couldn't exactly back out now. He gave Shen Jiu a quick kiss. Affection was the only thing Shen Jiu ever wanted these days and if that was what it took to fix their relationship, he would have to take one for the team and give his brother plenty of kisses. Maybe something more once he learned how to consent properly, as a reward. That didn't make him gay, right?

Shen Jiu fell asleep pretty quickly afterwards, held safely on his lap, and Shen Yuan wondered if maybe the death of his brother was less about competition and more about something else. Maybe things went too far between them. Maybe Shen Jiu figured out what his brother was really doing to him this whole time and fought back. He wondered if the Shen Jiu of the webnovel had mourned his brother or if it had finally felt like freedom or if it was a little bit of both.

Just before he drifted off into a nap himself, Shen Yuan remembered something. "Hey System, what's my status on that hidden quest?"

The System popped up one of its characteristic blue windows and let out a little trill, as if it hadn't just sent Shen Yuan through a hellish experience. "The hidden quest Twin Sparks in a House of Matchsticks is ten percent complete."

Ten percent hardly seemed like very much. "What do I get for completing it?"

"The satisfaction of a job well done!" the System chirped. Frankly it was lucky that it didn't have a neck to strangle.

For once, Shen Yuan took a deep breath. He couldn't yell without waking Shen Jiu. "Fine." The word came out as more of a hiss. "Fuck off."

The window in front of him vanished. As much as Shen Yuan wanted to hate the System, as horrible as the experience it had just put him through was, he had to admit that it had given him useful information that would actually help with Shen Jiu. If he could help Shen Jiu process his trauma, maybe poisoning him wouldn't be necessary anymore. But that was easier said than done.

--

"Congratulations!"

"I knew it would be you, shixiong!"

"A toast! A toast to Head Disciple Shen Yuan!"

The words rolled over him like waves on a beach. Shen Yuan knew that they should have meant more to him, that he should be sharing in the celebrations, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He sipped his wine and wondered how much longer this would take. Being praised was nice and all, but the one person he wanted to share this achievement with was missing.

Being named Head Disciple had been a foregone conclusion. With Shen Jiu unable to cultivate, Shen Yuan had very little competition left. He hadn't meant to clear the way for himself but it had happened anyway. And it wasn't such a bad thing. This meant that when Luo Binghe finally joined the sect, he could make sure the protagonist stayed a perfect white lotus forever.

But to be honest, he wasn't thinking much about the looming threat of Luo Binghe these days. His thoughts tended to stay in the little cottage. Becoming Peak Lord meant he could give Shen Jiu everything he could ever want and Head Disciple was a step on that path. It was a shame that Shen Jiu couldn't take it with him.

The hour was getting late and Shen Yuan stood up from his seat at the high table, looking out across the dining hall. It had been decorated nicely for his ascension to Head Disciple and all the Qing Jing Peak disciples were in attendance, with a scattering of representatives from other Peaks mixed in as well. Nobody else was ready to leave yet but he couldn't wait any longer.

"Shizun, please excuse me," Shen Yuan said. "I have business to attend to."

Shizun Zhang nodded. "Of course. Your responsibilities come first."

Shen Yuan waded into the main crowd, politely accepting compliments and pats on the back as he made his way to the door. Once outside, he let out a sigh and gazed up at the night sky. That was one thing he couldn't stop marveling at, even after a full year in this world. The sky was so clear and there were so many more stars.

It was a cold night and he was alone as he walked the familiar path away from the main buildings and a little ways into the woods, just far enough for peace and quiet but not fully isolated. The cottage was waiting for him, the warm glow of candles peeking out through the windows. He stopped at the front door and fumbled for his key. The lock wasn't really necessary but it helped him feel more secure. Shen Jiu felt the same way.

The cottage was exactly as he had left it, tidy and cozy. The desk was strewn with a selection of paints and books were piled up next to the bed in a precarious stack. By this hour, the hearth had burned low, casting long shadows across the floor like slender ghosts. Shen Jiu wasn't in bed, he realized with a shock, but his nerves calmed seconds later when he spotted the boy curled up in a chair facing the door, fast asleep.

Shen Yuan snuck closer to him, his footsteps completely soundless, and took a moment to admire his brother. Shen Jiu still looked pale and unwell but he had put on some weight finally and was less alarmingly frail. The firelight made his hair shine like a precious stone and Shen Yuan couldn't resist touching it gently.

"A-Yuan?" Shen Jiu rubbed his eyes and lifted his head. Of course he knew it was his brother. Nobody else was allowed in the cottage. "I was trying to wait for you, but... I guess I fell asleep."

"You need your rest." Shen Yuan couldn't stop looking at him sometimes, like Shen Jiu was the only interesting thing left in the world. "May I kiss you?"

"Uh-huh," Shen Jiu said sleepily. He always said yes but that wasn't the point.

Shen Yuan kissed him on the forehead and then picked him up, carrying him to the bed. It was covered in thick blankets on such a cold night, all bunched up together like a nest. He set Shen Jiu down right in the middle of it and lay next to him with his brother held close in his arms. "I've been made Head Disciple."

"You have? I guess you'll be Peak Lord one day." Shen Jiu sounded a bit sad.

"It should have been you," Shen Yuan said. It was true, but things were better this way. The doctors said that Shen Jiu's cultivation would have always been unstable even if he weren't sick because of his heart demons and being Peak Lord hardly went well for him in the webnovel.

Shen Jiu was quiet for a while and Shen Yuan thought he had gone back to sleep until he finally spoke. "I've been thinking about what you said. About the things you did when we were kids. I don't blame you for them, but... you're right. It was like what he did to us."

"Do you hate me?"

Shen Jiu shook his head. "No. Maybe I should but I don't. You're different now. You take such good care of me."

Shen Yuan wished that were true, wished he didn't have to keep Shen Jiu sick, wished he could tell Shen Jiu that he was truly a different person and that his real brother would never hurt him again. Maybe things would change one day, once he was Peak Lord and Luo Binghe was safely in his care. But for now, the best thing for everyone would be if Shen Jiu stayed here, where he could be protected from his fate and from himself.

"May I kiss you?" Shen Jiu asked.

"Yes," Shen Yuan said, and kissed him.